Boy Life on the Prairie
The snows fell deep in February and when at last the warm March winds
began to blow, lakes developed with magical swiftness in the fields, and
streams filled every swale, transforming the landscape into something
unexpected and enchanting. At night these waters froze, bringing fields
of ice almost to our door. We forgot all our other interests in the joy
of the games which we played thereon at every respite from school, or
from the wood-pile, for splitting firewood was our first spring task.
From time to time as the weather permitted, father had been cutting and
hauling maple and hickory logs from the forests of the Cedar River, and
these logs must now be made into stove-wood and piled for summer use.
Even before the school term ended we began to take a hand at this work,
after four o'clock and on Saturdays. While the hired man and father ran
the cross-cut saw, whose pleasant song had much of the seed-time
suggestion which vibrated in the _caw-caw_ of the hens as they burrowed
in the dust of the chip-yard, I split the easy blocks and my brother
helped to pile the finished product.
The place where the wood-pile lay was slightly higher than the barnyard
and was the first dry ground to appear in the almost universal slush and
mud. Delightful memories are associated with this sunny spot and with a
pond which appeared as if by some conjury, on the very field where I had
husked the down-row so painfully in November. From the wood-pile I was
often permitted to go skating and Burton was my constant companion in
these excursions. However, my joy in his companionship was not unmixed
with bitterness, for I deeply envied him the skates which he wore. They
were trimmed with brass and their runners came up over his toes in
beautiful curves and ended in brass acorns which transfigured their
wearer. To own a pair of such skates seemed to me the summit of all
earthly glory.
My own wooden "contraptions" went on with straps and I could not make
the runners stay in the middle of my soles where they belonged, hence my
ankles not only tipped in awkwardly but the stiff outer edges of my boot
counters dug holes in my skin so that my outing was a kind of torture
after all. Nevertheless, I persisted and, while Burton circled and
swooped like a hawk, I sprawled with flapping arms in a mist of ignoble
rage. That I learned to skate fairly well even under these disadvantages
argues a high degree of enthusiasm.
Father was always willing to release us from labor at times when the ice
was fine, and at night we were free to explore the whole country round
about, finding new places for our games. Sometimes the girls joined us,
and we built fires on the edges of the swales and played "gool" and a
kind of "shinny" till hunger drove us home.
We held to this sport to the last--till the ice with prodigious booming
and cracking fell away in the swales and broke through the icy drifts
(which lay like dams along the fences) and vanished, leaving the
corn-rows littered with huge blocks of ice. Often we came in from the
pond, wet to the middle, our boots completely soaked with water. They
often grew hard as iron during the night, and we experienced the
greatest trouble in getting them on again. Greasing them with hot
tallow was a regular morning job.
Then came the fanning mill. The seed grain had to be fanned up, and that
was a dark and dusty "trick" which we did not like anything near as well
as we did skating or even piling wood. The hired man turned the mill, I
dipped the wheat into the hopper, Franklin held sacks and father scooped
the grain in. I don't suppose we gave up many hours to this work, but it
seems to me that we spent weeks at it. Probably we took spells at the
mill in the midst of the work on the chip pile.
Meanwhile, above our heads the wild ducks again pursued their northward
flight, and the far honking of the geese fell to our ears from the
solemn deeps of the windless night. On the first dry warm ridges the
prairie cocks began to boom, and then at last came the day when father's
imperious voice rang high in familiar command. "Out with the drags,
boys! We start seeding tomorrow."
Again we went forth on the land, this time to wrestle with the tough,
unrotted sod of the new breaking, while all around us the larks and
plover called and the gray badgers stared with disapproving bitterness
from their ravaged hills.
Maledictions on that tough northwest forty! How many times I harrowed
and cross-harrowed it I cannot say, but I well remember the maddening
persistency with which the masses of hazel roots clogged the teeth of
the drag, making it necessary for me to raise the corner of it--a
million times a day! This had to be done while the team was in motion,
and you can see I did not lack for exercise. It was necessary also to
"lap-half" and this requirement made careful driving needful for father
could not be fooled. He saw every "balk."
