CHAPTER XVI
A WOMAN AND SHEEP
None had acquired a more general regard among the passengers than theKansas Farmer. He bore no resemblance to the typical farmer asrepresented in the comic publications but was, on the contrary, awell-dressed, imposing looking man of middle age, a college graduate, asStafford knew, and one who had selected his occupation because itappealed to him as, to their own and general good, it might appeal tohosts of others of the educated men of the country. Stafford and he hadbecome friends, as was almost a matter of course, and it was the formerwho insisted that the Farmer bring to the front some curious experienceof human nature in connection with farm life. "You are the tree we musttap now," he jested. "It's just because you are what you are that wewant the thing. Inevitably, you, with your experience and associations,can tell us something of the inner being and its ways on a farm whichwill be edifying. Tell us the queerest and most unexplainable thing youremember in connection with such life and of one man or woman's part init."
The farmer stroked his grizzled, close-cut beard and laughed:
"It seems to me that the element of love has entered with tolerableregularity into most of the narratives to which I have had the pleasureof listening here. That is right, certainly, and natural. What I'm goingto tell is a love story, too, in its way. It is of a love which buddedand bloomed but bore no fruit, for the oddest reason in the world. It isabout a man who loved a woman and was won away by sheep. No, he wasn'texactly won away; he just forgot. It was the strangest thing I ever knewor heard of, but it is true. I know the man and his sheep myself, thoughI never saw the woman. This is
JASON'S LOVE STORY
A swamp oak stump is one of the most contumacious stumps in the world.It is usually big and its roots extend, like the arms of an octopus, inall directions save upward. Furthermore, having been bred to the wet,feeding on dampness when alive, the wood does not rot willingly. Theupper portion of the stump absorbs the showers of heaven and enduresthe cracking heat of the sun apathetically and remains pretty much thesame for a long time, while the roots lie solid in their dark bed,almost regardless of the years as men grow old. So it is that anotherwise cleared area of land occupied largely by swamp oak stumps iswhat the farmers in Michigan's Lower Peninsula call an unpromising placefor present making of crops. It was such an area that Jason Goodell--whowas in love--owned. He possessed eighty acres, an eighth of a section,with fifteen acres cleared--but for stumps. The young woman whom heloved was Melissa Trumbull, the eldest daughter of "old man" Trumbull,who was well-to-do.
The place where swamp oaks grow is of a sort to command respect. It hasfeatures. It is often a black ash swale. A swale is low ground, but nota swamp, crossed sometimes, at irregular intervals, by strips of higherground referred to generally as beech ridges. In the lower ground thrivethe black ash, the huge swamp oak, various moisture-loving bushes andluxurious growths of ferns. Up on the ridges grow the maple, the whiteash, the beech, ironwood and birch and bushes which do not object toless damp soil, nannyberries elders and the like.
In the swale proper the growth underfoot is bush and there are hundredsof puddles where the frogs congregate in thousands, mostly the small,brown wood frog, not the big, green "kerplunk" sort of the ponds andstreams. Here the raccoon finds what is, to him, a land flowing withmilk and honey, for he agrees with a frog diet as a frog diet agreeswith him; here upon dead white trunks the solitary log-cock, the greatblack, red-crested woodpecker, largest of his genus, in the region,hammers away like a blacksmith; here the hermit thrush sings sometimes;and here little streams are born, to trickle at first, then ripple andthen leap, bubbling and noisy, into the sloping fields outside, toattain the dignity of brooks at last and join the undercreek.
On the beech ridges life is different. There the ruffed grouse strutsabout and feeds upon the nuts and berries; and there are the squirrels,black, gray and red. The grouse raise great families on the ridges andthe wooing "drumming" of the males in spring is like nothing else in theworld. It is the most distinctively wildwood sound there is. As for thesquirrels, the black is no longer holding his own with the red and thegray. He is going like the Red Indian and the buffalo and no one cantell why. He was not born to civilization. The red and gray adaptthemselves. Of such swale and ridge, so peopled, consisted (as has beensaid) the greater portion of the estate of Jason Goodell; excellent landbut requiring much work in its subjugation.
