Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net A BREATH OF PRAIRIE AND OTHER STORIES By WILL LILLIBRIDGE THE DOMINANT DOLLAR. Illustrated in color by Lester Ralph. Crown 8vo . . . $1.50 BEN BLAIR, PLAINSMAN. Frontispiece in color by Maynard Dixon. Seventieth thousand. Crown 8vo . . . $1.50 QUERCUS ALBA: The Veteran of the Ozarks. With frontispiece. 16mo. Net . . . $.50 A. C. MCCLURG & CO., Publishers CHICAGO [Illustration: She wheeled swiftly round, confronting him. [See "Journey's End."]] A BREATH OF PRAIRIE AND OTHER STORIES BY WILL LILLIBRIDGE AUTHOR OF "BEN BLAIR," "THE DOMINANT DOLLAR," ETC. WITH FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR BY J. N. MARCHAND CHICAGO A. C. McCLURG & CO. 1911 Copyright A. C. McCLURG & CO. 1911 Published April, 1911 W. J. Hall Printing Company Chicago A TRIBUTE It is an accepted truth, I believe, that every novelist embodies in the personalities of his heroes some of his own traits of character. Those who were intimately acquainted with William Otis Lillibridge could not fail to recognize this in a marked degree. To a casual reader, the heroes of his five novels might perhaps suggest five totally different personalities, but one who knows them well will inevitably recognize beneath the various disguises the same dominant characteristics in them all. Whether it be Ben Blair the sturdy plainsman, Bob McLeod the cripple, Dr. Watson, Darley Roberts, or even How Landor the Indian, one finds the same foundation stones of character,--repression, virility, firmness of purpose, an abhorrence of artificiality or affectation,--love of Nature and of Nature's works rather than things man-made. And these were unquestionably the pronounced traits of Will Lillibridge's personality. Markedly reserved, silent, forceful, he was seldom found in the places where men congregate, but loved rather the company of books and of the great out-doors. Living practically his entire life on the prairies it is undoubtedly true that he was greatly influenced by his environment. And certain it is that he could never have so successfully painted the various phases of prairie-life without a sympathetic, personal knowledge. The story of his life is characteristically told in this brief autobiographical sketch, written at the request of an interested magazine. "I was born on a farm in Union County, Iowa, near the boundary of the then Dakota Territory. Like most boys bred and raised in an atmosphere of eighteen hours of work out of twenty-four, I matured early. At twelve I was a useful citizen, at fifteen I was to all practical purposes a man,--did a man's work whatever the need. In this capacity I was alternately farmer, rancher, cattleman. Something prompted me to explore a university and I went to Iowa, where for six years I vibrated between the collegiate, dental, and medical departments. After graduating from the dental in 1898 I drifted to Sioux Falls and began to practise my profession. As the years passed the roots sank deeper and I am still here. "Work? My writing is done entirely at night. The waiting-room,--the plum-tree,--requires vigorous shaking in the daytime. After dinner,--I have a den, telephone-proof, piano-proof, friend-proof. What transpires therein no one knows because no one has ever seen. "Recreation? I have a mania, by no means always gratified,--to be out of doors. Once each summer 'the Lady' and I go somewhere for a time,--and forget it absolutely. In this way we've been able to travel a bit. We,--again 'the Lady' and I,--steal an hour when we can, and drive a gasoline car, keeping within the speed laws when necessary. Once each Fall, when the first frost shrivels the corn-stalk and when, if you chance to be out of doors after dark you hear, away up overhead, invisible, the accelerating, throbbing, diminishing purr of wings that drives the sportsman mad,--the town knows me no more." Every novel may have a happy close, but a real life's story has but one inevitable ending,--Death. And to "the Lady" has been left the sorrowful task of writing "Finis" across the final page. January 29, 1909, he died at his home in Sioux Falls after a brief illness. But thirty-one years of age, he had won a place in literature so gratifying that one might well rest content with a recital of his accomplishments. But his youth suggests a tale that is only partly told and the conjecture naturally arises,--"What success might he not have won?" Five novels, "Ben Blair," "Where the Trail Divides," "The Dissolving Circle," "The Quest Eternal," and "The Dominant Dollar," besides magazine articles, and a number of short stories (many of them appearing in this volume) were all written in the space of eight years' time, and, as he said, were entirely produced after nightfall. While interested naturally in the many phases of his life,--as a professional man, as an author, as the chief factor in the domestic drama,--yet most of all it pleases me to remember him as he appeared when under the spell of the prairies he loved so well. Tramping the fields in search of prairie-chicken or quail, a patient watcher in the rushes of a duck-pond, or merely lying flat on his back in the sunshine,--he was a being transformed. For he had in him much of the primitive man and his whole nature responded to the "call of the wild." But you who know his prairie-tales must have read between the lines,--for who, unless he loved the "honk" of the wild geese, could write, "to those who have heard it year by year it is the sweetest, most insistent of music. It is the spirit of the wild, of magnificent distances, of freedom impersonate"? To the late Mrs. Wilbur Teeters I am indebted for the following tribute, which appeared in the "Iowa Alumnus." "Dr. Lillibridge's field of romance was his own. Others have told of the Western mountains and pictured the great desert of the Southwest, but none has painted with so masterful a hand the great prairies of the Northwest, shown the lavish