One of Ours

by Willa Sibert Cather

  her. When he was hurt and suffered silently, something ached in

  her. On the other hand, when he was happy, a wave of physical

  contentment went through her. If she wakened in the night and

  happened to think that he had been happy lately, she would lie

  softly and gratefully in her warm place.

  “Rest, rest, perturbed spirit,” she sometimes whispered to him in

  her mind, when she wakened thus and thought of him. There was a

  singular light in his eyes when he smiled at her on one of his

  good days, as if to tell her that all was well in his inner

  kingdom. She had seen that same look again and again, and she

  could always remember it in the dark,—a quick blue flash, tender

  and a little wild, as if he had seen a vision or glimpsed bright

  uncertainties.

  XIII

  The next few weeks were busy ones on the farm. Before the wheat

  harvest was over, Nat Wheeler packed his leather trunk, put on

  his “store clothes,” and set off to take Tom Welted back to

  Maine. During his absence Ralph began to outfit for life in Yucca

  county. Ralph liked being a great man with the Frankfort

  merchants, and he had never before had such an opportunity as

  this. He bought a new shot gun, saddles, bridles, boots, long and

  short storm coats, a set of furniture for his own room, a

  fireless cooker, another music machine, and had them shipped to

  Colorado. His mother, who did not like phonograph music, and

  detested phonograph monologues, begged him to take the machine at

  home, but he assured her that she would be dull without it on

  winter evenings. He wanted one of the latest make, put out under

  the name of a great American inventor.

  Some of the ranches near Wested’s were owned by New York men who

  brought their families out there in the summer. Ralph had heard

  about the dances they gave, and he way counting on being one of

  the guests. He asked Claude to give him his dress suit, since

  Claude wouldn’t be needing it any more.

  “You can have it if you want it,” said Claude indifferently “But

  it won’t fit you.”

  “I’ll take it in to Fritz and have the pants cut off a little and

  the shoulders taken in,” his brother replied lightly.

  Claude was impassive. “Go ahead. But if that old Dutch man takes

  a whack at it, it will look like the devil.”

  “I think I’ll let him try. Father won’t say anything about what

  I’ve ordered for the house, but he isn’t much for glad rags, you

  know.” Without more ado he threw Claude’s black clothes into the

  back seat of the Ford and ran into town to enlist the services of

  the German tailor.

  Mr. Wheeler, when he returned, thought Ralph had been rather free

  in expenditures, but Ralph told him it wouldn’t do to take over

  the new place too modestly. “The ranchers out there are all

  high-fliers. If we go to squeezing nickels, they won’t think we

  mean business.”

  The country neighbours, who were always amused at the Wheelers’

  doings, got almost as much pleasure out of Ralph’s lavishness as

  he did himself. One said Ralph had shipped a new piano out to

  Yucca county, another heard he had ordered a billiard table.

  August Yoeder, their prosperous German neighbour, asked grimly

  whether he could, maybe, get a place as hired man with Ralph.

  Leonard Dawson, who was to be married in October, hailed Claude

  in town one day and shouted;

  “My God, Claude, there’s nothing left in the furniture store for

  me and Susie! Ralph’s bought everything but the coffins. He must

  be going to live like a prince out there.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Claude answered coolly. “It’s

  not my enterprise.”

  “No, you’ve got to stay on the old place and make it pay the

  debts, I understand.” Leonard jumped into his car, so that Claude

  wouldn’t have a chance to reply.

  Mrs. Wheeler, too, when she observed the magnitude of these

  preparations, began to feel that the new arrangement was not fair

  to Claude, since he was the older boy and much the steadier.

  Claude had always worked hard when he was at home, and made a

  good field hand, while Ralph had never done much but tinker with

  machinery and run errands in his car. She couldn’t understand why

  he was selected to manage an undertaking in which so much money

  was invested.

  “Why, Claude,” she said dreamily one day, “if your father were an

  older man, I would almost think his judgment had begun to fail.

  Won’t we get dreadfully into debt at this rate?”

  “Don’t say anything, Mother. It’s Father’s money. He shan’t think

  I want any of it.”

  “I wish I could talk to Bayliss. Has he said anything?”

  “Not to me, he hasn’t.”

  Ralph and Mr. Wheeler took another flying trip to Colorado, and

  when they came back Ralph began coaxing his mother to give him

  bedding and table linen. He said he wasn’t going to live like a

  savage, even in the sand hills. Mahailey was outraged to see the

  linen she had washed and ironed and taken care of for so many

  years packed into boxes. She was out of temper most of the time

  now, and went about muttering to herself.

  The only possessions Mahailey brought with her when she came to

  live with the Wheelers, were a feather bed and three patchwork

  quilts, interlined with wool off the backs of Virginia sheep,

  washed and carded by hand. The quilts had been made by her old

  mother, and given to her for a marriage portion. The patchwork on

  each was done in a different design; one was the popular

  “log-cabin” pattern, another the “laurel-leaf,” the third the

  “blazing star.” This quilt Mahailey thought too good for use, and

  she had told Mrs. Wheeler that she was saving it “to give Mr.

