The Moccasin Ranch Page 3

  One sultry day, while Rivers was on his way out to the store, he fell to studying the sky and air. On the prairie, as on the sea, one studies little else. There was something formidable in every sign. In the west a prodigious dome of blue-black cloud was rising, ragged at the edge, but dense and compact at the horizon.

  "That means business," Rivers said to himself, and chirped to his team.

  The air was close and hot. The southern wind had died away. There was scarcely a sound in all the landscape save the regular clucking of the wagon-wheels, the soft, rhythmical tread of the horses' feet, and the snapping buzz of the grasshoppers rising from the weeds. Far away to the west lay the blue Coteaux, thirty miles distant, long, low, without break, like a wall. The sun was hidden by the cloud, and as he passed a shanty Rivers saw the family eating their supper outside the door to escape the smothering heat.

  He smiled as he saw the gleam of white dresses about the door of the store. As he drove up, a swarm of impatient folk came out to meet him. The girls waved their handkerchiefs at him, and the men raised a shout.

  "You're late, old man."

  "I know it, but that makes me all the more welcome." He heaved the mail-bag to Bailey. "There's a letter for every girl in the crowd, I know, for I wrote 'em."

  "We'll believe that when we see the letters," the girls replied.

  He dismounted heavily. "Somebody put my team up. I'm hungry as a wolf and dry as a biscuit."

  "The poor thing," said one of the girls. "He means a cracker."

  Estelle Clayton came out of the store. "Supper's all ready for you, Mr. Mail-Carrier. Come right in and sit down."

  "I'm a-coming—now watch me," he replied, with intent to be funny.

  The girls accompanied him into the little living-room.

  "Oh, my, don't some folks live genteel? See the canned peaches!"

  "And the canned lobster!"

  "And the hot biscuit!"

  "Sit down, Jim, and we'll pour the tea and dip out the peaches."

  Rivers seated himself at the little pine table. "I guess you'd better whistle while you're dipping the peaches," he said, pointedly.

  Miss Thompson dropped the spoon. "What impudence!"

  "Oh, let him go on—don't mind him," said Estelle. "Let's desert him; I guess that will make him sorry."

  Upon the word they all withdrew, and Rivers smiled. "Good riddance," said he.

  Miss Baker presently opened the door, and, shaking a letter, said, "Don't you wish you knew?"

  He pretended to hurl a biscuit at her, and she shut the door with a shriek of laughter.

  Mrs. Burke slipped in. Her voice was low and timid, her face sombre.

  "I cooked the supper, Jim."

  "You did? Well, it's good. The biscuits are delicious." He looked at her as only a husband should look—intimate, unwaveringly, secure. "You're looking fine!"

  She flushed with pleasure. As she passed him with the tea, he put his arm about her waist.

  "Be careful, Jim," she said, gently, and with a revealing, familiar, sad cadence in her voice.

  He smiled at her boyishly. He was beautiful to her in this mood. "I was hoping you'd come over and stew something up for me. Hello, there's the thunder! It's going to rain!"

  Another sudden boom, like a cannon-shot, silenced the noise inside for an instant, and then a sudden movement took place, the movement of feet passing hurriedly about, and at last only one or two persons could be heard. When Rivers re-entered the store Bailey was alone, standing in the door, intently watching the coming storm. It was growing dusk on the plain, and the lightning was beginning to play rapidly, low down toward the horizon.

  "We're in for it!" Bailey remarked, very quietly. "Cyclone!"

  "Think so?" said Rivers, carelessly.

  "Sure of it, Jim. That cloud's too wide in the wings to miss us this time."

  A peculiar, branching flash of lightning lay along the sky, like a vast elm-tree, followed by a crashing roar.

  Blanche cried out in alarm.

  "Now, don't be scared. It's only a shower and will soon be over," said Bailey. "Here's a letter for you."

  She took the letter and read it hastily, looking often at the coming storm. She seemed pale and distraught.

  "Do you s'pose I've got time to get home now?" she asked, as she finished reading.

  "No," said Rivers, so decidedly that Bailey looked up in surprise.

