“Before the United States Land Office at Fairplay, Chico County, on August 30th, 18—,will appear, viz.: Ralph C. Gordon, who enters Homestead claim, No. 4571, for the W. 1-2, W. 1-4, Section 34, and S. 1-2 Section 33, Township 22 S., Range 68 W.“Ralph C. Gordon names the following witnesses to prove his continuous residence upon, and cultivation of said land, viz.:“W. H. Wright, S. H. Stearns, C. L. Wilson, all of Chico County.“W. W. Bayard, Register.”
“Before the United States Land Office at Fairplay, Chico County, on August 30th, 18—,will appear, viz.: Ralph C. Gordon, who enters Homestead claim, No. 4571, for the W. 1-2, W. 1-4, Section 34, and S. 1-2 Section 33, Township 22 S., Range 68 W.
“Ralph C. Gordon names the following witnesses to prove his continuous residence upon, and cultivation of said land, viz.:
“W. H. Wright, S. H. Stearns, C. L. Wilson, all of Chico County.
“W. W. Bayard, Register.”
We all listened to the reading with breathless interest. When it was concluded Mrs. Horton observed: “Wright, Stearns, and Wilson, they’re your witnesses, are they?”
“Yes; father selected them, you know,” Jessie replied.
“They’re good men, all of them, but, I declare, I wish that your pa had thought to put Jake on, too! It would have given me a good excuse to go down with you when the day comes. Not but what I mean to go anyhow, for that matter. Well, now, your date is set. It wasn’t set before, was it?”
“No; the other notices read: ‘On a day to be hereinafter named, etc.’”
“August 30th,” Mrs. Horton repeated, musingly; “let’s see, this is the 15th. You’ve got two weeks and a day yet to wait. It don’t give a great amount of time to get money in, but it’s a relief to know when it’s coming off, isn’t it?”
Joe had been sitting in his corner, saying nothing, but, just at this point, I saw him roll his eyes scornfully at our neighbor, and wondered if it could be that the old man was jealous of her openly expressed interest in the little family to which he laid prior claim. “Yes,” Jessie said, replying to Mrs. Horton’s question: “It is a great relief, and, after all, we’ve done about all that we can to make ready for it.”
“I’m not doubting that, still, I wish, now that we’ve thought of it, that you did have time to earn a little more by sewing. How much are the witnesses’ fees?”
“Six dollars each; it will take eighteen dollars for that alone,” Jessie told her.
“Eighteen dollars! and I don’t suppose you can have much more than that on hand!” Mrs. Horton’s face lengthened. “I wish I had it to lend you,” she remarked, at last. “You could pay me in sewing; but Jake—”
We had heard of Mr. Horton’s views on the money question. He always ran bills at the store because, he said, a woman couldn’t be trusted with ready cash. “Give a woman her head and she’ll spend all a man has on knick-knacks!” was an observation with which even his chance acquaintances were unduly familiar. How often, then, must his poor wife have heard it.
Pitying her halting effort to give a good excuse for not having the sum needed—when they were so wealthy—and still loyally shield her tyrant, I said: “I’m sure the witnesses will not be at all hard on us; they will be willing to wait a little if necessary, don’t you think so, Jessie?”
But before Jessie could reply, Joe interposed: “Mr. Wilson, he done say he goin’ gib me a chance for to wuck for him w’en I wants to;mebbe I goin’ want ter wuck out dem witness fee; no tellin’.”
This was ambiguous, but we well understood that the old man did not like to talk of business matters before strangers—as he regarded every one outside the immediate family.
“Your first notice came out along in the spring, didn’t it?” Mrs. Horton inquired.
“In April,” Jessie replied, and was silent, a dreamy look in her eyes, while I vividly recalled the stormy day when father came back from a visit to the post-office with the paper containing the first notice in his hand. I heard the April rain beating against the window panes while father told us children—for Jessie and I were children then; it was so long ago, measured by heart-beats, oh! so long ago—that our notice was out and the witnesses named.
Joe broke a little silence by remarking: “Dere’s ten acres ob as fine w’eat as ebber growed out doahs, a waitin’ to be cut an’ threshed atwixt dat day an’ dis.”
“Ten acres!” Mrs. Horton echoed. “Whata help that’ll be to you! I do hope you’ll get it taken care of all right.”
“I’se goin’ tek keer ob hit; yo’ needn’t fur to fret about dat. I’se goin’ at hit, hammer an’ tongs, day arter to-morry mornin’.”
“Why not to-morrow?” Jessie inquired eagerly; “Leslie and I can help you.”
“I reckons dere can’t nobody help me much w’en I’se done got a broken reaper to wuck with.”
“Oh, that’s too bad! How long will it take to get it fixed?” Jessie asked.
“I’se done get hit fixed to-morry, sure, den—we see.”
“Leslie and I will help you,” Jessie repeated. “The wheat is worth more than any sewing that we can do. If we can get it marketed it will pay up all our bills, nearly, won’t it, Joe?”
“I spec’ maybe hit will, honey,” Joe returned, grinning complacently. “Doan you chillen fret about nothin’,” he continued earnestly. “Dem bills all goin’ be paid up, clean to de handle.”
I confess that I felt far less sanguine than he appeared to be on that point.
“Isn’t it a mercy that our corn and wheat have been let to grow in peace this year?” I said, after Mrs. Horton had taken her leave. “It’s the first year since we have been here that such a thing has happened.”
“I hope it will be the last year that we will have to try raising a crop without a fence,” Jessie replied. For our fence building had stopped abruptly with the digging of some post holes on that day in April. Pumping the water out of the mine had been an expensive piece of work, and all the valley people who had lost relatives in the accident, many who had not, indeed, had come gallantly to the Gray Eagle’s aid when that task was undertaken. Because of the aid that we had furnished, our fence was still unbuilt.
