The Plow-Woman Part 1

The Plow-Woman.

by Eleanor Gates.

CHAPTER I

IN THE FURROW

The coulee was a long, scarlet gash in the brown level of the Dakota prairie, for the sumach, dyed by the frosts of the early autumn, covered its sides like a cloth whose upper folds were thrown far over the brinks of the winding ravine and, southward, half-way to the new cottonwood shack of the Lancasters. Near it, a dark band against the flaming shrub, stretched the plowed strip, narrow, but widening with each slow circuit of the team as the virgin, gra.s.s-grown land was turned by the mould-board to prepare for the corn-planting of the coming spring.

The sun, just risen, shone coldly upon the plain, and a wind, bearing with it a hint of raw weather and whirling snow, swept down the Missouri valley from the north, marshalling in its front hosts of gabbling ducks and honking geese that were taking noisy flight from a region soon to be buried and already bleak. Yet with all the chill in the air, Ben and Betty, the mules, steamed as they toiled to and fro, and lolled out their tongues with the warmth of their work and the effort of keeping straight in the furrow; and Dallas, following in their wake with the reins about her shoulders and the horns of the plow in a steadying grasp, took off her slouch hat at the turnings to bare her damp forehead, drew the sleeve of her close-fitting jersey across her face every few moments, and, at last, to aid her in making better progress, as well as to cool her ankles, brought the bottom of her skirt through the waistband, front and back, and walked in her red flannel petticoat.

As she travelled, she looked skyward occasionally with a troubled face, and, resting but seldom, urged the team forward. Clear weather and suns.h.i.+ne would not long continue, and the first field on the claim must be turned up and well harrowed before the opening of winter.

"Come, Ben, come," she called coaxingly to the nigh mule. "If you don't dig in now, how d' you expect to have anything to eat _next_ winter?

Betty, Betty, don't let Ben do it all; I'm talking to you, too. Come along, come along."

Ben and Betty, lean, and grey with age, bent willingly to their labour at the sound of her voice. Their harnesses creaked a monotonous complaint with their renewed efforts, the colter came whining behind them. As Dallas gently slapped the lines along their backs, now and then, to emphasise her commands, clouds of dust, which had been gathered as mud in the buffalo-wallow where they went each evening to roll, ascended and were blown away. Faithfully they pulled, not even lifting an eyelid or flapping an ear in protest when Simon, the stray yearling bull that had adopted the claim as its home and tagged Dallas everywhere, bellowed about their straining legs or loitered at their very noses and impeded their way.

Plowing was strange work to the patient mules and to the girl who was guiding them. To her, the level prairie, rank with goldenrod, pink-flowered smartweed, and purple aster, was a land of wondrous growth. For twenty years her home had been an arid _mesa_ far to the south, where her father captained the caretakers of a spur railroad track. The most western station-house in Texas, standing amid th.o.r.n.y mesquite, was her birthplace and that of her sister Marylyn; the grey plateau across which the embankment led was their playground; there they grew to womanhood under the careful guidance of their frail, Northern-born mother.

And then two casualties, coming close upon each other, had suddenly changed their life. Their father was brought home one night so maimed and crushed by the wheels of a flat-car that he could never hope to take up his work again; and while he lay, bandaged and broken, fighting to keep the soul in his crippled body, their mother bravely yielded her life to a lingering illness.

Many months later, when Evan Lancaster's wounds were at last healed, Ben and Betty were unhitched from a dirt-laden sc.r.a.per on the siding and put before a white-topped prairie-schooner. Then the old section-boss, with his crutches beside him and his daughters seated in the all but empty box behind, said a husky farewell to the men crowding around the wagon, and started the mules along the road that led northward beside the rails.

He gave no backward glance at the wind-battered house where he had brought an ailing bride; instead, eager to leave that plain of flying sand and scanty gra.s.ses, he drove the team rapidly forward, bound for a country where there were wells, and not water-cars, where rain fell oftener, and where food, both for man and beast, could be gotten easily from the earth. But Dallas, seated in the schooner's bed, her weeping sister held soothingly against her breast, watched, dry-eyed, as a mound by a giant mesquite faded slowly from her sight, and saw her girlhood's home give way, as a lighthouse sinks behind a speeding vessel, until only its grey-sprinkled roof showed through the scattered trees. Then, after pillowing Marylyn's head on a Navajo blanket beside the swas.h.i.+ng water cask, she climbed forward to the driver's seat and took the reins from her father.

