War Comes to the Big Bend Page 4

  “Where’s this man, Glidden?” demanded Kurt. “I’ll give him a piece of my mind.”

  “I reckon he’s hangin’ ’round the farm . . . out of sight . . . somewheres.”

  “All right, Jerry. Now you go back to work. You’ll never lose anything by sticking to us, I promise you that. Keep your eyes and ears open.”

  Kurt strode back to the house, and his entrance to the kitchen evidently interrupted a colloquy of some kind. The hired men were still at table. They looked down at their plates and said nothing. Kurt left the sitting room door open, and, turning, he asked Martha if his father had been to dinner.

  “No, an’ what’s more, when I called, he takes to roarin’ like a mad bull,” replied the woman.

  Kurt crossed the sitting room to knock upon his father’s door. The reply forthcoming did justify the woman’s comparison. It certainly caused the hired men to evacuate the kitchen with alacrity. Old Chris Dorn’s roar at his son was a German roar that did not soothe the young man’s rising temper. Of late his father had taken altogether to speaking German. He had never spoken English well. And Kurt was rapidly approaching the point where he would not speak German. A deadlock was in sight, and Kurt grimly prepared to meet it. He pounded on the locked door.

  “The men are going to lay off!” he called.

  “Who runs this farm?” was the thundered reply.

  “The IWW is going to run it if you sulk indoors as you have done lately!” yelled Kurt. He thought that would fetch his father stamping out, but he had reckoned falsely. No further sound came from the room. Leaving the room in high dudgeon, Kurt hurried out to catch the hired men near at hand and to order them back to work. They trudged off surlily toward the barn.

  Then Kurt went on to search for the IWW men, and, after looking up and down the road and all around, he at length found them behind an old straw stack. They were comfortably sitting down, backs to the straw, eating a substantial lunch. Kurt was angry and did not care. His appearance, however, did not faze the strangers. One of them, an American, was a man of about thirty years, clean-shaven, square-jawed, with light steely secretive gray eyes, and a look of intelligence and assurance that did not harmonize with his motley garb. His companion was a foreigner, small in stature, with eyes like a ferret and deep pits in his sallow face.

  “Do you know you’re trespassing?” demanded Kurt.

  “You grudge us a little shade, eh? Even to eat a bite,” said the American. He wrapped a paper around his lunch and leisurely rose to fasten penetrating eyes upon the young man. “That’s what I heard about you rich farmers of the Big Bend.”

  “What business have you coming here?” queried Kurt with sharp heat. “You sneak out of sight of the farmers. You trespass to get at our men and with a lot of lies and guff you make them discontented with their jobs. I’ll fire these men just for listening to you.”

  “Mister Dorn, we want you to fire them. That’s my business out here,” replied the American.

  “Who are you, anyway?”

  “That’s my business, too.”

  Kurt passed from hot to cold. He could not miss the antagonism of this man, a bold and menacing attitude.

  “My foreman says your name’s Glidden,” went on Kurt, cooler this time. “That you’re talking IWW as if you were one of its leaders . . . that you don’t want a job . . . that you’ve got a wad of money . . . that you coax, then threaten . . . that you’ve intimidated three of our hands.”

  “Your Jerry’s a marked man,” said Glidden shortly.

  “You impudent scoundrel!” exclaimed Kurt. “Now you listen to this. You’re the first IWW man I’ve met. You look and talk like an American. But if you are American, you’re a traitor. We’ve a war to fight . . . war with a powerful country! Germany! And you come spreading discontent in the wheat fields! When wheat means life! Get out of here before I . . .”

  “We’ll mark you, too, Mister Dorn, and your wheat fields,” snapped Glidden.

  With one swift lunge Kurt knocked the man flat, and then leaped to stand over him, watching for a move to draw a weapon. The little foreigner slunk back out of reach.

  “I’ll start a little marking myself,” grimly said Kurt. “Get up!”

  Slowly Glidden moved from elbow to knees, and then to his feet. His cheek was puffing out and his nose was bleeding. The light gray eyes were lurid.

  “That’s for your IWW,” declared Kurt. “The first rule of your IWW is to abolish capital, hey?”

