Virginia listened interestedly but not understandingly.

"What of this?" Jacobs continued. "I have some means. I'm waiting for more. I'll invest them in Grass River. Go back and tell your homesteaders that I'll make a small five-year loan to every man in the settlement according to his extreme needs. I'll take each man's note with five per cent interest and the privilege of renewing for two years if crops fail at the end of the term. I am selfish, I'll admit," he declared, as Virginia looked at him incredulously, "and I want dollar for dollar—always—sometimes more. My people are popularly known as Shylocks. But you note that my rate of usury is small, the time long, and that I want these settlers to stay. I am not trying to get rid of them in order to speculate on their land in coming days of prosperity—the days when you will be landlords over broad acres and I a merchant prince. I say again, I believe in the West and in you farmer people who must turn the West from a wilderness to a land of plenty. I'm willing to risk something on your venture."

"Oh, Mr. Jacobs," was all Virginia could say, and, womanlike, the tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks.

"Tell the men to send a committee up here with their needs listed," Jacobs said hastily, "or better, I'll go out there myself the day after tomorrow. I want to see what kind of a claim Carey has preempted. Good-by, now, good-by."

He hurried Virginia to her horse and watched her ride away.

Down at the ford of Wolf Creek the willow brush fringed the main trail thinly for a little distance and half hid the creek trail, winding up a long canyon-like hollow, until a low place in the bank and a steep climb brought it up to the open prairie. It was the same trail that Dr. Carey had spoken of as belonging to an ugly little creek running into Big Wolf, the trail he had wanted to avoid on the day he had heard Virginia singing when she was lost on the prairie one cold day.

Virginia paused in this semblance of shade to let Juno drink. She pushed back her sunbonnet and sat waiting. Her brown face grew radiant as she thought of the good news she was bearing to the waiting home-makers of the Grass River Valley. A song came to her lips, and as she sang a soft little measure she remembered how somewhere down a tributary to this very creek she had sung for help in pleading tones one cold hopeless day three years before. So intent was she on the triumph of the hour she did not even look up the willow-shadowed creek trail.

Dr. Horace Carey, coming in from a distant claim, had dropped into this trail for the bits of shade here and there and was letting his pony take its way leisurely along the side of the creek bed. There were only a few shallow pools now where the fall rains would soon put a running stream, and as the doctor's way lay along the moist places the pony's feet fell noiselessly on the soft ground. As he rounded a bend in the stream he caught sight of Virginia, her face outlined against the background of willow sprays, making a picture worth a journey to see, it was such a hopeful, happy face at that moment. Dr. Carey involuntarily checked his pony at the sight. His own countenance was too pale for a Kansas plainsman, and he sat so still that the low strain of Virginia's song reached his ears.

Presently Juno lifted her head and Virginia rode away out on the Sunflower Trail, bordered now only by dead pest-ridden stalks. Suddenly lifting her eyes she saw far across a stretch of burned prairie a landscape of exquisite beauty. In a foreground lay a little lake surrounded by grassy banks and behind it, on a slight elevation, stood a mansion house of the old Colonial style with white pillared portico, and green vines and forest trees casting cool shade. Beyond it, wrapped in mist, rose a mountain height with a road winding picturesquely in and out along its side. Virginia caught her breath as a great sob rose in her throat. This was all so like the old Thaine mansion house of her childhood years.

"It's only the mirage," she said aloud. "But it was so like—what?" She held Juno back as she looked afar at the receding painting of the plains. "It's like the house we'll have some day on that slope beyond the Sunflower Inn. The mountains are misty. They are only the mountains of memory. But the home and the woods and the water—all may be real."

Then she thought of Asher and of the dull prairie everywhere.

"I wonder if he would want to go back if he could see this as I see it," she questioned. "But I know he has seen it daily. I can tell by that look in his gray eyes."

It was long after moonrise when Asher Aydelot, watching by the corral, heard the sound of hoof-beats and saw the faint outline of a horse and rider swinging in from the northward as once before he had watched the same horse and rider swinging over the same trail before the cool north wind that beat back the September prairie fire.

"I have supper all ready. See what grew just for you!" Asher said as he and his wife entered the house.

A bunch of forlorn little sunflowers in a brown pitcher graced the table. They could scarcely be called flowers, but to Virginia, who had hardly seen a blossom through the days of drouth, the joy they brought was keener than the joy that the roses and orchids gave in the days of a later prosperity.

"I found them in the draw where the wild plums grow," Asher said. "How they ever escaped the hoppers is a miracle."

"We will christen our claim 'The Sunflower Ranch' tonight, and these are our decorations for the ceremony. It is all we have now. But it is ours," Virginia declared.

And then she told the story of the bank failure at Cloverdale.

"The last bridge is burned surely," Asher commented as he looked across the table at Virginia. "This is the only property we have except youth and health and hope—and—each other."

"And the old Aydelot heritage to stand for principle, and your mother's belief in the West and in you, and the Thaine stubbornness about giving up what they want to keep," Virginia declared.

"As our days so shall our strength be," Asher added, as he saw his wife's face bright with hope and determination, and remembered the sweet face of his mother as it had looked that night on the veranda of the old farmhouse by the National pike road.

* * * * *

For a long time down by the willows thinly shadowing Wolf Creek a white-faced man sat looking out toward the west, where a horse and rider had vanished into the mellow tones of distance.



CHAPTER VIII

ANCHORED HEARTHSTONES

Dear Mother of Christ, who motherhood blessed, All life in thy Son is complete. The length of a day, the century's tale Of years do His purpose repeat. As wide as the world a sympathy comes To him who has kissed his own son, A tenderness deep as the depths of the sea, To motherhood mourning is won. No life is for naught. It was heaven's own way That the baby who came should stay only a day.

Living by faith, which is the substance of things hoped for, is good for the spirit but reducing to the flesh. Yet it was much by faith that the frontier settlers lived through the winter after the grasshopper raid. Jim Shirley often declared in that time between crops that he could make three meals a day on Pryor Gaines' smile. And Todd Stewart asserted that when the meat was all gone from their larder his family lived one whole week on John Jacobs' belief in the future of their settlement. For the hardship of that winter was heavy. All the more heavy because the settlers were not stupid pauper-bred folk but young men and women of intelligence and culture, whose early lives had known luxuries as well as comforts. But the saving sense of humor, the saving power of belief in themselves, and the saving grace of brotherly love carried them through.

The winter was mercifully mild and the short grass of the prairies was nourishing to the stock that must otherwise have perished. Late in February a rainfall began that lasted for days and Grass River, rising to its opportunity, drowned all the fords, so that the neighbors on widely separated claims were cut off from each other. No telephones relieved the loneliness of the country dwellers in those days, and each household had to rely on its own resources for all its needs. March came raging in like a lion. All the rain turned to snow and the wind to a polar blast as the one furious blizzard of that season fell upon the plains and for many hours threshed the snow-covered land.

On the night before the coming of the blizzard the light did not go out in the Aydelot cabin. And while the wind and rain without raved at door and window, a faint little cry within told that a new life had come to the world, a baby girl born in the midst of the storm. Morning brought no check to the furious elements. And Asher, who had fought in the front line at Antietam, had forced his way through a storm of Indian arrows out of a death-trap in the foothills of the Rockies, had ministered to men on the plains dying of the Asiatic plague, and had bound up the wounds of men who returned to the battle again, found a new form of heroism that morning in his own little cabin—the heroism of motherhood.

"You must go for help, Asher," Virginia said, smiling bravely. "Leave the baby beside me here. We'll wait till you come back. Little Sweetheart, you are welcome, if you did come with the storm, a little before you were expected." The young mother looked fondly at the tiny face beside her.

"I can't leave you alone, Virgie," Asher insisted.

"But you must." Virginia's voice was full of courage. "You can go as far as Pryor Gaines' and send him on for you. Little daughter and I will be all right till you come back."

So Asher left her.

Pryor Gaines was waterbound across Grass River. Of the three women living east of the stream one was sick abed, one was kept at home with a sick husband, and the third had gone with her husband to Wykerton for supplies and was stormstaid somewhere along the Sunflower Trail.

"I must go for Jim. Any neighborhood is blessed that has a few good-hearted unmarried folks in it," Asher thought as he braced himself against the driving rain and hurried away.

When he reached home again the fire was low, the house was very quiet, and Virginia's face was white against her pillow.

"Our little daughter is asleep," she said, and turning away she seemed not to hear her husband's voice assuring her that Jim would bring the doctor as soon as possible.

The blizzard was just beginning in the early evening when Jim Shirley fairly blew down the trail from the north. He slipped into the kitchen and passed quietly to the next room. Asher was bending over his wife, who lay in a delirium.

Jim Shirley had one of those sympathetic natures that read the joys and sorrows of their friends without words. One look at Asher told him what had been.

"The doctor was away up Wolf Creek, but I left word with his colored man for him to come at once, and he'll do it," Jim assured Asher as he stood for a moment beside the bed. "I didn't wait because you need me."

Asher lifted his head and looked at Jim. As man to man they knew as never before the strength of their lifetime friendship.

"I need you. She needs the doctor. The baby—"

"Doesn't need any of us," Jim said softly. "I'll do what I can."

It is no strange, unreal story of the wilderness day, this fluttering in and out of a little life, where no rosewood grew for coffins nor florists made broken columns of white lilies and immortelles.

