A Son of the Middle Border

One by one the women put their worn, ungraceful arms about her, kissed her with trembling lips, and went away in silent grief. The scene became too painful for me at last, and I fled away from it – out into the fields, bitterly asking, "Why should this suffering be? Why should mother be wrenched from all her dearest friends and forced to move away to a strange land?"

I did not see the actual packing up and moving of the household goods, for I had determined to set forth in advance and independently, eager to be my own master, and at the moment I did not feel in the least like pioneering.

Some two years before, when the failure of our crop had made the matter of my continuing at school an issue between my father and myself, I had said, "If you will send me to school until I graduate, I will ask nothing further of you," and these words I now took a stern pleasure in upholding. Without a dollar of my own, I announced my intention to fare forth into the world on the strength of my two hands, but my father, who was in reality a most affectionate parent, offered me thirty dollars to pay my carfare.

This I accepted, feeling that I had abundantly earned this money, and after a sad parting with my mother and my little sister, set out one September morning for Osage. At the moment I was oppressed with the thought that this was the fork in the trail, that my family and I had started on differing roads. I had become a man. With all the ways of the world before me I suffered from a feeling of doubt. The open gate allured me, but the homely scenes I was leaving suddenly put forth a latent magic.

I knew every foot of this farm. I had traversed it scores of times in every direction, following the plow, the harrow, or the seeder. With a great lumber wagon at my side I had husked corn from every acre of it, and now I was leaving it with no intention of returning. My action, like that of my father, was final. As I looked back up the lane at the tall Lombardy poplar trees bent like sabres in the warm western wind, the landscape I was leaving seemed suddenly very beautiful, and the old home very peaceful and very desirable. Nevertheless I went on.

Try as I may, I cannot bring back out of the darkness of that night any memory of how I spent the time. I must have called upon some of my classmates, but I cannot lay hold upon a single word or look or phrase from any of them. Deeply as I felt my distinction in thus riding forth into the world, all the tender incidents of farewell are lost to me. Perhaps my boyish self-absorption prevented me from recording outside impressions, for the idea of travelling, of crossing the State line, profoundly engaged me. Up to this time, notwithstanding all my dreams of conquest in far countries, I had never ridden in a railway coach! Can you wonder therefore that I trembled with joyous excitement as I paced the platform next morning waiting for the chariot of my romance? The fact that it was a decayed little coach at the end of a "mixed accommodation train" on a stub road did not matter. I was ecstatic.

However, I was well dressed, and my inexperience appeared only in a certain tense watchfulness. I closely observed what went on around me and was careful to do nothing which could be misconstrued as ignorance. Thrilling with excitement, feeling the mighty significance of my departure, I entered quietly and took my seat, while the train roared on through Mitchell and St. Ansgar, the little towns in which I had played my part as an actor, – on into distant climes and marvellous cities. My emotion was all very boyish, but very natural as I look back upon it.

The town in which I spent my first night abroad should have been called Thebes or Athens or Palmyra; but it was not. On the contrary, it was named Ramsey, after an old pioneer, and no one but a youth of fervid imagination at the close of his first day of adventure in the world would have found it worth a second glance. To me it was both beautiful and inspiring, for the reason that it was new territory and because it was the home of Alice, my most brilliant school mate, and while I had in mind some notion of a conference with the county superintendent of schools, my real reason for stopping off was a desire to see this girl whom I greatly admired.

I smile as I recall the feeling of pride with which I stepped into the 'bus and started for the Grand Central Hotel. And yet, after all, values are relative. That boy had something which I have lost. I would give much of my present knowledge of the world for the keen savor of life which filled my nostrils at that time.

The sound of a violin is mingled with my memories of Ramsey, and the talk of a group of rough men around the bar-room stove is full of savage charm. A tall, pale man, with long hair and big black eyes, one who impressed me as being a man of refinement and culture, reduced by drink to poverty and to rebellious bitterness of soul, stands out in powerful relief – a tragic and moving figure.

