A Son of the Middle Border Part 13

At such moments we were glad of our swift ponies. From our saddles we could study these outbreaks of atavistic rage with serene enjoyment.

In herding the cattle we came to know all the open country round about and found it very beautiful. On the uplands a short, light-green, hairlike gra.s.s grew, intermixed with various resinous weeds, while in the lowland feeding grounds luxuriant patches of blue-joint, wild oats, and other tall forage plants waved in the wind. Along the streams and in the "sloos" cat-tails and tiger-lilies nodded above thick mats of wide-bladed marsh gra.s.s. Almost without realizing it, I came to know the character of every weed, every flower, every living thing big enough to be seen from the back of a horse.

Nothing could be more generous, more joyous, than these natural meadows in summer. The flash and ripple and glimmer of the tall sunflowers, the myriad voices of gleeful bobolinks, the chirp and gurgle of red-winged blackbirds swaying on the willows, the meadow-larks piping from gra.s.sy bogs, the peep of the prairie chick and the wailing call of plover on the flowery green slopes of the uplands made it all an ecstatic world to me. It was a wide world with a big, big sky which gave alluring hint of the still more glorious unknown wilderness beyond.

Sometimes of a Sunday afternoon, Harriet and I wandered away to the meadows along Dry Run, gathering bouquets of pinks, sweet-williams, tiger-lilies and lady slippers, thus attaining a vague perception of another and sweeter side of life. The sun flamed across the splendid serial waves of the gra.s.ses and the perfumes of a hundred spicy plants rose in the shimmering mid-day air. At such times the mere joy of living filled our young hearts with wordless satisfaction.

Nor were the upland ridges less interesting, for huge antlers lying bleached and bare in countless numbers on the slopes told of the herds of elk and bison that had once fed in these splendid savannahs, living and dying in the days when the tall Sioux were the only hunters.

The gray hermit, the badger, still clung to his deep den on the rocky unplowed ridges, and on sunny April days the mother fox lay out with her young, on southward-sloping swells. Often we met the prairie wolf or startled him from his sleep in hazel copse, finding in him the spirit of the wilderness. To us it seemed that just over the next long swell toward the sunset the s.h.a.ggy brown bulls still fed in myriads, and in our hearts was a longing to ride away into the "sunset regions" of our song.

All the boys I knew talked of Colorado, never of New England. We dreamed of the plains, of the Black Hills, discussing cattle raising and mining and hunting. "We'll have our rifles ready, boys, ha, ha, ha-ha!" was still our favorite chorus, "Newbrasky" and Wyoming our far-off wonderlands, Buffalo Bill our hero.

David, my hunter uncle who lived near us, still retained his long old-fashioned, muzzle-loading rifle, and one day offered it to me, but as I could not hold it at arm's length, I sorrowfully returned it. We owned a shotgun, however, and this I used with all the confidence of a man. I was able to kill a few ducks with it and I also hunted gophers during May when the sprouting corn was in most danger. Later I became quite expert in catching chickens on the wing.

On a long ridge to the north and west, the soil, too wet and cold to cultivate easily, remained unplowed for several years and scattered over these clay lands stood small groves of popple trees which we called "tow-heads." They were usually only two or three hundred feet in diameter, but they stood out like islands in the waving seas of gra.s.ses.

Against these dark-green ma.s.ses, breakers of blue-joint radiantly rolled.--To the east some four miles ran the Little Cedar River, and plum trees and crab-apples and haws bloomed along its banks. In June immense crops of strawberries offered from many meadows. Their delicious odor rose to us as we rode our way, tempting us to dismount and gather and eat.

Over these uplands, through these thickets of hazel brush, and around these coverts of popple, Burton and I careered, hunting the cows, chasing rabbits, killing rattlesnakes, watching the battles of bulls, racing the half-wild colts and pursuing the prowling wolves. It was an alluring life, and Harriet, who rode with us occasionally, seemed to enjoy it quite as much as any boy. She could ride almost as well as Burton, and we were all expert horse-tamers.

We all rode like cavalrymen,--that is to say, while holding the reins in our left hands we guided our horses by the pressure of the strap across the neck, rather than by pulling at the bit. Our ponies were never allowed to trot. We taught them a peculiar gait which we called "the lope," which was an easy canter in front and a trot behind (a very good gait for long distances), and we drilled them to keep this pace steadily and to fall at command into a swift walk without any jolting intervening trot.--We learned to ride like circus performers standing on our saddles, and practised other of the tricks we had seen, and through it all my mother remained unalarmed. To her a boy on a horse was as natural as a babe in the cradle. The chances we took of getting killed were so numerous that she could not afford to worry.

