"'Let him go,' says I. 'If he'll go, let him!'
"Mother looks at me whiter'n I ever expect to see her again but once, maybe; an' the next morning she an' Jack goes to the county seat an' he enlists. I went down when the rig'ment was all got together. Mother an' me has always had a place where we kep' all the money they was in the house, as much hern as mine, an' she took five twenty-dollar gold pieces out of the pile, an' sewed 'em in a chamois-skin bag all wet with her cryin' ... an' never sayin' a word ... an' she hangs it round his neck, an' hung to him an' kissed him till it sorter bothered the boss of the rig'ment—some kind of colonel—because he wanted the men to march, you know, an' didn't seem to like to make mother fall back.... She seemed to see how it was, finely, an' fell back, an' this colonel made the motion to her with his sword they do to their superiors, an' they marched.... Jack stood straighter than any one in the line, an' he had a new sort of look to him. He everidged up purty good, too, in hithe ... I don't see much to this soldier business.... Maybe that's why he looked the part so well.... I give the captain a hundred f'r him.... Jack sent it back from a place called Sanfrisco, without a word. 'So much saved!' says I. He was wuthless as ever."
The immense voice labored, broke, stopped—the man seemed weary and overcome. To afford him an escape from the story that seemed to have mastered him, like the Ancient Mariner's, I called his attention to what the four soldiers were doing. They had dressed as if for inspection, and were evidently going out upon the platform. The noticeable thing in their appearance was the change in their expressions from the hilarity and riotousness of a few moments ago, to a certain solemnity. One of them carried a little box carefully wrapped up, as a devotee might carry an offering to a shrine. The huge farmer glanced casually at them as if with full knowledge of what they were doing, and, ignoring my interruption, seemed to resume his monologue—as might the habitué of a temple pass by the question of a stranger concerning a matter related to the mysteries—something not to be discussed, difficult to be explained, or not worth mention. He pointed out of the window.
"Our land," said he; "both sides ... tiptop good ground.... Didn't look much like this when mother an' me homesteaded the first quarter-section.... See that bunch of box-elders? Me an' her camped there as we druv in.... Never cut 'em down.... Spoil an acre of good corn land, too; to say nothin' o' the time wasted cultivatin' 'round 'em.... Well, a man's a fool about some things!"
It was a picture of fulsome plenty and riotous fertility. Straight as the stretched cord by which they had been dropped ran the soldierly rows of corn, a mile along, their dark blades outstretched in the unwavering prairie wind, as if pointing us on to something noteworthy or mysterious beyond. Back and forth along the rows plodded the heavy teams of the cultivators, stirring the brown earth to a deeper brownness. High fences of woven wire divided the spacious fields. On a hundred-acre meadow, as square and level as a billiard table, were piled the dark cocks of a second crop of alfalfa. One, two, three farmsteads we passed, each with its white house hidden in trees, its big red barns, its low hog-houses, its feed yards, with their racks polished by the soft necks of feasting steers. And everywhere was the corn—the golden corn of last year in huge cribs like barracks; the emerald hosts of the new crop in its ranks like green-suited lines-of-battle arrested in full career and held as by some spell, leaning onward in act of marching, every quivering sword pointing mysteriously forward. My heart of a farmer swelled within me at the scene, which had something in it akin to its owner, it was so huge, so opulent, so illimitable. Somehow, it seemed to interpret him to me.
"Purty good little places," said he; "but the home place skins 'em all. We'll be to it in a minute. Train slows up f'r a piece o' new track work. We'll git a good view of it."
Heaving himself up, he went before me down the aisle of the slowing train. There stood the soldiers on the steps and the platform. We took our places back of them. I was absorbed in the study of the splendid farm, redeemed from the lost wilderness by this man who had all at once become worth while to me. Back at the rear of the near-by fields was a row of lofty cottonwoods, waving their high crests in the steady wind. All about the central grove were pastures, meadows, gardens and orchards. A dense coppice of red cedars enclosed on three sides a big feed-yard, in which, stuffing themselves on corn and alfalfa, or lying in the dusty straw, were grouped a hundred bovine aristocrats in stately unconcern of the rotund Poland-Chinas about them. In the pastures were colts as huge as dray-horses, shaking the earth in their clumsy play. There were barns and barns and barns—capacious red structures, with hay-forks rigged under their projecting gables; and, in the midst of all this foison, stood the house—square, roomy, of red brick, with a broad porch on two sides covered with climbing roses and vines.
On this veranda was a thing that looked like a Morris chair holding a figure clad in khaki. A stooped, slender, white-haired woman hovered about the chair; and down by the track, as if to view the passing train, stood a young woman who was tall and swarthy and of ample proportions. Her dress was artistically adapted to country wear; she looked well-groomed and finished. She was smiling as the train drew slowly past, but I was sure that her eyes were full of tears. I wondered why she looked with such intentness at the platform—until I saw what the soldiers were doing. They stood at attention, their hands to their service-hats, stiff, erect, military. The girl returned the salute, and pointed to the chair on the veranda, put her handkerchief to her eyes, and shook her head as if in apology for the man in khaki. And while she stood thus the man in khaki leaned forward in the Morris chair, laid hold of the column of the veranda, pulled himself to his feet, staggered forward a step, balanced himself as if with difficulty, and—saluted.
The soldiers on the platform swung their hats and cheered, and I joined in the cheer. One of the good fellows wiped his eyes. The big farmer stood partly inside the door, effectually blocking it, and quite out of the girl's sight, looking on, as impassive as a cliff. The pretty young woman picked up a parcel—the offering—which one of the soldiers tossed to her feet, looked after us smiling and waving her handkerchief, and ran back toward the house. The train picked up speed and whisked us out of sight just as the khaki man sank back into the chair, eased down by the woman with the white hair. I seemed to have seen a death.
"That was mother," said the man of the broad farms, as we resumed our seats—"mother and Jack ... jest as it always hes been.... Al'ays mother's boy.... The soldiers comin' from the war al'ays stand on the platform as they go by—if they's room enough—with their fingers to their hats in that fool way.... All seem to know where Jack is someway, no matter what rig'ment they belong to.... Humph!