War Comes to the Big Bend

by Zane Grey

  Kathleen was the first to burst in upon Lenore with the wonderful news. Lenore could only gasp her intense eagerness and sit trembling, hands over her heart, while the child babbled.

  “I listened, and I peeped in,” was Kathleen’s reiterated statement. “Kurt was awake. He spoke, too, but very soft. Say, he knows he’s at Many Waters. I heard him say . . . ‘Lenore’. . . Oh, I’m so happy, Lenore . . . that before he dies he’ll know you . . . talk to you.”

  “Hush, child,” whispered Lenore. “Kurt’s not going to die.”

  “But they all say so. That funny little doctor yesterday . . . he made me tired . . . but he said so. I heard him as Dad put him into the car.”

  “Yes, Kathie, I heard him, too, but I do not believe,” replied Lenore dreamily.

  “Kurt doesn’t look so . . . so sick,” went on Kathleen. “Only . . . only I don’t know what . . . different, I guess. I’m crazy to go in . . . to see him. Lenore, will they ever let me?”

  Their father’s abrupt entrance interrupted the conversation. He was pale, forceful, as when issues were at stake but were undecided. “Kathie, go out,” he said.

  Lenore rose to face him.

  “My girl . . . Dorn’s come to . . . an’ he’s asked for you. I was for lettin’ him see you. But Lowell an’ Jarvis say no . . . not yet. Now he might die any minute. Seems to me he ought to see you. It’s right. An’ if you say so . . .”

  “Yes,” replied Lenore.

  “By heaven, he shall see you, then,” said Anderson, breathing hard. “I’m justified even . . . even if it . . .” He did not finish his significant speech, but left her abruptly.

  Presently Lenore was summoned. When she left her room, she was in the throes of uncontrolled agitation, and all down the long hallway she fought herself. At the half-open door she paused to lean against the wall. There she had the will to still her nerves, to acquire serenity, and she prayed for wisdom to make her presence and her words of infinite good to Dorn in this crisis.

  She was not aware of when she moved—how she ever got to Dorn’s bedside. But seemingly detached from her real self, serene, with emotions locked, she was there, looking down upon him.

  “Lenore,” he said with far-off voice that just reached her. Gladness shone from his shadowy eyes.

  “Welcome home . . . my soldier boy,” she replied. Then she bent to kiss his cheek and to lay hers beside it.

  “I never . . . hoped . . . to see you . . . again,” he went on.

  “Oh, but I knew,” murmured Lenore, lifting her head. His right hand, brown, bare, and rough, lay outside the coverlet upon his breast. It was weakly reaching for her. Lenore took it in both hers, while she gazed steadily down into his eyes. She seemed to see then how he was comparing the image he had limned upon his memory with her face.

  “Changed . . . you’re older . . . more beautiful . . . yet the same,” he said. “It seems . . . long ago.”

  “Yes, long ago. Indeed I am older. But . . . all’s well that ends well. You are back.”

  “Lenore, haven’t you . . . been told . . . I can’t live?”

  “Yes, but it’s untrue,” she replied, and felt that she might have been life itself speaking.

  “Dear, something’s gone . . . from me. Something vital gone . . . with the shell that . . . took my arm.”

  “No!” She smiled down upon him. All the conviction of her soul and faith she projected into that single word and serene smile—all that was love and woman in her opposing death. A subtle, indefinable change came over Dorn.

  “Lenore . . . I paid . . . for my father,” he whispered. “I killed Huns. I spilled the . . . blood in me . . . I hated. But all was wrong . . . wrong.”

  “Yes, but you could not help that,” she said piercingly. “Blame can never rest upon you. You were only an . . . American soldier . . . Oh, I know. You were magnificent . . . But your duty that way is done. A higher duty awaits you.”

  His eyes questioned sadly and wonderingly.

  “You must be the great sower of wheat.”

  “Sower of wheat?” he whispered, and a light quickened in that questioning gaze.

  “There will be starving millions after this war. Wheat is the staff of life. You must get well . . . Listen . . .” She hesitated, and sank to her knees beside the bed. “Kurt, the day you’re able to sit up, I’ll marry you. Then I’ll take you home . . . to your wheat hills.”

