“Perhaps it would be as well now, dear, if we kept in the kitchen. I'll
keep it as bright and pleasant as I can. And, anyway, you can be more
about with me when I'm working then. We'll lay a fire in the front-room
stove, so that we can light it if anybody comes. We can just as well
save that much.”
Jim looked up brightly. “All right,” he said. “You're a sensible little
woman. You see, every cent makes a difference. And I want to be able to
pay off five hundred dollars of that mortgage this year.”
So, after that, they sat in the kitchen; and the fire was laid in the
front room, against the coming of company. But no one came, and it
remained unlighted.
Then the season began to show signs of opening,--bleak signs, hardly
recognizable to Annie; and after that Jim was not much in the house.
The weeks wore on, and spring came at last, dancing over the hills. The
ground-birds began building, and at four each morning awoke Annie with
their sylvan opera. The creek that ran just at the north of the house
worked itself into a fury and blustered along with much noise toward
the great Platte which, miles away, wallowed in its vast sandy bed. The
hills flushed from brown to yellow, and from mottled green to intensest
emerald, and in the superb air all the winds of heaven seemed to meet
and frolic with laughter and song.
Sometimes the mornings were so beautiful that, the men being afield and
Annie all alone, she gave herself up to an ecstasy and kneeled by the
little wooden bench outside the door, to say, “Father, I thank Thee,”
and then went about her work with all the poem of nature rhyming itself
over and over in her heart.
It was on such a day as this that Mrs. Dundy kept her promise and came
over to see if the young housekeeper needed any of the advice she
had promised her. She had walked, because none of the horses could be
spared. It had got so warm now that the fire in the kitchen heated
the whole house sufficiently, and Annie had the rooms clean to
exquisiteness. Mrs. Dundy looked about with envious eyes.
“How lovely!” she said.
“Do you think so?” cried Annie, in surprise. “I like it, of course,
because it is home, but I don't see how you could call anything here
lovely.”
“Oh, you don't understand,” her visitor went on. “It's lovely because it
looks so happy. Some of us have--well, kind o' lost our grip.”
“It's easy to do that if you don't feel well,” Annie remarked
sympathetically. “I haven't felt as well as usual myself, lately. And
I do get lonesome and wonder what good it does to fix up every day when
there is no one to see. But that is all nonsense, and I put it out of my
head.”
She smoothed out the clean lawn apron with delicate touch. Mrs. Dundy
followed the movement with her eyes.
“Oh, my dear,” she cried, “you don't know nothin' about it yet! But you
will know! You will!” and those restless, hot eyes of hers seemed to
grow more restless and more hot as they looked with infinite pity at the
young woman before her.
Annie thought of these words often as the summer came on, and the heat
grew. Jim was seldom to be seen now. He was up at four each morning,
and the last chore was not completed till nine at night. Then he threw
himself in bed and lay there log-like till dawn. He was too weary to
talk much, and Annie, with her heart aching for his fatigue, forbore to
speak to him. She cooked the most strengthening things she could, and
tried always to look fresh and pleasant when he came in. But she often
thought her pains were in vain, for he hardly rested his sunburned
eyes on her. His skin got so brown that his face was strangely changed,
especially as he no longer had time to shave, and had let a rough beard
straggle over his cheeks and chin. On Sundays Annie would have liked to
go to church, but the horses were too tired to be taken out, and she did
not feel well enough to walk far; besides, Jim got no particular good
out of walking over the hills unless he had a plough in his hand.
Harvest came at length, and the crop was good. There were any way from
three to twenty men at the house then, and Annie cooked for all of them.
Jim had tried to get some one to help her, but he had not succeeded.
Annie strove to be brave, remembering that farm-women all over the
country were working in similar fashion. But in spite of all she could
do, the days got to seem like nightmares, and sleep between was but a
brief pause in which she was always dreaming of water, and thinking that
she was stooping to put fevered lips to a running brook. Some of these
men were very disgusting to Annie. Their manners were as bad as they
could well be, and a coarse word came naturally to their lips.
“To be master of the soil, that is one thing,” said she to herself in
sickness of spirit; “but to be the slave of it is another. These men
seem to have got their souls all covered with muck.” She noticed that
they had no idea of amusement. They had never played anything. They did
not even care for base-ball. Their idea of happiness appeared to be to
do nothing; and there was a good part of the year in which they were
happy,--for these were not for the most part men owning farms; they
were men who hired out to help the farmer. A good many of them had been
farmers at one time and another, but they had failed. They all talked
politics a great deal,--politics and railroads. Annie had not much
patience with it all. She had great confidence in the course of things.
She believed that in this country all men have a fair chance. So when it
came about that the corn and the wheat, which had been raised with such
incessant toil, brought them no money, but only a loss, Annie stood
aghast.
“I said the rates were ruinous,” Jim said to her one night, after it was
all over, and he had found out that the year's slavish work had brought
him a loss of three hundred dollars; “it's been a conspiracy from the
first. The price of corn is all right. But by the time we set it down in
Chicago we are out eighteen cents a bushel. It means ruin. What are we
going to do? Here we had the best crop we've had for years--but what's
the use of talking! They have us in their grip.”
“I don't see how it is,” Annie protested. “I should think it would be
for the interest of the roads to help the people to be as prosperous as
possible.”
“Oh, we can't get out! And we're bound to stay and raise grain. And
they're bound to cart it. And that's all there is to it. They force
us to stand every loss, even to the shortage that is made in
transportation. The railroad companies own the elevators, and they have
the cinch on us. Our grain is at their mercy. God knows how I'm going to
raise that interest. As for the five hundred we were going to pay on the
mortgage this year, Annie, we're not in it.”
Autumn was well set in by this time, and the brilliant cold sky hung
over the prairies as young and fresh as if the world were not old and
tired. Annie no longer could look as trim as when she first came to the
little house. Her pretty wedding garments were beginning to be worn and
there was no money for more. Jim would not play chess now of evenings.
He was forever writing articles for the weekly paper in the adjoining
town. They talked of running him for the state legislature, and he was
anxious for the nomination.
“I think I might be able to stand it if I could fight 'em!” he declared;
“but to sit here idle, knowing that I have been cheated out of my year's
work, just as much as if I had been knocked down on the road and
the money taken from me, is enough to send me to the asylum with a
strait-jacket on!”
Life grew to take on tragic aspects. Annie used to find herself
wondering if anywhere in the world there were people with light
hearts. For her there was no longer anticipation of joy, or present
companionship, or any divertissement in the whole world. Jim read books
which she did not understand, and with a few of his friends, who dropped
in now and then evenings or Sundays, talked about these books in an
excited manner.
She would go to her room to rest, and lying there in the darkness on the
bed, would hear them speaking together, sometimes all at once, in those
sternly vindictive tones men use when there is revolt in their souls.
“It is the government which is helping to impoverish us,” she would hear
Jim saying. “Work is money. That is to say, it is the active form of
money. The wealth of a country is estimated by its power of production.
