One of Ours, Willa Cather [feel good fiction books txt] 📗

and climbed the bank out of the gully. As they tramped back through the cornfield, Claude turned to him abruptly. “See here, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that!” the boy replied airily, tossing the bell up like a ball and catching it.

“Well, you ought to be. I didn’t expect to see anything of this kind until I got to the front. I’ll be back here in a week, and I’ll make it hot for anybody that’s been bothering her.” Claude’s train was pulling in, and he ran for his baggage. Once seated in the “cottontail,” he began going down into his own country, where he knew every farm he passed⁠—knew the land even when he did not know the owner, what sort of crops it yielded, and about how much it was worth. He did not recognize these farms with the pleasure he had anticipated, because he was so angry about the indignities Mrs. Voigt had suffered. He was still burning with the first ardour of the enlisted man. He believed that he was going abroad with an expeditionary force that would make war without rage, with uncompromising generosity and chivalry.

Most of his friends at camp shared his quixotic ideas. They had come together from farms and shops and mills and mines, boys from college and boys from tough joints in big cities; sheepherders, street car drivers, plumbers’ assistants, billiard markers. Claude had seen hundreds of them when they first came in; “show men” in cheap, loud sport suits, ranch boys in knitted waistcoats, machinists with the grease still on their fingers, farmhands like Dan, in their one Sunday coat. Some of them carried paper suitcases tied up with rope, some brought all they had in a blue handkerchief. But they all came to give and not to ask, and what they offered was just themselves; their big red hands, their strong backs, the steady, honest, modest look in their eyes. Sometimes, when he had helped the medical examiner, Claude had noticed the anxious expression in the faces of the long lines of waiting men. They seemed to say, “If I’m good enough, take me. I’ll stay by.” He found them like that to work with; serviceable, good-natured, and eager to learn. If they talked about the war, or the enemy they were getting ready to fight, it was usually in a facetious tone; they were going to “can the Kaiser,” or to make the Crown Prince work for a living. Claude, loved the men he trained with⁠—wouldn’t choose to live in any better company.

The freight train swung into the river valley that meant home⁠—the place the mind always came back to, after its farthest quest. Rapidly the farms passed; the haystacks, the cornfields, the familiar red barns⁠—then the long coal sheds and the water tank, and the train stopped.

On the platform he saw Ralph and Mr. Royce, waiting to welcome him. Over there, in the automobile, were his father and mother, Mr. Wheeler in the driver’s seat. A line of motors stood along the siding. He was the first soldier who had come home, and some of the townspeople had driven down to see him arrive in his uniform. From one car Susie Dawson waved to him, and from another Gladys Farmer. While he stopped and spoke to them, Ralph took his bags.

“Come along, boys,” Mr. Wheeler called, tooting his horn, and he hurried the soldier away, leaving only a cloud of dust behind.

Mr. Royce went over to old man Dawson’s car and said rather childishly, “It can’t be that Claude’s grown taller? I suppose it’s the way they learn to carry themselves. He always was a manly looking boy.”

“I expect his mother’s a proud woman,” said Susie, very much excited. “It’s too bad Enid can’t be here to see him. She would never have gone away if she’d known all that was to happen.”

Susie did not mean this as a thrust, but it took effect. Mr. Royce turned away and lit a cigar with some difficulty. His hands had grown very unsteady this last year, though he insisted that his general health was as good as ever. As he grew older, he was more depressed by the conviction that his women-folk had added little to the warmth and comfort of the world. Women ought to do that, whatever else they did. He felt apologetic toward the Wheelers and toward his old friends. It seemed as if his daughters had no heart.

XI

Camp habits persisted. On his first morning at home Claude came downstairs before even Mahailey was stirring, and went out to have a look at the stock. The red sun came up just as he was going down the hill toward the cattle corral, and he had the pleasant feeling of being at home, on his father’s land. Why was it so gratifying to be able to say “our hill,” and “our creek down yonder”? to feel the crunch of this particular dried mud under his boots?

When he went into the barn to see the horses, the first creatures to meet his eye were the two big mules that had run away with him, standing in the stalls next the door. It flashed upon Claude that these muscular quadrupeds were the actual authors of his fate. If they had not bolted with him and thrown him into the wire fence that morning, Enid would not have felt sorry for him and come to see him every day, and his life might have turned out differently. Perhaps if older people were a little more honest, and a boy were not taught to idealize in women the very qualities which can make him utterly unhappy⁠—But there, he had got away from those regrets. But wasn’t it just like him to be dragged into matrimony by a pair of mules!

He laughed as he looked at them. “You old devils, you’re strong enough to play such tricks on green fellows for years to come. You’re chock full of meanness!”

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