Eleanor Gates

“ The line of flying animals had now crossed the farm. The blaze seemed to be at the very flanks of the herd, licking up the dry weeds and grass from under their speeding feet. The biggest brother groaned as his eye swept the oncoming panic. He forgot for a moment the danger to those at home and the terrible loss that, doubtless, had been visited upon them, in the thought of the impending fate of himself and the little girl. "They'll be plump on us in no time," he muttered, and, kneeling at the dashboard, he renewed his beating. ”

“ The family at the farm-house, called from their breakfast by the baying of the dogs, gathered bareheaded about the kitchen door and watched the mounting pillar, striving to make out any crouching figures at its base. But no hint of the size of the redskin company could be gained; and, when the biggest brother had climbed from the lean-to to the ridge-pole of the roof and his mother had peered from the lesser height of the attic window, they could not even catch a glimpse of the top of a tepee, of a skulking wolf-dog, or of the shaggy coat of a grazing pony. ”

“ Often on warm summer afternoons, the little girl rode down to the glade beyond the sloughs and, sitting her horse quietly, induced a tawny doe and her twin kids to approach by exciting their curiosity with her bright red flannel petticoat. But if she took the herd along, she did not dare display her skirt, for Napoleon did not like it and had, on one occasion, viciously gored the Indian pony in the ribs when the little girl was busy coaxing the deer. After a wind-storm she liked to climb from her pony to the overturned school-house and walk about on it. ”

“ 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 [138] upon the blue canopy overhead. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If they met a stranger, he sprang before her, his hair on end, his teeth showing, his claws working back and forth angrily. When a Sioux came near, he went into a perfect fit of rage; and not an Indian ever dared lay hands upon him.
It was this hatred for redskins that one night saved the herd from a stampede. Badgy had been playing about the sitting-room with the little girl, and trying his sharp claws on the new rag carpet, when he suddenly began to rush madly here and there, snapping his teeth furiously. ”

“ From velvet muzzle to sweeping tail, from mottled croup to fetlocks, she shone in the sunlight like corn-silk. Her mane was black and waved to her wide chest, and her heavy forelock hid an inwardly curving nose that proved an Arab strain. And when, after many spirited bouts with the hay bolster, the little girl finally won her over to a soft blanket and a stirruped girth, she showed the endurance and strength of a mustang, the speed of a racer, and the gait of a rocking-chair. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the herd was out of sight over the rise south of the meadow, the pinto, with her reluctant rider, again went riverward. This time the mare took a good drink, wading in so far that the little girl's anger turned to fear and she cried harder than ever. As the horse came out of the stream, the loud yur, yur, of a frightened crow, whose nest was in the willow fringe, startled the blind black colt, and he started on a run up the river. ”

“ 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. ”

“ IT was the little girl who discovered that the badgers were encroaching upon the big wheat-field that stretched westward, across the prairie, from the farm-house to the sandy bank of the Vermillion. In bringing the cattle home from the meadows one night, along the cow-path that bordered the northern end of the grain, she allowed several to stray aside into the field, which was now faintly green with its new sprouting. And as she headed them out, riding her pony at full gallop, she saw a fine shorthorn suddenly pitch forward with a bellow and fall. ”

“ But the mowers stood idle beneath their sheds, and the work-horses grazed contentedly with their heads to the south, for a rain was passing over the prairie. Inside the farm-house, the little girl, standing against the blurred panes, rebelled against the showers, and fretted for the blue mare and a gallop; the biggest brother, buried deep in a book, thanked [183] Providence; while the eldest, remembering the uncovered cocks in the timothy meadow, cursed the storm. ”

“ In the sorghum patch the eldest brother placidly dropped seed. Across the road the youngest lay on his back beside his herd pony. And, inside, by a window, the biggest sat and watched the smoke, now a wavering spiral in the light breeze that fanned the prairie; while their mother, knowing that the best way to receive an Indian is with corn-cakes and coffee, stood over the kitchen stove. But the little girl kept her sentinel place on the rain-barrel until the sun [173] veered her shadow from the side of the house to the earth bank piled against it. ”

“ One by one, big and little hurried up to receive their gifts of sweets. The little girl evinced none of the delight that shone on the faces of the other children. She watched the distribution silently, with no glad throbs of the heart, and took her share of the fruit and candy with downcast eyes. Her mother sorrowfully noted that, even when the bags and cornucopias had been given out and Santa turned his attention to the pile around the churn, her interest did not increase. ”