It was April, and when the _mesa_ was left far to rearward, a world almost forgotten by the crippled section-boss burst in new, green loveliness upon his desert children. Towering pines and spreading oaks, lush gra.s.s strewn with blossoms, clear-running streams and gay-feathered birds replaced thirsty vegetation, salt lakes, and hovering vultures.

They travelled slowly, each day bringing some fresh delight to ear and eye, until one evening in the waning Dakota summer they camped beside a great crooked split in the prairie, on a flat peninsula made by a sweeping westward bend of the muddy Missouri.

Across the river from their stopping-place, where an amber sun was going down, the horizon was near. High bluffs, like a huge wind-break, stood upon the plain, leaving at their feet only enough s.p.a.ce for the whitewashed frame buildings of Fort Brannon. But to the east, the paralleling bluffs lay at a distance, and broke their ridge-back far up the scarlet coulee; from where, southward, stretched a wide gap--ten broad and gently undulating miles--that ended at the slough-studded base of Medicine Mountain. Evan Lancaster, as he stood bareheaded under the unclouded sky, looked about him upon acres heavy with tangled gra.s.s and weeds; and pleased with the evident richness of the untouched ground, and with the sheltered situation of the claim on the bend, swore that the white-topped schooner, with its travel-stained crew of three, had found on the yellow billows of that northern prairie its permanent moorings at last.

The felling and hewing of cottonwoods for the shack had occupied the first few weeks that followed, citizen carpenters from Brannon doing the heavy cutting and lifting. But when the little house stood, its square log room and dirt floor open to the sun, Dallas performed her part of the building, and thatched the hip-roof with coa.r.s.e gra.s.s from a meadow.

Next, the well was dug; and the barn built as a lean-to, for the Lancasters knew little, but had heard much, about the blizzards of the territory. Then, while the elder girl covered the slanting rafters over Ben and Betty's stall, the section-boss hauled a scanty stock of hay and provisions from Clark's, a cattle-camp and settlement to the northeast.

And finally, when shack and barn were alike done, Dallas put the mules to the end of an oak beam and took up the task of plowing.

Now she was winding at a black mat that was gradually growing upon the brown carpet of the prairie. Up and down she walked, her whiplash trailing behind her like a lively snake, her hands striving to guide the cleaving share she followed, a look of deep content, despite all fear for bad weather, upon her sun-browned face.

But while, working the morning hours slowly away, she gave full attention to the nodding mules and the young bull straggling at their head, she did not stop to watch the flocks winging by above her, or to look off to where the plains fell away from the pale azure line of the sky. So she failed to see, at the middle of the long forenoon, a group of dark figures that came into sight to the eastward and moved slowly forward in the direction of the bend.

Toward noon, however, the furrows were turned less regularly. Ben and Betty were so tired that they no longer drew evenly, but wavered from side to side. Again and again the off mule jerked the share out of the sod; each time Dallas patiently circled the team and steered it back into place again, for her arms were not strong enough to swing the plow on the whiffletrees. And each time Simon caught sight of her red flannel petticoat, and, faint, half-awakened objections stirring beneath his sprouting horns, came back to challenge the goading colour and b.u.t.t her crossly in the skirts.

Just before dinner-time, and half-way of the plowed strip, going east, Dallas suddenly lifted her shoulders to tighten the slack of the reins, let go the horns and brought the mules to a stand. And then, as they halted with lowered heads, she caught sight of the distant figures between her and the horizon, recognising them as men, mounted and on foot, with wagons hanging at their rear.

She stepped to the head of the team and shaded her eyes for a moment. As she did so, a part of the advancing body detached itself and approached more swiftly, only to retreat again; and the sun, climbing toward the centre of the sky, flashed back upon bright objects carried at the front of the group.

"Soldiers for Brannon, I reckon," she said aloud to Simon, who had given over his b.u.t.ting and was thoughtfully sniffing the air. "Still," she added, "they're coming slow for soldiers."

