Vandemark's Folly Part 20

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She had not objected to my holding her so long; she rather seemed to like it; she seemed willing to go on camping here as long as I wished; she was wondering why I was so backward and so bashful; she was in my hands; why hold back? Why not use my power? If I did not I should make myself forever ridiculous to all men and to all women--who, according to my experience, were never in higher feather than when ridiculing some greenhorn of a boy. This thing must end. My affair with Virginia must be brought to a crisis and pushed to a decision. At once!

I wandered off again and from my vantage-point I began to watch her and gather courage from watching her. I could still feel her in my arms--so much more of a woman than I had at first suspected from seeing her about the camp. I could see her in my mind's eye wading the stream like a beautiful ghost. I could think of nothing but her all the time,--of her and the wild life of boats and backwoods harbors.

And at last I grew suddenly calm. I began to laugh at myself for my lack of decision. I would carefully consider the matter, and that night I would act.

I took my gun and wandered off across the prairie after a few birds for our larder. There were upland plover in great plenty; and before I had been away from the camp fifteen minutes I had several in my pockets. It was early in the afternoon; but instead of walking back to camp at once I sat down on a mound at the mouth of the old den of a wolf or badger and laid my plans; much as a wolf or badger might have done.

Then I went back. The sun was s.h.i.+ning with slanting mid-afternoon rays down among the trees by the creek. I looked for Virginia; but she was not about the wagon, neither sitting in the spring seat, nor on her box-by the fire, nor under her favorite crabapple-tree. I looked boldly in the wagon, without the timid tapping which I had always used to announce my presence--for what did I care now for her privacy?--but she was not there. I began searching for her along the creek in the secluded nooks which abounded, and at last I heard her voice.

I was startled. To whom could she be speaking? I would have n.o.body about, now. I would show him, whoever he was! This grove was mine as long as I wanted to stay there with my girl. The blood rose to my head as I went quietly forward until I could see Virginia.

She was alone! She had taken a blanket from the wagon and spread it on the ground upon the gra.s.s under a spreading elm, and scattered about on it were articles of clothing which she had taken from her satchel--that satchel to which the poor child had clung so tightly while she had come to my camp across the prairie on the Ridge Road that night--which now seemed so long ago. There was a dress on which she had been sewing; for the needle was stuck in the blanket with the thread still in the garment; but she was not working. She had in her lap as she sat cross-legged on the blanket, a little wax doll to which she was babbling and talking as little girls do. She had taken off its dress, and was carefully wiping its face, telling it to shut its eyes, saying that mama wouldn't hurt it, asking it if she wasn't a bad mama to keep it shut up all the time in that dark satchel, asking it if it wasn't afraid in the dark, a.s.suring it that mama wouldn't let anybody hurt it--and all this in the sweetest sort of baby-talk. And then she put its dress on, gently smoothed its hair, held it for a while against her bosom as she swayed from side to side telling it to go to sleep, hummed gently a cradle song, and put it back in the satchel as a mother might put her sleeping baby in its cradle. I crept silently away.

It was dark when I returned to camp, and she had supper ready and was anxiously awaiting me. She ran to me and took my hand affectionately.

"What kept you so long?" she asked earnestly. "I have been anxious. I thought something must have happened to you!"

And as we approached the fire, she looked in my face, and cried out in astonishment.

"Something has happened to you. You are as white as a sheet. What is it?

Are you sick? What shall I do if you get sick!"

"No," I said, "I am not sick. I am all right--now."

"But something has happened," she insisted. "You are weak as well as pale. Let me do something for you. What was it?"

"A snake," I said, for an excuse. "A rattlesnake. It struck at me and missed. It almost struck me. I'll be all right now."

The longer I live the surer I am that I told her very nearly the truth.

That night we sat up late and talked. She was only a dear little child, now, with a bit of the mother in her. She was really affectionate to me, more so than ever before, and sometimes I turned cold as I thought of how her affection might have been twisted into deviltry had it not been so strangely brought home to me that she was a child, with a good deal of the mother in her. I turned cold as I thought of her playing with her doll while I had been out on the prairie laying poison plots against her innocence, her defenselessness, her trust in me.

Why, she was like my mother! I had not thought of my mother for days.

When she had been young like Virginia, she must have been as beautiful; and she had played with dolls; but never except while she was an innocent child, as Virginia now was.

For the first time I talked of mother to Virginia. I told her of my mother's goodness to me while Rucker was putting me out to work in the factory--and Virginia grew hot with anger at Rucker, and very pitiful of the poor little boy going to work before daylight and coming home after dark. I told her of my running away, and of my life on the ca.n.a.l, with all the beautiful things I had seen and the interesting things I had done, leaving out the fighting and the bad things. I told her of how I had lost my mother, and my years of search for her, ending at that unmarked grave by the lake. Virginia's eyes shone with tears and she softly pressed my hand.

I took from my little iron-bound trunk that letter which I had found in the old hollow apple-tree, and we read it over together by the flickering light of a small fire which I kindled for the purpose; and from the very bottom of the trunk, wrapped in a white handkerchief which I had bought for this use, I took that old worn-out shoe which I had found that dark day at Tempe--and I began telling Virginia how it was that it was so run over, and worn in such a peculiar way.

My mother had worked so hard for me that she had had a good deal of trouble with her feet--and such a flood of sorrow came over me that I broke down and cried. I cried for my mother, and for joy at being able to think of her again, and for guilt, and with such a mingling of feeling that finally I started to rush off into the darkness--but Virginia clung to me and wiped away my tears and would not let me go.

She said she was afraid to be left alone, and wanted me with her--and that I was a good boy. She didn't wonder that my mother wanted to work for me--it must have been almost the only comfort she had.