But no mother's hands could have been more gentle than the gentle hands of Jim Shirley as he prepared the little form for burial.

Meantime the wind was at its wildest, and the plains blizzard swirled in blinding bitterness along the prairie. The hours of the night dragged by slowly to the two men hoping for the doctor's coming, yet fearing that hope was impossible in the face of such a night.

"Carey has the keenest sense of direction I ever knew in a human being," Jim assured Asher. "I know he will not fail us."

Yet the morning came and the doctor came not. The day differed from the night only in the visible fierceness of the storm. The wind swept howling in long angry shrieks from the northwest. The snow seemed one dizzy, maddening whirlpool of white flakes hanging forever above the earth.

Inside the cabin Virginia's delirium was turning to a frenzy. And Asher and Jim forgot that somewhere in the world that day there was warmth and sunlight, health and happiness, flowers, and the song of birds, and babies cooing on their mothers' knees. And the hours of the day dragged on to evening.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Dr. Carey had come into Wykerton belated by the rains.

"The wind is changing. There'll be a snowstorm before morning, Bo Peep," he said wearily as the young colored man assisted him into warm, dry clothes. "It's glorious to sit by a fire on a night like this. I didn't know how tired I was till now."

"Yes, suh, I'se glad you all is home for the night, suh. I sho' is. I got mighty little use for this yuh country. I'se sorry now I eveh done taken my leave of ol' Virginny." Bo Peep's white teeth glistened as he laughed.

"Any calls while I was gone?" Dr. Carey asked.

Bo Peep pretended not to hear as he busied himself over his employer's wraps, until Carey repeated the question.

"No, suh! no, suh! none that kaint wait till mawhnin', suh," Bo Peep assured him, adding to himself, "Tiahd as he is, he's not gwine way out to Grass Riveh this blessed night, not if I loses my job of bein' custodian of this huh 'stablishment. Not long's my name's Bone-ah-gees Peepehville, no, suh!"

Dr. Carey settled down for the evening with some inexplicable misgiving he could not overcome.

"I didn't sleep well last night, Bo Peep," he said when he rose late the next morning. "I reckon we doctors get so used to being called out on especially bad nights we can't rest decently in our beds."

"I didn't sleep well, nutheh," Bo Peep replied. "I kep thinkin' bout that man come heah foh you yestedy. I jes wa'n't gwine to le' yuh go out again las' night."

"What did he want?" the doctor asked, secretly appreciative of Bo Peep's goodness of heart as he saw the street full of whirling snow.

"He done said hit wah a maturity case."

Bo Peep tried to speak carelessly. In truth, his conscience had not left him in peace a moment.

"What do you mean? Who was it?" Horace Carey demanded.

"Don't be mad, Doctah, please don't. Hit wah cuz you all wah done woah out las' night. Hit wah Misteh Shulley from Grass Riveh, suh. He said hit wah Misteh Asheh Aydelot's wife—"

"For the love of God!" Horace Carey cried hoarsely, springing up. "Do you know who Mrs. Aydelot is, Bo Peep?"

"No, suh; neveh see huh."

"She was Virginia Thaine of the old Thaine family back at home."

Bo Peep did not sit down. He fell in a heap at Dr. Carey's feet, moaning grievously.

"Fo' Gawd, I neveh thought o' harm. I jus' thought o' you all, deed I did. Oh! Oh!"

"Help to get me off then," Carey commanded, and Bo Peep flew to his tasks.

When the doctor was ready to start he found two horses waiting outside in the storm and Bo Peep, wrapped to the eyes, beside them.

"Why two?" he asked kindly, for Bo Peep's face was so full of sorrow he could not help pitying the boy.

"Please, kaint I go with you all? I can cook betteh'n Miss Virginia eveh could, an' I can be lots of help an' you all'll need help."

"But it's a stinger of a storm, Bo Peep," the doctor insisted, anxious to be off.

"Neveh mind! Neveh mind! Lemme go. I won't complain of no stom." And the doctor let him go.

It was already dark at the Sunflower Ranch when the two, after hours of battling with wind and snow and bitter cold, reached the cabin door. Bo Peep, instead of giving up early or hanging a dead weight on Dr. Carey's hands, as he had feared the boy might do, had been the more hopeful of the two in all the journey. The hardship was Bo Peep's penance, and right merrily, after the nature of a merry-hearted race, he took his punishment.

Jim Shirley, putting wood on the kitchen fire, bent low as he heard the piteous moanings from the sick room.

"Oh, Lord, if you can work miracles work one now," he pleaded below his breath. "Bring help out of this storm or give us sense to do the best for her. We need her so, dear Lord. We need her so."

He lifted his eyes to see Horace Carey between himself and the bedroom door, slipping out of his snowy coat. And beside him stood Bo Peep, helping him to get ready for the sick room.

"I know Miss Virginia back in the Souf, suh. I done come to take keer of this kitchen depahtment. I know jus' what she lak mos' suh," Bo Peep said to Jim, who had not moved nor spoken. "I'se Misteh Bone-ah-gees Peepehville, an' I done live with Doctah Carey's family all mah life, suh, 'cept a short time I spent in the Jacobs House at Carey's Crossing. I'se his custodian now, suh, and I know a few things about the cookin' depahtment, suh."

He looked the part, and Jim accepted him gladly.

It is given to some men to know the power of the healing spirit. Dr. Carey was such a man. His presence controlled the atmosphere of the place. There was balm in his voice and in the touch of his hand as much as in his medicines. To him his own calling was divine. Who shall say that the hope and belief with which his few drugs were ministered carried not equal power with them toward health and wholeness?

When Virginia Aydelot had fallen asleep at last the doctor came into the kitchen and sat down with the two haggard men to whom his coming had brought unspeakable solace.

"You can take comfort, Mr. Aydelot," he said assuringly. "Your wife has been well cared for. Hardly one man in a thousand could do as well as you have done. I wonder you never studied medicine."

"You seem confident of results, Doctor," Asher said gratefully.

"I have known the Thaine family all my life," Horace Carey said quietly. And Asher, whose mind was surged with anxiety, did not even think to be surprised.

"We did not recognize each other when I found her on the way to Carey's Crossing three or four years ago, and—I did not know she was married then."

He sat a while in silence, looking at the window against which the wind outside was whirling the snow. When he spoke again his tone was hopeful.

"Mrs. Aydelot has had a nervous shock. But she is young. She has a heritage of will power and good blood. She will climb up rapidly with the coming on of spring."

How strange it was to Asher Aydelot to listen to such words! He had not slept for fifty hours. It had seemed to him that the dreadful storm outside and sickness and the presence of death within were to be unending, and that in all the world Jim Shirley would henceforth be his only friend.

"You both need sleep," Carey was saying in a matter-of-fact way. "Bo Peep will take care of things here, and I will look after Mrs. Aydelot. You will attend to the burial at the earliest possible time in order to save her any signs of grieving. And you will not grieve either until you have more time. And remember, Aydelot," he put his hand comfortingly on Asher's shoulders. "Remember in this affliction that your ambition may stake out claims and set up houses, but it takes a baby's hand to really anchor the hearthstones. And sometimes it takes even more. It needs a little grave as well. I understood from Shirley that some financial loss last fall prevented you from going back to Ohio. You wouldn't leave Grass River now if you could."

Dr. Carey's face was magnetic in its earnestness, and even in the sorrow of the moment Asher remembered that he had known Virginia all her life and he wondered subconsciously why the two had not fallen in love with each other.

And so it was that as the Sunflower Inn had received the first bride and groom to set up the first home in the Grass River Valley, so the first baby born in the valley opened its eyes to the light of day in the same Sunflower Inn. And out of this sod cabin came the first form to its burial. And it was the Sunflower Ranch that gave ground for God's Acre there for all the years that followed. It happened, too, that as Jim Shirley had been the friendly helper at that bridal supper and happy house-warming more than three years ago, so now it was Jim Shirley who in the hour of sorrow was the helper still.

* * * * *

The winter season passed with the passing of the blizzard. The warm spring air was delicious and all the prairies were presently abloom with a wild luxuriance of flowers.

Asher carried Virginia to the sunshine at the west window from which she could see the beautiful outdoor world.

"We wouldn't leave here now if we could," she declared as she beheld all the glory of the springtime rolling away before her eyes.

"Bank accounts bring comforts, but they do not make all of life nor consecrate death. We have given our first-born back to the prairie. It is sacred soil now," Asher replied.

And then they talked of many things, but mostly of Dr. Carey.

"I have known him from childhood," Virginia said. "He was my very first sweetheart, as very first sweethearts go. He went into the war when he was young. I didn't know much that happened after that. He was at home, I think, when you were in that hospital where I first saw you, and—oh, yes, Asher, dear, he was at home when your blessed letter came, the one with the old greasy deuce of hearts and the sunflower. It was this same Bo Peep, Carey's boy, who brought it to me up in the glen behind the big house. Horace left Virginia just after that." Virginia closed her eyes and lived in the past again.

"I wonder you never cared for Dr. Carey, Virgie. He is a prince among men," Asher said, as he leaned over her chair.

"Oh, I might, if my king had not sent me that sunflower just then. It made a new world for me."

"But I am only a common farmer, Virgie, just a king of a Kansas claim, just a home-builder on the prairie," Asher insisted.

"Asher, if you had your choice this minute of all the things you might be, what would you choose to be?" Virginia asked.

