PART I.

The Wild Land

I

One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored

on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist

of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low

drab buildings huddled on the gray prairie, under a gray sky. The

dwelling-houses were set about haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some

of them looked as if they had been moved in overnight, and others as if

they were straying off by themselves, headed straight for the open

plain. None of them had any appearance of permanence, and the howling

wind blew under them as well as over them. The main street was a deeply

rutted road, now frozen hard, which ran from the squat red railway

station and the grain “elevator” at the north end of the town to the

lumber yard and the horse pond at the south end. On either side of this

road straggled two uneven rows of wooden buildings; the general

merchandise stores, the two banks, the drug store, the feed store, the

saloon, the post-office. The board sidewalks were gray with trampled

snow, but at two o’clock in the afternoon the shopkeepers, having come

back from dinner, were keeping well behind their frosty windows. The

children were all in school, and there was nobody abroad in the streets

but a few rough-looking countrymen in coarse overcoats, with their long

caps pulled down to their noses. Some of them had brought their wives

to town, and now and then a red or a plaid shawl flashed out of one

store into the shelter of another. At the hitch-bars along the street a

few heavy work-horses, harnessed to farm wagons, shivered under their

blankets. About the station everything was quiet, for there would not

be another train in until night.

On the sidewalk in front of one of the stores sat a little Swede boy,

crying bitterly. He was about five years old. His black cloth coat was

much too big for him and made him look like a little old man. His

shrunken brown flannel dress had been washed many times and left a long

stretch of stocking between the hem of his skirt and the tops of his

clumsy, copper-toed shoes. His cap was pulled down over his ears; his

nose and his chubby cheeks were chapped and red with cold. He cried

quietly, and the few people who hurried by did not notice him. He was

afraid to stop any one, afraid to go into the store and ask for help,

so he sat wringing his long sleeves and looking up a telegraph pole

beside him, whimpering, “My kitten, oh, my kitten! Her will fweeze!” At

the top of the pole crouched a shivering gray kitten, mewing faintly

and clinging desperately to the wood with her claws. The boy had been

left at the store while his sister went to the doctor’s office, and in

her absence a dog had chased his kitten up the pole. The little

creature had never been so high before, and she was too frightened to

move. Her master was sunk in despair. He was a little country boy, and

this village was to him a very strange and perplexing place, where

people wore fine clothes and had hard hearts. He always felt shy and

awkward here, and wanted to hide behind things for fear some one might

laugh at him. Just now, he was too unhappy to care who laughed. At last

he seemed to see a ray of hope: his sister was coming, and he got up

and ran toward her in his heavy shoes.

His sister was a tall, strong girl, and she walked rapidly and

resolutely, as if she knew exactly where she was going and what she was

going to do next. She wore a man’s long ulster (not as if it were an

affliction, but as if it were very comfortable and belonged to her;

carried it like a young soldier), and a round plush cap, tied down with

a thick veil. She had a serious, thoughtful face, and her clear, deep

blue eyes were fixed intently on the distance, without seeming to see

anything, as if she were in trouble. She did not notice the little boy

until he pulled her by the coat. Then she stopped short and stooped

down to wipe his wet face.

“Why, Emil! I told you to stay in the store and not to come out. What

is the matter with you?”

“My kitten, sister, my kitten! A man put her out, and a dog chased her

up there.” His forefinger, projecting from the sleeve of his coat,

pointed up to the wretched little creature on the pole.

“Oh, Emil! Didn’t I tell you she’d get us into trouble of some kind, if

you brought her? What made you tease me so? But there, I ought to have

known better myself.” She went to the foot of the pole and held out her

arms, crying, “Kitty, kitty, kitty,” but the kitten only mewed and

faintly waved its tail. Alexandra turned away decidedly. “No, she won’t

come down. Somebody will have to go up after her. I saw the Linstrums’

wagon in town. I’ll go and see if I can find Carl. Maybe he can do

something. Only you must stop crying, or I won’t go a step. Where’s

your comforter? Did you leave it in the store? Never mind. Hold still,

till I put this on you.”

She unwound the brown veil from her head and tied it about his throat.

A shabby little traveling man, who was just then coming out of the

store on his way to the saloon, stopped and gazed stupidly at the

shining mass of hair she bared when she took off her veil; two thick

braids, pinned about her head in the German way, with a fringe of

reddish-yellow curls blowing out from under her cap. He took his cigar

out of his mouth and held the wet end between the fingers of his woolen

glove. “My God, girl, what a head of hair!” he exclaimed, quite

innocently and foolishly. She stabbed him with a glance of Amazonian

fierceness and drew in her lower lip—most unnecessary severity. It gave

the little clothing drummer such a start that he actually let his cigar

fall to the sidewalk and went off weakly in the teeth of the wind to

the saloon. His hand was still unsteady when he took his glass from the

bartender. His feeble flirtatious instincts had been crushed before,

but never so mercilessly. He felt cheap and ill-used, as if some one

had taken advantage of him. When a drummer had been knocking about in

little drab towns and crawling across the wintry country in dirty

smoking-cars, was he to be blamed if, when he chanced upon a fine human

creature, he suddenly wished himself more of a man?

While the little drummer was drinking to recover his nerve, Alexandra

hurried to the drug store as the most likely place to find Carl

Linstrum. There he was, turning over a portfolio of chromo “studies”

which the druggist sold to the Hanover women who did china-painting.

Alexandra explained her predicament, and the boy followed her to the

corner, where Emil still sat by the pole.

“I’ll have to go up after her, Alexandra. I think at the depot they

have some spikes I can strap on my feet. Wait a minute.” Carl thrust

his hands into his pockets, lowered his head, and darted up the street

against the north wind. He was a tall boy of fifteen, slight and

narrow-chested. When he came back with the spikes, Alexandra asked him

what he had done with his overcoat.

“I left it in the drug store. I couldn’t climb in it, anyhow. Catch me

if I fall, Emil,” he called back as he began his ascent. Alexandra

watched him anxiously; the cold was bitter enough on the ground. The

kitten would not budge an inch. Carl had to go to the very top of the

pole, and then had some difficulty in tearing her from her hold. When

he reached the ground, he handed the cat to her tearful little master.

“Now go into the store with her, Emil, and get warm.” He opened the

door for the child. “Wait a minute, Alexandra. Why can’t I drive for

you as far as our place? It’s getting colder every minute. Have you

seen the doctor?”

“Yes. He is coming over to-morrow. But he says father can’t get better;

can’t get well.” The girl’s lip trembled. She looked fixedly up the

bleak street as if she were gathering her strength to face something,

as if she were trying with all her might to grasp a situation which, no

matter how painful, must be met and dealt with somehow. The wind

flapped the skirts of her heavy coat about her.

Carl did not say anything, but she felt his sympathy. He, too, was

lonely. He was a thin, frail boy, with brooding dark eyes, very quiet

in all his movements. There was a delicate pallor in his thin face, and

his mouth was too sensitive for a boy’s. The lips had already a little

curl of bitterness and skepticism. The two friends stood for a few

moments on the windy street corner, not speaking a word, as two

travelers, who have lost their way, sometimes stand and admit their

perplexity in silence. When Carl turned away he said, “I’ll see to your

team.” Alexandra went into the store to have her purchases packed in

the egg-boxes, and to get warm before she set out on her long cold

drive.

When she looked for Emil, she found him sitting on a step of the

staircase that led up to the clothing and carpet department. He was

playing with a little Bohemian girl, Marie Tovesky, who was tying her

handkerchief over the kitten’s head for a bonnet. Marie was a stranger

in the country, having come from Omaha with her mother to visit her

uncle, Joe Tovesky. She was a dark child, with brown curly hair, like a

brunette doll’s, a coaxing little red mouth, and round, yellow-brown

eyes. Every one noticed her eyes; the brown iris had golden glints that

made them look like gold-stone, or, in softer lights, like that

Colorado mineral called tiger-eye.