As the ground dried off the dust arose from under the teeth of the
harrow and flew so thickly that my face was not only coated with it but
tears of rebellious rage stained my cheeks with comic lines. At such
times it seemed unprofitable to be the twelve-year-old son of a western
farmer.
One day, just as the early sown wheat was beginning to throw a tinge of
green over the brown earth, a tremendous wind arose from the southwest
and blew with such devastating fury that the soil, caught up from the
field, formed a cloud, hundreds of feet high,--a cloud which darkened
the sky, turning noon into dusk and sending us all to shelter. All the
forenoon this blizzard of loam raged, filling the house with dust,
almost smothering the cattle in the stable. Work was impossible, even
for the men. The growing grain, its roots exposed to the air, withered
and died. Many of the smaller plants were carried bodily away.
As the day wore on father fell into dumb, despairing rage. His rigid
face and smoldering eyes, his grim lips, terrified us all. It seemed to
him (as to us), that the entire farm was about to take flight and the
bitterest part of the tragic circumstance lay in the reflection that our
loss (which was much greater than any of our neighbors) was due to the
extra care with which we had pulverized the ground.
"If only I hadn't gone over it that last time," I heard him groan in
reference to the "smooch" with which I had crushed all the lumps making
every acre friable as a garden. "Look at Woodring's!"
Sure enough. The cloud was thinner over on Woodring's side of the line
fence. His rough clods were hardly touched. My father's bitter revolt,
his impotent fury appalled me, for it seemed to me (as to him), that
nature was, at the moment, an enemy. More than seventy acres of this
land had to be resown.
Most authors in writing of "the merry merry farmer" leave out
experiences like this--they omit the mud and the dust and the grime,
they forget the army worm, the flies, the heat, as well as the smells
and drudgery of the barns. Milking the cows is spoken of in the
traditional fashion as a lovely pastoral recreation, when as a matter of
fact it is a tedious job. We all hated it. We saw no poetry in it. We
hated it in summer when the mosquitoes bit and the cows slashed us with
their tails, and we hated it still more in the winter time when they
stood in crowded malodorous stalls.
In summer when the flies were particularly savage we had a way of
jamming our heads into the cows' flanks to prevent them from kicking
into the pail, and sometimes we tied their tails to their legs so that
they could not lash our ears. Humboldt Bunn tied a heifer's tail to his
boot straps once--and regretted it almost instantly.--No, no, it won't
do to talk to me of "the sweet breath of kine." I know them too
well--and calves are not "the lovely, fawn-like creatures" they are
supposed to be. To the boy who is teaching them to drink out of a pail
they are nasty brutes--quite unlike fawns. They have a way of filling
their nostrils with milk and blowing it all over their nurse. They are
greedy, noisy, ill-smelling and stupid. They look well when running with
their mothers in the pasture, but as soon as they are weaned they lose
all their charm--for me.
Attendance on swine was less humiliating for the reason that we could
keep them at arm's length, but we didn't enjoy that. We liked teaming
and pitching hay and harvesting and making fence, and we did not greatly
resent plowing or husking corn but we did hate the smell, the filth of
the cow-yard. Even hostling had its "outs," especially in spring when
the horses were shedding their hair. I never fully enjoyed the taste of
equine dandruff, and the eternal smell of manure irked me, especially
at the table.
Clearing out from behind the animals was one of our never ending jobs,
and hauling the compost out on the fields was one of the tasks which, as
my father grimly said, "We always put off till it rains so hard we can't
work out doors." This was no joke to us, for not only did we work out
doors, we worked while standing ankle deep in the slime of the yard,
getting full benefit of the drizzle. Our new land did not need the
fertilizer, but we were forced to haul it away or move the barn. Some
folks moved the barn. But then my father was an idealist.
Life was not all currying or muck-raking for Burt or for me. Herding the
cows came in to relieve the monotony of farm-work. Wide tracts of
unbroken sod still lay open to the north and west, and these were the
common grazing grounds for the community. Every farmer kept from
twenty-five to a hundred head of cattle and half as many colts, and no
sooner did the green begin to show on the fire-blackened sod in April
than the winter-worn beasts left the straw-piles under whose lee they
had fed during the cold months, and crawled out to nip the first tender
spears of grass in the sheltered swales. They were still "free
commoners" in the eyes of the law.
