Sally of Missouri Part 20

The same tingle of impatience seemed to reach both at once. They ran back into the house.

The cavalcade wound on up Ridge Road toward the Tigmores. At its far-away end now trotted the Kentucky blacks, drawing a light trap. The man on the box-seat was a big, deep-chested man, long and powerful of forearm. He held the exuberant, snorting blacks easily with one hand.

The woman beside him was a good mate for him, firmly knit, strong in her movements. Under her black hat the burnish of her hair and skin made her look gold-dusted.

They were high up Razor Ridge. Below the Ridge, Big Wheat Valley and We-all Prairie stretched away from the Tigmore foot-hills in broad strips of harvest gold. The sky was brilliantly blue; even Choke Gulch's glooms were flecked with light. The scrub-oak, the dog-wood, the chinca-pin, the walnut, the hickory, sumach and sa.s.safras trailed over the Tigmores like a giant green veil. On beyond the Tigmores the pale wide Di ran slowly, goldenly, a molten river.

As the procession went on up the hill the people called from one waggon to another, their tongues set going by the pa.s.sing of Madeira Place and the advent of the Kentucky blacks into the procession.

"They say Miss Sally, Miz Steerin', that is, feels mighty broke up because her paw didn' live to see all that's a-goin' on this day."

"Ya.s.s, reckin's haow that's true."

"Howdy, Miz Dade, haow you come on?"

"Huccome you to come, Asa?"

"They say the Steerin's air goin' away to-night. Goin' back East on a visit."

"Ya.s.s, that's true. The tramp-boy is goin' along. D'you know that? Ya.s.s, goin' to N'York, on his way to Italy. The Steerin's air sendin' him."

"Well, they cand all go whur they please, I wouldn' leave Mizzourah these days, not me. Wy, ev' farm in the Tigmores is liable to turn into a zinc mine any night. Say, do you know air the Steerin's to be long gone?"

"Nope, not so long. Unc' Bernique's to run things while they away."

"Oh, well, then."

The cavalcade's forerunners had now reached the top of the Tigmore Uplift. They began to deploy into the woods overhanging Choke Gulch. A trail had been cut, the trees were down until it was possible to get through with the vehicles, though it was rough going. At the end of the newly made road a great clearing opened up to the on-coming people. The teams were driven over to a thicket and the people spilled out of the vehicles and swarmed over the clearing. One by one, then two by two, in their hurry, the teams came in, until everybody had arrived. The Kentucky blacks came last. Then there was a waiting, a restraint, the people looked at one another. Finally their uneasiness and unspoken question were answered by an edict from the mouth of a small upright Frenchman, who mounted a stump and declaimed with a great flourish of graceful pomposity:

"'Tis the wish of Mistaire and Meez Steering that none go to the mill until that the bar-r-becue shall be end." He was generously applauded and his fine shoulders stiffened responsively. This was the sort of thing that Francois Placide DeLa.s.sus Bernique liked.

The people contented themselves within the clearing the little time that remained of the morning. At one side of the clearing, fenced off by ropes, was a long trench, across which stretched poles of tough green hickory. On top of these poles lay great quarters of beeves, whole hogs, slit through the belly and spread wide till the dressed flesh wrinkled into the back-bone in thick layers, sheep, tongues, venison, an army's rations. Down in the trench glowed the red-hot coals of a vast Vulcan fire, set going the night before and fed and beaten all night into its present perfect equability. Up and down the sides of the trench walked men in great ap.r.o.ns, long-handled brushes, like white-wash brushes, in their hands. These brushes they dipped into buckets of salt and pepper, strung along the trench at regular intervals, and smeared the sizzling meat, a sort of t.i.tanic seasoning process.

Rough pine boards, supported on tree stumps, formed long lines of tables on which loaves of bread were piled two feet high. Beside the bread were great buckets of pickles, preserves, jams, whole churns of b.u.t.ter, cheeses, cakes, pies, hundreds and hundreds of them, as though the whole world had become one enormous maw with an enormous clamour for food.

The rich aroma of the sizzling meat and the slow sweet scorch of the green hickory poles drifted up into the trees and hung there, a visible odour, tantalising, insistent. The men who had got into their wives'

ap.r.o.ns and had begun to cut sandwiches at the long tables were invited to hurry up. The men who were varnishing the meat with salt and pepper were told that they were too slow. The boys who had begun cracking ice were applauded. The girls who had begun to squeeze lemons were offered help. The women who had begun to set out knives and forks and plates were interrupted and set back by hoots of encouragement. Children were stepped on and soothed, a continuous performance. The committee-on-cooking got in the way of the committee-on-washing-the-dishes; the committee-on-waiting-on-the-table almost came to blows with the committee-on-slicing-the-bread. Toward noon the scramble for places began. Then the people began to gorge.

