War Comes to the Big Bend Read online

  Lenore returned his greeting and asked if her father intended to go anywhere.

  “No. I’m taking telegrams to Huntonville.”

  “Telegrams? What’s the matter with the phone?” she queried.

  “Wire was cut yesterday.”

  “By IWW men?”

  “So your father says. I don’t know.”

  “Something ought to be done to those men,” said Lenore severely.

  Nash was a dark-browed, heavy-jawed young man, with light eyes and hair. He appeared to be intelligent and had some breeding, but his manner when alone with Lenore—he had driven her to town several times—was not the same as when her father was present. Lenore had not bothered her mind about it. But today the look in his eye was offensive to her.

  “Between you and me, Lenore, I’ve sympathy for these poor devils,” he said.

  Lenore drew back rather haughtily at this familiar use of her first name. “It doesn’t concern me,” she said coldly, and turned away.

  “Won’t you ride along with me? I’m driving around for the mail!” he called after her.

  “No,” returned Lenore shortly, and hurried on out of earshot. The impertinence of the fellow!

  “’Mawnin’, Miss Lenore,” drawled a cheery voice. The voice and the jingle of spurs behind her told Lenore of the presence of the best liked of all her father’s men.

  “Good Morning, Jake. Where’s my dad?”

  “Wal, he’s with Adams, an’ I wouldn’t be Adams for no money,” replied the cowboy.

  “Neither would I,” laughed Lenore.

  “Reckon ya ain’t ridin’ this mawnin’. You sure look powerful fine, Miss Lenore, but you can’t ride in that dress.”

  “Jake, nothing but an aeroplane would satisfy me today.”

  “Want to fly, hey? Wal, excuse me from them birds. I seen one, an’ that’s enough for me . . . An’ changin’ the subject, Miss Lenore, beggin’ your pardon . . . you ain’t ridin’ in the car much these days.”

  “No, Jake, I’m not,” she replied, and looked at the cowboy. She would have trusted Jake as she would her brother Jim. And now he looked earnest.

  “Wal, I’m sure glad. I heerd Nash call an’ ask ya to go with him. I seen his eyes when he said it . . . Sure I know you’d never look at the likes of him. But I want to tell you . . . he ain’t no good. I’ve been watchin’ him. Your dad’s orders. He’s mixed up with the IWWs. But that ain’t what I mean. It’s . . . he’s . . . I . . .”

  “Thank you, Jake,” replied Lenore as the cowboy floundered. “I appreciate your thought of me. But you needn’t worry.”

  “I was worryin’ a little,” he said. “You see, I know men better’n your dad, an’ I reckon this Nash would do anythin’ . . .”

  “What’s Father keeping him for?”

  “Wal, Anderson wants to find out a lot about that IWW an’ he ain’t above takin’ risks to do it, either.”

  The stable boys and men Lenore passed all had an eager good morning for her. She often boasted to her father that she could run Many Waters as well as he. Sometimes there were difficulties that Lenore had no little part in smoothing over. The barns and corrals were familiar places to her and she insisted upon petting every horse, in some instances to Jake’s manifest concern.

  “Some of them horses are bad,” he insisted.

  “To be sure they are . . . when wicked cowboys cuff and kick them,” replied Lenore, laughing.

  “Wal, if I’m wicked, I’m a-goin’ to war,” said Jake reflectively. “Them Germans bother me.”

  “But, Jake, you don’t come in the draft age, do you?”

  “Jest how old do you think I am?”

  “Sometimes about fourteen, Jake.”

  “Much obliged. Wal, the fact is I’m overage, but I’ll gamble I can pack a gun and shoot as straight an’ eat as much as any young feller.”

  “I’ll bet so, too, Jake. But I hope you won’t go. We absolutely could not run this ranch without you.”

  “Sure I knew that. Wal then, I reckon I’ll hang around till you’re married, Miss Lenore,” he drawled.

  Again the scarlet mantled Lenore’s cheeks. “Good. We’ll have many harvests then, Jake, and many rides,” she replied.

  “Aw, I don’t know . . .” he began.

  But Lenore ran away so that she could hear no more.

