The Price of the Prairie: A Story of Kansas

Tell Mapleson's face was ashy gray with anger; but no heed was given to him, as my father continued.

"It happened that Jean Pahusca, who took him out of town by mistake and left him unconscious and half dead on the bank of Fingal's Creek, was ordered back by the ruffians to find his body, and if he was alive to finish him in any way the Indian chose. That same night the courthouse was entered, and the record of this land-entry was taken."

"I have papers showing O'Meara's signing it over – " Tell began; but my father waved his hand and proceeded.

"Briefly put, it was concealed in the old stone cabin by one Amos Judson. Le Claire here was a witness to the transaction."

The priest nodded assent.

"But for reasons of his own he did not report the theft. He did, however, remove the papers from their careless hiding-place in an old chest to a more secure nook in the far corner of the dark loft. Before I came home he had left Springvale, and business matters called him to France. He has not been here since, until last September when he spent a few days out at the cabin. The lead box had been taken from the loft and concealed under the flat stone that forms the door step, possibly by some movers who camped there and did some little harm to the property.

"I have the box in the bank vault now. Le Claire turned it over to me. There is no question as to the record. Two points must be settled, however. First, did O'Meara give up the land he entered? And second, is the young man we call O'mie heir to the same? Le Claire, you are just back from the Osage Mission?"

The priest assented.

"Now, will you tell us what you know of this case?"

A sudden fear seized Tell Mapleson. Would this man lie now to please Judge Baronet? Tell was a good reader of human nature, and he had thoroughly believed in the priest as a holy man, one who had renounced sin and whose life was one long atonement for a wild, tragic, and reckless youth. He disliked Le Claire, but he had never doubted the priest's sincerity. He could have given any sort of bribe had he deemed the Frenchman purchasable.

"Just one word please, Judge," he said suavely. "Look here, Le Claire, Baronet's a good lawyer, a rich man, and a popular man with a fine reputation; but by jiminy! if you try any tricks with me and vary one hair from the truth, I'll have you before the civil and church courts so quick you'll think the Holy Inquisition's no joke. If you'll just tell the truth nobody's going to know through me anything about your former wives, nor how many half-breed papooses claim you. And I know Baronet here well enough to know he never gossips."

Le Claire turned his dark face toward Mapleson, and his piercing black eyes seemed to look through the restless lawyer fidgeting in his chair. In the old days of the "Last Chance" saloon the two had played a quiet game, each trying to outwit the other – the priest for the spiritual and financial welfare of the Indian pensioners, Mapleson for his own financial gain. Yet no harsh word had ever passed between them. Not even after Le Claire had sent his ultimatum to the proprietor of the "Last Chance," "Sell Jean Pahusca another drink of whiskey and you'll be removed from the Indian agency by order from the Secretary of Indian affairs at Washington."

"Mr. Mapleson, I hope the truth will do you no harm. It is the only thing that will avail now, even the truth I have for years kept back. I am no longer a young man, and my severe illness in October forced me to get this business settled. Indeed, I in part helped to bring matters to an issue to-day."

Mapleson was disarmed at once by the priest's frankness. He had waited long to even up scores with the Roman Catholic who had kept many a dollar from his till.

"You are right, gentlemen, in believing that I hold the key to this situation. The Judge has asked two questions: 'Did Patrick O'Meara ever give up his title to the land?' and 'Is O'mie his heir, and therefore the rightful owner?' Let me tell you first what I know of O'mie.

"His mother was a dear little Irish woman who had come, a stranger, to New York City and was married to Patrick O'Meara when she was quite young. They were poor, and after O'mie was born, his father decided to try the West. Fate threw him into the way of a Frenchman who sent him to St. Louis to the employment of a fur-trading company in the upper Missouri River country. O'Meara knew that the West held large possibilities for a poor man. He hoped in a short time to send for his wife and child to join him."

The priest paused, and his brow darkened.