“Chillen’s, dere’s lots ob blackberries on de hill above de w’eat fiel’,” Joe stopped to remark, as he was about starting for the blacksmith shop with the reaper, the next morning.
“They’ll have to stay there as far as I’m concerned,” returned Jessie, who was busily engaged in sewing up the gaping rents in Mr. Horton’s coat; “I haven’t time to gather them.”
“Me do det ’em!” exclaimed Ralph, starting up from the floor, where he had been vainly trying to fasten some paper boots on Guard’s paws. Guard did not object, but, when a boot was, after much trouble, partially secured, he took it in his mouth and calmly pulled it off. “Me do dit ’ackburries yite now,” reiterated Ralph.
“No,” said Jessie, “Ralphie can’t go.”
Thus summarily enjoined, Ralph began to roar, as a matter of course. Joe, who had already started to climb into the reaper seat, came back and looked in at the door, the better to look reproachfully at us.
“I doan like dish yer sperrit ob money-gettin’,” he declared, frowning. “Denyin’ a little chile all his innercent pleasures fo’ de sake ob scrapin’ a few censes togedder!” he exclaimed severely.
Jessie laughed, with a suspicious little catch in her voice; it was hard to be misunderstood, if only by blundering, faithful old Joe. “I really must not spare time to go with him, Joe,” she said in self-defense, “but perhaps Leslie had better go. It will do you good, dear,” she added, mindful of my inexplicable paleness on the preceding day.
“I don’t need being done good to, Jessie, but evidently Ralph does, so I’ll take him out,” I said, while old Joe nodded approvingly.
“Dat’s right; dat’s right, honey, chile,” he declared, and again betook himself to the waitingteam and reaper. Freed from the danger of being compelled to wear boots, Guard had gone outside and placed himself by the doorstep, where he was, to all appearances, peacefully dozing when Joe started. But, before the team had turned the shoulder of the nearest hill, he arose, stretched himself lazily, and trotted slowly down the road after them.
Soon after Joe’s departure, Ralph and I, baskets in hand, started for the blackberry patch. Ralph’s basket was a little toy candy pail, which he assured Jessie he should bring to her “filled way up on ’e top wiv burries.” The blackberry vines grew along the upper edge of the wheat field. We stopped when fairly above the field to admire the square of yellow grain spread out below us, the bended heads of wheat nodding and swaying in the light breeze, and the tall stalks now and then rippling in soft, undulating waves, as if a gentle wind had moved over a sea of gold. Next to the wheat stood the corn in file after file, the leaves rustling and the tasseled heads held bravely aloft.Green uniformed soldiers of peace and plenty they seemed to me, bidding defiance to want and famine. I might better say that I stopped to admire the grain fields, for Ralph had no æsthetic enthusiasm. His one desire was to reach the “’ackburry” patch and begin stuffing them into that little red mouth of his.
“Tum on, ’Essie,” he said, tugging at my hand impatiently as I lingered. “Me’s so hungry.”
“Yes; it must be half an hour at least since you had breakfast,” I replied unfeelingly, but turning my back on the fields nevertheless and hastening on.
There were, as Joe had said, lots of blackberries, as we found on reaching the spot. I helped Ralph to fill his little bucket and he trudged along at my side, eating steadfastly, but sometimes suspending even that fascinating employment to cling to my skirts and shrink closer to me as we came upon a particularly luxuriant cluster of vines. They were so tall and arched so high above his sunny little head,and the prickly vines extended away and away in vistas that must have seemed so endless to his small stature that it was no wonder if he felt somewhat overawed at times.
We were well up on the hillside, and the fields below us were hidden from our view, when he suddenly announced that it was time to go home.
“Oh, no, Ralph,” I said, “see, sister hasn’t got her basket nearly full yet. Here’s some nice large berries; let me fill your bucket again.”
“No; ’eys sour. Me don’t like ’ackburries any more!”
“I don’t wonder!” I thought, recalling the number of times that I had filled the small bucket, and he had emptied it, but I remained discreetly silent. The little fellow had been humored so much since father’s death—and, perhaps, before—that the moment he was opposed he cried, so now he began to whimper forlornly: “Me ’ants to do home, ’Essie!”
“What for, dear?”
“Me’s s’eepy.”
That appeared very probable, too, but I dislikedto return with a half-filled bucket when the berries were so abundant and fairly begging to be picked. Looking around, inquiringly, I saw, under a clump of bushes at some little distance, an inviting carpet of cool green grass. Taking the child in my arms I carried him over and laid him down on the grass, putting my apron under his head for a pillow. “There, Ralph, isn’t that nice? I’ll stay right close by you and you can sleep here in the bushes like the little birds.”
Ralph smiled sleepily, nestling his head closer into the impromptu pillow. “’Ess,” he murmured drowsily, “’is nice; now me is a yittle yay bird.” He meant no reflection on himself in the comparison. His acquaintance with jay birds was limited, but he recognized them when he met them, and considered them very good fellows. The cool breeze fanned him; the leaves rustled, their airy shadows playing over his face, and Ralph was sound asleep almost as soon as his drowsy eyes closed. I watched him for a moment and then hastened back tomy chosen corner of the blackberry patch and resumed picking.
Unconsciously, as I worked, I pressed in among the tall vines until at length the recumbent little figure on the grass was quite hidden from sight. That did not really matter, for I was easily within call. No sound coming from that quarter I gradually became more and more absorbed in my task. It would be very nice, I thought, to carry a brimming bucket full of berries down to the house on my return. Once or twice I suspended operations to stand still and listen under the startled impression that I had heard some unusual noise. Convinced each time that there was nothing; that I was mistaken, I continued picking, but I remember that I did glance up once at the cloudless sky, wondering, in an idle way, why I should have heard thunder.
