On the Divide ToC
Near Rattlesnake Creek, on the side of a little draw
stood Canute’s shanty. North, east, south, stretched the
level Nebraska plain of long rust-red grass that undulated
constantly in the wind. To the west the ground was broken
and rough, and a narrow strip of timber wound along the
turbid, muddy little stream that had scarcely ambition enough
to crawl over its black bottom. If it had not been for the few
stunted cottonwoods and elms that grew along its banks,
Canute would have shot himself years ago. The Norwegians
are a timber-loving people, and if there is even a turtle pond
with a few plum bushes around it they seem irresistibly drawn
toward it.
As to the shanty itself, Canute had built it without aid of
any kind, for when he first squatted along the banks of Rattlesnake
Creek there was not a human being within twenty
miles. It was built of logs split in halves, the chinks stopped
with mud and plaster. The roof was covered with earth and
was supported by one gigantic beam curved in the shape of a
round arch. It was almost impossible that any tree had ever
grown in that shape. The Norwegians used to say that Canute
had taken the log across his knee and bent it into the shape
he wished. There were two rooms, or rather there was one
room with a partition made of ash saplings interwoven and
bound together like big straw basket work. In one corner
there was a cook stove, rusted and broken. In the other a bed
made of unplaned planks and poles. It was fully eight feet
long, and upon it was a heap of dark bed clothing. There was
a chair and a bench of colossal proportions. There was an
ordinary kitchen cupboard with a few cracked dirty dishes in
it, and beside it on a tall box a tin wash-basin. Under the bed
was a pile of pint flasks, some broken, some whole, all empty.
On the wood box lay a pair of shoes of almost incredible
dimensions. On the wall hung a saddle, a gun, and some
ragged clothing, conspicuous among which was a suit of dark
cloth, apparently new, with a paper collar carefully wrapped
in a red silk handkerchief and pinned to the sleeve. Over the
door hung a wolf and a badger skin, and on the door itself a
brace of thirty or forty snake skins whose noisy tails rattled
ominously every time it opened. The strangest things in the
shanty were the wide window-sills. At first glance they looked
as though they had been ruthlessly hacked and mutilated with
a hatchet, but on closer inspection all the notches and holes
in the wood took form and shape. There seemed to be a series
of pictures. They were, in a rough way, artistic, but the
figures were heavy and labored, as though they had been cut
very slowly and with very awkward instruments. There were
men plowing with little horned imps sitting on their shoulders
and on their horses’ heads. There were men praying with
a skull hanging over their heads and little demons behind
them mocking their attitudes. There were men fighting with
big serpents, and skeletons dancing together. All about these
pictures were blooming vines and foliage such as never grew
in this world, and coiled among the branches of the vines
there was always the scaly body of a serpent, and behind every
flower there was a serpent’s head. It was a veritable Dance of
Death by one who had felt its sting. In the wood box lay
some boards, and every inch of them was cut up in the same
manner. Sometimes the work was very rude and careless, and
looked as though the hand of the workman had trembled. It
would sometimes have been hard to distinguish the men from
their evil geniuses but for one fact, the men were always grave
and were either toiling or praying, while the devils were always
smiling and dancing. Several of these boards had been
split for kindling and it was evident that the artist did not
value his work highly.
It was the first day of winter on the Divide. Canute stumbled
into his shanty carrying a basket of cobs, and after filling
the stove, sat down on a stool and crouched his seven foot
frame over the fire, staring drearily out of the window at the
wide gray sky. He knew by heart every individual clump of
bunch grass in the miles of red shaggy prairie that stretched
before his cabin. He knew it in all the deceitful loveliness of
its early summer, in all the bitter barrenness of its autumn.
He had seen it smitten by all the plagues of Egypt. He had
seen it parched by drought, and sogged by rain, beaten by
hail, and swept by fire, and in the grasshopper years he had
seen it eaten as bare and clean as bones that the vultures have
left. After the great fires he had seen it stretch for miles and
miles, black and smoking as the floor of hell.
He rose slowly and crossed the room, dragging his big feet
heavily as though they were burdens to him. He looked out
of the window into the hog corral and saw the pigs burying
themselves in the straw before the shed. The leaden gray
clouds were beginning to spill themselves, and the snowflakes
were settling down over the white leprous patches of
frozen earth where the hogs had gnawed even the sod away.
He shuddered and began to walk, tramping heavily with his
ungainly feet. He was the wreck of ten winters on the Divide
and he knew what they meant. Men fear the winters of the
Divide as a child fears night or as men in the North Seas fear
the still dark cold of the polar twilight.
His eyes fell upon his gun, and he took it down from the
wall and looked it over. He sat down on the edge of his bed
and held the barrel towards his face, letting his forehead rest
upon it, and laid his finger on the trigger. He was perfectly
calm, there was neither passion nor despair in his face, but
the thoughtful look of a man who is considering. Presently
he laid down the gun, and reaching into the cupboard, drew
out a pint bottle of raw white alcohol. Lifting it to his lips,
he drank greedily. He washed his face in the tin basin and
combed his rough hair and shaggy blond beard. Then he
stood in uncertainty before the suit of dark clothes that hung
on the wall. For the fiftieth time he took them in his hands
and tried to summon courage to put them on. He took the
paper collar that was pinned to the sleeve of the coat and
cautiously slipped it under his rough beard, looking with
timid expectancy into the cracked, splashed glass that hung
over the bench. With a short laugh he threw it down on the
bed, and pulling on his old black hat, he went out, striking
off across the level.
It was a physical necessity for him to get away from his
cabin once in a while. He had been there for ten years, digging
and plowing and sowing, and reaping what little the hail
and the hot winds and the frosts left him to reap. Insanity
and suicide are very common things on the Divide. They
come on like an epidemic in the hot wind season. Those
scorching dusty winds that blow up over the bluffs from
Kansas seem to dry up the blood in men’s veins as they do
the sap in the corn leaves. Whenever the yellow scorch
creeps down over the tender inside leaves about the ear, then
the coroners prepare for active duty; for the oil of the country
is burned out and it does not take long for the flame to
eat up the wick. It causes no great sensation there when a
Dane is found swinging to his own windmill tower, and
most of the Poles after they have become too careless and
discouraged to shave themselves keep their razors to cut
their throats with.
