Alas! Boston no longer inspired me. It seemed small and alien and

Cambridge surprised me by revealing itself as a sprawling and rather

drab assemblage of wooden dwellings, shops and factories. Even the

University campus was less admirable, architecturally, than I had

supposed it to be, and the residences of its famous professors were

hardly the stately homes of luxury I had remembered them. Upon looking

up the house on Berkley Street in which Howells had lived while editing

_The Atlantic Monthly_, I found it smaller and less beautiful than my

own house in Wisconsin. Dr. Holmes' mansion on "the water side of Beacon

Street" and the palaces of Copley Square left me calm, their glamor had

utterly vanished with my youth (I fear Lee's Hotel in Auburndale would

have been reduced in grandeur), and when we took the train for New

York, I confessed to a feeling of sadness, of definite loss.

Naturally, inevitably the Boston of my early twenties had vanished. My

youthful worship of the city, my faith in the literary supremacy of New

England had died out. Manifestly increasing in power as a commercial

center, roaring with new interests, new powers, new people, the Hub had

lost its scholastic distinction, its historic charm. Each year would see

it more easily negligible in American art. It hurt me to acknowledge

this, it was like losing a noble ancestor, but there was no escape from

the conclusion.

"Little that is new is coming out of Boston," I sadly remarked to

Zulime. "Her illustrious poets of the Civil War period are not being

replaced by others of National appeal. Her writers, her artists, like

those of Chicago, Cleveland, and San Francisco, are coming to New York.

New England is being drained of talent in order that Manhattan shall be

supreme."

While we were away on this trip my friends Grace and Ernest

Thompson-Seton had sent out cards for a party "in honor of Mr. and Mrs.

Hamlin Garland," but when, a few nights later, a throng of writers,

artists and musicians filled the Seton studio, I was confirmed in a

growing suspicion that I was only the lesser half of a fortunate

combination. A long list of invitations to dinner or to luncheon

testified to the fact that while they tolerated me, they liked my wife,

and in this judgment I concurred.

One day while calling on a charming friend and fellow-fictionist, Juliet

Wilbur Tompkins, we met for the first time Frank Norris, another

California novelist, who captivated us both, not merely because of his

handsome face and figure, but by reason of his keen and joyous spirit.

He had been employed for some time in the office of Doubleday and Page,

and though I had often passed him at his desk, I had never before

spoken with him. We struck up an immediate friendship and thereafter

often dined together. He told me of his plan to embody modern California

in a series of novels, and at my request read some of his manuscript to

me.

Zulime, although she greatly admired Norris, still maintained that

Edward MacDowell was the handsomest man of her circle, and in this I

supported her, for he was then in the noble prime of his glorious

manhood, gay of spirit, swift of wit and delightfully humorous of

speech. As a dinner companion he was unexcelled and my wife quite lost

her heart to him. Between Frank Norris and Edward MacDowell I appeared

but a rusty-coat. I sang small. Fortunately for me they were both not

only loyal friends but devoted husbands.

I remembered saying to Zulime as we came away: "America need not despair

of her art so long as she has two such personalities as Edward MacDowell

and Frank Norris."

Edwin Booth's daughter, Mrs. Grossman, who was living at this time in a

handsome apartment on Eighteenth Street, was one of those who liked my

wife, and an invitation to take tea with her produced in me a singular

and sudden reversal to boyish timidity, for to me she had almost the

quality of royalty. I thought of her as she had looked to me, fifteen

years before, when on the occasion of Edwin Booth's last performance of

_Macbeth_ in Boston, she sat in the stage-box with her handsome young

husband, and applauded her illustrious father.

"An enormous audience was present," I explained to Zulime, "and most of

us were deeply interested in the radiant figure of that happy girl. To

me she was a princess, and I observed that as the curtain rose after

each act and the great tragedian came forth to bow, his eyes sought his

daughter's glowing face. Each time the curtain fell his final glance was

upon her. Her small hands seemed the only ones whose sound had value in

his ears."

How remote, how royal, how unattainable she had appeared to me that

night! Now here she was a kindly, charming hostess, the mother of a

family who regarded me as "a distinguished author." To make that radiant

girl in the stage box and my lovely hostess coalesce was difficult, but

as I studied her profile and noted the line of her expressive lips I was

able to relate her to the princely player whose genius I had worshiped

from the gallery.

It will be evident to the reader that life in New York pleased me better

than life in West Salem or even in Chicago, and I would gladly have

stayed on till spring, but Zulime decided to go back to Chicago, and

this we did about the first of February.

The last of the many notable entertainments in which my wife shared was

an open meeting of the National Institute of Arts and Letters (which I

had helped to found), where she met many of the leading writers and

artists of the city. Howells, who presided over the program, was

especially fine, restrained, tactful yet quietly authoritative, and when

I told him that our wedding journey was nearly over he expressed a

regret which was highly flattering to us both. At one o'clock on the day

following this historic meeting we entered a car headed for the west,

acknowledging with a sigh, yet with a comfortable sense of having

accomplished our purpose, that it would be profitable to go into

retirement and ruminate for a month or two. The glories of New York had

been almost too exciting for Zulime, "I am ready to go home," she said.

Home! There was my problem. The only city residence I possessed was my

bachelor apartment on Elm Street, and at the moment I had no intention

of asking my wife to share its narrow space except as a temporary

lodging, and to take her back into that snow-covered little Wisconsin

village, back to a shabby farm house filled with ailing elderly folk

would amount to crime. From the high splendor of our stay in New York we

now fell to earth with a thump. My duties as a son, my cares as the head

of a household returned upon me, and my essential homelessness took away

all that assurance of literary success which my Eastern friends had

helped me attain. Of the elation in which I had moved while in New York

I retained but a shred. Once more the hard-working fictionist and the

responsible head of a family, I began to worry about the future. My

honeymoon was over.

The basic realities of my poverty again cropped out in a letter from my

mother who wrote that my aunt was very ill and that she needed me. To

Zulime I said, "You stay here with your sister and your friends while I

go up to the Homestead and see what I can do for our old people."

This she refused to do. "No," she loyally said, "I am going with you,"

and although I knew that she was choosing a dreary alternative I was too

weak, too selfishly weak, to prevent her self-sacrifice. We left that

night at the usual hour and arrived in time to eat another farmer's

breakfast with father and mother next morning. Aunt Susan was unable to

meet us.

Her sweet spirit was about to leave its frail body, that was evident to

me as I looked down at her, but she knew me and whispered, "I'm glad to

have you at home." She showed no fear of death, in fact she appeared

unconscious of her grave condition. She was a beautiful character and to

see her lying there beneath her old-fashioned quilt, so small and

helpless, so patient, lonely and sad, made speech difficult for me. She

had meant much in my life. The serene dignity with which she and her

mother had carried the best New England traditions into the rough front

rank of the Border, was still written in the lines of her face. I had

never seen her angry or bitter, and I had never heard her utter an

unkind word.

Zulime took charge of the work about the house with a cheerfulness which

amazed me. My mother with pathetic confidence leaned upon her daughter's

strong young shoulders and the music of my stern old father's voice as

he said, "Well, daughter, I'm glad you're here," was a revelation to me.

He already loved her as if she were his very own, and she responded to

his affection in a way which put me still more deeply in her debt. It

would have been disheartening, but not at all surprising, had she found

the village and my home intolerable, but she did not--she appeared

content, sustained we will say, by her sense of duty.

Her situation was difficult. Imprisoned in the snowy silences of the

little valley, dependent on her neighbors for entertainment, and

confronted with the care of two invalids and a fretful husband, she was

put to a rigid test.

Beside our base-burning stove she sat night after night playing cinch or

dominoes to amuse my father, while creaking footsteps went by on the

frosty board-walks and in a distant room my aunt lay waiting for the

soft step of the Grim Intruder. It must have seemed a gray outlook for

my bride but she never by word or look displayed uneasiness.

Without putting our conviction into words, we all realized that my

aunt's departure was but a matter of a few days. "There is nothing to

do," the doctor said. "She will go like a person falling asleep. All you

can do is wait--" And so the days passed.

We went to bed each night at ten and quite as regularly rose at

half-past six. Dinner came exactly at noon, supper precisely at six.

Although my upstairs study was a kind of retreat, we spent less time in

it than we had planned to do, for mother was so appealingly wistful to

have us near her that neither of us had the heart to deny her. She could

not endure to have us both absent. Careful not to interrupt my writing,

she considered Zulime's case in different light. "You can read, or sew

or knit down here just as well as up there," she said. "It is a comfort

for me just to have you sit where I can look at you."

She loved to hear me read aloud, and this I often did in the evening

while she sat beside Zulime and watched her fingers fly about her

sewing. These were blissful hours for her, and in these after years I

take a measure of comfort in remembering the part I had in making them

possible.

Slowly but steadily Susan Garland's vital forces died out, and at last

there came a morning when her breath faltered on her lips. She had gone

away, as she had lived, with quiet dignity. Notwithstanding her almost

constant suffering she had always been a calmly cheerful soul and her

passing, while it left us serious did not sadden us. Her life came to

its end without struggle and her face was peaceful.

She was the last of my father's immediate family, and to him was

transmitted in due course of law, the estate with which her husband had

left her, a dower, which though small had enabled her to live

independently of her relatives and in simple comfort. It was a matter of

but a few thousand dollars, but its possession now made the most

fundamental change in my father's way of life. The effect of this

certain income upon his character was almost magical. He took on a sense

of security, a feeling of independence, a freedom from worry such as he

had been trying for over sixty years, without success, to attain.

_It released him from the tyranny of the skies._ All his life he had

been menaced by the "weather." Clouds, snows, winds, had been his

unrelenting antagonists. Hardly an hour of his past had been free from a

fear of disaster. The glare of the sun, the direction of the wind, the

assembling of clouds at sunset,--all the minute signs of change, of

storm, of destruction had been his incessant minute study. For over

fifty years he had been enslaved to the seasons. His sister's blessing

liberated him. He agonized no more about the fall of frost, the slash of

hail, the threat of tempest. Neither chinch bugs nor drought nor army

worms could break his rest. He slept in comfort and rose in confidence.

