the Desert Of Wheat (2001) Read online

  She seemed to doubt the sincerity of what she saw there and loved so well. Moon-blanched and serene, lonely and silent, beautiful and promising, the wide acres of "Many Waters," and the silver slopes and dark mountains beyond, did not tell the truth. 'Way over the dark ranges a hideous war had stretched out a red hand to her country. Her only brother had left his home to fight, and there was no telling if he would ever come back. Evil forces were at work out there in the moonlight.

  There had come a time for her to be thoughtful.

  Her father's asking her to ride to the Bend country had caused some strange little shock of surprise. Lenore had dreamed without thinking.

  Here in the darkness and silence, watching the crescent moon slowly sink, she did think. And it was to learn that she remembered singularly well the first time she had seen young Dorn, and still more vividly the second time, but the third time seemed both clear and vague. Enough young men had been smitten with Lenore to enable her to gauge the symptoms of these easy-come, easy-go attractions. In fact, they rather repelled her. But she had found Dorn's manner striking, confusing, and unforgettable. And why that should be so interested her intelligence.

  It was confusing to discover that she could not lay it to the sympathy she had felt for an American boy in a difficult position, because she had often thought of him long before she had any idea who he was or where he lived.

  In the very first place, he had been unforgettable for two reasons--because he had been so struck at sight of her that he had gazed unconsciously, with a glow on his face and a radiance in his eye, as of a young poet spellbound at an inspiration; and because he seemed the physical type of young man she had idealized--a strong, lithe-limbed, blond giant, with a handsome, frank face, clear-cut and smooth, ruddy-cheeked and blue-eyed.

  Only after meeting him out there in the desert of wheat had she felt sympathy for him. And now with intelligence and a woman's intuition, barring the old, insidious, dreamy mood, Lenore went over in retrospect all she could remember of that meeting. And the truth made her sharply catch her breath. Dorn had fallen in love with her. Intuition declared that, while her intelligence repudiated it. Stranger than all was the thrill which began somewhere in the unknown depths of her and mounted, to leave her tingling all over. She had told her father that she did not want to ride to the Bend country. But she did want to go! And that thought, flashing up, would not be denied. To want to meet a strange young man again was absolutely a new and irritating discovery for Lenore. It mystified her, because she had not had time to like Dorn.

  Liking an acquaintance had nothing to do with the fact. And that stunned her.

  "Could it be--love at first sight?" she whispered, incredulously, as she stared out over the shadowing fields.

  "For me? Why, how absurd--impossible!... I--I only remembered him--a big handsome boy with blazing eyes.... And now I'm sorry for him!"

  To whisper her amaze and doubt and consternation only augmented the instinctive recurring emotion. She felt something she could not explain.

  And that something was scarcely owing to this young man's pitiful position between duty to his father and love for his country. It had to do with his blazing eyes; intangible, dreamlike perceptions of him as not real, of vague sweet fancies that retreated before her introspective questioning. What alarmed Lenore was a tendency of her mind to shirk this revealing analysis. Never before had she been afraid to look into herself. But now she was finding unplumbed wells of feeling, secret chambers of dreams into which she had never let the light, strange instinctive activities, more physical than mental. When in her life before had she experienced a nameless palpitation of her heart?

  Long she sat there, staring out into the night. And the change in the aspect of the broad spaces, now dark and impenetrable and mysterious, seemed like the change in the knowledge of herself. Once she had flattered herself that she was an inch of crystal water; now she seemed a complex, aloof, and contrary creature, almost on the verge of tumultuous emotions.

  She said her prayers that night, a girlish habit resumed since her brother had declared his intention of enlisting in the army. And to that old prayer, which her mother had prayed before her, she added an appeal of her own. Strange that young Dorn's face should flash out of gloom! It was there, and her brother's was fading.

  "I wonder--will he and Jim--meet over there--on the battle-field!" she whispered. She hoped they would. Like tigers those boys would fight the Germans. Her heart beat high. Then a cold wind seemed to blow over her.

  It had a sickening weight. If that icy and somber wind could have been traced to its source, then the mystery of life would have been clear.

