Winning the Wilderness Part 13

"It's the same if you'd had corn, Bennington," Jim Shirley observed. "I was polishing my crown for a Corn King Festival this fall. I don't believe I'll harvest fifteen bushels to the acre."

"Fifteen bushels!" another neighbor exclaimed. "Fifteen ears to the row a section long would encourage me, Darley Champers told me when I took up my claim, if I'd plant a grove or two, that in three years the trees would be so big that rainfall would be abundant. You all know my catalpa woods is a wonder," he added with a wink.

Darley Champers himself had just come down the trail and was entering the door.

"Well, come over our way if you are on the hunt for prosperity," Todd Stewart interposed. "Gra.s.s River isn't living up to its name any better than our creek; isn't any fuller of weeds than our brook is of--shale. I did lose the trail in your river this morning, though. The weeds are nearly up to the pony's flanks. Think of the fertility of a river bed that will grow weeds three feet high and two shades more yellow green than the dead gra.s.s on the bank. If there's a drop of water in our creek for twenty miles, I'd go get it and have Brother Gaines a.n.a.lyze it to make sure it wasn't resin."

"You do well to see the humor of the situation, Stewart," Pryor Gaines began, with the cheery tone of a man who believes in hope.

"I don't see that that helps any," Bennington, the first speaker, broke in dolefully. "Joking isn't going to give us food and clothes and fuel till crop time comes again--if it ever does."

"I'm not suffering for extra clothes. What I wear now is a burden," Todd Stewart declared.

"Well, gentlemen." Darley Champers took the floor. "What are you going to do? That's what brought me here today. I knowed I'd find you all here.

When I sent some of you fellows into this blasted Sahara, I was honest. I thought Gra.s.s River was a real stream, not a weed patch and a stone outcrop. I'd seen water in it, as I can prove by Aydelot. Remember, when we met down by the bend here, one winter day?"

"Yes, I remember," Asher replied.

"Well, I just come by there and there ain't a drop of water in that deep bend, no more'n in my hat." Champers plumped his hat down on the floor with the words. "And the creek, on Stewart's testimony, is a blasted fissure in the earth."

"I always said when that bend went dry, I'd leave the country, but I can't," Jim Shirley said doggedly.

"Why not?" Champers inquired.

"Because I can't throw away the only property I have in the world, and I haven't the means to get away, let alone start up anywhere else."

"We're all in the same boat," Bennington declared.

"Same boat, every fellow rocking it, too, and no water to drown in if we fall out. We're in the queerest streak of luck yet developed," Todd Stewart observed.

"Let's take a vote, then, and see how many of us really have no visible means of support and couldn't walk out of here at all. Let's have a show of hands," Jim Shirley proposed.

"How did you decide?" Champers asked, as the hands dropped.

His eyes were on Asher Aydelot, who had not voted.

"Didn't you see? Everybody, except Asher there, is nailed fast to the gumbo," Stewart declared.

Darley Champers looked Asher Aydelot straight in the eyes, and n.o.body could have said that pity or dislike or surprise controlled the man's mind, for something of all three were in that look. Then he said:

"Gentlemen, I know your condition just as well as you do. You're in a losing game, and it's stay and starve, or--but they ain't no 'or.' Now, I'll advance money tomorrow on every claim held here and take it and a.s.sume the mortgage. Not that they are worth it. Oh, Lord, no. I'll be land-logged, and it's out of kindness to you that I'm willin' to stretch them fellers I represent in the East. But I'll take chances. I'll help each feller of you to get away for a reasonable price on your claim. It's a humanitarian move, but I may be able to lump it off for range land in a few years for about what it costs to pay taxes. But, gents, I got some of you in and I'm no scallawag when it comes to helpin' you out. Think it over, and I'll be down this way in two weeks. I've got to go now. It's too infernal hot to keep alive here. I know where there's two sunflower stalks up on the trail that's fully two feet tall. I've got to have shade.

Goodday." And Champers was gone.

"What do you say?" The question seemed to come from all at once.

"Let Pryor Gaines speak first. He's our preacher," Asher said with a smile.

Pryor Gaines was a small, fair-faced man, a scholar, a dreamer, too, maybe. By birth or accident, he had suffered from a deformity. He limped when he walked, and his left hand had less than normal efficiency. On his face the pathos of the large will and the limited power was written over by the ready smile, the mark of abundant good will toward men.

"I am out of the race," he said calmly. "I'm as poor as any of you, of course, and I must stay here anyhow, Dr. Carey tells me. I came West on account of heart action and some pulmonary necessities. I cannot choose where I shall go, even if I had the means to carry out my choice. But my necessities need not influence anyone," he added with a smile. "I can live without you, if I have to."

"How about you?" Stewart said, turning to Asher. "You take no risk at all in leaving, so you'll go first, I suppose?"

