The centre of the social life was Bailey's store. There stood the
post-office, which connected the settlers with the world they had left
behind. There they assembled each day when the flag ran up the long pole
which stood before the door as a signal for the mail. On the treeless,
shrubless prairie one could see the flag miles away, as it rose like a
faint fleck of pink against the green of the prairie beyond or the blue
sky above.
Twice a week Rivers drove out with supplies. These were the eventful
days of the week, and it was significant to observe with what tasteful
care the young women thought it proper to dress on this day. Hats,
dainty and fresh, cool muslins, spotless cuffs, ribbons. They came out
of their cabins with all the little airs and graces of their Eastern
homes. Bailey shared their good opinion, but he was always silent and a
little timid in their presence, and usually disappeared as soon as
Rivers came. "The social responsibilities belong to you, partner," he
was accustomed to say.
As the summer wore on, the number of those pathetically eager for
letters increased. The sun-bright plain, the beautiful, almost cloudless
sky, and the ever-flooding light wore upon them. They began to recall
wistfully the cool streams of New England, the wooded slopes of
Wisconsin, the comfortable homesteads and meadows of Illinois, and they
came for their mail with shining eyes--and when forced to say "Nothing
to-day," Bailey always suffered a keen pang of sympathetic pain.
He himself watched the eastern horizon, incessantly and unconsciously,
hours before the wagon was due, and, when it came in sight at last, ran
his flag up along its mast joyously.
It was a great pleasure to him to sit and talk with his partner, and he
looked forward to his visits eagerly. To Jim he could utter himself
freely. They had known each other so long, and he believed he understood
his partner to the centre of his heart.
He usually had supper ready--often he had help from the girls or Mrs.
Burke, and while a dozen hands volunteered at the team and with the
mail-bag, Rivers was free to hurry to his table, whereat he fared like a
pasha attended by the flower of his harem. The girls pretended it was
all on account of his office as mail-carrier, but they deceived no one,
much less an experienced beau like Rivers. He accepted it all with
shameless egotism.
To Bailey's mind Jim was too well attended. He seemed to see less and
less of his partner as the season wore on. They seldom sat down to talk
in the good old fashion, wearing out half the night smoking, listening
to the slumber-song of the night plain, for Rivers got into the habit of
walking home with some of the girls after the mail was distributed,
leaving his partner to do the trading. Sometimes he went away with Mrs.
Burke, if she were alone; sometimes with Estelle Clayton, whom Bailey
thought the finest woman in the world. He secretly resented Rivers'
attention to Estelle, for he had come to look upon her as under his
protection. Her coming raised mail-days to the level of a national
holiday.
She scared him, and yet he rejoiced to see her coming down over the sod
so strong, so erect, so clear-eyed. She wore her hair like a matron, and
that pleased him, and she looked at him so frankly and unwaveringly. She
had been a school-teacher in some middle Western State, and had been
swept into this movement by her desire to go to an Eastern college.
Bailey contrived to look very stern and very busy whenever she came in,
but she was wise in ways of men, and treated him as if he were a good
comrade, and so gradually he came to talk to her almost as freely as
with Blanche Burke.
He did not know that Jim almost invariably went over to Burke's
shanty--even when he walked home with Miss Clayton. Rivers did not
impress Estelle favorably. She was not one to be moved by flattery, nor
by dimples in male cheeks. She accepted his company pleasantly, but
there were well-defined bounds to her friendship, as Rivers discovered
one evening as they were walking over the plain toward her home.
On every side the vivid green stretched away, smooth as the rounded
flesh of a woman, velvet in texture, glorified by the saffron and orange
of the sunset sky.
At the cabin they met Carrie, for whom Estelle was both sister and
mother. The little shanty slanted on the side of a swell like a little
boat sliding up a monstrous mid-ocean wave. Around it lay a little
garden inhabited by a colony of chicken-coops--"All my own making,"
Estelle said. "Oh, of course, sister held the nails and bossed, but I
did it. I like it, too. It's more fun than working red poppies on
tidies--that's about all they'll let you do back East."
"It doesn't matter much what you do out here," said Rivers, meaningly.
"Oh yes, it does. Some things are wrong anywhere; but there are other
things which people _think_ are wrong that are only unusual," she
answered, and he knew she knew what he meant.
The talk moved on to lighter themes, and then died away as the three sat
in the doorway and saw the light fade out of the sky.
Carrie's thin, eager face shone with angelic light. She seemed to hold
her breath as flame after flame of the marvellous light was withdrawn.
"Oh, the sky is so big out here," she whispered. Estelle locked hands
with her and sat in silence. Rivers, awkward and constrained, respected
their emotion. At last he rose.
"I'm going over to Burke's a little while, so I'll have to be moving."
"Mrs. Burke is very strange," said Estelle; "I can't seem to get on with
her. She seems very lonely and restless. Her husband is away a great
deal, but I can't get her to talk, when I call, and she never returns my
call."
"She never seemed that way to me," Rivers said, having nothing better in
mind at the moment.
