4
I turned the horses toward her boarding-place, which was with a new family who had moved in at the head of the slew, near the pond for which poor Rowena was making the day of the prairie fire; and in doing so, set their faces right into the teeth of the gale. It seemed as if it would strip the scalps from our heads, in spite of all our capes and comforters and veils. Virginia pulled the robe up over her head. I had to face the storm and manage my team; but before I had gone forty rods, I saw that I was asking too much of them; and I let them turn to beat off with it. At that moment I really abandoned control, and gave it over to the wind and snow. But I thought myself steering for my own house. I was not much worried; having the confidence of youth and strength. The cutter was low and would not tip over easily. The horses were active and powerful and resolute. We were nested down in the deep box, wrapped in the warmest of robes; and it was not yet so very cold--not that cold which draws down into the lungs; seals the nostrils and mouth; and paralyzes the strength. That cold was coming--coming like an army with banners; but it was not yet here. I was not much worried until I had driven before the wind, beating up as much as I could to the east, without finding my house, or anything in the way of grove or fence to tell me where it was. I now remembered that I had not mounted the hill on which my house stood. In fact, I had missed my farm, and was lost, so far as knowing my locality was concerned: and the wind was growing fiercer and the cold more bitter.
For a moment I quailed inwardly; but I felt Virginia snuggled down by me in what seemed to be perfect trust; and I brushed the snow from my eye-opening and pushed on--hoping that I might by pure accident strike shelter in that wild waste of prairie, and determined to make the fight of my life for it if I failed.
It was getting dusk. The horses were tiring. We plunged through a deep drift under the lee of a knoll; and I stopped a few moments to let them breathe. I knew that stopping was a bad symptom, unless one had a good reason for it--but I gave myself a good reason. I felt Virginia pulling at my sleeve; and I turned back the robes and looked at her. She pulled my ear down to her lips.
"I know you now," she shouted. "It's Teunis!"
I nodded; and she squeezed my arm with her two hands. Give up! Not for all the winds and snows of the whole of the Iowa prairie! I disarranged the robes while I put my arm around her for a moment; while she patted my shoulder. Then, putting tendernesses aside, when they must be indulged in at the expense of snow in the sleigh, I put my horses into it again. A few minutes ago, I gave you the thoughts that ran through my mind as I conjured up the image of one lost in such a storm; but now I thought of nothing--only for a few minutes after that pressure on my arm--but getting on from moment to moment, keeping my sleigh from upsetting, encouraging those brave mares, and peering around for anything that might promise shelter. Virginia has always told of this to the children, when I was not present, to prove that I am brave, even if I am mortal slow; and if just facing danger from minute to minute without looking further, is bravery, I suppose I am--and there is plenty of good courage in the world which is nothing more, look at it how you will.
So far, the cutter and team of which I had robbed Buck Gowdy, had been a benefit to us. They gave us transportation, and the warm sleigh in which to nest down. I began to wonder, now, as it began to grow dark, as the tempest greatened, as my horses disappeared in the smother, and as the frost began to penetrate to our bodies, whether I should not have done better to have stayed in the schoolhouse, and burned up the partitions for fuel; but the thought came too late; though it troubled me much. Two or three times, one of the mares fell in the drifts, and nothing but the courage bred into them in the blue-grass fields of Kentucky saved us from stalling out in that fearful moving flood of wind and frost and snow. Two or three times we narrowly escaped being thrown out into it by the overturn of the sleigh; and then I foresaw a struggle, in which there would be no hope; for in a storm in which a strong man is helpless, how could he expect to come out safe with a weak girl on his hands?
At last, the inevitable happened: the off mare dove into a great drift; the nigh one pulled on: and they came to a staggering halt, one of them was kept from falling partly by her own efforts, and partly by the snow about her legs against which she braced herself. As they stood there, they turned their heads and looked back as if to say that so far as they were concerned, the fight was over. They had done all they could.
