When he could no longer stand the uncertainty, Peter Brailsford made his excuses to MillyVincent,—she of the silly lisp and carrot-colored hair. He stalked from the room while the piano and violin played Strauss, ascended the dark stairs, and stood at the landing watching the clouds scudding across the face of the moon.
The sound of laughter and dancing feet floated up to the unhappy boy. He heard the Strauss waltz vaguely.
He said that he would go away to some other town where no one would know him. He would go to Chicago or even New York. He would go to the farthest ends of the earth and forget that there had ever been a town named Brailsford Junction or a girl named Maxine.
After a few moments he turned from the window and ascended quietly to the upper hall. Scarcely breathing, he put his ear to Maxine's bedroom door. All that he could hear was the throbbing of his own pulse in his ears.
Bud Spillman and Maxine had been drinking. He had seen them slip away together half an hour before, and they had not come back. If he found them together he knew that he would kill them and then himself.
There! The rustle of silk. And now their voices and quiet laughter.
Strangely, he was not angry now. All of hisfury was suddenly drained away and he felt empty and shaken. He was amazed to find that the violin was still playing the Strauss waltz.
On a steel-cold January morning with the frozen lake booming and the wind whining along the telephone wires—a morning so cold that the pump in the kitchen was frozen and three inches of ice capped the stock tanks—the Brailsfords rolled out at four to begin butchering. They left the deep warmth of their feather-beds, came down the narrow, precipitous back stairs worn in hollows by years of weary feet.
Early Ann thawed the pump with hot water from the tea kettle; Sarah started the oatmeal, ham and eggs, toast and coffee. Gus scratched a peep-hole in the hoar frost on the window pane and looked out into the ten-below moonlight.
"It's a cold day to butcher," Sarah said. "Mightn't we wait a few days, Stanley?"
"Hank Vetter says he ain't got a pork chop left in his shop."
"I suppose if we must, we must."
The men pulled on arctics, wrapped red mufflersabout their necks, drew on their worn dogskin coats and fur caps, and taking milk pails and lanterns went out to the barns. They had no time this morning to carry water for the stock. They chopped holes in the ice on the tanks; drove the animals out to drink. The water froze as it streamed from the beasts' lips. Breath froze in white clouds about the horses' nostrils. The great bull, led by the nose, bellowed and snorted in the lantern light. The horses' hooves rang on the frozen mud of the barnyard.
"It's a rip snorter today," said Stud, coming in from the barns. He warmed his hands over the roaring stove.
Sarah dipped him hot water from the reservoir and poured it into the wash basin. She hung his coat toward the fire to keep it warm, and hastened to serve the breakfast. While they ate they argued the all-important problem of which animals were to die; and by five-thirty they were ready to begin the day's work.
Sarah, steeling herself for the ordeal; Early Ann, who pretended she did not mind slaughtering; Gus, who had a sentimental fondness for every animal on the place; and Stud, for whom this day was the climax of the hog-raising season, trooped down the hill to the slaughter house,started a fire in the stove, and carried water to fill the great iron kettle just outside the slaughter house door.
Stud began whetting his knives on his butcher's steel, making a sound which cut through Sarah's flesh like a blade. He liked to whet knives. And he could not deny it, he liked to slaughter. He had the finest butchering equipment of any farmer on Lake Koshkonong. Sticking, boning, and skinning knives in their rack—the steel blades and brass studs in the rosewood handles gleaming in the lantern light; the biggest butchering kettle in the township; the best pair of hand-wrought gambrels, hung from the finest reel on the strongest hickory axle.
Some farmers still carried away the blood in buckets, but Brailsford had built himself a slanting trough. His heavy cleavers with their hickory handles, his meat saws, hog hooks, scrapers, chopping block and sausage machine were the best that money could buy.
As always, Sarah felt an agony which she would not show. She could not understand that quality in Stanley which made him enjoy killing,—enjoy going out at night to knock the sparrows out of their nests in the straw to wring the necks of the drowsy, blinded birds. At hayingtime, too, he was careless of the rabbits and half-grown quail as he drove his mower through the timothy and clover. Sometimes when she lay beside him at night she thought of his God-like power to give life and to take it away.
Sarah's job on the farm was to feed, nurse and tenderly raise. She supposed that Stud must kill. And yet it frightened her to think that she and her family were no more secure from death than these animals. When the time came God would take them all as easily and with as little ceremony.
"Go get the hogs," Stud shouted to Gus. "And, Early Ann, you start the fire under the kettle."
