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_ Alexandra and Emil spent five days down among the river farms,
driving up and down the valley. Alexandra talked to the men about
their crops and to the women about their poultry. She spent a
whole day with one young farmer who had been away at school, and
who was experimenting with a new kind of clover hay. She learned
a great deal. As they drove along, she and Emil talked and planned.
At last, on the sixth day, Alexandra turned Brigham's head northward
and left the river behind.
"There's nothing in it for us down there, Emil. There are a few
fine farms, but they are owned by the rich men in town, and couldn't
be bought. Most of the land is rough and hilly. They can always
scrape along down there, but they can never do anything big. Down
there they have a little certainty, but up with us there is a big
chance. We must have faith in the high land, Emil. I want to hold
on harder than ever, and when you're a man you'll thank me." She
urged Brigham forward.
When the road began to climb the first long swells of the Divide,
Alexandra hummed an old Swedish hymn, and Emil wondered why his
sister looked so happy. Her face was so radiant that he felt shy
about asking her. For the first time, perhaps, since that land
emerged from the waters of geologic ages, a human face was set toward
it with love and yearning. It seemed beautiful to her, rich and
strong and glorious. Her eyes drank in the breadth of it, until
her tears blinded her. Then the Genius of the Divide, the great,
free spirit which breathes across it, must have bent lower than
it ever bent to a human will before. The history of every country
begins in the heart of a man or a woman.
Alexandra reached home in the afternoon. That evening she held
a family council and told her brothers all that she had seen and
heard.
"I want you boys to go down yourselves and look it over. Nothing
will convince you like seeing with your own eyes. The river land
was settled before this, and so they are a few years ahead of us,
and have learned more about farming. The land sells for three
times as much as this, but in five years we will double it. The
rich men down there own all the best land, and they are buying
all they can get. The thing to do is to sell our cattle and what
little old corn we have, and buy the Linstrum place. Then the next
thing to do is to take out two loans on our half-sections, and buy
Peter Crow's place; raise every dollar we can, and buy every acre
we can."
"Mortgage the homestead again?" Lou cried. He sprang up and began
to wind the clock furiously. "I won't slave to pay off another
mortgage. I'll never do it. You'd just as soon kill us all,
Alexandra, to carry out some scheme!"
Oscar rubbed his high, pale forehead. "How do you propose to pay
off your mortgages?"
Alexandra looked from one to the other and bit her lip. They had
never seen her so nervous. "See here," she brought out at last.
"We borrow the money for six years. Well, with the money we buy
a half-section from Linstrum and a half from Crow, and a quarter
from Struble, maybe. That will give us upwards of fourteen hundred
acres, won't it? You won't have to pay off your mortgages for six
years. By that time, any of this land will be worth thirty dollars
an acre--it will be worth fifty, but we'll say thirty; then you
can sell a garden patch anywhere, and pay off a debt of sixteen
hundred dollars. It's not the principal I'm worried about, it's
the interest and taxes. We'll have to strain to meet the payments.
But as sure as we are sitting here to-night, we can sit down here
ten years from now independent landowners, not struggling farmers
any longer. The chance that father was always looking for has
come."
Lou was pacing the floor. "But how do you KNOW that land is going
to go up enough to pay the mortgages and--"
"And make us rich besides?" Alexandra put in firmly. "I can't
explain that, Lou. You'll have to take my word for it. I KNOW,
that's all. When you drive about over the country you can feel it
coming."
Oscar had been sitting with his head lowered, his hands hanging
between his knees. "But we can't work so much land," he said
dully, as if he were talking to himself. "We can't even try. It
would just lie there and we'd work ourselves to death." He sighed,
and laid his calloused fist on the table.
Alexandra's eyes filled with tears. She put her hand on his
shoulder. "You poor boy, you won't have to work it. The men in
town who are buying up other people's land don't try to farm it.
They are the men to watch, in a new country. Let's try to do
like the shrewd ones, and not like these stupid fellows. I don't
want you boys always to have to work like this. I want you to be
independent, and Emil to go to school."
Lou held his head as if it were splitting. "Everybody will say we
are crazy. It must be crazy, or everybody would be doing it."
"If they were, we wouldn't have much chance. No, Lou, I was talking
about that with the smart young man who is raising the new kind
of clover. He says the right thing is usually just what everybody
don't do. Why are we better fixed than any of our neighbors? Because
father had more brains. Our people were better people than these
in the old country. We OUGHT to do more than they do, and see
further ahead. Yes, mother, I'm going to clear the table now."
Alexandra rose. The boys went to the stable to see to the stock,
and they were gone a long while. When they came back Lou played on
his DRAGHARMONIKA and Oscar sat figuring at his father's secretary
all evening. They said nothing more about Alexandra's project,
but she felt sure now that they would consent to it. Just before
bedtime Oscar went out for a pail of water. When he did not come
back, Alexandra threw a shawl over her head and ran down the path
to the windmill. She found him sitting there with his head in his
hands, and she sat down beside him.
"Don't do anything you don't want to do, Oscar," she whispered.
She waited a moment, but he did not stir. "I won't say any more
about it, if you'd rather not. What makes you so discouraged?"
"I dread signing my name to them pieces of paper," he said slowly.
"All the time I was a boy we had a mortgage hanging over us."
"Then don't sign one. I don't want you to, if you feel that way."
Oscar shook his head. "No, I can see there's a chance that way.
I've thought a good while there might be. We're in so deep now, we
might as well go deeper. But it's hard work pulling out of debt.
Like pulling a threshingmachine out of the mud; breaks your back.
Me and Lou's worked hard, and I can't see it's got us ahead much."
"Nobody knows about that as well as I do, Oscar. That's why I want
to try an easier way. I don't want you to have to grub for every
dollar."
"Yes, I know what you mean. Maybe it'll come out right. But signing
papers is signing papers. There ain't no maybe about that." He
took his pail and trudged up the path to the house.
Alexandra drew her shawl closer about her and stood leaning against
the frame of the mill, looking at the stars which glittered so
keenly through the frosty autumn air. She always loved to watch
them, to think of their vastness and distance, and of their ordered
march. It fortified her to reflect upon the great operations
of nature, and when she thought of the law that lay behind them,
she felt a sense of personal security. That night she had a new
consciousness of the country, felt almost a new relation to it.
Even her talk with the boys had not taken away the feeling that had
overwhelmed her when she drove back to the Divide that afternoon.
She had never known before how much the country meant to her. The
chirping of the insects down in the long grass had been like the
sweetest music. She had felt as if her heart were hiding down
there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little
wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. Under the long
shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring. _
Read next: PART II - Neighboring Fields: Chapter 1
Read previous: PART I - The Wild Land: Chapter 4
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