The Prairie Child Part 11

The revolver was empty. It was empty-had been empty for weeks. But the significant fact remained that I had deliberately pulled the trigger.

I had stood ready, in my moment of madness, to kill the man that I lived with....

Had a ball of lead gone through that man's body, I don't think he could have staggered back with a more startled expression on his face.

He looked more than bewildered; he looked vaguely humiliated, oddly and wordlessly affronted, as he stood leaning against the table-edge, breathing hard, his skin a mottled blue-white to the very lips. He made an effort to speak, but no sound came from him. For a moment the dreadful thought raced through me that I had indeed shot him, that in some mysterious way he was mortally hurt, without this particular bullet announcing itself as bullets usually do. I looked at the revolver, stupidly. It seemed to have grown heavy, as heavy as a cook-stove in my hand.

"You'd do that?" whispered my husband, very slowly, with a stricken light in his eyes which I couldn't quite understand. I intended to put the Colt on the table. But something must have been wrong with my vision, for the loathsome thing fell loathsomely to the floor. I felt sick and shaken and a horrible misty feeling of homelessness settled down about me, of a sudden, for I remembered how closely I had skirted the black gulf of murder.

"Oh, d.i.n.ky-Dunk!" I blubbered, weakly, as I groped toward him. He must have thought that I was going to fall, for he put out his arm and held me up. He held me up, but there wasn't an atom of warmth in his embrace. He held me up about the same as he'd hold up an open wheat-sack that threatened to tumble over on his granary floor. I don't know what reaction it was that took my strength away from me, but I clung to his shoulders and sobbed there. I felt as alone in the gray wastes of time as one of Gershom's lost stars. And I knew that my d.i.n.ky-Dunk would never bend down now and whisper into my ear any word of comfort, any word of forgiveness. For, however things may have been at the first, I was the one who was now so hopelessly in the wrong, _I_ was the big offender. And that knowledge only added to my misery as I stood there clinging to my husband's shoulders and blubbering "Oh, d.i.n.ky-Dunk!"

It must have grown distasteful to him, my foolish hanging on to him as though he were a hitching-post, for he finally said in a remote voice: "I guess we've had about enough of this." He led me rather ceremoniously to a chair, and slowly let me down in it. Then he crossed over to the old leather holster and picked it up, and stooped for the revolver, and pushed it down in the holster and buckled the cover-flap and tossed the whole thing up to the top of the book-cabinet again. Then, without speaking to me, he walked slowly out of the room.

I was tempted to call him back, but I knew, on second thought, that it would be no use. I merely sat there, staring ahead of me. Then I shut my eyes and tried to think. I don't know why, but I was thinking about the bigness of Betelgeuse, which was twenty-seven million times as big as our sun and which was going on through its millions of miles of s.p.a.ce without knowing anything about Chaddie McKail and what had happened to her that morning. I was wondering if there were worlds between me and Betelgeuse with women on them, with women as alone as I was, when I felt a pair of small arms tighten about my knees and an adoring small voice whispered "Mummsy!" And I forgot about Betelgeuse.

For it was my d.i.n.kie there, with his little rough hand reaching hungrily for mine....

Minty has been removed from Casa Grande. I took him over to the Teetzel ranch in the car, and young Dode Teetzel is to get a dollar a week for looking after him and feeding him. Only Elmer and I know of his whereabouts. And once a week the boy can canter over on Buntie and keep in touch with his pup.

We have a tacit understanding that the occurrences of yesterday morning are a closed chapter, are not to be referred to by word or deed. Duncan himself found it necessary to team in to Buckhorn and left word with Struthers that he would stay in town over night. The call for the Buckhorn trip was, of course, a polite fabrication, an expedient _pax in bello_ to permit the dust of battle to settle a little about this troubled house of McKail. All day to-day I have felt rather languid. I suppose it's the lethargy which naturally follows after all violence. Any respectable woman, I used to think, could keep a dead-line in her soul, beyond which the impulses of evil dare not venture. But I must have been wrong.... All week I've been looking for a letter from Peter Ketley. But for once in his life he seems to have forgotten us.

