Books: Main Travelled Roads
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Hamlin Garland >> Main Travelled Roads
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The chickens wakened her as usual that Sabbath morning from
dreams of her absent husband, from whom she had not heard for
weeks. The shadows drifted over the hills, down the slopes, across
the wheat, and up the opposite wall in leisurely way, as if, being
Sunday, they could "take it easy," also. The fowls clustered about
the housewife as she went out into the yard. Fuzzy little chickens
swarmed out from the coops where their clucking and perpetually
disgruntled mothers tramped about, petulantly thrusting their
heads through the spaces between the slats.
A cow called in a deep, musical bass, and a call answered from a
little pen nearby, and a pig scurried guiltily out of the cabbages.
Seeing all this, seeing the pig in the cabbages, the tangle of grass
in the garden, the broken fence which she had mended again and
again -the little woman, hardly more than a girl, sat down and
cried. The bright Sabbath morning was only a mockery without
him!
A few years ago they had bought this farm, paying part,
mortgaging the rest in the usual way. Edward Smith was a man of
terrible energy. He worked "nights and Sundays," as the saying
goes, to clear the farm of its brush and of its insatiate mortgage. In
the midst of his Herculean struggle came the call for volunteers,
and with the grirn and unselfish devotion to his country which
made the Eagle Brigade able to "whip its weight in wildcats," he
threw down his scythe and his grub ax, turned his cattle loose, and
became a blue-coated cog in a vast machine for killing men, and
not thistles. While the millionnaire sent his money to England for
safekeeping, this man, with his girl-wife and three babies, left
them on a mortgaged farm and went away to fight for an idea. It
was foolish, but it was sublime for all that.
That was three years before, and the young wife, sitting on the well
curb on this bright Sabbath harvest morning, was righteously
rebellious. It seemed to her that she had borne her share of the
country's sorrow. Two brothers had been killed, the renter in
whose hands her husband had left the farm had proved a villain,
one year the farm was without crops, and now the overripe grain
was waiting the tardy hand of the neighbor who had rented it, and
who was cutting his own grain first.
About six weeks before, she had received a letter saying, "We'll be
discharged in a little while." But no other word had come from
him. She had seen by the papers that his army was being
discharged, and from day to day other soldiers slowly percolated in
blue streams back into the state and county, but still her private did
not return.
Each week she had told the children that he was coming' and she
had watched the road so long that it had become unconscious, and
as she stood at the well, or by the kitchen door, her eyes were fixed
unthinkingly on the road that wound down the coulee. Nothing
wears on the human soul like waiting. If the stranded mariner,
'searching the sun-bright seas, could once give up hope of a ship,
that horrible grinding on his brain would cease. It was this waiting,
hoping, on the edge of despair, that gave Emma Smith no rest.
Neighbors said, with kind intentions, "He's sick, maybe, an' can't
start North just yet. He'll come along one o' these days."
"Why don't he write?" was her question, which silenced them all.
This Sunday morning it seemed to her as if she couldn't stand it
any longer. The house seemed intolerably lonely. So she dressed
the little ones in their best calico dresses and homemade jackets,
and closing up the house, set off down the coulee to old Mother
Gray's.
"Old Widder Gray" lived at the "mouth of the coulee." She was a
widow woman with a large family of stalwart boys and laughing
girls. She was the visible incarnation of hospitality and optimistic
poverty. With Western open-heartedness she fed every mouth that
asked food of her, and worked herself to death as cheerfully as her
girls danced in the neighborhood harvest dances.
She waddled down the path to meet Mrs. Smith with a smile on
her face that would have made the countenance of a convict
expand.
"Oh, you little dears! Come right to yer granny. Gimme a kiss!
Come right in, Mis' Smith. How are yeh, anyway? Nice mornin',
ain't it? Come in an' set down. Every-thing's in a clutter, but that
won't scare you any."
She led the way into the "best room," a sunny, square room,
carpeted with a faded and patched rag carpet, and papered with a
horrible white-and-green-striped wallpaper, where a few ghastly
effigies of dead members of the family hung in variously sized
oval walnut frames. The house resounded with singing, laughter,
whistling, tramping of boots, and scufflings. Half-grown boys
came to the door and crooked their fingers at the children, who ran
out, and were soon heard in the midst of the fun.
"Don't s'pose you've heard from Ed?" Mrs. Smith shook her head.
"He'll turn up some day, when you ain't look-in' for 'm." The good
old soul had said that so many times that poor Mrs. Smith derived
no comfort from it any longer.
"Liz heard from Al the other day. He's comin' some, day this week.