Never better man for conquering a forest or making good soil yield thecrops it has owed than this same brown-bearded Jason Goodell. Personallystrong, six full feet in height, though a trifle stooping, and slouchyin his gait, thewed like a draft-horse, broad of forehead and strong ofchin, with firm mouth and steady gray eyes, this man was one toaccomplish things as thoroughly and doggedly as Victor Hugo's Gilliatttoiling sturdily at the wrecked ship. Like Gilliatt, too, Jason wastoiling for love's sake. He had never spoken of his passion to MelissaTrumbull, but they had studied together in the little district school,had grown up together, had confided their plans and hopes to each otherand, until Jason left the employ of old man Trumbull and began work onhis own "eighty," had been almost constantly together. To Jason,reticent, and timid as well, in a matter of this sort, it never occurredto make a definite engagement, and to Melissa, black-eyed, gingham-clad,buoyant and with plenty of work to do, the situation doubtless presenteditself with the same aspect. No pledged word, though, could have madethe matter more fixed and serious than it was, at least to Jason. Whatneed of words? The first thing to do was to make a home for theoccupancy of two young married people.
So Jason built a rude cabin and lived in it alone and began clearing hisland. At the end of the second year he had fifteen acres in crops ofgrass and grain, and the beginning of a herd of cattle and a drove ofhogs, and was counted by his neighbors as a young man who would be welloff some day. They were right in their conclusion. Jason was the one tosucceed as a farmer. Living simply, working untiringly, theaccomplishments of the isolated man were a surprise even to the ruggedfarmers who knew him well. At the end of the third year a new field hadbeen hewed into the forest and the land first cleared had become moreeasily tillable. Fire had fed on the stumps. Half a dozen cows werefeeding on the grassland, the hogs were fattening on last year's corncrop and chickens and turkeys cackled and called about the roughlog-barn. Butter and pork and eggs had a value at the nearest littletown, and Jason had saved money. He bought another eighty acres ofwoodland--land was cheap then--and began to plan the building of ahouse. There was Melissa!
No log house should this mansion be but one fit for a bride's reception.It should be a framed house, with all proper rooms, clap-boarded as tothe sides and shingled as to the roof. There should be a porch in frontand the building should be of two stories. Jason brooded fondly over itall and planned and dreamed. He consulted often with Jim Rubens, thefarmer carpenter of the locality: "Never saw a man so wrapped up in hishouse-buildin' in all my life!" said Rubens.
The beams and plates and joists and rafters for the house were plannedand, with axe and broad-axe and saw, Jason and Rubens labored in theforest until oak and pine were cut and hewed, true to the line, and werethen dragged by toiling oxen to the site of the house of which they wereto be the stay and strength. The farmers round about assembled for theraising, there were heavings and shoutings, the parts were reared underthe hoarse overseeing of Carpenter Rubens and the great timbers, tonguein socket, pinned lastingly together, stood aloft, the sturdy whiteoutline of a pleasant home to face the roadway. What days they were forJason as the two men labored afterward for weeks until the house stoodall complete from cellar to roof-peak, and even painted--white, withgreen blinds, of course. Furnished it was too, well furnished for thecountry. It was the finest house in the neighborhood and Jason walkedthrough the rooms with that feeling which comes to a man of purpose whenhe looks upon the thing accomplished. Not yet, though, was the placeready for Melissa. There was much to be done besides the mere buildingof a shelter, but, even now, the front pa
rt of it must be sacred forher. There Jason nailed up the door solidly.
What comfort could a farmer's wife have with merely a house to live in!Here must be all convenience for her outdoor work in connection with thehousehold and all should be pleasant to look upon. Jason settled downresolutely to what was yet to come.
Obviously the old log barn had outlasted its original purposes. Itssmall stable no longer afforded shelter enough for the increasing herdof cattle and the horses nor its mows room for the hay and grain. Theremust be a frame barn, a big one, with high, wide doors into which a teamwith a load might be driven and with long stables and mows and roof roomenough for all contingencies of harvest. The year after the completionof the house, the barn was built and the one of logs abandoned. But thebarn had not absorbed Jason's thoughts so fully as had the house.
The lonely toiling of the man was not lonely to him. He was strong andrejoiced in work, and there was ever Melissa and always something to bedone for her. From the front door of the house down to the roadway hemade a wide gravelled path and along its sides he made beds ofold-fashioned pinks and sowed and planted larkspur and phlox and dahliasand peonies and golden coreopsis and bachelor's buttons and otherflowers named in the circulars of a seed firm in the distant city. Hemade a neat picket gate in the fence where the walk opened on theroadway and beside the fence he had hollyhocks, and sunflowers, thelatter trying every day to see Melissa, and turning their headsresolutely from sunrise until evening and going to sleep every nightwith their faces toward her home, which was in the West. Close besidethe house he planted rosebushes and "old hen and chickens" andlady-slippers and morning-glories, and a madeira vine for the porch.There was a path from the front around the house to the kitchen--whichhad a porch as well--and beside this path Jason had planted an abundanceof sweet briar, thinking as he did so how its faint, sweet fragrance andfair blossoms would match Melissa. A hop-vine clambered up the kitchenporch. Jason was thirty years old, now, and Melissa twenty-five.
One day old man Trumbull, who was a great trader, suddenly disposed ofhis farm and moved into the adjacent county. Somehow, the news did nothave much effect on Jason Goodell. It would be as easy to bring her fromthirty miles away as from where she had lived, he reasoned. The onlydifference to come would be that he would not see her often in theinterval. There had never been any correspondence between them and itdid not occur to Jason to write now.
There came a hard winter, the horses and cattle and other stock requiredclose attendance, and Jason was much about the house. It was at thistime when he discovered the faults of the kitchen floor, which was ofpine. The boards had shrunk and there were cracks and the soft wood hadworn away under the tread of his heavy feet. That sort of kitchen floorwould never do for Melissa! He made a new floor and was happy at hislabor all through "the big snow." The floor was of hard, seasoned ash,matched perfectly and smooth as the floor of a ball-room. "It will beeasier to mop" said he, and thought of Melissa's sunbonnet, and of howit would look hanging against the whitewashed wall.
All winter in Jason's newer eighty acres the axes of two men had swunghardily and, with spring and early summer, came to Jason a stress ofeffort in helping at the clearing and in attendance on the crops. He hadlittle time for work about the garden, though it was not neglected, buthe felt that he must somewhat change his home life. He had lived in thekitchen and a little room adjoining it. He had, from the time the housewas built, never changed in the feeling that the front part of the housewas sacred to Melissa, but he felt that now a little change must come.His duties were increasing. He must have a hired man about him, one whowould live with him. So the hired man came and slept in the room Jasonhad occupied while Jason slept upstairs in what, in fancy, he hadcalled "our room." "She won't mind," he thought.
There is spur to effort for the real farmer and a great comforting pridein looking out upon a conquered province, to note the corn swayingfull-eared, the timothy and clover and grain fields changing color withthe shift of the clouds and sweep of the breeze, the lowing cattle inthe pastures and the general promise of Autumn's wealth. Jason enjoyedit all, for was it not the product of his design and energy, and as thefarm grew, he grew with it. Success fairly earned made him zealous formore. He broadened and was for trying things.
One day old Rubens came along, and leaning idly over the front fence,began a farmer's chat with Jason, who was digging among the flowers.Rubens looked away at the vacant log barn.
"What are you going to do with the old barn?" he asked, "tool-house?"
"No," said Jason, "I have a tool-room in the big barn. I don't know whatI'll do with the old one. Pull it down, maybe."
Rubens gazed meditatively at the abandoned but still sound structure:"It would make a mighty good sheep barn," he suggested.
No more was said at the time, but Ruben's idea was not forgotten. Itremained in Jason's mind and the more he thought upon it the more hebecame impressed. Jason had never raised sheep, successful as he hadbeen with other animals. He considered, and rightly, that most of hisland was too low for them. There was an eighty acres of woodlandadjoining that which he had latest bought that was hilly, not heavilytimbered and with many springs and brooks. Partly cleared, with whatwoods were left well under-brushed, it would make a perfect sheeppasture. He had half a mind to buy it and experiment. And the plan grewin his mind until it overmastered him and he bought the land.
Not the sort of man to venture upon a new venture carelessly was Jason,and he had a problem before him now: What sort of sheep should he raise?His cattle and hogs were of good breeds and to have seen to it that itwas so he had found profitable. With sheep he was less acquainted. Heasked advice. "Get Merinos, by all means," pronounced Henry Wilson, wholived to the north of him. "Get Southdowns and nothing else," said JamesRemington, who lived to the west. "I'll get twenty of each andexperiment with them separately," decided Jason.
Now as between the Merino and the Southdown sheep there is a great gulffixed. The Merino is small with gnarled horns, wrinkled neck and nose;with silk-like wool curling close to the skin in its fineness, yellowunderneath because of its oiliness, and dark outside because of the dustgathered and held by such close, sticky coat. Well tried is theendurance of the sheep-washer who, in late spring before shearing time,stands waist deep in some stream and seeks to cleanse the fleece of aflock of shivering Merinos driven bleating to the water, and dreading itlike a tramp. But the fine Merino wool commands a price; the fleece isheavy and the breeder profits from that, not from the mutton. The fleshof the Merino requires for its consumption people who have been longbesieged and who are hungry.
Different is the quality of the Southdown; not from Spanish ancestors,feeding on Andalusian hills, as came the Merino, did he come, but fromAnglo-Saxon forefathers who cropped the herbage of the Hampshire andSussex downs. Big and white of body and dark-faced, sturdy of build andgarbed in clean, not over fine white wool, hornless but stepping freeand high, the Southdown has a healthy individuality. As concerns hismutton, those who know how to eat, and what to eat, speak fluently whiletheir eyes glisten.
And almost as the flocks throve under Isaac, toiling for Rebecca, throvethe flocks of Jason, toiling for Melissa. In summer and autumn they fedin the new pasture land and in winter they were sheltered and fared wellin the old barn, now renovated and with a great shed attached forfurther room. Jason became absorbed in sheep-growing, as he had neverbeen before in the growing of anything. He read books on the subject andtried experiments. At the end of the third year, with good flocks nowhis he selected from each the finest ram and ewe and entered them at theCounty fair. He wanted to learn with which breed he had been mostsuccessful.
Canny and just are almost always the judges at an American County fair.Known personally throughout the region, selected for their uprightnessand knowledge of special beast or fowl or any product of the fields,their verdict is almost mechanically accepted as a final and just one.More and more interested became Jason regarding the issue of hisexperiments in thus entering into
competition with breeders, some ofwhom had raised sheep before he was born, and he puzzled himself muchover the problem of where, in the opinion of these unbiased experts, hewould prove to have done best. The decision, when it came, was hardly asurprise to him. His Merinos, it is true, received favorable mention,but his Southdowns took first prize in a field where there was decidedand worthy competition. A proud man was Jason Goodell when he saw theblue ribbons tied by a gray-bearded giant in jeans about the necks ofhis two entries. He made an instant resolution. "I'll not raise wool,"he said, "I'll leave that to the Ohioans of the Western Reserve. I'llraise mutton!"
He sold the prize-winners for a mighty price and returned to his farm.Within a week the flock of Merinos was sold, as well, and the money soreceived was invested in an importation of more Southdowns, with bloodas blue as that of the Hapsburgs, and far stronger. Then begansheep-raising that was sheep-raising.
It is hard to serve two masters and it must be admitted that, since histhoughts and plans had turned so absorbingly to Southdowns, Jason feltless surpassingly the inspiration of Melissa. There had been a time whenhe dreamed of her almost nightly, but, now, his sleeping visions were ofgreat flocks upon the hillsides and the eyes into which he looked werenot always the sparkling ones of Melissa, but it might be the soft,gentle eyes of quite another color of some great ewe. Dreams aregrotesque things.
Still, instinctively, sometimes fervently, Jason worked and devised forthe girl who had gone away. The big orchard back of the house and barns,now growing into fruitfulness, he cared for well. In the spring, feedingthe just-weaned calves, as he put his fingers in the mouth of somevigorous youngster and then thrust its muzzle into the milk, that itmight learn to drink, he thought as the calf butted joyously at the pailas if it were his own mother, how Melissa would like the calves and howmuch better than he she would attend to them! He was somewhat troubled,too, because the spring in the hollow was not nearer the house--he didnot want Melissa to carry water so many yards--but he planned a"spring-house" with a cement floor, where Melissa should keep the milkand make the butter. That would be less labor for her. There would notbe much butter-making anyhow He was not going to have butter and eggsto sell. Only enough cattle and horses and hogs and chickens for farmpurposes did he intend to keep. And he bought yet another eighty acresof land.
It is wonderful how some over-mastering aim, one the accomplishment ofwhich requires concentration of thought and exertion of all energy inone direction, will get its grip upon a man and hold it to the end. Withhigh and low it is the same. Mozart died with the score of the RequiemMass hardly dry from his feeble hand. Napoleon died with the word ofcommand upon his lips. Seekers, investigators, experimenters in allfields, great and small, have grown into a forgetfulness of aught saveone object, have abandoned all outside, and have dreamed and devised andlabored toward one absorbing end. Such compelling influence in life maycome to the farmer as to others. With Jason, who recognized a farmer'sdignity, who knew that the farmer often fought men's battles and at alltimes fed them, the attainment of his own ambition was nothing small. Hebecame almost a monomaniac over Southdowns. How they thrived!--forNature ever loves a mentor. Peas grew where oats had grown, clover wherewas before a cornfield, turnips where had been potatoes, for sheepmust eat in winter. It became a Southdown farm, and acres were yetadded, for the undertaking was most profitable--until the time came whenJason's keen eyes could not, as he stood looking from the barn door,reach more than vaguely the outlines of his own domain. One day, a girlwearing a sunbonnet matching exactly in shape and color the one Melissahad once worn, passed by and Jason's thoughts went back. That afternoonhe took horses and wagon and drove to the growing town. He returned witha piano. "Melissa may have learned to play," he said to himself, "andshe will be glad to find it here." But, for weeks, perhaps for monthsafterward, no Melissa came again into his waking dreams nor in hissleep.
"THE CHILDREN CARRIED AWAY ARMFULS OF BLOSSOMS"]
He had abundance of help about him now. Another hired man, accompaniedby his wife, had been brought into the house, the wife proving a notablehousekeeper and relieving Jason of all petty duties. He visited hisneighbors and was liked among them. The children especially were fond ofhim and he allowed them to visit his house at will and to carry awayarmfuls of blossoms from his great flower-garden, seeing to it only thatthey did not harm the plants. But the parlor, with its furniture stillunworn, though becoming somewhat old-fashioned now, and with its pianostill untouched, was never entered except for dusting, and the frontdoor was never opened.
Far and wide as the great breeder of Southdown sheep, became known thename of Jason Goodell, and his flocks and barns grew with acressteadily. One afternoon a traveling nurseryman came to see him uponbusiness and stayed to dinner. They chatted over the meal:
"I was over at Wishtigo last week," said the man; "drove over one dayand came back the next. Who d'ye think I met?"
"Couldn't guess."
"I met County Clerk Jim Lacey's wife--her that used to be MelissaTrumbull, you know. It was the first I knew of it. I took dinner with'em; she wouldn't allow anything else. They've been married seven yearsand they've got a mighty nice little family: three children. Jim's agood fellow."
Jason said nothing for a few moments. Then he assented deliberately:"Yes, Jim's a good fellow. I've met him often. I didn't know whether hewas married or not, though. What was it you said about them young peartrees? I may take a dozen or two of 'em."
In the middle of the forenoon a few days later, while Jason was lookingover the sheep barns and giving directions to the men at work there, asudden fancy came upon him. He went to the house, asked for a hammer andwithdrew the nails from the front door. Then he opened all the parlorwindows and let in the sunlight. "It'll be healthier," he explained tothe astonished and delighted housekeeper. "Keep them open as much as youwant to now, in pleasant weather, and let the children in, too, if theylike it. It'll brighten things up."
At a table in one of the fine restaurants in the big city sat, recently,at dinner a man and woman, he a man of the world, she charming as womenso often are. They were delighted with the wonderful mutton they hadjust eaten and were talking of it.
"It's a mutton only kings would be allowed to eat, if these were ancienttimes," the man asserted laughingly. "It's delicate as strawberries,though that isn't a good comparison. It may have come direct from theGoodell fields."
"Who is Goodell?" queried the lady.
"Goodell, my dear madam, is a public benefactor. He is one of thewisest raisers of Southdown sheep the country knows. He's a splendid oldfellow, too. I've visited his farm and met him. He's awfully fond ofchildren."