Chapter XLIII: Jean Is Happy—and Another Person 307 (2)

“It’s a lot of trouble, having so much extra company on account of your office being in the house,” his wife said at times; “but it’s better than having you away two-thirds of your time down town, so it is all right.”

“There’s a woman going round the corner to the office,” exclaimed Mary, one evening, just as her father had settled himself before the fire to enjoy a frolic with the little ones.

“It’s that grass widow, Sally O’Dowd,” said Mrs. Ranger.

“She’s booked for a solid hour,” snapped Marjorie, “and we’ll have to delay supper till nine o’clock.”

The Squire had barely time to reach his office by an inner passage and seat himself before the fire, when Mrs. O’Dowd—an oversized, plainly dressed, intelligent-looking woman, who was remarkably handsome, notwithstanding the expression of pain upon her face—entered the office and stood silent before the open fire.

“Well,” exclaimed the Squire, impatiently, motioning her to a chair, “what can I do for you now?”

“Oh, Squire!” she cried, ignoring the proffered chair and dropping on her knees at his feet, her wealth of rippling hair falling about her face and over her shapely shoulders like a deluge of gold, “I want you to take me with you to Oregon.”

“What! And leave your children to the care of others? I didn’t think that of you, Mrs. O’Dowd.”

“But what else can I do? You know the court has assigned the custody of all three of my babies to Sam.”

“Yes, Sally; but you can see them once in a while if you stay here.”

“The court gave them to Samuel and his mother absolutely, you know.”

“Yes, yes, child; and while in one way it is hard, if you look at it in a practical light, you will see that it was best for the children. You couldn’t keep them with you and go out as hired help in anybody’s kitchen; and you have no other means of support any more.”

“If I stay here, I cannot have even the poor privilege of caring for them, except when they’re sick. I must get entirely away from their vicinity, or lose my senses altogether.”

“I thought that was what was the matter when you married the fellow, Sally. You certainly had lost your senses then.”

“But love is blind, Squire—till it gets its eyes open; and then it is generally too late to see to any advantage. Little did my dear father think, when he made a will leaving his homestead, his bank account, and all his belongings to me, that he was reducing my dear mother and me to beggary.”

“But that wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t married that worthless fellow, Sally.”

“But the _if_ exists, Squire. I married the fellow. It was an awful blunder,—I’ll admit that. But it wasn’t a crime. It should have been no reason for robbing me. And yet this marriage was made the legal pretext for permitting the robbery. Oh, I was so glad when my dear mother died! I couldn’t have shed a tear at her grave if I’d been hung for my seeming heartlessness. Poor mother! I was made an unwilling party to a robbery that beggared her and myself. Then, when I could no longer endure the presence of the robber and his accomplice, and live, I was doubly, yes, trebly robbed, by being deprived of my children.”

The Squire cleared his throat and spoke huskily.

“That will was a sad mistake of your father’s, Sally. He should have left his property to your mother. It was wrong to put her means of livelihood in jeopardy by leaving all to you. He ought to have known you’d marry, and that the property would accrue to your husband.”

“But mother insisted that all should be left to me. She even waived her right of dower, in my interest—as she thought.”

“Well, Sally, you can’t say that I didn’t warn you.”

The woman laughed hysterically. “Much good that warning can do me now!” she cried, rising to her feet and unconsciously assuming a dramatic pose. “We hadn’t been married a week when he ordered my mother out of my house. And then he installed his own mother in my home, and expected me to be silent. Oh, I am so glad my dear mother is dead! I would rejoice if my poor, defrauded children were all dead also.”

The Squire cleared his throat again and leaned forward on his hands. “The law recognizes the husband and wife as one, and the husband as that one, Mrs. O’Dowd.”

“Yes, yes, I know that, to my bitter sorrow,” she said with a meaning smile, her white teeth shining through her parted lips and her eyes flashing. The woman sank upon the hearth, looking strangely white and calm.

John Ranger sighed helplessly. “I worked the underground railroad last night for all it was worth, in the interest of some runaway niggers,” he said under his breath; then audibly, “The laws of the land must be obeyed, my child.”

“The law is a fiend,” cried Jean, who had entered the room unobserved and had stood listening in the shadow of the chimney jamb. “I’ll never rest till this awful one-sided power is broken. You know yourself that it’s a monster, daddie. I know you know it, or you’d never help a run—”

He put his finger on his lips, and the girl changed the subject. The underground railroad was a forbidden topic in the Ranger household.

“Because Sally Danover knew no better than to become the wife of an unworthy man,—who knew what he was about, though she didn’t,—the law declares that all the benefits resulting from the fraudulent transaction must accrue to the villain in the case, and all the penalties must be borne by his victim. What would you do to such a fellow, daddie, if I should marry him?”

John Ranger did not answer, but gazed steadily into the fire, his brow contracted and his thoughts gloomy.

“Sally, cheer up!” cried Jean, shaking the woman by the shoulder. “Daddie’s a whole lot better man than he thinks he is. I’ve seen him tested. You’re as good as a nigger, if you _are_ white, and he’ll help you.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, my daughter. It’s a crime to break the law, and crime must be followed by fitting punishment.”

“If you get caught, you get punished,” cried Jean, laughing in her father’s face. “To break such a law would be an act of heroism for which I should be glad to be arrested and sent to jail! It would be an act of heroism beside which the defence of the Stars and Stripes would be cowardice!” she cried in a transport of fury.

“Come, Jean,” said her father, rising, “we must go to supper. Won’t you join us, Mrs. O’Dowd?”

“Food would choke me,” said the visitor, bowing herself out.

