I
ONE week of authentic spring, one rare sweet week of May,
one tranquil moment between the blast of winter and the charge
of summer. Daily Carol walked from town into flashing
country hysteric with new life.
One enchanted hour when she returned to youth and a
belief in the possibility of beauty.
She had walked northward toward the upper shore of Plover
Lake, taking to the railroad track, whose directness and
dryness make it the natural highway for pedestrians on the
plains. She stepped from tie to tie, in long strides. At each
road-crossing she had to crawl over a cattle-guard of sharpened
timbers. She walked the rails, balancing with arms extended,
cautious heel before toe. As she lost balance her body bent
over, her arms revolved wildly, and when she toppled she
laughed aloud.
The thick grass beside the track, coarse and prickly with
many burnings, hid canary-yellow buttercups and the mauve
petals and woolly sage-green coats of the pasque flowers. The
branches of the kinnikinic brush were red and smooth as
lacquer on a saki bowl.
She ran down the gravelly embankment, smiled at children
gathering flowers in a little basket, thrust a handful of the
soft pasque flowers into the bosom of her white blouse. Fields
of springing wheat drew her from the straight propriety of the
railroad and she crawled through the rusty barbed-wire fence.
She followed a furrow between low wheat blades and a field of
rye which showed silver lights as it flowed before the wind.
She found a pasture by the lake. So sprinkled was the pasture
with rag-baby blossoms and the cottony herb of Indian tobacco
that it spread out like a rare old Persian carpet of cream
and rose and delicate green. Under her feet the rough grass
made a pleasant crunching. Sweet winds blew from the sunny
lake beside her, and small waves sputtered on the meadowy
shore. She leaped a tiny creek bowered in pussy-willow buds.
She was nearing a frivolous grove of birch and poplar and
wild plum trees.
The poplar foliage had the downiness of a Corot arbor;
the green and silver trunks were as candid as the birches, as
slender and lustrous as the limbs of a Pierrot. The cloudy
white blossoms of the plum trees filled the grove with a
springtime mistiness which gave an illusion of distance.
She ran into the wood, crying out for joy of freedom regained
after winter. Choke-cherry blossoms lured her from the outer
sun-warmed spaces to depths of green stillness, where a
submarine light came through the young leaves. She walked
pensively along an abandoned road. She found a
moccasin-flower beside a lichen-covered log. At the end of the road
she saw the open acres—dipping rolling fields bright with
wheat.
"I believe! The woodland gods still live! And out there,
the great land. It's beautiful as the mountains. What do
I care for Thanatopsises?"
She came out on the prairie, spacious under an arch of boldly
cut clouds. Small pools glittered. Above a marsh red-winged
blackbirds chased a crow in a swift melodrama of the air.
On a hill was silhouetted a man following a drag. His horse
bent its neck and plodded, content.
A path took her to the Corinth road, leading back to town.
Dandelions glowed in patches amidst the wild grass by the
way. A stream golloped through a concrete culvert beneath
the road. She trudged in healthy weariness.
A man in a bumping Ford rattled up beside her, hailed,
"Give you a lift, Mrs. Kennicott?"
"Thank you. It's awfully good of you, but I'm enjoying the
walk."
"Great day, by golly. I seen some wheat that must of
been five inches high. Well, so long."
She hadn't the dimmest notion who he was, but his greeting
warmed her. This countryman gave her a companionship
which she had never (whether by her fault or theirs or neither)
been able to find in the matrons and commercial lords of the
town.
Half a mile from town, in a hollow between hazelnut bushes
and a brook, she discovered a gipsy encampment: a covered
wagon, a tent, a bunch of pegged-out horses. A
broad-shouldered man was squatted on his heels, holding 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 hunk o' bacon. Pete! Hey, Pete!"
A tousled person came from behind the covered wagon.
"Pete, here's the one honest-to-God lady in my bum town.
Come on, crawl in and set a couple minutes, Mrs. Kennicott.
I'm hiking off for all summer."
The Red Swede staggered up, rubbed his cramped knees,
lumbered to the wire fence, held the strands apart for her.
She unconsciously smiled at him as she went through. Her
skirt caught on a barb; he carefully freed it.
Beside this man in blue flannel shirt, baggy khaki trousers,
uneven suspenders, and vile felt hat, she was small and
exquisite.
The surly Pete set out an upturned bucket for her. She
lounged on it, her elbows on her knees. "Where are you
going?" she asked.
"Just starting off for the summer, horse-trading." Bjornstam
chuckled. His red mustache caught the sun. "Regular
hoboes and public benefactors we are. Take a hike 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 wishing I had a
chance to say good-by to you before I ducked out but—
Say, you better come along with us."
"I'd like to."
"While you're playing mumblety-peg with Mrs. Lym Cass,
Pete and me will be rambling across Dakota, through the
Bad Lands, into the butte country, and when fall comes,
we'll be crossing over a pass of the Big Horn Mountains,
maybe, and camp in a snow-storm, quarter of a mile right
straight up above a lake. Then in the morning we'll lie snug
in our blankets and look up through the pines at an eagle.
How'd it strike you? Heh? Eagle soaring and soaring all
day—big wide sky—"
"Don't! Or I will go with you, and I'm afraid there might
be some slight scandal. Perhaps some day I'll do it. Good-by."
Her hand disappeared in his blackened leather glove. From
the turn in the road she waved at him. She walked on more
soberly now, and she was lonely.
But the wheat and grass were sleek velvet under the sunset;
the prairie clouds were tawny gold; and she swung happily
into Main Street.
