A week later the telegram was brought to her telling her that he had been killed in action.
It was a beautiful spring day, just such a day as that on which she and Jack had first seen Dorrington, and she hadbeen working in the garden. When she had read, she turned and walked down the path that led to the hazel copse. She hardly knew what had happened to her; there was only an instinct for flight, concealment, secrecy; but, as she walked, there rose in her, without sound, as if in a nightmare, the terrible cry of her loneliness. The dark wet earth that covered him seemed heaped upon her heart.
The hazel copse was tasseled thickly with golden green, and as she entered it she saw that the hepaticas were in flower. They seemed to shine with their own celestial whiteness, set in their melancholy green among the fallen leaves. She had never seen them look so beautiful.
She followed the path, looking down at them, and she seemed to feel Jack's little hand in hers and to see, at her side, his nut-brown head. It had been on just such a morning. She came to the stone bench; but the impulse that had led her here was altered. She did not sink down and cover her face, but stood looking around her at the flowers, the telegram still open in her hand; and slowly, with stealing calm, the sense of sanctuary fell about her.
She had lost him, and with him went all her life. He was dead, his youth and strength and beauty. Yet what was this strange up-welling of relief, deep, deep relief, for Jack; this gladness, poignant and celestial, like that of the hepaticas? He was dead and the dark earth covered him; yet he was here, with her, safe in his youth and strength and beauty forever. He had died the glorious death, and no future, tangled, perplexed, fretful with its foolish burden, lay before him. There was no loss for Jack—no fading, no waste. The burden was for her, and he was free.
Later, when pain should have dissolved thought, her agony would come to her unalleviated; but this hour was hers, and his. She heard the river and the soft whisperings of spring. A bird dropped lightly, unafraid, from branchto branch of a tree near by. From the woods came the rapid, insistent tapping of a woodpecker; and, as in so many springs, she seemed to hear Jack say, 'Hark, mummy,' and his little hand was always held in hers. And, everywhere, telling of irreparable loss, of a possession unalterable, the tragic, the celestial hepaticas.
She sat down on the stone bench now and closed her eyes for a little while, so holding them more closely—Jack and the hepaticas—together.
'A lie's an abomination unto the Lord a hundred and twenty-four, a lie's an abomination unto the Lord a hundred and twenty-five, a lie's an abomination unto the Lord a hundred and twenty-six,' recited Prudence Jane, and paused.
'Go on,' said Aunt Annie, looking up from her sewing and fixing her eyes severely on the small blue back across the room.
Prudence Jane, with the heels of her little ankle-ties together and her hands clasped tightly behind her, was standing in the corner, saying what was known in the family as her punish-sentence. Whenever she had been unusually naughty she had to say one four hundred times up in Aunt Annie's room. It was, no doubt, a silly sort of punishment, but it was one that Prudence Jane strongly objected to—and that, after all, is the essence of a punishment. Prudence Jane had seven teasing, mimicking brothers, and whenever one of them caught her saying a punish-sentence it was days before she heard the last of it. Already in the garden below there was audible a shrill voice singing, 'Alieis an abom-i-na-tionun-to theLord,' to the tune of 'Has anybody here seen Kelly?' And out of the corner of her eye, which was supposed to be fastened on the rosebuds of Aunt Annie's wall-paper, Prudence Jane could see an impudent little person in corduroys, straddling the gravel walk and squinting up at the window.
'Is "a lie's an abomination" in the Bible?' inquired Prudence Jane.
'Yes,' said Aunt Annie, 'go on.'
'Where?' demanded Prudence Jane.
'Where?' repeated Aunt Annie a little blankly. 'Why—why—in the middle of the Bible. Don't you listen to the minister, Prudence Jane?'
'The middle of the minister's Bible?' pursued Prudence Jane.
'Yes, of course,' said Aunt Annie, 'Prudence Jane, if you don't go on at once I shall have you say it five hundred times.
'A lie's an abomination unto the Lord a hundred and twenty-seven,' resumed Prudence Jane hastily.
Prudence Jane's sentences varied from day to day, it being Aunt Annie's idea to fit the sentence to the crime whenever possible. Thus, for being late to school it was, naturally, 'Procrastination is the thief of time.' While for telling Lena, the cook, that Uncle Arthur had said she was more of a lady than Aunt Annie, the sentence had been nothing less than, 'Truth crushed to earth will rise again.'
This particular fib had been very disastrous in its consequences. We will not dwell upon them here. They make a story in themselves. Suffice it to say that there was no possible excuse for Prudence Jane.
It was otherwise with the fib for which she was this morning serving a sentence up in Aunt Annie's room. Those who also have been named after their two grandmothers will at once forgive Prudence Jane for telling the new minister, the very first time she met him, that her name was Imogen Rose. It was, to be sure, a stupid little fib, and was therefore quite unworthy of Prudence Jane. For Prudence Jane almost never told stupid little fibs. The fibs of Prudence Jane were little masterpieces, with afinish and distinction all their own. Her brother Will, who adored her, and had a large mind, declared when he came home from college that she was the greatest mistress of imaginative fiction since George Eliot. Her Aunt Annie, who had not had the advantages of a college course, and who roomed with Prudence Jane, said that she was a 'simple little liar.'
Now this was unfair of Aunt Annie, for whatever else Prudence Jane might be, she wasnotsimple. Even her looks belied her. With her big confiding eyes, as round and blue as two forget-me-nots, and her pale yellow hair held demurely back from her forehead by a blue ribbon fillet, she gave an impression of gentle innocence that was altogether misleading.
'She is so like little Bertie,' dear old Grandma Piper would say; 'that same frail, flower-like look that he had toward the last. I almost tremble sometimes. Haven't you noticed a transparency about her lately, Annie?'
But Aunt Annie never had.
It may be said in passing that there was only one person to whom Prudence Jane was really transparent, and that was her youngest brother, Peter. Peter was a square, solid little person, with a vacant countenance; but nothing important that Prudence Jane did escaped him.
'Just to look into that sweet little face is enough for me,' Grandma Goodwin would declare; 'I don't want anybody to tellmethat Prudence Jane is untruthful. No child could look straight at you out of her little soul as she always does, and tell a fib. The trouble is they don't understand her at home. I've always said Annie Piper had a suspicious nature.'
To do Aunt Annie justice, it should be said that rooming with Prudence Jane did not tend to cultivate in one a nature that was trustful and confiding. And yet at heartPrudence Jane was really not at all the incorrigible little fibber that she seemed. She told fibs, not because she wished to deceive, but because the dull facts of life were so much less interesting than the lively little romances which she could make up out of her own head. When one is a creative genius one naturally rebels at being shackled to anything so tedious as a fact. Prudence Jane, looking back over a day, could rarely separate the things which had really happened from those she had invented.
Her brother Horace, who was studying law, said that he would give a hundred dollars to see Prudence Jane on the witness stand. This was one night at supper when she was being cross-examined by Aunt Annie. For five minutes she had kept the family spellbound by a circumstantial account of how that afternoon she had seen an automobile truck, loaded with a thousand boxes of eggs, go over the embankment. With eggs at sixty-five cents a dozen this was really a very shocking tale.
