"I've got four sections of ground," said he, "right by the track....
Show you the place when we go through. Of course I've got a lot of other truck scattered around.... Land at the right figger you've got to buy--got to.... But when I hadn't but the four sections--one section overruns so they's a little over twenty-six hundred acres--I thought 'twas about the checker f'r a man with three boys.... One f'r each o'
them, you understand, an' the home place f'r mother if anything happened.... Mother done jest as much to help git the start as I did....
Plumb as much--if not more.
"Tom an' Wallace is good boys--none better. I'd about as quick trust either of 'em to run the place as to trust myself."
There was a candid self-esteem in the word "about" and his emphasis on it.
"I sent Wallace," he resumed, "into a yard of feeders in Montana to pick out a trainload o' tops with a brush and paint-pot, an' I couldn't 'a'
got a hundred dollars better deal if I'd spotted 'em myself.... That's goin' some f'r a kid not twenty-five. Wallace knows critters ... f'r a boy ... mighty well.... An' Tom's got a way of handlin' land to get the last ten bushel of corn to the acre that beats me with all my experience.... These colleges where they study them things do some good, I s'pose; but it's gumption, an' not schoolin', that makes boys like Tom an' Wallace.... They're all right.... They'd 'a' made good anyhow."
I could feel an invidious comparison between Tom and Wallace, of whom he spoke with such laudatory emphasis, and some one else whom I suspected to be the Jack who had come back from the Philippines; and his next utterance proved this instinctive estimate of the situation to be correct. He went on, slower than before, with long pauses in which he seemed lost in thought, and in some of which I gave up, without much regret, I confess, the idea of ever hearing more of Jack or his brothers.
"Jack was always mother's boy," said he. "Mother's boy ... you know how it is.... Make beds, an' dust, an' play the pianah, an' look after the flowers!... Wasn't bigger'n nothin', either.... Girl, I always thought, by good rights. I remember ... mother wanted him to be a girl.... She was on the square with the children ... but if any boy got a shade the best of it anywhere along the line, it was Jack.... I don't guess Tom an' Wallace ever noticed; but maybe Jack got a leetle the soft side o'
things from mother.... Still, she's al'ays been dumbed square....
"I seen as soon as he got old enough to take holt, an' didn't, that he wasn't wuth a cuss.... Never told mother, an' never let on to the boys; but I could see he was no good, Jack wasn't.... Some never owns up when it's their own folks ... but what's the use lyin'?... Hed to hev a swaller-tail coat, an' joined a 'country club' down to town--an' him a-livin' in the middle of a strip o' country a mile wide an' four long, wuth a hundred dollars an acre ... all ourn ... goin' out in short pants to knock them little balls around that cost six bits apiece. I didn't let myself care much about it; but 'country club!'--Hell!"
He had visualized for me the young fellow unfitted to his surroundings, designed on a scale smaller than the sons of Anak about him, deft in little things, finical in dress, fond of the leisure and culture of the club, oppressed with the roughnesses and vastnesses about his father's farms, too tender for the wild winds and burning suns, with nerves attuned to music and art rather than to the crushing of obstacles and the defeat of tasks: and all the while the image of "mother" brooded over him. All this was vividly in the picture--very vividly, considering the unskilful brush with which it had been limned--but just as it began to appeal to me, Anak fell quiescent.
"I never thought he was anything wuss than wuthless," he went on, at last, "till he come to me to git some money he'd lost at this here club.... Thirty-seven dollars an' fifty cents.... Gamblin'.... I told him not by a damned sight; an' he cried--cried like a baby.... I'd 'a'
seen him jugged 'fore I'd 'a' give him thirty-seven fifty of my good money lost that way.... Not me.
"... Wallace give him the money f'r his shotgun.... An' mother--she al'ays knowed when Jack had one o' his girl-cryin' fits--she used to go up after Jack come in them nights, an' when he got asleep so he wouldn't know it she'd go in and kiss him.... Watched and ketched her at it, but never let on.... She run down bad--gittin' up before daylight an' broke of her rest like that.... I started in oncet to tell her he was no good, but I jest couldn't.... Turned it off on a hoss by the name o' Jack we had, an' sold him to make good f'r twenty-five dollars less'n he was wuth, ruther'n tell her what I started to.... She loved that wuthless boy, neighbor--there ain't no use denyin' it, she did love him."