Simon rubbed a red shoulder against her arm confidingly and gave a defiant, sideways toss of the head.

"_You_ know, don't you?" Dallas said, scratching the star in his curly forehead. "Well, I would, too, if I had your nose." She glanced at the mules and noted their lack of fright. "They're not Indians anyhow," she went on, "so I guess we'll do some more plowing."

When the sun was so high that Simon's shadow made but a small splotch upon the ground under him, Dallas again stopped to look toward the east.

The men and horses had travelled only a short distance, and were halted for their noon rest. Close to the wagons, the smoke of burning gra.s.s-twists was curling up from under the midday meal.

"They ain't soldiers," she said decisively; "if they was, they'd go on to the ferry. And what _can_ they be, headed this way?" She took off her hat and swung it at her father to attract his attention, then pointed toward the men and teams.

Lancaster was sitting before the shack, his crutches across his knees.

Seeing her signal, he got up and hobbled hastily around the corner, from where he blinked into the gap. And, unable to make out anything but a blurred collection of moving things, he called Marylyn from her dinner-getting.

"Come an' see w'at y' c'n make out off thar on th' prairie, Mar'lyn," he cried. "Ef it's antelope, bring out th' Sharps."

Marylyn hurried to him and followed the direction of his gaze. "Why, it's men, pa," she said.

"Certainly, it's men," he agreed pettishly. "But w'at _kin'_ o' men?

_Thet's_ w'at Ah kain't see."

Marylyn shook her head. Then, as she bent her look inquiringly toward the far-away camp, a horseman suddenly left it and started on a gallop toward them. "One's coming this way fast!" she exclaimed, and rushed back into the shack for her bonnet.

Lancaster and his younger daughter commented excitedly as the rider approached. One troop of cavalry had remained at Brannon throughout the summer to give protection to the wives and children of officers and enlisted men. The remaining troops belonging at the fort were away on Indian service. They were to return soon, and the section-boss believed he saw in the nearing traveller the herald of the home-coming force.

Marylyn, however, was just as certain that Indians were about to surround them, and hastily brought out the gun. But Dallas wasted no time in conjectures. She touched up Ben and Betty and finished her round of the plowed land. Not till the stranger was close did she stop at the eastern end of the field and wait, leaning on the cross-bar.

He came forward in a sharp canter, keeping a regular tap upon the flanks of his mount with the end of a lariat. His careless seat in the saddle and the fact that he wore no spurs told Dallas that he was not a trooper, though across the lessening distance now between them his dress of blue s.h.i.+rt, dark breeches and high boots, crowned by a wide, soft hat, was not unlike a campaign uniform. At his approach, Ben and Betty became lazily interested and raised their long ears to the front; Simon advanced a little and took a determined stand beside Dallas, who hung her lines on the plow-handles and prepared to greet the horseman.

The instant he reached her, he halted abruptly beside the mules and bared his head. "Good-morning," he said with cheery politeness; but his swift glance over team, plow, and girl showed a surprise that was almost pity.

She saw his look, and the colour swept up under the tan of her face.

"How d' y' do," she answered.

"I'm John Lounsbury from Clark's," he began. "I've been supplying that crowd back there with feed and grub for a couple of weeks." He nodded toward the distant men and horses. "May I ask--I--I didn't know any women folks had settled----"

She faced him squarely for a moment, and he met her eyes. They were grey, with tawny flecks, wide-open, clear and comprehending. "My father's Evan Lancaster," she explained.

"Lancaster--oh, he's traded at my store."

"That's him over there with Marylyn."

Lounsbury turned in his saddle and looked toward the shack. "Marylyn?"

he said. "What a pretty name! Sounds like Mary_land_. How'd she----" He paused questioningly.

"Mother's name was Mary Lynn," she answered, her voice lowered. "So she just put it together."

"And yours?"

"Mine's Dallas. I was born in Texas."

He leaned back against his high cantle and smiled. "I could 'a' guessed _that_," he declared.

Again she coloured sensitively, and hastened to swing the team around until Betty stood in the furrow. "My father's coming," she said.