A QUESTION OF DRESS.
One morning eight years later Flaxen left the home of Gearheart and Wood
with old Doll and the buggy, bound for Belleplain after groceries for
harvest. She drove with a dash, her hat on the back of her head. She was
seemingly intent on getting all there was possible out of a chew of
kerosene gum, which she had resolved to throw away upon entering town,
intending to get a new supply.
She had thriven on Western air and gum, and though hardly more than
fourteen years of age, her bust and limbs revealed the grace of
approaching womanhood, however childish her short dress and braided hair
might still show her to be. Her face was large and decidedly of
Scandinavian type, fair in spite of wind and sun, and broad at the
cheekbones. Her eyes were as blue and clear as winter ice.
As she rode along she sang as well as she could without neglecting the
gum, sitting at one end of the seat like a man, the reins held
carelessly in her left hand, notwithstanding the swift gait of the
horse, who always knew when Flaxen was driving. She met a friend on the
road, and said, "Hello!" pulling up her horse with one strong hand.
"Can't stop," she explained; "got to go over to the city to get some
groceries for harvest. Goin' to the sociable to-morrow?"
"You bet," replied the friend, "You?"
"I d'know; mebbe, if the boys'll go. Ta-ta; see ye later." And away she
spun.
Belleplain had not thriven, or, to be more exact, it had had a rise and
fall; and as the rise had been considerable, so the fall was something
worth chronicling. It was now a collection of wooden buildings, mostly
empty, graying under the storms and suns of pitiless winters and
summers, and now, just in mid-summer, surrounded by splendid troops and
phalanxes of gorgeous sunflowers, whose brown crowns, gold-dusted,
looked ever toward the sun as it swung through the wide arch of
cloudless sky. The signs of the empty buildings still remained, and one
might still read the melancholy decline from splendours of the past in
"emporiums," "palace drug stores," and "mansion-houses."
As Flaxen would have said, "Belleplain's boom had bu'sted." Her glory
had gone with the C., B. and Q., which formed the junction at Boomtown
and left the luckless citizens of Belleplain "high and dry" on the
prairie, with nothing but a "spur" to travel on. However, a few stores
yet remained in the midst of desolation.
After making her other purchases, Flaxen entered the "red-front drug
store" to secure the special brand of gum which seemed most delectable
and to buy a couple of cigars for the "boys."
The clerk, who was lately from the East, and wore his moustache curled
upward like the whiskers of a cat, was "gassing" with another young man,
who sat in a chair with his heels on the counter.
"Well, my dear, what can I do for you to-day?" he said, winking at the
loafer, as if to say, "Now watch me."
"I want some gum."
"What kind, darling?" he asked, encouraged by the fellow in the chair.
"I ain't your darling.--Kerosene, shoofly, an' ten cents' worth."
"Say, Jack," drawled the other fellow, "git onto the ankles! Say, sissy,
you picked your dress too soon. She's goin' to be a daisy, first you
know. Ain't y', honey?" he said, leaning over and pinching her arm.
"Let me alone, you great, mean thing! I'll tell ol' pap on you, see if I
don't," cried Flaxen, her eyes filling with angry tears. And as they
proceeded to other and bolder remarks she rushed out, feeling vaguely
the degradation of being so spoken to and so touched. It seemed to
become more atrocious the more she thought upon it.
When she reached home there were still signs of tears on her face, and
when Anson came out to help her alight, and noticing it asked, "What's
the matter?" she burst out afresh, crying, and talking incoherently.
Anson was astonished.
"Why, what's the matter, Flaxie? Can't you tell ol' pap? Are ye sick?"
She shook her head, and rushed past him into the house and into her
bedroom, like a little cyclone of wrath. Ans slowly followed her, much
perplexed. She was lying face downward on the bed, sobbing.
"What's the matter, little one? Can't y' tell ol' pap? Have the girls
be'n makin' fun o' yeh again?"
She shook her head.