"If she had only lived," I said, "so I could have made a home for her!"

"She knows all about that," said Virginia; "and when she sees you making a home for some one else, how happy it will make her!"

Virginia was the older of the two, now, the utterer of words of comfort; and I was the child. The moon rose late, but before we retired it flooded the grove with light. The wolves howled on the prairie, and the screech-owls cried pitifully in the grove; but I was happy. I told Virginia that we must break camp in the morning and move on. I must get to my land, and begin making that home. She sighed; but she did not protest. She would always remember this sojourn in the grove, she said; she had felt so safe! She hardly knew what she would do when we reached the next settlement; but she must think out some way to get back to Kentucky. When the time came for her to retire, I carried her to the wagon and lifted her in--and then went to my own bed to sleep the first sound sweet sleep I had enjoyed for days. The air had been purified by the storm.

CHAPTER XI

IN DEFENSE OF THE PROPRIETIES

Virginia and I arrived in Waterloo about two days after we left the Grove of Destiny, as my granddaughter Gertrude insists on calling the place at which we camped after we left Independence. We went in a sort of rather guess-way back to the Ridge Road, very happy, talking to each other about ourselves all the while, and admiring everything we saw along the way. The wild sweet-williams were in bloom, now, and scattered among them were the brilliant orange-colored pucc.o.o.ns; and the gra.s.s even on the knolls was long enough to wave in the wind like a rippling sea. It was a cool and sunny spell of weather, with fleecy clouds chasing one another up from the northwest like great s.h.i.+ps under full sail running wing-and-wing before the northwest wind which blew strong day and night. It was a new sort of weather to me--the typical high-barometer weather of the prairies after a violent "low." The driving clouds on the first day were sometimes heavy enough to spill over a scud of rain (which often caught Virginia like a cold splash from a hose), and were whisked off to the southeast in a few minutes, followed by a brilliant burst of suns.h.i.+ne--and all the time the shadows of the clouds raced over the prairie in big and little bluish patches speeding forever onward over a groundwork of green and gold dotted with the white and purple and yellow of the flowers.

We were now on terms of simple trust and confidence. We played. We bet each other great sums of money as to whether or not the rain-scud coming up in the west would pa.s.s over us, or miss us, or whether or not the shadow of a certain cloud would pa.s.s to the right or the left. People with horse teams who were all the time pa.s.sing us often heard us laughing, and looked at us and smiled, waving their hands, as Virginia would cry out, "I won that time!" or "You drove slow, just to beat me!"

or "Well, I lost, but you owe me twenty-five thousand dollars yet!"

Once an outfit with roan horses and a light wagon stopped and hailed us.

The woman, sitting by her husband, had been pointing at us and talking to him.

"Right purty day," he said.

"Most of the time," I answered; for it had just sloshed a few barrels of water from one of those flying clouds and forced us to cover ourselves up.

"Where's your folks?" he asked.

"We ain't too old to travel alone," I replied; "but we'll catch up with the young folks at Waterloo!"

He laughed and whipped up his team.

"Go it while you're young!" he shouted as he went out of hearing.

We were rather an unusual couple, as any one could see; though most people doubtless supposed that there were others of our party riding back under the cover. Virginia had not mentioned Buckner Gowdy since we camped in the Grove of Destiny; and not once had she looked with her old look of terror at an approaching or overtaking team, or scuttled back into the load to keep from being seen. I guess she had come to believe in the sufficiency of my protection.

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Waterloo was a town of seven or eight years of age--a little straggling village on the Red Cedar River, as it was then called, building its future on the growth of the country and the water-power of the stream.

It was crowded with seekers after "country," and its land dealers and bankers were looking for customers. It seemed to be a strong town in money, and I had a young man pointed out to me who was said to command unlimited capital and who was a.s.sociated with banks and land companies in Cedar Rapids and Sioux City,--I suppose he was a Greene, a Weare, a Graves, a Johnson or a Lusch. Many were talking of the Fort Dodge country, and of the new United States Land Office which was just then on the point of opening at Fort Dodge. They tried to send me to several places where land could be bought cheaply, in the counties between the Cedar and the Iowa Rivers, and as far west as Webster County; but when I told them that I had bought land they at once lost interest in me.

We camped down by the river among the trees, and it was late before we were free to sleep, on account of the visits we received from movers and land men; but finally the camp-fires died down, the songs ceased, the music of accordions and fiddles was heard no more, and the camp of emigrants became silent.

Virginia bade me good night, and I rolled up in my blankets under the wagon. I began wondering, after the questions which had been asked as to our relations.h.i.+p, just what was to be the end of this strange journey of the big boy and the friendless girl. We were under some queer sort of suspicion--that was clear. Two or three wives among the emigrants had tried to get a word with Virginia in private; and some of the men had grinned and winked at me in a way that I should have been glad to notice according to my old ca.n.a.l habits; but I had sense enough to see that that would never do.

Virginia was now as free from care as if she had been traveling with her brother; and what could I say? What did I want to say? By morning I had made up my mind that I would take her to my farm and care for her there, regardless of consequences--and I admit that I was not clear as to the proprieties. Every one was a stranger to every one else in this country.

Whose business was it anyhow? Doctor Bliven and his companion--I had worked out a pretty clear understanding of their case by this time--were settling in the new West and leaving their past behind them. Who could have anything to say against it if I took this girl with me to my farm, cared for her, protected her; and gave her the home that n.o.body else seemed ready to give?

"Do you ever go to church?" asked Virginia. "It's Sunday."

"Is there preaching here to-day?" I asked.

"Don't you hear the bell?" she inquired.

"Let's go!" said I.