Out of their warm hog house the pigs and sows were driven by the hired man's boots. They were herded across the pig yard, littered with thousands of corn cobs from the tons of corn they had eaten. They went in a complaining, squealing drove past the soul-satisfying mudholes (now frozen) where they had wallowed during the summer. They grunted and clambered over one another as they were shunted into the slaughter house.
Early Ann, meanwhile, was starting the great fire of hickory and oak under the black ironkettle mounted on its tripod. The red and yellow flames licked up around the kettle, made a scene in the darkness which might have accompanied an early witchburning on the wind-swept New England shore. Sarah was singing a hymn as she cleaned the sausage machine:
"Sweet the Sabbath morning,Cool and bright returning...."
Then:
"The lovely spring has come at last;The rain is o'er, the winter past...."
"Bring them on," cried Stud. He stripped off his mittens, picked up the big sledge, spit on his hands and rubbed them on the smooth, yellow hickory handle. He tested his strength with a couple of preparatory swings, striking the sledge against the base of the twelve-by-twelve hickory upright in the center of the building. His blows shook the roof.
"Send me a big one, Gus."
The squealing of the pigs had by this time become terrific. The crackle of the flames in the fire under the kettle, the thud of Stanley's sledge, the shouts of Gus herding the pigs, the sweet,clear notes of Sarah's singing filled the great, old building.
"Send me a big one, Gus. We'd better get going. It's lighting up in the east."
Just as the edge of the sun appeared, sparkling like red fire across five miles of frozen lake, Gus lifted the narrow sliding door and booted a sow through the opening. "Crack, crack" went the big sledge on the sow's skull. The pigs screamed and plunged about in their pens. Quickly, now, they hooked the gambrels through the tenons of her hind legs, heaved and sweat on the big pulley, lifted the sow clear of the floor and snubbed the rope around a post. Stud reached for his sticking knife, slit the sow's throat; the blood poured into the trough beneath. There were horrid sounds of breath gurgling through the slit throat.
All day they labored. They slaughtered six hogs and two young steers, cleaned sausage casings, ground and stuffed sausage, coiled it in tubs carefully. They scalded pigs and scraped them white and smooth, then hung them up to freeze. They set aside a pail of blood for blood pudding and blood gravy.
Stud sweat like a draft horse despite the chill of the building. His big muscles worked like fine, heavy machinery. He was as happy as a larkuntil they drove Ulysses S. Grant into the slaughtering pen. Then his heart misgave him.
Ulysses, whom he had raised and tended so carefully. Ulysses whom he had displayed so proudly at fair after fair. The great boar whom he loved and hated, pampered and fought. But it could not be helped. His breeding days were over. He was fierce and dangerous. A menace to have about the farm. Ulysses Jr. would have to take his place.
The boar's eyes gleamed wickedly as he stood with feet apart, waiting. He smelled the blood, but he did not scream. He was ready for his last fight and unafraid.
Stud trembled as he spit on his hands and picked up the heavy mall.
"Let him come, Gus. Get out of the way, girls."
He raised the sledge high above his head and brought it down with every ounce of his strength squarely between the animal's eyes.
Then he dropped the sledge to the ground and cried like a baby.
Stud Brailsford paced the house like a caged bear. The family was snowbound, and the enforcedidleness made the big man restless and moody.
For three days the snow had fallen burdening the trees, drifting three feet deep against the parlor windows, making it necessary to light the lamps at two each afternoon. Day and night the wind and snow poured in torrents down the Rock River valley, lifted in hissing spirals to strike against the house.
Stud had tried reading. He had mended and oiled harness, shucked corn, shoveled snow for hours every day. He had played a dozen games of checkers with the hired man. Still he was restless.
Coming upon Early Ann in the back pantry he pulled her roughly to him and kissed her full on the mouth. She broke away but she did not cry out. She looked at him bewildered, hurt, and tearful.
Stud was ashamed. He hung his head and went through into the kitchen where Sarah helped him off with his boots and put on his slippers. He knew now what was troubling him. He lay on the sofa with his eyes closed, pretending to sleep, but in reality thinking of Early Ann.
What a picture the girl was, her eyes bright and cheeks glowing! Stud liked to watch herchurning the cream (which they could not deliver because of the blizzard). He liked to watch her poring over the geography book to learn the state capitals and the principal rivers of the United States. Her fingers flew deftly as she tatted a yoke for a fancy nightgown. Stud wished he were still in his twenties.
As Stud lay brooding on the sofa, Gus burst in with the exciting news that the mailman had broken through and had brought the new mail-order catalogue. Nothing short of this miracle could have brightened the sad day for Stanley.
The new Sears Roebuck catalogue! It was a gala event. Let the snow drift, stars fall, or nations vanish. The Brailsfords did not care. They gathered around Stud who hastily tore the wrapping from "The Farmer's Bible" and opened it on the kitchen table.
