Chapter 2

And, then, all was so new and beautiful, and the sky was so clear. Oh, that marvellous, lofty sky with just clouds enough to make the blue more intense! Oh, the wonder of the wind from the wild, mysterious green sea to the west! With the change and sheen of the prairie, incessant and magical life was made marvellous and the winter put far away.

Merry parties drove here and there visiting. Formalities counted for little, and yet with all this freedom of intercourse, this close companionship, no one pointed the finger of gossip toward any woman. The girls in their one-room huts received calls from their bachelor neighbors with the confidence that comes from purity of purpose, both felt and understood. Life was strangely idyllic during these spring days. Envy and hate and suspicion seemed exorcised from the world.

III

JUNE

The centre of the social life was Bailey's store. There stood the post-office, which connected the settlers with the world they had left behind. There they assembled each day when the flag ran up the long pole which stood before the door as a signal for the mail. On the treeless, shrubless prairie one could see the flag miles away, as it rose like a faint fleck of pink against the green of the prairie beyond or the blue sky above.

Twice a week Rivers drove out with supplies. These were the eventful days of the week, and it was significant to observe with what tasteful care the young women thought it proper to dress on this day. Hats, dainty and fresh, cool muslins, spotless cuffs, ribbons. They came out of their cabins with all the little airs and graces of their Eastern homes. Bailey shared their good opinion, but he was always silent and a little timid in their presence, and usually disappeared as soon as Rivers came. "The social responsibilities belong to you, partner," he was accustomed to say.

As the summer wore on, the number of those pathetically eager for letters increased. The sun-bright plain, the beautiful, almost cloudless sky, and the ever-flooding light wore upon them. They began to recall wistfully the cool streams of New England, the wooded slopes of Wisconsin, the comfortable homesteads and meadows of Illinois, and they came for their mail with shining eyes--and when forced to say "Nothing to-day," Bailey always suffered a keen pang of sympathetic pain.

He himself watched the eastern horizon, incessantly and unconsciously, hours before the wagon was due, and, when it came in sight at last, ran his flag up along its mast joyously.

It was a great pleasure to him to sit and talk with his partner, and he looked forward to his visits eagerly. To Jim he could utter himself freely. They had known each other so long, and he believed he understood his partner to the centre of his heart.

He usually had supper ready--often he had help from the girls or Mrs. Burke, and while a dozen hands volunteered at the team and with the mail-bag, Rivers was free to hurry to his table, whereat he fared like a pasha attended by the flower of his harem. The girls pretended it was all on account of his office as mail-carrier, but they deceived no one, much less an experienced beau like Rivers. He accepted it all with shameless egotism.

To Bailey's mind Jim was too well attended. He seemed to see less and less of his partner as the season wore on. They seldom sat down to talk in the good old fashion, wearing out half the night smoking, listening to the slumber-song of the night plain, for Rivers got into the habit of walking home with some of the girls after the mail was distributed, leaving his partner to do the trading. Sometimes he went away with Mrs. Burke, if she were alone; sometimes with Estelle Clayton, whom Bailey thought the finest woman in the world. He secretly resented Rivers' attention to Estelle, for he had come to look upon her as under his protection. Her coming raised mail-days to the level of a national holiday.

She scared him, and yet he rejoiced to see her coming down over the sod so strong, so erect, so clear-eyed. She wore her hair like a matron, and that pleased him, and she looked at him so frankly and unwaveringly. She had been a school-teacher in some middle Western State, and had been swept into this movement by her desire to go to an Eastern college.

Bailey contrived to look very stern and very busy whenever she came in, but she was wise in ways of men, and treated him as if he were a good comrade, and so gradually he came to talk to her almost as freely as with Blanche Burke.

He did not know that Jim almost invariably went over to Burke's shanty--even when he walked home with Miss Clayton. Rivers did not impress Estelle favorably. She was not one to be moved by flattery, nor by dimples in male cheeks. She accepted his company pleasantly, but there were well-defined bounds to her friendship, as Rivers discovered one evening as they were walking over the plain toward her home.

On every side the vivid green stretched away, smooth as the rounded flesh of a woman, velvet in texture, glorified by the saffron and orange of the sunset sky.