"Have the boys be'n botherin' yeh?" No reply. "Who was it?" Still
silence. He was getting stern now. "Tell me right now."
"Jack Reeves--an'--an' another feller."
"Wha' d' they do?" Silence. "Tell me."
"They--pinched me, an'--an'--talked mean to me," she replied, breaking
down again with the memory of the insult.
Anson began to understand.
"Wal, there! You dry y'r eyes, Flaxie, an' go an' git supper; they won't
do it again--not this harvest," he added grimly as he marched to the
door to enter the buggy.
Bert, coming along from the barn and seeing Anson about to drive away,
asked where he was going. Anson tried to look indifferent.
"Oh, I've got a little business to transact with Reeves and some other
smart Aleck downtown."
"What's up? What have they be'n doing?" asked Gearheart, reading trouble
in the eyes of his friend.
"Well, they have be'n a little too fresh with Flaxen to-day, an' need a
lesson."
"They're equal to it. Say, Anson, let me go," laying his hand on the
dasher, ready to leap in.
"No: you're too brash. You wouldn't know when to quit. No: you stay
right here. Don't say anything to Flaxen about it; if she wants to know
where I'm gone, tell her I found I was out o' nails."
As Anson drove along swiftly he was in a savage mood and thinking
deeply. Two or three times of late some of his friends had touched
rather freely upon the fact that Flaxen was becoming a woman. "Girls
ripen early out in this climate," one old chap had said, "and your
little Norsk there is likely to leave you one of these days." He felt
now that something deliberately and inexpressibly offensive had been
said and done to his little girl. He didn't want to know just what it
was, but just who did it; that was all. It was time to make a protest.
Hitching his horse to a ring in the sidewalk upon arrival, he walked
into the drug store, which was also the post-office. Young Reeves was
inside the post-office corner giving out the mail, and Anson sauntered
about the store waiting his chance.
He was a dangerous-looking man just now. Ordinarily his vast frame,
huge, grizzled beard, and stern, steady eyes would quell a panther; but
now as he leaned against the counter a shrewd observer would have said,
"Lookout for him; he's dangerous."
His gray shirt, loose at the throat, showed a neck that resembled the
spreading base of an oak tree, and his crossed limbs and half-recumbent
pose formed a curious opposition to the look in his eyes.
Nobody noticed him specially. Most comers and goers, being occupied with
their mail, merely nodded and passed on.
Finally some one called for a cigar, and Reeves, having finished in the
post-office department, came jauntily along behind the counter directly
to where Anson stood. As he looked casually into the giant's eyes he
started back, but too late; one vast hand had clutched him by the
collar, and he was jerked over the counter and cuffed from hand to hand,
like a mouse in the paws of a cat. Though Ans used his open palm, the
punishment was fearful. Blood burst from his victim's nose and mouth; he
yelled with fright and pain.
The rest rushed to help.
"Stand back! This is a private affair," said Ans, throwing up a warning
hand. They paused; all knew his strength.
"It wasn't me!" screamed Reeves as the punishment increased; "it was Doc
Coe."
Coe, his hands full of papers and letters, horrified at what had
overtaken Reeves, stood looking on. But now he tried to escape. Flinging
the battered, half-senseless Reeves back over the counter, where he lay
in a heap, Anson caught Coe by the coat just as he was rushing past him,
and duplicated the punishment, ending by kicking him into the street,
where he lay stunned and helpless. Ans said then, in a voice that the
rest heard, "The next time you insult a girl, you'd better inquire into
the qualities of her guardeen."
This little matter attended to, he unhitched his horse from the
sidewalk, and refusing to answer any questions, rode off home, outwardly
as calm as though he had just been shaking hands.
Supper was about ready when he drove up, and through the open door he
could see the white-covered table and could hear the cheerful clatter of
dishes. Flaxen was whistling. Eight years of hard work had not done much
for these sturdy souls, but they had managed to secure with incredible
toil a comfortable little house surrounded with outbuildings. Calves and
chickens gave life to the barn-yard, and fields of wheat rippled and ran
with swash of heavy-bearded heads and dapple of shadow and sheen.
