A Little Norsk
Or
Ol' Paps' Flaxen
By
Hamlin Garland
Author of
Main Traveled Roads, A Member of the Third House, A Spoil of Office,
Jason Edwards, etc.
Publisher's logo
New York
D. Appleton and Company
1892
Copyright, 1892,
By D. Appleton and Company.
Printed at the Appleton Press, U.S.A.
On the Plain.
My cabin cowers in the pathless sweep
Of the terrible northern blast;
Above its roof the wild clouds leap
And shriek as they hurtle past.
The snow-waves hiss along the plain,
Like spectral wolves they stretch and strain
And race and ramp--with hissing beat,
Like stealthy tread of myriad feet,
I hear them pass; upon the roof
The icy showers swirl and rattle;
At times the moon, from storms aloof,
Shines white and wan within the room--
Then swift clouds drive across the light
And all the plain is lost to sight,
The cabin rocks, and on my palm
The sifted snow falls, cold and calm.
God! What a power is in the wind!
I lay my cheek to the cabin side
To feel the weight of his giant hands--
A speck, a fly in the blasting tide
Of streaming, pitiless, icy sands;
A single heart with its feeble beat--
A mouse in the lion's throat--
A swimmer at sea--a sunbeam's mote
In the grasp of a tempest of hail and sleet!
Table of Contents.
A Little Norsk
Page
CHAPTER I
Her Adoptive Parents 1
CHAPTER II.
Her First Trip in a Blizzard 9
CHAPTER III.
The Burial of her Dead Mother 22
CHAPTER IV.
Flaxen Adopts Anson as "Pap" 32
CHAPTER V.
Flaxen Becomes Indispensable to the Two Old Bachelors 38
CHAPTER VI.
A Question of Dress 46
CHAPTER VII.
After Harvest 69
CHAPTER VIII.
An Empty House 78
CHAPTER IX.
"Baching" it Again 86
CHAPTER X.
Flaxen Comes Home on a Vacation 105
CHAPTER XI.
Flaxen Grows Restless 113
CHAPTER XII.
Flaxen Says Good-bye 124
CHAPTER XIII.
Flaxen's Great Need 133
CHAPTER XIV.
Kendall Steps Out 148
CHAPTER XV.
Bert Comes Back 153
A LITTLE NORSK.
CHAPTER I.
HER ADOPTIVE PARENTS.
"Ans, the next time you twist hay f'r the fire, I wish't you'd dodge the
damp spots," said the cook, rising from a prolonged scrutiny of the
stove and the bread in the oven. His pose was threatening.
"Cooks are always grumblin'," calmly remarked Anson, drawing on his
gloves preparatory to going out to the barn; "but seein' 's this is
Chris'mus, I'll go out an' knock a barrel to pieces. I want them biscuit
to be O. K. See?"
"Yes: I see."
"Say, Bert!"
"Well?"
"Can't we have some sugar-'lasses on our biscuits, seein' it's
Chris'mus?"
"Well, I s'pose we can, Ans; but we're gittin' purty low on the thing
these days, an' they ain't no tellin' when we'll be able to git more."
"Well, jes' as you say, not as I care." Anson went out into the roaring
wind with a shout of defiance, but came back instantly, as if to say
something he had forgotten. "Say, wha' d'ye s'pose is the trouble over
to the Norsk's? I hain't seen a sign o' smoke over there f'r two 'r
three days."
"Well, now you speak of it, Ans, I've be'n thinkin' about that myself.
I'm afraid he's out o' coal, 'r sick, 'r somethin'. It 'u'd be mighty
tough f'r the woman an' babe to be there without any fire, an' this
blizzard whoopin' her up. I guess you'd better go over an' see what's
up. I was goin' to speak of it this mornin', but f'rgot it. I'm cook
this week, so I guess the job falls on you."
"All right. Here goes."
"Better take a horse."
"No: I guess not. The snow is driftin' purty bad, an' he couldn't git
through the drifts, anyway."
"Well, lookout f'r y'rself, ol' man. It looks purty owly off in the
west. Don't waste any time. I'd hate like thunder to be left alone on a
Dakota prairie f'r the rest o' the winter."
Anson laughed back through the mist of snow that blew in the open door,
his great-coat and cap allowing only a glimpse of his cheeks.
