The little girl was standing with one arm extended and one small forefinger pointing past him at the globe, which, for want of a better, was but a fat pumpkin ingeniously impaled on a stick, and peeled over part of its surface in such a manner that the five oceans were represented, while the portion yet unpeeled showed the rude outlines of the six continents.

"We've got lots of pumpkins bigger 'n that at our house," she was saying, her face turned toward "Frenchy," an up-river trapper who studied geography and English spelling between his rounds of the sloughs. "Why, the cellar's full of 'em."

The teacher rapped briskly on the table with his pencil, to call her to order. "Look here," he said, a little crossly, "you mustn't talk out like that. Sit down."

"No seat," she faltered, lowering her voice.

He looked up and down the girls' row; there were only four seats in it, and they were full. The boys' benches were not; but, loath to lessen the terrors of a favorite punishment, he hesitated to put her there. "Come up to the rostrum, then," he said.

The little girl walked slowly forward, and a flush stole up her throat and mounted to her temples. But when she was once seated, her sailor-hat on one side and her Second Reader on the other, she felt less demeaned; for the rostrum commanded a view of the whole room, and from it she could see Luffree, fast asleep under the youngest brother's bench.

The teacher went back to the roll-call, and the pupils droned the time away till recess. Then the boys rummaged through their willow baskets for something to eat and went out to play "prisoner's base." But the girls—the neighbor woman's daughter, and the seven belonging to the Dutchman who lived at the Vermillion's forks—stayed in, gathered in a silent circle about the rostrum, fingered the big gold brooch that the little girl's mother had let her wear as a reward for attending, and looked her up and down, from the scarlet bow on her hair to her fringed leggings. And she, never having seen the Dutchman's children before, forgot to be polite, and stared back at their denim dresses, pigtails, and wooden shoes.

When school took up again, the Swede boy was told to put his sums on a bit of tar-papered wall near him, and a mixed class in reading lined up in front of the teacher's table. Soon, however, the room was again quiet. The Swede boy and the class sat down, and the whole school, made sleepy by the warmth from the stove, lounged on their benches and drowsed on their books, and even the little girl, sitting idly on the rostrum, nodded wearily. But right in the midst of the silence, and just before the pupils were dismissed for noon, something so startling happened that the little girl's curls fairly stiffened in alarm.

The teacher clapped his hands, the children followed with a hurried banging of their books and slates, and, instantly, before the little girl had time to think what it all meant, the scholars, with one accord, began to roar at the top of their lungs.

"Scotland's burning! Scotland's burning!"

they cried, rapping their knuckles upon their desks in the rhythm of galloping horses,—

"More water! More water! Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! More water! More water!"

The little girl straightened herself and a gray light crept up to where the flush had been, so that every freckle of the hateful thirteen stood out clearly. Near her, the teacher was standing, with his feet planted wide apart and his eyes raised to the ceiling. And before him, shouting and pounding and staring with crimson faces into his, were the pupils.

"Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!"

they yelled. It brought back to the little girl that terrible moment when the farm-house, with a dripping-pan full of hog-fat flaming in the oven, was threatened with destruction.

"Scotland's burning! Scotland's burning!"

sounded the warning again. No one moved. But, not knowing just how near Scotland might be, and fearful for her safety with danger so imminent, she did not wait longer. Clutching her hat and book, with a bound she cleared the distance to the youngest brother, and, with a stifled cry, leaped into his arms.

But in her excitement she had forgotten Luffree, lying asleep under the bench, and had jumped squarely upon one soft, outstretched paw. The dog sprang up with a howl of pain, the school stopped its singing, and the angry teacher left the rostrum and advanced toward the little girl. The next moment he dragged the dog from under the bench by the scruff of the neck and hurled him out of the door; the next, he shook an admonishing finger in the very face of the thirteen unlucky freckles.

* * * * *

LATE that afternoon, the eldest brother paddled across the sloughs in the bull-boat, and had a talk with the teacher. The teacher lived in the Irishman's shack, which was made of cottonwood logs laid one upon another and covered with a roof of sticks and dirt, and "bached" by himself through the term, because the little girl's mother had refused to board him. So, when the eldest brother had finished his visit and rowed back, he recited such an ill-natured version of that day's happenings at the school-house, that the family, until then divided by the contradictory stories of the youngest brother and the little girl, united in heaping reproaches upon her.

Next morning she again traveled the winding path that skirted the marsh-grass and bulrushes, this time on the pinto. Luffree, who had been tied up at breakfast, but had mysteriously slipped his collar, followed, as before. When she arrived within a short distance of the school-house, she climbed down and, without taking any notice of the giggling, waiting crowd by the door, carefully picketed the mare out of reach of the other ponies. Then she pulled off the bridle, put it beside the picket-pin, and, after bidding Luffree watch beside it, went in quietly to take her seat. She had not unblanketed her horse because, underneath the soft sheepskin saddle and well out of sight, was tucked one of her mother's latest magazines that had pictures scattered through it.

When school was called, she was not allowed to keep the seat on the rostrum. One of the Dutchman's seven being absent, she was told to share the rear bench with the neighbor woman's daughter, and spent a happy hour in the seclusion of the high seat, watching "Frenchy," who had no slate, write his spelling on the smooth, round stove, and smiling at the Swede boy when he looked slyly across at her.

Then she heard some one call her name. It was the teacher. "Come forward to the chart," he said, and his voice seemed to shake the very floor.

She took up her Second Reader, edged herself off her seat, and stood beside it, her eyes fixed questioningly upon him.

"Come forward to the chart, I say," he said again. "Can't you hear!"

"Yes," answered the little girl, starting up the room. But she walked so slowly that, when she came near his table, he put out one lean hand, grabbed her by the arm, and hurried her. She resented his touch by twisting about until she was free. Then she took her place in front of the chart, feeling as if every eye in the room were looking up and down the row of blue crockery buttons on the back of her apron.

The teacher began to turn forward sheet after sheet of the chart, until the first page was before him. It depicted a figure in silk hat, long coat, and light trousers, promenading with a cane in his hand and a dog at his heels. Underneath were two lines of simple words, and two inquiring sentences. The teacher picked up a long cottonwood stick and pointed it first at the man and then at the dog.

"What is that?" he said.

"A man," answered the little girl.

"And that?"

"A dog."

"Now read after me," he went on, indicating a word, "'M-a-n, man.'"

She paused a moment, her lips pressed tightly together.

"Read, read, read!" commanded the teacher, whacking the chart with a pointer.

"'M-a-n, man,'" repeated the little girl, her eyes on his face.

"Don't look at me," he scolded; "look at the chart."

"I don't haf' to," said the little girl, earnestly; "I—I—"

Something unpleasant would certainly have happened at that moment, had not "Frenchy," deep in his geography lesson, piped up at the teacher from the rear of the room.

"T-a-n-g-a-n-y-i-k-a," he spelled, snapping his fingers and waving his arm. "Wot eez dat?"

For a moment the teacher was silent, scowling down at the little girl. Then he came back to the chart with another whack of the pointer. "Call it Moses," he growled.

"Mozez," repeated "Frenchy," resignedly, but with a shake of his head over the intricacies of the English language.

The little girl had twisted half around to look at a Dutch child, and the teacher, angry because he had neglected to look over the geography lesson, jerked her into place again by her sleeve. "Now, you read," he said; "look at the end of my pointer and read."

"I can read them words 'thout looking at 'em," she protested, pointing at an inquiring line, "'cause I can read everyfing in this." And she held up the Second Reader.

"Huh!" grunted the teacher, taking the book from her and tossing it upon his table. "Have you ever been to school before?"

"No," answered the little girl.

"Then you'll start right in where everybody else does," he said. "Read this line. 'Do you see a man?'"

"'Doyouseeaman?'" she repeated, still watching him.

"Look at the chart and read it," he commanded furiously.

An unfriendly light suddenly shone in the little girl's eyes. She stepped back and summoned all her pride to resent the indignity that he was putting upon her before the whole school.

"Oh, I don't want to read that baby talk," she cried, "and—and—I won't, and I 'm going home to my mother."

The teacher swayed in his wrath like a tall cottonwood. "You don't, eh? You won't, eh?" he bellowed, and, stooping down, plucked the little girl by the ear.

This time it was the Swede boy who interrupted the course of events in front. He leaned forward and whispered something into the ear of the boy ahead, and then, with an inarticulate shout, threw himself upon the boy and began to maul him. Instantly the teacher, yearning to use his hands upon some one, descended upon them and wrested them apart. But they clinched again and, continuing to fight, managed so to misdirect their kicks that they reached, not each other, but his lanky, interfering person.

And, while the battle raged, the little girl fled out of the school-house toward the pinto and pulled up the picket-pin. The teacher did not see her go, but, in retreating from an unusually vicious blow of the Swede boy's fist, caught sight of her just as she was leading her horse to an ant-hill to mount. With a hoarse call for her to return, he started after her, bearing in his train the two boys, who, still struggling, impeded his progress.

