magazine. They began with a red-brown one of a storm-tossed ship on a
rocky coast; and, following, were drawings of queer boxes and chairs
and, yet more strange, of a herd of grazing cattle _with a board fence
around it_! There was also a funny picture of a ragged boy and a stylish
little girl who wore a round hat and a polonaise. And, lastly, there was
shown a beautiful young woman standing by a table in a long, loose robe,
very much like the army chaplain's.
It was over this picture that the little girl bent longest, and she
read, not without some tedious spelling, the words that were printed
beneath it:
"Mary, in cap and gown, was so bright and dainty a vision that the
professor wished that more young ladies of gentle birth might attend the
college."
College! It was not a new word to the little girl, for she had heard the
colonel tell her mother that he was going to send his son to college.
But now she knew that girls as well as boys could go. And she saw by the
picture that they wore beautiful flowing robes and square caps.
It was the cap that specially attracted her, for it rested becomingly
upon a mass of wavy hair. She wished that her curls, which had to be
coaxed into shape every morning with a warm stove-lifter and a wet
brush, would hang in ripples like the young woman's, so that she could
wear one.
"Oh, _ain't_ it sweet!" she said aloud, getting up on her knees beside
Luffree and holding out the book at arm's length. And then, with the
mortar-board as her inspiration, there flashed into her brain a
wonderful thought that was to grow through the coming years; and her
lips framed a splendid purpose--heard by no mortal ears, save those of
the shivering hound and the cropping pony--that time was gloriously to
fulfil.
"And maybe," she added happily, "I'll have 'monia, and my hair'll come
in just as curly."
She sprang to her feet, fired with her new ambition, and undid the pony.
And remembering that it would be as well to reach the farm-house before
the family could hear the second tale of trouble at the school, she
hastily coiled the picket-rope, mounted, hid the magazine under the
saddle-blankets, and, with the dog running stiffly in her wake, rode
homeward.
When she reached the barn, she did not even wait to fasten the pinto in
her stall; but, taking the magazine, raced toward the kitchen. As she
halted breathless in its open door, however, she was sorry that she had
not come in quietly by way of her bedroom window and waited until she
was sure that her mother was alone. For she found herself in the
presence not only of the big brothers, but of him whose authority she
had so lately flouted!
The suddenness of the discovery drove the words she had meant to say in
her own behalf from her brain. But five pairs of eyes were upon her and
retreat was impossible; so she strove mutely to win any possible
sympathy by covering, with one unsteady hand, the ear that had been
pulled.
No one spoke for a moment. And in that brief space the little girl
divined, as she sought each face, that but one of the group before her
was eager to see her punished, and that one was the teacher. In the eyes
of the eldest brother there was no disapproval, only a lurking smile;
the biggest was openly beaming with satisfaction; the youngest had taken
his attitude, as usual, from the eldest; and her mother's look was sadly
kind. But the teacher was hostile from brow to boot.
It was the eldest brother who first broke the silence. He took his pipe
from his mouth, knocked out the ashes against his bench, and addressed
the little girl. "So you went on the war-path to-day?" he said.
She made no answer, but moved toward her mother.
"This youngster," he went on, wheeling around on the teacher, "is well
up in them chart pages and can read pretty good in most books. So I
guess"--he drawled it out sneeringly--"as long as you ain't got any
classes that exactly fit her, she'd better lie fallow for a while."
The little girl shot a proud glance at the Yankton man as she heard the
eldest brother's praise, and, emboldened, spoke up for herself. "I _can_
read all the chart," she declared, "and I can read everyfing in the
First Reader. And I could spell 'man'"--she put the hand that she had
been holding over her ear on a level with her knee--"when I was so
high."
The teacher snorted. "You know your own business," he said to the eldest
brother.
"Guess we do," chimed in the biggest, grinning. "No use bothering her
with a-b, ab, when she can read the things she does." The teacher stood
up, ready to go. "And I was about to remark," continued the biggest,
banteringly, "that she's got a lot of mighty nice stories that she's
read and done with; and if you'd like to borrow one, once in a while, to
pass an evenin' with, you'd find 'em mighty educatin'."
