The Lost Wagon Part 4

"Almost. Tad, take yourself off to bed now."

"Already?" Tad was testing the razor-keen blade of his newly honed knife.

"It's time. Take your bath and go to bed."

"Do I have to take a bath? I swam in the crick today."

"The 'creek,'" Emma corrected firmly. "If you swam you needn't bathe.

But go to bed."

"It's too early," he complained.

"Tad!"

"Yes, Ma."

Tad took himself toward the bedroom and emerged, yawning, for his good-night kiss. After he had gone, Emma smiled covertly. Tad, at eight, resented his own childhood fiercely. He was in an almost ferocious rush to grow up so he could avail himself of what, in his own mind, were all the privileges of adulthood. But he still would not go to bed without his mother's kiss.

Emma seated herself at the table for the moment contented to rest. This, for her, was a time of contentment and soul-satisfying joy. She arose to each new day as though it were a complete new challenge that was sure to present its opportunities but might offer hazards, too. But the night always meant peace, and to know that her younger children were safe in bed brought happiness to Emma's heart. Now she knew only a little uneasiness because Joe was still absent. Barbara washed her hands and face, and let her satiny, tawny hair cascade down her shoulders.

"Are we going to the Trevelyans' barn dance Sat.u.r.day night, Mother?"

"I think so."

"Would you mind very much if I did not go with you?"

Emma glanced curiously at her. "Why not?"

"Well, Johnny Abend asked if he could take me. So did Billy Trevelyan and Allan Geragty. It would be fun if you let me go with one of them."

Emma's eyes sparkled with humor. "And which of the three are you going to honor?"

Barbara wrinkled her nose. "Allan Geragty is a smart aleck. I don't like him."

Emma murmured, "Dear, a choice of only two escorts! Yes, you may go."

"Thank you. I believe I'll set outside for a little while, Mother."

"All right."

Barbara opened the door and closed it quietly behind her. Emma knew that she was going only to look at the stars, and that was good because all young people should have trysts with stars. They might never pull one out of the sky and have it for their own, but they could always try.

Emma fell into a mood of sober reflection.

The years had brought her a fair measure of wisdom, and at thirty-two she knew a great deal which she had not known when, at sixteen, she became Joe's wife. Among other things, she knew now that her father had been a martinet. He knew, he thought, the only true way, and all about him must follow or risk his wrath. If Emma regretted any years of her married life, it was the first five when she had insisted that she must not leave her father. But she had honestly known of nothing else that she might do.

Since babyhood she had been under her father's influence, and in his opinion women must always take a secondary place. One by one, as her six older brothers attained their majority, they had quarreled with their father and left home. Then the old man had suffered a series of spasms, and now Emma wondered if they were not simulated spasms designed to keep his last remaining child at his side. But she had loved him and pitied him and remained under his influence. She had brought upon her husband five painful and unproductive years. But those five years had taught Emma the true measure of Joe's worth. In spite of old Caleb's abuse, Joe had given him the fullest help of which a man is capable. He had been in the fields from the first light of morning until the last lingering glow of twilight. And he had waited without a word of complaint until Emma herself was willing to leave. With a fresh surge of love and grat.i.tude she thought about his patient waiting, more difficult for him than for many another. Because he had waited until she was fully ready, she had felt obliged to conceal from him the real anguish she felt when, looking back from the wagon that was carrying them away, she saw Caleb, a strangely shrunken, isolated figure, standing in the doorway of his empty home.

But it was not only pity for Caleb that tore at her. It was that her own roots ran deep, that Caleb's home had been her home for all of her life, that now she and Joe and Barbara had no home at all other than the quarters that would be given to them on the farm where Joe would be working. To be without her own home was a personal agony that she had shared with no one, but it was an agony that had enabled her to save and scrimp and put aside every penny until she could hold out her hands to Joe with enough money in them to buy a place of their own.

Now she held the spare copper lamp base in her hands, and with a soft piece of cloth she rubbed it and rubbed it until she could see mirrored in it the smiling, contented outlines of her own face. For a few precious minutes she dared to hope that, in spite of the troublesome debt, their most difficult years were behind them.

Barbara came in, stifling a yawn with her hand. "I think I'll go to bed too, Mother."

"Are you tired, darling?"

"Lazy, I suppose."

Barbara stooped to pick up a toy wagon--another of Joe's products--that Alfred and Carlyle had left on the floor. She put it in its proper place on a shelf, dipped a pan of water, and bathed herself. Night-dressed, she kissed her mother good night. Emma sat alone.

For eight years she had gone with Joe from farm to farm, where he worked for a house, food, and small wages. But he had always fed and clothed his family, and where other men had given up in despair, taken to drink, or even abandoned their families, Joe had still plodded on.

Still, he was more than a plodder. Plodding was his way of making a good from what otherwise would have been a bad situation.

Just as she herself had wanted a home, Joe had wanted his own land, and to be his own master. Together they had worked and saved and sacrificed, until the day came when they were able to realize their ambition. For her it was the end of the journey. She had come home. The foundation of their life was laid. From here on all the work they did would be toward making their home and their land completely their own, forever. Yet she had seen as the year pa.s.sed that Joe was somehow not content, and thinking about him now, a familiar fear began to tug at her again. She knew the wild fires that flared beneath Joe's placid exterior, and she was at a loss to explain them. The debt against which he fretted so angrily was to her bothersome but surely not intolerable. Bit by bit they would pay it off, and meanwhile they could live comfortably, each year expanding their little home to meet their expanding needs.

She started when she thought she heard his footstep, then sank back in her chair. Five minutes later the door opened quietly and Joe tiptoed in. Emma looked at his flushed cheeks and excited eyes, and for a moment she was startled. Men looked like that when they drank too much, but Joe didn't drink. However, he had surely partaken of some heady draught.

Emma asked,

"Are you all right, Joe?"

"Oh sure. I'm all right. I was down at the store. Bibbers Townley's there. He just came back from the west."

He sat beside her, his eyes glowing, and Emma looked wonderingly at him.

She had never seen him just this way before.

"Tell me, Joe," she urged.

He blurted, "How would you like to go west?"

A great fist seemed to have closed about her throat, and for a moment she could not breathe. After a time her breath came back, and her voice. But Joe was already going on, leaning forward tensely in his chair, his face eager and alive.

"There's land in the west, Emma! Land for us! For Tad, Joe, Alfred and Carlyle! Land for whoever Barbara and baby Emma might marry! It's for the _taking_!"

"There's land right here, Joe," she managed to say. "Our own land."

There was quick impatience in his voice as he repeated her words, "Our own land? I'll be able to pay Elias Dorrance $50 this fall, and out of that $40 goes for interest, and $10 off on what we owe."

"Still, it's something," she said hastily. "Ten off is something! Little by little, Joe, we'll make the land our own."

"How many years?" he demanded almost angrily. "How many more years will it take?"

She could not answer him, not only because she did not know the answer but because the question wasn't really a question. It was an accusation.

He seemed to be accusing her of unwillingness to see something that was plain enough to Joe, that was right out there in front of them.

He was looking at her now, his whole face full of questioning.

She avoided his eyes. "Let's think about it," she said. "The plowing and seeding's already done for this year. Let's think about it this year, and come next spring we'll talk about it again."

"Come next spring?" he asked vaguely. All of the glow faded from his face. Even his lips grew pale, and in the sudden quiet she could hear his breathing, quick and shallow and weary. He seemed spent, as though all the weariness of many weeks of work had been piled upon him all at once in this moment.