"Just a common farmer, just a king of a Kansas claim," Asher replied. Then looking out toward the swell of ground beside the Grass River schoolhouse where the one little mound of green earth marked his first-born's grave, he added, "Just a home-builder on the prairies."

The second generation of grasshoppers tarried but briefly, then all together took wing and flew away, no man knew, nor cared, whither. And the Grass River settlers who had weathered the hurricane of adversity, poor, but patient and persistent still, planted, sometimes in tears to reap in joy, sometimes in hope to reap only in heartsick hope deferred, but failed not to keep on planting. Other settlers came rapidly and the neighborhood thickened and broadened. And so, amid hardships still, and lack of opportunity and absence of many elements of culture, a sturdy, independent, God-fearing people struggled with the soil, while they lifted up faces full of hope and determination to the skies above them. What of the prairies they could subdue they bent to their service. What they could not overcome they defied the right to overcome them. There were no lines of social caste. They were needy or full together. They shared their pleasures; together they laughed at calamities; and they comforted one another in every sorrow.

A new town was platted on the claim that Dr. Carey had preempted where the upper fork of Grass River crossed the old Sunflower trail. The town founders ruled Hans Wyker out of a membership among them. Moreover, they declared their intentions of forever beating back all efforts at saloon building within the corporation's limits, making Wykerton their sworn enemy for all time. In the new town, which was a ten-by-ten shack of vertical boards, a sod stable, and two dugout homes, the very first sale of lots, for cash, too, was made to Darley Champers & Co., dealers in real estate, mortgages, loans, etc.

One summer Sabbath afternoon, three years after the grasshopper raid of dreadful memory, Asher came again to the little grave in the Grass River graveyard where other graves were consecrating the valley in other hearts. This time he bore in his arms a dimpled, brown-eyed baby boy who cooed and smiled as only babies can and flung his little square fists aimlessly about in baby joy of living.

"We'll wait here, Thaine, till your mother comes from Bennington's to tell us about the little baby that just came to our settlement only two days ago and staked out a claim in a lot of hearts."

Little Thaine had found that his fist and his mouth belonged together, so he offered no comment. Asher sat down on the warm sod with the baby on his knees.

"This is your little sister's grave, Thaine. She staid with us less than a day, but we loved her then and we love her still. Her name was to have been Mercy Pennington Aydelot, after the sweet Quaker girl your two great-great-grandfathers both loved. Such a big name for such a tiny girl! She isn't here, Thaine. This is just the little sod house she holds as her claim. She is in a beautiful mansion now. But she binds us always to the Grass River Valley because she has a claim here. We couldn't bear to go away and leave her little holding. And now you've come and all the big piece of prairie soil that is your papa's and mamma's now will be yours some day. I hope you'll want to stay here."

A stab of pain thrust him deeply as he remembered his own father and understood for the first time what Francis Aydelot must have felt for him. And then he remembered his mother's sacrifice and breadth of view.

"Oh, Thaine, will you want to leave us some day?" he said softly, gazing down into the baby's big dark eyes. "Heaven give me breadth and courage and memory, too," he added, "when that time comes not to be unkind; but to be brave to let you go. Only, Thaine, there's no bigger place to go than to a big, fine Kansas farm. Oh! we fathers are all alike. What Clover Creek was to Francis Aydelot, Grass River is to me. Will it be given to you to see bigger things?"

Thaine Aydelot crowed and stretched his little legs and threw out his hands.

"Thaine, there are no bigger things than the gifts of the soil. I may only win it, but you can find its hundredfold of increase. See, yonder comes your mother. Not the pretty, dainty Virginia girl I brought here as my bride. But I tell you truly, baby boy, she will always be handsome, because—you wouldn't understand if I told you, but you will some day."

"Oh, Asher, the new baby is splendid, and Mrs. Bennington is ever so well," Virginia said, coming up to where he sat waiting for her. "They call her Josephine after Mr. Bennington's mother. Thaine will never be lonely here, as we have been. After all, it is not the little graves alone that anchor us anywhere, for we can take memory with us wherever we go; it is the children living, as well, that hold our hearthstones fast and build a real community, even in a wilderness. We are just ready to begin now. The real story of the prairie is the story of the second generation. The real romance out here will be Thaine Aydelot's romance, for he was born here."



CHAPTER IX

THE BEGINNING OF SERVICE

Amid all the din Of the everyday battle some peace may begin, Like the silence of God in its regal content, Till we learn what the lesson of yesterday meant.

Hans Wyker had managed skillfully when he pulled the prospective county seat of Wolf county up Big Wolf Creek to Wykerton, a town he hoped to build after his own ideals. And his ideals had only one symbol, namely, the dollar sign. Hans had congratulated himself not a little over his success.

"I done it all mineself," he was wont to boast. "So long as Doc Carey tink he own der town vots name for him, an' so long as Yon Yacob, der ding-busted little Chew, tink him an' Todd Stewart run all der pusiness mitout regardin' my saloon pusiness, an' so long as Pryor Gaines preachin' an' teachin' all time gifin' black eye to me, 'cause I sells wisky, I not mak no hetway."

"You are danged right," Darley Champers would always assure him.

"Yah, I be. But von day I pull a lot of strinks at vonce. I pull der county seat locate to Pig Wolf Creek, an' I put up mine prewery here mit water power here vot dey vassent not at Carey's Crossing. An' der railroat comin' by dis way soon, I know. I do big business two times in vonce. I laugh yet to tink how easy Yon Yacob fall down. If Yon Yacob say so he hold Carey's for der county seat. But no. He yust sit shut oop like ant neffer say von sinkle vord. An' here she coom—my prewery, my saloon, my county seat, an' all in vonce."

Hans would laugh till the tears ran down his rough red cheeks. Then blowing his nose like a blast against the walls of Jericho he would add:

"Yon Yacob go back to Cincinnati. Doc Carey, he come Vest an' locate again right here. Course he tak up claim on nort fork of Grass River. But dat's yust for speculation some yet. Gaines an' Stewart go to Grass River settlement an' homestead. Oh, I scatter 'em like chaffs. Ho! Ho!" And again the laughter would bring tears to his watery little white-gray eyes.

What Hans Wyker said of John Jacobs was true, for in the council that decided the fate of the town it was his silence that lost the day and put Carey's Crossing off the map. Hans, while rejoicing over the result, openly accused Jacobs of being a ding-busted, selfish Jew who cared for nobody but John Jacobs. Secretly Hans admired Jacobs for his business ability, and all men respected him for a gentleman. Hence it was no small disappointment to the brewery owner to find when Jacobs returned to Kansas that he did not mean to open a business in Wykerton. Instead, he loaned his money to Grass River homesteaders.

When crops began to bring returns Jacobs established a new town farther west on the claim that Dr. Carey had taken up. Jacobs insisted on calling the place Careyville in honor of the doctor, because he had been the means of annihilating the first town named after Carey. And since he had befriended the settlers in the days after the grasshopper raid he drew all the trade west of Big Wolf to this new town, cutting deep into the Wykerton business. Misfortunes hunt in couples when they do not gather in larger companies. Not only did the Jacobs store decrease the income of the Wykerton stores, but, following hard after, came the shifting of county lines. Wolf county fell into three sections, to increase three other counties. The least desirable ground lay in the north section, and the town built up on a brewery and the hopes of being hit by a railroad survey, and of holding the county seat, was left in this third part which, like Caesar's third part of all Gaul, was most barbarous because least often the refining influences of civilization found their way thither.

Then came the crushing calamity, the Prohibitory Law, which put Hans Wyker out of business. And hand in hand with this disaster, when the railroad came at last it drove its steel lines imperiously westward, ignoring Wykerton, with the ugly little canyons of Big Wolf on the north, and the site of Carey's Crossing beside the old blossom-bordered trail on the south. Finding the new town of Careyville a strategic point, it headed straight thither, built through it, marked it for a future division point, and forged onward toward the sunset.

Dr. Carey had located an office on his claim when there were only four other buildings on the Careyville townsite. Darley Champers opened a branch office there about the same time, although he did not leave Wykerton. But the downfall of Wyker and his interests cut deeper into the interests of the Grass River settlement than anyone dreamed of at the time. It sifted into Wyker's slow brain that the Jew, as he called Jacobs with many profane decorations, had been shrewd as well as selfish when his silent vote had given Wykerton the lead in the race for a county seat location.

"Infernal scoundrel," Hans would cry with many gestures, "he figger it out in his own little black het and neffer tell nobody, so. He know to hisself dat Carey's Crossing's too fur sout, so—an' Big Wolf Creek too fur nort, so." Hands wide apart, and eyes red with anger. "He know der survey go between like it, so! And he figger it hit yust fer it hit Grass River, nort fork. An' he make a townsite dere, yust where Doc Carey take oop. Devil take him! An' he pull all my town's trade mit his fat pocketbook, huh! I send Champers to puy all Grass River claims. Dey don't sell none. I say, 'Champers, let 'em starf.' Den Champers, he let 'em. When supplies for crasshopper sufferers cooms from East we lock 'em oop in der office, tight. An' ve sell 'em. Huh! Cooms Yon Yacob an' he loan claim-holters money—fife per cent, huh! Puy 'em, hide an' hoof, an' horn, an' tail! Dey all swear py Yon Yacob. He rop me. I fix him yet sometime. I hate Yon Yacob!"

And Hans Wyker's hate was slow, but it was incurably poison.

