The Price of the Prairie: A Story of Kansas

Down from the low bluffs there poured a broad surge of cavalry, in perfect order, riding like the wind, the swift, steady hoof-beats of their horses marking a rhythmic measure that trembled along the ground in musical vibration, while overhead – oh, the grandeur of God's gracious dawn fell never on a thing more beautiful – swept out by the free winds of heaven to its full length, and gleaming in the sunlight, Old Glory rose and fell in rippling waves of splendor.

On they came, the approaching force, in a mad rush to reach us. And we who had waited for the superb charge of Roman Nose and his savage warriors, as we wait for death, saw now this coming in of life, and the regiment of the unconquerable people.

We threw restraint to the winds and shouted and danced and hugged each other, while we laughed and cried in a very transport of joy.

It was Colonel Carpenter and his colored cavalry who had made a dash across the country rushing to our rescue. Beside the Colonel at their head, rode Donovan the scout, whom we had accounted as dead. It was his unerring eye that had guided this command, never varying from the straight line toward our danger-girt entrenchment on the Arickaree.

Before Carpenter's approaching cavalry the Indians fled for their lives, and they who a few hours hence would have been swinging bloody tomahawks above our heads were now scurrying to their hiding-places far away.

Never tenderer hands cared for the wounded, and never were bath and bandage and food and drink more welcome. Our command was shifted to a clean spot where no stench of putrid flesh could reach us. Rest and care, such as a camp on the Plains can offer, was ours luxuriously; and hardtack and coffee, food for the angels, we had that day, to our intense satisfaction. Life was ours once more, and hope, and home, and civilization. Oh, could it be true, we asked ourselves, so long had we stood face to face with Death.

The import of this struggle on the Arickaree was far greater than we dreamed of then. We had gone out to meet a few foemen. What we really had to battle with was the fighting strength of the northern Cheyenne and Sioux tribes. Long afterwards it came to us what this victory meant. The broad trail we had eagerly followed up the Arickaree fork of the Republican River had been made by bands on bands of Plains Indians mobilizing only a little to the westward, gathering for a deadly purpose. At the full of the moon the whole fighting force, two thousand strong, was to make a terrible raid, spreading out on either side of the Republican River, reaching southward as far as the Saline Valley and northward to the Platte, and pushing eastward till the older settlements turned them back. They were determined to leave nothing behind them but death and desolation. Their numbers and leadership, with the defenceless condition of the Plains settlers, give broad suggestion of what that raid would have done for Kansas. Our victory on the Arickaree broke up that combination of Indian forces, for all future time. It was for such an unknown purpose, and against such unguessed odds, that fifty of us led by the God of all battle lines, had gone out to fight. We had met and vanquished a foe two hundred times our number, aye, crippled its power for all future years. We were lifting the fetters from the frontier; we were planting the standards westward, westward. In the history of the Plains warfare this fight on the Arickaree, though not the last stroke, was one of the decisive struggles in breaking the savage sovereignty, a sovereignty whose wilderness demesne to-day is a land of fruit and meadow and waving grain, of peaceful homes and wealth and honor.

It was impossible for our wounded comrades to begin the journey to Fort Wallace on that day. When evening came, the camp settled down to quiet and security: the horses fed at their rope tethers, the fires smouldered away to gray ashes, the sun swung down behind the horizon bar, the gold and scarlet of evening changed to deeper hues and the long, purple twilight was on the silent Colorado Plains. Over by the Arickaree the cavalry men lounged lazily in groups. As the shades of evening gathered, the soldiers began to sing. Softly at first, but richer, fuller, sweeter their voices rose and fell with that cadence and melody only the negro voice can compass. And their song, pulsing out across the undulating valley wrapped in the twilight peace, made a harmony so wonderfully tender that we who had dared danger for days unflinchingly now turned our faces to the shadows to hide our tears.

We are tenting to-night on the old camp ground.Give us a song to cheerOur weary hearts, a song of homeAnd friends we love so dear.Many are the hearts that are weary to-night,Wishing for this war to cease,Many are the hearts looking for the rightTo see the dawn of peace.

So the cavalry men sang, and we listened to their singing with hearts stirred to their depths. And then with prayers of thankfulness for our deliverance, we went to sleep. And over on the little island, under the shallow sands, the men who had fallen beside us lay with patient, folded hands waiting beside the Arickaree waters till the last reveille shall sound for them and they enter the kingdom of Eternal Peace.

