“Deirdre Falconer,” I heard myself say.
“Pleased to meet you. Miss. I’m Ellie Lowery, and this here is Tansy.” Tansy blushed and gave me a shy smile.
“Would you like a bite to eat, Miss Falconer?”
“No, thank you. And please call me Deirdre.”
“Some sassafras tea? It’ll only take a minute.”
“That will be fine.”
An earthy smell emanated from the mud-chinked walls, the dirt-packed floor, and the roof supported by gnarled tree limbs. I had seen houses like this before, but only from the outside, a sod house built from the black soil of the prairie itself.
The girl lingered at my side while her mother busied herself with the tea. I had the feeling I had usurped the child’s bed.
“Tansy is a lovely name,” I ventured.
Her freckled face broke into a wide grin.
The tea came and I drank it while the mother explained they were homesteaders from Ohio. Having been in the Dakotas for the five years prescribed by law, they now legally owned the house and acreage.
“Do you think they will come looking for you, Miss?” She wasn’t going to call me Deirdre, but I saw no point in insisting on it.
“Probably so,” I said.
“My husband would take you back, but he can’t spare himself now. There’s the last of the rye to be brought in, and the fine weather might not hold up.”
“I understand. It’s quite all right. As long as I’m under a roof. It’s very kind of you,” I added.
She gave me the same shy smile her daughter had given me earlier.
I slept soundly, and when I woke, a needle of sunlight was slanting down from a slit under the eaves. I heard voices in the distance and from closer the homey cluck of hens. The house itself was deserted. Holding on to my aching head I sat up and looked around. There was only the one room, with an alcove on the right, in which stood a large feather bed. A four-lidded cookstove, its black chimney piercing the roof, occupied the center of the earthen floor. The rest of the furnishings were simple: a rough-hewn pine table, dry-goods boxes apparently used for chairs and chests, and a ladder-back rocker. Pegs on the wall held clothing. A covered bucket and ladles stood in one corner and next to it a shelf above which hung several blackened pots.
My stiffened limbs protested as I got out of bed. At the foot of it, my riding skirt, blouse, and jacket had been folded neatly, my boots placed on the floor beside them. I dressed, wishing I could have a bath or even a good wash.
There was a plate of food on the table: some beans and a wedge of corn bread. A coffeepot, still warm, rested on the stove. A note—three" words—had been stuck under the plate. “For you. Miss.”
I found I was hungrier than I thought. When I finished I went outside, looking for the privy. It was beyond the sod stable. My mare was there, munching on a handful of dry hay. She nickered at me, an apology of sorts, as I passed.
When I emerged into sunlight again, I saw several figures in the distance, a cart, the flash of a scythe. The entire family was cutting rye. They had probably been at it for hours. I walked past a pig pen to the well and drew up a bucket of water, placing it on an upturned barrel that I took to be an outdoor washstand. Rolling up my sleeves, I doused my face, my neck, and my arms. Then I dried them on a clean rag nailed to the side of the barrel. I found a comb in my jacket pocket and managed to untangle my hair, tying it back with a ribbon from my camisole.
I performed all these homely, bodily tasks with a mind deliberately emptied. I did not want to think beyond the moment, did not want to consider yesterday or tomorrow, what I should or must do. Later, perhaps, but not now.
I sat dozing on a bench in the shade until the woman returned from the field, leading a small child of three by the hand.
“My youngest,” she explained. “Billy.”
Billy, towheaded and slightly crosseyed, stared at me, one finger jammed into his mouth.
Mrs. Lowry had come to prepare the noon meal. Had I eaten?
“Yes, and thank you.”
I followed her into the house. She set the child down and gave it a rag doll before proceeding with her chores. I watched as she went from the crude shelf that served as a worktabie to the stove with quick, sure movements, not one wasted. I wondered how many thousands of times she had performed this ritual. I thought of her life compared to mine: while I enjoyed the luxuries of servants, leisure, parties, she worked in the fields, prepared meals, mended, washed, cleaned, hauled water, and bore children. Billy must have been born here in the sod hut. Had Ellie Lowery gone through the ordeal without another woman’s help?
