Near Rattlesnake Creek, on the side of a little draw stood Canute's
shanty. North, east, south, stretched the level Nebraska plain of long
rust-red grass that undulated constantly in the wind. To the west the
ground was broken and rough, and a narrow strip of timber wound along
the turbid, muddy little stream that had scarcely ambition enough to
crawl over its black bottom. If it had not been for the few stunted
cottonwoods and elms that grew along its banks, Canute would have shot
himself years ago. The Norwegians are a timber-loving people, and if
there is even a turtle pond with a few plum bushes around it they seem
irresistibly drawn toward it.
As to the shanty itself, Canute had built it without aid of any kind,
for when he first squatted along the banks of Rattlesnake Creek there
was not a human being within twenty miles. It was built of logs split
in halves, the chinks stopped with mud and plaster. The roof was covered
with earth and was supported by one gigantic beam curved in the shape of
a round arch. It was almost impossible that any tree had ever grown in
that shape. The Norwegians used to say that Canute had taken the log
across his knee and bent it into the shape he wished. There were
two rooms, or rather there was one room with a partition made of ash
saplings interwoven and bound together like big straw basket work. In
one corner there was a cook stove, rusted and broken. In the other a
bed made of unplaned planks and poles. It was fully eight feet long, and
upon it was a heap of dark bed clothing. There was a chair and a bench
of colossal proportions. There was an ordinary kitchen cupboard with
a few cracked dirty dishes in it, and beside it on a tall box a tin
washbasin. Under the bed was a pile of pint flasks, some broken,
some whole, all empty. On the wood box lay a pair of shoes of almost
incredible dimensions. On the wall hung a saddle, a gun, and some ragged
clothing, conspicuous among which was a suit of dark cloth, apparently
new, with a paper collar carefully wrapped in a red silk handkerchief
and pinned to the sleeve. Over the door hung a wolf and a badger skin,
and on the door itself a brace of thirty or forty snake skins whose
noisy tails rattled ominously every time it opened. The strangest things
in the shanty were the wide windowsills. At first glance they looked as
though they had been ruthlessly hacked and mutilated with a hatchet, but
on closer inspection all the notches and holes in the wood took form and
shape. There seemed to be a series of pictures. They were, in a rough
way, artistic, but the figures were heavy and labored, as though they
had been cut very slowly and with very awkward instruments. There were
men plowing with little horned imps sitting on their shoulders and on
their horses' heads. There were men praying with a skull hanging over
their heads and little demons behind them mocking their attitudes. There
were men fighting with big serpents, and skeletons dancing together. All
about these pictures were blooming vines and foliage such as never grew
in this world, and coiled among the branches of the vines there was
always the scaly body of a serpent, and behind every flower there was
a serpent's head. It was a veritable Dance of Death by one who had felt
its sting. In the wood box lay some boards, and every inch of them
was cut up in the same manner. Sometimes the work was very rude and
careless, and looked as though the hand of the workman had trembled. It
would sometimes have been hard to distinguish the men from their evil
geniuses but for one fact, the men were always grave and were either
toiling or praying, while the devils were always smiling and dancing.
Several of these boards had been split for kindling and it was evident
that the artist did not value his work highly.
It was the first day of winter on the Divide. Canute stumbled into his
shanty carrying a basket of cobs, and after filling the stove, sat
down on a stool and crouched his seven foot frame over the fire, staring
drearily out of the window at the wide gray sky. He knew by heart every
individual clump of bunch grass in the miles of red shaggy prairie that
stretched before his cabin. He knew it in all the deceitful loveliness
of its early summer, in all the bitter barrenness of its autumn. He had
seen it smitten by all the plagues of Egypt. He had seen it parched by
drought, and sogged by rain, beaten by hail, and swept by fire, and in
the grasshopper years he had seen it eaten as bare and clean as bones
that the vultures have left. After the great fires he had seen it
stretch for miles and miles, black and smoking as the floor of hell.
