Elder Conklin, Frank Harris [life books to read .TXT] 📗

“Go and put the horse up, and then come back. I’ll wait right here for you.”

He did as he was told, and in ten minutes was by her side again. After a long pause, she began, with quivering lips:

“George, I’m sorry—so sorry. ‘Twas all my fault! But I didn’t know”— and she choked down a sob—“I didn’t think.

“I want you to tell me how your sisters act and—an’ what they wear and do. I’ll try to act like them. Then I’d be good, shouldn’t I?

“They play the pianner, don’t they?” He was forced to confess that one of them did.

“An’ they talk like you?”

“Yes.”

“An’ they’re good always? Oh, George, I’m jest too sorry for anythin’, an’ now—now I’m too glad!” and she burst into tears. He kissed and consoled her as in duty bound. He understood this mood as little as he had understood her challenge to love. He was not in sympathy with her; she had no ideal of conduct, no notion of dignity. Some suspicion of this estrangement must have dawned upon the girl, or else she was irritated by his acquiescence in her various phases of self-humiliation. All at once she dashed the tears from her eyes, and winding herself out of his arms, exclaimed:

“See here, George Bancroft! I’ll jest learn all they know—pianner and all. I ken, and I will. I’ll begin right now. You’ll see!” And her blue eyes flashed with the glitter of steel, while her chin was thrown up in defiant vanity and self-assertion.

He watched her with indifferent curiosity; the abrupt changes of mood repelled him. His depreciatory thoughts of her, his resolution not to be led away again by her beauty influencing him, he noticed the keen hardness of the look, and felt, perhaps out of a spirit of antagonism, that he disliked it.

After a few quieting phrases, which, though they sprang rather from the head than the heart, seemed to achieve their aim, he changed the subject, by pointing across the creek and asking:

“Whose corn is that?”

“Father’s, I guess!”

“I thought that was the Indian territory?”

“It is!”

“Is one allowed to sow corn there and to fence off the ground? Don’t the Indians object?”

“‘Tain’t healthy for Indians about here,” she answered carelessly, “I hain’t ever seen one. I guess it’s allowed; anyhow, the corn’s there an’ father’ll have it cut right soon.”

It seemed to Bancroft that they had not a thought in common. Wrong done by her own folk did not even interest her. At once he moved towards the house, and the girl followed him, feeling acutely disappointed and humiliated, which state of mind quickly became one of rebellious self-esteem. She guessed that other men thought big shucks of her anyway. And with this reflection she tried to comfort herself.

*

A week or ten days later, Bancroft came downstairs one morning early and found the ground covered with hoar-frost, though the sun had already warmed the air. Elder Conklin, in his shirtsleeves, was cleaning his boots by the wood pile. When he had finished with the brush, but not a moment sooner, he put it down near his boarder. His greeting, a mere nod, had not prepared the schoolmaster for the question:

“Kin you drive kyows?”

“I think so; I’ve done it as a boy.”

“Wall, to-day’s Saturday. There ain’t no school, and I’ve some cattle to drive to the scales in Eureka. They’re in the brush yonder, ef you’d help. That is, supposin’ you’ve nothin’ to do.”

“No. I’ve nothing else to do, and shall be glad to help you if I can.”

Miss Loo pouted when she heard that her lover would be away the greater part of the day, but it pleased her to think that her father had asked him for his help, and she resigned herself, stipulating only that he should come right back from Eureka.

After breakfast the two started. Their way lay along the roll of ground which looked down upon the creek. They rode together in silence, until the Elder asked:

“You ain’t a Member, air you?”

“No.”

“That’s bad. I kinder misdoubted it las’ Sunday; but I wasn’t sartin. Ef your callin’ and election ain’t sure, I guess Mr. Crew oughter talk to you.”

These phrases were jerked out with long pauses separating them, and then the Elder was ominously silent.

In various ways Bancroft attempted to draw him into conversation—in vain. The Elder answered in monosyllables, or not at all. Presently he entered the woods on the left, and soon halted before the shoot-entrance to a roughly-built corral.

“The kyows is yonder,” he remarked; “ef you’ll drive them hyar, I’ll count them as they come in.”

The schoolmaster turned his horse’s head in the direction pointed out. He rode for some minutes through the wood without seeing a single animal. Under ordinary circumstances this would have surprised him; but now he was absorbed in thinking of Conklin and his peculiarities, wondering at his habit of silence and its cause:

“Has he nothing to say? Or does he think a great deal without being able to find words to express his thoughts?”

