Bailey laughed at his innocence. "Jim Rivers has located about
seventy-five claims out here this spring. I guess he won't lose his
bearings."
"I'm afraid Blanche'll get nervous."
"Oh, Jim will take care of her. She won't be lonesome, either. He's a
great favorite with the women, always gassin'--Well, this won't feed the
baby," he ended, leaping to his feet.
They were about to start on when a swift team came into sight. The
carriage was a platform-spring wagon, with a man and woman in the front
seat, and in the rear a couple of alert young fellows sat holding rifles
in their hands and eyeing the plain for game.
"Hello!" said the driver, in a pleasant shout. "How you getting on?"
"Pretty well," replied Bailey.
"Should say you were. I didn't know but we'd fail to overhaul you."
Burke went up to the wagon. "Well, Blanche, what do you think of
it--far's you've got?"
"Not very much," replied his wife, candidly. She was a handsome woman,
but looked tired and a little cross, at the moment. "I guess I'll get
out and ride with you," she added.
"Why, no! What for?" asked Rivers, hastily. "Why not go right along out
to the store with us?"
"Why, yes; that's the thing to do, Blanche. We'll be along soon," said
Burke. "Stay where you are."
She sat down again, as if ashamed to give her reason for not going on
with these strange men.
"I was just in the middle of a story, too," added Rivers, humorously.
"Well, so long." And, cracking his whip, he started on. "We'll have
supper ready when you arrive!" he shouted back.
Burke could not forget the look in his wife's eyes. She was right. It
would have been pleasanter if she had stayed with him. They had been
married several years, but his love for her had not grown less. Perhaps
for the reason that she dominated him.
She was a fine, powerful girl, while he was a plain man, slightly
stooping, with thin face and prominent larynx. She had brought a little
property to him, which was unusual enough to give her a sense of
importance in all business transactions of the firm.
She had consented to the sale of their farm in Illinois with great
reluctance, and, as Burke rode along on his load of furniture, he
recalled it all very vividly, and it made him anxious to know her
impression of his claim. As he took her position for a moment, he got a
sudden sense of the loneliness and rawness of this new land which he had
not felt before. The woman's point of view was so different from that of
the adventurous man.
Twice they were forced to partly unload in order to cross ravines where
the frost had fallen out, and it was growing dark as they rose over the
low swell, from which they could see a dim, red star, which Burke
guessed to be the shanty light, even before Bailey called, exultantly:
"There she blows!"
The wind had grown chill and moist, the quacking ducks were thickening
on the pools, and strange noises came from ghostly swells and hidden
creeks. The tired horses moved forward with soundless feet upon the sod,
which had softened during the day. They quickened their steps when they
saw the lantern shine from the pole before the building.
The light of the lamp, and the sight of Blanche standing in the doorway
of the cabin at the back of the store-room, was a beautiful sight to
Burke. Set over against the wet, dark prairie, with its boundless sweep
of unknown soil, the shanty seemed a radiant palace.
"Supper's all ready, Willard!" called Blanche, and the tired man's heart
leaped with joy to hear the tender, familiar cadence of her voice. It
was her happy voice, and when she used it men were her slaves.
Bailey came out with one of the land-seekers.
"Go in to supper, boys; we'll take care of the teams," was his hearty
command.
The tired freighters gladly did as they were bid, and, scooping up some
water from a near-by hollow on the sod, hurriedly washed their faces and
sat down to a supper of chopped potatoes, bacon and eggs, and tea (which
Blanche placed steaming hot upon the table), in such joy as only the
weary worker knows.
Mrs. Burke was in high spirits. The novelty of the trip, the rude
shanty, with its litter of shavings, and its boxes for chairs, the
bundles of hay for beds, gave her something like the same pleasure a
picnic might have done. It appealed to the primeval in her. She forgot
her homesickness and her vague regrets, and her smiles filled her
husband with content.
Rivers and the others soon came in, and after supper there was a great
deal of energetic talk. The young land-seekers were garrulous with
delight over their claims, which they proudly exalted above the stumps
and stones of the farms "back home."
"Why, it took three generations of my folks to clear off forty acres of
land," said one of them. "They just wore themselves out on it. I told
Hank he could have it, and I'd go West and see if there wasn't some land
out there which wouldn't take a man's lifetime to grub out and smooth
down. And I've found it."
Rivers had plainly won the friendship of Mrs. Burke, for they were
having a jolly time together over by the table, where he was helping to
wash the dishes. He had laughing, brown eyes, and a pleasant voice, and
was one of the most popular of the lawyers and land-agents in Boomtown.
There was a boyish quality in him which kept him giving and taking
jocular remarks.
Bailey sometimes said: "Rivers would shine up to a seventy-year-old
Sioux squaw if she was the only woman handy, but he don't mean anything
by it--it's just his way. He's one o' the best-hearted fellers that ever
lived." Others took a less favorable view of the land-agent, and refused
to trust him.
Bailey assumed command. "Now, fellers," he said, "we'll vamoose the
ranch while Mrs. Burke turns in." He opened the way to the store-room,
and the men filed out, all but Burke, who remained to put up the calico
curtain with which his wife had planned to shield her bed.
Blanche was a little disturbed at the prospect of sleeping behind such a
thin barrier.