The country children thereabouts wore their dresses to their shoe-tops,

but this city child was dressed in what was then called the “Kate

Greenaway” manner, and her red cashmere frock, gathered full from the

yoke, came almost to the floor. This, with her poke bonnet, gave her

the look of a quaint little woman. She had a white fur tippet about her

neck and made no fussy objections when Emil fingered it admiringly.

Alexandra had not the heart to take him away from so pretty a

playfellow, and she let them tease the kitten together until Joe

Tovesky came in noisily and picked up his little niece, setting her on

his shoulder for every one to see. His children were all boys, and he

adored this little creature. His cronies formed a circle about him,

admiring and teasing the little girl, who took their jokes with great

good nature. They were all delighted with her, for they seldom saw so

pretty and carefully nurtured a child. They told her that she must

choose one of them for a sweetheart, and each began pressing his suit

and offering her bribes; candy, and little pigs, and spotted calves.

She looked archly into the big, brown, mustached faces, smelling of

spirits and tobacco, then she ran her tiny forefinger delicately over

Joe’s bristly chin and said, “Here is my sweetheart.”

The Bohemians roared with laughter, and Marie’s uncle hugged her until

she cried, “Please don’t, Uncle Joe! You hurt me.” Each of Joe’s

friends gave her a bag of candy, and she kissed them all around, though

she did not like country candy very well. Perhaps that was why she

bethought herself of Emil. “Let me down, Uncle Joe,” she said, “I want

to give some of my candy to that nice little boy I found.” She walked

graciously over to Emil, followed by her lusty admirers, who formed a

new circle and teased the little boy until he hid his face in his

sister’s skirts, and she had to scold him for being such a baby.

The farm people were making preparations to start for home. The women

were checking over their groceries and pinning their big red shawls

about their heads. The men were buying tobacco and candy with what

money they had left, were showing each other new boots and gloves and

blue flannel shirts. Three big Bohemians were drinking raw alcohol,

tinctured with oil of cinnamon. This was said to fortify one

effectually against the cold, and they smacked their lips after each

pull at the flask. Their volubility drowned every other noise in the

place, and the overheated store sounded of their spirited language as

it reeked of pipe smoke, damp woolens, and kerosene.

Carl came in, wearing his overcoat and carrying a wooden box with a

brass handle. “Come,” he said, “I’ve fed and watered your team, and the

wagon is ready.” He carried Emil out and tucked him down in the straw

in the wagonbox. The heat had made the little boy sleepy, but he still

clung to his kitten.

“You were awful good to climb so high and get my kitten, Carl. When I

get big I’ll climb and get little boys’ kittens for them,” he murmured

drowsily. Before the horses were over the first hill, Emil and his cat

were both fast asleep.

Although it was only four o’clock, the winter day was fading. The road

led southwest, toward the streak of pale, watery light that glimmered

in the leaden sky. The light fell upon the two sad young faces that

were turned mutely toward it: upon the eyes of the girl, who seemed to

be looking with such anguished perplexity into the future; upon the

sombre eyes of the boy, who seemed already to be looking into the past.

The little town behind them had vanished as if it had never been, had

fallen behind the swell of the prairie, and the stern frozen country

received them into its bosom. The homesteads were few and far apart;

here and there a windmill gaunt against the sky, a sod house crouching

in a hollow. But the great fact was the land itself, which seemed to

overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its

sombre wastes. It was from facing this vast hardness that the boy’s

mouth had become so bitter; because he felt that men were too weak to

make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve

its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its

uninterrupted mournfulness.

The wagon jolted along over the frozen road. The two friends had less

to say to each other than usual, as if the cold had somehow penetrated

to their hearts.

“Did Lou and Oscar go to the Blue to cut wood to-day?” Carl asked.

“Yes. I’m almost sorry I let them go, it’s turned so cold. But mother

frets if the wood gets low.” She stopped and put her hand to her

forehead, brushing back her hair. “I don’t know what is to become of

us, Carl, if father has to die. I don’t dare to think about it. I wish

we could all go with him and let the grass grow back over everything.”

Carl made no reply. Just ahead of them was the Norwegian graveyard,

where the grass had, indeed, grown back over everything, shaggy and

red, hiding even the wire fence. Carl realized that he was not a very

helpful companion, but there was nothing he could say.

“Of course,” Alexandra went on, steadying her voice a little, “the boys

are strong and work hard, but we’ve always depended so on father that I

don’t see how we can go ahead. I almost feel as if there were nothing

to go ahead for.”

“Does your father know?”

“Yes, I think he does. He lies and counts on his fingers all day. I

think he is trying to count up what he is leaving for us. It’s a

comfort to him that my chickens are laying right on through the cold

weather and bringing in a little money. I wish we could keep his mind

off such things, but I don’t have much time to be with him now.”

“I wonder if he’d like to have me bring my magic lantern over some

evening?”

Alexandra turned her face toward him. “Oh, Carl! Have you got it?”

“Yes. It’s back there in the straw. Didn’t you notice the box I was

carrying? I tried it all morning in the drug-store cellar, and it

worked ever so well, makes fine big pictures.”

“What are they about?”

“Oh, hunting pictures in Germany, and Robinson Crusoe and funny

pictures about cannibals. I’m going to paint some slides for it on

glass, out of the Hans Andersen book.”

Alexandra seemed actually cheered. There is often a good deal of the

child left in people who have had to grow up too soon. “Do bring it

over, Carl. I can hardly wait to see it, and I’m sure it will please

father. Are the pictures colored? Then I know he’ll like them. He likes

the calendars I get him in town. I wish I could get more. You must

leave me here, mustn’t you? It’s been nice to have company.”

Carl stopped the horses and looked dubiously up at the black sky. “It’s

pretty dark. Of course the horses will take you home, but I think I’d

better light your lantern, in case you should need it.”

He gave her the reins and climbed back into the wagon-box, where he

crouched down and made a tent of his overcoat. After a dozen trials he

succeeded in lighting the lantern, which he placed in front of

Alexandra, half covering it with a blanket so that the light would not

shine in her eyes. “Now, wait until I find my box. Yes, here it is.

Good-night, Alexandra. Try not to worry.” Carl sprang to the ground and

ran off across the fields toward the Linstrum homestead. “Hoo,

hoo-o-o-o!” he called back as he disappeared over a ridge and dropped

into a sand gully. The wind answered him like an echo, “Hoo,

hoo-o-o-o-o-o!” Alexandra drove off alone. The rattle of her wagon was

lost in the howling of the wind, but her lantern, held firmly between

her feet, made a moving point of light along the highway, going deeper

and deeper into the dark country.

II

On one of the ridges of that wintry waste stood the low log house in

which John Bergson was dying. The Bergson homestead was easier to find

than many another, because it overlooked Norway Creek, a shallow, muddy

stream that sometimes flowed, and sometimes stood still, at the bottom

of a winding ravine with steep, shelving sides overgrown with brush and

cottonwoods and dwarf ash. This creek gave a sort of identity to the

farms that bordered upon it. Of all the bewildering things about a new

country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing

and disheartening. The houses on the Divide were small and were usually

tucked away in low places; you did not see them until you came directly

upon them. Most of them were built of the sod itself, and were only the

unescapable ground in another form. The roads were but faint tracks in

the grass, and the fields were scarcely noticeable. The record of the

plow was insignificant, like the feeble scratches on stone left by

prehistoric races, so indeterminate that they may, after all, be only

the markings of glaciers, and not a record of human strivings.

