The Prairie Wife
down off the hay-rack. Then they fought.
They fought like two wildcats. Dinky-Dunk's nose bled and his lip was
cut. But he knocked the other man flat, and when he tried to get up he
knocked him again. It seemed cruel; it was revolting. But something in
me rejoiced and exulted as I saw that hulk of an animal thresh and
stagger about the hay-stubble. I tried to wipe the blood away from
Dinky-Dunk's nose. But he pushed me back and said this was no place for
a woman. I had no place in his universe, at that particular time. But
Dinky-Dunk can fight, if he has to. He's sa magerful a mon! He's afraid
of nothing.
But that was nearly a costly victory. Both the new men of course threw
up their jobs, then and there. Dinky-Dunk paid them off, on the spot,
and they started off across the open prairie, without even waiting for
their meal. Dinky-Dunk, as we sat down on the dry grass and ate
together, said it was a good riddance, and he was just saying I could
only have the left-hand side of his mouth to kiss for the next week when
he suddenly dropped his piece of custard-pie, stood up and stared toward
the east. I did the same, wondering what had happened.
I could see a long thin slanting column of smoke driving across the hot
noonday air. Then my heart stopped beating. _It was the prairie on
fire._
I had heard a great deal about fire-guards and fire-guarding, three rows
about crops and ten about buildings; and I knew that Olie hadn't yet
finished turning all those essential furrows. And if that column of
smoke, which was swinging up through the silvery haze where the indigo
vault of heaven melted into the dusty whiteness of the parched
grasslands, had come from the mouth of a siege-gun which was cannonading
us where we stood, it couldn't have more completely chilled my blood.
For I knew that east wind would carry the line of fire crackling across
the prairie floor to Dinky-Dunk's wheat, to the stables and
out-buildings, to Casa Grande itself, and all our scheming and planning
and toiling and moiling would go up in one yellow puff of smoke. And
once under way, nothing could stop that widening river of flame.
It was Dinky-Dunk who jumped to life as though he had indeed been
cannonaded. In one bound he was at the buckboard and was snatching out
the horse-blanket that lay folded up under the seat. Then he unsnapped
the reins from Paddy's bridle, snapping them on the blanket, one to the
buckle and the other to the strap-end. In another minute he had the
hobble off Paddy and had swung me up on that astonished pinto's back.
The next minute he himself was on Maid Marian, poking one end of the
long rein into my hand and telling me to keep up with him.
We rode like mad. I scarcely understood what it meant, at the time, but
I at least kept up with him. We went floundering through one end of a
slough until the blanket was wet and heavy and I could hardly hold it.
But I hung on for dear life. Then we swung off across the dry grass
toward that advancing semicircle of fire, as far apart as the taut reins
would let us ride. Dinky-Dunk took the windward side. Then on we rushed,
along that wavering frontier of flame, neck to neck, dragging the wet
blanket along its orange-tinted crest, flattening it down and wiping it
out as we went. We made the full circle, panting; saw where the flames
had broken out again, and swung back with our dragging blanket. But when
one side was conquered another side would revive, and off we'd have to
go again, until my arm felt as though it were going to be pulled out of
its socket.
But we won that fight, in the end. I slipped down off Paddy's back and
lay full length on the sod, weak, shaking, wondering why the solid
ground was rocking slowly from side to side like a boat. But Dinky-Dunk
didn't even observe me. He was fighting out the last patch of fire, on
foot.
When he came over to where I was waiting for him he was as sooty and
black as a boiler-maker. He dropped down beside me, breathing hard. We
sat there holding each other's hand, for several minutes, in utter
silence. Then he said, rather thickly: "Are you all right?" And I told
him that of course I was all right. Then he said, without looking at me,
"I forgot!" Then he got Paddy and patched up the harness and took me
home in the buckboard.
But all the rest of the day he hung about the shack, as solemn as an
owl. And once in the night he got up and lighted the lamp and came over
and studied my face. I blinked up at him sleepily, for I was dog-tired
and had been dreaming that we were back in Paris at the Bal des Quatz
Arts and were about to finish up with an early breakfast at the Madrid.
He looked so funny with his rumpled up hair and his faded pajamas that I
couldn't help laughing a little as he blew out the light and got back
into bed.
"Dinky-Dunk," I said, as I turned over my pillow and got comfy again,
"wouldn't it have been hell if all our wheat had been burned up?" I
forget what Duncan said, for in two minutes I was asleep again.
_Monday the Seventh_
The dry spell has been broken, and broken with a vengeance. One gets
pretty well used to high winds, in the West. There used to be days at a
time when that unending high wind would make me think something was
going to happen, filling me with a vague sense of impending calamity and
making me imagine a big storm was going to blow up and wipe Casa Grande
and its little coterie off the map. But we've had a real wind-storm,
this time, with rain and hail. Dinky-Dunk's wheat looks sadly draggled
out and beaten down, but he says there wasn't enough hail to hurt
anything; that the straw will straighten up again, and that this
downpour was just what he wanted. Early in the afternoon, on looking out
the shack door, I saw a tangle of clouds on the sky-line. They seemed
twisted up like a skein of wool a kitten had been playing with. Then
they seemed to marshal themselves into one solid line and sweep up over
the sky, getting blacker and blacker as they came. Olga ran in with her
yellow hair flying, slamming and bolting the stable-doors, locking the
chicken-coop, and calling out for me to get my clothes off the line or
they'd be blown to pieces. Even then I could feel the wind. It whipped
my own hair loose, and flattened my skirt against my body, and I had to
lean forward to make any advance against it.
