The Prairie Mother Part 5

I rather hate to think about it. We seem so like the Children of Israel bundled out of a Promised Land, or old Adam and Eve turned out of the Garden with their little Cains and Abels. "We're up against it, Gee-Gee," as d.i.n.ky-Dunk grimly observed. I could see that we were, without his telling me. But I refused to acknowledge it, even to myself. And it wasn't the first occasion. This time, thank heaven, I can at least face it with fort.i.tude, if not with relish. I don't like poverty. And I don't intend to like it. And I'm not such a hypocrite as to make a pretense of liking it. But I do intend to show my d.i.n.ky-Dunk that I'm something more than a household ornament, just as I intend to show myself that I can be something more than a breeder of children. I have given my three "hostages to fortune"--and during the last few days when we've been living, like the infant Moses, in a series of rushes, I have awakened to the fact that they are indeed hostages. For the little tikes, no matter how you maneuver, still demand a big share of your time and energy. But one finally manages, in some way or another.

d.i.n.ky-Dunk threatens to expel me from the Mothers' Union when I work over time, and Poppsy and Pee-Wee unite in letting me know when I've been foolish enough to pa.s.s my fatigue-point. Yet I've been sloughing off some of my old-time finicky ideas about child-raising and reverting to the peasant-type of conduct which I once so abhorred in my Finnish Olga. And I can't say that either I or my family seem to have suffered much in the process. I feel almost uncannily well and strong now, and am a wolf for work. If nothing else happened when our apple-cart went over, it at least broke the monotony of life. I'm able to wring, in fact, just a touch of relish out of all this migrational movement and stir, and Casa Grande itself is already beginning to remind me of a liner's stateroom about the time the pilot comes aboard and the donkey-engines start to clatter up with the trunk-nets.

For three whole days I simply ached to get at the Harris Ranch shack, just to show what I could do with it. And I realized when d.i.n.ky-Dunk and I drove over to it in the buckboard, on a rather nippy morning when it was a joy to go spanking along the prairie trail with the cold air etching rosettes on your cheek-bones, that it was a foeman well worthy of my steel. At a first inspection, indeed, it didn't look any too promising. It didn't exactly stand up on the prairie-floor and shout "Welcome" into your ears. There was an overturned windmill and a broken-down stable that needed a new roof, and a well that had a pump which wouldn't work without priming. There was an untidy-looking corral, and a reel for stringing up slaughtered beeves, and an overturned Red River cart bleached as white as a buffalo skeleton. As for the wickiup itself, it was well-enough built, but lacking in windows and quite unfinished as to the interior.

I told d.i.n.ky-Dunk I wanted two new window-frames, beaverboard for inside lining, and two gallons of paint. I have also demanded a lean-to, to serve as an extra bedroom and nursery, and a brand-new bunk-house for the hired "hands" when they happen to come along. I have also insisted on a covered veranda and sleeping porch on the south side of the shack, and fly-screens, and repairs to the chimney to stop the range from smoking. And since the cellar, which is merely timbered, will have to be both my coal-hole and my storage-room, it most a.s.suredly will have to be cemented. I explained to d.i.n.ky-Dunk that I wanted eave-troughs on both the shack and the stable, for the sake of the soft-water, and proceeded to point out the need of a new was.h.i.+ng-machine, and a kiddie-coop for Poppsy and Pee-Wee as soon as the weather got warm, and a fence, hog-tight and horse-high, about my half-acre of kitchen garden.

d.i.n.ky-Dunk sat staring at me with a wry though slightly woebegone face.

"Look here, Lady-Bird, all this sort of thing takes 'rhino,' which means ready money. And where's it going to come from?"

"I'll use that six hundred, as long as it lasts," I blithely retorted.

"And then we'll get credit."

"But my credit is gone," d.i.n.ky-Dunk dolorously acknowledged.

"Then what's the matter with mine?" I demanded. I hadn't meant to hurt him, when I said that. But I refused to be downed. And I intended to make my ranch a success.

"It's still quite unimpaired, I suppose," he said in a thirty-below-zero sort of voice.

"Goose!" I said, with a brotherly pat on his drooping shoulder. But my lord and master refused to be cheered up.

"It's going to take more than optimism to carry us through this first season," he explained to me. "And the only way that I can see is for me to get out and rustle for work."

"What kind of work?" I demanded.

"The kind there's a famine for, at this very moment," was d.i.n.ky-Dunk's reply.

"You don't mean being somebody else's hired man?" I said, aghast.

"A hired man can get four dollars a day and board," retorted my husband. "And a man and team can get nine dollars a day. We can't keep things going without ready money. And there's only one way, out here, of getting it."

d.i.n.ky-Dunk was able to laugh at the look of dismay that came into my face. I hadn't stopped to picture myself as the wife of a hired "hand." I hadn't quite realized just what we'd descended to. I hadn't imagined just how much one needed working capital, even out here on the edge of Nowhere.

