Windy Hilltop

By Ezra J. Poulsen

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Chapter 3

Joe opened his eyes and stared unbelievingly at Anne, standing near his bed. “How – when – did you come?” he gasped.

Anne bent over and kissed him. “Never mind, dear. I’ve come; that’s all that matters.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said weakly, “I didn’t get you away from there before this happened. It must be terrible for you out there alone with the kiddies. Della was right. I should never have taken you away from town in the beginning. I’m glad you came. I want you to get Hadfield to take over. He can have the crop for anything he wants to give. You bring the children and come back to your mother’s at once. I’ll be out again in a couple of months – I hope.”

“Joe, will you please stop talking. Why, you’re feverish,” cried Anne, drawing a chair close to his bed in the little white hospital room. “I’m the farmer, now, dear, and I’m turning nothing over to Hadfield. What I’m anxious about is what have you turned over to him?”

Joe looked confused. “Well, honey, I agreed to take what he offered. I could see I had to let the place go, and he was the only one who would give me anything.” Joe’s face clouded, and he struggled to lift his head. “Say, has he been bothering you?”

Anne smiled. “Not exactly, but he’s going to. He says he gave you a down payment, and now he wants me to leave everything.”

“Oh, yes, the check. I’ve never cashed it.”

“Can we manage to get along without it?”

“You know better than I do, dear.”

“Well, we can!” Anne made up her mind instantly, and felt new strength. “Forgive me, dear, for being so impatient. I know now that I don’t want to sell the homestead. I’ve learned to love it.” Tears and smiles lighted Anne’s sensitive face at the same moment, and she struggled under a great emotion.

“Darling!” exclaimed Joe, “do you really mean it?” He tried again to raise himself so that he could look squarely into her sparkling eyes to make sure he had not heard wrong. “I know I can make it worth while – if you’ll stay a little longer.” Suddenly, he fell back on his pillow weakly. “But Hadfield’ll never let it go,” he murmured in a tone of stark disillusionment.

Anne threw herself down by him, and broke into sobs. “I’m sorry, so sorry, dear. It’s my fault.”

Back on the homestead in a few days she took up her task again. The heat and drought of the late summer were forcing the wheat toward maturity, yet at the same time driving the ravenous squirrels down from the hills and the fly-pestered cattle along the sagging fences. Fighting the squirrels and keeping back the cattle were like fighting a war.

Anne tried to carry out the analogy in her own mind. For the life of her she had never been able to picture the tremendous clashes of two opposing armies. But she did understand, now, the meaning of struggle against elemental forces in nature, and she was learning the strategy of combat. She could leave Dick and Betsy playing in the dry creek bed while she lugged a heavy bucket of poisoned oats around the wheat field, criss-crossing through it a half dozen times until her body was wet with perspiration, and her mouth was as dry as cotton. She could also set a broken fence post, tie and tighten a broken strand of barbed wire, even drive the cattle back over the ridge, yelling at them until she was hoarse. She could do all this, and more, at the same time worrying lest a snake or a porcupine molest her chickens or her children.

Then, there was Joe lying in the hospital. The latest reports indicated he might have to have another operation on one of his legs.

She often found relief in tears, but she also smiled bravely, and inwardly rejoiced over the discovery of hidden strength in her own nature. She laughed and joked with Dickie and Betsy, and made up whimsical little games by which she turned their daily duties into play. She even laughed at her hard, blistered hands and brown face. “What would Della say now,” she wondered.

Suddenly Joe started to write regularly. He had his arm and one of his legs out of the cast, and what was even more wonderful, the threatened second operation was not going to be necessary.

“Just a little longer,” he declared, “and I’ll be out. Then, you’re going to have it easy the rest of your life. I’m already dickering again for the house I hoped to get in the first place,. My first act is going to be to get you into it.”

She wrote back, without mentioning the house: “I went up to the top of the hill last night, and let the breeze blow in my face for an hour, while I thought of you and watched the lights come on in the valley. Oh, how I wished you were here.”

