Chapter: WICK CUTTER was the money-lender who had fleeced poor Russian Peter. When
a farmer once got into the habit of going to Cutter, it was like gambling
or the lottery; in an hour of discouragement he went back.

Cutter's first name was Wycliffe, and he liked to talk about his pious
bringing-up. He contributed regularly to the Protestant churches, "for
sentiment's sake," as he said with a flourish of the hand. He came from a
town in Iowa where there were a great many Swedes, and could speak a
little Swedish, which gave him a great advantage with the early
Scandinavian settlers.

In every frontier settlement there are men who have come there to escape
restraint. Cutter was one of the "fast set" of Black Hawk business men. He
was an inveterate gambler, though a poor loser. When we saw a light
burning in his office late at night, we knew that a game of poker was
going on. Cutter boasted that he never drank anything stronger than
sherry, and he said he got his start in life by saving the money that
other young men spent for cigars. He was full of moral maxims for boys.
When he came to our house on business, he quoted "Poor Richard's Almanack"
to me, and told me he was delighted to find a town boy who could milk a
cow. He was particularly affable to grandmother, and whenever they met he
would begin at once to talk about "the good old times" and simple living.
I detested his pink, bald head, and his yellow whiskers, always soft and
glistening. It was said he brushed them every night, as a woman does her
hair. His white teeth looked factory-made. His skin was red and rough, as
if from perpetual sunburn; he often went away to hot springs to take mud
baths. He was notoriously dissolute with women. Two Swedish girls who had
lived in his house were the worse for the experience. One of them he had
taken to Omaha and established in the business for which he had fitted
her. He still visited her.

Cutter lived in a state of perpetual warfare with his wife, and yet,
apparently, they never thought of separating. They dwelt in a fussy,
scroll-work house, painted white and buried in thick evergreens, with a
fussy white fence and barn. Cutter thought he knew a great deal about
horses, and usually had a colt which he was training for the track. On
Sunday mornings one could see him out at the fair grounds, speeding around
the race-course in his trotting-buggy, wearing yellow gloves and a
black-and-white-check traveling cap, his whiskers blowing back in the
breeze. If there were any boys about, Cutter would offer one of them a
quarter to hold the stop-watch, and then drive off, saying he had no
change and would "fix it up next time." No one could cut his lawn or wash
his buggy to suit him. He was so fastidious and prim about his place that
a boy would go to a good deal of trouble to throw a dead cat into his back
yard, or to dump a sackful of tin cans in his alley. It was a peculiar
combination of old-maidishness and licentiousness that made Cutter seem so
despicable.

He had certainly met his match when he married Mrs. Cutter. She was a
terrifying-looking person; almost a giantess in height, raw-boned, with
iron-gray hair, a face always flushed, and prominent, hysterical eyes.
When she meant to be entertaining and agreeable, she nodded her head
incessantly and snapped her eyes at one. Her teeth were long and curved,
like a horse's; people said babies always cried if she smiled at them. Her
face had a kind of fascination for me; it was the very color and shape of
anger. There was a gleam of something akin to insanity in her full,
intense eyes. She was formal in manner, and made calls in rustling,
steel-gray brocades and a tall bonnet with bristling aigrettes.

Mrs. Cutter painted china so assiduously that even her washbowls and
pitchers, and her husband's shaving-mug, were covered with violets and
lilies. Once when Cutter was exhibiting some of his wife's china to a
caller, he dropped a piece. Mrs. Cutter put her handkerchief to her lips
as if she were going to faint and said grandly: "Mr. Cutter, you have
broken all the Commandments--spare the finger-bowls!"

They quarreled from the moment Cutter came into the house until they went
to bed at night, and their hired girls reported these scenes to the town
at large. Mrs. Cutter had several times cut paragraphs about unfaithful
husbands out of the newspapers and mailed them to Cutter in a disguised
handwriting. Cutter would come home at noon, find the mutilated journal in
the paper-rack, and triumphantly fit the clipping into the space from
which it had been cut. Those two could quarrel all morning about whether
he ought to put on his heavy or his light underwear, and all evening about
whether he had taken cold or not.

The Cutters had major as well as minor subjects for dispute. The chief of
these was the question of inheritance: Mrs. Cutter told her husband it was
plainly his fault they had no children. He insisted that Mrs. Cutter had
purposely remained childless, with the determination to outlive him and to
share his property with her "people," whom he detested. To this she would
reply that unless he changed his mode of life, she would certainly outlive
him. After listening to her insinuations about his physical soundness,
Cutter would resume his dumb-bell practice for a month, or rise daily at
the hour when his wife most liked to sleep, dress noisily, and drive out
to the track with his trotting-horse.

Once when they had quarreled about household expenses, Mrs. Cutter put on
her brocade and went among their friends soliciting orders for painted
china, saying that Mr. Cutter had compelled her "to live by her brush."
Cutter was n't shamed as she had expected; he was delighted!

Cutter often threatened to chop down the cedar trees which half-buried the
house. His wife declared she would leave him if she were stripped of the
"privacy" which she felt these trees afforded her. That was his
opportunity, surely; but he never cut down the trees. The Cutters seemed
to find their relations to each other interesting and stimulating, and
certainly the rest of us found them so. Wick Cutter was different from any
other rascal I have ever known, but I have found Mrs. Cutters all over the
world; sometimes founding new religions, sometimes being forcibly
fed--easily recognizable, even when superficially tamed.

 Antonia is discovered by the young men of the town at the Vannis dance nights. Before these nights, she had always been considered more of a ward of the Harlings than one of the hired girls. Antonia is the best dancer of all of them. Jim can hear rumors among the town folk that Antonia will soon be causing Mrs. Harling a great deal of trouble. Antonia cant get enough of the life of the tent. She rushes through her duties so she can get off in time to go to the dances. Now, the iceman stays around after delivering the ice so he can talk to her as do the delivery boys. One Saturday night when Mr. Harling had gone to the cellar for a beer, he heard Antonia outside the back door slapping a boy who had tried to kiss her against her will. When she comes in, he tells her she can no longer work for them if she doesnt stop going to dances. She refuses to stop going to dances. The next day Mrs. Harling tries to talk to her. She says she cant go back on what Mr. Harling says since it is his house. Antonia tells her she will leave and go work for the Cutters. Mrs. Harling is shocked and says she cannot speak to Antonia if she works for the Cutters. Antonia says she will take care of herself. Mrs. Harling wishes she had never become so fond of Antonia.