At the cabin they met Carrie, for whom Estelle was both sister and mother. The little shanty slanted on the side of a swell like a little boat sliding up a monstrous mid-ocean wave. Around it lay a little garden inhabited by a colony of chicken-coops--"All my own making," Estelle said. "Oh, of course, sister held the nails and bossed, but I did it. I like it, too. It's more fun than working red poppies on tidies--that's about all they'll let you do back East."

"It doesn't matter much what you do out here," said Rivers, meaningly.

"Oh yes, it does. Some things are wrong anywhere; but there are other things which people _think_ are wrong that are only unusual," she answered, and he knew she knew what he meant.

The talk moved on to lighter themes, and then died away as the three sat in the doorway and saw the light fade out of the sky.

Carrie's thin, eager face shone with angelic light. She seemed to hold her breath as flame after flame of the marvellous light was withdrawn.

"Oh, the sky is so big out here," she whispered. Estelle locked hands with her and sat in silence. Rivers, awkward and constrained, respected their emotion. At last he rose.

"I'm going over to Burke's a little while, so I'll have to be moving."

"Mrs. Burke is very strange," said Estelle; "I can't seem to get on with her. She seems very lonely and restless. Her husband is away a great deal, but I can't get her to talk, when I call, and she never returns my call."

"She never seemed that way to me," Rivers said, having nothing better in mind at the moment.

"I think she's homesick. I wish I knew how to help her, but I don't."

Rivers walked away with two thoughts in his mind. One was the girl's sentence about things that were wrong and things which people thought were wrong, and the other was the question about Blanche--was she homesick? That puzzled him. Had he only seen her in her joyous moods? It was not pleasant to think of her growing sad--perhaps on his account.

Burke sat on a bench outside the door, smoking silently in the dusk. Blanche was stirring about inside.

"Hello, Rivers!" Burke called. "Take a seat." He pointed at a vinegar-keg.

Blanche hurried to meet her visitor, a beautiful smile on her face. "Come inside," she said. "I've got some work to do, and I want to hear you men talk." They obediently complied, and she lighted a lamp. "I like to see you when you talk," she added, flashing a smile at Rivers.

He saw the change in her for the first time. She certainly was paler, her face less boyish, and a deeper shadow hovered about her eyes.

"I came over to see if you wouldn't come down and help us get up a jollification at the store on the Fourth," he said.

"Why, of course. What shall I do?"

"Oh, stir up a cake--and make some ice-cream. Can you make ice-cream?"

"You bet I can--with ice. Bring on your ice."

"Ice is easy to get. Cook is what bothered me."

"That ought to be easy," said Burke. "Marry one."

"That's what I'm telling Bailey."

"Why don't you set the example. 'Stelle Clayton--now."

Rivers laughed, but his eyes, directed above Burke's head, met the unsmiling gaze of Blanche and sobered.

"Miss Clayton and I don't seem to get along first-rate," he said, and her face lighted again.

"Well, there are lots of others 'round here--lonesome girls. Blanche, can't you help Jim find a woman?"

Blanche did not answer lightly. She turned to her work. "I guess he can find one if he tries hard."

She was alluring as she kneaded the bread at the table. The flex of her waist and the swing of her skirts affected Rivers powerfully. He watched her in silence. Once she looked around, and the penetrative glance of his eyes filled her face with a rush of blood, and her eyes misted. A few minutes later he said "good-night" in an absent-minded way and went home.

Burke talked on, attempting to retain the cheery atmosphere which Rivers had brought in, but Blanche refused to answer, a sombre look on her sullen face. She seemed falling back into her old petulant, moody ways, and her husband suffered a corresponding dejection.

The elation was passing out of his heart. Their picnic was at an end.

As the summer came on he was forced to go out ploughing for other settlers, and she was left alone a great deal. This was hard to bear. There was so little to do in her little sun-smit cabin, and her trip to the post-office to get the mail and to meet the other settlers came to be a necessity. Like the other women, she put on her best hat and gown when she went to the store, and a low word of compliment from Rivers, as he handed out the mail, put a color into her face and a joy in her heart which her husband had never been able to arouse--indeed, it was after these visits that she was most cruel to Willard.

