Letters from an Oregon Ranch/Chapter 20
XX
I really can’t remember when I last wrote home, but I think it was before the worst of our rainy season, as during the greater part of that time we were hibernating, sunk in a lethargy too profound to be disturbed by overflowing pigeon-holes of unanswered letters. Our winter was a medley of rain, snow, hail, landslides, and floods,—amazing even to the oldest inhabitant, who promptly remarked that he had “seen nothing like it for twenty-five years.” We had fifty-two successive days and nights of rain, with frequent dashes of snow and hail between showers; yet we remained reasonably calm, though the Noahs, I believe, took to the ark after a little dash of forty days.
The Winter rains were expected, and were even enjoyed; it was their continuance so far into the Spring that palled on us. The last four weeks it rained steadily without variation. Day after day we saw the same drab sky, the same gray rain dolefully slanting across the glen, veiling the hills and shutting out the world,—a monotony that not only depressed but stupefied.
All this surplus rain-water, together with that caused by the melting of the snow in the mountains, produced fearful high waters and floods. And really I was half glad of it,—glad of anything coming to break the dull uniformity of our lives. I was ready just then to reach out a welcoming hand to floods, earthquakes, cyclones, or any other excitement that might happen along.
Deer Leap, our dashing mountain stream, though drinking heavily for some weeks and rather ominously full, had up to this time kept his bed, showing no particularly riotous spirit. But with the first hint of the coming of the flood he began tossing and tumbling restlessly, and presently he broke loose from his restraining banks and went plunging through the alders and maples, whisking, whirling, and foaming, dealing destruction right and left, demolishing cattle-sheds, poultry-houses, and pasture fence. He then made a dash for the bridges, destroying one and trying hard for the other, blustering and raging about it for a day and night, hurling great logs against it, savagely bumping the floor, lifting a part of the planks, pulling and pushing and tugging fiercely at it; but though it trembled and swayed, it stood its ground bravely, aided by strong chains lashing it to the trees.
Our meadow looked a dreary waste. The trees and bushes seemed growing out of a lake. We one day saw fourteen Angora goats carried through this shallow sea. Fortunately they were thrown upon a little knoll in a thicket of briers, where sharp thorns caught their fleecy coats and held them fast until their owner came to the rescue. In being released from their thorny
Copyright, Kiser Bros., Portland, Ore.
DEER LEAP
"Plunging through the alders and maples, whisking, whirling, and foaming" (page 182)
entanglement the poor things were half shorn. Little white flags of mohair still flutter from those bushes in commemoration of the event.
All the known springs were gushing noisily, and many new ones were developing in unheard-of places. One day little streams of water came coursing down the hillside just back of the house, gradually broadening, then soon united, forming a swiftly flowing shallow river of bright orange color,—the coloring material furnished, we supposed, by the red soil of Mount Nebo above. It was the strangest sight imaginable, reminding us of the flood at Glen Quharity that Barrie tells of in the story of “The Little Minister.” Indeed, many of the scenes here were as wild as those the “Dominie” looked out upon from the schoolhouse in the Glen.
If Mrs. Noah had great yellow waves of thick muddy water dashing against her habitation, it’s no wonder she welcomed the coming of the ark. I told Tom he really must do something, or we should be forced to take to the hills, as I believed the house would be swept into Deer Leap and carried by the high tide down to the Willamette and from there out to sea. Though he said, “I should think you’d like that, you’ve always wanted a house-boat,” he at once began digging canals. When he had finished, he called me out to see how madly the water was dashing through them.
At first I could see nothing but Tom himself,—plastered with yellow mud from head to foot, features hidden and hair decorated with it.
A bright thought struck me. “Tom, get the wooden trough out of the milk-house, and that pole by the alder, and see if you can’t shove yourself around a little. I might fancy you a tall and shadowy gondolier, and half believe ourselves in Venice,—especially if you would first wash your face.”
“Yes, and we’ll be in Venice indeed when I make such an idiot of myself as that!”
