the Desert Of Wheat (2001) (2 page)

"Mr. Anderson, what steps have you taken down in your country?" queried Kurt.

"So far all I've done was to hire my hands for a year, give them high wages, an' caution them when strangers come round to feed them an' be civil an' send them on."

"But we can't do that up here in the Bend," said Dorn, seriously. "We need, say, a hundred thousand men in harvest-time, and not ten thousand all the rest of the year."

"Sure you can't. But you'll have to organize somethin'. Up here in this desert you could have a heap of trouble if that outfit got here strong enough. You'd better tell every farmer you can trust about this I. W. W."

"I've only one American neighbor, and he lives six miles from here," replied Dorn. "Olsen over there is a Swede, and not a naturalized citizen, but I believe he's for the U. S. And there's--"

"Dad," interrupted the girl, "I believe our driver is listening to your very uninteresting conversation."

She spoke demurely, with laughter in her low voice. It made Dorn dare to look at her, and he met a blue blaze that was instantly averted.

Anderson growled, evidently some very hard names, under his breath; his look just then was full of characteristic Western spirit. Then he got up.

"Lenore, I reckon your talk 'll be more interesting than mine," he said, dryly. "I'll go see Dorn an' get this business over."

"I'd rather go with you," hurriedly replied Kurt; and then, as though realizing a seeming discourtesy in his words, his face flamed, and he stammered: "I--I don't mean that. But father is in bad mood. We just quarreled.--I told you--about the war. And--Mr. Anderson,--I'm--I'm a little afraid he'll--"

"Well, son, I'm not afraid," interrupted the rancher. "I'll beard the old lion in his den. You talk to Lenore."

"Please don't speak of the war," said Kurt, appealingly.

"Not a word unless he starts roarin' at Uncle Sam," declared Anderson, with a twinkle in his eyes, and turned toward the house.

"He'll roar, all right," said Kurt, almost with a groan. He knew what an ordeal awaited the rancher, and he hated the fact that it could not be avoided. Then Kurt was confused, astounded, infuriated with himself over a situation he had not brought about and could scarcely realize. He became conscious of pride and shame, and something as black and hopeless as despair.

"Haven't I seen you--before?" asked the girl.

The query surprised and thrilled Kurt out of his self-centered thought.

"I don't know. Have you? Where?" he answered, facing her. It was a relief to find that she still averted her face.

"At Berkeley, in California, the first time, and the second at Spokane, in front of the Davenport," she replied.

"First--and--second?... You--you remembered both times!" he burst out, incredulously.

"Yes. I don't see how I could have helped remembering." Her laugh was low, musical, a little hurried, yet cool.

Dorn was not familiar with girls. He had worked hard all his life, there among those desert hills, and during the few years his father had allowed him for education. He knew wheat, but nothing of the eternal feminine. So it was impossible for him to grasp that this girl was not wholly at her ease. Her words and the cool little laugh suddenly brought home to Kurt the immeasurable distance between him and a daughter of one of the richest ranchers in Washington.

"You mean I--I was impertinent," he began, struggling between shame and pride. "I--I stared at you.... Oh, I must have been rude.... But, Miss Anderson, I--I didn't mean to be. I didn't think you saw me--at all. I don't know what made me do that. It never happened before. I beg your pardon."

A subtle indefinable change, perceptible to Dorn, even in his confused state, came over the girl.

"I did not say you were impertinent," she returned. "I remembered seeing you--notice me, that is all."

Self-possessed, aloof, and kind, Miss Anderson now became an impenetrable mystery to Dorn. But that only accentuated the distance she had intimated lay between them. Her kindness stung him to recover his composure. He wished she had not been kind. What a singular chance that had brought her here to his home--the daughter of a man who came to demand a long-unpaid debt! What a dispelling of the vague thing that had been only a dream! Dorn gazed away across the yellowing hills to the dim blue of the mountains where rolled the Oregon. Despite the color, it was gray--like his future.