And its power of production means work. It means there are so many men
with so much capacity. Now the government owes it to these men to have
money enough to pay them for their work; and if there is not enough
money in circulation to pay to each man for his honest and necessary
work, then I say that government is in league with crime. It is trying
to make defaulters of us. It has a hundred ways of cheating us. When I
bought this farm and put the mortgage on it, a day's work would bring
twice the results it will now. That is to say, the total at the end of
the year showed my profits to be twice what they would be now, even if
the railway did not stand in the way to rob us of more than we earn.
So that it will take just twice as many days' work now to pay off this
mortgage as it would have done at the time it was contracted. It's a
conspiracy, I tell you! Those Eastern capitalists make a science of
ruining us.”
He got more eloquent as time went on, and Annie, who had known him
first as rather a careless talker, was astonished at the boldness of his
language. But conversation was a lost art with him. He no longer talked.
He harangued.
In the early spring Annie's baby was born,--a little girl with a nervous
cry, who never slept long at a time, and who seemed to wail merely from
distaste at living. It was Mrs. Dundy who came over to look after the
house till Annie got able to do so. Her eyes had that fever in them,
as ever. She talked but little, but her touch on Annie's head was more
eloquent than words. One day Annie asked for the glass, and Mrs. Dundy
gave it to her. She looked in it a long time. The color was gone from
her cheeks, and about her mouth there was an ugly tightening. But her
eyes flashed and shone with that same--no, no, it could not be that in
her face also was coming the look of half-madness! She motioned Mrs.
Dundy to come to her.
“You knew it was coming,” she said, brokenly, pointing to the reflection
in the glass. “That first day, you knew how it would be.”
Mrs. Dundy took the glass away with a gentle hand.
“How could I help knowing?” she said simply. She went into the next
room, and when she returned Annie noticed that the handkerchief stuck in
her belt was wet, as if it had been wept on.
A woman cannot stay long away from her home on a farm at planting time,
even if it is a case of life and death. Mrs. Dundy had to go home, and
Annie crept about her work with the wailing baby in her arms. The house
was often disorderly now; but it could not be helped. The baby had to
be cared for. It fretted so much that Jim slept apart in the mow of
the barn, that his sleep might not be disturbed. It was a pleasant, dim
place, full of sweet scents, and he liked to be there alone. Though he
had always been an unusual worker, he worked now more like a man who was
fighting off fate, than a mere toiler for bread.
The corn came up beautifully, and far as the eye could reach around
their home it tossed its broad green leaves with an oceanlike swelling
of sibilant sound. Jim loved it with a sort of passion. Annie loved
it, too. Sometimes, at night, when her fatigue was unbearable, and her
irritation wearing out both body and soul, she took her little one in
her arms and walked among the corn, letting its rustling soothe the baby
to sleep.
The heat of the summer was terrible. The sun came up in that blue sky
like a curse, and hung there till night came to comfort the blistering
earth. And one morning a terrible thing happened. Annie was standing
out of doors in the shade of those miserable little oaks, ironing, when
suddenly a blast of air struck her in the face, which made her look up
startled. For a moment she thought, perhaps, there was a fire near in
the grass. But there was none. Another blast came, hotter this time, and
fifteen minutes later that wind was sweeping straight across the plain,
burning and blasting. Annie went in the house to finish her ironing, and
was working there, when she heard Jim's footstep on the door-sill. He
could not pale because of the tan, but there was a look of agony and of
anger-almost brutish anger--in his eyes. Then he looked, for a moment,
at Annie standing there working patiently, and rocking the little crib
with one foot, and he sat down on the door-step and buried his face in
his brown arms.
The wind blew for three days. At the end of that time every ear was
withered in the stalk. The corn crop was ruined.
But there were the other crops which must be attended to, and Jim
watched those with the alertness of a despairing man; and so harvest
came again, and again the house was filled with men who talked their
careless talk, and who were not ashamed to gorge while this one woman
cooked for them. The baby lay on a quilt on the floor in the coolest
part of the kitchen. Annie fed it irregularly. Sometimes she almost
forgot it. As for its wailing, she had grown so used to it that she
hardly heard it, any more than she did the ticking of the clock. And
yet, tighter than anything else in life, was the hold that little thing
had on her heart-strings. At night, after the interminable work had been
finished--though in slovenly fashion--she would take it up and caress it
with fierceness, and worn as she was, would bathe it and soothe it, and
give it warm milk from the big tin pail.
“Lay the child down,” Jim would say impatiently, while the men would
tell how their wives always put the babies on the bed and let them cry
if they wanted to. Annie said nothing, but she hushed the little one
with tender songs.
One day, as usual, it lay on its quilt while Annie worked. It was a
terribly busy morning. She had risen at four to get the washing out of
the way before the men got on hand, and there were a dozen loaves of
bread to bake, and the meals to get, and the milk to attend to, and the
chickens and pigs to feed. So occupied was she that she never was able
to tell how long she was gone from the baby. She only knew that the heat
of her own body was so great that the blood seemed to be pounding at her
ears, and she staggered as she crossed the yard. But when she went at
last with a cup of milk to feed the little one, it lay with clenched
fists and fixed eyes, and as she lifted it, a last convulsion laid it
back breathless, and its heart had ceased to beat.
Annie ran with it to her room, and tried such remedies as she had.
But nothing could keep the chill from creeping over the wasted little
form,--not even the heat of the day, not even the mother's agonized
embrace. Then, suddenly, Annie looked at the clock. It was time to get
the dinner. She laid the piteous tiny shape straight on the bed, threw a
sheet over it, and went back to the weltering kitchen to cook for those
men, who came at noon and who must be fed--who must be fed.
When they were all seated at the table, Jim among them, and she had
served them, she said, standing at the head of the table, with her hands
on her hips:--
“I don't suppose any of you have time to do anything about it; but I
thought you might like to know that the baby is dead. I wouldn't think
of asking you to spare the horses, for I know they have to rest. But I
thought, if you could make out on a cold supper, that I would go to the
town for a coffin.”
There was satire in the voice that stung even through the dull
perceptions of these men, and Jim arose with a cry and went to the room
where his dead baby lay.
About two months after this Annie insisted that she must go home to
Illinois. Jim protested in a way.
“You know, I'd like to send you,” he said; “but I don't see where the
money is to come from. And since I've got this nomination, I want to run
as well as I can. My friends expect me to do my best for them. It's a
duty, you know, and nothing less, for a few men, like me, to get in the
legislature. We're going to get a railroad bill through this session
that will straighten out a good many things. Be patient a little longer,
Annie.”
“I want to go home,” was the only reply he got. “You must get the money,
some way, for me to go home with.”
“I haven't paid a cent of interest yet,” he cried angrily. “I don't see
what you mean by being so unreasonable!”
“You must get the money, some way,” she reiterated.
He did not speak to her for a week, except when he was obliged to. But
she did not seem to mind; and he gave her the money. He took her to the
train in the little wagon that had met her when she first came. At the
station, some women were gossiping excitedly, and Annie asked what they
were saying.
