The Desert of Wheat - Zane Grey
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ZANE GREY
THE DESERT
of
WHEAT
1919
CHAPTER I
Late in June the vast northwestern desert of wheat began to take on a
tinge of gold, lending an austere beauty to that endless, rolling,
smooth world of treeless hills, where miles of fallow ground and miles
of waving grain sloped up to the far-separated homes of the heroic men
who had conquered over sage and sand.
These simple homes of farmers seemed lost on an immensity of soft gray
and golden billows of land, insignificant dots here and there on distant
hills, so far apart that nature only seemed accountable for those broad
squares of alternate gold and brown, extending on and on to the waving
horizon-line. A lonely, hard, heroic country, where flowers and fruit
were not, nor birds and brooks, nor green pastures. Whirling strings of
dust looped up over fallow ground, the short, dry wheat lay back from
the wind, the haze in the distance was drab and smoky, heavy with
substance.
A thousand hills lay bare to the sky, and half of every hill was wheat
and half was fallow ground; and all of them, with the shallow valleys
between, seemed big and strange and isolated. The beauty of them was
austere, as if the hand of man had been held back from making green his
home site, as if the immensity of the task had left no time for youth
and freshness. Years, long years, were there in the round-hilled,
many-furrowed gray old earth. And the wheat looked a century old. Here
and there a straight, dusty road stretched from hill to hill, becoming a
thin white line, to disappear in the distance. The sun shone hot, the
wind blew hard; and over the boundless undulating expanse hovered a
shadow that was neither hood of dust nor hue of gold. It was not
physical, but lonely, waiting, prophetic, and weird. No wild desert of
wastelands, once the home of other races of man, and now gone to decay
and death, could have shown so barren an acreage. Half of this wandering
patchwork of squares was earth, brown and gray, curried and disked, and
rolled and combed and harrowed, with not a tiny leaf of green in all the
miles. The other half had only a faint golden promise of mellow harvest;
and at long distance it seemed to shimmer and retreat under the hot sun.
A singularly beautiful effect of harmony lay in the long, slowly rising
slopes, in the rounded hills, in the endless curving lines on all sides.
The scene was heroic because of the labor of horny hands; it was sublime
because not a hundred harvests, nor three generations of toiling men,
could ever rob nature of its limitless space and scorching sun and
sweeping dust, of its resistless age-long creep back toward the desert
that it had been.
* * * * *
Here was grown the most bounteous, the richest and finest wheat in all
the world. Strange and unfathomable that so much of the bread of man,
the staff of life, the hope of civilization in this tragic year 1917,
should come from a vast, treeless, waterless, dreary desert!
This wonderful place was an immense valley of considerable altitude
called the Columbia Basin, surrounded by the Cascade Mountains on the
west, the Coeur d'Alene and Bitter Root Mountains on the east, the
Okanozan range to the north, and the Blue Mountains to the south. The
valley floor was basalt, from the lava flow of volcanoes in ages past.
The rainfall was slight except in the foot-hills of the mountains. The
Columbia River, making a prodigious and meandering curve, bordered on
three sides what was known as the Bend country. South of this vast area,
across the range, began the fertile, many-watered region that extended
on down into verdant Oregon. Among the desert hills of this Bend
country, near the center of the Basin, where the best wheat was raised,
lay widely separated little towns, the names of which gave evidence of
the mixed population. It was, of course, an exceedingly prosperous
country, a fact manifest in the substantial little towns, if not in the
crude and unpretentious homes of the farmers. The acreage of farms ran
from a section, six hundred and forty acres, up into the thousands.
* * * * *
Upon a morning in early July, exactly three months after the United
States had declared war upon Germany, a sturdy young farmer strode with
darkly troubled face from the presence of his father. At the end of a
stormy scene he had promised his father that he would abandon his desire
to enlist in the army.
Kurt Dorn walked away from the gray old clapboard house, out to the
fence, where he leaned on the gate. He could see for miles in every
direction, and to the southward, away on a long yellow slope, rose a
stream of dust from a motor-car.
"Must be Anderson--coming to dun father," muttered young Dorn.
This was the day, he remembered, when the wealthy rancher of Ruxton was
to look over old Chris Dorn's wheat-fields. Dorn owed thirty-thousand
dollars and interest for years, mostly to Anderson. Kurt hated the debt
and resented the visit, but he could not help acknowledging that the
rancher had been lenient and kind. Long since Kurt had sorrowfully
realized that his father was illiterate, hard, grasping, and growing
worse with the burden of years.
