“Overdo, nothing. I brought eight babies into the world. And I ain’t ever seen the time anybody cared if I was overdoin’.”
“Now, Mother, I wouldn’t say that. It was hard, but you was healthy and I always got help for you.”
“Yes, a passel o’ neighbor girls that wasn’t worth their weight in salt. Now, I s’pose it’ll fall on me to take care o’ Abbie. Nobody cares if I die or not.”
Abbie heard Grandpa go whistling down to the barn. Then she threw herself on the bed and cried tears of sensitiveness and discontent.
More and more she wanted her own home. If it were no better than the old sheep shed that she lived in one summer when she was a little girl, at least it would be their own. Will was good to her,—so kind and understanding, but he did not seem to sense how much she wanted a home of her own.
Abbie’s baby was born in January of 1867. Roads were drifted and Doc Matthews, in a coonskin cap with the tail down his back, came on a horse, his saddle-bags full of quinine and calomel.
Nature had to take its course without much aid from its handmaid, Science—and Nature took a fiendish course with Abbie. Two days and a night she wrestled with Nature, as Jacob wrestled with the angel. And then she had a son. Lying there after her ordeal, with the baby on her arm, she knew the age-old surge of mother-love. All her old love of life seemed to concentrate on one thing,—the little soft, helpless bundle. The world of romance, of courtly men and lovely ladies was a world of unreality,—and only Will and the little son were worth her thoughts.
Mackenzie Deal, they named him, but it was too big a mouthful for so small a bit of humanity, and it was not long until every one had shortened it to Mack. Will was inordinately proud of him. Grandpa Deal and Louise came in several times a day to see him, but Regina was not overly interested. Grandma Deal sputtered about the care of him. Why didn’t Abbie keep more shawls around him? Why did she let the sun shine across the bed that way? Why did she ask the doctor all those questions when he didn’t know as much about babies as a mother?
When Abbie was up, life grew richer, more full. Her voice took on a mellowness. With the baby in the high-backed wooden rocker, she crooned old lullabies which Maggie O’Conner had brought from the whins of Bally-poreen.
As little Mack grew that year and crept and then stood on fat wobbling legs by the chairs, Abbie’s desire for a home of her own reached gigantic proportions.
“You know, Will,” she brought up the subject in the spring, a little shyly, half hesitatingly, “I wish we could have a home of our own. Your folks . . .” She dropped her eyes that Will might not see the telltale evasion in them,—“are good to me, but I’d so like my own little house. It needn’t be half as big . . . or nice . . .”
To Abbie’s surprise Will turned on her in a sort of suppressed fury. “I don’t like it either, you needn’t think. I’m thinking every day what to do. What am I here? A hired man for Father. I’ll never get anywhere. And now we’ve got the baby . . . I’m glad you’ve been the one to bring it up. It decides me. We’re going out to Nebraska to start for ourselves.”
“Nebraska?” It had the sound of South Africa.
“Yes, . . . there are too many settlers here. And as long as I’m anywhere around here I’d always have to work for Father. It ain’t right, I tell you. And another thing, Abbie, our boy sha’n’t be tied down. He can do what he wants. And we’re going to Nebraska,—you and I and little Mack.”
“Oh, no, Will, not out there. Anywhere around here, but not to that far-off place. Why, Will, . . . my mother . . . my brothers and sisters . . . your folks . . . they’re all around here . . .”
“You can come back to visit them, I promise you that, Abbie, whenever you want to. It’s a wonderful opportunity. It’s the poor man’s country. We can get railroad land dirt cheap . . . or lease school lands near the river or even push on farther west and homestead.”
“It’s dangerous, Will. There are Indians.”
“Well, so are there Indians here. A whole camp of ’em over by Fisher’s Lake.”
“But they’re peaceable, . . . and those out there . . . Oh, Will . . .”
“It’s been fourteen years since the government made the treaty with the Indians out there . . . fourteen years ago, they gave up their title to all that land out there bordering on the Missouri. I guess when it’s been that long settling, we’ll find it in pretty good shape. . . .” Will was talking definitely, stubbornly, as though the question were settled. Abbie was so frightened at the turn the argument was taking that she studiously kept her voice calm.
