The Price of the Prairie Part 30

"I don't care for what I don't know, Lettie," she replied.

"Nor what you do, neither. I wouldn't if I was you. He ain't worth it; and it gives better folks a chance for what they want, anyhow."

Lettie's low brows and cunning black eyes were unendurable to the girl she was tormenting.

"Well, I don't know what you are talking about," and Marjie would have pa.s.sed on, but Lettie intercepted her.

"You know that rich Melrose girl's gone back to Topeka?"

"Oh, yes," Marjie spoke indifferently; "she went last evening, I was told."

"Well, this morning Phil Baronet went after her, left Springvale for good and all. O'mie says so, and he knows all Phil knows. Marjie, she's rich; and Phil won't marry n.o.body but a rich girl. You know you ain't got what you had when your pa was alive."

Yes, Marjie knew that.

"Well he's gone anyhow, and I don't care."

"Why should you care?" Marjie could not help the retort. She was stung to the quick in every nerve. Lettie's face blazed with anger.

"Or you?" she stormed. "He was with me last. I can prove it, and a lot more things you'd never want to hear. But you'll never be his girl again."

Marjie turned toward the cliff just as O'mie appeared through the bushes and stepped behind Lettie.

"Oh, good-evening, lovely ladies; delighted to meet you," he hailed them.

Marjie smiled at him, but Lettie gave a sudden start.

"Oh, O'mie, what are you forever tagging me for?" She spoke angrily and without another word to Marjie she hurried down the hill.

"I tag!" O'mie grinned. "I'd as soon tag Satan, only I've just got to do it." But his face changed when he turned to Marjie. "Little girl, I overheard the lady. Lovely spirit that! I just can't help dancin'

attendance on it. But, Marjie, I've come up here, knowin' Phil had gone and wasn't in my way, 'cause I wanted to show you somethin'. Yes, he's gone. Left early this mornin'. Never mind that, right now."

He led the way through the bushes and they sat down together. I cannot say what Marjie thought as she looked out on the landscape I had watched in loneliness the night before. It was O'mie, and not his companion, who told me long afterwards of this evening.

"I thought you were away on a ten days' vacation, O'mie. Dever said you were." She could not bear the silence.

"I'm on a tin days' vacation, but I'm not away, Marjie, darlin'," O'mie replied.

"Oh, O'mie, don't joke. I can't stand it to-night." Her face was white and her eyes were full of pain.

"Indade, I'm not jokin'. I came up here to show you somethin' and to tell you somethin'."

He took an old note book from his pocket and opened it to where a few brown blossoms lay flatly pressed between the leaves.

"Thim's not pretty now, Marjie, but the day I got 'em they was dainty an' pink as the dainty pink-cheeked girl whose brown curls they was wreathed about. These are the flowers Phil Baronet put on your hair out in the West Draw by the big cottonwood one April evenin' durin' the war; the flowers Jean Pahusca kissed an' throwed away. But I saved 'em because I love you, Marjie."

She shivered and bent her head.

"Oh, not like thim two ornery tramps who had these blossoms 'fore I got 'em, but like I'd love a sister, if I had one; like Father Le Claire loves me. D'ye see?"

"You are a dear, good brother, O'mie," Marjie murmured, without lifting her head.

"Oh, yis, I'm all av that an' more. Marjie, I'm goin' to kape these flowers till--well, now, Marjie, shall I tell you whin?"

"Yes, O'mie," Marjie said faintly.

"Well, till I see the pretty white veil lifted fur friends to kiss the bride an' I catch the scent av orange blossoms in thim soft little waves." He put his hand gently on her bowed head. "I'll get to do it, too," he went on, "not right away, but not fur off, nather; an' it won't be a little man, ner a rid-headed Irishman, ner a sharp-nosed school-teacher; but--Heaven bless an' kape him to-night!--it'll be a big, broad-shouldered, handsome rascal, whose heart has niver changed an' niver can change toward you, little sister, 'cause he's his father's own son--lovin', constant, white an' clane through an' through.

Be patient. It's goin' to be all right for you two." He closed the book and put it back in its place. "But I mustn't stay here. I've got to tag Lettie some more. Her an' some others. That's what my tin days'

vacation's fur, mostly." And O'mie leaped through the bushes and was gone.

The twilight was deepening when Marjie at last roused herself.

"I'll go down and see if he did get my letter," she murmured, taking her way down the rough stair. There was no letter in the crevice where she had placed it securely two nights before. Lifting her face upward she clasped her hands in sorrow.

"He took it away, but he did not come to me. He knows I love him." Then remembering herself, "I would not let him speak. But he said he hated 'Rockport.' Oh, what can it all mean? How could he be so good to me and then deceive me so? Shall I believe Lettie, or O'mie?"