The sky was bright overhead, but low down around the horizon it looked
wild. The air was frightfully cold--far below zero--and the wind had
been blowing almost every day for a week, and was still strong. The snow
was sliding fitfully along the sod with a stealthy, menacing motion, and
far off in the west and north a dense, shining cloud of frost was
hanging.
The plain was almost as lone and level and bare as a polar ocean, where
death and silence reign undisputedly. There was not a tree in sight, the
grass was mainly burned, or buried by the snow, and the little shanties
of the three or four settlers could hardly be said to be in sight, half
sunk, as they were, in drifts. A large white owl seated on a section
stake was the only living thing to be seen.
The boom had not yet struck Buster County. Indeed, it did not seem to
Bert Gearheart at this moment that it would ever strike Buster County.
It was as cold, dreary, and unprofitable an outlook as a man could face
and not go utterly mad. If any of these pioneers could have forecast the
winter, they would not have dared to pass it on the plains.
Bert watched his partner as he strode rapidly across the prairie, now
lost to sight as a racing troop of snow-waves, running shoulder-high,
shot between, now reappearing as the wind lulled.
"This is gittin' pretty monotonous, to tell the honest truth," he
muttered as he turned from the little window. "If that railroad don't
show up by March, in some shape or other, I'm goin' to give it up.
Gittin' free land like this is a little too costly for me. I'll go back
to Wiscons', an' rent land on shares."
Bert was a younger-looking man than his bachelor companion; perhaps
because his face was clean-shaven and his frame much slighter. He was a
silent, moody young fellow, hard to get along with, though of great good
heart. Anson Wood succeeded in winning and holding his love even through
the trials of masculine housekeeping. As Bert kept on with the dinner,
he went often to the little window facing the east and looked out, each
time thawing a hole in the frost on the window-panes.
The wind was rising again, and the night promised to be wild, as the two
preceding nights had been. As he moved back and forth setting out their
scanty meal, he was thinking of the old life back in Wisconsin in the
deeps of the little coulée; of the sleigh-rides with the boys and girls;
of the Christmas doings; of the damp, thick-falling snow among the
pines, where the wind had no terrors; of musical bells on swift horses
in the fragrant deeps, where the snowflakes fell like caresses through
the tossing branches of the trees.
By the side of such a life the plain, with its sliding snow and
ferocious wind, was appalling--a treeless expanse and a racing-ground
for snow and wind. The man's mood grew darker while he mused. He served
the meal on the rude box which took the place of table, and still his
companion did not come. He looked at his watch. It was nearly one
o'clock, and yet there was no sign of the sturdy figure of Anson.
The house of the poor Norwegian was about two miles away, and out of
sight, being built in a gully; but now the eye could distinguish a house
only when less than a mile away. A man could not at times be seen at a
distance of ten rods, though occasional lulls in the wind permitted Bert
to see nearly to the "First Moccasin."
"He may be in the swale," muttered the watcher as he stood with his eye
to the loop-hole. But the next time he looked the plain was as wild and
lone as before, save under the rising blast the snow was beginning to
ramp and race across the level sod till it looked at times like a sea
running white with foam and misty with spray.
At two o'clock he said: "Well, I s'pose Ans has concluded to stay over
there to dinner, though what the Norsk can offer as inducement I swear I
don't know. I'll eat, anyhow; he can have what's left."
He sat down to his lonely meal, and ate slowly, getting up two or three
times from his candle-box in a growing anxiety for Ans, using the heated
poker now to clear a spot on the pane. He expressed his growing
apprehension, manlike, by getting angry.
"I don't see what the darn fool means by stayin' so late. It'll be dark
by four o'clock, er jest as soon as that cloud over there strikes us.
You couldn't beat sense into some men's heads with a club."
He had eaten his dinner now, and had taken to pacing up and down the
little room, which was exactly six paces long and three wide, and just
high enough to permit Anson to walk erect in the highest part.
"Nice fix to leave a man in, ain't it? All alone here, an' a blizzard
comin' on! If I ever git out o' this country alive, I'll bet I'll know
enough not to come back," he broke out, stamping his foot in a rage. "I
don't see what he means by it. If he's caught in that blow, his life
ain't worth a cent."