CHAPTER IX.

"BACHING" IT AGAIN.

"The fact is, Flaxen has sp'iled us," laughed Anson, a couple of days later, when Bert was cursing the soggy biscuit. "We've got so high-toned that we can't stand common cookin'. Time was we'd 'a' thought ourselves lucky to git as good as that. Rec'lect them flapjacks we ust to make? By mighty! you could shoe a horse with 'em. Say, I wish I could jest slip in an' see what she's a-doin' about now, hey?"

"She's probably writin' a letter. She won't do much of anythin' else for the first week."

"I hope you're right," said Anson.

They got a queer little letter every Wednesday, each one for several weeks pitifully like the others.

Dear boys i thought i would take my pen in hand to tell you i dont like it one bit the school is just as mene as it can be the girls do laugh at me they call me toe-head. if i catch em right i will fix their heads. They is one girl who i like she is from pipestone she dont know no moren i do she says my dress is pritty—ol nig an the drake all rite i wish i was home.Elga.

Elga.

The wish to be home was in all these letters like a sob. The men read them over carefully and gravely, and finally Anson would put them away in the Bible (bought on Flaxen's account) for safe-keeping.

As the letters improved in form their exultation increased.

"Say, Bert, don't you notice she writes better now? She makes big I's now in place o' little ones. Seems 's if she runs the sentence all together, though."

"She'll come out all right. You see, she goes into the preparatory department, where they teach writin' an' spellin'. You'll see her hand improve right along now."

And it did, and she ceased to wail for home and ceased to say that she hated her studies.

"I am getting along splendid," she wrote some weeks after this. "I like my teacher; her name is Holt. She is just as nice as she can be. She is cousin to the one who came with me; I live with her uncle, and I can go to soshibles whenever I want to; but the other girls cant. I am feeling pretty good, but I wish you boys was here."

She did not wish to be at home this time!

Winter shut down on the broad land again with that implacable, remorseless brilliancy of fierce cold which characterises the northern plain, stopping work on the farm and bolting all doors. Hardly a day that the sun did not shine; but the light was hard, white, glittering, and cold, the winds treacherous, the snow wild and restless. There was now comparatively little danger of being lost even in the fiercest storms, but still life in one of these little cabins had an isolation almostas terrible as that of a ship wedged amid the ice-floes of the polar regions.

Day after day rising to feed the cattle, night after night bending over the sooty stove listening to the ceaseless voice of the wind as it beat and brushed, whispered, moaned, and piped or screamed around the windows and eaves—this was their life, varied with an occasional visit to the store or the post-office, or by the call of a neighbour. It is easy to conceive that Flaxen's bright letters were like bursts of bird-song in their loneliness. Many of the young men, their neighbours, went back East to spend the winter—back to Michigan, Iowa, New York, or elsewhere.

"Ans, why don't you go back an' visit your folks?" asked Bert, one day. "I'll take care o' things."

"Wal, the fact is, I've be'n away so long they don't care whether I'm alive er dead. I ain't got no near relatives except a sister, an' she's got all the fam'ly she can 'tend to."

"Same here. We ain't very affectionate,anyway; our fam'ly and I don't write. Still I'd like to go back, just to see how they all are."

"Why not go?"

"Well, I don't know. I guess I must one o' these days. I've kind o' be'n waitin' till we got into a little better shape. I hate to go back poor."

"So do I. It's hard work f'r me to give up beat; I ain't goin' to do it yet awhile."

Sometimes a neighbour dropped in during the middle of the day, and on pleasant days they would harness up the team and take a drive down to the store and the post-office; but mainly they vegetated like a couple of huge potatoes in a cellar, as did most of the settlers. There was nothing else to do.

It was the worst winter since the first that they had spent in the country. The snow seemed never still. It slid, streamed, rose in the air ceaselessly; it covered the hay, drifted up the barn door, swept the fields bare, and, carrying the dirt of the ploughed fields with it, built huge blackdrifts wherever there was a wind-break, corn-field, or other obstruction.

There were moments when Bert was well-nigh desperate. Only contact with hard work and cold winds saved him. He was naturally a more ambitious, more austere man than Anson. He was not content to vegetate, but longed to escape. He felt that he was wasting his life.

It was in December that the letter first came from Flaxen which mentioned Will Kendall.

O boys! I had the best time. We had a party at our house and lots of boys came and girls too, and they were nice, the boys, I mean. Will Kendall he is the nicest feller you ever seen. He has got black eyes and brown hair and a gold watch-chain with a locket with some girl's hair in it, and he said it was his sister's hair, but I told him I didn't believe it, do you? We had cake and popcorn and lasses candy; and Will he took me out to supper.

