Part 3

“Neither is it seemly or just to keep members of the family in ignorance of family affairs when all the rest of the neighborhood knows all about ’em! We ought to know all, grandma darling. The reason children are so often unreasonable is that they don’t understand.”

“‘I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread,’” said the grandfather, his head still bowed low upon his staff and his white locks falling over his stooping shoulders. “Let us not repine, mother.”

“I am not repining, father, but I do feel so—so disappointed with the outcome of all our hard struggles that I can’t always be cheerful.”

“We’d just begun to get our heads above water when it happened, Jean,” said the old man. “We’d been making a new farm. You see, we’d manumitted our slaves before we left Kaintuck, and we had to begin with our bare hands in this new country and work our way from the ground up. We’d only got a part o’ the children raised when the older ones began to get it in their heads to get married. But our second son took to book-learning, and we sent him off to Tennessee to finish his schooling. That cost a pile o’ money. Then we had to set out the married ones. We’d got things going in tol’ble shape and was beginning to get on our feet again, when Joseph—”

“Do stop, husband. Don’t tell any more; please don’t,” cried the grandmother, nervously stroking the bright young head that nestled in her lap. “I cannot bear to hear it, though I thought I could.”

“Let him go on, grandmother dear! I don’t want to be driven to the schoolmaster for the information that I am bound to get someway. When I have grandchildren of my own, I’ll tell ’em everything they ought to know about the family, and then they won’t be teased by the school-children, as we are.”

“We had to mortgage the farm,” continued the grandfather; “and then there came a financial panic. The wild-cat banks of the country all went to pieces, and the bottom kind o’ fell out o’ things.”

“But why did you borrow money, grandpa? Why was it necessary to mortgage the farms?”

“We did it because we had to stand by Joe in his trouble.”

“What did you hear at school, darling?” asked the grandmother.

“Oh, nothing much. But one day Jim Danover got mad at me because I went head in the class; and he said I needn’t be puttin’ on airs, for everybody knew that my uncle had been hung.”

“Good Lord! has it come to that?” cried the great-grandmother, dropping her knitting to the floor and clasping her withered hands over her knees. “I’ve always told you that you’d better tell the older children about it yourself, John.”

“No, Jean; your uncle wasn’t hung,” said the old man; “but he got into trouble, and we all believe he is dead. He was the pride and joy of us all. He was so promising that we gave him all the education that ought to have been distributed evenly through the family.”

“But John and Mollie took a notion to get married young, and you know that ended their chances,” interposed the mother.

“Your uncle’s trouble would never have come upon him and us if he had stayed out o’ that college,” exclaimed the great-grandmother, who did not approve of the course the family had taken with Joseph at the beginning of his college days.

“That’s true, grannie,” replied the father; “but he ought to have kept out o’ the scrape, college or no college.”

“Do go on,” cried Jean.

“Your Uncle Joe got mixed up in a hazing frolic, or something o’ that sort,” resumed the grandfather. “One or two of the students got hurt, one of ’em so bad that he died,—or it was given out that he died,—and the blame fell on Joe. He declared he wasn’t guilty, but the college authorities had to fix the blame somewhere, though the case was uncertain. They never proved that the boy was dead, but we raised the money and bailed Joe out o’ jail. When the story was started that the fellow had died, Joe skipped his bail and left us all in a hole. That was what made and has kept us poor.”

“Did you never hear of the other man, grandpa?”

“Oh, yes; he turned up, but too late to do Joe or the rest of us any good.”

“Poor dear Uncle Joe!”

“You’d better say poor dear all the rest of us,” cried the great-grandmother, who had staked and lost her little all in the great calamity.

“But Uncle Joe was sinned against, grannie dear. How he must have suffered!”

“Them that’s sinned against are often greater sufferers than them that sins,” was the sad reply.

“When the bail was jumped, the hard times set in with all of us,” resumed the grandfather. “The banks, as I was saying, went broke, the interest on the mortgages piled up, and the notes fell due. The crops got the rust and the weevil, and everything else went wrong. You see, Jean, when a man starts down hill, everybody tries to give him a kick. The long and the short of it is that mother, here, and grannie and I have been the same as paupers for more than a dozen years.”

“I must be going, though you must first tell me how you two and dear old grannie are going to live when we are away in Oregon. Your way seems very uncertain,” said Jean.

“Your father has made some kind of a bargain for our support with your Uncle Lije. But he’s sort o’ visionary, and he never has much luck. If he loses the property, we can go to the poorhouse.”

“Are you to be allowed no stated sum to live on? Will you have no means of your own to gratify your individual wishes or tastes?”

“No, child; not a picayune.”

“What’s a picayune?”

“A six-and-a-quarter-cent piece.”

“I’m just as wise as I was before.”

