Perfection City

The day after the fire was an idle one at Perfection City. No one felt able to work, Ezra least of all. He lay upon the floor of the kitchen with a wet handkerchief on his head, and several times he asked Olive not to make so much noise. She was as still as a mouse, she thought, but then his head ached, poor fellow! So she went out and sat in the shade of the house among her morning-glories, while the hens walked about with their wings down and their tongues lolling out, trying to cool themselves. The black burnt prairie seemed to send up shafts of heat to the copper-coloured sky.

A man rode up to the bars, and for one moment Olive’s heart stood still. She feared it might be Mr. Cotterell, whom she had not seen since the day at the spring, now some weeks past. It was not Mr. Cotterell, however, but one of the settlers from the other side of Cotton Wood Creek. He came forward with his bridle-rein over his arm, his horse following, head down.

“Wal, how’d you ’uns git ’long with that pesky fire?” he observed, without any preliminary greeting. He was a Missouri man, and they often prided themselves on their rudeness. It was their way of showing their independence.

“Good morning, Mr. Owen,” said Olive, who knew the man quite well. “We have escaped all right, thank you. I hope you were not injured?” She was extra careful in her manner, as the politeness for two had all to be furnished by herself.

“Yer hain’t been burnt out I see. You all’s mighty silly anyhow. Why in thunder didn’t yer back-fire before? ’Tain’t agin’ yer principles, is it?” Mr. Owen grinned under the impression that he was funny.

“We didn’t back-fire, because we thought it wrong to start a fire in such a wind and let it possibly burn up our neighbours,” said Olive stiffly.

“Then ’tis agin yer principles to back-fire, by Gosh! The boys was ’lowing as much over to Union Mills.”

“It is against our principles to injure our neighbours. You don’t object to that, Mr. Owen, do you?” said Olive.

“I reckon you’ll git mighty tired o’ them idees ef yer live long on the prairie,” observed Mr. Owen.

“Seen ole man Cotterell lately?” he inquired suddenly, half shutting his green-grey eyes and looking at Olive intently.

She was somewhat surprised at the question, but knowing from experience how inquisitive the average settler is, she answered readily enough.

“No, I haven’t seen him for a long time. Was he burnt out? I didn’t know the fire had gone so far.”

“I calkerlate he warn’t tetched by the fire,” said Mr. Owen, very slowly. He made long pauses between his remarks, during which he continued unremittingly the steady occupation of his life, namely, chewing tobacco. Olive began to feel impatient. She did not like to ask him into the house for fear of disturbing Ezra, so she sat down again in her chair, and pointing to a log of wood which lay near and seated on which he could still hold his horse, she asked him to take a seat also. Mr. Owen sat down with a grunt.

“Never seed ony pusson so sot on posies as you ’uns be,” he observed conversationally.

“Yes, I am very fond of flowers. They make the house more home-like, I think. The prairie is very bare looking,” replied Olive politely.

“Yer ole man oughter rared his house t’other side the Gully, an’ further down yon’er. This hyar ’ull be powerful col’ when we git col’ snaps in Jan’ary. Yer dunno nothin’ ’bout things in this hyar all-fired ’Fection City,” said Mr. Owen, looking around him in criticism.

“Perhaps not,” said Olive, rather nettled, “but we know how to mind our own business.”

Mr. Owen did not feel one whit abashed. He was far too near akin to the pachyderms for Olive’s delicate little shafts to have any effect on him. Another long silence followed, and Olive began to wonder if Owen was like that man from Jacksonville, who came to see them once and stayed four hours, during which time he made only two remarks and they possessed no particular interest. The man and his stony silence had driven her nearly wild, until she reflected how much more awful it would have been had she been obliged to entertain him with conversation. A recollection of this visitation and a dread born of that recollection began to invade her mind. Mr. Owen, however, was not going to stay for four hours, and he was going to make a remark of very particular interest, a remark that would quickly scatter all Olive’s other ideas. He delivered it slowly and with the monotonous enunciation which proclaimed him a Missouri man.

“The boys is hout huntin’ down ole man Cotterell.”

