me?" said she.
"The bicycle didn't need to do _anything_ for you!" he cried, warmly.
Mrs. Ellis, a little distance in the rear, heard, turned, and walked
thoughtfully away. "They're off," said she--she had acquired a sporting
tinge of thought from Shuey Cardigan. "If with that start he can't make
the running, it's a wonder."
"I have invited Mr. Winslow and his mother to dinner," said Miss
Hopkins, in the morning. "Will you come too, Maggie?"
"I'll back him against the marquis," thought Margaret, gleefully.
A week later Lorania said: "I really think I must be getting thinner.
Fancy Mr. Winslow, who is so clear-sighted, mistaking me for Sibyl! He
says--I told him how I had suffered from my figure--he says it can't be
what he has suffered from his. Do you think him so very short, Maggie?
Of course he isn't tall, but he has an elegant figure, I think, and I
never saw anywhere such a rider!"
Mrs. Ellis answered, heartily: "He isn't very small, and he is a
beautiful figure on the wheel!" And added to herself, "I know what was
in that letter she sent yesterday to the marquis! But to think of its
all being due to the bicycle!"
THE SPELLBINDER
Not long since the writer had occasion to pass through the scene of this
story. It would be hard to find anywhere a more pleasant and prosperous
land. Fertile fields and shady country roads and pastures where sleek
cattle are contentedly grazing; great stacks of green alfalfa;
farmhouses with flowers and vines, as well as thriving kitchen gardens;
windmills that pipe houses with water as well as fill the barn troughs;
automobiles and good roads--there could hardly be a greater contrast.
And it is pleasant to hear that the pioneers who suffered incredible
hardships during the lean years are now reaping the reward of their
toil, courage and versatile, indomitable ingenuity.
* * * * *
The frozen soil rattled under the horses' hoofs; the wagon wheels
rattled on their own account. A December wind was keen enough to make
the driver wrap his patched quilt closer and pull his battered straw hat
lower over his ears. He was a man of thirty, with high, tanned features
and eyes that would have been handsome but for their sullen frown.
"I should call it getting good and ready for a blizzard," observed the
other man on the board (seat the wagon had none); "maybe he won't come."
"He'll come fast enough," returned the driver; "you don't catch buzzards
staying in for weather!"
"I don't know. He's a pretty luxurious young scoundrel. Bixby says he
had a letter from him--very particular about a fire in his room, and
plenty of hot water and towels. Bixby is worried lest the boys make a
fuss with him in his hotel."
"Bixby is a coward from Wayback," was the driver's single comment or
reply. The other man eyed the dark profile at his shoulder, out of the
tail of his eye rubbing his hands up and down his wrists under his
frayed sleeves. He was a young man, shorter of stature than the driver.
He had a round, genial, tanned face, and a bad cold on him. His hands
were bare because he had lent his mittens to the driver; but he wore a
warm, if shabby greatcoat and a worn fur cap.
"I don't suppose," he said in a careless tone, "you fellows mean to do
more than scare the lad well."
"We scared the last man. Doc Russell got him fairly paralyzed; told him
'bout the Shylock that turned out the Kinneys, and Miss Kinney's dying
in the wagon, she was so weak; and Kin--somebody ('course he didn't
mention names) shooting that man; and their arresting Kinney, and the
jury acquitting him without leaving the box. Oh, he told a lot of
stories. Some of 'em, I guess, he made up out of his own head; but that
Iowa lawyer swallered the whole batch, hide and hoofs and all. And he
couldn't git out of town quick enough! But what's the good? Here's this
young dude come again. Say, did you know it's his pa that owns most of
the stock in the trust?"
"No?"
"Yes, sir. He's got the upper hand of 'em all. They've bought up every
last bit of foreclosed land 'round here. Yes, we was so mighty smart, we
fixed it that nobody'd dare to buy; and nobody 'round here _would_ dare,
even s'posing they got the money, which they ain't--"
"There certainly ain't much loose money 'round here, Wesley. At least,
when I ran the paper I didn't find it; I was glad to rent an abandoned
farm and trade my subscription list for enough corn to pay the first
instalment on some stock and a cultivator."
"Did you pay any more?"
"No; times got worse instead of better. I'd have lost the stock and the
cultivator and every blamed thing in the way of implement I've got if it
hadn't been for you fellows running the implement man out of the
country; he'd a chattel mortgage that was a terror. But what were you
saying about the land? Nobody would buy?"