The bucket was quite full and I was backing carefully out from a thick cluster of canes, having a respectful regard for their sharp thorns, when, suddenly, the air was rent with a wildshriek, coming from the direction of the grassy plot where I had left Ralph. Shriek after shriek followed. I had heard those high piercing notes too many times to be left in an instant’s doubt; the shrieks were his. Tearing my way out of the bushes, regardless now of thorns and scratches, I bounded into the open. The scene that presented itself, when I could get a view of what was going on, almost took away my breath. The entire hillside, and the fields below, were literally swarming with cattle. Not the tame domestic herds of peaceful Eastern meadows, but the wild, long-horned, compactly built, active, and peculiarly vicious beasts known in Western parlance as “range stock.”
Ralph had been awakened, none too soon, perhaps by the trampling of hoofs, perhaps by the low bellowing that I had absently attributed to unseen thunder clouds. However it was, he had started up, as he afterward sobbingly expressed it, “To make ’e bad tows do away, so ’ey not hurt ’Essie.”
In pursuance of this design he had advancedtoward the foremost of them, shouting and waving his big straw hat in one hand, while attempting to wave my apron in the other. The apron was long and he was short, and the effort to wave it in self-defense resulted in his becoming wound up in it, falling, and rolling bodily down the hillside, in the face of some half dozen wild-eyed steers, who were coming up it. It was then that he screamed, and I appeared on the scene at the very instant that one of the steers, awakening from what appeared to be a momentary trance of surprise, advanced toward the screaming little bundle, bellowing and pawing the ground. The immense black head, crowned with a pair of great horns, curving like a Turkish scimiter, and with a point as keen, was lowered; the savage animal was on the very verge of charging on the helpless child, when my screams drew his attention toward me. He paused, lifted his head, stared at me, and, retreating a step or two, began pawing the ground again, at the same time sending forth a hoarse challenge which seemed to proclaim his readinessto engage me and all my race in a hand to horn conflict if need be. His bit of bovine bravado had given me time to reach Ralph. I caught him up and thrust him behind me. Clutching my skirt tightly, he brought his scared little face into view for an instant to exhort me. “Don’t ’e be ’fraid, Essie, me knock ’e pie out o’ ’at bad tow if her touches ’oo!” Then he shrank back, creeping under the friendly shelter of the blackberry canes until he was, as I afterward found, quite lost to view. It all took place so quickly that I had scarcely time to realize the danger before I was called upon to act. If I had turned to run, in the first instance, the great beast would have been upon me, and, in less time than it takes to tell it, I should have been ground and trampled out of human semblance. As I stood my ground he hesitated, challenged again, and, as others of the herd started toward him, charged.
In spite of the signal service that it rendered me, I cannot conscientiously recommend a twelve-quart tin bucket, filled with blackberries, as areliable weapon of defense. There would be only about one chance in a hundred, I should think, of its proving useful in just the way that mine did. When the steer charged I was, in fact, quite wild with terror; it was instinct alone that prompted me to attempt a defensive use of any article in my hands, and if that article had been a feather duster I should have made the same use of it. The lowered head and sweeping horns were within six feet of me when I threw blackberries, pail and all, full in the creature’s face, at the same time giving frantic voice to the wild, high-pitched, long-drawn cry that the cow-boys use in rounding up their cattle. The blackberries did not trouble him; what did trouble him was that, by one chance in a hundred, the handle or bail of the bucket caught on the tip of one horn, and, as feeling it and, perhaps, bewildered by the rattle of tinware, the steer threw up his head, the bucket slid down the horn, lodging against the skull, and wholly obscuring one eye. Undaunted by this mishap the steer backed off,lifting his head high, shaking it and bellowing; then suddenly he lowered it, grinding head and horns into the ground, with the evident intention of pulverizing the strange contrivance rattling about his forehead. The attempt resulted in his getting his nose into the trap where only a horn had been before. Maddened with fright he took to his heels, careering down the hillside, and through the fields at top speed, followed by all the herd.
I had retreated, of course, the instant that I had discharged the bucket at my foe, and was cowering under the canes beside Ralph when the finale came.
We were saved, but my heart swelled with grief and anger, as, creeping out from our shelter, I stood up and looked down on what had so lately been a field of waving grain, ripe for the harvest.
Torn, trampled, beaten into the earth, scarcely a stalk was left standing, and the corn field was in no better shape. Poor little Ralph, with a dim, childish comprehension of the calamity that had befallen us, was crying bitterly. Lifting him to my shoulder I started toward the house, the desolated fields were out of sight behind us, when Jessie came hurrying up the trail.
“What has happened?” she inquired anxiously. “I thought I heard Ralph scream, and I am sure I heard you giving the round-up call; I thought I heard cattle, too.” She tookRalph, who was still crying, from my shoulder and carried him in her arms. “Don’t cry, precious,” she said. “Tell sister what has frightened you?”
“’Essie frowed all ’e ’ackburries at ’e bad tow, an’ ’e bad tows walked all over our pitty torn ’talks, so ’ey don’t ’tan’ up no more,” he sobbed incoherently. Jessie looked at me with dilating eyes. We were by this time entering the house, where I was not surprised to find Mrs. Horton again awaiting us, for I had already observed the Horton equipage in the front yard.
“Leslie!” Jessie was exclaiming, as we crossed the threshold. “Don’t tell me that the cattle have been in our fields; it isn’t possible!”
“I guess it is,” I said recklessly, unreasonably resenting our neighbor’s placid face. “If you find it hard to believe, just go and look for yourself. There isn’t a stalk of grain left standing,” and I proceeded to give the details of my late adventure and experience.
Jessie seemed like one dazed. She sank into a chair, holding Ralph, who was willing, for once,to be held tightly in her arms, and spoke never a word.
