The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prairie Wife, by Arthur Stringer
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Prairie Wife
Author: Arthur Stringer
Illustrator: H. T. Dunn
Release Date: July 19, 2006 [EBook #18875]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRAIRIE WIFE ***
Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
THE PRAIRIE WIFE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: I stooped over the trap-door and lifted it up. "Get down
there quick!" Page 109--The Prairie Wife.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PRAIRIE WIFE
By ARTHUR STRINGER
With Frontispiece in Color by
H. T. DUNN
A. L. BURT COMPANY
PUBLISHERS--NEW YORK
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PUBLISHED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH THE BOBBS, MERRILL COMPANY
COPYRIGHT 1915
THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT 1915
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO VAN
WHO KNOWS AND LOVES
THE WEST
AS WE LOVE HIM!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Thursday the Nineteenth 1
Saturday the Twenty-first 16
Monday the Twenty-third 33
Wednesday the Twenty-fifth 41
Thursday the Twenty-sixth 48
Saturday the Twenty-eighth 57
Wednesday the First 61
Thursday the Second 64
Friday the Third 67
Saturday the Fourth 68
Monday the Sixth 73
Wednesday the Eighth 80
Saturday the Tenth 88
Sunday the Eleventh 91
Monday the Twelfth 93
Sunday the Eighteenth 101
Monday the Nineteenth 103
Tuesday the Twentieth 105
Thursday the Twenty-second 115
Saturday the Twenty-fourth 119
Tuesday the Twenty-seventh 128
Thursday the Twenty-ninth 133
Friday the Fifth 136
Sunday the Seventh 137
Tuesday the Ninth 138
Saturday the Twenty-first 142
Sunday the Twenty-ninth 150
Monday the Seventh 152
Friday the Eleventh 153
Sunday the Thirteenth 155
Wednesday the Sixteenth 156
Sunday the Twentieth 157
Sunday the Twenty-seventh 158
Wednesday the Thirtieth 159
Thursday the Thirty-first 160
Sunday the Third 167
Thursday the Seventh 171
Saturday the Ninth 172
Monday the Eleventh 175
Tuesday the Nineteenth 182
Sunday the Thirty-first 186
Tuesday the Ninth 188
Wednesday the Seventeenth 189
Thursday the Twenty-fifth 190
Tuesday the Second 191
Thursday the Fourth 193
Wednesday the Seventeenth 194
Saturday the Twenty-seventh 195
Tuesday the Sixth 198
Monday the Twelfth 199
Tuesday the Twentieth 202
Monday the Twenty-sixth 205
Wednesday the Twenty-eighth 207
Monday the Second 209
Thursday the Fifth 210
Tuesday the Tenth 214
Monday the Sixteenth 217
Tuesday the Twenty-fourth 220
Friday the Third 222
Thursday the Ninth 224
Wednesday the Fifteenth 228
Friday the Seventeenth 230
Saturday the Nineteenth 231
Friday the Twenty-eighth 233
Saturday the Twenty-ninth 234
Sunday the Thirtieth 236
Tuesday the First 237
Monday the Seventh 243
Sunday the Thirteenth 247
Monday the Twenty-eighth 249
Saturday the Second 251
Wednesday the Sixth 252
Tuesday the Twelfth 254
Thursday the Fourteenth 255
Wednesday the Fifth 256
Sunday the Ninth 260
Monday the Tenth 262
Tuesday the Eleventh 264
Wednesday the Thirteenth 265
Thursday the Fourteenth 267
Friday the Fifteenth 269
Saturday the Sixteenth 272
Monday the Seventeenth 275
Wednesday the Nineteenth 276
Friday the Twenty-first 277
Monday the Twelfth 290
Wednesday the Fourteenth 292
Thursday the Fifteenth 295
Friday the Sixteenth 298
Sunday the Eighteenth 307
Sunday the Twenty-fifth 308
Tuesday the Twenty-seventh 309
Wednesday the Twenty-eighth 310
Friday the Thirtieth 313
Sunday the First 314
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PRAIRIE WIFE
_Thursday the Nineteenth_
Splash!... That's me, Matilda Anne! That's me falling plump into the
pool of matrimony before I've had time to fall in love! And oh, Matilda
Anne, Matilda Anne, I've _got_ to talk to you! You may be six thousand
miles away, but still you've got to be my safety-valve. I'd blow up and
explode if I didn't express myself to some one. For it's so lonesome out
here I could go and commune with the gophers. This isn't a twenty-part
letter, my dear, and it isn't a diary. It's the coral ring I'm cutting
my teeth of desolation on. For, every so long, I've simply got to sit
down and talk to some one, or I'd go mad, clean, stark, staring mad, and
bite the tops off the sweet-grass! It may even happen this will never be
sent to you. But I like to think of you reading it, some day, page by
page, when I'm fat and forty, or, what's more likely, when Duncan has
me chained to a corral-post or finally shut up in a padded cell. For you
were the one who was closest to me in the old days, Matilda Anne, and
when I was in trouble you were always the staff on which I leaned, the
calm-eyed Tillie-on-the-spot who never seemed to fail me! And I think
you will understand.
But there's so much to talk about I scarcely know where to begin. The
funny part of it all is, I've gone and married the _Other Man_. And you
won't understand that a bit, unless I start at the beginning. But when I
look back, there doesn't seem to be any beginning, for it's only in
books that things really begin and end in a single lifetime.
Howsomever, as Chinkie used to say, when I left you and Scheming Jack in
that funny little stone house of yours in Corfu, and got to Palermo, I
found Lady Agatha and Chinkie there at the Hotel des Palmes and the
yacht being coaled from a tramp steamer's bunkers in the harbor. So I
went on with them to Monte Carlo. We had a terrible trip all the way up
to the Riviera, and I was terribly sea-sick, and those lady novelists
who love to get their heroines off on a private yacht never dream that
in anything but duckpond weather the ordinary yacht at sea is about the
meanest habitation between Heaven and earth. But it was at Monte Carlo I
got the cable from Uncle Carlton telling me the Chilean revolution had
wiped out our nitrate mine concessions and that your poor Tabby's last
little nest-egg had been smashed. In other words, I woke up and found
myself a beggar, and for a few hours I even thought I'd have to travel
home on that Monte Carlo Viaticum fund which so discreetly ships away
the stranded adventurer before he musses up the Mediterranean scenery by
shooting himself. Then I remembered my letter of credit, and firmly but
sorrowfully paid off poor Hortense, who through her tears proclaimed
that she'd go with me anywhere, and without any thought of wages
(imagine being hooked up by a maid to whom you were under such
democratizing obligations!) But I was firm, for I knew the situation,
might just as well be faced first as last.
So I counted up my letter of credit and found I had exactly six hundred
and seventy-one dollars, American money, between me and beggary. Then I
sent a cable to Theobald Gustav (so condensed that he thought it was
code) and later on found that he'd been sending flowers and chocolates
all the while to the Hotel de L'Athénée, the long boxes duly piled up in
tiers, like coffins at the morgue. Then Theobald's aunt, the baroness,
called on me, in state. She came in that funny, old-fashioned, shallow
landau of hers, where she looked for all the world like an
oyster-on-the-half-shell, and spoke so pointedly of the danger of
international marriages that I felt sure she was trying to shoo me away
from my handsome and kingly Theobald Gustav--which made me quite calmly
and solemnly tell her that I intended to take Theobald out of
under-secretaryships, which really belonged to Oppenheim romances, and
put him in the shoe business in some nice New England town!
From Monte Carlo I scooted right up to Paris. Two days later, as I
intended to write you but didn't, I caught the boat-train for Cherbourg.
And there at the rail as I stepped on the _Baltic_ was the Other Man, to
wit, Duncan Argyll McKail, in a most awful-looking yellow plaid English
mackintosh. His face went a little blank as he clapped eyes on me, for
he'd dropped up to Banff last October when Chinkie and Lady Agatha and I
were there for a week. He'd been very nice, that week at Banff, and I
liked him a lot. But when Chinkie saw him "going it a bit too strong,"
as he put it, and quietly tipped Duncan Argyll off as to Theobald
Gustav, the aforesaid D. A. bolted back to his ranch without as much as
saying good-by to me. For Duncan Argyll McKail isn't an Irishman, as you
might in time gather from that name of his. He's a Scotch-Canadian, and
he's nothing but a broken-down civil engineer who's taken up farming in
the Northwest. But I could see right away that he was a gentleman (I
_hate_ that word, but where'll you get another one to take its place?)
and had known nice people, even before I found out he'd taught the
Duchess of S. to shoot big-horn. He'd run over to England to finance a
cooperative wheat-growing scheme, but had failed, because everything is
so unsettled in England just now.
But you're a woman, and before I go any further you'll want to know what
Duncan looks like.
Well, he's not a bit like his name. The West has shaken a good deal of
the Covenanter out of him. He's tall and gaunt and wide-shouldered, and
has brown eyes with hazel specks in them, and a mouth exactly like
Holbein's "Astronomer's," and a skin that is almost as disgracefully
brown as an Indian's. On the whole, if a Lina Cavalieri had happened to
marry a Lord Kitchener, and had happened to have a thirty-year-old son,
I feel quite sure he'd have been the dead spit, as the Irish say, of my
own Duncan Argyll. And Duncan Argyll, _alias_ Dinky-Dunk, is rather
reserved and quiet and, I'm afraid, rather masterful, but not as
Theobald Gustav might have been, for with all his force the modern
German, it seems to me, is like the bagpipes in being somewhat lacking
in suavity.
And all the way over Dinky-Dunk was so nice that he almost took my
breath away. He was also rather audacious, gritting his teeth in the
face of the German peril, and I got to like him so much I secretly
decided we'd always be good friends, old-fashioned, above-board,
Platonic good friends. But the trouble with Platonic love is that it's
always turning out too nice to be Platonic, or too Platonic to be nice.
So I had to look straight at the bosom of that awful yellow-plaid
English mackintosh and tell Dinky-Dunk the truth. And Dinky-Dunk
listened, with his astronomer mouth set rather grim, and otherwise not
in the least put out. His sense of confidence worried me. It was like
the quietness of the man who is holding back his trump. And it wasn't
until the impossible little wife of an impossible big lumberman from
Saginaw, Michigan, showed me the Paris _Herald_ with the cable in it
about that spidery Russian stage-dancer, L----, getting so nearly killed
in Theobald's car down at Long Beach, that I realized there _was_ a
trump card and that Dinky-Dunk had been too manly to play it.
I had a lot of thinking to do, the next three days.
When Theobald came on from Washington and met the steamer my conscience
troubled me and I should still have been kindness itself to him, if it
hadn't been for his proprietary manner (which, by the way, had never
annoyed me before), coupled with what I already knew. We had luncheon in
the Della Robbia room at the Vanderbilt and I was digging the marrons
out of a Nesselrode when, presto, it suddenly came over me that the
baroness was right and that _I could never marry a foreigner_. It came
like a thunderclap. But somewhere in that senate of instinct which
debates over such things down deep in the secret chambers of our souls,
I suppose, the whole problem had been talked over and fought out and put
to the vote. And in the face of the fact that Theobald Gustav had always
seemed more nearly akin to one of Ouida's demigods than any man I had
ever known, the vote had gone against him. My hero was no longer a
hero. I knew there had been times, of course, when that hero, being a
German, had rather regarded this universe of ours as a department-store
and this earth as the particular section over which the August Master
had appointed him floor-walker. I had thought of him as my
_Eisenfresser_ and my big blond _Saebierassler_. But my eyes opened with
my last marron and I suddenly sat back and stared at Theobald's handsome
pink face with its Krupp-steel blue eyes and its haughtily upturned
mustache-ends. He must have seen that look of appraisal on my own face,
for, with all his iron-and-blood Prussianism, he clouded up like a hurt
child. But he was too much of a diplomat to show his feelings. He merely
became so unctuously polite that I felt like poking him in his
steel-blue eye with my mint straw.
Remember, Matilda Anne, not a word was said, not one syllable about what
was there in both our souls. Yet it was one of life's biggest moments,
the Great Divide of a whole career--and I went on eating Nesselrode and
Theobald went on pleasantly smoking his cigarette and approvingly
inspecting his well-manicured nails.
It was funny, but it made me feel blue and unattached and terribly alone
in the world. Now, I can see things more clearly. I know that mood of
mine was not the mere child of caprice. Looking back, I can see how
Theobald had been more critical, more silently combative, from the
moment I stepped off the _Baltic_. I realized, all at once, _that he had
secretly been putting me to a strain_. I won't say it was because my
_dot_ had gone with The Nitrate Mines, or that he had discovered that
Duncan had crossed on the same steamer with me, or that he knew I'd soon
hear of the L---- episode. But these prophetic bones of mine told me
there was trouble ahead. And I felt so forsaken and desolate in spirit
that when Duncan whirled me out to Westbury, in a hired motor-car, to
see the Great Neck First defeated by the Meadow Brook Hunters, I went
with the happy-go-lucky glee of a truant who doesn't give a hang what
happens. Dinky-Dunk was interested in polo ponies, which, he explained
to me, are not a particular breed but just come along by accident--for
he'd bred and sold mounts to the Coronado and San Mateo Clubs and the
Philadelphia City Cavalry boys. And he loved the game. He was so genuine
and sincere and _human_, as we sat there side by side, that I wasn't a
bit afraid of him and knew we could be chums and didn't mind his lapses
into silence or his extension-sole English shoes and crazy London
cravat.
And I was happy, until the school-bell rang--which took the form of
Theobald's telephone message to the Ritz reminding me of our dinner
engagement. It was an awful dinner, for intuitively I knew what was
coming, and quite as intuitively he knew what was coming, and even the
waiter knew when it came,--for I flung Theobald's ring right against his
stately German chest. There'd be no good in telling you, Matilda Anne,
what led up to that most unlady-like action. I don't intend to burn
incense in front of myself. It may have looked wrong. But I know you'll
take my word when I say he deserved it. The one thing that hurts is
that he had the triumph of being the first to sever diplomatic
relations. In the language of Shorty McCabe and my fellow countrymen,
_he threw me down!_ Twenty minutes later, after composing my soul and
powdering my nose, I was telephoning all over the city trying to find
Duncan. I got him at last, and he came to the Ritz on the run. Then we
picked up a residuary old horse-hansom on Fifth Avenue and went rattling
off through Central Park. There I--who once boasted of seven proposals
and three times that number of nibbles--promptly and shamelessly
proposed to my Dinky-Dunk, though he is too much of a gentleman not to
swear it's a horrid lie and that he'd have fought through an acre of
Greek fire to get me!
But whatever happened, Count Theobald Gustav Von Guntner threw me down,
and Dinky-Dunk caught me on the bounce, and now instead of going to
embassy balls and talking world-politics like a Mrs. Humphry Ward
heroine I've married a shack-owner who grows wheat up in the Canadian
Northwest. And instead of wearing a tiara in the Grand Tier at the
Metropolitan I'm up here a dot on the prairie and wearing an apron made
of butcher's linen! _Sursum corda!_ For I'm still in the ring. And it's
no easy thing to fall in love and land on your feet. But I've gone and
done it. I've taken the high jump. I've made my bed, as Uncle Carlton
had the nerve to tell me, and now I've got to lie in it. But _assez
d'Etrangers_!
That wedding-day of mine I'll always remember as a day of smells, the
smell of the pew-cushions in the empty church, the smell of the
lilies-of-the-valley, that dear, sweet, scatter-brained
Fanny-Rain-In-The-Face (she rushed to town an hour after getting my
wire) insisted on carrying, the smell of the leather in the damp taxi,
the tobaccoy smell of Dinky-Dunk's quite impossible best man, who'd been
picked up at the hotel, on the fly, to act as a witness, and the smell
of Dinky-Dunk's brand new gloves as he lifted my chin and kissed me in
that slow, tender, tragic, end-of-the-world way big and bashful men
sometimes have with women. It's all a jumble of smells.
Then Dinky-Dunk got the wire saying he might lose his chance on the
Stuart Ranch, if he didn't close before the Calgary interests got hold
of it. And Dinky-Dunk wanted that ranch. So we talked it over and in
five minutes had given up the idea of going down to Aiken and were
telephoning for the stateroom on the Montreal Express. I had just four
hours for shopping, scurrying about after cook-books and golf-boots and
table-linen and a chafing dish, and a lot of other absurd things I
thought we'd need on the ranch. And then off we flew for the West,
before poor, extravagant, ecstatic Dinky-Dunk's thirty-six wedding
orchids' from Thorley's had faded and before I'd a chance to show Fanny
my nighties!
Am I crazy? Is it all wrong? Do I love my Dinky-Dunk? _Do_ I? The Good
Lord only knows, Matilda Anne! O God, O God, if it _should_ turn out
that I don't, that I can't? But I'm going to! I know I'm going to! And
there's one other thing that I know, and when I remember it, it sends a
comfy warm wave through all my body: Dinky-Dunk loves me. He's as mad as
a hatter about me. He deserves to be loved back. And I'm going to love
him back. That is a vow I herewith duly register. _I'm going to love my
Dinky-Dunk._ But, oh, isn't it wonderful to wake love in a man, in a
strong man? To be able to sweep him off, that way, on a tidal wave that
leaves him rather white and shaky in the voice and trembly in the
fingers, and seems to light a little luminous fire at the back of his
eyeballs so that you can see the pupils glow, the same as an animal's
when your motor head-lights hit them! It's like taking a little match
and starting a prairie-fire and watching the flames creep and spread
until the heavens are roaring! I wonder if I'm selfish? I wonder? But I
can't answer that now, for it's supper time, and your Tabby has the grub
to rustle!
_Saturday the Twenty-first_
I'm alone in the shack to-night, and I'm determined not to think about
my troubles. So I'm going to write you a ream, Matilda Anne, whether you
like it or not. And I must begin by telling you about the shack itself,
and how I got here. All the way out from Montreal Dinky-Dunk, in his
kindly way, kept doing his best to key me down and make me not expect
too much. But I'd hold his hand, under the magazine I was pretending to
read, and whistle _Home, Sweet Home_! He kept saying it would be hard,
for the first year or two, and there would be a terrible number of
things I'd be sure to miss. _Love Me and The World Is Mine!_ I hummed,
as I leaned over against his big wide shoulder. And I lay there smiling
and happy, blind to everything that was before me, and I only laughed
when Dinky-Dunk asked me if I'd still say that when I found there
wasn't a nutmeg-grater within seven miles of my kitchen.
"Do you love me?" I demanded, hanging on to him right in front of the
car-porter.
"I love you better than anything else in all this wide world!" was his
slow and solemn answer.
When we left Winnipeg, too, he tried to tell me what a plain little
shack we'd have to put up with for a year or two, and how it wouldn't be
much better than camping out, and how he knew I was clear grit and would
help him win that first year's battle. There was nothing depressing to
me in the thought of life in a prairie-shack. I never knew, of course,
just what it would be like, and had no way of knowing. I remembered
Chinkie's little love of a farm in Sussex, and I'd been a week at the
Westbury's place out on Long Island, with its terraced lawns and gardens
and greenhouses and macadamized roads. And, on the whole, I expected a
cross between a shooting-box and a Swiss chalet, a little nest of a home
that was so small it was sure to be lovable, with a rambler-rose draping
the front and a crystal spring bubbling at the back door, a little
flowery island on the prairie where we could play Swiss-Family-Robinson
and sally forth to shoot prairie-chicken and ruffed grouse to our
hearts' content.
Well, that shack wasn't quite what I expected! But I mustn't run ahead
of my story, Matilda Anne, so I'll go back to where Dinky-Dunk and I got
off the side-line "accommodation" at Buckhorn, with our traps and trunks
and hand-bags and suitcases. And these had scarcely been piled on the
wooden platform before the station-agent came running up to Duncan with
a yellow sheet in his hand. And Duncan looked worried as he read it, and
stopped talking to his man called Olie, who was there beside the
platform, in a big, sweat-stained Stetson hat, with a big team hitched
to a big wagon with straw in the bottom of the box.
Olie, I at once told myself, was a Swede. He was one of the ugliest men
I ever clapped eyes on, but I found out afterward that his face had been
frozen in a blizzard, years before, and his nose had split. This had
disfigured him--and the job had been done for life. His eyes were big
and pale blue, and his hair and eyebrows were a pale yellow. He was the
most silent man I ever saw. But Dinky-Dunk had already told me he was a
great worker, and a fine fellow at heart. And when Dinky-Dunk says he'd
trust a man, through thick and thin, there must be something good in
that man, no matter how bulbous his nose is or how scared-looking he
gets when a woman speaks to him. Olie looked more scared than ever when
Dinky-Dunk suddenly ran to where the train-conductor was standing beside
his car-steps, asked him to hold that "accommodation" for half a minute,
pulled his suit-case from under my pile of traps, and grabbed little me
in his arms.
"Quick," he said, "good-by! I've got to go on to Calgary. There's
trouble about my registrations."
I hung on to him for dear life. "You're not going to leave me here,
Dinky-Dunk, in the middle of this wilderness?" I cried out, while the
conductor and brakeman and station-agent all called and holloed and
clamored for Duncan to hurry.
"Olie will take you home, beloved," Dinky-Dunk tried to assure me.
"You'll be there by midnight, and I'll be back by Saturday evening!"
I began to bawl. "Don't go! Don't leave me!" I begged him. But the
conductor simply tore him out of my arms and pushed him aboard the
tail-end of the last car. I made a face at a fat man who was looking out
a window at me. I stood there, as the train started to move, feeling
that it was dragging my heart with it.
Then Dinky-Dunk called out to Olie, from the back platform: "Did you get
my message and paint that shack?" And Olie, with my steamer-rug in his
hand, only looked blank and called back "No." But I don't believe
Dinky-Dunk even heard him, for he was busy throwing kisses at me. I
stood there, at the edge of the platform, watching that lonely last
car-end fade down into the lonely sky-line. Then I mopped my eyes, took
one long quavery breath, and said out loud, as Birdalone Pebbley said
Shiner did when he was lying wounded on the field of Magersfontein:
"_Squealer, squealer, who's a squealer?_"
I found the big wagon-box filled with our things and Olie sitting there
waiting, viewing me with wordless yet respectful awe. Olie, in fact, has
never yet got used to me. He's a fine chap, in his rough and
inarticulate way, and there's nothing he wouldn't do for me. But I'm a
novelty to him. His pale blue eyes look frightened and he blushes when I
speak to him. And he studies me secretly, as though I were a dromedary,
or an archangel, or a mechanical toy whose inner mechanism perplexed
him. But yesterday I found out through Dinky-Dunk what the probable
secret of Olie's mystification was. It was my hat. "It ban so dam'
foolish!" he fervently confessed.
That wagon-ride from Buckhorn out to the ranch seemed endless. I thought
we were trekking clear up to the North Pole. At first there was what you
might call a road, straight and worn deep, between parallel lines of
barb-wire fencing. But this road soon melted into nothing more than a
trail, a never-ending gently curving trail that ribboned out across the
prairie-floor as far as the eye could see. It was a glorious afternoon,
one of those opaline, blue-arched autumn days when it should have been a
joy merely to be alive. But I was in an antagonistic mood, and the
little cabin-like farmhouses that every now and then stood up against
the sky-line made me feel lonesome, and the jolting of the heavy wagon
made me tired, and by six o'clock I was so hungry that my ribs ached. We
had been on the trail then almost five hours, and Olie calmly informed
me it was only a few hours more. It got quite cool as the sun went down,
and I had to undo my steamer-rug and get wrapped up in it. And still we
went on. It seemed like being at sea, with a light now and then, miles
and miles away. Something howled dismally in the distance, and gave me
the creeps. Olie told me it was only a coyote. But we kept on, and my
ribs ached worse than ever.
Then I gave a shout that nearly frightened Olie off the seat, for I
remembered the box of chocolates we'd had on the train. We stopped and
found my hand-bag, and lighted matches and looked through it. Then I
gave a second and more dismal shout, for I remembered Dinky-Dunk had
crammed it into his suit-case at the last moment. Then we went on again,
with me a squaw-woman all wrapped in her blanket. I must have fallen
asleep, for I woke with a start. Olie had stopped at a slough to water
his team, and said we'd make home in another hour or two. How he found
his way across that prairie Heaven only knows. I no longer worried. I
was too tired to think. The open air and the swaying and jolting had
chloroformed me into insensibility. Olie could have driven over the edge
of a canyon and I should never have stopped him.
Instead of falling into a canyon, however, at exactly ten minutes to
twelve we pulled up beside the shack door, which had been left unlocked,
and Olie went in and lighted a lamp and touched a match to the fire
already laid in the stove. I don't remember getting down from the wagon
seat and I don't remember going into the shack. But when Olie came from
putting in his team I was fast asleep on a luxurious divan made of a
rather smelly steer-hide stretched across two slim cedar-trees on four
little cedar legs, with a bag full of pine needles at the head. I lay
there watching Olie, in a sort of torpor. It surprised me how quickly
his big ungainly body could move, and how adept those big sunburned
hands of his could be.
Then sharp as an arrow through a velvet curtain came the smell of bacon
through my drowsiness. And it was a heavenly odor. I didn't even wash. I
ate bacon and eggs and toasted biscuits and orange marmalade and coffee,
the latter with condensed milk, which I hate. I don't know how I got to
my bed, or got my clothes off, or where the worthy Olie slept, or who
put out the light, or if the door had been left open or shut. I never
knew that the bed was hard, or that the coyotes were howling. I only
know that I slept for ten solid hours, without turning over, and that
when I opened my eyes I saw a big square of golden sunlight dancing on
the unpainted pine boards of the shack wall. And the funny part of it
all was, Matilda Anne, I didn't have the splitting headache I'd so
dolorously prophesied for myself. Instead of that I felt buoyant. I
started to sing as I pulled on my stockings. And I suddenly remembered
that I was terribly hungry again.
I swung open the window beside me, for it was on hinges, and poked my
head out. I could see a corral, and a long low building which I took to
be the ranch stables, and another and newer-looking building with a
metal roof, and several stacks of hay surrounded by a fence, and a row
of portable granaries. And beyond these stretched the open prairie,
limitless and beautiful in the clear morning sunshine. Above it arched a
sky of robin-egg blue, melting into opal and pale gold down toward the
rim of the world. I breathed in lungfuls of clear, dry, ozonic air, and
I really believe it made me a little light-headed, it was so
exhilarating, so champagnized with the invisible bubbles of life.
I needed that etheric eye-opener, Matilda Anne, before I calmly and
critically looked about our shack. Oh, that shack, that shack! What a
comedown it was for your heart-sore Chaddie! In the first place, it
seemed no bigger than a ship's cabin, and not one-half so orderly. It is
made of lumber, and not of logs, and is about twelve feet wide and
eighteen feet long. It has three windows, on hinges, and only one door.
The floor is rather rough, and has a trap door leading into a small
cellar, where vegetables can be stored for winter use. The end of the
shack is shut off by a "tarp"--which I have just found out is short for
tarpaulin. In other words, the privacy of my bedroom is assured by
nothing more substantial than a canvas drop-curtain, shutting off my
boudoir, where I could never very successfully _bouder_, from the larger
living-room.
This living-room is also the kitchen, the laundry, the sewing-room, the
reception-room and the library. It has a good big cookstove, which burns
either wood or coal, a built-in cupboard with an array of unspeakably
ugly crockery dishes, a row of shelves for holding canned goods, books
and magazines, cooking utensils, gun-cartridges, tobacco-jars,
carpenter's tools and a coal-oil lamp. There is also a plain pine table,
a few chairs, one rocking-chair which has plainly been made by hand, and
a flour-barrel. Outside the door is a wide wooden bench on which stands
a big tin wash-basin and a cake of soap in a sardine can that has been
punched full of holes along the bottom. Above it hung a roller towel
which looked a little the worse for wear. And that was to be my home, my
one and only habitation, for years and years to come! That little
cat-eyed cubby-hole of a place!
I sat down on an overturned wash-tub about twenty paces from the shack,
and studied it with calm and thoughtful eyes. It looked infinitely worse
from the outside. The reason for this was that the board siding had
first been covered with tar-paper, for the sake of warmth, and over this
had been nailed pieces of tin, tin of every color and size and
description. Some of it was flattened out stove-pipe, and some was
obviously the sides of tomato-cans. Even tin tobacco-boxes and Dundee
marmalade holders and the bottoms of old bake-pans and the sides of an
old wash-boiler had been pieced together and patiently tacked over those
shack-sides. It must have taken weeks and weeks to do. And it suddenly
impressed me as something poignant, as something with the Vergilian
touch of tears in it. It seemed so full of history, so vocal of the
tragic expedients to which men on the prairie must turn. It seemed
pathetic. It brought a lump into my throat. Yet that Joseph's Coat of
metal was a neatly done bit of work. All it needed was a coat of paint
or two, and it would look less like a crazy-quilt solidified into a
homestead. And I suddenly remembered Dinky-Dunk's question called out to
Olie from the car-end--and I knew he'd hurried off a message to have
that telltale tinning-job painted over before I happened to clap eyes on
it.
As Olie had disappeared from the scene and was nowhere to be found, I
went in and got my own breakfast. It was supper over again, only I
scrambled my eggs instead of frying them. And all the while I was eating
that meal I studied those shack-walls and made mental note of what
should be changed and what should be done. There was so much, that it
rather overwhelmed me. I sat at the table, littered with its dirty
dishes, wondering where to begin. And then the endless vista of it all
suddenly opened up before me. I became nervously conscious of the
unbroken silence about me, and I realized how different this new life
must be from the old. It seemed like death itself, and it got a strangle
hold on my nerves, and I knew I was going to make a fool of myself the
very first morning in my new home, in my home and Dinky-Dunk's. But I
refused to give in. I did something which startled me a little,
something which I had not done for years. I got down on my knees beside
that plain wooden chair and prayed to God. I asked Him to give me
strength to keep me from being a piker and make me a wife worthy of the
man who loved me, and lead me into the way of bringing happiness to the
home that was to be ours. Then I rolled up my sleeves, tied a face towel
over my head and went to work.
It was a royal cleaning-out, I can tell you. In the afternoon I had Olie
down on all fours scrubbing the floor. When he had washed the windows I
had him get a garden rake and clear away the rubbish that littered the
dooryard. I draped chintz curtains over the windows, and had Olie nail
two shelves in a packing-box and then carry it into my boudoir behind
the drop-curtain. Over this box I tacked fresh chintz (for the shack did
not possess so feminine a thing as a dresser) and on it put my
folding-mirror and my Tiffany traveling-clock and all my foolish
shimmery silver toilet articles. Then I tacked up photographs and
magazine-prints about the bare wooden walls--and decided that before the
winter came those walls would be painted and papered, or I'd know the
reason why. Then I aired the bedding and mattress, and unpacked my
brand-new linen sheets and the ridiculous hemstitched pillow-slips that
I'd scurried so frenziedly about the city to get, and stowed my things
away on the box-shelves, and had Olie pound the life out of the
well-sunned pillows, and carefully remade the bed.
And then I went at the living-room. And it was no easy task,
reorganizing those awful shelves and making sure I wasn't throwing away
things Dinky-Dunk might want later on. But the carnage was great, and
all afternoon the smoke went heavenward from my fires of destruction.
And when it was over I told Olie to go out for a good long walk, for I
intended to take a bath. Which I did in the wash-tub, with much joy and
my last cake of Roger-and-Gallet soap. And I had to shout to poor
ambulating Olie for half-an-hour before I could persuade him to come in
to supper. And even then he came tardily, with countless hesitations and
pauses, as though a lady temerarious enough to take a scrub were for all
time taboo to the race of man. And when he finally ventured in through
the door, round-eyed and blushing a deep russet, he gaped at my white
middy and my little white apron with that silent but eloquent admiration
which couldn't fail to warm the cockles of the most unimpressionable
housewife's heart.
_Monday the Twenty-third_
My Dinky-Dunk is back--and oh, the difference to me! I kept telling
myself that I was too busy to miss him. He came Saturday night as I was
getting ready for bed. I'd been watching the trail every now and then,
all day long, and by nine o'clock had given him up. When I heard him
shouting for Olie, I made a rush for him, with only half my clothes on,
and nearly shocked Olie and some unknown man, who'd driven Dinky-Dunk
home, to death. How I hugged my husband! My husband--I love to write
that word. And when I got him inside we had it all over again. He was
just like a big overgrown boy. And he put the table between us, so he'd
have a chance to talk. But even that didn't work. He smothered my
laughing in kisses, and held me up close to him and said I was
wonderful. Then we'd try to get down to earth again, and talk sensibly,
and then there'd be another death-clinch. Dinky-Dunk says I'm worse
than he is. "Of course it's all up with a man," he confessed, "when he
sees you coming for him with that Australian crawl-stroke of yours!"