  But that source was the cause of war, as its effect was the horror of women. A hideous and monstrous thing existed out there in the darkness.

  Lenore passionately loved her brother, and this black thing had taken him away. Why could not women, who suffered most, have some word in the regulation of events? If women could help govern the world there would be no wars.

  At last encroaching drowsiness dulled the poignancy of her feelings and she sank to sleep.

  Chapter VI

  Singing of birds at her window awakened Lenore. The dawn streamed in bright and sweetly fragrant. The wheat-fields seemed a rosy gold, and all that open slope called to her thrillingly of the beauty of the world and the happiness of youth. It was not possible to be morbid at dawn. "I hear! I hear!" she whispered. "From a thousand slopes far and wide!"

  At the breakfast-table, when there came opportunity, she looked up serenely and said, "Father, on second thought I will go the Bend, thank you!"

  Anderson laid down his knife and fork and his eyes opened wide in surprise. "Changed your mind!" he exclaimed.

  "That's a privilege I have, you know," she replied, calmly.

  Mrs. Anderson appeared more anxious than surprised. "Daughter, don't go.

  That will be a fearful ride."

  "Hum! Sure glad to have you, lass," added Anderson, with his keen eyes on her.

  "Let me go, too," begged Rose.

  Kathleen was solemnly gazing at Lenore, with the wise, penetrating eyes of extreme youth.

  "Lenore, I'll bet you've got a new beau up there," she declared.

  Lenore flushed scarlet. She was less angry with her little sister than with the incomprehensible fact of a playful word bringing the blood stingingly to her neck and face.

  "Kitty, you forget your manners," she said, sharply.

  "Kit is fresh. She's an awful child," added Rose, with a superior air.

  "I didn't say a thing," cried Kathleen, hotly. "Lenore, if it isn't true, why'd you blush so red?"

  "Hush, you silly children!" ordered the mother, reprovingly.

  Lenore was glad to finish that meal and to get outdoors. She could smile now at that shrewd and terrible Kitty, but recollection of her father's keen eyes was confusing. Lenore felt there was really nothing to blush for; still, she could scarcely tell her father that upon awakening this morning she had found her mind made up--that only by going to the Bend country could she determine the true state of her feelings. She simply dared not accuse herself of being in unusually radiant spirits because she was going to undertake a long, hard ride into a barren, desert country.

  The grave and thoughtful mood of last night had gone with her slumbers.

  Often Lenore had found problems decided for her while she slept. On this fresh, sweet summer morning, with the sun bright and warm, presaging a hot and glorious day, Lenore wanted to run with the winds, to wade through the alfalfa, to watch with strange and renewed pleasure the waves of shadow as they went over the wheat. All her life she had known and loved the fields of waving gold. But they had never been to her what they had become overnight. Perhaps this was because it had been said that the issue of the great war, the salvation of the world, and its happiness, its hope, depended upon the millions of broad acres of golden grain. Bread was the staff of life. Lenore felt that she was changing and growing. If anything should
happen to her brother Jim she would be heiress to thousands of acres of wheat. A pang shot through her heart.

  She had to drive the cold thought away. And she must learn--must know the bigness of this question. The women of the country would be called upon to help, to do their share.

  She ran down through the grove and across the bridge, coming abruptly upon Nash, her father's driver. He had the car out.

  "Good morning," he said, with a smile, doffing his cap.

  Lenore returned his greeting and asked if her father intended to go anywhere.

  "No. I'm taking telegrams to Huntington."

  "Telegrams? What's the matter with the 'phone?" she queried.

  "Wire was cut yesterday."

  "By I. W. W. men?"

  "So your father says. I don't know."

  "Something ought to be done to those men," said Lenore, severely.

  Nash was a dark-browed, heavy-jawed young man, with light eyes and hair.

  He appeared to be intelligent and had some breeding, but his manner when alone with Lenore--he had driven her to town several times--was not the same as when her father was present. Lenore had not bothered her mind about it. But to-day the look in his eyes was offensive to her.

  "Between you and me, Lenore, I've sympathy for those poor devils," he said.