Bert was reading the letter, and at this point he stopped and raised his eyes, and the two men gazed at each other withouta word for a long time. Then Anson laughed.

"She's gittin' over her homesickness. She's all right now she's got out to a sociable."

After that there was hardly a letter that did not mention Kendall in some innocent fashion among the other boys and girls who took part in the sleigh-rides, parties, and sociables. But the morbidly acute Bert, if he saw, said nothing, and Anson did not see.

"Who d' y' s'pose this Kendall is?" asked Anson, one night late in the winter, of Gearheart, who was reading the paper while his companion reread a letter from Flaxen. "Seems to me she's writin' a good 'eal about him lately."

"Oh, some slick little dry-goods clerk or druggist," said Bert, with unwarrantable irritation.

"She seems to have a good 'eal to say about him, anyway," repeated Anson, in a meditative way.

"Oh, that's natural enough. They are two young folks together," replied Bert,with a careless accent, to remove any suspicion which his hasty utterance might have raised in Anson's mind.

"Wal, I guess you're right," agreed Anson, after a pause, relieved. This relief was made complete when in other letters which came she said less and less about Kendall. If they had been more experienced, they would have been disturbed by this suspicious fact.

Then again, when Anson wrote asking "What has become of that Kendall you wrote so much about?" she replied that he was there, and began writing of him again in a careless sort of way, with the craft of woman already manifest in the change of front.

Spring came again, and that ever-recurring miracle, the good green grass, sprang forth from its covering of ice and snow, up from its hiding-place in the dark, cold sod.

Again the two men set to work ferociously at the seeding. Up early in the wide, sweet dawn, toiling through the day behind harrow and seeder, coming inat noon to a poor and badly cooked meal, hurrying back to the field and working till night, coming in at sundown so tired that one leg could hardly be dragged by the other—this was their daily life.

One day, as they were eating their supper of sour bread and canned beans, Gearheart irritatedly broke out: "Ans, why don't you git married? It 'u'd simplify matters a good 'eal if you should. 'Old Russ' is no good."

"What's the matter withyourgittin' married?" replied Anson, imperturbably pinching off the cooked part of the loaf, skilfully leaving the doughy part.

"I ain't on the marry; that's all."

"Neither am I."

"Well, you ought to be."

"Don't see it."

"Well, now, let me show it. We can't go on this way. I'm gittin' so poor you can count my ribs through my shirt. Jest think how comfortable it would make things! No more awful coffee; no more canned baked beans; no more cussed, infernal, everlastin', leathery flapjacks; nomore soggy bread—confound it!" Here he seized the round inner part of the loaf, from which the crust had been flaked, and flung it through the open door far down toward the garden.

"Bert! that's the last bit of bread we've got in the house."

"What's the odds? We couldn't eat it."

"We could 'a' baked it over."

"Wecouldeat dog, but we don't," replied Bert gloomily. His temper was getting frightful of late.

"We'll be all right when Flaxen comes back," said Ans, laughing.

"Say, now, you've said that a thousand times this winter. You know well enough Flaxen's out o' this. We ain't countin' on her," blurted Gearheart, just in the mood to say disagreeable things.

"Wha' d' y' mean? Ain't she comin' back in June?"

"Probably; but she won't stay."

"No: that's so. She'll have to go back in September; but that's three months, an' we may sell out by that time if we have a good crop. Anyway, we'll livehigh fer a spell. We ought to have a letter from her to-night, hadn't we?"

"I'm goin' down to see, if you'll wash the dishes."

"All right. Take a horse."

"No: the horses are tired. I'll foot it."

"Wal, ain't you too?"

"Want anythin' from the store?"

"Yes: git a hunk o' bacon an' some canned corn, tomatoes, an' some canned salmon; if y' think we can stand the pressure, bring home a can o' peaches."

And so Gearheart started off for town in the dusk, afoot, in order to spare the horse, as though he had not himself walked all day long in the soft, muddy ground. The wind was soft and moist, and the light of the stars coming out in the east fell upon his upturned eyes with unspeakable majesty. Yet he saw them but dimly. He was dreaming of a face which was often in his mind now—a face not unlike Flaxen's, only older, more glorified, more womanly. He was asking himself some searching questions to-nightas his tired limbs dragged themselves over the grassy road.

What was he toiling for, anyway? What mattered all this terrible tramping to and fro—was it an end or only a means? Would there ever come anything like satisfaction of desire? Life for him had been a silent, gloomy, and almost purposeless struggle. He had not looked forward to anything very definite, though vaguely he had hoped for something better.

As his eyes fell upon the twinkling, yellow lights of the village his thoughts came back to Flaxen and to the letter which he expected to receive from her. He quickened his steps, though his feet were sore and his limbs stiff and lame.

