A Man for the Ages Part 23

'tend to business.'

"They agreed with me."

Harry had not heard from home since he left it. Abe had had a letter from Rutledge which gave him the news of Bim's elopement The letter had said:

"I was over to Beardstown the day Kelso and McNeil got off the steamer.

I brought them home with me. Kelso was bigger than his trouble. Said that the ways of youth were a part of the great plan. 'Thorns! Thorns!' he said. 'They are the teachers of wisdom and who am I that I should think myself or my daughter too good for the like since it is written that Jesus Christ did not complain of them.'"

"Have you heard from home?" Abe asked as they paddled on.

"Not a word," said Harry.

"You're not expecting to meet Bim Kelso?"

"That's the best part of getting home for me," said Harry, turning with a smile.

"Let her drift for a minute," said Abe. "I've got a letter from James Rutledge that I want to read to you. There's a big lesson in it for both of us--something to remember as long as we live."

Abe read the letter. Harry sat motionless. Slowly his head bent forward until his chin touched his breast.

Abe said with a tender note in his voice as he folded the letter:

"This man is well along in life. He hasn't youth to help him as you have.

See how he takes it and she's the only child he has. There are millions of pretty girls in the world for you to choose from."

"I know it but there's only one Bim Kelso in the world," Harry answered mournfully. "She was the one I loved."

"Yes, but you'll find another. It looks serious but it isn't--you're so young. Hold up your head and keep going. You'll be happy again soon."

"Maybe, but I don't see how," said the boy.

"There are lots of things you can't see from where you are at this present moment. There are a good many miles ahead o' you I reckon and one thing you'll see plainly, by and by, that it's all for the best. I've suffered a lot myself but I can see now it has been a help to me. There isn't an hour of it I'd be willing to give up."

They paddled along in silence for a time.

"It was my fault," said Harry presently. "I never could say the half I wanted to when she was with me. My tongue is too slow. She gave me a chance and I wasn't man enough to take it. That's all I've got to say on that subject."

He seemed to find it hard to keep his word for in a moment he added:

"I wouldn't have been so good a scout if it hadn't been for her. I guess the Injuns would have got me but when I thought of her I just kept going."

"I think you did it just because you were a brave man and had a duty to perform," said Abe.

Some time afterward in a letter to his father the boy wrote:

"I often think of that ride down the river and the way he talked to me.

It was so gentle. He was a big, powerful giant of a man who weighed over two hundred pounds, all of it bone and muscle. But under his great strength was a woman's gentleness; under the dirty, ragged clothes and the rough, brown skin grimy with dust and perspiration, was one of the cleanest souls that ever came to this world. I don't mean that he was like a minister. He could tell a story with pretty rough talk in it but always for a purpose. He hated dirt on the hands or on the tongue. If another man had a trouble Abe took hold of it with him. He would put a lame man's pack on top of his own and carry it. He loved flowers like a woman. He loved to look at the stars at night and the colors of the sunset and the morning dew on the meadows. I never saw a man so much in love with fun and beauty."

They reached Havana that evening and sold their canoe to a man who kept boats to rent on the river sh.o.r.e. They ate a hot supper at the tavern and got a ride with a farmer who was going ten miles in their direction. From his cabin some two hours later they set out afoot in the darkness.

"I reckon it will be easier under the stars than under the hot sun," said Abe. "Our legs have had a long rest anyhow."

They enjoyed the coolness and beauty of the summer night.

"Going home is the end of all journeys," said Abe as they tramped along.

"Did it ever occur to you that every living creature has its home? The fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the beasts of the field and forest, the creepers in the gra.s.s, all go home. Most of them turn toward it when the day wanes. The call of home is the one voice heard and respected all the way down the line of life. And, ye know, the most wonderful and mysterious thing in nature is the power that fool animals have to go home through great distances, like the turtle that swam from the Bay of Biscay to his home off Van Dieman's Land. Somehow coming over in a s.h.i.+p he had blazed a trail through the pathless deep more than ten thousand miles long. It's the one miraculous gift--the one call that's irresistible. Don't you hear it now? I never lie down in the darkness without thinking of home when I am away."

"And it's hard to change your home when you're wonted to it," said Harry.

"Yes, it's a little like dying when you pull up the roots and move. It's been hard on your folks."

This remark brought them up to the greatest of mysteries. They tramped in silence for a moment. Abe broke in upon it with these words:

"I reckon there must be another home somewhere to go to after we have broke the last camp here and a kind of a bird's compa.s.s to help us find it. I reckon we'll hear the call of it as we grow older."

He stopped and took off his hat and looked up at the stars and added:

"If it isn't so I don't see why the long procession of life keeps harping on this subject of home. I think I see the point of the whole thing. It isn't the place or the furniture that makes it home, but the love and peace that's in it. By and by our home isn't here any more. It has moved.

Our minds begin to beat about in the undiscovered countries looking for it. Somehow we get it located--each man for himself."

For another s.p.a.ce they hurried along without speaking.

"I tell you, Harry, whatever a large number of intelligent folks have agreed upon for some generations is so--if they have been allowed to do their own thinking," said Abe. "It's about the only wisdom there is."

He had sounded the keynote of the new Democracy.

"There are some who think that Reason is the only guide but in the one problem of going home it don't compare with the turtle's wisdom," Abe added. "His head isn't bigger than a small apple. But I reckon the scientist can't teach him anything about navigation. Reminds me o' Steve Nuckles. His head is full of ignorance but he'll know how to get home when the time comes."

"My stars! How we're hurrying!" Harry exclaimed at length.

"I didn't realize it--I'm so taken up with the thought of getting back,"

said Abe. "It's as if my friends had a rope around me and were pulling it."

So under the lights of heaven, speaking in the silence of the night, of impenetrable mysteries, they journeyed on toward the land of plenty.

"It's as still as a graveyard," Harry whispered when they had climbed the bluff by the mill long after midnight and were near the little village.

"They're all buried in sleep," said Abe. "We'll get Rutledge out of bed.

He'll give us a shake-down somewhere."

His loud rap on the door of the tavern signalized more than a desire for rest in the weary travelers, for just then a cycle of their lives had ended.