In eleven long years John Bergson had made but little impression upon

the wild land he had come to tame. It was still a wild thing that had

its ugly moods; and no one knew when they were likely to come, or why.

Mischance hung over it. Its Genius was unfriendly to man. The sick man

was feeling this as he lay looking out of the window, after the doctor

had left him, on the day following Alexandra’s trip to town. There it

lay outside his door, the same land, the same lead-colored miles. He

knew every ridge and draw and gully between him and the horizon. To the

south, his plowed fields; to the east, the sod stables, the cattle

corral, the pond,—and then the grass.

Bergson went over in his mind the things that had held him back. One

winter his cattle had perished in a blizzard. The next summer one of

his plow horses broke its leg in a prairiedog hole and had to be shot.

Another summer he lost his hogs from cholera, and a valuable stallion

died from a rattlesnake bite. Time and again his crops had failed. He

had lost two children, boys, that came between Lou and Emil, and there

had been the cost of sickness and death. Now, when he had at last

struggled out of debt, he was going to die himself. He was only

forty-six, and had, of course, counted upon more time.

Bergson had spent his first five years on the Divide getting into debt,

and the last six getting out. He had paid off his mortgages and had

ended pretty much where he began, with the land. He owned exactly six

hundred and forty acres of what stretched outside his door; his own

original homestead and timber claim, making three hundred and twenty

acres, and the half-section adjoining, the homestead of a younger

brother who had given up the fight, gone back to Chicago to work in a

fancy bakery and distinguish himself in a Swedish athletic club. So far

John had not attempted to cultivate the second half-section, but used

it for pasture land, and one of his sons rode herd there in open

weather.

John Bergson had the Old-World belief that land, in itself, is

desirable. But this land was an enigma. It was like a horse that no one

knows how to break to harness, that runs wild and kicks things to

pieces. He had an idea that no one understood how to farm it properly,

and this he often discussed with Alexandra. Their neighbors, certainly,

knew even less about farming than he did. Many of them had never worked

on a farm until they took up their homesteads. They had been

_handwerkers_ at home; tailors, locksmiths, joiners, cigar-makers, etc.

Bergson himself had worked in a shipyard.

For weeks, John Bergson had been thinking about these things. His bed

stood in the sitting-room, next to the kitchen. Through the day, while

the baking and washing and ironing were going on, the father lay and

looked up at the roof beams that he himself had hewn, or out at the

cattle in the corral. He counted the cattle over and over. It diverted

him to speculate as to how much weight each of the steers would

probably put on by spring. He often called his daughter in to talk to

her about this. Before Alexandra was twelve years old she had begun to

be a help to him, and as she grew older he had come to depend more and

more upon her resourcefulness and good judgment. His boys were willing

enough to work, but when he talked with them they usually irritated

him. It was Alexandra who read the papers and followed the markets, and

who learned by the mistakes of their neighbors. It was Alexandra who

could always tell about what it had cost to fatten each steer, and who

could guess the weight of a hog before it went on the scales closer

than John Bergson himself. Lou and Oscar were industrious, but he could

never teach them to use their heads about their work.

Alexandra, her father often said to himself, was like her grandfather;

which was his way of saying that she was intelligent. John Bergson’s

father had been a shipbuilder, a man of considerable force and of some

fortune. Late in life he married a second time, a Stockholm woman of

questionable character, much younger than he, who goaded him into every

sort of extravagance. On the shipbuilder’s part, this marriage was an

infatuation, the despairing folly of a powerful man who cannot bear to

grow old. In a few years his unprincipled wife warped the probity of a

lifetime. He speculated, lost his own fortune and funds entrusted to

him by poor seafaring men, and died disgraced, leaving his children

nothing. But when all was said, he had come up from the sea himself,

had built up a proud little business with no capital but his own skill

and foresight, and had proved himself a man. In his daughter, John

Bergson recognized the strength of will, and the simple direct way of

thinking things out, that had characterized his father in his better

days. He would much rather, of course, have seen this likeness in one

of his sons, but it was not a question of choice. As he lay there day

after day he had to accept the situation as it was, and to be thankful

that there was one among his children to whom he could entrust the

future of his family and the possibilities of his hard-won land.

The winter twilight was fading. The sick man heard his wife strike a

match in the kitchen, and the light of a lamp glimmered through the

cracks of the door. It seemed like a light shining far away. He turned

painfully in his bed and looked at his white hands, with all the work

gone out of them. He was ready to give up, he felt. He did not know how

it had come about, but he was quite willing to go deep under his fields

and rest, where the plow could not find him. He was tired of making

mistakes. He was content to leave the tangle to other hands; he thought

of his Alexandra’s strong ones.

“_Dotter_,” he called feebly, “_dotter!_” He heard her quick step and

saw her tall figure appear in the doorway, with the light of the lamp

behind her. He felt her youth and strength, how easily she moved and

stooped and lifted. But he would not have had it again if he could, not

he! He knew the end too well to wish to begin again. He knew where it

all went to, what it all became.

His daughter came and lifted him up on his pillows. She called him by

an old Swedish name that she used to call him when she was little and

took his dinner to him in the shipyard.

“Tell the boys to come here, daughter. I want to speak to them.”

“They are feeding the horses, father. They have just come back from the

Blue. Shall I call them?”

He sighed. “No, no. Wait until they come in. Alexandra, you will have

to do the best you can for your brothers. Everything will come on you.”

“I will do all I can, father.”

“Don’t let them get discouraged and go off like Uncle Otto. I want them

to keep the land.”

“We will, father. We will never lose the land.”

There was a sound of heavy feet in the kitchen. Alexandra went to the

door and beckoned to her brothers, two strapping boys of seventeen and

nineteen. They came in and stood at the foot of the bed. Their father

looked at them searchingly, though it was too dark to see their faces;

they were just the same boys, he told himself, he had not been mistaken

in them. The square head and heavy shoulders belonged to Oscar, the

elder. The younger boy was quicker, but vacillating.

“Boys,” said the father wearily, “I want you to keep the land together

and to be guided by your sister. I have talked to her since I have been

sick, and she knows all my wishes. I want no quarrels among my

children, and so long as there is one house there must be one head.

Alexandra is the oldest, and she knows my wishes. She will do the best

she can. If she makes mistakes, she will not make so many as I have

made. When you marry, and want a house of your own, the land will be

divided fairly, according to the courts. But for the next few years you

will have it hard, and you must all keep together. Alexandra will

manage the best she can.”

Oscar, who was usually the last to speak, replied because he was the

older, “Yes, father. It would be so anyway, without your speaking. We

will all work the place together.”

“And you will be guided by your sister, boys, and be good brothers to

her, and good sons to your mother? That is good. And Alexandra must not

work in the fields any more. There is no necessity now. Hire a man when

you need help. She can make much more with her eggs and butter than the

wages of a man. It was one of my mistakes that I did not find that out

sooner. Try to break a little more land every year; sod corn is good

for fodder. Keep turning the land, and always put up more hay than you

need. Don’t grudge your mother a little time for plowing her garden and

setting out fruit trees, even if it comes in a busy season. She has

been a good mother to you, and she has always missed the old country.”

When they went back to the kitchen the boys sat down silently at the

table. Throughout the meal they looked down at their plates and did not

lift their red eyes. They did not eat much, although they had been

working in the cold all day, and there was a rabbit stewed in gravy for

supper, and prune pies.

John Bergson had married beneath him, but he had married a good

housewife. Mrs. Bergson was a fair-skinned, corpulent woman, heavy and

placid like her son, Oscar, but there was something comfortable about

her; perhaps it was her own love of comfort. For eleven years she had

worthily striven to maintain some semblance of household order amid

conditions that made order very difficult. Habit was very strong with

Mrs. Bergson, and her unremitting efforts to repeat the routine of her

old life among new surroundings had done a great deal to keep the

family from disintegrating morally and getting careless in their ways.