The one little street presented its usual Saturday-night appearance. Teams were hitched to the narrow plank walk before the battlemented wooden stores. Men stood here and there in listless knots, smoking, talking of the weather and of seeding, while their wives, surrounded by shy children, traded within. BeingSaturday night, the saloons were full of men, and shouts and the clink of beer-mugs could be heard at intervals. But the larger crowd was gathered at the post-office: uncouth farmers of all nationalities, clerks, land-sharks, lawyers, and giggling girls in couples, who took delight in mingling with the crowd.

Judge Sid Balser was over from Boomtown, and was talking expansively to a crowd of "leading citizens" about a scheme to establish a horse-car line between Boomtown and Belleplain.

Colonel Arran, of the BelleplainArgus, in another corner, not ten feet away, was saying that the judge was "a scoundrel, a blow-hard, and would down his best lover for a pewter cent," to all of which the placid judge was accustomed and gave no heed.

Bert paid no attention to the colonel or to the judge, or to any of this buzzing. "They are just talking to hear themselves make a noise, anyway. They talk about building up the country—they who are a rope and a grindstone around thenecks of the rest of us, who do the work."

When Gearheart reached his box he found a large, square letter in it, and looking at it saw that it was from Flaxen directed to Anson. "Her picture, probably," he said as he held it up. As he was pushing rapidly out he heard a half-drunken fellow say, in what he thought was an inaudible tone:

"There's Gearheart. Wonder what's become of his little Norsk."

Gearheart turned, and pushing through the crowd, thrust his eyes into the face of the speaker with a glare that paralysed the poor fool.

"What's become o' your sense?" he snarled, and his voice had in it a carnivorous note.

With this warning he turned contemptuously and passed out, leaving the discomfited rowdy to settle accounts with his friends. But there was a low note in the ruffian's voice, an insinuating inflection, which stayed with him all along the way home, like a bad taste in the mouth.He saw by the aid of a number of these side-lights of late that Flaxen never could come back to them in the old relation; but how could she come back?

Gearheart stopped and gazed thoughtfully upward. She must come back as the wife of Ans or himself. "Pooh! she is only a child," he said, snapping his finger and walking on. But the insistence remained. "She is not a child—she is a maiden, soon to be a woman; she has no relatives, no home to go to but ours after her two or three years of schooling are over. It must still be her home; no breath of scandal shall touch her if I can prevent it; and after her two years are up"—after a long, motionless reverie he strode forward—"she shall choose between us."

There had grown up between the two friends of late a constraint, or, to be more exact, Gearheart had held himself in before his friend, had not discussed these problems with him at all. "Ans is just like a boy," he had said to himself; "he don't seem to understand the case, and Idon't know as it's my duty to enlighten him; he either feels very sure about her, or he has not understood the situation."

He was thinking this now as he strode across the spongy sod toward the lighted windows of the shanty. The air was damp and chill, for the ice was not yet out of the ponds or swamps of tall grasses. An occasional prairie-cock sent forth a muffled, drowsy "boom"; low-hung flights of geese, gabbling anxiously, or the less-orderly ducks, with hissing wings, swept by overhead, darkly limned against the stars. There was a strange charm in the raw air. The weary man almost forgot his pain as he drew deep breathings of the night.

It was significant of the restraint that had grown up between him and Anson that he held the letter from Flaxen unopened in his hand simply because it was directed to his friend. He knew that it was as much to him as to Anson, and yet, feeling as he had of late, he would not open it, for he would have been angry if Anson had opened one directed tohim. He simply judged Anson by himself.

The giant was asleep when he entered. His great, shaggy head lay beside the lamp on his crossed arms. Bert laid the letter down beside him and shook him.

"Hello! got back, hey?" the sleeper said, rousing up sluggishly. "Anything?" Then he caught sight of the letter. "Oh, bless her little heart! Wonder what it is? Picture, bet my hat!" Here he opened it.

"Gee whittiker, thunder and turf, gosh-all—Friday!—look a-there! Ain't she growed!" he yelled, holding the picture by the corner and moving it into all sorts of positions. "That's my little girl—our Flaxen; she can't grow so purty but what I'd know her. See that hair done up on the top of her head! Look at that dress, an' the thingumajigs around her neck! Oh, she's gittin' there, Smith, hey?"

"She's changing pretty fast," said Bert listlessly.

"Changin' fast! Say, ol' man, what's the matter with you? Are y' sick?"

"I'm played out, that's all."

