Читать книгу Winning the Wilderness - McCarter Margaret Hill - Страница 10

While Jim Shirley was getting back to health, he and his physician had many long talks regarding the West and its future; its products and its people. There was only one topic in which Horace Carey was but intermittently interested, namely, Jim’s neighbors – the Aydelots. At least, it seemed so to Jim, who had loved Asher from boyhood, and had taken Virginia on sight and paid homage to her for all the years that followed. Jim accepted the doctor’s manner at first as a mere personal trait, but, having nothing to do except to lie and think, he grew curiously annoyed over it.

“I wish you’d tell me what ails you?” he blurted out one evening, as the two sat together in the twilight.

“About what?” the doctor inquired. “If I knew, I might even risk my own medicine to get over it.”

“Don’t joke, Horace Carey, not with a frail invalid. I’ve tried all day to talk to you about my neighbors and you turn the subject away as if it was of no consequence, and now, tonight, you settle down and say, ‘Tell me about the Aydelots.’ Why do you want to hear in the dark what you won’t listen to in the daylight?”

“Oh, you are a sick man, Jim, or you wouldn’t be so silly,” the doctor replied, “but to please you, I’ll tell you the truth. I’m homesick.”

“Yes?”

“And this Mrs. Aydelot was a Virginia woman.”

“Yes?”

“Well, I’m a true son of Virginia, and I thought it might make me happy to hear about somebody from – ”

“You are a magnificent liar,” Jim broke in.

“Evidently it’s better to have you talk about your neighbors than your medical advisor tonight,” Carey retorted.

“Oh, I won’t say a word more,” Jim declared.

“More Ananias magnificence! Do you suppose the Aydelots will be down before we go away?” the doctor asked.

“We?”

“Yes, I am going to take you with me, or give you a quieting powder when I leave here. On your own declaration you’d do anything to get back to strength and work. Now, the only way to get well, with or without a physician, is to get well. And you’ll never do that by using up a little more strength every day than you store up the night before. Men haven’t sense enough to be invalids. Nothing else is such a menace to human life as the will of the man who owns that life. You’ll obey my will for a month or two.”

“You are a – doctor, Carey. No, the Aydelots won’t be down before we go away, because Virginia has been sick ever since that awful trip to Carey’s Crossing,” Jim said sadly.

“Why haven’t you told me?” Carey’s voice was hardly audible.

“Because Asher just told me today, and because you took no interest in them.”

“Sickness is a doctor’s interest, always,” Carey replied in a stern voice. And then the two sat in silence while the night shadows darkened the little cabin.

As soon as Shirley was able to ride, he went up to Carey’s Crossing for a two months’ stay, and the Aydelots were left far away from the edge of civilization. A heavy snowfall buried all the trails and the world, the happy, busy world, forgot these two holding their claim on the grim wilderness frontier.

In after years they often talked of the old pioneer days, but of this one winter they spoke but rarely.

“We lived alone with each other and God,” Virginia said once. “He walked beside us on the prairie and made our little sod house His sanctuary. Those were consecrated days to Asher and me, like the stormy days of our first love in the old war times, and the first hours of our baby’s life. We were young and full of hope and belief in the future, and we loved each other. But we had need to have shoes of iron and brass, as Moses promised Asher of old. It was a hard, hard way, but it was His way. I am glad we walked through it all. It made the soil of Kansas sacred to us two forevermore.”

One March day spring came up the Grass River Valley with a glory all its own, and sky and headland and low level prairie were baptized with a new life. A month later a half-dozen prairie schooners moved out on the old sunflower-bordered trail. Then following down the Grass River trail, the schooner folk saw that the land, which Darley Champers had denounced, was very good. And for Asher and Virginia Aydelot, the days of lonely solitude were ended.

But the prairie had no gifts to bestow. It yielded slowly to its possessors only after they had paid out time and energy and hope and undying faith in its possibilities. The little sum of money per acre turned over to the Government represented the very least of the cost. There were no forests to lay waste here, nor marshes to be drained. Instead, forests must be grown and waters conserved. What Francis Aydelot with the Clover Valley community had struggled to overcome on the Ohio frontier, his son, Asher, with other settlers now strove to develop in Kansas. But these were young men, many of them graduates, either in the North or the South, from a four years’ course in the University of the Civil War. No hardship of the plains could be worse than the things they had already endured. These men who held the plow handles were State builders and they knew it. Into the State must be builded schools and churches, roads and bridges, growing timber and perpetual water reservoirs; while fields of grain and orchard fruitage, and the product of flock and herd must be multiplied as the sinews of life and larger opportunity. For all these things the Kansas plains offered to Asher Aydelot and his little company of neighbors only land below, crossed by a grass-choked river, and sky overhead, crossed but rarely by blessed rain-dropping clouds. And yet the less the wilderness voluntarily gave up, the more these farmer folk were determined to win from it. Truly, they had need not only for large endurance in the present, but for large vision of a future victory, and they had both.

