Prairie Folks

H >> Hamlin Garland >> Prairie Folks

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Something that was in the girl imparted itself to the wife,
electrically. She pulled herself together, rose silently, and started
toward the house. Her face was rigid, but no longer sullen. Lily
followed her slowly, wonderingly.

As she neared the kitchen door, she saw Sim still sitting at the table;
his face was unusually grave and soft. She saw him start and shove back
his chair--saw Lucretia go to the stove and lift the tea-pot, and heard
her say, as she took her seat beside the baby:

"Want some more tea?"

She had become a wife and mother again, but in what spirit the puzzled
girl could not say.

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PART V.

SATURDAY NIGHT ON THE FARM: BOYS AND HARVEST HANDS

In mystery of town and play
The splendid lady lives alway,
Inwrought with starlight, winds and streams.

SATURDAY NIGHT ON THE FARM.

A group of men were gathered in Farmer Graham's barn one rainy day in
September; the rain had stopped the stacking, and the men were amusing
themselves with feats of skill and strength. Steve Nagle was the
champion, no matter what came up; whether shouldering a sack of wheat,
or raising weights or suspending himself with one hand, he left the
others out of the race.

"Aw! it's no good foolun' with such puny little men as you," he
swaggered at last, throwing himself down upon a pile of sacks.

"If our hired man was here I bet he'd beat you all holler," piped a
boy's voice from the doorway.

Steve raised himself up and glared.

"What's that thing talkun'?"

The boy held his ground. "You can brag when he ain't around, but I bet
he can lick you with one hand tied behind him; don't you, Frank?"

Frank was doubtful, and kept a little out of sight. He was afraid of
Steve, as were, indeed, all the other men, for he had terrorized the
saloons of the county for years. Johnny went on about his hero:

"Why, he can take a sack of wheat by the corners and snap every kernel
of it clean out; he can lift a separator just as easy! You'd better brag
when he's around."

Steve's anger rose, for he saw the rest laughing; he glared around at
them all like a hyena. "Bring on this whelp, let's see how he looks. I
ain't seen him yit."

"Pa says if Lime went to a saloon where you'd meet him once, you
wouldn't clean out that saloon," Johnny went on in a calm voice, with a
sort of undercurrent of glee in it. He saw Steve's anger, and was
delighted.

"Bring on this feller; I'll knock the everlasting spots offen 'im f'r
two cents."

"I'll tell 'im that."

"Tell him and be damned," roared Steve, with a wolfish gleam in his eyes
that drove the boys away whooping with mingled terror and delight.

Steve saw that the men about him held Johnny's opinion of Lime, and it
made him furious. For several years he had held undisputed sovereignty
over the saloons of Rock County, and when, with both sleeves rolled up
and eyes flaming with madness, he had leaped into the center of a
bar-room floor with a wild shout, everybody got out, by doors, windows
or any other way, sometimes taking sash and all, and left him roaring
with maniacal delight.

No one used a revolver in those days. Shooting was almost unknown.
Fights were tests of physical strength and savagery.

Harvest brought into Iowa at that time a flood of rough and hardy men
who drifted north with the moving line of ripening wheat, and on
Saturday nights the saloons of the county were filled with them, and
Steve found many chances to show his power. Among these strangers, as
they gathered in some saloon to make a night of it, he loved to burst
with his assertion of individual sovereignty.

* * * * *

Lime was out mending fence when Johnny came home to tell him what Steve
had said. Johnny was anxious to see his faith in his hero justified, and
watched Lime carefully as he pounded away without looking up. His dress
always had an easy slouch about his vast limbs, and his pantaloons,
usually of some dark stuff, he wore invariably tucked into his
boot-tops, his vest swinging unbuttoned, his hat carelessly awry.

Being a quiet, sober man, he had never been in a saloon when Steve
entered to swing his hat to the floor and yell:

"I'm Jack Robinson, I am! I am the man that bunted the bull off the
bridge! I'm the best man in Northern Iowa!" He had met him, of course,
but Steve kept a check upon himself when sober.

"He says he can knock the spots off of you," Johnny said, in conclusion,
watching Lime roguishly.

The giant finished nailing up the fence, and at last said: "Now run
along, sonny, and git the cows." There was a laugh in his voice that
showed his amusement at Johnny's disappointment. "I ain't got any
spots."

On the following Saturday night, at dusk, as Lime was smoking his pipe
out on the horse-block, with the boys around him, there came a
swiftly-driven wagon down the road, filled with a noisy load of men.
They pulled up at the gate, with a prodigious shouting.

