Ragweed; a west-world story

Front matter

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

N

I

Chapter I. Page

CHAPTER IL

CHAPTER HI.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

“An’ Vo’s Gwine Cha’ge Me!” 81

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VHI.

How A Prairie Schooner Sailed 113

CHAPTER IX.

Contents.

CHAPTER X.

PAGE

In Nature’s Lap 14S

CHAPTER XL

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XHI.

^ CHAPTER XIV.

A Doll Stuffed with Sawdust 210

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVHI.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHAPTER XX.

Arise, for This is Not your Rf.st 303

RAGWEED.

CHAPTER I.

BORROWED CAPITAL.

“ The vintage is ripe,

The harvest is heaping,

But some that have sowed Have no riches for reaping.

T he fertile lands along the Missouri River, low-swelling hills and broad intervals, layunder the glory of an October sun. Along the fences and roadsides ran a riotous splendor of golden-rod, helius, crimson blackberry vines, and low sumac, with leaves glowing in the light to a translucent red. The season had been early from the first heat in April, and now the corn stood in shocks, the pickers and the cider-presses were busy in the orchards, and the splendid tassels of the sorghum in their rich and ever-varied shades of brown were nodding to their fall as the cutters with sharp sickles passed along the dark-green rows, and the cleft stalks loaded all the air with a honey -sweet perfume calling multitudinous

6 Rag%veed.

bees. Here the bluebirds flashed and fled along the fence-rails; there the jays clattered jubilant; yonder the pigeons preened in the sun ; and, sweeping down to meet their own dark shadows on the newly-harvested fields, the pirate crows called each other to their feast of first-fruits. Along the broad, smooth road traversing the prairie sped a lively, well-groomed young bay drawing a handsome new buggy. As they neared a rise of land around which a creek, seeking the distant river, made a horseshoe bend between well-wooded banks. Dr. Garth drew rein.

“ There ought to be a very fine place, but — ”

The “ but ” covered ruin, carelessness, and desolation expressed in a double block house going to decay, loyally accompanied in its progress ruinward by a little village of outbuildings. On the highest part of the ground between the house and the road a small crowd of people, a smoke, a slowly-moving mare, and the creak of a machine suggested the occupations of the hour. “ They are boiling sorghum,” said Mrs. Garth ; “ let us drive in.”

Turning up the lane beside a small dilapidated barn, they found scant room to pass some sections of black-oak log, wedges, and an axe, where some one had been riving shingles, which, fresh and ruddy, lay scattered about, yielding their aromatic odor to the sun.

Borrowed Capital.

Where the lane ended in the house-yard there stood a primitive mill for grinding sorghum. The motive power was a discouraged-looking roan mare, attached to the grinder by means of a long green sapling to which she was harnessed at the collar. The creature unwillingly plodded in a great circle, urged thereto by an eleven-year-old girl armed with a switch and following close at her heels. Standing beside the grinder, a shockheaded lad supplied the stalks of sorghum, which were thrown to him from an adjacent pile by a younger boy. The greenish juice of the canes trickled from the mill into a barrel through a particularly dismal-looking piece of gunny-cloth. Just beyond the path trod by the dreary mare, a ' big muscular fellow of sixteen with a hatchet in his brawny hand was converting a dry dead apple tree into fuel for the brick oven under the long iron boiling-pan. A raw-boned, disheveled woman squatted on the ground watching, witchlike, the seething, bubbling, sticky mass in the pan ; her second self in miniature carried the apple-tree fagots, and as needed thrust them into the oven. A dark, handsome, unkempt child of five stood aloof and looked on, superior, at the group of listless workers.

As the buggy stopped no surprise or attention was manifested; there was a slow bucolic lifting of the eyes and then calm indifference ; if Doctor

Ragweed.

and Mrs, Garth had alighted in a yard full of cattle, as much notice would have been bestowed upon them. Mrs, Garth went to the back of the box-buggy and took out a bag of red and green striped paper,

“ Oh, you’re going to distribute candy, are you?” said the doctor.

“ I’ll stir them up some way,” retorted his wife, and, placing herself near the path of the girl with the switch, she held out a stick of “ store candy.”

