A Daughter of the Middle Border Part 38

Where did that personality come from? Was her soul merely the automatic reaction of a material organism against a material environment? Was her spirit dependent on the life of its little body or could it live on independent of the flesh? Acknowledging the benumbing, hopeless mystery of it all, I continued to live for my children, finding in them my comfort and my justification.

I have never known anything more perfect than some of those mid-August days when on some woodland slope, we gathered the luscious musky fruit of wild blackberry vines and at our camp fire broiled our steak and made our coffee for our evening, open-air meal.

There were no flies, no mosquitoes, no snakes, and the hillsides were abloom with luscious shining berries, berries so ripe they fell into our hands with the slightest touch, and so tender that they melted in our mouths. The wind filled with the odor of yellowing corn, and the smell of nuts and leaves, carried our songs to the mist-filled valley below us, and the children playing on the smooth sward found our world a paradise.

As the cool dusk began to cover the farms below us, we sang "Juanita"

and "Kentucky Home" and told our last stories while the children lay at our feet, silent with rapture as I used to be, in similar circ.u.mstances, forty years before.

And then when the fire had died down and sleepy babies were ready to turn their faces bedward, we drove slowly down the winding lane to the dust-covered bridge, past the small cemetery where mother was sleeping, back to where the broad-roofed old house was waiting for us like some huge, faithful creature yearning to receive us once again beneath its wings. It was commonplace to our neighbors and without special significance to the world, but to my children it was n.o.ble and beautiful and poetic--it was home.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

"Cavanagh" and the "Winds of Destiny"

No doubt the reader has come to the conclusion, at this point, that my habits as an author were not in the least like those of Burroughs or Howells. There has never been anything cloistered about my life, on the contrary my study has always been a point of departure rather than a cell of meditation. From Elm Street, from the Homestead, I frequently darted away to the plains or the Rocky Mountains, keenly aware of the fact that the miner and cattleman, the trapper and the trailer were being pushed into ever remoter valleys by the men of the hoe and the spade, and that the customs and habits which the mountaineer had established were about to pa.s.s, precisely as the blossoming prairies had long since been broken and fenced and made commonplace by the plow.

That the destruction of the eagle and the mountain lion marked another stage of that remorseless march which is called civilization I fully recognized and--in a certain sense--approved, although the raising of billions of hens and pigs admittedly useful, was not to me an inspiring employment of human energy. The long-horn white-faced steer was more picturesque than a "Mooly" cow.

Doubtless a dairyman is a more valuable citizen in the long run than a prospector or miner, but he does not so easily appeal to the imagination. To wade irrigating ditches, hoe in hand, is not incompatible with the n.o.blest manhood, but it is none the less true that men riding the trail or exploring ledges of quartz are more alluring characters to the novelist--at least that was the way I felt in 1909 when I began to shape another book concerning the great drama which was going on in the forests of the High Country.

For more than fifteen years, while trailing among the mountains of Colorado, Montana and Wyoming, I had seen the Forest Service, under Gifford Pinchot's leadership, gradually getting into effect. I had seen the silver miner disappear and the army of forest rangers grow from a handful of hardy cowboys and "lonesome men" into a disciplined force of over two thousand young foresters who represented in some degree the science and the patriotism of their chief.

As in _Hesper_ and _The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_ I had attempted to depict certain types of the red men, miners and ranchers. I now began to study the mountain vedettes from the point of view of the Forest Ranger, a federal officer who represented our newly acquired ideals of Conservation, and whose duty it was to act as custodian of the National Forests. I decided to write a novel which should, in some degree, delineate the heroic side of this warden's solitary life as I had seen it and shared it in a half-dozen forests in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.

In this writing I put myself at the opposite pole from the scenes of _The Shadow World_, a study of psychic phenomena with which I had been deeply involved for a year or more. From dark cabinets in murky seance chambers, from contact with morbid, death-fearing, light-avoiding residents of crowded apartments, I now found myself riding once again ten thousand feet above sea level with men who "took chances" almost every hour of their lives--not from any reckless defiance of death but merely by way of duty, men who lived alone and rode alone, men in whose ears the mountain streams as they fell from the white silences of the snows, uttered songs of exultation. In the presence of these hardy trailers the doings of darkened seance rooms seemed morbid, if not actually insane.

