“John, I’ve thought of something else. I still have the hundred dollars you gave me so I could go to the hospital when—that is, this fall. Let’s take that and buy the seed. It will be enough and some left over for groceries. If we get a crop, there’ll be plenty of money for me, and if we shouldn’t—well, I can get along just as so many other women do. Come, John—come! We must hurry. There’s no time to lose.”
John’s head had come up again, and he turned to the indomitable little woman beside him and gathered her into his arms. And so a woman did what her pioneer sisters have done a thousand times before, and what women will do a thousand times in years to come. She drew from that seemingly inexhaustible well of courage, and inspired in her man the strength and determination to try just once more—and then once again.
Long after dark, that same night, Jane heard the rumble of Grahame’s wagon and went to the gate to meet him.
Climbing up on the wheel and holding her lantern down into the box, she saw the light reflected on the oily amber surface of flax. Lifting a handful, she watched it slip between her fingers. It felt cool and smooth and clean. Somehow there came to her, with its velvety touch, a new hope and faith, the faith which makes all things possible to those who must win success only by trying again and again.
On the long ride home with the flax John had had ample time for thought, and he came to realize what Jane’s faith and courage had meant to him that day, and what it would mean in the anxious days to come, and he tried to give expression to the thought.
“You sure are the best little crutch any lame man could have, honey girl.”
“Lame man! Don’t say it! You’re not a lame man!”
“Not physically, I’ll admit but—Jane, where did you get all your courage? You’re like a rubber ball. Punch you in one place, and you bob out in another. Now, me, if I’m punched in, any place, I stay punched in, I guess.”
Jane laughed, but she recognized his troubled thought under his levity.
“You’re unjust to yourself, John. This is the difference between us. You have all the care and worry. You have the responsibility, not only of your own future— which, if you were alone, would bother you not at all—but also the responsibility of my future and—our children’s future. Don’t you know that the fear of failure is what takes the courage out of a man? What you have to learn is how to forget to be afraid; and you know you will never lose your crutch, so what does the rest matter?”