“Hang the luck!” said the Squire, as the door slammed behind her.

“What are you going to do to help the poor woman, John?” asked Mrs. Ranger, as the family sat at the belated meal.

“Ask Jean.”

“What do you know about the case, daughter?”

“She thinks she knows a lot,” interrupted her father. “She’d ’a’ made a plaguy good lawyer if she’d only been born a boy.”

“Who knew best what I ought to be,—you or God?” asked Jean, her eyes glowing like stars.

“I give it up,” replied her father, smiling.

“I was reading to-day,” said Mrs. Ranger, “of a man down East who lured his runaway wife back home by stealing the babies and then warning everybody through the papers, and by posters, not to trust or harbor her, under penalty of the law. The woman held out quite a spell, but cold and hunger got the better of her at last; and when the stolen children fell sick, she went back to her lawful protector and stayed till she died, as meek as any lamb.”

“Sally Danover won’t go back to Sam O’Dowd; she’ll die first,” cried Mary; “and I glory in her grit.”

“You haven’t answered my question, John,” said Mrs. Ranger. “What do you propose to do with Sally O’Dowd?”

“I s’pose I’ll have to take her to Oregon and let her take a new start. She says she must get away from here, or go insane.”

“I’d go crazy if I had to leave my children, John.”

“You can boast, Annie; you can afford to. But if you were in Sally’s shoes, you’d sing a different song.”

Mrs. Ranger shrugged her shoulders.

“I can’t see why women with good husbands and happy homes are so ready to censure less fortunate women for breaking bonds that are unbearable,” said her husband. “Women are women’s worst enemies.”

“Sam O’Dowd’s no woman,” exclaimed Jean. “There’s not a woman on top o’ dirt that’d treat any man as he’s treated Sally.”

“I guess it’s about an even stand-off,” rejoined her mother.

“No,” cried Jean. “The conditions are not equal. No woman has the power to turn her husband out of doors. Even if it is her own house, he is its lawful master. Women don’t stand any show at all compared with men.”

“Jean is going to-morrow to see Sam O’Dowd’s mother. She can make matters smooth for Sally if anybody can,” said the Squire.

* * * * *

“The sale of our effects is only two weeks off, John,” said his wife, when they were alone. “I want to reserve a few things that are sacred. There’s Baby Jamie’s cradle, that you made from the hollow section of that old gum-tree that stood in the back pasture. Do you remember how nicely I lined it with the back breadths of my wedding dress?”

“Could I forget it, Annie?”

“Then there’s my mother’s little old spinning-wheel. It was my grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s. May I keep it for Mary?”

“It won’t pay to haul such things over the plains, Annie. Better let your mother keep ’em here till there’s a transcontinental railroad.”

“But that won’t come in my time, John.”

VI

_THE BEGINNING OF A JOURNEY_

The sale of Squire Ranger’s effects proceeded without unnecessary delay. The sawmill, the first portable structure of its kind ever seen west of the Wabash River, was eagerly purchased on credit by a waiting customer, and work at the mill went on without interruption. What a primitive affair it was! And how like a pygmy it seems as the resident on the North Pacific’s border recalls its littleness, and contrasts it with the mammoth mills of Oregon, the lower Columbia, and Puget Sound, which grasp in their giant arms the dead leviathans of the primeval forest, and set their teeth to work tearing to pieces the patient upbuilding of the ages gone!

The motive power of John Ranger’s sawmill consisted of about a dozen superannuated horses, some spavined, some ringboned, some wind-broken, all more or less disabled in some way; these were regularly harnessed, each in his turn, to a set of horizontal radiating shafts attached to a rotating centre, above which, on a little platform, stood the driver, with a whip.

“I know it’s wicked to kill the trees and cut them up into boards; it’s just as wicked as it is to kill pigs and cattle,” was Mary Ranger’s comment when she first beheld the frantic work of the raging saw, which, screaming like a demon, ate its way through hearts of oak and hickory, or tore the slabs from the sides of the black-walnut and sugar-maple patriarchs with ever unsated ferocity.

But this sawmill had long been a boon to the entire country, as was evidenced by the multiplication, since its advent, of framed houses, barns, bridges, schoolhouses, and churches, which suddenly sprang into vogue, not to mention the many miles of planked highways that rushed into fashion before the railroad era in the days when “good roads conventions” were unheard of.

Children born and reared in cities—subject, if of the tenant class, to frequent changes of habitation, or, if their homes are permanent, to frequent intervals of travel—can have little idea of the love which children of the country cherish for the farms and homes to which they are born, and in which their brief lives are spent. The very soil on which they have trodden is dear to them, and seems instinct with sentience. They make a boon companion of everything with which they come in contact, whether pertaining to the earth, the water, or the air. Their little gardens are familiar friends; the flowers of the wildwood are loving entities; the brook that sings in summer through the tangled grass and sleeps in winter under a bed of ice is always a communing spirit. The sighing winds chant rhythmic lullabies in the treetops, and the language of every insect, bird, and beast has, to them, a distinctive meaning. The blue heavens are their delight, and the passing clouds their friends. The sun, the moon, and the stars hold converse with them, and the changing seasons bring to them, each in its turn, peculiar joy.

But, dearly as they loved the old home and its surroundings, the Ranger children, who had never crossed the boundary of township number twelve, range three west, in which they were born, looked forward eagerly to the forthcoming journey. Once only had Mrs. Ranger ventured beyond the township limits since leaving the Kentucky home of her childhood; and that was many years before, when she went with her husband to the county seat to attach her mark to the fateful mortgage, upon which the accruing interest seemed always to be maturing at the time when she or the children were the most in need of books or shoes or clothing.