'Prudence Jane,' said Aunt Annie, who had private sources of information, 'you know well enough that no truck went over the embankment. Whatever do you mean by telling such an outrageous fib?'
Prudence Jane looked across the supper table at her aunt out of two round candid eyes.
'That wasn't a fib; that was just a story' she explained.
'Well, it wasn't true; and stories that aren't true are very wicked,' said Aunt Annie with decision.
'Are all the stories in books true?' inquired Prudence Jane, the picture of innocence behind her bowl of bread and milk.
'No,' Aunt Annie was forced to admit, 'but stories written in books are different. The writers don't mean for us to believe them.'
'Do they say so in the books?' went on Prudence Jane relentlessly.
'Of course not,' said Aunt Annie; 'we know their stories aren't true, so they don't deceive us.'
'But you always knowmystories aren't true, too,' objected Prudence Jane; 'so I don't deceive you, either.'
'Prudence Jane,' said Aunt Annie, 'I shan't argue with you. You are a very naughty little girl. I sometimes think that you don't belong to us at all; you're so different from your brothers.'
This was true. All the other little Pipers had been simple, virtuous children, with imaginations under perfect control—'a remarkable family' everybody had said, until the Pipers became quite complacent about themselves. This was why Prudence Jane seemed like such a judgment upon them. They had waited long and patiently, as Aunt Annie put it, for Providence to see fit to send them a dear little girl to inherit her grandmothers' names—and they received Prudence Jane. Had she appeared at an earlier date, or had there been another girl in the family, she might have escaped either the Prudence or the Jane. But for fifteen years little masculine Pipers had arrived in the household with unbroken regularity, and been named, one by one, after all the available grandfathers and uncles. For the last one, indeed, there had not been even a cousin left, and he had been christened by common consent Peter Piper. And still the grandmothers waited.
From the moment, therefore, when bluff old Doctor Jones looked in upon a parlor full of aunts, and announced that it was 'a girl at last, by Jove,' there had been no choice left for Prudence Jane. The only point discussed in the solemn family conclave was as to whether she should not be Jane Prudence.
'Oh, for mercy's sake, call the poor little kid Jurisprudence,and be done with it,' said a flippant uncle—and that had settled it. Prudence Jane was duly entered at the end of the list in the middle of the Family Bible, and her career began.
Through eight years she was just unmitigated Prudence Jane,—not a syllable of it could ever be omitted lest one grandmother or the other be slighted,—and then suddenly one day she decided that it was a combination no longer to be borne. She hated her name with all her little soul; therefore she would discard it and take another. This sounded simple, but there were, in fact, several complications. The most important was Aunt Annie. Never a really progressive spirit, in this matter of names Aunt Annie showed herself to be an out-and-out stand-patter.
'You wish that you had been called Gwendolin?' she echoed in horror, as she combed out the pale yellow hair at bed-time. 'Why, Prudence Jane, I'm ashamed of you. Gwendolin is a very silly name indeed, and you have two such noble ones. I only hope that you will grow up to be like the beautiful grandmammas who gave them to you'—which was a truly lovely little bit of optimism on Aunt Annie's part.
Prudence Jane did not consult Aunt Annie further. That very night, however, staring up into the darkness from her little white bed, she decided upon a new combination. And when the Reverend Mr. Sanders came up to her the next day after Sunday School, and inquired kindly what little girl this was, Prudence Jane was quite prepared to tell him, with the transparent look which so frightened dear old Grandma Piper, that it was Imogen Rose.
She fully meant to inform her family of this interestingchange as soon as she got home from Sunday School, but when she tiptoed into the parlor Aunt Annie, in all the majesty of her plum-colored satin, was sitting in a straight-backed chair readingThe Christian Word and Work, and looked unreceptive to new ideas. So Prudence Jane tiptoed out again, to await a more favorable moment.
Unfortunately, before that moment arrived she had a falling-out with her brother Peter. This was a mistake, for it was the part of prudence always to make an ally of Peter Piper. He had discovered Prudence Jane flat on the floor in a corner of the library, scratching her name out of the Family Bible with an ink-eraser.
'Did the minister tell you to write Imogen in?' he inquired blandly, as he stood in the doorway with his hands in his corduroys.
'None of your business,' retorted Prudence Jane, closing the Bible with a bang and sitting down upon it.
The result was that Peter Piper, from whom nothing was ever hidden, went off and told Aunt Annie all about Imogen Rose and the minister. Whereupon Aunt Annie, with her usual limited point of view, had pronounced it a very monstrous fib indeed, and had sent Prudence Jane instantly into the corner.
'A lie's an abomination unto the Lord three hundred and ninety-eight, a lie's an abomination unto the Lord three hundred and ninety-nine, a lie's an abomination unto the Lord four hundred,' finished Prudence Jane at a canter, and whisked around from her corner.
Aunt Annie beckoned with solemn finger.
'To-morrow, Prudence Jane,' she said, looking across the sewing-table, 'I am going to take you to see the minister and you must tell him yourself what your real name is, and what a dreadful story you have told him. I shall ask him what he thinks should be done with a little girl whocannot speak the truth. I'm sure I don't know what he will say. But we can't deceive a minister. They always know when they hear a fib.'
'Do they?' asked Prudence Jane, openly interested, her round eyes fastened upon her aunt.
'Always,' replied Aunt Annie rashly.
'Then why do I have to go and tell him?' asked Prudence Jane.
'Prudence Jane,' said Aunt Annie, 'you are a very saucy little girl, and I'm sure I don't know what is going to become of you.'
Prudence Jane walked slowly out of the room. She was considering what Aunt Annie had said about ministers, and she wondered if it were true. As she went tripping down the stairs she decided to put the Reverend Mr. Sanders to a test the very next time she met him. And that was why it was so surprising, when she peeked through the hall window at the foot of the stairs, to behold him diligently wiping his feet on the door-mat.
'How do you do?' said Prudence Jane politely, as she opened the door.
'Why, good afternoon, Imogen,' said the minister, shaking hands cordially.
Prudence Jane made the little knix that she had learned at German school. It was always the finishing touch to Prudence Jane. The Reverend Mr. Sanders looked down upon it with a most friendly smile.
'Is your aunt at home?' he asked, placing his hat on the table and following Prudence Jane into the parlor.
'Yes,' she said with simple candor. A fib of that sort was quite beneath Prudence Jane.
Then she sat down on a velvet sofa, spread out her little blue skirt, folded her hands in her lap and crossed her ankle-ties. She had never in her life looked so much likelittle Bertie. The Reverend Mr. Sanders, regarding her from an opposite chair, waited for her to open her lips and say, 'Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.' Instead, this is what she said:—
'Is Eliza Anna Bomination your grandmother?'
'I beg pardon,' said the Reverend Mr. Sanders.
'Is she dead and gone to heaven, and that's why you say "unto the Lord"?' continued Prudence Jane.
'I wonder, Imogen,' he said, 'if you would mind beginning over again.'
'I say, is Eliza Anna Bomination your grandmother?' repeated Prudence Jane. 'Aunt Annie says she's written down in the middle of your Bible where all people's relations are, and she sounded like a grandmother; they always have such horrid names.'
