Читать книгу Song of Years (Bess Streeter Aldrich) (Literary Thoughts Edition) - Bess Streeter Aldrich - Страница 4

The Valley of the Red Cedar is in eastern Iowa—a long strip of fertile land sprawling out beside the river whose name it bears. The Red Cedar River itself is not much more than a sturdy creek until joined by the waters of the Shell Rock and West Fork where it suddenly becomes of importance, a thing of width and depth with the right to boast of having mothered many a sawmill, grist-mill, and factory before a wheel on its banks was turned by electricity.

Just below the junction of these waters—which come together in the shape of a wild turkey’s foot—two towns lie very close to each other. Originally the tiny settlements from which they have grown were named Sturgis Falls and Prairie Rapids, and although it has been nearly a century since they were so called, the old names shall serve them here. Those who live in the Valley—or have lived there—will recognize them at once. Others will not care what they are called.

They are modern little cities, the one leaning to industry, the other proud of its fine college. Like sisters they lie there together by the Red Cedar which saw their beginnings nearly a hundred years ago. And like sisters they quarrel and argue on occasion, but stand up for each other indignantly if any outsider ventures criticism.

Between the two towns on the north and east side of the curving river is a strip of fertile farming land which was preëmpted by some of the first settlers in the Valley.

If you follow a paved highway a few miles to the north and west of it, turning at a certain point onto a side road, you will come to a wide iron gate set in a fence surrounding farm fields. Open the gate and follow the grassy trail which hugs the wire fence, and you will arrive in time at a second gate far up the sloping hillside. If it be early summer and the green corn young, you can catch a glimpse of that which lies at the end of the trail. But if the corn is high you must come to the second gate before you can see the tall white tombstones, the close-clipped grass of the plots, and the graveled paths that lie between.

Here rest those first settlers.

It is a place of utter peace. There are times when no sound penetrates but the rustling of the corn or the dropping of a pine-cone. Sometimes, though, one will hear a combine at work near these sleeping men who cut their grain with a cradle, or, perchance, a plane zoom over the heads of these quiet ones who followed the grassy trail with oxen.

But though there is a deep peace about them now, almost can you hear their loud laughter that this is so. They would tell you that peace may be here at the end of the trail, but there was very little at the end of that other one which led westward from Dubuque.

Because they who lie here are all connected by blood or marriage or neighborhood ties, the life of one in its bare outlines is the life of all. But what of those other things—the loving, hating, feuding, fending—all of the emotions that were stilled when the last old settler was brought here? For the life of one can never be the life of all.

The tall old stones with their drooping angel-wings and clasped hands cover long-forgotten interests as intertwined in that period as these vines on the marble shafts—the ashes of emotions as burned out now as the old camp-fires beside the trail. You will note a monument to Sabina, to Emily, to Ceila, one to Melinda, to Phoebe Lou, to Jeanie. Almost at the end of the central path where it curves you will see a shorter heavy stone which reads:

SUZANNE

BELOVED WIFE

OF

But what else it says you cannot know because a thick growth of old clinging woodbine and a clump of sweet-william cover the secret of whose beloved she was.

Reading the inscription chiseled long ago, it seems of such small consequence whose name is hidden under the vines. But, oh, to Suzanne it mattered so very, very much.

This is the love story of the Suzanne who lies here by the side of the curving graveled path. And because the years of her youth were the years of the settling of the Cedar Valley, the telling must include, perforce, the story of these others who lie beside her at the end of the trail.

It begins, perhaps, on a June day in 1854 with a young man walking steadily to the west in the light-footed rhythmic way of the prairie-wolf. His body bent a scarcely perceptible degree into the warm west wind, arms hanging loosely free from any encumbering luggage, he swung on.