He rose slowly and crossed the room, dragging his big feet heavily as
though they were burdens to him. He looked out of the window into the
hog corral and saw the pigs burying themselves in the straw before the
shed. The leaden gray clouds were beginning to spill themselves, and the
snow flakes were settling down over the white leprous patches of frozen
earth where the hogs had gnawed even the sod away. He shuddered and
began to walk, trampling heavily with his ungainly feet. He was the
wreck of ten winters on the Divide and he knew what that meant. Men fear
the winters of the Divide as a child fears night or as men in the North
Seas fear the still dark cold of the polar twilight. His eyes fell upon
his gun, and he took it down from the wall and looked it over. He
sat down on the edge of his bed and held the barrel towards his face,
letting his forehead rest upon it, and laid his finger on the trigger.
He was perfectly calm, there was neither passion nor despair in his
face, but the thoughtful look of a man who is considering. Presently
he laid down the gun, and reaching into the cupboard, drew out a pint
bottle of raw white alcohol. Lifting it to his lips, he drank greedily.
He washed his face in the tin basin and combed his rough hair and
shaggy blond beard. Then he stood in uncertainty before the suit of dark
clothes that hung on the wall. For the fiftieth time he took them in
his hands and tried to summon courage to put them on. He took the paper
collar that was pinned to the sleeve of the coat and cautiously slipped
it under his rough beard, looking with timid expectancy into the
cracked, splashed glass that hung over the bench. With a short laugh he
threw it down on the bed, and pulling on his old black hat, he went out,
striking off across the level.
It was a physical necessity for him to get away from his cabin once in a
while. He had been there for ten years, digging and plowing and sowing,
and reaping what little the hail and the hot winds and the frosts left
him to reap. Insanity and suicide are very common things on the Divide.
They come on like an epidemic in the hot wind season. Those scorching
dusty winds that blow up over the bluffs from Kansas seem to dry up the
blood in men's veins as they do the sap in the corn leaves. Whenever the
yellow scorch creeps down over the tender inside leaves about the ear,
then the coroners prepare for active duty; for the oil of the country is
burned out and it does not take long for the flame to eat up the wick.
It causes no great sensation there when a Dane is found swinging to his
own windmill tower, and most of the Poles after they have become too
careless and discouraged to shave themselves keep their razors to cut
their throats with.
It may be that the next generation on the Divide will be very happy, but
the present one came too late in life. It is useless for men that have
cut hemlocks among the mountains of Sweden for forty years to try to be
happy in a country as flat and gray and naked as the sea. It is not easy
for men that have spent their youth fishing in the Northern seas to be
content with following a plow, and men that have served in the Austrian
army hate hard work and coarse clothing on the loneliness of the plains,
and long for marches and excitement and tavern company and pretty
barmaids. After a man has passed his fortieth birthday it is not easy
for him to change the habits and conditions of his life. Most men bring
with them to the Divide only the dregs of the lives that they have
squandered in other lands and among other peoples.
Canute Canuteson was as mad as any of them, but his madness did not
take the form of suicide or religion but of alcohol. He had always taken
liquor when he wanted it, as all Norwegians do, but after his first year
of solitary life he settled down to it steadily. He exhausted whisky
after a while, and went to alcohol, because its effects were speedier
and surer. He was a big man and with a terrible amount of resistant
force, and it took a great deal of alcohol even to move him. After nine
years of drinking, the quantities he could take would seem fabulous to
an ordinary drinking man. He never let it interfere with his work, he
generally drank at night and on Sundays. Every night, as soon as his
chores were done, he began to drink. While he was able to sit up he
would play on his mouth harp or hack away at his window sills with his
jackknife. When the liquor went to his head he would lie down on his bed
and stare out of the window until he went to sleep. He drank alone and
in solitude not for pleasure or good cheer, but to forget the awful
loneliness and level of the Divide. Milton made a sad blunder when he
put mountains in hell. Mountains postulate faith and aspiration. All
mountain peoples are religious. It was the cities of the plains that,
because of their utter lack of spirituality and the mad caprice of their
vice, were cursed of God.
Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man. Drunkenness is
merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes maudlin; a bloody
man, vicious; a coarse man, vulgar. Canute was none of these, but he was
morose and gloomy, and liquor took him through all the hells of Dante.
