Puslapio vaizdai
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ice-cold milk! She and Ed never had any ice or milk, or, in fact, anything that they could possibly do without. Day by day there was less to eat; the cupboard was almost empty, and the fevered chickens were dying of starvation and heat.

There is something about intense heat that devitalizes body and spirit far more than bitter cold can do. One perishes inwardly under it, one surrenders hope, and yet has not strength enough for active despair.

"Maybe pappy would have wrote different, if he had known I was hungry," Bess whispered to herself one day. She talked more to herself when Ed was in the field than she did to him when he was present, for she could not share her poignant thoughts with him, lest she add to his suffering and anxiety. "Shorely pappy would have wrote different, if he had known about the baby!"

She sat huddled on the edge of the bed for a long time, and then she crept over to the door, to stand leaning against it, looking up at the sky. The sun, high in the afternoon heavens, shook insolent spears of light at her, and the fleckless blue was a mirror of despair.

Presently she walked to the dresser, where under a concealing sheet of newspaper her father's letter lay. The cracked mirror gave her back a face she scarcely recognized, it was so drawn, discolored, ravaged by anxiety, and thin from hunger.

She held the blue slip in her shaking fingers for a long moment.

"If I could only cash this and get enough to eat-for the baby's sake!"

Her fingers closed over it with resolve, her body thrilling at the thought of food; she would call Ed quickly and send him for supplies.

Then the memory of those last terrible moments with her father in the cow-pen swept over her. She heard again his searing words: "I don't want ever to see you or hear from you again! And don't you come crawling to me when he starves you, as he 'll sure' do!" She heard her sobbing vow, "I won't!"

Could she take his help now, like a shamed and beaten thing begging for food? If he knew her plight, would n't his hatred and contempt for Ed be ten

fold worse than before? How could she put such humiliation upon Ed, poor Ed, who worked so hard and did his pitiful best for her?

If she used this money now, pappy would think Ed responsible for it, would misjudge him further. He was a hard man, but he had always been rigidly honest, and she was his daughter. She saw again the words of his letter, “Unless you 've changed mightily, I know you'll act honest in this."

She had changed mightily,-Oh, Pappy, yes!-but she would act honest.

Her weak, relaxing fingers put the blue slip back in its hiding-place, and she turned away.

But the thought of the baby was with her all the time now, a sense of her responsibility pressing down upon her heart like clods upon a coffin. She and Ed would scan the sky countless times a day, to find nothing more hopeful than vaporous wisps of cloud that vanished tantalizingly the while they gazed, or else a blue dome of nothingness.

One night while Ed slept restlessly beside her she lay and gazed at the pallid and starveling new moon that looked at her from between the branches of a tree whose leaves had fallen in midsummer. She shook as she muttered, "It's the worst kind o' luck to see the new moon for the first time through brush." She thought of a sermon she had once heard an evangelist preach from the text, "I will arise and go to my father." She pictured herself as returning to the old home, and thrilled at thought of pappy's fierce, undemonstrative affection that would receive her back if she met his requirements and came to stay. She could see pappy sitting on the porch at evening, no longer lonely, with a little child in his arms.

But what of Ed? She thought of the boyish face now seamed with lines no young face ought to have to wear, of the sweet temper sharpened by suspense and want, of the pleasant, drawling voice that now was harsh. Tragedy looked at her out of the gray eyes that had wooed her with smiles a year ago. How could she desert him now when they loved each other through it all? She and Ed were married, and pappy nor nobody else had a right to try to

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"Until the gathering dusk Ed crouched beside the still figure on the floor"

separate them. Well, it was up to her to decide.

"I can't noways leave him when he 's having such a hard time!" she whispered to her hot pillow. "Everything an' everybody has turned against him, looks like, and his wife ought t' stand by him. I'll stick!"

When Bessie started to get breakfast she realized that there was nothing in the cupboard but a little flour, enough perhaps to make biscuit a couple of times. She had avoided telling Ed just how things were, but now the pinch of hunger was acute.

She watched him till he had scraped the syrup from his plate with the last morsel of biscuit, and then she faltered:

"We -we have n't got anything to eat, Eddie. Had n't you better go to town an' get some groceries to-day?"

A tormented look came into his eyes. "I ain't got the face to ask Bill Adams for no more credit."

She held one hand on the edge of the table to steady herself as the heat waves danced and blurred before her eyes. "But we got to have something to

eat!" she cried. "Think of the baby!" He threw his hands up passionately. "Ain't I thinkin' about it all the time? Ain't I fair' driv crazy thinkin' about it?

Thoughts don't get you nowhere if you have n't got no money!" Nevertheless, he rose and made ready to walk the five miles to town.