It was accepted in friendly silence. The millfeeder, the boy who supplied him with sorghum stalks, the wood-carrier, and the lofty little Olympian who surveyed like a baby Jove the labors of the rest, all received their saccharine doles without a word. Mrs. Garth paused by the wood-cutter, half smiled, and tentatively held out the paper bag. The young fellow, already grown to man’s estate, shook his shock of black hair and, laughing, turned away.

As Mrs. Garth passed around the group to the woman, a girl carrying the inevitable baby came from the house to be in the range of this unexpected windfall of sweets. The baby rested fretting against its sister’s arm.

“ He’s sick,” said the woman ; ” he’s had fever for three nights.”

Mrs. Garth eyed with compassion the miserable, dirty little object.

Borrowed Capital.

“ Why don’t you give him a nice hot bath and put a clean night-gown on him and let him lie quiet?” she asked.

“ Oh, my young uns ain’t used to pamperin’ up, and, ’sides. I’ve got the sorghum to see to.”

Mrs. Garth turned toward two other children who had kept at a distance — a boy of fourteen, a girl of nine. The boy sat on a box with his back to the others, and had neither turned nor given any sign ; he was splitting and trimming slender saplings into hoop-poles, several bundles of which lay piled on the ground beside him. The girl handed him a split sapling, which he fastened in a notch in the lowest branch of the tree by which he sat, and with slow, machine-like persistence and lack of interest shaved with a draw-knife, while the girl, with her hand on his shoulder, stood looking toward the strangers. As soon as Mrs, Garth turned toward her she picked up her dress-skirt and covered her face to her eyes. The woman coolly rose, took the bag of candy from the lady, and, going to the two, dealt out a mint stick to each. Coming back, she threw the empty bag under the boiler, remarking, ” Pope and Turk don’t never want nobody ’bout them!'

“ Won’t your mare go around without being driven ?” asked Dr. Garth.

“ No, she won’t. And ’taint our mare ; we horded her of Mis’ Jonsing down by the brook.”

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“ What is that empty brick place over there ?” asked Mrs. Garth, intent upon getting information.

“ That’s what we built for our sorghum-pan last year.”

“ Do you have to get a new pan every year ? Does it burn out?”

“ No, ’taint that, but las’ year we used Mis’ Morgan’s pan, an’ now she’s moved away, so we borried Mr. Gage’s, an’ we have to bile early, ’long of them wantin’ it. It’s a smaller pan than Mis’ Morgan’s, an’ so we had to brick up a new oven for it.”

“ Do you own the house and farm ? It seems a good place.”

“ Well, no, we don’t ’zactly own it ; we sort of borried it. I reckon it’s good enough if it was worked, but, land o’ gracious me ! he’s so lazy he won’t work enough at nothin’ to get any good out of it. He’s ciittin’ sorghum now, down in the field, an’ lettin’ us get plumb out while he stands gassin’ with whatever passes by. — Nance, you cut over to the field an’ tell your dad to hurry up some stalks if he means us ever to get done.”

Nance, baby on arm, strolled off toward the field behind the hill.

“The children are all yours, I suppose?” said Mrs. Garth.

“ Well, no, they ain’t ; seven of ’em is, but that tall fellow choppin’, an’ that gal that’s drivin’, an'

Borroxved Capital.

1 1

that little chap a-lookin’ on — he allays is lookin’ on, kind of scornful like, ’pears to me — them three is sort of borried.”

“ Dandy is getting restless,” suggested Dr. Garth to his wife.

With a merry nod all around, and a sudden smile that illuminated beyond sunshine the girl that was driving the dreary mare, Mrs. Garth sprung into her place in the buggy. As they turned down the lane, a lean little boy, speeding across a field, leaped, cat-like, on the fence and shouted, “ Da-a-a-vid ! Da-a-a-vid ! Sis sent me for our axe !”

David, the big dark youth, waved his arm ; the boy tugged the axe out of the black oak and hurried off with it over his shoulder. The buggy turned into the road.

“ Stop a minute — turn the wheel ; I have missed the opportunity of my life !” cried Mrs. Garth. The doctor, accustomed to her whims, obeyed. She sprung out, ran back to the woman crouching by the pan, and said,

“ Would you please tell me where you got the mill ?”

