Eric Hermannson was helping Jerry Lockhart thresh; a week earlier or
a week later, and there would have been no story to write.
It was on Thursday and they were to leave on Saturday. Wyllis and
his sister were sitting on the wide piazza of the ranchhouse,
staring out into the afternoon sunlight and protesting against the
gusts of hot wind that blew up from the sandy river-bottom twenty
miles to the southward.
The young man pulled his cap lower over his eyes and remarked:
“This wind is the real thing; you don’t strike it anywhere else. You
remember we had a touch of it in Algiers and I told you it came from
Kansas. It’s the key-note of this country.”
Wyllis touched her hand that lay on the hammock and continued
gently:
“I hope it’s paid you, Sis. Roughing it’s dangerous business; it
takes the taste out of things.”
She shut her fingers firmly over the brown hand that was so like her
own.
“Paid? Why, Wyllis, I haven’t been so happy since we were children
and were going to discover the ruins of Troy together some day. Do
you know, I believe I could just stay on here forever and let the
world go on its own gait. It seems as though the tension and strain
we used to talk of last winter were gone for good, as though one
could never give one’s strength out to such petty things any more.”
Wyllis brushed the ashes of his pipe away from the silk handkerchief
that was knotted about his neck and stared moodily off at the
sky-line.
“No, you’re mistaken. This would bore you after a while. You can’t
shake the fever of the other life. I’ve tried it. There was a time
when the gay fellows of Rome could trot down into the Thebaid and
burrow into the sandhills and get rid of it. But it’s all too
complex now. You see we’ve made our dissipations so dainty and
respectable that they’ve gone further in than the flesh, and taken
hold of the ego proper. You couldn’t rest, even here. The war-cry
would follow you.”
“You don’t waste words, Wyllis, but you never miss fire. I talk more
than you do, without saying half so much. You must have learned the
art of silence from these taciturn Norwegians. I think I like silent
men.”
“Naturally,” said Wyllis, “since you have decided to marry the most
brilliant talker you know.”
Both were silent for a time, listening to the sighing of the hot
wind through the parched morning-glory vines. Margaret spoke first.
“Tell me, Wyllis, were many of the Norwegians you used to know as
interesting as Eric Hermannson?”
“Who, Siegfried? Well, no. He used to be the flower of the Norwegian
youth in my day, and he’s rather an exception, even now. He has
retrograded, though. The bonds of the soil have tightened on him, I
fancy.”
“Siegfried? Come, that’s rather good, Wyllis. He looks like a
dragon-slayer. What is it that makes him so different from the