He shook them off at the door-step and broke into a run. The little girl was vainly striving to climb to the pinto's back; but she was so frightened that each time she made a jump for the saddle she came short of it and fell back. And, seeing the teacher coming, her efforts were more ineffectual than ever. But when he was scarcely a rod away, and when escape seemed impossible, a new figure joined in the affair.

Luffree had been lying quietly beside the picket-pin until the little girl ran out, when he got up, ready to follow her, and joyfully leaped about the mare. Then he saw the teacher advancing, and remembered the rough handling of the day before. So, as the Yankton man came close, swinging his arms about like the fans of the Dutchman's windmill, the dog went forward to meet him, his hair on end, his eyes shifting treacherously, his teeth showing in an ugly white seam, all the wolf blood in him roused.

The teacher halted when he saw him and called back to the scholars, now crowding about the door. "Bring my pointer," he cried.

Not a pupil moved. The teacher, noting that no one was obeying his order, and not daring to go forward unarmed, ran back at the top of his speed for the stick. But he was too late; for, by the time he had gained the school-room and grabbed both the pointer and the stove poker, the little girl had scrambled upon her pinto and galloped off toward the farm-house.

The teacher did not give chase, but, sputtering revenge under his breath, called the school to order. Then, not forgetting what severity is due insubordination where the sons of salary-supplying fathers are concerned, he gave the boys who had fought, but who were now docile and smiling, a mighty tongue-lashing.

When the little girl was beyond hailing distance or possibility of capture, she brought the pinto to a standstill and looked back. Once she opened her lips as if to say something, but closed them again, and, after waiting until the scholars had all gone in, rode on. She did not go home; instead, when she came in sight of the reservation road, she turned east and cantered across the prairie until only the top of the farm-house was visible to her as she sat upon her horse. Then she dismounted, tethered the pinto, made Luffree lie down, and, having taken the magazine from under the saddle-blankets, cuddled against the dog. She was still trembling, her throat ached with unspoken anger, and, underneath her apron, her heart bounded so that the checks moved in regular time.

But soon she wiped her blurred eyes and turned to the pictures in the magazine. They began with a red-brown one of a storm-tossed ship on a rocky coast; and, following, were drawings of queer boxes and chairs and, yet more strange, of a herd of grazing cattle with a board fence around it! There was also a funny picture of a ragged boy and a stylish little girl who wore a round hat and a polonaise. And, lastly, there was shown a beautiful young woman standing by a table in a long, loose robe, very much like the army chaplain's.

It was over this picture that the little girl bent longest, and she read, not without some tedious spelling, the words that were printed beneath it:

"Mary, in cap and gown, was so bright and dainty a vision that the professor wished that more young ladies of gentle birth might attend the college."

College! It was not a new word to the little girl, for she had heard the colonel tell her mother that he was going to send his son to college. But now she knew that girls as well as boys could go. And she saw by the picture that they wore beautiful flowing robes and square caps.

It was the cap that specially attracted her, for it rested becomingly upon a mass of wavy hair. She wished that her curls, which had to be coaxed into shape every morning with a warm stove-lifter and a wet brush, would hang in ripples like the young woman's, so that she could wear one.

"Oh, ain't it sweet!" she said aloud, getting up on her knees beside Luffree and holding out the book at arm's length. And then, with the mortar-board as her inspiration, there flashed into her brain a wonderful thought that was to grow through the coming years; and her lips framed a splendid purpose—heard by no mortal ears, save those of the shivering hound and the cropping pony—that time was gloriously to fulfil.

"And maybe," she added happily, "I'll have 'monia, and my hair'll come in just as curly."

She sprang to her feet, fired with her new ambition, and undid the pony. And remembering that it would be as well to reach the farm-house before the family could hear the second tale of trouble at the school, she hastily coiled the picket-rope, mounted, hid the magazine under the saddle-blankets, and, with the dog running stiffly in her wake, rode homeward.

When she reached the barn, she did not even wait to fasten the pinto in her stall; but, taking the magazine, raced toward the kitchen. As she halted breathless in its open door, however, she was sorry that she had not come in quietly by way of her bedroom window and waited until she was sure that her mother was alone. For she found herself in the presence not only of the big brothers, but of him whose authority she had so lately flouted!

The suddenness of the discovery drove the words she had meant to say in her own behalf from her brain. But five pairs of eyes were upon her and retreat was impossible; so she strove mutely to win any possible sympathy by covering, with one unsteady hand, the ear that had been pulled.

No one spoke for a moment. And in that brief space the little girl divined, as she sought each face, that but one of the group before her was eager to see her punished, and that one was the teacher. In the eyes of the eldest brother there was no disapproval, only a lurking smile; the biggest was openly beaming with satisfaction; the youngest had taken his attitude, as usual, from the eldest; and her mother's look was sadly kind. But the teacher was hostile from brow to boot.

It was the eldest brother who first broke the silence. He took his pipe from his mouth, knocked out the ashes against his bench, and addressed the little girl. "So you went on the war-path to-day?" he said.

She made no answer, but moved toward her mother.

"This youngster," he went on, wheeling around on the teacher, "is well up in them chart pages and can read pretty good in most books. So I guess"—he drawled it out sneeringly—"as long as you ain't got any classes that exactly fit her, she'd better lie fallow for a while."

The little girl shot a proud glance at the Yankton man as she heard the eldest brother's praise, and, emboldened, spoke up for herself. "I can read all the chart," she declared, "and I can read everyfing in the First Reader. And I could spell 'man'"—she put the hand that she had been holding over her ear on a level with her knee—"when I was so high."

The teacher snorted. "You know your own business," he said to the eldest brother.

"Guess we do," chimed in the biggest, grinning. "No use bothering her with a-b, ab, when she can read the things she does." The teacher stood up, ready to go. "And I was about to remark," continued the biggest, banteringly, "that she's got a lot of mighty nice stories that she's read and done with; and if you'd like to borrow one, once in a while, to pass an evenin' with, you'd find 'em mighty educatin'."

"Thank you," answered the teacher; "but like as not you'll need 'em all to finish up her eddication on. I guess maybe you'll be sending her to Sioux Falls in a year or so to kind o' polish her off."

The sarcasm in the voice stung the biggest brother. "Well," he said, "she could polish off right here on these plains and have a lot more in her noddle in a year or two than some people I know."

This boast of her favorite again brought the little girl's courage up. "I don't want to go to a city school," she declared, "'cause they don't wear caps there."

The teacher was tramping out, with no backward look or good-by word, and he did not wait to hear more. So it was the eldest brother who answered her. "If you don't go here and you don't go to Sioux Falls," he said, "I'd like to know where you'll learn anything. Ma ain't got no time to be your governess."

"I don't want no governess, either," she replied. "I know what I'm going to do." She brought forward the magazine, which she had been holding behind her back with one hand, and, opening it at the drawing of the young woman in cap and gown, laid it on the biggest brother's knee. Then she went up to her mother, her face fairly shining through the dust and tear-marks on it. Her mother put out her arms and gently drew the little girl to her. Into her mind had come the picture of herself, in spotless pinafore, bending with her governess over her English books. And beside that picture, the little girl, sunburned, soiled, and poorly shod, made a sharp contrast.

"What are you going to do, pet lamb?" she asked.

"I'm going to cut 'nough carpet-rags this winter to last you a whole year," said the little girl, "'cause next summer you won't have me any more. I'm—I'm—going to college."

* * * * *

THE teacher, jogging out of the barn-yard to the ash-lane, heard a hearty roll of bassos from the kitchen, and did not doubt but that he was its target. He reined in his horse at the bare flower-beds and glowered back at the door. Then, with a mutter, ungrammatical but eloquent, he spurred on toward the lonely, supperless shack by the slough.



VI

THE STORY OF A PLANTING

THE little girl was making believe, as she planted the corn, that the field was a great city; the long rows, reaching up from the timothy meadow to the carnelian bluff, were the beautiful streets; and the hills, two steps apart, were the houses. She had a seed-bag slung under her arm, and when she came to a hill she put her hand into it and took out four plump, yellow kernels. And as she went along, dropping her gifts at each door, she played that she was visiting and said, "How do you do?" as politely as she could to the lady of the house, at the same time taking off her battered blue sailor-hat and bowing,—just as she had seen the lightning-rod agent do to her mother.

She had begun the game by naming every family she called upon. But it was not long before she had used up all the names she could think of—those of the neighbors, the Indians, the story-book people, the horses, the cows, the oxen, the dogs, and even the vegetables in the garden. So, after having planted a row or two, she contented herself with making believe she was among strangers and just offering a friendly greeting to every household.

She had come out to the field when the prairie-chickens were still playing their bagpipes on the river bank, their booming sounding through the morning air so clearly that the little girl had been sure they were not farther than the edge of the wheat-field, and had walked out of her way to try to see them, tramping along in her best shoes, which had shiny copper toes and store-made laces. But when she had reached the wheat, the booming, like a will-o'-the-wisp, had been temptingly farther on; and she had turned back to the newly marked corn-land.

