CHAPTER IV

"THE BLESSED ROUTINE OF TOIL"

R

ETURNING to the house after stabling Nan's horse, Sam Davis adjusted the lamp wick, pursued a fluttering moth, then, sitting down, he began repeating in a harsh whisper :

"I knowed Ches Forest was in trouble. I seed it in a vision. I knowed it! Didn't I tell that gal of his?"

Periodically, Sam was driven by his visions to lay down the prosaic tools of a farm hand, take up a battered Bible and go forth, commissioned by no church and preaching no conventional creed, to redeem the world from sin. With the spell upon him, he trudged black-waxy roads and wind-swept prairie, to croak fervent warnings and pray loudly at embarrassed farmers and ranch hands.

"The minions of hell," old Sam went on muttering, staring at the lamp, "has cooked up a mighty broth of trouble for that man. An' the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children"-he interrupted the quotation to nod his head in exultant self-confidence-"onless Sam Davis takes a hand an' intercedes for that gal at the throne of God."

Turning over the problem and trying to decide upon the manner of his intercession, mumbling sentences from the Bible, the old man kept himself awake during the following hours.

Meanwhile, Nan lay with a hand between her aunt's cherishing palms, alert for the sound of hoofs. Lost in her own thoughts she yet listened to Susan Dines's fragmentary reminiscences, evoked from the dramatic past to comfort the young girl.

"I was about your age, Nancy, an' your grandpa was in the freightin' business out of Westport, as 'twas then (it's Kansas City now), clear across to Santa Fee. He'd be gone months at a time, apt to be set upon by bad Indians most of the way. Your grandma wasn't very well, either; an' your pa was a baby that I had to take care of mostly-well, as your grandma used to say, we just couldn't afford to worry about father. . .

Again:

"I used to ride out a ways with your grandpa sometimes. He'd have six yoke of oxen that he'd drive walkin' alongside. He'd have an ox-whip with a tenfoot handle an' a plaited leather snake at the end that was as long again, two inches thick where it joined the handle an' taperin' off to a two-foot lash. I'd see him step out an' swing that whip with two hands, then there'd be a sharp sound like a pistol shot, and maybe a mist of hair'd rise off the near leader's back an' he'd beller..

"They'd kill buffalo in what's central Kansas now. They'd jerk the meat from the humps an' hang it in strings alongside the wagons to dry some more as they traveled. . . .

"He'd talk to us about William Bent an' Jim Baker an' Saint Vrain an' Chaves and Jim Bridger until you'd think them old timers was near neighbors, 'stead of rangin' anywhere from a thousand to fifteen hundred miles away! .

"One day, right soon after my eighteenth birthday an' when your pa was only a little more than four years old, your Uncle Billy rode out to our house with the news that your grandpa'd been killed. Seems he'd quit the Santa Fee freighters an' struck out with a little party for Pike's Peak an' the new gold diggin's; an' the Cheyennes got 'em. . . . Your Uncle Billy brought your grandpa's watch that the troops took off a dead Indian; but of course, by that time, the watch wasn't any account.

"After that, your grandma just sort of faded away. Then Ches an' me had to fight it out alone up there in Missouri, until your Uncle Billy decided to come an' settle down for a while. . . . We got married in fifty-six."

The old woman's eyes rested upon the girl's flushed face for a time; she leaned to kiss her forehead; then went on deliberately:

"So you see, Nancy, we've had our bumps, same's you'll have yours. It's life. Anyway, as your Uncle

Billy's always sayin', it's Life in the Far West! I tell him he can laugh, but us women can't always see the joke in the shootin' an' hellin' around our menfolks do. . . . Some of 'em call it adventure!" She ceased, falling into a reverie of her own.

"Aunty," Nan broke a prolonged silence, "Uncle Billy said maybe we'd go ahead and put up that two hundred tons of hay just the same; maybe we could bale and sell it. If we could, we could use the money to help Dad. What do you think?"

Susan Dines's eyes snapped with a light of pride. “Why, I think that's a mighty good idea! Then, too, there's your pa's corn crop.

A young rooster in the chicken house crowed creakingly; it was answered by a round-voiced veteran. Out on the prairie a coyote struck up a multi-voiced serenade, and the Dines dog, Bully, barked in frenzied defiance.

"Gracious, Aunty, it's midnight!" Nan cried.

"So 'tis. . . . Gets nice an' cool along about this time." The old woman tucked the counterpane about Nan's shoulders and shifted from her chair to sit on the edge of the bed. She pressed her hand against Nan's neck and cheek, to find that the burning fever was cooling.

"Think you could sleep now, Nancy?"

"No!... Will you mind if I stay awake till Uncle Billy gets home?"

They talked fitfully in half whispers, Susan Dines

leading Nan's thoughts back to to-morrow's work: more hay to be raked and stacked; more grass to be cut and dried in the sun; more cooking for hungry men; more of the blessed routine that in a new land builds slowly and surely the character of a people, along with its wealth, and stirs the pride of achievement. Nan began to respond to her aunt's practical plans; she proposed eagerly:

"I'll tell you what, Aunty: I'll open up our house and cook dinner there, and the men won't have to come clear back here at noon. If we can put up fifteen tons a day, it'll only take us two weeks more to stack two hundred tons!"

"But what about rakin'? That's your job, Nancy."

"I know; but you see, I could hustle Bess from seven o'clock to ten, say, and then go to the house to get dinner ready. I could get out again at two o'clock. That way I could more than keep up with Uncle Billy's mowing machine.”

"Yes." Susan Dines nodded, and presently added: "I might come over myself before ten o'clock to sort of get dinner started, an' help wash up the dishes after dinner. I expect that might be a good plan; we'll see what your Uncle Billy says."

Childless, with only the long memory of soft lips that had tugged briefly at her breast, Susan Dines's heart had enfolded Nan, after her mother's death. Full of pride in the girl's sound sense and warm in the whole-hearted affection she returned, Susan thought of