CHAPTER XIX

A MAN'S BUSINESS

Mankind was my business; the common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business; the dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business.

– DICKENS.

Every little community has its customs peculiar to itself. With the people of Springvale the general visiting-time was on Sunday between the afternoon Sabbath-school and the evening service. The dishes that were prepared on Saturday for the next day's supper excelled the warm Sunday dinner.

We come to know the heart and soul of the folks that fill up a little town, and when we get into the larger city we miss them oftener than we have the courage to say. Unselfishness and integrity and stalwart principles of right are not confined to the higher circles of society. A man may be hungry for friends on the crest of his popularity; he may long for the strong right hand of Christian fellowship in the centre of a brotherhood of churchmen. Cam Gentry and his good wife are among those whom in all my busy years of wide acquaintance with people of all ranks I account as genuine stuff. They were only common clay, generous, unselfish, clean of thought and act. Uneducated, with no high ideals, they gauged their way by the golden rule, and made the most of their time. A journey to Topeka was their "trip abroad"; beyond the newspapers they read little except the Bible; and they built their faith on the Presbyterian Church and the Republican party. But the cosy lighted tavern on winter nights, and its clean, cool halls and resting-places in the summer heat, are still a green spot in the memory of many a traveller. Transients and regulars at the Cambridge House delighted in this Sabbath evening spread.

"Land knows," Dollie Gentry used to declare, "if ever a body feels lonesome it's on Sunday afternoon between Sunday-school and evenin' service. Why, the blues can get you then, when they'd stan' no show ary other day er hour in the week. An' it stan's to reason a man, er woman, either, is livin' in a hotel because they ain't got no home ner nobody to make 'em feel glad to see 'em. If they're goin' to patronize the Cambridge House they're goin' to get the best that's comin' to 'em right then."

So the old dining-room was a joy at this time of the week, with all that a good cook can make attractive to the appetite.

Mary Gentry, sweet-tempered and credulous as in her childhood, grew up into a home-lover. We all wondered why John Anderson, who was studying medicine, should fancy Mary, plain good girl that she was. John had been a bashful boy and a hard student whom the girls failed to interest. But the home Mary made for him later, and her two sons that grew up in it, are justification of his choice of wife. The two boys are men now, one in Seattle, and one in New York City. Both in high places of trust and financial importance.

One October Sabbath afternoon, O'mie fell into step beside Marjie on the way from Sabbath-school. Since his terrible experience in the Hermit's Cave five years before, he had never been strong. We became so accustomed to his little hacking cough we did not notice it until there came a day to all of us when we looked back and wondered how we could have been so inattentive to the thing growing up before our eyes. O'mie was never anything but a good-hearted Irishman, and yet he had a keener insight into character and trend of events than any other boy or man I ever knew. I've always thought that if his life had been spared to mature manhood – but it wasn't.

"Marjie, I'm commissioned to invite you to the Cambridge House for lunch," O'mie said. "Mary wants to see you. She's got a lame arm, fell off a step ladder in the pantry. The papers on the top shelves had been on there fifteen minutes, and Aunt Dollie thought they'd better put up clean ones. That's the how. Dr. John Anderson's most sure to call professionally this evening, and Bill Mead's going to bring Bess over for tea, and there's still others on the outskirts, but you're specially wanted, as usual. Bud will be there, too. Says he wants to see all the Andersons once more before he leaves town, and he knows it's his last chance; for John's forever at the tavern, and Bill Mead is monopolizing Bess at home; and you know, Star-face, how Clayton divides himself around among the Whatelys and Grays over at Red Range and a girl he's got up at Lawrence."

"All this when I'm starving for one of Aunt Dollie's good lunches. Offer some other inducement, O'mie," Marjie replied laughingly.

"Oh, well, Tillhurst'll be there, and one or two of the new folks, all eligible."

"What makes you call me 'Star-face'? That's what Jean Pahusca used to call me." She shivered.

"Oh, it fits you; but if you object, I can make it, 'Moon-face,' or 'Sun-up.'"

"Or 'Skylight,' or 'Big Dipper'; so you can keep to the blue firmament. Where's Bud going?"

Out of the tail of his eye O'mie caught sight of Judson falling in behind them here and he answered carelessly:

"Oh, I don't know where Bud is going exactly. Kansas City or St. Louis, or somewhere else. You'll come of course?"