“ Before it lay the black stretch at which the fire must stop, and on which, if the blue mare could be brought to a standstill behind a building or a waiting car, there was succor from death. Yet hope—with the herd upon them and the fire closer, hotter, and deadlier—was almost gone. The biggest brother, in a very final frenzy of desperation, joined his efforts to those of the little girl, and pounded the blue mare and the crowding stock repeatedly with his naked fists. ”

“ IT was always a puzzle to the little girl how the stork that brought her ever reached the lonely Dakota farm-house on a December afternoon without her being frozen; and it was another mystery, just as deep, how the strange bird, which her mother said was no larger than a blue crane, was able, on leaving, to carry her father away with him to some family, a long, long distance off, that needed a grown-up man as badly as her three big brothers needed a little sister. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Though the little girl was yet only five and a half years old, she had tried many times in her life, without success, to make the slat cage the home of some feathery pet. Snipes and plover, orioles and ovenbirds, bobolinks and meadow-larks, all had lived in it by turns for a few days. But the snipes and plover had gone into a decline, the orioles and ovenbirds had grown thin and unkempt, and the bobolinks and meadow-larks had eaten themselves to death. ”

“ The professor put his hands to his head, and the squares, escaping his arm, were blown from the steps and fluttered upon the graveled embankment. The little girl saw them fall and ran forward to secure them. He did not see her. He was sitting on the top step of the fast-receding train, his face covered as if to shut out a fearful sight, his coat-sleeves pressing his ears as if to deaden a shout of ridicule. ”

“ A new moon appeared, holding its chin up,—a promise of sunshine,—and the little girl ran happily to the barn, slipped a lariat into the blue mare's mouth, secured it with a thong under the jaw, and, bareback, started toward the sloughs beyond the reservation road to bring home the herd. When she was a mile away, the eldest brother followed her, for he wanted to see if the grass around the farthest slough would make good cutting. He rode the bald-faced pony, and across his pommel was slung his musket. ”

“ The big brothers always laughed at her fright and at the idea of any possible danger; yet they taught her to know an Indian camp-fire, the trail of an Indian pony, and the print of moccasined feet, and told her, if she ever met any braves on the plains, to leave the herd to take care of itself and ride home on the run. So, remembering only their warnings and forgetting their confident boasting and how sure and awful was the punishment meted out from the forts to erring wards of the nation, her days were haunted by prowling savages that waited behind every hillock, ridge, and stack ”

“ The prairie has given you health. It has never given you happiness. Your life, like that of every other child on the plains, has had few joys and many little tragedies. They say the city child ages fast; but do they ever think of the wearing sameness and starving of heart that puts years on the country child? Ah! those who are born and bred on the edge of things give more than the work of their hands to the country's building." [287]
They sat in silence a long time, their hands clasped. Then the little girl kissed her mother softly. ”

“ The little girl, sitting on the front seat between her mother and the eldest brother, her christening robe and the kid shoes wrapped up carefully and clasped in her arms, swelled with importance as the colts, resplendent in their new harness, trotted briskly down the rows of ash saplings in front of the house and turned the corner into the main road. ”

“ It brought her out upon the prairie at the western base of the hill.
As she crossed the southern slope, setting her horse into a run with her whip, she chanced to glance up toward the summit, and her eyes met an unfamiliar object. The next moment, despite her solicitude for her mother, the oncoming storm and the long road ahead, she reined him in so abruptly that he sat back upon his haunches, and then urged him up the incline to where, in place of the usual pile of stones, was a low, dark mound of earth with a pipestone cross at its head. ”

“ One afternoon, when the warblers were away foraging for the nest, the cowbird, now well feathered, had tried his wings a little, and had flown to a clump of tall weeds not far off. Alighting safely, and emboldened by success, he had eluded a hungry snake that hunted him across the gopher knolls, and finally gone on to the top of the hill. When twilight came he had found a perch in a pile of tumbleweed, far from the sheltering bushes by the river. So the warblers, coming home late with two long wrigglers for him, had found the nest empty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Beside him, quiet and brave, sat the little girl. A spot of scarlet showed on either cheek, her eyes were alight, her figure tense. If she felt any terror, she did not show it. She knew how rapidly the blue mare could travel, and she trusted her pet to bring them to safety.
As the buckboard struck the meadow road, the biggest brother gave a hurried glance over his shoulder to see how far behind was the herd. "Never saw so many animals all together in my life," he said. "They'll kill us sure if they catch us. ”