The George W. Ogden Western by George W. Ogden

Author:George W. Ogden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: western, gunslinger, cowboy, indian, Texas
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2015-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

EVA EMMA JANE

Originally published in Munsey’s Magazine, March 1903.

Eva Emma Jane was tied down. Everybody sympathized with her to the extent of pitying words, and regularly forgot her when invitations to a Sunday school picnic or an ice cream social were sent out. The state of bondage in which Eva Emma Jane lived put her on the outside of all such functions in Crab Orchard. She was young, bright, pretty, and good; but she was tied down.

The links in the chain of her servitude were five small white heads that began down very near the ground and advanced upwards gradually to her waist, like the steps in the cellar stairs. When her mother died of galloping consumption, induced by milking four cows in a barn that only aggravated the intensity of the winter wind by splitting it up between its cracks, she bequeathed the load that had submerged her own light to her eldest daughter.

“Be a mother to the young ’uns, Eva Emma Jane,” she said.

And Eva Emma Jane did her best. She gave up hope of the normal school and a first grade teacher’s certificate, and took up the milk pails, the washings, the ironings, the scrubbings, the bakings, and the mendings at the point where her mother’s wasted hands let go. The machinery of the household did not stop.

The neighbors spoke of her sacrifice. Her father heard of it one day, and growled. It was her duty, he said, and in the discharge of plain, everyday duty there was no sacrifice. Sacrifice was doing without tobacco to buy shoes. That was sacrifice.

Eva Emma Jane was strong. Toil and isolation from the merry ways of youth made her eyes sorrowful and deep-set, but her face was fair as a morning glory, and her figure graceful as a swinging vine. It was said that she never sat down without a child in her arms. The young men didn’t bother about her. She was so tied down.

* * * *

Eva Emma Jane drove over to the big store at the county seat, five miles away, once a week to trade eggs and butter for groceries and wearing apparel. One day, when she had finished shopping and emerged from the store, she found a fragment of halter strap hanging on the post where she had left her horse. He was gone. As she stood contemplating the long reach of dusty road between herself and home, Joe Doak drove up.

“I met your horse, Eva Emma Jane,” he said, “down in front of Piper’s. He was agony like Sam Hill, with the shafts of the buggy bangin’ on him. The runnin’ gears an’ box is smashed to flinders down at the turn of the lane.”

It was a terrible calamity. Eva Emma Jane looked down the road, put her basket on a box, and began to sob.

“Oh, what’ll pap say?” she moaned. “He’ll blame it all on me!”

“I ’lowed when I saw him runnin’,” said Joe, referring to the horse, “that I’d drive up an’ take you home.

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