"Darn my skin! I should think y' would be, draggin' all day, an' then walkin' all o' four mile to the post-office. Jest lay down on the bed there, ol' boy, while I read the letter to yeh. Say, ol' man, don't you git up in the mornin' till you please. I'll look after the breakfast," insisted Anson, struck with remorse by the expression on Bert's face. "But here's the letter. Short an' sweet."

Dear Boys[Bless the little fist that wrote that!]. I send my picture. I think it is a nice one. The girls say it flatters me, but Will says it don't [What the devil do we care what Will says?]—I guess it does, don't you? I wish I had a picture of you both; I want to show the girls how handsome you are [she means me, of course. No, confound it] how handsome you are both of you. I wish you would send me your pictures both of you. I ain't got much to say. I will write again soon.Elga.

Elga.

Bert looked at the picture over Anson's shoulder, but did not seem to pay much attention to it.

"Wal, I'll go out an' shut the barn door. Nights git cold after the sun goes down. You needn't peel the 'taters to-night. We'll bake 'em, brussels an' all, to-morrow mornin'."

When Anson had gone, Bert snatched up the picture with great eagerness and gazed upon it with a steady, devouring glance. How womanly she looked with her hair done up so, and the broad, fair face and full bosom.

He heard Anson returning from the barn, and hastily laid the picture down, and when Anson entered was apparently dropping off to sleep.

CHAPTER X.

FLAXEN COMES HOME ON A VACATION.

It was in June, just before the ending of the school, that Flaxen first began to write about delaying her return. Anson was wofully disappointed. He had said all along that she would make tracks for home just as soon as school was out, and he had calculated just when she would arrive; and on the second day after the close of school for the summer he drove down to the train to meet her. She did not come, but he got a letter which said that one of her friends wanted her to stay two weeks with her, until after the Fourth of July.

"She's an awful nice girl, and we will have a grand time; she has a rich father and a piano and a pony and a buggy. It will just be grand."

"I don't blame her none," sighed Anson to Bert. "I don't want her to come away while she's enjoyin' herself. It'll be a big change for her to come back an' cook f'r us old mossbacks after bein' at school an' in good company all these months."

He was plainly disturbed. Her vacation was going to be all too short at the best, and he was so hungry for the sight of her! Still, he could not blame her for staying, under the circumstances; as he told Bert, his feelings did not count. He just wanted her to get all she could out of life; "there ain't much, anyway, for us poor devils, but what little there is we want her to have."

The Fourth of July was the limit of her stay, and on the sixth, seventh, and eighth Anson drove regularly to the evening train to meet her.

On the third day another letter came, saying that she would reach home the next Monday. With this Anson rode home in triumph. During the next few days he went to the barber's and had his greatbeard shaved off. "Made me look so old," he explained, seeing Bert's wild start of surprise. "I've be'n carryin' that mop o' hair round so long I'd kind o' got into the notion o' bein' old myself. Got a kind o' crick in the back, y' know. But I ain't; I ain't ten years older'n you be."

And he was not. His long blond moustache, shaved beard, and clipped hair made a new man of him, and a very handsome man, too, in a large way. He was curiously embarrassed by Bert's prolonged scrutiny, and said jocosely:

"We've got to brace up a little now. Company boarders comin', young lady from St. Peter's Seminary, city airs an' all that sort o' thing. Don't you let me see you eatin' pie with y'r knife. I'll break the shins of any man that feeds himself with anythin' 'cept the silver-plated forks I've bought."

Flaxen had been gone almost a year, and a year counts for much at her age. Besides, Anson had exaggerated ideas of the amount of learning she could absorb in a year at a boarding-seminary, andhe had also a very vague idea of what "society" was in St. Peter, although he seemed suddenly to awake to the necessity of "bracing up" a little and getting things generally into shape. He bought a new suit of clothes and a second-hand two-seated carriage, notwithstanding the sarcastic reflection of his partner, who was making his own silent comment upon this thing.

"The paternal business isauskerspeelt," he said to himself. "Ans is goin' in on shape now. Well, it's all right; nobody's business but ours. Let her go, Smith; but they won't be no talk in this neighbourhood when they get hold of what's goin' on—oh, no!" He smiled grimly. "We can stand it, I guess; but it'll be hard on her. Ans is a little too previous. It's too soon to spring this trap on the poor little thing."

They stood side by side on the platform the next Monday when the train rolled into the station at Boomtown, panting with fatigue from its long run. Flaxen caught sight of Bert first as she sprang offthe train, and running to him, kissed him without much embarrassment. Then she looked around, saying:

"Where's ol' pap? Didn't he—"

"Why, Flaxen, don't ye know me?" he cried out at her elbow.

She knew his voice, but his shaven face, so much more youthful, was so strange that she knew him only by his eyes laughing down into hers. Nevertheless she kissed him doubtfully.

