Lucky | Page 4

I'm
comin'."
Not long after, Nana came into the little bare apartment which served as
dining-room and kitchen in one, where the farm hands were devouring
their morning repast.
"You get out o' here," was Mrs. Royster's greeting.
"I won't till I've had my breakfast," declared Nana.
"You won't! Well, we'll see," Mrs. Royster returned, accompanying her
remark with a sound box on Nana's ear.
The farm hands laughed. Mrs. Royster gave them an approving look.
"See there. They're laughin' at you, spunky, and well you deserve it.
Now get."
"I don't care how much they laugh. They're just as bad as you are, and I
hate 'em just as much, and I'm going to have something to eat," said
Nana, seizing a plate of corn bread that stood within reach.
"Oh, you will, will you?" exclaimed Mrs. Royster, "We'll see about
that."
She caught Nana's hand, and tried to wrest the bread from her, but the
child clung to it as an animal clings to its prey.
"I'll fix you!" exclaimed Mr. Royster, coming in just in time to witness
the disturbance. "You are gettin' a bit too sassy to the folks that feed
and clothe you and teach you manners." With this, he snatched the food
from her hand, and, thrusting her out, closed the door upon her.
The next moment an unearthly scream rent the air, and looking in the
direction whence it came, they saw Nana, peering through the window,
shaking her fist with intense violence, her face livid, her eyes aflame,
and her slight figure quivering from head to foot.

"Ah," she cried, through her clenched teeth, "You'd better be down on
your knees a sayin' your prayers from now on, for you ain't long for this
world, none of you!"
"What ails the young one?" said Mrs. Royster, as Nana vanished.
"She's mad," said Mr. Royster. "She needs that taken out of her, and by
the old Harry, she'll get it done too."
"She's an awful young one," said the girl who waited on the farm
hands.
"Terrible!" echoed the hands.
"She's half crazy," said Bub Royster.
"She ought to have been sent to the Inform School long afore this," said
his mother.
Lund, who was at the table, listened silently; but his food stuck in his
throat, and refused to be washed down by constant deluges of water
from his tin cup.
"What's the matter, boy? Your face is as red as a beet," remarked the
man who sat next to him.
"Nothin'," muttered Lund dropping his eyes.
"Try in' to eat too fast. Don't be afraid; you'll get enough, greedy," said
Mrs. Royster.
When he went out, Lund found Nana sitting in a disconsolate attitude
in her accustomed place under the willows by the spring. He had his
dinner-bag in his hand. He threw it into her lap.
"There, Nane," he said, "take it and run for your life. They'll half kill
you if they find you here."
"But you won't have any, then."

"I don't care. I'm a boy. I don't get hungry."
The tears rose to Nana's eyes.
"I won't take it at all, Lund, dear. Here's half of it back. Now, I'll scoot,
and before I get back they'll all be dead. Won't we have good old times
when they're gone? Don't forget the almanick."
* * *
The long grass swayed to and fro with a sleepy sound; the lithe
dragon-fly hovered over the little pools of stagnant water, beside which
the child lay with halfclosed eyes, watching the graceful darting hither
and thither of the pretty creatures on their transparent wings.
"I wonder why they stay around those ugly puddles," she mused
dreamily. "If I had wings, I'd fly away to where everything was nice."
Then, as the low, mournful call of the prairie gopher fell upon her ear,
she reflected : " What makes him feel so bad? He must have lost friends
that he can't forget. I never had any friends, so I feel bad like him. Poor
thing!"
At intervals a freight-line teamster passed down the great road, which,
in the parlance of the West, led from " Omaha to Idaho. " Nana could
hear the creak of the oxen's yoke and the snap of the driver's whip. The
teamsters were called bull-whackers, and Nana never quite overcame
her dread of them. Every time she heard their rasping "Whoa, haw," she
crouched farther down in the grass to hide. She believed them terrible
creatures, in whom the spirit of torture was instinctive, and whose chief
delight was to mistreat the poor dumb animals which they drove. It had
been the custom of Mrs. Royster when the child was younger to
frighten her into submission by the threat, "I'll give you to the
bull-whackers. " Now, despite