_Sunday the Twentieth_

I've been wondering to-day just what I'd do if I had to earn my own living. I could run a ranch, I suppose, if I still had one, but two or three years of such work would see me a hatchet-faced old termagant with fallen arches and a prairie-squint. Or I could raise chickens and peddle dated eggs in a flivver-and fresco hen-coops with whitewash until the trap-nest of time swallowed me up in oblivion. Or I could take a rural school somewhere and teach the three R's to little Slovenes and Frisians and French-Canadians even more urgently in need of soap and water. Or perhaps I could be housekeeper for one of our new beef-kings in his new Queen-Anne Norman-Georgian Venetian palace of Alberta sandstone with tesselated towers and bungalow sleeping-porches. Or I might even peddle magazines, or start a little bakery in one of the little board-fronted shops of Buckhorn, or take in plain sewing and dispose of home-made preserves to the elite of the community.

But each and all of them would be mere gestures of defeat. I'm of no value to the world. There was a time when I regarded myself as quite a Somebody, and prided myself on having an idea or two. Didn't Percy even once denominate me as "a window-dresser"? There was a time when I didn't have to wait to see if the pearl-handled knife was the one intended for the fish-course, and I could walk across a waxed floor without breaking my neck and do a bit of shopping in the Rue de la Paix without being taken for a tourist. But that was a long, long time ago. And life during the last few years has both humbled me and taught me my limitations. I'm a house-wife, now, and nothing more--and not even a successful house-wife. I've let everything fall away except the thought of my home and my family. And now I find that the basket into which I so carefully packed all my eggs hasn't even a bottom to it.

But I've no intention of repining. Heaven knows I've never wanted to sit on the Mourner's Bench. I've never tried to pull a sour mug, as d.i.n.ky-Dunk once inelegantly expressed it. I love life and the joy of life, and I want all of it I can get. I believe in laughter, and I've a weakness for men and women who can sing as they work. But I've blundered into a black frost, and even though there was something to sing about, there's scarcely a blue-bird left to do the singing. But sometime, somewhere, there'll be an end to that silence. The blight will pa.s.s, and I'll break out again. I know it. I don't intend to be held down. I _can't_ be held down. I haven't the remotest idea of how it's going to happen, but I'm going to love life again, and be happy, and carol out like a meadow-lark on a blue and breezy April morning.

It may not come to-morrow, and it may not come the next day. But it's going to come. And knowing it's going to come, I can afford to sit tight, and abide my time....

I've just had a letter from Uncle Chandler, enclosing snap-shots of the place he's bought in New Jersey. It looks very palatial and settled and Old-Worldish, shaded and shadowed with trees and softened with herbage, dignified by the hand of time. It reminds me how many and many a long year will have to go by before our bald young prairie can be tamed and petted into a homeyness like that. Uncle Chandler has rather startled me by suggesting that we send Elmer through to him, to go to school in the East. He says the boy can attend Montclair Academy, that he can be taken there and called for every day by faithful old Fisher, in the cabriolet, and that on Sunday he can be toted regularly to St. Luke's Episcopal Church, and occasionally go into New York for some of the better concerts, and even have a governess of his own, if he'd care for it. And in case I should be worrying about his welfare Uncle Chandler would send me a weekly night-letter "describing the condition and the activities of the child," as the letter expresses it. It sounds very appealing, but every time I try to think it over my heart goes down like a dab-chick.

My d.i.n.kie is such a little fellow. And he's my first-born, my man-child, and he means so much in my life. Yet he and his father are not getting along very well together. It would be better, in many respects, if the boy could get away for a while, until the raw edges healed over again. It would be better for both of them. But there's one thing that would happen: he would grow away from his mother. He'd come back to me a stranger. He'd come back a little ashamed of his shabby prairie mater, with her ten-years-old style of hair-dressing and her moss-grown ideas of things and her bald-looking prairie home with no repose and no dignifying background and neither a private gym nor a butler to wheel in the cinnamon-toast. He'd be having all those things, under Uncle Chandler's roof: he'd get used to them and he'd expect them.

