The Moccasin Ranch: A Story of Dakota

Contents

Early in the gray and red dawn of a March morning in 1883, two wagons moved slowly out of Boomtown, the two-year-old "giant of the plains." As the teams drew past the last house, the strangeness of the scene appealed irresistibly to the newly arrived immigrants. The town lay behind them on the level, treeless plain like a handful of blocks pitched upon a russet robe. Its houses were mainly shanties of pine, one-story in height, while here and there actual tents gleamed in the half-light with infinite suggestion of America's restless pioneers.

The wind blew fresh and chill from the west. The sun rose swiftly, and the thin scarf of morning cloud melted away, leaving an illimitable sweep of sky arching an almost equally majestic plain. There was a poignant charm in the air—a smell of freshly uncovered sod, a width and splendor in the view which exalted the movers beyond words.

The prairie was ridged here and there with ice, and the swales were full of posh and water. Geese were slowly winging their way against the wind, and ducks were sitting here and there on the ice-rimmed ponds. The sod was burned black and bare, and so firm with frost that the wagon chuckled noisily as it passed over it. The whistle of the driver called afar, startling the ducks from their all-night resting-places.

One of the teams drew a load of material for a house, together with a few household utensils. The driver, a thin-faced, blue-eyed man of thirty, walked beside his horses. His eyes were full of wonder, but he walked in silence.

The second wagon was piled high with boxes and barrels of groceries and hardware, and was driven by a handsome young fellow with a large brown mustache. His name was Bailey, and he seemed to be pointing the way for his companion, whom he called Burke.

As the sun rose, a kind of transformation-scene took place. The whole level land lifted at the horizon till the teams seemed crawling forever at bottom of an enormous bowl. Mystical forms came into view—grotesquely elongated, unrecognizable. Hills twenty, thirty miles away rose like apparitions, astonishingly magnified. Willows became elms, a settler's shanty rose like a shot-tower—towns hitherto unseen swam and palpitated in the yellow flood of light like shaken banners low-hung on unseen flagstaffs.

Burke marched with uplifted face. He was like one suddenly wakened in a new world, where nothing was familiar. Not a tree or shrub was in sight. Not a mark of plough or harrow—everything was wild, and to him mystical and glorious. His eyes were like those of a man who sees a world at its birth.

Hour after hour they moved across the swelling land. Hour after hour, while the yellow sun rolled up the slope, putting to flight the morning shapes on the horizon—striking the plain into level prose again, and warming the air into genial March. Hour after hour the horses toiled on till the last cabin fell away to the east, like a sail at sea, till the road faded into a trail almost imperceptible on the firm sod.

And so at last they came to the land of "the straddle-bug"—the squatters' watch dog—three boards nailed together (like a stack of army muskets) to mark a claim. Burke resembled a man taking his first sea-voyage. His eyes searched the plain restlessly, and his brain dreamed. Bailey, an old settler—of two years' experience—whistled and sang and shouted lustily to his tired beasts.

It drew toward noon. Bailey's clear voice shouted back, "When we reach that swell we'll see the Western Coteaux." The Western Coteaux! To Burke, the man from Illinois, this was like discovering a new range of mountains.

"There they rise," Bailey called, a little later.

Burke looked away to the west. Low down on the horizon lay a long, blue bank, hardly more substantial than a line of cloud. "How far off are they?" he asked, in awe.

"About twenty-five miles. Our claims are just about in line with that gap." Bailey pointed with his whip. "And about twelve miles from here. We're on the unsurveyed land now."

Burke experienced a thrill of exultation as he looked around him. In the distance, other carriages were crawling like beetles. A couple of shanties, newly built on a near-by ridge, glittered like gold in the sun, and the piles of yellow lumber and the straddle-bugs increased in number as they left the surveyed land and emerged into the finer tract which lay as yet unmapped. At noon they stopped and fed their animals, eating their own food on the ground beside their wagons.

While they rested, Bailey kept his eyes on their backward trail, watching for his partner, Rivers. "It's about time Jim showed up," he said, once again.

Burke seemed anxious. "They won't get off the track, will they?"

Bailey laughed at his innocence. "Jim Rivers has located about seventy-five claims out here this spring. I guess he won't lose his bearings."

