Sally of Missouri | Page 3

on the trail ag'in. The tramp-boy he's kim
along so far with Old Bernique." In saying this, or something very like
it, the hill farmer who spoke had always seemed to want it definitely
understood that the neighbourhood had its excitements, and seemed to
argue that if the stranger knew anything he must know Old Bernique
and the tramp-boy. Proceeding leisurely and reflectively, as though he
had decided in his own mind how to classify the stranger, the farmer
had generally added, "Lots of prospectors ride by nowadays. They head
in to the relroad f'm here,--you know you aint a-goin' to ketch the
relroad at Poetical?"
"Yes, I know, but when I left my friends at Bessietown yesterday I was
hoping I could make it all the way across country to Canaan before
to-night."

"Oh, you goin' on to Canaan?"
"Yes, going on to Canaan." Each time the words had echoed through
Steering's head with an old-time promise in a mocking refrain, "Going
on to Canaan! Going on to Canaan!"
Immediately the hill tribe had eyed him with renewed interest. "Going
on to Canaan!" the farmer at their head had repeated, an impressive
esteem in his treatment of the word Canaan. "Gre't taown, Canaan! You
strike the relroad tha' all righty. Dog-oned ef th'aint abaout ev'thing tha'.
Got the cote-haouse an' all, the relroad an' all--Miss Sally Madeira,
Mist' Crit Madeira's daughter, she lives tha'."
It had gone like that every time. Not once in the last twenty miles had
Steering exchanged a word with man or woman without this sort of
reference to Canaan and, collaterally, to Miss Sally Madeira. Miss
Sally, he had perceived early, excited in the hill-farm people a species
of awe, as though she were on a par with the circus, thaumaturgic,
almost too good to be true.
"The court house, the railroad and Miss Sally!" he had finally learned
to murmur, in order to meet the demands of the situation.
"Yass, oh yass." The farmer had given his head a dogged twist, and
looked as though he were cognisant of the fact that in certain essential
particulars Canaan did not have to yield an inch of her title to equality
with the biggest and best anywhere. "Yass, saouthwest Mizzourah's
hard to beat in spots; th'aint no State in the Union quite like her. She's
different," he had said, rocking on his heels, his chest lifting.
"I think you must be right about that," Steering had answered, every
time with profounder emphasis.
Off here alone on the ridge road now, Missouri's unspeakable
difference was coming over him in great submerging waves. Though he
tried bravely to face the State and have it out with her, he couldn't do it.
"Missouri," he said at last to himself, and to her confidentially, "I'd like

to cry. I'd give five hundred plunkerinos if I might be allowed to cry."
Then he flicked his riding-crop over his leg in a devilishly nonchalant
way, and rode straight forward.
The road went on interminably, its dust-white line, with the rocky ridge
through the middle, dipping and rising and getting nowhere. The horse
grew nervous and shied repeatedly from sheer loneliness. The road
entered a wood. Deep in its leafy fastness wild steers heard the beat of
the horse's hoofs, laid back their ears and galloped into safer depths,
bellowing with alarm. Steering gave up, as helplessly homesick as a
baby, his head dropped forward on his chest in a settled melancholy,
from which he did not rouse until he had cleared the timber; and then
only because he saw a horseman down the ridge road ahead of him.
What instantly attracted Steering's attention was the man's back. It was
a small but proud back. It had none of the hill stoop. It was erect,
sinewy, soldierly. Steering was so lonely that he would have welcomed
companionship with a chipmunk. The chance of companionship with a
man who had an interesting back grew luminous. He urged his horse
forward eagerly, almost hysterically glad of his opportunity.
"Good-afternoon," he called, having recourse to his well-tried form of
greeting. "Can you tell me how far it is to Poetical?"
The man addressed half turned, disclosing a thin and delicate face to
Steering. Then he reined his horse in gently. "Good-evening, sair. Is it
that you inquire to Poetical? It is a vair' long five miles f'm here, sair."
Steering rode up beside the man, more and more pleased, regarding and
analysing. The man's hickory shirt, his warped boots, his blue jean
trousers, his heavy buskins were mean and earth-stained, but inherent
in the quality of his low, musical voice and courteous manner was an
intangible suggestion of something different, some bigger and happier
past, to which, go where he would and clothe himself as he might,