The Price of the Prairie Part 18

With all the rough and tumble years of a boyhood and youth on the frontier, the West has been good to me, and I look back along the way glad that mine was the pioneer's time, and that the experiences of those early days welded into my building and being something of their simplicity, and strength, and capacity for enjoyment. But of all the seasons along the way of these sixty years, of all the successes and pleasures, I remember best and treasure most that glorious summer after my return from the East. My father was on the Judge's bench now and his legal interests and property interests were growing. I began the study of law under him at once, and my duties were many, for he put responsibility on me from the first. But I was in the very heyday of life, and had no wish ungratified.

"Phil, I want you to go up the river and take a look at two quarters of Section 29, range 14, this afternoon. It lies just this side of the big cottonwood," my father said to me one June day.

"Make a special note of the land, and its natural appurtenances. I want the information at once, or you needn't go out on such a hot day. It's like a furnace in the courthouse. It may be cooler out that way." He fanned his face with his straw hat, and the light breeze coming up the valley lifted the damp hair about his temples.

"There's a bridle path over the bluff a mile or so out, where you can ride a horse down and go up the river in the bottom. It's a much shorter way, but you'd better go out the Red Range road and turn north at the third draw well on to the divide. It gets pretty steep near the river, so you have to keep to the west and turn square at the draw. If it wasn't so warm you might go on to Red Range for some depositions for me.

But never mind, Dave Mead is going up there Monday, anyhow. Will you ride the pony?"

"No, I'll go out in the buggy."

"And take some girl along? Well, don't forget your errand. Be sure to note the lay of the land. There's no building, I believe, but a little stone cabin and it's been empty for years; but you can see. Be sure to examine everything in that cabin carefully. Stop at the courthouse as you go out, and get the surveyor's map and some other directions."

It was a hot summer day, with that thin, dry burning in the air that the light Kansas zephyr fanned back in little rippling waves. My horses were of the Indian pony breed, able to go in heat or cold. Most enduring and least handsome of the whole horse family, with temper ranging from moderately vicious to supremely devilish, is this Indian pony of the Plains.

Marjie was in the buggy beside me when I stopped at the courthouse for instructions. Lettie Conlow was pa.s.sing and came to the buggy's side.

"Where are you going, Marjie?" she asked. There was a sullen minor tone in her voice.

"With Phil, out somewhere. Where is it you are going, Phil?"

I was tying the ponies. They never learned how to stand unanch.o.r.ed a minute.

"Out north on the Red Range prairie to buy a couple of quarters," I replied carelessly and ran up the courthouse steps.

"Well, well, well," Cam Gentry roared as he ambled up to the buggy.

Cam's voice was loud in proportion as his range of vision was short.

"You two gettin' ready to elope? An' he's goin' to git his dad to back him up gettin' a farm. Now, Marjie, why'd you run off? Let us see the performance an' hear Dr. Hemingway say the words in the Presbyterian Church. Or maybe you're goin' to hunt up Dodd. He went toward Santy Fee when he put out of here after the War."

Cam could be heard in every corner of the public square. I was at the open window of my father's office. Looking out, I saw Lettie staring angrily at Cam, who couldn't see her face. She had never seemed less attractive to me. She had a flashy coloring, and she made the most of ornaments. Some people called her good-looking. Beside Marjie, she was as the wild yoncopin to the calla lily. Marjie knew how to dress.

To-day, shaded by the buggy-top, in her dainty light blue lawn, with the soft pink of her cheeks and her clear white brow and throat, she was a most delicious thing to look upon in that hot summer street. Poor Lettie suffered by contrast. Her cheeks were blazing, and her hair, wet with perspiration, was adorned with a bow of bright purple ribbon tied b.u.t.terfly-fashion, and fastened on with a pin set with flashing brilliants.

"Oh, Uncle Cam," Marjie cried, blushing like the pink rambler roses climbing the tavern veranda, "Phil's just going out to look at some land for his father. It's up the river somewhere and I'm going to hold the ponies while he looks."

"Well, he'd ort to have somebody holdin' 'em fur him. I'll bet ye I'd want a hostler if I had the lookin' to do. Land's a mighty small thing an' hard to look at, sometimes; 'specially when a feller's head's in the clouds an' he's walkin' on air. Goin' northwest? Look out, they's a ha'nted house up there. But, by hen, I'd never see a ha'nt long's I had somethin' better to look at."

I saw Lettie turn quickly and disappear around the corner. My father was busy, so I sat in the office window and whistled and waited, watching the ponies switch lazily at the flies.

When we were clear of town, and the open plain swept by the summer breezes gave freedom from the heat, Marjie asked:

"Where is Lettie Conlow going on such a hot afternoon?"

"Nowhere, is she? She was talking to you at the courthouse."

"But she rushed away while Uncle Cam was joking, and I saw her cross the alley back of the courthouse on Tell's pony, and in a minute she was just flying up toward Cliff Street. She doesn't ride very well. I thought she was afraid of that pony. But she was making it go sailing out toward the bluff above town."