"Yes, of course," Marjie answered, just as Judson in his pompous little manner called to her:

"Marjory, I have invited myself up to your mother's for tea."

"Why, there's nobody at home, Mr. Judson," the girl said kindly; "I'm going down to Mary Gentry's, and mother went up to Judge Baronet's with Aunt Candace for lunch."

Nobody called my father's sister by any other name. To Marjie, who had played about her knee, Aunt Candace was a part of the day's life in Springvale. But the name of Baronet was a red rag to Judson's temper. He was growing more certain of his cause every day; but any allusion to our family was especially annoying, and this remark of Marjie's fired him to hasten to something definite in his case of courtship.

"When she's my wife," he had boasted to Tell Mapleson, "I'll put a stop to all this Baronet friendship. I won't even let her go there. Marjie's a fine girl, but a wife must understand and obey her lord and master. That's it; a wife must obey, or your home's ruined."

Nobody had ever accused Tell Mapleson's wife of ruining a home on that basis; for she had been one of the crushed-down, washed-out women who never have two ideas above their dish-pan. She had been dead some years, and Tell was alone. People said he was too selfish to marry again. Certainly matrimony was not much in his thoughts.

The talk at the tavern table that evening ran on merrily among the young people. Albeit, the Sabbath hour was not too frivolous, for we were pretty stanch in our Presbyterianism there. I think our love for Dr. Hemingway in itself would have kept the Sabbath sacred. He never found fault with our Sunday visiting. All days were holy to him, and his evening sermons taught us that frivolity, and idle gossip, and scandal are as unforgivable on week days as on the Sabbath Day. Somewhere in the wide courts of heaven there must be reserved an abode of inconceivable joy and peace for such men as he, men who preach the Word faithfully through the years, whose hand-clasp means fellowship, and in whose tongue is the law of kindness.

"Say, Clate, where's Bud going?" Somebody called across the table. Bud was beside Marjie, whose company was always at a premium in any gathering.

"Let him tell; it's his secret," Clayton answered. "I'll be glad when he's gone" – he was speaking across to Marjie now – "then I'll get some show, maybe."

"I'm going to hunt a wife," Bud sang out. "Can't find a thoul here who'll thtay with me long enough to get acquainted. I'm going out Wetht thomewhere."

"I'd stay with you a blamed sight longer if I wasn't acquainted with you than if I was," Bill Mead broke in. "It's because they do get acquainted that they don't stay, Bud; and anyhow, they can run faster out there than here, the girls can; they have to, to keep away from the Indians. And there's no tepee ring for the ponies to stumble over. Marjie, do you remember the time Jean Pahusca nearly got you? I remember it, for when I came to after the shock, I was standing square on my head with both feet in the air. All I could see was Bud dragging Jean's pony out of the muss. I thought he was upside down at first and the horses were walking like flies on the ceiling."

Marjie's memories of that moment were keen. So were O'mie's.

"Well, what ever did become of that Jean, anyhow? Anybody here seen him for five years?"

The company looked at one another. Bud's face was as innocent as a baby's. Lettie Conlow at the foot of the table encountered O'mie's eyes and her face flamed. Dr. John Anderson was explaining the happening to Tillhurst and some newcomers in Springvale to whom the story was interesting, and the whole table began to recall old times and old escapades of Jean's.

"Wasn't afraid of anything on earth," Bill Mead declared.

"Yeth he wath, brother," Bud broke in, while Bess Anderson blushed deeply at Bud's teasing name. Bill and Bess were far along the happy way of youth and love.

"Why, what did he fear?" Judson asked Dave Mead at the head of the table.

"Phil Baronet. He never would fight Phil. He didn't dare. He couldn't bear to be licked."

And then the conversation turned on me, and my virtues and shortcomings were reviewed in friendly gossip. Only Judson's face wore a sneer.

"I don't wonder this Jean was afraid of him," a recent-comer to the town declared.

"Oh, if he was afraid of this young man, this boy," Judson declared, "he would have feared something else; that's it, he'd been afraid of other things."

"He was," O'mie spoke up.

"Well, what was it, O'mie?" Dr. John queried.

"Ghosts," O'mie replied gravely. "Oh, I know," he declared, as the crowd laughed. "I can prove it to you and tell you all about it. I'll do it some day, but I'll need the schoolhouse and some lantern slides to make it effective. I may charge a small admission fee and give a benefit to defray Bud's expenses home from this trip."

"Would you really do that, O'mie?" Mary Gentry asked him.