I’ve always been sorry that he declined to embark. The current of the lagoon was surprisingly swift, and would have carried his craft into the spring-run, which a little lower down in the yard has a fall of five or six feet. To see Mr. Thomas Graham shooting the rapids in the milk-trough would have made glad my day, dark as the skies were then.
During this flood-time we often heard the dull roar of the ocean; the wind blew straight from it with the force almost of a hurricane. The house shook in the fierce gusts; great branches of the alders snapped off and came tumbling down in the yard. Occasionally a big tree, uprooted by wind and water, fell with a tremendous crash.
It was fine to hear the rush of wind through the forest, to see the tall firs tossing their plumy heads, wrestling so fiercely with one another that many came out of the fray with broken limbs and not a few headless. Near the house one broke partly off, lodging against its neighbor. Swaying back and forth in the gale, they made a most hideous, rasping, screeching sound, like the screaming of caged beasts in a menagerie. Tom said those trees would be a treasure for a “shivaree” party,—that a resined scantling drawn across a pine box was but an æolian harp in comparison.
In daylight, when one could see what was going on, it wasn’t so bad; but at night it was something fearful. There was no light of moon or stars; only darkness and the rush and roar of wind and water, the lashing and swish-swashing of firs, with an accompaniment of shrieks from the crippled one and his fellow-sufferer.
Though rather frightened at times, I liked the excitement and exhilaration of all this, and I think Tom and Bert did—if they would admit it. The effort to save buildings, fences, bridges, etc., stirred their blood, and gave them something new to think and talk about.
The uneventful days preceding this stormy period were far worse to bear. During ten weeks I never exchanged a word with a neighbor woman, nor even saw one pass; and I saw only three men, all horsemen. The first—a smooth, round-faced, large man, wearing a plaid shawl—was so motherly-looking that we set him down as a country doctor. The second rider, gaunt and thin, with a stuffed gunny-sack for a saddle, had a bag of flour lying across his steed; we concluded hunger had drawn him from his lair. The last to pass was a stoop-shouldered, hollow-chested stripling, singing “Hold the Fort, for I am Coming.”
These are the only human beings, outside our own families, that I saw from the last of January until near the middle of April. Tom tells a rather mythical story of seeing emerge from the melancholy yews down in the canyon a shadowy hound, followed by a brown-corduroyed man, who called up to him, “I reckon you hain’t seen no stray Angorys up this way lately?” As this story lacks verification, we think Thomas, by overlong living in the woods, is beginning to “see things.”
In those gloomy days darkness descended upon us about four in the afternoon, making woefully long evenings. At first we were glad, as it gave us a chance to read our Christmas books and the piles of magazines and papers saved up from the busy season. After that for a while we enjoyed re-reading our favorites among the old books. Then came a time when the “restless pulse” of ennui could not be quieted even by good literature.
I’ll just lift the curtain and give you a glimpse of one of our winter evenings, which will be a fair sample of the other hundred or two. Open wide your eyes and look across the rainy night away up into the dark fir forests of Oregon. Do you see a faint light shining and wavering among the wet leaves? Well, that glimmer is from a student lamp in front of the big stone fireplace of the Ranch of the Pointed Firs. At the left of it, in an old Morris chair, sits Tom, silently and diligently reading. A low willow rocker on the right is occupied by Katharine, also silently and diligently reading. Between the two, upon a black fur rug, still as a shadow, lies Sheila, dreaming of summer-time and the whirr of pheasant wings.
Hours pass. The Morris-chair reader lays his book aside, draws nearer the fire, and, replenishing it, remarks that it must be near midnight. Even as he speaks, the clock chimes eight. Katharine closes her book, seeks the opposite chimney-corner, and there they sit, like a couple of heathen gods carved in wood, solemnly staring into the fire, which, having just swallowed a fresh dose of turpentine and pitch, snaps and crackles so alarmingly that Sheila, suspecting a gun, retires to a distant corner.
Presently the “brazen image” on the left remarks abruptly, “I’m as hungry as a bear; I wish we had some raw oysters!”
“You might as well wish for the apples of Hesperides.”