He retained a general interest in crops, of course, but he no longer ate

his bread in fear, and just in proportion as he realized his release

from these corroding, long-endured cares, did he take on mellowness and

humor. He became another man altogether. He ceased to worry and hurry.

His tone, his manner became those of a citizen of substance, of genial

leisure. He began to speak of travel!

Definitely abandoning all intention of farming, he put his Dakota land

on sale and bought several small cottages in West Salem. As a landlord

in a modest way, he rejoiced in the fact that his income was almost

entirely free from the results of harvest. It irked him (when he thought

of it) to admit that all his pioneering had been a failure, that all his

early rising, and his ceaseless labor had availed so little, but the

respect in which he was now held as householder, and as President of the

village, compensated him in such degree that he was able to ignore his

ill success as a wheat raiser.

"This legacy proves once again the magic of money," I remarked to

Zulime. "Father can now grow old with dignity and confidence. His living

is assured."

It remains to say that this inheritance also lifted indirectly a part of

my own burden. It took from me something of the financial responsibility

concerning the household whose upkeep I had shared for ten years or

more. Mother was still my care, but not in the same sense as before, for

my father with vast pride volunteered to pay all the household expenses.

He even insisted upon paying for an extra maid and gardener. Now that he

no longer needed the cash returns from the garden, he began to express a

pleasure in it. He was content with making it an esthetic or at most a

household enterprise.

CHAPTER TWELVE

We Tour the Oklahoma Prairie

One of the disadvantages of being a fictionist lies in the fact that the

history of one's imaginary people halts just in proportion as one's mind

is burdened with the sorrowful realities of one's own life. A troubled

bank clerk can (I believe) cast up a column of figures, an actor can

declaim while his heart is breaking, but a novelist can't--or at any

rate I can't--write stories while some friend or relative is in pain and

calling for relief. Composition is dependent in my case upon a

delicately adjusted mood, and a very small pebble is sufficient to turn

the currents of my mind into a dry channel.

My aunt's death was a sad shock to my mother and until she regained

something of her cheerful temper, I was unable to take up and continue

the action of my novel. I kept up the habit of going to my study, but

for a week or more I could not write anything but letters.

By the tenth of March we were all longing with deepest hunger for the

coming of spring. According to the old almanac's saying we had a right

to expect on the twenty-first a relenting of the rigors of the north,

but it did not come. "March the twenty-first is spring and little birds

begin to sing" was not true of the Valley this year. For two weeks

longer, the icy winds continued to sweep with Arctic severity across the

crests of the hills, and clouds of snow almost daily sifted down through

the bare branches of the elms. At times the landscape, mockingly

beautiful, was white and bleak as January. Drafts filled the lanes and

sleigh-bells jingled mockingly.

At last came grateful change. The wind shifted to the South. At mid-day

the eaves began to drip, and the hens, lifting their voices in jocund

song, scratched and burrowed, careening in the dusty earth which

appeared on the sunward side of the barn. Green grass enlivened the

banks of the garden, and on the southern slopes of the hills warmly

colored patches appeared, and then came bird-song and budding

branches!--so dramatic are the changes in our northern country.

No sooner was spring really at hand than Zulime and I, eager to share in

the art life which was so congenial to us both, returned to my former

lodging in Chicago; and a little later we went so far as to give a

party--our first party since our marriage. Fuller, who came early and

stayed late, appeared especially amused at our make-shifts. "This isn't

Chicago," he exclaimed as he looked around our rooms. "This is a lodging

in London!"

It was at this party that I heard the first word of the criticism under

which I had expected to suffer. One of our guests, an old and privileged

friend, remarked with a sigh, "Well, now that Zuhl has married a writer,

I suppose her own artistic career is at an end."

"Not at all!" I retorted, somewhat nettled. "I am an individualist in

this as in other things. I do not believe in the subordination of a wife

to her husband. Zulime has all the rights I claim for myself--no more,

no less. If she fails to go on with her painting or sculpture the fault

will not be mine. Our partnership is an equal one."

I meant this. Although dimly aware that mutual concessions must be made,

it was my fixed intention to allow my wife the fullest freedom of

action. Proud of her skill as an artist, I went so far as to insist on

her going back into her brother's studio to resume her modeling. "You

are not my house-keeper--you are a member of a firm. I prefer to have

you an artist."

Smiling, evasive, she replied, "I haven't at the present moment the

slightest 'call' to be an artist. Perhaps I shall--after a while; but at

present I'd rather keep house."

"But consider _me_!" I insisted. "Here am I, a public advocate of the

rights of women, already denounced as your 'tyrant husband,' 'a selfish

egotistic brute!'--I'll be accused--I am already accused--of cutting

short your career as a sculptor. Consider the injustice you are doing

_me_!"

She refused to take my protest or her friends' comment seriously; and so

we drifted along in pleasant round of parties till the suns of May,

brooding over the land lured us back to the Homestead, in which Zulime

could house-keep all day long if she wished to do so, and she did!

Full of plans for refurnishing and redecorating, she was busy as a

bumble-bee. As the mistress of a big garden and a real kitchen she

invited all her Chicago friends to come and share her good fortune. She

was filled with the spirit of ownership and exulted over the four-acre

patch as if it were a noble estate in Surrey.

It chanced that Lorado on his way to St. Paul was able to stop off, and

Zulime not only cooked a special dinner for him, but proudly showed him

all about the garden, talking gaily of the number of jars of berries and

glasses of jelly she was planning to put up.

"Well, Zuhl," he said resignedly, "I suppose it's all for the best, but

I don't quite see the connection between your years of training in

sculpture and the business of canning fruit."

It was a perfect spring day, and the Homestead was at its best. The

entire demesne was without a weed, and the blooming berry patches, the

sprouting asparagus beds and the budding grape vines all come in for the

eminent sculptor's enforced inspection, until at last with a yawn of

unconcealed boredom he turned away. "You _seem_ to _like_ your slavery,"

he remarked to Zulime, a note of comical accusation in his voice.

On the station platform when about to say good-bye to me, he became

quite serious. "This marriage appears to be working out," he admitted,

musingly. "I confess I was a little in doubt about it at first, but Zuhl

seems to be satisfied with her choice and so--well, I've decided to let

matters drift. Whether she ever comes back to sculpture or not is

unimportant, so long as she is happy."

Knowing that Zulime had always been his intellectual comrade, and

realizing how deeply he felt the separation which her growing interest

in my affairs had brought about, I gave him my hand in silent renewal of

a friendship into which something new and deeply significant had come.

"I hope she will never regret it," was all I could say.

Zulime was not deceived as to my income. My property, up to this time,

consisted of a small, a very small library, a dozen Navajo rugs, several

paintings, a share in four acres of land and my book rights (which were

of negligible value so far as furnishing a living was concerned), and my

wife perceived very clearly that our margin above necessity was narrow,

but this did not disturb her faith in the future, or if it did, she gave

no sign of it--her face was nearly always smiling. Nevertheless I had no

intention of keeping her in West Salem all summer. I could not afford to

wear out her interest in it.

One day, shortly after Lorado's visit, I received a letter from Major

Stouch, the Indian Agent with whom I had campaigned at Lamedeer in '97.

He wrote: "I have just been detailed to take charge of the Cheyenne

Agency at Darlington, Oklahoma. Mrs. Stouch and I are about to start on

a survey of my new reservation and I should like to have you and your

wife come down and accompany us on our circuit. We shall hold a number

of councils with the Indians, and there will be dances and pow-wows. It

will all be material for your pen."

This invitation appealed to me with especial force for I had long

desired to study the Southern Cheyennes, and a tour with Stouch promised

a rich harvest of fictional themes, for me. Furthermore it offered a

most romantic experience for Zulime--just the kind of enlightenment I

had promised her.

With no time to lose, we packed our trunks and took train for Kansas

City enroute for Indian Territory, the scene of many of the most

exciting romances of my youth, the stronghold of bank robbers, and the

hiding place of military renegades.

On our way to Oklahoma, we visited Professor Taft in Hanover and I find

this note recorded: "All day the wind blew, the persistent, mournful

crying wind of the plain. The saddest, the most appealing sound in my

world. It came with a familiar soft rush, a crowding presence, uttering

a sighing roar--a vague sound out of which voices of lonely children and

forgotten women broke. To the solitary farmer's wife such a wind brings

tears or madness. I am tense with desire to escape. This bare little

town on the ridge is appalling to me. Think of living here with the

litany of this wind forever in one's ears."

By contrast West Salem, with its green, embracing hills, seemed a

garden, a place of sweet content, a summer resort, and yet in this

Kansas town Zulime had spent part of her girlhood. In this sun-smit

cottage she had left her mother to find a place in the outside world

just as I had left my mother in Dakota. From this town she had gone

almost directly to Paris! It would be difficult to imagine a more

amazing translation--and yet, now that she was back in the midst of it,

she gave no sign of the disheartenment she must have felt. She met all

her old friends and neighbors with unaffected interest and gayety.

Twenty-four hours later we were in the midst of a wide, sunny prairie,

across which, in white-topped prairie schooners, settlers were moving

just as they had passed our door in Iowa thirty years before. Plowmen

were breaking the sod as my father had done in '71, and their women

washing and cooking in the open air, offered familiar phases of the

immemorial American drama,--only the stations on the railway broke the

spell of the past with a modern word.

Swarms of bearded, slouchy, broad-hatted men filled the train and

crowded the platforms of the villages. Cow-boys, Indians in white men's

clothing, negroes (black and brown), and tall, blonde Tennessee

mountaineers made up this amazing population--a population in which

libraries were of small value, a tobacco-chewing, ceaselessly spitting

unkempt horde, whose stage of culture was almost precisely that which

Dickens and other travelers from the old world had found in the Central

West in the forties.

