Other Main Travelled Roads

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He heard his sweetheart moving about inside, and mused: "The old man
won't hold out when he finds we're married. He can't get along without
her. If he does, why, I'll rent a farm here, and we'll go to work
housekeepin'. I can git the money. She shan't always be poor," he ended,
and the thought was a vow.

The window was raised again, and the girl's voice was heard low and
tremulous:--

"Lime, I'm ready, but I wish we didn't--"

He put his arm around her waist and helped her out, and did not put her
down till they reached the road. She was completely dressed, even to
her hat and shoes, but she mourned:--

"My hair is every-which-way; Lime, how can I be married so?"

They were nearing the horse and buggy now, and Lime laughed. "Oh, we'll
stop at Jennings's and fix up. Milt knows what's up, and has told his
mother by this time. So just laugh as jolly as you can."

Soon they were in the buggy, the impatient horse swung into the road at
a rattling pace, and as Marietta leaned back in the seat, thinking of
what she had done, she cried lamentably, in spite of all the caresses
and pleadings of her lover.

But the sun burst up from the plain, the prairie-chickens took up their
mighty chorus on the hills, robins met them on the way, flocks of wild
geese, honking cheerily, drove far overhead toward the north, and, with
these sounds of a golden spring day in her ears, the bride grew
cheerful, and laughed.

III

At about the time the sun was rising, Farmer Bacon, roused from his
sleep by the crowing of the chickens on the dry knolls in the fields as
well as by those in the barn-yard, rolled out of bed wearily, wondering
why he should feel so drowsy. Then he remembered the row with Lime and
his subsequent inability to sleep with thinking over it. There was a
dull pain in his breast, which made him uncomfortable.

As was his usual custom, he went out into the kitchen and built the fire
for Marietta, filled the tea-kettle with water, and filled the
water-bucket in the sink. Then he went to her bedroom door and knocked
with his knuckles as he had done for years in precisely the same
fashion.

Rap--rap--rap. "Hello, Merry! Time t' git up. Broad daylight, an' birds
asingun.'"

Without waiting for an answer he went out to the barn and worked away at
his chores. He took such delight in the glorious morning and the
turbulent life of the farmyard that his heart grew light and he hummed a
tune which sounded like the merry growl of a lion. "Poo-ee, poo-ee," he
called to the pigs as they swarmed across the yard.

"Ahrr! you big, fat rascals, them hams o' yourn is clear money. One of
ye shall go t' buy Merry a new dress," he said as he glanced at the
house and saw the smoke pouring out the stovepipe. "Merry's a good girl;
she's stood by her old pap when other girls 'u'd 'a' gone back on 'im."

While currying horses he went all over the ground of the quarrel
yesterday, and he began to see it in a different light. He began to see
that Lyman was a good man and an able man, and that his own course was a
foolish one.

"When I git mad," he confessed to himself, "I don't know any thin'. But
I won't give her up. She ain't old 'nough t' marry yet--and, besides, I
need her."

After finishing his chores, as usual, he went to the well and washed his
face and hands, then entered the kitchen--to find the tea-kettle boiling
over, and no signs of breakfast anywhere, and no sign of the girl.

"Well, I guess she felt sleepy this mornin'. Poor gal! Mebbe she cried
half the night."

"Merry!" he called gently, at the door.

"Merry, m' gal! Pap needs his breakfast."

There was no reply, and the old man's face stiffened into a wild
surprise. He knocked heavily again and got no reply, and, with a white
face and shaking hand, he flung the door open and gazed at the empty
bed. His hand dropped to his side; his head turned slowly from the bed
to the open window; he rushed forward and looked out on the ground,
where he saw the tracks of a man.

He fell heavily into the chair by the bed, while a deep groan broke from
his stiff and twitching lips.

"She's left me! She's left me!"