The stark heroism of these forest guards, their loyalty to a far-off chieftain (whom they knew only by name) appealed to me with increasing power. Their problem became my problem. More than this they kindled my admiration, for many of them possessed the cowboy's masterful skill with bronchos, his deft handling of rope and gun and the grace which had made him the most admired figure in our literature,--but in addition to all this, they had something finer, something which the cowboy often lacked. At their best they manifested the loyalty of soldiers. Heedful of the Federal Government, they strove to dispense justice over the lands which had been allotted to their care, and their flags--the Stars and Stripes--as I came upon them fluttering from the peaks of their cabins were to me the guidons of a new and valiant skirmish line. They were of the Border in a new and n.o.ble sense. In short the Federal Ranger was a hero made to my hand.

Not all the soldiers in the service were of this large mold, I admit, but many of those I had met did possess precisely the qualities I have outlined. Ready, cheerful, undaunted in the face of danger, some of them had the capacity for lonely action which rendered them as admirable in their way as any of the long line of frontiersmen who had made the winning of the West an epic of singular hardihood. To fight cold and snow and loneliness during long months, with no one looking on, calls for stern resolution. Such work is directly ant.i.thetic to that of the city fireman who goes to his duties with a crowd looking on. The ranger has only his own conscience as spectator. For many weeks he does not even see his supervisor.

To the writing of _Cavanagh_ I came, therefore, in the spirit of one who had discovered not only a new hero but the reverse side of the squatter's shield. Just as in my studies for _The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_, I had come upon the seamy side of the cattleman's activity, so now I perceived that many of the men who had settled on the national forests were merely adventurers trying to get something for nothing. To filch Uncle Sam's gold, to pasture on his gra.s.s, to dig his coal and seize his water-power--these were the real designs of the claim-holders, while the ranger was in effect a federal policeman, the guardian of a domain whose wealth was the heritage of us all. He was the prophet of a new order, the evangel of a new faith.

The actual composition of _Cavanagh_ began as I was riding the glorious trails around Cloud Peak in the Big Horn Mountains of northern Wyoming in the summer of 1908, one of the most beautiful of all my outings, for while the Big Horns are low and tame compared to the Wind River Range, yet the play of their lights and shadows, their clouds, and their mist was as romantic as anything I had ever encountered.

I recall riding alone down the eastern slope one afternoon, while prodigious rivers of cloud--white as wool and soundless as light--descended the canon on my right and spread above the foothills, forming a level sea out of which the high dark peaks rose like rocky islands. This flood came so swiftly, flowed so marvelously and enveloped my world so silently that the granite ledges appeared to melt beneath my horse's feet.

At times the vapor closed densely round me, shutting out even the rocks of the trail and as I cautiously descended, I almost b.u.mped astonished steers whose heads burst from the mist as if through a covered hoop. The high granite crags on the opposite side of the ravine took on the shapes of ruined castles seated on sloping sh.o.r.es by foaming seas, their smooth lawns reaching to the foam.

At one point, as I came out upon a ledge which overlooked the valley, I perceived my horse's shadow floating on the phantom ocean far below me, a dark equestrian statue encircled with a triple-ringed halo of fire. In all my mountain experiences I had never seen anything so marvelous.

At another time while riding up the trail, I perceived above my head a far-stretching roof of seamless cloud. As I rose, coming closer and closer to it, it seemed a ceiling just above my reach, then my head merged in it. A kind of dry mist surrounded me--and for ten or fifteen minutes I mounted through this luminous, strangely shrouding, all pervasive, mountain cloud. My horse, feeling his way with cautious care, steadily mounted and soon we burst out into the clear sunlight above.

While still the mist curled about my horse's hoofs, I looked across a sh.o.r.eless ocean with only Cloud Peak and its granite crags looming above its surface.

I describe these two spectacular effects out of many others merely to suggest the splendors which inspired me, and which, as I imagined, enriched the daily walk of the forest guard. "To get into my story some part of this glory, my hero must be something of a nature lover--as many rangers are," I argued, and this was true. Before a man will consent to ride the lonely road which leads to his cabin high in the forest, he must not only have a heart which thrills to the wonder of the lonely places, he must be self-sufficing and fearless. I rode with several such men and out of my experiences with them I composed the character of _Ross Cavanagh_.