Flaxen was now the housewife and daughter of these hard-working
pioneers, and a cheery and capable one she had become. No one had ever
turned up with a better claim to her, and so she had grown up with Ans
and Bert, going to school when she could spare the time, but mainly
being adviser and associate at the farm.
Ans and Bert had worked hard winter and summer trying to get ahead, but
had not succeeded as they had hoped. Crops had failed for three or four
years, and money was scarce with them; but they had managed to build
this small frame house and to get a little stock about them, and this
year, with a good crop, would "swing clear," and be able to do something
for Flaxen--perhaps send her to Belleplain to school, togged out like a
little queen.
When Anson returned to the house after putting out the horse, he found
Bert reading the paper in the little sitting-room and Flaxen putting the
tea on the stove.
"Wha' d' y' do to him, pap?" laughed she, all her anger gone. Bert came
out to listen.
"Oh, nothin' p'tic'lar," answered Ans, flinging his hat at a chicken
that made as though to come in, and rolling up his sleeves preparatory
to sozzling his face at the sink. "I jest cuffed 'em a little, an' let
'em go."
"Is that all?" said Flaxen, disappointedly, a comical look on her round
face.
"Now, don't you worry," put in Bert. "Anson's cuffin' a man is rather
severe experience. I saw him cuff a man once; it ain't anythin' to be
desired a second time."
They all drew about the table. Flaxen looked very womanly as she sat
cutting the bread and pouring the tea. She had always been old in her
ways about the house, for she had very early assumed the housewife's
duties and cares. Her fresh-coloured face beamed with delight as she
watched the hungry men devouring the fried pork, potatoes, and cheese.
"When y' goin' to begin cuttin', boys?" Collectively they were boys to
her, but when addressing them separately they were "Bert" and "Pap."
"To-morrow 'r nex' day, I guess," answered Anson, looking out of the
open door. "Don't it look fine--all yeller an' green? I tell ye they
ain't anything lays over a ripe field o' wheat in my eyes. You jest take
it when the sun strikes it right, an' the wind is playin' on it--when it
kind o' sloshes around like water--an' the clouds go over it, droppin'
shadders down on it, an' a hawk kind o' goes skimmin' over it, divin'
into it once in a while--"
He did not finish; it was not necessary.
"Yes, sir!" adjudged Gearheart, after a pause, leaning his elbows on the
table and looking out of the door on the far-stretching, sun-glorified
plain.
"The harvest kind o' justifies the winter we have out here. That is,
when we have a harvest such as this. Fact is, we fellers live six months
o' the year lookin' ahead to harvest, an' t'other six months lookin'
back to it. Well, this won't buy the woman a dress, Ans. We must get
that header set up to-night if we can."
They pushed their chairs back noisily and rose to go out. Flaxen said:
"Say, which o' you boys is goin' to help me churn to-night?"
Anson groaned, while she laughed.
"I don't know, Flax; ask us an easier one."
"We'll attend to that after it gets too dark to work on the machine,"
added Bert.
"Well, see 't y' do. I can't do it; I've got bread to mix an' a chicken
to dress. Say, if you don't begin cuttin' till day after to-morrow, we
can go down to the sociable to-morrow night. Last one o' the season."
"I wish it was the last one before the kingdom come," growled Bert as he
"stomped" out the door. "They're a bad lot. The idea o' takin' down four
dollars' worth o' grub an' then payin' four dollars for the privilege of
eatin' half of it! I'll take my chicken here, when I'm hungry."
"Bert ain't partial to sociables, is he, pap?" laughed Flaxen.
"I should hate to have the minister dependin' on Bert for a livin'."
"Sa-ay, pap!"
"Wal, babe?"
"I expect I'll haf t' have a new dress one o' these days."
"Think so?"
"You bet."
"Why, what's the matter with the one y' got on? Ain't no holes in it
that I can see," looking at it carefully and turning her around as if
she were on a pivot.
