The End of the Feud

The End of the Feud By Elizabeth Cannon Porter The row started over water. Van Noordan looked with sullen eyes at his neighbor's waving fields and intimated that they were kept green with stolen water. Being called a thief, roused Hamilton's Celtic blood, and he angrily raised his shovel and struck the Dutchman with the handle. "I'll have the law on you," yelled Van Noordan, stinging under the blow. This he proceeded to do. When the case was finally fought out, according to old water rights, Van Noordan had the lion's share of the water. This he proceeded to thriftily appropriate. If the Celt was quick to anger, the Teuton was slow to forget, and there began a feud as bitter as that between the Montagues and the Capulets, two families of Florence, who also had a son and a daughter. So it became Hamilton's turn to watch his fields parch and die while with burning hatred his eyes drank in his neighbor's succulent greenness. The two farms lay side by side at the mouth of Dry Canyon, where it widened out to sweep to the valley below. The land was rich and produced choice fruit because the pocket of the mountains protected it from cold winds and early frosts. Hamilton gazed at his seared fields much as a mother would look at her sick child, then with true Irish resource, he planned to checkmate his neighbor. He watered only a small portion of his land aiad in this he practiced intensive cultivation. The rest he turned into pasture. Then he imported thoroughbred Durhams t*> graze therein. In time his blooded stock became as famous as the Dutchman's grain fields. Van Noordan built an ice house; Hamilton added a screened-in porch to his dwelling. To shut out the obnoxious view of this, the former planted a row of Poplar trees between the farms. The latter placed on the dividing line a stone wall built out of the rocks that his plow had overturned in the field. These along with the bitterness of two stubborn old men, served as a barrier between two lonely children. Nature, which has a way of compensating, brought Hamilton a son, while in the Van Noordan household it left a daughter.

THE END OF THE FEUD 1087 As he exultantly watched Jim grow to longlimbed man- hood, old Hamilton cunningly schemed how, with his boy's strength, he would win back the beauty of his fields. Van Noordan, oblivious of his enemy's advantage, bathed with delight in the sunshine of his small Dutch daughter. Jim Hamilton had been two years at the Agricultural Col- lege, and Magdalene Van Noordan was training to become a nurse at the hospital in the city when she was suddenly called home by the death of her mother. It was vacation time and she used to watch through a gap in the fence the dark head glistening in the sun as the young man toiled in the beet field. Jim, who was tall, sometimes glanced over the wall to behold a trim, blue-clad figure, with a dimpled forearm, hanging out the wash. One noon as he came up with his hoe over his shoulder, he heard a piercing scream. This was followed by several more, which lapsed into sobs. Lithely he leaped the fence and plunged into the tall corn from whence the sound came. He had gone some distance when he spied between the rows the body of Amos Van Noordan. His daughter held his head in her lap as she wildly chaffed his hand. Young Hamilton dropped beside the rigid form and put his head to his heart. "Looks like he has been dead some time," he said gently. "Then there is nothing we can do for him," she wailed. Hysterically she told him: "He ran out this morning to chase boys who were stealing roasting ears in the corn patch. I never thought any more of it until lunch time when I called him. He didn't answer. I waited the dinner half an hour and then I got worried. I hunted for him all over the place and finally came down here." She gulped, "He was lying on his face. When I spoke to him he didn't answer. Oh my father!" The red-gold head cried over the gray one. Jim examined the old man's eyes. "Looks like apoplexy. The hot sun and the exertion of chasing the boys probably brought on a stroke. We'll see what the doctor says." "He died out here alone — with no one to care for him," moaned his daughter. "He probably knew nothing about it. Those things come on so suddenly." "Do you think so?" asked Magdalene, wiping her eyes on her apron. She stood up while the man picked up the body of his father's enemy and staggered to the house with it. It was Jim Hamilton who summoned the doctor, the coroner, the under- taker. He sent telegrams to distant relatives and met them when

1088 IMPROVEMENT ERA. they arrived. This left the daughter free, between fits of weep- ing, to prepare the house which Van Noordan had builded so well, for the master's last departure from it. On the return from the cemetery, Magdalene kindly but firmly declined the offers of friends to stay with her, but her young neighbor resolutely followed her to the door. When she entered the empty house she sank into a chair, but as soon as she perceived that it was her father's arm chair, she shivered and moved. She leaned back wanly and closed her white hand be- tween his two rough brown ones. "The only light I can see in the whole thing is that father is with mother," she murmured miserably. "My loss is mother's gain. They were companions, as well as lovers. Father never seemed the same after mother went." "Life isn't much without companionship — Magdalene, I want you for my companion — my wife. I believe I have loved you always." He raised her hand to his lips. "Jim, I want to thank you for all that you have done since our trouble. You can't know what it means to me at this time. About that other,— you will have to talk some other time." By the look in her eyes he knew that he would come back. As she gravely shook hands with him, the first little glow of comfort that she had felt since her father's death crept round her heart.