← catalogue

The Desert of Wheat

by Zane Grey · English · Gutenberg #10201 · 682,093 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Desert of Wheat
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Desert of Wheat

Author: Zane Grey


        
Release date: November 1, 2003 [eBook #10201]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10201

Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, David Kline and PG Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DESERT OF WHEAT ***

ZANE GREY



THE DESERT

of

WHEAT

1919





CHAPTER I

Late in June the vast northwestern desert of wheat began to take on a
tinge of gold, lending an austere beauty to that endless, rolling,
smooth world of treeless hills, where miles of fallow ground and miles
of waving grain sloped up to the far-separated homes of the heroic men
who had conquered over sage and sand.

These simple homes of farmers seemed lost on an immensity of soft gray
and golden billows of land, insignificant dots here and there on distant
hills, so far apart that nature only seemed accountable for those broad
squares of alternate gold and brown, extending on and on to the waving
horizon-line. A lonely, hard, heroic country, where flowers and fruit
were not, nor birds and brooks, nor green pastures. Whirling strings of
dust looped up over fallow ground, the short, dry wheat lay back from
the wind, the haze in the distance was drab and smoky, heavy with
substance.

A thousand hills lay bare to the sky, and half of every hill was wheat
and half was fallow ground; and all of them, with the shallow valleys
between, seemed big and strange and isolated. The beauty of them was
austere, as if the hand of man had been held back from making green his
home site, as if the immensity of the task had left no time for youth
and freshness. Years, long years, were there in the round-hilled,
many-furrowed gray old earth. And the wheat looked a century old. Here
and there a straight, dusty road stretched from hill to hill, becoming a
thin white line, to disappear in the distance. The sun shone hot, the
wind blew hard; and over the boundless undulating expanse hovered a
shadow that was neither hood of dust nor hue of gold. It was not
physical, but lonely, waiting, prophetic, and weird. No wild desert of
wastelands, once the home of other races of man, and now gone to decay
and death, could have shown so barren an acreage. Half of this wandering
patchwork of squares was earth, brown and gray, curried and disked, and
rolled and combed and harrowed, with not a tiny leaf of green in all the
miles. The other half had only a faint golden promise of mellow harvest;
and at long distance it seemed to shimmer and retreat under the hot sun.
A singularly beautiful effect of harmony lay in the long, slowly rising
slopes, in the rounded hills, in the endless curving lines on all sides.
The scene was heroic because of the labor of horny hands; it was sublime
because not a hundred harvests, nor three generations of toiling men,
could ever rob nature of its limitless space and scorching sun and
sweeping dust, of its resistless age-long creep back toward the desert
that it had been.

       *       *       *       *       *

Here was grown the most bounteous, the richest and finest wheat in all
the world. Strange and unfathomable that so much of the bread of man,
the staff of life, the hope of civilization in this tragic year 1917,
should come from a vast, treeless, waterless, dreary desert!

This wonderful place was an immense valley of considerable altitude
called the Columbia Basin, surrounded by the Cascade Mountains on the
west, the Coeur d'Alene and Bitter Root Mountains on the east, the
Okanozan range to the north, and the Blue Mountains to the south. The
valley floor was basalt, from the lava flow of volcanoes in ages past.
The rainfall was slight except in the foot-hills of the mountains. The
Columbia River, making a prodigious and meandering curve, bordered on
three sides what was known as the Bend country. South of this vast area,
across the range, began the fertile, many-watered region that extended
on down into verdant Oregon. Among the desert hills of this Bend
country, near the center of the Basin, where the best wheat was raised,
lay widely separated little towns, the names of which gave evidence of
the mixed population. It was, of course, an exceedingly prosperous
country, a fact manifest in the substantial little towns, if not in the
crude and unpretentious homes of the farmers. The acreage of farms ran
from a section, six hundred and forty acres, up into the thousands.

       *       *       *       *       *

Upon a morning in early July, exactly three months after the United
States had declared war upon Germany, a sturdy young farmer strode with
darkly troubled face from the presence of his father. At the end of a
stormy scene he had promised his father that he would abandon his desire
to enlist in the army.

Kurt Dorn walked away from the gray old clapboard house, out to the
fence, where he leaned on the gate. He could see for miles in every
direction, and to the southward, away on a long yellow slope, rose a
stream of dust from a motor-car.

"Must be Anderson--coming to dun father," muttered young Dorn.

This was the day, he remembered, when the wealthy rancher of Ruxton was
to look over old Chris Dorn's wheat-fields. Dorn owed thirty-thousand
dollars and interest for years, mostly to Anderson. Kurt hated the debt
and resented the visit, but he could not help acknowledging that the
rancher had been lenient and kind. Long since Kurt had sorrowfully
realized that his father was illiterate, hard, grasping, and growing
worse with the burden of years.

"If we had rain now--or soon--that section of Bluestem would square
father," soliloquized young Dorn, as with keen eyes he surveyed a vast
field of wheat, short, smooth, yellowing in the sun. But the cloudless
sky, the haze of heat rather betokened a continued drought.

There were reasons, indeed, for Dorn to wear a dark and troubled face as
he watched the motor-car speed along ahead of its stream of dust, pass
out of sight under the hill, and soon reappear, to turn off the main
road and come toward the house. It was a big, closed car, covered with
dust. The driver stopped it at the gate and got out.

"Is this Chris Dorn's farm?" he asked.

"Yes," replied Kurt.

Whereupon the door of the car opened and out stepped a short, broad man
in a long linen coat.

"Come out, Lenore, an' shake off the dust," he said, and he assisted a
young woman to step out. She also wore a long linen coat, and a veil
besides. The man removed his coat and threw it into the car. Then he
took off his sombrero to beat the dust off of that.

"Phew! The Golden Valley never seen dust like this in a million
years!... I'm chokin' for water. An' listen to the car. She's boilin'!"

Then, as he stepped toward Kurt, the rancher showed himself to be a
well-preserved man of perhaps fifty-five, of powerful form beginning to
sag in the broad shoulders, his face bronzed by long exposure to wind
and sun. He had keen gray eyes, and their look was that of a man used to
dealing with his kind and well disposed toward them.

"Hello! Are you young Dorn?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," replied Kurt, stepping out.

"I'm Anderson, from Ruxton, come to see your dad. This is my girl
Lenore."

Kurt acknowledged the slight bow from the veiled young woman, and then,
hesitating, he added, "Won't you come in?"

"No, not yet. I'm chokin' for air an' water. Bring us a drink," replied
Anderson.

Kurt hurried away to get a bucket and tin cup. As he drew water from the
well he was thinking rather vaguely that it was somehow
embarrassing--the fact of Mr. Anderson being accompanied by his
daughter. Kurt was afraid of his father. But then, what did it matter?
When he returned to the yard he found the rancher sitting in the shade
of one of the few apple-trees, and the young lady was standing near, in
the act of removing bonnet and veil. She had thrown the linen coat over
the seat of an old wagon-bed that lay near.

"Good water is scarce here, but I'm glad we have some," said Kurt; then
as he set down the bucket and offered a brimming cupful to the girl he
saw her face, and his eyes met hers. He dropped the cup and stared. Then
hurriedly, with flushing face, he bent over to recover and refill it.

"Ex-excuse me. I'm--clumsy," he managed to say, and as he handed the cup
to her he averted his gaze. For more than a year the memory of this very
girl had haunted him. He had seen her twice--the first time at the close
of his one year of college at the University of California, and the
second time on the street in Spokane. In a glance he had recognized the
strong, lithe figure, the sunny hair, the rare golden tint of her
complexion, the blue eyes, warm and direct. And he had sustained a shock
which momentarily confused him.

"Good water, hey?" dissented Anderson, after drinking a second cup. "Boy
that's wet, but it ain't water to drink. Come down in the foot-hills an'
I'll show you. My ranch 's called 'Many Waters,' an' you can't keep your
feet dry."

"I wish we had some of it here," replied Kurt, wistfully, and he waved a
hand at the broad, swelling slopes. The warm breath that blew in from
the wheatlands felt dry and smelled dry.

"You're in for a dry spell?" inquired Anderson, with interest that was
keen, and kindly as well.

"Father says so. And I fear it, too--for he never makes a mistake in
weather or crops."

"A hot, dry spell!... This summer?... Hum!... Boy, do you know that
wheat is the most important thing in the world to-day?"

"You mean on account of the war," replied Kurt. "Yes, I know. But father
doesn't see that. All he sees is--if we have rain we'll have bumper
crops. That big field there would be a record--at war prices.... And he
wouldn't be ruined!"

"Ruined?... Oh, he means I'd close on him.... Hum!... Say, what do you
see in a big wheat yield--if it rains?"

"Mr. Anderson, I'd like to see our debt paid, but I'm thinking most of
wheat for starving peoples. I--I've studied this wheat question. It's
the biggest question in this war."

Kurt had forgotten the girl and was unaware of her eyes bent steadily
upon him. Anderson had roused to the interest of wheat, and to a deeper
study of the young man.

"Say, Dorn, how old are you?" he asked.

"Twenty-four. And Kurt's my first name," was the reply.

"Will this farm fall to you?"

"Yes, if my father does not lose it."

"Hum!... Old Dorn won't lose it, never fear. He raises the best wheat in
this section."

"But father never owned the land. We have had three bad years. If the
wheat fails this summer--we lose the land, that's all."

"Are you an--American?" queried Anderson, slowly, as if treading on
dangerous ground.

"I am," snapped Kurt. "My mother was American. She's dead. Father is
German. He's old. He's rabid since the President declared war. He'll
never change."

"That's hell. What 're you goin' to do if your country calls you?"

"Go!" replied Kurt, with flashing eyes. "I wanted to enlist. Father and
I quarreled over that until I had to give in. He's hard--he's
impossible.... I'll wait for the draft and hope I'm called."

"Boy, it's that spirit Germany's roused, an' the best I can say is, God
help her!... Have you a brother?"

"No. I'm all father has."

"Well, it makes a tough place for him, an' you, too. Humor him. He's
old. An' when you're called--go an' fight. You'll come back."

"If I only knew that--it wouldn't be so hard."

"Hard? It sure is hard. But it'll be the makin' of a great country.
It'll weed out the riffraff.... See here, Kurt, I'm goin' to give you a
hunch. Have you had any dealin's with the I.W.W.?"

"Yes, last harvest we had trouble, but nothing serious. When I was in
Spokane last month I heard a good deal. Strangers have approached us
here, too--mostly aliens. I have no use for them, but they always get
father's ear. And now!... To tell the truth, I'm worried."

"Boy, you need to be," replied Anderson, earnestly. "We're all worried.
I'm goin' to let you read over the laws of that I.W.W. organization.
You're to keep mum now, mind you. I belong to the Chamber of Commerce in
Spokane. Somebody got hold of these by-laws of this so-called labor
union. We've had copies made, an' every honest farmer in the Northwest
is goin' to read them. But carryin' one around is dangerous, I reckon,
these days. Here."

Anderson hesitated a moment, peered cautiously around, and then,
slipping folded sheets of paper from his inside coat pocket, he
evidently made ready to hand them to Kurt.

"Lenore, where's the driver?" he asked.

"He's under the car," replied the girl

Kurt thrilled at the soft sound of her voice. It was something to have
been haunted by a girl's face for a year and then suddenly hear her
voice.

"He's new to me--that driver--an' I ain't trustin' any new men these
days," went on Anderson. "Here now, Dorn. Read that. An' if you don't
get red-headed--"

Without finishing his last muttered remark, he opened the sheets of
manuscript and spread them out to the young man.

Curiously, and with a little rush of excitement, Kurt began to read. The
very first rule of the I.W.W. aimed to abolish capital. Kurt read on
with slowly growing amaze, consternation, and anger. When he had
finished, his look, without speech, was a question Anderson hastened to
answer.

"It's straight goods," he declared. "Them's the sure-enough rules of
that gang. We made certain before we acted. Now how do they strike you?"

"Why, that's no labor union!" replied Kurt, hotly. "They're outlaws,
thieves, blackmailers, pirates. I--I don't know what!"

"Dorn, we're up against a bad outfit an' the Northwest will see hell
this summer. There's trouble in Montana and Idaho. Strangers are
driftin' into Washington from all over. We must organize to meet
them--to prevent them gettin' a hold out here. It's a labor union,
mostly aliens, with dishonest an' unscrupulous leaders, some of them
Americans. They aim to take advantage of the war situation. In the
newspapers they rave about shorter hours, more pay, acknowledgment of
the union. But any fool would see, if he read them laws I showed you,
that this I.W.W. is not straight."

"Mr. Anderson, what steps have you taken down in your country?" queried
Kurt.

"So far all I've done was to hire my hands for a year, give them high
wages, an' caution them when strangers come round to feed them an' be
civil an' send them on."

"But we can't do that up here in the Bend," said Dorn, seriously. "We
need, say, a hundred thousand men in harvest-time, and not ten thousand
all the rest of the year."

"Sure you can't. But you'll have to organize somethin'. Up here in this
desert you could have a heap of trouble if that outfit got here strong
enough. You'd better tell every farmer you can trust about this I.W.W."

"I've only one American neighbor, and he lives six miles from here,"
replied Dorn. "Olsen over there is a Swede, and not a naturalized
citizen, but I believe he's for the U.S. And there's--"

"Dad," interrupted the girl, "I believe our driver is listening to your
very uninteresting conversation."

She spoke demurely, with laughter in her low voice. It made Dorn dare to
look at her, and he met a blue blaze that was instantly averted.

Anderson growled, evidently some very hard names, under his breath; his
look just then was full of characteristic Western spirit. Then he got
up.

"Lenore, I reckon your talk 'll be more interesting than mine," he said,
dryly. "I'll go see Dorn an' get this business over."

"I'd rather go with you," hurriedly replied Kurt; and then, as though
realizing a seeming discourtesy in his words, his face flamed, and he
stammered: "I--I don't mean that. But father is in bad mood. We just
quarreled.--I told you--about the war. And--Mr. Anderson,--I'm--I'm a
little afraid he'll--"

"Well, son, I'm not afraid," interrupted the rancher. "I'll beard the
old lion in his den. You talk to Lenore."

"Please don't speak of the war," said Kurt, appealingly.

"Not a word unless he starts roarin' at Uncle Sam," declared Anderson,
with a twinkle in his eyes, and turned toward the house.

"He'll roar, all right," said Kurt, almost with a groan. He knew what an
ordeal awaited the rancher, and he hated the fact that it could not be
avoided. Then Kurt was confused, astounded, infuriated with himself over
a situation he had not brought about and could scarcely realize. He
became conscious of pride and shame, and something as black and hopeless
as despair.

"Haven't I seen you--before?" asked the girl.

The query surprised and thrilled Kurt out of his self-centered thought.

"I don't know. Have you? Where?" he answered, facing her. It was a
relief to find that she still averted her face.

"At Berkeley, in California, the first time, and the second at Spokane,
in front of the Davenport," she replied.

"First--and--second?... You--you remembered both times!" he burst out,
incredulously.

"Yes. I don't see how I could have helped remembering." Her laugh was
low, musical, a little hurried, yet cool.

Dorn was not familiar with girls. He had worked hard all his life, there
among those desert hills, and during the few years his father had
allowed him for education. He knew wheat, but nothing of the eternal
feminine. So it was impossible for him to grasp that this girl was not
wholly at her ease. Her words and the cool little laugh suddenly brought
home to Kurt the immeasurable distance between him and a daughter of one
of the richest ranchers in Washington.

"You mean I--I was impertinent," he began, struggling between shame and
pride. "I--I stared at you.... Oh, I must have been rude.... But, Miss
Anderson, I--I didn't mean to be. I didn't think you saw me--at all. I
don't know what made me do that. It never happened before. I beg your
pardon."

A subtle indefinable change, perceptible to Dorn, even in his confused
state, came over the girl.

"I did not say you were impertinent," she returned. "I remembered seeing
you--notice me, that is all."

Self-possessed, aloof, and kind, Miss Anderson now became an
impenetrable mystery to Dorn. But that only accentuated the distance she
had intimated lay between them. Her kindness stung him to recover his
composure. He wished she had not been kind. What a singular chance that
had brought her here to his home--the daughter of a man who came to
demand a long-unpaid debt! What a dispelling of the vague thing that had
been only a dream! Dorn gazed away across the yellowing hills to the dim
blue of the mountains where rolled the Oregon. Despite the color, it was
gray--like his future.

"I heard you tell father you had studied wheat," said the girl,
presently, evidently trying to make conversation.

"Yes, all my life," replied Kurt. "My study has mostly been under my
father. Look at my hands." He held out big, strong hands, scarred and
knotted, with horny palms uppermost, and he laughed. "I can be proud of
them, Miss Anderson.... But I had a splendid year in California at the
university and I graduated from the Washington State Agricultural
College."

"You love wheat--the raising of it, I mean?" she inquired.

"It must be that I do, though I never had such a thought. Wheat is so
wonderful. No one can guess who does not know it!... The clean, plump
grain, the sowing on fallow ground, the long wait, the first tender
green, and the change day by day to the deep waving fields of gold--then
the harvest, hot, noisy, smoky, full of dust and chaff, and the great
combine-harvesters with thirty-four horses. Oh! I guess I do love it
all.... I worked in a Spokane flour-mill, too, just to learn how flour
is made. There is nothing in the world so white, so clean, so pure as
flour made from the wheat of these hills!"

"Next you'll be telling me that you can bake bread," she rejoined, and
her laugh was low and sweet. Her eyes shone with soft blue gleams.

"Indeed I can! I bake all the bread we use," he said, stoutly. "And I
flatter myself I can beat any girl you know."

"You can beat mine, I'm sure. Before I went to college I did pretty
well. But I learned too much there. Now my mother and sisters, and
brother Jim, all the family except dad, make fun of my bread."

"You have a brother? How old is he?"

"One brother--Jim, we call him. He--he is just past twenty-one." She
faltered the last few words.

Kurt felt on common ground with her then. The sudden break in her voice,
the change in her face, the shadowing of the blue eyes--these were
eloquent.

"Oh, it's horrible--this need of war!" she exclaimed.

"Yes," he replied, simply. "But maybe your brother will not be called."

"Called! Why, he refused to wait for the draft! He went and enlisted.
Dad patted him on the back.... If anything happens to him it'll kill my
mother. Jim is her idol. It'd break my heart.... Oh, I hate the very
name of Germans!"

"My father is German," said Kurt. "He's been fifty years in
America--eighteen years here on this farm. He always hated England. Now
he's bitter against America.... I can see a side you can't see. But I
don't blame you--for what you said."

"Forgive me. I can't conceive of meaning that against any one who's
lived here so long.... Oh, it must be hard for you."

"I'll let my father think I'm forced to join the army. But I'm going to
fight against his people. We are a house divided against itself."

"Oh, what a pity!" The girl sighed and her eyes were dark with brooding
sorrow.

A step sounded behind them. Mr. Anderson appeared, sombrero off, mopping
a very red face. His eyes gleamed, with angry glints; his mouth and chin
were working. He flopped down with a great, explosive breath.

"Kurt, your old man is a--a--son of a gun!" he exclaimed, vociferously;
manifestly, liberation of speech was a relief.

The young man nodded seriously and knowingly. "I hope, sir--he--he--"

"He did--you just bet your life! He called me a lot in German, but I
know cuss words when I hear them. I tried to reason with him--told him I
wanted my money--was here to help him get that money off the farm, some
way or other. An' he swore I was a capitalist--an enemy to labor an' the
Northwest--that I an' my kind had caused the war."

Kurt gazed gravely into the disturbed face of the rancher. Miss Anderson
had wide-open eyes of wonder.

"Sure I could have stood all that," went on Anderson, fuming. "But he
ordered me out of the house. I got mad an' wouldn't go. Then--by George!
he pulled my nose an' called me a bloody Englishman!"

Kurt groaned in the disgrace of the moment. But, amazingly, Miss
Anderson burst into a silvery peal of laughter.

"Oh, dad!... that's--just too--good for--anything! You met your--match
at last.... You know you always--boasted of your drop of English
blood.... And you're sensitive--about your big nose!"

"He must be over seventy," growled Anderson, as if seeking for some
excuse to palliate his restraint. "I'm mad--but it was funny." The
working of his face finally set in the huge wrinkles of a laugh.

Young Dorn struggled to repress his own mirth, but unguardedly he
happened to meet the dancing blue eyes of the girl, merry, provocative,
full of youth and fun, and that was too much for him. He laughed with
them.

"The joke's on me," said Anderson. "An' I can take one.... Now, young
man, I think I gathered from your amiable dad that if the crop of wheat
was full I'd get my money. Otherwise I could take over the land. For my
part, I'd never do that, but the others interested might do it, even for
the little money involved. I tried to buy them out so I'd have the whole
mortgage. They would not sell."

"Mr. Anderson, you're a square man, and I'll do--" declared Kurt.

"Come out an' show me the wheat," interrupted Anderson. "Lenore, do you
want to go with us?"

"I do," replied the daughter, and she took up her hat to put it on.

Kurt led them through the yard, out past the old barn, to the edge of
the open slope where the wheat stretched away, down and up, as far as
the eye could see.




CHAPTER II

"We've got over sixteen hundred acres in fallow ground, a half-section
in rye, another half in wheat--Turkey Red--and this section you see, six
hundred and forty acres, in Bluestem," said Kurt.

Anderson's keen eyes swept from near at hand to far away, down the
gentle, billowy slope and up the far hillside. The wheat was two feet
high, beginning to be thick and heavy at the heads, as if struggling to
burst. A fragrant, dry, wheaty smell, mingled with dust, came on the
soft summer breeze, and a faint silken rustle. The greenish, almost blue
color near at hand gradually in the distance grew lighter, and then
yellow, and finally took on a tinge of gold. There was a living spirit
in that vast wheat-field.