Sometimes she went with him to visit the neighbors, but not often. One day he said:

"I'm goin' to work f'r Jim Bradley to-day--want 'o go 'long?"

"I can't this mornin'. Perhaps I'll come over after dinner and walk home with you."

"I think you'll like Mrs. Bradley. She's got the purtiest little baby you ever saw." He did not look at her as he slung his pick and shovel on his shoulder. "Well, I'll tell her you'll be over about three o'clock."

"All right, tell her. Mebbe I'll come and mebbe I won't," she answered, ungraciously.

All that forenoon she went about her little cabin moodily, or sat silently by the open door watching the buffalo birds or larks as they came up about the barn for food. The green plain was all a-shimmer with pleasant heat. The plover, nesting in the grass, were nearly ready to bring forth their young--and the mother fox had already begun to lead her litter out upon the sunny hillside; only this childless woman seemed unhappy--sad.

As she came to the cabin of the Bradleys, Willard, sunk to his topknot in the ground, was burrowing like a badger in the clay, quite oblivious to the world above him. Some one was singing in the cabin, and, approaching the door, Blanche saw a picture which thrilled her with a strange, hungry, envious passion.

A young woman was seated in the tiny room with her back to the door, her hand on a cradle, and as she rocked she sang softly. She was a plain little woman, the cradle was cheap and common, and her singing was only a monotonous chant; but the scene had a sort of sublimity--it was so old, so typical, and so beautiful.

The woman without the threshold stood for a long time staring straight before her, then turned and walked away homeward--past the weary, patient, heroic man toiling deep in the earth for her sake--leaving him without a glance or a word.

"You didn't get over to Mrs. Bradley's this afternoon, then?" Burke said, at supper.

"No," she replied, shortly, "I had some sewin' to do."

"Wal, go to-morrow. That's an awfully cute little chap--that baby," he went on, after a little. "Mrs. Bradley let him set on my knee to-day." Then he sighed. "I wisht we had one like 'im, Blanche." After a pause, he said, "Mebbe God will send one some day."

She didn't appear to hear, and her face was dark with passion.

IV

AUGUST

Now the settlers began to long for rain. Day after day vast clouds rose above the horizon, swift and portentous, domed like aerial mountains, only to pass with a swoop like the flight of silent, great eagles, followed by a trailing garment of dust. Often they lifted in the west with fine promise, only to go muttering and bellowing by to the north or south, leaving the sky and plain as beautiful, as placid, and as dry as before. The people grew anxious, and some of them became bitter, but the most of them kept up good courage, feeling certain that this was an unusual season.

One sultry day, while Rivers was on his way out to the store, he fell to studying the sky and air. On the prairie, as on the sea, one studies little else. There was something formidable in every sign. In the west a prodigious dome of blue-black cloud was rising, ragged at the edge, but dense and compact at the horizon.

"That means business," Rivers said to himself, and chirped to his team.

The air was close and hot. The southern wind had died away. There was scarcely a sound in all the landscape save the regular clucking of the wagon-wheels, the soft, rhythmical tread of the horses' feet, and the snapping buzz of the grasshoppers rising from the weeds. Far away to the west lay the blue Coteaux, thirty miles distant, long, low, without break, like a wall. The sun was hidden by the cloud, and as he passed a shanty Rivers saw the family eating their supper outside the door to escape the smothering heat.

He smiled as he saw the gleam of white dresses about the door of the store. As he drove up, a swarm of impatient folk came out to meet him. The girls waved their handkerchiefs at him, and the men raised a shout.

"You're late, old man."

"I know it, but that makes me all the more welcome." He heaved the mail-bag to Bailey. "There's a letter for every girl in the crowd, I know, for I wrote 'em."

"We'll believe that when we see the letters," the girls replied.

He dismounted heavily. "Somebody put my team up. I'm hungry as a wolf and dry as a biscuit."

"The poor thing," said one of the girls. "He means a cracker."

Estelle Clayton came out of the store. "Supper's all ready for you, Mr. Mail-Carrier. Come right in and sit down."

"I'm a-coming--now watch me," he replied, with intent to be funny.