One morning in early autumn Dr. Horace Carey drove leisurely down the street of the town that bore his name. The air was crisp and invigorating, for the September heat had just been broken by copious showers. Todd Stewart stood in the doorway of Jacobs' store, watching the doctor's approach.

"Good morning, Doctor," he called. "Somebody dying or a highwayman chasing after you for your pocketbook, that you drive so furiously?"

"Good morning, Stewart. No, nobody is in danger. Can't a doctor enjoy life once in a while? The country's so disgustingly healthy I have to make the best of it and kill time some way. Come, help at the killing, won't you?" Carey drew rein before the door of the store.

"I can't do it, Carey. Jacobs is away up on Big Wolf appraising some land and I want to be here when he comes in. I must do some holding up myself pretty soon if things don't pick up after this hot summer."

"You're an asset to the community, to be growling like that with this year's crops fairly choking the market," Horace Carey declared.

With a good-by wave of his hand he turned his horses' heads toward the south and took his way past the grain elevator toward the railroad crossing. The morning train was just pulling up to the station, blocking the street, so Carey sat still watching it with that interest a great locomotive in motion always holds for thinking people.

"Papa, there's Doctor Carey," a child's voice cried, and Thaine Aydelot bounded across the platform toward him, followed by his less-excited father.

Thaine was a sturdy, sun-browned little fellow of seven years, with blooming cheeks and big dark eyes. He was rather under than over normal size, and in the simplicity of plains life he had still the innocence of the very little boy.

"Good morning, Thaine. Good morning, Aydelot. Are you just getting home? Let me take you out. I'm going your way myself," Dr. Carey said.

"Good morning. Yes, we are getting home a little earlier than we were expected and nobody is here to meet us. We'll be glad to ride out with you."

Asher lifted Thaine into the buggy with the words. A certain reserve between the two men had never been broken, although they respected each other deeply and were fast friends.

The train cleared the crossing and the three went south over the bridge across the dry North Fork Creek, beyond the cattle pens, and on to the open country leading out toward the Grass River Valley. The morning was glorious with silvery mists lifting along the river's course and a shimmering light above golden stubble and brown plowed land and level prairie; while far away, in all its beauty, hung the deep purple veil that Nature drops between her finite and her infinite, where the things that are seen melt into the things that are not seen.

"Take the lines, Aydelot, and let me visit with Thaine," Horace Carey said, giving Asher the reins.

He was fond of children and children were more than fond of him. Thaine idolized him and snuggled up in his lap now with complete contentment of soul.

"Tell me all about it now, Thaine. Where have you been so long? I might have missed you down on the Sunflower Ranch this morning if I had driven faster and headed off the through train as it came in."

"Oo-o!" Thaine groaned at the possible disaster to himself. "We've been to Topeka, a very long way off."

"And you saw so many fine things?" Carey questioned.

"Yes, a big, awful big river. And a bridge made of iron. And it just rattled when we went across. And there were big pieces of the Statehouse lying around in the tall weeds. And such greeny green grass just everywhere. And, and, oh, the biggest trees. So many, all close together. Papa said it was like Ohio. Oh, so big. I never knew trees could grow so big, nor so many of them all together."

Little Thaine spread his short arms to show how wondrous large these trees were.

"He has never seen a tree before that was more than three inches through, except two or three lonesome cottonwoods. The forests of his grandfather's farm in Ohio would be gigantic to him. How little the prairie children know of the world!" Asher declared.

Dr. Carey remembered what Jim Shirley had told him of that lost estate in Ohio, and refrained from comment.

"You'd like to live in Topeka where the big Kaw river is, and the big trees along its banks, and so much green grass, wouldn't you, Thaine?"

"No!" The child's face was quaintly contemptuous. "It's too—too choky." The little hand clutched at the fat brown throat. "And the grass is so mussy green, and you can't see to anywhere for the bumpy hills and things. I like our old brown prairies best. It's so—nice out here." And with a sigh of perfect satisfaction Thaine leaned against Dr. Carey's shoulder and gazed out at the wide landscape swathed in the early morning sunlight.

The two men exchanged glances.

"This will be the land of memory for him some day, as you look back to the mountains of Virginia and I to the woodlands of Ohio," Asher said.

"It is worth remembering, anyhow," Carey replied. "I can count twenty young windbreaks from the swell just ahead, and the groves are springing up on many ranches from year to year. Your grove is the finest in the valley now, Aydelot."

"It is doing well," Asher said. "Mrs. Aydelot and I planned our home-to-be on the first evening we came to the Sunflower Inn. It was a sort of mirage-of-the-desert picture, it is true, but we were like the tapestry weavers. We hung the pattern up before our eyes and worked to it. It is slow weaving, I'll admit, but we kept on because we wanted to at first, then because we had to, and finally because our hearts took root in a baby's grave. They say the tapestry makers work on the wrong side of the threads, but when their work is done the pattern comes out complete. I hope ours will too. But there's many a day of aching muscles, and many a day of disappointment along the way. Crops prosper and crops fail, but we can't let the soil go untilled."

"I think we are all tapestry weavers. The trouble is sometimes in the pattern we hang up before us and sometimes in the careless weaving," Dr. Carey added.

They rode a while in silence. The doctor's cheek was against Thaine's dark hair and Asher looked down at his hard brown hands and then away at the autumn prairie.

Fifteen years on a plains claim, with all the daily grind of sowing and reaping and care of stock and garden, had not taken quite all the military bearing from him. He was thirty-eight years old now, vigorous and wholesome and hopeful. The tanning Kansas sunshine had not hidden the old expression of patience and endurance, nor had the sight of many hardships driven the vision from the clear, far-seeing gray eyes.

"Look at the sunflowers, Papa," Thaine cried as a curve of the trail brought a long golden line to view.

"You like the sunflowers, don't you?" Carey asked.

"Oh, yes, better than all the flowers on the prairie. My mamma loves them, too, because they made her think once papa wasn't dead."

"Thaine, what do you mean to do when you grow up?" Horace Carey interrupted the child.

"I'm going to be a soldier like my papa was," Thaine declared decisively.

"But there will probably be no wars. You see, your papa and I fought the battles all through and settled things. Maybe you can't go to war," Dr. Carey suggested.

"Oh, yes, I can. There'll be another war by that time, and I'm going, too. And when I come back I'm going away to where the purple notches are and have a big ranch and do just like my papa," Thaine asserted.

"Where are the purple notches?" the doctor asked.

"See yonder, away, way off?"

Thaine pointed toward the misty southwest horizon where three darker curves were outlined against a background of pale purple blending through lilac up to silvery gray.

"I'm going there some day," the boy insisted.

"And leave your papa and mamma?"

"They left their papas and mammas, too," Thaine philosophized.

The men laughed, although each felt a curious deep pain at the boy's words.

Thaine settled back, satisfied to be silent as he watched the wonderful prairie landscape about him.

"I am going down to Shirley's," Carey began, as if to change the subject. "Strange fellow, Jim; I never knew another like him."

"I was just thinking of Shirley," Asher responded. "He is a royal neighbor and true friend, better to everybody else than he is to himself. His own crops suffer sometimes while he helps other folks lay theirs by. And yet his premises always look like he was expecting company. One cannot help wondering what purpose stays him in his work."

"There is the tragedy of it," Horace Carey declared. "I never knew a more affectionate man, yet he has lived a bachelor all these years."

"How long have you known him, Carey?" Asher asked.

"Since the night at Kelley's Ferry, back in the Civil War. Our regiment, the Fifty-fourth Virginia, was taken. We were worn out with fighting and marching, and we were nearly starved besides. The Third Ohio boys had been in the same fix once and our boys—"

"Yes, I was a Third Ohio boy. I know what you fellows did. You saved our lives," Asher broke in.

"Well, you paid us back at Kelley's Ferry. I first knew Jim Shirley that night, although he remembered me from the time we had your regiment at our mercy. He brought me bacon and hard tack and coffee. We have been friends ever since. How long have you known him?"

"I am going to war when I get big, before I ever go to the purple notches. I know I am."

Thaine had been listening intently and now he broke in with face aglow and eyes full of eagerness.

"God forbid!" Carey said. "The lure of the drum beat might be hard for older men to resist even now."

"Your hand will fit a plow handle better than a gun-stock, Thaine," his father assured him, looking down at the boy's square, sun-browned hand with a dimple in each knuckle.

Thaine shut his lips tightly and said no more. But his father, who knew the heart of a boy, wondered what thoughts might lie back of that silence.

"I have known Jim all my life," Asher Aydelot took up the conversation where Thaine had interrupted it. "That is why I have wondered at the tenacity of his holding on out here. A man of his temperament is prone to let go quickly. Besides, Jim is far from being a strong man physically."

"When he was down with pneumonia in the early seventies he was ready to give up. Didn't want to get well and was bound not to do it," Dr. Carey said, "but somehow a letter I had brought him seemed to change him with one reading. 'I will do anything to get back to strength and work,' he declared, and he has worked ever since like a man who knew his business, even if his business judgment is sometimes faulty."

They rode awhile in silence, drinking in the delicious air of early autumn. Presently Dr. Carey said:

"Aydelot, I am taking a letter down to Jim this morning. It is in the same handwriting as the one I took when he had the pneumonia so severely. I learned a little something of Jim's affairs through friends when I was East studying some years ago."

He paused for a moment. Then, as if to change the subject, he continued:

"By the way, there was a bank failure at Cloverdale once that interested you. Did you ever investigate it?"

