The Prairie Wife
History solemnly announced to Freeman.
Percy said his lungs rather troubled him in England, and he has spent
over a year in Florence and Rome and can talk pictures like a Grant
Allen guide-book. And he's sat through many an opera at La Scala, but
considered the Canadian coyote a much better vocalist than most of the
minor Italian tenors. And he knows Capri and Taormina and says he'd like
to grow old and die in Sicily. He got pneumonia at Messina, and nearly
died young there and after five months in Switzerland a specialist told
him to try Canada.
I've noticed that one of the delusions of Americans is that an
Englishman is silent. Now, my personal conviction is that Englishmen are
the greatest talkers in the world, and I have Percy to back me up in it.
In fact, we sat about talking so long that Percy asked if he couldn't
stay all night, as he was a poor rider and wasn't sure of the trails as
yet. So we made a shake-down for him in the living-room. And when
Dinky-Dunk came to bed he confided to me that Percy was calmly reading
and smoking himself to sleep, out of my sadly scorned copy of _The Ring
and the Book_, with the lamp on the floor, on one side of him, and a
saucer on the other, for an ash-tray. But he was up and out this
morning, before either of us was stirring, coming back to Casa Grande,
however, when he saw the smoke at the chimney-top. His thin cheeks were
quite pink and he apologetically explained that he'd been trying for an
hour and a half to catch his cayuse. Olie had come to his rescue. But
our thin-shouldered Oxford exile said that he had never seen such a
glorious sunrise, and that the ozone had made him a bit tipsy. Speaking
of thin-shouldered specimens, Matilda Anne, I was once a thirty-six;
_now I am a perfect forty-two_.
_Friday the Fifth_
The weather has been bad all this week, but I've had a great deal of
sewing to do, and for two days Dinky-Dunk stayed in and helped me fix up
the shack. I made more book-shelves out of more old biscuit-boxes and my
lord made a gun-rack for our fire-arms. Percival Benson rode over once,
through the storm, and it took us half an hour to thaw him out. But he
brought some books, and says he has four cases, altogether, and that
we're welcome to all we wish. He stayed until noon the next day, this
time sleeping in the annex, which Dinky-Dunk and I have papered, so that
it looks quite presentable. But as yet there is no way of heating it.
Our new neighbor, I imagine, is very lonesome.
_Sunday the Seventh_
The weather has cleared: there's a chinook arch in the sky, and a sort
of St. Martin's-Summer haze on all the prairie. But there's news to-day.
Kino, our new neighbor's Jap, has decamped with a good deal of money and
about all of Percival Benson's valuables. The poor boy is almost
helpless, but he's not a quitter. He said he chopped his first kindling
to-day, though he had to stand in a wash-tub, while he did it, to keep
from cutting his feet. Dinky-Dunk's birthday is only three weeks off,
and I'm making plans for a celebration.
_Tuesday the Ninth_
The days slip by, and scarcely leave me time to write. Dinky-Dunk is a
sort of pendulum, swinging out to work, back to eat, and then out, and
then back again. Olie is teaming in lumber and galvanized iron for a new
building of some sort. My lord, in the evenings, sits with paper and
pencil, figuring out measurements and making plans. I sit on the other
side of the table, as a rule, sewing. Sometimes I go around to his side
of the table, and make him put his plans away for a few minutes. We are
very happy. But where the days fly to I scarcely know. We are always
looking toward the future, talking about the future, "conceiting" for
the future, as the Irish say. Next summer is to be our banner year.
Dinky-Dunk is going to risk everything on wheat. He's like a general
plotting out a future plan of campaign--for when the work comes, he
says, it will come in a rush. Help will be hard to get, so he'll sell
his British Columbia timber rights and buy a forty-horse-power gasoline
tractor. He will at least if gasoline gets cheaper, for with "gas" still
at twenty-six cents a gallon horse-power is cheapest. But during the
breaking season in April and May, one of these engines can haul eight
gang-plows behind it. In twenty-four hours it will be able to turn over
thirty-five acres of prairie soil--and the ordinary man and team counts
two acres of plowing a decent day's work.
To-night I asked Dinky-Dunk why he risked everything on wheat and warned
him that we might have to revise the old Kansas trekker's slogan to--
"In wheat we trusted,
In wheat we busted!"
Dinky-Dunk explained that to keep on raising only wheat would be bad for
the land, and even now meant taking a chance, but situated as he was it
brought in the quickest money. And he wanted money in a hurry, for he
had a nest to feather for a lady wild-bird that he'd captured--which
meant me. Later on he intends to go in for flax--for fiber and not for
seed--and as our land should produce two tons of the finest flax-straw
to the acre and as the Belgian and Irish product is now worth over four
hundred dollars a ton, he told me to sit down and figure out what four
hundred acres would produce, with even a two-third crop.
The Canadian farmer of the West, he went on to explain, mostly grew flax
for the seed alone, burning up over a million tons of straw every year,
just to get it out of the way, the same as he does with his wheat-straw.