"Oh, what've you done? You've shaved off your whiskers; you don't look a bit natural. I—"

She was embarrassed, almost frightened, at the change in him. He "looked so queer"; his fair, untroubled, smiling face and blond moustache made him look younger than Bert.

"Nev' mind that! She'll grow again if y' like it better. Get int' this new buggy—it's ours. They ain't no flies on us to-day; not many," said Ans in high glee, elaborately assisting her to the carriage, not appreciating the full meaning of the situation.

As they rode home he was extravagantly gay. He sat beside her, and she drove, wild with delight at the prairie, the wheat, the gulls, everything.

"Ain't no dust on our clo'es," said Ans, coughing, winking at Bert, and brushing off with an elaborately finical gesture an imaginary fleck from his knee and elbow. "Ain't we togged out? I guess nobody said 'boo' to us down to St. Peter, eh?"

"You like my clo'es?" said Flaxen, with charming directness.

"You bet! They're scrumptious."

"Well, they ought to be; they're my best, except my white dress. I thought you'd like 'em; I wore 'em a-purpose."

"Like 'em? They're—you're jest as purty as a red lily er a wild rose in the wheat—ahem! Ain't she, Bert, ol' boy? We're jest about starvin' to death, we are."

"I knew you'd be. What'll I stir up for supper? Biscuits?"

"Um, um! Say, what y' s'pose I've got to go with 'em?"

"Honey."

"Oh, you're too sharp," wailed Ans,while Flaxen went off into a peal of laughter. "Say, Bert's be'n in thedamnedest—excuse me—plaguedest temper fer the last two munce as you ever did see."

While this chatter was going on Bert sat silent and unsmiling on the back seat. He was absorbed in seeing the exquisite colour that played in her cheek and the equally charming curves of her figure. She was well dressed and was wonderfully mature. He was saying to himself: "Ans ain't got no more judgment than a boy. We can't keep that girl here. More'n that, the girl never'll be contented again, unless—" He did not allow himself to go farther. He dared not even think farther.

They had a merry time that night, quite like old times. The biscuits were light and flaky, the honey was delightsome, and the milk and butter (procured specially) were fresh. They shouted in laughter as Flaxen insisted on their eating potatoes with a fork, and opposed the use of the knife in scooping up the honey from their plates! Even the saturnineBert forgot his gloom and laughed too, as Ans laboriously dipped his honey with a fork, and, finally growing desperate, split a biscuit in half, and in the good old boyish way sopped it in the honey.

"There, that's the Christian way of doing things!" he exulted, while Flaxen laughed. How bright she was—how strange she acted! There were moments when she embarrassed them by some new womanly grace or accomplishment, some new air which she had caught from her companions or teachers at school. It was truly amazing how much she had absorbed outside of her regular studies. She indeed was no longer a girl; she was a young woman, and to them a beautiful one.

Not a day passed without some added surprise which made Anson exult and say, "She's gettin' her money's worth down there—no two ways about that."

CHAPTER XI.

FLAXEN GROWS RESTLESS.

But as the excitement of getting back died out, poor Flaxen grew restless, moody, and unaccountable. Before, she had always been the same cheery, frank, boyish creature. As Bert said, "You know where to find her." Now she was full of strange tempers and moods. She would work most furiously for a time, and then suddenly fall dreaming, looking away out on the shimmering plain toward the east.

At Bert's instigation, a middle-aged widow had been hired, at a fabulous price, to come and do the most of the work for them, thus releasing Flaxen from the weight of the hard work, which perhaps was all the worse for her. Hard work might have prevented the unbearable, sleepless pain within. She hatedthe slatternly Mrs. Green at once for her meddling with her affairs, though the good woman meant no offence. She was jocose in the broad way of middle-aged persons, to whom a love-affair is legitimate food for raillery.

But Gearheart's keen eye was on Flaxen as well. He saw how eagerly she watched for the mail on Tuesdays and Fridays, and how she sought a quiet place at once in order to read and dream over her letters. She was restless a day or two before a certain letter came, with an eager, excited, expectant air. Then, after reading it, she was absent-minded, flighty in conversation, and at last listlessly uneasy, moving slowly about from one thing to another, in a kind of restless inability to take continued interest in anything.

All this, if it came to the attention of Anson at all, was laid to the schooling the girl had had.

"Of course it'll seem a little slow to you, Flaxie, but harvestin' is comin' on soon, an' then things'll be a little more lively."

But Gearheart was not so slow-witted. He had had sisters and girl cousins, and knew "the symptoms," as Mrs. Green would have put it. He noticed that when Flaxen read her letters to them there was one which she carefully omitted. He knew that this was the letter which meant the most to her. He saw how those letters affected her, and thought he had divined in what way.

