O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 Part 49

Behind her came Unc' Zenas and Aunt Dolcey, setting the sheaves into compact, well-capped stocks, little rough golden castles to dot this field of amazing conflict.

And now the reaper had come to the corner. Unc' Zenas straightened himself and watched anxiously. But his faith in the near horse was justified--the team turned smoothly, Annie lifted the blade and dropped it, and they started again, only half visible now across the tall grain.

Annie's wrists and back ached unbearably, the sweat got in her eyes, but she drove on. She thought a little of Wes, and how he had looked when she picked up that butcher knife. She thought of his heavy hand on her shoulder, and her flesh burned where he had grasped it.

"I'm going to cut this wheat if it kills me." she said over and over to herself in a queer refrain. "I'm going to cut this wheat if it kills me!" She thought probably it would. But she drove on.

She made her second corner successfully, and now the sun was at her back, and that gave her a little ease. This wheat was going to be cut, and hauled to the thresher, and sold in the market, if she did every bit of the work herself. She would show Wes Dean! Let him try to stop her--if he dared!

And there would be money enough for everything the baby might want or might need. Her child should not be born to poverty and skimping. If only the sun didn't beat so hard on the back of her neck! If only her arms didn't ache so!

After countless hours of time she overtook Dolcey and Zenas, and the old woman divined her chief discomfort. She s.n.a.t.c.hed the sunbonnet off her own head and handed it up to her.

"Marster in hebben, ef I only had my stren'th!" muttered Zenas as she went on.

"Angels b'arin' dat chile up wid deir wings," chanted Aunt Dolcey.

Then, descending to more mundane matters, she added a delighted chuckle: "I knowed she'd rise en s.h.i.+ne one dese days. Holler at Ma.r.s.e Wes she did, name him names, plenty. Yessuh--laid him out!"

"What you s'pose he up to now?" asked Zenas, looking over his shoulder.

"I dunno--but I bet you he plumb da'nted. Zenas, lak I tol' you--man may hab plenty debbilment, rip en t'ar, but he'll stan' back whenas a ooman meks up her min' she stood enough." And Aunt Dolcey had never heard of Rudyard Kipling's famous line.

"Dat chile might kill he'se'f."

"When yo' mad yo' kin 'complish de onpossible, en it doan' hurt yo',"

replied Dolcey, thus going Kipling one better.

But she watched Annie anxiously.

The girl held out, though the jolting and shaking racked her excruciatingly and the pull of the reins seemed to drag the very flesh from her bones. Now and then the golden field swam dark before her eyes, the backs of the horses swelled to giant size and blotted out the sun. But she kept on long after her physical strength was gone; her endurance held her. Slowly, carefully, the machine went round and round the field, and the two bent old figures followed.

And so they came to mid-morning. They had long since ceased to look or care for any sign of the young master of the land. None of them noticed him, coming slowly, slowly from the stables, coming slowly, slowly to the field's edge and standing there, watching with unbelieving, sullen eyes the progress of the reaper, the wavering arms that guided the horses, the little shaken blue figure that sat high in the driver's seat. But he was there.

It is said of criminals that a confession can often be extracted by the endless repet.i.tion of one question alone; they cannot bear the pressure of its monotony. Perhaps it was the monotony of the measured rattle and clack of the machine going on so steadily that finally impelled Wes Dean, after his long frowning survey of the scene, to vault the low stone wall and approach it.

Annie did not check the horses when she saw him; she did not even look at him. But he looked at her, and in her white face, with the dreary circles of utter fatigue shadowing her eyes, his defeat was completed.

He put his hand on the bit of the nearest horse and stopped the team.

Then she looked at him, as one looks at a loathsome stranger.

"What you want?" she asked coldly.

He swallowed hard. "Annie--I'll--I'll cut the wheat, le'me lift you down off there." He held out his arms.

She did not budge. "You going to cut it all--and haul it down to the thresher?"

"Yes--yes, I will. Gee, you look near dead--get down, honey. You go in the house and lay down--I'm afraid you'll kill yourself. I'm afraid you'll hurt--him some way."

Still she did not move. "I'd ruther be dead than live with a man that acts like you do," she said. "Grown up, and can't handle his temper."

Something in her quiet, cold scorn struck through to him and cut away forever his childish satisfaction with himself. A new manhood came into his face; his twitching, sinister vein was still. Surrender choked him, but he managed to get it out:

"I know I acted like a fool. But I can't let you do this. I'll--I'll try to----"

The words died on his lips and he leaped forward in time to catch her as she swayed and fell, fainting.

An hour later Annie lay on the lounge in the sitting room, still aching with terrible weariness, but divinely content. Far away she could hear the steady susurrus of the reaper, driven against the golden wheat, and the sound was a promise and a song to her ears. She looked up now and then at the pictured face of Wes's father, frowning and pa.s.sionate, and the faint smile of a conqueror curved her tired mouth. For she had found and proved the strongest thing in the world, and she would never again know fear.

THE TRIBUTE

By HARRY ANABLE KNIFFIN

From _Brief Stories_

The Little Chap reached up a chubby hand to the doork.n.o.b. A few persistent tugs and twists and it turned in his grasp. Slowly pus.h.i.+ng the door open, he stood hesitating on the threshold of the studio.

The Big Chap looked up from his easel by the window. His gray eyes kindled into a kindly smile, its welcoming effect offset by an admonitory headshake. "Not now, Son," he said. "I'm busy."

"Can't I stay a little while, Daddy?" The st.u.r.dy little legs carried their owner across the floor as he spoke. "I'll be quiet, like--like I was asleep."

The Big Chap hesitated, looking first at his canvas and then at the small replica of himself standing before him.

"I got on my new pants," the youngster was saying, conversationally easing the embarra.s.sment of a possible capitulation. "Mummy says I ought to be proud of them, and because I'm five years old."

The artist looked gravely down at him. "Proud, Son?" he asked, in the peculiar way he had of reasoning with the Little Chap. "Have you reached the age of five because of anything you have done? Or did you acquire the trousers with money you earned?"

The Little Chap looked up at him questioningly. He had inherited his father's wide gray eyes, and at present their expression was troubled.

Then, evidently seeking a more easily comprehended topic, his eyes left his father's and sought the canvas on which was depicted a court scene of mediaeval times. "Who is that, Daddy?" His small index finger pointed to the most prominent figure in the painting.

His father continued to regard him thoughtfully. "One of England's proud kings, Son."

"And what did _he_ do to be proud of?" came quickly from the youthful inquisitioner.

A hearty laugh escaped the artist. "Bully for you, Son! That's a poser! Aside from taxing the poor and having enemies beheaded, I'm puzzled to know what he really did do to earn his high position."

The Little Chap squirmed himself between his father's knees and started to scale the heights to his lap, where he finally settled down with a sigh of comfort. "Tell me a story about him," he said eagerly.

"A story with castles, 'n' wars, 'n' everything."

The artist's gaze rested on the kingly figure in the picture, then wandered away to the window through which he seemed to lose himself in scenes of a far-distant time.

"I'll tell you a story, Son," he began, slowly and ruminatingly, "of how Loyalty and Service stormed the Stronghold of Honour and Splendour. This proud king you see in the picture lived part of the time in the great castle of Windsor, and the balance of the year in Saint James's Palace in London."

"It must have cost him a lot for rent," wisely interpolated the Little Chap.

"No, the people paid the rent, Son. Some of them were glad to do it, for they looked upon their king as a superior being. Among this cla.s.s of loyal subjects was an old hatter, very poor and humble."