How these scenes affected my young wife I will not undertake to say; but

I remember that she kept pretty close to my elbow whenever we mingled

with the crowd, and the deeper we got into this raw world the more

uneasy she became. "Where shall we spend the night?" she asked.

Had I been alone I would not have worried about a hotel, but with a

young wife who knew nothing of roughing it, I became worried. To the

conductor I put an anxious question, "Is there a decent hotel in Reno?"

His answer was a bit contemptuous, "Sure," he exclaimed. "What do you

think you're doing--exploring?"

This was precisely what I feared we _were_ doing. I said no more about

it, although I hadn't much confidence in his notions of a first class

hotel. There was nothing for it but to rest upon his assurance and go

hopefully forward to the end of the line.

It must have been about ten of a dark warm night as we came to a final

halt beside a low station marked "Reno," and at the suggestion of the

brakeman I called for "the Palace Hotel Bus," although none of the

waiting carriages or drivers seemed even remotely related to a palace.

My wife, filled with a high sense of our adventure, took her seat in

the muddy and smelly carriage, with touching trust in me.

The Palace Hotel, with its doorway brightly lighted with electricity,

proved a pleasant surprise. It looked clean and bright and new, and the

proprietor, a cheerful and self-respecting citizen, was equally

reassuring. We went to our rooms with restored confidence in Oklahoma.

The next morning, before we had finished our breakfast, a messenger from

the Agency came in to say that a carryall was at the door, and soon we

were on our way toward the Fort.

The roads were muddy, but the plain was vividly, brilliantly green, and

the sky radiantly blue. The wind, filled with delicious spring odors,

came out of the west; larks were whistling and wild ducks were in

flight. To my wife it was as strange as it was beautiful. It was the

prairie at its best--like the Jim River in 1881.

Fort Reno (a cluster of frame barracks), occupied a low hill which

overlooked the valley of the Canadian, on whose green meadows piebald

cattle were scattered like bits of topaz. Flowers starred the southern

slopes, and beside the stream near the willows (in which mocking birds

were singing), stood clusters of the conical tents of the Cheyennes,

lodges of canvas made in the ancient form. Our way led to the Agency

through one of these villages, and as we passed we saw women at their

work, and children in their play, all happy and quite indifferent to the

white man and his comment.

The Stouchs met us at the door of the big frame cottage which was the

agent's house, and while Mrs. Stouch took charge of Zulime the Major led

me at once to his office, in order that I might lose no time in getting

acquainted with his wards. In ten minutes I found myself deep in another

world, a world of captive, aboriginal warriors, sorrowfully concerned

with the problem of "walking the white man's trail."

All that day and each day thereafter, files of white-topped wagons

forded the river, keeping their westward march quite in the traditional

American fashion, to disappear like weary beetles over the long, low

ridge past the fort which stood like a guidon to the promised land. Here

were all the elements of Western settlement, the Indians, the soldiers,

the glorious sweeping wind and the flowering sod, and in addition to all

these the resolute white men seeking their fortunes beneath the sunset

sky, just as of old, remorselessly carrying their women and children

into hardship and solitude. Without effort I was able to imagine myself

back in the day of Sam Houston and Satanka.

Our trip around the reservation with the Agent began a few days later

with an exultant drive across the prairie to the South Fork of the

Canadian River. It was glorious summer here. Mocking birds were singing

in each swale, and exquisite flowers starred the sod beneath our wheels.

Through a land untouched by the white man's plow, we rode on a trail

which carried me back to my childhood, to the Iowa Prairie over which I

had ridden with my parents thirty years before. This land, this sky,

this mournful, sighing wind laid hold of something very sweet, almost

sacred in my brain. By great good fortune I had succeeded in overtaking

the vanishing prairie.

The arrival of the Agent at each sub-agency was the signal for an

assembly of all the red men round-about and Zulime had the pleasure of

seeing several old fashioned Councils carried on quite in the

traditional fashion, the chiefs in full native costume, their head

dresses presenting suggestions of the war-like past. The attitudes of

the men in the circle were at all times serious and dignified, and the

gestures of the orators instinct with natural grace.

One of the Cheyenne camps in which we lingered was especially charming.

Set amid the nodding flowers and waving grasses of a small meadow in the

elbow of a river, its lodges were filled with happy children, and under

sun-shades constructed of green branches, chattering women were at work.

Paths led from tent to tent, and in the deep shade of ancient walnut

trees, on the banks of the stream, old men were smoking in reminiscent

dream of other days.

As night fell and sunset clouds flamed overhead, primroses yearned

upward from the sward, and the teepees, lighted from within, glowed like

jewels, pearl-white cones with hearts of flame. Shouts of boys, laughter

of girls, and the murmur of mothers' voices suggested the care-free life

of the Algonquin in days before the invading conqueror enforced new

conditions and created new desires.

* * * * *

For two weeks we drove amid scenes like these, scenes which were of

inspirational value to me and of constant delight to Zulime. My notebook

filled itself with hints for poems and outlines for stories. In all my

tales of the Cheyennes, I kept in mind Major Powell's significant

remark, "The scalp dance no more represents the red man's daily life

than the bayonet-charge represents the white man's civilization." Having

no patience with the writers who regarded the Indian as a wild beast, I

based my interpretation on the experiences of men like Stouch and Seger

who, by twenty years' experience, had proved the red man's fine

qualities. As leading actors in the great tragedy of Western settlement

I resolved to present the Ogallallah and the Ute as I saw them.

At one of these informal councils between the Agent and some of the

Cheyenne headmen, I caught a phrase which gave me the title of a story

and at the same time pointed the moral of a volume of short stories.

White Shield, one of John Seger's friends, in telling of his

experiences, sadly remarked, "I find it hard to make a home among the

white men."

Instantly my mind grasped the reverse side of the problem. I took for

the title of my story these words: _White Eagle, the Red Pioneer_, and

presented the point of view of a nomad who turns his back on the

wilderness which he loves, and sets himself the task of leading his band

in settlement among the plowmen. In a collection of tales, some of which

have not been published even in magazines, I have grouped studies of red

individuals with intent to show that a village of Cheyennes has many

kinds of people just like any other village. "Hippy, the Dare Devil,"

"White Weasel, the Dandy," "Rising Wolf, the Ghost Dancer," are some of

the titles in this volume. Whether it will get itself printed in my

lifetime or not is a problem, for publishers are loath to issue a book

of short stories, any kind of short stories. "Stories about Indians are

no longer in demand," they say. Nevertheless, some day I hope these

stories may get into print as a volume complementary to _Main Traveled

Roads_, and _They of the High Trails_.

Among the most unforgettable of all our Oklahoma experiences was a

dinner which we had with the Jesuit Missionary priest at "Chickashay" on

the last day of our stay. It had been raining in torrents for several

hours, and as the Mission was four miles out I would have despaired of

getting there at all had it not been for the Agency Clerk who was a man

of resource and used to Oklahoma "showers." Commandeering for us the

Agency "hack," a kind of canvas-covered delivery wagon, he succeeded in

reaching the priest's house without shipwreck, although the road was a

river.

The priest, a short, jolly Alsatian, met us with shining face quite

unlike any other missionary I had ever seen. He was at once a delight

and an astonishment to Zulime. His laugh was a bugle note and his

hospitality a glow of good will. The dinner was abundant and well

served, the wine excellent, and our host's talk of absorbing interest.

We were waited upon by a Sister of severe mien, who, between courses,

stood against the wall with folded arms eyeing us with disapproving

countenance. It was plain that she was serving under compulsion, but

Father Ambrose paying no attention to her frowns, urged us to take a

second helping, telling us meanwhile of his first exploration of

Oklahoma, a story which filled us with laughter at his "greenness."

Chuckling with delight of the fool he was, he could not conceal the

heroic part he had played, for the hardships in those days were very

real to a young man just out of a monastery. "I was so green the cows

would have eaten me," he said.

The whole incident was like a chapter in a story of some other land than

ours. The Sisters, the little brown children, the book-walled sitting

room, the sturdy little priest recounting his struggles with a strange

people and a strange climate,--all these presented a charming picture of

the noble side of missionary life. Nothing broke the charm of that

dinner except an occasional peal of thunder which made us wonder whether

we would be able to navigate the hack back to the hotel or not.

What a waste the plain presented as we started on our return at ten

o'clock! The lightning, almost incessant, showed from time to time what

appeared to be a vast lake, shorelessly extending on every side of us, a

shallow sea through which the horses slopped, waded and all but swam

while Carroll, the Clerk, as pilot, did his best to reassure my wife. "I

know the high spots," he said, whereat I fervently (though secretly)

replied, "I hope you do," and when we swung to anchor in front of our

little hotel, I shook his hand in congratulations over his skill--and

good luck!

On our return to Chicago I found Lorado in his studio, modeling a more

or less conventional female form, and my resentment took words. "If you

will come with me, down among the Cheyennes, I will show you men who can

be nude without being naked. In White Eagle's camp you can study

warriors who have the dignity of Roman Senators and the grace of

Athenian athletes."

To illustrate one of my points, I caught up a piece of gray canvas and

showed him how the chiefs of various tribes managed their blankets.

Something in these motions or in the long gray lines of the robe which I

used fired his imagination. For the first time in our acquaintanceship,

I succeeded in interesting him in the Indian. He was especially excited

by the gesture of covering the mouth to express awe, and a few days

later he showed me several small figures which he had sketched,

suggestions which afterwards became the splendid monuments of Silmee and

Blackhawk. He never lost the effect of the noble gestures which I had

reproduced for him. The nude red man was a hackneyed subject, but Brown

Bear with his robe, afforded precisely the stimulus of which he stood in

need.

This trip to Indian Territory turned out to be a very important event in

my life. First of all it enabled me to complete the writing of _The

Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_, and started me on a long series of

short stories depicting the life of the red man. It gave me an enormous

amount of valuable material and confirmed me in my conviction that the

Indian needed an interpreter, but beyond all these literary gains, I

went back to Wisconsin filled with a fierce desire to own some of that

beautiful prairie over which we had ridden.