"I heard you tell father you had studied wheat," said the girl, presently, evidently trying to make conversation.

"Yes, all my life," replied Kurt. "My study has mostly been under my father. Look at my hands." He held out big, strong hands, scarred and knotted, with horny palms uppermost, and he laughed. "I can be proud of them, Miss Anderson.... But I had a splendid year in California at the university and I graduated from the Washington State Agricultural College."

"You love wheat--the raising of it, I mean?" she inquired.

"It must be that I do, though I never had such a thought. Wheat is so wonderful. No one can guess who does not know it!... The clean, plump grain, the sowing on fallow ground, the long wait, the first tender green, and the change day by day to the deep waving fields of gold--then the harvest, hot, noisy, smoky, full of dust and chaff, and the great combine-harvesters with thirty-four horses. Oh! I guess I do love it all.... I worked in a Spokane flour-mill, too, just to learn how flour is made. There is nothing in the world so white, so clean, so pure as flour made from the wheat of these hills!"

"Next you'll be telling me that you can bake bread," she rejoined, and her laugh was low and sweet. Her eyes shone with soft blue gleams.

"Indeed I can! I bake all the bread we use," he said, stoutly. "And I flatter myself I can beat any girl you know."

"You can beat mine, I'm sure. Before I went to college I did pretty well. But I learned too much there. Now my mother and sisters, and brother Jim, all the family except dad, make fun of my bread."

"You have a brother? How old is he?"

"One brother--Jim, we call him. He--he is just past twenty-one." She faltered the last few words.

Kurt felt on common ground with her then. The sudden break in her voice, the change in her face, the shadowing of the blue eyes--these were eloquent.

"Oh, it's horrible--this need of war!" she exclaimed.

"Yes," he replied, simply. "But maybe your brother will not be called."

"Called! Why, he refused to wait for the draft! He went and enlisted.

Dad patted him on the back.... If anything happens to him it'll kill my mother. Jim is her idol. It'd break my heart.... Oh, I hate the very name of Germans!"

"My father is German," said Kurt. "He's been fifty years in America--eighteen years here on this farm. He always hated England. Now he's bitter against America.... I can see a side you can't see. But I don't blame you--for what you said."

"Forgive me. I can't conceive of meaning that against any one who's lived here so long.... Oh, it must be hard for you."

"I'll let my father think I'm forced to join the army. But I'm going to fight against his people. We are a house divided against itself."

"Oh, what a pity!" The girl sighed and her eyes were dark with brooding sorrow.

A step sounded behind them. Mr. Anderson appeared, sombrero off, mopping a very red face. His eyes gleamed, with angry glints; his mouth and chin were working. He flopped down with a great, explosive breath.

"Kurt, your old man is a--a--son of a gun!" he exclaimed, vociferously; manifestly, liberation of speech was a relief.

The young man nodded seriously and knowingly. "I hope, sir--he--he--"

"He did--you just bet your life! He called me a lot in German, but I know cuss words when I hear them. I tried to reason with him--told him I wanted my money--was here to help him get that money off the farm, some way or other. An' he swore I was a capitalist--an enemy to labor an' the Northwest--that I an' my kind had caused the war."

Kurt gazed gravely into the disturbed face of the rancher. Miss Anderson had wide-open eyes of wonder.

"Sure I could have stood all that," went on Anderson, fuming. "But he ordered me out of the house. I got mad an' wouldn't go. Then--by George! he pulled my nose an' called me a bloody Englishman!"

Kurt groaned in the disgrace of the moment. But, amazingly, Miss Anderson burst into a silvery peal of laughter.

"Oh, dad!... that's--just too--good for--anything! You met your--match at last.... You know you always--boasted of your drop of English blood.... And you're sensitive--about your big nose!"

"He must be over seventy," growled Anderson, as if seeking for some excuse to palliate his restraint. "I'm mad--but it was funny." The working of his face finally set in the huge wrinkles of a laugh.

