The Wind Before the Dawn Part 55

"Sell a part of them as gra.s.s cattle, and use the money to buy corn for the rest," she advised.

"Gra.s.s cattle are soft and don't weigh down like corn-fed steers. It would be sheer waste," John insisted.

Elizabeth understood that right now they were to test their strength. She thought it over carefully, not speaking till she had decided what to say.

The old path of mortgages and interest meant the old agony of dread of pay-day and the heart eaten out of every day of their existence, and yet she was careful not to rush into discussion. Her voice became more quiet as she felt her way in the debate.

"You are right as far as you go, gra.s.s cattle do not sell for as much, but, on the other hand, a loan means interest, and there is always a chance of the loss of a steer or two and then the profit is gone and you have your mortgage left. Luther said yesterday that they had black-leg over north of home, and you know how contagious it is."

"Oh, Luther! Of course Luther knows all there is to know about anything,"

sneered her husband, to whom Luther was a sore point just now.

Elizabeth realized her mistake in mentioning Luther's name to John almost before it was out of her mouth. John's instincts made him bl.u.s.ter and get off the subject of business and on to that of personalities at once. She did not reply to the taunt, but went quietly back to the point of business.

"The price of corn," she said with perfect control, "will go way up after this dry weather, but the price of beef doesn't always rise in proportion.

Besides that, this is a bad year to get tied up in the money market."

"We're going to have to do it all the same," John replied, spurred on by the mention of Luther's name to compel her consent.

"But, we can't do it. Hugh especially directed in his letter that we must not go into debt."

"I have not had the honour of seeing Hugh's letter to you, and therefore I do not know," John returned. That was another sore point.

"So you didn't! Doctor Morgan read it to all the rest."

Elizabeth had forgotten that John had not heard the letter read, and rose promptly and went for it. She laid it on the table at his elbow when she returned saying:

"I had forgotten--you didn't hear it when the doctor read it that day."

John Hunter brushed it aside with his arm.

"I don't wish to see it, thank you."

The letter fell on the floor. Elizabeth stooped quickly and picked it up.

"You may do as you wish about that; I shall not consent to the mortgage just the same," she said, her temper getting the better of her at last.

She turned to the bedroom to put the letter away.

"Now look here, Elizabeth!" John called after her.

Seeing the ineffectiveness of carrying on the conversation when they were not face to face, John waited till she returned. When she was seated again and had begun to rock the restless child once more, he began:

"We may as well understand each other right now as any time. If you're going to run this place, I want to know it, and I'll step down and out."

John looked belligerent and waited for her to do her womanly duty and give in. Elizabeth made no reply. John waited. He continued to wait for some seconds.

"I shall not consent to a mortgage," was the quiet answer.

John Hunter flung himself out of the house.

It was a bad afternoon for John. The drizzle had hardly been enough to lay the dust, but had made it impossible to walk through the gra.s.s or over the fields; his pride made it impossible for him to go back to the house, and so there was no place open to him except the hayloft, where he turned his own gloomy thoughts over and reasoned out this new development. A day's pouting, he was certain, would win his point; it would probably be all right when he went back at supper time, but he saw difficulties ahead with Elizabeth feeling that she had a right to an opinion regarding the property.

"I shall let her see that I mean business all the same. I'm not going to have her interfering in my work. Let her attend to her own, as a woman ought to do," he concluded.

He did wish, however, that he had read the letter. Doctor Morgan had referred to the letter also as being authority. He had an uncomfortable feeling that if he ever saw that letter that he would have to ask again; Elizabeth was a little less easy of late to manage than she had been that first year; she could put a thing aside and not discuss it almost as well as he could.

At that point John's mind flamed up against Luther Hansen. Elizabeth was always quoting Luther. He was glad he had let her see just now that she need not quote that common Swede to him any more. He didn't know a necktie from a shoelace! Hugh might have asked him to witness the will, but Hugh had seen fit to leave the money to them, all the same. Whatever else hurt, the money was his, and he'd turn everything into cattle, and get rich, and get out of this d.a.m.ned hole.

