the Desert Of Wheat (2001)

by Grey, Zane

  It turned out that there had been little hurt to the property of the villagers. Some freight-cars full of barley, loaded and billed by the railroad people, had been burned, and this loss of grain would probably be paid for by the company. The loss of wheat would fall upon Kurt. In the haste of that great harvest and its transportation to the village no provision had been made for loss. The railroad company had not accepted his wheat for transportation, and was not liable.

  "Olsen, according to our agreement I owe you fifteen thousand dollars," said Kurt.

  "Yes, but forget it," replied Olsen. "You're the loser here."

  "I'll pay it," replied Kurt.

  "But, boy, you're ruined!" ejaculated the farmer. "You can't pay that big price now. An' we don't expect it."

  "Didn't you leave your burning fields to come help us save ours?" queried Kurt.

  "Sure. But there wasn't much of mine to burn."

  "And so did many of the other men who came to help. I tell you, Olsen, that means a great deal to me. I'll pay my debt or--or--"

  "But how can you?" interrupted Olsen, reasonably. "Sometime, when you raise another crop like this year, then you could pay."

  "The farm will bring that much more than I owe Anderson."

  "You'll give up the farm?" exclaimed Olsen.

  "Yes. I'll square myself."

  "Dorn, we won't take that money," said the farmer, deliberately.

  "You'll have to take it. I'll send you a check soon--perhaps to-morrow."

  "Give up your land!" repeated Olsen. "Why, that's unheard of! Land in your family so many years!... What will you do?"

  "Olsen, I waited for the draft just on account of my father. If it had not been for him I'd have enlisted. Anyway, I'm going to war."

  That silenced the little group of grimy-faced men.

  "Jerry, get our horses and we'll ride home," said Kurt.

  The tall foreman strode off. Kurt sensed something poignant in the feelings of the men, especially Olsen. This matter of the I. W. W. dealing had brought Kurt and his neighbors closer together. And he thought it a good opportunity for a few words about the United States and the war and Germany. So he launched forth into an eloquent expression of some of his convictions. He was still talking when Jerry returned with the horses.

  At length he broke off, rather abruptly, and, saying good-by, he mounted.

  "Hold on, Kurt," called Olsen, and left the group to lay a hand on the horse and to speak low. "What you said struck me deep. It applies pretty hard to us of the Bend. We've always been farmers, with no thought of country. An' that's because we left our native country to come here. I'm not German an' I've never been for Germany. But many of my neighbors an' friends are Germans. This war never has come close till now. I know Germans in this country. They have left their fatherland an' they are lost to that fatherland!... It may take some time to stir them up, to make them see, but the day will come.... Take my word for it, Dorn, the German-Americans of the Northwest, when it comes to a pinch, will find themselves an' be true to the country they have adopted."

  Chapter XVI

  The sun was up, broad and bright, burning over the darkened wheat-fields, when Kurt and Jerry reached home. Kurt had never seen the farm look like that--ugly and black and bare. But the fallow ground, hundreds of acres of it, billowing away to the south, had not suffered any change of color or beauty. To Kurt it seemed to smile at him, to bid him wait for another spring.

  And that thought was poignant, for he remembered he must leave at once for "Many Waters."

  He found, when he came to wash the blood and dirt from his person, that his bruises were many. There was a lump on his head, and his hands were skinned. After changing his clothes and packing a few things in a valise, along with his papers, he went down to breakfast. Though preoccupied in mind, he gathered that both the old housekeeper and Jerry were surprised and dismayed to see him ready to leave. He had made no mention of his intentions. And it struck him that this, somehow, was going to be hard.

  Indeed, when the moment came he found that speech was difficult and his voice not natural.

  "Martha--Jerry--I'm going away for good," he said, huskily. "I mean to make over the farm to Mr. Anderson. I'll leave you in charge here--and recommend that you be kept on. Here's your money up to date.... I'm going away to the war--and the chances are I'll never come back."

  The old housekeeper, who had been like a mother to him for many years, began to cry; and Jerry struggled with a regret that he could not speak.

