the Desert Of Wheat (2001) Read online

"Yes, that's the McCormack and it's a dandy," returned Adams. "With machines like that we can get along without the I. W. W."

  "I want a ride on it," declared Lenore, and she ran along to meet the harvester. She waved her hand to the driver, Bill Jones, another old hand, long employed by her father. Bill hauled back on the many-branched reins, and when the horses stopped the clattering, whirring roar of the machine also ceased.

  "Howdy, miss! Reckon this 's a regular I. W. W. hold-up."

  "Worse than that, Bill," gaily replied Lenore as she mounted the platform where another man sat on a bag of barley. Lenore did not recognize him. He looked rugged and honest, and beamed upon her.

  "Watch out fer yer dress," he said, pointing with grimy hand to the dusty wheels and braces so near her.

  "Let me drive, Bill?" she asked.

  "Wal, now, I wisht I could," he replied, dryly. "You sure can drive, miss. But drivin' ain't all this here job."

  "What can't I do? I'll bet you--"

  "I never seen a girl that could throw anythin' straight. Did you?"

  "Well, not so very. I forgot how you drove the horses.... Go ahead.

  Don't let me delay the harvest."

  Bill called sonorously to his twelve horses, and as they bent and strained and began to bob their heads, the clattering roar filled the air. Also a cloud of dust and thin, flying streams of chaff enveloped Lenore. The high stalks of barley, in wide sheets, fell before the cutter upon an apron, to be carried by feeders into the body of the machine. The straw, denuded of its grain, came out at the rear, to be dropped, while the grain streamed out of a tube on the side next to Lenore, to fall into an open sack. It made a short shift of harvesting.

  Lenore liked the even, nodding rhythm of the plodding horses, and the way Bill threw a pebble from a sack on his seat, to hit this or that horse not keeping in line or pulling his share. Bill's aim was unerring.

  He never hit the wrong horse, which would have been the case had he used a whip. The grain came out in so tiny a stream that Lenore wondered how a bag was ever filled. But she saw presently that even a tiny stream, if running steadily, soon made bulk. That was proof of the value of small things, even atoms.

  No marvel was it that Bill and his helper were as grimy as stokers of a furnace. Lenore began to choke with the fine dust and to feel her eyes smart and to see it settle on her hands and dress. She then had appreciation of the nature of a ten-hour day for workmen cutting eighteen acres of barley. How would they ever cut the two thousand acres of wheat? No wonder many men were needed. Lenore sympathized with the operators of that harvester-thresher, but she did not like the dirt. If she had been a man, though, that labor, hard as it was, would have appealed to her. Harvesting the grain was beautiful, whether in the old, slow method of threshing or with one of these modern man-saving machines.

  She jumped off, and the big, ponderous thing, almost gifted with intelligence, it seemed to Lenore, rolled on with its whirring roar, drawing its cloud of dust, and leaving behind a litter of straw.

  It developed then that Adams had walked along with the machine, and he now addressed her.

  "Will you be staying here till your father comes?" he asked.

  "No, Mr. Adams. Why do you ask?"

  "You oughtn't come out here alone or go back alone.... All these strange men! Some of them hard customers! You'll excuse me, miss, but this harvest is not like other harvests."

  "I'll wait for my father and I'll not go out of sight," replied Lenore.

  Thanking the foreman for his thoughtfulness, she walked away, and soon she stood at the edge of the first wheat-field.

  The grain was not yet ripe but near at hand it was a pale gold. The wind, out of the west, waved and swept the wheat, while the almost imperceptible shadows followed.

  A road half overgrown with grass and goldenrod bordered the wheat-field, and it wound away down toward the house. Her father appeared mounted on the white horse he always rode. Lenore sat down in the grass to wait for him. Nodding stalks of goldenrod leaned to her face. When looked at closely, how truly gold their color! Yet it was not such a gold as that of the rich blaze of ripe wheat. She was admitting to her consciousness a jealousy of anything comparable to wheat. And suddenly she confessed that her natural love for it had been augmented by a subtle growing sentiment. Not sentiment about the war or the need of the Allies or meaning of the staff of life. She had sensed young Dorn's passion for wheat and it had made a difference to her.