"This Frenchman, although he was of noble birth, had all the evil traits and none of the good ones of all the generations, and withal he was a wild, restless, romantic dreamer and adventurer. You two do not know what heartlessness means. This man had no heart, and yet," the holy man's voice trembled, "his people loved him – will always love his memory, for he could be irresistibly charming and affectionate when he chose. To make this painful story short, he fell in love – madly as only he could love – with this pretty little auburn-haired Irish woman. He had a wife in France, but Mrs. O'Meara pleased him for the time; and he was that kind of a beast.

"O'Meara came to Springvale, and finding here a chance to get hold of a good claim, he bought it. He built a little cabin and sent money to New York for his wife and child to join him here. Mails were slow in preterritorial days. The next letter O'Meara had from New York was from this Frenchman telling him that his wife and child were dead. Meanwhile the villain played the kind friend and brother to the little woman and helped her to prepare for her journey to the West. He had business himself in St. Louis. He would precede her there and accompany her to her husband's new home. Oh, he knew how to deceive, and he was as charming in manner as he was dominant in spirit. No king ever walked the earth with a prouder step. You have seen Jean Pahusca stride down the streets of Springvale, and you know his regal bearing. Such was this Frenchman.

"In truth," the priest went on, "he had cause to leave New York. Word had come to him that his deserted French wife was on her way to America. This French woman was quick-tempered and jealous, and her anger was something to flee from.

"It is a story of utter baseness. From St. Louis to Springvale Mrs. O'Meara's escort was more like a lover than a friend and business director of her affairs. This land was an Osage reservation then. O'Meara's half-section claim was west of here. The home he built was that little stone cabin near where the draw breaks through the bluff up the river, this side of the big cottonwood."

Le Claire paused and sat in silence for a while.

"Much as I have dealt with all sorts of people," he continued, "I never could understand this Frenchman's nature. Fickle and heartless he was to the very core. The wild frontier life attracted him, and he, who could have adorned the court of France or been a power in New York's high circles, plunged into this wilderness. When they reached the cabin the cause for his devoted attentions was made plain. O'Meara was not there, had indeed been gone for weeks. Letters left at Springvale directed to this Frenchman read:

"'I'm gone for good. A pretty Cheyenne squaw away up on the Platte is too much for me. Tell Kathleen I'm never coming back. So she is free to do what she wants to. You may have this ground I have preëmpted, for your trouble. Good-bye.'

"This letter, scrawled on a greasy bit of paper, was so unlike anything Patrick O'Meara had ever said, its spirit was so unlike his genial true-hearted nature that his wife might have doubted it. But she was young and inexperienced, alone and penniless with her baby boy in a harsh wilderness. The message broke her heart. And then this man used all the force of his power to win her. He showed her how helpless she was, how the community here would look upon her as his wife, and now since she was deserted by her husband, the father of her child, her only refuge lay with him, her true lover.

"The woman's heart was broken, but her fidelity and honor were founded on a rock. She scorned the villain before her and drove him from her door. That night she and O'mie were alone in that lonely little cabin. The cruel dominant nature of the man was aroused now, and he determined to crush the spirit of the only woman who had ever resisted him. Two days later a band of Kiowas was passing peaceably across the Plains. Here the Frenchman saw his chance for revenge by conniving with the Indians to seize little O'mie playing on the prairie beyond the cabin.

"The women out in Western Kansas have had the same agony of soul that Kathleen O'Meara suffered when she found her boy was stolen. In her despair she started after the tribe, wandering lost and starving many days on the prairie until a kind-hearted Osage chief found her and took her to our blessed Mission down the river. Here a strange thing happened. Before she had been there a week, her husband, Thomas O'Meara, came from a trapping tour on the Arkansas River. With him was a little child he had rescued from the Kiowas in a battle at Pawnee Rock. It was his own child, although he did not know it then. In this battle he was told that a Frenchman had been killed. The name was the same as that of the Frenchman he had known in New York. Can you picture the joy of that reunion? You who have had a wife to love, a son to cherish?"

My father's heart was full. All day his own boy's face had been before him, a face so like to the woman whose image he held evermore in sacred memory.