For which I did my best to break in his floating ribs. Heaven only knows
how late we talked that night. And Dinky-Dunk had a bundle of surprises
for me. The first was a bronze reading-lamp. The second was a soft
little rug for the bedroom--only an Axminster, but very acceptable. The
third was a pair of Juliets, lined with fur, and oceans too big for me.
And Dinky-Dunk says by Tuesday we'll have two milk-cows, part-Jersey, at
the ranch, and inside of a week a crate of hens will be ours. Thereupon
I couldn't help leading Duncan to the inventory I had made of what we
had, and the list, on the opposite side, of what we had to have. The
second thing under the heading of "Needs" was "lamp," the fifth was
"bedroom rug," the thirteenth was "hens," and the next was "cow." I
think he was rather amazed at the length of that list of "needs," but he
says I shall have everything in reason. And when he kind of settled
down, and noticed the changes in the living-room and then went in and
inspected the bedroom he grew very solemn, of a sudden. It worried me.
"Lady Bird," he said, taking me in his arms, "this is a pretty hard life
I've trapped you into. It will _have_ to be hard for a year or two, but
we'll win out, in the end, and I guess it'll be worth the fight!"
Dinky-Dunk is such a dear. I told him of course we'd win out, but I
wouldn't be much use to him at first. I'd have to get broken in and made
bridle-wise.
"But, oh, Dinky-Dunk, whatever happens, you must always love me!"--and I
imagine I swam for him with my Australian crawl-stroke again. All I
remember is that we went to sleep in each other's arms. And as I started
to say and forgot to finish, I'd been missing my Dinky-Dunk more than I
imagined, those last few days. After that night it was no longer just a
shack. It was "Home." Home--it's such a beautiful word! It must mean so
much to every woman. And I fell asleep telling myself it was the
loveliest word in the English language.
In the morning I slipped out of bed before Dinky-Dunk was awake, for
breakfast was to be our first home meal, and I wanted it to be a
respectable one. _Der Mensch ist was er isst_--so I must feed my lord
and master on the best in the land. Accordingly I put an extra
tablespoonful of cream in the scrambled eggs, and two whole eggs in the
coffee, to make dead sure it was crystal-clear. Then, feeling like Van
Roon when Berlin declared war on France, I rooted out Dinky-Dunk, made
him wash, and sat him down in his pajamas and his ragged old
dressing-gown.
"I suppose," I said as I saw his eyes wander about the table, "that you
feel exactly like an oyster-man who's just chipped his Blue-Point and
got his knife-edge in under the shell! And the next wrench is going to
tell you exactly what sort of an oyster you've got!"
Dinky-Dunk grinned up at me as I buttered his toast, piping hot from the
range. "Well, Lady Bird, you're not the kind that'll need paprika,
anyway!" he announced as he fell to. And he ate like a boa-constrictor
and patted his pajama-front and stentoriously announced that he'd picked
a queen--only he pronounced it kaveen, after the manner of our poor old
Swedish Olie!
As that was Sunday we spent the morning "pi-rooting" about the place.
Dinky-Dunk took me out and showed me the stables and the hay-stacks and
the granaries--which he'd just waterproofed so there'd be no more spoilt
grain on that farm--and the "cool-hole" he used to use before the cellar
was built, and the ruins of the sod-hut where the first homesteader that
owned that land had lived. Then he showed me the new bunk-house for the
men, which Olie is finishing in his spare time. It looks much better
than our own shack, being of planed lumber. But Dinky-Dunk is loyal to
the shack, and says it's really better built, and the warmest shack in
the West--as I'll find before winter is over.
Then we stopped at the pump, and Dinky-Dunk made a confession. When he
first bought that ranch there was no water at the shack, except what he
could catch from the roof. Water had to be hauled for miles, and it was
muddy and salty, at that. They used to call it "Gopher soup." This lack
of water always worried him, he said, for women always want water, and
oodles of it. It was the year before, after he had left me at Banff,
that he was determined to get water. It was hard work, putting down that
well, and up to almost the last moment it promised to be a dry hole. But
when they struck that water, Dinky-Dunk says, he decided in his soul
that he was going to have me, if I was to be had. It was water fit for a
queen. And he wanted his queen. But of course even queens have to be
well laved and well laundered. He said he didn't sleep all night, after
they found the water was there. He was too happy; he just went
meandering about the prairie, singing to himself.
"So you were pretty sure of me, Kitten-Cats, even then?" I demanded.
He looked at me with his solemn Scotch-Canadian eyes. "I'm not sure of
you, even now," was his answer. But I made him take it back.
It's rather odd how Dinky-Dunk got this ranch, which used to be called
the Cochrane Ranch, for even behind this peaceful little home of ours
there is a touch of tragedy. Hugh Cochrane was one of Dinky-Dunk's
surveyors when he first took up railroad work in British Columbia. Hugh
had a younger brother Andrew, who was rather wild and had been brought
out here and planted on the prairie to keep him out of mischief. One
winter night he rode nearly thirty miles to a dance (they do that
apparently out here, and think nothing of it) and instead of riding home
at five o'clock in the morning, with the others, he visited a
whisky-runner who was operating a "blind pig." There he acquired much
more whisky than was good for him and got lost on the trail. That meant
he was badly frozen and probably out of his mind before he got back to
the shack. He wasn't able to keep up a fire, of course, or do anything
for himself--and I suppose the poor boy simply froze to death. He was
alone there, and it was weeks and weeks before his body was found. But
the most gruesome part of it all is that his horses had been stabled,
tied up in their stalls without feed. They were all found dead, poor
brutes. They'd even eaten the wooden boards the mangers were built of.
Hugh Cochrane couldn't get over it, and was going to sell the ranch for
fourteen hundred dollars when Dinky-Dunk heard of it and stepped in and
bought the whole half-section. Then he bought the McKinnon place, a
half-section to the north of this, after McKinnon had lost all his
buildings because he was too shiftless to make a fire-guard. And when
the railway work was finished Dinky-Dunk took up wheat-growing. He is a
great believer in wheat. He says wheat spells wealth, in this country.
Some people call him a "land-miner," he says, but when he's given the
chance to do the thing as he wants to, he'll show them who's right.
_Wednesday the Twenty-fifth_
Dinky-Dunk and I have been making plans. He's promised to build an annex
to the shack, a wing on the north side, so I can have a store-room and a
clothes-closet at one end and a guest-chamber at the other. And I'm to
have a sewing-machine and a bread-mixer, and the smelly steer-hide divan
is going to be banished to the bunk-house. And Dinky-Dunk says I must
have a pinto, a riding-horse, as soon as he can lay hands on the right
animal. Later on he says I must have help, but out here in the West
women are hard to get, and harder to keep. They are snatched up by
lonely bachelors like Dinky-Dunk. They can't even keep the
school-teachers (mostly girls from Ontario) from marrying off. But I
don't want a woman about, not for a few months yet. I want Dinky-Dunk
all to myself. And the freedom of isolation like this is such a luxury!
To be just one's self, in civilization, is a luxury, is the greatest
luxury in the world,--and also the most expensive, I've found to my
sorrow.
Out here, there's no object in being anything but one's self. Life is so
simple and honest, so back to first principles! There's joy in the
thought of getting rid of all the sublimated junk of city life. I'm just
a woman; and Dinky-Dunk is just a man. We've got a roof and a bed and a
fire. That's all. And what is there, really, after that? We have to eat,
of course, but we really live well. There's all the game we want,
especially wild duck and prairie chicken, to say nothing of jack-rabbit.
Dinky-Dunk sallies out and pots them as we need them. We get our veal
and beef by the quarter, but it will not keep well until the weather
gets cooler, so I put what we don't need in brine and use it for
boiling-meat. We have no fresh fruit, but even evaporated peaches can be
stewed so that they're appetizing. And as I had the good sense to bring
out with me no less than three cook-books, from Brentano's, I am able to
attempt more and more elaborate dishes.
Olie has a wire-fenced square where he grew beets and carrots and onions
and turnips, and the biggest potatoes I ever saw. These will be pitted
before the heavy frosts come. We get our butter and lard by the pail,
and our flour by the sack, but getting things in quantities sometimes
has its drawbacks. When I examined the oatmeal box I found it had
weavels in it, and promptly threw all that meal away. Dinky-Dunk, coming
in from the corral, viewed the pile with round-eyed amazement. "It's got
_worms_ in it!" I cried out to him. He took up a handful of it, and
stared at it with tragic sorrow. "Why, I ate weavels all last winter,"
he reprovingly remarked. Dinky-Dunk, with his Scotch strain, loves his
porridge. So we'll have to get a hundred-weight, guaranteed strictly
uninhabited, when we team into Buckhorn.
Men are funny! A woman never quite knows a man until she has lived with
him and day by day unearthed his little idiosyncrasies. She may seem
close to him, in those earlier days of romance, but she never really
knows him, any more than a sparrow on a telegraph wire knows the Morse
Code thrilling along under its toes! Men have so many little kinks and
turns, even the best of them. I tacked oil-cloth on a shoe-box and
draped chintz around it, and fixed a place for Dinky-Dunk to wash, in
the bedroom, when he comes in at noon. At night I knew it would be
impossible, for he's built a little wash-house with old binder-carrier
canvas nailed to four posts, and out there Olie and he strip every
evening and splash each other with horse-pails full of well-water.
Dinky-Dunk is clean, whatever he may be, but I thought it would look
more civilized if he'd perform his limited noonday ablutions in the
bedroom. He did it for one day, in pensive silence, and then sneaked the
wash-things back to the rickety old bench outside the door. He said it
saved time.
Among other vital things, I've found that Dinky-Dunk hates burnt toast.
Yesterday morning, Matilda Anne, I got thinking about Corfu and Ragusa
and you, and it _did_ burn a little around the edges, I suppose. So I
kissed his ear and told him carbon would make his teeth white. But he
got up and went out with a sort of "In-this-way-madness-lies"
expression, and I felt wretched all day. So this morning I was more
careful. I did that toast just to a turn. "Feast, O Kaikobád, on the
blondest of toast!" I said as I salaamed and handed him the plate. He
wrinkled up his forehead a little, at the sting in that speech, but he
could not keep from grinning. Then, too, Dinky-Dunk always soaps the
back of his hand, to wash his back, and reach high up. So do I. And on
cold mornings-he says "One, two, three, the bumble bee!" before he hops
out of bed--and I imagined I was the only grownup in all the wide world
who still made use of that foolish rhyme. And the other day when he was
hot and tired I found him drinking a dipperful of cold water fresh from
the well. So I said:
"Many a man has gone to his sarcophagus
Thro' pouring cold water down a warm esophagus!"
When I recited that rhyme to him he swung about as though he'd been
shot. "Where did you ever hear that?" he asked. I told him that was
what Lady Agatha always said to me when she caught me drinking
ice-water. "I thought I was the only man in the world who knew that
crazy old couplet," he confessed, and he chased me around the shack with
the rest of the dipperful, to keep from chilling his tummy, he
explained. Then Dinky-Dunk and I both like to give pet-names to things.
He calls me "Lady Bird" and "Gee-Gee" and sometimes "Honey," and
sometimes "Boca Chica" and "Tabby." And I call him Dinky-Dunk and The
Dour Maun, and Kitten-Cats, though for some reason or other he hates
that last name. I think he feels it's an affront to his dignity. And no
man likes a trace of mockery in a woman. But Dinky-Dunk's names are born
of affection, and I love him for them.
Even the ranch horses have all been tagged with names. There's
"Slip-Along" and "Water Light" and "Bronk" and "Patsy Crocker" and "Pick
and Shovel" and "Tumble Weed," and others that I can't remember at the
moment. And I find I'm picking up certain of Dinky-Dunk's little
habits, and dropping into the trick of looking at things from his
standpoint. I wonder if husbands and wives really _do_ get to be alike?
There are times when Dinky-Dunk seems to know just what I'm thinking,
for when he speaks he says exactly the thing I was going to ask him. And
he's inexorable in his belief that one's right shoe should always be put
on first. So am I!
_Thursday the Twenty-sixth_
Dinky-Dunk is rather pinched for ready money. He is what they call "land
poor" out here. He has big plans, but not much cash. So we shall have to
be frugal. I had decided on vast and sudden changes in this household,
but I'll have to draw in my horns a little. Luckily I have nearly two
hundred dollars of my own money left--and have never mentioned it to
Dinky-Dunk. So almost every night I study the magazine advertisements,
and the catalog of the mail-order house in Winnipeg. Each night I add to
my list of "Needs," and then go back and cross out some of the earlier
ones, as being too extravagant, for the length of my list almost gives
me heart-failure. And as I sit there thinking of what I have to do
without, I envy the women I've known in other days, the women with all
their white linen and their cut glass and silverware and their
prayer-rugs and period rooms and their white-tiled baths and their
machinery for making life so comfortable and so easy. I envy them. I put
away my list, and go to bed envying them. But, oh, I sleep so soundly,
and I wake up so buoyant in heart, so eager to get at the next day's
work, so glad to see I'm slowly getting things more ship-shape. It
doesn't leave room for regret. And there is always the future, the
happier to-morrow to which our thoughts go out. I get to thinking of the
city again, of the hundreds of women I know going like hundreds of crazy
squirrels on their crazy treadmill of amusements, and of the thousands
and thousands of women who are toiling without hope, going on in the
same old rut from day to day, cooped up in little flats and back rooms,
with bad air and bad food and bad circulation, while I have all God's
outdoors to wander about in, and can feel the singing rivers of health
in my veins. And here I side-step my Song-of-Solomon voluntary, for they
have one thing I _do_ miss, and that is music. I wish I had a
cottage-piano or a Baby Grand or a _Welte Mignon_! I wish I had any
kind of an old piano! I wish I had an accordion, or a German
Sweet-Potato, or even a Jew's-Harp!
But what's the use of wishing for luxuries, when we haven't even a
can-opener--Dinky-Dunk says he's used a hatchet for over a year! And our
only toaster is a kitchen-fork wired to the end of a lath. I even saw
Dinky-Dunk spend half an hour straightening out old nails taken from one
of our shipping-boxes. And the only colander we have was made out of a
leaky milk-pan with holes punched in its bottom. And we haven't a
double-boiler or a mixing-bowl or a doughnut-cutter. When I told
Dinky-Dunk yesterday that we were running out of soap, he said he'd
build a leach of wood-ashes and get beef-tallow and make soft soap. I
asked him how long he'd want to kiss a downy cheek that had been washed
in soft soap. He said he'd keep on kissing me if I was a mummy pickled
in bitumen. But I prefer not risking too much of the pickling process.
Which reminds me of the fact that I find my hair a terrible nuisance,
with no Hortense to struggle with it every morning. As you know, it's as
thick as a rope and as long as my arm. I begrudge the time it takes to
look after it, and such a thing as a good shampoo is an event to be
approached with trepidation and prepared for with zeal. "Coises on me
beauty!" I think I'll cut that wool off. But on each occasion when I
have my mind about made up I experience one of "Mr. Polly's" l'il dog
moments. The thing that makes me hesitate is the thought that Dinky-Dunk
might hate me for the rest of his days. And now that our
department-store aristocracy seems to have a corner in Counts and I seem
destined to worry along with merely an American husband, I don't intend
to throw away the spoons with the dish-water! But having to fuss so with
that hair is a nuisance, especially at night, when I am so tired that my
pillow seems to bark like a dog for me to come and pat it.
And speaking of that reminds me that I have to order arch-supports for
my feet. I'm on them so much that by bedtime my ankles feel like a
_chocolat mousse_ that's been left out in the sun. Yet this isn't a
whimper, Matilda Anne, for when I turn in I sleep like a child. No more
counting and going to the medicine-chest for coal-tar pills. I abjure
them. I, who used to have so many tricks to bring the starry-eyed
goddess bending over my pillow, hereby announce myself as the noblest
sleeper north of the Line! I no longer need to count the sheep as they
come over the wall, or patiently try to imagine the sound of surf-waves,
or laboriously re-design that perennial dinner-gown which I've kept
tucked away in the cedar-chest of the imagination as long as I can
remember, elaborating it over and over again down to the minutest
details through the longest hour of my whitest white night until it
began to merge into the velvety robes of slumber itself! Nowadays an
ogre called Ten-O'Clock steals up behind my chair with a club in his
hand and stuns me into insensibility. Two or three times, in fact, my
dear old clumsy-fingered Dinky-Dunk has helped me get my clothes off.
But he says that the nicest sound he knows is to lie in bed and hear the
tinkle of my hair-pins as I toss them into the little Coalport pin-tray
on my dresser--which reminds me what Chinkie once said about his idea of
Heaven being eating my divinity-fudge to the sound of trumpets!
I brag about being busy, but I'm not the only busy person about this
wickyup. Olie and Dinky-Dunk talk about summer-fallowing and
double-discing and drag-harrowing and fire-guarding, and I'm beginning
to understand what it all means. They are out with their teams all day
long, working like Trojans. We have mid-day dinner, which Olie bolts in
silence and with the rapidity of chain-lightning. He is the most expert
of sword-swallowers, with a table-knife, and Dinky-Dunk says it keeps
reminding him how Burbank could make a fortune inventing a square pea
that would stay on a knife-blade. But Dinky-Dunk stopped me calling him
"The Sword Swallower" and has privately tipped Olie off as to the
functions of the table fork. How the males of this old earth stick
together! The world of men is a secret order, and every man is a member!
Having bolted his dinner Olie always makes for outdoors. Then Dinky-Dunk
comes to my side of the table. We sit side by side, with our arms around
each other. Sometimes I fill his pipe for him and light it. Then we talk
lazily, happily, contentedly and sometimes shockingly. Then he looks at
our nickel-alarm clock, up on the book shelves which I made out of old
biscuit-boxes, and invariably says: "This isn't the spirit that built
Rome," and kisses me three times, once on each eyelid, tight, and once
on the mouth. I don't even mind the taste of the pipe. Then he's off,
and I'm alone for the afternoon.
But I'm getting things organized now so that I have a little spare time.
And with time on my hands I find myself turning very restless. Yesterday
I wandered off on the prairie and nearly got lost. Dinky-Dunk says I
must be more careful, until I get to know the country better. He put me
up on his shoulder and made me promise. Then he let me down. It made me
wonder if I hadn't married a masterful man. Above all things I've always
wanted freedom.
"I'm a wild woman, Duncan. You'll never tame me," I confessed to him.
He laughed a little.
"So you think you will?" I demanded.
"No, _I_ won't, Gee-Gee, but life will!"
And again I felt some ghostly spirit of revolt stirring in me, away down
deep. I think he saw some shadow of it, caught some echo of it, for his
manner changed and he pushed back the hair from my forehead and kissed
me, almost pityingly.
"There's one thing must _not_ happen!" I told him as he held me in his
arms.
He did not let his eyes meet mine.
"Why?" he asked.
"I'm afraid--out here!" I confessed as I clung to him and felt the need
of having him close to me. He was very quiet and thoughtful all
evening. Before I fell asleep he told me that on Monday the two of us
would team in to Buckhorn and get a wagon-load of supplies.
_Saturday the Twenty-eighth_
I have got my cayuse. Dinky-Dunk meant him for a surprise, but the
shyest and reddest-headed cowboy that ever sat in a saddle came
cantering along the trail, and I saw him first. He was leading the
shaggiest, piebaldest, pottest-tummied, craziest-looking little cayuse
that ever wore a bridle. I gave one look at his tawny-colored forelock,
which stood pompadour-style about his ears, and shouted out
"Paderewski!" Dinky-Dunk came and stood beside me and laughed. He said
that cayuse _did_ look like Paderewski, but the youth of the fiery locks
blushingly explained that his present name was "Jail-Bird," which some
fool Scandinavian had used instead of "Grey-Bird," his authentic and
original appellative. But I stuck to my name, though we have shortened
it into "Paddy." And Paddy must indeed have been a jail-bird, or
deserved to be one, for he is marked and scarred from end to end. But
he is good-tempered, tough as hickory and obligingly omnivorous. Every
one in the West, men and women alike, rides astride, and I have been
practising on Paddy. It seems a very comfortable and sensible way to
ride, but I shall have to toughen up a bit before I hit the trail for
any length of time.
I've been wondering, Matilda Anne, if this all sounds pagan and foolish
to you, uncultured, as Theobald Gustav would put it? I've also been
wondering, since I wrote that last sentence, if people really need
culture, or what we used to call culture, and if it means as much to
life as so many imagine. Here we are out here without any of the
refinements of civilization, and we're as much at peace with our own
souls as are the birds of the air--when there _are_ birds in the air,
which isn't in our country! Culture, it seems to me as I look back on
things, tends to make people more and more mere spectators of life,
detaching them from it and lifting them above it. Or can it be that the
mere spectators demand culture, to take the place of what they miss by
not being actual builders and workers?
We are farmers, just rubes and hicks, as they say in my country. But
we're tilling the soil and growing wheat. We're making a great new
country out of what was once a wilderness. To me, that seems almost
enough. We're laboring to feed the world, since the world must have
bread, and there's something satisfying and uplifting in the mere
thought that we can answer to God, in the end, for our lives, no matter
how raw and rude they may have been. And there are mornings when I am
Browning's "Saul" in the flesh. The great wash of air from sky-line to
sky-line puts something into my blood or brain that leaves me almost
dizzy. I sizzle! It makes me pulse and tingle and cry out that life is
good--_good_! I suppose it is nothing more than altitude and ozone. But
in the matter of intoxicants it stands on a par with anything that was
ever poured out of bottles at Martin's or Bustanoby's. And at sunrise,
when the prairie is thinly silvered with dew, when the tiny hammocks of
the spider-webs swing a million sparkling webs strung with diamonds,
when every blade of grass is a singing string of pearls, hymning to God
on High for the birth of a golden day, I can feel my heart swell, and
I'm so abundantly, so inexpressibly alive, alive to every finger-tip!
Such space, such light, such distances! And being Saul is so much better
than reading about him!
_Wednesday the First_
I was too tired to write any last night, though there seemed so much to
talk about. We teamed into Buckhorn for our supplies, two leisurely,
lovely, lazy days on the trail, which we turned into a sort of
gipsy-holiday. We took blankets and grub and feed for the horses and a
frying-pan, and camped out on the prairie. The night was pretty cool,
but we made a good fire, and had hot coffee. Dinky-Dunk smoked and I
sang. Then we rolled up in our blankets and as I lay there watching the
stars I got thinking of the lights of the Great White Way. Then I nudged
my husband and asked him if he knew what my greatest ambition in life
used to be. And of course he didn't. "Well, Dinky-Dunk," I told him, "it
was to be the boy who opens the door at _Malliard's_! For two whole
years I ate my heart out with envy of that boy, who always lived in the
odor of such heavenly hot chocolate and wore two rows of shining
buttons down his braided coat and was never without white gloves and
morning, noon and night paraded about in the duckiest little skull-cap
cocked very much to one side like a Grenadier's!" And Dinky-Dunk told me
to go to sleep or he'd smother me with a horse-blanket. So I squirmed
back into my blanket and got "nested" and watched the fire die away
while far, far off somewhere a coyote howled. That made me lonesome, so
I got Dinky-Dunk's hand, and fell asleep holding it in mine.
I woke up early. Dinky-Dunk had forgotten about my hand, and it was
cold. In the East there was a low bar of ethereally pale silver, which
turned to amber, and then to ashes of roses, and then to gold. I saw one
sublime white star go out, in the West, and then behind the bars of gold
the sky grew rosy with morning until it was one Burgundian riot of
bewildering color. I sat up and watched it. Then I reached over and
shook Dinky-Dunk. It was too glorious a daybreak to miss. He looked at
me with one eye open, like a sleepy hound.
"You must see it, Dinky-Dunk! It's so resplendent it's positively
vulgar!"
He sat up, stared at the pageantry of color for one moment, and then
wriggled down into his blanket again. I tickled his nose with a blade of
sweet-grass. Then I washed my face in the dew, the same as we did in
Christ-Church Meadow that glorious May-Day in Oxford. By the time
Dinky-Dunk woke up I had the coffee boiling and the bacon sizzling in
the pan. It was the most celestial smell that ever assailed human
nostrils, and I blush with shame at the thought of how much I ate at
that breakfast, sitting flat on an empty oat-sack and leaning against a
wagon-wheel. By eight o'clock we were in the metropolis of Buckhorn and
busy gathering up our things there. And they made a very respectable
wagon-load.
_Thursday the Second_
I have been practising like mad learning to play the mouth-organ. I
bought it in Buckhorn, without letting Dinky-Dunk know, and all day
long, when I knew it was safe, I've been at it. So to-night, when I had
my supper-table all ready, I got the ladder that leaned against one of
the granaries and mounted the nearest hay-stack. There, quite out of
sight, I waited until Dinky-Dunk came in with his team. I saw him go
into the shack and then step outside again, staring about in a brown
study. Then I struck up _Traumerei_.
You should have seen that boy's face! He looked up at the sky, as though
my poor little harmonica were the aërial outpourings of archangels. He
stood stock-still, drinking it in. Then he bolted for the stables,
thinking it came from there. It took him some time to corner me up on my
stack-top. Then I slid down into his arms. And I believe he loves that
mouth-organ music. After supper he made me go out and sit on the oat-box
and play my repertory. He says it's wonderful, from a distance. But that
mouth-organ's rather brassy, and it makes my lips sore. Then, too, my
mouth isn't big enough for me to "tongue" it properly. When I told
Dinky-Dunk this he said:
"Of course it isn't! What d'you suppose I've been calling you Boca Chica
for?"
And I've just discovered "Boca Chica" is Spanish for "Little Mouth"--and
me with a trap, Matilda Anne, that you used to call the Cave of the
Winds! Now Dinky-Dunk vows he'll have a Victrola before the winter is
over! Ye gods and little fishes, what a luxury! There was a time, not so
long ago, when I was rather inclined to sniff at the Westbury's electric
player-piano and its cabinet of neatly canned classics! How life humbles
us! And how blind all women are in their ideals and their search for
happiness! The sea-stones that lie so bright on the shores of youth can
dry so dull in the hand of experience! And yet, as Birdalone's Nannie
once announced, "If you thuck 'em they thay boo-ful!" And I guess it
must be a good deal the same with marriage. You can't even afford to lay
down on your job of loving. The more we ask, the more we must give. I've
just been thinking of those days of my fiercely careless childhood when
my soul used to float out to placid happiness on one piece of
plum-cake--only even then, alas, it floated out like a polar bear on its
iceberg, for as that plum-cake vanished my peace of mind went with it,
madly as I clung to the last crumb. But now that I'm an old married
woman I don't intend to be a Hamlet in petticoats. A good man loves me,
and I love him back. And I intend to keep that love alive.
_Friday the Third_
I have just issued an ultimatum as to pigs. There shall be no more loose
porkers wandering about my dooryard. It's an advertisement of bad
management. And what's more, when I was hanging out my washing this
morning a shote rooted through my basket of white clothes with his dirty
nose, and while I made after him his big brother actually tried to eat
one of my wet table-napkins. And that meant another hour's hard work
before the damage was repaired.
_Saturday the Fourth_
Olie is painting the shack, inside and out, and now you'd never know our
poor little Joseph-coat home. I told Dinky-Dunk if we'd ever put a
chameleon on that shack-wall he'd have died of brain-fag trying to make
good on the color-schemes. So Dinky-Dunk made Olie take a day off and
ply the brush. But the smell of paint made me think of Channel passages,
so off I went with Dinky-Dunk, _a la_ team and buckboard, to the Dixon
Ranch to see about some horses, nearly seventy miles there and back. It
was a glorious autumn day, and a glorious ride, with "Bronk" and
"Tumble-Weed" loping along the double-trail and the air like crystal.
Dinky-Dunk and I sang most of the way. The gophers must have thought we
were mad. My lord and master is incontinently proud of his voice,
especially the chest-tones, but he rather tails behind me on the tune,
plainly not always being sure of himself. We had dinner with the Dixons,
and about three million flies. They gave me the blues, that family, and
especially Mrs. Dixon. She seemed to make prairie-life so ugly and empty
and hardening. Poor, dried-up, sad-eyed soul, she looked like a woman of
sixty, and yet her husband said she was just thirty-seven. Their water
is strong with alkali, and this and the prairie wind (combined with a
something deep down in her own make-up) have made her like a vulture,
lean and scrawny and dry. I stared at that hard line of jaw and
cheekbone and wondered how long ago the soft curves were there, and if
those overworked hands had ever been pretty, and if that flat back had
ever been rounded and dimpled. Her hair was untidy. Her apron was
unspeakably dirty, and she used it as both a handkerchief and a
hand-towel. Her voice was as hard as nails, and her cooking was
wretched. Not a door or window was screened, and, as I said before, we
were nearly smothered with flies.
Dinky-Dunk did not dare to look at me, all dinner time. And on the way
home Mrs. Dixon's eyes kept haunting me, they seemed so tired and vacant
and accusing, as though they were secretly holding God Himself to
account for cheating her out of her woman's heritage of joy. I asked
Dinky-Dunk if we'd ever get like that. He said, "Not on your life!" and
quoted the Latin phrase about mind controlling matter. The Dixons, he
went on to explain, were of the "slum" type, only they didn't happen to
live in a city. But tired and sleepy as I was that night, I got up to
cold-cream my face and arms. And I'm going to write for almond-meal and
glycerin from the mail-order house to-morrow. _And_ a brassiere--for I
saw what looked like the suspicion of a smile on Dinky-Dunk's unshaven
lips as he watched me struggling into my corsets this morning. It took
some writhing, and even then I could hardly make it. I threw my wet
sponge after him when he turned back in the doorway with the mildly
impersonal question: "Who's your fat friend?" Then he scooted for the
corral, and I went back and studied my chin in the dresser-mirror, to
make sure it wasn't getting terraced into a dew-lap like Uncle
Carlton's.
But I can't help thinking of the Dixons, and feeling foolishly and
helplessly sorry for them. It was dusk when we got back from that long
drive to their ranch, and the stars were coming out. I could see our
shack from miles off, a little lonely dot of black against the sky-line.
I made Dinky-Dunk stop the team, and we sat and looked at it. It seemed
so tiny there, so lonely, so strange, in the middle of such miles and
miles of emptiness, with a little rift of smoke going up from its
desolate little pipe-end. Then I said, out loud, "Home! My home!" And
out of a clear sky, for no earthly reason, I began to cry like a baby.
Women are such fools, sometimes! I told Dinky-Dunk we must get books,
good books, and spend the long winter evenings reading together, to keep
from going to seed.
He said, "All right, Gee-Gee," and patted my knee. Then we loped on
along the trail toward the lonely little black dot ahead of us. But I
hung on to Dinky-Dunk's arm, all the rest of the way, until we pulled up
beside the shack, and poor old Olie, with a frying-pan in his hand,
stood silhouetted against the light of the open door.
_Monday the Sixth_
The last few days I've been nothing but a two-footed retriever,
scurrying off and carrying things back home with me. There have been
rains, but the weather is still glorious. And I've discovered such heaps
and heaps of mushrooms over at the old Titchborne Ranch. They're thick
all around the corral and in the pasture there. I am now what your
English lord and master would call "a perfect seat" on Paddy, and every
morning I ride over after my basketful of _Agaricus Campestris_--that
ought to be in the plural, but I've forgotten how! We have them creamed
on toast; we have them fried in butter; and we have them in soup--and
such beauties! I'm going to try and can some for winter and spring use.
But the finest part of the mushroom is the finding it. To ride into a
little white city that has come up overnight and looks like an
encampment of fairy soldiers, to see the milky white domes against the
vivid green of the prairie-grass, to catch sight of another clump of
them, suddenly, like stars against an emerald sky, a hundred yards away,
to inhale the clean morning air, and feel your blood tingle, and hear
the prairie-chickens whir and the wild-duck scolding along the
coulee-edges--I tell you, Matilda Anne, it's worth losing a little of
your beauty sleep to go through it! I'm awake even before Dinky-Dunk,
and I brought him out of his dreams this morning by poking his teeth
with my little finger and saying:
"Twelve white horses
On a red hill--"
and I asked him if he knew what it was, and he gave the right answer,
and said he hadn't heard that conundrum since he was a boy.
All afternoon I've been helping Dinky-Dunk put up a barb-wire fence.
Barb-wire is nearly as hard as a woman to handle. Dinky-Dunk is fencing
in some of the range, for a sort of cattle-run for our two milk-cows. He
says it's only a small field, but there seemed to be miles and miles of
that fencing. We had no stretcher, so Dinky-Dunk made shift with me and
a claw-hammer. He'd catch the wire, lever his hammer about a post, and
I'd drive in the staple, with a hammer of my own. I got so I could hit
the staple almost every whack, though one staple went off like shrapnel
and hit Diddum's ear. So I'm some use, you see, even if I am a chekako!