He paused a long while, either to ponder on the strange infatuation of "mother" for "Jack" or to allow me to digest his statement. A dog--one of the shaggy brown enthusiasts that chase trains--ran along by the cars until distanced, and then went back wagging his tail as if he had expelled from the neighborhood some noxious trespasser--as he may have conceived himself to have done. Goliath watched him with great apparent interest.
"Collie," said he, at last. "Know anything about collies? Funny dogs!
Lick one of 'em oncet an' he's never no good any more.... All kind o'
shruvle up by lickin', they're that tender-hearted.... Five year ago this fall Tom spiled a fifty-dollar pedigreed collie by jest slappin'
his ears an' jawin' him.... Some critters is like that ... Jack ...
was!"
He faltered here, and then flamed out into pugnacity, squaring his huge jaw as if I had accused him--as I did in my heart, I suspect.
"But the dog," he rumbled, "was wuth somethin'--Jack never was....
Cryin' around f'r thirty-seven fifty!... Talkin' o' debts o' honor!...
That showed me plain enough he wasn't wuth botherin' with.... Got his mother to come an' ask f'r an allowance o' money--so much a month....
Ever hear of such a thing? An' him not turnin' his hand to a lick of work except around the house helpin' mother.... Tom an' Wallace bed quite a little start in live stock by this time, an' money in bank....
Jack hed the same lay, but he fooled his away--fooled it away.... Broke flat all the time, an' wantin' an allowance.... Mother said the young sprouts at the club had allowances ... an' he read in books that laid around the house about fellers in England an' them places havin'
allowances an' debts of honor.... Mother seemed to think one while that we was well enough off so we could let Jack live like the fellers in the books.... He lived more in them books than he did in South Dakoty, an'
talked book lingo all the time.... Mother soon seen she was wrong.
"She was some hurt b'cause I talked to the neighbors about Jack bein'
plumb no good.... I don't know who told her.... I didn't want the neighbors to think I was fooled by him.... I never said nothing to mother, though.... She couldn't f'rgit thet he was her boy, an' she kep'
on lovin' him.... Nobody orto blame her much f'r that, no matter what he done.... You know how it is with women.
"One time purty soon after the thirty-seven fifty deal a bad check f'r two hundred come into my bundle o' canceled vouchers at the bank, an' I knowed in a minute who'd done it.... Jack had been walkin' the floor nights f'r quite a spell, an' his eyes looked like a heifer's that's lost her calf.... He hed a sweetheart in town.... Gal from the East ...
big an' dark an' strong enough to take Jack up an' spank him.... It was her brother Jack had lost the money to. Jack jest wrote my name on a check--never tried to imitate my fist much--an' the bank paid it....
When I come home a-lookin' the way a man does that's been done that way by a boy o' his'n, mother told me Jack was gone, an' handed me a letter he left f'r me.... I never read it.... Went out to the barn so mother wouldn't see me, an' tore it up.... I'd 'a' been damned before I'd 'a'
read it!"
He gloomed out over my head in an expressionless way that aroused all the curiosity I am capable of feeling as to the actual workings of another's mind. He seemed to be under the impression that he had said a great many things in the pause that ensued; or he regarded my understanding as of small importance; for he recommenced at a point far advanced in his narrative.
"--'N' finely," said he very calmly, "we thought she was goin' to die. I asked the doctor what we could do, an' he told me what.... Knowed all the boys since he helped 'em into the world, you know--a friend more'n a doctor--an' he allowed it was Jack she was pinin' f'r. So I goes to her, a-layin' in bed as white as a sheet, an' I says, 'Mother, if they's anything you want, you can hev it, if it's on earth, no matter how no-account I think it is!' ... A feller makes a dumb fool of himself such times, neighbor; but mother was good goods when we was poor an'
young--any one of the neighbors can swear to that.... She looks up at me ... an' whispers low ... 'Go an' find him!' ... An' I went.
