CHAPTER V.
FLAXEN BECOMES INDISPENSABLE TO THE TWO OLD BACHELORS.
They never found any living relative, and only late in the spring was the fate of the poor father revealed. He and his cattle were found side by side in a deep swale, where they had foundered in the night and tempest.
As for little Flaxen, she soon recovered her cheerfulness, with the buoyancy natural to childhood, and learned to prattle in broken English very fast. She developed a sturdy self-reliance that was surprising in one so young, and long before spring came was indispensable to the two "old baches."
"Now, Bert," said Ans one day, "I don't wan' to hear you talk in that slipshod way any longer before Flaxen. Youknow better; you've had more chance than I have—be'n to school more. They ain't no excuse for you, not an ioty. Now, I'm goin' to say to her, 'Never mind how I talk, but talk like Bert does.'"
"Oh, say, now, look here, Ans, I can't stand the strain. Suppose she'd hear me swearin' at ol' Barney or the stove?"
"That's jest it. You ain't goin' to swear," decided Anson; and after that Bert took the education of the little waif in hand, for he was a man of good education; his use of dialect and slang sprang mainly from carelessness.
But all the little fatherly duties and discipline fell to Anson, and much perplexed he often got. For instance, when he bought her an outfit of American clothing at the store they were strange to her and to him, and the situation was decidedly embarrassing when they came to try them.
"Now, Flaxie, I guess this thing goes on this side before, so's you can button it. If it went on so, youcouldn'treach around to button it, don't you see? I guessyou'd better try it so. An' this thing, I judge, is a shirt, an' goes on under that other thing, which I reckon is called a shimmy. Say, Bert, shouldn't you call that a shirt?" holding up a garment.
"W-e-l-l, yes" (after a close scrutiny). "Yes: I should."
"And this a shimmy?"
"Well, now, you've got me, Ans. It seems to me I've heard the women folks home talk about shimmies, but they were always kind o' private about it, so I don't think I can help you out. That little thing goes underneath, sure enough."
"All right, here goes, Flax; if it should turn out to be hind side before, no matter."
Then again little Flaxen would want to wear her best dress on week-days, and Ans was unable to explain. Here again Bert came to the rescue.
"Git her one dress fer ev'ry day in the week, an' make her wear 'em in rotation. Hang 'em up an' put a tag on each one—Sunday, Monday, an' so on."
"Good idea."
And it was done. But the embarrassments of attending upon the child soon passed away; she quickly grew independent of such help, dressed herself, and combed her own hair, though Anson enjoyed doing it himself when he could find time, and she helped out not a little about the house. She seemed to have forgotten her old life, awakening as she had from almost deathly torpor into a new home—almost a new world—where a strange language was spoken, where no woman was, and where no mention of her mother, father, or native land was ever made before her. The little waif was at first utterly bewildered, then reconciled, and by the time spring came over the prairie was almost happy in the touching way of a child deprived of childish things.
Oh, how sweet spring seemed to those snow-weary people! Day after day the sun crept higher up in the sky; day after day the snow gave way a little on the swells, and streams of water began to trickle down under the huge banks of snow, filling the ravines; and then at lastcame a day when a strange, warm wind blew from the northwest. Soft and sweet and sensuous it was, as if it swept some tropic bay filled with a thousand isles—a wind like a vast warm breath blown upon the land. Under its touch the snow did not melt; it vanished. It fled in a single day from the plain to the gullies. Another day, and the gullies were rivers.
It was the "chinook," which old Lambert, the trapper and surveyor, said came from the Pacific Ocean.
The second morning after the chinook began to blow, Anson sprang to his feet from his bunk, and standing erect in the early morning light, yelled: "Hear that?"
"What is it?" asked Bert.
"There! Hear it?" Anson smiled, holding up his hand joyfully as a mellow "Boom—boom—boom" broke through the silent air. "Prairie-chickens! Hurrah! Spring has come! That breaks the back o' winter short off."
"Hurrah! de 'pring ees come!" cried little Flaxen, gleefully clapping her hands in imitation.
No man can know what a warm breeze and the note of a bird can mean to him till he is released, as these men were released, from the bondage of a horrible winter. Perhaps still more moving was the thought that with the spring the loneliness of the prairie would be broken, never again to be so dread and drear; for with the coming of spring came the tide of land-seekers pouring in: teams scurried here and there on the wide prairie, carrying surveyors, land agents, and settlers. At Summit trains came rumbling in by the first of April, emptying thousands of men, women, and children upon the sod, together with cattle, machinery, and household articles, to lie there roofed only by the blue sky. Summit, from being a half-buried store and a blacksmith's shop, bloomed out into a town with saloons, lumber-yards, hotels, and restaurants; the sound of hammer and anvil was incessant, and trains clanged and whistled night and day.