  Lenore drew back rather haughtily at this familiar use of her first name. "It doesn't concern me," she said, coldly and turned away.

  "Won't you ride along with me? I'm driving around for the mail," he called after her.

  "No," returned Lenore, shortly, and hurried on out of earshot. The impertinence of the fellow!

  "Mawnin', Miss Lenore!" drawled a cheery voice. The voice and the jingle of spurs behind her told Lenore of the presence of the best liked of all her father's men.

  "Good morning, Jake! Where's my dad?"

  "Wal, he's with Adams, an' I wouldn't be Adams for no money," replied the cowboy.

  "Neither would I," laughed Lenore.

  "Reckon you ain't ridin' this mawnin'. You sure look powerful fine, Miss Lenore, but you can't ride in thet dress."

  "Jake, nothing but an aeroplane would satisfy me to-day."

  "Want to fly, hey? Wal, excuse me from them birds. I seen one, an' thet's enough for me.... An', changin' the subject, Miss Lenore, beggin' your pardon--you ain't ridin' in the car much these days."

  "No, Jake, I'm not," she replied, and looked at the cowboy. She would have trusted Jake as she would her brother Jim. And now he looked earnest.

  "Wal, I'm sure glad. I heerd Nash call an' ask you to go with him. I seen his eyes when he said it.... Sure I know you'd never look at the likes of him. But I want to tell you--he ain't no good. I've been watchin' him. Your dad's orders. He's mixed up with the I. W. W.'s. But thet ain't what I mean. It's--He's--I--"

  "Thank you, Jake," replied Lenore, as the cowboy floundered. "I appreciate your thought of me. But you needn't worry."

  "I was worryin' a little," he said. "You see, I know men better 'n your dad, an' I reckon this Nash would do anythin'."

  "What's father keeping him for?"

  "Wal, Anderson wants to find out a lot about thet I. W. W., an' he ain't above takin' risks to do it, either."

  The stable-boys and men Lenore passed all had an eager good morning for her. She often boasted to her father that she could run "Many Waters" as well as he. Sometimes there were difficulties that Lenore had no little part in smoothing over. The barns and corrals were familiar places to her, and she insisted upon petting every horse, in some instances to Jake's manifest concern.

  "Some of them bosses are bad," he insisted.

  "To be sure they are--when wicked cowboys cuff and kick them," replied Lenore, laughingly.

  "Wal, if I'm wicked, I'm a-goin' to war," said Jake, reflectively. "Them Germans bother me."

  "But, Jake, you don't come in the draft age, do you?"

  "Jest how old do you think I am?"

  "Sometimes about fourteen, Jake."

  "Much obliged. Wal, the fact is I'm over age, but I'll gamble I can pack a gun an' shoot as straight an' eat as much as any young feller."

  "I'll bet so, too, Jake. But I hope you won't go. We absolutely could not run this ranch without you."

  "Sure I knew thet. Wal then, I reckon I'll hang around till you're married, Miss Lenore," he drawled.

  Again the scarlet mantled Lenore's cheeks.

  "Good. We'll have many harvests then, Jake, and many rides," she replied.

  "Aw, I don't know--" he began.

  But Lenore ran away so that she could hear no more.

  "What's the matter with me that people--that Jake should--?" she began, and ended with a hand on each soft, hot cheek. There was something different about her, that seemed certain. And if her eyes were as bright as the day, with its deep blue and white clouds and shining green and golden fields, then any one might think what he liked and have proof for his tormenting.

  "But married! I? Not much. Do I want a husband getting shot?"

  The path Lenore trod so lightly led along a great peach and apple orchard where the trees were set far apart and the soil was cultivated, so that not a weed nor a blade of grass showed. The fragrance of fruit in the air, however, did not come from this orchard, for the trees were young and the reddening fruit rare. Down the wide aisles she saw the thick and abundant green of the older orchards.

  At length Lenore reached the alfalfa-fields, and here among the mounds of newly cut hay that smelled so fresh and sweet she wanted to roll, and she had to run. Two great wagons with four horses each were being loaded. Lenore knew all the workmen except one. Silas Warner, an old, gray-headed farmer, had been with her father as long as she could remember.