The minister looked across at the velvet sofa with eyes that entirely contradicted the gravity of his face.
'No,' he said, 'I'm sorry, but she isn't. I wish she were. I never heard of such a jolly grandmother.'
'Is she an aunt?' pursued his small interlocutor.
'I'm afraid that she's not even related by marriage,' he replied.
'Isn't she written down in the middle of your Bible at all?' said Prudence Jane.
The minister shook his head.
'No,' he said, 'I'm afraid not.'
'Then Aunt Annie told a whopper,' announced Prudence Jane with satisfaction.
'We should not malign the absent,' said the Reverend Mr. Sanders. 'And that being the case, suppose you go up at this point, Imogen, and tell your Aunt Annie that I am here.'
Prudence Jane wondered what 'maligning the absent' was. She distrusted gentlemen who made cryptic remarksof this sort. It was a way her brother Horace had. She saw that the moment had now arrived to test Aunt Annie's theory about ministers and fibs!
'She can't come down,' she replied.
'Can't come down?' repeated the minister.
'No,' said Prudence Jane, looking at him out of the depths of her forget-me-not eyes, 'she's washed her hair.'
'Oh,' said the Reverend Mr. Sanders, in the tone of one who finds the conversation getting definitely beyond him.
At this moment an apparition with a round face and a pair of corduroy shoulders suddenly darkened the open window.
'Alieis an a-bom-i-na-tionun-to theLord,' it sang; and, catching sight of the clerical back, vanished hastily.
'Interesting chorus,' observed the Reverend Mr. Sanders.
Prudence Jane paid no heed to this interruption.
'It's hanging down her back now,' she pursued, launching upon the details with her usual aplomb. 'It comes clear down to here.' And standing up, she indicated a point halfway between her ankle-ties and the bottom of her ridiculous skirt.
The minister gazed fascinated. Prudence Jane sat down again.
'She washed it with Packer's Tar Soap,' she said, her eyes fixed upon her victim.
She was quite unable to make out whether Aunt Annie was right about ministers or not. The Reverend Mr. Sanders looked like the Sphinx.
'She gave a piece to a gentleman once,' went on Prudence Jane, warming to her work. 'He wasn't a very nice gentleman. He was a—a—' she hesitated a moment over a fitting climax,—'a—a Piskerpalyan,' she finished.
'Mercy!' said the Reverend Mr. Sanders, finding his voice at last. 'And what, may I ask, are you?'
Prudence Jane looked faintly surprised.
'I,' she said, with pride and composure, 'am an Orthy Dox Congo Gationist.'
'Yes,' said the Reverend Mr. Sanders, 'so I suspected from the first.'
And nowwhatdid he mean by that, thought Prudence Jane to herself. She could no longer see his face. He had turned abruptly in his chair and was watching something through the aperture in the portières.
Prudence Jane heard the thump of a pair of shoes plodding up the stairs and along the upper hall. She knew that it was Peter Piper going to find Aunt Annie. There was a stir in the room overhead, then the muffled sound of a rocking-chair suddenly abandoned, followed by the swish of skirts coming along the passage and down the stairs.
Prudence Jane sat with parted lips on the edge of the sofa.
The Reverend Mr. Sanders looked decidedly nervous, but he rose and presented a bold front to whatever might be coming to him through those portières. In another moment they were pushed hastily aside, and Aunt Annie, crowned with a quite faultless coiffure, hurried into the room.
'Why, Mr. Sanders,' she said, 'I did not know until this minute that you were here.'
Then her eye fell upon her niece. Prudence Jane was now standing in front of the sofa, tracing the pattern of the carpet with the toe of an ankle-tie.
'Why didn't you tell me that Mr. Sanders was waiting?' demanded Aunt Annie sternly.
Prudence Jane continued to gaze at the carpet.
'Mr. Sanders,' said Aunt Annie, who never postponed adisagreeable duty, 'we have a little girl here who cannot speak the truth, and we are going to ask you to tell us what becomes of people who tell wrong stories.'
The Reverend Mr. Sanders looked ill at ease.
'Come here,' continued Aunt Annie, holding out her hand toward the velvet sofa.
Prudence Jane moved reluctantly across the room.
'And now,' went on the voice of the accuser, 'she has even deceived her minister, and she has come to make her little confession. Tell Mr. Sanders,' directed Aunt Annie, 'the truth about that wicked fib.'
'Which one?' inquired Prudence Jane meekly.
'You know very well which,' answered her exasperated aunt; 'the last one.'
Prudence Jane lifted her blue eyes from the carpet and looked straight at the unfortunate Mr. Sanders.
'She didn't give any of it to the Piskerpalyan,' she said.
Then she turned and walked discreetly through the portières. She felt that it was no moment to stay and learn what became of little girls who told whoppers.
'Didn't give who what?' she could hear Aunt Annie saying vaguely on the other side of the curtains.
But Prudence Jane decided to let her minister explain.
In Southern Ohio a girl's wedding chest is her Glory-Box. If, like Mabel Bennet, you are the daughter of a successful druggist, the box is of cedarwood, delivered free of charge by the Dayton department stores; but if, like Eunice Day, you are the daughter of an unsuccessful bookkeeper who has left a life insurance inadequate even when supplemented by the salary you earn teaching primary children, then the box is just a box, covered with gay cretonne, and serving the purpose very nicely.
When Eunice Day's engagement became known, Mabel, remembering the scalloped guest-towels which Eunice had given her some months before, brought over one afternoon an offering wrapped in tissue paper.
'I hope you'll like this, Eunice,' she said. 'It's just a sack,—what they call a matinée. I've found them very useful.'
Mabel spoke with the slightly complacent air of the three months' bride.
'Why, it's ever so dear of you to go to so much trouble,' said Eunice, taking the package into her hands. She was a tall, slender girl, with dark eyes and a pretty dignity of bearing. 'I'll have to open it right now, I guess. You aren't in a hurry, are you?'
'Oh, no, not especially. Harry doesn't get home until quarter past six, and I've fixed the vegetables. Just you go ahead.'
Eunice untied the white ribbon. 'Why, Mabel, it's beautiful, and such a delicate shade of pink!'
She held the sack at arm's length.
'I'm glad you like it. It's nothing wonderful, of course.'
'It couldn't be more pretty, and Stephen loves pink. I wrote him the other day that I had made a pink kimono and I hoped he would like it. He wrote back that pink was—was the color of dawn and apple-blossoms.'
Mabel laughed. 'Stephen has a funny way of saying things, hasn't he?'
'Why, I don't know,' said Eunice, flushing.
'Oh, well,' went on Mabel good-naturedly, 'I do think you look nice in pink with your dark hair. Harry always tells me to stick to blue. It's the color for blondes. Don't you want to show me your things? I won't mind if the ribbons aren't all run in yet.'
'I'd like to show them to you, of course. Come upstairs. They'll look nicer though when they are all pressed out,' said Eunice, laying the sack carefully back in its paper wrappings. She carried it on outstretched palms.
'Do you know when you're going to be married?' asked Mabel as she reached the top of the narrow stairs.
'We haven't made plans yet. Probably Stephen won't want to for another year. It depends on so many things.'