The weight of pioneer hardship, however, fell heaviest on the women of whom Virginia Aydelot was a type. Into the crucible out of which a state is moulded, she cast her youth and strength and beauty; her love of luxury, her need for common comforts, her joy in the cultured appointments of society. She had a genius for music, trained in the best schools of the East. And sometimes in the lonely days, she marked her only table with a bit of charcoal to the likeness of a keyboard. Then she set her music against her clean dishpan and dumbly fingered the melodies she had loved, hoping her hands might not lose all their cunning in these years of home-making on the plains.

The spring of the memorable year of 1874 opened auspiciously. The peach trees on the Aydelot and Shirley claims bloomed for the first time; more sod had been turned for wheat and corn; gardens and truck patches were planted; cattle were grazing beyond the sand dunes across the river, while the young cottonwood and catalpa groves, less than three feet high it is true, began to make great splotches of darker green on the prairie, promising cool forest shade in coming years. Mail went west on the main trail three times a week. The world was coming nearer to the Grass River settlement which, in spite of his doleful view once, Darley Champers was helping to fill up to the profit of the real estate business.

Carey’s Crossing, having given up all hope of becoming a county seat, had faded from the face of the earth. The new county seat of Wolf County was confidently expected to be pitched at Wykerton, up in the Big Wolf Creek settlement, where one Hans Wyker, former saloon-keeper of Carey’s Crossing, was building up a brewery for the downfall of the community. Dr. Carey was taking an extended medical course in the East, whither Bo Peep had followed him. Darley Champers was hovering like a hawk between Wykerton and the Grass River settlement. Todd Stewart had taken a claim, while John Jacobs, temporarily in the East, was busy planting the seeds for a new town which no Wyker brewery should despoil.

All lovely was this springtime of 1874. Midsummer had another story to tell. A story of a wrathful sun in a rainless sky above a parched land, swept for days together by the searing south winds. In all the prairie there was no spot of vivid green, no oasis in the desert of tawny grasses and stunted brown cornstalks, and bare, hot stubble wherefrom even the poor crop of straw had been chaffless and mean.

On a Sabbath morning in late July, the little Grass River schoolhouse was crowded, for Sabbath school was the event of the week. It did not take a multitude to crowd the sod-built temple of learning. Even with the infant class out of doors in the shade, the class inside filled the space. The minister school-teacher, Pryor Gaines, called it the “old folks’ class,” although there was not a person over thirty-five years of age in the whole settlement.

Asher Aydelot was the superintendent, and Virginia took care of the infant class. Jim Shirley led the singing, and Pryor Gaines taught the “old folks.” He was the same minister school-teacher who had sat at the table with Dr. Carey and Todd Stewart and John Jacobs on the day that Thomas Smith ate his first meal at the Jacobs House. With the passing of Carey’s Crossing, he had taken a homestead claim on Grass River.

This morning the lesson was short, and the children, finding the heat of the shade outside unbearable, were sitting on the earth floor beside their parents. Nobody seemed ready to go home.

“Times are getting worse every day,” one man observed. “No rain since the tenth of May, and the prettiest stand of wheat I ever saw, burned to a half-yield or less before cutting time. I’d counted on wheat for my living this year.”

“It’s the same if you’d had corn, Bennington,” Jim Shirley observed. “I was polishing my crown for a Corn King Festival this fall. I don’t believe I’ll harvest fifteen bushels to the acre.”

“Fifteen bushels!” another neighbor exclaimed. “Fifteen ears to the row a section long would encourage me, Darley Champers told me when I took up my claim, if I’d plant a grove or two, that in three years the trees would be so big that rainfall would be abundant. You all know my catalpa woods is a wonder,” he added with a wink.

Darley Champers himself had just come down the trail and was entering the door.

“Well, come over our way if you are on the hunt for prosperity,” Todd Stewart interposed. “Grass River isn’t living up to its name any better than our creek; isn’t any fuller of weeds than our brook is of – shale. I did lose the trail in your river this morning, though. The weeds are nearly up to the pony’s flanks. Think of the fertility of a river bed that will grow weeds three feet high and two shades more yellow green than the dead grass on the bank. If there’s a drop of water in our creek for twenty miles, I’d go get it and have Brother Gaines analyze it to make sure it wasn’t resin.”

“You do well to see the humor of the situation, Stewart,” Pryor Gaines began, with the cheery tone of a man who believes in hope.

