The Biography of a Prairie Girl
by Eleanor Gates · English · Gutenberg #28989 · 415,763 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Biography of a Prairie Girl
Author: Eleanor Gates
Release date: May 29, 2009 [eBook #28989]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BIOGRAPHY OF A PRAIRIE GIRL ***
Produced by Peter Vachuska, Chuck Greif, Emmy and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
THE BIOGRAPHY OF A PRAIRIE GIRL
THE BIOGRAPHY OF A PRAIRIE GIRL
BY ELEANOR GATES
[Illustration]
PUBLISHED BY THE CENTURY CO.
NEW YORK MCMIX
Copyright, 1902, by
The Century Co.
_Published October, 1902_
THE DEVINNE PRESS.
TO
MRS. PHOEBE A. HEARST
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE COMING OF THE STORK 3
II A FRONTIER CHRISTENING 11
III "LITTLE BOY BLUE" 30
IV A PARIAH OF THE PRAIRIES 48
V THE MISFIT SCHOLAR 64
VI THE STORY OF A PLANTING 87
VII TWICE IN JEOPARDY 103
VIII A HARVEST WEDDING 118
IX THE PRICE OF CONVALESCENCE 134
X "BADGY" 152
XI A TRADE AND A TRICK 170
XII THE PROFESSOR'S "FIND" 187
XIII A RACE AND A RESCUE 206
XIV HARD TIMES 224
XV THE FATE OF A CROWING HEN 242
XVI THE RESERVATION TRIP 257
XVII ANOTHER MOUND ON THE BLUFF 276
XVIII THE LITTLE TEACHER 292
XIX TOWARD THE RISING SUN 311
THE BIOGRAPHY OF A PRAIRIE GIRL
THE BIOGRAPHY OF A PRAIRIE GIRL
I
THE COMING OF THE STORK
IT was always a puzzle to the little girl how the stork that brought her
ever reached the lonely Dakota farm-house on a December afternoon
without her being frozen; and it was another mystery, just as deep, how
the strange bird, which her mother said was no larger than a blue crane,
was able, on leaving, to carry her father away with him to some family,
a long, long distance off, that needed a grown-up man as badly as her
three big brothers needed a little sister.
She often tried to remember the stork, his broad nest of pussy-willows
on the chin of the new moon, and the long trip down through the wind and
snow to the open window of the farm-house. But though she never forgot
her christening, and could even remember things that happened before
that, her wonderful journey, she found, had slipped entirely from her
mind. But her mother and the three big brothers, ever reminded by the
stone-piled mound on the carnelian bluff, never forgot that day:
An icy blizzard, carrying in its teeth the blinding sleet that neither
man nor animal could breast, was driving fiercely across the wide
plains; and the red, frame dwelling and its near-lying buildings of sod,
which only the previous morning had stood out bravely against the
dreary, white waste, were wrapped and almost hidden in great banks that
had been caught up from the river heights and hurled with piercing roars
against them.
The storm had begun the day before, blowing first in fitful gusts that
whistled under the eaves, sent the hay from the stacks flying through
the yard, and lifted the ends of the roof shingles threateningly. It had
gradually strengthened to a gale toward midday, and the steady downfall
of flakes had been turned into a biting scourge that whipped up the soft
cloak from the face of the open, treeless prairie and sent it lashing
through the frigid air. Long before night had begun to settle down, no
eye could penetrate the scudding snow a foot beyond the window ledges,
except when a sudden stilling of the tempest disclosed the writhing
cottonwood break to the north, and the double row of ash saplings
leading south to the blotted, printless highway.
With darkness, the fury of the blizzard had redoubled, and the house had
rocked fearfully as each fresh blast struck it, so that the nails in the
sheathing had snapped from time to time, and rung in the tense atmosphere
like pistol shots. Momentary lulls--ominous breathing-spells--had
interrupted the blizzard; but they had served only to intensify it when
it broke again. As it rose from threatening silence to rending shrieks,
the bellowing of the frightened cattle, tied in their narrow stalls, had
mingled with it, and added to its terrors.
But, when another wild, sunless day had come in, the drift-piled home
had ceased to shiver and creak or admit any sounds from without. Hour by
hour it had settled deeper and deeper into the snow that weighted its
roof and shuttered its windows, until, shrouded and almost effaced, it
lay, at last, secure from the tempest that swept over it and deaf to the
calls from the buried stables.
Down-stairs in the big, dim sitting-room, the neighbor woman was keeping
the lonely vigil of the stork. Early the previous day, before the storm
began, and when the plains still stretched away on all sides, a
foam-covered sea, the huge swells of which had been gripped and frozen
into quiet, the anxious husband had mounted and started westward across
the prairie. The horse had not carried him far, however, for the drifts
would not bear its weight; so, when the three big brothers, hearing his
halloo, had taken him a pair of rude skees made of barrel staves, he had
helped them free the floundering animal, and had then gone on afoot.
His destination was the army post at the reservation, and he had made
swift progress toward it. The ice-bound Vermilion did not check him, and
the sealed sloughs shortened his path. Onward he had sped, tirelessly.
In half an hour his scarlet nubia had blended into the black of his
fur-lined coat; in an hour he was only a speck, now in sight upon the
top of a swell, now lost in its trough. And then he had disappeared
altogether over the long, unbroken line of the horizon.
That day had passed, and the night; and, when a second day was half
gone, he had not yet returned. The farm-house, as hopeful as a sailor's
home, felt little worry, believing that he was too good a plainsman to
brave such a blizzard foolishly, and pictured him fretting his time away
at the post, or in some hospitable shanty nearer by.
But the neighbor woman was full of fear for his safety. And, as she
waited alone, she walked to and fro, watching first the canopied bed in
the corner, and then the shaking sash that, if Providence were merciful,
might at any moment frame an eager face. Every little while she paused
at the stove, where, the hay twists having long since given out, she fed
the fire from a heaping basket of yellow, husked corn.
The three big brothers were in the attic overhead, huddled close about
the warm stovepipe that came up through the floor, with the dogs at
their backs. It was dusk there, too, for the western gable window,
broken the evening before by the force of the storm, was nailed tight
from within and piled high from without; while the window in the
opposite end of the house was intact, but veiled with frost and hung
with icicles. The week's washing, swinging under the peaked roof on a
long, sagging clothes-line, added further to the gloom. Stiff and
specter-like, it moved gently in the currents of air that blew down from
the bare, slanting rafters, each garment taking on a fantastic shape of
its own. Near the pipe hung the stockings of the family, limp and
steaming in the twilight.
The biggest brother had been reading aloud to the other two; but, as the
light grew less, he threw the paper-bound book aside, and they began to
talk in subdued tones. Below them, they could hear the neighbor woman
walking back and forth, and the popping of the kernels in the stove;
behind them, the dogs slept; and from above came faint sounds of the
storm.
Outside, night was coming on fast--the early night of a stormy day. The
neighbor woman, noting the increasing darkness in the sitting-room,
lighted a tall kerosene lamp and set it on the clock-shelf near a south
window. The lower windows to the west were closed and sightless, so no
beacon could shine from them; but she hoped that the lamp's feeble rays,
piercing the unscreened top panes of the south window, might by chance
catch the eye of the husband were he striving to return.
With increasing darkness, the blizzard grew in strength and fury. It
loosened a clapboard below the east gable, and shrieked through the
partial opening. It rattled the window, and tore at the heavy planks on
the roof that supported the stovepipe. It blew the snow from the cracks
and whistled through them shrilly. It caught the house in its drifts and
shook it.
The dogs, awakened by the screeching and clash of things, crouched in
fright against their masters. Shepherd, pointer, and Indian dogs
trembled when the wind moaned, and answered every whine from without
with another. The St. Bernard, separating himself from the pack, sprang
at a bound to the boarded-up window and, raising his head, uttered long,
dismal howls. The big brothers hastened to quiet him, and spared neither
foot nor fist; but the dog, eluding them, returned again and again to
the window, and mourned with his muzzle to the west.
It was while the hurricane was thus raging over the farm-house, and when
nothing but a bit of south roof and the tops of the cottonwoods showed
that a habitation was there, that the stork alighted.
The big brothers were drowsing in the dark about the pipe, with the pack
whimpering beside them, and did not know of his coming until, in a
sudden lull, there came up through the open trap-door that led to the
sitting-room stairs a small, clear, hailing cry.
It sounded but for an instant. Then the storm broke again, the windows
rattled, the dogs whined, the sleet-charged air boomed and thundered and
sucked at the quivering house, and darkness, ever blacker and more
terrible, settled down.
* * * * *
WHEN the neighbor woman came softly up and put her head above the
trap-door, she had to call again and again into the gloom, through which
the lines of frozen clothes waved faint and ghost-like, before the big
brothers awoke and, rising from their cramped positions, groped their
way sleepily to the stairs and followed her down. As they reached the
sitting-room and stood in a silent, waiting row by the stove, the dogs
about them, the neighbor woman tiptoed to the canopied bed in the corner
and took up a tiny bundle, which she brought back and laid in the arms
of the biggest brother.
Then she leaned back, all fat and smiling, as the big brothers bent over
the bundle and looked into a wee, puckered, pink face. It was the little
girl.
II
A FRONTIER CHRISTENING
THE christening of the little girl began the very morning after the
stork flew down through the blizzard and left her. For the three big
brothers, rejoicing that they were still only three, got out the
almanac, the world's atlas, and the dictionary, went carefully through
the first two, read a long list in the back of the last, and wrote down
all the names they liked. Then they set about trying to decide upon one.
It was difficult, for their selections were numerous. The world's atlas
had yielded Morena, Lansing, and Virginia; the back of the dictionary, a
generous line beginning with Abigail and ending with Zoraida; and the
almanac, May and June from the months, Maria and Geraldine from the
scattered jokes, and Louisa, Fanny, and Rose from the testimonials of
ladies who had been cured of influenza, hay-fever, and chilblains. So
not only that day, but a whole week passed away in lively discussion,
and they were no nearer a choice than ever.
Their mother gave no thought to the subject Instead, from morning till
night, through the lower western windows, now tunneled free, she scanned
the snow-sheeted, glistening prairie. It stretched away silent,
pathless, and treacherous, smiling up so brightly that it blinded those
who crossed it; and hiding, as smilingly, those who lay beneath the
drifts that covered it.
But discussion over the naming never flagged among the big brothers, for
they did not yet share her anxiety. The chores were their only
interruption; still, while they made twists for the stove, melted snow
for the thirsty stock, or pitched hay out of the shaft that had been
sunk to the half-used stack and piled it into the covered barn through a
hole in the roof, they kept up the debate. But with all the time and
talk given the matter, no agreement seemed possible, until one day when
the biggest brother made a suggestion.
He proposed that each write a name upon a piece of paper and place it in
a hat, and that the little girl's hand be put in among the pieces, so
that she could take hold of one. The name on the slip she seized should
be hers. So the ballots were prepared, the neighbor woman brought the
little girl, and one tiny clinging fist was guided into the crown. But
though the pink palm would close on a finger, it refused to grasp a
ballot; and, to show her disapproval of the scheme, the little girl
held her breath until she was purple, screwed up her face, and began to
cry lustily.
The big brothers, when they found that she would not choose for herself,
repaired in disgust to the attic. But as they gathered gloomily about
the stovepipe, a second plan offered itself to them in the shape of the
dominoes, and they began to play, with the understanding that whoever
came out winner in the end might name the little girl.
The contests were exciting and raged from dinner-time till dusk, the
dogs looking on from an outer circle and joining their barks to the
shouts of the boys. When the last game came to a close under the
swinging, smoky lantern that lighted the room from its nail on a rafter,
the eldest brother, victorious, arose and led the way to the
sitting-room, the other two following with the pack, and proudly
proclaimed the little girl Edith Maud.
But he had not counted on his mother's wishes. For when she heard the
result of the dominoes, she overturned the whole project, much to the
delight of the vanquished, by declaring that she did not like Edith Maud
at all; and added that the selection would be made from the Bible when
their father returned. So the big brothers carefully hunted out every
feminine name between Genesis and Revelations.
But at the end of a fortnight they too grew anxious, and the christening
was forgotten. No news had come from the army post, and so, one morning,
they set forth toward it with the St. Bernard, when the warm sun was
melting the white caps of the ridges. They did not have to go far. The
dog led them unerringly to a near-by bluff, from which they returned a
sad procession. And next day a mound rose on the southern slope of the
carnelian bluff and was covered high with stones, to keep away the
hungry prowlers of the plains. The storm that had ushered in the new
life had robbed the farm-house of the old.
* * * * *
SPRING had opened, and the thawing prairie lay in splotches of black and
white like the hide of a calico pony, before the family again thought of
the naming of the little girl. Then her mother despatched the youngest
brother to the post-office, a day's ride to the east, to mail an order
to a store in a far-away city. Though there seemed no possibility that
it would soon be decided what to call the little girl, preparations had
begun for the baptism at the sod church on the reservation, and the
order asked for five yards of fine linen and a pair of white kid shoes.
During the busy days of plowing and planting that followed, interest in
the christening was almost lost. And when the arrival of the linen and
the shoes revived it one afternoon in early summer, it was lost sight of
again in a rush of hoeing and herding. So it was not until late fall,
when all the crops were harvested and the threshers had come and gone,
that the family began once more to consider it.
It was time that the little girl had a name of her own, for she could
trot the length of the sitting-room, if she held on to the biggest
brother's finger, and walk, all by herself, from the lounge to the
table. Besides, she was learning to eat with a spoon, which she pounded
crossly on the oil-cloth when she could not find her mouth, and was
teething, without any worry to her mother, on an old soft
cartridge-belt.
The subject reopened the night the little girl's mother cut out the
baptismal robe. And while she tucked it in one succession of narrow rows
and began to embroider it in lacy patterns that she had learned to do
when she was a little girl in England, the big brothers hunted up the
lists from the dictionary, atlas, almanac, and Bible, and reviewed them.
But when the autumn days had been stitched and discussed away and winter
had come in, the family was still undecided. What pleased one big
brother did not please another; and if two agreed, the third opposed
them. The little girl's mother was even harder to suit than they.
The afternoon of the first birthday anniversary two important things
happened: the baptismal robe was finished and the christening
controversy took a new turn. The big brothers, arguing hotly, urged that
if a name could be found for every new calf and colt on the place, the
only baby in the house ought to have one. Now, the little girl's mother
always named the animals, so, when she heard their reproof, she promptly
declared that she would christen the little girl at once--and after an
English queen.
The big brothers were astounded, recalling how their American father had
objected to their having been named after English kings. But their
mother, unheeding their exclamations, wrote down a new list, which
started at Mary Beatrice and included all the consorts she could
remember. But when the queens had been considered from first to last,
and the little girl's mother had made up her mind fully and finally, the
house was again torn with dissension. The eldest brother favored
Elizabeth; the biggest, Mary; and the youngest, Anne. The little girl,
happy over a big, blue glass ball with a white sheep in the center,
alone was indifferent to the dispute, and crooned to herself contentedly
from the top of the pile of hay twists.
But, in spite of the wishes of the big brothers, the christening would
have been decided that day and forever if it had not been for one
circumstance. The eldest brother, protesting vigorously against every
name but Elizabeth, demanded of the little girl's mother what she had
selected.
"Caroline Matilda," she said firmly.
The eldest brother sprang to his feet like a flash, knocking over a
bench in his excitement.
"Caroline Matilda!" he roared, waving his arms--"Caroline Matilda!"
And the little girl, frightened at his shouting, dropped the blue glass
ball, and scurried under the bed.
It was plain, therefore, that she did not like the name her mother had
chosen. So the christening continued to disturb the farm-house. By
spring the eldest and the youngest brothers were calling the little girl
Anne, while the mother and the biggest brother were saluting her as
Victoria.
Matters were still in this unsettled condition when the army chaplain
rode in from the reservation one night late in the summer. He was on his
way to a big Sioux tepee camp, and carried in the saddle-bags flung
across his pommel a well-worn Bible and a brace of pistols. As he
entered the sitting-room, the little girl eyed him tremblingly, for his
spurs jingled loudly as he strode, and the leather fringe on his
riding-breeches snapped against his high boot-legs.
He was grieved to find the farm-house in such a state, and counseled
the little girl's mother to delay the christening no longer, suggesting
a private baptism, such as the big brothers had had. But to no effect.
She declared that a private baptism might do very well for boys, but
that the only daughter in the family should be named with more ceremony.
The chaplain, finding that he could not settle the question, made it the
subject of his evening prayer in the home circle.
The fame of the baptismal robe and the white kid shoes had gone far and
wide over the prairie, and they were talked of from the valley of the
Missouri to Devil's Lake, and from the pipestone country to the
reservations. So every week of that summer the family welcomed
squatters' wives from the scattered claims round about, and women from
the northern forts, whose eyes, strange to dainty things or long starved
of them, fed greedily on the smooth skin of the ivory boots and the soft
folds of the dress. Shortly after the chaplain's stay, a swarthy Polish
woman, shod in buckskin, came on a pilgrimage to the farm-house, and the
little girl's mother, eager to show her handiwork, lifted the dress
tenderly, but with a flourish, from the pasteboard box where it lay upon
wild-rose leaves and a fragrant red apple, and held it against the
little girl with one hand, while with the other she displayed the
pretty boots. The big brothers, hurrying from the barn-yard, crowded one
another to share in the triumph.
But suddenly their delight was changed to dismay. For the little girl's
mother, eager to win more praise from the Polish woman, had started to
deck the little girl in the dress and shoes, and had discovered that the
beautiful robe was too short and too narrow for its plump wearer, while
its sleeves left her fat wrists bare to the elbow. And the white kid
shoes would not even go on!
The youngest brother started for the post-office that afternoon to mail
the shoes back to the store in the far-away city, together with a
drawing on paper of the little girl's left foot, showing just how large
the new pair should be. The very same day the little girl's mother began
to rip out tucks.
When the chaplain stopped on his return trip, he found that the
christening was still agitating the farm-house, the big brothers having
formed a triple alliance in favor of Elizabeth, while the little girl's
mother was adhering more warmly than ever to Victoria. So he spent the
evening in renewed argument and prayer, and offered Catherine as a
compromise. But the little girl's mother attached no importance to his
suggestion, knowing that Catherine was the name of his wife.
Before starting for the reservation in the morning, as he sat upon his
pony with the family in a circle about him, he communicated a notable
piece of news. Some time during June of the coming year the good bishop,
who was greatly beloved by the Indians, would visit the post to marry
the general's daughter to the major. The wedding would take place in the
sod church, and would be followed by a sermon.
"And then," added the chaplain, "could come the baptism."
The little girl's mother was delighted with the idea, and decided on the
spot to delay the baptism until June. The administering of the rite by
the good bishop would give it a certain pomp, while his presence would
insure the attendance of every woman on the plains, and the robe and the
shoes would receive due parade and admiration.
The chaplain, satisfied at having accomplished even so little for peace,
cantered off, the family looking after him. But when he reached the
reservation road he came to a sudden halt, wheeled sharply, and raised
his hands to his face to make a funnel of them. All fell into silence
and listened for his parting admonition.
"Make it Catherine!" he shouted, and cantered on.
When the little girl's mother thought of the months that must pass
before the baptism, she felt sorry that she had been so hasty about
sending for the second pair of kid shoes; for by June of the coming year
the little girl's feet would be too big for them. So the youngest
brother was again sent to the post-office, this time with a letter that
asked the store in a far-away city to send two sizes larger than the
drawing.
While summer was fading into autumn, and autumn was merging into winter
again, the naming of the little girl was not forgotten. The subject came
up every time her mother brought out the new pair of sleeves which she
was embroidering. But it was talked over amicably, the big brothers
having relinquished all right to a share in the selection because their
mother had at last taken an irrevocable stand in favor of her own
choice, and had intrenched her position by a promise that they could
have that year's muskrat money. So when Christmas morning dawned and the
little girl temporarily received her long, dignified name, together with
a beaver pelt for a cap, the big brothers, whittling shingles into shape
for the stretching of their winter's catch, silently accepted the
decision.
The long, dignified name suited the little girl. She had grown so tall
that she could look over the St. Bernard's back, and so agile that she
had walked out six pairs of moccasins in as many months. And when the
new shoes arrived and the sleeves were finished, she grew so proud that
she wanted to wear her gobelin blue apron every day.
