At noon,a wilderness,at night,a land of tents,and on the morrow,a settled country of furrowed fields.Pioneer work is awful quick,nowadays!grumbled Bill Atkins,as Brick concluded.It wasn't so in my time.Up there in the Oklahoma country,fifty years have been squeezed into a week's time--it's like a magician making a seed grow and sprout and blossom right before the audience.Lucky I came to Greer County,Texas--I don't guess IT'LL ever be anything but sand and a blow.
It's a great story,Brick declared with enthusiasm.I reckon it's the greatest story that America can put out,in the pioneering line.There they had everything in twenty-four hours that used to wear out our ancestors:Injuns,unbroken land,no sign of life for hundreds of miles--and just a turn of the hand and cities is a-coming up out of the ground,and saloons and churches is rubbing shoulders,and there's talk of getting out newspapers.What do you think of it,honey?
Lahoma was sitting in grave silence,her hands clasped in her lap.She turned slowly and looked at Willock.Brick,I'm disappointed.
Which?asked Willock,somewhat taken aback.Where?In him--in Wilfred.
As how so?
Going into that wilderness-life,instead of taking his place in the world!
Well,honey if he hadn't come to THIS wilderness,you'd never of saw him.
Yes--but he wasn't settled,and now he's settled in it.Is that the way to be a man?There's all those other people to do the thing he's doing.Then what's the use of him?
Ain't we in the same box?
Yes,and that's why I mean to get out of it,some day.But it's different with him.He's chosen his box,and gone in,and shut the lid on himself!I'm disappointed in him.I've been thinking him a real man.I guess I'm still to see what I'm looking for,added Lahoma,shaking her head.
We'll let it go at that,muttered Bill who was anxious to turn Lahoma's mind from thoughts of Wilfred.We'll just go ahead and look for new prospects.
Not till I make a remark,said Willock,laying aside his pipe.Honey,do yon know what I mean by a vision?It calls for a big vision to take in a big person,and you ain't got it.Maybe it wasn't meant for women,or at least a girl of fifteen to see further than her own foot-tracks,so no blame laid and nobody judged,according.If you don't see nothing in that army of settlers going into a raw land and falling to work to make it bloom like the rose,a-setting out to live in solitude for years that in due time the world may be richer by a great territory,why,you ain't got a big vision.I've got it,for I was born in the West,and I've lived all my life,peaceable and calm,right out here or hereabouts.You've got to breathe western air to get the big vision.You've got to see towns rise out of the turf over night and bust into cities before the harvest-fields is ripe,to know what can be did when men is free,not hampered by set-and-bound rules as holds 'em down to the ways of their fathers.Back East,folks is straining themselves to make over,and improve,and polish up what they found ready-to-hand--but here out West,we creates.It takes a big vision to see the bigness of the West,and you can't get no true idee by squinting at the subject.
Lahoma did not reply,and Bill feared that under the conviction of her friend's eloquence,she had begun to idealize the efforts of Wilfred Compton.He need not have been afraid.To her imagination,big peoplewere not living in dugouts,or tents,far from civilization;big peoplewere going to the opera every night,and riding in splendid carriages along imposing boulevards every day.Brick and Bill had contrived to live as well as they desired from profits on skins obtained in the mountains and the small tract of ground they had cultivated in a desultory manner had done little beyond supplying themselves with vegetables and the horses with some extra feed.She had no great opinion of agriculture;and though she had taken part in planting and hoeing with a pleasurable zest,she had never entertained herself with the thought that she was engaged in a great work.As to dugouts,they had no place in her dreams of the future.Since Wilfred had chosen to handicap himself with the same limitations that bound her,even the thought of him was to be banished from her world,banished absolutely.
Her day-dreams did not cease,but became more dreamy,more unreal,since the hero of her fancies,for whom she now had no flesh-and-blood prototype,was suggested only by her moods and her books.As the sun-clear days of maidenhood melted imperceptibly into summer glow and winter spaces,the memory of Wilfred's face and voice sometimes surprised her at unexpected turns of solitary musings.But the face grew less defined,the voice lost its distinctive tone,as the years passed uninterruptedly by.
I reckon it ain't right,said Brick Willock to Bill Atkins as they went one morning to examine their traps before Lahoma was astir,to keep our little gal to ourselves as we're doing.You're getting old,Bill,awful old--
Well,damn it,growled Bill,I guess I don't have to be told!
You ain't very long for this world,Bill,not in the ordinary course of nature.And when I've laid you to rest under the rock-pile,Lahoma ain't going to find the variety in me that she now has in the two of us.Besides which,I'm in the fifties myself,and them is halves of hundreds.
Yes,Bill growled,and give Lahoma time,she'll die,too.Nothing but the mountain'll be left to look out on the plains.Lord,Brick,who do you reckon'll be living in that cove,when we three are dead and gone?
Guess I'll be worrying about something else,then.
Do you reckon,pursued Bill,in an unwonted tone of mellowness,that those who come to live in our dugout will ever imagine what happy hours we've passed there,just sitting around quiet and enjoying ourselves and one another?