"Of course nobody would buy, and we hugged ourselves we was so durned
slick. Oh, my! Now, here comes along one of them bloody trusts that's
eating this country up, and goes to the land company and buys the
foreclosed land for a song. It goes all the cheaper because its known
far and wide that we elected the sheriff not to enforce writs, but to
resist 'em; and the same with all the officers; and we're ready to shoot
down any man that tries to push us off the earth. That scared folks, and
the investment company sold cheap as dirt. They knew they couldn't git
anybody to take up a farm 'round here. Look a' there!" He jerked the
point of the switch that served for whip in the direction of a dark
bulk looming against the glowing belt of red in the west. The outlines
of a ruined chimney toppled over the misshapen roof. The door and window
openings gaped forlornly; doors and windows were gone long since,
wrenched off for other needs. Bit by bit the house had been nibbled
at--here a porch platform taken, there a patch of weather-boarding,
shingles pulled from the roof, the corn crib a wreck, the outbuildings
carried away piece-meal--until, a sadder ruin than fire leaves, it faced
the sunset and the prairie.
"That farm belonged to as hard-working, smart a feller as ever handled a
plow. Look at them fields, gone to desolation like everything else, but
the furrows used to be as straight's a line with a ruler. He fought the
hard times and the drought till his wife died, and then he said to me,
'I'm beat; I'm going to take the baby back to Winnie's folks. If I'd
only gone last year I could have took Winnie, too. The company kin have
my farm, and I hope to God it'll be the curse to them it's been to me!'
There the farm is. And look further down"--shifting the switch to
another direction--"there's another dropping to pieces. Lord, when I
think of the stories they told me about the crops when I fust came and
put in four hundred dollars that I'd worked hard for in a saw-mill, and
I think how we used to set 'round the fire evenings, my wife and I,
talking about how the town was a-growing and what it would be when the
trees was growed and our children was going to school, and how we'd have
a cabinet organ and we'd have a top buggy, and we'd send for her mother,
who didn't jest like it with Bill's wife--we was jest like children,
making believe! But that ain't what I was driving at. Here it is. We
calculated that we'd be let alone, because the poor, miserable remnants
of stock and machines and farms we got simply wasn't worth outside folks
taking, and inside folks wouldn't risk their lives by dispossessing us.
That's how we sized it up, ain't it?"
"I don't see yet what you're after, Wesley."
"You will. We reasoned that way. But along comes this company,
this--trust, that's clean against the laws and don't give a curse for
that, and it buys up the whole outfit. I tell you, Mr. Robbins, there
ain't five men in this community that that trust ain't got the legal
right to turn out on the prairies to-morrow. They've all been
foreclosed, and the year of grace is up. Most of us here ain't got no
show at all--legally. And so they send a man down here to see about
gitting out writs and finishing us up."
"But who'll they get to buy, Wesley Orr?"
"They're not needing much buying. They're on to a new scheme--going to
turn all these farms into big pastures and fatten cattle with alfalfa,
raise it and ship it; then the lower part of the county, down below
town, they intend to run a ditch through from the river and irrigate it.
They will fetch in a colony who'll pay them about ten times what they
paid, I expect, and--"
"But we won't let them--"
"Depends on how many guns the colony's got and how much fight there's in
it. They'll try it, anyhow, unless--"
"Unless--" repeated Robbins uneasily.
"Unless they're scared off, _unless they think it's death for a man to
tackle us_."
Robbins rubbed his hands harder; he bit his lip. A little space of
silence fell between them. Off to the south, where the little town was
set like an island in the darkening prairie, the lights began to
twinkle; they were yellow and scattered. Even at that distance one
could tell that they burned few to the house.
"I kinder wish," said Robbins, "that he came from another town."
"What's the difference about the town?"
"Oh, none, I guess. But that town, it's in Iowa, and it sent the best
things we've ever had. One woman put in a lot of jams and jellies and
tea--such tea! My wife was sick then, and I didn't know but I'd lose
her. I gave her some of that tea and some jam, and she began to pick up
from that day. It was a quince jam, and made her think of home, she
said. Her father was a Connecticut man, and they had an orchard with
quince trees in it--I remember--" He did not finish the sentence, but he
sighed as he absently ran his eye over the gaps in the harness mended
with rope.
