The Biography of a Prairie Girl

by Eleanor Gates

Looking down thus, for the first time, at the uncovered grave, no feeling of grief succeeded her surprise and wonder. But instantly the thought came that it was here, in happy ignorance of the meaning of the pile, that every spring and summer she had sat to watch the big brothers at work in the fields, the gophers, the birds, the herd in the slough below; to think over her baby problems and sorrows; or to build castles from a beloved book. She read the chiseled word again, softly and reverently, then backed the sorrel away and once more rode on rapidly, making for the railroad and sitting her horse with the tense erectness of a trooper on parade.

All at once, a little way out on the prairie, a terror seized her, and she began to lash the sorrel with all her might. The black hillock behind, with its graven head-mark, had borne to her heart a new fear that perhaps her mother, too, would soon sleep upon the hillside. She put the thought of her father away, and centered her efforts on reaching the station and the doctor. As she galloped at breakneck speed, the damp wind swept her face, cutting it sharply, and whipped out her horse's mane and tail till they fluttered on a level with the saddle.

At the track she ceased striking the sorrel and let him fall into a slow, steady canter. The downpour was near now, sweeping south in the strong grasp of a squall to cross her path. She could see that its front was a sheet not of rain, but of driving hail that rebounded high from the dry grass. She crouched in her seat and pulled her hat far down to shield her face.

Before the sorrel made another quarter of a mile, the hailstones had passed the ties and were kicking up the soft dirt of the embankment like a volley of shrapnel. When they moved their fire forward to the wagon-road, they almost hurled the little girl from her saddle. She cried out in agony as the icy bullets cleft the air and pounded her cruelly on head and shoulders. A stone the size of a wild duck's egg split the skin of her rein-hand, and she dropped the bridle and let the sorrel go at random. Squealing shrilly whenever a missile reached his tender ears, he stayed in the road, but stopped running, and whirled in a circle to avoid his punishment. The little girl, though she flinched under the shower, remained on his back grittily and waited until the fall thinned and suddenly ended.

Wounded from head to foot, she continued her journey over a road deep with hail. When the station came in sight, she stopped to wipe the blood from a hurt on her cheek and to wind her handkerchief around her injured hand. Then she raced through town and left her message at the doctor's door.

The doctor hitched up his buggy and, accompanied by his wife, set off for the farm behind the little girl, who at times rode anxiously far in the lead, and, again, drew up and trotted beside the vehicle to ask him to travel faster. But when the farm-house was neared, she could not bear to lag any longer, and gave the sorrel the bit. As she passed the carnelian bluff, she skirted it well, though she could not see the mound or the cross. It had grown dark and they were shrouded in stormy shadows. But she kept her eyes continually in that direction, and talked to the horse to quiet a nervous throbbing in her breast that she did not admit to herself. At the barn she unbuckled the saddle and the bridle outside the door, let the sorrel trot in alone, and ran toward the kitchen.

When the doctor completed his diagnosis that night, he told the little girl's mother only what she had long known: that she might live to see her daughter a grown woman and her sons old men; that she might pass away before the end of another week, or another day. The little girl was not in the room to hear him, and on returning later to the canopied bed, neither her mother nor the neighbor woman repeated his words. He was gone again, leaving only a few pellets to check a possible sinking-spell. For there was nothing else that could be done at the farm-house—except wait and hope.

But, as if she divined by instinct what there was to fear, the little girl stoutly refused to leave her mother that night and seek rest. After prevailing upon the neighbor woman to lie down on the lounge close by, she sat on the carpet beside the bed, weary but unswerving, and reached up every little while to touch a hand, or rose to listen to the spasmodic beating of the tortured heart.

At midnight her mother awoke and asked for nourishment. Having eaten and drunk, she motioned the little girl to a seat on the edge of the bed and began to talk, slowly at the beginning but more hurriedly toward the last, as if she were freeing herself of something long ago thought out and long delayed in the saying.

"I've been thinking of the fields and hedges of dear old England," she whispered. "I can see them so plainly to-night. I have just been there in my dreams, I think; and I have come back to tell you how beautiful they are. Of course the plains are beautiful, too,—beautiful but lonely. England is dotted with homes, and there are trees everywhere, and flowers so many months of the year. Oh, one never could feel lonely there."