  "Can't you take me home?"

  Rivers looked out of the door. "By the time we get this wagon unloaded and the team hitched up, the storm will be upon us. No. I guess you're safest right here."

  There was a peculiar tone, a note of authority, in his voice which puzzled Bailey quite as much as her submission.

  They worked silently and swiftly, getting the barrels of pork and oil and flour into the store, and by the time they had emptied the wagon the room was dark, so dark that the white face of the awed woman could be seen only as a blotch of gray against the shadow.

  They lighted the oil lamps, which hung in brackets on the wall, and then Rivers said to Blanche: "Won't you go into the other room? We must stay here and look after the goods."

  "No, no! I'd rather be here with you; it's going to be terrible."

  "Hark!" said Bailey, with lifted hands; "there she comes!"

  Far away was heard a continuous, steady, low-keyed, advancing hum, like the rushing of wild horses, their hoofbeats lost in one mighty, throbbing, tumultuous roar; then a deeper darkness fell upon the scene, and swift as the swoop of an eagle the tornado was upon them.

  The advancing wall of rain struck the building with terrific force. The lightning broke forth, savage as the roar of siege-guns. The noise of the wind and thunder was deafening. The plain grew black as night, save when the lightning flamed in countless streams across the clouds. The cabin shook like a frightened hound. Bailey looked around.

  "We must move the goods!" he shouted above the tumult. "See, the rain is beating in!"

  Rivers, with Blanche encircled by his arm, pressed her to his side reassuringly. "Don't be afraid. It can't blow down," he repeated.

  He then leaped to Bailey's assistance, and, while the thunder crashed in their ears and the lightning blinded their eyes, they worked like frantic insects to move the goods away from the western wall, through which the rain was beating. There was a pleasure in this assault which the woman could not share. It was battle, absorbing and exalting. Their shouts were full of joyous excitement.

  Once, when the structure trembled and groaned with the shock of a frightful blast, Rivers again put his arm around Blanche, saying: "It can't blow over. See those heavy barrels? If this store blows down, there won't be a shanty standing in the county."

  She pushed to the window to get a glimpse of the sod when the lightning flamed. She imagined the plain as it would look with every cabin flattened to earth, its inmates scattered, unhoused in the scant, water-weighted grass.

  As they all stood staring out, Rivers pointed and shouted to Bailey, "See that flag-pole!"

  It was made of hard pine, tough and supple, but it bent in the force of the wind like a willow twig. Again and again it bowed, rose with a fling, only to be borne down again. At last it broke with a crash; the upper half, whirling down, struck the roof, opening a ragged hole through which the rain streamed in torrents.

  Rivers cried, in battle alarm, "The roof is going!"

  "No, it ain't!" trumpeted Bailey, sturdily; "swing a tub up here to catch the water!"

  The woman forgot her fears and aided the two men as they toiled to cover the more perishable goods with bolts of cotton cloth, while the appalling wind tore at the eaves and lashed the roof with broadsides of rain and hail, which fell in constantly increasing force, raising the roar of the storm in key, till it crackled viciously. The tempest had the voice of a ravenous beast, cheated and angry. Outside the water lay in sheets. The whole land was a river, and the shanty was like a boat beached on a bar in the swash of it.

  Nothing more coul
d be done, and so they waited, Bailey watching at the window, Blanche and Rivers standing in the centre of the room. Bailey came back once to say: "This beats anything I ever saw. There will be ruin to many a shanty out of this," he added, as the roar began to diminish. "Nothing saved us but our ballast of pork and oil."

  "As soon as it stops, Bob, I wish you'd hitch up for me. I want to take Mrs. Burke home."

  "All right, Jim; it's letting up now. I wonder if the storm was as bad over where the Clayton girls are?" His voice betrayed anxiety greater than he knew. Rivers looked at him indulgently and smiled at Blanche. "You'd better go and see," he said.