"If we had rain now--or soon--that section of Bluestem would square
father," soliloquized young Dorn, as with keen eyes he surveyed a vast
field of wheat, short, smooth, yellowing in the sun. But the cloudless
sky, the haze of heat rather betokened a continued drought.
There were reasons, indeed, for Dorn to wear a dark and troubled face as
he watched the motor-car speed along ahead of its stream of dust, pass
out of sight under the hill, and soon reappear, to turn off the main
road and come toward the house. It was a big, closed car, covered with
dust. The driver stopped it at the gate and got out.
"Is this Chris Dorn's farm?" he asked.
"Yes," replied Kurt.
Whereupon the door of the car opened and out stepped a short, broad man
in a long linen coat.
"Come out, Lenore, an' shake off the dust," he said, and he assisted a
young woman to step out. She also wore a long linen coat, and a veil
besides. The man removed his coat and threw it into the car. Then he
took off his sombrero to beat the dust off of that.
"Phew! The Golden Valley never seen dust like this in a million
years!... I'm chokin' for water. An' listen to the car. She's boilin'!"
Then, as he stepped toward Kurt, the rancher showed himself to be a
well-preserved man of perhaps fifty-five, of powerful form beginning to
sag in the broad shoulders, his face bronzed by long exposure to wind
and sun. He had keen gray eyes, and their look was that of a man used to
dealing with his kind and well disposed toward them.
"Hello! Are you young Dorn?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," replied Kurt, stepping out.
"I'm Anderson, from Ruxton, come to see your dad. This is my girl
Lenore."
Kurt acknowledged the slight bow from the veiled young woman, and then,
hesitating, he added, "Won't you come in?"
"No, not yet. I'm chokin' for air an' water. Bring us a drink," replied
Anderson.
Kurt hurried away to get a bucket and tin cup. As he drew water from the
well he was thinking rather vaguely that it was somehow
embarrassing--the fact of Mr. Anderson being accompanied by his
daughter. Kurt was afraid of his father. But then, what did it matter?
When he returned to the yard he found the rancher sitting in the shade
of one of the few apple-trees, and the young lady was standing near, in
the act of removing bonnet and veil. She had thrown the linen coat over
the seat of an old wagon-bed that lay near.
"Good water is scarce here, but I'm glad we have some," said Kurt; then
as he set down the bucket and offered a brimming cupful to the girl he
saw her face, and his eyes met hers. He dropped the cup and stared. Then
hurriedly, with flushing face, he bent over to recover and refill it.
"Ex-excuse me. I'm--clumsy," he managed to say, and as he handed the cup
to her he averted his gaze. For more than a year the memory of this very
girl had haunted him. He had seen her twice--the first time at the close
of his one year of college at the University of California, and the
second time on the street in Spokane. In a glance he had recognized the
strong, lithe figure, the sunny hair, the rare golden tint of her
complexion, the blue eyes, warm and direct. And he had sustained a shock
which momentarily confused him.
"Good water, hey?" dissented Anderson, after drinking a second cup. "Boy
that's wet, but it ain't water to drink. Come down in the foot-hills an'
I'll show you. My ranch 's called 'Many Waters,' an' you can't keep your
feet dry."
"I wish we had some of it here," replied Kurt, wistfully, and he waved a
hand at the broad, swelling slopes. The warm breath that blew in from
the wheatlands felt dry and smelled dry.
"You're in for a dry spell?" inquired Anderson, with interest that was
keen, and kindly as well.
"Father says so. And I fear it, too--for he never makes a mistake in
weather or crops."
"A hot, dry spell!... This summer?... Hum!... Boy, do you know that
wheat is the most important thing in the world to-day?"
"You mean on account of the war," replied Kurt. "Yes, I know. But father
doesn't see that. All he sees is--if we have rain we'll have bumper
crops. That big field there would be a record--at war prices.... And he
wouldn't be ruined!"
"Ruined?... Oh, he means I'd close on him.... Hum!... Say, what do you
see in a big wheat yield--if it rains?"
"Mr. Anderson, I'd like to see our debt paid, but I'm thinking most of
wheat for starving peoples. I--I've studied this wheat question. It's
the biggest question in this war."
Kurt had forgotten the girl and was unaware of her eyes bent steadily
upon him. Anderson had roused to the interest of wheat, and to a deeper
study of the young man.
"Say, Dorn, how old are you?" he asked.
"Twenty-four. And Kurt's my first name," was the reply.
"Will this farm fall to you?"
"Yes, if my father does not lose it."
"Hum!... Old Dorn won't lose it, never fear. He raises the best wheat in
this section."
"But father never owned the land. We have had three bad years. If the
wheat fails this summer--we lose the land, that's all."