“It's Mis' Dundy,” they said. “She's been sent to th' insane asylum at
Lincoln. She's gone stark mad. All she said on the way out was,
'Th' butter won't come! Th' butter won't come!'” Then they laughed a
little--a strange laugh; and Annie thought of a drinking-song she had
once heard, “Here's to the next who dies.”
Ten days after this Jim got a letter from her. “I am never coming back,
Jim,” it said. “It is hopeless. I don't think I would mind standing
still to be shot down if there was any good in it. But I'm not going
back there to work harder than any slave for those money-loaners and the
railroads. I guess they can all get along without me. And I am sure I
can get along without them. I do not think this will make you feel very
bad. You haven't seemed to notice me very much lately when I've been
around, and I do not think you will notice very much when I am gone. I
know what this means. I know I am breaking my word when I leave you. But
remember, it is not you I leave, but the soil, Jim! I will not be its
slave any longer. If you care to come for me here, and live another
life--but no, there would be no use. Our love, like our toil, has been
eaten up by those rapacious acres. Let us say goodby.”
Jim sat all night with this letter in his hand. Sometimes he dozed
heavily in his chair. But he did not go to bed; and the next morning he
hitched up his horses and rode to town. He went to the bank which held
his notes.
“I'll confess judgment as soon as you like,” he said. “It's all up with
me.”
It was done as quickly as the law would allow. And the things in the
house were sold by auction. All the farmers were there with their wives.
It made quite an outing for them. Jim moved around impassively, and
chatted, now and then, with some of the men about what the horses ought
to bring.
The auctioneer was a clever fellow. Between the putting up of the
articles, he sang comic songs, and the funnier the song, the livelier
the bidding that followed. The horses brought a decent price, and the
machinery a disappointing one; and then, after a delicious snatch about
Nell who rode the sway-backed mare at the county fair, he got down to
the furniture,--the furniture which Jim had bought when he was expecting
Annie.
Jim was walking around with his hands in his pockets, looking
unconcerned, and, as the furniture began to go off, he came and sat down
in the midst of it. Every one noticed his indifference. Some of them
said that after all he couldn't have been very ambitious. He didn't seem
to take his failure much to heart. Every one was concentrating attention
on the cookingstove, when Jim leaned forward, quickly, over a little
wicker work-stand.
There was a bit of unfinished sewing there, and it fell out as he lifted
the cover. It was a baby's linen shirt. Jim let it lie, and then lifted
from its receptacle a silver thimble. He put it in his vest-pocket.
The campaign came on shortly after this, and Jim Lancy was defeated.
“I'm going to Omaha,” said he to the station-master, “and I've got just
enough to buy a ticket with. There's a kind of satisfaction in giving
the last cent I have to the railroads.”
Two months later, a “plain drunk” was registered at the station in
Nebraska's metropolis. When they searched him they found nothing in
his pockets but a silver thimble, and Joe Benson, the policeman who had
brought in the “drunk,” gave it to the matron, with his compliments. But
she, when no one noticed, went softly to where the man was sleeping, and
slipped it back into his pocket, with a sigh. For she knew somehow--as
women do know things--that he had not stolen that thimble.
THE equinoctial line itself is not more imaginary than the line which
divided the estates of the three Johns. The herds of the three Johns
roamed at will, and nibbled the short grass far and near without let or
hindrance; and the three Johns themselves were utterly indifferent as to
boundary lines. Each of them had filed his application at the office
of the government land-agent; each was engaged in the tedious task of
“proving up;” and each owned one-third of the L-shaped cabin which stood
at the point where the three ranches touched. The hundred and sixty
acres which would have completed this quadrangle had not yet been “taken
up.”
The three Johns were not anxious to have a neighbor. Indeed, they had
made up their minds that if one appeared on that adjoining “hun'erd an'
sixty,” it would go hard with him. For they did not deal in justice very
much--the three Johns. They considered it effete. It belonged in the
East along with other outgrown superstitions. And they had given it
out widely that it would be healthier for land applicants to give them
elbow-room. It took a good many miles of sunburnt prairie to afford
elbow-room for the three Johns.
They met by accident in Hamilton at the land-office. John Henderson,
fresh from Cincinnati, manifestly unused to the ways of the country,
looked at John Gillispie with a lurking smile. Gillispie wore a
sombrero, fresh, white, and expansive. His boots had high heels, and
were of elegant leather and finely arched at the instep. His corduroys
disappeared in them half-way up the thigh. About his waist a sash of
blue held a laced shirt of the same color in place. Henderson puffed at
his cigarette, and continued to look a trifle quizzical.
Suddenly Gillispie walked up to him and said, in a voice of complete
suavity, “Damn yeh, smoke a pipe!”
“Eh?” said Henderson, stupidly.
“Smoke a pipe,” said the other. “That thing you have is bad for your
complexion.”
“I can take care of my complexion,” said Henderson, firmly.
The two looked each other straight in the eye.
“You don't go on smoking that thing till you have apologized for that
grin you had on your phiz a moment ago.”
“I laugh when I please, and I smoke what I please,” said Henderson,
hotly, his face flaming as he realized that he was in for his first
“row.”
That was how it began. How it would have ended is not known--probably
there would have been only one John--if it had not been for the almost
miraculous appearance at this moment of the third John. For just then
the two belligerents found themselves prostrate, their pistols only
half-cocked, and between them stood a man all gnarled and squat, like
one of those wind-torn oaks which grow on the arid heights. He was no
older than the others, but the lines in his face were deep, and his
large mouth twitched as he said:--
“Hold on here, yeh fools! There's too much blood in you to spill. You'll
spile th' floor, and waste good stuff. We need blood out here!”
Gillispie bounced to his feet. Henderson arose suspiciously, keeping his
eyes on his assailants.
“Oh, get up!” cried the intercessor. “We don't shoot men hereabouts till
they git on their feet in fightin' trim.”
“What do you know about what we do here?” interrupted Gillispie. “This
is the first time I ever saw you around.”
“That's so,” the other admitted. “I'm just down from Montana. Came to
take up a quarter section. Where I come from we give men a show, an' I
thought perhaps yeh did th' same here.”
“Why, yes,” admitted Gillispie, “we do. But I don't want folks to laugh
too much--not when I'm around--unless they tell me what the joke is. I
was just mentioning it to the gentleman,” he added, dryly.
“So I saw,” said the other; “you're kind a emphatic in yer remarks.
Yeh ought to give the gentleman a chance to git used to the ways of
th' country. He'll be as tough as th' rest of us if you'll give him a
chance. I kin see it in him.”
“Thank you,” said Henderson. “I'm glad you do me justice. I wish you
wouldn't let daylight through me till I've had a chance to get my
quarter section. I'm going to be one of you, either as a live man or a
corpse. But I prefer a hundred and sixty acres of land to six feet of
it.”
“There, now!” triumphantly cried the squat man. “Didn't I tell yeh? Give
him a show! 'Tain't no fault of his that he's a tenderfoot. He'll get
over that.”