"Dorn, it's the finest wheat I've seen!" exclaimed Anderson, with the
admiration of the farmer who aspired high. "In fact, it's the only fine
field of wheat I've seen since we left the foot-hills. How is that?"

"Late spring and dry weather," replied Dorn. "Most of the farmers'
reports are poor. If we get rain over the Bend country we'll have only
an average yield this year. If we don't get rain--then flat failure."

Miss Anderson evinced an interest in the subject and she wanted to know
why this particular field, identical with all the others for miles
around, should have a promise of a magnificent crop when the others had
no promise at all.

"This section lay fallow a long time," replied Dorn. "Snow lasted here
on this north slope quite a while. My father used a method of soil
cultivation intended to conserve moisture. The seed wheat was especially
selected. And if we have rain during the next ten days this section of
Bluestem will yield fifty bushels to the acre."

"Fifty bushels!" ejaculated Anderson.

"Bluestem? Why do you call it that when it's green and yellow?" queried
the girl.

"It's a name. There are many varieties of wheat. Bluestem is best here
in this desert country because it resists drought, it produces large
yield, it does not break, and the flour-mills rate it very high.
Bluestem is not good in wet soils."

Anderson tramped along the edge of the field, peering down, here and
there pulling a shaft of wheat and examining it. The girl gazed with
dreamy eyes across the undulating sea. And Dorn watched her.

"We have a ranch--thousands of acres--but not like this," she said.

"What's the difference?" asked Dorn.

She appeared pensive and in doubt.

"I hardly know. What would you call this--this scene?"

"Why, I call it the desert of wheat! But no one else does," he replied.

"I named father's ranch 'Many Waters.' I think those names tell the
difference."

"Isn't my desert beautiful?"

"No. It has a sameness--a monotony that would drive me mad. It looks as
if the whole world had gone to wheat. It makes me think--oppresses me.
All this means that we live by wheat alone. These bare hills! They're
too open to wind and sun and snow. They look like the toil of ages."

"Miss Anderson, there is such a thing as love for the earth--the bare
brown earth. You know we came from dust, and to dust we return! These
fields are human to my father. And they have come to speak to me--a
language I don't understand yet. But I mean--what you see--the growing
wheat here, the field of clods over there, the wind and dust and glare
and heat, the eternal sameness of the open space--these are the things
around which my life has centered, and when I go away from them I am not
content."

Anderson came back to the young couple, carrying some heads of wheat in
his hand.

"Smut!" he exclaimed, showing both diseased and healthy specimens of
wheat. "Had to hunt hard to find that. Smut is the bane of all
wheat-growers. I never saw so little of it as there is here. In fact, we
know scarcely nothin' about smut an' its cure, if there is any. You
farmers who raise only grain have got the work down to a science. This
Bluestem is not bearded wheat, like Turkey Red. Has that beard anythin'
to do with smut?"

"I think not. The parasite, or fungus, lives inside the wheat."

"Never heard that before. No wonder smut is the worst trouble for
wheat-raisers in the Northwest. I've fields literally full of smut. An'
we never are rid of it. One farmer has one idea, an' some one else
another. What could be of greater importance to a farmer? We're at war.
The men who claim to know say that wheat will win the war. An' we lose
millions of bushels from this smut. That's to say it's a terrible fact
to face. I'd like to get your ideas."

Dorn, happening to glance again at Miss Anderson, an act that seemed to
be growing habitual, read curiosity and interest, and something more, in
her direct blue eyes. The circumstance embarrassed him, though it tugged
at the flood-gates of his knowledge. He could talk about wheat, and he
did like to. Yet here was a girl who might be supposed to be bored.
Still, she did not appear to be. That warm glance was not politeness.

"Yes, I'd like to hear every word you can say about wheat," she said,
with an encouraging little nod.

"Sure she would," added Anderson, with an affectionate hand on her
shoulder. "She's a farmer's daughter. She'll be a farmer's wife."

He laughed at this last sally. The girl blushed. Dorn smiled and shook
his head doubtfully.

"I imagine that good fortune will never befall a farmer," he said.

"Well, if it should," she replied, archly, "just consider how I might
surprise him with my knowledge of wheat.... Indeed, Mr. Dorn, I am
interested. I've never been in the Bend before--in your desert of wheat.
I never before felt the greatness of loving the soil--or caring for
it--of growing things from seed. Yet the Bible teaches that, and I read
my Bible. Please tell us. The more you say the more I'll like it."

Dorn was not proof against this eloquence. And he quoted two of his
authorities, Heald and Woolman, of the State Agricultural Experiment
Station, where he had studied for two years.

"Bunt, or stinking smut, is caused by two different species of
microscopic fungi which live as parasites in the wheat plant. Both are
essentially similar in their effects and their life-history. _Tilletia
tritici_, or the rough-spored variety, is the common stinking smut of
the Pacific regions, while _Tilletia foetans_, or the smooth-spored
species, is the one generally found in the eastern United States.

"The smut 'berries,' or 'balls,' from an infected head contain millions
of minute bodies, the spores or 'seeds' of the smut fungus. These
reproduce the smut in somewhat the same way that a true seed develops
into a new plant. A single smut ball of average size contains a
sufficient number of spores to give one for each grain of wheat in five
or six bushels. It takes eight smut spores to equal the diameter of a
human hair. Normal wheat grains from an infected field may have so many
spores lodged on their surface as to give them a dark color, but other
grains which show no difference in color to the naked eye may still
contain a sufficient number of spores to produce a smutty crop if seed
treatment is not practised.

"When living smut spores are introduced into the soil with the seed
wheat, or exist in the soil in which smut-free wheat is sown, a certain
percentage of the wheat plants are likely to become infected. The smut
spore germinates and produces first a stage of the smut plant in the
soil. This first stage never infects a young seedling direct, but gives
rise to secondary spores, or sporida, from which infection threads may
arise and penetrate the shoot of a young seedling and reach the growing
point. Here the fungus threads keep pace with the growth of the plant
and reach maturity at or slightly before harvest-time.

"Since this disease is caused by an internal parasite, it is natural to
expect certain responses to its presence. It should be noted first that
the smut fungus is living at the expense of its host plant, the wheat,
and its effect on the host may be summarized as follows: The consumption
of food, the destruction of food in the sporulating process, and the
stimulating or retarding effect on normal physiological processes.

"Badly smutted plants remain in many cases under-size and produce fewer
and smaller heads. In the Fife and Bluestem varieties the infected heads
previous to maturity exhibit a darker green color, and remain green
longer than the normal heads. In some varieties the infected heads stand
erect, when normal ones begin to droop as a result of the increasing
weight of the ripening grain.

"A crop may become infected with smut in a number of different ways.
Smut was originally introduced with the seed, and many farmers are still
planting it every season with their seed wheat. Wheat taken from a
smutty crop will have countless numbers of loose spores adhering to the
grains, also a certain number of unbroken smut balls. These are always a
source of danger, even when the seed is treated with fungicides before
sowing.

"There are also chances for the infection of a crop if absolutely
smut-free seed is employed. First, soil infection from a previous smutty
crop; second, soil infection from wind-blown spores. Experiments have
shown that separated spores from crushed smut balls lose their effective
power in from two to three months, provided the soil is moist and loose,
and in no case do they survive a winter.

"It does not seem probable that wheat smut will be controlled by any
single practice, but rather by the combined use of various methods: crop
rotation; the use of clean seed; seed treatment with fungicides;
cultural practices and breeding; and selection of varieties.

"Failure to practise crop rotation is undoubtedly one of the main
explanations for the general prevalence of smut in the wheat-fields of
eastern Washington. Even with an intervening summer fallow, the smut
from a previous crop may be a source of infection. Experience shows that
a fall stubble crop is less liable to smut infection than a crop
following summer fallow. The apparent explanation for this condition is
the fact that the summer fallow becomes infected with wind-blown spores,
while in a stubble crop the wind-blown spores, as well as those
originating from the previous crop, are buried in plowing.

"If clean seed or properly treated seed had been used by all farmers we
should never have had a smut problem. High per cents. of smut indicate
either soil infection or imperfect treatment. The principle of the
chemical treatment is to use a poison which will kill the superficial
spores of the smut and not materially injure the germinating power of
the seed. The hot-water treatment is only recommended when one of the
chemical 'steeps' is not effective.

"Certain cultural practices are beneficial in reducing the amount of
smut in all cases, while the value of others depends to some extent upon
the source of the smut spores. The factors which always influence the
amount of smut are the temperature of the soil during the germinating
period, the amount of soil moisture, and the depth of seeding. Where
seed-borne spores are the only sources of infection, attention to the
three factors mentioned will give the only cultural practices for
reducing the amount of smut.

"Early seeding has been practised by various farmers, and they report a
marked reduction in smut.

"The replowing of the summer fallow after the first fall rains is
generally effective in reducing the amount of smut.

"Very late planting--that is, four or five weeks after the first good
fall rains--is also an effective practice. Fall tillage of summer
fallow, other than plowing, seems to be beneficial.

"No smut-immune varieties of wheat are known, but the standard varieties
show varying degrees of resistance. Spring wheats generally suffer less
from smut than winter varieties. This is not due to any superior
resistance, but rather to the fact that they escape infection. If only
spring wheats were grown our smut problem would largely disappear; but a
return to this practice is not suggested, since the winter wheats are
much more desirable. It seems probable that the conditions which prevail
during the growing season may have considerable influence on the per
cent of smut in any given variety."

       *       *       *       *       *

When Dorn finished his discourse, to receive the thanks of his
listeners, they walked back through the yard toward the road. Mr.
Anderson, who led the way, halted rather abruptly.

"Hum! Who're those men talkin' to my driver?" he queried.

Dorn then saw a couple of strangers standing near the motor-car, engaged
in apparently close conversation with the chauffeur. Upon the moment
they glanced up to see Mr. Anderson approaching, and they rather
hurriedly departed. Dorn had noted a good many strangers lately--men
whose garb was not that of farmers, whose faces seemed foreign, whose
actions were suspicious.

"I'll bet a hundred they're I.W.W.'s," declared Anderson. "Take my
hunch, Dorn."

The strangers passed on down the road without looking back.

"Wonder where they'll sleep to-night?" muttered Dorn.

Anderson rather sharply asked his driver what the two men wanted. And
the reply he got was that they were inquiring about work.

"Did they speak English?" went on the rancher.

"Well enough to make themselves understood," replied the driver.

Dorn did not get a good impression from the shifty eyes and air of
taciturnity of Mr. Anderson's man, and it was evident that the blunt
rancher restrained himself. He helped his daughter into the car, and
then put on his long coat. Next he shook hands with Dorn.

"Young man, I've enjoyed meetin' you, an' have sure profited from same,"
he said. "Which makes up for your dad! I'll run over here again to see
you--around harvest-time. An' I'll be wishin' for that rain."

"Thank you. If it does rain I'll be happy to see you," replied Dorn,
with a smile.

"Well, if it doesn't rain I won't come. I'll put it off another year,
an' cuss them other fellers into holdin' off, too."

"You're very kind. I don't know how I'd--we'd ever repay you in that
case."

"Don't mention it. Say, how far did you say it was to Palmer? We'll have
lunch there."

"It's fifteen miles--that way," answered Dorn. "If it wasn't for--for
father I'd like you to stay--and break some of my bread."

Dorn was looking at the girl as he spoke. Her steady gaze had been on
him ever since she entered the car, and in the shade of her hat and the
veil she was adjusting her eyes seemed very dark and sweet and
thoughtful. She brightly nodded her thanks as she held the veil aside
with both hands.

"I wish you luck. Good-by," she said, and closed the veil.

Still, Dorn could see her eyes through it, and now they were sweeter,
more mysterious, more provocative of haunting thoughts. It flashed over
him with dread certainty that he had fallen in love with her. The shock
struck him mute. He had no reply for the rancher's hearty farewell. Then
the car lurched away and dust rose in a cloud.




CHAPTER III

With a strange knocking of his heart, high up toward his throat, Kurt
Dorn stood stock-still, watching the moving cloud of dust until it
disappeared over the hill.

No doubt entered his mind. The truth, the fact, was a year old--a
long-familiar and dreamy state--but its meaning had not been revealed to
him until just a moment past. Everything had changed when she looked out
with that sweet, steady gaze through the parted veil and then slowly
closed it. She had changed. There was something intangible about her
that last moment, baffling, haunting. He leaned against a crooked old
gate-post that as a boy he had climbed, and the thought came to him that
this spot would all his life be vivid and poignant in his memory. The
first sight of a blue-eyed, sunny-haired girl, a year and more before,
had struck deep into his unconscious heart; a second sight had made her
an unforgettable reality: and a third had been the realization of love.

It was sad, regrettable, incomprehensible, and yet somehow his inner
being swelled and throbbed. Her name was Lenore Anderson. Her father was
one of the richest men in the state of Washington. She had one brother,
Jim, who would not wait for the army draft. Kurt trembled and a hot rush
of tears dimmed his eyes. All at once his lot seemed unbearable. An
immeasurable barrier had arisen between him and his old father--a
hideous thing of blood, of years, of ineradicable difference; the broad
acres of wheatland so dear to him were to be taken from him; love had
overcome him with headlong rush, a love that could never be returned;
and cruelest of all, there was the war calling him to give up his home,
his father, his future, and to go out to kill and to be killed.

It came to him while he leaned there, that, remembering the light of
Lenore Anderson's eyes, he could not give up to bitterness and hatred,
whatever his misfortunes and his fate. She would never be anything to
him, but he and her brother Jim and many other young Americans must be
incalculable all to her. That thought saved Kurt Dorn. There were other
things besides his own career, his happiness; and the way he was placed,
however unfortunate from a selfish point of view, must not breed a
morbid self-pity.

The moment of his resolution brought a flash, a revelation of what he
owed himself. The work and the thought and the feeling of his last few
weeks there at home must be intensified. He must do much and live
greatly in little time. This was the moment of his renunciation, and he
imagined that many a young man who had decided to go to war had
experienced a strange spiritual division of self. He wondered also if
that moment was not for many of them a let-down, a throwing up of
ideals, a helpless retrograding and surrender to the brutalizing spirit
of war. But it could never be so for him. It might have been had not
that girl come into his life.

The bell for the midday meal roused Kurt from his profound reverie, and
he plodded back to the house. Down through the barnyard gate he saw the
hired men coming, and a second glance discovered to him that two unknown
men were with them. Watching for a moment, Kurt recognized the two
strangers that had been talking to Mr. Anderson's driver. They seemed to
be talking earnestly now. Kurt saw Jerry, a trusty and long-tried
employee, rather unceremoniously break away from these strangers. But
they followed him, headed him off, and with vehement nods and
gesticulations appeared to be arguing with him. The other hired men
pushed closer, evidently listening. Finally Jerry impatiently broke away
and tramped toward the house. These strangers sent sharp words after
him--words that Kurt could not distinguish, though he caught the tone of
scorn. Then the two individuals addressed themselves to the other men;
and in close contact the whole party passed out of sight behind the
barn.

Thoughtfully Kurt went into the house. He meant to speak to Jerry about
the strangers, but he wanted to consider the matter first. He had
misgivings. His father was not in the sitting-room, nor in the kitchen.
Dinner was ready on the table, and the one servant, an old woman who had
served the Dorns for years, appeared impatient at the lack of promptness
in the men. Both father and son, except on Sundays, always ate with the
hired help. Kurt stepped outside to find Jerry washing at the bench.

"Jerry, what's keeping the men?" queried Kurt.

"Wal, they're palaverin' out there with two I.W.W. fellers," replied
Jerry.

Kurt reached for the rope of the farm-bell, and rang it rather sharply.
Then he went in to take his place at the table, and Jerry soon followed.
Old man Dorn did not appear, which fact was not unusual. The other hired
men did not enter until Jerry and Kurt were half done with the meal.
They seemed excited and somewhat boisterous, Kurt thought, but once they
settled down to eating, after the manner of hungry laborers, they had
little to say. Kurt, soon finishing his dinner, went outdoors to wait
for Jerry. That individual appeared to be long in coming, and loud
voices in the kitchen attested to further argument. At last, however, he
lounged out and began to fill a pipe.

"Jerry, I want to talk to you," said Kurt. "Let's get away from the
house."

The hired man was a big, lumbering fellow, gnarled like an old oak-tree.
He had a good-natured face and honest eyes.

"I reckon you want to hear about them I.W.W. fellers?" he asked, as they
walked away.

"Yes," replied Kurt.

"There's been a regular procession of them fellers, the last week or so,
walkin' through the country," replied Jerry. "To-day's the first time
any of them got to me. But I've heerd talk. Sunday when I was in Palmer
the air was full of rumors."

"Rumors of what?" queried Kurt.

"All kinds," answered Jerry, nonchalantly scratching his stubby beard.
"There's an army of I.W.W.'s comin' in from eastward. Idaho an' Montana
are gittin' a dose now. Short hours; double wages; join the union;
sabotage, whatever thet is; capital an' labor fight; threats if you
don't fall in line; an' Lord knows what all."

"What did those two fellows want of you?"

"Wanted us to join the I.W.W.," replied the laborer.

"Did they want a job?"

"Not as I heerd. Why, one of them had a wad of bills thet would choke a
cow. He did most of the talkin'. The little feller with the beady eyes
an' the pock-marks, he didn't say much. He's Austrian an' not long in
this country. The big stiff--Glidden, he called himself--must be some
shucks in thet I.W.W. He looked an' talked oily at first--very
persuadin'; but when I says I wasn't goin' to join no union he got sassy
an' bossy. They made me sore, so I told him to go to hell. Then he said
the I.W.W. would run the whole Northwest this summer--wheat-fields,
lumberin', fruit-harvestin', railroadin'--the whole kaboodle, an' thet
any workman who wouldn't join would git his, all right."

"Well, Jerry, what do you think about this organization?" queried Kurt,
anxiously.

"Not much. It ain't a square deal. I ain't got no belief in them. What I
heerd of their threatenin' methods is like the way this Glidden talks.
If I owned a farm I'd drive such fellers off with a whip. There's goin'
to be bad doin's if they come driftin' strong into the Bend."

"Jerry, are you satisfied with your job?"

"Sure. I won't join the I.W.W. An' I'll talk ag'in' it. I reckon a few
of us will hev to do all the harvestin'. An', considerin' thet, I'll
take a dollar a day more on my wages."

"If father does not agree to that, I will," said Kurt. "Now how about
the other men?"

"Wal, they all air leanin' toward promises of little work an' lots of
pay," answered Jerry, with a laugh. "Morgan's on the fence about
joinin'. But Andrew agreed. He's Dutch an' pig-headed. Jansen's only too
glad to make trouble fer his boss. They're goin' to lay off the rest of
to-day an' talk with Glidden. They all agreed to meet down by the
culvert. An' thet's what they was arguin' with me fer--wanted me to
come."

"Where's this man Glidden?" demanded Kurt. "I'll give him a piece of my
mind."

"I reckon he's hangin' round the farm--out of sight somewhere."

"All right, Jerry. Now you go back to work. You'll never lose anything
by sticking to us, I promise you that. Keep your eyes and ears open."

Kurt strode back to the house, and his entrance to the kitchen evidently
interrupted a colloquy of some kind. The hired men were still at table.
They looked down at their plates and said nothing. Kurt left the
sitting-room door open, and, turning, he asked Martha if his father had
been to dinner.

"No, an' what's more, when I called he takes to roarin' like a mad
bull," replied the woman.

Kurt crossed the sitting-room to knock upon his father's door. The reply
forthcoming did justify the old woman's comparison. It certainly caused
the hired men to evacuate the kitchen with alacrity. Old Chris Dorn's
roar at his son was a German roar, which did not soothe the young man's
rising temper. Of late the father had taken altogether to speaking
German. He had never spoken English well. And Kurt was rapidly
approaching the point where he would not speak German. A deadlock was in
sight, and Kurt grimly prepared to meet it. He pounded on the locked
door.

"The men are going to lay off," he called.

"Who runs this farm?" was the thundered reply.

"The I.W.W. is going to run it if you sulk indoors as you have done
lately," yelled Kurt. He thought that would fetch his father stamping
out, but he had reckoned falsely. There was no further sound. Leaving
the room in high dudgeon, Kurt hurried out to catch the hired men near
at hand and to order them back to work. They trudged off surlily toward
the barn.

Then Kurt went on to search for the I.W.W. men, and after looking up and
down the road, and all around, he at length found them behind an old
strawstack. They were comfortably sitting down, backs to the straw,
eating a substantial lunch. Kurt was angry and did not care. His
appearance, however, did not faze the strangers. One of them, an
American, was a man of about thirty years, clean-shaven, square-jawed,
with light, steely, secretive gray eyes, and a look of intelligence and
assurance that did not harmonize with his motley garb. His companion was
a foreigner, small of stature, with eyes like a ferret and deep pits in
his sallow face.

"Do you know you're trespassing?" demanded Kurt.

"You grudge us a little shade, eh, even to eat a bite?" said the
American. He wrapped a paper round his lunch and leisurely rose, to
fasten penetrating eyes upon the young man. "That's what I heard about
you rich farmers of the Bend."

"What business have you coming here?" queried Kurt, with sharp heat.
"You sneak out of sight of the farmers. You trespass to get at our men
and with a lot of lies and guff you make them discontented with their
jobs. I'll fire these men just for listening to you."

"Mister Dorn, we want you to fire them. That's my business out here,"
replied the American.

"Who are you, anyway?"

"That's my business, too."

Kurt passed from hot to cold. He could not miss the antagonism of this
man, a bold and menacing attitude.

"My foreman says your name's Glidden," went on Kurt, cooler this time,
"and that you're talking I.W.W. as if you were one of its leaders; that
you don't want a job; that you've got a wad of money; that you coax,
then threaten; that you've intimidated three of our hands."