  What’s the matter with me that people . . . that Jake should . . .? she thought, and ended with a hand on each soft, hot cheek. There was something different about her, that seemed certain. And if her eyes were as bright as the day, with its deep blue and white clouds and shining green and golden fields, then anyone might think what he liked and have proof for his tormenting.

  But married! I? Not much. Do I want a husband away getting shot?

  The path Lenore trod so lightly led along a great peach and apple orchard where the trees were set far apart and the soil was cultivated so that not a weed or a blade of grass showed. The fragrance of fruit in the air, however, did not come from this orchard, for the trees were young and the reddening fruit rare. Down the wide aisles she saw the thick and abundant green of the older orchards.

  At length Lenore reached the alfalfa fields, and here among the mounds of newly cut hay that smelled so fresh and sweet she wanted to roll, and she had to run. Two great wagons with four horses each were being loaded. Lenore knew all the workmen except one. Silas Warner, an old, gray-headed farmer, had been with her father as long as she could remember.

  “Whar you goin’, lass?” he called as he halted to wipe his red face with a huge bandanna. “It’s too hot to run the way you’re a-doin’.”

  “Oh, Silas, it’s a grand morning,” she replied.

  “Why so ’tis. Pitchin’ hay hyar made me think it was hot,” he said as she tripped on. “Now, lass, don’t go up to the wheat fields.”

  Lenore heard heedlessly, and she ran on until she came to the uncut alfalfa that impeded her progress. A wonderful space of green and purple stretched away before her, and into it she waded. It came up to her knees, rich, thick, soft, and redolent of blossom and ripeness. Hard tramping it soon got to be. She grew hot and breathless, and her legs ached from the force expended in making progress through the tangled hay. At last she was almost across the field, far from the cutters, and here she flung herself, to roll and lie flat, and gaze up through the deep azure of sky, wonderingly, as if to penetrate its secret. And then she hid her face in the fragrant thickness that seemed to force a whisper from her.

  I wonder . . . how will I feel . . . when I see him . . . again . . . Oh, I wonder, she thought to herself.

  The words whispered to herself, the question, the inevitableness of something involuntary, proved traitors to her happy dreams, her assurance, her composure. She tried to burrow under the hay, to hide from that tremendous bright blue eye, the sky. Suddenly she lay very quiet, feeling the strange glow and throb and race of her blood, sensing the mystery of her body, trying to trace the thrills, to control this queer, tremulous, internal state. But she found she could not think clearly; she could only feel. And she gave up trying. It was sweet to feel.

  She rose and went on. Another field lay beyond, a gradual slope, covered with a new growth of alfalfa. It was a light green—a contrast to the rich darkness of that behind her. At the end of this field ran a swift little brook, clear and musical, open to the sky in places, and in others hidden under flowery banks. Birds sang from invisible coverts; a quail sent up clear flute-like notes, and a lark caroled, seemingly out of the sky.

  Lenore wet her feet crossing the brook, and, climbing the little knoll above, she sat down upon a stone to dry them in the sun. It had a burn that felt good. No matter how hot the sun ever got there, she liked it. Always there seemed air to breathe and the shade was pleasant.

  The brook murmured below her, and the birds sang. She heard the bees humming by. The air out here was clear of scent of fruit and hay, and it bore a drier odor, not so sweet. She could see the workmen, first those among
the alfalfa, and then the men, and women, too, bending over in the vegetable garden. Likewise she could see the gleam of peaches, apples, pears, and plums, a colorful and mixed gleam, delightful to the eye.

  Wet or dry, it seemed that her feet refused to stay still, and once again she was wandering. A gray slate-colored field of oats invited her steps, and across this stretch she saw a long yellow slope of barley, where the men were cutting. Beyond waved the golden fields of wheat. Lenore imagined that when she reached them she would not desire to wander farther.

  There were two machines cutting on the barley slope, one drawn by eight horses, and the other by twelve. When Lenore had crossed the oat field, she discovered a number of strange men lounging in the scant shade of a line of low trees that separated the fields. Here she saw Adams, the foreman, and he espied her at the same moment. He had been sitting down, talking to the men. At once he rose to come toward Lenore.

  “Is your father with you?” he asked.”

  “No, he’s too slow for me,” replied Lenore. “Who are these men?”

