第20章 The Three Johns(7)

It was the dead and mangled body of a steer.

She stooped over it to read the brand on its flank."It's one of the three Johns',"she cried out,looking anxiously about her.

"How could that have happened?"

The direction which the cattle had taken was toward her house,and she hastened homeward.And not a quarter of a mile from her door she found the body of Waite beside that of his pony,crushed out of its familiar form into something unspeakably shapeless.In her excitement she half dragged,half carried that mutilated body home,and then ran up her signal of alarm on the stick that Waite himself had erected for her convenience.She thought it would be a long time before any one reached her,but she had hardly had time to bathe the disfigured face and straighten the disfigured body before Henderson was pounding at her door.Outside stood his pony panting from its terrific exertions.Henderson had not seen her before for six weeks.Now he stared at her with frightened eyes.

"What is it?What is it?"he cried.

"What has happened to you,my --my love?"At least afterward,thinking it over as she worked by day or tossed in her narrow bunk at night,it seemed to Catherine that those were the words he spoke.Yet she could never feel sure;nothing in his manner after that justified the impassioned anxiety of his manner in those first few uncertain moments;for a second later he saw the body of his friend and learned the little that Catherine knew.They buried him the next day in a little hollow where there was a spring and some wild aspens.

"He never liked the prairie,"Catherine said,when she selected the spot."And Iwant him to lie as sheltered as possible."After he had been laid at rest,and she was back,busy with tidying her neglected shack,she fell to crying so that the children were scared.

"There's no one left to care what becomes of us,"she told them,bitterly."We might starve out here for all that any one cares."And all through the night her tears fell,and she told herself that they were all for the man whose last thought was for her and her babies;she told herself over and over again that her tears were all for him.After this the autumn began to hurry on,and the snow fell capriciously,days of biting cold giving place to retrospective glances at summer.

The last of the vegetables were taken out of the garden and buried in the cellar;and a few tons of coal --dear almost as diamonds --were brought out to provide against the severest weather.Ordinarily buffalo chips were the fuel.Catherine was alarmed at the way her wretched little store of money began to vanish.The baby was fretful with its teething,and was really more care than when she nursed it.The days shortened,and it seemed to her that she was forever working by lamp-light The prairies were brown and forbidding,the sky often a mere gray pall.The monotony of the life began to seem terrible.Sometimes her ears ached for a sound.For a time in the summer so many had seemed to need her that she had been happy in spite of her poverty and her loneliness.Now,suddenly,no one wanted her.She could find no source of inspiration.

She wondered how she was going to live through the winter,and keep her patience and her good-nature.

"You'll love me,"she said,almost fiercely,one night to the children --"you'll love mamma,no matter how cross and homely she gets,won't you?"The cold grew day by day.A strong winter was setting in.Catherine took up her study of medicine again,and sat over her books till midnight.It occurred to her that she might fit herself for nursing by spring,and that the children could be put with some one --she did not dare to think with whom.But this was the only solution she could find to her problem of existence.

November settled down drearily.Few passed the shack.Catherine,who had no one to speak with excepting the children,continually devised amusements for them.

They got to living in a world of fantasy,and were never themselves,but always wild Indians,or arctic explorers,or Robinson Crusoes.Kitty and Roderick,young as they were,found a never-ending source of amusement in these little grotesque dreams and dramas.The fund of money was get-ting so low that Catherine was obliged to economize even in the necessities.If it had not been for her two cows,she would hardly have known how to find food for her little ones.But she had a wonderful way of mak-ing things with eggs and milk,and she kept her little table always inviting.The day before Thanksgiving she determined that they should all have a frolic.

"By Christmas,"she said to Kitty,"the snow may be so bad that I cannot get to town.We'll have our high old time now."There is no denying that Catherine used slang even in talking to the children.The little pony had been sold long ago,and going to town meant a walk of twelve miles.

But Catherine started out early in the morning,and was back by nightfall,not so very much the worse,and carrying in her arms bundles which might have fatigued a bronco.