One day when Flaxen, after reading her letters, sprang up and ran into her bedroom, her eyes filled with sudden tears, Gearheart crooked his finger at Ans, and they went out to the barn together.

It was nearly one o'clock on an intolerable day peculiar to the Dakota plain. A frightfully hot, withering, and powerful wind was abroad. The thermometer stood nearly a hundred in the shade, and the wind, so far from being a relief, was suffocating because of its heat and the dust it swept along with it.

The heavy-headed grain and russet grass writhed and swirled as if in agony, and dashed high in waves of green andyellow. The corn-leaves had rolled up into long cords like the lashes of a whip, and beat themselves into tatters on the dry, smooth spot their blows had made beneath them; they seemed ready to turn to flame in the pitiless, furnace-like blast. Everywhere in the air was a silver-white, impalpable mist, which gave to the cloudless sky a whitish cast. The glittering gulls were the only living things that did not move listlessly and did not long for rain. They soared and swooped, exulting in the sounding wind; now throwing themselves upon it, like a swimmer, then darting upward with miraculous ease, to dip again into the shining, hissing, tumultuous waves of the grass.

Along the roads prodigious trains of dust rose hundreds of feet in the air, and drove like vast caravans with the wind. So powerful was the blast that men hesitated about going out with carriages, and everybody watched feverishly, expecting to see fire break out on the prairie and sweep everything before it. Work in the fields had stopped long before dinner, andthe farmers waited, praying or cursing, for the wheat was just at the right point to be blighted.

As the two men went out to the shed side by side, they looked out on the withering wheat-stalks and corn-leaves with gloomy eyes.

"Another day like this, an' they won't be wheat enough in this whole county to make a cake," said Anson, with a calm intonation, which after all betrayed the anxiety he felt. They sat down in the wagon-shed near the horses' mangers. They listened to the roar of the wind and the pleasant sound of the horses eating their hay, a good while before either of them spoke again. Finally Bert said sullenly:

"We can't put up hay such a day as this. You couldn't haul it home under lock an' key while this infernal wind is blowin'. It's gittin' worse, if anythin'."

Anson said nothing, but waited to hear what Bert had brought him out here for. Bert speared away with his knife at a strip of board. Anson sat on a wagon-tongue,his elbows on his knees, looking intently at the grave face of his companion. The horses ground cheerily at the hay.

"Ans, we've got to send Flaxen back to St. Peter; she's so homesick she don't know what to do."

Ans' eyes fell.

"I know it. I've be'n hopin' she'd git over that, but it's purty tough on her, after bein' with the young folks in the city f'r a year, to come back here on a farm." He did not finish for a moment. "But she can't stand it. I'd looked ahead to havin' her here till September, but I can't stand it to see her cryin' like she did to-day. We've got to give up the idee o' her livin' here. I don't see any other way but to sell out an' go back East somewhere."

Bert saw that Anson was still ignorant of the real state of affairs, but thought he would say nothing for the present.

"Yes: that's the best thing we can do. We'll send her right back, an' take our chances on the crops. We can git enough to live on an' keep her at school, I guess."

They sat silent for a long time, while the wind tore round the shed, Bert spearing at the stick, and Anson watching the hens as they vainly tried to navigate in the wind. Finally Anson spoke:

"The fact is, Bert, this ain't no place f'r a woman, anyway—such a woman as Flaxen's gittin' to be. They ain't nothin' goin' on, nothin' to see 'r hear. You can't expect a girl to be contented with this country after she's seen any other. No trees; no flowers; jest a lot o' little shanties full o' flies."

"I knew all that, Ans, a year ago. I knew she'd never come back here, but I jest said it's the thing to do—give her a chance, if we don't have a cent; now let's go back to the house an' tell her she needn't stay here if she don't want to."

"Wha' d' ye s'pose was in that letter?"

"Couldn't say. Some girl's description of a pic-nic er somethin'." Bert was not yet ready to tell what he knew. When they returned to the house the girl was still invisible, in her room. Mrs. Green was busy clearing up the dinner-dishes.

"I don't know's I ever see such a wind back to Michigan. Seems as if it 'u'd blow the hair off y'r head."

"Oh, this ain't nothin'. This is a gentle zephyr. Wait till y' see a wind."

"Wal, I hope to goodness I won't never see a wind. Zephyrs is all I can mortally stand."

Anson went through the little sitting-room and knocked on Flaxen's door.

"Flaxie, we want to talk to yeh." There was no answer, and he came back and sat down. Bert pointed to the letter which Flaxen had flung down on the table. The giant took it, folded it up, and called, "Here's y'r letter, babe."