"I'm afraid Blanche'll get nervous."

"Oh, Jim will take care of her. She won't be lonesome, either. He's a great favorite with the women, always gassin'—Well, this won't feed the baby," he ended, leaping to his feet.

They were about to start on when a swift team came into sight. The carriage was a platform-spring wagon, with a man and woman in the front seat, and in the rear a couple of alert young fellows sat holding rifles in their hands and eyeing the plain for game.

"Hello!" said the driver, in a pleasant shout. "How you getting on?"

"Pretty well," replied Bailey.

"Should say you were. I didn't know but we'd fail to overhaul you."

Burke went up to the wagon. "Well, Blanche, what do you think of it—far's you've got?"

"Not very much," replied his wife, candidly. She was a handsome woman, but looked tired and a little cross, at the moment. "I guess I'll get out and ride with you," she added.

"Why, no! What for?" asked Rivers, hastily. "Why not go right along out to the store with us?"

"Why, yes; that's the thing to do, Blanche. We'll be along soon," said Burke. "Stay where you are."

She sat down again, as if ashamed to give her reason for not going on with these strange men.

"I was just in the middle of a story, too," added Rivers, humorously. "Well, so long." And, cracking his whip, he started on. "We'll have supper ready when you arrive!" he shouted back.

Burke could not forget the look in his wife's eyes. She was right. It would have been pleasanter if she had stayed with him. They had been married several years, but his love for her had not grown less. Perhaps for the reason that she dominated him.

She was a fine, powerful girl, while he was a plain man, slightly stooping, with thin face and prominent larynx. She had brought a little property to him, which was unusual enough to give her a sense of importance in all business transactions of the firm.

She had consented to the sale of their farm in Illinois with great reluctance, and, as Burke rode along on his load of furniture, he recalled it all very vividly, and it made him anxious to know her impression of his claim. As he took her position for a moment, he got a sudden sense of the loneliness and rawness of this new land which he had not felt before. The woman's point of view was so different from that of the adventurous man.

Twice they were forced to partly unload in order to cross ravines where the frost had fallen out, and it was growing dark as they rose over the low swell, from which they could see a dim, red star, which Burke guessed to be the shanty light, even before Bailey called, exultantly:

"There she blows!"

The wind had grown chill and moist, the quacking ducks were thickening on the pools, and strange noises came from ghostly swells and hidden creeks. The tired horses moved forward with soundless feet upon the sod, which had softened during the day. They quickened their steps when they saw the lantern shine from the pole before the building.

The light of the lamp, and the sight of Blanche standing in the doorway of the cabin at the back of the store-room, was a beautiful sight to Burke. Set over against the wet, dark prairie, with its boundless sweep of unknown soil, the shanty seemed a radiant palace.

"Supper's all ready, Willard!" called Blanche, and the tired man's heart leaped with joy to hear the tender, familiar cadence of her voice. It was her happy voice, and when she used it men were her slaves.

Bailey came out with one of the land-seekers.

"Go in to supper, boys; we'll take care of the teams," was his hearty command.

The tired freighters gladly did as they were bid, and, scooping up some water from a near-by hollow on the sod, hurriedly washed their faces and sat down to a supper of chopped potatoes, bacon and eggs, and tea (which Blanche placed steaming hot upon the table), in such joy as only the weary worker knows.

Mrs. Burke was in high spirits. The novelty of the trip, the rude shanty, with its litter of shavings, and its boxes for chairs, the bundles of hay for beds, gave her something like the same pleasure a picnic might have done. It appealed to the primeval in her. She forgot her homesickness and her vague regrets, and her smiles filled her husband with content.

Rivers and the others soon came in, and after supper there was a great deal of energetic talk. The young land-seekers were garrulous with delight over their claims, which they proudly exalted above the stumps and stones of the farms "back home."

"Why, it took three generations of my folks to clear off forty acres of land," said one of them. "They just wore themselves out on it. I told Hank he could have it, and I'd go West and see if there wasn't some land out there which wouldn't take a man's lifetime to grub out and smooth down. And I've found it."

Rivers had plainly won the friendship of Mrs. Burke, for they were having a jolly time together over by the table, where he was helping to wash the dishes. He had laughing, brown eyes, and a pleasant voice, and was one of the most popular of the lawyers and land-agents in Boomtown. There was a boyish quality in him which kept him giving and taking jocular remarks.