“I wasn’t allowed to learn to write in my childhood,” she falteringly explained to the notary, when, after affixing her mark, she watched him as he attached his seal to the document which was to be as a millstone about her neck forever after. “My father always thought that education was bad for girls,” she added. “He said if they knew how to write they’d be forging their husbands’ names and getting their money out of the bank. And he said, too, that if girls learned to write, they’d be sending love letters to the boys.”

“It’s never too late to learn,” was the notary’s reply. “If I were you, I would learn to write when the children learn. You can do it if you try.”

“I’d be glad to, if I could find the time; but it’s hard to learn anything for one’s own especial benefit with a baby always in one’s arms. When the children get big enough to learn to write, I’ll try, though.”

And she did; with such success that she never after signed her name with a cross.

* * * * *

“I’m glad we’ve got that mortgage off our hands at last, Annie,” said her husband as they counted up the somewhat disappointing returns after the sale of their personal effects was over.

“But you’re not morally free from it, John, or even legally so. If the purchaser should fail, the load would then revert to Lije, you know. Say, John, can’t I deed my little ten-acre farm to my father and mother? It never cost you anything. I took care of old man Eustis for six long years; and you know he gave the little farm to me as pay for my services, absolutely.”

“Haven’t I paid its taxes all along, Annie?”

“And have I earned nothing all this time, my husband?”

“Oh, yes, you’ve earned a living; and you’ve got it as you went along, haven’t you?”

Mrs. Ranger made no reply, but being silenced was not being convinced.

“Be patient,” said Jean, aside. “I’ll manage it.”

* * * * *

Several pairs of great brown-eyed oxen, with which the children had become familiar in their days of logging about the sawmill, were easily trained for the long journey; but others, untamed and terrified, as if pre-sensing the trials awaiting them through untracked deserts, submitted to the yoke only under the cruelest compulsion. New wagons, stanchly built and covered with white canvas hoods, stretched tightly over hickory bows, were ranged on the lawn, under the naked, creaking branches of the big elm-tree. Provisions, resembling in quantity the supplies for a small army, were carted to the front veranda, awaiting shipment down the Illinois and Mississippi rivers to St. Louis, to be reshipped up the Missouri to the final point of loading into wagons for crossing the Great American Desert, as the Great Plains were then known.

Visitors, including friends and relatives from far and near, came to the dismantled house in great relays, and the business of Squire Ranger’s office as justice of the peace increased a dozen fold. All this commotion involved increasing labor for Mrs. Ranger, who faded visibly as she silently counted the intervening days before the hour of final separation from her sorrowing parents. If the Squire suffered at the thought of parting with anybody, he made no sign except to complain of a “pesky cold” that made his eyes water, which he attributed to the “beastly climate.”

“The spirit of adventure that inspires my husband to emigrate does not permit him to foresee danger,” was Mrs. Ranger’s ever-ready reply to the numerous prophets of evil who came to condole, but got only their labor for their pains. “I will not try to interfere with his plans. I started out as a bride to walk the road of life beside him, and I mean to do as I agreed.”

But the good wife grew thinner and whiter as the days sped on; and when at last the wagons were all ranged in line, with every yoke of oxen in place; when the last farewell had been spoken; when the last audible prayer had ascended heavenward, and the command to move on had been given,—she sank on her feather bed in the great family wagon and closed her eyes with a feeling of thankfulness akin to that of the sufferer from a fatal malady who realizes that his last hour has come.

“‘He giveth His beloved sleep,’” said Mary, softly, as she covered her mother with a heavy shawl.

* * * * *

It was now the first of April, a fitful, gray, and misty day. A soft breeze was stirring from the south, and straggling rays of sunlight struggled through occasional rifts in the straying clouds. The spring thaw had at last set in. The sticky soil adhered to the feet of man and beast, and clung in heavy masses to the wheels of wagons.

The dog, Rover, who had always willingly remained at home on watch during the family’s absence at church or elsewhere, had hidden himself at starting-time; but he was found waiting in the road when the party was several miles out on the way, and, when discovered, approached his master with drooping tail and piteous whine.

There were tears in the eyes of the strong man, of which he was not ashamed, as he dismounted from the back of Sukie, his favorite mare, and, stooping, patted the dog affectionately on the head.

“They didn’t fool ’oo, did ’ey, Rovie?” said Bobbie, as he hugged the dog, unmindful of his muddy coat.

“Come to me, Rover,” exclaimed Mrs. Ranger, who had been refreshed by her nap. The dog obeyed, and, wet and dirty as he was, attempted to hide himself among the baggage. But his hopes were blasted by a peremptory command from his master: “Go back home and stay with grandfather!” The poor brute jumped, whining, to the ground and affected to obey; but he reappeared a dozen miles farther on, at the Illinois River’s edge; and when the ferry-boat, which he was forbidden to enter, was out of reach of either command or missile, he sat on his haunches on the river-bank and howled dismally.

“Don’t you think a dog has a soul, daddie?” asked Jean, through her tears.

“How should I know, daughter?” was the husky response. “I’m not yet certain that a man has a soul.”

VII

_SCOTTY’S FIRST ROMANCE_

The home that was to be the abode of the Ranger family during the journey was an over-jutting wagon-box,—Harry called it a “hurricane deck,”—made to fit over the running gear of a substantial wagon, in which a dozen or more persons might be stowed away at night in crosswise fashion. It was named “the saloon” by the teamsters, in jocose recognition of its owner’s well-known teetotal habits, and was assigned to the women and children as their especial domicile.

“It will be your duty to keep a daily record of our journey, Jean.”