Burton continued to be my almost inseparable companion at school and whenever we could get together, and while to others he seemed only a shy, dull boy, to me he was something more. His strength and skill were remarkable and his self-command amazing. Although a lad of instant, white-hot, dangerous temper, he suddenly, at fifteen years of age, took himself in hand in a fashion miraculous to me. He decided (I never knew just why or how)--that he would never again use an obscene or profane word. He kept his vow. I knew him for over thirty years and I never heard him raise his voice in anger or utter a word a woman would have shrunk from,--and yet he became one of the most fearless and indomitable mountaineers I ever knew.

This change in him profoundly influenced me and though I said nothing about it, I resolved to do as well. I never quite succeeded, although I discouraged as well as I could the stories which some of the men and boys were so fond of telling, but alas! when the old cow kicked over my pail of milk, I fell from grace and told her just what I thought of her in phrases that Burton would have repressed. Still, I manfully tried to follow his good trail.

Corn-planting, which followed wheat-seeding, was done by hand, for a year or two, and this was a joyous task.--We "changed works" with neighbor b.u.t.ton, and in return Cyrus and Eva came to help us. Harriet and Eva and I worked side by side, "dropping" the corn, while Cyrus and the hired man followed with the hoes to cover it. Little Frank skittered about, planting with desultory action such pumpkin seeds as he did not eat. The presence of our young friends gave the job something of the nature of a party and we were sorry when it was over.

After the planting a fortnight of less strenuous labor came on, a period which had almost the character of a holiday. The wheat needed no cultivation and the corn was not high enough to plow. This was a time for building fence and fixing up things generally. This, too, was the season of the circus. Each year one came along from the east, trailing clouds of glorified dust and filling our minds with the color of romance.

From the time the "advance man" flung his highly colored posters over the fence till the coming of the glorious day we thought of little else.

It was India and Arabia and the jungle to us. History and the magic and pomp of chivalry mingled in the parade of the morning, and the crowds, the clanging band, the haughty and alien beauty of the women, the gold embroidered housings, the stark majesty of the acrobats subdued us into silent worship.

I here pay tribute to the men who brought these marvels to my eyes. To rob me of my memories of the circus would leave me as poor as those to whom life was a drab and hopeless round of toil. It was our brief season of imaginative life. In one day--in a part of one day--we gained a thousand new conceptions of the world and of human nature. It was an embodiment of all that was skillful and beautiful in manly action. It was a compendium of biologic research but more important still, it brought to our ears the latest band pieces and taught us the most popular songs. It furnished us with jokes. It relieved our dullness. It gave us something to talk about.

We always went home wearied with excitement, and dusty and fretful--but content. We had seen it. We had grasped as much of it as anybody and could remember it as well as the best. Next day as we resumed work in the field the memory of its splendors went with us like a golden cloud.

Most of the duties of the farmer's life require the lapse of years to seem beautiful in my eyes, but haying was a season of well-defined charm. In Iowa, summer was at its most exuberant stage of vitality during the last days of June, and it was not strange that the faculties of even the toiling hay-maker, dulled and deadened with never ending drudgery, caught something of the superabundant glow and throb of nature's life.

As I write I am back in that marvellous time.--The cornfield, dark-green and sweetly cool, is beginning to ripple in the wind with mult.i.tudinous stir of shining, swirling leaf. Waves of dusk and green and gold, circle across the ripening barley, and long leaves upthrust, at intervals, like spears. The trees are in heaviest foliage, insect life is at its height, and the shimmering air is filled with buzzing, dancing forms, and the clover is gay with the sheen of innumerable gauzy wings.

The west wind comes to me laden with ecstatic voices. The bobolinks sail and tinkle in the sensuous hush, now sinking, now rising, their exquisite notes filling the air as with the sound of fairy bells. The king-bird, alert, aggressive, cries out sharply as he launches from the top of a poplar tree upon some buzzing insect, and the plover makes the prairie sad with his wailing call. Vast purple-and-white clouds move like stately ships before the breeze, dark with rain, which they drop momentarily in trailing garments upon the earth, and so pa.s.s in majesty amidst a roll of thunder.

The gra.s.shoppers move in clouds with snap and buzz, and out of the luxurious stagnant marshes comes the ever-thickening chorus of the toads, while above them the kildees and the snipe shuttle to and fro in sounding flight. The blackbirds on the cat-tails sway and swing, uttering through lifted throats their liquid gurgle, mad with delight of the sun and the season--and over all, and laving all, moves the slow wind, heavy with the breath of the far-off blooms of other lands, a wind which covers the sunset plain with a golden entrancing haze.

At such times it seemed to me that we had reached the "sunset region" of our song, and that we were indeed "lords of the soil."

I am not so sure that haying brought to our mothers anything like this rapture, for the men added to our crew made the duties of the kitchens just that much heavier. I doubt if the women--any of them--got out into the fields or meadows long enough to enjoy the birds and the breezes.