But a wire slipped, and tore through my skirt and stocking, scratched my
leg and made the blood run. It was only the tiniest cut, really, but I
made the most of it, Dinky-Dunk was so adorably nice about doctoring me
up. We came home tired and happy, singing together, and Olie, as usual,
must have thought we'd both gone mad.
This husband of mine is so elementary. He secretly imagines that he's
one of the most complex of men. But in a good many things he's as simple
as a child. And I love him for it, although I believe I _do_ like to
bedevil him a little. He is dignified, and hates flippancy. So when I
greet him with "Morning, old boy!" I can see that nameless little
shadow sweep over his face. Then I say, "Oh, I beg its little pardon!"
He generally grins, in the end, and I think I'm slowly shaking that
monitorial air out of him, though once or twice I've had to remind him
about La Rochefoucauld saying gravity was a stratagem invented to
conceal the poverty of the mind! But Dinky-Dunk still objects to me
putting my finger on his Adam's apple when he's talking. He wears a
flannel shirt, when working outside, and his neck is bare. Yesterday I
buried my face down in the corner next to his shoulder-blade and made
him wriggle. As he shaves only on Sunday mornings now, that is about the
only soft spot, for his face is prickly, and makes my chin sore, the
bearded brute! Then I bit him; not hard--but Satan said bite, and I just
had to do it. He turned quite pale, swung me round so that I lay limp in
his arms, and closed his mouth over mine. I got away, and he chased me.
We upset things. Then I got outside the shack, ran around the
horse-corral, and then around the hay-stacks, with Dinky-Dunk right
after me, giving me goose-flesh at every turn. I felt like a
cave-woman. He grabbed me like a stone-age man and caught me up and
carried me over his shoulder to a pile of prairie sweet-grass that had
been left there for Olie's mattress. My hair was down. I was screaming,
half sobbing and half laughing. He dropped me in the hay, like a bag of
wheat. I started to fight him again. But I couldn't beat him off. Then
all my strength seemed to go. He was laughing himself, but it frightened
me a little to see his pupils so big that his eyes looked black. I felt
like a lamb in a lion's jaw, Dinky-Dunk is so much stronger than I am. I
lay there quite still, with my eyes closed. I went flop. I knew I was
conquered.
Then I came back to life. I suddenly realized that it was mid-day, in
the open air between the bald prairie-floor and God's own blue sky,
where Olie could stumble on us at any moment--and possibly die with his
boots on! Dinky-Dunk was kissing my left eyelid. It was a cup his lips
just seemed to fit into. I tried to move. But he held me there. He held
me so firmly that it hurt. Yet I couldn't help hugging him. Poor, big,
foolish, baby-hearted Dinky-Dunk! And poor, weak, crazy, storm-tossed
me! But, oh, God, it's glorious, in some mysterious way, to stir the
blood of a strong big man! It's heaven--and I don't quite know why. But
I love to see Dinky-Dunk's eyes grow black. Yet it makes me a little
afraid of him. I can hear his heart pound, sometimes, quite distinctly.
And sometimes there seems something so pathetic about it all--we are
such puny little mites of emotion played on by nature for her own
immitigable ends! But every woman wants to be loved. Dinky-Dunk asked me
why I shut my eyes when he kisses me. I wonder why? Sometimes, too, he
says my kisses are wicked, and that he likes 'em wicked. He's a funny
mixture. He's got the soul of a Scotch Calvinist tangled up in him
somewhere, and after the storm he's very apt to grow pious and a bit
preachy. But he has feelings, only he's ashamed of them. I think I'm
taking a little of the ice-crust off his emotions. He's a stiff clay
that needs to be well stirred up and turned over before it can mellow.
And I must be a sandy loam that wastes all its strength in one short
harvest. That sounds as though I were getting to be a real farmer's wife
with a vast knowledge of soils, doesn't it? At any rate my husband, out
of his vast knowledge of me, says I have the swamp-cedar trick of
flaring up into sudden and explosive attractiveness. Then, he says, I
shower sparks. As I've already told him, I'm a wild woman, and will be
hard to tame, for as Victor Hugo somewhere says, we women are only
perfected devils!
_Wednesday the Eighth_
I've cut off my hair, right bang off. When I got up yesterday morning
with so much work ahead of me, with so much to do and so little time to
do it in, I started doing my hair. I also started thinking about that
Frenchman who committed suicide after counting up the number of buttons
he had to button and unbutton every morning and evening of every day of
every year of his life. I tried to figure up the time I was wasting on
that mop of mine. Then the Great Idea occurred to me.
I got the scissors, and in six snips had it off, a big tangled pile of
brownish gold, rather bleached out by the sun at the ends. And the
moment I saw it there on my dresser, and saw my head in the mirror, I
was sorry. I looked like a plucked crow. I could have ditched a
freight-train. And I felt positively light-headed. But it was too late
for tears. I trimmed off the ragged edges as well as I could, and what
didn't get in my eyes got down my neck and itched so terribly that I had
to change my clothes. Then I got a nail-punch out of Dinky-Dunk's
tool-kit, and heated it over the lamp and gave a little more wave to
that two-inch shock of stubble. It didn't look so bad then, and when I
tried on Dinky-Dunk's coat in front of the glass I saw that I wouldn't
make such a bad-looking boy.
But I waited until noon with my heart in my mouth, to see what
Dinky-Dunk would say. What he really _did_ say I can't write here, for
there was a wicked swear-word mixed up in his ejaculation of startled
wonder. Then he saw the tears in my eyes, I suppose, for he came running
toward me with his arms out, and hugged me tight, and said I looked
cute, and all he'd have to do would be to get used to it. But all dinner
time he kept looking at me as though I were a strange woman, and later I
saw him standing in front of the dresser, stooping over that tragic pile
of tangled yellow-brown snakes. It reminded me of a man stooping over a
grave. I slipped away without letting him see me. But this morning I
woke him up early and asked him if he still loved his wife. And when he
vowed he did, I tried to make him tell me how much. But that stumped
him. He compromised by saying he couldn't cheapen his love by defining
it in words; it was limitless. I followed him out after breakfast, with
a hunger in my heart which bacon and eggs hadn't helped a bit, and told
him that if he really loved me he could tell me how much.
He looked right in my eyes, a little pityingly, it seemed to me, and
laughed, and grew solemn again. Then he stooped down and picked up a
little blade of prairie-grass, and held it up in front of me.
"Have you any idea of how far it is from the Rockies across to the
Hudson Bay and from the Line up to the Peace River Valley?"
Of course I hadn't.
"And have you any idea of how many millions of acres of land that is,
and how many millions of blades of grass like this there are in each
acre?" he soberly demanded.
And again of course I hadn't.
"Well, this one blade of grass is the amount of love I am able to
express for you, and all those other blades in all those millions of
acres is what love itself is!"
I thought it over, just as solemnly as he had said it. I think I was
satisfied. For when my Dinky-Dunk was away off on the prairie, working
like a nailer, and I was alone in the shack, I went to his old coat
hanging there--the old coat that had some subtle aroma of
Dinky-Dunkiness itself about every inch of it--and kissed it on the
sleeve.
This afternoon as Paddy and I started for home with a pail of mushrooms
I rode face to face with my first coyote. We stood staring at each
other. My heart bounced right up into my throat, and for a moment I
wondered if I was going to be eaten by a starving timber-wolf, with
Dinky-Dunk finding my bones picked as clean as those animal-carcasses
we see in an occasional buffalo-wallow. I kept up my end of the stare,
wondering whether to advance or retreat, and it wasn't until that coyote
turned tail and scooted that my courage came back. Then Paddy and I went
after him, like the wind. But we had to give up. And at supper
Dinky-Dunk told me coyotes were too cowardly to come near a person, and
were quite harmless. He said that even when they showed their teeth, the
rest of their face was apologizing for the threat. And before supper was
over that coyote, at least I suppose it was the same coyote, was howling
at the rising full moon. I went out with Dinky-Dunk's gun, but couldn't
get near the brute. Then I came back.
"Sing, you son-of-a-gun, sing!" I called out to him from the shack door.
And that shocked my lord and master so much that he scolded me, for the
first time in his life. And when I poked his Adam's apple with my finger
he got on his dignity. He was tired, poor boy, and I should have
remembered it. And when I requested him not to stand there and stare at
me in the hieratic rigidity of an Egyptian idol I could see a little
flush of anger go over his face. He didn't say anything. But he took one
of the lamps and a three-year-old _Pall-Mall Magazine_ and shut himself
up in the bunk-house.
Then I was sorry.
I tiptoed over to the door, and found it was locked. Then I went and
got my mouth-organ and sat meekly down on the doorstep and began to
play the _Don't Be Cross_ waltz. I dragged it out plaintively, with a
_vox humana tremolo_ on the coaxing little refrain. Finally I heard a
smothered snort, and the door suddenly opened and Dinky-Dunk picked me
up, mouth-organ and all. He shook me and said I was a little devil, and
I called him a big British brute. But he was laughing and a wee bit
ashamed of his temper and was very nice to me all the rest of the
evening.
I'm getting, I find, to depend a great deal on Dinky-Dunk, and it makes
me afraid, sometimes, for the future. He seems able to slip a hand
under my heart and lift it up, exactly as though it were the chin of a
wayward child. Yet I resent his power, and keep elbowing for more
breathing-space, like a rush-hour passenger in the subway crowd.
Sometimes, too, I resent the over-solemn streak in his mental make-up.
He abominates ragtime, and I have rather a weakness for it. So once or
twice in his dour days I've found an almost Satanic delight in singing
_The Humming Coon_. And the knowledge that he'd like to forbid me
singing rag seems to give a zest to it. So I go about flashing my saber
of independence:
"Ol' Ephr'm Johnson was a deacon of de church in Tennessee,
An' of course it was ag'inst de rules t' sing ragtime melodée!"
But I am the one, I notice, who always makes up first. To-night as I was
making cocoa before we went to bed I tried to tell my Diddums there was
something positively doglike in my devotion to him. He nickered like a
pony and said he was the dog in this deal. Then he pulled me over on
his knee and said that men get short-tempered when they were tuckered
out with worry and hard work, and that probably it would be hard for
even two of the seraphim always to get along together in a two-by-four
shack, where you couldn't even have, a deadline for the sake of
dignity. It was mostly his fault, he knew, but he was going to try to
fight against it. And I experienced the unreasonable joy of an
unreasonable woman who has succeeded in putting the man she loves with
all her heart and soul in the wrong. So I could afford to be humble
myself, and make a foolish lot of fuss over him. But I shall always
fight for my elbow-room. For there are times when my Dinky-Dunk, for all
his bigness and strength, has to be taken sedately in tow, the same as a
racing automobile has to be hauled through the city streets by a dinky
little low-power hack-car!
_Saturday the Tenth_
We've had a cold spell, with heavy frosts at night, but the days are
still glorious. The overcast days are so few in the West that I've been
wondering if the optimism of the Westerners isn't really due to the
sunshine they get. Who could be gloomy under such golden skies? Every
pore of my body has a throat and is shouting out a _Tarentella Sincera_
of its own! But it isn't the weather that has keyed me up this time.
It's another wagon-load of supplies which Olie teamed out from Buckhorn
yesterday. I've got wall-paper and a new iron bed for the annex, and
galvanized wash-tubs and a crock-churn and storm-boots and enough
ticking to make ten big pillows, and unbleached linen for two dozen
slips--I love a big pillow--and I've been saving up wild-duck feathers
for weeks, the downiest feathers you ever sank your ear into, Matilda
Anne; and if pillows will do it I'm going to make this house look like a
harem! Can you imagine a household with only three pillow-slips, which
had to be jerked off in the morning, washed, dried and ironed and put
back on their three lonely little pillows before bedtime? Well, there
will be no more of that in this shack.
But the important news is that I've got a duck-gun, the duckiest
duck-gun you ever saw, and waders, and a coon-skin coat and cap and a
big leather school-bag for wearing over my shoulder on Paddy. The coat
and cap are like the ones we used to laugh at when we went up to
Montreal for the tobogganing, in the days when I was young and foolish
and willing to sacrifice comfort on the altar of outward appearances.
The coon-skins make me look like a Laplander, but they'll be mighty
comfy when the cold weather comes, for Dinky-Dunk says it drops to forty
and fifty below, sometimes.
I also got a lot of small stuff I'd written for from the mail-order
house, little feminine things a woman simply _has_ to have. But the big
thing was the duck-gun.
I no longer get heart failure when I hear the whir of a
prairie-chicken, but drop my bird before it's out of range. Poor, plump,
wounded, warm-bodied little feathery things! Some of them keep on flying
after they've been shot clean through the body, going straight on for a
couple of hundred feet, or even more, and then dropping like a stone.
How hard-hearted we soon get! It used to worry me. Now I gather 'em up
as though they were so many chips and toss them into the wagon-box; or
into my school-bag, if it's a private expedition of only Paddy and me.
And that's the way life treats us, too.
I've been practising on the gophers with my new gun, and with
Dinky-Dunk's .22 rifle. A gopher is only a little bigger than a
chipmunk, and usually pokes nothing more than his head out of his hole,
so when I got thirteen out of fifteen shots I began to feel that I was a
sharp-shooter. But don't regard this as wanton cruelty, for the gopher
is worse than a rat, and in this country the government agents supply
homesteaders with an annual allowance of free strychnine to poison them
off.
_Sunday the Eleventh_
I've made my first butter, be it recorded--but in doing so I managed to
splash the ceiling and the walls and my own woolly head, for I didn't
have sense enough to tie a wet cloth about the handle of the
churn-dasher until the damage had been done. I was too intent on getting
my butter to pay attention to details, though it took a disheartening
long time and my arms were tired out before I had finished. And when I
saw myself spattered from head to foot it reminded me of what you once
said about me and my reading, that I had the habit of coming out of a
book like a spaniel out of water, scattering ideas as I came. But there
are not many new books in my life these days. It is mostly hard work,
although I reminded Dinky-Dunk last night that while Omar intimated that
love and bread and wine were enough for any wilderness, we mustn't
forget that he also included a book of verses underneath the bough! My
lord says that by next year we can line our walls with books. But I'm
like Moses on Mount Nebo--I can see my promised land, but it seems a
terribly long way off. But this, as Dinky-Dunk would say, is not the
spirit that built Rome, and has carried me away from my butter, the
making of which cold-creamed my face until I looked as though I had snow
on my headlight. Yet there is real joy in finding those lovely yellow
granules in the bottom of your churn and then working it over and over
with a saucer in a cooking-bowl until it is one golden mass. Several
times before I'd shaken up sour cream in a sealer, but this was my first
real butter-making. I have just discovered, however, that I didn't
"wash" it enough, so that all the buttermilk wasn't worked out of my
first dairy-product. Dinky-Dunk, like the scholar and gentleman that he
is, swore that it was worth its weight in Klondike gold. And next time
I'll do better.
_Monday the Twelfth_
Golden weather again, with a clear sky and soft and balmy air! Just
before our mid-day meal Olie arrived with mail for us. We've had letters
from home! Instead of cheering me up they made me blue, for they seemed
to bring word from another world, a world so far, far away!
I decided to have a half-day in the open, so I strapped on my duck-gun
and off I went on Paddy, as soon as dinner was over and the men had
gone. We went like the wind, until both Paddy and I were tired of it.
Then I found a "soft-water" pond hidden behind a fringe of scrub-willow
and poplar. The mid-day sun had warmed it to a tempting temperature. So
I hobbled Paddy, peeled off and had a most glorious bath. I had just
soaped down with bank-mud (which is an astonishingly good solvent) and
had taken a header and was swimming about on my back, blinking up at
the blue sky, as happy as a mud-turtle in a mill-pond, when I heard
Paddy nicker. That disturbed me a little, but I felt sure there could be
nobody within miles of me. However, I swam back to where my clothes
were, sunned myself dry, and was just standing up to shake out the ends
of this short-cropped hair of mine when I saw a man's head Across the
pond, staring through the bushes at me. I don't know how or why it is,
but I suddenly saw red. I don't remember picking up the duck-gun, and I
don't remember aiming it.
But I banged away, with both barrels, straight at that leering head--or
at least it ought to have been a leering head, whatever that may mean!
The howl that went up out of the wilderness, the next moment, could have
been heard for a mile!
It was Dinky-Dunk, and he said I might have put his eyes out with
bird-shot, if he hadn't made the quickest drop of his life. And he also
said that he'd seen me, a distinct splash of white against the green of
the prairie, three good miles away, and wasn't I ashamed of myself, and
what would I have done if he'd been Olie or old man Dixon? But he
kissed my shoulder where the gun-stock had bruised it, and helped me
dress.
Then we rode off together, four or five miles north, where Dinky-Dunk
was sure we could get a bag of duck. Which we did, thirteen altogether,
and started for home as the sun got low and the evening air grew chilly.
It was a heavenly ride. In the west a little army of thin blue clouds
was edged with blazing gold, and up between them spread great fan-like
shafts of amber light. Then came a riot of orange yellow and ashes of
roses and the palest of gold with little islands of azure in it. Then
while the dying radiance seemed to hold everything in a luminous wash of
air, the stars came out, one by one, and a soft cool wind swept across
the prairie, and the light darkened--and I was glad to have Dinky-Dunk
there at my side, or I should have had a little cry, for the twilight
prairie always makes me lonesome in a way that could never be put into
words.
I tried to explain the feeling to Dinky-Dunk. He said he understood.
"I'm a Sour-Dough, Gee-Gee, but it still gets me that way," he solemnly
confessed. He said that when he listened to beautiful music he felt the
same. And that got me thinking of grand opera, and of that _Romeo and
Juliet_ night at La Scala, in Milan, when I first met Theobald Gustav.
Then I stopped to tell Dinky-Dunk that I'd been hopelessly in love with
a tenor at thirteen and had written in my journal: "I shall die and turn
to dust still adoring him." Then I told him about my first opera,
_Rigoletto_, and hummed "_La Donna E Mobile_," which of course he
remembered himself. It took me back to Florence, and to a box at the
Pagliano, and me all in dimity and cork-screw curls, weeping deliciously
at a lady in white, whose troubles I could not quite understand. Then I
got thinking of New York and the Metropolitan, and poor old Morris's
lines:
And still with listening soul I hear
Strains hushed for many a noisy year:
The passionate chords which wake the tear,
The low-voiced love-tales dear....
Scarce changed, the same musicians play
The selfsame themes to-day;
The silvery swift sonatas ring,
The soaring voices sing!
And I could picture the old Metropolitan on a Caruso night. I could see
the Golden Horse-Shoe and the geranium-red trimmings and the satiny
white backs of the women, and smell that luxurious heavy smell of warm
air and hothouse flowers and Paris perfumery and happy human bodies and
hear the whisper of silk along the crimson stairways. I could see the
lights go down, in a sort of sigh, before the overture began, and the
scared-looking blotches of white on the musicians' scores and the other
blotches made by their dress-shirt fronts, and the violins going up and
down, up and down, as though they were one piece of machinery, and then
the heavy curtain stealing up, and the thrill as that new heaven opened
up to me, a gawky girl in her first low-cut dinner gown!
I told Dinky-Dunk I'd sat in every corner of that old house, up in the
sky-parlor with the Italian barbers, in press-seats in the second
gallery with dear old Fanny-Rain-in-the-Face, and in the Westbury's box
with the First Lady of the Land and a Spanish Princess with extremely
dirty nails. It seemed so far away, another life and another world! And
for three hours of "Manon" I'd be willing to hang like a chimpanzee from
the Metropolitan's center chandelier. I suddenly realized how much I
missed it. I could have sung to the City as poor Charpentier's "Louise"
sang to her Paris. And a coyote howled up near the trail, and the
prairie got dark, with a pale green rind of light along the northwest,
and I knew there would be a heavy frost before morning.
To-night after supper my soul and I sat down and did a bit of
bookkeeping. Dinky-Dunk, who'd been watching me out of the corner of his
eye, went to the window and said it looked like a storm. And I knew he
meant that I was the Medicine Hat it was to come from, for before he'd
got up from the table he'd explained to me that matrimony was like
motoring because it was really traveling by means of a series of
explosions. Then he tried to explain that in a few weeks the fall rush
would be over and we'd have more time for getting what we deserved out
of life. But I turned on him with sudden fierceness and declared I
wasn't going to be merely an animal. I intended to keep my soul alive,
that it was every one's duty, no matter where they were, to ennoble
their spirit by keeping in touch with the best that has ever been felt
and thought.
When I grimly got out my mouth-organ and played the _Pilgrim's Chorus_,
as well as I could remember it, Dinky-Dunk sat listening in silent
wonder. He kept up the fire, and waited until I got through. Then he
reached for the dish-pan and said, quite casually, "I'm going to help you
wash up to-night, Gee-Gee!" And so I put away the mouth-organ and washed
up. But before I went to bed I got out my little vellum edition of
Browning's _The Ring and the Book_, and read at it industriously,
doggedly, determinedly, for a solid hour. What it's all about I don't
know. Instead of ennobling my spirit it only tired my brain and ended
up in making me so mad I flung the book into the wood-box.... Dinky-Dunk
has just pinned a piece of paper on my door; it is a sentence from
Epictetus. And it says: "Better it is that great souls should live in
small habitations than that abject slaves should burrow in great
houses!"
_Sunday the Eighteenth_
I spent an hour to-day trying to shoot a hen-hawk that's been hovering
about the shack all afternoon. He's after my chickens, and as new-laid
eggs are worth more than Browning to a homesteader, I got out my
duck-gun. It gave me a feeling of impending evil, having that huge bird
hanging about. It reminded me there was wrong and rapine in the world. I
hated the brute. But I hid under one of the wagon-boxes and got him, in
the end. I brought him down, a tumbling flurry of wings, like Satan's
fall from Heaven. When I ran out to possess myself of his Satanic body
he was only wounded, however, and was ready to show fight. Then I saw
red again. I clubbed him with the gun-butt, going at him like fury. I
was moist with perspiration when I got through with him. He was a
monster. I nailed him with his wings out, on the bunk-house wall, and
Olie shouted and called Dinky-Dunk when they came back from rounding up
the horses, which had got away on the range. Dinky-Dunk solemnly warned
me not to run risks, as he might have taken an eye out, or torn my face
with his claws. He said he could have stuffed and mounted my hawk, if I
hadn't clubbed the poor thing almost to pieces. There's a devil in me
somewhere, I told Dinky-Dunk. But he only laughed.
_Monday the Nineteenth_
To-night Dinky-Dunk and I spent a solid hour trying to decide on a name
for the shack. I wanted to call it "Crucknacoola," which is Gaelic for
"A Little Hill of Sleep," but Dinky-Dunk brought forward the objection
that there was no hill. Then I suggested "Barnavista," since about all
we can see from the door are the stables. Then I said "The Builtmore,"
in a spirit of mockery, and then Dinky-Dunk in a spirit of irony
suggested "Casa Grande." And in the end we united on "Casa Grande." It
is marvelous how my hair grows. Olie now watches me studiously as I eat.
I can see that he is patiently patterning his table deportment after
mine. There's nothing that silent rough-mannered man wouldn't do for me.
I've got so I never notice his nose, any more than I used to notice
Uncle Carlton's receding chin. But I don't think Olie is getting enough
to eat. All his mind seems taken up with trying to remember not to drink
out of his saucer, as history sayeth George Washington himself once
did!
_Tuesday the Twentieth_
I knew that old hen-hawk meant trouble for me--and the trouble came, all
right. I'm afraid I can't tell about it very coherently, but this is how
it began: I was alone yesterday afternoon, busy in the shack, when a
Mounted Policeman rode up to the door, and, for a moment, nearly
frightened the life out of me. I just stood and stared at him, for he
was the first really, truly live man, outside Olie and my husband, I'd
seen for so long. And he looked very dashing in his scarlet jacket and
yellow facings. But I didn't have long to meditate on his color scheme,
for he calmly announced that a ranchman named McMein had been murdered
by a drunken cowboy in a wage dispute, and the murderer had been seen
heading for the Cochrane Ranch. He (the M. P.) inquired if I would
object to his searching the buildings.
Would I object? I most assuredly did not, for little chills began to
play up and down my spinal column, and I wasn't exactly in love with the
idea of having an escaped murderer crawling out of a hay-stack at
midnight and cutting my throat. The ranchman McMein had been killed on
Saturday, and the cowboy had been kept on the run for two days. As I was
being told this I tried to remember where Dinky-Dunk had stowed away his
revolver-holster and his hammerless ejector and his Colt repeater. But I
made that handsome young man in the scarlet coat come right into the
shack and begin his search by looking under the bed, and then going down
the cellar.
I stood holding the trap-door and warned him not to break my
pickle-jars. Then he came up and stood squinting thoughtfully out
through the doorway.
"Have you got a gun?" he suddenly asked me.
I showed him my duck-gun with its silver mountings, and he smiled a
little.
"Haven't you a rifle?" he demanded.
I explained that my husband had, and he still stood squinting out
through the doorway as I poked about the shack-corners and found
Dinky-Dunk's repeater. He was a very authoritative and self-assured
young man. He took the rifle from me, examined the magazine and made
sure it was loaded. Then he handed it back.
"I've got to search those buildings and stacks," he told me. "And I can
only be in one place at once. If you see a man break from under cover
anywhere, when I'm inside, _be so good as to shoot him_!"
He started off without another word, with his big army revolver in his
hand. My teeth began to do a little fox-trot all by themselves.
"Wait! Stop!" I shouted after him. "Don't go away!"
He stopped and asked me what was wrong. "I--I don't want to shoot a man!
I don't want to shoot _any_ man!" I tried to explain to him.
"You probably won't have to," was his cool response. "But it's better to
do that than have him shoot _you_, isn't it?"
Whereupon Mr. Red-Coat made straight for the hay-stacks, and I stood in
the doorway, with Dinky-Dunk's rifle in my hands and my knees shaking a
little.
I watched him as he beat about the hay-stacks. Then I got tired of
holding the heavy weapon and leaned it against the shack-wall. I watched
the red coat go in through the stable door, and felt vaguely dismayed at
the thought that its wearer was now quite out of sight.
Then my heart stopped beating. For out of a pile of straw which Olie had
dumped not a hundred feet away from the house, to line a pit for our
winter vegetables, a man suddenly erupted. He seemed to come up out of
the very earth, like a mushroom.
He was the most repulsive-looking man I ever had the pleasure of casting
eyes on. His clothes were ragged and torn and stained with mud. His face
was covered with stubble and his cheeks were hollow, and his skin was
just about the color of a new saddle.
I could see the whites of his eyes as he ran for the shack, looking over
his shoulder toward the stable door as he came. He had a revolver in his
hand. I noticed that, but it didn't seem to trouble me much. I suppose
I'd already been frightened as much as mortal flesh could be frightened.
In fact, I was thinking quite clearly what to do, and didn't hesitate
for a moment.
"Put that silly thing down," I told him, as he ran up to me with his
head lowered and that indescribably desperate look in his big frightened
eyes. "If you're not a fool I can get you hidden," I told him. It
reassured me to see that his knees were shaking much more than mine, as
he stood there in the center of the shack! I stooped over the trap-door
and lifted it up. "Get down there quick! He's searched that cellar and
won't go through it again. Stay there until I say he's gone!"
He slipped over to the trap-door and went slowly down the steps, with
his eyes narrowed and his revolver held up in front of him, as though he
still half expected to find some one there to confront him with a
blunderbuss. Then I promptly shut the trap-door. But there was no way of
locking it.
I had my murderer there, trapped, but the question was to keep him
there. Your little Chaddie didn't give up many precious moments to
reverie. I tiptoed into the bedroom and lifted the mattress, bedding and
all, off the bedstead. I tugged it out and put it silently down over the
trap-door. Then, without making a sound, I turned the table over on it.
But he could still lift that table, I knew, even with me sitting on top
of it. So I started to pile things on the overturned table, until it
looked like a moving-van ready for a May-Day migration. Then I sat on
top of that pile of household goods, reached for Dinky-Dunk's repeater,
and deliberately fired a shot up through the open door.
I sat there, studying my pile, feeling sure a revolver bullet couldn't
possibly come up through all that stuff. But before I had much time to
think about this my corporal of the R. N. W. M. P. (which means,
Matilda Anne, the Royal North-West Mounted Police) came through the door
on the run. He looked relieved when he saw me triumphantly astride that
overturned table loaded up with about all my household junk.
"I've got him for you," I calmly announced.
"You've got what?" he said, apparently thinking I'd gone mad.
"I've got your man for you," I repeated. "He's down there in my cellar."
And in one minute I'd explained just what had happened. There was no
parley, no deliberation, no hesitation.
"Hadn't you better go outside," he suggested as he started piling the
things off the trap-door.
"You're not going down there?" I demanded.
"Why not?" he asked.
"But he's got a revolver," I cried out, "and he's sure to shoot!"
"That's why I think it might be better for you to step outside for a
moment or two," was my soldier boy's casual answer.
I walked over and got Dinky-Dunk's repeater. Then I crossed to the far
side of the shack, with the rifle in my hands.
"I'm going to stay," I announced.
"All right," was the officer's unconcerned answer as he tossed the
mattress to one side and with one quick pull threw up the trap-door.
A shot rang out, from below, as the door swung back against the wall.
But it was not repeated, for the man in the red coat jumped bodily,
heels first, into that black hole. He didn't seem to count on the risk,
or on what might be ahead of him. He just jumped, spurs down, on that
other man with the revolver in his hand. I could hear little grunts, and
wheezes, and a thud or two against the cellar steps. Then there was
silence, except for one double "click-click" which I couldn't
understand.
Oh, Matilda Anne, how I watched that cellar opening! And I saw a back
with a red coat on it slowly rise out of the hole. He, the man who owned
the back of course, was dragging the other man bodily up the narrow
little stairs. There was a pair of handcuffs already on his wrists and
he seemed dazed and helpless, for that slim-looking soldier boy had
pummeled him unmercifully, knocking out his two front teeth, one of
which I found on the doorstep when I was sweeping up.
"I'm sorry, but I'll have to take one of your horses for a day or two,"
was all my R. N. W. M. P. hero condescended to say to me as he poked an
arm through his prisoner's and helped him out through the door.
"What--what will they do with him?" I called out after the corporal.
"Hang him, of course," was the curt answer.
Then I sat down to think things over, and, like an old maid with the
vapors, decided I wouldn't be any the worse for a cup of good strong
tea. And by the time I'd had my tea, and straightened things up, and
incidentally discovered that no less than five of my cans of mushrooms
had been broken to bits below-stairs, I heard the rumble of the wagon
and knew that Olie and Dinky-Dunk were back. And I drew a long breath of
relief, for with all their drawbacks, men are not a bad thing to have
about, now and then!
_Thursday the Twenty-second_
It was early Tuesday morning that Dinky-Dunk firmly announced that he
and I were going off on a three-day shooting-trip. I hadn't slept well,
the night before, for my nerves were still rather upset, and Dinky-Dunk
said I needed a picnic. So we got guns and cartridges and blankets and
slickers and cooking things, and stowed them away in the wagon-box. Then
we made a list of the provisions we'd need, and while Dinky-Dunk bagged
up some oats for the team I was busy packing the grub-box. And I packed
it cram full, and took along the old tin bread-box, as well, with
pancake flour and dried fruit and an extra piece of bacon--and _bacon_
it is now called in this shack, for I have positively forbidden
Dinky-Dunk ever to speak of it as "sowbelly" or even as a "slice of
grunt" again.
Then off we started across the prairie, after duly instructing Olie as
to feeding the chickens and taking care of the cream and finishing up
the pit for the winter vegetables. Still once again Olie thought we were
both a little mad, I believe, for we had no more idea where we were
going than the man in the moon.
But there was something glorious in the thought of gipsying across the
autumn prairie like that, without a thought or worry as to where we must
stop or what trail we must take. It made every day's movement a great
adventure. And the weather was divine.
We slept at night under the wagon-box, with a tarpaulin along one side
to keep out the wind, and a fire flickering in our faces on the other
side, and the horses tethered out, and the stars wheeling overhead, and
the peace of God in our hearts. How good every meal tasted! And how that
keen sharp air made snuggling down under a couple of Hudson Bay
five-point blankets a luxury to be spoken of only in the most reverent
of whispers! And there was a time, as you already know, when I used to
take bromide and sometimes even sulphonal to make me sleep! But here it
is so different! To get leg-weary in the open air, tramping about the
sedgy slough-sides after mallard and canvas-back, to smell coffee and
bacon and frying grouse in the cool of the evening, across a thin veil
of camp-fire smoke, to see the tired world turn over on its shoulder and
go to sleep--it's all a sort of monumental lullaby.
