The Return of a Private Hamlin Garland I The nearer the train drew toward La Crosse, the soberer the little group of “vets” became. On the long way from New Orleans they had beguiled tedium with jokes and friendly chaff; or with planning with elaborate detail what they were going to do now, after the war. A long journey, slowly, irregularly, yet persistently pushing northward. When they entered on Wisconsin territory they gave a cheer, and another when they reached Madison, but after that they sank into a dumb expectancy. Comrades dropped off at one or two points beyond, until there were only four or five left who were bound for La Crosse County. Three of them were gaunt and brown, the fourth was gaunt and pale, with signs of fever and ague upon him. One had a great scar down his temple, one limped, and they all had unnaturally large, bright eyes, showing emaciation. There were no bands greeting them at the stations, no banks of gaily dressed ladies waving hand-kerchiefs and shouting “Bravo!” as they came in on the caboose of a freight tram into the towns that had cheered and blared at them on their way to war. As they looked out or stepped upon the platform for a moment, while the train stood at the station, the loafers looked at them indifferently. Their blue coats, dusty and grimy, were too familiar now End of Page 222 to excite notice, much less a friendly word. They were the last of the army to return, and the loafers were surfeited with such sights. The train jogged forward so slowly that it seemed likely to be midnight before they should reach La Crosse. The little squad grumbled and swore, but it was no use; the train would not hurry, and, as a matter of fact, it was nearly two o’clock when the engine whistled “down brakes.” All of the group were farmers, living in districts several miles out of the town, and all were poor. “Now, boys,” said Private Smith, he of the fever and ague, “we are landed in La Crosse in the night. We’ve got to stay somewhere till mornin’. Now I ain’t got no two dollars to waste on a hotel. I’ve got a wife and children, so I’m goin’ to roost on a bench and take the cost of a bed out of my hide.” “Same here,” put in one of the other men. “Hide’ll grow on again, dollars’ll come hard. It’s goin’ to be mighty hot skirmishin’ to find a dollar these days.” “Don’t think they’ll be a deputation of citizens waitin’ to ‘scort us to a hotel, eh?” said another. His sarcasm was too obvious to require an answer. Smith went on: “Then at daybreak we’ll start for home—at least, I will.” “Well, I’ll be dummed if I’ll take two dollars out o’ my hide,” one of the younger men said. “I’m goin’ to a hotel, ef I don’t never lay up a cent.” “That’ll do f’r you,” said Smith; “but if you had a wife an’ three young ‘uns dependin’ on yeh—” “Which I ain’t, thank the Lord! and don’t intend havin’ while the court knows itself.” The station was deserted, chill, and dark, as they came into it at exactly a quarter to two in the morning. Lit by the oil lamps that flared a dull red light over the dingy benches, the waiting End of Page 223 room was not an inviting place. The younger man went off to look up a hotel, while the rest remained and prepared to camp down on the floor and benches. Smith was attended to tenderly by the other men, who spread their blankets on the bench for him, and, by robbing themselves, made quite a comfortable bed, though the narrowness of the bench made his sleeping precarious. It was chill, though August, and the two men sitting with bowed heads grew stiff with cold and weariness, and were forced to rise now and again and walk about to warm their stiffened limbs. It did not occur to them, probably, to contrast their coming home with their going forth, or with the coming home of the generals, colonels, or even captains—but to Private Smith, at any rate, there came a sickness at heart almost deadly as he lay there on his hard bed and went over his situation. In the deep of the night, lying on a board in the town where he had enlisted three years ago, all elation and enthusiasm gone out of him, he faced the fact that with the joy of homecoming was already mingled the bitter juice of care. He saw himself sick, worn out, taking up the work on his half-cleared farm, the inevitable mortgage standing ready with open jaw to swallow half his earnings. He had given three years of his life for a mere pittance of pay, and now!— Morning dawned at last, slowly, with a pale yellow dome of light rising silently above the bluffs, which stand like some huge storm-devastated castle, just east of the city. Out to the left the great river swept on its massive yet silent way to the south. Bluejays called across the river from hillside to hillside, through the clear, beautiful air, and hawks began to skim the tops of the hills. The older men were astir early, but Private Smith had fallen at last into a sleep, and they went out without waking him. He lay on his knapsack, his gaunt face turned toward the ceiling, his hands clasped on his breast, with a curious pathetic effect of weakness and appeal. End of Page 224 An engine switching near woke him at last, and he slowly sat up and stared about. He looked out of the window and saw that the sun was lightening the hills across the river. He rose and brushed his hair as well as he could, folded his blankets up, and went out to find his companions. They stood gazing silently at the river and at the hills. “Looks natcher’l, don’t it?” they said, as he came out. “That’s what it does,” he replied. “An’ it looks good. D’yeh see that peak?” He pointed at a beautiful symmetrical peak, rising like a slightly truncated cone, so high that it seemed the very highest of them all. It was touched by the morning sun and it glowed like a beacon, and a light scarf of gray morning fog was rolling up its shadowed side. “My farm’s just beyond that. Now, if I can only ketch a ride, we’ll be home by dinner-time.” “I’m talkin’ about breakfast,” said one of the others. “I