Main-Travelled Roads

by Garland, Hamlin

  H.G.

  March 1, 1922

  A BRANCH ROAD

  I

  "Keep the main-travelled road till you come to a branch leading off-keep to the right."

  IN the windless September dawn a voice went singing, a man's voice, singing a cheap and common air. Yet something in the elan of it all told he was young, jubilant, and a happy lover.

  Above the level belt of timber to the east a vast dome of pale undazzling gold was rising, silently and swiftly. Jays called in the thickets where the maples flamed amid the green oaks, with irregular splashes of red and orange. The grass was crisp with frost under the feet, the road smooth and gray-white in color, the air was indescribably sweet, resonant, and stimulating. No wonder the man sang.

  He came Into view around the curve in the lane. He had a fork on his shoulder, a graceful and polished tool. His straw hat was tilted on the back of his head, his rough, faded coat was buttoned close to the chin, and he wore thin buckskin gloves on his hands. He looked muscular and intelligent, and was evidently about twenty-two or -three years of age.

  As he walked on, and the sunrise came nearer to him, he stopped his song. The broadening heavens had a majesty and sweetness that made him forget the physical joy of happy youth. He grew almost sad with the great vague thoughts and emotions which rolled in his brain as the wonder of the morning grew.

  He walked more slowly, mechanically following the road, his eyes on the ever-shifting streaming banners of rose and pale green, which made the east too glorious for any words to tell. The air was so still it seemed to await expectantly the coming of the sun.

  Then his mind flew back to Agnes. Would she see it? She was at work, getting breakfast, but he hoped she had time to see it. He was in that mood so common to him now, when he could not fully enjoy any sight or sound unless he could share it with her. Far down the road he heard the sharp clatter of a wagon. The roosters were calling near and far, in many keys and tunes. The dogs were barking, cattle bells jangling in the wooded pastures, and as the youth passed farmhouses, lights in the kitchen windows showed that the women were astir about breakfast, and the sound of voices and curry-combs at the barn told that the men were at their daily chores.

  And the east bloomed broader. The dome of gold grew brighter, the faint clouds here and there flamed with a flush of red. The frost began to glisten with a reflected color. The youth dreamed as he walked; his broad face and deep earnest eyes caught and reflected some of the beauty and majesty of the sky.

  But as he passed a farm gate and a young man of about his own age joined him, his brow darkened. The other man was equipped for work like himself.

  "Hello, Will!"

  "Hello, Ed!"

  "Going down to help Dingman thrash?"

  "Yes," replied Will shortly. It was easy to see he didn't welcome company.

  "So'm I. Who's goin' to do your thrashin-Dave McTurg?"

  "Yes, I guess so. Haven't spoken to anybody yet."

  They walked on side by side. Will didn't feel like being rudely broken in on in this way. The two men were rivals, but Will, being the victor, would have been magnanimous, only he wanted to be alone with his lover's dream.

  "When do you go back to the sem'?" Ed asked after a little.

  "Term begins next week. I'll make a break about second week."

  "Le's see: you graduate next year, don't yeh?"

  "I expect to, if I don't slip up on it."

  They walked on side by side, both handsome fellows; Ed a little more showy in his face, which had a certain clean-cut precision of line and a peculiar clear pallor that never browned under the sun. He chewed vigorously on a quid of tobacco, one of his most noticeable bad habits.

  Teams could be heard clattering along on several roads now, and jovial voices singing. One team coming along behind the two men, the driver sung out in good-natured warning, "Get out o' the way, there." And with a laugh and a chirp spurred his horses to pass them.

  Ed, with a swift understanding of the driver's trick, flung out his left hand and caught the end-gate, threw his fork in, and leaped after it. Will walked on, disdaining attempt to catch the wagon. On all sides now the wagons of the plowmen or threshers were getting out into the fields, with a pounding, rumbling sound.

  The pale red sun was shooting light through the leaves, and warming the boles of the great oaks that stood in the yard, and melting the frost off the great gaudy threshing machine that stood between the stacks. The interest, picturesqueness of it all got hold of Will Hannan, accustomed to it as he was. The homes stood about in a circle, hitched to the ends of the six sweeps, all shining with frost.

