CHAPTER VI
David and His Violin
Most of the events of our last autumn in Green's Coulee have slipped into the fathomless gulf, but the experiences of Thanksgiving day, which followed closely on our threshing day, are in my treasure house. Like a canvas by Rembrandt only one side of the figures therein is defined, the other side melts away into shadow – a luminous shadow, through which faint light pulses, luring my wistful gaze on and on, back into the vanished world where the springs of my life lie hidden.
It is a raw November evening. Frank and Harriet and I are riding into a strange land in a clattering farm wagon. Father and mother are seated before us on the spring seat. The ground is frozen and the floor of the carriage pounds and jars. We cling to the iron-lined sides of the box to soften the blows. It is growing dark. Before us (in a similar vehicle) my Uncle David is leading the way. I catch momentary glimpses of him outlined against the pale yellow sky. He stands erect, holding the reins of his swiftly-moving horses in his powerful left hand. Occasionally he shouts back to my father, whose chin is buried in a thick buffalo-skin coat. Mother is only a vague mass, a figure wrapped in shawls. The wind is keen, the world gray and cheerless.
My sister is close beside me in the straw. Frank is asleep. I am on my knees looking ahead. Suddenly with rush of wind and clatter of hoofs, we enter the gloom of a forest and the road begins to climb. I see the hills on the right. I catch the sound of wheels on a bridge. I am cold. I snuggle down under the robes and the gurgle of ice-bound water is fused with my dreams.
I am roused at last by Uncle David's pleasant voice, "Wake up, boys, and pay y'r lodging!" I look out and perceive him standing beside the wheel. I see a house and I hear the sound of Deborah's voice from the warmly-lighted open door.
I climb down, heavy with cold and sleep. As I stand there my uncle reaches up his arms to take my mother down. Not knowing that she has a rheumatic elbow, he squeezes her playfully. She gives a sharp scream, and his team starts away on a swift run around the curve of the road toward the gate. Dropping my mother, he dashes across the yard to intercept the runaways. We all stand in silence, watching the flying horses and the wonderful race he is making toward the gate. He runs with magnificent action, his head thrown high. As the team dashes through the gate his outflung left hand catches the end-board of the wagon, – he leaps into the box, and so passes from our sight.
We go into the cottage. It is a small building with four rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor, but in the sitting room we come upon an open fireplace, – the first I had ever seen, and in the light of it sits Grandfather McClintock, the glory of the flaming logs gilding the edges of his cloud of bushy white hair. He does not rise to greet us, but smiles and calls out, "Come in! Come in! Draw a cheer. Sit ye down."
A clamor of welcome fills the place. Harriet and I are put to warm before the blaze. Grandad takes Frank upon his knee and the cutting wind of the gray outside world is forgotten.
This house in which the McClintocks were living at this time, belonged to a rented farm. Grandad had sold the original homestead on the LaCrosse River, and David who had lately married a charming young Canadian girl, was the head of the family. Deborah, it seems, was also living with him and Frank was there – as a visitor probably.
The room in which we sat was small and bare but to me it was very beautiful, because of the fire, and by reason of the merry voices which filled my ears with music. Aunt Rebecca brought to us a handful of crackers and told us that we were to have oyster soup for supper. This gave us great pleasure even in anticipation, for oysters were a delicious treat in those days.
"Well, Dick," Grandad began, "so ye're plannin' to go west, air ye?"
"Yes, as soon as I get all my grain and hogs marketed I'm going to pull out for my new farm over in Iowa."
"Ye'd better stick to the old coulee," warned my grandfather, a touch of sadness in his voice. "Ye'll find none better."
My father was disposed to resent this. "That's all very well for the few who have the level land in the middle of the valley," he retorted, "but how about those of us who are crowded against the hills? You should see the farm I have in Winnesheik!! Not a hill on it big enough for a boy to coast on. It's right on the edge of Looking Glass Prairie, and I have a spring of water, and a fine grove of trees just where I want them, not where they have to be grubbed out."
"But ye belong here," repeated Grandfather. "You were married here, your children were born here. Ye'll find no such friends in the west as you have here in Neshonoc. And Belle will miss the family."
