Standing by on tiptoe, with only the neighbor woman between her and the
colonel's son, she saw the chaplain unite the Dutchman's daughter and
the young farmer. The ceremony took place in the yard, so that all might
witness it, and the biggest brother held the lantern by which the
chaplain read from his prayer-book. The guests gathered about quietly,
and listened reverently to the service and to the prayer for health and
happiness in the dugout home on the Fork. And when the kissing,
handshaking, and congratulations were over, they moved across the yard
to the kitchen door, where they drank hearty toasts to the bride, in
coffee-cups foaming high with beer. Then the married men took their
wives, and the unmarried, their sweethearts, and went into the house to
open the party.
The Dutchman's habitation was different from his neighbors' homes. One
roof sheltered his family, his oxen and his cows, his harvested crops,
his poultry and his pigs. It was a shanty roof, and it covered a long,
sod building that began, at the river end, with the sitting-room,
continued through the bedroom, the kitchen, the granary, the stable, and
the chicken-coop, and was completed by the pig-house. The Dutchman, his
wife, and their daughters could go back and forth from the best room to
the beasts without leaving its cover. So, no matter how deep the snow
was, the cattle never lacked for fodder, the hens for feed, or the hogs
for their mash, a boiler of which, sour and fumy, cooked winter and
summer upon the kitchen stove; and, when the fiercest of blizzards was
blowing, the family were in no danger of getting lost between the house
and the barn.
The three rooms of the building that were nearest the Vermilion, though
given different names, were really all bedrooms. A high four-poster of
unplaned boards stood against the low back wall of the sitting-room,
beneath the rack that held the Dutchman's pipes; the sleeping-room,
which the four eldest children occupied, held two smaller beds; and in
the kitchen--where the family ate their breakfasts of coffee-cake and
barley-coffee, their dinners of souse and vegetables and hard bread
broken into a pan of clabbered milk, and supped, without plates, around
a deep bowl of stew--was a wide couch that belonged to the youngest
three.
But on the night of the wedding the first two rooms were empty, except
for benches, the beds having been taken down early in the day and piled
up beside the hay-stacks back of the stable. The couch in the kitchen
was left in its place, however, and was covered from head to foot with
babies.
The house was lighted by barn lanterns, hung out of the way under the
shingles at the upper ends of the bare, sloping roof-joists, and their
dull flames, that leaped and dipped with the moving feet beneath them,
shone upon walls clean and bright in a fresh layer of newspapers, and
revealed, to whomever cast a look upward, the parcels of herbs, seeds,
and sewing thrust here and there in handy crevices of the brown,
cobwebbed ceiling.
The Dutchman's neighbors crowded the rooms to the doors. In the kitchen
were the older women, keeping watch over the couch and, at the same
time, with busy clatter in a half-dozen tongues, unwrapping the edibles
brought for the wedding supper. In the doorway between the other rooms
sat the eldest brother playing his fiddle, the Irishman twanging a
jews'-harp, and "Frenchy" with the bones; and on each side of them
danced the guests.
The newly made bride and her husband led the quadrille in the
sitting-room, opposite a trooper and the neighbor woman; the Swede had
as his partner the new teacher, a young lady from St. Paul; and the
biggest brother had his mother. Above them, as they promenaded,
balanced, and swung, waved the black felt hat that the Dutchman had worn
when he took his long trip over the prairie to invite them. Each family
he visited had pinned a ribbon to its rim; and now it swayed back and
forth, a gay and varicolored challenge to the hands reached out to grasp
it.
The army chaplain was in the next room; and, as the quadrille closed in
a roistering polka and a waltz struck up, he clapped in time to the
couples that were circling before him, their hands on each other's
shoulders, and their voices joining merrily with the music:
"In Lauterbach hab' ich mein Strumf verlor'n,
Und ohne Strumf geh' ich nicht heim;
Ich gehe doch wieder zu Lauterbach hin
Und kauf' mir ein Strumf fuer mein Bein."
Now and then a couple drew aside and sat down a moment to rest. But soon
they were back on the floor again, whirling and laughing and stamping
their feet, and raising clouds of dust from the rough plank floors to
their scarlet faces.