“Just now I prefer the common ones of Oregon. Where are they? I’ll get some.”
“All gone at the house.”
“Great Scott! Then there isn’t one on the place, and no more to come until next July.”
“And we’re twenty miles from oranges and bananas, Tom, and the roads hub-deep with good red Oregon mud.”
“I’ll buy an air-ship before I’m a year older!”
Contemplation of the fire is silently resumed; no sound, save a little secret whispering among the flames, the muffled throbbing of rain on the mossy roof, and the steady drip from the overflowing eaves to the wet porches.
“Just listen, Tom! Drip, drip, drip, everlastingly! No wonder the gloom of this thing has crept into our hearts and looks out of our eyes. It’s as bad as Chesnywold, in Lincolnshire.”
“Not quite,—we haven’t any Ghosts’ Walk!”
“No; but I wish to goodness we had, and that a whole procession of phantoms paraded there nightly, spouting fire and brimstone, winding up with the carmagnole in blue flames.”
“Whew! What’s the carmagnole?”
“I don’t exactly know,—something fiendish, though; and I’d actually be glad to look out at midnight and see a couple of dozen airy apparitions, lit with phosphorus, cutting the pigeon-wing under these dripping black firs. We would get a thrill or two at least, and that would be something just now.”
“Katharine, are you getting tired of Oregon?”
“Tired of Oregon! You know I love its very name. I’m only tired of sullen skies, rain, mud, myself, and—you.”
“Thanks. Your frankness emboldens me to confess that there have been dark moments of late when your society seemed to me to lack something of the charm of the Sorceress of the Nile.”
“Very likely. I never set myself up for a sorceress. I know I am stupid; so are you. We need friends, mirth, music, and all that sort of thing; and it wouldn’t greatly damage our immortal souls even to see a good play. Oh, Tom! just imagine that we are sitting this very minute in a brilliantly lighted theatre, the perfume of flowers in the air, well-dressed people all about us, wealth and beauty in the boxes, waves of melody floating up from the orchestra, one final flourish and crash, and lo! the curtain rises.”
Adding more fuel to the fire and carefully brushing the hearth, Tom remarked: “What do you say to cards? We have all the Sarah Battle essentials.”
“Not all, Tom. The ‘rigor of the game’ would be lacking; for you well know that I always did, do now, and ever shall hate cards.”
“Well, then, as gardening-time is not far off, suppose we look over a seed catalogue and select such seeds as we shall need.”
“Good heavens! A seed catalogue! I want excitement, but I couldn’t stand anything quite so hilarious as that.”
“I’m sure you have often said there was nothing more fascinating.”
“Possibly, when the sun was shining and birds singing; but to sit in this dreariness and watch you slowly turn the pages and hear you ask, ‘Now about cucumbers: shall we get the white spine or the long greens? Onions: the yellow Danver is a good onion, don’t you think? Radishes: English Breakfast. Didn’t we have some seed left over? Beans: I’ll order the bunch kind,—the Golden Wax, I guess.’ Honestly, Tom, I couldn’t listen to-night to that lingo, clear through alphabetically from asparagus to watermelons, and live.”
“Well, that was my trump card. I’ve nothing more to offer.” Leaning back in his chair, he began singing,—
“I’m wearing awa’, Jean,
Like snaw when it’s thaw, Jean.”
After an interval the doleful one remarks: “I’ve thought of something, Tom, that would be absorbing work, for—
‘There’s nae sorrow there, Jean,
There’s neither cauld nor care, Jean.’
Let’s write a ghost story!”
“All right. I’ve long felt in my bones that I could write a rattling good ghost story. We’ll collaborate.”
“Oh! I think I understand.”
The inspired ones seize pencil and paper, and at once become absorbed in plots and plans. Curtain falls at 8.30 P. M.
We really did try the ghost story. It was about the only fun we had last winter. We wrote alternate chapters, Tom illustrating the whole with pencil sketches. It is a work of almost supernatural power, and destined to live, we think, and rank with the really great literature of the world. It will appear about the holidays—some other year.