One of Ours | Page 3

about the country. He said nothing to his
wife; it was her business to guess whether or not he would be home for
dinner. She and Mahailey could have a good time scrubbing and
sweeping all day, with no men around to bother them.

There were few days in the year when Wheeler did not drive off
somewhere; to an auction sale, or a political convention, or a meeting
of the Farmers' Telephone directors;--to see how his neighbours were
getting on with their work, if there was nothing else to look after. He
preferred his buckboard to a car because it was light, went easily over
heavy or rough roads, and was so rickety that he never felt he must
suggest his wife's accompanying him. Besides he could see the country
better when he didn't have to keep his mind on the road. He had come
to this part of Nebraska when the Indians and the buffalo were still
about, remembered the grasshopper year and the big cyclone, had
watched the farms emerge one by one from the great rolling page
where once only the wind wrote its story. He had encouraged new
settlers to take up homesteads, urged on courtships, lent young fellows
the money to marry on, seen families grow and prosper; until he felt a
little as if all this were his own enterprise. The changes, not only those
the years made, but those the seasons made, were interesting to him.
People recognized Nat Wheeler and his cart a mile away. He sat
massive and comfortable, weighing down one end of the slanting seat,
his driving hand lying on his knee. Even his German neighbours, the
Yoeders, who hated to stop work for a quarter of an hour on any
account, were glad to see him coming. The merchants in the little towns
about the county missed him if he didn't drop in once a week or so. He
was active in politics; never ran for an office himself, but often took up
the cause of a friend and conducted his campaign for him.
The French saying, "Joy of the street, sorrow of the home," was
exemplified in Mr. Wheeler, though not at all in the French way. His
own affairs were of secondary importance to him. In the early days he

had homesteaded and bought and leased enough land to make him rich.
Now he had only to rent it out to good farmers who liked to work--he
didn't, and of that he made no secret. When he was at home, he usually
sat upstairs in the living room, reading newspapers. He subscribed for a
dozen or more--the list included a weekly devoted to scandal--and he
was well informed about what was going on in the world. He had
magnificent health, and illness in himself or in other people struck him
as humorous. To be sure, he never suffered from anything more
perplexing than toothache or boils, or an occasional bilious attack.
Wheeler gave liberally to churches and charities, was always ready to
lend money or machinery to a neighbour who was short of anything.
He liked to tease and shock diffident people, and had an inexhaustible
supply of funny stories. Everybody marveled that he got on so well
with his oldest son, Bayliss Wheeler. Not that Bayliss was exactly
diffident, but he was a narrow gauge fellow, the sort of prudent young
man one wouldn't expect Nat Wheeler to like.
Bayliss had a farm implement business in Frankfort, and though he was
still under thirty he had made a very considerable financial success.
Perhaps Wheeler was proud of his son's business acumen. At any rate,
he drove to town to see Bayliss several times a week, went to sales and
stock exhibits with him, and sat about his store for hours at a stretch,
joking with the farmers who came in. Wheeler had been a heavy
drinker in his day, and was still a heavy feeder. Bayliss was thin and
dyspeptic, and a virulent Prohibitionist; he would have liked to regulate
everybody's diet by his own feeble constitution. Even Mrs. Wheeler,
who took the men God had apportioned her for granted, wondered how
Bayliss and his father could go off to conventions together and have a
good time, since their ideas of what made a good time were so
different.
Once every few years, Mr. Wheeler bought a new suit and a dozen stiff
shirts and went back to Maine to visit his brothers and sisters, who
were very quiet, conventional people. But he was always glad to get
home to his old clothes, his big farm, his buckboard, and Bayliss.
Mrs. Wheeler had come out from Vermont to be Principal of the High

School, when Frankfort was a frontier town and Nat Wheeler was a