A Son of the Middle Border | Page 6

our mother often gave them bread and meat which they took (always
without thanks) and ate with much relish while sitting beside our fire.
All this seemed very curious to us, but as they were accustomed to
share their food and lodging with one another so they accepted my

mother's bounty in the same matter-of-fact fashion.
Once two old fellows, while sitting by the fire, watched Frank and me
bringing in wood for the kitchen stove, and smiled and muttered
between themselves thereat. At last one of them patted my brother on
the head and called out admiringly, "Small pappoose, heap work-
good!" and we were very proud ot the old man's praise.

CHAPTER II
The McClintocks
THE members of my mother's family must have been often at our home
during my father's mili tary service in the south, but I have no mental
pictures of them till after my father's home-coming in 65. Their names
were familiar were, indeed, like bits of old- fashioned song. "Richard"
was a fine and tender word in my ear, but "David" and "Luke,"
"Deborah" and "Samantha," and especially "Hugh," suggested some
thing alien as well as poetic.
They all lived somewhere beyond the hills which walled our coulee on
the east, in a place called Salem, and I was eager to visit them, for in
that direction my universe died away in a luminous mist of unexplored
distance. I had some notion of its near-by loveliness for I had once
viewed it from the top of the tall bluff which stood like a warder at the
gate of our valley, and when one bright morning my father said, "Belle,
get ready, and we'll drive over to Grandad s," we all became greatly
excited.
In those days people did not "call," they went "visitin ." The women
took their knitting and stayed all the afternoon and sometimes all night.
No one owned a carriage. Each family journeyed in a heavy farm
wagon with the father and mother riding high on the wooden spring
seat while the children jounced up and down on the hay in the bottom
of the box or clung desperately to the side-boards to keep from being
jolted out. In such wise we started on our trip to the McClintocks.

The road ran to the south and east around the base of Sugar Loaf Bluff,
thence across a lovely valley and over a high wooded ridge which was
so steep that at times we rode above the tree tops. As father stopped the
horses to let them rest, we children gazed about us with wondering eyes.
Far behind us lay the LaCrosse valley through which a slender river ran,
while before us towered wind-worn cliffs of stone. It was an exploring
expedition for us.
The top of the divide gave a grand view of wooded hills to the
northeast, but father did not wait for us to enjoy that. He started the
team on the perilous down ward road without regard to our wishes, and
so we bumped and clattered to the bottom, all joy of the scenery
swallowed up in fear of being thrown from the wagon.
The roar of a rapid, the gleam of a long curving stream, a sharp turn
through a pair of bars, and we found ourselves approaching a low
unpainted house which stood on a level bench overlooking a river and
its meadows.
"There it is. That's Grandad's house," said mother, and peering over her
shoulder I perceived a group of people standing about the open door,
and heard then- shouts of welcome.
My father laughed. "Looks as if the whole McClintock clan was on
parade," he said.
It was Sunday and all my aunts and uncles were in holiday dress and a
merry, hearty, handsome group they were. One of the men helped my
mother out and another, a roguish young fellow with a pock-marked
face, snatched me from the wagon and carried me under his arm to the
threshold where a short, gray-haired smiling woman was standing.
"Mother, here's another grandson for you," he said as he put me at her
feet.
She greeted me kindly and led me into the house, in which a huge old
man with a shock of perfectly white hair was sitting with a Bible on his
knee. He had a rugged face framed in a circle of gray beard and his
glance was absent-minded and remote. "Father," said my grand mother,

"Belle has come. Here is one of her boys."
Closing his book on his glasses to mark the place of his reading he
turned to greet my mother who entered at this moment. His way of
speech was as strange as his look and for a few moments I studied him
with childish intentness. His face was rough-hewn