Winning the Wilderness Part 19

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 a.s.suringly. "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 s.h.i.+rley 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 s.h.i.+rley that some financial loss last fall prevented you from going back to Ohio. You wouldn't leave Gra.s.s 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 Gra.s.s 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 G.o.d's Acre there for all the years that followed. It happened, too, that as Jim s.h.i.+rley had been the friendly helper at that bridal supper and happy house-warming more than three years ago, so now it was Jim s.h.i.+rley who in the hour of sorrow was the helper still.

The winter season pa.s.sed with the pa.s.sing 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 Gra.s.s 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 gra.s.shoppers tarried but briefly, then all together took wing and flew away, no man knew, nor cared, whither. And the Gra.s.s 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 hards.h.i.+ps still, and lack of opportunity and absence of many elements of culture, a st.u.r.dy, independent, G.o.d-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 Gra.s.s River crossed the old Sunflower trail. The town founders ruled Hans Wyker out of a members.h.i.+p 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 gra.s.shopper raid of dreadful memory, Asher came again to the little grave in the Gra.s.s 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 Gra.s.s 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, Gra.s.s 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 din Of the everyday battle some peace may begin, Like the silence of G.o.d 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 a.s.sure 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 va.s.sent 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 Gra.s.s River. But dat's yust for speculation some yet. Gaines an' Stewart go to Gra.s.s 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.