Gillispie shook hands with first one and then the other of the men.
“It's a square deal from this on,” he said. “Come and have a drink.”
That's how they met--John Henderson, John Gillispie, and John Waite.
And a week later they were putting up a shanty together for common use,
which overlapped each of their reservations, and satisfied the law with
its sociable subterfuge.
The life wasn't bad, Henderson decided; and he adopted all the ways of
the country in an astonishingly short space of time. There was a freedom
about it all which was certainly complete. The three alternated in the
night watch. Once a week one of them went to town for provisions. They
were not good at the making of bread, so they contented themselves with
hot cakes. Then there was salt pork for a staple, and prunes. They slept
in straw-lined bunks, with warm blankets for a covering. They made a
point of bringing reading-matter back from town every week, and there
were always cards to fall back on, and Waite sang songs for them with
natural dramatic talent.
Nevertheless, in spite of their contentment, none of them was sorry when
the opportunity offered for going to town. There was always a bit of
stirring gossip to be picked up, and now and then there was a “show” at
the “opera-house,” in which, it is almost unnecessary to say, no opera
had ever been sung. Then there was the hotel, at which one not only
got good fare, but a chat with the three daughters of Jim O'Neal, the
proprietor--girls with the accident of two Irish parents, who were,
notwithstanding, as typically American as they well could be. A
half-hour's talk with these cheerful young women was all the more to be
desired for the reason that within riding distance of the three Johns'
ranch there were only two other women. One was Minerva Fitch, who had
gone out from Michigan accompanied by an oil-stove and a knowledge of
the English grammar, with the intention of teaching school, but who had
been unable to carry these good intentions into execution for the reason
that there were no children to teach,--at least, none but Bow-legged
Joe. He was a sad little fellow, who looked like a prairie-dog, and who
had very much the same sort of an outlook on life. The other woman was
the brisk and efficient wife of Mr. Bill Deems, of “Missourah.” Mr.
Deems had never in his life done anything, not even so much as bring in
a basket of buffalo chips to supply the scanty fire. That is to say, he
had done nothing strictly utilitarian. Yet he filled his place. He
was the most accomplished story-teller in the whole valley, and this
accomplishment of his was held in as high esteem as the improvisations
of a Welsh minstrel were among his reverencing people. His wife alone
deprecated his skill, and interrupted his spirited narratives with
sarcastic allusions concerning the empty cupboard, and the “state of her
back,” to which, as she confided to any who would listen, “there was not
a rag fit to wear.”
These two ladies had not, as may be surmised, any particular attraction
for John Henderson. Truth to tell, Henderson had not come West with the
intention of liking women, but rather with a determination to see
and think as little of them as possible. Yet even the most confirmed
misogynist must admit that it is a good thing to see a woman now and
then, and for this reason Henderson found it amusing to converse with
the amiable Misses O'Neal. At twenty-five one cannot be unyielding in
one's avoidance of the sex.
Henderson, with his pony at a fine lope, was on his way to town one day,
in that comfortable frame of mind adduced by an absence of any ideas
whatever, when he suddenly became conscious of a shiver that seemed
to run from his legs to the pony, and back again. The animal gave a
startled leap, and lifted his ears. There was a stirring in the coarse
grasses; the sky, which a moment before had been like sapphire, dulled
with an indescribable grayness.
Then came a little singing afar off, as if from a distant convocation
of cicadae, and before Henderson could guess what it meant, a cloud
of dust was upon him, blinding and bewildering, pricking with sharp
particles at eyes and nostrils. The pony was an ugly fellow, and when
Henderson felt him put his forefeet together, he knew what that meant,
and braced himself for the struggle. But it was useless; he had not yet
acquired the knack of staying on the back of a bucking bronco, and the
next moment he was on the ground, and around him whirled that saffron
chaos of dust. The temperature lowered every moment. Henderson
instinctively felt that this was but the beginning of the storm. He
picked himself up without useless regrets for his pony, and made his way
on.
The saffron hue turned to blackness, and then out of the murk shot a
living green ball of fire, and ploughed into the earth. Then sheets of
water, that seemed to come simultaneously from earth and sky, swept the
prairie, and in the midst of it struggled Henderson, weak as a little
child, half bereft of sense by the strange numbness of head and dullness
of eye. Another of those green balls fell and burst, as it actually
appeared to him, before his horrified eyes, and the bellow and blare of
the explosion made him cry out in a madness of fright and physical pain.
In the illumination he had seen a cabin only a few feet in front of him,
and toward it he made frantically, with an animal's instinctive desire
for shelter.
The door did not yield at once to his pressure, and in the panic of
his fear he threw his weight against it. There was a cry from within, a
fall, and Henderson flung himself in the cabin and closed the door.
In the dusk of the storm he saw a woman half prostrate. It was she
whom he had pushed from the door. He caught the hook in its staple,
and turned to raise her. She was not trembling as much as he, but, like
himself, she was dizzy with the shock of the lightning. In the midst of
all the clamor Henderson heard a shrill crying, and looking toward the
side of the room, he dimly perceived three tiny forms crouched in one of
the bunks. The woman took the smallest of the children in her arms, and
kissed and soothed it; and Henderson, after he had thrown a blanket at
the bottom of the door to keep out the drifting rain, sat with his back
to it, bracing it against the wind, lest the frail staple should give
way. He managed some way to reach out and lay hold of the other little
ones, and got them in his arms,--a boy, so tiny he seemed hardly human,
and a girl somewhat sturdier. They cuddled in his arms, and clutched his
clothes with their frantic little hands, and the three sat so while the
earth and the heavens seemed to be meeting in angry combat.
And back and forth, back and forth, in the dimness swayed the body of
the woman, hushing her babe.
Almost as suddenly as the darkness had fallen, it lifted. The lightning
ceased to threaten, and almost frolicked,--little wayward flashes of
white and yellow dancing in mid-air. The wind wailed less frequently,
like a child who sobs in its sleep. And at last Henderson could make his
voice heard.
“Is there anything to build a fire with?” he shouted. “The children are
shivering so.”
The woman pointed to a basket of buffalo chips in the corner, and he
wrapped his little companions up in a blanket while he made a fire in
the cooking-stove. The baby was sleeping by this time, and the woman
began tidying the cabin, and when the fire was burning brightly, she put
some coffee on.
“I wish I had some clothes to offer you,” she said, when the wind had
subsided sufficiently to make talking possible. “I'm afraid you'll have
to let them get dry on you.”
“Oh, that's of no consequence at all! We're lucky to get off with our
lives. I never saw anything so terrible. Fancy! half an hour ago it was
summer; now it is winter!”
“It seems rather sudden when you're not used to it,” the woman admitted.
“I've lived in the West six years now; you can't frighten me any more.
We never die out here before our time comes.”
“You seem to know that I haven't been here long,” said Henderson, with
some chagrin.
“Yes,” admitted the woman; “you have the ear-marks of a man from the
East.”