Stanley, as always, turned to the buggies, wagons and harnesses. He had a Ford, it was true, but his first love had been the buggy. He sighed deeply as he viewed the spanking new surreys, phaëtons, runabouts, Concords and buckboards. He especially coveted buggy number 11R720, a veritable dream in buggy manufacture illustrated in full color. This swank creation,which the catalogue disclosed had been especially designed for eastern customers, had drop axles, green cloth cushions, triple-braced shaft, and flashing red wheels. Even as steamboat captains must sometimes dream of smart clipper ships, so Stud Brailsford, owner of a Ford, exclaimed aloud over this beautiful mail order buggy—1914 model.
He decided that his stallion, who had recently had a touch of colic, needed more exercise, and within ten minutes had filled out an order for a skeleton road cart of sturdy design. He lingered over the new cream separators, bright red gasoline engines, ornamental fences, milk cans, lanterns, and one of the most inspiring manure spreaders which ever spread manure. The 1914 catalogue was epochal in the life of this big farmer.
When Sarah and Early Ann were given a chance to look between the covers they devoured the sections on clothes, jewelry, silverware and kitchen equipment. With dreaming eyes they caressed the lavallières engraved with roses, doves, and hearts; the real diamond rings flashing blue fire; the Parisian toilet sets elaborately hand-painted, monogrammed, and including two sizes of what were politely known as combinets. Perfumes, soaps, conch shells, and "high-class,hand-painted pictures inset with mother-of-pearl" transported them to fairy land.
Their senses starved with drab reality, they viewed with hungry eyes hats dangling red cherries, grapes, stuffed birds and ostrich plumes. They lusted for the dainty nightgowns, embroidered underwear, stylish coats and dresses, rococo silver, and exotic wall paper they might never own.
"I sure do wish I had one of them blue enamel coal-oil stoves," said Sarah. "It'd be a real blessing in hot weather."
"I'll make out the order right now," Stanley said, remembering guiltily how he had kissed Early Ann in the back pantry.
"You're too good to me, Stanley, I don't deserve it."
Early Ann said she was going to buy herself a pair of navy blue high-button velvet shoes with flexible cushion soles. They could be had for two dollars and twenty-five cents, only a quarter more than it would cost to buy a sensible pair.
"And I'm going to get the family a sugarbowl-with-teaspoon-rack for the center of the table, and some new sheet music for the organ."
"You save your money, young lady," Stanley warned.
Personally Gus wished he had a bulldog so that he might buy dog collar 6R6268, ablaze with brass and imitation topaz. Then with a college-shaped meerschaum pipe, a cane, a green suit and yellow gloves he would go calling upon the new school teacher. If that didn't impress her he didn't know what would.
When no one else was around he hastily turned to the section displaying corsets and women's underwear. He had never seen anything like it. Montgomery Ward's didn't have half as many big, blooming girls in lace-trimmed drawers, union suits, princess slips, corsets, and corset covers. He had never seen so many stylish stouts with blossoming cheeks and magnificent buttocks. The moment he dared he would carefully cut out whole pages of those colorful girls, particularly the smiling matron whose union suit was described as "snug fitting with flaring umbrella bottom."
"Gee," said Gus, "I'd like to have one of everything in this catalogue."
Life could be lived in those days, as it can now, without stepping off the farm for so much as a length of ribbon. You could "laugh yourself to death" for fourteen cents by perusing "On a Slow Train Through Arkansas," "Through NewHampshire on a Buckboard," or "I'm From Texas, You Can't Steer Me." You could buy—and still can—hay forks, Wilton carpets adorned with large red roses, slide trombones, butter paddles, post card albums, cylinder records, or magic lanterns for a relatively trifling sum.
And never before in the history of civilization was seen such a display of hammocks, guns, cuckoo clocks, home remedies, feather dusters, folding tubs, bust forms, pacifiers, bed pans, trusses, windmills, lard presses, hornless talking machines and morris chairs. Ben Hur's famous chariot race enlivened a full page in color, while the devout could purchase the Bible for as little as sixty-three cents.
They did not care if the storm was raging outside. They did not care that they were snowbound. They were living in the romantic world of the mail order catalogue where they were all as rich as kings, where every woman wore a beautiful new dress and every man was handsome and stylish, where there were bonbons and books and beautiful buggies.
"Well, now that we've got the new catalogue, we know where we can put the old one," said Gus, winking at Stud.
Sarah blushed and Early Ann giggled.
