The Biography of a Prairie Girl Part 17

The biggest brother's attention was given to the bison only an instant.

For a long-horned steer collided with a hind wheel and a horse came das.h.i.+ng against the blue mare. He guided the buckboard nearer the rails to avoid the horse and reached round to hammer with his hat the steer's nose, which was thrust almost against the seat. "They'll trample us, they'll trample us!" he cried, and he seized the little girl about the shoulders and thrust her in front of him. "Drive," he commanded. Then he climbed back over the seat and furiously kicked out at the animals lunging upon the buckboard.

But he could as easily have stopped the pursuing fire, which was in the meadow and was house high; for, with those in the rear pressing them on at every bound, the leaders could not slacken their course. He saw that there was but one thing to be done: increase the speed before the buckboard was run down. "Oh, why didn't I unhitch?" he cried miserably as he climbed back to the little girl's side.

Forgetful of danger, she was whipping the blue mare with all her strength. The mare was traveling as fast as the herd now, and the station was in sight despite the drifting dust and smoke. Before it lay the black stretch at which the fire must stop, and on which, if the blue mare could be brought to a standstill behind a building or a waiting car, there was succor from death. Yet hope--with the herd upon them and the fire closer, hotter, and deadlier--was almost gone. The biggest brother, in a very final frenzy of desperation, joined his efforts to those of the little girl, and pounded the blue mare and the crowding stock repeatedly with his naked fists.

But suddenly another phase entered into that run for life. The roar behind them became louder, swelled to deafening, surged to their ears like a long, deep boom of thunder. And then, with a shriek that seemed to divide the smoke and dust, the local plunged through the cloud across her track and came even with the blue mare's muzzle.

In that moment, worn with her five miles' gallop, it was the only thing that could have spurred her on. Her eyes were bulging from lack of breath. Her sides, streaked with blood, no longer responded to the scourge of the rein ends. But, with the engine abreast, the desire to worst it, long nurtured by the little girl, set her into a wilder pace.

With a snort, she gathered herself together.

The buckboard, tossing from side to side on the uneven meadow, gained instantly on the herd and pa.s.sed to the front once more. The engine had distanced it, yet the blue mare did not slacken. The biggest brother and the little girl, torn between hope and fear, yelled at her encouragingly. Breathing heavily, she strained every muscle to obey.

Another moment and the engine was on the burnt strip; another, and the last car reached it; a third, and the blue mare's feet struck it, and she scurried into the lee of the depot to let the animals behind her divide and charge by through the town.

THE biggest brother, as soon as the blue mare had been tenderly cared for, hired a livery horse and started homeward. The little girl accompanied him, her face, like his, still streaked with dust and cinders. Neither spoke as the bare, s.m.u.tty meadow was crossed. They only looked ahead to where smoke was rising slowly, ten miles away to the west. They were spent with excitement, but their thoughts were on their mother and brothers, the house surrounded by a straw-strewn yard, the line of stacks behind the barn, the board granaries, the fields dry and ready for the match.

As they drove rapidly along through the sunlight, over the land just scored and torn up by the stampede, they pa.s.sed dead and injured animals that, weaker than the others, had fallen and been trampled and burned.

Few horses and cattle had suffered, but, beginning at the draw, the sheep were pitifully plentiful. Everywhere smoke floated up in tiny threads from smoldering buffalo-chips, and clumps of weeds burned damply, only now and then bursting into flame.

At last, with a shout of joy, the biggest brother made out the farm-house; with an unhappy cry he announced the burning of the stacks.

And when the buckboard came still nearer, they could see that the granaries were gone, and that all the sod buildings were roofless and open to the blurred sky, while on every side--the corn-field alone breaking the vista--lay the blackened fields.

When they drove up, their mother tottered to meet them, and waved one hand heartbrokenly toward the kitchen door, where the eldest and the youngest brothers, exhausted with fighting fire, their faces grimy, their clothing burned to tatters, sat weeping. "It couldn't have been much worse," she sobbed, as the biggest brother took her in his arms.