  For a second Lenore saw him transformed with her spirit, her faith, her love, and it was that for which she had prayed. She had carried him beyond hopelessness, beyond incredulity. Some guidance had divinely prompted her. And when his mute rapture suddenly vanished, when he lost consciousness and a pale gloom and shade fell upon his face, she had no fear.

  In her own room she unleashed the strange bonds on her feelings and suffered their recurrent surge and strife, until relief and calmness returned to her. Then came a flashing uplift of soul, a great and beautiful exaltation. Lenore felt that she had been gifted with incalculable power. She had pierced Dorn’s fatalistic consciousness with the truth and glory of possible life, as opposed to the dark and evil morbidity of war. She saw for herself the wonderful and terrible stairs of sand that women had been climbing all the ages, and must climb on to the heights of solid rock, of equality, of salvation for the human race. She saw woman, the primitive, the female of the species, but she saw her also as the mother of the species, made to save as well as perpetuate, learning from the agony of childbirth and child care the meaning of Him who said: “Thou shalt not kill!” Tremendous would be the final resistance of woman to the brutality of man. Women were to be the saviors of humanity. It seemed so simple and natural that it could not be otherwise. Lenore realized, with a singular conception of the splendor of its truth, that when most women had found themselves, their mission in life, as she had found hers, then would come an end to violence, to greed, to hate, to war, to the black and hideous imperfection of mankind.

  With all her intellect and passion Lenore opposed the theory of the scientist and biologists. If they proved that strife and fight were necessary to the development of man, that without violence and bloodshed and endless contention the race would deteriorate, then she would say that it would be better to deteriorate and to die. Women all would declare against that, and in fact would never believe. She would never believe with her heart, but if her intellect was forced to recognize certain theories, then she must find a way to reconcile life to the inscrutable designs of Nature. The theory that continual strife was the very life of plants, birds, beasts, and men seemed verified by every reaction of the present, but, if these things were fixed materialistic rules of the existence of animated forms upon the earth, what then was God, what was the driving force in Kurt Dorn that made war duty some kind of murder that overthrew his mind, what was the love in her heart of all living things, and the nameless sublime faith in her soul?

  “If we poor creatures must fight,” said Lenore, and she meant this for a prayer, “let the women fight eternally against violence, and let the men forever fight their destructive instincts.”

  * * * * *

  From that hour the condition of Kurt Dorn changed for the better. Dr. Lowell admitted that Lenore had been the one medicine that might defeat the death that all except she had believed inevitable.

  Lenore was permitted to see him a few minutes every day, for which fleeting interval she must endure the endless hours. But she discovered that only when he was rational and free from pain would they let her go in. What Dorn’s condition was the rest of the time she could not guess. But she began to get inklings that it was very bad.

  “Dad, I’m going to insist on staying with Kurt as . . . as long as I want,” asserted Lenore, when she had made up her mind.

  This worried Anderson, and he appeared at a loss for words.

  “I told Kurt I’d marry him the very day he could sit up,” continued Lenore.

  “By George, that accounts!” exclaimed her father. “He’s been tryin’ to si
t up, an’ we’ve had hell with him.”

  “Dad, he will get well. And all the sooner if I can be with him more. He loves me. I feel I’m the only thing that counteracts . . . the . . . the madness in his mind . . . the death in his soul.”

  Anderson made one of his violent gestures. “I believe you. That hits me with a bang. It takes a woman . . . Lenore, what’s your idea?”

  “I want to . . . to marry him,” murmured Lenore. “To nurse him . . . to take him home to his wheat fields.”

  “You shall have your way,” replied Anderson, beginning to pace the floor. “It can’t do any harm. It might save him. An’ anyway, you’ll be his wife . . . if only for . . . By George, we’ll do it. You never gave me a wrong hunch in your life . . . but, girl, it’ll be hard for you to see him when . . . when he has the spells.”

  “Spells?” echoed Lenore.

  “Yes. You’ve been told that he raves. But you didn’t know how. Why, it gets even my nerve. It fascinated me, but once was enough. I couldn’t stand to see his face when his Huns come back to him.”

