Chapter II––The Leap
A man and a woman emerged from the dilapidated day-car as it drew up before the tiny, sanded station which marked the terminus of the railway. The man was tall, clean-shaven, quick of step and of glance. The woman was likewise tall, well-gloved, and, strange phenomenon at a country station, carried no parcels.
Though easily the centre of attention, the couple were far from being alone. On the contrary, the car and platform fairly swarmed with humanity. Men mostly composed the throng that alighted––big, weather-stained fellows in rough jeans and denims. In the background, as spectators moved or lounged a sprinkling of others: thinner, lighter, enveloped in felt, woollen and buckskin, a fringe of heavy hair peeping out at their backs beneath the broad hat-brims. A few women were intermingled. Coarsely gowned, sun-browned, they 124 stood; themselves like suns, but each the centre of a system of bleach-haired minor satellites. It was into this heterogeneous mass that the tall man elbowed his way, a neat grip in either hand; the woman following closely in his wake, her skirts carefully lifted.
Clear of the out-flowing stream the man put down the satchels, and looked over the heads of the motley crowd into the still more motley street beyond. Two short rows of one-story buildings, distinctive by the brightness of new lumber on their sheltered side, bordered a narrow street, half clogged by the teams of visiting farmers. Not the faintest clue to a hostelry was visible, and the eyes of the man wandered back, interrupting by the way another pair of eyes frankly inquisitive.
The curious one was short; by comparison his face was still shorter, and round. From his chin a tiny tuft of whiskers protruded, like the handle of a gourd. Never was countenance more unmistakably labelled good-humored, Americanized German.
The eyes of the tall man stopped. 125
“Is there a hotel in this”––he groped for a classification––“this city?” he asked.
A rattling sound, startlingly akin to the agitated contents of over-ripe vegetables, came from somewhere in the internal mechanism of the small man. Inferentially, the inquiry was amusing to the questioned, likewise the immediately surrounding listeners who became suddenly silent, gazing at the stranger with the wonder of young calves.
At length the innate spirit of courtesy in the German triumphed over his amusement.
“Hans Becher up by the postoffice takes folks in.” The inward commotion showed indications of resumption. “I never heard, though, that he called his place a hotel!”
“Thank you,” and the circle of silence widened.
The man and the woman walked up the street. Beneath their feet the cottonwood sidewalk, despite its newness, was warped in agony under sun and storm. Big puddles of water from a recent rain stood in the hollows of the roadway, side by side with tufts of native grasses fighting bravely for life against the 126 intruder––Man. A fresh, indescribable odor was in their nostrils; an odor which puzzled them then, but which later they learned to recognize and never forgot––the pungent scent of buffalo grass. A stillness, deeper than of Sabbath, unbelievable to urban ears, wrapped all things, and united with an absence of broken sky line, to produce an all-pervading sense of loneliness.
Hans Becher did not belie his name. He was very German. Likewise the little woman who courtesied at his side. Ditto the choice assortment of inquisitive tow-heads, who stared wide-eyed from various corners. He shook hands at the door with each of his guests,––which action also was unmistakably German.
“You would in my house––put up, you call it?” he inquired in labored English, while the little woman polished two speckless chairs with her apron, and with instinctive photographic art placed them stiffly side by side for the visitors.
“Yes, we’d like to stay with you for a time,” corroborated the tall man.
The little German ran his fingers uncertainly 127 through his hair for a moment; then his round face beamed.
“We should then become to each other known. Is it not so?” Without pausing for an answer, he put out a big hand to each in turn. “I am Hans Becher, and this”––with elaborate indications––”this my wife is––Minna.”
Minna courtesied dutifully, lower than before. The little Bechers were not classified, but their connection was apparent. They calmly sucked their thumbs.
The lords of creation obviously held the rostrum. It was the tall man who responded.
“My name is Maurice, Ichabod Maurice.” He looked at the woman, his companion, from the corner of his eye. “Allow me, Camilla, to present Mr. Becher.” Then turning to his hosts, “Camilla Maurice: Mr. and Mrs. Becher.”
The tall lady shook hands with each.
“Pleased to meet you,” she said, and smiled a moment into their eyes. Thus Camilla Maurice made friends.
There were a few low-spoken words in German and Minna vanished. 128
“She will dinner make ready,” Hans explained.
The visitors sat down in their chairs, with Hans opposite studying them narrowly; singly and together.
“The town is very new,” suggested Ichabod.
“One year ago it was not.” The German’s short legs crossed each other nervously and their owner seized the opportunity to make further inspection. “It is very new,” he repeated absently.
Camilla Maurice stood up.
“Might we wash, Mr. Becher?” she asked.
The ultimate predicament was all at once staring the little man in the face.
“To be sure.... I might have known.... You will a room––desire.” ... He ran his fingers through his hair, and inspiration came. “Mr. Maurice,” he motioned, “might I a moment with you––speak?”
“Certainly, Mr. Becher.”
The German saw light, and fairly beamed as he sought the safe seclusion of the doorway.