guess it’s one more meal o’ hardtack f’r me,” said Smith. They foraged around, and finally found a restaurant with a sleepy old German behind the counter, and procured some coffee, which they drank to wash down their hardtack. “Time’ll come,” said Smith, holding up a piece by the corner, “when this’ll be a curiosity.” “I hope to God it will! I bet I’ve chawed hardtack enough to shingle every house in the coolly. I’ve chawed it when my lampers was down, and when they wasn’t. I’ve took it dry, soaked, and mashed. I’ve had it wormy, musty, sour, and blue-mouldy. I’ve had it in little bits and big bits; ‘fore coffee an’ after coffee. I’m ready f’r a change. I’d like t’ git holt jest about now o’ some of the hot biscuits my wife c’n make when she lays herself out f’r company.” “Well, if you set there gabblin’, you’ll never see yer wife.” End of Page 225 “Come on,” said Private Smith. “Wait a moment, boys; less take suthin’. It’s on me.” He led them to the rusty tin dipper which hung on a nail beside the wooden water-pail, and they grinned and drank. (Things were primitive in La Crosse then.) Then shouldering their blankets and muskets, which they were “takin’ home to the boys,” they struck out on their last march. “They called that coffee Jayvy,” grumbled one of them, “but it never went by the road where government Jayvy resides. I reckon I know coffee from peas.” They kept together on the road along the turnpike, and up the winding road by the river, which they followed for some miles. The river was very lovely, curving down along its sandy beds, pausing now and then under broad basswood trees, or running in dark, swift, silent currents under tangles of wild grapevines, and drooping alders, and haw trees. At one of these lovely spots the three vets sat down on the thick green sward to rest, “on Smith’s account.” The leaves of the trees were as fresh and green as in June, the jays called cheery greetings to them, and kingfishers darted to and fro, with swooping, noiseless flight. “I tell yeh, boys, this knocks the swamps of Loueesiana into kingdom come.” “You bet. All they c’n raise down there is snakes….” “An’ fightin’ men,” put in the older man. “An’ fightin’ men. If I had a good hook an’ line I’d sneak a pick’rel out o’ that pond. Say, remember that time I shot that alligator—” “I guess we’d better be crawlin’ along,” interrupted Smith, rising and shouldering his knapsack, with considerable effort, which he tried to hide. “Say, Smith, lemme give you a lift on that.” “I guess I c’n manage,” said Smith grimly. “’Course. But, yo’ see, I may not have a chance right off to pay yeh back for the times you’ve carried my gun and hull caboodle. Say, now, gimme that gun, anyway.” End of Page 226 “All right, if yeh feel like it, Jim,” Smith replied, and they trudged along doggedly in the sun, which was getting higher and hotter each half-mile. “Ain’t it queer there ain’t no teams comin’ along,” said Smith, after a long silence. “Well, no, seein’ it’s Sunday.” “By jinks, that’s a fact! It is Sunday. I’ll git home in time f’r dinner, sure!” he exulted. “She don’t hev dinner usially till about one on Sundays.” And he fell into a muse, in which he smiled. “Well, I’ll git home jest about six o’clock, jest about when the boys are milkin’ the cows,” said old Jim Cranby. “I’ll step into the barn an’ then I’ll say: ‘Heah! why ain’t this milkin’ done before this time o’ day?’ An’ then won’t they yell!” he added, slapping his thigh in great glee. Smith went on. “I’ll jest go up the path. Old Rover’ll come down the road to meet me. He won’t bark; he’ll know me, an’ he’ll come down waggin’ his tail an’ showin’ his teeth. That’s his way of laughin’. An’ so I’ll walk up to the kitchen door, an’ I’ll say, ‘Dinner, f’r a hungry man!’ An’ then she’ll jump up, an’—” He couldn’t go on. His voice choked at the thought of it. Saunders, the third man, hardly uttered a word, but he walked silently behind the others. He had lost his wife the first year he was in the army. She died of pneumonia, caught in the autumn rains, while working in the fields in his place. They plodded along till at last they came to a parting of the ways. To the right the road continued up the main valley; to the left it went over the big ridge. “Well, boys,” began Smith, as they grounded their muskets and looked away up the valley, “here’s where we shake hands. We’ve marched together a good many miles, an’ now I s’pose we’re done.” “Yes, I don’t think we’ll do any more of it f’r a while. I don’t want to, I know.” “I hope I’ll see yeh once in a while, boys, to talk over old times.” “Of course,” said Saunders, whose voice trembled a little, too. “It ain’t exactly like dyin’.” They all found it hard to look at each other. “But we’d ought’r go home with you,” said Cranby. “You never’ll climb that ridge with all them things on yer back.” End of Page 227 “Oh, I’m all right! Don’t worry about me. Every step takes me nearer home, yeh see. Well, good-by, boys.” They shook hands. “Good-by. Good luck!” “Same to you. Lemme know how you find things at home.” “Good-by.” “Good-by.” He turned once before they passed out of sight, and waved his cap, and they did the same, and all yelled. Then all marched away with their long, steady, loping, veteran step. The solitary climber in blue walked on for a time, with his mind filled with the kindness of his comrades, and musing upon the many wonderful days they had had together in camp and field. He thought of his chum, Billy Tripp. Poor Billy! A “minie” ball fell into his breast one day, fell wailing like a cat, and tore a great ragged hole in his heart. He looked forward to a sad scene with Billy’s mother and sweetheart. They would want to know all about it. He tried to recall all that Billy had said, and the particulars of it, but there was little to remember, just that wild wailing sound high in the air, a dull slap, a short, quick, expulsive groan, and the boy lay with his face in the dirt in the ploughed field they were marching