I sat a moment thinking. I looked about, and saw, between gusts, that we were almost against a huge straw-pile, where some neighbor had threshed a setting of wheat. This might mean that we were close to a house, or it might not. I handed the lines to Virginia under the robes, got out, and struggled forward to look at my team. Their bloodshot eyes and quivering flanks told me that they could help us no longer; so I unhitched them, so as to keep the cutter as a possible shelter, and turned them loose. They floundered off into the drifts, and left us alone. Cuffed and mauled by the storm, I made a circuit of the stack, and stumbled over the tumbling-rod of the threshing-machine, which was still standing where it had been used. Leaning against the wheel was a shovel, carried for use in setting the separator. This I took with me, with some notion of building a snow-house for us; for I somehow felt that if there was any hope for us, it lay in the shelter of that straw. As I passed the side of the stack, just where the ground was scraped bare by the wind, I saw what seemed to be a hole under and into the great loose pile of dry straw. It looked exactly like one of those burrows which the children used to make in play in such places.
Virginia was safe for the moment, sitting covered up snugly with her hands warmed by the little dog; but the cold was beginning to penetrate the robes. I could leave her for the moment while I investigated the burrow with the shovel. As I gained a little advantage over the snow which was drifted in almost as fast as I could shovel it out, my heart leaped as I found the hole opening out into the middle of the stack; and I plunged in on my hands and knees, found it dry and free from snow within ten feet of the mouth, and after enlarging it by humping up my back under it where the settling had made it too small, I emerged and went to Virginia; whom I took out with her dog, wrapped her in the robes so as to keep them from getting snowy inside, and backing into the burrow, hauled the pile of robes, girl and dog in after me, like a gigantic mouse engaged in saving her young. I think no mouse ever yearned over her treasures in such case more than I did.
And then I went back to get the dinner-basket, which was already buried under the snow which had filled the cutter; for I knew that there was likely to be something left over of one of the bountiful dinners which a farmer's wife puts up for the teacher. Then I went back into the little chamber of straw in which we had found shelter, stopping up the mouth with snow and straw as I went in. I drew a long breath. This was far better than I had dared hope for. There is a warmth generated in such a pile, from the slow fermentation of the straw juices; even when seemingly dry as this was: and far in the middle of the stack, vegetables might have been stored without freezing. The sound of the tempest did not reach us here; it was still as death, and dark as tar. I wondered that Virginia did not say anything; but she kept still because she did not understand where she was, or what I had done with her.
Finally, when she spoke it was to say, "Unwrap me, Teunis! I am smothering with the heat!"
I laughed a long loud laugh. I guess I was almost hysterical. The change was so sudden, so complete. Virginia was actually complaining of the heat!
I unwrapped her carefully, and kissed her. Did ever any peril turn to any one a face so full of clemency and tenderness as this blizzard to me?
"It takes," says she, "a storm to move you to any speed faster than a walk."
The darkness in the burrow was now full of light for me. I made it soft as a mouse-nest, by pulling down the clean straw, and spreading it in the bottom, with the coonskin under her, and the buffalo-robe for a coverlid. There was scarcely room for two there, but we made it do, and found room for the little dog also. There was an inexpressible happiness in our safety from the awful storm, which we knew raged all about our nest; but to be together, and to feel that the things that stood between us had all been swept away at once--even the chaff that fell down our necks only gave us cause for laughter.
"Your coat is all wet!" she exclaimed.
"It was the snow, shoveling the way in," I said. "It's nothing."
But she began right there to take care of me. She made me take off the overcoat, and wrap myself in the blanket. The dampness went out into the dry straw; but when drowsiness came upon us, she would not let me take the chance of getting chilled, but made me wrap myself in the robes with her; and we lay there talking until finally, tired by my labors, I went to sleep with her arms about me, and her lips close to mine; and when I awoke, she was asleep, and I lay there listening to her soft breathing for hours.
We were both hungry when she awoke, and in the total darkness we felt about for the dinner-basket, in which were the dinners of the children of the McConkey family with whom she had boarded, and who had gone home at noon, because the fuel was gone. We ate frozen pie, and frozen boiled eggs, and frozen bread and butter; and then lay talking and caressing each other for hours. We talked about the poor horses, for which Virginia felt a deep pity, out there in the fierce storm and the awful cold. We talked of the beautiful cutter; and finally, I explained the way in which I had robbed Gowdy of horses and robes and sleigh, and dog.
"He can never have the dog back," said she. "And to think that I am hiding out in a straw-stack with a robber and a horse-thief!"
Then she said she reckoned we'd have to join the Bunker gang, if we could find any of it to join. Certainly we should be fugitives from justice when the storm was over; but she for herself would rather be a fugitive always with me than to be rescued by "that man"--and it was lucky for him, too, she said, that I had licked him and shut him up in a house where he would be warm and fed; because he never would have been able to save himself in this awful storm as I had done. Nobody could have done so well as I had done. I had snatched her from the very jaws of death.