Her big brothers had sent her out to drop and cover eighty rows, the last corn-planting to be done that year on the big Dakota farm. They had finished the rest of the field themselves and, intent on getting in the rutabaga crop, had turned over the remaining strip to the little girl, declaring that she could drop and cover forty rows in the morning and forty in the afternoon, and not half try. To make sure that she would have time to finish the work, they had started her off immediately after a five-o'clock breakfast; and in order that she should not lose any time at noon, they had made her take her dinner with her in a tall tin pail.

Her first glimpse of the unplanted piece had greatly discouraged her, for it seemed dreadfully wide and long. So, after deciding to plant the whole of it before doing any covering with the hoe, because the dropping of the corn was much easier and quicker to do than the hoeing, she went to work half-heartedly. Now, to make her task seem short, she had further determined to play "city."

It was such fun to pretend that, as she went bobbing and bowing up and down the rows, she forgot to stop her game and throw clods at the gray gophers. They lived in the timothy meadow, and were so bold that, if they were not watched, they would come out of their burrows and follow the rows, stealing every kernel out of the hills as they went along and putting the booty in their cheek-pouches.

After she had dropped corn as much as a whole hour, the little girl's back ached, and when she went to refill her seed-bag at the corn-barrel that stood on the border of the meadow near the row-marker, she sat down to rest a moment. The marker resembled a sleigh, only it had five runners instead of two, and there were rocks piled on top of it to make it heavy. So the minute the little girl's eyes fell upon it and she saw the runners, she thought of winter. Winter instantly reminded her of the muskrats in the slough below the bluff. And with that thought she could not resist starting down to see if they were busy after the thaw.

She gathered many flowers on the way, and stopped to pull off her shoes and stockings. At last she reached the slough and waded in to a muskrat house, where she used her hoe-handle as a poker to scare out some of the muskrats. Failing in this, she picked up her shoes and stockings and went around the slough to find out if any green leaves were unfolding yet in the wild-plum thicket. A little later she climbed the bluff to the corn-field, making a diligent search for Indian arrowheads all the way.

When she reached the seed-bag again, she threw the string over her head and started up a row determinedly. For a rod or more she did not pause either to be polite or to scare away gophers, but hurried along very fast, with her eyes to the ground. Suddenly she chanced to look just ahead of her, and stopped abruptly, standing erect. Her shadow pointed straight for the bluff: it was noon and high time to eat dinner.

She sat down on the marker and munched her sandwiches of salted lard and corn-meal bread with great appetite. She was just finishing them when the call of a goose far overhead attracted her attention. She got down and lay flat on her back, with her head on the seed-bag, to watch the flock, high above her, speeding northward to the lakes, their leader crying commands to the gray company that flew in V-shaped order behind him. When the geese were but a dark thread across the north sky, she felt drowsy and, turning on her side with her hat over her face and her back to the gentle spring breeze, went fast asleep.

She lay there for hours, entirely unaware of the saucy stares of several gophers who paused in their hunt for kernels and stood straight as picket-pins to watch and wonder at the little heap of pink calico under the battered sailor-hat, or whisked about her, their short legs flashing, their tails wide and bushy, their cheek-pouches so full of kernels that they smiled fatly when they looked at her, and showed four long front teeth. But the little girl was wrapped in a happy dream of a certain beautiful red wagon with a real seat that she had seen in a thick catalogue sent her mother by a store in a distant city. So she never moved till late in the afternoon, when the gentle breeze strengthened to a sharp wind that, with a petulant gust, whirled her sailor across the rows and far away.

The flying hat caused a stampede among some curious gophers who were just then investigating a near-by unplanted row in the hope of finding more corn. Clattering shrilly, they scudded back to the meadow, and the little girl rose. After a long chase for the hat, she went stiffly to work again, not stopping to put on her shoes and stockings, though the wind was cold.

After that she planted faithfully, leaving off only to throw clods at the gophers, or to ease her back now and then. And it was when she was resting a moment that she noticed something that made her begin working harder than ever. Her shadow stretched out so far to the eastward that she could not touch its head with the end of her long hoe. When she first came out that morning, it had fallen just as far the other way. She looked anxiously up at the sun, which was shining slantingly upon the freshly harrowed land through a gray haze that hung about it. Then she looked again at her shadow, distorted and grotesque, that moved when she moved and mimicked her when she bent to drop the corn. Its length showed her that it was getting late, and that she would soon hear the summoning blast of the cow-horn that hung behind the kitchen door.

She dropped the seed-bag, walked across the strip still unplanted, and counted the rows. She returned on the run. The dropping was little more than half finished, and no covering had been done at all. She knew she could not finish that day; yet if they asked her at the farm-house if she had completed the planting, she would not dare to tell them how little of it was done. She sat down to pull on her shoes and stockings, thinking hard all the while. But, just as she had one leg dressed, she sprang up with a happy thought, and stood on the shod foot like a heron while she dressed the other. Then, without stopping to lace her shoes, she tossed her sailor aside, swung the seed-bag to the front, and began dropping corn as fast as she could.

The kernels were counted no longer, nor were they placed in the hills precisely. Without a glance to right or left, she raced along the rows, her cheeks flaming and her hair flying out in the wind. She had decided that she would plant all of the strip—but not cover the corn until next day.

The sun sank slowly toward the horizon as she worked. But the unplanted rows were rapidly growing fewer and fewer now, and the descending disk gave her little worry. Up and down she hurried, scattering rather than dropping the seed, until she was on her final trip. When she reached the end of the last row, she joyfully put all the corn she had left into one hill, turned the seed-bag inside out, slipped her lunch-bucket into it, and, after hiding her hoe in the stone pile on the carnelian bluff, turned her face toward the house. And at that very moment, with the winding of the cow-horn for its farewell salute, the last yellow rind of the sun went out of sight below the level line of the prairie.

* * * * *

EARLY the next day, while the little girl's big brothers were busy with the chores, she mounted her pony and rode away southward from the farm-house. At the reservation road, she faced toward the sun and struck her horse to a canter. A mile out on the prairie to the east, she turned due north up a low ravine; and finally completed almost a perfect square by coming west, when on a line with the carnelian bluff, to the edge of the corn-field. There she tied her pony to a large stone on the slope of the bluff and well out of sight of the house, and, after hunting up the hoe, started energetically to cover up the planting of the day before.

She began at the bluff on the first uncovered row, and swung down it rapidly, her hoe flashing brightly in the sun as she pulled the dirt over the kernels. But when she had gone less than half the distance to the meadow she stopped at a hill and anxiously examined it a moment. She went on to the next without using her hoe, then on to the next and the next; and, finally, putting it across her shoulder, walked slowly to the end.

Arrived at the edge of the meadow, she turned about and followed up another row. Her hoe was still across her shoulder, and she did not stop to use it until she was near the bluff. When she reached the meadow the second time, she sat down on the row-marker and looked out across the timothy.

"Goodness!" she said, addressing the half-dozen animated stakes that were eying her from a proper distance, "you've done it!"

The gophers stood straighter than ever when they heard her voice, and new ones came from their burrows and sat up to watch her, with their fore paws held primly in front of them, their tails lying out motionless behind, and their slender heads poised pertly—with no movement except the twinkle of sharp, black eyes and the quiver of long whiskers.

"And there ain't 'nough seed left in that barrel," went on the little girl, "to plant a single row over again."

She sat on the marker a long time, a sorrowful little figure, in deep study. And when she finally rose and resumed work at the upper end of the strip, she thought with dread of the disclosure that sprouting-time would bring.

An hour later, she untied her pony and climbed wearily upon his back. As she rode across the meadow toward home, she shook her head solemnly at the mounds in the timothy.

"I s'pose," she said, "you've got to have something to lay up for winter; but I think you might 'a' gone down to mother's veg'table patch, 'cause, when the corn comes up, I'll catch it!"

The corn-stalks were nodding in their first untasseled sturdiness before the little girl's big brothers paid the field a visit to see when the crowding suckers should be pulled and the first loosening given to the dirt about the hills. They went down one morning, their muskets over their shoulders, and the little girl went with them, hoping that so much time had passed since the planting that they would not punish her even if they found fault with her work on the last eighty rows.

Summer had come in on a carpet of spring green strewn with wild clover, asters, and blazing-star. And as they went along, the verdant prairie rolled away before them for miles in the warm sunlight, unbroken save where their eyes passed to the richer emerald of wheat sprinkled with gay mustard, new flax on freshly turned sod, or a sea of waving maize. Overhead, the geese no longer streaked the sky in changing lines, but swarms of blackbirds filled the air with crisp calls at their approach, and rose from the ground in black clouds. Down along the slough where the wild-plum boughs waved their blossoms they could see the calves frolicking together; and up on the carnelian bluff, the young prairie-chickens scurried through the grass before a watchful mother.