A week before the grain was ready to cut, Hadfield rounded up a bunch of his hungry cattle and put them in his dry pasture above the Raines homestead. Anne woke at dawn to hear the defiant bellowing of a range bull. Before she was out of bed, the crashing of a post, and the whining of tight wires, giving way before the impact of heavy bodies, smote her ears. She sprang to her feet and ran outside. At least twenty head of hungry cattle were fanning out at the top of the wheat field, tearing it up in great bunches with their huge mouths, and trampling it under foot, while a score of others were coming over the ridge, bent on similar destruction.

“Whoo-oo-oo,” she cried running up the hill. Halfway through the wheat, she felt her lungs burning from the exertion, but she kept on. “Whoo-oo-oo,” she cried again, nearing the first animal. “Get out of here! Sic ‘em, get out of here!” Whirling her hat in her hand, she attacked the animal with a fury that made her feel capable of tearing it to pieces with her bare hands, but the bovine giant merely ran a few paces and turned to look at her with oxlike stolidity, as if wondering if she were some new kind of fly or other nuisance. She ran at another of the animals, shouting and clapping her hands. But they merely circled around in the grain, tearing more of it up with their great mouths and wallowing more under their feet. Others were pouring in along the edge of the wheat.

Anne’s temples throbbed, her heartbeat choked her, and she realized with sudden terror that she was on the verge of collapse. But she couldn’t stop. Something had to be done. She wished blindly she had the power to wave her arm and strike this terrific mass of invading power dead with a single stroke. She was in the midst of the milling herd now, but danger to herself never came to her mind. Once she would have been frightened to death at the mere presence of these wild, relentless animals, but at the moment, she was aware only of the havoc they were doing to her precious wheat. She was thinking of the hard work Joe had done, plowing, harrowing and planting it. She remembered the night he had come down to the corral with the drill after finishing the last round. He was as black as a negro, she had said, but as light-hearted as a schoolboy, and she had gone out to met him in one of her most dissatisfied moods.

“Whoo-oo-oo,” she cried. “Get out of here!”

Suddenly, the cattle stirred uneasily, as if the very desperation of her efforts had at last stricken them with fear. In a moment they began moving back out of the grain, starting at first slowly, then breaking into a run. Then, for the first time Anne realized a dog was barking, and nipping savagely at their heels. A man’s voice, too, broke upon the morning stillness, echoing along the ridge like shrill thunder. She saw him ride down the gully, jumping his horse over the sagging wires, and circling around the remnants of the cattle with amazing speed.

Of course it was Hadfield. “Confound it!” he yelled, “I’ll be glad when yuh get this wheat cut. We’ll have nothing but trouble, now they’ve found it.” He passed in a flash of speed. This long-limbed, hawk-like man in a broad-brimmed hat, and high-heeled boots, seemed like a character riding directly out of the pages of an adventure story. How could anyone cope with him? Anne drew her arm over her hot, perspiring face and sank down on a boulder.

A few minutes later, she was aware he had come back. “When’ll Joe be home?” Hadfield demanded.

“I – I – don’t know.” She looked up, half admiring Hadfield’s magnificent strength. She could never have driven the cattle out, alone.

“Thanks for helping me,” she murmured.

“I’ll fix the fence,” he replied, not unkindly.

Anne was numb with weariness when she started down through the wheat, and the morning sunshine was directly in her face. She was nearly down to the house, therefore, before she realized a car had driven up. then, seeing Dickie and Betsy running from the house, she realized it was Della; and by the time she could bring all her tired faculties to bear on the scene, she not only saw Della, but also Joe getting out of the car.

Then she found herself running again, her weariness forgotten. He came toward her with the help of his cane.

“Oh, Joe, Joe, darling, I’m so glad!” she cried, almost collapsing in his arms.