Day after day the settlers got their wagons together and loaded up, and thenmoved down the slope into the fair valley of the sleepy James. Mrs. Cap Burdon did a rushing business as a hotel-keeper, while Cap sold hay and oats at rates which made the land-seekers gasp.
"I'm not out here f'r my health," was all the explanation he ever made.
Soon all around the little shanty of Anson and Bert other shanties were built and filled with young, hopeful, buoyant souls. The railway surveyors came through, locating a town about three and another about twelve miles away, and straightway the bitter rivalry between Boomtown and Belleplain began. Belleplain being their town, Bert and Anson swore by Belleplain, and correspondingly derided the claims of Boomtown.
With the coming of spring began the fiercest toil of the pioneers—breaking the sod, building, harvesting, ploughing; then the winter again, though not so hard to bear; then the same round of work again. So the land was settled, the sod was turned over; sod shanties gave way to little frame houses; the tide ofland-seekers passed on, the boom burst, but the real workers, like Wood and Gearheart, went patiently, steadily on, founding a great State.
CHAPTER VI.
A QUESTION OF DRESS.
One morning eight years later Flaxen left the home of Gearheart and Wood with old Doll and the buggy, bound for Belleplain after groceries for harvest. She drove with a dash, her hat on the back of her head. She was seemingly intent on getting all there was possible out of a chew of kerosene gum, which she had resolved to throw away upon entering town, intending to get a new supply.
She had thriven on Western air and gum, and though hardly more than fourteen years of age, her bust and limbs revealed the grace of approaching womanhood, however childish her short dress and braided hair might still show her to be. Her face was large and decidedly of Scandinavian type, fair in spite ofwind and sun, and broad at the cheekbones. Her eyes were as blue and clear as winter ice.
As she rode along she sang as well as she could without neglecting the gum, sitting at one end of the seat like a man, the reins held carelessly in her left hand, notwithstanding the swift gait of the horse, who always knew when Flaxen was driving. She met a friend on the road, and said, "Hello!" pulling up her horse with one strong hand.
"Can't stop," she explained; "got to go over to the city to get some groceries for harvest. Goin' to the sociable to-morrow?"
"You bet," replied the friend, "You?"
"I d'know; mebbe, if the boys'll go. Ta-ta; see ye later." And away she spun.
Belleplain had not thriven, or, to be more exact, it had had a rise and fall; and as the rise had been considerable, so the fall was something worth chronicling. It was now a collection of wooden buildings, mostly empty, graying under the storms and suns of pitiless winters andsummers, and now, just in mid-summer, surrounded by splendid troops and phalanxes of gorgeous sunflowers, whose brown crowns, gold-dusted, looked ever toward the sun as it swung through the wide arch of cloudless sky. The signs of the empty buildings still remained, and one might still read the melancholy decline from splendours of the past in "emporiums," "palace drug stores," and "mansion-houses."
As Flaxen would have said, "Belleplain's boom had bu'sted." Her glory had gone with the C., B. and Q., which formed the junction at Boomtown and left the luckless citizens of Belleplain "high and dry" on the prairie, with nothing but a "spur" to travel on. However, a few stores yet remained in the midst of desolation.
After making her other purchases, Flaxen entered the "red-front drug store" to secure the special brand of gum which seemed most delectable and to buy a couple of cigars for the "boys."
The clerk, who was lately from theEast, and wore his moustache curled upward like the whiskers of a cat, was "gassing" with another young man, who sat in a chair with his heels on the counter.
"Well, my dear, what can I do for you to-day?" he said, winking at the loafer, as if to say, "Now watch me."
"I want some gum."
"What kind, darling?" he asked, encouraged by the fellow in the chair.
"I ain't your darling.—Kerosene, shoofly, an' ten cents' worth."
"Say, Jack," drawled the other fellow, "git onto the ankles! Say, sissy, you picked your dress too soon. She's goin' to be a daisy, first you know. Ain't y', honey?" he said, leaning over and pinching her arm.
"Let me alone, you great, mean thing! I'll tell ol' pap on you, see if I don't," cried Flaxen, her eyes filling with angry tears. And as they proceeded to other and bolder remarks she rushed out, feeling vaguely the degradation of being so spoken to and so touched. It seemed tobecome more atrocious the more she thought upon it.
When she reached home there were still signs of tears on her face, and when Anson came out to help her alight, and noticing it asked, "What's the matter?" she burst out afresh, crying, and talking incoherently. Anson was astonished.
"Why, what's the matter, Flaxie? Can't you tell ol' pap? Are ye sick?"
She shook her head, and rushed past him into the house and into her bedroom, like a little cyclone of wrath. Ans slowly followed her, much perplexed. She was lying face downward on the bed, sobbing.
"What's the matter, little one? Can't y' tell ol' pap? Have the girls be'n makin' fun o' yeh again?"
She shook her head.
"Have the boys be'n botherin' yeh?" No reply. "Who was it?" Still silence. He was getting stern now. "Tell me right now."