Anyhow, they expect him."
"Did he say anything of-"
"No, he didn't," Mrs. Gray admitted. "But then it was only a short
letter, anyhow. Al ain't much for ritin', anyhow. But come out and
see my new cheese. I tell yeh, I don't believe I ever had hetter luck
in my life. If Ed should come, I want you should take him up a
piece of this cheese."
It was beyond human nature to resist the influence of that noisy,
hearty, loving household, and in the midst of the singing and
laughing the wife forgot her anxiety, for the time at least, and
laughed and sang with the rest.
About eleven o'clock a wagonload more drove up to the door, and
Bill Gray, the widow's oldest son, and his whole family from Sand
Lake Coulee piled out amid a good-natured uproar, as
characteristic as it was ludicrous. Everyone talked. at once, except
Bill, who sat in the wagon with his wrists on his knees, a straw in
his mouth, and an amused twinkle in his blue eyes.
"Ain't heard nothin' o' Ed, I s'pose?" he asked in a kind of bellow.
Mrs. Smith shook her head. Bill, with a delicacy very striking in
such a great giant, rolled his quid in his mouth and said:
"Didn't know but you had. I hear two or three of the Sand Lake
boys are comm'. Left New Orleenes some time this week. Didn't
write nothin' about Ed, but no news is good news in such cases,
Mother always says."
"Well, go put out yer team," said Mrs. Gray, "an' go'n bring me in
some taters, an', Sim, you go see if you c'n find some corn. Sadie,
you put on the water to b'ile. Come now, hustle yer boots., all o'
yeh. If I feed this yer crowd, we've got to have some raw materials.
If y' think.I'm goin' to feed yeh on pie-"
The children went off into the fields, the girls put dinner on to
"b'ile," and then went to change their dresses and fix their hair.
"Somebody might come," they said.
"Land sakes, l hope not! I don't know where in time I'd set 'em,
'less they'd eat at the secont table," Mrs. Gray laughed in pretended
dismay.
The two older boys, who had served their time in the army, lay out
on the grass before the house, and whittied and talked desultorily
about the war and the crops, and planned buying a threshing
machine. The older girls and Mrs. Smith helped enlarge the table
and put on the dishes, talking all the time in that cheery,
incoherent, and meaningful way a group of such women have-a
conversation to be taken for its spirit rather than for its letter,
though Mrs. Gray at last got the ear of them all and dissertated at
length on girls.
"Girls in love ain't no use in the whole blessed week," she said.
"Sundays they're a-lookin' down the road, expectin' he'll come.
Sunday afternoons they can't think o' nothin' else, 'cause he's here.
Monday mornin's they're sleepy and kind o' dreamy and slimpsy,
and good fr nothin' on Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday they git
absent-minded, an' begin to look off toward Sunday agin, an' mope
aroun' and let the dishwater git cold, rtght under their noses. Friday
they break dishes, and go off in the best room an' snivel, an' look
out o' the winder. Saturdays they have queer spurts o' workin' like
all p'ssessed, an spurts o' frizzin' their hair. An' Sunday they begin
it all over agin."
The girls giggled and blushed all through this tirade from their
mother, their broad faces and powerful frames anything but
suggestive of lackadaisical sentiment. But Mrs. Smith said:
"Now, Mrs. Gray, I hadn't ought to stay to dianer. You've got-"
"Now you set right down! If any of them girls' beaus comes, they'll
have to take what's left, that's all. They ain't s'posed to have much
appetite, nohow. No, you're goin' to stay if they starve, an' they
ain't no danger o' that."
At one o'clock the long table was piled with boiled potatoes, cords
of boiled corn on the cob, squash and pumpkin pies, hot biscuit,
sweet pickles, bread and butter, and honey. Then one of the girls
took down a conch shell from a nail and, going to the door, blew a
long, fine, free blast, that showed there was no weakness of lungs
in her ample chest.
Then the children came out of the forest of corn, out of the crick,
out of the loft of the barn, and out of the garden. The men shut up
their jackknives, and surrounded the horse trough to souse their
faces in the cold, hard water, and in a few moments the table was
filled with a merry crowd, and a row of wistful-eyed youngsters
circled the kitchen wail, where they stood first on one leg and then
on the other, in impatient hunger.
"They come to their feed f'r all the world jest like the pigs when y'
hoilder 'poo-ee!' See 'em scoot!" laughed Mrs. Gray, every wrinkle
on her face shining with delight. "Now pitch in, Mrs. Smith," she
said, presiding over the table. "You know these men critters.
