Chapter 3

It was on such a day as this that Mrs. Dundy kept her promise and came over to see if the young housekeeper needed any of the advice she had promised her. She had walked, because none of the horses could be spared. It had got so warm now that the fire in the kitchen heated the whole house sufficiently, and Annie had the rooms clean to exquisiteness. Mrs. Dundy looked about with envious eyes.

“How lovely!” she said.

“Do you think so?” cried Annie, in surprise. “I like it, of course, because it is home, but I don't see how you could call anything here lovely.”

“Oh, you don't understand,” her visitor went on. “It's lovely because it looks so happy. Some of us have--well, kind o' lost our grip.”

“It's easy to do that if you don't feel well,” Annie remarked sympathetically. “I haven't felt as well as usual myself, lately. And I do get lonesome and wonder what good it does to fix up every day when there is no one to see. But that is all nonsense, and I put it out of my head.”

She smoothed out the clean lawn apron with delicate touch. Mrs. Dundy followed the movement with her eyes.

“Oh, my dear,” she cried, “you don't know nothin' about it yet! But you will know! You will!” and those restless, hot eyes of hers seemed to grow more restless and more hot as they looked with infinite pity at the young woman before her.

Annie thought of these words often as the summer came on, and the heat grew. Jim was seldom to be seen now. He was up at four each morning, and the last chore was not completed till nine at night. Then he threw himself in bed and lay there log-like till dawn. He was too weary to talk much, and Annie, with her heart aching for his fatigue, forbore to speak to him. She cooked the most strengthening things she could, and tried always to look fresh and pleasant when he came in. But she often thought her pains were in vain, for he hardly rested his sunburned eyes on her. His skin got so brown that his face was strangely changed, especially as he no longer had time to shave, and had let a rough beard straggle over his cheeks and chin. On Sundays Annie would have liked to go to church, but the horses were too tired to be taken out, and she did not feel well enough to walk far; besides, Jim got no particular good out of walking over the hills unless he had a plough in his hand.

Harvest came at length, and the crop was good. There were any way from three to twenty men at the house then, and Annie cooked for all of them. Jim had tried to get some one to help her, but he had not succeeded. Annie strove to be brave, remembering that farm-women all over the country were working in similar fashion. But in spite of all she could do, the days got to seem like nightmares, and sleep between was but a brief pause in which she was always dreaming of water, and thinking that she was stooping to put fevered lips to a running brook. Some of these men were very disgusting to Annie. Their manners were as bad as they could well be, and a coarse word came naturally to their lips.

“To be master of the soil, that is one thing,” said she to herself in sickness of spirit; “but to be the slave of it is another. These men seem to have got their souls all covered with muck.” She noticed that they had no idea of amusement. They had never played anything. They did not even care for base-ball. Their idea of happiness appeared to be to do nothing; and there was a good part of the year in which they were happy,--for these were not for the most part men owning farms; they were men who hired out to help the farmer. A good many of them had been farmers at one time and another, but they had failed. They all talked politics a great deal,--politics and railroads. Annie had not much patience with it all. She had great confidence in the course of things. She believed that in this country all men have a fair chance. So when it came about that the corn and the wheat, which had been raised with such incessant toil, brought them no money, but only a loss, Annie stood aghast.

“I said the rates were ruinous,” Jim said to her one night, after it was all over, and he had found out that the year's slavish work had brought him a loss of three hundred dollars; “it's been a conspiracy from the first. The price of corn is all right. But by the time we set it down in Chicago we are out eighteen cents a bushel. It means ruin. What are we going to do? Here we had the best crop we've had for years--but what's the use of talking! They have us in their grip.”

“I don't see how it is,” Annie protested. “I should think it would be for the interest of the roads to help the people to be as prosperous as possible.”

