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Title: The Smoking Flax
Author: Stead, Robert James Campbell (1880-1959)
Date of first publication: 1924
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Toronto: McClelland & Stewart
Date first posted: 2 June 2013
Date last updated: 2 June 2013
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1080

This ebook was produced by
David T. Jones, Elizabeth S. Oscanyon, Al Haines
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

The DPC Transcriber's notes can be found at the end of the book






                           By ROBERT STEAD

_The Smoking Flax_

_The Cow Puncher_

_The Homesteaders_

_Neighbours_

_Dennison Grant_


                  *       *       *       *       *



                           THE SMOKING FLAX



                           By ROBERT STEAD




                        McCLELLAND AND STEWART
                       PUBLISHERS :: :: TORONTO


                        Copyright Canada, 1924
                                  by
                    McClelland & Stewart, Limited
                               Toronto


                         Printed in Canada

               Press of The Hunter-Rose Co., Limited




                  *       *       *       *       *






                           THE SMOKING FLAX




CHAPTER ONE


Long vistas of undulating prairies checkered in black, moist fields.
Here and there a grove of green poplars; here and there a farmhouse,
white and peaceful in their shadows. Grass, green and moist, with a
purple carpeting of anemones. Water shining from many tiny lakes.
Coveys of white clouds, like ruffled swans, afloat in an infinite sky.

A long road, running straight on forever. Up and down the sweeping
vistas of prairie-land; by the checkered black fields breathing deep
the still sunshine of early May; through an interminable lane bordered
with barbed wire fences. A gopher by the roadside, bolt upright and
whistling. Fresh, damp earth from a badger hole mounded on the trail.
The hum of telephone wires. Water gurgling through a culvert. A crow
silent upon a neighboring post.

Over the ridge to the eastward an atom suddenly appears where the road
leaps out of the sky. It grows rapidly, flashing a heliograph in the
sunlight as it approaches. Presently it defines itself as that most
familiar of all objects on the prairie trail, ouster of horse and
saddle and buckboard and prairie schooner--a Ford automobile. Another
hundred yards and it proclaims itself an old Ford automobile, sagging
and rumbling and flapping its fenders like a spaniel's ears.

A man and a boy occupy the front seat, the man at the steering wheel.
The boy is of not more than eight or nine years, and his keen little
face, upturned to his companion, is flushed with interest and childish
enthusiasm. The two are deep in discussion, and, as we are to travel
with them through the pages of this narrative, let us stop them here
and climb aboard.

"No, I wouldn't exactly say there was a feud between the oak and the
elm; it wasn't quite so bad as that--"

"What is a feud, Daddy X?"

"Why, a feud is when one family feels aggrieved with another and--"

"What is aggrieved, Daddy X?"

"That is when you think someone has been unfair--hasn't been a good
sport, you know. Like the man who wouldn't pull us out of the mud-hole
yesterday until I gave him a dollar."

"Was that a feud?"

"No, but for a moment it threatened to be," and the driver's lips
disclosed a glint of white teeth. "You see, that happened to be our
last dollar, and one always feels a sentimental attachment for his
last dollar quite different from--"

"What is a sen-ti-mental 'tachment, Daddy X?"

"Something you will not begin to understand until you are about
fourteen or fifteen, and will not have finished understanding when you
are an old man, like me, at twenty-six. Now--where were we? Oh, yes! At
the quarrel between the oak and the elm. As I was saying--"

Bump! The dog's ear fenders flapped against the wheels.

"Whoa, Ante! Watch your step! Mustn't hit a culvert like that!"

The child's voice was raised in sturdy protest. "You promised,
yesterday, Daddy X; don't you remember?"

"What did I promise, Reed? It slips me."

"Don't you remember? When we were stuck in the mud you took the wheel
in both hands and you said, 'Ante, get us out of this and I will be
more respectful to you, and I won't ask you to wade in the mud, and
I'll call you by your full name, always--"Ante-lope",' like that."

"Dear me, so I did! But then, she didn't get us out of the mud, did
she? We had to have a farmer haul us with his team, at the price of
our last dollar--"

"It was a promise, and we got out," said the boy, solidly.

They were bowling along and had just crested the next hill. Suddenly
the shining surface of the lake broke upon their vision.

"Whoa, Ante-_lope_!" and the driver brought his car to a stop.

For a full minute the two companions gazed in silence at the scene
outspread before them. The prairie levels broke abruptly into a deep
valley, blazoned on its higher slopes with vivid patches of light
green poplars and balm-o'-gileads; on its lower reaches with the
darker hues of stately elms. Between the broad banks, and filling all
the bed of the valley, lay the lake, its surface shining like a mirror
of quicksilver.

"This must be the lake shown on our map," said Calvin Beach. "See,
there, at the western end, is the deep green of the marshes. Beyond
those marshes, according to the map, the road swings across the
valley, and there is a bridge over the river that feeds the lake."

"And we are to camp there to-night, aren't we, Daddy X?"

"That is the intention, if Ante-_lope_ only continues faithful to the
end."

Along the crest of the northern shore of the lake they skirted, the
boy silent in wonder at the great cloud reflections floating far
below, the driver busy with his car and with thoughts which, even in
this peaceful setting, may have had in them something of cloud and
shadow, too. The shades of evening trailed farther and farther behind;
the sunlight blazed more squarely in their faces; the road unwound
itself like an endless belt beneath their flying wheels.

At length they began to drop down a steep and winding road into the
valley, and the car demanded the undivided attention of the man at the
wheel. Reed had come to know such moments by instinct, and noted in
silence how, on the steep pitches, the brake-bands gripped and the
gravel flew from the tires as the wheels dragged on the stony road.
But it always was a delightful experience, and the steeper the hill
the more he liked it. He had a child's faith, unmeasured and
immeasurable, in "Daddy X."

Presently they reached the valley levels. Cal released the brakes and
the car floated forward with its pent-up momentum. Here they turned to
the south, and a tall shadow-car, with funny oval wheels and a very
top-heavy body, glided silently on their left until they plunged into
a grove of ancient elms.

"Oh, Daddy X!" the boy cried, clapping his hands. "We've won! See, it
was racing Ante--Ante-_lope_, and watching us instead of the road, and
it ran right into the elms!"

"A driver always should watch the road," said Cal.

"Yes," the boy agreed. "There might be a high culvert."

The young man made a feint of having received a blow in a vital part
of his anatomy. "That's one to you, Reed," he admitted. "But watch
out--"

For what he was to watch Cal did not say, and the boy did not ask. He
had become engrossed in the bars of yellow sunlight which, streaming
through aisles between the trees, flicked his face in rapid succession
of light and shadow. "It's like that funny band you used to wear on
your hat," he explained to Daddy X.

Suddenly the winding road, as though by a wiggle of its great
backbone, straightened out before them. It led along a well-graded
turnpike to the yawning arches of a steel bridge, but off to the side,
almost buried in a growth of grass and infant poplars, a side trail
led down to an old ford where the settlers had braved the river for a
score of years before the building of the bridge.

"This should be a good place to camp; what say you, Ante-_lope_?"

Cal bounced up and down in his seat until the car nodded her nose.
"'Very good,' you say. A fellow feeling, I suppose; Ford for ford.
Well, we'll turn down here," and he guided it along the deserted
trail. Down by the river there widened out a gravelly shelf. Against
its pebbly shore the blue-brown water of the stream confided strange
things whisperingly on its way to the marshes and the lake.

They climbed out and stretched their limbs. "To the big stump and
back!" Reed suddenly challenged and was off like the wind, while his
companion dallied for a moment to make a race of it at the finish.
Panting, they came up together, but it was the boy's hand that touched
the dog-eared fender first.

Reed brought the "grub box" out of the car as Cal started a fire with
a few twigs on the gravel. Presently sausages were sizzling in the
frying-pan and the smell of steaming tea went up like sweet incense
from their little altar. A hot sausage, split and laid between two
stout slabs of bread, and supper was served.

When they had put away the remnants of their meal and scoured their
utensils in the sand, the boy stood down by the water and skipped
stones across the stream. He amused himself at this until the yellow
bars of light faded out between the trees and the reflection of the
steel bridge died in the darkness. Once or twice the sharp whistle of
a wild duck's flight broke upon his ear, and his quick eye located the
speedy traveller just as he faded into the grey of heaven; once a
muskrat ventured forth from the opposite bank and dived, silent and
graceful, at the challenge of Reed's stone; once a team and wagon
rumbled over the bridge; otherwise all was silence save the low murmur
of the water and the skip and chuckle of the stones which he threw
upon it.

"All right, Reed," said a voice behind him. "Almost time to turn in."

"Oh, aren't we to have a fire and a story, Daddy X?"

"The fire is ready for starting, and the story, too, I think," said
Cal. "What shall it be?"

"The few, the few--what was it, between the oak and the elm?"

"I didn't say it was quite a feud, did I? Well, let us start a fire,
and then we shall hear."

Cal gathered some branches into a little heap, and now, kneeling
beside the pile, he struck a match. The glow lit up his face, very
brown and friendly in its ruddy light; a moment more and the dry limbs
were writhing as the flame curled about their knotted wrists and
fingers. Reed and Cal rolled an old tree trunk near to the fire and
sat down together.

"The quarrel between the oak and the elm was over the spruce," Cal
began. "Both the oak and the elm were in love with the beautiful
spruce. The oak wooed her in midday, when the sun poured its hot
brilliance through the still boughs and wove on the grass beneath a
carpet of light and shadow. It was then the oak would lean gently
toward his evergreen companion and whisper in her ear, 'Spruce, I love
you, dear,' but the spruce--"

"Oh, Daddy X, you are making poetry! You said, 'Whisper in her ear,
Spruce, I love you, dear'--"

"Well, well, so I did! But poetry is the language of love, and no
doubt the oak made poetry with the gentle rustle of his leaves in the
sunlight. But the spruce only bowed her head, bashfully.

"In the evening the elm, which also stood near the spruce, would
tremble toward her and say, 'Look at me, Spruce! Am I not beautiful?
See my straight trunk; see my shapely limbs! See how all my branches
reach to the same height and make a green umbrella in the sky. Think
of that when you are tempted to look upon the knotty, knarled, twisted
oak. Will you not come under that umbrella, dear Spruce, and let me
shelter you when the winds blow and the snow falls and the world is
white and still in the cold grip of winter?' But the spruce only bowed
her head, bashfully.

"Then the oak said, gruffly: 'Elm, why do you make love to Spruce? She
has been my companion since childhood. I have watched her grow from a
tiny Christmas-tree to a beautiful maiden with lovely symmetrical
green arms that stretch toward me, and with green hair that trembles
in the wind, but never grows ruffled or fuzzy and never falls to the
ground like yours and mine. Spruce belongs to me, I tell you,' said
the oak, gruffly. 'Leave her alone.'

"Then the elm answered in his big, sighing voice, which came down from
among his stately limbs, 'Oak, you shall not interfere in my love for
Spruce. It is I who have grown beside her all these years; it is I who
have pointed her skyward while you were tempting her down to the musty
earth. Leave her to me.'

"But the oak said gruffly, 'She is mine, I tell you. I will not leave
her to you!'

"Then the great elm shouted down, 'Now, Oak, I will have your sap for
this! When the northwest wind blows I will fall upon you, and crush
you into the earth, and everyone who passes shall laugh and say, "Look
what Elm has done to Oak!"'

"Then the beautiful spruce, when she heard these loud and angry words,
trembled silently, and tears came to her many eyes and fell like dew
on the warm grass, for she loved both the oak and the elm, and could
not have told you which she loved the better. And as the spruce
trembled and wept she made a great resolve.

"And when the night was deep upon them she arose from the rich black
earth which had been her home since she was a little Christmas-tree
and stole silently away to a sandy ridge, where no other tree could
grow, because she could not bear to hear her friends quarreling about
her. And in the morning when the oak and the elm awoke they saw their
beautiful love away on the ridge, where neither of them could grow at
all. And there she has lived for ever since."

"And did the elm fight the oak, Daddy X?" the lad inquired, raising
his gaze from the fire to the face of his friend.

"Oh, no! The elm was so sorry for his high words that he, too,
departed, but he went to the valley, not far from the river. And so
the oak and elm live apart, but under their gruff surfaces they are
very, very sad."

"But very beautiful," said the boy.

Reed poked the fire with a stick and watched a slender tongue of flame
whipping the smoke upwards. The bedtime story was always to him a
season of delight, a ten-minute ramble into fairyland. And this
strange friend of his, whom he knew only as Daddy X, always had a new
story every night, and never needed to read it out of a book. What a
wonderful Daddy X he was!

"Now you must say your verse and go to bed," said Cal, after they had
watched the fire smoulder for a while.

The lad clasped his hands, and, raising his face to the bright stars,
repeated solemnly the words, "A bruisd reed shall he not break, and
the smoking flax shall he not quench."

"That was what my mother said, last, wasn't it, Daddy X?" said the
boy.

"Yes, Reed."

"And that is why you called me Reed, because my mother was a bruisd
reed, isn't it, Daddy X?"

"Yes, lad. But you cannot understand. Some day, perhaps, you will
understand." But under his breath he renewed the promise given to the
boy's dead mother: "He never shall; he never shall!"




CHAPTER TWO


Reed slipped silently from the knee-pants and shirt which were his
principal attire; his shoes and stockings had been discarded early in
the evening, when he went to throw stones in the water. For a moment
the glint of his trim young body shone ruddy in the light of the fire;
then, with a contortion, it disappeared within the folds of his
nightgown.

"Porter, am dah berfs made up?" he demanded.

"Massa, dah berfs am made up," Cal answered, with great gravity.

In preparation for their expedition, Cal Beach, with a plumber's kit
and some help from a friendly blacksmith, had performed a surgical
operation of some delicacy upon the ancient Ford, which had just then
come into his possession. The back of the front seat was amputated at
the flanks and so arranged that it folded down, bridging, as it were,
the space between the front and back cushions. In this position, with
all the cushions in place, and furnished with a camp mattress,
blankets and pillows, a very passable bed was provided. Reed slept on
the driver's side to save Cal the danger of barking his long shins on
the steering post, and, with this precaution, they were as comfortable
as in any Pullman.

Cal had arranged the back and the cushions, spread the mattress,
turned back the blankets, placed the pillows. Reed clung for a moment
about his neck, then vaulted over the rattly side-door, flickering an
affectionate hand toward his companion as he went.

"Good-night, Daddy X," he called.

"Good-night, Reedie-boy."

Reed turned to a study of the stars which peered down, very thick and
friendly, from the Milky Way overhead, and Cal retraced his steps to
the fire, musing as he went over the amazing wonderlands of childhood.
He stirred the fire to new life with some fresh branches and settled
down, his back against a friendly tree, for his bedtime smoke. These
bedtime smokes were his thinking hour. During the day his time and
thought were given to Reed and Antelope, but at night, after the boy
was in bed, he would sit by the campfire and marshal past, present,
and future in review.

"What a kid he is!" he exclaimed to himself. "Eight--nine in September.
Twenty-six, eh, Cal? With a family, but without a wife. How time
flies--and how it drags! Both. The days seem endless, but how the weeks
slip by!

"Eight years--nine in September. Twenty-six. I used to think a man was
old at twenty-six. And so he is. I am old at twenty-six."

He leaned back, his square shoulders resting against the tree, while
his mind, from contemplating the childhood of Reed, skipped down the
years to his own first recollections. There stretched the leafy street
in the little university city of Kingston; there basked the big garden
in which he and Celesta romped as children. There were the apple tree
and the swing, and the flower beds that must not be touched, except by
permission. There was the solid limestone house, with vines clambering
over the porch and shutters.

Inside, his father sat in the big chair in the front room upstairs,
with the fireplace and walls lined with books. It seemed to Cal that
front room had always been filled with books and shadows, with his
father, master shadow of them all, in the big chair before the fire.
As Cal remembered him, his father was very tall, with a stoop, and a
face which receded wherever the bones would let it, and a way of being
busy just now. Cal had always thought of his father as old. There were
times, rare times, when his father wasn't busy just now; times when
the lad clambered up the long, thin legs and explored the strange
cavities in their owner's face. Those were moments not to be
forgotten, but they came only at great intervals. Professor Beach's
devotion to his university had to be bought with a price, so it
seemed. And it was Cal who paid.

Cal and Celesta. Celesta, two years older than Cal, was able to
recall, partly by memory, more by imagination, the brave days before
Mama went away. Those were the days when Daddy wasn't always busy just
now; days of walks and picnics and great times before the study fire.
Those were the days, so Celesta said, although Cal never quite
credited this, before the strange hollows had come in Daddy's face.
Then the angels came for Mama--that was how Celesta told it--and sent
men to carry her away in a black box. And Aunt Bertha had come to live
in her place.

Cal had learned why the hollows had dug their deep trenches in his
father's face. The day he was fourteen he was summoned into the study.
"Sit down, Calvin, my boy," said a voice out of the shadows. "I think
you are fourteen today. Quite a man now, Cal, eh?"

"Yes, Daddy," said the boy, wondering for what offence he had been
summoned.

"I am just three times your age, Calvin; just forty-two. Not very old,
eh, Calvin?"

Cal thought forty-two was very old, but he did not say so. He had
learned that the professorial mind is not to be disputed.

"Forty-two is not very old, Calvin," his father repeated, "but I
suppose it must be old enough. One can grow very weary in even
forty-two years. But fourteen is very young to be left alone."

"Why, Daddy, are you going away?" said Cal, catching only half his
father's meaning.

"Yes Calvin."

"When? May I go? And Celesta?"

"Not now. Later. I am going to your mother, Calvin. Some time this
year."

It seemed to Cal that his father had purposely chosen to sit in the
shadow, where his face could not be seen clearly. The boy felt as
though a great band were tightening about his ribs.

"You had to know, Calvin," his father continued after a silence, "and
it is as well that you should know now. I have seen this coming, ever
since your mother went, and before. That is why I took the extra
classes at the university, so that there might be something saved for
you and Celesta. ... . It isn't much. If I had been a farmer, or a
bricklayer, or a machinist--but a university professor! Doctor of
languages; seven languages as my mother tongue-- But there, I must not
be bitter. When the bills are paid it will keep you and Celesta
perhaps two years. Then you will have to make your way, my boy."

Cal had meant to answer bravely, but on the last words came a catch in
his father's voice, and the next he knew he was up and infolded in the
long, thin arms. Tears were mingled, and Cal went out with a blessing
and a memory.

The day came, sooner than he had expected, when Dr. Beach could not
leave his room. A strange woman arrived at the house to look after
Daddy, and strange men, heavy, as Cal thought, with professorial
wisdom, came often to visit their sick associate. They looked upon Cal
and Celesta with grave eyes, and one of them had laid his hand on
Cal's shoulder. ...

After the death of his father Cal learned that the house which he had
always known as home was in some way connected with the university,
and they must vacate it. Aunt Bertha saw them settled in rooms in a
cheaper part of the town and left them with her blessing and the
explanation that their little capital would support two longer than
three. Celesta was quite old enough to keep house.

"Celesta, my dear," Aunt Bertha had said on that last morning, while
they waited for the expressman after her trunks were packed, "Celesta,
my dear, you have been well brought up; you will be sister and mother
to that tremendous boy." To Aunt Bertha Cal had always for some reason
been "that tremendous boy." Aunt Bertha had been raised among girls,
and had never married. "Your money will last a couple of years; that
will see him through high school; then he must go to work." Aunt
Bertha delivered that ultimatum, so Cal thought, with unnecessary
relish of the inevitable.

A lawyer who had been named their guardian paid the rent of their
little flat and gave them a weekly living allowance. Celesta proved a
good manager, and when they had recovered from the first shock of
their father's death, life for the brother and sister moved very
pleasantly indeed. Cal finished his high school course at sixteen and
declared himself ready to carry out his aunt's decree about going to
work, but Celesta would have none of it. "When you have gone through
university, Cal," she said, "then I will let you work for me. Until
then I am going to work for you."

Cal protested, but Celesta's mind was made up, and Cal, being the
younger, had come to know how inexorable was his sister's mind when it
was made up. "The housework is nothing," she had said; "I can do it
morning and evening, like winking. I can get work in an office, and it
will be fun to have my big brother in college. You will work through
the summer. I am sure we can manage."

So Cal was persuaded; Celesta went to an office, and he to college. He
had not troubled to decide for what particular purpose he would go to
college; that could come later. All went well for a year or two, but
the time came when Celesta's devotion to her office and her
housekeeping seemed suddenly to be interrupted. There were many nights
when she had "a date"; there were evenings when she did not come home
to dinner. Cal, philosophical always, accepted the situation, mildly
wondering.

Finally came the day when Celesta announced that she was going to
Montreal; she had been offered a much better position; she could make
more money; it would be to Cal's advantage more than hers. He could
stay at a boarding house; it would be more companionable than their
lonely rooms. The idea appealed to Cal but little, but he accepted it
without much argument. It was apparent that Celesta had made up her
mind again; besides, he did not forget that it was to her efforts he
owed the possibility of attending college.

After Celesta had gone she sent him money two or three times,
generously, but at irregular intervals; then the remittances ceased
altogether. Fortunately Cal had found summer work in a printing
office, so he was not penniless, but an uneasiness concerning Celesta
grew upon him. He had just turned eighteen, and these eighteen years
had flowed, in the main, along the sheltered paths of life. He was
neither suspicious nor sophisticated. He had an undefined but
abounding confidence in the goodness of humanity. He was an optimist.

Then, one evening, just as he came home to his boarding house from the
printing shop, a telegram was placed in his hand. He looked at it
curiously, signed for it, and carried it to his room. It was a new and
somewhat important experience; never before had he received a
telegram. On his way upstairs he began to associate it with Celesta.
Perhaps she was coming home; perhaps he was to meet her at the train!
He took the last three steps at a bound.

In his room he tore open the envelope. The upper part of the sheet was
a series of unintelligible characters, but the central sentence leapt
out at him.

  Your sister very sick in private hospital here wants you

It was a moment before Cal grasped its significance. When he read it
again he saw it was signed by a Doctor Anson, and an address was
given.

The boy walked to the window and looked out on the quiet street,
filled with the glory of September. But he saw nothing of the glory
now, for a tremendous fear was clutching at his heart. "Celesta!
Celesta!" The name came dry from his lips. Could there be a
world--could there be life--without Celesta?

There was time to catch the evening train, and he fortunately had a
few dollars in his pocket. He packed the battered club bag handed down
by Dr. Beach, told the landlady he would be gone for a day or two, and
hurried away.

It was midnight when he reached the city. Clamorous cab drivers barked
for his bag and his patronage, and, not knowing which street car to
take, he parted with a dollar to be driven to his address. It proved a
large but dingy house, once the residence of a prosperous family, but
now reduced to the status of a sort of boarding house for sick
persons. By the dim light of a porch lamp he pressed the bell, and
waited.

After a considerable period the door was opened by a young woman in
nurse's uniform. "I am the only one on night duty," she explained, as
she showed him into a little office off from the main hall. "I was
busy with a patient and could not come at once to the door. Dr. Anson,
of course, does not live in at nights."

Cal was conscious of an odor of disinfectants and an oppressive sense
of being among the sick. "I am sorry to trouble you at such an hour,"
he said, "but I got Dr. Anson's telegram just in time to catch the
night train. I am Cal Beach."

The nurse regarded him with interest, but the name did not appear to
carry any suggestion to her mind.

"Yes, Mr. Beach? And what can we do for you?"

"It is about my sister. She is here, and very sick. Dr. Anson
telegraphed me to come at once." As though to support his statement he
produced his telegram.

"What is her name?" the nurse inquired.

"Celesta Beach. Spelled B-e-a-c-h."

"Beach? I don't remember any Beach." She turned to a register and
scanned a couple of pages. Finally, "No Celesta Beach here."

"But there must be," Cal insisted. "See, I have the telegram."

The nurse ran a pencil through her hair and puckered her lips as
though studying a deep puzzle. "What is she like?" she asked at
length.

"She is young--about twenty--and looks a bit like me," said Cal,
blushing a little at the reference to his personal appearance.

"Pretty?" the nurse suggested. Cal wondered how a nurse could be
frivolous in the presence of sickness, but his color deepened a trifle
under her eyes. "I shouldn't tease," she continued, suddenly,
penitently. "Let me see--"

Nurse Rooke pondered a moment. "Mrs. Raymond has been asking for her
brother," she said, "and I believe Dr. Anson _did_ wire for someone.
But, of course, she couldn't be your sister."

"No--no. My sister is not married, and her name is Celesta Beach."

"Better come along with me," said the sophisticated nurse, springing
up quickly under the impetus of a sudden idea. "Strange things happen
in hospitals."

Cal followed her with a sense that he was groping vaguely. He was
conscious mainly of the hospital smell and the shuffle of his feet on
the silenced floors.

Nurse Rooke led him into a room. On the bed a woman was lying, her
face pale, worn; her eyes closed; her dark hair braided and falling
about her cheeks. She stirred with a sense of their presence.

"Is she your sister?" the nurse asked, gently.

But the boy was beside the bed, leaning over, peering into her face.
"Celesta!" he cried. "Celesta!" and fell on his knees beside her.

Slowly she opened her eyes, strangely big against her pale, thin face,
and looked into his. "Cal," she breathed. "Cal, my brother ... I
have been expecting you." She drew a thin hand from under the coverlet
and reached for his. "Cal, my brother!"...

"I came at once--first train after the telegram. Why didn't you let me
know? What is the matter?"

Celesta's eyes swept the little room. The nurse had gone. Then the
lids fell, and, as he watched, Cal saw little pools of water gather
through her lashes.

"Celesta, dear," he whispered, "tell me."

"It isn't easy telling," she said at length, in a voice so low he
hardly could hear it. "I wonder what you will think. Look."

Gently she turned down the coverlet and Cal got a vision of a little
pink head, with eyes prodigiously puckered against the light, and a
little pink fist clutched and groping.

"Celesta! Married! ... Who is this Raymond?"

Again she closed her eyes. "I am not married, Cal," she murmured.
"There is no Raymond."

The boy staggered to a chair, dazed by the terrific, unexpected blow.
When he did not speak, she continued in a voice that was all pleading
and yet had in it a note of challenge, almost of defiance--the voice of
the self-willed Celesta: "Try not to think too bitterly of me, Cal. I
won't be here long. The doctor says--something wrong--I will not get
better."...

He was at her side again. "I do not think bitterly of you, Celesta.
But ... but ..." His voice failed. Then, his cheek against hers,
"Tell me, Celesta."

"It's not much to tell. I loved him. I thought he was a god. I
neglected you for him. I gave up everything for him. Then--he persuaded
me to leave you, that our secret might be kept. He made me great
promises; he promised me everything. Then, at last, he--he went away. . ..
I know I am to blame, Cal; I accept my punishment, but--I loved
him. He was half god, half--half devil."

"And now you hate him, as I hate him," said Cal, through his teeth.

Again she turned her eyes to him. "No, Cal. I love him."

He leaned back, perplexed, confused, struggling in currents too deep
for his years. "What can I do?" he demanded, after a silence.

"Will you do one thing for me? Bring up the boy as your own, and
promise he shall never know. Promise me that, Cal." And, folding her
within his arms, he promised.

"Oh, it is true, Cal--it is true!" she cried, when he had released her.
"See--the promise." She pointed to a motto, the only decoration that
hung on the bare walls. "A bruisd reed shall he not break, and the
smoking flax shall he not quench."

"That has been my ray of light, Cal. I have yearned to it, hung on it,
all these days. His kindness which would not break the bruisd
reed--would it reach out to me? It has--it does, in you!" The boy took
her in his arms again, and for lack of something better to say,
whispered in her ear, "My bruisd reed--my bruisd reed!"

Finally she sent him to get a room, and a sleep. He did not see her
again, alive.

Cal was fortunate enough to find a Mrs. Barnes, who had raised six
boys and sent them out into the world, and whose mother heart was
still unsatisfied. When Mrs. Barnes looked into the great blue eyes of
Celesta's baby it was not hard to make a bargain.

"What is his name?" she asked.

"Reed--Reed Beach," said Cal.

Mrs. Barnes took Cal as a boarder, as well as the baby, and Cal
immediately found work in a printing office. He had made up his mind
that under no circumstances would he go back to his old home. The
secret of Celesta was well hid. The hospital had known her only as
Mrs. Raymond. He had given his pledge for the boy's sake, and for the
boy's sake, and Celesta's, and his own, that pledge he would keep
though the heavens fell. The few belongings he had left at the
boarding house would satisfy his small debts.

The printing office in which Cal worked was also a newspaper
publishing office. Perhaps it was a romantic twist in the boy's
nature, together with a certain joy which he found in expressing ideas
in words, which led him to seek reportorial work. With a baby to
support, he needed all the money he could earn, and night assignments
presently began to supplement his weekly wage as a printer. He covered
police, morgues, hotels, and got a glimpse of a life far removed from
that of a professor's family and a sleepy university town. He began to
see that the tragedy which had befallen Celesta was not altogether
exceptional. She had been a bruisd reed, it was true, but now he
moved among reeds not merely bruised, but broken. ... Out of his
experiences his young mind, groping for some solid philosophy of life,
arrived at the conclusion that the great error for which all the world
pays penalty is misdirected effort. Every human soul, he thought, is
an engine which _will_ go; the thing is to put it at useful work and
save it from blowing itself, and others, to pieces. ... Even this
Raymond fellow--he thought of him as Raymond for lack of another
name--even he must have had his better qualities. It was impossible to
think of the strong-willed Celesta--

It was when Reed was almost three, and giving promise of being another
"tremendous" boy, as Aunt Bertha would have said, that Cal conceived
the conceit of teaching the lad to call him "Daddy X." Daddy be was
already called; the x he added in its algebraic sense, as signifying
the unknown quantity.

About this time his interest in sociology excited within him a
determination to resume his university studies. He re-entered college,
this time with a definite purpose in view. At nights he continued his
reportorial rounds to make a living for himself and the boy.

Cal recalled the proud day, now only a few months ago, when, his
course completed, he had faced the world on what he considered his
mission of life. His immediate plan was to do a series of sociological
studies for one of the more serious-minded magazines, and at the same
time gather material for a book for popular circulation, which he
hoped would not only advance his cause, but provide money with which
he could continue his work. But he had barely begun on this program
when Dr. Anson, in whom he had found a personal friend, vetoed it.

"It's the open air for you, my boy," he had said, after the
examination; "the open air, and no more of this day and night grind. A
year or two in the open, say on the prairies, and you may be all
right. No more of this grind!"

"But, Doctor, my work--"

"But, Cal, your life--and your boy."

The boy. Oh, yes, there was the boy! Of course, the boy....

Reed was eight now; going to school; healthy, happy; more "tremendous"
than even Cal had been; whimsical; romantic; serious only in those
bedtime moments when Cal reminded him of his mother Celesta, and they
repeated his verse together, and he told him whence his name had come.
Yes, there was the boy.

Cal had gathered his little capital about him, bought a second-hand
Ford and some camping utensils, and said good-bye to the heartbroken
Mrs. Barnes. And here they were.

The fire had died until only a few coals glowed before him; a chill of
night air came up from the lake; the stars shone stolidly overhead.
The river, swollen with the spring overflows of the prairie sloughs,
muttered gurglingly at his feet. Into its black tide he looked as
though it could give, perhaps, some answer to the mystery of life.

Then he yawned, tapped the ashes from his pipe, put it away, and went
to bed.




CHAPTER THREE


Reed awakened with the sun pouring in upon him. His arm, reaching
under the blankets beside him, found the place empty, and he sprang up
from his pillow. In the gravel nearby he saw Cal bending over a fire.

"Hello, Daddy X!" he cried. "Why didn't you call me? What luck for
breakfast?"

"Big doings, Reed; big doings! Come and see."

The boy clambered out of the car and ran to the spot where Cal, frying
pan in hand, leaned over his little fire. An appetizing odor came up
from something grilling on the hot metal.

"Smells scrumptious," Reed approved. "What is it, Daddy X?"

"A secret. Listen. Hold down your head. Let me whisper._Wild duck!_"

"Wild duck? How? But you said we mustn't shoot them; you said it was
against the law?"

"The law allows an exception for explorers threatened with starvation.
We are explorers, Reed, threatened with starvation--if we don't get
something to eat. And on top of that, when this fine drake a-lit on
the river just at daybreak it was too much for an empty stomach,
Reed."

"But I didn't hear you shoot?"

"You are a sound sleeper. Conscience sits light on a young stomach, as
well as on an empty one. Now, have your dip. It's cold, but safe, if
you stay near the shore."

With a sudden contortion of his arms the boy emerged from his
nightdress. There was a gleam of sunlight on his lithe little body as
he plunged into the stream. He came up sputtering and shaking.

"O-o-w-h!" he shouted. "You said it was cold, and you were right!" The
boy was jumping about on the gravel. "O-o-w-h!--Where's the towel?"

"Try a sun rub, Reed. It's better for you, and saves laundry."

The boy raced up and down the bank, rubbing his body with his hands as
he went. In a minute or two the morning sun and air had whipped him
clean and dry.

After breakfast: "How's Ante this morning? Have you called the roll?"

"Ante _lope_, please. No, sir, the roll has not been called."

"Very well. Sergeant, call the roll."

Brisk and business-like, Reed plunged into the tool kit for the tire
gauge and made a quick examination of the wheels while Cal measured
their oil and gasoline resources. Then he presented himself with a
salute.

"Front left, sixty; rear left, sixty-five; front right, sixty; rear
right, fifty."

Cal returned the salute. "Fifteen pounds fatigue duty for rear right."

"Yes, sir!"

More business with the gasoline tank. Then:

"Sergeant, our advance is cut off!"

"General! How cut off?"

"No gasoline."

"No gasoline!"

"Just a drop--perhaps a quart. Sergeant, you are a practical man. We
have gasoline enough for five miles, and oil enough for fifteen miles;
how far can we go?"

"Twenty miles!"

"Good! Let us be off!"

But on the way up the long hill out of the valley Reed slipped from
his happy world of make-belief. "What are we going to do for gasoline,
Daddy X?" he ventured. "You gave your last money to the man who pulled
us out of the mud."

"Yes. We are in a bad way. We have neither money nor gasoline. What do
we do when we have neither money nor gasoline?"

"Write a story. Oh, Daddy X, write the story of the oak and the elm!"

But Cal shook his head. The youngster was thinking of the recourse Cal
had had to newspapers in the cities they had come through; he was
generally able to sell some kind of "story" to buy gasoline and food.

"No newspaper market here," he had to say.

"Isn't there a paper in Plainville?"

"A country paper. But country papers don't buy stories, usually. The
editor writes his own, or acquires them by means of a long pair of
shears and a paste-pot. No, Sergeant, the army must go to work."

"Where? On a farm?"

"On a farm. On the first farm we come to. Certainly on a farm within
five miles."

"Oh, goodie!"

"A tremendous word for a sergeant, I must say," said the general,
severely.

They were up on the rolling prairie again, bowling through a country
tufted with groves of small poplars and willows. Presently a trail led
off to the left through a gate in a wire fence and lost itself amidst
the poplars. Cal brought his car to a stop.

"Consultation of staff," he announced. "Doubtless that trail leads to
a farm-yard. Shall we go in?"

"We are out of gasoline?"

"Almost."

"And food?"

"Almost."

"And money?"

"Quite."

"Let us go in."

"Very good, Sergeant."

He turned the wheels to the left and the rickety car contorted itself
strangely but successfully down into the ditch and up again. The gate
was open and they rumbled along a trail threading its way among the
poplars. Suddenly it broadened into an open space and they found
themselves in the midst of a village of farm buildings. There was a
scurrying of poultry out of their way and much chatter from a flock of
geese more than half disposed to hostility. Cal brought his car to an
abrupt stop, wedged between an obstreperous steer and the corner of a
log building.

Around the corner of the building, from the eastward, came the shadow
of a man, grotesque and squatty on the hard-packed earth of the
barnyard. In immediate pursuit of the shadow came the substance; six
feet and sixty years of substance; broad-chested substance under a
blue cotton shirt and blue duck overalls held in precarious position
by a pair of red leather suspenders with two ruptured eyelets; the
whole surmounted by a large, ruddy, and not ill-natured face, fringed
about the ears with a pleasant tangle of grey hairs and topped with a
submissive lump of straw hat.

"Whoa, Eliza!" he exclaimed. "Jumpin' jack rabbits, who have we here?"

"Two hired men," said Cal. "You weren't expecting us?"

"Not as you'd notice it. Whose hired men?"

"Yours."

The farmer removed the twisted accumulation from his head and harrowed
his scalp with his thick fingers. "Well, I'll be danged," he confided
at last. "I admit bein' in Plainville last night an' havin' a bit more
formalin than was good for me, but I don't have no recollection of
hirin' a man an' a boy an' a tin Lizzie. What is the deal?"

The farmer's partial confession opened an unexpected channel for Cal's
quick wits. "Forty dollars a month for me, during the season," he
said; "the boy gets his board and goes to school, and Lizzie makes
herself useful about the farm if you furnish the gasoline."

The thick fingers gently continued their harrowing, while a twinkle of
amusement lit up the broad, red face.

"Not so bad," he confided. "I was afraid I might have sold you the
farm, or got you engaged to Minnie, or traded off the wife's spaniel,
or something serious like that. Well, Jackson Stake is a man that
stands by his bargain. But one thing," he added, with an apparent
twinge of apprehension; "nothin' o' this to the wife. She's a
suspeecious creature, is the wife. I think she doubts all was well at
Plainville last night. Not a word o' it to her. I'll tell her I met
you just the now on the road and hired you, an' that's all there's to
it. I can use another man all right, an' the boy can go to school, but
you'll have to sleep in a grainery. As for Lizzie, you can pasture her
out. I drive a Dodge."

Cal already knew something of the jealousies peculiar to owners of
different makes of cars, and wondered whether the farmer's remark was
to be taken as an indication of snobbery or a piece of harmless
information. Aloud: "Good. Lead us to the granary, and let us get to
work."

"Give 'er the juice," said Jackson Stake, and as Cal drew the car by
him the farmer hopped on to the running-board with the agility of a
boy of twenty. "To the right, around the pig pen. Gee! Gee! Don't you
know gee from haw? To the right. Look out for the sow! Look out for
the hay rack! Look out for the wagon tongue! There, the frame caboose,
straight ahead."

Cal steamed straight ahead toward the "caboose," speeding up as he
went, and brought the car to a sudden stop a yard from the door. The
old man lurched forward with a jerk but did not lose his grip.
"Jumpin' jack rabbits! If you're as quick a starter as you are a
stopper we'll get along fine. ... This is it."

They got out and inspected "it." It was a frame building, twelve by
fourteen feet; one thickness of drop siding nailed to two-by-four
studs; floored with shiplap; roofed with shingles; a door in one end,
a window, which could be removed, in the other. A heap of old sacks
with a musty smell; a heap of old harness with a leathery smell; an
old fanning-mill without any smell. Three sacks of screenings,
up-ended and open-mouthed; probably chicken feed. The screenings had
been strewed somewhat generously about the floor, and in a corner,
where the rain had got in, had taken root and were sending thin,
fungusy stalks groping up the board wall. The theory that the
screenings were chicken feed was suddenly supported by a commotion in
the farm-yard. An old rooster, on sentry-go, observing the granary
door open, had given the "cook-house call," and the barnyard poultry
were sweeping down upon them from every direction like cavalry in a
charge, shedding superfluous feathers as they came. They were into the
fortress, among everybody's feet, dabbing with terrific velocity,
before the garrison had time to drop the portcullis.

"Hist! Hist! Shoo!" cried Jackson Stake, making a great swipe with his
foot which caught a rooster on the wish-bone and sent him
somersaulting under Antelope. "Hungry heathens! Who'd think they were
fed an hour ago? Strike me! but I never could see how a four-pound hen
could eat a bushel of wheat without wabblin'."

By united efforts they stemmed the charge and cleared the battle
ground. "Well, this is it," the farmer repeated, when the door had
been closed on the last invader. "You can dump this stuff in the hay
shed, an' the wife'll give you a broom an' a mop, if you're
fastid'ous. Got your own blankets?"

Cal nodded.

"Good! Now I'll go up to the house an' sort of break it gently. You
know what it is to cook for two more mouths. Dang it, I don' blame
'er. If there's any doggonder job than a farmer's it's a farmer's
wife's. In about ten minutes she'll be prepared for the worst, an' you
bump in then to borrow the broom. Mind, now, give me ten minutes!" And
the old farmer was off houseward, pursued by a scouting detachment
from the poultry yard.

Cal and Reed exchanged looks which began seriously, and ended
simultaneously in an outbreak of laughter. "But he _didn't_ hire us
last night, Daddy X," the boy protested, when his sides were settled.

"And I didn't say he did, if you noticed," Cal returned. "Just a bit
of good luck, and when Fate hands you a bit of good luck, don't
question her too closely. Now, let's wrestle this stuff out of here.
Let me see--that's the hay shed over there beyond the pig pen."

Cal took an observation of the position. It was evident that in the
laying out of this ramble of structures on Jackson Stake's homestead
no town planner had been employed. Most of the buildings were of logs,
and the obvious theory was that the logs were hauled in winter and
dumped wherever chance dictated, and in the spring a building was put
up wherever the logs happened to lie. One larger building, which
might, in a pinch, be called a barn, elbowed off a swarm of lesser
brethren crowding in about its feet, much as Jackson Stake warded off
the chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and young pigs which pursued him
on his perambulations about the yard. Except for the house, which was
of boards and stood a little to one side, the cardinal points of the
compass had been blandly disregarded. Everywhere were buildings,
pointing in every direction, in all states of repair and disrepair,
with gaping doors yawning in the morning sunshine, housing, no doubt,
all sorts of strange quadrupeds. The place gave promise of enormous
interest.

The granary which was to be their home was built on two logs or skids,
roughly pointed, so that it could be hauled beside the "set" at
threshing time and filled direct from the separator. It seemed to have
been left just at the spot where the loitering of the horses had
overbalanced the persistence of their driver. It pointed nowhere in
particular. Nearby, and similarly pointed, was another granary, its
exact double. It gave signs of habitation, as over the door, scrawled
with brown paint on the side of an apple box, was the legend, "Dinty
Moore."

Cal absorbed these general facts as he loaded the sacks and harness
into the Ford for transportation to the hay shed. When this was done
they went up to the house, assuming that Jackson Stake would now have
completed his preliminary overtures. The house stood a little to the
north of the principal cluster of buildings; it was a four-cornered
box with a roof, and a chimney at each end of the roof. The door was
in the centre of the eastern side, and in reaching the door from the
barnyard one made a detour around a water barrel which had leaked
somewhat copiously at the southeastern corner. This detour, however,
could not be accomplished in a wide and curving movement; some sharp
angles were necessary to avoid collapse over the pile of stove wood
which occupied the right front of the prospect. A hewn block of wood
served as a doorstep, with a fragment of plough-share nailed to one
end as a boot scraper. Dexterous footwork over a washtub and sundry
minor utensils landed Cal and Reed safely upon the step.

The door was open, and their shadow, falling inwards, announced their
presence. Jackson Stake was seated in a big chair, prodding his pipe
with a straw from the kitchen broom, while Mrs. Stake wrestled an
ample armful of dough on the wooden table. "This is the missus," said
the farmer, without rising. "She'll be glad to see you."

"I'd be a heap gladder to see a woman," said Mrs. Stake, severely,
without looking up from her dough. "You men are all alike; seem to
think there's no limit to the mouths a woman can fill. Jackson can
always get another man or two, whether he needs him or not, but I
can't get a woman, not for the soul or sake o' me. Come in!"

She was tall and square, big boned and not over fleshed. As she
kneaded the dough the muscles of her arms rose and fell like those of
a man. With a knife she severed a section, moulded it skillfully into
shape, and tucked it into a pan with a twin brother. With all her
brusqueness there was a touch of something akin to tenderness as she
patted it into place. She crossed the floor with quick, straight
strides and set it to rise on a board bridging two chairs beside the
oven. Then as she looked up, "Hello? Where'd the boy come from?"

"He's mine."

"Yours? Did you hire _him_, too, Jackson?" Apparently Jackson's
courage had failed him before he got this far in his revelation.
"Yours, did you say?" again to Cal. "Yours and whose?"

"Mine--adopted. My sister's," Cal explained.

Mrs. Stake looked at Reed and Reed looked at Mrs. Stake, and as they
looked all the woman's sternness melted into an expression very human
and motherly. "Come on in, Son," she said. "I know you're hungry. Boys
o' eight or nine are always hungry. I've raised three, an' I know."

She broke a bun from a fine fresh brown panful just out of the oven
and placed it in the boy's hand. Then she turned to her kneading.
"It's not that I mind work," she confided in the dough; "what I mind
is everlastin' work, mornin', noon an' night; never done. The men can
get help, even when they don' partic'lar need it, but the women just
have to plug alone. There's Minnie, now; if she'd stuck to the farm--
But she bolted. I dunno as I blame her. Some days I'm blame near
boltin' myself. Well, what d'ye want?" to Cal, who still stood framed
in the doorway.

"A broom and a mop, if you please," Cal answered.

"For what?"

"To brush up the granary a bit."

Mrs. Stake regarded Cal with some curiosity. "Partic'lar, ain't ye?
Well, I dunno but it's a good idea." She rubbed the dough from her
hands and filled a pail with hot water. From behind the door she
produced a broom and a mop, and severely handed the lot to Cal, who
thanked her and started for the granary. At the corner by the leaky
water barrel he was arrested by her sharp voice calling him.

"You'll be sendin' the boy to school," she called, "an' I'll wager his
clo'es is more holy than righteous. Bring 'im in to-night an' I'll
darn 'em up."




CHAPTER FOUR


By midday the granary wore a very different appearance. The floor had
come through the ordeal of soap and water with mixed emotions, but
now, convinced that no harm was intended, and that this was only the
strange way of these strange people, it smiled back pleasantly upon
Cal and Reed as they sorted their few belongings into position. The
cushions from the Ford would continue to be their bed; set on the
corner of the floor, and equipped with mattress, blankets, and
pillows, they looked tempting enough for a noon-day nap, not to speak
of nights after heavy labor in the fields. The suitcases were opened;
Cal's mirror and shaving set hung from nails in the wall; the gun
straddled over the door, and the cartridges sat on a little shelf
which Cal had built; even the spare tire with the blow-out, hanging by
the window, helped to lend a furnished air to the place. A table and
chairs would come in time; they were luxuries, not necessities.
Outside, Cal had moved the grindstone so that it stood parallel with
the granary, and not in reckless disregard of any definite angle to
it; had built little brackets on which he hoisted the binder knives
that had been found lying in the grass nearby; had moved four sections
of drag harrows from the side around to the back and had stood them up
on edge with some show of symmetry, and had carried a log which leaned
against the granary for no particular purpose except in fulfillment of
fate to the general log pile, where its fate could more conveniently
be fulfilled. Inside and out the granary proclaimed that a soul had
moved in to possess a body just comfortably started on its way to
disintegration.

It was noon before they knew it, filled with that peculiar lightness
of heart which has to do with the making of a place in which to live.
The jingle of trace chains and the heavy stamping of work horses were
their first reminder that the morning was gone. The farm-yard shook
itself awake, discarded its air of sunny indolence, and suddenly
became a scene of bustling activity. Twelve great horses, arranged in
three teams of four, each harnessed abreast, sweeping in from the
fields, now crowded aggressively about the long wooden water trough in
the centre of the yard--(if an area so undefined as Jackson Stake's
farm-yard can be said to have a centre. Just where the yard began or
ended no one knew or cared). A lanky young man with a gait apparently
acquired in the supporting of his overalls moved a lever and presently
from overhead came the rush of air in the blades of the windmill and
the slow "clank ... clank" of the connecting-rod as it operated the
pump.

"Grit, old Jim is checked up," said the young man with the gait to a
head suddenly thrust through a space in the shouldering mass of
horse-flesh. The head was crowned with a straw hat which, either
through age or misadventure, had lost the greater part of its brim;
underneath the remnant a pair of deep eyes twinkled slowly as though
lit by unseen fires of humor far within, and an expanse of cheek and
chin gave root-hold to a stubby whisker well laden with dust and sand.
The head made its way amid the heaving backs to a great bay who, with
nostrils high in air, was snorting his protest above the busy drinking
of his companions. A hand, no doubt associated with the head, unhooked
the check-line, and the bay, feeling release, plunged his eager muzzle
deep into the water.

"Got to check 'im, Gander," said the head. "He won't do nothin' but
flirt with this Mollie-mare if he ain't checked up short. Fact. When I
think o' him, an' then o' you, I says to myself, 'Old bay, you're
almost human.'"

"Come, Dinty, I ain't no flirt," said the man addressed as Gander.
"You know that. Ain't in my line." But his voice suggested that the
charge was not distasteful.

"Can I help?" said Cal, who had approached unheard above the clamor of
the horses. "I am the new hired man. My name is Cal Beach."

The two others turned toward him and regarded him for a moment in
silence. While they were thus engaged a third figure, a youth of
eighteen or thereabout, emerged from the mass. All three regarded him.

"Well, welcome to our city," said the man who answered alternately to
the names of Grit and Dinty. "You're the new hired man. I'm the old
hired man. It's the business of the old hired man to boss the new
hired man, eh, Gander?"

Gander was non-committal. "Didn't know Dad was figurin' on hirin' any
more help," he remarked. "However, he's the doctor. What can you do?"

"Not so very much, I am afraid. I can drive a Ford--"

"'An' it takes a good man to do that,'" Grit chanted from a popular
song.

"--and horses a little, and I'm middling strong, and--I've been through
university."