As spring opened, and the last tuck was taken out of the robe, the big
brothers put their guns and traps away in the attic, and once more
turned to the plowing and planting of the fields. But, in spite of the
farm work, they found time to make preparations for the approaching
baptism. They painted the light wagon, giving the box a glossy black
surface and the wheels a coat of green, while the little girl's mother
began three suits for them, and a brand-new dress for herself out of one
she had brought with her when the family came to the plains. The
evenings were no less busy. The mother sewed steadily, the big brothers
fixed up the light harness, and the little girl, scorning sleep,
alternately hindered and helped them, and held on to the ends of tugs
and reins with her pudgy hands while the big brothers greased and rubbed
and polished.
When the trip to the reservation was less than a week off, the
preparations for it were redoubled, and the farm was for a time
neglected. The little girl's mother put the last stitches on the new
clothes; the big brothers, each having firmly refused to let either of
the others try a hand at clipping him, made a journey to the
post-office to get their hair cut by the hardware man; and the little
girl wore a despised sunbonnet, had her yellow locks put up on rags, and
went to bed every night with clabbered milk on her face.
At last the great day arrived. Early in the morning, before the rising
sun flamed against the eastern windows, an ambitious young rooster,
perched on the cultivator outside, gave such a loud, croupy call to the
farm-yard that he awakened the little girl. She, in turn, awakened her
mother. So it was in good time that the family, after eating a quick
breakfast and hitching the gray colts to the newly painted wagon,
climbed in and started off.
The little girl, sitting on the front seat between her mother and the
eldest brother, her christening robe and the kid shoes wrapped up
carefully and clasped in her arms, swelled with importance as the colts,
resplendent in their new harness, trotted briskly down the rows of ash
saplings in front of the house and turned the corner into the main road.
Speechless and happy, she sat with her lips pressed tightly together
beneath the big sunbonnet that hid the rag-wound corkscrews on her sore
little head; and when the team crossed the Vermilion and passed the sod
shanty on the bluffs, she did not even turn her eyes from the long,
straight road that stretched westward to glance at the Swede boy who
had come out to see her go by.
But before the ride was half over she grew very tired. So, after she had
sleepily dropped the shoes and the robe into the hay in the wagon-box
several times, she munched a cooky, drank some buttermilk, and was
lifted to the hind seat, where the biggest brother held her in his arms.
When she next opened her eyes, the team was standing in front of
Officers' Row, and the colonel and his wife were beside the wagon
helping her mother down.
As soon as dinner was over, the little girl was carried off to be
dressed, though she wanted to stay in the parlor and play with the
colonel's son; and when she was ready for the baptism, the big brothers
came in to see her as she stood proudly upon the snowy counterpane of
the wide feather-bed, the embroidered robe sticking out saucily over her
stiff petticoats and upheld by two sturdy, white-stockinged legs. On her
shining curls perched a big white satin bow, while incasing each foot,
and completing the whole, was a dainty, soft kid shoe.
"My, you're a blossom!" gasped the biggest brother, walking around and
around her; "an' not any of your skimpy flowers, neither; just a
whacking big white rose with a yellow center!"
The white rose made no reply, for she had upset on the fat feathers in
trying to walk, had broken the string that held the pillow-shams, and
had mussed her stiff petals. So the colonel's wife put her on a paper
spread over a leather trunk.
When the two families started for the sod church, she was carried by the
admiring biggest brother, and on each side of her walked her mother and
the colonel's wife, the others following. She kept turning around to
look at the colonel's son as they went along, and so did not see the
church until she was close to it.
It made a quaint picture in the warm June sunlight as the little
procession neared it. The rude cross surmounting the gable above its
entrance was twined with morning-glory vines that had found their way to
it after hiding the low, thick, black walls beneath; and surrounding the
building was a fence of scantlings--built every spring by the chaplain
to keep the troop horses and the commissary's cows from grazing off its
sides, and stolen every fall by the half-breeds when the first frosts
came--that served as a hitching-post for raw-boned army mounts and
scraggy Indian ponies. Beyond this circle were wagons and big, clumsy,
box-topped carts from far-lying farms, with oxen tied to their wheels
and swaying their weary necks under heavy yokes.
The church still wore its wedding decorations of cat-tails and
willow-boughs when the door swung open to admit the christening party,
and over the step that led up to the altar hung a golden bell of
heart-leaved buttercups. As the little girl crossed the threshold, she
looked on the crowded, waiting congregation with eager, half-frightened
eyes. On each side of the aisle, filling the rear benches, were Indians
and half-breeds, the gay government blankets of the men and the bright
calico dresses, striped shawls, and gayer blankets of the women setting
off their wide, stolid faces; here and there among them, in greasy
breeches and flannel shirts, were rough cattlemen and trappers; and the
troop's famous scout, the half-breed Eagle Eye, sat in the midst of
them, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of her. Instead of the red
handkerchief that he wore about his forehead to keep his black hair out
of his eyes, he had tied, in honor of the occasion, a strip of bleached
muslin, and under it his eyes sparkled and his teeth gleamed as he
smiled at the white papoose.
When the biggest brother started toward the altar, the little girl
hurriedly smoothed the christening robe and put out the white kid shoes
so that everybody might see them. And when they passed the frontier
families and came in line with the aristocratic army benches, her cheeks
were flushed a vivid pink, and she was sitting proudly erect.
Then she beheld the chaplain standing at the step in a long, white
dress. Scarcely had she gotten over her surprise at his strange
appearance, when she saw a man join him who was garbed even more
wonderfully. His dark hair was combed back and rested, like Eagle Eye's,
on his shoulders, and the sleeves of his robe were wide and ruffled at
the wrist. It was the good bishop.
The next moment they were standing before him, the little girl and the
biggest brother at the middle of the line and the others on each side.
The chaplain raised his hand, and the white people stood up. And after
he had waved both arms commandingly and scowled, the Indians and the
half-breeds got up, too, and slouched against the benches while the good
bishop said a long prayer and followed it with a longer reading. The
biggest brother waited very quietly through it all, but he shifted the
little girl from one arm to the other two or three times.
When the reading was over, the little girl's mother answered a few
questions in a low voice. As the good bishop began to pray again, the
chaplain lifted a silver vessel in his hands and held it up solemnly.
The little girl saw that it was the colonel's fruit-dish, and that it
was full of water.
She looked about inquiringly, but all who were near her had their heads
bent; and at the close of the prayer, before she had time to question,
the good bishop took her into his arms.
She was frightened and wriggled to get down, not seeing the warning in
her mother's eyes. The good bishop paid no attention to her, however,
but leaned forward and spoke to the colonel and his wife.
"Name this child," he said.
The little girl did not hear their answer, for she was watching his
hand. It was poised just above the fruit-dish, as if he meant to plunge
it into the water.
She caught her breath and raised herself suddenly in his arms. The whole
church was bending and stretching to see her, but she forgot the staring
people, and was thinking only of her beautiful robe, the kid shoes, and
the threatening water.
A brief, solemn silence pervaded the waiting church. It was broken by
the good bishop's voice; and, at the same time, his ruffled hand sank
into the fruit-dish, held lightly between the chaplain's finger-tips,
and came to the surface wet and brimming. As she saw this, the little
girl's face turned from pink to white, and she caught her breath again.
Then, just as he bent his eyes upon her and lifted his slender fingers
toward her head, the little girl, giving a sudden scared, angry squirm,
struck the silver dish a resentful, upward blow with one vigorous, white
kid shoe.
The vessel bounded out of the hands of the horrified army chaplain,
overturned upon his immaculate robe, and, empty, fell clattering to the
step at his feet. And while it spun there, top-like, for one terrible
moment, the baptismal party, standing in front of the good bishop, gazed
in agonized, reproachful silence at the little girl, who was looking
back at them defiantly from the shelter of the pulpit.
* * * * *
LATER when the good bishop laid damp fingers upon her hair, she was
christened. But the family at the farm-house always declared that she
did not deserve the long, dignified name chosen for her; and the biggest
brother as often added that, because the amount of water has everything
to do with a baptism, the honor rightfully belonged to the dripping army
chaplain.
III
"LITTLE BOY BLUE"
UP and down the oxen toiled before the plow, licking out their tongues,
as they went along, for wisps of the sweet, new grass which the
mold-board was turning under. After them came the biggest brother,
striving with all his might to keep the beam level and the handles from
dancing as the steel share cut the sod into wide, thick ribbons, damp
and black on one side, on the other green and decked with flowers. And,
following the biggest brother, trotted the little girl, who from time to
time left the cool furrow to run ahead and give the steers a lash of the
gad she carried, or hopped to one side to keep from stepping with her
bare feet upon the fat earthworms that were rolled out into the
sunlight, where they were pounced upon by rivaling blackbirds circling
in the rear.
It was a cloudy morning near the end of May. The spring work on the farm
was long past, and already the fields rippled with corn and wheat,
barley and oats, and blue-flowered flax. But it was not yet time to
begin the yearly onslaught against intruding weeds, so the big brothers
were busying themselves with the erection of a sod smoke-house, which,
at hog-killing time, would receive fresh hams and sides for the winter's
curing.
A strip of prairie land bordering the northern edge of the grain had
been chosen to furnish the building material because its fertile top
layer was tenaciously root-bound and free from boulders. And while the
biggest brother plowed it up, the other two came slowly along with the
Studebaker, chopped the sods into pieces twice as long as they were
wide, and laid them carefully on the bed of the wagon.
The little girl let the biggest brother hang the gad about his neck and
helped for a while with the sod-carrying. But every time she put her
chubby arms around a slab, it broke in two; so her brothers told her to
stop. Then she climbed to the wagon-seat and drove the horses beside the
furrows, and, later, went to the farm-yard with a load.
The smoke-house was being built beside the corn-cribs. Before any sod
had been laid, the eldest brother had marked out on the ground with a
stick a nine-foot square, and in one side of it had left a narrow
door-space where two scantlings were driven in upright to serve as sides
of the casing. Then, with the dirt lines as a guide, he had begun the
walls, giving them the thickness of two sods. When the little girl rode
up they were already above her head. But she did not wait to see the
load she had accompanied bring them up to the eldest brother's waist,
for it was close upon noon and it occurred to her that there would soon
be a table to set in the kitchen, so she hurried out of call up the
weedy path between the wheat and the corn, to where the oxen were still
lazily drawing the plow.
She picked up the gad again and sent it whisking about the black flanks
of the steers. But when she had gone up and down till three long sods
lay lapping each other like heavy ruffles, she grew tired of following
the biggest brother and went up the carnelian bluff to the stone pile
and sat down.
Her mother, standing at the kitchen door, shading her eyes with her
hand, saw the fluttering blue calico on the hillside and smiled at it
through tears. Nearly four years and a half had passed since the
rock-covered mound had risen among the snow-drifts, yet during all this
time the little girl had never been told its sad secret, for the family
wished her to go about the farm without fear.
She had often wondered, however, why, when her mother wanted to have a
good cry, she always sat at the kitchen window that looked out across
the row of stunted apple-trees, the sorghum patch, and finally the
corn, to where the carnelian bluff lifted its pebbly head; and why,
whenever the big brothers saw their mother weeping there, if it were
winter, they always coaxed her into the sitting-room, where a pile of
magazines and books, bought to divert her, lay beside the lounge; or, if
it were summer, out into the front garden, where a low bench stood
against the house, under the lilac-bush, facing the round and
diamond-shaped beds of scarlet verbenas, yellow marguerites,
bachelor's-buttons and pansies.
But, though the little girl was ignorant of what the stone pile hid, she
was, nevertheless, thinking of mournful things as she sat there. The
Christmas before, Santa Claus had stingily dropped but one present down
the long stovepipe that carried up the smoke from the sitting-room
stove--one present to serve as both a holiday and a birthday
remembrance; and that had been a big, ugly crockery doll's head with
bumpy brown hair, staring blue eyes, fat, pink cheeks, and flinty
shoulders. The gift, aided by the confidences of the Swede boy, had
almost shaken her belief in Santa Claus, whom she had asked in a letter
to give her a bought riding-whip and a book that told more about
Robinson Crusoe. Instead, the homely head had been left, and she felt
sure (and the Swede boy assured her) that it could only have been
picked out for her by the eldest brother. And when, after gazing down
upon her stupidly for two or three months from the clock-shelf, it was
finally fastened, by thread run through the holes in its shoulders, to a
clumsy, jointless, sawdust body, it had only served to remind her more
bitterly than ever of the ill fortune that could make two great events
in one small life fall upon the selfsame day.
The little girl had often complained of the stork's bringing her at
Christmas-time, and had been promised by the biggest brother that, when
they should all agree that she was very good and deserving--because she
had cheerfully done everything she had been told--_she should have her
birthday changed to June_! But so far the promise had never been
fulfilled, for the little girl did not hold, as they did, that the
compact included the washing of potatoes or the scraping of the
mush-kettle. Now, June was almost at hand again, and, as she waited on
the bluff for the cow-horn to sound the call for dinner, she wondered if
the treasured change in dates would ever be made.
While she was still perched upon the topmost rock, she heard a faint
shout from the farm-yard, and looking that way, saw the eldest brother
standing on the seat of the Studebaker, frantically waving his arms. She
got down, ran around to the western side of the hill, and called to the
biggest brother on the level prairie below her. He stopped the ox-team
and tried to understand what the eldest was saying. But it was not made
clear until the youngest unhitched a horse from the wagon and mounting
it, still harnessed, started across the wheat-field with the dogs in
full cry before him.
The herd, which before breakfast had been driven north to the river
meadows, was returning to feed upon the young crops, and was dangerously
near the river edge of the wheat. The cattle were grazing as they
advanced, the cows leading and the beef cattle bringing up the rear. And
when the foremost animals saw the youngest brother cantering toward them
with the pack, they only hurried forward the faster so as to get a taste
of the forbidden grain before they were compelled to turn tail.
Snapping and yelping, the dogs came down upon them, and the herd, two
hundred strong, fled before them, with futile reaches after mouthfuls of
the wheat as they ran. But, scarcely an hour later, when the little girl
was sauntering home behind the biggest brother and the oxen, the cattle
faced about and started slowly back again; and, when the family was just
gathering about the dinner-table, they swarmed across the prairie and
into the fields. This time the youngest brother not only rode out and
drove them back to the meadows, but remained between them and the farm
till the biggest finished his meal and relieved him.
It was plain that some one would have to stay with the cattle throughout
the rest of the day; for, having gotten a taste of the grain, they would
return as often as they were driven away and trample down what they did
not steal. But not one of the big brothers felt that he could be spared
from the work on the smoke-house.
"Say, ma," said the eldest brother, looking at the little girl as he got
up from the dinner-table and took his hat from the elk antlers in the
hall, "I've thought the whole thing out, and I don't see why this
youngster can't herd. She learned to ride; now she can keep them cattle
in the meadows as well as not."
"Oh, you know she's too little," answered her mother; "she'd fall off
her pony if the cattle crowded, and get stepped on."
"Ah, too little," he said superciliously. "All she'd have to do is stay
behind the cattle and sick the dogs every little while."
The little girl's mother shook her head.
"Well, we could put her on the pinto and fasten her feet so's she
couldn't fall off," he persisted.
The mother looked down at the little girl, still busy over her plate of
bacon and eggs.
"Well, maybe she could do that," she said thoughtfully.
"Oh, I'm too little," expostulated the little girl, between two bites.
"Little! You great big thing!" scolded the eldest brother as he went
out. "What are you good for, anyway? Not worth your salt."
When he was gone around the corner of the kitchen, the little girl left
her high bench and sat down crossly upon the door-step. "He's always
'busing me," she complained. "When _I_ want to do anyfing, he says I'm
too little; but when _he_ wants me to do anyfing he finks I'm big
enough."
"Now, pet lamb," said her mother, "you don't have to herd if you don't
want to. But I think you'd be safe on the pinto, and, perhaps, if you
went the boys would all remember their promise about your birthday."
The little girl, understanding what was meant, looked up at her mother
for a moment. Then she whipped through the sitting-room to her bed,
pulled on a pair of beaded moccasins, took her sailor hat off a nail,
and started for the smoke-house.
* * * * *
THE eldest brother went across the reservation road to where the pinto
was picketed in the grassy swale, and brought her in, with her blind
black colt trotting at her heels. And when he had bridled her and
girthed on the soft, woolly pelt of a sheep, he lifted the little girl
to her back and fastened both bare ankles to the cinch with hame-straps.
Then he put the short reins into the little girl's hands, gave the mare
a good slap on the flanks, and watched horse, rider, and colt depart
northward toward the cattle. For it had been settled, when the biggest
brother came in, that if she would try her best to keep the cattle in
the meadows so that the smoke-house could be finished, that very day her
birthday would be changed from December to June.
As soon as the little girl reached the open prairie, the big brothers
returned to their work on the smoke-house. And by the time that the
herd, with the pinto and the dogs behind it, was but a collection of
white and brown specks against the green of the plains, they were so
busy that they had forgotten her. The youngest brother lifted the sods
from the wagon and handed them to the biggest, who helped the eldest lay
them, one layer lengthwise, the next crosswise, and always in such a way
that the middle of a slab came directly above the ends of the ones
beneath.
In the early afternoon, as they worked steadily, the clouds began to
mass darker across the gray sky; and the air, warm throughout the
morning, became chill. A rain-storm seemed on the way, and the big
brothers hurried so as to get the house covered before a shower came to
wash the walls. Two were left to lay the sods, and the other set about
sawing scantlings into lengths for the framework of the hip-roof, while
their mother came out and bound straw into flat bunches for the thatch.
Up in the river meadows, the little girl, secure in her seat on the
pinto, rode to and fro along the southern edge of the herd, in front of
the lowered foreheads and tossing horns of the cattle. Behind her came
the blind black colt, switching his tail and whinnying fretfully; but,
despite his pleading, the little girl, eager to win the reward she had
been promised, never paused in her sentry duty. The pinto fretted, too,
for she also was hungry. But the little girl held the short bridle-reins
tight and did not let the mare get her nose to the ground lest they slip
over her head and out of reach.
The dogs were stretched lazily on some soft badger mounds not far away.
The St. Bernard was not with them, for the big brothers were afraid that
Napoleon, the white bull, would gore him, and had chained him up at
home; and the collie was watching the sheep around the sloughs to the
south. So only the wolf-dogs, with Luffree at their head, helped the
little girl turn an animal back when it broke from the rest and started
toward the grain.
The little girl rode faithfully before the herd, not even stopping to
join the dogs in their chase after a kit-fox that was boldly passing
among the cattle. And when the hunt was over and the cows went down the
runway to the river, she followed in their train, with the pinto still
tugging hard at the reins. But at the bank she forgot how tired her arms
were, for the pack had returned and were amusing themselves by barking
and biting at the snakes that were lying along the strip of sand, and by
pursuing them as they scattered to the water or to the shelter of the
willows at its edge. When the herd had drunk their fill, she slowly rode
eastward, watching them carefully as they spread out across the meadow.
It was then that the clouds came up and the air turned cool. And it was
then that, accidentally, and in one unhappy moment, the little girl
brought all her faithful work to naught, imperiled her birthday hopes,
and cast herself adrift upon the prairie like a voyager in a rudderless
boat. For, in stooping to pull the sheepskin saddle-blanket over her
bare legs, she unthinkingly let go of the bridle, and, the pinto putting
her head down to graze, the short reins slipped along her mane until
they rested just behind her ears--far out of reach.
The little girl slapped her as hard as she could with her hands; but,
even when the mare raised her head and walked about, the little girl
could not get at the reins because she was tightly fastened to the
girth. So the pinto went where she pleased, paying no attention to angry
commands, or to the pounding inflicted upon her flanks by the fists of
the irate little girl.
All this time the herd, too, fed where it chose and had moved out of the
meadows toward the farm. The little girl was powerless to turn it, and
when she set the pack at the cattle they only ran faster than ever
toward the fields. So she called the dogs off. Slowly, but surely, the
cows led the forbidden way, and as the little girl moved about on the
pinto, powerless to go where she wished or to turn them back, she
watched them, swelling with very rage in her helplessness, and wept
bitterly.
When the herd was out of sight over the rise south of the meadow, the
pinto, with her reluctant rider, again went riverward. This time the
mare took a good drink, wading in so far that the little girl's anger
turned to fear and she cried harder than ever. As the horse came out of
the stream, the loud _yur_, _yur_, of a frightened crow, whose nest was
in the willow fringe, startled the blind black colt, and he started on a
run up the river. His mother, whinnying loudly, followed him and broke
into such a hard gallop that the little girl was bounced rudely about
and would have fallen to the ground had not the hame-straps firmly held
her.
