Читать книгу Song of Years (Bess Streeter Aldrich) (Literary Thoughts Edition) - Bess Streeter Aldrich - Страница 10

The cabin was finished, thanks to the practical neighborliness of the settlers, and for the first full day this eighth of July, 1854, young Wayne Lockwood was alone on his place. With youthful energy he put in every moment of his time. So much was there to be done that he could scarcely hold himself steadily at one task for wanting to break off and start another. There was wood enough for countless fires from the trimming of the house logs so that was one piece of work which need not take his time. But a hundred other things should be done, one almost as important as the next. Paramount among them was to be the breaking of the land. Then, too, he must prepare shelter for the sheep he was going to bring in soon. This one day, however, he devoted to getting his cabin livable.

For his bed he set up a single maple-tree trunk, slender and strong, fastened straight branches from this supporting post to the cabin wall, and laced an intricate crisscrossing of rope from one side to the other. Then he brought from the wagon the bedtick his mother had made for him. Something in the blue and white cloth, the familiarity of the striped pattern, and the neatness of its small stitches, gave him a momentary twinge of homesickness so that he must work the harder to lose the memory of the look on his mother’s face as she said good-by to him. He must write to her. This very night after it was too dark to work longer.

With his scythe he mowed some prairie grass, letting it lie in the sun to dry so that he might fill the bedtick, thinking that when he harvested his first oats he would refill it with good oat straw.

All day he worked at his homely tasks, eagerly, almost gaily, because this was his own land and his own house. On the first rainy day he would start making chairs, a table, and cupboard. But for the time being, sawed-off logs would constitute his furniture. At night-time he brought water from the spring, washed the mark of the day’s labor from his strong young body, and ate his supper of corn-meal mush and smoked side meat. Then near the light of a tallow dip that flickered in the night breeze which came through a half-opened window he started the letter.

My dear Mother:

It seems very lonely here to-night and so I shall use this occasion to take my pen in hand and tell you all that I have so far accomplished . . .

He broke off, head up, to listen. From across the prairie he could hear the sound of thudding hoofs, wagon wheels, tinkling laughter, so that his heart bounded in swift response to the fact that humans were coming near.

He was standing in the doorway when they drove up singing at the top of girlish voices: “The Martins are coming, oh, ho, oh, ho!”

Appropriating the song of the Campbell clan they had substituted the words of their own:

“The great Jeremiah, he goes before.

He makes his singing loudly roar

Wi’ sound of trumpet, pipe, and drum.

The Martins are coming, oh, ho! oh, ho!

“The Martins are bringing their supper so,

Their loyal faith and truth to show

Wi’ bonnets a’ rattlin’ in the wind

The Martins are coming, oh, ho! oh, ho!”

They broke into hilarious laughter on the last shouted note, so that Wayne was laughing excitedly with them, thinking that to be young on the Iowa prairie in this year of 1854 made life zestful.

Yes, the Martins were coming, were already here in full force. On the seat of the lumber wagon sat Henry driving, with one of the girls beside him. That would be—Wayne peered into the darkening prairie twilight—Phoebe Lou? No, Melinda.

Suddenly he remembered, and smiled at recalling that it was Melinda who always wanted to gad about, whom the others had accused of sitting in the wagon when any of the men folks were going away. Back of the spring seat was a makeshift one of a wide board with three girls on it, and still farther back were two girls in chairs, one swaying back and forth energetically in a rocker. All had light shawls around their shoulders and bonnets tied under their chins. Six girls. One then was missing, but which one?

And then Phineas and Suzanne rode up on horses, Suzanne’s bonnet back on her shoulders, her hair escaping from its net.

Behind the cavalcade came Jeremiah and Sarah in the buckboard, Sarah in a black dress, black shawl, and black bonnet with Phineas’ fiddle in its gray calico bag across her lap. She was forty-eight years old and had worn black outside her home for fifteen years. There had been room in the wagon for the two but it was wiser to bring all the horses. The Indians were not dangerous, no one was afraid of them; the Musquakies, Pottawatomies and Winnebagoes, the tribes which came along the river here or camped up at Turkey Foot Forks were peaceful. Only the Sioux farther up in the northern counties were the bad ones. But there were always some who would annoy the settlers with their peeking, prying, and stealing. A horse or two left at home could be the biggest sort of temptation, but, as Jeremiah said, “By granny, not even an Injun would try to steal a dumb ox.”

As Wayne stood in the doorway, a little excited over his first company and no longer lonely, he could hear other wagons trekking across the prairie. The Burrills proved to be in one and the Horace Akin and Wallace Akin families in others, the Mel Mansons and Mrs. Manson’s young brother, Ed Armitage, in another. Wayne was to find out that all of these people like himself were of sturdy old American stock, from New England, York State, or Pennsylvania. A few years later the Danish and German people were to come, thrifty folk who helped to make the Valley a thriving center of agriculture and industry, but for the most part these first comers were of such as the Martins whose families had been in this country long before the Revolution.

This was the first Wayne had seen of the women folks of the river road, other than the Martins. He saw now that the short dumpy Mrs. Wallace Akin bore a resemblance to the pictures of Victoria, the thirty-five-year-old queen, with her round face and thick-lidded eyes. She had three children, and Mrs. Horace Akin, younger and delicate-looking, had a small lisping boy and a baby. Mrs. Burrill was tall, long-boned, with a slim red neck and prominent Adam’s apple, so that she gave the appearance of a turkey gobbler lacking only the wattles. Her daughter, Evangeline, appeared to be cut from the same pattern, holding her small head high on its slender neck. If dressed in trousers both of their spare figures would have passed for men’s. Mrs. Manson, Ed Armitage’s sister, was the youngest of the wives, a bride of a few months, with round black button eyes and a little buttonhole mouth.