'I suppose so,' said Mabel, following Eunice into her bedroom. It was a small room but pretty. Eunice had recently put four coats of white paint on her oak set. 'Lawyers,' continued Mabel sympathetically, 'have to wait so much longer. Now Harry knew to a cent what salary he was getting when he proposed to me, and he knew what his raise would probably be for the next two years. The Wire Company is a square concern. There's your Glory-Box! It looks awfully nice. You made it, didn't you?'
'Stephen made it when he was on for his vacation lastsummer. We happened to have the cretonne in the house. Mother wanted me to buy a cedar chest but I thought this would do.'
'Oh, one doesn't really need a cedar chest,' said Mabel cheerfully, 'and they're terribly expensive, you know.'
'Yes, I do know.' Eunice's face twinkled. 'I'll lay this sack on the bed so it won't get mussed while I'm showing you the things.'
She raised the lid of the Glory-Box, then glanced shyly at the other girl. 'You're the first person I've shown them to. I hope you'll think they're dainty. There isn't much lace on them, but mother put in a lot of handwork—feather-stitching.'
'Lace is a bother to do up,' Mabel said amiably. 'I've been almost distracted doing up mine.'
'Your things were beautiful, though.' Eunice was laying piles of carefully folded garments on the edge of the box.
'There, I've got it now,' she said, getting up from the floor. 'This is my prettiest set. I've kept it wrapped in dark blue paper. Mother said it would keep white longer.'
'Why, they are sweet, Eunice!' Mabel touched the soft white stuff with appraising fingers. 'And all made by hand. My, what a lot of work! Your mother must have spent hours on them.'
'She did. She said she wanted to do it, though. The other things are plainer.' Eunice took them up one by one and showed them. 'I won't let you see the table linen to-day. I've done a lot of initialing, but they don't look really well until they have been washed.'
'No, they don't. Anyway I have to be going. You certainly have nice things, Eunice. That kimono is awfully pretty.'
'I like it,' said Eunice simply.
'Well, I can't stay another minute. Don't you come down to the door now. You have to put away everything. I'll just run along. Come and see me. I've got the flat all settled.'
'I shall love to, Mabel. Just a moment! You must let me go to the door with you. The Glory-Box can wait.'
Eunice found her mother standing by the bed when she came back. She was a meagre-looking woman with a thin mouth. Her eyes had once been soft and dark like Eunice's, but the glow had gone out of them, leaving them a little hard.
'I've been looking at the sack Mabel brought you. It's a nice pattern. That sort of lace looks almost like real val. What did she say to your things?'
'She said they were sweet, mother.'
'Well, I suppose they are as nice as any one could have without spending money. You didn't show her the tablecloth I gave you?'
'No, I thought I'd wait to show the linen until it was all done up.'
Her mother fingered the lace on the sack.
'I don't believe she has a much better tablecloth than that one, Eunice. Do you suppose so?'
'No,' answered Eunice, 'probably not. It's very beautiful.' She laid down the garment she was folding and looked up, troubled, into her mother's face. 'Oh, it seems so selfish for me to have it all. You've always wanted nice fine linen, mother.'
'I've given up wanting, I guess. I don't care as long as you have them. You had better lay tissue paper in that sleeve, Eunice, the way I showed you. I'll start supper so that you can put these things away. They won't look like anything if you leave them about.'
When her mother was gone, Eunice took up the pinkkimono and spread it out on the bed. She could fold it more carefully that way. She touched it with caressing fingers. 'Dawn and apple-blossoms,' she repeated softly. Then she smiled, remembering Mabel's remark: 'Stephen has a funny way of saying things.'
Stephen was different somehow from Harry, from any of the men whom her friends had married. They were nice young men, of course, all of them. One was superintendent of the Sunday School, besides getting a good salary in the Cash Register Company; another had gone to college, had been in Stephen's class at the Ohio State University in fact, and was now doing well as part owner of the garage on Main Street; still another was paying-teller in the bank next to the garage; he wore very 'good-looking' suits, usually with a tiny line of white at the edge of the waistcoat. Still Stephen was different.
When he had got his B.A. degree at Ohio, he decided that he wanted to be a lawyer, and that he would go to one of the best schools in the country. He chose Columbia. He had worked his way through college, but he considered that it would not pay to work his way through Law School. He wanted the time to get something out of New York. His father was unable to advance the money, so Stephen went to a friend of his father's, a prosperous coal-dealer in the town, and asked that he lend him enough to put him through economically, but not, he plainly said, too economically. He would give the coal-dealer notes, payable with interest four years after he was admitted to the bar.
The coal-dealer, taking into consideration the fact that the young man had broken every record at the university in scholarship, and two other facts, the young man's forehead and mouth, lent him the money. He said that the interest need not begin until he was admitted.
Stephen thanked him and went to Columbia. One ofthe professors there took a great fancy to him. He introduced him to his sister, a maiden lady living in Washington Square, who, finding him very likable, introduced him to other people living in the Square.
Stephen was very happy. He wrote to Eunice,—he had been engaged to her since the end of his second year at the Law School,—'Washington Square is rather terrifying from the outside, but once inside you feel beautifully at home. I think it's the perfect breeding you find there. I've met women more intellectual, greater perhaps, than Professor Lansing's sister, but never one who gives such an impression of completion. There are no loose ends. You will like her, Eunice.'
In another letter he said, 'We won't have much money to start with, of course, but if we put a little dignity into our kitchenette apartment, it will be a home that people will love to come to. It's partly the dignity of their living that makes these Washington Square people so worth while to be with.'
And last week he had written, 'You won't find New York lonely. They will love you, dear. You belong. You have not only charm but the dignity that belongs. I wonder if I'm foolish to care so much for that word dignity. Perhaps it's because I associate it with you, or perhaps—I love you because you have it.'
And Eunice too was happy and proud: happy that Stephen was coming into his own, and proud that he should think her equal to the occasion. It would not be an easy task, being equal to Stephen. Stephen was a great man, or would be a great man. She knew it and Stephen knew it. 'We are going to be great, you and I,' he had said more than once. And yet one day when she had answered, 'You and I, Stephen?' his eyes, which had been alight with the glorious vision of the future, softened, and he had come andknelt beside her and had laid his head down. 'Oh, Eunice,' he had whispered, 'I've got brains; I'm pretty sure to be successful; but if I'm worth while, it will be because of you. You are a great woman, dear.'
And Eunice had mothered him and had hoped—so fervently that the hope was a prayer—that she would really be great enough to meet his needs.
Sometimes she doubted. She had dignity; Stephen had said so; but inside she was deprecating and shy. People like Mabel Ashley made her shy, and most of the people she knew were like Mabel. They thought Stephen's way of saying and thinking things 'funny.' There was only one woman whom she could talk with, a High-School teacher who had come to board next door. She and the High-School teacher took long walks together.
The High-School teacher had been to Europe twice. She knew how people lived outside of this little Ohio town—outside of the United States even. She was full of shrewd comment. Eunice talked to her about the books that she and Stephen were reading, and sometimes about Stephen himself. Several times the High-School teacher had said, 'He is splendid, Eunice.'