Even on Sunday as they rode away to church, they were too tired and too worried to re-act to the beauties of the landscape.

I now began to dimly perceive that my mother was not well. Although large and seemingly strong, her increasing weight made her long days of housework a torture. She grew very tired and her sweet face was often knotted with physical pain.

She still made most of our garments as well as her own. She tailored father's shirts and underclothing, sewed carpet rags, pieced quilts and made b.u.t.ter for market,--and yet, in the midst of it all, found time to put covers on our baseball, and to do up all our burns and bruises.

Being a farmer's wife in those days, meant laboring outside any regulation of the hours of toil. I recall hearing one of the tired house-wives say, "Seems like I never get a day off, not even on Sunday,"

a protest which my mother thoroughly understood and sympathized with, notwithstanding its seeming inhospitality.

No history of this time would be complete without a reference to the doctor. We were a vigorous and on the whole a healthy tribe but accidents sometimes happened and "Go for the doctor!" was the first command when the band-cutter slashed the hand of the thresher or one of the children fell from the hay-rick.

One night as I lay buried in deep sleep close to the garret eaves I heard my mother call me--and something in her voice pierced me, roused me. A poignant note of alarm was in it.

"Hamlin," she called, "get up--at once. You must go for the doctor. Your father is very sick. _Hurry!_"

I sprang from my bed, dizzy with sleep, yet understanding her appeal. "I hear you, I'm coming," I called down to her as I started to dress.

"Call Hattie. I need her too."

The rain was pattering on the roof, and as I dressed I had a disturbing vision of the long cold ride which lay before me. I hoped the case was not so bad as mother thought. With limbs still numb and weak I stumbled down the stairs to the sitting room where a faint light shone.

Mother met me with white, strained face. "Your father is suffering terribly. Go for the doctor at once."

I could hear the sufferer groan even as I moved about the kitchen, putting on my coat and lighting the lantern. It was about one o'clock of the morning, and the wind was cold as I picked my way through the mud to the barn. The thought of the long miles to town made me shiver but as the son of a soldier I could not falter in my duty.

In their warm stalls the horses were resting in dreamful doze. Dan and d.i.c.k, the big plow team, stood near the door. Jule and Dolly came next.

Wild Frank, a fleet but treacherous Morgan, stood fifth and for a moment I considered taking him. He was strong and of wonderful staying powers but so savage and unreliable that I dared not risk an accident. I pa.s.sed on to bay Kittie whose bright eyes seemed to inquire, "What is the matter?"

Flinging the blanket over her and smoothing it carefully, I tossed the light saddle to her back and cinched it tight, so tight that she grunted. "I can't take any chances of a spill," I explained to her, and she accepted the bit willingly. She was always ready for action and fully dependable.

Blowing out my lantern I hung it on a peg, led Kit from her stall out into the night, and swung to the saddle. She made off with a spattering rush through the yard, out into the road. It was dark as pitch but I was fully awake now. The dash of the rain in my face had cleared my brain but I trusted to the keener senses of the mare to find the road which showed only in the strips of water which filled the wagon tracks.

We made way slowly for a few minutes until my eyes expanded to take in the faint lines of light along the lane. The road at last became a river of ink running between faint gray banks of sward, and my heart rose in confidence. I took on dignity. I was a courier riding through the night to save a city, a messenger on whose courage and skill thousands of lives depended.

"Get out o' this!" I shouted to Kit, and she leaped away like a wolf, at a tearing gallop.

She knew her rider. We had herded the cattle many days on the prairie, and in races with the wild colts I had tested her speed. Snorting with vigor at every leap she seemed to say, "My heart is brave, my limbs are strong. Call on me."

Out of the darkness John Martin's Carlo barked. A half-mile had pa.s.sed.

Old Marsh's fox hound clamored next. Two miles were gone. From here the road ran diagonally across the prairie, a velvet-black band on the dim sod. The ground was firmer but there were swales full of water. Through these Kittie dashed with unhesitating confidence, the water flying from her drumming hooves. Once she went to her knees and almost unseated me, but I regained my saddle and shouted, "Go on, Kit."

The fourth mile was in the mud, but the fifth brought us to the village turnpike and the mare was as glad of it as I. Her breath was labored now. She snorted no more in exultation and confident strength. She began to wonder--to doubt, and I, who knew her ways as well as I knew those of a human being, realized that she was beginning to flag. The mud had begun to tell on her.

It hurt me to urge her on, but the memory of my mother's agonized face and the sound of my father's groan of pain steeled my heart. I set lash to her side and so kept her to her highest speed.

At last a gleam of light! Someone in the village was awake. I pa.s.sed another lighted window. Then the green and red lamps of the drug store cheered me with their promise of aid, for the doctor lived next door.

There too a dim ray shone.