Young Dorn struggled to repress his own mirth, but unguardedly he happened to meet the dancing blue eyes of the girl, merry, provocative, full of youth and fun, and that was too much for him. He laughed with them.

"The joke's on me," said Anderson. "An' I can take one.... Now, young man, I think I gathered from your amiable dad that if the crop of wheat was full I'd get my money. Otherwise I could take over the land. For my part, I'd never do that, but the others interested might do it, even for the little money involved. I tried to buy them out so I'd have the whole mortgage. They would not sell."

"Mr. Anderson, you're a square man, and I'll do--" declared Kurt.

"Come out an' show me the wheat," interrupted Anderson. "Lenore, do you want to go with us?"

"I do," replied the daughter, and she took up her hat to put it on.

Kurt led them through the yard, out past the old barn, to the edge of the open slope where the wheat stretched away, down and up, as far as the eye could see.

Chapter
II

"We've got over sixteen hundred acres in fallow ground, a half-section in rye, another half in wheat--Turkey Red--and this section you see, six hundred and forty acres, in Bluestem," said Kurt.

Anderson's keen eyes swept from near at hand to far away, down the gentle, billowy slope and up the far hillside. The wheat was two feet high, beginning to be thick and heavy at the heads, as if struggling to burst. A fragrant, dry, wheaty smell, mingled with dust, came on the soft summer breeze, and a faint silken rustle. The greenish, almost blue color near at hand gradually in the distance grew lighter, and then yellow, and finally took on a tinge of gold. There was a living spirit in that vast wheat-field.

"Dorn, it's the finest wheat I've seen!" exclaimed Anderson, with the admiration of the farmer who aspired high. "In fact, it's the only fine field of wheat I've seen since we left the foot-hills. How is that?"

"Late spring and dry weather," replied Dorn. "Most of the farmers' reports are poor. If we get rain over the Bend country we'll have only an average yield this year. If we don't get rain--then flat failure."

Miss Anderson evinced an interest in the subject and she wanted to know why this particular field, identical with all the others for miles around, should have a promise of a magnificent crop when the others had no promise at all.

"This section lay fallow a long time," replied Dorn. "Snow lasted here on this north slope quite a while. My father used a method of soil cultivation intended to conserve moisture. The seed wheat was especially selected. And if we have rain during the next ten days this section of Bluestem will yield fifty bushels to the acre."

"Fifty bushels!" ejaculated Anderson.

"Bluestem? Why do you call it that when it's green and yellow?" queried the girl.

"It's a name. There are many varieties of wheat. Bluestem is best here in this desert country because it resists drought, it produces large yield, it does not break, and the flour-mills rate it very high.

Bluestem is not good in wet soils."

Anderson tramped along the edge of the field, peering down, here and there pulling a shaft of wheat and examining it. The girl gazed with dreamy eyes across the undulating sea. And Dorn watched her.

"We have a ranch--thousands of acres--but not like this," she said.

"What's the difference?" asked Dorn.

She appeared pensive and in doubt.

"I hardly know. What would you call this--this scene?"

"Why, I call it the desert of wheat! But no one else does," he replied.

"I named father's ranch 'Many Waters.' I think those names tell the difference."

"Isn't my desert beautiful?"

"No. It has a sameness--a monotony that would drive me mad. It looks as if the whole world had gone to wheat. It makes me think--oppresses me.

All this means that we live by wheat alone. These bare hills! They're too open to wind and sun and snow. They look like the toil of ages."

"Miss Anderson, there is such a thing as love for the earth--the bare brown earth. You know we came from dust, and to dust we return! These fields are human to my father. And they have come to speak to me--a language I don't understand yet. But I mean--w hat you see--the growing wheat here, the field of clods over there, the wind and dust and glare and heat, the eternal sameness of the open space--these are the things around which my life has centered, and when I go away from them I am not content."