“The baby, Will, . . . we have to think of him. There won’t be good schools . . . or doctors . . .”
“It is of him I’m thinking . . . the big future for him out in the newer country. He’ll be a farmer. All the Deals have always been for the land. . . .”
Fathers have always thought it,—that their sons belong only to them. Small wonder that Will Deal made the mistake of forgetting something, forgetting that the baby was also a Mackenzie, that his mother held her head as Isabelle Anders-Mackenzie had held hers in the wide gold frame,—that her hair had the gold-brown tints of the lovely lady,—that her long slender fingers tapered at the ends.
“But, Will . . .” Never had Abbie so thoroughly felt that queer sensation of being swept along by the wind which she could not stop,—of Time, which she could not stay. “Will . . . my voice . . . Mrs. Whitman . . . Every one thinks I ought to do something with it. And my painting, Will . . . to go away out there . . .”
“Oh, we’ll find you good teachers out there. No, Abbie, I’ve been thinking it over a long time and it’s my chance. We’re going in the summer. I’ll be getting everything ready. The army money will buy the wagon and oxen and the land, . . . and I’ll make up my mind soon about it, . . . whether to buy near the river, or homestead farther out.”
So Will had said he was going West. The era of this freedom had not dawned. Abbie Deal’s man had said he was going to Nebraska, and Abbie had to go too. It was as simple as that, then.
They began preparations, with Abbie still protesting that Nebraska was too far away and too uncivilized.
“It’s been a state since March of last year,” Will gave equal arguments in its favor. “They’ve got the site all chosen for the new capital. It’s named Lincoln. Queer when you stop to think about it that an old friend of Father’s should ever get big enough to be president and have a town named after him,—ain’t it?”
But Abbie was not thinking of the recently martyred President. “Yes, but they say the place they’ve chosen is away out on the prairie with just two or three log houses.” She was not so willing to believe the best of the infant state as was Will.
He sought out all the good news he could find to cheer her. Once he brought an Omaha newspaper. “Talk about a new country, . . .” he was enthusiastic. “Everything’s as citified as can be in Omaha, . . . and we won’t be so far from there. The paper says it has fifteen thousand inhabitants, . . . a regular city. How’s this for you, eleven churches and five schools, and five banks. It says, ‘Dealers in gold dust, bullion, coin and exchange.’ And the Union Pacific’s got an overland mail route clear to Laramie, with two trains every day.”
“Yes, and you read on a little farther. You’re leaving out some things. I saw that paper myself, Will Deal.”
Will laughed. “Oh, five breweries and sixty saloons, . . . that ain’t so bad. And besides there’s a hoop factory.”
“Well, I don’t care about that. They might even go out of style some day, although Regina thinks they never will, I wouldn’t care if they did. Even if they do make you look stylish, they’re not comfortable.”
And all the time Abbie was getting together her little possessions, and Will was preparing the outfit. He had intended to make a new ox-yoke, had in fact already cut the maple, and some pliable hickory for the bows, when Mother Mackenzie gave him the sturdy yoke that she had used fourteen years before on the trip out from Illinois. He painted the names of his
ox team, “Red” and “Baldy,” on it and in the center, “Nebraska, 1868.”
After some correspondence with an old army friend, Will bought his land, “sight unseen.” He was pleased with his purchase. It was railroad land and he paid two dollars an acre for it. Some people from Michigan by the name of Lutz were getting two quarter-sections near him.
“It’s only thirty-five miles from Nebraska City and about ten miles from Weeping Water. The county seat, Plattsmouth, has a hotel and some houses and a grist mill . . . It only takes a couple of hours to grind a sack of corn.”
“Yes, providing you’ve got the corn.” Abbie could not yet enter heartily into the plans.
“Oh, we’ll have the corn all right. They say the soil is the finest and blackest you ever saw.”
And then, before they were ready, Abbie knew that she was to be a mother again.
On a morning in July they started. Red and Baldy, in front of Grandpa Deal’s, stood hitched to the prairie-schooner in their stupid, stolid way. All the possessions were in the wagon, covered now with its new white canvas. Every one was there to see them off. Mother Mackenzie, with her pudding-bag-shaped body and her blue-black Irish eyes and her white cap, brought the calf-skin-covered box and the Seth Thomas clock with the little brown church painted on the glass.