For a long half-hour the iron-muscled old man sat there motionless,
hearing not the songs of the hens or the birds far out in the brilliant
sunshine. He had lost sight of his farm, his day's work, and felt no
hunger for food. He did not doubt that her going was final. He felt that
she was gone from him forever. If she ever came back it would not be as
his daughter, but as the wife of Gilman. She had deserted him, fled in
the night like a thief; his heart began to harden again, and he rose
stiffly. His native stubbornness began to assert itself, the first great
shock over, and he went out to the kitchen, and prepared, as best he
could, a breakfast, and sat down to it. In some way his appetite failed
him, and he fell to thinking over his past life, of the death of his
wife, and the early death of his only boy. He was still trying to think
what his life would be in the future without his girl, when two
carriages drove into the yard. It was about the middle of the forenoon,
and the prairie-chickens had ceased to boom and squawk; in fact, that
was why he knew, for he had been sitting two hours at the table. Before
he could rise he heard swift feet and a merry voice and Marietta burst
through the door.

"Hello, Pap! How you makin' out with break--" She saw a look on his face
that went to her heart like a knife. She saw a lonely and deserted old
man sitting at his cold and cheerless breakfast, and with a remorseful
cry she ran across the floor and took him in her arms, kissing him again
and again, while Mr. John Jennings and his wife stood in the door.

"Poor ol' Pap! Merry couldn't leave you. She's come back to stay as long
as he lives."

The old man remained cold and stern. His deep voice had a relentless
note in it as he pushed her away from him, noticing no one else.

"But how do you come back t' me?"

The girl grew rosy, but she stood proudly up.

"I come back the wife of a _man_, Pap; a wife like my mother, an' this
t' hang beside hers;" and she laid down a rolled piece of parchment.

"Take it an' go," growled he; "take yer lazy lubber an' git out o' my
sight. I raised ye, took keer o' ye when ye was little, sent ye t'
school, bought ye dresses,--done everythin' fer ye I could, 'lowin' t'
have ye stand by me when I got old,--but no, ye must go back on yer ol'
pap, an' go off in the night with a good-f'r-nothin' houn' that nobuddy
knows anything about--a feller that never done a thing fer ye in the
world--"

"What did you do for mother that she left _her_ father and mother and
went with you? How much did you have when you took her away from her
good home an' brought her away out here among the wolves an' Indians?
I've heard you an' her say a hundred times that you didn't have a chair
in the house. Now, why do you talk so t' me when I want t' git--when
Lime comes and asks for me?"

The old man was staggered. He looked at the smiling face of John
Jennings and the tearful eyes of Mrs. Jennings, who had returned with
Lyman. But his heart hardened again as he caught sight of Lime looking
in at him. His absurd pride would not let him relent. Lime saw it, and
stepped forward.

"Ol' man, I want t' take a little inning now. I'm a fair, square man. I
asked ye fer Merry as a man should. I told you I'd had hard luck, when I
first came here. I had five thousand dollars in clean cash stole from
me. I hain't got a thing now except credit, but that's good fer enough
t' stock a little farm with. Now, I wan' to be fair and square in this
thing. You wan' to rent a farm; I need one. Let me have the river
eighty, or I'll take the whole business on a share of a third, an' Merry
Etty and I to stay here with you jest as if nothin' 'd happened. Come,
now, what d' y' say?"

There was something winning in the sturdy bearing of the man as he stood
before the father, who remained silent and grim.

"Or if you don't do that, why, there's nothin' left fer Merry an' me but
to go back to La Crosse, where I can have my choice of a dozen farms.
Now this is the way things is standin'. I don't want to be underhanded
about this thing--"

"That's a fair offer," said Mr. Jennings in the pause which followed.
"You'd better do it, neighbor Bacon. Nobuddy need know how things stood;
they were married in my house--I thought that would be best. You can't
live without your girl," he went on, "any more 'n I could without my
boy. You'd better--"

The figure at the table straightened up. Under his tufted eyebrows his
keen gray eyes flashed from one to the other. His hands knotted.