Away they went, the colt in the lead and the pinto after, until they
reached the bunch of cottonwoods far up the stream where the yanging
wild geese had their nests. Then the colt came to a halt and waited
tremblingly for his anxious mother.
The black colt had a wild fear of crows, for it was due to them that he
had been blind ever since, a few days after his birth, he had
accompanied his mother across the reservation road to the sloughs
beyond. He had trotted happily at her side as they went, but late in the
evening had run one knobby leg into a hole in the prairie-dog village
and taken a bad tumble. He had not been able to rise again, and, in
struggling had got wedged upon his back between two mounds, so that he
had to lie, feet up, all night. His mother had fed near him till dark
came on, and had stood over him through the night; and not till the sun
was well up did she leave him to go for water. It was then that he had
been blinded, for some crows, flying by to the stubble-fields around the
farm-house, had thought him dead and had alighted beside him with
inquiring cries.
Now, as he stood in the cottonwoods beside his mother, he shook his head
uneasily as if unpleasant memories were stirring in his baby brain, and
stamped crossly as the dogs came up, their tongues out with their hot
pursuit.
Time dragged slowly. Late in the afternoon a dash of rain found its way
down through the cottonwood leaves, splashed against the little girl's
face, and mingled with the tear-drops. The pinto moved farther into the
shelter of the grove and the light sprinkle did not wet her. As the
light slowly faded the peepers along the river began to send up their
lonesome chant, and a crow went whirring past to his home down the
river, with no cry to the blind black colt underneath, for his bill was
thrust through a redhead's egg. Near by, from the open prairie, the
brown pippets flew skyward against the rain-drops, greeting the coming
night with a last song, and then dropped silently to their nests in the
lush grass.
The framework of the smoke-house roof was in its place, and the laying
of the straw bundles, in long, overlapping rows, well started before the
shower began; and so rapidly did the big brothers work, that when the
collie came in with the sheep, the thatching was nearly finished, and
the squatty, straw-crowned building, with grass and flower tops
sticking, still fresh, from between its sods, looked like one of the
chocolate layer-cakes that the little girl's mother made for
Thanksgiving, only the filling was green instead of brown, and the top
coating was gold.
They were on top of the house, laying the last two rows of straw along
the ridge-pole, when their mother, who was in the kitchen getting
supper, noticed that it was sprinkling, looked northward through the
gloom to try to catch a glimpse of the little girl returning with the
herd, and then called to the big brothers to ask if they could not see
cattle moving about in the corn. They looked and, from their
vantage-point, made out a big herd. Their shout brought their mother
hurrying into the yard.
"They're not ours, are they?" she asked. But the big brothers were
bringing the wagon team and a cultivator horse out of the barn,
unsaddled and unbridled, and did not hear. Before she could reach them,
they had dashed off.
She stood looking after them, her apron over her head. She knew that if
the cattle in the field belonged to the farm, something had gone wrong
with the little girl; and she strained her eyes anxiously to where loud
bellows, shouts, and the cracking of cattle-gads told that the herd was
being routed.
Suddenly, from across the intervening corn and sorghum and into the
cottonwood break, crashed a great white bull, whose curly head was
swaying angrily and whose eyes shone with the lust of fight, while
behind, laying about him with a whip at every jump, came the biggest
brother. It was Napoleon.
"Oh, my poor pet lamb!" cried the little girl's mother, and retreated
into the smoke-house for safety as the bull and his pursuer came by.
It took hard riding to rid the grain of the cattle, for, under cover of
the dusk, they slipped back into the wheat again and again after having
been driven out. So it was long after supper-time before the herd was
bunched and driven around the farm to the reservation road and into the
wire pen by way of the ash lane in front of the house. Then the big
brothers came tramping into the kitchen, tired and hungry.
But what was their surprise to find it empty. And, on looking about,
they discovered a note from their mother. It had been put in plain sight
against the syrup-jug and read:
"_The dogs, all except Luffree, came home. If she has returned when you
read this, fire a musket._"
They stood in a circle and looked blankly at one another. For it had not
crossed their minds that the little girl was not home, but somewhere out
on the prairie, tied to a pinto, and all alone in the dark.
Without waiting to snatch a bite from the table, they started off to
search, leaving their jaded horses in the barn. The eldest brother went
straight for the river, which he meant to follow, and took a musket
with him; the youngest ran off up the path between the corn and the
wheat, and carried the cow-horn; while the biggest made for the
carnelian bluff, taking neither gun nor horn, but relying on his lungs
to carry any good news to the others. And behind them, as they hurried,
sounded the baying of the St. Bernard, ignominiously chained to a stake
by the kitchen door.
The evening wore on. Overhead the low-hanging clouds covered the
moonless sky like a hood, and not a star shone through the fleecy
thickness to aid in the search for the little girl. At a late hour it
began to sprinkle again, and, though no sound of shot or blast had
broken the silence of the prairie, one by one the anxious hunters came
straggling home, dumbly ate, and waited for the morning.
The little girl's mother, sitting behind the stove, cried heartbrokenly.
"If my poor baby ever comes back alive," she sobbed, "she shall have her
birthday in June and the best present I can get her." And all the big
brothers silently assented.
But while they were gathered thus, drying their damp clothes, the
biggest brother suddenly sprang up with a joyful cry.
"Why didn't we think of it before?" he said--"the St. Bernard!"
A moment later he was freeing the big dog, and his mother, lantern in
hand, was holding a little gingham dress against his muzzle.
"Find her! Find her!" she commanded. "Go, go! Find her!"
The St. Bernard shook himself free of the chain that had bound him,
looked into the faces that peered at him through the dim lantern-light,
and then, giving a long sniff, proud, human, and contemptuous, walked
slowly and majestically toward the sod barn. The family followed
wonderingly.
When the corn-cribs were reached, the dog quickened his pace to a trot
and began to wave his big, bushy tail in friendly greeting to something
that, farther on in the dark, could not be seen by the little girl's
mother and the big brothers. And when he came near the wide, closed door
of the barn, in front of which showed indistinctly the forms of a large
and a small animal, he leaped forward with a welcoming bark that was
answered by another from a dog lying in the deep shadow against the
door.
For there stood the blind black colt and the pinto with the bridle-reins
still swinging across her neck. And on her back lay the little girl, her
arms hanging down on either side of the sheepskin saddle-blanket, her
head pillowed in sleep against her horse's mane.
IV
A PARIAH OF THE PRAIRIES
THE young cowbird, perched tail to windward on a stone beside the road,
raised his head, and uttered a hoarse cry of hunger and lonesomeness as
a great black flock of his own kind, sweeping by on its way to the
grazing herd in the gully, shadowed the ground about him for an instant.
"Look-see! look-see!" he called plaintively, rolling his eyes and
ruffling his throat; "look-see! look-see!"
But the flock, dipping and rising in swift flight, sped on unheeding.
The long summer day was drawing to a close over the prairie, and with
early evening myriads of gnats and mosquitos swarmed up from the sloughs
to drink their fill on the flanks of the stamping cows. The insects
offered a fat supper to the birds as they clung to the twitching hides
of the cattle. So the flock was hastening to reach the gully before
milking-time.
The young cowbird called disconsolately again and again after the shadow
of the flock was far away, making a moving blot across the darkening
plains. Then, discouraged, he tucked his head under his wing, clutched
the stone more tightly with his claws, and rocked gently back and forth
as the soft south breeze spread his tail, lifted his growing pinions,
and blew his new feathers on end.
He was a tramp and the descendant of a long line of tramps, all as black
and hoarse and homeless as himself. A vagabond of the blackbird world,
he had, like many an unfeathered exile, only sleep to make him forget
his empty craw, and only a wayside rock for his resting-place.
He had been an outcast from the beginning. One day in the spring his
tramp mother, too shiftless to build a home for herself, had come
peeping and spying about the fuzzy nest of some yellow warblers that had
built in an elder-bush by the river; and finding the birds away, had
laid a big white egg speckled with brown in the midst of four dainty
pale-blue ones that were wreathed with tiny dots. Then she had slipped
away as quickly as possible, abandoning her own to the more tender
mercies of the little canary pair.
It was the warblers' first nesting, or they would have known, the moment
they saw the large egg among their small ones, that they had been
imposed upon, and would either have pushed the interloper out or built
a second story to their home and left the cowbird's egg in the basement.
But they were young and inexperienced, so they had only wondered a
little at the size and color of their last lay, and let it remain.
The weeks had passed. Then, one day, there had been a great chattering
about the warm cup of milkweed fiber and thistle-down in the elder-bush,
husky cheeping from the nest mingling with the joyous chirps of the
mother-bird as she tilted and danced on its edge or fluttered
ecstatically above it; and from the end of a swaying twig close by had
swelled the proud song of the male.
The big egg had hatched.
When the first nestling had freed himself from his shell and tried his
long, wabbly legs, he opened a wide-gaping, clamorous red mouth above
his naked little body; and this set the yellowbirds on such persistent
and successful searches after worms, that by the time the young
cowbird's foster brothers and sisters were out, he had grown big and
strong. So the newer babies had been squeezed from the cozy center of
their warm home to a place on its chilly rim.
Affairs in the nest had soon come to a sad pass. The little warblers'
weak voices and short necks were not able to win the reward of tidbits
claimed by the young cowbird, who ruthlessly stood upon them as he
snatched his food from the bills of the yellowbirds. One by one they
sickened and died, and were then pushed out into the wet grass below.
After that the young cowbird had been fed faster and more fondly than
ever.
One afternoon, when the warblers were away foraging for the nest, the
cowbird, now well feathered, had tried his wings a little, and had flown
to a clump of tall weeds not far off. Alighting safely, and emboldened
by success, he had eluded a hungry snake that hunted him across the
gopher knolls, and finally gone on to the top of the hill. When twilight
came he had found a perch in a pile of tumbleweed, far from the
sheltering bushes by the river. So the warblers, coming home late with
two long wrigglers for him, had found the nest empty. They had darted
anxiously about it for a while, then the male had settled upon a
swinging elder-branch to sing a mournful song to his mute,
grief-stricken mate.
Their last baby was gone.
* * * * *
WHEN the little girl came trudging along the road that evening on her
way to the farm-house, she sat down for a moment opposite the stone on
which the cowbird was perched. And after examining a sand cut that was
giving her some trouble under her little toe, she suddenly caught sight
of the dumpy black ball that was moving back and forth with every gust.
She leaned forward on her knees to see what it was, and crept slowly
toward him until she was within reach. Then, before he had time to take
his head from under his wing, she put out one hand and seized him.
He was terribly frightened and struggled to get free, pushing vigorously
against her fingers with wings and claws. But she only tightened her
grasp as he fought, and he was soon so closely held that he could not
move. She forgot her sore toe in her happiness over catching him, and
started homeward on the run. As she bounded along, he watched her with
his small, scared eyes.
On reaching the farm-house the little girl put him into a rough slat
cage that hung in her room; and while he stretched his cramped legs, and
opened his crumpled wings, she hurried to the window, where she captured
a handful of house-flies. She placed them in front of him, and he
retreated to the farthest corner of the cage, to beat the bars in
terror. But after she had hidden herself behind the headboard of the
bed, he came forward and ate up the flies without stopping to take a
breath between gulps. Then he snuggled down on a piece of her worn-out
woolen dress, and went to sleep again.
Though the little girl was yet only five and a half years old, she had
tried many times in her life, without success, to make the slat cage the
home of some feathery pet. Snipes and plover, orioles and ovenbirds,
bobolinks and meadow-larks, all had lived in it by turns for a few days.
But the snipes and plover had gone into a decline, the orioles and
ovenbirds had grown thin and unkempt, and the bobolinks and meadow-larks
had eaten themselves to death. Sorrowful over so much misfortune, she
had longed to secure a hardy bird that would not only live in captivity,
but would repay her loving care with songs.
The young cowbird proved to be just what she had wanted. Every day he
grew larger, plumper, and hungrier; and though he was not a song-bird,
his attempts at melody, made with much choking and wheezing and many wry
faces,--as if the countless flies he had swallowed were sticking in his
throat,--pleased her more than carols. Within a week after his capture
he was so tame that he would sit on her shoulder as she walked about her
room and peck at her teeth. She was certain that he was giving her so
many loving kisses; but her big brothers unsympathetically explained
that he thought she had some kernels of corn between her lips.
It was not long before he was allowed the freedom of the sitting-room a
little while every afternoon, and the little girl always sat and
watched him as he walked solemnly about it, taking long steps, calling
happily in his husky voice, and pecking curiously at the bright rags in
the crocheted rug.
This freedom worked wonders with his plumage. His dark brown head fairly
shone, his sable breast and back grew glossy, and his wings took on
faint, changing tints of purple and blue. His jet rudder, daily dressed
to its iridescent tip by his ebony beak, was flicked jauntily as he
strode around on his long black legs. And all this alert, engaging
beauty won the friendship of the farm-house, including even that of the
little girl's big brothers, who advised her to clip his wings if she
wanted to keep him; for when he had once reached full size, they said,
he would fly away to join the cowbird colonies up the river. But the
little girl would never consent to any use of the scissors.
Throughout the remainder of the summer he went everywhere with her,
perching on her shoulder when she drove the cattle to the meadows,
riding with her on the pinto if she were sent on an errand, or walking
beside her in the farm-yard. He never flew far from her, and could
always be coaxed back if she whistled and showed her teeth. They spent
many an afternoon together on the prairie while the little girl herded.
And when the cows were headed away from the wheat and were grazing
quietly, he would leave her and fly to the back of Liney, the muley,
where he would walk up and down the broad, white mark that ran from her
horns to her tail, and catch insects. Liney, who liked the sharp thrust
of his bill where a mosquito had been stinging, was careful not to
wiggle her hide and scare him away. At dinner-time he joined the little
girl and shared her gingerbread.
One night, just before the cows started for the milking-pen, a big flock
of cowbirds flew down and alighted in the midst of them, some of the
birds perching upon the backs of the cattle to catch their supper. When
the little girl saw the black company, she looked around for her bird,
but could not tell him from the others. There were three perched upon
Liney's back, and, hoping that one of them was he, she ran toward the
cow, calling softly and showing her teeth. But as she came close, the
three flew away to the roan heifer. Half weeping, she ran after them,
calling still, and smiling to entice him. The birds rose into the air
again, this time alighting around the farthest cow in the herd.
Overwhelmed with sorrow, the little girl turned back to where the
cattle-gad lay, holding her apron up to her wet eyes as she stumbled
miserably along. But just as she flung herself down beside the whip,
there came a harsh call from behind her, where the lunch-pail stood. It
was the cowbird.
"Look-see! look-see!" he cried, pecking at the brown paper that held the
gingerbread. Jumping up, the little girl ran to him and caught him
tenderly to her breast.
He was so inquisitive that he soon became unpopular at the farm-house,
and on several occasions all but had his neck wrung for wrongdoing. One
day he picked the eldest brother's fiddle-strings in two; another time
he was discovered digging holes in the newly baked loaves of bread that
had been set in a window to cool; and, again, he stole hot potatoes out
of a kettle on the kitchen stove. But whenever danger threatened, the
little girl championed him valiantly. So time after time he escaped
merited punishment, which was to have been not less than death or exile;
for he was too small to whip.
But one morning in the early fall he was confronted with a very grave
charge--one that was, if proved true, to cost him his life or his home:
the little girl's mother, on going into the kitchen at sunrise to
prepare breakfast, discovered all her crocks of milk disturbed and the
shelf behind the stove, on which they stood in a long, yellow row,
spattered with milk from end to end. As she turned, very puzzled, from
the shelf to the table, she saw the cowbird gravely walking about on
the white oil-cloth.
"Look-see! look-see!" he cried to her, flirting his tail and blinking
his eyes. "Look-see! look-see!"
She ran to the table and seized him angrily in her hands, certain that
he had forsaken his own little pan of water to bathe in the milk. But
when she had looked him over carefully, and found him dry and tidy from
top to toe, she let him go again, forgetting to feel of the white
oil-cloth upon which he had been promenading, and which was spattered
with milk like the shelf.
Before the contents of the crocks were thrown out that morning, the
little girl's mother called all of the big brothers in to view the mess;
and by the time breakfast was over, the cowbird had been passed around,
for every one wanted to see if any milk could be found on him. None was
discovered, however, so the little girl was allowed to carry him away in
triumph on her shoulder.
For two or three mornings after that the milk was not visited by the
marauder. Then for several days in succession it was splashed about on
shelf, stove, and floor, and the little girl's mother was more puzzled
than ever. The cowbird was no longer under suspicion, for the big
brothers had not been able to fasten the guilt upon him, since his
feathers were always as sleek and shining as the coat of a curried
horse.
It was decided to poison a part of the milk for several nights and put
the rest carefully in the cupboard. This was done; but though morning
after morning the shelf was sprinkled as badly as ever, no dead body of
cat, bird, or wild animal was ever found in the kitchen to solve the
mystery. So a new plan was adopted, and tin pans were put upside down
over the crocks to keep the nightly visitor out.
This arrangement worked well for a week or more; then one morning there
was a terrific rattling and banging in the kitchen, followed by deathly
stillness. Certain that the disturber of the milk was at hand, the
entire family rushed pell-mell through the sitting-room and down the
entry to the kitchen door, which they flung wide open, and excitedly
peered in. On the floor lay a tin pan that had been knocked from its
place, and in one side of it was a large dent where it had struck the
stove in falling. The milk in the uncovered vessel was not disturbed,
and there was no sign of any living thing in the room.
Baffled and wondering, they returned to their beds. But the little girl,
before going back to hers, remained behind a moment to look for the
cowbird. At last she spied him, perched high up on the elbow of the
stovepipe. He was trembling violently, and his glossy, black feathers
were standing out--straight on end.
The neighbor woman, who dropped in that noon, made a suggestion that the
big brothers decided to act upon. She declared that the kitchen visitor
was a milk-snake, and that one night spent on the watch without a light
would prove her correct. So that very evening, the eldest brother,
wrapped in a buffalo robe and a pair of blankets, sat on a bench behind
the kitchen door, resolved to keep awake till morning in wait for the
mysterious disturber. The rest of the family prepared for bed, after
providing him with the musket, powder and buck-shot, and the
clothes-stick; and on looking in upon him before retiring, found him
sitting grimly in his corner, the musket leaning against one shoulder,
while upon the other perched the cowbird.
The sun was just rising next day when the little girl's mother awoke.
She was surprised at not having been aroused earlier by the noise of an
encounter, and, accompanied by the little girl and the other big
brothers, tiptoed quickly but softly down the entry to listen. All was
quiet. She pushed the kitchen door open a little to look at the crocks.
They had not been molested. Then she put her head in. As she did so, the
husky cry of the cowbird came from the bench behind the door.
"Look-see! look-see!" he called, as he walked up and down the eldest
brother from head to foot; "look-see! look-see!"
And the family, entering, beheld the eldest brother stretched upon the
bench--fast asleep.
He was so provoked at having been found napping that, when he heard
their laughter and awoke, he grabbed the cowbird and threw him across
the kitchen. The cowbird lighted upon his feet unhurt, and started
boldly back again. But the little girl was frightened over his bad
treatment, and running to him, took him up tenderly, and carried him to
her room. He was put into the slat cage for the rest of the day, and for
several weeks after that slept in it every night.
It was now autumn. The husked corn filled the cribs to bursting, the
wheat lay in yellow heaps on the granary floor, and the hay, stacked
high, stood along the north side of the low, sod barn in a sheltering
crescent. There was little left to do on the farm before the winter set
in, and the cold mornings found the family astir very late. So one raw
day, when the fields and prairie without lay white in a covering of
thick frost, it was after sun-up before the little girl's mother entered
the kitchen.
It had been so long since the milk had been disturbed that she had
neglected for a week or more to cover the crocks, and did not even give
the shelf a glance as she hurriedly lighted a twist of hay; but as she
stooped to poke it into the stove, a quavering, plaintive, raspy voice
above her made her start back and stare upward.
There on the edge stood the cowbird, his head drooping and his wings
half spread. But he was no longer black. From his crown to his legs he
was covered with a coating of frozen milk that, hiding his glossy
plumage, turned him into a woefully bedraggled white bird; while from
the ends of his once glistening tail feathers hung little icicles that
formed an icy fringe.
"Look-see! look-see!" he mourned, closing his eyes and lifting one stiff
leg from his perch. "Look-see! look-see!"