"Well, let her go, Marjie. She always wears on my nerves."

"Phil, she likes you, I know. Everybody knows."

"Well, I know and everybody knows that I never give her reason to. I wish she would listen to Tell. I thought when I first came home they were engaged."

"Before he went up to Wyandotte to work they were--he said so, anyhow."

Then we forgot Lettie. She wasn't necessary to us that day, for there were only two in our world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Baronet, I think we are marching straight into h.e.l.l's jaws"]

Out on the prairie trail a mile or more is the point where the bridle path leading to the river turns northwest, and pa.s.sing over a sidling narrow way down the bluff, it follows the bottom lands upstream. As we pa.s.sed this point we did not notice Tell Mapleson's black pony just making the top from the sidling bluff way, nor how quickly its rider wheeled and headed back again down beyond sight of the level prairie road. We had forgotten Lettie Conlow and everybody else.

The draw was the same old verdant ripple in the surface of the Plains.

The gra.s.ses were fresh and green. Toward the river the cottonwoods were making a cool, shady way, delightfully refreshing in this summer sunshine.

We did not hurry, for the draw was full of happy memories for us.

"I'll corral these bronchos up under the big cottonwood, and we'll explore appurtenances down by the river later," I said. "Father says every foot of the half-section ought to be viewed from that tree, except what's in the little clump about the cabin."

We drove up to the open prairie again and let the horses rest in the shade of this huge pioneer tree of the Plains. How it had escaped the prairie fires through its years of st.u.r.dy growth is a marvel, for it commanded the highest point of the whole divide. Its shade was delicious after the glare of the trail.

For once the ponies seemed willing to stand quiet, and Marjie and I looked long at the magnificent stretch of sky and earth. There were a few white clouds overhead, deepening to a dull gray in the southwest.

All the sunny land was swathed in the midsummer yellow green, darkening in verdure along the river and creeks, and in the deepest draws. Even as we rested there the clouds rolled over the horizon's edge, piling higher and higher, till they hid the afternoon sun, and the world was cool and gray. Then down the land sped a summer shower; and the sweet damp odor of its refreshing the south wind bore to us, who saw it all. Sheet after sheet of glittering raindrops, wind-driven, swept across the prairie, and the cool green and the silvery mist made a scene a master could joy to copy.

I didn't forget my errand, but it was not until the afternoon was growing late that we left the higher ground and drove down the shady draw toward the river. The Neosho is a picture here, with still expanses that mirror the trees along its banks, and stony shallows where the water, even in midsummer, prattles merrily in the sunshine, as it hurries toward the deep stillnesses.

We sat down in a cool, gra.s.sy s.p.a.ce with the river before us, and the green trees shading the little stone cabin beyond us, while down the draw the vista of still sunlit plains was like a dream of beauty.

"Marjie,"--I took her hand in mine--"since you were a little girl I have known you. Of all the girls here I have known you longest. In the two years I was East I met many young ladies, both in school and at Rockport. There were some charming young folks. One of them, Rachel Melrose, was very pretty and very wealthy. Her mother made considerable fuss over me, and I believe the daughter liked me a little; for she--but never mind; maybe it was all my vanity. But, Marjie, there has never been but one girl for me in all this world; there will never be but one.

If Jean Pahusca had carried you off--Oh, G.o.d in Heaven! Marjie, I wonder how my father lived through the days after my mother lost her life. Men do, I know."

I was toying with her hand. It was soft and beautifully formed, although she knew the work of our Springvale households.

"Marjie," my voice was full of tenderness, "you are dear to me as my mother was to my father. I loved you as my little playmate; I was fond of you as my girl when I was first beginning to care for a girl as boys will; as my sweetheart, when the liking grew to something more. And now all the love a man can give, I give to you."

I rose up before her. They call me vigorous and well built to-day. I was in my young manhood's prime then. I looked down at her, young and dainty, with the sweet grace of womanhood adorning her like a garment.

She stood up beside me and lifted her fair face to mine. There was a bloom on her cheeks and her brown eyes were full of peace. I opened my arms to her and she nestled in them and rested her cheek against my shoulder.

"Marjie," I said gently, "will you kiss me and tell me that you love me?"

Her arms were about my neck a moment. Sometimes I can feel them there now. All shy and sweet she lifted her lips to mine.

"I do love you, Phil," she murmured, and then of her own will, just once, she kissed me.

"It is vouchsafed sometimes to know a bit of heaven here on earth," Le Claire had said to me when he talked of O'mie's father.

It came to me that day; the cool, green valley by the river, the vine-covered old stone cabin, the sunlit draw opening to a limitless world of summer peace and beauty, and Marjie with me, while both of us were young and we loved each other.

The lengthening shadows warned me at last.

"Well, I must finish up this investigation business of Judge Baronet's,"