The actual writing of this novel was begun on my forty-ninth birthday at my desk in the old Homestead, and I started off with enthusiasm notwithstanding the fact that Fuller, who was visiting me at the time, expressed only a tepid interest in my "theme." "Why concern yourself with forestry?" he asked. "No one wants to read about the ranger and his problems. Grapple with Chicago--or New York. That's the only way to do a 'best seller.'"

Henry always amused me but never so much as when tolerating rural joys.

He was the exact opposite of my _Cavanagh_. Everything pastoral wearied him or irritated him. The "yelping" of the robins, the "drone" of the katydids, the "eternal twitter" of the sparrows infuriated him. The "accursed roosters" unseasonably wakened him in the morning, the "silly cackle" of the chickens prevented him from writing. Flowers bored him and the weather was always too cold or too hot, too damp or too dusty.

b.u.t.terflies filled him with pessimistic forebodings of generations of cabbage worms. Moths suggested ruined coat collars--only at night, before our fire, with nature safely and firmly shut out, did he regain his customary and charming humor.

He belonged to the brick pavement, the electric-car line. He did not mind being awakened by the "twitter" of a milk cart. The "yelp" of the ice man, the snort of a six o'clock switch engine and the "cackle" of a laundry wagon formed for him a pleasant morning symphony. The clatter of an elevated train was with him the normal accompaniment of dawn, but the poetry of the pastoral--well, it didn't exist, that's all--except in "maudlin verses of lying sentimentalists." "I'm like George Ade's clerk: I never enjoy my vacation till I get back to the city."

To all such diatribes Zulime and I gave delighted ear. We rejoiced in his comment, for we did not believe a word of it, it was all a part of Henry's delightful perversity.

For six consecutive weeks I bent to the work of writing my novel undisturbed. A peaceful season which I shall long remember, for almost every afternoon, when the weather permitted, we joined the Dudleys and McKees and drove to some lovely spot on the river bank or sought out some half-hidden spring at the far end of a coulee and there, while the children picked nuts or apples and the women read magazines or st.i.tched, George Dudley and I lighted our fire and broiled our steak. Nothing could be simpler, homelier, more wholesome, than this life, and I was able to do nearly half my story before a return to Chicago became necessary.

Practically all of the spring months of 1910 were given to revising and proof-reading _Cavanagh, Forest Ranger_, which had genuinely interested me and which should have been as important in my scheme of delineating the West as _The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_, but it wasn't. It was too controversial, and besides I did not give it time enough. I should have taken another year to it--but I didn't. I permitted myself to be hurried by Duneka, who was (like most publishers) enslaved to a program.

By April it was off my hands.

After the last page of this proof was returned to the printer a sense of weakness, of age, a feeling altogether new to me, led me to say to Fuller, "I shall never do another book. I have finished what I started out to do, I have pictured certain broad phases of the West as I know it, and I'm done. I am out of commission."

Fuller, who had been of this mood for several years, was not content to have me a.s.sume a despairing att.i.tude. "You're just tired, that's all,"

he insisted. "You'll come to a new theme soon."

Movement is swift on the Border. Nothing endures for more than a generation. No family really takes root. Every man is on his way. Cities come and builders go. Unfinished edifices are left behind in order that something new and grander may be started. Some other field is better than the one we are reaping. I do not condemn this, I believe in it. It is America's genius. We are all experimenters, pioneers, progressives.

For years I had in mind to write a book to be called _The Winds of Destiny_, in which I should take up one by one the differing careers of my cla.s.smates and friends who had found our little prairie town too narrow and too poor to afford them fullest action. I never got to it, but from time to time I found some new material for it--material which, alas! I can not now find imagination enough to vitalize.

For example: One morning during a stay in New York, I found among my letters a note from an almost forgotten school-fellow, inviting me to dine with himself and wife at the Ritzdorf. The name on this note-head developed on the negative plate of my memory, the picture of two shock-headed, slender-legged schoolboys pacing solemnly, regularly, morning after morning, into the campus of the Seminary in Osage, Iowa.