“Oh, we can't get out! And we're bound to stay and raise grain. And they're bound to cart it. And that's all there is to it. They force us to stand every loss, even to the shortage that is made in transportation. The railroad companies own the elevators, and they have the cinch on us. Our grain is at their mercy. God knows how I'm going to raise that interest. As for the five hundred we were going to pay on the mortgage this year, Annie, we're not in it.”

Autumn was well set in by this time, and the brilliant cold sky hung over the prairies as young and fresh as if the world were not old and tired. Annie no longer could look as trim as when she first came to the little house. Her pretty wedding garments were beginning to be worn and there was no money for more. Jim would not play chess now of evenings. He was forever writing articles for the weekly paper in the adjoining town. They talked of running him for the state legislature, and he was anxious for the nomination.

“I think I might be able to stand it if I could fight 'em!” he declared; “but to sit here idle, knowing that I have been cheated out of my year's work, just as much as if I had been knocked down on the road and the money taken from me, is enough to send me to the asylum with a strait-jacket on!”

Life grew to take on tragic aspects. Annie used to find herself wondering if anywhere in the world there were people with light hearts. For her there was no longer anticipation of joy, or present companionship, or any divertissement in the whole world. Jim read books which she did not understand, and with a few of his friends, who dropped in now and then evenings or Sundays, talked about these books in an excited manner.

She would go to her room to rest, and lying there in the darkness on the bed, would hear them speaking together, sometimes all at once, in those sternly vindictive tones men use when there is revolt in their souls.

“It is the government which is helping to impoverish us,” she would hear Jim saying. “Work is money. That is to say, it is the active form of money. The wealth of a country is estimated by its power of production. And its power of production means work. It means there are so many men with so much capacity. Now the government owes it to these men to have money enough to pay them for their work; and if there is not enough money in circulation to pay to each man for his honest and necessary work, then I say that government is in league with crime. It is trying to make defaulters of us. It has a hundred ways of cheating us. When I bought this farm and put the mortgage on it, a day's work would bring twice the results it will now. That is to say, the total at the end of the year showed my profits to be twice what they would be now, even if the railway did not stand in the way to rob us of more than we earn. So that it will take just twice as many days' work now to pay off this mortgage as it would have done at the time it was contracted. It's a conspiracy, I tell you! Those Eastern capitalists make a science of ruining us.”

He got more eloquent as time went on, and Annie, who had known him first as rather a careless talker, was astonished at the boldness of his language. But conversation was a lost art with him. He no longer talked. He harangued.

In the early spring Annie's baby was born,--a little girl with a nervous cry, who never slept long at a time, and who seemed to wail merely from distaste at living. It was Mrs. Dundy who came over to look after the house till Annie got able to do so. Her eyes had that fever in them, as ever. She talked but little, but her touch on Annie's head was more eloquent than words. One day Annie asked for the glass, and Mrs. Dundy gave it to her. She looked in it a long time. The color was gone from her cheeks, and about her mouth there was an ugly tightening. But her eyes flashed and shone with that same--no, no, it could not be that in her face also was coming the look of half-madness! She motioned Mrs. Dundy to come to her.

“You knew it was coming,” she said, brokenly, pointing to the reflection in the glass. “That first day, you knew how it would be.”

Mrs. Dundy took the glass away with a gentle hand.

“How could I help knowing?” she said simply. She went into the next room, and when she returned Annie noticed that the handkerchief stuck in her belt was wet, as if it had been wept on.

A woman cannot stay long away from her home on a farm at planting time, even if it is a case of life and death. Mrs. Dundy had to go home, and Annie crept about her work with the wailing baby in her arms. The house was often disorderly now; but it could not be helped. The baby had to be cared for. It fretted so much that Jim slept apart in the mow of the barn, that his sleep might not be disturbed. It was a pleasant, dim place, full of sweet scents, and he liked to be there alone. Though he had always been an unusual worker, he worked now more like a man who was fighting off fate, than a mere toiler for bread.

