Sally of Missouri Part 1

Sally of Missouri.

by R. E. Young.

_Chapter One_

STEERING OF NEW YORK

"Hoo-ee-ow-ohme!"

It was half a sob, half a laugh, and, half sobbing, half laughing, the young man stopped his horse on the crest of the Tigmore Hills, in the Ozark Uplift, raised in his stirrups, and looked the country through and through, as though he must see into its very heart. In the brilliant mid-afternoon light the Southwest unrolled below him and around him in a ragged bigness and an unconquered loneliness. As far as eye could reach tumbled the k.n.o.bs, the flats, the waste weedy places, the gullies, the rock-pitted sweeps of table-land and the timbered hills of the Uplift.

The buffalo gra.s.s trembled across the lowlands in long, shaking billows that had all the effect of scared flight. From the base of the Tigmores a line of river bottom stretched westward, and beyond the bottom curved a pale, quiet river. In the distance wraiths of blue smoke falteringly bespoke the presence of people and cabins; on a cleared hill an object that might be horse or dog or man was silhouetted, small and vague; and in the farthest west the hoister of a deserted zinc mine cut up against the sky a little lonely way. The near and dominant things were constantly those tremulous, fleeing billows of gra.s.s, the straight strong trees, the sullen rocks, the silent, shivering water.

"_Hoo-ee-ow!_"

It was too vast, too urgent. Waiting, ready, it lay there aggressively, like a challenge. As the young man faced it, it claimed him, forcing back his past life, his old habits, his old haunts, into the realm of myth and moonshine. His old habits! His old haunts! They hung aloof in his consciousness, shadow pictures, colourless and remote.... That zestful young life at New Haven, the swift years of it, the fine last day of it, Yale honours upon him, his enthusiasms cutting away into the future, his big shoulders squared, his face set toward great things, the righting of wrongs, grand reforms, the careers of nations.... A bachelor hotel; a club whose windows looked out on the avenue; an office where Carington and he had pretended to work down on Na.s.sau Street; drawing-rooms where Carington and he had pretended to be in love, on various streets; the whole gay, meaningless panorama of his life as a homeless, unplaced New York sojourner, who had considered that he had too much money to be anything seriously and too little money to do anything effectively.... Then another picture, jerking, mazy, a study in kinematics--"Crazy Monday" on the Street, Carington and he swept along in that day's whirlwind of speculation.... A blank in the panorama while he got used to things and thought things out.... Then a wintry twilight at the club, Carington and he by the window, talking it over, looking out upon the drifted light of the city, loving the city, in the way of New Yorkers. Then Carington's voice saying, "Bruce? Bruce, m' son? Why don't you try Missouri?" Saying it with that in his voice to indicate that there was nothing else left to try. Then the long thoughtful talk, Carington and he still by the window, while he showed Carington how little chance he had even in Missouri; then Carington's strong-hearted insistence that, in view of the agitation over the ore discoveries at Joplin, he go on "out there" and prospect; and then Carington's foolishly irrelevant heel-piece, "Miss Gossamer sails for Europe Sat.u.r.day!" and the sudden appeal of the notion to go "out there," its sharp striking-in.... Carington and he taking counsel with some of the other fellows in his rooms later on, all the deep voices roaring at once, all the boys insulting him at once, belittling his cigars, saying sharp things about his pictures, that being their way of showing him that they were badly broken up over his leaving them; all their eyes shining interest in him and hope for him and even envy of him, as the young man who was "going out West," while the great soft fluff of smoke in the room made the past a dream and the present an illusion and the future a phantasm.... Then the long journey overland, the little impetus toward the new life flickering drearily, while he gripped up his heart for any fate, growing quieter and quieter, but more and more determined to take Missouri as she came.... Then Missouri herself, the stop at St.

Louis, the dip into the State southwestward, toward the lead and zinc country and his own debatable land; good-bye to the railroad; by team, in company with other prospectors, through the sang hills, up and down stony ridges, along vast cattle ranges.... And now here, quite alone, twenty miles from the railroad, Missouri on all sides of him, close-timbered, rock-ribbed, gulch-broken, mortally lonely, billowing around him, over him, possessing him.

That sense of being possessed by Missouri, committed to her, had grown upon him intolerably all day. All day he had been fighting it and resenting it. At various points along the rocky ridge road he had come upon hill cabins and hill people, and, facing them, his fight and his resentment had been momentarily vicious.

"Gudday, stranger!" the people had called from the porches of the hill cabins, "Hikin' over the Ridge?"

"Yes, friend," Steering had called back, and had then projected his unfailing, anxious question: "Can you tell me how far it is to Poetical?"

At that the people from the porches had got up and come across the baked weeds of the cabin yard. a.s.sembled at the stile-block in front of him, the people invariably lined up as a long, gaunt farmer, a thin, flat-chested woman, a troop of dusty children, and a yellow dog.

"Ya.s.s, I cand tell you. It's six sights and a right smart chanst f'm here to Poetical, stranger," the long, gaunt farmer had invariably drawled, with more accommodation than information.