The prairie wind seems to seek you out, and make a bet with the Great
Dipper that he'll have you off in forty winks, and the orchestra of the
spheres whispers through its million strings and sings your soul to
rest. For I tell you here and now, Matilda Anne, I, poor, puny,
good-for-nothing, insignificant I, have heard that music of the spheres
as clearly as you ever heard _Funiculi-Funicula_ on that little Naples
steamer that used to take you to Capri. And when I'd crawl out from
under that old wagon-box, like a gopher out of his hole, in the first
delicate rosiness of dawn, I'd feel unutterably grateful to be alive, to
hear the cantatas of health singing deep in my soul, to know that
whatever life may do to me, I'd snatched my share of happiness from the
pantry of the gods! And the endless change of color, from the tawny
fox-glove on the lighter land, the pale yellow of a lion's skin in the
slanting autumn sun, to the quavering, shimmering glories of the
Northern Lights that dance in the north, that fling out their banners of
ruby and gold and green, and tremble and merge and pulse until I feel
that I can hear the clash of invisible cymbals. I wonder if you can
understand my feeling when I pulled the hat-pin out of my old gray
Stetson yesterday, uncovered my head, and looked straight up into the
blue firmament above me. Then I said, "Thank you, God, for such a
beautiful day!"
Dinky-Dunk promptly said that I was blasphemous--he's so strict and
solemn! But as I stared up into the depths of that intense opaline
light, so clear, so pure, I realized how air, just air and nothing else,
could leave a scatter-brained lady like me half-seas over. Only it's a
champagne that never leaves you with a headache the next day!
_Saturday the Twenty-fourth_
Dinky-Dunk, who seems intent on keeping my mind occupied, brought me
home a bundle of old magazines last night. They were so frayed and
thumbed-over that some of the pages reminded me of well-worn bank-notes.
I've been reading some of the stories, and they all seem silly.
Everybody appears to be in love with somebody else's wife. Then the
people are all divided so strictly into two classes, the good and the
bad! As for the other man's wife, prairie-life would soon knock that
nonsense out of people. There isn't much room for the Triangle in a
two-by-four shack. Life's so normal and natural and big out here that a
Pierre Loti would be kicked into a sheep-dip before he could use up his
first box of face-rouge! You want your own wife, and want her so bad
you're satisfied. Not that Dinky-Dunk and I are so goody-goody! We're
just healthy and human, that's all, and we'd never do for fiction.
After meals we push away the dishes and sit side by side, with our arms
across each other's shoulders, full of the joy of life, satisfied,
happy, healthy-minded, now and then a little Rabelaisian in our talk,
meandering innocent-eyed through those earthier intimacies which most
married people seem to face without shame, so long as the facing is done
in secret. We don't seem ashamed of that terribly human streak in us.
And neither of us is bad, at heart. But I know we're not like those
magazine characters, who all seem to have Florida-water instead of red
blood in their veins, and are so far, far away from life.
Yet even that dip into politely erotic fiction seemed to canalize my
poor little grass-grown mind into activity, and Diddums and I sat up
until the wee sma' hours discoursing on life and letters. He started me
off by somewhat pensively remarking that all women seem to want to be
intellectual and have a _salon_.
"No, Dinky-Dunk, I don't want a _salon_," I promptly announced. "I never
did want one, for I don't believe they were as exciting as we imagine.
And I hate literary people almost as much as I hate actors. I always
felt they were like stage-scenery, not made for close inspection. For
after five winters in New York and a couple in London you can't help
bumping into the Bohemian type, not to mention an occasional collision
with 'em up and down the Continent. When they're female they always seem
to wear the wrong kind of corsets. And when they're male they watch
themselves in the mirrors, or talk so much about themselves that you
haven't a chance to talk about _yourself_--which is really the
completest definition of a bore, isn't it? I'd much rather know them
through their books than through those awful Sunday evening _soirees_
where poor old leonine M---- used to perspire reading those Socialist
poems of his to the adoring ladies, and Sanguinary John used to wear the
same flannel shirt that shielded him from the Polar blasts up in
Alaska--open at the throat, and all that sort of thing, just like a
movie-actor cowboy, only John had grown a little stout and he kept
spoiling the Strong-Man picture by so everlastingly posing at one end
of the grand-piano! You know the way they do it, one pensive elbow on
the piano-end and the delicately drooping palm holding up the weary
brains, the same as you prop up a King-orange bough when it gets too
heavy with fruit! And then he had a lovely bang and a voice like a
maiden-lady from Maine. And take it from me, O lord and master, that man
devoured all his raw beef and blood on his typewriter-ribbon. I dubbed
him the King of the Eye-Socket school, and instead of getting angry he
actually thanked me for it. That was the sort of advertising he was
after."
Dinky-Dunk grinned a little as I rattled on. Then he grew serious again.
"Why is it," he asked, "a writer in Westminster Abbey is always a
genius, but a writer in the next room is rather a joke?"
I tried to explain it for him. "Because writers are like Indians. The
only good ones are the dead ones. And it's the same with those siren
affinities of history. Annie Laurie lived to be eighty, though the
ballad doesn't say so. And Lady Hamilton died poor and ugly and went
around with red herrings in her pocket. And Cleopatra was really a
redheaded old political schemer, and Paris got tired of Helen of Troy.
Which means that history, like literature, is only _Le mensonge
convenu_!"
This made Dinky-Dunk sit up and stare at me. "Look here, Gee-Gee, I
don't mind a bit of book-learning, but I hate to see you tear the whole
tree of knowledge up by the roots and knock me down with it! And it was
_salons_ we were talking about, and not the wicked ladies of the past!"
"Well, the only _salon_ I ever saw in America had the commercial air of
a millinery opening where tea happened to be served," I promptly
declared. "And the only American woman I ever knew who wanted to have a
_salon_ was a girl we used to call Asafetida Anne. And if I explained
why you'd make a much worse face than that, my Diddums. But she had a
weakness for black furs and never used to wash her neck. So the Plimpton
Mark was always there!"
"Don't get bitter, Gee-Gee," announced Dinky-Dunk as he proceeded to
light his pipe. And I could afford to laugh at his solemnity.
"I'm not bitter, Honey Chile; I'm only glad I got away from all that
Bohemian rubbish. You may call me a rattle-box, and accuse me of being
temperamental now and then--which I'm not--but the one thing in life
which I love is _sanity_. And that, Dinky-Dunk, is why I love you, even
though you are only a big sunburnt farmer fighting and planning and
grinding away for a home for an empty-headed wife who's going to fail at
everything but making you love her!"
Then followed a few moments when I wasn't able to talk,
... The sequel's scarce essential--
Nay, more than this, I hold it still
Profoundly confidential!
Then as we sat there side by side I got thinking of the past and of the
Bohemians before whom I had once burned incense. And remembering a
certain visit to Box Hill with Lady Agatha's mother, years and years
ago, I had to revise my verdict on authors, for one of the warmest
memories in all my life is that of dear old Meredith in his wheelchair,
with his bearded face still flooded with its kindly inner light and his
spirit still mellow with its unquenchable love of life. And once as a
child, I went on to tell Dinky-Dunk, I had met Stevenson. It was at
Mentone, and I can still remember him leaning over and taking my hand.
His own hand was cold and lean, like a claw, and with the quick instinct
of childhood I realized, too, that he was _condescending_ as he spoke to
me, for all the laugh that showed the white teeth under his drooping
black mustache. Wrong as it seemed, I didn't like him any more than I
afterward liked the Sargent portrait of him, which was really an echo of
my own first impression, though often and often I've tried to blot out
that first unfair estimate of a real man of genius. There's so much in
the _Child's Garden of Verse_ that I love; there's so much in the man's
life that demands admiration, that it seems wrong not to capitulate to
his charm. But when one's own family are one's biographers it's hard to
be kept human. "Yet there's one thing, Dinky-Dunk, that I do respect him
for," I went on. "He had seen the loveliest parts of this world, and,
when he had to, he could light-heartedly give it all up and rough it in
this American West of ours, even as you and I!" Whereupon Dinky-Dunk
argued that we ought to forgive an invalid his stridulous preaching
about bravery and manliness and his over-emphasis of fortitude, since it
was plainly based on an effort to react against a constitutional
weakness for which he himself couldn't be blamed.
And I confessed that I could forgive him more easily than I could
Sanguinary John with his literary Diabolism and that ostentatious
stone-age blugginess with which he loved to give the ladies goose-flesh,
pretending he was a bull in a china-shop when he's really only a white
mouse in an ink-pot! And after Dinky-Dunk had knocked out his pipe and
wound up his watch he looked over at me with his slow Scotch-Canadian
smile. "For a couple of hay-seeds who have been harpooning the _salon_
idea," he solemnly announced, "I call this quite a literary evening!"
But what's the use of having an idea or two in your head if you can't
air 'em now and then?
_Tuesday the Twenty-seventh_
To-day I stumbled on the surprise of my life! It was A Man! I took Paddy
and cantered over to the old Titchborne Ranch and was prowling around
the corral, hoping I might find a few belated mushrooms. But nary a one
was there. So I whistled on my four fingers for Paddy (I've been
teaching him to come at that call) and happened to glance in the
direction of the abandoned shack. Then I saw the door open, and _out
walked a man_.
He was a young man, in puttees and knickers and Norfolk jacket, and he
was smoking a cigarette. He stared at me as though I were the Missing
Link. Then he said "Hello!" rather inadequately, it seemed to me.
I answered back "Hello," and wondered whether to take to my heels or
not. But my courage got its second wind, and I stayed. Then we shook
hands, very formally, and explained who we were. And I discovered that
his name was Percival Benson Woodhouse (and the Lord forgive me if they
ever call him Percy for short!) and that his aunt is the Countess of
D---- and that he knows a number of people you and Lady Agatha have
often spoken of. He's got a Japanese servant called Kino, or perhaps
it's spelt Keeno, I don't know which, who's housekeeper, laundress,
_valet_, gardener, groom and _chef_, all in one,--so, at least Percival
Benson confessed to me. He also confessed that he'd bought the
Titchborne Ranch, from photographs, from "one of those land chaps" in
London. He wanted to rough it a bit, and they told him there would be
jolly good game shooting. So he even brought along an elephant-gun, which
his cousin had used in India. The photographs which the "land chap" had
showed him turned out to be pictures of the Selkirks. And, taking it all
in all, he fancied that he'd been jolly well bunked. But Percival seemed
to accept it with the stoicism of the well-born Britisher. He'd have a
try at the place, although there was no game.
"But there _is_ game," I told him, "slathers of it, oodles of it!"
He mildly inquired where and what? I told him: Wild duck,
prairie-chicken, wild geese, jack-rabbits, now and then a fox, and loads
of coyotes. He explained, then, that he meant big game--and how grandly
those two words, "big game," do roll off the English tongue! He has a
sister in the Bahamas, who may join him next summer if he should decide
to stick it out. He considered that it would be a bit rough for a girl,
during the winter season up here.
Yet before I go any further I must describe Percival Benson Woodhouse to
you, for he's not only "our sort," but a type as well.
In the first place, he's a Magdalen College man, the sort we've seen
going up and down the High many and many a time. He's rather gaunt and
rather tall, and he stoops a little. "At home" they call it the "Oxford
stoop," if I'm not greatly mistaken. His hands are thin and long and
bony. His eyes are nice, and he looks very good form. I mean he's the
sort of man you'd never take for the "outsider" or "rotter." He's the
sort who seem to have the royal privilege of doing even doubtfully
polite things and yet doing them in such a way as to make them seem
quite proper. I don't know whether I make that clear or not, but one
thing is clear, and this is that our Percival Benson is an aristocrat.
You see it in his over-sensitive, over-refined, almost womanishly
delicate face, with those idealizing and quite unpractical eyes of his.
You see it in the thin, high-arched, bony nose (almost as fine a beak as
the one belonging to His Grace, the Duke of M----!) and you see it in
the sad and somewhat elongated face, as though he had pored over big
books too much, a sort of air of pathos and aloofness from things. His
mouth strikes you as being rather meager, until he smiles, which is
quite often, for, glory be, he has a good sense of humor. But besides
that he has a neatness, a coolness, an impersonal sort of ease, which
would make you think that he might have stepped out of one of Henry
James's earlier novels of about the time of the _Portrait of a Lady_.
And I like him. I knew that at once. He's _effete_ and old-worldish and
probably useless, out here, but he stands for something I've been
missing, and I'll be greatly mistaken if Percival Benson and Chaddie
McKail are not pretty good friends before the winter's over! He's asked
if he might be permitted to call, and he's coming for dinner to-morrow
night, and I do hope Dinky-Dunk is nice to him--if we're to be
neighbors. But Dinky-Dunk says Westerners don't ask to be permitted to
call. They just stick their cayuse into the corral and walk in, the same
as an Indian does. And Dinky-Dunk says that if he comes in evening dress
he'll shoot him, sure pop!
_Thursday the Twenty-ninth_
Percy (how I hate that name!) was here for dinner last night, and all
things considered, we didn't fare so badly. We had tomato bisque and
scalloped potatoes and prairie-chicken (they need to be well basted) and
hot biscuits and stewed dried peaches with cream. Then we had coffee and
the men smoked their pipes. We talked until a quarter to one in the
morning, and my poor Dinky-Dunk, who has been working so hard and seeing
nobody, really enjoyed that visit and really likes Percival Benson.
Percy got talking about Oxford, and you could see that he loved the old
town and that he felt more at home on the Isis than on the prairie. He
said he once heard Freeman tell a story about Goldwin Smith, who used to
be Regius Professor of History at the University. G. S. seemed
astonished that F. couldn't tell him, at some _viva voce_ exam,
whatever that may mean, the cause of King John's death. Then G. S.
explained that poor John died of too much peaches and fresh ale, "which
would give a man considerable belly-ache," the Regius Professor of
History solemnly announced to Freeman.
Percy said his lungs rather troubled him in England, and he has spent
over a year in Florence and Rome and can talk pictures like a Grant
Allen guide-book. And he's sat through many an opera at La Scala, but
considered the Canadian coyote a much better vocalist than most of the
minor Italian tenors. And he knows Capri and Taormina and says he'd like
to grow old and die in Sicily. He got pneumonia at Messina, and nearly
died young there and after five months in Switzerland a specialist told
him to try Canada.
I've noticed that one of the delusions of Americans is that an
Englishman is silent. Now, my personal conviction is that Englishmen are
the greatest talkers in the world, and I have Percy to back me up in it.
In fact, we sat about talking so long that Percy asked if he couldn't
stay all night, as he was a poor rider and wasn't sure of the trails as
yet. So we made a shake-down for him in the living-room. And when
Dinky-Dunk came to bed he confided to me that Percy was calmly reading
and smoking himself to sleep, out of my sadly scorned copy of _The Ring
and the Book_, with the lamp on the floor, on one side of him, and a
saucer on the other, for an ash-tray. But he was up and out this
morning, before either of us was stirring, coming back to Casa Grande,
however, when he saw the smoke at the chimney-top. His thin cheeks were
quite pink and he apologetically explained that he'd been trying for an
hour and a half to catch his cayuse. Olie had come to his rescue. But
our thin-shouldered Oxford exile said that he had never seen such a
glorious sunrise, and that the ozone had made him a bit tipsy. Speaking
of thin-shouldered specimens, Matilda Anne, I was once a thirty-six;
_now I am a perfect forty-two_.
_Friday the Fifth_
The weather has been bad all this week, but I've had a great deal of
sewing to do, and for two days Dinky-Dunk stayed in and helped me fix up
the shack. I made more book-shelves out of more old biscuit-boxes and my
lord made a gun-rack for our fire-arms. Percival Benson rode over once,
through the storm, and it took us half an hour to thaw him out. But he
brought some books, and says he has four cases, altogether, and that
we're welcome to all we wish. He stayed until noon the next day, this
time sleeping in the annex, which Dinky-Dunk and I have papered, so that
it looks quite presentable. But as yet there is no way of heating it.
Our new neighbor, I imagine, is very lonesome.
_Sunday the Seventh_
The weather has cleared: there's a chinook arch in the sky, and a sort
of St. Martin's-Summer haze on all the prairie. But there's news to-day.
Kino, our new neighbor's Jap, has decamped with a good deal of money and
about all of Percival Benson's valuables. The poor boy is almost
helpless, but he's not a quitter. He said he chopped his first kindling
to-day, though he had to stand in a wash-tub, while he did it, to keep
from cutting his feet. Dinky-Dunk's birthday is only three weeks off,
and I'm making plans for a celebration.
_Tuesday the Ninth_
The days slip by, and scarcely leave me time to write. Dinky-Dunk is a
sort of pendulum, swinging out to work, back to eat, and then out, and
then back again. Olie is teaming in lumber and galvanized iron for a new
building of some sort. My lord, in the evenings, sits with paper and
pencil, figuring out measurements and making plans. I sit on the other
side of the table, as a rule, sewing. Sometimes I go around to his side
of the table, and make him put his plans away for a few minutes. We are
very happy. But where the days fly to I scarcely know. We are always
looking toward the future, talking about the future, "conceiting" for
the future, as the Irish say. Next summer is to be our banner year.
Dinky-Dunk is going to risk everything on wheat. He's like a general
plotting out a future plan of campaign--for when the work comes, he
says, it will come in a rush. Help will be hard to get, so he'll sell
his British Columbia timber rights and buy a forty-horse-power gasoline
tractor. He will at least if gasoline gets cheaper, for with "gas" still
at twenty-six cents a gallon horse-power is cheapest. But during the
breaking season in April and May, one of these engines can haul eight
gang-plows behind it. In twenty-four hours it will be able to turn over
thirty-five acres of prairie soil--and the ordinary man and team counts
two acres of plowing a decent day's work.
To-night I asked Dinky-Dunk why he risked everything on wheat and warned
him that we might have to revise the old Kansas trekker's slogan to--
"In wheat we trusted,
In wheat we busted!"
Dinky-Dunk explained that to keep on raising only wheat would be bad for
the land, and even now meant taking a chance, but situated as he was it
brought in the quickest money. And he wanted money in a hurry, for he
had a nest to feather for a lady wild-bird that he'd captured--which
meant me. Later on he intends to go in for flax--for fiber and not for
seed--and as our land should produce two tons of the finest flax-straw
to the acre and as the Belgian and Irish product is now worth over four
hundred dollars a ton, he told me to sit down and figure out what four
hundred acres would produce, with even a two-third crop.
The Canadian farmer of the West, he went on to explain, mostly grew flax
for the seed alone, burning up over a million tons of straw every year,
just to get it out of the way, the same as he does with his wheat-straw.
But all that will soon be changed. Only last week Dinky-Dunk wrote to
the Department of Agriculture for information about _courtai_
fiber--that's the kind used for point-lace and is worth a dollar a
pound--for my lord feels convinced his soil and climatic conditions are
especially suited for certain of the finer varieties. He even admitted
that flax would be better on his land at the present time, as it would
release certain of the natural fertilizers which sometimes leave the
virgin soil too rich for wheat. But what most impressed me about
Dinky-Dunk's talk was his absolute and unshaken faith in this West of
ours, once it wakes up to its opportunities. It's a stored-up granary of
wealth, he declares, and all we've done so far is to nibble along the
leaks in the floor-cracks!
_Saturday the Twenty-first_
To-day is Dinky-Dunk's birthday. He's always thought, of course, that
I'm a pauper, and never dreamed of my poor little residuary nest-egg.
I'd ordered a box of Okanagan Valley apples, and a gramophone and a
dozen opera records, and a brier-wood pipe and two pounds of English
"Honey-Dew," and a smoking-jacket, and some new ties and socks and
shirts, and a brand new Stetson, for Dinky-Dunk's old hat is almost a
rag-bag. And I ordered half a dozen of the newer novels and a set of
Herbert Spencer which I heard him say he wanted, and a sepia print of
the _Mona Lisa_ (which my lord says I look like when I'm planning
trouble) and a felt mattress and a set of bed-springs (so good-by, old
sway-backed friend whose humps have bruised me in body and spirit this
many a night!) and a dozen big oranges and three dozen little candles
for the birthday cake. And then I was cleaned out--every blessed cent
gone! But Percy (we have, you see, been unable to escape that name)
ordered a box of cigars and a pair of quilted house-slippers, so it was
a pretty formidable array.
I, accordingly, had Olie secretly team this array all the way from
Buckhorn to Percy's house, where it was duly ambushed and entrenched, to
await the fatal day. As luck would have it, or seemed to have it,
Dinky-Dunk had to hit the trail for overnight, to see about the
registration of his transfers for his new half-section, at the town of
H----. So as soon as Dinky-Dunk was out of sight I hurried through my
work and had Tumble-Weed and Bronk headed for the old Titchborne Ranch.
There I arrived about mid-afternoon, and what a time we had, getting
those things unpacked, and looking them over, and planning and talking!
But the whole thing was spoilt.
We forgot to tie the horses. So while we were having tea Bronk and
Tumble-Weed hit the trail, on their own hook. They made for home,
harness and all, but of course I never knew this at the time. We looked
and looked, came back for supper, and then started out again. We
searched until it got dark. My feet were like lead, and I couldn't have
walked another mile. I was so stiff and tired I simply had to give up.
Percy worried, of course, for we had no way of sending word to
Dinky-Dunk. Then we sat down and talked over possibilities, like a
couple of castaways on a Robinson Crusoe island. Percy offered to bunk
in the stable, and let me have the shack. But I wouldn't hear of that.
In the first place, I felt pretty sure Percy was what they call a
"lunger" out here, and I didn't relish the idea of sleeping in a
tuberculous bed. I asked for a blanket and told him that I was going to
sleep out under the wagon, as I'd often done with Dinky-Dunk. Percy
finally consented, but this worried him too. He even brought out his
"big-game" gun, so I'd have protection, and felt the grass to see if it
was damp, and declared he couldn't sleep on a mattress when he knew I
was out on the hard ground. I told him that I loved it, and to go to
bed, for I wanted to get out of some of my armor-plate. He went,
reluctantly.
It was a beautiful night, and not so cold, with scarcely a breath of
wind stirring. I lay looking out through the wheel-spokes at the Milky
Way, and was just dropping off when Percy came out still again. He was
in a quilted dressing-gown and had a blanket over his shoulders. It made
him look for all the world like Father Time. He wanted to know if I was
all right, and had brought me out a pillow--which I didn't use. Then he
sat down on the prairie-floor, near the wagon, and smoked and talked. He
pointed out some of the constellations to me, and said the only time
he'd ever seen the stars bigger was one still night on the Indian Ocean,
when he was on his way back from Singapore. He would never forget that
night, he said, the stars were so wonderful, so big, so close, so soft
and luminous. But the northern stars were different. They were without
the orange tone that belongs to the South. They seemed remoter and more
awe-inspiring, and there was always a green tone to their whiteness.
Then we got talking about "furrin parts" and Percy asked me if I'd ever
seen Naples at night from San Martino, and I asked him if he'd ever seen
Broadway at night from the top of the Times Building. Then he asked me
if I'd ever watched Paris from Montmartre, or seen the Temple of Neptune
at Pæstum bathed in Lucanian moonlight--which I very promptly told him I
had, for it was on the ride home from Pæstum that a certain person had
proposed to me. We talked about temples and Greek Gods and the age of
the world and Indian legends until I got downright sleepy. Then Percy
threw away his last cigarette and got up. He said "Good night;" I said
"Good night;" and he went into the shack. He said he'd leave the door
open, in case I called. There were just the two of us, between earth and
sky, that night, and not another soul within a radius of seven miles of
any side of us. He was very glad to have some one to talk to. He's
probably a year or two older than I am, but I am quite motherly with
him. And he is shockingly incompetent, as a homesteader, from the look
of his shack. But he's a gentleman, almost too "Gentle," I sometimes
feel, a Laodicean, mentally over-refined until it leaves him unable to
cope with real life. He's one of those men made for being a "spectator,"
and not an actor, in life. And there's something so absurd about his
being where he is that I feel sorry for him.
I slept like a log. Once I fell asleep, I forgot about the hard ground,
and the smell of the horse-blankets, and the fact that I'd lost my poor
Dinky-Dunk's team. When I woke up it was the first gray of dawn. Two men
were standing side by side, looking at me under the wagon. One was
Percy, and the other was Dinky-Dunk himself.
He'd got home by three o'clock in the morning, by hurrying, for he was
nervous about me being alone. But he found the house empty, the team
standing beside the corral, and me missing. Naturally, it wasn't a very
happy situation. Poor Dinky-Dunk hit the trail at once, and had been
riding all night looking for his lost wife. Then he made for Percy's,
woke him up, and discovered her placidly snoring under a wagon-box. He
didn't even smile at this. He was very tired and very silent. I thought,
for a moment, that I saw distrust on Dinky-Dunk's face, for the first
time. But he has said nothing. I hated to see him go out to work, when
we got home, but he refused to take a nap at noon, as I wanted him to.
So to-night, when he came in for his supper, I had the birthday cake
duly decked and the presents all out.
But his enthusiasm was forced, and all during the meal he showed a
tendency to be absent-minded. I had no explanations to make, so I made
none. But I noticed that he put on his old slippers. I thought he had
done it deliberately.
"You don't seem to mellow with age," I announced, with my eyebrows up.
He flushed at that, quite plainly. Then he reached over and took hold of
my hand. But he did it only with an effort, and after some tremendous
inward struggle which was not altogether flattering to me.
"Please take your hand away so I can reach the dish-towel," I told him.
And the hand went away like a shot. After I'd finished my work I got out
my George Meredith and read _Modern Love_. Dinky-Dunk did not come to
bed until late. I was awake when he came, but I didn't let him know it.
_Sunday the Twenty-ninth_
I haven't felt much like writing this last week. I scarcely know why. I
think it's because Dinky-Dunk is on his dignity. He's getting thin, by
the way. His cheek-bones show and his Adam's apple sticks out. He's
worried about his land payments, and I tell him he'd be happier with a
half-section. But Dinky-Dunk wants wealth. And I can't help him much.
I'm afraid I'm an encumbrance. And the stars make me lonely, and the
prairie wind sometimes gives me the willies! And winter is coming.
I'm afraid I'm out of my setting, as badly out of it as Percival Benson
is. It wouldn't be so bad, I suppose, if I'd never seen such lovely
corners of the world, before coming out here to be a dot on the
wilderness. If I'd never had that heavenly summer at Fiesole, and those
months with you at Corfu, and that winter in Rome with poor dear dead
Katrinka! Sometimes I think of the nights we used to look out over
Paris, from the roof above 'Tite Daneau's studio. And sometimes I think
of the Pincio, with the band playing, and the carriages flashing, and
the officers in uniform, and the milky white statues among the trees,
and the golden mists of the late afternoon over the Immortal City. And I
tell myself that it was all a dream. And then I feel that _I_ am all a
dream, and the prairie is a dream, and Paddy and Olie and Dinky-Dunk and
all this new life is nothing more than a dream. Oh, Matilda Anne, I've
been homesick this week, so unhappy and homesick for something--for
something, and I don't even know what it is!
_Monday the Seventh_
Glory be! Winter's here with a double-edged saber wind out of the north
and snow on the ground. It gives a zip to things. It makes our snug
little shack seem as cozy as a ship's cabin. And I've got a
jumper-sleigh, and with my coon-skin coat and gauntlets and wedge-cap I
can be as warm as toast in any wind. And there's so much to do. And I'm
not going to be a piker. This is the land where folks make good or go
loco. You've only got yourself to depend on, and yourself to blame, if
things go wrong. And I'm going to make them go right. There's no use
wailing out here in the West. A line or two of Laurence Hope's has been
running all day through my head:
"These are my people, and this my land;
I hear the pulse of her secret soul.
This is the life that I understand,
Savage and simple, and sane and whole."
_Friday the Eleventh_
Dinky-dunk came home with an Indian girl to-day, a young half-breed about
sixteen years old. She's to be both companion and parlor-maid, for
Dinky-Dunk has to hurry off to British Columbia, to try to sell his
timber-rights there to meet his land payments. He's off to-morrow. It
makes me feel wretched, but I'm consuming my own smoke, for I don't want
him to think me an encumbrance. My Indian girl speaks a little English.
She also eats sugar by the handful, whenever she can steal it. I asked
her what her name was and she told me "Queenie MacKenzie." That name
almost took my breath away. How that untutored Northwest aborigine ever
took unto herself this Broadway chorus-girl name, Heaven only knows! But
I have my suspicions of Queenie. She has certain exploratory movements
which convince me she is verminous. She sleeps in the annex, I'm happy
to say.
At dinner to-night when I was teaching Dinky-Dunk how to make a rabbit
out of his table-napkin and a sea-sick passenger out of the last of his
oranges, he explained that he might not get back in time for Christmas,
and asked if I'd mind. I knew his trip was important, so I kept a stiff
upper lip and said of course I wouldn't mind. But the thought of a
Christmas alone chilled my heart. I tried to be jolly, and gave my
repertory on the mouth-organ, which promptly stopped all activities on
the part of the round-eyed Queenie MacKenzie. But all that foolery was
as forced as the frivolity of the French Revolution Conciergerie where
the merry diners couldn't quite forget they were going to lose their
heads in the morning!
_Sunday the Thirteenth_
Not only is Duncan gone, but Queenie has also quite unceremoniously
taken her departure. It arose from the fact that I requested her to take
a bath. The only disappointed member of the family is poor old Olie, who
was actually making sheep's eyes at that verminous little baggage.
Imagination falters at what he might have done with a dollar's worth of
brown sugar. When Queenie went, I find, my mouth-organ went with her.
I'd like to ling chih that Indian girl!
_Wednesday the Sixteenth_
It was a sparkling clear day to-day, with no wind, so I rode over to the
old Titchborne Ranch with my little jumper-sleigh. There I found
Percival Benson in a most pitiable condition. He had been laid up with
the grip. His place was untidy, his dishes were unwashed, and his fuel
was running short. His appearance, in fact, rather frightened me. So I
bundled him up and got him in the jumper and brought him straight home
with me. He had a chill on the way, so as soon as we got to Casa Grande
I sent him to bed, gave him hot whisky, and put my hot water bottle at
his feet. He tried to accept the whole thing as a joke, and vowed I was
jolly well cooking him. But to-night he has a high fever and I'm afraid
he's in for a serious siege of illness. I intend to send Olie over to
get some of his things and have his live stock brought over with ours.
_Sunday the Twentieth_
Percy has had three very bad nights, but seems a little better to-day.
His lung is congested, and it may be pneumonia, but I think my
mustard-plaster saved the day. He tries so hard to be cheerful, and is
so grateful for every little thing. But I wish Dinky-Dunk was here to
tell me what to do.
I could never have survived this last week without Olie. He is as
watchful and ready as a farm-collie. But I want my Dinky-Dunk! I may
have spoiled my Dinky-Dunk a little, but it's only once every century or
two that God makes a man like him. I want to be a good wife. I want to
do my share, and keep a shoulder to the wheel, if the going's got to be
heavy for the next year or two. I won't be the Dixon type. I won't--I
won't! My Duncan will need me during this next year, and it will be a
joy to help him. For I love that man, Matilda Anne,--I love him so much
that it hurts!
_Sunday the Twenty-seventh_
Christmas has come and gone. It was very lonely at Casa Grande. I prefer
not writing about it. Percy is improving, but is still rather weak. I
think he had a narrow squeak.
_Wednesday the Thirtieth_
My patient is up and about, looking like a different man. He shows the
effects of my forced feeding, though he declares I'm trying to make him
into a Strasburg goose, for the sake of the _pâté de foies gras_ when I
cut him up. But he's decided to go to Santa Barbara for the winter: and
I think he's wise. So this afternoon I togged out in my furs, took the
jumper, and went kiting over to the Titchborne Ranch. Oh, what a shack!
What disorder, what untidiness, what spirit-numbing desolation! I don't
blame poor Percival Benson for clearing out for California. I got what
things he needed, however, and went kiting home again.
_Thursday the Thirty-first_
I hardly know how to begin. But it must be written or I'll suddenly go
mad and start to bite the shack walls. Last night, after Percy had
helped me turn the bread-mixer (for, whatever happens, we've at least
got to eat) I helped him pack. Among other things, he found a copy of
Housman's _Shropshire Lad_ and after running through it announced that
he'd like to read me two or three little things out of it. So I squatted
down in front of the fire, idly poking at the red coals, and he sat
beside the stove with his book, in slippers and dressing gown. And there
he was solemnly reading out loud when the door opened and in walked
Dinky-Dunk.
