Prairie Folks

by Garland, Hamlin

  He thrust a great arm in and caught her by the wrist.

  "Yes, y' can. This is y'r last chance. If I go off without ye t'night, I never come back. What make ye gig back? Are ye 'fraid o' me?"

  "N-no; but—but"——

  "But what, Merry Etty?"

  "It ain't right to go an' leave Dad all alone. Where y' goin' t' take me, anyhow?"

  "Milt Jennings let me have his horse an' buggy; they're down the road a piece, an' we'll go right down to Rock River and be married by sun-up."

  The girl still hesitated, her firm, boyish will unwontedly befogged. Resolute as she was, she could not at once accede to his demand.

  "Come, make up your mind soon. The old man 'll fill me with buck-shot if he catches sight o' me." He drew her arm out of the window and laid his bearded cheek to it. "Come, little one, we're made for each other; God knows it. Come! It's him 'r me."

  The girl's head dropped, consented.

  "That's right! Now a kiss to bind the bargain. There! What, cryin'? No more o' that, little one. Now I'll give you jest five minutes to git on your Sunday-go-t'-meetin' clo'es. Quick, there goes a rooster. It's gittin' white in the east."

  The man turned his back to the window and gazed at the western sky with a wealth of unuttered and unutterable exultation in his heart. Far off a rooster gave a long, clear blast—would it be answered in the barn? Yes; some wakeful ear had caught it, and now came the answer, but faint, muffled and drowsy. The dog at his feet whined uneasily as if suspecting something wrong. The wind from the south was full of the wonderful odor of springing grass, warm, brown earth, and oozing sap. Overhead, to the west, the stars were shining in the cloudless sky, dimmed a little in brightness by the faint silvery veil of moisture in the air. The man's soul grew very tender as he stood waiting for his bride. He was rough, illiterate, yet there was something fine about him after all, a kind of simplicity and a gigantic, leonine tenderness.

  He heard his sweetheart moving about inside, and thought: "The old man won't hold out when he finds we're married. He can't get along without her. If he does, why, I'll rent a farm here, and we'll go to work housekeepin'. I can git the money. She sha'n't always be poor," he ended, with a vow.

  The window was raised again, and the girl's voice was heard low and tremulous: "Lime, I'm ready, but I wish we didn't"——

  He put his arm around her waist and helped her out, and did not put her down till they reached the road. She was completely dressed, even to her hat and shoes, but she mourned:

  "My hair is every-which-way; Lime, how can I be married so?"

  They were nearing the horse and buggy now, and Lime laughed. "Oh, we'll stop at Jennings's and fix up. Milt knows what's up, and has told his mother by this time. So just laugh as jolly as you can."

  Soon they were in the buggy, the impatient horse swung into the road at a rattling pace, and as Marietta leaned back in the seat, thinking of what she had done, she cried lamentably, in spite of all the caresses and pleadings of her lover.

  But the sun burst up from the plain, the prairie-chickens took up their mighty chorus on the hills, robins met them on the way, flocks of wild geese, honking cheerily, drove far overhead toward the north, and, with these sounds of a golden spring day in her ears, the bride grew cheerful, and laughed.

  * * *

  III.

  At about the time the sun was rising, Farmer Bacon, roused from his sleep by the crowing of the chickens on the dry knolls in the fields as well as by those in the barnyard, rolled out of bed wearily, wondering why he should feel so drowsy. Then he remembered the row with Lime and his subsequent inability to sleep with thinking over it. There was a dull pain in his breast, which made him uncomfortable.

  As was his usual custom, he went out into the kitchen and built the fire for Marietta, filled the tea-kettle with water, and filled the water-bucket in the sink. Then he went to her bedroom door and knocked with his knuckles as he had done for years in precisely the same fashion.

  Rap—rap—rap. "Hello, Merry! Time t' git up. Broad daylight, an' birds a-singun'."

  Without waiting for an answer he went out to the barn and worked away at his chores. He took such delight in the glorious morning and the turbulent life of the farmyard that his heart grew light and he hummed a tune which sounded like the merry growl of a lion. "Poo-ee, poo-ee," he called to the pigs as they swarmed across the yard.