"But their joy was short-lived, for Mrs. O'Meara never recovered from her hardships on the prairie; she died in a few weeks. Her husband was killed by the Comanches shortly after her death. His claim here he left to his son, over whom the Mission assumed guardianship. O'mie was transferred to St. Mary's for some reason, and the priest who started to take him there stopped here to find out about his father's land. But the records were not available. Fingal, for whom Fingal's Creek was named, also known as Judge Fingal, held possession of all the records, and – how, I never knew – but in some way he prevented the priest from finding out anything. Fingal was a Southern man; he met a violent death that year. You know O'mie's story after that." Le Claire paused, and a sadness swept over his face.

"But that doesn't finish the Frenchman's story," he continued presently.

"The night that O'mie's mother left her home in the draw, the French woman who had journeyed far to find her husband came to Springvale. You know what she found. The belongings of another woman. It was she who slipped into the Neosho that night. The Frenchman was in the fight at Pawnee Rock. After that he disappeared. But he had entered a formal claim to the land as the husband of Patrick O'Meara's widow, heir to her property. You see he held a double grip. One through the letter – forged, of course – the other through the claim to a union that never existed."

"Seems to me you've a damned lot to answer for," Tell Mapleson hissed in rage. "If the Church can make a holy man out of such a villain, I'm glad I'm a heretic."

"I'm answering for it," the priest said meekly. Only my father sat with face impassive and calm.

"This half-section of land in question is the property of Thomas O'Meara, son and heir to Patrick O'Meara, as the records show. These stolen records I found where Amos Judson had hastily concealed them, as Judge Baronet has said. I put them in the dark loft for safer keeping, for I felt sure they were valuable. When I came to look for them, they had been moved again. I supposed the one who first took them had recovered them, and I let the matter go. Meanwhile I was called home. When I came here last Fall I found matters still unsettled, and O'mie still without his own. I spent several days in the stone cabin searching for the lost papers. The weather was bad, and you know of my severe attack of pneumonia. But I found the box. In the illness that followed I was kept from Springvale longer than I wished. When I came again O'mie had gone."

The priest paused and sat with eyes downcast, and a sorrowful face.

"Is this your story?" Tell queried. "Your proof of O'mie's claim you consider incontestable, but how about these affidavits from the Rev. Mr. Dodd who married you to the Kiowa squaw? How – "

But Le Claire lifted his hand in commanding gesture. A sudden sternness of face and attitude of authority seemed to clothe him like a garment.

"Gentlemen, there is another story. A bitter, painful story. I have never told it, although it has sometimes almost driven me from the holy sanctuary because of my silence."

It was a deeply impressive moment, for all three of the men realized the importance of the occasion.

"My name," said the priest, "is Pierre Rousseau Le Claire. I am of a titled house of France. We have only the blood of the nobility in our veins. My father had two sons, twins – Pierre the priest, and Jean the renegade, outlawed even among the savages; for his scalp will hang from Satanta's tepee pole if the chance ever comes. Mapleson, here, has told you the truth about his being married to a sister of Chief Satanta. He also is the father of Jean Pahusca. You have noticed the boy's likeness to me. If he, being half Indian, has such a strong resemblance to his family, you can imagine how much alike we are, my brother and myself. In form and gesture, everything – except – well, I have told you what his nature was, and – you have known me for many years. And yet, I have never ceased to pray for him, wicked as he is. We played together about the meadows and vine-clad hill slopes of old France, in our happy boyhood. We grew up and loved and might both have been happily wedded there, – but – I've told you his story. There is nothing of myself that can interest you. That letter of Mapleson's, purporting to be from Patrick O'Meara, is a mere forgery. I have just come up from the Mission. The records and letters of O'Meara have all been kept there. This handwriting would not stand, in court, Mapleson. The land was O'Meara's. It is now O'mie's."

Mapleson sat with rigid countenance. For almost fifteen years he had matched swords with John Baronet. He had felt so sure of his game, he had guarded every possible loophole where success might escape him, he had paved every step so carefully that his mind, grown to the habitual thought of winning, was stunned by the revelation. Like Judson in the morning, his only defence lay In putting blame on somebody else.

"You are the most accomplished double-dealer I ever met," he declared to the priest. "You pretend to follow a holy calling, you profess a love for your brother, and yet you are trying to rob his child of his property. You are against Jean Pahusca, son of the man you love so much. Is that the kind of a priest you are?"

