O Pioneers!

by Willa Cather

  I

  IT is sixteen years since John Bergson died. His wife now liesbeside him, and the white shaft that marks their graves gleamsacross the wheat-fields. Could he rise from beneath it, he wouldnot know the country under which he has been asleep. The shaggy coatof the prairie, which they lifted to make him a bed, has vanishedforever. From the Norwegian graveyard one looks out over a vastchecker-board, marked off in squares of wheat and corn; light anddark, dark and light. Telephone wires hum along the white roads,which always run at right angles. From the graveyard gate one cancount a dozen gayly painted farmhouses; the gilded weather-vaneson the big red barns wink at each other across the green and brownand yellow fields. The light steel windmills tremble throughouttheir frames and tug at their moorings, as they vibrate in the windthat often blows from one week's end to another across that high,active, resolute stretch of country.

  The Divide is now thickly populated. The rich soil yields heavyharvests; the dry, bracing climate and the smoothness of the landmake labor easy for men and beasts. There are few scenes moregratifying than a spring plowing in that country, where the furrowsof a single field often lie a mile in length, and the brown earth,with such a strong, clean smell, and such a power of growth andfertility in it, yields itself eagerly to the plow; rolls awayfrom the shear, not even dimming the brightness of the metal, witha soft, deep sigh of happiness. The wheat-cutting sometimes goeson all night as well as all day, and in good seasons there arescarcely men and horses enough to do the harvesting. The grain isso heavy that it bends toward the blade and cuts like velvet.

  There is something frank and joyous and young in the open faceof the country. It gives itself ungrudgingly to the moods of theseason, holding nothing back. Like the plains of Lombardy, itseems to rise a little to meet the sun. The air and the earth arecuriously mated and intermingled, as if the one were the breathof the other. You feel in the atmosphere the same tonic, puissantquality that is in the tilth, the same strength and resoluteness.

  One June morning a young man stood at the gate of the Norwegiangraveyard, sharpening his scythe in strokes unconsciously timed tothe tune he was whistling. He wore a flannel cap and duck trousers,and the sleeves of his white flannel shirt were rolled back tothe elbow. When he was satisfied with the edge of his blade, heslipped the whetstone into his hip pocket and began to swing hisscythe, still whistling, but softly, out of respect to the quietfolk about him. Unconscious respect, probably, for he seemedintent upon his own thoughts, and, like the Gladiator's, they werefar away. He was a splendid figure of a boy, tall and straightas a young pine tree, with a handsome head, and stormy gray eyes,deeply set under a serious brow. The space between his two frontteeth, which were unusually far apart, gave him the proficiencyin whistling for which he was distinguished at college. (He alsoplayed the cornet in the University band.)

  When the grass required his close attention, or when he had tostoop to cut about a head-stone, he paused in his lively air,--the"Jewel" song,--taking it up where he had left it when his scytheswung free again. He was not thinking about the tired pioneersover whom his blade glittered. The old wild country, the strugglein which his sister was destined to succeed while so many men broketheir hearts and died, he can scarcely remember. That is all amongthe dim things of childhood and has been forgotten in the brighterpattern life weaves to-day, in the bright facts of being captainof the track team, and holding the interstate record for the highjump, in the all-suffusing brightness of being twenty-one. Yetsometimes, in the pauses of his work, the young man frowned andlooked at the ground with an intentness which suggested that eventwenty-one might have its problems.

  When he had been mowing the better part of an hour, he heard therattle of a light cart on the road behind him. Supposing that itwas his sister coming back from one of her farms, he kept on withhis work. The cart stopped at the gate and a merry contralto voicecalled, "Almost through, Emil?" He dropped his scythe and wenttoward the fence, wiping his face and neck with his handkerchief.In the cart sat a young woman who wore driving gauntlets and a wideshade hat, trimmed with red poppies. Her face, too, was ratherlike a poppy, round and brown, with rich color in her cheeks andlips, and her dancing yellow-brown eyes bubbled with gayety. Thewind was flapping her big hat and teasing a curl of her chestnut-coloredhair. She shook her head at the tall youth.

  "What time did you get over here? That's not much of a job foran athlete. Here I've been to town and back. Alexandra lets yousleep late. Oh, I know! Lou's wife was telling me about the wayshe spoils you. I was going to give you a lift, if you were done."She gathered up her reins.

  "But I will be, in a minute. Please wait for me, Marie," Emilcoaxed. "Alexandra sent me to mow our lot, but I've done half adozen others, you see. Just wait till I finish off the Kourdnas'.By the way, they were Bohemians. Why aren't they up in the Catholicgraveyard?"

