The Reclaimers Part 7

V

NEW EDEN'S PROBLEM

Because of a broken "culbert" out toward "S'liny" the afternoon train on the Sage Brush branch was annulled for the day. Because of this annulment the mail for the Sage Brush Valley was brought up on the local freight, which is always behind time when it reaches its terminal, which accounted for the late delivery of the mail at the New Eden post-office, which made York Macpherson's dinner late because of a big batch of letters to be read, and an important business call at the Commercial Hotel following the reading and the delivery of Mr. Ponk's message.

Purple shadows were beginning to fold down upon the landscape, while overhead the sky was still heliotrope and gold, but York Macpherson, walking slowly homeward, saw neither the shadows nor the glory that overhung them. It was evident to his sister Laura, who was waiting for him in the honeysuckle corner of the big front porch, that his mind was burdened with something unusual to-night.

York Macpherson was a "leading citizen" type of the Middle West.

Wholesome, ruggedly handsome, prosperous, shrewd to read men's minds, quick to meet their needs, full of faith in the promise of the Western prairies, with the sort of culture no hards.h.i.+p of the plains could ever overcome--that was York. Although he was on the front edge of middle life in years, with a few gray streaks in his wavy brown hair, he had the young-looking face, the alert action, and vigorous atmosphere of a young-hearted man just entered into his full heritage of manhood.

"The train was delayed down the river on account of sand drifted over the track by the south wind, and that made the mail late," York explained, when he reached the porch. "I'll bet you have had the house shut up tight as wax and have gone about all day with a dust-cloth in your hand. Given a south wind and Laura Macpherson, and you have a home industry in no time. Let's hurry up the dinner" (it was always dinner to the Macphersons and supper to the remainder of New Eden) "and get outside again as soon as possible. I can't think in shut-up rooms."

"When there is a south wind it makes little difference whether or not one does any thinking. I postpone that job to the cool of the evening,"

Laura Macpherson declared, as she led the way to the dining-room.

When the two came outside again the air off the prairie was delicious, and there was promise of restfulness later in the black silence of the June night that made them forget the nervous strain of the windy day.

The Macphersons had no problems that they could not talk over in the shadowy stillness of that roomy porch on summer evenings.

York had been a bachelor boarder at the "Commercial Hotel and Garage"

for some years before the coming of his sister Laura, who was at once his housekeeper, companion, and counselor. When he first went to the hotel New Eden was in its infancy, and the raw beginnings of things were especially underdone in this two-dollars-a-day, one-towel-a-week establishment. It was through York that Junius Brutus Ponk had given up an unprofitable real-estate business to become proprietor of the Commercial Hotel--"and Gurrage" was added later with the advent of automobiles, the "Gurrage" part being a really creditably equipped livery for public service. By this change of occupation for Ponk, the Macpherson Mortgage Company accomplished several things. It got rid of an inefficient compet.i.tor whose very inefficiency would have made him a more disagreeable enemy than a successful man would have been. Further, it placed the ambitious little man where his talents could flourish (flourish is the right word for J. B. Ponk), and it put into the growing little town of New Eden a hotel with city comforts that brought business to the town and added mightily to its reputation and respectability.

York Macpherson's business had grown with the town he had helped to build. Long before other towns in this part of Kansas had dreamed it possible for them, New Eden was lighted with electricity. Water-works and a sewer system fore-ran cement sidewalks and a mile of paving, not including the square around the court-house. And before any of these had come the big stone school-house on the high ridge overlooking the Sage Brush Valley for miles. That also was York Macpherson's task, which he had carried out almost single-handed, and had the satisfaction of bringing desirable taxpaying residents to live in New Eden who would never have come but for the school advantages. Then Junius Brutus Ponk, who had learned to couple with York, got himself elected to the board of education and began to pay higher salaries to teachers than was paid by any other town in the whole Sage Brush Valley; to the end that better schools were housed in that fine school-building, and a finer cla.s.s of young citizens began to put the good name of New Eden above everything else. The hoodlum element was there, of course, but it was not the leading element. Boys stuck to the high-school faithfully and followed it up with a college course, even though a large per cent. of them worked for every dollar that the course cost them. Girls went to college, too, until it became a rare thing to find a teacher in the whole valley who had not a diploma from some inst.i.tution of higher learning.

It was only recently that Laura Macpherson had come to New Eden to make her home with her brother. An accident a few years before had shortened one limb, making her limp as she walked. She was some years older than York, with a face as young and very much like her brother's; a comely, companionable sort of woman, popular alike with men and women, young folks and children.