“You take the chest, Abbie . . . I want ye to have it. You can keep the pearls in it. And the clock, too, . . . it seems like it’s yours. I mind how ye was al’a’s sayin’ no one could stop Time.”
The Reverend and Mrs. Whitman came. Mrs. Whitman had a box of paints and some canvas for Abbie. “Keep on with your little painting talent, Abbie,” she told her.
“Yes,” the Reverend Whitman said, a little pompously, “and with your music. We can do with our lives whatever we will, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” agreed Abbie.
Grandma Deal, in her black cap, was sputtering because she had not had time to put her bread in loaves. Why didn’t they tie the chicken-coop on better? Why hadn’t they started the day before? The weather looked as though it might storm. What did they bother with a dog for? There, a bird flew in front of the oxen,—that was a bad sign.
Doctor Matthews stopped in his new top-buggy.
Grandpa Deal’s ice-blue eyes were clouded with sadness. “Good luck to you, my boy. And Abbie, a real daughter couldn’t have been kinder.”
Abbie’s heart was in her throat. Oh, stop the wind rushing by. Stop Time for a few minutes, until she could think whether this move was the thing to do. Life was not right. It was not meant that you should leave your own this way. It was not meant that weeks and weeks of travel should separate you from your folks. The baby, little Mack, would forget Mother Mackenzie and kind old Grandpa Deal. And the next baby would never know them.
Only one thing gave her strength for the parting. Only one thing gave her courage to make the long journey to the raw new state. Her love for Will. Abbie’s love for her husband had retained its sweetness and its ardor. And in her heart she knew that as much as she cared for her people,—as dear as were her mother and sisters and the old settlement to her,—they did not outweigh her love for him. If being with Will meant making a new home in a far, unsettled country, why, then, she chose to journey bravely to the far, unsettled country.
Abbie threw up her head fearlessly. “Well, we’re ready.”
“Good-by . . .”
“Take good care of little Mack.”
“Oh, Abbie, Abbie . . .”
“Mother . . . good-by . . .”
“Janet, dear, . . . Mary . . . Belle . . . Louise . . . Thank you all for all you did . . . Good-by . . . Yes, we’ll write as soon as . . . Kiss Grandma, Mack-baby . . .”
Will was boyishly gay. For the first time he felt free from “the folks,”—his own master.
“Well, here we go.” He cracked the long black snaky-looking whip. “We’ll come back rich.” He laughed in excitement.
The wagon lurched,—steadied,—moved on.
“Good-by . . . good-by . . . good-by . . .”
Hands were in the air,—a sunbonnet waved,—an apron was thrown over some one’s head. There was sobbing. Abbie’s hand was on her hard, dry throat. It felt as though it must burst. Stop the wind. Stop Time for a minute. The wagon lurched ahead.
Far back in the road Abbie could still see the little group, painted flatly against the white of the fence and the green of the honey-locusts.
Will’s eyes, full of the light of hope and courage, looked to the west. But Abbie’s, tear-misted, clung to the east.
CHAPTER IX
It was three weeks later, on a hot morning, that Will and Abbie and the other two families, whose land was to join theirs, broke camp, twenty miles out of Plattsmouth, where they had crossed the Platte on the ferry. The journey over western Iowa had been one endless lurching through acres of dry grass and sunflowers, thickets of sumac, wild plum and Indian currant. And now, save for the little clump of natural growth near the wagons, there was still not a tree in sight, not a shrub nor bush, a human being nor any living thing,—nothing but the coarse prairie grass.
The heads of the two Lutz families were brothers, Oscar and Henry. Oscar had a wife and three small children, Henry, a young bride and her little six-year-old orphaned nephew. Grandpa Lutz, a mild-mannered, gentle old man, had also come into the new country with his sons. They had traveled from Michigan, the two younger men by wagons, several weeks prior to the others. The women, children and the old gentleman had gone by train to Quincy, Illinois, where they had taken a river steamer to Hannibal, Missouri, crossing the Missouri to St. Joseph and taking a boat up the Missouri to Plattsmouth. There the men, having preceded the party, had waited a week for the boat to appear.
“I’d go down every day and kick the post the boat was goin’ to tie up to,” Oscar Lutz was telling Will.