"Jack Reeves—an'—an' another feller."
"Wha' d' they do?" Silence. "Tell me."
"They—pinched me, an'—an'—talked mean to me," she replied, breaking down again with the memory of the insult.
Anson began to understand.
"Wal, there! You dry y'r eyes, Flaxie, an' go an' git supper; they won't do it again—notthisharvest," he added grimly as he marched to the door to enter the buggy.
Bert, coming along from the barn and seeing Anson about to drive away, asked where he was going. Anson tried to look indifferent.
"Oh, I've got a little business to transact with Reeves and some other smart Aleck downtown."
"What's up? What have they be'n doing?" asked Gearheart, reading trouble in the eyes of his friend.
"Well, they have be'n a little too fresh with Flaxen to-day, an' need a lesson."
"They're equal to it. Say, Anson, let me go," laying his hand on the dasher, ready to leap in.
"No: you're too brash. You wouldn't know when to quit. No: you stay righthere. Don't say anything to Flaxen about it; if she wants to know where I'm gone, tell her I found I was out o' nails."
As Anson drove along swiftly he was in a savage mood and thinking deeply. Two or three times of late some of his friends had touched rather freely upon the fact that Flaxen was becoming a woman. "Girls ripen early out in this climate," one old chap had said, "and your little Norsk there is likely to leave you one of these days." He felt now that something deliberately and inexpressibly offensive had been said and done to his little girl. He didn't want to know just what it was, but just who did it; that was all. It was time to make a protest.
Hitching his horse to a ring in the sidewalk upon arrival, he walked into the drug store, which was also the post-office. Young Reeves was inside the post-office corner giving out the mail, and Anson sauntered about the store waiting his chance.
He was a dangerous-looking man just now. Ordinarily his vast frame, huge,grizzled beard, and stern, steady eyes would quell a panther; but now as he leaned against the counter a shrewd observer would have said, "Lookout for him; he's dangerous."
His gray shirt, loose at the throat, showed a neck that resembled the spreading base of an oak tree, and his crossed limbs and half-recumbent pose formed a curious opposition to the look in his eyes.
Nobody noticed him specially. Most comers and goers, being occupied with their mail, merely nodded and passed on.
Finally some one called for a cigar, and Reeves, having finished in the post-office department, came jauntily along behind the counter directly to where Anson stood. As he looked casually into the giant's eyes he started back, but too late; one vast hand had clutched him by the collar, and he was jerked over the counter and cuffed from hand to hand, like a mouse in the paws of a cat. Though Ans used his open palm, the punishment was fearful. Blood burst from his victim's nose and mouth; he yelled with fright and pain.
The rest rushed to help.
"Stand back! This is a private affair," said Ans, throwing up a warning hand. They paused; all knew his strength.
"It wasn't me!" screamed Reeves as the punishment increased; "it was Doc Coe."
Coe, his hands full of papers and letters, horrified at what had overtaken Reeves, stood looking on. But now he tried to escape. Flinging the battered, half-senseless Reeves back over the counter, where he lay in a heap, Anson caught Coe by the coat just as he was rushing past him, and duplicated the punishment, ending by kicking him into the street, where he lay stunned and helpless. Ans said then, in a voice that the rest heard, "The next time you insult a girl, you'd better inquire into the qualities of her guardeen."
This little matter attended to, he unhitched his horse from the sidewalk, and refusing to answer any questions, rode off home, outwardly as calm as though he had just been shaking hands.
Supper was about ready when he drove up, and through the open door he could see the white-covered table and could hear the cheerful clatter of dishes. Flaxen was whistling. Eight years of hard work had not done much for these sturdy souls, but they had managed to secure with incredible toil a comfortable little house surrounded with outbuildings. Calves and chickens gave life to the barn-yard, and fields of wheat rippled and ran with swash of heavy-bearded heads and dapple of shadow and sheen.
Flaxen was now the housewife and daughter of these hard-working pioneers, and a cheery and capable one she had become. No one had ever turned up with a better claim to her, and so she had grown up with Ans and Bert, going to school when she could spare the time, but mainly being adviser and associate at the farm.
Ans and Bert had worked hard winter and summer trying to get ahead, but had not succeeded as they had hoped. Crops had failed for three or four years, and money was scarce with them; but theyhad managed to build this small frame house and to get a little stock about them, and this year, with a good crop, would "swing clear," and be able to do something for Flaxen—perhaps send her to Belleplain to school, togged out like a little queen.
When Anson returned to the house after putting out the horse, he found Bert reading the paper in the little sitting-room and Flaxen putting the tea on the stove.
"Wha' d' y' do to him, pap?" laughed she, all her anger gone. Bert came out to listen.
"Oh, nothin' p'tic'lar," answered Ans, flinging his hat at a chicken that made as though to come in, and rolling up his sleeves preparatory to sozzling his face at the sink. "I jest cuffed 'em a little, an' let 'em go."