"There was nothing to investigate," Asher replied.

It did not occur to him to connect the query with Carey's knowledge of Shirley's affairs or with his studying in the East.

"You have relatives there?" Carey asked.

"Yes, a Jane Aydelot. Married, single, widowed, I can't tell. My father left his estate to her. I was in love with the West then, and madly in love with my wife. My father wasn't impressed with either one. But, you see, I was rash about little things like money matters. I had so much faith in myself and I couldn't give up a girl like Virginia Thaine. Understand, I have no quarrel with Jane Aydelot. Her property is absolutely her own, not mine to crave and look forward to getting some day."

"I understand," Horace Carey said, looking out toward the purple notches now more clearly outlined against the sky. "How this country has changed since that cold day when Mrs. Aydelot came almost to the old Crossing after me. The sand dunes narrow and the river deepens a little every year. The towns come and go on the prairies, but the homesteaders build better. It is the farmer who really makes a new country habitable."

"That's what my mother said when I talked of coming West. But the real test will come with the second generation. If it is loyal we will have won. Here is the old Grass River trail that Jim and I followed many lonely days. The valley is slowly coming out of the wilderness," Asher replied, remembering his wife's words long before when she said: "The real story of the plains is the story of the second generation. The real romance out here will be Thaine Aydelot's romance."

They had reached the old trail that led to the Grass River settlement now. It was still a new country where few trees, save some lone cottonwoods, were as tall as a cabin, and nothing broke the view. But groves had rooted, low windbreaks cut the country at frequent intervals; many acres of sod had been turned by the plow, and many more were being shut in by fences where the open cattle range was preempted by freeholds. One bit of woodland, however, was beginning to dignify the valley. The Aydelot grove spread over a hundred acres before the one-time sod Sunflower Inn. The new home was on the swell now as Virginia had seen the Colonial mansion of the mirage on the day she went seeking aid for the grasshopper-beset neighborhood. But this was just a little cottage waiting, like the grove, for years of time in which to grow a mansion shaded with tall trees, with the lake and the woodland before it, and the open prairie beyond.

Down at Jim Shirley's ranch the changes were many, for Jim had an artist's eye. And the energy other settlers spent on the needs of wives and children Jim spent on making his little dwelling attractive. He had brought clover seed from Ohio, and had carefully sowed a fire guard around his sod shack. Year by year the clover business increased; fire guard grew to clover-lot, and clover-lot to little meadow. Then the little meadow expanded along Grass River to a small cattle range. Over the door of his four-roomed cottage he put the name "Cloverdale," as he had put it over his sod cabin years before. And the Cloverdale Ranch, like the Sunflower Ranch farther up the river, became a landmark on the trail.

Pryor Gaines, still the teacher-preacher of the Grass River settlement, had come to the Cloverdale Ranch on an errand, and he and Jim Shirley were chatting beside the well curb when Dr. Carey drove up.

"Hello, Carey. How did you scent chicken pie so far? And a plum pudding all brown and ready?" Shirley called hospitably.

"It's my business to find what produces sickness as well as to provide cures," Carey responded as he stepped from his buggy to tie his horses.

"Take him in the house, Pryor, while I stable his crowbaits," Jim said, patting one of the doctor's well groomed horses the while.

"I hope you will stay, too," Horace Carey said to Pryor Gaines. "I have some important news for Shirley, and you and he are fast friends."

"The bachelor twins of Grass River," Pryor Gaines declared. "Jim hasn't any lungs and I haven't any heart, so we manage to keep a half a household apiece, and added together make one fairly reputable citizen. I'll stay if Jim wishes me to, of course."

"The two most useful men in the community," Carey declared. "Jim has been father and mother, big brother, and hired girl for half the settlement, while you, you marry and train up and bury. No neighborhood is complete without a couple of well-meaning old bachelors."

"How about a bachelor M. D.?" Pryor Gaines asked. "I've not been able to get in my work on you yet."

"Purely a necessary evil, the M. D. business," Carey insisted. "Here's Jim now. We wait the chicken and plum pudding, Host Shirley."

Jim's skill as a cook had not decreased since the day when he prepared Asher Aydelot's wedding supper, and the three men who sat together at that day's meal took large enjoyment in this quiet hour together.

"I have a letter for you, Shirley," the doctor said at last. "It was sent to me some months ago with the request that I give it to you when I had word to do so. I have had word. Here it is."

"I think I'll be going now." Pryor Gaines rose with the words.

"Don't go," Jim insisted. "I want you here."

So Gaines sat down. Shirley, who was quick in intuitive power, knew instinctively what awaited him. He opened the letter and read it while the two friends busied themselves with a consideration of Jim's bookcase, reading-table, and toolchest combined, all made out of one goods box with sundry trimmings.

Jim said nothing when he had finished, grateful that no painful silence on the part of the other two men forced him to words until he was ready to speak.

"Listen to me," he said at length. "I need your help now. When I came West life didn't seem worth living at first, but I had it on my hands and couldn't throw it away. I tried to take an interest in Asher Aydelot's home. But it is a second-rate kind of pleasure to sit by your own lonely fireside and enjoy the thought of the comfort another man has in his home with the wife of his choice."

A shadow fell on Dr. Carey's face as he sat looking through the open window at the stretch of green clover down the valley.

"I was about ready to call time on myself one winter here when Carey brought me a letter. It was from Alice Leigh, my brother Tank's wife. Tank and I were related—by marriage. We had the same father, but not the same mother. My mother died the day I was born. Nobody else is so helpless as a man with a one-day-old baby. My father was fairly forced into a second marriage by my step-mother, Betsy Tank. She was the housekeeper at the tavern after my mother's death. Her god was property and Tank is just like her. She married the old Shirley House. It looked big to her. Oh, well! I needn't repeat a common family history. I never had a mother, nor a wife, nor a sister, nor a brother. Even my father was early prejudiced in Tank's interest against mine, always. The one happy memory of my boyhood years was the loving interest of Asher Aydelot's mother, who made the old Aydelot farmhouse on the National road a welcome spot to me. For the Lord made me with a foolish longing for a home and all of these things—father, mother, sister, and brother."

"So you have been father and mother, brother and sister to this whole settlement," Pryor Gaines said.

"Which may be vastly satisfying to these relatives, but does not always fill the lack in one's own life," Horace Carey added, as a man who might know whereof he spoke.

"I won't bore you with details," Jim began again. "The letter I had from Alice Leigh, Tank's wife, a dozen or more years ago, asked me if I would take the guardianship of her children if they should need a guardian. I knew they would need one, if she were—taken from earth, as she had reason to fear then that she might be soon. I began to live with a new motive—a sense that I was needed, a purpose to be ready to help her children—the one service I could give to her. There's a long, cruel story back of her marriage to Tank—a story of deception, coercion, love of money, and all the elements of common cussedness—too common to make a good story. And, as generally happens, when Tank married the girl who didn't want him he treated her as he's always treated everybody else."

Jim clinched his fists hard and shut his teeth with a grip as he sat silent for a moment. Then drawing a deep breath, as if he were lifting a weight from his life, he said calmly:

"Mrs. Shirley died some time ago. Only one child survived her—a little girl six years old. The letter says—"The letter fluttered in Jim's trembling hands. "It says, 'My little Leigh is just six. She has been taught to love her uncle Jim.... Through the help of a friend here'—she doesn't give the name—'I have made you her guardian. I want her to go to your home. Her father will not take any responsibility, nor try to keep her. I know you will not fail me.'"

Jim folded the letter abruptly. "It is a dead woman's last wish. How can I make a home for a little girl? What shall I do?"

He looked at the two men for answer. The doctor lifted his hand to Pryor Gaines, but the preacher waited awhile before replying. Then he said thoughtfully:

"It is easy for us two to vote a duty on you, Shirley. I answer only because you ask, not because I would advise. From my angle of vision, this looks like your call to service. Your lonely fireside is waiting for a little child's presence—the child already taught to love you. I would say send for her at once."

"But how can I send?" Jim questioned. "How can I do a parent's part by her? I can help a neighbor in need. I can't bring up his children. I'm not fit for that kind of work. I've hung on here for more than a dozen years to be ready to help when the time came, and now the thing seems impossible."

"'As thy day, so shall thy strength be.' If you have prepared yourself to do anything, you can do it," Pryor Gaines assured him.

"Well, how can I send?" Jim asked again. "There's nobody there to bring her, and nobody here to go after her. It's an awfully long way from here to Ohio. A little six-year-old girl can't come alone. I couldn't go back myself. I may be a coward, but the Almighty made me as I am. I can't go back to Cloverdale and see only a grave—I can stay here and remember, and maybe do a kind of a man's part, but I can't go back." He bowed his head and sat very still.

"You are right, Shirley," Pryor Gaines spoke softly still. "Unless you were close to the life in its last days, don't hang any graves like dead weights of ineffectual sorrow about your neck. Look back to the best memories. Look up to the eternal joy no grave can withhold."

There was a sympathetic chord in Pryor Gaines' voice that spoke home to the heart, and so long as he lived in the Grass River valley, he gave the last service for everyone who left it for the larger life beyond it.

"I will go for you, Shirley," Horace Carey said. "You forget who brought you this letter. That it was sent to me for you, and that the time to give it to you was left until I was notified. This friend of your brother's wife is a friend of mine. Let me go."

