Wild Earth

"Yes, but, Wes--I wish you'd promise me something."

"Promise you anything."

"Then--promise me not to get mad and beat the horses any more or holler at Unc' Zenas. I don't like it."

"Annie, you little simp--what's the matter with you? A fellow's got to let off steam once in a while, and if you'd been pestered like I have with Unc' Zenas's ornery trifling spells and old Pomp's general cussedness, you'd wonder that I don't get mad and stay mad every minute. Don't let's talk any more about it. Say, look there--there's a scarlet tanager! Ain't it pretty? Shyest bird there is, but up here in the woods there's a couple pairs 'most every year. Pull that old newspaper up round the earth a little, so's I can get a better holt of it. That's the girl. Gee, I never knew what fun it'd be to have a wife who'd be so darn chummy as you are. How d'you like your husband, Mrs. Dean? Ain't it about time you said something nice to the poor feller instead of scolding his lights and liver out of place on a nice peaceful Sabbath day? You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

She pushed back the fear devil and answered his smile.

'No, sir, I'm not going to say anything nice to my husband. I'll tell you a secret about him--he's awful stuck on himself now."

"Why shouldn't he be? Look who he picked out to marry."

Who could stand against such beguiling? Annie looked up at him and saw his Dean mark give a little mocking twitch as if it rejoiced in her thwarting.

But she said no more; and they planted the wild clematis with its black woods earth beneath at the side of the front door, and Annie twisted its pliable green stems round one of the posts of the little benched entrance.

Her hands moved deftly, and Wes, who had finished firming the earth about the plant, watched them.

"Your little paws are gettin' awful brown," he said. "I remember that first day, in the shop, how white they were--and how quick they moved. You wrapped up them aprons like somethin' was after you, and I was trying to get my nerve up to speak to you."

"Tryin' to get up your nerve! I reckon it wasn't much effort. There, don't that vine look's if it grew there of itself?"

"Yeh--it looks fine." He sat down on the bench and pulled her down beside him, his arm about her. "Annie, baby, are y' happy?"

She put her cheek against his shoulder and shut her eyes.

"I'm so happy I wouldn't darst be any happier."

"You're not sorry you picked up with me so quick? You don't wish't you'd stayed down in Balt'mer and got you a city beau?"

"I'd rather be with you--here--than any place in the world. And, Wes--I think you're the best and kindest man that ever lived. I wouldn't have you changed, any way, one little bit."

She defied her fears and that mocking, twitching vein with the words.

"Same here. Made to order for me, you were. First minute I looked in those round blue eyes of yours I knew it."

"It isn't possible," she thought. "It isn't possible that he can get so mad and be so dreadful. Maybe if I can make him think he's awful good and kind"--oh, simple subtlety--"believe he is, too, and he'll stop getting such spells. Oh, if he would always be just like this!"

But it was only two days later when she called him to help her; there was a hen that was possessed to brood, and Aunt Dolcey had declared that it was too late, that summer chickens never thrived.

"I can't get her out, Wes," said Annie. "She's 'way in under the stable, and she pecks at me so mean. You got longer arms'n me--you reach in and grab her."

He came, smiling. He reached in and grabbed, and the incensed biddy pecked viciously.

In a flash his anger was on him. He snatched again, and this time brought out the creature and dropped her with wrung neck, a mass of quivering feathers and horribly jerking feet, before Annie.

"I reckon that'll learn the old crow!" he snarled, and strode away.

"We might's well have soup for supper," remarked Aunt Dolcey, coming on the scene a moment later. "Dere, chile, what's a chicken, anyway?"

"It's not that," said Annie briefly; "but he makes me afraid of him. If I get too afraid of him I'll stop caring anything about him. I don't want to do that."

"Den," answered Aunt Dolcey with equal brevity, "you got think up some manner er means to dribe his debbil out. Like I done tol' you."

"Yes, but----"

Aunt Dolcey paused, holding the carcass of the chicken in her hands, and faced her.

"Dishyer ain' nuthin'. Wait tell he gits one his still spells, whenas he doan' speak ter nobody an' doan' do no work. Why ain' we got no seed potaters? Marse Wes he took a contrairy spell an' he wouldn't dig 'em, an' he wouldn't let Zenas tech 'em needer. Me, I went out moonlight nights an' dug some to eat an' hid 'em in de cellar. Miss Annie, you doan' know nuffin' erbout de Dean temper yit."

They went silently to the house. Aunt Dolcey stopped in the kitchen and Annie went on into the living room. There on the walls hung the pictures of Wes's father and mother, cabinet photographs framed square in light wood. Annie looked at those pictured faces in accusing inquiry. Why had they bequeathed Wes such a legacy? In his father's face, despite the beard that was the fashion of those days, there was the same unmistakable pride and passion of Wes to-day. And his mother was a meek woman who could not live and endure the Dean temper. Well, Annie was not going to be meek. She thought with satisfaction of Aunt Dolcey and the hot flatiron. The fact that he had never lifted finger to Aunt Dolcey again proved that if one person could thus conquer him, so might another. Was she, his wife, to be less resourceful, less self-respecting than that old Negro woman? Was she to endure what Aunt Dolcey would not?

Suddenly she snatched out the little old family album from its place in the top of the desk secretary, an old-fashioned affair bound in shabby brown leather with two gilt clasps. Here were more pictures of the Dean line--his grandfather, more bearded than his father, his Dean vein even more prominent; his grandmother, another meek woman.

"Probably the old wretch beat her," thought Annie angrily.

Another page and here was great-grandfather himself, in middle age, his picture--a faded daguerreotype--showing him in his Sunday best, but plainly in no Sunday mood. "Looks like a pirate," was Annie's comment. There was no picture of great-grandmother. "Probably he killed her off too young, before she had time to get her picture taken." And Annie's eyes darted blue fire at the supposed culprit. She shook her brown little fist at him. "You started all this," she said aloud. "You began it. If you'd had a wife who'd've stood up to you you'd never got drunk and killed a man, and you wouldn't have left your family a nasty old mad vein in the middle of their foreheads, looking perfectly unChristian. I just wish I had you here, you old scoundrel! I'll bet I'd tell you something that'd make your ears smart."

She banged to the album and put it in its place.

"Well, not me!" said Annie. "Not me! I'm not going to be bullied and scared to death by any man with a bad temper, and the very next time Mister Wes flies off the handle and raises Cain I'm going to raise Cain, two to his one. I won't be scared! I won't be a little gump and take such actions off any man. We'll see!"

It is easy enough to be bold and resolute and threaten a picture. It is easy enough to plot action either before or after the need for it arises. But when it comes to raising Cain two to your husband's one, and that husband has been a long and successful cultivator of that particular crop--why, that is quite a different thing.

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