The Prairie Wife
strength to keep me from being a piker and make me a wife worthy of the
man who loved me, and lead me into the way of bringing happiness to the
home that was to be ours. Then I rolled up my sleeves, tied a face towel
over my head and went to work.
It was a royal cleaning-out, I can tell you. In the afternoon I had Olie
down on all fours scrubbing the floor. When he had washed the windows I
had him get a garden rake and clear away the rubbish that littered the
dooryard. I draped chintz curtains over the windows, and had Olie nail
two shelves in a packing-box and then carry it into my boudoir behind
the drop-curtain. Over this box I tacked fresh chintz (for the shack did
not possess so feminine a thing as a dresser) and on it put my
folding-mirror and my Tiffany traveling-clock and all my foolish
shimmery silver toilet articles. Then I tacked up photographs and
magazine-prints about the bare wooden walls--and decided that before the
winter came those walls would be painted and papered, or I'd know the
reason why. Then I aired the bedding and mattress, and unpacked my
brand-new linen sheets and the ridiculous hemstitched pillow-slips that
I'd scurried so frenziedly about the city to get, and stowed my things
away on the box-shelves, and had Olie pound the life out of the
well-sunned pillows, and carefully remade the bed.
And then I went at the living-room. And it was no easy task,
reorganizing those awful shelves and making sure I wasn't throwing away
things Dinky-Dunk might want later on. But the carnage was great, and
all afternoon the smoke went heavenward from my fires of destruction.
And when it was over I told Olie to go out for a good long walk, for I
intended to take a bath. Which I did in the wash-tub, with much joy and
my last cake of Roger-and-Gallet soap. And I had to shout to poor
ambulating Olie for half-an-hour before I could persuade him to come in
to supper. And even then he came tardily, with countless hesitations and
pauses, as though a lady temerarious enough to take a scrub were for all
time taboo to the race of man. And when he finally ventured in through
the door, round-eyed and blushing a deep russet, he gaped at my white
middy and my little white apron with that silent but eloquent admiration
which couldn't fail to warm the cockles of the most unimpressionable
housewife's heart.
_Monday the Twenty-third_
My Dinky-Dunk is back--and oh, the difference to me! I kept telling
myself that I was too busy to miss him. He came Saturday night as I was
getting ready for bed. I'd been watching the trail every now and then,
all day long, and by nine o'clock had given him up. When I heard him
shouting for Olie, I made a rush for him, with only half my clothes on,
and nearly shocked Olie and some unknown man, who'd driven Dinky-Dunk
home, to death. How I hugged my husband! My husband--I love to write
that word. And when I got him inside we had it all over again. He was
just like a big overgrown boy. And he put the table between us, so he'd
have a chance to talk. But even that didn't work. He smothered my
laughing in kisses, and held me up close to him and said I was
wonderful. Then we'd try to get down to earth again, and talk sensibly,
and then there'd be another death-clinch. Dinky-Dunk says I'm worse
than he is. "Of course it's all up with a man," he confessed, "when he
sees you coming for him with that Australian crawl-stroke of yours!"
For which I did my best to break in his floating ribs. Heaven only knows
how late we talked that night. And Dinky-Dunk had a bundle of surprises
for me. The first was a bronze reading-lamp. The second was a soft
little rug for the bedroom--only an Axminster, but very acceptable. The
third was a pair of Juliets, lined with fur, and oceans too big for me.
And Dinky-Dunk says by Tuesday we'll have two milk-cows, part-Jersey, at
the ranch, and inside of a week a crate of hens will be ours. Thereupon
I couldn't help leading Duncan to the inventory I had made of what we
had, and the list, on the opposite side, of what we had to have. The
second thing under the heading of "Needs" was "lamp," the fifth was
"bedroom rug," the thirteenth was "hens," and the next was "cow." I
think he was rather amazed at the length of that list of "needs," but he
says I shall have everything in reason. And when he kind of settled
down, and noticed the changes in the living-room and then went in and
inspected the bedroom he grew very solemn, of a sudden. It worried me.
"Lady Bird," he said, taking me in his arms, "this is a pretty hard life
I've trapped you into. It will _have_ to be hard for a year or two, but
we'll win out, in the end, and I guess it'll be worth the fight!"
Dinky-Dunk is such a dear. I told him of course we'd win out, but I
wouldn't be much use to him at first. I'd have to get broken in and made
bridle-wise.
"But, oh, Dinky-Dunk, whatever happens, you must always love me!"--and I
imagine I swam for him with my Australian crawl-stroke again. All I
remember is that we went to sleep in each other's arms. And as I started
to say and forgot to finish, I'd been missing my Dinky-Dunk more than I
imagined, those last few days. After that night it was no longer just a
shack. It was "Home." Home--it's such a beautiful word! It must mean so
much to every woman. And I fell asleep telling myself it was the
loveliest word in the English language.
In the morning I slipped out of bed before Dinky-Dunk was awake, for
breakfast was to be our first home meal, and I wanted it to be a
respectable one. _Der Mensch ist was er isst_--so I must feed my lord
and master on the best in the land. Accordingly I put an extra
tablespoonful of cream in the scrambled eggs, and two whole eggs in the
coffee, to make dead sure it was crystal-clear. Then, feeling like Van
Roon when Berlin declared war on France, I rooted out Dinky-Dunk, made
him wash, and sat him down in his pajamas and his ragged old
dressing-gown.