Bailey sometimes said: "Rivers would shine up to a seventy-year-old Sioux squaw if she was the only woman handy, but he don't mean anything by it—it's just his way. He's one o' the best-hearted fellers that ever lived." Others took a less favorable view of the land-agent, and refused to trust him.

Bailey assumed command. "Now, fellers," he said, "we'll vamoose the ranch while Mrs. Burke turns in." He opened the way to the store-room, and the men filed out, all but Burke, who remained to put up the calico curtain with which his wife had planned to shield her bed.

Blanche was a little disturbed at the prospect of sleeping behind such a thin barrier.

"Oh, it's no worse than the sleeping-car," her husband argued.

A little later he stuck his head in at the store-room door. "All ready, Bailey."

Bailey was to sleep on the rickety lounge, which served as bedstead and chair, and the other men were to make down as best they could in the grocery.

Bailey went out to the front of the shanty to look at the lantern he had set up on a scantling. Rivers followed him.

"Going to leave that up there all night?"

"Yes. May keep some poor devil from wandering around all night on the prairie."

Rivers said, with an abrupt change in his voice:

"Mrs. Burke is a hummer, isn't she? How'd his flat-chested nibs manage to secure a 'queen' like that? I must get married, Bailey—no use."

Bailey took his friend's declaration more lightly than it deserved. He laughed. "Wish you would, Jim, and relieve me of the cookin'."

Blanche could hardly compose herself to sleep. "Isn't it wonderful," she whispered. "It's all so strange, like being out of the world, someway."

Burke heard the ducks quacking down in the "Moggason," and he, too, felt the silence and immensity of the plain outside. It was enormous, incredible in its wildness. "I believe we're going to like it out here, Blanche," he said.

Blanche Burke rose to a beautiful and busy day. The breakfast which she cooked in the early dawn was savory, and Rivers, who helped her by bringing water and building the fire, was full of life and humor. He seemed to have no other business than to "wait and tend" on her.

He called her out to see the sunrise. "Isn't this great!" he called, exultantly. Flights of geese were passing, and the noise of ducks came to them from every direction. He pointed out the distant hills, and called her attention to a solemn row of sand-hill cranes down by the swale, causing her to see the wonder and beauty of this new world.

"You're going to like it out here," he said, with conviction. "It is a glorious climate, and you'll soon have more neighbors than you want."

After breakfast Bailey and Burke left the "Moggason Ranch"—as Bailey called the store and shanty—to carry the lumber and furniture belonging to Burke on to his claim, two or three miles away. Rivers remained to work in the store, and to meet some other land-seekers, and Mrs. Burke agreed to stay and get dinner for them all.

During this long forenoon, Rivers exerted himself to prevent her from being lonely. He was busy about the store, but he found time to keep her fire going and to bring water and to tell her of his bachelor life with Bailey. She had never had anything like this swift and smiling service, and she felt very grateful to him. He encouraged her to make some pies and to prepare a "thumping dinner." "It will seem like being married again," he said, with a chuckle.

Burke and Bailey returned at noon to dinner.

"Mrs. Burke, you can sleep in your own ranch to-night," announced Bailey.

"I guess it will be a ranch."

"It'll be new, anyhow," her husband said, with a timid smile.

After dinner she straightened things up a little, and as she got into the wagon she said: "Well, there, Mr. Rivers. You'll have to take care o' things now."

Rivers leered comically, sighed, and looked at his partner. "Bailey, I didn't know what we needed before; I know now. We need a woman."

Bailey smiled. "Go get one. Don't ask a clumsy old farmer like me to provide a cook."

"I'll get married to-morrow," said Rivers, with a droll inflection. They all laughed, and Burke clucked at the team. "Well, good-bye, boys; see you later."

After leaving the ranch they struck out over the prairie where no wagon-wheel but theirs had ever passed. Here were the buffalo trails, deep-worn ruts all running from northwest to southeast. Here lay the white bones of elk in shining crates, ghastly on the fire-blackened sod. Beside the shallow pools, buffalo horns, in testimony of the tragic past, lay scattered thickly. Everywhere could be seen the signs of the swarming herds of bison which once swept to and fro from north to south over the plain, all so silent and empty now.

