ONE week of spring, one sweet week of May, one moment the blast of winter and the of summer. Daily Carol walked from town into country with new life.
One hour when she returned to and a in the possibility of beauty.
She had walked toward the upper of Plover Lake, taking to the track, and make it the natural for on the plains. She from tie to tie, in long strides. At each road-crossing she had to over a cattle-guard of timbers. She walked the rails, with arms extended, toe. As she her over, her arms wildly, and when she she laughed aloud.
The thick the track, and with many burnings, canary-yellow and the and sage-green of the flowers. The of the were red and as on a bowl.
She ran the embankment, at children flowers in a little basket, a of the soft flowers into the of her white blouse. Fields of her from the of the and she through the barbed-wire fence. She a low and a of which lights as it the wind. She a by the lake. So was the with rag-baby and the of Indian tobacco that it spread out like a old Persian of and rose and green. Under her the a crunching. Sweet from the sunny her, and small on the shore. She a in pussy-willow buds. She was a of and and wild trees.
The had the of a Corot arbor; the green and were as as the birches, as and as the of a Pierrot. The cloudy white of the trees the with a which gave an of distance.
She ran into the wood, out for of after winter. Choke-cherry her from the sun-warmed to of green stillness, where a light came through the leaves. She walked along an road. She a moccasin-flower a lichen-covered log. At the end of the road she saw the open acres—dipping with wheat.
“I believe! The gods still live! And out there, the great land. It's as the mountains. What do I for Thanatopsises?”
She came out on the prairie, under an of cut clouds. Small glittered. Above a red-winged a in a of the air. On a hill was a man a drag. His its and plodded, content.
A path took her to the Corinth road, leading to town. Dandelions in the wild by the way. A through a the road. She in healthy weariness.
A man in a Ford up her, hailed, “Give you a lift, Mrs. Kennicott?”
“Thank you. It's good of you, but I'm the walk.”
“Great day, by golly. I some that must of been five high. Well, so long.”
She hadn't the who he was, but his her. This gave her a which she had (whether by her fault or theirs or neither) been able to in the and of the town.
Half a mile from town, in a and a brook, she a encampment: a wagon, a tent, a of pegged-out horses. A broad-shouldered man was on his heels, a frying-pan over a camp-fire. He looked toward her. He was Miles Bjornstam.
“Well, well, what you doing out here?” he roared. “Come have a o' bacon. Pete! Hey, Pete!”
A person came from the wagon.
“Pete, here's the one honest-to-God lady in my town. Come on, in and set a minutes, Mrs. Kennicott. I'm off for all summer.”
The Red Swede up, his knees, to the wire fence, the for her. She at him as she through. Her skirt on a barb; he it.
Beside this man in shirt, trousers, suspenders, and hat, she was small and exquisite.
The Pete set out an for her. She on it, her on her knees. “Where are you going?” she asked.
“Just starting off for the summer, horse-trading.” Bjornstam chuckled. His red the sun. “Regular and public we are. Take a like this every once in a while. Sharks on horses. Buy 'em from farmers and sell 'em to others. We're honest—frequently. Great time. Camp along the road. I was I had a to say good-by to you I out but——Say, you come along with us.”
“I'd like to.”
“While you're playing mumblety-peg with Mrs. Lym Cass, Pete and me will be across Dakota, through the Bad Lands, into the country, and when comes, we'll be over a pass of the Big Horn Mountains, maybe, and in a snow-storm, of a mile right up above a lake. Then in the we'll in our and look up through the at an eagle. How'd it you? Heh? Eagle and all day—big wide sky——”
“Don't! Or I will go with you, and I'm there might be some scandal. Perhaps some day I'll do it. Good-by.”
Her hand in his leather glove. From the turn in the road she at him. She walked on more now, and she was lonely.
But the and were under the sunset; the clouds were gold; and she into Main Street.
