________________________________________________
_ The next few weeks were busy ones on the farm. Before the wheat
harvest was over, Nat Wheeler packed his leather trunk, put on
his "store clothes," and set off to take Tom Welted back to
Maine. During his absence Ralph began to outfit for life in Yucca
county. Ralph liked being a great man with the Frankfort
merchants, and he had never before had such an opportunity as
this. He bought a new shot gun, saddles, bridles, boots, long and
short storm coats, a set of furniture for his own room, a
fireless cooker, another music machine, and had them shipped to
Colorado. His mother, who did not like phonograph music, and
detested phonograph monologues, begged him to take the machine at
home, but he assured her that she would be dull without it on
winter evenings. He wanted one of the latest make, put out under
the name of a great American inventor.
Some of the ranches near Wested's were owned by New York men who
brought their families out there in the summer Ralph had heard
about the dances they gave, and he way counting on being one of
the guests. He asked Claude to give him his dress suit, since
Claude wouldn't be needing it any more.
"You can have it if you want it," said Claude indifferently "But
it won't fit you."
"I'll take it in to Fritz and have the pants cut off a little and
the shoulders taken in," his brother replied lightly.
Claude was impassive. "Go ahead. But if that old Dutch man takes
a whack at it, it will look like the devil."
"I think I'll let him try. Father won't say anything about what
I've ordered for the house, but he isn't much for glad rags, you
know." Without more ado he threw Claude's black clothes into the
back seat of the Ford and ran into town to enlist the services of
the German tailor.
Mr. Wheeler, when he returned, thought Ralph had been rather free
in expenditures, but Ralph told him it wouldn't do to take over
the new place too modestly. "The ranchers out there are all
high-fliers. If we go to squeezing nickels, they won't think we
mean business."
The country neighbours, who were always amused at the Wheelers'
doings, got almost as much pleasure out of Ralph's lavishness as
he did himself. One said Ralph had shipped a new piano out to
Yucca county, another heard he had ordered a billiard table.
August Yoeder, their prosperous German neighbour, asked grimly
whether he could, maybe, get a place as hired man with Ralph.
Leonard Dawson, who was to be married in October, hailed Claude
in town one day and shouted;
"My God, Claude, there's nothing left in the furniture store for
me and Susie! Ralph's bought everything but the coffins. He must
be going to live like a prince out there."
"I don't know anything about it," Claude answered coolly. "It's
not my enterprise."
"No, you've got to stay on the old place and make it pay the
debts, I understand." Leonard jumped into his car, so that Claude
wouldn't have a chance to reply.
Mrs. Wheeler, too, when she observed the magnitude of these
preparations, began to feel that the new arrangement was not fair
to Claude, since he was the older boy and much the steadier.
Claude had always worked hard when he was at home, and made a
good field hand, while Ralph had never done much but tinker with
machinery and run errands in his car. She couldn't understand why
he was selected to manage an undertaking in which so much money
was invested.
"Why, Claude," she said dreamily one day, "if your father were an
older man, I would almost think his judgment had begun to fail.
Won't we get dreadfully into debt at this rate?"
"Don't say anything, Mother. It's Father's money. He shan't think
I want any of it."
"I wish I could talk to Bayliss. Has he said anything?"
"Not to me, he hasn't."
Ralph and Mr. Wheeler took another flying trip to Colorado, and
when they came back Ralph began coaxing his mother to give him
bedding and table linen. He said he wasn't going to live like a
savage, even in the sand hills. Mahailey was outraged to see the
linen she had washed and ironed and taken care of for so many
years packed into boxes. She was out of temper most of the time
now, and went about muttering to herself.
The only possessions Mahailey brought with her when she came to
live with the Wheelers, were a feather bed and three patchwork
quilts, interlined with wool off the backs of Virginia sheep,
washed and carded by hand. The quilts had been made by her old
mother, and given to her for a marriage portion. The patchwork on
each was done in a different design; one was the popular
"logcabin" pattern, another the "laurel-leaf," the third the
"blazing star." This quilt Mahailey thought too good for use, and
she had told Mrs. Wheeler that she was saving it "to give Mr.
Claude when he got married."
She slept on her feather bed in winter, and in summer she put it
away in the attic. The attic was reached by a ladder. which,
because of her weak back, Mrs. Wheeler very seldom climbed. Up
there Mahailey had things her own way, and thither she often
retired to air the bedding stored away there, or to look at the
pictures in the piles of old magazines. Ralph facetiously called
the attic "Mahailey's library."
One day, while things were being packed for the western ranch,
Mrs. Wheeler, going to the foot of the ladder to call Mahailey,
narrowly escaped being knocked down by a large feather bed which
came plumping through the trap door. A moment later Mahailey
herself descended backwards, holding to the rungs with one hand,
and in the other arm carrying her quilts.