The words were not out before he realized how inapt they were. "Hang
it!" he thought, "that isn't what I meant. I meant to let them know
that I wasn't a dub, that I had sense, that I could pick up things if
they gave me a chance."

"Sounds all right, all but the last," said Gander. "Don't know as what
they learn you in the university'll help much. A man on a farm don'
need no D.D.'s, or whatever it is, after his name. What he wants is
horsepower an' savvy. Well, we'll see. Go down to the barn an' throw
some hay in the mangers."

"Savvy," thought Cal. "That was the word. Means the same thing--or
should ... But does it?"

Reed was at his heels as he entered the barn. The building was of
poplar logs, with a loft overhead, and gables boarded perpendicularly
with shiplap. Mangers ran along each end, and were cross-sectioned by
short partitions which divided the space into stalls, each wide enough
for two horses. From the ends of these short partitions stout posts
supported the loft and gave anchorage for wooden harness pegs. Small
stones and gravel to the depth of several inches, impacted under the
hoofs of many horses, made a floor almost as hard as rock.

Cal and Reed had barely time to fill the mangers from the hay shed
when the horses were down upon them. As each came in, nodding his head
and clanking his harness prodigiously, he walked straight to his stall
and made an immediate inspection of the oat box nailed to the corner
of the manger. Finding it empty his nostrils went up in annoyance, but
a moment later, evidently on the theory that half a loaf is better
than no bread, he plunged into the fragrant hay.

"Hello, who's the kid?" said Gander, encountering the boy in the
doorway. "Another hired man?"

"Yes, sir."

"What's your name?"

"Reed, sir."

"Reed what?"

"Reed Beach."

Gander stroked the back of his long neck meditatively. "You don' mean
he's your daddy?" he said, indicating Cal with a jerk of his head.

"He's my Daddy X."

Gander seemed to mouth a remark, but swallowed it. Then:

"An' have you been through university, too?" Cal, from his work
between two horses, heard the words, and they struck home nastily. But
his heart bounced at the boy's prompt rejoinder:

"Not yet, but I'm going to. Have you?"

"Why, no; can't say as I have," said Gander, and his hand dropped from
his long neck and gave Reed's hair a not unfriendly tousle. "All the
horses got oats?" he demanded, in a voice intended to reach Grit
Wilson. "Well, c'mon an' eat. C'mon, Cal."

The youth of eighteen or so had preceded them to the house. Humped
over a bench beside the water barrel he was engaged in splashy and
noisy ablutions.

"That'll do, Ham," said Wilson, crowding him away from the bench very
much as the horses had crowded each other at the water trough. "You
ain't titivatin' to go over to Double F's at this time o' day."

Wilson inspected the granite-ware basin, half full of dirty water, as
though debating whether the fluid would serve one more turn. Evidently
he decided against it. With a sweep of his arm he sprayed the water
over the yard.

"You don' need washin'," said Gander to Cal and Reed, who were
standing waiting their turn. "Go on in."

"Oh, we'd rather wash, if we may," said Cal.

"Sure, you may. No law agin it," Gander agreed. "Go ahead."

Cal washed. The coarseness of the basin and of a huge bar of laundry
soap was compensated by the fresh rain water and the warm spring
sunshine. When he had washed someone shoved the towel into his hand.
It was of heavy duck, made down from a grain sack, and showed many
evidences of use and abuse. Through eyes smarting with the strong soap
he tried to locate a spot less soiled than the average. When he turned
to empty his basin he found Gander burrowing in it.

A side of biscuit tin nailed to the wall made a passable mirror, and a
wire comb chained nearby completed the toilet equipment.

"C'mon," said Gander again. "Don' keep the ol' lady waitin'. She's a
bit skittish."

Inside, a long table, covered with oilcloth that had once been white
but through which black smudges of wear were now showing at the
creases and corners, stood in the middle of the floor. Chairs were set
about it and the men moved straight to their places, much, as Cal
again thought, as did the horses in the stable.

Cal and Reed hung back. "Sit down, anywhere," said Jackson Stake. "No
formal'ties. Now dig in."

They "dug in"--into boiled potatoes and mashed turnips and fried pork
and hot, strong tea and bread thick and white and flaky and butter
smooth and yellow and delicious. Mrs. Stake had a large family to
feed, and she fed them, as her husband said, without formalities, but
she fed them well. She herself did not join them, but waited on the
table, reloading bread plates, refilling potato bowls and tea-cups as
the ravages of the moment demanded. Then, at the first sign of a
pause, came great helpings of rice-and-raisin pudding dumped from a
mighty spoon into plates just cleared of meat and potatoes.

"We're a bit rough an' ready," she apologized to Cal as she loaded his
plate. "'Specially since Minnie left I don' get time to wash any more
dishes than I jus' can't help. You're a city man an' I reckon you've
been places where they give you a heap more tablecloth an' a heap less
to eat. More puddin', Son?" to Reed. "Fill up. It's a long time till
supper."

The men consumed amazingly big meals in an amazingly short time; and
as each cleared his plate he got up and went out. Presently Cal noted
that only he and Reed remained. Mrs. Stake swept the soiled dishes
from a corner of the table and sat down with her own well-laden plate.

"Ever worked on a farm?" she demanded, presently.

"No. This will be my first attempt. I expect to find it a great life."

"Don' over-expect yourself. It's a great life, all right, if you don'
have to live it. That's why everybody's leavin' the farm for the
city."

"But they're not," Cal ventured to correct her. "For example, I've
just left the city for the farm."

"That's so," she said, looking at him curiously, as though she were
examining some kind of specimen. Then, after a pause, "That's so.
Perhaps I don' see it quite straight, thinkin' so much o' Minnie. You
don' know her, of course. Well, she's my daughter--my only daughter,
twenty-one in June, an' I set a heap by her. When I was raisin' the
kids, slavin' all day an' danderin' 'round half the night with
squawlin' babies, I useta say, 'Wait till Minnie grows up.' Minnie was
the youngest, excep' Hamilton, an' she was my only girl, an' I sort o'
set an extra store on her, as you might say. I suppose mothers have a
sort o' sympathy for their girls that they don' have for their boys;
they know what's ahead of 'em. Well, I useta keep up those times with
promisin' myself that when Minnie grew up her an' me'd sort o' hit it
off together. But would she stay on the farm? Not for the soul or sake
o' her. She's thumpin' one o' them writin' machines in a lawyer's
office in Plainville--though wha' they have to write about so much in
Plainville beats me--an' I'm still scrapin' the pots an' pans."

Something suspiciously like moisture gathered in the old woman's eyes
and sent her reaching for the corner of her apron. "Land's sakes,
you're long eaters!" she suddenly exclaimed. "The men'll be wantin'
your help with the teams, though if you're just from the city I reckon
they won' be missin' much. But you may as well jump in at once, as
they say, an' get your feet wet. Away wi' ye!" She waved them out of
the house.

"It's not that she wanted to hurry us off to work," Cal summed it up
to himself. "She had shown a little more of her heart than she
intended--to a stranger. And not a bad heart at that, or I'm mistaken.
... I wonder about this Minnie."

Jackson Stake met him in the yard. "Can you handle horses?" he
demanded.

"I've driven a team," Cal answered, recalling a weekend when he had
taken Reed to the country, and had functioned on the reins of two
downhearted nags then placed at his disposal. But a fine spirit of
confidence was bubbling within him. It was the climate, the air, the
sunshine, the big spaces, the big horses, the big meal, or something.
Perhaps Minnie. At any rate he was beginning to understand why the
only thing a Westerner feels apologetic about is having to apologize
for anything. "Sure, I can drive a team," he asserted.

"You should, at forty dollars a month," the farmer remarked drily.
"But I suspec' what you have in mind is an Ontario team. Two horses. A
team here is four horses--sometimes six. Can you drive four horses?"

"I never have," Cal confessed.

"Well, it don' come without learnin'. It takes a bit of eddication to
run a farm--you'll find that, an' you may's well start at the bottom.
Suppose you go along with Gander this afternoon an' keep your eyes an'
ears open. I'll know by tomorrow how drunk I was when I hired you."

Something about the twinkle in the old man's eyes set Cal wondering
just which had been playing with the other. Perhaps Jackson Stake
really wanted another man and had dropped into his by-play on purpose.
Well--

Gander's four horses were lined up like Company on Parade, and Gander
was busy snapping the reins to the bits and affectionately cuffing the
muzzles curled up at him as he went by.

"Will you show me how to do that?" Cal asked. "Let me get the system
of it in my head. I'll savvy if you give me a chance."

Gander turned a not unfriendly look upon him. "Now you're shoutin',"
he said. "It's easy; see--" He showed how the reins were connected;
showed him the order in what looked like a chaos of harness. Perhaps
it was because Professor Sterndale, Doctor of Philosophy, had a neck
like Gander's that he leaped into Cal's mind at the moment. Or perhaps
it was Gander's quiet, confident, efficient manner that summoned
Sterndale up from memory. "Funny business," Cal thought; "Old
Sterndale, Ph. D., and Gander Stake occupying the same brain cell in
my lumber room. Doctor of Philosophy and horse engineer. Teachers,
both of 'em." And then, the momentum of a new thought carrying him off
his balance, he took a mental stagger under the question whether or
not Gander Stake was the greater teacher of the two. ... Certainly,
for the moment at least, the more important.

Gander chirped to his team and they were on their way, the idle
traces, flung over the horses' broad backs, jingling pleasantly as
they went. Their road lay along a narrow lane between two sagging wire
fences, with black, moist fields, ploughed and seeded, on either side.
Innumerable blackbirds fluttered along the sagging wires. From the
early sown field to the left the first faint flush of green peeked up
between the serried ridges made by the drill. A hot sun poured down
from a sky of polished steel, cloudless save for two tufts of wool
dangling airily in the northeast.

"She's been handin' us a line o' good weather, I'll say," Gander
remarked, by way of conversation. "That's one thing about a farmer; he
can't make his conditions. He's got to take the weather God sends him,
an' make the best of it. We're ploughin' now for oats; Grit and Ham
ploughin', an' me followin' wi' the seeder. Sixty acres yet to plough
for oats; then forty more for barley. Double F was saying,--that's him
lives over on the next farm to the west--as he has a hundred acres in
oats now, but I bet he ain't. Double F always has more acres at
seedtime than when the bushels are counted from the thresher. Giddap,
Jim! What you trippin' over?"

The great bay on the right answered with a shuffle of his body as much
as to say, "Sorry; excuse me this time," and switched his tail at an
imaginary fly.

"Why do you call him Double F?" Cal inquired. "You seem to have some
funny names."

"Oh, I dunno. His name's Fraser Fyfe, so we cut it down to Double F.
School teacher here, Annie Frolic--you'll be goin' to her, Reed, once
you get settled--says it means very loud, but I don' see no connection.
Ham's a bit soft on Double F's daughter Elsie; that's what Grit was
kiddin' him about at noon, you remember, when he was washin'. Nice
girl, though. Her an' Minnie useta be back an' forth a lot. Ham's name
is Hamilton, of course, but he jus' gets Ham, excep' from Mother.
'Hamburger Stake,' we call him sometimes, for fun. An' Grit; I guess
that's his real name; dunno; sometimes I call 'im Dinty Moore. Looks a
bit like 'im, I'll say."

Cal felt a delicacy about asking an explanation of Gander's own
appellation, and Gander offered none, evidently quite overlooking the
need of it. It was not entirely associated with his lean, flexible
neck. When he was a boy of fourteen or fifteen years, his voice, in
going through those contortions peculiar to the voices of boys of
about that age, had shown a tendency to break out in a goose-like
honk. To Gander's great embarrassment these honks would come at the
most inopportune moments and wholly without notice, so that the most
casual statement, begun in a tame and respectable note, ended in
something suggestive of a wild goose piping to its mate. Some one
called him Gander, and Gander stuck; it had stuck so long and so well
that he had almost forgotten he had a christened name, William,
perfectly good and only slightly used.

They had passed out of the lane into an unfenced field. Directly
before them, with its tongue deep in the damp soil, was a two-wheeled
implement which Cal supposed to be the seeder. It resembled a long
trough with a cart wheel at either end, a quantity of short lengths of
garden hose suspended underneath, and a series of steel discs resting
on the ground. Gander dexterously swung his two "off" horses across
the tongue. Then he was at their heads, hitching the neck-yoke; then
he was at their heels, hitching the traces, while Cal dog-trotted
about after him, arriving at each scene of operations just after
Gander had finished.

Gander carried the reins around behind the implement and started his
team with a word, and Cal and Reed followed, watching the operations
with great interest. The discs began to turn, scooping little, narrow
trenches in the soil; into these trenches, through the rubber hose,
kernels of oats began to fall, and to be immediately buried by a
series of short chains dragging behind. It was very interesting.
Presently Reed discovered, at the top of the hose, a little machine
grinding the kernels down from the trough, almost as though it were
counting them. It was tremendously interesting.

The field was a mile long, and it was accomplished without a word,
save Gander's voice occasionally raised in admonition of his horses.
The heat of the sun was tempered with a cool breeze which caught up
particles of dust from the machine, so that it seemed to be trailing a
miniature, low-hanging cloud. At the end of the field the horses
turned, almost of their own accord, and would have started back had
not Gander stopped them with a tension on the reins.

"Nothin' to it," he remarked; "nothin' to it. Old Jim there knows the
job as well as I do. All you got to do is watch that you're almost
touching your last row, without overlappin' it. If you overlap it's a
waste o' seed an' time; if you don' touch it means a strip not sowed.
Nobody'll know about it now, but the whole neighborhood'll know in a
month from now, when the crop comes up, an' they'll say to me,
'Gander, you must o' been borie-eyed when you sowed your oats,' an'
I'll have to say, 'Not me. It was that D. D. of ours, his eddication
havin' been neglected in his youth.' Try it," and he thrust the reins
into Cal's hand. "Watch your main wheel there; it should run right in
the track we made comin' down, an' keep an eye now an' again that the
grain is workin' through all the tubes; sometimes they get plugged up.
Go to it!"

And so the day went on. By four in the afternoon Reed tired of
following the seeder up and down as, like a mighty shuttle, it wove a
web a mile wide from fringe to fringe, and went back to the farmyard,
where he interested himself in a long and critical inspection of the
old fanning mill. About the same time Gander pronounced his
commendation upon Cal. "You're doin' O. K.," he said. "Take a round by
yourself an' lend me some tobacco."

Cal handed over his pouch, and pressed on in high spirits. It was
plain that his adaptability had made an impression upon Gander. "Funny
world," he mused to himself, as he thought of Gander. "Not a bad
scout, though, and that D. D. talk of his is just fun. Still, it's
plain he thinks himself the best man of the two. And, damn it, he
is--that's the joke of it. Well, he won't be, before long. I'll pick
this up in no time. Oh boy, feel that air! I know I'm going to have
lungs like a bellows before fall."

Tired, hungry, happy, Cal turned with his team to the farm-yard at the
close of the day. Mrs. Stake could not pile his plate too high at
supper, and when the chores were done, he and Reed were ready for bed.

"No story tonight, Reed," he said. "Too big a day, and too much to
think about. Say your verse and let us roll in." And Reed, climbing on
his knee for a goodnight caress, said, "Gee, but it's great to be a
farmer. When I grow up I'm going to be a farmer, with a lot of big
horses, and a granary, and a fanning mill, and everything."

Presently, up from the cushions of the old Ford came the measured
breathing of two tired farmers sleeping the sleep of labor and
contentment, while the last red rays of sunset faded out of the west
and the still hush of night settled over the fields and prairies.




CHAPTER FIVE


At six the next morning, while Cal, busy with the curry comb and
brush, humped over the fetlock of Jim, the big bay, with whom he
already had struck up something of a friendship, Jackson Stake entered
the stable. He observed the currying process for a moment or two with
apparent satisfaction.

"Good enough," he remarked, when Cal straightened up. "You know,
Beach, a horse--any horse worth while--is as vain as a woman. You can
make a hit with old Jim jus' combin' his mane an' fetlocks an' sayin'
'Jim, old boy, you're lookin' your best th' smorning.' Where's the
lad?"

"Not up yet. All in last night, so I let him sleep."

"Sure. That's good for him. The missus was askin'. Seems to have taken
kind of a shine to him. You know, we lost a boy, as you might say, an'
a woman never gets over that kind o' thing."

"I'm sorry," Cal said simply, while Jackson Stake masked his features
by worrying a plug of chewing tobacco. Something in his face suggested
that the old man himself had not quite got over "that kind o' thing."

"Yep. She sent me out to say that maybe the boy--what is it you call
him? Reed, is it? Family name, I suppose?"

"Well, not exactly. Just a sort of notion I had."

"Queer name. Well, that don' matter. She thinks he ought to start to
school an' said if there was any mendin' or anythin' needed to bring
it in an' she'd fix it up right away, so's he could start th'
smorning."

Cal thought of the busy woman complaining that she could get no help,
"not for the soul or sake o' her," and of the glimpse of her heart she
had given him yesterday, and of the bigger glimpse her husband had
given him now.

"Oh, that's not in the bargain," he managed to say.

"It is if she says so. You don' know her yet. How's he fixed?"

"All right. He has one suit in good shape."

"Well, you better get him up an' take him over to the school th'
smorning. Mile an' a half south, straight down the road. Annie
Frolic's the teacher, an' I guess she's all right. Don't know myself
much about eddication, excep' I wish I had it. Gander'll drive the
team awhile, an' you can spell 'im off again when you get back."

Cal found himself framing some words of thanks, but the farmer had
moved down the stalls and his voice was raised in loud criticism of
Grit Wilson. A shoulder scald on one of Grit's horses seemed to be the
occasion. Cal slipped out quietly to awaken Reed.

The morning sun was pouring through the window in the eastern end of
the granary. Its beams fell on the tire with the blow-out and filled
the room with a faint but pungent smell of rubber. On the bed in the
corner, beneath a heap of blankets, lay the boy. One little foot,
protruding from under the rumpled mass, bore its own dark evidence of
the previous day's journeyings in the dusty field; one arm, thrown
upwards, fell open-palmed across his forehead, the little finger
linked in a flirting curl of hair; two ruddy lips, slightly parted in
the sleep of childhood, disclosed the flash of white teeth through
their smiles. Cal, leaning over him, paused for a moment in the clutch
of a great poignancy; it was at wholly unexpected times like this that
some tremendous thing about the boy reached up around his heart and
crushed from him just one word--Celesta!... Dim-eyed he saw the
little figure through the mists of his dead mother's tragedy; dim-eyed
he followed him down the eight wonderful years of his young life; down
to Jackson Stake's farm and the old Ford cushions in the granary....

"Come, old Indian; time to roll out," he said, shaking himself free of
his mood. "School today! Roll out!"

Breakfast was another hurried meal. All meals in the farmhouse, it
seemed, were hurried; ample and hurried. There had been the same
splashing in the wash basin by the rain barrel; the same single filing
into the table; the same "digging in." This time it was into porridge
and milk, fried potatoes and eggs, white bread and corn syrup. If Mrs.
Stake had had a good night's rest, or no night's rest, she gave no
sign; her pace was exactly what it had been the day before, and the
day before that, and would be tomorrow, and the day after that. The
same white table in the centre of the floor; the same succession of
hungry mouths; yesterday, today, and forever.

The first maze of strangeness having worn off, Cal's eyes began to
note the details of the house. The room in which they sat was large
and square, and seemed to occupy half of the ground floor, which was
cut through the middle by a stairway enclosed in partitions. Beyond
those partitions, through an open door, came a glimpse of what was
evidently the fine room of the house; a corner of a stiff, upholstered
chair, with dangly crimson furbelows dropping almost to the floor, and
an enlarged crayon portrait of some ancestral being hanging on the
wall, were all the aperture commanded. The floor of the room in which
they sat was covered with linoleum; traces of its gaudy pattern, which
had long since disappeared about the table and the stove, still blazed
up cheerily from the less trampled corners. The walls and ceiling were
of plaster, one time white, but now stained from yellow to grey in
token of many a culinary accident on the kitchen range. The door was
in the east, a window in the south, another in the west. Red roller
blinds, of a substance broadly suggestive of the linoleum under-foot,
hung in the windows, their bareness sheathed by cheap cotton curtains
which had taken on something of the yellow-grey color of the walls. A
poster announcement of the previous year's Brandon fair and a new
calendar from the Plainville Garage, evidently intended to relieve the
dullness of the walls, had precisely the opposite effect. The
furniture consisted of the long board table in the centre of the room;
the steel range with its numerous nickeled parts ruefully awaiting a
polishing rub; the wood-box, half filled with split poplar and crowned
with a shelf and water-pails; the bright red cream separator in the
corner, suggestive of a newly-painted hydrant; a cupboard of shelves
papered with ancient copies of the Plainville _Progress_, and
supporting an assortment of dishes and utensils; six chairs, including
one without a back, allotted to Reed; a sewing machine; a shelf with
an alarm clock, and Hamilton Stake's bicycle.

The occupants of the room were not less interesting and practical.
Jackson Stake, coatless and vestless, and with trousers still
precariously clinging to his broken suspenders, occupied the arm chair
at the end of the table. His hair, now mostly grey, and thinning out
on top, had once been red, and there was still an auburn hue to the
pepper-and-salt of his moustache; his eyes were keen and grey under
bristly brows; his mouth large and genial; his cheeks swarthy; his
neck creased and furrowed; his hands--one would not speak of Jackson
Stake's hands, one would say his fists. His figure favored corpulence
and his ample body showed threatening symptoms of overflowing the taut
waistline of his blue overalls. He gave the impression of being
aimiable and willing to talk had not the more urgent business of
breakfast intervened. On his right sat Gander Stake, lanky and
swan-like, with a thin face that sunburned yellow instead of red, a
tremendously busy Adam's apple, dark hair plastered to place with
water, and eyes that were blue, not grey. He, too, was coatless and
vestless, and even while sitting he would give his body an occasional
hitch as though to reassure his overalls. Across the table from Gander
sat Grit Wilson, also without coat or vest, and with yesterday's
whisker grown one day older and sandier. A parenthesis of wrinkles
about his mouth and chin agreeably conceded that for him the first
bloom of youth was gone, never to return; but his deep brown eyes had
the mischievous twinkle of perennial boyhood.

Then there was Hamilton Stake--"Hamburger Stake," as he was called in
fun--square and fair and sandy like his father, with curly copper hair
and a dash of ruddy down across his upper lip. His face was clean and
his teeth were white, and he wore a necktie in concession to the
burning of his heart for Elsie Fyfe. His unruly locks would comb into
no permanent position, although he spent many a clandestine moment in
the attempt; his overalls would bag at the knees although he folded
them carefully under his mattress every night. A serio-comic smile
played about his lips and captivated Cal, now that he saw it clearly.
He must cultivate the acquaintance of Hamilton Stake.

Cal was aroused from his inventory-taking by the discovery that, one
by one, the objects of it had left the table. Mrs. Stake had poured a
second helping of syrup into Reed's plate and was silently watching
him gather it up on thick fragments of bread. Glancing up suddenly Cal
startled within her eyes a strange look of hunger.

"I reckon that's his best suit," she said, trying to cover her
confusion with speech. "It won' last long at school. I useta say to my
boys that school suits should be made o' leather. Jackson, in
partic'lar, was awful hard on clo'es. ... How old did you say he
was?"

"Eight--nine in September."

Mrs. Stake cleared a corner of the table and her throat
simultaneously. It seemed she had a pesky tickle in her throat.

"Spring weather, I blame it on. Always like that in May. ... You
mus' be a good boy for Annie Frolic. Do as she bids you, an' work hard
at your lessons. It's the wind, the May wind--Was your sister married
long; I mean--"

She stopped, realizing the indelicacy of her question, and in the
momentary pause Cal recovered his balance.

"Not long; Reed was the only child," he equivocated.

"Well, we mus' get him off," she exclaimed, as, seeking safety in
action, she drew Reed on to the floor before her. Her fingers were
trifling with his tie; her old knees seemed pressing hungrily against
his; her hands were smoothing his riotous hair into some semblance of
order....

Cal walked with Reed to school. They went out on the winding trail
among the groves of poplar and willow, still sparkling and fragrant
with dew, and turned south on the main road. Across a black ploughed
field, now faintly tinged with green, lay a cluster of white-washed
farm buildings, probably the homestead of Fraser Fyfe. To the left
they could see Gander's four-horse team and seeder, with Gander
himself hitching along behind, as he drove his slow shuttle back and
forth. Further afield faint spirals of dust against a sky as clear as
spring water marked the progress of Grit Wilson and Hamilton Stake.

They swung along cheerily, Reed with his noonday lunch wrapped in the
current issue of the Plainville _Progress_; Cal with his thoughts busy
over the favorable turn their prospects had taken. There was occasion
for cheerfulness. He had literally motored into a job, and not only a
job, but a home for himself and Reed. Over what the old farmer would
say when he discovered that the bargain supposed to have been made in
Plainville was the creature of Cal's imagination--provided the old
farmer was under any delusion--Cal allowed himself no uneasiness.
Sufficient to the day. It was enough that in twenty-four hours he and
Reed had become members of the family. It was enough that Reed had
captured the heart of the stern and overworked Mrs. Jackson Stake. The
fiddling with his neck-tie--Cal was not blind. It was enough that Big
Jim had muzzled his shoulder playfully that morning while he curried
his mane. It was enough that the sun shone and the birds twittered as
they hopped along the barbed wire fences that bordered the road and
that the yellow buttercups glimpsed up shyly out of the green grass,
and that little dribbles and shreds of a whistled tune fell from
Reed's pursed lips as he jogged along by the side of his "Daddy X." It
was enough.

As they crested a low ridge they caught sight of the school, a
rectangular wooden building studded with windows on its northern side,
and standing back a short distance from the road. It seemed to have
been painted once upon a time, but wind and weather had taken their
toll. The door stood open, and when Cal and Reed looked in they could
at first distinguish nothing in the comparative gloom. A cool dampness
greeted their nostrils. Rows of wooden seats emerged from the
darkness, and presently they discerned a young woman at the end of the
room, her back to them, her arm raised in the act of writing on the
blackboard. If she was aware of their presence she gave no sign, until
at length Cal, in his deepest bass, addressed her.

"Good morning, Teacher. How about a new pupil this morning?"

She turned with a start, dropping the chalk to the floor.

"Oh, good morning, Mr. Beach. You will think me very rude. I thought
it was some of my children. And is this Reed, whom I have been hearing
about?"

"'Mr. Beach?'" thought Cal to himself. "'Reed, whom I have been
hearing about.' Our fame precedes us."

She took Reed's hand first, and then Cal's, and it struck Cal that
their welcome seemed to be somewhat in the ratio of their ages. He had
a glimpse of blue eyes, with thin, telltale puckers about them; fluffy
hair; clean, sharp features, somewhat older than they would care to
confess; a spare, light figure, rectangular like the school house and
the school grounds and the quarter section which accommodated them.
There was chalk dust on her hair and it may have been chalk dust on
her face.

"I have always heard that country school teachers are very wonderful,"
said Cal, when she seemed waiting for him to speak. "It is all true.
How did you know my name, and his?"

There was a light dancing in her eye that was not bad to see. "Oh,
that's easy. You know, we have rural telephones. They are a great
invention."

"Then Mrs. Stake telephoned you?"

"No, she didn't. I see you are curious. I thought only girls were
curious?"

Cal summed her up as a little witch. Very well.

"I offer no apology for being curious--about you," he said.

There was a light dancing in her eye that was rather good to see.

"How nice!" she chattered. "Then I'll tell you. Last night, between
eight and nine, Hamilton Stake called up Elsie Fyfe for their usual
bedtime confab. About the same time I tried to call Elsie, and found
the line busy, so I listened in. Oh, don't be shocked. We all do it,
although we don't all admit it. I wasn't the only one; I could tell
that by the quiet lifting of receivers. You get to know it, with
practice. Shall I tell you what the community knows this morning about
you and Reed?"

"I am mildly interested," he admitted, noting that there was really a
curve to her throat, in defiance of her general rectangular plan. A
rather pleasant curve, it was. And her eyes were full of fun, or
something.

"The community knows that you are Cal Beach, that you come from the
East, that you're green as grass, that you've been through university,
and that Jackson Stake is trying you out and will perhaps keep you on
for the season if you attend to your knitting and don't get an idea
that because you've been to college you know more than anybody else,
meaning in particular Hamilton Stake, Gander Stake, and Grit Wilson,
in the order named."

"All very interesting--and very accurate," Cal admitted. "What else?"

"The community knows that Reed is eight years old, and your sister's
son, and that he has a funny name, and that Mother Stake had taken
quite a shine to him."

"Our young friend is observant, Miss Frolic. By the way, speaking of
funny names--?"

Her eyes narrowed a little under his gaze, but the light in them
danced eagerly. "My name is Frawdic, F-r-a-w-d-i-c," she explained.
"An odd name, and it's easier to listen to their mispronouncing of it
than to correct them. And 'Frolic' is a rather pleasing appellation,
don't you think?"

"An appropriate one, perhaps," he bantered.

"Who knows?" she said, and momentarily dropped her eyes.

The children were beginning to gather for school. They came
barefooted, and some of them without coats, and swinging over their
shoulders bags with their school books and lunches. The visitor was an
object of their curiosity, and one or two of the bolder boys edged up
close enough to hear the conversation. But Miss Frawdic proved to be
something of a diplomatist.

"Here, Harold," she called to the boy who had come closest. "This is a
new pupil. His name is Reed. Take him away and get him started playing
with the other boys. Start a ball game. You have twenty minutes yet
until school time."

Harold looked Reed up and down for a moment. "C'mon," he said. Reed
followed, somewhat shyly, but in a few minutes his voice was coming
from the ball ground as loud as any.

The teacher was in no hurry to resume her work at the blackboard, and
Cal had a feeling that as Gander had managed without him successfully
for some twenty-three years he would probably get along for another
morning. He waited.

"Oh, I forgot to ask Reed's other name," said Miss Frawdic, as though
groping for a subject.

"Beach," said Cal.

"Beach? That's _your_ name, isn't it? And he's your sister's son?"

The eyes with the shallow furrows about them were now looking into
his, quizzically. Cal resented them just a little. He had no intention
of being cross-questioned by Annie Frawdic, nor yet of lying to evade
her curiosity. "His name is Beach," he said.

She lapsed into an appropriate silence. But it was for a moment only.
Annie Frawdic had no thought of allowing any unpleasantness to develop
between herself and the community's latest acquisition. The shadow in
her eyes was as temporary as that of a flying cloud upon the prairies.

"We are so glad to have you," she rattled. "You know--a university man.
We are all such dubs."

"Oh, not all, I am sure," said Cal, gallantly.

"Yes, all. You soon get that way. 'Like as iron sharpeneth iron,' you
know. I know I have grown very dull for lack of a--a--"

"A whetstone," Cal suggested.

"Exactly--a whetstone. Take care I don't call you Mr. Whetstone."

They were progressing.

With a slim toe she described a circle in the dust on the floor. She
was waiting for him to speak, so he spoke a platitude:

"It must be wonderful to teach these bright-eyed children; to see them
growing up under your guidance, your counsel."

"It isn't. It's a bore, to them and to me. They come to school because
they can't help themselves. I teach them for the same reason."

Her frankness was engaging. If she had said, "I am teaching school
because I have failed to land a husband," he could not have understood
her better. He wondered how far she would go.

"Never give up," he said.

Her eyes narrowed a trifle, but there was no anger in them. She
described another circle with her toe on the floor. As it happened the
circles interlinked each other.

"You have been in Plainville?" she queried, presently.

"No."

"Then you have not seen Minnie?"

"You mean Miss Stake?"

"I hope not," she said, punning on the name. "Still, it's a mistake
that might be excused."

Cal did not answer. He remembered the uncanny way in which gossip
swept through the community, and he had a mental picture of receivers
being silently lifted and greedy ears strained forward to catch what
Jackson Stake's new man had said about Minnie....

"Nine o'clock!" Miss Frawdic exclaimed. "I must call the children."
She extended her hand and took his in a friendly grip. The bones of
her thin hand were sharp and firm against his palm.

"I will do the best I can for Reed," she said.

Cal turned from the door to take Reed in his arms. "Make good, old
Indian; make good!" he whispered in his ear, and gave him an
affectionate shake. He waved a friendly arm to the children now
trooping into the school, and turned up the road to Jackson Stake's.
As he walked he tried to turn the conversation over in his mind. And
it always came back to this:

"What was it she said about Minnie? Something about a mistake that
might be excused. Funny girl. Strange girl. I mean Annie Frolic. Good
name. Well, we shall see."




CHAPTER SIX


The week went on tremendously. Up at five every morning; filling
mangers and oat-boxes while the horses nodded and jerked in great
gestures of approval; cleaning stables hot with the animal vapors of
the night; currying and brushing manes and flanks and fetlocks;
cuffing Big Jim as he curled his great upper lip in mock savagery;
buckling the harness to place; running a hand affectionately under the
collar to make sure it sat comfortably against the great and willing
shoulder, while the sunlight poured through the open door and touched
with gold a million dust-planets floating in its yellow wedge--such was
the ritual of consecrating a new day to the service of Man. Then the
splash at the corner of the house; the graceful solace of cold rain
water; the caress of prairie breezes where the shirt neck, turned down
for washing, exposed a skirt of white skin under the jacket of tan;
the lungs bulging, the muscles vibrant, the appetite on edge!

Breakfast; the tired woman moving mechanically back and forth as
inexorably as the inexorable machine in which she had been caught; the
horses again in Company on Parade, jingling their bits and stamping
their big, flat feet; the procession to the fields, and the seeder
shuttle up and down, up and down, up and down. After the first day Cal
had found himself intrusted with the seeder; Gander had no jealousies
when a distribution of the farm labor was being made, and nothing
pleased Cal better than to take a little more than his share. Gander
had christened him "D.D." in acknowledgment of his university
training, and the sobriquet threatened to stick, but if there had been
any contempt in it at first it was quickly giving place to more
friendly sentiments. Gander had complimented him generously, driving
the compliment home with the declaration that he "never would have
reckoned a D.D. could catch on so quick." He "reckoned" further that
perhaps no one was quite hopeless, provided he was fortunate enough to
fall into good hands at the start.

Every hour of the day had its own peculiar witchery, but it was to
five o'clock in the afternoon that Cal learned to look forward with
greatest anticipation. By five o'clock Reed would be home from school
and come skipping across the fields with tell-tale traces of Mother
Stake's great bread-and-jam sandwiches hanging tenaciously to his
cheeks. It seemed to Cal that never before had he measured the grip
the boy had taken about his heart. Their constant association during
six weeks of gipsying with "Antelope" had built up a chumship the
strength of which he had not realized until these daily periods of
separation. Always the boy had been to him the living representation
of Celesta, and had been loved, perhaps, on her account, but now he
was laying strange claims upon his guardian's heart in right and title
of his own.

But into Reed's life had suddenly come a new object of affection. It
happened on the second day on the farm that as the boy returned from
school he encountered on the road where it wound among the poplar
groves a very brown and very curly and very bright-eyed spaniel. Only
for a moment did they regard each other with misgivings, and then the
dog, pouncing upon Reed, licked him a lavish welcome. Reed, to protect
his face, wrapped his arms about the shaggy shoulders, and the two
went down in a wrestle together, rolling and tumbling about on the
grass. They formed friendship in that moment, and raced off to the
house to proclaim their discoveries.

"Trix is a bad dog," said Mrs. Stake, reprovingly. "A bad,
harum-scarum dog. The way she goes galavantin' over the country--I
declare, it's not respectable."

Flat on the floor, with chops resting on her extended paws and eyes
closed to the merest twinkle, the spaniel gravely accepted her rebuke.
Her demeanor was that of one who confessed it all and was not quite
ashamed.

"If you'd been home like a good dog you'd ha' met Reed yesterday," her
mistress continued. "But no, you mus' be away scourin' the
neighborhood, an' in no good company at that, I'll be bound. Now be
off with you--both o' you!" But as she ordered them off she was
spreading a great bread-and-jam sandwich, and neither Reed nor Trix
was so foolish as to take her immediately at her word.

The rush of strange, new work had sadly interrupted the bed-time
stories. When supper was over and the horses "done up" for the night
Cal was ready to drag his weary limbs to the cushions and blankets in
the corner of the granary. In those first days all the horse power of
his engines was needed to drive the physical machine; nothing was left
for romantic adventures. But soon he hardened to his work; soon the
work became mainly automatic, leaving his mental reserves almost
untouched, and after three days of coma he again began to think. It
was then he became somewhat startled by the ease with which one can
get out of the way of thinking. Gander, and Grit, for example; it was
quite apparent they didn't think. Their minds trudged around in a
deep-grooved circle, like a captive bear around a post; rarely
climbing to the top of the post for an observation; never excursioning
into the vast unknown that lay just beyond the circle. To them there
was no unknown; the world lay complete within their deep-grooved
circle; complete and fully comprehended. Everything was simple, and,
for the most part, satisfactory, and to be contemplated with amiable
acquiescence. No sleepy bear amid his bones was more content than
they; no scientist, searching heaven and earth for truth, was half so
wise. Their contempt for Cal's university education was not assumed;
it was genuine, and without even the saving flavor of a tinge of envy.
The sting of it was not mitigated by its obvious good nature, or by
the fact that, if Cal was now rising somewhat in their opinion, it was
in spite of, not because of, his scholarship. Cal almost frightened
himself with the question whether it might be that he, too, would
presently find all the universe within his circle, and plod it with
the unconscious pathos of Gander and Wilson. At all costs he must save
himself from that; he must save his soul alive. The first thing was to
resume the bed-time stories for the boy. He would begin again Saturday
evening.

Saturday evening, just after supper, Hamilton Stake waylaid Cal. He
had as yet had scarcely any conversation with Hamilton, for no
particular reason except that they worked in different fields and did
not come much in contact. Such impression as he had had had been
favorable, so when Hamilton strolled with overacted casualness into
the granary where Cal was spreading blankets after their day's airing
he welcomed him heartily.

"'Lo, Ham; come along. What do you think of my diggins? Some boudoir,
eh?"

"Pretty nifty," Hamilton agreed, a bashful smile playing across his
clean, fair face. "Never would 'a' thought you could make this old
dog-house look like home, but it does."

Cal sensed a note in the boy's voice quite different from anything in
Gander's or Grit's. There was appreciation in it; something, perhaps,
not far removed from admiration, in it.

"A little touch of art, you know," said Cal, off-handedly, "makes all
the difference between--between an animal and a man."

Ham did not answer, but subjected the tire with the blow-out to an
unnecessarily exhaustive inspection. Presently:

"I was wondering if you'd mind helping me out a bit to-night."

"Sure. If I can. What is it?"

"I was wondering if you'd mind feeding up for me. Gander's gone to
town with Dad's car, and I don't like asking Grit."

Cal glanced at him quizzically. He noted that the ruddy down had
disappeared from the upper lip; that the curly copper hair was parted
as well as its turbulent nature would permit; that the neck of a clean
shirt was neatly drawn together with a new and glorious tie and
bayoneted in place with a diamond pin which, if genuine, would have
been worth about a thousand dollars. And as Cal's own lips parted in a
smile the boy's parted in response, and they were friends.

"Sure, I'll feed up," said Cal. "And you might give my regards to Miss
Elsie."

"You're wise," the boy grinned. "And you're white," he added, and was
gone. Something very much like a lump came in Cal's throat as he
thought of that short but all-comprehensive tribute.

As he was feeding the horses Jackson Stake came into the stable and
regarded him silently for a minute.

"You doin' up Ham's?" he commented. "Don' let that young gaffer put
nothin' over on you. He'd be at Double F's mornin', noon, an' night if
some one would do his work at home. I sort o' suspec' he's gonna marry
the whole family one o' these days. Couldn't possibly have it that bad
over one or two."

Cal felt that this was hardly a matter for his discussion. "Ham's all
right," he ventured. "Good clean boy. You should be proud of him."

Jackson Stake's straight figure seemed to straighten more where he
stood between the stalls. "Dang it, I _am_ proud of him," he declared.
"We all get our bumps an' I've got mine, but I reckon on Ham as one o'
my compensations. An' Elsie's all right, too. Good as gold. I'm not
kickin' if you ain't."

It struck Cal that his employer's process of thought was capable of
cutting some sharp corners. And he wondered what particular bump
Jackson Stake had in mind. Minnie? Perhaps. Then:

"Would you object to a small camp fire in the yard, beside the
granary, these nights?"

"Camp fire? What for? You ain't cold, are ye? There's an old stove--"

"No--no. Not cold. It's just a sort of notion. When we were traveling
together Reed and I used to build a camp fire every night, and we
thought it would be nice to have one here, if you don't mind. I'd go
out and cut extra wood for it--"

"If the kid wants a fire he can have it," said Jackson Stake,
decisively. "Dangdest thing, the way that boy twists Susie 'round his
finger! Only be sure to put it out--clean out."

"Thanks," said Cal.

The sun was almost down when Cal had finished with his work, but the
news of a camp fire and a story sent Reed and Trix scampering with
delight. They built it on a bare spot a short distance from the
granary, and carried out the Ford cushions so that they could sit
about it in comfort. Although there was fuel for the taking at the
woodpile they preferred to gather dry branches among the poplars; it
made the fire more realistic, and when the flames were crackling and
the ruddy glow flickering on the granary wall they were again
gentlemen adventurers unafraid.

Reed gathered up his feet, with his arms about his ankles, and the red
firelight painting his face. "All right, Daddy X," he said. "Let 'er
go."

"Once upon a time," Cal began, "the gopher used to bark like a dog.
That was long before the first Old Timer came to the prairies, and the
gophers had only themselves to bark at, and sometimes a coyote or a
fox. The coyote and the fox, and the big hawk that sometimes hung
overhead, were their enemies, and when they were near Father Gopher
stayed close to the hole he had dug in the soft, warm earth, and made
Mrs. Gopher and the baby gophers keep out of sight until danger was
over. Sometimes Father Gopher would stand straight as a stick on the
little mound of earth at the door of his home and pretend not to see
the great hawk poising overhead. Then with a sudden swoop the hawk
would come at him with the speed of an express train, but Father
Gopher had not been asleep, and just as the cruel talons were about to
close on him he would dart under cover, chuckling and laughing. And
Mother Gopher would scold him for his rashness, and ask him to think
what would become of the children if anything should happen him, but I
think she was proud of her brave husband just the same, and it made
her heart glow in her little breast to think how daring he was, and
how he could make sport of their great enemy, the hawk.

"It was the same with the coyote and the fox; they thought themselves
very clever indeed, but Father Gopher was more than a match for them.
When they would hide from him behind the clump of willows he would
bark, like they did, but if they stole nearer he would slip into his
burrow and through the thin brown grass his small beady eyes would
watch their every movement. It was a clever fox or coyote that could
get the better of Father Gopher.

"But he had two enemies that were worthy to be feared, and, curiously
enough, they were called Fatty and Skinny. One was Fatty the Badger,
who, with his great flat back filling all the space in the buffalo
path in which he loved to travel, seemed harmless enough. But Fatty
had more than a big back; he had wonderful long claws on his short
little legs, and not another animal on the plains could make the earth
fly like he could when he started to dig. It was a bad day for any
gopher when Fatty Badger took it into his thick little head to dig him
out. There was only one thing to do, and that was to move house at
once, and as every wise gopher has a back door as well as a front
door, and sometimes little private passages to his neighbors' homes as
well, Fatty Badger seldom had more than exercise for his trouble. But
it is a sad thing to see a home destroyed, and Mother Gopher and the
children were always in tears when they heard the great claws rasping
in the earth above them.

"The worst enemy of all was Skinny Weasel, for he was long and thin,
and a terrible fighter, and could come right down the hole, and he
never knocked at the door like a gentleman, but rushed right in, and
Father Gopher could only make the best fight he could in the hope that
his wife and children would escape by the back door while he was
selling his life dearly at the front one."

"That is terrible," said Reed.

"Yes, isn't it? The prairies seemed to be full of the enemies of
Father Gopher, all stronger and greater fighters than he. And yet he
prospered and multiplied more than all his enemies, because he lived
upon the fruit of the soil and not by preying upon other people. But
one day his two very greatest enemies appeared on the scene. They were
a man and a dog. Father Gopher had never seen them before, and,
because he is very curious, he watched them with great interest,
thinking that such wonderful big creatures would not trouble a little
gopher who lived only on grass and seeds. But suddenly the dog rushed
upon him, with great loud barks, louder and lustier than the biggest
coyote Father Gopher had ever heard. Father Gopher was almost caught
before he could rush into his hole. He was so excited and out of
breath that he tumbled in upon Mother Gopher and the children and
could hardly speak. Then they heard the great claws digging, just like
Fatty Badger, and they were in a dreadful panic, because if they ran
out at the back door the man would be sure to catch them. But just as
it seemed their end had come--they could hear the sniffing of a great
nose within a foot of their home--the man whistled on the dog, and he
pulled his head out and ran away."

"Good!" said Reed. "I was afraid he was going to get 'em."

"Yes, so was I. But the dog ran away when the man whistled, and Father
Gopher plucked up his courage and followed along in a little path
which his own people had made in the grass, and he noticed that every
little while the man whistled and then the dog would run to him. And
he said to himself, 'If I could whistle like that the dog would obey
me as he obeys the man.' So he stood up and tried, and he found that
he could whistle almost as loud as a man, and ever since then the
gopher has whistled instead of barking."

They sat in silence when the story was finished. Darkness had settled
down; the little fire glowed gipsylike before them; whiffs of its
fragrant smoke fondled about their faces and tickled their nostrils
with its feathery pungency. They had been so interested that the
approach of an automobile to the house had been unheard, and Cal was
not prepared for a girlish voice almost at his elbow.

"Interesting--if true," the voice remarked, and Cal sprang to his feet.

She was standing a step or two away from them, somewhat in the shadow
of the granary, and the dull glow from the fire limned her figure only
in the vague and suggestive way which is the gift of art. Indeed, as
it afterwards seemed to Cal, all he saw was her face and head, and
imagination filled in the figure as it does in those clever
illustrations for advertisements which have been much in vogue. But it
was her face he saw, pink and ruddy and well made, with lips half
parted in a bantering smile. ... No, it was her eyes he saw, deep
and brown glowing. No, it was her hair, bronze hair surely, trapping
and teasing the ruddy light--

"I'm Minnie," she said simply, and held out her hand. "May I join your
party? I'm really not so bad mannered as I seem."

It was a hard remark to answer. Cal mumbled something about being sure
of that, which, of course, was not the right thing to say at all, and
the girl sat down on the cushion beside Reed. "I know all about you,
little man," she said, slipping her arm around him. "Shall we be
friends?"

"Yes," said the child, soberly, "but you'll have to be friends with
Daddy X, too."

"Daddy X?"

"That's my nickname," Cal hastened to say, anxious to avoid any
lengthy explanations.

"Then it's a bargain," she answered. She was facing the boy, but Cal
had a feeling the words were intended for him. There was something
unaccountably pleasant in that presumption.

"I really didn't intend to 'listen in'" she continued, turning toward
him. "Gander brought me home in the car, and when I came out to get
some groceries which I had left in it I saw the fire by the granary,
so I rambled down. Then I found there was serious business on hand, so
I didn't interrupt. Of course Gander told me about you. He said you
were a D.D."

"I'm not, really," Cal answered. "The initials after my name--if I
cared to use them--would stand for something quite different from
Doctor of Divinity. What else had our friend Gander to report?"

She had crossed her ankles and was pointing her shapely toes to the
fire. Cal noted the low shoes, the silk stockings, the fashionably cut
skirt. She rubbed a small heel in the earth, but she did not answer.

In the glow from the fire the profile of her face was cut as clean as
a cameo between Cal and the darkness. "What else did Gander report?"
he repeated.

"It was quite favorable," she said, after a silence. "Shall I tell
you? He said he reckoned if you stuck around for a while it wouldn't
be so hard to keep Sister Minnie on the farm."

Her confession brought her face toward him with a laugh, and suddenly
Cal knew it was her eyes that he had seen in that first glimpse
through the darkness.

"Let us hope Gander is a good prophet," he said, and they laughed
together.




CHAPTER SEVEN


Sunday morning was a time for rest, and Cal slept late. It was seven
when he awoke from a sleep strangely but pleasantly haunted by visions
of a beautiful maiden who had a disconcerting habit of thrusting her
stockinged feet in the fire. At the cost of shattering some
proprieties Cal gently but firmly averted the danger. It was a
particularly engaging kind of heroism, this rescuing of
silk-stockinged feet with a beautiful maiden attached, and he had
something of a grievance at the sunlight when, pouring in through the
window, it interrupted his gallant occupation.

Cal drew on his clothes and stretched himself at the granary door. The
sunshine filled the yard like a flood, and the air filled his lungs
like a bellows. The world was singing a morning psalm of peace, and a
lilt in his heart beat accompaniment. Matronly hens were taking their
dust bath by the side of the stables while their younger sisters
cackled over belated layings in the hay shed, and as Cal crossed the
yard the family sow turned from sunning herself by the water trough to
greet him with an amiable grunt. But at the stable Old Jim cast him a
look of reproach. For an hour he had been snuffing and nibbling in his
empty manger, and he felt righteously aggrieved. It was not until he
had been fed and curried, and left unharnessed, that the big bay
seemed to remember what day it was, and took to a friendly nodding of
a mouth broadly whiskered with hay. Plainly Jim was a believer in
Sunday observance.