The Bergsons had a log house, for instance, only because Mrs. Bergson

would not live in a sod house. She missed the fish diet of her own

country, and twice every summer she sent the boys to the river, twenty

miles to the southward, to fish for channel cat. When the children were

little she used to load them all into the wagon, the baby in its crib,

and go fishing herself.

Alexandra often said that if her mother were cast upon a desert island,

she would thank God for her deliverance, make a garden, and find

something to preserve. Preserving was almost a mania with Mrs. Bergson.

Stout as she was, she roamed the scrubby banks of Norway Creek looking

for fox grapes and goose plums, like a wild creature in search of prey.

She made a yellow jam of the insipid ground-cherries that grew on the

prairie, flavoring it with lemon peel; and she made a sticky dark

conserve of garden tomatoes. She had experimented even with the rank

buffalo-pea, and she could not see a fine bronze cluster of them

without shaking her head and murmuring, “What a pity!” When there was

nothing more to preserve, she began to pickle. The amount of sugar she

used in these processes was sometimes a serious drain upon the family

resources. She was a good mother, but she was glad when her children

were old enough not to be in her way in the kitchen. She had never

quite forgiven John Bergson for bringing her to the end of the earth;

but, now that she was there, she wanted to be let alone to reconstruct

her old life in so far as that was possible. She could still take some

comfort in the world if she had bacon in the cave, glass jars on the

shelves, and sheets in the press. She disapproved of all her neighbors

because of their slovenly housekeeping, and the women thought her very

proud. Once when Mrs. Bergson, on her way to Norway Creek, stopped to

see old Mrs. Lee, the old woman hid in the haymow “for fear Mis’

Bergson would catch her barefoot.”

III

One Sunday afternoon in July, six months after John Bergson’s death,

Carl was sitting in the doorway of the Linstrum kitchen, dreaming over

an illustrated paper, when he heard the rattle of a wagon along the

hill road. Looking up he recognized the Bergsons’ team, with two seats

in the wagon, which meant they were off for a pleasure excursion. Oscar

and Lou, on the front seat, wore their cloth hats and coats, never worn

except on Sundays, and Emil, on the second seat with Alexandra, sat

proudly in his new trousers, made from a pair of his father’s, and a

pink-striped shirt, with a wide ruffled collar. Oscar stopped the

horses and waved to Carl, who caught up his hat and ran through the

melon patch to join them.

“Want to go with us?” Lou called. “We’re going to Crazy Ivar’s to buy a

hammock.”

“Sure.” Carl ran up panting, and clambering over the wheel sat down

beside Emil. “I’ve always wanted to see Ivar’s pond. They say it’s the

biggest in all the country. Aren’t you afraid to go to Ivar’s in that

new shirt, Emil? He might want it and take it right off your back.”

Emil grinned. “I’d be awful scared to go,” he admitted, “if you big

boys weren’t along to take care of me. Did you ever hear him howl,

Carl? People say sometimes he runs about the country howling at night

because he is afraid the Lord will destroy him. Mother thinks he must

have done something awful wicked.”

Lou looked back and winked at Carl. “What would you do, Emil, if you

was out on the prairie by yourself and seen him coming?”

Emil stared. “Maybe I could hide in a badger-hole,” he suggested

doubtfully.

“But suppose there wasn’t any badger-hole,” Lou persisted. “Would you

run?”

“No, I’d be too scared to run,” Emil admitted mournfully, twisting his

fingers. “I guess I’d sit right down on the ground and say my prayers.”

The big boys laughed, and Oscar brandished his whip over the broad

backs of the horses.

“He wouldn’t hurt you, Emil,” said Carl persuasively. “He came to

doctor our mare when she ate green corn and swelled up most as big as

the water-tank. He petted her just like you do your cats. I couldn’t

understand much he said, for he don’t talk any English, but he kept

patting her and groaning as if he had the pain himself, and saying,

‘There now, sister, that’s easier, that’s better!’”

Lou and Oscar laughed, and Emil giggled delightedly and looked up at

his sister.

“I don’t think he knows anything at all about doctoring,” said Oscar

scornfully. “They say when horses have distemper he takes the medicine

himself, and then prays over the horses.”

Alexandra spoke up. “That’s what the Crows said, but he cured their

horses, all the same. Some days his mind is cloudy, like. But if you

can get him on a clear day, you can learn a great deal from him. He

understands animals. Didn’t I see him take the horn off the Berquist’s

cow when she had torn it loose and went crazy? She was tearing all over

the place, knocking herself against things. And at last she ran out on

the roof of the old dugout and her legs went through and there she

stuck, bellowing. Ivar came running with his white bag, and the moment

he got to her she was quiet and let him saw her horn off and daub the

place with tar.”

Emil had been watching his sister, his face reflecting the sufferings

of the cow. “And then didn’t it hurt her any more?” he asked.

Alexandra patted him. “No, not any more. And in two days they could use

her milk again.”

The road to Ivar’s homestead was a very poor one. He had settled in the

rough country across the county line, where no one lived but some

Russians,—half a dozen families who dwelt together in one long house,

divided off like barracks. Ivar had explained his choice by saying that

the fewer neighbors he had, the fewer temptations. Nevertheless, when

one considered that his chief business was horse-doctoring, it seemed

rather short-sighted of him to live in the most inaccessible place he

could find. The Bergson wagon lurched along over the rough hummocks and

grass banks, followed the bottom of winding draws, or skirted the

margin of wide lagoons, where the golden coreopsis grew up out of the

clear water and the wild ducks rose with a whirr of wings.

Lou looked after them helplessly. “I wish I’d brought my gun, anyway,

Alexandra,” he said fretfully. “I could have hidden it under the straw

in the bottom of the wagon.”

“Then we’d have had to lie to Ivar. Besides, they say he can smell dead

birds. And if he knew, we wouldn’t get anything out of him, not even a

hammock. I want to talk to him, and he won’t talk sense if he’s angry.

It makes him foolish.”

Lou sniffed. “Whoever heard of him talking sense, anyhow! I’d rather

have ducks for supper than Crazy Ivar’s tongue.”

Emil was alarmed. “Oh, but, Lou, you don’t want to make him mad! He

might howl!”

They all laughed again, and Oscar urged the horses up the crumbling

side of a clay bank. They had left the lagoons and the red grass behind

them. In Crazy Ivar’s country the grass was short and gray, the draws

deeper than they were in the Bergsons’ neighborhood, and the land was

all broken up into hillocks and clay ridges. The wild flowers

disappeared, and only in the bottom of the draws and gullies grew a few

of the very toughest and hardiest: shoestring, and ironweed, and

snow-on-the-mountain.

“Look, look, Emil, there’s Ivar’s big pond!” Alexandra pointed to a

shining sheet of water that lay at the bottom of a shallow draw. At one

end of the pond was an earthen dam, planted with green willow bushes,

and above it a door and a single window were set into the hillside. You

would not have seen them at all but for the reflection of the sunlight

upon the four panes of window-glass. And that was all you saw. Not a

shed, not a corral, not a well, not even a path broken in the curly

grass. But for the piece of rusty stovepipe sticking up through the

sod, you could have walked over the roof of Ivar’s dwelling without

dreaming that you were near a human habitation. Ivar had lived for

three years in the clay bank, without defiling the face of nature any

more than the coyote that had lived there before him had done.