“What I want to know,” cried Mrs. Horton, her face fiery with indignation, “is, whose cattle were they? It’s a low shameful, mean, trick; I don’t care who did it! Oh, to think of all you’ve had to suffer, and of all that those fields of grain stood for to you, and then to think—I don’t feel as if I could hear it!” she broke off, abruptly, her voice choking. I, avoiding her eyes, looked out of the window through which I saw, indeed, only the trampled fields, invisible to any but the mind’s eye from that window.
“I hope you can collect damages,” Mrs. Horton broke out again; “and I guess you can if you can prove the ownership of the cattle. Did you notice the brand?”
Feigning not to have heard the question, I still gazed silently out of the window, but Mrs. Horton was not to be put off so easily; she repeated the inquiry, her voice suddenly grown sharp with anxiety. “Did you notice the brand, Leslie?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
She would not be put off, and, for a wicked moment, my heart was hot against all that bore her husband’s name.
“The brand was, ‘R, half-circle, A,’” I said, and bolted out of the house to hide myself and my boiling indignation in the hayloft, but, as I went, I heard Mrs. Horton sobbing out an explanation to Jessie:
“Jake started out early this morning, long before sun-up, it was, to drive the cattle from the upper range to the north pasture—he said. I told him I was afraid that he couldn’t handle such a big bunch alone—there’s nigh three thousand of them, if there’s a dozen—but he thought that he could, and they must have got away from him after all!”
Jessie made no comment, but lying at full length in the seclusion of the hayloft, I thought of the relative positions of the upper range, where Mr. Horton’s cattle usually grazed, and the north pasture, and knew that, in order to reach ourfields, the herd must have “strayed” at least five miles out of their proper course.
I was still lying in the hayloft when, as my ears informed me, Mrs. Horton came out, climbed soberly into her wagon, and drove away. With my eyes shut I still seemed to see her drooping head and shamed face. I had so far recovered my reason by this time that I could feel for her; she believed in her husband. He would soon be able to convince her that what had occurred was due to an unavoidable accident; the cattle had broken away from their one herder, and she would expend her indignation on the fact that he had attempted to drive them alone, and—she would try to make him pay damages. She would fail. One did not need an intimate acquaintance with her husband to know that.
The sound of approaching wheels aroused me from my unhappy meditations. Joe was returning. I sprang up, slid down the ladder, and went out into the yard to meet him. Mr. Wilson, the ranchman, who was to be one of our witnesses, was with him. Joe had found him atthe blacksmith shop, and, as his homeward route led past our house, had invited him to ride with him. The two were talking earnestly as the horses stopped before the barn door. Mr. Wilson had been away from home for some weeks, and we had been somewhat worried lest he should not return in time for our proving up. Evidently Joe had just been telling him this, for, as I came near them, he was saying in his hearty way: “No, sir; your young ladies needn’t ’a’ been a mite worried for fear of my not getting around in time. I was bound to come when they wanted me, and wife’s been keeping me posted about their notice. I told her I’d leave whatever I had on hand and come in time, whether or no.” He was a large man. Joe had resigned the reaper seat to him and had ridden home himself standing on one of the cross-bars. He was slowly and cautiously backing down from the high seat as I stopped beside the reaper. When his feet were fairly on the ground he turned to greet me: “Why, what’s been happening to you, little girl? Joe, youdidn’t tell me that one of your young ladies was sick!”
Joe had begun unharnessing the team; he was tying up the lines, but dropped them as Mr. Wilson spoke, and came around to my side; just then, too, Jessie joined us; she stood with one hand on old Joe’s shoulder, while I again told of the incursion of cattle on our fields. I think that she feared some terrible outburst of rage from the old man who had toiled so faithfully in those fields, and had taken such honest pride in the rich promise of an abundant harvest. If so, her fears were groundless. Joe’s sole remark, as he went on with the work of caring for the horses, was:
“Mought jess as well a’ spared de trouble ob gettin’ de reaper fixed, hit ’pears.”
Instinctively, I felt that he was so sure, he understood so well by whose agency the ruin had been wrought that he disdained to ask a question. What had taken place was simply a thing to be borne, like martyrdom.
But Mr. Wilson was not committed to a policyof silence; he had a good deal to say, and what he said was directly to the point.
“Crops plumb ruined, you say, Miss Leslie?”
“Oh, yes; entirely; I think the whole herd must have been there; not feeding quietly so much as tearing through—”
“You say the whole herd? Know of any herd, now, that you could spot?”
“It was Mr. Horton’s herd; we all know his brand.”
“R, half-circle, A; yes. Now, young folks,”—he paused to roll his eyes impressively from one to the other of us—“I’ll tell you what you want to do about this affair. You want to keep still; to keep still!”
“And be ruined!” cried Jessie, her eyes flashing.
“And not be ruined! There’s where the fun’s going to come in, Miss Jessie. ’Spose you go to work now to try to prove malicious mischief on the part of Horton in driving his cattle into your fields, for that’s what he’s deliberately done, no doubt of that, why all he’s got to dois to take his stand on the law and say that you had no business to sow grain on the range and expect cattle to keep out of it; you’ve no title to this place, and your grain fields are not even fenced. Horton’s got the law on his side, you may be sure of that, but he hasn’t got the right, and some day he’ll find it out; he’ll find it out to his cost, no matter what the law says, now you mark my words!”
“There hasn’t been a year since we’ve been here that Mr. Horton’s cattle—always Mr. Horton’s cattle—haven’t destroyed our crops,” Jessie said, her voice trembling.
“And it has always been an ‘accident,’” I added, “but I did think that maybe there would be no such accident this year; it couldn’t have occurred at a time when it would be more effective.”