"Thank you," answered the teacher; "but like as not you'll need 'em all
to finish up _her_ eddication on. I guess maybe you'll be sending her to
Sioux Falls in a year or so to kind o' polish her off."
The sarcasm in the voice stung the biggest brother. "Well," he said,
"she could polish off right here on these plains and have a lot more in
her noddle in a year or two than _some_ people I know."
This boast of her favorite again brought the little girl's courage up.
"I don't want to go to a city school," she declared, "'cause they don't
wear caps there."
The teacher was tramping out, with no backward look or good-by word, and
he did not wait to hear more. So it was the eldest brother who answered
her. "If you don't go here and you don't go to Sioux Falls," he said,
"I'd like to know where you'll learn anything. Ma ain't got no time to
be your governess."
"I don't want no governess, either," she replied. "I know what I'm going
to do." She brought forward the magazine, which she had been holding
behind her back with one hand, and, opening it at the drawing of the
young woman in cap and gown, laid it on the biggest brother's knee. Then
she went up to her mother, her face fairly shining through the dust and
tear-marks on it. Her mother put out her arms and gently drew the little
girl to her. Into her mind had come the picture of herself, in spotless
pinafore, bending with her governess over her English books. And beside
that picture, the little girl, sunburned, soiled, and poorly shod, made
a sharp contrast.
"What are you going to do, pet lamb?" she asked.
"I'm going to cut 'nough carpet-rags this winter to last you a whole
year," said the little girl, "'cause next summer you won't have me any
more. I'm--I'm--going to college."
* * * * *
THE teacher, jogging out of the barn-yard to the ash-lane, heard a
hearty roll of bassos from the kitchen, and did not doubt but that he
was its target. He reined in his horse at the bare flower-beds and
glowered back at the door. Then, with a mutter, ungrammatical but
eloquent, he spurred on toward the lonely, supperless shack by the
slough.
VI
THE STORY OF A PLANTING
THE little girl was making believe, as she planted the corn, that the
field was a great city; the long rows, reaching up from the timothy
meadow to the carnelian bluff, were the beautiful streets; and the
hills, two steps apart, were the houses. She had a seed-bag slung under
her arm, and when she came to a hill she put her hand into it and took
out four plump, yellow kernels. And as she went along, dropping her
gifts at each door, she played that she was visiting and said, "How do
you do?" as politely as she could to the lady of the house, at the same
time taking off her battered blue sailor-hat and bowing,--just as she
had seen the lightning-rod agent do to her mother.
She had begun the game by naming every family she called upon. But it
was not long before she had used up all the names she could think
of--those of the neighbors, the Indians, the story-book people, the
horses, the cows, the oxen, the dogs, and even the vegetables in the
garden. So, after having planted a row or two, she contented herself
with making believe she was among strangers and just offering a friendly
greeting to every household.
She had come out to the field when the prairie-chickens were still
playing their bagpipes on the river bank, their booming sounding through
the morning air so clearly that the little girl had been sure they were
not farther than the edge of the wheat-field, and had walked out of her
way to try to see them, tramping along in her best shoes, which had
shiny copper toes and store-made laces. But when she had reached the
wheat, the booming, like a will-o'-the-wisp, had been temptingly farther
on; and she had turned back to the newly marked corn-land.
Her big brothers had sent her out to drop and cover eighty rows, the
last corn-planting to be done that year on the big Dakota farm. They had
finished the rest of the field themselves and, intent on getting in the
rutabaga crop, had turned over the remaining strip to the little girl,
declaring that she could drop and cover forty rows in the morning and
forty in the afternoon, and not half try. To make sure that she would
have time to finish the work, they had started her off immediately after
a five-o'clock breakfast; and in order that she should not lose any time
at noon, they had made her take her dinner with her in a tall tin pail.
Her first glimpse of the unplanted piece had greatly discouraged her,
for it seemed dreadfully wide and long. So, after deciding to plant the
whole of it before doing any covering with the hoe, because the dropping
of the corn was much easier and quicker to do than the hoeing, she went
to work half-heartedly. Now, to make her task seem short, she had
further determined to play "city."