"Is that all?" said Flaxen, disappointedly, a comical look on her round face.
"Now, don't you worry," put in Bert. "Anson's cuffin' a man is rather severe experience. I saw him cuff a man once; it ain't anythin' to be desired a second time."
They all drew about the table. Flaxen looked very womanly as she sat cutting the bread and pouring the tea. She had always been old in her ways about the house, for she had very early assumed the housewife's duties and cares. Her fresh-coloured face beamed with delight as she watched the hungry men devouring the fried pork, potatoes, and cheese.
"When y' goin' to begin cuttin', boys?" Collectively they were boys to her, but when addressing them separately they were "Bert" and "Pap."
"To-morrow 'r nex' day, I guess," answered Anson, looking out of the open door. "Don't it look fine—all yeller an' green? I tell ye they ain't anything lays over a ripe field o' wheat in my eyes. You jest take it when the sun strikes it right, an' the wind is playin' on it—when it kind o' sloshes around like water—an' the clouds go over it, droppin' shadders down on it, an' a hawk kind o' goes skimmin' over it, divin' into it once in a while—"
He did not finish; it was not necessary.
"Yes, sir!" adjudged Gearheart, after a pause, leaning his elbows on the table and looking out of the door on the far-stretching, sun-glorified plain.
"The harvest kind o' justifies the winter we have out here. That is, when we have a harvest such as this. Fact is, we fellers live six months o' the year lookin' ahead to harvest, an' t'other six months lookin' back to it. Well, this won't buy the woman a dress, Ans. We must get that header set up to-night if we can."
They pushed their chairs back noisily and rose to go out. Flaxen said:
"Say, which o' you boys is goin' to help me churn to-night?"
Anson groaned, while she laughed.
"I don't know, Flax; ask us an easier one."
"We'll attend to that after it gets too dark to work on the machine," added Bert.
"Well, see 't y' do. I can't do it; I've got bread to mix an' a chicken to dress. Say, if you don't begin cuttin' till day after to-morrow, we can go down to thesociable to-morrow night. Last one o' the season."
"I wish it was the last one before the kingdom come," growled Bert as he "stomped" out the door. "They're a bad lot. The idea o' takin' down four dollars' worth o' grub an' then payin' four dollars for the privilege of eatin' half of it! I'll take my chicken here, when I'm hungry."
"Bert ain't partial to sociables, is he, pap?" laughed Flaxen.
"I should hate to have the minister dependin' on Bert for a livin'."
"Sa-ay, pap!"
"Wal, babe?"
"I expect I'll haf t' have a new dress one o' these days."
"Think so?"
"You bet."
"Why, what's the matter with the one y' got on? Ain't no holes in it that I can see," looking at it carefully and turning her around as if she were on a pivot.
"Well, ain't it purty short, pap?" she said suggestively.
"I swear, I don't know but it is," conceded Anson, scratching his head; "I hadn't paid much 'tention to it before. It certainly is a lee-tle too short. Lemme see: ain't no way o' lettin' it down, is they?"
"Nary. She's clean down to the last notch now," replied Flaxen convincingly.
"Couldn't pull through till we thrash?" he continued, still in a tentative manner.
"Could, but don't like to," she answered, laughing again, and showing her white teeth pleasantly.
"I s'pose it'll cost suthin'," he insinuated in a dubious tone.
"Mattie Stuart paid seven dollars fer her'n, pap, an' I—"
"Seven how manys?"
"Dollars, pap, makin' an' everythin'. An' then I ought to have a new hat to go with the dress, an' a new pair o' shoes. All the girls are wearin' white, but I reckon I can git along with a good coloured one that'll do fer winter."
"Wal, all right. I'll fix it—some way," Ans said, turning away only to look backand smile to see her dancing up and down and crying:
"Oh, goody, goody!"
"I'll do it if I haf to borrow money at two per cent a month," said he to Bert, as he explained the case. "Hear her sing! Why, dern it! I'd spend all I've got to keep that child twitterin' like that. Wouldn't you, eh?"
Bert was silent, thinking deeply on a variety of matters suggested by Anson's words. The crickets were singing from out the weeds near by; a lost little wild chicken was whistling in plaintive sweetness down in the barley-field; the flaming light from the half-sunk sun swept along the green and yellow grain, glorifying as with a bath of gold everything it touched.
"I wish that grain hadn't ripened so fast, Ans. It's blightin'."
"Think so?"
"No: I know it. I went out to look at it before supper, an' every one of those spots that look so pretty are just simply burnin' up! But, say, ain't it a little singular that Flaxen should blossom outin a desire for a new dress all at once? Ain't it rather sudden?"
"Wal, no: I don't think it is. Come to look it all over, up one side an' down the other, she's been growin' about an inch a month this summer, an' her best dress is gittin' turrible short the best way you can fix it. She's gittin' to be 'most a woman, Bert."