  Kurt had not intended to say that. It slipped out in his fury. But the effect was striking. Glidden gave a violent start and his face turned white. Abruptly he turned away. His companion shuffled after him. Kurt stared at them, thinking the while that, if he had needed any proof of the crookedness of the IWW, he had seen it in Glidden’s guilty face. The man had been suddenly frightened, and surprise, too, had been prominent in his countenance. Then Kurt remembered that Anderson had intimated the secret of the IWW rules and objectives had been long hidden. Kurt, keen and quick in his sensibilities, divined that there was something powerful back of this Glidden’s cunning and assurance. Could it be only the power of a new labor organization? That might well be great, but the idea did not convince Kurt. During a hurried and tremendous preparation by the government for war, any disorder such as menaced the country would be little short of a calamity. It might turn out a fatality. This so-called labor union intended to take advantage of a crisis to further its own ends. Yet even so that fact did not wholly explain Glidden and his subtlety. Some nameless force loomed dark and sinister back of Glidden’s meaning and it was not peril to the wheat lands of the Northwest alone.

  Like a huge dog, Kurt shook himself and launched into action. There was sense and pleasure in muscular activity, and it lessened the habit of worry. Soon he ascertained that only Morgan had returned to work in the fields. Andrew and Jensen were nowhere to be seen. Jansen had left four horses hitched to a harrow. Kurt went out to take up the work thus abandoned.

  It was a long field, and, if he had earned a dollar for every time he had traversed its length, during the last ten years, he would have been a rich man. He could have walked it blindfolded. It was fallow ground, already plowed, disked, rolled, and now the last stage was to harrow it, loosening the soil, conserving the moisture.

  Morgan, far to the other side of this section, had the better of the job, for his harrow was a new machine and he could ride while driving the horses. But Kurt, using an old harrow, had to walk. The four big horses plodded at a gait that made Kurt step out to keep up with them. To keep up, to drive a straight line, to hold back on the reins, was labor for a man. It spoke well for Kurt that he had followed that old harrow hundreds of miles—that he could stand the strain—that he loved both the physical sense and the spiritual meaning of the toil.

  Driving west, he faced a wind laden with dust as dry as powder. At every sheeted cloud, whipping back from the hoofs of the horses and the steel spikes of the harrow, he had to bat his eyes to keep from being blinded. The smell of dust clogged his nostrils. As soon as he began to sweat under the hot sun, the dust caked on his face, itching, stinging, burning. There was dust between his teeth.

  Driving back east was a relief. The wind whipped the dust away from him. And he could catch the fragrance of the newly turned soil. How brown and clean and earthy it looked. Where the harrow had cut and ridged, the soil did not look thirsty and parched. But that which was unharrowed cried out for rain. No cloud in the hot sky, except the yellow clouds of dust.

  On that trip east across the field, which faced the road, Dorn saw pedestrians in twos and threes passing by. Once he was hailed, but made no answer. He would not have been surprised to see a crowd, yet travelers were scarce in that region. Sight of these men, some of them carrying bags and satchels, was disturbing to the young farmer. Where were they going? All appeared outward bound toward the river. They came, of course, from the little towns, the railroads, and the cities. At this season, with harvest time near at hand, it
had been in former years no unusual sight to see strings of laborers passing by. But this year, they came earlier, and in great numbers.

  With the wind in his face, however, Dorn saw nothing save the horses and the brown line ahead and half the time they were wholly obscured in yellow dust. He got to thinking about Lenore Anderson, just pondering that strange steady look of the girl’s eyes, and then he did not mind the dust or heat or distance. Never could he be cheated by his thoughts. And these of her, even the painful ones, gave birth to a comfort that he knew must abide with him henceforth on lonely labors such as this, and then the lonelier watches of a soldier’s duty. She had been curious, aloof, then sympathetic; she had studied his face. She had been an eloquent-eyed listener to his discourse on wheat. But she had not guessed his secret. Not until her last look—strange, deep, potent—had he guessed that secret himself.