On the stairs that night, Stanley again caught Early Ann and kissed her. The girl fought silently but furiously to free herself, and it was during the struggle that Sarah came upon them.
Stud's wife was suddenly overborne with her age, her fragility, and her helplessness. For a moment she was jealous, angry with them both, and bitter. The following moment she was thinking of Stanley and wondering if he weren't entitled to be faithless just once in his life. Sarah felt that she would be the last person in the world to keep another from happiness. Then she remembered Early Ann, and she was afraid for the girl as though she had been her own daughter. Heartsick, frightened, but determined to face the issue; lost, bewildered, so in love with Stanley that it hurt her in the pit of her stomach,—Sarah, in that long moment before she spoke experienced half a life-time of sorrow, and the despair of millions of women of her age, standing in lamplight on the worn stairs, looking a little older.
"You might at least think of Early Ann," she said.
Shortly after midnight Peter was awakened with lantern light in his eyes, and he sprang out of bed, smelling the fog and knowing that case weather had come.
He stumbled into his overalls and followed his father and Gus down the stairs and out into the yard where Vern Barton, Dutchy Bloom and others were waiting. The fog was so thick that a man might have lost his way in his own barnyard. The lanterns looked like fox fire at twenty feet.
Stud led the way and the others followed, Indian file, down the slushy lane to the tobacco sheds. The mist, which had rolled northward flooding the valley from hilltop to hilltop, enveloped them in a thick, white blanket, muffled their footsteps, and drowned their voices with its weight of silence. Once when the fog lifted momentarily Peter could see lights at other farm houses, other lanterns moving, the whole countryside astir.
Stud rolled back the doors of the tobacco shed on creaking rollers and the men flowed in through the wide, dark opening, went up among the beams, began methodically and rapidly to lower the heavily-laden laths of tobacco to the men below who piled them log-cabin fashion on the dirt floor. Not a moment could be lost. Tobacco leaves which had been as brittle as spun glass five hours before were now as pliable as brown satin. Before a cold wind could lift the fog, again freezing the leaves, the men must pile and protect tons of tobacco. Later it would be stripped from the stalk, bundled and hauled to the warehouses of the tobacco buyers in Brailsford Junction.
There was a breath of false spring in the air. The huge shadows cast by the men sprang up the walls and fell noiselessly. And Peter, surefooted as a cat among the beams, was jousting with shadows while he worked. Would he come back to the farm if this ten day layoff were extended, or would he catch a train for Chicago? Where would he forget Maxine the more easily? Where would he find happiness again?
On this night of fog, smelling of oak woods, of thawing earth and maple sap; surrounded by men he had known since childhood; watching his father moving gigantically in lantern light, hewrestled with his problems. What if the "Trailer" shut down for good as it easily might? Would he come back to this farm where his father and grandfather had labored before him, inherit these woods and fields, and marshes? Hunt ducks in the fall, plow the land in the spring, help at the birthing of calves and lambs and foals? He would introduce new machinery, build a new house, perhaps, high on one of the hills. Almost he was resigned to the idea. He thought his fate could have been worse.
Shortly before dawn, Early Ann came with black coffee and thick sausage sandwiches and slabs of buttered coffee cake. The men ate greedily after the hard night's work. They paid crude compliments to the girl who stood with graniteware coffeepot waiting to refill their cups.
Early Ann had brought something special for Peter. When none of the others were looking she slipped a little white hickorynut cake with white frosting into Peter's dirty hand.
"You take the first bite," he said, holding the cake to her lips.
* * *
When his ten days were up Peter almost wished that he did not have to go back to the factoryagain. He had been tinkering around with the thrashing machine, oiling the parts and tightening a nut here and there. He hoped that he might be thrashing boss again next summer.
"You might at least think of Early Ann," Stud's wife had said. Hehadthought of her until his spirit was tired, argued the problem with himself, tossed in his sleep.
Now he was almost happy to have another grievance to occupy his mind. Momentarily Early Ann was forgotten.
The Percheron had been grained too heavily and had not been given sufficient exercise. What else might be the matter with the great beast, the Lord alone knew.
"You and me, both!" Stud said to the sick stallion. "I wish all I had the matter with me was a belly ache."
Doc Carlyle was out of town, so it was up to Brailsford to save the horse,—no easy task. Teddy Roosevelt's head drooped almost to the floor; his big, shining barrel was blown, and his eyes were dull and lifeless. As Stanley and Gus stood watching the unfortunate animal he suddenlyjerked up his head, pawed the floor, and tried to climb into the manger with his front feet.
"Poor old bastard," said Gus.
"Run get the pig bladder and elder shoot," Stanley said. "I'll fix some turpentine and linseed oil."