The corn came up beautifully, and far as the eye could reach around their home it tossed its broad green leaves with an oceanlike swelling of sibilant sound. Jim loved it with a sort of passion. Annie loved it, too. Sometimes, at night, when her fatigue was unbearable, and her irritation wearing out both body and soul, she took her little one in her arms and walked among the corn, letting its rustling soothe the baby to sleep.

The heat of the summer was terrible. The sun came up in that blue sky like a curse, and hung there till night came to comfort the blistering earth. And one morning a terrible thing happened. Annie was standing out of doors in the shade of those miserable little oaks, ironing, when suddenly a blast of air struck her in the face, which made her look up startled. For a moment she thought, perhaps, there was a fire near in the grass. But there was none. Another blast came, hotter this time, and fifteen minutes later that wind was sweeping straight across the plain, burning and blasting. Annie went in the house to finish her ironing, and was working there, when she heard Jim's footstep on the door-sill. He could not pale because of the tan, but there was a look of agony and of anger-almost brutish anger--in his eyes. Then he looked, for a moment, at Annie standing there working patiently, and rocking the little crib with one foot, and he sat down on the door-step and buried his face in his brown arms.

The wind blew for three days. At the end of that time every ear was withered in the stalk. The corn crop was ruined.

But there were the other crops which must be attended to, and Jim watched those with the alertness of a despairing man; and so harvest came again, and again the house was filled with men who talked their careless talk, and who were not ashamed to gorge while this one woman cooked for them. The baby lay on a quilt on the floor in the coolest part of the kitchen. Annie fed it irregularly. Sometimes she almost forgot it. As for its wailing, she had grown so used to it that she hardly heard it, any more than she did the ticking of the clock. And yet, tighter than anything else in life, was the hold that little thing had on her heart-strings. At night, after the interminable work had been finished--though in slovenly fashion--she would take it up and caress it with fierceness, and worn as she was, would bathe it and soothe it, and give it warm milk from the big tin pail.

“Lay the child down,” Jim would say impatiently, while the men would tell how their wives always put the babies on the bed and let them cry if they wanted to. Annie said nothing, but she hushed the little one with tender songs.

One day, as usual, it lay on its quilt while Annie worked. It was a terribly busy morning. She had risen at four to get the washing out of the way before the men got on hand, and there were a dozen loaves of bread to bake, and the meals to get, and the milk to attend to, and the chickens and pigs to feed. So occupied was she that she never was able to tell how long she was gone from the baby. She only knew that the heat of her own body was so great that the blood seemed to be pounding at her ears, and she staggered as she crossed the yard. But when she went at last with a cup of milk to feed the little one, it lay with clenched fists and fixed eyes, and as she lifted it, a last convulsion laid it back breathless, and its heart had ceased to beat.

Annie ran with it to her room, and tried such remedies as she had. But nothing could keep the chill from creeping over the wasted little form,--not even the heat of the day, not even the mother's agonized embrace. Then, suddenly, Annie looked at the clock. It was time to get the dinner. She laid the piteous tiny shape straight on the bed, threw a sheet over it, and went back to the weltering kitchen to cook for those men, who came at noon and who must be fed--who must be fed.

When they were all seated at the table, Jim among them, and she had served them, she said, standing at the head of the table, with her hands on her hips:--

“I don't suppose any of you have time to do anything about it; but I thought you might like to know that the baby is dead. I wouldn't think of asking you to spare the horses, for I know they have to rest. But I thought, if you could make out on a cold supper, that I would go to the town for a coffin.”

There was satire in the voice that stung even through the dull perceptions of these men, and Jim arose with a cry and went to the room where his dead baby lay.

About two months after this Annie insisted that she must go home to Illinois. Jim protested in a way.

“You know, I'd like to send you,” he said; “but I don't see where the money is to come from. And since I've got this nomination, I want to run as well as I can. My friends expect me to do my best for them. It's a duty, you know, and nothing less, for a few men, like me, to get in the legislature. We're going to get a railroad bill through this session that will straighten out a good many things. Be patient a little longer, Annie.”