  So, with mind both busy and absent, Kurt Dorn harrowed the fallow ground abandoned by his men, and, when the day was done, with the sun setting hot and coppery beyond the dim, dark ranges, he guided the tired horses homeward and plodded back of them, weary and spent.

  He was to learn from Morgan, at the stables, that the old man had discharged both Andrew and Jansen. And Jansen, liberating some newly assimilated poison, had threatened revenge. He would see that any hired men would learn a thing or two, so that they would not sign up with Chris Dorn. In a fury the old man had driven Jansen out into the road.

  Sober and moody, Kurt put the horses away, and, working the dust grime from sun-burned face and hands, he went to his little attic room where he changed his damp and sweaty clothes. Then he went down to supper with mind made up to be lenient and silent with his old and sorely tired father.

  Chris Dorn sat in the light of the kitchen lamps. He was a huge man with a great round bullet-shaped head and a shock of gray hair and bristling grizzled beard. His face was broad, heavy, and seemed sodden with dark brooding thought. His eyes, under bushy brows, were pale gleams of fire. He looked immovable both as to bulk and will.

  Never before had Kurt Dorn so acutely felt the fixed, contrary, ruthless nature of his parent. Never had the distance between them seemed so great. Kurt shivered and sighed at once. Then, being hungry, he fell to eating in silence. Presently the old man shoved his plate back, and, wiping his face, he growled in German: “I discharged Andrew and Jansen.”

  “Yes, I know,” replied Kurt. “It wasn’t good judgment. What’ll we do for hands?”

  “I’ll hire more. Men are coming for the harvest.”

  “But they all belong to the IWW,” protested Kurt.

  “And what’s that?”

  In scarcely subdued wrath Kurt described in detail, and to the best of his knowledge, what the IWW was and he ended by declaring the organization treacherous to the United States.

  “How’s that?” asked old Dorn gruffly.

  Kurt was actually afraid to tell his father, who never read newspapers, who knew little of what was going on, that, if the Allies were to win the war, it was wheat that would be the greatest factor. Instead of that he said if the IWW inaugurated strikes and disorder in the Northwest, it would embarrass the government.

  “Then I’ll hire IWW men,” said old Dorn.

  Kurt battled against a rising temper. This blind old man was his father.

  “But I’ll not have IWW men on the farm,” retorted Kurt. “I just punched one IWW solicitor.”

  “I’ll run this farm. If you don’t like my way, you can leave,” darkly asserted the father.

  Kurt fell back in his chair and stared at the turgid, bulging forehead and hard eyes before him. What could be believed then? Had the war brought out a twist in his father’s brain? Why were Germans so impossible?

  “My heavens, Father, would you turn me out of my home because we disagree?” he asked desperately.

  “In my country sons obey their fathers or they go out for themselves.”

  “I’ve not been a disobedient son,” declared Kurt. “And here in America sons have more freedom . . . more say.”

  “America has no sense of family life . . . no honest government. I hate the country.”

  A ball of fire seemed to burst in Kurt. “That kind of talk infuriates me!” he blazed. “I don’t care if you are my father. Why in the hell did you come to America? Why did you stay? Why did you marry my mother . . . an American woman? That’s rot . . . just spiteful rot! I’ve heard you tell what life was in Europe when you were a boy. You ran off! You stayed in this country because it was a better country than yours . . . Fifty years you’ve been in America . . . forty years on this farm! And you love this land! My God, Father, can’t you and men like you see the truth?”

  “Aye, I can,” gloomily replied the old man. “The truth is we’ll lose the land. That greedy Anderson will drive me off.”

  “He will not. He’s fine . . . generous,” asserted Kurt earnestly. “All he wanted was to see the prospects of harvest, and perhaps to help you. Anderson has not had interest in his money for three years. I’ll bet he’s paid interest demanded by the other stockholders in that bank you borrowed from. Why, he’s our friend.”

  “Aye, and I see more,” boomed the father. “He fetched his lass up here to make eyes at my son. I saw her . . . the sly wench! Boy, you’ll not marry her!”

  Kurt choked back his mounting rage. “Certainly I never will,” he said bitterly. “But I would if she’d have me.”