"But never that way, Diddums!" I cried out in dismay, as I pictured my husband bunking with a sweaty-smelling plowing-gang of Swedes and Finns and hoboing about the prairie with a thras.h.i.+ng outfit of the Great Unwashed. He'd get cooties, or rheumatism, or a sunstroke, or a knife between his ribs some fine night--and then where'd I be? I couldn't think of it. I couldn't think of Duncan Argyll McKail, the descendant of Scottish kings and second-cousin to a t.i.tle, hiring out to some old skinflint of a farmer who'd have him up at four in the morning and keep him on the go until eight at night.

"Then what other way?" asked d.i.n.ky-Dunk.

"You leave it to me," I retorted. I made a bluff of saying it bravely enough, but I inwardly decided that instead of sixteen yards of fresh chintz I'd have to be satisfied with five yards. Poverty, after all, is not a picturesque thing. But I didn't intend to be poor, I protested to my troubled soul, as I went at that Harris Ranch wickiup, tooth and nail, while Iroquois Annie kept an eye on d.i.n.kie and the Twins.

These same Twins, I can more than ever see, are going to be somewhat of a brake on the wheels of industry. I have even been feeding on "slops," of late, to the end that Poppsy and Pee-Wee may thrive. And already I see s.e.x-differences a.s.serting themselves. Pee-Wee is a bit of a stoic, while his sister shows a tendency to prove a bit of a squealer. But Poppsy is much the daintier feeder of the two. I'll probably have to wean them both, however, before many more weeks slip by. As soon as we get settled in our new shack and I can be sure of a one-cow supply of milk I'll begin a bottle-feed once in every twenty-four hours. d.i.n.ky-Dunk says I ought to take a tip from the Indian mother, who sometimes nurses her babe until he's two and three years old. I asked Ikkie--as d.i.n.kie calls Iroquois Annie--about this and Ikkie says the teepee squaw has no cow's milk and has to keep on the move, so she feeds him breast-milk until he's able to eat meat.

Ikkie informs me that she has seen a papoose turn away from its mother's breast to take a puff or two at a pipe. From which I a.s.sume that the n.o.ble Red Man learns to smoke quite early in life.

Ikkie has also been enlightening me on other baby-customs of her ancestors, explaining that it was once the habit for a mother to name her baby for the first thing seen after its birth. That, I told d.i.n.ky-Dunk, was probably why there were so many "Running Rabbits," and "White Pups" and "Black Calfs" over on the Reservation. And that started me maun enlarging on the names of Indians he'd known, the most elongated of which, he acknowledged, was probably "The-Man-Who-Gets-Up- In-The-Middle-Of-The-Night-To-Feed-Oats-To-His-Pony," while the most descriptive was "Slow-To-Come-Over-The-Hill," though "Shot-At-Many-Times"

was not without value, and "Long-Time-No-See-Him," as the appellative for a disconsolate young squaw, carried a slight hint of the Indian's genius for nomenclature. Another thing mentioned by Dunkie, which has stuck in my memory, was his running across a papoose's grave in an Indian burying-ground at Pincer Creek, when he was surveying, where the Indian baby had been buried--above-ground, of course--_in an old Saratoga trunk_. That served to remind me of Francois' story about "Old Sun," who preceded "Running Rabbit"--note the name--as chief of the Alberta Blackfoot tribe, and always carried among his souvenirs of conquest a beautiful white scalp, with hair of the purest gold, very long and fine, but would never reveal how or where he got it. Many a night, when I couldn't sleep, I've worried about that white scalp, and dramatized the circ.u.mstances of its gathering. Who was the girl with the long and lovely tresses of purest gold? And did she die bravely? And did she meet death honorably and decently, or after the manner of certain of the Jesuits' _Relations_?...

I have had a talk with Whinnie, otherwise Whinstane Sandy, who has been ditching at the far end of our half-section. I explained the situation to him quite openly, acknowledging that we were on the rocks but not yet wrecked, and pointing out that there might be a few months before the ghost could walk again. And Whinstane Sandy has promised to stick. Poor old Whinnie not only promised to stick, but volunteered that if he could get over to Seattle or 'Frisco and raise some money on his Klondike claim our troubles would be a thing of the past. For Whinnie, who is an old-time miner and stampeder, is, I'm afraid, a wee bit gone in the upper story. He dreams he has a claim up North where there's millions and millions in gold to be dug out. On his moose-hide watch-guard he wears a nugget almost half as big as a praline, a nugget he found himself in ninety-nine, and he'd part with his life, I believe, before he'd part with that bangle of s.h.i.+ny yellow metal. In his chest of black-oak, too, he keeps a package of greasy and dog-eared doc.u.ments, and some day, he proclaims, those papers will bring him into millions of money.

