Part 5 (1/2)

He rose and shuffled to the window. Directly overhead a lone star glittered, cold and unyielding, and he watched it silently.

Emma's heart ached for him, but what could she do? How could he ask her to do this terrible thing, to pull up her roots again and turn her back on all that they had so painfully, so hopefully gathered together into this little house? She couldn't do it, not even for Joe, even though she loved him as dearly as she loved life itself.

She went to him and stood beside him at the window. Soon he put his arm about her. She dropped her head on his shoulder and a shudder went through her, so that she held to him convulsively.

”Forgive me, Joe,” she whispered. ”I'm not brave and strong the way you think. I'm afraid, Joe. I love this house, and I'm frightened to leave it.”

He held her close, and could find no words. A door had been closed between them, somehow, and he could not get through to her, to explain to her about the west. Maybe another year. Maybe....

CHAPTER THREE

The Destroyers

Joe was so weary of body and brain that the things he saw s.h.i.+mmered behind a haze that was born of no weather, but in his own mind. He was detached from almost everything, a lone being in a lone world, and the only thread that connected him with anything else was the smooth handle of the ax which he carried in his hand. The ax was real as it could be real only to one who had just spent eleven hours using it. At the same time, and while he reeled with fatigue, Joe counted his blessings.

Now the oats were high and the young corn in ta.s.sel. The family vegetable garden was thriving, the hay was not yet ripe enough for the scythe, and there were many more trees to cut on Joe's sixteen acres of timber. Clearing all sixteen acres was a major task and one that Joe didn't even hope to complete for several years because he could work in the timber only when there was nothing else to do. However, he intended to chop and trim many more trees.

He was exhausted, but the restlessness that had possessed him a month earlier was now gone, and for the present he was contented. Preparing the land to grow crops and planting them had been hard work. But now it was finished and when the crops were harvested he would be able to feed his family and livestock through the winter. All the surplus must be sold to satisfy Elias Dorrance. Yet, for the moment Joe harbored no special resentment against him. Bankers were necessary, and Elias had helped Joe when he needed help.

Carefully, as a man who loves good tools will, Joe hung the ax on its wooden pegs in the tool shed, and then took it down again to test both bits with his thumb. An ax had to be razor-sharp, actually capable of shaving, if a man was to do good work with it, and whoever put a tool away in good shape would find it in the same shape when he needed it again. Joe found the ax so sharp that he must have honed it after felling the last tree. He grinned; he was more tired than he'd thought because he couldn't remember sharpening the ax.

He leaned against the tool shed's wall, giving himself to the luxury of doing nothing at all. He watched Barbara, serene and lovely, going toward the pig pen with a pail of swill and he knew a moment's sheer pleasure. He gave no thought to the incongruity of the scene, that anyone should be able to look graceful while feeding pigs, but felt only delight because he saw something lithe and beautiful.

Joe yawned. He had been very wakeful last night. Lying beside Emma, he had watched the moon wane and the first faint streaks of dawn creep like stealthy thieves out of the sky. Only then had he gone to sleep, and soon afterward it had been time to get up and go to work again.

He went to the well, drew a bucket of water, and washed his face and hands. Instead of going to the store tonight he would go to bed after the evening meal. The empty swill pail in hand, Barbara came to stand beside him and her slim figure was bent slightly backward, as though by a mysterious wind created by her own spirit.

She said, ”You look tired.”

”Now don't you fret your head about me!”

She smiled. ”I will if I want to. How did it go today?”

”Good enough. How are the pigs?”

”Eleanor,” Barbara said seriously, ”keeps shoving Horace out of the trough. She won't let him eat.”

Joe said dryly, ”Eleanor has the manners of a pig, huh?”

She laughed, and Joe looked at her red-stained fingers. He knew without being told that Barbara, and probably all the rest except the babies, Alfred and Carlyle, had spent at least a part of their day gathering wild berries. Plucking and preserving wild fruit was a job the women folk and youngsters could do, and it was inevitable as summer itself.

Joe fell back on a stock question,

”Where's Tad?”

”He went off in the woods by himself.”

”Didn't he help you?”

”Oh yes. Mother made him.”