"Then," said I, "you're mine."
"Of course I am," said she. "I've been yours ever since we lived together so beautifully on the road, and in our Grove of Destiny. Of course I'm yours--and you are mine, Teunis--ain't you?"
"Then," said I, "just as soon as we get out of here, we'll be married."
It took argument to establish this point, but the jury was with me from the start; and finally nothing stood between me and a verdict but the fact that she must finish her term of school. I urged upon her that my house was nearer the school than was McConkey's, and she could finish it if she chose. Then she said she didn't believe it would be legal for Virginia Vandemark to finish a contract signed by Virginia Royall--and pretty soon I realized that she was making fun of me, and I hugged her and kissed her until she begged my pardon.
And all the time the storm raged. We finished the food in the dinner pail, and began wondering how long we had been imprisoned, and how hungry we ought to be by this time. I was not in the least hungry myself; but I began to feel panicky for fear Virginia might be starving to death. She had a watch, of course, as a teacher; but it had run down long ago, and even if it had not, we could not have lit a match in that place by which to look at it. Becoming really frightened as the thought of starvation and death from thirst came oftener and oftener into my mind, I dug my way to the opening of the burrow, and found it black night, and the snow still sweeping over the land; but there was hope in the fact that I could see one or two bright stars overhead. The gale was abating; and I went back with this word, and a basket of snow in lieu of water.
Whether it was the first night out or the second, I did not know, and this offered ground for argument. Virginia said that we had lived through so much that it had probably made the time seem longer than it was; but I argued that the time of holding her in my arms, kissing her, telling her how much I loved her, and persuading her to marry me as soon as we could get to Elder Thorndyke's, made it seem shorter--and this led to more efforts to make the time pass away. Finally, I dug out again, just as we both were really and truly hungry, and went back after Virginia. I made her wrap up warmly, and we crawled out, covered with chaff, rumpled, mussed up, but safe and happy; and found the sun shining over a landscape of sparkling frost, with sun-dogs in the sky and spiracles of frost in the air, and a light breeze still blowing from the northwest, so bitingly cold that a finger or cheek was nipped by it in a moment's exposure. And within forty rods of us was the farmstead of Amos Bemisdarfer; who stood looking at us in amazement as we came across the rippled surface of the snow to his back door.
"I kess," said Amos, "it mus' have peen your team I put in de parn lass night. Come in. Preckfuss is retty."
I left it to Virginia--she had been so sensible and wise in all her words since we had agreed to be married at once--to tell the elder and Grandma Thorndyke about it. But she went to pieces when she tried it. She ran into their little front room where the elder was working on a sermon, pulling grandma out of the kitchen by the hand.
"Teunis and I," she gasped, "have been lost in the storm, and nearly froze to death, and he tied that man up with the well-rope, and maybe he's starved to death in Teunis's house, and Teunis and I slept in a straw-stack, and Teunis is just as brave as he can be, and we're going to be married awful soon, and I'm going to board with him then, and that'll be nicer than with the McConkeys' and nearer the schoolhouse, and cheaper, and Teunis will build fires for me, and we'll be just as happy as we can be, and when you quit this stingy church you'll both of you live with us forever and ever, and I want you to kiss Teunis and call him your son right now, and if you don't we'll both be mad at you always--no we won't, no we won't, you dear things, but you will marry us, won't you?"
And then she cried hysterically and kissed us all.
"What Virginia says," said I, "is all true--especially the getting married right now, and your living with us. We'll both be awful sorry if we can't have you right off."
"I snum!" exclaimed Grandma Thorndyke. "Just as I expected!"
Grandma outlived the elder by many years; and it was not very long before she came, a widow, to live with us "until she could hear from her folks in Massachusetts." She finally heard from them, but she lived with us, and is buried in our lot in the Monterey Centre burying-ground. She always expected everything that happened. I have given some hints of her character; but she had one weakness; she always, when she was a little down, spoke of herself as being a burden to us, especially in the hard times in the 'seventies. There was never a better woman, or one that did more for a family than she did for Virginia and me and our children--and our chickens and our calves and our lambs and goslings and ducks and young turkeys. Of course, she wanted Virginia to do better than to marry me; and that was all right with me after I understood it: but grandma made that good, by always taking my side of every little difference in the family. Peace to her ashes!