________________________________________________
_ On the first day of July Claude Wheeler found himself in the fast
train from Omaha, going home for a week's leave. The uniform was
still an unfamiliar sight in July, 1917. The first draft was not
yet called, and the boys who had rushed off and enlisted were in
training camps far away. Therefore a redheaded young man with
long straight legs in puttees, and broad, energetic,
responsible-looking shoulders in close-fitting khaki, made a
conspicuous figure among the passengers. Little boys and young
girls peered at him over the tops of seats, men stopped in the
aisle to talk to him, old ladies put on their glasses and studied
his clothes, his bulky canvas hold-all, and even the book he kept
opening and forgetting to read.
The country that rushed by him on each side of the track was more
interesting to his trained eye than the pages of any book. He was
glad to be going through it at harvest,--the season when it is
most itself. He noted that there was more corn than usual,--much
of the winter wheat had been weather killed, and the fields were
ploughed up in the spring and replanted in maize. The pastures
were already burned brown, the alfalfa was coming green again
after its first cutting. Binders and harvesters were abroad in
the wheat and oats, gathering the soft-breathing billows of grain
into wide, subduing arms. When the train slowed down for a
trestle in a wheat field, harvesters in blue shirts and overalls
and wide straw hats stopped working to wave at the passengers.
Claude turned to the old man in the opposite seat. "When I see
those fellows, I feel as if I'd wakened up in the wrong clothes."
His neighbour looked pleased and smiled. "That the kind of
uniform you're accustomed to?"
"I surely never wore anything else in the month of July," Claude
admitted. "When I find myself riding along in a train, in the
middle of harvest, trying to learn French verbs, then I know the
world is turned upside down, for a fact!"
The old man pressed a cigar upon him and began to question him.
Like the hero of the Odyssey upon his homeward journey, Claude
had often to tell what his country was, and who were the parents
that begot him. He was constantly interrupted in his perusal of a
French phrase-book (made up of sentences chosen for their
usefulness to soldiers,--such as; "Non, jamais je ne regarde les
femmes") by the questions of curious strangers. Presently he
gathered up his luggage, shook hands with his neighbour, and put
on his hat-the same old Stetson, with a gold cord and two hard
tassels added to its conical severity. "I get off at this station
and wait for the freight that goes down to Frankfort; the
cotton-tail, we call it."
The old man wished him a pleasant visit home, and the best of
luck in days to come. Every one in the car smiled at him as he
stepped down to the platform with his suitcase in one hand and
his canvas bag in the other. His old friend, Mrs. Voigt, the
German woman, stood out in front of her restaurant, ringing her
bell to announce that dinner was ready for travellers. A crowd of
young boys stood about her on the sidewalk, laughing and shouting
in disagreeable, jeering tones. As Claude approached, one of them
snatched the bell from her hand, ran off across the tracks with
it, and plunged into a cornfield. The other boys followed, and
one of them shouted, "Don't go in there to eat, soldier. She's a
German spy, and she'll put ground glass in your dinner!"
Claude swept into the lunch room and threw his bags on the floor.
"What's the matter, Mrs. Voigt? Can I do anything for you?"
She was sitting on one of her own stools, crying piteously, her
false frizzes awry. Looking up, she gave a little screech of
recognition. "Oh, I tank Gott it was you, and no more trouble
coming! You know I ain't no spy nor nodding, like what dem boys
say. Dem young fellers is dreadful rough mit me. I sell dem candy
since dey was babies, an' now dey turn on me like dis.
Hindenburg, dey calls me, and Kaiser Bill!" She began to cry
again, twisting her stumpy little fingers as if she would tear
them off.
"Give me some dinner, ma'am, and then I'll go and settle with
that gang. I've been away for a long time, and it seemed like
getting home when I got off the train and saw your squaw vines
running over the porch like they used to."
"Ya? You remember dat?" she wiped her eyes. "I got a pot-pie
today, and green peas, chust a few, out of my own garden."
"Bring them along, please. We don't get anything but canned stuff
in camp."
Some railroad men came in for lunch. Mrs. Voigt beckoned Claude
off to the end of the counter, where, after she had served her
customers, she sat down and talked to him, in whispers.
"My, you look good in dem clothes," she said patting his sleeve.
"I can remember some wars, too; when we got back dem provinces
what Napoleon took away from us, Alsace and Lorraine. Dem boys is
passed de word to come and put tar on me some night, and I am
skeered to go in my bet. I chust wrap in a quilt and sit in my
old chair."
"Don't pay any attention to them. You don't have trouble with the
business people here, do you?"
"No-o, not troubles, exactly." She hesitated, then leaned
impulsively across the counter and spoke in his ear. "But it
ain't all so bad in de Old Country like what dey say. De poor
people ain't slaves, and dey ain't ground down like what dey say
here. Always de forester let de poor folks come into de wood and
carry off de limbs dat fall, and de dead trees. Und if de rich
farmer have maybe a liddle more manure dan he need, he let de
poor man come and take some for his land. De poor folks don't git
such wages like here, but dey lives chust as comfortable. Und dem
wooden shoes, what dey makes such fun of, is cleaner dan what
leather is, to go round in de mud and manure. Dey don't git so
wet and dey don't stink so."