"Your Jerry's a marked man," said Glidden, shortly.

"You impudent scoundrel!" exclaimed Kurt. "Now you listen to this.
You're the first I.W.W. man I've met. You look and talk like an
American. But if you are American you're a traitor. We've a war to
fight! War with a powerful country! Germany! And you come spreading
discontent in the wheat-fields,... when wheat means life!... Get out of
here before I--"

"We'll mark you, too, Mister Dorn, and your wheat-fields," snapped
Glidden.

With one swift lunge Kurt knocked the man flat and then leaped to stand
over him, watching for a move to draw a weapon. The little foreigner
slunk back out of reach.

"I'll start a little marking myself," grimly said Kurt. "Get up!"

Slowly Glidden moved from elbow to knees, and then to his feet. His
cheek was puffing out and his nose was bleeding. The light-gray eyes
were lurid.

"That's for your I.W.W.!" declared Kurt. "The first rule of your I.W.W.
is to abolish capital, hey?"

Kurt had not intended to say that. It slipped out in his fury. But the
effect was striking. Glidden gave a violent start and his face turned
white. Abruptly he hurried away. His companion shuffled after him. Kurt
stared at them, thinking the while that if he had needed any proof of
the crookedness of the I.W.W. he had seen it in Glidden's guilty face.
The man had been suddenly frightened, and surprise, too, had been
prominent in his countenance. Then Kurt remembered how Anderson had
intimated that the secrets of the I.W.W. had been long hidden. Kurt,
keen and quick in his sensibilities, divined that there was something
powerful back of this Glidden's cunning and assurance. Could it be only
the power of a new labor organization? That might well be great, but the
idea did not convince Kurt. During a hurried and tremendous preparation
by the government for war, any disorder such as menaced the country
would be little short of a calamity. It might turn out a fatality. This
so-called labor union intended to take advantage of a crisis to further
its own ends. Yet even so, that fact did not wholly explain Glidden and
his subtlety. Some nameless force loomed dark and sinister back of
Glidden's meaning, and it was not peril to the wheatlands of the
Northwest alone.

Like a huge dog Kurt shook himself and launched into action. There were
sense and pleasure in muscular activity, and it lessened the habit of
worry. Soon he ascertained that only Morgan had returned to work in the
fields. Andrew and Jansen were nowhere to be seen. Jansen had left four
horses hitched to a harrow. Kurt went out to take up the work thus
abandoned.

It was a long field, and if he had earned a dollar for every time he had
traversed its length, during the last ten years, he would have been a
rich man. He could have walked it blindfolded. It was fallow ground,
already plowed, disked, rolled, and now the last stage was to harrow it,
loosening the soil, conserving the moisture.

Morgan, far to the other side of this section, had the better of the
job, for his harrow was a new machine and he could ride while driving
the horses. But Kurt, using an old harrow, had to walk. The four big
horses plodded at a gait that made Kurt step out to keep up with them.
To keep up, to drive a straight line, to hold back on the reins, was
labor for a man. It spoke well for Kurt that he had followed that old
harrow hundreds of miles, that he could stand the strain, that he loved
both the physical sense and the spiritual meaning of the toil.

Driving west, he faced a wind laden with dust as dry as powder. At every
sheeted cloud, whipping back from the hoofs of the horses and the steel
spikes of the harrow, he had to bat his eyes to keep from being blinded.
The smell of dust clogged his nostrils. As soon as he began to sweat
under the hot sun the dust caked on his face, itching, stinging,
burning. There was dust between his teeth.

Driving back east was a relief. The wind whipped the dust away from him.
And he could catch the fragrance of the newly turned soil. How brown and
clean and earthy it looked! Where the harrow had cut and ridged, the
soil did not look thirsty and parched. But that which was unharrowed
cried out for rain. No cloud in the hot sky, except the yellow clouds of
dust!

On that trip east across the field, which faced the road, Dorn saw
pedestrians in twos and threes passing by. Once he was hailed, but made
no answer. He would not have been surprised to see a crowd, yet
travelers were scarce in that region. The sight of these men, some of
them carrying bags and satchels, was disturbing to the young farmer.
Where were they going? All appeared outward bound toward the river. They
came, of course, from the little towns, the railroads, the cities. At
this season, with harvest-time near at hand, it had been in former years
no unusual sight to see strings of laborers passing by. But this year
they came earlier, and in greater numbers.

With the wind in his face, however, Dorn saw nothing but the horses and
the brown line ahead, and half the time they were wholly obscured in
yellow dust. He began thinking about Lenore Anderson, just pondering
that strange, steady look of a girl's eyes; and then he did not mind the
dust or heat or distance. Never could he be cheated of his thoughts. And
those of her, even the painful ones, gave birth to a comfort that he
knew must abide with him henceforth on lonely labors such as this,
perhaps in the lonelier watches of a soldier's duty. She had been
curious, aloof, then sympathetic; she had studied his face; she had been
an eloquent-eyed listener to his discourse on wheat. But she had not
guessed his secret. Not until her last look--strange, deep, potent--had
he guessed that secret himself.

So, with mind both busy and absent, Kurt Dorn harrowed the fallow ground
abandoned by his men; and when the day was done, with the sun setting
hot and coppery beyond the dim, dark ranges, he guided the tired horses
homeward and plodded back of them, weary and spent.

He was to learn from Morgan, at the stables, that the old man had
discharged both Andrew and Jansen. And Jansen, liberating some newly
assimilated poison, had threatened revenge. He would see that any hired
men would learn a thing or two, so that they would not sign up with
Chris Dorn. In a fury the old man had driven Jansen out into the road.

Sober and moody, Kurt put the horses away, and, washing the dust grime
from sunburnt face and hands, he went to his little attic room, where he
changed his damp and sweaty clothes. Then he went down to supper with
mind made up to be lenient and silent with his old and sorely tried
father.

Chris Dorn sat in the light of the kitchen lamps. He was a huge man with
a great, round, bullet-shaped head and a shock of gray hair and
bristling, grizzled beard. His face was broad, heavy, and seemed sodden
with dark, brooding thought. His eyes, under bushy brows, were pale
gleams of fire. He looked immovable as to both bulk and will.

Never before had Kurt Dorn so acutely felt the fixed, contrary, ruthless
nature of his parent. Never had the distance between them seemed so
great. Kurt shivered and sighed at once. Then, being hungry, he fell to
eating in silence. Presently the old man shoved his plate back, and,
wiping his face, he growled, in German:

"I discharged Andrew and Jansen."

"Yes, I know," replied Kurt. "It wasn't good judgment. What'll we do for
hands?"

"I'll hire more. Men are coming for the harvest."

"But they all belong to the I.W.W.," protested Kurt.

"And what's that?"

In scarcely subdued wrath Kurt described in detail, and to the best of
his knowledge, what the I.W.W. was, and he ended by declaring the
organization treacherous to the United States.

"How's that?" asked old Dorn, gruffly.

Kurt was actually afraid to tell his father, who never read newspapers,
who knew little of what was going on, that if the Allies were to win the
war it was wheat that would be the greatest factor. Instead of that he
said if the I.W.W. inaugurated strikes and disorder in the Northwest it
would embarrass the government.

"Then I'll hire I.W.W. men," said old Dorn.

Kurt battled against a rising temper. This blind old man was his father.

"But I'll not have I.W.W. men on the farm," retorted Kurt. "I just
punched one I.W.W. solicitor."

"I'll run this farm. If you don't like my way you can leave," darkly
asserted the father.

Kurt fell back in his chair and stared at the turgid, bulging forehead
and hard eyes before him. What could be behind them? Had the war brought
out a twist in his father's brain? Why were Germans so impossible?

"My Heavens! father, would you turn me out of my home because we
disagree?" he asked, desperately.

"In my country sons obey their fathers or they go out for themselves."

"I've not been a disobedient son," declared Kurt. "And here in America
sons have more freedom--more say."

"America has no sense of family life--no honest government. I hate the
country."

A ball of fire seemed to burst in Kurt.

"That kind of talk infuriates me," he blazed. "I don't care if you are
my father. Why in the hell did you come to America? Why did you stay?
Why did you marry my mother--an American woman?... That's rot--just
spiteful rot! I've heard you tell what life was in Europe when you were
a boy. You ran off. You stayed in this country because it was a better
country than yours.... Fifty years you've been in America--many years on
this farm. And you love this land.... My God! father, can't you and men
like you see the truth?"

"Aye, I can," gloomily replied the old man. "The truth is we'll lose the
land. That greedy Anderson will drive me off."

"He will not. He's fine--generous," asserted Kurt, earnestly. "All he
wanted was to see the prospects of the harvest and perhaps to help you.
Anderson has not had interest on his money for three years. I'll bet
he's paid interest demanded by the other stockholders in that bank you
borrowed from. Why, he's our friend!"

"Aye, and I see more," boomed the father. "He fetched his lass up here
to make eyes at my son. I saw her--the sly wench!... Boy, you'll not
marry her!"

Kurt choked back his mounting rage.

"Certainly I never will," he said, bitterly. "But I would if she'd have
me."

"What!" thundered Dorn, his white locks standing up and shaking like the
mane of a lion. "That wheat banker's daughter! Never! I forbid it. You
shall not marry any American girl."

"Father, this is idle, foolish rant," cried Kurt, with a high warning
note in his voice. "I've no idea of marrying.... But if I had one--whom
else could I marry except an American girl?"

"I'll sell the wheat--the land. We'll go back to Germany!"

That was maddening to Kurt. He sprang up, sending dishes to the floor
with a crash. He bent over to pound the table with a fist. Violent
speech choked him and he felt a cold, tight blanching of his face.

"Listen!" he rang out. "If I go to Germany it'll be as a soldier--to
kill Germans!... I'm done--I'm through with the very name.... Listen to
the last words I'll ever speak to you in German--the last! _To hell with
Germany_!"

Then Kurt plunged, blind in his passion, out of the door into the night.
And as he went he heard his father cry out, brokenly:

"My son! Oh, my son!"

The night was dark and cool. A faint wind blew across the hills, and it
was dry, redolent, sweet. The sky seemed an endless curving canopy of
dark blue blazing with myriads of stars.

Kurt staggered out of the yard, down along the edge of a wheat-field, to
one of the straw-stacks, and there he flung himself down in an agony.

"Oh, I'm ruined--ruined!" he moaned. "The break--has come!... Poor old
dad!"

He leaned there against the straw, shaking and throbbing, with a cold
perspiration bathing face and body. Even the palms of his hands were
wet. A terrible fit of anger was beginning to loose its hold upon him.
His breathing was labored in gasps and sobs. Unutterable stupidity of
his father--horrible cruelty of his position! What had he ever done in
all his life to suffer under such a curse? Yet almost he clung to his
wrath, for it had been righteous. That thing, that infernal twist in the
brain, that was what was wrong with his father. His father who had been
fifty years in the United States! How simple, then, to understand what
was wrong with Germany.

"By God! I am--American!" he panted, and it was as if he called to the
grave of his mother, over there on the dark, windy hill.

That tremendous uprising of his passion had been a vortex, an end, a
decision. And he realized that even to that hour there had been a drag
in his blood. It was over now. The hell was done with. His soul was
free. This weak, quaking body of his housed his tainted blood and the
emotions of his heart, but it could not control his mind, his will. Beat
by beat the helpless fury in him subsided, and then he fell back and lay
still for a long time, eyes shut, relaxed and still.

A hound bayed mournfully; the insects chirped low, incessantly; the
night wind rustled the silken heads of wheat.

After a while the young man sat up and looked at the heavens, at the
twinkling white stars, and then away across the shadows of round hills
in the dusk. How lonely, sad, intelligible, and yet mystic the night and
the scene!

What came to him then was revealing, uplifting--a source of strength to
go on. He was not to blame for what had happened; he could not change
the future. He had a choice between playing the part of a man or that of
a coward, and he had to choose the former. There seemed to be a spirit
beside him--the spirit of his mother or of some one who loved him and
who would have him be true to an ideal, and, if needful, die for it. No
night in all his life before had been like this one. The dreaming hills
with their precious rustling wheat meant more than even a spirit could
tell. Where had the wheat come from that had seeded these fields? Whence
the first and original seeds, and where were the sowers? Back in the
ages! The stars, the night, the dark blue of heaven hid the secret in
their impenetrableness. Beyond them surely was the answer, and perhaps
peace.

Material things--life, success--such as had inspired Kurt Dorn, on this
calm night lost their significance and were seen clearly. They could not
last. But the wheat there, the hills, the stars--they would go on with
their task. Passion was the dominant side of a man declaring itself, and
that was a matter of inheritance. But self-sacrifice, with its mercy,
its succor, its seed like the wheat, was as infinite as the stars. He
had long made up his mind, yet that had not given him absolute
restraint. The world was full of little men, but he refused to stay
little. This war that had come between him and his father had been bred
of the fumes of self-centered minds, turned with an infantile fatality
to greedy desires. His poor old blinded father could be excused and
forgiven. There were other old men, sick, crippled, idle, who must
suffer pain, but whose pain could be lightened. There were babies,
children, women, who must suffer for the sins of men, but that suffering
need no longer be, if men became honest and true.

His sudden up-flashing love had a few hours back seemed a calamity. But
out there beside the whispering wheat, under the passionless stars, in
the dreaming night, it had turned into a blessing. He asked nothing but
to serve. To serve her, his country, his future! All at once he who had
always yearned for something unattainable had greatness thrust upon him.
His tragical situation had evoked a spirit from the gods.

To kiss that blue-eyed girl's sweet lips would be a sum of joy, earthly,
all-satisfying, precious. The man in him trembled all over at the daring
thought. He might revel in such dreams, and surrender to them, since she
would never know, but the divinity he sensed there in the presence of
those stars did not dwell on a woman's lips. Kisses were for the
present, the all too fleeting present; and he had to concern himself
with what he might do for one girl's future. It was exquisitely sad and
sweet to put it that way, though Kurt knew that if he had never seen
Lenore Anderson he would have gone to war just the same. He was not
making an abstract sacrifice.

The wheat-fields rolling before him, every clod of which had been
pressed by his bare feet as a boy; the father whose changeless blood had
sickened at the son of his loins; the life of hope, freedom, of action,
of achievement, of wonderful possibility--these seemed lost to Kurt
Dorn, a necessary renunciation when he yielded to the call of war.

But no loss, no sting of bullet or bayonet, no torturing victory of
approaching death, could balance in the scale against the thought of a
picture of one American girl--blue-eyed, red-lipped, golden-haired--as
she stepped somewhere in the future, down a summer lane or through a
blossoming orchard, on soil that was free.




CHAPTER IV

Toward the end of July eastern Washington sweltered under the most
torrid spell of heat on record. It was a dry, high country, noted for an
equable climate, with cool summers and mild winters. And this
unprecedented wave would have been unbearable had not the atmosphere
been free from humidity.

The haze of heat seemed like a pall of thin smoke from distant forest
fires. The sun rose, a great, pale-red ball, hot at sunrise, and it
soared blazing-white at noon, to burn slowly westward through a
cloudless, coppery sky, at last to set sullen and crimson over the
ranges.

Spokane, being the only center of iron, steel, brick, and masonry in
this area, resembled a city of furnaces. Business was slack. The asphalt
of the streets left clean imprints of a pedestrian's feet; bits of
newspaper stuck fast to the hot tar. Down by the gorge, where the great
green river made its magnificent plunges over the falls, people
congregated, tarried, and were loath to leave, for here the blowing mist
and the air set into motion by the falling water created a temperature
that was relief.

Citizens talked of the protracted hot spell, of the blasted crops, of an
almost sure disaster to the wheat-fields, and of the activities of the
I.W.W. Even the war, for the time being, gave place to the nearer
calamities impending.

Montana had taken drastic measures against the invading I.W.W. The
Governor of Idaho had sent word to the camps of the organization that
they had five days to leave that state. Spokane was awakening to the
menace of hordes of strange, idle men who came in on the westbound
freight-trains. The railroads had been unable to handle the situation.
They were being hard put to it to run trains at all. The train crews
that refused to join the I.W.W. had been threatened, beaten, shot at,
and otherwise intimidated.

The Chamber of Commerce sent an imperative appeal to representative
wheat-raisers, ranchers, lumbermen, farmers, and bade them come to
Spokane to discuss the situation. They met at the Hotel Davenport, where
luncheon was served in one of the magnificently appointed dining-halls
of that most splendid hotel in the West.

The lion of this group of Spokane capitalists was Riesinberg, a man of
German forebears, but all American in his sympathies, with a son already
in the army. Riesinberg was president of a city bank and of the Chamber
of Commerce. His first words to the large assembly of clean-cut,
square-jawed, intent-eyed Westerners were: "Gentlemen, we are here to
discuss the most threatening and unfortunate situation the Northwest was
ever called upon to meet." His address was not long, but it was
stirring. The Chamber of Commerce could provide unlimited means, could
influence and control the state government; but it was from the visitors
invited to this meeting, the men of the outlying districts which were
threatened, that objective proofs must come and the best methods of
procedure.

The first facts to come out were that many crops were ruined already,
but, owing to the increased acreage that year, a fair yield was
expected; that wheat in the Bend would be a failure, though some farmers
here and there would harvest well; that the lumber districts were not
operating, on account of the I.W.W.

Then it was that the organization of men who called themselves the
Industrial Workers of the World drew the absorbed attention of the
meeting. Depredations already committed stunned the members of the
Chamber of Commerce.

President Riesinberg called upon Beardsley, a prominent and intelligent
rancher of the southern wheat-belt. Beardsley said:

    "It is difficult to speak with any moderation of the outrageous
    eruption of the I.W.W. It is nothing less than rebellion, and the
    most effective means of suppressing rebellion is to apply a little
    of that 'direct action' which is the favorite diversion of the
    I.W.W.'s.

    "The I.W.W. do not intend to accomplish their treacherous aims by
    anything so feeble as speech; they scorn the ballot-box. They are
    against the war, and their method of making known their protest is
    by burning our grain, destroying our lumber, and blowing up
    freight-trains. They seek to make converts not by argument, but by
    threats and intimidation.

    "We read that Western towns are seeking to deport these rebels. In
    the old days we can imagine more drastic measures would have been
    taken. The Westerners were handy with the rope and the gun in those
    days. We are not counseling lynch law, but we think deportation is
    too mild a punishment.

    "We are too 'civilized' to apply the old Roman law, 'Spare the
    conquered and extirpate the rebels,' but at least we could intern
    them. The British have found it practicable to put German prisoners
    to work at useful employment. Why couldn't we do the same with our
    rebel I.W.W.'s?"

Jones, a farmer from the Yakima Valley, told that business men,
housewives, professional men, and high-school boys and girls would help
to save the crop of Washington to the nation in case of labor trouble.
Steps already had been taken to mobilize workers in stores, offices, and
homes for work in the orchards and grain-fields, should the I.W.W.
situation seriously threaten harvests.

Pledges to go into the hay or grain fields or the orchards, with a
statement of the number of days they were willing to work, had been
signed by virtually all the men in North Yakima.

Helmar, lumberman from the Blue Mountains, spoke feelingly; he said:

    "My company is the owner of a considerable amount of timbered lands
    and timber purchased from the state and from individuals. We have
    been engaged in logging that land until our operations have been
    stopped and our business paralyzed by an organization which calls
    itself the Industrial Workers of the World, and by members of that
    organization, and other lawless persons acting in sympathy with
    them.

    "Our employees have been threatened with physical violence and
    death.

    "Our works are picketed by individuals who camp out in the forests
    and who intimidate and threaten our employees.

    "Open threats have been made that our works, our logs, and our
    timber will all be burned.

    "Sabotage is publicly preached in the meetings, and in the
    literature of the organization it is advised and upheld.

    "The open boast is made that the lumbering industry, with all other
    industry, will be paralyzed by this organization, by the destruction
    of property used in industry and by the intimidation of laborers who
    are willing to work.

    "A real and present danger to the property of my company exists.
    Unless protection is given to us it will probably be burned and
    destroyed. Our lawful operations cannot be conducted because
    laborers who are willing to work are fearful of their lives and are
    subject to abuse, threats, and violence. Our camps, when in
    operation, are visited by individuals belonging to the said
    organization, and the men peaceably engaged in them threatened with
    death if they do not cease work. All sorts of injury to property by
    the driving of spikes in logs, the destruction of logs, and other
    similar acts are encouraged and recommended.

    "As I pointed out to the sheriff of our county, the season is a very
    dry one and the woods are and will be, unless rain comes, in danger
    of disastrous fires. The organization and its members have openly
    and repeatedly asserted that they will burn the logs in the woods
    and burn the forests of this company and other timber-holders before
    they will permit logging operations to continue.

    "Many individuals belonging to the organization are camped in the
    open in the timbered country, and their very presence is a fire
    menace. They are engaged in no business except to interfere with the
    industry and to interfere with the logging of this company and
    others who engaged in the logging business.

    "We have done what we could in a lawful manner to continue our
    operations and to protect our employees. We are now helpless, and
    place the responsibility for the protection of our property and the
    protection of our employees upon the board of county commissioners
    and upon the officers of the county."

Next President Riesinberg called upon a young reporter to read
paragraphs of an I.W.W. speech he had heard made to a crowd of three
hundred workmen. It was significant that several members of the Chamber
of Commerce called for a certain paragraph to be reread. It was this:

    "If you working-men could only stand together you could do in this
    country what has been done in Russia," declared the I.W.W. orator.
    "You know what the working-men did there to the slimy curs, the
    gunmen, and the stool-pigeons of the capitalistic class. They bumped
    them off. They sent them up to say, 'Good morning, Jesus.'"