“Most always I take Ted and the boys their food,” Ellie said. “But today they’re working close to home.”
Gradually the smell of stew filled the house. Ellie took one last taste before putting the ladle down and setting out bowls on the edge of the stove. Knives and spoons of assorted sizes went on the table. “We lost most of our good cutlery fording a river on the way over,” she apologized, suggesting she had known better.
She stepped outside the house and called. A few minutes later the Lowerys trooped in—Tansy, an older boy of fourteen, another boy of twelve, and Ted Lowery himself. He was a big man with a windburned face, red beard, and a bitter look in his bloodshot eyes. He nodded to me.
“I haven’t had a chance to thank you, Mr. Lowery,” I said.
“No thanks needed. ’Twas what any decent would do.”
Boxes were drawn up to the table, a blessing said, and the eating commenced. No one spoke. Except for the smacking of little Billy’s lips and the small contented sounds he made as he sat on his mother’s knee, dipping into her bowl with his spoon, silence reigned. Eating was a serious business. Only after second helpings were passed around and finished off did Mr. Lowery address me.
“So you’re from Fort Lincoln.”
“Yes. Virginia, originally.” I waited for the usual remark about Johnny Reb and, when none came, went on. “Your wife says you are natives of Ohio.”
“We are.” He grimaced as he broke a piece of bread and wiped it around the bottom of his bowl. “Don’t think I haven’t asked myself why we ever left. Eh, Ellie?”
She nodded.
“I was a carpenter by trade. Always wanted to farm, but couldn’t see my way to it. Land, even after the war, was dear in Ohio. Then the Homestead Act was passed and I thought it might be a way for me to have my own place, a paying place. No gentleman farming for me. But with one thing an’ another . . .’’He gave Ellie a sidelong glance and I guessed that she had probably been part of the one thing or another. “It wasn’t till ’69 that we started out. By then the railroad had been built and they were advertising in all the papers for settlers, promising good markets for our crops and railway lines to haul them there at cheap rates.” He paused, his blue eyes hardening. “They were lies, all lies.”
“Perhaps the cost of hauling was more than the railroads anticipated,” I ventured.
He gave me a withering look. “They got cheap rates, all right, for what they call bulk shipments. Not for the likes of us one-hundred-and-sixty-acre people. We’re small potatoes. The best land was grabbed up by the syndicates from the East in thousand-acre parcels.”
“But wasn’t that illegal?”
“Not the way those moneybags did it. They sent their agents out to homestead, then after the agents got title to the land, moneybags ‘bought’ the deeds from them.”
“But surely the government was aware of this?”
“Sure they was aware. And who the blazes is running the damned government?”
Ellie said, “Ted, please ...”
“Sorry.” He mopped up the last of his stew.
Dessert, a berry cobbler sweetened with honey and smothered in thick cream, appeared as if by magic.
“And now the Indians is getting restless,” he went on. “The government didn’t keep its word with us, how’d they expect to keep it with them? We ain’t had no trouble yet, but I’m
looking for the worst.”
Ellie, clearing the table, said, “At least we escaped the locusts.”
“Yeh, thanks be to God.”
Ellie explained that in 1865 a plague of locusts had laid the entire countryside to waste. “Cleaned it white as a bone,” she said. “Then Chief Red Cloud got on the warpath.”
“Hardly blame him,” Ted Lowery said. “The damn hunters killed off his buffalo.”
I could see where Ted Lowery’s sympathy for the red man and his radical ideas about government would not make him a popular man in these parts. Perhaps that was why he rarely went into Fort Lincoln or Bismark.
But I liked the Lowerys. There was something about their strength, their stubborn challenge to stacked odds, that appealed to me.