This was the first official order issued by Captain Ranger after he had been formally elected as commander of the expedition, and was given under the thickly falling snow, amid the bustle and confusion of making the first camp.

“What sort of a record?”

“A daily write-up of current events. Here is a brand-new blank-book I have bought for the purpose. And here’s a portable inkstand, with some lead pencils, a pocket knife, and a box of pens. I’ve selected you as scribe because you won the prize in that competitive contest over the doings of Bismarck.”

“But that was a different proposition, daddie.”

“It’s all in the same line, Jean. You have a record to preserve now. You must keep your credit good. Look to your laurels, and don’t forget!”

And Jean, partly from innate ambition, but chiefly because she was under orders from which she knew there could be no appeal, kept, through all the tedious journey, a diary, from which the chronicler of these pages proposes to cull such fragments as may fit into the narrative, without strict regard to chronology, though with due regard to facts.

* * * * *

“We made camp last night in the discomfort of a driving snowstorm,” wrote the scribe under date of April 2. “But in spite of our sorrow over our departure from home and loved ones, the most of us were jolly, and we made the best we could of the situation. To-night, after a day’s disagreeable wheeling through mud that freezes at night and thaws by day, making travel nasty, sticky, and tedious, we stopped for camp near an isolated farmhouse, where the goodwife is disheartened and sick, and the children are ragged, dirty, and frightened.

“The storm has abated, and the sky is clear. Our teamsters are kneeling on the ground around our mess-boxes, which are used for tables at mealtime, and stored in the ends of the wagons when we are moving ahead.”

“There, I can’t think of another word to write.” She closed the book with a bang.

For many minutes after gathering around the tables, all were too busy with the supper to make any attempt at conversation.

Beans and bacon, coffee and crackers, and great heaps of stewed fruits, were reinforced by mountains of steaming flapjacks, which Mary and Marjorie took turns at baking, their eyes watery from the smoke of the open fire, and their cheeks reddened by the wind.

“Wonder what’s become o’ Scotty,” said Captain Ranger, as he knelt in the absent teamster’s place at table and helped himself bountifully.

“He filled our water-buckets and was off like a shot,” said Hal. “He ought to show up at mealtime. Ah, there he comes.”

“Where’ve you been, Scotty?” asked the Captain. “Here’s plenty of room. Kneel, and give an account of yourself.”

“So you’re in love, eh, Scotty? and with that pretty widow in the next camp?”

The questioner was a tall, lanky teamster, answering to the appellation of Shorty.

“Never in love before,” said Scotty, as he swallowed his coffee with a gulp.

An uproarious laugh ran around the table.

“Her hair is like the flower o’ Scotia’s broom in springtime, and the sheen o’ her eyes is like Loch Achray!” exclaimed Scotty, as he passed his plate for a fresh relay of flapjacks.

“A love affair doesn’t spoil his appetite,” laughed Marjorie.

“I want you all to understand that no falling in love’ll be allowed on this journey,” said the Captain, dryly. “There’ll be time enough for that kind o’ nonsense after you get to Oregon and get settled.”

“Love, like death, has all seasons for its own, sir,” retorted Scotty, with a deferential bow.

“Women and war don’t go together,” replied his employer. “And you’ll find this journey is a good deal like war before you’re done with it.”

“Everything is fair in both love and war, sir.”

“Excuse me,” said a woman in black, with a low, mellow voice and blond complexion, who might have heard herself discussed if she had listened. The clatter around the table stopped instantly.

“We’re in a quandary, mamma and I,” she said, blushing. “Our matches are damp and won’t burn. I thought perhaps—”

A half-dozen men were on their feet in an instant, and half-a-dozen hands went suddenly into half-a-dozen pockets, while half-a-dozen blocks of matches were forthcoming in less than half a minute.

“Here are more than I need, gentlemen, and I thank you ever so much,” she said, taking the offer from Scotty; and, with a bow and a smile to all, she was gone.

“The red of her lips is like rubies, the white of her teeth is like pearls, and her voice is a symphony,” said Scotty, looking after her as she ran.

“Scotty’s attack is as sudden as it is serious,” laughed Lengthy, a short, stocky teamster, whose nickname was a ludicrous misfit.

“What freak o’ fate do you s’pose it was that brought that beauty out here on a journey like this?” asked Yank, a Southern-born teamster, whose accepted nickname was another palpable misnomer, and who dropped his _r_’s, like a negro preacher.

“I know!” cried Bobbie, his fingers dripping with molasses. “She came to meet Scotty.”

The laugh that followed disconcerted the child, who ran, abashed, to his mother in the family wagon.

“I thought,” exclaimed Sambo,—a gaunt Vermonter, who dropped his _g_’s as frequently as Yank dropped his _r_’s,—“I thought there’d be several ladies comin’ along, to keep us company.”

“Can you tell us why Mrs. O’Dowd didn’t join us?” asked Yank, turning deferentially to the Captain. “I thought we were to have the pleasure of one woman’s company,—I mean in addition to the ladies present, of course.”

Jean exchanged furtive glances with her father, who averted his face, and said: “That’s a conundrum, Yank. Ask me something easy.”

* * * * *

The next noticeable entry in Jean’s diary was made on the fifth of April, and was as follows:—

“The snow this morning is four inches deep. We camped last night in the mud and slush, in a narrow lane, after a hard day’s wheeling through the miry roads. Mother, dear woman, is weary and weak, but daddie got her a warm room in the farmhouse near us, where we children are allowed to go sometimes to thaw our marrow-bones by a pleasant fire.