This revived hunger for land generated in me a plan for establishing a

wide ranch down there, an estate to which we could retire in February

and March. "We can meet the spring half-way," I explained to my father.

"I want a place where I can keep saddle horses and cattle. You must go

with me and see it sometime. It is as lovely as Mitchell County was in

1870."

To this end I wrote to my brother in Mexico. "Leave the rubber business

and come to Oklahoma. I am going to buy a ranch there and need you as

superintendent."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Standing Rock and Lake McDonald

It was full summer when we got back to Wisconsin, and The Old Homestead

was at its best. The garden was red with ripening fruit, the trees thick

with shining leaves, and the thrushes and catbirds were singing in quiet

joy. In the fields the growing corn was showing its ordered spears, and

the wheat was beginning to wave in the gentle wind. No land could be

more hospitable, more abounding or more peaceful than our valley.

With her New Daughter again beside her life seemed very complete and

satisfying to my mother, and I was quite at ease until one night, as she

and I were sitting alone in the dusk, she confided to me, for the first

time, her conviction that she had but a short time to live. Her tone, as

well as her words, shocked me, for she had not hitherto been subject to

dark moods. She gave no reason for her belief, but that she was

suffering from some serious inner malady was evident,--I feared it might

concern the action of her heart--and I was greatly disturbed by it.

Of course I made light of her premonition, but thereafter I watched her

with minute care, and called on the doctor at the slightest sign of

change. We sang to her, we read to her, and Zulime spent long hours

reading to her or sitting beside her. She was entirely happy except

when, at intervals, her mysterious malady,--something she could not

describe,--filled her eyes with terror.

She loved to sit in the kitchen and watch her new daughter presiding

over its activities, and submitted, with pathetic pride, to any change

which Zulime proposed. "I am perfectly contented," she said to me,

"except----"

"Except what, mother?"

"The grandchild. I want to see my grandchild."

One of our regular excursions for several years had been a drive

(usually on Sunday) over the ridge to Lewis Valley, where Frank

McClintock still lived. Among my earliest memories is a terror of this

road, for it led up a long, wooded hill, which seemed to me, as a child,

a dangerous mountain pass. Many, many times since then I had made the

climb, sometimes in the spring, sometimes in midsummer, but now my plans

included my wife. Mother was eager to go. "I can stand the ride if you

will drive and be careful going down hill," she said to me--and so,

although I was a little in doubt about the effect upon her heart, I

hired a team, and early of a clear June morning we started for Mindoro.

It was like riding back into the hopeful, happy past, for both the old

people. Father was full of wistful reminiscences of "the early days,"

but mother, who sat beside Zulime, made no comment, although her face

shone with inward joy of the scene, the talk--until we came to the steep

descent which scared her. Clinging to her seat with pitiful intensity

she saw nothing but dangerous abysses until we reached the level road on

the opposite side of the ridge.

It was glorious June, and in this I now rejoice, for it proved to be the

last time that we made the crossing of the long hill together. I was

glad to have her visit her brother's home once more. Change was coming

to him as well as to her. His prodigious muscles and his boyish gayety

were fading away together. Though still delightfully jolly and

hospitable, his temper was distinctly less buoyant. He still played the

fiddle; but like his brother, David, he found less and less joy in it,

for his stiffened fingers refused to do his bidding. The strings which

once sang clear and sweet, failed of their proper pitch, and these

discords irritated and saddened him.

Aunt Lorette, his handsome, rosy-cheeked wife, was beginning to complain

smilingly, of being lame and "no account," but she provided a beautiful

chicken dinner, gayly "visiting" while she did it, with mother sitting

by to watch her at the job as she had done so many times before.

Lorette, like all the rest of us, felt under the necessity of putting

her best foot forward in order that "Zuleema" should not be disappointed

in any way, and to Zulime she was like a character in a novel; indeed,

they all tried to live up to her notion of them. For her, father told

his best stories of bears and Indians, for her, Uncle Frank fiddled his

liveliest tunes, and for her Aunt Lorette recounted some of the comedies

which the valley had from time to time developed, and which (as she

explained) "had gone into one of Hamlin's books. Of course he fixed 'em

up a little," she added, "you couldn't expect him to be satisfied with a

yarn just as I told it, but all the same he got the idea of at least two

of his stories from me."

Valiant Aunt Lorette! Her face was always sunny, no matter how deep the

shadow in her heart; and her capacity for work was prodigious. She was

an almost perfect example of the happy, hard-working farmer's wife, for

her superb physical endowment and her serene temperament had survived

the strain of thirty years of unremitting toil. Her life had been, thus

far, a cheerful pilgrimage. She did not mind the loneliness of the

valley. The high hill which lay between her door and the village could

not wall her spirit in. She rejoiced in the stream of pure water which

flowed from the hillside spring to the tank at her kitchen door, and she

took pride in the chickens and cows and pigs which provided her table

with abundant food.

"Oh, yes, I like to go to town--once in a while," she replied, in answer

to Zulime's question. "But I'd hate to live there. I don't see how

people get along on a tucked up fifty-foot lot where they have to buy

every blessed thing they eat."

How good that dinner was! Hot biscuit, chicken, shortcake, coffee and

the most delicious butter and cream. At the moment it did seem a most

satisfactory way to live. We forgot that the dishes had to be washed

three times each day, and that the mud and rain and wind and snow often

shut the homestead in for weeks at a stretch. Seeing the valley at its

loveliest, under the glamor of a summer afternoon, we found it perfect.

After dinner we men-folks (leaving the women, in the "good old way," to

clear away the dinner dishes) went out on the grass under the trees, and

as I talked of my mountaineering Uncle Frank said, with a wistful note

in his voice, "I've always wanted to go out into that country with you.

Chasing a deer through a Wisconsin swamp don't satisfy me--I'd like to

get into the grizzly bear country--but now I'm too old."

Thereupon father stated his desires. "There are just two trips I want to

make--I'd like to go by a steamboat from Duluth to Detroit, and I want

to see Yellowstone Park."

"Well, why don't you do it?" demanded my Uncle. "You can afford it now."

Father's face became thoughtful. "I believe I will. Lottridge and Shane

are planning that boat trip. I could go with them."

"Sail ahead," said I, "and if you get back in time I'll take you through

Yellowstone Park. Zulime and I are going to Montana in July."

Neither of them had the slightest desire to see London or Paris or Rome,

but they both longed for a fuller knowledge of the West. They were

still pioneers, still explorers over whose imagination the trackless

waste exercised a deathless dominion. To my uncle I said, "If I could

afford it, I would take you with me on one of my trailing expeditions

and show you some real wilderness."

"I wish you would," he answered quickly. "I'd tend horses, cook, or

anything else in order to go along."

Of course this wistful longing was only a mood on his part, for he was

naturally of a cheerful disposition, but music and the wilderness always

stirred him to his deeps. Ten minutes later he was joking with Zulime,

giving a fine exhibition of the contented husbandman.

As the time came to leave, my mother glanced about her with an emotion

which she brokenly expressed when she said, "I don't suppose I shall

ever get over here again. You must come and see me, after this."

"Oh, you'll be comin' over oftener than ever, now that you've got a

daughter to lean on," retorted Lorette with easy grace.

On our way home, at the crest of the hill, I drew rein in order that we

might all look away over the familiar valley, stretching mistily toward

the sun, and I, too, had the feeling--which I was careful not to express

even by a look or tone--that mother and I would never again ride this

road or look out upon this lovely scene together, and something in her

eyes and the melancholy sweetness of her lips told me that she was

bidding the landscape a long farewell.

We rode the remaining portion of our way in somber mood, although we all

agreed that it was a colorful finish of a perfect day--a day to be

recalled in after years with a tender heart-ache.

[It is all changed now. Aunt Lorette has gone to her reward. Uncle

Frank, old and lonely, is living on the village side of the ridge and

strangers are in the old house!]

That night, Zulime and I talked over the agreement I had made with

father, and we planned a way to carry it out. Almost as excited about

the Yellowstone as he, she was quite ready to camp through as I

suggested. "We will hire a team at Livingston, and with our own outfit,

will be independent of stages and hotels--but first I must show you some

Indians. We will visit Standing Rock and see the Sioux in their 'Big

Sunday.' Father can meet us at Bismark after we come out."

With the confidence of a child she accepted my arrangement and on the

first day of July we were in the stage ambling across the hot, dry

prairie which lay between Bismark and Fort Yates. Empty, arid and

illimitable the rolling treeless landscape oppressed us both, and yet

there was a stern majesty in its sweep, and the racing purple shadows of

the dazzling clouds lent it color and movement. To me it was all

familiar, but when, after an all-day ride, we came down into the valley

of the Muddy Missouri, the sheen of its oily red current was quite as

grateful to me as to my weary wife.

Our only means of reaching the Agency was a small rowboat which seemed a

frail ferry even to me. How it appeared to Zulime, I dared not ask--but

she unhesitatingly stepped in and took her seat beside me. I think she

accepted it as a part of the strange and hardy world in which her

husband was at home.

We were both silent on that crossing, for our slender craft struggled

anxiously with the boiling, silent, turbid current, and when we landed,

the tense look on Zulime's face gave place to a smile.--Half an hour

later we were sitting at supper in a fly-specked boarding house,

surrounded by squaw-men and half-breed Sioux, who were enjoying the

luxury of a white man's table as a part of their Fourth of July

celebration. My artist wife was being educated swiftly!

The tribe was again encamped in a wide circle just west of the Fort,

precisely as when my brother and I had visited it three years before,

while the store and the Agency swarmed with native men and women, many

in mixed costume of cloth and skin. Zulime's artistic joy in them filled

me with complacent satisfaction. I had the air of a showman rejoicing in

his exhibition hall. With keen interest we watched the young warriors as

they came whirling in on their swift ponies, each in his gayest

garments, the tail of his horse decorated with rosettes and ribbons.

Possessing the swiftness and the grace of Centaurs, coming and going

like sudden whirlwinds, they were superb embodiments of a race which was

passing. Some of the older men remembered me, and greeted me as one

friendly to their cause--but for the most part the younger folk eyed us

with indifference.

