"A—ha," he replied suggestively. Then he tramped to the timothy meadow, the others following. And the little girl, walking very slowly, came on behind.
When the big brothers had gone on to the farm-house, the little girl still tarried in the corn-field. Her eldest brother's hint concerning her birthday had suggested the cruel punishment she felt certain was to be hers, and she could not bear to face the family at the dinner-table.
For months she had longed for a little red wagon—a wagon with a long tongue, and "Express" on the side in black letters; and had planned how she would harness Bruno and Luffree to it and drive along the level prairie roads. Evening after evening she had taken out the thick catalogue and pored over the prices, and had shown the kind she wanted again and again to all the big brothers in turn.
Then one day she had surprised her biggest brother while he was taking a bulky brown-paper package off the farm wagon on his return from Yankton. He had sent her into the house; but she had found out later that the package was in the corn-crib, and had crept in there one afternoon, when the farm-house was deserted, and taken a good look at it as it hung from a rafter and well out of reach. It was still unwrapped, but the brown paper was torn in one place, and through the hole the little girl had seen a smooth, round red stick. It was a wheel-spoke.
Her sixth-and-a-half birthday was not far off, and she had waited for its coming as patiently as she could, in the meantime working secretly on harnesses for the dogs, who had resigned themselves good-naturedly to much measuring. Now, on the very eve of her happiness, she was to be deprived of the yearned-for wagon.
Crouching in the corn-field, she grieved away the long day. Dinner-time came, and all the corn-stalk shadows pointed significantly toward the carnelian bluff; then they slowly shifted around to the eastward and grew very long; and at last commingled and were blotted out by the descending gloom that infolded the little girl.
Lying upon her back, she looked up at the sky, that with the gathering darkness of the warm summer night disclosed its twinkling stars, and wished that she could suddenly die out there in the field in some mysterious way, so that there might be much self-condemning woe at the farm-house when they found her, cold and still. And she could not refrain from weeping with sheer pity for herself. After pondering for a while on the sad picture of her untimely death, she changed to one of great deeds and happiness, wealth and renown, in some far-off land toward which she was half determined to set out. But this delightful dream was rudely broken into.
A long blast from the cow-horn sounded through the quiet night and echoed itself against the bluff. The little girl sat up and looked toward the house through the dark aisles of the corn.
"I'm not coming," she said, speaking out loud in a voice that broke as she ended, "I'm going to stay here and starve to death!"