“She is your sister or cousin––nein?” he asked. 129
There was the faintest suggestion of a smile in the corners of Ichabod’s mouth.
“No, she is neither my sister nor my cousin, Mr. Becher.”
Hans heaved a sigh of relief: it had been a close corner.
“She is your wife. One must know,” and he mopped his brow.
“Certainly––one must know,” very soberly.
Alone together in the little unfinished room under the rafters, the woman sat down on the corner of the bed, physical discomfort forgotten in feminine curiosity.
“Those names––where did you get them?” she queried.
“They came to me––at the moment,” smiled the man.
“But the cold-blooded horror of them!... Ichabod!”
“The glory has departed.”
His companion started, and the smile left the man’s face.
“And Camilla?”––slowly.
“Attendant at a sacrifice.”
Of a sudden the room became very still. 130
Ichabod, exploring, discovered a tiny wash basin and a bucket of water.
“You wished to wash, Camilla?”
The woman did not move.
“They were very kind”––she looked through the window with the tiny panes: “have we any right to––lie to them?”
“We have not lied.”
“Tacitly.”
“No. I’m Ichabod Maurice and you’re Camilla Maurice. We have not lied.”
“But––”
“The past is dead, dead!”
The woman’s face dropped into her hands. Woman ever weeps instinctively for the dead.
“You are sorry that it is––so?” There was no bitterness in the man’s voice, but he did not look at her, and Camilla misunderstood.
“Sorry!” She came close, and a soft warm face pressed tightly against his face. “Sorry!” Her arms were around him. “Sorry!” again repeated. “No! No! No! No, without end! I’m not sorry. I’m Camilla Maurice, the happiest woman in the world!”
Later they utilized the tin basin and the 131 mirror with a crack across its centre. Dinner was waiting when they went below.
To a casual observer, Hans had been very idle while they were gone. He sat absently on the doorstep, watching the grass that grew almost visibly in the warm spring sun. Occasionally he tapped his forehead with his finger tips. It helped him to think, and just now he sadly needed assistance.
“Who were these people, anyway?” he wondered. Not farmers, certainly. Farmers did not have hands that dented when you pressed them, and farmers’ wives did not lift their skirts daintily from behind. Hans had been very observant as his visitors came up the muddy street. No, that was not the way of farmers’ wives: they took hold at the sides with both hands, and splashed right through on their heels.
Hans pulled the yellow tuft on his chin. What could they be, then? Not summer boarders. It was only early spring; and, besides, although the little German was an optimist, even he could not imagine any one selecting a Dakota prairie for an outing. 132 Yet ... No, they could not be summer boarders.
But what then? In his intensity Hans actually forgot the grass and, unfailing producer of inspiration, ran his fingers frantically through his mane.
“Ah––at last––of course!” The round face beamed and a hard hand smote a harder knee, joyously. That he had not remembered at once! It was the new banker, to be sure. He would tell Minna, quite as a matter of fact, for there could be no mistake. Hank Judge, the machine agent, and Eli Stevens, the proprietor of the corner store, had said only yesterday there was to be a bank. Looking up the street the little man spied a familiar figure, and sprang to his feet as though released by a spring, his hand already in the air. There was Hank Judge, now, and he didn’t know––
“Dinner, Hans,” announced Minna at his elbow.
Holding the child of his brain hard in both hands lest it should escape prematurely, the little German went inside to preside over a repast, 133 the distinctively German incense of which ascended most appetizingly.
Hans, junior, in a childish treble, spoke an honest little German blessing, beginning “Mein Vater von Himmel,” and emphasized by the raps of Hans senior’s knuckles on certain other small heads to keep their owners quiet.
“Fresh lettuce and radishes!” commented Camilla, joyously.
“Raised in our own garden hinein,” bobbed Minna, in ecstasy.
“And sauerkraut––” began Ichabod.
“From cabbages so large,” completed Hans, spreading his arms to designate an imaginary vegetable of heroic proportions.
“They must have grown very fast to be so large in May,” commented Camilla.
Hans and Minna exchanged glances––pitying, superior glances––such as we give behind the backs of the infirm, or the very old; and the subject of vegetables dropped.
“A great country for a bank, this,” commented Mr. Becher, with infinite finesse and between intermittent puffs at a hot potato.
Hans nodded violent confirmation, then words, English words, being valuable to him, he came quickly to the test.
“You will build for the bank yourself, is it not so?”
It was not the German and Minna who exchanged glances this time.
“No, I shall not build for the bank myself, Mr. Becher.”
“You will rent, perhaps?” Hans’s faith was beautiful.
“No, I shall not rent.”
The German’s face fell. To have wasted all that thought; for after all it was not the banker!
Minna, senior, stared in surprise, and her attention being diverted, Minna the younger seized the opportunity to inundate herself with a cup of hot coffee.
The spell was broken.
“I’m going to take a homestead,” explained Ichabod.
Hans’s fork paused in mid-air and his mouth forgot to close. At the point where the German struck, the earth was very hard.
