A week later Lorania said: "I really think I must be getting thinner.

Fancy Mr. Winslow, who is so clear-sighted, mistaking me for Sibyl! He says--I told him how I had suffered from my figure--he says it can't be what he has suffered from his. Do you think him so very short, Maggie?

Of course he isn't tall, but he has an elegant figure, I think, and I never saw anywhere such a rider!"

Mrs. Ellis answered, heartily: "He isn't very small, and he is a beautiful figure on the wheel!" And added to herself, "I know what was in that letter she sent yesterday to the marquis! But to think of its all being due to the bicycle!"

THE SPELLBINDER

Not long since the writer had occasion to pa.s.s through the scene of this story. It would be hard to find anywhere a more pleasant and prosperous land. Fertile fields and shady country roads and pastures where sleek cattle are contentedly grazing; great stacks of green alfalfa; farmhouses with flowers and vines, as well as thriving kitchen gardens; windmills that pipe houses with water as well as fill the barn troughs; automobiles and good roads--there could hardly be a greater contrast.

And it is pleasant to hear that the pioneers who suffered incredible hardships during the lean years are now reaping the reward of their toil, courage and versatile, indomitable ingenuity.

The frozen soil rattled under the horses' hoofs; the wagon wheels rattled on their own account. A December wind was keen enough to make the driver wrap his patched quilt closer and pull his battered straw hat lower over his ears. He was a man of thirty, with high, tanned features and eyes that would have been handsome but for their sullen frown.

"I should call it getting good and ready for a blizzard," observed the other man on the board (seat the wagon had none); "maybe he won't come."

"He'll come fast enough," returned the driver; "you don't catch buzzards staying in for weather!"

"I don't know. He's a pretty luxurious young scoundrel. Bixby says he had a letter from him--very particular about a fire in his room, and plenty of hot water and towels. Bixby is worried lest the boys make a fuss with him in his hotel."

"Bixby is a coward from Wayback," was the driver's single comment or reply. The other man eyed the dark profile at his shoulder, out of the tail of his eye rubbing his hands up and down his wrists under his frayed sleeves. He was a young man, shorter of stature than the driver.

He had a round, genial, tanned face, and a bad cold on him. His hands were bare because he had lent his mittens to the driver; but he wore a warm, if shabby greatcoat and a worn fur cap.

"I don't suppose," he said in a careless tone, "you fellows mean to do more than scare the lad well."

"We scared the last man. Doc Russell got him fairly paralyzed; told him 'bout the Shylock that turned out the Kinneys, and Miss Kinney's dying in the wagon, she was so weak; and Kin--somebody ('course he didn't mention names) shooting that man; and their arresting Kinney, and the jury acquitting him without leaving the box. Oh, he told a lot of stories. Some of 'em, I guess, he made up out of his own head; but that Iowa lawyer swallered the whole batch, hide and hoofs and all. And he couldn't git out of town quick enough! But what's the good? Here's this young dude come again. Say, did you know it's his pa that owns most of the stock in the trust?"

"No?"

"Yes, sir. He's got the upper hand of 'em all. They've bought up every last bit of foreclosed land 'round here. Yes, we was so mighty smart, we fixed it that n.o.body'd dare to buy; and n.o.body 'round here _would_ dare, even s'posing they got the money, which they ain't--"

"There certainly ain't much loose money 'round here, Wesley. At least, when I ran the paper I didn't find it; I was glad to rent an abandoned farm and trade my subscription list for enough corn to pay the first instalment on some stock and a cultivator."

"Did you pay any more?"

"No; times got worse instead of better. I'd have lost the stock and the cultivator and every blamed thing in the way of implement I've got if it hadn't been for you fellows running the implement man out of the country; he'd a chattel mortgage that was a terror. But what were you saying about the land? n.o.body would buy?"

"Of course n.o.body would buy, and we hugged ourselves we was so durned slick. Oh, my! Now, here comes along one of them b.l.o.o.d.y trusts that's eating this country up, and goes to the land company and buys the foreclosed land for a song. It goes all the cheaper because its known far and wide that we elected the sheriff not to enforce writs, but to resist 'em; and the same with all the officers; and we're ready to shoot down any man that tries to push us off the earth. That scared folks, and the investment company sold cheap as dirt. They knew they couldn't git anybody to take up a farm 'round here. Look a' there!" He jerked the point of the switch that served for whip in the direction of a dark bulk looming against the glowing belt of red in the west. The outlines of a ruined chimney toppled over the misshapen roof. The door and window openings gaped forlornly; doors and windows were gone long since, wrenched off for other needs. Bit by bit the house had been nibbled at--here a porch platform taken, there a patch of weather-boarding, shingles pulled from the roof, the corn crib a wreck, the outbuildings carried away piece-meal--until, a sadder ruin than fire leaves, it faced the sunset and the prairie.

"That farm belonged to as hard-working, smart a feller as ever handled a plow. Look at them fields, gone to desolation like everything else, but the furrows used to be as straight's a line with a ruler. He fought the hard times and the drought till his wife died, and then he said to me, 'I'm beat; I'm going to take the baby back to Winnie's folks. If I'd only gone last year I could have took Winnie, too. The company kin have my farm, and I hope to G.o.d it'll be the curse to them it's been to me!'

