The eastbound train had gone shrieking through Brailsford Junction pulled by two engines to buck the drifts. Bundles of Madison papers were tossed from the baggage car as the train passed, and the engineer had waved at Nat Cumlien, the station master.

Now in a corner of the station half a dozen rosy-faced young rascals fought and laughed as they stuffed their paper sacks.

"Wish I had about ten kids," thought Stud, watching the boys while waiting for the long over-due four-thirty-nine from Chicago. "Six or eight sons and a batch of girls."

He sighed as he looked out at the unexpected November blizzard. The telephone wires sang a high monotonous tune. Snow drifted in rippled waves over the tracks and the cinder piles beyond. The station windows rattled in the forty mile gale and the telegraph instrument kept up its incessant, monotonous tattoo.

"Gol darn! There never was nothing in my life I wanted like a lot of youngsters. Big strapping boys to help me with the cows and crops. Good looking girls to help Sarah."

He spat reflectively at the roaring stove, shifted his position on the bench.

"Peter's a good boy, and he certainly ran that thrashing machine slicker than a greased pig. But now he's figuring on spending all his mortal days in a trailer factory."

He couldn't make the boy out, always mooning around and sighing. Not mean nor hard to handle, but with a head full of silly ideas. Maybe all he needed was to sow his wild oats.

Peter'd make a good enough farmer if he'd put his mind to it. He was smart enough, and strong enough, and a real good worker. But Stud doubted that he would ever see the boy back on the farm again.

He wished he had a dozen big sons, strapping fellows who could handle a quarter section at sixteen. He wished it were as easy to get human young ones as it was calves, colts and lambs.

Why, if a mare didn't foal you tried another mare. If a cow didn't calve you turned her into beef steak. And any stallion, bull or ram could serve half a hundred females of his species.

"Wish I had a harem," thought Stud; "I'd get me all the children a man could want. We've got enough victuals to feed about forty on that farm. I'd breed 'em big and feed 'em plenty. It'd be a sight for sore eyes to see my litter."

Stud was awaiting Early Ann's train from the big city. She would be getting off the cars any time now all rosy and fresh and pert with her tongue running away with her and her feet fairly dancing. Young, healthy, and going to waste. What was the matter with young fellows these days, didn't they know a good thing when they saw it? Early Ann was just what Stud needed around the farm: a good little filly that'd make a good mare.

"Shoot, such a way to talk," thought Stud, spitting at the glowing stove. "Can't breed humans like you breed cattle. Got to think about marriage vows and morality and all that sort of business."

Nevertheless the thought stayed with him,—how he was getting along in his forties and how he wanted more boys. Often that winter he would stop work in the snowy fields where he was husking corn to look out across the frozen lake and sigh.

"Four-thirty-nine'll be another half hour late," said Nat Cumlien, coming out of his cage to throw half a hod of soft coal into the stove. "Got some big drifts down near Janesville."

"Four-thirty-nine ain't been on time in ten years, drifts or no drifts," said Stud.

"Well, I do my best," said Nat.

He went out onto the platform and changed the lantern, threw a couple of bundles of hides and some milk cans onto the truck, came in blowing on his fingers and brushing off the snow.

"Whew, that'd freeze the ears off a brass monkey," said Nat. He retired to his cage and his game of solitaire.

After an eternity the big headlight cut through the snow and the muffled whistle shook the windows. Stud hurried out to the platform as the train wheezed in and ground to a stop. Early Ann jumped off, laughing and squealing. He carried her baggage to the cutter and they streaked home through the storm to the accompaniment of jingling sleigh-bells and creaking snow beneath the polished runners. Deeply covered with robes and sharing each other's warmth, they shouted to each other above the storm.

It was good to be home again, good to be turning in at the Brailsford gate with the windows of the farmhouse shining on the snow. Stud hurried off to unhitch while Gus helped Early Ann with her bundles.

Sarah stood on the back stoop shivering and wiping her hands on her apron.

"Welcome home, Early Ann," she cried.

"Here I am safe and sound, Mrs. Brailsford. I had a wonderful time."

"Did you see the stock yards?" Gus wanted to know. "Or Sears, Roebuck's?"