After a moment of muttering and another silence the president again
addressed the meeting:

    "Gentlemen, we have Anderson of Golden Valley with us to-day. If
    there are any of you present who do not know him, you surely have
    heard of him. His people were pioneers. He was born in Washington.
    He is a type of the men who have made the Northwest. He fought the
    Indians in early days and packed a gun for the outlaws--and to-day,
    gentlemen, he owns a farm as big as Spokane County. We want to hear
    from him."

When Anderson rose to reply it was seen that he was pale and somber.
Slowly he gazed at the assembly of waiting men, bowed; then he began,
impressively:

    "Gentlemen an' friends, I wish I didn't have to throw a bomb into
    this here camp-fire talk. But I've got to. You're all talkin' I.W.W.
    Facts have been told showin' a strange an' sudden growth of this
    here four-flush labor union. We've had dealin's with them for
    several years. But this year it's different.... All at once they've
    multiplied and strengthened. There's somethin' behind them. A big
    unseen hand is stackin' the deck.... An', countrymen, that
    tremendous power is German gold!"

Anderson's deep voice rang like a bell. His hearers sat perfectly
silent. No surprise showed, but faces grew set and hard. After a pause
of suspense, in which his denunciation had time to sink in, Anderson
resumed:

    "A few weeks ago a young man, a stranger, came to me an' asked for a
    job. He could do anythin', he said. An' I hired him to drive my car.
    But he wasn't much of a driver. We went up in the Bend country one
    day, an' on that trip I got suspicious of him. I caught him talkin'
    to what I reckoned was I.W.W. men. An' then, back home again, I
    watched him an' kept my ears open. It didn't take long for me to
    find discontent among my farm-hands. I hire about a hundred hands on
    my ranches durin' the long off season, an' when harvest comes round
    a good many more. All I can get, in fact.... Well, I found my hands
    quittin' me, which was sure onusual. An' I laid it to that driver.

    "One day not long ago I run across him hobnobbin' with the strange
    man I'd seen talkin' with him on the Bend trip. But my driver--Nash,
    he calls himself--didn't see me. That night I put a cowboy to watch
    him. An' what this cowboy heard, put together two an' two, was that
    Nash was assistant to an I.W.W. leader named Glidden. He had sent
    for Glidden to come to look over my ranch. Both these I.W.W. men had
    more money than they could well carry--lots of it gold! The way they
    talked of this money proved that they did not know the source, but
    the supply was unlimited.

    "Next day Glidden could not be found. But my cowboy had learned
    enough to show his methods. If these proselyters could not coax or
    scare trusted men to join the I.W.W., they tried to corrupt them
    with money. An' in most cases they're successful. I've not yet
    sprung anythin' on my driver, Nash. But he can't get away, an'
    meanwhile I'll learn much by watchin' him. Maybe through Nash I can
    catch Glidden. An' so, gentlemen, here we have a plain case. An' the
    menace is enough to chill the heart of every loyal citizen. Any way
    you put it, if harvests can't be harvested, if wheat-fields an'
    lumber forests are burned, if the state militia has to be called
    out--any way you put it our government will be hampered, our
    supplies kept from our allies--an' so the cause of Germany will be
    helped.

    "The I.W.W. have back of them an organized power with a definite
    purpose. There can hardly be any doubt that that power is Germany.
    The agitators an' leaders throughout the country are well paid.
    Probably they, as individuals, do not know who pays them.
    Undoubtedly a little gang of men makes the deals, handles the money.
    We read that every U.S. attorney is investigating the I.W.W. The
    government has determined to close down on them. But lawyers an' law
    are slow to act. Meanwhile the danger to us is at hand.

    "Gentlemen, to finish let me say that down in my country we're goin'
    to rustle the I.W.W. in the good old Western way."




CHAPTER V

Golden Valley was the Garden of Eden of the Northwest. The southern
slope rose to the Blue Mountains, whence flowed down the innumerable
brooks that, uniting to form streams and rivers, abundantly watered the
valley.

The black reaches of timber extended down to the grazing-uplands, and
these bordered on the sloping golden wheat-fields, which in turn
contrasted so vividly with the lower green alfalfa-pastures; then came
the orchards with their ruddy, mellow fruit, and lastly the bottom-lands
where the vegetable-gardens attested to the wonderful richness of the
soil. From the mountain-side the valley seemed a series of colored
benches, stepping down, black to gray, and gray to gold, and gold to
green with purple tinge, and on to the perfectly ordered, many-hued
floor with its innumerable winding, tree-bordered streams glinting in
the sunlight.

The extremes of heat and cold never visited Golden Valley. Spokane and
the Bend country, just now sweltering in a torrid zone, might as well
have been in the Sahara, for all the effect it had on this garden spot
of all the Inland Empire. It was hot in the valley, but not unpleasant.
In fact, the greatest charm in this secluded vale was its pleasant
climate all the year round. No summer cyclones, no winter blizzards, no
cloudbursts or bad thunderstorms. It was a country that, once lived in,
could never be left.

There were no poor inhabitants in that great area of twenty-five hundred
miles; and there were many who were rich. Prosperous little towns dotted
the valley floor; and the many smooth, dusty, much-used roads all led to
Ruxton, a wealthy and fine city.

       *       *       *       *       *

Anderson, the rancher, had driven his car to Spokane. Upon his return he
had with him a detective, whom he expected to use in the I.W.W.
investigations, and a neighbor rancher. They had left Spokane early and
had endured almost insupportable dust and heat. A welcome change began
as they slid down from the bare desert into the valley; and once across
the Copper River, Anderson began to breathe freer and to feel he was
nearing home.

"God's country!" he said, as he struck the first low swell of rising
land, where a cool wind from off the wooded and watered hills greeted
his face. Dust there still was, but it seemed a different kind and
smelled of apple-orchards and alfalfa-fields. Here were hard, smooth
roads, and Anderson sped his car miles and miles through a country that
was a verdant fragrant bower, and across bright, shady streams and by
white little hamlets.

At Huntington he dropped his neighbor rancher, and also the detective,
Hall, who was to go disguised into the districts overrun by the I.W.W. A
further run of forty miles put him on his own property.

Anderson owned a string of farms and ranches extending from the
bottom-lands to the timber-line of the mountains. They represented his
life of hard work and fair dealing. Many of these orchard and vegetable
lands he had tenant farmers work on shares. The uplands or wheat and
grass he operated himself. As he had accumulated property he had changed
his place of residence from time to time, at last to build a beautiful
and permanent home farther up on the valley slope than any of the
others.

It was a modern house, white, with a red roof. Situated upon a high
level bench, with the waving gold fields sloping up from it and the
green squares of alfalfa and orchards below, it appeared a landmark from
all around, and could be plainly seen from Vale, the nearest little
town, five miles away.

Anderson had always loved the open, and he wanted a place where he could
see the sun rise over the distant valley gateway, and watch it set
beyond the bold black range in the west. He could sit on his front
porch, wide and shady, and look down over two thousand acres of his own
land. But from the back porch no eye could have encompassed the limit of
his broad, swelling slopes of grain and grass.

From the main road he drove up to the right of the house, where, under a
dip of wooded slope, clustered barns, sheds, corrals, granaries, engine
and machinery houses, a store, and the homes of hired men--a little
village in itself.

The sounds he heard were a welcome home--the rush of swift water not
twenty yards from where he stopped the car in the big courtyard, the
pound of hoofs on the barn floor, the shrill whistle of a stallion that
saw and recognized him, the drawling laugh of his cowboys and the clink
of their spurs as they became aware of his return.

Nash, the suspected driver, was among those who hurried to meet the car.

Anderson's keen, covert glance made note of the driver's worried and
anxious face.

"Nash, she'll need a lookin' over," he said, as he uncovered bundles in
the back seat and lifted them out.

"All right, sir," replied Nash, eagerly. A note of ended strain was
significant in his voice.

"Here, you Jake," cheerily called Anderson to a raw-boned, gaunt-faced
fellow who wore the garb of a cowboy.

"Boss, I'm powerful glad to see you home," replied Jake, as he received
bundle after bundle until he was loaded down. Then he grinned. "Mebbe
you want a pack-hoss."

"You're hoss enough for me. Come on," he said, and, waving the other men
aside, he turned toward the green, shady hill above which the red and
white of the house just showed.

A bridge crossed the rushing stream. Here Jake dropped some of the
bundles, and Anderson recovered them. As he straightened up he looked
searchingly at the cowboy. Jake's yellow-gray eyes returned the gaze.
And that exchange showed these two of the same breed and sure of each
other.

"Nawthin' come off, boss," he drawled, "but I'm glad you're home."

"Did Nash leave the place?" queried Anderson.

"Twice, at night, an' he was gone long. I didn't foller him because I
seen he didn't take no luggage, an' thet boy has some sporty clothes. He
was sure comin' back."

"Any sign of his pard--that Glidden?"

"Nope. But there's been more'n one new feller snookin' round."

"Have you heard from any of the boys with the cattle?"

"Yep. Bill Weeks rode down. He said a bunch of I.W.W.'s were campin'
above Blue Spring. Thet means they've moved on down to the edge of the
timber an' oncomfortable near our wheat. Bill says they're killin' our
stock fer meat."

"Hum!... How many in the gang?" inquired Anderson, darkly. His early
dealings with outlaw rustlers had not left him favorably inclined toward
losing a single steer.

"Wal, I reckon we can't say. Mebbe five hundred, countin' all along the
valley on this side. Then we hear there's more on the other... Boss, if
they git ugly we're goin' to lose stock, wheat, an' mebbe some blood."

"So many as that!" ejaculated the rancher, in amaze.

"They come an' go, an' lately they're most comin'," replied Jake.

"When do we begin cuttin' grain?"

"I reckon to-morrow. Adams didn't want to start till you got back. It'll
be barley an' oats fer a few days, an' then the wheat--if we can git the
men."

"An' has Adams hired any?"

"Yes, a matter of twenty or so. They swore they wasn't I.W.W.'s, but
Adams says, an' so do I, thet some of them are men who first claimed to
our old hands thet they did belong to the I.W.W."

"An' so we've got to take a chance if we're goin' to harvest two
thousand acres of wheat?"

"I reckon, boss."

"Any reports from Ruxton way?"

"Wal, yes. But I reckon you'd better git your supper 'fore I tell you,
boss."

"Jake, you said nothin' had come off."

"Wal, nawthin' has around here. Come on now, boss. Miss Lenore says I
was to keep my mouth shut."

"Jake, who's your boss? Me or Lenore?"

"Wal, you air. But I ain't disobeyin' Miss Lenore."

Anderson walked the rest of the way up the shady path to the house
without saying any more to Jake. The beautiful white house stood clear
of the grove, bright in the rays of the setting sun. A barking of dogs
greeted Anderson, and then the pattering of feet. His daughters appeared
on the porch. Kathleen, who was ten, made a dive for him, and Rose, who
was fourteen, came flying after her. Both girls were screaming joyously.
Their sunny hair danced. Lenore waited for him at the step, and as he
mounted the porch, burdened by the three girls, his anxious, sadly
smiling wife came out to make perfect the welcome home. No--not perfect,
for Anderson's joy held a bitter drop, the absence of his only son!

"Oh, dad, what-all did you fetch me?" cried Kathleen, and she deserted
her father for the bundle-laden Jake.

"And me!" echoed Rose.

Even Lenore, in the happiness of her father's return, was not proof
against the wonder and promise of those many bundles.

They all went within, through a hall to a great, cozy living-room. Mrs.
Anderson's very first words, after her welcoming smile, were a
half-faltered:

"Any--news of--Jim?"

"Why--yes," replied Anderson, hesitatingly.

Suddenly the three sisters were silent. How closely they resembled one
another then--Lenore, a budding woman; Rose, a budding girl; and
Kathleen, a rosy, radiant child! Lenore lost a little of her bloom.

"What news, father?" she asked.

"Haven't you heard from him?" returned Anderson.

"Not for a whole week. He wrote the day he reached Spokane. But then he
hardly knew anything except that he'd enlisted."

"I'm sure glad Jim didn't wait for the draft," replied the father.
"Well, mother an' girls, Jim was gone when I got to Spokane. All I heard
was that he was well when he left for Frisco an' strong for the aviation
corps."

"Then he means to--to be an aviator," said Lenore, with quivering lips.

"Sure, if he can get in. An' he's wise. Jim knows engines. He has a
knack for machinery. An' nerve! No boy ever had more. He'll make a crack
flier."

"But--the danger!" whispered the boy's mother, with a shudder.

"I reckon there'll be a little danger, mother," replied Anderson,
cheerfully. "We've got to take our chance on Jim. There's one sure bet.
If he had stayed home he'd been fightin' I.W.W.'s!"

That trying moment passed. Mrs. Anderson said that she would see to
supper being put on the table at once. The younger girls began untying
the bundles. Lenore studied her father's face a moment.

"Jake, you run along," she said to the waiting cowboy. "Wait till after
supper before you worry father."

"I'll do thet, Miss Lenore," drawled Jake, "an' if he wants worryin'
he'll hev to look me up."

"Lass, I'm only tired, not worried," replied Anderson, as Jake shuffled
out with jingling spurs.

"Did anything serious happen in Spokane?" she asked anxiously.

"No. But Spokane men are alive to serious trouble ahead," replied her
father. "I spoke to the Chamber of Commerce--sure exploded a bomb in
that camp. Then I had conferences with a good many different men. Fact
is they ran me pretty hard. Couldn't have slept much, anyhow, in that
heat. Lass, this is the place to live!... I'd rather die here than live
in Spokane, in summer."

"Did you see the Governor?"

"Yes, an' he wasn't as anxious about the Golden Valley as the Bend
country. He's right, too. We're old Westerners here. We can handle
trouble. But they're not Americans up there in the Bend."

"Father, we met one American," said Lenore, dreamily.

"By George! we did!... An' that reminds me. There was a government
official from Washington, come out to Spokane to investigate conditions.
I forget his name. He asked to meet me an' he was curious about the
Bend--its loyalty to the U.S. I told him all I knew an' what I thought.
An' then he said he was goin' to motor through that wheat-belt an' talk
to what Americans he could find, an' impress upon them that they could
do as much as soldiers to win the war. Wheat--bread--that's our great
gun in this war, Lenore!... I knew this, but I was made pretty blamed
sober by that government man. I told him by all means to go to Palmer
an' to have a talk with young Dorn. I sure gave that boy a good word.
Poor lad! He's true blue. An' to think of him with that old German
devil. Old Dorn has always had a hard name. An' this war has brought out
the German cussedness."

"Father, I'm glad you spoke well of the young man," said Lenore, still
dreamily.

"Hum! You never told me what you thought," replied her father, with a
quick glance of inquiry at her. Lenore was gazing out of the window,
away across the wheat-fields and the range. Anderson watched her a
moment, and then resumed: "If I can get away I'm goin' to drive up to
see Dorn again pretty soon. Do you want to go?"

Lenore gave a little start, as if the question had surprised her.

"I--I hardly think so," she replied.

"It's just as well," he said. "That'll be a hard ride.... Guess I'll
clean up a little for supper."

Anderson left the room, and, while Kathleen and Rose gleefully squabbled
over the bundles, Lenore continued to gaze dreamily out of the window.

       *       *       *       *       *

That night Lenore went early to her room, despite the presence of some
young people from a neighboring village. She locked her door and sat in
the dark beside her open window.

An early moon silvered the long slopes of wheat and made the alfalfa
squares seem black. A cool, faint, sweet breeze fanned her cheek. She
could smell the fragrance of apples, of new-mown hay, and she could hear
the low murmur of running water. A hound bayed off somewhere in the
fields. There was no other sound. It was a quiet, beautiful, pastoral
scene. But somehow it did not comfort Lenore.

She seemed to doubt the sincerity of what she saw there and loved so
well. Moon-blanched and serene, lonely and silent, beautiful and
promising, the wide acres of "Many Waters," and the silver slopes and
dark mountains beyond, did not tell the truth. 'Way over the dark ranges
a hideous war had stretched out a red hand to her country. Her only
brother had left his home to fight, and there was no telling if he would
ever come back. Evil forces were at work out there in the moonlight.
There had come a time for her to be thoughtful.

Her father's asking her to ride to the Bend country had caused some
strange little shock of surprise. Lenore had dreamed without thinking.
Here in the darkness and silence, watching the crescent moon slowly
sink, she did think. And it was to learn that she remembered singularly
well the first time she had seen young Dorn, and still more vividly the
second time, but the third time seemed both clear and vague. Enough
young men had been smitten with Lenore to enable her to gauge the
symptoms of these easy-come, easy-go attractions. In fact, they rather
repelled her. But she had found Dorn's manner striking, confusing, and
unforgettable. And why that should be so interested her intelligence.

It was confusing to discover that she could not lay it to the sympathy
she had felt for an American boy in a difficult position, because she
had often thought of him long before she had any idea who he was or
where he lived.

In the very first place, he had been unforgettable for two
reasons--because he had been so struck at sight of her that he had gazed
unconsciously, with a glow on his face and a radiance in his eye, as of
a young poet spellbound at an inspiration; and because he seemed the
physical type of young man she had idealized--a strong, lithe-limbed,
blond giant, with a handsome, frank face, clear-cut and smooth,
ruddy-cheeked and blue-eyed.

Only after meeting him out there in the desert of wheat had she felt
sympathy for him. And now with intelligence and a woman's intuition,
barring the old, insidious, dreamy mood, Lenore went over in retrospect
all she could remember of that meeting. And the truth made her sharply
catch her breath. Dorn had fallen in love with her. Intuition declared
that, while her intelligence repudiated it. Stranger than all was the
thrill which began somewhere in the unknown depths of her and mounted,
to leave her tingling all over. She had told her father that she did not
want to ride to the Bend country. But she did want to go! And that
thought, flashing up, would not be denied. To want to meet a strange
young man again was absolutely a new and irritating discovery for
Lenore. It mystified her, because she had not had time to like Dorn.
Liking an acquaintance had nothing to do with the fact. And that stunned
her.

"Could it be--love at first sight?" she whispered, incredulously, as she
stared out over the shadowing fields.

"For me? Why, how absurd--impossible!... I--I only remembered him--a big
handsome boy with blazing eyes.... And now I'm sorry for him!"

To whisper her amaze and doubt and consternation only augmented the
instinctive recurring emotion. She felt something she could not explain.
And that something was scarcely owing to this young man's pitiful
position between duty to his father and love for his country. It had to
do with his blazing eyes; intangible, dreamlike perceptions of him as
not real, of vague sweet fancies that retreated before her introspective
questioning. What alarmed Lenore was a tendency of her mind to shirk
this revealing analysis. Never before had she been afraid to look into
herself. But now she was finding unplumbed wells of feeling, secret
chambers of dreams into which she had never let the light, strange
instinctive activities, more physical than mental. When in her life
before had she experienced a nameless palpitation of her heart?

Long she sat there, staring out into the night. And the change in the
aspect of the broad spaces, now dark and impenetrable and mysterious,
seemed like the change in the knowledge of herself. Once she had
flattered herself that she was an inch of crystal water; now she seemed
a complex, aloof, and contrary creature, almost on the verge of
tumultuous emotions.

She said her prayers that night, a girlish habit resumed since her
brother had declared his intention of enlisting in the army. And to that
old prayer, which her mother had prayed before her, she added an appeal
of her own. Strange that young Dorn's face should flash out of gloom! It
was there, and her brother's was fading.

"I wonder--will he and Jim--meet over there--on the battle-field!" she
whispered. She hoped they would. Like tigers those boys would fight the
Germans. Her heart beat high. Then a cold wind seemed to blow over her.
It had a sickening weight. If that icy and somber wind could have been
traced to its source, then the mystery of life would have been clear.
But that source was the cause of war, as its effect was the horror of
women. A hideous and monstrous thing existed out there in the darkness.
Lenore passionately loved her brother, and this black thing had taken
him away. Why could not women, who suffered most, have some word in the
regulation of events? If women could help govern the world there would
be no wars.

At last encroaching drowsiness dulled the poignancy of her feelings and
she sank to sleep.




CHAPTER VI

Singing of birds at her window awakened Lenore. The dawn streamed in
bright and sweetly fragrant. The wheat-fields seemed a rosy gold, and
all that open slope called to her thrillingly of the beauty of the world
and the happiness of youth. It was not possible to be morbid at dawn. "I
hear! I hear!" she whispered. "From a thousand slopes far and wide!"

At the breakfast-table, when there came opportunity, she looked up
serenely and said, "Father, on second thought I will go the Bend, thank
you!"

Anderson laid down his knife and fork and his eyes opened wide in
surprise. "Changed your mind!" he exclaimed.

"That's a privilege I have, you know," she replied, calmly.

Mrs. Anderson appeared more anxious than surprised. "Daughter, don't go.
That will be a fearful ride."

"Hum! Sure glad to have you, lass," added Anderson, with his keen eyes
on her.

"Let me go, too," begged Rose.

Kathleen was solemnly gazing at Lenore, with the wise, penetrating eyes
of extreme youth.

"Lenore, I'll bet you've got a new beau up there," she declared.

Lenore flushed scarlet. She was less angry with her little sister than
with the incomprehensible fact of a playful word bringing the blood
stingingly to her neck and face.

"Kitty, you forget your manners," she said, sharply.

"Kit is fresh. She's an awful child," added Rose, with a superior air.

"I didn't say a thing," cried Kathleen, hotly. "Lenore, if it isn't
true, why'd you blush so red?"

"Hush, you silly children!" ordered the mother, reprovingly.

Lenore was glad to finish that meal and to get outdoors. She could smile
now at that shrewd and terrible Kitty, but recollection of her father's
keen eyes was confusing. Lenore felt there was really nothing to blush
for; still, she could scarcely tell her father that upon awakening this
morning she had found her mind made up--that only by going to the Bend
country could she determine the true state of her feelings. She simply
dared not accuse herself of being in unusually radiant spirits because
she was going to undertake a long, hard ride into a barren, desert
country.