"Go slow!" went on the smooth voice of Jennings, known all the country
through as a peacemaker. "Take time t' think it over. Stand out, an'
you'll live here alone without chick 'r child; give in, and this house
'll bubble over with noise and young ones. Now is short, and forever's a
long time to feel sorry in."

The old man at the table knitted his eyebrows, and a distorted,
quivering, ghastly smile broke out on his face. His chest heaved; then
he burst forth:--

"Gal, yank them gloves off, an' git me something to eat--breakfus 'r
dinner, I don't care which. Lime, you infernal idiot, git out there and
gear up them horses. What in thunder you foolun' round about hyere in
seed'n'? Come, hustle, all o' ye!"

And they all shouted in laughter, while the old man strode unsteadily
but resolutely out toward the barn, followed by the bridegroom, who was
still laughing--but silently.

ELDER PILL, PREACHER

I

Old man Bacon was pinching forked barbs on a wire fence one rainy day in
July, when his neighbor Jennings came along the road on his way to town.
Jennings never went to town except when it rained too hard to work
outdoors, his neighbors said; and of old man Bacon it was said he
_never_ rested _nights_ nor Sundays.

Jennings pulled up. "Good morning, neighbor Bacon."

"Mornin'," rumbled the old man without looking up.

"Taking it easy, as usual, I see. Think it's going to clear up?"

"May, an' may not. Don't make much differunce t' me," growled Bacon,
discouragingly.

"Heard about the plan for a church?"

"Naw."

"Well, we're goin' to hire Elder Pill from Douglass to come over and
preach every Sunday afternoon at the schoolhouse, an' we want help t'
pay him--the laborer is worthy of his hire."

"Sometimes he is an' then agin he ain't. Y' needn't look t' me f'r a
dollar. I ain't got no intrust in y'r church."

"Oh, yes, you have--besides, y'r sister--"

"She ain't got no more time 'n I have t' go t' church. We're obleeged to
do 'bout all we c'n stand t' pay our debts, let alone tryun' to support
a preacher." And the old man shut the pinchers up on a barb with a
vicious grip.

Easy-going Mr. Jennings laughed in his silent way. "I guess you'll help
when the time comes," he said, and, clucking to his team, drove off.

"I guess I won't," muttered the grizzled old giant as he went on with
his work. Bacon was what is called land poor in the West, that is, he
had more land than money; still he was able to give if he felt disposed.
It remains to say that he was _not_ disposed, being a sceptic and a
scoffer. It angered him to have Jennings predict so confidently that he
would help.

The sun was striking redly through a rift in the clouds, about three
o'clock in the afternoon, when he saw a man coming up the lane, walking:
on the grass at the side of the road, and whistling merrily. The old man
looked at him from under his huge eyebrows with some curiosity. As he
drew near, the pedestrian ceased to whistle, and, just as the farmer
expected him to pass, he stopped and said, in a free and easy style:--

"How de do? Give me a chaw t'baccer. I'm Pill, the new minister. I take
fine-cut when I can get it," he said, as Bacon put his hand into his
pocket. "Much obliged. How goes it?"

"Tollable, tollable," said the astounded farmer, looking hard at Pill as
he flung a handful of tobacco into his mouth.

"Yes, I'm the new minister sent around here to keep you fellows in the
traces and out of hell-fire. Have y' fled from the wrath?" he asked, in
a perfunctory way.

"You are, eh?" said Bacon, referring back to his profession.

"I am, just! How do you like that style of barb fence? Ain't the twisted
wire better?"

"I s'pose they be, but they cost more."

"Yes, costs more to go to heaven than to hell. You'll think so after I
board with you a week. Narrow the road that leads to light, and broad
the way that leads--how's your soul anyway, brother?"

"Soul's all right. I find more trouble to keep m' body go'n."

"Give us your hand; so do I. All the same we must prepare for the next
world. We're gettin' old; lay not up your treasures where moth and rust
corrupt and thieves break through and steal."