  "Whar you goin', lass?" he called, as he halted to wipe his red face with a huge bandana. "It's too hot to run the way you're a-doin'."

  "Oh, Silas, it's a grand morning!" she replied.

  "Why, so 'tis! Pitchin' hay hyar made me think it was hot," he said, as she tripped on. "Now, lass, don't go up to the wheat-fields."

  But Lenore heard heedlessly, and she ran on till she came to the uncut alfalfa, which impeded her progress. A wonderful space of green and purple stretched away before her, and into it she waded. It came up to her knees, rich, thick, soft, and redolent of blossom and ripeness. Hard tramping it soon got to be. She grew hot and breathless, and her legs ached from the force expended in making progress through the tangled hay. At last she was almost across the field, far from the cutters, and here she flung herself, to roll and lie flat and gaze up through the deep azure of sky, wonderingly, as if to penetrate its secret. And then she hid her face in the fragrant thickness that seemed to force a whisper from her.

  "I wonder--how will I feel--when I see him--again.... Oh, I wonder!"

  The sound of the whispered words, the question, the inevitableness of something involuntary, proved traitors to her happy dreams, her assurance, her composure. She tried to burrow under the hay, to hide from that tremendous bright-blue eye, the sky. Suddenly she lay very quiet, feeling the strange glow and throb and race of her blood, sensing the mystery of her body, trying to trace the thrills, to control this queer, tremulous, internal state. But she found she could not think clearly; she could only feel. And she gave up trying. It was sweet to feel.

  She rose and went on. Another field lay beyond, a gradual slope, covered with a new growth of alfalfa. It was a light green--a contrast to the rich darkness of that behind her. At the end of this field ran a swift little brook, clear and musical, open to the sky in places, and in others hidden under flowery banks. Birds sang from invisible coverts; a quail sent up clear flutelike notes; and a lark caroled, seemingly out of the sky.

  Lenore wet her feet crossing the brook, and, climbing the little knoll above, she sat down upon a stone to dry them in the sun. It had a burn that felt good. No matter how hot the sun ever got there, she liked it.

  Always there seemed air to breathe and the shade was pleasant.

  From t
his vantage-point, a favorite one with Lenore, she could see all the alfalfa-fields, the hill crowned by the beautiful white-and-red house, the acres of garden, and the miles of orchards. The grazing and grain fields began behind her.

  The brook murmured below her and the birds sang. She heard the bees humming by. The air out here was clear of scent of fruit and hay, and it bore a drier odor, not so sweet. She could see the workmen, first those among the alfalfa, and then the men, and women, too, bending over on the vegetable-gardens. Likewise she could see the gleam of peaches, apples, pears and plums--a colorful and mixed gleam, delightful to the eye.

  Wet or dry, it seemed that her feet refused to stay still, and once again she was wandering. A gray, slate-colored field of oats invited her steps, and across this stretch she saw a long yellow slope of barley, where the men were cutting. Beyond waved the golden fields of wheat.

  Lenore imagined that when she reached them she would not desire to wander farther.

  There were two machines cutting on the barley slope, one drawn by eight horses, and the other by twelve. When Lenore had crossed the oat-field she discovered a number of strange men lounging in the scant shade of a line of low trees that separated the fields. Here she saw Adams, the foreman; and he espied her at the same moment. He had been sitting down, talking to the men. At once he rose to come toward Lenore.

  "Is your father with you?" he asked.

  "No; he's too slow for me," replied Lenore. "Who are these men?"

  "They're strangers looking for jobs."

  "I. W. W. men?" queried Lenore, in lower voice.

  "Surely must be," he replied. Adams was not a young, not a robust man, and he seemed to carry a burden of worry. "Your father said he would come right out."

  "I hope he doesn't," said Lenore, bluntly. "Father has a way with him, you know."

  "Yes, I know. And it's the way we're needing here in the Valley," replied the foreman, significantly.

  "Is that the new harvester-thresher father just bought?" asked Lenore, pointing to the huge machine, shining and creeping behind the twelve horses.