ON THE DIVIDE by WILLA CATHER

"On the Divide" is a short story by Pulitzer Prize winner Willa Cather. It was first published in Overland Monthly in January 1896.  Plot summary On the Nebraska prairie, Canute takes to drinking to forget his boredom after spending the first forty years of his life in Sweden. Lena takes to teasing him and going to church with him. One day, he asks her father if he can marry her and the father says no. He then proceeds to drag Lena to his house by force, drag a priest there by force too, and get him to marry them without the girl or the girl's father's consent. Later the priest leaves and Lena is left alone in Canute's shanty. She is scared of the rattlesnakes and the coyotes, but he stays outside, in the snow. As she opens the door he is sobbing