  "Ahrr! you big, fat rascals, them hams o' yourn is clear money. One of ye shall go t' buy Merry a new dress," he said as he glanced at the house and saw the smoke pouring out the stove-pipe. "Merry 's a good girl; she's stood by her old pap when other girls 'u'd 'a' gone back on 'im."

  While currying horses he went all over the ground of the quarrel yesterday, and he began to see it in a different light. He began to see that Lyman was a good man and an able man, and that his own course was a foolish one.

  "When I git mad," he confessed to himself, "I don't know anythin'. But I won't give her up. She ain't old 'nough t' marry yet—and, besides, I need her."

  After finishing his chores, as usual, he went to the well and washed his face and hands, then entered the kitchen—to find the tea-kettle boiling over, and no signs of breakfast anywhere, and no sign of the girl.

  "Well, I guess she felt sleepy this mornin'. Poor gal! Mebbe she cried half the night."

  "Merry!" he called, gently, at the door. "Merry, m' gal! Pap needs his breakfast."

  There was no reply, and the old man's face stiffened into a wild surprise. He knocked heavily again and got no reply, and, with a white face and shaking hand, he flung the door open and gazed at the empty bed. His hand dropped to his side; his head turned slowly from the bed to the open window; he rushed forward and looked out on the ground, where he saw the tracks of a man.

  He fell heavily into the chair by the bed, while a deep groan broke from his stiff and twitching lips.

  "She's left me! She's left me!"

  For a long half-hour the iron-muscled old man sat there motionless, hearing not the songs of the hens or the birds far out in the brilliant sunshine. He had lost sight of his farm, his day's work, and felt no hunger for food. He did not doubt that her going was final. He felt that she was gone from him forever. If she ever came back it would not be as his daughter, but as the wife of Gilman. She had deserted him, fled in the night like a thief; his heart began to harden again, and he rose stiffly. His native stubbornness began to assert itself, the first great shock over, and he went out to the kitchen, and prepared, as best he could, a breakfast, and sat down to it. In some way his appetite failed him, and he fell to thinking over his past life, of the death of his wife, and the early death of his only boy. He was still trying to think what his life would be in the future without his girl, when two carriages drove into the yard. It was about the middle of the forenoon, and the prairie-chickens had ceased to boom and squawk; in fact, that was why he knew that he had been sitting two hours at the table. Before he could rise he heard swift feet and a merry voice. Then Marietta burst through the door.

  "Hello, Pap! How you makin' out with break"—— She saw a look on his face that went to her heart like a knife. She saw a lonely and deserted old man sitting at his cold and cheerless breakfast, and with a remorseful cry she ran across the floor and took him in her arms, kissing him again and again, while Mr. John Jennings and his wife stood in the door.

  "Poor ol' Pap! Merry couldn't leave you. She's come back to stay as long as he lives."

  The old man remained cold and stern. His deep voice had a raucous note in it as he pushed her away from him, noticing no one else.

  "But how do you come back t' me?"

  The girl grew rosy, but she stood proudly up.

  "I come back a wife of a man, Pap; a wife like my mother, an' this t' hang beside hers;" and she laid down a rolled piece of parchment.

  "Take it an' go," growled he; "take yer lazy lubber an' git out o' my sight. I raised ye, took keer o' ye when ye was little, sent ye t' school, bought ye dresses,—done ev
ery thin' for ye I could, 'lowin' t' have ye stand by me when I got old,—but no, ye must go back on yer ol' pap, an' go off in the night with a good-f'r-nothin' houn' that nobuddy knows anything about—a feller that never done a thing fer ye in the world"——

  "What did you do for mother that she left her father and mother and went with you? How much did you have when you took her away from her good home an' brought her away out here among the wolves an' Indians? I've heard you an' her say a hundred times that you didn't have a chair in the house. Now, why do you talk so t' me when I want t' git—when Lime comes and asks for me?"

  The old man was staggered. He looked at the smiling face of John Jennings and the tearful face of Mrs. Jennings, who had returned with Lyman. But his face hardened again as he caught sight of Lime looking in at him. His absurd pride would not let him relent. Lime saw it, and stepped forward.

  "Ol' man, I want t' take a little inning now. I'm a fair, square man. I asked ye fer Merry as a man should. I told you I'd had hard luck, when I first came here. I had five thousand dollars in clean cash stole from me. I hain't got a thing now except credit, but that's good fer enough t' stock a little farm with. Now, I wan' to be fair and square in this thing. You wan' to rent a farm; I need one. Let me have the river eighty, or I'll take the whole business on a share of a third an' Merry Etty, and I to stay here with you jest as if nothin' 'd happened. Come, now, what d' y' say?"

  There was something winning in the whole bearing of the man as he stood before the father, who remained silent and grim.

  "Or if you don't do that, why, there's nothin' left fer Merry an' me but to go back to La Crosse, where I can have my choice of a dozen farms. Now this is the way things is standin'. I don't want to be underhanded about this thing"——

  "That's a fair offer," said Mr. Jennings in the pause which followed. "You'd better do it, neighbor Bacon. Nobuddy need know how things stood; they were married in my house—I thought that 'u'd be best. You can't live without your girl," he went on, "any more 'n I could without my boy. You'd better"——

  The figure at the table straightened up. Under his tufted eyebrows his keen gray eyes flashed from one to the other. His hands knotted.

  "Go slow!" went on the smooth voice of Jennings, known all the country through as a peace-maker. "Take time t' think it over. Stand out, an' you'll live here alone without chick 'r child; give in, and this house 'll bubble over with noise and young ones. Now is short, and forever's a long time to feel sorry in."

  The old man at the table knitted his eyebrows, and a distorted, quivering, ghastly smile broke out on his face. His chest heaved; then he burst forth:

  "Gal, yank them gloves off, an' git me something to eat—breakfus 'r dinner, I don't care which. Lime, you infernal idiot, git out there and gear up them horses. What in thunder you foolun' around about hyere in seed'n'? Come, hustle, all o' ye!"

  And then they shouted in laughter, while the cause of it all strode unsteadily but resolutely out toward the barn, followed by the bridegroom, who was laughing—silently.

  * * *

  Part IV.

  SIM BURNS'S WIFE:

  A PRAIRIE HEROINE

  A tale of toil that's never done I tell;

  Of life where love's a fleeting wing

  Above the woman's hopeless hell

  Of ceaseless, year-round journeying.

  * * *

  SIM BURNS'S WIFE.

  I.

  Lucretia Burns had never been handsome, even in her days of early girlhood, and now she was middle-aged, distorted with work and child-bearing, and looking faded and worn as one of the boulders that lay beside the pasture fence near where she sat milking a large white cow.

  She had no shawl or hat and no shoes, for it was still muddy in the little yard, where the cattle stood patiently fighting the flies and mosquitoes swarming into their skins, already wet with blood. The evening was oppressive with its heat, and a ring of just-seen thunder-heads gave premonitions of an approaching storm.

  She rose from the cow's side at last, and, taking her pails of foaming milk, staggered toward the gate. The two pails hung from her lean arms, her bare feet slipped on the filthy ground, her greasy and faded calico dress showed her tired, swollen ankles, and the mosquitoes swarmed mercilessly on her neck and bedded themselves in her colorless hair.

  The children were quarreling at the well, and the sound of blows could be heard. Calves were querulously calling for their milk, and little turkeys, lost in a tangle of grass, were piping plaintively.

  The sun just setting struck through a long, low rift like a boy peeping beneath the eaves of a huge roof. Its light brought out Lucretia's face as she leaned her sallow forehead on the top bar of the gate and looked toward the west.

  It was a pitifully worn, almost tragic face—long, thin, sallow, hollow-eyed. The mouth had long since lost the power to shape itself into a kiss, and had a droop at the corners which seemed to announce a breaking-down at any moment into a despairing wail. The collarless neck and sharp shoulders showed painfully.

  She felt vaguely that the night was beautiful. The setting sun, the noise of frogs, the nocturnal insects beginning to pipe—all in some way called her girlhood back to her, though there was little in her girlhood to give her pleasure. Her large gray eyes grew round, deep and wistful as she saw the illimitable craggy clouds grow crimson, roll slowly up, and fire at the top. A childish scream recalled her.