“I want to go home,” was the only reply he got. “You must get the money, some way, for me to go home with.”

“I haven't paid a cent of interest yet,” he cried angrily. “I don't see what you mean by being so unreasonable!”

“You must get the money, some way,” she reiterated.

He did not speak to her for a week, except when he was obliged to. But she did not seem to mind; and he gave her the money. He took her to the train in the little wagon that had met her when she first came. At the station, some women were gossiping excitedly, and Annie asked what they were saying.

“It's Mis' Dundy,” they said. “She's been sent to th' insane asylum at Lincoln. She's gone stark mad. All she said on the way out was, 'Th' butter won't come! Th' butter won't come!'” Then they laughed a little--a strange laugh; and Annie thought of a drinking-song she had once heard, “Here's to the next who dies.”

Ten days after this Jim got a letter from her. “I am never coming back, Jim,” it said. “It is hopeless. I don't think I would mind standing still to be shot down if there was any good in it. But I'm not going back there to work harder than any slave for those money-loaners and the railroads. I guess they can all get along without me. And I am sure I can get along without them. I do not think this will make you feel very bad. You haven't seemed to notice me very much lately when I've been around, and I do not think you will notice very much when I am gone. I know what this means. I know I am breaking my word when I leave you. But remember, it is not you I leave, but the soil, Jim! I will not be its slave any longer. If you care to come for me here, and live another life--but no, there would be no use. Our love, like our toil, has been eaten up by those rapacious acres. Let us say goodby.”

Jim sat all night with this letter in his hand. Sometimes he dozed heavily in his chair. But he did not go to bed; and the next morning he hitched up his horses and rode to town. He went to the bank which held his notes.

“I'll confess judgment as soon as you like,” he said. “It's all up with me.”

It was done as quickly as the law would allow. And the things in the house were sold by auction. All the farmers were there with their wives. It made quite an outing for them. Jim moved around impassively, and chatted, now and then, with some of the men about what the horses ought to bring.

The auctioneer was a clever fellow. Between the putting up of the articles, he sang comic songs, and the funnier the song, the livelier the bidding that followed. The horses brought a decent price, and the machinery a disappointing one; and then, after a delicious snatch about Nell who rode the sway-backed mare at the county fair, he got down to the furniture,--the furniture which Jim had bought when he was expecting Annie.

Jim was walking around with his hands in his pockets, looking unconcerned, and, as the furniture began to go off, he came and sat down in the midst of it. Every one noticed his indifference. Some of them said that after all he couldn't have been very ambitious. He didn't seem to take his failure much to heart. Every one was concentrating attention on the cookingstove, when Jim leaned forward, quickly, over a little wicker work-stand.

There was a bit of unfinished sewing there, and it fell out as he lifted the cover. It was a baby's linen shirt. Jim let it lie, and then lifted from its receptacle a silver thimble. He put it in his vest-pocket.

The campaign came on shortly after this, and Jim Lancy was defeated. “I'm going to Omaha,” said he to the station-master, “and I've got just enough to buy a ticket with. There's a kind of satisfaction in giving the last cent I have to the railroads.”

Two months later, a “plain drunk” was registered at the station in Nebraska's metropolis. When they searched him they found nothing in his pockets but a silver thimble, and Joe Benson, the policeman who had brought in the “drunk,” gave it to the matron, with his compliments. But she, when no one noticed, went softly to where the man was sleeping, and slipped it back into his pocket, with a sigh. For she knew somehow--as women do know things--that he had not stolen that thimble.