All day he had walked to the west in those same evenly paced strides. All that day through the rank prairie grass, and part of the two moonlit June nights before, and all of two previous sunlit days! For those three days and part of two nights he had swung along in that easy way, every sinewy muscle rippling in accord with every other one, the whole mechanism of his perfect body in tune. Six feet one and broad of shoulder he was, but he walked as light-footed as the antelope he had sighted near the Wapsipinicon. A perspiring Adonis in buckskin breeches and open-necked flannel shirt there on the unsettled Iowa prairie in 1854!

The lush green of the prairie grass, tall enough now to bend before the breeze, stretched as far as eye could see. The world to-day was a thing of green and blue, white and gold. Green of the prairie! Blue of the sky! Gold of the sunlight! White of the clouds that appeared to be floating only a little too high for mortal to touch—white sails above on the blue, their shadows gray sails below on the green!

There were other colors which the young man’s far-seeing eyes did not quite note—the blue of lupines, the pink of wild roses, the delicate mauve of wind-flowers, the magenta of wild sweet-williams, the harsh red of the prairie lilies. Even though he did not see these in detail, still he was sensing vaguely their presence in the colorful whole. Though his mind was on very practical things, he was feeling unconsciously the beauty of Nature’s tapestry rolled out there under his agile feet.

All morning the prairie flowers had turned to the east. Now, obedient to that unseen force which gave them life, they, too, like the young man, looked toward the west and the sinking sun. Only the compass-plants, those flat-leaved little flowers which guided the Indians, refused to follow the sun’s urge but stuck loyally to their north and south directions.

The trail was none too distinct in the distance. Far ahead it appeared always to end suddenly but never really came to that point, for the ruts made by wagon wheels were always visible for a little way. Only when one looked too far in the distance did the hope of finding the trail in an ocean of grass fade. Something about that phenomenon might apply to life, the lad was thinking—perhaps that was a good way to look at the future, not too far ahead, else one might grow discouraged. Ten years from now, for instance—would he have wealth and satisfaction with living as he planned? Or failure and discouragement as he decidedly did now anticipate?

Swiftly he decided that was no conundrum, for he could make the answer whatever he chose. It was as easy as—as this journey. Make every decision with the same care you used when fording streams and avoiding swamps, and life would be whatever you made it. No riddle to that. Just plain horsesense.

He shrugged his shoulders lightly at his brief moralizing and broke into song:

“The wee birds sing and the wild flowers spring

And in sunshine the waters are sleeping. . . .”

His voice rose so clear and full-throated it is a pity there was no one there to hear.

“But the broken heart it kens

Nae second spring again. . . .”

Even so, had there been some one to hear, that person must have laughed heartily at the incongruity of this blithe young traveler singing of broken hearts.

All afternoon to the west he walked as though he, too, like the prairie blossoms, the moon, and the stars, must follow some vagrant urge.

Sometimes he sang again, not too loudly to consume precious breath, but low disconnected snatches of melody.

Sometimes he thought of his long trip from the east: the ride on the steam-cars to Chicago, a big place of nearly thirty-five thousand now; the change to the train which took him to Warren, Illinois, the end of the railroad; then the stage ride to Dubuque where he ferried across the Mississippi. He recalled the site of that town of three thousand perched there on the river’s bluff, and the interview with the government officials.

Once or twice he reached in his pocket to make sure that the paper they had given him was still there—the list of unpatented and unsold lands out here in the far-off Valley of the Red Cedar. And for the hundredth time he touched the ridge at his waist-line which was the quilted belt containing money for a portion of that land.

Sometimes his thought dwelt on the folks at home, his father, mother, brother, and sister he had left behind two weeks before in the New England town. Queer they had made so much howdydo about his leaving, mother and sister crying over him, even his father, formerly sympathetic with the plan, growing regretful at the last that he had consented to the venture out beyond the Mississippi. It had seemed the end of the world to them all—almost so to himself. And yet here he was at the end of the world.

For himself he held no regrets. For the first time in his life he felt entirely free, completely his own boss. For the first time he would own property—rich land out here in this new raw state. A great many people thought it would never be settled. It was true there were no railroads, no big towns, only a few settlements clinging to rivers.

