A Son of the Middle Border Part 22

Once more the spirit of the explorer flamed up in the soldier's heart.

Once more the sunset allured. Once more my mother sang the marching song of the McClintocks,

O'er the hills in legions, boys, Fair freedom's star Points to the sunset regions, boys, Ha, ha, ha-ha!

and sometime, in May I think it was, father again set out--this time by train, to explore the Land of The Dakotas which had but recently been wrested from the control of Sitting Bull.

He was gone only two weeks, but on his return announced with triumphant smile that he had taken up a homestead in Ordway, Brown County, Dakota.

His face was again alight with the hope of the borderman, and he had much to say of the region he had explored.

As graduation day came on, Burton and I became very serious. The question of our future pressed upon us. What were we to do when our schooling ended? Neither of us had any hope of going to college, and neither of us had any intention of going to Dakota, although I had taken "Going West" as the theme of my oration. We were also greatly worried about these essays. Burton fell off in appet.i.te and grew silent and abstracted. Each of us gave much time to declaiming our speeches, and the question of dress troubled us. Should we wear white ties and white vests, or white ties and black vests?

The evening fell on a dark and rainy night, but the Garlands came down in their best attire and so did the Babc.o.c.ks, the Gilchrists and many other of our neighbors. Burton was hoping that his people would not come, he especially dreaded the humorous gaze of his brother Charles who took a much less serious view of Burton's powers as an orator than Burton considered just. Other interested parents and friends filled the New Opera House to the doors, producing in us a sense of awe for this was the first time the "Exercises" had taken place outside the chapel.

Never again shall I feel the same exultation, the same pleasure mingled with bitter sadness, the same perception of the irrevocable pa.s.sing of beautiful things, and the equally inexorable coming on of care and trouble, as filled my heart that night. Whether any of the other members of my cla.s.s vibrated with similar emotion or not I cannot say, but I do recall that some of the girls annoyed me by their excessive attentions to unimportant ribbons, flounces, and laces. "How do I look?" seemed their princ.i.p.al concern. Only Alice expressed anything of the prophetic sadness which mingled with her exultation.

The name of my theme, (which was made public for the first time in the little programme) is worthy of a moment's emphasis. _Going West_ had been suggested, of course by the emigration fever, then at its height, and upon it I had lavished a great deal of anxious care. As an oration it was all very excited and very florid, but it had some stirring ideas in it and coming in the midst of the profound political discourses of my fellows and the formal essays of the girls, it seemed much more singular and revolutionary, both in form and in substance, than it really was.

As I waited my turn, I experienced that sense of nausea, that numbness which always preceded my platform trials, but as my name was called I contrived to reach the proper place behind the footlights, and to bow to the audience. My opening paragraph perplexed my fellows, and naturally, for it was exceedingly florid, filled with phrases like "the lure of the sunset," "the westward urge of men," and was neither prose nor verse.

Nevertheless I detected a slight current of sympathy coming up to me, and in the midst of the vast expanse of faces, I began to detect here and there a friendly smile. Mother and father were near but their faces were very serious.

After a few moments the blood began to circulate through my limbs and I was able to move about a little on the stage. My courage came back, but alas!--just in proportion as I attained confidence my emotional chant mounted too high! Since the writing was extremely ornate, my manner should have been studiedly cold and simple. This I knew perfectly well, but I could not check the perfervid rush of my song. I ranted deplorably, and though I closed amid fairly generous applause, no flowers were handed up to me. The only praise I received came from Charles Lohr, the man who had warned me against becoming a lawyer's hack. He, meeting me in the wings of the stage as I came off, remarked with ironic significance, "Well, that was an original piece of business!"

This delighted me exceedingly, for I had written with special deliberate intent to go outside the conventional grind of graduating orations.

Feeling dimly, but sincerely, the epic march of the American pioneer I had tried to express it in an address which was in fact a sloppy poem. I should not like to have that ma.n.u.script printed precisely as it came from my pen, and a phonographic record of my voice would serve admirably as an instrument of blackmail. However, I thought at the time that I had done moderately well, and my mother's shy smile confirmed me in the belief.

Burton was white with stage-fright as he stepped from the wings but he got through very well, better than I, for he attempted no oratorical flights.

Now came the usual hurried and painful farewells of cla.s.smates. With fervid hand-clasp we separated, some of us never again to meet. Our beloved princ.i.p.al (who was even then shadowed by the illness which brought about his death) clung to us as if he hated to see us go, and some of us could not utter a word as we took his hand in parting. What I said to Alice and Maud and Ethel I do not know, but I do recall that I had an uncomfortable lump in my throat while saying it.

As a truthful historian, I must add that Burton and I, immediately after this highly emotional close of our school career, were both called upon to climb into the family carriage and drive away into the black night, back to the farm,--an experience which seemed to us at the time a sad anticlimax. When we entered our ugly attic rooms and tumbled wearily into our hard beds, we retained very little of our momentary sense of victory. Our carefree school life was ended. Our stern education in life had begun.