  The driver was oiling the great tarry cogwheels underneath. Laughing fellows were wrestling about the yard. Ed Kinney had scaled the highest stack, and stood ready to throw the first sheaf. The sun, lighting him where he stood, made his fork handle gleam like dull gold. Cheery words, jests, and snatches of song everywhere. Dingman bustled about giving his orders and placing his men, and the voice of big Dave McTurg was heard calling to the men as they raised the long stacker into place:

  "Heave-ho, there! Up she rises!"

  And, best of all, Will caught a glirnpse of a smiling girl face at the kitchen window that made the blood beat in his throat.

  "Hello, Will!" was the general greeting, given with some constraint by most of the young fellows, for Will had been going to Rock River to school for some years, and there was a little feeling of jealousy on the part of those who pretended to sneer at the "seminary chaps like Will Hannan and Milton Jennings."

  Dingrnan came up. "Will, I guess you'd better go on the stack with

  Ed."

  "All ready. Hurrah, there!" said David in his soft but resonant bass voice that always had a laugh in it. "Come, come, every sucker of yeh git hold o' something. All ready!" He waved his hand at the driver, who climbed upon his platform. Everybody scrambled into place.

  "Chk, chk! All ready, boys! Stiddy there, Dan! Chk, chk! All ready, boys! Stiddy there, boys! All ready now!" The horses began to strain at the sweeps. The cylinder began to hum.

  "Grab a root there! Where's my band cutter? Here, you, climb on here!" And David reached down and pulled Shep Watson up by the shoulder with his gigantic hand.

  Boo-oo-oom, Boo-woo-woo-oom-oom-ow-owm, yarryarr! The whirling cylinder boomed, roared, and snarled as it rose in speed. At last, when its tone became a rattling yell, David nodded to the pitchers, rasped his hands together, the sheaves began to fall from the stack, the band cutter, knife in hand, slashed the bands in twain, and the feeder with easy majestic motion gathered them under his arm, rolled them out into an even belt of entering wheat, on which the cylinder tore with its frightful, ferocious snarl.

  Will was very happy in Its quiet way. He enjoyed the smooth roll of his great muscles, the sense of power he felt in his hands as he lifted, turned, and swung the heavy sheaves two by two down upon the table, where the band cutter madly slashed away. His frame, sturdy rather than tall, was nevertheless lithe, and he made a fine figure to look at, so Agnes thought, as she came out a moment and bowed and smiled to both the young men.

  This scene, one of the jolliest and most sociable of the western farm, had a charm quite aside from human companionship. The beautiful yellow straw entering the cylinder; the clear yellow-brown wheat pulsing out at the side; the broken straw, chaff, and dust puffing out on the great stacker; the cheery whistling and calling of the driver; the keen, crisp air, and the bright sun somehow weirdly suggestive of the passage of time.

  Will and Agnes had arrived at a tacit understanding of mutual love only the night before, and Will was power-fully moved to glance often toward the house, but feared somehow the jokes of his companions. He worked on, therefore, methodically, eagerly; but his thoughts were on the future-the rustle of the oak tree nearby, the noise of whose sere leaves he could distinguish beneath the booming snarl of the machine; on the sky, where great fleets of clouds were sailing on the rising wind, like merchantmen bound to s
ome land of love and plenty.

  When the Dingmans first came in, only a couple of years before, Agnes had been at once surrounded by a swarm of suitors. Her pleasant face and her abounding good nature made her an instant favorite with all. Will, however, had disdained to become one of the crowd, and held himself aloof, as he could easily do, being away at school most of the time.

  The second winter, however, Agnes also attended the seminary, and Will saw her daily and grew to love her. He had been just a bit jealous of Ed Kinney all the time, for Ed had a certain rakish grace in dancing and a dashing skill in handling a team which made him a dangerous rival.

  But, as Will worked beside him all this Monday, he felt so secure in his knowledge of the caress Agnes had given him at parting the night before that he was perfectly happy-so happy that he didn't care to talk, only to work on and dream as he worked.