"I knowed purty nigh where to look. I went to Chicago. He'd dropped clean down to the bottom, neighbor.... Playin' a pianah ... f'r his board an' lodgin' an' beer ... in ... in a beer hall."
I was quite sure, he paused so long, that he had told all he had to narrate of this history of the boy who could not stand punishment, and was so much like a collie; and I knew from the manner in which he had lapsed into silence, more than from what he had said, what a dark passage it was.
"Well," he resumed finally, "I hed my hands spread to strangle him right there.... I could 'a' done it all right--he was that peaked an'
little.... He wouldn't 'a' weighed more'n a hundred an' fifty--an' _my_ son!... I could 'a' squushed the life out of him with my hands--an' it was all right if I hed.... You bet it was!... Not that I cared f'r the two hundred dollars. I could spare that all right. I'll lose that much on a fair proposition any time.... But to take that thing back to mother ... from where I picked it up from!
"I reckon I was ruther more gentle with Jack goin' home than I ever was before.... I hed to be. They was no way out of it except to be easy with him--'r lam the life out of him an' take him home on a cot ... an'
mother needed him in runnin' order. So I got him clothes, an' had him bathed, an' he got shaved as he used to be--he had growed a beard--an' I rode in one car and him in another.... When mother seed him, her an'
him cried together f'r I suppose it might have been two hours 'r two and a quarter, off an' on, an' whispered together, an' then she went to sleep holdin' his hand, an' begun to pick up, an' Jack went back to his own ways, an' the rest of us to ourn, an' it was wuss than ever.... An'
when he sold a team o' mine and skipped ag'in, I was glad, I tell you, to be shet of him.... An' they could do the mile to the pole in twenty, slick as mice.
"Next time mother and Wallace went an' got him.... Mother found out some way that he was dyin' in a horsepittle in Minneapolis.... He claimed he'd been workin f'r a real estate firm; but I had the thing looked up ... an' I couldn't find where any of our name had done nothing.... An'
it seemed as ef we'd never git shet of him.... That sounds hard; but he was a kind of a disease by this time--a chronic, awful painful, worryin'
disease, like consumption.... An' we couldn't git cured of him, an' we couldn't die.... It was kind o' tough. He moped around, an' mother had some kind o' promise out of him that he wouldn't leave her no more, an'
he was pleadin' with her to let him go, an' Tom an' Wallace an' me never sayin' a word to him, when this here Philippine War broke out ...
you know what it's about--I never did ... an' Jack wanted to enlist.
"'I can't let him go!' says mother.
"'Let him go,' says I. 'If he'll go, let him!'
"Mother looks at me whiter'n I ever expect to see her again but once, maybe; an' the next morning she an' Jack goes to the county seat an' he enlists. I went down when the rig'ment was all got together. Mother an'
me has always had a place where we kep' all the money they was in the house, as much hern as mine, an' she took five twenty-dollar gold pieces out of the pile, an' sewed 'em in a chamois-skin bag all wet with her cryin' ... an' never sayin' a word ... an' she hangs it round his neck, an' hung to him an' kissed him till it sorter bothered the boss of the rig'ment--some kind of colonel--because he wanted the men to march, you know, an' didn't seem to like to make mother fall back.... She seemed to see how it was, finely, an' fell back, an' this colonel made the motion to her with his sword they do to their superiors, an' they marched....
Jack stood straighter than any one in the line, an' he had a new sort of look to him. He everidged up purty good, too, in hithe ... I don't see much to this soldier business.... Maybe that's why he looked the part so well.... I give the captain a hundred f'r him.... Jack sent it back from a place called Sanfrisco, without a word. 'So much saved!' says I. He was wuthless as ever."