A moment later, hearing the sound of loud laughter in the kitchen, the
little girl got out of bed and ran to find out what was the matter. But
when she caught sight of the cowbird on the shelf before the row of big
brothers, she did not join in the merriment. Instead, she turned very
white and crept back to bed again without a word, taking the cowbird
with her, cuddled under her arm.
* * * * *
WHEN the sun stood over the farm-house and the frost was gone from the
plains, the little girl climbed upon her pony's back and, with the
cowbird perched on her shoulder, started northward up the river. Her
face was whiter than it had been that morning, and she had no happy
chatter with which to answer him as he chirruped to her gaily and leaned
forward from time to time to peck at her teeth. Her ears were still
ringing with her big brothers' laughter, and with the pitiless command
that had driven the cowbird forth to the prairies again--a wing-clipped
tramp and an outcast! Straight on she rode to the river meadows where
the cowbird colonies lived.
Once there, she got down carefully from her horse and, after placing her
pet gently upon a stone, took from her pockets a crust, part of a
shriveled apple, a chunk of gingerbread, and a cold boiled potato. These
she placed in front of him on the ground. Then she took him up, parted
her lips to let him peck her teeth once more, held him against her
breast for a long, bitterly sad moment, and mounting, rode away.
When she was only a rod or so from him, the cowbird tried to follow. But
his maimed wings would not obey, and he fell back to the ground again
and again. Then he walked a few steps after the retreating pony, and,
finding that the little girl was getting farther and farther away every
moment, hopped upon a big rock beside the road, and called after her
pleadingly.
"Look-see! look-see!" he cried, rolling his eyes and swelling his
shining throat; "look-see! look-see!"
But the little girl rode straight on, and never looked back to see.
V
THE MISFIT SCHOLAR
IT was only a little way to the school-house in the winter-time because
the big brothers could cross the chain of sloughs to it on their skates;
but, in the autumn, before the ice was thick, the path led snake-like
beside the eastern border of the water, just skirting the frill of green
bulrushes and tall marsh-grass, and it was a long distance.
The school-house stood in a wide glade that was the favorite
grazing-spot of a band of antelope. It was narrow and unpainted, with
two windows on each side and a door in one end. And from its roof, which
was not too high for a game of "anti-I-over," protruded a joint of rusty
stovepipe. During spring and summer the building stood empty, with the
whole sloping green place to itself and the pronghorns, and in every
high wind it toppled over, with its pipe pointing to the east, until it
was pried into place again. But, after school "took up" in the fall, the
glade rang with the laughter and shouts of the scholars, and the
antelope crossed the Vermillion and traveled to the rugged country
farther west, where, when the snow fell and hid the dried grass, they
could browse off the bushes; and the school-house did not topple any
more, for its deep coal-bins, which were built against the wall by the
door, were full to the brim.
Often on warm summer afternoons, the little girl rode down to the glade
beyond the sloughs and, sitting her horse quietly, induced a tawny doe
and her twin kids to approach by exciting their curiosity with her
bright red flannel petticoat. But if she took the herd along, she did
not dare display her skirt, for Napoleon did not like it and had, on one
occasion, viciously gored the Indian pony in the ribs when the little
girl was busy coaxing the deer. After a wind-storm she liked to climb
from her pony to the overturned school-house and walk about on it. Once,
she slipped on a window-pane, when she was peering in, and fell through;
and would have had to remain there a long time (for the door was
locked), if she had not thought to pull the joint of stovepipe out of
the roof and crawl through the hole to freedom.
But she had never been near the building when the teacher was in charge.
She did not want to go to school, because she meant to learn her lessons
at home the way her mother had,--and her mother had been taught by
_her_ mother, and, after that, by a governess. The little girl had never
talked the matter over at the farm-house, however, for she never doubted
that the governess, whatever that was, would come all in good time.
So her surprise and grief were great when she heard one day that she was
to learn her lessons from the lanky Yankton man who presided over the
school, and along with the other little girls who lived near enough to
attend. She held one tearful argument after another with the eldest
brother, declaring that she could read and study at home. But he said
that a young one nearly six years old ought to know something more than
stories--something about the world and arithmetic.
Secretly the little girl did not think it was of any use going to
school, for she believed the teacher did not know much. She had even
heard the biggest brother say so. And she knew that _she_ knew a great
deal. As soon as she could eat with a spoon, she had begun to hold the
almanac up in front of her; and she had spoken her first word at
fourteen months. It was "Man," and her mother often related how it
happened.
She was rocking the little girl to sleep, she said, and singing,
"There was a little man,
And he had a little gun,"
when there sounded a small voice from the cradle. "Man," it said, and
the little girl's mother, peeking over the side, saw two wide-open blue
eyes. After that, when she was being rocked to sleep, the little girl
always said, "Man." Three months later, she had begun to talk in whole
sentences. At three years she had been able to make all her letters and
read several words, having been taught secretly by the biggest brother.
At four, she knew the youngest brother's reading lessons by heart, and
could spell every word in the First Reader. At this stage of her
education, she put aside such baby things as the "Mother Goose Rhymes,"
and was deeply interested in the doings of the "Swiss Family Robinson."
Winter nights, she had listened to an ever increasing number of stories
that were read aloud by her mother. And now she was occupied with
"Gulliver." But she did not know one of her multiplication tables, and
the neighbor woman, for one, was greatly disgusted with her, and
declared that she did not know whatever would become of the child.
The morning the little girl started to school, with her Second Reader
under one arm, it was so cold that her breath looked like puffs of white
steam. Her mother thought she had better walk instead of ride, and
bundled her up warmly in a big plaid shawl, her beaver cap, and her
thick mittens. When she set off, she was accompanied by the youngest
brother, who was going to be a visitor during the morning session. The
dogs, with the exception of Luffree (who could not be found), had been
chained up along the sunny side of the house to keep them from following
her. And as they saw her disappearing across the reservation road, they
jumped back and forth, pulling at their collars and howling dismally.
The little girl did not look around at them. Her heart was heavy. All
the unhappiness that had been visited upon her that autumn weighed it
down. Every day, before sunrise, she had had to get up and eat a raw
carrot, because the neighbor woman had prescribed it as a cure for a
certain livid spot that had made its appearance on the little girl's
cheek, and was thought to be a cancer. The little girl knew that the
carrot-eating was useless, since the spot was only the mark of an
unsuccessful attempt at tattooing; but she did not care to explain.
Then, the cowbird had been sent away; and, as a last blow, she had been
told to go to school.
There was no doubt in her mind that her misfortunes were due wholly to
the fact that she had precisely thirteen freckles on her pink nose. She
had never been able to count them because, when she had covered ten of
the tiny brown spots with as many fingers, so much of her nose was
hidden that she could count no further. But the biggest brother had
assured her that she had them, and that was enough.
She was very tired when they came in sight of the school-house, and the
youngest brother had to tug her along by the hand. Luffree, who had come
in sight over a hillock ahead of them when they were part way, trotted
at her heels and looked up wistfully at her as she half walked, half
ran, complaining at every step. Now and then he jumped up and tried to
lick her face sympathetically. But she would not let him, for she knew
he had warts on his muzzle that he had caught the summer before while
teasing a toad.
The school-room was full of smoke and noise when they entered. The
scholars were laughing and talking as they crowded about the tall, round
stove; and it was sending black, sooty breath into their faces from
every crevice of its loosely hung doors. But shortly afterward the noise
was silenced by the teacher, who brought his hands together with a
resounding clap.
All the pupils in the room, except the little girl, had been to school
to him the year before and knew what the signal meant. So she suddenly
found herself the only one left standing in the middle of the floor, the
girls having preempted the row of benches on the right, and the boys
that on the left. But she was not abashed, and her corkscrew curls
danced on her shoulders as she looked about.
"Sit down, sit down!" came in whispers from both sides. She took no
notice of them, and the teacher, busily preparing the roll-call at his
table, did not hear. But soon a ripple of laughter from the school, and
a voice from the stove, interrupted his work, and brought him scowling
to his feet.
The little girl was standing with one arm extended and one small
forefinger pointing past him at the globe, which, for want of a better,
was but a fat pumpkin ingeniously impaled on a stick, and peeled over
part of its surface in such a manner that the five oceans were
represented, while the portion yet unpeeled showed the rude outlines of
the six continents.
"We've got lots of pumpkins bigger 'n that at our house," she was
saying, her face turned toward "Frenchy," an up-river trapper who
studied geography and English spelling between his rounds of the
sloughs. "Why, the cellar's _full_ of 'em."
The teacher rapped briskly on the table with his pencil, to call her to
order. "Look here," he said, a little crossly, "you mustn't talk out
like that. Sit down."
"No seat," she faltered, lowering her voice.
He looked up and down the girls' row; there were only four seats in it,
and they were full. The boys' benches were not; but, loath to lessen
the terrors of a favorite punishment, he hesitated to put her there.
"Come up to the rostrum, then," he said.
The little girl walked slowly forward, and a flush stole up her throat
and mounted to her temples. But when she was once seated, her sailor-hat
on one side and her Second Reader on the other, she felt less demeaned;
for the rostrum commanded a view of the whole room, and from it she
could see Luffree, fast asleep under the youngest brother's bench.
The teacher went back to the roll-call, and the pupils droned the time
away till recess. Then the boys rummaged through their willow baskets
for something to eat and went out to play "prisoner's base." But the
girls--the neighbor woman's daughter, and the seven belonging to the
Dutchman who lived at the Vermillion's forks--stayed in, gathered in a
silent circle about the rostrum, fingered the big gold brooch that the
little girl's mother had let her wear as a reward for attending, and
looked her up and down, from the scarlet bow on her hair to her fringed
leggings. And she, never having seen the Dutchman's children before,
forgot to be polite, and stared back at their denim dresses, pigtails,
and wooden shoes.
When school took up again, the Swede boy was told to put his sums on a
bit of tar-papered wall near him, and a mixed class in reading lined up
in front of the teacher's table. Soon, however, the room was again
quiet. The Swede boy and the class sat down, and the whole school, made
sleepy by the warmth from the stove, lounged on their benches and
drowsed on their books, and even the little girl, sitting idly on the
rostrum, nodded wearily. But right in the midst of the silence, and just
before the pupils were dismissed for noon, something so startling
happened that the little girl's curls fairly stiffened in alarm.
The teacher clapped his hands, the children followed with a hurried
banging of their books and slates, and, instantly, before the little
girl had time to think what it all meant, the scholars, with one accord,
began to roar at the top of their lungs.
"Scotland's burning! Scotland's burning!"
they cried, rapping their knuckles upon their desks in the rhythm of
galloping horses,--
"More water! More water!
Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!
More water! More water!"
The little girl straightened herself and a gray light crept up to where
the flush had been, so that every freckle of the hateful thirteen stood
out clearly. Near her, the teacher was standing, with his feet planted
wide apart and his eyes raised to the ceiling. And before him, shouting
and pounding and staring with crimson faces into his, were the pupils.
"Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!"
they yelled. It brought back to the little girl that terrible moment
when the farm-house, with a dripping-pan full of hog-fat flaming in the
oven, was threatened with destruction.
"Scotland's burning! Scotland's burning!"
sounded the warning again. No one moved. But, not knowing just how near
Scotland might be, and fearful for her safety with danger so imminent,
she did not wait longer. Clutching her hat and book, with a bound she
cleared the distance to the youngest brother, and, with a stifled cry,
leaped into his arms.
But in her excitement she had forgotten Luffree, lying asleep under the
bench, and had jumped squarely upon one soft, outstretched paw. The dog
sprang up with a howl of pain, the school stopped its singing, and the
angry teacher left the rostrum and advanced toward the little girl. The
next moment he dragged the dog from under the bench by the scruff of the
neck and hurled him out of the door; the next, he shook an admonishing
finger in the very face of the thirteen unlucky freckles.
* * * * *
LATE that afternoon, the eldest brother paddled across the sloughs in
the bull-boat, and had a talk with the teacher. The teacher lived in the
Irishman's shack, which was made of cottonwood logs laid one upon
another and covered with a roof of sticks and dirt, and "bached" by
himself through the term, because the little girl's mother had refused
to board him. So, when the eldest brother had finished his visit and
rowed back, he recited such an ill-natured version of that day's
happenings at the school-house, that the family, until then divided by
the contradictory stories of the youngest brother and the little girl,
united in heaping reproaches upon her.
Next morning she again traveled the winding path that skirted the
marsh-grass and bulrushes, this time on the pinto. Luffree, who had been
tied up at breakfast, but had mysteriously slipped his collar, followed,
as before. When she arrived within a short distance of the school-house,
she climbed down and, without taking any notice of the giggling, waiting
crowd by the door, carefully picketed the mare out of reach of the other
ponies. Then she pulled off the bridle, put it beside the picket-pin,
and, after bidding Luffree watch beside it, went in quietly to take her
seat. She had not unblanketed her horse because, underneath the soft
sheepskin saddle and well out of sight, was tucked one of her mother's
latest magazines that had pictures scattered through it.
When school was called, she was not allowed to keep the seat on the
rostrum. One of the Dutchman's seven being absent, she was told to share
the rear bench with the neighbor woman's daughter, and spent a happy
hour in the seclusion of the high seat, watching "Frenchy," who had no
slate, write his spelling on the smooth, round stove, and smiling at the
Swede boy when he looked slyly across at her.
Then she heard some one call her name. It was the teacher. "Come forward
to the chart," he said, and his voice seemed to shake the very floor.
She took up her Second Reader, edged herself off her seat, and stood
beside it, her eyes fixed questioningly upon him.
"Come forward to the chart, I say," he said again. "Can't you hear!"
"Yes," answered the little girl, starting up the room. But she walked so
slowly that, when she came near his table, he put out one lean hand,
grabbed her by the arm, and hurried her. She resented his touch by
twisting about until she was free. Then she took her place in front of
the chart, feeling as if every eye in the room were looking up and down
the row of blue crockery buttons on the back of her apron.
The teacher began to turn forward sheet after sheet of the chart, until
the first page was before him. It depicted a figure in silk hat, long
coat, and light trousers, promenading with a cane in his hand and a dog
at his heels. Underneath were two lines of simple words, and two
inquiring sentences. The teacher picked up a long cottonwood stick and
pointed it first at the man and then at the dog.
"What is that?" he said.
"A man," answered the little girl.
"And that?"
"A dog."
"Now read after me," he went on, indicating a word, "'M-a-n, man.'"
She paused a moment, her lips pressed tightly together.
"Read, read, read!" commanded the teacher, whacking the chart with a
pointer.
"'M-a-n, man,'" repeated the little girl, her eyes on his face.
"Don't look at me," he scolded; "look at the chart."
"I don't haf' to," said the little girl, earnestly; "I--I--"
Something unpleasant would certainly have happened at that moment, had
not "Frenchy," deep in his geography lesson, piped up at the teacher
from the rear of the room.
"T-a-n-g-a-n-y-i-k-a," he spelled, snapping his fingers and waving his
arm. "Wot eez dat?"
For a moment the teacher was silent, scowling down at the little girl.
Then he came back to the chart with another whack of the pointer. "Call
it Moses," he growled.
"Mozez," repeated "Frenchy," resignedly, but with a shake of his head
over the intricacies of the English language.
The little girl had twisted half around to look at a Dutch child, and
the teacher, angry because he had neglected to look over the geography
lesson, jerked her into place again by her sleeve. "Now, you read," he
said; "look at the end of my pointer and read."
"I can read them words 'thout looking at 'em," she protested, pointing
at an inquiring line, "'cause I can read everyfing in this." And she
held up the Second Reader.
"Huh!" grunted the teacher, taking the book from her and tossing it upon
his table. "Have you ever been to school before?"
"No," answered the little girl.
"Then you'll start right in where everybody else does," he said. "Read
this line. 'Do you see a man?'"
"'Doyouseeaman?'" she repeated, still watching him.
"Look at the chart and read it," he commanded furiously.
An unfriendly light suddenly shone in the little girl's eyes. She
stepped back and summoned all her pride to resent the indignity that he
was putting upon her before the whole school.
"Oh, I don't want to read that baby talk," she cried, "and--and--I
_won't_, and I 'm going home to my mother."
The teacher swayed in his wrath like a tall cottonwood. "You don't, eh?
You won't, eh?" he bellowed, and, stooping down, plucked the little girl
by the ear.
This time it was the Swede boy who interrupted the course of events in
front. He leaned forward and whispered something into the ear of the boy
ahead, and then, with an inarticulate shout, threw himself upon the boy
and began to maul him. Instantly the teacher, yearning to use his hands
upon some one, descended upon them and wrested them apart. But they
clinched again and, continuing to fight, managed so to misdirect their
kicks that they reached, not each other, but his lanky, interfering
person.
And, while the battle raged, the little girl fled out of the
school-house toward the pinto and pulled up the picket-pin. The teacher
did not see her go, but, in retreating from an unusually vicious blow of
the Swede boy's fist, caught sight of her just as she was leading her
horse to an ant-hill to mount. With a hoarse call for her to return, he
started after her, bearing in his train the two boys, who, still
struggling, impeded his progress.
He shook them off at the door-step and broke into a run. The little girl
was vainly striving to climb to the pinto's back; but she was so
frightened that each time she made a jump for the saddle she came short
of it and fell back. And, seeing the teacher coming, her efforts were
more ineffectual than ever. But when he was scarcely a rod away, and
when escape seemed impossible, a new figure joined in the affair.
Luffree had been lying quietly beside the picket-pin until the little
girl ran out, when he got up, ready to follow her, and joyfully leaped
about the mare. Then he saw the teacher advancing, and remembered the
rough handling of the day before. So, as the Yankton man came close,
swinging his arms about like the fans of the Dutchman's windmill, the
dog went forward to meet him, his hair on end, his eyes shifting
treacherously, his teeth showing in an ugly white seam, all the wolf
blood in him roused.
The teacher halted when he saw him and called back to the scholars, now
crowding about the door. "Bring my pointer," he cried.
Not a pupil moved. The teacher, noting that no one was obeying his
order, and not daring to go forward unarmed, ran back at the top of his
speed for the stick. But he was too late; for, by the time he had gained
the school-room and grabbed both the pointer and the stove poker, the
little girl had scrambled upon her pinto and galloped off toward the
farm-house.
The teacher did not give chase, but, sputtering revenge under his
breath, called the school to order. Then, not forgetting what severity
is due insubordination where the sons of salary-supplying fathers are
concerned, he gave the boys who had fought, but who were now docile and
smiling, a mighty tongue-lashing.
When the little girl was beyond hailing distance or possibility of
capture, she brought the pinto to a standstill and looked back. Once she
opened her lips as if to say something, but closed them again, and,
after waiting until the scholars had all gone in, rode on. She did not
go home; instead, when she came in sight of the reservation road, she
turned east and cantered across the prairie until only the top of the
farm-house was visible to her as she sat upon her horse. Then she
dismounted, tethered the pinto, made Luffree lie down, and, having taken
the magazine from under the saddle-blankets, cuddled against the dog.
She was still trembling, her throat ached with unspoken anger, and,
underneath her apron, her heart bounded so that the checks moved in
regular time.
But soon she wiped her blurred eyes and turned to the pictures in the
magazine. They began with a red-brown one of a storm-tossed ship on a
rocky coast; and, following, were drawings of queer boxes and chairs
and, yet more strange, of a herd of grazing cattle _with a board fence
around it_! There was also a funny picture of a ragged boy and a stylish
little girl who wore a round hat and a polonaise. And, lastly, there was
shown a beautiful young woman standing by a table in a long, loose robe,
very much like the army chaplain's.
It was over this picture that the little girl bent longest, and she
read, not without some tedious spelling, the words that were printed
beneath it:
"Mary, in cap and gown, was so bright and dainty a vision that the
professor wished that more young ladies of gentle birth might attend the
college."
College! It was not a new word to the little girl, for she had heard the
colonel tell her mother that he was going to send his son to college.
But now she knew that girls as well as boys could go. And she saw by the
picture that they wore beautiful flowing robes and square caps.
It was the cap that specially attracted her, for it rested becomingly
upon a mass of wavy hair. She wished that her curls, which had to be
coaxed into shape every morning with a warm stove-lifter and a wet
brush, would hang in ripples like the young woman's, so that she could
wear one.
"Oh, _ain't_ it sweet!" she said aloud, getting up on her knees beside
Luffree and holding out the book at arm's length. And then, with the
mortar-board as her inspiration, there flashed into her brain a
wonderful thought that was to grow through the coming years; and her
lips framed a splendid purpose--heard by no mortal ears, save those of
the shivering hound and the cropping pony--that time was gloriously to
fulfil.