The colts were a fuzzy, ungraceful lot at this season. Even the best of
them had big bellies and carried dirty and tangled manes, but as the
grazing improved, as the warmth and plenty of May filled their veins
with new blood, they sloughed off their mangy coats and lifted their
wide-blown nostrils to the western wind in exultant return to freedom.
Many of them had never felt the weight of a man's hand, and even those
that had wintered in and around the barn-yard soon lost all trace of
domesticity. It was not unusual to find that the wildest and wariest of
all the leaders bore a collar mark or some other ineffaceable badge of
previous servitude.
They were for the most part Morgan grades or "Canuck," with a strain of
broncho to give them fire. It was curious, it was glorious to see how
deeply-buried instincts broke out in these halterless herds. In a few
days, after many trials of speed and power the bands of all the region
united into one drove, and a leader, the swiftest and most tireless of
them all, appeared from the ranks and led them at will.
Often without apparent cause, merely for the joy of it, they left their
feeding grounds to wheel and charge and race for hours over the swells,
across the creeks and through the hazel thickets. Sometimes their
movements arose from the stinging of gadflies, sometimes from a battle
between two jealous leaders, sometimes from the passing of a wolf--often
from no cause at all other than that of abounding vitality.
In much the same fashion, but less rapidly, the cattle went forth upon
the plain and as each herd not only contained the growing steers, but
the family cows, it became the duty of one boy from each farm to mount a
horse at five o'clock every afternoon and "hunt the cattle," a task
seldom shirked. My brother and I took turn and turn about at this
delightful task, and soon learned to ride like Comanches. In fact we
lived in the saddle, when freed from duty in the field. Burton often met
us on the feeding grounds, and at such times the prairie seemed an
excellent place for boys. As we galloped along together it was easy to
imagine ourselves Wild Bill and Buckskin Joe in pursuit of Indians or
buffalo.
We became, by force of unconscious observation, deeply learned in the
language and the psychology of kine as well as colts. We watched the
big bull-necked stags as they challenged one another, pawing the dust or
kneeling to tear the sod with their horns. We possessed perfect
understanding of their battle signs. Their boastful, defiant cries were
as intelligible to us as those of men. Every note, every motion had a
perfectly definite meaning. The foolish, inquisitive young heifers, the
staid self-absorbed dowagers wearing their bells with dignity, the
frisky two-year-olds and the lithe-bodied wide-horned, truculent
three-year-olds all came in for interpretation.
Sometimes a lone steer ranging the sod came suddenly upon a trace of
blood. Like a hound he paused, snuffling the earth. Then with wide mouth
and outthrust, curling tongue, uttered voice. Wild as the tiger's
food-sick cry, his warning roar burst forth, ending in a strange, upward
explosive whine. Instantly every head in the herd was lifted, even the
old cows heavy with milk stood as if suddenly renewing their youth,
alert and watchful.
Again it came, that prehistoric bawling cry, and with one mind the herd
began to center, rushing with menacing swiftness, like warriors
answering their chieftain's call for aid. With awkward lope or jolting
trot, snorting with fury they hastened to the rescue, only to meet in
blind bewildered mass, swirling to and fro in search of an imaginary
cause of some ancestral danger.
At such moments we were glad of our swift ponies. From our saddles we
could study these outbreaks of atavistic rage with serene enjoyment.
In herding the cattle we came to know all the open country round about
and found it very beautiful. On the uplands a short, light-green,
hairlike grass grew, intermixed with various resinous weeds, while in
the lowland feeding grounds luxuriant patches of blue-joint, wild oats,
and other tall forage plants waved in the wind. Along the streams and
in the "sloos" cat-tails and tiger-lilies nodded above thick mats of
wide-bladed marsh grass. Almost without realizing it, I came to know the
character of every weed, every flower, every living thing big enough to
be seen from the back of a horse.