But the query, "Where's Phil, now?" was going the rounds, and the answers were many. My doings had not been reported in the town, and gossip still was active concerning me.

"Up at Topeka," "Gone to St. Louis," "Back in Massachusetts." These were followed by Dave Mead's declaration:

"The best boy that ever went out of Springvale. Just his father over again. He'll make some place prouder than it would have been without him."

Nobody knew who started the story just then, but it grew rapidly from Tillhurst's side of the table that I had gone to Rockport, Massachusetts, to settle in my father's old home-town.

"Stands to reason a boy who can live in Kansas would go back to Massachusetts, doesn't it?" Dr. John declared scornfully.

"But Phil's to be married soon, to that stylish Miss Melrose. She's got the money, and Phil would become a fortune. Besides, she was perfectly infatuated with him."

"Well," somebody else asserted, "if he does marry her, he can bring her back here to live. My! but Judge Baronet's home will be a grand place to go to then. It was always good enough."

Amid all this clatter Marjie was as indifferent and self-possessed as if my name were a stranger's. Those who had always known her did not dream of what lay back of that sweet girl-face. She was the belle of Springvale, and she had too many admirers for any suspicion of the truth to find a place.

While the story ran on Bud turned to her and said in a low voice, "Marjie, I'm going to Phil. He needth me now."

Nobody except Bud noticed how white the girl was, as the company rising from the table swept her away from him.

That night Dr. Hemingway's prayer was fervent with love. The boys were always on his heart, and he called us all by name. He prayed for the young men of Springvale, who had grown up to the life here and on whom the cares of citizenship, and the town's good name were soon to rest; and for the young men who would not be with us again: for Tell Mapleson, that the snares of a great city like St. Louis might not entrap him; for James Conlow, whose lines had led him away from us; for David Mead, going soon to the far-away lands where the Sierras dip down the golden slope to the Pacific seas; for August Anderson, also about to go away from us, that life and health might be his; and last of all for Philip Baronet. A deeper hush fell upon the company bowed in prayer.

"For Philip Baronet, the strong, manly boy whom we all love, the brave-hearted hero who has gone out from among us, and as his father did before him for the homes of a nation, so now the son has gone to fight the battles of the prairie domain, and to build up a wall of safety before the homes and hearthstones of our frontier." And then he offered thanksgiving to a merciful Father that, "in the awful conflict which Philip, with a little handful of heroes, has helped to wage against the savage red man, a struggle in which so many lives have gone out, our Philip has been spared." His voice broke here, and he controlled it by an effort, as in calm, low tones he finished his simple prayer with the earnest petition, "Keep Thou these our boys; and though they may walk through the valley of the shadow of death, may they fear no evil, for Thou art with them. Amen."

It was the first intimation the town had had of what I was doing. Springvale was not without a regard for me who had loved it always, and then the thought of danger to a fellow citizen is not without its appeal. I have been told that Judge Baronet and Aunt Candace could not get down the aisle after service until after ten o'clock that night and that the tears of men as well as women fell fast as my father gave the words of the message sent to him by Governor Crawford on the evening before. Even Chris Mead, always a quiet, stern man, sat with head bowed on the railing of the pew before him during the recital. It was noted afterwards that Judson did not remain, but took Lettie Conlow home as soon as the doxology was ended. The next day my stock in Springvale was at a premium; for a genuine love, beside which fame and popularity are ashes and dust, was in the heart of that plain, good little Kansas town.

Bud called to say good-bye to Marjie, before he left home.

"Are you going out West to stay?" Marjie asked.

"I'm going to try it out there. Clate'th got all the law here a young man can get; he'th gobbled up Dave and Phil'th share of the thing. John will be the coming M. D. of the town, and Bill Mead already taketh to the bank like a duck to water. I'm going to try the Wetht. What word may I take to Phil for you?"

"There's nothing to say," Marjie answered.

To his words, "I hoped there might be," she only said gayly, "Good-bye, Bud. Be a good boy, and be sure not to forget Springvale, for we'll always love your memory."

And so he left her. He was a good boy, nor did he forget the town where his memory is green still in the hearts of all who knew him. His last thought was of Springvale, and he babbled of the Neosho, and fancied himself in the shallows down by the Deep Hole. He clung to me, as in his childhood, and begged me to carry him on my shoulders when waters of Death were rolling over him. I held his hand to the last, and when the silence fell, I stretched myself on the brown curly mesquite beside him and thanked God that He had let me know this boy. Ever more my life will be richer for the remembrance it holds of him.