"And maybe," she added happily, "I'll have 'monia, and my hair'll come
in just as curly."
She sprang to her feet, fired with her new ambition, and undid the pony.
And remembering that it would be as well to reach the farm-house before
the family could hear the second tale of trouble at the school, she
hastily coiled the picket-rope, mounted, hid the magazine under the
saddle-blankets, and, with the dog running stiffly in her wake, rode
homeward.
When she reached the barn, she did not even wait to fasten the pinto in
her stall; but, taking the magazine, raced toward the kitchen. As she
halted breathless in its open door, however, she was sorry that she had
not come in quietly by way of her bedroom window and waited until she
was sure that her mother was alone. For she found herself in the
presence not only of the big brothers, but of him whose authority she
had so lately flouted!
The suddenness of the discovery drove the words she had meant to say in
her own behalf from her brain. But five pairs of eyes were upon her and
retreat was impossible; so she strove mutely to win any possible
sympathy by covering, with one unsteady hand, the ear that had been
pulled.
No one spoke for a moment. And in that brief space the little girl
divined, as she sought each face, that but one of the group before her
was eager to see her punished, and that one was the teacher. In the eyes
of the eldest brother there was no disapproval, only a lurking smile;
the biggest was openly beaming with satisfaction; the youngest had taken
his attitude, as usual, from the eldest; and her mother's look was sadly
kind. But the teacher was hostile from brow to boot.
It was the eldest brother who first broke the silence. He took his pipe
from his mouth, knocked out the ashes against his bench, and addressed
the little girl. "So you went on the war-path to-day?" he said.
She made no answer, but moved toward her mother.
"This youngster," he went on, wheeling around on the teacher, "is well
up in them chart pages and can read pretty good in most books. So I
guess"--he drawled it out sneeringly--"as long as you ain't got any
classes that exactly fit her, she'd better lie fallow for a while."
The little girl shot a proud glance at the Yankton man as she heard the
eldest brother's praise, and, emboldened, spoke up for herself. "I _can_
read all the chart," she declared, "and I can read everyfing in the
First Reader. And I could spell 'man'"--she put the hand that she had
been holding over her ear on a level with her knee--"when I was so
high."
The teacher snorted. "You know your own business," he said to the eldest
brother.
"Guess we do," chimed in the biggest, grinning. "No use bothering her
with a-b, ab, when she can read the things she does." The teacher stood
up, ready to go. "And I was about to remark," continued the biggest,
banteringly, "that she's got a lot of mighty nice stories that she's
read and done with; and if you'd like to borrow one, once in a while, to
pass an evenin' with, you'd find 'em mighty educatin'."
"Thank you," answered the teacher; "but like as not you'll need 'em all
to finish up _her_ eddication on. I guess maybe you'll be sending her to
Sioux Falls in a year or so to kind o' polish her off."
The sarcasm in the voice stung the biggest brother. "Well," he said,
"she could polish off right here on these plains and have a lot more in
her noddle in a year or two than _some_ people I know."
This boast of her favorite again brought the little girl's courage up.
"I don't want to go to a city school," she declared, "'cause they don't
wear caps there."
The teacher was tramping out, with no backward look or good-by word, and
he did not wait to hear more. So it was the eldest brother who answered
her. "If you don't go here and you don't go to Sioux Falls," he said,
"I'd like to know where you'll learn anything. Ma ain't got no time to
be your governess."
"I don't want no governess, either," she replied. "I know what I'm going
to do." She brought forward the magazine, which she had been holding
behind her back with one hand, and, opening it at the drawing of the
young woman in cap and gown, laid it on the biggest brother's knee. Then
she went up to her mother, her face fairly shining through the dust and
tear-marks on it. Her mother put out her arms and gently drew the little
girl to her. Into her mind had come the picture of herself, in spotless
pinafore, bending with her governess over her English books. And beside
that picture, the little girl, sunburned, soiled, and poorly shod, made
a sharp contrast.
"What are you going to do, pet lamb?" she asked.
"I'm going to cut 'nough carpet-rags this winter to last you a whole
year," said the little girl, "'cause next summer you won't have me any
more. I'm--I'm--going to college."
* * * * *
THE teacher, jogging out of the barn-yard to the ash-lane, heard a
hearty roll of bassos from the kitchen, and did not doubt but that he
was its target. He reined in his horse at the bare flower-beds and
glowered back at the door. Then, with a mutter, ungrammatical but
eloquent, he spurred on toward the lonely, supperless shack by the
slough.
VI
THE STORY OF A PLANTING
THE little girl was making believe, as she planted the corn, that the
field was a great city; the long rows, reaching up from the timothy
meadow to the carnelian bluff, were the beautiful streets; and the
hills, two steps apart, were the houses. She had a seed-bag slung under
her arm, and when she came to a hill she put her hand into it and took
out four plump, yellow kernels. And as she went along, dropping her
gifts at each door, she played that she was visiting and said, "How do
you do?" as politely as she could to the lady of the house, at the same
time taking off her battered blue sailor-hat and bowing,--just as she
had seen the lightning-rod agent do to her mother.
She had begun the game by naming every family she called upon. But it
was not long before she had used up all the names she could think
of--those of the neighbors, the Indians, the story-book people, the
horses, the cows, the oxen, the dogs, and even the vegetables in the
garden. So, after having planted a row or two, she contented herself
with making believe she was among strangers and just offering a friendly
greeting to every household.
She had come out to the field when the prairie-chickens were still
playing their bagpipes on the river bank, their booming sounding through
the morning air so clearly that the little girl had been sure they were
not farther than the edge of the wheat-field, and had walked out of her
way to try to see them, tramping along in her best shoes, which had
shiny copper toes and store-made laces. But when she had reached the
wheat, the booming, like a will-o'-the-wisp, had been temptingly farther
on; and she had turned back to the newly marked corn-land.
Her big brothers had sent her out to drop and cover eighty rows, the
last corn-planting to be done that year on the big Dakota farm. They had
finished the rest of the field themselves and, intent on getting in the
rutabaga crop, had turned over the remaining strip to the little girl,
declaring that she could drop and cover forty rows in the morning and
forty in the afternoon, and not half try. To make sure that she would
have time to finish the work, they had started her off immediately after
a five-o'clock breakfast; and in order that she should not lose any time
at noon, they had made her take her dinner with her in a tall tin pail.
Her first glimpse of the unplanted piece had greatly discouraged her,
for it seemed dreadfully wide and long. So, after deciding to plant the
whole of it before doing any covering with the hoe, because the dropping
of the corn was much easier and quicker to do than the hoeing, she went
to work half-heartedly. Now, to make her task seem short, she had
further determined to play "city."
It was such fun to pretend that, as she went bobbing and bowing up and
down the rows, she forgot to stop her game and throw clods at the gray
gophers. They lived in the timothy meadow, and were so bold that, if
they were not watched, they would come out of their burrows and follow
the rows, stealing every kernel out of the hills as they went along and
putting the booty in their cheek-pouches.
After she had dropped corn as much as a whole hour, the little girl's
back ached, and when she went to refill her seed-bag at the corn-barrel
that stood on the border of the meadow near the row-marker, she sat down
to rest a moment. The marker resembled a sleigh, only it had five
runners instead of two, and there were rocks piled on top of it to make
it heavy. So the minute the little girl's eyes fell upon it and she saw
the runners, she thought of winter. Winter instantly reminded her of the
muskrats in the slough below the bluff. And with that thought she could
not resist starting down to see if they were busy after the thaw.
She gathered many flowers on the way, and stopped to pull off her shoes
and stockings. At last she reached the slough and waded in to a muskrat
house, where she used her hoe-handle as a poker to scare out some of the
muskrats. Failing in this, she picked up her shoes and stockings and
went around the slough to find out if any green leaves were unfolding
yet in the wild-plum thicket. A little later she climbed the bluff to
the corn-field, making a diligent search for Indian arrowheads all the
way.
When she reached the seed-bag again, she threw the string over her head
and started up a row determinedly. For a rod or more she did not pause
either to be polite or to scare away gophers, but hurried along very
fast, with her eyes to the ground. Suddenly she chanced to look just
ahead of her, and stopped abruptly, standing erect. Her shadow pointed
straight for the bluff: it was noon and high time to eat dinner.
She sat down on the marker and munched her sandwiches of salted lard and
corn-meal bread with great appetite. She was just finishing them when
the call of a goose far overhead attracted her attention. She got down
and lay flat on her back, with her head on the seed-bag, to watch the
flock, high above her, speeding northward to the lakes, their leader
crying commands to the gray company that flew in V-shaped order behind
him. When the geese were but a dark thread across the north sky, she
felt drowsy and, turning on her side with her hat over her face and her
back to the gentle spring breeze, went fast asleep.
She lay there for hours, entirely unaware of the saucy stares of several
gophers who paused in their hunt for kernels and stood straight as
picket-pins to watch and wonder at the little heap of pink calico under
the battered sailor-hat, or whisked about her, their short legs
flashing, their tails wide and bushy, their cheek-pouches so full of
kernels that they smiled fatly when they looked at her, and showed four
long front teeth. But the little girl was wrapped in a happy dream of a
certain beautiful red wagon with a real seat that she had seen in a
thick catalogue sent her mother by a store in a distant city. So she
never moved till late in the afternoon, when the gentle breeze
strengthened to a sharp wind that, with a petulant gust, whirled her
sailor across the rows and far away.
The flying hat caused a stampede among some curious gophers who were
just then investigating a near-by unplanted row in the hope of finding
more corn. Clattering shrilly, they scudded back to the meadow, and the
little girl rose. After a long chase for the hat, she went stiffly to
work again, not stopping to put on her shoes and stockings, though the
wind was cold.
After that she planted faithfully, leaving off only to throw clods at
the gophers, or to ease her back now and then. And it was when she was
resting a moment that she noticed something that made her begin working
harder than ever. Her shadow stretched out so far to the eastward that
she could not touch its head with the end of her long hoe. When she
first came out that morning, it had fallen just as far the other way.
She looked anxiously up at the sun, which was shining slantingly upon
the freshly harrowed land through a gray haze that hung about it. Then
she looked again at her shadow, distorted and grotesque, that moved when
she moved and mimicked her when she bent to drop the corn. Its length
showed her that it was getting late, and that she would soon hear the
summoning blast of the cow-horn that hung behind the kitchen door.
She dropped the seed-bag, walked across the strip still unplanted, and
counted the rows. She returned on the run. The dropping was little more
than half finished, and no covering had been done at all. She knew she
could not finish that day; yet if they asked her at the farm-house if
she had completed the planting, she would not dare to tell them how
little of it was done. She sat down to pull on her shoes and stockings,
thinking hard all the while. But, just as she had one leg dressed, she
sprang up with a happy thought, and stood on the shod foot like a heron
while she dressed the other. Then, without stopping to lace her shoes,
she tossed her sailor aside, swung the seed-bag to the front, and began
dropping corn as fast as she could.
The kernels were counted no longer, nor were they placed in the hills
precisely. Without a glance to right or left, she raced along the rows,
her cheeks flaming and her hair flying out in the wind. She had decided
that she would _plant_ all of the strip--but not _cover_ the corn until
next day.
The sun sank slowly toward the horizon as she worked. But the unplanted
rows were rapidly growing fewer and fewer now, and the descending disk
gave her little worry. Up and down she hurried, scattering rather than
dropping the seed, until she was on her final trip. When she reached the
end of the last row, she joyfully put all the corn she had left into one
hill, turned the seed-bag inside out, slipped her lunch-bucket into it,
and, after hiding her hoe in the stone pile on the carnelian bluff,
turned her face toward the house. And at that very moment, with the
winding of the cow-horn for its farewell salute, the last yellow rind of
the sun went out of sight below the level line of the prairie.
* * * * *
EARLY the next day, while the little girl's big brothers were busy with
the chores, she mounted her pony and rode away southward from the
farm-house. At the reservation road, she faced toward the sun and struck
her horse to a canter. A mile out on the prairie to the east, she turned
due north up a low ravine; and finally completed almost a perfect square
by coming west, when on a line with the carnelian bluff, to the edge of
the corn-field. There she tied her pony to a large stone on the slope of
the bluff and well out of sight of the house, and, after hunting up the
hoe, started energetically to cover up the planting of the day before.
She began at the bluff on the first uncovered row, and swung down it
rapidly, her hoe flashing brightly in the sun as she pulled the dirt
over the kernels. But when she had gone less than half the distance to
the meadow she stopped at a hill and anxiously examined it a moment. She
went on to the next without using her hoe, then on to the next and the
next; and, finally, putting it across her shoulder, walked slowly to the
end.
Arrived at the edge of the meadow, she turned about and followed up
another row. Her hoe was still across her shoulder, and she did not stop
to use it until she was near the bluff. When she reached the meadow the
second time, she sat down on the row-marker and looked out across the
timothy.
"Goodness!" she said, addressing the half-dozen animated stakes that
were eying her from a proper distance, "you've done it!"
The gophers stood straighter than ever when they heard her voice, and
new ones came from their burrows and sat up to watch her, with their
fore paws held primly in front of them, their tails lying out motionless
behind, and their slender heads poised pertly--with no movement except
the twinkle of sharp, black eyes and the quiver of long whiskers.
"And there ain't 'nough seed left in that barrel," went on the little
girl, "to plant a single row over again."
She sat on the marker a long time, a sorrowful little figure, in deep
study. And when she finally rose and resumed work at the upper end of
the strip, she thought with dread of the disclosure that sprouting-time
would bring.
An hour later, she untied her pony and climbed wearily upon his back. As
she rode across the meadow toward home, she shook her head solemnly at
the mounds in the timothy.
"I s'pose," she said, "you've _got_ to have something to lay up for
winter; but I think you might 'a' gone down to mother's veg'table patch,
'cause, when the corn comes up, I'll catch it!"
The corn-stalks were nodding in their first untasseled sturdiness before
the little girl's big brothers paid the field a visit to see when the
crowding suckers should be pulled and the first loosening given to the
dirt about the hills. They went down one morning, their muskets over
their shoulders, and the little girl went with them, hoping that so much
time had passed since the planting that they would not punish her even
if they found fault with her work on the last eighty rows.
Summer had come in on a carpet of spring green strewn with wild clover,
asters, and blazing-star. And as they went along, the verdant prairie
rolled away before them for miles in the warm sunlight, unbroken save
where their eyes passed to the richer emerald of wheat sprinkled with
gay mustard, new flax on freshly turned sod, or a sea of waving maize.
Overhead, the geese no longer streaked the sky in changing lines, but
swarms of blackbirds filled the air with crisp calls at their approach,
and rose from the ground in black clouds. Down along the slough where
the wild-plum boughs waved their blossoms they could see the calves
frolicking together; and up on the carnelian bluff, the young
prairie-chickens scurried through the grass before a watchful mother.
The little girl trailed, barefooted, behind her big brothers, and was in
no humor to enjoy any of the beauties of earth or sky. With anxious
face she followed them as they penetrated the lusty stand of corn, going
from south to north on the western side of the field. Then she tagged
less willingly as they turned east toward the strip she had planted. As
they neared it they remarked a scarcity of stalks ahead; and when they
at last stood on the first of the eighty rows, they gazed with
astonishment at the narrow belt that showed bravely green at the upper
end by the carnelian bluff, but dark and bare over the three fourths of
its length that sloped down to the timothy meadow.
"I guess _this_ won't need no thinning," said the biggest brother,
ironically.
They set to work to examine the hills, that only here and there sent up
a lonely shoot, the little girl standing by and silently watching them.
But they found few signs of the gopher burrowing they felt sure had
devastated the ground. All at once the eldest brother had a brilliant
thought, and, with a glance at the little girl, who was nervously
twisting her fingers, paced eastward and counted the rows that made up
the barren strip. There were just eighty!
He came back and joined his brothers; and the little girl, standing
before him, dared not lift her eyes to his face.
"Did you plant that corn?" he demanded, ramming the butt of his musket
into the ground.
"Yes," answered the little girl, her voice husky with apprehension.
There was a pause.
"Did a lot of gophers come in while you's a-planting?" asked the biggest
brother, more kindly.
"Oh, a _lot_," answered the little girl.
"Did you sling clods at 'em?" demanded the eldest brother, again
pounding the musket into the dirt.
"Nearly slung my arm off," answered the little girl.
The eldest brother grunted incredulously.
"It's mighty funny," he said, "that the gophers liked _your_ planting
better 'n anybody else's."
The little girl did not answer. Her forehead was puckered painfully as,
gripping her hat, she stood busily curling and uncurling her toes in the
dirt. Her lashes were fluttering as if she awaited a blow.
"I'll just ask you one thing," went on the eldest brother; "what's
to-morrow?"
The little girl started as if the blow had fallen, and stammered her
answer.
"My--my--birfday," she said.
"A--_ha_," he replied suggestively. Then he tramped to the timothy
meadow, the others following. And the little girl, walking very slowly,
came on behind.
* * * * *
WHEN the big brothers had gone on to the farm-house, the little girl
still tarried in the corn-field. Her eldest brother's hint concerning
her birthday had suggested the cruel punishment she felt certain was to
be hers, and she could not bear to face the family at the dinner-table.
For months she had longed for a little red wagon--a wagon with a long
tongue, and "Express" on the side in black letters; and had planned how
she would harness Bruno and Luffree to it and drive along the level
prairie roads. Evening after evening she had taken out the thick
catalogue and pored over the prices, and had shown the kind she wanted
again and again to all the big brothers in turn.
Then one day she had surprised her biggest brother while he was taking a
bulky brown-paper package off the farm wagon on his return from Yankton.
He had sent her into the house; but she had found out later that the
package was in the corn-crib, and had crept in there one afternoon, when
the farm-house was deserted, and taken a good look at it as it hung from
a rafter and well out of reach. It was still unwrapped, but the brown
paper was torn in one place, and through the hole the little girl had
seen a smooth, round red stick. It was a wheel-spoke.
Her sixth-and-a-half birthday was not far off, and she had waited for
its coming as patiently as she could, in the meantime working secretly
on harnesses for the dogs, who had resigned themselves good-naturedly to
much measuring. Now, on the very eve of her happiness, she was to be
deprived of the yearned-for wagon.
Crouching in the corn-field, she grieved away the long day. Dinner-time
came, and all the corn-stalk shadows pointed significantly toward the
carnelian bluff; then they slowly shifted around to the eastward and
grew very long; and at last commingled and were blotted out by the
descending gloom that infolded the little girl.
Lying upon her back, she looked up at the sky, that with the gathering
darkness of the warm summer night disclosed its twinkling stars, and
wished that she could suddenly die out there in the field in some
mysterious way, so that there might be much self-condemning woe at the
farm-house when they found her, cold and still. And she could not
refrain from weeping with sheer pity for herself. After pondering for a
while on the sad picture of her untimely death, she changed to one of
great deeds and happiness, wealth and renown, in some far-off land
toward which she was half determined to set out. But this delightful
dream was rudely broken into.
A long blast from the cow-horn sounded through the quiet night and
echoed itself against the bluff. The little girl sat up and looked
toward the house through the dark aisles of the corn.
"I'm not coming," she said, speaking out loud in a voice that broke as
she ended, "I'm going to stay here and _starve_ to death!"
Once more the cow-horn blew, and this time the call was more prolonged
and commanding in tone. It brought the little girl to her feet, and she
hunted up her hat and put it on. Then, as two short, peremptory blasts
rang out, she started toward home.
* * * * *
NEXT morning she dressed hurriedly and got to the sitting-room as
quickly as she could. But there was no bright red wagon standing bravely
in wait for her as she entered; there was nothing under her breakfast
plate, even, when she turned it over. She ate her grits and milk in
silence, choking a little when she swallowed, and, as soon as she could,
rushed away to the corn-crib to see if the brown-paper package were
still there.
It was gone!
Then she knew that her big brothers had sent it away.
She crept back to the house and climbed the ladder to the attic, where
she meant to hide and mourn alone. But no sooner had she gained her feet
beneath the peaked roof, than she saw what she had been seeking.
It hung by its scarlet tongue from a beam, flanked on one side by the
paper of sage that was being saved to season the holiday turkeys, and on
the other by the bag that held the trimmings of the Yule-tree. And the
little girl, sitting tearfully beneath it, tried to count on her fingers
the days that must pass before Christmas.
