AFTER THE STORM: A STORY OF THE PRAIRIE.
WHEN the men drove up for supper, they found the table unset, the fire out, and the woman tossing on the bed.
There were six of the men, besides Tennant, the Englishman, who, "by the bitter road the younger son must tread," had come to Nebraska and the sandhill country, ranching, and who was put over the rest of the men because he did not get drunk as often as they did.
Sharpneck, the cattleman, was in town. So was his daughter, whose hungry cats darted about the disorderly room, crying to be fed.
The men were astonished at the condition of affairs. The woman had never failed them before in all the months that she had cooked, and made beds, and washed and scrubbed for them. They swore hungry oaths, for the autumn air gets up a sharp appetite when a man is in saddle all day.
"Poor old prairie dog," said Fitzgerald, who was rather soft-hearted, "she's clean petered out!"
Tennant had been feeling her head.
"Get in your saddles again," he said, "and ride down to Smithers' for something to eat. You, Fitzgerald, go on to town and get the doctor. Get Sharpneck, too -- if you can. And you might look up Kitty."
Kitty was the daughter who owned the cats. These animals appeared to be voracious. Their eyes shone with evil phosphorescence as Tennant sent the men off and closed the door. He lit a fire in the stove, and then tried to make the woman more comfortable. Her toil-stained clothes were twisted about her; her wisps of hair straggled about her face.
"Poor old prairie dog!" he murmured, repeating Fitzgerald's words. "Not one of us noticed at noon that she was not as usual -- and why should we? What do we care?"
He had his own reasons for being out of love with his kind, and with himself, and he smiled sardonically, as, in making her more comfortable on the bed, he noticed the wretched couch, the poor garments smelling of smoke, the uncared-for body.
"She has borne two sons and a daughter," he went on, "and known the brutal boot of that drunken Dutchman, and, after all, she lies here alone, dies here alone, perhaps -- and it doesn't make any difference."
The sick woman was a stranger to him. To be sure, he had known her for three months. He had eaten at her table three times a day. Her little brown parchment-like face looked familiar to him from the first, not because he had seen it before, but because some things have, for certain persons, an indefinable familiarity. Besides doing the housework, she milked three cows, fed the pigs and chickens, and made the butter. Tennant had often seen her working far into the night. When he was on the night shift with the cattle, he had seen her moving about noiselessly, while the others slept.
As for Sharpneck, the proprietor of the land, the cattle, and her, he was a
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big fellow from Pennsylvania, who got drunk on vile compounds. Tennant never heard him address her except to give an order, and he usually gave it with an oath. Once Tennant had brought her some bell-like yellow flowers that he picked among the tall grasses. She nodded her thanks hurriedly, -- she was cooking cakes for the men, -- and put the blossoms in a glass. Her husband got up and tossed the flowers out of the window. Tennant did not find it worth his while even to be angry. After that, however, he thought it the part of kindness to leave her alone.
He lit his pipe now, and sat down near her. The hours passed, and the men did not return. Tennant guessed, with a good deal of accuracy, that in the allurements of a rousing game of poker they had forgotten him and his charge. It was not surprising; on the contrary, it seemed perfectly natural. Tennant decided to bend his energies to the getting up of a meal for himself. He found some bacon, which he fried, and some cold prune sauce, and plenty of bread. Then he made tea, and persuaded the sick woman to take a little of it by giving it to her a teaspoonful at a time. He placated the cats, too, but they would not sleep. He drove them all from the house, but they ran in again through holes they had scratched in the structure, near the floor -- for the shack was built of sod. Their eyes, red and green, seemed to light the whole place with a baleful radiance. Once, in anger, Tennant hurled a glowing brand at them, but furious, they rushed up the sides of the room, hissing and spitting, and making themselves much more hideous than before.
Toward morning, he could see that the sick woman was sinking into a state of coma. He grew seriously worried, and wondered if Fitzgerald had forgotten to go for the doctor. When it came time for the men to be at their places, he signaled them, and Fitzgerald came in answer to his summons. He had seen the physician, who had said he would be along in the course of the day. Sharpneck had been fool-drunk, and in no mood to listen to anything. Kitty said she would be home in the morning. But the whole forenoon passed without word from any of them. In the afternoon, however, Dr. Bender came out. He was a young man, with avaricious eyes and a sensual mouth. His long body was lank and ill-constructed. His hair was red, and an untidy mustache gave color to an otherwise colorless face. When he saw the unconscious figure on the bed, so inert, so mortally stricken, a peculiar gleam came to his eye.
"Her chance is small, afraid," said Tennant, "but do what you can. She is here with you and me, and none beside. We mustn't fail her, you know, by Jove!"
The physician leered at him, stupidly. He looked the woman over, put some powders in a glass of water, and arose to go.
"Then you know what is the matter with her!" exclaimed Tennant roughly. "going to leave her to her fate?"
"I've done all there is to do," said the doctor sullenly. "I ought to have been called sooner."
"You were called sooner, you fool!" almost shouted Tennant. "Get out, will you? I'd take more interest in a dying cow than you do in this woman."
There was a sort of menace in the man's white face as he quitted the place, but Ralph Tennant was not worrying about expressions of countenance. He gave the stuff the doctor had left -- merely to satisfy his conscience, and watched the road for Sharpneck. About three o'clock, the woman's breathing became so slight, he could no longer hear it. He tried to arouse her with stimulants, but it was of no avail. The last spark of life presently went out.
He rode four miles for a neighbor
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woman, who came and performed the last offices for the poor creature. She got supper for Tennant, too, and then left him. He had to sit up all night to keep off the cats, and one of the other fellows sat up with him; the two men played poker gloomily, occasionally varying the monotony by throwing brands at the cats, which, smelling death, were seized with some grim carnivorous atavism. The jungle awoke in them, and they were wild beasts, only more contemptible.
When morning came, Tennant set about making preparations for the funeral. He imagined how dismal the whole thing would be; he never dreamed that events would shape themselves otherwise than monotonously and drearily. But to his astonishment, the men came in their best clothes. They were, in fact, in a state of fine excitement.
"be riding down to Gester's to see if they have a spring seat to give us the loan of," said young Fitzgerald, who was the first to appear in the morning. The other men were close behind him. They had all breakfasted at Smithers'; Smithers' was a place which sometimes served as a road-house, and they were well fed and in form for some novel entertainment.
"Spring seats?" gasped Tennant. "What is wanting with spring seats?"
"To accommodate the mourners, to be sure! You want the mourners to ride on boards, do you, man?"
"Mourners!" Tennant's voice was almost hollow. He felt a terrible kinship with the "poor little prairie dog," who, a small mass of mortality, lay under the cold sheet in her miserable home. "Who in God's name are the mourners?"
"We are the mourners!" cried Fitzgerald, with grandiloquence, sweeping his hand around to indicate his companions.
"And the cattle, and the other work -- who, pray, will attend to them?" Tennant put this question more to drown the sardonic guffaw that was ...
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