But there's one thing he wouldn't and couldn't have. He wouldn't have his mother. And no one can take a mother's place, with a boy like that. No one could understand him, and make allowances for him, and explain things to him, as his own mother could. I've been thinking about that, all afternoon as I ironed his waists and his blue flannellet pajamas with frogs on like his dad's. And I've been thinking of it all evening as I patched his brown corduroy knickers and darned his little stockings and balled them up in a neat little row. I tried to picture myself as packing them away in a trunk, and putting in beside them all the clothes he would need, and the books that he could never get along without, and the childish little treasures he'd have to carry away to his new home. But it was too much for me. There was one thing, I began to see, which could never, never happen. I could never willingly be parted from my d.i.n.kie. I could think of nothing to pay me up for losing him. And he needed me as I needed him. For good or bad, we'd have to stick together. Mother and son, together in some way we'd have to sink or swim!

_Wednesday the Thirtieth_

The tension has been relieved by d.i.n.ky-Dunk going off to Calgary.

Along with him he has taken a rather formidable amount of his personal belongings. But he explains this by stating that business will keep him in the city for at least six or seven weeks. He has been talking a good deal about the Barcona coal-mine of late, and the last night he was with us he talked to Gershom for an hour and more about the advantages of those newer mines over the Drumh.e.l.ler. The newer field has a solid slate roof which makes drifting safe and easy, a finer type of coal, and a chance for big money once the railway runs in its spur and the officials wake up to the importance of giving them the cars they need. The whole country, d.i.n.ky-Dunk claims, is underlaid with coal, and our province alone is estimated to contain almost seventeen per cent. of the world's known supply. And my lord and master expressed the intention of being in on the clean-up.

I don't know how much of this was intended for my ears. But it served to disquiet me, for reasons I couldn't quite discern. And the same vague depression crept over me when d.i.n.ky-Dunk took his departure. I kept up my air of blitheness, it is true, to the last moment, and was as casual as you please in helping Duncan to pack and reminding him to put his shaving-things in his bag and making sure the last b.u.t.ton was on his pajamas. I kissed him good-by, as a dutiful wife ought, and held Pauline Augusta up in the doorway so that she might attempt a last-minute hand-waving at her daddy.

But I slumped, once it was all over. I felt mysteriously alone in an indifferent big world with the rime of winter creeping along its edges. Even Gershom, after the children had had their lesson, became conscious of my preoccupation and went so far as to ask if I wasn't feeling well.

I smilingly a.s.sured him that there was nothing much wrong with me.

"_Lerne zu leiden ohne zu klagen!_" as the dying Frederick said to a singularly foolish son.

"But you're upset?" persisted Gershom, with his valorous brand of timidity that so often reminds me of a robin defending her eggs.

"No, it's not that," I said with a shake of the head. "It's only that I'm--I'm a trifle too chilly to be comfortable."

And the foolish youth, at that, straightway fell to stoking the fire.

I had to laugh a little. And that made him study me with solemn eyes.

"Just think, Gershom," I said as I gathered up my sewing, "my heart is peris.h.i.+ng of cold in a province which is estimated to contain almost seventeen per cent. of the world's known coal supply!"

And that, apparently, left him with something to think about as I made my way off to bed ... It's hard to write coherently, I find, when you're not living coherently ...

Syd Woodward, of Buckhorn, having learned that I can drive a tractor, has asked me if I'll take part in the plowing-match to-morrow. And I've given my promise to show Mere Man what a woman can do in the matter of turning a mile-long furrow. I feel rather audacious over it all. And I'm glad to inject a little excitement into life ... I'm saving up for a new sewing-machine ... Tarzanette has got rather badly cut up in some of our barb-wire fencing.