I say he walked in, but that isn't quite right. He stood in the open
door, staring at us, with an expression that would have done credit to
the Tragic Muse. I imagine Enoch Arden wore much the same look when he
piped the home circle after that prolonged absence of his. Then
Dinky-Dunk did a most unpardonable thing. Instead of saying "Howdy!"
like a scholar and a gentleman, he backed out of the shack and slammed
the door. When I'd caught my breath I went out through that door after
him. It was a bitterly cold night, but I did not stop to put anything
on. I was too amazed, too indignant, too swept off my feet by the
absurdity of it all. I could see Dinky-Dunk in the clear starlight,
taking the blankets off his team. He'd hurried to the shack, without
even unharnessing the horses. I could hear the wheel-tires whine on the
crisp snow, for the poor beasts were tired and restless. I went straight
to the buckboard into which Dinky-Dunk was climbing. He looked like a
cinnamon-bear in his big shaggy coat. And I couldn't see his face. But I
remembered how it had looked in the doorway. It was the color of a tan
shoe. It was too weather-beaten and burnt with the wind and sun-glare
ever to turn white, or, I suppose, it would have been the color of
paper.
"Haven't you," I demanded, "haven't you any explanation for acting like
this?" He sat in the buckboard seat, with the reins in his hands.
"I guess I've got the first right to that question," he finally said in
a stifled voice.
"Then why don't you ask it?" was my answer to him. Again he waited a
moment before speaking, as though he felt the need of weighing his
words.
"I don't need to--now!" he said, as he tightened the reins.
"Wait," I called out to him. "There are certain things I want you to
know!"
I was not going to make explanations. I would not dignify his brute-man
stupidity by such things. I scarcely know what I intended to do. As I
looked up at him there in his rough fur coat, for a moment, he seemed
millions and millions of miles away from me. I stared at him, trying to
comprehend his utter lack of comprehension. I seemed to view him across
the same gulf which separates a meditative zoo visitor from some
abysmally hirsute animal that eons and eons ago must have been its
cave-fellow and hearth-mate. But now we seemed to have nothing in
common, not even a language with which to link up those lost ages. Yet
from all that mixture of feelings only one survived: I didn't want my
husband to go.
It was the team, as far as I can remember, that really decided the
thing. They had been restive, backing and jerking and pawing and
nickering for their feed-box. And suddenly they jumped forward. But this
time they kept going. Whether Dinky-Dunk tried to hold them back or not
I can't say. But I came back to the shack, shivering. Percy, thank
Heaven, was in his room.
"I think I'll turn in!" he called out, quite casually, through the
partition.
I said "All right," and sat down in front of the fire, trying to
straighten things out. My Dinky-Dunk was gone! He had glared at me, with
hate in his eyes, as he sat in that buckboard. It's all over. He has no
faith in me, his own wife!
I went to bed and tried to sleep. But sleep was out of the question. The
whole thing seemed so absurd, so unreasonable, so unjust. I could feel
waves of anger sweep through my body at the mere thought of it. Then a
wave of something else, of something between anxiety and terror, would
take the place of anger. My husband was gone, and he'd never come back.
I'd put all my eggs in one basket, and the basket had gone over, and
made a saffron-tinted omelet of all my life.
And that's the way I watched the New Year in, I couldn't even afford the
luxury of a little bawl, for I was afraid Percy would hear me. It must
have been almost morning when I fell asleep.
When I woke up Percival Benson was gone, bag and baggage. At first I
resented the thought of his going off that way, without a word, but on
thinking it over I decided he'd done the right thing. There's nothing
like the hard cold light of a winter morning to bring you back to hard
cold facts. Olie had driven Percy in to the station. So I was alone in
the shack all day. I did a heap of thinking during those long hours of
solitude. And out of all that straw of self-examination I threshed just
one little grain of truth. _I could never live on the prairie alone._
And whatever I did, or wherever I went, I could never be happy without
my Dinky-Dunk....
I had just finished supper to-night, as blue as indigo and as spiritless
as a wet hen, when I heard the sound of voices. It took me only ten
seconds to make sure whose they were. Dinky-Dunk had come back with
Olie! I made a high dive for a book from the nearest shelf, swung the
armchair about with a jerk, and sank luxuriously into it, with my feet
up on the warm damper and my eyes leisurely and contentedly perusing
George Moore's _Confessions of a Young Man_ (although I _hate_ the
libidinous stuff like poison!) Then Dinky-Dunk came in. I could see him
stare at me a little awkwardly and contritely (what woman can't read a
book and study a man at the same time?) and I, could see that he was
waiting for an opening. But I gave him none. Naturally, Olie had
explained everything to him. But I had been humiliated, my pride had
been walked over, from end to end. My spirit had been stamped on--and I
had decided on my plan of action. I simply ignored Duncan.
I read for a while, then I took a lamp, went to my room, and
deliberately locked the door. My one regret was that I couldn't see
Dinky-Dunk's face when that key turned. And now I must stop writing, and
go to bed, for I am dog-tired. I know I'll sleep better to-night. It's
nice to remember there's a man near, if he happens to be the man you
care a trifle about, even though you _have_ calmly turned the door-key
on him.
_Sunday the Third_
Dinky-Dunk has at least the sensibilities to respect my privacy of life.
He knows where the deadline is, and doesn't disregard it. But it's
terribly hard to be tragic in a two-by-four shack. You miss the
dignifying touches. And you haven't much leeway for the bulky swings of
grandeur.
For one whole day I didn't speak to Dinky-Dunk, didn't even so much as
recognize his existence. I ate by myself, and did my work--when the
monster was around--with all the preoccupation of a sleep-walker. But
something happened, and I forgot myself. Before I knew it I was asking
him a question. He answered it, quite soberly, quite casually. If he had
grinned, or shown one jot of triumph, I would have walked out of the
shack and never spoken to him again. I think he knew he was on terribly
perilous ground. He picked his way with care. He asked me a question
back, quite offhandedly, and for the time being let the matter rest
there. But the breach was in my walls, Matilda Anne, and I was quite
defenseless. We were both very impersonal and very polite, when he came
in at supper time, though I think I turned a visible pink when I sat
down at the table, for our eyes met there, just a moment and no more. I
knew he was watching me, covertly, all the time. And I knew I was making
him pretty miserable. But I wasn't the least bit ashamed of it.
After supper he indifferently announced that he had nothing to do and
might as well help me wash up. I went to hand him a dish-towel. Instead
of taking the towel he took my hand, with the very profane ejaculation,
as he did so, of "Oh, hell, Gee-Gee, what's the use?"
Then before I knew it, he had me in his arms (our butter-dish was broken
in the collision) and I was weak enough to feel sorry for him and his
poor tragic pleading eyes. Then I gave up. If I was silly enough to have
a little cry on his shoulder, I had the satisfaction of feeling him
give a gulp or two himself.
"You're the most wonderful woman in the world!" he solemnly told me, and
then in a much less solemn way he began kissing me again. But the
barriers were down. And how we talked that night! And how different
everything seemed! And how nice it was to feel his arm over my shoulder
and his quiet breathing on the nape of my neck as I fell asleep. It
seemed as though Love were fanning me with its softest wings. I'm happy
again. But I've been wondering if it's environment that makes character,
or character that makes environment. Sometimes I think it's one way, and
sometimes I feel it's the other. But I can't be sure of my answer--yet!
It's hard for a spoiled woman to remember that her life has to be merged
into somebody else's life. I've been wondering if marriage isn't like a
two-panel screen, which won't stand up if both its panels are too much
in line. Heaven knows, I want harmony! But a woman likes to feel that
instead of being out of step with her whole regiment of life it's the
regiment that's out of step with her. To-night I unlaced Dinky-Dunk's
shoes, and put on his slippers, and sat on the floor between his knees
with my head against the steady _tick-tock_ of his watch-pocket.
"Dinky-Dunk," I solemnly announced, "that gink called Pope was a poor
guesser. The proper study of man should have been _woman_!"
_Thursday the Seventh_
Everything at Casa Grande has settled back into the usual groove. There
is a great deal to do about the shack. The grimmest bug-bear of domestic
work is dish-washing. A pile of greasy plates is the one thing that gets
on my nerves. And it is a little Waterloo that must be faced three times
every day, of every week, of every month, of every year. And I was never
properly "broke" for domesticity and the dish-pan! Why can't some genius
invent a self-washing fry-pan? My hair is growing so long that I can now
do it up in a sort of half-hearted French roll. It has been quite cold,
with a wonderful fall of snow. The sleighing could not be better.
_Saturday the Ninth_
Dinky-Dunk's Christmas present came to-day, over two weeks late. He had
never mentioned it, and I had not only held my peace, but had given up
all thought of getting a really-truly gift from my lord and master.
They brought it out from Buckhorn, in the bobsleigh, all wrapped up in
old buffalo-robes and blankets and tarpaulins. _It's a baby-grand
piano_, and a beauty, and it came all the way from Winnipeg. But either
the shipping or the knocking about or the extreme cold has put it
terribly out of tune, and it can't be used until the piano-tuner travels
a couple of hundred miles out here to put it in shape. And it's far too
big for the shack, even when pushed right up into the corner. But
Dinky-Dunk says that before next winter there'll be a different sort of
house on this spot where Casa Grande now stands.
"And that's to keep your soul alive, in the meantime," he announced. I
scolded him for being so extravagant, when he needed every dollar he
could lay his hands on. But he wouldn't listen to me. In fact, it only
started an outburst.
"My God, Gee-Gee," he cried, "haven't you given up enough for me?
Haven't you sacrificed enough in coming out here to the end of nowhere
and leaving behind everything that made life decent?"
"Why, Honey Chile, didn't I get _you_?" I demanded. But even that didn't
stop him.
"Don't you suppose I ever think what it's meant to you, to a woman like
you? There are certain things we can't have, but there are some things
we're going to have. This next ten or twelve months will be hard, but
after that there's going to be a change--if the Lord's with me, and I
have a white man's luck!"
"And supposing we have bad luck?" I asked him. He was silent for a
moment or two.
"We can always give up, and go back to the city," he finally said.
"Give up!" I said with a whoop. "Give up? Not on your life, Mister Dour
Man! We're not going to be Dixonites! We're going to win out!" And we
were together in a death-clinch, hugging the breath out of each other,
when Olie came in to ask if he hadn't better get the stock stabled, as
there was bad weather coming.
_Monday the Eleventh_
We are having the first real blizzard of the winter. It began yesterday,
as Olie intimated, and for all the tail-end of the day my Dinky-Dunk was
on the go, in the bitter cold, looking after fuel and feed and getting
things ship-shape, for all the world like a skipper who's read his
barometer and seen a hurricane coming. There had been no wind for a
couple of days, only dull and heavy skies with a disturbing sense of
quietness. Even when I heard Olie and Dinky-Dunk shouting outside, and
shoring up the shack-walls with poles, I could not quite make out what
it meant.
Then the blizzard came. It came down out of the northwest, like a
cloudburst. It hummed and sang, and then it whined, and then it
screamed, screamed in a high falsetto that made you think poor old
Mother Earth was in her last throes! The snow was fine and hard, really
minute particles of ice, and not snow at all, as we know it in the
East, little sharp-angled diamond-points that stung the skin like fire.
It came in almost horizontal lines, driving flat across the unbroken
prairie and defying anything made of God or man to stop it. Nothing did
stop it. Our shack and the bunk-house and stables and hay-stacks tore a
few pin-feathers off its breast, though; and those few feathers are
drifts higher than my head, heaped up against each and all of the
buildings.
I scratched the frost off a window-pane, where feathery little drifts
were seeping in through the sill-cracks, when it first began. But the
wind blew harder and harder and the shack rocked and shook with the
tension. Oh, such a wind! It made a whining and wailing noise, with each
note higher, and when you felt that it couldn't possibly increase, that
it simply _must_ ease off, or the whole world would go smash, why, that
whining note merely grew tenser and the wind grew stronger. How it
lashed things! How it shook and flailed and trampled this poor old earth
of ours! Just before supper Olie announced that he'd look after my
chicks for me. I told him, quite casually, that I'd attend to them
myself. I usually strew a mixture of wheat and oats on the litter in the
hen-house overnight. This had two advantages, one was that it didn't
take me out quite so early in the morning, and the other was that the
chicks themselves started scratching around first thing in the morning
and so got exercise and kept themselves warmer-bodied and in better
health.
It was not essential that I should go to the hen-house myself, but I was
possessed with a sudden desire to face that singing white tornado. So I
put on my things, while Dinky-Dunk was at work in the stables. I put on
furs and leggings and gauntlets and all, as though I were starting for a
ninety-mile drive, and slipped out. Dinky-Dunk had tunneled through the
drift in front of the door, but that tunnel was already beginning to
fill again. I plowed through it, and tried to look about me. Everything
was a sort of streaked misty gray, an all-enveloping muffing leaden
maelstrom that hurt your skin when you lifted your head and tried to
look it in the face. Once, in a lull of the wind when the snow was not
so thick, I caught sight of the hay-stacks. That gave me a line on the
hen-house. So I made for it, on the run, holding my head low as I went.
It was glorious, at first, it made my lungs pump and my blood race and
my legs tingle. Then the storm-devils howled in my eyes and the
ice-lashes snapped in my face. Then the wind went off on a rampage
again, and I couldn't see. I couldn't move forward. I couldn't even
breathe. Then I got frightened.
I leaned there against the wind calling for Dinky-Dunk and Olie,
whenever I could gasp breath enough to make a sound. But I might as well
have been a baby crying in mid-ocean to a Kensington Gardens nurse.
Then I knew I was lost. No one could ever hear me in that roar. And
there was nothing to be seen, just a driving, blinding, stinging gray
pall of flying fury that nettled the naked skin like electric-massage
and took the breath out of your buffeted body. There was no land-mark,
no glimpse of any building, nothing whatever to go by. And I felt so
helpless in the face of that wind! It seemed to take the power of
locomotion from my legs. I was not altogether amazed at the thought that
I might die there, within a hundred yards of my own home, so near those
narrow walls within which were warmth, and shelter, and quietness. I
imagined how they'd find my body, deep under the snow, some morning; how
Dinky-Dunk would search, perhaps for days. I felt so sorry for him I
decided not to give up, that I wouldn't be lost, that I wouldn't die
there like a fly on a sheet of tanglefoot!
I had fallen down on my knees, with my back to the wind, and already the
snow had drifted around me. I also found my eye-lashes frozen together,
and I lost several winkers in getting rid of those solidified tears. But
I got to my feet and battled on, calling when I could. I kept on, going
round and round in a circle, I suppose, as people always do when
they're lost in a storm. Then the wind grew worse again. I couldn't make
any headway against it. I had to give up. I simply _had_ to! I wasn't
afraid. I wasn't terrified at the thought of what was happening to me. I
was only sorry, with a misty sort of sorrow I can't explain. And I don't
remember that I felt particularly uncomfortable, except for the fact I
found it rather hard to breathe.
It was Olie who found me. He came staggering through the snow with extra
fuel for the bunk-house, and nearly walked over me. As we found out
afterward, I wasn't more than thirty steps away from that bunk-house
door. Olie pulled me up out of the snow the same as you'd pull a skein
of darning-silk out of a work-basket. He half carried me to the
bunk-house, got his bearings, and then steered me for the shack. It was
a fight, but we made it. And Dinky-Dunk was still out looking after his
stock and doesn't know how nearly he lost his Lady Bird. I've made Olie
promise not to say a word about it. But the top of my nose is red and
swollen. I think it must have got a trifle frost-nipped, in the
encounter. The weather has cleared now, and the wind has gone down. But
it is very cold, and Dinky-Dunk has just reported that it's already
forty-eight below zero.
_Tuesday the Nineteenth_
The days slip away and I scarcely know where they go. The weather is
wonderful. Clear and cold, with such heaps of sunshine you'd never dream
it was zero weather. But you have to be careful, and always wear furs
when you're driving, or out for any length of time. Three hours in this
open air is as good as a pint of Chinkie's best champagne. It makes me
tingle. We are living high, with several barrels of frozen game--geese,
duck and prairie-chicken--and also an old tin trunk stuffed full of
beef-roasts, cut the right size. I bring them in and thaw them out
overnight, as I need them. The freezing makes them very tender. But they
must be completely thawed before they go into the oven, or the outside
will be overdone and the inside still raw. I learned that by experience.
My appetite is disgraceful, and I'm still gaining. Chinkie could never
again say I reminded him of one of the lean kine in Pharaoh's dream.
I have been asking Dinky-Dunk if it isn't downright cruelty to leave
horses and cattle out on the range in weather like this. My husband says
not, so long as they have a wind-break in time of storms. The animals
paw through the snow for grass to eat, and when they get thirsty they
can eat the snow itself, which, Dinky-Dunk solemnly assures me, almost
never gives them sore throat! But the open prairie, just at this season,
is a most inhospitable looking pasturage, and the unbroken glare of
white makes my eyes ache.... There's one big indoor task I finally have
accomplished, and that is tuning my piano. It made my heart heavy,
standing there useless, a gloomy monument of ironic grandeur.
As a girl I used to watch Katrinka's long-haired Alsatian putting her
concert grand to rights, and I knew that my ear was dependable enough.
So the second day after my baby grand's arrival I went at it with a
monkey-wrench. But that was a failure. Then I made a drawing of a
tuning-hammer and had Olie secretly convey it to the Buckhorn
blacksmith, who in turn concocted a great steel hollow-headed
monstrosity which actually fits over the pins to which the piano wires
are strung, even though the aforesaid monstrosity is heavy enough to
stun an ox with. But it did the work, although it took about two
half-days, and now every note is true. So now I have music! And
Dinky-Dunk does enjoy my playing, these long winter evenings. Some
nights we let Olie come in and listen to the concert. He sits rapt,
especially when I play ragtime, which seems the one thing that touches
his holy of holies. Poor Olie! I surely have a good friend in that
silent, faithful, uncouth Swede!
Dinky-Dunk himself is so thin that it worries me. But he eats well and
doesn't anathematize my cooking. He's getting a few gray hairs, at the
temples. I think they make him look rather _distingue_. But they worry
my poor Dinky-Dunk. "Hully Gee," he said yesterday, studying himself
for the third time in his shaving-glass, "I'm getting old!" He laughed
when I started to whistle "Believe me if all those endearing young
charms, which I gaze on so fondly to-day," but at heart he was really
disturbed by the discovery of those few white hairs. I've been telling
him that the ladies won't love him any more, and that his cut-up days
are over. He says I'll have to make up for the others. So I started for
him with my Australian crawl-stroke. It took me an hour to get the taste
of shaving soap out of my mouth. Dinky-Dunk says I'm so full of life
that I _sparkle_. All I know is that I'm happy, supremely and
ridiculously happy!
_Sunday the Thirty-first_
The inevitable has happened. I don't know how to write about it! I
_can't_ write about it! My heart goes down like a freight elevator,
slowly, sickeningly, even when I think about it. Dinky-Dunk came in and
saw me studying a little row of dates written on the wall-paper beside
the bedroom window. I pretended to be draping the curtain. "What's the
matter, Lady Bird?" he demanded when he saw my face. I calmly told him
that nothing was the matter. But he wouldn't let me go. I wanted to be
alone, to think things out. But he kept holding me there, with my face
to the light. I suppose I must have been all eyes, and probably shaking
a little. And I didn't want him to suspect.
"Excuse me if I find you unspeakably annoying!" I said in a voice that
was so desperately cold that it even surprised my own ears. He dropped
me as though I had been a hot potato. I could see that I'd hurt him, and
hurt him a lot. My first impulse was to run to him with a shower of
repentant kisses, as one usually does, the same as one sprinkles salt on
claret stains. But in him I beheld the original and entire cause--and I
just couldn't do it. He called me a high-spirited devil with a
hair-trigger temper. But he left me alone to think things out.
_Tuesday the Ninth_
I've started to say my prayers again. It rather frightened Dinky-Dunk,
who sat up in bed and asked me if I wasn't feeling well. I promptly
assured him that I was in the best of health. He not only agreed with
me, but said I was as plump as a partridge. When I am alone, though, I
get frightened and fidgety. So I kneel down every night and morning now
and ask God for help and guidance. I want to be a good woman and a
better wife. But I shall never let Duncan know--never!
_Wednesday the Seventeenth_
Do you remember Aunt Harriet who always wept when she read _The Isles of
Greece_? She didn't even know where they were, and had never been east
of Salem. But all the Woodberrys were like that. Dinky-Dunk came in and
found me crying to-day, for the second time in one week. He made such
valiantly ponderous efforts to cheer me up, poor boy, and shook his head
and said I'd soon be an improvement on the Snider System, which is a
system of irrigation by spraying overnight from pipes! My nerves don't
seem so good as they were. The winter's so long. I'm already counting
the days to spring.
_Thursday the Twenty-fifth_
Dinky-Dunk has concluded that I'm too much alone; he's been worrying
over it. I can tell that. I try not to be moody, but sometimes I simply
can't help it. Yesterday afternoon he drove up to Casa Grande, proud as
Punch, with a little black and white kitten in the crook of his arm.
He'd covered twenty-eight miles of trail for that kitten! It's to be my
companion. But the kitten's as lonesome as I am, and has been crying,
and nearly driving me crazy.
_Tuesday the Second_
The weather has been bad, but winter is slipping away. Dinky-Dunk has
been staying in from his work, these mornings, helping me about the
house. He is clumsy and slow, and has broken two or three of the dishes.
But I hate to say anything; his eyes get so tragic. He declares that as
soon as the trails are passable he's going to have a woman to help me,
that this sort of thing can't go on any longer. He imagines it's merely
the monotony of housework that is making my nerves so bad.
Yesterday morning I was drying the dishes and Dinky-Dunk was washing. I
found the second spoon with egg on it. I don't know why it was, but that
trivial streak of yellow along the edge of a spoon suddenly seemed to
enrage me. It became monumental, an emblem of vague incapabilities which
I would have to face until the end of my days. I flung that spoon back
in the dish-pan. Then I turned on my husband and called out to him, in a
voice that didn't quite seem like my own, "O God, can't you wash 'em
_clean_? Can't you wash 'em clean?" I even think I ran up and down the
room and pretty well made what Percival Benson would call "a bally ass"
of myself. Dinky-Dunk didn't even answer me. But he dried his hands and
got his things and went outdoors, to the stables, I suppose. His face
was as colorless as it could possibly get. I felt sorry; but it was too
late. And my sniffling didn't do any good. And it startled me, as I sat
thinking things over, to realize that I'd lost my sense of humor.
_Thursday the Fourth_
Dinky-Dunk thinks I'm mad. I'm quite sure he does. He came in at noon
to-day and found me on the floor with the kitten. I'd tied a piece of fur
to the end of a string. Oh, how that kitten scrambled after that fur,
round and round in a circle until he'd tumble over on his own ears! I
was squeaking and weak with laughing when Dinky-Dunk stood in the door.
Poor boy, he takes things so solemnly! But I know he thinks I'm quite
mad. Perhaps I am. I cried myself to sleep last night. And for several
days now I've had a longing for _caviare_.
_Wednesday the Seventeenth_
Spring is surely coming. It promises to be an early one. I feel better
at the thought of it, and of getting out again. But the roads are quite
impassable. Such mud! Such oceans of glue-pot dirt! They have a saying
out here that soil is as rich as it is sticky. If this is true
Dinky-Dunk has a second Garden of Eden. This mud sticks to everything,
to feet, to clothes, to wagon-wheels. But there's getting to be real
warmth in the sun that shines through my window.
_Saturday the Twenty-seventh_
A warm Chinook has licked up the last of the snow. Even Dinky-Dunk
admits that spring is coming. For three solid hours an awakened
blue-bottle has been buzzing against the pane of my bedroom window. I
wonder if most of us aren't like that fly, mystified by the illusion of
light that fails to lead to liberty? This morning I caught sight of
Dinky-Dunk in his fur coat, climbing into the buckboard. I shall always
hate to see him in that rig. It makes me think of a certain night. And
we hate to have memory put a finger on our mental scars. When I was a
girl Aunt Charlotte's second fiend of a husband locked me up in that
lonely Derby house of theirs because I threw pebbles at the swans. Then
off they drove to dinner somewhere and left me a prisoner there, where I
sat listening to the bells of All Saints as the house gradually grew
dark. And ever since then bells at evening have made me feel lonely and
left me unhappy.
But the renaissance of the buckboard means that spring is here again.
And for my Dinky-Dunk that means harder work. He's what they call a
"rustler" out here. He believes in speed. He doesn't even wait until the
frost is out of the ground before he starts to seed--just puts a drill
over a two-inch batter of thawed-out mud, he's so mad about getting
early on the land. He says he wants early wheat or no wheat. But he has
to have help, and men are almost impossible to get. He had hoped for a
gasoline tractor, but it can't be financed this spring, he has confessed
to me. And I know, in my secret heart of hearts, that the tractor would
have been here if it hadn't been for my piano!
There are still hundreds and hundreds of acres of prairie sod to "break"
for spring wheat. Dinky-Dunk declares that he's going to risk everything
on wheat this year. He says that by working two outfits of horses he
himself can sow forty acres a day, but that means keeping the horses on
the trot part of the time. He is thinking so much about his crop that I
accused him of neglecting me.
"Is the varnish starting to wear off?" I inquired with a secret gulp of
womanish self-pity. He saved the day by declaring I was just as crazy
and just as adorable as I ever was. Then he asked me, rather sadly, if I
was bored. "Bored?" I said, "how could I be bored with all these
discomforts? No one is ever bored until they are comfortable!" But the
moment after I'd said it I was sorry.
_Tuesday the Sixth_
Spring is here, with a warm Chinook creeping in from the Rockies and a
sky of robin-egg blue. The gophers have come out of their winter
quarters and are chattering and racing about. We saw a phalanx of wild
geese going northward, and Dinky-Dunk says he's seen any number of
ducks. They go in drifting V's, and I love to watch them melt in the
sky-line. The prairie floor is turning to the loveliest of greens, and
it is a joy just to be alive. I have been out all afternoon. The gophers
aren't going to get ahead of me!
_Monday the Twelfth_
What would you say if you saw Brunhild drive up to your back door? What
would you do if you discovered a Norse goddess placidly surveying you
from a green wagon-seat? How would you act if you beheld a big blonde
Valkyr suddenly introducing herself into your little earthly affairs?
Well, can you wonder that I stared, all eyes, when Dinky-Dunk brought
home a figure like this, in the shape of a Finn girl named Olga
Sarristo? Olga is to work in the fields, and to help me when she has
time. But I'll never get used to having a Norse Legend standing at my
elbow, for Olga is the most wonderful creature I have ever clapped eyes
on. I say that without doubt, and without exaggeration. And what made
the picture complete, she came driving a yoke of oxen--for Dinky-Dunk
will have need of every horse and hauling animal he can lay his hands
on. I simply held my breath as I stared up at her, high on her
wagon-seat, blocked out in silhouette against the pale sky-line, a
Brunhild with cowhide boots on. She wore a pale blue petticoat and a
Swedish looking black shawl with bright-colored flowers worked along the
hem. She had no hat. But she had two great ropes of pale gold hair,
almost as thick as my arm, and hanging almost as low as her knees. She
looked colossal up on the wagon-seat, but when she got down on the
ground she was not so immense. She is, however, a strapping big woman,
and I don't think I ever saw such shoulders! She is Olympian, Titanic!
She makes me think of the Venus de Milo; there's such a largeness and
calmness and smoothness of surface about her. I suppose a Saint-Gaudens
might say that her mouth was too big and a Gibson might add that her
nose hadn't the narrow rectitude of a Greek statue's, but she's a
beautiful, a beautiful--"woman" was the word I was going to write, but
the word "animal" just bunts and shoves itself in, like a stabled cow
insisting on its own stall. But if you regard her as only animal, you
must at least accept her as a perfect one. Her mouth is large, but I
never saw such red lips, full and red and dewy. Her forehead is low and
square, but milky smooth, and I know she could crack a chicken-bone
between those white teeth of hers. Even her tongue, I noticed, is a
watermelon red. She must be healthy. Dinky-Dunk says she's a find, that
she can drive a double-seeder as well as any man in the West, and that
by taking her for the season he gets the use of the ox-team as well. He
warned me not to ask her about her family, as only a few weeks ago her
father and younger brother were burned to death in their shack, a
hundred miles or so north of us.
_Tuesday the Twentieth_
Olga has been with us a week, and she still fascinates me. She is
installed in the annex, and seems calmly satisfied with her
surroundings. She brought everything she owns tied up in an oat-sack. I
have given her a few of my things, for which she seems dumbly grateful.
She seldom talks, and never laughs. But I am teaching her to say "yes"
instead of "yaw." She studies me with her limpid blue eyes, and if she
is silent she is never sullen. She hasn't the heavy forehead and jaw of
the Galician women and she hasn't the Asiatic cast of face that belongs
to the Russian peasant. And she has the finest mouthful of teeth I ever
saw in a human head--and she never used a toothbrush in her life! She is
only nineteen, but such a bosom, such limbs, such strength!
This is a great deal of talk about Olga, I'm afraid, but you must
remember that Olga is an event. I expected Olie would be keeled over by
her arrival, but they seem to regard each other with silent contempt. I
suppose that is because racially and physically they are of the same
type. I'm anxious to see what Percival Benson thinks of Olga when he
gets back--they would be such opposites. Olga is working with her
ox-team on the land. Two days ago I rode out on Paddy and watched her.
There was something Homeric about it, something Sorolla would have
jumped at. She seemed so like her oxen. She moved like them, and her
eyes were like theirs. She has the same strength and solemnity when she
walks. She's so primitive and natural and instinctive in her actions.
Yesterday, after dinner, she curled up on a pile of hay at one end of
the corral and fell asleep for a few minutes, flat in the strong noonday
light. I saw Dinky-Dunk stop on his way to the stable and stand and look
down at her. I slipped out beside him. "God, what a woman!" he said
under his breath. A vague stab of jealousy went through me as I heard
him say that. Then I looked at her hand, large, relaxed, roughened with
all kinds of weather and calloused with heavy work. And this time it was
an equally vague stab of pity that went through me.
_Monday the Twenty-sixth_
The rush is on, and Dinky-Dunk is always out before six. If it's true,
as some one once said, that the pleasures of life depended on its
anxieties, then we ought to be a hilarious household. Every one is busy,
and I do what I can to help. I don't know why it is, but I find an odd
comfort in the thought of having another woman near me, even Olga. She
also helps me a great deal with the housework. Those huge hands of hers
have a dexterity you'd never dream of. She thinks the piano a sort of
miracle, and me a second miracle for being able to play it. In the
evening she sits back in a corner, the darkest corner she can find, and
listens. She never speaks, never moves, never expresses one iota of
emotion. But in the gloom I can often catch the animal-like glow of her
eyes. They seem almost phosphorescent. Dinky-Dunk had a long letter from
Percival Benson to-day. It was interesting and offhandedly jolly and
just the right sort. And Percy says he'll be back on the Titchborne
place in a few weeks.
_Wednesday the Twenty-eighth_
Olga went through the boards of her wagon-box and got a bad scrape on
her leg. She showed me the extent of her injuries, without the slightest
hesitation, and I gave her first-aid treatment with my carbolated
vaseline. And still again I had to think of the Venus de Milo, for it
was a knee like a statue's, milky white and round and smooth, with a
skin like a baby's, and so different to her sunburnt forearms. It was
Olympian more than Fifth-Avenuey. It was a leg that made me think, not
of Rubens, but of Titian, and my thoughts at once went out to the
right-hand lady of the "Sacred and Profane Love," in the Borghese, there
was such softness and roundness combined with its strength. And
Dinky-Dunk walked in and stood staring at it, himself, with never so
much as a word of apology. Olga looked up at him without a flicker of
her ox-like eyes. It wasn't until I made an angry motion for her to
drop her skirt that she realized any necessity for covering the Titian
knee. But again I felt that odd pang of jealousy needle through me as I
saw his face. At least I suppose it was jealousy, the jealousy of an
artful little Mona-Lisa minx who didn't even class in with the
demigods. When Olga was gone, however, I said to Dinky-Dunk: "Isn't
that a limb for your life?"
He merely said: "We don't grow limbs up here, Tabby. They're legs, just
plain legs!"
"Anything but _plain_!" I corrected him. Then he acknowledged that he'd
seen those knees before. He'd stumbled on Olga and her brother knee-deep
in mud and cow manure, treading a mixture to plaster their shack with,
the same as the Doukhobors do. It left me less envious of those
Junoesque knees.