There the farm is. And look further down"--shifting the switch to another direction--"there's another dropping to pieces. Lord, when I think of the stories they told me about the crops when I fust came and put in four hundred dollars that I'd worked hard for in a saw-mill, and I think how we used to set 'round the fire evenings, my wife and I, talking about how the town was a-growing and what it would be when the trees was growed and our children was going to school, and how we'd have a cabinet organ and we'd have a top buggy, and we'd send for her mother, who didn't jest like it with Bill's wife--we was jest like children, making believe! But that ain't what I was driving at. Here it is. We calculated that we'd be let alone, because the poor, miserable remnants of stock and machines and farms we got simply wasn't worth outside folks taking, and inside folks wouldn't risk their lives by dispossessing us.

That's how we sized it up, ain't it?"

"I don't see yet what you're after, Wesley."

"You will. We reasoned that way. But along comes this company, this--trust, that's clean against the laws and don't give a curse for that, and it buys up the whole outfit. I tell you, Mr. Robbins, there ain't five men in this community that that trust ain't got the legal right to turn out on the prairies to-morrow. They've all been foreclosed, and the year of grace is up. Most of us here ain't got no show at all--legally. And so they send a man down here to see about gitting out writs and finishing us up."

"But who'll they get to buy, Wesley Orr?"

"They're not needing much buying. They're on to a new scheme--going to turn all these farms into big pastures and fatten cattle with alfalfa, raise it and ship it; then the lower part of the county, down below town, they intend to run a ditch through from the river and irrigate it.

They will fetch in a colony who'll pay them about ten times what they paid, I expect, and--"

"But we won't let them--"

"Depends on how many guns the colony's got and how much fight there's in it. They'll try it, anyhow, unless--"

"Unless--" repeated Robbins uneasily.

"Unless they're scared off, _unless they think it's death for a man to tackle us_."

Robbins rubbed his hands harder; he bit his lip. A little s.p.a.ce of silence fell between them. Off to the south, where the little town was set like an island in the darkening prairie, the lights began to twinkle; they were yellow and scattered. Even at that distance one could tell that they burned few to the house.

"I kinder wish," said Robbins, "that he came from another town."

"What's the difference about the town?"

"Oh, none, I guess. But that town, it's in Iowa, and it sent the best things we've ever had. One woman put in a lot of jams and jellies and tea--such tea! My wife was sick then, and I didn't know but I'd lose her. I gave her some of that tea and some jam, and she began to pick up from that day. It was a quince jam, and made her think of home, she said. Her father was a Connecticut man, and they had an orchard with quince trees in it--I remember--" He did not finish the sentence, but he sighed as he absently ran his eye over the gaps in the harness mended with rope.

"I bet _he_ didn't have nothing to do with that box," said Orr; "most like, the people sent us that were poor folks themselves, and had to pinch to make up for the things they sent us. 'Tain't the rich people are sorriest for poor folks. This young Wallace--his father's the owner of a big paper, and rich besides, and he's got this boy in training for editor; and when that first duck couldn't do nothing out here, the old man said he'd buy in, and the young one thought it a mighty smart thing to do to come over here and turn a lot of half-starved women and children out in winter. What's _he_ care? What do any of these rich folks care?"

"I don't think you're fair, Wesley," said Robbins. "All the rich folks aren't mean. I know more about them than you." He spoke with a dawning of pride in his tone, which deepened a little.

"Yes, I know you used to belong to them," said Orr, "and I guess you were decent to the poor. But you'll admit you didn't have no notion how it cuts to work every muscle in you and to lay awake thinking yourself half crazy to puzzle out better ways to make money and yet to feel every year you're a-sinking deeper in the slough! I've worked five years here, and 'cepting the first year, every single year has piled interest on the mortgage. Every year we've had less clothes to wear and poorer stuff to eat, and it's been mend instead of buy, and we've had more debts and more worries every year. I tell you, Mr. Robbins, I thought it would _kill_ me, once, to come on the county. I'd 'a' said I'd starve first; but you can't see your wife and children starve. I went in last winter, and asked for relief. I'd that old hound dog of mine with me; you knowed him. He'd been a good dog. He come with us when we come here, running under the wagon. All the children had played with him. I took him into town, and I asked every one I knowed would he have that dog for a gift; I showed off all his tricks, feeling like I was dirty mean deceiving him, for I done it so somebody would be willing to take him home and feed him and take care of him, for it's G.o.d's truth I hadn't enough for him and the children too. But n.o.body wanted him; he was pretty old, and he wasn't never handsome. And one store I was in, as I went out I heard a drummer that was trying to sell goods say, 'I saw that feller at the Relief, but I notice he's able to keep a dog. Lets the children go hungry ruther'n the dog, I guess.' I kinder turned on him, then I turned back again, and I whistled to Sport, and I looked at him and saw how his ribs showed and his eyes was kinder sunk. He wagged his tail and yelped like he used to, seeing me look at him; and then I went straight to that drug-store Billy used to keep--Billy Harvey. He moved away last year; he was a good friend of mine. I said to him, 'Billy, you got something that would kill a dog in a flash, so he'd never suffer or know what hurt him?' And Billy--he understood, and he said he had. 'You jest put it on his tongue and he'd never know what killed him.' Billy was sorry for me.

