Prairie Folks Part 18

Like a flash of keener light, a sentence shot across the girl's mind: "Nature knows no t.i.tle-deed. The bounty of her mighty hands falls as the sunlight falls, copious, impartial; her seas carry all s.h.i.+ps; 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 s.h.i.+ning seas, could this dwarfed, bent, broken, middle-aged woman go? n.o.body wanted her, n.o.body 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.

SAt.u.r.dAY 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.

SAt.u.r.dAY 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 d.a.m.ned," 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 when, 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 a.s.sertion 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 unb.u.t.toned, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt at Johnny's disappointment. "I ain't got any spots."

On the following Sat.u.r.day 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.

"h.e.l.lo, Lime!"

"h.e.l.lo, 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.