The Biography of a Prairie Girl Part 23

She shook her head again. "I don't know. Only I _shall_ go some day.

I'm--I'm glad _you're_ going, though."

"But it's been more your hope than mine. I'm sorry it isn't different--that we aren't just changed around. I don't care to study much, anyway. I want to be a soldier, like father. I don't see why I should study so much for that. I've been everywhere with him after Indians. I wish I could go on at it without stopping to study."

"I don't know what _I_ want to be. I only know that I love to read and study. If I could read and study I wouldn't mind living on the plains."

"You wouldn't?" cried the colonel's son. "Why, maybe I shall always have to live here, and--" He stopped in confusion, and got up hastily, hat in hand. "Good-by," he said. He stepped toward her, his head lowered bashfully. She wiped her hands on the jumper.

"Do you have to go?" she asked. "Can't you stay and have dinner? My brothers would love to see you. And I'd cook you something nice."

"No," he replied, a little agitated. "I won't more than catch my train."

He shook hands and started out. At the door he glanced back, and was startled at her colorless face. "What is it?" he pleaded, coming back to her side.

She sat down on a bench by the window, the jumper crushed in her fingers. "Oh, I want to go! I want to go!" she said, her voice deep with pain and longing. "I'm lonesome here. I miss mother terribly. I'm always listening for her; I'm always getting up and going into the next room as if she were there. And then I remember--" She broke down and wept, all her pride gone.

"Don't, don't," whispered the colonel's son, tenderly. "It'll all come out right. Next year, when I'm on my way back, I'll stop, and we'll talk it over again. That won't be long. Maybe something will turn up, too, between now and then."

"Maybe," she said hopelessly. But she checked her tears and rose to follow him out. At the mounting-block they shook hands again. Then he sprang into the saddle and galloped through the yard toward the north.

"A year isn't long," she whispered to herself, as she watched him disappear in the corn, and she went bravely back to her tub.

A MONTH went by,--a month of dull routine that was enlivened only by the harvesters. Day after day she plodded through a heavy program of breakfast, dinner, supper, bed-making, sweeping, and the care of the chickens and pigs; her calendar was the added duties that each morning entailed of washing, ironing, mending, scrubbing, and baking. The promise of the colonel's son came to cheer her sometimes; but it was a peep into the tin spice-box each evening that heartened her most. For to her the bishop's letter was the single link between the prairie and the longed-for campus.

Then one afternoon, as she sat churning, the dasher in one hand, in the other a spoon that busily returned the cream frothing from the hole of the cover, there came a second tap at the front door. This time she heard, and ran through the sitting-room, still grasping the spoon, to invite the new settler to enter.

He tramped in with a jocund greeting, sat down on the kitchen floor in a path of sunlight, and leaned against the wall, smoking. "Go right on--go right on," he urged. "Like to see you trouncing the cream. And what I've got to say won't sour it."

She went on with her b.u.t.ter-making, the tall, wooden vessel firmly held between her feet.

"Had a meeting of the school committee yesterday," he began, puffing at his pipe slowly. "We talked over hunting up another teacher to take the place of the one the Dutchman hired."

"She isn't coming?" asked the little girl.

"No, she isn't coming; she's going to take a school near Sioux Falls,"

he answered crossly. "I'm tired of these teachers that pretend to the little schools away off nowhere that they're ready to take them, when all the while they've got their eyes peeled for a school near town. So I've proposed to the committee that we get some one about here to take the school--some one that won't fail us, and that can handle my young ones, the two little chaps from the West Fork, and one or two of the Dutchman's. That's about all the scholars there'll be this term. What do you think about it?"

"I--I should think it would be all right," she faltered, churning so hard that the froth climbed up the dasher, carrying pieces of fresh b.u.t.ter with it and leaving them midway on the handle.

"I should think so, too," said the new settler; "and that's about the way we fixed it up. And--well, we thought we'd offer it to you."

She got up, her color coming and going swiftly, and stood before him.

"To _me_?" she asked. "Do you mean it?"

He a.s.sented by a nod.

"Oh, it's too good to be true," she went on. "I can hardly believe it."

She began to laugh tearfully. "You see, I've--I've--" Then, at sight of the braid lying over her shoulder, she put up her hands and gathered her hair into a knot. "I'll take it," she said.

"Glad of that," answered the new settler, cheerily, and, with a glance at the handle of the dasher, "I think that b.u.t.ter's come."

IT was just a week later when she rode south and took charge of the school. The day was full of joy and misgivings. She was happy when, with one of the new settler's babies before the chart, she could point out the very lines the Yankton man had shown her, and hear the little one striving to lisp and learn them. She was filled with doubts when, having dismissed a cla.s.s, the pupils looked back at her from their seats, some mockingly, she thought, others with laughing eyes that challenged hers. But at four o'clock, when, at the tap of the hand-bell, they cleared their desks and sat straight with folded arms, they seemed to have gotten over the novelty of her supervision, and marched out, with good-bys as they pa.s.sed the teacher's table, just as they had in former terms. She rode home, feeling that her work was well begun.

The first six weeks of the term pa.s.sed without incident. There had sprung up a complete understanding between her and the children, and her affection for them was returned with gratifying respect. Then, one Monday morning, there entered a disturbing element.