That night a singular and savage change in the weather took place. The

wind shifted to the southeast and took on the heat of a furnace. By ten

o'clock next morning dirt was blowing in clouds and to walk the street

was an ordeal. All day Zulime remained in her room virtually a prisoner.

Night fell with the blast still roaring, and the dust rising from the

river banks like smoke, presented a strange and sinister picture of

wrath. It was as though the water, itself, had taken fire from the

lightning which plunged in branching streams across the sky. Thunder

muttered incessantly all through that singular and solemn night, a night

which somehow foreshadowed the doom which was about to overtake the

Sioux.

The following day, however, was clear and cool, and we spent most of it

in walking about the camp, visiting the teepees of which there were

several hundreds set in a huge ellipse, all furnished in primitive

fashion--some of them very neatly. Over four thousand Sioux were said to

be in this circle, and their coming and going, their camp fires and

feasting groups composed a scene well worth the long journey we had

endured. Strange as this life seemed to my wife it was quite familiar to

me. To me these people were not savages, they were folks--and in their

festivity I perceived something of the spirit of a county fair in

Wisconsin.

Our guide about the camp, the half-breed son of a St. Louis trader, was

a big, fine-featured, intelligent man of about my own age, whose

pleasant lips, and deep brown eyes attracted me. He knew everybody, both

white and red, and as soon as he understood my wish to write fairly of

his people, he gave himself unreservedly to our service. Taking us from

lodge to lodge, he introduced us to the men whose characters were of the

most value in my study and told them of my wish to report them with

sympathy and truth.

One of the games that day was a rough, outdoor drama, in which mimic war

parties sallied forth, scouts were captured and captives rescued in

stirring pantomime.

As I stood watching the play I observed that one man (no longer young)

was serving as "the enemy," alternately captured or slain. His role was

not only arduous--it was dangerous--dangerous and thankless, and as I

saw him cheerfully volunteering to be "killed" I handed Primeau a dollar

and said: "Give this to that old fellow, and tell him he should have

many dollars for his hard, rough work."

Primeau gave him the coin, but before he had time to know who gave it,

he was called back into the field.

At the Agency store I met a French-Canadian named Carignan who was a

most valuable witness, for he had been among the red men for many years,

first as a school teacher and later as trader. From him I secured much

intimate history of the Sioux. He had known the Sitting Bull well, and

gave me a very kindly account of him. "I taught the school in Rock Creek

near the Sitting Bull's camp, and he was often at my table," he

explained. "I saw no harm in him. I liked him and respected him. He was

an Indian but he was a thinker."

Vaguely holding in my brain a tale in which the Sitting Bull should be

protagonist, I talked with many who had known him, and a few days later

I accepted Primeau's invitation to visit the valley in which the chief

had lived, and which was the scene of the Ghost Dance, and the place of

the chief's death.

I suggested to Zulime that she would be more comfortable at the Agency

but she replied, "I'd rather go with you. I don't like being left here

alone."

"You'll find the ride tiresome and the lodging rough, I fear."

"I don't care," she retorted firmly, "I'm going with you."

Primeau was a very intelligent man and a good talker, and as we rode

along he gave us in detail the history of the rise of the Ghost Dance,

so far as the Sioux were concerned. "There was nothing war-like about

it," he insisted. "It was a religious appeal. It was a prayer to the

Great Spirit to take pity on the red man and bring back the world of the

buffalo. They carried no weapons, in fact they carried nothing which the

white man had brought to them. They even took the metal fringes off

their shirts. They believed that if they gave up all signs of the whites

the Great Spirit would turn his face upon them again."

"Did Sitting Bull take part in this?" I asked.

"He encouraged the meeting at his camp and gave his cattle to feed the

people, but he was never able to dream like the rest. He never really

believed in it. He wanted to but he couldn't. He was too deep a thinker.

He often talked with me about it."

At a point about twenty miles from The Fort, Primeau left us to visit a

ranchman with whom he had some business and left us to drive on with a

guide to his cattle-ranch where we were to stay all night.

The ranch house turned out to be a rude low shack, and here Zulime had

her first touch of genuine cowboy life. The foreman had not been

expecting ladies for supper and the food he had prepared was of the

usual camp sort. He explained that he and his men had finished their

meal, and then, leading the way to the kitchen, showed us the food and

said heartily, "Help yourself."

On the back of the stove was a pot half filled with a mixture of boiled

rice and prunes. In the oven was some soggy bread, and on the hearth

some cold bacon. A can half filled with pale brown coffee added the

finishing touch to a layout perfectly familiar to me. I thanked the cook

and proceeded to dish out some of the rice whose grayish color aroused

Zulime's distrust. She refused to even taste it. "It looks as if it were

filled with dirt--or ashes."

"That's its natural complexion," I explained. "This is the unpolished

kind of rice. It is much more nutritious than the other kind."

She could not eat any of the bread, and when she tried the coffee she

was utterly discouraged. Nevertheless her kindliness of heart led her to

conceal her disgust. She emptied her rice into the stove and threw her

cup of coffee from the window in order that the cook might think that

she had eaten her share of the supper.

The foreman who came in a few minutes later to see that we were getting

fed politely inquired, "Is there anything else I can get you, miss?"

She really needed something to eat and yet she was puzzled to know what

to ask for. At last, in the belief that she was asking for the simplest

possible thing, she smiled sweetly and said, "I should like a glass of

milk."

The foreman permitted no expression of surprise or displeasure to cross

his face, he merely turned to a tall young man in the doorway and

quietly remarked, "Mell, the lady would like some milk."

A glint of amusement was in the eyes of Mell, but he made no reply, just

quietly "sifted out," and a few moments later, while the foreman was in

the midst of a story, a most appalling tumult broke upon our ears.

Calves bawled, bulls bellowed, galloping hooves thundered, men shouted

and laughed--in a most amazing uproar.

Rushing to the door in search of the cause of this clamor, I found it to

be related to my wife's innocent request.

Tied near the cabin was a leaping, blatting, badly frightened calf while

inside the corral, a cow evidently its dam, was charging up and down the

fence, her eyes literally blazing with fury, pursued by Mell on a swift

pony, a rope swinging in his hand. On the top rails of the enclosure a

row of delighted loafers laughed and cheered and shouted good advice to

the roper.

"What is he doing?" asked my amazed wife, as Mell brought the cow to

earth in a cloud of dust.

"Milking the cow," replied the boss with calmly hospitable inflection.

"If you'll be patient jest a few minutes----"

The insane animal, strong as a lioness, in some way freed herself from

the rope and charged her enemy--Mell's pony fled. "O, don't let him hurt

her," pleaded Zulime. "I don't want any milk. I didn't know you had to

do that."

"It's the only way to milk a range cow," I explained.

"Don't worry, Miss," the foreman added reassuringly. "It's all in the

day's work for Mell."

Again the cow went to earth and Zulime, horrified at the sight, begged

them to restore the calf to its dam. At last this was done, and a

grateful peace settled over the scene.

The cowboys were highly delighted and I was amused, but Zulime was too

shocked to see any humor in Mell's defeat. "Do they really milk their

cows in that way?" she asked me.

"Yes, when they milk them at all," I replied, inwardly filled with

laughter. "As a matter of fact they get all their cream out of cans.

Milking that cow was a new departure for Mell, I think he was a little

disappointed at not being allowed to go through with it."

"I'm glad he didn't. I'll never mention milk again--in this country."

We slept in the bed of our wagon-box that night while the crew rode away

to fight a prairie fire. We heard them come quietly in toward dawn, and

when we awoke and looked out of our cover we saw them lying all about us

on the ground each rolled up in his tarpaulin like a boulder. Altogether

it was a stirring glimpse of ranch life for my city-bred wife.

Primeau's home ranch and store which we reached about eleven the next

forenoon was an almost equally sorry place for a delicate woman, a sad

spot in which to spend even a single night. Flies swarmed in the kitchen

like bees, and the air of our bedroom was hot and stagnant, and

mosquitoes made sleep impossible. Zulime became ill, and I bitterly

regretted my action in bringing her into this God forsaken land. "We

shall return at once to the fort," I promised her.

It was an iron soil. The valley was a furnace, the sky a brazen shield.

No green thing was in sight, and the curling leaves of the dying corn

brought back to me those desolate days in Dakota when my mother tried so

hard to maintain a garden. Deeply pitying the captive red hunters, who

were expected to become farmers under these desolate conditions, I was

able to understand how they had turned to the Great Spirit in a last

despairing plea for pity and relief. "Think of this place in winter," I

said to Zulime.

One of the men whom Primeau especially wished me to meet was Slohan, the

annalist of his tribe, one of the "Silent Eaters," a kind of bodyguard

to Sitting Bull. "He lives only a few miles up the valley," Primeau

explained, and so to find him we set off in a light wagon next morning

drawn by a couple of fleet ponies.

As we rode, Primeau told me more of "The Silent Eaters." "They were a

small band of young warriors organized for defense and council, and were

closely associated with Sitting Bull all his life. Slohan, the man we

are to see to-day, is one of those who stood nearest the chief. No man

living knows more about him. He can tell you just what you want to

know."

An hour later as we were riding along close to the bank of the creek,

Primeau stopped his team. "There he is now!" he exclaimed.

Looking where he pointed I discovered on a mound above the stream an old

man sitting motionless as a statue, with bowed head, and lax hands.

There was something strange, almost tragic in his attitude, and this

impression deepened as we approached him.

He was wrinkled with age and clad in ragged white man's clothing, but

his profile was fine, fine as that of a Roman Senator, and the lines of

his face were infinitely sad. In one fallen hand lay a coiled rope.

He did not look up as we drew near, did not appear to hear Primeau's

respectful greeting. Dejected, motionless, he endured the hot sunshine

like an Oriental Yoghi or a man deadened by some narcotic drug.