“So?” he interrogated, weakly. 135
At this juncture the difference between the two Minnas, which had been transferred from the table to the kitchen, was resumed; and although Ichabod ate the remaining kraut to the last shred, and Camilla talked to Hans of the Vaterland in his native German, each knew the occasion was a failure. An ideal had been raised, the ideal of a Napoleon of finance, a banker; and that ideal materializing, lo there stood forth a farmer! Ach Gott von Himmel!
After dinner Hans stood in the doorway and pointed out the land-office. Ichabod thanked him, and under the impulse of habit felt in his pocket for a cigar. None was there, and all at once he remembered Ichabod Maurice did not smoke. Strange he should have such an abominable inclination to do so just then; but nevertheless the fact remained. Ichabod Maurice never had smoked.
He started up the street.
A small man, with very high boots and a very long moustache, sat tipped back in the sun in front of the land-office. He was telling a story; a good one, judging from the attention of the row of listeners. He grasped the chair tightly 136 with his left hand while his right, holding a cob pipe, gesticulated actively. The story halted abruptly as Ichabod came up.
“Howdy!” greeted the little man.
Maurice nodded.
“Don’t let me interrupt you,” he temporized.
“Not at all,” courtesied the teller of stories, as he led the way inside. “I’ve told that one until I’m tired of it, anyway.” He tapped the ashes from his pipe-bowl, meditatively. “A fellow has to kill the time some way, though, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” acquiesced Ichabod.
The agent took a chair behind the battered pine desk, and pointed to another opposite.
“Any way I can help you?” he suggested.
“Yes,” answered Maurice. “I’m thinking of taking a homestead.”
The agent looked his visitor up and down and back again; then, being native born, his surprise broke forth in idiom.
“Well, I’m jiggered!” he avowed.
It was Ichabod’s turn to make observation.
“I believe you; you look it,” he corroborated at length. 137
Again the little man stared; and in the silence following, a hungry-looking bird-dog thrust his thin muzzle in at the door, and sniffed.
“Get out,” shouted the owner at the intruder, adding in extenuation: “I’m busy.” He certainly was “jiggered.”
Ichabod came to the rescue.
“I called to learn how one goes at it to take a claim,” he explained. “The modus operandi isn’t exactly clear in my mind.”
The agent braced up in his chair.
“I suppose you’ll say it’s none of my business,” he commented, “but as a speculation you’d do a lot better to buy up the claims of poor cusses who have to relinquish, than to settle yourself.”
“I’m not speculating. I expect to build a house, and live here.”
“As a friend, then, let me tell you you’ll never stand it.” A stubby thumb made motion up the narrow street. “You see this town. I won’t say what it is––you realize for yourself; but bad as it is, it’s advanced civilization alongside of the country. You’ll have to go ten miles out to get any land that’s not taken.” He 138 stopped and lit his pipe. “Do you know what it means to live alone ten miles out on the prairie?”
“I’ve never lived in the country.”
“I’ll tell you, then, what it means.” He put down his pipe and looked out at the open door. His face changed; became softer, milder, younger. His voice, when he spoke, added to the impression of reminiscence, bearing an almost forgotten tone of years ago.
“The prairie!” he apostrophized. “It means the loneliest place on God’s earth. It means that living there, in life you bury yourself, your hopes, your ambitions. It means you work ever to forget the past––and fail. It means self, always; morning, noon, night; until the very solitude becomes an incubus. It means that in time you die, or, from being a man, become as the cattle.” The speaker turned for the first time to the tall man before him, his big blue eyes wide open and round, his voice an entreaty.
“Don’t move into it, man. It’s death and worse than death to such as you! You’re too old to begin. One must be born to the life; 139 must never have known another. Don’t do it, I say.”
Ichabod Maurice, listening, read in that appeal, beneath the words, the wild, unsatisfied tale of a disappointed human life.
“You are dissatisfied, lonesome––There was a time years ago perhaps––”
“I don’t know.” The glow had passed and the face was old again, and heavy. “I remember nothing. I’m dead, dead.” He drew a rough map from his pocket and spread it out before him.
“If you’ll move close, please, I’ll show you the open lands.”
For an hour he explained homesteads, preemptions and tree claims, and the method of filing and proving up. At parting, Ichabod held out his hand.
“I thank you for your advice,” he said.
The man behind the desk puffed stolidly.
“But don’t intend to follow it,” he completed.
Instinctively, metaphor sprang to the lips of Ichabod Maurice.
“A small speck of circumstance, which is near, obliterates much that is in the distance.” 140 He turned toward the door. “I shall not be alone.”
The little agent smoked on in silence for some minutes, gazing motionless at the doorway through which Ichabod had passed out. Again the lean bird-dog thrust in an apologetic head, dutifully awaiting recognition. At length the man shook his pipe clean, and leaned back in soliloquy.
“Man, woman, human nature; habit, solitude, the prairie.” He spoke each word slowly, and with a shake of his head. “He’s mad, mad; but I pity him”––a pause––“for I know.”
The dog whined an interruption from the doorway, and the man looked up.