They'll eat every grain of it, if yeh give 'em a chance. I swan,
they're made o' Indian rubber, their stomachs is, I know it."
"Haft to eat to work," said Bill, gnawing a cob with a swift,
circular motion that rivaled a corn sheller in results.
"More like workin' to eat," put in one of the girls with a giggle.
"More eat 'n' work with you."
"You needn't say anything, Net. Anyone that'll eat seven ears-"
"I didn't, no such thing. You piled your cobs on my plate."
"That'll do to tell Ed Varney. It won't go down here, where we
know yeh."
"Good land! Eat all yeh want! They's plenty more in the fiel's, but I
can't afford to give you young 'uns tea. The tea is for us
womenfolks, and 'specially fr Mis' Smith an' Bill's wife. We're
agoin' to tell fortunes by it."
One by one the men filled up and shoved back, and one by one the
children slipped into their places, and by two o'clock the women
alone remained around the debris-covered table, sipping their tea
and telling fortunes.
As they got well down to the grounds in the cup, they shook them
with a circular motion in the hand, and then turned them
bottom-side-up quickly in the saucer, then twirled them three or
four times one way, and three or four times the other, during a
breathless pause. Then Mrs. Gray lifted the cup and, gazing into it
with profound gravity, pronounced the impending fate.
It must be admitted that, to a critical observer, she had abundant
preparation for hitting close to the mark; as when she told the girls
that "somebody was coming." "It is a man," she went on gravely.
"He is cross-eyed-"
"Oh, you hush!"
"He has red hair, and is death on b'iled corn and hot biscuit."
The others shrieked with delight.
"But he's goin' to get the mitten, that redheaded feller is, for I see a
feller comin' up behind him."
"Oh, lemme see, lemme see!" cried Nettle.
"Keep off," said the priestess with a lofty gesture. "His hair is
black. He don't eat so much, and he works more."
The girls exploded in a shriek of laughter and pounded their sister
on the back.
At last came Mrs. Smith's turn, and she was trembling with
excitement as Mrs. Gray again composed her jolly face to what she
considered a proper solemnity of expression.
"Somebody is comin' to you," she said after a long pause. "He's got
a musket on his back. He's a soldier. He's almost here. See?"
She pointed at two little tea stems, which formed a faint
suggestion of a man with a musket on his back. He had climbed
nearly to the edge of the cup. Mrs. Smith grew pale with
excitement. She trembled so she could hardly hold the cup in her
hand as she gazed into it.
"It's Ed," cried the old woman. "He's on the way home. Heavens an'
earth! There he is now!" She turned and waved her hand out
toward the road. They rushed to the door and looked where she
pointed.
A man in a blue coat, with a musket on his back, was toiling
slowly up the hill, on the sun-bright, dusty road, toiling slowly,
with bent head half-hidden by a heavy knapsack. So tired it
seemed that walking was indeed a process of falling. So eager to
get home he would not stop, would not look aside, but plodded on,
amid the cries of the locusts, the welcome of the crickets, and the
rustle of the yellow wheat. Getting back to God's country, and his
wife and babies!
Laughing, crying, trying to call him and the children at the same
time, the little wife, almost hysterical, snatched her hat and ran out
into the yard. But the soldier had disappeared over the hill into the
hollowy beyond, and, by the time she had found the children, he
was too far away for her voice to reach him. And besides, she was
not sure it was her husband, for he had not turned his head at their
shouts. This seemed so strange. Why didn't he stop to rest at his
old neighbor's house? Tortured by hope and doubt, she hurried up
the coulee as fast as she could push the baby wagon, the blue
coated figure just ahead pushing steadily, silently forward up the
coulee.
When the excited, panting little group came in sight of the gate,
they saw the blue-coated figure standing, leaning upon the rough
rail fence, his chin on his palms, gazing at the empty house. His
knapsack, canteen, blankets, and musket lay upon the dusty grass
at his feet.
He was like a man lost in a dream. His wide, hungry eyes devoured
the scene. The rough lawn, the little unpainted house, the field of
clear yellow wheat behind it, down across which streamed the sun,
now almost ready to touch the high hill to the west, the crickets
crying merrily, a cat on the fence nearby, dreaming, unmmdful of
the stranger in blue.
How peaceful it all was. O God! How far removed from all camps,
hospitals, battlelines. A little cabin in a Wisconsin coulee, but it
was majestic in its peace. How did he ever leave it for those years
of tramping, thirsting, killing?
Trembling, weak with emotion, her eyes on the silent figure, Mrs.
Smith hurried up to the fence. Her feet made no noise in the dust
and grass, and they were close upon him before he knew of them.
