VI
Miles Bjornstam, the pariah "Red Swede," had brought
his circular saw and portable gasoline engine to the house, to
cut the cords of poplar for the kitchen range. Kennicott had
given the order; Carol knew nothing of it till she heard the
ringing of the saw, and glanced out to see Bjornstam, in
black leather jacket and enormous ragged purple mittens, pressing
sticks against the whirling blade, and flinging the
stove-lengths to one side. The red irritable motor kept up a red
irritable "tip-tip-tip-tip-tip-tip." The whine of the saw rose
till it simulated the shriek of a fire-alarm whistle at night,
but always at the end it gave a lively metallic clang, and in
the stillness she heard the flump of the cut stick falling on the
pile.
She threw a motor robe over her, ran out. Bjornstam
welcomed her, "Well, well, well! Here's old Miles, fresh as ever.
Well say, that's all right; he ain't even begun to be cheeky yet;
next summer he's going to take you out on his horse-trading
trip, clear into Idaho."
"Yes, and I may go!"
"How's tricks? Crazy about the town yet?"
"No, but I probably shall be, some day."
"Don't let 'em get you. Kick 'em in the face!"
He shouted at her while he worked. The pile of
stove-wood grew astonishingly. The pale bark of the poplar sticks
was mottled with lichens of sage-green and dusty gray; the
newly sawed ends were fresh-colored, with the agreeable
roughness of a woolen muffler. To the sterile winter air the
wood gave a scent of March sap.
Kennicott telephoned that he was going into the country.
Bjornstam had not finished his work at noon, and she invited
him to have dinner with Bea in the kitchen. She wished that
she were independent enough to dine with these her guests.
She considered their friendliness, she sneered at "social
distinctions," she raged at her own taboos—and she continued to
regard them as retainers and herself as a lady. She sat in
the dining-room and listened through the door to Bjornstam's
booming and Bea's giggles. She was the more absurd to herself
in that, after the rite of dining alone, she could go out to
the kitchen, lean against the sink, and talk to them.
They were attracted to each other; a Swedish Othello and
Desdemona, more useful and amiable than their prototypes.
Bjornstam told his scapes: selling horses in a Montana
mining-camp, breaking a log-jam, being impertinent to a
"two-fisted" millionaire lumberman. Bea gurgled "Oh my!" and
kept his coffee cup filled.
He took a long time to finish the wood. He had frequently
to go into the kitchen to get warm. Carol heard him confiding
to Bea, "You're a darn nice Swede girl. I guess if
I had a woman like you I wouldn't be such a sorehead. Gosh,
your kitchen is clean; makes an old bach feel sloppy. Say,
that's nice hair you got. Huh? Me fresh? Saaaay, girl, if
I ever do get fresh, you'll know it. Why, I could pick you up
with one finger, and hold you in the air long enough to read
Robert J. Ingersoll clean through. Ingersoll? Oh, he's a
religious writer. Sure. You'd like him fine."
When he drove off he waved to Bea; and Carol, lonely at the
window above, was envious of their pastoral.
"And I— But I will go on."