  "No use lying to myself!" she soliloquized. "I think of him!.. I can't help it... I ran out here, wild, restless, unable to reason... just because I'd decided to see him again--to make sure I--I really didn't care.... How furious--how ridiculous I'll feel--when--when--"

  Lenore did not complete her thought, because she was not sure. Nothing could be any truer than the fact that she had no idea how she would feel. She began sensitively to distrust herself. She who had always been so sure of motives, so contented with things as they were, had been struck by an absurd fancy that haunted because it was fiercely repudiated and scorned, that would give her no rest until it was proven false. But suppose it were true!

  A succeeding blankness of mind awoke to the clip-clop of hoofs and her father's cheery halloo.

  Anderson dismounted and, throwing his bridle, he sat down heavily beside her.

  "You can ride back home," he said.

  Lenore knew she had been reproved for her wandering out there, and she made a motion to rise. His big hand held her down.

  "No hurry, now I'm here. Grand day, ain't it? An' I see the barley's goin'. Them sacks look good to me."

  Lenore waited with some perturbation. She had a guilty conscience and she feared he meant to quiz her about her sudden change of front regarding the Bend trip. So she could not look up and she could not say a word.

  "Jake says that Nash has been tryin' to make up to you. Any sense in what he says?" asked her father, bluntly.

  "Why, hardly. Oh, I've noticed Nash is--is rather fresh, as Rose calls it," replied Lenore, somewhat relieved at this unexpected query.

  "Yes, he's been makin' eyes at Rose. She told me," replied Anderson.

  "Discharge him," said Lenore, forcibly.

  "So I ought. But let me tell you, Lenore. I've been hopin' to get Nash dead to rights."

  "What more do you want?" she demanded.

  "I mean regardin' his relation to the I. W. W.... Listen. Here's the point. Nash has been tracked an' caught in secret talks with prominent men in this country. Men of foreign blood an' mebbe foreign sympathies.

  We're at the start of big an' bad times in the good old U. S. No one can tell how bad. Well, you know my position in the Golden Valley. I'm looked to. Reckon this I. W. W. has got me a marked man. I'm packin' two guns right now. An' you bet Jake is packin' the same. We don't travel far apart any more this summer."

  Lenore had started shudderingly and her look showed her voiceless fear.

  "You needn't tell your mother," he went on, more intimately. "I can trust you an' ... To come back to Nash. He an' this Glidden--you remember, one of those men at Dorn's house--they are usin' gold. They must have barrels of it. If I could find out where that gold comes from!

  Probably they don't know. But I might find out if men here in our own country are hatchin' plots with the I. W. W."

  "Plots! What for?" queried Lenore, breathlessly.

  "To destroy my wheat, to drive off or bribe the harvest-hands, to cripple the crop yield in the Northwest; to draw the militia here; in short, to harass an' weaken an' slow down our government in its preparation against Germany."

  "Why, that is terrible!" declared Lenore.

  "I've a hunch from Jake--there's a whisper of a plot to put me out of the way," said Anderson, darkly.

  "Oh--good Heavens! You don't mean it!" cried Lenore, distractedly.

  "Sure I do. But that's no way for Anderson's daughter to take it. Our women have got to fight, too. We've all got to meet these German hired devils with their own weapons. No
w, lass, you know you'll get these wheatlands of mine some day. It's in my will. That's because you, like your dad, always loved the wheat. You'd fight, wouldn't you, to save your grain for our soldiers--bread for your own brother Jim--an' for your own land?"

  "Fight! Would I?" burst out Lenore, with a passionate little cry.

  "Good! Now you're talkin'!" exclaimed her father.

  "I'll find out about this Nash--if you'll let me," declared Lenore, as if inspired.

  "How? What do you mean, girl?"

  "I'll encourage him. I'll make him think I'm a wishy-washy moonstruck girl, smitten with him. All's fair in war!... If he means ill by my father--"

  Anderson muttered low under his breath and his big hand snapped hard at the nodding goldenrod.

  "For my sake--to help me--you'd encourage Nash--flirt with him a little--find out all you could?"

  "Yes, I would!" she cried, deliberately. But she wanted to cover her face with her hands. She trembled slightly, then grew cold, with a sickening disgust at this strange, new, uprising self.