When he had finished with his horses Cal turned toward the water
barrel at the house for his morning ablutions, but in the yard he was
arrested by a sound of singing, accompanied by a drone faintly
suggestive of distant bagpipes. It seemed to come from one of the
smaller stables to which his duties had not yet taken him. After a
moment of irresolution he turned toward it, and found an even more
humble building than that which housed the horses; the chinks had
fallen out in many places and the door hung only by one tenacious
hinge. Inside were cows, four of them, with necks bracketed to their
mangers, and a girl seated at one, streaming industrious white ribbons
of milk into a tin pail which rang its reverberations now partly
smothered in creamy froth. She was singing, and for a moment he did
not disturb her. He was watching the rounded, rising muscles of her
arms, the quick action of her slender wrists, the warm curve of her
ear--

"Music hath charms!" he quoted, inanely, when he felt that he must
announce himself.

She stopped and regarded him for a moment. "Yes, hasn't it?" she
agreed, and resumed her milking.

It was true, then, that her hair was bronze; certain audacious
threads, peeking out from beneath her milking cap, confirmed it.

He was wishing he could help her milk. After all, what avails it to
write the prize thesis on "The Reaction of Industrialism Upon the
Rural Social Atmosphere" if one has not learned to milk? He said so,
but not in such language. "I am afraid my education has been
neglected," he explained.

"Don't pity yourself," she advised him. "A first-class farm hand never
milks."

So he was a farm hand. All right. He was above being hurt by being
called a farm hand. Besides, he _was_ a farm hand.

"But why?" he asked.

"Because milking is drudgery. The experienced farm hand always lays it
down that he can't milk and has no intention of learning. It's only
the greenhorn who says, 'No, I can't milk, but I'd like to learn'."

Evidently Miss Minnie could give him some pointers, and was not
averse.

"But why? These mild-eyed cows; that creamy pail. Why?"

She was stripping the last drops between finger and thumb. Then
setting her pail to one side--he rushed forward to take it from her
hand--she arose, showing a pinned-up skirt and a fragment of feminine
attire commonly regarded as obsolete, lifted up her stool, patted
Bossie on the flank, and stepped out.

"There!" she said, as one who had just had a considerable weight
pleasantly lifted from her mind. "That's that."

"Finished?"

"Finished."

She turned to another full pail, which he had not seen. He took up
both in his strong arms, never stronger than on this happy Sunday
morning, and together they walked toward the house.

"You asked why," she said, picking up the thread of his thought. "I'll
tell you. You've seen the film, 'Why Girls Leave Home?'"

"Don't know that I have."

"Why, I thought you city men-- It's been at the Plainville Electric
Theatre._Some_ theatre, let me say. A sort of tunnel with a sheet at
one end and a ticket box at the other. Well, I could write a scenario
for a film, 'Why Country Girls Leave Home,' and I'd use only one
actor."

"Who?"

"A cow. A herd of cows. That's why."

Her remark opened up a new avenue of speculation. By no stretch of the
imagination had cows, common domestic cows, female _Bovina_, appeared
within the scope of the university curriculum touching sociology. And
now--

He had much to say, but before any of it had been said they were at
the house.

"What do you do with it now?" he asked, helplessly.

"Run it through the separator. You can turn it for me, if you like."

He liked, and a minute later the whine of the cream separator rose
above the volcanic bubbling of the porridge on the range and the
clatter of Mrs. Stake's table-setting. With something akin to
fascination Cal watched the little rivulet of cream trickling out of
its long slender spout into the receptacle placed for it, while
presently his arms cramped to the ache of a strange exercise and the
sweat began to gather on his face.

"My land, you might let the man have his Sunday rest," Mrs. Stake
protested.

Cal wondered who supplied the horsepower for this machine on week
days. Certainly not Gander, nor Hamilton. It boiled itself down to
Jackson Stake or his wife. Perhaps, in days gone by, Minnie; the girl
was strong of bicep, he could see that--

The men were filing in for breakfast. The slumbering chuckle in Grit
Wilson's eyes leaped to flame at sight of Cal turning the separator;
then instantly died down again. A new note from the whirling bowl, a
sort of throaty growl as compared with its tight, high-pitched whine,
proclaimed the task finished, and, at a signal from Minnie, Cal
released the handle, which dropped inert to the lowest point of its
circle while the machine itself coasted joyously along, like Antelope
with the clutch out on a down grade.

"Thank you," she said, simply, in a voice to reach him alone, and he
went to his seat more than repaid. What cared he for the mocking eyes
of Grit Wilson? What, indeed! No more than for the peripatetic
functioning of Gander's Adam's apple, more obvious than usual against
the background of a recent shave and a clean collar!

After breakfast they turned the horses free for exercise, and the
drove, with Big Jim at their head and Reed and Trixie bringing up the
rear, set out on a sedate trot around the pasture field. The trot
steadily gathered momentum, and when Grit's big grey thought to slip
ahead of Jim on a corner it broke into a gallop, and ended with a
flourish of tails and stamping at the pasture gate. Then were many
rollings on the warm grass, and heavings of great hoofs and fetlocks
in the air, and prodigious scratchings of vertebral ridge-poles on the
sandy earth.

The forenoon was spent in congenial laziness. Cal, drawing upon the
warm water reservoir at the back of the kitchen range, and
requisitioning an iron wash-tub that lay upturned in the yard before
the house, sought the privacy of his granary for a bath, and marvelled
at the evidences of honest toil which the residue in the tub afforded.
He shaved with more care than usual, selected clean shirt, underwear,
and socks from his somewhat limited wardrobe, parted his hair with
military exactitude, and superintended similar operations, sans the
shaving, on the part of Reed. Then he sallied forth, conquering and to
conquer.

There was no sign of Minnie, so he rambled about the stables. On the
sunny side of one of the buildings he came upon Grit and Gander
lounging in the warm sand.

"We was jus' sayin'," said Grit, through the clenched teeth that held
his pipe; "we was jus' sayin' you ought to rig up the old Ford to run
that milk buzzer. That shouldn't be hard for a man with a eddication."

"For a D. D.," Gander expanded the description.

Cal sat down with them, hunched his back against the sunny wall, and
got out his pipe. Not until it was drawing well and the peace of
tobacco was upon his soul did he take up the theme.

"I'm afraid my education, along practical lines, has been neglected,"
he said.

"Minnie'll make up for that," said Gander. "She was givin' you a good
start this morning. But take a tip from father, don't get mixed up in
this chore bus'ness. There's nothin' to it."

"That's what she said--or words to that effect."

"She did, eh? Well, she's wise. She knows. An' when a man drives a
team all day, an' feeds up at night, I'll say he's done a day's work,
an' he's through."

"Same here," Mr. Wilson volunteered.

"Sounds reasonable," Cal admitted. "And when a woman feeds a herd of
hungry men three times and rids up after them I suppose she's done a
day's work, and she's through, too. Is that right?"

Gander took his pipe from his mouth and held it at a non-committal
angle. "What are you drivin' at?" he demanded.

"Well, I've only been here a few days, and perhaps it is too soon to
reach conclusions, but my specialty in college was sociology--"

"Wha's that got to do with? Socials, an' free eats? Sounds like a good
subject." It was Grit who was commenting. "You'll be ace high when the
box social season comes 'round."

"No, it's not exactly that," Cal continued, husbanding his good humor.
"I don't know quite how I'd explain it to this audience." He paused,
but his irony was too delicate; it was lost upon them. "But the
purpose of all education is to teach a man to observe, to think--"

"Poor bus'ness," Grit interrupted. "The biggest trouble I ever got
into came from observin'--an' thinkin'." He was for launching into a
salacious story, but Cal would not be deflected.

"And my habit of observing and thinking," he continued, "has caused me
to take notice that the hardest worked beast of burden on the farm is
the farmer's wife. Now that's a tremendous fact. I suppose it has more
to do with the movement from the farm to the city than everything
else."

Gander contributed a flicker of interest. "What you goin' to do about
it?" he inquired.

"I'm going to think about it."

Gander relapsed. Cal, recalling his mental picture, saw the bear get
down from the top of his post and resume the plodding of his well-worn
circle. The flicker of interest had died in its birth.

But it had not. Suddenly Cal was aware of the germ of an idea
burrowing into his consciousness. Leaping from Gander's unreceptive
brain it was igniting the combustible material in his own. He knew it
for a great moment, and he slipped away, eager for a solitude in which
he might compress the nebula into a solid thought.

In the shade of the granary he evolved it. It was very simple when
reduced to terms; it simply meant that here, on the farm of Jackson
Stake, he was to take his post-graduate course in sociology. He had
put his science away, as a thing to be kept under safe cover while his
health was mending, little dreaming that right here was the
environment in which he could best develop it, and the raw material
for his experiments. This prairie homestead, prosperous, no doubt, in
a gross kind of way, in the kind of way that is measured by acres and
bushels and droves of stock, with its rough buildings, its simple
customs, its labors, its drudgeries, its flickers of humor, its
pathetic shadows, its unconscious tragedy--this was to be the school of
his post-graduation. What characters, what material to his hand!
Jackson Stake, himself a broad-girthed boy of sixty; Susie Stake, a
domestic treadmill, but a treadmill with a heart, and a heart which,
in some unaccounted way, had been set pounding again by the presence
of the boy Reed; Gander and Grit, all-wise and self-sufficient;
Hamilton, deep in the happy embarrassment of his love for Elsie Fyfe;
even Reed, a strange light from out of the darkness--what subject
matter for his study! And Minnie. A gust of reaction swept him at the
thought of including Minnie in his investigations; of impaling her as
a rare specimen and subjecting her to the microscopic scrutiny of the
eye of science. Yet not the least of the material to his hand was she,
and science must not be impeded by the clamor of the heart.

As Cal turned these new thoughts in his mind he smiled at the
complacent ignorance in which he had written his prize thesis on "The
Reaction of Industrialism Upon the Rural Social Atmosphere." Here,
now, was no musty text-book; here was life, throbbing, pulsating,
grinding, to which the text-book bore no closer relationship than does
the photograph to the living soul.

It was too tremendous to be taken standing, and Cal sought poise in
the prairie fields. Fancy injecting idealism into this clay;
substituting art for materialism; living for being alive; implanting
an intellectual consciousness; attuning minds to the infinite
reactions of Truth; broadening horizons until they included the world,
the universe itself! Cal walked the fields by himself, his soul afire
with dreams; forgot his midday meal, and came out of his trance only
when he discovered that the family was preparing to attend church in
the district schoolhouse, that the Dodge was drawn up at the door, and
that Minnie was dressed apparently for walking rather than riding.

"Dad will drive, of course," she explained, "and Mother will ride with
him. Hamilton is over at Double F's, and you three men will fill the
back seat. I don't mind walking; indeed, I don't. I rather like it--"

So Cal said something about liking to walk, too, and with Reed in the
back seat it would be crowded, anyway, and it was only a mile and a
half, wasn't it? And perhaps they had better start at once. And
presently he and Minnie were tracking together the winding trail
through the poplar groves to the highroad.

The sun poured down upon them as they walked, and they sought the
grass at the side of the road to escape the dust. In his left hand Cal
carried his soft hat that he might the better enjoy the breeze which
from time to time teased through his hair, but his right swung free
and in dangerous proximity to Minnie's left. He had thought he would
have much to say, but they were strangely silent; they had not found a
conversational point of contact, and to grope for one seemed too
obvious. He caught himself in furtive glances at the trim figure at
his side; glances of appraisal; glances that took note of the flirting
curls of her bronze hair, of the long lashes over her brown eyes, of
the mould of her lips, the curve of her neck, the white V of her
bosom, the swing of her limbs, the lilt of her ankle. He told himself
he was studying her; that she was a part of his field of
investigation. Exhibit A! Absurd. Yet what else? Anything else would
be still more absurd.

"I thought perhaps you would want to talk, as well as walk," she said
at length. She was master of a sidelong glance charged with menace to
the cause of science.

"I do, tremendously," he answered. "Perhaps that is why I can't."

The explanation seemed to satisfy her, and again they walked on in
silence.

"At any rate I'm glad--we're all glad--you came," she volunteered when
they had crested the knoll that commands the school. "That was why I
had to leave the farm."

"I don't understand."

"A girl must have some one to talk to," she told him, frankly. "I felt
that I was just--drying up--on the farm. Not that it's so much better in
Plainville, but at any rate there's not the drudgery. You haven't
talked much yet, but I'm sure you can, and you will. You see, I've
been studying you."

Exhibit B! Ah! Well, that was fair, and two could play at it.

At this moment the Dodge swept by them, and other cars were raising
their dust-clouds in the distance. When they came up to the school a
little group of farmers was assembled on the shady side of the
building, discussing the progress of their seeding and the prospect of
rain. A blue-black cloud, already forming in the west, gave point to
their prophecies, but their absorption in crops and weather was not so
great that they failed to note the young man walking with Minnie
Stake, and to encourage certain gentle surmises, more hinted than
spoken. As other cars came up other farmers joined the group, while
their wives and daughters took seats inside the school.

It may have been quite by accident, but Annie Frawdic was at the door.
"Hello, Minnie," she greeted them; "who's your friend?"

"Oh, this is Mr. Beach, Cal Beach, Miss Frolic."

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Beach," said Annie, as she extended her hand.
Then, while Minnie's head was turned aside for a moment to take note
of those who were in the building, she added, _sotto voce_, "For the
second time, remember my predictions, and take them as a warning."

And as Cal returned the pressure of her hand, which had not been
prematurely withdrawn, he mentally registered--Exhibit C!




CHAPTER EIGHT


Cal found a strange new zest in his labors all that week. The thought
that he could combine practical research in sociology--a sort of
post-graduate course in his specialty--with the equally practical
business of making a livelihood and re-establishing his health was a
particularly encouraging and inspiring one. In an instant it drained
the drudgery from his toil, revealing those rich social deposits which
drudgery so often conceals; it gave purpose to his life; it invested
the meanest surrounding with mystery and romance.

He had talked with loosened tongue to Minnie that night, until Gander,
with inopportune impatience, had raced his engines to a roar as he
awaited her in the car. She had sprung to her feet from the Ford
cushion where she had sat at the front of his granary, with a deft
hand whipping the dust from the fringe of her skirt as she arose.

"I must go," she had said. "Brothers get in a beastly hurry just
when--"

But she stood before him, and did not go. Then--

"Can you drive a Dodge?"

"I can easily learn. It's a little different--"

"You ought to learn. ... Good night." And she was gone.

That was an idea. That was something to think about. It gave him a
pleasurable little thrill of intoxication, like a very light wine. It
may have been unscientific, but it was very enjoyable, and he nursed
it until he fell asleep.

He must have slept lightly, for he was awakened by the first patter of
rain on the shingled roof. It was very dark; so dark he could not see
his hand when he raised it before his face. A cool breeze came in
through his open window and stirred his workday overalls where they
hung from a nail beside his bed; he could hear the suspender buckles
rasping lightly against the board wall as they stirred. The few drops
of rain which had awakened him lulled and died down, then gathered
again for a more determined assault. Pat-a-pat, pat-a-pat, pat-a-pat,
like some myriad-footed creature of the night they sprang upon his
cedar shingles; he could smell the damp odor of the cedar filtering
through the roof and filling his little room. Presently there was a
splash of water as it gathered in little pools under his eaves; and
always the myriad-footed pat-a-patting on the roof.

Reed stirred in his sleep, projecting a corner of himself into Cal's
section of the bed, and Cal gently but firmly unkinked him. With a
strong hand he straightened the sturdy little limbs, apparently
hopelessly entangled among themselves and fragments of blanket, and
pointed them in the direction in which they should be pointed. Then he
rested back to the luxury of the rhythm of the rain on the roof;
linking his fingers palm-upward on the pillow and nesting his head in
the warm junction of his hands, he lay in a quiet ecstasy of spirit
that was very new and wonderful. It did not occur to him to question
whether that spirit was quite scientific. One question only had
fluttered through his semi-consciousness, beating a tattoo on his
brain to the accompaniment of the patter on the roof; a vague
wonderment whether or not Minnie had reached Plainville before the
rain.

She had. Gander had let her down at Mrs. Goode's boarding house and,
his mood of impatience having now given way to that of one who has an
amplitude of time, had gone strolling down the streets of the little
town in search of such adventure as might be afoot at eleven o'clock
of a Sunday evening. It was well after midnight when Minnie heard the
shifting of his gears, for the girl was still awake, turning over in
her mind the events of a day long to be remembered as eventful. She
admitted having become interested in Cal Beach. He was a new type, and
she was fond of studying types. It had been the monotony of types,
perhaps as much as the cow-drudgery of the farm, which had goaded her
to a school of stenography in Winnipeg, from which she had returned to
be reimmersed in a monotony of types in the village of Plainville.
These farm men, these little-town men, she knew them all; she "had
their number," as she confidently assured herself.

This Cal person was different. Perhaps no better, but different. At
any rate he could talk; she had found that out. She had prodded him
out of his shell as they sat in pleasant proximity on the cushion of
the old Ford in front of the granary. She had led him to talk about
himself as the easiest angle of attack, and he had told her something
of his plans, and of how they had been interrupted by the doctor's
edict, and of how he hoped soon to be able to take up again his study
of sociology. She remembered how she had laughed when he said he might
find the material close at hand, and how she had banteringly inquired
if she was to be a subject for investigation, and how he had
over-denied it. Well, he was very interesting, and we should see what
we should see. He had not told her much about Reed; rather dried up on
the subject of Reed. A winsome kid who had walked right into Mother
Stake's arms. Well, Mother needed something of that kind to keep her
soul alive. ... Of course, people would talk, but let them. They
always did. ... Cal seemed rather to like her. Of course, nothing
serious. That would be nonsense. But Cal Beach was a chap a girl could
be proud of, even if he was her father's hired man, and she might show
some of them a thing or two at the summer picnics. She was glad she had
worn her new skirt and her silk stockings out to the farm over Sunday.
Let's see--how much had she coming from the law office? She fell asleep
while making calculations of her assets, present and prospective, and a
budget of expenditures, most of which had to do with the ladies' wear
department of Sempter & Burton's general store.

In the morning the skies cleared and the rain stopped, and the seeding
and plowing were resumed where they had been left off Saturday night.
But as Cal followed his machine up and down the length of the oat
field the vague schemes which had been pleasantly tormenting his mind
began to take more definite form. Jackson Stake was an amiable and
easy-going farmer, addicted, as Cal had learned, to only two
vices--occasional overindulgence in "formalin" and a mania for
attending auction sales and buying wholly unnecessary and usually
obsolete equipment which he dragged home behind a wagon, or in it, in
exchange for a lien note so drawn as to complicate his title to all
things here and hereafter. It was Mrs. Stake who had told Cal about
it.

"They've perhibited liquor," she said, "an' that's all right as far as
it goes. Jackson don' get goin' as often as he use' to, though I mus'
say when he does start he goes further, an' now if they'd jus'
perhibit auction sales p'rhaps we might get our feet under us. He fair
loses his head at a auction sale. Go out to the boneyard some day; I
call it the boneyard, jus' beyond the cow stables, an' see the old
machinery he's got piled up there. Enough to mor'gage a township. An'
me churnin' butter--"

That was the thought which came back to Cal. Jackson was amiable and
well disposed, and here lay the opportunity to remodel the farm as it
should be remodeled. Of what use was his higher education if it could
not grapple with a situation of this kind; if he must leave this farm
as crude and ugly as he had found it? Of course, he would have to meet
the opposition of Grit and Gander. The two geegees, he called them, in
revenge for the sobriquet of D. D. That opposition would take the form
of ridicule, of ponderous mock-respect and weighty speculations which
he would be permitted to overhear as though by accident. But what of
that? Minnie would understand--

"Why Minnie?" he chided himself. "This is a social experiment, not a
love affair."

He took the first opportunity to investigate the "boneyard." It lay,
as Mrs. Stake had said, behind the cow stable. It consisted of a
considerable area of land strewn with remnants of all kinds of farm
machinery and overgrown with a rank crop of last year's weeds, still
standing stiff and wooden after a winter's snow. Two self-binders,
with reels in a state of partial collapse, and the hollow hull of an
old grain separator, pirated by all the community in search of metal
pulleys or fittings for more modern machines, first attracted his
attention, and he gazed on them as one might gaze on the ribs of a
wrecked ship protruding through the sand. As he strode about among the
weeds he became aware that he was walking on a veritable pavement of
discarded machinery. With a stick he prodded up a set of mower knives,
the rim of an old wheel, some fragments of hay rake. Then a thought
struck him.

Grit had said something about running the cream separator with the old
Ford. It had been said in jest, but he would turn it to account. Among
all this mechanical flotsam he surely would find the means to carry
out the idea. He went to Jackson Stake.

"If I can rig up a machine to run the separator by using some of that
old machinery and the Ford, will it be all right?" he asked.

The farmer regarded him with some curiosity, dropping his lower jaw
the better to promote contemplation.

"Now what in hay-time put that into your head?" he finally inquired.

"Well, you see, I found last Sunday that it takes a good bit of muscle
to run that machine, and the old Ford might as well be earning its
keep. If you'll let me have the use of the blacksmith shop and the run
of the boneyard--"

"I think the wife's been talkin'. Did she put you up to this?"

"Not a word. But I'd like to try."

"Not enough to do in the fields? They'll be ready for barley seedin'
in a day or two."

"Yes. But I could do this odd times; noon hours, and the like."

The farmer scuffled his thin hair. "You beat me," he admitted at
length. "Suppose you tell me jus' what your game is?"

"There's no game, Mr. Stake." He saw that he had to go carefully.
Jackson Stake, for all his amiability, would be a hard man to move if
he set himself in the way. He had little initiative and no
aggressiveness, but, if provoked, he could develop an enormous
inertia. He was one of those men whose will power is mostly won't
power. What Jackson Stake mistook for determination in his own
character was really stubbornness; the stubbornness which had grappled
with this scrub-land farm and converted it, little by little and year
by year, into a valuable possession and a place of plenty; the
stubbornness which had dared a pioneering life and bent environment to
its will--that was the great strength of purpose, more negative perhaps
than positive, which under a hearty exterior dominated Jackson Stake.
He appeared genial and pliable, but when crossed he was hard as rock.
He was a man to be handled with care.

Cal was now quick enough to perceive in his employer these
qualities--qualities which until this moment had not come home to him.
He mentally revised his line of attack.

"You've a great farm here, Mr. Stake," he began. "You've made the
prairie blossom as the rose, as the poet says. Suppose you had had to
cultivate all these fields with a spade?"

"It couldn't be done."

"Of course not. You do your farm work with power, not because it's
easier, but because it's cheaper, and quicker, and it pays better. Now
my idea is to carry that same principle into housework. I want to see
this the most modern farm in Plainville district. I want the women to
be talking after church, 'You should see the way Jackson Stake has
fixed things up for his wife. Running the cream separator with power,
if you please, and the washing machine, too.' And I'd like you to let
me help you do that. That's all."

"Sounds the least bit like Minnie," said the farmer; "only you put it
better. You don' threaten nothin', an' Minnie was strong on what she'd
do an' what she wouldn't. Well, she left the farm over it, an' I ain't
askin' her back. Not but what she's welcome, an' she comes out most
ev'ry Sunday, an' she can have a home here when she wants it, but I
ain't askin' her back. That's the kind of a badger I am." The farmer
paused to let the weight of his pronouncement take effect. "Jus' the
same, I ain't sayin' but there's somethin' in your idea, so go to it,
only don' waste nothin', an' don' use up all my smithy coal."

With this authority Cal "went to it." He had a mechanical turn of
mind, as well as a philosophic one, and his progress was easier than
he expected. By milking time that evening he had the Ford backed up
against the house, a tire off and the wheel blocked up, and a rope
belt running from it through the window and on to a grooved pulley
bolted to the separator. He found he would have to run the car in low
gear to get the speed slow enough, and he had arranged a block of wood
to hold the foot pedal in place. He was so enthused he hardly could
wait until Jackson Stake and his wife brought up the cans of frothy
milk from the cow stable. When all was ready he started the engine,
and, watch in hand, set the throttle for the correct number of
revolutions per minute. The separator set up its shrill whine as an
accompaniment to the rattle of the old motor, and there was a moment
of tense excitement, but the belt ran true on the pulleys, the skimmed
milk and the cream began trickling out of their respective tubes, and
the success of his machine was established. It was great business.

Gander and Grit, strolling up from the horse stable, took in the
situation with amused interest. The elliptic wrinkles in Grit's face
lengthened until they effected almost a complete circle, save for the
interruption of his nose, and Gander's Adam's apple was spasmodically
gulping his emotion.

"I often heard it said that some day they'd breed a Ford that 'ud give
milk," said Grit, "but I never reckoned I'd live to see it."

Gander weighed his response. "Wonderful what you can do, with a Ford
an' an eddication. If I was a D. D. I bet I could make the Dodge give
cream cheese."

"Or lay an egg," Grit suggested.

"A fried egg!" Gander exclaimed, but this flight of imagination proved
too much for the two cronies. They caught arms, clinched, and in a
moment were swaying and straining in a catch-as-catch-can wrestling
bout. After a minute or two of Herculean combat their emotion had
found relief, and, panting and grunting, they resumed consideration of
the possibilities arising out of a Ford and an education.

"He'll be hemstitchin' the hangkerchiefs with it next," Gander
predicted.

"Or feedin' the canary," Grit added, disregarding the slight objection
that there was no canary.

Having so spoken, the two worthies, their bodies judiciously poised on
well-spread legs and their thumbs tucked in their trouser bands,
observed the processes with an exaggerated gravity, not unmixed with a
secret hope that the pulley would drop off, or the belt break, or
disaster in some form overtake the contrivance. But Cal had made sure
of his job, and the separator ran on smoothly and regularly--more
smoothly and regularly than if it had been turned by hand. As the
motor warmed up it increased its speed and he had to readjust the
throttle, but aside from that the operations were quite automatic.
Mrs. Stake looked on incredulously, as though unable to accept the
testimony of her eyes, and a little doubtful about the morality of
skimming milk by such a method. But her husband was openly
enthusiastic. His big red face was contorted with approval.

"That was a hum-dingin' good idee of ours, Cal," he said. "No use
breakin' your back if Henry'll do it for you."

"Ain't the first back he's broke," Gander put in irrelevantly, but the
farmer ignored the interruption. Plainly this was the moment to
propose further innovations, and Cal struck at once. "Of course," he
suggested, aligning himself with Jackson Stake's intimation of
partnership in the good work, "what we really need is a small gasoline
engine. It would run the washing machine, too--"

"What did I tell you?" said Grit. "And feed the canary--"

But the old farmer's imagination had been ignited. For a moment he
glimpsed a world beyond the bear-tracks and the family post.

"I must watch out for one at an auction sale," he said, now bulging
with constructive generosity. "Wish I'd bought an engine instead o'
that manure spreader--"

"You had a good manure spreader already," Mrs. Stake reminded him,
"but, of course, if it was somethin' o' use you wouldn' buy it, not
for the soul or sake o' you. You'd trek home that ol' manure spreader,
an' you with more lien notes than'll be paid this fall or next, but if
it was somethin' useful--"

Her voice trailed off plaintively, but it occurred to Cal that the
moment was a singularly inopportune one for nagging. Now was the time
to get Jackson Stake committed to a program of local uplift. He
wheedled the farmer to one side, and before the bowl of the separator
stopped growling he had been constituted a committee of one with
_carte blanche_ to carry out improvements--provided they didn't cost
anything.

He began with an effort to revise the farmyard on some sort of
geometrical basis. With the help of Big Jim and his associates he
straightened the granaries about and lined them up, and hauled the
frame blacksmith shop, which had been occupying a position
twenty-seven point five degrees from north of the horse stable, into
alignment with the granaries. The three frame buildings, now in a
straight row with the house, presented quite an avenue. "Beach
Boulevard," Gander christened it, and "reckoned" there should be a
policeman on traffic duty at the corner, as he had seen upon his only
visit to Winnipeg. But Cal smiled and went on. Wait until Minnie came
out from town Saturday night! See what Minnie would have to say about
his--his social experiments. She was a bright girl, Minnie, and she
would understand.

Cal blocked up the sagging corner of the water trough, so that it
would not run over there before the other end was half full, and
assuaged the mud hole around the well with several wagon loads of
gravel. He dismantled the wooden pig pen in the centre of the grounds
and hauled it log by log beyond the boneyard, where he reassembled it,
to the eminent satisfaction of the occupants, who showed their
approval of green grass and fresh earth to root in with bassoonic
grunts of happiness. He loaded the great "basket" racks, discarded
until haying time, on to wagons and moved them out beyond the stables.
He straightened up the log pile, and now set to work to carry the
sawed wood from what should have been the lawn in front of the house
around to the north end, where it could not be seen from "Beach
Boulevard."

All these operations Gander and Grit observed with amused contempt. If
Cal were fool enough to fill in his slack time with unnecessary work,
let him. He would be wiser by fall. But Hamilton lent a hand with the
piling of the wood, and sometimes came and sat on Cal's cushion in
front of the granary after supper, and asked shy little questions
about the outside world, and what it was like to be in a university.

It was on Friday that the happiness of the great week dropped into a
gulf, as one walking with his head in the clouds may step over a
precipice. Cal was working about the yard when Reed returned from
school, swinging his lunch bag at the end of a strap. The boy was
tanned and brown and happy; as Cal looked fondly down at him he seemed
to have grown years since their camp at the head of the lake, less
than two weeks ago. And to-day his face was more radiant than ever,
for his was the joy of the child who has great news to tell.

"Oh, Daddy X, do you know? There's a boy in school and he's a bad boy,
and his mother's bad, too!"

"Why, Reed! That is a very serious thing to say. You mustn't say such
things about boys, and especially about their mothers."

"But it's true, Daddy X! All the boys say so, and his mother's bad,
too, and worse than he is."

"Reed, you mustn't! But why do they say it?"

"Well, he's got no father, and that's why, although I don't just see--
At any rate, it's very bad, and to-day we chased him nearly all the
way home, and some of the boys called him a bad name, at least I
thought it was bad, but they say it's not bad when it's true, and he
fought with one of them and got knocked down and it made his nose
bleed and served him right, didn't it? And then he ran off home
crying. You bet he was scared."

"And you took part in that?" It was the sternness of Cal's voice,
rather than his words, that brought Reed up with a start. The child's
face whitened a little; it was not often that Daddy X spoke to him
like that.

"Yes--why?" he faltered.

"Because, in the first place, it's cowardly. A bunch of children can
be as cruel as a pack of wolves. Young savages, every one of them! And
you were cruel as well as cowardly."

"But, Daddy X"--the boy's lip was trembling--"it was true; they all said
it was true; he's a bad boy, and his mother is bad, and he has no
father. It _is_ bad to have no father, isn't it, Daddy X?"

Cal discovered that his sympathies were in sharp collision with the
moral law, but he took firm ground. "No, Reed, it is not bad, at least
so far as the boy is concerned. The boy is as good--as good as you are.
And perhaps his mother, too, is good--as good as your mother was."

It was their custom, when they talked of Reed's mother, always to
speak with subdued voices and exalted mind, as of something hallowed
and holy. Reed's voice and mind now instantly adapted themselves to
their custom; the tremble died out of his lips, and in his eyes came a
seraphic light which set Cal's heart thumping down the dark avenues of
the past, down to the tragedy of Celesta Beach, and the night on which
she had laid her soul bare before him.

"But _my_ mother is with the angels, Daddy X," the child reminded him.
"The angels came for her, and she said that verse of mine--where you
got my name--and went home with them."

Suddenly Cal knew himself to be of a lower order than the child, and
he could only nod in silent assent. That which to him remained a
flicker of hope, not quite extinguished by the gusts of his practical
learning, was to Reed a beacon of light, undimmed and unbounded.

There was a minute of close heart-concord between them. Then--

"Daddy X, who _was_ my father? You often tell me about my mother, but
you never tell me about my father. Was he good, like my mother? Of
course, I know you're my Daddy X, but you're not really my father, are
you? Just my Daddy X?"

So it had come to this, and so soon. The pledge that he had given,
that Reed should never know--how could he carry it, concealed,
unguessed, through all his life? This at eight; Reed was only eight,
and already he was ferreting into his heart with this bitterest of all
questions. Reed might now accept any answer in faith, but grown-ups
could not be deceived. Perhaps it had already been discussed at
school; he recalled how Annie Frawdic had checked up on the name. What
were Gander and Grit conjecturing behind his back? How had the
community--which took so minute and curious an interest in the affairs
of every member of it--accounted for this boy? What conclusions had it
drawn, and at whose expense? What old women's whisperings were going
on about the queer people at Jackson Stake's? How long until Reed
would be hunted home from school, bleeding and crying and pursued by
rampant Virtue, as had been this other boy to-day?

At all costs he must save the child. He must find an explanation that
would not outrage the righteousness of Plainville; if it reflected
glory or sympathy upon Reed so much the better. He had it:

"You had a father, all right," he said. "He went to the war--and he did
not come back. It is very sad, and that is why I have not liked to
talk to you about it." Lying did not come easily to Cal Beach. The
words seemed to lacerate his throat and he pressed his fingers about
his neck. "He was a good man," he added; "you must always be proud of
him."

The child received this intelligence with a gravity beyond his years.
"I _am_ proud of him," he said. "But"--and again there was the leap of
light in his eyes--"you don't _know_ that he has been killed? Some day
he may come back--then he will find me, though he has to search all the
world over for me, like the good knights searching for the Holy Grail!
Oh, Daddy X!"

For a moment the boy pondered great possibilities; then, satisfied, he
ran off for his after-school sandwich of bread and jam, and Cal was
left dazed, humiliated, caught in a hatred that swept down upon him,
engulfing him. He had thought it would die out in time; he had hoped
that that wound had healed forever, but flow it was torn open afresh.
Hatred seized him like an evil spirit; he was again the wild beast in
the jungle.

"And on top of everything else," he muttered, as though confronting
Celesta's betrayer face to face, "I've made of myself a liar--for you.
I've called you a good man; I've told that innocent child to be proud
of you; I've paid you the honor of a hero! God forgive me! If ever I
lay hands on you I'll tear you limb from limb!"

The incident filled him with an overwhelming unhappiness, and he was
silent and morose at the supper table. But later in the evening he
heard the unwonted sound of singing coming from the house. Before the
open window he stopped, held by the picture which it disclosed. Mrs.
Stake was sitting in the "room," the sacred precinct with the
ancestral crayon enlargements, into which Cal had not yet been
admitted; her old form settled into a low rocker, her head back, her
glasses thrust up on her brow, her thinning gray hair drawn sharply
into a dwindling knob that once had been her glory. And on her lap was
the boy Reed, his legs dangling over the sharp ridge of her own; his
body snuggled against hers, his right arm thrown upward and about her
neck. But it was her eyes that held his attention; there was in them
something of that same light that filled Reed's when they spoke of his
mother. And as she rocked and held the boy she sang,

  "Twilight is stealing over the sea,
  Shadows are falling dark on the lea,
  Borne on the night wind voices of yore
  Come from that far-off shore."

As Cal watched the singer and listened to her song he was held by a
wonder of what voices from memory's far-off shores had touched again
to love and romance the stern old heart of Mrs. Stake. He watched as
her lean hands caressed the boy's legs; as they closed about his
little body. He was stirred by this revelation, but stirred more
poignantly still by something that defied analysis, that groped down
into his being and held him with the clutch of a primal passion. For
all his fine love for Reed his essential parental instinct had not yet
been kindled, and it was that which now caught him, groping,
smothering, somewhere in the uncharted mystery of existence. He drew
quietly away as one who has chanced unwittingly upon a sacred privacy,
but once more his heart was swept clean of the gust of hatred that had
seized upon it.

A little later Reed joined him at their granary and they went to bed
together, the boy saying his simple verse and then rolling his little
frame into his protector's arms, for a chill night wind was creeping
over the plains. But before he fell asleep he had a matter to settle.

"Mrs. Stake sang to me to-night, Daddy X," he said, "and she talked to
me about her boy that is gone; her little Jackson, she called him. She
says I make her think of him. Why should I make her think of him,
Daddy X?"

"I don't know, Reed; I didn't even know she had lost a little boy."

"I didn't, either," reverently. "And she asked me if I would call her
Grandma. May I, Daddy X?"

"If it pleases her, and you, you may."

And, this weighty matter settled, they fell asleep.




CHAPTER NINE


Shortly after noon next day the Jackson Stake homestead was honored by
a visit from the two hired men on Ernton's farm--where Annie Frawdic
boarded--a couple of miles to the south-east, and not far from the
school. Disregarding roads and fences the visitors came straight
across the oat field, and even at a distance the contrast presented by
their figures stirred Cal to whimsical amusement. One was very tall,
and very broad, and very thick; the other very short, and very narrow,
and very thin; and as they walked the greater would, from time to
time, entirely eclipse the lesser, so that at one moment two persons
were to be seen approaching, and at another, only one.

"We call them Pounds and Ounces," said Gander, who, for all his
contempt of Cal's inventions, never ceased to be cordial. "They look
it."

When Pounds and Ounces came up it was apparent that great business had
prompted their expedition. They had matters of moment with Gander, but
they regarded Cal shyly and without comment further than unanimity as
to its being a fine day.

"This is Cal Beach," Gander introduced him. "Not a bad fellow, but a
D.D., but I bet you don' neither of you know what D.D. stands for."

"Dead dog," said Ounces, immediately accepting the challenge.

"Dippy Dickie," said Pounds, who read the comic papers.

Gander made a gesture of disgust. "Such ignorance! An' before the
professor! I'm ashamed o' you. Well, what's the big news?"

The big news proved to be that P. & O.--as they were called for
short--had discovered the lair of a mother coyote. There was no doubt
about the mother beast, and it was likely she had six or seven whelps.
Now, unfortunately, the benighted municipality in which they lived
offered no bonus for coyotes, but in the municipality to the eastward
a bonus of two dollars a head was paid, whelps counting the same as
adults. The only difficulty was that the claimant had to make a
declaration that he had killed them in that municipality.

"So we thought if you'd come and bring your car we could dig the pups
out and put 'em in a sack and take 'em over the line before we killed
'em," Ounces naively explained. "It's twelve beans easy pickin' and we
might's well have it."

Gander concurred. "Sure thing," he said. "Be with you in a minute."

He ran to the house for a rifle, to the blacksmith shop for a shovel,
to the oat bin for an empty sack. "Before the professor started this
here garden city we could pick up a shovel an' a sack mos' anywhere,"
he complained. "Now we have to look 'em all up in the direct'ry."

He brought the car out of the garage with a flourish, piled P. & O.
into it, and was off down the trail that skirted the oat field. Cal
waved a hand after them genially, treating it all as an incident in
the day's work, and marvelling somewhat upon a code of morals which
would not make a false declaration but had no scruples about attaining
the same end by moving the young coyotes into the next township.
Nothing in the mild incident, the glaring sky, or the whirling
dust-cones in the distance gave him any hint that Gander's absence
that afternoon was to turn into new and swifter channels the placid
currents of his life.

About four o'clock Jackson Stake found his hired man busy repairing
the fence that, in its better days, had enclosed the family garden. He
looked on while Cal drove a staple, and shook the top of the post with
his big fist, reassuringly.

"Gander's off bummin' with the car, ain't he?" he asked presently.
"Got any idee where he went?"

Cal exposed as much as seemed necessary of the coyote conspiracy.

"So that's how he's burnin' up my tires an' gasoline!" the farmer
exploded. "If some day the Council offers a bounty for damfools I sure
know where I can make two dollars."

Cal went on driving a staple while the barbed wire sang pleasantly to
the pounding of his hammer. A little ripple of tune ran down its
twisted strands from post to post, crescendoing as, by means of the
stretcher in his left hand, Cal steadily tightened the wire.

"No sayin' when he'll be back," the farmer continued. "If they _do_
get the beasts, which ain't likely--like enough they'll find it's foxes
when they dig 'em out, but then ol' Skeezicks that's Clerk o' the
Council don' know a fox's ear from a fish's tail so that don' make no
difference--they'll kill 'em an drive right on in an' get the money an'
fill up with formalin an' like enough bust an axle in a badger hole
whoopin' home after dark." Jackson Stake was in a mood to be prepared
for the worst. "'Sides, somun's got to go to Plainville for Minnie.
The missus 's 'phoned for some things she's to bring out for
to-morrow. Dang it all, since we got a 'phone in the house we've got
nothin' else. Allus out o' somethin'. I mind when we use n't to be in
Plainville once a month and allus had lots; now it's a dull day we
don' run out o' somethin'. That's labor-savin' inventions for you.
Another invention or two an' we won't get nothin' done but windin' up
inventions. Well, somun's got to go. Didn't useta mind drivin' it with
a team; drove it many a time, winter an' summer, when there wasn't
settlement nor telephones, an' thought nothin' of it, but it's
different now. After you sleep for awhile on feathers you don' take to
the feel of straw like you useta. That's what I say to these
politician fellows that's always goin' to stop the trek from country
to city by makin' the country more like a city. 'City conveniences,
good roads, telephones, mail delivery,' they says; 'that's the
things'll keep the young folks on the farm.' An' the more they give us
o' those things the more the kids beat it for town. You can't make a
calf into a kitten an' you can't make the country into a city, an' the
more you try the sorer everybody gets. When I useta drive that road
with ol' Bill an' Nigger; I mind there was only one house between here
an' Plainville, an' ten miles on a winter's night-- Say, wha's to
prevent you goin' for Minnie with that ol' skim-milker o' yours?"

Cal's heart gave a most unscientific bump. What, indeed!

"Nothing that I know of," he said, as casually as he could. "That is,
if you let me draw on your gasoline barrel. And you'll have to crank
the separator to-night by hand."

"Strike me! When I take holt o' that ol' sep'rator I jus' naturally
_scare_ the cream out o' it. But I ain't the twister I useta be. The
old days--when Mother useta set the milk in the milkhouse an' skim it
with her front finger--those were the days! But once you get a new
idee-- It's like losin' the hankerin' for straw after you've slep' a
spell on feathers. I reckon that's one o' the things wrong with the
world these days; two many new idees-- Well, someun's got to go for
Minnie, an' it looks like you. Shouldn't wonder but you're a bit
lonesome for the white lights, yourself, an' Plainville'll do you
good." He spoke with friendly sarcasm of his country town. "Don' spend
all your money on the op'ra. By the way, how're you fixed?"

Cal took this to be an inquiry into his financial standing.
Investigation revealed a capital of forty cents.

"Well, that's about the price of a big time in Plainville," Jackson
Stake commented, meanwhile digging in his trouser pocket. He presently
produced a crumpled and twisted bill, out of the creases of which
dropped fragments of smoking tobacco, a couple of matches, a screw
nail and an American nickel. When it was smoothed out it disclosed a
denomination of two dollars.

"Take that on account," he said, "an' don' spend it all in one place.
You can go as soon as you're ready."

It was an hour, at his best pace, before Cal could be ready. Not only
must he shave and change, but he must oil and grease Antelope, replace
the tire which had been taken off for the cream separator operations,
and generally tighten up the clattering joints. So intent was he upon
these matters that not until the last moment did he think of Reed. But
Reed had gone gopher hunting with Trixie early in the afternoon and
was probably miles away over the prairie.

It was plain the boy could not go, and in spite of his loyalty Cal
felt his heart thump again. Not quite so tremendously, but still it
certainly did thump. At any rate, he reasoned to himself, they might
be late getting home; Minnie had some purchases to make, had she
not?--and Reed would be better in bed. And again there came a little
bump-bump.

Cal set off joyously, out through the poplar groves; down the main
road by the school; glancing up half expecting to see Annie Frawdic,
until he recalled that it was Saturday; then, still following the
principal road, across country in a south-westerly direction to
Plainville. By this time he was out of the scrubland and into open
prairie; gently rolling fields of black earth, now tinted with green
as the new crop thrust its tender shoots toward the light; now
skirting a sleugh where Mr. and Mrs. Wild Duck (who are about to take
up housekeeping in a fine thick clump of grass which Mrs. W. D. had
selected for the purpose), observed him with the indifference born of
honeymoon affection and well-enforced game laws; now over a long ridge
that disclosed the cupolas of the grain elevators in Plainville. The
little car ate up the distance greedily and in less than half an hour
Cal was dusting down the main thoroughfare of the town. Two rows of
automobiles, representing all grades of value and condition, were
lined against the cement curbs. Cal found an opening among them and
brought his dog-eared Ford boldly along side of the pretentious car of
some wealthy farmer.

"'Big car, big mortgage,'" Cal quoted from the philosophy of Jackson
Stake, as his eye took in the beautiful lines of Antelope's neighbor.
"No flirtations, now, Ante, with that polished dandy! Remember, virtue
becomes the poor."

He paused with one foot on the running-board and patted her tattered
upholstery sentimentally, encouraging high resolves with a quotation,

  "Know then this truth (enough for man to know),
  'Virtue alone is happiness below.'"

Groping in his pocket he found a key, and whimsically turned it in the
lock with which a previous owner had equipped the Ford. "Not as a
precaution against theft, but as a compliment to the car," he
explained.

He had intended going straight to Mrs. Goode's boarding house, but a
glance at his watch showed six o'clock. Minnie would be at supper; she
would insist that he join her, and that would be leaving the check at
the wrong place. He decided to look over the town and find a place
where he could buy a meal.

The main thoroughfare of Plainville was wider than the principal
street of many a metropolis; it was a broad, unpaved traffic canal
shored by banks of cement sidewalk. He regarded it with interest. This
was, no doubt, the "Main Street" he had read about, that mercenary and
visionless monster, conceived of social inertia, born of an existence
drab, ignorant, commonplace. But to Cal, Main Street seemed broad,
cheerful, innocuous. To be sure, the business blocks were not those of
Broadway or Yonge Street, but they probably housed quite as reputable
a class of occupants. From the little incident which Reed had reported
from school Cal was beginning to understand that in the country places
one has to be reputable--at all costs. The social life of a small
community is too thin to afford safe cover for indiscretions. ...
The buildings were fronted on the street level with windows of plate
glass enclosed in cracking wooden frames that had once been painted,
and walled between with columns of brick or artificial stone. Gaps in
the irregular profile which lined the street indicated vacant lots
littered with packing boxes and empty tin cans, or utilized as
open-air warehouses for farm machinery. The ground floors were devoted
to trade; the upper stories, in most cases, to living rooms or
offices. Many of the buildings attained to only one story, and their
diminutive size contrasted with the broad street emphasized their
squatty appearance. Only one--the Palace Hotel--made a profession of
three stories, and even the rear part of it, tapering off to two,
rather belied its bold pretensions.

A bench in front of the hotel was congenially occupied with Saturday
evening loungers, who regarded Cal silently but with mild interest.
Strangers came and went in Plainville, but not so numerously as to
escape attention. A dingy waiting room, papered with announcements of
Plainville's "Big Day" on the twenty-fourth, and of the seed grain
fair which had occurred the previous March, opened off the main
entrance. It was deserted except for a man in shirt sleeves behind the
counter which barricaded one corner, displaying an assortment of
chewing gum and cheap cigars. He was engaged in performing an autopsy
upon a speedometer with a screw driver, and showed no sign of being
diverted from his purpose.

"Can I get a meal here?" Cal asked at length.

"Nope," said the proprietor of the Palace Hotel, without looking up.
"Don' serve meals since pro'bition." With the screw driver he pursued
something in the vitals of the mechanical corpse before him.

"Yet I suppose people continue to eat?" Cal ventured to suggest.

No answer, but hot pursuit of the elusive something.

Suddenly a screw flew out and across the counter. Both men grabbed for
it, but Cal got it first, and with great deliberation tucked it into
his waistcoat pocket.

For the first time the hotel keeper raised his eyes, exposing a broad,
bovine face. "Well, what the hell?" he inquired.

"Now, old Oxo, just pay attention to me for a minute. Where do I eat?"

A latent sense of humor, not less than a quick appraisal of Cal's
biceps, came to the support of the boniface in a situation charged
with possibilities.

"Try the Chink at the end o' the block," he grinned. Cal surrendered
the screw and they parted friends.

Cal found the Chinese restaurant occupying a building of plain,
unpainted boards. For a moment he studied in amusement the sign which
proclaimed "No Sing--Wun Lung." Evidently it had been perpetrated by a
painter with a zest for a practical joke, but the subtle humor was
lost on the proprietor, whose adventures in English rarely escaped the
borders of his bill of fare. Through the uncurtained windows Cal could
see a dozen men eating at plain wooden tables, after the manner of the
farm staff at Jackson Stake's. He turned in and joined them. His check
was forty cents.

After supper he strolled about the little town, making a mental
inventory of it. The business section crowded about a single street;
back of that were churches, a number of modest residences, with two or
three making some claim to pretension; a couple of lumber yards; a
large, oval roofed skating and curling rink, now deserted and dank
with its lingering ice, and a big red brick schoolhouse standing in
spacious grounds surrounded by a double row of Manitoba maples, many
of them obviously dead. With the exception of the two or three houses
referred to there was no pretense at orderliness; the vanities of
Plainville people ran to automobiles and gramophones, but not to lawns
or neat back yards. The whole effect was strangely reminiscent of that
produced by the cluster of buildings on Jackson Stake's homestead.
Plainville, with the exception of its business street, its schoolhouse
and churches, and its two or three homes of some pretension, was a
farmyard overgrown.

A boy driving a cow by dint of much loud argument paused long enough
to direct Cal to Mrs. Goode's boarding house, and he followed the
narrow plank sidewalk that led to its door. Cement sidewalks, it
seemed, were reserved for the business street; suburbanites must be
content to walk on planks, laid length-wise, and indulging an annoying
habit of up-tilting their loose and rotten ends to the discomfiture of
the pedestrian. A practice even more annoying to couples married in
the not too remote past was that of engulfing the wheels of baby
carriages in their broad cracks, which always seemed broad enough to
let the wheel down, but never broad enough to let it up again. Cal was
able to rescue a young matron and her offspring from such a
predicament, and to agree with her that "if Councillor Clarke lived on
First Street, instead of Third, we wouldn't have these rotten planks
for a sidewalk." Plainville was up-to-date in its imputations upon its
governing officials.