It may be that the next generation on the Divide will be
very happy, but the present one came too late in life. It is
useless for men that have cut hemlocks among the mountains
of Sweden for forty years to try to be happy in a country
as flat and gray and as naked as the sea. It is not easy for
men that have spent their youths fishing in the Northern
seas to be content with following a plow, and men that have
served in the Austrian army hate hard work and coarse
clothing and the loneliness of the plains, and long for
marches and excitement and tavern company and pretty barmaids.
After a man has passed his fortieth birthday it is not
easy for him to change the habits and conditions of his life.
Most men bring with them to the Divide only the dregs of
the lives that they have squandered in other lands and
among other peoples.
Canute Canuteson was as mad as any of them, but his
madness did not take the form of suicide or religion but of
alcohol. He had always taken liquor when he wanted it, as all
Norwegians do, but after his first year of solitary life he settled
down to it steadily. He exhausted whisky after a while,
and went to alcohol, because its effects were speedier and
surer. He was a big man with a terrible amount of resistant
force, and it took a great deal of alcohol even to move him.
After nine years of drinking, the quantities he could take
would seem fabulous to an ordinary drinking man. He never
let it interfere with his work, he generally drank at night and
on Sundays. Every night, as soon as his chores were done, he
began to drink. While he was able to sit up he would play on
his mouth harp or hack away at his window sills with his jack
knife. When the liquor went to his head he would lie down
on his bed and stare out of the window until he went to
sleep. He drank alone and in solitude not for pleasure or
good cheer, but to forget the awful loneliness and level of the
Divide. Milton made a sad blunder when he put mountains
in hell. Mountains postulate faith and aspiration. All mountain
peoples are religious. It was the cities of the plains that,
because of their utter lack of spirituality and the mad caprice
of their vice, were cursed of God.
Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man.
Drunkenness is merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk
becomes maudlin; a bloody man, vicious; a coarse man,
vulgar. Canute was none of these, but he was morose and
gloomy, and liquor took him through all the hells of Dante.
As he lay on his giant’s bed all the horrors of this world and
every other were laid bare to his chilled senses. He was a man
who knew no joy, a man who toiled in silence and bitterness.
The skull and the serpent were always before him, the symbols
of eternal futileness and of eternal hate.
One spring there moved to the next “eighty” a family that
made a great change in Canute’s life. Ole Yensen was too
drunk most of the time to be afraid of any one, and his wife
Mary was too garrulous to be afraid of any one who listened
to her talk, and Lena, their pretty daughter, was not afraid of
man nor devil. So it came about that Canute went over to
take his alcohol with Ole oftener than he took it alone. After
a while the report spread that he was going to marry Yensen’s
daughter, and the Norwegian girls began to tease Lena about
the great bear she was going to keep house for. No one could
quite see how the affair had come about, for Canute’s tactics
of courtship were somewhat peculiar. He apparently never
spoke to her at all: he would sit for hours with Mary chattering
on one side of him and Ole drinking on the other and
watch Lena at her work. She teased him, and threw flour in
his face and put vinegar in his coffee, but he took her rough
jokes with silent wonder, never even smiling. He took her to
church occasionally, but the most watchful and curious people
never saw him speak to her. He would sit staring at her
while she giggled and flirted with the other men.
Next spring Mary Lee went to town to work in a steam
laundry. She came home every Sunday, and always ran across
to Yensens to startle Lena with stories of ten cent theaters,
firemen’s dances, and all the other esthetic delights of metropolitan
life. In a few weeks Lena’s head was completely
turned, and she gave her father no rest until he let her go to
town to seek her fortune at the ironing board. From the time
she came home on her first visit she began to treat Canute
with contempt. She had bought a plush cloak and kid gloves,
had her clothes made by the dress-maker, and assumed airs
and graces that made the other women of the neighborhood
cordially detest her. She generally brought with her a young
man from town who waxed his mustache and wore a red
necktie, and she did not even introduce him to Canute.
The neighbors teased Canute a good deal until he
knocked one of them down. He gave no sign of suffering
from her neglect except that he drank more and avoided the
other Norwegians more carefully than ever. He lay around
in his den and no one knew what he felt or thought, but
little Jim Peterson, who had seen him glowering at Lena in
church one Sunday when she was there with the town man,
said that he would not give an acre of his wheat for Lena’s
life or the town chap’s either; and Jim’s wheat was so wondrously
worthless that the statement was an exceedingly
strong one.
Canute had bought a new suit of clothes that looked as
nearly like the town man’s as possible. They had cost him half
a millet crop; for tailors are not accustomed to fitting giants
and they charge for it. He had hung those clothes in his
shanty two months ago and had never put them on, partly
from fear of ridicule, partly from discouragement, and partly
because there was something in his own soul that revolted at
the littleness of the device.
Lena was at home just at this time. Work was slack in the
laundry and Mary had not been well, so Lena stayed at home,
glad enough to get an opportunity to torment Canute once
more.
She was washing in the side kitchen, singing loudly as she
worked. Mary was on her knees, blacking the stove and scolding
violently about the young man who was coming out from
town that night. The young man had committed the fatal
error of laughing at Mary’s ceaseless babble and had never
been forgiven.
“He is no good, and you will come to a bad end by running
with him! I do not see why a daughter of mine should
act so. I do not see why the Lord should visit such a punishment
upon me as to give me such a daughter. There are
plenty of good men you can marry.”
She was washing in the side kitchen, singing loudly as she
worked. Mary was on her knees, blacking the stove and scolding
violently about the young man who was coming out from
town that night. The young man had committed the fatal
error of laughing at Mary’s ceaseless babble and had never
been forgiven.
“He is no good, and you will come to a bad end by running
with him! I do not see why a daughter of mine should
act so. I do not see why the Lord should visit such a punishment
upon me as to give me such a daughter. There are
plenty of good men you can marry.”