The grave and thoughtful mood of last night had gone with her slumbers.
Often Lenore had found problems decided for her while she slept. On this
fresh, sweet summer morning, with the sun bright and warm, presaging a
hot and glorious day, Lenore wanted to run with the winds, to wade
through the alfalfa, to watch with strange and renewed pleasure the
waves of shadow as they went over the wheat. All her life she had known
and loved the fields of waving gold. But they had never been to her what
they had become overnight. Perhaps this was because it had been said
that the issue of the great war, the salvation of the world, and its
happiness, its hope, depended upon the millions of broad acres of golden
grain. Bread was the staff of life. Lenore felt that she was changing
and growing. If anything should happen to her brother Jim she would be
heiress to thousands of acres of wheat. A pang shot through her heart.
She had to drive the cold thought away. And she must learn--must know
the bigness of this question. The women of the country would be called
upon to help, to do their share.

She ran down through the grove and across the bridge, coming abruptly
upon Nash, her father's driver. He had the car out.

"Good morning," he said, with a smile, doffing his cap.

Lenore returned his greeting and asked if her father intended to go
anywhere.

"No. I'm taking telegrams to Huntington."

"Telegrams? What's the matter with the 'phone?" she queried.

"Wire was cut yesterday."

"By I.W.W. men?"

"So your father says. I don't know."

"Something ought to be done to those men," said Lenore, severely.

Nash was a dark-browed, heavy-jawed young man, with light eyes and hair.
He appeared to be intelligent and had some breeding, but his manner when
alone with Lenore--he had driven her to town several times--was not the
same as when her father was present. Lenore had not bothered her mind
about it. But to-day the look in his eyes was offensive to her.

"Between you and me, Lenore, I've sympathy for those poor devils," he
said.

Lenore drew back rather haughtily at this familiar use of her first
name. "It doesn't concern me," she said, coldly and turned away.

"Won't you ride along with me? I'm driving around for the mail," he
called after her.

"No," returned Lenore, shortly, and hurried on out of earshot. The
impertinence of the fellow!

"Mawnin', Miss Lenore!" drawled a cheery voice. The voice and the jingle
of spurs behind her told Lenore of the presence of the best liked of all
her father's men.

"Good morning, Jake! Where's my dad?"

"Wal, he's with Adams, an' I wouldn't be Adams for no money," replied
the cowboy.

"Neither would I," laughed Lenore.

"Reckon you ain't ridin' this mawnin'. You sure look powerful fine, Miss
Lenore, but you can't ride in thet dress."

"Jake, nothing but an aeroplane would satisfy me to-day."

"Want to fly, hey? Wal, excuse me from them birds. I seen one, an'
thet's enough for me.... An', changin' the subject, Miss Lenore, beggin'
your pardon--you ain't ridin' in the car much these days."

"No, Jake, I'm not," she replied, and looked at the cowboy. She would
have trusted Jake as she would her brother Jim. And now he looked
earnest.

"Wal, I'm sure glad. I heerd Nash call an' ask you to go with him. I
seen his eyes when he said it.... Sure I know you'd never look at the
likes of him. But I want to tell you--he ain't no good. I've been
watchin' him. Your dad's orders. He's mixed up with the I.W.W.'s. But
thet ain't what I mean. It's--He's--I--"

"Thank you, Jake," replied Lenore, as the cowboy floundered. "I
appreciate your thought of me. But you needn't worry."

"I was worryin' a little," he said. "You see, I know men better 'n your
dad, an' I reckon this Nash would do anythin'."

"What's father keeping him for?"

"Wal, Anderson wants to find out a lot about thet I.W.W., an' he ain't
above takin' risks to do it, either."

The stable-boys and men Lenore passed all had an eager good morning for
her. She often boasted to her father that she could run "Many Waters" as
well as he. Sometimes there were difficulties that Lenore had no little
part in smoothing over. The barns and corrals were familiar places to
her, and she insisted upon petting every horse, in some instances to
Jake's manifest concern.

"Some of them bosses are bad," he insisted.

"To be sure they are--when wicked cowboys cuff and kick them," replied
Lenore, laughingly.

"Wal, if I'm wicked, I'm a-goin' to war," said Jake, reflectively. "Them
Germans bother me."

"But, Jake, you don't come in the draft age, do you?"

"Jest how old do you think I am?"

"Sometimes about fourteen, Jake."

"Much obliged. Wal, the fact is I'm over age, but I'll gamble I can pack
a gun an' shoot as straight an' eat as much as any young feller."

"I'll bet so, too, Jake. But I hope you won't go. We absolutely could
not run this ranch without you."

"Sure I knew thet. Wal then, I reckon I'll hang around till you're
married, Miss Lenore," he drawled.

Again the scarlet mantled Lenore's cheeks.

"Good. We'll have many harvests then, Jake, and many rides," she
replied.

"Aw, I don't know--" he began.

But Lenore ran away so that she could hear no more.

"What's the matter with me that people--that Jake should--?" she began,
and ended with a hand on each soft, hot cheek. There was something
different about her, that seemed certain. And if her eyes were as bright
as the day, with its deep blue and white clouds and shining green and
golden fields, then any one might think what he liked and have proof for
his tormenting.

"But married! I? Not much. Do I want a husband getting shot?"

The path Lenore trod so lightly led along a great peach and apple
orchard where the trees were set far apart and the soil was cultivated,
so that not a weed nor a blade of grass showed. The fragrance of fruit
in the air, however, did not come from this orchard, for the trees were
young and the reddening fruit rare. Down the wide aisles she saw the
thick and abundant green of the older orchards.

At length Lenore reached the alfalfa-fields, and here among the mounds
of newly cut hay that smelled so fresh and sweet she wanted to roll, and
she had to run. Two great wagons with four horses each were being
loaded. Lenore knew all the workmen except one. Silas Warner, an old,
gray-headed farmer, had been with her father as long as she could
remember.

"Whar you goin', lass?" he called, as he halted to wipe his red face
with a huge bandana. "It's too hot to run the way you're a-doin'."

"Oh, Silas, it's a grand morning!" she replied.

"Why, so 'tis! Pitchin' hay hyar made me think it was hot," he said, as
she tripped on. "Now, lass, don't go up to the wheat-fields."

But Lenore heard heedlessly, and she ran on till she came to the uncut
alfalfa, which impeded her progress. A wonderful space of green and
purple stretched away before her, and into it she waded. It came up to
her knees, rich, thick, soft, and redolent of blossom and ripeness. Hard
tramping it soon got to be. She grew hot and breathless, and her legs
ached from the force expended in making progress through the tangled
hay. At last she was almost across the field, far from the cutters, and
here she flung herself, to roll and lie flat and gaze up through the
deep azure of sky, wonderingly, as if to penetrate its secret. And then
she hid her face in the fragrant thickness that seemed to force a
whisper from her.

"I wonder--how will I feel--when I see him--again.... Oh, I wonder!"

The sound of the whispered words, the question, the inevitableness of
something involuntary, proved traitors to her happy dreams, her
assurance, her composure. She tried to burrow under the hay, to hide
from that tremendous bright-blue eye, the sky. Suddenly she lay very
quiet, feeling the strange glow and throb and race of her blood, sensing
the mystery of her body, trying to trace the thrills, to control this
queer, tremulous, internal state. But she found she could not think
clearly; she could only feel. And she gave up trying. It was sweet to
feel.

She rose and went on. Another field lay beyond, a gradual slope, covered
with a new growth of alfalfa. It was a light green--a contrast to the
rich darkness of that behind her. At the end of this field ran a swift
little brook, clear and musical, open to the sky in places, and in
others hidden under flowery banks. Birds sang from invisible coverts; a
quail sent up clear flutelike notes; and a lark caroled, seemingly out
of the sky.

Lenore wet her feet crossing the brook, and, climbing the little knoll
above, she sat down upon a stone to dry them in the sun. It had a burn
that felt good. No matter how hot the sun ever got there, she liked it.
Always there seemed air to breathe and the shade was pleasant.

From this vantage-point, a favorite one with Lenore, she could see all
the alfalfa-fields, the hill crowned by the beautiful white-and-red
house, the acres of garden, and the miles of orchards. The grazing and
grain fields began behind her.

The brook murmured below her and the birds sang. She heard the bees
humming by. The air out here was clear of scent of fruit and hay, and it
bore a drier odor, not so sweet. She could see the workmen, first those
among the alfalfa, and then the men, and women, too, bending over on the
vegetable-gardens. Likewise she could see the gleam of peaches, apples,
pears and plums--a colorful and mixed gleam, delightful to the eye.

Wet or dry, it seemed that her feet refused to stay still, and once
again she was wandering. A gray, slate-colored field of oats invited her
steps, and across this stretch she saw a long yellow slope of barley,
where the men were cutting. Beyond waved the golden fields of wheat.
Lenore imagined that when she reached them she would not desire to
wander farther.

There were two machines cutting on the barley slope, one drawn by eight
horses, and the other by twelve. When Lenore had crossed the oat-field
she discovered a number of strange men lounging in the scant shade of a
line of low trees that separated the fields. Here she saw Adams, the
foreman; and he espied her at the same moment. He had been sitting down,
talking to the men. At once he rose to come toward Lenore.

"Is your father with you?" he asked.

"No; he's too slow for me," replied Lenore. "Who are these men?"

"They're strangers looking for jobs."

"I.W.W. men?" queried Lenore, in lower voice.

"Surely must be," he replied. Adams was not a young, not a robust man,
and he seemed to carry a burden of worry. "Your father said he would
come right out."

"I hope he doesn't," said Lenore, bluntly. "Father has a way with him,
you know."

"Yes, I know. And it's the way we're needing here in the Valley,"
replied the foreman, significantly.

"Is that the new harvester-thresher father just bought?" asked Lenore,
pointing to the huge machine, shining and creeping behind the twelve
horses.

"Yes, that's the McCormack and it's a dandy," returned Adams. "With
machines like that we can get along without the I.W.W."

"I want a ride on it," declared Lenore, and she ran along to meet the
harvester. She waved her hand to the driver, Bill Jones, another old
hand, long employed by her father. Bill hauled back on the many-branched
reins, and when the horses stopped the clattering, whirring roar of the
machine also ceased.

"Howdy, miss! Reckon this 's a regular I.W.W. hold-up."

"Worse than that, Bill," gaily replied Lenore as she mounted the
platform where another man sat on a bag of barley. Lenore did not
recognize him. He looked rugged and honest, and beamed upon her.

"Watch out fer yer dress," he said, pointing with grimy hand to the
dusty wheels and braces so near her.

"Let me drive, Bill?" she asked.

"Wal, now, I wisht I could," he replied, dryly. "You sure can drive,
miss. But drivin' ain't all this here job."

"What can't I do? I'll bet you--"

"I never seen a girl that could throw anythin' straight. Did you?"

"Well, not so very. I forgot how you drove the horses.... Go ahead.
Don't let me delay the harvest."

Bill called sonorously to his twelve horses, and as they bent and
strained and began to bob their heads, the clattering roar filled the
air. Also a cloud of dust and thin, flying streams of chaff enveloped
Lenore. The high stalks of barley, in wide sheets, fell before the
cutter upon an apron, to be carried by feeders into the body of the
machine. The straw, denuded of its grain, came out at the rear, to be
dropped, while the grain streamed out of a tube on the side next to
Lenore, to fall into an open sack. It made a short shift of harvesting.

Lenore liked the even, nodding rhythm of the plodding horses, and the
way Bill threw a pebble from a sack on his seat, to hit this or that
horse not keeping in line or pulling his share. Bill's aim was unerring.
He never hit the wrong horse, which would have been the case had he used
a whip. The grain came out in so tiny a stream that Lenore wondered how
a bag was ever filled. But she saw presently that even a tiny stream, if
running steadily, soon made bulk. That was proof of the value of small
things, even atoms.

No marvel was it that Bill and his helper were as grimy as stokers of a
furnace. Lenore began to choke with the fine dust and to feel her eyes
smart and to see it settle on her hands and dress. She then had
appreciation of the nature of a ten-hour day for workmen cutting
eighteen acres of barley. How would they ever cut the two thousand acres
of wheat? No wonder many men were needed. Lenore sympathized with the
operators of that harvester-thresher, but she did not like the dirt. If
she had been a man, though, that labor, hard as it was, would have
appealed to her. Harvesting the grain was beautiful, whether in the old,
slow method of threshing or with one of these modern man-saving
machines.

She jumped off, and the big, ponderous thing, almost gifted with
intelligence, it seemed to Lenore, rolled on with its whirring roar,
drawing its cloud of dust, and leaving behind a litter of straw.

It developed then that Adams had walked along with the machine, and he
now addressed her.

"Will you be staying here till your father comes?" he asked.

"No, Mr. Adams. Why do you ask?"

"You oughtn't come out here alone or go back alone.... All these strange
men! Some of them hard customers! You'll excuse me, miss, but this
harvest is not like other harvests."

"I'll wait for my father and I'll not go out of sight," replied Lenore.
Thanking the foreman for his thoughtfulness, she walked away, and soon
she stood at the edge of the first wheat-field.

The grain was not yet ripe but near at hand it was a pale gold. The
wind, out of the west, waved and swept the wheat, while the almost
imperceptible shadows followed.

A road half overgrown with grass and goldenrod bordered the wheat-field,
and it wound away down toward the house. Her father appeared mounted on
the white horse he always rode. Lenore sat down in the grass to wait for
him. Nodding stalks of goldenrod leaned to her face. When looked at
closely, how truly gold their color! Yet it was not such a gold as that
of the rich blaze of ripe wheat. She was admitting to her consciousness
a jealousy of anything comparable to wheat. And suddenly she confessed
that her natural love for it had been augmented by a subtle growing
sentiment. Not sentiment about the war or the need of the Allies or
meaning of the staff of life. She had sensed young Dorn's passion for
wheat and it had made a difference to her.

"No use lying to myself!" she soliloquized. "I think of him!.. I can't
help it... I ran out here, wild, restless, unable to reason... just
because I'd decided to see him again--to make sure I--I really didn't
care.... How furious--how ridiculous I'll feel--when--when--"

Lenore did not complete her thought, because she was not sure. Nothing
could be any truer than the fact that she had no idea how she would
feel. She began sensitively to distrust herself. She who had always been
so sure of motives, so contented with things as they were, had been
struck by an absurd fancy that haunted because it was fiercely
repudiated and scorned, that would give her no rest until it was proven
false. But suppose it were true!

A succeeding blankness of mind awoke to the clip-clop of hoofs and her
father's cheery halloo.

Anderson dismounted and, throwing his bridle, he sat down heavily beside
her.

"You can ride back home," he said.

Lenore knew she had been reproved for her wandering out there, and she
made a motion to rise. His big hand held her down.

"No hurry, now I'm here. Grand day, ain't it? An' I see the barley's
goin'. Them sacks look good to me."

Lenore waited with some perturbation. She had a guilty conscience and
she feared he meant to quiz her about her sudden change of front
regarding the Bend trip. So she could not look up and she could not say
a word.

"Jake says that Nash has been tryin' to make up to you. Any sense in
what he says?" asked her father, bluntly.

"Why, hardly. Oh, I've noticed Nash is--is rather fresh, as Rose calls
it," replied Lenore, somewhat relieved at this unexpected query.

"Yes, he's been makin' eyes at Rose. She told me," replied Anderson.

"Discharge him," said Lenore, forcibly.

"So I ought. But let me tell you, Lenore. I've been hopin' to get Nash
dead to rights."

"What more do you want?" she demanded.

"I mean regardin' his relation to the I.W.W.... Listen. Here's the
point. Nash has been tracked an' caught in secret talks with prominent
men in this country. Men of foreign blood an' mebbe foreign sympathies.
We're at the start of big an' bad times in the good old U.S. No one can
tell how bad. Well, you know my position in the Golden Valley. I'm
looked to. Reckon this I.W.W. has got me a marked man. I'm packin' two
guns right now. An' you bet Jake is packin' the same. We don't travel
far apart any more this summer."

Lenore had started shudderingly and her look showed her voiceless fear.

"You needn't tell your mother," he went on, more intimately. "I can
trust you an' ... To come back to Nash. He an' this Glidden--you
remember, one of those men at Dorn's house--they are usin' gold. They
must have barrels of it. If I could find out where that gold comes from!
Probably they don't know. But I might find out if men here in our own
country are hatchin' plots with the I.W.W."

"Plots! What for?" queried Lenore, breathlessly.

"To destroy my wheat, to drive off or bribe the harvest-hands, to
cripple the crop yield in the Northwest; to draw the militia here; in
short, to harass an' weaken an' slow down our government in its
preparation against Germany."

"Why, that is terrible!" declared Lenore.

"I've a hunch from Jake--there's a whisper of a plot to put me out of
the way," said Anderson, darkly.

"Oh--good Heavens! You don't mean it!" cried Lenore, distractedly.

"Sure I do. But that's no way for Anderson's daughter to take it. Our
women have got to fight, too. We've all got to meet these German hired
devils with their own weapons. Now, lass, you know you'll get these
wheatlands of mine some day. It's in my will. That's because you, like
your dad, always loved the wheat. You'd fight, wouldn't you, to save
your grain for our soldiers--bread for your own brother Jim--an' for
your own land?"

"Fight! Would I?" burst out Lenore, with a passionate little cry.

"Good! Now you're talkin'!" exclaimed her father.

"I'll find out about this Nash--if you'll let me," declared Lenore, as
if inspired.

"How? What do you mean, girl?"

"I'll encourage him. I'll make him think I'm a wishy-washy moonstruck
girl, smitten with him. All's fair in war!... If he means ill by my
father--"

Anderson muttered low under his breath and his big hand snapped hard at
the nodding goldenrod.

"For my sake--to help me--you'd encourage Nash--flirt with him a
little--find out all you could?"

"Yes, I would!" she cried, deliberately. But she wanted to cover her
face with her hands. She trembled slightly, then grew cold, with a
sickening disgust at this strange, new, uprising self.

"Wait a minute before you say too much," went on Anderson. "You're my
best-beloved child, my Lenore, the lass I've been so proud of all my
life. I'd spill blood to avenge an insult to you.... But, Lenore, we've
entered upon a terrible war. People out here, especially the women,
don't realize it yet. But you must realize it. When I said good-by to
Jim, my son, I--I felt I'd never look upon his face again!... I gave him
up. I could have held him back--got exemption for him. But, no, by God!
I gave him up--to make safety and happiness and prosperity for--say,
your children, an' Rose's, an' Kathleen's.... I'm workin' now for the
future. So must every loyal man an' every loyal woman! We love our own
country. An' I ask you to see as I see the terrible danger to that
country. Think of you an' Rose an' Kathleen bein' treated like those
poor Belgian girls! Well, you'd get that an' worse if the Germans won
this war. An' the point is, for us to win, every last one of us must
fight, sacrifice to that end, an' hang together."

Anderson paused huskily and swallowed hard while he looked away across
the fields. Lenore felt herself drawn by an irresistible power. The west
wind rustled through the waving wheat. She heard the whir of the
threshers. Yet all seemed unreal. Her father's passion had made this
place another world.

"So much for that," resumed Anderson. "I'm goin' to do my best. An' I
may make blunders. I'll play the game as it's dealt out to me. Lord
knows I feel all in the dark. But it's the nature of the effort, the
spirit, that'll count. I'm goin' to save most of the wheat on my
ranches. An' bein' a Westerner who can see ahead, I know there's goin'
to be blood spilled.... I'd give a lot to know who sent this Nash spyin'
on me. I'm satisfied now he's an agent, a spy, a plotter for a gang
that's marked me. I can't prove it yet, but I feel it. Maybe nothin'
worth while--worth the trouble--will ever be found out from him. But I
don't figure that way. I say play their own game an' take a chance....
If you encouraged Nash you'd probably find out all about him. The worst
of it is could you be slick enough? Could a girl as fine an' square an'
high-spirited as you ever double-cross a man, even a scoundrel like
Nash? I reckon you could, considerin' the motive. Women are
wonderful.... Well, if you can fool him, make him think he's a winner,
flatter him till he swells up like a toad, promise to elope with him, be
curious, jealous, make him tell where he goes, whom he meets, show his
letters, all without ever sufferin' his hand on you, I'll give my
consent. I'd think more of you for it. Now the question is, can you do
it?"

"Yes," whispered Lenore.

"Good!" exploded Anderson, in a great relief. Then he began to mop his
wet face. He arose, showing the weight of heavy guns in his pockets, and
he gazed across the wheat-fields. "That wheat'll be ripe in a week. It
sure looks fine.... Lenore, you ride back home now. Don't let Jake pump
you. He's powerful curious. An' I'll go give these I.W.W.'s a first dose
of Anderson."

He turned away without looking at her, and he hesitated, bending over to
pluck a stem of goldenrod.

"Lass--you're--you're like your mother", he said, unsteadily. "An' she
helped me win out durin' my struggle here. You're brave an' you're big."

Lenore wanted to say something, to show her feeling, to make her task
seem lighter, but she could not speak.

"We're pards now--with no secrets", he continued, with a different note
in his voice. "An' I want you to know that it ain't likely Nash or
Glidden will get out of this country alive."




CHAPTER VII

Three days later, Lenore accompanied her father on the ride to the Bend
country. She sat in the back seat of the car with Jake--an arrangement
very gratifying to the cowboy, but received with ill-concealed
displeasure by the driver, Nash. They had arranged to start at sunrise,
and it became manifest that Nash had expected Lenore to sit beside him
all during the long ride. It was her father, however, who took the front
seat, and behind Nash's back he had slyly winked at Lenore, as if to
compliment her on the evident success of their deep plot. Lenore, at the
first opportunity that presented, shot Nash a warning glance which was
sincere enough. Jake had begun to use keen eyes, and there was no
telling what he might do.