“April 6. Cloudy to-day, with a threat of rain. But mother urges a forward movement, so Mary and Marjorie are packing the mess-boxes, and daddie says I must write up this horrid diary. There is nothing to write about. The country through which we are struggling is swampy, monotonous, muddy, and level. Cheap, rickety farmhouses are seen at intervals; the bridges are gone from most of the swollen streams; our way goes through narrow, muddy lanes, with crooked, tumble-down fences; and we see, every now and then, a discouraged-looking woman and a lot of half-clad children peeping through open doors, from the midst of a crowd of half-starved dogs. Daddie says these frontier people (and dogs) are the forerunners of all civilization; but I think they’re the embodiment of desolation and discouragement.

“April 7. The ague has broken out among our teamsters. We stopped to-night at a farmhouse, where suspicious women treated us like so many thieves. The whole family were barefoot, and lacked everything but numbers. Mother says that starvation has aroused their cupidity, and we mustn’t mind their suspicious airs. They had no feed for sale for the stock, and no supplies to sell for our table; but there were plenty of guns and dogs,—the latter a thieving lot,—from which we shall be glad to escape when we again see morning. Weather and roads no better.

“April 8. Mother quite ill again; but the skies are clear, and she insists on moving forward.

“April 11. No food for man or beast to be had for love or money. We must move onward, sick or well.

“April 12. A better-settled region. The scenery is often fine. Pussy-willows peep at us from marshy edges, and birds are singing in the budding treetops. Sick folks no better. Bought a liberal supply of corn for the stock, and a lot of butter, eggs, and chickens for the rest of us, so we have a feast in prospect. Camped on the edge of a pretty little village, on a nice green grass-plat. Daddie took us girls to a prayer-meeting. The good people eyed us askance. Evidently they thought us freaks. Certainly our slat sunbonnets and soiled linsey-woolsey dresses were not reassuring.”

* * * * *

The next day, at nightfall, the party reached Quincy, on the Mississippi, and camped on a flat bit of upland outside of the city’s limits, where many other wayfarers, like themselves, had halted and encamped.

“Did you notice Scotty?” asked Marjorie, approaching Jean, who sat on a wagon-tongue, trying to think of something out of the ordinary to jot in her journal.

“What’s he up to now?”

“He’s been preening his feathers like a turkey-gobbler for the last half-hour. Guess our pretty widow and her aristocratic mamma have caught up with our train. Just watch him! See how the ex-scientist, ex-statesman, ex-orator, and now ex-almost-anything is making a fool of himself!”

“All people, of both sexes, get a spell of the simples, sooner or later,” laughed Jean. “Daddie says that when the system is in the right condition to catch it, one gets it bad.”

“Guess I’ll ride out and look over the town a little, Annie,” said the Captain to his wife after the family had retired for the night. “I want to look out a little for our Scotty. He seems to need a guardian.”

Scotty, though a characteristic specimen of the educated Scotchman, was a loyal adherent of the institutions of his adopted country. He had been a member of the constitutional conventions of two border States, and was known as a writer and orator of no mean ability. But, like many another brilliant man, he had passed his fortieth year without acquiring a home, a family, or a competence. He was well versed in the “Rise and Fall of Republics,” and had travelled much in foreign lands,—themes of which he never tired. But he could never reduce ox-driving to a science.

Captain Ranger rode to the top of the bluffs, where he leisurely contemplated the scene. Lights reflected from town and river danced and gleamed, but barely made the darkness visible in the muddy streets. Church bells rang, steamers whistled, and longshoremen tugged at heavy loads. Powerful horses propelled great, clumsy freight-wagons through the unpaved streets. Foot passengers picked their way through slop and mud.

“Railroads will come here some day,” said the Captain to himself. “They will compete with the river traffic and cripple it. Other towns, like Chicago, will divert the trade, and there is no telling what the end will be. What a busy, bustling world it is, anyhow!”

“Halloa, Captain!”

“Well, I’m blanked if it isn’t Scotty!”

“I’ve been to call upon the widows we met in the beginning of our journey, sir, and I’ve been thinking it would be a handsome thing for you to do if you’d take them into our company, Captain Ranger.”

“We’ll see about it, Scotty; but I’m afraid you won’t earn your salt if I let them join us. I s’pose I’ll have to risk it, though.”

VIII

_A BORDER INCIDENT_

The public roads or thoroughfares through which the party floundered when crossing the sparsely settled counties of western Illinois, which had noticeably improved during the day or two of travel from the East toward Quincy, grew almost impassable on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River. Heavy freight-wagons, each bearing an immense load of merchandise, chiefly hides and furs from the Northwest Territory, had stirred the mud in the narrow lane to a seemingly inexhaustible depth; and the long spell of freezing by night, followed daily by the inevitable thaw, caused the many unbridged streams to overflow their banks and inundate the wide wastes of bottom land through which the ox teams were compelled to wander blindly, in continual danger of disaster. But the most disagreeable experiences resulted from the frequent snow-storms, which generally occurred at camping-time, accompanied by chilling winds and intermittent falls of rain or sleet, covering the earth with a glare of ice.

“When I get to heaven, I mean to ask Saint Peter to assign all cooks to high seats,” said Jean one evening, as, balancing a tray laden with tin cups and saucers, she paused above the heads of the men kneeling at the mess-boxes, and in apparent innocence upset a steaming cup upon the head of Yank.

“No harm done, I assure you, Miss Rangeah. Don’t mention it!” he said, affecting not to feel the burn at the back of his neck, whereat Jean grew repentant.

“Do you s’pose Saint Peter will pay any heed to the request of a slip of a girl like you?” asked Hal.

“I’ll not be a slip of a girl when I go through the gates o’ heaven, but a mature matron, famous and honored.”