"Horace Carey, since the night your Virginia regiment fed us poor starving fellows in the old war times, you've been true blue."

"Well, I wore the gray that night, and I'd probably do it again. I can't tell. It was worth wearing, if only for men to find out how much bigger manhood and brotherhood are than any issue of war to be satisfied only by shedding of innocent blood," Horace Carey replied, glad to lift the burden of thought from Shirley's mind.

"Could a sectional war ever have begun out here on these broad prairies, where men need each other so?" Pryor Gaines asked, following the doctor's lead.

"Something remarkably like it did make a stir out here once. Like it, only worse," Horace Carey answered with a smile. "But the little girl, what's her name? Leigh? We'll have her here for you. Your service is only beginning, but think of the comfort of such a service. I envy you, Jim."

"A little child shall lead them," Pryor Gaines added reverently.

Then they fell to talking of the coming of little Leigh Shirley. The hours of the day slipped by. The breeze came pouring over the prairie from the far southwest where the purple notches stood sentinel. The warm afternoon sunlight streamed in at the door. The while these childless men planned together for the welfare of one motherless, and worse than fatherless, little girl away in the Clover Creek Valley in Ohio, waiting for a home and guardianship and love under far Kansas skies.



CHAPTER X

THE COMING OF LOVE

I love the world with all its brave endeavor, I love its winds and floods, its suns and sands, But, oh, I love most deeply and forever The clinging touch of timid little hands.

The Ohio woods were gorgeous with the October coloring. The oak in regal purple stood outlined against the beech in cloth-of-gold, while green-flecked hickory and elm, and iridescent silver and scarlet ash, and flaming maple added to the kaleidoscope of splendor.

The old National pike road leading down to Cloverdale was still flanked by little rail-fenced fields that were bordered by deep woodlands. The old Aydelot farmhouse was as neat and white, with gardens and flower beds as well kept, as if only a day had passed since the master and mistress thereof had gone out to their last earthly home in the Cloverdale graveyard.

Fifteen years had seen the frontier pushed westward with magic swiftness. The Grass River Valley, once a wide reach of emptiness and solitude, where only one homestead stood a lone bulwark against the forces of the wilderness, now, after a decade and a half, beheld its prairie dotted with freeholds, where the foundations of homes were laid.

Fifteen years marked little appreciable change in the heritage given up by Asher Aydelot out of his love for a girl and his dream of a larger opportunity in the new West. For fifteen springtimes the old-fashioned sweet pinks had blossomed on the two mounds where his last service had been given to his native estate. Hardly a tree had been cut in the Aydelot woods. The marshes in the lower ground had not been drained. The only change in the landscape was the high grade of the railroad that cut a triangle from the northwest corner of the farm in its haste to reach Cloverdale and be done with it. The census of 1880, however, showed an increase in ten years of seventy-five citizens in Clover County, and the community felt satisfied with itself.

The afternoon train on the Cloverdale branch was late getting into town, but the station parasites were rewarded for their patience by the sight of a stranger following the usual two or three passengers who alighted. Strangers were not so common in Cloverdale that anyone's face would be forgotten under ten years of time.

"That's that same feller that come here ten year or mebby twelve year ago. I'd know him in Guinea," one of the oldest station parasites declared.

"That's him, sure as shootin'," his comrade-in-laziness agreed. "A doctor, don't you ricolleck? Name's Corrie, no, Craney, no, that's not it neither—A-ah!" trying hard to think a little.

"Carey. Don't you remember?" the first speaker broke in, "Doc Carey. They say he doctored Miss Jane in Philadelphia, an' got in good with her, more'n a dozen years ago."

"Well," drawled the second watcher of affairs, "if he thinks he can get anything out'n o' her by hangin' round Cloverdale, he's barkin' up the wrong saplin'. Miss Jane, she's close, an' too set in her ways now. She must be nigh forty."

"That's right. But, I'll bet he's goin' there now. Let's see."

The two moved to the end of the station, from which strategic point both the main street, the National pike road, of course, and the new street running "cat-i-cornered" from the station to the creek bridge could be commanded.

"Darned fool! is what he is! hikin' straight as a plumbline fur the crick. If he was worth it, I'd foller him."

"Oh, the ornery pup will be back all right. Lazy fellers waitin' to marry rich old maids ain't worth follerin'. Darn 'em! Slick skeezicks, tryin' to git rich jes' doin' nothin'."

So the two citizens agreed while they consigned a perfect stranger to a mild purgatory. His brisk wholesomeness offended them, and the narrowness of their own daily lives bred prejudice as the marshes breed mosquitoes.

Dr. Carey walked away with springing step. He was glad to be at his journey's end; glad to be off the slow little train, and glad to see again the October woods of the Alleghany foothills. To the eastern-bred man, nothing in the grandeur of the prairie landscape can quite meet the craving for the autumn beauty of the eastern forests. The slanting rays of the late afternoon sun fell athwart the radiant foliage of the woods as Dr. Carey's way led him between the two lines of flaming glory. When he had cleared the creek valley, his pace slackened. Something of the old boyhood joy of living, something of the sorrowful-sweet memory, the tender grace of a day that is dead, but will never be forgotten, came with the pensive autumn mood of Nature to make the day sweet to the pensive mind.

Jane Aydelot sat on the veranda of the Aydelot home, looking eagerly toward Cloverdale, when she discovered Dr. Carey coming leisurely up the road. She was nearly forty years old, as the railroad station loafers had declared, but there was nothing about her to indicate the "old maid, set in her ways." She might have passed for Asher's sister, for she had a certain erect bearing and strong resemblance of feature. All single women were called old maids at twenty-five in those days. Else this fair-faced woman, with clear gray eyes and pink cheeks, and scarce a hint of white in her abundant brown hair, would not have been considered in the then ridiculed class. There was a mixture of resoluteness and of timidity in the expression of her face betokening a character at once determined of will but shrinking in action. And withal, she was daintily neat and well kept, like her neat and well-kept farm and home.

As Dr. Carey passed up the flower-bordered walk, she arose to greet him. If there was a look of glad expectancy in her eyes, the doctor did not notice it, for the whole setting of the scene was peacefully lovely, and the fresh-cheeked, white-handed woman was a joy to see. Some quick remembrance of the brown-handed claimholders' wives crossed his mind at that instant, and like a cruel stab to his memory came unbidden the picture of Virginia Thaine in her dainty girlishness in the old mansion house of the years now dead. Was he to blame that the contrast between Asher Aydelot's wife, now of Kansas, and Jane Aydelot of Ohio should throw the favor toward the latter, that he should forget for the moment what the women of the frontier must sacrifice in the winning of the wilderness?

"I am glad to see you again, Doctor," Jane Aydelot said in cordial greeting.

"This is a very great pleasure to me, I assure you, Miss Aydelot," Horace Carey replied, grasping her hand.

Inside the house everything was as well appointed as the outside suggested. As the doctor was making himself more presentable after his long journey, he realized that the pretty, old-fashioned bedroom had evidently been a boy's room once, Asher Aydelot's room. And with a woman's loving sentiment, neither Asher's mother nor the present owner had changed it at all. The petals of a pink rose of the wallpaper by the old-styled dresser were written over in a boyish hand and the doctor read the names of "Jim and Alice," and "Asher and Nell."

"Old sweethearts of 'the Kerry Dancing' days," he thought to himself.

From the open window he looked out upon the magnificence of the autumn forests and saw the white pike road leading down to Clover Creek and the church spires and courthouse tower above the trees.

"The heir to all this comfort and beauty gave it up because he didn't want to be a tavern-keeper here, and because he did want a girl—Virginia!" Horace Carey said the name softly. "I know what her jessamine-draped window looked out upon. I hardly realized when I was here before what Asher's early home had been. Yet those two for love of each other are building their lives into the life of their chosen State. It is the tiller of the soil who must make the West. But how many times in the lonely days in that little sod cabin must they have remembered their childhood homes! How many times when the hot fall winds swept across the dead brown prairie have their memories turned to the beauty of the October days here in the East! Oh, well, the heroes weren't all killed at Lexington and Bunker Hill, nor at Bull Run and Gettysburg. Some of them got away, and with heroic wives went out to conquer the plains from the harsh rule of Nature there."

When the doctor went downstairs again, a little girl met him, saying, "Miss Jane says you may sit in the parlor, or out on the meranda, till supper is ready."

"How pleasant! Won't you come and sit with me?" Doctor Carey replied.

"I must put the—the lap-robes on the tables to everybody's plate, and the knives and forks and poons. Nen I'll come," she answered.

Carey sat on the veranda enjoying the minutes and waiting for the little girl.

"What is your name?" he asked when she appeared, and climbed into Miss Jane's vacant chair.

"Leigh Shirley. What's yours?"

"Horace Carey."

The doctor could not keep from smiling as he looked at her. She was so little and pretty, with yellow hair, big blue eyes, china-doll cheeks, and with all the repose of manner that only childhood and innocence can bestow.

"I think I like you, Horace," Leigh said frankly, after carefully looking Carey over.

"Then, we'll be friends," he declared.

"Not for so mery long." Leigh could not master the V of the alphabet yet. "'Cause I'm going away pretty soon, Miss Jane say. You know my mamma's dead." The little face was very grave now. "And my Uncle Jim out in Kansas wants me. I'm going to him."

Even in her innocence, Doctor Carey noted the very definite tone and clear trend of the young mind.