By this time the black army of the heavens had rolled up overhead and a
few big frog-like drops of rain began to fall, throwing up little clouds
of dust, as a rifle bullet might. I trundled out a couple of tubs, in
the hope of catching a little soft water. It wasn't until later that I
realized the meaning of Olga's mild stare of reproof. For the next
moment the downpour came, and with it the wind. And such wind! There had
been nothing to stop its sweep, of course, for hundreds and hundreds of
miles, and it hit us the same as a hurricane at sea hits a liner. The
shack shook with the force of it. My two wash-tubs went bounding and
careening off across the landscape, the chicken-coop went over like a
nine-pin, and the air was filled with bits of flying timber. Olga's
wagon, with the hay-rack on top of it, moved solemnly and ponderously
across the barnyard and crashed into the corral, propelled by no power
but that of the wind. My sweet-pea hedges were torn from their wires,
and an armful of hay came smack against the shack-window and was held
there by the wind, darkening the room more than ever.
Then the storm blew itself out, though it poured for two or three hours
afterward. And all the while, although I exulted in that play of
elemental force, I was worrying about my Dinky-Dunk, who was away for
the day, doing what he could to arrange for some harvest hands, when the
time for cutting came. For the wheat, it seems, ripens all at once, and
then the grand rush begins. If it isn't cut the moment it's ripe, the
grain shells out, and that means loss. Olga has been saying that the
wheat on the Cummins section will easily run forty bushels to the acre
and over. It will also grade high, whatever that means. There are six
hundred and forty acres of it in that section, and I've just figured out
that this means a little over twenty-five thousand bushels of grain. Our
other piece on the home ranch is a larger tract, but a little lighter in
crop. That wheat is just beginning to turn from green to the palest of
yellow. And it has a good show, Olga says, if frost will only keep off
and no hail comes. Our one occupation, for the next few weeks, will be
watching the weather.
_Sunday the Thirteenth_
Percy and Mrs. Watson drove over to see how we'd all weathered the
storm. They found the chicken-coop once more right side up, and
everything ship-shape. Percy promptly asked where Olga was. I pointed
her out to him, breast-high in the growing wheat. She looked like Ceres,
in her big, new, loose-fitting blue waist, with the noonday sun on her
yellow-gold head and her mild ruminative eyes with their misted sky-line
effect. She always seems to fit into the landscape here. I suppose it's
because she's a born daughter of the soil. And a sea of wheat makes a
perfect frame for that massive, benignant figure of hers.
I looked at Percy, at thin-nosed, unpractical Percy, with all his
finicky sensibilities, with his high fastidious reticences, with his
effete, inbred meagerness of bone and sinew, with his distinguished
pride of distinguished race rather running to seed. And I stood
marveling at the wisdom of old Mother Nature, who was so plainly
propelling him toward this revitalizing, revivifying, reanimalizing,
redeeming type which his pale austerities of spirit could never quite
neutralize. Even Dinky-Dunk has noticed what is taking place. He saw
them standing side by side in the grain. When he came in he pointed them
out to me, and merely said, "_Hermann und Dorothea_!" But I remembered
my Goethe well enough to understand.
_Monday the Twenty-eighth_
I woke Dinky-Dunk up last night crying beside him in bed. I just got to
thinking about things again, how far away we were from everything, how
hard it would be to get help if we needed it, and how much I'd give if I
only had you, Matilda Anne, for the next few weeks.... I got up and went
to the window and looked out. The moon was big and yellow, like a
cheese. And the midnight prairie itself seemed so big and wide and
lonely, and I seemed such a tiny speck on its face, so far away from
every one, from God himself, that the courage went out of my body like
the air out of a tire. Dinky-Dunk was right; it is life that is taming
me.
I stood at the window praying, and then I slipped back into bed.
Dinky-Dunk works so hard and gets so tired that it would take a Chinese
devil-gong to waken him, once he's asleep. He did not stir when I crept
back into bed. And that, as I lay there wide awake, made me feel that
even my own husband had betrayed me. And I _bawled_. I must have shaken
the bed, for Dinky-Dunk finally did wake up. I couldn't tell him what
was the matter. I blubbered out that I only wanted him to hold me. He
took me in his arms and kissed my wet eyelids, hugging me up close to
him, until I got quieter. Then I fell asleep. But poor Dinky-Dunk was
awake when I opened my eyes about four, and had been that way for hours.
He was afraid of disturbing me by taking his arm from under my head.
To-day he looks tired and dark around the eyes. But he was up and off
early. There is so much to be done these days! He is putting up a
grub-tent and a rough sleeping-shack for the harvest "hands," so that I
won't be bothered with a lot of rough men about the house here. I'm
afraid I'm an encumbrance, when I should be helping. But they seem to be
taking everything out of my hands.
_Saturday the Second_