The rim of the prairie

Front matter

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dhe Patient sisi Hist

2) Pires a aie offi tad My 04H ob nD a ity cae My

Foreword

THe RETURN

WarRNER FIELD

Tue Lockep DRAWER

SUNDAY

THE Op GENERATION AND THE NEW Nancy Comes To A DECcISION Tue Prarrie Makes Its APPEAL AuicE RINELAND

THe Brr-House

. Tue DiartEs Cast THEIR SHADOW

Tue Pram Propie Live THE FRIENDSHIP PROGRESSES Mr. RinELAND DREAMS

THE SINISTER THING STALKS Nancy WEAVES A TAPESTRY

Vill

CHAPTER

XX.

XXI.

XXII.

XXII.

XXIV.

XXV.

XXVI.

XXVILI.

XXVIII.

XXIX.

XXX.

XXXI.

XXXII.

XXXITI.

XXXIV.

XXXV.

XXXVI.

CONTENTS

TRAGEDY AT THE BEE-HoUSE

“T Love You!” .

Autce RINELAND PERFECTS A PLAN

Nancy Leaves Mapie City THE MEETING

THE END OF THE STORY “Goop-By, Nancy”

PAYING THE PRrIckE

UncLe Jup Faces a Crisis FIVE-THIRTY O’cLOcK

A Lear FALts

From THE RIM OF THE PRAIRIE AFTER THE TORNADO

A Brown SHAWL

Anp Now

Maple City is in Nebraska. It is far enough from the Missouri River to be out of the high bluff region. It is near enough to lie among the low rolling hills that rise and dip like solidified waves of the sea.

Wheat fields, corn fields, meadows, apple orchards, country roads . . . these frame Maple City. They not only frame it but they wander through it. Maple City children play in half-block pastures of timothy and bluegrass; gnarled old Ben Davis trees straggle down alleys; paved Main Sireet is but the continuation of a dusty highway which was once a buffalo trail; and, save at the more pretentious homes, plebeian corn patches flourish boldly in back yards. |

Small and midwestern is Maple City, which in the eyes of many modernists is synonymous for all that is hideous and cramping. A handful of people, they say we are, knotted together like roots in the darkness. Blind souls, they call us—struggling spirits who can never find deliverance from sordid surroundings. Poor thinkers! Not to know that from tangled roots shimmering growth may spring to the light in beautiful winged release.

This is the story of a group of people in Maple City— “tangled roots” if you will, but roots from which grew the fragrant flower of romance.

anes

Bh i ae "ay

Chapter I The Return

N the second Friday in September the evening QO passenger train from the East pulled into the Maple City station, a little late as usual, like an old man

with a chronic complaint which he accepts stoically.

There was the customary stir around the station to greet this event. The drayman noisily backed his team into the platform. The agent came importantly out of the ticket office. A fat boy hurried along to get the mail sacks. A group of idlers pressed forward with a feeble show of animation. The brakeman swung down from the Pullman with a flourish of arms. It was almost a ridiculous anti. climax that after all this commotion only one passenger alighted . . . a young woman in her early twenties.

She wore a trim dark suit, a close-fitting hat and a fur, which gave her an appearance of slim daintiness. She gave no glance toward the people on the platform, but turned abruptly to her right and walked quickly past the baggage room and freight shed where a great pile of chicken crates gave forth feathery rustling sounds. The drayman, watching the stranger, made a half movement toward going after her and explaining that Main Street was up the other way, thought better of it and let her go.

The girl turned up a grassy side street without walks and hurried along in the soft dusk. »Ske continued to walk e | aches Waa THE RIM OF THE PRAIRIE | rapidly, tooking neither to the right nor the left as th she wanted no one to speak to her. By this out-of-the route she reached Main Street near its end and crossec railroad tracks where the pavement abruptly change)

“gravel road. Only there did she stop in her swift ¥ __.. » turn and look back toward the business part of town. |

She saw a few new store buildings and a stone cl house replacing the old brick one of her childhood. to her searching eyes everything else seemed the same yet paradoxically different. The street that had beer wide years before was not of unusual width. Build that had seemed huge were dwarfed. Far back up y Street through the trees she could see the old Baldwin h: that had once been the show place of the town. To her. prise the vast conservatory with its multitude of long 1 eled glass panes was merely a big double bay window. | she had once wondered whether there could be any ol place in the world i in which so much glass was assembl It made her chuckle . . . to think how Time, the care! laundryman, shrinks many of our ideals.