"Hello, Lime!"

"Hello, the house!"

"Hurrah for the show!"

"It's Al Crandall," cried Johnny, running down to the gate. Lime
followed slowly, and asked: "What's up, boys?"

"All goin' down to the show; climb in!"

"All right; wait till I git my coat."

Lime was working one of Graham's farms on shares in the summer; in the
winter he went to the pinery.

"Oh, can't we go, Lime?" pleaded the boys.

"If your dad'll let you; I'll pay for the tickets."

The boys rushed wildly to the house and as wildly back again, and the
team resumed its swift course, for it was getting late. It was a
beautiful night; the full moon poured down a cataract of silent white
light like spray, and the dew (almost frost) lay on the grass and
reflected the glory of the autumn sky; the air was still and had that
peculiar property, common to the prairie air, of carrying sound to a
great distance.

The road was hard and smooth, and the spirited little team bowled the
heavy wagon along at a swift pace. "We're late," Crandall said, as he
snapped his long whip over the heads of his horses, "and we've got to
make it in twenty-five minutes or miss part of the show." This caused
Johnny great anxiety. He had never seen a play and wanted to see it all.
He looked at the flying legs of the horses and pushed on the dashboard,
chirping at them slyly.

Rock Falls was the county town and the only town where plays could be
produced. It was a place of about 3,000 inhabitants at that time, and to
Johnny's childish eyes it was a very great place indeed. To go to town
was an event, but to go with the men at night, and to a show, was
something to remember a lifetime.

There was little talk as they rushed along, only some singing of a
dubious sort by Bill Young, on the back seat. At intervals Bill stopped
singing and leaned over to say, in exactly the same tone of voice each
time: "Al, I hope t' God we won't be late." Then he resumed his
monotonous singing, or said something coarse to Rice, who laughed
immoderately.

The play had begun when they climbed the narrow, precarious stairway
which led to the door of the hall. Every seat of the room was filled,
but as for the boys, after getting their eyes upon the players, they did
not think of sitting, or of moving, for that matter; they were literally
all eyes and ears.

The hall seated about 400 persons, and the stage was a contrivance
striking as to coloring as well as variety of pieces. It added no little
to the sport of the evening by the squeaks it gave out as the heavy man
walked across, and by the falling down of the calico wings and by the
persistent refusal of the curtain to go down at the proper moment on the
tableau. At the back of the room the benches rose one above the other
until the one at the rear was near the grimy ceiling. These benches were
occupied by the toughs of the town, who treated each other to peanuts
and slapped one another over the head with their soft, shapeless hats,
and laughed inordinately when some fellow's hat was thrown out of his
reach into the crowd.

The play was Wilkie Collins' "New Magdalen," and the part of Mercy was
taken by a large and magnificently proportioned woman, a blonde, and in
Johnny's eyes she seemed something divine, with her grace and majesty of
motion. He took a personal pride in her at once and wanted her to come
out triumphant in the end, regardless of any conventional morality.

True, his admiration for the dark little woman's tragic utterance at
times drew him away from his breathless study of the queenly Mercy, but
such moments were few. Within a half hour he was deeply in love with the
heroine and wondered how she could possibly endure the fat man who
played the part of Horace, and who pitched into the practicable supper
of cold ham, biscuit and currant wine with a gusto that suggested
gluttony as the reason for his growing burden of flesh.

And so the play went on. The wonderful old lady in the cap and
spectacles, the mysterious dark little woman who popped in at short
intervals to say "Beware!" in a very deep contralto voice, the tender
and repentant Mercy, all were new and wonderful, beautiful things to the
boys, and though they stood up the whole evening through, it passed so
swiftly that the curtain's fall drew from them long sighs of regret.
From that time on they were to dream of that wonderful play and that
beautiful, repentant woman. So securely was she enthroned in their
regard that no rude and senseless jest could ever unseat her. Of
course, the men, as they went out, laughed and joked in the manner of
such men, and swore in their disappointment because it was a serious
drama in place of the comedy and the farce which they had expected.

"It's a regular sell," Bill said. "I wanted to hear old Plunket stid of
all that stuff about nothin'. That was a lunkin' good-lookin' woman
though," he added, with a coarse suggestion in his voice, which
exasperated Johnny to the pitch of giving him a kick on the heel as he
walked in front. "Hyare, young feller, look where you're puttin' your
hoofs!" Bill growled, looking about.

