Winning the Wilderness Part 20

What Hans Wyker said of John Jacobs was true, for in the council that decided the fate of the town it was his silence that lost the day and put Carey's Crossing off the map. Hans, while rejoicing over the result, openly accused Jacobs of being a ding-busted, selfish Jew who cared for n.o.body but John Jacobs. Secretly Hans admired Jacobs for his business ability, and all men respected him for a gentleman. Hence it was no small disappointment to the brewery owner to find when Jacobs returned to Kansas that he did not mean to open a business in Wykerton. Instead, he loaned his money to Gra.s.s River homesteaders.

When crops began to bring returns Jacobs established a new town farther west on the claim that Dr. Carey had taken up. Jacobs insisted on calling the place Careyville in honor of the doctor, because he had been the means of annihilating the first town named after Carey. And since he had befriended the settlers in the days after the gra.s.shopper raid he drew all the trade west of Big Wolf to this new town, cutting deep into the Wykerton business. Misfortunes hunt in couples when they do not gather in larger companies. Not only did the Jacobs store decrease the income of the Wykerton stores, but, following hard after, came the shifting of county lines. Wolf county fell into three sections, to increase three other counties. The least desirable ground lay in the north section, and the town built up on a brewery and the hopes of being hit by a railroad survey, and of holding the county seat, was left in this third part which, like Caesar's third part of all Gaul, was most barbarous because least often the refining influences of civilization found their way thither.

Then came the crushing calamity, the Prohibitory Law, which put Hans Wyker out of business. And hand in hand with this disaster, when the railroad came at last it drove its steel lines imperiously westward, ignoring Wykerton, with the ugly little canyons of Big Wolf on the north, and the site of Carey's Crossing beside the old blossom-bordered trail on the south. Finding the new town of Careyville a strategic point, it headed straight thither, built through it, marked it for a future division point, and forged onward toward the sunset.

Dr. Carey had located an office on his claim when there were only four other buildings on the Careyville townsite. Darley Champers opened a branch office there about the same time, although he did not leave Wykerton. But the downfall of Wyker and his interests cut deeper into the interests of the Gra.s.s River settlement than anyone dreamed of at the time. It sifted into Wyker's slow brain that the Jew, as he called Jacobs with many profane decorations, had been shrewd as well as selfish when his silent vote had given Wykerton the lead in the race for a county seat location.

"Infernal scoundrel," Hans would cry with many gestures, "he figger it out in his own little black het and neffer tell n.o.body, so. He know to hisself dat Carey's Crossing's too fur sout, so--an' Big Wolf Creek too fur nort, so." Hands wide apart, and eyes red with anger. "He know der survey go between like it, so! And he figger it hit yust fer it hit Gra.s.s River, nort fork. An' he make a townsite dere, yust where Doc Carey take oop.

Devil take him! An' he pull all my town's trade mit his fat pocketbook, huh! I send Champers to puy all Gra.s.s River claims. Dey don't sell none. I say, 'Champers, let 'em starf.' Den Champers, he let 'em. When supplies for cra.s.shopper sufferers cooms from East we lock 'em oop in der office, tight. An' ve sell 'em. Huh! Cooms Yon Yacob an' he loan claim-holters money--fife per cent, huh! Puy 'em, hide an' hoof, an' horn, an' tail! Dey all swear py Yon Yacob. He rop me. I fix him yet sometime. I hate Yon Yacob!"

And Hans Wyker's hate was slow, but it was incurably poison.

One morning in early autumn Dr. Horace Carey drove leisurely down the street of the town that bore his name. The air was crisp and invigorating, for the September heat had just been broken by copious showers. Todd Stewart stood in the doorway of Jacobs' store, watching the doctor's approach.

"Good morning, Doctor," he called. "Somebody dying or a highwayman chasing after you for your pocketbook, that you drive so furiously?"

"Good morning, Stewart. No, n.o.body is in danger. Can't a doctor enjoy life once in a while? The country's so disgustingly healthy I have to make the best of it and kill time some way. Come, help at the killing, won't you?" Carey drew rein before the door of the store.

"I can't do it, Carey. Jacobs is away up on Big Wolf appraising some land and I want to be here when he comes in. I must do some holding up myself pretty soon if things don't pick up after this hot summer."

"You're an a.s.set to the community, to be growling like that with this year's crops fairly choking the market," Horace Carey declared.

With a good-by wave of his hand he turned his horses' heads toward the south and took his way past the grain elevator toward the railroad crossing. The morning train was just pulling up to the station, blocking the street, so Carey sat still watching it with that interest a great locomotive in motion always holds for thinking people.

"Papa, there's Doctor Carey," a child's voice cried, and Thaine Aydelot bounded across the platform toward him, followed by his less-excited father.

Thaine was a st.u.r.dy, sun-browned little fellow of seven years, with blooming cheeks and big dark eyes. He was rather under than over normal size, and in the simplicity of plains life he had still the innocence of the very little boy.

"Good morning, Thaine. Good morning, Aydelot. Are you just getting home?

Let me take you out. I'm going your way myself," Dr. Carey said.