I asked d.i.n.ky-Dunk about the nugget, and he says it's genuine gold, without a doubt. He also says there's one chance in a hundred of Whinnie actually having a claim up in the gold country, but doubts if the poor old fellow will ever get up to it again. It's about on the same footing, apparently, as Uncle Carlton's Chilean nitrate mines. For Whinnie had a foot frozen, his third winter on the Yukon, and this, of course, has left him lame. It means that he's not a great deal of good when it comes to working the land, but he's a clever carpenter, and a good cement-worker, and can ch.o.r.e about milking the cows and looking after the stock and repairing the farm implements. Many a night, after supper, he tells us about the Klondike in the old days, about the stampedes of ninety-eight and ninety-nine, and the dance-halls and hards.h.i.+ps and gamblers and claim-jumpers. I have always had a weakness for him because of his blind and unshakable love for my little d.i.n.kie, for whom he whittles out s.h.i.+ps and windmills and decoy-ducks. But when I explained things to simple-minded old Whinnie, and he offered to hand over the last of his ready money--the money he was h.o.a.rding dollar by dollar to get back to his hidden _El Dorado_--it brought a lump up into my throat.

I couldn't accept his offer, of course, but I loved him for making it.

And whatever happens, I'm going to see that Whinnie has patches on his panties and no holes in his socks as long as he abides beneath our humble roof-tree. I intend to make the new bunk-house just as homy and comfortable as I can, so that Whinnie, under that new roof, won't feel that he's been thrust out in the cold. But I must have my own house for myself and my babes. Soapy Stennet, by the way, has been paid off by d.i.n.ky-Dunk and is moving on to the Knee-Hill country, where he says he can get good wages breaking and seeding. Soapy, of course, was a good man on the land, but I never took a s.h.i.+ne to that hard-eyed Canuck, and we'll get along, in some way or other, without him. For, in the language of the n.o.ble Horatius, "I'll find a way, or make it!"

On the way back to Casa Grande to-night, after a hard day's work, I asked d.i.n.ky-Dunk if we wouldn't need some sort of garage over at the Harris Ranch, to house our automobile. He said he'd probably put doors on the end of one of the portable granaries and use that. When I questioned if a car of that size would ever fit into a granary he informed me that we couldn't keep our big car.

"I can get seventeen hundred dollars for that boat," he explained.

"We'll have to be satisfied with a tin Lizzie, and squander less on gasoline."

So once again am I reminded that the unpardonable crime of poverty is not always picturesque. But I wrestled with my soul then and there, and put my pride in my pocket and told d.i.n.ky-Dunk I didn't give a rip what kind of a car I rode in so long as I had such a handsome _chauffeur_. And I reached out and patted him on the knee, but he was too deep in his worries about business matters, I suppose, to pay any attention to that unseemly advance.

To-night after supper, when the bairns were safely in bed, I opened up the baby grand, intent on dying game, whatever happened or was to happen. But my concert wasn't much of a success. When you do a thing for the last time, and know it's to be the last time, it gives you a graveyardy sort of feeling, no matter how you may struggle against it.

And the blither the tune the heavier it seemed to make my heart. So I swung back to the statelier things that have come down to us out of the cool and quiet of Time. I eased my soul with the _Sonata Appa.s.sionata_ and lost myself in the _Moonlight_ and pounded out the _Eroica_. But my fingers were stiff and my touch was wooden--so it was small wonder my poor lord and master tried to bury himself in his four-day-old newspaper. Then I tried Schubert's _Rosamonde_, though that wasn't much of a success. So I wandered on through Liszt to Chopin. And even Chopin struck me as too soft and sugary and far-away for a homesteader's wife, so I sang

"In the dead av the night, acushla, When the new big house is still,"--

to see if it would shake any sign of recognition out of my harried old d.i.n.ky-Dunk.

As I beheld nothing more than an abstracted frown over the tip-top edge of his paper, I defiantly swung into _The Humming c.o.o.n_, which apparently had no more effect than Herman Lohr. So with malice aforethought I slowly and deliberately pounded out the Beethoven Funeral March. I lost myself, in fact, in that glorious and melodic wail of sorrow, merged my own puny troubles in its G.o.d-like immensities, and was brought down to earth by a sudden movement from d.i.n.ky-Dunk.

"Why rub it in?" he almost angrily demanded as he got up and left the room....

But that stammering little soul-flight has done me good. It has given me back my perspective. I refuse to be downed. I'm still the captain of my soul. I'm still at the wheel, no matter if we are rolling a bit.

And life, in some way, is still going to be good, still well worth the living!

