“Why—I thought you said there’d be nothin’ t’ feed an’ you’d have t’,” said a man whose shaggy whiskers had not seen a comb that year. “What’ll you do? You can’t see things starve!”
“I thought you was strong for goin’. What’ll you do with all your stock?” another said, and all bent forward and waited for his answer as if he could find a way out of the tangle for them.
“That’s just it.” Again he paused, enjoying the suspense that his silence created. Mr. Farnshaw was not popular, but he had more stock than all his simple neighbours put together and was conscious that money, or its equivalent, had weight. “That’s just it,” he repeated to add emphasis to his opinion. “What is a man to do? You folks that have nothin’ but your teams an’ wagons can load th’ family in an’ get away. How’d I feel ’bout th’ time that I got t’ th’ Missouri River if I knowed all them hogs an’ cattle was layin’ around here too weak t’ get up cause they hadn’t been fed?”
He dropped his argument into the midst of them and then sat back and enjoyed its effect. He had intended to go till ten minutes previous. The argument sounded good to him now, however. It put him on a higher basis with himself, in spite of the fact that it had only popped into his head while he was clicking his knife blade. He conceived a new liking for himself. “No, sir,” he continued; “I’ll stay by it.”
“I don’t see as your stayin’ helps anything if you ain’t got nothin’ t’ feed,” was the reiterated objection.
“Well,” Mr. Farnshaw replied, careful not to look in his wife’s direction, “I was for goin’ at first, but I’ve listened t’ you folks an’ I’ve come t’ th’ conclusion that you ain’t goin’ t’ better yourselves any. If you go East, You’ll have t’ come back here in th’ spring, or live on day’s work there—an’—an’ I’ll take my chances right here. It’s a long lane that has no turn. Grasshoppers can’t stay always.”
“What’ll you do if all them eggs hatch out an’ eat th’ crops in th’ spring?” the new neighbour asked, determined to look on all sides of the question before he decided to give up his recently purchased farm, and glad of this opportunity to get the opinions of his fellow sufferers on that particular phase of his unexpected calamity. “What’ll you do with all that bunch of cattle, anyhow?” he added.
“I’ll share what I’ve got with th’ stuff, an’ if part of it dies I’ll drag it out on th’ hill t’ rot; th’ rest I’ll stay by,” was the stubborn reply. “As for them eggs a-hatchin’, they’ll be good ones if they can stand a Kansas winter; they’ll do a blamed sight better’n any eggs Mrs. Farnshaw gethers in. They’d better go south.”
This raised a laugh. The grim humour of anything, that could get away, spending a winter in Kansas, appealed to these grizzly pioneers, who struggled with the question of fuel in a country where there was little natural timber, and coal must be paid for before it was burned. But all their arguments would not turn him from his course.
“Your wife’s turrible set on goin’, Farnshaw,” one of the men said to him as they went to the stable for their horses when the meeting broke up.