"Good morning. Yes, we are getting home a little earlier than we were expected and n.o.body is here to meet us. We'll be glad to ride out with you."

Asher lifted Thaine into the buggy with the words. A certain reserve between the two men had never been broken, although they respected each other deeply and were fast friends.

The train cleared the crossing and the three went south over the bridge across the dry North Fork Creek, beyond the cattle pens, and on to the open country leading out toward the Gra.s.s River Valley. The morning was glorious with silvery mists lifting along the river's course and a shimmering light above golden stubble and brown plowed land and level prairie; while far away, in all its beauty, hung the deep purple veil that Nature drops between her finite and her infinite, where the things that are seen melt into the things that are not seen.

"Take the lines, Aydelot, and let me visit with Thaine," Horace Carey said, giving Asher the reins.

He was fond of children and children were more than fond of him. Thaine idolized him and snuggled up in his lap now with complete contentment of soul.

"Tell me all about it now, Thaine. Where have you been so long? I might have missed you down on the Sunflower Ranch this morning if I had driven faster and headed off the through train as it came in."

"Oo-o!" Thaine groaned at the possible disaster to himself. "We've been to Topeka, a very long way off."

"And you saw so many fine things?" Carey questioned.

"Yes, a big, awful big river. And a bridge made of iron. And it just rattled when we went across. And there were big pieces of the Statehouse lying around in the tall weeds. And such greeny green gra.s.s just _everywhere_. And, and, oh, the biggest trees. So many, all close together. Papa said it was like Ohio. Oh, so big. I never knew trees could grow so big, nor so many of them all together."

Little Thaine spread his short arms to show how wondrous large these trees were.

"He has never seen a tree before that was more than three inches through, except two or three lonesome cottonwoods. The forests of his grandfather's farm in Ohio would be gigantic to him. How little the prairie children know of the world!" Asher declared.

Dr. Carey remembered what Jim Shirley had told him of that lost estate in Ohio, and refrained from comment.

"You'd like to live in Topeka where the big Kaw river is, and the big trees along its banks, and so much green gra.s.s, wouldn't you, Thaine?"

"No!" The child's face was quaintly contemptuous. "It's too--too choky."

The little hand clutched at the fat brown throat. "And the gra.s.s is so mussy green, and you can't _see_ to _any_where for the b.u.mpy hills and things. I like our old brown prairies best. It's so--nice out here." And with a sigh of perfect satisfaction Thaine leaned against Dr. Carey's shoulder and gazed out at the wide landscape swathed in the early morning sunlight.

The two men exchanged glances.

"This will be the land of memory for him some day, as you look back to the mountains of Virginia and I to the woodlands of Ohio," Asher said.

"It is worth remembering, anyhow," Carey replied. "I can count twenty young windbreaks from the swell just ahead, and the groves are springing up on many ranches from year to year. Your grove is the finest in the valley now, Aydelot."

"It is doing well," Asher said. "Mrs. Aydelot and I planned our home-to-be on the first evening we came to the Sunflower Inn. It was a sort of mirage-of-the-desert picture, it is true, but we were like the tapestry weavers. We hung the pattern up before our eyes and worked to it. It is slow weaving, I'll admit, but we kept on because we wanted to at first, then because we had to, and finally because our hearts took root in a baby's grave. They say the tapestry makers work on the wrong side of the threads, but when their work is done the pattern comes out complete. I hope ours will too. But there's many a day of aching muscles, and many a day of disappointment along the way. Crops prosper and crops fail, but we can't let the soil go untilled."

"I think we are all tapestry weavers. The trouble is sometimes in the pattern we hang up before us and sometimes in the careless weaving," Dr.

Carey added.

They rode a while in silence. The doctor's cheek was against Thaine's dark hair and Asher looked down at his hard brown hands and then away at the autumn prairie.

Fifteen years on a plains claim, with all the daily grind of sowing and reaping and care of stock and garden, had not taken quite all the military bearing from him. He was thirty-eight years old now, vigorous and wholesome and hopeful. The tanning Kansas sunshine had not hidden the old expression of patience and endurance, nor had the sight of many hardships driven the vision from the clear, far-seeing gray eyes.

"Look at the sunflowers, Papa," Thaine cried as a curve of the trail brought a long golden line to view.

"You like the sunflowers, don't you?" Carey asked.

"Oh, yes, better than all the flowers on the prairie. My mamma loves them, too, because they made her think once papa wasn't dead."

"Thaine, what do you mean to do when you grow up?" Horace Carey interrupted the child.

"I'm going to be a soldier like my papa was," Thaine declared decisively.

"But there will probably be no wars. You see, your papa and I fought the battles all through and settled things. Maybe you can't go to war," Dr.

Carey suggested.

"Oh, yes, I can. There'll be another war by that time, and I'm going, too.

And when I come back I'm going away to where the purple notches are and have a big ranch and do just like my papa," Thaine a.s.serted.

"Where are the purple notches?" the doctor asked.

"See yonder, away, way off?"

Thaine pointed toward the misty southwest horizon where three darker curves were outlined against a background of pale purple blending through lilac up to silvery gray.

"I'm going there some day," the boy insisted.