Some time before her coming York had bought the best building-site in New Eden, a wooded knoll inside the corporation limits, the only natural woodland in the vicinity, that stood directly across the far end of Broad Avenue, the main business street, whose mile of paving ended in York's driveway. In one direction, this site commanded a view far down Sage Brush Valley; in the other, it overlooked the best residence and business portion of New Eden. Here York had, as he put it, "built a porch, at the rear of which a few rooms were attached." The main glory of the place, however, was the big porch.

York had named their home "Castle Cluny," and his big farm joining it just outside the town limits "Kingussie," after some old Macpherson-clan memories. There were no millionaires in the Sage Brush Valley, and this home was far and away the finest, as well as the most popular, home in a community where thrift and neatness abounded in the homes, and elegance was very much lacking, as was to be expected in a young town on the far edge of the Middle West.

"Joe Thomson came in to-day to see me about putting a mortgage on his claim this side of the big blowout. Looks like a losing game for Joe.

His land is about one-third sand now," York commented, thoughtfully, as he settled himself comfortably in his big porch chair.

"Well, why not let the sand have its own third, while he uses the other two-thirds himself? They ought to keep him busy," Laura suggested.

The country around New Eden was still new to her. Although she overflowed the town with her sunny presence, her lameness had kept her nearer to "Castle Cluny" than her brother had comprehended. She did not understand the laws, nor lawlessness, of what her brother called the "blowout," nor had she ever seen the desolation that marked its broadening path.

"A blowout is never satisfied until it has swallowed all the land in the landscape," York explained. "I remember a few years ago there was just a sandy outcrop along a little draw below Joe's claim, the line of some prehistoric river-bed, I suppose. That was the beginning of the thing Joe is fighting to-day. Something started the sand to drifting. It increased as the wind blew away the soil; the more wind, the more sand; the more sand, the more wind. They worked together until what had been a narrow belt spread enormously, gradually overlapping Joe's claim, making acres of waste ground. I hate to see Joe shoulder a mortgage to try to drive back that monstrous thing. But Joe is one of those big, self-contained fellows who takes the bit in his teeth and goes his own gait in spite of all the danger signals you wigwag at him."

"Why do you loan him money if you know he can't succeed?" Laura inquired.

"Making farm loans is the business of the Macpherson Mortgage Company.

That's how we maintain our meager existence," York replied, teasingly.

"Joe wants to fight back the blowout creeping over his south border farther and farther each year. Our company gets its commission while he fights. See?"

"Oh, you grasping loan shark! If I didn't know how easy it is for you to lie I'd disown you," Laura declared, flinging a chair pillow at her brother, who was chuckling at her earnestness.

But York was serious himself in the next minute.

"Our company doesn't want the prairie; it wants prosperity. A foreclosed mortgage is bad business. It brings us responsibility and ill-will. What we want is good-will and interest money. I have put the thing up to Joe just as it is. Man is a free agent to choose or let alone. I have a bigger problem than Joe to handle now. I had a letter this evening from Miss Geraldine Swaim, of Philadelphia. Do you remember her, Laura? She used to come up to Winnowoc when she was a little girl."

"I remember little Jerry Swaim, Jim and Lesa's only child," York's sister declared. "She was considerably younger than I. I pushed her in her baby-cab when I wasn't very big myself. When I went away to college she was a little roly-poly beauty of ten or eleven, maybe. Wasn't she named for her father's rich sister, Mrs. Darby? I never knew that Mrs.

Darby's name was Geraldine."

"It wasn't; it was Jerusha; and Jim's name was Jeremiah; and Lesa's was plain Melissa," York explained. "But Lesa changed all of their names to make them sound more romantic. Romance was Lesa's strong suit. She called her daughter 'Jerry,' to please Mrs. Darby, but the child was christened Geraldine--never Jerusha. Lesa wouldn't stand for that."

"And now what does this Geraldine want from my respected brother?" Laura inquired, leaning back on the cus.h.i.+ons of her chair to listen.

York's face was hidden by the darker shadows of the porch, but his sister knew by his grave tone, when he spoke again, that something deeper than a business transaction lay back of this message from Philadelphia.