across. That was all. But all the scenes he had since been through had not dimmed the horror, the terror of that moment, when his boy comrade fell, with only a breath between a laugh and a deathgroan. Poor handsome Billy! Worth millions of dollars was his young wife. These sombre recollections gave way at length to more cheerful feelings as he began to approach his home coolly. The fields and houses grew familiar, and in one or two he was greeted by people seated in the doorway. But he was in no mood to talk, and pushed on steadily, though he stopped and accepted a drink of milk once at the well-side of a neighbor. The sun was burning hot on that slope, and his step grew slower, in spite of his iron resolution. He sat down several times to rest. Slowly he crawled up the rough, reddish-brown road, which wound along the hillside, under great trees, through dense groves End of Page 228 of jack oaks, with tree-tops far below him on his left hand, and the hills far above him on his right. He crawled along like some minute, wingless variety of fly. He ate some hardtack, sauced with wild berries, when he reached the summit of the ridge, and sat there for some time, looking down into his home coolly. Sombre, pathetic figure! His wide, round, gray eyes gazing down into the beautiful valley, seeing and not seeing, the splendid cloud-shadows sweeping over the western hills and across the green and yellow wheat far below. His head drooped forward on his palm, his shoulders took on a tired stoop, his cheek-bones showed painfully. An observer might have said, “He is looking down upon his own grave.” II Sunday comes in a Western wheat harvest with such sweet and sudden relaxation to man and beast that it would be holy for that reason, if for no other, and Sundays are usually fair in harvest-time. As one goes out into the field in the hot morning sunshine, with no sound abroad save the crickets and the indescribably pleasant silken rustling of the ripened grain, the reaper and the very sheaves in the stubble seem to be resting, dreaming. Around the house, in the shade of the trees, the men sit, smoking, dozing, or reading the papers, while the women, never resting, move about at the housework. The men eat on Sundays, about the same as on other days, and breakfast is no sooner over and out of the way than dinner begins. But at the Smith farm there were no men dozing or reading. Mrs. Smith was alone with her three children, Mary, nine, Tommy, six, and little Ted, just past four. Her farm, rented to a neighbor, lay at the head of a coolly or narrow galley, made at some far-off post-glacial period by the vast and angry floods of water which gullied these tremendous furrows in the level prairie—furrows so End of Page 229 deep that undisturbed portions of the original level rose like hills on either side, rose to quite considerable mountains. The chickens wakened her as usual that Sabbath morning from dreams of her absent husband, from whom she had not heard for weeks. The shadows drifted over the hills, down the slopes, across the wheat, and up the opposite wall in a leisurely way, as if, being Sunday, they could “take it easy” also. The fowls clustered about the housewife as she went out into the yard. Fuzzy little chickens swarmed out from the coops, where their clucking and perpetually disgruntled mothers tramped about, petulantly, thrusting their heads through the spaces between the slats. A cow called in a deep, musical bass, and a calf answered from a little pen near by, and a pig scurried guiltily out of the cabbages. Seeing all this, seeing the pig in the cabbages, the tangle of grass in the garden, the broken fence which she had mended again and again—the little woman, hardly more than a girl, sat down and cried. The bright Sabbath morning was only a mockery without him! A few years ago they had bought this farm, paying part, mortgaging the rest in the usual way. Edward Smith was a man of terrible energy. He worked “nights and Sundays,” as the saying goes, to clear the farm of its brush and of its insatiate mortgage! In the midst of his Herculean struggle came the call for volunteers, and with the grim and unselfish devotion to his country which made the Eagle Brigade able to “whip its weight in wildcats,” he threw down his scythe and a grub-axe, turned his cattle loose, and became a blue-coated cogin a vast machine for killing men, and not thistles. While the millionnaire sent his money to England for safe-keeping, this man, with his girl-wife and three babies, left them End of Page 230 on a mortgaged farm, and went away to fight for an idea. It was foolish, but it was sublime for all that. That was three years before, and the young wife, sitting on the well-curb on this bright Sabbath harvest morning, was righteously rebellious. It seemed to her that she had borne her share of the country’s sorrow. Two brothers had been killed, the renter in whose hands her husband had left the farm had proved a villain; one year the farm had been without crops, and now the overripe grain was waiting the tardy hand of the neighbor who had rented it, and who was cutting his own grain first. About six weeks before, she had received a letter saying, “We’ll be discharged in a little while.” But no other word had come from him. She had seen by the papers that his army was being discharged, and from day to day other soldiers slowly percolated in blue streams back into the State and county, but still her hero did not return. Each week she had told the children that he was coming, and she had watched the road so long that it had become unconscious; and as she stood at the well, or by the kitchen door, her eyes were fixed unthinkingly on the road that wound down the coolly. Nothing wears on the human soul like waiting. If the stranded mariner, searching the sun-bright seas, could once give up hope of a ship, that horrible grinding on his brain would cease. It was this waiting, hoping, on the edge of despair, that gave Emma Smith no