_Monday the Second_
Keeping chickens is a much more complicated thing than the outsider
imagines. For example, several of my best hens, quite untouched by the
modern spirit of feminine unrest, have been developing "broodiness" and
I have been trying to "break them up," as the poulterers put it. But
they are determined to set. This mothering instinct is a fine enough
thing in its way, but it's been spoiling too many good eggs. So I've
been trying to emancipate these ruffled females. I lift them off the
nest by the tail feathers, ten times a day. I fling cold water in their
solemn maternal faces. I put little rings of barb-wire under their
sentimental old bosoms. But still they set. And one, having pecked me on
the wrist until the blood came, got her ears promptly boxed--in face of
the fact that all poultry keepers acknowledge that kindness to a hen
improves her laying qualities.
_Thursday the Fifth_
Casa Grande is a beehive of industry. Every one has a part to play. I am
no longer expected to sit by the fire and purr. At nights I sew.
Dinky-Dunk is so hard on his clothes! When it's not putting on patches
it's sewing on buttons. Then we go to bed at half-past nine. At
half-past nine, think of it! Little me, who more than once went humming
up Fifth Avenue when morning was showing gray over the East River, and
often left Sherry's (oh, those dear old dancing days!) when the milk
wagons were rumbling through Forty-fourth Street, and once triumphantly
announced, on coming out of Dorlon's and studying the old Oyster-Letter
clock, that I'd stuck it out to Y minutes past O! But it's no hardship
to get up at five, these glorious mornings. The days get longer, and the
weather is perfect. And the prairie looks as though a vacuum cleaner
had been at work on it overnight. Positively, there's a charwoman who
does this old world over, while we sleep! By morning it's as bright as a
new pin. And out here every one is thinking of the day ahead;
Dinky-Dunk, of his crop; Olga, of the pair of sky-blue corsets I've
written to the Winnipeg mail-order house for; Olie, of the final
waterproofing of the granaries so the wheat won't get spoilt any more;
Gee-Gee, herself, of--of something which she's almost afraid to think
about.
Dinky-Dunk, in his deviling moods, says I'm an old married woman now,
that I'm settled, that I've eaten my pie! Perhaps I have. I'm not
imaginative, so I must depend on others for my joy of living. I know now
that I can never create, never really express myself in any way worth
while, either on paper or canvas or keyboard. And people without
imagination, I suppose, simply have to drop back to racial
simplicities--which means I'll have to have a family, and feed hungry
mouths, and keep a home going. And I'll have to get all my art at
second-hand, from magazines and gramophone records and plaster-of-Paris
casts. Just a housewife! And I so wanted to be something more, once! Yet
I wonder if, after all, the one is so much better than the other? I
wonder? And here comes my Dinky-Dunk, and in three minutes he'll be
kissing me on the tip of the chin and asking me what there's going to be
good for supper! And that is better than fame! For all afternoon those
twelve little lines of Dobson's have been running through my head:
Fame is a food that dead men eat--
I have no stomach for such meat.
In little light and narrow rooms,
They eat it in the silent tombs,
With no kind voice of comrade near
To bid the banquet be of cheer.
But Friendship is a noble thing--
Of Friendship it is good to sing,
For truly when a man shall end,
He lives in memory of his friend
Who doth his better part recall
And of his faults make funeral!
But when you put the word "love" there instead of "friendship" you make
it even better.... Olga, by the way, is not so stupid as you might
imagine. She's discovered something which I didn't intend her to find
out.... And Olie, also by the way, has solved the problem of "breaking
up" my setting hens. He has made a swinging coop with a wire netting
bottom, for all the world like the hanging gardens of Babylon, and into
this all the ruffled mothers-to-be have been thrust and the coop hung up
on the hen-house wall. Open wire is a very uncomfortable thing to set
on, and these hens have at last discovered that fact. I have been out
looking at them. I never saw such a parliament of solemn indignation.
But their pride has been broken, and they are beginning to show a
healthier interest in their meals.
_Tuesday the Tenth_
I've been wondering if Dinky-Dunk is going to fall in love with Olga.
Yesterday I saw him staring at her neck. She's the type of woman that
would really make the right sort of wilderness wife. She seems an
integral part of the prairie, broad-bosomed, fecund, opulent. And she's
so placid and large and soft-spoken and easy to live with. She has none
of my moods and tantrums.
Her corsets came to-day, and I showed her how to put them on. She is
incontinently proud of them, but in my judgment they only make her
ridiculous. It's as foolish as putting a French _toque_ on one of her
oxen. The skin of Olga's great shoulders is as smooth and creamy as a
baby's. I have been watching her eyes. They are not a dark blue, but in
a strong side-light they seem deep wells of light, layer on layer of
azure. And she is mysterious to me, calmly and magnificently
inscrutable. And I once thought her an uncouth animal. But she is a
great help. She has planted rows and rows of sweet peas all about Casa
Grande and is starting to make a kitchen garden, which she's going to
fence off and look after with her own hands. It will be twice the size
of Olie's. But I do hope she doesn't ever grow into something mysterious
to my Dinky-Dunk. This morning she said I ought to work in the garden,
that the more I kept on my feet the better it would be for me later on.
As for Dinky-Dunk, the poor boy is working himself gaunt. Yet tired as
he is, he tries to read a few pages of something worth while every
night. Sometimes we take turns in reading. Last night he handed me over
his volume of Spencer with a pencil mark along one passage. This passage
said: "Intellectual activity in women is liable to be diminished after
marriage by that antagonism between individuation and reproduction
everywhere operative throughout the organic world." I don't know why,
but that passage made me as hot as a hornet. In the background of my
brain I carried some vague memory of George Eliot once catching this
same philosophizing Spencer fishing with a composite fly, and, remarking
on his passion for generalizations, declaring that he even fished with a
generalization. So I could afford to laugh. "Spencer's idea of a
tragedy," I told Dinky-Dunk, "is a deduction killed by a fact!" And
again I smiled my Mona-Lisa smile. "And I'm going to be one of the
facts!" I proudly proclaimed.
Dinky-Dunk, after thinking this over, broke into a laugh. "You know,
Gee-Gee," he solemnly announced, "there are times when you seem almost
clever!" But I wasn't clever in this case, for it was hours later before
I saw the trap which Dinky-Dunk had laid for me!
_Monday the Sixteenth_
All day Saturday Olga and Dinky-Dunk were off in the chuck-wagon,
working too far away to come home for dinner. The thought of them being
out there, side by side, hung over me like a cloud. I remembered how he
had absently stared at the white column of her neck. And I pictured him
stopping in his work and studying her faded blue cotton waist pulled
tight across the line of that opulent bust. What man wouldn't be
impressed by such bodily magnificence, such lavish and undulating youth
and strength? And there's something so soft and diffused about those
ox-like eyes of hers! You do not think, then, of her eyes being such a
pale blue, any more than you could stop to accuse summer moonlight of
not being ruddy. And those unruffled blue eyes never seem to see you;
they rather seem to bathe you in a gaze as soft and impersonal as
moonlight itself.
I simply couldn't stand it any more. I got on Paddy and galloped out for
my Dinky-Dunk, as though it were my sudden and solemn duty to save him
from some imminent and awful catastrophe.
I stopped on the way, to watch a couple of prairie-chickens minuetting
through the turns of their vernal courtships. The pompous little beggars
with puffed-out wattles and neck ruffs were positively doing cancans and
two-steps along the prairie floor. Love was in the air, that perfect
spring afternoon, even for the animal world. So instead of riding openly
and honestly up to Dinky-Dunk and Olga, I kept under cover as much as I
could and stalked them, as though I had been a timber wolf.
Then I felt thoroughly and unspeakably ashamed of myself, for I caught
sight of Olga high on her wagon, like a Valkyr on a cloud, and
Dinky-Dunk hard at work a good two miles away.
He was a little startled to see me come cantering up on Paddy. I don't
know whether it was silly or not, but I told him straight out what had
brought me. He hugged me like a bear and then sat down on the prairie
and laughed. "With that cow?" he cried. And I'm sure no man could ever
call the woman he loves a cow.... I believe Dinky-Dunk suspects
something. He's just asked me to be more careful about riding Paddy. And
he's been more solemnly kind, lately. But I'll never tell
him--never--never!
_Tuesday the Twenty-fourth_
Percy will be back to-morrow. It will be a different looking country to
what it was when he left. I've been staring up at a cobalt sky, and
begin to understand why people used to think Heaven was somewhere up in
the midst of such celestial blue. And on the prairie the sky is your
first and last friend. Wasn't it Emerson who somewhere said that the
firmament was the daily bread for one's eyes? And oh, the lovely,
greening floor of the wheat country now! Such a soft yellow-green glory
stretching so far in every direction, growing so much deeper day by day!
And the sun and space and clear light on the sky-line and the pillars of
smoke miles away and the wonderful, mysterious promise that is hanging
over this teeming, steaming, shimmering, abundant broad bosom of earth!
It thrills me in a way I can't explain. By night and day, before
breakfast and after supper, the talk is of wheat, wheat, wheat, until I
nearly go crazy. I complained to Dinky-Dunk that he was dreaming wheat,
living wheat, breathing wheat, that he and all the rest of the world
seemed mad about wheat.
"And there's just one other thing you must remember, Lady Bird," was his
answer. "All the rest of the world is _eating_ wheat. It can't live
without wheat. And I'd rather be growing the bread that feeds the hungry
than getting rich making cordite and Krupp guns!" So he's risking
everything on this crop of his, and is eternally figuring and planning
and getting ready for the _grande débâcle_. He says it will be like a
battle. And no general goes into a battle without being prepared for it.
But when we read about the doings of the outside world, it seems like
reading of happenings that have taken place on the planet Mars. We're
our own little world just now, self-contained, rounded-out, complete.
_Friday the Third_
Two things of vast importance have happened. Dinky-Dunk has packed up
and made off to Edmonton to interview some railway officials, and Percy
is back. Dinky-Dunk is so mysteriously silent as to the matter of his
trip that I'm afraid he is worried about money matters. And he asked me
if I'd mind keeping the household expenses down as low as I could,
without actual hardship, for the next few months.
As for Percy, he seemed a little constrained, but looked ever so much
better. He is quite sunburned, likes California and says we ought to
have a winter bungalow there (and Dinky-Dunk just warning me to save on
the pantry pennies!) He's brought a fastidious little old English woman
back with him as a housekeeper, a Mrs. Watson, and she looks both
capable and practical. Notwithstanding the fact that she seems to have
stepped right out of Dickens, and carries a huge Manx cat about with
her, Percy said he thought they'd muddle along in some way. Thoughtful
boy that he was, he brought me a portmanteau packed full of the newer
novels and magazines, and a two-pound jar of smoking tobacco for
Dinky-Dunk.
_Thursday the Ninth_
A Belasco couldn't have more carefully stage-managed the first meeting
between Percy and Olga. I felt that she was my discovery, and I wanted
to spring her on him, at the right moment, and in the right way. I
wanted to get the Valkyr on a cloud effect. So I kept Percy in the house
on the pretext of giving him a cup of tea, until I should hear the
rumble of the wagon and know that Olga was swinging home with her team.
It so happened, when I heard the first faint far thunder of that homing
wagon, that Percy was sitting in my easy chair, with a cup of my
thinnest china in one hand and a copy of Walter Pater's _Marius the
Epicurean_ in the other. We had been speaking of climate, and he wanted
to look up the passage where Pater said, "one always dies of the
cold"--which I consider a slur on the Northwest!
I couldn't help realizing, as I sat staring at Percy, at the thin,
over-sensitive face, and the high-arched, over-refined nose, and the
narrow, stooping, over-delicate shoulders, what a direct opposite he was
to Olga, in every way. Instead of thin china and Pater in her hand at
that very moment, I remembered she'd probably have a four-tined fork or
a mud-stained fence stretcher.
I went to the door and looked out. At the proper moment I called Percy.
Olga was standing up in the wagon-box, swinging about one corner of the
corral. She stood with her shoulders well back, for her weight was
already on the lines, to pull the team up. Her loose blue skirt edge was
fluttering in the wind, but at the front was held tight against her
legs, like the drapery of the Peace figure in the Sherman statue in the
Plaza. Across that Artemis-like bosom her thin waist was stretched
tight. She had no hat on, and her pale gold hair, which had been braided
and twisted up into a heavy crown, had the sheen of metal on it, in the
later afternoon sun. And in that clear glow of light, which so often
plays mirage-like tricks with vision, she loomed up like a demi-god, or
a she-Mercury who ought to have had little bicycle wheels attached to
her heels.
Percy is never demonstrative. But I could see that he was more than
impressed. He was amazed.
"My word!" he said very quietly.
"What does she make you think of?" I demanded.
Percy put down his teacup.
"Don't go away," I commanded, "but tell me what she makes you think of."
He still stood staring at her with puckered up eyes.
"She's like band-music going by!" he proclaimed. "No, she's more than
that; she's Wagner on wheels," he finally said. "No, not that! A Norse
myth in dimity!"
I told him it wasn't dimity, but he was too interested in Olga to listen
to me.
Half an hour later, when she met him, she was very shy. She turned an
adorable pink, and then calmly rebuttoned the two top buttons of her
waist, which had been hanging loose. And I noticed that Percy did
precisely what I saw Dinky-Dunk once doing. He sat staring absently yet
studiously at the milky white column of Olga's neck! And I had to speak
to him twice, before he even woke up to the fact that he was being
addressed by his hostess.
_Wednesday the Fifteenth_
Dinky-Dunk is back, and very busy again. During the day I scarcely get a
glimpse of him, except at meal-times. I have a steadily growing sense of
being neglected, but I know how a worried man hates petulance. The
really important thing is that Percy is giving Olga lessons in reading
and writing. For, although a Finn, she is a Canadian Finn from almost
the shadow of the sub-Arctics, and has had little chance for education.
But her mind is not obtuse.
Yesterday I asked Olga what she thought of Percival Benson. "Ah lak
heem," she calmly admitted in her majestic, monosyllabic way. "He is a
fonny leetle man." And the "fonny leetle man" who isn't really little,
seems to like Olga, odd as it may sound. They are such opposites, such
contradictions! Percy says she's Homeric. He says he never saw eyes that
were so limpid, or such pools of peace and calm. He insists on the fact
that she's essentially maternal, as maternal as the soil over which she
walks, as Percy put it. I told him what Dinky-Dunk had once told me,
about Olga killing a bull. The bull was a vicious brute that had
attacked her father and knocked him down. He was striking at the fallen
man with his fore-paws when Olga heard his cries. She promptly came for
that bull with a pitchfork. And speaking of Homer, it must have been a
pretty epical battle, for she killed the bull and left the fork-tines
eight inches in his body while she picked up her father and carried him
back to the house. And I won't even kill my own hens, but have always
appointed Olie as the executioner.
_Friday the Seventeenth_
It is funny to see Percy teaching Olga. She watches him as though he
were a miracle man. Her dewy red lips form the words slowly, and the
full white throat utters them largely, laboriously, instruments on them,
and in some perhaps uncouth way makes them lovely. I sit with my sewing,
listening. Sometimes I open the piano and play. But I feel out of it. I
seem to be on the fringe of things that are momentous only to other
people. Last night, when Percy said he thought he'd sell his ranch,
Dinky-Dunk looked up from his paper-littered desk and told him to hang
on to that land like a leech. But he didn't explain why.
_Saturday the Nineteenth_
I can't even remember the date. But I know that midsummer is here, that
the men folks are so busy I have to shift for myself, and that the talk
is still of wheat, and how it's heading, and how the dry weather of the
last few weeks will affect the length of the straw. Dinky-Dunk is making
desperate efforts to get men to cut wild-hay. He's bought the hay rights
of a large stretch between some sloughs about seven miles east of our
place. He says men are scarcer than hen's teeth, but has the promise of
a couple of cutthroats who were thrown off a freight-train near
Buckhorn. Percy volunteered to help, and was convinced of the fact that
he could drive a mower. Olie, who nurses a vast contempt for Percy, and,
I secretly believe, rather resents his attentions to Olga, put the new
team of colts on the mower. They promptly ran away with Percy, who came
within an ace of being thrown in front of the mower-knife, which would
have chopped him up into very unscholarly mincemeat. Olga got on a
horse, bareback, and rounded up the colts. Then she cooed about poor
bruised Percy and tried to coax him to come to the house. But Percy said
he was going to drive that team, even if he had to be strapped to the
mower-seat. And, oddly enough, he did "gat them beat," as Olga expressed
it, but it tired him out and wilted his collar and the sweat was running
down his face when he came in at noon. Olga is very proud of him. But
she announced that she'd drive that mower herself, and sailed into Olie
for giving a tenderfoot a team like that to drive. It was her first
outburst. I couldn't understand a word she said, but I know that she was
magnificent. She looked like a statue of Justice that had suddenly
jumped off its pedestal and was doing its best to put a Daniel Webster
out of business!
_Friday the Twenty-eighth_
The weather is still very dry. But Dinky-Dunk feels sure it will not
affect his crop. He says the filaments of a wheat-plant will go almost
two feet deep in search for moisture. Yesterday Percy appeared in a
flannel shirt, and without his glasses. I think he is secretly
practising calisthenics. He said he was going to cut out this afternoon
tea, because it doesn't seem to fit in with prairie life. I fancy I see
the re-barbarianizing influence of Olga at work on Percival Benson
Woodhouse. Either Dinky-Dunk or Olie, I find, has hidden my saddle!
_Saturday the Twenty-ninth_
To-day has been one of the hottest days of the year. It may be good for
the wheat, but I can't say that it seems good for me. All day long I've
been fretting for far-away things, for foolish and impossible things. I
tried reading Keats, but that only made me worse than ever. I've been
longing for a glimpse of the Luxembourg Gardens in spring, with all the
horse-chestnuts in bloom. I've been wondering how lovely it would be to
drift into the Blue Grotto at Capri and see the azure sea-water drip
from the trailing boat-oars. I've been burning with a hunger to see a
New England orchard in the slanting afternoon sunlight of an early June
afternoon. The hot white light of this open country makes my eyes ache
and seems to dry my soul up. I can't help thinking of cool green
shadows, and musky little valleys of gloom with a brook purling over
mossy stones. I long for the solemn greenery of great elms, aisles and
aisles of cathedral-like gloom and leaf-filtered sunlight. I'd love to
hear an English cuckoo again, and feel the soft mild sea-air that blows
up through Louis's dear little Devonshire garden. But what's the use!
I went to the piano and pounded out _Kennst Du Das Land_ with all my
soul, and I imagine it did me good. It at least bombarded the silence
out of Casa Grande. The noise of life is so far away from you on the
prairie! It is not utterly silent, just that dreamy and disembodied sigh
of wind and grass against which a human call targets like a leaden
bullet against metal. It is almost worse than silence.
_Sunday the Thirtieth_
My mood is over. Early, early this morning I slipped out of bed and
watched day break. I saw the first faint orange rim along the limitless
sky-line, and then the pearly pink above it, and all the sweet dimness
and softness and mystery of God's hand pulling the curtains of morning
apart. And then the rioting orchestras of color struck up, and I leaned
out of the window bathed in glory as the golden disk of the sun showed
over the dewy prairie-edge. Oh, the grandeur of it! And oh, the
God-given freshness of that pellucid air! I love my land! I love it!
_Tuesday the First_
I have married a _man_! My Dinky-Dunk is not a softy. I had that proved
to me yesterday, when I put Paddy in the buckboard and drove out to
where the men were working in the hay. I was taking their dinner out to
them, neatly packed in the chuck-box. One of the new men, who'd been
hired for the rush, had been overworking his team. The brute had been
prodding them with a pitchfork, instead of using a whip. Dinky-Dunk saw
the marks, and noticed one of the horses bleeding. But he didn't
interfere until he caught the man in the act of jabbing the tines into
Maid Marian's flank. Then he jumped for him, just as I drove up. He
cursed that man, cursed and damned him most dreadfully and pulled him
down off the hay-rack. Then they fought.
They fought like two wildcats. Dinky-Dunk's nose bled and his lip was
cut. But he knocked the other man flat, and when he tried to get up he
knocked him again. It seemed cruel; it was revolting. But something in
me rejoiced and exulted as I saw that hulk of an animal thresh and
stagger about the hay-stubble. I tried to wipe the blood away from
Dinky-Dunk's nose. But he pushed me back and said this was no place for
a woman. I had no place in his universe, at that particular time. But
Dinky-Dunk can fight, if he has to. He's sa magerful a mon! He's afraid
of nothing.
But that was nearly a costly victory. Both the new men of course threw
up their jobs, then and there. Dinky-Dunk paid them off, on the spot,
and they started off across the open prairie, without even waiting for
their meal. Dinky-Dunk, as we sat down on the dry grass and ate
together, said it was a good riddance, and he was just saying I could
only have the left-hand side of his mouth to kiss for the next week when
he suddenly dropped his piece of custard-pie, stood up and stared toward
the east. I did the same, wondering what had happened.
I could see a long thin slanting column of smoke driving across the hot
noonday air. Then my heart stopped beating. _It was the prairie on
fire._
I had heard a great deal about fire-guards and fire-guarding, three rows
about crops and ten about buildings; and I knew that Olie hadn't yet
finished turning all those essential furrows. And if that column of
smoke, which was swinging up through the silvery haze where the indigo
vault of heaven melted into the dusty whiteness of the parched
grasslands, had come from the mouth of a siege-gun which was cannonading
us where we stood, it couldn't have more completely chilled my blood.
For I knew that east wind would carry the line of fire crackling across
the prairie floor to Dinky-Dunk's wheat, to the stables and
out-buildings, to Casa Grande itself, and all our scheming and planning
and toiling and moiling would go up in one yellow puff of smoke. And
once under way, nothing could stop that widening river of flame.
It was Dinky-Dunk who jumped to life as though he had indeed been
cannonaded. In one bound he was at the buckboard and was snatching out
the horse-blanket that lay folded up under the seat. Then he unsnapped
the reins from Paddy's bridle, snapping them on the blanket, one to the
buckle and the other to the strap-end. In another minute he had the
hobble off Paddy and had swung me up on that astonished pinto's back.
The next minute he himself was on Maid Marian, poking one end of the
long rein into my hand and telling me to keep up with him.
We rode like mad. I scarcely understood what it meant, at the time, but
I at least kept up with him. We went floundering through one end of a
slough until the blanket was wet and heavy and I could hardly hold it.
But I hung on for dear life. Then we swung off across the dry grass
toward that advancing semicircle of fire, as far apart as the taut reins
would let us ride. Dinky-Dunk took the windward side. Then on we rushed,
along that wavering frontier of flame, neck to neck, dragging the wet
blanket along its orange-tinted crest, flattening it down and wiping it
out as we went. We made the full circle, panting; saw where the flames
had broken out again, and swung back with our dragging blanket. But when
one side was conquered another side would revive, and off we'd have to
go again, until my arm felt as though it were going to be pulled out of
its socket.
But we won that fight, in the end. I slipped down off Paddy's back and
lay full length on the sod, weak, shaking, wondering why the solid
ground was rocking slowly from side to side like a boat. But Dinky-Dunk
didn't even observe me. He was fighting out the last patch of fire, on
foot.
When he came over to where I was waiting for him he was as sooty and
black as a boiler-maker. He dropped down beside me, breathing hard. We
sat there holding each other's hand, for several minutes, in utter
silence. Then he said, rather thickly: "Are you all right?" And I told
him that of course I was all right. Then he said, without looking at me,
"I forgot!" Then he got Paddy and patched up the harness and took me
home in the buckboard.
But all the rest of the day he hung about the shack, as solemn as an
owl. And once in the night he got up and lighted the lamp and came over
and studied my face. I blinked up at him sleepily, for I was dog-tired
and had been dreaming that we were back in Paris at the Bal des Quatz
Arts and were about to finish up with an early breakfast at the Madrid.
He looked so funny with his rumpled up hair and his faded pajamas that I
couldn't help laughing a little as he blew out the light and got back
into bed.
"Dinky-Dunk," I said, as I turned over my pillow and got comfy again,
"wouldn't it have been hell if all our wheat had been burned up?" I
forget what Duncan said, for in two minutes I was asleep again.
_Monday the Seventh_
The dry spell has been broken, and broken with a vengeance. One gets
pretty well used to high winds, in the West. There used to be days at a
time when that unending high wind would make me think something was
going to happen, filling me with a vague sense of impending calamity and
making me imagine a big storm was going to blow up and wipe Casa Grande
and its little coterie off the map. But we've had a real wind-storm,
this time, with rain and hail. Dinky-Dunk's wheat looks sadly draggled
out and beaten down, but he says there wasn't enough hail to hurt
anything; that the straw will straighten up again, and that this
downpour was just what he wanted. Early in the afternoon, on looking out
the shack door, I saw a tangle of clouds on the sky-line. They seemed
twisted up like a skein of wool a kitten had been playing with. Then
they seemed to marshal themselves into one solid line and sweep up over
the sky, getting blacker and blacker as they came. Olga ran in with her
yellow hair flying, slamming and bolting the stable-doors, locking the
chicken-coop, and calling out for me to get my clothes off the line or
they'd be blown to pieces. Even then I could feel the wind. It whipped
my own hair loose, and flattened my skirt against my body, and I had to
lean forward to make any advance against it.
By this time the black army of the heavens had rolled up overhead and a
few big frog-like drops of rain began to fall, throwing up little clouds
of dust, as a rifle bullet might. I trundled out a couple of tubs, in
the hope of catching a little soft water. It wasn't until later that I
realized the meaning of Olga's mild stare of reproof. For the next
moment the downpour came, and with it the wind. And such wind! There had
been nothing to stop its sweep, of course, for hundreds and hundreds of
miles, and it hit us the same as a hurricane at sea hits a liner. The
shack shook with the force of it. My two wash-tubs went bounding and
careening off across the landscape, the chicken-coop went over like a
nine-pin, and the air was filled with bits of flying timber. Olga's
wagon, with the hay-rack on top of it, moved solemnly and ponderously
across the barnyard and crashed into the corral, propelled by no power
but that of the wind. My sweet-pea hedges were torn from their wires,
and an armful of hay came smack against the shack-window and was held
there by the wind, darkening the room more than ever.
Then the storm blew itself out, though it poured for two or three hours
afterward. And all the while, although I exulted in that play of
elemental force, I was worrying about my Dinky-Dunk, who was away for
the day, doing what he could to arrange for some harvest hands, when the
time for cutting came. For the wheat, it seems, ripens all at once, and
then the grand rush begins. If it isn't cut the moment it's ripe, the
grain shells out, and that means loss. Olga has been saying that the
wheat on the Cummins section will easily run forty bushels to the acre
and over. It will also grade high, whatever that means. There are six
hundred and forty acres of it in that section, and I've just figured out
that this means a little over twenty-five thousand bushels of grain. Our
other piece on the home ranch is a larger tract, but a little lighter in
crop. That wheat is just beginning to turn from green to the palest of
yellow. And it has a good show, Olga says, if frost will only keep off
and no hail comes. Our one occupation, for the next few weeks, will be
watching the weather.
_Sunday the Thirteenth_
Percy and Mrs. Watson drove over to see how we'd all weathered the
storm. They found the chicken-coop once more right side up, and
everything ship-shape. Percy promptly asked where Olga was. I pointed
her out to him, breast-high in the growing wheat. She looked like Ceres,
in her big, new, loose-fitting blue waist, with the noonday sun on her
yellow-gold head and her mild ruminative eyes with their misted sky-line
effect. She always seems to fit into the landscape here. I suppose it's
because she's a born daughter of the soil. And a sea of wheat makes a
perfect frame for that massive, benignant figure of hers.
I looked at Percy, at thin-nosed, unpractical Percy, with all his
finicky sensibilities, with his high fastidious reticences, with his
effete, inbred meagerness of bone and sinew, with his distinguished
pride of distinguished race rather running to seed. And I stood
marveling at the wisdom of old Mother Nature, who was so plainly
propelling him toward this revitalizing, revivifying, reanimalizing,
redeeming type which his pale austerities of spirit could never quite
neutralize. Even Dinky-Dunk has noticed what is taking place. He saw
them standing side by side in the grain. When he came in he pointed them
out to me, and merely said, "_Hermann und Dorothea_!" But I remembered
my Goethe well enough to understand.
_Monday the Twenty-eighth_
I woke Dinky-Dunk up last night crying beside him in bed. I just got to
thinking about things again, how far away we were from everything, how
hard it would be to get help if we needed it, and how much I'd give if I
only had you, Matilda Anne, for the next few weeks.... I got up and went
to the window and looked out. The moon was big and yellow, like a
cheese. And the midnight prairie itself seemed so big and wide and
lonely, and I seemed such a tiny speck on its face, so far away from
every one, from God himself, that the courage went out of my body like
the air out of a tire. Dinky-Dunk was right; it is life that is taming
me.
I stood at the window praying, and then I slipped back into bed.
Dinky-Dunk works so hard and gets so tired that it would take a Chinese
devil-gong to waken him, once he's asleep. He did not stir when I crept
back into bed. And that, as I lay there wide awake, made me feel that
even my own husband had betrayed me. And I _bawled_. I must have shaken
the bed, for Dinky-Dunk finally did wake up. I couldn't tell him what
was the matter. I blubbered out that I only wanted him to hold me. He
took me in his arms and kissed my wet eyelids, hugging me up close to
him, until I got quieter. Then I fell asleep. But poor Dinky-Dunk was
awake when I opened my eyes about four, and had been that way for hours.
He was afraid of disturbing me by taking his arm from under my head.
To-day he looks tired and dark around the eyes. But he was up and off
early. There is so much to be done these days! He is putting up a
grub-tent and a rough sleeping-shack for the harvest "hands," so that I
won't be bothered with a lot of rough men about the house here. I'm
afraid I'm an encumbrance, when I should be helping. But they seem to be
taking everything out of my hands.
_Saturday the Second_
I love to watch the wheat, now that it's really turning. It waves like a
sea and stretches off into the distance as far as the eye can follow it.
It's as high as my waist, and sometimes it moves up and down like a
slowly breathing breast. When the sun is low it turns a pure Roman gold,
and makes my eyes ache. But I love it. It strikes me as being glorious,
and at the same time pathetic--I scarcely know why. I can't analyze my
feelings. But the prairie brings a great peace to my soul. It is so
rich, so maternal, so generous. It seems to brood under a passion to
give, to yield up, to surrender all that is asked of it. And it is so
tranquil. It seems like a bosom breathed on by the breath of God.
_Wednesday the Sixth_
It is nearly a year, now, since I first came to Casa Grande. I can
scarcely believe it. The nights are getting very cool again and any time
now there might be a heavy frost. If it should freeze this next week or
two I think my Dinky-Dunk would just curl up and die. Poor boy, he's
working so hard! I pray for that crop every night. I worry about it.
Last night I dreamt it was burnt up in a prairie-fire and woke up
screaming for wet blankets. Dinky-Dunk had to hold me until I got quiet
again. I asked him if he loved me, now that I was getting old and ugly.
He said I was the most beautiful thing God ever made and that he loved
me in a deeper and nobler way than he did a year ago. Then I asked him
if he'd ever get married again, if I should die. He called me silly and
said I was going to live to be eighty, and that a gasoline-tractor
couldn't kill me. But he promised I'd be the only one, whatever
happened. And I believe him. I know Dinky-Dunk would go in black for a
solid year, if I _should_ die, and he'd never, never marry again, for
he's the sort of Old Sobersides who can only love one woman in one
lifetime. And I'm the woman, glory be!
_Tuesday the Twelfth_
Harvest time is here. The stage is cleared, and the last and great act
of the drama now begins. It's a drama with a stage a thousand miles
wide. I can hear through the open windows the rattle of the
self-binders. Olga is driving one, like a tawny Boadicea up on her
chariot. She said she never saw such heads of wheat. This is the first
day's cutting, but those flapping canvas belts and those tireless arms
of wood and iron won't have one-tenth of Dinky-Dunk's crop tied up by
midnight. It is very cold, and Olie has lugubriously announced that it's
sure going to freeze. So three times I've gone out to look at the
thermometer and three times I've said my solemn little prayer: "Dear
God, please don't freeze poor Dinky-Dunk's wheat!" And the Lord heard
that prayer, for a Chinook came about two o'clock in the morning and the
mercury slowly but steadily rose.
_Thursday the Fourteenth_
I had a great deal to talk about to-day. But I can't write much.... I'm
afraid. I dread being alone. I wish I'd been a better wife to my poor
old gold-bricked Dinky-Dunk! But we are what we are, character-kinks and
all. So when he understands, perhaps he'll forgive me. I'm like a
cottontail in the middle of a wheat-patch with the binders going round
and round and every swathe cutting away a little more of my covering.