As he lay on his giant's bed all the horrors of this world and every
other were laid bare to his chilled senses. He was a man who knew no
joy, a man who toiled in silence and bitterness. The skull and the
serpent were always before him, the symbols of eternal futileness and of
eternal hate.
When the first Norwegians near enough to be called neighbors came,
Canute rejoiced, and planned to escape from his bosom vice. But he was
not a social man by nature and had not the power of drawing out the
social side of other people. His new neighbors rather feared him because
of his great strength and size, his silence and his lowering brows.
Perhaps, too, they knew that he was mad, mad from the eternal treachery
of the plains, which every spring stretch green and rustle with the
promises of Eden, showing long grassy lagoons full of clear water
and cattle whose hoofs are stained with wild roses. Before autumn the
lagoons are dried up, and the ground is burnt dry and hard until it
blisters and cracks open.
So instead of becoming a friend and neighbor to the men that settled
about him, Canute became a mystery and a terror. They told awful stories
of his size and strength and of the alcohol he drank.
They said that one night, when he went out to see to his horses just
before he went to bed, his steps were unsteady and the rotten planks
of the floor gave way and threw him behind the feet of a fiery young
stallion. His foot was caught fast in the floor, and the nervous horse
began kicking frantically. When Canute felt the blood trickling down
into his eyes from a scalp wound in his head, he roused himself from his
kingly indifference, and with the quiet stoical courage of a drunken man
leaned forward and wound his arms about the horse's hind legs and held
them against his breast with crushing embrace. All through the darkness
and cold of the night he lay there, matching strength against strength.
When little Jim Peterson went over the next morning at four o'clock to
go with him to the Blue to cut wood, he found him so, and the horse was
on its fore knees, trembling and whinnying with fear. This is the story
the Norwegians tell of him, and if it is true it is no wonder that they
feared and hated this Holder of the Heels of Horses.
One spring there moved to the next “eighty” a family that made a great
change in Canute's life. Ole Yensen was too drunk most of the time to be
afraid of any one, and his wife Mary was too garrulous to be afraid of
any one who listened to her talk, and Lena, their pretty daughter, was
not afraid of man nor devil. So it came about that Canute went over to
take his alcohol with Ole oftener than he took it alone, After a while
the report spread that he was going to marry Yensen's daughter, and the
Norwegian girls began to tease Lena about the great bear she was going
to keep house for. No one could quite see how the affair had come about,
for Canute's tactics of courtship were somewhat peculiar. He apparently
never spoke to her at all: he would sit for hours with Mary chattering
on one side of him and Ole drinking on the other and watch Lena at her
work. She teased him, and threw flour in his face and put vinegar in
his coffee, but he took her rough jokes with silent wonder, never even
smiling. He took her to church occasionally, but the most watchful and
curious people never saw him speak to her. He would sit staring at her
while she giggled and flirted with the other men.
Next spring Mary Lee went to town to work in a steam laundry. She came
home every Sunday, and always ran across to Yensens to startle Lena
with stories of ten cent theaters, firemen's dances, and all the other
esthetic delights of metropolitan life. In a few weeks Lena's head was
completely turned, and she gave her father no rest until he let her go
to town to seek her fortune at the ironing board. From the time she came
home on her first visit she began to treat Canute with contempt. She had
bought a plush cloak and kid gloves, had her clothes made by the dress
maker, and assumed airs and graces that made the other women of the
neighborhood cordially detest her. She generally brought with her a
young man from town who waxed his mustache and wore a red necktie, and
she did not even introduce him to Canute.
The neighbors teased Canute a good deal until he knocked one of them
down. He gave no sign of suffering from her neglect except that he drank
more and avoided the other Norwegians more carefully than ever, He lay
around in his den and no one knew what he felt or thought, but little
Jim Peterson, who had seen him glowering at Lena in church one Sunday
when she was there with the town man, said that he would not give an
acre of his wheat for Lena's life or the town chap's either; and Jim's
wheat was so wondrously worthless that the statement was an exceedingly
strong one.
Canute had bought a new suit of clothes that looked as nearly like the
town man as possible. They had cost him half a millet crop; for
tailors are not accustomed to fitting giants and they charge for it. He
had hung those clothes in his shanty two months ago and had never put
them on, partly from fear of ridicule, partly from discouragement, and
partly because there was something in his own soul that revolted at the
littleness of the device.
