3stalwarts by Unknown Read Free Book Online Page A

awhile, her dark eyes anxious.
    “Gil,” she said.
    He stopped, leaving the axe driven, and turned round. His head and neck were covered with sweat and sweat drops ran slowly down his arms. The sun beating down on the newly uncovered ground brought forth a suffocating, tindery smell, as if it might start the firing of itself at any minute.
    He stood for a moment looking out on his work. With what he already had cleared, he could see in his mind’s eye the first beginnings of a farm taking shape. Next year his present patch of corn would go to wheat. Two years from now, he ought to have eight acres sown to wheat. Once a farm could produce a hundred bushel of wheat the farmer had got past the dangerous years. He could begin to count on a yearly income of around two hundred dollars. He could then consider building him a barn. From where he stood, Gil saw where he would build his barn against the slope. A sidehill barn. It was going to be a great place to pasture stock in. Later they would plan on building a framed house.
    But women, he knew, put stock in board walls and a board floor. And Lana deserved a house. When he had married her, he hadn’t considered such things, or the fact that she would have to be left here on muster day. There were a lot of things to being married he hadn’t considered at all.
    She said again, “Gil!” quite sharply.
    In her work clothes, with her slim legs bare and her dark hair in a braid down her back, she looked light enough for him to raise her with one hand around her waist, like a daisy stem.
    She stamped her foot and the dust powdered her ankle.
    “Speak to me! Don’t stand there staring like a crazy man gone deaf! What’s on your mind?”
    “I was just thinking how the place would look, in five years from now.”
    He looked so sheepish that she laughed. “I’ll bet you were thinking about a barn and the cows in it.”
    “Horses. And I was thinking how long it would seem to you before it would be right for me to build you a decent house.”
    “What’s the matter with the cabin? Don’t it look nice?”
    “It does. But I thought you’d probably be hankering for a house.”
    “Well,” said Lana, “I probably will be. But that doesn’t mean you’ve got to moon about it so. When I get discontented I’ll let you know it fast enough.” She sat against the bevel of a stump. “What did Mr. Demooth actually say?”
    “Just about what I told her. He said I ought to go down. I told him I wanted to stay. It does seem kind of hard.” He repeated everything the captain had said.
    “Who’s this Blue Back?” she asked.
    “He’s an old Indian. Once in a while he stops with me.”
    “It’s a funny name.”
    “Yes, it is. If he ever comes round when I’m out, you treat him nice, Lana.”
    “Of course,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I?”
    “Well, you know how Indians is.”
    “You mean drunk.”
    “No, he don’t drink much. For an Indian.”
    He glanced at her.
    “You won’t be scared, being left here?”
    “No.”
    “You could pass the time with Mrs. Weaver.”
    “Maybe I will or go to Reall’s. But I’ll get back to have your supper.”
    “You wait for me at Weaver’s. No telling when we get back,” he said. “If I got time, maybe I’ll fetch you something from the store.”
    She laughed.
    “Me. I don’t need anything. Lord! You’re kind of silly about me still, aren’t you?”
    “I’m just about crazy,” he said, grinning.
    “This isn’t time to start that kind of business,” she said. “What do you want me to do, now?”
    “If you mean work, you could drag the lopped branches so the tops lay on the logs.”
    She set to work. The tree trunks lay where they had fallen almost end to end, sometimes overlapping. She dragged the lopped branches so that they lay over the trunks, the tops all pointing eastward to favor the pre-vailing west winds of fall, when the burning would take place.
    They didn’t talk. The dust and the heat choked them both. But