“They’re wellnigh out o’ circulation nowadays, though I used to come across ’em frequently when I was sheriff,” said the old man.

Jean covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.

“Don’t worry about us, dearie,” said the old man. “There is One above us who heareth even the young ravens when they cry. There is not a sparrow that falleth to the ground without His knowledge. Your Uncle Lije will move into the old homestead when you are all gone. Your father built this cottage for us when he assumed the mortgage, as you know. We won’t be entirely alone, but we’ll miss you all; and we’ll try to remember that we are of more value than many sparrows.”

“I’ve heard such talk as that all my life, grandpa. But I can’t help thinking that it would have been better to keep the ravens from having anything to cry about in the first place, and to save the sparrows from falling.”

“If none o’ God’s creatures ever had any hard experiences, they’d never know enough to enjoy their blessings, Jean. A child has to stumble and hurt itself many times before it learns to walk steady. We’ve all got to be purified and saved, as by fire, before we are fit to stand in the presence of the awful God.”

“The God I love and worship isn’t an awful God,” cried Jean. “I couldn’t love Him if He were awful. My earthly daddie whipped me once. No doubt I deserved the punishment, but I couldn’t love him for a whole month afterwards. And I’d have hated him for the rest of my life if I hadn’t deserved the whipping.”

“Didn’t it do you any good?”

Jean confronted her grandfather, her eyes flashing. “No, sir!” she cried. “I ought not to have been whipped, and I wasn’t a bit repentant after the punishment. I was sorry beforehand, though, and said so.”

“What was your offence, Jean?”

“I dropped a pan full of dishes and broke more than half o’ the lot. They fell to the floor with a crash, and scared me half to death.”

“Didn’t the whipping make you more careful afterwards?”.

“Not at all; it only made me mad and afraid and nervous, so I broke more dishes. But the next time it happened, I hid the broken pieces in the ash hopper, and when they were found, I saved myself a whipping by telling my first lie.”

“The Lord chasteneth whom He loveth, my child.”

“I once saw a mill-hand strike his wife,” retorted Jean, “and he said, as she rubbed her bruises, ‘I love you, Mollie. Take another kick!’ But I must go now. Be of good cheer. And remember, when I get to Oregon and get to making money, you shall have every cent that I can spare.”

V

_SALLY O’DOWD_

Great excitement prevailed in the rural neighborhood when it became generally known that John Ranger, Junior, had sold the farm and was preparing to dispose of his sawmill and all his personal belongings, with the intention of departing to the new and far-away West in an ox-wagon train with his family,—an undertaking that seemed to his friends as foolhardy as would have been an attempt to reach the North Pole with his wife and children in a balloon.

Of more than ordinary ability, enterprise, and daring, John Ranger had long been a man of note in his bailiwick. Twice he had represented his county in the State Legislative Assembly; but when the Old Line Whigs of his district offered to nominate him for Congress,—“No, gentlemen!” he exclaimed. “I started out early in life to assist my good wife in rearing and educating a big family of young Americans. I frankly admit that we’ve got a bigger job on hand than either of us imagined it would be when we made the bargain; but that doesn’t lessen our mutual responsibility. There is always a regiment, more or less, of unencumbered men in waiting in every locality, ready and willing to wear the toga of office; so, with thanks for the proffered honor, I must beg to be excused.”

But there was one office, that of justice of the peace, which he never refused, and to which he had been so often re-elected that the appellation of “Squire” had grown to belong to him as a matter of course. One room of the great barnlike farmhouse had long been set apart as his office; and many were the litigants who remained after office hours to be entertained at his hospitable board.

“It’s a lot of trouble, having so much extra company on account of your office being in the house,” his wife said at times; “but it’s better than having you away two-thirds of your time down town, so it is all right.”

“There’s a woman going round the corner to the office,” exclaimed Mary, one evening, just as her father had settled himself before the fire to enjoy a frolic with the little ones.

“It’s that grass widow, Sally O’Dowd,” said Mrs. Ranger.

“She’s booked for a solid hour,” snapped Marjorie, “and we’ll have to delay supper till nine o’clock.”

The Squire had barely time to reach his office by an inner passage and seat himself before the fire, when Mrs. O’Dowd—an oversized, plainly dressed, intelligent-looking woman, who was remarkably handsome, notwithstanding the expression of pain upon her face—entered the office and stood silent before the open fire.

“Well,” exclaimed the Squire, impatiently, motioning her to a chair, “what can I do for you now?”

“Oh, Squire!” she cried, ignoring the proffered chair and dropping on her knees at his feet, her wealth of rippling hair falling about her face and over her shapely shoulders like a deluge of gold, “I want you to take me with you to Oregon.”

“What! And leave your children to the care of others? I didn’t think that of you, Mrs. O’Dowd.”