Nothing could be more generous, more joyous, than these natural meadows
in summer. The flash and ripple and glimmer of the tall sunflowers, the
myriad voices of gleeful bobolinks, the chirp and gurgle of red-winged
blackbirds swaying on the willows, the meadow-larks piping from grassy
bogs, the peep of the prairie chick and the wailing call of plover on
the flowery green slopes of the uplands made it all an ecstatic world to
me. It was a wide world with a big, big sky which gave alluring hint of
the still more glorious unknown wilderness beyond.
Sometimes of a Sunday afternoon, Harriet and I wandered away to the
meadows along Dry Run, gathering bouquets of pinks, sweet-williams,
tiger-lilies and lady slippers, thus attaining a vague perception of
another and sweeter side of life. The sun flamed across the splendid
serial waves of the grasses and the perfumes of a hundred spicy plants
rose in the shimmering mid-day air. At such times the mere joy of living
filled our young hearts with wordless satisfaction.
Nor were the upland ridges less interesting, for huge antlers lying
bleached and bare in countless numbers on the slopes told of the herds
of elk and bison that had once fed in these splendid savannahs, living
and dying in the days when the tall Sioux were the only hunters.
The gray hermit, the badger, still clung to his deep den on the rocky
unplowed ridges, and on sunny April days the mother fox lay out with her
young, on southward-sloping swells. Often we met the prairie wolf or
startled him from his sleep in hazel copse, finding in him the spirit
of the wilderness. To us it seemed that just over the next long swell
toward the sunset the shaggy brown bulls still fed in myriads, and in
our hearts was a longing to ride away into the "sunset regions" of our
song.
All the boys I knew talked of Colorado, never of New England. We dreamed
of the plains, of the Black Hills, discussing cattle raising and mining
and hunting. "We'll have our rifles ready, boys, ha, ha, ha-ha!" was
still our favorite chorus, "Newbrasky" and Wyoming our far-off
wonderlands, Buffalo Bill our hero.
David, my hunter uncle who lived near us, still retained his long
old-fashioned, muzzle-loading rifle, and one day offered it to me, but
as I could not hold it at arm's length, I sorrowfully returned it. We
owned a shotgun, however, and this I used with all the confidence of a
man. I was able to kill a few ducks with it and I also hunted gophers
during May when the sprouting corn was in most danger. Later I became
quite expert in catching chickens on the wing.
On a long ridge to the north and west, the soil, too wet and cold to
cultivate easily, remained unplowed for several years and scattered over
these clay lands stood small groves of popple trees which we called
"tow-heads." They were usually only two or three hundred feet in
diameter, but they stood out like islands in the waving seas of grasses.
Against these dark-green masses, breakers of blue-joint radiantly
rolled.--To the east some four miles ran the Little Cedar River, and
plum trees and crab-apples and haws bloomed along its banks. In June
immense crops of strawberries offered from many meadows. Their delicious
odor rose to us as we rode our way, tempting us to dismount and gather
and eat.
Over these uplands, through these thickets of hazel brush, and around
these coverts of popple, Burton and I careered, hunting the cows,
chasing rabbits, killing rattlesnakes, watching the battles of bulls,
racing the half-wild colts and pursuing the prowling wolves. It was an
alluring life, and Harriet, who rode with us occasionally, seemed to
enjoy it quite as much as any boy. She could ride almost as well as
Burton, and we were all expert horse-tamers.
We all rode like cavalrymen,--that is to say, while holding the reins in
our left hands we guided our horses by the pressure of the strap across
the neck, rather than by pulling at the bit. Our ponies were never
allowed to trot. We taught them a peculiar gait which we called "the
lope," which was an easy canter in front and a trot behind (a very good
gait for long distances), and we drilled them to keep this pace steadily
and to fall at command into a swift walk without any jolting intervening
trot.--We learned to ride like circus performers standing on our
saddles, and practised other of the tricks we had seen, and through it
all my mother remained unalarmed. To her a boy on a horse was as natural
as a babe in the cradle. The chances we took of getting killed were so
numerous that she could not afford to worry.
Burton continued to be my almost inseparable companion at school and
whenever we could get together, and while to others he seemed only a
shy, dull boy, to me he was something more. His strength and skill were
remarkable and his self-command amazing. Although a lad of instant,
white-hot, dangerous temper, he suddenly, at fifteen years of age, took
himself in hand in a fashion miraculous to me. He decided (I never knew
just why or how)--that he would never again use an obscene or profane
word. He kept his vow. I knew him for over thirty years and I never
heard him raise his voice in anger or utter a word a woman would have
shrunk from,--and yet he became one of the most fearless and indomitable
mountaineers I ever knew.