There was a constant reaching and grabbing. The clearing resounded with phrases of intricate politeness:

"Thank you to trouble you fer one them pickles, Si."

"Please'm gi' me a little your tongue, Miz Dade."

"Reach me some more bread, if you don't care whut you do, Quin."

Beyond the long tables little private parties sat here and there, ranged around red table-cloths, flat on the ground, stuffing, greasy-fingered, hospitable, happy.

Beyond these little parties, off in the young trees, in the buggies and buck-boards, were still smaller parties, the red-necktie young men and the girls with bright flowers in their hats, two and two, two and two, all through the thicket, each duet very happy, drinking out of one tin cup, the red-necktie young man a.s.siduously putting his lips to the cup on the spot where the girl's lips had touched it.

Everybody ate incessantly. At first to appease hunger; then probably because of a dim prevision that by the middle of next week some reproachful memory might a.s.sail one if one did not do one's full part by the present abundance. It was not until the sun had long pa.s.sed the zenith that the gorging and stuffing came to an end, and then it was only because word began to circulate among the people that "the mill was open"; that "the people could go down now," in fine, that the great hour of that great day had come. Following upon the rumour, Francois Placide DeLa.s.sus Bernique again mounted a stump. This time he said:

"I am authorise' to make to you the announcement that the first mill of the Canaan Mining and Development Company is now to commence to r-r-un, and to invite you in the name of Mistaire Steering to a.s.semble in the Choke Gulch, there to behold the begin' of a new e-r-a of pr-r-osperitee for thees gr-r-eat State of Missouri. But before that we go, I ask your attention for the one moment to those word of our fellow-citizen, Mistaire Steering!" He stopped, reluctantly but heroically, and Steering, quitting the side of the girl in black, mounted the stump.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Steering, "it was my wife's idea to make the opening of the first mill of the Canaan Mining and Development Company a gala day, a holiday, and I believe that you are all prepared to agree with me that it was a good idea. All that I want to say to you now for myself and for Mr. Carington, and for the eastern gentlemen whose money Mr. Carington represents, is just this: A great opportunity has opened up for us all down here. A new Missouri is about to be made.

All our dreams are coming true. The golden harvest of our wheat fields has been found to be rooted deep in mines of wonderful richness. But just because we have found something inside these hills of ours, don't let's neglect the outside of the hills. We must cultivate and improve on the outside, while we dig down deep on the inside. Life is going to give us chances from now on that we have never had before. As a people we must rise to these chances all along the line. We must come up all along the line. We must get better schools, better houses, better barns, better farming implements, better kitchen implements, better roads. Our watchword down here in the Southwest must be to _come up_. Don't forget it. We've got our chance now, now we must come up!"

Bruce sat down and the people, who had listened to him attentively, the faces of the farm-women especially keen and responsive, broke into another vast applause that set the leaves astir.

Somebody began to insist then that somebody else ought to make a speech of thanks, appreciation, to the Steerings for the day, and for the general satisfaction and prosperity that had come into Canaan with the new regime of the Canaan Company's affairs. Everybody began to turn toward Mr. Quin Beasley. Those nearest him nudged him. Very slowly Mr.

Beasley got to his feet, mounted the stump, fell off and mounted it again.

"Frien's an'," Mr. Beasley's scared eye lit upon some children just beneath him who were regarding him with awe and the ecstatic hope that he would fall off again, and, encouraged by the awe, he levelled his next words at them powerfully, "Fellow Citizens! Taint fer me to say anythin' more ceppen only that ef I did say anythin', which I shan't, it 'ud jes be to say over whut Mist' Steerin' has said as bein' the whole thing, an fer that reason I'll say nothin'."

It was a master stroke! Never in his life before had Beasley refrained from saying anything because he had nothing to say. The Canaanites were impressed. They said, "Good! Good!" For fear of some anticlimax Bruce at once gave his signal and the people began to swarm down the hillside into Choke Gulch, defiling through the Gulch toward a great shed that stood backed up to the hillside arrogantly. Although all Canaan had watched the building and rigging day by day, in Choke Gulch, the sight of the shed made the people almost hysterical, as though they had never seen the "plant" of the Canaan Mining and Development Company before, the shack office, the tool-house, the big proud mill shed, the tramway, the hoister. There was a group already ranged at the door of the engine-room as the people came on. Bruce Steering and his wife, Old Bernique, and the tramp-boy were in the centre of the group.