"I suppose," I said as I saw his eyes wander about the table, "that you
feel exactly like an oyster-man who's just chipped his Blue-Point and
got his knife-edge in under the shell! And the next wrench is going to
tell you exactly what sort of an oyster you've got!"
Dinky-Dunk grinned up at me as I buttered his toast, piping hot from the
range. "Well, Lady Bird, you're not the kind that'll need paprika,
anyway!" he announced as he fell to. And he ate like a boa-constrictor
and patted his pajama-front and stentoriously announced that he'd picked
a queen--only he pronounced it kaveen, after the manner of our poor old
Swedish Olie!
As that was Sunday we spent the morning "pi-rooting" about the place.
Dinky-Dunk took me out and showed me the stables and the hay-stacks and
the granaries--which he'd just waterproofed so there'd be no more spoilt
grain on that farm--and the "cool-hole" he used to use before the cellar
was built, and the ruins of the sod-hut where the first homesteader that
owned that land had lived. Then he showed me the new bunk-house for the
men, which Olie is finishing in his spare time. It looks much better
than our own shack, being of planed lumber. But Dinky-Dunk is loyal to
the shack, and says it's really better built, and the warmest shack in
the West--as I'll find before winter is over.
Then we stopped at the pump, and Dinky-Dunk made a confession. When he
first bought that ranch there was no water at the shack, except what he
could catch from the roof. Water had to be hauled for miles, and it was
muddy and salty, at that. They used to call it "Gopher soup." This lack
of water always worried him, he said, for women always want water, and
oodles of it. It was the year before, after he had left me at Banff,
that he was determined to get water. It was hard work, putting down that
well, and up to almost the last moment it promised to be a dry hole. But
when they struck that water, Dinky-Dunk says, he decided in his soul
that he was going to have me, if I was to be had. It was water fit for a
queen. And he wanted his queen. But of course even queens have to be
well laved and well laundered. He said he didn't sleep all night, after
they found the water was there. He was too happy; he just went
meandering about the prairie, singing to himself.
"So you were pretty sure of me, Kitten-Cats, even then?" I demanded.
He looked at me with his solemn Scotch-Canadian eyes. "I'm not sure of
you, even now," was his answer. But I made him take it back.
It's rather odd how Dinky-Dunk got this ranch, which used to be called
the Cochrane Ranch, for even behind this peaceful little home of ours
there is a touch of tragedy. Hugh Cochrane was one of Dinky-Dunk's
surveyors when he first took up railroad work in British Columbia. Hugh
had a younger brother Andrew, who was rather wild and had been brought
out here and planted on the prairie to keep him out of mischief. One
winter night he rode nearly thirty miles to a dance (they do that
apparently out here, and think nothing of it) and instead of riding home
at five o'clock in the morning, with the others, he visited a
whisky-runner who was operating a "blind pig." There he acquired much
more whisky than was good for him and got lost on the trail. That meant
he was badly frozen and probably out of his mind before he got back to
the shack. He wasn't able to keep up a fire, of course, or do anything
for himself--and I suppose the poor boy simply froze to death. He was
alone there, and it was weeks and weeks before his body was found. But
the most gruesome part of it all is that his horses had been stabled,
tied up in their stalls without feed. They were all found dead, poor
brutes. They'd even eaten the wooden boards the mangers were built of.
Hugh Cochrane couldn't get over it, and was going to sell the ranch for
fourteen hundred dollars when Dinky-Dunk heard of it and stepped in and
bought the whole half-section. Then he bought the McKinnon place, a
half-section to the north of this, after McKinnon had lost all his
buildings because he was too shiftless to make a fire-guard. And when
the railway work was finished Dinky-Dunk took up wheat-growing. He is a
great believer in wheat. He says wheat spells wealth, in this country.
Some people call him a "land-miner," he says, but when he's given the
chance to do the thing as he wants to, he'll show them who's right.
_Wednesday the Twenty-fifth_
Dinky-Dunk and I have been making plans. He's promised to build an annex
to the shack, a wing on the north side, so I can have a store-room and a
clothes-closet at one end and a guest-chamber at the other. And I'm to
have a sewing-machine and a bread-mixer, and the smelly steer-hide divan
is going to be banished to the bunk-house. And Dinky-Dunk says I must
have a pinto, a riding-horse, as soon as he can lay hands on the right
animal. Later on he says I must have help, but out here in the West
women are hard to get, and harder to keep. They are snatched up by
lonely bachelors like Dinky-Dunk. They can't even keep the
school-teachers (mostly girls from Ontario) from marrying off. But I
don't want a woman about, not for a few months yet. I want Dinky-Dunk
all to myself. And the freedom of isolation like this is such a luxury!
To be just one's self, in civilization, is a luxury, is the greatest
luxury in the world,--and also the most expensive, I've found to my
sorrow.
Out here, there's no object in being anything but one's self. Life is so
simple and honest, so back to first principles! There's joy in the
thought of getting rid of all the sublimated junk of city life. I'm just
a woman; and Dinky-Dunk is just a man. We've got a roof and a bed and a
fire. That's all. And what is there, really, after that? We have to eat,
of course, but we really live well. There's all the game we want,