When the Bergsons drove over the hill, Ivar was sitting in the doorway

of his house, reading the Norwegian Bible. He was a queerly shaped old

man, with a thick, powerful body set on short bow-legs. His shaggy

white hair, falling in a thick mane about his ruddy cheeks, made him

look older than he was. He was barefoot, but he wore a clean shirt of

unbleached cotton, open at the neck. He always put on a clean shirt

when Sunday morning came round, though he never went to church. He had

a peculiar religion of his own and could not get on with any of the

denominations. Often he did not see anybody from one week’s end to

another. He kept a calendar, and every morning he checked off a day, so

that he was never in any doubt as to which day of the week it was. Ivar

hired himself out in threshing and corn-husking time, and he doctored

sick animals when he was sent for. When he was at home, he made

hammocks out of twine and committed chapters of the Bible to memory.

Ivar found contentment in the solitude he had sought out for himself.

He disliked the litter of human dwellings: the broken food, the bits of

broken china, the old wash-boilers and tea-kettles thrown into the

sunflower patch. He preferred the cleanness and tidiness of the wild

sod. He always said that the badgers had cleaner houses than people,

and that when he took a housekeeper her name would be Mrs. Badger. He

best expressed his preference for his wild homestead by saying that his

Bible seemed truer to him there. If one stood in the doorway of his

cave, and looked off at the rough land, the smiling sky, the curly

grass white in the hot sunlight; if one listened to the rapturous song

of the lark, the drumming of the quail, the burr of the locust against

that vast silence, one understood what Ivar meant.

On this Sunday afternoon his face shone with happiness. He closed the

book on his knee, keeping the place with his horny finger, and repeated

softly:—

He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills;

They give drink to every beast of the field; the wild asses quench

their thirst.

The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon which he

hath planted;

Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees are

her house.

The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats; and the rocks for the

conies.

Before he opened his Bible again, Ivar heard the Bergsons’ wagon

approaching, and he sprang up and ran toward it.

“No guns, no guns!” he shouted, waving his arms distractedly.

“No, Ivar, no guns,” Alexandra called reassuringly.

He dropped his arms and went up to the wagon, smiling amiably and

looking at them out of his pale blue eyes.

“We want to buy a hammock, if you have one,” Alexandra explained, “and

my little brother, here, wants to see your big pond, where so many

birds come.”

Ivar smiled foolishly, and began rubbing the horses’ noses and feeling

about their mouths behind the bits. “Not many birds just now. A few

ducks this morning; and some snipe come to drink. But there was a crane

last week. She spent one night and came back the next evening. I don’t

know why. It is not her season, of course. Many of them go over in the

fall. Then the pond is full of strange voices every night.”

Alexandra translated for Carl, who looked thoughtful. “Ask him,

Alexandra, if it is true that a sea gull came here once. I have heard

so.”

She had some difficulty in making the old man understand.

He looked puzzled at first, then smote his hands together as he

remembered. “Oh, yes, yes! A big white bird with long wings and pink

feet. My! what a voice she had! She came in the afternoon and kept

flying about the pond and screaming until dark. She was in trouble of

some sort, but I could not understand her. She was going over to the

other ocean, maybe, and did not know how far it was. She was afraid of

never getting there. She was more mournful than our birds here; she

cried in the night. She saw the light from my window and darted up to

it. Maybe she thought my house was a boat, she was such a wild thing.

Next morning, when the sun rose, I went out to take her food, but she

flew up into the sky and went on her way.” Ivar ran his fingers through

his thick hair. “I have many strange birds stop with me here. They come

from very far away and are great company. I hope you boys never shoot

wild birds?”

Lou and Oscar grinned, and Ivar shook his bushy head. “Yes, I know boys

are thoughtless. But these wild things are God’s birds. He watches over

them and counts them, as we do our cattle; Christ says so in the New

Testament.”

“Now, Ivar,” Lou asked, “may we water our horses at your pond and give

them some feed? It’s a bad road to your place.”

“Yes, yes, it is.” The old man scrambled about and began to loose the

tugs. “A bad road, eh, girls? And the bay with a colt at home!”

Oscar brushed the old man aside. “We’ll take care of the horses, Ivar.

You’ll be finding some disease on them. Alexandra wants to see your

hammocks.”

Ivar led Alexandra and Emil to his little cave house. He had but one

room, neatly plastered and whitewashed, and there was a wooden floor.

There was a kitchen stove, a table covered with oilcloth, two chairs, a

clock, a calendar, a few books on the window-shelf; nothing more. But

the place was as clean as a cupboard.

“But where do you sleep, Ivar?” Emil asked, looking about.

Ivar unslung a hammock from a hook on the wall; in it was rolled a

buffalo robe. “There, my son. A hammock is a good bed, and in winter I

wrap up in this skin. Where I go to work, the beds are not half so easy

as this.”

By this time Emil had lost all his timidity. He thought a cave a very

superior kind of house. There was something pleasantly unusual about it

and about Ivar. “Do the birds know you will be kind to them, Ivar? Is

that why so many come?” he asked.

Ivar sat down on the floor and tucked his feet under him. “See, little

brother, they have come from a long way, and they are very tired. From

up there where they are flying, our country looks dark and flat. They

must have water to drink and to bathe in before they can go on with

their journey. They look this way and that, and far below them they see

something shining, like a piece of glass set in the dark earth. That is

my pond. They come to it and are not disturbed. Maybe I sprinkle a

little corn. They tell the other birds, and next year more come this

way. They have their roads up there, as we have down here.”

Emil rubbed his knees thoughtfully. “And is that true, Ivar, about the

head ducks falling back when they are tired, and the hind ones taking

their place?”

“Yes. The point of the wedge gets the worst of it; they cut the wind.

They can only stand it there a little while—half an hour, maybe. Then

they fall back and the wedge splits a little, while the rear ones come

up the middle to the front. Then it closes up and they fly on, with a

new edge. They are always changing like that, up in the air. Never any

confusion; just like soldiers who have been drilled.”

Alexandra had selected her hammock by the time the boys came up from

the pond. They would not come in, but sat in the shade of the bank

outside while Alexandra and Ivar talked about the birds and about his

housekeeping, and why he never ate meat, fresh or salt.

Alexandra was sitting on one of the wooden chairs, her arms resting on

the table. Ivar was sitting on the floor at her feet. “Ivar,” she said

suddenly, beginning to trace the pattern on the oilcloth with her

forefinger, “I came to-day more because I wanted to talk to you than

because I wanted to buy a hammock.”

“Yes?” The old man scraped his bare feet on the plank floor.

“We have a big bunch of hogs, Ivar. I wouldn’t sell in the spring, when

everybody advised me to, and now so many people are losing their hogs

that I am frightened. What can be done?”

Ivar’s little eyes began to shine. They lost their vagueness.

“You feed them swill and such stuff? Of course! And sour milk? Oh, yes!

And keep them in a stinking pen? I tell you, sister, the hogs of this

country are put upon! They become unclean, like the hogs in the Bible.

If you kept your chickens like that, what would happen? You have a

little sorghum patch, maybe? Put a fence around it, and turn the hogs

in. Build a shed to give them shade, a thatch on poles. Let the boys

haul water to them in barrels, clean water, and plenty. Get them off

the old stinking ground, and do not let them go back there until

winter. Give them only grain and clean feed, such as you would give

horses or cattle. Hogs do not like to be filthy.”

The boys outside the door had been listening. Lou nudged his brother.

“Come, the horses are done eating. Let’s hitch up and get out of here.

He’ll fill her full of notions. She’ll be for having the pigs sleep

with us, next.”

Oscar grunted and got up. Carl, who could not understand what Ivar

said, saw that the two boys were displeased. They did not mind hard

work, but they hated experiments and could never see the use of taking

pains. Even Lou, who was more elastic than his older brother, disliked

to do anything different from their neighbors. He felt that it made

them conspicuous and gave people a chance to talk about them.