But all that will soon be changed. Only last week Dinky-Dunk wrote to
the Department of Agriculture for information about _courtai_
fiber--that's the kind used for point-lace and is worth a dollar a
pound--for my lord feels convinced his soil and climatic conditions are
especially suited for certain of the finer varieties. He even admitted
that flax would be better on his land at the present time, as it would
release certain of the natural fertilizers which sometimes leave the
virgin soil too rich for wheat. But what most impressed me about
Dinky-Dunk's talk was his absolute and unshaken faith in this West of
ours, once it wakes up to its opportunities. It's a stored-up granary of
wealth, he declares, and all we've done so far is to nibble along the
leaks in the floor-cracks!
_Saturday the Twenty-first_
To-day is Dinky-Dunk's birthday. He's always thought, of course, that
I'm a pauper, and never dreamed of my poor little residuary nest-egg.
I'd ordered a box of Okanagan Valley apples, and a gramophone and a
dozen opera records, and a brier-wood pipe and two pounds of English
"Honey-Dew," and a smoking-jacket, and some new ties and socks and
shirts, and a brand new Stetson, for Dinky-Dunk's old hat is almost a
rag-bag. And I ordered half a dozen of the newer novels and a set of
Herbert Spencer which I heard him say he wanted, and a sepia print of
the _Mona Lisa_ (which my lord says I look like when I'm planning
trouble) and a felt mattress and a set of bed-springs (so good-by, old
sway-backed friend whose humps have bruised me in body and spirit this
many a night!) and a dozen big oranges and three dozen little candles
for the birthday cake. And then I was cleaned out--every blessed cent
gone! But Percy (we have, you see, been unable to escape that name)
ordered a box of cigars and a pair of quilted house-slippers, so it was
a pretty formidable array.
I, accordingly, had Olie secretly team this array all the way from
Buckhorn to Percy's house, where it was duly ambushed and entrenched, to
await the fatal day. As luck would have it, or seemed to have it,
Dinky-Dunk had to hit the trail for overnight, to see about the
registration of his transfers for his new half-section, at the town of
H----. So as soon as Dinky-Dunk was out of sight I hurried through my
work and had Tumble-Weed and Bronk headed for the old Titchborne Ranch.
There I arrived about mid-afternoon, and what a time we had, getting
those things unpacked, and looking them over, and planning and talking!
But the whole thing was spoilt.
We forgot to tie the horses. So while we were having tea Bronk and
Tumble-Weed hit the trail, on their own hook. They made for home,
harness and all, but of course I never knew this at the time. We looked
and looked, came back for supper, and then started out again. We
searched until it got dark. My feet were like lead, and I couldn't have
walked another mile. I was so stiff and tired I simply had to give up.
Percy worried, of course, for we had no way of sending word to
Dinky-Dunk. Then we sat down and talked over possibilities, like a
couple of castaways on a Robinson Crusoe island. Percy offered to bunk
in the stable, and let me have the shack. But I wouldn't hear of that.
In the first place, I felt pretty sure Percy was what they call a
"lunger" out here, and I didn't relish the idea of sleeping in a
tuberculous bed. I asked for a blanket and told him that I was going to
sleep out under the wagon, as I'd often done with Dinky-Dunk. Percy
finally consented, but this worried him too. He even brought out his
"big-game" gun, so I'd have protection, and felt the grass to see if it
was damp, and declared he couldn't sleep on a mattress when he knew I
was out on the hard ground. I told him that I loved it, and to go to
bed, for I wanted to get out of some of my armor-plate. He went,
reluctantly.
It was a beautiful night, and not so cold, with scarcely a breath of
wind stirring. I lay looking out through the wheel-spokes at the Milky
Way, and was just dropping off when Percy came out still again. He was
in a quilted dressing-gown and had a blanket over his shoulders. It made
him look for all the world like Father Time. He wanted to know if I was
all right, and had brought me out a pillow--which I didn't use. Then he
sat down on the prairie-floor, near the wagon, and smoked and talked. He
pointed out some of the constellations to me, and said the only time
he'd ever seen the stars bigger was one still night on the Indian Ocean,
when he was on his way back from Singapore. He would never forget that
night, he said, the stars were so wonderful, so big, so close, so soft
and luminous. But the northern stars were different. They were without
the orange tone that belongs to the South. They seemed remoter and more
awe-inspiring, and there was always a green tone to their whiteness.
Then we got talking about "furrin parts" and Percy asked me if I'd ever
seen Naples at night from San Martino, and I asked him if he'd ever seen
Broadway at night from the top of the Times Building. Then he asked me
if I'd ever watched Paris from Montmartre, or seen the Temple of Neptune
at Paestum bathed in Lucanian moonlight--which I very promptly told him I
had, for it was on the ride home from Paestum that a certain person had
proposed to me. We talked about temples and Greek Gods and the age of
the world and Indian legends until I got downright sleepy. Then Percy
threw away his last cigarette and got up. He said "Good night;" I said
"Good night;" and he went into the shack. He said he'd leave the door
open, in case I called. There were just the two of us, between earth and
sky, that night, and not another soul within a radius of seven miles of
any side of us. He was very glad to have some one to talk to. He's
probably a year or two older than I am, but I am quite motherly with
him. And he is shockingly incompetent, as a homesteader, from the look
of his shack. But he's a gentleman, almost too "Gentle," I sometimes
feel, a Laodicean, mentally over-refined until it leaves him unable to
cope with real life. He's one of those men made for being a "spectator,"
and not an actor, in life. And there's something so absurd about his
being where he is that I feel sorry for him.