"Maybe you can get a lift part ways, coming or going," she drearily encouraged him as he stooped to kiss her. "Maybe."

She sat on the edge of the bed waiting his return. The pillow was too hot for her to rest her cheek against it, so she slumped forward, swaying from weakness, losing all sense of time. She watched the road, but there was little passing. It was as if life had been suspended for a time because of the heat.

It was mid-afternoon when she saw Ed come dragging up the road as if he could hardly lift one foot ahead of the other, his head sunk forward, his arms hanging limp. His hands were empty!

"You so tired, honey?" she murmured, laying her tear-wet cheek against his as he came in.

"Dog-tired," he panted, sinking into a chair. "My head hurts," he went on, putting his hands to his temples. "Feel funny, like an iron kettle full o' live coals."

"This heat has been too much for you." She passed caressing fingers across his burning forehead. “And you -did n't-get anything?"

"No." He shook his head as if the effort were an agony, and his voice was thick and lifeless, as though a corpse were speaking. "Bill Adams said he 'd be ruint, with all he 'd let out to farmers, if cotton did n't make. Said, if it went on like this a couple of days longer, nobody 'd make anything. Said to come back if it rained in a couple o' days. But it ain't ever goin' to rain no more!" She stood beside him, helpless for a moment, unable to speak; but at thought of his need she roused herself.

"Come on back an' sit in the kitchen with me, honey, while I get you some supper." She felt a need to have him near her, and her love reached out pitiful hands to his in the face of menacing future.

He staggered after her into the shedkitchen.

"I'll make the fire for you," he said, picking up a stick of wood, but holding it in uncertain hands.

Bessie shook the last flour from the bag into the pan and began making up biscuit dough, working it with her fingers.

"Maybe you can get something tomorrow from one o' the other stores," she suggested, with an effort at an encouraging smile.

His look contradicted her.

"I tried 'em. They're all in the same box. I dunno what we 're goin' to do!" His voice rose sharply, and his eyes were unnatural in their stare.

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And then she seemed to hear from some far distance a little child crying, its thin, poignant wail piercing her soul. Some force seemed to tear her heart out of her body, crush it with iron force, and then thrust it back.

"Ed," she cried, with heartbreak in her voice, "O Ed, I guess I 'd better go, back to pappy, darling!"

He shook his head.
"He would n't let you."

Tears were rolling down her cheeks. "Yes, he wrote for me to come." He lifted his head with a jerk. "When 'd you hear from him?" "Some time back. I did n't say nothing to you about it, because I did n't want to go." She looked at him fearfully, to see how he would take it.

He sat in silence for a moment, as if his disturbed brain was attempting to comprehend this new thought, his nervous fingers balancing the stick of wood. Finally he dragged out his words.

"Maybe it would be better for you to go home for a little visit, to pick up an' get strong. I can come for you after cotton-pickin', an' maybe we can find a new place an' start over again. Surely there won't be a drought next year, and we can get on better. I'd feel easier to have you taken right care of in September."

She held clenched hands on the rim of the bread-pan. How unselfish he was in his thought for her, and how she loved him! But she could n't lie to him just as she was leaving him!.

"No, Ed honey," she cried piercingly, "pappy said I could n't come 'less it was to stay!"

His bloodshot eyes held a bewildered

look.

"But he don't want me to stay there?" "No." Her whole body trembled, as if her joints were water. "He saysif I come-I 've got to leave you!"

His look of bewilderment deepened. "Leave me, Bess girl? Why, we 're married!"

"Yes, that 's what I say. It's near 'bout killing me to even think of it!" Her tears dripped down on her hands.

"You would n't leave me?" His voice had an acute ring like that of a child who sees his mother abandoning him. She gave a great sob.

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"What can I do, Ed darling? half starved, though I would n't mind that for myself. I'd honestly rather die than be separated from you; but the baby, Eddie "

"You'd leave me when I'm havin' such a hard deal from all creation? You'd turn your back on me when it looks like God and man has forsaken me, an' the elements was makin' sport of me?" His eyes were wild.

She leaned against the table, sobbing convulsively.

"O God, why is life so hard for us? There ain't nobody nigh for me to turn to, forty miles away from all the folks I ever knew! I 've got to leave you, Eddie, when I'd rather be cut into little bits an' burned in the fire!"

"When you aimin' to go?" His tone was deadly still.

"The sooner, the better, I reckon, if it 's got to be.'

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He laughed queerly.

"You can't go.

money."

You ain't got any

She nodded her wretched head. "Yes, pappy sent me the money for my ticket."

"How much?" he demanded.
"Fifty dollars.”