John was comforted by seeing in the face of his brother the same rapt
expression which he felt was on his own. He walked along almost
mechanically, scarcely feeling the sidewalk, his thoughts still dwelling
on the lady and the play. It was after ten o'clock, and the stores were
all shut, the frost lay thick and white on the plank walk, and the moon
was shining as only a moon can shine through the rarefied air on the
Western prairies, and overhead the stars in innumerable hosts swam in
the absolutely cloudless sky.

John stumbled along, keeping hold of Lime's hand till they reached the
team standing at the sidewalk, shivering with cold. The impatient horses
stretched their stiffened limbs with pleasure and made off with a
rearing plunge. The men were noisy. Bill sang another song at the top
of his voice as they rattled by the sleeping houses, but as he came to
an objectionable part of the song Lime turned suddenly and said: "Shut
up on that, will you?" and he became silent.

Rock Falls, after the most extraordinary agitation, had just prohibited
the sale of liquor at any point within two miles of the school-house in
the town. This, after strenuous opposition, was enforced; the immediate
effect of the law was to establish saloons at the limit of the two miles
and to throw a large increase of business into the hands of Hank Swartz
in the retail part of his brewery, which was situated about two miles
from the town, on the bank of the river. He had immediately built a
bar-room and made himself ready for the increase of his trade, which had
previously been confined to supplying picnic parties with half-kegs of
beer or an occasional glass to teamsters passing by. Hank had an eye to
the main chance and boasted: "If the public gits ahead of me it's got to
be up and a-comin'."

The road along which Crandall was driving did not lead to Hank's place,
but the river road, which branched off a little farther on, went by the
brewery, though it was a longer way around. The men grew silent at last,
and the steady roll and rumble of the wagon over the smooth road was
soothing, and John laid his head in Lime's lap and fell asleep while
looking at the moon and wondering why it always seemed to go just as
fast as the team.

He was awakened by a series of wild yells, the snapping of whips and the
furious rush of horses. It was another team filled with harvesters
trying to pass, and not succeeding. The fellows in the other wagon
hooted and howled and cracked the whip, but Al's little bays kept them
behind until Lime protested, "Oh, let 'em go, Al," and then with a shout
of glee the team went by and left them in a cloud of dust.

"Say, boys," said Bill, "that was Pat Sheehan and the Nagle boys.
They've turned off; they're goin' down to Hank's. Let's go too. Come on,
fellers, what d'you say? I'm allfired dry. Ain't you?"

"I'm willun'," said Frank Rice; "what d'you say, Lime?" John looked up
into Lime's face and said to him, in a low voice, "Let's go home; that
was Steve a-drivin'." Lime nodded and made a sign to John to keep still,
but John saw his head lift. He had heard and recognized Steve's voice.

"It was Pat Sheehan, sure," repeated Bill, "an' I shouldn't wonder if
the others was the Nagle boys and Eth Cole."

"Yes, it was Steve," said Al. "I saw his old hat as he went by."

It was perfectly intelligible to Lime that they were all anxious to
have a meeting between Steve and himself. Johnny saw also that if Lime
refused to go to the brewery he would be called a coward. Bill would
tell it all over the neighborhood, and his hero would be shamed. At last
Lime nodded his head in consent and Al turned off into the river road.

When they drew up at the brewery by the river the other fellows had all
entered and the door was shut. There were two or three other teams
hitched about under the trees. The men sprang out and Bill danced a jig
in anticipation of the fun to follow. "If Steve starts to lam Lime
there'll be a circus."

As they stood for a moment before the door Al spoke to Lime about
Steve's probable attack. "I ain't goin' to hunt around for no row,"
replied Lime, placidly, "and I don't believe Steve is. You lads," he
said to the boys, "watch the team for a little while; cuddle down under
the blankets if you git cold. It ain't no place for you in the inside.
We won't stop long," he ended, cheerily.

The door opened and let out a dull red light, closed again, and all was
still except an occasional burst of laughter and noise of heavy feet
within. The scene made an indelible impress upon John, child though he
was. Fifty feet away the river sang over its shallows, broad and
whitened with foam which gleamed like frosted silver in the brilliant
moonlight. The trees were dark and tall about him and loomed overhead
against the starlit sky, and the broad high moon threw a thick tracery
of shadows on the dusty white road where the horses stood. Only the
rhythmic flow of the broad, swift river, with the occasional uneasy
movement of the horses under their creaking harnesses or the dull noise
of the shouting men within the shanty, was to be heard.

