Читать книгу The Settler - Whitaker Herman - Страница 17

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After putting forth a feeble straggle on the morning of the funeral, the pale winter sun retired for good as the north wind began to herd the drift over vast white steppes. Though fire had been kept up all night in Merrill's cabin by Mrs. Flynn, who had come in to perform the last offices, a pail of water had frozen solid close to the stove. After a quarter of an hour in the oven, a loaf of bread yet showed frost crystals in its centre at breakfast; a drop of coffee congealed as it fell in the saucer.

It was, indeed, the hardest of weather. By noon a half-inch of ice levelled the window-panes with the sash; pouring through the key-hole a spume of fine drift laid a white finger across the floor. Outside, the spirit thermometer registered forty-five below. The very air was frozen, blanketing the snow with lurid frost clouds. Yet, though a pair of iridescent "sun-dogs" gave storm warnings, a score of Canadian settlers, men and women, assembled for the service in the cabin. Severe, silent, they sat around on boards and boxes, eying Mrs. Leslie and other English neighbors with great disfavor, inwardly critical of the funeral arrangements. For ceremony and service had been stripped of the lugubrious attributes which gave mournful satisfaction to the primitive mind. Helen herself, in her quiet grief, was a disappointment; and she wore no black or other grievous emblem. Worse! The casket-lid was screwed down, and, filched of their prerogative of "viewing the corpse," they turned gloomy faces to the theological student who had come out from Lone Tree.

Here was an additional disappointment. Afterwards, in the stable, it was held that he had not improved the occasion. Of Morrill, who had been so lax in his attendance at occasional preachings as to justify a suspicion of atheism, he could have made an edifying text, thrilling his hearers with doubts as to whether the man was altogether fallen short of grace. But there was none of this. Just a word on the brother's sunny nature and brave fight against wasting sickness, and he was passed without doubt of title to mansions in the skies.

"I don't call that no sermon," Hines growled, as he thrust a frosty bit into his pony's mouth. "Missed all the good points, he did."

"Never heerd the like," said Shinn, his neighbor, nearest in disposition as well as location. "Not a bit of crape for the pall-bearers. I know a person that ain't going to be missed much."

"I've heerd," another man said, "as he doubted the Scriptures. If that is so—Is it true as the Roman priest was with him at the last?"

Hines despondently nodded. "We'll hope for the best," he said, with an accent that murdered the hope.

Shinn, however, who never could compass the art of suggestion, gave plainer terms to his thought. "There ain't a doubt in my mind. It's a warning to turn from the paths he trod."

"You needn't be scairt." From the gloom of the far corner, where he was harnessing the team that was to draw the burial sleigh, Bender's voice issued. "You needn't be scairt. There ain't a damn one of you travelling his trail."

Ensued a silence, then Hines snarled, "No, an' I ain't agoing to follow him on this. If you fellows want to tag after priests' leavings, you kin. I'm pulling my freight for home."

"You're what?"

Hines quailed as Bender's huge body and blue-scarred face materialized from the gloom. "I said as 'twas too cold to go to the grave."

"You did, eh? Well, you're going. Not that your presence is necessary, but just because you ain't to be allowed to show disrespect to a better man than yourself. Tie up that hoss. You're agoing to ride with me. An' if there's any other man as thinks his team ain't fit to buck the drifts"—his fierce eyes searched for opposition—"he'll find room in my sleigh."

So with Hines—albeit much against his will—heading the procession, a long line of sleighs sped through the mirk drift to the lonely acre which had been set apart for the long sleep. A few posts and a single wire marked it off from white wastes, and through these the drift flew with sibilant hiss, piling against the mounded grave which Flynn and Carter had thawed out and dug, inch by inch, with many fires, these last two days. And there was small ceremony. King Frost is no respecter of persons, freezes alike the quick and the dead. Removing his cap to offer a short prayer, the student's ears turned deathly white; while he rubbed them with snow, the mourners spelled one another with the shovels, working furiously in vain efforts to warm chilled blood. Roughly filled, the grave was left to be smoothed in warmer season; the living fled, leaving the dead with the drift, the frost, the wind, stern ministers of the illimitable.

No woman had dared the weather. Lying in the bottom of a sled, under hides and blankets, with hot stones at hands and feet, Helen had gone home with Mrs. Leslie. Coming back from the grave she formed the subject of conversation between Flynn and Carter, who rode together.

To Flynn's inquiry Carter replied that, as far as he was aware, she had no private means. Her father, a physician in good practice in a New England town, had lived up to every cent of his income, and the insurance he carried had been mortgaged to start the brother out West.

"Not having any special training," Carter finished, "she had to choose between a place in a store or keeping house for him."

"It's no snap in them sthores," Flynn sighed. "Shmall pay an' big temptations, they're telling me." Then, giving Carter the tail of his eye, he added, "But there'll be nothing else for it—now?"

"Oh, I don't know," Carter mused. "Flynn, are you and the other married folks around here going to let your families grow up in ignorance? Ain't it pretty nigh time you was forming a school district?"

In the slit between his cap and scarf the Irishman's eyes twinkled like blue jewels. Affecting ignorance, however, he answered, "An' phwere would we be after getting a teacher in this frozen country?"

"Miss Morrill."

Flynn subdued his laugh out of respect to the occasion. "Jest what's in me own mind. An' there'll be no lack av children for the same school, me boy, when you—There, don't be looking mad! 'Tis after the order of nature; an' I'm not blaming ye, she's sweet as she's pretty. Putting you an' me out av the question, I'd do it for her. An' it shouldn't be so hard—if we can corral the bachelors. But lave thim to me."

