The Conquest Part 21

The government's final estimated yield of all crops was the smallest it had been for ten years. As a result, loan companies who had allowed interest to acc.u.mulate for one and two years, in the hope that the farmers and other investors would be able to sell, such having been the conditions of the past, now began to threaten foreclosure and money became hard to get.

From the south came reports that many counties in Oklahoma, that were loaded with debt, had defaulted for two years on the interest, and County warrants, that had always brought a premium, sold at a discount.

The rain that had followed the drouth, in the north, as the winter months set in, began to move south, and about Christmas came the heaviest snows the south had known for years. With the snows came low temperatures that lasted for weeks. As far south as Oklahoma city, zero weather gripped the country, and to the west the cattle left on the ranges froze to death by the thousands. A large part of those that lived--few were fit for the market, they were so thin--were sold to eastern speculators at gift prices, due to the fact that rough feed was not to be had.

The heavy snows that covered the entire country, from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic, and the bitter cold weather that followed, made s.h.i.+pping hazardous. Therefore, the rural districts suffered in every way. Snow continued to fall and the cold weather held forth, until it was to be seen, when warm weather arrived, the change would be sudden, and floods would result, such was the case.

It was a year of coincidences; the greatest drouth known for years, followed by the coldest winter and the heaviest snows, and these in turn by disastrous floods, will live long in memory.

To me the days were long, and the nights lonely. The late fall rains kept my flax growing until winter had set in, and snow fell before it was all harvested. All I could see of my crop was little white elevations over the field. There was no chance to get it threshed. My capital had all been exhausted, and it was a dismal prospect indeed. I used to sit there in my wife's lonely claim-house, with nothing else to occupy my mind but to live over the happy events connected with our courts.h.i.+p and marriage, and the sad events following her departure.

During my life on the Little Crow, I had looked forward joyfully to the time when I should be a husband and father, with a wife to love, and a home of my own. This had been so dominant in my mind, that when I thought it over, I could not clearly realize the present situation. I lived in a sort of stupor and my very existence seemed to be a dreadful nightmare. I would at times rouse myself, pinch the flesh, and move about, to see if it was my real self; and would try to shake off the loneliness which completely enveloped me. My head ached and my heart was wrung with agony.

I read a strange story, but its contents seemed so true to life. It related the incident of a criminal who had made an escape from a prison--not for freedom, but to get away for only an hour, that he might find a cat, or a dog, or something, that he could love.

It seems he had been an author, and by chance came upon a woman--during the time of his escape--who permitted him to love her, and during the short recess, to her he recited a poem ent.i.tled, "The right to love."

The words of that poem burned in my mind.

"Love is only where is reply, I speak, you answer; There am I, And that is life everlasting."

"Love lives, to seek reply.

I speak, no answer; Then I die, To seek reincarnation."

As the cold days and long nights pa.s.sed slowly by, and I cared for the stock and held down my wife's claim, the t.i.tle of that story evolved in my mind, and I would repeat it until it seemed to drive me near insanity. I sought consolation in hope, and the winter days pa.s.sed at last; but I continued to hope until I had grown to feel that when I saw my wife and called to her name, she would hear me and see the longing in my heart and soul; then would come the day of redemption.

CHAPTER XLIII

"AND SATAN CAME ALSO."

Came a day when the snow had disappeared; my thres.h.i.+ng was done; I had money again, and to Chicago I journeyed.

During the winter I had planned a way to get to see my wife, and took the first step toward carrying it out, immediately following my arrival in the city.

I went to a telephone and called up Mrs. Ewis. She recognized my voice and knew what I had come for. She said: "I am so glad I was near the phone when you called up, because your father-in-law is in the house this very minute." On hearing this I was taken aback, for it had not occurred to me that he might be in the city. As the realization that he was, became clear to me, I felt ill at ease, and asked how he came to be in the city at that time.

"Well," and from her tone I could see that she was also disturbed--"you see tomorrow is election and yesterday was Easter, so he came home to vote, and be here Easter, at the same time. Now, let me think a moment,"

she said nervously. Finally she called: "Oscar, I tell you what I will do, P.H. is sick and the Reverend has been here every day to see him."