"Why, Mahailey," gasped Mrs. Wheeler. "It's not winter yet;
whatever are you getting your bed for?"
"I'm just a-goin' to lay on my fedder bed," she broke out, "or
direc'ly I won't have none. I ain't a-goin' to have Mr. Ralph
carryin' off my quilts my mudder pieced fur me."
Mrs. Wheeler tried to reason with her, but the old woman took up
her bed in her arms and staggered down the hall with it,
muttering and tossing her head like a horse in fly-time.
That afternoon Ralph brought a barrel and a bundle of straw into
the kitchen and told Mahailey to carry up preserves and canned
fruit, and he would pack them. She went obediently to the cellar,
and Ralph took off his coat and began to line the barrel with
straw. He was some time in doing this, but still Mahailey had not
returned. He went to the head of the stairs and whistled.
"I'm a-comin', Mr. Ralph, I'm a-comin' ! Don't hurry me, I don't
want to break nothin'."
Ralph waited a few minutes. "What are you doing down there,
Mahailey?" he fumed. "I could have emptied the whole cellar by
this time. I suppose I'll have to do it myself."
"I'm a-comin'. You'd git yourself all dusty down here." She came
breathlessly up the stairs, carrying a hamper basket full of
jars, her hands and face streaked with black.
"Well, I should say it is dusty!" Ralph snorted. "You might clean
your fruit closet once in awhile, you know, Mahailey. You ought
to see how Mrs. Dawson keeps hers. Now, let's see." He sorted the
jars on the table. "Take back the grape jelly. If there's
anything I hate, it's grape jelly. I know you have lots of it,
but you can't work it off on me. And when you come up, don't
forget the pickled peaches. I told you particularly, the pickled
peaches!"
"We ain't got no pickled peaches." Mahailey stood by the cellar
door, holding a corner of her apron up to her chin, with a queer,
animal look of stubbornness in her face.
"No pickled peaches? What nonsense, Mahailey ! I saw you making
them here, only a few weeks ago."
"I know you did, Mr. Ralph, but they ain't none now. I didn't
have no luck with my peaches this year. I must 'a' let the air
git at 'em. They all worked on me, an' I had to throw 'em out."
Ralph was thoroughly annoyed. "I never heard of such a thing,
Mahailey ! You get more careless every year. Think of wasting all
that fruit and sugar! Does mother know?"
Mahailey's low brow clouded. "I reckon she does. I don't wase
your mudder's sugar. I never did wase nothin'," she muttered. Her
speech became queerer than ever when she was angry.
Ralph dashed down the cellar stairs, lit a lantern, and searched
the fruit closet. Sure enough, there were no pickled peaches.
When he came back and began packing his fruit, Mahailey stood
watching him with a furtive expression, very much like the look
that is in a chained coyote's eyes when a boy is showing him off
to visitors and saying he wouldn't run away if he could.
"Go on with your work," Ralph snapped. "Don't stand there
watching me!"
That evening Claude was sitting on the windmill platform, down by
the barn, after a hard day's work ploughing for winter wheat. He
was solacing himself with his pipe. No matter how much she loved
him, or how sorry she felt for him, his mother could never bring
herself to tell him he might smoke in the house. Lights were
shining from the upstairs rooms on the hill, and through the open
windows sounded the singing snarl of a phonograph. A figure came
stealing down the path. He knew by her low, padding step that it
was Mahailey, with her apron thrown over her head. She came up to
him and touched him on the shoulder in a way which meant that
what she had to say was confidential.
"Mr. Claude, Mr. Ralph's done packed up a barr'l of your mudder's
jelly an' pickles to take out there."
"That's all right, Mahailey. Mr. Wested was a widower, and I
guess there wasn't anything of that sort put up at his place."
She hesitated and bent lower. "He asked me fur them pickled
peaches I made fur you, but I didn't give him none. I hid 'em all
in my old cook-stove we done put down cellar when Mr. Ralph
bought the new one. I didn't give him your mudder's new
preserves, nudder. I give him the old last year's stuff we had
left over, and now you an' your mudder'll have plenty." Claude
laughed. "Oh, I don't care if Ralph takes all the fruit on the
place, Mahailey!"
She shrank back a little, saying confusedly, "No, I know you
don't, Mr. Claude. I know you don't."
"I surely ought not to take it out on her," Claude thought, when
he saw her disappointment. He rose and patted her on the back.
"That's all right, Mahailey. Thank you for saving the peaches,
anyhow."
She shook her finger at him. "Don't you let on!"
He promised, and watched her slipping back over the zigzag path
up the hill. _
Read next: Book One: On Lovely Creek: Chapter 14
Read previous: Book One: On Lovely Creek: Chapter 12
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