Lena was at home just at this time. Work was slack in the laundry and
Mary had not been well, so Lena stayed at home, glad enough to get an
opportunity to torment Canute once more.
She was washing in the side kitchen, singing loudly as she worked. Mary
was on her knees, blacking the stove and scolding violently about the
young man who was coming out from town that night. The young man had
committed the fatal error of laughing at Mary's ceaseless babble and had
never been forgiven.
“He is no good, and you will come to a bad end by running with him! I do
not see why a daughter of mine should act so. I do not see why the Lord
should visit such a punishment upon me as to give me such a daughter.
There are plenty of good men you can marry.”
Lena tossed her head and answered curtly, “I don't happen to want to
marry any man right away, and so long as Dick dresses nice and has
plenty of money to spend, there is no harm in my going with him.”
“Money to spend? Yes, and that is all he does with it I'll be bound. You
think it very fine now, but you will change your tune when you have been
married five years and see your children running naked and your cupboard
empty. Did Anne Hermanson come to any good end by marrying a town man?”
“I don't know anything about Anne Hermanson, but I know any of the
laundry girls would have Dick quick enough if they could get him.”
“Yes, and a nice lot of store clothes huzzies you are too. Now there is
Canuteson who has an 'eighty' proved up and fifty head of cattle and--”
“And hair that ain't been cut since he was a baby, and a big dirty
beard, and he wears overalls on Sundays, and drinks like a pig. Besides
he will keep. I can have all the fun I want, and when I am old and ugly
like you he can have me and take care of me. The Lord knows there ain't
nobody else going to marry him.”
Canute drew his hand back from the latch as though it were red hot. He
was not the kind of man to make a good eavesdropper, and he wished he
had knocked sooner. He pulled himself together and struck the door like
a battering ram. Mary jumped and opened it with a screech.
“God! Canute, how you scared us! I thought it was crazy Lou--he has been
tearing around the neighborhood trying to convert folks. I am afraid as
death of him. He ought to be sent off, I think. He is just as liable as
not to kill us all, or burn the barn, or poison the dogs. He has been
worrying even the poor minister to death, and he laid up with the
rheumatism, too! Did you notice that he was too sick to preach last
Sunday? But don't stand there in the cold, come in. Yensen isn't here,
but he just went over to Sorenson's for the mail; he won't be gone long.
Walk right in the other room and sit down.”
Canute followed her, looking steadily in front of him and not noticing
Lena as he passed her. But Lena's vanity would not allow him to pass
unmolested. She took the wet sheet she was wringing out and cracked him
across the face with it, and ran giggling to the other side of the room.
The blow stung his cheeks and the soapy water flew in his eyes, and
he involuntarily began rubbing them with his hands. Lena giggled with
delight at his discomfiture, and the wrath in Canute's face grew blacker
than ever. A big man humiliated is vastly more undignified than a little
one. He forgot the sting of his face in the bitter consciousness that
he had made a fool of himself He stumbled blindly into the living room,
knocking his head against the door jamb because he forgot to stoop.
He dropped into a chair behind the stove, thrusting his big feet back
helplessly on either side of him.
Ole was a long time in coming, and Canute sat there, still and silent,
with his hands clenched on his knees, and the skin of his face seemed to
have shriveled up into little wrinkles that trembled when he lowered his
brows. His life had been one long lethargy of solitude and alcohol,
but now he was awakening, and it was as when the dumb stagnant heat of
summer breaks out into thunder.
When Ole came staggering in, heavy with liquor, Canute rose at once.
“Yensen,” he said quietly, “I have come to see if you will let me marry
your daughter today.”
“Today!” gasped Ole.
“Yes, I will not wait until tomorrow. I am tired of living alone.”
Ole braced his staggering knees against the bedstead, and stammered
eloquently: “Do you think I will marry my daughter to a drunkard? a man
who drinks raw alcohol? a man who sleeps with rattle snakes? Get out
of my house or I will kick you out for your impudence.” And Ole began
looking anxiously for his feet.