Gently, almost timidly, Primeau addressed him. "Slohan, this white man

has come a long way to see you. He wishes to talk with you about the

Sitting Bull and of the days of the buffalo."

At last the old man turned and lifted his bloodshot eyes and uttered in

a husky whisper, a few words which changed Primeau's whole expression.

He drew back. "Come away!" he said to me.

While we were walking toward our team he explained. "Slohan is mourning

the death of his little grandson. Long time he has been there wailing.

His voice is gone. He can cry no more. His heart is empty. He will not

talk with us."

What a revelation of the soul of a red warrior! Hopeless, tragic,

inconsolable, he was the type of all paternity throughout the world.

Primeau went on, "I told him of you and I think his mind is turned to

other things. I asked him to come to see you this afternoon. Perhaps he

will. Perhaps I have lifted his mind from his sorrow."

All the way down the valley I pondered on the picture that grandsire had

made there in the midst of that desolate valley.

Primeau told me of his grandson. "He was a handsome little fellow. I

can't blame the old man for weeping over his loss."

Slohan was a redoubtable warrior. He had been the leader of Sitting

Bull's bodyguard, he was accounted a savage, and yet for forty-eight

hours he had been sitting ceaselessly mourning for a child, crying till

his voice was only a husky whisper. Nothing that I had ever seen typed

the bitterness of barbaric grief more powerfully than this bent and

voiceless old man.

* * * * *

Late in the afternoon the mourner came in view, riding on a pony,

without a saddle, his face still very sad, but not entirely despairing.

His mind, in working backward to the splendid world of the past, the

world in which his chief had played such heroic and stirring parts, his

heart had been comforted--or at any rate lightened.

Although clothed in the customary rags of the mourner, his hair was

neatly brushed and braided, and he met my wife with gentle grace. There

was something tragic in his dim glance, something admirable in his low

words of greeting.

We gave him food and drink, and then while we all sat on the earth in

the scant shade thrown by Primeau's building, he began to talk, slowly,

hesitantly of the part his chief had taken in the wars against the white

man. He had the dignity and the eloquence of a fine New England judge. A

notable sweetness and a lofty poetry were blended in his expression; and

as he used the sign language in emphasizing his words (gestures finely

expressive and nobly rhythmical) he became, to my perception, the native

bard reciting the story of his clan. I was able to follow the broad

lines of his discourse and when at the close of the afternoon he rose to

go, I said to him, "I shall tell of the Sitting Bull as you have

spoken," and we parted in the glow of mutual esteem.

Zulime was feeling much better, and the air being cooler, I asked

permission to stay another day, in order that I might meet Looking Stag,

another of the warriors who had known the Sitting Bull.

Looking Stag's home was a few miles down the valley, and we found him in

his commodious lodge, entertaining a couple of headmen from Cheyenne

River. He was seated on a low bed opposite the door, and his guests were

placed on either hand of him. He glanced up at us, spoke a curt word to

Primeau and went on with his story. His cold greeting, and the evident

preoccupation of his manner made me feel like an intruder, which I was,

and this feeling was deepened when I perceived that my guide was

distinctly ill at ease. After all, he was only a half-breed trader,

while these men were red chieftains.

The Looking Stag was not contemptuous of me--he was merely indifferent.

Busied with honored guests he regarded the coming of a strange white man

to his lodge as something of a nuisance. He went on cutting tobacco, and

afterward ground it between his palms whilst his visitors talked on

quite oblivious to me.

Our host looked familiar, but as he was painted and wore a bonnet of

eagle feathers I could not remember where I had seen him.

At last, in a pause of the talk, Primeau said something to him which

caused him to break into a smile and thrust his open hand toward me.

"How! How! my friend," he called heartily.

Then I recognized him. He was the man who had so unweariedly taken the

part of "The Enemy" in the games at Standing Rock. Primeau had told him

that I was the man who had given him the money, and he now accepted me

as a friend.

He then told his visitors the story of my gift and message. They also

laughed and shook hands with me. Thereafter we were all on terms of high

respect and mutual confidence. I put my questions freely and they

replied with an air of candor.

As they approached the Custer fight, however, they paused, pondered,

checked up one another's statements, and at last produced what I

believed to be the truth regarding the share in that battle--and the

truth is incredible. They recreated the whole scene for me as Two Moons

had done. They corroborated all that I had obtained from the northern

Cheyennes.

I forgot the plow and the reaper while sitting there in conference with

those men for they were thinkers as well as warriors. Within the walls

of that lodge they were not despised outcasts, they were leaders,

councillors, men of weight. They had reentered a world which caused

their faces to shine just as my father's face shone when he told of

Grant at Vicksburg or recounted the days of his youth on The Old

Wisconse. For a little while I inhabited their world, and when I left

them I carried with me a deepened sense of their essential manliness.

Alas! Zulime was less enthusiastic. The flies, the heat, the dust, the

bad food--so commonplace to me--were horrifying to her, and so for her

sake I cut short my historical studies and hurried her back to the Fort,

back to the wholesome fare of the officers' mess. With no consuming

literary interest to sustain her she found even the Agency a weariness;

and as the date for meeting my father was near, we took the stage back

to Bismark, she with a sense of relief, I with a feeling of regret that

I had not been able to push my investigations deeper. There was a big

theme here, but I had small faith in my ability to handle it. It

required an epic poet, rather than a realistic novelist.

Father, excited as a boy, came along on the train which reached Bismark

the morning following our arrival and we at once took him into the

Pullman car and forced him to share some of the comforts of travel. We

ate breakfast in the dining car at what seemed to him a wildly

extravagant price but I insisted on his being a guest. "Just sit here

and look out of the window and think of the Erie Canal Boats in which

you came west, or remember your ox-team in fifty-eight."

"All right," he said with a quizzical smile. "If you can stand the

expense, I can." A little later he said, "What a change my life has

witnessed. I helped to grade the first railway in the State of Maine,

and now here I am whirling along through 'the Great American Desert'

eating a steak and drinking my coffee in a flying hotel. I wish your

mother could be here with us."

This was the only shadow at our feast and we put it aside, taking

comfort in the thought that she was happy in a tree-embowered home,

surrounded by the abundance of a prolific garden. "Her days of travel

are over," I said, and turned to the task of making my father's outing a

shining success.

For ten days we camped with him in Yellowstone Park, moving from place

to place, in our own wagon and tent, and when we came out and he

started on his homeward way, he expressed complete satisfaction. "It has

been up to the bills," he conceded, and I could see that he was eager to

get back to Johnson's drug store, where he could discuss with Stevens

and McEldowney the action of geysers and the habits of grizzly bears, on

terms of equal information.

If he was satisfied, I was not. Insisting on showing Zulime the Cascade

Range and the Pacific Ocean, I kept on to the West. Together we viewed

Tacoma and Seattle, and from the boat on Puget Sound discovered the

Olympic Mountains springing superbly from the sea. For us Rainier

disclosed his dome above the clouds, and Lake McDonald offered its most

gorgeous sunset.

One of the points which I had found of most interest in '97 was the

Blackfoot Agency, and as we sat in our tent on the Northern shore of

Lake McDonald I gained Zulime's consent to go in there for a few days.

"The train lands us there late at night," I said, "and there is no hotel

at the station or the Agency, but we can set up our tent in a few

moments and be comfortable till morning."

To this she agreed--or perhaps I should say to this she submitted, and

at eleven o'clock the following night we found ourselves unloaded on the

platform of a lonely little station on the plain. It was a starlit

night, fortunately, and dragging our tent and bedding out on the crisp,

dry sod, we set to work. In ten minutes we had a house and bed in which

we slept comfortably till a freight train thundered by along about dawn.

Truly my artist wife was being schooled in the tactics of the trail!

At the Agency we hired a wagon and drove to the St. Mary's Lake. With a

Piegan (old Four Horns) for a guide we camped on the lower Lake, and

Zulime caught two enormous pike. At Upper St. Mary's, we set our tent

just below the dike. A "Chalet" on this spot now welcomes the tourist,

but in those days St. Mary's was a lone, and stormful mountain water

with not even a forest ranger's cabin to offer shelter. We lived in our

own tent and cooked our own food--a glorious experience to me, but to

Zulime (as I learned afterward) the trip was not an unmixed delight.

We visited several other Indian reservations on our way home, and all

along the way my mind was busy with the splendid literary problems here

suggested. Deep down in my brain a plan was forming to picture these

conditions. "First I must put together a volume of short stories to be

called _The Red Pioneer_; then I shall complete a prose poem of the

Sitting Bull to be called _The Silent Eaters_, and third, and most

important of all, I must do a novel of reservation life, with an army

officer as the agent."

In these volumes I planned to put the results of all my studies of the

Northwest during my many explorations of the wild. In this way I would

be doing my part in delineating the swiftly changing conditions of the

red man and the mountaineer.

Everywhere I went I studied soldiers, agents, missionaries, traders and

squaw-men with insatiable interest. My mind was like a sponge, absorbing

not facts, but impressions, pictures which were necessary to make my

stories seem like the truth. While in camp and on the train, I took

notes busily and actually formulated several tales while riding my horse

along the trail.

Perfectly happy in this work, I believed my wife to be equally content,

for she bravely declared that to tumble off a pullman in the middle of a

moonless night, and help me set up a tent on the prairie grass was fun.

She pretended to _enjoy_ cooking our food at a smoking camp fire in a

drizzle of rain; but I now know that she was longing for the comforts,

the conveniences, the repose of West Salem.

"Oh, but it is good to be home," she said as we reached the old house,

and I too was ready for its freedom from care and its opportunity for

work, happy in the belief that I had bestowed on my wife some part of

the store of heroic and splendid experiences, which made up so large a

section of my own life, experiences which were to serve as the basis for

all my future work.