"I bet _he_ didn't have nothing to do with that box," said Orr; "most
like, the people sent us that were poor folks themselves, and had to
pinch to make up for the things they sent us. 'Tain't the rich people
are sorriest for poor folks. This young Wallace--his father's the owner
of a big paper, and rich besides, and he's got this boy in training for
editor; and when that first duck couldn't do nothing out here, the old
man said he'd buy in, and the young one thought it a mighty smart thing
to do to come over here and turn a lot of half-starved women and
children out in winter. What's _he_ care? What do any of these rich
folks care?"
"I don't think you're fair, Wesley," said Robbins. "All the rich folks
aren't mean. I know more about them than you." He spoke with a dawning
of pride in his tone, which deepened a little.
"Yes, I know you used to belong to them," said Orr, "and I guess you
were decent to the poor. But you'll admit you didn't have no notion how
it cuts to work every muscle in you and to lay awake thinking yourself
half crazy to puzzle out better ways to make money and yet to feel every
year you're a-sinking deeper in the slough! I've worked five years here,
and 'cepting the first year, every single year has piled interest on the
mortgage. Every year we've had less clothes to wear and poorer stuff to
eat, and it's been mend instead of buy, and we've had more debts and
more worries every year. I tell you, Mr. Robbins, I thought it would
_kill_ me, once, to come on the county. I'd 'a' said I'd starve first;
but you can't see your wife and children starve. I went in last winter,
and asked for relief. I'd that old hound dog of mine with me; you knowed
him. He'd been a good dog. He come with us when we come here, running
under the wagon. All the children had played with him. I took him into
town, and I asked every one I knowed would he have that dog for a gift;
I showed off all his tricks, feeling like I was dirty mean deceiving
him, for I done it so somebody would be willing to take him home and
feed him and take care of him, for it's God's truth I hadn't enough for
him and the children too. But nobody wanted him; he was pretty old, and
he wasn't never handsome. And one store I was in, as I went out I heard
a drummer that was trying to sell goods say, 'I saw that feller at the
Relief, but I notice he's able to keep a dog. Lets the children go
hungry ruther'n the dog, I guess.' I kinder turned on him, then I turned
back again, and I whistled to Sport, and I looked at him and saw how his
ribs showed and his eyes was kinder sunk. He wagged his tail and yelped
like he used to, seeing me look at him; and then I went straight to that
drug-store Billy used to keep--Billy Harvey. He moved away last year;
he was a good friend of mine. I said to him, 'Billy, you got something
that would kill a dog in a flash, so he'd never suffer or know what hurt
him?' And Billy--he understood, and he said he had. 'You jest put it on
his tongue and he'd never know what killed him.' Billy was sorry for me.
He gave it to me for nothing, and he gave me some bones and corn bread
and milk; so Sport had a good dinner. And he come right up to me and
looked me in the eyes, wagging his tail. His eyes was kinder dim, but
they was just as loving as ever. And he was wagging his tail when he
dropped. Then I went home, and the children asked me where was Sport,
and little Peggy cried--oh, Lord!"
"It was awful hard on you, Wesley," said Robbins gently.
"I suppose it wasn't nothing to what some men have suffered. There was
poor Tommy Walker, give up his farm when it was foreclosed--thought he
had to--and went off tramping to Kansas City, and after he'd tramped a
week there, looking for a job, give it up and jumped into the river. And
you know how old man Osgood killed himself, honest a old man as ever
lived; always kept his machines under cover, too; _he_ couldn't stand
it. They found it harder--and lots more, too; but I've found it hard
enough. And I know I'd shoot that sneaking, sneering young Shylock, and
not mind it near so much as I minded killing poor Sport."
"I don't know but we'd all better quit," said the younger man with a
sigh. "This isn't a living country. Three years of drought would break
any country up. It's not meant to live in. We had a fair crop this year,
but it's so low; and freights, though they're lower, are pretty high. I
don't see any way out of it. And I declare I think if we run this young
fellow off we'll only get a bad name for the place."
"I don't care for bad names," said the other sullenly. "I got a wife and
three children; I was foreclosed a year ago--so's you, so's a lot of the
boys; we're at the end of our string now--legally. So what did we say?
We said we didn't care, was it legal or illegal; that laws was made to
skin the poor man; and we elected a sheriff we could depend on not to
enforce the laws, and we druv off the bloodsuckers they sent out here.
