A Man for the Ages Part 55

"The only thing in the way of mine is the national debt that I have acc.u.mulated," Harry remarked.

"I knew he'd think of something," said Bim ruefully. "If I wanted to abolish the n.o.ble inst.i.tution of marriage I'd make him chairman of the ways and means committee."

"Harry, your credit is still good with me, and I'm prosperous," Samson began. "I want you to know that Bim's energy and skill are mostly responsible for my success. I guess we owe more to your sickness than you're aware of. If it hadn't been for that we would be plodding along at the same old pace. We would not have felt the need of speeding up. It was your misfortune that brought Bim into the store. If she wants to retire and marry you I rather think she is ent.i.tled to do it. I don't want any more fooling around about this matter. Sarah and I couldn't stand it.

She's kept me awake nights talking about it. The thing has worried us plenty. We rebel and demand action before anything else happens. We feel as if we had some rights in this case."

"I concede them and second your demand," Harry answered. "Bim must name a near day. I only need a week to get some clothes made and to go up to Milwaukee on a little matter of business."

"I don't know whether we'll give him a week or not," said Bim playfully.

"A great many things may happen to him in a week."

CHAPTER XXIV

WHICH DESCRIBES A PLEASANT HOLIDAY AND A PRETTY STRATAGEM.

Two days later Bim suggested that they should take a day's ride in the open and spend the night at the home of a friend of hers in a settlement known as Plain's End, Harry having expressed a wish to get out on the prairies in the saddle after his long term of travel on a steamboat.

"Are you sure that you can stand an all day's journey?" Bim asked.

"I! I could kill a bear with my hands and carry him home on my back and eat him for dinner," the young man boasted.

"I've got enough of the wild West in me to like a man who can eat bears if there's nothing better," said Bim. "I didn't know but you'd been spoiled in the homes of those eastern millionaires. If you're willing to take what comes and make the best of it, I'll give you a day that you will remember. You will have to put up with a very simple hospitality but I wouldn't wonder if you'd enjoy it."

"I can put up with anything so long as I have your help," the young man answered.

"Then I shall send word that we are coming. We will leave here day after to-morrow. Our horses will be at the door at eight o'clock in the morning. We shall take some luncheon and reach our destination late in the afternoon and return next day. It will give us a good long visit with each other and you'll know me better before we get back."

"I want to know you as well as I love you," he said. "I suppose it will be like studying law--one never gets through with it."

"I've found myself a rather abstruse subject--as bad as c.o.ke, of which Abe used to talk so much with my father," she declared. "I shall be glad if it doesn't discourage you."

"The mystery of woman can not be solved by intellectual processes," the young man remarked. "Observation is the only help and mine has been mostly telescopic. We have managed to keep ourselves separated by a great distance even when we were near each other. It has been like looking at a star with a very limited parallax. It's a joy to be able to see you with the naked eye."

"You will have little to look at on this holiday but me and the prairies," said Bim.

"I think the prairies will be neglected. I shall wear my cavalry uniform and try to get a pair of the best horses in Chicago for the trip."

"Then you would have to get mine. I have a handsome pair of black young horses from Ohio--real high steppers. It is to be my party. You will have to take what comes and make the best of it."

The day of their journey arrived--a warm, bright, cloudless day in September 1841. The long story of those years of separation was told as they rode along. Biggs had been killed in a drunken brawl at Alton.

Davis had gone to the far West--a thoroughly discredited man. Henry Brimstead had got his new plow on the market and was prospering beyond all his hopes. Eli had become a merchant of unusual ability and vision.

His square dealing and good sense had done much to break down prejudice against the Jews in the democracy of the West. Agents of the store were traveling in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana selling its goods to country dealers. They carried with them the progressive and enlightened spirit of the city and the news. Everywhere they insisted upon a high standard of honesty in business. A man who had no respect for his contract was struck off the list. They spread the every-day religion of the counting room.

They were a welcome, unifying and civilizing force in the middle country.

Samson Traylor was getting wealth and a reputation for good sense. He had made the plan on which the business had developed. He had proved himself a wise and far-seeing man. Sarah's friends had been out in Springfield for a visit. They had invested money in the business. Her brother had decided to bring his family West and settle in Sangamon County.