He gave it to me for nothing, and he gave me some bones and corn bread and milk; so Sport had a good dinner. And he come right up to me and looked me in the eyes, wagging his tail. His eyes was kinder dim, but they was just as loving as ever. And he was wagging his tail when he dropped. Then I went home, and the children asked me where was Sport, and little Peggy cried--oh, Lord!"

"It was awful hard on you, Wesley," said Robbins gently.

"I suppose it wasn't nothing to what some men have suffered. There was poor Tommy Walker, give up his farm when it was foreclosed--thought he had to--and went off tramping to Kansas City, and after he'd tramped a week there, looking for a job, give it up and jumped into the river. And you know how old man Osgood killed himself, honest a old man as ever lived; always kept his machines under cover, too; _he_ couldn't stand it. They found it harder--and lots more, too; but I've found it hard enough. And I know I'd shoot that sneaking, sneering young Shylock, and not mind it near so much as I minded killing poor Sport."

"I don't know but we'd all better quit," said the younger man with a sigh. "This isn't a living country. Three years of drought would break any country up. It's not meant to live in. We had a fair crop this year, but it's so low; and freights, though they're lower, are pretty high. I don't see any way out of it. And I declare I think if we run this young fellow off we'll only get a bad name for the place."

"I don't care for bad names," said the other sullenly. "I got a wife and three children; I was foreclosed a year ago--so's you, so's a lot of the boys; we're at the end of our string now--legally. So what did we say?

We said we didn't care, was it legal or illegal; that laws was made to skin the poor man; and we elected a sheriff we could depend on not to enforce the laws, and we druv off the bloodsuckers they sent out here.

They say one feller was killed. I don't know. Guess that's one of Doc Russell's stories. The boys talk a lot about the cause of all this here trouble, and how we're going to have a revolution, and how referendum and initiendum will help, and how free silver will help--I guess, myself, a little more rain three years ago when corn was up would have helped more'n anything--and they talk how they're fighting the battles of the poor man, and the Eastern bloodsuckers has ruined us, and the Shylocks are devouring us, and they holler the roof off. I listen to 'em, but I don't believe 'em any more than you do."

"But," interrupted the other man eagerly, "I voted with the people's party--"

"Of course you did. We was going to be unanimous, and you da.s.s'n't stand out; but you didn't believe in it. Me neither. I ain't makin' any pretense, but I'll tell you it's jest here--I'm down to bed-rock. If I let my farm be took away and my stock, what's going to become of my wife and children? You can call it stealing, or resisting the law, or anything you please, but I'll kill that feller before I'll let him turn me out."

"Don't you think we can scare him off? Killing's a nasty word."

"My father was with John Brown; he helped kill a man. He never lost no sleep about it; I shan't neither. Look here, Mr. Robbins, I got lots of time to think, winters--lots. Remorse and all them fine feelings you read of, they don't belong to folks that are way down in the dirt. You got to have something to eat and wear, and not have your stomach sa.s.sing you, and you half froze most of the time; when your body is in sech a fix it's keeping your mind so full there ain't any show for any other feelings. And look a' here, there's worse"--his voice sank. "Why, you git to that pa.s.s you ain't able to feel for your own wife and babies.

When this morning Peggy kept hushing the baby, and she was fretting and moaning, and Peggy says to me, couldn't I git a little crackers in town; maybe the baby could eat them? I didn't feel nothing 'cept a numb aching. I kept saying, 'I'd 'a' felt that, once!' But I didn't feel it now. And, all of a sudden, it come to me 'twas because I was gitting _past_ feeling--like you do when you're froze, jest before you die. I read a story once, when I was a little shaver, that kept me awake nights many a time. It was about a Russian n.o.bleman out sleigh-riding with his children, three of 'em, on one of them steppes; and the wolves chased them. The father had a pistol, and he would shoot one of the wolves, and then the cowardly cusses would stop to tear the wounded critter to pieces and eat him, giving the folks in the sleigh a little more time; but every time the distance between the wolves and them when they stopped was a little smaller; but they were getting closer to the town, and they could see the lights. So the father, he kept on shooting, until the wolves were jumping up and grabbing at the sleigh, and the last time he shot a wolf he used up his last cartridge; then, when they come after him again, when the lights were nearer, and he knew if he could stop 'em once more he could escape, he--he throwed out one of the children; because it was this way: if he jumped out himself the children were so little they couldn't drive, and they'd be tipped up, and all three of them lost, so he throwed out the child he loved the best, and they got to town safely; but he went raving crazy. Well, I thought of him, and I said, if baby died there'd be the more chance for the others--"

"Look here, Wesley," his companion interrupted, "_quit it_! You're getting light-headed. Get rid of such fool thoughts as those or you'll be going off to the insane asylum; and mighty little use your family will have of you _there_!"