  "Wait a minute before you say too much," went on Anderson. "You're my best-beloved child, my Lenore, the lass I've been so proud of all my life. I'd spill blood to avenge an insult to you.... But, Lenore, we've entered upon a terrible war. People out here, especially the women, don't realize it yet. But you must realize it. When I said good-by to Jim, my son, I--I felt I'd never look upon his face again!... I gave him up. I could have held him back--got exemption for him. But, no, by God!

  I gave him up--to make safety and happiness and prosperity for--say, your children, an' Rose's, an' Kathleen's.... I'm workin' now for the future. So must every loyal man an' every loyal woman! We love our own country. An' I ask you to see as I see the terrible danger to that country. Think of you an' Rose an' Kathleen bein' treated like those poor Belgian girls! Well, you'd get that an' worse if the Germans won this war. An' the point is, for us to win, every last one of us must fight, sacrifice to that end, an' hang together."

  Anderson paused huskily and swallowed hard while he looked away across the fields. Lenore felt herself drawn by an irresistible power. The west wind rustled through the waving wheat. She heard the whir of the threshers. Yet all seemed unreal. Her father's passion had made this place another world.

  "So much for that," resumed Anderson. "I'm goin' to do my best. An' I may make blunders. I'll play the game as it's dealt out to me. Lord knows I feel all in the dark. But it's the nature of the effort, the spirit, that'll count. I'm goin' to save most of the wheat on my ranches. An' bein' a Westerner who can see ahead, I know there's goin' to be blood spilled.... I'd give a lot to know who sent this Nash spyin' on me. I'm satisfied now he's an agent, a spy, a plotter for a gang that's marked me. I can't prove it yet, but I feel it. Maybe nothin' worth while--worth the trouble--will ever be found out from him. But I don't figure that way. I say play their own game an' take a chance....

  If you encouraged Nash you'd probably find out all about him. The worst of it is could you be slick enough? Could a girl as fine an' square an' high-spirited as you ever double-cross a man, even a scoundrel like Nash? I reckon you could, considerin' the motive. Women are wonderful.... Well, if you can fool him, make him think he's a winner, flatter him till he swells up like a toad, promise to elope with him, be curious, jealous, make him tell where he goes, whom he meets, show his letters, all without ever sufferin' his hand on you, I'll give my consent. I'd think more of you for it. Now the question is, can you do it?"

  "Yes," whispered Lenore.

  "Good!" exploded Anderson, in a great relief. Then he began to mop his wet face. He arose, showing the weight of heavy guns in his pockets, and he gazed across the wheat-fields. "That wheat'll be ripe in a week. It sure looks fine.... Lenore, you ride back home now. Don't let Jake pump you. He's powerful curious. An' I'll go give these I. W. W.'s a first dose of Anderson."

  He turned away without looking at her, and he hesitated, bending over to pluck a stem of goldenrod.

  "Lass--you're--you're like your mother", he said, unsteadily. "An' she helped me win out durin' my struggle here. You're brave an' you're big."

  Lenore wanted to say something, to show her feeling, to make her task seem lighter, but she could not speak.

  "We're pards now--with no secrets", he continued, with a different note in his voice. "An' I want you to know that it ain't likely Nash or Glidden will get out of this country alive."

  Chapter VII

  Three days later, Lenore accompanied her father on the ride to the Bend country. She sat in the back seat of the car with Jake--an arrangement very gratifying to the cowboy, but received with ill-concealed displeasure by the driver, Nash. They had arranged to start at sunrise, and it became manifest that Nash had expected Lenore to sit beside him all during the long ride. It was her father, however, who took the front seat, and behind Nash's back he had slyly winked at Lenore, as if to compliment her on the evident success of their deep plot. Lenore, at the first opportunity that presented, shot Nash a warning glance which was sincere enough. Jake had begun to use keen eyes, and there was no telling what he might do.

  The morning was cool, sweet, fresh, with a red sun presaging a hot day.

  The big car hummed like a droning bee and seemed to cover the miles as if by magic. Lenore sat with face uncovered, enjoying the breeze and the endless colorful scene flashing by, listening to Jake's amusing comments, and trying to keep back thought of what discovery might await her before the end of this day.