"The very kind – even worse," Le Claire responded. "I went back to France before my aged father died. My mother died of a broken heart over Jean long ago. While our father yet lived I persuaded him to give all his estate – it was large – to the Holy Church. He did it. Not a penny of it can ever be touched."

Mapleson caught his breath like a drowning man.

"It spoiled a beautiful lawsuit, I know," Le Claire continued looking meaningly at him. "For that fortune in France, put into the hands of Jean Pahusca's attorneys here, would have been rich plucking. It can never be. I fixed that before our father's death. Why?"

"Yes, you narrow, grasping robber of orphans, why?" Tell shouted in his passion.

"For the same reason that I stood between Jean Pahusca and this town until he was outlawed here. The half-breed cares nothing for property except as it can buy revenge and feed his appetites. He would sell himself for a drink of whiskey. You know how dangerous he is when drunk. Every man in this town except Judge Baronet and myself has had to flee from him at some time or other. Sober, he is a devil – half Indian, half French, and wholly fiendish. Neither he nor his father has any property. I used my influence to prevent it. I would do it again. Jean Le Claire has forfeited all claims to inheritance. So have I. Among the Indians he is a renegade. I am only a missionary priest trying as I may to atone for my own sins and for the sins of my father's son, my twin brother. That, gentlemen, is all I can say."

"We are grateful to you, Le Claire," John Baronet said. "Mapleson said before you began that your word would show us what to do. It has shown us. It is now time, when some deeds long past their due, must be requited." He turned to Tell sitting defiantly there casting mentally in every direction for some legal hook, some cunning turn, by which to win victory away from defeat.

"Tell Mapleson, the hour has come for us to settle more than a property claim between an Irish orphan and a half-breed Kiowa. And now, if it was wise to settle the other matter out of court, it will be a hundred times safer to settle this here this afternoon. You have grown prosperous in Springvale. In so far as you have done it honestly, I rejoice. You know yourself that I have more than once proved my sincerity by turning business your way, that I could as easily have put elsewhere."

Tell did know, and with something of Southern politeness, he nodded assent.

"You are here now to settle with me or to go before my court for some counts you must meet. You have been the headpiece for all the evil-doing that has wrecked the welfare of Springvale and that has injured reputation, brought lasting sorrow, even cost the life of many citizens. Sooner or later the man who does that meets his own crimes face to face, and their ugly powers break loose on him."

"What do you mean?" Tell's voice was suppressed, and his face was livid.

"I mean first: you with Dick Yeager and others, later in Quantrill's band, in May of 1863 planned the destruction of this town by mob violence. The houses were to be burned, every Union man was to be murdered with his wife and children, except such as the Kiowa and Comanche Indians chose to spare. My own son was singled out as the choicest of your victims. Little O'mie, for your own selfish ends, was not to be spared; and Marjory Whately, just blooming into womanhood, you gave to Jean Pahusca as his booty. Your plan failed, partly through the efforts of this good man here, partly through the courage and quick action of the boys of the town, but mainly through the mercy of Omnipotent God, who sent the floods to keep back the forces of Satan. That Marjory escaped even in the midst of it all is due to the shrewdness and sacrifice of the young man you have been trying to defraud – O'mie.

"In the midst of this you connived with others to steal the records from the courthouse. You were a treble villain, for you set the Rev. Mr. Dodd to a deed you afterwards held over him as a threat and drove him from the town for fear of exposure, forcing him to give you the papers he held against Jean Le Claire's claims to the half-section on the Neosho. Not that his going was any loss to Springvale. But Dodd will never trouble you again. He cast his lot with the Dog Indians of the plains, and one of them used him for a shield in Custer's battle with Black Kettle's band last December. He had not even Indian burial.

"Those deeds against Springvale belong to the days of the Civil War, but your record since proves that the man who planned them cannot be trusted as a safe citizen in times of peace. Into your civil office you carried your war-time methods, until the Postmaster-General cannot deal longer with you. Your term of office expires in six days. Your successor's commission is already on its way here. This much was accomplished in the trip East last Fall." My father spoke significantly.