CHAPTER XX

The Land of the Dakotas

The movement of settlers toward Dakota had now become an exodus, a stampede. Hardly anything else was talked about as neighbors met one another on the road or at the Burr Oak school-house on Sundays. Every man who could sell out had gone west or was going. In vain did the county papers and Farmer's Inst.i.tute lecturers advise cattle raising and plead for diversified tillage, predicting wealth for those who held on; farmer after farmer joined the march to Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota.

"We are wheat raisers," they said, "and we intend to keep in the wheat belt."

Our own family group was breaking up. My uncle David of pioneer spirit had already gone to the far Missouri Valley. Rachel had moved to Georgia, and Grandad McClintock was with his daughters, Samantha and Deborah, in western Minnesota. My mother, thus widely separated from her kin, resigned herself once more to the thought of founding a new home.

Once more she sang, "O'er the hills in legions, boys," with such spirit as she could command, her clear voice a little touched with the huskiness of regret.

I confess I sympathized in some degree with my father's new design.

There was something large and fine in the business of wheat-growing, and to have a plague of insects arise just as our harvesting machinery was reaching such perfection that we could handle our entire crop without hired help, was a tragic, abominable injustice. I could not blame him for his resentment and dismay.

My personal plans were now confused and wavering. I had no intention of joining this westward march; on the contrary, I was looking toward employment as a teacher, therefore my last weeks at the Seminary were shadowed by a cloud of uncertainty and vague alarm. It seemed a time of change, and immense, far-reaching, portentous readjustment. Our homestead was sold, my world was broken up. "What am I to do?" was my question.

Father had settled upon Ordway, Brown County, South Dakota, as his future home, and immediately after my graduation, he and my brother set forth into the new country to prepare the way for the family's removal, leaving me to go ahead with the harvest alone. It fell out, therefore, that immediately after my flowery oration on _Going West_ I found myself more of a slave to the cattle than ever before in my life.

Help was scarce; I could not secure even so much as a boy to aid in milking the cows; I was obliged to work double time in order to set up the sheaves of barley which were in danger of mouldering on the wet ground. I worked with a kind of bitter, desperate pleasure, saying, "This is the last time I shall ever lift a bundle of this accursed stuff."

And then, to make the situation worse, in raising some heavy machinery connected with the self-binder, I strained my side so seriously that I was unable to walk. This brought the harvesting to a stand, and made my father's return necessary. For several weeks I hobbled about, bent like a gnome, and so helped to reap what the chinch bugs had left, while my mother prepared to "follow the sunset" with her "Boss."

September first was the day set for saying good-bye to Dry Run, and it so happened that her wedding anniversary fell close upon the same date and our neighbors, having quietly pa.s.sed the word around, came together one Sunday afternoon to combine a farewell dinner with a Silver Wedding "surprise party."

Mother saw nothing strange in the coming of the first two carriages, the b.u.t.tons often came driving in that way,--but when the Babc.o.c.ks, the Coles, and the Gilchrists clattered in with smiling faces, we all stood in the yard transfixed with amazement. "What's the meaning of all this?"

asked my father.

No one explained. The women calmly clambered down from their vehicles, bearing baskets and bottles and k.n.o.bby parcels, and began instant and concerted bustle of preparation. The men tied their horses to the fence and hunted up saw-horses and planks, and soon a long table was spread beneath the trees on the lawn. One by one other teams came whirling into the yard. The a.s.sembly resembled a "vandoo" as Asa Walker said. "It's worse than that," laughed Mrs. Turner. "It's a silver wedding and a 'send off' combined."

They would not let either the "bride" or the "groom" do a thing, and with smiling resignation my mother folded her hands and sank into a chair. "All right," she said. "I am perfectly willing to sit by and see you do the work. I won't have another chance right away." And there was something sad in her voice. She could not forget that this was the beginning of a new pioneering adventure.

The shadows were long on the gra.s.s when at the close of the supper old John Gammons rose to make a speech and present the silver tea set. His voice was tremulous with emotion as he spoke of the loss which the neighborhood was about to suffer, and tears were in many eyes when father made reply. The old soldier's voice failed him several times during his utterance of the few short sentences he was able to frame, and at last he was obliged to take his seat, and blow his nose very hard on his big bandanna handkerchief to conceal his emotion.

It was a very touching and beautiful moment to me, for as I looked around upon that little group of men and women, rough-handed, bent and worn with toil, silent and shadowed with the sorrow of parting, I realized as never before the high place my parents had won in the estimation of their neighbors. It affected me still more deeply to see my father stammer and flush with uncontrollable emotion. I had thought the event deeply important before, but I now perceived that our going was all of a piece with the West's elemental restlessness. I could not express what I felt then, and I can recover but little of it now, but the pain which filled my throat comes back to me mixed with a singular longing to relive it.

There, on a low mound in the midst of the prairie, in the shadow of the house we had built, beneath the slender trees we had planted, we were bidding farewell to one cycle of emigration and entering upon another.