The little girl trailed, barefooted, behind her big brothers, and was in no humor to enjoy any of the beauties of earth or sky. With anxious face she followed them as they penetrated the lusty stand of corn, going from south to north on the western side of the field. Then she tagged less willingly as they turned east toward the strip she had planted. As they neared it they remarked a scarcity of stalks ahead; and when they at last stood on the first of the eighty rows, they gazed with astonishment at the narrow belt that showed bravely green at the upper end by the carnelian bluff, but dark and bare over the three fourths of its length that sloped down to the timothy meadow.

"I guess this won't need no thinning," said the biggest brother, ironically.

They set to work to examine the hills, that only here and there sent up a lonely shoot, the little girl standing by and silently watching them. But they found few signs of the gopher burrowing they felt sure had devastated the ground. All at once the eldest brother had a brilliant thought, and, with a glance at the little girl, who was nervously twisting her fingers, paced eastward and counted the rows that made up the barren strip. There were just eighty!

He came back and joined his brothers; and the little girl, standing before him, dared not lift her eyes to his face.

"Did you plant that corn?" he demanded, ramming the butt of his musket into the ground.

"Yes," answered the little girl, her voice husky with apprehension. There was a pause.

"Did a lot of gophers come in while you's a-planting?" asked the biggest brother, more kindly.

"Oh, a lot," answered the little girl.

"Did you sling clods at 'em?" demanded the eldest brother, again pounding the musket into the dirt.

"Nearly slung my arm off," answered the little girl.

The eldest brother grunted incredulously.

"It's mighty funny," he said, "that the gophers liked your planting better 'n anybody else's."

The little girl did not answer. Her forehead was puckered painfully as, gripping her hat, she stood busily curling and uncurling her toes in the dirt. Her lashes were fluttering as if she awaited a blow.

"I'll just ask you one thing," went on the eldest brother; "what's to-morrow?"

The little girl started as if the blow had fallen, and stammered her answer.

"My—my—birfday," she said.

"A—ha," he replied suggestively. Then he tramped to the timothy meadow, the others following. And the little girl, walking very slowly, came on behind.

* * * * *

WHEN the big brothers had gone on to the farm-house, the little girl still tarried in the corn-field. Her eldest brother's hint concerning her birthday had suggested the cruel punishment she felt certain was to be hers, and she could not bear to face the family at the dinner-table.

For months she had longed for a little red wagon—a wagon with a long tongue, and "Express" on the side in black letters; and had planned how she would harness Bruno and Luffree to it and drive along the level prairie roads. Evening after evening she had taken out the thick catalogue and pored over the prices, and had shown the kind she wanted again and again to all the big brothers in turn.

Then one day she had surprised her biggest brother while he was taking a bulky brown-paper package off the farm wagon on his return from Yankton. He had sent her into the house; but she had found out later that the package was in the corn-crib, and had crept in there one afternoon, when the farm-house was deserted, and taken a good look at it as it hung from a rafter and well out of reach. It was still unwrapped, but the brown paper was torn in one place, and through the hole the little girl had seen a smooth, round red stick. It was a wheel-spoke.

Her sixth-and-a-half birthday was not far off, and she had waited for its coming as patiently as she could, in the meantime working secretly on harnesses for the dogs, who had resigned themselves good-naturedly to much measuring. Now, on the very eve of her happiness, she was to be deprived of the yearned-for wagon.

Crouching in the corn-field, she grieved away the long day. Dinner-time came, and all the corn-stalk shadows pointed significantly toward the carnelian bluff; then they slowly shifted around to the eastward and grew very long; and at last commingled and were blotted out by the descending gloom that infolded the little girl.

Lying upon her back, she looked up at the sky, that with the gathering darkness of the warm summer night disclosed its twinkling stars, and wished that she could suddenly die out there in the field in some mysterious way, so that there might be much self-condemning woe at the farm-house when they found her, cold and still. And she could not refrain from weeping with sheer pity for herself. After pondering for a while on the sad picture of her untimely death, she changed to one of great deeds and happiness, wealth and renown, in some far-off land toward which she was half determined to set out. But this delightful dream was rudely broken into.

A long blast from the cow-horn sounded through the quiet night and echoed itself against the bluff. The little girl sat up and looked toward the house through the dark aisles of the corn.

"I'm not coming," she said, speaking out loud in a voice that broke as she ended, "I'm going to stay here and starve to death!"

Once more the cow-horn blew, and this time the call was more prolonged and commanding in tone. It brought the little girl to her feet, and she hunted up her hat and put it on. Then, as two short, peremptory blasts rang out, she started toward home.

* * * * *

NEXT morning she dressed hurriedly and got to the sitting-room as quickly as she could. But there was no bright red wagon standing bravely in wait for her as she entered; there was nothing under her breakfast plate, even, when she turned it over. She ate her grits and milk in silence, choking a little when she swallowed, and, as soon as she could, rushed away to the corn-crib to see if the brown-paper package were still there.

It was gone!

Then she knew that her big brothers had sent it away.

She crept back to the house and climbed the ladder to the attic, where she meant to hide and mourn alone. But no sooner had she gained her feet beneath the peaked roof, than she saw what she had been seeking.

It hung by its scarlet tongue from a beam, flanked on one side by the paper of sage that was being saved to season the holiday turkeys, and on the other by the bag that held the trimmings of the Yule-tree. And the little girl, sitting tearfully beneath it, tried to count on her fingers the days that must pass before Christmas.



VII

TWICE IN JEOPARDY

COOL and sparkling after its morning rain-bath, and showing along its green ridges those first, faint signs of yellow that foretell a coming ripeness, the grass-mantled prairie lay beneath the warm noon sun. The little girl, cantering over it toward the sod shanty on the farther river bluffs, frightened the trilling meadow-larks, as she passed, from their perch on the dripping sunflowers, and scattered the drops on the wild wheat-blades with the hoofs of her blind black pony.

The storm had wept so copiously upon the fading plains that the furrows, turned along the edge of the broad wheat-field to check fires, ran full and swift down the gentle slope that the little girl was crossing and almost kept pace with her pony. Every hollow in her path was filled to the brim, and the chain of sloughs to the south, now resounding with the joyous quacks of bluewings and mallards, were swelling their waters with the feeding of countless streams. And the drenched ground, where the flowers bent their clean faces as if worn with the heavy downpour, sent up that grateful essence that follows in the wake of a shower.

The blind, black pony felt the new life in the springy turf and the fresh air and flirted his unshod heels dangerously near to a tracking wolf-dog as he splashed through runlet and pool. Pluff-et-y-pluff, pluff-et-y-pluff, pluff-et-y-pluff, he drummed softly, and the panting hound, muzzle down, followed with a soft swish, swish. But to the little girl, thinking of the bounty for gopher brushes that her big brothers had offered her the day before, the galloping echoed a different song: A-cent-for-a-tail, a-cent-for-a-tail, a-cent-for-a-tail, it sang in her ears, till she struck the pony a welt on the flanks with the ends of her long rope reins, and jerked his head impatiently toward the shallow ford that led to the home of the Swede boy.

* * * * *

THE morning before, the little girl's mother and the three big brothers had held an indignation meeting in the timothy meadow, which, once the choicest bit of hay land on the farm, was now so thickly strewn with wide, brown gopher-mounds, that the little girl, with a good running start down the barren corn strip, could cross it without touching a spear of grass, by bopping from one hillock to another. But while this amused her very much, for she pretended that the knolls were muskrat houses in a deep, deep slough, it only enraged her mother and the big brothers. For the gray gophers had intrenched themselves so well in the timothy, and had thrown up such damaging earthworks, that only a scythe could save what little hay remained; and they had not only taken into their burrows—as had been discovered the week before—all the freshly dropped seed from the barren corn strip, but had dug up kernels all over the field when they were sprouting into stalks.

The meadow had lain fallow the summer before, and had served no further use than the grazing of some picketed cows. Then, one parching July day it had been cut, to kill the thistles and pigweed that overran it, and in the following May had been plowed, dragged, and sown to wild timothy. The few mounds dotting it had been turned under with the belief that, between the fallow and the new plowing, the gophers would be driven out. Instead, they had kept to their burrows and, all in good time, had tripled their number.

So, as the little girl's mother and the big brothers stood on the edge of the timothy and viewed the concave stretch that should have showed green and waving from its rim to the boggy center, they planned the destruction of the rodents, and declared that if any escaped death by poison, the little girl should snare them and receive a cent for each tail.

When her mother's calico slat-sunbonnet and the big hats of her big brothers had bobbed out of sight across the corn, the little girl sat down upon a hillock and counted gophers. But there were so many and they ran about so much that she could not keep track of them; so she gave it up soon and began to think over all the things she would buy from the thick catalogue with the money she would get when she had snared a great number.

