The Reclaimers Part 10

As he left the house his sister heard him whistling the air to the old song, "I'll paddle my own canoe."

Evidently the fair Philadelphian was still on his mind.

"I wish," he said to himself, as he cleared the north limits of the New Eden settlement and struck out toward the upper Sage Brush country--"I wish to goodness I had pressed Laura to tell me more about what that infernal Big Dipper said to her Sat.u.r.day. I'll get that creature yet. I believe she knows that as well as I do. I wish, too, I was sure things would just stay put until I get back."

Half an hour after York had left town Jerry Swaim, dressed for a drive, appeared at the door of Ponk's garage.

"Have you a good little runabout that I could hire this morning? I want to go out into the country," she said to the proprietor.

"Why, yes, Miss Swaim, but I 'ain't got no shofer this morning. York Macpherson, he took my last man and soared up the country, and they won't be back for a couple of days. I'm sorry, but could you wait till, say, about a-Thursday, or mebby a-Friday?"

Ponk's cheerful grin always threatened to eclipse his eyes, but this morning there was something anxious back of his cheerfulness. Nature had made him in a joking mood, round eyed, round headed, round bodied, talkative, and pompous in an inverse ratio to his size. But there was something always good and reliable about Ponk, and with all his superficiality, too, there was a real depth to the man, and a keener insight than anybody in New Eden, except York Macpherson, ever gave him credit for having.

"I'm sorry I've got no shofer. There was a run on the livery business this morning for some reason. That's why I'm office-boy here now, 'stead of runnin' the office next door," Ponk explained, as blandly and conclusively as possible.

"I don't want a chauffeur at all. I drive myself," Jerry declared.

"You say you do?" Ponk stared at her little hands in their close-fitting white gauntlets.

"Now I'd never thought that. Yes," weakly, "I've got a dandy car for them that can use it, which is mostly me. It's the little gray gadabout we come up from the station in the other evening. There ain't another one like it this side of the Mississippi River--S'liny, Kansas, anyhow.

You see, I have to be awful particular. I don't want it smashed against a stone wall or run off of some bridge."

"I've never done that with a car yet. And I used to drive our big eight-cylinder machine over all kinds of Pennsylvania roads."

The blue eyes were full of pathos as the memory of her home and all its luxuries swept over Jerry. And Ponk understood.

"We don't have no stone walls out here, and there ain't no bridges, either, except across the Sage Brush in a few places, because there ain't never water enough out here to bridge over. Yes, you may take the gadabout. I just know you'll be careful. That little car's just like a colt, and noways bridle-wise under a woman's hand."

"Thank you. I'll take no risks."

When Jerry was seated in the shining gray car, with her hand on the wheel, she turned to Mr. Ponk.

"By the way, do you know who owns any of the claims, as you call them, in this valley?" she asked. "I was going to speak to Mr. Macpherson, but you say he has gone out of town."

"Yes'm." Ponk fairly swelled with importance. "I know every claim, and who owns it, from the hills up yonder clear to the mouth of that stream.

My hotel an' livery business together keeps me as well posted as the Macpherson Mortgage Company that holds a mortgage on most of them."

"Can you tell me where to find the one belonging to the estate of the late Jeremiah Swaim, of Philadelphia?" Jerry asked, in a low voice.

The short little man beside the car looked away in pity and surprise as he said:

"Yes'm, I can. You follow this street south and keep on till you come to where the Sage Brush makes a sharp bend to the east, right at a ranch-house. From there you leave the trail (we still call that down-stream road 'the trail') and strike across to three big cottonwood-trees on a kind of a knoll, considerable distance away. You can't miss 'em, for you can see 'em for miles. And then"--Ponk hesitated as if trying to remember--"seems to me you turn, bias'n' like, southeast a bit, and head for a little bunch of low oaks. From there you run your eye around and figger how many acres you can see. An', it's all Jeremiah Swaim's, or his heirs an' a.s.signees. But, say, _you_ ain't any kin to the late Mr. Swaim, who never seen that land of hisn, I reckon? I hadn't thought about your names being the same. Odd I didn't."

There was something wistful in the query which Jerry set down merely as plebeian curiosity, but she answered, courteously:

"Yes, he was my father. The land belongs to me."

"Say, hadn't you better wait and let York Macpherson soar down with you?" Ponk suggested. "It might be better, after all, mebby, not to go alone to spy out the land, even if you can drive yourself. Seems to me York said he'd be goin' down that way the last of the week. I do wish you'd wait for York to go with you first."

"I want to go alone," Jerry replied, and with a deft hand she made the difficult curve to the street, leaving the proprietor of the garage staring after her.

"Well, by heck! she can run a car anyhow!" he exclaimed, as he watched her speeding away. "Smart as her dad, I reckon. Mebby a little smarter."

All of Lesa Swaim's love of romantic adventure was shining on Jerry Swaim's bright face as she came upon Laura Macpherson on the cool side porch a few minutes later.

"I'm going out to inspect my royal demesne," she cried, gaily.

