Prairie Folks

by Garland, Hamlin

  "What word can I carry to her from you? I'm going to go and see her. If I could take a word from you, I know she would come back to the table. Shall I tell her you feel to blame?"

  The answer was a long time coming; at last the man nodded an assent, the sweat pouring from his purple face. She had set him thinking; her victory was sure.

  Lily almost ran out into the garden and to the strawberry patch, where she found Lucretia in her familiar, colorless, shapeless dress, picking berries in the hot sun, the mosquitoes biting her neck and hands.

  "Poor, pathetic, dumb sufferer!" the girl thought as she ran up to her.

  She dropped her dish as she heard Lily coming, and gazed up into the tender, pitying face. Not a word was spoken, but something she saw there made her eyes fill with tears, and her throat swell. It was pure sympathy. She put her arms around the girl's neck and sobbed for the first time since Friday night. Then they sat down on the grass under the hedge, and she told her story, interspersed with Lily's horrified comments.

  When it was all told, the girl still sat listening. She heard Radbourn's calm, slow voice again. It helped her not to hate Burns; it helped her to pity and understand him:

  "You must remember that such toil brutalizes a man; it makes him callous, selfish, unfeeling, necessarily. A fine nature must either adapt itself to its hard surroundings or die. Men who toil terribly in filthy garments day after day and year after year cannot easily keep gentle; the frost and grime, the heat and cold will soon or late enter into their souls. The case is not all in favor of the suffering wives, and against the brutal husbands. If the farmer's wife is dulled and crazed by her routine, the farmer himself is degraded and brutalized."

  As well as she could Lily explained all this to the woman, who lay with her face buried in the girl's lap. Lily's arms were about her thin shoulders in an agony of pity.

  "It's hard, Lucretia, I know—more than you can bear—but you mustn't forget what Sim endures too. He goes out in the storms and in the heat and dust. His boots are hard, and see how his hands are all bruised and broken by his work! He was tired and hungry when he said that—he didn't really mean it."

  The wife remained silent.

  "Mr. Radbourn says work, as things go now, does degrade a man in spite of himself. He says men get coarse and violent in spite of themselves, just as women do when everything goes wrong in the house—when the flies are thick, and the fire won't burn, and the irons stick to the clothes. You see, you both suffer. Don't lay up this fit of temper against Sim—will you?"

  The wife lifted her head and looked away. Her face was full of hopeless weariness.

  "It ain't this once. It ain't that 't all. It's having no let-up. Just doin' the same thing right over 'n' over—no hope of anything better."

  "If you had a hope of another world"——

  "Don't talk that. I don't want that kind o' comfert. I want a decent chance here. I want 'o rest an' be happy now." Lily's big eyes were streaming with tears. What should she say to the desperate woman? "What's the use? We might jest as well die—all of us."

  The woman's livid face appalled the girl. She was gaunt, heavy-eyed, nerveless. Her faded dress settled down over her limbs, showing the swollen knees and thin calves; her hands, with distorted joints, protruded painfully from her sleeves. And all about was the ever-recurring wealth and cheer of nature that knows no fear or favor—the bees and flies buzzing in the sun, the jay and kingbird in the poplars, the smell of strawberries, the motion of lush grass, the shimmer of corn-blades tossed gayly as banners in a conquering army.

  Like a flash of keener light, a sentence shot across the girl's mind: "Nature knows no title-deed. The bounty of her mighty hands falls as the sunlight falls, copious, impartial; her seas carry all ships; her air is for all lips, her lands for all feet."

  "Poverty and suffering such as yours will not last." There was something in the girl's voice that roused the woman. She turned her dull eyes upon the youthful face.

  Lily took her hand in both hers as if by a caress she could impart her own faith.

  "Look up, dear. When nature is so good and generous, man must come to be better, surely. Come, go in the house again. Sim is there; he expects you; he told me to tell you he was sorry." Lucretia's face twitched a little at that, but her head was bent. "Come; you can't live this way. There isn't any other place to go to."