At Mrs. Goode's gate he met Minnie coming down the short walk that led
to the boarding house door. She had been watching for him from the
screened veranda and had timed her progress to a nicety. She wore a
smart dress of some navy blue stuff, relieved with a dash of red about
the neck and cuffs, and around that V-shaped aperture, not too modest
and not too daring, through which she conceded a glimpse of a white
and well-formed throat and bosom. Her hat was of blue, in keeping with
her dress, and carried only a perky red feather to hint that its
sombreness by no means suggested the mood of the active little head it
covered.

"I was afraid you had had trouble," she remarked, as though they had
parted an hour before; "I turned down a chair beside me at supper,
expecting to have the honor--"

"That was good of you. The honor was shared by two other farm
hands--unappreciative, I am afraid--at the table of our celestial
friend, No Sing. The cause of his musical limitations is indicated,
with refreshing frankness, on his sign--"

"You mean you went to the Chink's for supper," the practical Minnie
interrupted him, short-cutting through his verbiage. "And I with a
chair turned down, in defiance of the glances and quips of the other
boarders! Well--"

She shot at him a look, half of protest and half of raillery. Her skin
was pink and clear, and her eyes had a dance in them like sunlight on
a ripply stream.

"I'm sorry," he pleaded, dropping his voice. "How could I know?"

"You might have known._I_ would have known. ... Well, I have
some shopping to do. Will you come?"

He saw that the red effect around her throat was obtained by lacing a
ribbon through eyelets in her waist; all her dress suggested
simplicity with dignity, and he contrasted her with one or two
frippishly clad young women he had seen on Main Street. Minnie had
learned the first principle of art.

Their shopping led them from store to store, and, as the farmers were
now crowding in for their Saturday evening combination of business and
gossip, their progress was slow. When at last they had finished and
Cal had piled all the parcels in the back seat of the long-suffering
Antelope, two double rows of cars lined Main Street, and it was with
difficulty he could thread his way through the groups of holidaying
farmers that blocked the sidewalk.

"Well, that's that," said Minnie. "Are we ready?"

But Cal was not ready--quite. He was in a dilemma. With other girls he
might have been embarrassed, but Minnie's presence exuded frankness as
a rose exudes perfume. He asked her:

"What does a young man do in Plainville when he wishes to entertain a
lady friend?"

"There are two possibilities," she told him. "He may take her to the
Electric Theatre, where they hold hands under her hat, or to the
Roseland Emporium, where they eat an ice cream sundae."

"And your preference?"

She hesitated, as though weighing a matter of some nicety. He had a
feeling that it was a contest of ice cream against the friendly
shelter of a hat. Ice cream won.

"The theatre would keep us pretty late," she said, as she led him to
the Roseland Emporium, a sort of cheap bazaar festooned with faded
paper roses, and furnished at the rear with tables where ice cream and
soft drinks were served. They ate a David Harum to the accompaniment
of an overworked and complaining gramophone which had the single merit
of partially submerging the boisterous wit of the other patrons. The
entertainment cost Cal forty cents.

It was not until they were out of town in the rickety Ford that Cal
began to feel reasonably at home. In the town he had trotted about
after Minnie with a vague sense of being a sort of faithful collie,
but now, with the wheel in his hands and the grey belt of road winding
up beneath them, he was again master of his destinies. The sun had
just set, and the western sky was a sea of gold; overhead, tattered
shreds of cloud caught the evening color and glowed gently in mauve
and purple. There was no wind; the croaking of frogs came up on the
gentle air above the rumble of the Ford; the fields were very pastoral
and still. Sharply marked currents of warm air--strange atmospheric
Gulf streams, as they seemed--swept Cal's face as he crested the knolls
and ridges, but a chill tang was abroad on the levels, and the
presence of Minnie, close beside him on the front seat, was peculiarly
grateful. He had long ago learned to drive his car proficiently with
one hand, and it happened that the other one dropped from the wheel.. ..

He talked of the plans he had for remodeling the farm; of what had
been done already; of the enthusiasm of her father, which he hoped
would presently express itself in the form of paint for the granaries
and the house. Then there was the great project which as yet was only
taking form in his mind; the new building, a sort of annex to the
house, to be equipped with gasoline power arranged to drive the cream
separator and the washing machine; to pump water; eventually, perhaps,
to supply electric light.

"And you should see the yard," he told her. "'Beach Boulevard,' Gander
has named it, more, I think, in sorrow than in anger, because I've
hauled the buildings into line, and dragged the pig pen into the
fields, and propped up the water trough so it doesn't leak over the
corner. You won't know it."

He awaited her enthusiasm, but for a minute she did not answer him at
all. When she did,

"You might as well save yourself the trouble," she told him. "It's no
use. I've been through it all, and I know. Not that I ever moved the
pig pen, or the granaries; not that. But I've been through the same
fight. They beat me, and they'll beat you."

"But you should see your father. He's all set up--"

"It's a bubble, and one of these minutes it's going to burst. Gander
and Grit laugh, but they're wiser than you. They know."

Her mood of finality nettled him. "Know--what do they know?" he
demanded. "They haven't a glimpse of what it should be--of what it
could be made--"

"That's just it," she interrupted. "They haven't a glimpse, and so
they're content. I had a glimpse, and it drove me from the farm. You
have a glimpse, and it's making you do wonderful things--wonderful
things, if only they'd last!"

Her note was one of protesting resignation, of unwilling but complete
acceptance of the inevitable.

He was subdued. "Why will they not last?" he asked.

"I don't know. I think it is because everyone on the farm has too much
to do. Always tired, or just getting over being tired, or just going
to do something that'll make 'em tired. It becomes chronic. When
you're like that you let everything slide that will slide. You fall
into the way of it. You leave the granary where it is; you leave the
pig pen where it is; you let the water trough spill over if it likes.
You don't care. You get that way, because you're always tired, or have
just been tired, or are just going to be tired. You do what must be
done; you let everything else slide."

"But I don't find that to be so," he protested. "I'm not always tired.
Of course, I had some stiff muscles at first, but the work is really
rather easy; much easier than plugging for a university 'exam,' for
example."

She was thoughtful over his argument. "Maybe," she commented, at
length. "I've been through something like that. It's not really the
work, perhaps; perhaps it is the monotony, the changelessness of the
environment. Always the same people, the same fields, the same horses,
the same cows. Particularly the cows. ... At any rate I was tired,
and I let 'er slide."

"But you didn't," he corrected. "You couldn't. You couldn't 'let
everything slide'--"

"That's right. There was something in me that wouldn't stand it, and I
left. They don't understand me, either, any more than they do you. I'm
afraid we're regarded as a couple of freaks."

Cal warmed to the idea of being considered a freak if it classified
him with Minnie Stake. They were silent again as the car rumbled on
into the gathering darkness.

"Well, it's an experiment, anyway," he said, at length, "and I'm going
through with it. We'll see."

She laughed gently, inducingly. "I think we're all experiments," she
said. "I guess life is pretty much an experiment, don't you think? An
experiment, and an adventure. At any rate that's what it is for me,
and I ramble in joyously where angels fear to tread, or something to
that effect. I got fed up on the farm, so I quit it. If I get fed up
on the office I'll quit that, too."

"And go back to the farm?"

"No. Anything but that."

After a while she took up the thread again at that point. "I know it's
rather rough on Mother and Dad--I know it is," she admitted. "We've
never had any quarrel or anything of that kind, you know, but just--our
paths seemed to separate. I guess there's a good deal of that in life,
and it's hard on the old folks. But one has to live his life, doesn't
he? I suppose Mother wouldn't have taken it so much to heart if I'd
been the first, but, you see, Jackson did the same thing, and it makes
it hard on her."

"Jackson? Your father?"

"No--my oldest brother. Perhaps you haven't heard of him. We don't
shout his name from the housetops, for a fact, but as you're sure to
hear it sooner or later you might as well have it straight. It's a
wonder Annie Frolic hasn't found a way to let you know before this.
You _must_ have been sticking close to your job."

Cal was aware of her eyes, half frank, half bantering, upon him, but
he did not answer. Evidently she was interested in his acquaintance
with Annie Frawdic, and he had no objection to that interest. It was
important for what it indicated.

"We don't say much about him," she repeated. "Partly because we don't
know. He was quite a bit older than the rest of us; he'll be--let me
see--about thirty now, if he's living. And he was a bit
harum-scarum--always was--but a fellow a girl could like for all that. I
don't know that that makes much difference, when it comes to liking,
do you think? Well, he got up and left. That was about ten years ago.
Worked in Winnipeg for a while; then at Fort William; then on the lake
boats; then on the lower lakes. Used to write once in a while, just a
line or two, but you should have seen Mother when a letter would come!
She never lost faith. You know, Ham and I are Stakes, after our
father, but Jackson and Gander took after Mother. In appearances, I
mean. Dark, you know-- Well, his last letter was from Kingston. After
that we lost track of him altogether. Mother has persuaded herself he
went to the war, but I dunno." She had fallen into the vernacular. "It
wouldn't be so bad if one could believe that. It would mean that his
life had counted for something, anyway, don't you think?"

She had a friendly way of appealing to him with that intimate little
"Don't you think?" that pleased him very much.

"Yes, I think so," he said, simply. "If it hadn't been for Reed I'd
have been there, too."

"Bless the boy! He's a wonder, don't you think? But, of course, Mother
has never given up. She insists that Jackie--that was his pet name--will
come home some day, but I dunno-- Why, here we are! It isn't far, is
it?"

"Not half far enough," he said, as he gave her some unnecessary
assistance out of the car, which she accepted with unnecessary
dependence.

It was still the twilight of a prairie evening, but the farmyard was
asleep, with no sound save the contented blowing of cows drowsing in a
heaven of smoke from the mosquito smudge. He helped her carry the
parcels to the house, and after they had set them on the table they
stood for a moment in the door.

"Well--good night," she said suddenly, and went in.

With a strange confusion of emotions he turned to the granary, and to
the boy Reed.




CHAPTER TEN


The twenty-fourth of May was famous for being a national holiday,
observed in memory of the birthday of Queen Victoria; and for being,
by established practice, the date of the first ball game of the season
at Plainville. As the birthday of the Queen receded further and
further into the past, and as the Plainville baseball team developed
in prowess, the holiday became less and less a commemorative event and
more and more a demonstrative one.

Cal had gleaned something of its importance from the columns of the
Plainville _Progress_ and from desultory remarks of Gander and Grit.
It seemed to be an established thing that every one went to Plainville
on "The Twenty-fourth," and it was Cal's purpose not to disregard so
proper a custom. It was time Reed had a visit to the town; the boy was
too isolated on the farm. Besides, a holiday, and a ball game, and
Minnie Stake--

But Fate ruled otherwise. The barley field in which Cal was seeding
would easily have been finished on the twenty-third had it not rained
on the twenty-second. But it did, and this threw Cal just one day
behind his schedule.

"I reckon you won't partic'lar mind workin' on the Twenty-fourth,"
Jackson Stake observed. "'Tain't like as if you had friends in
Plainville, or hereabout, that you could visit with, an' it's time
that field was finished."

Cal swallowed his annoyance, remembering that Jackson Stake was in
most respects an ideal employer. "All right, I'll finish it," he said.

"Now you're shoutin'," said the former, approvingly. "She played us a
dirty trick, rainin' yesterday, but you'll finish to-morrow, easy. If
you're done early take a run down to the lake; it'll be good for you
an' the boy, an' you may get some fishin'. There's a troll an' line
somewhere in the kitchen. The wife'll get it for you; she can't go,
account o' the cows at night."

Cal recalled Minnie's reference to cows in her proposed scenario of
"Why Girls Leave the Farm," and felt that he was beginning to
understand. But he was thinking, too, of the farmer's reference to
Reed; the boy had in some way got a grip on old Jackson Stake and his
wife that was quite unexplainable.

On the Twenty-fourth Gander and Grit worked a short forenoon and
stabled their horses early. Cal came in soon afterward. He was in time
to witness their hasty shaving before the tin mirror at the corner of
the house.

"Suppose Youth and Beauty will be out in force to-day," he remarked as
genially as he could, as he observed Grit carefully excavating the
elliptic wrinkles that furrowed his brown cheeks.

"Sure," said Grit. "Sorry you can't come. Guess Minnie'll have to fall
back on her bank clerk to-day."

There was nothing malicious in the thrust, but it struck home
nevertheless. Cal pretended to laugh, and went in to dinner with a
stone in his stomach.

In the afternoon, tramping up and down behind his four-horse team in
the black field, still heavy and dank with the rain of two days
before, Cal argued it out with himself. "Of course," he admitted, "it
is perfectly natural that Minnie should have a friend in town--a bank
clerk, or whoever he is. A girl of Minnie's qualities. You have to
expect that. Besides, my interest in her is purely experimental."

He did not like the word experimental, so he substituted scientific,
but with no better results. "After all, it _is_ experimental, and
we'll let it go at that," he concluded, as he sent a warning shout to
Big Jim, who had a genius for scenting his master's moods and imposing
on them.

The trouble was it wouldn't "go at that." A dozen times between one
end of the field and the other his mind would flit to Plainville. He
saw Minnie and her bank clerk--a tall, thin fellow, as he pictured him,
whom he could have knocked sprawling with one punch--he saw them going
into the ball grounds, finding their seats in the grandstand, eating
peanuts out of the same bag, applauding the Plainville team in its
successes, commiserating together over its reverses, concurring with
the grandstand crowd concerning the utter depravity of the umpire and
the visiting players. Then there would be supper, somewhere--he had a
vision of Wun Lung's--and after that, perhaps, the Electric Theatre,
where hands may be held under a friendly hat. He would have liked to
think of Minnie as unsophisticated, but he suspected the facts were
against him.

Cal was on his last round when Reed, brown and busy from a day's
gopher snaring on the prairie, came up with him. At the end of the
field they unhitched, and Cal flung the boy on to the broad back of
Big Jim, who had become accustomed to this familiarity, and who bore
him homeward with mingled pride and condescension.

In the house they found Annie Frawdic. "Pleased to see you again, Mr.
Beach," she said, extending her hand. "I thought you would have been
in Plainville."

"Why--I thought the same of you," said Cal.

"No; at the last moment I decided not to go," she explained. "Thought
I would rather slip over and have a quiet afternoon with Mrs. Stake.
We old ladies don't often have a chance to visit, do we, Mrs. Stake?"

"Old ladies! Tosh! Don' be sayin' that before Cal. You're a young
girl, Annie."

Annie Frawdic shook a lean finger in the face of the farmer's wife.
"May the Lord forgive you for trifling with the truth," she
threatened. ... But what Annie did not say was that her decision to
visit Mrs. Stake was made after she had seen Cal's team return to the
field for the afternoon.

A thought came to Cal and he acted upon it.

"We're going down to the lake, Reed and I, for a little picnic and a
word or two with Nature. Will you join us? You, too, Mrs. Stake? You
can come, can't you?"

But Mrs. Stake protested. She simply couldn't. There were the cows,
you know. "But you go, Annie; go along, that's the girl. I'll make you
up a bite o' lunch."

Annie Frawdic argued that she had come to visit Mrs. Stake, not to go
picnicking, but she was careful not to strain her invitation to the
breaking point. Half an hour later Cal, Annie, and Reed were bumping
in the old Ford along the little used road which led to a secluded
beach on the lake--not the main road over which Cal and Reed had come
three weeks before. This was an old timber trail, cut by the early
settlers in pursuance of their business of filching logs and firewood
from the Government lands adjoining the lake. In recent years it had
been used only by an occasional picnicking or fishing party. Cal
guided the car with subconscious skill among the overgrown stumps
which bordered the trail, and presently, from the brow of a hill, a
vision of the lake burst upon them, framed in its broad valley like a
picture worked in silver and amethyst.

They stopped for a moment to feast on the scene. "I always think
nature is so wonderful," she said, bellowsing her thin chest like a
motion-picture heroine.

"Yes--and so original," he agreed.

She seemed to suspect a smile behind his words, but his lips were
straight and sober.

"Will you tell us a story about it to-night, Daddy X?" piped Reed from
the back seat.

"About something, to be sure. Come, Antelope; slow and steady."

There was occasion for both injunctions, for the trail down the
hillsides to the lake was tortuous and uncertain. Wagon wheels of
bygone years had furrowed the virgin turf, and the rains of succeeding
seasons has sluiced a once passable trail into a miniature gorge of
crumbling yellow clay, dry except in spring or after heavy rain.
Straddling this narrow canyon Antelope wormed her way like a pudgy
caterpillar, slithering from side to side on the crumbling clay, while
Annie Frawdic wrestled with a feminine impulse to avert disaster by
seizing Cal's arm. She wrestled successfully, and at last the sandy
beach was reached in safety.

"What a driver you are!" she bellowsed again. "I felt so safe--"

"Oh, it's easy enough coming down," he assured her. "The trick will be
to go up. Antelope has an annoying habit of balking if you hold her
head too high, and then we go sliding back to the bottom."

Reed supplied the technical information. "That's because the gasoline
won't run from the tank to the carburetor," he explained.

"Oh, I'm so relieved," said Annie. "I was afraid the engine might
stop, or something."

The trail continued along the beach, but they found a pleasant sandy
spot with tall trees nearby and drew the car to one side. Reed was out
with a whoop and the next minute, bare-legged, was wading in the
shallow water. His two elders looked on with diminishing reserve.

"Who wouldn't be a child?" she said.

"All right. Suppose we do?"

She colored a little, but her eyes met his. Then she seated herself on
a stone at a modest distance, and presently she was tripping along
gingerly in six inches of water. Cal brought out the troll and line,
and, with trousers rolled to his knees, waded as far into the water as
he could. Then he swung the hook about his head and threw it still
farther in. It needed no small faith to suppose that any fish would
respond to such obvious advances, but Cal's faith was functioning
almost one hundred per cent. It occurred to him that some fish were
only waiting for advances....

And his faith was rewarded. Not immediately, but soon. Came a splash
and a widening circle where a fish jumped for a fly, and a moment
later Cal dexterously landed his hook at the same spot. He had only a
second to wait; first a slight tug; then a jerk; then the line ran off
in a huge elliptic. Cal's shout brought Annie and Reed as far into the
water as prudence would permit, but when suddenly the fish changed his
tactics and steamed full speed for shore, Annie made a wild dash for
safety. A pike of three pounds.

"Just the measurements for supper," Cal said, when he had blustered
Annie into hefting the lithe, cold, slippery body in her two hands.
"Now for a fire."

They gathered some bits of wood and built a little fire on the sand,
and no one seemed to remember that they were still in their bare feet.
The sand was warm and caressing, and who cared?

When supper was over Reed went wading again, but Annie and Cal sat by
the fire and talked. The girl interested and amused him. She was a
fruitful field for experiment. She was another exhibit for his
collection to be gathered in the interests of Truth and Science. She
had ideas, too, and their talk was not wholly banal. Yet she lacked
something--something that was not lacking in Minnie Stake. Cal tried to
analyze it, to define the deficiency, but could not. Only--she did not
draw him; she did not appeal-- As if appeal had anything to do with
investigations in the interests of Truth and Science! He laughed a
little at his own inconsistency, and Annie thought he was laughing at
her wit, and was very happy.

The sun hung low at the end of a ruddy path along the water and the
shadow of their seated figures fell like crumpled giants on the sand
when suddenly they heard the sound of an approaching car. A moment
later a new Ford came plunging along the overgrown trail and through
the willows almost beside them. Embarrassed, they sprang to their
feet, and Annie, slipping in the sand, clutched Cal's arm to save
herself from falling.

The Ford had stopped, and Cal's first glance discovered Minnie Stake
and a young man; not the thin, collapsible fellow he had pictured, but
solid and square-shouldered and likely to carry a wallop in his
biceps. For a moment the two couples faced each other; Cal actually
could trace the line of Minnie's vision down to his bare feet, and
Annie's, and he wished the sand might swallow him, at least to the
knees. So long they stood in silence, or it seemed so long, that he
began to wonder if Minnie was not going to speak at all. But presently
she spoke, quietly and with that quality of poise which he had found
in her before, but which he had not analyzed, and which he now knew
distinguished her from Annie Frawdic--

"Good evening, Annie. You know Mr. Hale? Cal, this is my friend, Mr.
Hale--Mr. Beach."

They shook hands, and Cal asked if they would stay and share some
fragments. "We have some crusts and the ribs of a fish," he said,
"and, of course, I could catch another fish in a minute or two." What
mattered it if he and Annie _were_ in their bare feet? She should see
the couples at any bathing beach! But that was different. No, it
wasn't. Yes, it was--

Reed came up from the water, and Cal noticed that Minnie's eyes took
in his presence with interest, and, he thought, with something of
relief.

"Thanks. I'm afraid we can't stay," she said. "Mr. Hale is just trying
out his new car. We came down by the east end of the lake, and are
going home by the farm. We'll have supper there, on the way."

"How's the road up the hill?" Mr. Hale inquired.

"Not good, but you can make it."

Mr. Hale got out of the car, patted the radiator with boyish
affection, removed the cap, and looked judiciously into the aperture.
Then he retrieved a tomato can from under the back seat and went down
to the lake for water. Cal noted that Annie, whose policy it was never
to miss a chance, lent her services in dipping the can.

"This is an unexpected pleasure," said Minnie, in a low voice, when
the others were out of earshot.

"Yes--for both of us," Cal agreed.

They left immediately, and Cal and Annie, without a word, put on their
shoes. Then, as they sat by the fire, Reed swooped upon Cal with the
demand that he make good his promise of a story. Cal made a couple of
unsuccessful attempts, but could not bring his mind to romancing. He
gave it up with, "Sorry, old man. I'm afraid I can't get my mind off
that big fish. He was a dandy, wasn't he?"

"You bet!" said the boy.

"Well, take the line and try your luck," Cal told him, and sent him
off delighted.

Annie Frawdic broke a silence that was becoming embarrassing. "I'm
sorry, Cal, if I made you--if we, among us--spilled the beans," she
said. In some ways Annie was no fool.

"Oh, it wasn't that," said Cal, and wondered why he should lie to
Annie Frawdic....

Early twilight was beginning to settle in the trees, and the sound of
croaking frogs, loud against the evening silences, came from reedy
inlets up the lake. "I guess we'd better be going," Cal suggested. "We
need daylight for the hill."

He did not go back the way he had come, but by way of Ernton's, where
he left Annie Frawdic at her gate. He tried to return the lingering
pressure of her hand as she thanked him for the "just wonderful time"
he had given her, but her fingers stirred no emotion within him. To
his heart he confessed he was "fed up" on Annie Frawdic.

When he reached the Jackson Stake homestead the holiday makers had not
yet returned from Plainville, and Minnie and Mr. Hale had gone.
Deliberately he had taken Annie home first in order that he might not
meet Minnie again that night, but now that she was gone the stone in
his stomach doubled in weight. They had just gone; they would not be
in Plainville yet; they would be on the road, that same road where,
just a few evenings ago, Minnie and he--

What was the use of lingering over it? Throw it out of your mind. Be
done with it!

He arranged the cushions and the blankets for Reed, and the lad, tired
with his great day of pleasure, lisped his verse and fell asleep. But
Cal sat at the door, thinking. And when he had thought for an hour or
more he had thought himself around to this:

There was only one person in the world for whom he really cared, and
who really cared for him. That person was the boy Reed, his sister
Celesta's son. In these days he had been tempted to forget that Reed
was more to him than anybody else--than everybody else. Reed was his
own flesh and blood. A great surging of the heart swept through him.
All the others were experiments; exhibits in the one great experiment
of life. Very well--

He went to bed and gathered the little, sleeping form in his arms. The
warm heat of his young life--the warm blood of Celesta--thrilled through
his limbs and into his body. ... He was caught in the gust of a
great loneliness, and before he slept his pillow was wet.




CHAPTER ELEVEN


Minnie Stake's holiday with Archie Hale had not been one of undivided
pleasure. For some days she had been looking forward to "The
Twenty-fourth" with a degree of misgiving. She rather liked Archie;
indeed, until quite recently, a day spent in rambling the prairies
with him in his new car would have been something to anticipate.

"Wait until I get my car," he had told her twenty times that winter,
as they skated hand in hand at the rink, as they two-stepped at the
weekly dances in the town hall, as they sat under the big lamp in the
corner of Mrs. Goode's living room. And the prospect had seemed a
wholly pleasing one--until quite recently.

A few evenings ago he had come to the boarding house with light in his
eyes. "I am to have my new car on the Twenty-fourth, sure," he told
her, before they were off the steps. "Positive promise--delivery on the
twenty-third. They're teaching me to drive an old one--you should see
me give 'er the gas--so I can take you out on the Twenty-fourth."

"You didn't tell them that was the reason?" she inquired, in feigned
confusion.

"No, I didn't tell 'em--but it is. Where shall we go? I suggest a day
at the lake--just ourselves; it's so much chummier than being jammed in
a crowd; then 'round by your mother's, say for supper, and home in the
evening. What do you say?"

She had no heart to discourage him, and no heart to accept. Archie was
a nice boy, a kind boy, and he was obviously--much too obviously--in
love with her. More than once he had spoken of the time when he would
have his promotion to a branch managership, and she knew what was in
his mind. She had looked forward to the day when he would ask her to
be his wife; she had wondered when, and how, and where. And she had
wondered what she would say. Curiosity, adventure, vanity, had tingled
in her veins. But no happy anticipations stirred her now. Archie was
still a nice boy, to be sure, and she liked him very much indeed. But
she dreaded the question she knew was ripening in his heart, and she
dreaded having to answer it.

"Yes," she said, with attempted gaiety, "won't it be fine?" Then, as
though the thought had just come to her, "But isn't the Twenty-fourth
the day of the ball game in Plainville?"

"Of course, if you'd rather go to the ball game--" he wavered, but his
disappointment was so apparent that she could not hurt him--not yet.
"We'll see," she temporized, and with that he had to be content until
the very noon of the Twenty-fourth. It was just before twelve that she
got her mother on the telephone, and, by dexterous inquiry about
others, learned that Cal was not coming to town.

"Yes," she told Archie. "I'll be glad to ballast your new boat. I'll
be ready at two." But she did not tell him that the chief attraction
of the trip would be supper at the farm and the chance of a word with
Cal.

In her little box of a room she dressed with unusual care. Sempter &
Burton's store had been ransacked for a gown of sheathy, diaphanous
texture, a little more daring in depth and height, a trifle more
diaphanous, than the censors of Plainville would be likely to accept
without remark. There would be lifted eye-brows when she blazed forth
in it upon the street. Its folds clung lovingly to her dainty limbs as
she approved of her reflection in the glass. She admitted she was
pretty. There were self-appreciation and a buoyant, girlish happiness
in the admission. She loved her own beauty as she loved the beauty of
flowers, of the lake, of the prairie dawns and sunsets. As she tucked
her boisterous hair under the snug bonnet which she had bought in
anticipation of much motoring her lips drew to a pucker and erratic
dribbles of tune came whistling forth. They stopped as suddenly, and a
cloud filled her brown eyes. It was a shame to bury that new, filmy
gown under a drab old last-year's rain-coat. But a stenographer's
salary had its limitations, and, as every one knew, it was the special
delight of the weatherman to send rain on the Twenty-fourth.

She contemplated the old coat without enthusiasm. "Well, any way, I'll
have it off in the house," she comforted herself. It was at that
moment she realized she had been dressing, not for Archie Hale, but
for Calvin Beach, and a sudden sense of something akin to shame swept
over her, as though she had been guilty of a kind of disloyalty.

All afternoon an unhappy accusation of insincerity enveloped her.
Archie was in the seventh heaven of his happiness, the two immediate
ambitions of his life--possession of a Ford car and the companionship
of Minnie Stake--having been achieved. She tried to react to his high
spirits, but she had no gift of dissembling, and she knew she played
her part clumsily. Her hand was dead, almost, to the touch of Archie's
when, as though by accident, it fell from the wheel. Fortunately he
was so enthused over his car that he failed to sense the artificiality
of her responses. Then there had been that revelation on the beach. A
hundred times she demanded of Fate why the world was not wide enough
to prevent such a meeting. A hundred times she stormed upon Annie
Frawdic for the duplicity by which she had gained Cal's company. She
had heard a plausible story at her mother's, but she knew better._She_
knew why Annie Frawdic had preferred a visit at Mrs. Stake's to the
ball game at Plainville. She never had liked Annie Frawdic, and she
liked her now less than before. If there was one thing she despised it
was duplicity--

As for Cal, she held him not too strictly to account. If he had kept
his boots on she could have forgiven him, quite. Annie was a wily old
hunter and it was not surprising that he had fallen into her trap. Yet
Minnie was forced to admit that Cal had shown no distress in his
captivity. Cal was a man, and men were like that, she supposed.

Gradually out of the mists of her resentment her own part in the day's
events began to rise sombre and forbidding. She turned the whole
matter over as she lay on her bed late that night of the
Twenty-fourth, after the last rocket had gone whizzing skyward and the
last Ford and its noisy occupants had gone rumbling home. The reward
which, in the shadow of the screened veranda, she had bestowed on
Archie for his day's attentions had been so Platonic that even he must
have been baffled and wondering. She had had no heart for it, and she
had gone to bed to think things over.

And out of the mists of her resentment her own behavior began to stand
unlovely and reprehensible. No, not that; merely silly; she would not
have it worse than silly. The silliness of the whole situation seized
upon her and she laughed outright, and assured herself that her
laughter was genuine and spontaneous. It all had been very silly, but
she was sane again and could see things clearly. Calvin Beach was
nothing to her; nothing at all. An interesting person, of course; her
father's "hired man," she would see him from time to time, and maybe
discuss his air-castle plans for the remodelling of the homestead. He
was interesting, and they might be friends, casual friends; they never
could be more than that. As she turned it over in her mind she was
amazed that ever she had thought it could be more than that. The fact
that Cal was a "hired man" did not disqualify him; snobbery does not
root deep on the prairies, even in the second generation. But it roots
a little. To the first generation of pioneers the farm-hand is
preferred above the bank clerk; to the second, the bank clerk is
preferred, a little, above the farm-hand; in the third, collars and
cuffs are in the saddle. But Minnie's mind was as big as her prairies,
and class consciousness had no part in her appraisals. The facts were
as clear as daylight. Cal Beach, quite an estimable fellow, was
working on her father's farm. He had stopped to work there because he
was out of money; when he had earned enough he would move on again. He
was a bit of a Gypsy. He had ability, perhaps; dreams, yes; money,
none. He had nothing to offer but a share in his rumbling Ford and the
foster motherhood of his adopted boy. Something about the thought of
Reed made her heart beat faster again, but she quieted it; that, too,
was silly. And she knew him scarcely at all, whereas Archie
Hale--Archie was steady, and likeable, and he was saving some money.
One of these days he would have his promotion; go farther west to some
town in Saskatchewan or Alberta, just tent-pegging on the edge of
civilization, and have charge of a bank himself. Then-- Again she
temporized. "We'll see," she said.

So she dismissed Cal Beach from her mind. But the next day, when
transcribing a brief, for the words _casus belli_ she wrote Calvin
Beach. By great good fortune she discovered the error before it fell
into the hands of Mr. Bradshaw. Mr. Bradshaw was a lawyer
occasionally, a stern employer once in a while, but a tease and
tormentor always. If ever it had come into his hands! She might as
well have taken it straight to the Plainville _Progress_.

Friday evening Archie Hale asked if he might drive her home on
Saturday. She wondered whether Archie was trying to intercept further
activities on the part of Cal Beach's Ford, and she was most
inconsistently annoyed. But there was none of that in her words or
manner. She would teach Mr. Beach a lesson. That Annie Frolic--

"No," she said. "I don't think I'll go home this week-end. But you can
drive me to Ferndale Sunday, if you like."

Ferndale was a neighboring town a dozen miles down the single line of
railway which connected Plainville with the outside world, and between
Ferndale and Plainville existed a bitterness of rivalry such as is
known only by towns that are very ambitious and very small. But
Ferndale boasted a good hotel, judged by Plainville standards, and the
prospects of taking Minnie there as his guest for Sunday dinner, and
of a long, circuitous drive homeward through the golden evening, sent
Archie to his boarding house in tumultuous high spirits.

But as Minnie went to bed an iron band seemed tightening about her
chest. In a passion of resolution she clenched her hands beneath the
sheets, but the words would come.

"I wanted to go home," she whispered, fearfully. "I want Cal, dear
Cal, my Cal!"

She lisped the words again and again, tenderly, like a mother crooning
to her child. Out of a maze of strange emotions she began to know how
tremendous was her confession, but she was glad; she felt the color
mounting in her cheek, but she was not ashamed. She had come to an
understanding with herself. It brought her peace, and presently she
fell asleep.




CHAPTER TWELVE


It was the second Saturday in June when Jackson Stake, junior, came
home. Cal, quite unaware of the meshes which Fate was stringing for
him, rode his plough up and down the long field of the summer-fallow,
his broad straw hat drawn back to shade his neck from a blistering
sun, his dust-dry voice occasionally raised in hoarse admonition to
Big Jim and his fellow-conspirators, who had learned to know his moods
and to impose upon them; his subconscious self busy with his furrows
and the collapsing wave of pig weed and young mustard that heaved and
somersaulted below him as the mouldboards buried it under ridges of
rich, friable, black earth; his imaginative mind engaged with a number
of academic problems, chief among which was an insistent wondering
whether Minnie Stake would come home for Sunday.

He had not seen her since the unhappy episode of the bare feet and
Annie Frawdic. Two Sundays had gone by; long, immeasurable prairie
Sundays, broken only by a gap of church-going in the afternoon--and a
walk home with Annie after the service. Very well. No doubt Minnie was
helping young Hale consume his income in gasoline--

At any rate the experiments must continue. They had been making some
progress. Jackson Stake had consented to order enough paint from the
Square Deal Hardware to cover the bare boards of the two granaries.
When the paint arrived it proved to be of a glaring and unabashed red,
artistic considerations having been brushed aside by the more
practical matter of price. But Cal saw in this paint, in spite of its
warlike hue, an evidence of the peaceful penetration of his doctrine
into the large, thick heart of Jackson Stake, and he plied his brush
with a will, working in the long, sunny evenings while Gander and Grit
lounged in the back seat of Antelope and speculated on what the world
was coming to. They had co-operated only by lettering a large and
luminous sign, "Beech Bullevard--speed Limit 10 miles," which they
surreptitiously nailed to the corner of Cal's granary.

A more important development, from the community point of view, was
the painting of Double F's house, which began three days after the
granaries were finished, and was popularly attributed to the boastings
of one Hamburg Stake over the innovations being introduced on the
paternal homestead by their university hired man.

"If Jackson Stake can paint his granaries I can paint my whole
outside," Double F had declared, "and if there's any color you can see
farther than red, lead me to it." With a message of such import
Hamilton hurried to Cal, and sundry telephonings with the Square Deal
Hardware, supported by repeated visits to the Fyfe farm on the part of
Hamilton, resulted in the color scheme being revised to a base of
white with trimmings of green. But even after the house stood
resplendent in its white and green, old Double F would look dubiously
across the fields to the red glare of Jackson Stake's granaries. He
had the manner of one who has been restrained from his impulses by a
sense of virtue and rather regrets it.

Then there had been the auction sale at Fryber's last Saturday--just a
week ago to-day. Something approaching a domestic scene had occurred
at the dinner table when Jackson Stake announced his purpose of
attending the sale.

"More good you'd dig the rest o' the garden," Mrs. Stake suggested.

Her husband dismissed the idea as impracticable. "Too late," he said.
"Couldn't raise a disturbance in that garden unless you plant it
before the first of June."

Mrs. Stake slapped another fried egg into Reed's plate. "Well, you can
plant a disturbance over at Fryber's sale, an' it'll be ripe in
October--with interest," she remarked. "You'll buy some old fool
contraption, or some dyin' or spavined crittur--trust you! An' sign
some one else's note, as though you hadn't enough o' your own. But
will you dig the garden? Not for the soul or sake o' you! They've
perhibited liquor. Now if they'd perhibit auction sales--"

After dinner Cal had engaged the farmer in conversation as they leaned
against the stays of the windmill. Overhead the galvanized blades
shone idly in the dead calm of noonday and at their feet the empty
water trough gaped reproachfully.

"Fryber is offering a gasoline engine for sale," he suggested,
diplomatically. "It could be rigged to run the cream separator and the
washing machine, and to pump water when the wind is on strike."

"The wife's got 'er knife into auction sales," the farmer commented.
"She's always after me--" Jackson Stake spread his great palms with a
gesture of helplessness.

"You could make yourself solid by buying that gasoline engine," Cal
insisted. "Just drag it home from Fryber's and hitch it to the
household implements, and you've heard the last from Mrs. Stake about
auction sales."

The farmer raised a brimless hat and scuffled his thin hair.

"How old are you, Cal?" he demanded.

"Twenty-six."

"You're old enough to be married. Any fellow that figgers as far ahead
as you do is old enough to be married."

Cal experienced a sudden bounce of light-heartedness--the first for
days. Toward the good-natured, irresponsible, slightly hen-pecked old
farmer he felt a glow of real friendship; a sense of man-to-manness
sent him to his fields whistling.

Mrs. Stake received the engine with conflicting emotions. "Haven't I
told you not to go buyin' those fool contraptions?" she wanted to
know. "I bet it won' go, anyway."

"Oh, yes it will, Mother," said Jackson Stake, with amiable disregard
of her querulousness. "Start it up for her, Cal."

Cal started the engine and in a moment it was pit-a-pat-ing its
staccato rhythm with the regularity of clockwork. Mrs. Stake watched
it stolidly for some minutes, but slowly her face began to twist and
pucker in unwonted lines and ridges. The stern old lips softened, the
firm chin went quivering, there was a glisten of moisture about her
deep, black eyes.

"Jackson Stake, you're an old fool," she said, but her voice had gone
soft and gaspy....

Cal ruminated on all these things, and more, as he furrowed up and
down the fallow field that morning in June. Minnie had not been home
for two Sundays....

At a little before twelve Reed came romping over the ploughed field,
his bare feet sinking pleasantly in the soft, warm earth. The boy was
tanned and healthy; his little frame stood up sturdily under his loose
blouse and knickers. Cal took him up on the plough, and at the end of
the furrow, when he had unhitched for dinner, tossed him aboard Big
Jim's ample back. This procedure always instigated great noddings and
champings on the part of Big Jim, and he marched homeward with the
pride of vast responsibility and an ostentatious jingling of his
trace-chains.

It was not until, a little later than the others, he was seated at the
dinner table that Cal became aware of an additional presence. At
Jackson Stake's right sat a tall, dark man; a man of thirty, or
thereabouts; stouter than Gander, and without the peripatetic Adam's
apple, but otherwise bearing a resemblance that could hardly be
accidental. He wore a suit which had once shown good material, now
faded and sagging; a celluloid collar and a gorgeous tie-pin
contributed an effect of comparative dandyism. Cal sensed that no
welcome was being wasted as the business of eating proceeded without
conversational accompaniment. True, a strange light gleamed in Mrs.
Stake's eye as she moved to and fro between the kitchen range and the
table, but she served the meal without comment.

Jackson Stake was in no hurry with an introduction. He had cleared his
plate of salt pork and boiled potatoes and was deep in his helping of
rice-and-raisin pudding when he halted a spoonful in mid-air with a
sudden realization of his social duties.

"This is our boy Jackson, Cal," he explained. "He has returned to the
parental roof after a perlonged absence, as the Plainville _Progress_
would say."

"Glad to meet you," said Cal, cordially. The stranger nodded, and a
quick glance from his dark eyes intercepted Cal's as for a fraction of
a second they measured each other.

"We'll be killin' the fatted calf this afternoon," said Gander. "Grit
an' me'll get the hide an' you can have the hoofs, Cal--if you're fond
o' hoofs."

There was no mistaking the open hostility of Gander to the new
arrival, and, absurd as it assuredly was, Cal felt a sudden warming of
the heart at being included with his two fellow laborers. It was the
first time he had felt himself one of the community.

"You don' seem much pleased that your brother's come home, an' him
away ten years an' more," said Mrs. Stake, with a dry voice. The
unhappy old woman was on the horns of a divided family.

"Oh, yes I am," said Gander. "I'm tickled to death. Can't hardly keep
from kissin' him, right here before the comp'ny. An' so wise he's
grown, too! Didn't come 'till the work o' the seedin's over, an' he'll
be leavin' before the harvest begins."

The stranger turned his dark eyes on Gander. They were quiet, strong
eyes, hintful of power and, perhaps, of hardness. When he spoke his
voice was poised, easy, unruffled.

"Honk for us, Gander," he suggested.

The taunt drew the color up through Gander's suntanned cheeks; his
muscles bulged, quivering; he half rose from his chair. For a moment
Cal expected instant hostilities.

"Come, cut it out!" said Jackson Stake, who could assert a blunt
authority on occasion. "Bygones is bygones, an' if Jackie wants to
stay with us now he can stay, an' welcome. But there'll be no dead
calf about it, an' he'll take his share o' the work or find a new
boardin' house. Does that go, Jackie?"

"Suits me," said Jackson, junior, shoving his chair back and rising
from the table. "It wasn't _me_ that suggested veal, if you remember."

Cal made a quick appraisal of him. "He has too much head for Gander,"
he noted, "and Gander may try to make up the difference with a heavy
fist. Nothing makes a man so quick with his hands as being a little
slow with his head."

The meal broke up in chilly weather. Meals at Jackson Stake's, at
best, were hardly to be described as social functions. They were
business events, unavoidable interruptions to the serious occupations
of the day, like oiling a tractor, but an under-current of goodwill
and hospitality usually relieved their stark utilitarianism. They
would end with a word of banter or of far-fetched humor; a thrust at
Cal's university education, at Reed's prodigious appetite, at Jackson
Stake's expanding waist-line, at Hamilton's weakness for Elsie Fyfe. . ..
Today the men rose from their places and shuffled out in silence.

Cal added this development to matters under contemplation during the
afternoon. It was plain that the coming of Jackson Stake, junior,
marked a new epoch in life on the family homestead; here was an
important contribution to his growing list of exhibits. Evidently the
presence of the first-born was not expected to bring much glory to the
paternal name. Cal remembered how Jackson Stake, senior, in appearing
to reprove Gander, had really seized the opportunity to endorse, for
the benefit of "Jackie," the scriptural maxim that in the sweat of his
brow he should earn his bread. The old man was not so slow in a pinch.
Hamilton and Grit had discreetly kept out of the discussion. He
wondered what Minnie would say. He wondered if she would come home for
Sunday, and if that Hale would bring her. He wondered if she had
deliberately kept away from the farm on his account. He wondered if
she were jealous of Annie Frawdic! That last was a wonder to take note
of; it was not merely an idea; it was a possible weapon, a means of
attack and defense. He scrutinized it for a full round of the
summer-fallow; then set it aside as something to fall back upon in a
moment of emergency.

Minnie came home that evening. "That" Hale brought her in his Ford,
which he drew up, perhaps by accident, by the side of Antelope. The
contrast between Archie's bright new machine, shining in the evening
sunlight, and Antelope's battered body with her drooping fenders
hanging in dog-eared apology over carbuncular tires struck Cal's
imagination as being also the contrast between Archie's spick-and-span
store suit and his own flapping overalls and scuffed boots. And a
tiny, strange speck of color burned in Cal's cheeks as he realized
that all the liberalism of his sociological training had not raised
him above a pang of jealousy. Minnie had no monopoly on that weakness.

Archie's Ford had arrived and Minnie had gone into the house while Cal
was busy with his horses. He made a practice of giving them a little
extra rub down on Saturday night by way of acknowledgment of a week's
work well done. In the early dusk of the stables he curried Big Jim's
fetlocks while up and down the length of the mangers came the sound of
oats being munched with equine gusto and satisfaction.

It fell to Reed to break the big news. "Oh, Daddy X," he cried,
bursting in from the outer sunshine, "Minnie's here, and that man that
was with her when we were down at the lake, when you were wading with
Miss Frolic--Miss Frawdic, I mean. Don't you remember?"

Cal remembered, and said so. "You seem quite excited about it," he
added, shortly.

Reed looked at him for a moment, puzzled and crestfallen, then slipped
quietly out of the stable. He had barely disappeared when a stab went
skewering through Cal's heart. For the first time in his life he had
fallen short of Reed's estimate of him; had failed to answer
enthusiasm with enthusiasm.

"Fool's business," said Cal to himself. "In my irritation over Minnie
I snub Reed. I must make it up to him--"

He was at no pains to meet either Minnie or Archie Hale, but a few
minutes later he found Reed sitting beside the granary with Trixie in
his arms. The boy had turned from one source of affection to another.

"Come on, Old Indian," said Cal, taking him gently by the shoulder.
"It's early yet. What do you say to a swim in the lake?"

A moment later they had Antelope sputtering and were off on their way
down the old trail to the lake. Through the kitchen window, where she
had furtively been keeping watch, Minnie saw them go....

The water was calm and warm, mirroring the purple and mauve of the
summer sky, and it slipped deliriously about their young limbs as they
swam out from the shore, and back. A week in the hot, dusty fields
made its touch a luxury such as Cal had never known in the days of
bathtubs and "conveniences." Afterwards they sat on the sand until
they were dry, while Trixie, who had shared in the plunge, shook her
long hair unconscionably close to their pile of crumpled clothing.

Suddenly Reed sprang to his feet. "Let's build a fire and have a
story, Daddy X!" he cried. But Cal had begun to feel an unaccountable
impatience to go back to the farm. He wondered whether Archie Hale had
gone home yet.

"Sure, we'll have a fire and a story--up at the granary," said Cal.
"We'd better be going home now; it's a bad road for after dark," he
explained, and marvelled at his own sophistry.

The long twilight of the Manitoba evening had faded into a segment of
steel dipped in champagne by the time Cal and Reed were back at the
farm buildings. Archie Hale's new Ford was gone--somewhat to Cal's
surprise--and the homestead lay hushed in silence save for the
contented sighing of the cows drowsing in a wedge of blue smoke from
the smudge at the corral. From beside the horse stable came the red
glow of Gander's pipe, and the yellow light from the kitchen window
disclosed Jackson Stake, senior, busy with his bed-time repast of
young onions and buttermilk.

While Reed brought an armful of small sticks from the wood-pile Cal
arranged his cushions at the granary door. In a few minutes a finger
of fire was toying through wraiths of orange-yellow smoke curling
through the still air.

"Did I ever tell you about the trouble between the cloud and the
shadow?" Cal asked, when they were seated comfortably and the crackle
of fire played pleasantly in their ears. "No? Oh, that was a great
trouble. So silly, too, as most of our troubles are when you go to the
bottom of them.

"You see, it was like this: The cloud used to be born every afternoon,
somewhere in the southwest, and used to come steering her ship softly
through the blue lake that we call the sky. She was very proud of her
great white plumes that rose like majestic feathers from the back of a
mighty swan, and of the glisten of sunshine where it fell on her
shining shoulders.

"But the cloud, like many beautiful persons, was very vain. Do you
know what it is to be vain, Reed?"

"She was stuck on herself," the boy answered promptly.

Cal paused, taken rather aback by the glib rejoinder.

"Ah, I see your education is progressing," he continued. "Yes, she was
rather vain, and she wanted very much to be admired. And so it annoyed
her very much that wherever she went a shadow passed over the face of
the earth, darkening its cheerful smile. And at last she said to the
shadow, 'Shadow, why do you annoy me by going wherever I go, and by
pushing yourself in always between Earth and me? Why don't you go away
by yourself, so that Earth may admire me? Surely the world is big
enough for us both!'

"But the shadow said, 'Earth loves me more than she does you, and I
will not leave her. See how the parched flowers open at my caress!
Hear how the wheat whispers under the touch of my fingers! Earth loves
me, and I will not give her up.'

"Then the cloud gathered all her friends together, until a great
squadron of them came sailing through the sky. And as they came they
touched elbows, closed ranks, and began to shoot their little bullets
of rain at the shadow below. But the shadow took the onslaught in
silence; did not answer, did not strike back."

Cal paused, aware of a presence. From the gloom by the side of the
granary young Jackson Stake emerged; passed through a segment of the
circle of light, his dark face strangely sinister in the red glow;
disappeared again in the darkness.

"Then the cloud grew more angry than ever because the shadow would not
fight back, and she called up her artillery under General Lightning
and Colonel Thunder, and my, but didn't they raise a clatter! They
blazed and bellowed and poured until it seemed the poor shadow must be
driven to surrender. But the shadow never answered a word, and all the
time she grew deeper and blacker, and so she grew until she seemed to
cover all the world, until at length, look where she would, the cloud
could not see a ray of sunshine in all the earth. And the cloud wept
as she had never wept before, to think that all the earth had become
so dark and foreboding.

"But the cloud would not give up, and so she carried on her fight
until she could fight no longer; all her beautiful plumes were gone;
all her loveliness had disappeared; she had exhausted herself; she
vanished into thin air. And then a wonderful thing happened. Just as
the cloud vanished the shadow also vanished, and all the earth lay
steeped in sunshine."

"What does it mean, Daddy X?" said Reed, when Cal had been silent for
some minutes.

"I don't know. Just a story. But I suppose it means that jealousy
makes its own shadows--its own troubles. And when jealousy disappears
the shadows disappear, too. I reckon that's what it means. Now say
your verse and slip away to bed."

He held the child a moment in his arms; then turned to his fire and
his pipe. But Reed had barely gone when there was a soft rustle in the
darkness and Minnie Stake stood beside him. He sprang to his feet,
remembering in the moment how absolutely their first meeting was being
duplicated.

"I've been eavesdropping again," she said. "May I sit down?"