* * * * *

“We are in a slave State now,” wrote Jean, under date of April 16; “and from my limited experience I am forced to conclude that slavery is more deteriorating in its effects upon the white people we meet than it is upon the blacks. The primitive cultivating of the soil we saw in central Illinois, where the white men do their own farming, was bad enough, God knows; but the shiftless, aimless, happy-go-lucky work of the Missouri ‘niggers,’ as they style themselves, is even worse. The white men we see at times are idle, pompous, and lazy. The white women are idle and apathetic; and the children are aimless and discouraged. Daddie says slavery is wrong, and no contingency can make it right; but I notice that he doesn’t propose any remedy.”

* * * * *

Prairie schooners were not known as “ships of the desert” then, for Joaquin Miller had not yet sought or acquired fame; and no Huntington or Holladay had made a transcontinental railway track, or tunnelled the sierras of the mighty West to open the way for the iron horse. Even the overland stage was an improvement as yet unknown; for Holladay had not yet established his relay stations, or sent his intrepid drivers out among the savages as heralds of approaching civilization.

“Daddy says humanity’s a hog,” was the leader in Jean’s next entry in her diary. “The weather continued so bad, mother was so wan and weak, and the stock were so nearly starved, that he decided to stop over for a day or two near a farmhouse and barnyard, where there seemed a chance to purchase food for man and beast. But we were glad to move on after a rather brief experience. The farmer doubled the price of his hay and grain every morning after ‘worship,’ reminding those of us who could not choose but hear his daily dole of advice to God, of Grandpa Ranger’s story of a planter and merchant he knew in his youth, of whom it was said that he would call his slaves to their devotions in the morning with a preamble like this: ‘Have you wet the leather? Have you sanded the sugar? Have you put meal in the pepper and chicory in the coffee? Have you watered the whiskey? Then come in to prayers!’”

The necessities of these farmers were born of isolation; and the opportunities for barter and dicker with passing emigrants stirred the acquisitive spirit within them into vigorous action. The prices of their hitherto unsalable commodities went up to unheard-of figures, increasing in geometrical progression. But Captain Ranger, having created a market in the remote country places in Illinois for supplies of coffee, tea, calico, and unbleached cotton cloth, had prepared himself at Quincy with such commodities, and was able to adjust his trade somewhat to the law of supply and demand.

* * * * *

Oh, those teamsters of the plains! No jollier crowd of brave, enduring, accommodating men ever cracked cruel whips over the backs of long-enduring oxen, or plodded more patiently than they beside the slowly moving wagons, as, wading often over shoe-tops through the muck and mire of the Missouri roads of early springtime, they jollied one another and cracked their whips and sang. Each misfit nickname was accepted as a joke, and none of the men inquired as to the origin of his peculiar cognomen. But Hal, being more inquisitive than they, asked troublesome questions of his sisters, who were in the secret.

“Better tell him, girls,” said their mother. “He’ll be in honor bound to keep the secret then. Won’t you, dear?”

“Jean did it,” said Marjorie.

“Then suppose you confess,” said Hal.

“It was this way,” she explained after a pause of mock seriousness. “The first night we were in camp, after we had washed the dishes, it occurred to me to write each teamster’s name and paste it to the bottom of his plate. I didn’t know the real name of one of ’em from Adam’s, so I wrote them down as Scotty, Limpy, Yank, Shorty, Sawed-off, and so on. We didn’t intend to perpetrate a misfit, but a joke, and we struck both. Scotty got the correct title, though it merely happened so. But you just watch ’em! Limpy’s as straight as an Indian; Sawed-off stands six feet two in his socks; Lengthy is no taller when he stands up than when he lies down; Yank is a characteristic slave-owner; and Sambo is an ingrained abolitionist!”

“We couldn’t have made such a lot o’ misfits if we had tried a week,” said Mary. “But the men all think Hal did it; so the suspicion doesn’t fall on us; and you get the credit for being somewhat of a wag, Mr. Hal.”

“It’s nothing new for men or boys to take the credit for what their sisters do,” said Jean, as Hal strode away, satisfied that in protecting his sisters from a piece of folly, by accepting it as his own, he was acting the part of a man. “Adam set the example; and where would Herschel have been if he hadn’t had a sister?”

“Adam might have been in a box if he couldn’t have had Eve,” laughed Marjorie; “for there would then have been nobody to raise Cain.”

“Or the Ranger family,” added Jean.

* * * * *

Several days of tedious, laborious travel brought the wanderers into an open, sparsely timbered, almost unsettled part of the State of Missouri. The snow and sleet gave way to brighter skies, the roads and sloughs were drying up, and the higher grounds were gradually arraying themselves in robes of green and gold.

“Here is vacant land, and lots of it,” said Mary, as she viewed the virgin prospect of a mighty settlement in undisguised admiration. “This is a beautiful world!” and she sighed deeply, her face toward the rising sun.

“Don’t look backward,” cried Jean. “Remember Lot’s wife.”

“There’s no use in trying to look backward,” urged Hal. “Dad will never halt till he lands us on the western shore of the continent, on the eastern hem of the Pacific Ocean. He says this country’s too old for him. The wild turkeys are all killed off, or scared out o’ sight; the deer and elk are gone for good; and the country’s played out.”

“Wait a few years, and there’ll be railroads gridironing this whole great valley of the Mississippi,” said Jean. “There’ll be towns and cities springing up in a hundred places. Farms and orchards and handsome country homes will cover these rolling prairies. The native groves will be more than quadrupled by cultivation, and schoolhouses and churches will spring into existence everywhere.”

