The Price of the Prairie Part 42

"Father, Tillhurst says he has heard that Amos Judson and Marjie are engaged. Are they?" I put the question squarely. My father was stripping the gold leaves one by one off a locust spray.

"Yes, I have heard it, too," he replied, and to save my life I could not have judged by word or manner whether he cared one whit or not. He was studying me, if toying with a locust branch and whistling softly and gazing off at Burnett's Mound are marks of study. He had nothing of himself to reveal. "I have heard it several times," he went on. "Judson has made the announcement quietly, but generally."

He threw away the locust branch, shook down his cuff and settled it in his sleeve, lifted his hat from his forehead and reset it on his head, and then added as a final conclusion, "I don't believe it."

He had always managed me most skilfully when he wanted to find out anything; and when the time came that I began in turn to manage him, being of his own blood, the game was interesting. But before I knew it, we had drifted far away from the subject, and I had no opportunity to come back to it. My father had found out all he wanted to know.

"Phil, I must leave on the train for Kansas City this evening," he said as we rose to go back to town. "I'm to meet Morton there, and we may go on East together. He will have the best surgeons look after that wound of his, Governor Crawford tells me."

Then laying his hand affectionately on my shoulder he said, "I congratulate you on the result of your first campaign. I had hoped it would be your last; but you are a man, and must choose for yourself.

Yet, if you mean to give yourself to your State now, if you choose a man's work, do it like a man, not like a schoolboy on a picnic excursion. The history of Kansas is made as much by the privates down in the ranks as by the men whose names and faces adorn its record. You are making that record now. Make it strong and clean. Let the glory side go, only do your part well. When you have finished this six months and are mustered out, I want you to come home at once. There are some business matters and family matters demanding it. But I must go to Kansas City, and from there to New York on important business. And since n.o.body has a lease on life, I may as well say now that if you get back and I'm not there, O'mie left his will with me before he went away."

"His will? Now what had he to leave? And who is his beneficiary?"

"That's all in the will," my father said, smiling, "but it is a matter that must not be overlooked. In the nature of things the boy will go before I do. He's marked, I take it; never has gotten over the hardships of his earliest years and that fever in '63. Le Claire came back to see him and me in September."

"He did? Where did he come from?"

My father looked at me quickly. "Why do you ask?" he queried.

"I'll tell you when we have more time. Just now I'm engaged to fight the Cheyennes, the Arapahoes, the Comanches, and the Kiowas, in which last tribe my friend Jean Pahusca has pack right. He was in that gang of devils that fought us out on the Arickaree."

For once I thought I knew more than my father, but he replied quietly, "Yes, I knew he was there. His tether may be long, but its limit will be reached some day."

"Who told you he was there, father?" I asked.

"Le Claire said so," he answered.

"Where was he at that time?" I was getting excited now.

"He spent the week in the little stone cabin out by the big cottonwood.

Took cold and had to go to St. Louis to a hospital for a week or two."

"He was in the haunted cabin the third week in September," I repeated slowly; "then I don't know black from white any more."

My father smiled at me. "They call that being 'locoed' out on the Plains, don't they?" he said with a twinkle in his eye. "You have a delusion mixed up in your gray matter somewhere. One thing more," he added as an unimportant afterthought, "I see Miss Melrose is still in Topeka."

"Yes," I answered.

"And Tillhurst, too," he went on. "Well, there has been quite a little story going around Conlow's shop and the post-office and Fingal's Creek and other social centres about you two; and now when Tillhurst gets back (he'll never make the cavalry), he's square, but a little vain and thin-skinned, and he may add something of color and interest to the story. Let it go. Just now it may be better so."

I thought his words were indefinite, for one whose purposes were always definite, and in the wisdom of my youth I wondered whether he really wanted me to follow Rachel's leading, or whether he was, after all, inclined to believe Judson's a.s.sertion about his engagement, and family pride had a little part to play with him. It was unlike John Baronet to stoop to a thing like that.

"Father," I said, "I'm going away, too. I may never come back, and for my own sake I want to a.s.sure you of one thing: no matter what Tillhurst may say, if Rachel Melrose were ten times more handsome, if she had in her own name a fortune such as I can never hope to acquire myself, she would mean nothing to me. I care nothing for the stories now"--a hopelessness would come into my voice--"but I do not care for her either. I never did, and I never could."

My eyes were away on Burnett's Mound, and the sweet remembrance of Marjie's last affectionate look made a blur before them. We stood in silence for some time.

"Phil," said John Baronet in a deep, fervent tone, "I have a matter I meant to take up later, but this is a good time. Let the young folks go now. This is a family matter. Years ago a friend of the older Baronets died in the East leaving some property that should sooner or later come to me to keep in trust for you. This time was to be at the death of the man and his wife who had the property for their lifetime. Philip, you have been accused by the Conlow-Judson crowd of wanting a rich wife. I also am called grasping by Tell Mapleson's cla.s.s. And," he smiled a little, "indeed, Iago's advice to Roderigo, 'Put money in thy purse,'

was sound philosophy if the putting be honestly done. But this little property in the East that should come to you is in the hands of a man who is now ill, probably in his last sickness. He has one child that will have nothing else left to her. Shall we take this money at her father's death?"