“But what else can I do? You know the court has assigned the custody of all three of my babies to Sam.”

“Yes, Sally; but you can see them once in a while if you stay here.”

“The court gave them to Samuel and his mother absolutely, you know.”

“Yes, yes, child; and while in one way it is hard, if you look at it in a practical light, you will see that it was best for the children. You couldn’t keep them with you and go out as hired help in anybody’s kitchen; and you have no other means of support any more.”

“If I stay here, I cannot have even the poor privilege of caring for them, except when they’re sick. I must get entirely away from their vicinity, or lose my senses altogether.”

“I thought that was what was the matter when you married the fellow, Sally. You certainly had lost your senses then.”

“But love is blind, Squire—till it gets its eyes open; and then it is generally too late to see to any advantage. Little did my dear father think, when he made a will leaving his homestead, his bank account, and all his belongings to me, that he was reducing my dear mother and me to beggary.”

“But that wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t married that worthless fellow, Sally.”

“But the _if_ exists, Squire. I married the fellow. It was an awful blunder,—I’ll admit that. But it wasn’t a crime. It should have been no reason for robbing me. And yet this marriage was made the legal pretext for permitting the robbery. Oh, I was so glad when my dear mother died! I couldn’t have shed a tear at her grave if I’d been hung for my seeming heartlessness. Poor mother! I was made an unwilling party to a robbery that beggared her and myself. Then, when I could no longer endure the presence of the robber and his accomplice, and live, I was doubly, yes, trebly robbed, by being deprived of my children.”

The Squire cleared his throat and spoke huskily.

“That will was a sad mistake of your father’s, Sally. He should have left his property to your mother. It was wrong to put her means of livelihood in jeopardy by leaving all to you. He ought to have known you’d marry, and that the property would accrue to your husband.”

“But mother insisted that all should be left to me. She even waived her right of dower, in my interest—as she thought.”

“Well, Sally, you can’t say that I didn’t warn you.”

The woman laughed hysterically. “Much good that warning can do me now!” she cried, rising to her feet and unconsciously assuming a dramatic pose. “We hadn’t been married a week when he ordered my mother out of my house. And then he installed his own mother in my home, and expected me to be silent. Oh, I am so glad my dear mother is dead! I would rejoice if my poor, defrauded children were all dead also.”

The Squire cleared his throat again and leaned forward on his hands. “The law recognizes the husband and wife as one, and the husband as that one, Mrs. O’Dowd.”

“Yes, yes, I know that, to my bitter sorrow,” she said with a meaning smile, her white teeth shining through her parted lips and her eyes flashing. The woman sank upon the hearth, looking strangely white and calm.

John Ranger sighed helplessly. “I worked the underground railroad last night for all it was worth, in the interest of some runaway niggers,” he said under his breath; then audibly, “The laws of the land must be obeyed, my child.”

“The law is a fiend,” cried Jean, who had entered the room unobserved and had stood listening in the shadow of the chimney jamb. “I’ll never rest till this awful one-sided power is broken. You know yourself that it’s a monster, daddie. I know you know it, or you’d never help a run—”

He put his finger on his lips, and the girl changed the subject. The underground railroad was a forbidden topic in the Ranger household.

“Because Sally Danover knew no better than to become the wife of an unworthy man,—who knew what he was about, though she didn’t,—the law declares that all the benefits resulting from the fraudulent transaction must accrue to the villain in the case, and all the penalties must be borne by his victim. What would you do to such a fellow, daddie, if I should marry him?”

John Ranger did not answer, but gazed steadily into the fire, his brow contracted and his thoughts gloomy.

“Sally, cheer up!” cried Jean, shaking the woman by the shoulder. “Daddie’s a whole lot better man than he thinks he is. I’ve seen him tested. You’re as good as a nigger, if you _are_ white, and he’ll help you.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, my daughter. It’s a crime to break the law, and crime must be followed by fitting punishment.”

“If you get caught, you get punished,” cried Jean, laughing in her father’s face. “To break such a law would be an act of heroism for which I should be glad to be arrested and sent to jail! It would be an act of heroism beside which the defence of the Stars and Stripes would be cowardice!” she cried in a transport of fury.

“Come, Jean,” said her father, rising, “we must go to supper. Won’t you join us, Mrs. O’Dowd?”

“Food would choke me,” said the visitor, bowing herself out.

“Hang the luck!” said the Squire, as the door slammed behind her.

“What are you going to do to help the poor woman, John?” asked Mrs. Ranger, as the family sat at the belated meal.

“Ask Jean.”

“What do you know about the case, daughter?”

“She thinks she knows a lot,” interrupted her father. “She’d ’a’ made a plaguy good lawyer if she’d only been born a boy.”

“Who knew best what I ought to be,—you or God?” asked Jean, her eyes glowing like stars.

