FLAXEN BECOMES INDISPENSABLE TO THE TWO OLD BACHELORS.
They never found any living relative, and only late in the spring was
the fate of the poor father revealed. He and his cattle were found side
by side in a deep swale, where they had foundered in the night and
tempest.
As for little Flaxen, she soon recovered her cheerfulness, with the
buoyancy natural to childhood, and learned to prattle in broken English
very fast. She developed a sturdy self-reliance that was surprising in
one so young, and long before spring came was indispensable to the two
"old baches."
"Now, Bert," said Ans one day, "I don't wan' to hear you talk in that
slipshod way any longer before Flaxen. You know better; you've had more
chance than I have--be'n to school more. They ain't no excuse for you,
not an ioty. Now, I'm goin' to say to her, 'Never mind how I talk, but
talk like Bert does.'"
"Oh, say, now, look here, Ans, I can't stand the strain. Suppose she'd
hear me swearin' at ol' Barney or the stove?"
"That's jest it. You ain't goin' to swear," decided Anson; and after
that Bert took the education of the little waif in hand, for he was a
man of good education; his use of dialect and slang sprang mainly from
carelessness.
But all the little fatherly duties and discipline fell to Anson, and
much perplexed he often got. For instance, when he bought her an outfit
of American clothing at the store they were strange to her and to him,
and the situation was decidedly embarrassing when they came to try them.
"Now, Flaxie, I guess this thing goes on this side before, so's you can
button it. If it went on so, you couldn't reach around to button it,
don't you see? I guess you'd better try it so. An' this thing, I judge,
is a shirt, an' goes on under that other thing, which I reckon is called
a shimmy. Say, Bert, shouldn't you call that a shirt?" holding up a
garment.
"W-e-l-l, yes" (after a close scrutiny). "Yes: I should."
"And this a shimmy?"
"Well, now, you've got me, Ans. It seems to me I've heard the women
folks home talk about shimmies, but they were always kind o' private
about it, so I don't think I can help you out. That little thing goes
underneath, sure enough."
"All right, here goes, Flax; if it should turn out to be hind side
before, no matter."
Then again little Flaxen would want to wear her best dress on week-days,
and Ans was unable to explain. Here again Bert came to the rescue.
"Git her one dress fer ev'ry day in the week, an' make her wear 'em in
rotation. Hang 'em up an' put a tag on each one--Sunday, Monday, an' so
on."
"Good idea."
And it was done. But the embarrassments of attending upon the child soon
passed away; she quickly grew independent of such help, dressed herself,
and combed her own hair, though Anson enjoyed doing it himself when he
could find time, and she helped out not a little about the house. She
seemed to have forgotten her old life, awakening as she had from almost
deathly torpor into a new home--almost a new world--where a strange
language was spoken, where no woman was, and where no mention of her
mother, father, or native land was ever made before her. The little waif
was at first utterly bewildered, then reconciled, and by the time spring
came over the prairie was almost happy in the touching way of a child
deprived of childish things.
Oh, how sweet spring seemed to those snow-weary people! Day after day
the sun crept higher up in the sky; day after day the snow gave way a
little on the swells, and streams of water began to trickle down under
the huge banks of snow, filling the ravines; and then at last came a day
when a strange, warm wind blew from the northwest. Soft and sweet and
sensuous it was, as if it swept some tropic bay filled with a thousand
isles--a wind like a vast warm breath blown upon the land. Under its
touch the snow did not melt; it vanished. It fled in a single day from
the plain to the gullies. Another day, and the gullies were rivers.
It was the "chinook," which old Lambert, the trapper and surveyor, said
came from the Pacific Ocean.
The second morning after the chinook began to blow, Anson sprang to his
feet from his bunk, and standing erect in the early morning light,
yelled: "Hear that?"
"What is it?" asked Bert.
"There! Hear it?" Anson smiled, holding up his hand joyfully as a mellow
"Boom--boom--boom" broke through the silent air. "Prairie-chickens!
Hurrah! Spring has come! That breaks the back o' winter short off."
"Hurrah! de 'pring ees come!" cried little Flaxen, gleefully clapping
her hands in imitation.
No man can know what a warm breeze and the note of a bird can mean to
him till he is released, as these men were released, from the bondage of
a horrible winter. Perhaps still more moving was the thought that with
the spring the loneliness of the prairie would be broken, never again to
be so dread and drear; for with the coming of spring came the tide of
land-seekers pouring in: teams scurried here and there on the wide
prairie, carrying surveyors, land agents, and settlers. At Summit trains
came rumbling in by the first of April, emptying thousands of men,
women, and children upon the sod, together with cattle, machinery, and
household articles, to lie there roofed only by the blue sky. Summit,
from being a half-buried store and a blacksmith's shop, bloomed out into
a town with saloons, lumber-yards, hotels, and restaurants; the sound of
hammer and anvil was incessant, and trains clanged and whistled night
and day.
Day after day the settlers got their wagons together and loaded up, and
then moved down the slope into the fair valley of the sleepy James. Mrs.
Cap Burdon did a rushing business as a hotel-keeper, while Cap sold hay
and oats at rates which made the land-seekers gasp.
"I'm not out here f'r my health," was all the explanation he ever made.
Soon all around the little shanty of Anson and Bert other shanties were
built and filled with young, hopeful, buoyant souls. The railway
surveyors came through, locating a town about three and another about
twelve miles away, and straightway the bitter rivalry between Boomtown
and Belleplain began. Belleplain being their town, Bert and Anson swore
by Belleplain, and correspondingly derided the claims of Boomtown.
With the coming of spring began the fiercest toil of the
pioneers--breaking the sod, building, harvesting, ploughing; then the
winter again, though not so hard to bear; then the same round of work
again. So the land was settled, the sod was turned over; sod shanties
gave way to little frame houses; the tide of land-seekers passed on, the
boom burst, but the real workers, like Wood and Gearheart, went
patiently, steadily on, founding a great State.