The Reclaimers Part 36

"It does," Ponk a.s.sured him. "She's the real stuff--even mother, out yonder, loves her."

The little man's face was turned momentarily toward the hill-slope cemetery beyond the town. "And when a girl like that comes to me for my fastest-powered car to go where no car can't go, for the sake of as good a man as ever lived on earth, a man she's been _comrading_ with for three years, and with that look in her fine eyes, they's no mistakin' to any sensible man on G.o.d's earth why she's doin' it."

"If my room is ready I'll go to it," Eugene broke in, curtly.

"Yes, Georgette, call George to take the gentleman to number seven, an'

put him to bed."

Then the little keeper of the Commercial Hotel and Garage turned toward the street again, and his full-moon face went into a total eclipse. But what lay back of that shadow of the earth upon it no man but Junius Brutus Ponk could know.

XIX

RECLAIMED

Down the Sage Brush trail Jerry Swaim's car swept on in spite of ruts and gullies and narrow roadways and obstructing debris, flood-washed across the land. But though the machine leaped and climbed and skidded most perilously, nothing daunted the girl with a grip on the steering-wheel. The storm-center of destruction had been at the big bend of the river, and no hand less skilful, nor will less determined, would have dared to drive a car as Jerry Swaim drove hers into the heart of the Sage Brush flood-lands in the twilight of this June evening.

Where the forks of the trail should have been the girl paused and looked down the road she had followed three years before; once when she had lost her way in her drive toward the Swaim estate; again, when she herself was lost in the overwhelming surprise and disappointment of her ruined acres; and lastly when she had come with Joe Thomson to recover her stolen money from the old grub whose shack was close beside the deep fishing-hole. The road now was all a part of the mad, overwhelming Sage Brush hurrying its flood waters to the southeast with all its might.

Where was the flimsy little shack now, and where was the old Teddy Bear himself? Did his shabby form lie under the swirling current of that angry river, his heroic old heart stilled forever?

A group of rescuers, muddy and tired, came around a growth of low bushes on the higher ground toward her. All day they had been locating homeless flood victims, rescuing stock, and dragging farm implements above the water-line. The sight of Ponk's best car, mud-smeared and panting, amazed them. This wasn't a place for cars. But the face of the driver amazed them more.

"Why, it's Miss Swaim, that teacher up at New Eden!" one man exclaimed.

At the word, a boy, unrecognizable for the mud caking him over, leaped forward toward Jerry's car.

"What are you doing, Miss Swaim?" he cried. "You mustn't go any farther!

The river's undermined everything! Please don't go! Please don't!" he pleaded.

"Why, Clare Lenwell!" Jerry exclaimed, in surprise.

"Yes. This isn't my full-dress I wore at Commencement the other night, but I've been saving lives to-day, and feeding the hungry, too," the boy declared, forgetting his besmeared clothing in the thought of his service.

"Tell me, Clare, where is Joe Thomson--I mean the young man whose ranch is just below here."

Clare's face couldn't go white under that mud, but Jerry saw his hand tremble as it caught the edge of her wind-shield.

"He's gone down-stream, I'm afraid. They say his home is clean gone. We have been across the river and came over on that high bridge. I don't know much about this side. They said Thelma Ekblad tried to save him and nearly got lost herself. Her brother, the cripple, you know, couldn't get away. Their house is gone now. He and the Belkap baby were given up for lost when old Fishin' Teddy got to them some way. He knew the high stepping-stones below the deep hole and hit them true every step. They said he went nearly neck deep holding Paul and striking solid rock every time. He'd lived by the river so long he knew the crossing, deep as the flood was over it. Paul made him take the baby first, and he got out with it, all right, and would have been safe, but he was bound to go back for Paul, too; and he got him safe to land, where the baby was; but I guess the effort was too much for the old fellow, and he loosed his hold and fell back into the river before they could catch him. He saved two lives, though, and he wasn't any use to the community, anyhow. A man that lives alone like that never is, so it isn't much loss, after all.

But that big Joe Thomson's another matter. And he was so strong, he could swim like a whale; but the Sage Brush got him--I'm afraid."

Jerry's engine gave a great thump as she flung on all the power and dashed away on the upper road toward Joe Thomson's ranch.

"At the bend of the river you turn toward the three cottonwoods." Jerry recalled the directions given her on her first and only journey down this valley three years before.

"Why, why, there is no bend any more!" she cried as she halted her car and gazed in amazement and horror at the river valley where a broad, full stream poured down a new-cut channel straight to the south.

"Joe's home isn't gone at all! Yonder it stands, safe and high above the flood-line. Oh, where did the river take Joe?" She twisted her hands in her old quick, nervous way, and stiffened every muscle as if to keep off a dead weight that was crushing down upon her.

"He said if I wanted him he would be down beyond the blowout. I'm going to look for him there. I don't know where else to go, and I want him."

The white, determined face and firm lips bespoke Jim Swaim's own child now. And if the speed of her car was increased, no one would ever know that the thought of reaching her goal ahead of any possible Thelma might be the impetus that gave the increase.

"Yonder are the three cotton woods. From there I can see the oak-grove and all of my rare old acres of sand. What beautiful wheat everywhere!

The storm seems to have hit the other side of the river as it runs now, and left all this fine crop to Joe. But what for, if it took him?"

Her quick imagination pictured possibilities too dreadful for words.