She was a tall woman, with large blue eyes, and a remarkable quantity of
yellow hair braided on top of her head. Her gown was of calico, of such
a pattern as a widow might wear.
“I haven't been out of town a week yet,” she said. “We're not half
settled. Not having any one to help makes it harder; and the baby is
rather fretful.”
“But you're not alone with all these little codgers?” cried Henderson,
in dismay.
The woman turned toward him with a sort of defiance. “Yes, I am,” she
said; “and I'm as strong as a horse, and I mean to get through all
right. Here were the three children in my arms, you may say, and no way
to get in a cent. I wasn't going to stand it just to please other folk.
I said, let them talk if they want to, but I'm going to hold down a
claim, and be accumulating something while the children are getting up a
bit. Oh, I'm not afraid!”
In spite of this bold assertion of bravery, there was a sort of break in
her voice. She was putting dishes on the table as she talked, and turned
some ham in the skillet, and got the children up before the fire,
and dropped some eggs in water,--all with a rapidity that bewildered
Henderson.
“How long have you been alone?” he asked, softly.
“Three months before baby was born, and he's five months old now.
I--I--you think I can get on here, don't you? There was nothing else to
do.”
She was folding another blanket over the sleeping baby now, and the
action brought to her guest the recollection of a thousand tender
moments of his dimly remembered youth.
“You'll get on if we have anything to do with it,” he cried, suppressing
an oath with difficulty, just from pure emotion.
And he told her about the three Johns' ranch, and found it was only
three miles distant, and that both were on the same road; only her
cabin, having been put up during the past week, had of course been
unknown to him. So it ended in a sort of compact that they were to help
each other in such ways as they could. Meanwhile the fire got genial,
and the coffee filled the cabin with its comfortable scent, and all of
them ate together quite merrily, Henderson cutting up the ham for the
youngsters; and he told how he chanced to come out; and she entertained
him with stories of what she thought at first when she was brought a
bride to Hamilton, the adjacent village, and convulsed him with stories
of the people, whom she saw with humorous eyes.
Henderson marvelled how she could in those few minutes have rescued the
cabin from the desolation in which the storm had plunged it. Out of the
window he could see the stricken grasses dripping cold moisture, and the
sky still angrily plunging forward like a disturbed sea. Not a tree or
a house broke the view. The desolation of it swept over him as it never
had before. But within the little ones were chattering to themselves in
odd baby dialect, and the mother was laughing with them.
“Women aren't always useless,” she said, at parting; “and you tell your
chums that when they get hungry for a slice of homemade bread they can
get it here. And the next time they go by, I want them to stop in and
look at the children. It'll do them good. They may think they won't
enjoy themselves, but they will.”
“Oh, I'll answer for that!” cried he, shaking hands with her. “I'll tell
them we have just the right sort of a neighbor.”
“Thank you,” said she, heartily. “And you may tell them that her name is
Catherine Ford.”
Once at home, he told his story.
“H'm!” said Gillispie, “I guess I'll have to go to town myself
to-morrow.”
Henderson looked at him blackly. “She's a woman alone, Gillispie,” said
he, severely, “trying to make her way with handicaps--”
“Shet up, can't ye, ye darned fool?” roared Gillispie. “What do yeh take
me fur?”
Waite was putting on his rubber coat preparatory to going out for his
night with the cattle. “Guess you're makin' a mistake, my boy,” he said,
gently. “There ain't no danger of any woman bein' treated rude in these
parts.”
“I know it, by Jove!” cried Henderson, in quick contriteness.
“All right,” grunted Gillispie, in tacit acceptance of this apology. “I
guess you thought you was in civilized parts.”
Two days after this Waite came in late to his supper. “Well, I seen
her,” he announced.
“Oh! did you?” cried Henderson, knowing perfectly well whom he meant.
“What was she doing?”
“Killin' snakes, b'gosh! She says th' baby's crazy fur um, an' so she
takes aroun' a hoe on her shoulder wherever she goes, an' when she sees
a snake, she has it out with 'im then an' there. I says to 'er, 'Yer
don't expec' t' git all th' snakes outen this here country, d' yeh?'
'Well,' she says, 'I'm as good a man as St. Patrick any day.' She is a
jolly one, Henderson. She tuk me in an' showed me th' kids, and give me
a loaf of gingerbread to bring home. Here it is; see?”
“Hu!” said Gillispie. “I'm not in it.” But for all of his scorn he was
not above eating the gingerbread.
It was gardening time, and the three Johns were putting in every spare
moment in the little paling made of willow twigs behind the house. It
was little enough time they had, though, for the cattle were new to each
other and to the country, and they were hard to manage. It was generally
conceded that Waite had a genius for herding, and he could take the
“mad” out of a fractious animal in a way that the others looked on as
little less than superhuman. Thus it was that one day, when the clay had
been well turned, and the seeds arranged on the kitchen table, and
all things prepared for an afternoon of busy planting, that Waite
and Henderson, who were needed out with the cattle, felt no little
irritation at the inexplicable absence of Gillispie, who was to look
after the garden. It was quite nightfall when he at last returned.
Supper was ready, although it had been Gillispie's turn to prepare it.
Henderson was sore from his saddle, and cross at having to do more than
his share of the work. “Damn yeh!” he cried, as Gillispie appeared.
“Where yeh been?”
“Making garden,” responded Gillispie, slowly.
“Making garden!” Henderson indulged in some more harmless oaths.
Just then Gillispie drew from under his coat a large and friendly
looking apple-pie. “Yes,” he said, with emphasis; “I've bin a-makin'
garden fur Mis' Ford.”
And so it came about that the three Johns knew her and served her, and
that she never had a need that they were not ready to supply if they
could. Not one of them would have thought of going to town without
stopping to inquire what was needed at the village. As for Catherine
Ford, she was fighting her way with native pluck and maternal
unselfishness. If she had feared solitude she did not suffer from it.
The activity of her life stifled her fresh sorrow. She was pleasantly
excited by the rumors that a railroad was soon to be built near the
place, which would raise the value of the claim she was “holding down”
many thousand dollars.
It is marvellous how sorrow shrinks when one is very healthy and very
much occupied. Although poverty was her close companion, Catherine had
no thought of it in this primitive manner of living. She had come out
there, with the independence and determination of a Western woman, for
the purpose of living at the least possible expense, and making the most
she could while the baby was “getting out of her arms.” That process
has its pleasures, which every mother feels in spite of burdens, and
the mind is happily dulled by nature's merciful provision. With a little
child tugging at the breast, care and fret vanish, not because of the
happiness so much as because of a certain mammal complacency, which
is not at all intellectual, but serves its purpose better than the
profoundest method of reasoning.