"It'll take a year to tell all I saw," said Early Ann. She went into the warm, lamp-lit kitchen fragrant with the smells of pie and coffee and roasting meat. They had a surprise for Early Ann. Gus had caught a raccoon in one of his traps. They were having a raccoon supper with sweet potatoes and corn bread.

"Hope it tastes as good as it smells," said Early Ann. "Here, Mrs. Brailsford, let me help with everything."

"Change your dress first, child."

Throughout supper she regaled them with the wonders of Chicago: the room she had had six stories above the street with electric lights and a brass bed, and a private bathroom with hot and cold running water. She had lived like a queen. She had slept until eight o'clock every morning, and once she had taken her breakfast in bed.

"And you should see the limousines and street cars, and boats on the river! They got bridges that lift up, and buildings five times as tall as the windmill," said Early Ann.

"Did you see the Board of Trade?" Stud wanted to know.

"No I didn't," the girl admitted, "but I saw a woman smoking a cigarette, and couples doing the tango on a glass dance floor. It was lovely the way they served food, with white napkins and pretty glass and silver."

"I'm so glad you went," Sarah said. "It'll be something to think about until the day you die."

"Such pretty dresses in the stores," said Early Ann. "I sure do wish you could have been along, Mrs. Brailsford. I bought myself a new corset and.... Oh, I shouldn't."

"Don't mind me," said Gus.

"There was a big parade for Emmeline Pankhurst who came all the way from London to talk about woman suffrage, and I was as close as across this room from her. She looked like a fighter all right."

"She's a criminal," said Gus, "she oughta be hanged."

"She's a great leader and a fine woman," said Sarah, quietly. "They'll treat her like a real saint before she dies."

"And everybody was all aflutter about General Booth coming to town, and I went to a drama called 'Lead, Kindly Light.' It was awful uplifting."

When she couldn't think of another thing to tell them, Early Ann brought some packages to the table.

"This is for you, Mrs. Brailsford."

Sarah opened the pretty box with trembling fingers, saying, "You shouldn't have done it, Early Ann. I don't deserve a thing." And when she found silk stockings in the box she started to cry.

"Why, I never had a pair of silk stockings in my life," she said.

"I'll have to watch you, now you got silk stockings," said Stud. "You'll be running off with Vern Barton or somebody the first thing I know."

Sarah looked through the silk at the lamp and rubbed the smooth stuff against her cheek. She kept them treasured in her bureau drawer, but never wore them to the day she died.

The present Early Ann had bought for Gus was a set of arm garters and matching green tie. The hired man grinned like a Cheshire cat when he opened the box.

Stud was given a magnificent, fancy white vest of imported bird's-eye weave with detachable pearl buttons.

"Never seen anything so classy in all my born days," said Stud, slipping into the vest. He put his watch in the watch pocket, draped his gold log-chain across his middle, and paraded in front of the kitchen mirror, holding up the lamp to get the full effect.

"That's mighty nice of you, girl," said Stud. "I reckon I ought to kiss you for that."

"Stanley," said Sarah, in laughing disapproval, "I reckon you better not."

Early Ann said she would keep Peter's present until she saw him. Meanwhile she had one more gift for the entire family. She unwrapped a small stereopticon on which she had squandered seven dollars. Sarah put up a sheet at one end of the kitchen, while Early Ann lighted the coal-oil lamp in the little black box and blew out all the other lights in the room. There in the warm, dark kitchen they spent two magic hours. Over and over again they called for "Rock of Ages," "Niagara Falls," "The Statue of Liberty," "The Sinking of the Maine" and "The Washington Monument." Altogether there were twenty-four slides in full color.

"Next time you go to Chicago you got to take me," said Gus, pouring Early Ann another mug of cider.

It was not until Early Ann saw Peter, and gave him the gold watch she had bought him, that she told the other side of her trip to Chicago.

"I was scared half the time and so lonesome. I felt like coming home on the first train. I didn't know a single soul and the city was so big and noisy. You don't catch me going to Chicago all alone again."

"And I'll bet you spent all your money," Peter growled accusingly.