Reed had taken one of the cushions, as an installment of his bed. Cal
eagerly brushed the end of the remaining cushion with his hand and
they sat down together. He pushed the glowing sticks in to a little
pile and a finger of flame thrust up again to toy with the
smoke-wraiths in the silent air. The light glowed on the girl's face;
danced entangled in her rippling hair; touched with its soft caress
the shadows of her throat; limned the alluring lines of her young body
and glistening on the sheen of her stockings as she stretched her toes
toward the fire. Of a sudden Cal felt his pulses racing and knew that
the barriers which their stubbornness had built between them had
collapsed and restrained them less to-night than if they had never
been. This girl--what of the world, of his station, of his ambitions,
of his poverty, of the cloud which had sent him to the open spaces?
His sociological experiment, beginning as the half-humorous pastime of
a season, had grown to be a matter of life and death, of all things
desirable. Her presence flooded him with a witchery of wild
imaginations.

For a moment he would not trust himself with words.




CHAPTER THIRTEEN


"I have been eavesdropping again," she repeated, when he did not
speak. "Are you angry?"

"Angry? How could I be angry? But it is a dangerous practice; you
never can tell--"

"What I may hear? I have to take that chance. Do you remember what you
were saying--what I heard?"

He groped in his mind, but it had gone surging. There was nothing
solid on which he could lay his hand.

"You were saying that jealousy makes its own troubles, and that when
jealousy goes the troubles go, too. And I knew you must have been
thinking--what I've been thinking--or you wouldn't have said that."

She turned to him her face, warm and inviting with a radiance not
entirely of the fire, and it was with an effort he refrained from
reaching out and touching it, from drawing her lips to his. It would
be folly, he knew, but a folly more entrancing than all the wisdom of
the world.

"So that's what you've been thinking," he managed to say.

"For three weeks. Cal, I've been so unhappy. I-- Was there anything in
that--that incident, you know, down at the lake?"

"You mean in the fact that I was there with Annie Frawdic?"

"Yes."

"No more than in the fact that you were there with Archie Hale."

She was silent for a moment, the heel of her shoe digging meanwhile in
the hard earth before the fire.

"Yes, I know you see it that way," she conceded. "But it's a little
different. Archie and I are old friends--"

"And good friends."

"And good friends. But not so good as that--"

"How, 'So good as _that_?'"

"Well, don't you see, he's gone home--early?"

She was talking in enigmas. "I can't follow you," he confessed.

"Then I'll be blunt. I sent him home early, don't you see, so that I
could--that we could--" She was floundering.

"You saw me go to the lake?" he asked.

"Yes, and wished I might have gone, too," she said.

Her amazing frankness threatened his undoing. With an effort he held
his poise. When he spoke it was with forced calmness.

"Why do you say these things to me?" he asked.

It was as though in some way he had thrust out and repulsed her. She
did not move, yet he experienced a sense of her drawing away from him.

"I thought you would be interested," she said, very quietly.

"I _am_ interested; tremendously interested. Minnie, if things were
different--if I were in a position--I would tell you how much I am
interested."

"But as things are--?"

He spread his open palms before him. "You know," he said.

They fell silent then, and the fire again died down before them.

"My brother has come home," she said at length, as though seeking a
change of topic. "He was asking me about you--and Reed."

"You can't have seen much of him yet. I am flattered by his interest."
He did not mean his words to be so hard as they sounded.

"Just a few minutes. You see, I hadn't seen him for ten years--more
than ten years. I was a little girl then, going to school." She paused
as though to call up the picture. "But we always have looked on him as
a sort of black sheep; I don't know why, except that he went away and
stayed--seemed to drop us out of his life. He always was different from
the rest of us; is yet. Didn't you see it?"

"Yes, I could see that he was different," said Cal. "And he was
interested in me?"

"Oh, he was asking about everybody, you know. He seems to be at war
with everybody, because the first thing he said to me was, 'I suppose
you'll have your little knife into me, too.' There was something
tragic about it. 'Not till I know you better,' says I, which was a
funny answer, don't you think?"

"Rather," Cal agreed. "It's bad enough to be alone in the world,
without being at war with it, too."

She shot a quick glance at him, and for an instant their eyes met.

"But you are not alone," she said, with her keen intuition of his
meaning. "You have Reed, and--" She paused. "Father and mother think a
great deal of you, and so does Gander, for all his banter about your
boulevard and your education, and you're a hero in Ham's eyes. Ham
doesn't say very much, but he thinks a great deal, and I know."

"That leaves just one member of the family unclassified."

"Then there's Annie Frolic," she added.

He ignored the thrust; an exploratory thrust, he did not doubt. "You
were telling me about your brother," he reminded her.

"So I was. He asked me who you were, and I said 'Calvin Beach.' 'Who?'
he said. 'Calvin Beach--Cal, we call him,' I said. 'Where's he from?'
'Don't know, particularly; he never told me,' I said. 'Rambled in with
his Ford a few weeks ago and held father up for a job.' And all the
time I was telling him this he was watching me in the strangest kind
of way with those strange black eyes of his."

She turned suddenly on the cushion, and her hand fell lightly on Cal's
arm. The feather's weight of her fingers set him a-thrill. "Tell me,
Cal," she said, with sudden intensity, "Do you know him? Did you ever
see him before?"

"Never in the world."

She breathed more easily. "Something about the way he looked made me
think he knew you," she said. "Of course I didn't know, and it may
just have been my fancy, but I thought, perhaps, I should tell you."

He was following her move by move. She had thought that possibly he
was in danger; she had come to tell him.

"He was interested, too, in Reed," she went on. "Asked me who the boy
was. I told him he was your sister's child. That was right, wasn't it?
Then he asked his name, and I told him 'Reed Beach,' and he said how
could that be if he was your sister's child, and I couldn't tell him."

The fire had dulled to a glow in which he sensed, rather than saw, her
figure. Her face was turned away. So this was her problem, and his.
For a second time he had been confronted with this inconsistency.
Minnie had expressed no doubt of her own, but it was impossible to
suppose she had not wondered. He must give her an explanation, not an
evasion; he must make and pidgeon-hole where it would always be ready
for instant use an explanation that would turn the edge of doubt. The
promise he had made his sister, the love he bore Reed, demanded this
artifice.

"Listen, Minnie," he said. "There is one thing I have never done--have
never felt called upon to do. That is, _explain_ Reed. My friends must
accept him, as they accept me, without question."

She turned her face to him again. "You need not explain him--to me,"
she said.

He stirred the fire slowly to give him time to collect his thoughts.
Then,

"Reed is my sister's son," he said. "A short time before he was born
his father disappeared, and was never seen again. We suspected an
accident; drowning, perhaps, but never learned anything definite. No
doubt the extra strain of this mystery wore Celesta down; at any rate
she never recovered after Reed was born. At the last she gave the boy
to me, and charged me to take care of him. I have done so, and will do
so to the end. I adopted him and gave him my name. That is all there
is to it."

Her hand found his; rested on it gently for a moment, then closed with
a sudden intensity of passion in her strong, supple fingers. "You need
not have told me," she whispered. "I did not want--I did not _need_ to
know."

For a time they sat in silence, conscious of a subtle new bond of
union and of dumb swelling in their throats.

"He is about all I have in life," Cal went on. "Celesta and I were the
only children. I have to think of him, always. You understand?"

"I understand," she breathed. But in her heart she was crying, "Oh,
don't you see? That is no obstacle. I love him, too!" Outwardly, "He
is a wonderful boy. I wonder if I--would you let me see him, as he
sleeps?"

They arose together and he led her through the door of the little
granary that served as his home, and Reed's. His heart was thumping
absurdly, but above its uproar Cal could hear the rhythm of the boy's
steady breathing as it came from the corner of the room where he
slept. He found a match and struck a light. Its flame lit up the bare
board walls until Cal directed it toward the sleeping figure on the
floor. Reed was entangled, boylike, among his covers; an arm and his
face lay bare and a foot protruded from under a twisted blanket. They
leaned over and watched the sweet lips, the calm, placid face, but Cal
watched also the eyes of the girl beside him; saw them moisten and
fill and drop their jewelled tribute on the rough bed that was Reed's,
and his. Then the match burned out.

They turned to go, and as they turned her hair brushed his cheek. It
was tantalizing, maddening. It was black darkness in the little room;
he could not see her face, but the sense of her presence was all about
him. He stretched out his hand and it touched her hair; it fell upon
her shoulder; he turned her toward him.

"Minnie--I know it's madness, and you will say so, and forget, but for
the moment you must hear me--Minnie, I love you! I cannot ask you to be
my wife; I have nothing to offer that you would have, but I can be
silent no longer. I love you, Minnie--love you--do you hear?"

For a moment she did not answer, but he felt her frame tremble beneath
his hand. Then--her voice was low but clear and firm: "It is not
madness, Cal. And you can offer me everything--everything that I would
ever care to have."

"You mean that, sweet? Remember, I am penniless, in uncertain health--"

"You will be rich some day. You have brains; you have education. But
it is not for that, but because I--I love you, Cal--"

She stirred toward him and his hands found her arms, traced their
rounded grace to the shoulders, linked about her as he drew her to him
in a sudden abandon of passion. His lips met hers, crushing forth that
wine which is poured but once in life, a new wine that went reeling
through his brain, to his limbs, to the tips of the fingers that held
her in their clasp. The revelation of her love swept over him, held
him speechless while she trembled responsive in his arms. He feared to
break the spell; feared that the sound of his voice would arouse him
as from a dream, and the ecstasy of that moment would be fled forever.
When at length he dared to speak they were word-caresses that he
poured into her ear; words of endearment, strange to his tongue, which
now sprang to his lips as from some secret and unsuspected reservoir
of feeling. She was his! She was his! And he spoke as though his own
soul communed with itself. This was no stranger here; no one even so
strange as Reed; only two halves of a single spirit, made for each
other from the beginning of the world, mingling now and forever. That
was the strangest part of it, that there was no sense of strangeness;
this girl, this Minnie--see, her cheek was warm, her lips were soft,
her eyes were moist with the fresh dew of her confession, and she was
his--his ...

On Sunday it was his privilege to sleep comparatively late, and Cal
found himself assorting and piecing together the events of the
previous day. He lay in a glow of happiness from his knowledge of
Minnie's love; his lips were yet warm with her eager kisses. It was a
great thing to think about, this confession that had been his and
hers, and which must shape his life henceforward from that hour.

He tried to think of it dispassionately; to follow, item by item, the
processes which had led to his present position. Certainly nothing had
been further from his mind than falling in love with Minnie Stake. He
had looked upon her as an interesting item in his study of humanity as
a whole; he had thought that she might give him some unusual
side-lights on that most absorbing topic. Well--she had. There was
something about this business that went deeper than the reason could
reach; that was sure enough. Viewed in the light of cold reason his
love was madness. And yet it was a madness more divine than the wisdom
of angels. That was the strange thing about it. He was on an uncharted
sea, sailing a course that had no end, no harbor; lost, and supremely
happy in his lostness.

Environment, of course, had a good deal to do with it. But then, one
can shape environment to his will--or her will, as the case may be. He
began to suspect that it was no idle whim which had led Minnie to
Reed's bedside. And as for himself, he might have lit the lamp instead
of a transitory match, had he been so disposed. ... What had
environment done for Annie Frawdic?

The conclusion was that nature was wise and knew what she was about.
Nature might have presented him with Annie Frawdic, but Annie Frawdic
had left him unstirred. Nature knew what she was doing and was not to
be gainsaid.

All this was very satisfactory until, the first flush of rapture
abating, he began to wonder where it would lead him. He had learned to
look on life through serious eyes, with a realization that every
individual is a factor in society and bears a responsibility toward
the common good. And while nature might be wise in her biological
selections, society also was wise in fencing her processes about with
the conventions of marriage. On no other basis could society continue
to exist as anything short of chaos; Cal had no doubt about that. The
tragedy of Celesta and a million others like her was the price of
disregarding the wise provisions of society for their own protection.

His thought flung back to Celesta in a gust of longing tinged by some
new sympathy which he had not known before. He had never held Celesta
to account; he had treated her deflection as something beyond
explanation, and let it go at that. The blame he placed on her
betrayer. For him he had found no shadow of excuse. With a curious
pang he recalled how, particularly in those earlier years, he had
sworn that if ever fate brought the faithless father of Reed within
his power he would exact retribution without mercy and without limit.
Latterly it had been but a sore memory, a sick spot in his mind slowly
mending toward convalescence.

This morning he began to see things differently. Reed was the product
of a law deeper than the puny fencings of society. Society was
justified in its fencings but also it must recognize the deeper law.
Reed was the product of that law, yet society would not recognize
him--if it knew. That was why he had to guard Reed's secret at the
price of his other moral principles. If there was sin in the matter,
the sin was society's, which, unable to enforce its mandates, took a
brutal vengeance upon the innocent outcome of their evasion.

"It is as though a man stole a horse," he commented to himself, "and
the police recovered the horse, but couldn't catch the thief. Then
they would torture the horse for being a party to the crime, and as a
warning to other horses not to be stolen."

He was pleased with this figure as he turned it over in his mind, even
while he began to realize how far it had carried him from his original
premises. It would be a great thing to set society right on the matter
of this injustice. Society was kind at heart but it worshipped its
prejudices as a religion. The thing was to break down those
prejudices, and who was in better position to strike a blow than he?
He had practical knowledge as well as theoretical; he had felt both
edges of the blade. A pamphlet, a series of magazine articles. He
might start a discussion. But always Reed must be protected from any
suspicion. The articles should sell well; the public can be trusted to
read avidly anything of which it doubts the propriety; there would be
money--

This brought him back to Minnie. Of course he would marry Minnie;
society's fencings must be recognized. It was a question of finding
the money. Society, in laying down its regulations, had blandly
disregarded the fact that it takes money to comply with those
regulations, and not all people have money. Married life,
respectability, legitimacy for one's children, had become things that
could be bought in the open market--if one had the price. But to the
man without money what alternative did society offer? Here was the
germ of another series of articles.

He must get money. He was faced with the fact that he could not remain
a moral citizen of the community without money. He was working hard;
he was earning what was called "good wages," yet he could not marry on
them. There was no place to live; no place in which they could rear
their children. Suddenly it dawned upon him that perhaps that was the
real root of the shortage of farm labor. "We'd soon be short of
lawyers, doctors, bricklayers, too," he commented, "if we adopted a
social system which gave them no opportunity to reproduce. No wonder
the skilled farm laborer has disappeared! He's dead, and his children
have never been born. His employer wouldn't let them." Here was
another series of articles.

The sun was pouring in at the eastern window and already warming to
pungency the old tire with the blow-out where it caught the morning
rays. Reed slept deeply on his back, his mouth wide open--against all
instructions; his feet exposed beyond a corner of their crumpled
blankets. Cal rose on his elbow and found his watch. Six o'clock. He
yawned, stretched, kicked himself clear of the blankets, stood up on
the floor.

Half an hour later, while he was currying Big Jim to the accompaniment
of much business with hay and oats, a shadow fell amid the million
yellow atoms dancing in the wedge of sunlight at the stable door, and
Minnie entered. She waved a hand at Cal, paused a moment as though to
make sure there was no one else about, then came up fearlessly between
the horses.

"I have to go to town, Cal," she said. "Mr. Bradshaw has telephoned.
An important case is coming up suddenly in the Winnipeg courts and
there is still a great amount of work to do on it. Gander has
volunteered to drive me in."

"Gander is unnecessarily obliging," Cal observed.

"Yes, isn't he? Who knows but some one would have asked me to spend
the day at the lake, and might, perhaps, have let me wade a little?
The water must be warmer now than on the Twenty-fourth."

He smothered her banter in a quick embrace, while Big Jim, like the
gentleman he was, buried his attention in his oat box. And neither
guessed what strange links in their chain of events would be forged or
broken before they met again.




CHAPTER FOURTEEN


It was Tuesday evening when the blow fell.

Cal had been busy that day with his summer-fallow, and with thoughts
of Minnie Stake, and of Reed. Practical thoughts they were; plans for
his magazine articles; speculations as to the most likely editors; a
slowly evolving idea of a series of articles knit together in a book.
A picture of the book on the market; of its inviting cover in the shop
windows; of fat royalty cheques to be laid, metaphorically, at the
feet of Minnie Beach. He breathed deeply in the fresh breeze that
stirred the dust from his plough wheels and was glad of the health in
his young veins. The cloud had passed over; there was now no threat
for the future in his expanding lungs.

His plans were beginning to take form, and to enthuse him greatly. The
same divine urge which bade him bring order into the chaos of Jackson
Stake's farm yard now stirred him to carry the battle into a much
wider field. If he could bring order into the chaos of farm labor, if
he could touch with one glimpse of beauty the sordidness which was
expressed by "forty dollars a month and found"; if he could awaken to
spiritual consciousness the physical life of which the Stake farmstead
was typical, and at the same time gain a livelihood for Minnie and for
Reed: that, surely, would be something worth while. His thought turned
to a bungalow down by the lake; he could build it cheaply, mainly of
logs that could be cut nearby, and the land would cost him little or
nothing. Down by the lake it was rough and unsuitable for farming; its
only recommendation was its beauty, its solitude, its vast, slumbrous,
brooding silence, and on these its owners placed no value. A few
acres, with a patch that could be cleared for a garden and a cow; a
brood of chickens; a log bungalow looking over the lake; a fire-place
built by his own hands, of boulders gathered along some rocky point of
the shore, and fuel cut lavishly from the dead and fallen timbers near
by; such was the patchwork out of which he was piecing a design for
the home that should be his--and Minnie's.

"We could live cheaply that way," he observed to himself. "No rent, no
fuel bills, no 'social standing' to maintain, whatever that is;
raising most of our own food, with fish from the lake and ducks and
geese from the marshes; we would live simply and cheaply and happily.
And if my articles don't bring in enough money for a while to meet our
modest requirements I can take a job on a farm during the rush season
and so replenish my cash while gathering fresh literary material." As
he dwelt in fancy on the prospect he could almost feel the pungent
wood smoke from his own fire-place in his nostrils; he saw Minnie
seated gypsylike in the glow from the fire, or on the sand by the lake
in the gathering twilight. He saw the little room he would build for
Reed; the little bed, the dresser he would shape against the wall. He
saw the larger room, rich in the dignity of simplicity, draped with
the priceless tapestries of love, which he would build for Minnie and
himself....

"I must talk this over with Minnie," he said. "Might run into town
to-night and talk it over with her. Haven't seen her since Sunday
morning."

With this intention in the back of his mind he persuaded himself that
it had been a hard day on the horses and unhitched a round earlier
than usual, to the great surprise and approval of Big Jim and his
associates. During the unhitching process they assumed an attitude of
extreme fatigue as a precaution against any change in their master's
good intentions, but as soon as the traces were safely over their
backs even Big Jim was ready for a flirtatious episode with the
Mollie-mare who travelled next to him, and all turned homeward in high
spirits.

Cal met his employer in the yard. "I've been pounding the horses
through pretty steady," he said, "so I thought I'd knock off a bit
early to-night and perhaps run into town for an hour or two, if you
don't mind."

"Sure, that's all right," said the old farmer, genially. "Take an
evenin' whenever you want it." A furrow of smile ploughed up through
his big red face. "Take an evenin' off whenever you like an' run into
town. Maybe you'll be takin' an interest in the practice o' the law?"

Cal measured him for a moment, then made his plunge. "Can't say I'm
interested in the practice of the law," he said, "but I'll admit
there's something mighty attractive about the law office of Bradshaw &
Tonnerfeldt."

"Don' tell me, Cal," Jackson Stake laughed. "I wasn't born yesterday,
an' I ain't blind, neither. This is more'n was in the bargain, Cal,
but I ain't kickin'."

Cal took this to be the parental blessing, and mumbled something
unintelligible. He wondered how much Minnie had told her father. But
his hand in some way became enclosed in Jackson Stake's great palm,
and the two men held each other for a moment with their eyes, silent.

"I reckon you haven't got much money to come an' go on, Cal," said the
farmer when he spoke, "but I reckon too you've got about a bushel o'
brains under that ol' hat o' yours, an' you'll cash in on 'em sooner
or later. I'll admit I never set much on eddication until you come
here, as I sort o' figgered it spoiled a man for work. But I see now
that don' always go. I ain't particular kickin' on you not havin' any
money, Cal, if you know what I'm drivin' at. That'll come in time.
I've made a few bones myself, an' I'd trade 'em right now for some
things you got that you can't sell. By the way, I might as well give
you somethin' on account. You'll be wantin' to go to the Electric
Theatre, or buy some peanuts, or somethin'. Come up to the house. I
think there's a bit o' money, an' you might as well have it."

The farmer insisted on paying Cal until the end of June. "Take it now
while you want it," he advised. "There might be a hail storm tomorrow
night an' then you'd have to talk wages to me from behind a shotgun.
When I'm close, Cal, I'd bust a rib if I swallowed a flax seed, so
take it when the takin's good."

Cal was busy pumping his tires when Jackson, junior, came by and
observed him in silence for some minutes.

"Going to town?" he asked at length.

"Thinking of it. Like to come?"

"No. These jerk-water joints don't weigh much with me. Don't with you,
either, I guess. You weren't brought up in Plainville."

"Not exactly. Still, I can enjoy an evening there now and again."

"So could I, if I'd somebody else's sister to jazz around with.
Where'd you come from, Cal?"

Cal felt the color beginning to creep up around his neck. He resented
this questioning and the veiled but flippant reference to Minnie.
Still, there was nothing to quarrel about.

"Oh, I'm a bird of passage," he said. "Just blew in."

"So did I. And I'm ready to blow out again. It don't take much of this
to do me."

"I haven't found it that way. I rather like it here."

"Yes, you seem to have made a hit. You're ace-high with Dad and the
old woman and some other members of the family. With me it's
different. I'm a two-spot--spades at that."

There was something in his voice that recalled Minnie's remark about
everybody having their knives into him. He was at war with the world.

"Oh, I wouldn't go so far as that," Cal suggested. "Your mother is
still pretty fond of you, if I can read her aright."

"Is she? Well, it don't get me anywhere. Cal, I'm broke, and I'm fed
up on this Rube-stuff, and I'm due to beat it. That's what I wanted to
talk to you about."

He seated himself on the running-board, and the dog-eared fenders
flapped him a precarious welcome. As Jackson rolled a cigarette Cal
recalled Gander's prophecy to the effect that his erring brother would
be no great factor in solving the farm labor problem. Evidently
Gander's conclusions were to be justified sooner even than he
expected.

"Have one?" he said, extending his pouch and papers.

"No, thanks. I usually take a pipe before turning in, but that's about
all."

Jackson returned his pouch to a pocket of good worsted stuff, now
frayed and broken about the edge. "Well, let's get down to business,"
he said, as one who had an unpleasant task and wants to get it over
with. "How about lending me a hundred dollars? That 'u'd put me back
under the cluster lights and out of everybody's way."

Cal did a moment's quick thinking. What lay behind this complacent,
even confident suggestion that he should lend this stranger a hundred
dollars? There was a deliberateness about the manner of young Jackson
which suggested that this approach was part of a definite plan. Why
had he not gone to his father for money? But he must speak--

"A hundred dollars? I haven't that much in the world."

"You could get it from the old man if you went after it. He paid you
something to-night, didn't he?"

Cal restrained an impulse to tell this meddler to mind his own
business. There was something deeper here than appeared on the surface
and he must move warily.

"Yes. He paid me up to date, and something over. I couldn't ask him
for more at present."

"You're too modest, Cal. Always do your getting while the getting is
good. But perhaps what he gave you would see me through. I could be in
Minneapolis in twenty-four hours, and comfortably out of your way."

"But you're not in my way. Not at all. This country's big enough--"

"It won't be--if I stay here. Besides, I'll send the money back as soon
as I hit a bit of luck. I got nothing against you, Cal; nothing at
all, and I've made you a straight proposition. Come through with the
green and I'll get out and stay out, and nobody'll know any more than
when I came."

Cal was screwing a dust cap on a valve. His head was low, turned to
the wheel, and he held it there for a moment while he considered these
strange words. They were spoken softly enough, in a manner almost
friendly, but there was a hard hint of threat underneath. What was the
fellow coming at? They might as well have it out at once.

Cal straightened up and faced him, a latent fire of belligerency
fanning up hotly in his breast.

"I have no money to lend you," he said, "and there is no reason why I
should do so, if I had. As for what you call 'a straight proposition,'
I don't understand you at all."

Jackson did not move from his seat on the running-board. His face was
calm, his voice deliberate, but there was a deep glow in his eyes that
was hard to fathom.

"If you won't do it on my account, Cal, perhaps you will do it on
Reed's?"

Iron jaws suddenly went clutching about Cal's heart. "How Reed's?" he
demanded. "What have you to do with Reed?"

Jackson flicked the ash from his cigarette and inhaled deeply. "It's
not a pleasant story, Cal; not pleasant for any of us, and I'd just as
soon not go into it. Suppose you lend me fifty dollars and I'll be off
on the next train to Minneapolis."

Cal measured him for a moment. "I don't know what you're driving at,"
he said. "But I'm not going to lend you fifty dollars. If you think
you can get it from me any other way here and now is a good chance to
try."

"I didn't want to tell you the story, Cal, but if I must I must. The
boy is not what you pretend he is."

"Not what I pretend--? You lie! What do you know about Reed?"

If Cal expected the passing of the lie would bring Jackson Stake to
his feet he was disappointed. The man remained seated.

"I don't generally take that, Cal, but the circumstances are unusual.
You may want to take it back in a moment. You ask me what I know about
Reed. Suppose I tell you. You had a sister named Celesta?"

A tremor of something akin to fear ran along Cal's spine. It was plain
that Jackson was not merely stabbing in the dark. He knew--how much?
Cal decided it would be well worth while to find that out and changed
his tactics accordingly.

"That's so--yes," he agreed.

"And Reed is her son?"

"I have made no secret of the fact that Reed is my sister's son."

"Quite so. But--_who is his father?_"

Cal's feeling was that of a miser whose hoard has been robbed; of a
now virtuous woman whose youthful error is about to be blazoned
abroad. He had a terrific impulse to fall upon this black scoundrel,
to take his neck in his strong hands and twist it into eternal
silence. The man knew about Reed! The secret he had guarded so well,
which he had hoped to lose forever, was in this man's power. Why not
seal it now--now, for the sake of the boy--

Something jerked his whirling mind back to a solid ground of cunning.
He had to meet this problem brain with brain, not muscle with muscle.
Curiously, even at this moment of passion Cal recalled his own
philosophy about Gander being no match for this stranger, and about
those who are lacking in the head trying to make up for it with a
heavy fist. The thought sobered him, steadied him, brought him back to
earth. He could be as dangerous as young Mr. Stake.

The secret must be kept! That was the one thing above all others.
Nothing else mattered. Reed must grow up free of the horrible handicap
that society would place upon him if it knew. For that he was willing
to pay any price. It was plain that this man knew, and his mouth must
be closed. With money? The loan idea was blackmail--blackmail, pure and
simple. If he gave him fifty dollars to-day he would demand a hundred
dollars to-morrow. In the promise to go away and keep silence Cal had
no faith whatever. The creature would keep silence only so long as he
found it profitable so to do.

On the other hand, if Cal attacked this man, if he thrashed him as he
should, explanations would be demanded and the secret would be out.
With a blow that seemed to stop his heart it came to Cal that there
would be no safety while this man lived. ... Still, he must feel his
way; he must temporize.

"I can't guess what you may know about Reed," he said, "or why you
should ask me a question like that. It is, of course, none of your
business. That is the obvious answer. But apparently you think you
have information which you can sell to me and that I will pay you for
keeping quiet. Before I can decide on that I must know what the
information is. What do you know about Reed, and why should I pay you
for silence?"

Jackson laughed uneasily. "You carry it well, Cal," he said. "If I had
your poker face I wouldn't be holding you up for a measly fifty
dollars. I'd go after bigger game. However, when the big fish ain't
biting one has to play for the small ones. I thought I'd told you
enough, and you wouldn't be curious about the details."

"I want to know the whole thing. If I'm to pay you money I want to
know what I am paying it for."

"Sit down, Cal," said Jackson, after a moment, making room for him on
the running-board. "I ain't proud of my part in this story, as perhaps
you can guess, but I ain't as sorry, either, as you'll think I ought
to be. That's human nature and there's no use arguing about it. I met
your sister when she was eighteen or nineteen--"

"_You_ met her?"

"Yep. Mighty catchy looking girl and I fell for her right away. I
wasn't much more than a kid myself, you understand. She spoke of you
often--that's how I knew it was you when I heard your name here; Cal
Beach isn't so common but that it 'u'd make one pick up the
connection--but she never let me come 'round to her place and never let
me see you. Not that I had any hankering to see you, you understand.
Guess she knew I was a sort of black sheep from the first and wanted
to keep the family name as clean as the circumstances would permit."

Cal listened to this amazing recital too stunned to feel its force.
Afterwards he wondered at that moment he had not twisted Jackson
Stake's head from his shoulders. But at the time the suddenness, the
brazenness, of the revelation held him dumfounded. It was not until
the sneer in Jackson's confession--if he could call it a confession--it
was not until the sneer upon Celesta began to emerge from the tangled
debris of his life's wreckage that Cal felt the sting of the blow. The
blood rushed to his head and brought him, reeling, to his feet.

"You dog!" he cried. "You cur! I've a mind to choke your insults down
your throat, here and now. You--you murderer! Yes, murderer; that's the
word. Murderer, and worse than murderer, of my sister! I could take
your life, but it wouldn't settle the score; it isn't worth a hair of
her head. You--you--"

"Hot words, Cal. Calm yourself. I told you I wasn't proud of my part,
but you insisted on the facts. You got 'em. But there's one fact which
doesn't seem to be quite clear to you; the fact that it is I who hold
the whip hand in this little controversy. Just lay so much as a finger
on me and no price you can offer will keep me from telling Minnie, at
any rate. I haven't been a model brother, but I owe her that much and
I'll pay it. So sit down and keep quiet."

Cal obeyed. There was nothing else to do. The hypocrisy of Jackson's
pretence of protecting Minnie nauseated him, but there was nothing to
do but keep silence. And keep his head. He was playing with too shrewd
a gamester to lose his head.

"And I wasn't insinuating against Celesta--not at all. Celesta was a
good girl. But she seemed to recognize the black sheep in me and
there's a kink in human nature that makes the good girl and the black
sheep an awful bad combination. She'd have given her soul for me, I
reckon, and I admit I thought more of her than of most of them. I was
mighty sorry over it all, but it couldn't be helped then, and there
was no use standing around weeping about it."

Cal's sarcasm burst his restraint. "That is the one thing you allowed
Celesta's other friends to do for her," he commented. "And now you
expect for this little service to the family I'll make a good fellow
of you and present you with my summer's wages?"

"Well--I wouldn't put it just that way. I thought this country would be
a little small for us, and the simplest thing would be for you to
stake me to a railway ticket and I'd put a lot of land between us. Of
course, there are other ways--"

"You're right--there are other ways. Listen to me, Stake. When I sat by
my sister in those last hours--when I followed her alone to the
cemetery, I swore before God that if ever I met the man responsible
for it I'd have his life for hers. And I haven't entirely changed my
mind. You might chew on that a little, too."

"I know. You could lay for me and knock me out sometime when I'm off
my guard; I don't admit you can do it in a fair fight. But that would
call for explanations, Cal, and it seems to me explanations are the
thing that would be particularly hard--for you. So you can chew on
that."

In impotent rage Cal held his peace. The fellow had him; had him hand
and foot, gagged and bound and tied to the stake. He was completely at
the mercy of this blackmailer. It was an impossible, an unthinkable
situation, but it was so. Jackson Stake, the transgressor, dictated
terms to Calvin Beach, the injured party. The criminal had climbed on
to the judge's bench and was grimly passing sentence upon his accuser.

Even as Cal reflected upon this amazing reversal of all that should be
so he could not help being stirred by some kind of tribute to the
cleverness with which young Jackson had played his game. He had pulled
Cal into the pit which he himself should occupy, and was climbing out
over his victim.

All that Cal saw clearly was that he must temporize; he must get time
to think; he must keep his head. "Well, I'll see what I can do," he
said at length. "Perhaps I can get some money from my friends in
Winnipeg. I can't give you all my wages, you know."

"I'll give you till Saturday--no longer," said Jackson Stake, with the
air of a creditor closing an account.




CHAPTER FIFTEEN


Cal's first impulse was to drive to Plainville and tell Minnie
everything. He felt that he had come to an _impasse_ in his life where
he must lean on other judgment beside his own. His house of dreams had
collapsed, shattered by a blow under a clear sky, a blow unheard and
unseen by any neighbor, and he was writhing amid the ruins. He needed
ministrations; needed them tremendously.

On second thought he knew he could not tell Minnie. It would be a
breach of his faith with Celesta, and with Reed. He must save the
secret at all costs. How to do it--that was the question. Jackson had
walked away after his ultimatum leaving him seated on the
running-board while something pounded with sledge-hammer thumps across
his temples. How to do it? He must think; he must think. And he could
not think.

He remembered that he had said something about writing to Winnipeg for
money. That, of course, was to gain time, but it had appeared to
satisfy Jackson, and he must make the most of it. He did not know
whether Jackson was still watching him, but he went to his granary and
simulated the writing of a letter. As he did so Trix came in hotly
pursued by Reed.

"We're playing a great game, Daddy X," the boy shouted. "Trix is a
bandit and I am the Mounted Police. Now I have her!" But the dog
darted between his legs and was gone.

To Cal the boy seemed to have come up out of a mist. It was so strange
to hear his voice! He sat for a moment piecing together events;
arranging the sudden chaos of his life in some kind of sequence. Yes,
this was the boy--Jackson Stake's boy. What had he to do with Jackson
Stake's boy? Why not-- For one moment his soul trembled on an abyss of
depravity, but the next it was soaring with the gods. The little face
faded before him, like a picture thrown out of focus; then came up
clear and sweet and tender as the face of his dead mother, and Cal
knew that, whatever happened, Reed was safe in his hands. He stretched
out his arms, and the boy, surprised but willing, crept within them.

Suddenly a new fear gripped at his heart. Was this boy safe--physically
safe--from the menace that hung over him? Since his first days on the
farm Reed had had the run of the prairie. True, he attended school,
but aside from that he came and went as he pleased and only the dog
Trix knew of his comings and goings. With a snare of brass wire and a
string of binder twine he would lie for patient hours by the mouth of
some gopher hole, or he would ramble for miles in search of flowers or
butterflies. But now--?

Cal resolved that he must keep a close eye on the boy. He knew only
enough of Jackson Stake to know that there might be no limit to his
audacity. He could take no chances.

"Let's go to town to-night, old scout," he suggested.

But they did not go to town. Antelope performed her rumbling ramble
through the groves of poplars and down the main road beyond the
school, but then Cal turned her nose along a side trail and away from
Plainville. He had decided that he could not face Minnie at present.
She would read his secret in his eyes. He dared not face her.

Nor would he talk with Reed. After two or three unsuccessful attempts
to engage him in conversation the boy turned his attention to the more
receptive ears of Antelope, and his talk from that time was such as a
boy of eight may hold with an automobile two years his senior. It had
to do with badger holes and deep prairie ruts and gentle reproof of
the various rattlings with which Antelope made answer.

The sun hung low over the prairies; the clumps of willows threw their
lengthening shadows across the trail; the grass took on its vivid
evening livery of green, and still Cal held his aimless course as a
boat adrift at sea. He was fighting, fighting. And as yet he did not
know what he fought. He was fighting to get the enemy visualized, to
see clearly--

It was dusk when they again drew up at the granary, although a halo of
light still hung in the western sky and filtered dimly through the
grateful cloud of smudge-smoke which filled the farmyard like a fog.

"Home early, D. D.," Gander remarked, while Grit added some surmise to
the effect that the staff in the law office must be working nights.
But Cal neither answered them nor heard them. He was skewering the
vile heart that had risen up to destroy his life; in his mind he was
trampling under foot the lifeless body of Jackson Stake.

Reed, strangely perplexed by a shadow which he could feel but could
not understand, slipped quietly to bed without so much as a suggestion
of a bed-time story. For awhile he watched the outline of Cal's form
as it sat, unusually bowed, in the door of the granary, but there was
no receptacle in his young mind that could long hold trouble, and
presently he and Trixie were scampering the fields in search of
butterflies. And a minute later he was asleep.

Cal did not light his pipe, and when Hamilton paused on his way to bed
as though he would have joined in a chat he gave him no encouragement.
Ordinarily he liked Ham, but to-night he returned his salute with a
monosyllable. The twilight deepened; the red coals in the bowl of
Gander's pipe and Grit's presently got up and moved away; the yellow
oil light in the kitchen went out; even the contented puffing of the
cows under their canopy of friendly smoke was silenced, but still Cal
sat on, bent and bruised and dumb. This was a fight in which his hands
were shackled; in which his feet were bound; in which he was snared in
a trap. As he began to survey his problem with a slowly returning
clarity of vision it seemed to him that never before had man been
placed in such a position. He couldn't fight and he couldn't
surrender. No sacrifice which he could make would buy freedom. Not
even death. Cal had no more than his share of physical fear; he had
young blood in his veins and that combative confidence which comes
with hard muscles and clean living. But it was precisely because he
could not fall back upon these primitive defences that the fight was
so unevenly balanced against him.

At midnight he was trying to put it into words. "I'm not afraid of
Jackson Stake--not physically," he told himself. "Quite the contrary.
If I could settle this thing physically I would drag him out of his
bed and settle it right now. But I can't. I can't go into the house
and up stairs and pull Jackson out of bed and thrash him or be
thrashed without an explanation. If I didn't explain it, he would. I
can't do that.

"And I can't buy his silence. It would be immoral, to begin with, but
I could overlook that. One doesn't worry so much about moral
principles when his antagonist has a strangle hold on his throat; at
least, _I_ haven't reached that degree of moral exactitude. But if I
pay him I will be only playing into his trap. He would take fifty
dollars now--and another fifty as soon as I had earned it. He would
simply live on me. That's his game. And after he had bled me white, or
some time in a sulky mood, he would tell. Tell Minnie, likely. So even
that wouldn't save me.

"Not me. Reed. Reed, and my promise to Celesta. That's what has to be
saved. And I would give my life for it. But I can't save it by giving
my life; that way, perhaps, least of all. The boy needs me and I'm
going to live for him. I'm going to live for him no matter who dies.

"He will tell Minnie. When he is fouling anyway he will make his blow
as foul as possible. And then Minnie will despise me, because I lied
to her, and because--because--" Suddenly Cal's heart gave an
extraordinary thump, and for the first time he sat erect. Minnie would
not despise him! It came to him as clear as a voice at his side--Minnie
would not despise him. She was that kind of girl. Let Jackson Stake do
his worst; here was one pillar of his life that could not be
overthrown.

But a moment later he saw the other side of the shield and the brief
tide of hope that had flooded his heart went ebbing out again. Minnie
would not despise him, but she would despise herself, and the effect
would be as bad, or worse. "If Jackson Stake were to tell her the
truth," he soliloquized, "she never would look me in the face again.
Realizing the wrong that Celesta, and I, and Reed have suffered from
her brother she never would look on me again. That would be a
situation that could net be remedied, any way whatever."

He rose and paced unsteadily forward and back before his door. He
would turn again and again to look at the door; he had a feeling that
he dared not leave it, scarcely an arm's length. Celesta's boy was
sleeping there and the night was full of heinous dangers directed at
his head. He must stand on guard. He half hoped that Jackson Stake,
slipping suddenly out of the dusk, would fall upon him.

"By God, I wish he would!" he suddenly exclaimed, clenching his fists
in the darkness. "Then I would kill him--kill him, and it would be over
with. Dead men tell no tales."...

He toyed with it. It was a tremendously fascinating line of thought,
and he toyed with it. That would remove the peril. With young Jackson
Stake out of the way the secret would be safe, and there was no other
way in which it could be made safe. And it would be justice. Celesta
had given her life. A life for a life....

Thrusting out his arm, Cal found the corner of the granary in the
darkness and rested himself against it. His brain was reeling. The
thought which had crashed into his mind was so foreign to anything he
had ever thought before that it paralyzed him like a physical blow. He
could imagine his terrified normal thoughts running hither and
thither, shepherdless, defenceless, scurrying for cover against this
black wolf of a new idea which had broken into their peaceful domain.
Poor, innocent, inoffensive thoughts, scattered like children at the
blast of war! For this was war--war! This was a clash of forces which
could not unite and for which there was no solution except the death
of one of the other--Jackson Stake or Cal Beach.

"And it shall be Jackson Stake," he said aloud, and the words smote
his ears like a voice from another world. He could not believe that he
himself had uttered them. He, Calvin Beach, the sociologist, the
advocate of order, believer that all this world needed for happiness
was knowledge and understanding--that he should contemplate taking the
life of a fellow man was absurd, impossible. He, the whimsical
humorist who could make of all his associates exhibits to be studied
under a mental microscope, subjected to a painless and entertaining
process of intellectual vivisection,--he, to take another man's life?
He reeled under the crash of that idea.

His lips were on fire; his tongue wallowed between them, cracked and
parched and tasteless. At the door he listened to Reed's regular
breathing; caught the sound of it along with the ticking of his watch
and the thumping of his heart. Then he ventured as far as the water
trough and drank heavily from the iron cup that hung at the pump. The
first mouthful was as colorless as night; he forced it down like solid
food rather than water. But it revived him, and then he drank
refreshingly. He poured water on his head, on his wrists; he held it
against his temples, he washed his hands beside the trough, and he
walked back to the granary steadied, strengthened, sane. He had a
feeling of having been dragged back to life after an hour of death.

He undressed and went to bed, but as he lay thinking he began to
realize that his saneness was more terrible than any insanity. More
terrible because it confirmed his insanity. Now, viewing the matter
clearly, weighing as a sane man, almost as an impartial man, he knew
there could be no safety while Jackson Stake lived. It was not
Jackson's life against Cal's; it was Jackson's life against Reed's,
and between these two his choice was instantly taken. His decision
clashed with all his theories, with all his fine principles for a
society clothed in order. He began to realize that this was but an
instant's revelation of the eternal warfare between the ideal and the
real; between that which should be and that which is. He had to accept
the circumstances in which he found himself; they were not of his
making.

Even if he gave his life along with Jackson's his cause would be
saved. He was willing to do that. It was not a too great price to pay
for Reed's freedom and for his right to admission into the body of
society. Even if Jackson and he should be locked in death the truth
would be locked with them and Reed would go free.

The child stirred in his sleep; flung an arm which fell across Cal's
chest; turned and nestled against him. Cal enveloped him in his arms
and clung to him tremendously, as though Reed were his safety; as
though the man in reality were clinging to the child. ... "Give you
up? You! My God!" he breathed to himself. "Nor leave you. Jackson Stake
has no claim on my life, but I have a claim on his. My claim is
due--overdue--and I propose to collect it. How? I must think about that. I
have until Saturday. I must find a way."

Cal awoke early from a restless sleep and sat up suddenly, uncertain
as to where he was. His mind seemed, during the night, to have gone
scattering through the universe; now it came hurrying back from all
the compass-points of time and place to occupy its accustomed citadel.
As its units rushed in they arrayed themselves in order and gradually
he became able to think coherently. He pieced together the issue with
Jackson Stake; built up the two walls of their positions until all
seemed about to collapse again. Then, in a panic, he thrust the
keystone into place; the great central idea on which he had slept; the
conclusion that the world was not big enough for Reed and Jackson
Stake. He saw it clearly now and knew that there was only one
solution. ... Besides, it was fair. Jackson Stake's life was surely
small enough compensation to exact in return for Celesta's.

"And who has a better right to exact it?" he demanded of the tire with
the blow-out which hung in the rays of the rising sun. "Who has a
better right? Leaving Reed out of the question altogether, who has a
better right? No jury would hang me for that."

Suddenly his heart crawled up into a heap, a little strangulated heap
of crinkly tissue lost between his lungs. Suppose a jury would not
hang him for that; suppose he might successfully invoke the unwritten
law--_he dared not invoke it_! He could not do so without revealing his
secret. That would give to the infamy of Reed's origin a publicity a
thousand times broader than anything that Jackson Stake could do or
say. No; he would stand silenced in court, unable to speak a word in
his own defence. Was ever a soul so helplessly in a trap? It seemed to
Cal that all the concentrated cunning of the devil-world had been
employed for his complete undoing.

"How say you, Calvin Beach; guilty or not guilty?"

"Guilty, my lord."

"The first witness for the king."...

"The first witness for the defence."

"There are no witnesses for the defence, my lord."

"No witnesses for the defence?"

"No, my lord."

"Let the prisoner be examined. Prisoner at the bar, you are charged
with the murder of Jackson Stake. You have pleaded guilty to the
charge, and have been unable, or unwilling, to call any witnesses in
your defence. The evidence against you is very strong. Nevertheless,
it is the business of the Crown to assure not only your prosecution,
but your fair defence. You must be able to open to the court
information which has not yet been disclosed. Be frank. Frankness can
cost you nothing. Tell the court what you know of this matter."

"I have nothing to say, my lord."

"You admit that you killed Jackson Stake."

"Yes, my lord."

"You had a reason--you must have had what you at least thought to be a
very weighty reason--for committing such a crime?"

"I had, my lord."

"What was that reason? Possibly it may have been of such a nature as
to ameliorate the judgment which must otherwise be passed upon you.
What was your reason?"

"I cannot tell you, my lord."

"Most extraordinary. Listen, Calvin Beach. You are a man of
intelligence; a university man, it has been established; a specialist,
even, on the very problems of men living amiably with other men. You
were employed on the farm of Jackson Stake, senior, the father of the
murdered man, with whom you had no quarrel, and whom you have heard
testify against you in this court. The reluctance with which that
testimony was given was its most damning quality."

"Yes, my lord."

"You have heard the evidence of Mrs. Stake, her heart obviously torn
two ways between a natural desire for vengeance for her son and a deep
attachment for you. You have heard the evidence of the young man known
as Gander Stake, of Wilson, the hired man, of Hamilton Stake;--all
friendly to you but the more damning for that reason."

"Yes, my lord."

"You have heard the evidence--the unwilling evidence, I must say--of the
girl, Minnie Stake. ... Have you nothing to say to that?"

"No, my lord."

"And the boy, your adopted boy, your dead sister's child, who has sat
in court with you through this trial, and who, on account of you, must
go down through life branded as the protege of a murderer; through no
fault of his own must carry the stigma which you have brought upon
him. For the boy's sake--for the girl's sake--have you no word to say
which can clear you of this terrible charge, or at least can make it
evident that your mad act was done under extreme provocation? If that
can be established the court will make recommendations on your behalf
to the proper authorities. Have you nothing to answer?"

"No, my lord."

". ... and may God have mercy upon your soul."

With his hands about his throat Cal sprang from his bed and staggered
into the open air.




CHAPTER SIXTEEN


Cal had half finished with his horses when he dropped his curry-comb
and brush and hurried back to the granary. The fear of the unseen was
terrific upon him. Danger lurked about the head of the boy; a danger
which, if he only could see, he might avert. He must find a way out of
this hideous jungle as soon as possible, but until then he must guard
the boy as an army guards from attack its flank and rear. For the
front he had no misgivings. It was not from that direction his enemy
would strike.

Reed still slept, his neck bare, his arms thrown wide, his legs
entangled in a wreckage of blankets. Cal gently shook him awake.
"Come, old scout," he said, when the big eyes looked up to his,
wonderingly, "I want you to go to the field with me this morning.
Hustle; we've no time to lose. See, let me help you."

Wondering somewhat over his early awaking and the unusual assistance
Reed clambered into his simple clothing. "Come to the stable with me
until I have finished with the horses and then we will go up to
breakfast together," said Cal, and the boy obeyed.

The delay had made Cal late for breakfast, and the porridge course had
nearly disappeared, when Cal and Reed came in. There they were, all of
them, even young Jackson Stake at his father's right; Mrs. Stake
moving back and forth between the table and the stove in a manner
which always suggested to Cal a sort of domestic treadmill. It came as
a sudden shock to him to see them all seated there, eating peacefully.
Did they not know the heavens had collapsed within the last twelve
hours? He would have been prepared to see seats vacant, the kitchen in
disorder; to have heard moaning and shouting and the sounds of a
fierce struggle. Could they not sense that tragedy stalked among them?
This outward peacefulness--

"Hello, D. D.," said Gander, cordially. "How's business in
Plainville?"

With a tremendous wrench he brought his mind into action. They thought
he had been in Plainville. Home late--slept late. Perfectly logical
explanation. Of course. And his particular business just now was to
make everything appear as logical as possible.

"Plainville is all right, I guess," he returned, simulating
casualness.

"Legal perfession goin' all right" Gander persisted. "That D. D.
business o' yours ought to help some now. _That's_ what you learn at a
university, ain't it?"

Cal was stuck for an answer. Gander had not been very explicit and to
ask him to make his meaning clearer might have embarrassing results.
There was such a thing as being too specific.

Help came from an unexpected quarter.

"Let up on Cal, Gander," said Hamilton, usually the most silent one at
the table. "He knows what he's doing, and one high-brow in the family
might help out the average a little. And it needs some helping,
believe me."

"If I was you, Ham, I'd be takin' night courses from him. I see Ounces
hangin' 'round Double F's. A bit of eddication's what you need, an' D.
D.'s the man to hand it out."

"The girls all fall for it," Grit observed. "Glad my ol' folks didn't
send me to no eddication factory. Hard enough to keep single as it
is."

"Humph!" said Ham. "I bet you'd marry one of those corset forms in
Sempter & Burton's, if it would have you."