The turpentine made the stallion frantic. He broke into a cold sweat, plunged around and around his pen, threw himself down with a crash, rolled over and got up again, dashed headlong into the planks of his stall, stood on his hind legs pawing the air wildly, screamed and foamed at the mouth, fell to the floor—his gigantic muscles contracting spasmodically under his gleaming black hide. There was a mad, frightened light in his eyes.
"It'd be like losing a member of the family," Gus said.
"We've got to save him," Brailsford cried. "Get Sarah to put over a boiler of water. And bring the cayenne pepper and baking soda and barbadoes aloes off the medicine shelf."
All night Stanley Brailsford worked over the Percheron, carried steaming blankets to cover the heaving body, forced whiskey down the terrified animal's throat, tried to soothe the brute bypetting him and talking to him as he would a sick child. He fixed himself a bed on the feed box and tried to snatch a few winks of sleep.
Shortly after midnight a cold wind made the lantern flicker. Stud Brailsford looked up to see Early Ann with coffee pot and sandwiches.
"I couldn't sleep," she said. "How's the stallion?"
"Ain't kicking around so bad."
Early Ann gazed thoughtfully at the horse for several moments.
"Probably stomach staggers," she said.
"How'd you know?"
"I've taken care of 'em before."
The man wolfed his sandwiches and drank his scalding black coffee. Early Ann went into the stall, dropped to her knees beside the stallion and began to pet his quivering shoulder. His coat was rumpled and full of straw, his heavy legs listless. The girl got the curry comb and began to curry very gently. She put a gunny-sack over the Percheron's head to shade his eyes from the lantern light.
"You're quite a hand with a sick stallion."
"Got to pamper 'em like you do all males."
"You'll make a great wife for some lucky farmer."
"I'm going to try," the girl said earnestly. "I'm sewing things against the day."
"Wish I was twenty years younger."
"That'd be two years before I was born."
They were silent for several minutes, Early Ann currying the stallion, Stanley brooding and munching his sandwiches. Once the Percheron tried to get to his knees, then sank back wearily in the straw.
"You'll be all right," Stanley told the big animal. "You ain't going to die. You're a big husky critter that can stand all kinds of belly aches."
The girl picked up the coffee pot and started for the door.
"Wait," the man said. He came quickly to her side and put his arm around her. Trembling and frightened she tried to get away. The rasping breath of the stallion, the strange light, and the huge arm around her waist made her feel faint.
"I can't," she said.
"Why not?"
"I can't do anything like that to Sarah, and to you and me."
"No," the man said. "I suppose you can't."
After she had gone Stud tried to sleep, but could not. Mice ventured out into the ring oflight and nibbled at kernels of corn. The wind shoved at the door and rattled the black window panes. The animals stirred in their sleep, sighed deeply, dreamed of lush green pastures.
At half past three in the morning the stallion had another bad spell, and Stud thought he was going to die. He wished that he had a hypodermic needle so that he could puncture the gut at the spot where it had become the most distended. He felt helpless in the face of death. He pleaded with the stallion not to die.
Strange how big male things could die so easily. They were so strong and fiery and full of life one moment and dead the next. You could breed them to size, color, speed or endurance but you couldn't breed them against death. It made Stud Brailsford think of his own mortality watching the stallion hour by hour. He wished again that he could leave a dozen boys to propagate his kind.
"Don't die," he said. "Don't die, big fellow."
* * *
All day they tended the stallion, and the next night Stanley again insisted upon watching throughout the night. This time Early Ann brought coffee and sandwiches before the restof the family went to bed. Stanley said nothing but pulled the girl roughly to him.
"No, no," she whispered. "Don't, Mr. Brailsford, please. I ain't strong enough to fight you, Stanley, please."
She began to cry, so he let her go, unharmed. She did not leave immediately, but waited to pour him another cup of coffee.
She wondered if he were asking too much, if other girls were so virtuous. She wondered if she should be kind to this unhappy man. But before she could answer these questions they saw the first flames and caught the smell of burning hay.
Looking back upon that night of wind and gusty rain when the Brailsford barn burned like a pile of dry shavings in a forest fire, Sarah sometimes wondered what blind impulse had sent her through the smoke and flames to save the twin Percheron colts. She thought that perhaps it was her feeling of protection for young things. She couldn't bear to think of the colts being burned.
"Save yourself, Mother," Brailsford had cried above the roaring fire, struggling vainly to savethe stallion; pleading, whipping and cajoling. At last he left the inert sire, rushed to the box stall of Napoleon and led the bull to safety.
"Help Gus with the cows down at the other end," Stud shouted to his wife. "I'll get the horses."