“What!” exclaimed Olive turning very white. Then, steadying her voice as well as she could she said, “Why are they hunting him?”

“To cotch him,” replied her visitor concisely.

“But what for?” asked Olive, looking at him with wide eyes of horror. She knew only too well what hunting down a man portended.

“Wal, there’s bin a shootin’ over to his house, an’ one o’ thim boys o’ Mills is shot, shot dead. Cotterell done it. And now he’s gone an’ run off. The boys they ’lowed Cotterell best be hung this time. Las’ time he was let off. He won’t be agin, you bet.”

“How do you know he has shot young Mills? What evidence have you of it?” asked Olive in terror, yet she could not help pressing the man to tell her, although each word was like a stab.

He gave a silent inward laugh as if his thoughts were facetious. “Evidence an’ enough,” he said. “Jake Mills’ body with a bullet through his heart. Yer can’t git nothin’ plainer in the way of evidence than that, I reckon.”

“But how do you know it was Mr. Cotterell shot him?” asked Olive.

“Damn my eyes! but yer mus’ be a nateral born fool, Mis’ Weston. Jake Mills were foun’ on Cotterell’s lan’. Who else could ha’ done it? Besides, he did, an’ that’s a fac’ anyhow.”

“I think it is perfectly monstrous,” burst out Olive, trembling with agitation. “I never heard of a wickeder thing. Here is this man you have decided to hang, and you don’t even know if he has done the thing you accuse him of. If that is what you call prairie law and justice I can only say I never heard of a more sinful and unjust law. Black savages couldn’t do worse.”

“Mos’ like the boys will let him hev a trial, ef he’s partic’lar sot on’t. That won’t si’nify nothin’,” said Mr. Owen, again surveying Olive through the narrow aperture of his half-closed eyes, and again applying himself to his habitual occupation with vigour. She looked at him with a face in which horror and disgust struggled for mastery.

“If this horrid murder is committed by your neighbours, Mr. Owen, I shall think that prairie men are a disgrace to civilization,” said Olive.

“We prairie folks ain’t partic’lar sot on civilization,” remarked Mr. Owen with affability.

“I hope you’ll never catch him,” said Olive, with a sound very like a sob in her voice.

“The boys they ’lowed you’uns was mighty good frien’s o’ his’n, an’ he’d a mos’ likely come this hyar way to make for the Pottawattamie ’fore we’uns could cotch him. That’s why I come ’long ter look for him hyar,” observed Mr. Owen, rising and putting his head under his saddle flap in order to tighten up the girth a couple of holes.

“Oh, you’ve come here to spy out, have you?” said Olive, in passionate anger. “Why didn’t you say so at first, and ask the question like a man, and not come sneaking around? Do you want to hunt all over the house and see if we’ve got anybody hidden away?”

“No,” said Owen slowly. “Guess that’ll do. I ain’t agoin’ ter hunt roun’. We ain’t no great shakes at bein’ fine folks out hyar on the prairie, but we allers takes the word of a lady, by Gosh. You said you hain’t seen nothin’ o’ ole man Cotterell, guess that’ll do for the boys. Mornin’.”

Mr. Owen rode away, feeling that in the contest of politeness that morning he had certainly scored off Mrs. Weston with her stuck-up Eastern ways.

Olive was in an agony of doubt and terror. That the boys were out hunting for Cotterell was, she knew, but the preliminary to his death, if they caught him. The boys seldom or never let off any one they caught, so she gathered from the stories she had heard of their doings in time past. What was she to do in this difficult dilemma? Should she tell Ezra?

Under ordinary circumstances her first impulse would have been to go straight to her husband with the story she had heard, but in this instance she felt that such a course would be impossible. She knew that Ezra was jealous of Mr. Cotterell, he had betrayed his feelings more than once, and in her heart she knew that few men can be just towards the man who arouses their jealousy. Her husband was a very just man, and could, more than any one she knew, put himself in the place of others and see what was right and what was wrong. But in this instance it was not justice Olive wanted, it was justice that she feared. Although she spoke bravely enough to Owen, a terrible fear lurked in her breast that the evidence, though ludicrously deficient by the rules of procedure that obtain in old established communities, was quite sufficient to convince a prairie jury. Ezra would not sit on a hanging jury, nor would he be a party to catching Mr. Cotterell, but his sense of justice and what was due to the principles professed at Perfection City might carry him no further than this passively inactive point? Would he assist Cotterell to escape? Guilty or not, that was what Olive wanted, and to help in such an undertaking, she felt sure, was what her husband might very well refuse to do.