"Not to-day. I want you to spend the day with me, and you don't know the road. You haven't any way to go. York will be home soon. He wants to take you there himself. He understands land values, and, anyhow, you oughtn't go alone," Laura Macpherson said, emphatically.

"That is just what Mr. Ponk said at the garage, but I want to go alone."

That "I want" settled everything with Jerry Swaim in the Kansas New Eden as in the old "Eden" in the green valley of the Winnowoc.

"I have hired a runabout of Mr. Ponk. He gave me directions so I can't miss the way. Good-by."

The trail down the Sage Brush was full of delight this morning for the young Eastern girl who sent her car swiftly along the level road, almost forgetting the landmarks of the way in the exhilaration of youth and June-time. And, however out of place she might seem on the Western prairie, no one could doubt her ability to handle a car.

"'Where the stream bends sharp to the east away from a ranch-house,'"

Jerry was quoting Ponk. "I'm sure I can't miss it if I follow his directions and the stream and bend and house and cottonwood-trees and oak-grove are really there. I love oaks and I hope my woodland is full of them. There must be a woodland on my farm, even if the trees are few and small and scattered here, so far as I have seen. But there was really something pitiful in the little man's eyes when he was talking to me. Maybe he is a wee bit envious of my possessions. Some men are jealous of women who have property. No doubt my workmen will need managing, and some adjusting to a new head of affairs. I'll be very considerate with them, but they must respect my authority. I wish Gene was with me this morning."

Then she fell to musing.

"I wonder what message Gene will send me, and whether he will write it himself, or, as he suggested, will send it through Aunt Jerry's letters to York. It was his original way of doing to say I'd find things out through Aunt Jerry, when she probably won't write me a line for a long time. I know Gene will choose n.o.bly, and I know everything will turn out all right at last.... I wonder if my place is as beautiful as this. How I wish Gene could see it with his artist eyes."

Jerry brought her engine down to slow speed as she pa.s.sed a thrifty ranch-house where barns and cl.u.s.tering silos, and fields of grain and cattle-dotted prairies outlying all, betokened the possibilities of the Sage Brush Valley. The blue eyes of Lesa Swaim's daughter were full of dreamy light as she paused to picture here the possibilities of her own possessions.

At the crest of a low ridge the road forked, one branch wandering in and out among the small willow-trees along the river, and the other cutting clean and broad across the rougher open land swelling away from the narrowed valley.

"Here's something Mr. Junius Brutus Ponk left out of his map. I'll take the rim road; it looks the more inviting," Jerry decided, because the way of least resistance had been her life-road always.

This one grew narrow and clung close to the water's side. Its sandy bed was damp and firm, and the slender trees on either side here and there almost touched branches overhead. Mile after mile it seemed to stretch without another given landmark to show Jerry her destination. Beyond where the road curved sharply around a thicket of small trees and underbrush Jerry halted her car. Before her the waters of the river rippled into foam against a rocky ledge that helped to form a deep hole above it. Below, the stream was shallow, and in dry midsummer here offered rough stepping-stones across it. It was a lonely spot, with the river on one side and a tangle of bushes and tall weeds on the other, and the curves along the roadway, filled with underbrush and low timber shutting off the view up-stream and down-stream.

At the coming of Jerry's car a man who had been kneeling over some fishing-lines at the river's edge rose up beside the road, brushing the wet sand from his clothes, and staring at her. He was small and old and stooped and fuzzy, and thoroughly unpretty to see.

"It's the Teddy Bear who 'sat in the sand and the sun' coming up from that horrid railroad junction. Who's afraid of bears? I'll ask him how to find my lost empire."

Jerry did not reflect that it was the unconscious effect of this humble creature's thoughtfulness for her that made her unafraid of him in this lonely spot. Reflection was not yet one of her active psychological processes.

"I want to find a ranch-house by a big bend in the river where it turns east," Jerry said, looking at the man much as she would look at the bend in the river--merely for the information to be furnished. He pushed his brown cap back from his forehead and rubbed his fingers thoughtfully through his thin sunburnt hair.

"It's Joe's place, eh?" the high, quavering voice squeaking like an unused machine afraid of itself. "You'd ought to took the t'other fork of the road back yander. It's a goodish mile on down this way now to where you das to turn your cyar round. When you get where you kin turn, then go back and take the t'other fork. It'll take you right to Joe's door about."

The words came hesitatingly, as if the speaker had little use for sounding them in his solitary, silent life. Fishermen don't catch fish by talking to them.

"A mile! I think I'll turn right here," Jerry declared.

Then, as the meek unknown watched her in open-mouthed wonder, she swung her car deftly about, the outer wheels barely keeping a toe-hold on the edge of the river-bank, with hardly more than an inch of s.p.a.ce between them and the crumbling sand above the water. As she faced the way over which she had come she reached out to drop a piece of silver into the man's hand. He let it fall to the ground, then picked it up and laid it on the top of the car door.

"I ain't workin' for the gov'mint," he quavered. "I thankee, but I don't have no knowin's to sell. Ye're welcome to my ketch of information any day ye're on the river."