It was such fun to pretend that, as she went bobbing and bowing up and
down the rows, she forgot to stop her game and throw clods at the gray
gophers. They lived in the timothy meadow, and were so bold that, if
they were not watched, they would come out of their burrows and follow
the rows, stealing every kernel out of the hills as they went along and
putting the booty in their cheek-pouches.
After she had dropped corn as much as a whole hour, the little girl's
back ached, and when she went to refill her seed-bag at the corn-barrel
that stood on the border of the meadow near the row-marker, she sat down
to rest a moment. The marker resembled a sleigh, only it had five
runners instead of two, and there were rocks piled on top of it to make
it heavy. So the minute the little girl's eyes fell upon it and she saw
the runners, she thought of winter. Winter instantly reminded her of the
muskrats in the slough below the bluff. And with that thought she could
not resist starting down to see if they were busy after the thaw.
She gathered many flowers on the way, and stopped to pull off her shoes
and stockings. At last she reached the slough and waded in to a muskrat
house, where she used her hoe-handle as a poker to scare out some of the
muskrats. Failing in this, she picked up her shoes and stockings and
went around the slough to find out if any green leaves were unfolding
yet in the wild-plum thicket. A little later she climbed the bluff to
the corn-field, making a diligent search for Indian arrowheads all the
way.
When she reached the seed-bag again, she threw the string over her head
and started up a row determinedly. For a rod or more she did not pause
either to be polite or to scare away gophers, but hurried along very
fast, with her eyes to the ground. Suddenly she chanced to look just
ahead of her, and stopped abruptly, standing erect. Her shadow pointed
straight for the bluff: it was noon and high time to eat dinner.
She sat down on the marker and munched her sandwiches of salted lard and
corn-meal bread with great appetite. She was just finishing them when
the call of a goose far overhead attracted her attention. She got down
and lay flat on her back, with her head on the seed-bag, to watch the
flock, high above her, speeding northward to the lakes, their leader
crying commands to the gray company that flew in V-shaped order behind
him. When the geese were but a dark thread across the north sky, she
felt drowsy and, turning on her side with her hat over her face and her
back to the gentle spring breeze, went fast asleep.
She lay there for hours, entirely unaware of the saucy stares of several
gophers who paused in their hunt for kernels and stood straight as
picket-pins to watch and wonder at the little heap of pink calico under
the battered sailor-hat, or whisked about her, their short legs
flashing, their tails wide and bushy, their cheek-pouches so full of
kernels that they smiled fatly when they looked at her, and showed four
long front teeth. But the little girl was wrapped in a happy dream of a
certain beautiful red wagon with a real seat that she had seen in a
thick catalogue sent her mother by a store in a distant city. So she
never moved till late in the afternoon, when the gentle breeze
strengthened to a sharp wind that, with a petulant gust, whirled her
sailor across the rows and far away.
The flying hat caused a stampede among some curious gophers who were
just then investigating a near-by unplanted row in the hope of finding
more corn. Clattering shrilly, they scudded back to the meadow, and the
little girl rose. After a long chase for the hat, she went stiffly to
work again, not stopping to put on her shoes and stockings, though the
wind was cold.
After that she planted faithfully, leaving off only to throw clods at
the gophers, or to ease her back now and then. And it was when she was
resting a moment that she noticed something that made her begin working
harder than ever. Her shadow stretched out so far to the eastward that
she could not touch its head with the end of her long hoe. When she
first came out that morning, it had fallen just as far the other way.
She looked anxiously up at the sun, which was shining slantingly upon
the freshly harrowed land through a gray haze that hung about it. Then
she looked again at her shadow, distorted and grotesque, that moved when
she moved and mimicked her when she bent to drop the corn. Its length
showed her that it was getting late, and that she would soon hear the
summoning blast of the cow-horn that hung behind the kitchen door.