II
Through the days of June she with Kennicott on his calls. She him with the land; she him as she saw with what respect the farmers him. She was out in the early chill, after a cup of coffee, open country as the fresh sun came up in that world. Meadow called from the of thin fence-posts. The wild roses clean.
As they returned in late the low sun was a of bands, like a of gold; the circle of the was a green sea with fog, and the wind-breaks were isles.
Before July the close them. The earth cracked. Farmers through corn-fields and the of horses. While she waited for Kennicott in the car, a farmhouse, the seat her and her with the on and hood.
A black thunder-shower was by a which the sky yellow with the hint of a tornado. Impalpable black far-borne from Dakota the of the closed windows.
The July was more stifling. They along Main Street by day; they it hard to sleep at night. They to the living-room, and and by the open window. Ten times a night they talked of going out to themselves with the and through the dew, but they were too to take the trouble. On evenings, when they to go walking, the appeared in which their and in their throats.
She wanted the Northern pines, the Eastern sea, but Kennicott that it would be “kind of hard to away, just NOW.” The Health and Improvement Committee of the Thanatopsis asked her to take part in the anti-fly campaign, and she about town to use the fly-traps by the club, or out money to fly-swatting children. She was but not ardent, and without to, she to neglect the as at her strength.
Kennicott and she North and a week with his mother—that is, Carol it with his mother, while he for bass.
The great event was their purchase of a cottage, on Lake Minniemashie.
Perhaps the most of life in Gopher Prairie was the cottages. They were two-room shanties, with a of broken-down chairs, tables, on walls, and stoves. They were so thin-walled and so close together that you could—and did—hear a being in the off. But they were set among and on a which looked across the to of up to green woods.
Here the social jealousies, and sat in gingham; or, in old bathing-suits, by children, they for hours. Carol joined them; she small boys, and helped sand-basins for minnows. She liked Juanita Haydock and Maud Dyer when she helped them make picnic-supper for the men, who came out from town each evening. She was and more natural with them. In the as to there should be or egg on hash, she had no to be and oversensitive.
They sometimes, in the evening; they had a show, with Kennicott good as end-man; always they were by children wise in the of and and and whistles.
If they have this normal life Carol would have been the most citizen of Gopher Prairie. She was to be that she did not want alone; that she did not the town to a Bohemia. She was now. She did not criticize.
But in September, when the year was at its richest, that it was time to return to town; to remove the children from the waste of learning the earth, and send them to lessons about the number of potatoes which (in a world by commission-houses or in freight-cars) William to John. The who had gone all looked when Carol begged, “Let's keep up an life this winter, let's and skate.” Their again till spring, and the nine months of and and all over.
III
Carol had started a salon.
Since Kennicott, Vida Sherwin, and Guy Pollock were her only lions, and since Kennicott would have Sam Clark to all the and in the entire world, her private and self-defensive did not one dinner for Vida and Guy, on her wedding anniversary; and that dinner did not a Raymie Wutherspoon's yearnings.
Guy Pollock was the person she had here. He spoke of her new and naturally, not jocosely; he her chair for her as they sat to dinner; and he did not, like Kennicott, her to shout, “Oh say, speaking of that, I a good today.” But Guy was hermit. He sat late and talked hard, and did not come again.
Then she met Champ Perry in the post-office—and that in the history of the was the for Gopher Prairie, for all of America. We have their sturdiness, she told herself. We must the last of the to power and them on the path to the of Lincoln, to the of dancing in a saw-mill.
She read in the records of the Minnesota Territorial Pioneers that only sixty years ago, not so as the birth of her own father, four had Gopher Prairie. The which Mrs. Champ Perry was to when she in was by the soldiers as a defense against the Sioux. The four were by Maine Yankees who had come up the Mississippi to St. Paul and north over into woods. They ground their own corn; the men-folks and and chickens; the new the turnip-like rutabagas, which they ate and and and again. For they had wild and crab-apples and wild strawberries.
