FullReads

III.

At about the time the sun was rising, Farmer Bacon, roused from his sleep by the crowing of the chickens on the dry knolls in the fields as well as by those in the barnyard, rolled out of bed wearily, wondering why he should feel so drowsy. Then he remembered the row with Lime and his subsequent inability to sleep with thinking over it. There was a dull pain in his breast, which made him uncomfortable.

As was his usual custom, he went out into the kitchen and built the fire for Marietta, filled the tea-kettle with water, and filled the water-bucket in the sink. Then he went to her bedroom door and knocked with his knuckles as he had done for years in precisely the same fashion.

Rap–rap–rap. “Hello, Merry! Time t’ git up. Broad daylight, an’ birds a-singun’.”

Without waiting for an answer he went out to the barn and worked away at his chores. He took such delight in the glorious morning and the turbulent life of the farmyard that his heart grew light and he hummed a tune which sounded like the merry growl of a lion. “Poo-ee, poo-ee,” he called to the pigs as they swarmed across the yard.

“Ahrr! you big, fat rascals, them hams o’ yourn is clear money. One of ye shall go t’ buy Merry a new dress,” he said as he glanced at the house and saw the smoke pouring out the stove-pipe. “Merry ‘s a good girl; she’s stood by her old pap when other girls ‘u’d ‘a’ gone back on ‘im.”

While currying horses he went all over the ground of the quarrel yesterday, and he began to see it in a different light. He began to see that Lyman was a good man and an able man, and that his own course was a foolish one.

“When I git mad,” he confessed to himself, “I don’t know anythin’. But I won’t give her up. She ain’t old ‘nough t’ marry yet–and, besides, I need her.”

After finishing his chores, as usual, he went to the well and washed his face and hands, then entered the kitchen–to find the tea-kettle boiling over, and no signs of breakfast anywhere, and no sign of the girl.

“Well, I guess she felt sleepy this mornin’. Poor gal! Mebbe she cried half the night.”

“Merry!” he called, gently, at the door. “Merry, m’ gal! Pap needs his breakfast.”

There was no reply, and the old man’s face stiffened into a wild surprise. He knocked heavily again and got no reply, and, with a white face and shaking hand, he flung the door open and gazed at the empty bed. His hand dropped to his side; his head turned slowly from the bed to the open window; he rushed forward and looked out on the ground, where he saw the tracks of a man.

He fell heavily into the chair by the bed, while a deep groan broke from his stiff and twitching lips.

“She’s left me! She’s left me!”

For a long half-hour the iron-muscled old man sat there motionless, hearing not the songs of the hens or the birds far out in the brilliant sunshine. He had lost sight of his farm, his day’s work, and felt no hunger for food. He did not doubt that her going was final. He felt that she was gone from him forever. If she ever came back it would not be as his daughter, but as the wife of Gilman. She had deserted him, fled in the night like a thief; his heart began to harden again, and he rose stiffly. His native stubbornness began to assert itself, the first great shock over, and he went out to the kitchen, and prepared, as best he could, a breakfast, and sat down to it. In some way his appetite failed him, and he fell to thinking over his past life, of the death of his wife, and the early death of his only boy. He was still trying to think what his life would be in the future without his girl, when two carriages drove into the yard. It was about the middle of the forenoon, and the prairie-chickens had ceased to boom and squawk; in fact, that was why he knew that he had been sitting two hours at the table. Before he could rise he heard swift feet and a merry voice. Then Marietta burst through the door.