The Wind Before the Dawn. Dell H. Munger
when her father came from the stable, slipped out to where he was washing for supper and whispered about the flax, asking him not to mention it while her mother was suffering with the headache.
The news was not news to Josiah Farnshaw, who had examined the field anxiously as he had returned from Hansen’s. Sobered by the loss, he was less disagreeable than usual and only pushed his daughter out of his way as he reached around her for the sun-cracked bar of yellow laundry soap with which to wash his hands. Thankful to have the unpleasant but important matter, as she thought, safely attended to, the child returned to help lift the meal to the bare kitchen table.
The illy lighted room, with its one small window, was dim and dismal in the dusk of evening. In spite of the added heat it would produce, the child decided that a light was necessary.
After the kerosene lamp was lighted, she turned to see if her mother needed her help again. The crooked blaze ran up unexpectedly and blacked the cracked chimney on one side with a soot so thick that one half of the room was soon in semi-darkness. Mrs. Farnshaw took it fretfully in hand.
“Why can’t you trim it when you see it runnin’ up that way?” she demanded querulously, poking at the lopsided and deeply charred wick with a sliver obtained from the side of the wood-box.
Her ministrations were not very successful, however, for when the chimney was replaced it ran up on the other side, and in the end her daughter had to prosecute a search for the scissors and cut the wick properly. As they worked over the ill-smelling light, Albert, the youngest of the three children of the household, burst into the kitchen crying excitedly:
“Ma, did you know that th’ flax was all whipped out of th’ pods on to the ground?”
Mrs. Farnshaw, who had received the lamp from her daughter’s hand, let it fall on the edge of an upturned plate in her excitement, and then, seeing what she had done, fumbled blindly in a terrified effort to right it before it should go over. The cracked chimney fell from its moorings, and, striking a teacup, spattered broken glass over the table like hailstones. The entire family scrambled to save the lamp itself from a similar fate and were plunged into darkness by the girl blowing out its flame to save an explosion.
The excitement of the moment served, temporarily, to lessen the blow of Albert’s announcement, but by the time “a dip” had been constructed the full weight of the disaster had fallen upon the defeated and despairing woman, and to protect her from the taunts of the head of the house, Lizzie induced her to go to bed, where she sobbed throughout the night.
The next day was hot and windy. The grasshoppers, unable to fly in a strong wind, clung to the weeds, to the dry grass, the stripped branches of the half-grown trees, to the cattle and hogs upon which they happened to alight, and even to people themselves, unless brushed off.
Lizzie took the cattle out to the usual grazing ground, but there was no Luther to help, and the grasshoppers made the lives of the restless animals so unendurable that in real alarm, lest they run away again, she took them home, preferring her father’s wrath to the experience of getting them back if they should get beyond her control. Fortune favoured her. Unable to endure the demonstrations of grief at home, her father had taken himself to a distant neighbour’s to discuss the “plague of locusts.”
The wind blew a gale throughout the day, sweeping remorselessly over the unobstructed hillsides. Unable to fly, the helpless insects hugged the earth while the gale tore over the Kansas prairies with a fearful velocity. With feminine instinct, every female grasshopper burrowed into the dry earth, making a hole which would receive almost her entire body back of her wings and legs. The spring sod, half rotted and loosened from the grass roots, furnished the best lodgment. In each hole, as deep down as her body could reach, her pouch of eggs was deposited.
No attempt was made to cover the hole, and by night the sod presented a honeycombed appearance never before seen by the oldest settlers. Having performed nature’s functions, and provided for the propagation of their kind, the lately fecund grasshoppers were hungry when the act was over. Not a spear of anything green was left. The travel-worn horde had devoured everything in sight the day before. Evening closed in upon a restless and excited swarm of starving insects, but they were unable to fly at night or while the wind was blowing.
It was necessary to find food; hunger’s pangs may not be suffered long by creatures whose active life is numbered in weeks. The high wind had cooled the air and made the locusts stupid and sleepy, but when the next morning the wind had fallen, and the sun had warmed their bodies, as fast as they were able all were on the wing, headed for the north. The air was calm, and by ten o’clock they were away in swarms, leaving ruin and desolation to show that they had sojourned in the land.
The situation was truly desperate. Cattle, horses, and hogs were without food of any sort. Many families were new to the country and had depended upon sod-corn for the winter’s supply of provender for both man and beast. Mr. Farnshaw, being one of the older residents, had grown a crop of wheat, so that his bread was assured; but the herd of cattle which had been his delight was now a terrorizing burden. Cattle and horses could not live on wheat, and there was no hay because of the dry weather. What was to be done?
That night the neighbours held a consultation at the Farnshaw house, where grizzled and despairing men discussed the advisability of “goin’ East,” and ways and means of getting there. The verdict was strongly in favour of going.
Mrs. Farnshaw brightened. Perhaps, after all, she would get away from these wind-blown prairies, where no shade offered its protecting presence against a sun which took life and spirits out of the pluckiest of them. Even more childish than the daughter at her side, Mrs. Farnshaw clapped her hands with joy as she leaned forward expectantly to address her new neighbour.
“If I can only get t’ my mother’s, I won’t care for nothin’ after that. My heart goes out t’ Mrs. Crane. Think of all that good money goin’ t’ them Swedes! You just better pocket your loss an’ get away while you can.”
“You’re goin’ too, then, Farnshaw?” the new neighbour asked.
All eyes turned upon Mr. Farnshaw, who had not as yet expressed himself on either side. These neighbours had asked to assemble in his house because his kitchen afforded more room than any other house in the vicinity, the kitchen being a large room with no beds in it to take up floor space.
Mrs. Farnshaw realized as soon as the question was asked that her joy had been premature.
Josiah Farnshaw sat with his chair tilted back on two legs against the wall, snapping the blade of his pocket knife back and forth as he considered what he was going to say in reply. He felt all eyes turned in his direction and quite enjoyed the suspense. Mr. Farnshaw was an artist in calculating the suspense of others. He gave them plenty of time to get their perspective before he replied. At last he shut the blade of the knife down ostentatiously, replaced it in his trousers’ pocket, and announced slowly:
“Well, sir, as for me and mine, I think we’ll stay right here.”
Mrs. Farnshaw gave a despairing, “Oh!” and covered her face with her hands to strangle back her tears. Her one hope had been that poverty would accomplish what the flax had failed to do.
“Why—I thought you said there’d be nothin’ t’ feed an’ you’d have t’,” said a man whose shaggy whiskers had not seen a comb that year. “What’ll you do? You can’t see things starve!”
“I thought you was strong for goin’. What’ll you do with all your stock?” another said, and all bent forward and waited for his answer as if he could find a way out of the tangle for them.
“That’s just it.” Again he paused, enjoying the suspense that his silence created. Mr. Farnshaw was not popular, but he had more stock than all his simple neighbours put together and was conscious that money, or its equivalent, had weight. “That’s just it,” he repeated to add emphasis to his opinion. “What is a man to do? You folks that have nothin’ but your teams an’ wagons can load th’ family in an’ get away. How’d I feel ’bout th’ time that I got t’ th’ Missouri River