The Prairie Wife
it simply _must_ ease off, or the whole world would go smash, why, that
whining note merely grew tenser and the wind grew stronger. How it
lashed things! How it shook and flailed and trampled this poor old earth
of ours! Just before supper Olie announced that he'd look after my
chicks for me. I told him, quite casually, that I'd attend to them
myself. I usually strew a mixture of wheat and oats on the litter in the
hen-house overnight. This had two advantages, one was that it didn't
take me out quite so early in the morning, and the other was that the
chicks themselves started scratching around first thing in the morning
and so got exercise and kept themselves warmer-bodied and in better
health.
It was not essential that I should go to the hen-house myself, but I was
possessed with a sudden desire to face that singing white tornado. So I
put on my things, while Dinky-Dunk was at work in the stables. I put on
furs and leggings and gauntlets and all, as though I were starting for a
ninety-mile drive, and slipped out. Dinky-Dunk had tunneled through the
drift in front of the door, but that tunnel was already beginning to
fill again. I plowed through it, and tried to look about me. Everything
was a sort of streaked misty gray, an all-enveloping muffing leaden
maelstrom that hurt your skin when you lifted your head and tried to
look it in the face. Once, in a lull of the wind when the snow was not
so thick, I caught sight of the hay-stacks. That gave me a line on the
hen-house. So I made for it, on the run, holding my head low as I went.
It was glorious, at first, it made my lungs pump and my blood race and
my legs tingle. Then the storm-devils howled in my eyes and the
ice-lashes snapped in my face. Then the wind went off on a rampage
again, and I couldn't see. I couldn't move forward. I couldn't even
breathe. Then I got frightened.
I leaned there against the wind calling for Dinky-Dunk and Olie,
whenever I could gasp breath enough to make a sound. But I might as well
have been a baby crying in mid-ocean to a Kensington Gardens nurse.
Then I knew I was lost. No one could ever hear me in that roar. And
there was nothing to be seen, just a driving, blinding, stinging gray
pall of flying fury that nettled the naked skin like electric-massage
and took the breath out of your buffeted body. There was no land-mark,
no glimpse of any building, nothing whatever to go by. And I felt so
helpless in the face of that wind! It seemed to take the power of
locomotion from my legs. I was not altogether amazed at the thought that
I might die there, within a hundred yards of my own home, so near those
narrow walls within which were warmth, and shelter, and quietness. I
imagined how they'd find my body, deep under the snow, some morning; how
Dinky-Dunk would search, perhaps for days. I felt so sorry for him I
decided not to give up, that I wouldn't be lost, that I wouldn't die
there like a fly on a sheet of tanglefoot!
I had fallen down on my knees, with my back to the wind, and already the
snow had drifted around me. I also found my eye-lashes frozen together,
and I lost several winkers in getting rid of those solidified tears. But
I got to my feet and battled on, calling when I could. I kept on, going
round and round in a circle, I suppose, as people always do when
they're lost in a storm. Then the wind grew worse again. I couldn't make
any headway against it. I had to give up. I simply _had_ to! I wasn't
afraid. I wasn't terrified at the thought of what was happening to me. I
was only sorry, with a misty sort of sorrow I can't explain. And I don't
remember that I felt particularly uncomfortable, except for the fact I
found it rather hard to breathe.
It was Olie who found me. He came staggering through the snow with extra
fuel for the bunk-house, and nearly walked over me. As we found out
afterward, I wasn't more than thirty steps away from that bunk-house
door. Olie pulled me up out of the snow the same as you'd pull a skein
of darning-silk out of a work-basket. He half carried me to the
bunk-house, got his bearings, and then steered me for the shack. It was
a fight, but we made it. And Dinky-Dunk was still out looking after his
stock and doesn't know how nearly he lost his Lady Bird. I've made Olie
promise not to say a word about it. But the top of my nose is red and
swollen. I think it must have got a trifle frost-nipped, in the
encounter. The weather has cleared now, and the wind has gone down. But
it is very cold, and Dinky-Dunk has just reported that it's already
forty-eight below zero.
_Tuesday the Nineteenth_
The days slip away and I scarcely know where they go. The weather is
wonderful. Clear and cold, with such heaps of sunshine you'd never dream
it was zero weather. But you have to be careful, and always wear furs
when you're driving, or out for any length of time. Three hours in this
open air is as good as a pint of Chinkie's best champagne. It makes me
tingle. We are living high, with several barrels of frozen game--geese,
duck and prairie-chicken--and also an old tin trunk stuffed full of
beef-roasts, cut the right size. I bring them in and thaw them out
overnight, as I need them. The freezing makes them very tender. But they
must be completely thawed before they go into the oven, or the outside
will be overdone and the inside still raw. I learned that by experience.
My appetite is disgraceful, and I'm still gaining. Chinkie could never
again say I reminded him of one of the lean kine in Pharaoh's dream.
I have been asking Dinky-Dunk if it isn't downright cruelty to leave
horses and cattle out on the range in weather like this. My husband says
not, so long as they have a wind-break in time of storms. The animals
paw through the snow for grass to eat, and when they get thirsty they
can eat the snow itself, which, Dinky-Dunk solemnly assures me, almost
never gives them sore throat! But the open prairie, just at this season,
is a most inhospitable looking pasturage, and the unbroken glare of
white makes my eyes ache.... There's one big indoor task I finally have
accomplished, and that is tuning my piano. It made my heart heavy,
standing there useless, a gloomy monument of ironic grandeur.