She dropped the seed-bag, walked across the strip still unplanted, and
counted the rows. She returned on the run. The dropping was little more
than half finished, and no covering had been done at all. She knew she
could not finish that day; yet if they asked her at the farm-house if
she had completed the planting, she would not dare to tell them how
little of it was done. She sat down to pull on her shoes and stockings,
thinking hard all the while. But, just as she had one leg dressed, she
sprang up with a happy thought, and stood on the shod foot like a heron
while she dressed the other. Then, without stopping to lace her shoes,
she tossed her sailor aside, swung the seed-bag to the front, and began
dropping corn as fast as she could.
The kernels were counted no longer, nor were they placed in the hills
precisely. Without a glance to right or left, she raced along the rows,
her cheeks flaming and her hair flying out in the wind. She had decided
that she would _plant_ all of the strip--but not _cover_ the corn until
next day.
The sun sank slowly toward the horizon as she worked. But the unplanted
rows were rapidly growing fewer and fewer now, and the descending disk
gave her little worry. Up and down she hurried, scattering rather than
dropping the seed, until she was on her final trip. When she reached the
end of the last row, she joyfully put all the corn she had left into one
hill, turned the seed-bag inside out, slipped her lunch-bucket into it,
and, after hiding her hoe in the stone pile on the carnelian bluff,
turned her face toward the house. And at that very moment, with the
winding of the cow-horn for its farewell salute, the last yellow rind of
the sun went out of sight below the level line of the prairie.
* * * * *
EARLY the next day, while the little girl's big brothers were busy with
the chores, she mounted her pony and rode away southward from the
farm-house. At the reservation road, she faced toward the sun and struck
her horse to a canter. A mile out on the prairie to the east, she turned
due north up a low ravine; and finally completed almost a perfect square
by coming west, when on a line with the carnelian bluff, to the edge of
the corn-field. There she tied her pony to a large stone on the slope of
the bluff and well out of sight of the house, and, after hunting up the
hoe, started energetically to cover up the planting of the day before.
She began at the bluff on the first uncovered row, and swung down it
rapidly, her hoe flashing brightly in the sun as she pulled the dirt
over the kernels. But when she had gone less than half the distance to
the meadow she stopped at a hill and anxiously examined it a moment. She
went on to the next without using her hoe, then on to the next and the
next; and, finally, putting it across her shoulder, walked slowly to the
end.
Arrived at the edge of the meadow, she turned about and followed up
another row. Her hoe was still across her shoulder, and she did not stop
to use it until she was near the bluff. When she reached the meadow the
second time, she sat down on the row-marker and looked out across the
timothy.
"Goodness!" she said, addressing the half-dozen animated stakes that
were eying her from a proper distance, "you've done it!"
The gophers stood straighter than ever when they heard her voice, and
new ones came from their burrows and sat up to watch her, with their
fore paws held primly in front of them, their tails lying out motionless
behind, and their slender heads poised pertly--with no movement except
the twinkle of sharp, black eyes and the quiver of long whiskers.
"And there ain't 'nough seed left in that barrel," went on the little
girl, "to plant a single row over again."
She sat on the marker a long time, a sorrowful little figure, in deep
study. And when she finally rose and resumed work at the upper end of
the strip, she thought with dread of the disclosure that sprouting-time
would bring.
An hour later, she untied her pony and climbed wearily upon his back. As
she rode across the meadow toward home, she shook her head solemnly at
the mounds in the timothy.
"I s'pose," she said, "you've _got_ to have something to lay up for
winter; but I think you might 'a' gone down to mother's veg'table patch,
'cause, when the corn comes up, I'll catch it!"
The corn-stalks were nodding in their first untasseled sturdiness before
the little girl's big brothers paid the field a visit to see when the
crowding suckers should be pulled and the first loosening given to the
dirt about the hills. They went down one morning, their muskets over
their shoulders, and the little girl went with them, hoping that so much
time had passed since the planting that they would not punish her even
if they found fault with her work on the last eighty rows.
Summer had come in on a carpet of spring green strewn with wild clover,
asters, and blazing-star. And as they went along, the verdant prairie
rolled away before them for miles in the warm sunlight, unbroken save
where their eyes passed to the richer emerald of wheat sprinkled with
gay mustard, new flax on freshly turned sod, or a sea of waving maize.