"Oh, it's no worse than the sleeping-car," her husband argued.
A little later he stuck his head in at the store-room door. "All ready,
Bailey."
Bailey was to sleep on the rickety lounge, which served as bedstead and
chair, and the other men were to make down as best they could in the
grocery.
Bailey went out to the front of the shanty to look at the lantern he had
set up on a scantling. Rivers followed him.
"Going to leave that up there all night?"
"Yes. May keep some poor devil from wandering around all night on the
prairie."
Rivers said, with an abrupt change in his voice:
"Mrs. Burke is a hummer, isn't she? How'd his flat-chested nibs manage
to secure a 'queen' like that? I must get married, Bailey--no use."
Bailey took his friend's declaration more lightly than it deserved. He
laughed. "Wish you would, Jim, and relieve me of the cookin'."
Blanche could hardly compose herself to sleep. "Isn't it wonderful," she
whispered. "It's all so strange, like being out of the world, someway."
Burke heard the ducks quacking down in the "Moggason," and he, too,
_felt_ the silence and immensity of the plain outside. It was enormous,
incredible in its wildness. "I believe we're going to like it out here,
Blanche," he said.
Blanche Burke rose to a beautiful and busy day. The breakfast which she
cooked in the early dawn was savory, and Rivers, who helped her by
bringing water and building the fire, was full of life and humor. He
seemed to have no other business than to "wait and tend" on her.
He called her out to see the sunrise. "Isn't this great!" he called,
exultantly. Flights of geese were passing, and the noise of ducks came
to them from every direction. He pointed out the distant hills, and
called her attention to a solemn row of sand-hill cranes down by the
swale, causing her to see the wonder and beauty of this new world.
"You're going to like it out here," he said, with conviction. "It is a
glorious climate, and you'll soon have more neighbors than you want."
After breakfast Bailey and Burke left the "Moggason Ranch"--as Bailey
called the store and shanty--to carry the lumber and furniture belonging
to Burke on to his claim, two or three miles away. Rivers remained to
work in the store, and to meet some other land-seekers, and Mrs. Burke
agreed to stay and get dinner for them all.
During this long forenoon, Rivers exerted himself to prevent her from
being lonely. He was busy about the store, but he found time to keep her
fire going and to bring water and to tell her of his bachelor life with
Bailey. She had never had anything like this swift and smiling service,
and she felt very grateful to him. He encouraged her to make some pies
and to prepare a "thumping dinner." "It will seem like being married
again," he said, with a chuckle.
Burke and Bailey returned at noon to dinner.
"Mrs. Burke, you can sleep in your own ranch to-night," announced
Bailey.
"I guess it will be a ranch."
"It'll be new, anyhow," her husband said, with a timid smile.
After dinner she straightened things up a little, and as she got into
the wagon she said: "Well, there, Mr. Rivers. _You'll_ have to take care
o' things now."
Rivers leered comically, sighed, and looked at his partner. "Bailey, I
didn't know what we needed before; I know now. We need a woman."
Bailey smiled. "Go get one. Don't ask a clumsy old farmer like me to
provide a cook."
"I'll get married to-morrow," said Rivers, with a droll inflection. They
all laughed, and Burke clucked at the team. "Well, good-bye, boys; see
you later."
After leaving the ranch they struck out over the prairie where no
wagon-wheel but theirs had ever passed. Here were the buffalo trails,
deep-worn ruts all running from northwest to southeast. Here lay the
white bones of elk in shining crates, ghastly on the fire-blackened sod.
Beside the shallow pools, buffalo horns, in testimony of the tragic
past, lay scattered thickly. Everywhere could be seen the signs of the
swarming herds of bison which once swept to and fro from north to south
over the plain, all so silent and empty now.
A few antelope scurried away out of the path, and a wolf sitting on a
height gravely watched the teams as if marvelling at their coming. The
wind swept out of the west clear and cold. The sky held no shred of
cloud. The air was like some all-powerful intoxicant, and when Bailey
pointed out a row of little stakes and said, "There's the railroad,"
their imagination supplied the trains, the wheat, the houses, the towns
which were to come.
At the claim Blanche sat on a box and watched the two men as they
swiftly built the little cabin which was to be her home. Their hammers
rang merrily, and soon she was permitted to go inside and look up at the
great sky which roofed it in. This was an emotional moment to her. As
she sat there listening to the voices of the men who were drawing this
fragile shelter around her, a great awe fell upon her. It seemed as if
she had drawn a little nearer to the Almighty Creator of the universe.
Here, where no white man had ever set foot, she was watching the
founding of her own house. Was it a home? Could it ever be a home?
Swiftly the roof closed over her head, and the floor crept under her
feet. The stove came in, and the flour-barrel, and the few household
articles which they had brought followed, and as the sun was setting
they all sat down to supper in her new home.
The smell of the fresh pine was round them. Geese were flying over.
Cranes were dancing down by the ponds, prairie-chickens were _booming_.
The open doorway--doorless yet--looked out on the sea-like plain
glorified by the red sun just sinking over the purple line of treeless
hills to the west. It was the bare, raw materials of a State, and they
were in at the beginning of it.
After Bailey left them the husband and wife sat in silence. When they
spoke it was in low voices. It seemed as if God could hear what they
said--that He was just there behind the glory of the western clouds.