“No, you may count on that; that’s just the reason why it hasn’t taken place before this. Now, the rest of us folks around here don’t propose to see you two girls and that purty little orphan boy drove off of this place that you’vetried so hard and so bravely to keep, but we’ve all got to sing low until you get your title. Then, Mr. Man, let that—well, I won’t call names—just let Mr. Horton try his little games and he’ll find that there are laws that will fit his case. The reasons that that man hasn’t landed in the penitentiary before this are, first, that the Lord was mighty lenient toward him when he went a courtin’ and induced that good woman to become his wife; second, he’s so sly. There’s never been a time yet when a body could produce direct, damaging evidence against him. It’s all ‘accident.’”
I thought of that small shining object that I had picked up in the rubbish the morning after the fire was set under our window. It would have been hard, indeed, to produce more damaging or convincing evidence than that, but Mr. Wilson had just been enjoining a strict silence in regard to Mr. Horton and his works upon us, so I kept the thought to myself.
“Your father was a good man,” Mr. Wilson continued. “He had one big advantage overHorton from the start—he was able to hold both his tongue and his temper even when Horton, by his acts, kept him so short-handed that he was unable to build the fence that would have saved his crops and so helped to defeat Horton. The fencing will cost about three hundred dollars. When I sold off that big bunch of steers, two years ago, I offered to lend him money to fence his claim, but, no sir, he wouldn’t touch a cent—seemed to have a kind of prejudice agin’ borrowing money, even of me. Another thing about Horton is,” went on our friend, who seemed to have made an exhaustive study of his subject, “that he must brag about what he’s going to do before he does it. That’s how every one knows, in reason, that he is the one who has made you all this trouble. He hasn’t scrupled to say that he’s bound to have this place, by hook or by crook, whatever happens—and so he looks out for it that things happen. But there is one thing that I will say for him, and it’s kind of curious, too—let him once be fairly and squarely beaten, so that there’s no way but forhim to own up to it, and you needn’t ask for a better or more faithful friend than he is; but he’s like—” Mr. Wilson lifted his hat and scratched his grizzled head, casting about for a simile; his eye fell on Guard. “Why, he’s like a bull-dog, you might say—he’ll hang on until beaten, and then he’s yours to command ever after.”
Jessie was greatly cast down; she looked at Guard and accepted the simile mournfully.
“There’s no hope of our ever being able to do anything that will make him admit himself beaten,” she said, “so, I suppose, we must resign ourselves to enduring his enmity as best we can.”
“I ain’t calculating on his keeping up this racket after you get your title,” Mr. Wilson declared, hopefully; “he’s dead set on getting this land now. He’s made his brags that he would have it, but when it’s once passed out of his reach, he’ll kind of tame down, I’m thinking. Now, about your fences,” he continued, with a sudden, cheery change of tone: “they’re goingup. Don’t you worry about the loss of your crop, but Joe, you just whirl in and go to plowing those fields again for fall wheat; nothing better for raising money on than fall wheat; and by the time it’s sprouted, we’ll have it fenced, snug and tight; we will, if I have to mortgage my farm to do it! But I shan’t have to do that. I can raise the money for you somehow.”
Jessie was sitting on the wagon-tongue. She looked gratefully up into the ranchman’s weather-beaten face.
“I think you’re just awful good, Mr. Wilson, but—would it be right for us to let you lend us the money when we know how opposed poor father was to anything of that kind?”
This was a vital question. I leaned forward, awaiting the answer, while Jessie listened with parted lips, as she might if our good neighbor had been some ancient oracle, whose lightest word was law. Mr. Wilson regarded us steadfastly for a moment, then scratched his head again.
“Well,” he said slowly, at last, “I s’pose, setting aside all questions of circumstances, that when the Bible said: ‘Honor thy father and thy mother in the days of thy youth,’ it meant to reach clean down to the things that your parents wanted you to do—or not to do—whether they was alive to see it done or not. I do s’pose that that was what it means, and your father he was sure set against borrowing.”
Stooping, he picked up a straw, and began biting it meditatively, while we two pondered his plain interpretation of a very plain text. Suddenly he dropped the straw, and looked at us with a brightening face:
“Why, say, you can give a mortgage on your own land, when you get your title, and your father, nor the Bible, nor nobody else, would say there was anything wrong in your neighbor’s helping you out, if so be that you couldn’t lift the mortgage when the time come. Not that there’ll be any danger of that, with the price that wheat always brings in this grazing country.”
He went away shortly after, leaving us much comforted. Joe had housed the un-needed reaper in the shed and was examining the plow before he had been gone an hour. Some bolts needed tightening and Jessie offered her services as assistant.
“We’ll get ahead of Mr. Horton yet!” she exclaimed, hammering away at the head of the bolt that she was manipulating, under Joe’s direction, as vigorously as though it might have been the head of the gentleman in question.
Joe went at the plowing the next morning and kept at it with dogged perseverance for several days. Jessie and I, busy with the sewing, at first paid little attention to him, but after a few days the look of settled exasperation on his sable countenance, as he returned to the house at the close of his day’s work, drew my attention.
“Joe,” I said to him one morning, as he was about starting for the field, “what is the matter? You look discouraged.”
“I ain’ discouraged, so my looks is deceivin’, den; but I is kine o’ wore out in my patience.”
“Why; what about?”
“Hit’s dat ’ar Frank horse; nothin’ gwine ter do him, but he mus’ stop in de furrer, ebbery few ya’ahds, an’ tun aroun’ in de ha’ness ter look at me. ’Pears like he can’ be satisfy dat Iknows my own business, but he’s got to obersee hit. Hit done gets mighty worrisome afore de day’s out,” he concluded with a heavy sigh.
“Why don’t you whip him for it?” demanded Jessie indignantly.
“W’ip nuffin’! Hes a saddle hoss; he’s nebber been call’ on fer to do such wuck afore, an’ he doan know what hit means.”
