“I am quite ready,” replied Ezra. “But my horses are both out on the prairie. I turned them loose after the fire to let them run off to the Creek, as I had no time to put them up and feed them. To-day I did not feel able to hunt after them.”
“Well, suppose you take my team, and I will find your horses for you to-morrow. Will that do?”
“All right, then I’ll go to Mapleton.”
“The corn is already shucked, it won’t take half an hour to load up. You and I will do it while the horses are feeding. You ought to get off by six, I will feed the horses at five.”
Each spoke of his horses and his waggons much in the same way as an artillery officer speaks of his guns. There were three pairs of horses in the Community, and, in theory at least, everyone was equally free to use them, but experience showed that that sort of handling did not suit horses, who do better if left always in the care of the same persons. Therefore it came about that Brother Dummy always had Biting Bill, since no one else could manage the brute, and Ezra generally had Queen Katharine and Rebel, while Brother Wright kept the greys. Now these animals, although common property, were invariably spoken of by their drivers as theirs, for the use of certain familiar phrases, which to the outsider might seem to denote the idea of private property, came naturally to their lips. It is often more difficult to change habits of speech than laws of property. Reformers who start out to alter the whole course of modern ideas and to rearrange the world according to a plan of their own devising, would do well to meditate upon this peculiarity and see what it points to. Surely so slight a thing as a word might easily be eradicated from human speech, and yet how difficult it is to do so. But the point to consider is that the pertinacity, which shows itself in modes of expression, may very well exist in just as strong a form in habits of thought and feeling. The Pioneers, like others of that sort, passed over and disregarded such expressions as “my horse,” “my waggon,” and “your plough,” not apparently recognizing that the expressions denoted a habit of thought that might very easily strike at the very root of their institution. They were communists, as Olive had said, in bits of this and scraps of that, but the old leaven of individualism was there still among them, only dormant. The Pioneers never expected that the leaven would again become an active principle. Like other people, they were unable to see into the future, and therefore rejoiced in their escape from the perils of the prairie fire and considered that they had no further danger to apprehend for this winter at least. The sea was smooth and the sky was serene, so to speak, and they did not perceive the sunken rocks that lay in the track of their experimental bark.
CHAPTER XV.
IN QUEST OF NEWS.
Olive was early astir the next morning, in order to see her husband off and also to provide him with food in ample abundance to last him for the trip. He carried a plentiful store of dried beef, a portable commodity much in request on the prairie. The old trappers had showed the settlers how to make it, and the trappers had acquired the art from the Indians. Dried beef is precisely what its name indicates. It is raw beef, somewhat salted, and then dried in the sun until it is like a piece of solid leather. It has to be cut into thin slices across the grain before the stoutest teeth can make the slightest impression upon it. It may be also cooked in a batter of eggs for the dainty, but has only to be sliced up with a jack-knife to be eaten by the average teamster on the prairie. Besides the dried meat and plenty of corn-bread, Ezra had milk in a bottle and one of Olive’s wedding presents to eat, namely, a tin of peaches. He travelled therefore in extreme luxury. He set off along with Brother Dummy just as the sun was rising, and the canvas covers of the waggons showed for a long time as two moving white specks as they slowly crept across the blackened landscape, finally disappearing behind the Mounds some twelve miles to the west of Perfection City.
Olive remained alone at home with Napoleon Pompey and Diana to keep her company, until Ezra should return in four days’ time. It was only with great reluctance that he had consented to this. He did not at all like the idea of her remaining alone in the house. As usual, when it came to Olive doing what the ordinary prairie settler’s wife did as a matter of course, Ezra’s love took fright. He urged her to go and stay at Madame’s house, she would be more than welcome, he declared, in fact it seemed to him almost necessary that she should go, and he insisted strongly upon the plan. Olive was as strongly opposed to it. Why couldn’t she stay in her own house? She would much prefer it, so as to be on hand to feed the chickens and milk the cows and generally see to things. Besides, she felt quite sure she would be vastly in Madame’s way. Ezra combated this position vigorously. Olive could not be in anyone’s way, even if she tried. Moreover, was not Madame a communist like the rest of them, and she would be only too pleased to take Olive into her home as she had already done into her heart. His spouse made no comment, except a mental one, to this argument, but reiterated her preference for staying at home. It would only be three days or four at most, and she would be very busy. Ezra hinted at possible danger if it were known she was alone in the house.
“But I won’t be alone: there is Napoleon Pompey for one and Diana for two. Surely between so stout a pair nothing on earth can happen to me,” she said, smiling at his anxious face.
“I don’t feel easy about you,” said Ezra, looking at her with mournful eyes. “I never left you alone before, and it suddenly seems to me a most portentous thing.”