  Claude when he got married.”

  She slept on her feather bed in winter, and in summer she put it

  away in the attic. The attic was reached by a ladder which,

  because of her weak back, Mrs. Wheeler very seldom climbed. Up

  there Mahailey had things her own way, and thither she often

  retired to air the bedding stored away there, or to look at the

  pictures in the piles of old magazines. Ralph facetiously called

  the attic “Mahailey’s library.”

  One day, while things were being packed for the western ranch,

  Mrs. Wheeler, going to the foot of the ladder to call Mahailey,

  narrowly escaped being knocked down by a large feather bed which

  came plumping through the trap door. A moment later Mahailey

  herself descended backwards, holding to the rungs with one hand,

  and in the other arm carrying her quilts.

  “Why, Mahailey,” gasped Mrs. Wheeler. “It’s not winter yet;

  whatever are you getting your bed for?”

  “I’m just a-goin’ to lay on my fedder bed,” she broke out, “or

  direc’ly I won’t have none. I ain’t a-goin’ to have Mr. Ralph

  carryin’ off my quilts my mudder pieced fur me.”

  Mrs. Wheeler tried to reason with her, but the old woman took up

  her bed in her
arms and staggered down the hall with it,

  muttering and tossing her head like a horse in fly-time.

  That afternoon Ralph brought a barrel and a bundle of straw into

  the kitchen and told Mahailey to carry up preserves and canned

  fruit, and he would pack them. She went obediently to the cellar,

  and Ralph took off his coat and began to line the barrel with

  straw. He was some time in doing this, but still Mahailey had not

  returned. He went to the head of the stairs and whistled.

  “I’m a-comin’, Mr. Ralph, I’m a-comin’! Don’t hurry me, I don’t

  want to break nothin’.”

  Ralph waited a few minutes. “What are you doing down there,

  Mahailey?” he fumed. “I could have emptied the whole cellar by

  this time. I suppose I’ll have to do it myself.”

  “I’m a-comin’. You’d git yourself all dusty down here.” She came

  breathlessly up the stairs, carrying a hamper basket full of

  jars, her hands and face streaked with black.

  “Well, I should say it is dusty!” Ralph snorted. “You might clean

  your fruit closet once in awhile, you know, Mahailey. You ought

  to see how Mrs. Dawson keeps hers. Now, let’s see.” He sorted the

  jars on the table. “Take back the grape jelly. If there’s

  anything I hate, it’s grape jelly. I know you have lots of it,

  but you can’t work it off on me. And when you come up, don’t

  forget the pickled peaches. I told you particularly, the pickled

  peaches!”

  “We ain’t got no pickled peaches.” Mahailey stood by the cellar

  door, holding a corner of her apron up to her chin, with a queer,

  animal look of stubbornness in her face.

  “No pickled peaches? What nonsense, Mahailey! I saw you making

  them here, only a few weeks ago.”

  “I know you did, Mr. Ralph, but they ain’t none now. I didn’t

  have no luck with my peaches this year. I must ‘a’ let the air

  git at ‘em. They all worked on me, an’ I had to throw ‘em out.”

  Ralph was thoroughly annoyed. “I never heard of such a thing,

  Mahailey! You get more careless every year. Think of wasting all

  that fruit and sugar! Does mother know?”

  Mahailey’s low brow clouded. “I reckon she does. I don’t wase

  your mudder’s sugar. I never did wase nothin’,” she muttered. Her

  speech became queerer than ever when she was angry.

  Ralph dashed down the cellar stairs, lit a lantern, and searched

  the fruit closet. Sure enough, there were no pickled peaches.

  When he came back and began packing his fruit, Mahailey stood

  watching him with a furtive expression, very much like the look

  that is in a chained coyote’s eyes when a boy is showing him off

  to visitors and saying he wouldn’t run away if he could.

  “Go on with your work,” Ralph snapped. “Don’t stand there

  watching me!”

  That evening Claude was sitting on the windmill platform, down by

  the barn, after a hard day’s work ploughing for winter wheat. He

  was solacing himself with his pipe. No matter how much she loved

  him, or how sorry she felt for him, his mother could never bring

  herself to tell him he might smoke in the house. Lights were

  shining from the upstairs rooms on the hill, and through the open

  windows sounded the singing snarl of a phonograph. A figure came

  stealing down the path. He knew by her low, padding step that it

  was Mahailey, with her apron thrown over her head. She came up to

  him and touched him on the shoulder in a way which meant that

  what she had to say was confidential.

  “Mr. Claude, Mr. Ralph’s done packed up a barr’l of your mudder’s

  jelly an’ pickles to take out there.”

  “That’s all right, Mahailey. Mr. Wested was a widower, and I

  guess there wasn’t anything of that sort put up at his place.”

