O Pioneers! | Page 4

as if they were straying off by themselves, headed straight for
the open plain. None of them had any appearance of permanence, and
the howling wind blew under them as well as over them. The main
street was a deeply rutted road, now frozen hard, which ran from the
squat red railway station and the grain "elevator" at the north end of the
town to the lumber yard and the horse pond at the south end. On either
side of this road straggled two uneven rows of wooden buildings; the
general merchandise stores, the two banks, the drug store, the feed store,
the saloon, the post-office. The board sidewalks were gray with
trampled snow, but at two o'clock in the afternoon the shopkeepers,
having come back from dinner, were keeping well behind their frosty
windows. The children were all in school, and there was nobody abroad
in the streets but a few rough-looking countrymen in coarse overcoats,
with their long caps pulled down to their noses. Some of them had

brought their wives to town, and now and then a red or a plaid shawl
flashed out of one store into the shelter of another. At the hitch-bars
along the street a few heavy work-horses, harnessed to farm wagons,
shivered under their blankets. About the station everything was quiet,
for there would not be another train in until night.
On the sidewalk in front of one of the stores sat a little Swede boy,
crying bitterly. He was about five years old. His black cloth coat was
much too big for him and made him look like a little old man. His
shrunken brown flannel dress had been washed many times and left a
long stretch of stocking between the hem of his skirt and the tops of his
clumsy, copper-toed shoes. His cap was pulled down over his ears; his
nose and his chubby cheeks were chapped and red with cold. He cried
quietly, and the few people who hurried by did not notice him. He was
afraid to stop any one, afraid to go into the store and ask for help, so he
sat wringing his long sleeves and looking up a telegraph pole beside
him, whimpering, "My kitten, oh, my kitten! Her will fweeze!" At the
top of the pole crouched a shivering gray kitten, mewing faintly and
clinging desperately to the wood with her claws. The boy had been left
at the store while his sister went to the doctor's office, and in her
absence a dog had chased his kitten up the pole. The little creature had
never been so high before, and she was too frightened to move. Her
master was sunk in despair. He was a little country boy, and this village
was to him a very strange and perplexing place, where people wore fine
clothes and had hard hearts. He always felt shy and awkward here, and
wanted to hide behind things for fear some one might laugh at him. Just
now, he was too unhappy to care who laughed. At last he seemed to see
a ray of hope: his sister was coming, and he got up and ran toward her
in his heavy shoes.
His sister was a tall, strong girl, and she walked rapidly and resolutely,
as if she knew exactly where she was going and what she was going to
do next. She wore a man's long ulster (not as if it were an affliction, but
as if it were very comfortable and belonged to her; carried it like a
young soldier), and a round plush cap, tied down with a thick veil. She
had a serious, thoughtful face, and her clear, deep blue eyes were fixed
intently on the distance, without seeming to see anything, as if she were

in trouble. She did not notice the little boy until he pulled her by the
coat. Then she stopped short and stooped down to wipe his wet face.
"Why, Emil! I told you to stay in the store and not to come out. What is
the matter with you?"
"My kitten, sister, my kitten! A man put her out, and a dog chased her
up there." His forefinger, projecting from the sleeve of his coat, pointed
up to the wretched little creature on the pole.
"Oh, Emil! Didn't I tell you she'd get us into trouble of some kind, if
you brought her? What made you tease me so? But there, I ought to
have known better myself." She went to the foot of the pole and held
out her arms, crying, "Kitty, kitty, kitty," but the kitten only mewed and
faintly waved its tail. Alexandra turned away decidedly. "No, she won't
come down. Somebody will have to go up after her. I saw the
Linstrums' wagon in town. I'll