The Homesteader: A Novel

by Oscar Micheaux

The severe winter passed at last and with early spring everybody completed the gathering of the corn and immediately turned to seeding their crops. Work was plentiful everywhere, and to secure men to complete gathering his crop of corn, Baptiste had the greatest difficulty. Stewarts had failed to secure any land at all—either of the four in the drawing, and, being unable to purchase relinquishments on even one quarter at the large sum demanded therefor, had gone toward the western part of the state and taken free homesteads. As for Agnes, she had apparently passed out of his life.

He labored so hard in the cold, wet muddy fields in trying to get his corn out that he was taken ill, and was not able to work at all for days, and while so, he wrote his fiancée his troubles; and that since he was so indisposed, with a world of work and expense upon him she would do him a great favor if she would consent to come to him and be married.

Now the McCarthys had given Ethel a big wedding although her husband received only thirteen dollars a week for his work. Two hundred dollars, so it was reported, had been expended on the occasion. Such display did not appeal to the practical mind of Jean. He had lived his life too closely in accomplishing his purpose to become at this late day a victim of such simple vanity; the ultra simple vanity of aping the rich. Upon this point his mind was duly set. The McCarthys had started to buy a home the summer before which was quite expensive, and had entered into the contract with a payment of three hundred dollars. The Reverend had borrowed a hundred dollars on his life insurance and paid this in, while Glavis had paid another. Ethel had used what money she had saved teaching, to expend in the big wedding, so Orlean had paid the other hundred out of the money she had saved teaching school.

Now, if there was any big wedding for Orlean, then he, Jean Baptiste, knew that he would be expected to stand the expense. Therefore, Baptiste tried to make plain to Orlean in his letters the gravity of his position. She would be compelled to establish residence on her homestead early in May, and this was April, or forfeit her right and sacrifice all he had put into it.

But Orlean became unreasonable—Jean Baptiste reasoned. She set forth that she did not think it right for her to go away out there and marry him; that he should come to her. She seemed to have lost sense of all he had written her, regarding the crops, responsibilities, and other considerations. He wrote her to place it up to her mother and father, which she did, to reply in the same tenor. They had not agreed to it, either. He replied then heatedly, and hinted that her father was not a business man else he would have realized his circumstances, and, as man to man, appreciated the same.

The next letter he received had enclosed the receipt for the first payment of the purchase price of six dollars an acre, a charge the government had made on the land, amounting to some $210, in the first payment. She released him from his promise—but kept the ring.

"Now, don't that beat the devil!" he exclaimed angrily, when he read the letter. "As though this receipt is worth anything to me; or that it would suffice to get back the $2,000 I paid the man for the relinquishment. The only thing that will suffice is, for her to go on the land, so I guess I'll have to settle this nuisance at once by going to Chicago and marrying her."

So he started for the Windy City.

At Omaha he sent a telegram to her to the effect that he was on the way, and would arrive in the city on the morrow.

He arrived. He called her up from the Northwestern station, and she called back that it was settled; she had given him her word. The engagement was off.