All this time the settlers' wives sat listening to the considerations that meant so much to them. They wore calico dresses, and not one of them had on a hat. But their sun-bonnets were clean and stiffly starched, and, while they were humbly clad, there was not a stupid face among them; neither was their conversation stupid. Their homes and home devices for improvement, the last reading in the all too few papers that came their way, the memories of books and lectures and college life of other days, and the hope of the future, were among the things of which they spoke.

Virginia Aydelot was no longer the pretty pink and white girl-bride who had come to the West three years before. Her face and arms were brown as a gypsy's, but her hair, rumpled by the white sunbonnet she had worn, was abundant, and her dark eyes and the outlines of her face had not changed.

She would always be handsome without regard to age or locality. Nor had the harshness of the wilderness made harsh the soft Southern tongue that was her heritage.

At Stewart's words, Asher glanced at his wife, and he knew from her eyes what her choice would be.

"When I was a boy on the old farm back at Cloverdale, Ohio, my mother's advice was as useful to me as my father's." Swift through Asher's mind ran the memory of that moonlit April night on his father's veranda five years before. "Out here it is our wives who bear the heaviest burdens. Let us have their thoughts on the situation."

"That's right," Jim Shirley exclaimed. "Mrs. Aydelot, you are first in point of time in this settlement. What do you say?"

"It's a big responsibility, Mrs. Aydelot," Bennington, who had not smiled hitherto, said with a twinkle in his eye.

"As goes Asher Aydelot, so goes Gra.s.s River," Todd Stewart declared. "You speak for him, Mrs. Aydelot, and tell us what to do."

"I cannot tell _you_ what to do. I can speak only for the Aydelots,"

Virginia said. "When we came West Asher told me he had left one bridge not burned. He had put aside enough money to take us back to Ohio and to start a new life, on small dimensions, of course, back East, whenever we found the prairies too hostile. They've often been rough, never worse than now, but"--her eyes were bright with the unconquerable will to do as she pleased, true heritage of the Thaines of old--"but I'm not ready to go yet."

Jim Shirley clapped his hands, but Pryor Gaines spoke earnestly. "There is no failure in a land where the women will to win. By them the hearthstones stand or crumble to dust. The Plains are master now. They must be servant some day."

"Amen!" responded Asher Aydelot, and the Sabbath service ended.

Two weeks later Darley Champers came again to the barren valley and met the settlers in the sod schoolhouse. Not a cloud had yet scarred the heavens, not a dewdrop had glistened in the morning sunlight. Clearly, August was outranking July as king of a season of glaring light and withering heat. The settlers drooped listlessly on the backless seats, and the barefoot children did not even try to recite the golden text.

"I'd like to speak to you, Aydelot," Champers said at the door, as the school service ended.

The two men sought the shady side of the cabin and dropped on the ground.

"I'm goin' to be plain, now, and you mustn't misunderstand me for a minute," Champers declared. The bl.u.s.terer is rarely tactful.

"All right."

Champers seemed to take the cheery tone as a personal matter.

"Two weeks ago, I understand you and Mrs. Aydelot headed off these poor devils from their one chance of escape. Now, you know danged well you _don't_ intend to stay here a minute longer'n it'll take to kite out of this in the fall. And you are sacrificing human lives by persuadin' these folks to hold onto this land they just can't keep, nor make a livin' on, under five years and pay the interest till their mortgages expire. And I've just this to say:" Champers spoke persuasively. "I'm not a shark. I'm humane. If you'll help me to get these poor settlers out of Gra.s.s River Valley, I'm willing to pay you a good commission on every single claim and take no commission at all on yours. It will help you a lot toward makin' a bigger start back East. Don't listen to your woman now; listen to me, for I'm givin' you the chance of your life, robbin' myself to do it, too.

But"--his tone changed abruptly--"if you figger you can take your danged rainy-day bank account out'n the Cloverdale bank and grab onto this land, you leave yourself, and hold onto it while you stay East a few years, and then sneak back here and get rich off their loss, I tell you now, you can't do it. And if you don't use your influence right now to get 'em to sell out to my company, you're going to regret it. Don't ask how I know. I _know_. I warn you once for all. You go in there and help the men decide right now--I'll buy at a reasonable figger, you understand--and you're goin' to help make 'em sell to save their fool skins from starvation and their wives and their little ones, or you're going to rue the day you drove into Kansas. What do you say? What are you goin' to do?"

The man's voice was full of menace, and he looked at Asher Aydelot with the determination of one who will not be thwarted.

Asher looked back at him with clear gray eyes that saw deeper than the threatening words. A half smile hovered about his lips as he replied.

"So that's your game, Darley Champers. If I'll help you to get hold of this land, you'll pay the settlers more than the claims are worth and you'll pay me more than they are worth. A pretty good price for worthless ground."

"Well, look at the landscape and tell me what you see." Darley Champers flung his hand out toward the sweep of brown prairie with the dry river bed and the brazen sands beyond it. Lean cattle stood disconsolately in the shadeless open, while the cultivated fields were a ma.s.s of yellow clods about the starveling crops.

Asher did not heed the interruption.