“I don’t see that that helps any,” Bennington, the first speaker, broke in dolefully. “Joking isn’t going to give us food and clothes and fuel till crop time comes again – if it ever does.”

“I’m not suffering for extra clothes. What I wear now is a burden,” Todd Stewart declared.

“Well, gentlemen.” Darley Champers took the floor. “What are you going to do? That’s what brought me here today. I knowed I’d find you all here. When I sent some of you fellows into this blasted Sahara, I was honest. I thought Grass River was a real stream, not a weed patch and a stone outcrop. I’d seen water in it, as I can prove by Aydelot. Remember, when we met down by the bend here, one winter day?”

“Yes, I remember,” Asher replied.

“Well, I just come by there and there ain’t a drop of water in that deep bend, no more’n in my hat.” Champers plumped his hat down on the floor with the words. “And the creek, on Stewart’s testimony, is a blasted fissure in the earth.”

“I always said when that bend went dry, I’d leave the country, but I can’t,” Jim Shirley said doggedly.

“Why not?” Champers inquired.

“Because I can’t throw away the only property I have in the world, and I haven’t the means to get away, let alone start up anywhere else.”

“We’re all in the same boat,” Bennington declared.

“Same boat, every fellow rocking it, too, and no water to drown in if we fall out. We’re in the queerest streak of luck yet developed,” Todd Stewart observed.

“Let’s take a vote, then, and see how many of us really have no visible means of support and couldn’t walk out of here at all. Let’s have a show of hands,” Jim Shirley proposed.

“How did you decide?” Champers asked, as the hands dropped.

His eyes were on Asher Aydelot, who had not voted.

“Didn’t you see? Everybody, except Asher there, is nailed fast to the gumbo,” Stewart declared.

Darley Champers looked Asher Aydelot straight in the eyes, and nobody could have said that pity or dislike or surprise controlled the man’s mind, for something of all three were in that look. Then he said:

“Gentlemen, I know your condition just as well as you do. You’re in a losing game, and it’s stay and starve, or – but they ain’t no ’or.’ Now, I’ll advance money tomorrow on every claim held here and take it and assume the mortgage. Not that they are worth it. Oh, Lord, no. I’ll be land-logged, and it’s out of kindness to you that I’m willin’ to stretch them fellers I represent in the East. But I’ll take chances. I’ll help each feller of you to get away for a reasonable price on your claim. It’s a humanitarian move, but I may be able to lump it off for range land in a few years for about what it costs to pay taxes. But, gents, I got some of you in and I’m no scallawag when it comes to helpin’ you out. Think it over, and I’ll be down this way in two weeks. I’ve got to go now. It’s too infernal hot to keep alive here. I know where there’s two sunflower stalks up on the trail that’s fully two feet tall. I’ve got to have shade. Goodday.” And Champers was gone.

“What do you say?” The question seemed to come from all at once.

“Let Pryor Gaines speak first. He’s our preacher,” Asher said with a smile.

Pryor Gaines was a small, fair-faced man, a scholar, a dreamer, too, maybe. By birth or accident, he had suffered from a deformity. He limped when he walked, and his left hand had less than normal efficiency. On his face the pathos of the large will and the limited power was written over by the ready smile, the mark of abundant good will toward men.

“I am out of the race,” he said calmly. “I’m as poor as any of you, of course, and I must stay here anyhow, Dr. Carey tells me. I came West on account of heart action and some pulmonary necessities. I cannot choose where I shall go, even if I had the means to carry out my choice. But my necessities need not influence anyone,” he added with a smile. “I can live without you, if I have to.”

“How about you?” Stewart said, turning to Asher. “You take no risk at all in leaving, so you’ll go first, I suppose?”

All this time the settlers’ wives sat listening to the considerations that meant so much to them. They wore calico dresses, and not one of them had on a hat. But their sun-bonnets were clean and stiffly starched, and, while they were humbly clad, there was not a stupid face among them; neither was their conversation stupid. Their homes and home devices for improvement, the last reading in the all too few papers that came their way, the memories of books and lectures and college life of other days, and the hope of the future, were among the things of which they spoke.

Virginia Aydelot was no longer the pretty pink and white girl-bride who had come to the West three years before. Her face and arms were brown as a gypsy’s, but her hair, rumpled by the white sunbonnet she had worn, was abundant, and her dark eyes and the outlines of her face had not changed. She would always be handsome without regard to age or locality. Nor had the harshness of the wilderness made harsh the soft Southern tongue that was her heritage.

At Stewart’s words, Asher glanced at his wife, and he knew from her eyes what her choice would be.