  Abruptly Kurt left them and hurried out of the house. How strange that difficult feelings had arisen--emotions he had never considered at all!

  But the truth was that he was leaving his home forever. All was explained in that.

  First he went to the graves of his father and mother, out on the south slope, where there were always wind and sun. The fire had not desecrated the simple burying-ground. There was no grass. But a few trees and bushes kept it from appearing bare.

  Kurt sat down in the shade near his mother's grave and looked away across the hills with dim eyes. Something came to him--a subtle assurance that his mother approved of his going to war. Kurt remembered her--slow, quiet, patient, hard-working, dominated by his father.

  The slope was hot and still, with only a rustling of leaves in the wind.

  The air was dry. Kurt missed the sweet fragrance of wheat. What odor there was seemed to be like that of burning weeds. The great, undulating open of the Bend extended on three sides. His parents had spent the best of their lives there and had now been taken to the bosom of the soil they loved. It seemed natural. Many were the last resting-places of toilers of the wheat there on those hills. And surely in the long frontier days, and in the ages before, men innumerable had gone back to the earth from which they had sprung. The dwelling-places of men were beautiful; it was only life that was sad. In this poignant, revealing hour Kurt could not resist human longings and regrets, though he gained incalculable strength from these two graves on the windy slope. It was not for any man to understand to the uttermost the meaning of life.

  * * * * *

  When he left he made his way across some of the fallow land and some of the stubble fields that had yielded, alas! so futilely, such abundant harvest. His boyhood days came back to him, when he used to crush down the stubble with his bare feet. Every rod of the way revealed some memory. He went into the barn and climbed into the huge, airy loft. It smelled of straw and years of dust and mice. The swallows darted in and out, twittering. How friendly they were! Year after year they had returned to their nests--the young birds returning to the homes of the old. Home even for birds was a thing of first and vital importance.

  It was a very old barn that had not many more useful years to stand.

  Kurt decided that he would advise that it be strengthened. There were holes in the rough shingling and boards were off the sides. In the corners and on the rafters was an accumulation of grain dust as thick as snow. Mice ran in and out, almost as tame as the swallows. He seemed to be taking leave of them. He recalled that he used to chase and trap mice with all a boy's savage ingenuity. But that boyish instinct, along with so many things so potential then, was gone now.

  Best of all he loved the horses. Most of these were old and had given faithful service for many years. Indeed, there was one--Old Badge--that had carried Kurt when he was a boy. Once he and a neighbor boy had gone to the pasture to fetch home the cows. Old Badge was there, and nothing would do but that they ride him. From the fence Kurt mounted to his broad back. Then the neighbor boy, full of the devil, had struck Old Badge with a stick. The horse set off at a gallop for home with Kurt, frantically holding on, bouncing up and down on his back. That had been the ride of Kurt's life. His father had whipped him, too, for the adventure.

  How strangely vivid and thought-compelling were these ordinary adjuncts to his life there on the farm. It was only upon giving them up that he discovered their real meaning. The hills of bare fallow and of yellow slope, the
old barn with its horses, swallows, mice, and odorous loft, the cows and chickens--these appeared to Kurt, in the illuminating light of farewell, in their true relation to him. For they, and the labor of them, had made him what he was.

  Slowly he went back to the old house and climbed the stairs. Only three rooms were there up-stairs, and one of these, his mother's, had not been opened for a long time. It seemed just the same as when he used to go to her with his stubbed toes and his troubles. She had died in that room.

  And now he was a man, going out to fight for his country. How strange!

  Why? In his mother's room he could not answer that puzzling question. It stung him, and with a last look, a good-by, and a word of prayer on his lips, he turned to his own little room.

  He entered and sat down on the bed. It was small, with the slope of the roof running down so low that he had learned to stoop when close to the wall. There was no ceiling. Bare yellow rafters and dark old shingles showed. He could see light through more than one little hole. The window was small, low, and without glass. How many times he had sat there, leaning out in the hot dusk of summer nights, dreaming dreams that were never to come true. Alas for the hopes and illusions of boyhood! So long as he could remember, this room was most closely associated with his actions and his thoughts. It was a part of him. He almost took it into his confidence as if it were human. Never had he become what he had dared to dream he would, yet, somehow, at that moment he was not ashamed. It struck him then what few belongings he really had. But he had been taught to get along with little.