Canute answered not a word, but he put on his hat and went out into the
kitchen. He went up to Lena and said without looking at her, “Get your
things on and come with me!”
The tones of his voice startled her, and she said angrily, dropping the
soap, “Are you drunk?”
“If you do not come with me, I will take you--you had better come,” said
Canute quietly.
She lifted a sheet to strike him, but he caught her arm roughly and
wrenched the sheet from her. He turned to the wall and took down a hood
and shawl that hung there, and began wrapping her up. Lena scratched
and fought like a wild thing. Ole stood in the door, cursing, and Mary
howled and screeched at the top of her voice. As for Canute, he
lifted the girl in his arms and went out of the house. She kicked and
struggled, but the helpless wailing of Mary and Ole soon died away in
the distance, and her face was held down tightly on Canute's shoulder so
that she could not see whither he was taking her. She was conscious only
of the north wind whistling in her ears, and of rapid steady motion and
of a great breast that heaved beneath her in quick, irregular breaths.
The harder she struggled the tighter those iron arms that had held the
heels of horses crushed about her, until she felt as if they would crush
the breath from her, and lay still with fear. Canute was striding across
the level fields at a pace at which man never went before, drawing the
stinging north winds into his lungs in great gulps. He walked with his
eyes half closed and looking straight in front of him, only lowering
them when he bent his head to blow away the snow flakes that settled
on her hair. So it was that Canute took her to his home, even as his
bearded barbarian ancestors took the fair frivolous women of the South
in their hairy arms and bore them down to their war ships. For ever and
anon the soul becomes weary of the conventions that are not of it, and
with a single stroke shatters the civilized lies with which it is unable
to cope, and the strong arm reaches out and takes by force what it
cannot win by cunning.
When Canute reached his shanty he placed the girl upon a chair, where
she sat sobbing. He stayed only a few minutes. He filled the stove
with wood and lit the lamp, drank a huge swallow of alcohol and put the
bottle in his pocket. He paused a moment, staring heavily at the weeping
girl, then he went off and locked the door and disappeared in the
gathering gloom of the night.
Wrapped in flannels and soaked with turpentine, the little Norwegian
preacher sat reading his Bible, when he heard a thundering knock at his
door, and Canute entered, covered with snow and his beard frozen fast to
his coat.
“Come in, Canute, you must be frozen,” said the little man, shoving a
chair towards his visitor.
Canute remained standing with his hat on and said quietly, “I want you
to come over to my house tonight to marry me to Lena Yensen.”
“Have you got a license, Canute?”
“No, I don't want a license. I want to be married.”
“But I can't marry you without a license, man, it would not be legal.”
A dangerous light came in the big Norwegian's eye. “I want you to come
over to my house to marry me to Lena Yensen.”
“No, I can't, it would kill an ox to go out in a storm like this, and my
rheumatism is bad tonight.”
“Then if you will not go I must take you,” said Canute with a sigh.
He took down the preacher's bearskin coat and bade him put it on while
he hitched up his buggy. He went out and closed the door softly after
him. Presently he returned and found the frightened minister crouching
before the fire with his coat lying beside him. Canute helped him put it
on and gently wrapped his head in his big muffler. Then he picked him
up and carried him out and placed him in his buggy. As he tucked the
buffalo robes around him he said: “Your horse is old, he might flounder
or lose his way in this storm. I will lead him.”
The minister took the reins feebly in his hands and sat shivering with
the cold. Sometimes when there was a lull in the wind, he could see the
horse struggling through the snow with the man plodding steadily beside
him. Again the blowing snow would hide them from him altogether. He had
no idea where they were or what direction they were going. He felt as
though he were being whirled away in the heart of the storm, and he said
all the prayers he knew. But at last the long four miles were over, and
Canute set him down in the snow while he unlocked the door. He saw the
bride sitting by the fire with her eyes red and swollen as though
she had been weeping. Canute placed a huge chair for him, and said
roughly,--
“Warm yourself.”
Lena began to cry and moan afresh, begging the minister to take her
home. He looked helplessly at Canute. Canute said simply,
“If you are warm now, you can marry us.”
“My daughter, do you take this step of your own free will?” asked the
minister in a trembling voice.
