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Updated: June 22, 2025
In a few minutes they were mounted and away, Brown riding hard to bring the great news to the engineer's camp and recall the hunting parties; the rest to make the ranch, Marjorie in front in happy sparkling converse with Jack French, and Kalman, haggard and gloomy, bringing up the rear. A new man was being brought to birth within him, and sore were the parturition pangs.
There was an immediate market for coal among the Galicians of the colony, who much preferred it to wood as a fuel for the clay ovens with which they heated their houses. But they had little money to spare, and hence, at the beginning of the work, Kalman hit upon the device of bartering coal for labour, two days' work in the mine entitling a labourer to a load of coal.
The Galician, a heavily-built man, was standing on the trail with a stout stake in his hand, viewing the ruins of his load and expressing his emotions in voluble Galician profanity with a bad mixture of halting and broken English. Kalman stood beside French with wrath growing in his face. "He is calling you very bad names!" he burst out at length.
Kalman sat clinging to the rocking, pitching buckboard, his eyes alight and his face aglow with excitement. There was stirring in the boy's brain a dim and far-away memory of wild rides over the steppes of Southern Russia, and French, glancing now and then at his glowing face, nodded grim approval. "Afraid, boy?" he shouted over the roar and rattle of the pitching buckboard.
She looked flushed and angry, her "burnin' brown eyes" shining like blazing coals. "What is the matter?" said Kalman, when he had a moment's leisure to observe her. "He is very rough and rude," said the girl, "and he is a little pig." Kalman nodded and waited. He had no time for mere words. "And he tried to kiss me just now," she continued indignantly.
No man, nothing shall take you from me!" "Hush, Kalman!" she cried, coming to him and laying her hand upon his lips; "they are just down by the river there." "Who are they? I care not who they are, now that you are mine!" "And oh, how near I was to losing you!" she cried. "You were going away to-morrow, and I should have broken my heart." "Ah, dear heart! How could I know?" he said.
"It is a fine thing," said Marjorie, "to have a country to be made, and it is fine to be a man and have a part in the making of it." "Yes," agreed Kalman, "it is fine." "I envy you," cried Marjorie with enthusiasm. A shadow fell on Kalman's face. "I don't know that you need to, after all." Then she said good-by, leaving him with heart throbbing and nerves tingling to his finger tips.
"You show me what to do," said Kalman confidently, "and I'll do it." The stable was a tumble-down affair, and sorely needing attention, as, indeed, was the case with the ranch and all its belongings. A team of horses showing signs of hard work and poor care, with harness patched with rope and rawhide thongs, were waiting in the stable.
This desire both Brown and Kalman were only too eager to gratify, for the two had grown into a friendship that became a large part of the lives of both. Every Sunday Kalman was to be found at Wakota. There, in the hospitable home of the Browns, he came into contact with a phase of life new and delightful to him.
He no longer trod the solid ground, but through paths of airy bliss his soul marched to the strains of celestial music. Poor Kalman! When on that fateful morning upon his virgin soul there dawned the vision of the maid, the hour of fate struck for him. That most ancient and most divine of frenzies smote him. He was deliciously, madly in love, though he knew it not.
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