A few antelope scurried away out of the path, and a wolf sitting on a height gravely watched the teams as if marvelling at their coming. The wind swept out of the west clear and cold. The sky held no shred of cloud. The air was like some all-powerful intoxicant, and when Bailey pointed out a row of little stakes and said, "There's the railroad," their imagination supplied the trains, the wheat, the houses, the towns which were to come.

At the claim Blanche sat on a box and watched the two men as they swiftly built the little cabin which was to be her home. Their hammers rang merrily, and soon she was permitted to go inside and look up at the great sky which roofed it in. This was an emotional moment to her. As she sat there listening to the voices of the men who were drawing this fragile shelter around her, a great awe fell upon her. It seemed as if she had drawn a little nearer to the Almighty Creator of the universe. Here, where no white man had ever set foot, she was watching the founding of her own house. Was it a home? Could it ever be a home?

Swiftly the roof closed over her head, and the floor crept under her feet. The stove came in, and the flour-barrel, and the few household articles which they had brought followed, and as the sun was setting they all sat down to supper in her new home.

The smell of the fresh pine was round them. Geese were flying over. Cranes were dancing down by the ponds, prairie-chickens were booming. The open doorway—doorless yet—looked out on the sea-like plain glorified by the red sun just sinking over the purple line of treeless hills to the west. It was the bare, raw materials of a State, and they were in at the beginning of it.

After Bailey left them the husband and wife sat in silence. When they spoke it was in low voices. It seemed as if God could hear what they said—that He was just there behind the glory of the western clouds.

Day by day the plain thickened with life. Each noon a crowd of land-seekers swarmed about the Moggason Ranch asking for food and shelter, and Blanche, responding to Rivers' entreaties, went down to cook, returning each night to her bed. Rivers professed to be very grateful for her aid.

All ages and sexes came to take claims. Old men, alone and feeble, school teachers from the East, young girls from the towns of the older counties, boys not yet of age—everywhere incoming claimants were setting stakes upon the green and beautiful sod.

Each day the grass grew more velvety green. Each day the sky waxed warmer. The snow disappeared from the ravines. The ice broke up on the Moggason. The ponds disappeared. Plover flew over with wailing cry. Buffalo birds, prairie pigeons, larks, blackbirds, sparrows, joined their voices to those of the cranes and geese and ducks, and the prairie piped and twittered and clacked and chuckled with life. The gophers emerged from their winter-quarters, the foxes barked on the hills, the skunk hobbled along the ravines, and the badger raised mounds of fresh soil as if to aid the boomer by showing how deep the black loam was.

Everybody was in holiday mood. Men whistled and sang and shouted and toiled—toiled terribly—and yet it did not seem like toil! They sank wells and ploughed gardens and built barns and planted seeds, and yet the whole settlement continued to present the care-free manners of a great pleasure party. It seemed as if no one needed to work, and, therefore, those first months were months of gay and swift progress.

It was the most beautiful spring Blanche and Willard Burke had spent since their marriage nine years before. Blanche forgot to be petulant or moody. She was in superb health, and carried herself like a girl of eighteen. She appeared to have lost all her regrets.

She laughed heartily when Rivers came over one afternoon and boldly declared:

"Burke, I've c'me to borrow your wife. We've got a lot o' tenderfoots over there to-night, and I'm a little shy of Bailey's biscuits. I'm going to carry your cook away."

"All right; only bring her back."

Blanche was a little embarrassed when Rivers replied: "I don't like to agree to do that. Mebbe you'd better come over to make sure I do."

"All right. I'll come over in time for supper." Burke's simple, good face glowed with enjoyment of the fun. He smilingly went back to beating his plough-share with hammer and wedge as Rivers drove away with Blanche. The clink of his steel rang through the golden light that flooded the prairie, keeping time to his whistled song.

In the months of April and May the world sent a skirmish-line into this echoless land to take possession of a belt of territory six hundred miles long and one hundred miles broad. The settlers came like locusts; they sang like larks. From Alsace and Lorraine, from the North Sea, from Russia, from the Alps, they came, and their faces shone as if they had happened upon the spring-time of the world. Tyranny was behind them, the majesty of God's wilderness before them, a mystic joy within them.