Out of doors there was less noise, but no lack of fun. Smudge fires
burned in a wide circle about the house to repel the hungry mosquitos
that, with high, monotonous battle-songs, stormed the smoky barrier
between them and the inner circle of horses and oxen feeding from
wagon-boxes. Nearer the building, and set about the carefully raked yard
on barrels and boxes, were Jack-o'-lanterns made of pumpkins, that gave
out the uncertain, flickering light of tallow dips through their
goggle-eyes and grinning mouths.
In and out among the wagons, fires, and lanterns the children were
playing hide-and-go-seek, screaming with excitement as they scampered in
every direction to secrete themselves, or lying still and breathless as
the boy who was "it" hunted them cautiously, with one eye searching for
moving shadows and the other fixed upon the wagon-wheel that was the
goal. On being sent out of the house to give the dancers room, the boys
had raised a joyous clamor over their banishment, and begun a game of
crack-the-whip; while the girls, not wishing to soil their clothes, had
walked to and fro in front of the house, with their arms around each
other, and watched the dancing. But when the Swede boy, who was chosen
for the snapper, was so worn and breathless with being popped from the
end of the rushing line that he could run no longer, boys and girls had
joined in playing tag and blindman's-buff and, afterward,
hide-and-go-seek.
The little girl was with them. But, so far, in spite of her white dress,
which made her an easy prey, she had not been caught. The boys who had
taken their turns at the wheel had caught other boys whom she did not
know; and had always managed to find and, with much struggling, kiss the
particular girls they favored. No matter how conspicuously she had
hidden, they had always passed her by. As a result, after two or three
disappointments, she had not taken the trouble of running to cover, but
had either lingered just within the sitting-room to watch the dancing,
or hung wistfully about the yard, somewhere near the colonel's son.
"Frenchy's" brother was now guarding the goal, and the little girl was
ambushed behind the very straw-pile that concealed the colonel's son. It
was an occasion that she had looked forward to and secretly brought to
pass, yet, as she knelt close beside him, she could not think of one of
the polite things she had planned to say to him that night. Their
proximity struck her dumb, while he was silent through fear of being
discovered. So they cowered together, speechless and restive, until the
Swede boy tore by in an unsuccessful race for the wagon-wheel. Then the
colonel's son darted out from behind the straw, and she remained
regretfully looking after his blue-clad form.
All at once her meditations were rudely interrupted. "Frenchy's"
brother, skulking here and there on the lookout for a bright, telltale
apron, came round the pile and pounced upon her. "Forfeet! forfeet!" he
cried, dragging her out into the middle of the yard.
She tried to pull away from him, and twisted her head so that her face
was out of reach. "You stop," she cried hotly; "you jus' stop!"
The struggle was sweet to him, however, and he only laughed at her
angry commands and fought harder than ever for his due, striving at
every turn to pin her arms down so that she could not resist. The boys
ran up to urge him on, and the girls hopped up and down in their
enjoyment of the scuffle.
But he was not able to win in the contest. The little girl was a match
for him. What she lacked in strength she made up in nimbleness, and she
stood her ground fiercely, wrestling on until, with a quick, furious
wrench, she freed herself from his hold and bolted toward the kitchen.
"Frenchy's" brother pursued her. But, once inside, she was safe, for he
dared not enter and scramble across the couch to where she had sought
refuge by a window. So he turned back toward the goal. "I get you yet,"
he shouted, wiping his damp face on his shirt sleeve.
The other children gathered about him and taunted him with his failure.
To right himself in their eyes he set after one of the Dutchman's girls,
who shook off her wooden shoes and fled frantically in circles to evade
him. But he succeeded in catching her and taking a forfeit from one of
her sun-bleached braids, after which he went to the wagon and sat down
on the tongue to rest.
The game went on. It was the Swede boy's turn at the goal, and he put
his hands over his face and began to count as the children scattered.
"Tane, twanety, thirty, forty, feefty," he chanted, "seexty, saventy,
eighty." As he told the numbers he stealthily watched the kitchen window
where the little girl stood.
The neighbor woman's boy, who was in hiding under the wagon and almost
at his feet, saw him peeking through his fingers and jumped out to
denounce him. "King's ex, king's ex!" he cried, holding up one hand.
"It's no fair; he's looking."