“No, sir, I don't, and it is disgraceful he should force me into it! I
won't marry him.”
“Then, Canute, I cannot marry you,” said the minister, standing as
straight as his rheumatic limbs would let him.
“Are you ready to marry us now, sir?” said Canute, laying one iron hand
on his stooped shoulder. The little preacher was a good man, but like
most men of weak body he was a coward and had a horror of physical
suffering, although he had known so much of it. So with many qualms of
conscience he began to repeat the marriage service. Lena sat sullenly in
her chair, staring at the fire. Canute stood beside her, listening with
his head bent reverently and his hands folded on his breast. When the
little man had prayed and said amen, Canute began bundling him up again.
“I will take you home, now,” he said as he carried him out and placed
him in his buggy, and started off with him through the fury of the
storm, floundering among the snow drifts that brought even the giant
himself to his knees.
After she was left alone, Lena soon ceased weeping. She was not of a
particularly sensitive temperament, and had little pride beyond that of
vanity. After the first bitter anger wore itself out, she felt nothing
more than a healthy sense of humiliation and defeat. She had no
inclination to run away, for she was married now, and in her eyes
that was final and all rebellion was useless. She knew nothing about
a license, but she knew that a preacher married folks. She consoled
herself by thinking that she had always intended to marry Canute
someday, anyway.
She grew tired of crying and looking into the fire, so she got up and
began to look about her. She had heard queer tales about the inside of
Canute's shanty, and her curiosity soon got the better of her rage.
One of the first things she noticed was the new black suit of clothes
hanging on the wall. She was dull, but it did not take a vain woman long
to interpret anything so decidedly flattering, and she was pleased in
spite of herself. As she looked through the cupboard, the general air of
neglect and discomfort made her pity the man who lived there.
“Poor fellow, no wonder he wants to get married to get somebody to wash
up his dishes. Batchin's pretty hard on a man.”
It is easy to pity when once one's vanity has been tickled. She looked
at the windowsill and gave a little shudder and wondered if the man were
crazy. Then she sat down again and sat a long time wondering what her
Dick and Ole would do.
“It is queer Dick didn't come right over after me. He surely came, for
he would have left town before the storm began and he might just as
well come right on as go back. If he'd hurried he would have gotten here
before the preacher came. I suppose he was afraid to come, for he
knew Canuteson could pound him to jelly, the coward!” Her eyes flashed
angrily.
The weary hours wore on and Lena began to grow horribly lonesome. It was
an uncanny night and this was an uncanny place to be in. She could
hear the coyotes howling hungrily a little way from the cabin, and more
terrible still were all the unknown noises of the storm. She remembered
the tales they told of the big log overhead and she was afraid of those
snaky things on the windowsills. She remembered the man who had been
killed in the draw, and she wondered what she would do if she saw crazy
Lou's white face glaring into the window. The rattling of the door
became unbearable, she thought the latch must be loose and took the
lamp to look at it. Then for the first time she saw the ugly brown snake
skins whose death rattle sounded every time the wind jarred the door.
“Canute, Canute!” she screamed in terror.
Outside the door she heard a heavy sound as of a big dog getting up and
shaking himself. The door opened and Canute stood before her, white as a
snow drift.
“What is it?” he asked kindly.
“I am cold,” she faltered.
He went out and got an armful of wood and a basket of cobs and filled
the stove. Then he went out and lay in the snow before the door.
Presently he heard her calling again.
“What is it?” he said, sitting up.
“I'm so lonesome, I'm afraid to stay in here all alone.”
“I will go over and get your mother.” And he got up.
“She won't come.”
“I'll bring her,” said Canute grimly.
“No, no. I don't want her, she will scold all the time.”
“Well, I will bring your father.”
She spoke again and it seemed as though her mouth was close up to the
key-hole. She spoke lower than he had ever heard her speak before, so
low that he had to put his ear up to the lock to hear her.
“I don't want him either, Canute,--I'd rather have you.”
For a moment she heard no noise at all, then something like a groan.
With a cry of fear she opened the door, and saw Canute stretched in the
snow at her feet, his face in his hands, sobbing on the doorstep.