Once they were on the homeward road, the boys forgot their ill-humor

and joked about Ivar and his birds. Alexandra did not propose any

reforms in the care of the pigs, and they hoped she had forgotten

Ivar’s talk. They agreed that he was crazier than ever, and would never

be able to prove up on his land because he worked it so little.

Alexandra privately resolved that she would have a talk with Ivar about

this and stir him up. The boys persuaded Carl to stay for supper and go

swimming in the pasture pond after dark.

That evening, after she had washed the supper dishes, Alexandra sat

down on the kitchen doorstep, while her mother was mixing the bread. It

was a still, deep-breathing summer night, full of the smell of the hay

fields. Sounds of laughter and splashing came up from the pasture, and

when the moon rose rapidly above the bare rim of the prairie, the pond

glittered like polished metal, and she could see the flash of white

bodies as the boys ran about the edge, or jumped into the water.

Alexandra watched the shimmering pool dreamily, but eventually her eyes

went back to the sorghum patch south of the barn, where she was

planning to make her new pig corral.

IV

For the first three years after John Bergson’s death, the affairs of

his family prospered. Then came the hard times that brought every one

on the Divide to the brink of despair; three years of drouth and

failure, the last struggle of a wild soil against the encroaching

plowshare. The first of these fruitless summers the Bergson boys bore

courageously. The failure of the corn crop made labor cheap. Lou and

Oscar hired two men and put in bigger crops than ever before. They lost

everything they spent. The whole country was discouraged. Farmers who

were already in debt had to give up their land. A few foreclosures

demoralized the county. The settlers sat about on the wooden sidewalks

in the little town and told each other that the country was never meant

for men to live in; the thing to do was to get back to Iowa, to

Illinois, to any place that had been proved habitable. The Bergson

boys, certainly, would have been happier with their uncle Otto, in the

bakery shop in Chicago. Like most of their neighbors, they were meant

to follow in paths already marked out for them, not to break trails in

a new country. A steady job, a few holidays, nothing to think about,

and they would have been very happy. It was no fault of theirs that

they had been dragged into the wilderness when they were little boys. A

pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of

things more than the things themselves.

The second of these barren summers was passing. One September afternoon

Alexandra had gone over to the garden across the draw to dig sweet

potatoes—they had been thriving upon the weather that was fatal to

everything else. But when Carl Linstrum came up the garden rows to find

her, she was not working. She was standing lost in thought, leaning

upon her pitchfork, her sunbonnet lying beside her on the ground. The

dry garden patch smelled of drying vines and was strewn with yellow

seed-cucumbers and pumpkins and citrons. At one end, next the rhubarb,

grew feathery asparagus, with red berries. Down the middle of the

garden was a row of gooseberry and currant bushes. A few tough zenias

and marigolds and a row of scarlet sage bore witness to the buckets of

water that Mrs. Bergson had carried there after sundown, against the

prohibition of her sons. Carl came quietly and slowly up the garden

path, looking intently at Alexandra. She did not hear him. She was

standing perfectly still, with that serious ease so characteristic of

her. Her thick, reddish braids, twisted about her head, fairly burned

in the sunlight. The air was cool enough to make the warm sun pleasant

on one’s back and shoulders, and so clear that the eye could follow a

hawk up and up, into the blazing blue depths of the sky. Even Carl,

never a very cheerful boy, and considerably darkened by these last two

bitter years, loved the country on days like this, felt something

strong and young and wild come out of it, that laughed at care.

“Alexandra,” he said as he approached her, “I want to talk to you.

Let’s sit down by the gooseberry bushes.” He picked up her sack of

potatoes and they crossed the garden. “Boys gone to town?” he asked as

he sank down on the warm, sun-baked earth. “Well, we have made up our

minds at last, Alexandra. We are really going away.”

She looked at him as if she were a little frightened. “Really, Carl? Is

it settled?”

“Yes, father has heard from St. Louis, and they will give him back his

old job in the cigar factory. He must be there by the first of

November. They are taking on new men then. We will sell the place for

whatever we can get, and auction the stock. We haven’t enough to ship.

I am going to learn engraving with a German engraver there, and then

try to get work in Chicago.”

Alexandra’s hands dropped in her lap. Her eyes became dreamy and filled

with tears.

Carl’s sensitive lower lip trembled. He scratched in the soft earth

beside him with a stick. “That’s all I hate about it, Alexandra,” he

said slowly. “You’ve stood by us through so much and helped father out

so many times, and now it seems as if we were running off and leaving

you to face the worst of it. But it isn’t as if we could really ever be

of any help to you. We are only one more drag, one more thing you look

out for and feel responsible for. Father was never meant for a farmer,

you know that. And I hate it. We’d only get in deeper and deeper.”

“Yes, yes, Carl, I know. You are wasting your life here. You are able

to do much better things. You are nearly nineteen now, and I wouldn’t

have you stay. I’ve always hoped you would get away. But I can’t help

feeling scared when I think how I will miss you—more than you will ever

know.” She brushed the tears from her cheeks, not trying to hide them.

“But, Alexandra,” he said sadly and wistfully, “I’ve never been any

real help to you, beyond sometimes trying to keep the boys in a good

humor.”

Alexandra smiled and shook her head. “Oh, it’s not that. Nothing like

that. It’s by understanding me, and the boys, and mother, that you’ve

helped me. I expect that is the only way one person ever really can

help another. I think you are about the only one that ever helped me.

Somehow it will take more courage to bear your going than everything

that has happened before.”

Carl looked at the ground. “You see, we’ve all depended so on you,” he

said, “even father. He makes me laugh. When anything comes up he always

says, ‘I wonder what the Bergsons are going to do about that? I guess

I’ll go and ask her.’ I’ll never forget that time, when we first came

here, and our horse had the colic, and I ran over to your place—your

father was away, and you came home with me and showed father how to let

the wind out of the horse. You were only a little girl then, but you

knew ever so much more about farm work than poor father. You remember

how homesick I used to get, and what long talks we used to have coming

from school? We’ve someway always felt alike about things.”

“Yes, that’s it; we’ve liked the same things and we’ve liked them

together, without anybody else knowing. And we’ve had good times,

hunting for Christmas trees and going for ducks and making our plum

wine together every year. We’ve never either of us had any other close

friend. And now—” Alexandra wiped her eyes with the corner of her

apron, “and now I must remember that you are going where you will have

many friends, and will find the work you were meant to do. But you’ll

write to me, Carl? That will mean a great deal to me here.”

“I’ll write as long as I live,” cried the boy impetuously. “And I’ll be

working for you as much as for myself, Alexandra. I want to do

something you’ll like and be proud of. I’m a fool here, but I know I

can do something!” He sat up and frowned at the red grass.

Alexandra sighed. “How discouraged the boys will be when they hear.

They always come home from town discouraged, anyway. So many people are

trying to leave the country, and they talk to our boys and make them

low-spirited. I’m afraid they are beginning to feel hard toward me

because I won’t listen to any talk about going. Sometimes I feel like

I’m getting tired of standing up for this country.”

“I won’t tell the boys yet, if you’d rather not.”

“Oh, I’ll tell them myself, to-night, when they come home. They’ll be

talking wild, anyway, and no good comes of keeping bad news. It’s all

harder on them than it is on me. Lou wants to get married, poor boy,

and he can’t until times are better. See, there goes the sun, Carl. I

must be getting back. Mother will want her potatoes. It’s chilly

already, the moment the light goes.”