"Yes: I know she is," said Bert, significantly. "An' something's got to be done right off."
"Wha' d' ye mean by that, ol' man?"
"I mean jest this. It's time we did something religious for that girl. She ain't had much chance since she's been here with us. She ain't had no chance at all. Now I move that we send her away to school this winter. Give her a good outfit an' send her away. This ain't no sort o' way for a girl to grow up in."
"Wal, I've be'n thinkin' o' that myself; but where'll we send her?"
"Oh, back to the States somewhere; Wisconsin or Minnesota—somewhere."
"Why not to Boomtown?"
"Well, I'll tell yeh, Ans. I've been hearing a good 'eal off an' on about the way we're bringin' her up here 'alone with two rough old codgers,' an' I jest want to give her a better chance than the Territory affords. I want her to git free of us and all like us, for a while; let her see something of the world. Besides, that business over in Belleplain to-day kind o' settled me. The plain facts are, Ans, the people are a little too free with her because she is growin' up here—"
"I know some fellers that won't be again."
"Well, they are beginnin' to wink an' nudge each other an' to say—"
"Go on! What do they say?"
"They say she's goin' to be a woman soon; that this fatherly business is bound to play out."
"I'd like to see anybody wink when I'm around. I'd smash 'em!" said Anson through his set teeth. "Why, she's our little babe," he broke out, as the full significance of the matter came to him. "My little un; I'm her ol' pap. Why—"He ended in despair. "It's none o' their darn business."
"There ain't no use o' howlin', Ans. You can't smash a whole neighborhood."
"But what are we goin' to do?"
"Well, I'll tell ye what we mustn't do. We mustn't tog her out jest yet."
"Why not?" asked Anson, not seeing these subtle distinctions of time and place.
"Because, you tog her out this week or next, without any apparent reason, in a new hat an' dress an' gloves, an' go down to one o' these sociables with her, an' you'd have to clean out the whole crowd. They'd all be winkin' an' nudgin' an' grinnin'—see?"
"Wal, go on," said the crushed giant. "What'll we do?"
"Just let things go on as they are for the present till we git ready to send her to school."
"But I promised the togs."
"All right. I've stated the case," Gearheart returned, with the air of a man who washed his hands of the whole affair.
Anson rose with a sudden gesture. "Jest hear her! whistlin' away like a lark. I don't see how I'm goin' to go in there an' spoil all her fun; I can't do it, that's all."
"Well, now, you leave it all to me. I'll state the case to her in a way that'll catch her—see if I don't. She ain't no common girl."
It was growing dark as they went in, and the girl's face could not be seen.
"Well, Bert, are y' ready to help churn?"
"Yes, I guess so, if Ans'll milk."
"Oh, he'll milk; he jest loves to milk ol' Brindle when the flies are thick."
"Oh, you bet," said Ans, to make her laugh.
"Now, Flaxen," coughed Gearheart in beginning, "we've been discussin' your case, an' we've come to the conclusion that you ought to have the togs specified in the indictment" (this to take away the gravity of what was to follow); "but we're kind o' up a tree about just what we'd better do. The case is this. We'vegot to buy a horse to fill out our team, an' that's a-goin' to take about all we can rake an' scrape."
"We may have to git our groceries on tick. Now, if you could only pull through till after—" Anson broke in.
"It's purty tough, Flaxie, an' pap's awful sorry; but if you could jest pull through—"
It was a great blow to poor little Flaxen, and she broke down and cried unrestrainedly.
"I—I—don't see why I can't have things like the rest o' the girls." It was her first reproach, and it cut to the heart. Anson swore under his breath, and was stepping forward to say something when Gearheart restrained him.
"But, y' see, Flaxie, we ain't askin' you to give up the dress, only to wait on us for a month or so, till we thrash."
"That's it, babe," said Anson, going over to where she sat, with her arms lying on the table and her face hidden upon them. "We could spend dollars then where we couldn't cents now."
"And they won't be any more thingumyjigs at the church, anyhow, an' the wheat's blightin' on the knolls, besides."
But the first keen disappointment over, she was her brave self once more.
"Well, all right, boys," she said, her trembling voice curiously at variance with her words; "I'll get along somehow, but I tell you I'll have something scrumptious to pay for this—see if I don't." She was smiling again faintly, "It'll cost more'noneten dollars for my togs, as you call 'em. Now, pap, you go an' milk that cow! An', Bert, you glue yerself to that churn-dasher, an' don't you stop to breathe or swear till it's done."
"That's the girl to have—that's our own Flaxie! She knows how hard things come on a farm," cheered Anson.
"I bet I do," she said, wiping away the last trace of her tears and smiling at her palpable hit. And then began the thump of the dasher, and out in the dusk Anson was whistling as he milked.
