THE EVE OF OTHER THINGS
The wide valley was brown, with green splots and tracings for slough and
stream. The distant ranges were grey. The sky showed the misty blue of
the dog-days. Far off to the north and west, black streaks edged the
horizon, where smoke rolled up from prairie-fires.
Brannon was quiet to the point of lethargy. Guard was mounted, and daily
dress-parade held ceremoniously. The trumpet blew its unvarying round of
commands. There was no hunting, and no field duty beyond the scouting of
the eastern shore. The hoarse salute of an upward-plying steamer roused
the garrison to life one morning. But the interruption lasted barely
half an hour. Then the steamer, her pilot-house screened by sheet iron,
and her decks aswarm with infantry, rounded a bend in the river and went
coughing away out of sight. Once again, interest centred at the site of
the pony corral, where a platform was slowly building.
Life at the shack was even less eventful. For Dallas, it was a season of
idleness. The pumpkins and the melons were swelling; the tasselled corn
wanted weeks before it would ripen; the field and garden were free of
weeds. With no work to do, alone except for her sister, the elder girl
had ample time to worry.
Marylyn saw that she was dispirited, and increased in tenderness toward
her, following her about with eyes that entreated, yet were not sad. At
breakfast she spitted the choicest cuts for Dallas. In the noon heat,
she was at her elbow with a dipper of ginger-beer. And supper coaxed the
elder girl's failing appetite by offerings of tasty stew, white flour
dumplings and pone. As for herself, Marylyn needed neither urging nor
tidbits. She ate heartily. Her sleep was a rest for both body and mind.
Every afternoon she strolled across the bend to the cottonwoods. The
butterflies fared beside her. Overhead, between sun and earth, hung
legions of grasshoppers, like a haze. Underfoot, bluebell and sunflower
nodded. And the grove was a place for dreams!
And Dallas--was a wild thing that cannot tell of its wound.
She uttered no complaint, even to Simon. The outburst that followed
Lounsbury's return was her first and last. She questioned now if her
suffering justified a lament. In this, she resembled her mother. A
woman, coming to the section-house one torrid day, remarked wonderingly
that Mrs. Lancaster gave "nary a whimper." The latter looked up with a
smile. "I don't think I'm sick enough," she said. "Other people, worse
off, have a right to groan." Dallas, certain that Marylyn's heartache
was the keener, would not be behindhand in restraint. And her sister's
happiness, forethought, and desire to please, all drove the thrust of
penitence to the hilt, and turned the knife in that secret wound.
She found no solace in Marylyn's friends of the calico covers. Her
thoughts were too tempestuous for that. They were like milling cattle.
Around and around they tore, mingling and warring, but stilling in the
end to follow the only course--self-denial. Once so rebellious, she was
growing meek at last--meek and full of contrition. She was coming to
dwell more too, on the lessons that the evangelist had taught her: She
was coming to think of leaning where David Bond had leaned--she, who had
always been a prop.
There was the old terror that had stalked beside her down to her
mother's death. She had fought her way with it, and the conflict had
given her strength. There was the jealousy that had smirched her
sister-love. She had fought it, too, and bitterly, scorning it because
she knew it for a hateful inheritance. Now was come a third misery, and
the worst. She saw herself as a traitor. This was not mere reproach. It
was the torture of a stricken conscience.
Her face grew thin, her hand unsteady, her eyes wore a hunted look. At
night, hers were the scalding tears that dampened the pillow.
And so the days went by. Whatever pangs of remorse, whatever longing she
endured, she remained faithful to the resolution that she would not give
way to temptation again. But every night brought the lonely watcher to
the swale.