“ We borried it from Uncle Mose Barr.”

” Oh, thank you ever so much !” said Mrs. Garth, and the next minute was in her place by the doctor’s side. — “ I knew it could not be theirs,” she said ; “ house, children, horse, pan, mill, — every-

Ragweed.

thing borrowed and a silver peal of laughter, fresh as a child’s, rang to the accompaniment of Dandy’s swiftly-beating hoofs and the whirr of the wheels on the level prairie road.

“ There he is, cutting sorghum, a stalk in five minutes or thereabouts,-” said the doctor, pointing with his whip ; “ and there is Nance going to try the impossible task of hurrying him; and that gray-headed darkey on the fence is no doubt Uncle Mose Barr, who owns the sorghum-mill. What unutterable shiftlessness curses much of this magnificent land ! Look yonder at that expensive reaper standing out exposed to the weather the year round ; look at that barn, with a roof like a sieve ; see those cattle and horses that will winter out unsheltered ; there is a buggy and a spring wagon, never housed. Yet, in spite of all this unthrift, some of them get rich — but not that class of ‘ borrowers.’ That family looked to me like ‘ movers ’ or ‘ wagon-tramps ’ settled for a time. See there, what corn ! Such harvests as this land is capable of producing! Just after the war I came through here, and these farms might have been had for a song. I thought all was sterile, worth nothing, because it was entirely covered with a crop of ragweed growing as high as one’s head. I thought it would produce nothing but ragweed. If I had understood the hidden possibilities, I might now be a millionaire.”

“ Some men’s sins go beforehand to judgment, and some men their sins follow after,” said Mrs. Garth. “ For my part, I have no very inordinate desire to have my steps dogged by a million as I move on to account. As for the ragweed, I am sure there mu.st be something useful in what is so abundant. I don’t believe God creates so much for waste. Something could be done with it if we were wise enough to find it out. There is plenty of it still. See that pasture.”

“ Yes, it looks like a poor use of land. Do you know that woman and the ten up there struck me as ragweed too — human ragweed?”

“ Value, eternal value, in them, if we could find it out,” said Mrs. Garth, and then she sank into silence, and then she sighed. Words are sometimes spoken which we do not on the moment catch, but the mind gathers up their vibrations and translates them to us presently in their full force. So the eye catches sights, scarcely aware of their meaning, and after a time the brain correlates them and expounds them to us in their true significance. It was so now with Mrs. Garth. That vivid picture set in sunlight on the hill had attracted and amused her as a whole in its bald realism ; now fragments of it were evolved upon her mental sight, and she discerned in them pathos, tragedy, responsibility. The echo of her own voice came back upon her : “ Are we ready

Ragweed.

to answer to God for our use of a million? Rather, can we answer with assurance for our use of an hour?”

“ What now ?” said the doctor. He was used to these changeful moods.

“ I am of those who see and do not understand — until afterward. I told you a few minutes ago, jestingly, that I had missed the opportunity of my lifetime, I missed up there more than I knew, and now I am gathering up what I overlooked. Those two under the trees apart — she called them by odd names, ‘ Pope ’ and ‘ Turk.’ The boy never turned around. I understand it : he did not hear our voices — he is a mute. And the girl — the instant I turned toward her, she gathered up her skirt across her face. I realize now what I saw of her face in a flash and what the action meant. The child has a hare-lip, and she is sensitive about it.”

” Eh ? , Is that so ?” said the doctor, his professional interest waking up. “ Why, it ought to be cured. Every year will make an operation more difficult. How old did she seem to be ? — about nine?”

” I should think so. And those three children who she said did not belong to her — they are of a very different strain. That big, suddenlygrown-up boy, with his dark, thin, heavy brown hair, and great black eyes, in which thought

Borroived Capital. 1 5

is only now slowly wakening, because his mind has been nearly dormant 'while his body outgrew it — he looked like a young buffalo, half-curious, half-belligerent. The little girl with the brown eyes and swarthy skin had a dreamy, wistful, poetic face, full of possibilities. The little fellow, said to be always looking on, was a splendid child. No ragweed about them but in the way in which they grow.”

“You will make a romance about them, and have them all princes in disguise,” laughed the doctor ; “ but you are right : those three were of a very different breed. I wonder how they come to be there ?”