“Even if you do raise something,” his mother had said in her argument against his coming, “how can you ever expect to sell it? Who is there to sell it to? You can’t ship it. . . .”

Once his mind dwelt on another memory—a girl. She had come down the village street; meeting him, stopping to speak about his leaving, she had suddenly broken down, grown tearful and foolish. He was ashamed for her. Nice girls didn’t throw themselves at you like that. He had no hankering for a sweetheart, would have none for many years. When he did . . . if he ever did . . . His mind formed a very indistinct picture of some beautiful unknown creature in a nebulous mist of white, a sort of blurred outline of a wingless angel floating in clouds. Anyway, if the time ever came he would know her when he saw her—of that part only was he certain!

Then quickly he tossed this sketchy and imaginative picture aside as lightly as crumpled paper. No time to think about girls out here. He desired nothing so much as land and crops and stock, freedom to come and go as he wished, to get rich and perhaps parade his success a bit back home.

The trail still stretched ahead over the prairie, the bent and broken stems of wiry grasses, crushed flowers and indistinct wagon ruts pointing the way to the two little settlements there so close together in the Valley of the Red Cedar.

Ever since he had come from the log tavern back there at a point called Independence, the trail had presented no cabin or sign of humans. Only the knowledge that two settlements, Prairie Rapids and Sturgis Falls, lay at the end of the wagon ruts, six miles apart, gave him the assurance that the journey would end in anything but that great green sea. On the crude map in his pocket were penciled the two settlements, and the locations and numbers of the few patented sections surrounding them. All besides these were government owned and from these he was to choose that which would be his. It must be near one of the settlements, it must have water and timber.

He broke into singing again, low, deep-throated, a song with no meaning but its sheer exuberance of feeling.

And now there were black dots in the distance at the left, a half dozen spotted about on the open prairie and another straggling group on the opposite bank of the river that came down from the northwest. The Red Cedar! Sparkling in the afternoon sunlight, with blue joint grass to the water’s edge, and timber in the distance. Prairie Rapids! The larger settlement, Sturgis Falls, would be six miles beyond.

He stopped now to reconnoiter and plan. To-night he would stay in the log house over there in Prairie Rapids which he had been told passed for a tavern, or at one of the three in Sturgis Falls beyond. Just now he would walk on the six miles to the other settlement, keeping his eyes open and appraising the lands that lay at his right between the two.

As he walked he saw that the timber along the river’s bank to his left became heavier but open prairie still lay to the north.

He had gone perhaps three miles when he came to another stream, a mere rippling creek with no great depth. But something in the clear little stream, a song of its own in the ripples, the whiteness of its sandy banks, the clean gravel along its waters, gave him pause and after he had slaked his thirst, guzzling like any other prairie animal, nose and mouth in the cool water, he sat down on the bank to ponder a bit.

From his pocket he drew the penciled plan given him in Dubuque by the government official. Here it was. This land, this part of the trail where he now sat, was taken. In fact a few log cabins along the trail were visible from this point. Farther to the northwest a section away, the plan showed unpatented acres: a scribbled notation across the sections said, “rich land, water, timber, sand, gravel.”

Abruptly he turned off the trail and followed the creek bed to the northwest. Hickory and hazelnut scrub lined the banks so that he must keep close to the creek bed for the trail, or stay outside of the green border. Squirrels scolded about this intrusion. Wild ducks flew up from the water with a whir of beating wings. A startled heron took to the sky like a graceful blue-gray boat sailing into limpid gray-blue waters.

This, too, was preëmpted land; only that which lay still farther was unentered. He swung along the creek bed for a few rods, estimated with practised eye that he had come a mile from the trail, consulted the paper again.

This now . . . about here . . . ended the preëmpted claims. That which extended beyond was all government land. The lush grass bent before the wind. A spring bubbled from the sand of the creek bed. The thin wooded border of the winding creek merged into a small grove of maples, elm, oak, and ash.