And there can't be much more hiding away with my secret. But I shall
never openly speak of it. The binder can cut off my feet first, the same
as Olie's did with that mother-rabbit which stood trembling over her
nest of young. Why must life sometimes be so ruthlessly tragic? And why,
oh, why, are women sometimes so absurd? And why should I be afraid of
what every woman who would justify her womanhood must face? Still, I'm
afraid!
_Wednesday the Fifth_
Three long weeks since those last words were written. And what shall I
say, or how shall I begin?
In the first place, everything seemed gray. The bed was gray, my own
arms were gray, the walls looked gray, the window-glass was gray, and
even Dinky-Dunk's face was gray. I didn't want to move, for a long time.
Then I got the strength to tell Mrs. Watson that I wanted to speak to my
husband. She was wrapping something up in soft flannel and purring over
it quite proudly and calling it a blessed little lamb. When poor
pale-faced Dinky-Dunk bent over the bed I asked him if it had a receding
chin, or if it had a nose like Olie's. And he said it had neither, that
it was a king of a boy and could holler like a good one.
Then I told Dinky-Dunk what had been in my secret soul, for so many
months. Uncle Carlton had a receding chin, a boneless, dew-lappy sort
of chin I'd always hated, and I'd been afraid it might kind of
skip-and-carry one and fasten itself on my innocent offspring. Then,
later on, I'd been afraid of Olie's frozen nose, with the split down the
center. And all the while I kept remembering what the Morleys' old
colored nurse had said to me when I was a schoolgirl, a girl of only
seventeen, spending that first vacation of mine in Virginia: "Lawdy,
chile, yuh ain't no bigger'n a minit! Don't yuh nebber hab no baby,
chile!"
Isn't it funny how those foolish old things stick in a woman's memory?
For I've had my baby and I'm still alive, and although I sometimes
wanted a girl, Dinky-Dunk is so ridiculously proud and happy seeing it's
a boy that I don't much care. But I'm going to get well and strong in a
few more days, and here against my breast I'm holding the God-love-itest
little lump of pulsing manhood, the darlingest, solemnest, placidest,
pinkest hope of the white race that ever made life full and perfect for
a foolish mother.
The doctor who finally got here--when both Olga and Mrs. Dixon agreed
that he couldn't possibly do a bit of good--announced that I had come
through it all like the true Prairie Woman that I was. Then he somewhat
pompously and redundantly explained that I was a highly organized
individual, "a bit high-strung," as Mrs. Dixon put it. I smiled into the
pillow when he turned to my anxious-eyed Dinky-Dunk and condoningly
enlarged on the fact that there was nothing abnormal about a woman like
me being--well, rather abnormal as to temper and nerves during the last
few months. But Dinky-Dunk cut him short.
"On the contrary, sir; she's been wonderful, simply wonderful!"
Dinky-Dunk stoutly declared. Then he reached for my hand under the
coverlet. "She's been an angel!"
I squeezed the hand that held mine. Then I looked at the doctor, who had
turned away to give some orders to Olga.
"Doctor," I quite as stoutly declared, "I've been a perfect devil, and
this dear old liar knows it!" But our doctor was too busy to pay much
attention to what I was saying. He merely murmured that it was all
normal, quite normal, under the circumstances. So, after all, I'm just
an ordinary, everyday woman! But the man of medicine has ordered me to
stay in bed for twelve days--which Olga regards as unspeakably
preposterous, since one day, she proudly announced, was all her mother
ever asked for. Which shows the disadvantages of being too civilized!
_Sunday the Ninth_
I'm day by day getting stronger, though I'm a lady of luxury and lie in
bed until ten every morning. To-day when I was sitting up to eat
breakfast, with my hair braided in two tails and a pink and white
hug-me-tight over my nightie, Dinky-Dunk came in and sat by the bed. He
tried to soft-soap me by saying he'd be mighty glad when I was running
things again so he could get something fit to eat. Olga, he admitted,
was all right, but she hadn't the touch of his Gee-Gee. He confessed
that for nearly a month now the house had been a damned gynocracy and he
was getting tired of being bossed around by a couple of women. _Mio
piccino_ no longer looks like a littered whelp of the animal world, as
he did at first. His wrinkled little face and his close-shut eyes used
to make me think of a little old man, with all the wisdom of the ages
shut up in his tiny body. And it is such a knowing little body, with
all its stored-up instincts and guardian appetites! My little _tenor
robusto_, how he can sing when he's hungry! Last night I sat up in bed,
listening for my son's--Dinky-Dink's--breathing. At first I thought he
might be dead, he was so quiet. Then I heard his lips move in the
rhapsodic deglutition of babyland dreams. "Dinky-Dunk," I demanded,
"what would we do if Babe should die?" And I shook him to make him
answer. He stared up at me with a sleepy eye. "That whale?" he commented
as he blinked contentedly down at his offspring and then turned over and
went to sleep. But I slipped a hand in under little Dinky-Dink's body,
and found it as warm as a nesting bird.
_Monday the Tenth_
I noticed that Dinky-Dunk had not been smoking lately, so I asked him
what had become of the rest of his cigars. He admitted that he had given
them to Olie. "When?" I asked. And Dinky-Dunk colored up as he answered,
rather casually, "Oh, the day Buddy Boy was born!" How men merge down
into the conventional in their more epochal moments!
The second day after my baby's birth Olga rather took my breath away by
carrying in as neat a little wooden cradle as any prince of the royal
blood would care to lie in. _Olie had made it_. He had worked on it
during his spare hours in the evening, and even Dinky-Dunk hadn't known.
I made Olga hold it up at the foot of the bed so I could see it better.
It had been scroll-sawed and sand-papered and polished like any
factory-made baby-bed, and my faithful old Olie had even attempted some
hand-carving along the rockers and the head-board. But as I looked at it
I realized that it must have taken weeks and weeks to make. And that
gave me an odd little earthquaky feeling in the neighborhood of the
midriff, for I knew then that my secret had been no secret at all.
Dinky-Dunk, by the way, has just announced that we're to have a
touring-car. He says I've earned it!
_Tuesday the Eleventh_
Yesterday was so warm that I sat out in the sun and took an ozone-bath.
I sat there, staring down at my boy, realizing that I was a mother. My
boy--bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh! It's so hard to believe! And
now I am one of the mystic chain, and no longer the idle link. I am a
mother. And I'd give an arm if you and Chinkie and Scheming-Jack could
see my boy, at this moment. He's like a rose-leaf and he's got six
dimples, not counting his hands and feet--for I've found and kissed 'em
all--on different parts of his blessed little body. Dinky-Dunk came back
from Buckhorn yesterday with a lot of the foolishest things you ever
clapped eyes on--a big cloth elephant that grunts when you pull its
tail, a musical spinning-top, a high-chair, and a projecting lantern.
They're for Dinky-Dink, of course. But it will be a week or two before
he can manipulate the lantern!
_Wednesday the Thirteenth_
Dinky-Dunk has taken Mrs. Dixon home and come back with a brand-new
"hand," which, of course, is prairie-land synecdoche for a new hired
man. His name is Terry Dillon, and as the name might lead you to
imagine, he's about as Irish as Paddy's pig. He is blessed with a
potato-lip, a buttermilk brogue, and a nose which, if he follows it
faithfully, will some day lead him straight to Heaven. But Terry,
Dinky-Dunk tells me, is a steady worker and a good man with horses, and
that of course rounds him out as a paragon in the eyes of my
slave-driving lord and master. I asked where Terry came from.
Dinky-Dunk, with rather a grim smile, acknowledged that he'd been
working for Percy.
Terry, it seems, has no particular love for an Englishman. And Percy had
affronted his haughty Irish spirit with certain ideas of caste which
can't be imported into the Canadian West, where the hired man is every
whit as good as his master--as that master will tragically soon find out
if he tries to make his help eat at second table! At any rate, Percy and
potato-lipped Terry developed friction which ended up in every promise
of a fight, only Dinky-Dunk arrived in the nick of time and took Terry
off his harassed neighbor's hands. I told him he had rather the habit of
catching people on the bounce. But I am reserving my opinion of Terry
Dillon. We are a happy family here, and I want no trouble-makers in my
neighborhood.
I have been studying some of the New York magazines, going rather
hungrily through their advertisements where such lovely layettes are
described. My poor little Dinky-Dink's things are so plain and rough and
meager. I envy those city mothers with all those beautiful linens and
laces. But my little Spartan man-child has never known a single day's
sickness. And some day he'll show 'em!
_Thursday the Fourteenth_
When Olie came in after dinner yesterday I asked him where my husband
was. Olie, after some hesitation, admitted that he was out in the
stable. I asked just what Dinky-Dunk was doing there, for I'd noticed
that after each meal he slipped silently away. Again Olie hesitated.
Then he finally admitted that he thought maybe my lord was out there
smoking. So I went out, and there I found my poor old Dinky-Dunk sitting
on a grain-box puffing gloomily away at his old pipe. For a minute or
two he didn't see me, so I went right over to him. "What does this
mean?" I demanded.
"Why?" he rather guiltily equivocated.
"Why are you smoking out here?"
"I--er--I rather thought you might think it wouldn't be good for the
Boy!" He looked pathetic as he said that, I don't know why, though I
loved him for it. He made me think of a king who'd been dethroned, an
outsider, a man without a home. It brought a lump into my throat.
I wormed my way up close to him on the grain-box, so that he had to hold
me to keep from falling off the end. "Listen to me," I commanded. "You
are my True Love and my Kaikobád and my Man-God and my Soul-Mate! And no
baby is ever going to come between me and you!"
"You shouldn't say those awful things," he declared, but he did it only
half-heartedly.
"But I want you to sit and smoke with me, beloved, the same as you
always did," I told him. "We can leave the windows open a little and it
won't hurt Dinky-Dink, for that boy gets more ozone than any city child
that was ever wheeled out in the Mall! It can't possibly hurt him. What
hurts me is being away from you so much. And now give me a hug, a tight
one, and tell me that you still love your Lady Bird!" He gave me two,
and then two more, until Tumble-Weed turned round in his stall and
whinnied for us to behave.
_Friday the Fifteenth_
I've been keeping Terry under my eye, and I don't believe he's a
trouble-maker. His first move was to lift Babe out of the cradle, hold
him up and publicly announce that he was a darlin'. Then he pointed out
to me what a wonderful head the child had, feeling his frontal bone and
declaring he was sure to make a great scholar in his time. Dinky-Dunk,
grinning at the sober way in which I was swallowing this, pointedly
inquired of Terry whether it was Milton or Archimedes that Babe most
resembled as to skull formation. But it isn't Terry's blarney that has
made me capitulate; it's the fact that he has proved so companionable
and has slipped so quietly into his place in our little lonely circle of
lives on this ragged edge of nowhere.
And he's as clean as a cat, shaving every blessed morning with a little
old broken-handled razor which he strops on a strip of oiled bootleg.
He declares that razor to be the finest bit of steel in all the
Americas, and showed off before Olie and Olga yesterday morning by
shaving without a looking-glass, which trick he said he learned in the
army. He also gave Olie a hair-cut, which was badly needed, and on
Sunday has promised to rig up a soldering-iron and mend all my pans for
me. He looks little over twenty, but is really thirty and more, and has
been in India and Mexico and Alaska.
I caught him neatly darning his own woolen socks. Instead of betraying
shame at being detected in that effeminate pastime he proudly explained
that he'd learned to do a bit of stitching in the army. He hasn't many
possessions, but he's very neat in his arrangement of them. A good
soldier, he solemnly told me, always had to be a bit of an old maid.
"And you were a grand soldier, Terry, I know," I frankly told him. "I've
done a bit av killing in me time!" he proudly acknowledged. But as he
sat there darning his sock-heel he looked as though he couldn't kill a
field mouse. And in his idle hours he reads _Nick Carter_, a series of
paper-bound detective stories, almost worn to tatters, which he is going
through for the second or third time. These adventures, I find, he later
recounts to Olie, who is slowly but surely succumbing to the poison of
the penny-dreadful and the virus of the shilling-shocker! I even caught
Dinky-Dunk sitting up over one of these blood-curdling romances the
other night, though he laughed a little as I dragged him off to bed, at
the absurdity of the situations. Terry's eyes lighted up when he saw my
books and magazines. When I told him he could take anything he wanted,
he beamed and said it would sure be a glorious winter he'd be having,
with all that book-reading when the long nights came. But before those
long nights are over I'm going to try to pilot Terry into the channels
of respectable literature.
_Saturday the Sixteenth_
I love the milky smell of my Dinky-Dink better than the perfume of any
flower that ever grew. He's so strong now that he can almost lift
himself up by his two little hands. At least he can really and actually
give a little _pull_. Two days ago our touring-car arrived. It is a
beauty. It skims over these smooth prairie trails like a yacht. From now
on we can run into Buckhorn, do our shopping, and run out again inside
of two or three hours. We can also reach the larger towns without
trouble and it will be so much easier to gather up what we need for Casa
Grande. Dinky-Dink seems to love the car. Ten minutes after we have
started out he is always fast asleep. Olga, who holds him in the back
seat when I get tired, sits in rapt and silent bliss as we rock along at
thirty miles an hour. And no wonder, for it's the next best thing to
sailing out on the briny deep!
I can't help thinking of Terry's attitude toward Olga. He doesn't
actively dislike her, but he quietly ignores her, even more so than Olie
does. I've been wondering why neither of them has succumbed to such
physical grandeur. Perhaps it's because they're physical themselves. And
then I think her largeness oppresses Terry, for no man, whether he's
been a soldier or not, likes to be overtopped by a woman.
The one exception, of course, is Percy. But Percy is a man of
imagination. He can realize that Olga is more than a mere type. He
agrees with me that she's a sort of miracle. To Terry she's only a mute
and muscular Finnish servant-girl with an arm like a grenadier's. To
Percy she is a goddess made manifest, a superhuman body of superhuman
vigor and beauty and at the same time a body crowned with majesty and
robed in mystery. And I still incline to Percy's opinion. Olga is always
wonderful to me. Her lips are such a soft and melting red, the red of
perfect animal health. The very milkiness of her skin is an
advertisement of that queenly and all-conquering vitality which lifts
her so above the ordinary ruck of humanity. And her great ruminative
eyes are as clear and limpid as any woodland pool.
She blushes rose color sometimes when Percy comes in. I think he finds a
secret joy in sensing that reaction in anything so colossal. But he
defends himself behind that mask of cool impersonality which is the last
attribute of the mental aristocrat, no matter what his feelings may be.
His attitude toward Terry, by the way, is a remarkably companionable one
in view of the fact of their earlier contentions. They can let by-gones
be by-gones and talk and smoke and laugh together. It is Terry, if any
one, who is just a wee bit condescending. And I imagine that it is the
aura of Olga which has brought about this oddly democratizing condition
of affairs. She seems to give a new relationship to things, softening a
point here and illuminating a point there as quietly as moonlight itself
can do.
_Monday the Seventeenth_
Yesterday Olga carried home a whole pailful of mushrooms, for an Indian
summer seems to have brought on a second crop of them. They were lovely.
But she refused to eat any. I asked her why. She heaved her huge
shoulders and said she didn't know. But she does, I feel sure, and I've
been wondering why she's afraid of anything that can taste so good, once
they are creamed and heaped on a square of toast. As for me
I love 'em, I love 'em, and who shall dare
To chide me for loving that mushroom fare?
_Wednesday the Nineteenth_
I found myself singing for all I was worth as I did my work this
morning. Dinky-Dunk came and stood in the door and said it sounded like
old times. I feel strong again and have ventured to ask my lord and
master if I couldn't have the weentiest gallop on Paddy once more. But
he's made me promise to wait for a week or two. The last two or three
nights have been quite cold, and away off, miles and miles across the
prairie, we can see the glow of fires where different ranchers are
burning their straw, after the wind-stackers have blown it from the
threshing machines. Sometimes it burns all night long.
_Friday the Twenty-first_
I have this morning found out why Olga won't eat mushrooms. It was very
cold again last night, for this time of year. Percy came over, and we
had a ripping fire and popped Ontario pop-corn with Ontario maple sirup
poured over it. Olga and Olie and Terry all came in and sat about the
stove. And being absolutely happy and contented and satisfied with life
in general, we promptly fell to talking horrors, the same as a cook
stirs lemon juice into her pudding-sauce, I suppose, to keep its
sweetness from being too cloying. That revel in the by-paths of the
Poesque began with Dinky-Dunk's casual reference to the McKinnon ranch
and Percy's inquiry as to why its earlier owner had given it up. So
Dinky-Dunk recounted the story of Andrew Cochrane's death. And it was
noticeable that poor old Olie betrayed visible signs of distress at this
tale of a young ranchman being frozen to death alone in his shack in
mid-winter. So Dinky-Dunk, apparently with malice prepense, enlarged on
his theme, describing how all young Cochrane's stock had starved in
their stalls and how his collie dog which had been chained to a
kennel-box outside the shack had first drawn attention to the tragedy. A
government inspector, in riding past, had noticed the shut-up shack, had
pounded on the door, and had promptly discovered the skeleton of the dog
with a chain and collar still attached to the clean-picked neckbones.
And inside the shack he had found the dead man himself, as life-like,
because of the intense cold, as though he had fallen asleep the night
before.
It was not a pleasant story, and my efforts to picture the scene gave me
rather a bristly feeling along the pin-feather area of my anatomy. And
again undoubted signs of distress were manifest in poor Olie. The face
of that simple-souled Swede took on such a look of wondering trouble
that Dinky-Dunk deliberately and at great detail told of a ghost that
had been repeatedly seen in an abandoned wickyup a little farther west
in the province.
And that, of course, fired the Celtic soul of Terry, who told of the
sister of his Ould Counthry master who had once been taken to a
hospital. And just at dusk on the third day after that his young master
was walking down the dark hall. As he passed his sister's door, there
she stood all in white, quietly brushing her hair, as plain as day to
his eyes. And with that the master rushed down-stairs to his mother
asking how Sheila had got back from the hospital. And his old mother,
being slow of movement, started for Sheila's room. But before she so
much as reached the foot of the stairs a neighbor woman came running in,
wiping her eyes with her shawl-end and saying, "Poor Sheila died this
minute over t' the hospital!" I can't tell it as Terry told it, and I
don't know whether he himself believed in it or not, but the huge bulk
of Olie Larson sat there bathed in a fine sweat, with his eyes fixed on
the stove front. He was by no means happy, and yet he seemed unable to
tear himself away, just as Gimlets and I used to sit chained to the spot
while Grandfather Heppelwhite continued to intone the dolorous history
of the "Babes in the Woods" until our ultimate and inevitable collapse
into tears!
So Percy, who is not without his spirit of ragging, told several
whoppers, which he later confessed came from the Society of Psychical
Research records. And I huskily recounted Uncle Carlton's story of the
neurasthenic lady patient who went into a doctor's office and there
beheld a skull standing on his polished rosewood desk. Then, as she sat
staring at it, this skull started to move slowly toward her. It later
turned out to be only a plaster-of-Paris paper weight, and a mouse had
got inside it and found a piece of cracker there--and a cracker, I had
to explain to Percy, was the name under which a biscuit usually
masqueraded in America. That mouse, in its efforts to get the last of
that cracker, had, of course, shifted the skull along the polished wood.
This reminded Dinky-Dunk of the three medical students who had tried to
frighten their landlady's daughter by smuggling an arm from the
dissecting room and hiding it under the girl's pillow. Dinky-Dunk even
solemnly avowed that the three men were college chums of his. They
waited to hear the girl's scream, but as there was nothing but silence
they finally stole into the room. And there they saw the girl sitting on
the floor, holding the arm in her hands. As she sat there she was
mumbling to herself and eating one end of it! Of course the poor thing
had gone stark staring mad.
Olie groaned audibly at this and wiped his forehead with his
coat-sleeve. But before he could get away Terry started to tell of the
four-bottle Irish sea captain who was sober only when at sea and one
night in port stumbled up to bed three sheets in the wind. When he had
navigated into what he thought was his own room he was astounded to find
a man already in bed there, and even drunker than he was himself, too
drunk, in fact, to move. And even the candles had been left burning.
But the old captain climbed over next to the wall, clothes and all, and
would have been fast asleep in two minutes if two stout old ladies
hadn't come in and started to cry and say a prayer or two at the side of
the bed. Thereupon the old captain, muddled as he was, quietly but
inquisitively reached over and touched the man beside him. _And that man
was cold as ice!_ The captain gave one howl and made for the door. But
the old ladies went first, and they all rolled down the stairs one after
the other and the three of them up and ran like the wind. "And niver
wanst did they stop," declared the brogue-mouthing Terry, "till they
lept flat against the sea-wall!"
Olie, who had moved away to the far end of the table, got up at this
point and went to the door and looked out. He sighed lugubriously as he
stared into the darkness of the night. The outer gloom, apparently, was
too much for him, as he came slowly and reluctantly back to his chair at
the far end of the table and it was plain to see that he was as
frightened as a five-year-old child. The men, I suppose, would have
badgered him until midnight, for Terry had begun a story of a negro
who'd been sent to rob a grave and found the dead man not quite dead.
But I declared that we'd had enough of horrors and declined to hear
anything more about either ghosts or deaders. I was, in fact, getting
just a wee bit creepy along the nerve-ends myself. And Babe whimpered a
little in his cradle and brought us all suddenly back from the Wendigo
Age to the time of the kerosene lamp. "Fra' witches and warlocks," I
solemnly intoned, "fra' wurricoos and evil speerits, and fra' a' ferly
things that wheep and gang bump in the nicht, Guid Lord deliver us!" And
that incantation, I feel sure, cleared the air for both my own
sprite-threatened offspring and for the simple-minded Olie himself,
although Dinky-Dunk explained that my Scotch was rather worse than the
stories.
But it was this morning after breakfast that I learned from Olga why she
never cared to eat mushrooms. And all day long her story has been
hanging between me and the sun, like a cloud. Not that there is
anything so wonderful about the story itself, outside of its naked
tragedy. But I think it was more the way that huge placid-eyed girl told
it, with her broken English and her occasional pauses to grope after the
right word. Or perhaps it was because it came as such a grim reality
after the trifling grotesqueries of the night before. At any rate, as I
heard it this morning it seemed as terrible as anything in Tolstoi's
_Heart of Darkness_, and more than once sent my thoughts back to the
sorrows of the house of OEdipus. It startled me a little, too, for I
never thought to catch an echo of Greek tragedy out of the full soft
lips of a Finnish girl who was helping me wash my breakfast dishes.
It began as I was deciding on my dinner menu, and looked to see if all
our mushrooms had been used up. That prompted me to ask the girl why she
never ate them. I could see a barricaded look come into her eyes but she
merely shrugged and said that sometimes they were poison and killed
people. I told her that this was absurd and that any one with ordinary
intelligence soon got to know a meadow mushroom when he saw one. But
sometimes, Olga insisted, they were death cups. If you ate a death cup
you died, and nothing could save you. I tried to convince her that this
was just a peasant superstition, but she announced that she had seen
death cups, many of them, and had seen people who had been killed by
them. And then brokenly, and with many heavy gestures of hesitation, she
told me the story.
Nearly seventy miles northwest of us, up near her old home, so she said,
a Pole named Andrei Przenikowski and his wife used to live. They had one
son, whose name was Jozef. They were poor, always poor, and could never
succeed. So when Jozef was fifteen years old he went to the coast to
make his fortune. And the old father and mother had a hard time of it,
for old Andrei found it no easy thing to get about, having had his feet
frozen years before. He stumped around like a hen with frost-bitten
claws, Olga said, and his wife, old as she was, had to help him in the
fields. One whole winter, he told Olga's father, they had lived on
turnips. But season after season dragged on, and still they existed, God
knows how. Of Jozef they never heard again. But with Jozef himself it
was a different story. The boy went up to Alaska, before the days of the
Klondike strike. There he worked in the fisheries, and in the lumber
camps, and still later he joined a mining outfit. Then he went in to the
Yukon.
That was twelve years after he had first left home. He was a strong man
by this time and spoke English very well. And the next year he struck
luck, and washed up a great deal of gold, thousands of dollars' worth of
gold. But he saved it all, for he had never forgotten the old folks on
their little farm. So he gathered up his money and went down to Seattle,
and then crossed to Vancouver. From there he made his way back to his
old home, dressed like a man of the world and wearing a big gold watch
and chain and a gold ring. And when he walked in on the old folks they
failed to recognize him--and that Jozef thought the finest of jokes. He
filled the little sod-covered shack with his laughter, for he was happy.
He knew that for the rest of their days their troubles had all ended. So
he walked about and made plans, but still he did not tell them who he
was. It was so good a joke that he intended to make the most of it. But
he said that he had news of their Jozef, who was not so badly off for a
ne'er-do-well. Before he left the next day, he promised, they should be
told about their boy. And he laughed again and slapped his pocketful of
gold and the two old folks sat blinking at him in awe, until he
announced that he was hungry and confided to them that his friend Jozef
had once told him there were wonderful mushrooms round-about at that
season of the year.
Andrei and his wife talked together in the cow-shed, before the old man
hobbled out to gather the mushrooms. Poverty and suffering had made them
hard and the sight of this stranger with so much gold was too much for
them. So it was a plate full of death cups which Andrei's wife cooked
for the brown-faced stranger with the loud laugh. And they stood about
and watched him eat them. Then he died, as Andrei knew he must die. But
the old woman hid in the cow-shed until it was over, for it took some
time. Together then the old couple searched the dead man's bags and his
pockets. They found papers and certain marks on his body. They knew then
that they had murdered their own son. The old man hobbled all the way to
the nearest village, where he sent a letter to Olga's father and bought
a clothes-line to take home. The journey took him an entire day. With
that clothes-line Andrei Przenikowski and his wife hanged themselves,
from one of the rafters in the cow-shed.
Olga said that she was only five years old then, but she remembered
driving over with the others, after the letter had come to her father's
place. She can still remember seeing the two old bodies hanging side by
side and twisting slowly about in the wind. And she saw what was left of
the mushrooms. She says she can never forget it and dreams of it quite
often. And Olga is not what you would call emotional. She told me, as
she dried her hands and hung up the dish-pan, that she can still see her
people staring down at what was left of that plate of poisoned death
cups, which had turned quite black, almost as black as the dead man she
saw them lift up on the dirty bed.
_Monday the Twelfth_
Yesterday was Sunday and Olga in her best bib and tucker sat out in the
sun with Dinky-Dink. She seemed perfectly happy merely to hold him. I
looked out, to make sure he was all right, for a few days before Olga
had nearly given me heart failure by balancing my boy on one huge hand,
as though he were a mutton-chop, so that the adoring Olie might see him
kick. As I stood watching Olga crooning above Buddy Boy, Percy rode up.
Then he came over and joined Olga, who carefully lifted up the veil
covering Dinky-Dink's face, and showed him off to the somewhat
intimidated Percy. Percy poked a finger at him, and made absurd noises,
and felt his legs as Olga directed and then sat down in front of Olga.
They talked there for a long time, quite oblivious of everything about
them. At least Percy talked, for Olga's replies seemed mostly
monosyllabic. But she kept bathing him in that mystic moonlight stare
of hers and sometimes she showed her teeth in a slow and wistful sort of
smile. Percy clattered on, quite unconscious that I was standing in the
doorway staring at him. They seemed to be great pals. And I've been
wondering what they talked about.
_Wednesday the Fourteenth_
To-day after dinner Dinky-Dunk took the Boy and held him up on Paddy's
back, where he looked like a bump on a log. And that started me thinking
that it wouldn't be so long before my little Snoozerette had a pony of
his own and would be cantering off across the prairie like a monkey on a
circus horse. For I want my boy to ride, and ride well. And then a
little later he would be cantering off to school. And then it wouldn't
be such a great while before he'd be hitting the trail side by side with
some clear-eyed prairie girl on a dappled pinto, and I'd be a
silvery-haired old lady wondering if that clear-eyed girl was good
enough for my son! And there I was, as usual, dreaming of the future!
All day long the fact that Dinky-Dunk is getting extravagant has been
hitting me just under the fifth rib. So I asked him if we could really
afford a six-cylinder car with tan slip-covers and electric lights.
"Afford it?" he echoed, "of course we can afford it. We can afford
anything. Hang it all, our lean days are over and we haven't had the
imagination to wake up to the fact. And d'you know what I'm going to do
if certain things come my way? I'm going to send you and the Babe down
to New York for the winter!"
"And where will you be?" I promptly inquired. The look of mingled pride
and determination went out of his face.
"Oh, I'll have to hang around the Polar regions up here to look after
things. But you and the Boy have got to have your chance. And I'll come
down for two weeks at Easter and bring you home with me!"
"And will you be enjoying it up here?" I inquired.
"Of course I won't," acknowledged Dinky-Dunk. "But think what it will
mean to you, Gee-Gee, to have a few months in the city again! And think
what you've been missing!"
"Goosey-goosey-gander!" I said as I got his foolish old head in
Chancery. "I want you to listen to me. There's nothing I've been
missing. And you are plum locoed, Honey Chile, if you think I could ever
be happy away from you, in New York or any other city. And I wouldn't go
there for the winter if you gave me the Plaza and all the Park for a
back yard!"
That declaration of mine seemed to puzzle him. "But think what it would
mean to the Boy!" he contended.
"Well, what?" I demanded.
"Oh, good--er--good pictures and music and all that sort of thing!" he
vaguely explained. I couldn't help laughing at him.
"But, Dinky-Dunk, don't you think Babe's a month or so too young to take
up Debussy and the Post-Impressionists, you big, foolish, adorable old
muddle-headed captor of helpless ladies' hearts!" And I firmly announced
that he could never, never get rid of me.
_Thursday the Fifteenth_
Now that Olga is working altogether inside with me she is losing quite a
little of her sunburn. Her skin is softer and she has acquired a little
more of the Leonardo di Vinci look. She almost seems to be getting
spiritualized--but it may be simply because she's lengthened her skirts.
She loves Babe, and, I'm afraid, is rather spoiling him. I find her a
better and better companion, not only because she talks more, but
because she seems in some way to be climbing up to a newer level.
Between whiles, I'm teaching her to cook. She learns readily, and is
proud of her progress. But the thing of which she is proudest is her
corsets. And they _do_ make a difference. Even Dinky-Dunk has noticed
this. Yesterday he stood and stared after her.
"By gum," he sagely remarked, "that girl is getting a figure!" Men are
so absurd. When this same Olga was going about half uncovered he never
even noticed her. Now that she's mystified her nether limbs with a
little drapery he stands staring after her as though she were a Venus de
Milo come to life. And Olga is slowly but surely losing a little of her
Arcadian simplicity. Yesterday I caught her burning up her cowhide
boots. She is ashamed of them. And she is spending most of her money on
clothes, asking me many strange questions as to apparel and carrying off
my fashion magazines to her bedroom for secret perusal. For the first
time in her life she is using cold cream. And the end seems to justify
the means, for her skin is now like apple blossoms. Rodin, I feel sure,
would have carried that woman across America on his back, once to have
got her into his atelier!
Last week I persuaded Terry to take a try at Meredith and lent him my
green cloth copy of _Harry Richmond_. Three days ago I found the seventh
page turned down at the corner, and suspecting that this marked the
final frontier of his advance, I tied a strand of green silk thread
about the volume. It was still there this morning, though Terry daily
and stoutly maintains that he's getting on grand with that fine green
book of mine! But at noon to-day when Dinky-Dunk got back from Buckhorn
he handed Terry a parcel, and I noticed the latter glanced rather
uneasily about as he unwrapped it. This afternoon I discovered that it
held two new books in paper covers. One was _The Hidden Hand_ and the
other was called _The Terror of Tamaraska Gulch_. Terry, of late, has
been doing his reading in his own room. And Nick Carter, apparently, is
not to be so easily displaced. But a man who can make you read his books
for the third time must be a genius. If I were an author, that's the
sort of man I'd envy. And I think I'll try Percival Benson with _The
Terror of Tamaraska Gulch_ when Terry is through with it!
_Friday the Sixteenth_
We were just finishing dinner to-day, and an uncommonly good one it
seemed to me, and I was looking contentedly about my little family
circle, wondering what more life could hold for a big healthy hulk of a
woman like me, when the drone and purr of an approaching motor-car broke
through the sound of our talk. Dinky-Dunk, in fact, was laying down the
law about the farmer of the West, maintaining that he was a
broader-spirited and bigger-minded man than his brother of the East, and
pointing out that the westerner's wife was a queen who if she had little
ease at least had great honor. And I was just thinking that one glorious
thing about this same queen was that she at least escaped from all the
twentieth-century strain and dislocation in the relationship between
city men and women, when the hum of that car brought me back to earth
and reminded me that I might have a tableful of guests to feed. The car
itself drew up, with a flutter of its engine, half-way between the shack
and the corral, and at that sound I imagine we all rather felt like
Robinson Crusoes listening to the rattle of an anchor cable in Juan
Fernandez's quietest bay. And through the open window I could make out a
huge touring-car pretty well powdered with dust and with no less than
six men in it.