  No; that was the bitterest truth. Where on this wide earth, with its forth-shooting fruits and grains, its fragrant lands and shining seas, could this dwarfed, bent, broken, middle-aged woman go? Nobody wanted her, nobody cared for her. But the wind kissed her drawn lips as readily as those of the girl, and the blooms of clover nodded to her as if to a queen.

  Lily had said all she could. Her heart ached with unspeakable pity and a sort of terror.

  "Don't give up, Lucretia. This may be the worst hour of your life. Live and bear with it all for Christ's sake—for your children's sake. Sim told me to tell you he was to blame. If you will only see that you are both to blame and yet neither to blame, then you can rise above it. Try, dear!"

  Something that was in the girl imparted itself to the wife, electrically. She pulled herself together, rose silently, and started toward the house. Her face was rigid, but no longer sullen. Lily followed her slowly, wonderingly.

  As she neared the kitchen door, she saw Sim still sitting at the table; his face was unusually grave and soft. She saw him start and shove back his chair—saw Lucretia go to the stove and lift the tea-pot, and heard her say, as she took her seat beside the baby:

  "Want some more tea?"

  She had become a wife and mother again, but in what spirit the puzzled girl could not say.

  * * *

  Part V.

  SATURDAY NIGHT on the FARM:

  BOYS AND HARVEST HANDS

  In mystery of town and play

  The splendid lady lives alway,

  Inwrought with starlight, winds and streams.

  * * *

  SATURDAY NIGHT ON THE FARM.

  A group of men were gathered in Farmer Graham's barn one rainy day in September; the rain had stopped the stacking, and the men were amusing themselves with feats of skill and strength. Steve Nagle was the champion, no matter what came up; whether shouldering a sack of wheat, or raising weights or suspending himself with one hand, he left the others out of the race.

  "Aw! it's no good foolun' with such puny little men as you," he swaggered at last, throwing himself down upon a pile of sacks.

  "If our hired man was here I bet he'd beat you all holler," piped a boy's voice from the doorway.

  Steve raised himself up and glared.

  "What's that thing talkun'?"

  The boy held his ground. "You can brag when he ain't around, but I bet he can lick you with one hand tied behind him; don't you, Frank?"

  Frank was doubtful, and kept a little out of sight. He was afraid of Steve, as were, indeed, all the other men, for he had terrorized the saloons of the county for years. Johnny went on about his hero:

  "Why, he can take a sack of wheat by the corners and snap every kernel of it clean out; he can lift a separator just as easy! You'd better brag when he's around."

  Steve's anger rose, for he saw the rest laughing; he glared around at them all like a hyena. "Bring on this whelp, let's see how he looks. I ain't seen him yit."

  "Pa says if Lime went to a saloon where you'd meet him once, you wouldn't clean out that saloon," Johnny went on in a calm voice, with a sort of undercurrent of glee in it. He saw Steve's anger, and was delighted.

  "Bring on this feller; I'll knock the everlasting spots offen 'im f'r two cents."

  "I'll tell 'im that."

  "Tell him and be damned," roared Steve, with a wolfish gleam in his eyes that drove the boys away whooping with mingled terror and delight.

  Steve saw that the men about him held Johnny's opinion of Lime, and it made him furious. For several years he had held undisputed sovereignty over the saloons of Rock County, and whe
n, with both sleeves rolled up and eyes flaming with madness, he had leaped into the center of a bar-room floor with a wild shout, everybody got out, by doors, windows or any other way, sometimes taking sash and all, and left him roaring with maniacal delight.

  No one used a revolver in those days. Shooting was almost unknown. Fights were tests of physical strength and savagery.

  Harvest brought into Iowa at that time a flood of rough and hardy men who drifted north with the moving line of ripening wheat, and on Saturday nights the saloons of the county were filled with them, and Steve found many chances to show his power. Among these strangers, as they gathered in some saloon to make a night of it, he loved to burst with his assertion of individual sovereignty.

  * * *

  Lime was out mending fence when Johnny came home to tell him what Steve had said. Johnny was anxious to see his faith in his hero justified, and watched Lime carefully as he pounded away without looking up. His dress always had an easy slouch about his vast limbs, and his pantaloons, usually of some dark stuff, he wore invariably tucked into his boot-tops, his vest swinging unbuttoned, his hat carelessly awry.