This change in him profoundly influenced me and though I said nothing
about it, I resolved to do as well. I never quite succeeded, although I
discouraged as well as I could the stories which some of the men and
boys were so fond of telling, but alas! when the old cow kicked over my
pail of milk, I fell from grace and told her just what I thought of her
in phrases that Burton would have repressed. Still, I manfully tried to
follow his good trail.
* * * * *
Corn-planting, which followed wheat-seeding, was done by hand, for a
year or two, and this was a joyous task.--We "changed works" with
neighbor Button, and in return Cyrus and Eva came to help us. Harriet
and Eva and I worked side by side, "dropping" the corn, while Cyrus and
the hired man followed with the hoes to cover it. Little Frank skittered
about, planting with desultory action such pumpkin seeds as he did not
eat. The presence of our young friends gave the job something of the
nature of a party and we were sorry when it was over.
After the planting a fortnight of less strenuous labor came on, a period
which had almost the character of a holiday. The wheat needed no
cultivation and the corn was not high enough to plow. This was a time
for building fence and fixing up things generally. This, too, was the
season of the circus. Each year one came along from the east, trailing
clouds of glorified dust and filling our minds with the color of
romance.
From the time the "advance man" flung his highly colored posters over
the fence till the coming of the glorious day we thought of little else.
It was India and Arabia and the jungle to us. History and the magic and
pomp of chivalry mingled in the parade of the morning, and the crowds,
the clanging band, the haughty and alien beauty of the women, the gold
embroidered housings, the stark majesty of the acrobats subdued us into
silent worship.
I here pay tribute to the men who brought these marvels to my eyes. To
rob me of my memories of the circus would leave me as poor as those to
whom life was a drab and hopeless round of toil. It was our brief season
of imaginative life. In one day--in a part of one day--we gained a
thousand new conceptions of the world and of human nature. It was an
embodiment of all that was skillful and beautiful in manly action. It
was a compendium of biologic research but more important still, it
brought to our ears the latest band pieces and taught us the most
popular songs. It furnished us with jokes. It relieved our dullness. It
gave us something to talk about.
We always went home wearied with excitement, and dusty and fretful--but
content. We had seen it. We had grasped as much of it as anybody and
could remember it as well as the best. Next day as we resumed work in
the field the memory of its splendors went with us like a golden cloud.
* * * * *
Most of the duties of the farmer's life require the lapse of years to
seem beautiful in my eyes, but haying was a season of well-defined
charm. In Iowa, summer was at its most exuberant stage of vitality
during the last days of June, and it was not strange that the faculties
of even the toiling hay-maker, dulled and deadened with never ending
drudgery, caught something of the superabundant glow and throb of
nature's life.
As I write I am back in that marvellous time.--The cornfield, dark-green
and sweetly cool, is beginning to ripple in the wind with multitudinous
stir of shining, swirling leaf. Waves of dusk and green and gold, circle
across the ripening barley, and long leaves upthrust, at intervals, like
spears. The trees are in heaviest foliage, insect life is at its height,
and the shimmering air is filled with buzzing, dancing forms, and the
clover is gay with the sheen of innumerable gauzy wings.
The west wind comes to me laden with ecstatic voices. The bobolinks sail
and tinkle in the sensuous hush, now sinking, now rising, their
exquisite notes filling the air as with the sound of fairy bells. The
king-bird, alert, aggressive, cries out sharply as he launches from the
top of a poplar tree upon some buzzing insect, and the plover makes the
prairie sad with his wailing call. Vast purple-and-white clouds move
like stately ships before the breeze, dark with rain, which they drop
momentarily in trailing garments upon the earth, and so pass in majesty
amidst a roll of thunder.