As a girl I used to watch Katrinka's long-haired Alsatian putting her
concert grand to rights, and I knew that my ear was dependable enough.
So the second day after my baby grand's arrival I went at it with a
monkey-wrench. But that was a failure. Then I made a drawing of a
tuning-hammer and had Olie secretly convey it to the Buckhorn
blacksmith, who in turn concocted a great steel hollow-headed
monstrosity which actually fits over the pins to which the piano wires
are strung, even though the aforesaid monstrosity is heavy enough to
stun an ox with. But it did the work, although it took about two
half-days, and now every note is true. So now I have music! And
Dinky-Dunk does enjoy my playing, these long winter evenings. Some
nights we let Olie come in and listen to the concert. He sits rapt,
especially when I play ragtime, which seems the one thing that touches
his holy of holies. Poor Olie! I surely have a good friend in that
silent, faithful, uncouth Swede!
Dinky-Dunk himself is so thin that it worries me. But he eats well and
doesn't anathematize my cooking. He's getting a few gray hairs, at the
temples. I think they make him look rather _distingue_. But they worry
my poor Dinky-Dunk. "Hully Gee," he said yesterday, studying himself
for the third time in his shaving-glass, "I'm getting old!" He laughed
when I started to whistle "Believe me if all those endearing young
charms, which I gaze on so fondly to-day," but at heart he was really
disturbed by the discovery of those few white hairs. I've been telling
him that the ladies won't love him any more, and that his cut-up days
are over. He says I'll have to make up for the others. So I started for
him with my Australian crawl-stroke. It took me an hour to get the taste
of shaving soap out of my mouth. Dinky-Dunk says I'm so full of life
that I _sparkle_. All I know is that I'm happy, supremely and
ridiculously happy!
_Sunday the Thirty-first_
The inevitable has happened. I don't know how to write about it! I
_can't_ write about it! My heart goes down like a freight elevator,
slowly, sickeningly, even when I think about it. Dinky-Dunk came in and
saw me studying a little row of dates written on the wall-paper beside
the bedroom window. I pretended to be draping the curtain. "What's the
matter, Lady Bird?" he demanded when he saw my face. I calmly told him
that nothing was the matter. But he wouldn't let me go. I wanted to be
alone, to think things out. But he kept holding me there, with my face
to the light. I suppose I must have been all eyes, and probably shaking
a little. And I didn't want him to suspect.
"Excuse me if I find you unspeakably annoying!" I said in a voice that
was so desperately cold that it even surprised my own ears. He dropped
me as though I had been a hot potato. I could see that I'd hurt him, and
hurt him a lot. My first impulse was to run to him with a shower of
repentant kisses, as one usually does, the same as one sprinkles salt on
claret stains. But in him I beheld the original and entire cause--and I
just couldn't do it. He called me a high-spirited devil with a
hair-trigger temper. But he left me alone to think things out.
_Tuesday the Ninth_
I've started to say my prayers again. It rather frightened Dinky-Dunk,
who sat up in bed and asked me if I wasn't feeling well. I promptly
assured him that I was in the best of health. He not only agreed with
me, but said I was as plump as a partridge. When I am alone, though, I
get frightened and fidgety. So I kneel down every night and morning now
and ask God for help and guidance. I want to be a good woman and a
better wife. But I shall never let Duncan know--never!
_Wednesday the Seventeenth_
Do you remember Aunt Harriet who always wept when she read _The Isles of
Greece_? She didn't even know where they were, and had never been east
of Salem. But all the Woodberrys were like that. Dinky-Dunk came in and
found me crying to-day, for the second time in one week. He made such
valiantly ponderous efforts to cheer me up, poor boy, and shook his head
and said I'd soon be an improvement on the Snider System, which is a
system of irrigation by spraying overnight from pipes! My nerves don't
seem so good as they were. The winter's so long. I'm already counting
the days to spring.
_Thursday the Twenty-fifth_
Dinky-Dunk has concluded that I'm too much alone; he's been worrying
over it. I can tell that. I try not to be moody, but sometimes I simply
can't help it. Yesterday afternoon he drove up to Casa Grande, proud as
Punch, with a little black and white kitten in the crook of his arm.
He'd covered twenty-eight miles of trail for that kitten! It's to be my
companion. But the kitten's as lonesome as I am, and has been crying,
and nearly driving me crazy.
_Tuesday the Second_
The weather has been bad, but winter is slipping away. Dinky-Dunk has
been staying in from his work, these mornings, helping me about the
house. He is clumsy and slow, and has broken two or three of the dishes.
But I hate to say anything; his eyes get so tragic. He declares that as
soon as the trails are passable he's going to have a woman to help me,
that this sort of thing can't go on any longer. He imagines it's merely
the monotony of housework that is making my nerves so bad.
Yesterday morning I was drying the dishes and Dinky-Dunk was washing. I
found the second spoon with egg on it. I don't know why it was, but that
trivial streak of yellow along the edge of a spoon suddenly seemed to