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Chapters (16)
  1. The Homesteader
  2. Table of Contents
  3. CHAPTER I
  4. CHAPTER IV
  5. CHAPTER IX
  6. CHAPTER XV
  7. CHAPTER III
  8. CHAPTER VII
  9. CHAPTER XIII
  10. CHAPTER II
  11. CHAPTER VIII
  12. CHAPTER XIII
  13. CHAPTER III
  14. CHAPTER IX
  15. CHAPTER XIII
  16. CHAPTER XIX

But with Jean Baptiste, he snored in peace. His dream had come true; the one of his vision had come as he had hoped she would. But Jean Baptiste was not aware of the debt he owed her; that through strange providence in getting lost she had come into his sod house and saved his life. But what he was yet to know, and which is the great problem of our story, the girl, his dream girl, Agnes Stewart, happened to be white, while he, Jean Baptiste, The Homesteader, was a Negro.

CHAPTER IV

Table of Contents

SHE COULD NEVER BE ANYTHING TO HIM

JEAN BAPTISTE slept soundly all the night through, snoring loudly at times, turning frequently, but never awakening. And while he slept, unconscious of how near he had come to freezing to death upon the prairie, but for the strange coincidence of Agnes Stewart's having gotten lost and finding him, she sat near, listening to the dull roar of the storm outside at times; at other times casting furtive, anxious and apprehensive glances toward the bed, half in fear. More because the position she realized herself to be in was awkward, not to say embarrassing.

Her eyes became heavy as the night wore on, and she arose and walked about over the dirt floor in an attempt to shake off the inertia. And in the meantime, the man she had saved slept on, apparently disturbed by nothing. Presently she approached him shyly, and, taking the coat he had worn and which lay near, she spread it carefully over him, then tiptoed away and regarded him curiously. Her life had never afforded character study in a broad sense; but for some reason, which she could not account for, she strangely trusted the sleeping man. And because she did, she was not in fear lest he awaken and take advantage of the compromising circumstances. But in her life she had met and known no colored people, and knew directly little about the Negro race beyond what she had read. Therefore to find herself lost on the wide plains, in a house alone with one, a bachelor Homesteader, with a terrific storm without, gave her a peculiar sensation.