Overhead, the geese no longer streaked the sky in changing lines, but
swarms of blackbirds filled the air with crisp calls at their approach,
and rose from the ground in black clouds. Down along the slough where
the wild-plum boughs waved their blossoms they could see the calves
frolicking together; and up on the carnelian bluff, the young
prairie-chickens scurried through the grass before a watchful mother.
The little girl trailed, barefooted, behind her big brothers, and was in
no humor to enjoy any of the beauties of earth or sky. With anxious
face she followed them as they penetrated the lusty stand of corn, going
from south to north on the western side of the field. Then she tagged
less willingly as they turned east toward the strip she had planted. As
they neared it they remarked a scarcity of stalks ahead; and when they
at last stood on the first of the eighty rows, they gazed with
astonishment at the narrow belt that showed bravely green at the upper
end by the carnelian bluff, but dark and bare over the three fourths of
its length that sloped down to the timothy meadow.
"I guess _this_ won't need no thinning," said the biggest brother,
ironically.
They set to work to examine the hills, that only here and there sent up
a lonely shoot, the little girl standing by and silently watching them.
But they found few signs of the gopher burrowing they felt sure had
devastated the ground. All at once the eldest brother had a brilliant
thought, and, with a glance at the little girl, who was nervously
twisting her fingers, paced eastward and counted the rows that made up
the barren strip. There were just eighty!
He came back and joined his brothers; and the little girl, standing
before him, dared not lift her eyes to his face.
"Did you plant that corn?" he demanded, ramming the butt of his musket
into the ground.
"Yes," answered the little girl, her voice husky with apprehension.
There was a pause.
"Did a lot of gophers come in while you's a-planting?" asked the biggest
brother, more kindly.
"Oh, a _lot_," answered the little girl.
"Did you sling clods at 'em?" demanded the eldest brother, again
pounding the musket into the dirt.
"Nearly slung my arm off," answered the little girl.
The eldest brother grunted incredulously.
"It's mighty funny," he said, "that the gophers liked _your_ planting
better 'n anybody else's."
The little girl did not answer. Her forehead was puckered painfully as,
gripping her hat, she stood busily curling and uncurling her toes in the
dirt. Her lashes were fluttering as if she awaited a blow.
"I'll just ask you one thing," went on the eldest brother; "what's
to-morrow?"
The little girl started as if the blow had fallen, and stammered her
answer.
"My--my--birfday," she said.
"A--_ha_," he replied suggestively. Then he tramped to the timothy
meadow, the others following. And the little girl, walking very slowly,
came on behind.
* * * * *
WHEN the big brothers had gone on to the farm-house, the little girl
still tarried in the corn-field. Her eldest brother's hint concerning
her birthday had suggested the cruel punishment she felt certain was to
be hers, and she could not bear to face the family at the dinner-table.
For months she had longed for a little red wagon--a wagon with a long
tongue, and "Express" on the side in black letters; and had planned how
she would harness Bruno and Luffree to it and drive along the level
prairie roads. Evening after evening she had taken out the thick
catalogue and pored over the prices, and had shown the kind she wanted
again and again to all the big brothers in turn.
Then one day she had surprised her biggest brother while he was taking a
bulky brown-paper package off the farm wagon on his return from Yankton.
He had sent her into the house; but she had found out later that the
package was in the corn-crib, and had crept in there one afternoon, when
the farm-house was deserted, and taken a good look at it as it hung from
a rafter and well out of reach. It was still unwrapped, but the brown
paper was torn in one place, and through the hole the little girl had
seen a smooth, round red stick. It was a wheel-spoke.
Her sixth-and-a-half birthday was not far off, and she had waited for
its coming as patiently as she could, in the meantime working secretly
on harnesses for the dogs, who had resigned themselves good-naturedly to
much measuring. Now, on the very eve of her happiness, she was to be
deprived of the yearned-for wagon.
Crouching in the corn-field, she grieved away the long day. Dinner-time
came, and all the corn-stalk shadows pointed significantly toward the
carnelian bluff; then they slowly shifted around to the eastward and
grew very long; and at last commingled and were blotted out by the
descending gloom that infolded the little girl.