The morning was cool, sweet, fresh, with a red sun presaging a hot day.
The big car hummed like a droning bee and seemed to cover the miles as
if by magic. Lenore sat with face uncovered, enjoying the breeze and the
endless colorful scene flashing by, listening to Jake's amusing
comments, and trying to keep back thought of what discovery might await
her before the end of this day.

Once across the Copper River, they struck the gradual ascent, and here
the temperature began to mount and the dust to fly. Lenore drew her
veils close and, leaning comfortably back, she resigned herself to wait
and to endure.

By the flight of a crow it was about a hundred miles from Anderson's
ranch to Palmer; but by the round-about roads necessary to take the
distance was a great deal longer. Lenore was well aware when they got up
on the desert, and the time came when she thought she would suffocate.
There appeared to be intolerable hours in which no one spoke and only
the hum and creak of the machine throbbed in her ears. She could not see
through her veils and did not part them until a stop was made at Palmer.

Her father got out, sputtering and gasping, shaking the dust in clouds
from his long linen coat. Jake, who always said he lived on dust and
heat, averred it was not exactly a regular fine day. Lenore looked out,
trying to get a breath of air. Nash busied himself with the hot engine.

The little country town appeared dead, and buried under dust. There was
not a person in sight nor a sound to be heard. The sky resembled molten
lead, with a blazing center too bright for the gaze of man.

Anderson and Jake went into the little hotel to get some refreshments.
Lenore preferred to stay in the car, saying she wanted only a cool
drink. The moment the two men were out of sight Nash straightened up to
gaze darkly and hungrily at Lenore.

"This's a good a chance as we'll get," he said, in an eager, hurried
whisper.

"For what?" asked Lenore, aghast.

"To run off," he replied, huskily.

Lenore had proceeded so cleverly to carry out her scheme that in three
days Nash had begun to implore and demand that she elope with him. He
had been so much of a fool. But she as yet had found out but little
about him. His right name was Ruenke. He was a socialist. He had plenty
of money and hinted of mysterious sources for more.

At this Lenore hid her face, and while she fell back in pretended
distress, she really wanted to laugh. She had learned something new in
these few days, and that was to hate.

"Oh no! no!" she murmured. "I--I can't think of that--yet."

"But why not?" he demanded, in shrill violence. His gloved hand clenched
on the tool he held.

"Mother has been so unhappy--with my brother Jim--off to the war. I--I
just couldn't--now. Harry, you must give me time. It's all so--so
sudden. Please wait!"

Nash appeared divided between two emotions. Lenore watched him from
behind her parted veil. She had been astonished to find out that, side
by side with her intense disgust and shame at the part she was playing,
there was a strong, keen, passionate interest in it, owing to the fact
that, though she could prove little against this man, her woman's
intuition had sensed his secret deadly antagonism toward her father. By
little significant mannerisms and revelations he had more and more
betrayed the German in him. She saw it in his overbearing conceit, his
almost instant assumption that he was her master. At first Lenore feared
him, but, as she learned to hate him she lost her fear. She had never
been alone with him except under such circumstances as this; and she had
decided she would not be.

"Wait?" he was expostulating. "But it's going to get hot for me."

"Oh!... What do you mean?" she begged. "You frighten me."

"Lenore, the I.W.W. will have hard sledding in this wheat country. I
belong to that. I told you. But the union is run differently this
summer. And I've got work to do--that I don't like, since I fell in love
with you. Come, run off with me and I'll give it up."

Lenore trembled at this admission. She appeared to be close upon further
discovery.

"Harry, how wildly you talk!" she exclaimed. "I hardly know you. You
frighten me with your mysterious talk.... Have--a--a little
consideration for me."

Nash strode back to lean into the car. Behind his huge goggles his eyes
gleamed. His gloved hand closed hard on her arm.

"It is sudden. It's got to be sudden," he said, in fierce undertone.
"You must trust me."

"I will. But you must confide in me," she replied, earnestly. "I'm not
quite a fool. You're rushing me--too--too--"

Suddenly he released her, threw up his hand, then quickly stepped back
to the front of the car. Jake stood in the door of the hotel. He had
seen that action of Nash's. Then Anderson appeared, followed by a boy
carrying a glass of water for Lenore. They approached the car, Jake
sauntering last, with his curious gaze on Nash.

"Go in an' get a bite an' a drink," said Anderson to the driver. "An'
hurry."

Nash obeyed. Jake's eyes never left him until he entered the door. Then
Jake stepped in beside Lenore.

"Thet water's wet, anyhow," he drawled.

"We'll get a good cold drink at Dorn's," said Anderson. "Lass, how are
you makin' it?"

"Fine," she replied, smiling.

"So I seen," significantly added Jake, with a piercing glance at her.

Lenore realized then that she would have to confide in Jake or run the
risk of having violence done to Nash. So she nodded wisely at the cowboy
and winked mischievously, and, taking advantage of Anderson's entering
the car, she whispered in Jake's ear: "I'm finding out things. Tell
you--later."

The cowboy looked anything but convinced; and he glanced with narrowed
eyes at Nash as that worthy hurried back to the car.

With a lurch and a leap the car left Palmer behind in a cloud of dust.
The air was furnace-hot, oppressive, and exceedingly dry. Lenore's lips
smarted so that she continually moistened them. On all sides stretched
dreary parched wheat-fields. Anderson shook his head sadly. Jake said:
"Ain't thet too bad? Not half growed, an' sure too late now."

Near at hand Lenore saw the short immature dirty-whitish wheat, and she
realized that it was ruined.

"It's been gettin' worse, Jake," remarked Anderson. "Most of this won't
be cut at all. An' what is cut won't yield seedlings. I see a yellow
patch here an' there on the north slopes, but on the most part the
Bend's a failure."

"Father, you remember Dorn's section, that promised so well?" asked
Lenore.

"Yes. But it promised only in case of rain. I look for the worst,"
replied Anderson, regretfully.

"It looks like storm-clouds over there," said Lenore, pointing far
ahead.

Through the drifting veils of heat, far across the bare, dreamy hills of
fallow and the blasted fields of wheat, stood up some huge white
columnar clouds, a vivid contrast to the coppery sky.

"By George! there's a thunderhead!" exclaimed Anderson. "Jake, what do
you make of that?"

"Looks good to me," replied Jake, who was always hopeful.

Lenore bore the hot wind and the fine, choking dust without covering her
face. She wanted to see all the hills and valleys of this desert of
wheat. Her heart beat a little faster as, looking across that waste on
waste of heroic labor, she realized she was nearing the end of a ride
that might be momentous for her. The very aspect of that wide, treeless
expanse, with all its overwhelming meaning, seemed to make her a
stronger and more thoughtful girl. If those endless wheat-fields were
indeed ruined, what a pity, what a tragedy! Not only would young Dorn be
ruined, but perhaps many other toiling farmers. Somehow Lenore felt no
hopeless certainty of ruin for the young man in whom she was interested.

"There, on that slope!" spoke up Anderson, pointing to a field which was
yellow in contrast to the surrounding gray field. "There's a
half-section of fair wheat."

But such tinges of harvest gold were not many in half a dozen miles of
dreary hills. Where were the beautiful shadows in the wheat? wondered
Lenore. Not a breath of wind appeared to stir across those fields.

As the car neared the top of a hill the road curved into another, and
Lenore saw a dusty flash of another car passing on ahead.

Suddenly Jake leaned forward.

"Boss, I seen somethin' throwed out of thet car--into the wheat," he
said.

"What?--Mebbe it was a bottle," replied Anderson, peering ahead.

"Nope. Sure wasn't thet.... There! I seen it again. Watch, boss!"

Lenore strained her eyes and felt a stir of her pulses. Jake's voice was
perturbing. Was it strange that Nash slowed up a little where there was
no apparent need? Then Lenore saw a hand flash out of the side of the
car ahead and throw a small, glinting object into the wheat.

"There! Seen it again," said Jake.

"I saw!... Jake, mark that spot.... Nash, slow down," yelled Anderson.

Lenore gathered from the look of her father and the cowboy that
something was amiss, but she could not guess what it might be. Nash bent
sullenly at his task of driving.

"I reckon about here," said Jake, waving his hand.

"Stop her," ordered Anderson, and as the car came to a halt he got out,
followed by Jake.

"Wal, I marked it by thet rock," declared the cowboy.

"So did I," responded Anderson. "Let's get over the fence an' find what
it was they threw in there."

Jake rested a lean hand on a post and vaulted the fence. But Anderson
had to climb laboriously and painfully over the barbed-wire obstruction.
Lenore marveled at his silence and his persistence. Anderson hated wire
fences. Presently he got over, and then he divided his time between
searching in the wheat and peering after the strange car that was
drawing far away.

Lenore saw Jake pick up something and scrutinize it.

"I'll be dog-goned!" he muttered. Then he approached Anderson. "What is
thet?"

"Jake, you can lambaste me if I ever saw the likes," replied Anderson.
"But it looks bad. Let's rustle after that car."

As Anderson clambered into his seat once more he looked dark and grim.

"Catch that car ahead," he tersely ordered Nash. Whereupon the driver
began to go through his usual motions in starting.

"Lenore, what do you make of this?" queried Anderson, turning to show
her a small cake of some gray substance, soft and wet to the touch.

"I don't know what it is," replied Lenore, wonderingly. "Do you?"

"No. An' I'd give a lot--Say, Nash, hurry! Overhaul that car!"

Anderson turned to see why his order had not been obeyed. He looked
angry. Nash made hurried motions. The car trembled, the machinery began
to whir--then came a tremendous buzzing roar, a violent shaking of the
car, followed by sharp explosions, and silence.

"You stripped the gears!" shouted Anderson, with the red fading out of
his face.

"No; but something's wrong," replied Nash. He got out to examine the
engine.

Anderson manifestly controlled strong feeling. Lenore saw Jake's hand go
to her father's shoulder. "Boss," he whispered, "we can't ketch thet car
now." Anderson resigned himself, averted his face so that he could not
see Nash, who was tinkering with the engine. Lenore believed then that
Nash had deliberately stalled the engine or disordered something, so as
to permit the escape of the strange car ahead. She saw it turn off the
long, straight road ahead and disappear to the right. After some
minutes' delay Nash resumed his seat and started the car once more.

From the top of the next hill Lenore saw the Dorn farm and home. All the
wheat looked parched. She remembered, however, that the section of
promising grain lay on the north slope, and therefore out of sight from
where she was.

"Looks as bad as any," said Anderson. "Good-by to my money."

Lenore shut her eyes and thought of herself, her inward state. She
seemed calm, and glad to have that first part of the journey almost
ended. Her motive in coming was not now the impelling thing that had
actuated her.

When next the car slowed down she heard her father say, "Drive in by the
house."

Then Lenore, opening her eyes, saw the gate, the trim little orchard
with its scant shade, the gray old weatherbeaten house which she
remembered so well. The big porch looked inviting, as it was shady and
held an old rocking-chair and a bench with blue cushions. A door stood
wide open. No one appeared to be on the premises.

"Nash, blow your horn an' then hunt around for somebody," said Anderson.
"Come, get out, Lenore. You must be half dead."

"Oh no. Only half dust and half fire," replied Lenore, laughing, as she
stepped out. What a relief to get rid of coat, veils, bonnet, and to sit
on a shady porch where a faint breeze blew! Just at that instant she
heard a low, distant rumbling. Thunder! It thrilled her. Jake brought
her a cold, refreshing drink, and she sent him back after another. She
wet her handkerchief and bathed her hot face. It was indeed very
comfortable there after that long hot ride.

"Miss Lenore, I seen thet Nash pawin' you," said the cowboy, "an' by
Gosh! I couldn't believe my eyes!"

"Not so loud! Jake, the young gentleman imagines I'm in love with him,"
replied Lenore.

"Wall, I'll remove his imagining'," declared Jake, coolly.

"Jake, you will do nothing."

"Ahuh! Then you air in love with _him?_"

Lenore was compelled to explain to this loyal cowboy just what the
situation meant. Whereupon Jake swore his amaze, and said, "I'm a-goin'
to lick him, anyhow, fer thet!" And he caught up the tin cup and
shuffled away.

Footsteps and voices sounded on the path, upon which presently appeared
Anderson and young Dorn.

"Father's gone to Wheatly," he was saying. "But I'm glad to tell you
we'll pay twenty thousand dollars on the debt as soon as we harvest. If
it rains we'll pay it all and have thirty thousand left."

"Good! I sure hope it rains. An' that thunder sounds hopeful," responded
Anderson.

"It's been hopeful like that for several days, but no rain," said Dorn.
And then, espying Lenore, he seemed startled out of his eagerness. He
flushed slightly. "I--I didn't see--you had brought your daughter."

He greeted her somewhat bashfully. And Lenore returned the greeting
calmly, watching him steadily and waiting for the nameless sensations
she had imagined would attend this meeting. But whatever these might be,
they did not come to overwhelm her. The gladness of his voice, as he had
spoken so eagerly to her father about the debt, had made her feel very
kindly toward him. It might have been natural for a young man to resent
this dragging debt. But he was fine. She observed, as he sat down, that,
once the smile and flush left his face, he seemed somewhat thinner and
older than she had pictured him. A shadow lay in his eyes and his lips
were sad. He had evidently been working, upon their arrival. He wore
overalls, dusty and ragged; his arms, bare to the elbow, were brown and
muscular; his thin cotton shirt was wet with sweat and it clung to his
powerful shoulders.

Anderson surveyed the young man with friendly glance.

"What's your first name?" he queried, with his blunt frankness.

"Kurt," was the reply.

"Is that American?"

"No. Neither is Dorn. But Kurt Dorn is an American."

"Hum! So I see, an' I'm powerful glad.... An' you've saved the big
section of promisin' wheat?"

"Yes. We've been lucky. It's the best and finest wheat father ever
raised. If it rains the yield will go sixty bushels to the acre."

"Sixty? Whew!" ejaculated Anderson.

Lenore smiled at these wheat men, and said: "It surely will rain--and
likely storm to-day. I am a prophet who never fails."

"By George! that's true! Lenore has anybody beat when it comes to
figurin' the weather," declared Anderson.

Dorn looked at her without speaking, but his smile seemed to say that
she could not help being a prophet of good, of hope, of joy.

"Say, Lenore, how many bushels in a section at sixty per acre?" went on
Anderson.

"Thirty-eight thousand four hundred," replied Lenore.

"An' what'll you sell for?" asked Anderson of Dorn.

"Father has sold at two dollars and twenty-five cents a bushel," replied
Dorn.

"Good! But he ought to have waited. The government will set a higher
price.... How much will that come to, Lenore?"

Dorn's smile, as he watched Lenore do her mental arithmetic, attested to
the fact that he already had figured out the sum.

"Eighty-six thousand four hundred dollars," replied Lenore. "Is that
right?"

"An' you'll have thirty thousand dollars left after all debts are paid?"
inquired Anderson.

"Yes, sir. I can hardly realize it. That's a fortune--for one section of
wheat. But we've had four bad seasons.... Oh, if it only rains to-day!"

Lenore turned her cheek to the faint west wind. And then she looked long
at the slowly spreading clouds, white and beautiful, high up near the
sky-line, and dark and forbidding down along the horizon.

"I knew a girl who could feel things move when no one else could," said
Lenore. "I'm sensitive like that--at least about wind and rain. Right
now I can feel rain in the air."

"Then you have brought me luck," said Dorn, earnestly. "Indeed I guess
my luck has turned. I hated the idea of going away with that debt
unpaid."

"Are you--going away?" asked Lenore, in surprise.

"Yes, rather," he replied, with a short, sardonic laugh. He fumbled in a
pocket of his overalls and drew forth a paper which he opened. A flame
burned the fairness from his face; his eyes darkened and shone with
peculiar intensity of pride. "I was the first man drafted in this Bend
country.... My number was the first called!"

"Drafted!" echoed Lenore, and she seemed to be standing on the threshold
of an amazing and terrible truth.

"Lass, we forget," said her father, rather thickly.

"Oh, but--why?" cried Lenore. She had voiced the same poignant appeal to
her brother Jim. Why need he--why must he go to war? What for? And Jim
had called out a bitter curse on the Germans he meant to kill.

"Why?" returned Dorn, with the sad, thoughtful shadow returning to his
eyes. "How many times have I asked myself that?... In one way, I don't
know.... I haven't told father yet!... It's not for his sake.... But
when I think deeply--when I can feel and see--I mean I'm going for my
country.... For you and your sisters."

Like a soldier then Lenore received her mortal blow facing him who dealt
it, and it was a sudden overwhelming realization of love. No confusion,
no embarrassment, no shame attended the agony of that revelation.
Outwardly she did not seem to change at all. She felt her father's eyes
upon her; but she had no wish to hide the tumult of her heart. The
moment made her a woman. Where was the fulfilment of those vague,
stingingly sweet dreamy fancies of love? Where was her maiden reserve,
that she so boldly recognized an unsolicited passion? Her eyes met
Dorn's steadily, and she felt some vital and compelling spirit pass from
her to him. She saw him struggle with what he could not understand. It
was his glance that wavered and fell, his hand that trembled, his breast
that heaved. She loved him. There had been no beginning. Always he had
lived in her dreams. And like her brother he was going to kill and to be
killed.

Then Lenore gazed away across the wheat-fields. The shadows came waving
toward her. A stronger breeze fanned her cheeks. The heavens were
darkening and low thunder rolled along the battlements of the great
clouds.

"Say, Kurt, what do you make of this?" asked Anderson. Lenore, turning,
saw her father hold out the little gray cake that Jake had found in the
wheat-field.

Young Dorn seized it quickly, felt and smelled and bit it.

"Where'd you get this?" he asked, with excitement.

Anderson related the circumstance of its discovery.

"It's a preparation, mostly phosphorus," replied Dorn. "When the
moisture evaporates it will ignite--set fire to any dry substance....
That is a trick of the I.W.W. to burn the wheat-fields."

"By all that's ----!" swore Anderson, with his jaw bulging. "Jake an' I
knew it meant bad. But we didn't know what."

"I've been expecting tricks of all kinds," said Dorn. "I have four men
watching the section."

"Good! Say, that car turned off to the right back here some miles....
But, worse luck, the I.W.W.'s can work at night."

"We'll watch at night, too," replied Dorn.

Lenore was conscious of anger encroaching upon the melancholy splendor
of her emotions, and the change was bitter.

"When the rain comes, won't it counteract the ignition of that
phosphorus?" she asked, eagerly, for she knew that rain would come.

"Only for the time being. It 'll be just as dry this time to-morrow as
it is now."

"Then the wheat's goin' to burn," declared Anderson, grimly. "If that
trick has been worked all over this country you're goin' to have worse
'n a prairie fire. The job on hand is to save this one section that has
a fortune tied up in it."

"Mr. Anderson, that job looks almost hopeless, in the light of this
phosphorus trick. What on earth can be done? I've four men. I can't hire
any more, because I can't trust these strangers. And how can four
men--or five, counting me, watch a square mile of wheat day and night?"

The situation looked hopeless to Lenore and she was sick. What cruel
fates toyed with this young farmer! He seemed to be sinking under this
last crowning blow. There in the sky, rolling up and rumbling, was the
long-deferred rain-storm that meant freedom from debt, and a fortune
besides. But of what avail the rain if it was to rush the wheat to full
bursting measure only for the infernal touch of the foreigner?

Anderson, however, was no longer a boy. He had dealt with many and many
a trial. Never was he plunged into despair until after the dread crisis
had come to pass. His red forehead, frowning and ridged with swelling
blood-vessels, showed the bent of his mind.

"Oh, it is hard!" said Lenore to Dorn. "I'm so sorry! But don't give up.
While there's life there's hope!"

He looked up with tears in his eyes.

"Thank you.... I did weaken. You see I've let myself believe too
much--for dad's sake. I don't care about the money for myself.... Money!
What good will money be to me--now? It's over for me.... To get the
wheat cut--harvested--that's all I hoped.... The army--war--France--I go
to be--"

"Hush!" whispered Lenore, and she put a soft hand upon his lips,
checking the end of that bitter speech. She felt him start, and the look
she met pierced her soul. "Hush!... It's going to rain!... Father will
find some way to save the wheat!... And you are coming home--after the
war!"

He crushed her hand to his hot lips.

"You make me--ashamed. I won't give--up," he said, brokenly. "And when
I'm over--there--in the trenches, I'll think--"

"Dorn, listen to this," rang out Anderson. "We'll fool that I.W.W.
gang....It's a-goin' to rain. So far so good. To-morrow you take this
cake of phosphorus an' ride around all over the country. Show it an'
tell the farmers their wheat's goin' to burn. An' offer them whose
fields are already ruined--that fire can't do no more harm--offer them
big money to help you save your section. Half a hundred men could put
out a fire if one did start. An' these neighbors of yours, some of them
will jump at a chance to beat the I.W.W.... Boy, it can be done!"

He ended with a big fist held aloft in triumph.

"See! Didn't I tell you?" murmured Lenore, softly. It touched her deeply
to see Dorn respond to hope. His haggard face suddenly warmed and
glowed.

"I never thought of that," he burst out, radiantly. "We can save the
wheat.... Mr. Anderson, I--I can't thank you enough."

"Don't try," replied the rancher.

"I tell you it will rain," cried Lenore, gaily. "Let's walk out
there--watch the storm come across the hills. I love to see the shadows
blow over the wheat."

Lenore became aware, as she passed the car, that Nash was glaring at her
in no unmistakable manner. She had forgotten all about him. The sight of
his jealous face somehow added to her strange exhilaration.