  Shrewd David McTurg had his joke when the machine stopped for a few minutes. "Well, you fellers do better'n I expected yeh to, after bein' out so late last night. The first feller I find gappin' has got to treat to the apples."

  "Keep your eye on me," said Shep.

  "You?" laughed one of the others. "Anybody knows if a girl so much as looked crossways at you, you'd fall in a fit."

  "Another thing," said David. "I can't have you fellers carryin' grain, going to the house too often for fried cakes or cookies."

  "Now you git out," said Bill Young from the straw pile. "You ain't goin' to have all the fun to yerself."

  Will's blood began to grow hot in his face. If Bill had said much more, or mentioned her name, he would have silenced him. To have this rough joking come so close upon the holiest and most exquisite evening of his life was horrible. It was not the words they said, but the tones they used, that vulgarized it all. He breathed a sigh of relief when the sound of the machine began again.

  This jesting made him more wary, and when the call for dinner sounded and he knew he was going in to see her, he shrank from it. He took no part in the race of the dust-blackened, half-famished men to get at the washing place first. He took no part in the scurry to get seats at the first table.

  Threshing time was always a season of great trial to the housewife. To have a dozen men with the appetites of dragons to cook for was no small task for a couple of women, in addition to their other everyday duties. Preparations usually began the night before with a raid on a hen roost, for "biled chickun" formed the piece de resistance of the dinner. The table, enlarged by boards, filled the sitting room. Extra seats were made out of planks placed on chairs, and dishes were borrowed of neighbors who came for such aid, in their turn.

  Sometimes the neighboring women came in to help; but Agnes and her mother were determined to manage the job alone this year, and so the girl, with a neat dark dress, her eyes shining, her cheeks flushed with the work, received the men as they came in dusty, coatless, with grime behind their ears, but a jolly good smile on every face.

  Most of them were farmers of the neighborhood and schoolmates. The only one she shrank from was Young, with his hard, glittering eyes and red, sordid face. She received their jokes, their noise, with a silent smile which showed her even teeth and dimpled her round cheek. "She was good for sore eyes," as one of the fellows said to Shep. She seemed deliciously sweet and dainty to these roughly dressed fellows.

  They ranged along the table with a great deal of noise, boots thumping, squeaking, knives and forks rattling, voices bellowing out.

  "Now hold on, Steve! Can't have yeh so near that chickun!"

  "Move along, Shep! I want to be next to the kitchen door! I won't get nothin' with you on that side o' me."

  "Oh, that's too thin! I see what you're-"

  "No, I won't need any sugar, if you just smile into it." This from gallant David, greeted with roars of laughter.

  "Now, Dave, s'pose your wife 'ud hear o' that?"

  "She'd snatch 'im bald-headed, that's what she'd do."

  "Say, somebody drive that ceow down this way," said Bill.

  "Don't get off that drive! It's too old," criticised Shep, passing the milk jug.

  Potatoes were seized, cut in halves, sopped in gravy, and taken one, two! Corn cakes went into great jaws like coal into a steam engine. Knives in the right hand cut and scooped gravy up. Great, muscular, grimy, but wholesome fellows they were, feeding like ancient Norse, and capable of working like demons. They were deep in the process; half-hidden by steam from the potatoes and stew, in less than sixty seconds from their entrance.

  With a shrinking from the comments of the others upon his regard for Agnes, Will assumed a reserved and almost haughty air toward his fellow workmen, and a curious coldness toward her. As he went in, she came forward smiling brightly.

  "There's one more place, Will." A tender, involuntary droop in her voice betrayed her, and Will felt a wave of hot blood surge over him as the rest roared.

  "Ha, ha! Oh, there'd be a place for him!"

  "Don't worry, Will! Always room for you here!"

  Will took his seat with a sudden angry flame. "Why can't she keep it from these fools?" was his thought. He didn't even thank her for showing him the chair.

  She flushed vividly, but smiled back. She was so proud and happy, she didn't care very much if they did know it. But as Will looked at her with that quick angry glance, and took his seat with scowling brow, she was hurt and puzzled. She redoubled her exertions to please him, and by so doing added to the amusement of the crowd that gnawed chicken bones, rattled cups, knives and forks, and joked as they ate with small grace and no material loss of time.