The little girl tumbled from the buckboard and, forgetting their quarrel of the morning, threw her arms around the eldest brother's neck. He bowed his head against her ap.r.o.n, and there was a long silence, interrupted only by sounds of mourning. Then the biggest brother spoke.

"Mother," he said, patting her shoulder softly, "we've got the house and the farm left, remember. We've got one another, too." He paused a moment. Before he spoke again he gave a little laugh, and all looked up at him in surprise. "What's more," he went on, "where's the caterpillars and cuc.u.mber-bugs, and the potato-bugs and cabbage lice? Burned up, slicker 'n a whistle. And mother," he persisted, holding up her tear-stained face smilingly, "have you happened to consider that there ain't a blamed gra.s.shopper in a hundred miles?"

XIV

HARD TIMES

THE first deep snow of the winter, dropping gently from a wide, dun sky, rested in white folds on the new straw roofs of the sod buildings, crested the low stacks that had been hauled from distant meadows not swept by the fire, covered the cinder-strewn gaps in the yard where the granaries had stood, and hid under a s.h.i.+ning, jeweled pall the stripped fields and the somber prairie. The little girl's mother, stringing pop-corn in the kitchen for the Christmas tree at the school-house, looked out toward noon to see the farm restored, as if by enchantment, to the aspect of other and happier winters; and sorrowfully welcomed the winding-sheet that gave promise of the coming resurrection, when the gra.s.s and flowers should rise again from out the naked, charred ground, bright and glorious with the fresh-born spring.

It had seemed to her, ever since the terrible holocaust of a few months before, as if the Bad Lands had moved eastward upon them. Yet, however sad was the sight of their loss and the sense of their privation, she counseled against selling out at a small figure and moving to some State where prairie fires were unknown, and bravely determined to stay and fight back to rough comfort and plenty.

"The snow will help us to forget," she said to the biggest brother, as she took a hot, crammed popper from him and emptied it into a milk-pan.

He nodded in reply, and sprinkled the popper with kernels again, and she went back to her bench, carrying the pan under one arm. They sat without speaking, the click of the needle and the snapping of the corn alone breaking the quiet. When another popper was ready to be turned out, the biggest brother went into the adjoining shed with a wooden bucket and shoveled it full of coal from the ever-lessening pile that had been purchased, like the seed for the coming planting, on the promise of the next year's crop.

As he returned, bending under the weight of the bucket, the door into the entry was shoved slowly open and the little girl entered. She walked forward to lay her mittens on the table before she brushed the snow from her shoulders and leggings and untwisted and shook out her nubia. Her woolen cap was pulled far down over her ears, and her mother, as she watched her, did not see the grave eyes and pensive face until the little girl halted beside the biggest brother's chair to warm her hands at a stove-hole.

"How's the tree?" asked the biggest brother, putting down the bucket and depositing one small lump on the dying coals.

"It's setting in a churn," replied the little girl, without looking up.

"Is it trimmed?" said her mother.

The little girl acquiesced. "It's all ready to light."

"S'pose those Dutchman's young ones brought some things over to put on,"

ventured the biggest brother, shaking the popper violently to hide his concern.

The little girl sighed heavily. "Everybody's sent presents but the Swedes and us," she said, and there was a telltale break in her voice.

"The Swedes and us won't have much on," declared the biggest brother, dryly. "That fire scooped up our Christmas gifts. The only people around here that can make presents this year were smart enough to backfire." He gave the popper such a shake that the lid swung up and let a shower of kernels fall over the stove.

"The Dutch girls said this morning," began the little girl, "that their new house is better 'n ours. And they said that every one of 'em is going to have two presents off the tree to-night. And--and--I know it's true, too, because I saw the teacher write their names on the packages."

She paused a moment. "They're all big packages," she added mournfully.

"I am glad," said her mother, "that some one is to receive presents to-night, even if we do not."

"And where _you're_ goin' to s.h.i.+ne," broke in the biggest brother, giving the little girl a squeeze, "is in the program. You'll play that new tune you learned on the fiddle, and you'll speak your piece; and they'll all be as jealous as kingdom come. As for presents, well, you've been gettin' 'em straight for ten years; so you c'n afford to skip the eleventh." He got up to empty the popper in the pan.