The door opened a little, and a faint, tearful voice said:

"Read it, if ye want to, boys." Then the door closed tightly again, and they heard her fling herself on the bed. Anson handed the letter to Bert, who read it in a steady voice.

Dear Darling: I have good news to tell you. My uncle was out from Wisconsin to see me, and he was pleased with what I haddone, and he bought out Mr. Ford, and gave me the whole half interest. I'm to pay him back when I please. Ain't that glorious? Now we can get married right off, can't we, darling? So you just show this letter to your father, and tell him how things stand. I've got a good business. The drug store is worth $1,200 a year—my half—but knock off fifty per cent and we could live nicely. Don't you think so? I want to see you so bad, and talk things over. If you can't come back soon, I will come on. Write soon.Yours till death,Will.

Yours till death,

Will.

From the first word Anson winced, grew perplexed, then suffered. His head drooped forward on his hands, his elbows rested on his vast, spread knees. He drew his breath with a long, grieving gasp. Bert read on steadily to the end, then glanced at his companion with a deep frown darkening his face; but he was not taken by surprise. He had not had paternal affection change to the passion of a lover only to have it swept down like a half-opened flower. For the first time in his life Anson writhed in mental agony. He saw it all. It meant eternalseparation. It meant a long ache in his heart which time could scarcely deaden into a tolerable pain.

Gearheart rose and went out, unwilling to witness the agony of his friend and desiring himself to be alone. Anson sat motionless, with his hands covering his wet eyes, going over the past and trying to figure the future.

He began in that storm: felt again the little form and face of the wailing child; thought of the frightful struggle against the wind and snow; of the touch of the little hands and feet; of her pretty prattle and gleeful laughter; then of her helpful and oddly-womanish ways as she grew older; of the fresh, clear voice calling him "pap" and ordering him about with a roguish air; of her beauty now, when for the first time he had begun to hope that she might be something dearer to him.

How could he live without her? She had grown to be a part of him. He had long ceased to think of the future without her. As he sat so, the bedroom dooropened, and Flaxen's tearful face looked out at him. He did not seem to hear, and she stole up to him and, putting her arm around his neck, laid her cheek on his head—a dear, familiar, childish gesture, used when she wished to propitiate him. He roused himself and put his arm about her waist, tried to speak, and finally said in a sorry attempt at humor, wofully belied by the tears on his face and the choking in his throat:

"You tell that feller—if he wants ye, to jest come an'—git ye—that's all!"

CHAPTER XII.

FLAXEN SAYS GOOD-BYE.

Elga went back to her friends, the Holts, in the course of a week. It hurt Anson terribly to see how eager she was to get away, and he grew a little bitter—a quality of temper Bert did not know he possessed.

"What's that little whipper-snapper ever done for her, that she should leave us in the shade f'r him—f'rget us an' all we've done f'r her, an' climb out an' leave us just at his wink? It beats me, but it's all right. I don't blame her if she feels so—only it does seem queer, now don't it?"

"It does, that's a fact—'specially the idea of leaving us for a thing like that."

After arriving at a complete understandingof the matter, they said no more about it, but went to work to make everything as pleasant for Flaxen as possible. Again they rode down to the station with her, down past the wide, level fields of grain which the blazing sun had ripened prematurely. Again they parted from her at the train, but this time the girl was eager to go; and yet a peculiar feeling of sadness was mixed with her eagerness to be off.

"Now, boys, you'll come down just as soon as you can this fall, won't you?" she said, tearfully, as they stood in the aisle of the car. "I wish't you'd sell out an' come back there an' live—I want you to."

"Well, we'll try," Anson said, speaking with difficulty, the lump in his throat was so big and so dry.

They rode home in silence again, but this time there was something darker and more sullen in their thoughts.

"Well, Ans, that settles it. We're orphaned again, sure." He tried to give a little touch of jocoseness to it, but failed miserably.

"Yes," Anson sighed deeply, "we'll haf t' stand it, I s'pose, but it's tough."

It was hard, but it would have been harder had not the rush and push of the harvest come upon them just as it did. They never spoke of the matter again, except as a matter settled, till they received a letter from the young people asking their consent to an early marriage.

They both read the letter, and then Anson said, without raising his eyes:

"Well, what d' you think of it?"

"Oh, we might as well say yes," replied Bert irritably.

"But she's so young."

"She seems so to us, but my mother was married at fifteen. If she's going to leave us, why, the sooner she has a home the better, I s'pose."

"I s'pose you're right. But I'd rather have 'em put it off a year."

"Oh, a year wouldn't make any difference, and besides, you can't stop the thing now. She's out of our hands."