The young man drew a quick excited breath. Wood . . . creek . . . gravel . . . sand . . . flowing spring . . . rich loam . . . only a mile to the north of the beaten track, about five from Prairie Rapids . . . only about three, probably, from Sturgis Falls. This was it. For this he had come the long miles by steam-cars, stage, and foot.

“God!” he said aloud. Some of it was mere careless ejaculation. But some of it was genuine thanks to the addressee.

All this had been surveyed. Two years before a group of surveyors had completed their work in this part of the new state, so the official there in Dubuque had told him. Somewhere there in the grass, then, covered by an inverted piece of prairie sod lay the corner stake of the section. His farm!

Long he stood gazing on the picture of the green grass and blue sky, running creek water and white sandy bank, and the trees beyond. It was possible that no man but the surveyors had stood in this spot before, for it was north of the beaten trail. No one had done so at least with proprietary eye, for the surveyors had but done their work and gone on.

“This is it.” He spoke aloud as though the saying so before these grasses gave the choice definiteness and solemnity. “Yes, this is it.”

His voice trembled a bit with the emotion of the moment. To have come all this distance to claim that which was his own, not knowing just where it would lie or what contours it would have. And now at last to see it before him with satisfying clarity.

It was something like the sudden meeting with a person of whom you had long heard but whose face you had never seen. It was almost like keeping a tryst with . . . Why, it came pretty near to being like the first meeting with that girl he’d sometimes imagined.

He took off his cap and the sun brought out the glints in his yellow hair.

“Wayne Lockwood,” he grinned widely, “do you take this land to be your lawfully wedded own, to have and to hold in sickness and in health?”

Jocularly he made his answer in a feminine voice: “I do.”

“Section . . .” He consulted his papers, naming aloud the numbered notations there. “Do you take Wayne Lockwood to be your lawfully wedded . . .?”

“Caw, caw, caw!” The grackles wheeled and dipped in noisy inquisitiveness. All the solemnity was gone. Wayne Lockwood threw back his head and laughed at Nature’s raucous answer to the impromptu wedding.

“Well, anyway,” he said boyishly, “I pronounce you mine . . .”

The gay words died in the utterance for not a half-dozen rods away to the east, a top-buggy with glistening body, pulled by a sleek pair of prancing bag horses was coming directly toward him through the prairie grass.

He stood there and stared. It was rather unbelievable. All afternoon he had seen no living thing on the beaten trail. And now to the north of the trail, off that one path between Dubuque and the twin settlements of Prairie Rapids and Sturgis Falls, came a buggy containing two men.

When they drew close, the bays stepping in perfect unison as though on some city boulevard, Wayne saw that the men were well dressed, that one was older than the other, and that they were more surprised to see him, if such a thing were possible, than he was to see them.

The team stopped with a few prancing didoes and the driver leaned forward toward Wayne as though expecting him to come to the buggy. It was characteristic of Wayne Lockwood, perhaps, that, tall and straight under the maple at the creek’s edge, he should stand unmoving.

Apparently seeing that Wayne was not making any move to come to them, the younger of the two men got out. He was a personable young fellow not much older than Wayne himself, dark, with dapper mustache, and he was now saying: “How do you do?”

“ ’Do, sir.”

“Little off the trail, aren’t you?” He spoke affably.

“Quite a peace.”

“Looking for land?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good land up this way. We’ve located several fine sections. You will probably find something you like.”

“Yes . . . I’ve found it.”

The young man was not quite so cordial now. “Not this section?”

“This quarter-section.”

“Oh, no . . . this one is mine . . . this half.”

Wayne looked down at the paper still in his hand, traced the penciled line of the creek to the numbered section. “I made this out from a government map . . . and it’s not filed on yet, according to this,” he said quietly.

“No.” The young chap admitted it readily enough. “We’re driving back to Dubuque, though, to-morrow to attend to that matter.”

