Winning the Wilderness Part 43

"Jo Bennington, where's Thaine Aydelot? Great note for him to disappear when this Charity Ball was executed mainly for him."

"Better ask Todd Stewart. He's probably had Thaine kidnaped for this occasion," somebody else suggested.

"I tried to do it and failed," Todd Stewart a.s.sented. "I don't need him in my business. He can start to school today if he wants to."

"Well, you don't want him to go, do you, Jo?"

"Oh, I don't care especially. I'm going away myself, but not to the University, but I'm not going till papa's elected," Jo replied.

"And if papa's defeated we stay home all winter, eh?" Todd questioned.

"That all depends," Jo replied.

"Of course it does. What is it, and who depends on it? Jo, I'll help you if you must defend yourself."

Thaine Aydelot bounced down from the rocky bank above into the midst of the company and became at once Jo's escort by common consent.

"Now life's worth living, Thaine's here. Let's have dinner," the boys urged.

It was not Leigh s.h.i.+rley's fault that Thaine should be placed between her and Jo at the spread of good things to eat; nor Jo's planning that she should be between Thaine and Todd Stewart. But n.o.body could be unhappy today.

In the late afternoon the crowd strolled in couples and quartettes and groups up and down the picturesque place.

Thaine had been with Jo from the moment of his coming and Leigh was glad that she had not yielded to his request of the afternoon before. She had become a little separated from the company as she followed a trail of golden sunflowers down the edge of the wide s.p.a.ce between the stream and the foot of the headlands towering far beyond it. The sun had disappeared suddenly and the gleam of the blossoms dulled a trifle. Leigh sat down on a slab of shale to study the effect of the shadow.

"Are you still looking for a letter that will bring Prince Quippi back?"

Thaine Aydelot asked as he climbed up from the rough stream bed to a seat beside her.

"I'm watching the effect of suns.h.i.+ne and shadow on the sunflowers," Leigh replied.

"It will be all shadow if you wait much longer. The clouds are gathering now and we must start home."

"Then I must be going, too. It's a lovely, lazy place here, though. Some time I'm going to the top of those bluffs, away off there."

"Let's go up now," Thaine suggested.

"But it's too late. I mustn't keep the crowd waiting," Leigh insisted.

"It's a stiff climb, too."

"I can drive up. I know a trail through the brush. Let me drive you up, Leigh. It won't take long. There's something worth seeing up there,"

Thaine insisted.

"Well, be quick, Thaine. We'll get into trouble if we are late," Leigh declared.

The trail up the steep slope twisted its way back and forth through the low timber that covered the sides of the bluffs, and the two in the buggy found themselves shut away in its solitary windings.

"What a shadowy road," Leigh said. "And see that cliff dropping down beyond that turn. How could there be such a romantic place out on these level plains?"

"It was my fairy land when I was a little tot," Thaine replied. "I came here long ago and explored it myself."

"I'd like to come here sketching sometime. See how the branches meet overhead. The odors from the bluffside are like the odors of the woodland back in the Clover valley in Ohio. I remember them yet, although I was so little when I left there," Leigh said, turning to Thaine.

He s.h.i.+fted the reins, and throwing his hat in the buggy before him he pushed back the hair from his forehead.

"Leigh, will you let me take you home? I didn't ask Jo after all. Todd wouldn't wait long enough for me to do that, as I knew well enough he wouldn't. Don't be mad at me. Please don't," he pleaded.

"Why, I'm glad if you really want me to go with you, but you shouldn't have staid away this morning."

"I did it on purpose. I knew Todd wouldn't let the chance slip--nor Jo neither, if I let him have it."

"You let him have it merely because you didn't want the chance today. Your kindness will be your undoing some day," Leigh said with a smile that took off the edge of sarcasm.

Thaine said nothing in response, and they climbed slowly to the top of the bluff and stood at last on the crest of the middle headland.

Below them lay "The Cottonwoods" and the winding stream whose course, marked by the dark green line of shrubbery, stretched away toward Gra.s.s River far to the southeast. To the westward a wonderful vista of level prairie spread endlessly, wherein no line of shrubbery marked a watercourse nor tree rose up to break the circle of the horizon. Over all this vast plain the three headlands stood as sentinels. In the west the sunlight had pierced a heavy cloudbank and was pouring through the rift in one broad sheet of gold mist from sky to earth. Purple and silver and burnt umber, with green and gray and richest orange, blended all in the tones of the landscape, overhung now by a storm-girdled sky.

"This prairie belongs mostly to John Jacobs now and it is just as it was when the Indians called it the Grand Prairie and the old p.a.w.nees came down here every summer to hunt buffalo. Some day, soon, there will be a sea of wheat flowing over all that level plain," Thaine said.

"And up here a home with nothing to cut off a fragment of the whole horizon. Think of seeing every sunrise and every sunset from a place like this," Leigh said, her face aglow with an artist's love of beauty. "It's farther to China than I used to think when I dreamed of a purple velvet house decorated with gold k.n.o.bs beyond these three headlands."

"I always did want to live on the Purple Notches," Thaine said reminiscently. "I'm glad we came up here today."

The sound of singing came faintly up from the valley far away.

"The crowd is mobilized. See the wagons crawling out of the grove and the civilians in citizens' clothes following in carriages," Thaine said as he watched the picnic party pus.h.i.+ng out toward the eastward. "I'm so glad we aren't with them."

Leigh sat leaning forward, looking at the majestic distances lost in purple haze, overshadowed by purple clouds with gold-broidered edges of sunlight.

"The world is all ours for once. We see all there is of it and yet we are alone in it up here on the purple notches I used to dream about," she said softly.

Thaine leaned back in his buggy and looked at Leigh with the same impenetrable expression on his countenance that was always there when she was present.

"Leigh," he said at last, "if you didn't have Uncle Jim what would you do?"

"I don't know," the girl answered.

"I never knew one of the fellows who didn't like you, but you, you don't seem to care for any of them. Don't they suit you?" Thaine asked.

"Yes, but I can't think much about them."

"Why not?"

Leigh drew a long breath.

"Thaine, you have always been a good friend to me. Some day I'll tell you why."

"Tell me now," Thaine insisted gently.