"I think she's homesick. I wish I knew how to help her, but I don't."
Rivers walked away with two thoughts in his mind. One was the girl's
sentence about things that were wrong and things which people thought
were wrong, and the other was the question about Blanche--was she
homesick? That puzzled him. Had he only seen her in her joyous moods? It
was not pleasant to think of her growing sad--perhaps on his account.
Burke sat on a bench outside the door, smoking silently in the dusk.
Blanche was stirring about inside.
"Hello, Rivers!" Burke called. "Take a seat." He pointed at a
vinegar-keg.
Blanche hurried to meet her visitor, a beautiful smile on her face.
"Come inside," she said. "I've got some work to do, and I want to hear
you men talk." They obediently complied, and she lighted a lamp. "I like
to see you when you talk," she added, flashing a smile at Rivers.
He saw the change in her for the first time. She certainly was paler,
her face less boyish, and a deeper shadow hovered about her eyes.
"I came over to see if you wouldn't come down and help us get up a
jollification at the store on the Fourth," he said.
"Why, of course. What shall I do?"
"Oh, stir up a cake--and make some ice-cream. Can you make ice-cream?"
"You bet I can--with ice. Bring on your ice."
"Ice is easy to get. Cook is what bothered me."
"That ought to be easy," said Burke. "Marry one."
"That's what I'm telling Bailey."
"Why don't you set the example. 'Stelle Clayton--now."
Rivers laughed, but his eyes, directed above Burke's head, met the
unsmiling gaze of Blanche and sobered.
"Miss Clayton and I don't seem to get along first-rate," he said, and
her face lighted again.
"Well, there are lots of others 'round here--lonesome girls. Blanche,
can't you help Jim find a woman?"
Blanche did not answer lightly. She turned to her work. "I guess he can
find one if he tries hard."
She was alluring as she kneaded the bread at the table. The flex of her
waist and the swing of her skirts affected Rivers powerfully. He watched
her in silence. Once she looked around, and the penetrative glance of
his eyes filled her face with a rush of blood, and her eyes misted. A
few minutes later he said "good-night" in an absent-minded way and went
home.
Burke talked on, attempting to retain the cheery atmosphere which Rivers
had brought in, but Blanche refused to answer, a sombre look on her
sullen face. She seemed falling back into her old petulant, moody ways,
and her husband suffered a corresponding dejection.
The elation was passing out of his heart. Their picnic was at an end.
As the summer came on he was forced to go out ploughing for other
settlers, and she was left alone a great deal. This was hard to bear.
There was so little to do in her little sun-smit cabin, and her trip to
the post-office to get the mail and to meet the other settlers came to
be a necessity. Like the other women, she put on her best hat and gown
when she went to the store, and a low word of compliment from Rivers, as
he handed out the mail, put a color into her face and a joy in her
heart which her husband had never been able to arouse--indeed, it was
after these visits that she was most cruel to Willard.
Sometimes she went with him to visit the neighbors, but not often. One
day he said:
"I'm goin' to work f'r Jim Bradley to-day--want 'o go 'long?"
"I can't this mornin'. Perhaps I'll come over after dinner and walk home
with you."
"I think you'll like Mrs. Bradley. She's got the purtiest little baby
you ever saw." He did not look at her as he slung his pick and shovel on
his shoulder. "Well, I'll tell her you'll be over about three o'clock."
"All right, tell her. Mebbe I'll come and mebbe I won't," she answered,
ungraciously.
All that forenoon she went about her little cabin moodily, or sat
silently by the open door watching the buffalo birds or larks as they
came up about the barn for food. The green plain was all a-shimmer with
pleasant heat. The plover, nesting in the grass, were nearly ready to
bring forth their young--and the mother fox had already begun to lead
her litter out upon the sunny hillside; only this childless woman seemed
unhappy--sad.
As she came to the cabin of the Bradleys, Willard, sunk to his topknot
in the ground, was burrowing like a badger in the clay, quite oblivious
to the world above him. Some one was singing in the cabin, and,
approaching the door, Blanche saw a picture which thrilled her with a
strange, hungry, envious passion.
A young woman was seated in the tiny room with her back to the door,
her hand on a cradle, and as she rocked she sang softly. She was a plain
little woman, the cradle was cheap and common, and her singing was only
a monotonous chant; but the scene had a sort of sublimity--it was so
old, so typical, and so beautiful.
The woman without the threshold stood for a long time staring straight
before her, then turned and walked away homeward--past the weary,
patient, heroic man toiling deep in the earth for her sake--leaving him
without a glance or a word.
"You didn't get over to Mrs. Bradley's this afternoon, then?" Burke
said, at supper.
"No," she replied, shortly, "I had some sewin' to do."
"Wal, go to-morrow. That's an awfully cute little chap--that baby," he
went on, after a little. "Mrs. Bradley let him set on my knee to-day."
Then he sighed. "I wisht we had one like 'im, Blanche." After a pause,
he said, "Mebbe God will send one some day."
She didn't appear to hear, and her face was dark with passion.