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ROSE OF DUTCHER'S COOLLY

by

HAMLIN GARLAND







Chicago
Stone & Kimball
MDCCCXCV

Copyright, 1895, by
Hamlin Garland




CONTENTS
   CHAPTER I.     HER CHILDHOOD
   CHAPTER II.    CHILD-LIFE, PAGAN FREE
   CHAPTER III.   DANGEROUS DAYS
   CHAPTER IV.    AN OPENING CLOVER-BLOOM
   CHAPTER V.     HER FIRST PERIL
   CHAPTER VI.    HER FIRST IDEAL
   CHAPTER VII.   ROSE MEETS DR. THATCHER
   CHAPTER VIII.  LEAVING HOME
   CHAPTER IX.    ROSE ENTERS MADISON
   CHAPTER X.     QUIET YEARS OF GROWTH
   CHAPTER XI.    STUDY OF THE STARS
   CHAPTER XII.   THE GATES OPEN WIDE
   CHAPTER XIII.  THE WOMAN'S PART
   CHAPTER XIV.   AGAIN THE QUESTION OF HOME-LEAVING
   CHAPTER XV.    CHICAGO
   CHAPTER XVI.   HER FIRST CONQUEST
   CHAPTER XVII.  HER FIRST DINNER OUT
   CHAPTER XVIII. MASON TALKS ON MARRIAGE
   CHAPTER XIX.   ROSE SITS IN THE BLAZE OF A THOUSAND EYES
   CHAPTER XX.    ROSE SETS FACE TOWARD THE OPEN ROAD
   CHAPTER XXI.   MASON TALKS AGAIN
   CHAPTER XXII.  SOCIAL QUESTIONS
   CHAPTER XXIII. A STORM AND A HELMSMAN
   CHAPTER XXIV.  MASON TAKES A VACATION
   CHAPTER XXV.   ROSE RECEIVES A LETTER
   CHAPTER XXVI.  MASON AS A LOVER
   CONCLUSION




ROSE OF DUTCHER'S COOLLY




CHAPTER I

HER CHILDHOOD


Rose was an unaccountable child from the start. She learned to speak
early and while she did not use "baby-talk" she had strange words of her
own. She called hard money "tow" and a picture "tac," names which had
nothing to do with onomatopoeia though it seemed so in some cases.
Bread and milk she called "plop."

She began to read of her own accord when four years old, picking out the
letters from the advertisements of the newspapers, and running to her
mother at the sink or bread-board to learn what each word meant. Her
demand for stories grew to be a burden. She was insatiate, nothing but
sleep subdued her eager brain.

As she grew older she read and re-read her picture books when alone, but
when older people were talking she listened as attentively as if she
understood every word. She had the power of amusing herself and visited
very little with other children. It was deeply moving to see her with
her poor playthings out under the poplar tree, talking to herself,
arranging and rearranging her chairs and tables, the sunlight flecking
her hair, and the birds singing overhead.

She seemed only a larger sort of insect, and her prattle mixed easily
with the chirp of crickets and the rustle of leaves.

She was only five years old when her mother suddenly withdrew her hands
from pans and kettles, gave up all thought of bread and butter making,
and took rest in death. Only a few hours of waiting on her bed near the
kitchen fire and Ann Dutcher was through with toil and troubled
dreaming, and lay in the dim best-room, taking no account of anything in
the light of day.

Rose got up the next morning after her mother's last kiss and went into
the room where the body lay. A gnomish little figure the child was, for
at that time her head was large and her cropped hair bristled till she
seemed a sort of brownie. Also, her lonely child-life had given her
quaint, grave ways.

She knew her mother was dead, and that death was a kind of sleep which
lasted longer than common sleep, that was all the difference, so she
went in and stood by the bed and tried to see her mother's face. It was
early in the morning and the curtains being drawn it was dark in the
room, but Rose had no fear, for mother was there.

She talked softly to herself a little while, then went over to the
window and pulled on the string of the curtain till it rolled up. Then
she went back and looked at her mother. She grew tired of waiting at
last.

"Mamma," she called, "wake up. Can't you wake up, mamma?"

She patted the cold, rigid cheeks with her rough brown little palms.
Then she blew in the dead face, gravely. Then she thought if she could
only open mamma's eyes she'd be awake. So she took her finger and thumb
and tried to lift the lashes, and when she did she was frightened by the
look of the set faded gray eyes. Then the terrible vague shadow of the
Unknown settled upon her and she cried convulsively: "Mamma! mamma, I
want you!" Thus she met death, early in her life.

After her mother's burial Rose turned to her father more hungrily than
before. She rode into the fields with him in the spring, when he went
out to sow, sitting on the seeder box with the pockets of her little
pink apron filled with wheat, and her sweet, piping little voice calling
to the horses or laughing in glee at the swarms of sparrows. When he was
plowing corn she rode on the horses, clinging like a blue-jay to the
rings in the back-pad, her yellow-brown hair blowing.

She talked sagely about the crops and the weather, and asked innumerable
questions. Often John could not hear her questions, which were like soft
soliloquies, but she babbled on just the same.

"See the little birds, pappa John. They's 'bout a million of 'um, ain't
they? They're glad spring has come, ain't they, pappa? They can
understand each other just the same as we can, can't they, pappa John?"

John Dutcher was not a talker, and he seldom answered her unless she
turned her eager face to him, and her bird-like voice repeated her
question. But it mattered very little to Rose. She had her father's
power of self-amusement. In case she got tired of riding about with him
she brought her playthings out and established them in a corner of the
fence. Her favorite game was playing horses.

Her horses were sticks of the size of canes, and of all sorts and
colors. Each one had a name. How she selected them, and why she selected
them out of the vast world of sticks, was a mystery to John Dutcher.

The brown stick she called Dan, the fork handle, Nellie, and the crooked
stick with the big knot was Barney. She had from six to ten and she
never forgot their names. Each had a string for a bridle and they all
were placed in stalls, which she built with infinite labor and
calculation out of twigs. She led each stick by its halter up to the
manger (a rail) on which she had placed oats and grass. She talked to
them.

"Now, Barney, whoa-whoa there now! Don't you kick Kit again--now sir!
Kit, you better stand over here by Pete--Barney, you need exercise,
that's what you need--yessir."

She exercised them by riding them in plunging circles about the fields,
forgetting, with the quick imagination of a child, that she was doing
all the hard work of the riding with her own stout, brown legs. It was a
pleasure to John to have her there though he said little to her.

Often at night as he saw her lying asleep, her long lashes upon her
roughened sun-burned skin, his heart went out to her in a great gush of
tenderness. His throat ached and his eyes grew wet as he thought how
unresponsive he had been that day. His remorseful memory went back over
her eager questions to which he had not replied. Dear, sweet, restless
little heart! And then he vowed never to lose patience with her again.
And sometimes standing there beside her bed his arms closed about the
little mound under the quilts, and his lips touched the round,
sleep-enraptured face. At such times his needy soul went out in a cry to
his dead wife for help to care for his child.

He grew afraid of the mystery and danger of coming womanhood. Her needs
came to him more powerfully each day.

When she began going to school