Here, too, I heard my first splendid singer. A patent medicine cart was in the street and one of its troupe, a basso, sang Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep with such art that I listened with delight. His lion-like pose, his mighty voice, his studied phrasing, revealed to me higher qualities of musical art than I had hitherto known.

From this singer, I went directly to Alice's home. I must have appeared singularly exalted as I faced her. The entire family was in the sitting room as I entered – but after a few kindly inquiries concerning my people and some general remarks they each and all slipped away, leaving me alone with the girl – in the good old-fashioned American way.

It would seem that in this farewell call I was permitting myself an exaggeration of what had been to Alice only a pleasant association, for she greeted me composedly and waited for me to justify my presence.

After a few moments of explanation, I suggested that we go out and hear the singing of the "troupe." To this she consented, and rose quietly – she never did anything hurriedly or with girlish alertness – and put on her hat. Although so young, she had the dignity of a woman, and her face, pale as a silver moon, was calm and sweet, only her big gray eyes expressed the maiden mystery. She read my adoration and was a little afraid of it.

As we walked, I spoke of the good days at "the Sem," of our classmates, and their future, and this led me to the announcement of my own plans. "I shall teach," I said. "I hope to be able to work into a professorship in literature some day. – What do you intend to do?"

"I shall go on with my studies for a while," she replied. "I may go to some eastern college for a few years."

"You must not become too learned," I urged. "You'll forget me."

She did not protest this as a coquette might have done. On the contrary, she remained silent, and I was aware that while she liked and respected me, she was not profoundly moved by this farewell call. Nevertheless I hoped, and in that hope I repeated, "You will write to me, won't you?"

"Of course!" she replied, and again I experienced a chilling perception that her words arose from friendliness rather than from tenderness, but I was glad of even this restrained promise, and I added, "I shall write often, for I shall be lonely – for a while."

As I walked on, the girl's soft warm arm in mine, a feeling of uncertainty, of disquiet, took possession of me. "Success" seemed a long way off and the road to it long and hard. However, I said nothing further concerning my doubts.

The street that night had all the enchantment of Granada to me. The girl's voice rippled with a music like that of the fountain Lindarazza, and when I caught glimpses of her sweet, serious face beneath her hat-rim, I dreaded our parting. The nearer to her gate we drew the more tremulous my voice became, and the more uncertain my step.

At last on the door-step she turned and said, "Won't you come in again?"

In her tone was friendly dismissal, but I would not have it so. "You will write to me, won't you?" I pleaded with choking utterance.

She was moved (by pity perhaps).

"Why, yes, with pleasure," she answered. "Good-bye, I hope you'll succeed. I'm sure you will."

She extended her hand and I, recalling the instructions of my most romantic fiction, raised it to my lips. "Good-bye!" I huskily said, and turned away.

My next night was spent in Faribault. Here I touched storied ground, for near this town Edward Eggleston had laid the scene of his novel, The Mystery of Metropolisville and my imagination responded to the magic which lay in the influence of the man of letters. I wrote to Alice a long and impassioned account of my sensations as I stood beside the Cannonball River.

My search for a school proving futile, I pushed on to the town of Farmington, where the Dakota branch of the Milwaukee railroad crossed my line of march. Here I felt to its full the compelling power of the swift stream of immigration surging to the west. The little village had doubled in size almost in a day. It was a junction point, a place of transfer, and its thin-walled unpainted pine hotels were packed with men, women and children laden with bags and bundles (all bound for the west) and the joyous excitement of these adventurers compelled me to change my plan. I decided to try some of the newer counties in western Minnesota. Romance was still in the West for me.

I slept that night on the floor in company with four or five young Iowa farmers, and the smell of clean white shavings, the wailing of tired children, the excited muttering of fathers, the plaintive voices of mothers, came through the partitions at intervals, producing in my mind an effect which will never pass away. It seemed to me at the moment as if all America were in process of change, all hurrying to overtake the vanishing line of the middle border, and the women at least were secretly or openly doubtful of the outcome. Woman is not by nature an explorer. She is the home-lover.