"I got two hundred and three dollars left," said Early Ann, averting her eyes. "I feel kind of wicked when I think how I've squandered ninety-seven dollars. But I ain't going to spend one more cent until the day I'm married. I've got to have something left to help set up housekeeping."

"Who you going to marry?" Peter asked.

"Oh, I got a fellow," lied Early Ann. She wanted to egg him on, and she was a trifle disappointed at the casual way in which he had taken it.

2

One windy November afternoon when Stud and Gus were cutting firewood in the grove beside the lake, Stud looked across the bay and was surprised to see smoke streaming from the chimney of the old hunting lodge on Lake House Point. The blizzard, which had flung ten-foot waves against the crumbling cliff, had stripped the leaves from oak and elm and maple, sent them in cascades down every ravine and gully, left the old building naked to the eye.

"Looks like we got a neighbor," said Stud.

"Better not monkey with my mushrat traps."

"What'd you do?"

"Pepper his behind with rock salt from the old ten gauge."

"You talk big," Stud admitted. "Why don't you mosey over and see who it is?"

"Not me," said Gus. "It ain't healthy."

Stud grinned. He knew that Gus would rather sleep in a cemetery or break a looking-glass than set foot on Lake House Point.

Long ago the limestone bluff had been the stronghold of Indians. Later a small colony of Mormons, hated alike for their polygamy and their horse-thieving, had made the Point their hide-away until chased from the country by the indignant settlers. In the eighties a club of rich Chicago duck hunters had put up the present lodge where shortly before the turn of the century a bloody murder had occurred. No one went near the lodge now. The porches were drifted deep with leaves, the old boathouse was strewn in whitened planks the length of the beach. The bluff was overgrown with sumac, ivy and grapevines. Scrub oak extended from the edge of the cliff to the marsh behind the Point.

Old women, children and hired hands believed implicitly that ghosts could be seen at the broken windows of the lodge and in the rotting halls and paneled rooms. Stud scoffed at all these old-wives' tales, but admitted he would rather live on his own side of the bay than on that bluff with its unpleasant memories.

"Might be that feller," suggested Gus.

"The one prowling around here nights?"

"Might be."

"Might be, but probably ain't."

Possibly Gus was right. Stud had an uneasy feeling that a man by the name of Joe Valentine was living in the lodge, trapping perhaps, catching fish, stealing a few chickens.

Stud had heard of Joe Valentine from Timothy Halleck who in tracing Early Ann's claim to the Horicon farm had run across Joe's trail. Later Early Ann herself had admitted the existence of this stepfather, and had confessed to Stud that it was Joe who had been annoying her. She told Stud something of her early life, her days with Joe and her mother in the shack near Rockford, Illinois, her mother's death, and her flight from her stepfather.

She said she had been ashamed of Joe, of his treatment of her mother, and of his attitude toward her. She had wanted to forget the past, to live where no one would know that she was the illegitimate child of Bung Sherman, or the stepdaughter of Joe Valentine.

Stud thought of Joe as more of a nuisance than a menace. Nevertheless he was determined to investigate his new neighbor on Lake House Point.

Other matters intervened. Ulysses S. Grant had acquired a taste for chicken, and almost every unlucky fowl who got into his pen was caught by the wily boar and eaten alive. Stud had to put chicken wire outside the planks of the boar's pen to save Sarah's flock from destruction.

Then there was the problem of Peter and Maxine Larabee. Stud was of the opinion that the boy would never be a man until he learned the facts of life first-hand, but Sarah was worrying herself into another nervous breakdown. Stud made a futile trip to town. Peter was belligerent and uncommunicative. Stud was outwardly bellicose but secretly sympathetic. The net result was a widened breach between father and son, although Stanley led Sarah to believe that he had put some sense into the boy's head.

Brailsford had momentarily forgotten his plan to investigate the old hunting lodge when one morning—the day before Thanksgiving—he found a man setting a trap at the end of a hollow log just out of sight of the house over the crest of Cottonwood Hill.

"Trying to catch one of my 'coons?" Stud asked amiably.

The man whirled to face him, his hand on his sheath knife.

"Nothing to fight about," said Stud. "What's your name?"

"Joe Valentine."

"You ain't the fellow who's moved in over on the Point?"

"That's my business," said Joe.