Under their hands the straddle-bug multiplied. He is short-lived, this prairie insect. He usually dies in thirty days—by courtesy alone he lives. He expresses the settlers' hope and sense of justice. In these spring days of good cheer he lived at times to sixty days—but only on stony ground or fire-scarred, peaty lowlands.

He withered—this strange, three-legged, voiceless insect—but in his stead arose a beetle. This beetle sheltered human beings, and was called a shack.

They were all alike, these shacks. They had roofs of one slant. They were built of rough lumber, and roofed with tarred paper, which made all food taste of tar.

They were dens but little higher than a man's head, and yet they sheltered the most joyous people that ever set foot to earth. In one cabin lived a girl and a canary-bird, all alone. In the next a man who cooked his own food when he did not share his rations with the girl, all in frank and honorable companionship. On the next claim were two school-teachers, busy as magpies, using the saw and hammer with deft accuracy. In the next was a bank-clerk out for his health—and these clean and self-contained people lived in free intercourse without slander and without fear. Only the Alsatians settled in groups, alien and unapproachable. All others met at odd times and places, breathing in the promiseful air of the clean sod, resolute to put the world of hopeless failure behind them.

Spring merged magnificently into summer. The grass upthrust. The waterfowl passed on to the northern lake-region. The morning symphony of the prairie-chickens died out, but the whistle of the larks, the chatter of the sparrows, and the wailing cry of the nesting plover came to take its place.

The gophers whistled and trilled, the foxes barked from the hills, and an occasional startled antelope or curious wolf passed through the line of settlement as if to see what lay behind this strange phalanx of ploughmen guarding their yellow shanties.

Week after week passed away, and the government surveyors did not appear. The Boomtown Spike told in each issue how the men of the chain and compass were pushing westward; but still they did not come, and the settlers' hopes of getting their claims filed before winter grew fainter. The mass of them had planned to take claims in the spring, live on them the required six months, "prove up," and return East for the winter.

In spite of these disappointments, all continued to be merry. No one took any part of it very seriously. The young men went out and ploughed when they pleased, and came in and sat on the door-step and talked with the women when they were weary. The shanties were hot and crowded, but no one minded that; by-and-by they were to build bigger.

And, then, all was so new and beautiful, and the sky was so clear. Oh, that marvellous, lofty sky with just clouds enough to make the blue more intense! Oh, the wonder of the wind from the wild, mysterious green sea to the west! With the change and sheen of the prairie, incessant and magical life was made marvellous and the winter put far away.

Merry parties drove here and there visiting. Formalities counted for little, and yet with all this freedom of intercourse, this close companionship, no one pointed the finger of gossip toward any woman. The girls in their one-room huts received calls from their bachelor neighbors with the confidence that comes from purity of purpose, both felt and understood. Life was strangely idyllic during these spring days. Envy and hate and suspicion seemed exorcised from the world.

The centre of the social life was Bailey's store. There stood the post-office, which connected the settlers with the world they had left behind. There they assembled each day when the flag ran up the long pole which stood before the door as a signal for the mail. On the treeless, shrubless prairie one could see the flag miles away, as it rose like a faint fleck of pink against the green of the prairie beyond or the blue sky above.

Twice a week Rivers drove out with supplies. These were the eventful days of the week, and it was significant to observe with what tasteful care the young women thought it proper to dress on this day. Hats, dainty and fresh, cool muslins, spotless cuffs, ribbons. They came out of their cabins with all the little airs and graces of their Eastern homes. Bailey shared their good opinion, but he was always silent and a little timid in their presence, and usually disappeared as soon as Rivers came. "The social responsibilities belong to you, partner," he was accustomed to say.

As the summer wore on, the number of those pathetically eager for letters increased. The sun-bright plain, the beautiful, almost cloudless sky, and the ever-flooding light wore upon them. They began to recall wistfully the cool streams of New England, the wooded slopes of Wisconsin, the comfortable homesteads and meadows of Illinois, and they came for their mail with shining eyes—and when forced to say "Nothing to-day," Bailey always suffered a keen pang of sympathetic pain.

