Charles D. Stewart

“ Thus Janet's imagination battered at the doors of Home, scarcely knowing what she thought, but taking mental action, nevertheless, in the face of circumstance and the quick speech of things. It seemed to her—afterwards—that never till that moment had she seen the full nature of Home. That she could see any of its features, even for a moment, in a shack so frail that a boot could break it, did not seem reasonable, even to her; but the strength of a house is not all in locks and bars. ”

“ Janet was tired. She sat there watching the prairie. In the sky the same dark birds were soaring. The suspended effigy of Mr. Pete Harding, swayed by the slightest breeze, moved its loose-hung arms and legs as if it were being visited by the drunken spirit of its owner. At intervals the solitude found expression in a sheep's automatic baa. The birds, which were buzzards, wheeled round and round as the time passed and brought them nothing. One of them, tired of wheeling round and round, sat on one of the posts of the corral and waited for something to happen. ”

“ Space and darkness began to demand human attention. Unable to do otherwise, she looked up and contemplated the big blackboard of night, and especially the North Star, to which the front stars of the Dipper served as a pointer. And very soon she was wholly engaged upon the silence.
It is no small thing, if you are not used to it, to occupy a lone prairie at night. You face the absence of the whole human race. The ominous stillness centres upon you with all the weight of Past, Present, and Future. You are sitting up with the universe. ”

“ Janet can hardly be called a coward for acting as she did. A Texas longhorn of the old school was enough to move anybody,—better calculated to do so than either the elk or deer.
Consider the stag raising his antlers in the forest aisle. Held to the spot by this display of headgear you contemplate it in all its branches,—main-beam, brow-tine, bes-tine, royal and surroyal,—they are all beautifully named. To run is only second thought. No particular horn seems aimed at you. Between so many there may be room for escape.
But think of the Texas steer! ”

“ Steve, taking a route of his own, drove twice through the waters of the wandering Comanche. At these wide shallows, Janet's gossip ceased while she held to his coat-sleeve and kept her eye on the water as it hurried through the spokes and rose steadily to the hub. But when the stout pony pulled them up the opposite bank and the road lay before them the same length as before, she again took up the thread of the conversation. ”

“ With a broken bow and girths that are none too tight, a rider's seat is but temporary at the best; and it is safe to say that Janet's ride was not quite as long as it seemed. With a broken bow a saddle must, sooner or later, start to turn,—and it is a strange sensation to upset while you are sitting properly in the saddle with your feet in the stirrups; it is impossible seeming; and with a woman, who is fastened more tightly to the saddle itself, the sliding of the girth on the horse's barrel is as if she were soon going to be riding upside down. ”

“ Steve, as if suddenly admonished of something, rose to his feet, excused himself, and disappeared in the direction of the corral.
With the place before her temporarily vacant, and unable to see out of her circle of light except by looking upward, Janet instinctively lifted her eyes to the scene above. Thousands and thousands of stars made the night big and beautiful. They were so clear and so lively, as if they took joy in their shining. A mild southern breeze gave the night motion and perfume. Janet took a deep breath which was hardly a sigh ”

“ As everybody knows, a conversation can lead almost anywhere; the talk will get to wherever it is going by some route as long as words point the way, and always the story of one's self will leak through the sentences in the end. And where is there anything so conducive to the objects of conversation as a Rockaway buggy wheeling it over the cushioned sward and the flowers trooping by? We are not going to intrude upon their pleasant situation; suffice it to say that as time passed he became more and more Steve Brown and she became increasingly Janet. ”

“ What a terrible thing to be a woman! So, having turned instinctively to the shack, and recoiled from it, and then, with nothing else in sight, returned to it with the imagination of despair, there was nothing left but to turn about and stand with equal bafflement before the closed secrets of his soul. ”

“ He idled along after them, revolving in his mind his plans for the evening—some boards to be nailed tight on the storm-shed, and certain repairs on the south side of the pen.
Although the lamb had delayed him, the sun was still above the horizon as he drew near home—if a word which means so much may be applied to a herder's shack. A shack is a residence about like a farmer's smokehouse, being taller than it is wide or long; and as it is intended only for sleeping purposes there is just enough floor space to allow for a door, and room to turn yourself in as you shut the door. ”

“ For a door-sill is definite, and on it rises a formal spectre; but the way to a woman's heart is not so. Out here there were no set bounds; nothing to give pause at a distance showing the first and fatal step: no line in nature which becomes evident before it has been passed. Without it the moral dead-line was too close. Oh! if that shack were only hers—the rights of its lockless door. ”

“ And all the time the hooded stirrup flew about like a boot on a boneless leg and kicked him fore and aft.
Thoroughly insulted, he pitched by a mixture of methods which amazed Janet; she ran farther back. Now she beheld a fine vaulting movement, going up with the hoofs together, opening out in midair and coming down repeatedly in the same place; and here he worked away industriously, stretching his loins with the regularity of a machine and hitting away at the one spot in space with his fine punctuating heels ”

“ A lamb, upon arriving, needs a few moments to take notice that this is the Earth; but he has not much more than come to a stop when he realizes that it is the place for refreshments. For this reason, the force of gravity cannot keep a good lamb down; and as nature has provided him with just enough strength to rise and partake, the sooner he is about it the better. After a few draughts from the fount of knowledge his education is complete; and it is not many days till sheep life is too dull for him and he must lead a livelier career. ”