“ She said she ‘ borried them,’ with the rest of her surroundings. I mean that they shall cross my path of life again, and that some day my wasted opportunity shall be under my hand once more.”

Meanwhile work had stopped about, the sorghum-pan. The last stalk had been fed to the mill, and “ he ” did not appear with further supply. David had provided more than enough of dead apple tree ; “ Sis ” had sent for the axe, and he could not rive shingles, so he seated himself on the top rail of the fence; the mare was allowed to stand and doze ; Janet dropped her switch and approached David. For the first time in her life Janet had beheld a lady and a toilette.

1 6 Ragivccti.

That slender figure in a black silk grenadine, black gloves, black boots, a crimson crepe tie at the throat, and a black lace hat with a bunch of barberries at the side had been ineffaceably painted on Janet’s brain.

“ Oh, David,” she said, “ wasn’t she beautiful ?”

“ No, she wasn’t. I hate her,” retorted David, cordially.

“ Why, David ! Did you see her ?”

“ Yes, I did — I saw she was laughing at us. We all looked very queer and funny to her, it seems. She came back and asked who owned the mill. She heard Sikey say that Sis had sent him for the axe. I reckon she has her own things. Oh, I saw her. There wasn’t as much dust on the sole of her shoe as those young ones had on. their faces. I never knew how ragged and dirty you looked till she held out that bag to you. I suppose she considered Bruce a curiosity, along of bare feet and rags. Oh, she is of one world, and we are of another, it seems. Yes, I hate her.”

“ I don’t. I wish she’d come back. David, that is the way, just exactly the way, my cousin Ida looks, I am sure.”

“ Your cousin Ida — bosh !”

“ It is, I tell you. Oh, did you see her hat and her boots? And gloves every day! And what was her dress made of?”

“ I don’t know and I don’t care. I wish I could build a wall about us a mile high, so such folks could not get in and stare.”

“ But, David, I’d rather — rather — be just like her,”

“ Well, you can’t, and there’s an end of it. Look at us — look at them — and talk of being like such a high-flyer !”

” Oh, David,” wailed Janet in dismay, “ have I got to be like her ?” and she pointed to the woman still sitting on her heels watching the boiling sorghum.

“ No, you haven’t. Just wait, and I’ll kick out the whole lot.”

” Do you suppose she lives over in the town, David? I wish I knew her name,”

“ What good would it do ? Would you go and see her and be laughed at? Want to be made fun of?”

“ She looked kind at me,” said Janet.

” You don’t know her name, and I’m glad of it. You’d be going to see her next, barefooted and in your ragged frock.”

Janet cast down her eyes, and her dark pretty face hardened into lines of fixed determination, of a kind that always discerns a way to its end and relentle.ssly pursues it.

“ David, did you notice the buggy ? Bright yellow wheels and gear. Did you ever see one like that?”

Ragweed.

i8

“ No, I never did. Looked like a great whirling snake-doctor ” — by which he meant a dragonfly, and in his remark he had unconsciously ranged himself beside Hugh Miller, who had seen and commented on this resemblance long ago.

Here “ he ” arrived with a white horse and a small cart-load of stalks. Once more a boy handed over stalks, a boy fed the mill, Janet switched the sleepy mare, David chopped apple tree ; “ she ” crouched by the boiling-pan, dipped out molasses, and added fresh juice; the little girl fed the fire; the baby cried ; Nance shrilly sung “ by ! by! by!” Bruce looked on; Turk handed Pope saplings which he shaved into hoop-poles.

“And all the pent-up stream of life Rushed downward in a cataract.”

Chapter II. Seeking A Family

“One after one they flew away Far up to the heavenly blue,

To the better country, the upper day,

And — I wish I were going too.”

WEEK later, nine o’clock in the morning.

the day glorious with sun and fragrance and all the wealth October garners from the subservient months. Dr. Garth was off on his rounds, the house had fallen into that careful order demanded by Mrs. Garth’s critical eye, and she was in her garden, deciding which of the plants should winter in her little conservatory. The gate opened, and a slim, dusty, barefooted girl with a weary step came toward the house-mistress.

“Good-morning!” said Mrs. Garth; “do you want the doctor?”