Elizabeth, in the house, was doing her own thinking. The conversation just finished had indications. She saw that her husband had a definite policy in regard to the management of the property, that he did not mean to let her have any more to do with it than when it was all his own. A creeping suspicion came to her that if she refused to consent to further mortgages her husband might leave her. There had been a violence in his tones as well as in his manner beyond any he had ever a.s.sumed toward her. Elizabeth shrank in a heartsick way from the contest. If he would mortgage the one eighty and then stop she would far rather have given away that much land than to have the quarrel, but that she knew he would not do. She could not for a moment think of giving up if she expected to have a roof over her head that was unenc.u.mbered when she was old. Though half the property was now hers by actual right, she would not interfere with anything he wished to do with it except to place a loan against it. If he insisted upon mortgages, though their disagreement became a scandal, she resolved that she would not consent.

John ate his supper without speaking to any one, and waited from then till bedtime for his answer, but Elizabeth gave no sign. The next day he waited, and the next, with increasing uneasiness and alarm. He decided at last to force her consent.

The third day he put one of the new horses in the single buggy and left the place without saying where he was going, and not even when he returned in the evening did he mention what his errand had been.

The following morning a team was driven into the side lane and Elizabeth saw John meet the driver and help him tie his horses. There was the air of a prearranged thing between them, and as they came toward the house it flashed through her mind what had been done. Her whole form straightened instinctively and she grasped her broom rigidly as she left the dining room and went to her own bedroom to get control of herself before she should have to meet the stranger. She realized that the man was the Johnson John had spoken of as having the quarter section of land for sale.

She was to be called upon to act. The thing she must do she knew was right; could she make the manner of the doing of it right also? She would not humiliate him if she could help it; she stayed in her room, hoping that he would come to call her himself and then she could warn him when he was alone, but John would not meet her except in the presence of the stranger, and sent Hepsie to call her. There was no help for it, and Elizabeth went as she was bidden--went quietly, and was introduced to the neighbour whom she had never seen.

"Mr. Johnson has accepted my proposition, Elizabeth, to give him twenty-five dollars an acre for the quarter next to ours," John said after all were seated.

The girl waited quietly. She noticed that John did not mention the terms of payment, and waited for him to commit himself on that point.

"Do you know where those blank deeds are? We can make one out while we conclude the details, and then go in to Colebyville to-morrow and have a notary take our signatures," John concluded easily.

Elizabeth hesitated visibly, and John had a startled moment, but she went for the blanks at last, as he directed. The two men sat with their heads together, and wrote carefully in the numbers and legal description of the land.

"And the party of the first part further agrees that the sum of----" John was reading as he wrote it in. His voice ran on to the close. When the writing was finished the man Johnson rose, and, picking up his straw hat, said:

"I guess I'll be hurrying on toward home now. I'll stop in on the way to-morrow morning. You'd just as well ride with me."

"Oh, I'll have to take Mrs. Hunter in with me," John replied, "and I can just as well hitch up to my own rig."

"What are you taking me in with you for, John?" Elizabeth asked, perfectly quiet on the outside, but aquiver with humiliation and dread because of the thing she was being compelled to do.

"To fix up the papers on the west eighty; you know It'll be necessary for you to sign them too." Addressing Mr. Johnson, he added easily: "My wife objects to going into debt, Mr. Johnson, but I felt this too good an opportunity to let pa.s.s, and since we can arrange it so that I won't have to raise but a thousand dollars just now, I'm sure She'll see the advisability of the move."

Elizabeth considered a second before she began to speak, and then said slowly:

"Mr. Hunter does not understand the nature of my objection, I see. Of course if he can arrange it with you so that all the indebtedness falls on the land he is buying, I should have no objections whatever, but we cannot mortgage our home. The provisions of the will forbid it, and I shall live up to those provisions absolutely."

The silence which followed was vocal with astonishment. The man looked from husband to wife for signs of quarrelling, but Elizabeth returned his gaze quietly, and without signs of anger, and John also gave no indication of anything but surprise. After a gasping instant, during which his instincts warned him to keep on the side of decency, John accepted the situation with seeming calm.

"Well, Mr. Johnson, if Mrs. Hunter feels that way about it, there's nothing to do. I'm sorry to have brought you over on a fool's errand," he said suavely, "but it can't be helped now. We'll take the land later, however," and ushered his guest out of the house and helped him untie his team without any sign of the tempest within.

John went back to the house with no concealment and no cajolery.

"We may as well know where we are and what we mean to do right here and now, Elizabeth," he began. "If you're going to do this kind of thing, I want to know it."