Bacon was thoroughly interested in the preacher, and was studying him
carefully. He was tall, straight, and superbly proportioned;
broad-shouldered, wide-lunged, and thewed like a Chippewa. His rather
small steel-blue eyes twinkled, and his shrewd face and small head, set
well back, completed a remarkable figure. He wore his reddish beard in
the usual way of Western clergymen, with mustache chopped close.

Bacon spoke slowly:--

"You look like a good, husky man to pitch in the barn-yard; you've too
much muscle f'r preachun'."

"Come and hear me next Sunday, and if you say so then, I'll quit,"
replied Mr. Pill, quietly. "I give ye my word for it. I believe in
preachers havin' a little of the flesh and the devil; they can
sympathize better with the rest of ye." The sarcasm was lost on Bacon,
who continued to look at him. Suddenly he said, as if with an
involuntary determination:--

"Where ye go'n' to stay t'night?"

"I don't know; do you?" was the quick reply.

"I reckon ye can hang out with me, 'f ye feel like ut. We ain't very
purty, at our house, but we eat. You go along down the road and tell 'em
I sent yeh. Ye'll find an' ol' dusty Bible round some'rs--I s'pose ye
spend y'r spare time read'n' about Joshua an' Dan'l--"

"I spend more time reading men. Well, I'm off! I'm hungrier 'n a gray
wolf in a bear-trap." And off he went as he came. But he did not
whistle; he chewed.

Bacon felt as if he had made too much of a concession, and had a strong
inclination to shout after him, and retract his invitation; but he did
not, only worked on, with an occasional bear-like grin. There was
something captivating in this fellow's free and easy way.

When he came up to the house an hour or two later, in singular good
humor for him, he found the Elder in the creamery, with his niece
Eldora, who was not more won by him than was his sister Jane Buttles, he
was so genial and put on so few religious frills.

Mrs. Buttles never put on frills of any kind. She was a most frightful
toiler, only excelled (if excelled at all) by her brother. Unlovely at
her best, when about her work in her faded calico gown and flat shoes,
hair wisped into a slovenly knot, she was depressing. But she was a good
woman, of sterling integrity, and ambitious for her girl. She was very
glad of the chance to take charge of her brother's household after
Marietta married.

Eldora was as attractive as her mother was depressing. She was very
young at this time and had the physical perfection--at least as regards
body--that her parents must have had in youth. She was above the average
height of woman, with strong swell of bosom and glorious, erect carriage
of head. Her features were coarse, but regular and pleasing, and her
manner boyish.

Elder Pill was on the best terms with them as he watched the milk being
skimmed out of the "submerged cans" ready for the "caaves and hawgs," as
Mrs. Buttles called them.

"Uncle told you t' come here 'nd stay t' supper, did he? What's come
over him?" said the girl, with a sort of audacious humor.

"Bill has an awful grutch agin preachers," said Mrs. Buttles, as she
wiped her hands on her apron. "I declare, I don't see how--"

"_Some_ preachers, not _all_ preachers," laughed Pill, in his mellow
nasal. "There are preachers, and then again preachers. I'm one o' the
t'other kind."

"I sh'd think y' was," laughed the girl.

"Now, Eldory, you run right t' the pig-pen with that milk, whilst I go
in an' set the tea on."

Mr. Pill seized the can of milk, saying, with a twang: "Show me the way
that I may walk therein," and, accompanied by the laughing girl, made
rapid way to the pig-pen just as the old man set up a ferocious shout to
call the hired hand out of the corn-field.

"How'd y' come to send _him_ here?" asked Mrs. Buttles, nodding toward
Pill.

"Damfino! I kind o' liked him--no nonsense about him," answered Bacon,
going into temporary eclipse behind his hands as he washed his face at
the cistern.