Eunice thought about her this afternoon as she put the last things away in the Glory-Box. She hoped that, if the Washington Square people were like this teacher, she would get along. And there came another encouraging thought. The people in the Square were sure of themselves of course, but perhaps they were sure because they had things and had always had things. She would one day have the things in her Glory-Box, and she would have Stephen. After she was quite used to having them and to having a person like Stephen, she would be sure of herself too.
'Supper will be ready in five minutes, Eunice.'
'I'm coming in a moment.'
The room had grown quite dark. Eunice lighted two candles standing on her bureau. They were in common glass candlesticks which she had bought at the Ten Cent store: she had wanted to have brass; but then, Stephen and she were going to have brass candlesticks in every room of their house. They both loved candle-light.
Eunice smoothed her dark hair. Then she washed her hands very carefully. Stephen had said once that they were not wonderfully pretty hands, but that they had distinction. He had kissed them.
'I guess I'm all right now,' said Eunice, glancing into the mirror. She picked up a photograph of Stephen from the bureau and laid her face against it. Then she blew out the candles and went downstairs.
Stephen's letter that awaited her when she came home from school the next afternoon was a one-page scrawl. 'My head is ringing so with the quinine I've taken that I can't write to-night. By to-morrow I shall probably be rid of this beastly cold. I want to tell you about a book I've just read. It's great stuff.' He added a postscript: 'Don't ask me, dear, if I wore my rubbers day before yesterday. You know I didn't.'
In Eunice's eyes was a smile of amused tenderness as she put the letter back in its envelope. If the cold were 'beastly,' perhaps he might remember next time. She was afraid though that only married men wore rubbers.
No letter came the next day, or the next.
'If I don't hear to-morrow, I'll telegraph.'
'He's probably busy,' said her mother.
'I'm afraid he's sick.'
Eunice waited for the postman on Saturday morning,but he brought her no letter. She put on her hat and coat.
'I'll be back in a half hour, mother.'
As she went down the steps a boy riding a bicycle stopped at the curb. He handed her a telegram. It was from Stephen's landlady. Stephen had died that morning at two o'clock—of pneumonia.
Eunice was conscious of being very collected and calm as she went back into the house; quite wonderfully calm. Her mother was in the kitchen. Eunice went to her and told her—very gently. She had the feeling that it was her mother's sorrow. Her mother's dry, hard sobs and bowed figure brought the tears to her eyes. She laid her hand on the thin convulsed shoulders. 'Mother, don't—don't, dear, it's all right, you know.' She stood by her chair until the sobs ceased.
'I'm going around to—to Stephen's, mother. I'll not be gone long.'
Mrs. Day followed her to the steps; her face was pitifully pinched, almost old. At the gate Eunice turned and saw her.
'Poor mother!' She wanted to go back and kiss her but she dared not.
Stephen's home was on the other side of the town. It was a small frame house painted light gray, with a gable back and front, and a narrow porch running across it. This morning the shades in the parlor were drawn down.
Eunice had to wait some moments before the door was opened by Stephen's young sister—a slip of a thing but a capable housekeeper. Her eyes were swollen with crying. 'She's so little,' thought Eunice, and took her in her arms.
When the girl was able to speak, she told Eunice that her father had gone to New York, and that he would bring Stephen home. Eunice stayed an hour, comforting, talking, planning. Then she left her.
'I'm so quiet. I didn't know it could be like this.'
The March wind blew the dust into her face. The grit irritated her. She wished there were snow on the ground and then wondered that she should care. That was how it was the next two days: she went on thinking and acting, with every now and then this strange awareness of being alive.
But on Monday afternoon when they came home from the cemetery, Eunice went upstairs to her room.
'I'm going to lie down a while, mother.'
Her mother made no answer as she turned into the kitchen.
Eunice lay down on the bed. A pale yellow sunset gleamed through the branches of the tree outside her window. She had seen the yellow streak in the sky as they had left the cemetery. She closed her eyes to shut it out. Her heart was no longer numb. It was waking to its misery. She lay very still with clenched hands. She had learned to bear physical pain that way. She thought perhaps she could bear this if she lay very still.
'I want to tell you about a book I've just read. It's great stuff.'
'O Stephen, Stephen, laddie!'
The tears came, and great sobs that shook and twisted her rigid body. Once she thought her mother came up the stairs and stopped outside her door. She buried her face in the pillow. Her mother must not hear. By and by,—she had been quiet for an hour,—her mother came in with a tray.
'I've made you some toast and tea, Eunice. You must keep up your strength.'
Her tone was flat and emotionless. She set the tray down by her in the darkness. Then she lighted the gas.
Eunice swallowed the tea obediently, she was so verytired. As she put the cup down her eyes fell on the cretonne-covered box in the window.
'Mother, my Glory-Box! Don't let me see it! Oh, don't let me see my Glory-Box!'
Mrs. Day came up to the bed. 'I'll take it out to-morrow while you are at school. I meant to do that.' Her face worked as she left the room.
When the door closed, Eunice sat up and pushed her tumbled hair back from her face. She wanted to look at the Glory-Box. To-morrow her mother was going to take it away. She clasped her hands tightly about her drawn-up knees and stared at the box with hot, miserable eyes. Of course it would have to be taken away, but she wanted to look at it now because it was her Glory-Box and because it was Stephen's. Stephen had made it.
'That's a decent job for just a lawyer,' he had said, when the last nail was driven in and they were taking a critical survey of it.
Stephen had laughed when she regretted that the roses in the cretonne were yellow, because the things to go into the box very likely would be pink. He had laughed and kissed her and told her she had better get a pair of pink specs, then the roses would be pink enough.
And Stephen had taken such an interest in what she had written about the things she was embroidering for household use. When she had reported a whole dozen napkins hemmed and initialed, he had thought it would be jolly to have nice linen. They would probably be short on silver at first, but good linen made you feel respectable. He remembered his mother taking so much pride in what had been left of hers. For a moment the words of that letter were so vividly recalled that she forgot that Stephen was dead. For quite a moment she was happy. Then sheremembered, but the realization brought no tears, only a swelling wave of misery.
'I can't bear it, oh, I can't!'
But even as she moaned she knew that she would bear it, that she would go on living for years and years and years. Other girls she had known or heard about—in her own town—had gone on living: little Sadie Smith whose lover had been killed three days before her wedding, and even Milly Petersen, who had been engaged for five years when the man asked to be released because he wanted to marry the girl who had recently moved to Milly's street. These girls had lived; they had grown pale and faded, or hard. People felt very sorry for them: they were spoken of as 'poor Milly,' or 'Sadie Smith, poor child'; but they had lived. Eunice saw herself moving among her little circle, brave and sad-eyed like these girls.
Suddenly—she never remembered just how it came about—suddenly her humor flashed a white light over the vision. This sad-eyed Self seemed something not to pity but to scorn. It was grotesque standing in your friend's parlor with clenched hands, as it were, and compressed lips, saying, 'Don't mind me, please. I'm bearing it.' If one were going to live one must live happily. Stephen was such a happy person. He was happy when he was working or playing or just loving. Even hurdy-gurdys made him happy.
'When I hear one grinding away in the morning,' he had written, 'I have to kick a few Law Journals about just to keep in tune with the darn thing.'