  Being a quiet, sober man, he had never been in a saloon when Steve entered to swing his hat to the floor and yell:

  "I'm Jack Robinson, I am! I am the man that bunted the bull off the bridge! I'm the best man in Northern Iowa!" He had met him, of course, but Steve kept a check upon himself when sober.

  "He says he can knock the spots off of you," Johnny said, in conclusion, watching Lime roguishly.

  The giant finished nailing up the fence, and at last said: "Now run along, sonny, and git the cows." There was a laugh in his voice that showed his amusement at Johnny's disappointment. "I ain't got any spots."

  On the following Saturday night, at dusk, as Lime was smoking his pipe out on the horse-block, with the boys around him, there came a swiftly-driven wagon down the road, filled with a noisy load of men. They pulled up at the gate, with a prodigious shouting.

  "Hello, Lime!"

  "Hello, the house!"

  "Hurrah for the show!"

  "It's Al Crandall," cried Johnny, running down to the gate. Lime followed slowly, and asked: "What's up, boys?"

  "All goin' down to the show; climb in!"

  "All right; wait till I git my coat."

  Lime was working one of Graham's farms on shares in the summer; in the winter he went to the pinery.

  "Oh, can't we go, Lime?" pleaded the boys.

  "If your dad'll let you; I'll pay for the tickets."

  The boys rushed wildly to the house and as wildly back again, and the team resumed its swift course, for it was getting late. It was a beautiful night; the full moon poured down a cataract of silent white light like spray, and the dew (almost frost) lay on the grass and reflected the glory of the autumn sky; the air was still and had that peculiar property, common to the prairie air, of carrying sound to a great distance.

  The road was hard and smooth, and the spirited little team bowled the heavy wagon along at a swift pace. "We're late," Crandall said, as he snapped his long whip over the heads of his horses, "and we've got to make it in twenty-five minutes or miss part of the show." This caused Johnny great anxiety. He had never seen a play and wanted to see it all. He looked at the flying legs of the horses and pushed on the dashboard, chirping at them slyly.

  Rock Falls was the county town and the only town where plays could be produced. It was a place of about 3,000 inhabitants at that time, and to Johnny's childish eyes it was a very great place indeed. To go to town was an event, but to go with the men at night, and to a show, was something to remember a lifetime.

  There was little talk as they rushed along, only some singing of a dubious sort by Bill Young, on the back seat. At intervals Bill stopped singing and leaned over to say, in exactly the same tone of voice each time: "Al, I hope t' God we won't be late." Then he resumed his monotonous singing, or said something coarse to Rice, who laughed immoderately.

  The play had begun when they climbed the narrow, precarious stairway which led to the door of the hall. Every seat of the room was filled, but as for the boys, after getting their eyes upon the players, they did not think of sitting, or of moving, for that matter; they were literally all eyes and ears.

  The hall seated about 400 persons, and the stage was a contrivance striking as to coloring as well as variety of pieces. It added no little to the sport of the evening by the squeaks it gave out as the heavy man walked across, and by the falling down of the calico wings and by the persistent refusal of the curtain to go down at the proper moment on the tableau. At the back of the room the benches rose one above the other until the one at the rear was near the grimy ceiling. These benches were occupied by the toughs of the town, who treated each other to peanuts and slapped one another over the head with their soft, shapeless hats, and laughed inordinately when some fellow's hat was thrown out of his reach into the crowd.

  The play was Wilkie Collins' "New Magdalen," and the part of Mercy was taken by a large and magnificently proportioned woman, a blonde, and in Johnny's eyes she seemed something divine, with her grace and majesty of motion. He took a personal pride in her at once and wanted her to come out triumphant in the end, regardless of any conventional morality.

  True, his admiration for the dark little woman's tragic utterance at times drew him away from his breathless study of the queenly Mercy, but such moments were few. Within a half hour he was deeply in love with the heroine and wondered how she could possibly endure the fat man who played the part of Horace, and who pitched into the practicable supper of cold ham, biscuit and currant wine with a gusto that suggested gluttony as the reason for his growing burden of flesh.