  “They’re strangers looking for jobs.”

  “IWW men?” queried Lenore, in lower voice.

  “Surely must be,” he replied. Adams was not a young, not a robust man, and he seemed to carry a burden of worry. “Your father said he would come right out.”

  “I hope he doesn’t,” said Lenore bluntly. “Father has a way with him, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. And it’s the way we’re needing here in the valley,” replied the foreman significantly.

  “Is that the new harvester-thresher Father just bought?” asked Lenore, pointing to a huge machine, shining and creeping behind the twelve horses.

  “Yes, that’s the McCormack and it’s a dandy,” returned Adams. “With machines like that we can get along without the IWW.”

  “I want to ride on it,” declared Lenore, and she ran along to meet the harvester. She waved her hand to the driver, Bill Jones, another old hand, long employed by her father. Bill hauled back on the many-branched reins, and, when the horses stopped, the clattering, shirring roar of the machine also stopped.

  “Howdy, miss. Reckon this’s a regular IWW hold-up.”

  “Worse than that, Bill,” gaily replied Lenore as she mounted the platform where another man sat on a bag of barley. Lenore did not recognize him. He looked rugged and honest, and beamed upon her.

  “Watch out for yer dress,” he said, pointing with grimy hand to the dusty wheels and braces so near her.

  “Let me drive, Bill?” she asked.

  “Wal now, I wisht I could,” he replied dryly. “You sure can drive, miss. But ya know drivin’ ain’t all this here job.”

  “What can’t I do? I’ll bet you . . .”

  “I never seen a girl that could throw anythin’ straight. Did you?”

  “Well, not so very. I forgot how you drove the horses . . . Go ahead. Don’t let me delay the harvest.”

  Bill called sonorously to his twelve horses, and, as they bent and strained and began to bob their heads, the clattering roar filled the air. Also, a cloud of dust and thin flying stream of chaff enveloped Lenore. The high stalks of barley, in wide sheets, fell before the cutter upon an apron, to be carried by feeders into the body of the machine. The straw, denuded of its grain, came out at the rear to be dropped while the grain came streaming out of a tube on the side next to Lenore to fall into an open sack. It made a short shift of harvesting.

  Lenore liked the even, nodding rhythm of the plodding horses, and the way Bill threw a pebble from a sack on his seat, to hit this or that horse not keeping in line or pulling his share. Bill’s aim was unerring. He never hit the wrong horse, which would have been the case had he used a whip. The grain came out in so tiny a stream that Lenore wondered how a bag was ever filled. But she saw presently that even a tiny stream, if running steadily, soon made bulk. That was proof of the value of small things, even atoms.

  No marvel was it that Bill and his helper were as grimy as stokers of a furnace. Lenore began to choke with the fine dust and to feel her eyes smart and to see it settle on her hands and dress. She then had appreciation of the nature of a ten-hour day for workmen cutting eighteen acres of barley. How would they ever cut the two thousand acres of wheat? No wonder many men were needed. Lenore sympathized with the operators of that harvester-thresher, but she did not like the dirt. If she had been a man, though, that labor, hard as it was, would have appealed to her. Harvesting the grain was beautiful, whether in the old, slow method of threshing or with one of these modern man-saving machines.

  She jumped off, and the big, ponderous thing, almost gifted with intelligence, it seemed to Lenore, rolled on with its whirring roar, drawing its cloud of dust, and leaving behind a litter of straw.

  It developed then that Adams had walked along with the machine, and he now addressed her. “Will you be staying here till your father comes?” he asked.

  “No, Mister Adams. Why do you ask?”

  “You oughtn’t come out here alone or go back alone. . . All these strange men. Some of them hard customers. You’ll excuse me, miss, but this harvest is not like other harvests.”

  “I’ll wait for my father and I’ll not go out of sight,” replied Lenore. Thanking the foreman for his thoughtfulness, she walked away, and soon she stood at the edge of the first wheat field.

  The grain was not yet ripe, but near at hand it was a pale gold. The wind, out of the west, waved and swept the wheat, while the almost imperceptible shadows followed.