"Six sights--six sights and a right what _what_?"

"W'y," the Missourian had explained forbearingly, blinking toward the sun, and waving his loosely jointed arms westward, "it's this-a-way--you'll git sight of Poetical f'm six hills, an' whend you git to the bottom of the sixt' hill they's a right smart chanst you won't be to Poetical evum yit awhile. You cand see far in this air. It's some mild f'm here to Poetical, an' sharp ridin' at that."

Each time that Steering had heard that, little varied in phraseology, save for the number of "sights," according to his progress, he had felt so dismal and looked so dismal that, each time, the native before him had added quickly, "Better git off an' spin' the night with us. Aint got much, but what we got's yourn."

Each time the house beyond the stile-block had looked miserably uninviting,--a plough on the front porch, harness on the porch posts; all around the house the yard litter of cheap farm life, a broken-down harrow, broken-backed furniture, straw, corn-shucks, ghosts of past winters and past summers on the farm, that had shuffled out there and died there; each time the cleared patches beyond the house had looked lean; each time the native had been sallow and toil-worn; but each time that welcome word had been a finely perfect thing, good to hear.

Steering had noticed that in declining each invitation he had suddenly stopped short in his inner fight and resentment and a.s.sumed his best manner, as though his finest and highest courtesy had responded instinctively to something in kind.

Idling on for a more expansive moment at each cabin door, the conversation had usually shaped itself like this:

"Two has already rid over the Ridge to-day--Old Bernique and the tramp-boy. Old Bernique he's on the trail ag'in. The tramp-boy he's kim along so far with Old Bernique." In saying this, or something very like it, the hill farmer who spoke had always seemed to want it definitely understood that the neighbourhood had its excitements, and seemed to argue that if the stranger knew anything he must know Old Bernique and the tramp-boy. Proceeding leisurely and reflectively, as though he had decided in his own mind how to cla.s.sify the stranger, the farmer had generally added, "Lots of prospectors ride by nowadays. They head in to the relroad f'm here,--you know you aint a-goin' to ketch the relroad at Poetical?"

"Yes, I know, but when I left my friends at Bessietown yesterday I was hoping I could make it all the way across country to Canaan before to-night."

"Oh, you goin' on to Canaan?"

"Yes, going on to Canaan." Each time the words had echoed through Steering's head with an old-time promise in a mocking refrain, "Going on to Canaan! Going on to Canaan!"

Immediately the hill tribe had eyed him with renewed interest. "Going on to Canaan!" the farmer at their head had repeated, an impressive esteem in his treatment of the word Canaan. "Gre't taown, Canaan! You strike the relroad tha' all righty. Dog-oned ef th'aint abaout ev'thing tha'.

Got the cote-haouse an' all, the relroad an' all--Miss Sally Madeira, Mist' Crit Madeira's daughter, _she_ lives tha'."

It had gone like that every time. Not once in the last twenty miles had Steering exchanged a word with man or woman without this sort of reference to Canaan and, collaterally, to Miss Sally Madeira. Miss Sally, he had perceived early, excited in the hill-farm people a species of awe, as though she were on a par with the circus, thaumaturgic, almost too good to be true.

"The court house, the railroad and Miss Sally!" he had finally learned to murmur, in order to meet the demands of the situation.

"Ya.s.s, oh ya.s.s." The farmer had given his head a dogged twist, and looked as though he were cognisant of the fact that in certain essential particulars Canaan did not have to yield an inch of her t.i.tle to equality with the biggest and best anywhere. "Ya.s.s, saouthwest Mizzourah's hard to beat in spots; th'aint no State in the Union quite like her. She's different," he had said, rocking on his heels, his chest lifting.

"I think you must be right about that," Steering had answered, every time with profounder emphasis.

Off here alone on the ridge road now, Missouri's unspeakable difference was coming over him in great submerging waves. Though he tried bravely to face the State and have it out with her, he couldn't do it.

"Missouri," he said at last to himself, and to her confidentially, "I'd like to cry. I'd give five hundred plunkerinos if I might be allowed to cry." Then he flicked his riding-crop over his leg in a devilishly nonchalant way, and rode straight forward.

The road went on interminably, its dust-white line, with the rocky ridge through the middle, dipping and rising and getting nowhere. The horse grew nervous and shied repeatedly from sheer loneliness. The road entered a wood. Deep in its leafy fastness wild steers heard the beat of the horse's hoofs, laid back their ears and galloped into safer depths, bellowing with alarm. Steering gave up, as helplessly homesick as a baby, his head dropped forward on his chest in a settled melancholy, from which he did not rouse until he had cleared the timber; and then only because he saw a horseman down the ridge road ahead of him. What instantly attracted Steering's attention was the man's back. It was a small but proud back. It had none of the hill stoop. It was erect, sinewy, soldierly. Steering was so lonely that he would have welcomed companionship with a chipmunk. The chance of companionship with a man who had an interesting back grew luminous. He urged his horse forward eagerly, almost hysterically glad of his opportunity.