Down in the oak-grove, Joe Thomson stood leaning against a low bough, staring out at the river valley, with the shimmering glow of the twilight sky above it. At the soft whirring sound of an automobile he turned, to see a gray runabout coasting down the long slope from the three cottonwoods.

"Jerry!" The glad cry broke from his lips involuntarily.

Jerry did not speak. After the first instant of a.s.surance that Joe was alive, her eyes were not on the young ranchman, but on the landscape beyond him. There, billow on billow of waving young wheat breaking against the oak-wood outpost swept in from far away, where once she had looked out on nothing but burning, restless sand, spiked here and there by a struggling green shrub.

"What has done all this?" she cried, at last.

"I'm partly 'what,'" Joe Thomson replied. The shadows were on his face again, and his loss, after that moment of glad surprise, seemed to be doubly heavy.

"But how? I don't understand. I'm dreaming. You really are here, and not dead, are you?"

"No, you are not dreaming. I only wish you were," Joe responded, gloomily. "But no matter. Yes, I'm here. 'Part of me lived, but most of me died,'" he muttered Kipling's line half audibly. "I subleased your land from the Macpherson Mortgage Company three years ago. The lease expires to-day. You remember what it was worth when you saw it before. I shall hand it over to you now, worth thirty dollars an acre. Thirty thousand dollars, at the very least, besides the value of the crop. I got beyond the blowout and followed it up. I plowed and planted. Lord!

how I plowed and planted! And as with old Paul and Apollos, it was G.o.d who gave the increase."

"Joe! Oh, Joe! You are a miracle-worker!" Jerry cried.

"A worker, all right, maybe. And all life is a miracle," Joe declared, gravely.

"But your own land, Joe. They told me that your house was gone and that maybe you had gone with it, and that these roads down here were impa.s.sable and n.o.body could find you."

Joe came to the side of the little gray car where Jerry sat with her white hands crossed on the steering-wheel. Her soft white gown, fitted for a summer afternoon on the Macpherson porch, seemed far more lovely in the evening light down by the oak-trees. Her golden hair was blown in little ringlets about her forehead, and her dark-blue eyes--Joe wondered if Nature ever gave such eyes to another human being!

"No, Jerry, my house isn't gone. My father built it up pretty high above the river, and I saved almost everything loose before the flood reached my place. It was the Ekblad house that went down the river. I went over there to help Thelma get her brother and the baby to safety on the high ground. She had started out to warn old Fishin' Teddy, thinking her own family was secure, and afraid he would get caught. She could not get back to them, nor anywhere else. I saved her, all right, but when I went back after Paul and the baby, the home and those in it were gone down-stream. Thelma thought we were all lost. That's how the story got started. Old Teddy is gone, but I heard later that the others are saved.

Their home wasn't worth so very much. They got most of the real valuable things--photographs of their dead father and mother, and the family Bible, and deeds, and a few trinkets. Other things don't count.

Money will replace them. Anyhow, York Macpherson is buying their land at a good figure. It will give Thelma the chance she's wanted--to go to a college town and teach botany. She will make her way and carry a name among educators yet, and support Paul and the baby, all right, too. Did the folks miss me and say I had gone down the river? Well, I didn't. I'm here. And as to all this"--he waved his hand toward the wheat--"I can net a right good bank-account for myself and I can pay off the mortgage I put on my claim to pay the lease on yours, and for steam-plows and such things. It has been a b.u.mper year for wheat down here. I have reclaimed the land from the desert. It will revert to you now--you and your artist cousin jointly, I suppose. The river helped to finish the work for me--found its old bed in that low sandy streak where years ago the blowout began. It has straightened its bend for itself and got away from that ledge below the deep hole, and left the rest of the ground, all the upper portion of the blowout, yours and mine, covered with a fine silt, splendid for cultivation. The blowout is dead. It took hard work and patience and a big risk, of course, and the Lord Almighty at last for a partner in the firm to kill it off. Your own comes back to you now. Can I be of any further service to you?"

As he stood there with folded arms beside the car, tall and rugged, with the triumph of overcoming deep written on his sad face, the width of the earth seemed suddenly to yawn between him and the lucky artist who had inherited a fortune without labor.

"You have done more than to reclaim this ground, Joe," Jerry exclaimed.

"Miraculous as it all is, there is a bigger desert than this, the waste and useless desert in the human heart. You have helped to reclaim to a better life a foolish, romancing, daring girl, with no true conception of what makes life worth while. All the Sage Brush Valley has been good to me. York and Laura Macpherson in their well-bred, wholesome friendship; little Mr. Ponk in his deep love for his mother and faith in G.o.d; even old Teddy Bear, poor lost creature, in his sublime devotion to duty, protecting the woman he had vowed once at the marriage altar that he would protect; and, most of all"--Jerry's voice was soft and low--"a st.u.r.dy, brave young farmer has helped me by his respect for honest labor and his willingness to sacrifice for others.

"Joe"--Jerry spoke more softly still--"when you said good-by the other night in the storm, you told me that if I ever wanted you I'd find you down beyond the blowout. The word was like a blow in the face then. But to-night I left Cousin Gene up at New Eden and came here to find you, because _I want you_."

With all of Jim Swaim's power to estimate values written in her firm mouth and chin, but with Lesa Swaim's love of romance shining in her dark eyes, Jerry looked up shyly at Joe. And Joe understood.