I didn’t tell them about Ward Gamble. They seemed to sense my unwillingness to reveal very much about myself and so did not question me. I was half hoping Ward wouldn’t find me, although I knew I couldn’t stay with the Lowery’s forever. I was an extra mouth to feed, and the small assistance I tried to give Ellie with the household chores during the next few days hardly warranted my keep.
But Ward did find me. One morning after the family had gone into the fields to cut the last of the rye, he came riding through the autumn grass, a bloodhound trotting at his side. I watched from the doorway as he approached. When he reached the well he dismounted and tied up the horse and the dog.
He didn’t come to me, but stood apart, silently, his hat shading his face.
“Hello, Ward.”
The dog tugged at his leash, growling and barking. Ward turned and gave it a sharp command, then turned back to me.
“What happened, Deirdre?”
“I went riding and got lost. Then I was thrown.” The wind teased my hair, whipping a strand across my cheek. I brushed it aside. “How did you find me?”
“Several scouts from the fort tracked you here. I sent them back. I wanted to talk to you alone.” He studied me for a moment. “You seem to be all right.”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me what really happened.” His voice was calm, not angry, but quiet, authoritative.
“I think you know.”
He gave me a measured look. “I’d rather have you tell me.”
I turned and walked swiftly away around the corner of the house.
He followed, catching my shoulder, wheeling me about. His yellow eyes were wide, the black pupils pinpoints, but he did not raise his voice. “You owe me an explanation.”
“I owe you nothing.”
“I think you do. We’ve been together long enough.”
“Long enough,” I mocked bitterly. “Years of lies! There is no poor, mad, tucked-away Mrs. Gamble. There never was!”
He took a deep breath and after a long moment said, “All right. I stand in the dock. I plead guilty.”
“But why? Why? I could understand it perhaps at first, but later . . . Why did you have to go on with the pretense?”
“It seemed simpler.”
“Simpler! Damn you!”
I began to walk away again. He strode in front of me, blocking my path. “I told you I plead guilty. I never wanted to get married. After I saw my father trapped, losing himself in drink, my mother miserable and sick, marriage seemed like a deadfall. I thought ...” Ward searched my face and, seeing the unforgiving, hard look there, paused.
“I’m going back to Wildoak, Ward. I want to go home. I miss Page. I miss him so.”
“And me? You can leave—just like that?”
“Yes.” I stared down at my dusty boots.
“I love you, Deirdre.”
I looked up. He meant it; he was not acting. He had fooled me with the story of a sick wife, but he wasn’t fooling now. It was plainly written on his face. Another man might have done something dramatic, taken me in his arms, fallen to his knees even. But Ward was telling me he loved me the only way he knew how.
“I want to marry you, Deirdre. I won’t pretend I didn’t have other women before your time. But I’ve always been faithful to you. No woman has ever meant as much. And I don’t think I have behaved badly toward you except for that one lie. Deirdre . . He moved toward me, but I backed away.
“I don’t know, Ward. I don’t know what to say.”
“You do love me. You’re angry now, but you do.”
“I wish I could be as sure as you. I have to think about it. Give me time.”
“All right. But I have to leave in ten days, two weeks at the outside. I’m being sent to St. Paul with a message for General Terry.”
“A week, then. And I would like to stay here. I won’t be able to think straight if we’re living in the same house. Come back for me in a week.”
“But isn’t this place . . . well, a little primitive?”
“I don’t mind. And Ward, these people are poor. They have so little. They’re too proud to take money, but if you bring clothing, shoes for the children, perhaps a length of wool for Mrs. Lowery, they will accept it as a gift.”
He didn’t linger, but set out for Fort Lincoln after watering his horse. When the others came in from the field I explained that my fiancé had visited me, that I couldn’t make up my mind as to whether I really wanted to marry him, and that I hoped they wouldn’t object to my staying on.
They were courteous but, I sensed, baffled. I suppose they found my preoccupation with such a matter frivolous. They had far greater problems to struggle with—wresting a living from the obdurate soil, fighting adverse elements, constantly coping with the fear of illness or accident. And I could not make up my mind to marry a man, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army who obviously could keep me in stylishly cut riding habits and would see to it that my soft white hands would never roughen with work.