They say one feller was killed. I don't know. Guess that's one of Doc
Russell's stories. The boys talk a lot about the cause of all this here
trouble, and how we're going to have a revolution, and how referendum
and initiendum will help, and how free silver will help--I guess,
myself, a little more rain three years ago when corn was up would have
helped more'n anything--and they talk how they're fighting the battles
of the poor man, and the Eastern bloodsuckers has ruined us, and the
Shylocks are devouring us, and they holler the roof off. I listen to
'em, but I don't believe 'em any more than you do."
"But," interrupted the other man eagerly, "I voted with the people's
party--"
"Of course you did. We was going to be unanimous, and you dass'n't stand
out; but you didn't believe in it. Me neither. I ain't makin' any
pretense, but I'll tell you it's jest here--I'm down to bed-rock. If I
let my farm be took away and my stock, what's going to become of my wife
and children? You can call it stealing, or resisting the law, or
anything you please, but I'll kill that feller before I'll let him turn
me out."
"Don't you think we can scare him off? Killing's a nasty word."
"My father was with John Brown; he helped kill a man. He never lost no
sleep about it; I shan't neither. Look here, Mr. Robbins, I got lots of
time to think, winters--lots. Remorse and all them fine feelings you
read of, they don't belong to folks that are way down in the dirt. You
got to have something to eat and wear, and not have your stomach sassing
you, and you half froze most of the time; when your body is in sech a
fix it's keeping your mind so full there ain't any show for any other
feelings. And look a' here, there's worse"--his voice sank. "Why, you
git to that pass you ain't able to feel for your own wife and babies.
When this morning Peggy kept hushing the baby, and she was fretting and
moaning, and Peggy says to me, couldn't I git a little crackers in town;
maybe the baby could eat them? I didn't feel nothing 'cept a numb
aching. I kept saying, 'I'd 'a' felt that, once!' But I didn't feel it
now. And, all of a sudden, it come to me 'twas because I was gitting
_past_ feeling--like you do when you're froze, jest before you die. I
read a story once, when I was a little shaver, that kept me awake nights
many a time. It was about a Russian nobleman out sleigh-riding with his
children, three of 'em, on one of them steppes; and the wolves chased
them. The father had a pistol, and he would shoot one of the wolves, and
then the cowardly cusses would stop to tear the wounded critter to
pieces and eat him, giving the folks in the sleigh a little more time;
but every time the distance between the wolves and them when they
stopped was a little smaller; but they were getting closer to the town,
and they could see the lights. So the father, he kept on shooting, until
the wolves were jumping up and grabbing at the sleigh, and the last time
he shot a wolf he used up his last cartridge; then, when they come after
him again, when the lights were nearer, and he knew if he could stop 'em
once more he could escape, he--he throwed out one of the children;
because it was this way: if he jumped out himself the children were so
little they couldn't drive, and they'd be tipped up, and all three of
them lost, so he throwed out the child he loved the best, and they got
to town safely; but he went raving crazy. Well, I thought of him, and I
said, if baby died there'd be the more chance for the others--"
"Look here, Wesley," his companion interrupted, "_quit it_! You're
getting light-headed. Get rid of such fool thoughts as those or you'll
be going off to the insane asylum; and mighty little use your family
will have of you _there_!"
Orr gave him no answer. Robbins watched his impassive face and frowned.
"He's not bad-hearted, but he's desperate. You can't appeal to a
desperate man," he thought, "and the other boys are the same way.
There'll be wild work there to-night, unless that young fool has the
papers with him and will give them up. You're a fool, George Robbins, to
mix yourself up in it on the chance of getting a few dollars from a
Kansas City paper for a telegram!"
Silently the two men looked at the nearing lights, while the wagon
creaked and swayed and rattled over the road.
"We got to save the lantern to go home by," Orr remarked at last, "else
I'd light up; they ain't got any more lights in the streets. But I guess
we can see."