The little girl did not reply at once. When she burst forth at last, her eyes were full and her breast was heaving. "It's our first school tree,"

she cried; "and here I'll be the only girl that won't have her name called, except for an old orange or a bag of candy." Then she hurriedly left the kitchen.

"Poor baby!" said her mother when she was gone. She disposed of the stringing of the pop-corn to the biggest brother and began to pick over a quart of wheat that was to be their supper. Having finished and put it on to boil, she turned to the roasting of some barley for the next morning's coffee.

"I wish we'd a-got her a little trinket for to-night," said the biggest brother, "even if it'd a-been only worth ten cents." He took out his pipe and filled it from a handful of corn-silk in his jumper pocket.

"_I'd_ be tickled to death," he added, "if I could have a plug of tobacco."

"And I a sack of flour," said his mother. "We'll have the last in biscuits for to-day's dinner. I suppose I shouldn't have used it up for a week more, because we had white biscuits only last Sunday. But it is Christmas day; I can't resist giving you boys something a little extra.

I've kept enough flour out, though, to thicken gravies with. Now, if we only had plenty of potatoes."

"When it gets nearer spring, we c'n eat the inside of the potatoes and save the peelin's for plantin'."

"Oh, I thought of that long ago," laughed his mother; "I've got half a sack of peelings here behind the stove where they won't freeze."

"The meat's gettin' low, ma. There's only a hunk or two left in the barrel, and I just noticed, when I was gettin' the coal, that that pig in there on the rafters is dwindlin' fast. I guess another cow'll have to go. Might as well, anyway. Hay won't more 'n last the horses."

They were interrupted by the eldest and the youngest brothers, who came in, stamping the snow from their boots and swinging their arms.

"Gee! it's cold!" cried the youngest, keeping in a far corner, out of way of the warmth from the stove, and thumping his toes alternately as he moved in a circle. "Sloughs are frozen to the bottom. Didn't catch a thing, and had to use the ax to chop out the traps every place we'd set."

Dinner was eaten in silence that Christmas day. The family could not help contrasting the meal with those served on former like occasions.

Since nearly all the turkeys and chickens had perished in the fire, and what few remained were being kept over for the following year, no plump fowl lay, s.h.i.+ns in air, before the eldest brother. A small piece of baked pork held the place of honor, surrounded by the never-absent dish of boiled wheat, the plate of precious white biscuits, and some sweetened corn-bread. When dinner was over, the big brothers tramped off to the chain of sloughs, taking with them the violin and the corn their mother had strung so that the latter could be put on the tree that afternoon. The little girl and her mother cleared the table and then sat down to unravel some old wristlets and from them knit new heels and toes into the big brothers' stockings.

The little girl was very quiet and thoughtful. Her mouth drooped mournfully, her eyes were wistful. She spoke to her mother only in answer, and then in monosyllables. Her mother, as she watched her, felt that the little girl's unhappiness was the last bitter touch to her own grief, and she was glad when the child put on her dried leggings, her cap and coat, preparatory to spending an hour in her own room, where there was no fire.

The mother heard no sound from the other part of the house until the middle of the short afternoon. Then she caught the notes of a song. A moment later the little girl came running into the kitchen, her eyes dancing, and went running out again, carrying a sheet of brown wrapping-paper and a long piece of white string. No more sounds came from her room. When she came out at suppertime, dressed for the evening's entertainment, she was her usual cheerful self, much to the mystification of her compa.s.sionate mother and the big brothers.

There was a false ring of gladness in the sleigh-bells that night as they came jingling from the stable. For what right have sleigh-bells to ring when every pocket is flat and when there is no lumpy flour-sack hidden from sight under the hay in the pung bottom? So the eldest and the youngest brothers, their mother and the little girl, took their places in the low box and let the biggest brother cover them with a feather-tick, without any of the gay laughter and banter that marked the pleasure-rides of former years. Then the biggest brother, only his eyes showing from his head-wrappings, sprang to his seat behind the horses and sent the team briskly forward with the storm toward the huge bonfire of cottonwood logs that had been lighted close to the school-house on the farther edge of the farthest slough.