PART I - The Wild Land

 
  I

    One January day,
           thirty years ago,
         the little town of Hanover,
           anchored on
               a windy Nebraska tableland,
         was trying not
              to be blown away.

    A mist of fine snowflakes
        was curling and eddying
               about the cluster
                   of low drab buildings
              huddled on the gray prairie,
           under a gray sky.

    The dwelling-houses
        were set
               about haphazard
                   on the tough prairie sod;
        some of them looked
             as if
                 they had been moved
                       in overnight,
           and others
             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.