"Good-afternoon," he called, having recourse to his well-tried form of greeting. "Can you tell me how far it is to Poetical?"

The man addressed half turned, disclosing a thin and delicate face to Steering. Then he reined his horse in gently. "Good-evening, sair. Is it that you inquire to Poetical? It is a vair' long five miles f'm here, sair."

Steering rode up beside the man, more and more pleased, regarding and a.n.a.lysing. The man's hickory shirt, his warped boots, his blue jean trousers, his heavy buskins were mean and earth-stained, but inherent in the quality of his low, musical voice and courteous manner was an intangible suggestion of something different, some bigger and happier past, to which, go where he would and clothe himself as he might, voice and manner had remained true.

"I wonder," said Steering, almost sighing, "if you will mind a little of my company. The road is terribly lonely, sir. The country is terribly lonely in fact."

"Yes, sair, a tr-r-ue word that. It is lonely. But sair, what will you of this particulaire portion? It is vair' yong in the Tigmores. It cannot be populate' in a day, a year. You, sair, come from the East, hein? Sair, relativement, effort against effort, they have not done as much in the East in feefty years as we have done in the Southwest in twenty,--believe that, sair." It was that same feeling for the State, that quick, leaping pa.s.sion of nativity that Steering had thus far found in every Missourian with whom he had come in contact.

"You are a Missourian, I see," said Steering, to keep his companion talking along the line of this enlivening enthusiasm.

"Indeed, sair, yes. From that Saint Louis--Francois Placide DeLa.s.sus Bernique, at your service."

"Thank you. My name is Steering, from New York, if you please, but very deeply interested in Missouri just now, sir."

From that on they made easy progress into acquaintance. Bernique proved talkative, full of anecdotes about Missouri's past, and full of belief in her future. In his rich loquacity he roamed the history of the State painstakingly for the edification of Steering, as one who stood at Missouri's gates, inquiring of her true inwardness. He told Missouri's history back to Spain and France, forward to unspeakable splendour. He was intelligent, nave, unusual. Steering, responsive to the attraction that was by and by to hold them strongly together, listened delightedly.

"Yessair,"--through Bernique's speech ran a reminiscence of his native tongue, faint, sweet, fleeting, like the thought of home,--"yessair, it is I know the fashion in the eastern States to considaire all the West as vair' yong countree, and it is tr-r-ue, sair, that you, par example, have come upon the most yong part of thees gr-r-eat State of Missouri, but it is to be remembaire that this Missouri is not all rocks and wood, uncultivate', standing toward the future, but that her story date back to a remoter period and a fuller and finer civilisation, in that day when France and Spain held sway over the province of Louisiana, than does the story of many of the eastern States who hold this countree new, raw, uncivilise'. I myself,"--continued the speaker, spreading out one slender hand with an exquisite grace,--"have gr-r-own up in this State of Missouri, at that St. Louis, with the most profound convincement, aftaire much travel and observation, that for elegance we have in that city the most to it belong people in the United States of America, yessair!"

"Ah, well," admitted Steering, borne along rapidly on the vehement current of Bernique's ardour, "with your sort of spirit in the people of Missouri, whatever she was and whatever she is can be but a mighty promise of what she will become----"

"Ah, there you have it, the note!" interrupted Francois Placide DeLa.s.sus Bernique eagerly, "What she will become! That is the gr-r-and thought, sair. I who say it have preserve' my belief in what she will become through the discouragement ter-r-ible. I who speak have prospec' this land from end to end. I know her largesse. Believe me, sair, the tr-r-easures that were sought by the Castilian knights of old through all thees parts are indeed to be found here,--not the white silvaire of Castilian dreams, but iron! Coppaire! Lead! Zinc!"

"I suppose," ventured Steering, "that it would be foolish to hope for deposits in this part of the State similar to the deposits about Joplin, and all through the thirty-mile stretch?"

"Pouf!" Old Bernique made one of his pretty gestures, but said nothing.

"You have," went on Steering, "you have to the west here the Canaan Tigmores, Mr. Bernique?"

"Eh? Yessair, the Canaan Tigmores," repeated old Bernique, looking out over the ridges of hills and the flats listlessly; so listlessly that, by one of those flashes of intuitive perception that light us far along waiting paths, Steering knew suddenly that he had to deal with a man whose experience had somehow crossed the Canaan Tigmores.--"And also, Mistaire Steering, we have to the far south the Boston Range, in Arkansas, and far to the west the Kiamichi, in the Territoree."

"Yes, but about these Canaan Tigmores, Mr. Bernique," insisted Steering, not at all deflected by Bernique's effort, "what about your Canaan Tigmores, Mr. Bernique?" Steering's experience with the French Missourian had been too fragmentary for anything but conjecture to come of it, and his own plans were too immature and too heavily conditioned for him to project them directly, but he had a feeling that he should want to know Bernique better some fine day, and he was moved to get some sort of grip upon the old man's interest while the chance lasted. "The Canaan Tigmores are not as far away as the Boston Mountains, Mr.