John nestled down into the robes and took to dreaming of the lovely lady
he had seen, and wondered if, when he became a man, he should have a
wife like her. He was awakened by Frank, who was rousing him to serve a
purpose of his own. John was ten and Frank fifteen; he rubbed his sleepy
eyes and rose under orders.

"Say, Johnny, what d'yeh s'pose them fellers are doen' in there? You
said Steve was goin' to lick Lime, you did. It don't sound much like it
in there. Hear 'um laugh," he said viciously and regretfully. "Say,
John, you sly along and peek in and see what they're up to, an' come an'
tell me, while I hold the horses," he said, to hide the fact that John
was doing a good deal for his benefit.

John got slowly off the wagon and hobbled on toward the saloon, stiff
with the cold. As he neared the door he could hear some one talking in a
loud voice, while the rest laughed at intervals in the manner of those
who are listening to the good points in a story. Not daring to open the
door, Johnny stood around the front trying to find a crevice to look in
at. The speaker inside had finished his joke and some one had begun
singing.

The building was a lean-to attached to the brewery, and was a rude and
hastily constructed affair. It had only two windows; one was on the side
and the other on the back. The window on the side was out of John's
reach, so he went to the back of the shanty. It was built partly into
the hill, and the window was at the top of the bank. John found that by
lying down on the ground on the outside he had a good view of the
interior. The window, while level with the ground on the outside, was
about as high as the face of a man on the inside. He was extremely
wide-awake now and peered in at the scene with round, unblinking eyes.

Steve was making sport for the rest and stood leaning his elbow on the
bar. He was in rare good humor, for him. His hat was lying beside him
and he was in his shirt-sleeves, and his cruel gray eyes, pockmarked
face and broken nose were lighted up with a frightful smile. He was
good-natured now, but the next drink might set him wild. Hank stood
behind the high pine bar, a broad but nervous grin on his round, red
face. Two big kerosene lamps, through a couple of smoky chimneys, sent
a dull red glare upon the company, which half filled the room.

If Steve's face was unpleasant to look upon, the nonchalant, tiger-like
poise and flex of his body was not. He had been dancing, it seemed, and
had thrown off his coat, and as he talked he repeatedly rolled his blue
shirt-sleeves up and down as though the motion were habitual to him.
Most of the men were sitting around the room looking on and laughing at
Steve's antics, and the antics of one or two others who were just drunk
enough to make fools of themselves. Two or three sat on an old billiard
table under the window through which John was peering.

Lime sat in his characteristic attitude, his elbows upon his knees and
his thumbs under his chin. His eyes were lazily raised now and then with
a lion-like action of the muscles of his forehead. But he seemed to take
little interest in the ribaldry of the other fellows. John measured both
champions critically, and exulted in the feeling that Steve was not so
ready for the row with Lime as he thought he was.

After Steve had finished his story there was a chorus of roars: "Bully
for you, Steve!" "Give us another," etc. Steve, much flattered, nodded
to the alert saloon-keeper, and said: "Give us another, Hank." As the
rest all sprang up he added: "Pull out that brandy kaig this time,
Hank. Trot her out, you white-livered Dutchman," he roared, as Swartz
hesitated.

The brewer fetched it up from beneath the bar, but he did it
reluctantly. In the midst of the hubbub thus produced, an abnormally
tall and lanky fellow known as "High" Bedloe pushed up to the bar and
made an effort to speak, and finally did say solemnly:

"Gen'lmun, Steve, say, gen'lmun, do'n' less mix our drinks!"

This was received with boisterous delight, in which Bedloe could not see
the joke, and looked feebly astonished.

Just at this point John received such a fright as entirely took away his
powers of moving or breathing, for something laid hold of his heels with
deadly grip. He was getting his breath to yell when a familiar voice at
his ear said, in a tone somewhere between a whisper and a groan:

"Say, what they up to all this while? I'm sick o' wait'n' out there."

Frank had become impatient; as for John, he had been so absorbed by the
scenes within, he had not noticed how the frosty ground was slowly
stiffening his limbs and setting his teeth chattering. They were both
now looking in at the window. John had simply pointed with his mittened,
stubby thumb toward the interior, and Frank had crawled along to a place
beside him.

Mixing the drinks had produced the disastrous effect which Hank and
Bedloe had anticipated. The fun became uproarious. There were songs and
dances by various members of the Nagle gang, but Lime's crowd, being in
the minority, kept quiet, occasionally standing treat as was the proper
thing to do.