  “What!” thundered Dorn, his white locks standing up and shaking like the mane of a lion. “That wheat banker’s daughter? Never! I forbid it. You shall not marry any American girl!”

  “Father, this is idle foolish ranting!” cried Kurt with a high warning note in his voice. “I’ve no idea of marrying. But if I had one . . . who else could I marry except an American girl?”

  “I’ll sell the wheat . . . the land. We’ll go back to Germany!”

  That was maddening to Kurt. He sprang up, sending dishes to the floor with a crash. He bent over to pound the table with a fist. Violent speech choked him and he felt a cold tight blanching of his face.

  “Listen!” he rang out. “If I go to Germany, it’ll be as a soldier . . . to kill Germans! I’m done . . . I’m through with the very name . . . Listen to the last words I’ll ever speak in German . . . the last in all my life. To hell with Germany!”

  Then Kurt plunged, blind in his passion, out of the door into the night. And as he went, he heard his father cry out brokenly: “My son! Oh, my son!”

  The night was dark and cool. A faint wind blew across the hills and it was dry, redolent, sweet. The sky seemed an endless curving canopy of dark blue blazing with myriads of stars.

  Kurt staggered out of the yard, down along the edge of a wheat field to one of the straw stacks, and there he flung himself down in an agony.

  “Oh, I’m ruined . . . ruined,” he moaned. “The break . . . has come. Poor old Dad.”

  He leaned there against the straw, shaking and throbbing with a cold perspiration bathing face and body. Even the palms of his hands were wet. A terrible fit of anger was beginning to loose its hold upon him. His breathing was labored in gasps and sobs. Unutterable stupidity of his father—horrible cruelty of his position. What had he ever done in all his life to suffer under such a curse? Yet always he clung to his wrath, for it had been righteous. That thing, that infernal twist in the brain—that was what was wrong with his father. His father who had been sixty years in the United States. How simple then to understand what was wrong with Germany.

  “By God! I am . . . American!” he panted, and it was as if he called to the grave of his mother, over there on the dark windy hill.

  That tremendous uprising of his passion had been a vortex, an end, a decision. And he realized that even to that hour there had been a drag in his blood. It was over now. The hell was done with. His soul was free. This weak, quaking body of his housed his tainted blood and the emotions of his heart, but it could not control his mind, his will. Beat by beat the helpless fury i
n him subsided, and then he fell back and lay still for a long time, eyes shut, relaxed and still.

  A hound bayed mournfully; the insects chirped low incessantly; the night wind rustled the silken heads of wheat.

  After a while the young man sat up and looked at the heavens, at the twinkling white stars, and then away across the shadows of round hills in the dusk. How lonely, sad, intelligible, and yet mystic the night and the scene.

  What came to him then was revealing, uplifting—a source of strength to go on. He was not to blame for what had happened—he could not change the future. He had a choice between playing the part of a man or of a coward, and he had to choose the former. There seemed to be a spirit beside him—the spirit of his mother or of someone who loved him and who would have him be true to an ideal and, if needful, die for it. No night in all his life before had been like this one. The dreaming hills with their precious rustling wheat meant more than even a spirit could tell. Where had the wheat come from that had seeded these fields? Whence the first and original seeds, and where were the sowers? Back in the ages! The stars, the night, the dark blue of heaven had the secret in their impenetrableness. Beyond these surely was the answer, and perhaps peace.

  Material things—life success—such as had inspired Kurt Dorn on this calm night lost their significance and were seen clearly. They could not last. But the wheat out there, the hills, the stars—they would go on with their task. Passion was the dominant side of a man declaring itself, and that was a matter of inheritance. But self-sacrifice with its mercy, its succor, its seed like the wheat, was as infinite as the stars. He had long made up his mind, yet that had not given him absolute restraint. The world was full of little men, but he refused to stay little. This war that had come between him and his father had been bred of the fumes of self-centered minds, turned with an infantile fatality to greedy desires. His poor old blinded father could be excused and forgiven. There were other old men, sick, crippled, idle, who must suffer pain, but whose pain could be lightened. There were babies, children, women who must suffer for the sins of men, but that suffering need no longer be, if only men became honest and true.