“I guess if he attended to his business he’d find out in time,” Jessie insisted. But Frank, whatever other faults he had, had none under the saddle; he was, moreover, old Joe’s especial pet. One of the work horses had died during the preceding winter, which was the reason that this one was called upon to perform labor that he evidently regarded with distrust, if not active disapproval.
So now the old man replied to Jessie’s observation with unusual sharpness:
“De whole worl’ is plum’ full ob plow hosses, so fur’s I kin see. Yo’ done meets ’em on de road, and in de chu’ch and de town meetin’s, and on de ranches; yes, sir; yo’ kin fine a plowhoss twenty times a day where yo’ meets up wid a saddle hoss once in six mont’s w’at is a saddle hoss, and not a saw-hoss wif a bridle on. Ef somebody’s got fer to poun’ dat Frank fer to make him drag a plow aroun’, hit’ll be somebody odder dan me w’at does hit! I done cut dem wicked ole clumsy blinders, w’at is a relict ob ba’barism, ef dere ebber was one, offen his bridle, so’s ’t dem bright eyes ob his’n kin see w’ats goin’ on aroun’ him, an’ now I ain’ gwine spile a good saddle hoss ter make a poor plow hoss. Hit’s too much like tryin’ ter make a eagle inter a tame ole goose,” the old man concluded soberly.
“Well, then, I suppose we’ll have to give up the fall plowing, just on account of Frank’s whims!” Jessie retorted, nettled.
“No,” Joe returned patiently; “I’se done gwine ter keep at hit, we’s get hit done somehow; if not dis year, den de nex’. I ’clar fur hit, sometimes I done been tempted fur t’ hitch one ob de cow beasts up along o’ Bill an’ tryin’ de plowin’ dat way.”
“Isn’t there some way of making Frank keep straight without whipping him?” I asked, my sympathies being about equally divided between man and horse.
“Oh, yes! I done thought a hun’nerd times dat ef dere was only some small, active boy w’at would ride him whilst I—”
I sprang to my feet, tossing aside the pieces of gingham that were destined to form a new shirt for Mr. Horton: “Here am I, Joe, take me!”
“You!” Joe’s mild eyes looked me over, and gleamed approvingly. “You is little, you is active, an’ yo’ has de bravest heart, and de unselfishestsperrit—”he said, half soliloquizing, until I interposed, laughingly:
“Come, now! Stop calling me names and say that I’ll do!”
“Dat yo’ will, honey, chile, but I nebber thought ob askin’ yo’ to do sech wuck as dat! Hit ain’ fittin’ nohow!”
“Fitting! Anything is fitting that is honest, and will help us out, Joe. Still, I am rather gladthat the fields are quite out of sight from the road.”
“Dat’s w’at dey is. Come on, den. Frank gwine wuck like a hero, now, ’cause he done think hit’s saddle wuck w’at he’s a doin’.”
“And I’ll work all the harder at the sewing,” Jessie said, smiling approval of this novel arrangement, and hastily rescuing Mr. Horton’s unfinished shirt from Guard, who had been trying to utilize it for a bed. “There, now, see that!” she added, looking at me reproachfully. “How could you be so careless, Leslie? Guard has been lying on Mr. Horton’s new shirt!”
“It is new, and Mr. Horton has never worn it, so I don’t think it will contaminate Guard,” I retorted, perversely, as I turned to follow Joe, who had already started for the fields.
With me perched upon his back, the long, awkward, pulling lines discarded, and his movements directed by a gentle touch of the bridle reins against the side of his neck, Frank worked, as Joe had said he would, like a hero. The other horse, being of a meek and quiet spirit,had made no trouble from the outset; he was content to follow Frank’s lead, so we got on famously with the plowing from the day that I was installed as postillion.
“I always supposed that plowing was such a monotonous kind of business,” I remarked to Joe one day, taking advantage of the opportunity offered by his stopping the team to wipe away the perspiration that was streaming down my face. For the day was very warm, and we had been working steadily.
“If mon’tonus means hot, honey chile, I reckons yo’s right,” responded Joe. “Yo’s purty face is a sight to behole; red as a turkey cock’s comb, hit is, an’ dat streaked wif dirt dat dey doan nuffin’ show natteral but yo’ eyes.”
“One good thing, Joe, I can’t look any dirtier than I feel,” I replied wearily, and with a longing glance toward the river that rippled silver-white and cool at the foot of the hill beneath us. Joe saw the glance.
WE GOT ON FAMOUSLY WITH THE PLOWINGWE GOT ON FAMOUSLY WITH THE PLOWING(Page150)
“Hol’ on, honey,” he exclaimed, as I was about starting the team again. “Dere’s de lineslooped up on the back band; I’ll jess run ’em out an’ finish up dish yer bit alone.”
“Do you think you can?” I asked, wavering between a longing to rest and my sense of duty.
“T’ink I kin? Dat’s good, now! Yo’ run along down to de ribber an’ hab a good paddle afore hit gits too late.”
Accordingly I slid off of Frank’s back while Joe, gathering in the slack of the lines, clucked encouragingly to him to go on. Instead of doing that the horse wheeled around in the furrow until he had brought my retreating figure into view, then stopped and gazed inquiringly after me.
“Joe,” I called back, halting, “maybe I’d better not leave.”
“Yo’ jess run right erlong, Miss Leslie, honey; dis hoss gwine ter go all right jess soon’s he make up he mine whar yo’ is gwine.”
Glancing back again presently, I found that Joe was right. Frank was working with promising sedateness.