So without any very unbearable misery at her recent widowhood, this
healthy young woman worked in field and house, cared for her little
ones, milked the two cows out in the corral, sewed, sang, rode, baked,
and was happy for very wholesomeness. Sometimes she reproached herself
that she was not more miserable, remembering that long grave back in
the unkempt little prairie cemetery, and she sat down to coax her sorrow
into proper prominence. But the baby cooing at her from its bunk, the
low of the cattle from the corral begging her to relieve their heavy
bags, the familiar call of one of her neighbors from without, even
the burning sky of the summer dawns, broke the spell of this conjured
sorrow, and in spite of herself she was again a very hearty and happy
young woman. Besides, if one has a liking for comedy, it is
impossible to be dull on a Nebraska prairie. The people are a merrier
divertissement than the theatre with its hackneyed stories. Catherine
Ford laughed a good deal, and she took the three Johns into her
confidence, and they laughed with her. There was Minerva Fitch, who
insisted on coming over to tell Catherine how to raise her children, and
who was almost offended that the children wouldn't die of sunstroke
when she predicted. And there was Bob Ackerman, who had inflammatory
rheumatism and a Past, and who confided the latter to Mrs. Ford while
she doctored the former with homoeopathic medicines. And there were all
the strange visionaries who came out prospecting, and quite naturally
drifted to Mrs. Ford's cabin for a meal, and paid her in compliments of
a peculiarly Western type. And there were the three Johns themselves.
Catherine considered it no treason to laugh at them a little.
Yet at Waite she did not laugh much. There had come to be something
pathetic in the constant service he rendered her. The beginning of his
more particular devotion had started in a particular way. Malaria was
very bad in the country. It had carried off some of the most vigorous
on the prairie, and twice that summer Catherine herself had laid out the
cold forms of her neighbors on ironing-boards, and, with the assistance
of Bill Deems of Missourah, had read the burial service over them. She
had averted several other fatal runs of fever by the contents of her
little medicine-case. These remedies she dealt out with an intelligence
that astonished her patients, until it was learned that she was studying
medicine at the time that she met her late husband, and was persuaded to
assume the responsibilities of matrimony instead of those of the medical
profession.
One day in midsummer, when the sun was focussing itself on the raw pine
boards of her shanty, and Catherine had the shades drawn for coolness
and the water-pitcher swathed in wet rags, East Indian fashion, she
heard the familiar halloo of Waite down the road. This greeting, which
was usually sent to her from the point where the dipping road lifted
itself into the first view of the house, did not contain its usual note
of cheerfulness. Catherine, wiping her hands on her checked apron, ran
out to wave a welcome; and Waite, his squat body looking more distorted
than ever, his huge shoulders lurching as he walked, came fairly
plunging down the hill.
“It's all up with Henderson!” he cried, as Catherine approached. “He's
got the malery, an' he says he's dyin'.”
“That's no sign he's dying, because he says so,” retorted Catherine.
“He wants to see yeh,” panted Waite, mopping his big ugly head. “I think
he's got somethin' particular to say.”
“How long has he been down?”
“Three days; an' yeh wouldn't know 'im.”
The children were playing on the floor at that side of the house where
it was least hot. Catherine poured out three bowls of milk, and cut some
bread, meanwhile telling Kitty how to feed the baby.
“She's a sensible thing, is the little daughter,” said Catherine, as she
tied on her sunbonnet and packed a little basket with things from the
cupboard. She kissed the babies tenderly, flung her hoe--her only weapon
of defence--over her shoulder, and the two started off.
They did not speak, for their throats were soon too parched. The prairie
was burned brown with the sun; the grasses curled as if they had been on
a gridiron. A strong wind was blowing; but it brought no comfort, for
it was heavy with a scorching heat. The skin smarted and blistered under
it, and the eyes felt as if they were filled with sand. The sun seemed
to swing but a little way above the earth, and though the sky was
intensest blue, around about this burning ball there was a halo of
copper, as if the very ether were being consumed in yellow fire.
Waite put some big burdock-leaves on Catherine's head under her bonnet,
and now and then he took a bottle of water from his pocket and made her
swallow a mouthful. She staggered often as she walked, and the road was
black before her. Still, it was not very long before the oddly shaped
shack of the three Johns came in sight; and as he caught a glimpse of
it, Waite quickened his footsteps.
“What if he should be gone?” he said, under his breath.
“Oh, come off!” said Catherine, angrily. “He's not gone. You make me
tired!”
But she was trembling when she stopped just before the door to compose
herself for a moment. Indeed, she trembled so very much that Waite
put out his sprawling hand to steady her. She gently felt the pressure
tightening, and Waite whispered in her ear:
“I guess I'd stand by him as well as anybody, excep' you, Mis' Ford.
He's been my bes' friend. But I guess you like him better, eh?”
Catherine raised her finger. She could hear Henderson's voice within;
it was pitiably querulous. He was half sitting up in his bunk, and
Gillispie had just handed him a plate on which two cakes were swimming
in black molasses and pork gravy. Henderson looked at it a moment; then
over his face came a look of utter despair. He dropped his head in his
arms and broke into uncontrolled crying.
“Oh, my God, Gillispie,” he sobbed, “I shall die out here in this
wretched hole! I want my mother. Great God, Gillispie, am I going to die
without ever seeing my mother?”
Gillispie, maddened at this anguish, which he could in no way alleviate,
sought comfort by first lighting his pipe and then taking his revolver
out of his hip-pocket and playing with it. Henderson continued to shake
with sobs, and Catherine, who had never before in her life heard a man
cry, leaned against the door for a moment to gather courage. Then she
ran into the house quickly, laughing as she came. She took Henderson's
arms away from his face and laid him back on the pillow, and she stooped
over him and kissed his forehead in the most matter-of-fact way.
“That's what your mother would do if she were here,” she cried, merrily.
“Where's the water?”
She washed his face and hands a long time, till they were cool and his
convulsive sobs had ceased. Then she took a slice of thin bread from her
basket and a spoonful of amber jelly. She beat an egg into some milk and
dropped a little liquor within it, and served them together on the first
clean napkin that had been in the cabin of the three Johns since it was
built.
At this the great fool on the bed cried again, only quietly, tears
of weak happiness running from his feverish eyes. And Catherine
straightened the disorderly cabin. She came every day for two weeks, and
by that time Henderson, very uncertain as to the strength of his legs,
but once more accoutred in his native pluck, sat up in a chair, for
which she had made clean soft cushions, writing a letter to his mother.
The floor was scrubbed; the cabin had taken to itself cupboards made
of packing-boxes; it had clothes-presses and shelves; curtains at the
windows; boxes for all sort of necessaries, from flour to tobacco; and
a cook-book on the wall, with an inscription within which was more
appropriate than respectful.
The day that she announced that she would have no further call to come
back, Waite, who was looking after the house while Gillispie was afield,
made a little speech.
“After this here,” he said, “we four stands er falls together. Now
look here, there's lots of things can happen to a person on this cussed
praira, and no one be none th' wiser. So see here, Mis' Ford, every
night one of us is a-goin' to th' roof of this shack. From there we can
see your place. If anything is th' matter--it don't signify how little
er how big--you hang a lantern on th' stick that I'll put alongside th'
house to-morrow. Yeh can h'ist th' light up with a string, and every
mornin' before we go out we'll look too, and a white rag'll bring us
quick as we can git there. We don't say nothin' about what we owe yeh,
fur that ain't our way, but we sticks to each other from this on.”