She went down to the sociable the next night in her old dress, and bravely lookedhappy for pap's sake. Bert did not go. Anson was a rather handsome old fellow. Huge, bearded like a Russian, though the colour of his beard was a wolf brindle, resembling a bunch of dry buffalo-grass, Bert was accustomed to say that he looked the father of the girl, for she had the same robust development, carried herself as erect, and looked everybody in the eye with the same laughing directness.
There were some sly remarks among a ribald few, but on the whole everything passed off as usual. They were both general favorites, and as a matter of fact few people remarked that Flaxen's dress was not good enough. She certainly forgot all about it, so complete was her absorption in the gayety of the evening.
"Wal, now for four weeks' hard times, Flaxen," said Anson, as they were jogging homeward about eleven o'clock.
"I can standmyshare of it, pap," she stoutly replied. "I'm no chicken."
CHAPTER VII.
AFTER HARVEST.
All through those four or five weeks, at every opportunity, the partners planned the future of their waif. In the harvest-field, when they had a moment together, one would say to the other:
"We'll let her stay two years if she likes it, eh?"
"Certainly; she needn't come back till she wants to. We may be rich enough to sell out then, and move back ourselves. I'm gittin' tired o' this prairie myself. If we could sell, we'd put her through a whole course o' sprouts."
"You bet! Sell when you can find a buyer. I'll sign the deed."
"All right."
And then they would go to work again toiling and planning for the future. Everyday during August these men worked with the energy of demons, up early in the morning and out late at night, harvesting their crop. All day the header clattered to and fro with Bert or Ans astride the rudder, a cloud of dust rolling up from the ground, out of which the painted flanges of the reel flashed like sword-strokes. All day, and day after day; while the gulls sailed and soared in the hazy air and the larks piped from the dun grass, these human beings, covered with grime and sweat, worked in heat and parching wind. And never for an hour did they forget their little waif and her needs. And she did her part in the house. She rose as early as they and worked almost as late. It was miraculous, they admitted.
One night toward the last of the harvest they were returning along the road from a neighboring farm, where they had been to head some late wheat. The tired horses with down-hung heads and swinging traces were walking sullenly but swiftly along the homeward road, thewagon rumbling sleepily; the stars were coming out in the east, while yet the rose and amethyst of the fallen sun lighted the western sky. Through the air, growing moist, came the sound of reapers still going. Men were shouting blithely, while voices of women and children came from the cabins, where yellow lights began to twinkle.
Anson and Bert, blackened with dust and perspiration and weary to the point of listlessness, sat with elbows on knees, talking in low, slow tones on the never-failing topic, crops and profits. Their voices chimed with the sound of the wagon.
"There's the light," broke out Ans, rousing himself and the team; "Flaxen's got supper all ready for us. She's a regular little Trojan, that girl is. They ain't many girls o' fourteen that 'u'd stay there contented all day alone an' keep all the whole business in apple-pie order. She'll get her pay some day."
"We'll try to pay her; but say, ol' man, ain't it about time to open up our plans to her?"
"Wal, yes; it is. You kind o' start the thing to-night, an' we'll have it over with."
As they drove up, Flaxen came to the door. "Hello, boys! What makes ye so late?"
"Finishin' up a field, babe. All done."
She clapped her hands and danced up and down.
"Goody! all done at last. Well, yank them horses out o' their harnesses an' come to biscuits. They're jest sizzlin' hot."
"All right. We'll be there in about two jerks of a lamb's tail in fly-time. Bert, grab a tug; I'm hungry as a wolf."
It was about the first of September and the nights were getting cool, and the steaming supper seemed like a feast to the chilled and stiffened men coming in a little later and sitting down with the sound of the girl's cheery voice in their ears. The tea was hot; so were the biscuits. The pyramid of hot mashed potato had a lump of half-melted butter in the hollowtop, and there were canned peaches and canned salmon.
"Yes: we're about finished up harvestin'," said Bert, as they settled themselves at the table, "an' it's about time to talk about gittin' you off to school."
"Don't worry about that. It ain't no great job, I reckon. I can git ready in about seventeen jiffies, stop-watch time."
"Not if you are goin' away off to some city in the East—"
"Yes: but I ain't, y' see."
"Oh, yes, you are. Bert an' I've be'n talkin' it all over f'r the last three weeks. We're goin' to send you back to St. Peter to the seminary."
"I guess not, pap. I'd like to know what you think you're a-doin' sendin' me 'way back there. Boomtown's good enough fer me."
"There, there, Flaxie; don't git mad. Y' see, we think they ain't anythin' good enough for you. Nothin' too good for a girl that stays to home an' cooks f'r two old cusses—"
"You ain't cusses! You're jest asgood as you can be; but I ain't a-goin'—there!"
"Why not?"
"'Cause I ain't; that's why."