"Miss Jane loves me and I love her," Leigh explained further. "Don't you love Miss Jane, Horace?"

"Certainly," Carey said, with some hesitancy.

"I'll tell her so. She will love you, too. She is mery sweet," Leigh assured him. "Where are you going to?"

"I'm going back to Kansas soon."

"Wim me?"

"I should like to. Let's go together."

Leigh slid quickly from the chair and ran inside, where Doctor Carey heard her clear childish voice saying, "He is going to Kansas, too, Miss Jane. He says he loves you. His name is Horace, and he's mery nice. He's not mery pretty, though, but you love him, too, don't you, Miss Jane?"

Evidently the child was close to Miss Jane, for the doctor heard something like a kiss and low words that seemed to send her away on some errand. Presently he caught sight of a sunny head and two big blue eyes and a little hand beckoning to him, as Leigh peeped around the corner of the house.

"Miss Jane says I mustn't talk too much and mustn't call you Horace, but just Doctor Carey. Won't you come with me to get flowers for supper?"

The two strolled together into the old flower garden where verbenas and phlox and late asters and early chrysanthemums and a few monthly roses under Miss Jane's careful covering had weathered the first frosts. Leigh knew each plant and shrub, and gave out information freely.

"Would you rather stay with Miss Jane?"

Doctor Carey knew he should not ask the question, but it came anyhow.

"Oh, no, I want to go to my Uncle Jim." Leigh settled the matter once for all.

* * * * *

That night Leigh fell asleep early, for Miss Jane was methodical with children. Then she and Doctor Carey sat until late by the open wood fire and talked of many things, but first of Leigh and her future.

"You will miss her, I'm sure," the doctor said.

"More than anyone will know," Miss Jane replied. "But I could not be happy without fulfilling my promise. I wrote you to come soon because each day makes the giving up a little harder for me. But I must know the truth about this Uncle Jim. I cannot send Leigh out of my house to be neglected and unloved. She demands love above all things."

The pink color deepened in Miss Jane's fair cheek as she recalled what Leigh had said to Doctor Carey about loving her. The doctor remembered also, and knew why she blushed. Yet blushes, he thought, were becoming to her.

"I'll tell you all I know of Mr. Shirley. We have been friends for many years," he said.

Then as truthfully as possible he told her of the life and mind of the lonely loving plainsman. When he had finished, Miss Jane sat awhile in silent thought.

"It is right that you should know something of conditions here, Doctor," she said at last. "The older Shirleys are dead. Tank's life hastened the end for them, the Cloverdale gossips say. And as I have owned the Shirley House for several years, I came to know them well, and I do not think the gossips were far out of the way."

"What of Tank's life?" Doctor Carey asked. "I have some personal reasons for asking."

Miss Jane looked up quickly. She was a pretty woman, and a keenly intelligent one as well. To Horace Carey, she seemed most charming at that moment.

"Let me tell you of Alice first," she said. "You know, of course, that she loved Jim. They were just suited to each other. But her mother and Tank's mother planned otherwise. Alice was submissive. Tank was greedy. He wanted the old Leigh farm. And envious, for he seemed to hate Jim always. It grew to be the passion of his life to want to take whatever Jim had. His mother hated Jim before he was born. It was his pre-natal heritage, combined with a selfish nature. There was misrepresentation and deception enough to make a plot for a novel; a misunderstanding and brief estrangement, separating Jim and Alice forever—all managed by Tank and his mother, for the farm first, and the downfall of Jim second. They took no account of Alice, who must be the greatest loser. And after they were married, both mothers-in-law were disappointed, for the Leigh farm was heavily incumbered and sold by the sheriff the same fall, and the Shirley House fell into Uncle Francis Aydelot's hands in about the same way. Love of property can be the root of much misery." Miss Jane paused, for the story brought bitterness to her kindly soul.

"It is ended now," Horace Carey said gently. "It is well that it is, I am sure."

"Yes, Alice rests now beside her two little ones who went before her. She had no sorrow in going, except for Leigh. And"—

"And you lifted that, I know." Doctor Carey finished the sentence.

"I tried to," Miss Jane said, struggling between timidity and truthfulness. "I made her last hours peaceful, for she knew Leigh would be cared for and safe. I saw to that. Tank Shirley is bound to a surrender of all legal claim to her. It was left to Jim to take her, if he chose. If not, she belongs to me. She is a strange child, wise beyond her years, with a sort of power already for not telling all she knows. You can rely on her in almost anything. She will make a strong woman some day."

Doctor Carey read the loving sacrifice back of the words, and his heart warmed toward this sweet-spirited, childless woman.

"Jim wants her, else I could not have come," he said gently, "but you can come to Grass River to see her sometimes."

"Oh, no, it is so far," Jane Aydelot said, and Carey realized in how small an orbit her life revolved.

"But she does good in it. What does distance count, against that?" he thought to himself. Aloud he said:

"Tell me of Tank, Miss Aydelot."

"He has run his course here, but he is shrewd enough to escape the law. His parents mortgaged the Shirley House to get money to keep his doings quiet. My Uncle Francis foreclosed on them at last. But by Jim's abrupt leaving, Cloverdale blamed him for a long time for the family misfortunes. Tank broke every moral law; he invested his money wildly in his greed to make more money, until finally the bank failure came. That is a long story, and it was a dead loss. But the cashier's suicide stopped investigation. All blame was laid on him. And he, being dead, made no complaint and incriminated nobody."

"Where is Tank now?" Carey asked.

He did not know why the image of Thomas Smith of Wilmington, Delaware, should come unbidden to his mind just now, nor why he should feel that the answer to his question held only a portion of what could have been told him then.

"Nobody knows exactly where," Jane Aydelot replied. "He left his wife penniless. She lived here with me and died here. Tank hasn't been seen in Cloverdale for a long time. It is strange how family ties get warped sometimes. And oftenest over property."

Doctor Carey thought of Asher, and was silent. But Jane Aydelot divined his thought.

"I am thinking of our own family," she said, looking into the heart of the wood fire. "I have my cousin Asher's heritage, which by law now neither he nor any child of his can receive from me."

"Miss Aydelot, he doesn't want it. And there is no prejudice in him against you at all. Moreover, if his dreams come true, little Thaine Aydelot will never need it." There was a sternness in Carey's voice that pained his hostess.

"But, Doctor Carey!" she began hesitatingly. Then, as if to change the trend of thought, she added simply, "I try to use it well."

Horace Carey was by nature and experience a keen reader of human minds. As Jane Aydelot studied the burning coals in the grate, he studied her face, and what he read there gave him both pleasure and pain. Between him and that face came the image of Virginia Aydelot, who should be there instead; of the brown-handed farmer's wife, who had given up so much for the West. And yet, that face, framed in its dark hair, lighted by luminous dark eyes, seemed to blot out the dainty pink and white Jane Aydelot. A strength of will, a view of life at wide angles of vision, a resourcefulness and power of sacrifice seemed to deify the plainly clad prairie home-maker, winning, not inheriting, her possessions. Had Jane been anywhere else save in the home that Virginia might have had, her future might have had another story. But why forecast the might-have-been?

"You do use your property well, I am sure," Doctor Carey said, replying to the last words spoken between them, "and yet, you would give it up?" He knew her answer, or he would not have asked the question.

For reply, she rose and went to the little writing desk where the Aydelot papers were kept. Taking therefrom two documents, she placed them in Carey's hands.

"Read these," she said, "then promise me that in the hour when Leigh needs my help you will let me help her."

They were the will of Francis Aydelot and her own will. How much of sacrifice lay in that act of hers, only Horace Carey could understand.



"I promise gladly, Miss Aydelot. I see why you are willing to give up little Leigh now," he said, looking up with eyes filled with sincerest admiration. "You are a wonderful woman. You have the same Aydelot heritage of endurance and patience and the large view of duty that characterizes your cousin Asher. Your setting is different. I hope the time may come soon when Ohio and Kansas will not be so far apart as they are tonight."

He rose and took her hand in his.

If Doctor Carey's magnetism made men admire him, it was no less an attractive force with women. As he looked into Jane Aydelot's gray eyes, he saw a new light there. And swiftly its meaning translated itself to him. He dropped her hand and turned away, and when their eyes met again, the light was gone.

* * * * *

It was still Indian-Summer weather on the prairie when Doctor Carey with little Leigh Shirley reached Careyville. He had a feeling that Jim would prefer meeting Leigh in his own home, so no word had been sent forward as to the time of the coming of the two.

All through the journey, the doctor had wondered how Jane Aydelot could have given Leigh up at all. She was such a happy prattler, such an honest, straightforward little body, such an innocent child, and, withal, so loving that Carey lost his own heart before the first half day was ended. In her little gray wool gown and her gray cap with its scarlet quill above her golden hair, she was as dainty and pretty as a picture of childhood could be.

Down on the Grass River trail, the two came upon Thaine Aydelot trudging in from some errand to a distant neighbor, and the doctor hailed him at once.

"Come, ride with us. We'll take you home," he said, turning the wheel for Thaine's convenience. "This is Leigh Shirley, who is coming to live with her uncle, Jim. You'll like to go to the Cloverdale Ranch more than ever now."

Thaine was only a little country boy, unused to conventionalities, so he took Leigh on her face value at once. And Leigh, honest as she was innocent, returned the compliment. At the Sunflower Ranch, Carey drew rein to let Thaine leave them. Leigh, putting both arms about the little boy's neck, kissed him good-by, saying: "I have known you always because you are the Thaine"—she caught her breath, and added: "You must come to my uncle Jim's and see me."