He went in among the fire-crazed mares and geldings, old work horses who were faithful and quiet in the field but who were now leaping, terrified, wild animals, straining at their halter ropes, pawing the floor, and shying like unbroken yearlings at the thunder of the flames. Early Ann led the three ponies into the tobacco shed, then ran like the wind to the telephone in the kitchen.
"Hurry, it's the Brailsford barn," she cried. "Take the short cut over Barton's hill."
Vern Barton, Ole Oleson and Dutchy Bloom were carrying water from the stock tanks. Sarah and Gus were leading out the cows.
The big flames ran in sheets up the curving walls of the wooden silo, burst like a volcano through the peaked roof, cracked and thundered like a kettle drum in the half-empty cylinder. The resinous siding of the barn burned like a fire of pine knots, kindling the hand-hewn oak and hickory timbers cut from the forest with axe and adz fifty years before.
Cows bawled. Pigeons and sparrows shot out like flaming rockets and fell into the fields. Chickens squawked as they tumbled from the building, ran around in circles like fighting cocks, or flew back crazily into the scorching flames. A mother cat carrying a singed kitten in her mouth stalked out of the barn, her eyes gleaming like green coals. Ganders added their hiss to the hiss of the fire, men shouted and women screamed.
In the hub-bub that went on about him Stud alone kept a clear head. He ordered the men to form a bucket line, sent others for the spray wagon which was used to throw a small stream on the adjoining buildings, rushed in again and again after horses. It was while he was leading out the last, maddened gelding that he was all but caught in the passageway by the rearing, screaming beast. He could hear Sarah calling him, beside herself with fear. He could see the flame licking at the edges of the doorway and eating at the lintel.
"Steady, boy. Steady."
He patted the nervous shoulder, talked quietly to the frantic animal. Slowly the horse subsided, seemed to listen, followed Stud in a dash through the door not a moment too soon as the flaming lintel came crashing down behind them.
When the fire reached the haymow there was a flare and flash almost like an explosion as the dust and loose hay ignited. All the colors from blue-white to crimson played across the surface of the hay. Then the fifty tons of timothy, alfalfa, and clover settled down to a forty-eight hour blaze. Flame and smoke sucked and twisted up the hay chutes like dust in a tornado. These blasts cut through the shingled roof like a dozen blow-torches and spurted their yellow pennants skyward. The flames licked and bellied in the wind, belched from the open door of the loft with the hollow intonation of a big gun.
"Help pull the hayfork down," cried Gus. He said in after years that he had intended to fasten barrels of water to the fork, run them down the fork track, and dump them on the flame. Before he could attempt the impractical scheme the ropes had burned and the fork had fallen with a crash, imbedding itself in the snow and mud.
Finally the fire department arrived. The big dapple grays had run four miles dragging the heavy fire engine through the slushy snow. They galloped into the barnyard lathered and panting, the red wheels and brass mountings of their engine flashing in the fire-light, steam and smoke belching from the funnel.
"Unwind the hose, boys," shouted Hank Vetter. "Where's the water, Stud?"
"We'll use the tanks and then the cistern," Stud roared. "I got the gasoline engine pumping from the well."
But all these sources were soon insufficient for the two inch hose through which the fire engine forced its stream. They led the hose to the creek, chopped a hole through the ice, and began to pump from the deep hole beside the mill. The water sprayed upon the burning roof, was shot in through the loft door; hissed into the inferno leaving scarcely a trace.
"Look out!" cried Stud. "There goes the roof!" It fell with a mighty crash throwing embers high into the air, shooting flames seventy-five feet above the barn: blue, yellow, and red against the inky sky; lighting up the countryside from Cottonwood Hill to Charley's Bluff. Another fire was burning on the frozen lake, the flames pointing downward toward the center of the earth.
Then the timbers holding up the hay collapsed and half-a-hundred tons of burning grass fell into the stables. The great stallion screamed once and then was still.
Sarah came over to comfort Stud.
"We've got each other and most of the stock," she said.
"We'll make it somehow, Mother. We'll start all over."
"I'll go to the house now and fix something for the firemen."
"I guess you might as well."
Hank Vetter, chief of the volunteers, left his engine and came over to where Stud was listening to the condolences of his neighbors.
"How'd it start?" yelled Hank.
"Darned if I know," said Stud, scratching his singed head. "I was tending a sick stallion and...."
"Was you smoking?" asked Hank.
"Never smoked around the barns in my life."
"Didn't tip over the lantern?"
"Lantern was hanging from a peg. Never touched the lantern."
"Well, it couldn't have started by itself," said Hank. "Let's look around."
