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CHAPTER V

AT BIG GROVE ACADEMY

WO disappointing developments dampened Billy Dines's satisfaction in finishing the hay harvest.

Harvey Stokes, who operated the single baling outfit available in the Walnut Creeks neighborhood, could promise nothing until November.

"Like as not," he predicted gloomily, "I couldn't give you more than ten days, anyway; the boys won't work when it gets real cold."

Then the Indian tribal authorities clamped down quarantine restrictions. No more Texas cattle would be admitted until cold weather, when what was known as "splenetic fever" was no longer to be feared. December first to April first was the period fixed for importations; and as a matter of course cattlemen would delay their northbound shipments until the last possible moment in spring, when cattle could manage to live on the young grass in sheltered creek bottoms and on sunny hillsides. Who would care to buy stacked hay? His neighbors had all they needed.

However, he maintained a cheerful front. The haying crew scattered to their homes, leaving to him and

Nan two weeks more of work retopping the ricks with long-stemmed marsh hay, inclosing them with fences of stout locust posts and wire, raking loose hay away from their sides and, on windless, dew-wet nights, burning it in twenty-foot-wide circles about the stacks to form fire guards.

The two made a workmanlike job, and the result was stimulating to the fancy. There they stood, twelve great round-backed monuments, looking, on the gently rolling stubble that was already showing a new wash of green, like a widely scattered herd of prehistoric beasts, each carefully penned against the time when its substance should melt away under heaving pitchforks, to be spread for hungry cattle. If only the cattle came!

But Nan harbored no doubt. Fine, clean hay like that must find a purchaser, be fed to hungry steers designed themselves to feed hungry people in cities beyond far horizons.

"I'll bet," Nan said to herself, falling into the formula of "The House That Jack Built," "a king somewhere in Europe will eat the meat that is cut from the steer that eats the hay that I raked!"

More improbable prophecies have been fulfilled.

The haying finished, Nan and Susan Dines dismantled the Forest house, and Billy Dines hauled its meager furnishings, the few farm tools, the chickens and the pig across to his own expanding and prospering leasehold. Nan helped to dig the remaining potatoes, to

pull the onions; she carefully transplanted to the Dines neat frontyard two bush roses, secretly naming them "Dad's rose" and "my rose" and resolving in her heart to keep them flourishing as symbols of a future that should mean for her father and herself the beauty and fragrance of blossom time.

Early on the morning of October first Uncle Billy took Nan and her little brown-strapped trunk in his rattling South Bend wagon to Mrs. Hardwick in Big Grove. Nan was to stay with her while attending the new Academy.

"I'm mighty glad to have you, Nan!" the spry little woman in widow's black exclaimed, as she kissed her. "I've been nagging at Cousin Sue to let you make me a visit ever since June, when your father first-" she brought herself up suddenly. "Well, Mr. Dines, why don't you sit down?"

"Can't stay, Miz Hardwick. Got to get back home. But I thought I'd go round to the school first with Nancy an' say howdy to the teacher."

In the new, still-smelling-of-paint Academy office, the smooth-faced principal met them. At thirty-one, O'Shea had a pale, immature look; his hands were soft and white; and he had a habit of tossing his mane of reddish-brown hair as though it hampered his thinking.

"Ah, Mr. Dines; and this is Nancy Forest. Yes. Age, fifteen-and five months. Yes. What grade shall we enter Nancy in?" Billy Dines failed to per

ceive that O'Shea was talking to himself, and replied confidently:

"I expect she'll hold her own with youngsters of her age!"

"I am sure the little lady will do our school credit," the principal agreed smoothly, conveying in tone and look a gentle rebuke. Billy Dines rose, embarrassed and uncomfortable.

"Well, Nancy, I'll come in for you Friday evenin'; I expect we'll start shuckin' your pa's corn Saturday." O'Shea made a tentative step towards the door, a careful smile on his face and the thought in his mind:

"How these farmers work their children! Shameful!"

But O'Shea, new to his job, might have spared his indignant pity. He had yet to learn how eagerly these shy, ambitious children of the long grass country threw their young strength into the practical business of making dreams come true.

Nan gave concentrated attention to O'Shea's questions and instructions, and plunged full stroke into what he called, vaguely, the sea of knowledge. Kearns had followed her father to Fort Tyler, had secured a postponement of his trial to December and reported that he was as comfortable and cheerful as possible under the circumstances. The lawyer was working towards two ends: to establish the truth of Forest's assertion that Dick Brothers had been armed when he

was killed, and the further fact that Brothers had been a quarrelsome and tricky dealer. Nan knew that her father's case was in competent hands. Buoyed by her indomitable youth, she felt that everything would "come out right," and wrote often and optimistically to him.

town.

Its

Nan found Big Grove swelling in the bud. twelve hundred inhabitants were in a state of elation over the completion of another railroad through the Preston Wills, editor of the weekly Eagle, pointed out in proud black type that Big Grove was now an important railroad junction; that wooden store buildings would have to give way to brick blocks; that already St. Louis and Kansas City drummers were competing hotly for orders from the town's merchants; and that the new square three-story brick Academy testified to the alertness of Indians and whites alike in the matter of education.

Eager attention to classroom instruction, Latin following geometry, then physical geography, rhetoric, ancient history; afternoon sessions with Birdie Durant, the art teacher, Miss Whimple at the piano and O'Shea's elocution class; Friday "programs," when parents came to hear duets, watch a Delsarte drill and listen to "the future Congressman," T. Albertus Shipley, "orate"; an occasional evening of candy pulling, a straw ride on moonlit Hallowe'en, winning quickly the friendship of girls of her own age, attracting the shy attentions of more than one boy of her classes as well as