Winning the Wilderness

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 dinOf 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.”