“ No ; I came to see you.”

Mrs. Garth looked more observantly across the rose bush which she was despoiling. “And who are you, my dear ?”

“ I’m Janet Hume. You saw me — don’t you know ? — out yonder by the river, biling sorghum that day.”

“ Oh yes, I remember ; and you have come to town to-day ?”

“ David said not to. He says he hates you, and you were only makin’ fun of us ’cause we were all so dirty and ‘ she ’ borried all the things,”

“ I was not making fun of you at all,” said the lady, with some compunction of conscience, remembering her mirth. ” I did think the woman rather queer, but not you.”

“ I said you looked nice and kind. David says he hates the sight of you, but I think you are just beautiful.”

The least vain of women might not be indifferent to such praise as this, so spontaneous and hearty. Mrs. Garth regarded her guest with increasing favor, “ I am very glad that you had a chance to come to see me.”

“ Didn’t have it, I took it. Got up this mornin’ when the stars was shinin’, an’ afore there was a streak of red in the sky, an’ jes’ walked off”

” You walked ! Why, it is ten miles ! you must be tired.”

“ You b’lieve I’m tired, orful.”

“And did you have any breakfast?”

“ I brung along a piece of corn-pone. I et it.”

“ Why, you poor dear little soul ! And how did you find me?”

Seeking a Family.

“ I asked in a store where the folks lived with the buggy that had yellow runnin’-gear, an’ they said it was this house, an’ when I got to the gate I knew you, though you didn’t have the same things on. I most wisht you had. Them red and black things was what made you so perfec’ly lovely. You look tol’able in that blue frock, but I don’t like blue; ’f ever I get rich I’m goin’ to stick to red.”

Any little rising of vanity evoked by her visitor’s first praises was novv thoroughly rebuked ; it was the black and red that was ” perfec’ly lovely.” Mrs. Garth laughed.

“And so you have come to visit me ! The first thing will be to get you thoroughly rested, and a hot bath will do that ; and then a nice little breakfast, and then we’ll talk, and in the afternoon I’ll take you home, or nearly home, in the buggy. You cannot walk back, that is sure. Come, let us go in.”

She led the way into the house and up stairs to a little square room with lace curtains, and a carpet on whose gay flowers and scrolls Janet feared to tread. Sitting upon the side of a great white-china something, the lady turned two bright handles, and, as if by magic, a stream of hot and a stream of cold water poured into the china tub.’

“What’s that for?” demanded Janet.

“ It is a bath-tub, and when I get the water

Ragweed.

ready, here are soap, sponge, towels, comb, and brush. You can undress and jump into the tub, and wash and bathe as long as you like, and all the tired will go out of you, and you will feel fresh and comfortable. I have some clothes here that a little friend of mine left this summer, and you can put them on, for yours are dirty from your walk.”

“ Is this a bath-room and a bath-tub ? Oh, jolly! ain’t I some now? My cousin Ida has a luxuriant bath-tub^

“ Oh, has she ? Well, when your toilet is made I’ll have a nice little breakfast ready for you, so when you are dressed come down stairs. You can let the water out of the tub by pulling the chain — see ?”

The clock was striking ten when a metamorphosed little maid in a pink gingham gown, black stockings, and buttoned boots came slowly down the stairs ; her dark hair had been washed, combed, brushed, and woven into a shining braid the ends of which fell in three soft round curls. Mrs. Garth, seated near a little tray holding sandwiches, a roll, a pear, and a glass of milk, realized that her selfinvited guest was very pretty.

” I emptied the tub and wiped it with the towel, and I rolled my clothes all up in a bundle,” said Janet with satisfaction. “ I guess David will stare when I tell him how nice you treated me. Da\ id

Seeking a Family.

says you’re proud, and he never wants to see you again. I guess he’ll sing another tune when I get back. What an elegant house you have! just like my cousin Ida’s.”

“ Does your cousin Ida live near here?”

“ No, she don’t.”

“ Have you ever been to see her ?”

“ No ; she lives too far off. But I think about her, and I want to be just like her, if I could only begin. But we can’t be anything with those Bealses around. David says he means to kick them all out some day. I hope he will.”

“ Where are your father and mother ? Who owns that place?”