They crossed the road from the house, and, facing the west, had free
prospect of the miles of billowy hills and the magnificent ordnance of
the storm-clouds. The deep, low mutterings of thunder seemed a grand and
welcome music. Lenore stole a look at Dorn, to see him, bareheaded, face
upturned, entranced. It was only a rain-storm coming! Down in the valley
country such storms were frequent at this season, too common for their
meaning to be appreciated. Here in the desert of wheat rain was a
blessing, life itself.

The creamy-white, rounded edge of the approaching clouds came and
coalesced, spread and mushroomed. Under them the body of the storm was
purple, lit now and then by a flash of lightning. Long, drifting veils
of rain, gray as thin fog, hung suspended between sky and earth.

"Listen!" exclaimed Dorn.

A warm wind, laden with dry scent of wheat, struck Lenore's face and
waved her hair. It brought a silken, sweeping rustle, a whispering of
the bearded grain. The soft sound thrilled Lenore. It seemed a sweet,
hopeful message that waiting had been rewarded, that the drought could
be broken. Again, and more beautiful than ever before in her life, she
saw the waves of shadow as they came forward over the wheat. Rippling,
like breezes over the surface of a golden lake, they came in long,
broken lines, moving, following, changing, until the whole wheat-field
seemed in shadowy motion.

The cloud pageant rolled on above and beyond. Lenore felt a sweet drop
of rain splash upon her upturned face. It seemed like a caress. There
came a pattering around her. Suddenly rose a damp, faint smell of dust.
Beyond the hill showed a gray pall of rain, coming slowly, charged with
a low roar. The whisper of the sweeping wheat was swallowed up.

Lenore stood her ground until heavy rain drops fell thick and fast upon
her, sinking through her thin waist to thrill her flesh; and then, with
a last gay call to those two man lovers of wheat and storms, she ran for
the porch.

There they joined her, Anderson puffing and smiling, Dorn still with
that rapt look upon his face. The rain swept up and roared on the roof,
while all around was streaked gray.

"Boy, there's your thirty-thousand-dollar rain!" shouted Anderson.

But Dorn did not hear. Once he smiled at Lenore as if she were the good
fairy who had brought about this miracle. In his look Lenore had deeper
realization of him, of nature, and of life. She loved rain, but always,
thenceforth, she would reverence it. Fresh, cool fragrance of a renewed
soil filled the air. All that dusty gray hue of the earth had vanished,
and it was wet and green and bright. Even as she gazed the water seemed
to sink in as it fell, a precious relief to thirsty soil. The thunder
rolled away eastward and the storm passed. The thin clouds following
soon cleared away from the western sky, rain-washed and blue, with a
rainbow curving down to bury its exquisite hues in the golden wheat.




CHAPTER VIII

The journey homeward held many incalculable differences from the
uncertain doubts and fears that had tormented Lenore on the outward
trip.

For a long time she felt the warm, tight clasp of Dorn's hand on hers as
he had said good-by. Very evidently he believed that was to be his last
sight of her. Lenore would never forget the gaze that seemed to try to
burn her image on his memory forever. She felt that they would meet
again. Solemn thoughts revolved in her mind; still, she was not unhappy.
She had given much unsought, but the return to her seemed growing every
moment that she lived.

The dust had been settled by the rain for many miles; however, beyond
Palmer there began to show evidences that the storm had thinned out or
sheered off, because the road gradually grew dry again. When dust rose
once more Lenore covered her face, although, obsessed as she was by the
deep change in herself, neither dust nor heat nor distance affected her
greatly. Like the miles the moments sped by. She was aware through
closed eyes when darkness fell. Stops were frequent after the Copper
River had been crossed, and her father appeared to meet and question
many persons in the towns they passed. Most of his questioning pertained
to the I.W.W. And even excited whispering by her father and Jake had no
power to interest her. It was midnight when they reached "Many Waters"
and Lenore became conscious of fatigue.

Nash crowded in front of Jake as she was about to step out, and assisted
her. He gave her arm a hard squeeze and fiercely whispered in her ear,
"To-morrow!"

The whisper was trenchant with meaning and thoroughly aroused Lenore.
But she gave no sign and moved away.

"I seen strangers sneakin' off in the dark," Jake was whispering to
Anderson.

"Keep your eyes peeled," replied Anderson. "I'll take Lenore up to the
house an' come back."

It was pitch black up the path through the grove and Lenore had to cling
to her father.

"Is there--any danger?" she whispered.

"We're lookin' for anythin'," replied Anderson, slowly.

"Will you be careful?"

"Sure, lass. I'll take no foolish risks. I've got men watchin' the house
an' ranch. But I'd better have the cowboys down. There's Jake--he spots
some prowlin' coyotes the minute we reach home."

Anderson unlocked and opened the door. The hall was dark and quiet. He
turned on the electric light. Lenore was detaching her veil.

"You look pale," he said, solicitously. "No wonder. That was a ride. But
I'm glad we went. I saved Dorn's wheat."

"I'm glad, too, father. Good-night!"

He bade her good-night, and went out, locking the door. Then his rapid
footsteps died away. Wearily Lenore climbed the stairs and went to her
room.

       *       *       *       *       *

She was awakened from deep slumber by Kathleen, who pulled and tugged at
her.

"Lenorry, I thought you was dead, your eyes were shut so tight,"
declared the child. "Breakfast is waiting. Did you fetch me anything?"

"Yes, a new sister," replied Lenore, dreamily.

Kathleen's eyes opened wide. "Where?"

Lenore place a hand over her heart.

"Here."

"Oh, you do look funny.... Get up, Lenorry. Did you hear the shooting
last night?"

Instantly Lenore sat up and stared.

"No. Was there any?"

"You bet. But I don't know what it was all about."

Lenore dispelled her dreamy state, and, hurriedly dressing, she went
down to breakfast. Her father and Rose were still at the table.

"Hello, big eyes!" was his greeting.

And Rose, not to be outdone, chirped, "Hello, old sleepy-head!"

Lenore's reply lacked her usual spontaneity. And she felt, if she did
not explain, the wideness of her eyes. Her father did not look as if
anything worried him. It was a way of his, however, not to show stress
or worry. Lenore ate in silence until Rose left the dining-room, and
then she asked her father if there had been shooting.

"Sure," he replied, with a broad smile. "Jake turned his guns loose on
them prowlin' men last night. By George! you ought to have heard them
run. One plumped into the gate an' went clear over it, to fall like a
log. Another fell into the brook an' made more racket than a drownin'
horse. But it was so dark we couldn't catch them."

"Jake shot to frighten them?" inquired Lenore.

"Not much. He stung one I.W.W., that's sure. We heard a cry, an' this
mornin' we found some blood."

"What do you suppose these--these night visitors wanted?"

"No tellin'. Jake thinks one of them looked an' walked like the man Nash
has been meetin'. Anyway, we're not takin' much more chance on Nash. I
reckon it's dangerous keepin' him around. I'll have him drive me
to-day--over to Vale, an' then to Huntington. You can go along. That'll
be your last chance to pump him. Have you found out anythin'?"

Lenore told what had transpired between her and the driver. Anderson's
face turned fiery red.

"That ain't much to help us," declared, angrily. "But it shows him
up.... So his real name's Ruenke? Fine American name, I don't think!
That man's a spy an' a plotter. An' before he's another day older I'm
goin' to corner him. It's a sure go I can't hold Jake in any longer."

To Lenore it was a further indication of her father's temper that when
they went down to enter the car he addressed Nash in cool, careless,
easy speech. It made Lenore shiver. She had heard stories of her
father's early career among hard men.

Jake was there, dry, caustic, with keen, quiet eyes that any subtle,
clever man would have feared. But Nash's thought seemed turned mostly
inward.

Lenore took the front seat in the car beside the driver. He showed
unconscious response to that action.

"Jake, aren't you coming?" she asked, of the cowboy.

"Wal, I reckon it'll be sure dull fer you without me. Nobody to talk to
while your dad fools around. But I can't go. Me an' the boys air a-goin'
to hang some I.W.W.'s this mawnin', an' I can't miss thet fun."

Jake drawled his speech and laughed lazily as he ended it. He was just
boasting, as usual, but his hawklike eyes were on Nash. And it was
certain that Nash turned pale.

Lenore had no reply to make. Her father appeared to lose patience with
Jake, but after a moment's hesitation decided not to voice it.

Nash was not a good nor a careful driver under any circumstances, and
this morning it was evident he did not have his mind on his business.
There were bumps in the orchard road where the irrigation ditches
crossed.

"Say, you ought to be drivin' a hay-wagon," called Anderson,
sarcastically.

At Vale he ordered the car stopped at the post-office, and, telling
Lenore he might be detained a few moments, he went in. Nash followed,
and presently came back with a package of letters. Upon taking his seat
in the car he assorted the letters, one of which, a large, thick
envelope, manifestly gave him excited gratification. He pocketed them
and turned to Lenore.

"Ah! I see you get letters--from a woman," she said, pretending a poison
sweetness of jealousy.

"Certainly. I'm not married yet," he replied. "Lenore, last night--"

"You will never be married--to me--while you write to other women. Let
me see that letter!... Let me read it--all of them!"

"No, Lenore--not here. And don't speak so loud. Your father will be
coming any minute.... Lenore, he suspects me. And that cowboy knows
things. I can't go back to the ranch."

"Oh, you must come!"

"No. If you love me you've got to run off with me to-day."

"But why the hurry?" she appealed.

"It's getting hot for me."

"What do you mean by that? Why don't you explain to me? As long as you
are so strange, so mysterious, how can I trust you? You ask me to run
off with you, yet you don't put confidence in me."

Nash grew pale and earnest, and his hands shook.

"But if I do confide in you, then will you come with me?" he queried,
breathlessly.

"I'll not promise. Maybe what you have to tell will prove--you--you
don't care for me."

"It 'll prove I do," he replied, passionately.

"Then tell me." Lenore realized she could no longer play the part she
had assumed. But Nash was so stirred by his own emotions, so carried
along in a current, that he did not see the difference in her.

"Listen. I tell you it's getting hot for me," he whispered. "I've been
put here--close to Anderson--to find out things and to carry out orders.
Lately I've neglected my job because I fell in love with you. He's your
father. If I go on with plans--and harm comes to him--I'll never get
you. Is that clear?"

"It certainly is," replied Lenore, and she felt a tightness at her
throat.

"I'm no member of the I.W.W.," he went on. "Whatever that organization
might have been last year, it's gone wild this year.... There are
interests that have used the I.W.W. I'm only an agent, and I'm not high
up, either. I see what the government will do to the I.W.W. if the
Northwest leaves any of it. But just now there're plots against a few
big men like your father. He's to be ruined. His crops and ranches
destroyed. And he's to be killed. It's because he's so well known and
has so much influence that he was marked. I told you the I.W.W. was
being used to make trouble. They are being stirred up by agitators,
bribed and driven, all for the purpose of making a great disorder in the
Northwest."

"Germany!" whispered Lenore.

"I can't say. But men are all over, and these men work in secret. There
are American citizens in the Northwest--one right in this valley--who
have plotted to ruin your father."

"Do you know who they are?"

"No, I do not."

"You are for Germany, of course?"

"I have been. My people are German. But I was born in the U.S. And if it
suits me I will be for America. If you come with me I'll throw up this
dirty job, advise Glidden to shift the plot from your father to some
other man--"

"So it's Glidden!" exclaimed Lenore.

Nash bit his lip, and for the first time looked at Lenore without
thinking of himself. And surprise dawned in his eyes.

"Yes, Glidden. You saw him speak to me up in the Bend, the first time
your father went to see Dorn's wheat. Glidden's playing the I.W.W.
against itself. He means to drop out of this deal with big money....Now
I'll save your father if you'll stick to me."

Lenore could no longer restrain herself. This man was not even big in
his wickedness. Lenore divined that his later words held no truth.

"Mr. Ruenke, you are a detestable coward," she said, with quivering
scorn. "I let you imagine--Oh! I can't speak it!... You--you--"

"God! You fooled me!" he ejaculated, his jaw falling in utter amaze.

"You were contemptibly easy. You'd better jump out of this car and run.
My father will shoot you."

"You deceitful--cat!" he cried, haltingly, as anger overcame his
astonishment. "I'll--"

Anderson's big bulk loomed up behind Nash. Lenore gasped as she saw her
father, for his eyes were upon her and he had recognized events.

"Say, Mister Ruenke, the postmaster says you get letters here under
different names," said Anderson, bluntly.

"Yes--I--I--get them--for a friend," stammered the driver, as his face
turned white.

"You lyin' German pup!... I'll look over them letters!" Anderson's big
hand shot out to clutch Nash, holding him powerless, and with the other
hand he searched Nash's inside coat pockets, to tear forth a packet of
letters. Then Anderson released him and stepped back. "Get out of that
car!" he thundered.

Nash made a slow movement, as if to comply, then suddenly he threw on
the power. The car jerked forward.

Anderson leaped to get one hand on the car door, the other on Nash. He
almost pulled the driver out of his seat. But Nash held on desperately,
and the car, gaining momentum, dragged Anderson. He could not get his
feet up on the running-board, and suddenly he fell.

Lenore screamed and tore frantically at the handle of the door. Nash
struck her, jerked her back into the seat. She struggled until the car
shot full speed ahead. Then it meant death for her to leap out.

"Sit still, or you'll kill yourself." shouted Nash, hoarsely.

Lenore fell back, almost fainting, with the swift realization of what
had happened.




CHAPTER IX

Kurt Dorn had indeed no hope of ever seeing Lenore Anderson again, and
he suffered a pang that seemed to leave his heart numb, though
Anderson's timely visit might turn out as providential as the saving
rain-storm. The wheat waved and rustled as if with renewed and bursting
life. The exquisite rainbow still shone, a beautiful promise, in the
sky. But Dorn could not be happy in that moment.

This day Lenore Anderson had seemed a bewildering fulfilment of the
sweetness he had imagined was latent in her. She had meant what was
beyond him to understand. She had gently put a hand to his lips, to
check the bitter words, and he had dared to kiss her soft fingers. The
thrill, the sweetness, the incomprehensible and perhaps imagined
response of her pulse would never leave him. He watched the big car
until it was out of sight.

The afternoon was only half advanced and there were numberless tasks to
do. He decided he could think and plan while he worked. As he was about
to turn away he espied another automobile, this one coming from the
opposite direction to that Anderson had taken. The sight of it reminded
Dorn of the I.W.W. trick of throwing phosphorus cakes into the wheat. He
was suspicious of that car. It slowed down in front of the Dorn
homestead, turned into the yard, and stopped near where Dorn stood. The
dust had caked in layers upon it. Someone hailed him and asked if this
was the Dorn farm. Kurt answered in the affirmative, whereupon a tall
man, wearing a long linen coat, opened the car door to step out. In the
car remained the driver and another man.

"My name is Hall," announced the stranger, with a pleasant manner. "I'm
from Washington, D.C. I represent the government and am in the Northwest
in the interest of the Conservation Commission. Your name has been
recommended to me as one of the progressive young wheat-growers of the
Bend; particularly that you are an American, located in a country
exceedingly important to the United States just now--a country where
foreign-born people predominate."

Kurt, somewhat startled and awed, managed to give a courteous greeting
to his visitor, and asked him into the house. But Mr. Hall preferred to
sit outdoors on the porch. He threw off hat and coat, and, taking an
easy chair, he produced some cigars.

"Will you smoke?" he asked, offering one.

Kurt declined with thanks. He was aware of this man's penetrating, yet
kindly scrutiny of him, and he had begun to wonder. This was no ordinary
visitor.

"Have you been drafted?" abruptly queried Mr. Hall.

"Yes, sir. Mine was the first number," replied Kurt, with a little
pride.

"Do you want exemption?" swiftly came the second query.

It shocked Dorn, then stung him.

"No," he said, forcibly.

"Your father's sympathy is with Germany, I understand."

"Well, sir, I don't know how you understand that, but it's true--to my
regret and shame."

"You want to fight?" went on the official.

"I hate the idea of war. But I--I guess I want to fight. Maybe that's
because I'm feeling scrappy over these I.W.W. tricks."

"Dorn, the I.W.W. is only one of the many phases of war that we must
meet," returned Mr. Hall, and then for a moment he thoughtfully drew
upon his cigar.

"Young man, I like your talk. And I'll tell you a secret. My name's not
Hall. Never mind my name. For you it's Uncle Sam!"

Whereupon, with a winning and fascinating manner that seemed to Kurt at
once intimate and flattering, he began to talk fluently of the meaning
of his visit, and of its cardinal importance. The government was looking
far ahead, preparing for a tremendous, and perhaps a lengthy, war. The
food of the country must be conserved. Wheat was one of the most vital
things in the whole world, and the wheat of America was incalculably
precious--only the government knew how precious. If the war was short a
wheat famine would come afterward; if it was long, the famine would come
before the war ended. But it was inevitable. The very outcome of the war
itself depended upon wheat.

The government expected a nation-wide propaganda by the German interests
which would be carried on secretly and boldly, in every conceivable way,
to alienate the labor organizations, to bribe or menace the harvesters,
to despoil crops, and particularly to put obstacles in the way of the
raising and harvesting, the transporting and storing of wheat. It would
take an army to protect the nation's grain.

Dorn was earnestly besought by this official to compass his district, to
find out who could be depended upon by the United States and who was
antagonistic, to impress upon the minds of all his neighbors the
exceeding need of greater and more persistent cultivation of wheat.

"I accept. I'll do my best," replied Kurt, grimly. "I'll be going some
the next two weeks."

"It's deplorable that most of the wheat in this section is a failure,"
said the official. "But we must make up for that next year. I see you
have one magnificent wheat-field. But, fact is, I heard of that long
before I got here."

"Yes? Where?" ejaculated Kurt, quick to catch a significance in the
other's words.

"I've motored direct from Wheatly. And I'm sorry to say that what I have
now to tell you is not pleasant.... Your father sold this wheat for
eighty thousand dollars in cash. The money was seen to be paid over by a
mill-operator of Spokane.... And your father is reported to be
suspiciously interested in the I.W.W. men now at Wheatly."

"Oh, that's awful!" exclaimed Kurt, with a groan. "How did you learn
that?"

"From American farmers--men that I had been instructed to approach, the
same as in your case. The information came quite by accident, however,
and through my inquiring about the I.W.W."

"Father has not been rational since the President declared war. He's
very old. I've had trouble with him. He might do anything."

"My boy, there are multitudes of irrational men nowadays and the number
is growing.... I advise you to go at once to Wheatly and bring your
father home. It was openly said that he was taking risks with that large
sum of money."

"Risks! Why, I can't understand that. The wheat's not harvested yet, let
alone hauled to town. And to-day I learned the I.W.W. are working a
trick with cakes of phosphorus, to burn the wheat."

Kurt produced the cake of phosphorus and explained its significance to
the curious official.

"Cunning devils! Who but a German would ever have thought of that?" he
exclaimed. "German science! To such ends the Germans put their supreme
knowledge!"

"I wonder what my father will say about this phosphorus trick. I just
wonder. He loves the wheat. His wheat has taken prizes at three world's
fairs. Maybe to see our wheat burn would untwist that twist in his brain
and make him American."

"I doubt it. Only death changes the state of a real German, physical,
moral, and spiritual. Come, ride back to Glencoe with me. I'll drop you
there. You can hire a car and make Wheatly before dark."

Kurt ran indoors, thinking hard as he changed clothes. He told the
housekeeper to tell Jerry he was called away and would be back next day.
Putting money and a revolver in his pocket, he started out, but
hesitated and halted. He happened to think that he was a poor shot with
a revolver and a fine one with a rifle. So he went back for his rifle, a
small high-power, repeating gun that he could take apart and hide under
his coat. When he reached the porch the official glanced from the weapon
to Kurt's face and said, with a flash of spirit:

"It appears that you are in earnest!"

"I am. Something told me to take this," responded Kurt, as he dismounted
the rifle. "I've already had one run-in with an I.W.W. I know tough
customers when I see them. These foreigners are the kind I don't want
near me. And if I see one trying to fire the wheat I'll shoot his leg
off."

"I'm inclined to think that Uncle Sam would not deplore your shooting a
little higher.... Dorn, you're fine! You're all I heard you were! Shake
hands!"

Kurt tingled all over as he followed the official out to the car and
took the seat given him beside the driver. "Back to Glencoe," was the
order. And then, even if conversation had been in order, it would
scarcely have been possible. That driver could drive! He had no fear and
he knew his car. Kurt could drive himself, but he thought that if he had
been as good as this fellow he would have chosen one of two magnificent
services for the army--an ambulance-driver at the front or an aeroplane
scout.

On the way to Glencoe several squads of idling and marching men were
passed, all of whom bore the earmarks of the I.W.W. Sight of them made
Kurt hug his gun and wonder at himself. Never had he been a coward, but
neither had he been one to seek a fight. This suave, distinguished
government official, by his own significant metaphor, Uncle Sam gone
abroad to find true hearts, had wrought powerfully upon Kurt's temper.
He sensed events. He revolved in mind the need for him to be cool and
decisive when facing the circumstances that were sure to arise.

At Glencoe, which was reached so speedily that Kurt could scarcely
credit his eyes, the official said; "You'll hear from me. Good-by and
good luck!"

Kurt hired a young man he knew to drive him over to Wheatly. All the way
Kurt brooded about his father's strange action. The old man had left
home before the rain-storm. How did he know he could guarantee so many
bushels of wheat as the selling-price indicated? Kurt divined that his
father had acted upon one of his strange weather prophecies. For he must
have been absolutely sure of rain to save the wheat.

Darkness had settled down when Kurt reached Wheatly and left the car at
the railroad station. Wheatly was a fairly good-sized little town. There
seemed to be an unusual number of men on the dark streets. Dim lights
showed here and there. Kurt passed several times near groups of
conversing men, but he did not hear any significant talk.