  As soon as it became possible to carry a light, Bailey went to the barn and brought the team to the door. Rivers helped Blanche to a seat in the wagon and drove off across the plain, leaving Bailey alone in the water-soaked store-room. After a half-hour's work he, too, set out on a tour of exploration. The moon was shining on the plain as serenely as if only a dew had fallen. Water stood in shallow basins here and there, but the land was unmarked of the passion of lightning and of wind. Bailey walked across the level waste, straining his eyes ahead to see if the homes of his neighbors were still standing. He saw lights gleaming here and there like warning lamps of distant schooners, and when the infrequent, silent lightning flamed over the level waste, he caught glimpses of familiar shanties standing on the low swells.

  He hurried forward, his feet splashing in water, too intent to turn aside. Wherever a lamp burned steadily he knew a roof still remained, and his heart grew lighter. He came at last to the object of his search. It was only a small hut, but it was to him most sacred. He knocked timidly at the door.

  "Who's there?" was the quick and startled reply.

  "It's Bailey. I'm here to see how you came through the storm."

  "Oh, Mr. Bailey!" replied Estelle. She opened the door. "Come in. We're all right, but wet. Don't step in the pans."

  As he entered, with eyes a little dazzled by the candle, Carrie, wrapped in a shawl, rose from the bed. "Oh, I'm glad to see a man! Wasn't it terrible?" Pans were set about the room to catch the dripping water. The little shanty, usually so orderly and cheerful, looked dishevelled and desolate.

  Estelle laughed and said, "I tried to save the chickens, and I nearly blew away myself."

  Her cheeks were flushed, and her wet hair streamed down her back. She was barefooted, a fact which she tried to conceal by leaning forward a little.

  "It was very good of you to come over," she went on, more soberly, in the pause which followed. "We were scared; no use denying that, but we were too busy to dwell upon it. The wind took the tarred paper off the roof and let the rain through everywhere. It was the most exciting experience of our lives."

  She was more breathless and girlish than she had ever been in his presence, and he grew correspondingly secure. A subtle charm came from her streaming hair and her uncorseted and graceful figure. He offered assistance, but she sturdily replied:

  "Oh no, thank you. There's nothing to do till morning, anyway. We kept the bed dry, and so we can sleep." She smiled on him with something happy hidden in the tones of her voice. She was embarrassed, but not afraid. She trusted him perfectly, and he was exalted by that trust.

  "Well, I'll be over in the morning and see how badly damaged you are. I couldn't go to bed till I knew you were all right."

  "Thank you. You're very kind."

  He went out with a feeling that Carrie was trying hard not to laugh at him. He was sure he heard a smothered giggle as he went down the slope. He glowed with admiration for Estelle, so frank, so womanly. They seemed to have drawn closer to each other in that fifteen minutes' talk than in all the preceding months. In the joy of this deepening friendship he splashed contentedly back to the store, unheeding the pools beneath his feet.

  * * *

  V

  NOVEMBER

  September and October passed before the surveyors, long looked for, came through, and three months dragged out their slow length before the pre-emptors could file and escape from their claims.

  By the first of November the wonder had gone out of the life of the settlers. One by one the novelties and beauties of the plain had passed away or grown familiar. The plover and blackbird fell silent. The prairie-chicken's piping cry ceased as the flocks grew toward maturity, and the lark and cricket alone possessed the russet plain, which seemed to snap and crackle in the midnight frost, and to wither away in the bright midday sun.

  Many of the squatters by this time had spent their last dollar, and there was little work for them to do. Each man, like his neighbor, was waiting to "prove up." They had all lived on canned beans and crackers since March, and they now faced three months more of this fare. Some of them had no fuel, and winter was rapidly approaching.

  The vast, treeless level, so alluring in May and June, had become an oppressive weight to those most sensitive to the weather, and as the air grew chill and the skies overcast, the women turned with apprehensive faces to the untracked northwest, out of which the winds swept pitilessly cold and keen. The land of the straddle-bug was gray and sad.

  One day a cold rain mixed with sleet came on, and when the sun set, partly clear, the Coteaux to the west rose like a marble wall, crenelated and shadowed in violet, radiant as the bulwarks of some celestial city; but it made the thoughtful husband look keenly at the thin walls of his cabin and wonder where his fuel was to come from. In this unsheltered land, where coal was high and doctors far away, winter was a dreaded enemy.

