The Prairie Wife
winter vegetables, a man suddenly erupted. He seemed to come up out of
the very earth, like a mushroom.
He was the most repulsive-looking man I ever had the pleasure of casting
eyes on. His clothes were ragged and torn and stained with mud. His face
was covered with stubble and his cheeks were hollow, and his skin was
just about the color of a new saddle.
I could see the whites of his eyes as he ran for the shack, looking over
his shoulder toward the stable door as he came. He had a revolver in his
hand. I noticed that, but it didn't seem to trouble me much. I suppose
I'd already been frightened as much as mortal flesh could be frightened.
In fact, I was thinking quite clearly what to do, and didn't hesitate
for a moment.
"Put that silly thing down," I told him, as he ran up to me with his
head lowered and that indescribably desperate look in his big frightened
eyes. "If you're not a fool I can get you hidden," I told him. It
reassured me to see that his knees were shaking much more than mine, as
he stood there in the center of the shack! I stooped over the trap-door
and lifted it up. "Get down there quick! He's searched that cellar and
won't go through it again. Stay there until I say he's gone!"
He slipped over to the trap-door and went slowly down the steps, with
his eyes narrowed and his revolver held up in front of him, as though he
still half expected to find some one there to confront him with a
blunderbuss. Then I promptly shut the trap-door. But there was no way of
locking it.
I had my murderer there, trapped, but the question was to keep him
there. Your little Chaddie didn't give up many precious moments to
reverie. I tiptoed into the bedroom and lifted the mattress, bedding and
all, off the bedstead. I tugged it out and put it silently down over the
trap-door. Then, without making a sound, I turned the table over on it.
But he could still lift that table, I knew, even with me sitting on top
of it. So I started to pile things on the overturned table, until it
looked like a moving-van ready for a May-Day migration. Then I sat on
top of that pile of household goods, reached for Dinky-Dunk's repeater,
and deliberately fired a shot up through the open door.
I sat there, studying my pile, feeling sure a revolver bullet couldn't
possibly come up through all that stuff. But before I had much time to
think about this my corporal of the R. N. W. M. P. (which means,
Matilda Anne, the Royal North-West Mounted Police) came through the door
on the run. He looked relieved when he saw me triumphantly astride that
overturned table loaded up with about all my household junk.
"I've got him for you," I calmly announced.
"You've got what?" he said, apparently thinking I'd gone mad.
"I've got your man for you," I repeated. "He's down there in my cellar."
And in one minute I'd explained just what had happened. There was no
parley, no deliberation, no hesitation.
"Hadn't you better go outside," he suggested as he started piling the
things off the trap-door.
"You're not going down there?" I demanded.
"Why not?" he asked.
"But he's got a revolver," I cried out, "and he's sure to shoot!"
"That's why I think it might be better for you to step outside for a
moment or two," was my soldier boy's casual answer.
I walked over and got Dinky-Dunk's repeater. Then I crossed to the far
side of the shack, with the rifle in my hands.
"I'm going to stay," I announced.
"All right," was the officer's unconcerned answer as he tossed the
mattress to one side and with one quick pull threw up the trap-door.
A shot rang out, from below, as the door swung back against the wall.
But it was not repeated, for the man in the red coat jumped bodily,
heels first, into that black hole. He didn't seem to count on the risk,
or on what might be ahead of him. He just jumped, spurs down, on that
other man with the revolver in his hand. I could hear little grunts, and
wheezes, and a thud or two against the cellar steps. Then there was
silence, except for one double "click-click" which I couldn't
understand.
Oh, Matilda Anne, how I watched that cellar opening! And I saw a back
with a red coat on it slowly rise out of the hole. He, the man who owned
the back of course, was dragging the other man bodily up the narrow
little stairs. There was a pair of handcuffs already on his wrists and
he seemed dazed and helpless, for that slim-looking soldier boy had
pummeled him unmercifully, knocking out his two front teeth, one of
which I found on the doorstep when I was sweeping up.
"I'm sorry, but I'll have to take one of your horses for a day or two,"
was all my R. N. W. M. P. hero condescended to say to me as he poked an
arm through his prisoner's and helped him out through the door.
"What--what will they do with him?" I called out after the corporal.
"Hang him, of course," was the curt answer.
Then I sat down to think things over, and, like an old maid with the
vapors, decided I wouldn't be any the worse for a cup of good strong
tea. And by the time I'd had my tea, and straightened things up, and
incidentally discovered that no less than five of my cans of mushrooms
had been broken to bits below-stairs, I heard the rumble of the wagon
and knew that Olie and Dinky-Dunk were back. And I drew a long breath of
relief, for with all their drawbacks, men are not a bad thing to have
about, now and then!
_Thursday the Twenty-second_
It was early Tuesday morning that Dinky-Dunk firmly announced that he
and I were going off on a three-day shooting-trip. I hadn't slept well,
the night before, for my nerves were still rather upset, and Dinky-Dunk
said I needed a picnic. So we got guns and cartridges and blankets and
slickers and cooking things, and stowed them away in the wagon-box. Then
we made a list of the provisions we'd need, and while Dinky-Dunk bagged
up some oats for the team I was busy packing the grub-box. And I packed
it cram full, and took along the old tin bread-box, as well, with
pancake flour and dried fruit and an extra piece of bacon--and _bacon_
it is now called in this shack, for I have positively forbidden
Dinky-Dunk ever to speak of it as "sowbelly" or even as a "slice of
grunt" again.