Lena tossed her head and answered curtly, “I don’t happen
to want to marry any man right away, and so long as Dick
dresses nice and has plenty of money to spend, there is no
harm in my going with him.”
“Money to spend? Yes, and that is all he does with it I’ll be
bound. You think it very fine now, but you will change your
tune when you have been married five years and see your children
running naked and your cupboard empty. Did Anne
Hermanson come to any good end by marrying a town man?”
“I don’t know anything about Anne Hermanson, but I
know any of the laundry girls would have Dick quick enough
if they could get him.”
“Yes, and a nice lot of store clothes huzzies you are too.
Now there is Canuteson who has an ‘eighty’ proved up and
fifty head of cattle and——”
“And hair that ain’t been cut since he was a baby, and a big
dirty beard, and he wears overalls on Sundays, and drinks like
a pig. Besides he will keep. I can have all the fun I want, and
when I am old and ugly like you he can have me and take care
of me. The Lord knows there ain’t nobody else going to
marry him.”
Canute drew his hand back from the latch as though it
were red hot. He was not the kind of a man to make a good
eavesdropper, and he wished he had knocked sooner. He
pulled himself together and struck the door like a battering
ram. Mary jumped and opened it with a screech.
“God! Canute, how you scared us! I thought it was crazy
Lou,—he has been tearing around the neighborhood trying
to convert folks. I am afraid as death of him. He ought to be
sent off, I think. He is just as liable as not to kill us all, or
burn the barn, or poison the dogs. He has been worrying
even the poor minister to death, and he laid up with the rheumatism,
too! Did you notice that he was too sick to preach
last Sunday? But don’t stand there in the cold,—come in.
Yensen isn’t here, but he just went over to Sorenson’s for the
mail; he won’t be gone long. Walk right in the other room
and sit down.”
Canute followed her, looking steadily in front of him and
not noticing Lena as he passed her. But Lena’s vanity would
not allow him to pass unmolested. She took the wet sheet
she was wringing out and cracked him across the face with it,
and ran giggling to the other side of the room. The blow
stung his cheeks and the soapy water flew in his eyes, and he
involuntarily began rubbing them with his hands. Lena giggled
with delight at his discomfiture, and the wrath in Canute’s
face grew blacker than ever. A big man humiliated is
vastly more undignified than a little one. He forgot the sting
of his face in the bitter consciousness that he had made a
fool of himself. He stumbled blindly into the living room,
knocking his head against the door jamb because he forgot
to stoop. He dropped into a chair behind the stove, thrusting
his big feet back helplessly on either side of him.
Ole was a long time in coming, and Canute sat there, still
and silent, with his hands clenched on his knees, and the skin
of his face seemed to have shriveled up into little wrinkles that
trembled when he lowered his brows. His life had been one
long lethargy of solitude and alcohol, but now he was awakening,
and it was as when the dumb stagnant heat of summer
breaks out into thunder.
She lifted a sheet to strike him, but he caught her arm
roughly and wrenched the sheet from her. He turned to the
wall and took down a hood and shawl that hung there, and
began wrapping her up. Lena scratched and fought like a wild
thing. Ole stood in the door, cursing, and Mary howled and
screeched at the top of her voice. As for Canute, he lifted the
girl in his arms and went out of the house. She kicked and
struggled, but the helpless wailing of Mary and Ole soon died
away in the distance, and her face was held down tightly on
Canute’s shoulder so that she could not see whither he was
taking her. She was conscious only of the north wind whistling
in her ears, and of rapid steady motion and of a great
breast that heaved beneath her in quick, irregular breaths. The
harder she struggled the tighter those iron arms that had held
the heels of horses crushed about her, until she felt as if they
would crush the breath from her, and lay still with fear.
Canute was striding across the level fields at a pace at which
man never went before, drawing the stinging north wind into
his lungs in great gulps. He walked with his eyes half closed
and looking straight in front of him, only lowering them
when he bent his head to blow away the snow flakes that
settled on her hair. So it was that Canute took her to his
home, even as his bearded barbarian ancestors took the fair
frivolous women of the South in their hairy arms and bore
them down to their war ships. For ever and anon the soul
becomes weary of the conventions that are not of it, and
with a single stroke shatters the civilized lies with which it is
unable to cope, and the strong arm reaches out and takes by
force what it cannot win by cunning.
_______________________________________________________________
Part I
Stories
Peter ToC
“No, Antone, I have told thee many times, no, thou shalt
not sell it until I am gone.”
“But I need money; what good is that old fiddle to thee?
The very crows laugh at thee when thou art trying to play.
Thy hand trembles so thou canst scarce hold the bow. Thou
shalt go with me to the Blue to cut wood to-morrow. See to
it thou art up early.”
“What, on the Sabbath, Antone, when it is so cold? I get
so very cold, my son, let us not go to-morrow.”
“Yes, to-morrow, thou lazy old man. Do not I cut wood
upon the Sabbath? Care I how cold it is? Wood thou shalt
cut, and haul it too, and as for the fiddle, I tell thee I will sell
it yet.” Antone pulled his ragged cap down over his low
heavy brow, and went out. The old man drew his stool up
nearer the fire, and sat stroking his violin with trembling fingers
and muttering, “Not while I live, not while I live.”
Five years ago they had come here, Peter Sadelack, and his
wife, and oldest son Antone, and countless smaller Sadelacks,
here to the dreariest part of south-western Nebraska, and had
taken up a homestead. Antone was the acknowledged master
of the premises, and people said he was a likely youth, and
would do well. That he was mean and untrustworthy every
one knew, but that made little difference. His corn was better
tended than any in the county, and his wheat always yielded
more than other men’s.
Of Peter no one knew much, nor had any one a good word
to say for him. He drank whenever he could get out of Antone’s
sight long enough to pawn his hat or coat for whiskey.