Here she paused again, then went on: "I will try to get him to go home, but he stays late. However, you call up in about an hour, and if he is still here, I'll say 'this is the wrong number, see?'"

"Yes," I said gratefully, and hung up the receiver.

I had by this time become so nervous that I trembled, and then went down into Custom House place--I had talked from the Polk Street station--and took a couple of drinks to try to get steady.

In an hour and a half I called up again and it was the "wrong number,"

so I went out south and called on a young railroad man and his wife, by the name of Lilis, who were friends of Orlean's and mine.

After expressing themselves as being puzzled as to why the Reverend should want to separate us, Mrs. Lilis told me of her. During the conversation Mrs. Lilis said: "After you left last year, I went over to see Orlean, and spoke at length of you, of how broken hearted you appeared to be, and that she should be in Dakota. Mrs. McCraline looked uncomfortable and tried to change the subject, but I said my mind, and watched Orlean. In the meantime I thought she would faint right there, she looked so miserable and unhappy. She has grown so fat, you know she was always so peaked before you married her. Everybody is wondering how her father can be so mean, and continue to keep her from returning home to you, but Mrs. Ewis can and will help you get her because she can do more with that family than anyone else. She and the Elder have been such close friends for the last fifteen years, and she should be able to manage him."

Then her mother said: "Oscar, I have known you all your life; I was raised up with your parents; knew all of your uncles; and know your family to have always been highly respected; but I cannot for my life see, why, if Orlean loves you, she lets her father keep her away from you. Now here is my Millie," she went on, turning her eyes to her daughter, "and Belle too, why, I could no more separate them from their husbands than I could fly--even if I was mean enough to want to."

"But why does he do it, Mama? The Reverend wants to break up the home of Orlean and Oscar," Mrs. Lilis put in, anxiously.

"Bless me, my child," her mother replied, "I have known N.J. McCraline for thirty years and he has been a rascal all the while. I am not surprised at anything that he would do."

"Well," said Mrs. Lilis, with a sigh of resignation, "it puzzles me."

I then told them about calling up Mrs. Ewis and what I had planned on doing. It was then about nine-thirty. As they had a phone, I called Mrs.

Ewis again.

While talking, I had forgotten the signal, and remembered it only when I heard Mrs. Ewis calling frantically, from the other end of the wire, "This is the wrong number, Mister, this is the wrong number." With an exclamation, I hung up the receiver with a jerk.

Mrs. Ankin lived about two blocks east, so I went to her house from Mrs.

Lilis'. On the street, the effect of what had pa.s.sed, began to weaken me. I was almost overcome, but finally arrived at Mrs. Ankins'. Just before retiring, at eleven o'clock, I again called up Mrs. Ewis, and it was still the "wrong number." I went to bed and spent a restless night.

I awakened about five-thirty from a troubled sleep, jumped up, dressed, then went out and caught a car for the west side. I felt sure the Elder would go home during the night.

It is always very slow getting from the south to the west side in Chicago, on a surface car, and it was after seven o'clock when I arrived at the address, an apartment building, where Mrs. Ewis' husband held the position as janitor, and where they made their home, in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

She was just coming from the grocery and greeted me with a cheerful "Good Morning," and "Do you know that rascal stayed here until twelve o'clock last night," she laughed. She called him "rascal" as a nickname.

She took me into their quarters, invited me to a chair, sat down, and began to talk in a serious tone. "Now Oscar, I understand your circ.u.mstances thoroughly, and am going to help you and Orlean in every way I can. You understand Rev. McCraline has always been hard-headed, and the cla.s.s of ministers he a.s.sociates with, are more hard-headed still. The Elder has never liked you because of your independence, and from the fact that you would not let him rule your house and submit to his ruling, as Claves does. Now Oscar, let me give you some advice.