The girls accompanied him into the little living-room.

"Oh, my, don't some folks live genteel? See the canned peaches!"

"And the canned lobster!"

"And the hot biscuit!"

"Sit down, Jim, and we'll pour the tea and dip out the peaches."

Rivers seated himself at the little pine table. "I guess you'd better whistle while you're dipping the peaches," he said, pointedly.

Miss Thompson dropped the spoon. "What impudence!"

"Oh, let him go on--don't mind him," said Estelle. "Let's desert him; I guess that will make him sorry."

Upon the word they all withdrew, and Rivers smiled. "Good riddance," said he.

Miss Baker presently opened the door, and, shaking a letter, said, "Don't you wish you knew?"

He pretended to hurl a biscuit at her, and she shut the door with a shriek of laughter.

Mrs. Burke slipped in. Her voice was low and timid, her face sombre.

"I cooked the supper, Jim."

"You did? Well, it's good. The biscuits are delicious." He looked at her as only a husband should look--intimate, unwaveringly, secure. "You're looking fine!"

She flushed with pleasure. As she passed him with the tea, he put his arm about her waist.

"Be careful, Jim," she said, gently, and with a revealing, familiar, sad cadence in her voice.

He smiled at her boyishly. He was beautiful to her in this mood. "I was hoping you'd come over and stew something up for me. Hello, there's the thunder! It's going to rain!"

Another sudden boom, like a cannon-shot, silenced the noise inside for an instant, and then a sudden movement took place, the movement of feet passing hurriedly about, and at last only one or two persons could be heard. When Rivers re-entered the store Bailey was alone, standing in the door, intently watching the coming storm. It was growing dusk on the plain, and the lightning was beginning to play rapidly, low down toward the horizon.

"We're in for it!" Bailey remarked, very quietly. "Cyclone!"

"Think so?" said Rivers, carelessly.

"Sure of it, Jim. That cloud's too wide in the wings to miss us this time."

A peculiar, branching flash of lightning lay along the sky, like a vast elm-tree, followed by a crashing roar.

Blanche cried out in alarm.

"Now, don't be scared. It's only a shower and will soon be over," said Bailey. "Here's a letter for you."

She took the letter and read it hastily, looking often at the coming storm. She seemed pale and distraught.

"Do you s'pose I've got time to get home now?" she asked, as she finished reading.

"No," said Rivers, so decidedly that Bailey looked up in surprise.

"Can't you take me home?"

Rivers looked out of the door. "By the time we get this wagon unloaded and the team hitched up, the storm will be upon us. No. I guess you're safest right here."

There was a peculiar tone, a note of authority, in his voice which puzzled Bailey quite as much as her submission.

They worked silently and swiftly, getting the barrels of pork and oil and flour into the store, and by the time they had emptied the wagon the room was dark, so dark that the white face of the awed woman could be seen only as a blotch of gray against the shadow.

They lighted the oil lamps, which hung in brackets on the wall, and then Rivers said to Blanche: "Won't you go into the other room? We must stay here and look after the goods."

"No, no! I'd rather be here with you; it's going to be terrible."

"Hark!" said Bailey, with lifted hands; "there she comes!"

Far away was heard a continuous, steady, low-keyed, advancing hum, like the rushing of wild horses, their hoofbeats lost in one mighty, throbbing, tumultuous roar; then a deeper darkness fell upon the scene, and swift as the swoop of an eagle the tornado was upon them.

The advancing wall of rain struck the building with terrific force. The lightning broke forth, savage as the roar of siege-guns. The noise of the wind and thunder was deafening. The plain grew black as night, save when the lightning flamed in countless streams across the clouds. The cabin shook like a frightened hound. Bailey looked around.

"We must move the goods!" he shouted above the tumult. "See, the rain is beating in!"

Rivers, with Blanche encircled by his arm, pressed her to his side reassuringly. "Don't be afraid. It can't blow down," he repeated.

He then leaped to Bailey's assistance, and, while the thunder crashed in their ears and the lightning blinded their eyes, they worked like frantic insects to move the goods away from the western wall, through which the rain was beating. There was a pleasure in this assault which the woman could not share. It was battle, absorbing and exalting. Their shouts were full of joyous excitement.