My father laughed. "Oh, you'll all come along. Dave has the fever already. Even William is likely to catch it."
Old Hugh sighed deeply. "I hope ye're wrong," he said. "I'd like to spend me last days here with me sons and daughters around me, sich as are left to me," here his voice became sterner. "It's the curse of our country, – this constant moving, moving. I'd have been better off had I stayed in Ohio, though this valley seemed very beautiful to me the first time I saw it."
At this point David came in, and everybody shouted, "Did you stop them?" referring of course to the runaway team.
"I did," he replied with a smile. "But how about the oysters. I'm holler as a beech log."
The fragrance of the soup thoroughly awakened even little Frank, and when we drew around the table, each face shone with the light of peace and plenty, and all our elders tried to forget that this was the last Thanksgiving festival which the McClintocks and Garlands would be able to enjoy in the old valley. How good those oysters were! They made up the entire meal, – excepting mince pie which came as a closing sweet.
Slowly, one by one, the men drew back and returned to the sitting room, leaving the women to wash up the dishes and put the kitchen to rights. David seized the opportunity to ask my father to tell once again of the trip he had made, of the lands he had seen, and the farm he had purchased, for his young heart was also fired with desire of exploration. The level lands toward the sunset allured him. In his visions the wild meadows were filled with game, and the free lands needed only to be tickled with a hoe to laugh into harvest.
He said, "As soon as Dad and Frank are settled on a farm here, I'm going west also. I'm as tired of climbing these hills as you are. I want a place of my own – and besides, from all you say of that wheat country out there, a threshing machine would pay wonderfully well."
As the women came in, my father called out, "Come, Belle, sing 'O'er the Hills in Legions Boys!' – Dave get out your fiddle – and tune us all up."
David tuned up his fiddle and while he twanged on the strings mother lifted her voice in our fine old marching song.
Cheer up, brothers, as we go,
O'er the mountains, westward ho —
and we all joined in the jubilant chorus —
Then o'er the hills in legions, boys,
Fair freedom's star
Points to the sunset regions, boys,
Ha, ha, ha-ha! —
My father's face shone with the light of the explorer, the pioneer. The words of this song appealed to him as the finest poetry. It meant all that was fine and hopeful and buoyant in American life, to him – but on my mother's sweet face a wistful expression deepened and in her fine eyes a reflective shadow lay. To her this song meant not so much the acquisition of a new home as the loss of all her friends and relatives. She sang it submissively, not exultantly, and I think the other women were of the same mood though their faces were less expressive to me. To all of the pioneer wives of the past that song had meant deprivation, suffering, loneliness, heart-ache.
From this they passed to other of my father's favorite songs, and it is highly significant to note that even in this choice of songs he generally had his way. He was the dominating force. "Sing 'Nellie Wildwood,'" he said, and they sang it. – This power of getting his will respected was due partly to his military training but more to a distinctive trait in him. He was a man of power, of decision, a natural commander of men.
They sang "Minnie Minturn" to his request, and the refrain, —
I have heard the angels warning,
I have seen the golden shore —
meant much to me. So did the line,
But I only hear the drummers
As the armies march away.
Aunt Deb was also a soul of decision. She called out, "No more of these sad tones," and struck up "The Year of Jubilo," and we all shouted till the walls shook with the exultant words:
Ol' massa run – ha-ha!
De darkies stay, – ho-ho!
It must be now is the kingdom a-comin'
In the year of Jubilo.
At this point the fire suggested an old English ballad which I loved, and so I piped up, "Mother, sing, 'Pile the Wood on Higher!'" and she complied with pleasure, for this was a song of home, of the unbroken fireside circle.
Oh, the winds howl mad outdoors
The snow clouds hurry past,
The giant trees sway to and fro
Beneath the sweeping blast.
and we children joined in the chorus:
Then we'll gather round the fire
And we'll pile the wood on higher,
Let the song and jest go round;
What care we for the storm,
When the fireside is so warm,
And pleasure here is found?
Never before did this song mean so much to me as at this moment when the winds were actually howling outdoors, and Uncle Frank was in very truth piling the logs higher. It seemed as though my stuffed bosom could not receive anything deeper and finer, but it did, for father was saying, "Well, Dave, now for some tunes."