"Why, don't y' wan' to go back there where the people have nice houses, an' where they's a good—"
"Well, I don't know enough; that's why. I ain't goin' back to no seminary to be laughed at 'cause I don't know beans."
"But you do," laughed Bert, with an attempt to lighten the gloom—"you know canned beans."
"They'd laff at me, I know, an' call me a little Norsk." She was ready to cry.
"I'll bet they won't, not when they see our new dress an' our new gold watch—dress jest the color o' crow's-foot grass, watch thirty carats fine. I'd laugh to see 'em callin' my babe names then!"
And so by bribing, coaxing, and lying they finally obtained her tearful consent. They might not have succeeded even then had it not been for a young lady in Boomtown who was going back to the same school, and who offered to take her incharge. But there was hardly a day that she did not fling herself down into a chair and cry out:
"I jest ain't goin'. I'm all right here, an' I don't see why you can't let me stay here.Iain't made no fuss. Seems as if you thought it was fun f'r me to go 'way off there where I don't know anythin' an' where I don't know anybody."
But having come to a conclusion, the men were relentless. They hired sewing-girls, and skirmished back and forth between Boomtown and the farm like mad. Their steady zeal made up for her moody and fitful enthusiasm. However, she grew more resigned to the idea as the days wore on toward the departure, though her fits of dark and unusual musing were alarming to Anson, who feared a desperate retreat at the last moment.
He took her over to see Miss Holt one day, but not before he had prepared the way.
"I s'pose things are in purty good shape around this seminary?" he asked.
"Oh, yes, indeed. There are threelarge buildings; libraries, picture-galleries, and music-rooms. The boarding-halls are carpeted and the parlors are really elegant."
"Uh-hum!" commented Anson. "Well, now, I'm goin' to bring my girl over to see you, an' I guess it 'u'd be jest as well if you didn't mention these fineries an' things. Y' see, she's afraid of all such things. It 'u'd be better to tell her that things weren't very gorgeous there—about like the graded school in Boomtown, say. She ain't used to these music-halls an' things. Kind o' make her think St. Peter ain't no great shakes, anyhow."
"I see," laughed the quick-witted girl. And she succeeded in removing a good deal of Flaxen's dread of the seminary.
"Wal, babe, to-morrow," said Anson, as they were eating supper, and he was astonished to see her break out in weeping.
"Why don't you keep harpin' away on that the whole while?" she exclaimed. "Can't you leave me alone a minute? Seems to me you're jest crazy to git rid o' me."
"Oh, we are," put in Bert. "We're jest lickin' our chops to git back to sour flapjacks an' soggy bread. Jest seems as though we couldn't wait till to-morrow noon, to begin doing our own cookin' again."
This cleared the air a little, and they spent the rest of the evening without saying very much directly upon the departure. The two men sat up late after Flaxen had gone to bed. There was the trunk and valise which would not let them forget even for a moment what was coming on the morrow. Every time Anson looked at her he sighed and tried to swallow the lump in his throat.
"Say, Bert, let's let her stay if she wants to," he said suddenly after they had been in silence for a long time.
"Don't make a cussed fool of yourself, Ans," growled Bert, who saw that heroic measures were necessary. "Go to bed an' don't you say another word; we've got to take our medicine like men."
CHAPTER VIII.
AN EMPTY HOUSE.
Anson was the more talkative of the two next morning, however.
"Come, come, brace up, babe! Anybody 'u'd think we'd lost all the rest of our family, when we're only doin' the square thing by our daughter. That's all. Why, you'll be as happy as a canary in less'n two weeks. Young folks is about the same everywhere, an' you'll git acquainted in less'n two jiffies."
They were on the road to Boomtown to put Flaxen on the train. It was about the tenth of September, early in the cold, crisp air of a perfect morning. In the south there was a vast phantom lake, with duplicate cities here and there along the winding shores, which stretched from east to west. The grain-stacks stood aroundso thickly that they seemed like walls of a great, low-built town, the mirage bringing into vision countless hundreds of them commonly below the horizon.
The smoke of steam threshing-machines mounted into the still air here and there, and hung long in a slowly drifting cloud above the land. The prairie-lark, the last of the singing birds, whistled softly and infrequently from the dry grass. The gulls were streaming south from the lakes.
They were driving her to Boomtown to avoid the inquisitive eyes of the good people of Belleplain. "I may break down an' blubber," said Anson to Bert; "an' if I do, I don't want them cussed idiots standin' around laughin'—it's better to go on the C., B. and Q., anyhow."
Notwithstanding his struggle to keep talk going, Anson was unsuccessful from the very moment that Belleplain faded to an unsubstantial group of shadows and disappeared from the level plain into the air, just as Boomtown correspondingly wavered into sight ahead. Silence soprofound was a restraint on them all, and poor Flaxen with wide eyes looked wistfully on the plain that stretched away into unknown regions. She was thinking of her poor mother, whom she dimly remembered in the horror of that first winter. Naturally of a gay, buoyant disposition, she had not dwelt much upon her future or her past; but now that the familiar plain seemed slipping from her sight entirely, she was conscious of its beauty, and, rapt with the associated emotions which came crowding upon her, she felt as though she were leaving the tried and true for the unknown and uncertain.