rest. Neighbors said, with kind intentions, “He’s sick, maybe, an’ can’t start north just yet. He’ll come along one o’ these days.” “Why don’t he write?” was her question, which silenced them all. This Sunday morning it seemed to her as if she could not stand it any longer. The house seemed intolerably lonely. So she dressed the little ones in their best calico dresses and home-made jackets, and closing up the house, set off down the coolly to old Mother Gray’s. “Old Widder Gray” lived at the “mouth of the coolly.” She was a widow woman with a large family of stalwart boys and laughing End of Page 231 girls. She was the visible incarnation of hospitality and optimistic poverty. With Western open-heartedness she fed every mouth that asked food of her, and worked herself to death as cheerfully as her girls danced in the neighborhood harvest dances. She waddled down the path to meet Mrs. Smith with a broad smile on her face. “Oh, you little dears! Come right to your granny. Gimme a kiss! Come right in, Mis’ Smith. How are yeh, anyway? Nice mornin’, ain’t it? Come in an’ set down. Everything’s in a clutter, but that won’t scare you any.” She led the way into the best room, a sunny, square room, carpeted with a faded and patched rag carpet, and papered with a horrible white-and-greenstriped wallpaper, where a few faded effigies of dead members of the family hung in various sized oval walnut frames. The house resounded with singing, laughter, whistling, tramping of heavy boots, and scuffing. Half-grown boys came to the door and crooked their fingers at the children, who ran out, and were soon heard in the midst of the fun. “Don’t s’pose you’ve heard from Ed?” Mrs. Smith shook her head. “He’ll turn up some day, when you ain’t lookin’ for ‘m.” The good old soul had said that so many times that poor Mrs. Smith derived no comfort from it any longer. “Liz heard from Al the other day. He’s comin’ some day this week. Anyhow, they expect him.” “Did he say anything of—” “No, he didn’t,” Mrs. Gray admitted. “But then it was only a short letter, anyhow. Al ain’t much for writin’, anyhow—But come out and see my new cheese. I tell yeh, I don’t believe I ever had better luck in my life. If Ed should come, I want you should take him up a piece of this cheese.” It was beyond human nature to resist the influence of that noisy, hearty, loving household, and in the midst of the singing and laughing the wife forgot her anxiety, for the time at least, and laughed and sang with the rest. End of Page 232 About eleven o’clock a wagon-load more drove up to the door, and Bill Gray, the widow’s oldest son, and his whole family from Sand Lake Coolly piled out amid a good-natured uproar. Every one talked at once, except Bill, who sat in the wagon with his wrists on his knees, a straw in his mouth, and an amused twinkle in his blue eyes. “Ain’t heard nothin’ o’ Ed, I s’pose?” he asked in a kind of bellow. Mrs. Smith shook her head. Bill, with a delicacy very striking in such a great giant, rolled his quid in his mouth and said: “Didn’t know but you had. I hear two or three of the Sand Lake boys are comin’. Left New Orleenes some time this week. Didn’t write nothin’ about Ed, but no news is good news in such cases, mother always says.” “Well, go put out yer team,” said Mrs. Gray, “an’ go ‘n bring me in some taters, an’, Sim, you go see if you c’n find some corn. Sadie, you put on the water to bile. Come now, hustle yer boots, all o’ yeh. If I feed this yer crowd, we’ve got to have some raw materials. If y’ think ‘m goin’ to feed yeh on pie— you’re jest mightily mistaken.” The children went off into the fields, the girls put dinner on to boil, and then went to change their dresses and fix their hair. “Somebody might come,” they said. “Land sakes, I hope not! I don’t know where in time I’d set ‘em, ‘less they’d eat at the second table,” Mrs. Gray laughed, in pretended dismay. The two older boys, who had served their time in the army, lay out on the grass before the house, and whittled and talked desultorily about the war and the crops, and planned buying a threshing machine. The older girls and Mrs. Smith helped enlarge the table and put on the dishes, talking all the time in that cheery, incoherent, and meaningful way a group of such women have—a conversation to be taken for its spirit rather than for its letter, though Mrs. Gray at last got the ear of them all and dissertated at length on girls. “Girls in love ain’t no use in the whole blessed week,” she said. “Sundays they’re a lookin’ down the road, expectin’ he’ll come. End of Page 233 Sunday afternoons they can’t think o’ nothin’ else, ‘cause he’s here. Monday mornin’s they’re sleepy and kind o’ dreamy and slimpsy, and good f’r nothin’ on Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday they git absent-minded, an’ begin to look off toward Sundays agin, an’ mope aroun’ and let the dishwater git cold, right under their noses. Friday they break dishes, and go off in the best room an’ snivel, an’ look out o’ the winder. Saturdays they have queer spurts o’ workin’ like all p’ssessed, an spurts o’ frizzin’ their hair. An’ Sunday they begin it all over agin.” The girls giggled and blushed all through this tirade from their mother, their broad faces and powerful frames anything but suggestive of lackadaisical sentiment. But Mrs. Smith said: “Now, Mrs. Gray, I hadn’t ought to stay to dinner. You’ve got—” “Now you set right down! If any of them girls’ beaus comes, they’ll have to take what’s left, that’s all. They ain’t s’posed to have much appetite, nohow. No, you’re goin’ to stay if they starve, an’ they ain’t no danger o’ that.” At one o’clock the long table was piled with boiled potatoes, cords of boiled corn on the cob, squash and pumpkin pies, hot biscuit, sweet pickles, bread and butter, and honey. Then one of the girls took down a conch shell from a nail and, going to the door, blew a long, fine, free blast, that showed there was no weakness of lungs in her ample chest. Then the children came out of the forest of corn, out of the creek, out of the loft of the barn, and out of the garden. “They come to their feed f’r all the world jest like the pigs when y’ holler ‘poo-ee!’ See ‘em scoot!” laughed Mrs. Gray, every wrinkle on her face shining with delight. The men shut up their jack-knives, and surrounded the horse trough to souse their faces in the cold, hard water, and in a few moments the table was filled with a merry crowd, and a row of wistful-eyed youngsters circled the kitchen wall, where they stood first on one leg and then on the other, in impatient hunger. “Now pitch in, Mrs. Smith,” she said, presiding over the table. End of Page 234 “You know these men critters. They’ll eat every grain of it, if yeh give ‘em a chance. I swan, they’re made o’ India-rubber, their stomachs is, I know it.” “Haft to eat to work,” said Bill, gnawing a cob with a swift, circular motion that rivaled a corn-sheller in results. “More like workin’ to eat,” put in one of the girls, with a giggle. “More eat ‘n work with you.” “You needn’t say anything, Net. Anyone that’ll eat seven ears—” “I didn’t, no such thing. You piled your cobs on my plate.” “That’ll do to tell Ed Varney. It won’t go down here where we know yeh.” “Good land! Eat all yeh want! They’s plenty more in the fiel’s, but I can’t afford to give you young uns tea. The tea is for us women-folks, and ‘specially f’r Miss’ Smith an’ Bill’s wife. We’re a-goin’ to tell fortunes by it.” One by one the men filled up and shoved back, and one by one the children slipped into their places, and by two o’clock the women alone remained around the debris-covered table, sipping their tea and telling fortunes. As they got well down to the grounds in the cup, they shook them with a circular motion in the hand, and then turned them bottom-side-up quickly in the saucer, then twirled them three or four times one way, and three or four times the other, during a breathless pause. Then Mrs. Gray lifted the cup and, gazing into it with profound gravity, pronounced the impending fate. It must be admitted that, to a critical observer, she had abundant preparation for hitting close to the mark, as when she told the girls that “somebody was comin’.” “It’s a man,” she went on gravely. “He is cross-eyed—” “Oh, you hush!” cried Nettie. “He has red hair, and is death on b’iled corn and hot biscuit.” The others shrieked with delight. “But he’s goin’ to get the mitten, that red-headed feller is, for I see a feller comin’ up behind him.” “Oh, lemme see, lemme see!” cried Nettle. End of Page 235 “Keep off,” said the priestess with a lofty gesture. “His hair is black. He don’t eat so much, and he works more.” The girls exploded in a shriek of laughter, and pounded their sister on the back. At last came Mrs. Smith’s turn, and she was trembling with excitement as Mrs. Gray again composed her jolly face to what she considered a proper solemnity of expression. “Somebody is comin’ to you,” she said after a long pause. “He’s got a musket on his back. He’s a soldier. He’s almost here. See?” She pointed at two little tea-stems, which really formed a faint suggestion of a man with a musket on his back. He had climbed nearly to the edge of the cup. Mrs. Smith grew pale with excitement. She trembled so she could hardly hold the cup in her hand as she gazed into it. “It’s Ed,” cried the old woman. “He’s on the way home. Heavens an’ earth! There he is now!” She turned and waved her hand out toward the road. They rushed to the door and looked where she pointed. A man in a blue coat, with a musket on his back, was toiling slowly up the hill, on the sun-bright, dusty road, toiling slowly, with bent head half-hidden by a heavy knapsack. So tired it seemed that walking was indeed a process of falling. So eager to get home he would not stop, would not look aside, but plodded on, amid the cries of the locusts, the welcome of the crickets, and the rustle of the yellow wheat. Getting back to God’s country, and his wife and babies! Laughing, crying, trying to call him and the children at the same time, the little wife, almost hysterical, snatched her hat and ran out into the yard. But the soldier had disappeared over the hill into the hollow beyond, and, by the time she had found the children, he was too far away for her voice to reach him. And, besides, she was not sure it was her husband, for he had not turned his head at their shouts. This seemed so strange. Why didn’t he stop to rest at his old neighbor’s house? Tortured by hope and doubt, she hurried up the coolly as fast as she could push the baby wagon, the blue coated figure just ahead pushing steadily, silently forward up the coolly. End of Page 236 When the excited, panting little group came in sight of the gate they saw the blue-coated figure standing, leaning upon the rough rail fence, his chin on his palms, gazing at the empty house. His knapsack, canteen, blankets, and musket lay upon the dusty grass at his feet. He was like a man lost in a dream. His wide, hungry eyes devoured the scene. The rough lawn, the little unpainted house, the field of clear yellow wheat behind it, down across which streamed the sun, now almost ready to touch the high hill to the west, the crickets crying merrily, a cat on the fence nearby, dreaming, unmindful of the stranger in blue— How peaceful it all was. O God! How far removed from all camps, hospitals, battle lines. A little cabin in a Wisconsin coolly, but it was majestic in its peace. How did he ever leave it for those years of tramping, thirsting, killing? Trembling, weak with emotion, her eyes on the silent figure, Mrs. Smith hurried up to the fence. Her feet made no noise in the dust and grass, and they were close upon him before he knew of them. The oldest boy ran a little ahead. He will never forget that figure, that face. It will always remain as something epic, that return of the private. He fixed his eyes on the pale face covered with a ragged beard. “Who are you, sir?” asked the