All these crowded now into the new cabin with their baskets containing the party refreshments and donations toward Wayne’s housekeeping. The Martins had brought some butter and lard and a stone crock of fresh strawberry jam. The two families of Akins had two live hens and a rooster for him, and a sack of new potatoes. The Mansons had only some corn-meal which they offered with apologies but which Wayne sensed had been a generous gift. The Burrills had brought freshly made hard soap of a pale yellow shade. Phoebe Lou whispered to Emily that Mrs. Burrill’s soap was so much better than her cooking that she’d rather eat it any day than her cakes and pies, which remark passed on down through the group of girls, so that they were all suppressing runaway laughter as they put their bonnets on Wayne’s bed.

The little cabin was filled with them—twenty-six adults and children besides the Akin baby at the back side of the bed with a rolled quilt in front to keep him from sliding off, getting mixed with the head-gear, or being unceremoniously sat upon. Tom Bostwick, and two other young men, Sam Phillips and George Wormsby, all arriving on horseback at various times, added to the crowd packed into the sixteen by twenty-four space.

“You will be lonely and friendless out there,” Wayne’s mother had argued.

The eating came first, Wayne being the only one who had partaken of supper, but now that there were others here and better things to eat, his appetite appeared to be as good as that of the famished company.

They brought in wagon seats and chairs, piecing out with sawed-off logs, while the children sat on the floor.

After supper there were games, “King William was King James’s son,” “Clap Hands,” and “Miller Boy.” Then there were some dances, with Jeremiah at the jews’-harp, Phineas doing the heavy work with the fiddle on “Old Dan Tucker” and Horace Akin calling, “Salute your pardners . . . join hands and circle to the left . . . first lady swing out and second lady in . . . then join hands and circle ag’in . . .” And when there was the short lull of a quiet moment. Phoebe Lou, grinning mischievously, said, “I know . . . let’s play the game ‘I saw him first’ and Suzanne can be ‘It.’ ” Which set the Martin girls off into gales of laughter, so that Suzanne’s face turned crimson, Sarah said to stop their foolishness, and Jeremiah threatened to thump the next one who plagued Suzanne.

Emily, to tide over Suzanne’s discomfiture and the intermittent laughter at it, suggested settling down to a good sing, and began it herself by starting off a tuneless version of “Bonnie Charlie’s now awa’ ” pitched impossibly high, so that it ended in laughter and a fresh start with a more reasonable attack.

“Bonnie Charlie’s now awa’

Safely o’er the friendly main . . .”

Their voices rose lustily, Sabina’s true and strong, Suzanne’s sweet and clear, Tom Bostwick’s thin and high, Wayne’s rolling out with resonant melody, Emily’s off-key, Jeanie’s a little indifferent because she was turning her brown eyes first toward Sam Phillips and then George Wormsby, getting a good deal of fun out of their surreptitious glaring at each other.

“Mony a heart will break in twa . . .”

The candles on the shelf above the fireplace flamed up wildly in the wind, for in the deep interest of the singing, no one had heard the horseman coming or noticed the first creaking of the door which was flung open so suddenly as to knock Celia against the wall.

A man stood on the threshold, wild-eyed, breathing hoarsely. He flung it at them like a ball of burning pitch. “The Indians are coming!”

The song broke off as suddenly and definitely as a brittle plum branch snapping in the wind. Every one stared at the messenger.

It was not believable that such an evil thing could tear its way into the midst of all this friendliness. No one moved for part of a split second. The news hung there in stillness like the silence of the prairie after a crashing report of thunder has ceased.

It was Jeremiah who spoke and the steadiness of his voice brought back their reassurance. “Aw, hell,” he said scornfully, “we’ve heard that yarn before.”

“It’s true this time.” The messenger’s voice rose in a frightened crescendo. “A man run his horse all the way down from the Big Woods. They’re on the rampage above there . . . startin’ with Clear Lake . . . down through Clarksville . . . they killed all the Clear Lake settlers . . . They’re pretty near to Janesville . . . hundreds of ’em . . . war-paint on . . . killin’ and burnin’ everything as they come. All the whites are comin’ down the Cedar.”

He was gone on into the night to spread the alarm. They could hear the thud of his horse’s hoofs on the prairie to the east.

Wayne felt his heart beating wildly in that moment of awed silence which followed, realized he was standing motionless and numb when he should have been doing something. Queerly the thought went through him that the folks at home had warned him against this very danger. “A peaceful prairie country,” he had called it. “I was wrong and they were right,” he thought, staring at the assemblage, only a moment before noisy with song and laughter. There was no song now and no laughter. Bonnie Charlie was never to get across the friendly main.

Not a half minute had gone by, but it was like an hour with that silence, concentrated, frozen, in which they were all mummified figures dug from some ancient tomb.

The younger Mrs. Akin had snatched up her baby, pressing it tightly to her breast. The men were standing frowning, incredulous-looking, the women and girls white-faced, all merriment gone and joking forgot. The candles back of the gray-blue of Suzanne’s eyes had been snuffed out, leaving nothing but darkness.

For just that moment the silence and fear were merged and timeless as though some gigantic force held them all in its relentless grasp.

And then Sarah Martin, reaching for her black bonnet, broke the spell. “Let’s get on home,” she said dryly. “No old Injun is goin’ to stick his dirty thumb into my fresh strawberry jam.”