1887

The Great Plains are often wide open even today.
Author's photo from a cross-country bicycle ride in 2007.

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Procedure for tabulating electoral votes explained.

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February 3: In response to the election fiasco of 1876, but belatedly, Congress passes, and the president signs into law the Electoral Count Bill.

 

Benjamin Andrews explains:

 

It aims to throw up on each State, so far as possible, the responsibility of determining how its own presidential vote has been cast. It provides that the President of the Senate shall open the electoral certificates in the presence of both houses, and hand them to the tellers, two from each house, who are to read them aloud and record the votes.

 

If there has been no dispute as to the list of electors from a state, such list, where certified in due form, is to be accepted as a matter of course. In case of dispute, the procedure is as follows: If but one set of returns appears and this is authenticated by a state electoral tribunal constituted to settle the dispute, such return shall be conclusive. If there are two or more sets of returns, the set approved by the state tribunal shall be accepted. If there are two rival tribunals, the vote of the State shall be thrown out, unless both houses, acting separately, agree upon the lawfulness of one tribunal or the other. If there has been no decision by a tribunal, those votes shall be counted which both houses, acting separately, decide to be lawful. If the two houses disagree, the votes certified to by the governor shall be accepted.

 

President Hayes’s first important action was the withdrawal of troops from South Carolina and Louisiana, where the rival governments existed side by side. The republican governments at once fell to the ground. As the Democrats had already got control in Florida, the “solid South” was now an accomplished fact. (IV, 215-216)

 

*

“Advance toward socialism and state socialism.”

  

February 4: The Interstate Commerce Act is passed, and the Interstate Commerce Commission is created. At first, a toothless agency, Justice Harlan will later call the ICC “a useless body for all practical purposes.”

 

Benjamin Andrews describes a changing attitude toward business and government:

 

Another sign of the times, still more striking, was our advance toward socialism and state socialism. This occurred for the most part in ways so recondite as to escape observation, yet in many respects the course of things in this direction was perfectly obvious. The powerful movement for the legal prohibition of the manufacture and sale of intoxicants was one instance. The extension and perfection of our public school system, all at the expense of the taxpayers, was another, if being possible by 1890 in nearly every state for a young person of either sex to secure, without paying a cent of tuition money, a better education than the finest universities in the land could give a hundred years previous. The extension of governmental surveillance over great industries was another illustration. The Trusts spoken of in a preceding chapter were unhesitatingly assumed to be subject to legislative investigation and command. Great corporations and combinations, it was now well understood, could not pursue their ends merely for profit, irrespective of public interest. The Inter-State Railway Law of February 4, 1887, instituting a National Commission, to which all railways crossing state lines were responsible for obedience to certain rules which is the same law and joined, was the boldest assertion of supervision yet made; but there was a great and growing number of thinkers who believed that mere state oversight would not suffice, and that at least gigantic businesses like telegraph, railway, and mining, must sooner or later be bought and operated out and out by public authority. Nothing had done so much to promote this conviction as the rise, procedure, and wealth of these Trusts, for from the oppressive greed of many of them no legislative regulation seemed sufficient to protect the people. (IV, 369-370)

 

*

 

February 8: Congress passes the Dawes Severalty Act, designed with good intentions, to help Native Americans. Even the Library of Congress describes results as disastrous:

 

Previously, the Dawes Severalty Act (1887) had shaped U.S. policy towards Native Americans. In accordance with its terms, and hoping to turn Indians into farmers, the federal government redistributed tribal lands to heads of families in 160-acre allotments. Unclaimed or “surplus” land was sold, and the proceeds used to establish Indian schools where Native-American children learned reading, writing, and the domestic and social systems of white America. By 1932, the sale of both unclaimed land and allotted acreage resulted in the loss of two-thirds of the 138 million acres that Native Americans had held prior to the Dawes Act.

 

*

“Women preached, practiced law and medicine…”

 

February 16: A new law in Kansas takes effect, granting women the right to vote in all municipal elections. Andrews writes,

 

In many other localities they had the privilege of voting on certain questions, as the election of school committees, and were eligible to membership in these committees. Occupations of honor and profit were,  more and more as the years passed, open to the female sex. Women preached, practiced law and medicine, and furnished many of the best bookkeepers, sales-people, and principals of schools. Vassar College, the first institution in the world for the full collegiate education of women was opened in 1861. Smith and Wellesley Colleges, for the same, were opened in 1875, Bryn Mawr followed in 1885. Cornell, Michigan, and all the State Universities in the West, like a number of the best universities in the East, educated young women on the same terms as young men Harvard opened its Radcliffe College for female pupils. At its commencement in 1886, Columbia College, of which the Barnard College for women became virtually a part, conferred the degree of Doctor in Philosophy upon a woman. Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania opened their graduate departments to women on the same terms as to men. Brown University did the same, besides providing for the undergraduate instruction of women. (IV, 367-369)

 

*

 

Winter months: Starting in the last days of 1886, bad weather drives the cattle business on the Northern Plains into ruin. As Helena Huntington Smith writes (see: “The Johnson County War,” in American Heritage):

 

Snow fell and drifted and thawed and froze and fell again, clothing the ground with an iron sheath of white on which a stagecoach could travel and through which no bovine hoof could paw for grass; and since the plains were heavily overstocked and the previous summer had been hot and dry, there was no grass anyway. Moaning cattle wandered into the outskirts of towns, trying to eat frozen garbage and the tar paper off the eaves of the shacks; and when the hot sun of early summer uncovered the fetid carcasses piled in the creek bottoms, the bark of trees and brush was gnawed as high as a cow could reach. Herd losses averaged fifty percent, with ninety percent for unacclimated southern herds…

 

In the heyday of the beef bonanza, herds had been bought and sold by “book count,” based on a back-of-an-envelope calculation of “natural increase,” with no pother about a tally on the range. As the day of reckoning dawned, it turned out that many big companies had fewer than half the number of cattle claimed on their books. Now the terrible winter cut this half down to small fractions…

 

Some of the biggest cattle barons, blaming smaller ranchers for the loss of so many cattle, and fighting often erupted. (See:  Year 1892.)

 

*

 

March 9: One of the worst blizzards in history sweeps the West, with the Fort Benton, Montana River Press writing, “Our losses in cattle are simply immense.” The “big die-up,” they called it.

 

That winter, Charlie Russell was working on the O-H Ranch, tending cattle near Helena. When one rancher asked Russell and another cowboy how his herd was doing, the other fellow was at a loss for words. Russell tossed him a watercolor he had done and said, “Send ’em that.” (National Geographic, November 1976, p. 652)

Wolves wait for a dying steer to grow weaker.

 

*

“My husband I pity is wasting his life.”

 

Farmers, particularly in the West, were having increasing difficulty making a decent living, as Mrs. A. M. Green made clear in this poem.

 

My husband I pity is wasting his life,

To obtain scant living for his children and wife.

The Sabbath which once was a day of sweet rest

Is now spent toiling for bread in the West.

After five years of hard toiling with hopes that were vain

I have such despair on this desolate plain.

 

(Adapted from Sixteen Years on the Great American Desert: Or, the Trials and Triumphs of a Frontier Life by Mrs. A. M. Green, who settled with her family in Colorado Territory.) Her book might be of interest.

 

*

Gag-worthy take on slavery.

 

Thomas Nelson Page, by training a lawyer, publishes a collection of short stories in a book titled Ole Virginia. Page was born in 1853, and too young to fight in the Civil War, or remember the worst of slavery.

 

It might be worth reading some of his work, because even Halleck’s assessment, in 1911, of Page’s work makes me want to gag. He writes:

 

Thomas Nelson Page was born on Oakland Plantation in Hanover County, Virginia, in 1853. He graduated at Washington and Lee University in 1872, and took a degree in law at the University of Virginia in 1874. He practiced law in Richmond, wrote stories and essays upon the old South, and later moved to Washington to live.

 

His best stories are the short ones, like Marse Chan and Meh Lady, in which life on the Virginia plantations during the war is presented. Page is a natural story-teller. He wastes no time in analyzing, describing, and explaining, but sets his simple plots into immediate motion and makes us acquainted with his characters through their actions and speech. The regal mistresses of the plantations, the lordly but kind-hearted masters, the loving, simple-minded slaves and handsome young men and maidens are far from complex personalities. They have a primitive simplicity and ingenuousness which belong to a bygone civilization. The strongest appeal in the stories is made by the negroes, whose faith in their masters is unquestioning, and sometimes pathetic [emphasis added].

 

Some old negro who had been a former slave usually tells the story, and paints his “marster,” his “missus,” and his “white folks,” as the finest in the region. He looks back upon the bygone days as a time when “nuthin’ warn too good for niggers,” and is sure that if his young “marster” did not get the brush “twuz cause twuz a bob-tailed fox.” In Meh Lady the negro relating the tale is the true but unconscious hero. This kindly presentation of the finest traits of slave days, the idealizing of the characters, and the sympathetic portrayal of the warm affection existing between master and slave give to Page’s books a strong note of romanticism. The humor is mild, quaint, and subtle, and it often lies next to tears.

 

Lord have mercy!

*

 

The story “A Branch Road” is set in the 1880s, and ends in 1887, from Hamlin Garland’s Main-Traveled Roads.

 

We first meet Will Hannan, walking down a country road, just as the sun comes up. He’s heading for the Dingman farm to help them thresh the wheat.

 

In the windless September dawn a voice went ringing clear and sweet, a man’s voice, singing a cheap and common air. Yet something in the sound of it told he was young, jubilant, and a happy lover.

 

Above the level belt of timber to the east a vast dome of pale undazzling gold was rising, silently and swiftly. Jays called in the thickets where the maples flamed amid the green oaks, with irregular splashes of red and orange. The grass was crisp with frost under the feet, the road smooth and gray-white in color, the air was indescribably pure, resonant, and stimulating. No wonder the man sang!

 

He came into view around the curve in the lane. He had a [pitch] fork on his shoulder, a graceful and polished tool. His straw hat was tilted on the back of his head; his rough, faded coat was buttoned close to the chin, and he wore thin buckskin gloves on his hands. He looked muscular and intelligent, and was evidently about twenty-two years of age.

 

As he walked on, and the sunrise came nearer to him, he stopped his song. The broadening heavens had a majesty and sweetness that made him forget the physical joy of happy youth. He grew almost sad with the vague thoughts and great emotions which rolled in his brain as the wonder of the morning grew.

 

He walked more slowly, mechanically following the road, his eyes on the ever-shifting streaming banners of rose and pale green, which made the east too glorious for any words to tell. The air was so still it seemed to await expectantly the coming of the sun.

 

Then his mind flew back to Agnes. Would she see it? She was at work, getting breakfast, but he hoped she had time to see it. He was in that mood, so common to him now, wherein he could not fully enjoy any sight or sound unless sharing it with her. Far down the road he heard the sharp clatter of a wagon. The roosters were calling near and far, in many keys and tunes. The dogs were barking, cattle-bells were jangling in the wooded pastures, and as the youth passed farmhouses, lights in the kitchen windows showed that the women were astir about breakfast, and the sound of voices and the tapping of curry-combs at the barn told that the men were at their morning chores.

 

Will has little experience with women. He’s jealous of his rival, Ed Kinney, even though Agnes has chosen him. Ed meets him along the way, and they go on to the Dingman place. When they arrive, the other young men gathered to help with the threshing greet Ed warmly, Will less so. In a day when few people graduated from high school, or even eighth grade, Will is a bit of a scholar.

 

“Hello, Will!” was the general greeting, given with some constraint by most of the young fellows, for Will had been going to Rock River to school for some years, and there was a little feeling of jealousy on the part of those who pretended to sneer at the “seminary chaps like Will Hannan and Milton Jennings.”

 

The men soon set to work, Will tense and anxious, lest the others start to joke about his love for Agnes.

 

Will and Agnes had arrived at a tacit understanding of mutual love only the night before, and Will was powerfully moved to glance often toward the house, but feared as never before the jokes of his companions. He worked on, therefore, methodically, eagerly; but his thoughts were on the future – the rustle of the oak-tree near by, the noise of whose sere leaves he could distinguish sifting beneath the booming snarl of the machine, was like the sound of a woman’s dress; on the sky were great fleets of clouds sailing on the rising wind, like merchantmen bound to some land of love and plenty.

 

When the Dingmans first came in, only a couple of years before, Agnes had been at once surrounded by a swarm of suitors. Her pleasant face and her abounding good-nature made her an instant favorite with all. Will, however, had disdained to become one of the crowd, and held himself aloof, as he could easily do, being away at school most of the time.

 

The second winter, however, Agnes also attended the seminary, and Will saw her daily, and grew to love her. He had been just a bit jealous of Ed Kinney all the time, for Ed had a certain rakish grace in dancing and a dashing skill in handling a team, which made him a dangerous rival.

 

But, as Will worked beside him all the Monday, he felt so secure in his knowledge of the caress Agnes had given him at parting the night before that he was perfectly happy – so happy that he didn’t care to talk, only to work on and dream as he worked.

 

Will hangs back when it’s time to eat. The other workers have been poking fun at lovers in general terms. He’s almost embarrassed to go in and see Agnes. The hard life of women on the prairies is hinted at in the next scene:

 

Threshing-time was always a season of great trial to the housewife. To have a dozen men with the appetites of dragons to cook for, in addition to their other everyday duties, was no small task for a couple of women. Preparations usually began the night before with a raid on a hen-roost, for “biled chicken” formed the pièce de resistance of the dinner. The table, enlarged by boards, filled the sitting room. Extra seats were made out of planks placed on chairs, and dishes were borrowed from neighbors, who came for such aid in their turn.

 

Sometimes the neighboring women came in to help; but Agnes and her mother were determined to manage the job alone this year, and so the girl, in a neat dark dress, her eyes shining, her cheeks flushed with the work, received the men as they came in, dusty, coatless, with grime behind their ears, but a jolly good smile on every face.

 

Most of them were farmers of the neighborhood, and her schoolmates. The only one she shrank from was Bill Young, with his hard, glittering eyes and red, sordid face. She received their jokes, their noise, with a silent smile which showed her even teeth and dimpled her round cheek. “She was good for sore eyes,” as one of the fellows said to Shep. She seemed deliciously sweet and dainty to these roughly dressed fellows.

 

At one point, one of the men teases Agnes, telling her he doesn’t need any sugar for his coffee.

 

“No, I won’t need any sugar, if you just smile into it.” This from gallant David, greeted with roars of laughter.

 

“Now, Dave, s’pose your wife ‘ud hear o’ that?

 

“She’d snatch ‘im bald-headed, that’s what she’d do.”

 

“Say, somebody drive that ceow down this way,” said Bill.

 

“Don’t get off that drive! It’s too old,” criticised Shep, passing the milk-jug.

 

Potatoes were seized, cut in halves, sopped in gravy, and taken one, two! Corn cakes went into great jaws like coal into a steam-engine. Knives in the right hand cut meat and scooped gravy up. Great, muscular, grimy, but wholesome fellows they were, feeding like ancient Norse, and capable of working like demons. They were deep in the process, half-hidden by steam from the potatoes and stew, in less than sixty seconds after their entrance.

 

With a shrinking from the comments of the others upon his regard for Agnes, Will assumed a reserved and almost haughty air toward his fellow-workmen, and a curious coldness toward her. As he went in, she came forward smiling brightly.

 

“There’s one more place, Will.” A tender, involuntary droop in her voice betrayed her, and Will felt a wave of hot blood surge over him as the rest roared.

 

“Ha, ha! Oh, there’d be a place for him!”

 

“Don’t worry, Will! Always room for you here!”

 

Will took his seat with a sudden, angry flame.

 

“Why can’t she keep it from these fools?” was his thought. He didn’t even thank her for showing him the chair.

 

She flushed vividly, but smiled back. She was so proud and happy she didn’t care very much if they did know it. But as Will looked at her with that quick, angry glance, she was hurt and puzzled. She redoubled her exertions to please him, and by so doing added to the amusement of the crowd that gnawed chicken-bones, rattled cups, knives, and forks, and joked as they ate with small grace and no material loss of time.

 

Will remained silent through it all, eating his potato, in marked contrast to the others, with his fork instead of his knife, and drinking his tea from his cup rather than from his saucer – “finnickies” which did not escape the notice of the girl nor the sharp eyes of the other workmen.

 

“See that? That’s the way we do down to the Sem! See? Fork for pie in yer right hand! Hey? I can’t do it? Watch me.”

 

When Agnes leaned over to say, “Won’t you have some more tea, Will?” they nudged each other and grinned. “Aha! What did I tell you?”

 

Agnes saw at last that for some reason Will didn’t want her to show her regard for him – that he was ashamed of it in some way, and she was wounded. To cover it up, she resorted to the natural device of smiling and chatting with the others. She asked Ed if he wouldn’t have another piece of pie.

 

“I will – with a fork, please.”

 

Will’s mood sours completely. During the afternoon, he works steadily, angrily. Finally, the steam engine that supplies power is stopped for minor repairs. Will lies down for a rest, hears his name and the name of Agnes mentioned by others, on the other side of the machine.

Farm work was hard work every day.

 

“She’s pretty sweet on him, ain’t she? Did yeh notus how she stood around over him?”

 

“Yes; an’ did yeh see him when she passed the cup o’ tea down over his shoulder?”

 

Will got up, white with wrath, as they laughed.

 

“Someway he didn’t seem to enjoy it as I would. I wish she’d reach her arm over my neck that way.”

 

Will walked around the machine, and came on the group lying on the chaff near the straw-pile.

 

“Say, I want you fellers to understand that I won’t have any more of this talk. I won’t have it.”

 

There was a dead silence. Then Bill Young got up.

 

“What yeh goin’ to do about ut?” he sneered.

 

“I’m going to stop it.”

 

The wolf rose in Young. He moved forward, his ferocious soul flaming from his eyes.

 

“W’y, you damned seminary dude, I can break you in two!”

 

An answering glare came into Will’s eyes. He grasped and slightly shook his fork, which he had brought with him unconsciously.

 

“If you make one motion at me, I’ll smash your head like an egg-shell!” His voice was low but terrific. There was a tone in it that made his own blood stop in his veins. “If you think I’m going to roll around on this ground with a hyena like you, you’ve mistaken your man. I’ll kill you, but I won’t fight with such men as you are.”

Bill quailed and slunk away, muttering some epithet like “coward.”

 

“I don’t care what you call me, but just remember what I say: you keep your tongue off that girl’s affairs.”

 

“That’s the talk!” said David. “Stand up for your girl always, but don’t use a fork. You can handle him without that.”

 

“I don’t propose to try,” said Will, as he turned away. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of Ed Kinney at the well, pumping a pail of water for Agnes, who stood beside him, the sun on her beautiful yellow hair. She was laughing at something Ed was saying as he slowly moved the handle up and down.

 

Instantly, like a foaming, turbid flood, his rage swept out toward her. “It’s all her fault,” he thought, grinding his teeth. “She’s a fool. If she’d hold herself in, like other girls! But no; she must smile and smile at everybody.” It was a beautiful picture, but it sent a shiver through him.

 

Agnes comes out late in the afternoon to see how work is going, and likely hoping for a good word with him. Will ignores her and she has a kind word for all the other men. He knows he’s wrong to be so angry, but his “set teeth ached with the stress of his muscular tension, and his eyes smarted with the strain.”

 

To save his soul from hell-flames he couldn’t have gone over there and smiled at her. It was impossible. A wall of bronze seemed to have arisen between them. Yesterday –last night – seemed a dream. The clasp of her hands at his neck, the touch of her lips, were like the caresses of an ideal in some revery long ago.

 

As night drew on the men worked with a steadier, more mechanical action. No one spoke now. Each man was intent on his work. No one had any strength or breath to waste. The driver on his power, changed his weight on weary feet and whistled and sang at the tired horses. The feeder, his face gray with dust, rolled the grain into the cylinder so evenly, so steady, so swiftly that it ran on with a sullen, booming roar. Far up on the straw-pile the stackers worked with the steady, rhythmic action of men.

 

Time and again, in Main-Traveled Roads, Garland captures the grinding toil required of farmers and their wives in that era.

 

Will had worked unceasingly all day. His muscles ached with fatigue. His hands trembled. He clenched his teeth, however, and worked on, determined not to yield. He wanted them to understand that he could do as much pitching as any of them, and read Caesar’s Commentaries beside. It seemed as if each bundle were the last he could raise. The sinews of his wrist pained him so; they seemed swollen to twice their natural size. But still he worked on grimly, while the dusk fell and the air grew chill.

 

At last the bottom bundle was pitched up, and he got down on his knees to help scrape the loose wheat into baskets. What a sweet relief it was to kneel down, to release the fork, and let the worn and cramping muscles settle into rest! A new note came into the driver’s voice, a soothing tone, full of kindness and admiration for the work his teams [of horses] had done.

 

It was now time for supper; but Will’s anger has overcome even his exhaustion and hunger. Mr. Dingman tells him to come inside. The women have been cooking all day and will be expecting him.

 

The men were laughing at the well, the warm yellow light shone from the kitchen, the chill air making it seem very inviting, and she was there – waiting! But the demon rose in him. He knew Agnes would expect him, that she would cry that night with disappointment, but his face hardened. “I guess I’ll go home,” he said, and his tone was relentless. He turned and walked away, hungry, tired – so tired he stumbled, and so unhappy he could have wept.

 

 

Will does not see Agnes for the next few days; but it has been arranged on that Sunday they kissed. He will pick her up at eight in the morning and take her to the county fair.

 

On Thursday the county fair was to be held. The fair is one of the gala-days of the year in the country districts of the West, and one of the times when the country lover rises above expense to the extravagance of hiring a top-buggy, in which to take his sweetheart to the neighboring town.

 

It was customary to prepare for this long beforehand, for the demand for top-buggies was so great the livery-men grew dictatorial, and took no chances. Slowly but surely the country beaux began to compete with the clerks, and in many cases actually outbid them, as they furnished their own horses and could bid higher, in consequence, on the carriages.

 

Will had secured his brother’s “rig,” and early on Thursday morning he was at work, busily washing the mud from the carriage, dusting the cushions, and polishing up the buckles and rosettes on his horses’ harnesses. It was a beautiful, crisp, clear dawn – the ideal day for a ride; and Will was singing as he worked. He had regained his real self, and, having passed through a bitter period of shame, was now joyous with anticipation of forgiveness. He looked forward to the day, with its chances of doing a thousand little things to show his regret and his love.

 

He had not seen Agnes since Monday; Tuesday he did not go back to help thresh, and Wednesday he had been obliged to go to town to see about board for the coming [school] term; but he felt sure of her. It had all been arranged the Sunday before; she’d expect him, and he was to call at eight o’clock.

 

He polished up the colts with merry tick-tack of the brush and comb, and after the last stroke on their shining limbs, threw his tools in the box and went to the house.

 

“Pretty sharp last night,” said his brother John, who was scrubbing his face at the cistern.

 

“Should say so by that rim of ice,” Will replied, dipping his hands into the icy water.

 

“I ought ‘o stay home to-day and dig ‘tates,” continued the older man, thoughtfully, as they went into the woodshed and wiped consecutively on the long roller-towel. “Some o’ them Early Rose lay right on top o’ the ground. They’ll get nipped, sure.”

 

“Oh, I guess not. You’d better go, Jack; you don’t get away very often. And then it would disappoint Nettie and the children so. Their little hearts are overflowing,” he ended, as the door opened and two sturdy little boys rushed out.

 

“B’ekfuss, poppa; all yeady!”

 

The kitchen table was set near the stove; the window let in the sun, and the smell of sizzling sausages and the aroma of coffee filled the room.

 

The kettle was doing its duty cheerily, and the wife, with flushed face and smiling eyes, was hurrying to and fro, her heart full of anticipation of the day’s outing.

 

There was a hilarity almost like some strange intoxication on the part of the two children. They danced and chattered and clapped their chubby brown hands and ran to the windows ceaselessly.

 

“Is yuncle Will goin’ yide nour buggy?”

 

“Yus; the buggy and the colts.”

 

“Is he goin’ to take his girl?”

 

Will blushed a little and John roared.

 

“Yes, I’m goin’ – ”

 

“Is Aggie your girl?”

 

“H’yer! H’yer! young man,” called John, “you’re getting’ personal.”

 

“Well, set up!” said Nettie, and with a good deal of clatter they drew around the cheerful table.

 

Will had already begun to see the pathos, the pitiful significance of his great joy over a day’s outing, and he took himself a little to task at his own selfish freedom. He resolved to stay at home some time and let Nettie go in his place. A few hours in the middle of the day on Sunday, three or four holidays in summer; the rest of the year, for this cheerful little wife and her patient husband, was made up of work – work which accomplished little and brought them almost nothing that was beautiful.

 

While they were eating breakfast, teams began to clatter by, huge lumber-wagons with three seats across, and a boy or two jouncing up and down with the dinner baskets near the end-gate. The children rushed to the window each time to announce who it was and how many there were in.

 

But as Johnny said “firteen” each time, and Ned wavered between “seven” and “sixteen,” it was doubtful if they could be relied upon. They had very little appetite, so keen was their anticipation of the ride and the wonderful sights before them. Their little hearts shuddered with joy at every fresh token of preparation – a joy that made Will say, “Poor little men!”

 

Will’s spirits rise. His brother’s family leaves in the farm wagon. He dresses himself with care.  He climbs into the buggy seat and off he goes:

 

He was quite happy again. The crisp, bracing air, the strong pull of the spirited young team, put all thought of sorrow behind him. He had planned it all out. He would first put his arm round her and kiss her – there would not need to be any words to tell her how sorry and ashamed he was. She would know!

 

Now, when he was alone and going toward her on a beautiful morning, the anger and bitterness of Monday fled away, became unreal, and the sweet dream of the Sunday parting grew the reality. She was waiting for him now. She had on her pretty blue dress, and the wide hat that always made her look so arch. He had said about eight o’clock.

 

The swift team was carrying him along the cross-road, which was little travelled, and he was alone with his thoughts. He fell again upon his plans. Another year at school for them both, and then he’d go into a law office. Judge Brown had told him he’d give him – 

 

“Whoa! Ho!”

 

There was a swift lurch that sent him flying over the dasher. A confused vision of a roadside ditch full of weeds and bushes, and then he felt the reins in his hands and heard the snorting horses trample on the hard road.

 

He rose dizzy, bruised, and covered with dust. The team he held securely and soon quieted. The cause of the accident was plain; the right fore-wheel had come off, letting the front of the buggy drop. He unhitched the excited team from the carriage, drove them to the fence and tied them securely, then went back to find the wheel, and the burr whose failure to hold its place had done all the mischief. He soon had the wheel on, but to find the burr was a harder task. Back and forth he ranged, looking, scraping in the dust, searching the weeds.

 

Will finally finds the burr, remounts the wheel, but arrives at the Dingman farm more than two hours late. Agnes has gone – with Ed Kinney – an old farmhand tells him. “I guess your goose is cooked,” he adds. Again, Will’s fury gets the better of him.

 

Will lashed the horses into a run, and swung round the yard and out of the gate. His face was white as a dead man’s, and his teeth were set like a vice. He glared straight ahead. The team ran wildly, steadily homeward, while their driver guided them unconsciously without seeing them. His mind was filled with a tempest of rages, despairs, and shames.

 

That ride he will never forget. In it he threw away all his plans. He gave up his year’s schooling. He gave up his law aspirations. He deserted his brother and his friends. In the dizzying whirl of passions he had only one clear idea – to get away, to go West, to escape from the sneers and laughter of his neighbors, and to make her suffer by it all.

 

Will stopped at home only long enough to pack his bags and write a furious letter to his love.

 

“If you want to go to hell with Ed Kinney, you can. I won’t say a word. That’s where he’ll take you. You won’t see me again.”

 

This he signed and sealed, and then he bowed his head and wept like a girl. But his tears did not soften the effect of the letter. It went as straight to its mark as he meant it should. It tore a seared and ragged path to an innocent, happy heart, and he took a savage pleasure in the thought…

 

In Part III of the story, Will returns to Rock Creek after seven years away, 1880-1887. The country has changed noticeably. Trees and hedges have grown up around many of the farmhouses. Some farms, however, are abandoned. These are tough years for American farmers.

 

He stops to talk to a young man working in a field near the road. Will asks after people he used to know. He dares not ask about Agnes, specifically. The young man does tell him that Ed Kinney’s brother Tom has managed to throw their father off his own farm. Now Old Man Kinney lives with Ed. We learn that Will has prospered in Arizona. He has sent money over the years, back to his brother John, but “concealed his own address carefully.” He realized his “folly.”

 

He soon learns from a young boy he meets along the way, that Agnes has a baby, but she has been sick. He gives the boy a dime and sends a note ahead to Agnes’ home. Will stops by her old house. The place is boarded up and decayed. Finally, he arrives at the home where Ed and Agnes, and Ed’s mother and father live. Will is not recognized at first, but Agnes has been warned he’s coming. Will is invited in.

 

“How de do? How de do?” said Will, walking in, his eyes fixed on a woman seated beyond, a child in her lap.

 

Agnes rose, without a word; a fawn-like, startled widening of the eyes, her breath coming quick, and her face flushing. They couldn’t speak; they only looked at each other an instant, then Will shivered, passed his hand over his eyes and sat down.

 

There was no one there but the old people, who were looking at him in bewilderment. They did not notice any confusion in Agnes’s face. She recovered first.

 

“I’m glad to see you back, Will,” she said, rising and putting the sleeping child down in a neighboring room. As she gave him her hand, he said:

 

“I’m glad to get back, Agnes. I hadn’t ought to have gone.”

 

 

Mr. Kinney and his wife don’t catch his meaning. Agnes surely does. The passage of seven years has been hard on Will’s one great love. He studies her carefully.

 

She was worn and wasted incredibly. The blue of her eyes seemed dimmed and faded by weeping, and the old-time scarlet of her lips had been washed away. The sinews of her neck showed painfully when she turned her head, and her trembling hands were worn, discolored, and lumpy at the joints.

 

Poor girl! She knew she was under scrutiny, and her eyes felt hot and restless. She wished to run away and cry, but she dared not. She stayed, while Will began to tell her of his life and to ask questions about old friends.

 

The old people took it up and relieved her of any share in it; and Will, seeing that she was suffering, told some funny stories which made the old people cackle in spite of themselves.

 

But it was forced merriment on Will’s part. Once or twice Agnes smiled, with just a little flash of the old-time sunny temper. But there was no dimple in the cheek now, and the smile had more suggestion of an invalid – or even a skeleton. He was almost ready to take her in his arms and weep, her face appealed so pitifully to him.

 

The older folks are planning on going to church that afternoon. Agnes sets about getting dinner.

 

“You’ll stay to dinner, Will?” asked Agnes.

 

“Yes – if you wish it.”

 

“I do wish it.”

 

“Thank you; I want to have a good visit with you. I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”

 

As she moved about, getting dinner on the table, Will sat with gloomy face, listening to the “clack” of the old man. The room was a poor little sitting room, with furniture worn and shapeless; hardly a touch of pleasant color, save here and there a little bit of Agnes’s handiwork. The lounge, covered with calico, was rickety; the rocking-chair matched it, and the carpet of rags was patched and darned with twine in twenty places. Everywhere was the influence of the Kinneys. The furniture looked like them, in fact.

 

Agnes was outwardly calm, but her real distraction did not escape Mrs. Kinney’s hawk-like eyes.

 

“Well, I declare if you hain’t put the butter on in one o’ my blue chainy [china] saucers? Now you know I don’t allow that saucer to be took down by nobody. I don’t see what’s got into yeh! Anybody’d s’pose you never see any comp’ny b’fore – wouldn’t they, pa?”

 

“Sh’d say th’ would,” said pa, stopping short in a long story about Ed. “Seems if we couldn’t keep anything in this house sep’rit from the rest. Ed he uses my curry-comb – ”

 

He launched out a long list of grievances, to which Will shut his ears as completely as possible, and was thinking how to stop him, when there came a sudden crash. Agnes had dropped a plate.

 

“Good land o’ Goshen!” screamed Granny. “If you ain’t the worst I ever see. I’ll bet that’s my grapevine plate. If it is – Well, of all the mercies, it ain’t! But it might ‘a’ ben. I never see your beat – never! That’s the third plate since I came to live here.”

 

“Oh, look-a-here, Granny,” said Will, desperately, “don’t make so much fuss about the plate. What’s it worth, anyway? Here’s a dollar.”

 

Agnes cried quickly:

 

“Oh, don’t do that, Will! It ain’t her plate. It’s my plate, and I can break every plate in the house if I want to,” she cried defiantly.

 

“‘Course you can,” Will agreed.

 

“Wal, she can’t! Not while I’m around,” put in Daddy. “I’ve helped to pay f’r them plates, if she does call ‘em her’n – ”

 

“What the devul is all this row about? Agg, can’t you get along without stirring up the old folks every time I’m out o’ the house?”

 

The speaker was Ed, now a tall and slouchily dressed man of thirty-two or three; his face still handsome in a certain dark, cleanly-cut style, but he wore a surly look as he lounged in with insolent swagger, clothed in greasy overalls and a hickory shirt.

 

They sit down for dinner at last, “Agnes sobbing under breath.” Will notices that the table on which they are eating is warped and dishes tend to slide to the middle. The walls of the kitchen are bare plaster, “grayed with time.” The “food was poor and scant, and the flies absolutely swarmed upon everything, like bees. Otherwise the room was clean and orderly.”

 

Ed asks Will about his life.

 

“They say you’ve made a pile o’ money out West, Bill. I’m glad of it. We fellers back here don’t make anything. It’s a dam tight squeeze. Agg, it seems to me the flies are devilish thick to-day. Can’t you drive ‘em out?”

 

Agnes felt that she must vindicate herself a little.

 

“I do drive ‘em out, but they come right in again. The screen-door is broken and they come right in.”

 

“I told Dad to fix that door.”

 

“But he won’t do it for me.”

 

Ed rested his elbows on the table and fixed his bright black eyes on his father.

 

“Say, what d’ you mean by actin’ like a mule? I swear I’ll trade you off f’r a yaller dog. What do I keep you round here for anyway – to look purty?”

 

Fortunately, Ed soon drives off to take his parents to church. Will and Agnes have a chance to talk more freely.

 

“Do you go to church?” he asked. She shook her head. “No, I don’t go anywhere now. I have too much to do; I haven’t strength left. And I’m not fit anyway.”

 

“Agnes, I want to say something to you; not now – after they’re gone.”

 

He went into the other room, leaving her to wash the dinner-things. She worked on in a curious, almost dazed way, a dream of something sweet and irrevocable in her eyes. Will represented so much to her. His voice brought up times and places that thrilled her like song. He was associated with all that was sweetest and most care-free and most girlish in her life.

 

Ever since the boy [the messenger from Will] had handed her that note she had been re-living those days. In the midst of her drudgery she stopped to dream – to let some picture come back into her mind. She was a student again at the Seminary, and stood in the recitation-room with suffocating beat of the heart; Will was waiting outside – waiting in a tremor like her own, to walk home with her under the maples.

 

“Oh, let me be a girl again!” Agnes finds herself wishing. Garland adds, however: “She did not look forward to happiness. She hadn’t power to look forward at all.” Agnes has finished cleaning up, and stands at the door watching her husband and in-laws drive off to church.

 

…Will studied her, a smothering ache in his heart as he saw how thin and bent and weary she was. In his soul he felt that she was a dying woman unless she had rest and tender care.

 

As she turned, she saw something in his face – a pity and an agony of self-accusation – that made her weak and white. She sank into a chair, putting her hand on her chest, as if she felt a failing of breath. Then the blood came back to her face and her eyes filled with tears.

 

“Don’t – don’t look at me like that,” she said in a whisper. His pity hurt her.

 

At sight of her sitting there pathetic, abashed, bewildered, like some gentle animal, Will’s throat contracted so that he could not speak. His voice came at last in one terrible cry –

 

“Oh, Agnes! for God’s sake forgive me!” He knelt by her side and put his arm about her shoulders and kissed her bowed head. A curious numbness involved his whole body; his voice was husky, the tears burned in his eyes. His whole soul and body ached with his pity and remorseful, self-accusing wrath.

 

“It was all my fault. Lay it all to me.… I am the one to bear it.… Oh, I’ve dreamed a thousand times of sayin’ this to you, Aggie! I thought if I could only see you again and ask your forgiveness, I’d – ” He ground his teeth together in his assault upon himself. “I threw my life away an’ killed you – that’s what I did!”

 

He rose, and raged up and down the room till he had mastered himself.

 

“What did you think I meant that day of the thrashing?” he said, turning suddenly. He spoke of it as if it were but a month or two past.

 

She lifted her head and looked at him in a slow way. She seemed to be remembering. The tears lay on her hollow cheeks.

 

“I thought you was ashamed of me. I didn’t know – why – ”

 

He uttered a snarl of self-disgust.

 

“You couldn’t know. Nobody could tell what I meant. But why didn’t you write? I was ready to come back. I only wanted an excuse – only a line.”

 

“How could I, Will – after your letter?”

 

He groaned, and turned away.

 

“And Will, I – I got mad too. I couldn’t write.”

 

“Oh, that letter – I can see every line of it! F’r God’s sake, don’t think of it again! But I didn’t think, even when I wrote that letter, that I’d find you where you are. I didn’t think. I hoped, anyhow, Ed Kinney wouldn’t – ”

 

She stopped him with a startled look in her great eyes.

 

“Don’t talk about him – it ain’t right. I mean it don’t do any good. What could I do, after father died? Mother and I. Besides, I waited three years to hear from you, Will.”

 

He gave a strange, choking cry. It burst from his throat – that terrible thing, a man’s sob of agony. She went on, curiously calm now.

 

“Ed was good to me; and he offered a home, anyway, for mother – ”

 

“And all the time I was waiting for some line to break down my cussed pride, so I could write to you and explain. But you did go with Ed to the fair,” he ended suddenly, seeking a morsel of justification for himself.

 

“Yes. But I waited an’ waited; and I thought you was mad at me, so when they came I – no, I didn’t really go with Ed. There was a wagon-load of them.”

 

“But I started,” he explained, “but the wheel came off. I didn’t send word because I thought you’d feel sure I’d come. If you’d only trusted me a little more – No! It was all my fault. I acted like a crazy fool. I didn’t stop to reason about anything.”

 

They sat in silence after these explanations. The sound of the snapping wings of the grasshoppers came through the windows, and a locust high in a poplar sent down his ringing whir.

 

“It can’t be helped now, Will,” Agnes said at last, her voice full of the woman’s resignation. “We’ve got to bear it.”

 

A sense of hopelessness overcomes Agnes. She’s still not thirty years old; but in many ways her life seems over. Will rises up.

 

“It can be helped, Aggie,” he said. “Now just listen to me. We’ve made an awful mistake. We’ve lost seven years o’ life, but that’s no reason why we should waste the rest of it. Now hold on; don’t interrupt me just yet. I come back thinking just as much of you as ever. I ain’t going to say a word more about Ed; let the past stay past. I’m going to talk about the future.”

 

She looked at him in a daze of wonder as he went on.

 

“Now I’ve got some money, I’ve got a third interest in a ranch, and I’ve got a standing offer to go back on the Sante Fe road as conductor. There is a team standing out there. I’d like to make another trip to Cedarville – with you – ”

 

“Oh, Will, don’t!” she cried; “for pity’s sake don’t talk – ”

 

“Wait!” he exclaimed, imperiously. “Now look at it. Here you are in hell! Caged up with two old crows picking the life out of you. They’ll kill you – I can see it; you’re being killed by inches. You can’t go anywhere, you can’t have anything. Life is just torture for you – ”

 

She gave a little moan of anguish and despair, and turned her face to her chair-back. Her shoulders shook with weeping, but she listened. He went to her and stood with his hand on the chair-back.