“When I was a boy on the old farm back at Cloverdale, Ohio, my mother’s advice was as useful to me as my father’s.” Swift through Asher’s mind ran the memory of that moonlit April night on his father’s veranda five years before. “Out here it is our wives who bear the heaviest burdens. Let us have their thoughts on the situation.”

“That’s right,” Jim Shirley exclaimed. “Mrs. Aydelot, you are first in point of time in this settlement. What do you say?”

“It’s a big responsibility, Mrs. Aydelot,” Bennington, who had not smiled hitherto, said with a twinkle in his eye.

“As goes Asher Aydelot, so goes Grass River,” Todd Stewart declared. “You speak for him, Mrs. Aydelot, and tell us what to do.”

“I cannot tell you what to do. I can speak only for the Aydelots,” Virginia said. “When we came West Asher told me he had left one bridge not burned. He had put aside enough money to take us back to Ohio and to start a new life, on small dimensions, of course, back East, whenever we found the prairies too hostile. They’ve often been rough, never worse than now, but” – her eyes were bright with the unconquerable will to do as she pleased, true heritage of the Thaines of old – “but I’m not ready to go yet.”

Jim Shirley clapped his hands, but Pryor Gaines spoke earnestly. “There is no failure in a land where the women will to win. By them the hearthstones stand or crumble to dust. The Plains are master now. They must be servant some day.”

“Amen!” responded Asher Aydelot, and the Sabbath service ended.

Two weeks later Darley Champers came again to the barren valley and met the settlers in the sod schoolhouse. Not a cloud had yet scarred the heavens, not a dewdrop had glistened in the morning sunlight. Clearly, August was outranking July as king of a season of glaring light and withering heat. The settlers drooped listlessly on the backless seats, and the barefoot children did not even try to recite the golden text.

“I’d like to speak to you, Aydelot,” Champers said at the door, as the school service ended.

The two men sought the shady side of the cabin and dropped on the ground.

“I’m goin’ to be plain, now, and you mustn’t misunderstand me for a minute,” Champers declared. The blusterer is rarely tactful.

“All right.”

Champers seemed to take the cheery tone as a personal matter.

“Two weeks ago, I understand you and Mrs. Aydelot headed off these poor devils from their one chance of escape. Now, you know danged well you don’t intend to stay here a minute longer’n it’ll take to kite out of this in the fall. And you are sacrificing human lives by persuadin’ these folks to hold onto this land they just can’t keep, nor make a livin’ on, under five years and pay the interest till their mortgages expire. And I’ve just this to say:” Champers spoke persuasively. “I’m not a shark. I’m humane. If you’ll help me to get these poor settlers out of Grass River Valley, I’m willing to pay you a good commission on every single claim and take no commission at all on yours. It will help you a lot toward makin’ a bigger start back East. Don’t listen to your woman now; listen to me, for I’m givin’ you the chance of your life, robbin’ myself to do it, too. But” – his tone changed abruptly – “if you figger you can take your danged rainy-day bank account out’n the Cloverdale bank and grab onto this land, you leave yourself, and hold onto it while you stay East a few years, and then sneak back here and get rich off their loss, I tell you now, you can’t do it. And if you don’t use your influence right now to get ’em to sell out to my company, you’re going to regret it. Don’t ask how I know. I know. I warn you once for all. You go in there and help the men decide right now – I’ll buy at a reasonable figger, you understand – and you’re goin’ to help make ’em sell to save their fool skins from starvation and their wives and their little ones, or you’re going to rue the day you drove into Kansas. What do you say? What are you goin’ to do?”

The man’s voice was full of menace, and he looked at Asher Aydelot with the determination of one who will not be thwarted.

Asher looked back at him with clear gray eyes that saw deeper than the threatening words. A half smile hovered about his lips as he replied.

“So that’s your game, Darley Champers. If I’ll help you to get hold of this land, you’ll pay the settlers more than the claims are worth and you’ll pay me more than they are worth. A pretty good price for worthless ground.”

“Well, look at the landscape and tell me what you see.” Darley Champers flung his hand out toward the sweep of brown prairie with the dry river bed and the brazen sands beyond it. Lean cattle stood disconsolately in the shadeless open, while the cultivated fields were a mass of yellow clods about the starveling crops.

Asher did not heed the interruption.

“You declare that I’ll leave here as soon as I can get away, and that I’m brutal to use my influence to keep the settlers here; that I am working a trick you have worked out already for me, to get the land myself because it is valuable; you, in your humane love for your fellowmen, you threaten me with all unknown calamities if I refuse your demand. And then you ask me what I have to say, what I am going to do, and, with fine gestures, what I see?”

“Well?” Champers queried urgently.

The plains life made men patient and deliberate of speech, and Asher did not hasten his words for all the bluster.