hand with which Nature pours out her gifts upon the pioneer, and again the calm cruelty with which she effaces him. In the midst of these scenes his actors played their parts and there he played his own part, clean in life and thought, a man to the last, slipping away upon the wings of the great storm which had just swept over his much-loved land, wrapped in the snowy mantle of his own prairies." Edith Keller-Lillibridge CONTENTS I A BREATH OF PRAIRIE 13 II THE DOMINANT IMPULSE 61 III THE STUFF OF HEROES 87 IV ARCADIA IN AVERNUS 109 Chapter I Prelude Chapter II The Leap Chapter III The Wonder of Prairie Chapter IV A Revelation Chapter V The Dominance of the Evolved Chapter VI By a Candle's Flame Chapter VII The Price of the Leap V JOURNEY'S END 239 VI A PRAIRIE IDYL 265 VII THE MADNESS OF WHISTLING WINGS 279 Chapter I Sandford the Exemplary Chapter II The Presage of the Wings Chapter III The Other Man Chapter IV Capitulation Chapter V Anticipation Chapter VI "Mark the Right, Sandford!" Chapter VII The Bacon What Am! Chapter VIII Feathered Bullets Chapter IX Oblivion Chapter X Upon "Wiping the Eye" Chapter XI The Cold Gray Dawn VIII A FRONTIER ROMANCE: A TALE OF JUMEL MANSION 309 IX THE CUP THAT O'ERFLOWED: AN OUTLINE 339 X UNJUDGED 347 XI THE TOUCH HUMAN 367 XII A DARK HORSE 373 XIII THE WORTH OF THE PRICE 393 ILLUSTRATIONS She wheeled swiftly round, confronting him. Frontispiece They saw the hands which had gone to hips flash up and forward like pistons, and two puffs of smoke like escaping steam. 74 "You'll apologize." 190 The two men went East together. 326 He heard a voice ... and glanced back. 388 A BREATH OF PRAIRIE AND OTHER STORIES A BREATH OF PRAIRIE I Dense darkness of early morning wrapped all things within and without a square, story-and-a-half prairie farm-house. Silence, all-pervading, dense as the darkness, its companion, needed but a human ear to become painfully noticeable. Up-stairs in the half-story attic was Life. From one corner of the room deep, regular breathing marked the unvarying time of healthy physical life asleep. Nearby a clock beat loud automatic time, with a brassy resonance--healthy mechanical life awake. Man and machine, side by side, punctuated the passage of time. Alone in the darkness the mechanical mind of the clock conceived a bit of fiendish pleasantry. With violent, shocking clamor, its deafening alarm suddenly shattered the stillness. The two victims of the outrage sat up in bed and blinked sleepily at the dark. The younger, in a voice of wrath, relieved his feelings with a vigorously expressed opinion of the applied uses of things in general, and of alarm-clocks and milk pans in particular. He thereupon yawned prodigiously, and promptly began snoring away again, as though nothing had interrupted. The other man made one final effort, and came down hard upon the middle of the floor. Rough it was, uncarpeted, cold with the damp chill of early morning. He groped for a match, and dressed rapidly in the dim light, his teeth chattering a diminishing accompaniment until the last piece was on. Deep, regular breathing still came from the bed. The man listened a moment, irresolutely; then with a smile on his face he drew a feather from a pillow, and, rolling back the bed-clothes, he applied the feather's tip to the sleeper's bare soles, where experience had demonstrated it to be the most effective. Dodging the ensuing kick, he remarked simply, "I'll leave the light, Jim. Better hurry--this is going to be a busy day." Outside, a reddish light in the sky marked east, but over all else there lay only starlight, as, lantern in hand, he swung down the frozen path. With the opening barn door there came a puff of warm animal breath. As the first rays of light entered, the stock stood up with many a sleepy groan, and bright eyes shining in the half-light swayed back and forth in the narrow stalls, while their owners waited patiently for the feed they knew was coming. Jim, still sleepy, appeared presently; together the two went through the routine of chores, as they had done hundreds of times before. They worked mechanically, being still stiff and sore from the previous day's work, but swiftly, in the way mechanical work is sometimes done. Side by side, with singing milk pails between their knees, Jim stopped long enough to ask, "Made up your mind yet what you'll do, Guy?" The older brother answered without a break in the swish of milk through foam: "No, I haven't, Jim. If it wasn't for you and father and mother and--" he diverted with a redoubled clatter of milk on tin. "Be honest, Guy," was the reproachful caution. "--and Faith," added the older brother simply. The reddish glow in the east had spread and lit up the earth; so they put out the lantern, and, bending under the weight of steaming milk pails, walked single file toward the house and breakfast. Far in the distance a thin jet of steam spreading broadly in the frosty air marked the location of a threshing crew. The whistle,--thin, brassy,--spoke the one word "Come!" over miles of level prairie, to the scattered neighbors. Four people, rough, homely, sat down to a breakfast of coarse, plain cookery, and talked of common, homely things. "I see you didn't get so much milk as usual this morning, Jim," said the mother. "No, the line-backed heifer kicked over a half-pailful." "Goin' to finish shuckin' that west field this week, Guy?" asked the father. "Yes. We'll cross over before night." Nothing more was said. They were all hungry, and in the following silence the jangle of iron on coarse queensware, and the aspiration of beverages steaming still though undergoing the cooling medium of saucers, filled in all lulls that might otherwise have seemed to require conversation. Not until the boys got up to go to work did the family bond draw tight enough to show. Then the mother, tenderly as a surgeon, dressed the chafed spots on her boys' hands, saying low in words that spoke volumes, "I'll