Bud left Springvale in one of those dripping, chilly, wet days our Kansas Octobers sometimes mix in with their opal-hued hours of Indian summer. That evening Tell Mapleson dropped into Judson's store and O'mie was let off early.

The little Irishman ran up the street at once to the Whately home. Mrs. Whately had retired. Eight o'clock was bed time for middle-aged people in our town. Marjie sat alone by the fire. How many times that summer we had talked of the long winter evenings we should spend together by that fireplace in Marjie's cosy sitting-room. And now she was beside the hearth, and I was far away. I might have been forgiven without a word had I walked in that evening and found her, as O'mie did, alone with her sad thoughts. Marjie never tried to hide anything from O'mie. She knew he could see through any pretence of hers. She knew, too, that he would keep sacred anything he saw.

"Marjie, I'm lonesome to-night."

Marjie gave him a seat beside the fire.

"What makes you lonesome, O'mie?" she asked gravely.

"The wrongs av the world bear heavily upon me."

Marjory looked at him curiously to see if he was joking.

"What I need to do is to shrive myself, I guess, and then get up an inquisition, with myself as chief inquisitor."

Marjie, studying the pictures in the burning coals, said nothing. O'mie also sat silent for a time.

"Marjie," he said at length, "when you see things goin' all wrong end to, and you know what's behind 'em, drivin' 'em wrong, what's your rale Presbyterian duty then? Let 'em go? or tend to somethin' else besides your own business? Honest, now, what's what?"

"I don't know what you're up to, O'mie." She was looking dreamily into the grate, the firelight on her young face and thoughtful brown eyes making a picture tenderly sweet and fair. In her mind was the image of Judge Baronet as he looked the night before, when he lifted his head after Dr. Hemingway's prayer for his son. And then maybe a picture of the graceless son himself came unbidden, and his eyes were full of love as when they looked down into hers on the day Rachel Melrose came into Judge Baronet's office demanding his attention. "What's the matter, O'mie? Is Uncle Cam being imposed on? You'd never stand that, I know."

"No, little girl, Cambridge Gentry can still take care of Cam's interest and do a kind act to more folks off-hand better than any other man I know. Marjie, it's Phil Baronet."

Marjie gave a start, but she made no effort to hide her interest.

"Little girl, he's been wronged, and lied about, and misunderstood, by a crowd av us who have knowed him day in and day out since he was a little boy. Marjory Whately, did anybody iver catch him in a lie? Did he iver turn coward in a place where courage was needed? Did he iver do a cruelty to a helpless thing, or fight a smaller boy? Did he iver decaive? Honestly, now, was there iver anything in all the years we run together that wasn't square and clane and fearless and lovin'?"

Marjie sat with bowed head before the flickering fire. When O'mie spoke again his voice was husky.

"Little girl, when I was tied hand and foot, and left to die in that dark Hermit's Cave, it was Phil Baronet who brought in the sunlight and a face radiant with love. When Jean Pahusca, drunk as a fury, was after you out on the prairie with that cruel knife ready, the knife I've seen him kill many a helpless thing with when he was drunk, when this Jean was ridin' like a fiend after you, Phil turned to me that day and his white agonized face I'll never forget. Now, Marjie, it's to right his wrong, and the wrongs of some he loves that I'm studyin' about. The week Phil came home from the rally I took a vacation. Shall I tell you why?"

Marjie nodded.

"Well, Star-face, it was laid on me conscience heavy to pay a part av the debt I owe to the boy who saved me life. I ain't got eyes fur nothin', and I see the clouds gatherin' black about that boy's head. Back of 'em was jealousy, that was a girl; hate, that was a man whose cruel, ugly deeds Phil had knocked down and trampled on and prevented from comin' to a harvest of sufferin'; and revenge, that was a rebel-hearted scoundrel who'd have destroyed this town but for Phil; and last, a selfish, money-lovin' son of a horse-thief who was grabbing for riches and pulling hard at the covers to hide some sins he'd never want to come to the light, being a deacon in the Presbyterian Church. All thim in one cloud makes a hurricane, and with 'em comes a shallow, selfish, pretty girl. Oh, it was a sight, Marjie. If I can do somethin' to keep shipwreck not only from them the storm's aimed at, but them that's pilin' up trouble fur themselves, too, I'm goin' to do it."