They wrote giving their consent, and the wedding was fixed for late Septemberto enable the fall's work to be put out of the way. For Elga's sake they bought new suits and hats before starting on their trip, though the harvest hardly justified any extravagance.

Under other circumstances they would have rejoiced over the trip, for it was carrying them back to the gleam of leaf-dappled streams and waving trees and deep, cool forests. It made their nostrils dilate with pleasure as they whirled past fern-filled ravines, out of which the rivulets stole with stealthy circuits under mossy rocks. They were both forest-born, and it was like getting back home out of a strange desert country to come back into "the States."

St. Peter was a small town, situated on the steep bank of a broad river—that is to say, the business street was there, but the seminary and the residence part of the town was on a high and beautiful plateau. The country was well diversified with wood and prairie.

Kendall and Elga met them at the station. Elga with flushed face was searchingthe car-windows with eager glance, when Anson appeared on the platform. The quick rush she made for him drove out all his bitterness. It made him understand that she loved him as if he were her father.

She greeted Bert with a little less warmth, and chattering with joy she led the way up the street with Anson. She had a hundred things to tell him, and he listened in a daze. She seemed so different from his Flaxen. Bert walked behind with Kendall, who did not impress him favourably.

He was a harmless little creature enough—small, a little inclined to bow-legs, and dudish in manner and dress. His hair was smoothed till it shone like ebony, and he wore the latest designs in standing collars, high on his slim neck. His hands were beautifully small and white and held several rings. He had the manners of a dry-goods clerk.

"He can't abuse her, that's one good thing about the whelp," thought Bert as he crushed the young bridegroom's handin his brown palm, just to see him cringe.

As for Kendall, he was a little afraid of these big fellows, so sullen and strong; and he tried his best to please them, chirping away brightly upon all kinds of things, ending up by telling them his business plans.

"We're one o' the best cities on the river. Couldn't be a better place fer a business stand, don't you see? And we're getting to the front with our wholesale department (of course—ha! ha! my wife's father ought to know how I'm getting on), so you're welcome to look over my books. Our trade is a cash trade so far as our retail trade goes, and we're mighty careful who gets tick from us on the wholesale trade. We're developing a great business."

Bert and Anson made no replies to his chatter, and he pattered along by Anson's side like a small boy, showing them the town and its beauties. Anson inwardly despised the little man, but held it a sort of treason to think so, and tried to look upon him kindly.

The wedding took place in the house of the Holt family, and was in charge of Miss Holt, Elga's teacher. Kendall's parents could not be present, which was a great disappointment to Elga, but Will was secretly glad of it. His father was a very crusty and brutal old fellow, and he would not have fitted in smoothly beside Bert and Anson, who were as uncomfortable as men could well be. Both wished to avoid it, but dared not object.

Anson stood bravely through the ceremony as the father of the bride, and bore himself with his usual massive, rude dignity. But he inwardly winced as he saw Elga, looking very stately and beautiful in her bride's veil, towering half a head above the sleek-haired little clerk. Not a few of the company smiled at the contrast, but she had no other feeling than perfect love and happiness.

When the ceremony was over and Anson looked around for Bert, he was gone. He couldn't stand the pressure of the crowd and the whispered comments, and had slipped away early in the evening.

Among the presents which were laid on the table in the dining-room was a long envelope addressed to Mrs. Will Kendall. It contained a deed for a house and lot in one of the most desirable parts of the suburbs. It was from Gearheart, but there was no other written word. This gift meant the sale of his claim in Dakota.

When Anson got back to the hotel that night, wondering and alarmed at his partner's absence, he found a letter from him. It was savage and hopeless.

This climate is getting too frigid for my lungs. I'm going to emigrate to California. I made a mistake: I ought to have gone in for stand-up collars, shiny hair, and bow-legs. You'd better skip back to Dakota and sell your claim. Keep my share of the stock and tools; it ain't worth bothering about. Don't try to live there alone, old man. If you can't sell, marry. Don't let that girl break you all up too. We are all fools, but some can get over it quicker than others.If that little bow-legged thing gets under your feet or abuses her, jest get your toe under him and hoist him over into the alley.Good-bye and good luck, old man.Bert.

If that little bow-legged thing gets under your feet or abuses her, jest get your toe under him and hoist him over into the alley.

Good-bye and good luck, old man.

Bert.

And the next day the doubly bereaved man started on his lonely journey back to the Dakota claim, back to an empty house, with a gnawing pain in his heart and a constriction like an iron band about his throat; back to his broad fields to plod to and fro alone.

As he began to realize it all and to think how terrible was this loss, he laid his head down on the car-seat before him and cried. His first great trial had come to him, and meeting it like a man, he must now weep like a woman.

Back to Index Next