There was scarcely an unbroken window left in the ramshackle farmhouse; the windmill was down. Plantain and burrs had crept into the barnyard, and the fields were giving way on every hand to brambles, sumac and willows.
So this was where Tess Bedermier had come, pregnant with his child, to live with the only man who would take her in, to bury that first child in an unmarked grave, and to bear Bung Sherman three children out of wedlock, of whom Early Ann alone had survived. Here was the desolate farm on which Early Ann—no child of Stud's—had grown and blossomed, and it was here that Bung Sherman had died in a drunken brawl with a duck hunter.
After Bung's death Tess had gone off with a man who stopped at the farm for a drink of water, a man whose name was unknown to the neighbors and whose only distinguishing characteristic was that he carried in the crook of his arm a large black cat. Two weeks later Early Ann had gone to join them.
As Stud watched the sun setting over the vast marshes he thought he felt a cold wind blow across the barn lot, and the hair stood up on the nape of his neck. The killdeers called that a storm was at hand. Clouds rolled up from the horizon and distant thunder rattled like wheels on a far bridge. Then, suddenly, the sky was black and over-cast. The lightning flashed close at hand,—jagged blue, reflected on the dark pools and the channels. The trees bowed low, the dust whirled, and rain came down over countless miles of marsh land.
CHAPTER VII
1
When Stud returned from Horicon there was little time to think of Tess, Early Ann, Sarah, or any other woman for the farm was up to its ears in preparation for the Rock County Fair. Three magnificent stud animals were to be entered: Napoleon, the bull; Teddy Roosevelt, the stallion; and Ulysses S. Grant, the boar.