Maybe you are not acquainted with the circ.u.mstances, for if you had been, in the beginning, you might have avoided this trouble. What I am telling you is from experience, and I know it to be true. Don't ever criticize the preachers, to their faces, especially the older ones. They know their views and practices, in many instances, to be out of keeping with good morals, but they are not going to welcome any criticism of their acts. In fact, they will crucify criticism, and persecute those who have criticized them. Furthermore, you are fond of Booker T.

Was.h.i.+ngton, and his ideas, and Rev. McCraline, like many other negro preachers, especially the older ones, hates him and everybody that openly approves of his ideas. His family admire the educator, and so do I, but we don't let on to him. Now I have a plan in mind, which I feel a most plausible one, and which I believe will work out best for you, Orlean, and and myself. Before I mention it, I want to speak concerning the incident of last fall. When you sent him that bunch of letters, with mine in it, he fairly raised cain; as a result, the family quit speaking to me, and Orlean has not been over here for six months, until she and Ethel came a few days before Easter, to get the hats I have always given them. Now, she went on, seeming to become excited, if I should invite Orlean over, the Elder would come along," which I knew to be true. "When you wrote me last summer in regard to taking her to a summer resort, so you could come and get her, I told Mary Arling about it. Now to be candid, Mrs. Arling and I are not the best of friends. You know she drinks a little too much, and I don't like that, but Mary Arling is a friend of yours, and a smart woman."

"Is that so?" I asked, showing interest, for I admired Mrs. Arling and her husband.

"Yes," Mrs. Ewis rea.s.sured me, "she is a friend of yours and you know all the McCraline family admire the Arlings, and Orlean goes there often." "Well, as I was saying", she went on, "last summer out at a picnic, Mrs. Arling got tipsy enough to speak her mind and she simply laid the family out about you. She told the Reverend right to his teeth that he was a dirty rascal, and knew it; always had been, and that it was a shame before G.o.d and man the way he was treating you. Yes, she said it," she rea.s.sured me when I appeared to doubt a little. "And she told me she wished you had asked her to take Orlean away; that she would not only have taken her away from Chicago, but would have carried her on back to Dakota where she wanted to be, instead of worrying her life away in Chicago, in fear of her father's wrath. So now, my plan is that you go over to her house, see? You know the address."

I knew the house. "Well," and she put it down on a piece of paper, "you go over there, and she will help you; and Oscar, for G.o.d's sake, she implored, with tears in her eyes, do be careful. I know Orlean loves you and you do her, but the Reverend has it in for you, and if he learned you were in the city, Orlean would not be allowed to leave the house.

Now, she added, I will get him over here as soon as I can and you do your part. Good-bye."

I took a roundabout way in getting back to the south side, keeping out of the colored neighborhood as long as possible, by taking a Halsted street car south, got a transfer, and took a Thirty-fifth street car.

I was careful to avoid meeting anyone who might know me, but who might not be aware of my predicament, and who might thoughtlessly inform the McCralines.

I arrived at Mrs. Arlings without meeting anyone who knew me, however.

They owned and occupied an elaborate flat at an address in the Thirty-seventh block on Wabash avenue. I rang the bell, which was answered by a young lady unknown to me, but who, I surmised, roomed at the house. She inquired the name, and when I had told her she let out an "O!" and invited me into the parlor. She hurried away to tell Mrs.

Arling, who came immediately, and holding both hands out to me, said, "I am so glad you came at last, Oscar, I am so glad."

After we had said a few words concerning the weather, etc., I said in a serious tone, "Mrs. Arling, I am being persecuted on account of my ideas."

"I know it, Oscar, I know it," she repeated, nodding her head vigorously, and appeared eager.

I then related briefly the events of the past year, including the Reverend's trip to Dakota.

Raising her arms in a gesture, she said: "If you remember the day after you were married, when we had the family and you over to dinner, and you and Richard (her husband), talked on race matters, that the Elder never joined. Well, when you had gone Richard said: 'Oscar and the Elder are not going to be friends long, for their views are too far apart.' When he brought Orlean home last year I said to Richard, 'Rev. McCraline is up to some trick.'" Continuing, she went on to tell me, "You are aware how bitter most of the colored preachers are in regard to Booker T.