“I wish you’d talk like this to your father! Won’t you, Jean?” asked Mrs. Ranger.

“You couldn’t hire him to live in a slave State!” cried Jean.

“The Reverend Thomas Rogers might manage to get this far on the way toward the setting sun without much money,” smiled Mrs. Ranger, meaningly. “The children favor our stopping here, on Missouri soil,” she added, as her husband joined the group. “Don’t you think the idea a good one, John?”

“What! And let the word go back among our people at home that we’d flunked? No! I’d die first, and then I wouldn’t do it,” exclaimed her husband, petulantly.

Mrs. Ranger burst into tears.

“There, there, Annie! Don’t worry. But don’t ask me to settle, with my children, in a slave State. Father left Kentucky when I was a boy to get away from slavery and its inevitable accompaniment of poor white trash. There is an irrepressible conflict between freedom and every form of involuntary servitude that exists under the sun. This nigger business will lead to a bloody war long before Uncle Sam is done with it, and I doubt if even war will settle it.”

“But Oregon may come into the Union as a slave State, John. You know that the extension of slavery is the chief theme that is agitating Congress now.”

“I’ll have a chance to fight the curse in Oregon, Annie. But it is a settled condition here. I’ll fight it to the bitter end, if I get a chance!” He strode away to look after the cattle and men.

“Dear, patient mother!” cried Jean, stroking her mother’s cheek tenderly. “Your head is as clear as a bell. But there’s a whole lot o’ common-sense in what daddie says, too. We’ll soon have settled weather; then you won’t mind travelling. We all think you’ll be well and strong as soon as we get settled in Oregon.”

“Maybe so, if I could only live to get there,” faltered the feeble woman. “But—”

“But what, mother?”

“Nothing. I was only thinking.”

Jean’s heart sank. “You must get to bed, mother dear,” she said lovingly.

The Ranger children, tired out with the fatigue and excitement of the day, were soon locked in the deep sleep of healthy youth and vigor. Not so Mrs. Ranger. The regular breathing of her sleeping loved ones soothed her nerves, but she seemed preternaturally awake.

A gentle breeze stirred the white wagon-hood overhead. Sukie, who was tethered near, neighed gently as Mrs. Ranger spoke her name, and came closer to be stroked.

“Is de Cap’n heah?” asked a dusky figure with a child on its hip, as it edged its way between the mare and the wagon-wheel.

“He’s out with the cattle at present. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Hide me, quick! De houn’s is aftah me, honey. I’ve jes’ waded de crick, and dey’ve lost de trail. Quick, missus; an’ I’ll sarve ye forever!”

The low baying of the bloodhounds proclaimed that they were again on the trail.

“Climb in here! Be quick!” exclaimed Mrs. Ranger, making room for the quaking fugitive. “I’ve never tried to sleep with a nigger and her baby, but I can stand it if I have to,” she said to herself, as the refugee took the place assigned to her.

* * * * *

“What in thunder are you up to now?” asked her husband when he looked in upon his wife and children in the morning and discovered the dusky intruder.

“Trying to help you to circumvent the institution you are so ready to fight, which, as you say, is wrong, and no contingency can make right,” replied his wife, her cheeks and eyes aglow with mingled satisfaction and excitement.

IX

_THE CAPTAIN DEFENDS THE LAW_

“Don’t you know it’s against the laws of your country to harbor a runaway nigger?” asked the Captain, in genuine alarm. “We’ll never get off o’ Missouri soil in this world if we’re caught hiding this wench and her pickaninny among our traps. She’s got to get away from here in a hurry.”

“So far as the laws go, I don’t care a rap, John. I, nor no other woman, ever took a hand in making any of ’em. And as for Missouri soil, it’s good enough for anybody. I’m quite enamored of it; and I feel perfectly willing to stay here as long as I live.”

“I don’t want to make no trouble for nobody, massa,” sobbed the fugitive, peeping from her covert like a beast at bay. “De missus done tuk keep o’ me ’dout ’siderin’ any consikenses. Didn’t ye, honey?”

“There was nothing else I could do,” said Mrs. Ranger, firmly, though her cheeks blanched with an unspoken fear.

“Dey was goin’ to sell me down Souf, an’ keep my coon for a body-servant for his own pappy’s new bride dat’s a-comin’ to de plantation nex’ week. Wusn’t dey, dawlin’?” holding aloft her mulatto offspring, who blinked at the rising sun. “’Fo’ God, massa, I won’t make a speck o’ trouble. I’ll jest keep a hidin’ till we git across de Missouri Ribbah. Take me ’long to Oregon, an’ ye won’t nebbah be sorry.”

“I’ve already agreed to take along one widow and her babies,” said the Captain, exchanging glances with Jean. “It doesn’t seem possible to add to the number.”

“Jes’ le’ me ride a hidin’ in a wagon till I get across de Missouri Ribbah, massa! I kin take keer o’ myself an’ my pickaninny too, if you’ll turn me loose among de Injuns.”

“It is the slaveholding, free American white man that the poor creature’s afraid of,” said Mrs. Ranger, with a bitter smile.

Again the deep baying of the bloodhounds betokened the finding of the trail.

“Climb back into the wagon, quick,” cried the Captain, “and take care that you keep out o’ sight! Deluge the wagon-wheel and all around it with water, gals. Don’t let the wench put her nose out, Annie. Hang the luck! When it comes to such a pass that a runaway wench would rather trust herself and her brat among the red savages of the plains than among her white owners in a free country, I get ashamed of a white man’s government. What’s the wench’s name?”

“She said it was Dugs.”

“The devil!”

“Don’t swear, John. She didn’t name herself.”

