A Breath of Prairie and other stories Part 2

Ross looked up in pleased surprise. He was tired and sleepy and only too glad to accept the suggestion.

"Thank you, Guy," he answered gratefully. "I'll do as much for you some time."

Landers waited silently until the last eulogist had lingeringly departed, leaving the bewildered speaker gazing about for the chairman.

"I'm to take you to town," said Landers, simply, as he led the way toward his wagon. He then added, as an afterthought: "If you're tired and prefer, you may stay with me to-night."

The collegian, looking up to decline, met the countryman's eye, and for the first time the two studied each other steadily.

"I will stay with you, if you please," he said in sudden change of mind.

They drove out, slowly, into the frosty night, the sound of the other wagons rattling over frozen roads coming pleasantly to their ears.

Overhead countless stars lit up the earth and sky, almost as brightly as moonlight.

"I suppose you are husking corn these days," initiated the collegian, perfunctorily.

"Yes," was the short answer.

They rode on again in silence, the other wagons rumbling slowly away into the distance until their sound came only as a low humming from the frozen earth.

"Prices pretty good this season?" questioned the college man, tentatively.

Landers flashed around on him almost fiercely.

"In Heaven's name, man," he protested, "give me credit for a thought outside my work--" He paused, and his voice became natural: "--a thought such as other people have," he finished, sadly.

The two men looked steadily at each other, a mult.i.tude of conflicting emotions on the face of the collegian. He could not have been more surprised had a clothing dummy raised its voice and spoken. Landers turned away and looked out over the frosty prairie.

"I beg your pardon,"--wearily. "You're not to blame for thinking--as everybody else thinks." His companion started to interrupt but Landers raised his hand in silencing motion. "Let us be honest--with ourselves, at least," he antic.i.p.ated.

"I know we of the farm are dull, and crude, and vulgar, and our thoughts are of common things. You of the other world patronize us; you practise on us as you did to-night, thinking we do not know. But some of us do, and it hurts."

The other man impulsively held out his hand; a swift apology came to his lips, but as he looked into the face before him, he felt it would be better left unsaid. Instead, he voiced the question that came uppermost to his mind.

"Why don't you leave--this--and go to school?" he asked abruptly. "You have an equal chance with the rest. We're each what we make ourselves."

Landers broke in on him quickly.

"We all like to talk of equality, but in reality we know there is none. You say 'leave' without the slightest knowledge of what in my case it means." He gave the collegian a quick look.

"I'm talking as though I'd known you all my life." A question was in his voice.

"I'm listening," said the man, simply.

"I'll tell you what it means, then. It means that I divorce myself from everything of Now; that I unlive my past life; that I leave my companionship with dumb things--horses and cattle and birds--and I love them, for they are natural. This seems childish to you; but live with them for years, more than with human beings, and you will understand.

"More than all else it means that I must become as a stranger to my family; and they depend upon me. My friends of now would not be my friends when I returned; they would be as I am to you now--a thing to be patronized."

He hesitated, and then went recklessly on:

"I've told you so much, I may as well tell you everything. On the next farm to ours there's a little, brown-eyed girl--Faith's her name--and--and--" His new-found flow of words failed, and he ended in unconscious apostrophe:

"To think of growing out of her life, and strange to my father and mother--it's all so selfish, so hideously selfish!"

"I think I understand," said the soft voice at his side.

They drove on without a word, the frost-bound road ringing under the horses' feet, the stars above smiling sympathetic indulgence at this last repet.i.tion of the old, old tale of man.

The gentle voice of the collegian broke the silence.

"You say it would be selfish to leave. Is it not right, though, and of necessity, that we think first of self?" He paused, then boldly sounded the keynote of the universe.

"Is not selfishness the first law of nature?" he asked.

Landers opened his lips to answer, but closed them without a word.

III

Brown, magnetic Fall, with her overflow of animal activity, shaded gradually into the white of lethic Winter; then in slow dissolution relinquished supremacy to the tans and mottled greens of Springtime.

Unsatisfied as man, the mighty cycle of the seasons' evolution moved on until the ripe yellow of harvest and of corn-field wrote "Autumn"

on the broad page of the prairies.

Of an evening in early September, Guy Landers turned out from the uncut gra.s.s of the farm-yard into the yellow, beaten dust of the country road. He walked slowly, for it was his last night on the farm, and it would be long ere he pa.s.sed that way again. This was the road that led to the district school-house, and with him every inch had been familiar from childhood. As a boy he had run barefoot in its yellow dust, and paddled joyously in the soft mud of its summer showers. The rows of tall cottonwoods that bordered it on either side he had helped plant, watching them grow year by year, as he himself had grown, until now the whispering of prairie night winds in their loosely hung leaves spoke a language as familiar as his native tongue.

He walked down the road for a half-mile, and turned in between still other tall cottonwoods at another weather-stained, square farm-house, scarcely distinguishable from his own.

"'Evening, Mr. Baker." He nodded to the round-shouldered man who sat smoking on the doorstep.

The farmer moved to one side, making generous room beside him.

"'Evening, Guy," he echoed. "Won't y' set down?"

"Not to-night, Mr. Baker. I came over to see Faith." He hesitated, then added as an afterthought: "I go away to-morrow."

The man on the steps smoked silently for a minute, the glow from the corn-cob bowl emphasizing the gathering twilight. Slowly he took the pipe from his mouth, and, standing up, seized the young man's hand in the grip of a vise.

"I heerd y' were goin', Guy." He looked down through the steadiest of mild blue eyes. "Good-bye, my boy." An uncertain catch came into his voice, and he shook the hand harder than before. "We'll all miss ye."

He dropped his arm, and sat down on the step, impa.s.sively resuming his pipe. Without raising his eyes, he nodded toward the back yard.

"Faith's back there with her posies," he said.

The young man hesitated, swallowing fiercely at the lump in his throat.

"Good-bye, Mr. Baker," he faltered at length.

He walked slowly around the corner of the house, stopping a moment to pat the friendly collie that wagged his tail, welcomingly, in the path. A large mixed orchard-garden, surrounded by a row of st.u.r.dy soft maples, opened up before him; and, coming up its side path, with the most cautious of gingerly treads, was the big hired man, bearing a huge striped watermelon. He nodded in pa.s.sing, and grinned with a meaning hospitality on the visitor.