"I will, I will," Thaine assured her.

Doctor Carey looked back to wave good-by just in time to see Virginia Aydelot coming toward Thaine, who stood watching the buggy. Instantly the pretty face of Jane Aydelot came to his mind, her face as she had looked on the night when they sat by the wood fire in the Aydelot farmhouse. Against that picture stood the reality of Virginia with her richer coloring.

"Nor storm nor stress can rob her of her beauty," he thought. "However sweet and self-sacrificing Jane Aydelot may be, the Plains would have broken her long ago."

He turned about at once and came back to where Thaine stood beside his mother.

"This is Jim Shirley's little girl, Mrs. Aydelot," he said, gently patting Leigh's shoulder.

"That's my wife," little Thaine said gravely. "We will go and live at the purple notches when I come home from the war."

Virginia's heart warmed toward the motherless little one, and Leigh understood her at once. Nor once in all the years that followed did the two fail each other.

The Cloverdale homestead never had known such a gala fixing as Jim Shirley had kept there for nearly a week awaiting the doctor's return. Truly, love is genius in itself, and only genius could have put so many quaint and attractive touches to such common surroundings as now embellished the little four-roomed house in the bend of Grass River.

Doctor Carey tied his horses to the post beside the trail, and, lifting Leigh from the buggy, he said:

"Uncle Jim is up there waiting for you, and oh, so glad, so glad to have you come. Go and meet him, Leigh."

Leigh smoothed her little gray wool frock down with her dainty little hands. Then, pushing back the gray cap with its scarlet quill from her forehead where the golden hair fell in soft rings, she passed up the grassy way to meet Jim Shirley. He could never have looked bigger and handsomer than he did at that moment. In his eyes all the heart hunger of years seemed centered as he watched the little six-year-old child coming towards him.

Just before reaching the doorway, she paused, and with that clear penetration only a little child possesses, she looked up into the strong man's face.

"Uncle Jim. My Uncle Jim," she cried. "I can love you always."

Jim gathered her close in his arms, and she clung about his neck, softly patting his brown cheek as they passed into the house. While all unseen, the light of love went in with them, a light that should never fade from the hearthstone, driving loneliness and sorrow from it, far away.

Leigh Shirley's coming marked an epoch in the annals of the Grass River settlement, for her uncle often declared that he could remember only two events in the West before that time: the coming of Mrs. Aydelot and the grasshopper raid. With Leigh in his home, he almost forgot that he had ever been sad-hearted. This loving little child was such a constant source of interest and surprise. She was so innocently plain-spoken and self-dependent sometimes, and such a strange little dreamer of dreams at other times. She would drive a shrewd bargain for whatever she wanted—some more of Uncle Jim's good cookies, or a ride all alone on the biggest pony, or a two-days' visit at the Aydelot ranch, scrupulously rendering back value received of her own wares—kisses, or washing all the supper dishes for her tired uncle, or staying away from her play to watch that the chickens did not scratch in the garden.

But there were times when she would go alone to the bend in the river and people her world with folk of her own creation and live with them and for them. Chief among them all was a certain Prince Quippi, who would come from China some day to marry her and take her away to a house made of purple velvet and adorned with gold knobs. She had to send a letter to Prince Quippi every day or he would think she did not love him. Of course, she loved Uncle Jim best of what she called folks—but Prince Quippi was big and brown and handsome; and, strangely enough, the only kind of letter he could read from her was in a flower.

So Leigh dropped a flower on the waters of Grass River every day to float away to China telling her love to Prince Quippi. And oftenest it was the tawny sunflower, because it was big and strong and could tell a big love story. Thus she dreamed her happy dreams until one day Thaine Aydelot, listening to her, said:

"Why my papa sent my mamma a sunflower once, and made her love him very much. I'll be your real Prince Quippi—not a—a paper-doll, thinkish one, and come after you."

"Clear from China?" Leigh queried.

"Yes, when I'm a big soldier like my papa, and we'll go off to the purple notches and live."

"You don't look like my Prince Quippi," Leigh insisted.

"But I can grow to look like any thing I want to—like a big elephant or a hippopopamus or a—angel, or any thing," Thaine assured her.

"Well, escuse me from any of the free—a angel or a elephant. I don't know what the poppy one is, but it's too poppy," Leigh said decisively.

There were others in the Grass River settlement who would have envied the mythical Prince Quippi also. For even at six years of age Leigh had the same quality that marked her uncle. People must love her if they cared for her at all; and they couldn't help caring for her. She fitted into the life of the prairie, too, as naturally as Thaine Aydelot did, who was born to it. The baby gold was soon lost from her hair for the brown-gold like the shimmering sunlight on the brown prairie. The baby blue eyes deepened to the deep violet-blue of overhead skies in June. The pretty pink and white complexion, however, did not grow brown under the kisses of the prairie winds. The delicate china-doll tinting went with other baby features, but, save for the few little brown freckles in midsummer, Leigh Shirley kept year after year the clear complexion with the peach blossom pink on her cheeks that only rarely the young girls of the dry western plains possessed in those days of shadeless homes.

Thaine Aydelot looked like a gypsy beside her, he was so brown, and his big dark eyes and heavy mane of dark hair, and ruddy cheeks made the contrast striking. From the first day of their meeting, the children were playmates and companions as often as opportunity offered. They sat together in the Grass River Sabbath School; they exchanged days on days of visits, and the first sorrow of their hitherto unclouded lives came when they found that Leigh was too far away to attend the week-day school.

Settlers were filling up the valley rapidly, but they all wanted ranches, and ranches do not make close neighbors. Land-lust sometimes overshadows the divine rights of children. And the lower part of the settlement was not yet equal to the support of a school of its own.

The two families still kept the custom of spending their Sabbaths together. And one Sabbath Thaine showed Leigh the books and slate and sponge and pencils he was to take to school the next week. Leigh, who had been pleased with all of them, turned to her guardian, saying gravely:

"Uncle Jim, can I go to school wif Thaine?"

"You must meet that question every day now, Jim," Asher said. "Why not answer it and be rid of it?"

"How can I answer it?" Jim queried.

"Virgie, help us with this educational problem of the State," Asher turned to his wife. "Women are especially resourceful in these things, Jim. I hope Kansas will fully recognize the fact some day."

"Who is Kansas?" Virginia asked with a smile.

"Oh, all of us men who depend so much on some woman's brain every day of our lives," Jim assured her. "Tell me, what to do for my little girl. Mrs. Bennington and some of the other neighbors say I should send her East for her sake—"

"And for both of your sakes, Jim, I say, no," Virginia broke in. "The way must open for all of our children here. It always has for everything else, you know."

"Thaine can walk the two miles. He's made of iron, anyhow. But Leigh can't make the five miles 'up stream,'" Asher declared.

"Jim," Virginia Aydelot said gravely, "Pryor Gaines will be our teacher for many years, we hope, but he is hardly equal to tilling his ground now. John Jacobs holds the mortgage on his claim still that he put there after the grasshopper loan, which he could not pay. Life is an uphill pull for him, and he bears his burdens so cheerfully. I believe Mr. Jacobs would take the claim and pay him the equity. We all know how unlike a Shylock John Jacobs really is, even if he is getting rich fast. Now, Jim, why not take Pryor into your home and let him drive up to the school with Leigh and the other little folks down your way. We can pay him better wages and he will have a real home, not a lonely cabin by himself, and you will be fortunate in having such a man in your household."

"Just the thing, Virginia," Jim declared. "Why haven't we done it before? He always says I'm his heart and he's my lungs. We might stack up to a one-man power. Old bachelors should be segregated, anyhow, out here. The West needs more families. And think what Pryor Gaines' cultivated mind will mean to a little artist soul like Leigh Shirley's. Glorious!"

"Well, Virgie, if you will also segregate John Jacobs and Dr. Carey, we'll settle the bachelors once for all. A quartette of royal good fellows, too, State-makers who really make. They ought to be in the legislature, but Carey and Pryor are democrats and Jim and Jacobs are republican. They balance too well for the interests of any party. Anyhow, if Pryor agrees, the school problem is fixed," Asher asserted.

Pryor Gaines did agree, to the welfare of many children, who remember him still with that deep-seated affection of student for teacher unlike any other form of human devotion. But especially did this cultured man put into Leigh Shirley's life a refining artistic power that stood her well in the years to come.



CHAPTER XI

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS

They saw not the shadow that walked beside, They heard not the feet with silence shod. —Whittier.

With successive seasons of good crops, combining with the time of the crest between two eras of financial depression, and with Eastern capital easy to reach, a mania of speculation known as "the boom" burst forth; a mania that swept men's minds as prairie fires sweep along the wide lengths of the plains, changing both the face of the land and the fortunes of the land owners, and marking an epoch in the story of the West. New counties were organized out of the still unoccupied frontier. Thousands of citizens poured into these counties. Scores of towns were chartered and hundreds of miles of railroad were constructed. Colleges and universities sprouted up from the virgin soil of the prairie. Loans on real estate were easy to secure. Land, especially in town lots, took on an enormously inflated valuation and the rapid investment in real estate and the rapid transference from buyer to seller was bewildering, while voting bonds for extensive and extravagant improvements in cities-to-be was not the least phase of this brief mania of the fortune-making, fortune-breaking "boom."