If the Baldwin place had once been the show place _. the town it was evidently no longer so, for up on the | here. formerly there had been only rank undergroy stood a new house, wonderfully fine and artistic for Ma ‘City. Whose could it be? The girl, who had seen Ital

architecture in its native setting, recognized it as belong to the Renaissance period. There was something out place about it here overlooking the sleepy maple-and-e bordered streets of the old midwestern town. It lool supercilious above thé tomfortable brick and frame hous a little like a sophisticated alien among provincial natir She turned and walked to the ai. sali Tin kling For a moment she loitered, seeing in memory. the <- who was herself drop a bent pin and line over

[reer teh

THE RETURN 3

She recalled skating under it, too, with Walt Thomas, while team and wagon rumbled and crashed over their heads. 2e had shivered and clung to Walt with,. “What if it’d bust rough?”

This was fun. She was enjoying herself . . . was glad she had decided to make the trip. She passed the creamery ~ with its peculiar odor, half sour and half sweet, and the little cottages near it. She came to the Carlsons’ home and from the number of children in the yard decided that the family had been increasing with its old-time regularity. In the dusk she recognized the mother, Jen Carlson, on her front steps, but not wanting to talk to her, she hurried along, ostrich-like.

She had left the town behind now and was out on the highway heading for the east. Night was beginning to settle down comfortably over the country. There was a hush on the twilight fields. It looked peaceful. But the girl knew that peace is a matter of heart and mind and not of location.

She passed the cemetery. There was no fear within her to be out on the country road. The way was too familiar and homelike to call forth any forebodings.

Several times cars passed her. When she saw their headlights coming she would slip farther up into the friendly shadow of the cottonwoods and Lombardy poplars oe ‘ linedesome of the pastures: The corn rustled eerily, it long brown fingers beckoning to her, its low sibilant wae whispering to her.

The moon swung up from the east and scattered white magic over the fields. It made the Lombardys look like the mosque towers from which the Muezzin cries ihe call to

» Those on the right of the road cast ridiculously aret-like shadows toward the northwest.

She "pated the oat corner. As she walked she threw back her head and breathed deeply of the night dat peculiar mid-west combination of loam and subsoil, b and apple trees and clover bloom. | . Toward the end of the second mile, Tinkling Cree, Sypsy stream that seemed to wander where it desired, sj cross her path again. Frogs were croaking below its bi| _-A clammy dampness hung over it like a tangible th _ She crossed the white-railed bridge. There was the Thomas place now on her right. took the opposite side of the road under the Lombar) If Walt’s mother, Mattie Thomas, should see her, the w) countryside would know of her arrival. There it was . . . on the left. . . . Uncle Jud Moc place behind the cottonwoods. They did not know she | coming, did not believe that she would ever come agail Now that she was so near she began, for the first time, question her impulsive decision to come; questioned, - the possibility of their still being there, whether in fact t were living. Aunt Biny especially, always frail, might | have lived through these years. The girl’s heart was pou ing tumultuously. Four years is a long time. If they wi dead. . . » Quite suddenly the trouble she had given thy seemed larger and moréiieruel. a y the gate with its clanking ch

Bd THE RIM OF THE PRAIRIE

She stood for a mome! on which a horseshoe swung. In the moon shadows noth ‘seemed changed unless there was a dwarfed crumbling 1c about the buildings as though Time had leaned heavily uy them. Neng ee

There was a light in the middle room*of the house a another one out in the cabin that had once been her pl. house. —

_ She walked up the grassy path between the petunias. § wu knew that the blossoms were pink and lavender but, in 1 half dusk, half moonli ‘ht, they were all white. There v ition ; te ee aa ¢ : Mig! ost, et ) 4 TEA ‘ u ‘

THE RETURN ]

that same odor again . . . the mingling of loam, alfalfa, dust, petunias, apple trees, ...

She placed her bag quietly by the steps and walked to © the sitting-room window. She had not dreamed that she would feel such fear and agitation, such hope that everything was as it had been.

There they were. Two old people sat by a red-covered, drop-leaf table. The old man, huge of body, gaunt framed, gray bearded, was reading a paper. The old lady, gentle looking, white haired, a crutch by her side, was darning a stocking. A swift flash of tears swept the girl’s brown eyes and she put her hand to her throat to stop its quivering. Why, how old they looked! They had seemed only middle-aged the day she went away.

She lingered for a few moments as though she could not bear to leave the picture. Then she took off her hat and dropped it by her bag. Everything hung on her reception. There would be no middle ground of welcome. Either they would be quite beside themselves with joy or ... shut the door upon her.

She stepped up on the porch and with infinite care to be quiet lay down at the very threshold of the door and curled herself into a ball. Then, trembling with the import of the decision, she reached up and knoll sharply.

She could hear the creaking of a chair, a heavy shuffling and the door above her opening. The old man looked out and then down at the girl by his feet. In a high squeaky voice that shook a little in spite of its brave attempt at fun, she said, “Baby on your doorstep.”