_Friday the Fifteenth_

The plowing-match was good fun, and I enjoyed it even more than I had expected. The men "kidded" me a good deal, and gave me a cheer at the end (I don't quite know whether it was for my work or my costume) and I had to pose for photographs, and a moving-picture man even followed me about for a round, shooting me as I turned my prairie stubble upside down. But the excitement of the plowing-match has been eclipsed by a bit of news which has rather taken my breath away. _It is Peter Ketley who has bought the Harris Ranch._

_Sat.u.r.day the Twenty-Third_

The rains have brought mushrooms, slathers of mushrooms, and I joy in gathering them.

Yesterday afternoon I rode past the Harris Ranch. The old place brought back a confusion of memories. But I was most disturbed by the signs of building going on there. It seems to mean a new shack on Alabama Ranch. And a new shack of very considerable dimensions. I've been wondering what this implies. I don't know whether to be elated or depressed. And what business is it, after all, of mine?

My d.i.n.kie--I have altogether given up trying to call my d.i.n.kie anything but d.i.n.kie--came home two evenings ago with a discolored eye and a distinct air of silence. Gershom, too, seemed equally reticent.

So I set about discreetly third-degreeing Poppsy, who finally acknowledged, with awe in her voice, that d.i.n.kie had been in a fight.

It was, according to my petticoated Herodotus, a truly terrible fight.

Noses got bloodied, and no one could make the fighters stop. But d.i.n.kie was unquestionably the conqueror. Yet, oddly enough, I am informed that he cried all through the combat. He was a crying fighter. And he had his fight with Climmie O'Lone--trust the Irish to look for trouble!--who seems to have been accepted as the ring-master of his younger clan. Their differences arose out of the accusation that d.i.n.kie, my bashful little d.i.n.kie, had been forcing his unwelcomed attention on one Doreen O'Lone, Climmie's younger sister. That's absurd, of course. And d.i.n.kie must have realized it. He didn't want to fight, acknowledged Poppsy, from the first. He even cried over it. And Doreen also cried. And Poppsy herself joined in.

I fancy it was a truly Homeric struggle, for it seems to have lasted for round after round. It lasted, I have been able to gather, until Climmie was worsted and down on his back crying "Enough!" Which Poppsy reports d.i.n.kie made him say three times, until Doreen nodded and said she'd heard. But my young son, apparently, is one of those crying fighters, who are reckoned, if I remember right, as the worst breed of belligerents!

I have decided not to tell d.i.n.kie what I know. But I'm rather anxious to get a glimpse of this young Mistress Doreen, for whom lances are already being shattered in the lists of youth. The O'Lones regard themselves as the landed aristocracy of the Elk-trail District. And Doreen O'Lone impresses me as a very musical appellative. Yet I prefer to keep my kin free from all entangling alliances, even though they have to do with a cattle-king's offspring....

I had a short letter from d.i.n.ky-Dunk to-day, asking me to send on a package of papers which he had left in a pigeon-hole of his desk here.

It was a depressingly non-committal little note, without a glimmer of warmth between the lines. I'm afraid there's a certain ugly truth which will have to be faced some day. But I intend to stick to the s.h.i.+p as long as the s.h.i.+p can keep afloat. I am so essentially a family woman that I can't conceive of life without its home circle. Home, however, is where the heart is. And it seems to take more than one heart to keep it going. I keep reminding myself that I have my children at the same time that I keep asking myself why my children are not enough, why they can't seem to fill my cup of contentment as they ought. Now that their father is so much away, a great deal of their training is falling on my shoulders. And I must, in some way, be a model to them. So I'll continue to show them what a Penelope I can be. Perhaps, after all, they will prove our salvation. For our offspring ought to be the snow-fences along the wind-harried rails of matrimony. They should prevent drifting along the line, and from terminal to lonely terminal should keep traffic open ... I have to-night induced Poppsy to write a long and affectionate letter to her _pater_, telling him all the news of Casa Grande. Perhaps it will awaken a little pang in the breast of her absent parent.