The lovers stopped in a grove at noon and fed their horses and Harry, who had a bundle of Joe's lucifer matches in his pocket--a gift from Samson--built a fire and made a broach of green sticks on which he broiled beef steak.

A letter from Harry to Sarah Traylor tells of the beauty of the day--of blue bells and scarlet lilies in the meadow gra.s.s, of the whistling quail, of pigeons and wild geese flying across the sky and of his great joy in seeing again the vast sunlit reaches of the level, virgin lands.

"It was my great day of fulfillment, all the dearer because I had come back to health and youth and beloved scenes out of those years shadowed with loneliness and despair," he writes. "The best part of it, I a.s.sure you, was the face I loved and that musical voice ringing like a bell in merry laughter and in the songs which had stirred my heart in the days of its tender youth. You--the dear and gentle mother of my later boyhood--are ent.i.tled to know of my happiness when I heard that voice tell me in its sweeter tone of the love which has endured through all these years of stern trial. We talked of our plans as we sat among the ferns and mosses in the cool shade sweetened by the incense of burning f.a.gots, over that repast to which we shall be returning often for refreshment in poorer days. We had thought of you and of the man so well beloved of you and us in all these plans. We shall live in Springfield so that we may be near you and him and our friend, Honest Abe."

It is a long letter presenting minute details in the history of that sentimental journey and allusion to matters which have no part in this record. Its substance being fully in the consciousness of the writer, he tenderly folds it up and returns it to the package--yellow and brittle and faded and having that curious fragrance of papers that have lain for scores of years in the gloom and silence of a locked mahogany drawer. So alive are these letters with the pa.s.sion of youth in long forgotten years that the writer ties the old ribbon and returns them to their tomb with a feeling of sadness, finding a singular pathos in the contrast of their look and their contents. They are turning to dust but the soul of them has gone into this little history.

The young man and woman mounted their horses and resumed their journey.

It was after two o'clock. The Grand Prairie lay ahead of them. The settlement of Plain's End was twenty-one miles away on its farther side. They could just see its tall oak trees in the dim distance.

"We must hurry if we get there before dark," said the girl. "Above all we must be careful to keep our direction. It's easy to get lost down in the great prairie."

They heard a cat-bird singing in a near thicket as they left their camp.

It reminded Bim of her favorite ballad and she sang it with the spirit of old:

"My sweetheart, come along-- Don't you hear the glad song As the notes of the nightingale flow?

Don't you hear the fond tale of the sweet nightingale As she sings in the valleys below?

As she sings in the valleys below?"

They went on shoulder-deep in the tall gra.s.s on the lower stretches of the prairie. Here and there it gave Harry the impression that he was swimming his horse in "noisy, vivid green water." They startled a herd of deer and a number of wild horses. When they lost sight of the woods at Plain's End the young man, with his cavalry training, was able to ride standing on his saddle until he had got it located. It reminded him of riding in the Everglades and he told of his adventures there as they went on, but very modestly. He said not a word of his heroic fight the day that he and sixty of his comrades were cut off and surrounded in the "land of the gra.s.sy waters." But Bim had heard the story from other lips.

Late in the afternoon the woods loomed in front of them scarcely a mile off. Near the end of the prairie they came to a road which led them past the door of a lonely cabin. It seemed to be deserted, but its windows were clean and a faint column of smoke rose from its chimney. There were hollyhocks and sunflowers in its small and cleanly dooryard. A morning-glory vine had been trained around the windows.

"Broad Creek is just beyond," said Bim. "I don't know how the crossing will be."

They came presently to the creek, unexpectedly swollen. A man stood on the farther sh.o.r.e with some seventy feet of deep and rapid water between him and the travelers.

"That man looks like Stephen Nuckles," said Harry.

"It is Stephen Nuckles," Bim answered.

"h.e.l.lo, Steve!" the young soldier called.

"Howdy, boy!" said the old minister. "That ar creek is b'ilin' over.

I reckon you'll have to swim the hosses."

"They're young city horses and not broke to deep water but we'll try them," said Bim.

They tried but Bim's horse refused to go beyond good footing.

"You kin light at that ar house an' spend the night but the folks have gone erway," the minister called.

"I guess you'll have to marry us right here and now," Harry proposed.

"Night is coming and that house is our only refuge."