“Sweetheart,” he murmured, holding her tightly. “This has been terrible for you. But it’s all over now. I’ve bargained for the place in town. We’re going to move.”

Anne braced herself with sudden alertness. “But darling, the wheat’s got to be cut. I’ve arranged for the headers to come next week. Then of course you know we’ve got to thresh. Besides there’s a lot of stuff in the garden yet to dig. Why, we’ve got enough food to last us all winter.”

“Honey, I saw you chasing those cattle when we were down in the valley, and I knew what a killing ordeal you were having. I’ve tried it myself. And I said to Della, then, ‘Sis, you’re right, the meanest thing I ever did as to bring Anne out to this forsaken place.’” Joe’s voice quivered.

“But, dear, you’re here now. Everything’ll be easy. I don’t want to leave, not yet. Our job isn’t finished here. I’m a changed woman, Joe; I’ve learned to see so many things your way.”

“And I’ve learned to see things your way,” protested Joe. “I guess it was just stupid of me to get so attached to this place.”

They began to follow Della and the children to the house, but before they had gone many steps, they were aware of Hadfield riding into the yard.

“Hello, Joe,” he said. “I’m glad to see you back, and I want to tell you this little wife of yours has sure looked after things.” Hadfield leaned on the horn of his saddle and looked down into their serious faces. “I hope your legs are all right.”

“They’ll be as good as ever in a few more weeks,” replied Joe.

“Well, how about the deal?” Hadfield came to the point.

“Oh, yes, the deal for the place. Well, honestly, Mr. Hadfield, we’ve decided not to sell for the present, but we’ll still give you a chance if we decide to later,” replied Joe, reaching the decision so quickly he was half-afraid, and looked at Anne to see if she approved.

“That’s right,” said Anne. “We’re going to make ever so many improvements first, however, so we can get a good price for it.”

Hadfield’s face clouded. “I’ve already made a payment on it, you know.”

“Oh, yes, the check.” Joe fumbled in his pocket, and finally produced the one evidence of the sale. “Here it is. You see, I didn’t cash it. I was able to make other arrangements for my hospital bill.”

He held it up, but Anne took it, and tore it to bits. “Mr. Hadfield doesn’t want it. His money’s all in the bank and everybody’s happy.” Anne laughed impudently, then hysterically, but in a moment she was crying again. “You won’t try to hold us to it, will you?”

The scowl on Hadfield’s hawk-like face broadened into a grin. “You win,” he said. “Good luck.”

The sporting wind was cool and soothing when Anne and Joe reached the hilltop to watch the sun go down, and a lone hawk was spreading his wings to cut a true course directly against the current. Hand in hand, they stood silent against the benediction of the sky, surrounded by the vast solitude.

“How often I pictured this place in my mind when I was lying in the hospital,” Joe said reflectively.

“And were unhappy to think of losing it,” prompted Anne.

Joe grinned. “Yes, I admit it.”

They surveyed their rough acres, partly subdued by their toil, and a mutual pride of achievement possessed them. “Darling,” said Anne, “as soon as you were hurt, and I started to feel responsible, I began to love everything here, and with you gone, I began to realize how it bound us together.”

Fervently, he drew her to him. “Dear, you are wonderful. I don’t believe any other man ever had such a heroic little wife. And because of that, your little cottage in town is still going to come true.”

She looked up questioningly.

“We’re about the last of the homesteaders, and we can be thankful to have had such an opportunity. This humble heritage should always be ours and our children’s. I have a good trade, and there are still other things I can do in the winter. And, you know, we don’t owe anything on this place.”

Anne caught the vision instantly. “What wonderful summers we’ll have here while the children are growing up, and what grand things we’ll raise to eat. All our friends in town will be jealous because we have a country home and a city home, too.” She laughed as the wind blew her golden hair in wisps about her face. Looking up, she saw the hawk make a magnificent dive into the wind.

“Our wings are set right,” she murmured, putting her lips up to be kissed.

(The End)