They had taken less than a dozen steps down the lane when a figure started up from behind a stump, jumped the fence, crashed down the hill toward the lake, and began to skirt the bay.
"It's Joe Valentine," shouted Early Ann.
"This is my job," Stud cried, dashing after the fleeing figure.
Hearing shouts, Joe Valentine decided to risk the shortest way to Lake House Point. He leaped onto the melting ice and ran and stumbled two hundred yards out from the shore. They saw him clearly in the light of the burning barn as he crashed through into the black water and went down; and although they watched the dark hole in the ice for twenty minutes he did not come up again.
BOOK FIVE
During the spring of 1914 Edith Cavell was going quietly about her civilian duties of mercy in Brussels. A Bolshevik agitator by the name of Lenin was hiding in Galicia sending anonymous articles to Russian newspapers. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Navy, attended the ceremonies which began construction of battleship number 39, "the greatest fighting machine in the universe." Villa had the federals on the run south of the Rio Grande. The veteran Joffre deep in Plan 17 eyed the aging but wily von Moltke across the Rhine. Aunt Martha in her Household Hints suggested putting ordinary glass marbles in the tea-kettle to keep the lime from gathering.
But on the Brailsford farm they were building a new barn.
For twenty-four hours the Brailsfords had been stunned by the loss. They had gone about their duties in a daze. No one had seen Sarah crying,but her eyes were rimmed with red, and Stanley silently mourned the loss of his big Percheron and the Jersey heifers.
Then, while the last charred timbers were still smouldering they turned to the more consoling thought of reconstruction. They would have a magnificent new barn with arching roof and silver ventilators. They would have a barn which would house fifty head of cattle besides the horses, with a hayloft twice the size of the old one.
Peter came home every week-end to help with the work. He insisted that the barn be piped with drinking water for the cattle, that the steel stanchions and cement floor be of the latest design, and that whole banks of windows replace what had previously been almost windowless stone walls.
They worked with frantic haste for soon it would be spring, soon there would be a quarter section to plow and plant. Already the ice was breaking, the gulls were screaming overhead; great flights of wild ducks and geese were wedging their way northward.
Stripped to his shirt sleeves even in the early March winds Stud Brailsford worked early and late. He helped the carpenters to lift the big four-by-eights and two-by-twelves into theirplaces, drove thirty-penny spikes as though they were finishing nails. He helped to build the forms and pour the cement; wheeled big barrows of sand, gravel and concrete; brought stone-boat loads of hard heads to fill the sloping ramp.
Saws ripped through clean-smelling wood; hammers rang from dawn until dark; wagonloads of lumber, shingles, barn-equipment and paint came out daily from Brailsford Junction; and by the twentieth of March the cows and horses were in their new, luxurious home.
It took all the insurance money on the old barn and nearly every cent Stud Brailsford had in the bank. The big man was weary, hard-hit financially, and definitely older. But he looked up proudly at his great new barn and smiled.
Before Stud put a fork of hay in the mow they had a barn dance. Corn meal was strewn over the wide pine boards and a four-piece orchestra from Brailsford Junction was hired for the occasion. The old folks danced the square dances to the squeaking of the fiddle, and Stud who had not called the figures in fifteen years called them that night as was his privilege since he owned the barn. Neither he nor Sarah had gone to a dance in ten years, nevertheless he led her proudly in the grand march and the Virginia Reel.
Later the young folks, to the scandalization of their elders, danced the tango and the turkey trot, and they all ended the evening with "Home, Sweet Home" and plenty of apple cider.
"I guess we can still kick up our heels," said Stanley, escorting his wife from the barn to the kitchen door.
"Gee, you sure can rag," Early Ann told the glowing Peter.
"Maybe I can't dance so good," Gus confessed to the new school teacher, "but I know where there's another jug of apple jack."
Almost before the paint was dry on the barn it was lambing time, and night and day for more than a week the Brailsfords helped the bleating ewes and their small dependents, warmed chilled lambs in the "hospital" at the corner of the shed and gave the weakened mothers encouraging shots of brandy. Four times there were twins and once triplets. To Stud's dismay one little black lamb made its appearance—a disgrace to his exceptionally pure flock of Shropshires. As chance would have it the little black fellow was orphaned and no ewe could be made to adopt it, so Early Ann raised him a pet on a baby bottle.
The great old ram was kept securely lockedin his pen through all these proceedings. He looked on indifferently through the bars, his thick white wool glowing and healthy; his massive, wide head, broad shoulders and low-slung chassis the very essence of masculinity.
"He's got a leg on each corner," said Stanley admiringly, stopping to pet the father of sixty-four new sons and daughters.