Catherine's eyes were moist. She looked at Henderson. His face had no
expression in it at all. He did not even say good-by to her, and she
turned, with the tears suddenly dried under her lids, and walked down
the road in the twilight.
Weeks went by, and though Gillispie and Waite were often at Catherine's,
Henderson never came. Gillispie gave it out as his opinion that
Henderson was an ungrateful puppy; but Waite said nothing. This strange
man, who seemed like a mere untoward accident of nature, had changed
during the summer. His big ill-shaped body had grown more gaunt;
his deep-set gray eyes had sunk deeper; the gentleness which had
distinguished him even on the wild ranges of Montana became more marked.
Late in August he volunteered to take on himself the entire charge of
the night watch.
“It's nicer to be out at night,” he said to Catherine. “Then you don't
keep looking off at things; you can look inside;” and he struck his
breast with his splay hand.
Cattle are timorous under the stars. The vastness of the plains, the
sweep of the wind under the unbroken arch, frighten them; they are
made for the close comforts of the barn-yard; and the apprehension is
contagious, as every ranchman knows. Waite realized the need of becoming
good friends with his animals. Night after night, riding up and down
in the twilight of the stars, or dozing, rolled in his blanket, in the
shelter of a knoll, he would hear a low roar; it was the cry of the
alarmist. Then from every direction the cattle would rise with trembling
awkwardness on their knees, and answer, giving out sullen bellowings.
Some of them would begin to move from place to place, spreading the
baseless alarm, and then came the time for action, else over the plain
in mere fruitless frenzy would go the whole frantic band, lashed to
madness by their own fears, trampling each other, heedless of any
obstacle, in pitiable, deadly rout. Waite knew the premonitory signs
well, and at the first warning bellow he was on his feet, alert
and determined, his energy nerved for a struggle in which he always
conquered.
Waite had a secret which he told to none, knowing, in his unanalytical
fashion, that it would not be believed in. But soon as ever the dark
heads of the cattle began to lift themselves, he sent a resonant voice
out into the stillness. The songs he sang were hymns, and he made them
into a sort of imperative lullaby. Waite let his lungs and soul fill
with the breath of the night; he gave himself up to the exaltation of
mastering those trembling brutes. Mounting, melodious, with even and
powerful swing he let his full notes fall on the air in the confidence
of power, and one by one the reassured cattle would lie down again,
lowing in soft contentment, and so fall asleep with noses stretched out
in mute attention, till their presence could hardly be guessed except
for the sweet aroma of their cuds.
One night in the early dusk, he saw Catherine Ford hastening across the
prairie with Bill Deems. He sent a halloo out to them, which they both
answered as they ran on. Waite knew on what errand of mercy Catherine
was bent, and he thought of the children over at the cabin alone. The
cattle were quiet, the night beautiful, and he concluded that it was
safe enough, since he was on his pony, to ride down there about midnight
and see that the little ones were safe.
The dark sky, pricked with points of intensest light, hung over him
so beneficently that in his heart there leaped a joy which even his
ever-present sorrow could not disturb. This sorrow Waite openly admitted
not only to himself, but to others. He had said to Catherine: “You see,
I'll always hev to love yeh. An' yeh'll not git cross with me; I'm not
goin' to be in th' way.” And Catherine had told him, with tears in her
eyes, that his love could never be but a comfort to any woman. And these
words, which the poor fellow had in no sense mistaken, comforted him
always, became part of his joy as he rode there, under those piercing
stars, to look after her little ones. He found them sleeping in their
bunks, the baby tight in Kitty's arms, the little boy above them in the
upper bunk, with his hand in the long hair of his brown spaniel. Waite
softly kissed each of them, so Kitty, who was half waking, told her
mother afterwards, and then, bethinking him that Catherine might not be
able to return in time for their breakfast, found the milk and bread,
and set it for them on the table. Catherine had been writing, and her
unfinished letter lay open beside the ink. He took up the pen and wrote,
“The childdren was all asleep at twelv.
“J. W.”
He had not more than got on his pony again before he heard an ominous
sound that made his heart leap. It was a frantic dull pounding of
hoofs. He knew in a second what it meant. There was a stampede among
the cattle. If the animals had all been his, he would not have lost
his sense of judgment. But the realization that he had voluntarily
undertaken the care of them, and that the larger part of them belonged
to his friends, put him in a passion of apprehension that, as a
ranchman, was almost inexplicable. He did the very thing of all others
that no cattle-man in his right senses would think of doing. Gillispie
and Henderson, talking it over afterward, were never able to understand
it. It is possible--just barely possible--that Waite, still drunk on his
solitary dreams, knew what he was doing, and chose to bring his little
chapter to an end while the lines were pleasant. At any rate, he rode
straight forward, shouting and waving his arms in an insane endeavor to
head off that frantic mob. The noise woke the children, and they peered
from the window as the pawing and bellowing herd plunged by, trampling
the young steers under their feet.
In the early morning, Catherine Ford, spent both in mind and body, came
walking slowly home. In her heart was a prayer of thanksgiving. Mary
Deems lay sleeping back in her comfortless shack, with her little son by
her side.
“The wonder of God is in it,” said Catherine to herself as she walked
home. “All the ministers of all the world could not have preached me
such a sermon as I've had to-night.”
So dim had been the light and so perturbed her mind that she had not
noticed how torn and trampled was the road. But suddenly a bulk in her
pathway startled her. It was the dead and mangled body of a steer. She
stooped over it to read the brand on its flank. “It's one of the three
Johns',” she cried out, looking anxiously about her. “How could that
have happened?”
The direction which the cattle had taken was toward her house, and she
hastened homeward. And not a quarter of a mile from her door she found
the body of Waite beside that of his pony, crushed out of its familiar
form into something unspeakably shapeless. In her excitement she half
dragged, half carried that mutilated body home, and then ran up her
signal of alarm on the stick that Waite himself had erected for her
convenience. She thought it would be a long time before any one reached
her, but she had hardly had time to bathe the disfigured face and
straighten the disfigured body before Henderson was pounding at her
door. Outside stood his pony panting from its terrific exertions.
Henderson had not seen her before for six weeks. Now he stared at her
with frightened eyes.
“What is it? What is it?” he cried. “What has happened to you, my--my
love?”
At least afterward, thinking it over as she worked by day or tossed in
her narrow bunk at night, it seemed to Catherine that those were the
words he spoke. Yet she could never feel sure; nothing in his manner
after that justified the impassioned anxiety of his manner in those
first few uncertain moments; for a second later he saw the body of his
friend and learned the little that Catherine knew. They buried him
the next day in a little hollow where there was a spring and some wild
aspens.
“He never liked the prairie,” Catherine said, when she selected the
spot. “And I want him to lie as sheltered as possible.”
