One of Ours
Book I: On Lovely Creek
Chapter XVII
It had been Mr. Wheeler's intention to stay at home until spring, but Ralph
wrote that he was having trouble with his foreman, so his father went out to the
ranch in February. A few days after his departure there was a storm which gave
people something to talk about for a year to come.
The snow began to fall about noon on St. Valentine's day, a soft, thick, wet
snow that came down in billows and stuck to everything. Later in the afternoon
the wind rose, and wherever there was a shed, a tree, a hedge, or even a clump
of tall weeds, drifts began to pile up. Mrs. Wheeler, looking anxiously out from
the sitting-room windows, could see nothing but driving waves of soft white,
which cut the tall house off from the rest of the world.
Claude and Dan, down in the corral, where they were provisioning the cattle
against bad weather, found the air so thick that they could scarcely breathe;
their ears and mouths and nostrils were full of snow, their faces plastered with
it. It melted constantly upon their clothing, and yet they were white from their
boots to their caps as they worked,- there was no shaking it off. The air was
not cold, only a little below freezing. When they came in for supper, the drifts
had piled against the house until they covered the lower sashes of the kitchen
windows, and as they opened the door, a frail wall of snow fell in behind them.
Mahailey came running with her broom and pail to sweep it up.
"Ain't it a turrible storm, Mr. Claude? I reckon poor Mr. Ernest won't git
over tonight, will he? You never mind, honey; I'll wipe up that water. Run along
and git dry clothes on you, an' take a bath, or you'll ketch cold. Th' ole
tank's full of hot water for you." Exceptional weather of any kind always
delighted Mahailey.
Mrs. Wheeler met Claude at the head of the stairs. "There's no danger of the
steers getting snowed under along the creek, is there?" she asked anxiously.
"No, I thought of that. We've driven them all into the little corral on the
level, and shut the gates. It's over my head down in the creek bottom now. I
haven't a dry stitch on me. I guess I'll follow Mahailey's advice and get in the
tub, if you can wait supper for me."
"Put your clothes outside the bathroom door, and I'll see to drying them for
you."
"Yes, please. I'll need them tomorrow. I don't want to spoil my new
corduroys. And, Mother, see if you can make Dan change. He's too wet and steamy
to sit at the table with. Tell him if anybody has to go out after supper, I'll
go."
Mrs. Wheeler hurried down stairs. Dan, she knew, would rather sit all evening
in wet clothes than take the trouble to put on dry ones. He tried to sneak past
her to his own quarters behind the wash-room, and looked aggrieved when he heard
her message.
"I ain't got no other outside clothes, except my Sunday ones," he objected.
"Well, Claude says he'll go out if anybody has to. I guess you'll have to
change for once, Dan, or go to bed without your supper." She laughed quietly at
his dejected expression as he slunk away.
"Mrs. Wheeler," Mahailey whispered, "can't I run down to the cellar an' git
some of them nice strawberry preserves? Mr. Claude, he loves 'em on his hot
biscuit. He don't eat the honey no more; he's got tired of it."
"Very well. I'll make the coffee good and strong; that will please him more
than anything."
Claude came down feeling clean and warm and hungry. As he opened the stair
door he sniffed the coffee and frying ham, and when Mahailey bent over the oven
the warm smell of browning biscuit rushed out with the heat. These combined
odours somewhat dispersed Dan's gloom when he came back in squeaky Sunday shoes
and a bunglesome cut-away coat. The latter was not required of him, but he wore
it for revenge.
During supper Mrs. Wheeler told them once again how, long ago when she was
first married, there were no roads or fences west of Frankfort. One winter night
she sat on the roof of their first dugout nearly all night, holding up a lantern
tied to a pole to guide Mr. Wheeler home through a snowstorm like this.
Mahailey, moving about the stove, watched over the group at the table. She
liked to see the men fill themselves with food-though she did not count Dan a
man, by any means, and she looked out to see that Mrs. Wheeler did not forget to
eat altogether, as she was apt to do when she fell to remembering things that
had happened long ago. Mahailey was in a happy frame of mind because her weather
predictions had come true; only yesterday she had told Mrs. Wheeler there would
be snow, because she had seen snowbirds. She regarded supper as more than
usually important when Claude put on his "velvet close," as she called his brown
corduroys.
After supper Claude lay on the couch in the sitting room, while his mother
read aloud to him from "Bleak House,"—one of the few novels she loved. Poor Jo
was drawing toward his end when Claude suddenly sat up. "Mother, I believe I'm
too sleepy. I'll have to turn in. Do you suppose it's still snowing?"
He rose and went to look out, but the west windows were so plastered with
snow that they were opaque. Even from the one on the south he could see nothing
for a moment; then Mahailey must have carried her lamp to the kitchen window
beneath, for all at once a broad yellow beam shone out into the choked air, and
down it millions of snowflakes hurried like armies, an unceasing progression,
moving as close as they could without forming a solid mass. Claude struck the
frozen window-frame with his fist, lifted the lower sash, and thrusting out his
head tried to look abroad into the engulfed night. There was a solemnity about a
storm of such magnitude; it gave one a feeling of infinity. The myriads of white
particles that crossed the rays of lamplight seemed to have a quiet purpose, to
be hurrying toward a definite end. A faint purity, like a fragrance almost too
fine for human senses, exhaled from them as they clustered about his head and
shoulders. His mother, looking under his lifted arm, strained her eyes to see
out into that swarming movement, and murmured softly in her quavering voice:
"Ever thicker, thicker, thicker, Froze the ice on lake and river; Ever
deeper, deeper, deeper, Fell the snow o'er all the landscape."