Most of the stores were open and well filled with men, but to Kurt's
sharp eyes there appeared to be much more gossip going on than business.
The town was not as slow and quiet as was usual with Bend towns. He
listened for war talk, and heard none. Two out of every three men who
spoke in his hearing did not use the English language. Kurt went into
the office of the first hotel he found. There was no one present. He
glanced at an old register lying on the desk. No guests had registered
for several days.

Then Kurt went out and accosted a man leaning against a hitching-rail.

"What's going on in this town?"

The man stood rather indistinctly in the uncertain light. Kurt, however,
made out his eyes and they were regarding him suspiciously.

"Nothin' onusual," was the reply.

"Has harvesting begun in these parts?"

"Some barley cut, but no wheat. Next week, I reckon."

"How's the wheat?"

"Some bad an' some good."

"Is this town a headquarters for the I.W.W.?"

"No. But there's a big camp of I.W.W.'s near here. Reckon you're one of
them union fellers?"

"I am not," declared Kurt, bluntly.

"Reckon you sure look like one, with thet gun under your coat."

"Are you going to hire I.W.W. men?" asked Kurt, ignoring the other's
observation.

"I'm only a farm-hand," was the sullen reply. "An' I tell you I won't
join no I.W.W."

Kurt spared himself a moment to give this fellow a few strong proofs of
the fact that any farm-hand was wise to take such a stand against the
labor organization. Leaving the fellow gaping and staring after him,
Kurt crossed the street to enter another hotel. It was more pretentious
than the first, with a large, well lighted office. There were loungers
at the tables. Kurt walked to the desk. A man leaned upon his elbows. He
asked Kurt if he wanted a room. This man, evidently the proprietor, was
a German, though he spoke English.

"I'm not sure," replied Kurt. "Will you let me look at the register?"

The man shoved the book around. Kurt did not find the name he sought.

"My father, Chris Dorn, is in town. Can you tell me where I'll find
him?"

"So you're young Dorn," replied the other, with instant change to
friendliness. "I've heard of you. Yes, the old man is here. He made a
big wheat deal to-day. He's eating his supper."

Kurt stepped to the door indicated, and, looking into the dining-room,
he at once espied his father's huge head with its shock of gray hair. He
appeared to be in earnest colloquy with a man whose bulk matched his
own. Kurt hesitated, and finally went back to the desk.

"Who's the big man with my father?" he asked.

"He is a big man, both ways. Don't you know him?" rejoined the
proprietor, in a lower voice.

"I'm not sure," answered Kurt. The lowered tone had a significance that
decided Kurt to admit nothing.

"That's Neuman from Ruxton, one of the biggest wheat men in Washington."

Kurt repressed a whistle of surprise. Neuman was Anderson's only rival
in the great, fertile valley. What were Neuman and Chris Dorn doing with
their heads together?

"I thought he was Neuman," replied Kurt, feeling his way. "Is he in on
the big deal with father?"

"Which one?" queried the proprietor, with shrewd eyes, taking Kurt's
measure. "You're in on both, of course."

"Sure. I mean the wheat sale, not the I.W.W. deal," replied Kurt. He
hazarded a guess with that mention of the I.W.W. No sooner had the words
passed his lips than he divined he was on the track of sinister events.

"Your father sold out to that Spokane miller. No, Neuman is not in on
that."

"I was surprised to hear father had sold the wheat. Was it speculation
or guarantee?"

"Old Chris guaranteed sixty bushels. There were friends of his here who
advised against it. Did you have rain over there?"

"Fine. The wheat will go over sixty bushels. I'm sorry I couldn't get
here sooner."

"When it rained you hurried over to boost the price. Well, it's too
late."

"Is Glidden here?" queried Kurt, hazarding another guess.

"Don't talk so loud," warned the proprietor. "Yes, he just got here in a
car with two other men. He's up-stairs having supper in his room."

"Supper!" Kurt echoed the word, and averted his face to hide the leap of
his blood. "That reminds me, I'm hungry."

He went into the big, dimly lighted dining-room. There was a shelf on
one side as he went in, and here, with his back turned to the room, he
laid the disjointed gun and his hat. Several newspapers lying near
attracted his eye. Quickly he slipped them under and around the gun, and
then took a seat at the nearest table. A buxom German waitress came for
his order. He gave it while he gazed around at his grim-faced old father
and the burly Neuman, and his ears throbbed to the beat of his blood.
His hand trembled on the table. His thoughts flashed almost too swiftly
for comprehension. It took a stern effort to gain self-control.

Evil of some nature was afoot. Neuman's presence there was a strange,
disturbing fact. Kurt had made two guesses, both alarmingly correct. If
he had any more illusions or hopes, he dispelled them. His father had
been won over by this arch conspirator of the I.W.W. And, despite his
father's close-fistedness where money was concerned, that eighty
thousand dollars, or part of it, was in danger.

Kurt wondered how he could get possession of it. If he could he would
return it to the bank and wire a warning to the Spokane buyer that the
wheat was not safe. He might persuade his father to turn over the amount
of the debt to Anderson. While thinking and planning, Kurt kept an eye
on his father and rather neglected his supper. Presently, when old Dorn
and Neuman rose and left the dining-room, Kurt followed them. His father
was whispering to the proprietor over the desk, and at Kurt's touch he
glared his astonishment.

"You here! What for?" he demanded, gruffly, in German.

"I had to see you," replied Kurt, in English.

"Did it rain?" was the old man's second demand, husky and serious.

"The wheat is made, if we can harvest it," answered Kurt.

The blaze of joy on old Dorn's face gave Kurt a twinge of pain. He hated
to dispel it. "Come aside, here, a minute," he whispered, and drew his
father over to a corner under a lamp. "I've got bad news. Look at this!"
He produced the cake of phosphorus, careful to hide it from other
curious eyes there, and with swift, low words he explained its meaning.
He expected an outburst of surprise and fury, but he was mistaken.

"I know about that," whispered his father, hoarsely. "There won't be any
thrown in my wheat."

"Father! What assurance have you of that?" queried Kurt, astounded.

The old man nodded his gray head wisely. He knew, but he did not speak.

"Do you think these I.W.W. plotters will spare your wheat?" asked Kurt.
"You are wrong. They may lie to your face. But they'll betray you. The
I.W.W. is backed by--by interests that want to embarrass the
government."

"What government?"

"Why, ours--the U.S. government!"

"That's not my government. The more it's embarrassed the better it will
suit me."

In the stress of the moment Kurt had forgotten his father's bitter and
unchangeable hatred.

"But you're--you're stupid," he hissed, passionately. "That government
has protected you for fifty years."

Old Dorn growled into his beard. His huge ox-eyes rolled. Kurt realized
then finally how implacable and hopeless he was--how utterly German.
Then Kurt importuned him to return the eighty thousand dollars to the
bank until he was sure the wheat was harvested and hauled to the
railroad.

"My wheat won't burn," was old Dorn's stubborn reply.

"Well, then, give me Anderson's thirty thousand. I'll take it to him at
once. Our debt will be paid. We'll have it off our minds."

"No hurry about that," replied his father.

"But there is hurry," returned Kurt, in a hot whisper. "Anderson came to
see you to-day. He wants his money."

"Neuman holds the small end of that debt. I'll pay him. Anderson can
wait."

Kurt felt no amaze. He expected anything. But he could scarcely contain
his fury. How this old man, his father, whom he had loved--how he had
responded to the influences that must destroy him!

"Anderson shall not wait," declared Kurt. "I've got some say in this
matter. I've worked like a dog in those wheat-fields. I've a right to
demand Anderson's money. He needs it. He has a tremendous harvest on his
hands."

Old Dorn shook his huge head in somber and gloomy thought. His broad
face, his deep eyes, seemed to mask and to hide. It was an expression
Kurt had seldom seen there, but had always hated. It seemed so old to
Kurt, that alien look, something not born of his time.

"Anderson is a capitalist," said Chris Dorn, deep in his beard. "He
seeks control of farmers and wheat in the Northwest. Ranch after ranch
he's gained by taking up and foreclosing mortgages. He's against labor.
He grinds down the poor. He cheated Neuman out of a hundred thousand
bushels of wheat. He bought up my debt. He meant to ruin me. He--"

"You're talking I.W.W. rot," whispered Kurt, shaking with the effort to
subdue his feelings. "Anderson is fine, big, square--a developer of the
Northwest. Not an enemy! He's our friend. Oh! if only you had an
American's eyes, just for a minute!... Father, I want that money for
Anderson."

"My son, I run my own business," replied Dorn, sullenly, with a pale
fire in his opaque eyes. "You're a wild boy, unfaithful to your blood.
You've fallen in love with an American girl.... Anderson says he needs
money!"... With hard, gloomy face the old man shook his head. "He thinks
he'll harvest!" Again that strange shake of finality. "I know what I
know.... I keep my money.... We'll have other rule.... I keep my money."

Kurt had vibrated to those most significant words and he stared
speechless at his father.

"Go home. Get ready for harvest," suddenly ordered old Dorn, as if he
had just awakened to the fact of Kurt's disobedience in lingering here.

"All right, father," replied Kurt, and, turning on his heel, he strode
outdoors.

When he got beyond the light he turned and went back to a position where
in the dark he could watch without being seen. His father and the hotel
proprietor were again engaged in earnest colloquy. Neuman had
disappeared. Kurt saw the huge shadow of a man pass across a drawn blind
in a room up-stairs. Then he saw smaller shadows, and arms raised in
vehement gesticulation. The very shadows were sinister. Men passed in
and out of the hotel. Once old Dorn came to the door and peered all
around. Kurt observed that there was a dark side entrance to this hotel.
Presently Neuman returned to the desk and said something to old Dorn,
who shook his head emphatically, and then threw himself into a chair, in
a brooding posture that Kurt knew well. He had seen it so often that he
knew it had to do with money. His father was refusing demands of some
kind. Neuman again left the office, this time with the proprietor. They
were absent some little time.

During this period Kurt leaned against a tree, hidden in the shadow,
with keen eyes watching and with puzzled, anxious mind. He had
determined, in case his father left that office with Neuman, on one of
those significant disappearances, to slip into the hotel at the side
entrance and go up-stairs to listen at the door of the room with the
closely drawn blind. Neuman returned soon with the hotel man, and the
two of them half led, half dragged old Dorn out into the street. They
took the direction toward the railroad. Kurt followed at a safe distance
on the opposite side of the street. Soon they passed the stores with
lighted windows, then several dark houses, and at length the railroad
station. Perhaps they were bound for the train. Kurt heard rumbling in
the distance. But they went beyond the station, across the track, and
turned to the right.

Kurt was soft-footed and keen-eyed. He just kept the dim shadows in
range. They were heading for some freight-cars that stood upon a
side-track. The dark figures disappeared behind them. Then one figure
reappeared, coming back. Kurt crouched low. This man passed within a few
yards of Kurt and he was whispering to himself. After he was safely out
of earshot Kurt stole on stealthily until he reached the end of the
freight-cars. Here he paused, listening. He thought he heard low voices,
but he could not see the men he was following. No doubt they were
waiting in the secluded gloom for the other men apparently necessary for
that secret conference. Kurt had sensed this event and he had determined
to be present. He tried not to conjecture. It was best for him to apply
all his faculties to the task of slipping unseen and unheard close to
these men who had involved his father in some dark plot.

Not long after Kurt hid himself on the other side of the freight-car he
heard soft-padded footsteps and subdued voices. Dark shapes appeared to
come out of the gloom. They passed him. He distinguished low, guttural
voices, speaking German. These men, three in number, were scarcely out
of sight when Kurt laid his rifle on the projecting shelf of the
freight-car and followed them.

Presently he came to deep shadow, where he paused. Low voices drew him
on again, then a light made him thrill. Now and then the light appeared
to be darkened by moving figures. A dark object loomed up to cut off
Kurt's view. It was a pile of railroad ties, and beyond it loomed
another. Stealing along these, he soon saw the light again, quite close.
By its glow he recognized his father's huge frame, back to him, and the
burly Neuman on the other side, and Glidden, whose dark face was working
as he talked. These three were sitting, evidently on a flat pile of
ties, and the other two men stood behind. Kurt could not make out the
meaning of the low voices. Pressing closer to the freight-car, he
cautiously and noiselessly advanced.

Glidden was importuning with expressive hands and swift, low utterance.
His face gleamed dark, hard, strong, intensely strung with corded,
quivering muscles, with eyes apparently green orbs of fire. He spoke in
German.

Kurt dared not go closer unless he wanted to be discovered, and not yet
was he ready for that. He might hear some word to help explain his
father's strange, significant intimations about Anderson.

"...must--have--money," Glidden was saying. To Kurt's eyes treachery
gleamed in that working face. Neuman bent over to whisper gruffly in
Dorn's ear. One of the silent men standing rubbed his hands together.
Old Dorn's head was bowed. Then Glidden spoke so low and so swiftly that
Kurt could not connect sentences, but with mounting blood he stood
transfixed and horrified, to gather meaning from word on word, until he
realized Anderson's doom, with other rich men of the Northwest, was
sealed--that there were to be burnings of wheat-fields and of
storehouses and of freight-trains--destruction everywhere.

"I give money," said old Dorn, and with heavy movement he drew from
inside his coat a large package wrapped in newspaper. He laid it before
him in the light and began to unwrap it. Soon there were disclosed two
bundles of bills--the eighty thousand dollars.

Kurt thrilled in all his being. His poor father was being misled and
robbed. A melancholy flash of comfort came to Kurt! Then at sight of
Glidden's hungry eyes and working face and clutching hands Kurt pulled
his hat far down, drew his revolver, and leaped forward with a yell,
"Hands up!"

He discharged the revolver right in the faces of the stunned plotters,
and, snatching up the bundle of money, he leaped over the light,
knocking one of the men down, and was gone into the darkness, without
having slowed in the least his swift action.

Wheeling round the end of the freight-car, he darted back, risking a
hard fall in the darkness, and ran along the several cars to the first
one, where he grasped his rifle and kept on. He heard his father's roar,
like that of a mad bull, and shrill yells from the other men. Kurt
laughed grimly. They would never catch him in the dark. While he ran he
stuffed the money into his inside coat pockets. Beyond the railroad
station he slowed down to catch his breath. His breast was heaving, his
pulse hammering, and his skin was streaming. The excitement was the
greatest under which he had ever labored.

"Now--what shall--I do?" he panted. A freight-train was lumbering toward
him and the head-light was almost at the station. The train appeared to
be going slowly through without stopping. Kurt hurried on down the track
a little farther. Then he waited. He would get on that train and make
his way somehow to Ruxton, there to warn Anderson of the plot against
his life.




CHAPTER X

Kurt rode to Adrian on that freight, and upon arriving in the yards
there he jumped off, only to mount another, headed south. He meant to be
traveling while it was dark. No passenger-trains ran at night and he
wanted to put as much distance between him and Wheatly as possible
before daylight.

He had piled into an open box-car. It was empty, at least of freight,
and the floor appeared to have a thin covering of hay. The train,
gathering headway, made a rattling rolling roar. Kurt hesitated about
getting up and groping back in the pitch-black corners of the car. He
felt that it contained a presence besides his own. And suddenly he was
startled by an object blacker than the shadow, that sidled up close to
him. Kurt could not keep the cold chills from chasing up and down his
back. The object was a man, who reached for Kurt and felt of him with a
skinny hand.

"I.W.W.?" he whispered, hoarsely, in Kurt's ear.

"Yes," replied Kurt.

"Was that Adrian where you got on?"

"It sure was," answered Kurt, with grim humor.

"Than you're the feller?"

"Sure," replied Kurt. It was evident that he had embarked upon an
adventure.

"When do we stall this freight?"

"Not while we're on it, you can gamble."

Other dark forms sidled out of the gloomy depths of that cavern-like
corner and drew close to Kurt. He realized that he had fallen in with
I.W.W. men who apparently had taken him for an expected messenger or
leader. He was importuned for tobacco, drink, and money, and he judged
that his begging companions consisted of an American tramp, an Austrian,
a negro, and a German. Fine society to fall into! That eighty thousand
dollars became a tremendous burden.

"How many men on this freight?" queried Kurt, thinking he could ask
questions better than answer them. And he was told there were about
twenty-five, all of whom expected money. At this information Kurt rather
closely pressed his hand upon the revolver in his side coat pocket. By
asking questions and making judicious replies he passed what he felt was
the dark mark in that mixed company of I.W.W. men; and at length, one by
one, they melted away to their warmer corners, leaving Kurt by the door.
He did not mind the cold. He wanted to be where, at the first indication
of a stop, he could jump off the train.

With his hand on his gun and hugging the bulging coat pockets close to
him, Kurt settled himself for what he believed would be interminable
hours. He strained eyes and ears for a possible attack from the riffraff
I.W.W. men hidden there in the car. And that was why, perhaps, that it
seemed only a short while until the train bumped and slowed, preparatory
to stopping. The instant it was safe Kurt jumped out and stole away in
the gloom. A fence obstructed further passage. He peered around to make
out that he was in a road. Thereupon he hurried along it until he was
out of hearing of the train. There was light in the east, heralding a
dawn that Kurt surely would welcome. He sat down to wait, and addressed
to his bewildered judgment a query as to whether or not he ought to keep
on carrying the burdensome rifle. It was not only heavy, but when
daylight came it might attract attention, and his bulging coat would
certainly invite curiosity. He was in a predicament; nevertheless, he
decided to hang on to the rifle.

He almost fell asleep, waiting there with his back against a fence-post.
The dawn came, and then the rosy sunrise. And he discovered, not half a
mile away, a good-sized town, where he believed he surely could hire an
automobile.

Waiting grew to be so tedious that he decided to risk the early hour,
and proceeded toward the town. Upon the outskirts he met a farmer boy,
who, in reply to a question, said that the town was Connell. Kurt found
another early riser in the person of a blacksmith who evidently was a
Yankee and proud of it. He owned a car that he was willing to hire out
on good security. Kurt satisfied him on that score, and then proceeded
to ask how to get across the Copper River and into Golden Valley. The
highway followed the railroad from that town to Kahlotus, and there
crossed a big trunk-line railroad, to turn south toward the river.

In half an hour, during which time Kurt was enabled to breakfast, the
car was ready. It was a large car, rather ancient and the worse for
wear, but its owner assured Kurt that it would take him where he wanted
to go and he need not be afraid to drive fast. With that inspiring
knowledge Kurt started off.

Before ten o'clock Kurt reached Kilo, far across the Copper River, with
the Blue Mountains in sight, and from there less confusing directions to
follow. He had been lucky. He had passed the wreck of the freight-train
upon which he had ridden from Adrian; his car had been surrounded by
rough men, and only quick wits saved him at least delay; he had been
hailed by more than one group of tramping I.W.W. men; and he had passed
camps and freight-yards where idlers were congregated. And lastly, he
had seen, far across the valley, a pall of smoke from forest fire.

He was going to reach "Many Waters" in time to warn Anderson, and that
fact gave him strange exultation. When it was assured and he had the
eighty thousand dollars deposited in a bank he could feel that his gray,
gloomy future would have several happy memories. How would Lenore
Anderson feel toward a man who had saved her father? The thought was too
rich, too sweet for Kurt to dwell upon.

Before noon Kurt began to climb gradually up off the wonderfully fertile
bottom-lands where the endless orchards and boundless gardens delighted
his eye, and the towns grew fewer and farther between. Kurt halted at
Huntington for water, and when he was about ready to start a man rushed
out of a store, glanced hurriedly up and down the almost deserted
street, and, espying Kurt, ran to him.

"Message over 'phone! I.W.W.! Hell to pay!" he cried, excitedly.

"What's up? Tell me the message," replied Kurt, calmly.

"It just come--from Vale. Anderson, the big rancher! He 'phoned to send
men out on all roads--to stop his car! His daughter's in it! She's been
made off with! I.W.W.'s!"

Kurt's heart leaped. The bursting blood burned through him and receded
to leave him cold, tingling. Anything might happen to him this day! He
reached inside the seat to grasp the disjointed rifle, and three swift
movements seemed to serve to unwrap it and put the pieces together.

"What else did Anderson say?" he asked, sharply.

"That likely the car would head for the hills, where the I.W.W.'s are
camped."

"What road from here leads that way?"

"Take the left-hand road at the end of town," replied the man, more
calmly. "Ten miles down you'll come to a fork. There's where the
I.W.W.'s will turn off to go up into the foot-hills. Anderson just
'phoned. You can head off his car if it's on the hill road. But you'll
have to drive.... Do you know Anderson's car? Don't you want men with
you?"

"No time!" called Kurt, as he leaped into the seat and jammed on the
power.

"I'll send cars all over," shouted the man, as Kurt whirred away.

Kurt's eyes and hands and feet hurt with the sudden intensity of strain.
All his nervous force seemed set upon the one great task of driving and
guiding that car at the limit of its speed. Huntington flashed behind,
two indistinct streaks of houses. An open road, slightly rising,
stretched ahead. The wind pressed so hard that he could scarcely
breathe. The car gave forth a humming roar.

Kurt's heart labored, swollen and tight, high in his breast, and his
thoughts were swift, tumultuous. An agony of dread battled with a
dominating but strange certainty. He felt belief in his luck.
Circumstances one by one had led to this drive, and in every one passed
by he felt the direction of chance.

He sped by fields of wheat, a wagon that he missed by an inch, some
stragglers on the road, and then, far ahead, he saw a sign-post of the
forks. As he neared it he gradually shut off the power, to stop at the
cross-roads. There he got out to search for fresh car tracks turning up
to the right. There were none. If Anderson's car was coming on that road
he would meet it.

Kurt started again, but at reasonable speed, while his eyes were sharp
on the road ahead. It was empty. It sloped down for a long way, and made
a wide curve to the right, along the base of hilly pas

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/10201