be so glad when the corn's all husked"; and the father followed them out onto the little porch to add, "Better quit early so's to hear the speakin' to-night, Guy." "How are you feeling to-day, father?" asked the young man, in a tone he attempted to make honestly interested, but which an infinite number of repetitions had made almost automatic. The father hesitated, and a look of sadness crept over his weathered face. "No better, Guy." He laid his hand on the young man's shoulder, looking down into the frank blue eyes with a tenderness that made his rough features almost beautiful. "It all depends upon you now, Guy, my boy." Unconsciously his voice took on the incomparable pathos of age displaced. "I'm out of the race," he finished simply. The heavy, weather-painted lumber wagon turned at the farm-yard, and rumbled down a country road, bound hard as asphalt in the fall frosts. The air cut sharply at the ears of the man in the box, as he held the lines in either hand alternately, swinging its mate with vigor. The sun was just peeping from the broad lap of the prairie, casting the beauty of color and of sparkle over all things. Ahead of the wagon coveys of quail broke and ran swiftly in the track until tired, when, with a side movement the tall grass by the border absorbed them. Flocks of prairie-chickens, frightened by the clatter, sprang winging from the roadside, and together sailed away on spread wings. The man in the wagon looked about him and forgetting all else in the quick-flowing blood of morning, smiled gladly. He stopped at the edge of the field, tying the reins loosely and building up the sideboards, gradually shorter, each above the other, pyramid-like, until they reached higher than his own head as he stood in the wagon-box. Stiff from the jolting and inactivity of the drive, he jumped out upon the uneven surface of the corn-field. Slowly at first, as sore fingers rebelled against the roughness of husks, he began work, touching the frosty ears gingerly; then as he warmed to the task, stopping at nothing. The frost, dense, all-covering, shook from the stalks as he moved, coloring the rusty blue of his overalls white, and melting ice-cold, wet him through to the skin on arms and shoulders and knees. Swiftly, two motions to the ear, he kept up a tapping like the regular blows of a hammer, as the ears struck the sideboard. Fifteen taps to the minute, you would have counted; a goodly man's record. This morning, though, Landers' mind was not upon his work. The vague, uncertain restlessness that marked the birth of a desire for broader things than he had known heretofore, was taking form in his brain. He himself could not have told what he wanted, what he planned; he simply felt a distaste for the things of Now; an unrest that prevented his sitting quiet; that took him up very early at morning; that made him husk more bushels of corn, and toss more bundles of grain into the self-feed of a threshing machine than any other man he knew; that kept him awake thinking at night until the discordant snores of the family sent him to bed, with the covers over his ears in self-defence. A vague wonder that such thoughts were in his mind at all was upon him. He was the son of his parents; his life so far had been their life: why should he not be as content as they? He could not answer, yet the distaste grew. Irresistibly he had acquired a habit of seeing unpleasant things: the meanness and the smallness of his surroundings; the uncouth furnishings of his home; the lack of grace in his parents and acquaintances; the trifling incidents that required so many hours of discussion; and in all things the absence of that sense of humor and appreciation of the lighter side of life which, from reading, he had learned to recognize. Try as he might, he could not recollect even the faint flash of a poor pun coming originally from his parents. Was he to be as they? A feeling of intense repugnance swept over him at the thought--a repugnance unaccountable, and of which he felt much ashamed. Self-suspicion followed. Was it well for him to read the books and think the thoughts of the past year? He could not escape except by brutally tearing himself by the roots from his parents' lives. It was all so hopelessly selfish on his part! "True," answered the hot spirit of resentment, "but is it not right that you should think first of Self? Is not individual advancement the first law of Nature? If there is something better, why should you not secure it?" The innate spirit of independence, the intense passion of pride and equality inborn with the true country-bred, surged warmly through his body until he fairly tingled. Why should others have things, think thoughts, enjoy pleasures of which he was to remain in ignorance? The mood of rebellion was upon him and he swore he would be as they. Of the best the world contained, he, Guy Landers, would partake. With the decision came an exultant consciousness of the graceful play of his own muscles in rapid action. The self-confidence of the splendid animal was his. He would work and advance himself. The world must move, and he would help. He would do things, great things, of which he and the world would be proud. Unconsciously he worked faster and faster as thought travelled. The other wagons dropped behind, the tapping of corn ears on their sideboards making faint music in the clear air. The sun rose swiftly, warming and drying the earth. Instead of frost the dust of weathered husks fell thickly over him. Overflowing with life and physical power, he worked through the long rows to the end, then mounted the wagon and looked around. Silently he noted the gain over the other workers, and a smile lit up the sturdy lines of his face. Evening was approaching. The rough lumber wagon, heavily loaded from the afternoon's work, groaned loudly over the uneven ground. Instead of the east, the west was now red, glorious. High up in the sky, surrounding the glow, a part