Was Cotterell guilty? Olive debated this point anxiously in her mind. She knew he went armed, but so did many other men. In fact, to be armed was the rule on the prairie. The doctrine of non-resistance was one of the least understood tenets of the Pioneers at Perfection City, and was observed by nobody else on the prairie. Even Brother Wright, as we have seen—though Olive was quite unaware of this—had granted to himself a special indulgence in this matter. So the mere fact of Mr. Cotterell’s always having his revolver in his belt did not really count for anything, one way or the other. He had always been so gentle and so chivalrous in his manner to her, she found it difficult to force her mind to keep hold of the fact that he was a very passionate man. Everyone said so, and she knew, too, that the Mills’ were a bad lot, drunken quarrelsome men, who, as Ezra said, combined in their character all the vices of the prairie and preserved none of its virtues. How easy it would be for a proud, passionate man like Mr. Cotterell to bring his revolver into a heated argument with Jake Mills, who might be mad with drink. But surely such a shooting was not murder according to prairie law. In her distress Olive found herself falling back upon the probable laxity of that very prairie justice which a short time before she had so scornfully characterised to Owen.

The “boys” who were hunting Cotterell were, as Olive well knew, the most relentless men on the prairie, regular settlers who had found by experience that the only way to keep order was to keep it with their own right hands. They had hung several horse-thieves lately, and had declared they were going to put a stop to the “shooting round promiscuous” of the younger blades. They were not unjust men, but they were hasty, and were moreover already terribly prejudiced against Cotterell.

Having decided that it was best not to tell Ezra what she had heard, Olive was immediately assailed with a hundred doubts. Suppose Mr. Cotterell came to them in his extremity, should she try to conceal him? But how utterly impossible to do so without the co-operation of her husband! The mere attempt to do such a thing might involve her in difficulties without being of any use to the unhappy man himself. Then there was Madame. Should she appeal to her for help? Her heart revolted from such a course. After their last meeting, when they had interchanged hot words on the subject of this very man, Olive felt it was impossible to ask Madame’s aid or to tell her anything about it. Then there was no one, and Olive resolved to keep the secret of what she had heard, hoping that something might turn up which would justify her action, or at least make any further action unnecessary. Thus do people often put off on the shoulders of chance the burden of a decision which taxes too much their powers of forecasting events. It was a heavy secret to keep to herself, and her face looked white and scared as she entered the kitchen on tip-toe to see how Ezra felt. He roused up as she came in.

“I am better now, little woman,” he said in answer to her inquiries. “The pain is all gone. I will get up and begin to stir around again.”

He went out with her and with the keenness which is soon a habit with a prairie man, he noticed the hoof-marks of Owen’s horse, where it had stamped rather briskly, owing to the flies.

“Who has been here? Those are fresh,” he said, pointing to the marks.

“That man from over beyond Cotton Wood Creek was here a little while ago, Owen is his name: you know the man,” said Olive, with a beating heart.

“Cattle-hunting after the fire, I suppose. Were they burnt out yesterday?” asked Ezra, with slight show of interest.

“No, I believe not, he did not say. He sneered at the Pioneers for not having safe-guarded themselves, heedless of the welfare of the other settlers, so I suppose he had been betimes with his back-firing, at least if he lives up to his principles,” remarked Olive.

“It is too late to go and hunt for our horses,” said Ezra, “and I feel too tired to start out on foot after them. They may very well be five miles away by this time. Did you ask Owen if he had seen them?”

“No, I never thought of doing so.”

“Don’t forget always to ask everyone if they have seen your horses whenever they are out on the prairie: it is one of the golden rules of prairie life,” said Ezra, tapping her chin.