"Ham-m-m--burg!" said Mrs. Stake. "What these boys don' know
now-a-days!"

"I bet it was different when Dad was a boy," Gander suggested. "He
didn' know nothin'."

"He didn', eh?" Mrs. Stake flared back. "Don' you fool yourself."

"'Fraid you're gettin' me in wrong, either way, Mother," said the
farmer. "Well, I didn' marry no corset form, anyway."

"Didn', eh? Well, I guess I'd as good a figger as most of 'em, if it
comes to that. A woman don' keep herself no Venus raisin' kids and
feedin' a hungry horde like--"

"Now, Mother, that ain't what I meant at all. I meant you had any
fashion form faded out o' the picture. Eh, Cal, how's that for
up-to-date? Can you beat that?"

Their banter had partly won Cal out of his mood. "Pretty good, Mr.
Stake," he agreed. "It isn't to me Ham had better go for his
lessons--if he needs them."

Young Jackson had taken no part in the conversation. Suddenly, "Post
your letter all right?" he inquired of Cal, without diverting his
attention from his plate.

"Oh, yes."

The business of eating proceeded.

"But what's the idea o' gettin' the little man up so early?" said Mrs.
Stake, as she re-filled Reed's plate. "Should be sleepin' for an hour
yet."

"He's going to help me hitch up in the field this morning; we've a
deal on with Big Jim to that effect," Cal extemporized. "He can go to
school from the other end of the field."

Cal was again under the cloud. His appetite was gone and a great
vacuity filled his ribs where his stomach should have been. To avoid
comment he forced the food between his lips and slipped out as soon as
possible.

There was a short-cut to the school from the far end of the
summer-fallow, and at half past eight Cal sent Reed on his way across
the fields. Pausing on his plough he watched the slowly receding
figure as the boy kicked up the warm dust with his bare feet, or as he
stopped to throw clods of earth at a particularly saucy gopher. From a
knoll somewhat across the field Reed turned and waved his hand, and
then Cal started his team, marking with a glance from time to time
Reed's progress toward the school. Before he had reached the other end
of the furrow he knew that for the time being the boy was safe under
the care of Annie Frawdic.

Then another fear encroached upon him. Jackson might go to the school.
He might bluntly say he had come to see Reed home, and to Annie there
would be nothing suspicious in that. Then, with the boy in his
possession, Jackson might do--what? It was unthinkable that he would
harm the boy physically.

"Then what am I afraid of?" Cal demanded of himself.

Gradually it came to him that he knew what he was afraid of. He was
afraid Jackson would make a friend of this boy. He was afraid the man
would set himself deliberately to win the boy's confidence and
affection, so that he might have another club to wield over the head
of his victim. To the threat of exposure if his terms were not
complied with he would add a threat to take his child away from him
altogether!

"He will--over my dead body," said Cal between his teeth. But the more
he thought of it the more he became convinced that this was an
instance where the lesser law must give way to the higher one. In
short, there was no outlet except by making away with Jackson Stake.
The man's life was doubly forfeit anyway; first, by his betrayal of
Celesta; second, by the baseness with which he sought to turn that
fact to his financial advantage.

"It's a case of defending the innocent," Cal soliloquized. "If I must
kill Jackson Stake to protect Reed Beach, then I must. There is no
other way. I shall not be able to prove my innocence, but I shall be
no less innocent on that account."

"But the boy--he will be stamped as the ward of a murderer," something
dinned in his ears, and he recalled the imaginary court scene of his
awaking moments. "Or some one--some enterprising newspaper, perhaps--may
dig up the whole facts and expose them to the world. What defense can
you give the boy against that?"

"In such a case I must not kill Jackson Stake; he must just disappear.
I must arrange that. No one will bother much. They will just think he
has gone again as unannounced as he came. I shall not kill him; no,
no; but he shall disappear."

He set his mind to plan a scheme by which Jackson could be made to
"disappear," and the facility with which it operated rather startled
him. For the first time he began to realize that constitutionally he
afforded the making of a first class criminal. It was a new thought,
and even in his agitation and distress he paused to toy with it for a
moment. Were all men, then, possessed of a criminal instinct, held at
bay only by fortunate environment and the codes of civilization? If so
peace-loving a man as he could lay so dark a trap for his victim, what
of all men? Was criminality the natural state? Here was substance for
another series of articles.

Thought of a series of articles brought back with a rush the picture
his mind had carried less than twenty-four hours ago--now obscured
under the debris of the world--of a bungalow on the shore of the lake,
and a typewriter thumping in the shade of a friendly cottonwood, and
the voice of Minnie singing down on the sands. Since last night he had
thought not so much of Minnie, but of Reed and young Jackson. Minnie
had never been out of the background of his thought, but the
principals of the tragedy had held the centre of the stage. Now they
gave way and Minnie took their place. Her kiss was scarcely cold upon
his lips, and the pulse of his young love, checked for the moment by
this sudden horror, now leapt again like a thoroughbred under the
whip....

He would have to give Minnie up unless he did away--unless Jackson
Stake disappeared. With that disappearance all the old dream could be
realized. Only he would know, and the secret in his breast would be
safe forever. Reed would grow up unbesmirched, and their own children,
too, to be useful members of society. Was the life of an atom of
polluted social flotsam worth the wrecking of that dream?--especially
when the dream could so easily be saved for reality?

For a plan had suddenly taken shape in Cal's mind. It was sinister in
its simplicity and effectiveness, and it seemed to have taken shape of
its own volition. Cal had no consciousness of having worked it out; it
had come to him--from somewhere. It was sent to him in his hour of need
as the one way out. At first it held him hypnotized in a sort of
horror, as a sort of gruesome thing wrapped about and too horrible to
be undraped. But gradually he ventured near, to touch it, to remove
one wrap and then another. The horrible thing did not resist; it
complied, it yielded itself to his will. Garment by garment, fold by
fold. ... There, it stood before him, naked, brazen. He seized it in
a lust that was devilish and terrible.

With familiarity it became less repulsive and he cooled his mind to
think of it dispassionately. It was no love of his, this strange
creature of the mind which had folded him suddenly in its embrace;
this was a creature of convenience, for the moment only. ... It was
this:

He would invite young Jackson to go fishing with him. There was an old
boat at the shore; it would serve for such a turn. Fortunately there
had been no open breach between them; nobody knew; nobody would think
it remarkable that they should go fishing in the lake some evening
after the day's work. Jackson would not refuse; Cal could suggest that
it would give them a good opportunity to discuss, without fear of
interruption, matters in which they were mutually interested. Few
boats frequented that part of the lake and there was little danger of
being observed. Then, as Jackson lurched to catch a fish wriggling
loose from his line, he overturned the boat! He must have become
entangled in weeds in the bottom of the shallow lake, for Cal,
although he dived again and again, could not locate him. That would be
the explanation. Actually, he would dump him out of the boat and
quietly row away from him, mocking his appeals with platitudes about
the way of the transgressor, and it being a long lane that has no
turning. Jackson might be a good swimmer, but by instinct he would
follow the boat and Cal would wear him out. If he turned and struck
for the shore--well, one can use an oar for more purposes than pulling
a boat. Then--a plunge in the lake to wet his clothes, and who would
question his report?

It was horrible, and he trembled as he thought of it, but it was the
only way out. The only way to safety. A useless life gone to save
lives that might be useful. An unhappy life ended that lives which
were happy might continue. It was the only way. And even if there
should be a struggle, and they should go down together, Cal was
willing to pay that price. Who could charge him with any motive short
of the highest? ...

Meanwhile he must see Annie Frawdic. He could not explain, of course,
but he knew that Annie would accept his word if he warned her against
any interest that Jackson might show in Reed. He must see her at once.

Jackson, junior, did not join the family at noon-day dinner, having
elected, it appeared, to go out on a shooting expedition. Gander
conceded him no larger game than gophers, but Grit magnanimously threw
in a badger for good measure. At any rate, the meal hour passed, and
Cal was able to drown the erupting in his head enough to keep up his
end of the sparse and shallow conversation. During the afternoon he
ploughed as one in a dream, to whom time and space have become
meaningless terms, but at a quarter to four he awoke, tied his horses
to the fence at the far end of the field, and strode off rapidly in
the direction of the school house. He came up just as the little
building was belching forth its contents for the day.

Some of the children, as they pell-melled out of school, recognized
Cal and gathered about with speculations as to what could be at the
bottom of this visit from Reed's "father." No explanation which Reed
had been able to give of his relationship to "Daddy X" had left any
clearer understanding in the minds of his schoolmates than that Cal
must be his father.

"If he's not your father, who is?" demanded a pimpled urchin of twelve
or thirteen, a leader in the moral crusades instituted from time to
time against Freddie Frain, whose paternal ancestry was understood to
be shrouded in some obscurity.

"He's my Daddy X," Reed persisted.

"Same thing," his inquisitor asserted.

Reed discovered that this conclusion seemed to establish his position
in the community, so he accepted it as the easiest way out of a
difficulty. This business of identifying one's father was more
confusing than even the "seven times" multiplication table, and he was
glad to be rid of it.

"Hello, Cal," said one of the bolder boys. "Wha' d'ya want?"

"He come to thee Mith Frolic," a freckled miss suggested from behind a
finger in her teeth. She returned Cal's amused inspection with the
wriggles of a fish-worm.

"That's it," said Cal, with a laugh, as he moved up to the door.
"Don't go away, Reed," he called; "we'll go home together."

Annie Frawdic stood with her back to the door, erasing from the
blackboard the marks of the day's labor and instruction. About her
head swam a halo of chalk dust from which settling atoms fell like
silver on a fuzz of hair no longer innocent of an occasional grey
thread on its own account. Cal noted the cheap blouse with its
threatened lesion just above the waist-band at the back; the skirt,
once smart enough, but flimsy and formless from much wear and many
washings; the gap of spindling stocking, more spindling than Miss
Frawdic cared to contemplate; the wobbly shoes with heels bevelled by
the wear of country roads and the school-room floor, and something
about the _ensemble_ clutched him suddenly as poignantly pathetic. He
had smiled to himself over Annie Frawdic's obvious husband-seeking
advances, but now the smile seeped out and left him empty and a little
ashamed. It was tragedy; the silent tragedy of the undesired. Another
subject for his series of articles--

That brought him to earth again, but even as he crashed he flung a
thought of wonder into his own being, so weakly willing to soar away
on every cloud of whimsical imagining. Surely the business now on foot
was grave enough for his whole attention.

"Good afternoon, Miss Frawdic!"

She turned with a start, dropping the eraser to the floor.

"Oh, good afternoon, _Mister_ Beach. ... Teaching gets on one's
nerves, about the end of the term," she added, as she stooped to pick
up her eraser. "Thank Heaven, I'm through on Friday. Summer holidays."
Then, brightly, and with a challenge of badinage--"I hope you haven't
come with a complaint?"

"Why should I come with a complaint?"

"When parents visit a school it always is because they come with a
complaint. If you have not come with a complaint I shall know, more
than ever, what an extraordinary man you are."

He was fishing, he knew, but he could not resist the question--"And am
I extraordinary?"

"Oh, very. And so is that boy Reed. Half way through his
multiplication tables already. I suspect him of a good drilling at
home."

Cal remembered his horses, tied to the fence, and hurried to his
objective. Nothing was likely to be gained by encouraging Annie in
loquaciousness.

"It was Reed I came to speak about," he said.

"So there _is_ a complaint."

"Oh, no--nothing about the school. But I want you to help me, and to do
so you will have to trust me. That is, you may have to do something
which doesn't seem quite necessary, just because I ask you to, and
without explanations. Will you trust me to that extent, Miss Frawdic?"

"On one condition."

"And that is--?"

"That you call me Annie. Only the children call me Miss Frawdic--Miss
Frolic, they call me--in school, for discipline. Outside they call me
Old Annie. I don't look much like a frolic, do I, Cal?"

"No, Annie."

"And how can I help you, now that I trust you?"

"It's about Reed. I suppose you know young Jackson Stake has come
home?"

"Heard it, but they say there's no great rejoicing."

"You follow the news well."

"Your city men never appreciate properly the rural telephone. Well?"

"This may be just a notion of mine, but I don't trust him, and I don't
want him to have anything to do with Reed."

"I see. But how can _I_ help?"

"He's not working; has all day on his hands, you know, and I thought
he might come drifting around by the school and want to take Reed
home. If he does--don't let him. That's what I want you to do. And I
want you not to say anything about this--to anybody."

They had moved down through the dusty school-room and now stood in the
door, where the warm breeze of the afternoon fluttered in Annie's hair
and the mellow light softened the furrows about her eyes. Facing, they
leaned against the opposite door jambs, and Annie's vagrant toe again
went tracing figures in the dust.

"If he wants to take the boy how can I prevent him?"

"Come home with him, too, or take Reed to your boarding house and I'll
come over for him later."

"All right, Cal," she said, simply.

"Thank you, Annie." He held out his hand and took hers in a warm and
responsive grip.

It was at that moment that Jackson Stake, junior, on his way home from
a day's gopher shooting, passed along the road in front of the school
house. When they looked out suddenly they surprised his curious study
of them. He nodded, touched his hat, and went on.




CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


The next morning Cal awoke with a feeling of blood on his hands. He
awoke very early, and in a stupor as to time and place. The yellow
summer morning had not yet dawned beyond a faint grey mist that
blocked the window of the granary against the jet blackness of the
wall.

His sleep had been uneasy; a rabble of strange imaginings had
clamoured in his mind. Then, suddenly, he had awakened with a sense of
blood on his hands. He stretched his extended fingers above him in the
thin greyness of the pre-dawn, while the sweat started on his forehead
and his body went cold and clammy about the ribs. He could distinguish
nothing--nothing but a feeling of blood. Turning into his mind he found
a vague impression that somewhere in his life--or it may have been in a
previous incarnation; time and place were quite undefined--he had
killed a man. He had killed a man, but no one had suspected him. The
secret had been well kept, save for the blood on his hands. ... It
was Jackson Stake!

In an instant he was wide awake. He sat bolt upright; his eyes,
distended, sought to sift some ray of meaning out of the darkness.
Reed! He groped wildly to the boy's side of the bed; found the little
form twisted in the contortions of childish sleep; thrust his ear to
the lad's chest. The heart was pumping regularly, the lung rising and
falling, the skin warm to the touch.

"Nerves, Cal; nerves," he chided himself. "If you are like this
before, what will you be after?"

The sticky feeling on his fingers persisted in his imagination.
"Beastly stuff; beastly stuff to have on one's fingers all his life.
Nobody knowing but one's self. All the years and nobody to know, but
always yourself knowing. Sticky fingers. That will be the hardest
part."

So he wrestled with the inevitable until the morning sun again poured
through the window in the end of his little room. Then he got up,
washed his face in a splash of cold water, and proceeded with his work
as usual.

He awakened Reed early and they went to the field together as on the
previous day. As they left the farmyard, following the jingling
trace-chains of the four great horses, he felt young Jackson Stake's
eyes upon them, and knew that Jackson understood. The knowledge
increased his alarm for Reed and he decided to take the boy partly
into his confidence.

"How do you like young Mr. Stake, Reed?" he asked.

"All right."

"Does he talk to you at all?"

"Not much. A little last night, while you were doing the horses."

"What did he talk about?"

"Oh, nothing much. Asked if you often went over to see me at the
school."

"Oh, did he? Anything else?"

"Promised to take me and Trixie--Trixie and I--and me--_me_ is right,
isn't it, Daddy X?--gopher hunting on Saturday."

"Well, I don't want you to talk to him, Reed, or to have anything to
do with him. And if he calls for you at the school don't come home
with him; go home with Miss Frawdic, and I will come over for you
afterward. Will you remember that?"

"Yes, Daddy X. ... But I'd like to go gopher hunting."

"So you shall, but not with him." Cal was glad the child could not
detect the grimness in his words.

He watched the boy safely to school and then continued with his
ploughing, but as his mouldboards crumpled the friable earth up and
down the field and the forest and thistles wavered and fell beneath
him like the ranks of an army swept by volley after volley of fire,
his mind was rehearsing an event now only thirty-six hours distant. He
had definitely fixed on Friday evening. He had turned over every
possibility, anticipated every difficulty, provided against every
contingency. Yesterday he had settled with his own conscience.

"Thou shalt not kill," Conscience had drummed in his soul.

"But this is in defence of the life of a child. We kill to defend our
children, our loved ones, our country. Besides, he deserves it."

"Vengeance is Mine," the voice insisted.

"And I am its instrument," he parried. "Oh, I would give the world to
escape, but there is no other way out. Reed is not safe while Jackson
Stake lives."

"Give him the money," lisped a new voice; a cunning, subtle voice, in
his ear.

"That would be compounding his crime and his cowardice. That I will
not do. It would be admitting his power over me. I do not admit it. I
will not admit it."

With that the voices were silent, but this morning a new voice came
clamouring at his heart. "Don't do it, Cal; don't do it," it cried,
with a mingling of entreaty and threat. "Think of your hands. Think of
that, all through life, every morning. No one to know but you. You
never will dare mention it; it will be a gulf between you and every
other creature. In your body you may mix with society but in your soul
you will be an outcast. To carry it all your life festering within
you; never to ease its fever by mention to a living soul. Even from
Minnie--from Minnie most of all, you must keep your secret, guard it
close forever, always under the dread that a thoughtless word may
reveal it. Think, Cal! A murmur in your sleep, a raving in an illness,
and Minnie will know her brother's blood is on your hands. It will
separate you from her like a wall; a wall which she will not see, but
which will imprison and embitter her. When her love for you is dead
you will not be able to explain, to revive it by one whisper of
confidence and confession. You will have to hide it from your
children. You will look on them in their beds and the horrible
knowledge, like a wild beast, will come tearing at your heart. Don't
do it. It will lay a plague upon you; it will brand you with the mark
of Cain--"

"Stop it!" Cal cried, wrenching his shoulders as though in physical
conflict. "I know you. You are Fear. Damn you, I'm no coward!"

Then all the voices fell silent and his mind drummed on in a sort of
stupor, drugged by its own tremendous purposes. So he spent the day,
up and down, no longer like a weaver shuttling the rich black carpet
of the earth, but like a caged animal awaiting his hour.

As four o'clock approached he began to glance from time to time in the
direction of Annie Frawdic's school. Sharp at the hour a swarm of
little human atoms buzzed forth. For a few minutes they swirled about
the school-yard without giving evidence of any definite direction,
like bees before the flight to the feeding ground; then a group of
atoms detached itself and moved rapidly along the road toward the
Stake homestead. Cal watched this unusual deployment with increasing
interest. No pupils lived in Reed's direction from the school, and it
was customary for him to come home alone.

Suddenly the approaching group was swallowed in a depression in the
prairie, to reappear a few minutes later almost at the corner of his
field. He could now discern Reed and another boy running ahead and six
or eight more following closely behind. When they reached the
summer-fallow Reed and his companion left the road and came directly
across the field to where Cal, absorbed in the incident being enacted
before him, had allowed his horses, ever ready to take advantage of a
moment of weakness, to come to a stop. The pursuers followed for a
short distance across the ploughed field, then slackened, stopped,
consulted, and finally slowly fell back to the roadway.

As Reed approached Cal could see that he had been crying. His face was
covered with dust streaked with tears and perspiration, for he had run
almost to exhaustion; and from his lips a thin, red stream trickled
down and across his chin. Scratches on the white flesh of his shoulder
showed through a rent in the sleeve of his blouse. The other boy,
slightly older than Reed, bore even deeper marks of combat.

Cal felt a sudden leap of the heart, a fierce primitive instinct for
blood, surge through him as he sprang from his plough seat and met
Reed at the horses' heads. But the assailants, watching from the safe
distance of the road, raised a derisive cheer and broke into a run
toward their respective homes.

"Why, Reed, old Indian, what has happened?"

But the boy's eyes were on the ground and for the moment he had no
answer. He edged to Big Jim and laid a groping finger against the
great shoulder, which shivered prodigiously as though in anticipation
of a horsefly. A moment later Big Jim threw his head in the air with a
fine jingling of his bit; then with his great, curious, affectionate
lips muzzled the naked shoulder of the boy, and all was well with the
world once more. Reed looked up at Cal with the glint of a strange new
kinship in his eyes and a smile twisting his swollen lips.

"We've been fighting, Daddy X," he confessed. "The boys piled on Fred,
'cause he has no father, and I took his part, 'cause I haven't any
either, have I, Daddy X? Only you, who aren't really."

Of a sudden the horizon swam before Cal's eyes; the long lines of
fences tilted forward and back, like a ship in a stormy sea. The world
was closing in upon him. Fate, having absorbed his attention from in
front, now attacked him, suddenly and viciously, on the flank. The
uncanny intuition by which Reed had allied himself with this other
child of a like estate seemed to hint that forces more than human had
combined for his undoing.

Cal pulled himself together. "That was right, Reed. That was a sort of
chivalry. Do you understand?"

"Chivalry? That is what the knights--King Arthur and his knights, you
know--used to have, when they fought in armour, and didn't care how
many piled on--"

"That's it. Never count your enemies. Punch 'em instead. Better have a
swollen face than a shrunken heart."

He turned to Freddie. The boy was a picture of dejection, his face
blood and grime, his clothing torn and trampled. Under a sympathetic
eye the sobs with which he had been struggling burst restraint, and
the little form shook in convulsions of misery.

"They're always doing it," he said, when he could control his voice.
"Piling onto me. My father's dead--my mother says so. But they say I
never had a father. One must have had a father, mustn't he, Mr.
Beach?"

"Of course, he must."

He dried his eyes on the sleeve of his dusty shirt. "Sometimes they're
all right," he added magnanimously. "Sometimes they don't seem to make
any difference. And then, all of a sudden, they'll pile on to me for
nothing. They call my mother a bad woman, too, and that makes me
fight. She's not bad. She's good. Don't you think she's good, Mr.
Beach?"

The appeal in the little boy's face wrung from Cal a sudden and
vicious answer.

"I'm sure she's good, Freddie; perhaps a damned sight better than
those who call her bad."

"Oh, you swore, Daddy X!"

"I know it, Reed. I'd think less of myself if I hadn't."

"And they say they know she's bad because she doesn't go to church,
and that proves it. Does that prove it, Mr. Beach? She used to go, but
she said they all looked at her so strange, and none of them ever went
to see her, except Minnie Stake used to once in a while when she was
on the farm, and my mother told her she shouldn't because for what
people would say about her, and Minnie, she up and said, 'To hell with
what people say about me, I'm coming anyway,' and then my mother cried
and made tea and we had the dandiest time. And sometimes Annie Frolic
comes over, too, but not so often, because she's always on the hunt
for a man--that's what the kids say--and hasn't much time for us."

With the quick buoyancy of childhood, Freddie's spirits were already
returning, and Cal's own heart had gone suddenly aglow. "But you
shouldn't tell things like that, that happen at home, Freddie," he
chided.

"I never did, before, but I thought you'd like to know, because Reed
said you and Minnie were great friends and how you sat on the cushion
in front of the fire and when you thought he was asleep--"

"That'll do," Cal brought him up peremptorily. "Reed, I'm surprised at
you. Now you two boys run up to the house and have a wash and ask Mrs.
Stake to give you your supper, and after that Reed can go home with
you and stay all night. But remember, Reed, no more tattling!"

Delighted, the boys broke into a race toward the house, and Cal
resumed his ploughing. For the moment he had been almost happy. He
returned to a contemplation of the inexorable web which fate was
weaving about him.

When he went into supper the boys had finished theirs and were gone.
The first gusto of the meal was slackening when Mrs. Stake mentioned
them.

"I let Reed go with that Frain boy, Cal," she said. "He said you told
him he could."

There was a note of challenge in Mrs. Stake's voice and Cal was in a
mood to take up the cudgels.

"Yes, I said he could go. Freddie seems to have rather a tough time of
it at school, and I thought Reed might cheer him up a bit."

Mrs. Stake ladled a generous helping of strawberries into young
Jackson's plate before she answered.

"He's your boy, Cal, an' it's not for me to interfere, but perhaps you
don' know's much about the Frain woman as the rest of us do."

"As far as I can learn no one seems to know very much about Mrs.
Frain," Cal returned.

Mrs. Stake paused in her serving. She could be stern at times. She
seemed more than usually tall and sharp; more than usually white of
hair and black of eye.

"I didn't say _Mrs._ Frain," she said.

"I did."

"Then perhaps you know?"

"No, I just suppose. I believe in giving anybody--especially a
woman--the benefit of the doubt."

It was Gander who interrupted. "I guess there ain't much doubt, Cal.
She don' deny it herself."

"Deny what?"

Gander colored and seemed to have trouble with his food. His Adam's
apple hopped about his neck like a panicky squirrel.

"Oh, come on. You know, Cal."

"But I _don't_ know. What do you mean? What is it she doesn't deny?"
He was interested in uncovering a code of ethics which could think the
things that Gander was thinking, but shrank from expressing a simple
statement in simple English.

"What is it she doesn't deny?" he repeated.

"Well, about her not being married, and all that."

"All what?"

Jackson junior came to his brother's aid. "Gander isn't a D. D., Cal,
and his language doesn't come easy. He means that Mrs. Frain couldn't
refrain."

Cal felt the blood jump to his face. Here was a chance--make an issue
of it now--strangle those mocking eyes into an eternal stare. To think
he had argued with his conscience about a man like that! But in a
moment his wits were in the saddle again. This was not his hour, and
he could wait.

"After all, I don't see what difference it makes," he resumed,
quietly. "If the woman sinned, she has likely paid for it. They
usually do. More than their share." His eyes were straight on young
Jackson. "More than their share. In any case, the boy is not to blame,
and those young savages at school, taking the cue from their elders,
are making his life a torment. I'm glad Reed has gone home with him."

"Well, I hope people won' say anythin' about it," Mrs. Stake quavered.

"Why?" Cal was busy empaling his exhibits on their pins and there was
no mercy in him.

Mrs. Stake's voice weakened threateningly. The issue had gone from her
head to her heart.

"Because we've always been a decent family, Cal. We ain't much for
manners or eddication, but we've always been decent. It's different
with you--I don' mean you ain't decent, too, but you see things
different, an' I can't argue with you about that. But Reed is like--our
own boy." Her voice was breaking. "I've held him on my knee, many a
time, when you didn' know, jus' because my heart was somehow reachin'
out aroun' him. I guess I'm gettin' to be an old woman, Cal"--she was
talking to Cal only--"an' God hasn't give me any gran'children. If
Jackie there-- So I'm awful set on Reed, Cal, an' wouldn' like for
anythin' that'd make any of us ashamed--"

"Don't worry, Mother. Nothing will happen that will make _you_
ashamed. I promise you." It was the first time he had called her
mother, and the word just slipped out from him. But the old eyes,
which had gone wet, shone out again with a new light.

Hamilton had slipped away, feeling that the conversation was on
dangerous ground. Grit and Gander went out together, to discuss under
the friendly shelter of the stable in detail the deflections of the
erring Mrs. Frain, and Cal's unexpected championship of her, and to
put two and two together and speculate as to whether they made four.
Young Jackson, always aloof, presently followed them, and Cal found
himself alone with the farmer and his wife.

"I hope you weren't annoyed that I--such an unconventional one as
I--called you mother," he said, when he found the old woman's eyes
gripped on his.

"Annoyed? Why, child, every woman, at my age, hankers for that name,
and for someone to say it. I guess that's why I'm so powerful drawn to
Reed. Jackie got the best eddication of them all, excep' Minnie,
perhaps, an' she put herself through, an' I always built on him
settlin' down an' maybe gettin married an' havin' children, but he
never did, an' Dad an' me feels we're gettin' a bit more alone every
year. Now, a boy like Reed-- No, I ain't sorry you called me mother."

"Because I hope to call you that, always, after a while," said Cal,
boldly.

For a moment the dark eyes narrowed; then a faint, happy, fleeting
smile flitted over the austere features. "You're thinkin' o' Minnie,"
she said. "I'm glad."




CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


While ploughing in the summer-fallow Friday afternoon, Cal ran over a
gopher. The hapless creature, darting out from the deep weeds, became
confused among the horses' feet and ran directly under the sharp
colter. Ordinarily Cal would have given the incident no further
thought, but he had been living in the morbid side of his mind for
almost a week, and this sudden little tragedy stirred him strangely.
He stopped, got down from his plough, and rolled back the clods which
covered the quivering atom of that which, a moment before, had been
life. ... When he passed by on his next round he saw it was already
teeming with flies.

At noon he met young Jackson in the stable yard. "Any word from
Winnipeg yet?" Jackson demanded.

"Not yet. There's hardly time. Maybe to-morrow."

"Well, to-morrow's the limit."

"If it shouldn't come to-morrow, what are you going to do?"

Jackson regarded him for a moment. "It had better come to-morrow," he
said, ominously. "If it doesn't you'll have to come through with your
wages. I'm not going to stick it here any longer. I'm fed up."

"You won't have to stick it any longer," said Cal, with a show of
amiability. "I promise you. By the way, how about a little excursion
on the lake to-night?"

"What for?"

"Ostensibly, to fish. There's a boat that we can get. Actually, to see
if we can't come to some sort of terms."

"You know my terms."

"Yes, but I've some terms, too. I want a clearance, so far as Reed is
concerned."

"Just how?"

"I want you to sign off your claim on him."

"Don't think that would interest me."

"Perhaps I could make it interest you."

"Well--money talks."

"All right. See you to-night. Nine o'clock. Better meet at the beach,
if you don't mind."

Jackson nodded and Cal turned to his horses.

Reed did not come home from school that afternoon, and Cal, scenting
trouble, hurried through his stable work and started out with
Antelope. To mislead Jackson he set out in a direction the opposite of
Annie Frawdic's. Once upon the high road behind the poplars he altered
his course and bore rapidly down upon the Ernton homestead, where
Annie had her lodgings. There was no time to lose if he were to be at
the beach by nine o'clock.

The Ernton buildings lay behind a grove of Manitoba maples fringing
the northwestern corner of the farm. As the Ford loped along the
short, leafy lane occasioned by this shelter belt, a sudden "Yoo-hoo"
brought Cal to attention and his car to a precipitate stop. Half erect
in a hammock under the trees sat Annie Frawdic, with one hand waving
to him a welcome, while the other adjusted a skirt gone somewhat awry
from her sudden change in position. A foot and ankle swung clear below
the hammock, and, caught in a lane of yellow sunshine, cast an
exaggerated shadow across an open space of grass and up the bare trunk
of a neighboring tree.

Cal sprang from his car and cut short her salutation. "Is Reed here?"
he demanded.

"Uh-huh. I brought him over, as you said."

"Then he's all right?"

"Of course. What's wrong with you, Cal? You're positively pale, if one
_could_ be pale behind such a coat of tan. I was going to say such a
_lovely_ coat of tan--"

"Thank you, Annie. I'm afraid I'm too much on high gear these days.
And I was uneasy about Reed."

"He's safe as Sunday; gone for the cows, I think, with Master Jim.
It's you that are in danger. I begin to think you need some one to
look after you, Cal."

He tried to ease his mind of its dark load and to react to her
vivacity. "I've known that for some time," he admitted, "but knowing
it doesn't seem to help."

She swung the other foot to the ground. "I think it will hold you,"
she suggested, and he sat down beside her. Her face and hair seemed to
take on something of the amber of the evening light; her eyes seemed
full and deep; her angularities were softened and smoothed as by some
mystic, gentle hand. He was glad to idle a moment or two with her,
seeing that the night held such portentous doings.

"At any rate, my suspicions were founded," he remarked, when the
rather delicate adjustments of their centres of gravity had been
completed. "Young Jackson was around for Reed?"

She did not answer.

"What did he say? What did you say to him? Tell me about it."

"Well, it wasn't just that way," she said, after a pause. "You're some
prize suspector, Cal, and I didn't want to disappoint you."

"You mean that Jackson didn't come at all? Then why--"

"Not really, he didn't. That is, not right to the school. But he may
have been just over the ridge; you know, in the little hollow between
the school and Stake's. I couldn't see, but I thought it better to
take no chances, and so I brought Reed home with me."

"I've been very uneasy about him," said Cal, with a note of reproach
in his voice.

"I'm sorry. Don't be cross. Besides, I was going to telephone you
presently that he was here."

With a push of his foot on the ground he set the hammock slightly
swinging. Annie saved her balance by clutching his waist.

"Yes, you might have done that," he agreed. "But why did you bring him
at all?"

"Reed's a nice boy."

"Well?"

"So are you."

"Oh, thanks. Really--"

"And this was the last day of the term. To-night I leave for home.
Perhaps I'll be here again next term; perhaps not. You old goose--don't
you see?"

He spoke gravely again. "You wanted me to come over, Annie? You could
have sent me a message."

"I thought of that. But messages sometimes fall into wrong hands. And
the telephone is worse than the Plainville _Progress_. It was my
little subterfuge, Cal. Forgive it, won't you?"

"Of course. In fact, the pleasure is all mine. But I'm sorry I didn't
know; then I could have arranged it better. I've another engagement
to-night, about nine."

"Oh, Minnie you have with you always. What's one engagement, more or
less?"

He was about to correct her, but he held the words on his tongue. As
well let her think that; it would take less explaining.

"You're going to-night?" he picked up the thread. "There's no train
until morning."

"No--I'm motoring. Friends of mine, from the South; they're to call
sometime to-night. It may be late, but they'll be here. I've
everything packed and nothing on my mind. Say I look it."

"You look--no, I don't mean that. Annie, you're positively
fascinating."

"Oh, Cal, what a dear you are! Even although I know you're lying, and
you wish yourself away, it sounds so good to hear you say it. See, it
isn't eight yet. Can you put up with me until nine?"

"Until nearly nine. Annie, I wish I didn't have to go, and that's the
truth of God."

Her eyes leapt into his, and their hands found each other.

It was darkening under the trees when, after a while, she spoke of
Reed. "Tell me about Reed," she whispered.

"There isn't much to tell, Annie. My sister's boy; both parents dead;
he has been mine since infancy. He calls me Daddy X, which means that
I am not really his daddy, but just supposed to be."

"Yes," she breathed. "What a funny name! Like algebra, and a bit of
mystery about it. Quite appropriately, for you are mysterious--both of
you. And his name, Reed. That's unusual, spelled with two e's. Did you
give him that?"

"It was a whim--a sort of whim, I suppose. In the hospital where my
sister--died--there was a verse in a little frame; just one, the only
relief on the bare walls of the room;--I wonder why hospitals must have
their walls so gloomy?--'A bruisd reed shall he not break, and the
smoking flax shall he not quench.' That was it, and it seemed, some
way, to fit her case, so I called him Reed."

"It's a nice name. I like it," she said.

They were silent for some moments. Then, "What do you suppose it
means, Cal?" she asked.

Cal found himself caught in an embarrassment not easy to explain.
Although he had his own fairly definite views on religion he was not
given to a discussion of them. He found an absurd difficulty in
talking frankly with Annie Frawdic on such a subject.

"I suppose it's poetic," he ventured. "A picture of the tenderness of
God. Sometimes--I wonder."

"So do I," she said, quickly. "Life isn't all tenderness, is it, Cal?
A good bit of the other thing. Has been for me, anyway." She dropped
her voice confidentially. "You know, Cal, I have counted myself
something like that--'a bruisd reed,' you know, bruised, but not
broken. I will not let myself be broken."

He had no answer, and they sat on in silence, gently swinging in the
lattice of dimming light which sifted through the leaves about them.

"At any rate, I'd rather be the bruisd reed than the smoking flax,"
she continued, after a time.

"I never understood that part of it," he said.

"Then you have never used a flax taper, I guess. We don't, now-a-days,
with our oil lamps or electric light. The smell--you'd understand. It
isn't pleasant. The desire to quench it is very human and natural. You
know, Cal, that figure seems to me more striking than the other. It's
easy enough to have sympathy with the bruisd reed, but it's different
with the smoking flax. Something--somebody--who just makes himself an
outrageous nuisance in the world. To spare such a thing in the hope
that, for all its offensiveness, it may some day burst into redeeming
flame--that takes faith as well as sympathy."

"Is that what it means, Annie?"

"Yes. ... Don't ask me how I know. Reed told me about his verse, as
he called it, and I looked it up in a commentary. You see how
interested I have been in him--and you."

But Cal was on his feet. "It's a new light, Annie," he was saying. "I
never knew what it meant. I've been in the stench of it. Horrible--I
wonder--"

A tremendous thought had gripped him, and his ribs seemed tightening
about his heart. He had not been too weak for sympathy, for
forgiveness, to "the bruisd reed"; could he deny the same sympathy
and forgiveness to "the smoking flax"? The one had been slender,
touching, appealing; the other vile, nauseous, disgusting; but they
were linked together in this verse of tenderness which he and Reed had
made peculiarly their own. After all, was this the way out? Was it?

The voice of Reed, playing with Jimmie Ernton, chimed over the lilac
hedge that screened them from the farm buildings. Annie, more sweet,
more companionable than he had ever known her, draped in the vague
artistry of the gathering twilight, swung gently in her hammock, her
toe stirring and restirring the scattered leaves at the lowest segment
of her arc. The air was as still as though it had been glass cast in a
mighty mould; overhead the sunset was splashing vagrant whiffs of
cloud with crimson and copper; already the colors of the east were
fading into the drab death of another day. It was a time to be at
peace with the world.

Cal looked at his watch; a quarter to nine. By leaving at once he
could barely make the beach by the appointed hour. And he had no
desire to leave at once. What of Jackson Stake? Smoking flax!
Offensive, but surely not a factor in life. Let him go. There _was_
another way out. A self-renouncement, a price to pay, but a way out.
He would pay it. Even as he made the resolve he suddenly knew that he
was sane again.

"Must you go?" she was asking. "I suppose it is nearly nine o'clock.
Couldn't you cancel it, Cal, for to-night?"

"I have cancelled it," he said, with sudden decision. ... "How about
Reed?"

"I think the boys are planning a camp fire to celebrate the closing of
school. That is how they love me. Tell him you're here; they'll be
glad of the chance to wait up until you go."

"But your friends?"

"They may be late, I said."

The light had gone out of the sky save for a faint curtain of lemon
that still flushed the horizon north and west, and it was black
darkness amid the maples when Cal at length sought Reed at the fire.
Approaching quietly from the rear he paused to hear a version of one
of his own stories--the story of the cloud and the shadow--as Reed
regaled it into the appreciative ear of Jimmie Ernton. Time had ceased
to be a factor in their young lives; they were well embarked on the
shadowy sea of Romance, and even in the exultance of his new grip upon
fundamentals, Cal hesitated to interrupt.

"... And then the strangest thing happened. When the cloud was gone
the shadow was gone, too; both of 'em gone together. Daddy X says
that's the way of it in life. It's about jealousy, I think, whatever
that is."

"It's very strange," said Master Jim, stretching his sun-browned legs
toward the fire....

On the way home Cal uncovered to Reed somewhat of his new resolve.
"Things have happened," he said, "which make it necessary for us to
leave Mr. Stake's farm, and the Plainville district, at once. Are you
game?"

"Sure--with you, and Antelope. Where are we going?"

"I don't know. Just going. And we're to start right away; to-night."

"But they'll be in bed. Ain't you--aren't you--going to say good-bye?"

"No; we're going out silently, like an army breaking camp and not
letting the enemy know."

"Are we in retreat, Daddy X?"

"No--advance. The greatest advance we have yet made."

"All right. But I thought you'd want to say goodbye to Minnie. ...
I'd like to say good-bye to Grandma."

"In war-time we can't always do these things, Reed."

"Yep. I know. But the knight always says goodbye to his lady, doesn't
he, Daddy X? And she gives him a token--"

"Not always, Reed. Well, here we are. Quietly, Antelope; mustn't wake
the guard."

"That means Trixie, I guess," Reed suggested.

They were swinging up Beach Boulevard; the signboard, "Beech
Bullevard--Speed limit 10 miles," caught their headlights for a moment.
In front of the granary they stopped and quickly loaded their few
effects into the back of the car. Then, by the light of a lamp Mrs.
Stake had supplied for his room, Cal made a hurried calculation,
arriving at the amount of his wages which had been overpaid. He put
the sum in bank notes in an envelope, addressed it to Jackson Stake,
senior, and secured it under the lamp.

"All ready, Reed," he said, quietly. "Climb in."

With all lights out the buildings and familiar objects of the farmyard
bulked vague and shadowy in the general gloom. The sighing of the cows
in the corral; the shifting of a horse in the stable; these were the
only sounds that stirred under the tranquil stars. In his mind, rather
than by sight, Cal defined the regular order of the farmyard, so
changed since his arrival there less than two months before. It had
been his whim, his hobby. Well, he had left his mark. They had been
exhibits--A, B, C. He had used them, mixed them, noted their reactions,
until almost he had exploded the lot. They were exhibits--let it go at
that.

He tried to tell himself that Minnie Stake had been an exhibit, but
the lie would not down. It stuck in his throat, swelling, choking him.
Minnie. ... Minnie. ... That was the price. That the smoking flax
might still smoke on, filling the air with its stench and its pollution.
That was the price. Well, he had resolved.. ..

He started Antelope as quietly as her clattering motor would permit,
and, without lights, felt his way gently out of the yard and into the
life that lies beyond renunciation.




CHAPTER NINETEEN


The week for Minnie Stake had been both long and short; long in its
absence from Cal, short in the rare intoxication which sped the feet
of every hour. Mr. Bradshaw had been apologetic for requiring her to
work on Sunday. "Very sorry, Miss Stake," he had said. "Quite unusual
circumstances--"

"I wish you wouldn't call me Miss Stake," she protested. "Sounds
too--too appropriate."

"I'm sorry, Miss--Stake. But really, it's not my fault. If you don't
like your name--" he raised his shoulders expressively.

"I've been thinking of that," she blurted out. She was happy enough to
have told Old Brad the whole story. Or at least the essential parts.
But she pulled herself together.

"Subsection D of Section Four of the same Chapter provides--" The keys
of her typewriter clattered on under the ripple and dance of her
wonderful fingers. Mr. Bradshaw himself declared, in romantic moments,
that Minnie's typewriter did not clatter; it sang, it hummed, it
poured like tinkling water, it splashed like Niagara, it crashed like
broadsides of rifle fire in answer to the moods of Minnie as she
tripped her fantasias or banged upon it in double forte diapason. Mr.
Bradshaw, when the world did well with him, and there was little doubt
that his clients, winning or losing, would be able to pay his fee,
sometimes would lean back in his chair and listen with serene joy to
the metallic hail with which Minnie's typewriter poured its message
upon the embossed stationery of Bradshaw & Tonnerfeldt. It was a sound
the pure artistry of which gladdened his heart. Moreover, were not the
charges based on so much per folio?

"Now, for me, a typewriter is simply a hunt-and-peck machine," he
would say on occasion to an office caller. "But for Miss Stake--why,
she just plays on it. I sometimes feel I ought to charge her for it.
I've seen girls--had 'em, too--who used their lily white hands more for
patting their store hair than for romping up and down the alphabet.
What I'm afraid of is that some gazabo--some bank clerk or farm hand or
something-- 'll ramble her off to the altar some day, and put the law
business of Brad & Tonner on the blink. By George, if it comes to that
I'll apply for a writ of _habeas corpus_ or _ipso facto_ or whatever
may be necessary to divert a catastrophe. And I'd be doing the young
rooster a service; saving him from his miss-stake, so to speak."

To-day Mr. Bradshaw was too much engrossed with the business in hand
to indulge any lengthy play of banter. He walked about his little
office, dictating fragments of memoranda, and insistently lighting and
relighting his pipe, which as insistently went out between matches. As
Minnie's fingers rippled over the keys and the white sheets flowed
through her typewriter he blessed his stars for the one jewel above
price in any office--a competent stenographer. At noon he had lunch
sent up from No Sing's; at mid-afternoon he had tea; at seven he had
supper. He seemed almost to stand guard over Minnie lest a "bank clerk
or farm hand or something" should snatch her from him. The long Sunday
was at an end and the light in the law office glowed brazenly and
alone amid the dark windows of the block before the brief was
completed and all the documents neatly filed in Mr. Bradshaw's
despatch bag.

"Thank you, Miss Stake," he said, as he buckled the straps. "Don't
know what I should have done without you. You can have two days off or
two days' extra pay, whichever you prefer. There won't be much doing
until I'm back, anyway."

As Minnie walked to her boarding house, too tired almost to sense the
romance in the gathering dusk, she wondered whether she would take two
days' leave or the extra pay. The leave would give her an opportunity
to go back to the farm; evenings with Cal, and escape from the
intolerable Mr. Tonnerfeldt, junior partner in the firm of Bradshaw &
Tonnerfeldt, insufferable on account of his "freshness" toward her,
and doubly insufferable in contrast with the genial and bantering Mr.
Bradshaw. On the other hand was two days' pay, and she found herself
in the grip of a sudden and growing appreciation of the value of
dollars. The economic side of the business of marrying was already
beginning to intrude itself. Not that Cal had actually asked her, but
their love was acknowledged; marriage must follow as a matter of
course. They would need all their dollars, she and Cal....

In the shadow of Mrs. Goode's boarding house she almost collided with
Archie Hale turning from the door.

"Oh, it's you, Minnie," he said, when they recognized each other.
"They told me you hadn't come back from the farm."

"I was at the office all day, Archie. Some special work for Mr.
Bradshaw."

"All day Sunday! The slave driver! I've a mind to have him up for
breach of the Lord's Day Act. Then he'd have a slippery client,
wouldn't he?"

"It couldn't be helped, Archie," she said, wearily. She was feeling
out a line of defence. "But I'm about all in. I don't think I can see
you to-night."

"A run in the car is just what you need; fresh air after being shut up
all day in that dingy hole. Wonder old Bradshaw wouldn't rent a decent
office. But it will soon be over, Minnie. I've great news; just
spoiling to tell it. Won't you come?"

"I'd like to, Archie, but-- Don't you see, it isn't quite fair?"

"How 'quite fair?' No, I don't see it at all. Come along."

He took her arm and they swung around in the deep twilight thrown by
the screened veranda. "Come along!"

"No, I can't," she protested. "Archie, I don't want to make it any
harder than I must, but I can't go with you--any more."

He dropped her arm. Even in the darkness she could see his face harden
and whiten.

"Not any more? Why?"

"We've been good friends, Archie, and I'd like to keep on being good
friends, but--I know what you want, and I can't give it to you, ever. . ..
Please don't misjudge me. I've told you as soon as I knew."

He was silent, and she murmured again. "Please don't misjudge me,
Archie. I like you, awfully, really, but not that way. I didn't
know--the difference--myself, until just lately."

His hand had sought the railing of the veranda, and when he spoke it
was not with the voice of Archie Hale, but of some one strange and far
away.

"Is it Cal Beach?" he asked.

"Yes," she whispered. ... "Oh, Archie, I'm so sorry."

"I congratulate him," she heard the strange voice say. Then it
continued, "I just called to mention that I have been appointed
manager of one of the Saskatchewan branches of our bank. I--I used to
think you would be interested."

He paused a moment, then turned quickly away, and before she realized
what had happened he had passed through the gate and disappeared down
the street. Sobered and on the verge of tears she sought her room. She
was genuinely sorry for Archie and her sorrow was not eased by a sense
that she had been rather less than fair to him. She had known that it
was Cal Beach--that it must be Cal Beach--for ever so long, but she had
used Archie to soothe her pride against the pangs of Cal's suspected
flirtations with Annie Frawdic. That hadn't been quite fair, and she
took herself sharply to task for it, but after half an hour's
introspection she concluded that it couldn't be helped, and it might
have been much worse. Archie would presently forget her altogether, or
think of her only as a pleasant incident, and marry some other girl
better suited to be his wife. The idea was not so comforting as she
had hoped to find it.

"At any rate I've got Cal--my Cal," she breathed, and in the joy of her
possession she fell asleep.

She was awakened by the June sun pouring through the eastern window of
her little room. Her alarm clock still allowed her fifteen minutes,
minutes which she nursed and clung to in blissful, lazy, idealizing
contemplation. With her bare round arms upstretched she linked her
fingers until the light shone pink in their delicate intersections;
then she drew them down upon her eyes and lay dreaming in an ecstasy
of tenderness. Cal--they were Cal's hands that closed her eyes.
... The pulse of young life beat strong within her, and the world
was so good--so good! She forgave it all its buffetings; she forgave it
Mrs. Goode's boarding house; she forgave it the drudgery of the farm;
with a smile she forgave it Annie Frawdic; she even almost forgave it
the insufferable Mr. Tonnerfeldt.

As she dressed she studied herself in the one uncertain mirror her
furniture afforded. She caught the round of her face, the curve of her
arm, the gentle contours of her neck, the warm glint of her new-bronze
hair, the grace of her firm, strong, supple body. They were charms,
she supposed; charms which man appraises with an instinctive eye. They
accounted for the glances--the not wholly unwelcome glances--of
admiration which she sometimes surprised in the office, on the street,
in Sempter & Burton's store. But they failed to explain so amazing a
phenomenon as that Cal Beach should fall in love with her. That she
should love Cal was understandable enough, but that Cal should love
her--that was the thing that baffled her reason. Now, Archie Hale--she
could understand that. But Cal Beach-- It was too wonderful for
explanation.

During the absence of Mr. Bradshaw she made the best of the situation
in the office, establishing a strictly business attitude toward Mr.
Tonnerfeldt, and maintaining it in the face of his elaborate
attentions. She wished she might have talked with Cal over the
telephone, but she knew how deadly are the ramifications of the rural
party line system. When, on Tuesday, she called her mother, she could
hear the surreptitious lifting of receivers, and she chose her words
accordingly. Everybody well? Yes. What was she doing? Preserves. What
was Dad doing? Nothing, likely. What were the men doing? Gander, she
didn't know; likely helping Dad. Cal was summer-fallowing-- She broke
off the conversation at that word. It was sufficient to have heard
Cal's name.