The grasshoppers move in clouds with snap and buzz, and out of the
luxurious stagnant marshes comes the ever-thickening chorus of the
toads, while above them the kildees and the snipe shuttle to and fro in
sounding flight. The blackbirds on the cat-tails sway and swing,
uttering through lifted throats their liquid gurgle, mad with delight of
the sun and the season--and over all, and laving all, moves the slow
wind, heavy with the breath of the far-off blooms of other lands, a wind
which covers the sunset plain with a golden entrancing haze.
At such times it seemed to me that we had reached the "sunset region" of
our song, and that we were indeed "lords of the soil."
I am not so sure that haying brought to our mothers anything like this
rapture, for the men added to our crew made the duties of the kitchens
just that much heavier. I doubt if the women--any of them--got out into
the fields or meadows long enough to enjoy the birds and the breezes.
Even on Sunday as they rode away to church, they were too tired and too
worried to re-act to the beauties of the landscape.
I now began to dimly perceive that my mother was not well. Although
large and seemingly strong, her increasing weight made her long days of
housework a torture. She grew very tired and her sweet face was often
knotted with physical pain.
She still made most of our garments as well as her own. She tailored
father's shirts and underclothing, sewed carpet rags, pieced quilts and
made butter for market,--and yet, in the midst of it all, found time to
put covers on our baseball, and to do up all our burns and bruises.
Being a farmer's wife in those days, meant laboring outside any
regulation of the hours of toil. I recall hearing one of the tired
house-wives say, "Seems like I never get a day off, not even on Sunday,"
a protest which my mother thoroughly understood and sympathized with,
notwithstanding its seeming inhospitality.
No history of this time would be complete without a reference to the
doctor. We were a vigorous and on the whole a healthy tribe but
accidents sometimes happened and "Go for the doctor!" was the first
command when the band-cutter slashed the hand of the thresher or one of
the children fell from the hay-rick.
One night as I lay buried in deep sleep close to the garret eaves I
heard my mother call me--and something in her voice pierced me, roused
me. A poignant note of alarm was in it.
"Hamlin," she called, "get up--at once. You must go for the doctor. Your
father is very sick. _Hurry!_"
I sprang from my bed, dizzy with sleep, yet understanding her appeal. "I
hear you, I'm coming," I called down to her as I started to dress.
"Call Hattie. I need her too."
The rain was pattering on the roof, and as I dressed I had a disturbing
vision of the long cold ride which lay before me. I hoped the case was
not so bad as mother thought. With limbs still numb and weak I stumbled
down the stairs to the sitting room where a faint light shone.
Mother met me with white, strained face. "Your father is suffering
terribly. Go for the doctor at once."
I could hear the sufferer groan even as I moved about the kitchen,
putting on my coat and lighting the lantern. It was about one o'clock of
the morning, and the wind was cold as I picked my way through the mud to
the barn. The thought of the long miles to town made me shiver but as
the son of a soldier I could not falter in my duty.
In their warm stalls the horses were resting in dreamful doze. Dan and
Dick, the big plow team, stood near the door. Jule and Dolly came next.
Wild Frank, a fleet but treacherous Morgan, stood fifth and for a moment
I considered taking him. He was strong and of wonderful staying powers
but so savage and unreliable that I dared not risk an accident. I passed
on to bay Kittie whose bright eyes seemed to inquire, "What is the
matter?"
Flinging the blanket over her and smoothing it carefully, I tossed the
light saddle to her back and cinched it tight, so tight that she
grunted. "I can't take any chances of a spill," I explained to her, and
she accepted the bit willingly. She was always ready for action and
fully dependable.
Blowing out my lantern I hung it on a peg, led Kit from her stall out
into the night, and swung to the saddle. She made off with a spattering
rush through the yard, out into the road. It was dark as pitch but I was
fully awake now. The dash of the rain in my face had cleared my brain
but I trusted to the keener senses of the mare to find the road which
showed only in the strips of water which filled the wagon tracks.
We made way slowly for a few minutes until my eyes expanded to take in
the faint lines of light along the lane. The road at last became a river
of ink running between faint gray banks of sward, and my heart rose in
confidence. I took on dignity. I was a courier riding through the night
to save a city, a messenger on whose courage and skill thousands of
lives depended.
"Get out o' this!" I shouted to Kit, and she leaped away like a wolf, at
a tearing gallop.