"Ay bane note," declared the Swede boy, stoutly, wheeling about; "yo
late may alone."
"You are, too," persisted the other, springing away to hide again.
The Swede boy once more resumed his chanting, and the little girl, as
she leaned from her vantage-point to listen, wished that she might
return to the yard and take part in the game. But "Frenchy's" brother,
though tired with his struggles, was still sitting menacingly on the
wagon tongue, and she dared not leave her cover.
Suddenly the sight of a slat sunbonnet, hanging on a nail beside her,
suggested a means of circumventing him. She took it down and put it on,
tying the strings under her chin in a hard double knot. The long, stiff
pasteboard slats buried her face completely, and nobody but Luffree,
with his sharp muzzle, could have reached her cheeks to kiss them. So
she sallied bravely into the yard.
The Swede boy had been counting slowly in the hope that she would hide,
and when he saw her approaching he paused a moment, expecting
"Frenchy's" brother to renew the attack. But the figure on the tongue
never moved, even when the little girl, with a saucy swish of her
skirts, paused daringly near it. So he sang out his last call:
"Boshel of wheat, boshel of raye,
Who ain't radey, holer 'Ay.'"
"I," shouted the little girl, whisking triumphantly away, and the Swede
boy began to count again.
She entered the house, going in at the sitting-room. He followed her
movements as she threaded her way through the dancers toward the empty
granary, and saw her sunbonnet pass the bedroom window and the open
kitchen door. Then once more he sent out the last call. This time there
was no response. So, after a hasty examination of the wagon, he began to
creep about with an impressive show of hunting.
Often he came upon a new calico dress trailing in a dusty place, but
passed its wearer by as if he had not seen her. He surprised the
colonel's son curled up in a box beneath a Jack-o'-lantern, and
distanced him to the wagon. Then he went on searching for a girl, and
the boys, clustered about the wheel, watched him as he sneaked through
the yard. Finally, when he judged that enough time had passed to warrant
it, he made a wider search that brought him close to the granary door.
His courage almost failed him as he passed in front of it, and he was
glad when the delighted squeals of two girls, who were running toward
the goal, gave him an excuse to delay his entrance. But when the girls
had tapped the wheel, he bounded back and, spurring himself on, stepped
within the dark room, where, in a far corner, he caught a faint glint of
white.
He walked toward it timidly. It moved, and he stood still. "Yo there?"
he asked, at last, his throat so dry that he could scarcely find the
words. A subdued giggle answered him. He recalled how kind and
comrade-like she had been to him three months before when they had
caught gophers together, and his spirits rose. "Yo there?" he asked
again.
Suddenly she came from her corner and attempted to pass him. Emboldened
by the darkness, he put out his arms and stopped her, and she laughed
gaily up at him. He laughed shyly back and dropped her arms. She made no
effort to get away. He stood still, awkwardly cracking his knuckles.
"Why don't you fight!" she demanded. He did not reply, but shuffled his
feet and cracked his knuckles harder than ever. The music of a waltz
floated in to them over the babble of the kitchen, and he turned his
head that way as if to listen. As he did so she crept past him, her eyes
sparkling with fun from the depths of the bonnet. When he turned back to
look at her, she was gone.
He followed her out and paid no attention to the jeering inquiries of
the other children. And as the colonel's son began to count from the
wagon-wheel he walked slowly past the teams and smudges, and across a
strip of backfire beyond, to the high, dry grass, where he lay on his
back for the rest of the evening, looking sadly up at the stars.
The little girl sought a hiding-place, too, behind a hay-stack on the
other side of the house. The colonel's son had seen her run that way,
and as he sounded the final challenge his voice had a victorious ring.
He began a second mock hunt. But it was a short one, for, fearful that
he might stumble upon one of the Dutchman's younger brood, he first
penetrated the outer darkness to find a boy, and then ran round the
house in the direction taken by the little girl.
He came upon her unexpectedly as he circled a stack. She was crouching
in plain sight against the hay, her face still hidden in the recesses
of the bonnet. He rushed up to her and took her by the shoulders. "I've
got you!" he said, but so low that the neighbor woman's daughter, who
was just a few steps away behind a fanning-mill, could scarcely hear
him.