_Wednesday the Eighth_

d.i.n.ky-Dunk has had word that Lady Alicia is on her way west. He seems to regard that event as something very solemn, but I refuse to take seriously either her ladys.h.i.+p or her arrival. To-night, I'm more worried about d.i.n.kie, who got at the floor-sh.e.l.lac with which I'd been furbis.h.i.+ng up the bathroom at Casa Grande. He succeeded in giving his face and hair a very generous coat of it--and I'm hoping against hope he didn't get too much of it in his little stomach. He seems normal enough, and in fairly good spirits, but I had to scrub his face with coal-oil, to get it clean, and his poor little baby-skin is burnt rather pink.

The winter has broken, the frost is coming out of the ground and the mud is not adding to our joy in life. Our last load over to the Harris shack was ferried and tooled through a batter. On the top of it (the _load_, and not the batter!) I placed Olie's old banjo, for whatever happens, we mustn't be entirely without music.

Yesterday d.i.n.ky-Dunk got Paddy saddled and bridled for me. Paddy bucked and bit and bolted and sulked and tried to brush his rider off against the corral posts. But d.i.n.ky-Dunk fought it out with him, and winded him, and mastered him, and made him meek enough for me to slip up into the saddle. My riding muscles, however, have gone flabby, and two or three miles, for the first venture, was all I cared to stand.

But I'm glad to know that Paddy can be pressed into service again, whenever the occasion arises. Poor old Bobs, by the way, keeps looking at me with a troubled and questioning eye. He seems to know that some unsettling and untoward event is on the way. When a coyote howled last night, far off on the sky-line, Bobs poured out his soul in an answering solo of misery. This morning, when I was pretty busy, he poked his head between my knees. I had a dozen things calling me, but I took the time to rub his nose and brush back his ears and tell him he was the grandest old dog on all G.o.d's green earth. And he repaid me with a look of adoration that put springs under my heels for the rest of the morning, and came and licked Pee-Wee's bare heels, and later Poppsy's, when I was giving them their bath.

_Friday the Tenth_

Lady Alicia has arrived. So have her trunks, eleven in number--count 'em!--trunks of queer sizes and shapes, of pigskin and patent leather and canvas, with gigantic buckles and straps, and all gaudily initialed and plastered with foreign labels. Her ladys.h.i.+p had to come, of course, at the very worst time of year, when the mud was at its muckiest and the prairie was at its worst. The trails were simply awful, with the last of the frost coming out of the ground and mother earth a foot-deep sponge of engulfing stickiness. All the world seemed turned to mud. I couldn't go along, of course, when d.i.n.ky-Dunk started off in the Teetzels' borrowed spring "democrat" to meet his English cousin at the Buckhorn station, with Whinstane Sandy and the wagon trailing behind for the luggage.

We expected a lady in somewhat delicate health, so I sent along plenty of rugs and a foot-warmer, and saw that the house was well heated, and the west room bed turned down. Even a hot-water bottle stood ready and waiting to be filled.

But Lady Alicia, when she arrived with d.i.n.ky-Dunk just before nightfall, didn't impress me as very much of an invalid. She struck me more as a very vital and audacious woman, neither young nor old, with an odd quietness of manner to give a saber-edge to her audacity. I could hear her laughing, musically and not unpleasantly, at the mud-coated "democrat," which on its return looked a good deal like a 'dobe hut mounted on four chariot wheels. But _everything_, for that matter, was covered with mud, horses and harness and robes and even the blanket in which Lady Alicia had wrapped herself. She had done this, I could see, to give decent protection to a Redfern coat of plucked beaver with immense reveres, though there was mud enough on her stout tan shoes, so unmistakably English in their common-sense solidity, and some on her fur turban and even a splash or two on her face. That face, by the way, has an apple-blossom skin of which I can see she is justly proud. And she has tourmaline eyes, with reddish hazel specks in an iris of opaque blue, and small white teeth and lips with a telltale curve of wilfulness about them. She isn't exactly girlish, but with all her worldly wisdom she has a touch of the clinging-ivy type which must make her inordinately appealing to men.

Her voice is soft and full-voweled, with that habitual rising inflection characteristic of the English, and that rather insolent drawl which in her native land seems the final flower of unchallenged privilege. Her hands are very white and fastidious looking, and most carefully manicured. She is, in fact, wonderful in many ways, but I haven't yet decided whether I'm going to like her or not. Her smile strikes me as having more glitter than warmth, and although she is neither tall nor full-bodied, she seems to have the power of making point take the place of weight. Yet, oddly enough, there is an occasional air of masculine loose-jointedness about her movements, a half-defiant sort of slouch and swagger which would probably carry much farther in her Old World than in our easier-moving New World, where disdain of decorum can not be regarded as quite such a novelty.