"Well, ain't it purty short, pap?" she said suggestively.
"I swear, I don't know but it is," conceded Anson, scratching his head;
"I hadn't paid much 'tention to it before. It certainly is a lee-tle too
short. Lemme see: ain't no way o' lettin' it down, is they?"
"Nary. She's clean down to the last notch now," replied Flaxen
convincingly.
"Couldn't pull through till we thrash?" he continued, still in a
tentative manner.
"Could, but don't like to," she answered, laughing again, and showing
her white teeth pleasantly.
"I s'pose it'll cost suthin'," he insinuated in a dubious tone.
"Mattie Stuart paid seven dollars fer her'n, pap, an' I--"
"Seven how manys?"
"Dollars, pap, makin' an' everythin'. An' then I ought to have a new hat
to go with the dress, an' a new pair o' shoes. All the girls are wearin'
white, but I reckon I can git along with a good coloured one that'll do
fer winter."
"Wal, all right. I'll fix it--some way," Ans said, turning away only to
look back and smile to see her dancing up and down and crying:
"Oh, goody, goody!"
"I'll do it if I haf to borrow money at two per cent a month," said he
to Bert, as he explained the case. "Hear her sing! Why, dern it! I'd
spend all I've got to keep that child twitterin' like that. Wouldn't
you, eh?"
Bert was silent, thinking deeply on a variety of matters suggested by
Anson's words. The crickets were singing from out the weeds near by; a
lost little wild chicken was whistling in plaintive sweetness down in
the barley-field; the flaming light from the half-sunk sun swept along
the green and yellow grain, glorifying as with a bath of gold everything
it touched.
"I wish that grain hadn't ripened so fast, Ans. It's blightin'."
"Think so?"
"No: I know it. I went out to look at it before supper, an' every one of
those spots that look so pretty are just simply burnin' up! But, say,
ain't it a little singular that Flaxen should blossom out in a desire
for a new dress all at once? Ain't it rather sudden?"
"Wal, no: I don't think it is. Come to look it all over, up one side an'
down the other, she's been growin' about an inch a month this summer,
an' her best dress is gittin' turrible short the best way you can fix
it. She's gittin' to be 'most a woman, Bert."
"Yes: I know she is," said Bert, significantly. "An' something's got to
be done right off."
"Wha' d' ye mean by that, ol' man?"
"I mean jest this. It's time we did something religious for that girl.
She ain't had much chance since she's been here with us. She ain't had
no chance at all. Now I move that we send her away to school this
winter. Give her a good outfit an' send her away. This ain't no sort o'
way for a girl to grow up in."
"Wal, I've be'n thinkin' o' that myself; but where'll we send her?"
"Oh, back to the States somewhere; Wisconsin or Minnesota--somewhere."
"Why not to Boomtown?"
"Well, I'll tell yeh, Ans. I've been hearing a good 'eal off an' on
about the way we're bringin' her up here 'alone with two rough old
codgers,' an' I jest want to give her a better chance than the Territory
affords. I want her to git free of us and all like us, for a while; let
her see something of the world. Besides, that business over in
Belleplain to-day kind o' settled me. The plain facts are, Ans, the
people are a little too free with her because she is growin' up here--"
"I know some fellers that won't be again."
"Well, they are beginnin' to wink an' nudge each other an' to say--"
"Go on! What do they say?"
"They say she's goin' to be a woman soon; that this fatherly business is
bound to play out."
"I'd like to see anybody wink when I'm around. I'd smash 'em!" said
Anson through his set teeth. "Why, she's our little babe," he broke out,
as the full significance of the matter came to him. "My little un; I'm
her ol' pap. Why--" He ended in despair. "It's none o' their darn
business."
"There ain't no use o' howlin', Ans. You can't smash a whole
neighborhood."
"But what are we goin' to do?"
"Well, I'll tell ye what we mustn't do. We mustn't tog her out jest
yet."
"Why not?" asked Anson, not seeing these subtle distinctions of time and
place.