Kneeling there in the deep shadows of the cliff-side with the Neosho gurgling darkly below her, and the long shafts of pink radiance from the hidden sunset illumining the sky above her, Marjie prayed for strength to bear her burden, for courage to meet whatever must come to her, and for the a.s.surance of divine Love although now her lover, as well as her father, was lost to her. The simple pleading cry of a grief-stricken heart it was. Heaven heard that prayer, and Marjie went down the hill with womanly grace and courage and faith to face whatever must befall her in the new life opening before her.

In the days that followed my little girl was more than ever the idol of Springvale. Her sweet, sunny nature now had a new beauty. Her sorrow she hid away so completely there were few who guessed what her thoughts were. Lettie Conlow was not deceived, for jealousy has sharp eyes. O'mie understood, for O'mie had carried a sad, hungry heart underneath his happy-go-lucky carelessness all the years of his life. Aunt Candace was a woman who had overcome a grief of her own, and had been cheery and bright down the years. She knew the mark of conquest in the face. And lastly, my father, through his innate power to read human nature, watched Marjie as if she were his own child. Quietly, too, so quietly that n.o.body noticed it, he became a guardian over her. Where she went and what she did he knew as well as Jean Pahusca, watching in the lilac clump, long ago. For fourteen years he had come and gone to our house on Cliff Street up and down the gentler slope two blocks to the west of Whately's. n.o.body knew, until it had become habitual, when he changed his daily walk homeward up the steeper climb that led him by Marjie's house farther down the street. n.o.body realized, until it was too common for comment, how much a part of all the social life of Springvale my father had become. He had come to Kansas a widower, but gossip long ago gave up trying to do anything with him. And now, as always, he was a welcome factor everywhere, a genial, courteous gentleman, whose dignity of character matched his stern uprightness and courage in civic matters.

Among all the things for which I bless his memory, not the least of them was this strong, unostentatious guardianship of a girl when her need for protection was greatest, as that Winter that followed proved.

I knew nothing of all this then. I only knew my loved one had turned against me. Of course I knew that Rachel was the cause, but I could not understand why Marjie would listen to no explanation, why she should turn completely from me when I had told her everything in the letter I wrote the night of the party at Anderson's. And now I was many miles from Springvale, and the very thought of the past was like a knife-thrust. All my future now looked to the Westward. I longed for action, for the opportunity to do something, and they came swiftly, the opportunity and the action.

CHAPTER XVI

BEGINNING AGAIN

It matters not what fruit the hand may gather, If G.o.d approves, and says, "This is the best."

It matters not how far the feet may wander, If He says, "Go, and leave to Me the rest."

--ALBERT MACY.

I stood in the August twilight by the railway station in the little frontier town of Salina, where the Union Pacific train had abandoned me to my fate. Turning toward the unmapped, limitless Northwest, I suddenly realized that I was at the edge of the earth now. Behind me were civilization and safety. Beyond me was only a waste of gray nothingness.

Yet this was the world I had come hither to conquer. Here were the s.p.a.ces wherein I should find peace. I set my face with grim determination to work now, out of the thing before me, a purpose that controlled me.

Morton's claim was a far day's journey up the Saline Valley. It would be nearly a week before I could find a man to drive me thither; so I secured careful directions, and the next morning I left the town on foot and alone. I did not mind the labor of it. I was as vigorous as a young giant, fear of personal peril I had never known, and the love of adventure was singing its siren's song to me. I was clad in the strong, coa.r.s.e garments, suited to the Plains. I was armed with two heavy revolvers and a small pistol. Hidden inside of my belt as a last defence was the short, sharp knife bearing Jean Le Claire's name in script lettering.

I shall never forget the moment when a low bluff beyond a bend in the Saline River shut off the distant town from my view and I stood utterly alone in a wide, silent world, left just as G.o.d had made it. Humility and uplift mingle in the soul in such a time and place. One question ran back and forth across my mind: What conquering power can ever bring the warmth of glad welcome to the still, hostile, impenetrable beauty of these boundless plains?

"The air is full of spirits out here," I said to myself. "There is no living thing in sight, and yet the land seems inhabited, just as that old haunted cabin down on the Neosho seemed last June."

And then with the thought of that June day Memory began to play her tricks on me and I cried out, "Oh, perdition take that stone cabin and the whole Neosho Valley if that will make me forget it all!"

I strode forward along the silent, sunshiny way, with a thousand things on my mind's surface and only one thought in its inner deeps. The sun swung up the sky, and the thin August air even in its heat was light and invigorating. The river banks were low and soft where the stream cuts through the alluvial soil a channel many feet below the level of the Plains. The day was long, but full of interest to me, who took its sight as a child takes a new picture-book, albeit a certain sense of peril lurked in the shadowing corners of my thought.