  “His Huns!” ejaculated Lenore, shuddering. “What do you mean?”

  “Those Huns he killed come back to him. He fights them. You see him go through strange motions, an’ it’s as if his left arm wasn’t gone. He uses his right arm . . . an’ the motions he makes are the ones he made when he killed the Huns with his bayonet. It’s terrible to watch him . . . the look on his face. I heard at the hospital in New York that in France they photographed him when he had one of the spells . . . I’d hate to have you see him then. But maybe after Doctor Lowell explains it, you’ll understand.”

  “Poor boy! How terrible for him to live it all over. But when he gets well . . . when he has his wheat hills and me to fill his mind . . . those spells will fade.”

  “Maybe . . . maybe. I hope so. Lord knows it’s all beyond me. But you’re goin’ to have your way.”

  Dr. Lowell explained to Lenore that Dorn, like all mentally deranged soldiers, dreamed when he was asleep, and raved when he was out of his mind, of only one thing—the foe. In his nightmares Dorn had to be held forcibly. The doctor said that the remarkable and hopeful indication about Dorn’s condition was a gradual daily gain in strength and a decline in the duration and violence of his bad spells.

  This assurance made Lenore happy. She began to relieve the worn-out nurse during the day, and she prepared herself for the first ordeal of actual experience of Dorn’s peculiar madness. But Dorn watched her many hours and would not or could not sleep while she was there, and the tenth day of his stay at Many Waters passed without her seeing what she dreaded. Meanwhile, he grew perceptibly better.

  The afternoon came when Anderson brought a minister. Then a few moments sufficed to make Lenore Dorn’s wife.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The remarkable happened. Scarcely had the minister left when Kurt Dorn’s smiling wonder and happiness sustained a break, as sharp and cold and terrible as if Nature had transformed him from man to beast.

  His face became like that of a gorilla. Struggling up, he swept his right arm over and outward with singular twisting energy. A bayonet thrust. And for him his left arm was still intact. A savage, unintelligible battle cry, yet unmistakably German, escaped his lips.

  Lenore stood one instant petrified. Her father, grinding his teeth, attempted to lead her away. But as Dorn was about to pitch off the bed, Lenore, with piercing cry, ran to catch him and force him back. There she held him, subdued his struggles, and kept calling with that intensity of power and spirit that must have penetrated even his delirium. Whatever influence she exerted, it quieted him, changed his savage face, until he relaxed and lay back, passive and pale. It was possible to tell exactly when his reason returned, for it showed in the gaze he fixed upon Lenore.

  “I had . . . one of my fits,” he said huskily.

  “Oh . . . I don’t know what it was,” replied Lenore with quavering voice. Her strength began to leave her now. Her arms that had held him so firmly began to slip away.

  “Son, you had a bad spell,” interposed Anderson with his heavy breathing. “First one she’s seen.”

  “Lenore, I laid out my Huns again,” said Dorn with a tragic smile. “Lately I could tell when . . . they were coming back.”

  “Did you know just now?” queried Lenore.

  “I think so. I wasn’t really out of my head. I’ve known when I did that. It’s a strange feeling . . . thought . . . memory . . . and action drives it away. Then I seem always to want to . . . kill my Huns all over again.”

  Lenore gazed at him with mournful and passionate tenderness. “Do you remember that we were just married?” she asked.

  “My wife,” he whispered.

  “Husband. I knew you were coming home to me . . . I knew you would not die . . . I know you will get well.”

  “I begin to believe that, too. Then . . . maybe the black spells will go away.”

  “They must or . . . or you’ll lose me,” faltered Lenore. “If you go on killing your Huns . . . over and over . . . it’ll be I who will die.”

  She carried with her to her room a haunting sense of Dorn’s reception of her last speech. Some tremendous impression it made on him, but whether of fear or domination or resolve, or all combined, she could not tell. She had weakened in mention of the return of his phantoms. But neither Dorn nor her father ever guessed that, once in her room, she collapsed from sheer feminine horror at the prospect of seeing Dorn change from a man to a gorilla, and to repeat the savage orgy of remurdering his Huns. That was too much for Lenore. She who had been invincible in faith, who could stand any tests of endurance and pain, was not proof against a spectacle of Dorn’s strange counterfeit presentment of the actual and terrible killing he had performed with a bayonet.