THE equinoctial line itself is not more imaginary than the line which divided the estates of the three Johns. The herds of the three Johns roamed at will, and nibbled the short grass far and near without let or hindrance; and the three Johns themselves were utterly indifferent as to boundary lines. Each of them had filed his application at the office of the government land-agent; each was engaged in the tedious task of “proving up;” and each owned one-third of the L-shaped cabin which stood at the point where the three ranches touched. The hundred and sixty acres which would have completed this quadrangle had not yet been “taken up.”

The three Johns were not anxious to have a neighbor. Indeed, they had made up their minds that if one appeared on that adjoining “hun'erd an' sixty,” it would go hard with him. For they did not deal in justice very much--the three Johns. They considered it effete. It belonged in the East along with other outgrown superstitions. And they had given it out widely that it would be healthier for land applicants to give them elbow-room. It took a good many miles of sunburnt prairie to afford elbow-room for the three Johns.

They met by accident in Hamilton at the land-office. John Henderson, fresh from Cincinnati, manifestly unused to the ways of the country, looked at John Gillispie with a lurking smile. Gillispie wore a sombrero, fresh, white, and expansive. His boots had high heels, and were of elegant leather and finely arched at the instep. His corduroys disappeared in them half-way up the thigh. About his waist a sash of blue held a laced shirt of the same color in place. Henderson puffed at his cigarette, and continued to look a trifle quizzical.

Suddenly Gillispie walked up to him and said, in a voice of complete suavity, “Damn yeh, smoke a pipe!”

“Eh?” said Henderson, stupidly.

“Smoke a pipe,” said the other. “That thing you have is bad for your complexion.”

“I can take care of my complexion,” said Henderson, firmly.

The two looked each other straight in the eye.

“You don't go on smoking that thing till you have apologized for that grin you had on your phiz a moment ago.”

“I laugh when I please, and I smoke what I please,” said Henderson, hotly, his face flaming as he realized that he was in for his first “row.”

That was how it began. How it would have ended is not known--probably there would have been only one John--if it had not been for the almost miraculous appearance at this moment of the third John. For just then the two belligerents found themselves prostrate, their pistols only half-cocked, and between them stood a man all gnarled and squat, like one of those wind-torn oaks which grow on the arid heights. He was no older than the others, but the lines in his face were deep, and his large mouth twitched as he said:--

“Hold on here, yeh fools! There's too much blood in you to spill. You'll spile th' floor, and waste good stuff. We need blood out here!”

Gillispie bounced to his feet. Henderson arose suspiciously, keeping his eyes on his assailants.

“Oh, get up!” cried the intercessor. “We don't shoot men hereabouts till they git on their feet in fightin' trim.”

“What do you know about what we do here?” interrupted Gillispie. “This is the first time I ever saw you around.”

“That's so,” the other admitted. “I'm just down from Montana. Came to take up a quarter section. Where I come from we give men a show, an' I thought perhaps yeh did th' same here.”

“Why, yes,” admitted Gillispie, “we do. But I don't want folks to laugh too much--not when I'm around--unless they tell me what the joke is. I was just mentioning it to the gentleman,” he added, dryly.

“So I saw,” said the other; “you're kind a emphatic in yer remarks. Yeh ought to give the gentleman a chance to git used to the ways of th' country. He'll be as tough as th' rest of us if you'll give him a chance. I kin see it in him.”

“Thank you,” said Henderson. “I'm glad you do me justice. I wish you wouldn't let daylight through me till I've had a chance to get my quarter section. I'm going to be one of you, either as a live man or a corpse. But I prefer a hundred and sixty acres of land to six feet of it.”

“There, now!” triumphantly cried the squat man. “Didn't I tell yeh? Give him a show! 'Tain't no fault of his that he's a tenderfoot. He'll get over that.”

Gillispie shook hands with first one and then the other of the men. “It's a square deal from this on,” he said. “Come and have a drink.”

That's how they met--John Henderson, John Gillispie, and John Waite. And a week later they were putting up a shanty together for common use, which overlapped each of their reservations, and satisfied the law with its sociable subterfuge.