It was deliciously cool down underneath theshadow of the cliff, on the banks of the shallow, bright river. Guard had followed me from the field; he, too, enjoyed the cool water and proceeded to make the most of it. After I had bathed my hot face and hands I sat on the bank and watched him as he splashed about, making sudden, futile darts at the tiny fish that swarmed around him when he was quiet, and went scurrying away like chaff before the wind, the instant that he moved. I had just risen to my feet, intending to start to the house, when Guard suddenly sprang out of the water with a growl. At the same instant the direful squawking of a frightened chicken broke on my ears. The squawking, close at hand at first, receded rapidly. Evidently some animal had caught one of our flock of poultry and was making off with its prize.
There was a wildness of rocks and gnarled cedar trees on the steep mountain slope above us, just beyond the bend in the river, and toward this wild quarter, judging by the outcries—fast lessening in the distance—the animal,whatever it might be, was bearing its prey. I was drenched with a shower of water drops as Guard shot past me, taking the trail with an eager yelp, while I, no less eager, and with as little reflection, ran after him. The dog had cleared the underbrush on the river bank, as I rushed out, and was racing across the little interval, or clear space between the river bank and the first jumble of rocks where the abrupt rise of the mountain slope began. Just in front of him, so close it seemed the next leap would surely enable him to seize the creature, glided, rather than ran, so swift and stealthy was the motion, some large animal, bearing a white chicken in its mouth. A tiny trail of white feathers drifted backward as the animal ran, while the helpless white wings beat the air frantically on either side of the unyielding jaws.
The poor chick might be badly hurt, but it could still squawk and struggle. Indignation gave me renewed strength. I ran forward, shouting, “Sic him, Guard, sic him!” and thenext instant my foot caught under a projecting root and I fell headlong to the ground. It really seemed for a blank space as if my fall must have jarred the earth. There was a whirling dance of stars all about my head; the ground rolled and heaved underneath me; sky, earth, and trees swam together, joining that whirling dance of stars. It must have been a full minute before I was able to sit up and weakly wonder what had happened. It all came back to me as a cold, moist nose touched my hand and a sympathetic whimper broke the silence. I turned on Guard reproachfully.
“Why did you leave that thing to come back to me, sir? You could have caught it if you had kept right on after it, and you might have known I’d get along all right without your help. Now, do you go and find it, sir!” and I pointed imperatively, if rather vaguely, towards the jumble of rocks. The chicken’s cries had ceased; there was now nothing to guide the dog, even if he understood, which I, having great faith in his intelligence, believed he did. He ran alongthe trail for a few yards, stopped, gave a joyful bark, and came running back to me with a stick in his mouth.
I had been trying to teach him to retrieve, and my order, “go find it,” suggested that pastime to him. When he laid the stick at my feet, wagging his tail and looking up in hopeful anticipation of the praise that he felt to be his due, I could not find it in my heart to withhold it. Besides, the chicken thief was, no doubt, safe in his lair at this time, so, abandoning the hopeless pursuit, we made our way homeward.
When Joe came in, and I related our adventure to him, he said: “Yo’ may t’ank yo’ sta’hs, Miss Leslie, dat yo’ done got dat tumble w’en yo’ did! Dat feller wif de black coat, trimmed in yeller, was a lynx—dat’s his’n’s dress ebbery time—an’ I’d ’a’ heap rudder meet up wif a mountain lion, any day, dan one ’o’ dem ar! Land, chile! Ef hit had ’a’ been me, down dar by de ribber, I’d ’a’ helt Guard to keep him still, an’ I’d ’a’ kep’ out o’ sight. Dat’s w’at I’d ’a’ done, honey.”
“Do you recollect, Leslie,” Jessie chimed in, “what Mrs. Loyd told us about her encounter with a lynx, last year? She said that she was in the house one day, when she heard a great outcry among her chickens, right close at hand, in the yard. She ran to the door, and there was a great lynx, chasing the chickens around. The minute the door was opened, they ran toward it, and into the house. The lynx was right behind them, but it stopped as the chickens crowded around her, and she seized the broom and struck at it. Instead of running, it stood its ground and showed its teeth, bristling up and growling. She dropped the broom and sprang into the house, slamming the door shut just as the lynx hurled itself against it. She said that she was almost scared to death. She locked the door, and scrambled up into the loft—she said that she was afraid the cat would take a notion to break in at one of the windows—and the creature stayed outside and killed chickens as long as he pleased, while she stayed up there, trembling, until her husband camehome. She said that the next time a bob-cat wanted one of her chickens it could have it, for all of her.”
“I would hate to have Guard get hurt,” I said, looking affectionately at our follower.
The plowing was done—had been done for some days, indeed—and the time set for our offering final proof was close at hand. But Jessie and I, going about our household tasks with sober faces, had hardly a word to say to each other.
We had looked forward to this coming day with such eager expectation, but now that it was so near, we shrank with dread from facing it. A trouble so great as, under the circumstances, to deserve to be ranked as a calamity, had befallen us. Joe was gone. He had left us without a sign, at the time, of all others in our whole lives, when we most needed him. On the evening of the day that the plowing was done he had retired, as usual, to his little room off the kitchen, and when we awoke in the morning he was gone. That was all. But it was enough.It was a fact that seemed to darken our whole world. It was not alone that we missed his help; we had believed in his fidelity as one believes in the fidelity of a mother, and he had left us without a word of explanation or regret.
The subject was so painful that, by tacit consent, we both avoided it. It would have been better, I think, to have expressed our views freely, for, as we could dwell on nothing else, we seldom spoke at all, and that added to the gloom of the situation.
Joe had been gone several days, and we had been silently struggling in the Slough of Despond, when I awoke one morning filled with a new and ardent resolution, which I proceeded to carry into instant execution.
Jessie was always the first one up. I heard her moving about in the kitchen, and, making a hasty toilet, joined her there. She was grinding coffee in the mill that was fastened securely to the door-jamb. It was, I believe, the noisiest mill in existence; its resonant whi-r-rr was like that of some giant grist-mill.Jessie suspended operations as I drew near to remark:
“You’re up early, Leslie.”
