"Are they the same ones that I'll see when--when--I'm away from here?"

"The very same, pet lamb."

"You and I will watch them and think of that, mother."

The neighbor woman turned on the lounge, and they fell into silence again. The little girl remained standing at a window, her face pressed close to the gla.s.s.

As she waited there, the whole east began gradually to spring into flame. The sky blazed as ruddily as if a great fire were just beyond the horizon and racing to leap it and sweep across upon the farm. A broad fan of light, roseate at its pivot and radiating in shafts of yellow and red, was rising and paling the stars with its shining edge. Wider and wider it grew, until from north to south, and almost as far up as the zenith, were thrust its shining sticks. Then out of the cold mist floating over the distant Sioux showed a copper segment of the moon, which rose into sight and careened slowly heavenward, lighting up the wide plains, glimmering on the placid water of the sloughs, and shining full into the face of the dreaming little girl.

ONLY the neighbor woman was at the farm-house next day to comfort the little girl and help her through the sad hours. There was no sign of the pig-wagon all morning, and as the afternoon pa.s.sed slowly away the little girl ceased to strain her eyes along the road leading to the school-house, and never left her mother's side. It was the neighbor woman who, not daring to leave the room even to do the ch.o.r.es about the barn and coops, looked south every few moments with the hope that the biggest brother would return before it was too late.

As the day drew toward its close the sun, which had been lurking sulkily behind the clouds, came out brightly and shone into the sitting-room, where its beams lay across the foot of the canopied bed like a warm coverlet. The room was robbed of its gloom, and the little girl's mother opened her eyes and looked about her, long and thoughtfully, as one gazes upon a loved scene that is drifting from sight.

The walls were hung with spatter-work that the biggest brother had done, and with photographs and magazine pictures in splint frames. Over the front door was tacked the first yarn motto that the little girl had ever worked. It was faded, but her mother, though her eyes were dimming, could read the uneven line: "G.o.d Bless Our Home." The new cane-seated chairs were set about against the walls, and a bright blue cover hid the round, oak center-table. The eldest brother's violin lay in its case on the organ that had come into the house the month before when the wheat was sold. Up on the clock-shelf was a Dresden shepherd in stately pose before his dainty shepherdess. The curtains on the windows hung white and soft to the carpet.

Presently the mother asked to be raised on her pillow, and the neighbor woman and the little girl turned the bed so that she could look out of the windows at the setting sun.

The western heavens rioted in a fuller beauty that afternoon than had the eastern half at moon-rise the night before. As the sun sank behind the clouds piled high upon the horizon, it colored them in gorgeous array and threw them out in wonderful shapes and sharp relief against a clearing sky. Castles towered on one side, vast turrets standing forth above their walls; on the other, banks of tinted vapor formed a huge cloud-seat.

The little girl, calm, though her heart was torn with pain, looked out with her mother upon the dying glories. She had often before in her life seen that changing panorama which, thrown up one moment, melted into nothingness the next. At night she had learned to kneel with her face that way,--to the great billows that always seemed to her a seat in the sky, that were always something more than mere vapor. She could pray better when, long after sundown, they hung above the horizon, robbed of their colors but still glorious. And there had grown up in her mind the comforting thought that on those very billows was G.o.d's throne, and from them, at sunset, He looked down upon that part of the earth that was sinking into the night, and blessed it and told it farewell. She even thought she could see His face in the heavens sometimes,--His flowing white robes, and the amethyst stool upon which He rested his feet.

As the sun dropped behind the prairie, the cloud-throne loomed forth against the blue more vividly than ever. The little girl kept her eyes dumbly upon it, watching the crimson and gold slowly fade to royal purple where the King sat.

"Remember what I said, pet lamb," her mother whispered. She could not see, yet she was still holding the little girl's hands firmly. "Remember what I told you to do."

The little girl could not answer; she could only bow her head in reply.

Tearless, she waited beside the bed, where, for the second time, Life was striving with Death,--and was to lose. There was no sound in the room until there came a last whisper, "Pray."

The little girl slipped down from the edge of the bed to the carpet and knelt toward the west. A collie trotted up to her and licked her cheek.

She put him gently aside. She was trying to think of something to say in behalf of her mother to Him who, even now, was taking His farewell look.

At last a thought came to her, and her lips moved to speak aloud the only pet.i.tion she could think of:

"O G.o.d," she pleaded, raising her eyes to where the seat, marvelous in purple and burning gold, loomed high over the prairie against the sky, "please be good to my mother."

And as she knelt there, strong in her faith and brave in her grief, a messenger came down from the western cloud-throne--a messenger of peace from the G.o.d of the little girl.