And she was still sitting there, watching the gophers covetously, when she saw the eldest brother returning. He had a salmon-can full of poisoned wheat in one hand, and when he reached the meadow he made a circuit and left a pinch of grain at the mouths of a score of burrows, where the greedy animals could find it and cram it into their cheek-pouches, and then crawl into their holes to die. When he had distributed all the grain, he threw the salmon-can away, wiped his fingers on his overalls, and started for the watermelon patch.

The little girl had silently withdrawn into the corn-field at his approach, but now she came out and, after satisfying herself that he was out of sight, picked up the can and also made a circuit of the meadow. Strangely enough, she stopped at the very burrows he had visited. When she was done, she went to the boggy center, found a deep cow track that was half full of water, and carefully emptied the can into it. Then she took it back to where the eldest brother had thrown it, and, with a look toward the watermelon patch, went home.

On his way back to the farm-house, the eldest brother paused in the timothy to see if the gophers had eaten of the poisoned grain. He was delighted to find, on going from hill to hill, that not a single kernel was visible! He imparted the good news to the family at the dinner-table, and it was received with rejoicing. The little girl alone was silent. But, doubtless, she had not heard what he said, for she was intent upon a huge piece of dried-prune cobbler.

That afternoon she went out to the barn to get some hair for a slipping-noose. Kate, the raw-boned cultivator horse, standing idle in her stall, turned her head and nickered when she heard the door creak open, expecting a nibble of sugar-bread. But the little girl had nothing for her. Instead, she rolled a dry-goods box into an adjoining stall, climbed upon it, and, reaching over the rough board side, got hold of Kate's long black tail.

The mare flattened her ears back, stamped crossly, and swayed her hind quarters against the opposite partition. But the little girl only clung the tighter and, unmindful in her security, chose and pulled out a dozen of the longest hairs she could find. Then, jumping down, she arranged them, ends together, hooked them over a nail at their center, and plaited them. And when she had tied a piece of stout, dark string to the end of the braid, she slipped it through the hair loop. The next moment, with a stick in one hand and the snare in the other, she started happily for the meadow.

When she reached it, saucy chur-r-rs from all over the timothy announced her. And as she paused on its edge to decide which burrow she would attack first, a dozen gophers sat up on their haunches to look at her, or frisked gaily from mound to mound.

She caught sight of a gray back at a near-by hole, and, running forward, chased the animal out of sight, stooped and carefully arranged the noose around the opening, and, after covering it with dirt, straightened the string to its full length. Then she crept back noiselessly to the hole to take a last peep before she threw herself down flat upon her stomach, grasped the end of the string, and lay very still.

For a moment there was no movement at the burrow. But soon the tip end of a gopher's nose appeared, the whiskers moving inquiringly, and disappeared. When it came again, the little girl whistled a note softly, and the nose came out so far that two sharp black eyes showed. The eyes saw her, too, and the gopher, growing bolder and more inquisitive, raised himself higher on his fore paws to take a better look. Presently all of his white throat was visible, and the little girl knew that it was time to act. With one quick, vigorous jerk of her extended right arm, she tightened the loop around him. And, amid a whirl of dirt, gray tail, and tawny back, the gopher was pulled out into the timothy.

The little girl sat upon her knees and looked at him. Her heart was beating wildly, and she was almost as scared as the panting creature at the end of her string. He held the snare taut as he crouched in a bunch of grass and watched her. Finally, she pulled at it a little. It brought him toward her, reluctantly sliding along on his feet, which he braced stiffly. Then, as she pulled again, he began to tug madly, and clattered in alarm.

"Seek—seek!" he cried, twisting and turning his lithe body; "seek—seek—seek!" The next instant he took the string into his mouth and bit it ferociously.

The little girl paled at the sight, and arose trembling to her feet. This shortened the snare, and the gopher came nearer, tumbling over and over through the grass. Remembering her stick, the little girl backed slowly toward it, not taking her eyes off him for an instant. But, as she retreated, the string tightened again, and the gopher advanced as before. The little girl, still too far from the stick, trembled more than ever at his wild cries, and her hand shook so that she could hardly hold the snare. He was attacking it with all his might, bounding into the air and, blindly fearless in his danger, coming toward her faster than she could step backward.

A moment she paused, shaking her apron to try to scare him. But as, hissing and fighting, he rolled against her bare feet, she dropped the string, turned her face from the meadow—and fled!

* * * * *

EVERY Sunday afternoon the Swede boy came to the farm-house and, squatting opposite the little girl as she sat enthroned upon the lounge in all the glory of a stiff Turkey-red dress, eyed her furtively while her mother read aloud the story of Mazeppa. His pale eyes, under their heavy white brows, never wavered from her face, even during the most stirring danger to the Cossack chief. Upon these occasions the little girl's mind wandered, too; for the tale of bravery recalled the colonel's son at the army post, the pride of the troop, who, in campaign hat, yellow-striped trousers, and snug, bright-buttoned coat, was a sturdy military figure. And had the Swede boy known it, he was less to her than a cockle-bur in her blind black pony's tail.

But youth is fickle and the reservation was far. So, when the rain was over next morning, she ran to the barn, bridled her horse, climbed from the manger to his back, and, lying flat to escape the top casing of the door, went out of the stable toward the Swede shanty at a run. Down deep in the long, narrow, jack-knife pocket of her apron lay a new gopher snare, culled, as before, from the tail of the cultivator mare.

As she scoured across the prairie, her hair whipping her shoulders and her skirts fluttering gaily, the last few clouds in the sky, white and almost empty, dispersed tearfully above the distant forks of the Vermillion. And when the river was reached and forded, and the steep bank climbed on the other side, a drying wind that had sprung up promised, with the sun, to prepare the timothy for that afternoon's snaring.

The Swede boy listened silently while the little girl unfolded her plan, and, after she had finished, waited a long time before speaking. His pale eyes looked thoughtfully at the ground, and the little girl, still mounted on her pony, could not see whether or not they approved of the scheme.

"Who gates th' mownay?" he asked at last. The little girl hesitated before answering, struggling with greed.

"Bofe of us?" she faltered.

The Swede boy grunted.

"You catch 'em and kill 'em," said the little girl, "and I'll snip off their tails. 'Cause my biggest brother says gray gophers don't worry no more 'bout losin' their tails than tadpoles do."

He grunted again, and the little girl, eager and impatient, turned the blind black pony about in circles.

"Ay catch 'em, ay kill 'em," the Swede boy said finally. There was a significant tone in his voice, and a gleam in the pale eyes under the tow hair. "An' yo' gate th' mownay," he added.

They were on the edge of the timothy meadow as soon as the pony, with his double load, could cover the distance. And while the little girl tied the horse to a big stone on the slope of the carnelian bluff, the Swede boy hastened to a gopher-hole and fixed the noose about it. A moment later, when she came stealthily running up behind him, he was already flat upon the ground and waiting.

It was not long before the gopher poked his nose out to see if his pursuer was near, and, catching sight of a ragged felt hat just above a clump of pigweed, stood up to investigate. The next instant the Swede boy had him and, springing to his feet, cast a triumphant look behind. But what was his amazement to see the little girl, bareheaded, fast disappearing through the corn!

When she came slowly back, the Swede boy was again stretched upon his stomach, and watching a hole nearer the center of the meadow. The little girl did not follow him, but stayed on the rim and pityingly viewed the limp gopher that lay, with eyes half closed, breast still, and tail thin and lifeless.

"Poor fing!" she said sympathetically, "it's 'cause you stealed the corn."

Then she opened his mouth with the butt end of her willow riding-switch, to find out what he had in his cheek-pouches. An onion and a few marrowfat peas rolled out, and the little girl, kneeling beside him, eyed him sternly.

"And so," she said, waving her hand toward the barren strip, "after pickin' up all that corn, you gophers have to go a-snoopin' round the veg'table patch!"

She left him and went on to the corn-marker, his tail, taken in righteous wrath, bearing her jack-knife company in the long, narrow pocket of her apron. But when she had sat down musingly, her chin in her hands, a strange thing happened to the dead gopher on the meadow rim. He moved a little, slowly unclosed his eyes, raised his head, and looked about; and, unseen by the Swede boy and the little girl, crawled away, through the clods that had only stunned him, to the corn-field, where, with many a cross seek, he nursed the hairy stump that henceforth was to serve him for a tail.

Dinnerless, but forgetful of hunger in the sport of capture, the little girl and the Swede boy stayed on. Once, during the afternoon, a gopher stopped their work by getting away with the snare and leaving them only half of the string. But the blind black pony good-naturedly furnished enough wiry strands for another slipping-noose, and the hunt went on.

On their way to the farm-house at sundown, they passed the spot where the Swede boy had left his first capture, but failed to find him anywhere.

"Why, he's runned away!" exclaimed the little girl.

The Swede boy shook his head. "Noa; ay keel hame weeth a clode," he said, "an' a bole-snake gote hame."