This was the best part of David to me. He could make any room mystical with the magic of his bow. True, his pieces were mainly venerable dance tunes, cotillions, hornpipes, – melodies which had passed from fiddler to fiddler until they had become veritable folk-songs, – pieces like "Money Musk," "Honest John," "Haste to the Wedding," and many others whose names I have forgotten, but with a gift of putting into even the simplest song an emotion which subdued us and silenced us, he played on, absorbed and intent. From these familiar pieces he passed to others for which he had no names, melodies strangely sweet and sad, full of longing cries, voicing something which I dimly felt but could not understand.
At the moment he was the somber Scotch Highlander, the true Celt, and as he bent above his instrument his black eyes glowing, his fine head drooping low, my heart bowed down in worship of his skill. He was my hero, the handsomest, most romantic figure in all my world.
He played, "Maggie, Air Ye Sleepin," and the wind outside went to my soul. Voices wailed to me out of the illimitable hill-land forests, voices that pleaded:
Oh, let me in, for loud the linn
Goes roarin' o'er the moorland craggy.
He appeared to forget us, even his young wife. His eyes looked away into gray storms. Vague longing ached in his throat. Life was a struggle, love a torment.
He stopped abruptly, and put the violin into its box, fumbling with the catch to hide his emotion and my father broke the tense silence with a prosaic word. "Well, well! Look here, it's time you youngsters were asleep. Beckie, where are you going to put these children?"
Aunt Rebecca, a trim little woman with brown eyes, looked at us reflectively, "Well, now, I don't know. I guess we'll have to make a bed for them on the floor."
This was done, and for the first time in my life, I slept before an open fire. As I snuggled into my blankets with my face turned to the blaze, the darkness of the night and the denizens of the pineland wilderness to the north had no terrors for me.
I was awakened in the early light by Uncle David building the fire, and then came my father's call, and the hurly burly of jovial greeting from old and young. The tumult lasted till breakfast was called, and everybody who could find place sat around the table and attacked the venison and potatoes which formed the meal. I do not remember our leave-taking or the ride homeward. I bring to mind only the desolate cold of our own kitchen into which we tramped late in the afternoon, sitting in our wraps until the fire began to roar within its iron cage.
Oh, winds of the winter night! Oh, firelight and the shine of tender eyes! How far away you seem tonight!
So faint and far,
Each dear face shineth as a star.
Oh, you by the western sea, and you of the south beyond the reach of Christmas snow, do not your hearts hunger, like mine tonight for that Thanksgiving Day among the trees? For the glance of eyes undimmed of tears, for the hair untouched with gray?
It all lies in the unchanging realm of the past – this land of my childhood. Its charm, its strange dominion cannot return save in the poet's reminiscent dream. No money, no railway train can take us back to it. It did not in truth exist – it was a magical world, born of the vibrant union of youth and firelight, of music and the voice of moaning winds – a union which can never come again to you or me, father, uncle, brother, till the coulee meadows bloom again unscarred of spade or plow.
CHAPTER VII
Winnesheik "Woods and Prairie Lands"
Our last winter in the Coulee was given over to preparations for our removal but it made very little impression on my mind which was deeply engaged on my school work. As it was out of the question for us to attend the village school the elders arranged for a neighborhood school at the home of John Roche, who had an unusually large living room. John is but a shadowy figure in this chronicle but his daughter Indiana, whom we called "Ingie," stands out as the big girl of my class.
Books were scarce in this house as well as in our own. I remember piles of newspapers but no bound volumes other than the Bible and certain small Sunday school books. All the homes of the valley were equally barren. My sister and I jointly possessed a very limp and soiled cloth edition of "Mother Goose." Our stories all came to us by way of the conversation of our elders. No one but grandmother Garland ever deliberately told us a tale – except the hired girls, and their romances were of such dark and gruesome texture that we often went to bed shivering with fear of the dark.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, miraculously, I came into possession of two books, one called Beauty and The Beast, and the other Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp. These volumes mark a distinct epoch in my life. The grace of the lovely Lady as she stood above the cringing Beast gave me my first clear notion of feminine dignity and charm. On the magic Flying Carpet I rose into the wide air of Oriental romance. I attended the building of towered cities and the laying of gorgeous feasts. I carried in my hand the shell from which, at the word of command, the cool clear water gushed. My feet were shod with winged boots, and on my head was the Cap of Invisibility. My body was captive in our snowbound little cabin but my mind ranged the golden palaces of Persia – so much I know. Where the wonder-working romances came from I cannot now tell but I think they were Christmas presents, for Christmas came this year with unusual splendor.