He himself watched the eastern horizon, incessantly and unconsciously, hours before the wagon was due, and, when it came in sight at last, ran his flag up along its mast joyously.

It was a great pleasure to him to sit and talk with his partner, and he looked forward to his visits eagerly. To Jim he could utter himself freely. They had known each other so long, and he believed he understood his partner to the centre of his heart.

He usually had supper ready—often he had help from the girls or Mrs. Burke, and while a dozen hands volunteered at the team and with the mail-bag, Rivers was free to hurry to his table, whereat he fared like a pasha attended by the flower of his harem. The girls pretended it was all on account of his office as mail-carrier, but they deceived no one, much less an experienced beau like Rivers. He accepted it all with shameless egotism.

To Bailey's mind Jim was too well attended. He seemed to see less and less of his partner as the season wore on. They seldom sat down to talk in the good old fashion, wearing out half the night smoking, listening to the slumber-song of the night plain, for Rivers got into the habit of walking home with some of the girls after the mail was distributed, leaving his partner to do the trading. Sometimes he went away with Mrs. Burke, if she were alone; sometimes with Estelle Clayton, whom Bailey thought the finest woman in the world. He secretly resented Rivers' attention to Estelle, for he had come to look upon her as under his protection. Her coming raised mail-days to the level of a national holiday.

She scared him, and yet he rejoiced to see her coming down over the sod so strong, so erect, so clear-eyed. She wore her hair like a matron, and that pleased him, and she looked at him so frankly and unwaveringly. She had been a school-teacher in some middle Western State, and had been swept into this movement by her desire to go to an Eastern college.

Bailey contrived to look very stern and very busy whenever she came in, but she was wise in ways of men, and treated him as if he were a good comrade, and so gradually he came to talk to her almost as freely as with Blanche Burke.

He did not know that Jim almost invariably went over to Burke's shanty—even when he walked home with Miss Clayton. Rivers did not impress Estelle favorably. She was not one to be moved by flattery, nor by dimples in male cheeks. She accepted his company pleasantly, but there were well-defined bounds to her friendship, as Rivers discovered one evening as they were walking over the plain toward her home.

On every side the vivid green stretched away, smooth as the rounded flesh of a woman, velvet in texture, glorified by the saffron and orange of the sunset sky.

At the cabin they met Carrie, for whom Estelle was both sister and mother. The little shanty slanted on the side of a swell like a little boat sliding up a monstrous mid-ocean wave. Around it lay a little garden inhabited by a colony of chicken-coops—"All my own making," Estelle said. "Oh, of course, sister held the nails and bossed, but I did it. I like it, too. It's more fun than working red poppies on tidies—that's about all they'll let you do back East."

"It doesn't matter much what you do out here," said Rivers, meaningly.

"Oh yes, it does. Some things are wrong anywhere; but there are other things which people think are wrong that are only unusual," she answered, and he knew she knew what he meant.

The talk moved on to lighter themes, and then died away as the three sat in the doorway and saw the light fade out of the sky.

Carrie's thin, eager face shone with angelic light. She seemed to hold her breath as flame after flame of the marvellous light was withdrawn.

"Oh, the sky is so big out here," she whispered. Estelle locked hands with her and sat in silence. Rivers, awkward and constrained, respected their emotion. At last he rose.

"I'm going over to Burke's a little while, so I'll have to be moving."

"Mrs. Burke is very strange," said Estelle; "I can't seem to get on with her. She seems very lonely and restless. Her husband is away a great deal, but I can't get her to talk, when I call, and she never returns my call."

"She never seemed that way to me," Rivers said, having nothing better in mind at the moment.

"I think she's homesick. I wish I knew how to help her, but I don't."

Rivers walked away with two thoughts in his mind. One was the girl's sentence about things that were wrong and things which people thought were wrong, and the other was the question about Blanche—was she homesick? That puzzled him. Had he only seen her in her joyous moods? It was not pleasant to think of her growing sad—perhaps on his account.

Burke sat on a bench outside the door, smoking silently in the dusk. Blanche was stirring about inside.

"Hello, Rivers!" Burke called. "Take a seat." He pointed at a vinegar-keg.

Blanche hurried to meet her visitor, a beautiful smile on her face. "Come inside," she said. "I've got some work to do, and I want to hear you men talk." They obediently complied, and she lighted a lamp. "I like to see you when you talk," she added, flashing a smile at Rivers.