They had many a stout noose stolen during the days that followed. But the Swede boy snared plenty of gray gophers, and they all shared the fate of the first one,—lost their tails and were left to lie on the edge of the ruined meadow. When the spot was visited afterward, it was generally found that they had disappeared. But this did not trouble the little girl, for she wisely concluded that the bull-snakes were having a fat time of it.

The night before the three big brothers left with the thrashers, the string of gopher-tails was so long that she brought it into the kitchen and gave it proudly to the eldest brother to count. Then it was put into a twist of hay and shoved into the cook-stove.

"Goin' to give some of them pennies to th' Swede?" asked the youngest brother as the little girl sat down at the table and began to add up her earnings.

She flushed, but did not answer.

"Naw," said the eldest brother. "Why, th' Swede's not catchin' gophers for money; he's doin' it for love."

The little girl gathered up her pennies angrily and went to her room. But, next morning, when the Swede boy's whistle sounded from the meadow, she mounted her pony and went down. For the biggest brother had whispered to her this word of philosophy: "Might jus' as well get th' game with th' name."

For several nights after the departure of the big brothers, the little girl came home radiant, brushes dangling from her apron ruffle like scalps. Then, one evening, when four catches should have made her happy, she ate her supper with a sad and puzzled face, and afterward added only two tails to her string. Her mother, seeing that something was troubling her, inquired what it was; but, on hearing the story, went into such a hearty fit of laughter that the little girl's feelings were hurt very much, and she went to bed on the instant. She did not broach the subject again. But while the two weeks of her big brothers' absence were passing, she was often dejected.

After supper, the first night of their return, when the benches were still drawn up around the table, and the big brothers, tired with their long ride, were pulling at their corn-cob pipes, the little girl went up to the eldest and touched him timidly on the arm.

"Well, youngster," he said, "how many gophers have you snared since we've been gone?"

The little girl got red suddenly, and hesitated before she spoke. "Sixty," she answered, half under her breath.

The biggest brother took his pipe out of his mouth in mock astonishment. "Sixty!" he exclaimed. "Why, geewhitaker! you'll break the bank if you don't look out!"

The eldest brother put his hand into his pocket and took out some change. "Get the string," he said, "and here's your money."

The little girl looked at the coins mournfully, and then around the circle, and stepped back a few paces. "You won't b'lieve me when you see it," she said. She went out and came back presently, holding up the tails.

The eldest brother took them out of her hand, and she stood silently by while he counted them. When he had finished, he looked at her crossly. "Sixty!" he sneered. "You haven't caught no such thing! Here's only twenty." He waved the brushes in the air, and the little girl trembled visibly. "Did you think I'd pay you for sixty," he continued, "when you ain't got the tails to show for 'em?"

The little girl trembled more than ever. "Honest," she said; "honest! We caught sixty—we did, truly—"

"Where are their tails, then? where are their tails?" asked the eldest brother, impatiently, shaking the string so violently that some of the brushes fell off. "You say you did—but what have you got to show for 'em?"

The little girl came closer, her eyes wide and earnest. She was breathing hard and she lowered her voice as she answered.

"True as cross my heart to die," she said, "we caught sixty; but this was all the string I could get. 'Cause—'cause—there's a new kind of gophers in the timothy meadow,—and they ain't got tails!"



VIII

A HARVEST WEDDING

THE wedding of one of the Dutchman's seven stout daughters to a young farmer who lived in a dugout on the West Fork was an event in the little girl's life only second in importance to the christening. Two trips to Yankton on the wheat-wagon with the biggest brother shrank into insignificance before it, and she looked forward to its celebration so anxiously that time dragged as slowly as a week before Christmas.

The morning of the notable day she was unable to eat anything through sheer excitement. She passed the hours after breakfast in restless riding over the barley stubble, where the sheep, led by a black bell-wether who sought the fields because they were forbidden ground, were mincing and picking their way. At eleven she happily welcomed a gallop to the farthest end of the farm to carry doughnuts and ginger-beer to the big brothers. At dinner-time her appetite was again poor, but later, after making enough hay-twists for her mother's baking, she scraped the cake-batter dish clean and partook freely of several yards of red apple peelings.

The big brothers came in early from the fields to rest and get ready, and, one by one, spent half an hour in the kitchen, where the big wooden wash-tub held the center of the room. When it came time for the little girl to take a bath, the kitchen floor looked like a duck pond, for the tub was almost floating, and the well outside was noticeably low. At sunset the family sat down to a supper suggestive of the wedding feast to come. But though there were toothsome sandwiches on the table and cream popovers, not to speak of a heaping dish of watermelon sweet-pickles, the little girl again did not feel like eating, and only nibbled at a piece of raisin-pie when her mother, not realizing how satisfying the batter and peelings had been, threatened her with staying at home. After supper the big brothers hitched the gray team to the light wagon, fastened up the chicken-coops, latched the barn door and chained the dogs; and, having finished the chores, blacked each other's boots, brushed their hair slick with water, changed their clothes and resigned themselves to their mother, who put the last touches to their collars and ties. Then, just as a faint bugle-call, sounding the advance, was heard from across the prairie to the west, the family climbed into the wagon.

On the trip down, the eldest and youngest brothers sat in front and drove. Their mother and the biggest brother occupied the hind seat and looked after the piccalilli and pies, which they held on their laps. So the little girl had to content herself with staying in the back of the wagon on an armful of hay and letting her feet dangle out behind. As the team trotted south over the rough path that, at the school-house, joined another leading to the Dutchman's, she clung to the side boards in impatient silence, her eyes turned across the sloughs toward the Vermilion, where, through the starlight, were coming the chaplain, some troopers, and the colonel's son.

It was a still night, and the family could hear other wagons approaching from various directions, the distant whinnying of ponies traveling singly, the barking of the Dutchman's dogs, and the thudding gallop of the nearing cavalry mounts; and when they arrived the same shouts that greeted them welcomed a score of their neighbors and the dusty army men.

The moments that followed were memorable ones to the little girl. Standing by on tiptoe, with only the neighbor woman between her and the colonel's son, she saw the chaplain unite the Dutchman's daughter and the young farmer. The ceremony took place in the yard, so that all might witness it, and the biggest brother held the lantern by which the chaplain read from his prayer-book. The guests gathered about quietly, and listened reverently to the service and to the prayer for health and happiness in the dugout home on the Fork. And when the kissing, handshaking, and congratulations were over, they moved across the yard to the kitchen door, where they drank hearty toasts to the bride, in coffee-cups foaming high with beer. Then the married men took their wives, and the unmarried, their sweethearts, and went into the house to open the party.

The Dutchman's habitation was different from his neighbors' homes. One roof sheltered his family, his oxen and his cows, his harvested crops, his poultry and his pigs. It was a shanty roof, and it covered a long, sod building that began, at the river end, with the sitting-room, continued through the bedroom, the kitchen, the granary, the stable, and the chicken-coop, and was completed by the pig-house. The Dutchman, his wife, and their daughters could go back and forth from the best room to the beasts without leaving its cover. So, no matter how deep the snow was, the cattle never lacked for fodder, the hens for feed, or the hogs for their mash, a boiler of which, sour and fumy, cooked winter and summer upon the kitchen stove; and, when the fiercest of blizzards was blowing, the family were in no danger of getting lost between the house and the barn.

The three rooms of the building that were nearest the Vermilion, though given different names, were really all bedrooms. A high four-poster of unplaned boards stood against the low back wall of the sitting-room, beneath the rack that held the Dutchman's pipes; the sleeping-room, which the four eldest children occupied, held two smaller beds; and in the kitchen—where the family ate their breakfasts of coffee-cake and barley-coffee, their dinners of souse and vegetables and hard bread broken into a pan of clabbered milk, and supped, without plates, around a deep bowl of stew—was a wide couch that belonged to the youngest three.

But on the night of the wedding the first two rooms were empty, except for benches, the beds having been taken down early in the day and piled up beside the hay-stacks back of the stable. The couch in the kitchen was left in its place, however, and was covered from head to foot with babies.

The house was lighted by barn lanterns, hung out of the way under the shingles at the upper ends of the bare, sloping roof-joists, and their dull flames, that leaped and dipped with the moving feet beneath them, shone upon walls clean and bright in a fresh layer of newspapers, and revealed, to whomever cast a look upward, the parcels of herbs, seeds, and sewing thrust here and there in handy crevices of the brown, cobwebbed ceiling.

The Dutchman's neighbors crowded the rooms to the doors. In the kitchen were the older women, keeping watch over the couch and, at the same time, with busy clatter in a half-dozen tongues, unwrapping the edibles brought for the wedding supper. In the doorway between the other rooms sat the eldest brother playing his fiddle, the Irishman twanging a jews'-harp, and "Frenchy" with the bones; and on each side of them danced the guests.

The newly made bride and her husband led the quadrille in the sitting-room, opposite a trooper and the neighbor woman; the Swede had as his partner the new teacher, a young lady from St. Paul; and the biggest brother had his mother. Above them, as they promenaded, balanced, and swung, waved the black felt hat that the Dutchman had worn when he took his long trip over the prairie to invite them. Each family he visited had pinned a ribbon to its rim; and now it swayed back and forth, a gay and varicolored challenge to the hands reached out to grasp it.