At the supper table Pill was "easy as an old shoe"; ate with his knife,
talked about fatting hogs, suggested a few points on raising clover,
told of pioneer experiences in Michigan, and soon won them--hired man
and all--to a most favorable opinion of himself. But he did not trench
on religious matters at all.

The hired man in his shirt-sleeves, and smelling frightfully of tobacco
and sweat (as did Bacon), sat with open mouth, at times forgetting to
eat, in his absorbing interest in the minister's yarns.

"Yes, I've got a family, too much of a family, in fact--that is, I think
so sometimes when I'm pinched. Our Western people are so indigent--in
plain terms, poor--they _can't_ do any better than they do. But we pull
through--we pull through! John, you look like a stout fellow, but I'll
bet a hat I can _down_ you three out of five."

"I bet you can't," grinned the hired man. It was the climax of all, that
bet.

"I'll take y' in hand an' flop y' both," roared Bacon from his
lion-like throat, his eyes glistening with rare good-nature from the
shadow of his gray brows. But he admired the minister's broad shoulders
at the same time. If this fellow panned out as he promised, he was a
rare specimen.

After supper the Elder played a masterly game of croquet with Eldora,
beating her with ease; then he wandered out to the barn and talked
horses with the hired man, and finished by stripping off his coat and
putting on one of Mrs. Buttles's aprons to help milk the cows.

But at breakfast the next morning, when the family were about pitching
into their food as usual without ceremony, the visitor spoke in an
imperious tone and with lifted hand. "_Wait!_ Let us look to the Lord
for His blessing."

They waited till the grace was said, but it threw a depressing
atmosphere over the group; evidently they considered the trouble begun.
At the end of the meal the minister asked:--

"Have you a Bible in the house?"

"I reckon there's one around somewhere. Elly, go 'n see 'f y' can't
raise one," said Mrs. Buttles, indifferently.

"Have you any objection to family devotion?" asked Pill, as the book was
placed in his hands by the girl.

"No; have all you want," said Bacon, as he rose from the table and
passed out the door.

"I guess I'll see the thing through," said the hand.

"It ain't just square to leave the women folks to bear the brunt of it."

It was shortly after breakfast that the Elder concluded he'd walk up to
Brother Jennings's and see about church matters.

"I shall expect you, Brother Bacon, to be at the service at 2.30."

"All right, go ahead expectun'," responded Bacon, with an inscrutable
sidewise glance.

"You promised, you remember?"

"The--devil--I did!" the old man snarled.

The Elder looked back with a smile, and went off whistling in the warm,
bright morning.

II

The schoolhouse down on the creek was known as "Hell's Corners" all
through the county, because of the frequent rows that took place therein
at "corkuses" and the like, and also because of the number of teachers
that had been "ousted" by the boys. In fact, it was one of those places
still to be found occasionally in the West, far from railroads and
schools, where the primitive ignorance and ferocity of men still prowl,
like the panthers which are also found sometimes in the deeps of the
Iowa timber lands.

The most of this ignorance and ferocity, however, was centred in the
family of Dixons, a dark-skinned, unsavory group of Missourians. It
consisted of old man Dixon and wife, and six sons, all man-grown,
great, gaunt, sinewy fellows, with no education, but superstitious as
savages. If anything went wrong in "Hell's Corners" everybody knew that
the Dixons were "on the rampage again." The school-teachers were warned
against the Dixons, and the preachers were besought to convert the
Dixons.

In fact, John Jennings, as he drove Pill to the schoolhouse next day,
said:--

"If you can convert the Dixon boys, Elder, I'll give you the best horse
in my barn."

"I work not for such hire," said Mr. Pill, with a look of deep solemnity
on his face, belied, indeed, by a twinkle in his small, keen eye--a
twinkle which made Milton Jennings laugh candidly.

There was considerable curiosity, expressed by a murmur of lips and
voices, as the minister's tall figure entered the door and stood for a
moment in a study of the scene before him. It was a characteristically
Western scene. The women sat on one side of the schoolroom, the men on
the other; the front seats were occupied by squirming boys and girls in
their Sunday splendor.