And Flynn went about it with all the political sagacity inherent in his race. "We'll not be spreading the news much," he told the married men to whom he broached the subject. "Not a word till we get 'em in meeting, or they'll organize an' vote us down."

Accordingly the summons to gather in public meeting was issued without statement of purpose, a mystery that brought out every settler for twenty miles around. An hour before time, some fifty men, rough-looking fellows in furs, arctic socks, moose-skins, and moccasins, crowded into the post-office, which, as most centrally located, was chosen for the meeting.

The expected opposition developed as soon as the postmaster, who presided, mentioned "eddycation."

"More taxation!" a bachelor roared. "You're to marry the girls an' we're to eddycate the kids!"

"Right you are, Pete!" others chorused.

But Flynn was ready. "Is that you, Pete Ross?" He transfixed the speaker with his blue twinkle. "An' yerself coorting the Brown girl so desprit that she don't get time to comb her hair anny more?

"An' you, Bill MacCloud," he went on, as Peter, growling that he "wasn't married yet," carried his blushing face behind the stove, "you that's galloping your ponies so hard after the Baker girl. Twins it was, twice running, in her mother's family, an' well ye know it. A public school ain't good enough for you, Bill? Which is to be—a governess, or a young ladies' siminery?"

So, one after another, Flynn smote the bachelors. Had a man so much as winked at a girl, it made a text for a sermon that was witty as risque.

Yet he was so good-tempered about it that by the time he had finished grilling the last victim the first-cooked were joining their laughter to that of the married men.

Then Flynn turned his eloquence upon a common evil. Everywhere the best of the land had passed into the hands of non-resident speculators, who hindered settlement and development by holding for high prices. "Was it a question of increased taxation?" Flynn asked. Then let the non-residents pay. Under the law they could expend eight hundred dollars on a building. Well, they would distribute the contracts among themselves—one man cut logs, another hew them, a third draw them, and so on! Every man should have a contract, an' who the divil would care if taxes were raised on the speculators.

It was his closing argument, however, that finished the bachelors. "Now me an' Jimmy have spotted a teacher, a right smart young woman—"

A howl of applause cut him short—the bachelors would call it settled!

Thus it came to pass that as, a week or so after the funeral, Carter was driving Helen from Leslie's back to her cabin, a deputation consisting of Mr. Flynn and Mr. Glaves was heading in the same direction.

All that week the cabin had stood, fireless, a mournful blot on the snowscape, but though she was only to be there for the hour required to pack her belongings, Carter had swept out the drift that morning and put on the fires. So the place was cosey and warm. Yet, with all its cheer, on entering, she relapsed into the first passionate grief. For nothing is so vividly alive as the things of a dead person, and everywhere her glance fell on objects her brother had used. Divining the cause, Carter left her to have her cry out on pretence of stable chores, and when he returned she was busily packing.

So while she worked he talked, explaining her affairs as related to himself through his partnership with Morrill. Their cattle were worth so much, but as it would require a summer's grazing to fit them for market, he would advance the money on her share. He did not mention the fact that he would have to borrow it himself at usurer's interest. As to the homestead: Land was unsalable since the bottom fell out of the boom, but in any case it was advisable to hold for the values that would accrue with the coming of the railroad. He would rent it, on settler's terms, paying roadwork and taxes for use of the broken land.

As, kindly thoughtful for her interests, he ran on, she rose from her packing, grasped his hand impulsively, squeezed his arm to her bosom.

"You have been so good!" The sunsets in her cheeks, the softness of her glance, her touch, almost upset his reason. But he resisted a mad impulse.

"Nonsense!" he said, when he could trust himself to speak. "I'm going to make money off you."

"Really?" she asked, smiling.

"Really," he smiled back.

"I—wish you could," she sighed. "But I am afraid you are saying that to please me. Well, you know best. Do as you please."

Had he done as he pleased, the question of their mutual interests would have been simply solved. But the time was not ripe. He was too shrewd to mistake gratitude for love.

"Now," he said, resolutely thrusting away temptation, "if it's any of my darn business—what are your plans?"

"My plans?" Leaning on the table beside him, she gazed dreamily upon the frosted panes. The question forced in upon her the imminence of impending change and brought a feeling of strong revulsion. The ties that death forges are stronger than those of life. It was inexpressibly painful, just then, to think of leaving the land which held her recent dead.

"My plans!" she mused, knitting her brows. "I haven't any—yet. Of course I have relatives, back East. But as father did not like them, I hardly know more than their names. I shall have to do something, but Mrs. Leslie is so good. She won't hear of me leaving until spring. I have heaps of time to plan."

But having bucked trail all morning, the solution of her immediate future just then heralded its arrival by the groan of frosty runners.

"Me an' Jimmy," Mr. Flynn explained, after he had introduced his co-trustee, "is a depytation. Being as it's the only crop the frost won't nip, Silver Creek is going to raise a few legislators. We want the young lady to teach our school."

"But," Helen objected, when she had assimilated the startling news, "I never taught school."

"You'll nivir begin younger," Flynn comforted; to which he added, "An' it's the foinest training agin the time ye'll have a few av your own."

Mr. Glaves solemnly contemplated the blushing candidate. "You kin sum, ma'am—an' spell?"

"Oh yes," she assured him. "I graduated from high-school."

"You don't say!" Both trustees regarded her with intense admiration, and Glaves said, "We didn't expect to get that much for our money, so we'll jest have you go a bit easy at first, lest there'll be some sprained intellec's among the kiddies."