  A road half overgrown with grass and goldenrod bordered the wheat field, and it wound away down toward the house. Her father appeared mounted on the white horse he always rode. Lenore sat down in the grass to wait for him. Nodding stalks of goldenrod leaned to her face. When looked at closely, how truly gold their color. Yet it was not such a gold as that of the rich blaze of ripe wheat. She was admitting to her consciousness a jealousy of anything comparable to wheat. And suddenly she confessed that her natural love for it had been augmented by a subtle growing sentiment. Not sentiment about the war or the need of the Allies or meaning of the staff of life. She had sensed young Dorn’s passion for wheat and it had made a difference to her.

  “No use lying to myself,” she soliloquized. “I think of him . . . I can’t help it . . . I ran out here, wild, restless, unable to reason . . . just because I’d decided to see him again . . . to make sure I . . . I really didn’t care . . . How furious . . . how ridiculous I’ll feel . . . when . . . when . . .”

  Lenore did not complete her thoughts, because she was not sure. Nothing could be any truer than the fact that she had no idea how she would feel. She began sensitively to distrust herself. She who had always been so sure of motives, so contented with things as they were, had been struck by an absurd fancy that haunted because it was fiercely repudiated and scorned, that would give her no rest until it was proven false. But suppose it were true.

  A succeeding blankness of mind awoke to the clip-clop of hoofs and her father’s cheery halloo.

  Anderson dismounted, and, throwing his bridle, he sat down heavily beside her. “You can ride back home,” he said. Lenore knew she had been reproved for her wandering out there, and she made a motion to rise. His big hand held her down. “No hurry, now I’m here. Grand day, ain’t it? An’ I see the barley’s goin’. Them sacks look good to me.”

  Lenore waited with some perturbation. She had a guilty conscience and she feared he meant to quiz her about her sudden change of front regarding the Big Bend trip. So she could not look up and she could not say a word.

  “Jake says that Nash has been tryin’ to make up to you. Any sense in what he says?” asked her father bluntly.

  “Why, hardly. Oh, I’ve noticed Nash is . . . is rather fresh, as Rose calls it,” replied Lenore, somewhat relieved at this unexpected query.

  “Yes, he’s been makin’ eyes at Rose. She told me,” replied Anderson.

  “Discharge him,” said Lenore forcibly.

  “So I
ought. But let me tell you, Lenore. I’ve been hopin’ to get Nash dead to rights.”

  “What more do you want?” she demanded.

  “I mean regardin’ his relation to the IWW . . . Listen. Here’s the point. Nash has been tracked an’ caught in secret talks with prominent men in this country. Men of foreign blood an’ mebbe foreign sympathies. We’re at the start of big an’ bad times in the good old U.S. No one can tell how bad. Well, you know my position in the Walla Walla Valley. I’m looked to. Reckon this IWW has got me a marked man. I’m packin’ two guns right now. An’ you bet Jake is packin’ the same. We don’t travel far apart any more this summer.”

  Lenore had started shudderingly and her look showed her voiceless fear.

  “You needn’t tell your mother,” he went on more intimately. “I can trust you an’ . . . To come back to Nash. He an’ this Glidden . . . you remember one of those men at Dorn’s house . . . they are usin’ gold. They must have barrels of it. If I could find out where that gold comes from. Probably they don’t know. But I might find out if men here in our own country are hatchin’ plots with the IWW.”

  “Plots! What for?” queried Lenore breathlessly.

  “To destroy my wheat . . . to drive off or bribe the harvest hands, to cripple the crop yield in the Northwest . . . to draw the militia here . . . in short, to harass an’ weaken an’ slow down our government in its preparation against Germany.”

  “Why, that is terrible,” declared Lenore.

  “I’ve a hunch from Jake . . . there’s a whisper of a plot to put me out of the way,” said Anderson darkly.

  “Oh . . . good heavens! You don’t mean it!” cried Lenore distractedly.

  “Sure I do. But that’s no way for Anderson’s daughter to take it. Our women have got to fight, too. We’ve all got to meet these German hired devils with their own weapons. Now, lass, you know you’ll get these wheat lands of mine someday. It’s in my will. That’s because you, like your dad, always loved the wheat. You’d fight, wouldn’t you, to save your grain for our soldiers . . . bread for your own brother Jim . . . an’ for your own land?”