“But he wouldn’t have known Queen Katharine and Rebel even if he did happen to meet them,” objected Olive. “How could he know one pair of strange horses from another?”

“Bless your sweet eyes, Owen knows every horse and cow belonging to his neighbours for a radius of ten miles from his house, at the very least. Telling a neighbour where his cattle are, is the only rule of politeness known to many of them, and they are punctilious about it,” said Ezra laughing.

“I wish I had known that, because I found him deficient in many of the rules I have been taught,” said Olive. “Possibly he found me as lacking, according to his estimate.”

Ezra did not go out to hunt for the horses the next morning as he had intended. Other work, which seemed more important, turned up for him. Brother Wright came that same evening to arrange about it.

“Good evening, friends,” he said. “I trust you are both rested after yesterday. It was a hard day and a harder night. Brother Ezra, you did splendidly.”

“We were much alarmed for the safety of Perfection City: I don’t think it is ever likely to be in greater danger,” said Ezra.

“No, I suppose, not from the outside,” said Wright.

“And we are not likely to be set on fire from the inside, are we?” observed Ezra with a laugh.

“Accidents may happen,” said Olive.

“Even in the best regulated communities,” added Brother Wright. “However, what I came to talk about was the future, and not the past. We’ve got two good loads of corn ready, it ought to be sold at once in Mapleton. We’ll get top price. I stepped into Madame’s as I came along, and she agreed with me. We must sell at once. Brother Dummy has got his waggon loaded up ready to start. It is a marvel how much that man does get through in the way of work. Well, the question is, who will go with the corn? Brother Dummy must drive his own team, because no other man could manage that black horse for half an hour. Biting Bill would kick the waggon into match-wood in two minutes, if any of us attempted to touch his reins. I wonder whether it is the absolutely silent driving which cows him? You are out and out the best one for attending to business of any here. Madame thinks it would be well for you to go, and so do I.”

“I am quite ready,” replied Ezra. “But my horses are both out on the prairie. I turned them loose after the fire to let them run off to the Creek, as I had no time to put them up and feed them. To-day I did not feel able to hunt after them.”

“Well, suppose you take my team, and I will find your horses for you to-morrow. Will that do?”

“All right, then I’ll go to Mapleton.”

“The corn is already shucked, it won’t take half an hour to load up. You and I will do it while the horses are feeding. You ought to get off by six, I will feed the horses at five.”

Each spoke of his horses and his waggons much in the same way as an artillery officer speaks of his guns. There were three pairs of horses in the Community, and, in theory at least, everyone was equally free to use them, but experience showed that that sort of handling did not suit horses, who do better if left always in the care of the same persons. Therefore it came about that Brother Dummy always had Biting Bill, since no one else could manage the brute, and Ezra generally had Queen Katharine and Rebel, while Brother Wright kept the greys. Now these animals, although common property, were invariably spoken of by their drivers as theirs, for the use of certain familiar phrases, which to the outsider might seem to denote the idea of private property, came naturally to their lips. It is often more difficult to change habits of speech than laws of property. Reformers who start out to alter the whole course of modern ideas and to rearrange the world according to a plan of their own devising, would do well to meditate upon this peculiarity and see what it points to. Surely so slight a thing as a word might easily be eradicated from human speech, and yet how difficult it is to do so. But the point to consider is that the pertinacity, which shows itself in modes of expression, may very well exist in just as strong a form in habits of thought and feeling. The Pioneers, like others of that sort, passed over and disregarded such expressions as “my horse,” “my waggon,” and “your plough,” not apparently recognizing that the expressions denoted a habit of thought that might very easily strike at the very root of their institution. They were communists, as Olive had said, in bits of this and scraps of that, but the old leaven of individualism was there still among them, only dormant. The Pioneers never expected that the leaven would again become an active principle. Like other people, they were unable to see into the future, and therefore rejoiced in their escape from the perils of the prairie fire and considered that they had no further danger to apprehend for this winter at least. The sea was smooth and the sky was serene, so to speak, and they did not perceive the sunken rocks that lay in the track of their experimental bark.