Footprints by Kay Cleaver Strahan

I

April 12, 1900.

Dearest, dearest Judy-pudy: "Begin at the beginning," like many other rules, seems very simple. It is not. How is one to know where the beginning is?

I have decided that, probably, the beginning of this very long letter, which I am planning to write to you this afternoon and evening, should be that Irene does not like Q 2 Ranch. She does not wish to live here, or to have Christopher live here.

When they came last month, they came only for a visit. But when Chris found that we had been sending him all the ready money we could get, and had been forced to practise rigid economy, he refused to take Irene back to New York. Father agrees with Chris that he and Irene should stay here for the present.

Chris says certainly, that nothing else is to be considered. He says if he had had the least notion of how things were with us here at home, he would have come home two years ago when he returned from the Continent. He said that, of course, by staying in New York and attempting to get his play produced, he felt that he was doing his share. Because, if _Gold_ had been successful, we never would have had another money worry again. He says effort must weigh, as well as accomplishment.

Irene said that Booful had worked very hard and lived most frugally in New York. Chris said that he had not lived half as frugally as he would have had he known that his living was literally coming out of our pantry and off our backs.

Irene and Father both said "Nonsense" to that, but they said it differently. Just the same, Judy, in spite of Father's "Nonsense," can you ever remember a time when about all the ready money we had did not have to be sent off to Cousin Christopher?

Chris said that he had had his chance, and that you had not had yours (he meant about your not going to a university), but that now we must all pull together to see that Neal and I had ours.

Father agreed with him. He rather overagreed with him. He said that Chris had had a bit more than his chance, he thought. That he had two degrees, and two years of European travel. He said that Chris was a sophomore at Princeton when he was Neal's age.

Neal began to say, as he always says, that he did not care for a classical education; that all he needed was a few years at a good agricultural college. Father spoke almost abruptly to him. Neal walked right away out of the room.

When Neal was gone, that left Grandfather, Father, Chris, Irene, and me in the sitting room. I was reading in the window nook. I think that the others did not know I was there. I was not eavesdropping because, if any of them had turned around and looked at me, I was plainly there to be seen.

Irene said that if an agricultural college was all Neal cared about, why couldn't he be sent to the Oregon one, which she had heard was fairly possible.

Darling Father has been having that stomach trouble again. You know how quiet and patient it makes him. He just sat there, white, and did not answer Irene at all.

Grandfather told her that, just now, even the state agricultural college was a bit more than we could manage.

Irene said, "Couldn't you mortgage some more of Chris's land?"

Grandfather explained to her that the ranch was over-mortgaged now. He went on and told her about how bad ranching conditions had been, and how in 1895 cows were selling for from five to seven dollars, and calves for two, and horses about the same. He told how it had been necessary to disperse most of the herds because we could not afford to keep them. And then he told how timber and teams had kept us going. And how, after that, the mortgages had been necessary to buy new herds, and to pay debts contracted when we couldn't even mortgage. He finished by telling her how, if we could devote the coming two or three years to keeping up our interest, and our herds, and so on, we were bound to win through with flying colours.

I don't know why that should have made Irene angry. It did. It made her so angry that her voice trembled as she asked Grandfather whether he actually meant that the place was so deeply in debt that no more money could be raised on it.

Grandfather told her that he doubted whether another hundred dollars could be borrowed on the place. He said that now it need not be borrowed. He said she had spoken of raising money. We were now, he told her, engaged in raising money-cattle and horses.

She has a queer way, I think I may have mentioned it before, of seeming to hear only a part, the first part of whatever one says to her. She has another odd mannerism. She interrupts. She interrupted Grandfather then, and said that, in other words, the place was worthless.