Part One - ONE

by Willa Cather

　　Thirty or forty years ago, in one of those grey towns along theBurlington railroad, which are so much greyer today than they werethen, there was a house well known from Omaha to Denver for itshospitality and for a certain charm of atmosphere. Well known,that is to say, to the railroad aristocracy of that time; men whohad to do with the railroad itself, or with one of the "landcompanies" which were its by-products. In those days it was enoughto say of a man that he was "connected with the Burlington." Therewere the directors, the general managers, vice-presidents,superintendents, whose names we all knew; and their youngerbrothers or nephews were auditors, freight agents, departmentalassistants. Everyone "connected" with the Road, even the largecattle- and grain-shippers, had annual passes; they and theirfamilies rode about over the line a great deal. There were thentwo distinct social strata in the prairie States; the homesteadersand hand-workers who were there to make a living, and the bankersand gentlemen ranchers who came from the Atlantic seaboard toinvest money and to "develop our great West," as they used to tellus.

　　When the Burlington men were travelling back and forth on businessnot very urgent, they found it agreeable to drop off the expressand spend a night in a pleasant house where their importance wasdelicately recognized; and no house was pleasanter than that ofCaptain Daniel Forrester, at Sweet Water. Captain Forrester washimself a railroad man, a contractor, who had built hundreds ofmiles of road for the Burlington,--over the sage brush and cattlecountry, and on up into the Black Hills.

　　The Forrester place, as every one called it, was not at allremarkable; the people who lived there made it seem much larger andfiner than it was. The house stood on a low round hill, nearly amile east of town; a white house with a wing, and sharp-slopingroofs to shed the snow. It was encircled by porches, too narrowfor modern notions of comfort, supported by the fussy, fragilepillars of that time, when every honest stick of timber wastortured by the turning-lathe into something hideous. Stripped ofits vines and denuded of its shrubbery, the house would probablyhave been ugly enough. It stood close into a fine cottonwood grovethat threw sheltering arms to left and right and grew all down thehillside behind it. Thus placed on the hill, against its bristlinggrove, it was the first thing one saw on coming into Sweet Water byrail, and the last thing one saw on departing.

　　To approach Captain Forrester's property, you had first to get overa wide, sandy creek which flowed along the eastern edge of thetown. Crossing this by the footbridge or the ford, you entered theCaptain's private lane bordered by Lombardy poplars, with widemeadows lying on either side. Just at the foot of the hill onwhich the house sat, one crossed a second creek by the stout woodenroad-bridge. This stream traced artless loops and curves throughthe broad meadows that were half pasture land, half marsh. Any onebut Captain Forrester would have drained the bottom land and madeit into highly productive fields. But he had selected this placelong ago because it looked beautiful to him, and he happened tolike the way the creek wound through his pasture, with mint andjoint-grass and twinkling willows along its banks. He was well offfor those times, and he had no children. He could afford to humourhis fancies.

　　When the Captain drove friends from Omaha or Denver over from thestation in his democrat wagon, it gratified him to hear thesegentlemen admire his fine stock, grazing in the meadows on eitherside of his lane. And when they reached the top of the hill, itgratified him to see men who were older than himself leap nimbly tothe ground and run up the front steps as Mrs. Forrester came out onthe porch to greet them. Even the hardest and coldest of hisfriends, a certain narrow-faced Lincoln banker, became animatedwhen he took her hand, tried to meet the gay challenge in her eyesand to reply cleverly to the droll word of greeting on her lips.

　　She was always there, just outside the front door, to welcome theirvisitors, having been warned of their approach by the sound ofhoofs and the rumble of wheels on the wooden bridge. If shehappened to be in the kitchen, helping her Bohemian cook, she cameout in her apron, waving a buttery iron spoon, or shook cherry-stained fingers at the new arrival. She never stopped to pin up alock; she was attractive in dishabille, and she knew it. She hadbeen known to rush to the door in her dressing-gown, brush in handand her long black hair rippling over her shoulders, to welcomeCyrus Dalzell, president of the Colorado & Utah; and the great manhad never felt more flattered. In his eyes, and in the eyes of theadmiring middle-aged men who visited there, whatever Mrs. Forresterchose to do was "lady-like" because she did it. They could notimagine her in any dress or situation in which she would not becharming. Captain Forrester himself, a man of few words, toldJudge Pommeroy that he had never seen her look more captivatingthan on the day when she was chased by the new bull in the pasture.She had forgotten about the bull and gone into the meadow to gatherwild flowers. He heard her scream, and as he ran puffing down thehill, she was scudding along the edge of the marshes like a hare,beside herself with laughter, and stubbornly clinging to thecrimson parasol that had made all the trouble.

　　Mrs. Forrester was twenty-five years younger than her husband, andshe was his second wife. He married her in California and broughther to Sweet Water a bride. They called the place home even then,when they lived there but a few months out of each year. Butlater, after the Captain's terrible fall with his horse in themountains, which broke him so that he could no longer buildrailroads, he and his wife retired to the house on the hill.He grew old there,--and even she, alas! grew older.