Indeed there were but two things he would not pawn, his
pipe and his violin. He was a lazy, absent minded old fellow,
who liked to fiddle better than to plow, though Antone surely
got work enough out of them all, for that matter. In the
house of which Antone was master there was no one, from
the little boy three years old, to the old man of sixty, who did
not earn his bread. Still people said that Peter was worthless,
and was a great drag on Antone, his son, who never drank,
and was a much better man than his father had ever been.
Peter did not care what people said. He did not like the country,
nor the people, least of all he liked the plowing. He was
very homesick for Bohemia. Long ago, only eight years ago
by the calendar, but it seemed eight centuries to Peter, he had
been a second violinist in the great theatre at Prague. He had
gone into the theatre very young, and had been there all his
life, until he had a stroke of paralysis, which made his arm so
weak that his bowing was uncertain. Then they told him he
could go. Those were great days at the theatre. He had plenty
to drink then, and wore a dress coat every evening, and there
were always parties after the play. He could play in those
days, ay, that he could! He could never read the notes well, so
he did not play first; but his touch, he had a touch indeed, so
Herr Mikilsdoff, who led the orchestra, had said. Sometimes
now Peter thought he could plow better if he could only bow
as he used to. He had seen all the lovely women in the world
there, all the great singers and the great players. He was in the
orchestra when Rachel played, and he heard Liszt play when
the Countess d’Agoult sat in the stage box and threw the master
white lilies. Once, a French woman came and played for
weeks, he did not remember her name now. He did not remember
her face very well either, for it changed so, it was
never twice the same. But the beauty of it, and the great hunger
men felt at the sight of it, that he remembered. Most of all
he remembered her voice. He did not know French, and
could not understand a word she said, but it seemed to him
that she must be talking the music of Chopin. And her voice,
he thought he should know that in the other world. The last
night she played a play in which a man touched her arm, and
she stabbed him. As Peter sat among the smoking gas jets
down below the footlights with his fiddle on his knee, and
looked up at her, he thought he would like to die too, if he
could touch her arm once, and have her stab him so. Peter
went home to his wife very drunk that night. Even in those
days he was a foolish fellow, who cared for nothing but music
and pretty faces.
It was all different now. He had nothing to drink and little
to eat, and here, there was nothing but sun, and grass, and
sky. He had forgotten almost everything, but some things he
remembered well enough. He loved his violin and the holy
Mary, and above all else he feared the Evil One, and his son
Antone.
The fire was low, and it grew cold. Still Peter sat by the fire
remembering. He dared not throw more cobs on the fire; Antone
would be angry. He did not want to cut wood tomorrow,
it would be Sunday, and he wanted to go to mass.
Antone might let him do that. He held his violin under his
wrinkled chin, his white hair fell over it, and he began to play
“Ave Maria.” His hand shook more than ever before, and at
last refused to work the bow at all. He sat stupefied for a
while, then arose, and taking his violin with him, stole out
into the old sod stable. He took Antone’s shot-gun down
from its peg, and loaded it by the moonlight which streamed
in through the door. He sat down on the dirt floor, and
leaned back against the dirt wall. He heard the wolves howling
in the distance, and the night wind screaming as it swept
over the snow. Near him he heard the regular breathing of
the horses in the dark. He put his crucifix above his heart, and
folding his hands said brokenly all the Latin he had ever
known, “Pater noster, qui in cælum est.” Then he raised his
head and sighed, “Not one kreutzer will Antone pay them to
pray for my soul, not one kreutzer, he is so careful of his
money, is Antone, he does not waste it in drink, he is a better
man than I, but hard sometimes. He works the girls too hard,
women were not made to work so. But he shall not sell thee,
my fiddle, I can play thee no more, but they shall not part us.
We have seen it all together, and we will forget it together,
the French woman and all.” He held his fiddle under his chin
a moment, where it had lain so often, then put it across his
knee and broke it through the middle. He pulled off his old
boot, held the gun between his knees with the muzzle against
his forehead, and pressed the trigger with his toe.
In the morning Antone found him stiff, frozen fast in a
pool of blood. They could not straighten him out enough to
fit a coffin, so they buried him in a pine box. Before the funeral
Antone carried to town the fiddle-bow which Peter had
forgotten to break. Antone was very thrifty, and a better man
than his father had been.
The Mahogany Tree, May 21, 1892
On the Divide ToC
Near Rattlesnake Creek, on the side of a little draw
stood Canute’s shanty. North, east, south, stretched the
level Nebraska plain of long rust-red grass that undulated
constantly in the wind. To the west the ground was broken
and rough, and a narrow strip of timber wound along the
turbid, muddy little stream that had scarcely ambition enough
to crawl over its black bottom. If it had not been for the few
stunted cottonwoods and elms that grew along its banks,
Canute would have shot himself years ago. The Norwegians
are a timber-loving people, and if there is even a turtle pond
with a few plum bushes around it they seem irresistibly drawn
toward it.
As to the shanty itself, Canute had built it without aid of
any kind, for when he first squatted along the banks of Rattlesnake
Creek there was not a human being within twenty
miles. It was built of logs split in halves, the chinks stopped
with mud and plaster. The roof was covered with earth and
was supported by one gigantic beam curved in the shape of a
round arch. It was almost impossible that any tree had ever
grown in that shape. The Norwegians used to say that Canute
had taken the log across his knee and bent it into the shape
he wished. There were two rooms, or rather there was one
room with a partition made of ash saplings interwoven and
bound together like big straw basket work. In one corner
there was a cook stove, rusted and broken. In the other a bed
made of unplaned planks and poles. It was fully eight feet
long, and upon it was a heap of dark bed clothing. There was
a chair and a bench of colossal proportions. There was an
ordinary kitchen cupboard with a few cracked dirty dishes in
it, and beside it on a tall box a tin wash-basin. Under the bed
was a pile of pint flasks, some broken, some whole, all empty.