"Are you an--American?" queried Anderson, slowly, as if treading on
dangerous ground.
"I am," snapped Kurt. "My mother was American. She's dead. Father is
German. He's old. He's rabid since the President declared war. He'll
never change."
"That's hell. What 're you goin' to do if your country calls you?"
"Go!" replied Kurt, with flashing eyes. "I wanted to enlist. Father and
I quarreled over that until I had to give in. He's hard--he's
impossible.... I'll wait for the draft and hope I'm called."
"Boy, it's that spirit Germany's roused, an' the best I can say is, God
help her!... Have you a brother?"
"No. I'm all father has."
"Well, it makes a tough place for him, an' you, too. Humor him. He's
old. An' when you're called--go an' fight. You'll come back."
"If I only knew that--it wouldn't be so hard."
"Hard? It sure is hard. But it'll be the makin' of a great country.
It'll weed out the riffraff.... See here, Kurt, I'm goin' to give you a
hunch. Have you had any dealin's with the I.W.W.?"
"Yes, last harvest we had trouble, but nothing serious. When I was in
Spokane last month I heard a good deal. Strangers have approached us
here, too--mostly aliens. I have no use for them, but they always get
father's ear. And now!... To tell the truth, I'm worried."
"Boy, you need to be," replied Anderson, earnestly. "We're all worried.
I'm goin' to let you read over the laws of that I.W.W. organization.
You're to keep mum now, mind you. I belong to the Chamber of Commerce in
Spokane. Somebody got hold of these by-laws of this so-called labor
union. We've had copies made, an' every honest farmer in the Northwest
is goin' to read them. But carryin' one around is dangerous, I reckon,
these days. Here."
Anderson hesitated a moment, peered cautiously around, and then,
slipping folded sheets of paper from his inside coat pocket, he
evidently made ready to hand them to Kurt.
"Lenore, where's the driver?" he asked.
"He's under the car," replied the girl
Kurt thrilled at the soft sound of her voice. It was something to have
been haunted by a girl's face for a year and then suddenly hear her
voice.
"He's new to me--that driver--an' I ain't trustin' any new men these
days," went on Anderson. "Here now, Dorn. Read that. An' if you don't
get red-headed--"
Without finishing his last muttered remark, he opened the sheets of
manuscript and spread them out to the young man.
Curiously, and with a little rush of excitement, Kurt began to read. The
very first rule of the I.W.W. aimed to abolish capital. Kurt read on
with slowly growing amaze, consternation, and anger. When he had
finished, his look, without speech, was a question Anderson hastened to
answer.
"It's straight goods," he declared. "Them's the sure-enough rules of
that gang. We made certain before we acted. Now how do they strike you?"
"Why, that's no labor union!" replied Kurt, hotly. "They're outlaws,
thieves, blackmailers, pirates. I--I don't know what!"
"Dorn, we're up against a bad outfit an' the Northwest will see hell
this summer. There's trouble in Montana and Idaho. Strangers are
driftin' into Washington from all over. We must organize to meet
them--to prevent them gettin' a hold out here. It's a labor union,
mostly aliens, with dishonest an' unscrupulous leaders, some of them
Americans. They aim to take advantage of the war situation. In the
newspapers they rave about shorter hours, more pay, acknowledgment of
the union. But any fool would see, if he read them laws I showed you,
that this I.W.W. is not straight."
"Mr. Anderson, what steps have you taken down in your country?" queried
Kurt.
"So far all I've done was to hire my hands for a year, give them high
wages, an' caution them when strangers come round to feed them an' be
civil an' send them on."
"But we can't do that up here in the Bend," said Dorn, seriously. "We
need, say, a hundred thousand men in harvest-time, and not ten thousand
all the rest of the year."
"Sure you can't. But you'll have to organize somethin'. Up here in this
desert you could have a heap of trouble if that outfit got here strong
enough. You'd better tell every farmer you can trust about this I.W.W."
"I've only one American neighbor, and he lives six miles from here,"
replied Dorn. "Olsen over there is a Swede, and not a naturalized
citizen, but I believe he's for the U.S. And there's--"
"Dad," interrupted the girl, "I believe our driver is listening to your
very uninteresting conversation."
She spoke demurely, with laughter in her low voice. It made Dorn dare to
look at her, and he met a blue blaze that was instantly averted.
Anderson growled, evidently some very hard names, under his breath; his
look just then was full of characteristic Western spirit. Then he got
up.
"Lenore, I reckon your talk 'll be more interesting than mine," he said,
dryly. "I'll go see Dorn an' get this business over."
