Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1897 — RUFE’S LOVEMAKING. [ARTICLE]

RUFE’S LOVEMAKING.

It was tlio year I built my store and *ot the Corners Postoffiqp, which, by the good will of Providence and my friends. I've held ever since, no matter Who was “in” at Washington, that I tlrat took notice of Shiftless Rufe Dimming. He lived with his father and xiother just across the flats at the foot •f West Hill, in the edge of the big woods. You know, all this region was pioneered late, and although nearly everything was cleared up on this side of the valley and the pine timber had long been cut off the flats, there was a heavy growth of mixed hardwood and hemlock to the west that stretched •way back I don't know how many miles. Here and there in the little “openings” on the side of the West Hill log houses were still to be seen, and the folks living in them were sometimes pretty primitive. The Dunnings were probably the Imost no-account of the lot. They lived In a little shanty old Rufe had knocked together out of slabs given him by the sawmill boss. They had only a little patch of ground, and they lived on What they raised, the fish they caught, knd what they trapped and shot. They didn't steal, as I know of, but they were kll mortal,shiftless, and young Rufe tas worse than either his father or his other. In fact, he was so all-fiied lazy, If I must put it that way, that even the etd man felt discouraged about him. Young Rufe was 22 before anybody •uspected that he could possibly have any ambition at all. But one day he ■ays Kitty Sylvester. But was the daughter of the first manager of the big Barkley estate. Old man Barkley—the grandfather of the present Barkley, Who never comes near the estate—had Just put the place in a manager’s hands and moved awav with his familv. Now,

Kitty was a real sensible, go-ahead girl. She knew the Sylvesters were as good ms anybody around the Corners, if not m le-etle better, and she tried to live up to the family reputation in all ways. 'When a girl, her mother had been famous for the work she could do, andKitty was not a bit behind. Every morning in the winter she was up early mnd got breakfast by candlelight. Ail long she wove carpet, or quilted comforters, or spun stockings yarn, or did something else that counted. Every morning in the summer she was up With the sun. and day when it /went down she had churned and workled more butter or made more cheese, ior in some other way done more work than any woman anywhere round could do. And she was the savingest girl in the county. Everybody said she was the smartest young woman going, and, naturally, she was considered a highly desirable catch. But she held herself mighty shy of them all for awhile, and SI was regularly given out that no young man need ever think of keeping jeompany with Kitty Sylvester who [wasn't fully her match, both at working and saving. So when it was noised iabout that young Rufe, of all the world, (had got him a pair of fine boots, a muffled shirt, doeskin pantaloons, and a Ibroadeloth coat, and had begun to sbine imp to Kitty, there was a general upjroar. Folks couldn't believe it at first, fltat it wasn't anywhere near as hard to pwollow as what came afterward. You see, the outgiving that had been )msade about the kind of chap Kitty’s Iraaband would have to be had shifted jibe young fellows out a whole lot. Most •f them were willing to work and willing to save, and they all admired Kitty, (for she was as good looking as she was teduptrions and frugal, but ber standard was so blgb it scared the boys, and iINMUx got to be mighty seldom on the

Now, as it turned ont. Shiftless Rnfe thought tiiore of Kitty than any ot the others, and at the very beginning she gave him a little encouragement. Not much, to l>e sure, bnt enough to reform him completely. He was naturaly mighty bashful when he called at the big house, all fixed up In cloths he wasn’t used to, and Kitty at first pretended she didn't understand that he had come to see lier. “I'll call my father,” she said. “Perhaps you want to talk about cutting some cordwood.” “No,” said Rufe, directly, “I want to know if I can’t keep "company with you?” The girl was startled by his failure to beat about the bush, but she answered quite as directly: “Certainly cot. You're too lazy to be allowed to keep company with any one.” Then an idea flashed through her mind. “But if you'll cut cordwood a whole year every day but Sunday aud holidays you may come aud see me—just once. Here comes father aud you'd better make arrangements to cut for him on shares.” To Kitty’s surprise Shiftless Rufe stood his ground, and when her father came In started at once to discuss the proposed arrangement. “Wal, Mist' Sylvester.” said Rufe, grasping the old man’s hand, “I ain't never been no great hand for work, but I must have a chance to keep eomp'ny with Kitty, and she says I may come and see her after I've chopped cordwood a year. It won't be no fun, but I must have Kitty, and if I got to work to git her, why, then I have, and that’s all there is about it.” Sylvester was at first inclined to be angry at Kitty for trifling with Rufe, but concluded to humor the situation, and, bidding Kitty leave the room, told the young man he was ready to make a bargain with him. "You can cut cordwood off the estate on shares, Rufe, of course, if you want to, and I'll set aside some trees right near your father’s shanty on the other side of the flats. But you want to take off them fine boots and them doeskin pants, and that there broadcloth coat, and y.ou don't want to put them on again till you’ve worked hard a whole year. You’re too shiftless to be allowed to think a single minute about Kitty now, and I suppose you always will be, but ” “You needn't f«ay no more, Mist’ Sylvester,” put in Shiftless Rube. “But can’t I see Kitty again just long enough to say good-night?” “Yes,” said the old man, “and I’ll tell her we've made the bargain f>he suggested.” Then he called Kitty into the room. As she entered she noticed for the first time that Rufe, dressed up, wasn’t at all bad looking, and that he seemed twice the man lie had been before. She kept perfect silence till her father had finished. Then she reached out and took Rufe's big, soft paw in her own small hand—a hand that was calloused with hard work in spite of its littleness.