of it as well, narrow luminous sun-dogs presaged uncertain weather to follow. Guy Landers mounted the wagon wearily, and looked ahead. The end of the two loaded corn-rows which he was robbing was in sight, and he returned doggedly to his task. The ardor of the morning had succumbed to the steady grind of physical toil, and he worked with the impassive perseverance of a machine. Night and the stillness thereof settled fast. The world darkened so swiftly that the change could almost be distinguished. The rows ahead grew shadowy, and in their midst, by contrast, the corn-ears stood out white and distinct. The whole world seemed to draw more closely together. The low vibrant hum that marked the location of the distant threshing crew, sounded now almost as near as the voice of a friend. A flock of prairie-chickens flew low overhead, their flatly spread wings cutting the air with a sound like whips. They settled nearby, and out of the twilight came anon the confused murmur of their voices. Landers stopped the impatient horses at the end of the field, and shook level the irregular, golden heap in the wagon-box. Slowly he drew on coat and top-coat, and mounted the full load, sitting sideways with legs hanging over the bulging wagon-box. It was dark now, but he was not alone. Other wagons were groaning homeward as well. Suddenly, thin and brassy, out of the distance came the sound of a steam whistle; and when it was again silent the hum of the thresher had ceased. From a field by the roadside, a solitary prairie-rooster gave once, twice, its lone, restless call. The man stretched back full length on the corn bed and looked up where the stars sparkled clear and bright. It all appealed to him, and a moisture formed in his eyes. A new side to the problem of the morning came to him. These sounds--he realized now how he loved them. Verily they were a part of his life. Mid them he had been bred; of them as of food he had grown. That whistle, thin and unmusical; that elusive, indescribable call of prairie male; all these homely sounds that meant so much to him--could he leave them? The moisture in his eyes deepened and a tightness gripped his throat. Slowly two great tears fought their way down through the dust on his face, and dropped lingeringly, one after the other amid the corn-ears. II The little, low, weather-white school-house stood glaring solitarily in the bright starlight, from out its setting of brown, hard-trodden prairie. Within, the assembled farmers were packed tight and regular in the seats and aisles, like kernels on an ear of corn. In the front of the room a little space had been shelled bare for the speaker, and the displaced human kernels thereto incident were scattered crouching in the narrow hall and anteroom. From without, groups of men denied admittance, thrust hairy faces in at the open windows. A row of dusty, grease-covered lamps flanked by composition metal reflectors, concentrated light upon the shelled spot, leaving the remainder of the room in variant shadow. The low murmur of suppressed conversation, accompanied by the unconscious shuffling of restless feet, sounded through the place. Becoming constantly more noticeable, an unpleasant, penetrating odor, of the unclean human animal filled the room. Guy Landers sat on a crowded back seat, where, leaning one elbow on his knee, he shaded his eyes with his hand. On his right a big, sweaty farmer was smoking a stale pipe. The smell of the cheap, vile tobacco, bad as it was, became a welcome substitute for the odor of the man himself. At his left were two boys of his own age, splendid, both of them, with the overflowing vitality that makes all young animals splendid. They were talking--of women. They spoke low, watching sheepishly whether any one was listening, and snickering suppressedly together. The young man's head dropped in his hands. It all depressed him like a weight. From the depths of his soul he despised them for their vulgarity, and hated himself for so doing, for he was of their life and work akin. He shut his eyes, suffering blindly. Consciousness returned at the sound of a strangely soft voice, and he looked up a little bewildered. A swarm of night-bugs encircled each of the greasy lamps, blindly beating out their lives against the hot chimney; but save this and the soft voice there was no other sound. The man at the right held his pipe in his hand; to the left the boys had ceased whispering; one and all were listening to the speaker with the stolid, expressionless gaze of interested animals. Guy Landers could not have told why he had come that night. Perhaps it was in response to that gregarious instinct which prompts us all at times to mingle with a crowd; certainly he had not expected to be interested. Thus it was with almost a feeling of rebellious curiosity that he caught himself listening intently. The speech was political, the speaker a college man. What he said was immaterial--not a listener but had heard the same arguments a dozen times before; it was the man himself that held them. What the farmers in that dingy little room saw was a smooth-faced young man, with blue eyes set far apart and light hair that exposed the temples far back; they heard a soft voice which made them forget for a time that they were very tired--forget all else but that he was speaking. Landers saw further: not a single man, but a type; the concrete illustration of a vague ideal he had long known. He realized as the others did not, that the speaker was merely practising on them--training, as the man himself would have said. When Landers was critically conscious, he was not deceived; yet, with this knowledge, at times he forgot and moved along with the speaker, unconsciously. It was all deliriously intoxicating to the farmer--this first understanding glimpse of things he had before merely dreamed of--and he waited exultantly for those brief moments when he felt, sympathetically with the speaker, the keen