"I'd rather go with you," hurriedly replied Kurt; and then, as though
realizing a seeming discourtesy in his words, his face flamed, and he
stammered: "I--I don't mean that. But father is in bad mood. We just
quarreled.--I told you--about the war. And--Mr. Anderson,--I'm--I'm a
little afraid he'll--"
"Well, son, I'm not afraid," interrupted the rancher. "I'll beard the
old lion in his den. You talk to Lenore."
"Please don't speak of the war," said Kurt, appealingly.
"Not a word unless he starts roarin' at Uncle Sam," declared Anderson,
with a twinkle in his eyes, and turned toward the house.
"He'll roar, all right," said Kurt, almost with a groan. He knew what an
ordeal awaited the rancher, and he hated the fact that it could not be
avoided. Then Kurt was confused, astounded, infuriated with himself over
a situation he had not brought about and could scarcely realize. He
became conscious of pride and shame, and something as black and hopeless
as despair.
"Haven't I seen you--before?" asked the girl.
The query surprised and thrilled Kurt out of his self-centered thought.
"I don't know. Have you? Where?" he answered, facing her. It was a
relief to find that she still averted her face.
"At Berkeley, in California, the first time, and the second at Spokane,
in front of the Davenport," she replied.
"First--and--second?... You--you remembered both times!" he burst out,
incredulously.
"Yes. I don't see how I could have helped remembering." Her laugh was
low, musical, a little hurried, yet cool.
Dorn was not familiar with girls. He had worked hard all his life, there
among those desert hills, and during the few years his father had
allowed him for education. He knew wheat, but nothing of the eternal
feminine. So it was impossible for him to grasp that this girl was not
wholly at her ease. Her words and the cool little laugh suddenly brought
home to Kurt the immeasurable distance between him and a daughter of one
of the richest ranchers in Washington.
"You mean I--I was impertinent," he began, struggling between shame and
pride. "I--I stared at you.... Oh, I must have been rude.... But, Miss
Anderson, I--I didn't mean to be. I didn't think you saw me--at all. I
don't know what made me do that. It never happened before. I beg your
pardon."
A subtle indefinable change, perceptible to Dorn, even in his confused
state, came over the girl.
"I did not say you were impertinent," she returned. "I remembered seeing
you--notice me, that is all."
Self-possessed, aloof, and kind, Miss Anderson now became an
impenetrable mystery to Dorn. But that only accentuated the distance she
had intimated lay between them. Her kindness stung him to recover his
composure. He wished she had not been kind. What a singular chance that
had brought her here to his home--the daughter of a man who came to
demand a long-unpaid debt! What a dispelling of the vague thing that had
been only a dream! Dorn gazed away across the yellowing hills to the dim
blue of the mountains where rolled the Oregon. Despite the color, it was
gray--like his future.
"I heard you tell father you had studied wheat," said the girl,
presently, evidently trying to make conversation.
"Yes, all my life," replied Kurt. "My study has mostly been under my
father. Look at my hands." He held out big, strong hands, scarred and
knotted, with horny palms uppermost, and he laughed. "I can be proud of
them, Miss Anderson.... But I had a splendid year in California at the
university and I graduated from the Washington State Agricultural
College."
"You love wheat--the raising of it, I mean?" she inquired.
"It must be that I do, though I never had such a thought. Wheat is so
wonderful. No one can guess who does not know it!... The clean, plump
grain, the sowing on fallow ground, the long wait, the first tender
green, and the change day by day to the deep waving fields of gold--then
the harvest, hot, noisy, smoky, full of dust and chaff, and the great
combine-harvesters with thirty-four horses. Oh! I guess I do love it
all.... I worked in a Spokane flour-mill, too, just to learn how flour
is made. There is nothing in the world so white, so clean, so pure as
flour made from the wheat of these hills!"
"Next you'll be telling me that you can bake bread," she rejoined, and
her laugh was low and sweet. Her eyes shone with soft blue gleams.
"Indeed I can! I bake all the bread we use," he said, stoutly. "And I
flatter myself I can beat any girl you know."
"You can beat mine, I'm sure. Before I went to college I did pretty
well. But I learned too much there. Now my mother and sisters, and
brother Jim, all the family except dad, make fun of my bread."
"You have a brother? How old is he?"
"One brother--Jim, we call him. He--he is just past twenty-one." She
faltered the last few words.
Kurt felt on common ground with her then. The sudden break in her voice,
the change in her face, the shadowing of the blue eyes--these were
eloquent.
"Oh, it's horrible--this need of war!" she exclaimed.
"Yes," he replied, simply. "But maybe your brother will not be called."