VII
TWICE IN JEOPARDY
COOL and sparkling after its morning rain-bath, and showing along its
green ridges those first, faint signs of yellow that foretell a coming
ripeness, the grass-mantled prairie lay beneath the warm noon sun. The
little girl, cantering over it toward the sod shanty on the farther
river bluffs, frightened the trilling meadow-larks, as she passed, from
their perch on the dripping sunflowers, and scattered the drops on the
wild wheat-blades with the hoofs of her blind black pony.
The storm had wept so copiously upon the fading plains that the furrows,
turned along the edge of the broad wheat-field to check fires, ran full
and swift down the gentle slope that the little girl was crossing and
almost kept pace with her pony. Every hollow in her path was filled to
the brim, and the chain of sloughs to the south, now resounding with the
joyous quacks of bluewings and mallards, were swelling their waters with
the feeding of countless streams. And the drenched ground, where the
flowers bent their clean faces as if worn with the heavy downpour, sent
up that grateful essence that follows in the wake of a shower.
The blind, black pony felt the new life in the springy turf and the
fresh air and flirted his unshod heels dangerously near to a tracking
wolf-dog as he splashed through runlet and pool. _Pluff-et-y-pluff,
pluff-et-y-pluff, pluff-et-y-pluff_, he drummed softly, and the panting
hound, muzzle down, followed with a soft _swish, swish_. But to the
little girl, thinking of the bounty for gopher brushes that her big
brothers had offered her the day before, the galloping echoed a different
song: _A-cent-for-a-tail, a-cent-for-a-tail, a-cent-for-a-tail_, it sang
in her ears, till she struck the pony a welt on the flanks with the ends
of her long rope reins, and jerked his head impatiently toward the
shallow ford that led to the home of the Swede boy.
* * * * *
THE morning before, the little girl's mother and the three big brothers
had held an indignation meeting in the timothy meadow, which, once the
choicest bit of hay land on the farm, was now so thickly strewn with
wide, brown gopher-mounds, that the little girl, with a good running
start down the barren corn strip, could cross it without touching a
spear of grass, by bopping from one hillock to another. But while this
amused her very much, for she pretended that the knolls were muskrat
houses in a deep, deep slough, it only enraged her mother and the big
brothers. For the gray gophers had intrenched themselves so well in the
timothy, and had thrown up such damaging earthworks, that only a scythe
could save what little hay remained; and they had not only taken into
their burrows--as had been discovered the week before--all the freshly
dropped seed from the barren corn strip, but had dug up kernels all over
the field when they were sprouting into stalks.
The meadow had lain fallow the summer before, and had served no further
use than the grazing of some picketed cows. Then, one parching July day
it had been cut, to kill the thistles and pigweed that overran it, and
in the following May had been plowed, dragged, and sown to wild timothy.
The few mounds dotting it had been turned under with the belief that,
between the fallow and the new plowing, the gophers would be driven out.
Instead, they had kept to their burrows and, all in good time, had
tripled their number.
So, as the little girl's mother and the big brothers stood on the edge
of the timothy and viewed the concave stretch that should have showed
green and waving from its rim to the boggy center, they planned the
destruction of the rodents, and declared that if any escaped death by
poison, the little girl should snare them and receive a cent for each
tail.
When her mother's calico slat-sunbonnet and the big hats of her big
brothers had bobbed out of sight across the corn, the little girl sat
down upon a hillock and counted gophers. But there were so many and they
ran about so much that she could not keep track of them; so she gave it
up soon and began to think over all the things she would buy from the
thick catalogue with the money she would get when she had snared a great
number.
And she was still sitting there, watching the gophers covetously, when
she saw the eldest brother returning. He had a salmon-can full of
poisoned wheat in one hand, and when he reached the meadow he made a
circuit and left a pinch of grain at the mouths of a score of burrows,
where the greedy animals could find it and cram it into their
cheek-pouches, and then crawl into their holes to die. When he had
distributed all the grain, he threw the salmon-can away, wiped his
fingers on his overalls, and started for the watermelon patch.
The little girl had silently withdrawn into the corn-field at his
approach, but now she came out and, after satisfying herself that he was
out of sight, picked up the can and also made a circuit of the meadow.
Strangely enough, she stopped at the very burrows he had visited. When
she was done, she went to the boggy center, found a deep cow track that
was half full of water, and carefully emptied the can into it. Then she
took it back to where the eldest brother had thrown it, and, with a look
toward the watermelon patch, went home.
On his way back to the farm-house, the eldest brother paused in the
timothy to see if the gophers had eaten of the poisoned grain. He was
delighted to find, on going from hill to hill, that not a single kernel
was visible! He imparted the good news to the family at the
dinner-table, and it was received with rejoicing. The little girl alone
was silent. But, doubtless, she had not heard what he said, for she was
intent upon a huge piece of dried-prune cobbler.
That afternoon she went out to the barn to get some hair for a
slipping-noose. Kate, the raw-boned cultivator horse, standing idle in
her stall, turned her head and nickered when she heard the door creak
open, expecting a nibble of sugar-bread. But the little girl had nothing
for her. Instead, she rolled a dry-goods box into an adjoining stall,
climbed upon it, and, reaching over the rough board side, got hold of
Kate's long black tail.
The mare flattened her ears back, stamped crossly, and swayed her hind
quarters against the opposite partition. But the little girl only clung
the tighter and, unmindful in her security, chose and pulled out a dozen
of the longest hairs she could find. Then, jumping down, she arranged
them, ends together, hooked them over a nail at their center, and
plaited them. And when she had tied a piece of stout, dark string to the
end of the braid, she slipped it through the hair loop. The next moment,
with a stick in one hand and the snare in the other, she started happily
for the meadow.
When she reached it, saucy _chur-r-rs_ from all over the timothy
announced her. And as she paused on its edge to decide which burrow she
would attack first, a dozen gophers sat up on their haunches to look at
her, or frisked gaily from mound to mound.
She caught sight of a gray back at a near-by hole, and, running forward,
chased the animal out of sight, stooped and carefully arranged the noose
around the opening, and, after covering it with dirt, straightened the
string to its full length. Then she crept back noiselessly to the hole
to take a last peep before she threw herself down flat upon her stomach,
grasped the end of the string, and lay very still.
For a moment there was no movement at the burrow. But soon the tip end
of a gopher's nose appeared, the whiskers moving inquiringly, and
disappeared. When it came again, the little girl whistled a note softly,
and the nose came out so far that two sharp black eyes showed. The eyes
saw her, too, and the gopher, growing bolder and more inquisitive,
raised himself higher on his fore paws to take a better look. Presently
all of his white throat was visible, and the little girl knew that it
was time to act. With one quick, vigorous jerk of her extended right
arm, she tightened the loop around him. And, amid a whirl of dirt, gray
tail, and tawny back, the gopher was pulled out into the timothy.
The little girl sat upon her knees and looked at him. Her heart was
beating wildly, and she was almost as scared as the panting creature at
the end of her string. He held the snare taut as he crouched in a bunch
of grass and watched her. Finally, she pulled at it a little. It brought
him toward her, reluctantly sliding along on his feet, which he braced
stiffly. Then, as she pulled again, he began to tug madly, and clattered
in alarm.
"_Seek--seek!_" he cried, twisting and turning his lithe body;
"_seek--seek--seek!_" The next instant he took the string into his mouth
and bit it ferociously.
The little girl paled at the sight, and arose trembling to her feet.
This shortened the snare, and the gopher came nearer, tumbling over and
over through the grass. Remembering her stick, the little girl backed
slowly toward it, not taking her eyes off him for an instant. But, as
she retreated, the string tightened again, and the gopher advanced as
before. The little girl, still too far from the stick, trembled more
than ever at his wild cries, and her hand shook so that she could hardly
hold the snare. He was attacking it with all his might, bounding into
the air and, blindly fearless in his danger, coming toward her faster
than she could step backward.
A moment she paused, shaking her apron to try to scare him. But as,
hissing and fighting, he rolled against her bare feet, she dropped the
string, turned her face from the meadow--and fled!
* * * * *
EVERY Sunday afternoon the Swede boy came to the farm-house and,
squatting opposite the little girl as she sat enthroned upon the lounge
in all the glory of a stiff Turkey-red dress, eyed her furtively while
her mother read aloud the story of Mazeppa. His pale eyes, under their
heavy white brows, never wavered from her face, even during the most
stirring danger to the Cossack chief. Upon these occasions the little
girl's mind wandered, too; for the tale of bravery recalled the
colonel's son at the army post, the pride of the troop, who, in campaign
hat, yellow-striped trousers, and snug, bright-buttoned coat, was a
sturdy military figure. And had the Swede boy known it, he was less to
her than a cockle-bur in her blind black pony's tail.
But youth is fickle and the reservation was far. So, when the rain was
over next morning, she ran to the barn, bridled her horse, climbed from
the manger to his back, and, lying flat to escape the top casing of the
door, went out of the stable toward the Swede shanty at a run. Down deep
in the long, narrow, jack-knife pocket of her apron lay a new gopher
snare, culled, as before, from the tail of the cultivator mare.
As she scoured across the prairie, her hair whipping her shoulders and
her skirts fluttering gaily, the last few clouds in the sky, white and
almost empty, dispersed tearfully above the distant forks of the
Vermillion. And when the river was reached and forded, and the steep
bank climbed on the other side, a drying wind that had sprung up
promised, with the sun, to prepare the timothy for that afternoon's
snaring.
The Swede boy listened silently while the little girl unfolded her plan,
and, after she had finished, waited a long time before speaking. His
pale eyes looked thoughtfully at the ground, and the little girl, still
mounted on her pony, could not see whether or not they approved of the
scheme.
"Who gates th' mownay?" he asked at last. The little girl hesitated
before answering, struggling with greed.
"Bofe of us?" she faltered.
The Swede boy grunted.
"You catch 'em and kill 'em," said the little girl, "and I'll snip off
their tails. 'Cause my biggest brother says gray gophers don't worry no
more 'bout losin' their tails than tadpoles do."
He grunted again, and the little girl, eager and impatient, turned the
blind black pony about in circles.
"Ay catch 'em, ay kill 'em," the Swede boy said finally. There was a
significant tone in his voice, and a gleam in the pale eyes under the
tow hair. "An' yo' gate th' mownay," he added.
They were on the edge of the timothy meadow as soon as the pony, with
his double load, could cover the distance. And while the little girl
tied the horse to a big stone on the slope of the carnelian bluff, the
Swede boy hastened to a gopher-hole and fixed the noose about it. A
moment later, when she came stealthily running up behind him, he was
already flat upon the ground and waiting.
It was not long before the gopher poked his nose out to see if his
pursuer was near, and, catching sight of a ragged felt hat just above a
clump of pigweed, stood up to investigate. The next instant the Swede
boy had him and, springing to his feet, cast a triumphant look behind.
But what was his amazement to see the little girl, bareheaded, fast
disappearing through the corn!
When she came slowly back, the Swede boy was again stretched upon his
stomach, and watching a hole nearer the center of the meadow. The little
girl did not follow him, but stayed on the rim and pityingly viewed the
limp gopher that lay, with eyes half closed, breast still, and tail thin
and lifeless.
"Poor fing!" she said sympathetically, "it's 'cause you stealed the
corn."
Then she opened his mouth with the butt end of her willow riding-switch,
to find out what he had in his cheek-pouches. An onion and a few
marrowfat peas rolled out, and the little girl, kneeling beside him,
eyed him sternly.
"And so," she said, waving her hand toward the barren strip, "after
pickin' up all that corn, you gophers have to go a-snoopin' round the
veg'table patch!"
She left him and went on to the corn-marker, his tail, taken in
righteous wrath, bearing her jack-knife company in the long, narrow
pocket of her apron. But when she had sat down musingly, her chin in her
hands, a strange thing happened to the dead gopher on the meadow rim. He
moved a little, slowly unclosed his eyes, raised his head, and looked
about; and, unseen by the Swede boy and the little girl, crawled away,
through the clods that had only stunned him, to the corn-field, where,
with many a cross _seek_, he nursed the hairy stump that henceforth was
to serve him for a tail.
Dinnerless, but forgetful of hunger in the sport of capture, the little
girl and the Swede boy stayed on. Once, during the afternoon, a gopher
stopped their work by getting away with the snare and leaving them only
half of the string. But the blind black pony good-naturedly furnished
enough wiry strands for another slipping-noose, and the hunt went on.
On their way to the farm-house at sundown, they passed the spot where
the Swede boy had left his first capture, but failed to find him
anywhere.
"Why, he's runned away!" exclaimed the little girl.
The Swede boy shook his head. "Noa; ay keel hame weeth a clode," he
said, "an' a bole-snake gote hame."
They had many a stout noose stolen during the days that followed. But
the Swede boy snared plenty of gray gophers, and they all shared the
fate of the first one,--lost their tails and were left to lie on the
edge of the ruined meadow. When the spot was visited afterward, it was
generally found that they had disappeared. But this did not trouble the
little girl, for she wisely concluded that the bull-snakes were having a
fat time of it.
The night before the three big brothers left with the thrashers, the
string of gopher-tails was so long that she brought it into the kitchen
and gave it proudly to the eldest brother to count. Then it was put into
a twist of hay and shoved into the cook-stove.
"Goin' to give some of them pennies to th' Swede?" asked the youngest
brother as the little girl sat down at the table and began to add up her
earnings.
She flushed, but did not answer.
"Naw," said the eldest brother. "Why, th' Swede's not catchin' gophers
for money; he's doin' it for love."
The little girl gathered up her pennies angrily and went to her room.
But, next morning, when the Swede boy's whistle sounded from the meadow,
she mounted her pony and went down. For the biggest brother had
whispered to her this word of philosophy: "Might jus' as well get th'
game with th' name."
For several nights after the departure of the big brothers, the little
girl came home radiant, brushes dangling from her apron ruffle like
scalps. Then, one evening, when four catches should have made her happy,
she ate her supper with a sad and puzzled face, and afterward added
only _two_ tails to her string. Her mother, seeing that something was
troubling her, inquired what it was; but, on hearing the story, went
into such a hearty fit of laughter that the little girl's feelings were
hurt very much, and she went to bed on the instant. She did not broach
the subject again. But while the two weeks of her big brothers' absence
were passing, she was often dejected.
After supper, the first night of their return, when the benches were
still drawn up around the table, and the big brothers, tired with their
long ride, were pulling at their corn-cob pipes, the little girl went up
to the eldest and touched him timidly on the arm.
"Well, youngster," he said, "how many gophers have you snared since
we've been gone?"
The little girl got red suddenly, and hesitated before she spoke.
"Sixty," she answered, half under her breath.
The biggest brother took his pipe out of his mouth in mock astonishment.
"Sixty!" he exclaimed. "Why, geewhitaker! you'll break the bank if you
don't look out!"
The eldest brother put his hand into his pocket and took out some
change. "Get the string," he said, "and here's your money."
The little girl looked at the coins mournfully, and then around the
circle, and stepped back a few paces. "You won't b'lieve me when you
see it," she said. She went out and came back presently, holding up the
tails.
The eldest brother took them out of her hand, and she stood silently by
while he counted them. When he had finished, he looked at her crossly.
"Sixty!" he sneered. "You haven't caught no such thing! Here's only
twenty." He waved the brushes in the air, and the little girl trembled
visibly. "Did you think I'd pay you for sixty," he continued, "when you
ain't got the tails to show for 'em?"
The little girl trembled more than ever. "Honest," she said; "honest! We
caught sixty--we did, truly--"
"Where are their tails, then? where are their tails?" asked the eldest
brother, impatiently, shaking the string so violently that some of the
brushes fell off. "You _say_ you did--_but what have you got to show for
'em_?"
The little girl came closer, her eyes wide and earnest. She was
breathing hard and she lowered her voice as she answered.
"True as cross my heart to die," she said, "we caught sixty; but this
was all the string I could get. 'Cause--'cause--there's a new kind of
gophers in the timothy meadow,--_and they ain't got tails!_"
VIII
A HARVEST WEDDING
THE wedding of one of the Dutchman's seven stout daughters to a young
farmer who lived in a dugout on the West Fork was an event in the little
girl's life only second in importance to the christening. Two trips to
Yankton on the wheat-wagon with the biggest brother shrank into
insignificance before it, and she looked forward to its celebration so
anxiously that time dragged as slowly as a week before Christmas.
The morning of the notable day she was unable to eat anything through
sheer excitement. She passed the hours after breakfast in restless
riding over the barley stubble, where the sheep, led by a black
bell-wether who sought the fields because they were forbidden ground,
were mincing and picking their way. At eleven she happily welcomed a
gallop to the farthest end of the farm to carry doughnuts and
ginger-beer to the big brothers. At dinner-time her appetite was again
poor, but later, after making enough hay-twists for her mother's
baking, she scraped the cake-batter dish clean and partook freely of
several yards of red apple peelings.
The big brothers came in early from the fields to rest and get ready,
and, one by one, spent half an hour in the kitchen, where the big wooden
wash-tub held the center of the room. When it came time for the little
girl to take a bath, the kitchen floor looked like a duck pond, for the
tub was almost floating, and the well outside was noticeably low. At
sunset the family sat down to a supper suggestive of the wedding feast
to come. But though there were toothsome sandwiches on the table and
cream popovers, not to speak of a heaping dish of watermelon
sweet-pickles, the little girl again did not feel like eating, and only
nibbled at a piece of raisin-pie when her mother, not realizing how
satisfying the batter and peelings had been, threatened her with staying
at home. After supper the big brothers hitched the gray team to the
light wagon, fastened up the chicken-coops, latched the barn door and
chained the dogs; and, having finished the chores, blacked each other's
boots, brushed their hair slick with water, changed their clothes and
resigned themselves to their mother, who put the last touches to their
collars and ties. Then, just as a faint bugle-call, sounding the
advance, was heard from across the prairie to the west, the family
climbed into the wagon.
On the trip down, the eldest and youngest brothers sat in front and
drove. Their mother and the biggest brother occupied the hind seat and
looked after the piccalilli and pies, which they held on their laps. So
the little girl had to content herself with staying in the back of the
wagon on an armful of hay and letting her feet dangle out behind. As the
team trotted south over the rough path that, at the school-house, joined
another leading to the Dutchman's, she clung to the side boards in
impatient silence, her eyes turned across the sloughs toward the
Vermilion, where, through the starlight, were coming the chaplain, some
troopers, and the colonel's son.
It was a still night, and the family could hear other wagons approaching
from various directions, the distant whinnying of ponies traveling
singly, the barking of the Dutchman's dogs, and the thudding gallop of
the nearing cavalry mounts; and when they arrived the same shouts that
greeted them welcomed a score of their neighbors and the dusty army men.
The moments that followed were memorable ones to the little girl.
Standing by on tiptoe, with only the neighbor woman between her and the
colonel's son, she saw the chaplain unite the Dutchman's daughter and
the young farmer. The ceremony took place in the yard, so that all might
witness it, and the biggest brother held the lantern by which the
chaplain read from his prayer-book. The guests gathered about quietly,
and listened reverently to the service and to the prayer for health and
happiness in the dugout home on the Fork. And when the kissing,
handshaking, and congratulations were over, they moved across the yard
to the kitchen door, where they drank hearty toasts to the bride, in
coffee-cups foaming high with beer. Then the married men took their
wives, and the unmarried, their sweethearts, and went into the house to
open the party.
The Dutchman's habitation was different from his neighbors' homes. One
roof sheltered his family, his oxen and his cows, his harvested crops,
his poultry and his pigs. It was a shanty roof, and it covered a long,
sod building that began, at the river end, with the sitting-room,
continued through the bedroom, the kitchen, the granary, the stable, and
the chicken-coop, and was completed by the pig-house. The Dutchman, his
wife, and their daughters could go back and forth from the best room to
the beasts without leaving its cover. So, no matter how deep the snow
was, the cattle never lacked for fodder, the hens for feed, or the hogs
for their mash, a boiler of which, sour and fumy, cooked winter and
summer upon the kitchen stove; and, when the fiercest of blizzards was
blowing, the family were in no danger of getting lost between the house
and the barn.
The three rooms of the building that were nearest the Vermilion, though
given different names, were really all bedrooms. A high four-poster of
unplaned boards stood against the low back wall of the sitting-room,
beneath the rack that held the Dutchman's pipes; the sleeping-room,
which the four eldest children occupied, held two smaller beds; and in
the kitchen--where the family ate their breakfasts of coffee-cake and
barley-coffee, their dinners of souse and vegetables and hard bread
broken into a pan of clabbered milk, and supped, without plates, around
a deep bowl of stew--was a wide couch that belonged to the youngest
three.