joy of mastery in perfect art; that joy beside which no other of earth can compare, the compelling magnetism which carries another's mind irresistibly along with one's own. The speaker finished and sat down wearily, and almost simultaneously the hairy faces left the windows. The shuffling of feet and the murmur of rough voices once more sounded through the room; again the odor of vile tobacco filled the air. Several of the older men gathered around the speaker, in turn holding his hand in a relentless grip while they struggled bravely for words to express the broadest of compliments. Young boys stood wide-eyed under their fathers' arms and looked at the college man steadily, like young calves. The reaction was on the slender young speaker, and though the experience was new, he shook hands wearily. In spite of himself a shade of disgust crept into his face. He was not bidding for these farmers' votes, and the big sweaty men were foully odorous. He worked his way steadily out into the open air. Landers, in response to a motive he made no attempt to explain even to himself, walked over and touched the chairman on the shoulder. "'Evening, Ross," he greeted perfunctorily. "Pretty good talk, wasn't it?" Without waiting for a reply he went on, "Suppose you're not hankering for a drive back to town to-night? I'll see that"--a swift nod toward the departing group--"he gets back home, if you wish." Ross looked up in pleased surprise. He was tired and sleepy and only too glad to accept the suggestion. "Thank you, Guy," he answered gratefully. "I'll do as much for you some time." Landers waited silently until the last eulogist had lingeringly departed, leaving the bewildered speaker gazing about for the chairman. "I'm to take you to town," said Landers, simply, as he led the way toward his wagon. He then added, as an afterthought: "If you're tired and prefer, you may stay with me to-night." The collegian, looking up to decline, met the countryman's eye, and for the first time the two studied each other steadily. "I will stay with you, if you please," he said in sudden change of mind. They drove out, slowly, into the frosty night, the sound of the other wagons rattling over frozen roads coming pleasantly to their ears. Overhead countless stars lit up the earth and sky, almost as brightly as moonlight. "I suppose you are husking corn these days," initiated the collegian, perfunctorily. "Yes," was the short answer. They rode on again in silence, the other wagons rumbling slowly away into the distance until their sound came only as a low humming from the frozen earth. "Prices pretty good this season?" questioned the college man, tentatively. Landers flashed around on him almost fiercely. "In Heaven's name, man," he protested, "give me credit for a thought outside my work--" He paused, and his voice became natural: "--a thought such as other people have," he finished, sadly. The two men looked steadily at each other, a multitude of conflicting emotions on the face of the collegian. He could not have been more surprised had a clothing dummy raised its voice and spoken. Landers turned away and looked out over the frosty prairie. "I beg your pardon,"--wearily. "You're not to blame for thinking--as everybody else thinks." His companion started to interrupt but Landers raised his hand in silencing motion. "Let us be honest--with ourselves, at least," he anticipated. "I know we of the farm are dull, and crude, and vulgar, and our thoughts are of common things. You of the other world patronize us; you practise on us as you did to-night, thinking we do not know. But some of us do, and it hurts." The other man impulsively held out his hand; a swift apology came to his lips, but as he looked into the face before him, he felt it would be better left unsaid. Instead, he voiced the question that came uppermost to his mind. "Why don't you leave--this--and go to school?" he asked abruptly. "You have an equal chance with the rest. We're each what we make ourselves." Landers broke in on him quickly. "We all like to talk of equality, but in reality we know there is none. You say 'leave' without the slightest knowledge of what in my case it means." He gave the collegian a quick look. "I'm talking as though I'd known you all my life." A question was in his voice. "I'm listening," said the man, simply. "I'll tell you what it means, then. It means that I divorce myself from everything of Now; that I unlive my past life; that I leave my companionship with dumb things--horses and cattle and birds--and I love them, for they are natural. This seems childish to you; but live with them for years, more than with human beings, and you will understand. "More than all else it means that I must become as a stranger to my family; and they depend upon me. My friends of now would not be my friends when I returned; they would be as I am to you now--a thing to be patronized." He hesitated, and then went recklessly on: "I've told you so much, I may as well tell you everything. On the next farm to ours there's a little, brown-eyed girl--Faith's her name--and--and--" His new-found flow of words failed, and he ended in unconscious apostrophe: "To think of growing out of her life, and strange to my father and mother--it's all so selfish, so hideously selfish!" "I think I understand," said the soft voice at his side. They drove on without a word, the frost-bound road ringing under the horses' feet, the stars above smiling sympathetic indulgence at this last repetition of the old, old tale of man. The gentle voice of the collegian broke the silence. "You say it would be selfish to leave. Is it not right, though, and of necessity, that we think first of self?" He paused, then boldly sounded the keynote of the universe. "Is not selfishness the first law of nature?" he asked. Landers opened his lips to answer, but closed them without a word. III Brown, magnetic Fall, with her overflow of animal activity, shaded gradually into the