“I give it up,” replied her father, smiling.

“I was reading to-day,” said Mrs. Ranger, “of a man down East who lured his runaway wife back home by stealing the babies and then warning everybody through the papers, and by posters, not to trust or harbor her, under penalty of the law. The woman held out quite a spell, but cold and hunger got the better of her at last; and when the stolen children fell sick, she went back to her lawful protector and stayed till she died, as meek as any lamb.”

“Sally Danover won’t go back to Sam O’Dowd; she’ll die first,” cried Mary; “and I glory in her grit.”

“You haven’t answered my question, John,” said Mrs. Ranger. “What do you propose to do with Sally O’Dowd?”

“I s’pose I’ll have to take her to Oregon and let her take a new start. She says she must get away from here, or go insane.”

“I’d go crazy if I had to leave my children, John.”

“You can boast, Annie; you can afford to. But if you were in Sally’s shoes, you’d sing a different song.”

Mrs. Ranger shrugged her shoulders.

“I can’t see why women with good husbands and happy homes are so ready to censure less fortunate women for breaking bonds that are unbearable,” said her husband. “Women are women’s worst enemies.”

“Sam O’Dowd’s no woman,” exclaimed Jean. “There’s not a woman on top o’ dirt that’d treat any man as he’s treated Sally.”

“I guess it’s about an even stand-off,” rejoined her mother.

“No,” cried Jean. “The conditions are not equal. No woman has the power to turn her husband out of doors. Even if it is her own house, he is its lawful master. Women don’t stand any show at all compared with men.”

“Jean is going to-morrow to see Sam O’Dowd’s mother. She can make matters smooth for Sally if anybody can,” said the Squire.

* * * * *

“The sale of our effects is only two weeks off, John,” said his wife, when they were alone. “I want to reserve a few things that are sacred. There’s Baby Jamie’s cradle, that you made from the hollow section of that old gum-tree that stood in the back pasture. Do you remember how nicely I lined it with the back breadths of my wedding dress?”

“Could I forget it, Annie?”

“Then there’s my mother’s little old spinning-wheel. It was my grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s. May I keep it for Mary?”

“It won’t pay to haul such things over the plains, Annie. Better let your mother keep ’em here till there’s a transcontinental railroad.”

“But that won’t come in my time, John.”

VI

_THE BEGINNING OF A JOURNEY_

The sale of Squire Ranger’s effects proceeded without unnecessary delay. The sawmill, the first portable structure of its kind ever seen west of the Wabash River, was eagerly purchased on credit by a waiting customer, and work at the mill went on without interruption. What a primitive affair it was! And how like a pygmy it seems as the resident on the North Pacific’s border recalls its littleness, and contrasts it with the mammoth mills of Oregon, the lower Columbia, and Puget Sound, which grasp in their giant arms the dead leviathans of the primeval forest, and set their teeth to work tearing to pieces the patient upbuilding of the ages gone!

The motive power of John Ranger’s sawmill consisted of about a dozen superannuated horses, some spavined, some ringboned, some wind-broken, all more or less disabled in some way; these were regularly harnessed, each in his turn, to a set of horizontal radiating shafts attached to a rotating centre, above which, on a little platform, stood the driver, with a whip.

“I know it’s wicked to kill the trees and cut them up into boards; it’s just as wicked as it is to kill pigs and cattle,” was Mary Ranger’s comment when she first beheld the frantic work of the raging saw, which, screaming like a demon, ate its way through hearts of oak and hickory, or tore the slabs from the sides of the black-walnut and sugar-maple patriarchs with ever unsated ferocity.

But this sawmill had long been a boon to the entire country, as was evidenced by the multiplication, since its advent, of framed houses, barns, bridges, schoolhouses, and churches, which suddenly sprang into vogue, not to mention the many miles of planked highways that rushed into fashion before the railroad era in the days when “good roads conventions” were unheard of.

Children born and reared in cities—subject, if of the tenant class, to frequent changes of habitation, or, if their homes are permanent, to frequent intervals of travel—can have little idea of the love which children of the country cherish for the farms and homes to which they are born, and in which their brief lives are spent. The very soil on which they have trodden is dear to them, and seems instinct with sentience. They make a boon companion of everything with which they come in contact, whether pertaining to the earth, the water, or the air. Their little gardens are familiar friends; the flowers of the wildwood are loving entities; the brook that sings in summer through the tangled grass and sleeps in winter under a bed of ice is always a communing spirit. The sighing winds chant rhythmic lullabies in the treetops, and the language of every insect, bird, and beast has, to them, a distinctive meaning. The blue heavens are their delight, and the passing clouds their friends. The sun, the moon, and the stars hold converse with them, and the changing seasons bring to them, each in its turn, peculiar joy.