Early the next morning I bought a ticket for Aberdeen, and entered the train crammed with movers who had found the "prairie schooner" all too slow. The epoch of the canvas-covered wagon had passed. The era of the locomotive, the day of the chartered car, had arrived. Free land was receding at railroad speed, the borderline could be overtaken only by steam, and every man was in haste to arrive.

All that day we rumbled and rattled into a strange country, feeding our little engine with logs of wood, which we stopped occasionally to secure from long ricks which lined the banks of the river. At Chaska, at Granite Falls, I stepped off, but did not succeed in finding employment. It is probable that being filled with the desire of exploration I only half-heartedly sought for work; at any rate, on the third day, I found myself far out upon the unbroken plain where only the hairlike buffalo grass grew – beyond trees, beyond the plow, but not beyond settlement, for here at the end of my third day's ride at Millbank, I found a hamlet six months old, and the flock of shining yellow pine shanties strewn upon the sod, gave me an illogical delight, but then I was twenty-one – and it was sunset in the Land of the Dakotas!

All around me that night the talk was all of land, land! Nearly every man I met was bound for the "Jim River valley," and each voice was aquiver with hope, each eye alight with anticipation of certain success. Even the women had begun to catch something of this enthusiasm, for the night was very beautiful and the next day promised fair.

Again I slept on a cot in a room of rough pine, slept dreamlessly, and was out early enough to witness the coming of dawn, – a wonderful moment that sunrise was to me. Again, as eleven years before, I felt myself a part of the new world, a world fresh from the hand of God. To the east nothing could be seen but a vague expanse of yellow plain, misty purple in its hollows, but to the west rose a long low wall of hills, the Eastern Coteaux, up which a red line of prairie fire was slowly creeping.

It was middle September. The air, magnificently crisp and clear, filled me with desire of exploration, with vague resolution to do and dare. The sound of horses and mules calling for their feed, the clatter of hammers and the rasping of saws gave evidence of eager builders, of alert adventurers, and I was hotly impatient to get forward.

At eight o'clock the engine drew out, pulling after it a dozen box-cars laden with stock and household goods, and on the roof of a freight caboose, together with several other young Jasons, I rode, bound for the valley of the James.

It was a marvellous adventure. All the morning we rattled and rumbled along, our engine snorting with effort, struggling with a load almost too great for its strength. By noon we were up amid the rounded grassy hills of the Sisseton Reservation where only the coyote ranged and the Sioux made residence.

Here we caught our first glimpse of the James River valley, which seemed to us at the moment as illimitable as the ocean and as level as a floor, and then pitching and tossing over the rough track, with our cars leaping and twisting like a herd of frightened buffaloes, we charged down the western slope, down into a level land of ripened grass, where blackbirds chattered in the willows, and prairie chickens called from the tall rushes which grew beside the sluggish streams.

Aberdeen was the end of the line, and when we came into it that night it seemed a near neighbor to Sitting Bull and the bison. And so, indeed, it was, for a buffalo bull had been hunted across its site less than a year before.

It was twelve miles from here to where my father had set his stakes for his new home, hence I must have stayed all night in some small hotel, but that experience has also faded from my mind. I remember only my walk across the dead-level plain next day. For the first time I set foot upon a landscape without a tree to break its sere expanse – and I was at once intensely interested in a long flock of gulls, apparently rolling along the sod, busily gathering their morning meal of frosted locusts. The ones left behind kept flying over the ones in front so that a ceaseless change of leadership took place.

There was beauty in this plain, delicate beauty and a weird charm, despite its lack of undulation. Its lonely unplowed sweep gave me the satisfying sensation of being at last among the men who held the outposts, – sentinels for the marching millions who were approaching from the east. For two hours I walked, seeing Aberdeen fade to a series of wavering, grotesque notches on the southern horizon line, while to the north an equally irregular and insubstantial line of shadows gradually took on weight and color until it became the village in which my father was at this very moment busy in founding his new home.