XVIII

THE LITTLE TEACHER

WITH one of the biggest brother's checked jumpers pinned across her breast, and with suds spattered up her bare arms to her shoulders, the little girl was valiantly attacking the weekly wash. A clothes-basket at her feet was piled with white garments awaiting the bluing. The tub was full of colored things that were receiving a second rub. Out of doors, on a line stretched between the corner of the kitchen and the high seat of the big farm wagon, flapped the drying sheets and pillow-cases.

Breakfast was cleared away, the beds were made, the sitting-room was tidied, and it was not eight o'clock, yet she was nearly done. And while she worked steadily to finish, the boiler on the stove behind her kept time with its clanking cover to the grating tune of her washboard.

The little girl no longer had to make use of a three-legged milking-stool in order to reach the tub. Instead, she stood square on the floor. For she was tall for her scant fifteen years, having grown so rapidly in the last twelve months that she now came up to the youngest brother's chin, and required fully ten yards of cloth for a dress. But she still wore her hair down her back, and, as she bobbed over the clothes to give them their added drubbing, shiny strands shook themselves loose from their curly, captive neighbors and waved damply against her flushing cheeks, till she looked like a gay yellow dandelion a-sway in a gusty wind.

When the last red shirt was wrung from the water, she began to dip bucketfuls and empty them on the sloping ground at the farther side of the storm-cellar, singing blithely as she hurried back and forth. She was so intent on her carrying that she did not see a horseman who was turning in at the ash lane, his face eagerly lifted to the windows of the farm-house. Even when, having tied his mount at the block in front, he rapped on the sitting-room door, she did not hear him. Finally, when, receiving no answer, he walked around the corner to the entry, she stepped out with her last pail and came face to face with him.

Joy leaped into his eyes as he dropped his whip and lifted his hat; something more than surprise lighted hers as she let her suds fall and spill over the stone step. Then, stammering a welcome, she surrendered her hands to the glad grasp of the colonel's son.

"My! it's good to see you!" he cried, looking at her with the old frankness. He stepped back a little to measure her from top to toe. "And _haven't_ you shot up!"

"Like a ragweed," she laughed, taking him into the kitchen, where she brought him a chair from the sitting-room.

"You're a full-fledged housekeeper, too," he declared. "How do you like the change from herding?"

"Oh, I haven't herded much for a long while," she replied proudly, as she refilled her tub from a barrel in the corner that had been drawn by the biggest brother; "I helped mother in the house all last summer." She grew sober suddenly, and the colonel's son hastened to change the subject.

"You're looking awfully well," he a.s.sured her.

"I've worn off some of my tan," she explained.

"Well, that's partly it," he said, and his glance was boyishly eloquent.

She fell to rubbing again, and he watched her admiringly, noticing how trim was her black dress, and how spotless were the lace at her throat and the ribbon that bound back her hair.

"I don't believe you can guess where I'm started for," he said, after a moment of silence.

She straightened up to rest her back and looked out through an open window. "I thought you were just coming here."

"No." He watched her for a sign of pleased astonishment when he continued, "I'm on my way to St. Paul."

She turned swiftly, her eyes open wide. "College?" she questioned in a low, strained voice.

"Nearly that; I shall prepare for West Point. The bishop has chosen a school for me."

Her eyes went back to the window, but a mist was over them now, and she could not see the square of cottonwoods and barley framed by the sash.

"I left the Wyoming post a week ago," he went on. "Father's orderly brought my trunk to Chamberlain, and I rode down from there to the reservation--and then came here. I shall take the train at the station.

It's changed to morning time, I believe, and goes by about 10:30."

She seemed not to hear him. Her face was still turned away, and she was murmuring to herself. "The bishop!" she repeated; "the bishop!" All at once she ran out of the room. When she returned, she held a tin spice-box in her hand. She took a letter from it and held it toward the colonel's son. "Read this," she said. "It's from the bishop to mother."

He spread out the written sheet, which was dated two years back, and read it aloud.

"'Whenever that spirited little maid of yours is ready to take up the studies she cannot enjoy where you are, send her to me. I will get her ready for the college she dreams about, and, if G.o.d takes you from her soon, as you fear, and as I pray not (though His will be done!), I will watch over her like a father.'"

When he finished, he looked up at her, his face fairly sparkling. "Of course you'll go," he said.

"No," she answered sadly, shaking her head; "I can't go. I haven't any money. The boys have just bought some land that joins ours. If I left, they'd have to pay my expenses and then hire some one to take my place.

So they wouldn't be able to pay for the land. I shall have to wait till I can earn something myself."

"It's a shame!" declared the colonel's son. "Because if you work here, how can you earn anything?"