She knew her rider. We had herded the cattle many days on the prairie,
and in races with the wild colts I had tested her speed. Snorting with
vigor at every leap she seemed to say, "My heart is brave, my limbs are
strong. Call on me."
Out of the darkness John Martin's Carlo barked. A half-mile had passed.
Old Marsh's fox hound clamored next. Two miles were gone. From here the
road ran diagonally across the prairie, a velvet-black band on the dim
sod. The ground was firmer but there were swales full of water. Through
these Kittie dashed with unhesitating confidence, the water flying from
her drumming hooves. Once she went to her knees and almost unseated me,
but I regained my saddle and shouted, "Go on, Kit."
The fourth mile was in the mud, but the fifth brought us to the village
turnpike and the mare was as glad of it as I. Her breath was labored
now. She snorted no more in exultation and confident strength. She began
to wonder--to doubt, and I, who knew her ways as well as I knew those of
a human being, realized that she was beginning to flag. The mud had
begun to tell on her.
It hurt me to urge her on, but the memory of my mother's agonized face
and the sound of my father's groan of pain steeled my heart. I set lash
to her side and so kept her to her highest speed.
At last a gleam of light! Someone in the village was awake. I passed
another lighted window. Then the green and red lamps of the drug store
cheered me with their promise of aid, for the doctor lived next door.
There too a dim ray shone.
Slipping from my weary horse I tied her to the rail and hurried up the
walk toward the doctor's bell. I remembered just where the knob rested.
Twice I pulled sharply, strongly, putting into it some part of the
anxiety and impatience I felt. I could hear its imperative jingle as it
died away in the silent house.
At last the door opened and the doctor, a big blonde handsome man in a
long night gown, confronted me with impassive face. "What is it, my
boy?" he asked kindly.
As I told him he looked down at my water-soaked form and wild-eyed
countenance with gentle patience. Then he peered out over my head into
the dismal night. He was a man of resolution but he hesitated for a
moment. "Your father is suffering sharply, is he?"
"Yes, sir. I could hear him groan.--Please hurry."
He mused a moment. "He is a soldier. He would not complain of a little
thing--I will come."
Turning in relief, I ran down the walk and climbed upon my shivering
mare. She wheeled sharply, eager to be off on her homeward way. Her
spirit was not broken, but she was content to take a slower pace. She
seemed to know that our errand was accomplished and that the warm
shelter of the stall was to be her reward.
Holding her down to a slow trot I turned often to see if I could detect
the lights of the doctor's buggy which was a familiar sight on our road.
I had heard that he kept one of his teams harnessed ready for calls
like this, and I confidently expected him to overtake me. "It's a
terrible night to go out, but he said he would come," I repeated as I
rode.
At last the lights of a carriage, crazily rocking, came into view and
pulling Kit to a walk I twisted in my saddle, ready to shout with
admiration of the speed of his team. "He's driving the 'Clay-Banks,'" I
called in great excitement.
The Clay-Banks were famous throughout the county as the doctor's
swiftest and wildest team, a span of bronchos whose savage spirits no
journey could entirely subdue, a team he did not spare, a team that
scorned petting and pity, bony, sinewy, big-headed. They never walked
and had little care of mud or snow.
They came rushing now with splashing feet and foaming, half-open jaws,
the big doctor, calm, iron-handed, masterful, sitting in the swaying top
of his light buggy, his feet against the dash board, keeping his furious
span in hand as easily as if they were a pair of Shetland ponies. The
nigh horse was running, the off horse pacing, and the splatter of their
feet, the slash of the wheels and the roaring of their heavy breathing,
made my boyish heart leap. I could hardly repress a yell of delight.
As I drew aside to let him pass the doctor called out with mellow cheer,
"Take your time, boy, take your time!"
Before I could even think of an answer, he was gone and I was alone with
Kit and the night.
My anxiety vanished with him. I had done all that could humanly be done,
I had fetched the doctor. Whatever happened I was guiltless. I knew also
that in a few minutes a sweet relief would come to my tortured mother,
and with full faith and loving confidence in the man of science, I
jogged along homeward, wet to the bone but triumphant.