"Called! Why, he refused to wait for the draft! He went and enlisted.
Dad patted him on the back.... If anything happens to him it'll kill my
mother. Jim is her idol. It'd break my heart.... Oh, I hate the very
name of Germans!"
"My father is German," said Kurt. "He's been fifty years in
America--eighteen years here on this farm. He always hated England. Now
he's bitter against America.... I can see a side you can't see. But I
don't blame you--for what you said."
"Forgive me. I can't conceive of meaning that against any one who's
lived here so long.... Oh, it must be hard for you."
"I'll let my father think I'm forced to join the army. But I'm going to
fight against his people. We are a house divided against itself."
"Oh, what a pity!" The girl sighed and her eyes were dark with brooding
sorrow.
A step sounded behind them. Mr. Anderson appeared, sombrero off, mopping
a very red face. His eyes gleamed, with angry glints; his mouth and chin
were working. He flopped down with a great, explosive breath.
"Kurt, your old man is a--a--son of a gun!" he exclaimed, vociferously;
manifestly, liberation of speech was a relief.
The young man nodded seriously and knowingly. "I hope, sir--he--he--"
"He did--you just bet your life! He called me a lot in German, but I
know cuss words when I hear them. I tried to reason with him--told him I
wanted my money--was here to help him get that money off the farm, some
way or other. An' he swore I was a capitalist--an enemy to labor an' the
Northwest--that I an' my kind had caused the war."
Kurt gazed gravely into the disturbed face of the rancher. Miss Anderson
had wide-open eyes of wonder.
"Sure I could have stood all that," went on Anderson, fuming. "But he
ordered me out of the house. I got mad an' wouldn't go. Then--by George!
he pulled my nose an' called me a bloody Englishman!"
Kurt groaned in the disgrace of the moment. But, amazingly, Miss
Anderson burst into a silvery peal of laughter.
"Oh, dad!... that's--just too--good for--anything! You met your--match
at last.... You know you always--boasted of your drop of English
blood.... And you're sensitive--about your big nose!"
"He must be over seventy," growled Anderson, as if seeking for some
excuse to palliate his restraint. "I'm mad--but it was funny." The
working of his face finally set in the huge wrinkles of a laugh.
Young Dorn struggled to repress his own mirth, but unguardedly he
happened to meet the dancing blue eyes of the girl, merry, provocative,
full of youth and fun, and that was too much for him. He laughed with
them.
"The joke's on me," said Anderson. "An' I can take one.... Now, young
man, I think I gathered from your amiable dad that if the crop of wheat
was full I'd get my money. Otherwise I could take over the land. For my
part, I'd never do that, but the others interested might do it, even for
the little money involved. I tried to buy them out so I'd have the whole
mortgage. They would not sell."
"Mr. Anderson, you're a square man, and I'll do--" declared Kurt.
"Come out an' show me the wheat," interrupted Anderson. "Lenore, do you
want to go with us?"
"I do," replied the daughter, and she took up her hat to put it on.
Kurt led them through the yard, out past the old barn, to the edge of
the open slope where the wheat stretched away, down and up, as far as
the eye could see.
CHAPTER II
"We've got over sixteen hundred acres in fallow ground, a half-section
in rye, another half in wheat--Turkey Red--and this section you see, six
hundred and forty acres, in Bluestem," said Kurt.
Anderson's keen eyes swept from near at hand to far away, down the
gentle, billowy slope and up the far hillside. The wheat was two feet
high, beginning to be thick and heavy at the heads, as if struggling to
burst. A fragrant, dry, wheaty smell, mingled with dust, came on the
soft summer breeze, and a faint silken rustle. The greenish, almost blue
color near at hand gradually in the distance grew lighter, and then
yellow, and finally took on a tinge of gold. There was a living spirit
in that vast wheat-field.
"Dorn, it's the finest wheat I've seen!" exclaimed Anderson, with the
admiration of the farmer who aspired high. "In fact, it's the only fine
field of wheat I've seen since we left the foot-hills. How is that?"
"Late spring and dry weather," replied Dorn. "Most of the farmers'
reports are poor. If we get rain over the Bend country we'll have only
an average yield this year. If we don't get rain--then flat failure."
Miss Anderson evinced an interest in the subject and she wanted to know
why this particular field, identical with all the others for miles
around, should have a promise of a magnificent crop when the others had
no promise at all.
"This section lay fallow a long time," replied Dorn. "Snow lasted here
on this north slope quite a while. My father used a method of soil
cultivation intended to conserve moisture. The seed wheat was especially
selected. And if we have rain during the next ten days this section of
Bluestem will yield fifty bushels to the acre."