Main-Travelled Roads Part 21

"No; I'll take the candle box."

"Not much. I know what manners are, if I am a bull driver."

Seagraves took the three-legged and rather precarious-looking stool and drew up to the table, which was a flat broad box nailed up against the side of the wall, with two strips of board nailed at the outer corners for legs.

"How's that f'r a layout?" Rob inquired proudly.

"Well, you have spread yourself! Biscuit and canned peaches and sardines and cheese. why, this is-is- prodigal."

"It ain't nothin' else."

Rob was from one of the finest counties of Wisconsin, over toward Milwaukee. He was of German parentage, a middle-sized, cheery, wide-awake, good-looking young fellow-a typical claimholder. He was always confident, jovial, and full of plans for the future. He had dug his own well, built his own shanty, washed and mended his own clothing. He could do anything, and do it well. He had a fine field of wheat, and was finis.h.i.+ng the plowing of his entire quarter section.

"This is what I call settin' under a feller's own vine an' fig tree"-after Seagraves's compliments-"an' I like it. I'm my own boss.

No man can say 'come here' 'n' 'go there' to me. I get up when I'm a min' to, an' go t' bed when I'm a min' t'."

"Some drawbacks, I s'pose?"

"Yes. Mice, f'r instance, give me a devilish lot o' trouble. They get into my flour barrel, eat up my cheese, an' fall into my well. But it ain't no use t' swear."

"The rats and the mlce they made such a strife He had to go to London to buy him a wife,"

quoted Seagraves. "Don't blush. I've probed your secret thought."

"Well, to tell the honest truth," said Rob a little sheepishly, leaning across the table, "I ain't satisfied with my style o' cookin'. It's good, but a little too plain, y' know. I'd like a change. It ain't much fun to break all day and then go to work an' cook y'r own supper."

"No, I should say not."

"This fall I'm going back to Wisconsin. Girls are thick as huckleberries back there, and I'm goin' t' bring one back, now you hear me."

"Good! That's the plan," laughed Seagraves, amused at a certain timid and apprehensive look in his companion's eye. "Just think what a woman 'd do to put this shanty in shape; and think how nice it would be to take her arm and saunter out after supper, and look at the farm, and plan and lay out gardens and paths, and tend the chickens!"

Rob's manly and self-reliant nature had the settler's typical buoyancy and hopefulness, as well as a certain power of a.n.a.lysis, which enabled him now to say: "The fact is, we fellers holdin'

down claims out here ain't fools clear to the rine. We know a couple o' things. Now I didn't leave Waupac County f'r fun. Did y'

ever see Wanpac? Well, it's one o' the handsomest counties the sun ever shone on, full o' lakes and rivers and groves of timber. I miss 'em all out here, and I miss the boys an' girls; but they wa'n't no chance there f'r a feller. Land that was good was so blamed high you couldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole from a balloon. Rent was high, if you wanted t' rent, an' so a feller like me had t' get out, an'

now I'm out here, I'm goin' f make the most of it. An other thing,"

he went on, after a pause-"we fellers work-in' out back there got more 'n' more like hands, an' less like human beings. Y'know, Waupac is a kind of a summer resort, and the people that use' t'

come in summers looked down on us cusses in the fields an'

shops. I couldn't stand it. By G.o.d!" he said with a sudden im pulse of rage quite unlike him, "I'd rather live on an ice-berg and claw crabs f'r a livin' than have some feller pa.s.sin' me on the road an'

callin' me fellah!'"

Seagraves knew what he meant and listened in astonishment at this outburst.

"I consider myself a sight better 'n any man who lives on somebody else's hard work. I've never had a cent I didn't earn with them hands." He held them up and broke into a grin. "Beauties, ain't they? But they never wore gloves that some other poor cuss earned."

Seagraves thought them grand hands, worthy to grasp the hand of any man or woman living.

"Well, so I come West, just like a thousand other fellers, to get a start where the cussed European aristocracy hadn't got a holt on the people. I like it here-course I'd like the lakes an' meadows of Waupac better-but I'm my own boss, as I say, an' I'm goin' to stay my own boss if I haf to live on crackers an' wheat coffee to do it; that's the kind of a hairpin I am."

In the pause which followed, Seagraves, plunged deep into thought by Rob's words, leaned his head on his hand. This working farmer had voiced the modem idea. It was an absolute overturn of all the ideas of n.o.bility and special privilege born of the feudal past. Rob had spoken upon impulse, but that impulse appeared to Sea-graves to be right.

"I'd like to use your idea for an editorial, Rob," he said.

"My ideas!" exclaimed the astounded host, pausing in the act of filling his pipe. "My ideas! why, I didn't know I had any."

"Well, you've given me some, anyhow."

Seagraves felt that it was a wild, grand upstirring of the modem democrat against the aristocratic, against the idea of caste and the privilege of living on the labor of others. This atom of humanity (how infinitesimal this drop in the ocean of humanity!) was feeling the name-less longing of expanding personality, and had already pierced the conventions of society and declared as nil the laws of the land-laws that were survivals of hate and prejudice. He had exposed also the native spring of the emigrant by uttering the feeling that it is better to be an equal among peasants than a servant before n.o.bles.

"So I have good reasons f'r liking the country," Rob resumed in a quiet way. "The soil is rich, the climate good so far, an' if I have a couple o' decent crops you'll see a neat upright goin' up here, with a porch and a bay winder."

"And you'll still be livin' here alone, frying leathery slapjacks an'

choppin' taters and bacon."

"I think I see myself," drawled Rob, "goin' around all summer wearin' the same s.h.i.+rt without was.h.i.+n', an' wipin' on the same towel four straight weeks, an' wearin' holes in my socks, an' eatin'

musty gingersnaps, moldy bacon, an' canned Boston beans f'r the rest o' my endurin' days! Oh, yes; I guess not! Well, see y' later.

Must go water my bulls."

As he went off down the slope, Seagraves smiled to hear him sing:

"I wish that some kindhearted girl Would pity on me take, And extricate me from the mess I'm in.

The angel-how I'd bless her, li this her home she'd make, In my little old sod shanty on the plain!"

The boys nearly fell off their chairs in the Western House dining room, a few days later, at seeing Rob come into supper with a collar and necktie as the finis.h.i.+ng touch of a remarkable outfit.

"Hit him, somebody!"

"It's a clean collar!"

"He's started f'r Congress!"

"He's going to get married," put in Seagraves in a tone that brought conviction.

"What!" screamed Jack Adams, O'Neill, and Wilson in one breath.

"That man?"

"That man," replied Seagraves, amazed at Rob, who coolly took his seat, squared his elbows, pressed his collar down at the back, and called for the bacon and eggs.

The crowd stared at him in a dead silence.

"Where's he going to do it?" asked Jack Adarns. "where's he going to find a girl?"

"Ask him," said Seagraves.

"I ain't tellin'," put in Rob, with his mouth full of potato.

"You're afraid of our compet.i.tion."

"That's right; our compet.i.tion, Jack; not your compet.i.tion. Come, now, Rob, tell us where you found her."