A Polish woman, whose husband had moved his family down from Pierre to occupy the Irishman's shack, came to the school, bringing her son, a gawky, hangdog lad of twelve. While she recited a long account of his past experiences with teachers, and dictated her wishes as to his treatment by the little girl, he acted as interpreter. When she finally departed, with admonitions and sidewise wags of the head, he shuffled defiantly to a desk.

He occupied his first hour in slyly flipping wet-paper wads at a picture of Shakspere pinned above him on the wall. The little girl, who was well versed in all school tricks from her years of sitting in a rear seat, knew what he was doing, but hesitated to speak to him. At last, seeing that he was attracting the attention of all the other children, she sent him to the blackboard to copy his spelling ten times.

By ingenious counting he soon completed his work, and then began to draw pipe-stem men for the Dutchman's youngest to giggle at. He was sent back to his desk, where he spent the time in wriggling his ears.

The little girl saw that trouble was before her,--saw, too, that her position would be imperiled if she failed in her discipline. That night, when the biggest brother helped her to get supper and make the beds, she shared her fears with him.

"It's one thing to get a school," she said sorrowfully, as he tried to comfort her; "it's another to keep it."

But next day she called the pupils to order cheerfully.

It was evident that the young Pole had been well discussed by the children. They watched him constantly to see what new prank he was preparing for their entertainment. He swaggered under their astonished gaze, and insolently made requests aloud without raising his hand for permission to speak. Just before recess, upon chancing to glance his way, the little girl caught him tossing a note over to the other side of the room.

She suddenly came to a halt beside his desk, and anger, strange and almost unreasonable, possessed her. It flashed into her mind that before her, ignorant, slouchy, indifferent, was one who, by his mischief, threatened to deprive her of what her mother and the biggest brother had long desired, what she herself yearned after with all the earnestness of her soul. She could scarcely refrain from attempting to send him off then and there! She trembled with indignation. Meeting her eyes for a moment, he saw a dangerous glint in them, and for the rest of the morning was more circ.u.mspect.

But at noon, a full dinner, a lazy hour, and the ill-concealed admiration of the other children put him again into a mean mood. He got out of line in marching, and pulled the hair of one of the little fellows from the West Fork. The little girl pa.s.sed the afternoon with her eyes upon him. When he went so far that the school was interrupted, she walked toward him and gave him some task, or stayed beside his desk while she was hearing a cla.s.s. But though in a measure it kept him in subjection, her power over the others, she found, was being woefully lessened, and her discipline destroyed. At dismissal she took up her hat and pail with a weariness that was not physical, but of the spirit, and rode home, bowed and silent.

But, unknown to her, the Polish boy defeated his own evil ends that same evening, and solved to her satisfaction, and to that of the committee and the scholars, the question of her rule.

He was sent to the Swede's to inquire after a turkey that his mother thought had strayed up the river and nested near the reservation road; and, in asking after the hen, he departed from his errand long enough to boast to the Swede boy of his fun at the school-house. The latter listened to him eagerly, though quietly, grinned slyly once or twice during the story, and at the close of it remarked, with his finger on his nose, that he thought he had better go back to school again himself.

The following morning, when she entered, to her surprise, the little girl found him seated in the back of the room, his lunch in a newspaper beside him, his books in a strap at his feet. "Ay kome tow lairn again,"

he said, and then waited until she a.s.signed him a desk.

He was so interested in the little girl that, for the first hour after school was called, he forgot to watch the young Pole. Everywhere she moved, he kept his eyes upon her. If she caught his glance, she saw in it only pride and encouragement and was content.

But the young Pole, seeing that the Swede boy did not look at him, became piqued at last and set about gaining not only the attention of the new pupil, but of the entire school. He rummaged his pockets for a bean-shooter, and, finding one, proceeded to let the dry beans fly, snapping them loudly against the benches.

The anger, resentment, and mortification on the little girl's face at his audacity made the Swede boy squirm in his seat. But he said nothing, seemed not to watch the bean-shooting, and bided his time.

At last, interrupted in her teaching and goaded to the point of rebuke, the little girl dismissed a cla.s.s and, rising in her chair, called the school to attention. "I am sorry to have to speak to any one before the rest," she said, her face white, her voice almost gone with excitement; "but I must have order." She looked straight at the young Pole.

He sc.r.a.ped his feet and smirked at her, at the same time flipping a bean from between his thumb and finger. It struck the stove with a sharp ring that brought the Swede boy to his feet. His hand was raised to attract her attention. She nodded.

The Swede boy lowered his arm very slowly, looking about him with an air of deprecation. "Ay doan know," he said in a low voice, "eef yo theenk like me. Bote she"--he pointed to the little girl--"komes, takes th'

skole, lairns us. We bay gote to pay hair back." He shifted till he stood over the young Pole. "So eef somebodey no bay gote," he added, with a threatening note in his voice, _"ay make hame_." Then he sank to his seat again, having for the second time in that school-room saved her from bitter humiliation.

The next morning the school-house withstood its last throe. At ten o'clock, in the midst of a reading-lesson, there entered the young Pole's father. His ox-gad was in his hand; he did not remove his hat, but strode forward to the teacher's desk, sputtering broken English.

When he came near, he shook his empty fist so close to the little girl that she caught the scent of hay on it, for he had been throwing down feed to his cattle.