On the back, to the right, were the young men, in their best vests, with
paper collars and butterfly neckties, with their coats unbuttoned, their
hair plastered down in a fascinating wave on their brown foreheads. Not
a few were in their shirt-sleeves. The older men sat immediately between
the youths and boys, talking in hoarse whispers across the aisles about
the state of the crops and the county ticket, while the women in much
the same way conversed about the children and raising onions and
strawberries. It was their main recreation, this Sunday meeting.

"Brethren!" rang out the imperious voice of the minister, "let us pray."

The audience thoroughly enjoyed the Elder's prayer. He was certainly
gifted in that direction, and his petition grew genuinely eloquent as
his desires embraced the "ends of the earth and the utterm'st parts of
the seas thereof." But in the midst of it a clatter was heard, and five
or six strapping fellows filed in with loud thumpings of their brogans.

Shortly after they had settled themselves with elaborate impudence on
the back seat, the singing began. Just as they were singing the last
verse, every individual voice wavered and all but died out in
astonishment to see William Bacon come in--an unheard-of thing! And with
a clean shirt, too! Bacon, to tell the truth, was feeling as much out of
place as a cat in a bath-tub, and looked uncomfortable, even shamefaced,
as he sidled in, his shapeless hat gripped nervously in both hands;
coatless and collarless, his shirt open at his massive throat. The girls
tittered, of course, and the boys hammered each other's ribs, moved by
the unusual sight. Milton Jennings, sitting beside Bettie Moss, said:--

"Well! may I jump straight up and never come down!"

And Shep Watson said: "May I never see the back o' my neck!" Which
pleased Bettie so much that she grew quite purple with efforts to
conceal her laughter; she always enjoyed a joke on her father.

But all things have an end, and at last the room became quiet as Mr.
Pill began to read the Scripture, wondering a little at the commotion.
He suspected that those dark-skinned, grinning fellows on the back seat
were the Dixon boys, and knew they were bent on fun. The physique of the
minister being carefully studied, the boys began whispering among
themselves, and at last, just as the sermon opened, they began to push
the line of young men on the long seat over toward the girls' side,
squeezing Milton against Bettie. This pleasantry encouraged one of them
to whack his neighbor over the head with his soft hat, causing great
laughter and disturbance. The preacher stopped. His cool, penetrating
voice sounded strangely unclerical as he said:--

"There are some fellows here to-day to have fun with me. If they don't
keep quiet, they'll have more fun than they can hold." (At this point a
green crab-apple bounded up the aisle.) "I'm not to be bulldozed."

He pulled off his coat and laid it on the table before him, and, amid a
wondering silence, took off his cuffs and collar, saying:--

"I can preach the word of the Lord just as well without my coat, and I
can throw rowdies out the door a little better in my shirt-sleeves."

Had the Dixon boys been a little shrewder as readers of human character,
or if they had known why old William Bacon was there, they would have
kept quiet; but it was not long before they began to push again, and at
last one of them gave a squeak, and a tussle took place. The preacher
was in the midst of a sentence:--

"An evil deed, brethren, is like unto a grain of mustard seed. It is
small, but it grows steadily, absorbing its like from the earth and air,
sending out roots and branches, till at last--"

There was a scuffle and a snicker. Mr. Pill paused, and gazed intently
at Tom Dixon, who was the most impudent and strongest of the gang; then
he moved slowly down on the astonished young savage. As he came his eyes
seemed to expand like those of an eagle in battle, steady, remorseless,
unwavering, at the same time that his brows shut down over them--a
glance that hushed every breath. The awed and astonished ruffians sat as
if paralyzed by the unuttered yet terribly ferocious determination of
the preacher's eyes. His right hand was raised, the other was clenched
at his waist. There was a sort of solemnity in his approach, like a
tiger creeping upon a foe.

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