“ Our folks is dead. We used to live in Texas, but two years ago our uncle Hume died, and he left our father that place you were at the other day, and we started up here in a wagon, and mother died on the road. Then father never held up his head, and when we moved into the place he was sick and lay on the bed all the time. One day, along the edge of winter, those Bealses — all but the baby — that baby hadn’t come then — come along in a wagon an’ saw David, an’ we knew them, ’cause we had camped near them on the road, an’ they came in to see father, an’ Mis’ Beals said she’d stay an’ keep house an’ nuss father, and they stayed ever since. Father died that Christmas. Dayid says the Bealses haven’t

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any right there at all, an’ he’ll show them a thing or two next spring. David’s showed old Beals a thing or two already. One day old Beals told Bruce to fetch in some wood, and Bruce said, ‘ No,’ an’ Beals hit him on the side of his head and upset him, and David just gave Beals a good one — he got him down and thrashed him ! You ought to seen him ! his fists flew !” Janet’s eyes glowed at the memory of her brother’s prowess.

“And what did Mrs. Beals say to that?’’ asked Mrs. Garth,

“Why, she just said if David was able to lam him, she reckoned he’d have to, an’ it would pay Beals up for some of the skites he’d give other folks.’’

“ Do you go to school ?’’

“ Yes, me and Turk go to school'. I love school and books, and I’ve got a book — a book of my own ’’ — this with great pride, “ The last leaf is gone. I wisht it wasn’t, so I could tell how it turned out. But I guess it turned out pretty well, for it reads like it up to that. I found it on the road-side.”

“ Did you ? and what is the name of your book ?”

“ ‘ The Ranger’s Bride.’ Oh, its elegant ! You made me think of some of it, your gloves and your hat, but you’re not so grand, of course — she wore diamonds and gold and velvet. Dear

Seeking a Family.

me ! I’ve et up all your breakfast ! I didn’t know I was so hungry. Not one of those Bealses can read but Turk. David can, of course, and write, but David don’t care for school. He likes work when there’s any sense in it, but there’s no sense, he says, in working for the Bealses, and they owe us work, David says, for the place, so Bruce don’t do a thing, and I don’t do a thing, and David don’t do much, only mend up the house and fences a little. David says its all going to rack and ruin. Are all these things yours? Who is that a picture of on the wall ?”

“ That was a picture of me when I was a girl.”

“ Land o’ gracious ! Weren’t you nice-looking ! lots nicer than now !” with the unnecessary frankness of one accustomed to savage life. “ Now, that picture is just exactly like my cousin Ida! f Could I ever be like that, do you think ?” She stood before the picture lost in admiration.

Mrs. Garth leaned back and meditated on the chapter of life laid open before her. Three orphans, real owners of a good but entirely neglected farm which had been taken possession of by a family of idle and dirty “movers,” those vagabonds of the mid-Western States, who, in slow-going, canvas-covered wagons, drift to and fro between Illinois, Colorado, and the Mexican frontier. Could any companionship be more disastrous ? Was any obsession more unwarranted and

Ragweed.

injurious ? The matter must be looked into ; this boy of sixteen, however rea*dy with his fists, was likely to be an inefficient protector of his own rights or of his younger brother and sister. Certainly something must be done about it. Meanwhile, Janet cruised about the room, examining everything, generally refraining from meddling, her tongue in perpetual motion, either in answering questions or volunteering information. Had her father liked the Bealses ? Oh no ; he said just as soon as he got well they’d have to go. But then he didn’t get well. Her own mother — what was she like ? Oh, she was nice — real nice, and she had had a trunkful of things, but Mis’ Beals had cut them all up for herself and her own children. Had she ever seen the uncle who left them the farm ? Oh no, indeed, never, nor had her father either ; but it was all writ in a letter by a lawyer-man, and when they got to the house, why, it had stood empty eight months, and most of the things had been carried off by movers. Mis’ Jonsing down by the brook said, and the windows was all knocked out. Hume ? Yes, that was their name. Their grandfather was from Scotland, father said. The Bealses didn’t have any name of their own, only “she” was called Deb and “ he ” was named Saul, and they borried the name of Beals from a man they got the white horse of tradin’ for a mule and a calf ; the mule was lame.