The army chaplain was in the next room; and, as the quadrille closed in a roistering polka and a waltz struck up, he clapped in time to the couples that were circling before him, their hands on each other's shoulders, and their voices joining merrily with the music:

"In Lauterbach hab' ich mein Strumf verlor'n, Und ohne Strumf geh' ich nicht heim; Ich gehe doch wieder zu Lauterbach hin Und kauf' mir ein Strumf fuer mein Bein."

Now and then a couple drew aside and sat down a moment to rest. But soon they were back on the floor again, whirling and laughing and stamping their feet, and raising clouds of dust from the rough plank floors to their scarlet faces.

Out of doors there was less noise, but no lack of fun. Smudge fires burned in a wide circle about the house to repel the hungry mosquitos that, with high, monotonous battle-songs, stormed the smoky barrier between them and the inner circle of horses and oxen feeding from wagon-boxes. Nearer the building, and set about the carefully raked yard on barrels and boxes, were Jack-o'-lanterns made of pumpkins, that gave out the uncertain, flickering light of tallow dips through their goggle-eyes and grinning mouths.

In and out among the wagons, fires, and lanterns the children were playing hide-and-go-seek, screaming with excitement as they scampered in every direction to secrete themselves, or lying still and breathless as the boy who was "it" hunted them cautiously, with one eye searching for moving shadows and the other fixed upon the wagon-wheel that was the goal. On being sent out of the house to give the dancers room, the boys had raised a joyous clamor over their banishment, and begun a game of crack-the-whip; while the girls, not wishing to soil their clothes, had walked to and fro in front of the house, with their arms around each other, and watched the dancing. But when the Swede boy, who was chosen for the snapper, was so worn and breathless with being popped from the end of the rushing line that he could run no longer, boys and girls had joined in playing tag and blindman's-buff and, afterward, hide-and-go-seek.

The little girl was with them. But, so far, in spite of her white dress, which made her an easy prey, she had not been caught. The boys who had taken their turns at the wheel had caught other boys whom she did not know; and had always managed to find and, with much struggling, kiss the particular girls they favored. No matter how conspicuously she had hidden, they had always passed her by. As a result, after two or three disappointments, she had not taken the trouble of running to cover, but had either lingered just within the sitting-room to watch the dancing, or hung wistfully about the yard, somewhere near the colonel's son.

"Frenchy's" brother was now guarding the goal, and the little girl was ambushed behind the very straw-pile that concealed the colonel's son. It was an occasion that she had looked forward to and secretly brought to pass, yet, as she knelt close beside him, she could not think of one of the polite things she had planned to say to him that night. Their proximity struck her dumb, while he was silent through fear of being discovered. So they cowered together, speechless and restive, until the Swede boy tore by in an unsuccessful race for the wagon-wheel. Then the colonel's son darted out from behind the straw, and she remained regretfully looking after his blue-clad form.

All at once her meditations were rudely interrupted. "Frenchy's" brother, skulking here and there on the lookout for a bright, telltale apron, came round the pile and pounced upon her. "Forfeet! forfeet!" he cried, dragging her out into the middle of the yard.

She tried to pull away from him, and twisted her head so that her face was out of reach. "You stop," she cried hotly; "you jus' stop!"

The struggle was sweet to him, however, and he only laughed at her angry commands and fought harder than ever for his due, striving at every turn to pin her arms down so that she could not resist. The boys ran up to urge him on, and the girls hopped up and down in their enjoyment of the scuffle.

But he was not able to win in the contest. The little girl was a match for him. What she lacked in strength she made up in nimbleness, and she stood her ground fiercely, wrestling on until, with a quick, furious wrench, she freed herself from his hold and bolted toward the kitchen.

"Frenchy's" brother pursued her. But, once inside, she was safe, for he dared not enter and scramble across the couch to where she had sought refuge by a window. So he turned back toward the goal. "I get you yet," he shouted, wiping his damp face on his shirt sleeve.

The other children gathered about him and taunted him with his failure. To right himself in their eyes he set after one of the Dutchman's girls, who shook off her wooden shoes and fled frantically in circles to evade him. But he succeeded in catching her and taking a forfeit from one of her sun-bleached braids, after which he went to the wagon and sat down on the tongue to rest.

The game went on. It was the Swede boy's turn at the goal, and he put his hands over his face and began to count as the children scattered. "Tane, twanety, thirty, forty, feefty," he chanted, "seexty, saventy, eighty." As he told the numbers he stealthily watched the kitchen window where the little girl stood.

The neighbor woman's boy, who was in hiding under the wagon and almost at his feet, saw him peeking through his fingers and jumped out to denounce him. "King's ex, king's ex!" he cried, holding up one hand. "It's no fair; he's looking."

"Ay bane note," declared the Swede boy, stoutly, wheeling about; "yo late may alone."

"You are, too," persisted the other, springing away to hide again.

The Swede boy once more resumed his chanting, and the little girl, as she leaned from her vantage-point to listen, wished that she might return to the yard and take part in the game. But "Frenchy's" brother, though tired with his struggles, was still sitting menacingly on the wagon tongue, and she dared not leave her cover.

Suddenly the sight of a slat sunbonnet, hanging on a nail beside her, suggested a means of circumventing him. She took it down and put it on, tying the strings under her chin in a hard double knot. The long, stiff pasteboard slats buried her face completely, and nobody but Luffree, with his sharp muzzle, could have reached her cheeks to kiss them. So she sallied bravely into the yard.

The Swede boy had been counting slowly in the hope that she would hide, and when he saw her approaching he paused a moment, expecting "Frenchy's" brother to renew the attack. But the figure on the tongue never moved, even when the little girl, with a saucy swish of her skirts, paused daringly near it. So he sang out his last call:

"Boshel of wheat, boshel of raye, Who ain't radey, holer 'Ay.'"

"I," shouted the little girl, whisking triumphantly away, and the Swede boy began to count again.

She entered the house, going in at the sitting-room. He followed her movements as she threaded her way through the dancers toward the empty granary, and saw her sunbonnet pass the bedroom window and the open kitchen door. Then once more he sent out the last call. This time there was no response. So, after a hasty examination of the wagon, he began to creep about with an impressive show of hunting.

Often he came upon a new calico dress trailing in a dusty place, but passed its wearer by as if he had not seen her. He surprised the colonel's son curled up in a box beneath a Jack-o'-lantern, and distanced him to the wagon. Then he went on searching for a girl, and the boys, clustered about the wheel, watched him as he sneaked through the yard. Finally, when he judged that enough time had passed to warrant it, he made a wider search that brought him close to the granary door.

His courage almost failed him as he passed in front of it, and he was glad when the delighted squeals of two girls, who were running toward the goal, gave him an excuse to delay his entrance. But when the girls had tapped the wheel, he bounded back and, spurring himself on, stepped within the dark room, where, in a far corner, he caught a faint glint of white.

He walked toward it timidly. It moved, and he stood still. "Yo there?" he asked, at last, his throat so dry that he could scarcely find the words. A subdued giggle answered him. He recalled how kind and comrade-like she had been to him three months before when they had caught gophers together, and his spirits rose. "Yo there?" he asked again.

Suddenly she came from her corner and attempted to pass him. Emboldened by the darkness, he put out his arms and stopped her, and she laughed gaily up at him. He laughed shyly back and dropped her arms. She made no effort to get away. He stood still, awkwardly cracking his knuckles.

"Why don't you fight!" she demanded. He did not reply, but shuffled his feet and cracked his knuckles harder than ever. The music of a waltz floated in to them over the babble of the kitchen, and he turned his head that way as if to listen. As he did so she crept past him, her eyes sparkling with fun from the depths of the bonnet. When he turned back to look at her, she was gone.

He followed her out and paid no attention to the jeering inquiries of the other children. And as the colonel's son began to count from the wagon-wheel he walked slowly past the teams and smudges, and across a strip of backfire beyond, to the high, dry grass, where he lay on his back for the rest of the evening, looking sadly up at the stars.

The little girl sought a hiding-place, too, behind a hay-stack on the other side of the house. The colonel's son had seen her run that way, and as he sounded the final challenge his voice had a victorious ring. He began a second mock hunt. But it was a short one, for, fearful that he might stumble upon one of the Dutchman's younger brood, he first penetrated the outer darkness to find a boy, and then ran round the house in the direction taken by the little girl.

He came upon her unexpectedly as he circled a stack. She was crouching in plain sight against the hay, her face still hidden in the recesses of the bonnet. He rushed up to her and took her by the shoulders. "I've got you!" he said, but so low that the neighbor woman's daughter, who was just a few steps away behind a fanning-mill, could scarcely hear him.

"Y-e-e-s," stammered the little girl. She drew back and looked down, all her assurance supplanted by a wild desire to get away.