  Living in that room was over for him. He was filled with unutterable sadness. Yet he would not have had it any different. Bigger, and selfless things called to him. He was bidding farewell to his youth and all that it related to. A solemn procession of beautiful memories passed through his mind, born of the nights there in that room of his boyhood, with the wind at the eaves and the rain pattering on the shingles. What strong and vivid pictures! No grief, no pain, no war could rob him of this best heritage from the past.

  He got up to go. And then a blinding rush of tears burned his eyes. This room seemed dearer than all the rest of his home. It was hard to leave.

  His last look was magnified, transformed. "Good-by!" he whispered, with a swelling constriction in his throat. At the head of the dark old stairway he paused a moment, and then with bowed head he slowly descended.

  Chapter XVII

  An August twilight settled softly down over "Many Waters" while Lenore Anderson dreamily gazed from her window out over the darkening fields so tranquil now after the day's harvest toil.

  Of late, in thoughtful hours such as this, she had become conscious of strain, of longing. She had fought out a battle with herself, had confessed her love for Kurt Dorn, and, surrendering to the enchantment of that truth, had felt her love grow with every thought of him and every beat of a thrilling pulse. In spite of a longing that amounted to pain and a nameless dread she could not deny, she was happy. And she waited, with a woman's presaging sense of events, for a crisis that was coming.

  Presently she heard her father down-stairs, his heavy tread and hearty voice. These strenuous harvest days left him little time for his family.

  And Lenore, having lost herself in her dreams, had not, of late, sought him out in the fields. She was waiting, and, besides, his keen eyes, at once so penetrating and so kind, had confused her. Few secrets had she ever kept from her father.

  "Where's Lenore?" she heard him ask, down in the dining-room.

  "Lenorry's mooning," replied Kathleen, with a giggle.

  "Ah-huh? Well, whereabouts is she moonin'?" went on Anderson.

  "Why, in her room!" retorted the child. "And you can't get a word out of her with a crowbar."

  Anderson's laugh rang out with a jingle of tableware. He was eating his supper. Then Lenore heard her mother and Rose and Kathleen all burst out with news of a letter come that day from Jim, away training to be a soldier. It was Rose who read this letter aloud to her father, and outside of her swift, soft voice the absolute silence attested to the attention of the listeners. Lenore's heart shook as she distinguished a phrase here and there, for Jim's letter had been wonderful for her. He had gained weight! He was getting husky enough to lick his father! He was feeling great! There was not a boy in the outfit who could beat him to a stuffed bag of a German soldier! And he sure could make some job with that old bayonet! So ran Jim's message to the loved ones at home.

  Then a strange pride replaced the quake in Lenore's heart. Not now would she have had Jim stay home. She had sacrificed him. Something subtler than thought told her she would never see him again. And, oh, how dear he had become!

  Then Anderson roared his delight in that letter and banged the table with his fist. The girls excitedly talked in unison. But the mother was significantly silent. Lenore forgot them presently and went back to her dreaming. It was just about dark when her father called.

  "Lenore."

  "Yes, father," she replied.

  "I'm comin' up," he said, and his heavy tread sounded in the hall. It was followed by the swift patter of little feet. "Say, you kids go back.

  I want to talk to Lenore."

  "Daddy," came Kathleen's shrill, guilty whisper, "I was only in fun--about her mooning."

  The father laughed again and slowly mounted the stairs. Lenore reflected uneasily that he seldom came to her room. Also, when he was most concerned with trouble he usually sought her.

  "Hello! All in the dark?" he said, as he came in. "May I turn on the light?"

  Lenore assented, though not quite readily. But Anderson did not turn on the light. He bumped into things on the way to where she was curled up in her window-seat, and he dropped wearily into Lenore's big arm-chair.

  "How are you, daddy?" she inquired.