The flame of my ambition burned brightly at the close of these weeks of

inspirational exploration. "With nothing to distract or weaken me I

ought now, at least to justify the faith which Howells and other of my

literary friends and advisers had been kind enough to declare." Seizing

my pen with new resolution I bent to the task of putting into fiction

certain phases of the great Northwest which (up to this year) had not

been successfully portrayed.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Empty Room

My father was a loyal G. A. R. man. To him, naturally, the literature,

the ceremonies and the comradeship of the Grand Army of the Republic

were of heroic significance for, notwithstanding all other events of his

stirring life, his two years as a soldier remained his most moving, most

poetic experience. On all special occasions he wore the regulation blue

coat with the bronze button of the Legion in its lapel, and faithfully

attended all the local meetings of his "Post," but he had not been able

to take part in the National Conventions for the double reason that they

were always too far away from his Dakota home and invariably came at the

time when his presence was most needed on the farm. With a feeling of

mingled envy and sadness he had seen his comrades, year after year,

jubilantly set out for Washington or Boston or San Francisco whilst he

remained at work.

Now the case was different. He had the money, he had the leisure and the

Grand Review was about to take place in Chicago. "Hamlin," said he, on

the morning after my return from Montana, "I want you to go with me to

the G. A. R. meeting in Chicago."

Although I did not say so, I was sadly averse to making this trip.

Aching to write, impatient to get my new conceptions down on paper, I

could hardly restrain an expression of reluctance, but I did, for the

old soldier, more afraid of towns than of mountains, needed me in the

city.

"All right, father," I said, and put my notes away.

He made a handsome figure in his new suit, and his broad-rimmed hat with

its gold cord. He was as excited as a boy when we set out for the

station and commented with a tone of satisfaction on the number of his

comrades to be seen on the train. He was not in need of me during this

part of his excursion for he hailed every old soldier as "Comrade" and

made a dozen new friendships before we reached Madison. No one resented

his fraternal interest. Occasionally he brought one of his acquaintances

over to my seat, explaining with perfectly obvious pride that I had

written a history of General Grant and that I lived in Chicago. "I'm

taking him along to be my scout," he declared, at the close of each

introduction.

At my lodgings on Elm Street he made himself so beloved that I feared

for his digestion. The landlady and the cook were determined that he

should eat hot biscuit and jam and pie in addition to roast chicken and

gravy, and I was obliged to insist on his going to bed early in order to

be up and in good condition for the parade next day.

"I've no desire to march in the ranks," he said. "I'm perfectly content

to sit on the fence and see the columns pass."

"You needn't sit on the fence," I replied. "I've got two of the best

seats in the Grand Stand. You can rest there in comfort all through the

parade."

He didn't know how much I paid for our chairs, but a knowledge that he

was in the seats of the extravagant pleased him while it troubled him.

He was never quite at ease while enjoying luxury. It didn't seem

natural, someway, for him to be wholly comfortable.

We were in our places hours before the start (he was like a boy on

Circus Day--afraid of missing something), but that he was enjoying in

high degree his comfortable outlook, made me almost equally content.

At last with blare of bugle and throb of drum, that grand and melancholy

procession of time-scarred veterans came to view, and their tattered

flags and faded guidons brought quick tears to my father's eyes. Few of

them stepped out with a swing, many of them limped pitifully--all were

white-haired--an army on its downward slope, marching toward its final,

silent bivouac.

None of them were gay and yet each took a poignant pleasure in sharing

the rhythm of the column, and my father voiced this emotion when he

murmured, "I ought to be down there with my company."

To touch elbows just once more, to be a part of the file would have been

at once profoundly sad and sadly sweet, and he wiped the tears from his

cheeks in a silence which was more expressive than any words could have

been.

To me each passing phalanx was composed of piteous old men--to my sire

they were fragments of a colossal dream--an epic of song and steel. "In

ten years he and they will all be at rest in 'fame's eternal camping

ground,'" I thought with a benumbing realization of the swift,

inexorable rush of time--a tragedy which no fluttering of bright flags,

no flare of brave bugles could lighten or conceal. It was not an army in

review, it was an epoch passing to its grave.

* * * * *

After the parade was over, as we were going home in the car, tired,

silent and sad, I perceived my father as others saw him, a white-haired

veteran whose days of marching, of exploration were over. His powerful

figure, so resilient and so brave was stooping to its end. His restless

feet were weary.

However, this was only a mood with him. A night's sleep brought back his

courage, and his energy to a most amazing degree, and I was again called

upon to show him the "sights" of the city--that is to say, we once more

viewed the Stock Yards, the Masonic Temple and Lincoln Park. He also

asked me to go with him for a sail across the Lake, but at this point I

rebelled. "I am willing to climb tall buildings or visit the Zoo, but I

draw the line at a trip to Muskegon."

With guilty conscience I watched him start off for the dock alone, but

this sentiment on my part was wasted. A score of "comrades" on the boat

more than made up for my absence, and at sunset he returned beaming,

triumphant, perfectly satisfied with his day's sail. "Now, I'm ready to

go home," he announced.

After putting him on the train next day I opened my desk in my quiet

room on Elm Street, with a feeling of being half-in and half-out of the

state of matrimony. In some ways I liked being alone. A greater power of

concentration resulted. With no disturbing household influences, no

distracting interests, I wrote all the morning, but at night, when my

work was done, my mind went out toward my young wife. To have her moving

about the room would have been pleasant. To walk with her to the studio

would have been a joy. As a novelist, I bitterly resented all the minute

domestic worries, but as a human being I rejoiced in my new

relationship. "Can I combine the two activities? Will being a husband

and a householder cramp and defeat me as a novelist?"

These questions every writer who is ambitious to excel, must answer for

himself. So far as I was concerned, the decision had been made. Having

elected myself into the ranks of those who were carrying forward the

immemorial traditions of the race, there was no turning back for me. I

ended the week by going out to Eagle's Nest Camp, where Zulime met me to

renew the delight of our days of courtship.

Even here, I did not neglect my task. Wallace Heckman gave me a desk in

the attic and there each morning I hammered away, eager to get my

material "roughed out" while it was hot in my memory. I often wrote

four thousand words between breakfast and luncheon. One story took shape

as a brief prose epic of the Sioux, a special pleading from the

standpoint of a young educated red man, to whom Sitting Bull was a kind

of Themistocles. Though based on accurate information, I intended it to

be not so much a history as an interpretation. It interested me at the

time and so--I wasted a week!

Life at camp was very pleasant, but as my brother wrote me that he must

return to New York I felt it my duty to go home and see that my mother

"attended" the County Fair, which was a most important event to her.

"Mother's life retains so few interests," I explained to Zulime, "that

to miss the Fair would be to her a great deprivation. You can stay here

but I must go home and take her down to the old settlers' picnic in

Floral Hall."

Zulime understood. Loyally cutting short her pleasant companionship with

her fellow artists she returned with me to West Salem a few days before

the fair opened.

Fuller, who timed his visit to be with us during the exhibition,

professed a keen interest in every department of it. His attitude was

comically that of a serious-minded European tourist. He not only

purchased a catalogue, he treated it precisely as if it were the

hand-book of the Autumn Salon in Paris. Carrying it in his hand, he

spent busy hours minutely studying "Spatter Work," and carefully

inspecting decorated bedspreads. He tasted the prize bread, sampled the

honey, and twirled the contesting apples. Nothing escaped his notice. He

was as alert, and (apparently) as vitally concerned as any of the

"judges," but I, knowing his highly-critical mind, could only smile at

his reports.

He was a constant joy, not only to Zulime and to me, but to our friends,

the Eastons. One day as we were digging potatoes he gave me a lecture on

my duty as a Wisconsin novelist. "You should do for this country what

Thomas Hardy has done for Wessex," he said. "You have made a good start

in _Main Traveled Roads_, and _Rose of Dutcher's Coolly_, but you should

do more with it. It is a noble background."

"Why not do something with it yourself?" I retorted.

"You are almost as much a part of Wisconsin as I am. I've done my part

and moved on. My keenest interests now are in the Mountain West--a

larger field. There's no use saying 'Make more of this material!' I can

only do what I feel. Just now I am full of Montana. Why don't you

celebrate Eagle's Nest? If you weren't so myopic you'd perceive in that

little artist colony something quite as literary as the life which

Hawthorne lived at Brook Farm."

"I'm no Hawthorne," he replied. "I'm not even Margaret Fuller. I don't

want to write about Camp--in fact I don't want to write about anything.

I'd rather drive nails or superintend a tinner."

In this way our discussion usually ended--with each of us going his own

gait. In this instance his way led back to Chicago. "I must return to my

plumbing," he protested. "I've got some renters who are complaining of

their furnaces," and that was the end of his visit. We knew better than

to argue for delay. He was as inflexible as New England granite.

His going left a gap. We both liked to have him about. Never in the way,

never interfering with my work, he was always a stimulant. His judgment

(second only to Howells' in my estimation) kept me to my highest level.

He was the only man with whom I could discuss all my perplexities and be

enlightened.

As October came on my mother's condition called for increasing care. She

could not walk across the road and her outings were all taken in a

wheeled chair, which I pushed about the village each afternoon. She was

very happy when we were at home, but as she could neither sew nor read

she was piteously dependent upon the members of her household for

diversion. Life's walls were narrowing for her, that was sorrowfully

evident to me; and yet I did not--I would not consider the possibility

of her early passing. I thought of her as living on for many years

longer. It was her growing inability to employ her time which troubled

me and I gave the most of my afternoons to her amusement.

As my father wrote from Dakota early in October setting November 1st as

the date for his return, I began to plan another trip to New York,

feeling that it was better to go in the early autumn than to wait till

winter. "Winters are very hard on old folks in our valley," I remarked

to Zulime. To mother I said, "Our absence will not be long. We'll be

back in time for Thanksgiving," I assured her.

She dreaded our going. Clinging to us both as though she feared we might

never return she pleadingly said, "Wait till your father comes," and her

distress of mind caused me to put off our departure until father could

arrive.

These moods of depression, these periods of suffering which she could

not explain, were usually transitory, and this one soon passed. In a day

or two she was free from pain, and quite cheerful. "You may go," she

said at last, but warningly added, "Don't stay away too long!"