There was a long moment in which she scarcely breathed) The old man seemed dazed as though the faculties of his mind could not adjust themselves to the peculiar situatipn. And then quite suddenly comprehending, he opened his pearded mouth and roared, great enormous laughter, and slapped his knee. The girl looked up impishly. “I didn’t really darken your doorway, Uncle Jud, did I?” Then she jumped up and threw her arms around him.

The old lady who had been coming forward slowly on her crutch, and peering curiously at the two, suddenly realized the iruth and put out her hands. “Oh, my dear . . . my dear . . .” she said brokenly, her withered cheek against the fresh one. “My dear... .”

They stood in a little group together with some laughter and some tears. And because people do not say all that is in their hearts there were no apologies and no forgiveness, no questions and no answers. Only tears! And laughter! And home!

And then Uncle Jud Moore, whose idea of hospitality was to make the house very hot, was stuffing cottonwood chunks into the kitchen range. And Aunt Biny, her gentle face aglow, her worn crutch thumping over the scrubbed bareness’ of the kitchen floor, was getting a bite for the wayfarer to eat.

The girl curled up in a deep chintz-covered chair and took in the scene. The long narrow room, a combination kitchen and dining room, was spotless. In the dining-room end where she sat, rag rugs lay over the slate-colored painted floor. There were geraniums in the window and a little Black Prince fuchsia that looked as gentle and frail as Aunt Biny. The table was set with a white cloth and shining heavy dishes. In the kitchen end the huge range and woodbox, piled high with dried chunks, took up the width of the room. It was an old-fashioned room, not very convenient and not at all artistic, but to the girl it seemed peaceful, homelike, and because she was troubled, a haven.

There was much to say. Aunt Biny could not seem to get lunch for stopping to take in the fragrant slender charm of the girl curled up in the big chair. Uncle Jud asked multi-

THE RETURN 7:

tudinous questions, ending each one with a split stick for the _ range, like so many cottonwood interrogation points.

“Yes, I’m going to stay six weeks or two months.”

“Only two months! That ain’t half long enough.”

“Oh, why such a short time?” Now that she was home it seemed that it must be for always.

“TI have to go back to my wedding,” she said uncon- ~cernedly. “They quite insist that I shall attend it.”

Aunt Biny on her crutch came up to the chintz-covered chair and put her hand on the girl’s brown head.

“And so you’ve met a man you love?” she said gently.

The girl reached up and patted the worn old fingers. “Well . . .” she threw out her own hand in a little characteristic gesture, “I’ve met a man... .”

It hurt Aunt Biny. It did not sound right. There was a note missing from the girl’s voice . . . a note that should have been there.

Both of the old folks questioned her further until, quite _ abruptly, she changed the subject.

“Do you have hired help living in the old sabi Uncle Jud? I saw a light there when I came.” |

Uncle Jud roared and slapped his knee. “Help? Lord, no. A feller’s out there writin’. Rented it for a week to _ write in. Writes all day and all night and tramps down the cockleburrs in Tinklin’ Creek when he ain’t. Works over in town in the First National Bank. This is his vacation. Lord!” He slapped his knee again in the ecstasy of the joke. “Think of puttin’ in your vacation writin’! Name’s Field. . . . Warner Field.”

The girl stared at him. “Warner Field?” she repeated it questioningly as though she had not heard right. There was surprise and incredulity in her tone, and something that might have been either interest or pleasure. But old Jud _ Moore was not subtle. He did not concern himself with the nuances of the human voice. And there were more important things to explain to the girl while she ate, the taxes for the new graveled road, the cow that had twin calves, the muskrat catch of the winter before with two minks thrown in for good measure.

After the three had talked for a long time, Aunt Biny said happily that they must all go to bed, that there would be a lot of to-morrows in which to visit. The girl took a lamp from a high shelf in the kitchen, lighted its clean wick, gave each of the old folks an impetuous kiss and went up the narrow built-in stairway. Straight to the south bedroom she went, opened the door and stepped inside. The room was neat and clean. The single bed was made up with a white spread and a fat pillow standing upright in its starched case. On the high bureau were a gay scarf and many girlish trinkets. A small writing desk stood in the curve of the south windows. The chairs, the pictures, the cedar chest, were all in their old places. Through the open closet door she could see a few out-of-date dresses and a sunhat hanging limply on their hooks. Everything was just as she had left it. Nothing of hers had been changed. With the lamp still in her hand she stood for some time just inside the doorway and took in the picture of the old-fashioned room. It was not true that environment made any difference with one’s personality but, if it were so, it would account for the feeling of tranquillity that possessed her, the witchery of the place that enveloped her. For a whimsical moment she had the sensation that the girl who climbed the stairs had been met at the door of the bedroom by another and, crossing the threshold, had become that one.

God send us a little home

To come back to when we roam.

Red firelight and deep chairs And a small white bed upstairs.