  She hesitated and bent lower. “He asked me fur them pickled

  peaches I made fur you, but I didn’t give him none. I hid ‘em all

  in my old cook-stove we done put down cellar when Mr. Ralph

  bought the new one. I didn’t give him your mudder’s new

  preserves, nudder. I give him the old last year’s stuff we had

  left over, and now you an’ your mudder’ll have plenty.” Claude

  laughed. “Oh, I don’t care if Ralph takes all the fruit on the

  place, Mahailey!”

  She shrank back a little, saying confusedly, “No, I know you

  don’t, Mr. Claude. I know you don’t.”

  “I surely ought not to take it out on her,” Claude thought, when

  he saw her disappointment. He rose and patted her on the back.

  “That’s all right, Mahailey. Thank you for saving the peaches,

  anyhow.”

  She shook her finger at him. “Don’t you let on!”

  He promised, and watched her slipping back over the zigzag path

  up the hill.

  XIV

  Ralph and his father moved to the new ranch the last of August,

  and Mr. Wheeler wrote back that late in the fall he meant to ship

  a carload of grass steers to the home farm to be fattened during

  the winter. This, Claude saw, would mean a need for fodder. There

  was a fifty-acre corn field west of the creek,—just on the

  sky-line when one looked out from the west windows of the house.

  Claude decided to put this field into winter wheat, and early in

  September he began to cut and bind the corn that stood upon it

  for fodder. As soon as the corn was gathered, he would plough up

  the ground, and drill in the wheat when he planted the other

  wheat fields.

  This was Claude’s first innovation, and it did not meet with

  approval. When Bayliss came out to spend Sunday with his mother,

  he asked her what Claude thought he was doing, anyhow. If he

  wanted to change the crop on that field, why didn’t he plant oats

  in the spring, and then get into wheat next fall? Cutting fodder

  and preparing the ground now, would only hold him back in his

  work. When Mr. Wheeler came home for a short visit, he jocosely

  referred to that quarter as “Claude’s wheat field.”

  Claude went ahead with what he had undertaken to do, but all

  through September he was nervous and apprehensive about the

  weather. Heavy rains, if they came, would make him late with his

  wheat-planting, and then there would certainly be criticism. In

  reality, nobody cared much whether the planting was late or not,

  but Claude thought they did, and sometimes in the morning he

  awoke in a state of panic because he wasn’t getting ahead faster.

  He had Dan and one of August Yoeder’s four sons to help him, and

  he worked early and late. The new field he ploughed and drilled

  himself. He put a great deal of young energy into it, and buried

  a great deal of discontent in its dark furrows. Day after day he

  flung himself upon the land and planted it with what was

  fermenting in him, glad to be so tired at night that he could not

  think.

  Ralph came home for Leonard Dawson’s wedding, on the first of

  October. All the Wheelers went to the wedding, even Mahailey, and

  there was a great gathering of the country folk and townsmen.

  After Ralph left, Claude had the
place to himself again, and the

  work went on as usual. The stock did well, and there were no

  vexatious interruptions. The fine weather held, and every morning

  when Claude got up, another gold day stretched before him like a

  glittering carpet, leading…? When the question where the

  days were leading struck him on the edge of his bed, he hurried

  to dress and get down-stairs in time to fetch wood and coal for

  Mahailey. They often reached the kitchen at the same moment, and

  she would shake her finger at him and say, “You come down to help

  me, you nice boy, you!” At least he was of some use to Mahailey.

  His father could hire one of the Yoeder boys to look after the

  place, but Mahailey wouldn’t let any one else save her old back.

  Mrs. Wheeler, as well as Mahailey, enjoyed that fall. She slept

  late in the morning, and read and rested in the afternoon. She

  made herself some new house-dresses out of a grey material Claude

  chose. “It’s almost like being a bride, keeping house for just

  you, Claude,” she sometimes said.

  Soon Claude had the satisfaction of seeing a blush of green come

  up over his brown wheat fields, visible first in the dimples and

  little hollows, then flickering over the knobs and levels like a

  fugitive smile. He watched the green blades coming every day,

  when he and Dan went afield with their wagons to gather corn.

  Claude sent Dan to shuck on the north quarter, and he worked on

  the south. He always brought in one more load a day than Dan

  did,—that was to be expected. Dan explained this very

  reasonably, Claude thought, one afternoon when they were hooking

  up their teams.

  “It’s all right for you to jump at that corn like you was

  a-beating carpets, Claude; it’s your corn, or anyways it’s your

  Paw’s. Them fields will always lay betwixt you and trouble. But a

  hired man’s got no property but his back, and he has to save it.

  I figure that I’ve only got about so many jumps left in me, and I

  ain’t a-going to jump too hard at no man’s corn.”

  “What’s the matter? I haven’t been hinting that you ought to jump

  any harder, have I?”

  “No, you ain’t, but I just want you to know that there’s reason

  in all things.” With this Dan got into his wagon and drove off.

  He had probably been meditating upon this declaration for some

  time.

  That afternoon Claude suddenly stopped flinging white ears into