Alexandra rose and looked about. A golden afterglow throbbed in the

west, but the country already looked empty and mournful. A dark moving

mass came over the western hill, the Lee boy was bringing in the herd

from the other half-section. Emil ran from the windmill to open the

corral gate. From the log house, on the little rise across the draw,

the smoke was curling. The cattle lowed and bellowed. In the sky the

pale half-moon was slowly silvering. Alexandra and Carl walked together

down the potato rows. “I have to keep telling myself what is going to

happen,” she said softly. “Since you have been here, ten years now, I

have never really been lonely. But I can remember what it was like

before. Now I shall have nobody but Emil. But he is my boy, and he is

tender-hearted.”

That night, when the boys were called to supper, they sat down moodily.

They had worn their coats to town, but they ate in their striped shirts

and suspenders. They were grown men now, and, as Alexandra said, for

the last few years they had been growing more and more like themselves.

Lou was still the slighter of the two, the quicker and more

intelligent, but apt to go off at half-cock. He had a lively blue eye,

a thin, fair skin (always burned red to the neckband of his shirt in

summer), stiff, yellow hair that would not lie down on his head, and a

bristly little yellow mustache, of which he was very proud. Oscar could

not grow a mustache; his pale face was as bare as an egg, and his white

eyebrows gave it an empty look. He was a man of powerful body and

unusual endurance; the sort of man you could attach to a corn-sheller

as you would an engine. He would turn it all day, without hurrying,

without slowing down. But he was as indolent of mind as he was

unsparing of his body. His love of routine amounted to a vice. He

worked like an insect, always doing the same thing over in the same

way, regardless of whether it was best or no. He felt that there was a

sovereign virtue in mere bodily toil, and he rather liked to do things

in the hardest way. If a field had once been in corn, he couldn’t bear

to put it into wheat. He liked to begin his corn-planting at the same

time every year, whether the season were backward or forward. He seemed

to feel that by his own irreproachable regularity he would clear

himself of blame and reprove the weather. When the wheat crop failed,

he threshed the straw at a dead loss to demonstrate how little grain

there was, and thus prove his case against Providence.

Lou, on the other hand, was fussy and flighty; always planned to get

through two days’ work in one, and often got only the least important

things done. He liked to keep the place up, but he never got round to

doing odd jobs until he had to neglect more pressing work to attend to

them. In the middle of the wheat harvest, when the grain was over-ripe

and every hand was needed, he would stop to mend fences or to patch the

harness; then dash down to the field and overwork and be laid up in bed

for a week. The two boys balanced each other, and they pulled well

together. They had been good friends since they were children. One

seldom went anywhere, even to town, without the other.

To-night, after they sat down to supper, Oscar kept looking at Lou as

if he expected him to say something, and Lou blinked his eyes and

frowned at his plate. It was Alexandra herself who at last opened the

discussion.

“The Linstrums,” she said calmly, as she put another plate of hot

biscuit on the table, “are going back to St. Louis. The old man is

going to work in the cigar factory again.”

At this Lou plunged in. “You see, Alexandra, everybody who can crawl

out is going away. There’s no use of us trying to stick it out, just to

be stubborn. There’s something in knowing when to quit.”

“Where do you want to go, Lou?”

“Any place where things will grow,” said Oscar grimly.

Lou reached for a potato. “Chris Arnson has traded his half-section for

a place down on the river.”

“Who did he trade with?”

“Charley Fuller, in town.”

“Fuller the real estate man? You see, Lou, that Fuller has a head on

him. He’s buying and trading for every bit of land he can get up here.

It’ll make him a rich man, some day.”

“He’s rich now, that’s why he can take a chance.”

“Why can’t we? We’ll live longer than he will. Some day the land itself

will be worth more than all we can ever raise on it.”

Lou laughed. “It could be worth that, and still not be worth much. Why,

Alexandra, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Our place wouldn’t

bring now what it would six years ago. The fellows that settled up here

just made a mistake. Now they’re beginning to see this high land wasn’t

never meant to grow nothing on, and everybody who ain’t fixed to graze

cattle is trying to crawl out. It’s too high to farm up here. All the

Americans are skinning out. That man Percy Adams, north of town, told

me that he was going to let Fuller take his land and stuff for four

hundred dollars and a ticket to Chicago.”

“There’s Fuller again!” Alexandra exclaimed. “I wish that man would

take me for a partner. He’s feathering his nest! If only poor people

could learn a little from rich people! But all these fellows who are

running off are bad farmers, like poor Mr. Linstrum. They couldn’t get

ahead even in good years, and they all got into debt while father was

getting out. I think we ought to hold on as long as we can on father’s

account. He was so set on keeping this land. He must have seen harder

times than this, here. How was it in the early days, mother?”

Mrs. Bergson was weeping quietly. These family discussions always

depressed her, and made her remember all that she had been torn away

from. “I don’t see why the boys are always taking on about going away,”

she said, wiping her eyes. “I don’t want to move again; out to some raw

place, maybe, where we’d be worse off than we are here, and all to do

over again. I won’t move! If the rest of you go, I will ask some of the

neighbors to take me in, and stay and be buried by father. I’m not

going to leave him by himself on the prairie, for cattle to run over.”

She began to cry more bitterly.

The boys looked angry. Alexandra put a soothing hand on her mother’s

shoulder. “There’s no question of that, mother. You don’t have to go if

you don’t want to. A third of the place belongs to you by American law,

and we can’t sell without your consent. We only want you to advise us.

How did it use to be when you and father first came? Was it really as

bad as this, or not?”

“Oh, worse! Much worse,” moaned Mrs. Bergson. “Drouth, chince-bugs,

hail, everything! My garden all cut to pieces like sauerkraut. No

grapes on the creek, no nothing. The people all lived just like

coyotes.”

Oscar got up and tramped out of the kitchen. Lou followed him. They

felt that Alexandra had taken an unfair advantage in turning their

mother loose on them. The next morning they were silent and reserved.

They did not offer to take the women to church, but went down to the

barn immediately after breakfast and stayed there all day. When Carl

Linstrum came over in the afternoon, Alexandra winked to him and

pointed toward the barn. He understood her and went down to play cards

with the boys. They believed that a very wicked thing to do on Sunday,

and it relieved their feelings.

Alexandra stayed in the house. On Sunday afternoon Mrs. Bergson always

took a nap, and Alexandra read. During the week she read only the

newspaper, but on Sunday, and in the long evenings of winter, she read

a good deal; read a few things over a great many times. She knew long

portions of the “Frithjof Saga” by heart, and, like most Swedes who

read at all, she was fond of Longfellow’s verse,—the ballads and the

“Golden Legend” and “The Spanish Student.” To-day she sat in the wooden

rocking-chair with the Swedish Bible open on her knees, but she was not

reading. She was looking thoughtfully away at the point where the

upland road disappeared over the rim of the prairie. Her body was in an

attitude of perfect repose, such as it was apt to take when she was

thinking earnestly. Her mind was slow, truthful, steadfast. She had not

the least spark of cleverness.

All afternoon the sitting-room was full of quiet and sunlight. Emil was

making rabbit traps in the kitchen shed. The hens were clucking and

scratching brown holes in the flower beds, and the wind was teasing the

prince’s feather by the door.

That evening Carl came in with the boys to supper.

“Emil,” said Alexandra, when they were all seated at the table, “how

would you like to go traveling? Because I am going to take a trip, and

you can go with me if you want to.”

The boys looked up in amazement; they were always afraid of Alexandra’s

schemes. Carl was interested.

“I’ve been thinking, boys,” she went on, “that maybe I am too set

against making a change. I’m going to take Brigham and the buckboard

to-morrow and drive down to the river country and spend a few days

looking over what they’ve got down there. If I find anything good, you

boys can go down and make a trade.”