  "Oh, my soul!" she half groaned, half swore, as she lifted her milk and hurried to the well. Arriving there, she cuffed the children right and left with, all her remaining strength, saying in justification:

  "My soul! can't you—you young 'uns give me a minute's peace? Land knows, I'm almost gone up; washin', an' milkin' six cows, and tendin' you, and cookin' f'r him, ought 'o be enough f'r one day! Sadie, you let him drink now 'r I'll slap your head off, you hateful thing! Why can't you behave, when you know I'm jest about dead?" She was weeping now, with nervous weakness. "Where's y'r pa?" she asked after a moment, wiping her eyes with her apron.

  One of the group, the one cuffed last, sniffed out, in rage and grief:

  "He's in the cornfield; where'd ye s'pose he was?"

  "Good land! why don't the man work all night? Sile, you put that dipper in that milk agin, an' I'll whack you till your head'll swim! Sadie, le' go Pet, an' go 'n get them turkeys out of the grass 'fore it gits dark! Bob, you go tell y'r dad if he wants the rest o' them cows milked he's got 'o do it himself. I jest can't, and what's more, I won't," she ended, rebelliously.

  Having strained the milk and fed the children, she took some skimmed milk from the cans and started to feed the calves bawling strenuously behind the barn. The eager and unruly brutes pushed and struggled to get into the pails all at once, and in consequence spilt nearly all of the milk on the ground. This was the last trial; the woman fell down on the damp grass and moaned and sobbed like a crazed thing. The children came to seek her and stood around like little partridges, looking at her in scared silence, till at last the little one began to wail. Then the mother rose wearily to her feet, and walked slowly back toward the house.

  She heard Burns threshing his team at the well, with the sound of oaths. He was tired, hungry and ill-tempered, but she was too desperate to care. His poor, overworked team did not move quickly enough for him, and his extra long turn in the corn had made him dangerous. His eyes gleamed wrathfully from his dust-laid face.

  "Supper ready?" he growled.

  "Yes, two hours ago."

  "Well, I can't help it!" he said, understanding her reproach. "That devilish corn is gettin' too tall to plow again, and I've got 'o go through it to-morrow or not at all. Cows milked?"

  "Part of 'em."

  "How many left?"

  "Three."

  "Hell! Which three?"

  "Spot, and Brin, and Cherry."

  "Of course, left the three worst ones. I'll be damned if I milk a cow to-night. I don't see why you play out jest the nights I need ye most." Here he kick
ed a child out of the way. "Git out o' that! Hain't you got no sense? I'll learn ye"——

  "Stop that, Sim Burns," cried the woman, snatching up the child. "You're a reg'lar ol' hyeny,—that's what you are," she added defiantly, roused at last from her lethargy.

  "You're a—beauty, that's what you are," he said, pitilessly. "Keep your brats out f'um under my feet." And he strode off to a barn after his team, leaving her with a fierce hate in her heart. She heard him yelling at his team in their stalls: "Git around there, damn yeh."

  The children had had their supper; so she took them to bed. She was unusually tender to them, for she wanted to make up in some way for her previous harshness. The ferocity of her husband had shown up her own petulant temper hideously, and she sat and sobbed in the darkness a long time beside the cradle where little Pet slept.

  She heard Burns come growling in and tramp about, but she did not rise. The supper was on the table; he could wait on himself. There was an awful feeling at her heart as she sat there and the house grew quiet. She thought of suicide in a vague way; of somehow taking her children in her arms and sinking into a lake somewhere, where she would never more be troubled, where she could sleep forever, without toil or hunger.

  Then she thought of the little turkeys wandering in the grass, of the children sleeping at last, of the quiet, wonderful stars. Then she thought of the cows left unmilked, and listened to them stirring uneasily in the yard. She rose, at last, and stole forth. She could not rid herself of the thought that they would suffer. She knew what the dull ache in the full breasts of a mother was, and she could not let them stand at the bars all night moaning for relief.

  The mosquitoes had gone, but the frogs and katydids still sang, while over in the west Venus shone. She was a long time milking the cows; her hands were so tired she had often to stop and rest them, while the tears fell unheeded into the pail. She saw and felt little of the external as she sat there. She thought in vague retrospect of how sweet it seemed the first time Sim came to see her; of the many rides to town with him when he was an accepted lover; of the few things he had given her—a coral breastpin and a ring.