He saw the change in her for the first time. She certainly was paler, her face less boyish, and a deeper shadow hovered about her eyes.

"I came over to see if you wouldn't come down and help us get up a jollification at the store on the Fourth," he said.

"Why, of course. What shall I do?"

"Oh, stir up a cake—and make some ice-cream. Can you make ice-cream?"

"You bet I can—with ice. Bring on your ice."

"Ice is easy to get. Cook is what bothered me."

"That ought to be easy," said Burke. "Marry one."

"That's what I'm telling Bailey."

"Why don't you set the example. 'Stelle Clayton—now."

Rivers laughed, but his eyes, directed above Burke's head, met the unsmiling gaze of Blanche and sobered.

"Miss Clayton and I don't seem to get along first-rate," he said, and her face lighted again.

"Well, there are lots of others 'round here—lonesome girls. Blanche, can't you help Jim find a woman?"

Blanche did not answer lightly. She turned to her work. "I guess he can find one if he tries hard."

She was alluring as she kneaded the bread at the table. The flex of her waist and the swing of her skirts affected Rivers powerfully. He watched her in silence. Once she looked around, and the penetrative glance of his eyes filled her face with a rush of blood, and her eyes misted. A few minutes later he said "good-night" in an absent-minded way and went home.

Burke talked on, attempting to retain the cheery atmosphere which Rivers had brought in, but Blanche refused to answer, a sombre look on her sullen face. She seemed falling back into her old petulant, moody ways, and her husband suffered a corresponding dejection.

The elation was passing out of his heart. Their picnic was at an end.

As the summer came on he was forced to go out ploughing for other settlers, and she was left alone a great deal. This was hard to bear. There was so little to do in her little sun-smit cabin, and her trip to the post-office to get the mail and to meet the other settlers came to be a necessity. Like the other women, she put on her best hat and gown when she went to the store, and a low word of compliment from Rivers, as he handed out the mail, put a color into her face and a joy in her heart which her husband had never been able to arouse—indeed, it was after these visits that she was most cruel to Willard.

Sometimes she went with him to visit the neighbors, but not often. One day he said:

"I'm goin' to work f'r Jim Bradley to-day—want 'o go 'long?"

"I can't this mornin'. Perhaps I'll come over after dinner and walk home with you."

"I think you'll like Mrs. Bradley. She's got the purtiest little baby you ever saw." He did not look at her as he slung his pick and shovel on his shoulder. "Well, I'll tell her you'll be over about three o'clock."

"All right, tell her. Mebbe I'll come and mebbe I won't," she answered, ungraciously.

All that forenoon she went about her little cabin moodily, or sat silently by the open door watching the buffalo birds or larks as they came up about the barn for food. The green plain was all a-shimmer with pleasant heat. The plover, nesting in the grass, were nearly ready to bring forth their young—and the mother fox had already begun to lead her litter out upon the sunny hillside; only this childless woman seemed unhappy—sad.

As she came to the cabin of the Bradleys, Willard, sunk to his topknot in the ground, was burrowing like a badger in the clay, quite oblivious to the world above him. Some one was singing in the cabin, and, approaching the door, Blanche saw a picture which thrilled her with a strange, hungry, envious passion.

A young woman was seated in the tiny room with her back to the door, her hand on a cradle, and as she rocked she sang softly. She was a plain little woman, the cradle was cheap and common, and her singing was only a monotonous chant; but the scene had a sort of sublimity—it was so old, so typical, and so beautiful.

The woman without the threshold stood for a long time staring straight before her, then turned and walked away homeward—past the weary, patient, heroic man toiling deep in the earth for her sake—leaving him without a glance or a word.

"You didn't get over to Mrs. Bradley's this afternoon, then?" Burke said, at supper.

"No," she replied, shortly, "I had some sewin' to do."

"Wal, go to-morrow. That's an awfully cute little chap—that baby," he went on, after a little. "Mrs. Bradley let him set on my knee to-day." Then he sighed. "I wisht we had one like 'im, Blanche." After a pause, he said, "Mebbe God will send one some day."

She didn't appear to hear, and her face was dark with passion.