Thinking of the Lowerys and the differences between us, however, did not diminish my own turmoil, the doubts, the self-argument. Did I love Ward? I was fond of him, yes, far fonder than I had ever been of Judah. Ward satisfied me physically. In his own way he was kind, he was intelligent, and he respected me, listening to my opinions even when he disagreed with them.
What was love? Over and over I asked myself that question in the dark of sleepless nights. A phantom, a dream, a romantic notion invented by novelists? So many people lived their lives without it. Ian was the only man I could ever really love, and he was a scoundrel, unworthy, as irrevocably lost to me as if he were dead. Perhaps he was.
The days grew colder. The wind, always a lurking presence, now howled incessantly around the corners of the house, tearing at the sod roof, sweeping over it in malicious fury. The perpetual whine and roar of the northwesterly magnified the loneliness, the inhuman but breathtaking landscape. Every day I saw more and more proof that the romantic image of a brave, cheerful pioneer farmer enjoying the good earth, smoking his pipe in peace and contentment in the bosom of his happy family, was nothing more than a myth. In harsh reality these fine people lived ugly, grueling lives. They had little time to appreciate the wide sweeping sky, the towering cloud formations, the purple and red sunsets and golden dawns. Their drab existence, the dust-grimed clothing they wore, the gray house, the primitive lack of comfort, the sweat, flies, and back-breaking drudgery dimmed their eyes, turned the older ones sour and made the younger ones long wildly for an impossible escape. At Wildoak we had been poor during the war, often unable to put more than a meal of dandelion greens on the table. Aunt Carmella and I had washed, cleaned, mended, and cooked, but we lived in a lovely house; we had trees on the front lawn, roses in the garden, water in the well, and however hard we worked, we knew that it was only until the “war was over.” Not so the Lowerys. They were locked into their unceasing labor, their only reward full title to 160 demanding acres.
Given my mood, perhaps I was seeing only the dark side of things, though I knew from remarks made by Ted Lowery that he shared some of my feelings. Yet I sometimes wondered whether, offered the opportunity, he would trade his way of life, say, for a cobbler’s in Bismark or
a hosteler’s in Sioux City. Probably not.
Five more days passed and I still hadn’t come to a decision. I became restless, pacing the sod house’s cold, drafty floor like a prisoner in a dungeon. I didn’t know what to do: one minute I thought I would marry Ward, the next I felt it would be better to return to Wildoak. My confusion shamed me. I had always felt superior to people who quibbled endlessly, unable to make up their minds. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I choose?
One morning after the Lowerys had gone, I saddled the mare and took her out for a canter. It was a foolhardy thing to do, but I promised myself it would be a short ride and I would keep the house in sight. The day was lovely, brisk and clear, the blue sky plumed with a single streak of white cloud, the wind only a sibilant whisper as it stirred the grass. Purple blazing stars and yellow-eyed asters still bloomed in places along the wagon trail. A pheasant stalked us, darting its curious head in our direction before suddenly taking fright and rising with a rustle of brown wings.
Riding on, I saw a cluster of trees ahead and what looked like a small lake. I wondered at it, because I had not observed anything resembling trees from the house, nor had the Lowerys mentioned a lake. Still keeping to the track, I rode toward it and soon realized that distance and the unending monotony of the landscape had created a mirage. It was not a stand of trees, but a tent with a basin reflecting the sun hanging from a pole. Two horses were staked out in front, but I did not see their owners.
As I approached, however, a man opened the tent flap and stepped out. He wore a dirty red wool shirt, greasy denim trousers stuffed into mud-caked boots, and a battered derby, which he removed upon seeing me.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,’’ he said politely, giving me the benefit of a grin that disclosed a mouthful of tobacco-stained teeth. “Out seein’ the country?’’
“Yes. Good afternoon.’’
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