  Once across the Copper River, they struck the gradual ascent, and here the temperature began to mount and the dust to fly. Lenore drew her veils close and, leaning comfortably back, she resigned herself to wait and to endure.

  By the flight of a crow it was about a hundred miles from Anderson's ranch to Palmer; but by the round-about roads necessary to take the distance was a great deal longer. Lenore was well aware when they got up on the desert, and the time came when she thought she would suffocate.

  There appeared to be intolerable hours in which no one spoke and only the hum and creak of the machine throbbed in her ears. She could not see through her veils and did not part them until a stop was made at Palmer.

  Her father got out, sputtering and gasping, shaking the dust in clouds from his long linen coat. Jake, who always said he lived on dust and heat, averred it was not exactly a regular fine day. Lenore looked out, trying to get a breath of air. Nash busied himself with the hot engine.

  The little country town appeared dead, and buried under dust. There was not a person in sight nor a sound to be heard. The sky resembled molten lead, with a blazing center too bright for the gaze of man.

  Anderson and Jake went into the little hotel to get some refreshments.

  Lenore preferred to stay in the car, saying she wanted only a cool drink. The moment the two men were out of sight Nash straightened up to gaze darkly and hungrily at Lenore.

  "This's a good a chance as we'll get," he said, in an eager, hurried whisper.

  "For what?" asked Lenore, aghast.

  "To run off," he replied, huskily.

  Lenore had proceeded so cleverly to carry out her scheme that in three days Nash had begun to implore and demand that she elope with him. He had been so much of a fool. But she as yet had found out but little about him. His right name was Ruenke. He was a socialist. He had plenty of money and hinted of mysterious sources for more.

  At this Lenore hid her face, and while she fell back in pretended distress, she really wanted to laugh. She had learned something new in these few days, and that was to hate.

  "Oh no! no!" she murmured. "I--I can't think of that--yet."

  "But why not?" he demanded, in shrill violence. His gloved hand clenched on the tool he held.

  "Mother has been so unhappy--with my brother Jim--off to the war. I--I just couldn't--now. Harry, you must give me time. It's all so--so sudden. Please wait!"

  Nash appeared divided between two emotions. Lenore watched him from behind her parted veil. She ha
d been astonished to find out that, side by side with her intense disgust and shame at the part she was playing, there was a strong, keen, passionate interest in it, owing to the fact that, though she could prove little against this man, her woman's intuition had sensed his secret deadly antagonism toward her father. By little significant mannerisms and revelations he had more and more betrayed the German in him. She saw it in his overbearing conceit, his almost instant assumption that he was her master. At first Lenore feared him, but, as she learned to hate him she lost her fear. She had never been alone with him except under such circumstances as this; and she had decided she would not be.

  "Wait?" he was expostulating. "But it's going to get hot for me."

  "Oh!... What do you mean?" she begged. "You frighten me."

  "Lenore, the I. W. W. will have hard sledding in this wheat country. I belong to that. I told you. But the union is run differently this summer. And I've got work to do--that I don't like, since I fell in love with you. Come, run off with me and I'll give it up."

  Lenore trembled at this admission. She appeared to be close upon further discovery.

  "Harry, how wildly you talk!" she exclaimed. "I hardly know you. You frighten me with your mysterious talk.... Have--a--a little consideration for me."

  Nash strode back to lean into the car. Behind his huge goggles his eyes gleamed. His gloved hand closed hard on her arm.

  "It is sudden. It's got to be sudden," he said, in fierce undertone.

  "You must trust me."

  "I will. But you must confide in me," she replied, earnestly. "I'm not quite a fool. You're rushing me--too--too--"

  Suddenly he released her, threw up his hand, then quickly stepped back to the front of the car. Jake stood in the door of the hotel. He had seen that action of Nash's. Then Anderson appeared, followed by a boy carrying a glass of water for Lenore. They approached the car, Jake sauntering last, with his curious gaze on Nash.

  "Go in an' get a bite an' a drink," said Anderson to the driver. "An' hurry."

  Nash obeyed. Jake's eyes never left him until he entered the door. Then Jake stepped in beside Lenore.