"Y-e-e-s," stammered the little girl. She drew back and looked down, all
her assurance supplanted by a wild desire to get away.
"Going to let me have my forfeit?" he whispered, shaking her a little.
The sunbonnet drooped until its wide cape stood up stiffly above her
curls. "I hate that old French boy," she said.
The colonel's son moved closer, and a wisp of brittle grass in her hands
crackled in a double grasp. She glanced up at him swiftly, as she felt
his touch, and this time there was a nearing of the white frock to the
suit of blue. "Well,--if--if--you've got t'," she added.
But the colonel's son, as he bent over her with all the gallantry of his
nine years, had to learn by experience what "Frenchy's" brother had
divined at a glance: the sunbonnet was in the way.
He was equal to the emergency, however, and hesitated only for a moment.
Then he put his hand into his trousers pocket and took out his
clasp-knife. He could hear some one at the goal calling him, and there
was a rattle of dishes in the house, where the music had ceased for a
moment, that told him the plates were being passed for supper. He knew
that in a moment either the chaplain or the boys would be searching for
him.
She heard the calls and clatter, too; yet she did not move except to
raise her head until the bonnet strings were in plain sight under her
dimpled chin. When he saw them, he straightened his knife out with a
click and leaned once more toward her.
The fiddle was playing the opening strains of the supper dance now, and
a hundred voices were singing with it; so the neighbor woman's daughter,
who had been peering from behind the fanning-mill, hurried away to the
house. And thus it came about that no one but a vagrant night-hawk,
perched high on the top of the stack, remained near enough to hear the
sawing sound of a dull knife-blade, making its way through cloth.
* * * * *
IN the early morning hours, as the gray team jogged homeward past the
deserted school-house, the big brothers and their mother discussed the
wedding, the dancing, and the supper. But the little girl, snugly
wrapped in a quilt on the hay behind, lay still and silent, and only
smiled when the night breeze from the west bore to her ear the clear
notes of the departing bugle blowing a sweet retreat.
IX
THE PRICE OF CONVALESCENCE
EVERY morning a cloud appeared in the east, rushed westward across the
northern sky, and vanished beyond the "Jim." Every afternoon it came up
in the west again, swept back toward the east, and went out of sight in
the Big Sioux. If a herd chanced to be grazing too near its path as it
approached, they were scattered right and left in wild confusion by a
shrill _toot_! _toot_! that could be heard at the farm-house. But when
the way was clear the cloud traveled swiftly and silently, stringing
itself, on sunny days, to a low white ribbon, or, if the air was damp
and the heavens were gray, separating itself, from river to river, into
many dark coughs of dense, high-sailing smoke.
For three months it had been crossing the plains as regularly as the sun
itself. Before that it had loitered, attended, so the biggest brother
said, by a great company of rough men carrying shovels and picks. It was
this company, stray members of which, worn and grimy, had visited the
farm-house now and then and talked in broad brogue, that had kept the
little girl and the herd south of the reservation road throughout the
early spring; and it was not until the men had dispersed and the cloud
had begun its daily trips from horizon to horizon that she was permitted
to ride northward on the pinto to see it go by.
The youngest brother went with her, mounted upon a skittish, bald-faced
pony, and they halted together, near the low embankment that divided the
prairie, to wait for the engine. But when it hurtled past, a screaming
thing of iron and flying sparks, both the pinto and the pony, despite
their riders' curbing, retreated so precipitately from the track that
neither she nor the youngest brother caught more than a glimpse of the
flying train, for their mounts ceased running only when the barn-yard
was reached. Then the old mare came to a stop, blowing and trembling so
wildly that she could scarcely keep her legs, while the bald-face kicked
and snorted about among the granaries and pens in a perfect paroxysm of
terror.
It was not long, however, before the pinto completely lost her fear of
the engine, and would eat quietly near the embankment while the little
girl lay flat on the ties to listen for a first faint rumble, or waved
at the people in the cars. The flock, too, became so familiar with the
track that they soon had a contempt for it, a feeling that they retained
even after a dozen of their number had been mangled on its rails; but
the cattle always kept it at a respectful distance, and only Napoleon
ever showed the train enough hostility to shake his stubby horns angrily
at it or charge toward it as it shot away over the plains. The herd was
allowed, therefore, to feed along the railroad in the custody of the
little girl.