My experienced eyes saw the deep, rich soil, and my youthful imagination looking into the future, supplied the trees and vines and flowers which were to make this land a garden.

I was converted. I had no doubts. It seemed at the moment that my father had acted wisely in leaving his Iowa farm in order to claim his share of Uncle Sam's rapidly-lessening unclaimed land.

CHAPTER XXI

The Grasshopper and the Ant

Without a doubt this trip, so illogical and so recklessly extravagant, was due entirely to a boy's thirst for adventure. Color it as I may, the fact of my truancy remains. I longed to explore. The valley of the James allured me, and though my ticket and my meals along the route had used up my last dollar, I felt amply repaid as I trod this new earth and confronted this new sky – for both earth and sky were to my perception subtly different from those of Iowa and Minnesota.

The endless stretches of short, dry grass, the gorgeous colors of the dawn, the marvellous, shifting, phantom lakes and headlands, the violet sunset afterglow, – all were widely different from our old home, and the far, bare hills were delightfully suggestive of the horseman, the Indian and the buffalo. The village itself was hardly more than a summer camp, and yet its hearty, boastful citizens talked almost deliriously of "corner lots" and "boulevards," and their chantings were timed to the sound of hammers. The spirit of the builder seized me and so with my return ticket in my pocket, I joined the carpenters at work on my father's claim some two miles from the village with intent to earn money for further exploration.

Grandfather Garland had also taken a claim (although he heartily disliked the country) and in order to provide for both families a double house was being built across the line between the two farms. I helped shingle the roof, and being twenty-one now, and my own master, I accepted wages from my father without a qualm. I earned every cent of my two dollars per day, I assure you, but I carefully omitted all reference to shingling, in my letters to my classmates.

At the end of a fortnight with my pay in my pocket I started eastward on a trip which I fully intended to make very long and profoundly educational. That I was green, very green, I knew but all that could be changed by travel.

At the end of my second day's journey, I reached Hastings, a small town on the Mississippi river, and from there decided to go by water to Redwing some thirty miles below. All my life I had longed to ride on a Mississippi steamboat, and now, as I waited on the wharf at the very instant of the fulfillment of my desire, I expanded with anticipatory satisfaction.

The arrival of the War Eagle from St. Paul carried a fine foreign significance, and I ascended its gang-plank with the air of a traveller embarking at Cairo for Assouan. Once aboard the vessel I mingled, aloofly, with the passengers, absorbed in study of the river winding down among its wooded hills.

This ecstasy lasted during the entire trip – indeed it almost took on poetic form as the vessel approached the landing at Redwing, for at this point the legendary appeal made itself felt. This lovely valley had once been the home of a chieftain, and his body, together with that of his favorite warhorse, was buried on the summit of a hill which overlooks the river, "in order" (so runs the legend) "that the chief might see the first faint glow of the resurrection morn and ride to meet it."

In truth Redwing was a quiet, excessively practical little town, quite commonplace to every other passenger, except myself. My excited imagination translated it into something very distinctive and far-off and shining.

I took lodgings that night at a very exclusive boarding house at six dollars per week, reckless of the effect on my very slender purse. For a few days I permitted myself to wander and to dream. I have disturbing recollections of writing my friends from this little town, letters wherein I rhapsodized on the beauty of the scenery in terms which I would not now use in describing the Grand Canyon, or in picturing the peaks of Wyoming. After all I was right. A landscape is precisely as great as the impression it makes upon the perceiving mind. I was a traveller at last! – that seemed to be my chiefest joy and I extracted from each day all the ecstasy it contained.

My avowed object was to obtain a school and I did not entirely neglect my plans but application to the county superintendent came to nothing. I fear I was half-hearted in my campaign.

At last, at the beginning of the week and at the end of my money, I bought passage to Wabasha and from there took train to a small town where some of my mother's cousins lived. I had been in correspondence with one of them, a Mrs. Harris, and I landed at her door (after a glorious ride up through the hills, amid the most gorgeous autumn colors) with just three cents in my pocket – a poverty which you may be sure I did not publish to my relations who treated me with high respect and manifested keen interest in all my plans.