wife, or, rather, started to ask, for he turned, stood a moment, and then cried: “Emma!” “Edward!” The children stood in a curious row to see their mother kiss this bearded, strange man, the elder girl sobbing sympathetically with her mother. Illness had left the soldier partly deaf, and this added to the strangeness of his manner. But the youngest child stood away, even after the girl had recognized her father and kissed him. The man turned then to the baby, and said in a curiously unpaternal tone: “Come here, my little man; don’t you know me?” But the baby backed away under the fence and stood peering at him critically. End of Page 237 “My little man!” What meaning in those words! This baby seemed like some other woman’s child, and not the infant he had left in his wife’s arms. The war had come between him and his baby—he was only a strange man to him, with big eyes; a soldier, with mother hanging to his arm, and talking in a loud voice. “And this is Tom,” the private said, drawing the oldest boy to him. “He’ll come and see me. He knows his poor old pap when he comes home from the war.” The mother heard the pain and reproach in his voice and hastened to apologize. “You’ve changed so, Ed. He can’t know yeh. This is papa, Teddy; come and kiss him—Tom and Mary do. Come, won’t you?” But Teddy still peered through the fence with solemn eyes, well out of reach. He resembled a half-wild kitten that hesitates, studying the tones of one’s voice. “I’ll fix him,” said the soldier, and sat down to undo his knapsack, out of which he drew three enormous and very red apples. After giving one to each of the older children, he said: “Now I guess he’ll come. Eh, my little man? Now come see your pap.” Teddy crept slowly under the fence, assisted by the overzealous Tommy, and a moment later was kicking and squalling in his father’s arms. Then they entered the house, into the sitting room, poor, bare, art-forsaken little room, too, with its rag carpet, its square clock, and its two or three chromos and pictures from Harper’s Weekly pinned about. “Emma, I’m all tired out,” said Private Smith as he flung himself down on the carpet as he used to do, while his wife brought a pillow to put under his head, and the children stood about munching their apples. “Tommy, you run and get me a pan of chips; and Mary, you get the tea-kettle on, and I’ll go and make some biscuit.” And the soldier talked. Question after question he poured forth about the crops, the cattle, the renter, the neighbors. He slipped his heavy government brogan shoes off his poor, tired, blistered feet, End of Page 238 and lay out with utter, sweet relaxation. He was a free man again, no longer a soldier under command. At supper he stopped once, listened and smiled. “That’s old Spot. I know her voice. I s’pose that’s her calf out there in the pen. I can’t milk her to-night, though. I’m too tired. But I tell you, I’d like a drink o’ her milk. What’s become of old Rove?” “He died last winter. Poisoned, I guess.” There was a moment of sadness for them all. It was some time before the husband spoke again, in a voice that trembled a little. “Poor old feller! He’d ‘a’ known me a half a mile away. I expected him to come down the hill to meet me. It ‘ud ‘a’ been more like comin’ home if I could ‘a’ seen him comin’ down the road an’ waggin’ his tail, an’ laughin’ that way he has. I tell yeh, it kin’ o’ took hold o’ me to see the blinds down an’ the house shut up.” “But, yeh see, we—we expected you’d write again ‘fore you started. And then we thought we’d see you if you did come,” she hastened to explain. “Well, I ain’t worth a cent on writin’. Besides, it’s just as well yeh didn’t know when I was comin’. I tell you, it sounds good to hear them chickens out there, an’ turkeys, an’ the crickets. Do you know they don’t have just the same kind o’ crickets down South. Who’s Sam hired t’ help cut yer grain?” “The Ramsey boys.” “Looks like a good crop; but I’m afraid I won’t do much gettin’ it cut. This cussed fever an’ ague has got me down pretty low. I don’t know when I’ll get rid of it. I’ll bet I’ve took twenty-five pounds of quinine if I’ve taken a bit. Gimme another biscuit. I tell yeh, they taste good, Emma. I ain’t had anything like it—Say, if you’d ‘a’ hear’d me braggin’ to th’ boys about your butter ‘n’ biscuits I’ll bet your ears ‘ud ‘a’ burnt.” The private’s wife colored with pleasure. “Oh, you’re always a-braggin’ about your things. Everybody makes good butter.” “Yes; old lady Snyder, for instance.” “Oh, well, she ain’t to be mentioned. She’s Dutch.” “Or old Mis’ Snively. One more cup o’ tea, Mary. That’s my girl! I’m feeling better already. I just b’lieve the matter with me is I’m starved.” End of Page 239 This was a delicious hour, one long to be remembered. They were like lovers again. But their tenderness, like that of a typical American family, found utterance in tones, rather than in words. He was praising her when praising her biscuit, and she knew it. They grew soberer when he showed where he had been struck, one ball burning the back of his hand, one cutting away a lock of hair from his temple, and one passing through the calf of his leg. The wife shuddered to think how near she had come to being a soldier’s widow. Her waiting no longer seemed hard. This sweet, glorious hour effaced it all. Then they rose and all went out into the garden and down to the barn. He stood beside her while she milked old Spot. They began to plan fields and crops for next year. His farm was weedy and encumbered, a rascally renter had run away with his machinery (departing between two days), his children needed clothing, the years were coming upon him, he was sick and emaciated, but his heroic soul did not quail. With the same courage with which he faced his Southern march he entered upon a still more hazardous future. Oh, that mystic hour! The pale man with big eyes standing there by the well, with his young wife by his side. The vast moon swinging above the eastern