He smiled with such oily condescension that Wayne took an immediate dislike to him. And when he asked: “Did you walk out from Dubuque?” it seemed to take on the tone of a superior addressing an inferior.

“Yes.”

“I thought I didn’t see any conveyance about.”

That was perilously close to a sneering comment. When Wayne remained silent, the stranger volunteered affably enough: “Well . . . we’ll go on. We’re staying at a tavern in Sturgis Falls but will be driving back to Dubuque to-morrow.”

Not particularly versed in the nuances of the human voice, still Wayne thought he detected the semblance of a threat in the statement.

The stranger could well afford to be pleasant, though, with those prancing bays stamping the prairie grass, ready to take him back to the land-office one hundred miles away. So he was saying cheerfully: “Better luck in your next choice.”

He had walked back to the carriage now where his silent companion awaited him. One foot on the buggy step, he turned. His eyes narrowed and his voice held distinct arrogance and insult. “And don’t you try anything foolish around here to make trouble.”

They were gone, driving away to the southwest, presumably to join the trail again and go on to Sturgis Falls for the night.

Wayne walked over and threw himself down on the creek’s bank. He was disappointed and chagrined. To be sure there were countless other unclaimed sections. Almost was there all of Iowa from which to choose. It was foolish to be so upset because he could not have the one he had picked so enthusiastically. He was no child to be angry because he could not have his way. But this particular section had everything for which he could wish. Over in his mind he called the roll of those characteristics: rich loam . . . water . . . white sand . . . gravel . . . timber . . . only a few miles from the twin settlements of Prairie Rapids and Sturgis Falls.

If that smart Aleck had really owned it now, he would have walked on with no thought of covetousness. But that was the hardest thing to swallow in the whole business, that, after all, it was not yet the other fellow’s any more than his. Only by virtue of owning that swift team would the stranger be able to claim it.

And now he could see his folly in failing to purchase his own team at the sale there in Dubuque. Because he wanted to be sure of this venture, satisfy himself first that the lands were good, worth their dollar and a quarter an acre, he had held off from buying horses, using his own two good legs for the journey.

Yes, his legs were good but scarcely could be expected to compete with those prancing bays. The dapper stranger had said they were going to stay all night at a Sturgis Falls tavern and then start back to Dubuque to file on this.

“Gosh all hemlock!” He sat up suddenly as a wild idea took possession of his mind. “If only . . .”

He leaped to his feet and stood looking to the east where even now the late afternoon shadows were beginning to cluster. Pools of pale yellow light lay on the prairie like gold breastpins on a woman’s green dress. Dubuque! One hundred miles! It might as well have been half a world away. He thought of the three long days and half-nights on the trail, sleeping a few hours in a log house at Delhi, another time at the log tavern in Independence.

But added to the certainty that the men were going to Sturgis Falls for the night were a few possibilities. It might be late in the morning when they would get started. There was just a chance he himself might be overtaken by some one with whom he could ride part of the way.

He looked down at his strong young limbs incased in calfskin boots as though there he might find the answer to his questioning. If only they were the seven-league boots of his childhood tales.

Suddenly he sat down again on the creek’s bank, unloosed the straps, removed the boots and stockings, and bathed his feet in the cool water. Drying them on the heavy socks, he took a fresh pair from a coat pocket, put on these and his boots. Then he rinsed out the first pair and hung them on a scrub oak.

“To hold my property down for me,” he grinned.

Now he let his glance once more sweep the coveted section, seeing it under the slanting rays of the sinking sun. Already shadows were crowding into the thick undergrowth of hickory, hazelnut, and burr oak there on the creek’s bank.

The land, slightly higher than that nearer the trail, rolled into faintly discernible swales like solidified waves of a green sea.

A deep longing for the real ownership of that which had already taken on familiar lines and an obstinacy within him, as well as an intuitive dislike of the young stranger’s condescending tones—all of these feelings, which could not take the decision calmly, spurred him on.

Suddenly he turned and in that light Indian-footed way of his strode back toward the east.