A prolonged moan, a lowing of cattle in pain, came to his ears. He made directly for the sound, and soon saw the herd huddled together by the snake-fence which zigzagged along the bank of the creek. He went on till he came to the boundary fence which ran at right angles to the water, and then turning tried to drive the animals towards the corral. He met, however, with unexpected difficulties. He had brought a stock-whip with him, and used it with some skill, though without result. The bullocks and cows swerved from the lash, but before they had gone ten yards they wheeled and bolted back. At first this manoeuvre amused him. The Elder, he thought, has brought me to do what he couldn’t do himself; I’ll show him I can drive. But no! in spite of all his efforts, the cattle would not be driven. He grew warm, and set himself to the work. In a quarter of an hour his horse was in a lather, and his whip had flayed one or two of the bullocks, but there they stood again with necks outstretched towards the creek, lowing piteously. He could not understand it. Reluctantly he made up his mind to acquaint the Elder with the inexplicable fact. He had gone some two hundred yards when his tired horse stumbled. Holding him up, Bancroft saw he had tripped over a mound of white dust. A thought struck him. He threw himself off the horse, and tasted the stuff; he was right; it was salt! No wonder he could not drive the cattle; no wonder they lowed as if in pain—the ground had been salted.

He remounted and hastened to the corral. He found the Elder sitting on his horse by the shoot, the bars of which were down.

“I can’t move those cattle!”

“You said you knew how to drive.”

“I do, but they are mad with thirst; no one can do anything with them. Besides, in this sun they might die on the road.”

“Hum.”

“Let them drink; they’ll go on afterwards.”

“Hum.” And the Elder remained for some moments silent. Then he said, as if thinking aloud: “It’s eight miles to Eureka; they’ll be thirsty again before they get to the town.”

Bancroft, too, had had his wits at work, and now answered the other’s thought. “I guess so; if they’re allowed just a mouthful or two they can be driven, and long before they reach Eureka they’ll be as thirsty as ever.”

Without a word in reply the Elder turned his horse and started off at a lope. In ten minutes the two men had taken down the snake fence for a distance of some fifty yards, and the cattle had rushed through the gap and were drinking greedily.

After they had had a deep draught or two, Bancroft urged his horse into the stream and began to drive them up the bank. They went easily enough now, and ahead of them rode the Elder, his long whitey-brown holland coat fluttering behind him. In half an hour Bancroft had got the herd into the corral. The Elder counted the three hundred and sixty-two beasts with painstaking carefulness as they filed by.

The prairie-track to Eureka led along the creek, and in places ran close to it without any intervening fence. In an hour under that hot October sun the cattle had again become thirsty, and it needed all Bancroft’s energy and courage to keep them from dashing into the water. Once or twice indeed it was a toss-up whether or not they would rush over him. He was nearly exhausted when some four hours after the start they came in sight of the little town. Here he let the herd into the creek. Glad of the rest, he sat on his panting horse and wiped the perspiration from his face. After the cattle had drunk their fill, he moved them quietly along the road, while the water dripped from their mouths and bodies. At the scales the Elder met the would-be purchaser, who as soon as he caught sight of the stock burst into a laugh.

“Say, Conklin,” he cried out, “I guess you’ve given them cattle enough to drink, but I don’t buy water for meat. No, sir; you bet, I don’t.”

“I didn’t allow you would,” replied the Elder gravely; “but the track was long and hot; so they drank in the crik.”

“Wall,” resumed the dealer, half disarmed by this confession, which served the Elder’s purpose better than any denial could have done, “I guess you’ll take off fifty pound a head for that water.”

“I guess not,” was the answer. “Twenty pound of water’s reckoned to be about as much as a kyow kin drink.”

The trading began and continued to Bancroft’s annoyance for more than half an hour. At last it was settled that thirty pounds’ weight should be allowed on each beast for the water it had drunk. When this conclusion had been arrived at, it took but a few minutes to weigh the animals and pay the price agreed upon.

The Elder now declared himself ready to go “to hum” and get somethin’ to eat. In sullen silence Bancroft remounted, and side by side they rode slowly towards the farm. The schoolmaster’s feelings may easily be imagined. He had been disgusted by the cunning and hypocrisy of the trick, and the complacent expression of the Elder’s countenance irritated him intensely. As he passed place after place where the cattle had given him most trouble in the morning, anger took possession of him, and at length forced itself to speech.

“See here, Elder Conklin!” he began abruptly, “I suppose you call yourself a Christian. You look down on me because I’m not a Member. Yet, first of all, you salt cattle for days till they’re half mad with thirst, then after torturing them by driving them for hours along this road side by side with water, you act lies with the man you’ve sold them to, and end up by cheating him. You know as well as I do that each of those steers had drunk sixty-five pounds’ weight of water at least; so you got” (he couldn’t use the word “stole” even in his anger, while the Elder was looking at him) “more than a dollar a head too much. That’s the kind of Christianity you practise. I don’t like such Christians, and I’ll leave your house as soon as I can. I am ashamed that I didn’t tell the dealer you were deceiving him. I feel as if I had been a party to the cheat.”

While the young man was speaking the Elder looked