The oldest boy ran a little ahead. He will never forget that figure,
that face. It will always remain as something epic, that return of
the private. He fixed his eyes on the pale face, covered with a
ragged beard.
"Who are you, sir?" asked the wife, or, rather, started to ask, for he
turned, stood a moment, and then cried:
"Emma!"
"Edward!"
The children stood in a curious row to see their mother kiss this
bearded, strange man, the elder girl sobbing sympathetically with
her mother. Illness had left the soldier partly deaf, and this added
to the strangeness of his manner.
But the boy of six years stood away, even after the girl had
recognized her father and kissed him. The man turned then to the
baby and said in a curiously unpaternal tone:
"Come here, my little man; don't you know me?" But the baby
backed away under the fence and stood peering at him critically.
"My little man!" What meaning in those words! This baby seemed
like some other woman's child, and not the infant he had left in his
wife's arms. The war had come between him and his baby-he was
only "a strange man, with big eyes, dressed in blue, with Mother
hanging to his arm, and talking in a loud voice.
"And this is Tom," he said, drawing the oldest boy to him. "He'll
come and see me. He knows his poor old pap when he comes
home from the war."
The mother heard the pain and reproach in his voice and hastened
to apologize.
"You've changed so, Ed. He can't know yeh. This is Papa, Teddy;
come and kiss him-Tom and Mary do, Come, won't you?" But
Teddy still peered through the fence with solemn eyes, well out of
reach. He resembled a half-wild kitten that hesitates, studying the
tones of one's voice.
"I'll fix him," said the soldier, and sat down to undo his knapsack,
out of which he drew three enormous and very red apples. After
giving one to each of the older children, he said:
"Now I guess he'll come. Eh, my little man? Now come see your
pap."
Teddy crept slowly under the fence, assisted by the overzealous
Tommy, and a moment later was kick-ing and squalling in his
father's arms. Then they entered the house, into the sitting room,
poor, bare, art-forsaken little room, too, with its rag carpet, its
square clock, and its two or three chromos and pictures from
Harper's Weekly pinned about.
"Emma, I'm all tired out," said Private Smith as he flung himself
down on the carpet as he used to do, while his wife brought a
pillow to put under his head, and the children stood about,
munching their apples.
"Tommy, you run and get me a pan of chips; and Mary, you get the
teakettle on, and I'll go and make some biscuit."
And the soldier talked. Question after question he poured forth
about the crops, the cattle, the renter, the neighbors. He slipped his
heavy government brogan shoes off his poor, tired, blistered feet,
and lay out with utter, sweet relaxation. He was a free man again,
no longer a soldier under command. At supper he stopped once,
listened, and smiled. "That's old Spot. I know her voice. I s'pose
that's her calf out there in the pen. I can't milk her tonight, though,
I'm too tired; but I tell you, I'd like a drink o' her milk. What's
become of old Rove?"
"He died last winter. Poisoned, I guess." There was a moment of
sadness for them all. It was some time before the husband spoke
again, in a voice that trembled a little.
"Poor old feller! He'd a known me a half a mile away. I expected
him to come down the hill to meet me. It 'ud 'a' been more like
comin' home if I could 'a' seen him comm' down the road an'
waggin' his tail, an' laugh-in' that way he has. I tell yeh, it kin' o'
took hold o' me to see the blinds down an' the house shut up."
"But, yeh see, we-we expected you'd write again 'fore you started.
And then we thought we'd see you if you did come," she hastened
to explain.
"Well, I ain't worth a cent on writin'. Besides, it's just as well yeh
didn't know when I was comm'. I tell yeh, it sounds good to hear
them chickens out there, an' turkeys, an' the crickets. Do you know
they don't have just the same kind o' crickets down South. Who's
Sam hired t' help cut yer grain?"
"The Ramsey boys."
"Looks like a good crop; but I'm afraid I won't do much gettin' it
cut. This cussed fever an' ague has got me down pretty low. I don't
know when I'll get red of it. I'll bet I've took twenty-five pounds of
quinine, if I've taken a bit. Gimme another biscuit. I tell yeh, they
taste good, Emma. I ain't had anything like it- Say, if you'd a heard
me braggin' to th' boys about your butter 'n' biscuits, I'll bet your
ears 'ud 'a' burnt."
The private's wife colored with pleasure. "Oh, you're always
a-braggin' about your things. Everybody makes good butter."
"Yes; old lady Snyder, for instance."
"Oh, well, she ain't to be mentioned. She's Dutch."
"Or old Mis' Snively. One more cup o' tea, Mary. That's my girl!