  For days after that she was under a strain that she realized would break her if it was not relieved. It appeared to be solely her fear of Dorn’s derangement. She was with him almost all the daylight hours, attending him, watching him sleep, talking a little to him now and then, seeing with joy his gradual improvement, feeling each day the slow lifting of the shadow over him, and yet every minute of every hour she waited in dread for the return of Dorn’s madness. It did not come. If it recurred at night, she never was told. Then after a week a more pronounced change for the better in Dorn’s condition marked a lessening of the strain upon Lenore. A little later it was deemed safe to dismiss the nurse. Lenore dreaded the first night vigil. She lay upon a couch in Dorn’s room and never closed her eyes. But he slept, and his slumber appeared sound at times, and then restless, given over to dreams. He talked incoherently, and moaned, and once appeared to be drifting into a nightmare, when Lenore awakened him. Next day he sat up and said he was hungry. Thereafter Lenore began to lose her dread.

  * * * * *

  “Well, son, let’s talk wheat,” said Anderson cheerily, one beautiful June morning, as he entered Dorn’s room.

  “Wheat,” sighed Dorn with a pathetic glance at his empty sleeve. “How can I ever do a man’s work again in the fields?”

  Lenore smiled bravely at him. “You will sow more wheat than ever, and harvest more, too.”

  “I should smile,” corroborated Anderson.

  “But how? I’ve only one arm,” said Dorn.

  “Kurt, you hug me better with that one arm than you ever did with two arms,” replied Lenore in sublime assurance.

  “Son, you lose that argument!” roared Anderson. “Me an’ Lenore stand pat. You’ll sow more an’ better wheat than ever . . . than any other man in the Northwest. Get my hunch? Well, I’ll tell you later . . . Now see here, let me declare myself about you. I seen it worries you more an’ more, now you’re gettin’ well. You miss that good arm, an’ you feel the pain of bullets that still lodge somewheres in you, an’ you think you’ll be a cripple always. Look things in the face, square. Sure, compared to what you once was, you’ll be a cripple. But Kurt Dorn weighin’ one hundred an’ ninety let loose on a bunch of Huns w
as some man. My gawd! Forget that, an’ forget that you’ll never chop a cord of wood again in a day. Look at facts like me an’ Lenore. We gave you up. An’ here you’re with us, comin’ along fine, an’ you’ll be able to do hard work someday, if you’re crazy about it. Just think how good that is for Lenore, an’ me, too . . . Now listen to this.” Anderson unfolded a newspaper and began to read:

  Continued improvement, with favorable weather conditions, in the winter wheat states and encouraging messages from the Northwest warrant an increase of crop estimates made two weeks ago and based mainly upon the government’s report. In all probability the yield from winter fields will slightly exceed 600,000,000 bushels. Increase of acreage in the spring states is unexpectedly large. For example, Minnesota’s Food Administrator says the addition in his state is forty percent, instead of the early estimate of twenty percent. Throughout the spring area the plants have a good start and are in excellent condition. It may be that the yield will rise to 300,000,000 bushels, making a total of about 900,000,000. From such a crop 280,000,000 could be exported in normal times, and by conservation the surplus can easily be enlarged to 350,000,000 or even 400,000,000. In Canada also estimates of acreage increase have been too low. It was said that the addition in Alberta was twenty percent, but recent reports make it forty percent. Canada may harvest a crop of 300,000,000 bushels, or nearly 70,000,000 more than last year’s. Our allies in Europe can safely rely upon the shipment of 500,000,000 bushels from the United States and Canada.

  After the coming harvest there will be an ample supply of wheat for the foes of Germany at ports which can easily be reached. In addition, the large surplus stocks in Australia and Argentina will be available when ships can be spared for such service. And the ships are coming from the builders. For more than a year to come there will be wheat enough for our war partners, the Belgians, and the northern European neutral countries with which we have trade agreements.

  Lenore eagerly watched her husband’s face in pleasurable anticipation, yet with some anxiety. Wheat had been a subject little touched upon and the war had never been mentioned.