Their arms were always laden with books, their big brows bulging with thought. Invariably marching side by side like a faithful team of horses, turning aside neither to fight nor to play, they provoked laughter.

They were the sons of a farmer (a man of small means, who lived a mile or two from the village), and although they were familiar figures in the school they could hardly be said to be a part of it. Their poverty, their homespun trousers which were usually too short and too tight, and their poverty together with a natural shyness, kept them out of school affairs, although they were always at the top of their cla.s.ses. To me they were worthy--though a bit grotesque.

My letter of invitation was from the younger of these boys, and having accepted his invitation, I was a bit in doubt as to what I should wear, for he had written, "with Mrs. Roberts and myself," and something in the tone of the letter had decided me to play safe. I put on evening dress, and it was well I did, for Ben met me in irreproachable dinner coat and presented his wife, a handsome and beautifully gowned woman, quite in the manner of a city-bred host. No one looking at us as we sat at our flower-decked table would have imagined that he or I had ever been plow-boys of the Middle Border.

As the dinner went on I lost all my conviction that the preternaturally solemn, heavy-footed lad of 1880 was in any way connected with this rich middle-aged inventor, but then he was probably having the same difficulty relating me with the beardless senior of 1881.

On the surface our dinner was a pleasant and rather conventional meeting, and yet the more it is dwelt upon the more significant it becomes. Starting from almost the same point, with somewhat similar handicaps, we two had "arrived," though at widely separated goals. Each of our courses was characteristically American, and each was in demonstration--for the millionth time--of the magic power of the open lands.

In the free air of the Middle Border, this man's genius for inventing had full power of expansion, and in result he was in possession of a fortune, whilst I, in my literary way, had won what my kindest critics called success--by another kind of service. My position though less secure and far less remunerative, was none the less honorable--that I shall insist on saying even though I must admit that in the eyes of my Seminary cla.s.smates the inventor made the handsomer showing. As the owner of a patent bringing in many thousands of dollars per year in royalty he had certain very definite claims to respect which I lacked.

My home in contrast with his would have seemed very humble. Measured by material things, his imagination had proved enormously more potent than mine.

This meeting not only led me to re-value my own achievement, it brought up to me with peculiar pathos the career of another cla.s.smate, my comrade Burton Babc.o.c.k, whom I (in 1898) had left standing on the bank of the Stickeen River in Alaska. He, too, was characteristically American. He had carried out his plan. After leading his pack train across the divide to the upper waters of the Yukon, he had built a raft and floated down the Hotalinqua. He had been frozen in, and had spent the winter in a windowless hut in the deep snow of an arctic landscape--and when, after incredible hardships, he had reached the Klondike, he had found himself almost as far from a gold claim as ever.

All the mines were monopolized.

For the next four years he had alternately worked for wages and prospected for himself. One year he had "mushed" in the Copper River Country and later in the Tanana. In these explorations he went alone, and once he sledged far within the Arctic circle with only two dogs to keep him company. He became one of the most daring and persistent prospectors and yet he had always been just a little too late. He had never shared in any of the big strikes.

At last, after five years of this disheartening life, he had succeeded in breaking away from the fatal lure of the North. Returning to Anacortes on Puget Sound, he had taken up the threads of his life at the point where he had dropped them, to meet me, at Ashcroft, in '98, and on my little daughter's wrist was a bracelet, a string of nuggets, which represented all that he had been able to win from the desolate North.

He left his youth in Alaska. He was an old and broken man when he landed in Seattle, a silent, gray and introspective philosopher. Seeking out the cabin he had built on the Skagit River, he resumed his residence there, solitary and somber. In winter he cooked for a nearby lumber camp, in summer he served as watchman for an electric power company, patient, faithful, brooding over his books, austere, taciturn, mystical.

He read much on occult subjects, and corresponded ceaselessly with a certain school of esoteric philosophy, reaching at last a lofty serenity which approached content. He wrote me that the men of the lumber camp spoke of him as a "queer old cuss," but that disturbed him not at all. To me, however, he uttered his mind freely, and as I followed him thus, in imagination, remembering him as he once was, my graceful companion on the bright Iowa prairie, my sense of something futile in his whole life was deepened into pain.