The Prairie Mother   By: Arthur Stringer (1874-1950)

THE PRAIRIE MOTHER

[Illustration: "Swing twenty paces out from one another and circle this shack!"]

THE PRAIRIE MOTHER

By ARTHUR STRINGER

AUTHOR OF THE PRAIRIE WIFE, THE HOUSE OF INTRIGUE THE MAN WHO COULDN'T SLEEP, ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY ARTHUR E. BECHER

INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1920 The Pictorial Review Company

Copyright 1920 The Bobbs Merrill Company

Printed in the United States of America

PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOK MANUFACTURERS BROOKLYN, N. Y.

THE PRAIRIE MOTHER

The Prairie Mother

Sunday the Fifteenth

I opened my eyes and saw a pea green world all around me. Then I heard the doctor say: "Give 'er another whiff or two." His voice sounded far away, as though he were speaking through the Simplon Tunnel, and not merely through his teeth, within twelve inches of my nose.

I took my whiff or two. I gulped at that chloroform like a thirsty Bedouin at a wadi spring. I went down into the pea green emptiness again, and forgot about the Kelly pad and the recurring waves of pain that came bigger and bigger and tried to sweep through my racked old body like breakers through the ribs of a stranded schooner. I forgot about the hateful metallic clink of steel things against an instrument tray, and about the loganberry pimple on the nose of the red headed surgical nurse who'd been sent into the labor room to help.

I went wafting off into a feather pillowy pit of infinitude. I even forgot to preach to myself, as I'd been doing for the last month or two. I knew that my time was upon me, as the Good Book says. There are a lot of things in this life, I remembered, which woman is able to squirm out of. But here, Mistress Tabbie, was one you couldn't escape. Here was a situation that had to be faced. Here was a time I had to knuckle down, had to grin and bear it, had to go through with it to the bitter end. For other folks, whatever they may be able to do for you, aren't able to have your babies for you.

Then I ebbed up out of the pea green depths again, and was troubled by the sound of voices, so thin and far away I couldn't make out what they were saying. Then came the beating of a tom tom, so loud that it hurt. When that died away for a minute or two I caught the sound of the sharp and quavery squall of something, of something which had never squalled before, a squall of protest and injured pride, of maltreated youth resenting the ignominious way it must enter the world. Then the tom tom beating started up again, and I opened my eyes to make sure it wasn't the Grenadiers' Band going by.

I saw a face bending over mine, seeming to float in space. It was the color of a half grown cucumber, and it made me think of a tropical fish in an aquarium when the water needed changing.