Once, when the structure trembled and groaned with the shock of a frightful blast, Rivers again put his arm around Blanche, saying: "It can't blow over. See those heavy barrels? If this store blows down, there won't be a shanty standing in the county."

She pushed to the window to get a glimpse of the sod when the lightning flamed. She imagined the plain as it would look with every cabin flattened to earth, its inmates scattered, unhoused in the scant, water-weighted grass.

As they all stood staring out, Rivers pointed and shouted to Bailey, "See that flag-pole!"

It was made of hard pine, tough and supple, but it bent in the force of the wind like a willow twig. Again and again it bowed, rose with a fling, only to be borne down again. At last it broke with a crash; the upper half, whirling down, struck the roof, opening a ragged hole through which the rain streamed in torrents.

Rivers cried, in battle alarm, "The roof is going!"

"No, it ain't!" trumpeted Bailey, sturdily; "swing a tub up here to catch the water!"

The woman forgot her fears and aided the two men as they toiled to cover the more perishable goods with bolts of cotton cloth, while the appalling wind tore at the eaves and lashed the roof with broadsides of rain and hail, which fell in constantly increasing force, raising the roar of the storm in key, till it crackled viciously. The tempest had the voice of a ravenous beast, cheated and angry. Outside the water lay in sheets. The whole land was a river, and the shanty was like a boat beached on a bar in the swash of it.

Nothing more could be done, and so they waited, Bailey watching at the window, Blanche and Rivers standing in the centre of the room. Bailey came back once to say: "This beats anything I ever saw. There will be ruin to many a shanty out of this," he added, as the roar began to diminish. "Nothing saved us but our ballast of pork and oil."

"As soon as it stops, Bob, I wish you'd hitch up for me. I want to take Mrs. Burke home."

"All right, Jim; it's letting up now. I wonder if the storm was as bad over where the Clayton girls are?" His voice betrayed anxiety greater than he knew. Rivers looked at him indulgently and smiled at Blanche. "You'd better go and see," he said.

As soon as it became possible to carry a light, Bailey went to the barn and brought the team to the door. Rivers helped Blanche to a seat in the wagon and drove off across the plain, leaving Bailey alone in the water-soaked store-room. After a half-hour's work he, too, set out on a tour of exploration. The moon was shining on the plain as serenely as if only a dew had fallen. Water stood in shallow basins here and there, but the land was unmarked of the passion of lightning and of wind. Bailey walked across the level waste, straining his eyes ahead to see if the homes of his neighbors were still standing. He saw lights gleaming here and there like warning lamps of distant schooners, and when the infrequent, silent lightning flamed over the level waste, he caught glimpses of familiar shanties standing on the low swells.

He hurried forward, his feet splashing in water, too intent to turn aside. Wherever a lamp burned steadily he knew a roof still remained, and his heart grew lighter. He came at last to the object of his search. It was only a small hut, but it was to him most sacred. He knocked timidly at the door.

"Who's there?" was the quick and startled reply.

"It's Bailey. I'm here to see how you came through the storm."

"Oh, Mr. Bailey!" replied Estelle. She opened the door. "Come in. We're all right, but wet. Don't step in the pans."

As he entered, with eyes a little dazzled by the candle, Carrie, wrapped in a shawl, rose from the bed. "Oh, I'm glad to see a man! Wasn't it terrible?" Pans were set about the room to catch the dripping water. The little shanty, usually so orderly and cheerful, looked dishevelled and desolate.

Estelle laughed and said, "I tried to save the chickens, and I nearly blew away myself."

Her cheeks were flushed, and her wet hair streamed down her back. She was barefooted, a fact which she tried to conceal by leaning forward a little.

"It was very good of you to come over," she went on, more soberly, in the pause which followed. "We were scared; no use denying that, but we were too busy to dwell upon it. The wind took the tarred paper off the roof and let the rain through everywhere. It was the most exciting experience of our lives."

She was more breathless and girlish than she had ever been in his presence, and he grew correspondingly secure. A subtle charm came from her streaming hair and her uncorseted and graceful figure. He offered assistance, but she sturdily replied: