The Desert of Wheat by Zane Grey (best books to read now .TXT) 📗

Best of all he loved the horses. Most of these were old and had given faithful service for many years. Indeed, there was one—Old Badge—that had carried Kurt when he was a boy. Once he and a neighbor boy had gone to the pasture to fetch home the cows. Old Badge was there, and nothing would do but that they ride him. From the fence Kurt mounted to his broad back. Then the neighbor boy, full of the devil, had struck Old Badge with a stick. The horse set off at a gallop for home with Kurt, frantically holding on, bouncing up and down on his back. That had been the ride of Kurt's life. His father had whipped him, too, for the adventure.

How strangely vivid and thought-compelling were these ordinary adjuncts to his life there on the farm. It was only upon giving them up that he discovered their real meaning. The hills of bare fallow and of yellow slope, the old barn with its horses, swallows, mice, and odorous loft, the cows and chickens—these appeared to Kurt, in the illuminating light of farewell, in their true relation to him. For they, and the labor of them, had made him what he was.

Slowly he went back to the old house and climbed the stairs. Only three rooms were there up-stairs, and one of these, his mother's, had not been opened for a long time. It seemed just the same as when he used to go to her with his stubbed toes and his troubles. She had died in that room. And now he was a man, going out to fight for his country. How strange! Why? In his mother's room he could not answer that puzzling question. It stung him, and with a last look, a good-by, and a word of prayer on his lips, he turned to his own little room.

He entered and sat down on the bed. It was small, with the slope of the roof running down so low that he had learned to stoop when close to the wall. There was no ceiling. Bare yellow rafters and dark old shingles showed. He could see light through more than one little hole. The window was small, low, and without glass. How many times he had sat there, leaning out in the hot dusk of summer nights, dreaming dreams that were never to come true. Alas for the hopes and illusions of boyhood! So long as he could remember, this room was most closely associated with his actions and his thoughts. It was a part of him. He almost took it into his confidence as if it were human. Never had he become what he had dared to dream he would, yet, somehow, at that moment he was not ashamed. It struck him then what few belongings he really had. But he had been taught to get along with little.

Living in that room was over for him. He was filled with unutterable sadness. Yet he would not have had it any different. Bigger, and selfless things called to him. He was bidding farewell to his youth and all that it related to. A solemn procession of beautiful memories passed through his mind, born of the nights there in that room of his boyhood, with the wind at the eaves and the rain pattering on the shingles. What strong and vivid pictures! No grief, no pain, no war could rob him of this best heritage from the past.

He got up to go. And then a blinding rush of tears burned his eyes. This room seemed dearer than all the rest of his home. It was hard to leave. His last look was magnified, transformed. "Good-by!" he whispered, with a swelling constriction in his throat. At the head of the dark old stairway he paused a moment, and then with bowed head he slowly descended.

An August twilight settled softly down over "Many Waters" while Lenore Anderson dreamily gazed from her window out over the darkening fields so tranquil now after the day's harvest toil.

Of late, in thoughtful hours such as this, she had become conscious of strain, of longing. She had fought out a battle with herself, had confessed her love for Kurt Dorn, and, surrendering to the enchantment of that truth, had felt her love grow with every thought of him and every beat of a thrilling pulse. In spite of a longing that amounted to pain and a nameless dread she could not deny, she was happy. And she waited, with a woman's presaging sense of events, for a crisis that was coming.

Presently she heard her father down-stairs, his heavy tread and hearty voice. These strenuous harvest days left him little time for his family. And Lenore, having lost herself in her dreams, had not, of late, sought him out in the fields. She was waiting, and, besides, his keen eyes, at once so penetrating and so kind, had confused her. Few secrets had she ever kept from her father.

"Where's Lenore?" she heard him ask, down in the dining-room.

"Lenorry's mooning," replied Kathleen, with a giggle.

"Ah-huh? Well, whereabouts is she moonin'?" went on Anderson.

"Why, in her room!" retorted the child. "And you can't get a word out of her with a crowbar."

Anderson's laugh rang out with a jingle of tableware. He was eating his supper. Then Lenore heard her mother and Rose and Kathleen all burst out with news of a letter come that day from Jim, away training to be a soldier. It was Rose who read this letter aloud to her father, and outside of her swift, soft voice the absolute silence attested to the attention of the listeners. Lenore's heart shook as she distinguished a phrase here and there, for Jim's letter had been wonderful for her. He had gained weight! He was getting husky enough to lick his father! He was feeling great! There was not a boy in the outfit who could beat him to a stuffed bag of a German soldier! And he sure could make some job with that old bayonet! So ran Jim's message to the loved ones at home. Then a strange pride replaced the quake in Lenore's heart. Not now would she have had Jim stay home. She had sacrificed him. Something subtler than thought told her she would never see him again. And, oh, how dear he had become!

Then Anderson roared his delight in that letter and banged the table with his fist. The girls excitedly talked in unison. But the mother was significantly silent. Lenore forgot them presently and went back to her dreaming. It was just about dark when her father called.

"Lenore."