Claude could see that her heart was bursting with homesickness,
full of tender memories of the far-away time and land of her
youth. She had never talked to him of these things before, but
now she poured out a flood of confidences about the big dairy
farm on which she had worked as a girl; how she took care of nine
cows, and how the cows, though small, were very strong,--drew a
plough all day and yet gave as much milk at night as if they had
been browsing in a pasture! The country people never had to spend
money for doctors, but cured all diseases with roots and herbs,
and when the old folks had the rheumatism they took "one of dem
liddle jenny-pigs" to bed with them, and the guinea-pig drew out
all the pain.
Claude would have liked to listen longer, but he wanted to find
the old woman's tormentors before his train came in. Leaving his
bags with her, he crossed the railroad tracks, guided by an
occasional teasing tinkle of the bell in the cornfield. Presently
he came upon the gang, a dozen or more, lying in a shallow draw
that ran from the edge of the field out into an open pasture. He
stood on the edge of the bank and looked down at them, while he
slowly cut off the end of a cigar and lit it. The boys grinned at
him, trying to appear indifferent and at ease.
"Looking for any one, soldier?" asked the one with the bell.
"Yes, I am. I'm looking for that bell. You'll have to take it
back where it belongs. You every one of you know there's no harm
in that old woman."
"She's a German, and we're fighting the Germans, ain't we?"
"I don't think you'll ever fight any. You'd last about ten
minutes in the American army. You're not our kind. There's only
one army in the world that wants men who'll bully old women. You
might get a job with them."
The boys giggled. Claude beckoned impatiently. "Come along with
that bell, kid."
The boy rose slowly and climbed the bank out of the gully. As
they tramped back through the cornfield, Claude turned to him
abruptly. "See here, aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
"Oh, I don't know about that!" the boy replied airily, tossing
the bell up like a ball and catching it.
"Well, you ought to be. I didn't expect to see anything of this
kind until I got to the front. I'll be back here in a week, and
I'll make it hot for anybody that's been bothering her." Claude's
train was pulling in, and he ran for his baggage. Once seated in
the "cotton-tail," he began going down into his own country,
where he knew every farm he passed,--knew the land even when he
did not know the owner, what sort of crops it yielded, and about
how much it was worth. He did not recognize these farms with the
pleasure he had anticipated, because he was so angry about the
indignities Mrs. Voigt had suffered. He was still burning with
the first ardour of the enlisted man. He believed that he was
going abroad with an expeditionary force that would make war
without rage, with uncompromising generosity and chivalry.
Most of his friends at camp shared his Quixotic ideas. They had
come together from farms and shops and mills and mines, boys from
college and boys from tough joints in big cities; sheepherders,
street car drivers, plumbers' assistants, billiard markers.
Claude had seen hundreds of them when they first came in; "show
men" in cheap, loud sport suits, ranch boys in knitted
waistcoats, machinists with the grease still on their fingers,
farm-hands like Dan, in their one Sunday coat. Some of them
carried paper suitcases tied up with rope, some brought all they
had in a blue handkerchief. But they all came to give and not to
ask, and what they offered was just themselves; their big red
hands, their strong backs, the steady, honest, modest look in
their eyes. Sometimes, when he had helped the medical examiner,
Claude had noticed the anxious expression in the faces of the
long lines of waiting men. They seemed to say, "If I'm good
enough, take me. I'll stay by." He found them like that to work
with; serviceable, good-natured, and eager to learn. If they
talked about the war, or the enemy they were getting ready to
fight, it was usually in a facetious tone; they were going to
"can the Kaiser," or to make the Crown Prince work for a living.
Claude, loved the men he trained with,--wouldn't choose to live
in any better company.
The freight train swung into the river valley that meant
home,--the place the mind always came back to, after its farthest
quest. Rapidly the farms passed; the haystacks, the cornfields,
the familiar red barns--then the long coal sheds and the water
tank, and the train stopped.
On the platform he saw Ralph and Mr. Royce, waiting to welcome
him. Over there, in the automobile, were his father and mother,
Mr. Wheeler in the driver's seat. A line of motors stood along
the siding. He was the first soldier who had come home, and some
of the townspeople had driven down to see him arrive in his
uniform. From one car Susie Dawson waved to him, and from another
Gladys Farmer. While he stopped and spoke to them, Ralph took his
bags.
"Come along, boys," Mr. Wheeler called, tooting his horn, and he
hurried the soldier away, leaving only a cloud of dust behind.
Mr. Royce went over to old man Dawson's car and said rather
childishly, "It can't be that Claude's grown taller? I suppose
it's the way they learn to carry themselves. He always was a
manly looking boy."
"I expect his mother's a proud woman," said Susie, very much
excited. "It's too bad Enid can't be here to see him. She would
never have gone away if she'd known all that was to happen."
Susie did not mean this as a thrust, but it took effect. Mr.
Royce turned away and lit a cigar with some difficulty. His hands
had grown very unsteady this last year, though he insisted that
his general health was as good as ever. As he grew older, he was
more depressed by the conviction that his women-folk had added
little to the warmth and comfort of the world. Women ought to do
that, whatever else they did. He felt apologetic toward the
Wheelers and toward his old friends. It seemed as if his
daughters had no heart. _
Read next: Book Three: Sunrise on the Prairie: Chapter 11
Read previous: Book Three: Sunrise on the Prairie: Chapter 9
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