peaks; the cattle winding down the pasture slopes with jangling bells; the crickets singing; the stars blooming out sweet and far and serene; the katydids rhythmically calling; the little turkeys crying querulously, as they settled to roost in the poplar tree near the open gate. The voices at the well drop lower, the little ones nestle in their father’s arms at last, and Teddy falls asleep there. The common soldier of the American volunteer army had returned. His war with the South was over, and his fight, his daily running fight with nature and against the injustice of his fellowmen, was begun again. End of Page 240 The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County Mark Twain In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend’s friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me to death with some exasperating reminiscence of him as long and as tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it succeeded. I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the barroom stove of the dilapidated tavern in the decayed mining camp of Angel’s, and I noticed that he was fat and baldheaded, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up, and gave me good day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas W. Smiley—Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, a young minister of the Gospel, who End of Page 241 he had heard was at one time a resident of Angel’s Camp. I added that if Mr. Wheeler could tell me anything about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to him. Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned his initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in finesse. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once. “Rev. Leonidas W. H’m, Reverend Le—well, there was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of ‘49—or maybe it was the spring of ‘50—I don’t recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume warn’t finished when he first come to the camp; but anyway, he was the curiousest man about always betting on anything that turned up you ever see, if he could get anybody to bet on the other side; and if he couldn’t he’d change sides. Any way that suited the other man would suit him—any way just so’s he got a bet, he was satisfied. But still he was lucky, uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner. He was always ready and laying for a chance; there couldn’t be no solit’ry thing mentioned but that feller’d offer to bet on it, and take ary side you please, as I was just telling you. If there was a horse race, you’d find him flush End of Page 242 or you’d find him busted at the end of it; if there was a dogfight, he’d bet on it; if there was a cat fight, he’d bet on it; if there was a chicken fight, he’d bet on it; why, if there was two birds setting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first; or if there was a camp meeting, he would be there reg’lar to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here and so he was too, and a good man. If he even see a straddle bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get to—to wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots of the boys here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about him. Why, it never made no difference to him—he’d bet on any thing—the dangdest feller. Parson Walker’s wife laid very sick once, for a good while, and it seemed as if they warn’t going to save her; but one morning he come in, and Smiley up and asked him how she was, and he said she was considable better—thank the Lord for his inf’nite mercy—and coming on so smart that with the blessing of Prov’dence she’d get well yet; and Smiley, before he thought, says, ‘Well, I’ll resk two-and-a-half she don’t anyway.’ Thish-yer Smiley had a mare—the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag, but that was only in fun, you know, because of course she was faster than that— and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards start, and then pass her under way; but always at the fag end of the race she’d get excited and desperate like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and End of Page 243 sneezing and blowing her nose—and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could cipher it down. And he had a little small bull-pup, that to look at him you’d think he warn’t worth a cent but to set around and look ornery and lay for a chance to steal something. But as soon as money was up on him he was a different dog; his under-jaw’d begin to stick out like the fo’castle of a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover and shine like the furnaces. And a dog might tackle him and bullyrag him, and bite him, and throw him over his shoulder two or three times, and Andrew Jackson—which was the name of the pup—Andrew Jackson would never let on but what he was satisfied, and hadn’t expected nothing else— and the bets being doubled and doubled on the other side all the time, till the money was all up; and then all of a sudden he would grab that other dog just by the j’int of his hind leg and freeze to it—not chaw, you understand, but only just grip and hang on till they throwed up the sponge, if it was a year. Smiley always come out winner on that pup, till he harnessed a dog once that didn’t have no hind legs, because they’d been sawed off in a circular saw, and when the thing had gone along far enough, and the money was all up, and he come to make a snatch for his pet holt, he see in a minute how he’d been imposed on, and how the other dog had him in the door, so to speak, and he ‘peared surprised, and then he looked sorter discouraged-like, and didn’t try no more to win the fight, and so he got shucked out bad. He give Smiley a look, as much as to say his heart was broke, and it was his fault, for putting up a dog that hadn’t no hind legs for him to take holt of, which was his main dependence in a fight, and then he limped off a piece and laid down and died. It