Grasshoppers came the sky, and in an hour ate the farmwife's garden and the farmer's coat. Precious from Illinois, were in or by the of blizzards. Snow through the of new-made cabins, and Eastern children, with dresses, all winter and in were red and black with bites. Indians were everywhere; they in dooryards, into to doughnuts, came with across their into and to see the pictures in the geographies. Packs of timber-wolves the children; and the of rattle-snakes, killed fifty, a hundred, in a day.
Yet it was a life. Carol read in the Minnesota called “Old Rail Fence Corners” the of Mrs. Mahlon Black, who settled in Stillwater in 1848:
“There was nothing to over in those days. We took it as it came and had happy lives. . . . We would all together and in about two minutes would be having a good time—playing cards or dancing. . . . We used to and dances. None of these new and not wear any to speak of. We our in those days; no tight skirts like now. You take three or four steps our skirts and then not the edge. One of the boys would a while and then some one would spell him and he a dance. Sometimes they would and too.”
She that if she not have of and rose and crystal, she wanted to be across a puncheon-floor with a dancing fiddler. This in-between town, which had “Money Musk” for out ragtime, it was neither the old the new. Couldn't she somehow, some yet how, turn it to simplicity?
She herself two of the pioneers: the Perrys. Champ Perry was the at the grain-elevator. He of on a platform-scale, in the of which the every spring. Between times he in the peace of his office.
She called on the Perrys at their rooms above Howland & Gould's grocery.
When they were already old they had the money, which they had in an elevator. They had up their yellow house and moved into these rooms over a store, which were the Gopher Prairie of a flat. A from the to the upper hall, along which were the doors of a lawyer's office, a dentist's, a photographer's “studio,” the lodge-rooms of the Affiliated Order of Spartans and, at the back, the Perrys' apartment.
They her (their in a month) with tenderness. Mrs. Perry confided, “My, it's a we got to you in such a place. And there ain't any water that iron in the hall, but still, as I say to Champ, can't be choosers. 'Sides, the house was too big for me to sweep, and it was way out, and it's to be here among folks. Yes, we're to be here. But——Some day, maybe we can have a house of our own again. We're saving up——Oh, dear, if we have our own home! But these rooms are nice, ain't they!”
As old people will, the world over, they had moved as much as possible of their familiar into this small space. Carol had none of the she toward Mrs. Lyman Cass's parlor. She was at home here. She noted with all the makeshifts: the chair-arms, the with cretonne, the of paper the birch-bark napkin-rings “Papa” and “Mama.”
She of her new enthusiasm. To one of the “young folks” who took them seriously, the Perrys, and she easily from them the by which Gopher Prairie should be again—should again to live in.
This was their complete . . . in the of and syndicalism:
The Baptist Church (and, less, the Methodist, Congregational, and Presbyterian Churches) is the perfect, the in music, oratory, philanthropy, and ethics. “We don't need all this new-fangled science, or this terrible Higher Criticism that's our men in colleges. What we need is to to the true Word of God, and a good in hell, like we used to have it to us.”
The Republican Party, the Grand Old Party of Blaine and McKinley, is the agent of the Lord and of the Baptist Church in affairs.
All ought to be hanged.
“Harold Bell Wright is a writer, and he teaches such good in his novels, and say he's prett' near a out of 'em.”
People who make more than ten thousand a year or less than eight hundred are wicked.
Europeans are still wickeder.
It doesn't any to drink a of on a warm day, but who touches is for hell.
Virgins are not so as they used to be.
Nobody needs drug-store ice cream; is good for anybody.
The farmers want too much for their wheat.
The owners of the elevator-company too much for the salaries they pay.
There would be no more trouble or in the world if as hard as Pa did when he our farm.
IV
Carol's hero-worship to nodding, and the to a to escape, and she home with a headache.
Next day she saw Miles Bjornstam on the street.
“Just from Montana. Great summer. Pumped my chuck-full of Rocky Mountain air. Now for another at the of Gopher Prairie.” She at him, and the Perrys faded, the faded, till they were but in a black cupboard.