But on the night of the wedding the first two rooms were empty, except
for benches, the beds having been taken down early in the day and piled
up beside the hay-stacks back of the stable. The couch in the kitchen
was left in its place, however, and was covered from head to foot with
babies.
The house was lighted by barn lanterns, hung out of the way under the
shingles at the upper ends of the bare, sloping roof-joists, and their
dull flames, that leaped and dipped with the moving feet beneath them,
shone upon walls clean and bright in a fresh layer of newspapers, and
revealed, to whomever cast a look upward, the parcels of herbs, seeds,
and sewing thrust here and there in handy crevices of the brown,
cobwebbed ceiling.
The Dutchman's neighbors crowded the rooms to the doors. In the kitchen
were the older women, keeping watch over the couch and, at the same
time, with busy clatter in a half-dozen tongues, unwrapping the edibles
brought for the wedding supper. In the doorway between the other rooms
sat the eldest brother playing his fiddle, the Irishman twanging a
jews'-harp, and "Frenchy" with the bones; and on each side of them
danced the guests.
The newly made bride and her husband led the quadrille in the
sitting-room, opposite a trooper and the neighbor woman; the Swede had
as his partner the new teacher, a young lady from St. Paul; and the
biggest brother had his mother. Above them, as they promenaded,
balanced, and swung, waved the black felt hat that the Dutchman had worn
when he took his long trip over the prairie to invite them. Each family
he visited had pinned a ribbon to its rim; and now it swayed back and
forth, a gay and varicolored challenge to the hands reached out to grasp
it.
The army chaplain was in the next room; and, as the quadrille closed in
a roistering polka and a waltz struck up, he clapped in time to the
couples that were circling before him, their hands on each other's
shoulders, and their voices joining merrily with the music:
"In Lauterbach hab' ich mein Strumf verlor'n,
Und ohne Strumf geh' ich nicht heim;
Ich gehe doch wieder zu Lauterbach hin
Und kauf' mir ein Strumf für mein Bein."
Now and then a couple drew aside and sat down a moment to rest. But soon
they were back on the floor again, whirling and laughing and stamping
their feet, and raising clouds of dust from the rough plank floors to
their scarlet faces.
Out of doors there was less noise, but no lack of fun. Smudge fires
burned in a wide circle about the house to repel the hungry mosquitos
that, with high, monotonous battle-songs, stormed the smoky barrier
between them and the inner circle of horses and oxen feeding from
wagon-boxes. Nearer the building, and set about the carefully raked yard
on barrels and boxes, were Jack-o'-lanterns made of pumpkins, that gave
out the uncertain, flickering light of tallow dips through their
goggle-eyes and grinning mouths.
In and out among the wagons, fires, and lanterns the children were
playing hide-and-go-seek, screaming with excitement as they scampered in
every direction to secrete themselves, or lying still and breathless as
the boy who was "it" hunted them cautiously, with one eye searching for
moving shadows and the other fixed upon the wagon-wheel that was the
goal. On being sent out of the house to give the dancers room, the boys
had raised a joyous clamor over their banishment, and begun a game of
crack-the-whip; while the girls, not wishing to soil their clothes, had
walked to and fro in front of the house, with their arms around each
other, and watched the dancing. But when the Swede boy, who was chosen
for the snapper, was so worn and breathless with being popped from the
end of the rushing line that he could run no longer, boys and girls had
joined in playing tag and blindman's-buff and, afterward,
hide-and-go-seek.
The little girl was with them. But, so far, in spite of her white dress,
which made her an easy prey, she had not been caught. The boys who had
taken their turns at the wheel had caught other boys whom she did not
know; and had always managed to find and, with much struggling, kiss the
particular girls they favored. No matter how conspicuously she had
hidden, they had always passed her by. As a result, after two or three
disappointments, she had not taken the trouble of running to cover, but
had either lingered just within the sitting-room to watch the dancing,
or hung wistfully about the yard, somewhere near the colonel's son.
"Frenchy's" brother was now guarding the goal, and the little girl was
ambushed behind the very straw-pile that concealed the colonel's son. It
was an occasion that she had looked forward to and secretly brought to
pass, yet, as she knelt close beside him, she could not think of one of
the polite things she had planned to say to him that night. Their
proximity struck her dumb, while he was silent through fear of being
discovered. So they cowered together, speechless and restive, until the
Swede boy tore by in an unsuccessful race for the wagon-wheel. Then the
colonel's son darted out from behind the straw, and she remained
regretfully looking after his blue-clad form.
All at once her meditations were rudely interrupted. "Frenchy's"
brother, skulking here and there on the lookout for a bright, telltale
apron, came round the pile and pounced upon her. "Forfeet! forfeet!" he
cried, dragging her out into the middle of the yard.
She tried to pull away from him, and twisted her head so that her face
was out of reach. "You stop," she cried hotly; "you jus' stop!"
The struggle was sweet to him, however, and he only laughed at her
angry commands and fought harder than ever for his due, striving at
every turn to pin her arms down so that she could not resist. The boys
ran up to urge him on, and the girls hopped up and down in their
enjoyment of the scuffle.
But he was not able to win in the contest. The little girl was a match
for him. What she lacked in strength she made up in nimbleness, and she
stood her ground fiercely, wrestling on until, with a quick, furious
wrench, she freed herself from his hold and bolted toward the kitchen.
"Frenchy's" brother pursued her. But, once inside, she was safe, for he
dared not enter and scramble across the couch to where she had sought
refuge by a window. So he turned back toward the goal. "I get you yet,"
he shouted, wiping his damp face on his shirt sleeve.
The other children gathered about him and taunted him with his failure.
To right himself in their eyes he set after one of the Dutchman's girls,
who shook off her wooden shoes and fled frantically in circles to evade
him. But he succeeded in catching her and taking a forfeit from one of
her sun-bleached braids, after which he went to the wagon and sat down
on the tongue to rest.
The game went on. It was the Swede boy's turn at the goal, and he put
his hands over his face and began to count as the children scattered.
"Tane, twanety, thirty, forty, feefty," he chanted, "seexty, saventy,
eighty." As he told the numbers he stealthily watched the kitchen window
where the little girl stood.
The neighbor woman's boy, who was in hiding under the wagon and almost
at his feet, saw him peeking through his fingers and jumped out to
denounce him. "King's ex, king's ex!" he cried, holding up one hand.
"It's no fair; he's looking."
"Ay bane note," declared the Swede boy, stoutly, wheeling about; "yo
late may alone."
"You are, too," persisted the other, springing away to hide again.
The Swede boy once more resumed his chanting, and the little girl, as
she leaned from her vantage-point to listen, wished that she might
return to the yard and take part in the game. But "Frenchy's" brother,
though tired with his struggles, was still sitting menacingly on the
wagon tongue, and she dared not leave her cover.
Suddenly the sight of a slat sunbonnet, hanging on a nail beside her,
suggested a means of circumventing him. She took it down and put it on,
tying the strings under her chin in a hard double knot. The long, stiff
pasteboard slats buried her face completely, and nobody but Luffree,
with his sharp muzzle, could have reached her cheeks to kiss them. So
she sallied bravely into the yard.
The Swede boy had been counting slowly in the hope that she would hide,
and when he saw her approaching he paused a moment, expecting
"Frenchy's" brother to renew the attack. But the figure on the tongue
never moved, even when the little girl, with a saucy swish of her
skirts, paused daringly near it. So he sang out his last call:
"Boshel of wheat, boshel of raye,
Who ain't radey, holer 'Ay.'"
"I," shouted the little girl, whisking triumphantly away, and the Swede
boy began to count again.
She entered the house, going in at the sitting-room. He followed her
movements as she threaded her way through the dancers toward the empty
granary, and saw her sunbonnet pass the bedroom window and the open
kitchen door. Then once more he sent out the last call. This time there
was no response. So, after a hasty examination of the wagon, he began to
creep about with an impressive show of hunting.
Often he came upon a new calico dress trailing in a dusty place, but
passed its wearer by as if he had not seen her. He surprised the
colonel's son curled up in a box beneath a Jack-o'-lantern, and
distanced him to the wagon. Then he went on searching for a girl, and
the boys, clustered about the wheel, watched him as he sneaked through
the yard. Finally, when he judged that enough time had passed to warrant
it, he made a wider search that brought him close to the granary door.
His courage almost failed him as he passed in front of it, and he was
glad when the delighted squeals of two girls, who were running toward
the goal, gave him an excuse to delay his entrance. But when the girls
had tapped the wheel, he bounded back and, spurring himself on, stepped
within the dark room, where, in a far corner, he caught a faint glint of
white.
He walked toward it timidly. It moved, and he stood still. "Yo there?"
he asked, at last, his throat so dry that he could scarcely find the
words. A subdued giggle answered him. He recalled how kind and
comrade-like she had been to him three months before when they had
caught gophers together, and his spirits rose. "Yo there?" he asked
again.
Suddenly she came from her corner and attempted to pass him. Emboldened
by the darkness, he put out his arms and stopped her, and she laughed
gaily up at him. He laughed shyly back and dropped her arms. She made no
effort to get away. He stood still, awkwardly cracking his knuckles.
"Why don't you fight!" she demanded. He did not reply, but shuffled his
feet and cracked his knuckles harder than ever. The music of a waltz
floated in to them over the babble of the kitchen, and he turned his
head that way as if to listen. As he did so she crept past him, her eyes
sparkling with fun from the depths of the bonnet. When he turned back to
look at her, she was gone.
He followed her out and paid no attention to the jeering inquiries of
the other children. And as the colonel's son began to count from the
wagon-wheel he walked slowly past the teams and smudges, and across a
strip of backfire beyond, to the high, dry grass, where he lay on his
back for the rest of the evening, looking sadly up at the stars.
The little girl sought a hiding-place, too, behind a hay-stack on the
other side of the house. The colonel's son had seen her run that way,
and as he sounded the final challenge his voice had a victorious ring.
He began a second mock hunt. But it was a short one, for, fearful that
he might stumble upon one of the Dutchman's younger brood, he first
penetrated the outer darkness to find a boy, and then ran round the
house in the direction taken by the little girl.
He came upon her unexpectedly as he circled a stack. She was crouching
in plain sight against the hay, her face still hidden in the recesses
of the bonnet. He rushed up to her and took her by the shoulders. "I've
got you!" he said, but so low that the neighbor woman's daughter, who
was just a few steps away behind a fanning-mill, could scarcely hear
him.
"Y-e-e-s," stammered the little girl. She drew back and looked down, all
her assurance supplanted by a wild desire to get away.
"Going to let me have my forfeit?" he whispered, shaking her a little.
The sunbonnet drooped until its wide cape stood up stiffly above her
curls. "I hate that old French boy," she said.
The colonel's son moved closer, and a wisp of brittle grass in her hands
crackled in a double grasp. She glanced up at him swiftly, as she felt
his touch, and this time there was a nearing of the white frock to the
suit of blue. "Well,--if--if--you've got t'," she added.
But the colonel's son, as he bent over her with all the gallantry of his
nine years, had to learn by experience what "Frenchy's" brother had
divined at a glance: the sunbonnet was in the way.
He was equal to the emergency, however, and hesitated only for a moment.
Then he put his hand into his trousers pocket and took out his
clasp-knife. He could hear some one at the goal calling him, and there
was a rattle of dishes in the house, where the music had ceased for a
moment, that told him the plates were being passed for supper. He knew
that in a moment either the chaplain or the boys would be searching for
him.
She heard the calls and clatter, too; yet she did not move except to
raise her head until the bonnet strings were in plain sight under her
dimpled chin. When he saw them, he straightened his knife out with a
click and leaned once more toward her.
The fiddle was playing the opening strains of the supper dance now, and
a hundred voices were singing with it; so the neighbor woman's daughter,
who had been peering from behind the fanning-mill, hurried away to the
house. And thus it came about that no one but a vagrant night-hawk,
perched high on the top of the stack, remained near enough to hear the
sawing sound of a dull knife-blade, making its way through cloth.
* * * * *
IN the early morning hours, as the gray team jogged homeward past the
deserted school-house, the big brothers and their mother discussed the
wedding, the dancing, and the supper. But the little girl, snugly
wrapped in a quilt on the hay behind, lay still and silent, and only
smiled when the night breeze from the west bore to her ear the clear
notes of the departing bugle blowing a sweet retreat.
IX
THE PRICE OF CONVALESCENCE
EVERY morning a cloud appeared in the east, rushed westward across the
northern sky, and vanished beyond the "Jim." Every afternoon it came up
in the west again, swept back toward the east, and went out of sight in
the Big Sioux. If a herd chanced to be grazing too near its path as it
approached, they were scattered right and left in wild confusion by a
shrill _toot_! _toot_! that could be heard at the farm-house. But when
the way was clear the cloud traveled swiftly and silently, stringing
itself, on sunny days, to a low white ribbon, or, if the air was damp
and the heavens were gray, separating itself, from river to river, into
many dark coughs of dense, high-sailing smoke.
For three months it had been crossing the plains as regularly as the sun
itself. Before that it had loitered, attended, so the biggest brother
said, by a great company of rough men carrying shovels and picks. It was
this company, stray members of which, worn and grimy, had visited the
farm-house now and then and talked in broad brogue, that had kept the
little girl and the herd south of the reservation road throughout the
early spring; and it was not until the men had dispersed and the cloud
had begun its daily trips from horizon to horizon that she was permitted
to ride northward on the pinto to see it go by.
The youngest brother went with her, mounted upon a skittish, bald-faced
pony, and they halted together, near the low embankment that divided the
prairie, to wait for the engine. But when it hurtled past, a screaming
thing of iron and flying sparks, both the pinto and the pony, despite
their riders' curbing, retreated so precipitately from the track that
neither she nor the youngest brother caught more than a glimpse of the
flying train, for their mounts ceased running only when the barn-yard
was reached. Then the old mare came to a stop, blowing and trembling so
wildly that she could scarcely keep her legs, while the bald-face kicked
and snorted about among the granaries and pens in a perfect paroxysm of
terror.
It was not long, however, before the pinto completely lost her fear of
the engine, and would eat quietly near the embankment while the little
girl lay flat on the ties to listen for a first faint rumble, or waved
at the people in the cars. The flock, too, became so familiar with the
track that they soon had a contempt for it, a feeling that they retained
even after a dozen of their number had been mangled on its rails; but
the cattle always kept it at a respectful distance, and only Napoleon
ever showed the train enough hostility to shake his stubby horns angrily
at it or charge toward it as it shot away over the plains. The herd was
allowed, therefore, to feed along the railroad in the custody of the
little girl.
But now, for nearly three weeks, the Swede boy had kept guard over the
grazing stock, and the little girl had not even seen the cloud above the
distant train. For she was ill: so ill that the neighbor woman, who
shared the long night watches beside the canopied bed with the biggest
brother and his mother, shook her head in the seclusion of the kitchen,
and told herself that the little girl would never be well again.
The family were beginning to have the same awful thought, and had sent a
telegraphic summons from the new station, ten miles away, to a physician
in Sioux Falls. To them a cloud far heavier and darker than the engine's
breath was hanging, day and night, over the farm-house, shutting out all
sunshine, hope, and happiness.
One warm afternoon, while the little girl was riding the cultivator mare
up and down in the Indian corn, she had suddenly been seized with a
chill. That night a fever followed, and for a week she grew steadily
worse. Her mother gave her every home remedy known to be good for
malaria, and at the end of the second week moved her to the canopied
bed, where an ever waving fan cooled her hot cheeks. It was here, almost
at the end of the third week of her illness, that the Sioux Falls doctor
found her.
She was tossing from side to side, murmuring in a delirium that had
possessed her for days. Her face showed a scarlet flush against the
white pillow-slip. The biggest brother, who scarcely left her bedside to
rest or eat, was placing cold cloths upon her forehead and wetting her
lips. White through his tan, he hung over her in an agony of fear, only
lifting his eyes, now and then, to turn them sorrowfully upon his
mother, seated opposite.
The little girl did not know of the doctor's arrival. As he hurried into
the sitting-room, she was thinking of the floating cloud. Now it was
pursuing her as she fled from it on a fleet pony; now it was stooping
groundward, a huge, airy monster, to offer her a cake of ice; again it
was sweeping over her, quenching the deadly fire that consumed her, and
leaving her on the damp, green bank above the mooring-place of the
bull-boat. She lay very still with her cool thoughts, her eyes, wide and
lustrous, fixed upon the blue canopy overhead. But when, a moment
later, the fever burned more hotly again, and the cloud changed to a
blinding, blistering steam that enveloped her, she sat up and fought
with her hands, and cried aloud for the biggest brother.
The doctor caught her wrists and gently put her back. One glance at her
parched lips and brown tongue had told him what was the matter, and as
he opened a valise and took out some medicines he answered the inquiring
looks of the family. "Typhoid," he said. "She's a very sick child. But I
think we may be able to pull her through."
With her mother and the big brothers looking on mournfully, the first
step was taken toward aiding her. One by one her curls, so long her
mother's pride and care, were snipped off close to her head; and when at
last they lay on the bed in a newspaper, a little heap of soft, yellow
tangles, there was sobbing all about in the sitting-room, and even the
doctor, accustomed to sad sights, could not keep the tears from chasing
down his cheeks and into his brown beard.
She looked pitifully thin and altered, shorn of her bright halo; yet at
once she grew quieter, and when she was gently lowered into the brimming
wash-tub and then laid between sheets wrung from cold water, she closed
her eyes gratefully and ceased her outcries.
The doctor, collarless and with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, worked over
her all day. The little girl's mother and the neighbor woman assisted
him, and the big brothers sat on the bench in front of the house, so as
to be within easy call. But when twilight came, and everything possible
had been done for his patient's comfort, the doctor, who was tired with
his long ride and the day's strain, went into the little girl's room and
took a much-needed sleep.
"Keep up your courage," he said cheerily to the biggest brother, as he
left him at his post by the little girl; "her years of outdoor life will
help her rally. I have hope; but wake me at once if you note any decided
change."
The evening hours passed slowly. In the sick-room the little girl's
mother was resting on the lounge, which had been pulled close to the
canopied bed. The neighbor woman dozed in the kitchen, beside the table
where was spread the untasted supper. The eldest and the youngest
brothers were stretched, still dressed, on their beds in the attic. The
house was noiseless, and dark everywhere except in the sitting-room.
There, on the high clock-shelf, the same tall lamp that, nearly seven
and a half years before, had burned like a beacon and lighted the coming
of the stork, now, turned low, shone upon the faithful biggest brother
and the suffering little girl.
Shortly after ten o'clock an interruption came to the silence. A gentle
knocking was heard at the hall door, and, on going out, the neighbor
woman found a cattleman who had recently moved into the Territory from
northern Texas standing on the stone step. Having heard that morning
from the Swede boy that the little girl was dangerously ill, he had
ridden down to proffer the services of himself and his swift horse
Sultan. And when the neighbor woman told him that there was small hope
of the little girl's recovery, he stabled his animal, and prepared to
remain all night.
As he came out of the barn, after having tied Sultan in a vacant stall,
he found that, unknown to the family, another anxious watcher was
lingering about. A tow head was suddenly thrust from behind the partly
open door, and a hand halted him by catching appealingly at his sleeve.
"She bane bater?" asked a low, timid voice.
The cattleman turned, half startled, and shook his head as he replied,
"I reckon she's a lot worse," he said. He walked on, but paused again at
the smoke-house. The tow-head was just behind, and the cattleman could
hear the sound of chattering teeth; so he whipped off his overcoat and
tossed it back. When he entered the hall the chattering had stopped, and
the coat had disappeared into the shadow of a granary.
After the cattleman settled himself upon the bench in the kitchen, the
house fell into quiet once more; and it was not until midnight that the
hush was broken. Then the biggest brother, having moved the curtains of
the canopied bed and turned up the lamp, discovered what he felt to be
the dreaded change in the little girl, and uttered a frightened
exclamation.
Her face, so long flushed with fever, was blanched and wan. Her eyes
were entirely closed, and their long lashes lay on her cheeks. Her arms
were outspread and relaxed, her palms open. Her breathing was so faint
that he had to bend his ear to her lips to hear it. He was certain that
the end was near, and hastened to call his mother and summon his
brothers and the doctor. They were joined in the sitting-room by the
neighbor woman and the cattleman.