I'm feeling better already. I just b'lieve the matter with me is, I'm
starved."
This was a delicious hour, one long to be remembered. They were
like lovers again. But their tenderness, like that of a typical
American, found utterance in tones, rather than in words. He was
praising her when praising her biscuit, and she knew it. They grew
soberer when he showed where he had been struck, one ball
burning the back of his hand, one cutting away a lock of hair from
his temple, and one passing through the calf of his leg. The wife
shuddered to think how near she had come to being a soldier's
widow. Her waiting no longer seemed hard. This sweet, glorious
hour effaced it all.
Then they rose and all went out into the garden and down to the
barn. He stood beside her while she milked old Spot. They began
to plan fields and crops for next year. Here was the epic figure
which Whitman has in mind, and which he calls the "common
American soldier." With the livery of war on his limbs, this man
was facing his future, his thoughts holding no scent of battle.
Clean, clear-headed, in spite of physical weakness, Edward Smith,
private, turned future-ward with a sublime courage.
His farm was mortgaged, a rascally renter had run away with his
machinery, "departing between two days," his children needed
clothing, the years were coming upon him, he was sick and
emaciated, but his heroic soul did not quail. With the same
courage with which he faced his southern march, be entered upon
a still more hazardous future.
Oh, that mystic hour! The pale man with big eyes standing there by
the well, with his young wife by his side. The vast moon swinging
above the eastern peaks; the cattle winding down the pasture
slopes with jangling bells; the crickets singing; the stars blooming
out sweet and far and serene; the katydids rhythmically calling; the
little turkeys crying querulously as they settled to roost in the
poplar tree near the open gate. The voices at the well drop lower,
the little ones nestle in their father's arms at last, and Teddy falls
asleep there.
The common soldier of the American volunteer army had returned.
His war with the South was over, and his fight, his daily running
fight, with nature and against the injustice of his fellow men was
begun again. In tlie dusk of that far-off valley his figure looms
vast, his personal peculiarities fade away, he rises into a
magnificent type.
He is a gray-haired man of sixty now, and on the brown hair of his
wife the white is also showing. They are fighting a hopeless battle,
and must fight till God gives them furlough.
UNDER THE LION'S PAW
"Along the main-travelled road trailed an endless line of prairie
schooners. Coming into sight at the east, and passing out of sight
over the swell to the west. We children used to wonder where they
were going and why they went."
IT was the last of autumn and first day of winter coming together.
All day long the ploughmen on their prairie farms had moved to
and fro in their wide level fields through the falling snow, which
melted as it fell, wetting them to the skin all day, notwithstanding
the frequent squalls of snow, the dripping, desolate clouds, and the
muck of the furrows, black and tenacious as tar.
Under their dripping harness the horses swung to and fro silently
with that marvellous uncomplaining patience which marks the
horse. All day the wild geese, honking wildly, as they sprawled
sidewise down the wind, seemed to be fleeing from an enemy
behind, and with neck outthrust and wings extended, sailed down
the wind, soon lost to sight.
Yet the ploughman behind his plough, though the snow lay on his
ragged great-coat, and the cold clinging mud rose on his heavy
boots, fettering him like gyves, whistled in the very beard of the
gale. As day passed, the snow, ceasing to melt, lay along the
ploughed land, and lodged in the depth of the stubble, till on each
slow round the last furrow stood out black and shining as jet
between the ploughed land and the gray stubble.
When night began to fall, and the geese, flying low, began to alight
invisibly in the near corn-field, Stephen Council was still at work
"finishing a land." He rode on his sulky plough when going with
the wind, but walked when facing it. Sitting bent and cold but
cheery under his slouch hat, he talked encouragingly to his
four-in-hand.
"Come round there, boys! Round agin! We got t' finish this land.
Come in there, Dan! Stiddy, Kate, stiddy! None o' y'r tantrums,
Kittie. It's purty tuff, but got a be did. Tchk! tchk! Step along, Pete!
Don't let Kate git y'r single-tree on the wheel. Once more!"
They seemed to know what he meant, and that this was the last
round, for they worked with greater vigor than before. "Once
more, boys, an' then, sez I, oats an' a nice warm stall, an' sleep f'r
all."
By the time the last furrow was turned on the land it was too dark
to see the house, and the snow was changing to rain again. The
tired and hungry man could see the light from the kitchen shining
through the leafless hedge, and he lifted a great shout, "Supper f'r
a half a dozen!"
It was nearly eight o'clock by the time he had finished his chores
and started for supper. He was picking his way carefully through
the mud, when the tall form of a man loomed up before him with
a premonitory cough.
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