Then off we started across the prairie, after duly instructing Olie as
to feeding the chickens and taking care of the cream and finishing up
the pit for the winter vegetables. Still once again Olie thought we were
both a little mad, I believe, for we had no more idea where we were
going than the man in the moon.
But there was something glorious in the thought of gipsying across the
autumn prairie like that, without a thought or worry as to where we must
stop or what trail we must take. It made every day's movement a great
adventure. And the weather was divine.
We slept at night under the wagon-box, with a tarpaulin along one side
to keep out the wind, and a fire flickering in our faces on the other
side, and the horses tethered out, and the stars wheeling overhead, and
the peace of God in our hearts. How good every meal tasted! And how that
keen sharp air made snuggling down under a couple of Hudson Bay
five-point blankets a luxury to be spoken of only in the most reverent
of whispers! And there was a time, as you already know, when I used to
take bromide and sometimes even sulphonal to make me sleep! But here it
is so different! To get leg-weary in the open air, tramping about the
sedgy slough-sides after mallard and canvas-back, to smell coffee and
bacon and frying grouse in the cool of the evening, across a thin veil
of camp-fire smoke, to see the tired world turn over on its shoulder and
go to sleep--it's all a sort of monumental lullaby.
The prairie wind seems to seek you out, and make a bet with the Great
Dipper that he'll have you off in forty winks, and the orchestra of the
spheres whispers through its million strings and sings your soul to
rest. For I tell you here and now, Matilda Anne, I, poor, puny,
good-for-nothing, insignificant I, have heard that music of the spheres
as clearly as you ever heard _Funiculi-Funicula_ on that little Naples
steamer that used to take you to Capri. And when I'd crawl out from
under that old wagon-box, like a gopher out of his hole, in the first
delicate rosiness of dawn, I'd feel unutterably grateful to be alive, to
hear the cantatas of health singing deep in my soul, to know that
whatever life may do to me, I'd snatched my share of happiness from the
pantry of the gods! And the endless change of color, from the tawny
fox-glove on the lighter land, the pale yellow of a lion's skin in the
slanting autumn sun, to the quavering, shimmering glories of the
Northern Lights that dance in the north, that fling out their banners of
ruby and gold and green, and tremble and merge and pulse until I feel
that I can hear the clash of invisible cymbals. I wonder if you can
understand my feeling when I pulled the hat-pin out of my old gray
Stetson yesterday, uncovered my head, and looked straight up into the
blue firmament above me. Then I said, "Thank you, God, for such a
beautiful day!"
Dinky-Dunk promptly said that I was blasphemous--he's so strict and
solemn! But as I stared up into the depths of that intense opaline
light, so clear, so pure, I realized how air, just air and nothing else,
could leave a scatter-brained lady like me half-seas over. Only it's a
champagne that never leaves you with a headache the next day!
_Saturday the Twenty-fourth_
Dinky-Dunk, who seems intent on keeping my mind occupied, brought me
home a bundle of old magazines last night. They were so frayed and
thumbed-over that some of the pages reminded me of well-worn bank-notes.
I've been reading some of the stories, and they all seem silly.
Everybody appears to be in love with somebody else's wife. Then the
people are all divided so strictly into two classes, the good and the
bad! As for the other man's wife, prairie-life would soon knock that
nonsense out of people. There isn't much room for the Triangle in a
two-by-four shack. Life's so normal and natural and big out here that a
Pierre Loti would be kicked into a sheep-dip before he could use up his
first box of face-rouge! You want your own wife, and want her so bad
you're satisfied. Not that Dinky-Dunk and I are so goody-goody! We're
just healthy and human, that's all, and we'd never do for fiction.
After meals we push away the dishes and sit side by side, with our arms
across each other's shoulders, full of the joy of life, satisfied,
happy, healthy-minded, now and then a little Rabelaisian in our talk,
meandering innocent-eyed through those earthier intimacies which most
married people seem to face without shame, so long as the facing is done
in secret. We don't seem ashamed of that terribly human streak in us.
And neither of us is bad, at heart. But I know we're not like those
magazine characters, who all seem to have Florida-water instead of red
blood in their veins, and are so far, far away from life.
Yet even that dip into politely erotic fiction seemed to canalize my
poor little grass-grown mind into activity, and Diddums and I sat up
until the wee sma' hours discoursing on life and letters. He started me
off by somewhat pensively remarking that all women seem to want to be
intellectual and have a _salon_.
"No, Dinky-Dunk, I don't want a _salon_," I promptly announced. "I never
did want one, for I don't believe they were as exciting as we imagine.
And I hate literary people almost as much as I hate actors. I always
felt they were like stage-scenery, not made for close inspection. For
after five winters in New York and a couple in London you can't help
bumping into the Bohemian type, not to mention an occasional collision
with 'em up and down the Continent. When they're female they always seem