The Reclaimers Part 27

The next morning, when Jerry Swaim was ready to go to the bank, her pretty beaded bag seemed light as she lifted it, and when she opened her purse she found it empty. Then she sat down and stared at herself in the mirror opposite her.

"Well, what next? Go mad or go back East? This must be the last ditch,"

she murmured. "Joe Thomson said he didn't _go_ mad, but he did _get_ mad. I'm mad clear to my Swaim toes, and I'm not going to take another b.u.mp. It's been nothing but b.u.mps ever since I reached the junction of the main line with the Sage Brush branch back in June, and I'm tired of it. Gene Wellington said the West got the better of his father. The East seems to have gotten the best of his father's son."

Across her mind swept the thought of how easy Gene's way was being made for him in the East, and how the way of the West for her had to be fought over inch by inch.

"Neither East nor West shall get me." She tossed her head imperiously, for Jim Swaim's chin, York Macpherson would have said, was in command, and the dreamy eyes were flashing fire.

An hour later Ponk's gray runabout was spinning off the miles of the trail down the Sage Brush, with Jerry Swaim's hands gripping the wheel firmly, though her cheeks were pink with excitement. Where a road from the west crossed the trail, the stream cut through a ledge of shale, leaving a little bluffy bank on either side, with a bridge standing high above the water.

Joe Thomson, in a big farm wagon, had just met his neighbor, Thelma Ekblad, in her plain car, at the end of the bridge, when Jerry's horn called her approach. Before they had time to shift aside the gray car swept by with graceful curve, missing the edge of the bridge abutment by an eyelash.

"Great Scott! Thelma, I didn't notice that this big gun of mine was filling up all the road," Joe exclaimed. "That was the neatest curve I ever saw. That's Ponk's car from New Eden, but only a civil engineer's eye could have kept out of the river right there."

"The pretty girl who is visiting the Macphersons was the driver," Thelma said.

"No! Was it, sure?" Joe queried, looking with keen eyes down the trail, whither the gray runabout was gliding like a bird on the wing.

"Why, of course it was!" Thelma a.s.sured him, feeling suddenly how shabby her own machine became in comparison. "I must go now. Come over and see Paul when you can."

"I will. How is the baby?" Joe asked.

"Oh, splendid, and so much company for Paul!" Thelma declared.

"Yes, a baby is the preacher and the whole congregation sometimes. Let me know if you need any help. Good-by."

So in neighborly good-will they separated, Joe to follow the gray car down the trail, and Thelma to wonder briefly at the easy life of the beautiful Eastern girl whose lot was so unlike her own. Only briefly, however, for Thelma was of too happy a temperament, of too calm and philosophical a mentality, to grieve vainly. It always put a song in her day, too, to meet Joe upon the way. Not only on common farm topics were she and Joe congenial companions, but in politics, the latest books, the issues of foreign affairs, the new in science, they found a common ground.

Joe's thoughts were of the Eastern girl, too, as he thundered down the trail in his noisy wagon.

"I wish I could overtake her before she gets to the forks of the road,"

he said to himself. "I know she's not going to go my way farther than that. But why is she here at all? There's n.o.body living down the river road for miles, except old Fishing Teddy. She did dine at his expense the day she came out to her sand-pile. He told me all about it the night when we rode down from town together. Funny old squeak he is. But he can't interest her. h.e.l.lo! Yonder we are."

In three minutes he was beside the gray car, that was standing at the point where the river road branched from the main trail.

"Good morning, Mr. Thomson. I knew you were coming this way, so I waited for you here. I don't go down that road. You know why."

Jerry pointed toward the way down which her own land lay.

Joe lifted his hat in greeting, his cheeks flushing through the tan, for his heart would jump furiously whenever he came into this girl's presence.

"Good morning, Miss Swaim. I am glad you waited," he managed to say.

"You certainly know how to guide a car. I didn't know I was filling the whole highway up at the bridge."

"Oh, there was plenty of room," Jerry said, indifferently.

"Yes, plenty if you know how to stick to it. That's the secret of a lot of things, I guess--not finding a wider trail, but knowing how to drive straight through on the one you have found."

Joe was talking to gain time with himself, for he was inwardly angry at being upset every time he met this pretty girl.

This morning she seemed prettier than ever to his eyes. She was wearing a cool gray-green hat above her golden-gleaming hair, and her sheer gingham gown was stylishly summery. Exquisite taste in dress, as well as love of romance, was a heritage from Lesa Swaim.

"You are a real philosopher and a poet," Jerry exclaimed, looking up with wide-open eyes.

"A sort of Homer in homespun," Joe suggested.

"Probably; but I have a prose purpose in detaining you and I am in great luck to have found you," Jerry replied.

"Thank you. The luck will be mine if I can serve you."

The bronze young farmer's gallantry was as gracious as ever the well-groomed Philadelphia artist's had been.

"Kansas seems determined to get rid of me, if hard knocks mean anything.

I've had nothing but b.u.mps and knotty problems since I landed on these sand-shifting prairies. It makes me mad and I'm not going to be run off by it." Jerry's eyes were darkly defiant and her lifted hand seemed strong to strike for herself.

"You have the real pioneer spirit," Joe declared. "It was that very determination not to be gotten rid of by a st.u.r.dy bunch of forefathers and mothers that has subdued a state, sometimes boisterous and belligerent, and sometimes snarling and catty, and made it willing to eat out of their hands."

"Oh, it's not all subdued yet. It never will be." Jerry pointed down the trail toward the far distance where her twelve hundred blowout-cursed acres lay.

Joe Thomson's mouth was set with a bulldog squareness. "Are we less able than our forefathers?" he asked.

"As to sand--yes," Jerry replied, "but to myself, as a first consideration, I'm dreadfully in trouble."

"Again?"

"Oh, always--in Kansas," Jerry declared. "First my whole inheritance is smothered in plain sand--and dies--hard but quickly. Then I fight out a battle for existence and win a schoolmarm's crown of--"

"Of service," Joe suggested, seriously.

"I hope so. I really do," Jerry a.s.sured him. "Next I lease my--dukedom for a small but vital sum of money on which to exist till--till--"

"Yes, till wheat harvest, figuratively speaking," Joe declared.

"And this morning my purse is empty, robbed of every cent, and my pearl-handled knife and a b.u.t.ton-hook."

Joe had left his wagon and was standing beside Jerry's car, with one foot on the running-board.

"Stolen! Why, why, where's York?" he asked, in amazement.

"I don't know. I don't think he took it," Jerry replied.

"Oh, but I mean what's he doing about it?" Joe questioned, anxiously.

"Nothing. He doesn't know it. I came to find you first, to get you to help me."

"Me!" Joe could think of nothing more to say.

"You won't scold, and I'm afraid York would. I don't want to be scolded," Jerry declared. "He would wonder why I hadn't put it in the bank. And, besides, there have some queer things been happening in New Eden--I can't explain them, for you might not understand, but I do really need a friend right now. Did you ever need one?"