white of lethic Winter; then in slow dissolution relinquished supremacy to the tans and mottled greens of Springtime. Unsatisfied as man, the mighty cycle of the seasons' evolution moved on until the ripe yellow of harvest and of corn-field wrote "Autumn" on the broad page of the prairies. Of an evening in early September, Guy Landers turned out from the uncut grass of the farm-yard into the yellow, beaten dust of the country road. He walked slowly, for it was his last night on the farm, and it would be long ere he passed that way again. This was the road that led to the district school-house, and with him every inch had been familiar from childhood. As a boy he had run barefoot in its yellow dust, and paddled joyously in the soft mud of its summer showers. The rows of tall cottonwoods that bordered it on either side he had helped plant, watching them grow year by year, as he himself had grown, until now the whispering of prairie night winds in their loosely hung leaves spoke a language as familiar as his native tongue. He walked down the road for a half-mile, and turned in between still other tall cottonwoods at another weather-stained, square farm-house, scarcely distinguishable from his own. "'Evening, Mr. Baker." He nodded to the round-shouldered man who sat smoking on the doorstep. The farmer moved to one side, making generous room beside him. "'Evening, Guy," he echoed. "Won't y' set down?" "Not to-night, Mr. Baker. I came over to see Faith." He hesitated, then added as an afterthought: "I go away to-morrow." The man on the steps smoked silently for a minute, the glow from the corn-cob bowl emphasizing the gathering twilight. Slowly he took the pipe from his mouth, and, standing up, seized the young man's hand in the grip of a vise. "I heerd y' were goin', Guy." He looked down through the steadiest of mild blue eyes. "Good-bye, my boy." An uncertain catch came into his voice, and he shook the hand harder than before. "We'll all miss ye." He dropped his arm, and sat down on the step, impassively resuming his pipe. Without raising his eyes, he nodded toward the back yard. "Faith's back there with her posies," he said. The young man hesitated, swallowing fiercely at the lump in his throat. "Good-bye, Mr. Baker," he faltered at length. He walked slowly around the corner of the house, stopping a moment to pat the friendly collie that wagged his tail, welcomingly, in the path. A large mixed orchard-garden, surrounded by a row of sturdy soft maples, opened up before him; and, coming up its side path, with the most cautious of gingerly treads, was the big hired man, bearing a huge striped watermelon. He nodded in passing, and grinned with a meaning hospitality on the visitor. At one corner of the garden an oblong mound of earth, bordered with bright stones and river-clam shells, marked the "posy" bed. Within its boundaries a collection of overgrown house plants, belated pinks, and seeding sweet-peas, fought for life with the early fall frosts. Landers looked steadily down at the sorry little garden. Like everything else he had seen that night, it told its pathetic tale of things that had been but would be no more. As he looked, a multitude of homely blossoms that he had plucked in the past flowered anew in his memory. The mild faces of violets and pansies, the gaudy blotches of phlox, stood out like nature. He could almost smell the heavy odor of mignonette. A mist gathered over his eyes, and again, as at the good-bye of a moment ago, the lump rose chokingly in his throat. He turned away from the tiny, damaged bed to send a searching look around the garden. "Faith!" he called gently. "Faith!"--louder. A soft little sound caught his ear from the grass-plot at the border. He started swiftly toward it, but stopped half-way, for the sound was repeated, and this time came distinctly--a bitter, half-choked sob. With a motion of weariness and of pain the man passed his hand over his eyes, then walked on firmly, his footsteps muffled in the short grass. A dainty little figure in the plainest of calico, lay curled up on the sod beneath the big maple. Her face was buried in both arms; her whole body trembled, as she struggled hard against the great sobs. "Faith--" interrupted the man softly, "Faith--" The sobs became more violent. "Go away, Guy," pleaded a tearful, muffled voice between the breaks. "Please go away, please--" The man knelt swiftly down on the grass; irresistibly his arm spread over the dainty, trembling, little woman. Then as suddenly he drew back with a face white as moonlight, and a sound in his throat that was almost a groan. He knelt a moment so, then touched her shoulder gently--as he would have touched earth's most sacred thing. "Faith--" he repeated uncertainly. The girl buried her head more deeply. "I won't, I tell you," she cried chokingly, "I won't--" she could say no more. There were no words in her meagre vocabulary to voice her bitterness of heart. The man got to his feet almost roughly, face and hands set like a lock. He stood a second looking passionately down at her. "Good-bye, Faith," he said, and his trembling voice was the gentlest of caresses. He started swiftly away down the path. The girl listened a moment to the retreating steps, then raised a tear-stained face above her arms. "Guy!" she called chokingly, "Guy!" The man quickened his steps at the sound, but did not turn. The girl sprang to her feet. "Oh, Guy! Guy!" pleadingly, desperately. "Guy!" The man had reached the open. With a motion that was almost insane, he clapped his hands over his ears, and ran blindly down the dusty path until he was tired, then dropped hopelessly by the roadside. Overhead the big cottonwoods whispered softly in the starlight, and a solitary catbird sang its lonely night song. The man flung his arms around the big, friendly tree, and sobbed wildly--as the girl had sobbed. "Oh, Faith!" he groaned. IV A month had passed by, bringing to Guy Landers a new Heaven