After he had been laid at rest, and she was back, busy with tidying her
neglected shack, she fell to crying so that the children were scared.
“There's no one left to care what becomes of us,” she told them,
bitterly. “We might starve out here for all that any one cares.”
And all through the night her tears fell, and she told herself that they
were all for the man whose last thought was for her and her babies; she
told herself over and over again that her tears were all for him. After
this the autumn began to hurry on, and the snow fell capriciously, days
of biting cold giving place to retrospective glances at summer. The last
of the vegetables were taken out of the garden and buried in the cellar;
and a few tons of coal--dear almost as diamonds--were brought out to
provide against the severest weather. Ordinarily buffalo chips were
the fuel. Catherine was alarmed at the way her wretched little store of
money began to vanish. The baby was fretful with its teething, and was
really more care than when she nursed it. The days shortened, and it
seemed to her that she was forever working by lamp-light The prairies
were brown and forbidding, the sky often a mere gray pall. The monotony
of the life began to seem terrible. Sometimes her ears ached for a
sound. For a time in the summer so many had seemed to need her that
she had been happy in spite of her poverty and her loneliness. Now,
suddenly, no one wanted her. She could find no source of inspiration.
She wondered how she was going to live through the winter, and keep her
patience and her good-nature.
“You'll love me,” she said, almost fiercely, one night to the
children--“you'll love mamma, no matter how cross and homely she gets,
won't you?”
The cold grew day by day. A strong winter was setting in. Catherine took
up her study of medicine again, and sat over her books till midnight.
It occurred to her that she might fit herself for nursing by spring, and
that the children could be put with some one--she did not dare to think
with whom. But this was the only solution she could find to her problem
of existence.
November settled down drearily. Few passed the shack. Catherine, who
had no one to speak with excepting the children, continually devised
amusements for them. They got to living in a world of fantasy, and
were never themselves, but always wild Indians, or arctic explorers,
or Robinson Crusoes. Kitty and Roderick, young as they were, found a
never-ending source of amusement in these little grotesque dreams and
dramas. The fund of money was getting so low that Catherine was obliged
to economize even in the necessities. If it had not been for her two
cows, she would hardly have known how to find food for her little ones.
But she had a wonderful way of making things with eggs and milk, and she
kept her little table always inviting. The day before Thanksgiving she
determined that they should all have a frolic.
“By Christmas,” she said to Kitty, “the snow may be so bad that I cannot
get to town. We'll have our high old time now.”
There is no denying that Catherine used slang even in talking to the
children. The little pony had been sold long ago, and going to town
meant a walk of twelve miles. But Catherine started out early in the
morning, and was back by nightfall, not so very much the worse, and
carrying in her arms bundles which might have fatigued a bronco.
The next morning she was up early, and was as happy and ridiculously
excited over the prospect of the day's merrymaking as if she had been
Kitty. Busy as she was, she noticed a peculiar oppression in the air,
which intensified as the day went on. The sky seemed to hang but a
little way above the rolling stretch of frost-bitten grass. But Kitty
laughing over her new doll, Roderick startling the sullen silence
with his drum, the smell of the chicken, slaughtered to make a prairie
holiday, browning in the oven, drove all apprehensions from Catherine's
mind. She was a common creature. Such very little things could make her
happy. She sang as she worked; and what with the drumming of her boy,
and the little exulting shrieks of her baby, the shack was filled with a
deafening and exhilarating din.
It was a little past noon, when she became conscious that there was
sweeping down on her a gray sheet of snow and ice, and not till then did
she realize what those lowering clouds had signified. For one moment she
stood half paralyzed. She thought of everything,--of the cattle, of the
chance for being buried in this drift, of the stock of provisions, of
the power of endurance of the children. While she was still thinking,
the first ice-needles of the blizzard came peppering the windows. The
cattle ran bellowing to the lee side of the house and crouched there,
and the chickens scurried for the coop. Catherine seized such blankets
and bits of carpet as she could find, and crammed them at windows and
doors. Then she piled coal on the fire, and clothed the children in all
they had that was warmest, their out-door garments included; and with
them close about her, she sat and waited. The wind seemed to push
steadily at the walls of the house. The howling became horrible. She
could see that the children were crying with fright, but she could
not hear them. The air was dusky; the cold, in spite of the fire,
intolerable. In every crevice of the wretched structure the ice and snow
made their way. It came through the roof, and began piling up in little
pointed strips under the crevices. Catherine put the children all
together in one bunk, covered them with all the bedclothes she had, and
then stood before them defiantly, facing the west, from whence the
wind was driving. Not suddenly, but by steady pressure, at length the
window-sash yielded, and the next moment that whirlwind was in the
house,--a maddening tumult of ice and wind, leaving no room for
resistance; a killing cold, against which it was futile to fight.
Catherine threw the bedclothes over the heads of the children, and then
threw herself across the bunk, gasping and choking for breath. Her
body would not have yielded to the suffering yet, so strongly made and
sustained was it; but her dismay stifled her. She saw in one horrified
moment the frozen forms of her babies, now so pink and pleasant to the
sense; and oblivion came to save her from further misery.
She was alive--just barely alive--when Gillispie and Henderson got
there, three hours later, the very balls of their eyes almost frozen
into blindness. But for an instinct stronger than reason they would
never have been able to have found their way across that trackless
stretch. The children lying unconscious under their coverings were
neither dead nor actually frozen, although the men putting their hands
on their little hearts could not at first discover the beating. Stiff
and suffering as these young fellows were, it was no easy matter to get
the window back into place and re-light the fire. They had tied flasks
of liquor about their waists; and this beneficent fluid they used with
that sense of appreciation which only a pioneer can feel toward
whiskey. It was hours before Catherine rewarded them with a gleam
of consciousness. Her body had been frozen in many places. Her arms,
outstretched over her children and holding the clothes down about
them, were rigid. But consciousness came at length, dimly struggling up
through her brain; and over her she saw her friends rubbing and rubbing
those strong firm arms of hers with snow.
She half raised her head, with a horror of comprehension in her eyes,
and listened. A cry answered her,--a cry of dull pain from the baby.
Henderson dropped on his knees beside her.
“They are all safe,” he said. “And we will never leave you again. I have
been afraid to tell you how I love you. I thought I might offend you. I
thought I ought to wait--you know why. But I will never let you run the
risks of this awful life alone again. You must rename the baby. From
this day his name is John. And we will have the three Johns again
back at the old ranch. It doesn't matter whether you love me or not,
Catherine, I am going to take care of you just the same. Gillispie
agrees with me.”
“Damme, yes,” muttered Gillispie, feeling of his hip-pocket for
consolation in his old manner.
Catherine struggled to find her voice, but it would not come.
“Do not speak,” whispered John. “Tell me with your eyes whether you will
come as my wife or only as our sister.”
Catherine told him.
“This is Thanksgiving day,” said he. “And we don't know much about
praying, but I guess we all have something in our hearts that does just
as well.”
“Damme, yes,” said Gillispie, again, as he pensively cocked and uncocked
his revolver.