was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have made a name for hisself if he’d lived, for the stuff was in him and he had genius—I know it, because he hadn’t no opportunities to speak of, and it don’t stand to reason that a dog could make such a fight as he could under them circumstances if he hadn’t no talent. It always makes me feel sorry when I think of that last fight of his’n, and the way it turned out. End of Page 244 Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-terriers, and chicken cocks, and tomcats and all them kind of things, till you couldn’t rest, and you couldn’t fetch nothing for him to bet on but he’d match you. He ketched a frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal’lated to educate him; and so he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He’d give him a little punch behind, and the next minute you’d see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut—see him turn one summerset, or maybe a couple, if he got a good start, and come down flatfooted and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of ketching flies, and kep’ him in practice so constant, that he’d nail a fly every time as fur as he could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do ‘most anything—and I believe him. Why, I’ve seen him set Dan’l Webster down here on this floor—Dan’l Webster was the name of the frog—and sing out, “Flies, Dan’l, flies!” and quicker’n you could wink he’d spring straight up and snake a fly off’n the counter there, and flop down on the floor ag’in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn’t no idea he’d been doin’ any more’n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest and straightfor’ard as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see. Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when it come to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers that had traveled and been everywheres all said he laid over any frog that ever they see. Well, Smiley kep’ the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch him downtown sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller—a stranger in the camp, he was—come acrost him with his box, and says: ‘What might it be that you’ve got in the box?’ End of Page 245 And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, ‘It might be a parrot, or it might be a canary, maybe, but it ain’t—it’s only just a frog.’ And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round this way and that, and says, ‘H’m—so ‘tis. Well, what’s he good for?’ ‘Well,’ Smiley says, easy and careless, ‘he’s good enough for one thing, I should judge—he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.’ The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look, and give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I don’t see no p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog.’ ‘Maybe you don’t,’ Smiley says. ‘Maybe you understand frogs and maybe you don’t understand ‘em; maybe you’ve had experience, and maybe you ain’t only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I’ve got my opinion and I’ll resk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.’ And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, ‘Well, I’m only a stranger here, and I ain’t got no frog; but if I had a frog, I’d bet you.’ And then Smiley says, ‘That’s all right—that’s all right—if you’ll hold my box a minute, I’ll go and get you a frog.’ And so the feller took the box, and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley’s, and set down to wait. So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and filled him full of quailshot—filled him pretty near up to his chin—and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him in, and give him to this feller, and says: ‘Now, if you’re ready, set him alongside of Dan’l, with his forepaws just even with Dan’l’s, and I’ll give the word.’ Then he says, ‘One—two—three— git!’ and him and the feller touched up the frogs from behind, and the new frog hopped off lively, but Dan’l give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders— so—like a Frenchman, End of Page 246 but it warn’t no use—he couldn’t budge; he was planted as solid as a church, and he couldn’t no more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted too, but he didn’t have no idea what the matter was, of course. The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at the door, he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder—so—at Dan’l, and says again, very deliberate, ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I don’t see no p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog.’ Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan’l a long time, and at last he says, ‘I do wonder what in the nation that frog throw’d off for—I wonder if there ain’t something the matter with him—he ‘pears to look mighty baggy, somehow.’ And he ketched Dan’l by the nap of the neck, and hefted him, and says, ‘Why blame my cats if he don’t weigh five pound!’ and turned him upside down and he belched out a double handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was the maddest man—he set the frog down and took out after that feller, but he never ketched him. And—” Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and got up to see what was wanted. And turning to me as he moved away, he said: “Just set where you are, stranger, and rest easy—I ain’t going to be gone a second.” But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of the enterprising vagabond Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much information concerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started away. At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he buttonholed me and recommenced: “Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yaller one-eyed cow that didn’t have no tail, only jest a short stump like a bannanner, and—” End of Page 247
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