"When?" He sprang to his feet. "Some time back," she faltered. "And so you 've had money all this time when I was eatin' my soul out! When I could n't sleep nights for thinkin' how I could get somethin' for you to eat, you had fifty dollars hid' away! So that's the kind of wife you are, is it?"

His. face was livid, and his eyes glared ike a madman's.

Bess shrank from him in terror. "O Ed, you don't understand!" He came a step nearer her, his muscles tense.

"By God, you think you'll leave me to live as if you 'd never known me! No, damn you, I'll kill you first!"

She saw the leaping light of madness in his eyes, and knew that the heat and his distress had crazed him.

He lunged forward, the stick of wood lifted in his grasp.

"O Eddie, don't! don't!" she cried, stumbling backward and around the table, her hands thrown out in appeal.

As he sprang after her, she jerked the table between them, the dishes crashing to the floor.

"O Ed, don't hit me!" she shrieked, and crumpled to the floor.

EVEN while they had talked a wisp of cloud as filmy as raveled cotton-wool had floated idly up the sky. Other wisps had stolen from nowhere to join it, till it had hung like a great open cottonboll high in the blue. Presently darker clouds had piled themselves on the horizon, massed and ponderous, like bales of cotton in their brown wrappings. A jagged streak of lightning had slit the face of the sky like a cruel smile.

In a little while a few hesitant drops came down, then more scurried faster from the clouds, until a slow and searching downpour followed. At last the sheeted rain fell like a drop-curtain before the landscape, fell on the cracked earth, which drank it thirstily, on the wilted cotton plants, which lifted grateful leaves, on the roof of the little house on the edge of the field. But the two in the shed-kitchen paid no heed to it.

Until the gathering dusk Ed crouched beside the still figure on the floor. His hands frantically chafed her wrists, his kisses rained on her white face, and his cries implored her to speak to him.

"O Bess girl! I did n't mean it! I was n't myself!"

When he strained his ears to listen for an answer, he heard only the rain.

Suddenly the wind shifted, bringing a swirl of rain through the window upon that quiet form and unresponsive face. With a swift impulse to shield her, Ed put his arms about the helpless body and dragged it to one side. As he did so, her eyes opened, and looked into his, with dazed questioning at first and then with leaping fear.

When Ed saw his wife look at him in terror, he struck his hands against his head, with one wordless cry.

The sight of his anguish swept the fear from her eyes, and only love was left. Her weak hands groped toward him, to draw his head against her breast, to hold it there with tenderness, before she gathered strength to speak.

"I'm not hurt, Eddie darling. I understand. And, see, it 's raining!"

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"Of many courageous feats performed by the American youths in khaki who are roaming the hills of Haiti one stands out as the most spectacular. Indeed, it is fit to rank with any of the stirring warrior tales with which history is seasoned from the days of the Greeks to the recent World War."

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HE name caco first appears in Haitian history in 1867. The men who took the field in the insurrection against President Salnave adopted that pseudonym, and nicknamed zandolite those who supported the Government. The insurrectionists were the Haitian birds who flitted freely everywhere, feeding on the helpless "caterpillars." The two terms have persisted to this day.

Haiti has never since been entirely free from cacos, though there have been occasional short periods when the country has been spared their ravages. Let a new president lose his popularity, however, or some ambitious rascal raise the cry of revolt, and the bandit-revolutionists were quick to flock together again, beginning their operations as soon as the mangos were ripe enough to furnish them subsistence. Ragged, penniless, illiterate fellows in the mass, they gather in bands varying from a score to thousands in numbers, depending on the reputation, persuasiveness, or power of compulsion of the selfappointed leaders. The latter are, in some cases, men of a certain education by Haitian standards, though often as illiterate as their followers. Now and again one of them, usually with a certain admixture of Caucasian blood in

his veins, has personal ambitions either of making himself President of Haiti in the long-approved manner, or at least of becoming powerful enough to force the Government to appoint him the ruler of a province or a smaller district. Others are merely the mouthpieces of disgruntled politicians or influential "respectable citizens" of Portau-Prince or several others of the larger cities, who secretly supply funds to the active insurrectionists.

The backwardness and poverty of Haiti are due chiefly to the more or less constant menace of these roving outlaws. Travel has often entirely disappeared from many a trail; more than one fertile region has been left wholly uncultivated and virtually uninhabited because of the bands of marauding cacos. Cattle, once plentiful throughout the republic, have almost entirely disappeared, thanks to the fact that their meat furnishes the chief means of livelihood, and their hides the one source of income for the bandits. Their depredations have cost the Black Republic most of its wealth and the greater share of its worldly troubles.

Some two years after American occupation cacoism took on a new life. In perfect frankness it must be admitted that this was partly the fault of the Americans. In their eagerness to fur

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