“Yes; I’ve thought of something, and—”
“It’s the early thought that is caught, same’s the early worm,” my sister remarked, unfeelingly. Then she added: “Excuse me a minute, Leslie, I must get this coffee ground, and can’t talk against the mill.”
When the coffee was in the pot on the stove, she turned to me again:
“Now what have you thought of that is so wonderful?”
“It isn’t wonderful, Jessie. It’s sensible.”
“It amounts to the same thing.”
“Not in this case. First, I think we ought to stop grieving over Joe’s desertion.”
Jessie’s bright face clouded instantly:
“It is cruel!” she protested.
“I don’t feel as if we ought to say that, Jessie. Joe has been a good, true, faithful friend to us, and he loved father; we, ourselves, loved father no more than Joe did—”
“Why, Leslie!”
“It is true, Jessie. I feel it, someway, and I am not going to blame Joe any more; not even in my own thoughts. It does no good, and it makes us very unhappy. Let’s try to be cheerful again, Jessie, and make the best of it.”
“We must make the best of it whether we are cheerful or not.”
“Very well, then; one of the first things that we must do, if we are to depend on our own efforts, is to market that cantaloupe crop.”
“What, you and I, Leslie?” Jessie sat down with the bread knife in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other, the better to consider this proposition.
“Just you and I, Jessie. We cannot afford to hire an agent, supposing that one was to be had for the hiring, which is by no means likely. We’ve been eating the melons for days; they are just in their prime, and I know that Joe counted on making quite a little sum on his cantaloupe crop, but if we wait now, hoping for his return, the melons will be ruined; they will be a total loss.”
“You needn’t offer any more arguments, Leslie. I’m glad you thought of it; it’s a pity that I never think of any such thing myself until the procession has gone by. Now let me see, have I got your morning thoughts in order? First, Charity. Toward Joe. Second, Resignation—all capitals—Toward Joe. Third, Labor. For ourselves. Is that right?”
“Yes; if you like to put it that way.”
“You shall have it any way you please, Leslie dear, and I will help you.”
“After breakfast, then, we will harness up the team and drive the wagon into the melon patch, then—we will fill it.”
“Yes, and what then?”
It was like taking a plunge into cold water. I am sure that I was not intended for a huckster, but I managed to respond with some show of courage:
“Why, then I will drive over to the store and sell what I can, and then I will go about among the neighbors with the rest.”
“Will you?” Jessie breathed a sigh of relief.“That will be enterprising, anyway. I should dreadfully hate to drive about peddling melons myself, but there’s such a difference in people about things of that sort.”
Jessie is so exasperatingly prosaic, at times, that she makes me feel either like crying, or like shaking her. On this occasion I was fortunately hindered from doing either by Ralph, who suddenly appeared, demanding to be “dwessed.” After breakfast we harnessed the horses—we could either of us do that as well, and quicker than Joe—then we drove into the enclosure where the olive-tinted little spheres lay thick on the ground and proceeded to fill the wagon-box. The patch was small, but the melons grew in great profusion, and it did not take long. Within a couple of hours I was traveling along the highway, perched upon the high spring seat of the wagon-box, with Guard beside me. Guard was, according to my idea, very good company, and it was, moreover, desirable that he should learn to ride in a wagon and to conduct himself properly while doing so. It was a very warm morning andas the sweet, cloying odor of my wagon load of produce assailed my nostrils, I could not but think of the famous couplet, “You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will, but the scent of the roses will hang round it still!” My route through the settlement might be traced, I fancied, by the fragrance that the melons exhaled.
My first stop was at the store where I disposed of a satisfactory quantity of melons, but after leaving the store the business dragged wearily, and I found myself obliged to take promises to pay in lieu of money from the women of the household when the masculine head chanced to be absent. They always explained, quite as a matter of course, that “he” had left no money with them. It appeared to me, as I patiently booked one promise after another, that “he” could not have kept hired help very long if their wages consisted of nothing more tangible—after the matter of food and lodging was eliminated—than those that fell to the lot of “his” womenfolk. I had observed, with some annoyance,when I first started out, that one of the wagon wheels had a tendency to make plaintive little protests, as if it objected to being put to any use. I could by no means fathom the reason for it, but by mid-afternoon the protest had grown into a piercing shriek. A shriek that even Guard shrank from with an indignant growl.
Less than one-fourth of my load yet remained unsold. I was most anxious to clear it all out, but that ear-piercing sound was becoming maddening. “The wagon must be conjured,” I thought, recalling some of Joe’s fancies. Coming to a place at last, where two roads met, I halted the team and sat considering the question of a return home or a trip to Crusoe, which place I had not yet visited, when the sight of a horseman far down the left-hand road decided me to go in that direction. The horseman was well mounted and going at a good pace. “I don’t care!” I told myself, recklessly, “I’m going to overtake him and make him take some of these melons if I have to pay him for doing it.”
But there was no occasion for my hurrying the horses. When the man on ahead caught the sound of my rapidly-advancing shriek he promptly drew up beside the roadway and awaited my approach, and then I saw that the rider was Mr. Rutledge. He recognized me at the same moment and exclaimed:
“Why, Miss Leslie, is that you?”
“Yes,” I said, meekly, but I felt my face grow red, and was conscious, in spite of my good resolutions, of a sudden resentment against Joe. Why had he left me to do such work as this?
Mr. Rutledge, drawing close to the wagon, ran an inquiring eye over my merchandise.
“Been buying melons?” he asked, adding: “I didn’t know that there was anything of the kind for sale in the valley.”
The observation did not seem to require an answer, and I was silent while he reached into the box and selected one of the smaller melons and held it up laughingly, as if defying me to retake it.
“Findings is keepings!” he said, gayly.