  "Dog tired, but feelin' fine," he replied. "I've got a meetin' at eight an' I need a rest. Reckon I'd like to smoke--an' talk to you--if you don't mind."

  "I'd sure rather listen to my dad than any one," she replied, softly.

  She knew he had come with news or trouble or need of help. He always began that way. She could measure his mood by the preliminaries before his disclosure. And she fortified herself.

  "Wasn't that a great letter from the boy?" began Anderson, as he lit a cigar. By the flash of the match Lenore got a glimpse of his dark and unguarded face. Indeed, she did well to fortify herself.

  "Fine!... He wrote it to me. I laughed. I swelled with pride. It sent my blood racing. It filled me with fight.... Then I sneaked up here to cry."

  "Ah-huh!" exclaimed Anderson, with a loud sigh. Then for a moment of silence the end of his cigar alternately paled and glowed. "Lenore, did you get any--any kind of a hunch from Jim's letter?"

  "I don't exactly understand what you mean," replied Lenore.

  "Did somethin'--strange an' different come to you?" queried Anderson, haltingly, as if words were difficult to express what he meant.

  "Why, yes--I had many strange feelings."

  "Jim's letter was just like he talks. But to me it said somethin' he never meant an' didn't know.... Jim will never come back!"

  "Yes, dad--I divined just that," whispered Lenore.

  "Strange about that," mused Anderson, with a pull on his cigar.

  And then followed a silence. Lenore felt how long ago her father had made his sacrifice. There did not seem to be any need for more words about Jim. But there seemed a bigness in the bond of understanding between her and her father. A cause united them, and they were sustained by unfaltering courage. The great thing was the divine spark in the boy who could not have been held back. Lenore gazed out into the darkening shadows. The night was very still, except for the hum of insects, and the cool air felt sweet on her face. The shadows, the silence, the sleeping atmosphere hovering over "Many Waters," seemed charged with a quality of present sadness, of the inexplicable great world moving to its fate.

  "Lenore, you haven't been around much lately," resumed Anderson. "Sure you're
missed. An' Jake swears a lot more than usual."

  "Father, you told me to stay at home," she replied.

  "So I did. An' I reckon it's just as well. But when did you ever before mind me?"

  "Why, I always obey you," replied Lenore, with her low laugh.

  "Ah-huh! Not so I'd notice it.... Lenore, have you seen the big clouds of smoke driftin' over 'Many Waters' these last few days?"

  "Yes. And I've smelled smoke, too.... From forest fire, is it not?"

  "There's fire in some of the timber, but the wind's wrong for us to get smoke from the foot-hills."

  "Then where does the smoke come from?" queried Lenore, quickly.

  "Some of the Bend wheat country's been burned over."

  "Burned! You mean the wheat?"

  "Sure."

  "Oh! What part of the Bend?"

  "I reckon it's what you called young Dorn's desert of wheat."

  "Oh, what a pity!... Have you had word?"

  "Nothin' but rumors yet. But I'm fearin' the worst an' I'm sorry for our young friend."

  A sharp pain shot through Lenore's breast, leaving behind an ache.

  "It will ruin him!" she whispered.

  "Aw no, not that bad," declared Anderson, and there was a red streak in the dark where evidently he waved his cigar in quick, decisive action.

  "It'll only be tough on him an' sort of embarrassin' for me--an' you.

  That boy's proud.... I'll bet he raised hell among them I. W. W.'s, if he got to them." And Anderson chuckled with the delight he always felt in the Western appreciation of summary violence justly dealt.

  Lenore felt the rising tide of her anger. She was her father's daughter, yet always had been slow to wrath. That was her mother's softness and gentleness tempering the hard spirit of her father. But now her blood ran hot, beating and bursting about her throat and temples. And there was a leap and quiver to her body.

  "Dastards! Father, those foreign I. W. W. devils should be shot!" she cried, passionately. "To ruin those poor, heroic farmers! To ruin that--that boy! It's a crime! And, oh, to burn his beautiful field of wheat--with all his hopes! Oh, what shall I call that!"