It had been a delightful surprise to her, his overflowing happiness, for Stephen's face in repose was very grave. She herself only occasionally had his joy in mere living, but she had always thought that Stephen's joyfulness would prove infectious. Suppose, now, without Stephen sheshould make the experiment of being happy. It would be a wonderful experiment to see,—she spoke the words aloud, deliberately,—to see if she could kill this terrible thing, Sorrow, and keep Stephen to love and to remember.
Eunice was still staring at the Glory-Box, but it was more than her Glory-Box. It was part of the problem that she was trying to think out clearly. For perhaps sorrow was a problem that you could work out like other problems, if only you could see it, not as one solid, opaque mass, but as something made up of pieces that you could deal with one at a time. The Glory-Box was a piece. She had wanted it taken away because it was a thing so filled with pain that she could not bear to have it about. If—Eunice got up in her excitement and walked up and down the room—if the Glory-Box could become a box again, just a box covered with cretonne, and the things in it become things, then a great piece of misery would disappear. Love, a girl's love, was like—she groped a moment for words—like a vine that puts forth little shoots and tendrils; love even went into things. When Death trampled on the vine, the shoots and tendrils were crushed with it. But if you cut them off, these poor bruised pieces of the vine, the vine itself would perhaps have a chance to become strong and beautiful.
Eunice played with the idea, her cheeks flushed, her eyes very bright. She felt as she did sometimes when talking on paper with Stephen.
She went over to the Glory-Box and raised the cover. On top lay the matinée that Mabel had brought on that day not quite a week ago. She unfolded it and touched it. 'This isn't—Stephen,' she said aloud, quite firmly. 'It's cotton voile and val lace. It's cotton voile.'
She took out garment after garment. When she came to the pink kimono her eyes blinded with tears. 'It's alovely shade. Pink is pretty with dark hair.' Her quivering lips could scarcely frame the words. 'It's not Stephen. It's—it's just a kimono.'
She put the things back and closed the box. 'I'll look at the rest in a day or two. I'll keep looking at them. Probably I shall never be able to use them, but I'll keep looking until I get accustomed to seeing them. Mother will get used to seeing the box here. If she put it in the storeroom she would always dread going in.'
Mrs. Day was getting breakfast the next morning when Eunice came down. She went on mechanically with her preparation, avoiding looking at her. At the table she glanced up. Eunice's face was white and haggard, but her eyes, strangely big, were shining. Eunice's mother watched her furtively throughout the meal. As they left the table Eunice put her arms about her.
'Don't take the box out, mother. It's better to get used to it. I'm trying to get used to things. Don't you worry about me. You'll see.'
She kissed her and hurried to school. In her exalted mood the sympathetic attentions of the other teachers seemed almost surprising. They were dear and kind, but why should they be so kind? She was going to be happy. At the end of the day, however, Eunice let herself softly into the house, too wretched to want to meet her mother. She carried to her room the letters of condolence that were on the dining-room table. She read them impassively, even the kindly one from Miss Lansing, wondering why they did not touch her. 'It's because I'm tired,' she concluded, and knelt down by the Glory-Box, bowing her head on her outstretched arms.
'Stephen, dear,' she prayed, 'I can't look at the things to-night. I'm too tired.'
But the next day she took them all out. And on a Saturdayafternoon three weeks later she startled her mother by coming into her room dressed in the suit and hat that were her 'best.' Her mother laid down the skirt on which she was putting a new braid.
'Why, where are you going, Eunice?'
'I thought I'd call on Mabel. I've never been to see her since she started housekeeping. I promised to, long ago.'
Mrs. Day looked at her keenly, her mouth tightening. 'You're foolish to go and see all her wedding presents about the house. You won't be able to stand it.'
'I shall, mother. That's why I'm going to stand it. I shan't mind calling there after I've been this once. I've thought it out.'
'You're a queer girl, Eunice. I don't understand you. But I suppose you know your—your own business best,' she ended, taking up her work again.
Eunice felt quite sure that she did, and yet there were days when the experiment seemed a failure, or at least only just begun: days when she would read in a paper of brilliant social events in New York, in Stephen's New York. Stephen might have been there at that dinner, his eyes, which looked so gravely from his picture, lighted with the joyfulness of the occasion, his splendid head towering above the other men as he joined in the toasts—Stephen had told her they always made toasts at these dinners; she could hear his laugh, his hearty boyish laugh. And those other days in early spring, when a hurdy-gurdy would play 'Turkey in the Straw,' and she could see Stephen pitching his Law Journals about, exulting in the glorious fact that he was alive. Oh, how she longed for him, wanted him these days—with a passionate yearning that for moments maddened her. But as the months went by the times of overwhelming wanting came less and less frequently. 'I shall soon be happy,' Eunice told herself.And on a morning of June loveliness, a morning of very blue sky, white clouds, and butter-cups, Eunice knew that she was happy.
'I'm glad to-day, Stephen, I'm glad, just because it's all so beautiful.'
She wondered now and again why, since she herself was so surely leaving the sorrow behind her, her mother should still droop under its weight. They seldom talked about Stephen. They had agreed at the beginning not to do that often, but there was bitterness in her mother's face and bitterness on occasion in her words. 'I've got used to seeing your box around, but don't ever ask me to look inside.' It occurred to Eunice that perhaps it was because to her mother had come only the grief. She was not having Stephen to love.
One afternoon late in February, Eunice was met in the hall by her mother. 'A letter came for you this morning. It's from New York.' She stood watching her as Eunice opened it with unsteady fingers.
Eunice looked up in a few moments, very white. 'It's from Professor Lansing's sister,' she faltered. 'Miss Lansing is coming on to Chicago this week. She says she would like to see me. She'll stop off in Dayton over night, Saturday probably, and will come out for lunch if it's convenient for us to have her. She can make connections by doing that. Oh, mother, it's beautiful of her to want to come.'
'I don't know that it will do you much good to see her. You'll probably get upset.'
'No, I won't be upset because I'll be so glad. Stephen said she was a wonderful woman, and—we can talk abouthim. He was at her house only a few days before he—caught cold.'
'Well, I don't know,' said her mother. 'You had better come into the kitchen where it's warm. You look like a ghost, Eunice. I'll give you a cup of soup to drink. It's on the stove now.' She laid nervous compelling fingers on Eunice's arm. 'I suppose,' Mrs. Day was pouring out the soup as she spoke, 'I suppose that Miss Lansing hasn't any idea of the way we live. Even the front stoop looks a sight. It's needed a coat of paint for years.'
'I know,' Eunice answered, her face clouding. 'I wish things were different for Stephen's sake. But we can't help it.'
'No,' said her mother harshly, 'we can't help it. But I wish she wasn't coming for a meal. The last decent tablecloth was cut up into napkins a month ago. I was ashamed of the one we set Mabel Bennet down to the other night.'
Eunice walked to the window. She looked out upon the backyard, upon the snow that was reflecting the sunset, a sentence of one of Stephen's letters in her mind. 'It's the dignity of their living that makes these Washington Square people so worth while.' And then she recalled that other letter. 'It will be jolly to have nice linen. Good linen makes you feel respectable.'