 

His voice trembled and broke. “There’s just one way to get out of this, Agnes. Come with me. He don’t care for you; his whole idea of women is that they are created for his pleasure and to keep house. Your whole life is agony. Come! Don’t cry. There’s a chance for life yet.”

 

She didn’t speak, but her sobs were less violent; his voice growing stronger reassured her.

 

“I’m going East, maybe to Europe; and the woman who goes with me will have nothing to do but get strong and well again. I’ve made you suffer so, I ought to spend the rest of my life making you happy. Come! My wife will sit with me on the deck of the steamer and see the moon rise, and walk with me by the sea, till she gets strong and happy again – till the dimples get back into her cheeks. I never will rest till I see her eyes laugh again.”

 

She rose flushed, wide-eyed, breathing hard with the emotion his vibrant voice called up, but she could not speak. He put his hand gently upon her shoulder, and she sank down again. And he went on with his appeal. There was something hypnotic, dominating, in his voice and eyes.

 

Garland continues the scene. On Will’s part, there is no sexual passion in his plea, “only a passion of pity and remorse, and a sweet, tender love based on memory.

 

…He did not love the woman before him so much as the girl whose ghost she was – the woman whose promise she was. He held himself responsible for it all, and he throbbed with desire to repair the ravage he had indirectly caused. There was nothing equivocal in his position – nothing to disown. How others might look at it, he did not consider, and did not care. …

 

“And then after you’re well, after our trip, we’ll come back – to Houston, or somewhere in Texas, and I’ll build my wife a house that will make her eyes shine. My cattle will give us a good living, and she can have a piano and books, and go to the theatre and concerts. Come, what do you think of that?”

 

Then she heard his words beneath his voice somehow, and they produced pictures that dazzled her. Luminous shadows moved before her eyes, drifting across the gray background of her poor, starved, work-weary life.

 

As his voice ceased the rosy clouds faded, and she realized again the faded, musty little room, the calico-covered furniture, and looking down at her own cheap and ill-fitting dress, she saw her ugly hands lying there. Then she cried out with a gush of tears:

 

“Oh, Will, I’m so old and homely now, I ain’t fit to go with you now! Oh, why couldn’t we have married then?”

 

She was seeing herself as she was then, and so was he; but it deepened his resolution. How beautiful she used to be! He seemed to see her there as if she stood in perpetual sunlight, with a warm sheen in her hair and dimples in her cheeks.

She saw her thin red wrists, her gaunt and knotted hands. There was a pitiful droop in the thin, pale lips, and the tears fell slowly from her drooping lashes. He went on:

 

“Well, it’s no use to cry over what was. We must think of what we’re going to do. Don’t worry about your looks; you’ll be the prettiest woman in the country when we get back. Don’t wait, Aggie; make up your mind.”

 

She hesitated, and was lost.

 

“What will people say?”

 

“I don’t care what they say,” he flamed out. “They’d say, stay here and be killed by inches. I say you’ve had your share of suffering. They’d say – the liberal ones – stay and get a divorce; but how do you know we can get one after you’ve been dragged through the mud of a trial? We can get one as well in some other state. Why should you be worn out at thirty? What right or justice is there in making you bear all your life the consequences of our – my schoolboy folly?”

 

As he went on his argument rose to the level of Browning’s philosophy.

 

“We can make this experience count for us yet. But we mustn’t let a mistake ruin us – it should teach us. What right has any one to keep you in a hole? God don’t expect a toad to stay in a stump and starve if it can get out. He don’t ask the snakes to suffer as you do.”

 

She had lost the threads of right and wrong out of her hands. She was lost in a maze, but she was not moved by passion. Flesh had ceased to stir her; but there was vast power in the new and thrilling words her deliverer spoke. He seemed to open a door for her, and through it turrets shone and great ships crossed on dim blue seas.

“You can’t live here, Aggie. You’ll die in less than five years. It would kill me to see you die here. Come! It’s suicide.”

 

She is naturally hesitant. Will says she knows her choice. If he leaves again, he’ll never come back.

 

The woman turned wildly and darted into the little bedroom. The man listened. He whistled in surprise almost comical. He had forgotten the baby. He could hear the mother talking, cooing.

 

“Mommie’s ‘ittle pet! She wasn’t goin’ to leave her ‘ittle man – no, she wasn’t! There, there, don’t ‘e cry. Mommie ain’t goin’ away and leave him – wicked mommie ain’t – ‘ittle treasure!”

 

She was confused again; and when she reappeared at the door, with the child in her arms, there was a wandering look on her face pitiful to see. She tried to speak, tried to say, “Please go, Will.”

 

He designedly failed to understand her whisper. He stepped forward. “The baby! Sure enough. Why, certainly! to the mother belongs the child. Blue eyes, thank heaven!”

 

He put his arm about them both. She obeyed silently. There was something irresistible in his frank, clear eyes, his sunny smile, his strong brown hand. He slammed the door behind them.

 

“That closes the door on your sufferings,” he said, smiling down at her. “Good-by to it all.”

 

The baby laughed and stretched out its hands toward the light.

 

“Boo, boo!” he cried.

 

“What’s he talking about?”

 

She smiled in perfect trust and fearlessness, seeing her child’s face beside his own. “He says it’s beautiful.”

 

“Oh, he does? I can’t follow his French accent.”

 

She smiled again, in spite of herself. Will shuddered with a thrill of fear, she was so weak and worn. But the sun shone on the dazzling, rustling wheat, the fathomless sky, blue as a sea, bent above them – and the world lay before them.

 

 

I’m not sure this story would work with students; but I’d probably try questions like these:

 

1. How will Ed Kinney react when he returns home and finds his wife and child gone?

2. What will Old Man Kinney and his wife say?

3. Do you think Will and Agnes will end up having a happy life? Why, or why not?

 

As a teacher, I’d want to bring out the harsh realities for women in those days. Divorce was rare in those days, and shameful in many eyes.