“ Entirely occupied with his kitchen duties he would move busily here and there or remain steadily behind or beside the stove while it pursued its onward way, and with the bucket of batter in his hand and the griddle smoking and sizzling, he would seldom miss a flap. From the standpoint of a weary cowboy it was a beautiful sight. It is, indeed, a pleasant thing, when you are tired and hungry, to see your supper thus coming along as conqueror over space and time.
No one but a man like Jonas, who had the combined talents of a sea-cook and a cowboy, could have managed it. ”

“ Shep sprang to life and barked orders right and left. The crowding multitude spread out on the prairie in grazing order, and when Shep had executed certain commands necessary to get them headed in the right direction, the trio of caretakers began their slow progress through the day. Shep, subject to orders, followed at Steve's heels; Janet walked at his right hand; thus they wandered along in the desultory manner of the sheep-herder, standing a while, sitting down a while, advancing now and then as the flock grazed farther away. ”

“ And then Lena, whose open Swiss nature was either at the summit of happiness or down in the valley of despair, regarded her ruefully for a space, and after one more hug and the shedding of two large healthy tears, accompanied her out to the porch. There the Wangers were waiting and the children standing in line to be kissed—quite as if she were a dear relative, or at least an acquaintance of more than four days' standing. Janet kissed them all ”

“ Jonas's trip to the ranch took longer than it takes to tell it. But there is not, in truth, anything about the trip itself to tell—and yet there ought to be some way of describing time. Under the circumstances, and especially as oxen cannot be hurried, it might be well to pass the time by talking about Jonas Hicks's past; it will be better than to take up the scenery again. In those parts the scenery, if the weather remains settled, is rather uneventful; it is the same when you arrive as when you started. On a prairie the human mind carries its own scenery. ”

“ Occasionally a passer-by diversified the tenor of his waiting—now a straight-paced lawyer garbed in black and thinking dark thoughts; again, a leisurely stockman arrayed like himself with sombrero and spurs. His own spurs he had not thought to remove since he got back that morning. The little town, like other county capitals, had an atmosphere that was half the hush of the court-room and partly the quiet of academic groves, in which state of being the inhabitants were peacefully and permanently established, the court-house being, in truth, Belleville's principal industry. ”

“ Quite strictly they kept to the course; none of them, beech, hickory, live-oak, nor pecan, encroached beyond the right of way nor seemed ever to have been forgetful that these were the Plains. It was very much as if they recognized that trees ought not to grow here. As, indeed, they ought not. The prairie is itself as much as is the ocean or forest, and it has no room to spare. Space, like wood and water, must have its own exclusive regions wherein to exercise its larger and deeper spell. ”

“ The little gully was hardly more than a deep grass-grown ditch made by the spring as it won its way out of the heart of the knoll; or rather it was a green hallway, overtopped with a frieze of mesquite, leading in privately to the source of the stream. ”

“ Quite a little of the traffic that came down Williston Road turned out and followed the trail which led diagonally across it past the door of the house. And usually the traveler, whether horseman or driver, would speak in passing; or, more likely, stop to have a talk with Jonas Hicks, who, if he were at home, might be engaged in plaiting a whip or mixing batter for pancakes or taking a stitch in his clothes, the iron seat of a "prairie-busting" plow being particularly hard on the seat of a man's trousers. ”

“ Janet would now hardly have been surprised to see him throw a somersault, as, indeed, he seemed on the point of doing at times when he stood up so high that he almost went over backwards. This time, after a moment of inaction, he reared again, and as he stood up with his hind hoof in the stirrup the girth strap parted and the saddle dropped from him. He jumped suddenly aside as if he were startled at his success, and finding himself rid of it he gave a final flourish to his heels and galloped away. The last Janet saw of him, he was going over a knoll with a cow running on before. ”

“ Nowhere so artfully, perhaps, as in a prairie stream, are eye and ear addressed by the manifold activities of wood and water. To come across it in the course of a long monotonous journey is as sudden as falling in love—and very much like it.
Comanche Creek, having such advantages of contrast and sharp comparison, was well calculated to strike the mind with the whole charm of stream and forest; and so it worked upon Janet. To her right was the prairie as monotonous as duty ”

“ There was not a stone, it is safe to say, within half a day's walk of Claxton Road. Prairie country of the black-waxy variety is noticeably bereft of this usual feature of life, the lazy Southern ocean which formerly brooded over these parts having deposited black, rich muck till it covered everything post-hole deep. And so if a man had wanted a stone to throw he would have had to walk several miles to find one, by which time, of course, his anger would have cooled off. ”

“ Which way to take him in search of milk became now a pressing problem. She thought she felt him shiver. If he was to be saved, it would not do for him to starve much longer; nature demands that if a lamb is to live he must have his first meal without delay. She paused to decide the matter, holding his passive little hoofs in her hand. To keep right on after the flock might prove the quickest way; but again it might not; it would be taking a chance. Back at the corral, far though it was, the services of a mother were certain. ”

“ Conversation can take such quick turns. Words, even mere things, can pop up with such unlooked-for allusions. They had drifted into some remarks upon sheep-herding, a trying occupation. Mr. Brown attested its monotonous and wearing nature.
"Yes," she said, "it must be so. No doubt you are always glad enough, Mr. Brown, when the time comes to get back home again."
"Yes—I prefer town to this. But I can't exactly say that it is like going home nowadays. I have a house just outside of town on the county-seat road. But a house is n't home." ”

“ Pete Harding under whose manly presentment the lambs enjoyed protection. Mr. Brown had made a very good imitation of a man by filling the herder's working-clothes with marsh grass; the figure had been made to stand up by means of a pole thrust through the fence, to the end of which Mr. Harding was suspended by the neck as if he had been hung in effigy. The man himself had not yet put in his appearance. Janet, as she thought of him, scanned the horizon for signs of his approach. ”