As nothing offered in the township round about the Harris home, I started one Saturday morning to walk to a little cross-roads village some twenty miles away, in which I was told a teacher was required. My cousins, not knowing that I was penniless, supposed, of course, that I would go by train, and I was too proud to tell them the truth. It was very muddy, and when I reached the home of the committeeman his mid-day meal was over, and his wife did not ask if I had dined – although she was quick to tell me that the teacher had just been hired.

Without a cent in my pocket, I could not ask for food – therefore, I turned back weary, hungry and disheartened. To make matters worse a cold rain was falling and the eighteen or twenty miles between me and the Harris farm looked long.

I think it must have been at this moment that I began, for the first time, to take a really serious view of my plan "to see the world." It became evident with startling abruptness, that a man might be both hungry and cold in the midst of abundance. I recalled the fable of the grasshopper who, having wasted the summer hours in singing, was mendicant to the ant. My weeks of careless gayety were over. The money I had spent in travel looked like a noble fortune to me at this hour.

The road was deep in mud, and as night drew on the rain thickened. At last I said, "I will go into some farm-house and ask the privilege of a bed." This was apparently a simple thing to do and yet I found it exceedingly hard to carry out. To say bluntly, "Sir, I have no money, I am tired and hungry," seemed a baldly disgraceful way of beginning. On the other hand to plead relationship with Will Harris involved a relative, and besides they might not know my cousin, or they might think my statement false.

Arguing in this way I passed house after house while the water dripped from my hat and the mud clogged my feet. Though chilled and hungry to the point of weakness, my suffering was mainly mental. A sudden realization of the natural antagonism of the well-to-do toward the tramp appalled me. Once, as I turned in toward the bright light of a kitchen window, the roar of a watch dog stopped me before I had fairly passed the gate. I turned back with a savage word, hot with resentment at a house-owner who would keep a beast like that. At another cottage I was repulsed by an old woman who sharply said, "We don't feed tramps."

I now had the precise feeling of the penniless outcast. With morbidly active imagination I conceived of myself as a being forever set apart from home and friends, condemned to wander the night alone. I worked on this idea till I achieved a bitter, furtive and ferocious manner.

However, I knocked at another door and upon meeting the eyes of the woman at the threshold, began with formal politeness to explain, "I am a teacher, I have been to look for a school, and I am on my way back to Byron, where I have relatives. Can you keep me all night?"

The woman listened in silence and at length replied with ungracious curtness, "I guess so. Come in."

She gave me a seat by the fire, and when her husband returned from the barn, I explained the situation to him. He was only moderately cordial. "Make yourself at home. I'll be in as soon as I have finished my milking," he said and left me beside the kitchen fire.

The woman of the house, silent, suspicious (it seemed to me) began to spread the table for supper while I, sitting beside the stove, began to suffer with the knowledge that I had, in a certain sense, deceived them. I was fairly well dressed and my voice and manner, as well as the fact that I was seeking a school, had given them, no doubt, the impression that I was able to pay for my entertainment, and the more I thought of this the more uneasy I became. To eat of their food without making an explanation was impossible but the longer I waited the more difficult the explanation grew.

Suffering keenly, absurdly, I sat with hanging head going over and over the problem, trying to formulate an easy way of letting them know my predicament. There was but one way of escape – and I took it. As the woman stepped out of the room for a moment, I rose, seized my hat and rushed out into the rain and darkness like a fugitive.

I have often wondered what those people thought when they found me gone. Perhaps I am the great mystery of their lives, an unexplained visitant from "the night's Plutonian shore."

I plodded on for another mile or two in the darkness, which was now so intense I could scarcely keep the road. Only by the feel of the mud under my feet could I follow the pike. Like Jean Valjean, I possessed a tempest in my brain. I experienced my first touch of despair.