The border line had moved on, and my indomitable Dad was moving with it.

I s.h.i.+vered with dread of the irrevocable decision thus forced upon me. I heard a clanging as of great gates behind me and the field of the future was wide and wan.

From this spot we had seen the wild prairies disappear. On every hand wheat and corn and clover had taken the place of the wild oat, the hazelbush and the rose. Our house, a commonplace frame cabin, took on grace. Here Hattie had died. Our yard was ugly, but there Jessie's small feet had worn a slender path. Each of our lives was knit into these hedges and rooted in these fields and yet, notwithstanding all this, in response to some powerful yearning call, my father was about to set out for the fifth time into the still more remote and untrodden west. Small wonder that my mother sat with bowed head and tear-blinded eyes, while these good and faithful friends crowded around her to say good-bye.

She had no enemies and no hatreds. Her rich singing voice, her smiling face, her ready sympathy with those who suffered, had endeared her to every home into which she had gone, even as a momentary visitor. No woman in childbirth, no afflicted family within a radius of five miles had ever called for her in vain. Death knew her well, for she had closed the eyes of youth and age, and yet she remained the same laughing, bounteous, whole-souled mother of men that she had been in the valley of the Neshonoc. Nothing could permanently cloud her face or embitter the sunny sweetness of her creed.

One by one the women put their worn, ungraceful arms about her, kissed her with trembling lips, and went away in silent grief. The scene became too painful for me at last, and I fled away from it--out into the fields, bitterly asking, "Why should this suffering be? Why should mother be wrenched from all her dearest friends and forced to move away to a strange land?"

I did not see the actual packing up and moving of the household goods, for I had determined to set forth in advance and independently, eager to be my own master, and at the moment I did not feel in the least like pioneering.

Some two years before, when the failure of our crop had made the matter of my continuing at school an issue between my father and myself, I had said, "If you will send me to school until I graduate, I will ask nothing further of you," and these words I now took a stern pleasure in upholding. Without a dollar of my own, I announced my intention to fare forth into the world on the strength of my two hands, but my father, who was in reality a most affectionate parent, offered me thirty dollars to pay my carfare.

This I accepted, feeling that I had abundantly earned this money, and after a sad parting with my mother and my little sister, set out one September morning for Osage. At the moment I was oppressed with the thought that this was the fork in the trail, that my family and I had started on differing roads. I had become a man. With all the ways of the world before me I suffered from a feeling of doubt. The open gate allured me, but the homely scenes I was leaving suddenly put forth a latent magic.

I knew every foot of this farm. I had traversed it scores of times in every direction, following the plow, the harrow, or the seeder. With a great lumber wagon at my side I had husked corn from every acre of it, and now I was leaving it with no intention of returning. My action, like that of my father, was final. As I looked back up the lane at the tall Lombardy poplar trees bent like sabres in the warm western wind, the landscape I was leaving seemed suddenly very beautiful, and the old home very peaceful and very desirable. Nevertheless I went on.

Try as I may, I cannot bring back out of the darkness of that night any memory of how I spent the time. I must have called upon some of my cla.s.smates, but I cannot lay hold upon a single word or look or phrase from any of them. Deeply as I felt my distinction in thus riding forth into the world, all the tender incidents of farewell are lost to me.

Perhaps my boyish self-absorption prevented me from recording outside impressions, for the idea of travelling, of crossing the State line, profoundly engaged me. Up to this time, notwithstanding all my dreams of conquest in far countries, I had never ridden in a railway coach! Can you wonder therefore that I trembled with joyous excitement as I paced the platform next morning waiting for the chariot of my romance? The fact that it was a decayed little coach at the end of a "mixed accommodation train" on a stub road did not matter. I was ecstatic.

However, I was well dressed, and my inexperience appeared only in a certain tense watchfulness. I closely observed what went on around me and was careful to do nothing which could be misconstrued as ignorance.

Thrilling with excitement, feeling the mighty significance of my departure, I entered quietly and took my seat, while the train roared on through Mitch.e.l.l and St. Ansgar, the little towns in which I had played my part as an actor,--on into distant climes and marvellous cities. My emotion was all very boyish, but very natural as I look back upon it.

The town in which I spent my first night abroad should have been called Thebes or Athens or Palmyra; but it was not. On the contrary, it was named Ramsey, after an old pioneer, and no one but a youth of fervid imagination at the close of his first day of adventure in the world would have found it worth a second glance. To me it was both beautiful and inspiring, for the reason that it was new territory and because it was the home of Alice, my most brilliant school mate, and while I had in mind some notion of a conference with the county superintendent of schools, my real reason for stopping off was a desire to see this girl whom I greatly admired.

I smile as I recall the feeling of pride with which I stepped into the 'bus and started for the Grand Central Hotel. And yet, after all, values are relative. That boy had something which I have lost. I would give much of my present knowledge of the world for the keen savor of life which filled my nostrils at that time.