"Going to let me have my forfeit?" he whispered, shaking her a little.

The sunbonnet drooped until its wide cape stood up stiffly above her curls. "I hate that old French boy," she said.

The colonel's son moved closer, and a wisp of brittle grass in her hands crackled in a double grasp. She glanced up at him swiftly, as she felt his touch, and this time there was a nearing of the white frock to the suit of blue. "Well,—if—if—you've got t'," she added.

But the colonel's son, as he bent over her with all the gallantry of his nine years, had to learn by experience what "Frenchy's" brother had divined at a glance: the sunbonnet was in the way.

He was equal to the emergency, however, and hesitated only for a moment. Then he put his hand into his trousers pocket and took out his clasp-knife. He could hear some one at the goal calling him, and there was a rattle of dishes in the house, where the music had ceased for a moment, that told him the plates were being passed for supper. He knew that in a moment either the chaplain or the boys would be searching for him.

She heard the calls and clatter, too; yet she did not move except to raise her head until the bonnet strings were in plain sight under her dimpled chin. When he saw them, he straightened his knife out with a click and leaned once more toward her.

The fiddle was playing the opening strains of the supper dance now, and a hundred voices were singing with it; so the neighbor woman's daughter, who had been peering from behind the fanning-mill, hurried away to the house. And thus it came about that no one but a vagrant night-hawk, perched high on the top of the stack, remained near enough to hear the sawing sound of a dull knife-blade, making its way through cloth.

* * * * *

IN the early morning hours, as the gray team jogged homeward past the deserted school-house, the big brothers and their mother discussed the wedding, the dancing, and the supper. But the little girl, snugly wrapped in a quilt on the hay behind, lay still and silent, and only smiled when the night breeze from the west bore to her ear the clear notes of the departing bugle blowing a sweet retreat.



IX

THE PRICE OF CONVALESCENCE

EVERY morning a cloud appeared in the east, rushed westward across the northern sky, and vanished beyond the "Jim." Every afternoon it came up in the west again, swept back toward the east, and went out of sight in the Big Sioux. If a herd chanced to be grazing too near its path as it approached, they were scattered right and left in wild confusion by a shrill toot! toot! that could be heard at the farm-house. But when the way was clear the cloud traveled swiftly and silently, stringing itself, on sunny days, to a low white ribbon, or, if the air was damp and the heavens were gray, separating itself, from river to river, into many dark coughs of dense, high-sailing smoke.

For three months it had been crossing the plains as regularly as the sun itself. Before that it had loitered, attended, so the biggest brother said, by a great company of rough men carrying shovels and picks. It was this company, stray members of which, worn and grimy, had visited the farm-house now and then and talked in broad brogue, that had kept the little girl and the herd south of the reservation road throughout the early spring; and it was not until the men had dispersed and the cloud had begun its daily trips from horizon to horizon that she was permitted to ride northward on the pinto to see it go by.

The youngest brother went with her, mounted upon a skittish, bald-faced pony, and they halted together, near the low embankment that divided the prairie, to wait for the engine. But when it hurtled past, a screaming thing of iron and flying sparks, both the pinto and the pony, despite their riders' curbing, retreated so precipitately from the track that neither she nor the youngest brother caught more than a glimpse of the flying train, for their mounts ceased running only when the barn-yard was reached. Then the old mare came to a stop, blowing and trembling so wildly that she could scarcely keep her legs, while the bald-face kicked and snorted about among the granaries and pens in a perfect paroxysm of terror.

It was not long, however, before the pinto completely lost her fear of the engine, and would eat quietly near the embankment while the little girl lay flat on the ties to listen for a first faint rumble, or waved at the people in the cars. The flock, too, became so familiar with the track that they soon had a contempt for it, a feeling that they retained even after a dozen of their number had been mangled on its rails; but the cattle always kept it at a respectful distance, and only Napoleon ever showed the train enough hostility to shake his stubby horns angrily at it or charge toward it as it shot away over the plains. The herd was allowed, therefore, to feed along the railroad in the custody of the little girl.

But now, for nearly three weeks, the Swede boy had kept guard over the grazing stock, and the little girl had not even seen the cloud above the distant train. For she was ill: so ill that the neighbor woman, who shared the long night watches beside the canopied bed with the biggest brother and his mother, shook her head in the seclusion of the kitchen, and told herself that the little girl would never be well again.

The family were beginning to have the same awful thought, and had sent a telegraphic summons from the new station, ten miles away, to a physician in Sioux Falls. To them a cloud far heavier and darker than the engine's breath was hanging, day and night, over the farm-house, shutting out all sunshine, hope, and happiness.

One warm afternoon, while the little girl was riding the cultivator mare up and down in the Indian corn, she had suddenly been seized with a chill. That night a fever followed, and for a week she grew steadily worse. Her mother gave her every home remedy known to be good for malaria, and at the end of the second week moved her to the canopied bed, where an ever waving fan cooled her hot cheeks. It was here, almost at the end of the third week of her illness, that the Sioux Falls doctor found her.

She was tossing from side to side, murmuring in a delirium that had possessed her for days. Her face showed a scarlet flush against the white pillow-slip. The biggest brother, who scarcely left her bedside to rest or eat, was placing cold cloths upon her forehead and wetting her lips. White through his tan, he hung over her in an agony of fear, only lifting his eyes, now and then, to turn them sorrowfully upon his mother, seated opposite.

The little girl did not know of the doctor's arrival. As he hurried into the sitting-room, she was thinking of the floating cloud. Now it was pursuing her as she fled from it on a fleet pony; now it was stooping groundward, a huge, airy monster, to offer her a cake of ice; again it was sweeping over her, quenching the deadly fire that consumed her, and leaving her on the damp, green bank above the mooring-place of the bull-boat. She lay very still with her cool thoughts, her eyes, wide and lustrous, fixed upon the blue canopy overhead. But when, a moment later, the fever burned more hotly again, and the cloud changed to a blinding, blistering steam that enveloped her, she sat up and fought with her hands, and cried aloud for the biggest brother.

The doctor caught her wrists and gently put her back. One glance at her parched lips and brown tongue had told him what was the matter, and as he opened a valise and took out some medicines he answered the inquiring looks of the family. "Typhoid," he said. "She's a very sick child. But I think we may be able to pull her through."

With her mother and the big brothers looking on mournfully, the first step was taken toward aiding her. One by one her curls, so long her mother's pride and care, were snipped off close to her head; and when at last they lay on the bed in a newspaper, a little heap of soft, yellow tangles, there was sobbing all about in the sitting-room, and even the doctor, accustomed to sad sights, could not keep the tears from chasing down his cheeks and into his brown beard.

She looked pitifully thin and altered, shorn of her bright halo; yet at once she grew quieter, and when she was gently lowered into the brimming wash-tub and then laid between sheets wrung from cold water, she closed her eyes gratefully and ceased her outcries.

The doctor, collarless and with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, worked over her all day. The little girl's mother and the neighbor woman assisted him, and the big brothers sat on the bench in front of the house, so as to be within easy call. But when twilight came, and everything possible had been done for his patient's comfort, the doctor, who was tired with his long ride and the day's strain, went into the little girl's room and took a much-needed sleep.

"Keep up your courage," he said cheerily to the biggest brother, as he left him at his post by the little girl; "her years of outdoor life will help her rally. I have hope; but wake me at once if you note any decided change."

The evening hours passed slowly. In the sick-room the little girl's mother was resting on the lounge, which had been pulled close to the canopied bed. The neighbor woman dozed in the kitchen, beside the table where was spread the untasted supper. The eldest and the youngest brothers were stretched, still dressed, on their beds in the attic. The house was noiseless, and dark everywhere except in the sitting-room. There, on the high clock-shelf, the same tall lamp that, nearly seven and a half years before, had burned like a beacon and lighted the coming of the stork, now, turned low, shone upon the faithful biggest brother and the suffering little girl.

Shortly after ten o'clock an interruption came to the silence. A gentle knocking was heard at the hall door, and, on going out, the neighbor woman found a cattleman who had recently moved into the Territory from northern Texas standing on the stone step. Having heard that morning from the Swede boy that the little girl was dangerously ill, he had ridden down to proffer the services of himself and his swift horse Sultan. And when the neighbor woman told him that there was small hope of the little girl's recovery, he stabled his animal, and prepared to remain all night.

As he came out of the barn, after having tied Sultan in a vacant stall, he found that, unknown to the family, another anxious watcher was lingering about. A tow head was suddenly thrust from behind the partly open door, and a hand halted him by catching appealingly at his sleeve. "She bane bater?" asked a low, timid voice.

The cattleman turned, half startled, and shook his head as he replied, "I reckon she's a lot worse," he said. He walked on, but paused again at the smoke-house. The tow-head was just behind, and the cattleman could hear the sound of chattering teeth; so he whipped off his overcoat and tossed it back. When he entered the hall the chattering had stopped, and the coat had disappeared into the shadow of a granary.