and a new earth. Already the prosy old university town had begun to assume an atmosphere of home. The well-clipped campus, with its huge oaks and its limestone walks, had taken on the familiar possessive plural "our campus," and the solitary red squirrel which sported fearlessly in its midst had likewise become "our squirrel." The imposing, dignified college buildings had ceased to elicit open-mouthed observance, and among the student-body surnames had yielded precedence to Christian names--oftener, though, to some outlandish sobriquet which satirized an idiosyncrasy of temperament or outward aspect. Meantime the farmer had learned many things. Prominent among these was a conception of the preponderant amount he had yet to learn. Another matter of illumination involved the relation of clothes to man. He had been reared in the delusion that the person who gave thought to that which he wore, must necessarily think of nothing else. Very confusing, therefore, was the experience of having representatives of this same class immeasurably outdistance him in the quiz room. Again, on the athletic field he saw men of much lighter weight excel him in a way that made his face burn with a redness not of physical exertion. It was a wholesome lesson that he was learning--that there are everywhere scores of others, equally or better fitted by Nature for the struggle of life than oneself, and who can only be surpassed by the indomitable application and determination that wins all things. Landers' nature though was that of the born combatant. The class that laughed openly at his first tremblingly bashful, and ludicrously inapt answer at quiz, was indelibly photographed upon his memory. "Before this session is complete--" he challenged softly to himself, and glared at those members nearest him in a way that made them suddenly forget the humor of the situation. But youth is ever tractable, and even this short time had accomplished much. Already the warm, contagious, college comradeship possessed him. Violent attacks of homesickness that made gray the brightest fall days, like the callous spots on his palms, were becoming more rare. The old existence was already a dream, as yet a little sad, but none the less a thing without a substance. The new life was a warm, magnetic reality; the future glowed bright with limitless promise. "The first day of the second month," remarked Landers, meeting a fellow-classman on the way to college hall one morning. "Yes, an auspicious time to quit--this," completed the student with a suggestive shuffle of his feet. "We've furnished our share of amusement." Landers looked up questioningly. "Is that from the class president?" he asked. "Yes," answered the other, "hadn't you heard? No more dancing, 'his nibs' says." They had reached the entrance to the big college building, and at that moment a great roar of voices sounded from out the second-floor windows. Simultaneously the two freshmen quickened their pace. "The fun's on," commented Landers' informant excitedly, as together they broke for the lecture-room, two stairs at the jump. The large department amphitheatre opened up like a fan--the handle in the centre of the building on the entrance floor, the spread edge, nearly a complete half-circle, marked by the boundary walls of the building, a full story higher. The intervening space, at an inclination of thirty odd degrees, was a field of seats, cut into three equal parts by two aisles that ran from the entrance, divergently upward. The small space at the entrance--popularly dubbed "the pit"--was professordom's own particular region. From this point, by an unwritten law, the classes ranged themselves according to the length of their university life; the seniors at the extreme apex of the angle, the other classes respectively above, leaving the freshmen far beyond in space. As guardians of the two narrow aisles, the seniors dealt lightly with juniors and "sophs," but demanded insatiable toll of every freshman before he was allowed to ascend. That a first-year man must dance was irrevocable. It had the authority of precedent in uncounted graduate classes. To be sure, it was neither required nor expected that all applicants be masters of the art; but, agitate his feet in some manner, every able-bodied male member must, or remain forever a freshman. When Landers and his companion arrived at the top of the stairs they found the hall packed close with fellow-classmates. The lower rows of seats were already filled with triumphant seniors, waiting for the throng that crowded pit and lobby to come within their reach. With regular tapping of feet and clapping of hands in unison, the class as one man beat the steady time of one who marches. "Dance, freshies!" they repeated monotonously. "Dance!" "Clear the pit for a rush," yelled the president of the besieging freshmen, elbowing his way back into the mass. A lull fell upon the room, as both sides gathered themselves together. "Now--all at once!" yelled the president, and pandemonium broke loose. "Rush 'em! Shove, behind there!" shrieked the struggling freshmen at the front. "Dance, freshies! Dance!" challenged the seniors, as they locked arms across the narrow aisle. "Hold 'em, fellows! Hold 'em!" encouraged the men of the upper seats, bracing themselves against the broad backs below. The classes met like water against a wall. To go up was impossible; advantage of gravity and of position was all with the seniors. For an instant, at the centre, there were frantic yelling and pulling of loose wearing apparel; then, packed like cotton in a bale, they could only scream for mercy. "Loosen up, back there! Back!" they panted, squirming impotently as they gasped for breath. Slowly the reaction came amid the triumphant, "Dance, freshies!" of the conquering hosts. The jam loosened; the seniors' opportunity came. Like a big machine, the occupants of the front row leaned forward, and seized upon a circle of unsuspecting, retreating