The immense voice labored, broke, stopped--the man seemed weary and overcome. To afford him an escape from the story that seemed to have mastered him, like the Ancient Mariner's, I called his attention to what the four soldiers were doing. They had dressed as if for inspection, and were evidently going out upon the platform. The noticeable thing in their appearance was the change in their expressions from the hilarity and riotousness of a few moments ago, to a certain solemnity. One of them carried a little box carefully wrapped up, as a devotee might carry an offering to a shrine. The huge farmer glanced casually at them as if with full knowledge of what they were doing, and, ignoring my interruption, seemed to resume his monologue--as might the habitue of a temple pass by the question of a stranger concerning a matter related to the mysteries--something not to be discussed, difficult to be explained, or not worth mention. He pointed out of the window.
"Our land," said he; "both sides ... tiptop good ground.... Didn't look much like this when mother an' me homesteaded the first quarter-section.... See that bunch of box-elders? Me an' her camped there as we druv in.... Never cut 'em down.... Spoil an acre of good corn land, too; to say nothin' o' the time wasted cultivatin' 'round 'em.... Well, a man's a fool about some things!"
It was a picture of fulsome plenty and riotous fertility. Straight as the stretched cord by which they had been dropped ran the soldierly rows of corn, a mile along, their dark blades outstretched in the unwavering prairie wind, as if pointing us on to something noteworthy or mysterious beyond. Back and forth along the rows plodded the heavy teams of the cultivators, stirring the brown earth to a deeper brownness. High fences of woven wire divided the spacious fields. On a hundred-acre meadow, as square and level as a billiard table, were piled the dark cocks of a second crop of alfalfa. One, two, three farmsteads we passed, each with its white house hidden in trees, its big red barns, its low hog-houses, its feed yards, with their racks polished by the soft necks of feasting steers. And everywhere was the corn--the golden corn of last year in huge cribs like barracks; the emerald hosts of the new crop in its ranks like green-suited lines-of-battle arrested in full career and held as by some spell, leaning onward in act of marching, every quivering sword pointing mysteriously forward. My heart of a farmer swelled within me at the scene, which had something in it akin to its owner, it was so huge, so opulent, so illimitable. Somehow, it seemed to interpret him to me.
"Purty good little places," said he; "but the home place skins 'em all.
We'll be to it in a minute. Train slows up f'r a piece o' new track work. We'll git a good view of it."
Heaving himself up, he went before me down the aisle of the slowing train. There stood the soldiers on the steps and the platform. We took our places back of them. I was absorbed in the study of the splendid farm, redeemed from the lost wilderness by this man who had all at once become worth while to me. Back at the rear of the near-by fields was a row of lofty cottonwoods, waving their high crests in the steady wind.
All about the central grove were pastures, meadows, gardens and orchards. A dense coppice of red cedars enclosed on three sides a big feed-yard, in which, stuffing themselves on corn and alfalfa, or lying in the dusty straw, were grouped a hundred bovine aristocrats in stately unconcern of the rotund Poland-Chinas about them. In the pastures were colts as huge as dray-horses, shaking the earth in their clumsy play.
There were barns and barns and barns--capacious red structures, with hay-forks rigged under their projecting gables; and, in the midst of all this foison, stood the house--square, roomy, of red brick, with a broad porch on two sides covered with climbing roses and vines.
On this veranda was a thing that looked like a Morris chair holding a figure clad in khaki. A stooped, slender, white-haired woman hovered about the chair; and down by the track, as if to view the passing train, stood a young woman who was tall and swarthy and of ample proportions.
Her dress was artistically adapted to country wear; she looked well-groomed and finished. She was smiling as the train drew slowly past, but I was sure that her eyes were full of tears. I wondered why she looked with such intentness at the platform--until I saw what the soldiers were doing. They stood at attention, their hands to their service-hats, stiff, erect, military. The girl returned the salute, and pointed to the chair on the veranda, put her handkerchief to her eyes, and shook her head as if in apology for the man in khaki. And while she stood thus the man in khaki leaned forward in the Morris chair, laid hold of the column of the veranda, pulled himself to his feet, staggered forward a step, balanced himself as if with difficulty, and--saluted.