The sale of the farm had put into my father's hands a considerable sum of money and I assume that some small part of this went to make our holiday glorious. In one of my stockings was a noble red and blue tin horse with a flowing mane and tail, and in the other was a monkey who could be made to climb a stick. Harriet had a new china doll and Frank a horn and china dog, and all the corners of our stockings were stuffed with nuts and candies. I hope mother got something beside the potatoes and onions which I remember seeing her pull out and unwrap with delightful humor – an old and rather pathetic joke but new to us.
The snow fell deep in January and I have many glorious pictures of the whirling flakes outlined against the darkly wooded hills across the marsh. Father was busy with his team drawing off wheat and hogs and hay, and often came into the house at night, white with the storms through which he had passed. My trips to school were often interrupted by the cold, and the path which my sister and I trod was along the ever-deepening furrows made by the bob-sleighs of the farmers. Often when we met a team or were overtaken by one, we were forced out of the road into the drifts, and I can feel to this moment, the wedge of snow which caught in the tops of my tall boots and slowly melted into my gray socks.
We were not afraid of the drifts, however. On the contrary mother had to fight to keep us from wallowing beyond our depth. I had now a sled which was my inseparable companion. I could not feed the hens or bring in a pan of chips without taking it with me. My heart swelled with pride and joy whenever I regarded it, and yet it was but a sober-colored thing, a frame of hickory built by the village blacksmith in exchange for a cord of wood – delivered. I took it to school one day, but Ed Roche abused it, took it up and threw it into the deep snow among the weeds. – Had I been large enough, I would have killed that boy with pleasure, but being small and fat and numb with cold I merely rescued my treasure as quickly as I could and hurried home to pour my indignant story into my mother's sympathetic ears.
I seldom spoke of my defeats to my father for he had once said, "Fight your own battles, my son. If I hear of your being licked by a boy of anything like your own size, I'll give you another when you get home." He didn't believe in molly-coddling, you will perceive. His was a stern school, the school of self-reliance and resolution.
Neighbors came in now and again to talk of our migration, and yet in spite of all that, in spite of our song, in spite of my father's preparation I had no definite premonition of coming change, and when the day of departure actually dawned, I was as surprised, as unprepared as though it had all happened without the slightest warning.
So long as the kettle sang on the hearth and the clock ticked on its shelf, the idea of "moving" was pleasantly diverting, but when one raw winter day I saw the faithful clock stuffed with rags and laid on its back in a box, and the chairs and dishes being loaded into a big sleigh, I began to experience something very disturbing and very uncomfortable. "O'er the hills in legions, boys," did not sound so inspiring to me then. "The woods and prairie lands" of Iowa became of less account to me than the little cabin in which I had lived all my short life.
Harriet and I wandered around, whining and shivering, our own misery augmented by the worried look on mother's face. It was February, and she very properly resented leaving her home for a long, cold ride into an unknown world, but as a dutiful wife she worked hard and silently in packing away her treasures, and clothing her children for the journey.
At last the great sleigh-load of bedding and furniture stood ready at the door, the stove, still warm with cheerful service, was lifted in, and the time for saying good-bye to our coulee home had come.
"Forward march!" shouted father and led the way with the big bob-sled, followed by cousin Jim and our little herd of kine, while mother and the children brought up the rear in a "pung" drawn by old Josh, a flea-bit gray. – It is probable that at the moment the master himself was slightly regretful.
A couple of hours' march brought us to LaCrosse, the great city whose wonders I had longed to confront. It stood on the bank of a wide river and had all the value of a sea-port to me for in summertime great hoarsely bellowing steamboats came and went from its quay, and all about it rose high wooded hills. Halting there, we overlooked a wide expanse of snow-covered ice in the midst of which a dark, swift, threatening current of open water ran. Across this chasm stretching from one ice-field to another lay a flexible narrow bridge over which my father led the way toward hills of the western shore. There was something especially terrifying in the boiling heave of that black flood, and I shivered with terror as I passed it, having vividly in my mind certain grim stories of men whose teams had broken through and been swept beneath the ice never to reappear.