"We are all steamed up!" cried Bruce. "Make ready there, boys! Hurrah for the greatest zinc run in the greatest State in the Union! _Now_, Piney!"

The tramp-boy, on his face an unaccustomed appreciation of this larger side of the workaday world, stepped back inside the engine-room, laid his hand on a throttle, and at the signal, as if by magic, there was a whirr of slipping bands, a mighty throb, the renewed fashing of water down the jigs, a grinding, a pounding, a crunching, a gurgling; and a long, resonant shout went up again and again from the elastic throats of the exalted Canaanites; for the first mill of the Canaan Mining and Development Company was running!

Later on someone over in the crowd spoke. "Pity Mist' Crit Madeira aint here to see all this. Haow he woulda taken to it. That son-in-law of his woulda jes adzackly suited Mist' Crit. Pity he had to die off sudden-like jes whend ev'thing wuz comin' araoun'." It was a woman's voice and it was all softened with pity.

"Ya.s.s, oh ya.s.s," said a man next her gingerly. He was a man who had not believed in Crit Madeira, but it occurred to him that this was not the time or the place to recall that.

The evening of that gala day was a glorious evening. Rich and warm and beautiful, self-indulgent nature had swaddled herself about in barbaric bands of colour, a drowsy opulence of green and scarlet, soft-toned amber and pale, veiled azure. It was an hour when the senses riot in carnival, when colour sings and sound seems pink and gold, when light is fragrant and flowers emit sparks of light.

Steering and his wife stood in the Garden of Dreams and the hour swirled up to them out of the sunset, mystical, urgent, sweet. The house was shut and locked behind them. Below them was the shivering Di. Off beyond them tumbled the Canaan Tigmores. Canaan, the proud, lay to the West in a fecund waiting.

"Do you know," said Steering, "I do not like to leave Missouri, Sally, not even for a little while, not even to show you to Carington and Elsie. We've no business along with brides and grooms anyway, we've been married two months. I wish we weren't going to leave Missouri, Sally."

She turned her face up to him banteringly; her travelling hat was in her hand; above her black gown her bright hair shone with its beautiful l.u.s.tres. "They must get along without you here for a little while, Mr.

President of the Canaan Mining and Development Company. I need some clothes."

"Lay hold on my t.i.tle gently, please, Mrs. Steering. Every time I hear it I feel that it needs more glue."

"Mrs. Steering! That's something of a t.i.tle, too, isn't it? But, after all, who is so proud of newcome t.i.tles as the Superintendent of the Gulch Mine, Francois Placide DeLa.s.sus Bernique, eh, Mistaire Steering?"

"Old chap's satisfaction is good to live in. Oh, we are all happy, happy! Elsie and Carington seem to be hitting it off well, too, don't they?" Steering heaved a benevolent sigh, as though he felt that he had missed something whose missing was little short of escape. He regarded the magnificent, glowing woman beside him worshipfully. "Hark!" he cried next, "Piney's happy too, dear boy. That's the best of all! Hear that!"

From the river road below the garden came the sound of the pony's galloping feet and down by the sheen of the river, the tramp-boy was outlined presently, a gallant young figure, full of life and fire.

"I'm a-goin' to meet you at the station," he called up to them. "I'm a-sayin' good-bye to Mizzourah! D'you think Italy's a-goin' to beat this, Miss Sally?" He indicated the shimmering river, the woods beyond, the wonderful sky in the west, with a half-homesick gesture, then dashed on down the river road, gay with antic.i.p.ation again, carolling the potato song l.u.s.tily:

"_The taters grow an' grow, they grow!_"

"That was a fine idea of yours, Sally, to send him to Italy. I suppose he will have to be disappointed, for Italy, with him, is all dream-stuff; still, life would never have been fulfilled for Piney without Italy."

"No, it wouldn't. And he won't be disappointed. You see, it's the music in him. That will count big some day. And Italy is the place for him to find himself. He won't be disappointed, and we shan't be disappointed in him. He is worth his chance. But see how low the sun is, Bruce. We, too, must say good-bye to Missouri now, if we are to make the train. Take your last look until we come back to it all."

The fragrance trembled about them. The pale wide Di quivered below them.

Far to the west flamed the sunset. Down through the ether dropped great swaying draperies of orange and purple. Fair into the heart of heaven unrolled a path of violet and blue and rose.