The Song of the Lark, Willa Cather [rosie project .txt] 📗

his hand. It was a turquoise, rubbed smooth in the Indian finish, which is so much more beautiful than the incongruous high polish the white man gives that tender stone. “I got this from her necklace. See the hole where the string went through? You know how the Indians drill them? Work the drill with their teeth. You like it, don’t you? They’re just right for you. Blue and yellow are the Swedish colors.” Ray looked intently at her head, bent over his hand, and then gave his whole attention to the track.

“I’ll tell you, Thee,” he began after a pause, “I’m going to form a camping party one of these days and persuade your padre to take you and your mother down to that country, and we’ll live in the rock houses⁠—they’re as comfortable as can be⁠—and start the cook fires up in ’em once again. I’ll go into the burial mounds and get you more keepsakes than any girl ever had before.” Ray had planned such an expedition for his wedding journey, and it made his heart thump to see how Thea’s eyes kindled when he talked about it. “I’ve learned more down there about what makes history,” he went on, “than in all the books I’ve ever read. When you sit in the sun and let your heels hang out of a doorway that drops a thousand feet, ideas come to you. You begin to feel what the human race has been up against from the beginning. There’s something mighty elevating about those old habitations. You feel like it’s up to you to do your best, on account of those fellows having it so hard. You feel like you owed them something.”

At Wassiwappa, Ray got instructions to sidetrack until Thirty-six went by. After reading the message, he turned to his guests. “I’m afraid this will hold us up about two hours, Mrs. Kronborg, and we won’t get into Denver till near midnight.”

“That won’t trouble me,” said Mrs. Kronborg contentedly. “They know me at the Y.W.C.A., and they’ll let me in any time of night. I came to see the country, not to make time. I’ve always wanted to get out at this white place and look around, and now I’ll have a chance. What makes it so white?”

“Some kind of chalky rock.” Ray sprang to the ground and gave Mrs. Kronborg his hand. “You can get soil of any color in Colorado; match most any ribbon.”

While Ray was getting his train on to a side track, Mrs. Kronborg strolled off to examine the post-office and station house; these, with the water tank, made up the town. The station agent “batched” and raised chickens. He ran out to meet Mrs. Kronborg, clutched at her feverishly, and began telling her at once how lonely he was and what bad luck he was having with his poultry. She went to his chicken yard with him, and prescribed for gapes.

Wassiwappa seemed a dreary place enough to people who looked for verdure, a brilliant place to people who liked color. Beside the station house there was a bluegrass plot, protected by a red plank fence, and six fly-bitten box-elder trees, not much larger than bushes, were kept alive by frequent hosings from the water plug. Over the windows some dusty morning-glory vines were trained on strings. All the country about was broken up into low chalky hills, which were so intensely white, and spotted so evenly with sage, that they looked like white leopards crouching. White dust powdered everything, and the light was so intense that the station agent usually wore blue glasses. Behind the station there was a water course, which roared in flood time, and a basin in the soft white rock where a pool of alkali water flashed in the sun like a mirror. The agent looked almost as sick as his chickens, and Mrs. Kronborg at once invited him to lunch with her party. He had, he confessed, a distaste for his own cooking, and lived mainly on soda crackers and canned beef. He laughed apologetically when Mrs. Kronborg said she guessed she’d look about for a shady place to eat lunch.

She walked up the track to the water tank, and there, in the narrow shadows cast by the uprights on which the tank stood, she found two tramps. They sat up and stared at her, heavy with sleep. When she asked them where they were going, they told her “to the coast.” They rested by day and traveled by night; walked the ties unless they could steal a ride, they said; adding that “these Western roads were getting strict.” Their faces were blistered, their eyes bloodshot, and their shoes looked fit only for the trash pile.

“I suppose you’re hungry?” Mrs. Kronborg asked. “I suppose you both drink?” she went on thoughtfully, not censoriously.

The huskier of the two hoboes, a bushy, bearded fellow, rolled his eyes and said, “I wonder?” But the other, who was old and spare, with a sharp nose and watery eyes, sighed. “Some has one affliction, some another,” he said.

Mrs. Kronborg reflected. “Well,” she said at last, “you can’t get liquor here, anyway. I am going to ask you to vacate, because I want to have a little picnic under this tank for the freight crew that brought me along. I wish I had lunch enough to provide you, but I ain’t. The station agent says he gets his provisions over there at the post office store, and if you are hungry you can get some canned stuff there.” She opened her handbag and gave each of the tramps a half-dollar.

The old man wiped his eyes with his forefinger. “Thank ’ee, ma’am. A can of tomatters will taste pretty good to me. I wasn’t always walkin’ ties; I had a good job in Cleveland before⁠—”

The hairy tramp turned on him fiercely. “Aw, shut up on that, grandpaw! Ain’t you got no gratitude? What do you want to hand the lady that fur?”

The old man hung his head and turned away. As he