"It wasn't all that was accomplished, by Heaven! There's a lawsuit coming; there's a will that's to be broken that can't stand when I get at it. You are mighty good and fine about money when other folks are getting it; but when it's coming to you, you're another man." Tell's voice was pitched high now.

"Father Le Claire, let me tell you a story. Baronet's a smooth rascal and nobody can find him out easily. But I know him. He has called me a thief. It takes that kind to catch a thief, maybe. Anyhow, back at Rockport the Baronets were friends of the Melrose family. One of them, Ferdinand, was drowned at sea. He had some foolish delusion or other in his head, for he left a will bequeathing all his property to his brother James Melrose during his lifetime. At his death all Ferdinand's money was to go to John Baronet in trust for his son Phil. Baronet, here, sent his boy back East to school in hopes that Phil would marry Rachel Melrose, James's daughter, and so get the fortune of both Ferdinand and James Melrose. He went crazy over the girl; and, to be honest, for Phil's a likable young fellow, the girl was awfully in love with him. Baronet's had her come clear out here to visit them. But, you'll excuse me for saying it, Judge, Phil is a little fast. He got tangled up with a girl of shady reputation here, and Rachel broke off the match. Now, last October the Judge goes East. You see, he's well fixed, but that nice little sum looks big to him, and he's bound Phil shall have it, wife or no wife. But there's a good many turns in law. While Baronet was at Rockport before I could get there, being detained at Washington" (my father smiled a faint little gleam of a smile in his eyes more than on his lip) – "before I could get to Rockport, Mr. Melrose dies, leaving his wife and Rachel alone in the world. Now, I'm retained here as their attorney. Tillhurst is going on to see to things for me. It's only a few thousand that Baronet is after, but it's all Rachel and her mother have. The Melroses weren't near as rich as the people thought. That will of Ferdinand's won't hold water, not even salt water. It'll go to pieces in court, but it'll show this pious Judge, who calls his neighbors to account, what kind of a man he is. The money's been tied up in some investments and it will soon be released."

Le Claire looked anxiously toward my father, whose face for the first time that day was pale. Rising he opened his cabinet of private papers and selected a legal document.

"This seems to be the day for digging up records," he said in a low voice. "Here is one that may interest you and save time and money. What Mapleson says about Ferdinand Melrose is true. We'll pass by the motives I had in sending Phil East, and some other statements. When I became convinced that love played no part in Phil's mind toward Rachel Melrose, I met him in Topeka in October and gave him the opportunity of signing a relinquishment to all claims on the estate of Ferdinand Melrose. Phil didn't care for the girl; and as to the money gotten in that way" (my father drew himself up to his full height), "the oxygen of Kansas breeds a class of men out here who can make an honest fortune in spite of any inheritance, or the lack of it. I put my boy in that class."

I was his only child, and a father may be pardoned for being proud of his own.

"When I reached Rockport," he continued, "Mr. Melrose was ill. I hurried to him with my message, and it may be his last hours were more peaceful because of my going. Rachel will come into her full possessions in a short time, as you say. Mapleson, will you renounce your retainer's fees in your interest in the orphaned?"

It was Tell's bad day, and he swore sulphureously in a low tone.

"Now I'll take up this matter where I left off," John Baronet said. "While O'mie was taking a vacation in the heated days of August, he slept up in the stone cabin. Jean Pahusca, thief, highwayman, robber, and assassin, kept his stolen goods there. Mapleson and his mercantile partner divided the spoils. O'mie's sense of humor is strong, and one night he played ghost for Jean. You know the redskin's inherent fear of ghosts. It put Jean out of the commission goods business. No persuasion of Mapleson's or his partner's could induce Jean to go back after night to the cabin after this reappearance of the long quiet ghost of the drowned woman."

Le Claire could not repress a smile.

"I think I unconsciously played the same role in September out there, frightening a little man away one night. I was innocent of any harm intended."

"It did the work," my father replied. "Jean cut for the West at once, and joined the Cheyennes for a time – and with a purpose." Then as he looked straight at Tell, his voice grew stern, and that mastery of men that his presence carried made itself felt.