“Nobody down there will trade for anything up here,” said Oscar

gloomily.

“That’s just what I want to find out. Maybe they are just as

discontented down there as we are up here. Things away from home often

look better than they are. You know what your Hans Andersen book says,

Carl, about the Swedes liking to buy Danish bread and the Danes liking

to buy Swedish bread, because people always think the bread of another

country is better than their own. Anyway, I’ve heard so much about the

river farms, I won’t be satisfied till I’ve seen for myself.”

Lou fidgeted. “Look out! Don’t agree to anything. Don’t let them fool

you.”

Lou was apt to be fooled himself. He had not yet learned to keep away

from the shell-game wagons that followed the circus.

After supper Lou put on a necktie and went across the fields to court

Annie Lee, and Carl and Oscar sat down to a game of checkers, while

Alexandra read “The Swiss Family Robinson” aloud to her mother and

Emil. It was not long before the two boys at the table neglected their

game to listen. They were all big children together, and they found the

adventures of the family in the tree house so absorbing that they gave

them their undivided attention.

V

Alexandra and Emil spent five days down among the river farms, driving

up and down the valley. Alexandra talked to the men about their crops

and to the women about their poultry. She spent a whole day with one

young farmer who had been away at school, and who was experimenting

with a new kind of clover hay. She learned a great deal. As they drove

along, she and Emil talked and planned. At last, on the sixth day,

Alexandra turned Brigham’s head northward and left the river behind.

“There’s nothing in it for us down there, Emil. There are a few fine

farms, but they are owned by the rich men in town, and couldn’t be

bought. Most of the land is rough and hilly. They can always scrape

along down there, but they can never do anything big. Down there they

have a little certainty, but up with us there is a big chance. We must

have faith in the high land, Emil. I want to hold on harder than ever,

and when you’re a man you’ll thank me.” She urged Brigham forward.

When the road began to climb the first long swells of the Divide,

Alexandra hummed an old Swedish hymn, and Emil wondered why his sister

looked so happy. Her face was so radiant that he felt shy about asking

her. For the first time, perhaps, since that land emerged from the

waters of geologic ages, a human face was set toward it with love and

yearning. It seemed beautiful to her, rich and strong and glorious. Her

eyes drank in the breadth of it, until her tears blinded her. Then the

Genius of the Divide, the great, free spirit which breathes across it,

must have bent lower than it ever bent to a human will before. The

history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.

Alexandra reached home in the afternoon. That evening she held a family

council and told her brothers all that she had seen and heard.

“I want you boys to go down yourselves and look it over. Nothing will

convince you like seeing with your own eyes. The river land was settled

before this, and so they are a few years ahead of us, and have learned

more about farming. The land sells for three times as much as this, but

in five years we will double it. The rich men down there own all the

best land, and they are buying all they can get. The thing to do is to

sell our cattle and what little old corn we have, and buy the Linstrum

place. Then the next thing to do is to take out two loans on our

half-sections, and buy Peter Crow’s place; raise every dollar we can,

and buy every acre we can.”

“Mortgage the homestead again?” Lou cried. He sprang up and began to

wind the clock furiously. “I won’t slave to pay off another mortgage.

I’ll never do it. You’d just as soon kill us all, Alexandra, to carry

out some scheme!”

Oscar rubbed his high, pale forehead. “How do you propose to pay off

your mortgages?”

Alexandra looked from one to the other and bit her lip. They had never

seen her so nervous. “See here,” she brought out at last. “We borrow

the money for six years. Well, with the money we buy a half-section

from Linstrum and a half from Crow, and a quarter from Struble, maybe.

That will give us upwards of fourteen hundred acres, won’t it? You

won’t have to pay off your mortgages for six years. By that time, any

of this land will be worth thirty dollars an acre—it will be worth

fifty, but we’ll say thirty; then you can sell a garden patch anywhere,

and pay off a debt of sixteen hundred dollars. It’s not the principal

I’m worried about, it’s the interest and taxes. We’ll have to strain to

meet the payments. But as sure as we are sitting here to-night, we can

sit down here ten years from now independent landowners, not struggling

farmers any longer. The chance that father was always looking for has

come.”

Lou was pacing the floor. “But how do you _know_ that land is going to

go up enough to pay the mortgages and—”

“And make us rich besides?” Alexandra put in firmly. “I can’t explain

that, Lou. You’ll have to take my word for it. I _know_, that’s all.

When you drive about over the country you can feel it coming.”

Oscar had been sitting with his head lowered, his hands hanging between

his knees. “But we can’t work so much land,” he said dully, as if he

were talking to himself. “We can’t even try. It would just lie there

and we’d work ourselves to death.” He sighed, and laid his calloused

fist on the table.

Alexandra’s eyes filled with tears. She put her hand on his shoulder.

“You poor boy, you won’t have to work it. The men in town who are

buying up other people’s land don’t try to farm it. They are the men to

watch, in a new country. Let’s try to do like the shrewd ones, and not

like these stupid fellows. I don’t want you boys always to have to work

like this. I want you to be independent, and Emil to go to school.”

Lou held his head as if it were splitting. “Everybody will say we are

crazy. It must be crazy, or everybody would be doing it.”

“If they were, we wouldn’t have much chance. No, Lou, I was talking

about that with the smart young man who is raising the new kind of

clover. He says the right thing is usually just what everybody don’t

do. Why are we better fixed than any of our neighbors? Because father

had more brains. Our people were better people than these in the old

country. We _ought_ to do more than they do, and see further ahead.

Yes, mother, I’m going to clear the table now.”

Alexandra rose. The boys went to the stable to see to the stock, and

they were gone a long while. When they came back Lou played on his

_dragharmonika_ and Oscar sat figuring at his father’s secretary all

evening. They said nothing more about Alexandra’s project, but she felt

sure now that they would consent to it. Just before bedtime Oscar went

out for a pail of water. When he did not come back, Alexandra threw a

shawl over her head and ran down the path to the windmill. She found

him sitting there with his head in his hands, and she sat down beside

him.

“Don’t do anything you don’t want to do, Oscar,” she whispered. She

waited a moment, but he did not stir. “I won’t say any more about it,

if you’d rather not. What makes you so discouraged?”

“I dread signing my name to them pieces of paper,” he said slowly. “All

the time I was a boy we had a mortgage hanging over us.”

“Then don’t sign one. I don’t want you to, if you feel that way.”

Oscar shook his head. “No, I can see there’s a chance that way. I’ve

thought a good while there might be. We’re in so deep now, we might as

well go deeper. But it’s hard work pulling out of debt. Like pulling a

threshing-machine out of the mud; breaks your back. Me and Lou’s worked

hard, and I can’t see it’s got us ahead much.”

“Nobody knows about that as well as I do, Oscar. That’s why I want to

try an easier way. I don’t want you to have to grub for every dollar.”

“Yes, I know what you mean. Maybe it’ll come out right. But signing

papers is signing papers. There ain’t no maybe about that.” He took his

pail and trudged up the path to the house.

Alexandra drew her shawl closer about her and stood leaning against the

frame of the mill, looking at the stars which glittered so keenly

through the frosty autumn air. She always loved to watch them, to think

of their vastness and distance, and of their ordered march. It

fortified her to reflect upon the great operations of nature, and when

she thought of the law that lay behind them, she felt a sense of

personal security. That night she had a new consciousness of the

country, felt almost a new relation to it. Even her talk with the boys

had not taken away the feeling that had overwhelmed her when she drove

back to the Divide that afternoon. She had never known before how much

the country meant to her. The chirping of the insects down in the long

grass had been like the sweetest music. She had felt as if her heart

were hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and

all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. Under the

long shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring.