Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 444
This day Kurt Dorn was gripped by the unknown. Some far-off instinct of future drove him, set his spiritual need, and made him register with his senses all that was so beautiful and good and heroic in the scene about him.
Strangely, now and then a thought of Lenore Anderson entered his mind and made sudden havoc. It tended to retard action. He trembled and thrilled with a realization that every hour brought closer the meeting he could not avoid. And he discovered that it was whenever this memory recurred that he had to leave off his present task and rush to another. Only thus could he forget her.
The late afternoon found him feeding sheaves of wheat to one of the steam-threshers. He stood high upon a platform and pitched sheaves from the wagons upon the sliding track of the ponderous, rattling threshing-machine. The engine stood off fifty yards or more, connected by an endless driving-belt to the thresher. Here indeed were whistle and roar and whir, and the shout of laborers, and the smell of smoke, sweat, dust, and wheat. Kurt had arms of steel. If they tired he never knew it. He toiled, and he watched the long spout of chaff and straw as it streamed from the thresher to lift, magically, a glistening, ever-growing stack. And he felt, as a last and cumulative change, his physical effort, and the physical adjuncts of the scene, pass into something spiritual, into his heart and his memory.
The end of that harvest-time came as a surprise to Kurt. Obsessed with his own emotions, he had actually helped to cut the wheat and harvest it; he had seen it go swath by swath, he had watched the huge wagons lumber away and the huge straw-stacks rise without realizing that the hours of this wonderful harvest were numbered.
Sight of Olsen coming in from across the field, and the sudden cessation of roar and action, made Kurt aware of the end. It seemed a calamity. But Olsen was smiling through his dust-caked face. About him were relaxation, an air of finality, and a subtle pride.
“We’re through,” he said. “She tallies thirty-eight thousand, seven hundred an’ forty-one bushels. It’s too bad the old man couldn’t live to hear that.”
Olsen gripped Kurt’s hand and wrung it.
“Boy, I reckon you ought to take that a little cheerfuller,” he went on. “But — well it’s been a hard time.… The men are leavin’ now. In two hours the last wagons will unload at the railroad. The wheat will all be in the warehouse. An’ our worry’s ended.”
“I — I hope so,” responded Kurt. He seemed overcome with the passionate longing to show his gratitude to Olsen. But the words would not flow. “I — I don’t know how to thank you.… All my life—”
“We beat the I.W.W.,” interposed the farmer, heartily. “An’ now what’ll you do, Dorn?”
“Why, I’ll hustle to Kilo, get my money, send you a check for yourself and men, pay off the debt to Anderson, and then—”
But Kurt did not conclude his speech. His last words were thought-provoking.
“It’s turned out well,” said Olsen, with satisfaction, and, shaking hands again with Kurt, he strode back to his horses.
At last the wide, sloping field was bare, except for the huge straw-stacks. A bright procession lumbered down the road, led by the long strings of wagons filled with brown bags. A strange silence had settled down over the farm. The wheat was gone. That waving stretch of gold had fallen to the thresher and the grain had been hauled away. The neighbors had gone, leaving Kurt rich in bushels of wheat, and richer for the hearty farewells and the grips of horny hands. Kurt’s heart was full.
It was evening. Kurt had finished his supper. Already he had packed a few things to take with him on the morrow. He went out to the front of the house. Stars were blinking. There was a low hum of insects from the fields. He missed the soft silken rustle of the wheat. And now it seemed he could sit there in the quiet darkness, in that spot which had been made sweet by Lenore Anderson’s presence, and think of her, the meeting soon to come. The feeling abiding with him then must have been happiness, because he was not used to it. Without deserving anything, he had asked a great deal of fate, and, lo! it had been given him. All was well that ended well. He realized now the terrible depths of despair into which he had allowed himself to be plunged. He had been weak, wrong, selfish. There was something that guided events.
He needed to teach himself all this, with strong and repeated force, so that when he went to give Lenore Anderson the opportunity to express her gratitude, to see her sweet face again, and to meet the strange, warm glance of her blue eyes, so mysterious and somehow mocking, he could be a man of restraint, of pride, like any American, like any other college man she knew. This was no time for a man to leave a girl bearing a burden of his unsolicited love, haunted, perhaps, by a generous reproach that she might have been a little to blame. He had told her the truth, and so far he had been dignified. Now let him bid her good-by, leaving no sorrow for her, and, once out of her impelling presence, let come what might come. He could love her then; he could dare what he had never dared; he could surrender himself to the furious, insistent sweetness of a passion that was sheer bliss in its expression. He could imagine kisses on the red lips that were not for him.
A husky shout from somewhere in the rear of the house diverted Kurt’s attention. He listened. It came again. His name! It seemed a strange call from out of the troubled past that had just ended. He hurried through the house to the kitchen. The woman stood holding a lamp, staring at Jerry.
Jerry appeared to have sunk against the wall. His face was pallid, with drops of sweat standing out, with distorted, quivering lower jaw. He could not look at Kurt. He could not speak. With shaking hand he pointed toward the back of the house.
Filled with nameless dread, Kurt rushed out. He saw nothing unusual, heard nothing. Rapidly he walked out through the yard, and suddenly he saw a glow in the sky above the barns. Then he ran, so that he could get an unobstructed view of the valley.
The instant he obtained this he halted as if turned to stone. The valley was a place of yellow light. He stared. With the wheat-fields all burned, what was the meaning of such a big light? That broad flare had a center, low down on the valley floor. As he gazed a monstrous flame leaped up, lighting colossal pillars of smoke that swirled upward, and showing plainer than in day the big warehouse and lines of freight-cars at the railroad station, eight miles distant.
“My God!” gasped Kurt. “The warehouse — my wheat — on fire!”
Clear and unmistakable was the horrible truth. Kurt heard the roar of the sinister flames. Transfixed, he stood there, at first hardly able to see and to comprehend. For miles the valley was as light as at noonday. An awful beauty attended the scene. How lurid and sinister the red heart of that fire? How weird and hellish and impressive of destruction those black, mountain-high clouds of smoke! He saw the freight-cars disappear under this fierce blazing and smoking pall. He watched for what seemed endless moments. He saw the changes of that fire, swift and terrible. And only then did Kurt Dorn awaken to the full sense of the calamity.
“All that work — Olsen’s sacrifice — and the farmers’ — my father’s death — all for nothing!” whispered Kurt. “They only waited — those fiends — to fire the warehouse and the cars!”
The catastrophe had fallen. The wheat was burning. He was ruined. His wheatland must go to Anderson. Kurt thought first and most poignantly of the noble farmers who had sacrificed the little in their wheat-fields to save the much in his. Never could he repay them.
Then he became occupied with a horrible heat that seemed to have come from the burning warehouse to all his pulses and veins and to his heart and his soul.
This fiendish work, as had been forecast, was the work of the I.W.W. Behind it was Glidden and perhaps behind him was the grasping, black lust of German might. Kurt’s loss was no longer abstract or problematical. It was a loss so real and terrible that it confounded him. He shook and gasped and reeled. He wrung his hands and beat his breast while the tumult swayed him, the physical hate at last yielding up its significance. What then, was his great loss? He could not tell. The thing was mighty, like the sense of terror and loneliness in the black night. Not the loss for his farmer neighbors, so true in his hour of trial! Not the loss of his father, nor the wheat, nor the land, nor his ruined future! But it must be a loss, incalculable and insupportable, to his soul. His great ordeal had been the need, a terrible and incomprehensible need, to kill something intangible in himself. He had meant to do it. And now the need was shifted, subject to a baser instinct. If there was German blood in him, poisoning the very wells of his heart he could have spilled it, and so, whether living or dead, have repudiated the taint. That was now clear in his consciousness. But a baser spark had ignited all the primitive passion of the forebears he felt burning and driving within him. He felt no noble fire. He longed to live, to have a hundredfold his strength and fury, to be gifted with a genius for time and place and bloody deed, to have the war-gods set him a thousand opportunities, to beat with iron mace and cut with sharp bayonet and rend with hard hand — to kill and kill and kill the hideous thing that was German.
CHAPTER XIV
KURT RUSHED BACK to the house. Encountering Jerry, he ordered him to run and saddle a couple of horses. Then Kurt got his revolver and a box of shells, and, throwing on his coat, he hurried to the barn. Jerry was leading out the horses. It took but short work to saddle them. Jerry was excited and talkative. He asked Kurt many questions, which excited few replies.
When Kurt threw himself into the saddle Jerry yelled, “Which way?”
“Down the trail!” replied Kurt, and was off.
“Aw, we’ll break our necks!” came Jerry’s yell after him.
Kurt had no fear of the dark. He knew that trail almost as well by night as by day. His horse was a mettlesome colt that had not been worked during the harvest, and he plunged down the dim, winding trail as if, indeed, to verify Jerry’s fears. Presently the thin, pale line that was the trail disappeared on the burned wheat-ground. Here Kurt was at fault as to direction, but he did not slacken the pace for that. He heard Jerry pounding along in the rear, trying to catch up. The way the colt jumped ditches and washes and other obstructions proved his keen sight. Kurt let him go. And then the ride became both perilous and thrilling.
Kurt could not see anything on the blackened earth. But he knew from the contour of the hills just about where to expect to reach the fence and the road. And he did not pull the horse too soon. When he found the gate he waited for Jerry, who could be heard calling from the darkness. Kurt answered him.
“Here’s the gate!” yelled Kurt, as Jerry came galloping up. “Good road all the way now!”
“Lickity-cut then!” shouted Jerry to whom the pace had evidently communicated enthusiasm.
The ride then became a race, with Kurt drawing ahead. Kurt could see the road, a broad, pale belt, dividing the blackness on either side; and he urged the colt to a run. The wind cut short Kurt’s breath, beat at his ears, and roared about them. Closer and closer drew the red flare of the dying fire, casting long rays of light into Kurt’s eyes.
The colt was almost run out when he entered the circle of reddish flare. Kurt saw the glowing ruins of the elevators and a long, fiery line of box-cars burned to the wheels. Men were running and shouting round in front of the little railroad station, and several were on the roof with brooms and buckets. The freight-house had burned, and evidently the station itself had been on fire. Across the wide street of the little village the roof of a cottage was burning. Men were on top of it, beating the shingles. Hoarse yells greeted Kurt as he leaped out of the saddle. He heard screams of frightened women. On the other side of the burned box-cars a long, thin column of sparks rose straight upward. Over the ruins of the elevators hung a pall of heavy smoke. Just then Jerry came galloping up, his lean face red in the glow.
“Thet you, Kurt! Say, the sons of guns are burnin’ down the town.” He leaped off. “Lemme have your bridle. I’ll tie the hosses up. Find out what we can do.”
Kurt ran here and there, possessed by impotent rage. The wheat was gone! That fact gave him a hollow, sickening pang. He met farmers he knew. They all threw up their hands at sight of him. Not one could find a voice. Finally he met Olsen. The little wheat farmer was white with passion. He carried a gun.
“Hello, Dorn! Ain’t this hell? They got your wheat!” he said hoarsely.
“Olsen! How’d it happen? Wasn’t anybody set to guard the elevators?”
“Yes. But the I.W.W.’s drove all the guards off but Grimm, an’ they beat him up bad. Nobody had nerve enough to shoot.”
“Olsen, if I run into the Glidden I’ll kill him,” declared Kurt.
“So will I.… But, Dorn, they’re a hard crowd. They’re over there on the side, watchin’ the fire. A gang of them! Soon as I can get the men together we’ll drive them out of town. There’ll be a fight, if I don’t miss my guess.”
“Hurry the men! Have all of them get their guns! Come on!”
“Not yet, Dorn. We’re fightin’ fire yet. You an’ Jerry help all you can.”
Indeed, it appeared there was danger of more than one cottage burning. The exceedingly dry weather of the past weeks had made shingles like tinder, and wherever a glowing spark fell on them there straightway was a smoldering fire. Water, a scarce necessity in that region, had been used until all wells and pumps became dry. It was fortunate that most of the roofs of the little village had been constructed of galvanized iron. Beating out blazes and glowing embers with brooms was not effective enough. When it appeared that the one cottage nearest the rain of sparks was sure to go, Kurt thought of the railroad watertank below the station. He led a number of men with buckets to the tank, and they soon drowned out the smoldering places.
Meanwhile the blazes from the box-cars died out, leaving only the dull glow from the red heap that had once been the elevators. However, this gave forth light enough for any one to be seen a few rods distant. Sparks had ceased to fall, and from that source no further danger need be apprehended. Olsen had been going from man to man, sending those who were not armed home for guns. So it came about that half an hour after Kurt’s arrival a score of farmers, villagers, and a few railroaders were collected in a group, listening to the pale-faced Olsen.
“Men, there’s only a few of us, an’ there’s hundreds, mebbe, in thet I.W.W. gang, but we’ve got to drive them off,” he said, doggedly. “There’s no tellin’ what they’ll do if we let them hang around any longer. They know we’re weak in numbers. We’ve got to do some shootin’ to scare them away.”
Kurt seconded Olsen in ringing voice.
“They’ve threatened your homes,” he said. “They’ve burned my wheat — ruined me. They were the death of my father.… These are facts I’m telling you. We can’t wait for law or for militia. We’ve got to meet this I.W.W. invasion. They have taken advantage of the war situation. They’re backed by German agents. It’s now a question of our property. We’ve got to fight!”
The crowd made noisy and determined response. Most of them had small weapons; a few had shot-guns or rifles.
“Come on, men,” called Olsen. “I’ll do the talkin’. An’ if I say shoot, why, you shoot!”
It was necessary to go around the long line of box-cars. Olsen led the way, with Kurt just back of him. The men spoke but little and in whispers. At the left end of the line the darkness was thick enough to make objects indistinct.
Once around the corner, Kurt plainly descried a big dark crowd of men whose faces showed red in the glow of the huge pile of embers which was all that remained of the elevators. They did not see Olsen’s men.
“Hold on,” whispered Olsen. “If we get in a fight here we’ll be in a bad place. We’ve nothin’ to hide behind. Let’s go off — more to the left — an’ come up behind those freight-cars on the switches. That’ll give us cover an’ we’ll have the I.W.W.’s in the light.”
So he led off to the left, keeping in the shadow, and climbed between several lines of freight-cars, all empty, and finally came out behind the I.W.W.’s. Olsen led to within fifty yards of them, and was halted by some observant member of the gang who sat with the others on top of a flat-car.
This man’s yell stilled the coarse talk and laughter of the gang.
“What’s that?” shouted a cold, clear voice with authority in it.
Kurt thought he recognized the voice, and it caused a bursting, savage sensation in his blood.
“Here’s a bunch of farmers with guns!” yelled the man from the flat-car.
Olsen halted his force near one of the detached lines of box-cars, which he probably meant to take advantage of in case of a fight.
“Hey, you I.W.W.’s!” he shouted, with all his might.
There was a moment’s silence.
“There’s no I.W.W.’s here,” replied the authoritative voice.
Kurt was sure now that he recognized Glidden’s voice. Excitement and anger then gave place to deadly rage.
“Who are you?” yelled Olsen.
“We’re tramps watchin’ the fire,” came the reply.
“You set that fire!”
“No, we didn’t.”
Kurt motioned Olsen to be silent, as with lifting breast he took an involuntary step forward.
“Glidden, I know you!” he shouted, in hard, quick tones. “I’m Kurt Dorn. I’ve met you. I know your voice.… Take your gang — get out of here — or we’ll kill you!”
This pregnant speech caused a blank dead silence. Then came a white flash, a sharp report. Kurt heard the thud of a bullet striking some one near him. The man cried out, but did not fall.