"Boys," she said finally, "do you s'pose I've got any folks?"
"I shouldn't wonder if y' had, babe, somewhere back in the ol' country."
"They couldn't talk with me if I could find 'em, could they?"
"I reckon not, 'less you study so hard that you can learn their lingo," said Ans, seeing another opportunity to add a reason for going to school.
"Well, boys, that's what I'm goin' todo, an' by an' by we'll go over there an' see if we can't find 'em, won't we?"
"That's the talk; now you're gittin' down to business," rejoined Ans.
"I s'pose St. Peter is a good 'eal bigger'n Boomtown," she said sighfully, as they neared the "emporium of the sleepy James."
"A little," said the astute Gearheart.
The clanging of the engines and the noise of shouting gave her a sinking sensation in the chest, and she clung to Anson's arm as they drove past the engine. She was deafened by the hiss of the escaping steam of the monster standing motionless, headed toward the east, ready to leap on its sounding way.
On the platform they found Miss Holt and a number of other friends waiting. There was a great deal of clanging and whanging and scuffling, it seemed to the poor, overwrought girl. Miss Holt took her in charge at once and tried to keep her cheerful. When they had checked her trunk and the train was about ready to start, Ans looked uneasy and fidgetedabout. Bert looked on, silent and dark. Flaxen, with her new long dress and new hat, looked quite the woman, and Miss Holt greeted her as such; indeed, she kept so close to her that Anson looked in vain for a chance to say something more which was on his mind. Finally, as the train was about going, he said hesitatingly:
"Elga, jest a minute." She stared for a moment, then came up to him.
"I didn't want to call y' Flaxen afore her," he explained; "but you—ain't—kissed us good-bye." He ended hesitatingly.
The tears were already streaming down her cheeks, and this was too much. She flung her arms about his neck and sobbed on his bosom with the abandon of girlish grief.
"I don't wan' to go 't all, pap."
"Oh, yes, y' do, Elga; yes; y' do! Don't mind us; we'll be all right. I'll have Bert writin' a full half the time. There, kiss me good-bye an' git on—Bert here, too."
She kissed him twice through his bristling moustache, and going to Bert offered her lips, and then came back to Anson and threw herself against his broad, strong breast. She had no one to love but these two. It seemed as if she were leaving everything in the world. Anson took her on his firm arm and helped her on the car, and followed her till she was seated beside Miss Holt.
"Don't cry, babe; you'll make ol' pap feel turrible. He'll break right down here afore all these people, an' blubber, if y' don't cheer up. Why, you'll soon be as happy as a fly in soup. Good-bye, good-bye!"
The train started, and Anson, brushing his eyes with his great brown hand, swung himself off and stood looking at her. As the train passed him she rushed to the rear end of the car, and remained there looking back at the little station till the sympathetic Miss Holt gently led her back to her seat. Then she flattened her round cheek against the pane and tried to see the boys. When the last house of thetown passed by her window she sank back in her seat and sobbed silently.
"I feel as if I'd be'n attendin' my own funeral," said Anson, after they had got into their wagon and the train had gone out of sight in the haze of the prairie.
"Well, it's pretty tough on that child to go off that way. To her the world is all a great mystery. When you an' I go to heaven it won't be any greater change for us than this change for Flaxen—every face strange, every spot new."
"Wal, she ain't far away but we can look out for her. She ain't poor n'r fatherless as long as we live, hey?"
And then silence fell on them. As they were jogging homeward they saw the gray gulls rise from the sod and go home to the lake for the night. They heard the crickets' evening chorus broaden and deepen to an endless and monotonous symphony, while behind fantastic, thin, and rainless clouds the sun sank in unspeakable glory of colour. The air, perfectly still, was cool almost to frostiness,and, far above, the fair stars broke from the lilac and gold of the sun-flushed sky. Lights in the farm-houses began to appear.
Once or twice Anson said: "She's about at Summit now. I hope she's chirked up."
They met threshing-crews going noisily home to supper. Once they met an "outfit," engine, tank, separator, all moving along like a train of cars, while every few minutes the red light from the furnace gleamed on the man who was stuffing the straw into the furnace-door, bringing out his face so plainly that they knew him. As the night grew deeper, an occasional owl flapped across the fields in search of mice.
"We're bound to miss her like thunder, Bert; no two ways about that. Can't help but miss her on the cookin', hey?"
Bert nodded without looking up. As they came in sight of home at last, and saw the house silhouetted against the faintly yellow sky, Ans said with a sigh:
"No light an' no singin' there to-night."