“And the name of the coon?”

“Geo’ge Washin’t’n, sah. I named him for de faddah o’ de kentry. He’s as han’some a coon as ebber had a white daddy. Ain’t ye, honey?” And the mother held him close. “Yo’s a flower o’ slavery, ain’t ye, dawlin’?” a hidden meaning in her voice.

Again the deep baying of the bloodhounds was heard. But they were taking the back trail. The fugitive laughed.

“De way we larn ’em dat trick is a niggah’s secret,” she said, as she again hid herself and child.

“My massa didn’t use to b’lieve in slavery, missus,” she said, as the baying of the dogs grew faint and distant. “When massa first ’herited his slaves, he used to tell us he’d set us free. But he got a habit o’ holdin’ on to us, an’ it jist growed on him. It was like de whiskey habit. It got fastened on him good an’ ha’d, and he didn’t talk ’bout manumittin’ us no mo’. He didn’t want to sell me, he said, but I was prope’ty, an’ times got bad, an’ he was ’bleeged to have money to pay his debts. His new wife’s ’spensive, awful, an’ he had to sell some o’ de niggahs. If he’d sol’ me an’ Geo’dy Wah too, I wouldn’t ’a’ runned away. But when he said he’d sell me, an’ keep my coon to be his new wife’s niggah, I couldn’t stan’ it nohow, so I scooted!” and the negress laughed heartily.

“Do you think you can hide her for a week, Annie? We’ll be across the Missouri River, by that time.”

“I’ll do my best, John. We’re running a terrible risk, though. Sometimes, when I think of the sins of this so-called free government, all committed in the name of Liberty, I long to turn rebel, and do my best to destroy it, root and branch.”

“I had a husban’ once, suh. But massa tuk a liken’ to me, so he sol’ him down Souf,” said the fugitive.

“And this baby?”

“Is my massa’s own coon. Massa wouldn’t ’a’ sol’ him nohow.”

“Be quick!” cried Jean, her breath hot with indignation. “Hide yourself! You mustn’t let the teamsters see you here. They’re coming in with the cattle now.”

“Gimme some quilts an’ blankets, honey. Dah! Hol’ ’em up, so! Now lemme make an Injun wickiup in one end o’ dis yah wagon. Geo’ge Washin’t’n ’ll be still as a lamb. Won’t ye, my putty ’ittle yallow coon?”

The baby, with its tawny skin, blue eyes, and blackish-brown, tangled curls, looked elfish as he nestled close to his mother’s breast and gazed affrighted into her turban-shaded eyes.

“Sh-sh-sh!” cried Jean; “the men are almost here. Keep close to your den and be very quiet.”

* * * * *

Day after day passed wearily along; but if the teamsters suspected aught, they made no sign. And day after day the teams wended their way westward without betraying the commission of this crime against the commonwealth of the great new State of Missouri and the free government of the United States of America, which it would have been base flattery to call a misdemeanor; as its perpetrators would have learned to their cost if they had been caught in the act.

* * * * *

“You don’t seem as happy as formerly,” said Captain Ranger to his wife at the close of a long and trying day. “If the risk we’re running by harboring that runaway nigger is making you uneasy, we can turn her out. A man’s first duty is to his own flesh and blood.”

“It isn’t that, John. The woman is no trouble; and her baby’s so afraid of bloodhounds that she keeps him as quiet as a mouse. I’m willing to risk my life to get them both away from their white owners and out into the Indians’ country, where they may have at least comparative freedom. I am not afraid.”

“Then what is the matter, dear?”

She toyed caressingly with his hair and beard, but said nothing. They were seated on a log by the roadside, and a laughing rivulet sprawled at their feet.

“Speak, Annie; don’t hesitate. I can hear your heart beat. What’s the matter?”

“You remember my little farm, John? It’s only ten acres, you know.”

“Yes; what of it?”

“You won’t be angry, John?”

“Of course not. What about it?”

“I want to deed the place over to my mother before we leave the State o’ Missouri.”

His manner changed instantly.

“I thought that matter was settled,” he said tersely. “Can’t you let me have a little peace?”

“I have held my peace as long as my conscience will let me, dear. You didn’t settle anything about it. You merely put me off, you know.”

“Well?”

A man can put a world of meaning into a monosyllable sometimes.

“I want you to let me deed that piece of property to my mother. If the deed were made to my father, and she should outlive him, she’d be only allowed to occupy it free from rent for one year after his death; but if it is made hers absolutely, and he should outlive her, he’ll be allowed to have a home and get his living off it as long as he lives. You see, it makes a difference whether it is a cow or an ox that is gored,” and she smiled grimly.

“The women are all getting their heads turned over the question of property,” said Captain Ranger to himself as he watched the rivulet playing at his feet.

“Jean’s been putting this into your head, Annie,” he said after a painful silence.

“The child has a strong sense of justice, inherited from you, John. You know she is wonderfully like you.”

“Yes, yes, Annie. I wish she had been a boy instead o’ Hal. She’d have made a rackin’ good lawyer.”

“I’ll admit that she advised me to urge you to make the deed, John.”

“Very well; we’ll see about it sometime, Annie” and he arose to go.

Mrs. Ranger’s heart sank.

“Why is it that men who are proverbially just and upright in their dealings with their fellow-men are so often derelict in duty where women, especially their own wives, are concerned?” she asked herself as she tottered by his side in silence.

The next morning found her unable to rise. A racking cough, which had disturbed her all through the night, was followed at daybreak by a burning fever. Her husband, who had slept like a top in an adjoining tent, was startled when he saw the ravages the night had left upon her pinched, white face.