There were enough lights in the windows to reveal the wide untidiness of
the street, the black, boarded windows of the empty shops, the gaps in
the sidewalk, the haggard gardens, where savage winds had blown the
heart out of deserted rose-trees and geraniums. In general the sky-line
was low and the roofs the simplest peaks; but it was broken in a few
places by three and four storied brick buildings of the florid pomp on
which a raw Western town loves to lavish its money. Now they loomed,
dark and silent, landmarks of vanished ambition. Robbins, who was a man
of parts and education, with a fanciful turn, felt the air of defeat and
desolation hanging over the town choke him like miasma. To him the
dreariness was the more poignant for the half a dozen little shops that
still flickered their challenge to fate in the guise of a dim coal-oil
lamp in the window. There appeared to be no customers at these dismal
marts; in some cases not even the shop-keeper was visible, and only the
stove in the rear of the room kept a lonesome red eye on the shelves.
The sole sparks of life in the place were at the hotel. It had been
built "during the boom"--a large rectangle of wood, with a cheap and
gaudy piazza, all painted four shades of green, which the climate had
burned and blistered and bleached into one sickly, mottled brown. Long
ago the stables of the hostelry had been abandoned, but this night the
stable yard was full of wagons.
The upper story of the hotel was dark, and the greater part of the lower
story; but the kitchen was bright, and yellow light leaked through every
chink and crack in the office blinds.
"Boys have turned out well, I guess," said Robbins.
"They _better_ turn out!" said Orr.
No word was spoken by either while they unhitched their horses, led them
within the sheds, and tied them among the sorry company already housed.
Robbins noted that after Orr had laid the blanket which had served them
for robe on one thin back, he flung his own quilt over the other. Then
they stumbled (for they were unwieldy with cold) through the yard to the
hotel.
The office was full of men, gathered about the stove, talking to each
other. The innkeeper sat behind his counter, affecting to busy himself
with a blotted ledger. Originally he had been a stout man, but he had
lost flesh of late years. He was wrinkled and flabby, and the furtive
eyeshots that he cast toward the stove were anxious beyond his
concealing. Any one, however, could perceive that matters of heavy
import were being discussed. The miserably clad men about the stove all
looked sullen. There was none of the easy-going badinage so habitual
with Westerners. They exchanged glances rather than words; what words
were spoken were uttered in low tones.
"Where is he?" said Orr, in the same undertone to a large man in a
buffalo coat. The large man was the sheriff of the county. He jerked his
thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the dining-room.
"What's he like?"
"Little feller with a game leg."
Orr frowned. Robbins felt uncomfortable. A gaunt man on the outskirts of
the circle added: "He's powerful slick, though; you can bet your life.
That girl Susy is all won over already; and she's suspecting something,
sure's shooting. I guess she's warned him there's something in the air."
"Well, if there is, I don't know it," said the sheriff.
"You never _will_ know anything about it, either," a gray-haired man
added.
"That's right, Kinney," two or three spoke at once. But immediately a
silence fell on them. Robbins, who felt himself an outsider, could see
that the others drew closer together. Once or twice he caught sinister
murmurs. He began to wish that he had not come.
"It would be no earthly use for me to chip in and try to soften them,"
he thought. "They're crazy with defeat and misery and the fool stuff
campaign orators have crammed down their throats."
Just then the dining-room door opened, and Robbins was the only one of
the group to turn his head. The other men gazed at the fire, and the
heavy silence grew heavier.
The man who came out of the room was young, slight of figure, and he
limped a little. Nevertheless, there was nothing of dejection in his
bearing or his face. He was freckled to a degree, smooth-shaven, and his
teeth were beautiful. He had fine eyes also, a deep blue, flashing like
steel as they moved from one object to another. The eyes were keen,
alert, and determined; but being set rather wide apart under his light
brows, they gave the face a candid, almost artless, look, and when he
smiled the deep dimple in his cheek made it as merry as a child's.
"Good evening, gentlemen," said he cheerfully. No one responded. Robbins
made a gurgle in his throat, which the newcomer generously accepted for
salutation, promptly approaching the fire at Robbins' elbow.
"Cold weather," said he. Two or three of the company lifted their heads
and eyed the speaker. Robbins wondered were they as keenly conscious as
he of the young fellow's trimly fitted clothes, what good quality that
rough plaided brown stuff was, how dainty was his linen. He looked at
the home people's ragged coats, he thought of the poverty that he knew,
and the reflection of a sneer was on his own lips, and, somehow, a lump
in his throat.
"Too cold weather for folks to travel unless they're wanted bad!" said
the gray-haired man on the edge of the company. There was a thrill of
some strong feeling in his deep voice.