Will laughed. “What for?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Had to take all the delay out on somethin’ or somebody, so I kicked the post instead o’ Henry, here.”
Sarah, the bride, was a pretty girl. Her hair was crow-black, her cheeks pink as prairie roses, her little black beady eyes had merry wrinkles of laughter around them. Life seemed a joke to her. This forenoon she had decorated the wagon with Indian paint brush, which burned like flames of fire against the dingy white of the canvas cover.
Abbie, in her illness from heat and fatigue and pregnancy, could only sit and wonder how young Sarah Lutz could be so happy and active. Nothing seemed to worry or frighten her. Apparently she had not even been disturbed by the story of the graves at Eight-Mile Grove,—the seven graves under the little clump of trees fenced around with slabs which the blacksmith there had told them were brought from the saw-mill at Rock Bluff. They had asked him innocently enough who was buried there. Abbie almost shivered now at the thought of his answer.
“Claim jumpers ’n horse thieves ’n sich,” he had said indifferently. And, shifting his tobacco, had added definitely, “Hung. Vigilance committee.” And more grimly specific, “To that there tree.”
“Hung?” Some one had repeated in the silence that followed.
“Yep. Hang ’em in summer,” he had explained cheerfully, “ ’n’ poke ’em under the ice in winter.”
Abbie shuddered again at the memory of the grim voice.
The journey on from camp was across the vast prairie itself. As the morning passed, the heat rolled over Abbie in waves like the rippling of the grass. She looked out from the canvas to see Will plodding along, his shoulders drooping. He had not called back any gay cheery thing all forenoon. The grass out there,—would it never cease to wave? There were four rhythmic beats like music, but music which irritated rather than soothed one: Blow . . . wave . . . ripple . . . dip. It beat upon her brain, so that she turned wearily away from the sight. And then, as one fascinated by something distasteful, she looked again. Yes, it never ceased from those four beats: Blow, . . . wave, . . . ripple . . . dip, . . . blow . . . wave . . . ripple . . . dip . .
.
Little Mack was sleeping, and Abbie dropped over beside him. She closed her eyes and kept her mind on the lane beside Grandpa Deal’s with the honey-locusts and the maples, on the black walnut grove back of his house and the hazel-nut thickets around the schoolhouse. How cool and pleasant the schoolhouse looked with the green shutters against the white siding! How good it would seem to draw water from Grandpa Deal’s well. In fancy she pulled up the bucket with the windlass and put her face into its cold, dark depths.
She slept,—and sleeping, walked in the cool of the maples and oaks in the Big Woods, picked anemones and creamy white Mayflowers. She dropped down in a bed of cool ferns behind Janet Graves’ house in the timber. Suddenly, the wagon creaked and lurched and she opened her eyes. Hurriedly sitting up, only half cognizant of where she was, she looked out through the canvas. The sun shone hot on the flat prairie. Blow, . . . wave, . . . ripple, . . . dip. . . . An intense nausea seized her,—the mal de mer of the prairie-schooner passenger lurching over the hot, dry inland sea.
Later in the forenoon they sighted a fringe of trees against the unclouded sky. It seemed an oasis,—or was it a mirage to vanish when they should come to it?
“The Weeping Water,” Henry Lutz called back. And they knew they were getting near to the new home.
They crossed the shallow, winding stream not far from a stone mill. A man with milk-pails in his hands paused to watch the cavalcade. Will, walking by his ox team, was wet to the boot-tops.
The man grinned and called out jovially: “You’ve got your baptism of the new country now. You’re branded. You’ll never go back.”
“I don’t want to go back,” Will called out with equal jocosity. Abbie in the wagon almost moaned from nausea, heat and homesickness.
On the other side of the stream there stood a team of oxen hitched to a covered wagon so odd-looking, that even Abbie sat up in interest. The wagon-box was a rowboat painted a gaudy blue, the bow curving toward the stolid oxen’s buttocks, the stern forming the base of the rear canvas doorway. A man with his wife and two babies waited for the others to come up. Gus Reinmueller, he said his name was, and jerking an indifferent thumb toward his wife, he gave a laconic, “My voman, Christine.”
A Lantern in Her Hand Page 6