But Steve grew wilder and more irritable every moment. He seemed to have
drunk just enough to let loose the terrible force that slept in his
muscles. He had tugged at his throat until the strings of his woolen
shirt loosened, displaying the great, sloping muscles of his neck and
shoulders, white as milk and hard as iron. His eyes rolled restlessly to
and fro as he paced the floor. His panther-like step was full of a
terrible suggestiveness. The breath of the boys at the window came
quicker and quicker. They saw he was working himself into a rage that
threatened momentarily to break forth into a violence. He realized that
this was a crisis in his career; his reputation was at stake.

Young as John was, he understood the whole matter as he studied the
restless Steve, and compared him with his impassive hero, sitting
immovable.

"You see Lime can't go away," he explained, breathlessly, to Frank, in a
whisper, "'cause they'd tell it all over the country that he backed down
for Steve. He daresn't leave."

"Steve ain't no durn fool," returned the superior wisdom of Frank, in
the same cautious whisper, keeping his eyes on the bar-room. "See Lime
there, cool as a cucumber. He's from the pineries, he is." He ended in a
tone of voice intended to convey that fighting was the principal study
of the pineries, and that Lime had graduated with the highest honors.
"Steve ain't a-go'n' to pitch into him yet awhile, you bet y'r bottom
dollar; he ain't drunk enough for that."

Each time the invitation for another drink was given, they noticed that
Lime kept on the outside of the crowd, and some one helped him to his
glass. "Don't you see he ain't drinkin'. He's throwin' it away," said
Frank; "there, see! He's foolun' 'em; he ain't a-go'n' to be drunk when
Steve tackles him. Oh, there'll be music in a minute or two."

Steve now walked the floor, pouring forth a flood of profanity and
challenges against men who were not present. He had not brought himself
to the point of attacking the unmoved and silent giant. Some of the
younger men, and especially the pleader against mixed drinks, had
succumbed, and were sleeping heavily on the back end of the bar and on
the billiard table. Hank was getting anxious, and the forced smile on
his face was painful to see. Over the whole group there was a singular
air of waiting. No one was enjoying himself, and all wished that they
were on the road home, but there was no way out of it now. It was
evident that Lime purposed forcing the beginning of the battle on Steve.
He sat in statuesque repose.

Steve had got his hat in his hand and held it doubled up like a club,
and every time that he turned in his restless walk he struck the bar a
resounding blow. His eyes seemed to see nothing, although they moved
wildly from side to side.

He lifted up his voice in a raucous snarl. "I'm the man that struck
Billy Patterson! I'm the man that bunted the bull off the bridge!
Anybody got anything to say, now's his time. I'm here. Bring on your
champion."

Foam came into the corners of his mouth, and the veins stood out on his
neck. His red face shone with its swollen veins. He smashed his fists
together, threw his hat on the floor, tramped on it, snarling out
curses. Nothing kept him in check save the imperturbability of the
seated figure. Everybody expected him to clear the saloon to prove his
power.

Bedloe, who was asleep on the table, precipitated matters by rolling off
with a prodigious noise amid a pandemonium of howls and laughter. In his
anxiety to see what was going on, Frank thrust his head violently
against the window, and it crashed in, sending the glass rattling down
on the table.

Steve looked up, a red sheen in his eyes like that of a wild beast.
Instantly his fury burst out against this new object of attention--a
wild, unreasoning rage.

"What you doen' there? Who air ye, ye mangy little dog?"

Both boys sank back in tumultuous, shuddering haste, and rolled down the
embankment, while they heard the voice of Steve thundering: "Fetch the
little whelp here!"

There was a rush from the inside, a sudden outpouring, and the next
moment John felt a hand touch his shoulder. Steve dragged him around to
the front of the saloon before he could draw his breath or utter a
sound. The rest crowded around.

"What are y' doen' there?" said Steve, shaking him with insane
vindictiveness.

"Drop that boy!" said the voice of Lime, and voice never sounded
sweeter. "Drop that boy!" he repeated, and his voice had a peculiar
sound, as if it came through his teeth.

Steve dropped him, and turned with a grating snarl upon Lime, who opened
his way through the excited crowd while Johnny stumbled, leaped and
crawled out of the ring and joined Frank. "Oh, it's you, is it? You
white-livered"----He did not finish, for the arm of the blond giant shot
out against his face like a beetle, and down he rolled on the grass.
The sound of the blow made Johnny give an involuntary, quick cry.

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