It pained her that they must offer this friend of Stephen's what they had been ashamed to offer Mabel Bennet. Stephen's pride would be hurt, Stephen who had loved that word 'dignity'; and Stephen's pride was her own pride just as much as if she were his wife, as if he were living.
Eunice stood a long time looking out upon the snow, until the rose of the sunset had gone from it, leaving it blue and cold. She turned from the window.
'Mother,'—she was glad that in the darkening kitchenshe could not see her mother's face distinctly,—'mother, don't you think we had better use that very fine cloth you gave me, and the napkins, to make the table look nice? Hadn't we better use them?'
'Use your things out of your Glory-Box, Eunice!'
'Yes, they are just pretty things, now, mother. All the pain is out of them. I'm going to wear the best set you made me. I think if I have on those nice clothes under my dress I won't be so shy with Miss Lansing. I want—O, mother, I want Stephen to—to feel proud of me.'
Mrs. Day bent to rake the fire, then straightened up. 'If you can stand wearing that set, I've nothing to say. You have a right to your own notions. But I don't see how I can bear to look at the cloth.'
'After it's been done up and on the table once, you'll forget there was anything sad connected with it. I know you will,' said Eunice, with her brave, pleading eyes fixed on her mother's set face.
'I don't know; maybe I could forget. But I don't see how I could bring myself to use something out of your own Glory-Box. It seems almost indelicate. They're all your things.'
Eunice crossed the room and laid her face down on her mother's shoulder. 'You gave me the things, mother, and you've had so little of what you've always wanted. Can't it be our Glory-Box, for us both to use on special occasions—like this?' Her arms tightened about her mother's neck. 'Can't we use them this time for Stephen's sake?'
After a moment's silence Mrs. Day pushed her gently away.
'If they are to be washed you'll have to bring them down to-morrow. I'll want to get them on the line while this good weather lasts. Saturday is only four days off.'
Saturday evening Eunice lighted the candles on herbureau; lighting the candles seemed like another ceremony of this perfect day. She had got up early so as to put her room and the rest of the house in order. While her mother was finishing in the kitchen she had set the table. It had been a joy to do that, to spread the cloth so that the creases would come in just the right place, and the large initial 'D' show without being too conspicuous, and to fold the napkins prettily and arrange the dishes. At the last moment she had decided that it would not be too extravagant to buy a little plant of some sort for a centrepiece. So there was just time for her to slip into the clothes that had been spread out on the bed, and do over her hair, before Miss Lansing arrived.
Stephen had said, 'You will like her, Eunice.' Like her!—she was the most wonderful woman she had ever met. She was elderly, but strangely enough you did not wonder whether she had been pretty or beautiful when she was young. She was wonderful just as she was now. You could not think of her as being different. She was tall, a little taller than Eunice herself. Her face was finely cut, the sort of face you saw in engravings of old portraits; there were not many lines in it. Her eyes were dark and young too, though she had quite gray hair and evidently didn't care to be in the fashion, for her black silk fell all around in ample lengths. Eunice had watched her hands. They were not small, but long and slender and very white; the two rings she wore seemed made for them.
And Eunice had not felt shy. At first she had thought she was going to; Miss Lansing had seemed at first so like a personage; but the thought of Stephen, and of the featherstitched best set she was wearing made her forget that Washington Square was, as Stephen had said, rather terrifying on the outside. It was Stephen's friend whom they were entertaining, and Stephen's friend was not a personagereally, but a wonderful woman who had loved Stephen too.
After lunch they talked together in the parlor while her mother was clearing things away. Miss Lansing said that she had seen a great deal of Stephen that last year. He had seemed to enjoy coming to the house. He had come to dinner sometimes, but more often he had dropped in on Saturday or Sunday afternoons for tea. One afternoon he had not been quite himself. She had questioned him a little and he had confessed with a laugh that he was homesick for Ohio.
'That was the time he talked for two hours about you, my dear,' Miss Lansing said, smiling. 'Fortunately no one else came in, so he was uninterrupted. I liked to listen to his talk; he had charm.' But Eunice saw her eyes kindle. 'He was more than charming. He was great.'
'Yes,' Eunice answered very low. 'He would have been a great man, Miss Lansing. I always knew he would.'
At that Miss Lansing put out both hands and covered Eunice's that were clasped tightly in her lap. 'He would have been a great man,' she repeated, 'and you, my dear, would have made him a great wife.'
Eunice felt that never, unless she should hear Stephen's voice again, should she listen to such wonderful words as those. Ever since Miss Lansing had gone they had sung themselves in her heart like a sacred refrain. She was glad that it was night now so that she could fall asleep repeating them.
'Getting ready for bed, Eunice?'
'I'm beginning to.' Eunice opened the door to her mother, who stood outside winding the clock.
'Do you know,' said Mrs. Day as she set the alarm, 'I've been thinking again what a good idea it was to open that can of peas. They did make the chops look so tasty,and they were almost as tender as the French. I helped Miss Lansing twice.'
Eunice kissed her as she turned away.
'It was a nice dinner throughout, mother, and the table looked lovely.'
'Well, I saw Miss Lansing look at the cloth. She was too much of a lady to say anything, of course, but I could tell she noticed it.'
'Yes,' said Eunice, 'I think she did.'
Mrs. Day was closing her door.
'Put out the light in the hall before you go to bed, Eunice.'
'Yes, mother,' said Eunice, softly closing her own door.
She stood still a moment in the centre of the candle-lighted room. Then she went over to the Glory-Box and took out the kimono and laid it over the footboard so that the pink folds could catch the light. When she had undressed, she put it on. 'It will be a beautiful ending to the day,' she said, as she stood before the mirror braiding her hair.
Her eyes rested on Stephen's picture.
'I think you would have been proud to-day, dear, and I think you would have liked this.'
She turned to the mirror, and looked at the girl reflected there, at the dark eyes and hair and at the kimono draping her soft white gown.
'Dawn and apple-blossoms,' she whispered and then stretched out her arms.
'Stephen, my dear! O Stephen.'
We were trailing the 'riders' of P Ranch across the plains to a hollow in the hills called the 'Troughs,' where they were to round up a lot of cattle for a branding. On the way we fell in behind a bunch of some fifty cows and yearlings which one of the riders had picked up; and, while he dashed off across the desert for a 'stray,' we tenderfeet drove on the herd. It was hot, and the cattle lagged, so we urged them on. All at once I noticed that the whole herd was moving with a swinging, warping gait, with switching tails, and heads thrown round from side to side as if every steer were watching us. We were not near enough to see their eyes, but the rider, far across the desert, saw the movement and came cutting through the sage, shouting and waving his arms to stop us. We had pushed the driving too hard. Mutiny was spreading among the cattle, already manifest in a sullen ugly temper that would have brought the herd charging us in another minute, had not the cowboy galloped in between us just as he did—so untamed, unafraid, and instinctively savage is the spirit of the herd.
It is this herd-spirit that the cowboy, on his long, cross-desert drives to the railroad, most fears. The herd is like a crowd, easily led, easily excited, easily stampeded,—when it becomes a mob of frenzied beasts, past all control,—the spirit of the city 'gang' at riot in the plains.