It was a long ride to my mother, for she too was in terror of the ice, but at last the Minnesota bank was reached, La Crescent was passed, and our guide entering a narrow valley began to climb the snowy hills. All that was familiar was put behind; all that was strange and dark, all that was wonderful and unknown, spread out before us, and as we crawled along that slippery, slanting road, it seemed that we were entering on a new and marvellous world.
We lodged that night in Hokah, a little town in a deep valley. The tavern stood near a river which flowed over its dam with resounding roar and to its sound I slept. Next day at noon we reached Caledonia, a town high on the snowy prairie. Caledonia! For years that word was a poem in my ear, part of a marvellous and epic march. Actually it consisted of a few frame houses and a grocery store. But no matter. Its name shall ring like a peal of bells in this book.
It grew colder as we rose, and that night, the night of the second day, we reached Hesper and entered a long stretch of woods, and at last turned in towards a friendly light shining from a low house beneath a splendid oak.
As we drew near my father raised a signal shout, "Hallo-o-o the House!" and a man in a long gray coat came out. "Is that thee, friend Richard?" he called, and my father replied, "Yea, neighbor Barley, here we are!"
I do not know how this stranger whose manner of speech was so peculiar, came to be there, but he was and in answer to my question, father replied, "Barley is a Quaker," an answer which explained nothing at that time. Being too sleepy to pursue the matter, or to remark upon anything connected with the exterior, I dumbly followed Harriet into the kitchen which was still in possession of good Mrs. Barley.
Having filled our stomachs with warm food mother put us to bed, and when we awoke late the next day the Barleys were gone, our own stove was in its place, and our faithful clock was ticking calmly on the shelf. So far as we knew, mother was again at home and entirely content.
This farm, which was situated two miles west of the village of Hesper, immediately won our love. It was a glorious place for boys. Broad-armed white oaks stood about the yard, and to the east and north a deep forest invited to exploration. The house was of logs and for that reason was much more attractive to us than to our mother. It was, I suspect, both dark and cold. I know the roof was poor, for one morning I awoke to find a miniature peak of snow on the floor at my bedside. It was only a rude little frontier cabin, but it was perfectly satisfactory to me.
Harriet and I learned much in the way of woodcraft during the months which followed. Night by night the rabbits, in countless numbers printed their tell-tale records in the snow, and quail and partridges nested beneath the down-drooping branches of the red oaks. Squirrels ran from tree to tree and we were soon able to distinguish and name most of the tracks made by the birds and small animals, and we took a never-failing delight in this study of the wild. In most of my excursions my sister was my companion. My brother was too small.
All my memories of this farm are of the fiber of poetry. The silence of the snowy aisles of the forest, the whirring flight of partridges, the impudent bark of squirrels, the quavering voices of owls and coons, the music of the winds in the high trees, – all these impressions unite in my mind like parts of a woodland symphony. I soon learned to distinguish the raccoon's mournful call from the quavering cry of the owl, and I joined the hired man in hunting rabbits from under the piles of brush in the clearing. Once or twice some ferocious, larger animal, possibly a panther, hungrily yowled in the impenetrable thickets to the north, but this only lent a still more enthralling interest to the forest.
To the east, an hour's walk through the timber, stood the village, built and named by the "Friends" who had a meeting house not far away, and though I saw much of them, I never attended their services.
Our closest neighbor was a gruff loud-voiced old Norwegian and from his children (our playmates) we learned many curious facts. All Norwegians, it appeared, ate from wooden plates or wooden bowls. Their food was soup which they called "bean swaagen" and they were all yellow haired and blue-eyed.
Harriet and I and one Lars Peterson gave a great deal of time to an attempt to train a yoke of yearling calves to draw our handsled. I call it an attempt, for we hardly got beyond a struggle to overcome the stubborn resentment of the stupid beasts, who very naturally objected to being forced into service before their time. Harriet was ten, I was not quite nine, and Lars was only twelve, hence we spent long hours in yoking and unyoking our unruly span. I believe we did actually haul several loads of firewood to the kitchen door, but at last Buck and Brin "turned the yoke" and broke it, and that ended our teaming.