“Mr. Dunning,” she said, “I hope you’ll keep your bargain faithfully, as I shall keep mine. After you have worked hard for a year you pi ay come and see me—once. Whether you may come again or hot will depend on yourself. Good evening, Mr. Dunning.” Nobody had ever called Shiftless Rufe Mr. Dunning before and the title scared him far more than the notion of working every day for twelve long months. From the time he left the big house that night he was fit to drop the title “shiftless.” Next morning, as soon as it was light, the sharp ring of his ax was heard across the valley, biting out the chips as he chopped down the first tree of his year long stent. Long before noon that day his bigpulpy hands were blistered and swollen, and by sundown they were a sight to behold. That night his mother cried over them and urged him to stop thinking about the proud, stuck-up girl on the other side of the valley. “The blear!”- muttered the old woman between whiffs at ber clay pipe, while she dressed Shiftless Rufe’s hand. “Do you think Kitty Sylvester will look at you just because you've been fool enough to* work a whole year? Why, it's puffickly ridlklls. I alius knew you was a little light in the head, Rufe, but I didn't think you’d make a fool of yourself for no conceited Sylvester girl.” . To this and much more of the same sort, both from his father and mother, Shiftless Rufe made no reply, but while yet the next morning was gray the sound of ills busy ax was again wafted across the valley, and this continued to the going down of the 6un. And so it went on, day after day, all the fall and through the winter. No matter how deep the snow, or how stormy the weather, Rufe toiled on unceasingly. When the days were shortest, in the middle of the winter, lie sometimes began before daybreak and worked after dark, splitting the “lengths” he had chopped from the felled trees into “four-foot wood” by the light of a tallow dip stuck into a tin lantern of the pattern so common when the “Corners” was new, but now rarely seen. Before spring folks got to going by Rufe’s ax and lantern in beginning and leaving off work mornings and nights the same as they go by the big tannery whistle down tlie valley now, and nobody who began work as early as Rufe did and worked till Rufe’s lantern was out at night was counted lazy. And Rufe did more than chop cordwood that winter. He learned to read, and this both his mother and father a far more “ridiklis” proceeding. Yet more; he went to meeting every Sunday as regularly as the most pious and -thrifty of the whole neighborhood. Not that he became specially religious, so far as I know, but by going to meeting he could get a glimpse or two every Sunday of Kitty ..Sylvester, and it was a little thing, indeed, for the man who was chopping cord wood a whole year that he might

make eoc call on her' to listen to q sms mon once a week so that he could sit for a whole hour under the same roof with her. - j / ‘ ' Nobody knew then how this devotion of her once shiftless, no-account lover affected Kitty Sylvester, but we learned afterward that the sound of his ax from morning to night echoing across the valley became as music in her ears, and that the light of his candle shining through the trees in the mornings and the evenings was delight to her eyes. At last the long winter, with its cold, its storms, and its darkness were away, the spring passed, and the summer with its heat came on. “Now Rufe'U weaken,” said the loafers about the store. “It’s all right to work hard when it’s cold and the air is bracing, but he'll let up In the hot weather, sure.” But they were wrong. AIT through the heated term Rufe's ax gave noisy notice that he "was still working, and when fall began it was still biting out chips and splitting up lengths. At last the year was nearly up, and old Sylvester had begun to asl* himself whether he had not made an exceedingly bad bargain after all. For Kitty was plainly much interested in the patient lover who had toiled so long aud so 'gmnllly for the privilege of calling on her “just once,” and it-might be, the old man reasoned, that she would allow him to call the second time, and perhaps a third, and perhaps—but the thought was too awful to entertain and the old man strove to dismiss it. Failing in that he questioned the girl, who refused to answer satisfactorily and the two had a quarrel in which Mrs. Sylvester joined, taking Kitty’s part most vigorously. On the last day of the stipulated twelve months Shiftless Rufe went to his work early and began with quick, eager strokes to cut a big hickory. He had becofao an export axman by this time and the sun was not yet high in the sky when the big tree came down with a crash. It so happened that I was over in the big woods that day with a neighbor looking at the timber. We heard the tree fall aud at the same time a scream as if a strong man were in mortal agony. In a hurry I ran in the direction of the sound,' guided by low moans that followed the shriek. There, pinned under a branch of the fallen tree, lay Shiftless Rufe, crushed and barely conscious. For the first time in the entire year he had miscalculated in felling his tree. As quickly as wo could my neighbor and I cut away the branch and released the young man. Then we got together a stretcher of boughs on which ive proposed to carry him home. As we lifted him he opened his eyes. “I wish you'd take me over to Sylvester’s first,” he said, faintly. “I want to call on liis daughter. She said I might come to-night- and so did her father—and—maybe—if you take me home before I go there I won't be able to see her to-night at all.” So we carried him across to the big house on the Barkley estate. Fart of the way he was quite unconscious and part of the way he was pathetically delirious, but when we reached the house he was quite rational, though very weak. Arid so it was that I was present when Rufe Dunning made love to Kitty Sylvester. His love-making didn't take long, for his strength Avas about gone, but he had time to say what he AA-anted to say and to hear what he Avanted 1o hear. And when, after a long look into Kitty's eyes, poor Rufe peacefully closed his oAvn, his big hand, no longer soft aud pulpy, but sinewy and strong, clasped her little one in the clasp of an accepted lover. —Nebraska State Journal.