  And so the play went on. The wonderful old lady in the cap and spectacles, the mysterious dark little woman who popped in at short intervals to say "Beware!" in a very deep contralto voice, the tender and repentant Mercy, all were new and wonderful, beautiful things to the boys, and though they stood up the whole evening through, it passed so swiftly that the curtain's fall drew from them long sighs of regret. From that time on they were to dream of that wonderful play and that beautiful, repentant woman. So securely was she enthroned in their regard that no rude and senseless jest could ever unseat her. Of course, the men, as they went out, laughed and joked in the manner of such men, and swore in their disappointment because it was a serious drama in place of the comedy and the farce which they had expected.

  "It's a regular sell," Bill said. "I wanted to hear old Plunket stid of all that stuff about nothin'. That was a lunkin' good-lookin' woman though," he added, with a coarse suggestion in his voice, which exasperated Johnny to the pitch of giving him a kick on the heel as he walked in front. "Hyare, young feller, look where you're puttin' your hoofs!" Bill growled, looking about.

  John was comforted by seeing in the face of his brother the same rapt expression which he felt was on his own. He walked along almost mechanically, scarcely feeling the sidewalk, his thoughts still dwelling on the lady and the play. It was after ten o'clock, and the stores were all shut, the frost lay thick and white on the plank walk, and the moon was shining as only a moon can shine through the rarefied air on the Western prairies, and overhead the stars in innumerable hosts swam in the absolutely cloudless sky.

  John stumbled along, keeping hold of Lime's hand till they reached the team standing at the sidewalk, shivering with cold. The impatient horses stretched their stiffened limbs with pleasure and made off with a rearing plunge. The men were noisy. Bill sang another song at the top of his voice as they rattled by the sleeping houses, but as he came to an objectionable part of the song Lime turned suddenly and said: "Shut up on that, will you?" and he became silent.

  Rock Falls, after the most extraordinary agitation, had just prohibited the sale of liquor at any point within two miles of the school-house in the town. This, after strenuous opposition, was enforced; the immediate effect of the law was to establish saloons at the limit of the two miles and to throw a larg
e increase of business into the hands of Hank Swartz in the retail part of his brewery, which was situated about two miles from the town, on the bank of the river. He had immediately built a bar-room and made himself ready for the increase of his trade, which had previously been confined to supplying picnic parties with half-kegs of beer or an occasional glass to teamsters passing by. Hank had an eye to the main chance and boasted: "If the public gits ahead of me it's got to be up and a-comin'."

  The road along which Crandall was driving did not lead to Hank's place, but the river road, which branched off a little farther on, went by the brewery, though it was a longer way around. The men grew silent at last, and the steady roll and rumble of the wagon over the smooth road was soothing, and John laid his head in Lime's lap and fell asleep while looking at the moon and wondering why it always seemed to go just as fast as the team.

  He was awakened by a series of wild yells, the snapping of whips and the furious rush of horses. It was another team filled with harvesters trying to pass, and not succeeding. The fellows in the other wagon hooted and howled and cracked the whip, but Al's little bays kept them behind until Lime protested, "Oh, let 'em go, Al," and then with a shout of glee the team went by and left them in a cloud of dust.

  "Say, boys," said Bill, "that was Pat Sheehan and the Nagle boys. They've turned off; they're goin' down to Hank's. Let's go too. Come on, fellers, what d'you say? I'm allfired dry. Ain't you?"

  "I'm willun'," said Frank Rice; "what d'you say, Lime?" John looked up into Lime's face and said to him, in a low voice, "Let's go home; that was Steve a-drivin'." Lime nodded and made a sign to John to keep still, but John saw his head lift. He had heard and recognized Steve's voice.

  "It was Pat Sheehan, sure," repeated Bill, "an' I shouldn't wonder if the others was the Nagle boys and Eth Cole."

  "Yes, it was Steve," said Al. "I saw his old hat as he went by."

  It was perfectly intelligible to Lime that they were all anxious to have a meeting between Steve and himself. Johnny saw also that if Lime refused to go to the brewery he would be called a coward. Bill would tell it all over the neighborhood, and his hero would be shamed. At last Lime nodded his head in consent and Al turned off into the river road.