It was apparent to all that a change for the worse had taken place in
the little girl. Yet the doctor, who hurried to her side, watch in hand,
betrayed neither satisfaction nor alarm as he bent above her; and the
group about him could only wait in suspense.
Suddenly there came a sigh from the pillow, and the little girl opened
her eyes. For a week she had recognized no one. Now she looked about at
the faces turned upon her, and a faint smile curved her lips. It brought
a cry of joy from her mother. "Oh, pet lamb," she said, "the doctor's
here, and he's going to make my baby well."
A shade passed over the little girl's face, and she glanced from her
mother to the doctor. "I'm really not a baby," she said in a weak voice,
but with something of the old spirit; "my mother jus' says that. I'll be
seven in June."
The doctor nodded, and smiled back at her. His fingers were still at her
wrist, and his face wore a worried expression. The cattleman leaned and
whispered a question in his ear, and he replied out loud. "I can't
tell," he said. "She may and she may not."
The little girl's eyes closed. The doctor poured out a stimulant, and
put the glass to her mouth. When he lifted her head, she drank it, and
her breath came in longer and heavier respirations. No one spoke.
All at once a sound of scratching at the front door, followed by
whining, startled her so that she looked up once more, and her lips
moved. "That's Luffree," she said. Her mother began to smooth her head
tenderly, and it brought a new thought to the little girl. "'Monia'll
give me curly hair," she added, and closed her eyes again.
The family watched her hopelessly, for to them the doctor's silence had
only one meaning; but the cattleman, standing behind the eldest
brother, could not bear the wordless waiting. He felt that if she would
rouse and continue to speak, death would be delayed. So he called to her
pleadingly.
"Little gal!" he said huskily; "little gal!" She stirred wearily, and
her lids fluttered as if she were striving to lift them. "Little gal,"
he went on; "I want ye t' fight this out. Don't ye let no ol' typhoid
git _you_. An' when ye git well, ye jus' come to see me, an' ye kin hev
anything on th' whole ranch." She turned her face toward him. "Anything
on th' whole ranch," he repeated, his voice breaking. She moved one hand
till it found one of her mother's, then she lay very still.
The biggest brother dropped to his knees beside the bed and crouched
there. The youngest brother began to weep, leaning against the eldest.
The neighbor woman crept away toward the kitchen, her face buried in her
apron. The cattleman turned his back. The mother clung prayerfully to
the transparent hand. And so passed a long and despairing five minutes.
But at its end the doctor uttered an ejaculation of surprise and
pleasure, and sprang to his feet. At the same time he raised a warning
finger and motioned all toward the kitchen. They obeyed him and
retreated, remaining together in troubled impatience until he came among
them.
"I can't be absolutely certain," he said, his face alight with
happiness, "but I believe you can all go to bed with safety. Things seem
to have turned our way: her skin is soft and moist, her temperature is
down, and, better than anything else, she's asleep."
As a full realization of the good news broke upon them, all save the
biggest brother sat down to talk it gratefully over. But he dashed out
of doors to voice his joy, and, as he bounded up and down the yard, half
laughing and half crying, he caught up a muffled figure that was lurking
in the rear of the kitchen and swung it high into the air.
* * * * *
DURING the weeks that followed, while the little girl was slowly
fighting her way back to a sure hold on life, there often came into her
mind, vaguely at first and then more clearly, the promise that the
cattleman had made her the night they thought she was dying. "Ye kin hev
anything on th' whole ranch," had been his exact words; and in the
intervals when, having gratified an appetite that was alarming in its
heartiness, she sat in the sun with the dogs about her, or drove with
her mother in the new buckboard, she pondered them exultantly and with a
confidence that was absolute.
However, it was not until she was so well that she was again saying pert
things to the eldest brother, and so strong that she was once more
tending the herd, that she determined to pay the cattleman a visit and
remind him of his agreement. Aware that the family would oppose her
acceptance of a gift from a neighbor, she made her preparations for the
trip in secret, and quietly left the farm-house one Sunday afternoon,
taking with her a bridle and a gunny feed-bag half filled with oats.
She had chosen a Sunday for several reasons: she was always relieved on
that day of the task of herding, the youngest brother taking her place;
her mother invariably spent it in writing long letters that traveled
across land and sea to far-away England; and the eldest and biggest
brothers puttered it away in the blacksmith-shop, where there were farm
implements to mend, hoes to sharpen, and picket-ropes and tugs to
splice. Usually it was the lonesomest day of the week to the little
girl; but this Sunday proved to be an exception.
She was careful not to disturb the household as she set off, and when
she passed the cattle, which were feeding in the river meadows, she
crept round them as slyly as an Indian, so that the youngest brother,
who was fashioning willow whistles, should not see her. Once having
gained the straight road that led across the railroad track toward the
cattleman's, she took off her hat and made faster progress.
But the way was long, and, still weak from her recent sickness, she was
easily tired. When only two thirds of the distance was traveled it was
so late that the night-blooming flowers were unfolding their chalices,
as white and glimmering as the little girl's Sunday apron, to let the
crape-winged moths drink their sweetness. Migrant birds were already
speeding above her, to fly till dawn, and they veered from their course
as they saw her hurrying along beneath them. Wild creatures that had
been sleeping during the day came from their holes to seek food and
timidly watched her hasten past. And all along, out of the tall, brittle
grass, the busy lightning-bugs sprang up with their lanterns to help the
dim stars light the way.
It was dusk on the plains before she looked in, through a tangle of corn
and young cottonwoods, upon the low shanty, in front of which sat the
cattleman in his shirt-sleeves, thoughtfully chewing a quid. The growl
of a dog at his feet discovered her to him at the same moment, and, as
he squinted in the half-light at her thin little form and cropped head,
she seemed like some strange prairie fay coming, light-footed, out of
the gloom to meet him.
"Hi thar!" he called, rising up as the little girl threaded the corn and
cottonwoods. She was breathless with walking, and did not answer as she
crossed the yard, shielding herself with the bridle and the feed-bag
from the dog, bounding boisterously against her. "Wal, what on airth!"
exclaimed the cattleman when she halted before him.
As she glanced up, he took on the forbidding height and glowering aspect
of her first school-teacher. But she summoned heart. "How d' ye do?" she
said, nodding at him cordially.
"What're ye doin' up here?" he demanded. "Ye lost? Come in! come in!"
"Oh, no," answered the little girl, following him into the shanty.
He lighted a lantern, and, turning it upon her, eyed her anxiously. She
looked even thinner, paler, and more eerie than she had in the yard.
"Sit down," he said, motioning her to a bench. But he remained standing,
his hands shoved far into the top of his wide, yellow, goatskin "chaps,"
his quid rolling from side to side. "W'y, I thought you 's a spook," he
laughed, "er a will-o'-th'-wisp--one. Want a drink er somethin' to eat?
Got lots o' nice coffee. Guess y' 're petered."
"No, I'm not," she declared. And as he turned from the stove, where he
had put the coffee on to boil, she got up and stepped toward him.
"I--I--called to get somefing," she faltered, resuming, in her
trepidation, a babyish pronunciation long since discarded for one more
dignified.
"Ye did?" queried the cattleman.
"Yes," she continued. "You 'member the night I 'most died?" He
acquiesced silently. "Well, you told me then that if I'd get well you'd
give me anyfing on your ranch."
The cattleman started as if he had been stung, and, wheeling about, took
out his quid and threw it on the flames, so that he might be better able
to cope with the matter before him.
"And so," the little girl went on, "I fought I'd come to-day."
The cattleman rubbed his chin. "I see; I see," he said.
"I couldn't get here sooner," she explained, "'cause I didn't ride."
"Oh, ye didn't?" he said. Then, noting the bridle and bag, "What ye got
them fer?" he asked.
"I didn't want to use yours," she replied.
"Mine?" The cattleman was puzzled.
"Yes: I brought this," she went on, holding up the bag, "to catch him
wiv; and this," holding up the bridle, "to take him home wiv."
"Him?" questioned the cattleman, more puzzled than ever.
The little girl saw that she would have to make herself more clear.
"Why, yes," she said. "You promised me anyfing I wanted if I'd get
well; now I'm well, so I've come to--to--get Sultan."
The cattleman sat down, amazement and consternation succeeding each
other on his face. Until now he had forgotten the compact made with her,
and which he was in honor bound to keep. Recalling it, he realized that
it meant the loss of his best horse.
He was silent for a while, thinking hard for a means of escape from his
dilemma. When he spoke at last he was smiling good-naturedly. "Ye're
right," he said, rubbing his hands briskly over the long hair of the
breeches; "I did say that very thing. An' I'm a man o' my word. But it
seems to me," and he leaned forward confidently, "thet ye ain't made
exac'ly the best pick thet ye could." The little girl sat up with a new
interest. "Now I've got sunthin' here," continued the cattleman,
"thet'll jes make yer eyes pop." He got up, went to a box that, nailed
against the wall above the stove, served him for a cupboard, and took
out a long, slender package. "Ye've got more horses than ye can shake a
stick at," he began again; "ponies an' plow teams an' buggy nags, but ye
ain't got nuthin' like what I'm 'bout to show ye."
Slowly and impressively he began to undo the package, keeping one eye
covertly on the little girl all the while. She was beside him, rigid
with expectancy. When many thicknesses of thin brown paper had been
unrolled, he stepped back, unwrapped a last cover, and, with a proud
wave of his hand, revealed to her delighted gaze a big, thick,
red-and-white candy cane.
"Now, what do ye think o' that?" he demanded.
An exclamation of wonder came from her parted lips. She moved nearer
without answering.
"As I said," he went on, "y' 've got all kinds of horses; but when in
yer life hev ye hed anything like this?" He laid it gently on the table,
and folded his arms solemnly. "Thet came all the way from Yankton," he
said, as if recounting the history of some famous work of art. "I bought
it down thar of a feller, an' paid some little money fer it." He did not
add that she was in his thoughts when he bought it. "Now I'm going out
to hitch up an' take ye home," he continued. "While I'm gone, ye make up
yer mind which ye want--" He started for the door, but paused half-way.
"--which ye want," he repeated, lowering his voice, "Sultan--er thet
_beautiful_ cane?"
When he was gone the little girl stole closer to the table and gazed
rapturously down. Never in her life, as the cattleman truly said, had
she seen anything like it. No horse, on a prairie overrunning with
horses, could compare with it. She put out her hand and touched its
crooked head, almost reverently, with one small finger.
The cattleman harnessed a span of fat mules at the barn, and led them
into their places on each side of a wagon tongue. All the while he
talked out loud to himself, with occasional guffaws of hearty laughter
and sharp commands to the team. Despite his merriment, however, he
peered back at the shanty uneasily from time to time; so that it was a
full quarter of an hour before the mules were hitched to the
whiffletrees and ready for their journey. Then he climbed to the seat
and circled toward the door.
She was not in sight when he brought up with a loud whoa, and getting
down, the lines in one hand and a black-snake in the other, he advanced
to the sill and looked in. "Any passengers goin' south?" he cried
cheerily, cracking the whip.
"Me," answered a voice from behind the table, and the little girl,
fagged but blissful, came forward smilingly, a long, brown-paper package
clasped tightly to her breast.
X
"BADGY"
IT was the little girl who discovered that the badgers were encroaching
upon the big wheat-field that stretched westward, across the prairie,
from the farm-house to the sandy bank of the Vermillion. In bringing the
cattle home from the meadows one night, along the cow-path that bordered
the northern end of the grain, she allowed several to stray aside into
the field, which was now faintly green with its new sprouting. And as
she headed them out, riding her pony at full gallop, she saw a fine
shorthorn suddenly pitch forward with a bellow and fall. She checked her
horse and waited for the animal to rise again. But it could not--it had
snapped a fore ankle in a freshly dug badger hole.
The shorthorn was a favorite and, as befitted her good blood, carried
across her dewlap the string of silver sleigh-bells that in wintertime
tinkled before the pung. So the news of her injury was received with
sorrow at the farm-house; and when, later in the evening, the little
girl's big brothers went down to the field to put the heifer out of her
misery, they vowed that the last feeble jingle of her bells should be
the death-knell of the badgers.
They found that the burrowing host, driven out of their former homes
either by an unlooked-for seepage or the advent of a stronger animal,
had been attracted to the field because the harrow had so recently
broken and softened the fallow, and had dug so rapidly since the
planting of a few weeks before, that the north end, perforated every
three or four feet, would be utterly useless, that year at least, for
either the harvester or the plow. Each family had dug two tunnels that
slanted toward each other and met at the nest. And since the tunnels of
one family often crossed those of another, the ground was treacherously
unstable. The outlying, unplowed land also bore, mile upon mile, marks
of the ravages of an army of badgers; but the north end of the
wheat-field was the concentration camp.
The badgers had thrived in their new home, for on one side was a grassy
rise where the eggs and young of the plover and prairie-chicken could be
found; and, on the other, a gully led down to the sloughs that yielded
succulent roots and crawling things. The little girl's big brothers saw
that the animals were so abundant that shot, traps, or poison would not
avail--only a thorough drowning-out would rid the grain-land of the
pest.
The attack was planned for the following day. It would be timely, since
four feet beneath the surface were the newly born, half-blind litters
that could be wiped out by a flood. Some of the old badgers would,
undoubtedly, escape the deluge and get past the dogs, but they would be
driven away to hunt other ground for their tunneling.
The next afternoon, when the farm wagon, creaking under its load of
water-barrels and attended by the dogs, was driven down to the badger
holes in the field, the little girl went along. Drownings-out were
exciting affairs, for the badgers always gave the pack a fine tussle
before they were despatched; and she was allowed to attend them if she
would promise to remain on the high seat of the wagon, out of harm's
way.
When the team had been brought to a standstill on the cow-path, she
watched the preparations for the drowning from her perch.
Two holes were found that slanted toward each other. One big brother,
armed with two or three buckets of water, stationed himself at the hole
nearer the wagon; and another, similarly armed, guarded the farther
hole. The pack divided itself, half remaining at each outlet, and barked
itself hoarse with anticipation.
At last all was in readiness, and, at a word, the water was
poured--bucketful after bucketful--down the tunnels. Then a big brother
sprang to the horses' heads to prevent their running when the fight
began, another jumped into the wagon to refill the pails and hand them
down, and the dogs, leaping excitedly, closed about the holes. The
little girl watched breathlessly and clung fast to the seat.
For a moment there was no sign of anything. Suddenly from the nearer
hole bounded a female, the refuse of her nest clinging to her dripping
hair. Whirling and biting furiously on all sides, she growled in fear
and rage as she defied the pack. There was a quick, fierce fight that
was carried a rod before it ended; then, amid a din of yelping, the
badger met a speedy death.
The little girl climbed down from the wagon, and ran to the hole out of
which the badger had come. From her seat she had spied a small, gray bit
of fur in the debris lying about it, and guessed what it was. She
reached the hole none too soon; for the dogs, having been drawn off
their prey, were coming back, whining and limping and licking their
chops. She caught up the little, half-drowned thing and climbed hastily
into the wagon again, as the pack, scenting it, pursued her and leaped
against the wheels.
The baby badger came very near to going the way of superfluous kittens
when the little girl's big brothers saw what she had, and was saved only
through her pleading. She begged to keep and tame him, and promised to
thwart any desire of his to burrow indiscriminately about the house and
garden. So she was finally permitted to take him home, snugly wound up
in her apron, and revive him with warm milk.
* * * * *
THE first time that he saw the world he viewed it from a subterranean
standpoint, his birthplace being a round, soft, warm pocket far below
the level of the growing wheat. True, his horizon was somewhat limited,
since the pocket was of small dimensions. Nevertheless, it was wide to
him; and he spent several days in surveying the top and sides of his
home with his weak, little, blinking eyes before he ventured to crawl
about. Then it was necessary for his mother to lift him from his cozy
bed in the midst of his brothers and sisters and give him a sharp pinch
on the neck with her teeth to make him start.
The pocket was reached by a tunnel that had been well begun and then
abandoned by an industrious but timid pocket-gopher. This timidity and
industry had been taken advantage of when the badgers began their
colonization of the wheat-field, and the pocket and a second tunnel
completed; so that the result was a comfortable residence and, finally,
an ideal nursery. But in all probability he and his brothers and sisters
did not realize how cozily Providence had placed them until that
dreadful day.
It was when they were having their regular romp with their mother that
the first indication of trouble came. His father, who had been sitting
at the mouth of the tunnel gossiping with a neighboring fox, rushed down
wildly to the little family, and fairly fell over them in an effort to
escape by the second tunnel beyond. The fierce barking of the dogs was
heard. Then the great flood of water swept down upon them from both
tunnels, lifting them all in a struggling, suffocating mass to the top
of the pocket.
His mother, the instinct of self-preservation overcoming her parental
love, started madly for a tunnel, and, in swimming against the floating
ruins of her nest, pushed him before her up the opening and into the
full light of day. There, blinded by the sunlight and exhausted, he lost
consciousness, and lay unnoticed, partly hidden beneath the feathers and
grass that had made his bed, until the little girl saw him.
* * * * *
HE rewarded her for his first meal by turning on his back with his legs
in the air and grunting contentedly. He was of a grizzled gray color,
soft, fat, clumsy, short of limb and thick of tail, and displayed, in
spite of his few weeks, a remarkably fine set of claws on his fore feet.
These he alternately thrust out and drew in, as she petted him, and
curled up his long, black-and-white nose. The little girl thought him
the nicest pet she had ever had, and soon fell a willing slave to his
wheedling grunts.
He was christened "Badgy," and spent the first month of his new life in
a warmly padded soap-box in the farm-house kitchen. But by the end of
that time he had outgrown the box, and, the weather being warmer, was
given the empty potato-bin in the cellar. When he was big enough to run
about, he spent his days out of doors. Early in the morning he was
called from the bin by the little girl, who opened the cellar doors and
watched him come awkwardly up the steps, ambitiously advancing two at a
time and generally falling back one. After his breakfast of meat and
bread and milk he enjoyed a frolic, which consisted of a long run in a
circle about the little girl, while he grunted for joy and lack of
breath. When he was completely worn out with play, he rolled over on his
back and had a sleep in the sun.
Badgy learned to love the little girl; and it was found, after he had
lived in the potato-bin for a while, that she was the only person he
would follow or meet amicably; all others were saluted with a snarl and
a lifting of the grizzled hair. So the household came to look upon him
in the light of a worthy supplanter of the Indian dogs as a protector
for her. He accompanied her everywhere over the prairie, keeping close
to her bare feet and grunting good-naturedly at every swaying step. If
they met a stranger, he sprang before her, his hair on end, his teeth
showing, his claws working back and forth angrily. When a Sioux came
near, he went into a perfect fit of rage; and not an Indian ever dared
lay hands upon him.
It was this hatred for redskins that one night saved the herd from a
stampede. Badgy had been playing about the sitting-room with the little
girl, and trying his sharp claws on the new rag carpet, when he suddenly
began to rush madly here and there, snapping his teeth furiously. A big
brother grasped the musket that stood behind the door, thinking that he
had gone mad. But the little girl knew the signs, and, shielding him,
begged them to go out and look for the Indians she felt certain were
near. Sure enough, beyond the tall cottonwoods that formed the
wind-break to the north of the house were the figures of a dozen mounted
men, silhouetted against the sky. They were moving cautiously in the
direction of the wire cattle-pen; but as a big brother challenged them
with a halloo and followed it with a musket shot, they wheeled and
dashed away. The last glimpse of their ponies showed them apparently
riderless; which proved to the little girl's big brothers that the
marauders were from the reservation to the west.
The summer was at its full and the wheat-fields of the Vermillion River
Valley were all but ready for the harvester before Badgy began to feel a
yearning for his own kind and the freedom of the open prairie. Then he
often deserted his little mistress when they were walking about in the
afternoon, or sneaked away after his morning nap in the sun. The first
time he disappeared she mourned disconsolately for him all day. But late
in the afternoon, as she sat looking across the grain, waiting for him
hopelessly, she forgot her loss in watching a most curious thing
happening in the wheat. Away out in the broad, quiet field there was a
small, agitated spot, as if a tiny whirlwind were tossing the heads
about. The commotion was coming nearer and nearer every moment. Now it
was a quarter of a mile away--now it was only a few rods--now it was
almost on the edge. The little girl scrambled to her feet, half inclined
to run, when out of the tall stalks rolled Badgy, growling at every step
and wagging his tired head from side to side!
Often, after that, he did not come home until late at night, when she
would hea
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