But now, for nearly three weeks, the Swede boy had kept guard over the
grazing stock, and the little girl had not even seen the cloud above the
distant train. For she was ill: so ill that the neighbor woman, who
shared the long night watches beside the canopied bed with the biggest
brother and his mother, shook her head in the seclusion of the kitchen,
and told herself that the little girl would never be well again.
The family were beginning to have the same awful thought, and had sent a
telegraphic summons from the new station, ten miles away, to a physician
in Sioux Falls. To them a cloud far heavier and darker than the engine's
breath was hanging, day and night, over the farm-house, shutting out all
sunshine, hope, and happiness.
One warm afternoon, while the little girl was riding the cultivator mare
up and down in the Indian corn, she had suddenly been seized with a
chill. That night a fever followed, and for a week she grew steadily
worse. Her mother gave her every home remedy known to be good for
malaria, and at the end of the second week moved her to the canopied
bed, where an ever waving fan cooled her hot cheeks. It was here, almost
at the end of the third week of her illness, that the Sioux Falls doctor
found her.
She was tossing from side to side, murmuring in a delirium that had
possessed her for days. Her face showed a scarlet flush against the
white pillow-slip. The biggest brother, who scarcely left her bedside to
rest or eat, was placing cold cloths upon her forehead and wetting her
lips. White through his tan, he hung over her in an agony of fear, only
lifting his eyes, now and then, to turn them sorrowfully upon his
mother, seated opposite.
The little girl did not know of the doctor's arrival. As he hurried into
the sitting-room, she was thinking of the floating cloud. Now it was
pursuing her as she fled from it on a fleet pony; now it was stooping
groundward, a huge, airy monster, to offer her a cake of ice; again it
was sweeping over her, quenching the deadly fire that consumed her, and
leaving her on the damp, green bank above the mooring-place of the
bull-boat. She lay very still with her cool thoughts, her eyes, wide and
lustrous, fixed upon the blue canopy overhead. But when, a moment
later, the fever burned more hotly again, and the cloud changed to a
blinding, blistering steam that enveloped her, she sat up and fought
with her hands, and cried aloud for the biggest brother.
The doctor caught her wrists and gently put her back. One glance at her
parched lips and brown tongue had told him what was the matter, and as
he opened a valise and took out some medicines he answered the inquiring
looks of the family. "Typhoid," he said. "She's a very sick child. But I
think we may be able to pull her through."
With her mother and the big brothers looking on mournfully, the first
step was taken toward aiding her. One by one her curls, so long her
mother's pride and care, were snipped off close to her head; and when at
last they lay on the bed in a newspaper, a little heap of soft, yellow
tangles, there was sobbing all about in the sitting-room, and even the
doctor, accustomed to sad sights, could not keep the tears from chasing
down his cheeks and into his brown beard.
She looked pitifully thin and altered, shorn of her bright halo; yet at
once she grew quieter, and when she was gently lowered into the brimming
wash-tub and then laid between sheets wrung from cold water, she closed
her eyes gratefully and ceased her outcries.
The doctor, collarless and with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, worked over
her all day. The little girl's mother and the neighbor woman assisted
him, and the big brothers sat on the bench in front of the house, so as
to be within easy call. But when twilight came, and everything possible
had been done for his patient's comfort, the doctor, who was tired with
his long ride and the day's strain, went into the little girl's room and
took a much-needed sleep.
"Keep up your courage," he said cheerily to the biggest brother, as he
left him at his post by the little girl; "her years of outdoor life will
help her rally. I have hope; but wake me at once if you note any decided
change."
The evening hours passed slowly. In the sick-room the little girl's
mother was resting on the lounge, which had been pulled close to the
canopied bed. The neighbor woman dozed in the kitchen, beside the table
where was spread the untasted supper. The eldest and the youngest
brothers were stretched, still dressed, on their beds in the attic. The
house was noiseless, and dark everywhere except in the sitting-room.
There, on the high clock-shelf, the same tall lamp that, nearly seven
and a half years before, had burned like a beacon and lighted the coming
of the stork, now, turned low, shone upon the faithful biggest brother
and the suffering little girl.