freshmen, among the number the class president. "Pass 'em up! Pass 'em up!" insisted the men above, reaching out eager hands to aid; and with an irresistibility that seemed miraculous, the squirming, kicking, struggling freshmen found themselves rolling upward--head foremost, feet foremost, position unclassified--over the heads of the upper classmen; bumping against seats, and scattering the contents of their pockets loosely along the way. "Up with them," repeated the denizens of the front row as they reached forward for a fresh supply. But there was no more material available; the besieging party had retreated. On the top row the dishevelled president was confusedly pulling himself together, and grinning sheepishly. The rebellion was over. "Dance, freshies," resumed the seniors mockingly; and once more the regular tap of feet and clapping of hands beat slow march-time. One by one the freshmen came forward, and, shuffling a few steps to the encouraging "well done" of the seniors, mounted the steps between the rows of laughing upper classmen. It happened that Landers came last. He wore heavy shoes and walked with an undeniable clump. "He's Dutch, make him clog," called a man from an upper row. The class caught the cry. "Clog! Clog!" they commanded. A big fellow next the aisle made an addition. "Clog there, hayseed," he grumbled. Landers stopped as though the words were a blow. That one word "hayseed" with all that it meant to him--to be thrown at him now, tauntingly, before the whole class! His face grew white beneath the remaining coat of tan, and he stepped up to the big senior with a swiftness of which no one would have suspected him capable. "Take that back!" he blazed into the man's face. The senior hesitated; the room grew breathlessly quiet. "Take it back, I say!" The big fellow tried to laugh, but his voice only grated. "Damned if I will--hayseed," he retorted with a meaning pause and accent. Before the words were out of his mouth Landers had the man by the collar, and they were fighting like cats. For a time things in that pit were very confused and very noisy. Both students were big and both were furiously angry. By rule they would have been very evenly matched, but in a rough-and-tumble scrimmage there was no comparison. The classes made silent and neutral spectators, as Landers swung the man around in the narrow pit like a whirlwind, and finally pushed him back into his seat. "Now will you take it back!" he roared breathlessly, vigorously shaking his victim. The hot lust of battle was upon the farmer, and he forgot that several hundred students were watching his every motion. "Take it back," he repeated, "or I'll--" and he lifted the man half out of the seat. The senior seized both arms of the chair, and looked up in a dazed sort of way. "I--" he began weakly. "Louder--" interrupted Landers. "I--beg your pardon," said the reluctant, trembling voice. That instant the amphitheatre went wild. "Bravo!" yelled a hundred voices over the clamor of cheering hands. "Three cheers for the freshman!" shrilled a voice over the tumult; and the "rah, rah, rah" that followed made the skylight rattle. Landers stepped back and looked up bewildered; then a realization of the thing came to him and his face burned as no sun could make it burn, and his knees grew weak. He gladly would have given all his present earthly belongings, and all in prospect for the immediate future for a kindly earth to open suddenly and swallow him. Perspiration stood out on his face as he went slowly up the stairs, at every step a row of friendly hands grasping him in congratulation. Slowly the room became quiet. The whole confusion had not taken up even the time of grace at the beginning of the hour; and a great burst of applause greeted the mild old dean as he came absently in, as was his wont, at the tap of the ten-minute bell. He looked up innocently at the unusual greeting, and the cheer was repeated with interest. As first in authority he was supposed to report all such inter-class offences; but in effect he invariably happened to be conveniently absent at such times--the times of the freshman rebellion. He began lecturing now without a word of comment, and on the instant the peaceful scratching of fountain pens on notebooks replaced the clamors of war. The lecture was about half over when there was a tap on the entrance door; and the white-haired dean, answering, stepped out into the hall. In a second he returned carrying a thin, yellow envelope. "A message for--," he studied the writing with near-sighted eyes, "--for Guy Landers," he announced slowly. The message went up the incline, hand over hand toward the top row, and the boy who waited felt the room growing gradually close and dark. To him a telegram could mean but one thing. The class sat watching silently until they saw him take the paper from his neighbor; then in kindness they turned away at the look on his face. In the pit below the mild old dean began talking absently. Landers tried to open the envelope, but his nervous hands rebelled. He laid the broad side firmly against his knee and tore open the end raggedly, drawing out the inclosed sheet with a trembling rustle that could be heard all over the room. The open page was before him; but the letters only danced before his eyes. He spread the paper as before, flat upon his knee, ere he could read. The one short line, the line of which every word was as he expected, stood clear before him. He felt now a vague sort of wonder that the brief, picked sentences should have affected him as they had. He had already known what they told for so long--ever since his name was spoken at the door--ages ago. He looked hesitatingly around the room. Several students were scrutinizing him curiously, as though expecting something. Oh, yes--that recalled him. He must
{'title': 'A Breath of Prairie and other stories by Will Lillibridge', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}