In spite of her smiling face, I kissed her good-by with a sense of

uneasiness, almost of guilt. "It seems a selfish act to leave her at

this time," I confessed to Zulime, "and yet if we are to get away at

all, it is safer to go now."

In order to save time for our eastern trip, we went through Chicago

almost without stopping, and upon reaching New York, took the same suite

of rooms on Fifteenth Street in which we had lived the previous year. In

an hour we were settled.

My brother, who was playing an engagement in the city, came at once to

inquire about the old folks and I gave a good report. "Mother has her

ups and downs," I explained, "but she is very comfortable in her new

rooms. Of course she misses her sons and her new daughter--I am not

sure, but she misses the new daughter more than she misses you and me,

but we shall soon return to her."

_The Eagle's Heart_, which had been running with favor as a serial, was

just being published in book form, and we were in high hopes of it.

At the same time the Century Company was preparing to issue _Her

Mountain Lover_, which had already been printed in the magazine.

Altogether my presence in New York seemed opportune, if not actually

necessary, a fact which I made much of in writing to the old folks in

the West.

Gilder, who met me on the street soon after our arrival in New York,

spoke to me in praise of _Her Mountain Lover_. "I predict a great

success for it. It has beauty----" here he smiled. "I am always

preaching 'beauty' to you, but you need it! You should remember that the

writing which is beautiful is the writing which lasts."

He was looking thin and bent and gray, and I experienced a keen pang of

fear. "Gilder is growing old," I thought, and this feeling of change was

deepened a few days later by the death of Charles Dudley Warner.

"The older literary men, the Writers who have been my guides and my

exemplars, are dropping away! I am no longer 'a young and promising

novelist.' It is time I delivered my message--if I have any," I reminded

myself, with a realization that I was now in the mid-ranks, pushed on by

younger and more vigorous authors. Frank Norris and Stewart Edward White

were crowding close upon my lagging heels. With this in my thought I got

out my manuscript and set to work.

I would have been entirely happy in the midst of many delightful

meetings with my fellow craftsmen had it not been for a growing sense

of anxiety concerning my mother's condition. Father's brief notes were

not reassuring. "Your mother needs you," he said, in effect, and I began

to plan our return. "We have a few engagements," I wrote, "but you may

expect us for our usual Thanksgiving Dinner."

I will not say that I had a definite premonition of trouble, I was just

uneasy. I felt inclined to drop all our social engagements and start for

home but I did not carry out the impulse.

On Sunday, the twenty-fifth of November, after a delightful dinner with

Augustus Thomas in his home at New Rochelle, Zulime and I returned to

our apartment in happiest humor, to be met by a telegram which went to

my heart like the thrust of a bayonet. It was from my father. "_Your

mother is very low. Come at once._"

For a few moments I remained standing, like a man stunned by a savage

blow. Then I awoke to the need of haste in getting away to the West. It

was five o'clock in the afternoon, and the last train which would enable

us to connect with the Milwaukee train from Chicago to West Salem, left

at half-past six. "We must make that train," I said to Zulime with a

desperate realization of the need of haste.

The rush of packing, the excitement of getting to the station kept me

from the sinking of spirit, the agony of self-accusation which set in

the moment we were safely in the sleeping car, and speeding on our

homeward way. "If only we can reach her before it is too late," was my

prayer. "I shall never forgive myself for leaving her. I knew she was

not well," I confessed to Zulime, whose serene optimism comforted me, or

at least dulled the edge of my self-reproach. Again I telegraphed that

we were coming, giving the name and number of our train, hoping to have

an encouraging reply from father or the doctor during the evening, but

none came.

The long agonizing hours wore on. A hundred times I accused myself, "I

should not have left her."

At all points where I attacked myself, my wife defended me, excused me,

and yet I could not clear myself--could not rest. In imagination I

pictured that dear, sweet face turned toward the door, and heard that

faint voice asking for me.

It is true I had done many considerate things for her, but I had not

done enough. Money I had given her, and a home, but I had not given her

as much of my time, my service, as I might have done,--as I should have

done. My going away to the city at the very moment when my presence was

most necessary seemed base desertion. While she had been suffering,

longing and lonely, I had been feasting. All my honors, all my writing,

seemed at this moment too slight, too trivial to counter-balance my

mother's need, my mother's love.

Midnight came without a message, and I went to bed, slightly comforted,

hoping that a turn for the better had taken place. I slept fitfully,

waking again and again to the bleak possibilities of the day. A

persistent vision of a gray-haired mother watching and waiting for her

sons filled my brain. That she was also longing for Zulime I knew, for

she loved her, and thought of her as a daughter.

In this agony of remorse and fear I wore out the night, and as no word

came in the morning, I ate my breakfast in half-recovered tranquillity.

"It must be that she is better," Zulime said, but at nine o'clock a

telegram from the doctor destroyed all hope. "Your mother is

unconscious. Do not hope to find her alive," was his desolating message.

Every devoted son who reads this line will shiver as I shivered. That

warning came like a wind from the dark spaces of a bleak, uncharted

deep. It changed my world. For twenty years my mother had been my chief

care. My daily thought ran to her. Only when deeply absorbed in my work

had she been absent from my conscious mind. For her I had planned, for

her I had saved, for her I had built, and now----!

That day was the longest, bitterest, I had ever known, for the reason

that, mixed with my grief, my sense of remorse, was a feeling of utter

helplessness. In desperate desire for haste I could only lumpishly wait.

Another day of agony, another interminable night of pain must pass

before I could reach the shadowed Homestead. Nothing could shorten the

interval. Then, too, I realized that she whom I would comfort had

already gone beyond my aid, beyond any comfort I could send.

Over and over I repeated, "If only we had started a few days sooner!"

The truth is I had failed of a son's duty just when that duty was most

needed, and this conviction brought an almost intolerable ache into my

throat. Nothing that Zulime could do or say removed that pain. I could

not eat, and I could not rest.

We reached Chicago in time to catch the night train at ten o'clock, and

in almost utter mental exhaustion I fell asleep about midnight, and

slept till nearly daylight.

* * * * *

Father met us at the train, as he had so often done before, but this

time there was something in the pinched gray look of his face, something

in the filmed light of his eagle eyes which denoted, movingly, the

tragic experiences through which he had just passed. Before he spoke I

knew that mother had passed beyond my reach.

As he gripped my hand I perceived that he was smitten but unbowed. He

was taking his orders like a soldier, without complaint or

question.--Only when Zulime kissed him did he give way.

As we entered the gate I perceived with a pang of dread the wheeled

chair, standing empty on the porch, pathetic witness of the one who had

no further need of it. Within doors, the house showed the disorder, the

desolate confusion, the terror which death had brought. The furniture

was disarranged--the floor muddy, and in the midst of the chill little

parlor rested a sinister, flower-strewn box. In this was all that

remained of Isabel McClintock, my mother.

For a few minutes I stood looking about me, a scalding blur in my eyes,

a choking in my throat. The south room, _her_ room, was empty,

intolerably, accusingly empty. The gentle, gray-haired figure was no

longer in its place before the window. The smiling lips which had so

often touched my cheek on my return were cold. The sweet, hesitant voice

was forever silent.

Her dear face I did not see. I refused to look upon her in her coffin. I

wanted to remember her as she appeared when I said good-by to her that

bright October evening, her white hair gleaming in the light of the

lamp, while soft curves about her lips suggested a beautiful serenity.

How patient and loving she had been! Even though she feared that she

might never see us again she had sent us away in cheerful

self-sacrifice.

Father was composed but tense. He went about his duties with solemn

resignation, and, an hour or two later, he said to me, "You and I must

go down and select a burial lot, a place for your mother and me."

It was a desolate November morning, raw and gloomy, but the gray sky and

the patient, bare-limbed elms were curiously medicinal to my sore heart.

In some strange way they comforted me. Snow was in the air and father

mechanically weather-wise, said, without thinking of the bitter irony of

his words--"Regular Thanksgiving weather."

Thanksgiving weather! Yes, but what Thanksgiving could there be for him

or for me, now?

* * * * *

The day of the funeral was still more savagely cold and bleak, and I

resented its pitiless gloom. The wind which blew over the open grave of

my dead mother was sinister as hate, and the snow which fell,

intolerably stern. I turned away. I could not see that box lowered into

the merciless soil. My mother's spirit was not there--I knew that--and

yet I could not bear to think of those tender lips, those loving hands

going into the dark. It was a harsh bed for one so gentle and so dear.

Back to the Homestead we drove--back to an empty shell. The place in

which Isabel Garland's wish had been law for so many years was now

desolate and drear, and return would have been impossible for me had it

not been for the presence of my wife, whose serene soul was my comfort

and my stay. "You have done all that a son could do," she insisted, and

it was a comfort to have her say this even though I knew that it was not

true, her faith in me and her youth and beauty partly redeemed me from

the awful emptiness of that home. Without her (and all that she

represented) my father and I would have been victims of a black despair.

I had never possessed a definite belief in immortality and yet, as we

gathered about our table that night, I could not rid myself of a feeling

that my mother was in her room, and that she might at any moment cough,

or stir, or call to me. Realizing with appalling force that so far as my

philosophy went our separation was eternal, I nevertheless hoped that

her spirit was with us at that moment, I did not know it--I desired it.

In the sense which would have made belief a solace and relief, I was

agnostic.

"How strange it all seems!" my father exclaimed, and on his face lay

such lines of dismay as I had never seen written there before. "It seems

as though I ought to go and wheel her in to dinner."

I marvel now, as I marveled then, at the buoyant helpfulness, the brave

patience of my wife in the presence of her stricken and bewildered

household. She sorrowed but she kept her calm judgment, and set about

restoring the interrupted routine of our lives. Putting away all signs

of the gray intruder whose hands had scattered the ashes of ruin across

our floor, she called on me to aid in uniting our broken circle. Under

her influence I soon regained a certain composure. With a realization

that it was not fair that she should bear all the burden of the family

reorganization, I turned from death and faced the future with her. On

her depended the continuation of our family. She was its hope and its

saving grace.