  The depopulation of the newly claimed land began. Some of the girls went back never to return; others settled in Boomtown, with intent to visit their claims once a month through the winter; but a few, like the Burkes, remained in their little shanties, which looked still more like dens when sodded to the eaves. The Clayton girls flitted away to Wheatland, leaving the plain desolately lonely to Bailey. One by one the huts grew smokeless and silent, until at last the only English-speaking woman within three miles was old Mrs. Bussy, who swore and smoked a pipe, and talked like a man with bronchitis. She was not an attractive personality, and Mrs. Burke derived little comfort from her presence.

  Willard was away a great deal teaming, working desperately to get something laid up for the winter. The summer excursion, with its laughter, its careless irresponsibility, had become a deadly grapple with the implacable forces of winter. The land of the straddle-bug had become a menacing desert, hard as iron, pitiless as ice.

  Now the wind had dominion over the lonely women, wearing out their souls with its melancholy moanings and its vast and wordless sighs. Its voices seemed to enter Blanche Burke's soul, filling it with hunger never felt before. Day after day it moaned in her ears and wailed about the little cabin, rousing within her formless desires and bitter despairs. Obscure emotions, unused powers of reason and recollection came to her. She developed swiftly in sombre womanhood.

  Sometimes Mrs. Bussy came across the prairie, sometimes a load of land-seekers asked for dinner, but mainly she was alone all the long, long days. She spent hours by the window watching, waiting, gazing at the moveless sod, listening to the wind-voices, companioned only by her memories. She began to perceive that their emigration had been a bitter mistake, but her husband had not yet acknowledged it, and she honestly tried not to reproach him for it. Nevertheless, she had moments of bitterness when she raged fiercely against him.

  Little things gave her opportunity. He came home late one day. She greeted him sullenly. He began to apologize:

  "I didn't intend to stay to supper, but Mrs. Bradley—"

  "Mrs. Bradley! Yes, you can go and have a good time with Mrs. Bradley, and leave me here all alone to rot. It'd serve you right if I left you to enjoy this fine home alone."

  He trembled with agony and weakness.

  "Oh, you don't mean that, Blanche—"

  "For Heaven's sake, don't call me pet names. I'm not a child. If I'd had any sense I'd never have come out here. There's nothing left for us but just freeze or starve.
What did we ever leave Illinois for, anyway?"

  He sank back into a corner in gentle, sorrowful patience, waiting for her anger to wear itself out.

  While they sat there in silence they heard the sound of hoofs on the frozen ground, and a moment later Bailey's pleasant voice arose: "Hullo, the house!" Burke went to the door, and Blanche rose to meet the visitor with a smile, the knot in her forehead smoothed out. There was no alloy in her pure respect and friendship for Bailey.

  He came in cheerily, his hearty voice ringing with health and good-will. He took her hand in his with a quick, strong grip, and the light of his brown eyes brought a glow to her heart.

  "I've come over to see if you don't want to go to the city to-morrow? I've got Joe Pease to stay in the store, and so I thought I'd take an outing."

  Burke looked at his wife; she replied, eagerly:

  "I should like to go, Mr. Bailey, very much. Our old team is so feeble we daren't drive so far. I'm afraid every time old Dick stumbles he'll fall down on the road."

  "We'll have to get back to-morrow night," Burke said.

  "Oh, we'll do that all right," replied Bailey.

  As she planned the trip with tremulous eagerness, Bailey studied her. She was paler than he had ever seen her, and more refined and thoughtful, scarcely recognizable as the high-colored, powerful woman for whom he had helped build the shanty in March. There were times now when it seemed as if she were appealing to him, and his heart ached with undefined sorrow as he looked about her prison-like home.

  For half an hour she chatted with something of her old-time vivacity, but when he went out her face resumed its gloomy lines, and she silenced her husband with a glance when he attempted to keep up the cheerful conversation.