  Will remained silent through it all, eating in marked contrast to the others, using his fork instead of his knife in eating his potato, and drinking his tea from his cup rather than from his saucer—"finickies" which did not escape the notice of the girl nor the sharp eyes of the other workmen.

  "See that? That's the way we do down to the sem! See? Fork for pie in yer right hand! Hey? I can't do it. Watch me."

  When Agnes leaned over to say, "Won't you have some more tea, Will?" they nudged each other and grinned. "Aha! What did I tell you?"

  Agnes saw at last that for some reason Will didn't want her to show her regard for him, that be was ashamed of it in some way, and she was wounded. To cover it up, she resorted to the feminine device of smiling and chatting with the others. She asked Ed if he wouldn't have another piece of pie.

  "I will-with a fork, please."

  "This is 'bout the only place you can use a fork," said Bill Young, anticipating a laugh by his own broad grin.

  "Oh, that's too old," said Shep Watson. "Don't drag that out agin. A man that'll eat seven taters-"

  "Shows who docs the work."

  "Yes, with his jaws," put in Jim Wheelock, the driver. "If you'd put in a little more work with soap 'n' water before comin' in to dinner, it 'ud be a religious idee," said David.

  "It ain't healthy to wash."

  "Well, you'll live forever, then."

  "He ain't washed his face sence I knew 'im."

  "Oh, that's a little too tought! He washes once a week," said Ed

  Kinney.

  "Back of his ears?" inquired David, who was munching a doughnut, his black eyes twinkling with fun.

  "What's the cause of it?"

  "Dade says she won't kiss 'im if he don't." Everybody roared.

  "Good fer Dade! I wouldn't if I was in her place."

  Wheelock gripped a chicken leg imperturbably, and left it bare as a toothpick with one or two bites at it. His face shone in two clean sections around his nose and mouth. Behind his ears the dirt lay undisturbed. The grease on his hands could not be washed off.

  Will began to suffer now because Agnes treated the other fellows too well. With a lover's exacting jealousy, he wanted her in some way to hide their tenderness from the rest, but to show her indifference to men like Young and Kinney. He didn't stop to inquire of himself the justice of such a demand, nor just how it was to be done. He only insisted she ought to do it. />
  He rose and left the table at the end of his dinner, without having spoken to her, without even a tender, significant glance, and he knew, too, that she was troubled and hurt. But he was suffering. It seemed as if he had lost something sweet, lost it irrecoverably.

  He noticed Ed Kinney and Bill Young were the last to come out, just before the machine started up again after dinner, and he saw them pause outside the threshold and laugh back at Agnes standing in the doorway. Why couldn't she keep those fellows at a distance, not go out of her way to bandy jokes with them?

  Some way the elation of the morning was gone. He worked on doggedly now, without looking up, without listening to the leaves, without seeing the sunlighted clouds. Of course he didn't think that she meant anything by it, but it irritated him and made him unhappy. She gave herself too freely.

  Toward the middle of the afternoon the machine stopped for a time for some repairing; and while Will lay on his stack in the bright yellow sunshine, shelling wheat in his hands and listening to the wind in the oaks, he heard his name and her name mentioned on the other side of the machine, where the measuring box stood. He listened.

  "She's pretty sweet on him, ain't she? Did yeh notus how she stood around over him?"

  "Yes; an' did yeh see him when she passed the cup o' tea down over his shoulder?"

  Will got up, white with wrath as they laughed.

  "Some way he didn't seem to enjoy it as I would. I wish she'd reach her arm over my neck that way."

  Will walked around the machine, and came on the group lying on the chaff near the straw pile.

  "Say, I want you fellers to understand that I won't have any more of this talk. I won't have it."

  There was a dead silence. Then Bill Young rose up.

  "What yeh goen' to do about it?" he sneered.

  "I'm going to stop it."

  The wolf rose in Young. He moved forward, his ferocious soul flaming from his eyes.

  "W'y, you damned seminary dude, I can break you in two!"