  "Free-thinkers," replied the young woman laconically.

  "Lots of the Bohemian boys at the University are," said Emil, takingup his scythe again. "What did you ever burn John Huss for, anyway?It's made an awful row. They still jaw about it in history classes."

  "We'd do it right over again, most of us," said the young womanhotly. "Don't they ever teach you in your history classes thatyou'd all be heathen Turks if it hadn't been for the Bohemians?"

  Emil had fallen to mowing. "Oh, there's no denying you're a spunkylittle bunch, you Czechs," he called back over his shoulder.

  Marie Shabata settled herself in her seat and watched the rhythmicalmovement of the young man's long arms, swinging her foot as ifin time to some air that was going through her mind. The minutespassed. Emil mowed vigorously and Marie sat sunning herself andwatching the long grass fall. She sat with the ease that belongsto persons of an essentially happy nature, who can find a comfortablespot almost anywhere; who are supple, and quick in adapting themselvesto circumstances. After a final swish, Emil snapped the gate andsprang into the cart, holding his scythe well out over the wheel."There," he sighed. "I gave old man Lee a cut or so, too. Lou'swife needn't talk. I never see Lou's scythe over here."

  Marie clucked to her horse. "Oh, you know Annie!" She looked atthe young man's bare arms. "How brown you've got since you camehome. I wish I had an athlete to mow my orchard. I get wet to myknees when I go down to pick cherries."

  "You can have one, any time you want him. Better wait until afterit rains." Emil squinted off at the horizon as if he were lookingfor clouds.

  "Will you? Oh, there's a good boy!" She turned her head to himwith a quick, bright smile. He felt it rather than saw it. Indeed,he had looked away with the purpose of not seeing it. "I've beenup looking at Angelique's wedding clothes," Marie went on, "andI'm so excited I can hardly wait until Sunday. Amedee will bea handsome bridegroom. Is anybody but you going to stand up withhim? Well, then it will be a handsome wedding party." She made adroll face at Emil, who flushed. "Frank," Marie continued, flickingher horse, "is cranky at me because I loaned his saddle to JanSmirka, and I'm terribly afraid he won't take me to the dance inthe evening. Maybe the supper will tempt him. All Angelique'sfolks are baking for it, and all Amedee's twenty cousins. Therewill be barrels of beer. If once I get Frank to the supper, I'llsee that I stay for the dance. And by the way, Emil, you mustn'tdance with me but once or twice. You must dance with all the Frenchgirls. It hurts their feelings if you don't. They think you'reproud because you've been away to school or something."

  Emil sniffed. "How do you know they think that?"

  "Well, you didn't dance with them much at Raoul Marcel's party, andI could tell how they took it by the way they looked at you--andat me."

  "All right," said Emil shortly, studying the glittering blade ofhis scythe.

  They drove westward toward Norway Creek, and toward a big whitehouse that stood on a hill, several miles across the fields. Therewere so many sheds and outbuildings grouped about it that theplace looked not unlike a tiny village. A stranger, approachingit, could not help noticing the beauty and fruitfulness of theoutlying fields. Ther
e was something individual about the greatfarm, a most unusual trimness and care for detail. On either sideof the road, for a mile before you reached the foot of the hill,stood tall osage orange hedges, their glossy green marking offthe yellow fields. South of the hill, in a low, sheltered swale,surrounded by a mulberry hedge, was the orchard, its fruit treesknee-deep in timothy grass. Any one thereabouts would have toldyou that this was one of the richest farms on the Divide, and thatthe farmer was a woman, Alexandra Bergson.

  If you go up the hill and enter Alexandra's big house, you willfind that it is curiously unfinished and uneven in comfort. Oneroom is papered, carpeted, over-furnished; the next is almostbare. The pleasantest rooms in the house are the kitchen--whereAlexandra's three young Swedish girls chatter and cook and pickleand preserve all summer long--and the sitting-room, in whichAlexandra has brought together the old homely furniture that theBergsons used in their first log house, the family portraits, andthe few things her mother brought from Sweden.

  When you go out of the house into the flower garden, there you feelagain the order and fine arrangement manifest all over the greatfarm; in the fencing and hedging, in the windbreaks and sheds, inthe symmetrical pasture ponds, planted with scrub willows to giveshade to the cattle in fly-time. There is even a white row ofbeehives in the orchard, under the walnut trees. You feel that,properly, Alexandra's house is the big out-of-doors, and that itis in the soil that she expresses herself best.