Terry, all eyes, dove for the window, and Olie, all mouth, for the door.
Olga leaned half-way across the table to look out, and I did a little
staring myself. The only person who remained quiet was Dinky-Dunk. He
knocked out his pipe, stuck it in his pocket, put on his hat and caught
up a package of papers from his work table. Then he stalked out, with
his gray fighting look about the eyes. He went out just as one of the
bigger men was about to step down from the car, so that the bigger man
changed his mind and climbed back in his seat, like a king reascending
his throne. And they all sat there so sedate and non-committal and
dignified, rather like dusty pallbearers in an undertaker's wagonette,
that I promptly decided they had come to foreclose a mortgage and take
my Dinky-Dunk's land away from him, at one fell swoop!
I could see my lord walk right up to the running-board, with curt little
nods to his visitors, and I knew by the trim of his shoulders that there
was trouble ahead. Yet they started talking quietly enough. But inside
of two minutes my Dinky-Dunk was shaking his fist in the face of one of
the younger and bigger men and calling him a liar and somewhat
tautologically accusing him of knowing that he was a liar and that he
always had been one. This altogether ungentlemanly language naturally
brought forth language quite as ungentlemanly from the accused, who
stood up in the car and took his turn at dancing about and shaking his
own fist. And then the others seemed to take sides, and voices rose to a
shout, and I saw that there was going to be another fight at Casa
Grande--and I promptly decided to be in it. So off went my apron and
out I went.
It was funny. For, oddly enough, the effect of my entrance on the scene
was like that on a noisy class-room at the teacher's return. The tumult
stopped, rather sheepishly, and that earful of men instinctively slipped
on their armor plate of over-obsequious sex gallantry. They knew I
wasn't a low-brow. I went right up to them, though something about their
funereal discomfiture made me smile. So Dinky-Dunk, mad as a wet hen
though he was, had to introduce every man-jack of them to me! One was a
member of Parliament, and another belonged to some kind of railway
committee, and another was a road construction official, and another was
a mere capitalist who owned two or three newspapers. The man Dinky-Dunk
had been calling a liar was a civil engineer, although it seemed to me
that he had been acting decidedly uncivil. They ventured a platitude
about the beautiful Indian summer weather and labored out a ponderous
joke or two about such a bad-tempered man having such a good-looking
wife--for which I despised them all. But I could see that even if my
intrusion had put the soft pedal on their talk it had also left
everything uncomfortably tentative and non-committal. For some reason or
other this was a man's fight, one which had to be settled in a man's
way. So I decided to retire with outward dignity even if with inward
embarrassment. But I resented their uncouth commercial gallantry almost
as much as I abominated their trying to bully my True Love. And I gave
them one Parthian shot as I turned away.
"The last prize-fight I saw was in a sort of _souteneur's_ cabaret in
the Avenue des Tilleuls," I sweetly explained to them. "But that was
nearly three years ago. So if there is going to be a bout in my back
yard, I trust you gentlemen will be so good as to call me!"
And smiling up into their somewhat puzzled faces, I turned on my heel
and went into the house. One of the men laughed loud and deep, at this
speech of mine, and a couple of the others seemed to sit puzzling over
it. Yet two minutes after I was inside the shack that most uncivil civil
engineer and Dinky-Dunk were at it again. Their language was more than I
should care to repeat. The end of it was, however, that the six dusty
pallbearers all stepped stiffly down out of their car and Dinky-Dunk
shouted for Olie and Terry. At first I thought it was to be a duel, only
I couldn't make out how it could be fought with a post-hole augur and a
few lengths of jointed gaspipe, for this was what the men carried away
with them.
Away across the prairie I could see them apparently engaged in the silly
and quite profitless occupation of putting down a post-hole where it
wasn't in the least needed, and then clustering about this hole like a
bunch of professorial bigwigs about a new specimen on a microscope
slide. Then they moved on and made another hole, and still another,
until I got tired of watching them. It was two hours later before they
came back. Their voices now seemed more facetious and there was more
laughing and joking, Dinky-Dunk and the uncivil civil engineer being the
only quiet ones. And then the car engine purred and hummed and they
climbed heavily in and lighted cigars and waved hands and were off in a
cloud of dust.
But Dinky-Dunk, when he came back to the shack with his papers, was in
no mood for talking. And I knew better than to try to pump him. To-night
he came in early for supper and announced that he'd have to leave for
Winnipeg right away and might even have to go on to Ottawa. So I cooked
his supper and packed his bag and held Babe up for him to kiss good-by.
But still I didn't bother him with questions, for I was afraid of bad
news. And he knew that I knew I could trust him.
He kissed me good-by in a tragically tender, or rather a tenderly tragic
sort of way, which made me wonder for a moment if he was possibly never
coming back again. So I made 'em all wait while I took one extra, for
good measure, in case I should be a grass widow for the rest of my
days.
To-night, however, I sat Terry down at the end of the table and third
degreed him to the queen's taste. The fight, as far as I can learn from
this circuitous young Irishman, is all about a right of way through our
part of the province. Dinky-Dunk, it seems, has been working for it for
over a year. And the man he called wicked names had been sent out by the
officials to report on the territory. My husband claims he was bribed by
the opposition party and turned in a report saying our district was
without water. He also proclaimed that our land--_our_ land, mark
you!--was unvaryingly poor and inferior soil! No wonder my Dinky-Dunk
had stormed! Then Terry rather disquieted me by chortlingly announcing
that they had put one over on the whole bunch. For, three days before,
he'd quietly put down twenty soil and water-test holes and carefully
filled them in again. But he'd found what he was after. And that little
army of paid knockers, he acknowledged, had been steered into the
neighborhood where the soil was deepest and the water was nearest. And
that soon showed who the liar was, for of course everything came out as
Dinky-Dunk wanted it to come out!
But this phase of it I didn't discuss with Terry, for I had no desire to
air my husband's moral obliquities before his hired man. Yet I am still
disturbed by what I have heard. Oh, Dinky-Dunk, I never imagined you
were one bit sly, even in business!
_Sunday the Eighteenth_
Olie and Terry seem convinced of the fact that Dinky-Dunk's farming has
been a success. We have saved all our wheat crop, and it's a whopper.
Terry, with his crazy Celtic enthusiasms, says that by next year they'll
be calling Dinky-Dunk the Wheat King of the West. Olga and Percy went
buggy riding this afternoon. I wish I had some sort of scales to weight
my Snoozerette. I know he's doubled in the last three weeks.
_Sunday the Twenty-fifth_
My Dinky-Dunk is home again. He looks a little tired and hollow-eyed,
but when the Boy crowed and smiled up at him his poor tired face
softened so wonderfully that it brought the tears to my eyes. I finally
persuaded him to stop petting Babe and pay a little attention to me.
After supper he opened up his extra hand-bag and hauled out the heaps of
things he'd brought Babe and me. Then I sat on his knee and held his
ears and made him blow away the smoke, every shred of it, so I could
kiss him in my own particular places.
_Tuesday the Twenty-seventh_
Dinky-Dunk has sailed off to Buckhorn to do some telegraphing he should
have done Saturday night. My suspicions about his slyness, by the way,
were quite unfounded. It was the guileless-eyed Terry who led those
railway officials out to the spot where he'd already secretly tested for
water and found signs of it. And Terry can't even understand why
Dinky-Dunk is so toweringly angry about it all!
_Wednesday the Twenty-eighth_
When Dinky-Dunk came in last night, after his drive out from Buckhorn,
there was a look on his face that rather frightened me. I backed him up
against the door, after he'd had a peep at the Boy, and said, "Let me
smell your breath, sir!" For with that strange light in his eyes I
surely thought he'd been drinking. "Lips that touch liquor," I sang,
"shall never touch mine!"
But I was mistaken. And Dinky-Dunk only laughed in a quiet inward
rumbling sort of way that was new to him. "I believe I am drunk, Boca
Chica," he solemnly confessed, "drunk as a lord!" Then he took both my
hands in his.
"D'you know what's going to happen?" he demanded. And of course I
didn't. Then he hurled it point-blank at me.
"_The railway's going to come!_"
"Come where?" I gasped.
"Come here, right across our land! It's settled. And there's no mistake
about it this time. Inside of ten months there'll be choo-choo cars
steaming past Casa Grande!"
"Skookum!" I shouted.
"And there'll be a station within a mile of where you stand! And inside
of two years this seventeen or eighteen hundred acres of land will be
worth forty dollars an acre, easily, and perhaps even fifty. And what
that means you can figure out for yourself!"
"Whoopee!" I gasped, trying in vain to figure out how much forty times
seventeen hundred was.
But that was not all. It would do away with the road haul to the
elevator, which might have taken most of the profit out of his grain
growing. To team wheat into Buckhorn would have been a terrible
discount, no matter what luck he might have with his crops. So he'd been
moving heaven and earth to get the steel to come his way. He'd pulled
wires and interviewed members and guaranteed a water-tank supply and
promised a right of way and made use of his old engineering
friends--until his battle was won. And his last fight had been against
the liar who'd sent in false reports about his district. But that was
over now, and Casa Grande will no longer be the jumping-off place of
civilization, the dot on the wilderness. It will be on the time-tables
and the mail-routes, and I know my Dinky-Dunk will be the first mayor of
the new city, if there ever is a city to be mayor of!
_Friday the Thirtieth_
Dinky-Dunk came in at noon to-day, tiptoed over to the crib to see if
the Boy was all right, and then came and put his hands on my shoulders,
looking me solemnly in the eye: "What do you suppose has happened?" he
demanded.
"Another railroad," I ventured.
He shook his head. Of course it was useless for me to try to guess. I
pushed my finger against Dinky-Dunk's Adam's apple and asked him what
the news was.
"Percival Benson Woodhouse has just calmly announced to me that, next
week, _he's going to marry Olga_," was my husband's answer.
And he wondered why I smiled.
_Sunday the First_
Little Dinky-Dink is fast asleep in his hand-carved Scandinavian cradle.
The night is cool, so we have a fire going. Big Dinky-Dunk, who has been
smoking his pipe, is sitting on one side of the table, and I am sitting
on the other. Between us lies the bundle of house-plans which have just
been mailed up to us from Philadelphia. This is the second night we've
pored over them. And we've decided what we're to do at Casa Grande.
We're to have a telephone, as soon as the railway gets through, and a
wind-mill and running water, and a new barn with a big soft-water tank
at one end, and a hot-water furnace in the new house and sleeping
porches and a butler's pantry and a laundry chute--and next winter in
California, if we want it. And Dinky-Dunk blames himself for never
having had brains enough to plant an avenue or two of poplars or
Manitoba maples about Casa Grande, for now we'll have to wait a few
years for foliage and shade. And he intends to have a playground for
little Dinky-Dink, for he agrees with me that our boy must be strong and
manly and muscular, and must not use tobacco in any form until he is
twenty at least. And Dinky-Dunk has also agreed that I shall do all the
punishing--if any punishing is ever necessary! His father, by the way,
has just announced that he wants Babe to go to McGill and then to
Oxford. But I have been insisting on Harvard, and I shall be firm about
this.
That promised to bring us to a dead-lock, so we went back to our
house-plans again, and Dinky-Dunk pointed out that the new living-room
would be bigger than all our present shack and the annex put together.
And that caused me to stare about our poor little cat-eyed cubby-hole of
a wickyup and for the first time realize that our first home was to be
wiped off the map. And nothing would ever be the same again, and even
the prairie over which I had stared in my joy and my sorrow would
always be different! A lump came in my throat. And when Olga came in and
I handed Dinky-Dink to her she could see that my lashes were wet. But
she couldn't understand.
So I slipped over to the piano and began to play. Very quietly I sang
through Herman Lohr's Irish song that begins:
In the dead av the night, acushla,
When the new big house is still ...
But before I got to the last two verses I'm afraid my voice was rather
shaky.
In the dead av the year, acushla,
When me wide new fields are brown,
I think av a wee ould house,
At the edge av an ould gray town!
I think av the rush-lit faces,
Where the room and loaf was small:
_But the new years seem the lean years,
And the ould years, best av all!_
Dinky-Dunk came and stood close beside me. "Has my Gee-Gee a big sadness
in her little prairie heart?" he asked as he slipped his arms about me.
But I was sniffling and couldn't answer him. And the cling of his
blessed big arms about me only seemed to make everything worse. So I was
bawling openly when he held up my face and helped himself to what must
have been a terribly briny kiss. But I slipped away into my bedroom, for
I'm not one of those apple-blossom women who can weep and still look
pretty. And for two blessed hours I've been sitting here, Matilda Anne,
wondering if our new life will be as happy as our old life was.... Those
old days are over and gone, and the page must be turned. And on that
last page I was about to write "_Tamám shud_." But kinglike and
imperative through the quietness of Casa Grande I hear the call of my
beloved little _tenor robusto_--and if it is the voice of hunger it is
also the voice of hope!
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Popular Copyright Novels
_AT MODERATE PRICES_
Ask Your Dealer for a Complete List of A. L. Burt Company's Popular
Copyright Fiction
Adventures of Jimmie Dale, The. By Frank L. Packard.
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. By A. Conan Doyle.
After House, The. By Mary Roberts Rinehart.
Ailsa Paige. By Robert W. Chambers.
Alton of Somasco. By Harold Bindloss.
Amateur Gentleman, The. By Jeffery Farnol.
Anna, the Adventuress. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Anne's House of Dreams. By L. M. Montgomery.
Around Old Chester. By Margaret Deland.
Athalie. By Robert W. Chambers.
At the Mercy of Tiberius. By Augusta Evans Wilson.
Auction Block, The. By Rex Beach.
Aunt Jane of Kentucky. By Eliza C. Hall.
Awakening of Helena Richie. By Margaret Deland.
Bab: a Sub-Deb. By Mary Roberts Rinehart.
Barrier, The. By Rex Beach.
Barbarians. By Robert W. Chambers.
Bargain True, The. By Nalbro Bartley.
Bar 20. By Clarence E. Mulford.
Bar 20 Days. By Clarence E. Mulford.
Bars of Iron, The. By Ethel M. Dell.
Beasts of Tarzan, The. By Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Beloved Traitor, The. By Frank L. Packard.
Beltane the Smith. By Jeffery Farnol.
Betrayal, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Beyond the Frontier. By Randall Parrish.
Big Timber. By Bertrand W. Sinclair.
Black Is White. By George Barr McCutcheon.
Blind Man's Eyes, The. By Wm. MacHarg and Edw. Balmer.
Bob, Son of Battle. By Alfred Ollivant.
Boston Blackie. By Jack Boyle.
Boy with Wings, The. By Berta Ruck.
Brandon of the Engineers. By Harold Bindloss.
Broad Highway, The. By Jeffery Farnol.
Brown Study, The. By Grace S. Richmond.
Bruce of the Circle A. By Harold Titus.
Buck Peters, Ranchman. By Clarence E. Mulford.
Business of Life, The. By Robert W. Chambers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Popular Copyright Novels
_AT MODERATE PRICES_
Ask Your Dealer for a Complete List of A. L. Burt Company's Popular
Copyright Fiction
Cabbages and Kings. By O. Henry.
Cabin Fever. By B. M. Bower.
Calling of Dan Matthews, The. By Harold Bell Wright.
Cape Cod Stories. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper. By James A. Cooper.
Cap'n Dan's Daughter. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
Cap'n Eri. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
Cap'n Jonah's Fortune. By James A. Cooper.
Cap'n Warren's Wards. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
Chain of Evidence, A. By Carolyn Wells.
Chief Legatee, The. By Anna Katharine Green.
Cinderella Jane. By Marjorie B. Cooke.
Cinema Murder, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
City of Masks, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.
Cleek of Scotland Yard. By T. W. Hanshew.
Cleek, The Man of Forty Faces. By Thomas W. Hanshew.
Cleek's Government Cases. By Thomas W. Hanshew.
Clipped Wings. By Rupert Hughes.
Clue, The. By Carolyn Wells.
Clutch of Circumstance, The. By Marjorie Benton Cooke.
Coast of Adventure, The. By Harold Bindloss.
Coming of Cassidy, The. By Clarence E. Mulford.
Coming of the Law, The. By Chas. A. Seltzer.
Conquest of Canaan, The. By Booth Tarkington.
Conspirators, The. By Robert W. Chambers.
Court of Inquiry, A. By Grace S. Richmond.
Cow Puncher, The. By Robert J. C. Stead.
Crimson Gardenia, The, and Other Tales of Adventure. By Rex Beach.
Cross Currents. By Author of "Pollyanna."
Cry in the Wilderness, A. By Mary E. Waller.
Danger, And Other Stories. By A. Conan Doyle.
Dark Hollow, The. By Anna Katharine Green.
Dark Star, The. By Robert W. Chambers.
Daughter Pays, The. By Mrs. Baillie Reynolds.
Day of Days, The. By Louis Joseph Vance.
Depot Master, The. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
Desired Woman, The. By Will N. Harben.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Popular Copyright Novels
_AT MODERATE PRICES_
Ask Your Dealer for a Complete List of A. L. Burt Company's Popular
Copyright Fiction
Destroying Angel, The. By Louis Jos. Vance.
Devil's Own, The. By Randall Parrish.
Double Traitor, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Empty Pockets. By Rupert Hughes.
Eyes of the Blind, The. By Arthur Somers Roche.
Eye of Dread, The. By Payne Erskine.
Eyes of the World, The. By Harold Bell Wright.
Extricating Obadiah. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
Felix O'Day. By F. Hopkinson Smith.
54-40 or Fight. By Emerson Hough.
Fighting Chance, The. By Robert W. Chambers.
Fighting Shepherdess, The. By Caroline Lockhart.
Financier, The. By Theodore Dreiser.
Flame, The. By Olive Wadsley.
Flamsted Quarries. By Mary E. Wallar.
Forfeit, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.
Four Million, The. By O. Henry.
Fruitful Vine, The. By Robert Hichens.
Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale, The. By Frank L. Packard.
Girl of the Blue Ridge, A. By Payne Erskine.
Girl from Keller's, The. By Harold Bindloss.
Girl Philippa, The. By Robert W. Chambers.
Girls at His Billet, The. By Berta Ruck.
God's Country and the Woman. By James Oliver Curwood.
Going Some. By Rex Beach.
Golden Slipper, The. By Anna Katharine Green.
Golden Woman, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.
Greater Love Hath No Man. By Frank L. Packard.
Greyfriars Bobby. By Eleanor Atkinson.
Gun Brand, The. By James B. Hendryx.
Halcyone. By Elinor Glyn.
Hand of Fu-Manchu, The. By Sax Rohmer.
Havoc. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Heart of the Desert, The. By Honoré Willsie.
Heart of the Hills, The. By John Fox, Jr.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Popular Copyright Novels
_AT MODERATE PRICES_
Ask Your Dealer for a Complete List of A. L. Burt Company's Popular
Copyright Fiction
Heart of the Sunset. By Rex Beach.
Heart of Thunder Mountain, The. By Edfrid A. Bingham.
Her Weight in Gold. By Geo. B. McCutcheon.
Hidden Children, The, By Robert W. Chambers.
Hidden Spring, The. By Clarence B. Kelland.
Hillman, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Hills of Refuge, The. By Will N. Harben.
His Official Fiancee. By Berta Ruck.
Honor of the Big Snows. By James Oliver Curwood.
Hopalong Cassidy. By Clarence E. Mulford.
Hound from the North, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.
House of the Whispering Pines, The. By Anna Katharine Green.
Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker. By S. Weir Mitchell, M.D.
I Conquered. By Harold Titus.
Illustrious Prince, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
In Another Girl's Shoes. By Berta Ruck.
Indifference of Juliet, The. By Grace S. Richmond.
Infelice. By Augusta Evans Wilson.
Initials Only. By Anna Katharine Green.
Inner Law, The. By Will N. Harben.
Innocent By Marie Corelli.
Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, The. By Sax Rohmer.
In the Brooding Wild. By Ridgwell Cullum.
Intriguers, The. By Harold Bindloss.
Iron Trail, The. By Rex Beach.
Iron Woman, The. By Margaret Deland.
I Spy. By Natalie Sumner Lincoln.
Japonette. By Robert W. Chambers.
Jean of the Lazy A. By B. M. Bower.
Jeanne of the Marshes. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Jennie Gerhardt. By Theodore Dreiser.
Judgment House, The. By Gilbert Parker.
Keeper of the Door, The. By Ethel M. Dell.
Keith of the Border. By Randall Parrish.
Kent Knowles: Ouahaug. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
Kingdom of the Blind, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Popular Copyright Novels
_AT MODERATE PRICES_
Ask Your Dealer for a Complete List of A. L. Burt Company's Popular
Copyright Fiction
King Spruce. By Holman Day.
King's Widow, The. By Mrs. Baillie Reynolds.
Knave of Diamonds, The. By Ethel M. Dell.
Ladder of Swords. By Gilbert Parker.
Lady Betty Across the Water. By C. N. & A. M. Williamson.
Land-Girl's Love Story, A. By Berta Ruck.
Landloper, The. By Holman Day.
Land of Long Ago, The. By Eliza Calvert Hall.
Land of Strong Men, The. By A. M. Chisholm.
Last Trail, The. By Zane Grey.
Laugh and Live. By Douglas Fairbanks.
Laughing Bill Hyde. By Rex Beach.
Laughing Girl, The. By Robert W. Chambers.
Law Breakers, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.
Lifted Veil, The. By Basil King.
Lighted Way, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Lin McLean. By Owen Wister.
Lonesome Land. By B. M. Bower.
Lone Wolf, The. By Louis Joseph Vance.
Long Ever Ago. By Rupert Hughes.
Lonely Stronghold, The. By Mrs. Baillie Reynolds.
Long Live the King. By Mary Roberts Rinehart.
Long Roll, The. By Mary Johnston.
Lord Tony's Wife. By Baroness Orczy.
Lost Ambassador. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Lost Prince, The. By Frances Hodgson Burnett.
Lydia of the Pines. By Honoré Willsie.
Maid of the Forest, The. By Randall Parrish.
Maid of the Whispering Hills, The. By Vingie E. Roe.
Maids of Paradise, The. By Robert W. Chambers.
Major, The. By Ralph Connor.
Maker of History, A. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Malefactor, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Man from Bar 20, The. By Clarence E. Mulford.
Man in Grey, The, By Baroness Orczy.
Man Trail, The. By Henry Oyen.
Man Who Couldn't Sleep, The. By Arthur Stringer.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Popular Copyright Novels
_AT MODERATE PRICES_
Ask Your Dealer for a Complete List of A. L. Burt Company's Popular
Copyright Fiction
Man with the Club Foot, The. By Valentine Williams.
Mary-'Gusta. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
Mary Moreland. By Marie Van Vorst.
Mary Regan. By Leroy Scott.
Master Mummer, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. By A. Conan Doyle.
Men Who Wrought, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.
Mischief Maker, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Missioner, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Miss Million's Maid. By Berta Ruck.
Molly McDonald. By Randall Parrish.
Money Master, The. By Gilbert Parker.
Money Moon, The. By Jeffery Farnol.
Mountain Girl, The. By Payne Erskine.
Moving Finger, The. By Natalie Sumner Lincoln.
Mr. Bingle. By George Barr McCutcheon.
Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Mr. Pratt. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
Mr. Pratt's Patients. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
Mrs. Belfame. By Gertrude Atherton.
Mrs. Red Pepper. By Grace S. Richmond
My Lady Caprice. By Jeffrey Farnol.
My Lady of the North. By Randall Parrish.
My Lady of the South. By Randall Parrish.
Mystery of the Hasty Arrow, The. By Anna K. Green.
Nameless Man, The. By Nataile Sumner Lincoln.
Ne'er-Do-Well, The. By Rex Beach.
Nest Builders, The. By Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale.
Net, The. By Rex Beach.
New Clarion. By Will N. Harben.
Night Operator, The. By Frank L. Packard.
Night Riders, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.
Nobody. By Louis Joseph Vance.
Okewood of the Secret Service. By the Author of "The Man with the Club
Foot."
One Way Trail, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.
Open Sesame. By Mrs. Baillie Reynolds.
Otherwise Phyllis. By Meredith Nicholson.
Outlaw, The. By Jackson Gregory.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Popular Copyright Novels
_AT MODERATE PRICES_
Ask Your Dealer for a Complete List of A. L. Burt Company's Popular
Copyright Fiction
Paradise Auction. By Nalbro Bartley.
Pardners. By Rex Beach.
Parrot & Co. By Harold MacGrath.
Partners of the Night. By Leroy Scott.
Partners of the Tide. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
Passionate Friends, The. By H. G. Wells.
Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail, The. By Ralph Connor.
Paul Anthony, Christian. By Hiram W. Hays.
Pawns Count, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
People's Man, A. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Perch of the Devil. By Gertrude Atherton.
Peter Ruff and the Double Four. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Pidgin Island. By Harold MacGrath.
Place of Honeymoon, The. By Harold MacGrath.
Pool of Flame, The. By Louis Joseph Vance.
Postmaster, The. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
Prairie Wife, The. By Arthur Stringer.
Price of the Prairie, The. By Margaret Hill McCarter.
Prince of Sinners, A. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Promise, The. By J. B. Hendryx.
Proof of the Pudding, The. By Meredith Nicholson.
Rainbow's End, The. By Rex Beach.
Ranch at the Wolverine, The. By B. M. Bower.
Ranching for Sylvia. By Harold Bindloss.
Ransom. By Arthur Somers Roche.
Reason Why, The. By Elinor Glyn.
Reclaimers, The. By Margaret Hill McCarter.
Red Mist, The. By Randall Parrish.
Red Pepper Burns. By Grace S. Richmond.
Red Pepper's Patients. By Grace S. Richmond.
Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary, The. By Anne Warner.
Restless Sex, The. By Robert W. Chambers.
Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, The. By Sax Rohmer.
Return of Tarzan, The. By Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Riddle of Night, The. By Thomas W. Hanshew.
Rim of the Desert, The. By Ada Woodruff Anderson.
Rise of Roscoe Paine, The. By J. C. Lincoln.
Rising Tide, The. By Margaret Deland.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Popular Copyright Novels
_AT MODERATE PRICES_
Ask Your Dealer for a Complete List of A. L. Burt Company's Popular
Copyright Fiction
Rocks of Valpré, The. By Ethel M. Dell.
Rogue by Compulsion, A. By Victor Bridges.
Room Number 3. By Anna Katharine Green.
Rose in the Ring, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.
Rose of Old Harpeth, The. By Maria Thompson Daviess.
Round the Corner in Gay Street. By Grace S. Richmond.
Second Choice. By Will N. Harben.
Second Violin, The. By Grace S. Richmond.
Secret History. By C. N. & A. M. Williamson.
Secret of the Reef, The. By Harold Bindloss.
Seven Darlings, The. By Gouverneur Morris.
Shavings. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
Shepherd of the Hills, The. By Harold Bell Wright.
Sheriff of Dyke Hole, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.
Sherry. By George Barr McCutcheon.
Side of the Angels, The. By Basil King.
Silver Horde, The. By Rex Beach.
Sin That Was His, The. By Frank L. Packard.
Sixty-first Second, The. By Owen Johnson.
Soldier of the Legion, A. By C. N. & A. M. Williamson.
Son of His Father, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.
Son of Tarzan, The. By Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Source, The. By Clarence Buddington Kelland.
Speckled Bird, A. By Augusta Evans Wilson.
Spirit in Prison, A. By Robert Hichens.
Spirit of the Border, The. (New Edition.) By Zane Grey.
Spoilers, The. By Rex Beach.
Steele of the Royal Mounted. By James Oliver Curwood.
Still Jim. By Honoré Willsie.
Story of Foss River Ranch, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.
Story of Marco, The. By Eleanor H. Porter.
Strange Case of Cavendish, The. By Randall Parrish.
Strawberry Acres. By Grace S. Richmond.
Sudden Jim. By Clarence B. Kelland.
Tales of Sherlock Holmes. By A. Conan Doyle.
Tarzan of the Apes. By Edgar R. Burroughs.
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar. By Edgar Rice Burroughs.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Popular Copyright Novels
_AT MODERATE PRICES_
Ask Your Dealer for a Complete List of A. L. Burt Company's Popular
Copyright Fiction
Tempting of Tavernake, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles. By Thos. Hardy.
Thankful's Inheritance. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
That Affair Next Door. By Anna Katharine Green.
That Printer of Udell's. By Harold Bell Wright.
Their Yesterdays. By Harold Bell Wright.
Thirteenth Commandment, The. By Rupert Hughes.
Three of Hearts, The. By Berta Ruck.
Three Strings, The. By Natalie Sumner Lincoln.
Threshold, The. By Marjorie Benton Cooke.
Throwback, The. By Alfred Henry Lewis.
Tish. By Mary Roberts Rinehart.
To M. L. G.; or, He Who Passed. Anon.
Trail of the Axe, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.
Trail to Yesterday, The. By Chas. A. Seltzer.
Treasure of Heaven, The. By Marie Corelli.
Triumph, The. By Will N. Harben.
T. Tembarom. By Frances Hodgson Burnett.
Turn of the Tide. By Author of "Pollyanna.".
Twenty-fourth of June, The. By Grace S. Richmond.
Twins of Suffering Creek, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.
Two-Gun Man, The. By Chas. A. Seltzer.
Uncle William. By Jeannette Lee.
Under Handicap. By Jackson Gregory.
Under the Country Sky. By Grace S. Richmond.
Unforgiving Offender, The. By John Reed Scott.
Unknown Mr. Kent, The. By Roy Norton.
Unpardonable Sin, The. By Major Rupert Hughes.
Up From Slavery. By Booker T. Washington.
Valiants of Virginia, The. By Hallie Ermine Rives.
Valley of Fear, The. By Sir A. Conan Doyle.
Vanished Messenger, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Vanguards of the Plains. By Margaret Hill McCarter.
Vashti. By Augusta Evans Wilson.
Virtuous Wives. By Owen Johnson.
Visioning, The. By Susan Glaspell.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Popular Copyright Novels
_AT MODERATE PRICES_
Ask Your Dealer for a Complete List of A. L. Burt Company's Popular
Copyright Fiction
Waif-o'-the-Sea. By Cyrus Townsend Brady.
Wall of Men, A. By Margaret H. McCarter.
Watchers of the Plans, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.
Way Home, The. By Basil King.
Way of an Eagle, The. By E. M. Dell.
Way of the Strong, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.
Way of These Women, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
We Can't Have Everything. By Major Rupert Hughes.
Weavers, The. By Gilbert Parker.
When a Man's a Man. By Harold Bell Wright.
When Wilderness Was King. By Randall Parrish.
Where the Trail Divides. By Will Lillibridge.
Where There's a Will. By Mary R. Rinehart.
White Sister, The. By Marion Crawford.
Who Goes There? By Robert W. Chambers.
Why Not. By Margaret Widdemer.
Window at the White Cat, The. By Mary Roberts Rinehart.
Winds of Chance, The. By Rex Beach.
Wings of Youth, The. By Elizabeth Jordan.
Winning of Barbara Worth, The. By Harold Bell Wright.
Wire Devils, The. By Frank L. Packard.
Winning the Wilderness. By Margaret Hill McCarter.
Wishing Ring Man, The. By Margaret Widdemer.
With Juliet in England. By Grace S. Richmond.
Wolves of the Sea. By Randall Parrish.
Woman Gives, The. By Owen Johnson.
Woman Haters, The. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
Woman in Question, The. By John Reed Scott.
Woman Thou Gavest Me, The. By Hall Caine.
Woodcarver of 'Lympus, The. By Mary E. Waller.
Wooing of Rosamond Fayre, The. By Berta Ruck.
World for Sale, The. By Gilbert-Parker.
Years for Rachel, The. By Berta Ruck.
Yellow Claw, The. By Sax Rohmer.
You Never Know Your Luck. By Gilbert Parker.
Zeppelin's Passenger, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
1. Punctuation has been normalized to contemporary standards.
2. Added Table of Contents not in original edition.
3. OE ligatures have been expanded.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prairie Wife, by Arthur Stringer
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRAIRIE WIFE ***
***** This file should be named 18875-8.txt or 18875-8.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/8/7/18875/
Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
http://gutenberg.org/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
[email protected]. Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at http://pglaf.org
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit http://pglaf.org
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card
donations. To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
http://www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
*** END: FULL LICENSE ***