She wished she might have gone out to the farm for an evening, but
there was no opportunity. A wild thought that she should ask Archie
Hale to drive her darted into her mind, and, finding the changed
conditions there, darted out again as suddenly.

Wednesday evening Archie called again. He said he felt he had acted
rudely the other night and he didn't want her to think of him that
way. She said she didn't think of him that way--never had. It was she
who had been rude; she had not congratulated him on his promotion, nor
asked him anything about it. She was really very interested, she told
him. Archie said of course he was glad, but it didn't amount to much
after all, now that the bottom had fallen out of everything. She
assured him that it hadn't really; he just felt that way, but he'd
soon get over it and marry some much nicer girl--

"Would you soon get over it," he demanded, "if Cal Beach were to pass
you up?"

She whitened at the thought, and felt her ribs gripping about her
heart.

"But Cal wouldn't--he wouldn't do that," she whispered. "Oh, Archie,
I'm sorry." ... When he left she would have paid him the tribute of
a final kiss, but he exacted no such honor.

It was Saturday when Gander, dusty and flurried, burst into the
office. Minnie was taking dictation from Mr. Bradshaw when, raising
her eyes, she saw Gander in the door.

"Why Gander, what's wrong?" she cried, disregarding the voice engaged
in threatening suit unless this long over-due account, in connection
with which our client--

"Maybe nothin'," said Gander, with a sheepish laugh to cover his
agitation. "Maybe a good deal. Can I talk to you a minute, Minn?"

"Take your brother into my private office, Miss Stake," Mr. Bradshaw
suggested. "This can wait."

She led Gander into the little box which Mr. Bradshaw designated his
private office. Closing the door she turned to her brother, a sudden,
undefined fear trembling through her limbs. "What is it, Gander?
What's wrong?"

"Where's Cal?"

"I don't know. Where is he? Has anything happened?" Her hand was on
the knob of the door. She was trembling so she steadied herself
against it.

"Somethin's happened, sure enough, but not jus' what I figgered. You
ain't seen Cal?"

"Not since Saturday--Sunday morning, when I left the farm. Gander, tell
me!"

"Well, he's gone. Him an' Reed an' their old boat of a car. Las'
night, some time. Didn' know, none of us, till th' smorning. When he
didn' turn out to tend his horses I thought maybe he was sick, so I
went over to the granary. It was skinned out--ever'thin' gone. Old car
gone; hadn't missed it till then."

With contracting heart the girl listened to her brother's words. At
first the sense of them numbed her, as the shock of a wound
momentarily paralyzes the feeling of pain, but as Gander's recital
continued a consciousness of what it meant began to burn home upon
her. She waited a moment to speak, gripping herself.

"Oh, Gander, it can't be! Surely--he must have gone only on some little
trip; he'll be back by night; perhaps he's back now. He wouldn't go--he
couldn't go--altogether--without leaving a word!"

"I reckon he's gone," said Gander, doggedly. "He'd made a bit of a
table-- You was never in his room, Minnie?"

"N-no--no, Gander."

"Well, he'd built a little table, nailed to the wall, an' o' course it
was still there, an' a lamp on it Mother had lent him. Well, under the
lamp was an envelope. It was sealed an' addressed to Dad, an' I
figgered here was news."

"Yes--what did it say?"

"Nothin'--not a word. Jus' some money in it. Seems Dad had overpaid him
on wages, an' he left the diff'rence. Straight, so far as that goes.
But it shows he don' figger on comin' back."

She let herself down into a chair and sat staring at the rows of books
across the room. There was a vacancy in one of the rows; a book which
Mr. Bradshaw had taken to Winnipeg. She wondered if he had forgotten
to bring it back--

"I reckon this hits you pretty hard," said Gander, with a clumsy
attempt at being sympathetic, and she was back among realities.

"Pretty hard, Gander," she murmured. "Pretty hard. ... There's a
reason--I know that. I'll never believe anything else until I know the
reason."

"I always liked Cal," Gander conceded. "He was a queer guy, but
decent, an' I reckoned how the land was beginnin' to lie between you
an' him. That was why I didn' phone you. Might be all jus' a mistake,
an' the less said the better."

"Oh, I'm sure it is--it must be--a mistake."

"Besides, I didn' know--I was a bit afraid, Minn, that you an' him had
run off together. I'm sorry, Minn, but that's what I thought--"

"Gander!"

"An I didn' want nothin' said about it if it could be helped. We've
always been decent, Minn, an' I didn' want nothin'--"

"I understand, Gander." Her voice was suddenly calm. "We're decent
still. The family honor has not been compromised."

Came a tap on the door. "Miss Stake wanted on the telephone," said Mr.
Bradshaw.

"That will be news," she whispered to Gander as she hurried to her
desk.

It was Jackson. Was Gander there? Yes. Any news? Not yet. Well, here
was news. Annie Frolic has disappeared, too.

"What! I don't believe--"

"Yes. Last night, through the night. Went away in an auto--"

"I don't believe--"

"Told Erntons she was staying up for friends who were to call with an
auto. An' Cal was there last night, sitting with her in a hammock,
after dark--"

"I don't believe--"

She could hear the lifting of receivers on the party line; she could
almost hear the salacious lip-licking of the delighted eavesdroppers.
The world spun; the telephone swam away into distance, then smashed
against her head.

"I don't believe--"

"Water!" shouted Mr. Bradshaw. "Water! Damn it, Tonnerfeldt, can't you
see the girl's fainted?"




CHAPTER TWENTY


Cal and Reed, feeling their way in the darkness, wound through the
poplar bluffs that sheltered the Stake homestead from the winter
nor'westers. Once out of possible sight from the house Cal switched on
his lights, and they quickened their speed. On to the main road, down
the valley hills and across the bridge, they took their course along
the route over which they had come that bright May morning so many
eons ago.

"Are we going back to the city, Daddy X?" said Reed. He had drawn a
blanket up about him, as though the summer night were cold, and his
teeth chattered with an uncanny nervousness. Something about Daddy X
was so strange; so--so terrible.

"No, we're not going back to the city; not at present. Farther west."

Sure enough, at the forks at the foot of the hill Cal took the turn to
the west. There was a bad culvert, and the car lurched dangerously
over it.

"All right, Antelope, old girl. All right--all right. Don't fail us
now; we need you now, more than we ever did. Steady! That's better.
Now for the hill."

Muffled in his blanket, the sound of Cal's voice came to Reed in a
reassuring drone. He watched the green grass flowing by the car; the
occasional stone, white for a moment in the wavering headlight, then
suddenly gulped into blackness; the big, steady, friendly stars
overhead. He heard the rumbling of the motor, the patter of the
exhaust, the soft sluff of the wheels in the black earth of the road.
Presently all sounds seemed to join in a sort of lullaby: Farther west
... farther west ... farther west....

When he awoke they were stopped by a stream, and Cal was bending over
a fragment of fire, tending something with a very appetizing smell.
The boy stretched his cramped limbs and came down, investigating.

"Wild duck for breakfast, Reed, old scout," said Cal, in a voice that
resolutely strove for cheerfulness. "We'll have to take it
straight--not even salt. That's what comes of hitting the trail in such
a hurry."

Cal had shot a drake in the early morning--no difficult feat, as the
feathered folk were tame in the fancied security of the law. Splitting
the little body in two he had broiled it over a fire. One half of it
he now tendered to Reed. The boy ate it eagerly, leaving nothing but
the bones.

"Are we staying here, Daddy X?" he asked.

"No. We have still a long way to go."

They pushed on at once and travelled all that day. Several times the
cupolas of grain elevators in the prairie towns loomed on the horizon,
and Reed expected they would take the main road in that direction, but
always Cal swung off, following some side trail, and avoiding the
principal arteries of travel. He was able to obtain gasoline and food
from a farmer, and so he pressed on until darkness was again upon
them. Then they found a stream and camped beside it.

"Better go to bed, Reed," said Cal. "You must be tired. I want to
smoke--and to think."

But Reed hesitated.

"Anything wrong, old man?" Cal inquired.

"No, Daddy X. But--couldn't we have a bed-time story, to-night?"

"I'm afraid I don't know a bed-time story to-night. I want to think."

"You've been thinking all day. You've hardly spoken--"

The little voice went lumpy with loneliness, and the brave little lips
had a strange tremble to them. Cal extended his arms and the boy
nestled to his breast.

"All right, old scout. First things first. Let me see--

"Once there was a clean little tree, that was so proud of being clean
and straight. It stood by the side of a stream, and all day long it
would watch its reflection in the water, and think what a beautiful
straight young tree it was. It was a birch tree, I think, with smooth
white bark and clean limbs.

"Nearby grew a twisted willow, and the willow was very jealous of its
straight, clean neighbour. 'The birch puts on great airs,' said the
willow, 'but wait! Some day--some day.'

"Then came a man with a sharp axe, looking carefully at all the trees
and bushes. His eye fell on the birch, and as it was very beautiful he
marked it for his victim. That is often the way, Reed; it was the
deformities of the twisted willow that saved it from destruction; but
you cannot understand. 'Whack, whack!' went the sharp axe, and the
beautiful birch reeled and fell into the sympathetic arms of a great
poplar, that had known her since she was a tiny shoot.

"Then the man cut off her upper limbs, and trimmed her all about, and
fondled her smooth white skin with his hands. Although he had
destroyed her he seemed, in a way, to be very fond of her.

"And then he went down to the stream that flowed close by the feet of
the twisted willow. The birch had often watched her beautiful
reflection in that clear stream, but she never had been able to feel
its cool waters about her. And now the man thrust her into the stream,
so that the water came up about her waist.

"And then a strange thing happened. At the very point where the
beautiful birch met the water its straight lines were suddenly
twisted, so that it was straight no longer, but crooked. And the
twisted willow, looking on, cried to its neighbours, 'I told you! I
told you! Look at the beautiful birch now. I always said she was a
sham. Look at her now!'

"And the beautiful birch herself could not understand it at all, but
she wept that she who had been so straight could be so crooked.

"But presently the man came back for her, and drew her up out of the
water, and as soon as she was back in her own element she was straight
again. But she had heard what the willow had said, and now she
answered, gently but reprovingly, 'Willow, I am glad for what had
befallen me, because now I know that we are all what God has made us,
and not what we have made ourselves.'"

"What does it mean, Daddy X?" said the boy, when he was sure the story
ended.

"I don't know, Reed. I wish I did."

By the third day of their travel Cal judged that they were far enough
from Plainville to escape comment. Of pursuit he had no fear, but he
wanted to bury himself in a new community. They were now well across
the border into Saskatchewan, still avoiding the towns and the
principal roads, and making their way along the back trails that
linked the various settlements together.

"Have to go to work again pretty soon," he confessed. "The treasury is
getting low."

"So is the tank," said Reed, as the motor gave a warning sputter. "Let
us make for that shack."

They were on the brow of a hill, and in the valley below lay a
settler's shack, with fields of wheat and oats stretching down to a
stream that glistened white in the distance. By dint of gravity and
much persuasion Cal was able to coax Antelope almost to the shanty
door.

The door stood open, but there was no sign of anyone about.

"Well, let's explore," said Cal, and, going inside, they found a
single room, about twelve by fourteen feet in size, framed with bare
two-by-four studding and covered by a low, shingled roof. A rusty
stove, a table, a chair, a packing-box cupboard nailed against the
wall, a trunk, a gramophone, a home-made bed dishevelled in one
corner--these were the items of furniture. As it was nearing noon they
made themselves at home, digging early potatoes in the little garden
behind the shack, discovering bacon and butter in the pail hanging
down the well, starting a fire in the rusty stove. In a few minutes a
pleasant sizzle was coming from the frying pan and an appetizing odor
filled the room.

"Won't he mind?" Reed asked with some misgivings as Cal explored the
cupboard for dishes and further resources in food.

"Not likely. Hospitality with a Westerner is not a social function; it
has to do with the heart; he really means it. So you see you're as
welcome to a meal in his house in his absence as in his presence. You
may not understand all that--"

"Of course he does," said a hearty voice, and a man of about Cal's age
stood framed in the door. "Welcome? I should say so! And the meal
cooked to the bargain! How's the foraging?"

"Not so bad for a new cook," Cal answered. "Potatoes, bacon, bread and
butter, and a pail of jam. I was figuring on setting for three."

"Three is right," said the farmer, including Reed in his glance. "If
you can find enough dishes. If not, we can eat in relays. I'll be in
as soon as I unhitch. Saw the smoke and wondered what was doing."

He disappeared as suddenly as he had come, but a few minutes later
they heard him splashing in the basin at the front of the shack. Cal
had supplemented the farmer's dishes from the camp equipment carried
in the old Ford, and had set for three. He had moved the table over
beside the trunk, that Reed might use it for a chair, and had found a
box on which he himself could sit, and when the settler came in from
his ablutions, the meal was ready.

"This is something like it," said the farmer, surveying the
arrangements with approval. "Beastly business getting one's own meals.
My name's Mason--Fred Mason--and I'm the owner of this here country
estate except for certain prior claims by the original vendors and the
holders of the second mortgages. Yours?"

Cal introduced Reed and himself.

"I see an Ontario license plate on that old dust hound of yours," Mr.
Mason resumed. "Going far?"

"Not much farther," said Cal. "We're short of two essentials--cash and
gasoline."

"That makes the going a bit heavy," the farmer reflected over a
well-heaped fork of potatoes and bacon. "What do you do when you're at
home?"

"Been farming all summer."

Suddenly a thought struck Mr. Mason so hard the fork dropped from his
upraised hand.

"Say, maybe you're just the fellow I'm looking for!" he exclaimed.
"I've word to go home. Old folks not so young as they used to be and a
bit under the weather, but I'm tied up here with the stock. I'd be
back by harvest, and if you could just stick around and maybe finish
the ploughing and put up a bit of hay--"

They were not long in striking a bargain, and it was typical of Mr.
Mason that remuneration was the last thing he discussed. Indeed, he
seemed to have overlooked that detail altogether.

Cal brought it up. "What are you paying?" he inquired.

"Oh, I dunno. What's she worth?"

"I was getting forty at my last place."

"Pretty good. But I dunno. Tell you what, I'm not very flush with
cash, especially if I go East, but I can fix you up a credit at the
store for anything you need, and if you stay on until the crop is
threshed I'll make it right with you."

They shook hands on that, and Mason, elated with the sudden prospect
of a visit back home, promptly rolled all the responsibilities of the
farm into Cal's lap, as it were. He enumerated the horses, the "horned
stock," the pigs and the hens; explained about the ploughing and the
hay; cautioned Cal about fire, and to boil the water, as the well was
fed by surface drainage and there had been fever going around. After
dispatching Cal on horseback to the nearest neighbour, Peterson, a
Swede, to borrow a gallon of gasoline, and detailing Reed to wash the
dishes, now the center of a busy colony of flies, Mason engaged in an
earnest but unsuccessful search for a clean shirt in which to travel.

"Never mind, we'll buy a new shirt in town," he announced to the boy,
cheerily, when the forlorn hope in the bottom of his trunk revealed a
body with both arms missing. "I remember now. I cut those off last
fall to line the sleeves of my smock when the weather got cold. But
there's more at the store, which is only twelve miles away, and I'll
bet that old go-humper of yours can make it in about a week."

"Humph!" Reed exploded. "You should see Antelope go when she gets her
wind up. I bet we traveled a million miles coming here."

"Well, it was worth it," Mr. Mason remarked, with a quizzical grin.
"To me, anyway. Haven't had a boy on this place since it was born.
We'll sample the ice cream cones in Wheatview to-night, eh, old
scout?"

Reed was beginning to like this acquaintance. "That is what Daddy X
sometimes calls me," he said.

"Daddy X? That's a funny one. Who is he? Your dad?"

"No; just my Daddy X. My real father was killed in the war."

The big, wind-tanned face of the farmer softened, and his voice
dropped to a still friendlier note. "Sorry, old chap," he said,
combing his fingers through Reed's hair. "I lost a brother over there,
too, so we can be sort of pals, can't we?"

That night they drove to Wheatview together. Wheatview turned out to
be as like Plainville as one pea to another, except newer and barer.
There was the same single, busy street, lined with Fords and other
more pretentious carry-alls; the same row of shop fronts under
two-story buildings, culminating in a three-story hotel; the same--they
might have been the same--hardware store and implement shed and
poolroom and Chinese restaurant; the same vacant lots littered with
packing-boxes, barrels, and farm machinery. Mason introduced Cal to
the managers of one or two of the stores, establishing for him a line
of credit until "after threshing;" then, on the same convenient terms,
he bought for himself a traveling outfit, from new shoes of the latest
cut to a hat to match. In the barber's shop he underwent a scouring
and scraping, while Reed, his eyes filled with unwonted scenes, took
in the splendor of the barber's mirrors and the mysterious colored
liquids in the funny-shaped bottles. When tonsorial skill could do no
more Mason took shelter with his bundles in a little room at the back
of the shop, from which he presently emerged in the glory of his new
clothes, very unlike the ruddy farmer of a few hours before. In an ice
cream "emporium" nearby he filled Reed to the danger point with all
sorts of concoctions, bought cigars for himself and Cal, and gave
final instructions concerning the management of the farm.

They saw their new employer off on the night train, discovered
Antelope among a swarm of her younger relatives, and retraced their
way to the Mason farm. The course lay southeasterly; behind them
glowed the lingering luminosity of the midsummer night; overhead were
clear, friendly stars. In the air was the scent of prairie roses
mingled with the first faint perfumes of the early wheat. Now and
again the headlights of an approaching automobile blazed along their
path; now and again the shadow of a farmsteading, wrapped in slumber,
loomed up sudden and vague through the gathering darkness. Presently
Reed, from much feasting, fell asleep, and Cal was left alone with his
thoughts.

"I did the only thing I could," he confided to Antelope. "I know now
that for days I was sheer, stark mad. I know now--I have occasion to
know--how easily one can get on the wrong track; how thin, after all,
is the partition between good and evil, and how good the evil may
sometimes appear. If it hadn't been for Annie Frawdic-- I suppose our
jails are full of people not much worse--not any worse--than I. I must
write an article on that when I get settled down--when I get settled
down."

He ended in a bitter laugh. For an instant a vision of a simple cabin
by the shore of a lake, with a typewriter under the trees and Minnie
Stake singing from somewhere in the house, framed itself like a
picture in the eye of his imagination; the next, it was gone, and the
black road rolled up incessantly under the rumbling wheels. This was
the price; the dethroning of that vision, casting it down and out even
from the inmost chambers of his dreams; this was the price he had
bargained with himself to pay that the sleeping boy at his side might
grow up unashamed. Yet to Minnie his thoughts would turn as steel to
an irresistible magnet. He wondered how she had received the news of
his flight, and what interpretation she had put upon it. He wondered
how long it would be until she would find solace in the attentions of
Archie Hale. He loved Minnie Stake, but he had, or thought he had, no
illusions about her. Minnie was a practical girl. She would take her
blow standing, smother her grief and her furious wonder within
herself, and make the best of the situation. Just as he was doing.

He reflected then, and often in the days immediately to come, that
Fortune is a capricious, but not unfriendly, mistress. She had
threatened his health that she might show him the land of the open
trail, and his life had grown abundantly. She had introduced him to
love and hate, that he might know how tremendous were their sorrows.
She had robbed him of his home, turned him into the wilds a fugitive,
and promptly sheltered him again under the roof of the genial Mason.
She had torn from him his sister in agony, and given him a son who was
more than many sisters.

"Yes," he admitted, "I have lost much, but I have gained more. I have
paid for Reed, but Reed is worth the price."




CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


Life on the Mason farm moved along pleasantly enough. It was very
different from Jackson Stake's; here Cal and Reed seemed alone in the
world. From their shack in the valley no other habitation could be
seen; even the rambling buildings of Peterson, their nearest neighbor,
were cut from view by a shoulder of the hills. Now and again a
settler's wagon creaked its slow course along the trail that led to
Wheatview; occasionally an automobile sped by, trailing a cloud of
dust; but neither settler nor motorist gave more than a glance to the
Mason shack, nor so much as a thought to its occupants. The nearest
telephone was miles away, and the nearest school still farther.

It was twelve miles to Wheatview, but the railway passed not far from
the Mason farm, and Reed soon discovered that by climbing the bank of
the valley he could command a view of the freight trains, crawling
like gigantic serpents, until they faded out of view in the heat-haze
of the plains. Many of the freight trains stopped at a siding and a
water tank about four miles away, and, from his point of observation,
the boy began to pick up an acquaintance with them. He soon learned,
too, the hours at which passenger trains might be expected, and as he
watched them rushing by, trailing behind their pennants of steam and
smoke, he felt that this was a very interesting world indeed. Some day
he would be an engineer, and one of those monsters would answer to his
hand!

The absence of all other companionship threw Cal and Reed more closely
together than ever. Cal put the boy to useful work, trapping gophers
in the fields; washing dishes, sweeping, and cleaning in the house;
helping with the feeding of horses and the care of livestock and
poultry. Reed contributed with his own fork in the hay field, hoisting
little tufts of the new-mown grass on to the waiting wagon, and even
drove a dubious sorrel on the hayrake for short periods under Cal's
attentive eye. They had found a pond where the water was suitable for
swimming, and in the evenings of the hot summer days they would splash
together in its liquid freshness. Already Cal was beginning to put
into effect his orderly practices, tidying the yard and buildings,
ranging the machinery in regimental array, mowing the long weeds that
grew behind the barn. Had there been anyone to note he might have seen
a soul had moved into the body of the Mason farm.

With all these occupations Cal sought to keep his mind engaged, tried
to maintain the high spirit of his self-abnegation. He assured himself
he was doing the only thing possible, and that he was very happy with
a virtuous sense of unselfishness. It was a case of directing his
energies aright--the basic thing in the development of a civilized
society. He would be true, at least, to his own theories. Order was
the rule of life; order, and system, and growth based upon a
confidence in the ultimate triumph of good over evil. What of it if,
in accomplishing that triumph, the individual must be crushed, as the
stones are crushed in building a highway for the traffic of the world?
Progress, too, demands her highways, and builds them of any material
at hand. The material may be crushed, but progress goes on. Very well;
that was his contribution.

But there were times when his philosophies deserted him, and in their
desertion stripped away the veil of his artificial composure,
revealing to him how utterly dejected and miserable he was. It was
when alone in the fields, away from the presence of the boy, that he
felt his load most unbearable. With Reed at hand the stake seemed
worth the price, but with Reed away his mind would revert to that
dream of a bungalow down by the lake. Then would come a tremendous
desire to write to Minnie Stake--to reopen the wound which was so
sorely healing. For these reasons he encouraged Reed to believe that
his help in the fields was essential, called him his hired man, and
clung to his company as the one thing left in life.

There were times, however, when the boy seemed listless and dull;
there were days when even the prospect of driving the sorrel mare on
the hayrake failed to stir his enthusiasm.

"What's the matter, old man?" Cal would ask with a concern he tried to
hide, on such occasions. "Are you lonely for someone to play with?"

"I don't know. I guess so."

"Well, we must find you someone. I wish we had a dog."

"I wish we had Trixie and Big Jim."

"So do I."

"And Grandma and Jimmie Ernton and Minnie."

"So do I. ..."

So things went on until a particularly hot afternoon in mid-July. Reed
was more moodish than usual, and at length Cal sent him to the house,
directing him to stay quietly in the shade until it was time to
prepare supper. "You might make supper a little early," he added, with
a sudden happy thought, "and we'll drive to town to-night and see a
picture show."

Reed's eyes lighted momentarily, and he trudged off toward the shack.
But when Cal followed at five he found no preparations for supper.
Reed was lying on the bed in the corner of the little room.

"Why, what's the matter, old scout? No supper to-night?"

"I don't feel very well," the boy answered, beginning to cry. "I've
got a headache, and I'm dizzy, and I don't feel very well."

Cal felt his heart suddenly gripped in a strange and stifling clutch.
Reed had always been so well. ... Sick, under these conditions. ...
If he should lose everything now!

He moved anxiously to the side of the bed and placed his hand on the
child's forehead. It was hot and dry. The pulse was rapid, the
breathing quick and catchy. He raised him slightly in his arms.

"Any pains anywhere?"

"No, but I have a headache, and--I--don't feel--very well."

The voice trailed off listlessly while Cal's mind went plunging
through strange crannies of memory for all he knew about treatment of
fever. The first thing was to call a doctor. It was four miles to a
telephone. He could be back in half an hour.

"Can you stick it out alone for half an hour, Reed, while I go to call
a doctor? We'll get a doctor and have you fixed up in no time."

The boy's eyes, unnaturally bright, were fixed on the bare rafters of
the roof, and he seemed to be swallowing at something in his throat.
It was a minute before he answered. "All right, Daddy X," he breathed.
"But don't--be--long."

Cal rushed to his car, chased by something nearer panic than he had
known since childhood. If only there were a woman; Minnie, Mrs. Stake,
Annie Frawdic--any woman! He cranked viciously, but got no answering
chuck. He straightened up, wiped his forehead--to discover that he was
perspiring profusely--and cranked again. No response. Horseback, then,
and he rushed toward the stable. On his way a thought overtook him and
he rushed back to the car. Sure enough, he had forgotten to put on the
switch. He set it, cranked again, and Ante, well primed, started off
with a roar.

The incident steadied him. "No use losing your head, Cal, boy," he
soothed himself. "You need it now more than ever. Reed will be all
right. But if he shouldn't--"

The thought added another notch to his throttle, although he was
already tearing wildly through the valley. If he should throw a tire;
if he should break a steering arm--

A tremendous bump in a fresh badger hole cautioned him, and he reduced
his speed. It was only four miles to Dempman's, and the difference
between a breakneck pace and a reasonable gait could not be vital.
Dempman, too, was a bachelor--worse luck. There was no woman to whom he
could turn.

He found Dempman's shack empty, and no one in sight, but the door was
not locked. He hurried in, located the telephone, lifted the receiver,
thrust it to his ear.

"Get off the line," said a woman's voice. "There's someone on the
line, Carrie. Get off! The line's busy."

"Pity one couldn't have the line for a minute without someone butting
in," another feminine voice added. "Get off! How do you put up your
strawberries, Isobel, pound for pound, or how? I always do mine pound
for pound, but Mrs. Fordley was sayin' in Wheatview she was gettin'
herself a new hat and I seen her in the store, so, of course, I went
up and said how-do to her, and, my land, you know that old hat of
hers? I guess she's had that ever since they homesteaded, at least as
long as I remember, and we've been here six years--or is it seven?--let
me see, was it six years ago last spring? You ought to know because
you'se folks came the spring after us; at any rate, it was the spring
we had so much rain in May and the roads were something awful! I'll
never forget the night we landed. You remember Pete came out the fall
before, and he was at the station to meet me, and the roads! My land,
you couldn't see the axle--"

"May I have the line a moment? I want to call Wheatview?" Cal
interrupted.

"Who's that fresh guy, Isobel? Someone's always buttin' in. Tell him
he'll get the line when we're good an' through. Oh, my land, Isobel,
did you hear about Mrs. Garton's setting of thor'bred eggs? Well, she
paid four or five dollars a dozen or something like that--"

"Will you let me have the line a moment? I want to call a doctor."

"There he is again. Can you beat it, Isobel? And that old gag about
callin' a doctor. That's played out years ago. 'Pon my word I haven't
had a visit on this phone for I don't know how long, always somebody
buttin' in. What was I talkin' about? Let me see-- Oh, yes, about
putting up strawberries, pound for pound, or how. Pete says I make all
my jams too rich. He says if I'd show my jams at the Wheatview fair
there'd be nothin' to it, but just one, two, three, but, my land, I
ain't got the nerve to go in for that kind of thing, although they do
say that bein' the wife of a director has more to do with the prizes
than anythin' else. Eh, what do you think? Anyway, I haven't the time--
Oh, did I tell you 'bout Louise--she's our second, you know--how well
she done at the summer exams? Pete says he don't know where Louise
gets her brains, but I tell him I could guess--"

"Take care, Carrie! That's a hard one on you. Ha! Ha! Ha! Watch your
step, Carrie!"

"Oh, my land, Isobel; what a mind you have! I never thought--"

"May I have the line a minute? It is really serious. There's a boy
very sick and I want to call the doctor for him--"

"Oh, _can_ that old gag! Line's busy! Get off the line!"

"I'm in dead earnest. I've got to get a doctor at once, and I'm going
to stay on this line until I get him. Moreover, Carrie, I'm going to
explain to your husband how it is that he doesn't understand where
Louise gets her brains--"

There was a gasp and a clicking of receivers, and a minute later Cal
had his connection through to Wheatview. Dr. Thompson's wife answered,
as the doctor himself was out of town. She couldn't say when he'd be
back. Yes, he would come out as soon as he returned. Yes, he knew the
place. ... Probably typhoid. No solid food, and if he becomes
delirious, keep down the temperature by bathing, but be careful not to
let him take a chill. Yes, Dr. Thompson will come at once, as soon as
he returns. No, there is no other doctor in Wheatview. No, I'm afraid
it's not possible to get a nurse; there are so many demands--

With this Cal had to be satisfied, and he turned the situation over in
his mind as he hurried back to Reed. It might be hours--many
hours--before the doctor could come. It might be morning. His
helplessness pressed home upon him; he wanted tremendously someone
upon whom he could lean in this moment of trial. This was the
unexpected, the bolt out of the blue sky--

He found Reed apparently asleep, and he stole gently to the bed. But a
consciousness of his presence seemed to seize the lad; he stirred, and
muttered something which Cal's ear did not catch.

"It's I, Reed, old boy; it's Daddy X."

"Daddy X? Where's Trixie?"

Cal was about to explain when he remembered having read somewhere that
the wandering delusions of a patient in fever delirium should be
humored rather than explained or contradicted.

"Trixie's outside, playing somewhere. With Big Jim, I guess."

The low sun poured through the western window and its yellow rays lit
up the bed. They fell across the flushed face of the child; they
limned the faint smile on his lips as he heard the assurance that
Trixie was playing with Big Jim. They stirred to life the atoms of
dust in their amber wedge and blazed upon the water pail in the corner
of the room.

Cal brought him water, and he drank greedily, sinking back from the
upraised dipper as though into a stupor of sleep.

"Where's Grandma?" he suddenly demanded. "I want Grandma."

"Perhaps she'll come pretty soon."

The boy began to sob. "I want Grandma--now."

"All right; I'll see if I can get her."

Cal turned toward the stove, and, remembering suddenly the advice from
the doctor's wife, started a fire to heat water for a bath. Reed had
again fallen into quietness, as though awaiting the arrival of Mrs.
Stake. Cal dipped a towel in cold water, and, bringing it with him,
laid it across the child's forehead. As it happened, it covered his
eyes.

"Is that you, Grandma?"

In that moment came an idea to Cal, and, with simulated voice, he
answered, "Yes, dear. Are you feeling better?"

"Grandma!" he cried. "Hold me in your arms!"

A vision from somewhere in memory burst upon Cal--the scene which he
had once witnessed through the window of the "room" in Jackson Stake's
house. There, under the cheap crayon portraits of her ancestors, the
old woman sat with this boy in her arms, her eyes closed, her hungry
soul rambling with its unknown offspring through the Elysian fields.
There, surely, by the light that never was on land or sea, these two
had seen, and had known....

Cal wrapped a blanket about the boy, and, still keeping his eyes
covered, raised him from the bed. The little head fell back against
his shoulder, content.

"Sing to me, Grandma," he murmured. Then, suddenly jerking himself
into an upright position, "You're not Grandma! You're Daddy X!"

"Yes, I'm Daddy X. Grandma, I'm afraid, is too far away to come at
present."

"She can't be far away," Reed answered, slowly, as though groping
about in his mind for some illusive fact. "I saw her a minute ago."

The words sent a strange shiver up and down Cal's back. Was this--?

The kettle began to sing on the stove, and he sought refuge in action.
Returning Reed to the bed, he drew his fingers about the little body
and realized how irritating the coarse blankets must be to the dry,
burning skin. But he had no linen or cotton sheets; not even a
tablecloth. Thoughts of a tablecloth suggested another substitute, and
he went plundering in the battered suitcase which housed his personal
effects. Presently he emerged with an unsoiled shirt of his own which
he spread on the bed as a miniature sheet. Then, with hot water and a
cloth--he tore a shirt sleeve loose for the purpose--he gently bathed
the boy, being careful to expose only a small portion of the body at a
time. The operation appeared to bring relief, for Reed lay more
quietly, and for short periods seemed to fall into a sort of stupor of
sleep.

So he bathed and caressed, with hot water on the body and cold water
on the head, until the heat of the fever seemed somewhat abated and
the skin grew moist to the touch. So he sat and tended his patient as
the sunlight died in his western window; as the glow of the evening
sky faded from yellow to mauve to purple; as the golden band on the
horizon dimmed to steel grey under the enveloping curtains of the
night. So he sat as the lingering breezes of the gloaming stole along
the silent valley and whispered about the eaves and gables of the
roof. So he sat, paying once more the overpaid but never satisfied
price of parenthood, as the night settled down upon the endless plains
and the cold stars, one by one, lighted their beacons overhead.

It was thus that Doctor Thompson found him, just as the hands of the
little clock on the wall were pointed to twelve.




CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


Quickly but systematically the doctor made his examinations, while
Cal, seized once more with a sense of his own impotence, stood
helplessly by. A yellow pallor from the single smudgy lamp hung about
the bed, and against its feeble rays the doctor's robust form flung
its huge silhouette on the wall. Cal stood in silence, in the hope and
fear of one held on the edge of abysmal things.

"He's running quite a temperature," said Doctor Thompson, at length.
"Almost a hundred and four. Too bad we couldn't have him in a
hospital, but he can't be moved at present. He's been miserable for
awhile?"

"Well, he hasn't seemed quite himself," said Cal, glad for the relief
which he found in even the most casual words. "Didn't seem to have any
spirit--"

"Exactly. I'm afraid we have a case of typhoid on our hands, and it's
rather awkward dealing with it out here. Always been a healthy boy?"

"Oh, quite. ... Doctor, is he very sick?" The words came at last
with a rush, and the doctor, for the first time since he entered the
room, looked keenly into the anxious face in the semi-gloom beside
him.

"Your boy?" he asked, evading an immediate answer.

"Well, yes. My sister's. I have had him since he was a baby."

"Ah! His mother is not living, then? That is unfortunate. When a child
is sick he needs his mother."

"Is he very sick, Doctor?"

"Yes, I would say he is. A typhoid patient is always sick--very sick.
Still, the percentage of mortality is not so very high, where proper
care is given. To be quite frank with you, that is what worries me
most. If we could have a nurse-- Unfortunately, the supply just now is
much less than the demand. Typhoid is a disease for the nurse rather
than for the doctor."

"Couldn't we get one from Winnipeg?"

"It's doubtful. You understand," and the doctor hesitated as though to
choose words that would not give offense; "this is hardly a Grade A
position. A nurse wouldn't thank me for bringing her out here when
there are so many other calls."

Cal's eyes followed the doctor's unconscious glance around the small
and sordid room, and he understood all that had been left unsaid.

"What can I do?" he exclaimed, desperately. "I will do
anything--anything. Surely someone will help. Surely there is someone
with heart enough--"

"It's not lack of heart," said the doctor, gently. "It's lack of
experience--lack of experienced help. Look at me," and he suddenly
stood up before him. He was a big man in the prime of life, but there
were marks of pain and weariness about his eyes. "I haven't had my
clothes off for four nights. Yet I would take him to town, to my own
house, if I dared move him. I can't send my wife; she's indispensable
there, and I've no one else to send."

Suddenly he was again looking keenly at Cal. "You're not Mason, are
you?"

"Oh, no. Mr. Mason is in the East. I'm carrying on for him for a few
weeks. My name is Beach--Calvin Beach. And I'm sorry for what I
said--about there being no heart; you understand?"

The doctor laid a hand on his arm. "That's all right, Beach, old man,"
he said. "I've a couple of kiddies of my own, and I know what this
means to you. But I begin to see hope. You're a man of education, or
I'm mistaken?"

"I'm a university man."

"Good! You'll have to take hold. You will have learned the value of
exactness, and will be able to follow my instructions. You can carry
on for a day or two. I'll send out bedding; sheets, you know, and
everything of that kind, and you will have to be nurse until we can
get help. We must have a woman--not necessarily a nurse, but a woman of
sense and intelligence as soon as possible. Is there no relative--no
friend of the family to whom you can appeal? In the meantime you can
carry on."

The last words fell on Cal's ears unheard. His mind was away, away on
a wild mission of hope. It was wild, he knew, but there was a hope in
it, a gleam of hope.

"Paper!" he demanded. "Your prescription pad. Let me write a
telegram!"

The doctor extended a pad and Cal scrawled on it:

  Mrs. Jackson Stake, Plainville, Man. Reed is very sick and I
  cannot get a nurse. We are alone on a homestead, twelve miles
  from Wheatview. Will you come? Typhoid fever. I can explain
  everything. Do it for Reed--if not for me. Will you come? His
  life is at stake. Cal.

"Send that for me as soon as you get to town. It is my only hope."

But the doctor returned the slip to his hand. "Suppose you take it to
town yourself. I'll stay with the boy until you return. Besides, I may
be able to steal an hour's sleep. I saw your car in the yard, or you
can take mine if it's out of order."

Cal seized the doctor's hand in a quick grasp of gratitude, and a
minute later he was cranking Antelope.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Minnie Stake was taking dictation from Mr. Tonnerfeldt on the
absorbing topic of a chattel mortgage on four cows described as
follows, that is to say, Betsy, aged seven years, brown, white patch
on ribs; Rosey, five years--when the ring of the telephone bell
interrupted the machinery of the law.

"Damn a telephone," said Mr. Tonnerfeldt, who was enjoying his usual
bad humour. "The most impertinent of all inventions. Butts right in
and ditches your train of thought. Who is it, Miss Stake?"

"It seems to be for me," she answered. "Yes, this is Miss Stake. A
telegram? Yes, I'll take it. Go ahead."

The girl began making characters in shorthand, when suddenly even Mr.
Tonnerfeldt, absorbed though he was in the damage which had been done
to the process of the law in the case of the four cows aforesaid, took
note of her agitation. Her face had gone suddenly colourless; her
hands trembled; the receiver threatened to fall from her grasp.

"What's the matter, Miss Stake? Nothing wrong at home, I hope?" was
the concerned inquiry of Mr. Tonnerfeldt, who, contrary to Minnie's
fixed belief, had a heart tucked away somewhere in the recesses of his
much-detested person. But Minnie could not answer. She was gazing
through infinities of time and space at certain twisted little
characters on the paper before her, and realizing with a woman's
intuition that she had come to the great moment of her life. For,
among a sea of minor confusions, one great thought had swept over her
like a tidal wave. The message was for her mother, that was clear
enough, but--why not substitute? The telegraph operator, for the sake
of convenience, and perhaps because of a certain romantic flavor about
the sudden disappearance of Cal Beach and the salacious village gossip
that had coupled it alternately with the names of Annie Frawdic and
Minnie Stake, had telephoned the message to her. He would not
telephone it to the farm; he would probably not even trouble to mail
it; she could avoid any risk on that score by calling for it at the
office. Then it would be in her hands. And if she were to substitute
for her mother, who was to know? And who had a right to care?

Here was the opportunity to clear up the mystery. She did not propose
to run after Cal Beach; indeed, it was a question whether she ever
could forgive the outrageous treatment she had received at his hands;
but she proposed to get at the facts. In any action that was the first
step; get the facts. That he had gone with Annie Frawdic she had never
really believed, but it was plain enough that others believed it; the
half-quizzical, half-despising, sidelong glances which she sometimes
encountered on the street, and which sent the color flowing into the
roots of her hair, blared to her like a trumpet that her name was
being bandied about by the gossip-mongers of Plainville. Cal Beach had
done that. He had left her in an impossible position without a word of
explanation. With a secret hope she had been the first to handle the
office mail day by day after his departure, but day by day the secret
hope had died down until finally it went out altogether. Whatever the
cause of his strange conduct, whatever explanation he might offer,
there could be no excuse--

And now he was in trouble. She read the scrawly characters again; read
them while they swam before her eyes. He was appealing to her mother.
Why not to her? The girl crushed that stab of strange jealousy out of
her bosom, but the sting of it remained. He was offering to explain.
He said he could explain. Why, then, had he not explained? Why had he
left her to be the subject of comment of those-- It was too bitter to
think about. Surely she had been humiliated enough. Must she humiliate
herself further by flying to him; rush to him on a subterfuge, he who
had left her--

Slowly, out from the mist, came one clean, triumphant fact. It was not
for himself he was appealing. It was for Reed. As she read the notes
again she knew that Cal Beach--the Cal Beach she had known--could never,
never write that telegram on his own behalf. Not though he stood at
the gates of death. _There_ was humiliation for you. Suddenly she saw
it clear as daylight. What was her humiliation to this? Nothing but
love--his love for Reed--could have wrung that appeal from his heart.

"I'm going home!" she said, springing from her seat. "I'll have to be
away for--for some time. I hope you'll manage. It's very important.
Will you call a car for me, please, Mr. Tonnerfeldt? I want a car to
go home."

On the road, as they tore through long lanes of summering wheat, she
turned the situation over and over in her mind. Reed was
sick--dangerously sick. No help could be had. Cal, frantic with his
love for the boy, had swallowed his pride--whatever wild pride it had
been that had led him to such inexplicable behaviour--and had appealed
to her mother. He had remembered her mother's attachment to Reed, and
had turned to her in his distress. But did he really expect her mother
to leave the work of the farm--? Cal knew how inexorable were the
demands of that work. With a sudden pounding of her heart she wondered
whether he had really expected her mother to come, or had he
deliberately opened the way for the substitution which she planned? Of
course, he couldn't make such an appeal direct to her. ... Cal was
deep, deep.

She had settled her course and regained her composure by the time the
car drew up at the weather-beaten house which she still called home.
Her mother unbended from the mixing-board, her hands heavy with dough,
as Minnie's shadow fell in at the door.

"Well, for the soul or sake o' me, Minnie, are you sick? What a start
you give me! You look plumb-- You ain't lost your job, Minnie?"

"No--nothing as bad as that. Where's Dad? I'm going away for awhile,
and I might as well tell you both at once."

"Goin' away? My land! He's out--oh, here he comes, him an' Jackie.
What's it all about?"

"I want to tell you all at once," said Minnie, addressing her father
and brother, "and so save words--and time. I have a telegram from Cal;
he's at Wheatview, Saskatchewan, and Reed is dangerously sick. He
can't get a nurse, and he wants me to go out--and I'm going."

For a moment the old farmer stood--stock still under the impact of this
news and declaration. Then, with one great hand he scuffled his thin
hair as though to promote cerebral activity.

"Well, I'll be-- Cal Beach, did you say? Wheatview, did you say? Well,
I'll--"

Mrs. Stake had dropped into a chair, heedless of the dough that
settled in her lap. "Reed--Reed sick--Reed sick," she repeated to
herself, as one who would placate a thought too terrible to be
accepted. "It's me he needs. If only the work wasn't so everlastin'.
Reed sick! The little boy--the poor little boy." She rocked back and
forth in a paroxysm of anxiety and sympathy.

"I think we've all had enough of this Beach fellow," said young
Jackson. "You know what everybody's saying about Minnie. You know--"

"What are they saying about me?" demanded the girl, hotly. "What are
they saying, and what do I care what they say? Out with it!"

"Well, if you must know, they're saying that Stake's hired man got out
when the gettin' was good. Nice stuff, that, to hear whenever a fellow
goes to Plainville."

"Oh--you--you--you--" Under the insult Minnie's face, which had been
flushed, went white; her eyes no longer flashed, but contracted into a
cold, murderous glow. No longer was she a docile Stake, but a furious
daughter of her mother's dark blood. On the table lay a knife; long,
thin, well-ground for the kitchen services. Her hand found it; closed
on it; slowly, with the stalking step of a tigress, she moved toward
her brother. But her father, suddenly the masterful man that he
sometimes was, threw himself upon her. "You're crazy, Minnie; you're
crazy! There, girl, be still. Shut up, Jackson! You ought to be
whipped like a dog! There now, girl, be still. Be still, Minnie.
That's it, Minnie, be still. You're goin' to Cal if you want to, an'
if anybody wants to talk he can settle with me," and he turned
defiantly to his son. "You understand, if anybody wants to talk about
Minnie he can settle with me. I don' believe anythin' wrong about
neither Minnie nor Cal, an' if anybody else believes it they can
settle with me."

"Of course, I don't believe it, either," said Jackson, adroitly
shifting ground. "And Minnie needn't try to take it out on me. I just
said what people are sayin', which ain't very nice, you'll admit."

He was thinking fast, realizing that he had made a serious blunder.
The success with which Cal had given him the slip, and the
completeness with which he had disappeared, had left him baffled and
beaten. It was not entirely that he had expected to blackmail his
victim out of money; it was the cleverness with which he had been
outwitted that rankled within him. It had been a duel between them; a
duel with no seconds, no referee, no witnesses, and first blood had
gone to his adversary. Now, through a whim of fate, the weapons were
in his hands again, and he had been fool enough to jeopardize them by
his gratuitous offense to Minnie.

"It wasn't my saying," he continued, "and I'm not hinting that I
believe it, or anything like that. I'm sorry, Minn, for offending you.
Where's the telegram? What does he say?"

But Minnie had disposed of the telegram by tearing it up on the road.
"I haven't got it," she said; "the agent 'phoned it to me, and I
haven't got it. Here are my notes," and she read them off. "You see
it's serious, and there's no time to lose, as I must catch the next
train."

They stood in silence for a moment, contemplating this sudden upheaval
in their affairs. It was young Jackson who was first to offer a
suggestion.

"The train connection to Wheatview is bad, and it will take you a
couple of days, Minn, if you have to go 'round by Winnipeg. If Dad
would lend his car I would go with you, and we could drive it in less
time. We could spell off at the wheel and drive day and night.
Besides, he says they're alone on a homestead and--don't fly off
again--it wouldn't be quite the thing for you to go by yourself. What
do you say, Dad?"

"Sure! Take the car if it will save time. Minnie an' you can get your
things together an I'll fill her up with oil an' gasoline. Wisht I
could go myself. I might be able--"

Half an hour later they were on the road. Jackson was at the wheel and
Minnie sat in silence beside him. He drove so furiously that
conversation was impossible, even had she been disposed to speak, so
she clung to her seat and wrestled with her thoughts. She was not
enthusiastic over her brother's decision to accompany her, but she had
not been able to find any argument against it. He had wounded her
deeply and was, she supposed, offering this act by way of atonement.
That Jackson entertained no friendly feelings toward Cal she had for
some time suspected, and his outburst in the kitchen had confirmed
that suspicion. Taking that fact and their own quarrel into
consideration his willingness now to be of service did him credit.
Altogether it was a situation in which the less said the better.

After two hours he came to a stop and motioned to her to take the
wheel. She had learned to drive her father's car only for pastime, and
had always had a healthy respect for speed limits, but she proved
to-day as furious a driver as her brother. And so they sped along the
general route which Cal and Reed had taken a few weeks before. They
were under no necessity of avoiding the towns and the principal roads,
as Cal had been, and by nightfall a third of the distance to Wheatview
had been covered. They halted for supper and to stretch their limbs,
and then pressed on again, one dozing while the other drove. So on
through the night. The first grey of dawn found the girl at the wheel,
her eyes straining into the darkness of a road which continually
heaved up before her like a narrow causeway between infinite gulfs of
night. Slowly the blackness faded into a receding curtain of grey;
suddenly the dawn blazed forth overhead, and a new day was born. The
vague shadows of the plains took definite shape; the windows of the
farmhouses far ahead, caught in the first rays of the rising sun,
flashed their red heliograms against the scattering banks of darkness
to the west. The light fell on prairie ponds, silent and clear as
quicksilver; it sparkled on jewels of dew on a billion blades of
grass; it strung itself in thin golden ribbons along the telephone
wires that stretched forever ahead. Up from the distance came a mighty
railway train, pouring mountains of billowing smoke into the still
air; the engine, at first a diamond point where the sun's beams
focussed in its headlight, grew rapidly black and terrific as it
approached; then it rushed by, its drive-wheels racing and the steel
rails twanging underneath. The engineer saw the girl at the wheel and
waved her a salute as they passed, and Minnie waved back, and of a
sudden knew once more that life is worth the living. In an
intoxication of speed she fled through a sleeping hamlet and again up
an eternity of road which narrowed to a point and faded out of view on
the edge of the sky.

At four in the afternoon they were nosing along the main street of
Wheatview, watching for the sign on a doctor's office. Doctor
Thompson, as usual, was not at home, and his wife, a busy woman, was
engaged at the telephone when they entered. When she had hung up the
receiver she turned to them.

"Cal Beach? Oh, yes, the doctor spoke of him. Has a little boy down
with typhoid. Yes, the doctor was out to see him again this morning.
He seems to be holding his own. The doctor says Mr. Beach is a
wonderful man; never saw the like, without a woman in the house.
You'll be friends of his?"

"Well, yes," Minnie explained. "That is, we--we're acquaintances, and
we're--very fond--of the boy, too, and we came to see if we could help."

From Mrs. Thompson they learned the road to the Mason homestead, and
the girl gained a few suggestions concerning the care of the patient.
Ten minutes later they were again on their way.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Cal Beach had set up a tub on the shady side of the shack and was busy
with his hospital washing when an automobile turned from the main road
and bore quickly down upon him. Engaged in his operations, he did not
hear its approach until it drew up alongside. Then, for a moment, he
distrusted his eyes, but slowly and surely the dust-begrimed figures
in the car resolved themselves into Jackson and Minnie Stake!




CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE


Minnie was first out of the car. She came toward him with outstretched
hand.

"You see, Cal, I have come. I came immediately I received your
telegram. We thought we could make better time by car, so Jackson
drove me. How is Reed?"

With a grain sack tied about his waist for an apron, his sleeves
tucked above his elbows, and a wet sheet still clasped in his hands,
Cal had a sense that his appearance did him rather less than justice.
Even in the embarrassment of this unexpected meeting he was conscious
of that. He was conscious, too, of Minnie's eyes on his face,
searchingly; of a tremor in her voice which she had been unable to
quite conceal. Her untamed loveliness held and thrilled him even
through the chill of the sinister presence of Jackson Stake, and a
pang of poignant sympathy clutched his heart. Why had _she_ come? Not
that he would have sent her back, for worlds, but--it was going to be
increasingly difficult for them. And Jackson-- The words, "But I didn't
wire for you--it was your mother!" sprang to his lips, but he had
presence of mind enough to swallow them unsaid. Indeed, he swallowed a
second time before he spoke.

"This is good of you, Minnie; better than I deserve," he said, as he
took her hand. "You, too, Jackson. Better than I deserve. Yes, I think
Reed is holding his own. Doctor Thompson was here this morning--"

"We called at his office in town," Minnie hurried to say. She felt
that she must say something to relieve the tumultuousness uprising
within her. Though her lips uttered words, it was her eyes that were
eloquent. So this was Cal--Cal. She had an impulse to seize him in her
arms, to draw his face to hers, to hold him as she had held him that
night so long ago. But with the same impulse came the recollection of
the cruelty with which he had treated her, the contumely which he had
left her to bear alone. By an access of resolution she set her face;
her shoulders stiffened with pride. She told herself she had come for
a purpose, but her hour was not yet.

"Take me to him," she said, hurriedly, turning away.

Cal led her into the house. On the bed in the corner, no longer a
rumple of grey blankets, but white in new cotton sheets, lay Reed. His
eyes were closed; he seemed in a sort of stupor as she approached and
stood for a long minute looking down upon him in silence. Then,
seeming to sense her presence, he slowly turned his face toward her.

"Grandma?" he breathed, in a hardly audible whisper.

She sank on her knees beside him; reached out, caressed his hair with
her fingers.

"No, dear, this is not Grandma. This is Minnie. Do you remember
me--Minnie?"

Slowly his eyes opened, and he held her in his big wondering gaze. "I
wanted Grandma," he said.

"He has talked so much of your mother--he calls her Grandma," Cal
explained. "I have comforted him by saying that Grandma was coming."

"I shall be Grandma to you," Minnie whispered. "I have come to help
make you well."

"I--wanted--Grandma," he said.

Presently he dropped back into his stupor of sleep, and the girl rose
from his side. When she stood she was close to Cal, and again she felt
his presence over-powering her. Inwardly she chided herself. "Have
sense, Minnie; have sense. Must he humiliate you again?"

Outwardly, "I suppose I am to be nurse. I don't know much about it.
You'll have to tell me, Cal."

She had not intended to use his name, but it slipped out unawares. .. .
Besides, it was good to note how he seemed to clutch at the familiar
address.

"You'll be all right, Minnie; I know you'll be all right. You don't
know what a load-- I feel as though Reed were on the mend already. Just
take charge, and I will be your willing slave."

"I'm following a good housekeeper," she said, with a swift glance
about the little room, in which Cal had established an order and
cleanliness unimaginable in the regime of Mr. Mason. "I suppose you've
been doing here--what you did at Plainville. You know--the water trough,
and the pig pen, and all that sort of thing?"

"And Beach Boulevard?" he added, almost gaily. In spite of Reed's
sickness, in spite of the sudden cloud of Jackson Stake's presence,
his heart insisted upon singing from very joy in her nearness.

"Yes, and Beach Boulevard," she repeated, disregarding the little
danger signals which, from somewhere in her consciousness, were
flaring warnings that this was not the course to which she had set
herself. For the first time her lips had parted in a smile.

"It's good to see you again, dear," Cal whispered. "It was splendid of
you to come. I was afraid, after what had happened--after what I had
done--"

"Let's not talk about that," she interrupted, firmly. "I came because
Reed was very sick. I wouldn't have come, otherwise."

When the words were out she wondered if they were quite true, but it
was then too late to recall them. Cal was suddenly sobered. "I
understand," he said, but the fire was gone from his voice. "It was
tremendously good of you to come, and I shall not presume upon your
kindness. I shall treat you just as professionally as--as you make me."

The girl was trembling under the tension of her restraint. As
professionally as she made him! She wondered how long that would
last--how long she could make it last. For the resentment she had told
herself she harbored was melting away in the glow of Cal's presence
like a snowball in the sun. There must be a reason, a sufficient
reason, which he would tell her in good time. Had not his telegram
promised an explanation? In good time--

Jackson, who had been examining the car after its long run, appeared
in the doorway. His eyes took in the contents of the room; Cal and
Minnie standing in the spot of clear space in the centre of the floor;
the bed, with its little occupant, silent in a corner. Without
speaking he crossed over to the bed, running, as if by some impulsive
instinct, his fingers through his hair as he went. It was his father's
gesture.

For a minute or two he stood looking down in silence.

"Is he pretty sick, Cal?" he asked.

"Pretty sick."

To smother thoughts that were running wild within her Minnie pounced
into activity. "Bring my things, Jackson," she commanded. "Can I
change here?"

"It's the only place we have," said Cal. "One room, and all outside."
He went with Jackson, and when they had handed Minnie her suitcase the
two men strolled toward the car. For a moment they regarded each other
without speaking.

Cal was the one to break the silence. "You have me at a loss,
Jackson," he said. "It was certainly very good of you to drive from
Plainville, but I'm puzzled about your motives. I can't forget the
circumstances under which I left there. All this has come out of
your--of what you threatened--and I think I can fairly blame you for
it."

"Oh, that's all right," said Jackson, with a laugh in which there was
no joyousness. "I thrive on blame. Pile it on as thick as you like.
When the world gets down on a man a little more doesn't matter."

This was hardly the tack which Cal had expected, and it made his moves
no clearer to him. Jackson was unprincipled, he knew, and perhaps
dangerous; whether the man had also his human side Cal had not so far
discovered. He recalled that Minnie had once said something about
Jackson feeling that all the world was at war with him. Certainly he,
Cal, had been at war with Jackson; for years before they had met in
the flesh that state of war had existed. He had declared war on
Jackson by the bedside of his sister Celesta; the wild beast within
him had sprung up and cried, "When I meet this man I will tear him
limb from limb." ... And now he stood, regarding him across the
dusty fender of the car, and in some way failed to realize that this
was in very fact the man. It seemed as though in some vicarious
experience he had already settled the score with Jackson Stake. It
seemed as though, in a sort of world of the mind and, perhaps, of the
spirit, he had exacted retribution. The fact was, his hatred of the
man had dissolved. He was amazed and somewhat annoyed at this
phenomenon, but it was so. He did not hate this man who stood within
arm's reach across the fender. He despised him, but he did not hate.

"I don't want to 'pile it on,'" he said at length. "I want to be fair.
But I must know why you are here. I was ready to kill you a few weeks
ago; kill you, you understand? It seemed the only way out. That was
why I ran away from Plainville; I didn't run away from you--don't
imagine it--I ran away from myself."

He was astonished that he should so uncover his heart to this man whom
he despised, but the words flowed forth, and as they flowed they
brought relief. Whatever the cause or the process, it was plain that
he had gone through some kind of transformation. His attitude toward
Jackson had changed. Even his contempt began to have a measure of
compassion in it. Perhaps it was Reed's sickness; he could find no
other explanation than that Reed's sickness must have established some
subtle bond--some psychological bond, perhaps--between them.

"I didn't run away from you, Jackson," he repeated, as though it were
of particular importance that he should establish that fact. "Don't
get any wrong idea about that. I ran away from myself."

Jackson answered with his mirthless laugh. "It can't be done," he
said. "I've been trying it for ten years, and I know."

There was another gap of silence which Cal bridged at length,
impatiently. "Well, what's the answer, Jackson? Why are you here, and
is it to be peace or war?"

Jackson toyed with the steering wheel, and gave the horn a little
reassuring toot, before he spoke. "That's hard to say," he began. "So
much depends on circumstances. I don't mind telling you that when I
put up my little scheme at Plainville it wasn't so much to get money
out of you--although I never pass up any easy coin--as to keep you
quiet. As soon as I saw how the land lay I figured that one of us was
going to be in the hole, and it was a good time to strike first. Of
course--"

"I never would have known," Cal interrupted. "I never would have
suspected you--the thought would never have come into my mind--if you
hadn't let me know."

"Well, perhaps. Perhaps it was the money I wanted. I'm not saying but
I may want it yet. At any rate it seemed a good place to strike first.
I'm sorry you thought of killing me, though. That would have made so
much unpleasant talk."

"Not the way I proposed to do it," said Cal, grimly. "And as you
haven't quite given over your plans, I won't say I've entirely
abandoned mine. They'll keep. Now--why are you here?"

"A number of reasons. Does it occur to you that I may be concerned
about the boy's illness?"

"No, I confess it doesn't. Your concern about his welfare so far does
not lend itself to any such suggestion. Try again."

"Then, Minnie wanted to come, on Reed's account. Of course she
couldn't stay with you here alone. You had thought of that?"

"I can't say I had. Your sister is here in the capacity of a nurse,
professionally. Nothing wrong about that."

"Minnie's not a nurse, and she's not here professionally. Do you think
she came for what you'll pay her?" Jackson laughed sardonically. "For
what _you'll_ pay her--you who couldn't spare the price of a railway
ticket to keep out of this mess? No, Minnie didn't come here for a
fee. She left a better job than you can offer her. She tried to tell
me she was coming on Reed's account. I know better. That's the
reason--one of the reasons--I'm here."

Cal's anger was rising again under Jackson's cool affrontery, but
mixed with the anger was a curious happiness over this testimony
concerning Minnie's motives. It was good to have her come as Reed's
nurse, but it was better-- Still, the hypocrisy of this man nauseated
him.

"So you have become a champion of women's virtue," he said, bitterly.
"I can only regret that you were less gallant when it was _my_ sister
that was concerned."

Jackson rolled a cigarette with much deliberation. "That's a common
fault among men," he observed. "You may have noticed it. You may even
have experienced it."

The thrust in the dark struck Cal deeper than he would have cared to
admit, but at that moment their discussion was cut short by Minnie's
appearing at the door. She had changed to a neat house dress of some
inexpensive stuff which, although not a nurse's uniform, gave her a
kind of professional note. The smart simplicity of her costume struck
Cal as tremendously domestic and homey. For the moment Jackson was out
of his mind as he turned to introduce her to his scanty housekeeping
equipment.

"I think I'm the only one that can make these dishes go 'round,
Minnie," he explained. "It takes a bit of education--"

"A D. D.," she interrupted, and immediately stiffened again. Why must
something within her be so absurdly facetious while she was trying to
impress this man with a sense of her disfavor?

"Yes, a D. D.," he agreed, shamelessly unimpressed. "It helps. So I
shall continue the kitchen duties. You will need all your time for
Reed."

Was he seeking an excuse to be with her in the house? "Oh, I think I
can manage both," she said. "I'm sure I can. Besides, how about the
farm? There must be work--haying or something--to do, isn't there?"

"There's a bit more haying," he admitted. "I had forgotten about it. I
think these last days I have forgotten everything, except Reed--and
you."

"Of course you've been worried about Reed," she parried. "Now, do you
know what I've been wondering? How we're to manage at nights."

It was a problem in house planning, and they settled it together.
Reed, of course, must be undisturbed. They would make down a bed on
the floor for Minnie, and Cal would sleep in the old Ford drawn up
near the window, where he would be available quickly in case of
emergency. Jackson must be intrusted to the hospitality of the
stables.

As the evening wore on it occurred to Cal that Minnie must be tired
after her long journey. He himself, although he had not slept since
Reed had taken sick, felt little weariness. He was drawing on his
reserves, but that was what reserves were for.

"Better go to bed, Minnie," he suggested. "You need a good sleep, and
I'll sit up with Reed tonight. If he's troublesome I'll wake you."

The girl protested, but, fearing that refusal might be misconstrued,
she let him have his way. While she made her preparations Cal
explained the arrangements to Jackson. "You can sleep in the Ford
tonight if you like," he said, "but afterwards I can't offer you
anything better than a stall in the stable. It will be warm, and
there's plenty of clean hay, but it's not a good point from which--from
which to chaperone us."

Jackson's dark face twisted in its enigmatical smile. "I'll take a
chance," he said.

When Minnie had gone to bed Cal entered and took his post. Reed still
lay in a partial stupor and gave little trouble save by his occasional
demands for water. Cal had set a lamp burning low, in case it should
be needed for sudden service, and presently Minnie's steady breathing
proclaimed that she had fallen asleep. For the comfort of his eyes Cal
took a seat by Reed's bedside, with his back to the lamp, and turned
over in his mind the strange happenings of the day. The panic which
had seized him upon Reed's illness had swept by and had left him
strangely calm and assured. For Reed the worst was over; in some way
he felt assured of that. Dr. Thompson had said the fever would have to
run its course, and it was mainly a matter of proper care. Minnie,
although not a nurse, was a girl of sense, and she could be trusted.
What a topsy-turvy world it was! And who more topsy-turvy in it than
Cal himself? As he ran back in his mind over the experiences of the
recent weeks he found it impossible to realize that he was the same
man who had deliberately planned the death of Jackson Stake; who had
even regarded those plans as a virtuous thing, and the only solution
of his difficulty. It had all seemed so sane and reasonable. Tonight
he knew he had been stark mad. Yet no one had suspected him; not even
Jackson....

That was the thing that impressed him most, and the more he thought of
it the more was he impressed. No one had sensed the brooding tragedy.
The sleepy, good-humored, narrow-bounded life of which the Stake
farmstead was the centre had seen in him only an innocuous and
somewhat amusing atom of intelligencia--Cal was thinking in his own
language--it had not suspected the social dynamite under his Saturnian
exterior. The mental processes through which he had passed suggested
hubbub and screaming headlines as a proper accompaniment; as a matter
of fact, they had not stirred by a feather's breath the placidity of
that prairie settlement. How little even the simplest social system
knew of the hidden actions and reactions, the conflicts, the
intrigues, the tragedies gestating unsuspected in its apparently
limpid shallows! With all its eavesdropping, its gossip-mongering, how
little the community really knew! He wondered how many men go about
with madness in their hearts, some, like himself, to be saved by a
fortunate twist of fate, others to challenge the horror of that
organized society of which they form a part. Did any man really
understand any other man? Did any man really understand himself?

What about Jackson Stake? Why had he followed, and what were his
purposes? Was he, too, mad? Had it been in madness--a different kind of
madness--that he had sinned against Celesta? Was Jackson Stake any
worse than he? Or was he? Was it all part of the mystery of life,
confused, baffling, unanswerable? And why had he forgiven Jackson
Stake? In his heart he knew he had forgiven him; that he no longer
craved vengeance, but only to be let alone. Had there been some kind
of atonement in those days and nights of mental distortion out of
which he had come purified, seeing clearly at last? He, who had
studied human life in books, found the book of life itself an
unanswerable riddle.

As the night wore on a strange peace took possession of his soul. He
was surprised when he became conscious of it. It stole in upon him so
unobtrusively that he scarce noticed its coming, until suddenly he
realized how strangely it enveloped him. There was a sense of
possession, a sense of well-being, a sense of destiny fulfilled.
Slowly it dawned upon him that this was the vision he had carried in
his heart; these two, here, almost within reach of his hand--they were
all in the world that really mattered. With a sudden leap of intuition
he knew what it was. They were _his family_! His family! That without
which no life is complete; that about which all life centres and
revolves. One's wife; one's family! And they were here--here within
touch of his hand!

To steady his thought he slipped quietly into the cool air outside.
The night was dark; no stars blinked overhead, but a breeze soughed up
through the valley and lisped eerily across the fields of wheat. He
filled his lungs with great satisfying breaths and clutched again at
the thought which had brought him happiness. It was of Minnie as his
wife, and Reed as their boy.

Then, upon his great happiness, darkness came down again. The serenity
which he had so briefly tasted was suddenly roiled, and under the
quiet skies he sought to win it back. But it had flown him. Like the
tip of some enchanted wing, it had rested on his shoulder for a moment
before its flight into the void from which it had come had left him
more deserted than before. For a great fear had suddenly seized him.
Could he marry this girl without telling her? And if he told her,
what?




CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR


It was not that Cal feared that knowledge on Minnie's part would lower
him, or Reed, in her estimation; he was sure he knew the girl too well
for that. His danger was a much deeper and more difficult one. If
Minnie knew the truth would not she be so crushed by humiliation as to
think herself forever his inferior? Would she be willing to marry one
who had been shamelessly wronged by a member of her family? Could
there be equality or self-respect on such a basis? And without
self-respect what hope could there be for love?

This was the problem which so suddenly seized him, and to which the
soughing winds, the lisping wheat-leaves, gave no answer. Through the
gloom the farm stables bulked vaguely in a darker greyness. Under
their roofs somewhere lay Jackson Stake, now more completely in Cal's
power than ever he had dreamed. Some slumbering fang of that hate
which he had thought dead cut suddenly into his heart. Hate the
man--how could he other than hate him? ... A careless match dropped
in the hay by the stables, with the lock set on the door. ... It
would be simple enough. The horses were in the pasture. Jackson,
lighting a cigarette, had fired the hay about him and had been
cremated in his own holocaust. That would be the explanation. Horribly
simple....

Presently Cal fancied he heard a sound distinct from the vague night
noises that filled the air. He was standing in the shadow, a little
way from the wedge of light that fell through the open door, when he
heard it, and in an instant his senses were strung taut. ... He was
sure he heard a stealthy footfall in the grass. Noiselessly he drew
into the deeper gloom, finding the wall of the shanty with his hand,
then moving slowly, silently, along it to the corner. As he neared the
corner he could distinguish the faint light which fell through the
window in the northern end of the house, the end in which Reed's bed
was set. But the square of light was not quite square; a roundish
shadow, such as might be caused by a man's head, cut off a corner of
it.

For a moment he hesitated. It was plain that some one was looking
through the window, obviously with no good purpose, or why did he not
come to the door? The advantage of a surprise attack would be all with
Cal, and he tensed himself for the emergency. Then, stealthily, he
extended his head until he could see along the northern wall.

Jackson Stake knelt by the window, crouched so that only the upper
part of his head and face was in the light. He was gazing intently,
absorbedly at the little form on the bed. ... It would have been so
easy to overpower him in that position. Perhaps it was the very ease
of it that deterred Cal from rushing upon him.

"Well, Jackson, what do you want?" he demanded sharply, stepping up
beside him. "Eavesdropping--or just chaperoning?"

Jackson turned a strangely drawn face to his, then slowly rose to his
feet.

"You had the drop on me, Cal," he said. "I thought you were sitting
back in the corner, where I couldn't see you. I was watching Reed."

"You seem very interested in Reed. Why didn't you come inside, if you
wanted to, instead of sneaking up to the window?"

Jackson was silent for a moment, then suddenly broke out: "Oh, hell,
you wouldn't believe me if I told you," and disappeared toward the
stables.

When Dr. Armstrong called next day he took in the situation
appraisingly. It was apparent that, short of a trained nurse, Minnie
very nearly came up to his requirements.

"Sharp girl, that," he told Cal, as they talked together beside the
doctor's car for a few minutes before he left. "Doesn't know much
about nursing, but she's got savvy, you understand; she'll do as she's
told. Knows the importance of exactness, or I'm mistaken.
Stenographer, I think she said?"

"Yes, in a lawyer's office, but brought up on the farm."

"That accounts for it," said Dr. Armstrong, as though there had been
something which needed to be accounted for. "One training gave her
brains and the other exactness--care as to details, you know. Sharp
girl. Don't see any reason why the boy shouldn't be all right, now; it
will have to run its course, but he should be all right, provided she
does exactly as she's told. You'll have to see to that, but I don't
think you'll have any trouble."

The busy doctor finished his words as he changed his gears, and a
moment later was trailing a cloud of dust toward the Wheatview road.
It was the most encouraging report he had made since Reed's illness
had begun.

The days of that illness passed slowly and uneventfully, fading into
each other as in a period of dream. Cal was able to resume his haying,
and, although his relationships with Jackson were those of an armed
truce, they were at no time near the breaking point. Jackson even
worked with him in the hay field, and sometimes, during the evening,
would spend an hour or two at Reed's bedside. Minnie carried on the
work of housekeeper energetically and efficiently, but after that
first meeting with Cal she had become absorbed in her patient and had
displayed no further evidence of sentiment. Cal was obliged to admit
that, whatever Minnie may have thought or felt--and Jackson's frank
statement about her purpose in coming left little doubt in his
mind--she had herself well under control. She worked early and late,
and consulted him only as she might have consulted Mr. Bradshaw or Mr.
Tonnerfeldt.

As the boy's fever continued to run its course normally and Cal's
anxiety in that connection subsided, he felt himself more and more
disposed to reopen negotiations with Minnie. The studied correctness
of her behavior tantalized and intrigued him. It was hard to realize
that this was the Minnie Stake of the granary episode. The thought
occurred to him that perhaps she was playing a part; perhaps she was
over-conscious of the observant eyes of her brother.

An opportunity to put her to the test came one day when Jackson
volunteered to drive to Wheatview for supplies. Cal left the field at
four o'clock and a little later met Minnie at the door of the house.

"You're in early, Cal," she observed. "Anything wrong in the fields?"

"No--nothing. But the work isn't pressing, and the day is hot, so I
thought I'd knock off. How's the patient?"

"Doing well, I think. He's sleeping now, but he's been asking for
Grandma and Trixie. I think he knows who I am, too, but he doesn't
seem to get interested in me."

"That's strange. His mind can't be quite normal, yet."

"Out of bounds, Cal. Can't I make you understand that I'm here to
nurse Reed, and it isn't quite the thing for you--for you--"

"What isn't?"

"For you to say, or suggest, compliments to me, you know."

"Don't you like compliments, Minnie?"

"That's not the question."

"Don't you like my compliments, Minnie?"

They had seated themselves on a bench on the shady side of the house,
and his eyes were on her face, but she avoided his gaze. He became
aware that Minnie had grown thinner and paler; long hours and broken
sleep were telling upon her, and he found himself seized in a great
wave of sympathy. They had been so near, and it was intolerable now
that they should be so far apart. With difficulty he restrained an
impulse to take her in his arms, to draw her lips to his, but he
warned himself that he must take no advantage of her position. Still,
the present situation was intolerable. They must reach some kind of
understanding.

"Don't you like my compliments--any more?" he repeated.

Her eyes lay on the distant wheat fields, now copper-red for harvest.
Even as he beheld her Cal found himself comparing her waves of
bronze-brown hair with those ripening fields. She was bewitching to
look upon. "More than the fields is ripening," said he to himself.

"If you must know--no," she said. "Oh, Cal, can't you see how absurd
this is?"

"Is it absurd, dear? When did it become absurd? Do you want to take
back all--take everything back?"

The color mantled quickly in her pale cheeks, but she ignored the
latter part of his question. "It became absurd when you ran away," she
said.

"When I--ran away! But I didn't run away; not really. Oh, Minnie, I
can't explain. You must believe that I didn't run away; not really,
from you, do you understand?"

"No, I'm afraid I don't. More than that, I'm afraid I can't. We parted
as"--she trembled, hesitated--"as we parted. The next I knew you had
disappeared. There were some strange stories about it. I can't repeat
them, Cal; I can't. But they hurt me awfully."

She had drawn her hands up about her breast, and held herself as in
physical pain. "They hurt me awfully," she murmured.

"But you knew they weren't true," he protested. "You knew that."

"I knew--some of them--weren't true," she faltered.

"And then you stayed away, and sent no word, no word at all," she went
on. "How I watched the morning mails! Every day I would say to myself,
'Today I will hear from Cal. Today he will explain.' But no
explanation came. People would look at me on the streets--I could see
it in their eyes, I could hear them saying, 'That's her; you know, the
one the hired man had to skip out about--'"

"Minnie!"

"That's what they were saying--and worse. And you let me stand it,
alone, and not a word of explanation came from you; not a word."

Cal felt a great hollowness filling him. She was going to demand an
explanation, the explanation he never could give. If he did he would
crush her forever; if he didn't--

"Then came your telegram," she went on. "The agent 'phoned it, and I
didn't let them know at home that it wasn't for me. I wanted to come
so that I might find out the truth. I told you I came on Reed's
account. That wasn't true, Cal. I came on yours."

"I know it, Minnie," he whispered. "But why--"

"There was one clause in that telegram," she interrupted. "It said, 'I
can explain everything.' I've been waiting for that explanation--I'm
waiting for it now!"

She turned to him, her hands outstretched, imploring. "I don't take
back anything, Cal," she pleaded. "I don't judge, I don't blame, I
don't argue. I'm just waiting."

He would have taken her hands in his, but she withdrew them again,
shaking her head slowly, solemnly. "I love you, Cal, now, just as I
did--then. But I can't be played with. You must explain. Give me a
reasonable explanation; it's only between we too, dear--I'll never
breathe a word; it shall be buried in my heart forever. Only explain,
so that I may know that there was an honest reason; even if--even if
it's something you feel you _can't_ explain, I think I'm big enough
for that; only tell me, and all I have or am or ever can be is yours.
Cal, have I offered you enough?"

His face had grown pale under the onslaught of her passion and with
the horror of the unfathomable abyss on which he tottered. To tell her
all would be so simple, so easy. For a moment the temptation seemed
irresistible. What of the promise he had given Celesta? Must a man be
bound forever by a promise given under such conditions, when the
developments of the future could not be at all foreseen? What of Reed?
She had given her pledge that the confession would be buried in her
heart. What of Minnie herself? ... But even as he weighed these
questions in his mind she took his silence for refusal. Her lovely body
straightened before him; her head went back, her chin went up. She made
a slight gesture of her hand as though dismissing him.

"Very well," she said, steadily. "I shall not humiliate myself again.
I suppose it is hardly necessary to ask you to forget anything that
may have occurred between us. I think I hear Reed," and, walking like
a queen, she went into the house.

Cal watched her proud head until it disappeared beyond the doorway,
and a surge of something like relief swept through him. For a moment
he had wavered, but now was he master of himself again. Tell her?
Never! Bow that head in shame; in shame for her brother, her family,
herself, and in the bitterness of remorse for what had been and could
not be undone? Never! He had lost her, but he had saved her; saved her
for herself, but not for him. Pride, passion, pain, and a supreme
glory of renunciation writhed in his heart together. But he had won;
he knew that, once again, by the narrowest margin and a fortunate turn
of fate, his better side had won. He, too, rose from the bench and
with steady step took his way to the stables. ... The thing now was
for Reed to get well as quickly as possible. Minnie's presence, while
she remained, would be a continual laceration to him, and he was fair
enough to admit that, for her, the situation must be almost
intolerable. The sooner it was ended the better.

The next evening Jackson sprung a surprise by offering to sit up with
Reed. He and Cal were in the stable doing some evening chores when he
broached the matter.

"You've been having it pretty steady, Cal," he said, as he leaned on
his fork after filling a manger with hay. "If you don't mind I'll sit
up with the boy tonight."

Cal looked at him doubtfully. His suspicions of Jackson, somewhat
allayed by recent good behaviour, were again alert. There was
something behind this suggestion; something more than appeared on the
surface. Yet it was a request hard to refuse.

"If you don't mind, Cal, I'd like to sit up with him tonight," Jackson
repeated.

"All right," he answered, shortly. "The crisis is past, and I guess he
won't give you any trouble. That is, if Minnie agrees. You'll have to
ask her."

Apparently Minnie agreed, for, as bed-time approached, Jackson took up
his station in the house. Filled with misgivings Cal arranged his
blankets in the old Ford. But he had no intention of going to sleep.
Whatever Jackson's purpose might be he meant to be on hand in case
there were evil plans to foil. As he drowsed in the Ford he recalled
the night when he had surprised Jackson at the window, and along with
that he began to link up strange incidents from time to time in the
man's behaviour. Once, when Reed had called for a drink, Jackson had
rushed with it before either Cal or Minnie could attend, and at
different times he had seen him looking strangely at the boy. Reed had
had a kite in the machine shed in which the binder sat, and one
afternoon Jackson had spent hours studying its construction. He had
even taken it out in an abortive attempt to make it fly. And he had
surprised him again looking at an old coat of Reed's which hung on the
stable wall as though the mystery of the universe were hidden in its
folds. What to make of the man! Kidnapping, for the moment, was out of
the question. It would be murder. Could Jackson and Minnie have
planned--

Suddenly a terrifying thought clamped his ribs like a vise. Would
Jackson do the boy harm as he lay, sick and helpless, at his mercy?
There were medicines there; an overdose might easily prove fatal. What
had Jackson brought yesterday from town? He could easily have
obtained--

In a panic of alarm he sprang from his cushions and rushed toward the
house. He had not kept the Ford drawn up by the window since Reed's
condition had improved; it stood back some little distance in the
yard. In his excitement he tripped, apparently over nothing, and fell
headlong in the grass. When he arose he was somewhat sobered, and he
approached the window--the very one through which he had discovered
Jackson peering--with caution.

The lamp in the house burned low; he could distinguish the outline of
Minnie's bed in the far corner, and Reed's just under the window. For
the moment Jackson was nowhere to be seen. The chair in front of the
bed was empty; he was not by the stove; he was not by the door. But at
length Cal began to make out the form of a man lying on the bed--on
Reed's bed, close beside the boy. His first thought was that Jackson
had lain down and fallen asleep, but as his eyes became accustomed to
the light he saw that Jackson's hand was moving steadily, slowly, up
and down, and his fingers were furrowing through the hair of the
sleeping child. Fascinated, Cal watched as one who cannot believe the
testimony of his eyes, but they would not be disputed. Certainly
Jackson Stake was fondling the hair of the boy Reed, his child.

As one who has guiltily looked upon an intimacy not intended for his
eyes Cal stole back to his cushions in a bewilderment of conflicting
emotions.




CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE


The next day Cal drove the Ford to Wheatview for supplies. A sharp
rainstorm in the afternoon delayed his return, with the result that it
was dark by the time he arrived at the Mason farm. The lamp light
shone through the window as he came up the drive from the road
allowance, but the door was closed, for the night air was cool and
damp.

Laden with parcels, Cal came to the door, wondering a little that
Minnie had not opened it when she heard his car. Resting his load
against the jamb, he turned the knob that he might walk in. He was
about to call some cheery greeting when his eyes caught Minnie's form
huddled by the little table, her face buried in her hands.

His first stab of alarm was for Reed. Had anything happened the boy?
Dropping his parcels on a bench, he hurried to the bedside. But Reed
was sleeping; his pulse was regular, his skin cool to the touch.
Turning, he saw that the girl had not changed her position; her head
was still buried in her hands, and as he looked a tremor ran through
her form.

He hurried to her, arms outstretched. "What's the matter, Minnie?"
What has happened? What is wrong?"

She did not answer, nor in any way seem to recognize his presence, but
another tremor shook her frame, and Cal's hands fell about her
shoulders. With Minnie in distress it was impossible for him to retain
his Platonism. His hands found her hair; his fingers caressed her
ears, her cheeks. He bent down until his face was close to hers.

"Will you tell me what is wrong, Minnie?" he whispered, gently.
"Perhaps I can help."

He waited for her answer, but it was a long while in coming. At last,
in a voice from which every vestige of her spirit seemed to have been
drained, she murmured, "How you must hate me! How you must hate me!"

"But I _don't_ hate you, Minnie. I don't hate--I've never hated you--I
couldn't hate you. Why do you say such a thing?"

She was silent now so long he thought she had decided not to speak to
him again at all. But at length--

"Believe me, Cal, I would not be here except for Reed. I would have
gone this afternoon. Anywhere--anywhere! I should never again have
faced your eyes. I never--"

"But I don't understand! What are you talking about? Why shouldn't you
face my eyes?" He hesitated, wondering. Suddenly the thought occurred
to him that the strain and loneliness had been too much for her and
her nerves had snapped under them. Slipping an arm about her, by sheer
strength he raised her to her feet. Her body was limp in his arms. He
turned her face to his, but her eyes were closed.

"Look at me, Minnie. Open your eyes, and look at me. See, I do not
hate you; I love you--love you--love you." Coaxingly, almost crooningly,
as to a child, he repeated the words in her ears, seeking to win her
out of her mood; he raised her arms about his, but there was no
answering pressure; his lips found hers, but they were flat and
unresponsive as the lips of the dead. So he held her for a long
minute; then, puzzled and beaten, he let her rest again upon the
chair.

"I wish you would tell me, Minnie," he ventured again. "I don't
understand at all. You have been working too hard--the strain has been
too much for you. Tomorrow you must go for a drive. Jackson can take
you--"

At the mention of Jackson's name it seemed another shiver ran through
her frame, and she murmured something which he could not catch. He
bent his head beside hers, while with his fingers he caressed her
hair, her temples, her eyes.

"I wish I might help you, Minnie," he whispered, his lips close to her
ear. "I want to help you, because I love you, Minnie; love you,
Minnie, do you understand?"

Suddenly she spoke. "Why do you say such untruths?" she demanded. "You
don't love me! You _can't_ love me! After what I--what we--what my
family--"

She paused, and the tremor which ran through her frame seemed to
communicate itself to Cal's. A paralyzing thought sent the hair of his
neck creeping uncannily. What did she know? Could it be possible--?

"What do you mean, Minnie?" he demanded, with unintentional sternness.
"What do you mean about you and your family?"

By a great effort she drew herself together, summoning all her
fortitude for the task before her. She found herself able to speak
more steadily. "Jackson has told me everything," she said. ... "Now
leave me, please."

As the words sank home upon him Cal began to realize that they
heralded an entirely new set of circumstances. The world of an hour
ago was gone forever, and with these words he was ushered into a new
planet, where a new Minnie Stake, sobered, shamed, abased, lay at his
feet. Here again was a bruisd reed, and one which, surely, he must
not break. To win her back to pride in her family, in herself, must be
the first step toward winning her back to love of him. It was a task
big enough for all his resources of tact and earnestness.

Slowly the deadly effectiveness of Jackson's attack became clear to
him. To tell Minnie was, after all, the surest way to raise an
insurmountable barrier between them. The man's cunning and insight
were diabolical.

"Where's Jackson?" he demanded. "Where's Jackson?"

"Gone," she answered. "I know what you're thinking, Cal, but I think
you should know what he said. Before he left he held Reed in his arms
and he said, 'Little boy, this is the hardest thing I ever did. I'm
giving you to Cal and--and--"

"And what? ... Minnie! Do you think he loved Reed?"

With the sound of her voice, the play of their conversation, her
confidence came trickling back, her hysteria of dejection surrendering
to calmer moods. Above its clamours of regret her heart incredulously
heard again the tap of Hope upon its door; doors which, an hour ago,
she had told herself, were closed and sealed forever. For Cal did not
despise her! He loved her still--he said he did. Even if-- She raised
her eyes, deep wells of sudden sorrow and understanding, to his. Then,

"At the last, yes. It wasn't that that brought him here. It was that
wild, adventurous spirit of his. He felt that you had turned the trick
on him, and he wanted to show you that he could turn it back. He
wanted to show himself a match for you. I think that was what brought
him. But sitting beside Reed, and watching him, and staying up with
him at night, and wondering, and wondering. ... 'Minnie,' he said,
'It got me. I began to realize things I'd never realized before. That
he was my boy--' Cal, he couldn't say any more."

"And then he said he left him to me, and something else--you didn't
finish it," Cal reminded her. "What else?"

She shook her head. "I can't tell you, Cal."

He hesitated, prying about for a means of attack. Presently--

"Don't you think you _should_ tell me, Minnie? Don't you think it's
fair to deliver his whole message?"

"I suppose I should," she agreed. "But I am telling you for him, not
for myself. He said, 'I'm giving you to Cal and--and--'" Her voice
dropped to an almost inaudible sound. "'And Minnie.'"

"And so it shall be," said Cal, raising her face again to his. "So it
shall be. No one shall prevent it now; not even you. I shall win you
back, you shall see. No matter at what cost." She shook her head
gently, but she did not draw it away, and he held it still closer to
his. "You shall see. I have known this all along, and it was no
barrier to me. When your mind has become accustomed---has accepted it,
it will be no barrier to you. Time may not heal all sores, but it
surely brings us to understand. And when you see this sanely then you
will--you will accept Jackson's gift."

So he plied her with caresses and assuring words until at last with
joy he knew the touch of her reviving love....

"I shall give you time," he said. "All the time you want. But it must
be that way in the end."

"I hope it may be so," she confessed. "Now I know why you couldn't
explain. Jackson told me about his blackmail, too; I think he spared
himself nothing. Oh, Cal, can you ever forgive?"

"That's the strangest thing about it," he told her. "I don't seem to
have anything to forgive now. I seem to have lost it somewhere between
Plainville and Mason's farm. It may be Annie Frawdic has it. I
sometimes think it was Annie who took it from me. Perhaps it was she
who helped me understand." And then he told her all about that last
evening among the maples on Ernton's farm. That is, all she needed to
know.

"But it wasn't you she left with, Cal?" she said, and he knew that the
old fire was burning up again in Minnie's heart....

"Where did Jackson go?" he asked again. "Did he take the car?"

"No. He didn't take anything. Said they travelled light the way he was
going. Said he was going over to The Siding to jump the next freight.
He said he was used to that kind of travel--he'd be all right--and I
could tell you he wouldn't trouble you any more."

"I must follow him," said Cal. "We can't have him go like that."

Again he drew her, now responsive, to his arms, then, outside, he
selected the Dodge for its better headlights and in a few minutes was
on his way. The railway siding, where trains stopped at the water
tank, and, in the shipping season, to pick up cars loaded with wheat,
lay four miles across the prairies from the Mason farm. Cal had never
driven the trail, but he knew its general direction, and, once upon
it, he followed it without difficulty. The rain had washed the winds
clean, and as he drove he filled his lungs with great breaths of the
evening air. In the far north-west a segment of light still hung along
the horizon, while from the east came intermittently the faint blush
of distant lightning. Very peaceful was the night, and as he hummed
along the smooth prairie trail Cal found his heart grown strangely
peaceful, too. The crisis was passed. Minnie knew. There would be no
deception now, and yet he had remained faithful to Celesta, and to
Reed. As for Jackson, he thought of him with a sort of detached
impartiality. The idea of killing him, or even of hating him, was so
absurd that he wondered how he ever could have entertained it.

Cresting a ridge on the prairies his vision caught the headlight of an
engine standing at the water tank. Its long tail of freight cars was
lost in the darkness; from far down the track came the glimmering
green light of its caboose. Here was Jackson's opportunity; doubtless
he would "jump" this train as it pulled out, and, crouched on the top
of a box car, or standing over the coupling-bars, or hanging from the
iron foot-rails, steal his ride until approaching daylight threatened
his discovery. It would be no new experience for Jackson; he had
simply swung back to that life from whence he came. Up in Cal's heart
there suddenly welled a strange sense of sympathy with this man who
felt himself a wanderer at war with all the world, and he speeded his
car along the winding trail, the wet grass shining green against his
headlights, to reach The Siding, if possible, before the freight
pulled out.

But he was too late. As he hummed down the long slope of prairie
toward The Siding he heard above the music of his car the hoarse voice
of the locomotive as with its first gasp it sent a shower of sparks
scurrying amid a cloud of smoke and steam. Another, and another; a
tempestuous roar as the drivers, impatient with the drag of their
thousand-ton load, slipped on the rails; a steady, sober succession of
accelerating exhausts as the great train got under way. Cal pulled so
close to the track that the watchful engineer sent a screech of
warning--two long blasts, two short--from his whistle. As the engine
drew by Cal made out the form of the driver in his seat; the dim
lights on the gauges beyond; the bent figure of the fireman delivering
a shovelful of coal against the orange-white glow from the furnace.
Overhead the trailing steam-cloud was lighted up with a momentary
burst of lurid whiteness from the open fire-box. Then the cars swung
by, clanking and jostling on their way, their brake-shoes droning
loosely against the quickening wheels.

With a strange fascination Cal watched this dark, many-jointed,
mechanical centipede roaring by, the car initials and numbers skipping
with gathering speed through the white wedge of his headlights.
Suddenly his eye seemed to catch the form of a man hanging by the
hand-rails between two cars; he could not be sure, but the figure
seemed to wave a shadowy hand at him as it flitted and was gone. ...
He watched while the green light on the caboose gave place to three
red ones, and followed them with his eyes until they dimmed in a
single orange blur in the distance. ... Then he turned his car by
the grain elevator, narrowly missing an empty gasoline drum in his
orbit, and went slowly back to the shack on the Mason farm.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Jackson Stake had seen the headlights of the motor as it emerged like
a gigantic, electric-eyed bug over the edge of the prairie. He
surmised that it was Cal in pursuit, probably in hostile pursuit, and
smiled grimly as the clatter of the water-spout to place intimated
that the engine was again ready for her journey. The clank of
tightening draw-bars ran its gamut down the train like mighty fingers
on a keyboard half a mile in length, and with the first motion of the
wheels he drew himself up on the hand-rails between two cars. It was
the old, free life again, and the singing of the rails was music in
his ears. ... As he raced by Cal he waved him a gesture, half of
defiance, half of farewell.

The speed quickened; the cars swung more and more boisterously; the
vacuum of their motion sucked dust and cinders from the roadbed to
fill his throat and eyes, and in his heart was a happiness and sorrow
such as he had never known. It was his first and great renunciation;
and, having renounced so much, the thought insisted upon him, why not
all? The price which remained to pay was not a heavy one. He had taken
his life as a plaything and he had had his game with it. Now that the
toy was wrecked, the bauble broken, why linger over the ruined
fragments? And why regret? At best the pain outweighs the pleasure,
the loss is always greater than the gain. Man lives not for today, but
for tomorrow, and Hope, the arch deceiver, luring him on in the vain
belief that somewhere, sometime, some tomorrow shall be better than
today, mocks and deserts her victim at last and leaves him to the
disintegration of the beast. That was the end. Jackson Stake's
philosophy dared nothing further. And if that was the end, and the end
was always the same, why prolong so profitless a journey?

Thoughts something like these may have run in his mind as he clung to
the hand-rails of the iron ladder on the end of his car. He had not
known he loved the boy until contact had breathed to life the dead
ashes of his parental instinct. Now, for the boy's sake, he must
disappear forever. Grimly he told himself it was the only thing ever
he had done that was worth doing; why not do it well?

A glint of light from the red rising moon fell on a segment of wheel
within his vision and on the rail which streamed like a ribbon of
steel beneath him. ... To let go, that was all. To open his numbed
and stiffening fingers. Only another bubble burst, another toy broken....

                  *       *       *       *       *

Item from the Wheatview _Gazette_:

  Section men working on the track east of The Siding Wednesday
  morning came upon the badly mangled remains of a man who had
  evidently been killed by a train during the night. There was
  nothing in the clothing that would lead to identification, and
  only a few cents of money, so it is supposed the remains are
  those of a tramp who had fallen from a train while stealing a
  ride. Coroner Armstrong held that an inquest was unnecessary, as
  it was plainly a case of accident.

As Cal read the cold type the words swam in his mind in a flood of
possibilities. An accident? He recalled Jackson's remark, now
strangely ominous and significant, "They travel light the way I'm
going," and his head sank between his hands.

Then he destroyed the paper, that Minnie might never know.




CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX


Again it is June in Manitoba. Mantles of green are deepening on black
fields now pregnant with another harvest, and from the summer-fallows
slender spirals of dust twist heavenward like incense burned in
worship of the god of husbandry. Upon the prairies, upon the groves,
upon the gaudily painted buildings of Double F and Jackson Stake, the
summer rests, calm and dazzling in its brilliancy. The world is at
peace, and, it might be, asleep, save for the slow shuttling of the
ploughs back and forth across the summer-fallows, and a voice which
from time to time floats out of the distance--the voice of Gander Stake
raised in admonition of a four-horse team long since indifferent to
either his threats or blandishments.

On the surface of the lake, as calm and white as quicksilver, the
blazing afternoon dips slowly into the mauve and purple and crimson of
evening. High overhead tatters of cloud entrap their fringes of ruby
light and fling them into the mirrored depths, where they reverse the
blue bowl of infinity and set up a heaven of their own not less
magnificent than that which gave them birth. ... The lengthening
shadows of the reeds creep out along the silent water; a fish leaps
suddenly upon an incautious fly; a mother duck cajoles her brood like
a phalanx of yellow tufted feathers in the soft ripples of her wake.

As the heat abates and the cool of evening enwraps the valley a little
boy comes down to the shore to skip stones on the water. With each
skip of a stone the spaniel that gambols at his side plunges into the
lake, to return, open- and empty-mouthed from a fruitless search for
the occasion of the disturbance, but as eager as ever for another
plunge the moment after. Above the noise of their play, from somewhere
under the trees comes the incessant clatter of a typewriter, and up a
leafy path, if we are now tempted to look, we may glimpse the outline,
so hidden by foliage as to be almost undiscerned, of a bungalow of
cottonwood logs, with a deep, inviting veranda and a chimney of
granite boulders suggestive of hospitality, and rest, and the smell of
wood smoke, and the glow of an open fire against the night winds from
the lake.

"Thanks, Minn; that's a great help," said Cal, as the girl drew the
last sheet from her machine. "If an author must marry, let him marry a
stenographer. To-morrow we'll hitch up Antelope and haul a load of
manuscripts to town, and if we're lucky enough to find a cheque at the
postoffice we'll visit the Roseland Emporium--"

"Or the Electric theatre," she suggested.

"Or the Electric theatre," he agreed. "Take along your broad hat,
anyway. Now I have just time to catch a fish for supper--"

"Just the same, I shall fry sausages. I am beginning to know something
of your fisherman's luck."

"Can't be lucky in everything," he smiled back, "and I've had my
share. Here's your pay."

He paid her, and Big Jim, who was cropping grass near by, like the
gentleman he was, turned modestly away.

After supper they fished until sundown, that they might have a string
to present to Mrs. Goode and Mr. Bradshaw, when they met them in
Plainville on the morrow. Then they built a fire on the beach, and
Reed demanded his bedtime story.

"Once upon a time," said Cal, when all three had snuggled into the
sand beside the fire, "a beautiful rose grew in a field of wheat. She
was very young and very sweet, and she loved the wheat, and the wheat
loved her. In the darkness of the night, when the wind stirred above
them, their leaves would rustle together. When the storms came, and
the rain beat down upon them, the stalwart wheat protected her. He
could not bear to see harm come to a petal of her wonderful face, but
he loved to see the dew-drops hanging there when the sun burst over
the clouds in the morning. On other nights, when all was still and
calm, they stood together watching the friendly twinkle of the myriad
of stars which God had set over them, and knew that in some way life
was more than just being a rose and a stalk of wheat.

"And then, one night, a dreadful thing happened. A horrible weed grew
up between them. He grew so fast that by morning he had quite shut
them off from each other's view; the wheat could still scent the sweet
perfume of the rose, and the rose could hear the sorrowful rustle of
the wheat, but they were as far apart as though worlds had come
between them.

"Then the wheat began to say to himself, 'I am stronger than this
weed. Tomorrow night, when all is dark, I will uproot him and cast him
out of the way; then he will shrivel up and die, and come no more
between the rose and me.' But as he nursed this plan in his heart he
looked down and saw that if he destroyed the weed he would surely
uproot the rose. So the wheat was very sad, and for many days he made
no cheerful sound at all. But at length he said, 'I love the rose even
more than I love myself, and I will not uproot the weed, but will let
it grow up between us undisturbed, in order that not so much as a leaf
of the beautiful rose may fall to the ground.' And after that he began
to be happy again."

Minnie stirred where she sat, and Cal felt the pressure of her hand in
his.

"All right. Go on, Daddy X," said Reed.

"And then another strange thing happened. A tiny flower sprang up from
the very root of the weed. It was not a rose, and it was not wheat,
but it was very tender, and delicate, and trustful. At first the weed
paid no attention to this new flower, but after a while he began to
love the little tendrils wrapped about him, so that he soothed and
fondled it and grew very much attached to it. And one night he said
suddenly, 'I am shutting the sunlight from this little flower which I
love.' And in the morning he was gone, and was never seen again.

"After that the wheat and the rose and the little flower grew up very
happily together. But the wheat and the rose often thought, with a
strange sort of sadness, of the weed that had once grown up between
them, and had gone away, because he loved the little flower."

The voice died out, and the speaker's eyes, and the girl's gazed
mistily across the dull phosphorescent distances of the lake.

"Is that all?" said Reed. "It's a nice story, but I don't understand
it."

"_I_ do," the girl whispered, as she kissed her husband's lips.



THE END




Transcriber's Notes for "The Smoking Flax"

This author used some non-conventional and some inconsistent spellings
of words; these have not been changed. Ellipses, however, have been
regularized to current usage regarding the number of periods.

There were a few typographical errors which have been changed:

1] comfortably for comfortaby in "they were seated comfortaby"

2] unnecessarily for unneccessarily in "Gander is unneccessarily
obliging"

3] successfully for successsfully in "suppose he might successsfully
invoke the unwritten"

4] period for space in: "and to do so you will have to trust me  That
is, you may have"

5] nothin' for nothing' in "Minn, an' I didn' want nothing'--"
where speaker had consistently used nothin' and the apostrophe was
present.




[End of The Smoking Flax, by Robert Stead]