"I'll make it my business. You been prowling around here quite a bit lately."

"I got a right to catch my living," said Joe. Every night he looked across the bay at the glowing windows of the Brailsford farm, thought of his stepdaughter over there, all the good things to eat. "I got a right," he said.

"I got a right to run you off my land."

"You ain't got a right to Early Ann."

"Get off my place before I get mad," Stud said. He had his womenfolks and cattle to think about.

Joe whipped out his knife and prepared to spring. Like sticking a pig, he thought. Like the time his father killed his kitten with a butcher knife. He had buried the cat and put flowers on its grave. After a few days he dug it up to see if it had gone to heaven.

Joe leapt. Stud sidestepped, put out his foot. Joe tripped, fell into the bushes, turned a complete somersault and was up again, knife in hand.

"You're going to hurt yourself with that knife," Stud said. "We don't fight with knives in these parts."

Stud never gouged or bunted, but he could see that anything went with Joe Valentine.

Joe sprang again. His knife slashed empty air. Simultaneously something like a sledge hammer hit him behind the ear. He staggered, whirled.

More careful now, the men feinted, maneuvered, circled for advantage.

Joe doubled over as though caught with pain. Stud rushed. Joe tossed a handful of snow and fine gravel into Stud's eyes. Half-blinded, Stud leapt back. He felt the knife rip into his right shoulder and the blood wet his shirt. Bright blood sprinkled the dirty snow.

Now Stud was fighting in earnest. As Joe came on, Stud aimed a kick at the knife arm, missed, fell. Joe tried to hamstring the fallen giant, was lifted bodily into the air by a great backward kick.

They were up again, feinting and charging. Stud grabbed the knife arm in a clinch, held it as in a vise, slugged with his other fist Joe's head and body. Joe brought up his knee. Sickness swept over Stud in a great wave.

They were rolling on the ground now, panting and straining, tearing up the bloody snow and gravel. Stud caught Joe's arm in a hammer-lock. Joe screamed in pain, dropped his knife. Stud grabbed for a full Nelson, and Joe slipped out of his grasp like a snake.

Stud kicked the knife out of reach as they leapt to their feet. They slugged, sweat and panted. Two men on a hilltop overlooking the world. Murder in their hearts.

Joe was quicker and more slippery, a tricky boxer, fast with rabbit punches, kidney punches, jabs below the belt. Stud had the power of a bull, was tireless and able to take almost limitless punishment. He sent haymakers crashing to Joe's lantern jaw, heart, and solar plexus. His shoulder was throbbing, but he battled on.

Joe made a crying sound through his torn lips. Suddenly he was afraid. He turned and ran down the hill through the hazel brush, sobbing, breathless.

Stud did not follow. He watched Joe Valentine bee-lining for Lake House Point. Slowly he doubled his right arm and felt the huge bicep.

"That's the last we'll see of Joe Valentine," he told the giant cottonwood. He chuckled as he strode back toward the house.

3

With silos full, full haymows, bins of grain; with sheds loaded to the last beam with tobacco; with the farm shipshape and bright with new paint they faced the coming winter.

The provision cellar was loaded with earthenware crocks of pickles, sauerkraut and preserves; glasses of jelly; mason jars of cherries, applesauce, plums, pears, raspberries, and strawberries.

The smokehouse reeked of ham and pleasant hickory smoke from morning until night. Hams hung in the cellar beside the slabs of bacon, and the small white ears of popcorn. In a dry bin with a wooden floor were hickory nuts and walnuts by the bushel with a few pecks of butternuts and hazel nuts to furnish variety.

Apple cider in brown jugs, wild grape juice in tight bottles, with just a gallon or two of blackberry cordial in case of sickness lined the lower shelf of the can cupboard. There were bins of sand for carrots, beets and celery. Pie pumpkins in one corner, hubbard squashes in another.

And although Stanley Brailsford longed for more children, wished that Sarah could have better health, and mourned the rift which was slowly arising between himself and Peter, he had much to be thankful for as he said the blessing over his Thanksgiving dinner.

Above all he thanked God most devoutly that he was the strongest man in Southern Wisconsin and could provide for and protect his womenfolks and cattle.