"Because, you tog her out this week or next, without any apparent
reason, in a new hat an' dress an' gloves, an' go down to one o' these
sociables with her, an' you'd have to clean out the whole crowd. They'd
all be winkin' an' nudgin' an' grinnin'--see?"
"Wal, go on," said the crushed giant. "What'll we do?"
"Just let things go on as they are for the present till we git ready to
send her to school."
"But I promised the togs."
"All right. I've stated the case," Gearheart returned, with the air of a
man who washed his hands of the whole affair.
Anson rose with a sudden gesture. "Jest hear her! whistlin' away like a
lark. I don't see how I'm goin' to go in there an' spoil all her fun; I
can't do it, that's all."
"Well, now, you leave it all to me. I'll state the case to her in a way
that'll catch her--see if I don't. She ain't no common girl."
It was growing dark as they went in, and the girl's face could not be
seen.
"Well, Bert, are y' ready to help churn?"
"Yes, I guess so, if Ans'll milk."
"Oh, he'll milk; he jest loves to milk ol' Brindle when the flies are
thick."
"Oh, you bet," said Ans, to make her laugh.
"Now, Flaxen," coughed Gearheart in beginning, "we've been discussin'
your case, an' we've come to the conclusion that you ought to have the
togs specified in the indictment" (this to take away the gravity of what
was to follow); "but we're kind o' up a tree about just what we'd better
do. The case is this. We've got to buy a horse to fill out our team, an'
that's a-goin' to take about all we can rake an' scrape."
"We may have to git our groceries on tick. Now, if you could only pull
through till after--" Anson broke in.
"It's purty tough, Flaxie, an' pap's awful sorry; but if you could jest
pull through--"
It was a great blow to poor little Flaxen, and she broke down and cried
unrestrainedly.
"I--I--don't see why I can't have things like the rest o' the girls." It
was her first reproach, and it cut to the heart. Anson swore under his
breath, and was stepping forward to say something when Gearheart
restrained him.
"But, y' see, Flaxie, we ain't askin' you to give up the dress, only to
wait on us for a month or so, till we thrash."
"That's it, babe," said Anson, going over to where she sat, with her
arms lying on the table and her face hidden upon them. "We could spend
dollars then where we couldn't cents now."
"And they won't be any more thingumyjigs at the church, anyhow, an' the
wheat's blightin' on the knolls, besides."
But the first keen disappointment over, she was her brave self once
more.
"Well, all right, boys," she said, her trembling voice curiously at
variance with her words; "I'll get along somehow, but I tell you I'll
have something scrumptious to pay for this--see if I don't." She was
smiling again faintly, "It'll cost more'n one ten dollars for my togs,
as you call 'em. Now, pap, you go an' milk that cow! An', Bert, you glue
yerself to that churn-dasher, an' don't you stop to breathe or swear
till it's done."
"That's the girl to have--that's our own Flaxie! She knows how hard
things come on a farm," cheered Anson.
"I bet I do," she said, wiping away the last trace of her tears and
smiling at her palpable hit. And then began the thump of the dasher, and
out in the dusk Anson was whistling as he milked.
She went down to the sociable the next night in her old dress, and
bravely looked happy for pap's sake. Bert did not go. Anson was a rather
handsome old fellow. Huge, bearded like a Russian, though the colour of
his beard was a wolf brindle, resembling a bunch of dry buffalo-grass,
Bert was accustomed to say that he looked the father of the girl, for
she had the same robust development, carried herself as erect, and
looked everybody in the eye with the same laughing directness.
There were some sly remarks among a ribald few, but on the whole
everything passed off as usual. They were both general favorites, and as
a matter of fact few people remarked that Flaxen's dress was not good
enough. She certainly forgot all about it, so complete was her
absorption in the gayety of the evening.
"Wal, now for four weeks' hard times, Flaxen," said Anson, as they were
jogging homeward about eleven o'clock.
"I can stand my share of it, pap," she stoutly replied. "I'm no
chicken."