The pony mare and one of the Percherons dropped foals within the next two weeks, and fawn-eyed Jersey calves arrived almost daily. At the Oleson farm another little Swede entered the world. Sarah and Temperance Crandall were on hand to help the midwife, but Early Ann was strictly forbidden to go near the place until the baby was born, washed, and placed in his hand-carved cradle. The arrival of three small billy goats, and twelve litters of Poland China pigs increased the blessed events on the west shore of Lake Koshkonong to a staggering figure.
Stud Brailsford, deep in the spring plowing, had no time to think of any woman. He bought a brooder and an incubator for Sarah, and evenings he went into the cellar to tinker with the new contraptions. In due time flotillas of fluffy ducklings, eight hundred scrambling, peeping chicks, and a dozen long-necked, awkward, yellow-greengoslings were in evidence on every hand.
One night the orchard was taken in a single onslaught by the rush of spring. The fragrant white billow swept over apple, cherry, plum, and Sarah's flowering crab. Underneath the laden trees the dandelions bloomed, and the bees came to plunder.
Once again spring was upon the land.
It might have occurred to Stanley—but never did—that throughout the spring the boy had seemed curiously devoted to the farm, unwilling to miss a single week-end in the country. It should have seemed strange to Brailsford that when the "Trailer" went bankrupt in May, Peter took the loss of his job so philosophically. But all that Stud thought, when he thought about the matter at all, was now his boy was back at last, that he had sown his wild oats and was ready to settle down, and that during the coming season he would make him thrashing boss again.
On the morning of June 28, 1914—the day that Gavro Princip shot the Archduke Ferdinandat Serajevo—Stud Brailsford awoke just before dawn. Ducks were quacking, geese hissing in the barnyard. Roosters were heralding the dawn, answered across the lake by other roosters. A cow bawled at her calf, the wind rustled in the corn. Ten miles away a train whistled, and rumbled across the river bridge. To Stud's simple mind the world had never seemed more peaceful. The smell of coffee, toast and sausage drifted up from the kitchen. The first streaks of color were showing in the east, reflected on the surface of the lake.
Stud did not know that Europe was an armed camp, that civilization was about to be blown to bits, that Wisconsin farm boys, whistling as they went to the barns that morning, would soon be lying in the mud of Flanders. Stud had never heard of the Archduke Ferdinand nor of Serajevo. You could not have convinced him that a shot fired by a Serb in remote Bosnia could affect his prosperous dairy farm on Crabapple Point in the Fertile Rock River valley of Southern Wisconsin.
It was Sunday. Peter and Gus were already up and doing the chores. Stud could lie abed for another half hour if he wished. He could go swimming in the lake, or merely lie in the hammock under the trees, listening to the birds and takinglife easy. Such indolence was all but unbelievable to the big farmer who for the past three and one-half months had been working sixteen hours a day, laboring evenings and holidays, even breaking God's commandment by plowing on Sunday. But at last the crops were planted; the corn was knee-high, and the twenty acres of tobacco were a rich, healthy green.
Stud yawned, stretched like a big cat, rolled out of bed and donned clean blue shirt and overalls. Carrying his shoes and socks in his hand he padded down the stairs, enjoying the feeling of the cool, smooth wood under his bare feet. Sarah and Early Ann were busy over the kitchen stove, the spot where they spent many a Sabbath.
"Sleepy-head," taunted Early Ann. "Chores are most done."
For the first time since the burning of the barn Stud really noticed the girl. My, she was pretty! After breakfast he saw her take sunbonnet and milkpail and start up the path toward the strawberry patch beyond the hill. Ten minutes after she was out of sight, he followed.
Sarah Brailsford guessed where he was going, and why, but she did not raise a finger to stop him. Gus Gunderson knew by second nature what was up. Stud, chewing a stem of Timothy,climbed the hill, skirted the orchard, and there he found them.
For a moment Stanley Brailsford was dumbfounded. Then a slow smile spread over his face. Briefly he stayed to watch Early Ann and Peter sitting on the grassy bank with their arms around each other, looking off across the lake.
Slowly old Brailsford retraced his steps, saying to no one in particular, "Grandchildren. Ho, ho! I never thought of grandchildren. Wonder what it'll be like to be a grandfather?"
He was still chuckling when he sat down beside Sarah on the front porch.
"You know, when Peter and Early Ann get married, I'm going to build them a house on Cottonwood Hill."
"I think that would be real nice," said Sarah. "It's the prettiest view in southern Wisconsin."
"I hope they have a dozen children, Mother. I'd like about seven boys and five girls. They'll be blue-ribbon babies if that pair breeds 'em."