On the wood box lay a pair of shoes of almost incredible
dimensions. On the wall hung a saddle, a gun, and some
ragged clothing, conspicuous among which was a suit of dark
cloth, apparently new, with a paper collar carefully wrapped
in a red silk handkerchief and pinned to the sleeve. Over the
door hung a wolf and a badger skin, and on the door itself a
brace of thirty or forty snake skins whose noisy tails rattled
ominously every time it opened. The strangest things in the
shanty were the wide window-sills. At first glance they looked
as though they had been ruthlessly hacked and mutilated with
a hatchet, but on closer inspection all the notches and holes
in the wood took form and shape. There seemed to be a series
of pictures. They were, in a rough way, artistic, but the
figures were heavy and labored, as though they had been cut
very slowly and with very awkward instruments. There were
men plowing with little horned imps sitting on their shoulders
and on their horses’ heads. There were men praying with
a skull hanging over their heads and little demons behind
them mocking their attitudes. There were men fighting with
big serpents, and skeletons dancing together. All about these
pictures were blooming vines and foliage such as never grew
in this world, and coiled among the branches of the vines
there was always the scaly body of a serpent, and behind every
flower there was a serpent’s head. It was a veritable Dance of
Death by one who had felt its sting. In the wood box lay
some boards, and every inch of them was cut up in the same
manner. Sometimes the work was very rude and careless, and
looked as though the hand of the workman had trembled. It
would sometimes have been hard to distinguish the men from
their evil geniuses but for one fact, the men were always grave
and were either toiling or praying, while the devils were always
smiling and dancing. Several of these boards had been
split for kindling and it was evident that the artist did not
value his work highly.
It was the first day of winter on the Divide. Canute stumbled
into his shanty carrying a basket of cobs, and after filling
the stove, sat down on a stool and crouched his seven foot
frame over the fire, staring drearily out of the window at the
wide gray sky. He knew by heart every individual clump of
bunch grass in the miles of red shaggy prairie that stretched
before his cabin. He knew it in all the deceitful loveliness of
its early summer, in all the bitter barrenness of its autumn.
He had seen it smitten by all the plagues of Egypt. He had
seen it parched by drought, and sogged by rain, beaten by
hail, and swept by fire, and in the grasshopper years he had
seen it eaten as bare and clean as bones that the vultures have
left. After the great fires he had seen it stretch for miles and
miles, black and smoking as the floor of hell.
He rose slowly and crossed the room, dragging his big feet
heavily as though they were burdens to him. He looked out
of the window into the hog corral and saw the pigs burying
themselves in the straw before the shed. The leaden gray
clouds were beginning to spill themselves, and the snowflakes
were settling down over the white leprous patches of
frozen earth where the hogs had gnawed even the sod away.
He shuddered and began to walk, tramping heavily with his
ungainly feet. He was the wreck of ten winters on the Divide
and he knew what they meant. Men fear the winters of the
Divide as a child fears night or as men in the North Seas fear
the still dark cold of the polar twilight.
His eyes fell upon his gun, and he took it down from the
wall and looked it over. He sat down on the edge of his bed
and held the barrel towards his face, letting his forehead rest
upon it, and laid his finger on the trigger. He was perfectly
calm, there was neither passion nor despair in his face, but
the thoughtful look of a man who is considering. Presently
he laid down the gun, and reaching into the cupboard, drew
out a pint bottle of raw white alcohol. Lifting it to his lips,
he drank greedily. He washed his face in the tin basin and
combed his rough hair and shaggy blond beard. Then he
stood in uncertainty before the suit of dark clothes that hung
on the wall. For the fiftieth time he took them in his hands
and tried to summon courage to put them on. He took the
paper collar that was pinned to the sleeve of the coat and
cautiously slipped it under his rough beard, looking with
timid expectancy into the cracked, splashed glass that hung
over the bench. With a short laugh he threw it down on the
bed, and pulling on his old black hat, he went out, striking
off across the level.
It was a physical necessity for him to get away from his
cabin once in a while. He had been there for ten years, digging
and plowing and sowing, and reaping what little the hail
and the hot winds and the frosts left him to reap. Insanity
and suicide are very common things on the Divide. They
come on like an epidemic in the hot wind season. Those
scorching dusty winds that blow up over the bluffs from
Kansas seem to dry up the blood in men’s veins as they do
the sap in the corn leaves. Whenever the yellow scorch
creeps down over the tender inside leaves about the ear, then
the coroners prepare for active duty; for the oil of the country
is burned out and it does not take long for the flame to
eat up the wick. It causes no great sensation there when a
Dane is found swinging to his own windmill tower, and
most of the Poles after they have become too careless and
discouraged to shave themselves keep their razors to cut
their throats with.
It may be that the next generation on the Divide will be
very happy, but the present one came too late in life. It is
useless for men that have cut hemlocks among the mountains
of Sweden for forty years to try to be happy in a country
as flat and gray and as naked as the sea. It is not easy for
men that have spent their youths fishing in the Northern
seas to be content with following a plow, and men that have
served in the Austrian army hate hard work and coarse
clothing and the loneliness of the plains, and long for
marches and excitement and tavern company and pretty barmaids.
After a man has passed his fortieth birthday it is not
easy for him to change the habits and conditions of his life.
Most men bring with them to the Divide only the dregs of
the lives that they have squandered in other lands and
among other peoples.
Canute Canuteson was as mad as any of them, but his
madness did not take the form of suicide or religion but of
alcohol. He had always taken liquor when he wanted it, as all
Norwegians do, but after his first year of solitary life he settled
down to it steadily. He exhausted whisky after a while,
and went to alcohol, because its effects were speedier and
surer. He was a big man with a terrible amount of resistant
force, and it took a great deal of alcohol even to move him.
After nine years of drinking, the quantities he could take
would seem fabulous to an ordinary drinking man. He never
let it interfere with his work, he generally drank at night and
on Sundays. Every night, as soon as his chores were done, he
began to drink. While he was able to sit up he would play on
his mouth harp or hack away at his window sills with his jack
knife. When the liquor went to his head he would lie down
on his bed and stare out of the window until he went to
sleep. He drank alone and in solitude not for pleasure or
good cheer, but to forget the awful loneliness and level of the
Divide. Milton made a sad blunder when he put mountains
in hell. Mountains postulate faith and aspiration. All mountain
peoples are religious. It was the cities of the plains that,
because of their utter lack of spirituality and the mad caprice
of their vice, were cursed of God.
Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man.
Drunkenness is merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk
becomes maudlin; a bloody man, vicious; a coarse man,
vulgar. Canute was none of these, but he was morose and
gloomy, and liquor took him through all the hells of Dante.
As he lay on his giant’s bed all the horrors of this world and
every other were laid bare to his chilled senses. He was a man
who knew no joy, a man who toiled in silence and bitterness.
The skull and the serpent were always before him, the symbols
of eternal futileness and of eternal hate.
When the first Norwegians near enough to be called
neighbors came, Canute rejoiced, and planned to escape
from his bosom vice. But he was not a social man by nature
and had not the power of drawing out the social side of
other people. His new neighbors rather feared him because
of his great strength and size, his silence and his lowering
brows. Perhaps, too, they knew that he was mad, mad from
the eternal treachery of the plains, which every spring stretch
green and rustle with the promises of Eden, showing long
grassy lagoons full of clear water and cattle whose hoofs are
stained with wild roses. Before autumn the lagoons are dried
up, and the ground is burnt dry and hard until it blisters
and cracks open.
So instead of becoming a friend and neighbor to the men
that settled about him, Canute became a mystery and a terror.
They told awful stories of his size and strength and of the
alcohol he drank. They said that one night, when he went out
to see to his horses just before he went to bed, his steps were
unsteady and the rotten planks of the floor gave way and
threw him behind the feet of a fiery young stallion. His foot
was caught fast in the floor, and the nervous horse began
kicking frantically. When Canute felt the blood trickling down
in his eyes from a scalp wound in his head, he roused himself
from his kingly indifference, and with the quiet stoical courage
of a drunken man leaned forward and wound his arms
about the horse’s hind legs and held them against his breast
with crushing embrace. All through the darkness and cold of
the night he lay there, matching strength against strength.
When little Jim Peterson went over the next morning at four
o’clock to go with him to the Blue to cut wood, he found him
so, and the horse was on its fore knees, trembling and
whinnying with fear. This is the story the Norwegians tell of
him, and if it is true it is no wonder that they feared and
hated this Holder of the Heels of Horses.
One spring there moved to the next “eighty” a family that
made a great change in Canute’s life. Ole Yensen was too
drunk most of the time to be afraid of any one, and his wife
Mary was too garrulous to be afraid of any one who listened
to her talk, and Lena, their pretty daughter, was not afraid of
man nor devil. So it came about that Canute went over to
take his alcohol with Ole oftener than he took it alone. After
a while the report spread that he was going to marry Yensen’s
daughter, and the Norwegian girls began to tease Lena about
the great bear she was going to keep house for. No one could
quite see how the affair had come about, for Canute’s tactics
of courtship were somewhat peculiar. He apparently never
spoke to her at all: he would sit for hours with Mary chattering
on one side of him and Ole drinking on the other and
watch Lena at her work. She teased him, and threw flour in
his face and put vinegar in his coffee, but he took her rough
jokes with silent wonder, never even smiling. He took her to
church occasionally, but the most watchful and curious people
never saw him speak to her. He would sit staring at her
while she giggled and flirted with the other men.
Next spring Mary Lee went to town to work in a steam
laundry. She came home every Sunday, and always ran across
to Yensens to startle Lena with stories of ten cent theaters,
firemen’s dances, and all the other esthetic delights of metropolitan
life. In a few weeks Lena’s head was completely
turned, and she gave her father no rest until he let her go to
town to seek her fortune at the ironing board. From the time
she came home on her first visit she began to treat Canute
with contempt. She had bought a plush cloak and kid gloves,
had her clothes made by the dress-maker, and assumed airs
and graces that made the other women of the neighborhood
cordially detest her. She generally brought with her a young
man from town who waxed his mustache and wore a red
necktie, and she did not even introduce him to Canute.
The neighbors teased Canute a good deal until he
knocked one of them down. He gave no sign of suffering
from her neglect except that he drank more and avoided the
other Norwegians more carefully than ever. He lay around
in his den and no one knew what he felt or thought, but
little Jim Peterson, who had seen him glowering at Lena in
church one Sunday when she was there with the town man,
said that he would not give an acre of his wheat for Lena’s
life or the town chap’s either; and Jim’s wheat was so wondrously
worthless that the statement was an exceedingly
strong one.
Canute had bought a new suit of clothes that looked as
nearly like the town man’s as possible. They had cost him half
a millet crop; for tailors are not accustomed to fitting giants
and they charge for it. He had hung those clothes in his
shanty two months ago and had never put them on, partly
from fear of ridicule, partly from discouragement, and partly
because there was something in his own soul that revolted at
the littleness of the device.
Lena was at home just at this time. Work was slack in the
laundry and Mary had not been well, so Lena stayed at home,
glad enough to get an opportunity to torment Canute once
more.
She was washing in the side kitchen, singing loudly as she
worked. Mary was on her knees, blacking the stove and scolding
violently about the young man who was coming out from
town that night. The young man had committed the fatal
error of laughing at Mary’s ceaseless babble and had never
been forgiven.
“He is no good, and you will come to a bad end by running
with him! I do not see why a daughter of mine should
act so. I do not see why the Lord should visit such a punishment
upon me as to give me such a daughter. There are
plenty of good men you can marry.”
Lena tossed her head and answered curtly, “I don’t happen
to want to marry any man right away, and so long as Dick
dresses nice and has plenty of money to spend, there is no
harm in my going with him.”
“Money to spend? Yes, and that is all he does with it I’ll be
bound. You think it very fine now, but you will change your
tune when you have been married five years and see your children
running naked and your cupboard empty. Did Anne
Hermanson come to any good end by marrying a town man?”
“I don’t know anything about Anne Hermanson, but I
know any of the laundry girls would have Dick quick enough
if they could get him.”
“Yes, and a nice lot of store clothes huzzies you are too.
Now there is Canuteson who has an ‘eighty’ proved up and
fifty head of cattle and——”
“And hair that ain’t been cut since he was a baby, and a big
dirty beard, and he wears overalls on Sundays, and drinks like
a pig. Besides he will keep. I can have all the fun I want, and
when I am old and ugly like you he can have me and take care
of me. The Lord knows there ain’t nobody else going to
marry him.”
Canute drew his hand back from the latch as though it
were red hot. He was not the kind of a man to make a good
eavesdropper, and he wished he had knocked sooner. He
pulled himself together and struck the door like a battering
ram. Mary jumped and opened it with a screech.
“God! Canute, how you scared us! I thought it was crazy
Lou,—he has been tearing around the neighborhood trying
to convert folks. I am afraid as death of him. He ought to be
sent off, I think. He is just as liable as not to kill us all, or
burn the barn, or poison the dogs. He has been worrying
even the poor minister to death, and he laid up with the rheumatism,
too! Did you notice that he was too sick to preach
last Sunday? But don’t stand there in the cold,—come in.
Yensen isn’t here, but he just went over to Sorenson’s for the
mail; he won’t be gone long. Walk right in the other room
and sit down.”
Canute followed her, looking steadily in front of him and
not noticing Lena as he passed her. But Lena’s vanity would
not allow him to pass unmolested. She took the wet sheet
she was wringing out and cracked him across the face with it,
and ran giggling to the other side of the room. The blow
stung his cheeks and the soapy water flew in his eyes, and he
involuntarily began rubbing them with his hands. Lena giggled
with delight at his discomfiture, and the wrath in Canute’s
face grew blacker than ever. A big man humiliated is
vastly more undignified than a little one. He forgot the sting
of his face in the bitter consciousness that he had made a
fool of himself. He stumbled blindly into the living room,
knocking his head against the door jamb because he forgot
to stoop. He dropped into a chair behind the stove, thrusting
his big feet back helplessly on either side of him.
Ole was a long time in coming, and Canute sat there, still
and silent, with his hands clenched on his knees, and the skin
of his face seemed to have shriveled up into little wrinkles that
trembled when he lowered his brows. His life had been one
long lethargy of solitude and alcohol, but now he was awakening,
and it was as when the dumb stagnant heat of summer
breaks out into thunder.
When Ole came staggering in, heavy with liquor, Canute
rose at once.
“Yensen,” he said quietly, “I have come to see if you will let
me marry your daughter today.”
“Today!” gasped Ole.
“Yes, I will not wait until tomorrow. I am tired of living
alone.”
Ole braced his staggering knees against the bedstead, and
stammered eloquently: “Do you think I will marry my daughter
to a drunkard? a man who drinks raw alcohol? a man who
sleeps with rattle snakes? Get out of my house or I will kick
you out for your impudence.” And Ole began looking anxiously
for his feet.
Canute answered not a word, but he put on his hat and
went out into the kitchen. He went up to Lena and said without
looking at her, “Get your things on and come with me!”
The tones of his voice startled her, and she said angrily,
dropping the soap, “Are you drunk?”
She lifted a sheet to strike him, but he caught her arm
roughly and wrenched the sheet from her. He turned to the
wall and took down a hood and shawl that hung there, and
began wrapping her up. Lena scratched and fought like a wild
thing. Ole stood in the door, cursing, and Mary howled and
screeched at the top of her voice. As for Canute, he lifted the
girl in his arms and went out of the house. She kicked and
struggled, but the helpless wailing of Mary and Ole soon died
away in the distance, and her face was held down tightly on
Canute’s shoulder so that she could not see whither he was
taking her. She was conscious only of the north wind whistling
in her ears, and of rapid steady motion and of a great
breast that heaved beneath her in quick, irregular breaths. The
harder she struggled the tighter those iron arms that had held
the heels of horses crushed about her, until she felt as if they
would crush the breath from her, and lay still with fear.
Canute was striding across the level fields at a pace at which
man never went before, drawing the stinging north wind into
his lungs in great gulps. He walked with his eyes half closed
and looking straight in front of him, only lowering them
when he bent his head to blow away the snow flakes that
settled on her hair. So it was that Canute took her to his
home, even as his bearded barbarian ancestors took the fair
frivolous women of the South in their hairy arms and bore
them down to their war ships. For ever and anon the soul
becomes weary of the conventions that are not of it, and
with a single stroke shatters the civilized lies with which it is
unable to cope, and the strong arm reaches out and takes by
force what it cannot win by cunning.
When Canute reached his shanty he placed the girl upon a
chair, where she sat sobbing. He stayed only a few minutes.
He filled the stove with wood and lit the lamp, drank a huge
swallow of alcohol and put the bottle in his pocket. He
paused a moment, staring heavily at the weeping girl, then he
went off and locked the door and disappeared in the gathering
gloom of the night.
Wrapped in flannels and soaked with turpentine, the little
Norwegian preacher sat reading his Bible, when he heard a
thundering knock at his door, and Canute entered, covered
with snow and with his beard frozen fast to his coat.
“Come in, Canute, you must be frozen,” said the little man,
shoving a chair towards his visitor.
Canute remained standing with his hat on and said quietly,
“I want you to come over to my house tonight to marry me
to Lena Yensen.”
“Have you got a license, Canute?”
“No, I don’t want a license. I want to be married.”
“But I can’t marry you without a license, man. It would
not be legal.”
A dangerous light came in the big Norwegian’s eye. “I
want you to come over to my house to marry me to Lena
Yensen.”
“No, I can’t, it would kill an ox to go out in a storm like
this, and my rheumatism is bad tonight.”
“Then if you will not go I must take you,” said Canute
with a sigh.
He took down the preacher’s bearskin coat and bade him
put it on while he hitched up his buggy. He went out and
closed the door softly after him. Presently he returned and
found the frightened minister crouching before the fire with
his coat lying beside him. Canute helped him put it on and
gently wrapped his head in his big muffler. Then he picked
him up and carried him out and placed him in his buggy. As
he tucked the buffalo robes around him he said: “Your horse
is old, he might flounder or lose his way in this storm. I will
lead him.”
The minister took the reins feebly in his hands and sat
shivering with the cold. Sometimes when there was a lull in
the wind, he could see the horse struggling through the snow
with the man plodding steadily beside him. Again the blowing
snow would hide them from him altogether. He had no
idea where they were or what direction they were going. He
felt as though he were being whirled away in the heart of the
storm, and he said all the prayers he knew. But at last the
long four miles were over, and Canute set him down in the
snow while he unlocked the door. He saw the bride sitting
by the fire with her eyes red and swollen as though she had
been weeping. Canute placed a huge chair for him, and said
roughly,—
“Warm yourself.”
Lena began to cry and moan afresh, begging the minister
to take her home. He looked helplessly at Canute. Canute
said simply,—
“If you are warm now, you can marry us.”
“My daughter, do you take this step of your own free will?”
asked the minister in a trembling voice.
“No sir, I don’t, and it is disgraceful he should force me
into it! I won’t marry him.”
“Then, Canute, I cannot marry you,” said the minister,
standing as straight as his rheumatic limbs would let him.
“Are you ready to marry us now, sir?” said Canute, laying
one iron hand on his stooped shoulder. The little preacher
was a good man, but like most men of weak body he was a
coward and had a horror of physical suffering, although he
had known so much of it. So with many qualms of conscience
he began to repeat the marriage service. Lena sat sullenly in
her chair, staring at the fire. Canute stood beside her, listening
with his head bent reverently and his hands folded on his
breast. When the little man had prayed and said amen, Canute
began bundling him up again.
“I will take you home, now,” he said as he carried him
out and placed him in his buggy, and started off with him
through the fury of the storm, floundering among the snow
drifts that brought even the giant himself to his knees.
After she was left alone, Lena soon ceased weeping. She
was not of a particularly sensitive temperament, and had little
pride beyond that of vanity. After the first bitter anger wore
itself out, she felt nothing more than a healthy sense of
humiliation and defeat. She had no inclination to run away,
for she was married now, and in her eyes that was final and
all rebellion was useless. She knew nothing about a license,
but she knew that a preacher married folks. She consoled herself
by thinking that she had always intended to marry Canute
some day, any way.
She grew tired of crying and looking into the fire, so she
got up and began to look about her. She had heard queer
tales about the inside of Canute’s shanty, and her curiosity
soon got the better of her rage. One of the first things she
noticed was the new black suit of clothes hanging on the wall.
She was dull, but it did not take a vain woman long to interpret
anything so decidedly flattering, and she was pleased in
spite of herself. As she looked through the cupboard, the
general air of neglect and discomfort made her pity the man
who lived there.
“Poor fellow, no wonder he wants to get married to get
somebody to wash up his dishes. Batchin’s pretty hard on a
man.”
It is easy to pity when once one’s vanity has been tickled.
She looked at the window sill and gave a little shudder and
wondered if the man were crazy. Then she sat down again and
sat a long time wondering what her Dick and Ole would do.
“It is queer Dick didn’t come right over after me. He
surely came, for he would have left town before the storm
began and he might just as well come right on as go back. If
he’d hurried he would have gotten here before the preacher
came. I suppose he was afraid to come, for he knew Canuteson
could pound him to jelly, the coward!” Her eyes flashed
angrily.
The weary hours wore on and Lena began to grow horribly
lonesome. It was an uncanny night and this was an uncanny
place to be in. She could hear the coyotes howling hungrily a
little way from the cabin, and more terrible still were all the
unknown noises of the storm. She remembered the tales they
told of the big log overhead and she was afraid of those snaky
things on the window sills. She remembered the man who
had been killed in the draw, and she wondered what she
would do if she saw crazy Lou’s white face glaring into the
window. The rattling of the door became unbearable, she
thought the latch must be loose and took the lamp to look at
it. Then for the first time she saw the ugly brown snake skins
whose death rattle sounded every time the wind jarred the
door.
“Canute, Canute!” she screamed in terror.
Outside the door she heard a heavy sound as of a big dog
getting up and shaking himself. The door opened and Canute
stood before her, white as a snow drift.
“I am cold,” she faltered.
He went out and got an armful of wood and a basket of
cobs and filled the stove. Then he went out and lay in the
snow before the door. Presently he heard her calling again.
“What is it?” he said, sitting up.
“I’m so lonesome, I’m afraid to stay in here all alone.”
“I will go over and get your mother.” And he got up.
“She won’t come.”
“I’ll bring her,” said Canute grimly.
“No, no. I don’t want her, she will scold all the time.”
“Well, I will bring your father.”
She spoke again and it seemed as though her mouth was
close up to the key-hole. She spoke lower than he had ever
heard her speak before, so low that he had to put his ear up to
the lock to hear her.
“I don’t want him either, Canute,—I’d rather have you.”
For a moment she heard no noise at all, then something
like a groan. With a cry of fear she opened the door, and saw
Canute stretched in the snow at her feet, his face in his hands,
sobbing on the door step.
Overland Monthly, January 1896
Literary significance and criticism[edit]
On the Divide was Cather's first story to be published in a national magazine.[2] In a 1938 letter to Edward Wagenknetch, Willa Cather admitted that On the Divide was retouched by one of her professors and submitted for publication without her consent.[3]
The story bears similarities with O Pioneers!.[4] Moreover, it has been noted that Cather's spare style parallels the harshness of the landscape.[5]
References[edit]
- ^ Willa Cather's Collected Short Fiction, University of Nebraska Press; Rev Ed edition, 1 November 1970, page 504
- ^ James Woodress, Willa Cather: Her Life and Art, New York: Pegasus, 1970, p. 73
- ^ Willa Cather's Collected Short Fiction, University of Nebraska Press; Rev Ed edition, 1 November 1970, 'Introduction' by Mildred R. Bennett, page xxvii
- ^ Mildred Bennett, Early Stories of Willa Cather, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1957, p. 61
- ^ Marilyn Arnold, Willa Cather's Short Fiction, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1984, p. 4
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