"It's an old story, Laura. The story of parents rearing a child in luxury and then dying poor and leaving this child unprovided for and unfitted to provide for herself. Jim Swaim was as clear-headed as his wife was soft-hearted and idealizing. Every angle of his was a right angle, even if he did grow a bit tight-fisted sometimes for his family's sake. But a leech of a fellow, a sort of relative by marriage, got his claws into Jim some way, and in the end got him, root and branch. Then Lesa contracted pneumonia and died after a short illness. And just when Jim was most needed to hold up his business interests and tide things over, as well as look after his daughter, they found him dead in his office one morning. Heart failure, the doctors said, the kind that gets a brain-f.a.gged business man. The estate has been in litigation for two years. Now it is settled, and all that is left for Geraldine is a claim her father held out here in the Sage Brush Valley. She thinks she is going to live on that. She came in on the afternoon train and is stopping at the Commercial Hotel. I called to see her a minute on my way home. That was why I ate a cold dinner this evening. I asked her to come here at once, but she refused. Some one from the hotel will bring her over later. That means Ponk, of course. He's the whole Commercial Hotel 'and Gurrage.' We must have her here to stay with us awhile, of course."

"York Macpherson!" his sister fairly gasped. "Coming to call this evening! Will stay with us awhile, of course. All right. I'm willing she should stay with us awhile, but how can _she_ live on a Sage Brush claim? Why doesn't her rich aunt Darby provide for her? What does she look like?"

"I don't know," York drawled, provokingly. Then he added: "Mrs. Darby also writes, saying that she hopes we will look after Jerry while she is here, but that she herself can do nothing for her niece, because a relative of her dear deceased husband, an artist of merit but no means, is dependent on her, and she owes it to her dear deceased's memory to look after this young man. I've a notion that there is something back of both letters, but I haven't had time to read behind the lines yet."

"Turns out her own flesh and blood, a girl, too, to s.h.i.+ft for herself, and coddles this man, this artist thing, for her dear deceased's sake.

What _do_ you think of that?" Laura burst out.

"I don't think of that," York replied. "Not really knowing any woman but my sister, I can't judge them by the sample. Besides, this 'girl thing'

may have elected to come to the Sage Brush herself; that would be like Jim Swaim. Or she may be making a lark of the trip; that's her mother's child. And, anyhow, she has property in her own name, you see."

"Property, bos.h.!.+ Where is this precious claim that is to sustain this luxuriously reared child?" Laura Macpherson insisted.

"It is an undeveloped claim down the Sage Brush, in a part of the country you haven't seen yet. That is what this child of luxury has come out for to live upon," York said, with a minor chord of anxiety in his voice.

Then a silence fell, for Laura Macpherson felt that something tragical must be bound up in the course of coming events.

It was the poet's hour of "nearly dark." The "high lights" were beginning to gleam from the cupola of the court-house and high-school, and station tower out across the open stretch that lay between it and the town. New Eden was unusually well lighted for its size. York Macpherson had forced that provision into the electric company's franchise. But New-Edenites were still rural in their ways, and never burned up the long summer twilight with bug-alluring street lights.

Homes, too, were mostly shadowy places, with the dwellers resting in porch swings or lawn chairs. Moreover, although there was a little leakage somewhere through which things disappeared occasionally, n.o.body in town except bankers, postmasters, and mortgage companies locked their doors. The jail was usually empty on the Sat.u.r.day night, and the churches were full on Sunday, as is the normal condition of Middle West towns in a prohibition state.

"The wind is in the east. It will rain to-morrow," York said, after a pause. "I had planned to go to the upper Sage Brush country for a couple of days. I'll wait till after Sunday now."

Laura Macpherson did not know whether the last meant relief or anxiety.

York was not readable to-night.

"What are you staring at?" York asked, presently, from his vine-sheltered angle, as he saw his sister looking intently down into the street.

"Humans," Laura replied, composedly.

"Not the Big Dipper, I hope. Isn't the town big enough without her ranging all over 'Kingussie'?"

"Oh, York, you will call Mrs. Bahrr 'the Big Dipper' to her face some day, if you don't quit your private practice," Laura declared.

"Well, her name is Stella Bahrr. 'Stellar,' she calls it, and she p.r.o.nounces her surname just plain 'Bear.' If that isn't starry enough I don't know my astronomy. And she is always dipping into other folks's business and stirring up trouble with a high hand. Laura, once and for all, never tie up with that little old hat-trimmer. She'll trim you if you do."

"Don't be uneasy about our getting chummy. I'm positively rude to her most of the time. She isn't coming here. She has veered off toward the Lenwells'. But look who is coming, York."