"Why, father, no. I don't want it. Do you want it?"

I knew him too well to ask the question. Had I not seen the unselfish, kindly, generous spirit that had marked all his business career?

Springvale never called him grasping, save as his prosperity grated on men of Mapleson's type.

"Will you sign a relinquishment to your claim, and trust to me that it is the best for us to do?" he asked.

"Just as soon as we get to an inkstand," I answered. Nor did I ever hold that such a relinquishment is anything but Christian opportunity.

That evening I said good-bye to my father, and when I saw him again it was after I had gone through the greatest crisis of these sixty years.

On the same train that bore my father to the East were his friend Morton and his political and professional antagonist, Tell Mapleson. The next day I enlisted in Troop A of the Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry, and was quartered temporarily in the State House, north of Fifth Street, on Kansas Avenue. Tillhurst was not admitted to the regiment, as my father had predicted. Neither was Jim Conlow, who had come up to Topeka for that purpose. Good-natured, shallow-pated "Possum," no matter where he found work to do, he sooner or later drifted back to Springvale to his father's forge. He did not realize that no Conlow of the Missouri breed ought ever to try anything above a horse's hoofs, in cavalry matters.

The Lord made some men to shoe horses, and some to ride them. The Conlows weren't riders, and Jim's line was turned again to his father's smithy.

Tillhurst took his failure the more grievously that Rachel, who had been most gracious to him at first, transferred her attentions to me. And I, being only a man and built of common clay, with my lifetime hope destroyed, gave him good reason to believe in my superior influence with the beautiful Ma.s.sachusetts girl. I had a game to play with Rachel, for Topeka was full of pretty girls, and I made the most of my time. I knew somewhat of the gayety the Winter on the Plains was about to offer. As long as I could I held to the pleasures of the civilized homes and sheltered lives. And with all and all, one sweet girl-face, enshrined in my heart's holy of holies, held me back from idle deception and turned me from temptation.

CHAPTER XXII

THE NINETEENTH KANSAS CAVALRY

"The regiments of Kansas have glorified our State on a hundred battle fields, but none served her more faithfully, or endured more in her cause than the Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry."

--HORACE L. MOORE.

When Camp Crawford was opened, northeast of town, between the Kaw River and the Shunganunga Creek, I went into training for regular cavalry service, thinking less of pretty girls and more of good horses with the pa.s.sing days. I had plenty of material for both themes. Not only were there handsome young ladies in the capital city, but this call for military supplies had brought in superb cavalry mounts. Every day the camp increased its borders. The first to find places were the men of the Eighteenth Kansas Regiment, veterans of the exalted order of the wardens of civilization. Endurance was their mark of distinction, and Loyalty their watchword. It was the grief of this regiment, and especially of the men directly under his leadership, that Captain Henry Lindsey was not made a Major for the Nineteenth. No more capable or more popular officer than Lindsey ever followed an Indian trail across the Plains.

It was from the veterans of this Eighteenth Cavalry, men whom Lindsey had led, that we younger soldiers learned our best lessons in the months that followed. Those were my years of hero-worship. I had gone into this service with an ideal, and the influence of such men as Morton and Forsyth, the skill of Grover, and the daring of Donovan and Stillwell were an inspiration to me. And now my captain was the same Pliley, who with Donovan had made that hundred-mile dash to Fort Wallace to start a force to the rescue of our beleaguered few in that island citadel of sand.

The men who made up Pliley's troop were, for the most part, older than myself, and they are coming now to the venerable years; but deep in the heart of each surviving soldier of that company is admiration and affection for the fearless, adroit, resourceful Captain, the modest, generous-hearted soldier.

On the last evening of our stay in Topeka there was a gay gathering of young people, where, as usual, the soldier boys were the lions. Bra.s.s b.u.t.tons bearing the American Eagle and the magic inscription "U. S."

have ever their social sway.

Rachel had been a.s.signed to my care by the powers that were. After Tillhurst's departure I had found my companions mainly elsewhere, and I would have chosen elsewhere on this night had I done the choosing. On the way to her aunt's home Rachel was more charming than I had ever found her before. It was still early, and we strolled leisurely on our way and talked of many things. At the gate she suddenly exclaimed:

"Philip, you leave to-morrow. Maybe I shall never see you again; but I'm not going to think that." Her voice was sweet, and her manner sincere.

"May I ask you one favor?"

"Yes, a dozen," I said, rashly.

"Let's take one more walk out to our locust tree."

"Oh, blame the locust tree! What did it ever grow for?" That was my thought but I a.s.sented with a show of pleasure, as conventionality demands. It was a balmy night in early November, not uncommon in this glorious climate. The moon was one quarter large, and the dim light was pleasant. Many young people were abroad that evening. When we reached the swell where the tree threw its lacy shadows on its fallen yellow leaves, my companion grew silent.

"Cheer up, Rachel," I said. "We'll soon be gone and you'll be free from the soldier nuisance. And d.i.c.k Tillhurst is sure to run up here again soon. Besides, you have all Ma.s.sachusetts waiting to be conquered."