If one would know how thin is the coat of domestication worn by the tamest of animals, let him ride with the cattle across the rim-rock country of southeastern Oregon. No better chance to study the spirit of the herd could possibly be had. And in contrast to the cattle, how intelligent, controlled, almost human, seems the plainsman's horse!
I share all the tenderfoot's admiration for the cowboy and his 'pony.'
Both of them are necessary in bringing four thousand cattle through from P Ranch to Winnemucca; and of both is required a degree of daring and endurance, as well as a knowledge of the wild-animal mind, which lifts their hard work into the heroic, and makes of every drive a sage-brush epic—so wonderful is the working together of man and horse, a kind of centaur of the plains.
From P Ranch to Winnemucca is a seventeen-day drive through a desert of rim-rock and greasewood and sage, which, under the most favorable conditions, is beset with difficulty, but which, in the dry season, and with anything like four thousand cattle, becomes an unbroken hazard. More than all else on such a drive is feared the wild herd-spirit, the quick, black temper which, by one sign or another, ever threatens to break the spell of the riders' power and sweep the maddened or terrorized herd to destruction. The handling of the herd to keep this spirit sleeping is ofttimes a thrilling experience.
Some time before my visit to P Ranch, in the summer of 1912, the riders had taken out a herd of four thousand steers on what proved to be one of the most difficult drives ever made to Winnemucca. For the first two days on the trail the cattle were strange to each other, having beengathered from widely separated grazing grounds,—from Double-O and the Home Ranch,—and were somewhat clannish and restive under the driving. At the beginning of the third day signs of real trouble appeared. A shortage of water and the hot weather together began to tell on the temper of the herd.
The third day was long and exceedingly hot. The line started forward at dawn, and all day kept moving, with the sun cooking the bitter smell of the sage into the air, and with sixteen thousand hoofs kicking up a still bitterer smother of alkali dust which inflamed eyes and nostrils and coated the very lungs of the cattle. The fierce desert thirst was upon the herd long before it reached the creek where it was to bed for the night. The heat and the dust had made slow work of the driving, and it was already late when they reached the creek, only to find it dry.
This was bad. The men were tired, but the cattle were thirsty, and Wade, the 'boss of the buckaroos,' pushed the herd on toward the next rim-rock, hoping to get down to the plain below before the end of the slow desert twilight. Anything for the night but a dry camp.
They had hardly started on when a whole flank of the herd, suddenly breaking away as if by prearrangement, tore off through the brush. The horses were as tired as the men, and, before the chase was over, the twilight was gray in the sage, making it necessary to halt at once and camp where they were. They would have to go without water.
The runaways were brought up and the herd closed in till it formed a circle nearly a mile around. This was as close as it could be drawn, for the cattle would not bed—lie down. They wanted water more than they wanted rest. Their eyes were red, their tongues raspy with thirst. The situation was a difficult one.
But camp was made. Two of the riders were sent backalong the trail to bring up the 'drags' while Wade, with his other men, circled the uneasy cattle, closing them in, quieting them, and doing everything possible to make them bed.
They were thirsty; and instead of bedding, the herd began to 'growl'—a distant mutter of throats, low, rumbling, ominous, as when faint thunder rolls behind the hills. Every plainsman fears the growl, for it too often is a prelude to the 'milling,' as it proved to be now, when the whole vast herd began to stir—slowly, singly at first and without direction, till at length it moved together, round and round a great compact circle, the multitude of clicking hoofs, of clashing horns and chafing sides, like the sound of rushing rain across a field of corn.
Nothing could be worse for the cattle. The cooler twilight was falling, but, mingling with it, rose and thickened and spread a choking dust from their feet which soon covered them, and shut from sight all but the wall of the herd. Slowly, evenly, swung the wall, round and round, without a break. Only one who has watched a milling herd can know its suppressed excitement. To keep that excitement in check was the problem of Wade and his men. And the night had not yet begun.
When the riders had brought in the drags, and the chuckwagon had lumbered up with supper, Wade set the first watch.
Along with the wagon had come the fresh horses—among them Peroxide Jim, a supple, powerful, clean-limbed buckskin, that had, I think, as fine and intelligent an animal-face as any creature I ever saw. And why should he not have been saved fresh for just such a need as this? Are there not superior horses as well as superior men—a Peroxide Jim to complement a Wade?
The horse plainly understood the situation, Wade told me; and though there was nothing like sentiment for horse-fleshabout the boss of the P Ranch riders, his faith in Peroxide Jim was absolute.
The other night-horses were saddled and tied to the wheels of the wagon. It was Wade's custom to take his turn with the second watch; but shifting his saddle to Peroxide Jim, he rode out with the four of the first watch, who, evenly spaced, were quietly circling the herd.
The night, for this part of the high desert, was unusually warm. It was close, still, and without a sky. The near, thick darkness blotted out the stars. There is usually a breeze at night over these highest rim-rock plains which, no matter how hot the day may have been, crowds the cattle together for warmth. To-night not a breath stirred the sage as Wade wound in and out among the bushes, the hot dust stinging his eyes and caking rough on his skin.
Round and round moved the weaving shifting forms, out of the dark and into the dark, a gray spectral line like a procession of ghosts, or some morris dance of the desert's sheeted dead. But it was not a line, it was a sea of forms; not a procession, but the even surging of a maelstrom of hoofs a mile around.
Wade galloped out on the plain for a breath of air and a look at the sky. A quick cold rain would quiet them; but there was not a feel of rain in the darkness, no smell of it on the air. Only the powdery taste of the bitter sage.
The desert, where the herd was camped, was one of the highest of a series of table-lands, or benches; it lay as level as a floor, rimmed by a sheer wall of rock from which there was a drop to the bench of sage below. The herd had been headed for a pass, and was now halted within a mile of the rim-rock on the east, where there was a perpendicular fall of about three hundred feet.
It was the last place an experienced plainsman would have chosen for a camp; and every time Wade circled theherd, and came in between the cattle and the rim, he felt the nearness of the precipice. The darkness helped to bring it near. The height of his horse brought it near—he seemed to look down from his saddle over it, into its dark depths. The herd in its milling was surely warping slowly in the direction of the rim. But this was all fancy, the trick of the dark and of nerves—if a plainsman has nerves.
At twelve o'clock the first guard came in and woke the second watch. Wade had been in the saddle since dawn, but this was his regular watch. More than that, his trained ear had timed the milling hoofs. The movement of the herd had quickened.
If now he could keep them going, and could prevent their taking any sudden fright! They must not stop until they stopped from utter weariness. Safety lay in their continued motion. So the fresh riders flanked them closely, paced them, and urged them quietly on. They must be kept milling and they must be kept from fright.
In the taut silence of the stirless desert night, with the tension of the herd at the snapping-point, any quick, unwonted sight or sound would stampede them; the sneezing of a horse, the flare of a match, would be enough to send the whole four thousand headlong—blind, frenzied, trampling—till spent and scattered over the plain.
And so, as he rode, Wade began to sing. The rider ahead of him took up the air and passed it on until, above the stepping stir of the hoofs, rose the faint voices of the men, and all the herd was bound about by the slow plaintive measures of some old song. It was not to soothe their savage breasts that the riders sang to the cattle, but to prevent the shock of their hearing any loud and sudden noise.