The man from whom we acquired our farm had in some way domesticated a flock of wild geese, and though they must have been a part of the farm-yard during the winter, they made no deep impression on my mind till in the spring when as the migratory instinct stirred in their blood they all rose on the surface of the water in a little pool near the barn and with beating wings lifted their voices in brazen clamor calling to their fellows driving by high overhead. At times their cries halted the flocks in their arrowy flight and brought them down to mix indistinguishably with the captive birds.
The wings of these had been clipped but as the weeks went on their pinions grew again and one morning when I went out to see what had happened to them, I found the pool empty and silent. We all missed their fine voices and yet we could not blame them for a reassertion of their freeborn nature. They had gone back to their summer camping grounds on the lakes of the far north.
Early in April my father hired a couple of raw Norwegians to assist in clearing the land, and although neither of these immigrants could speak a word of English, I was greatly interested in them. They slept in the granary but this did not prevent them from communicating to our house-maid a virulent case of smallpox. Several days passed before my mother realized what ailed the girl. The discovery must have horrified her, for she had been through an epidemic of this dread disease in Wisconsin, and knew its danger.
It was a fearsome plague in those days, much more fatal than now, and my mother with three unvaccinated children, a helpless handmaid to be nursed, was in despair when father developed the disease and took to his bed. Surely it must have seemed to her as though the Lord had visited upon her more punishment than belonged to her, for to add the final touch, in the midst of all her other afflictions she was expecting the birth of another child.
I do not know what we would have done had not a noble woman of the neighborhood volunteered to come in and help us. She was not a friend, hardly an acquaintance, and yet she served us like an angel of mercy. Whether she still lives or not I cannot say, but I wish to acknowledge here the splendid heroism which brought Mary Briggs, a stranger, into our stricken home at a time when all our other neighbors beat their horses into a mad gallop whenever forced to pass our gate.
Young as I was I realized something of the burden which had fallen upon my mother, and when one night I was awakened from deep sleep by hearing her calling out in pain, begging piteously for help, I shuddered in my bed, realizing with childish, intuitive knowledge that she was passing through a cruel convulsion which could not be softened or put aside. I went to sleep again at last, and when I woke, I had a little sister.
Harriet and I having been vaccinated, escaped with what was called the "verylide" but father was ill for several weeks. Fortunately he was spared, as we all were, the "pitting" which usually follows this dreaded disease, and in a week or two we children had forgotten all about it. Spring was upon us and the world was waiting to be explored.
One of the noblest features of this farm was a large spring which boiled forth from the limestone rock about eighty rods north of the house, and this was a wonder-spot to us. There was something magical in this never-failing fountain, and we loved to play beside its waters. One of our delightful tasks was riding the horses to water at this spring, and I took many lessons in horsemanship on these trips.
As the seeding time came on, enormous flocks of pigeons, in clouds which almost filled the sky, made it necessary for some one to sentinel the new-sown grain, and although I was but nine years of age, my father put a double-barrelled shotgun into my hands, and sent me out to defend the fields.
This commission filled me with the spirit of the soldier. Proudly walking my rounds I menaced the flocks as they circled warily over my head, taking shot at them now and again as they came near enough, feeling as duty bound and as martial as any Roman sentry standing guard over a city. Up to this time I had not been allowed to carry arms, although I had been the companion of Den Green and Ellis Usher on their hunting expeditions in the coulee – now with entire discretion over my weapon, I loaded it, capped it and fired it, marching with sedate and manly tread, while little Frank at my heels, served as subordinate in his turn.
The pigeons passed after a few days, but my warlike duties continued, for the ground-squirrels, called "gophers" by the settlers, were almost as destructive of the seed corn as the pigeons had been of the wheat. Day after day I patrolled the edge of the field listening to the saucy whistle of the striped little rascals, tracking them to their burrows and shooting them as they lifted their heads above the ground. I had moments of being sorry for them, but the sight of one digging up the seed, silenced my complaining conscience and I continued to slay.