Winning the Wilderness Part 24

"He has run his course here, but he is shrewd enough to escape the law.

His parents mortgaged the Shirley House to get money to keep his doings quiet. My Uncle Francis foreclosed on them at last. But by Jim's abrupt leaving, Cloverdale blamed him for a long time for the family misfortunes.

Tank broke every moral law; he invested his money wildly in his greed to make more money, until finally the bank failure came. That is a long story, and it was a dead loss. But the cashier's suicide stopped investigation. All blame was laid on him. And he, being dead, made no complaint and incriminated n.o.body."

"Where is Tank now?" Carey asked.

He did not know why the image of Thomas Smith of Wilmington, Delaware, should come unbidden to his mind just now, nor why he should feel that the answer to his question held only a portion of what could have been told him then.

"n.o.body knows exactly where," Jane Aydelot replied. "He left his wife penniless. She lived here with me and died here. Tank hasn't been seen in Cloverdale for a long time. It is strange how family ties get warped sometimes. And oftenest over property."

Doctor Carey thought of Asher, and was silent. But Jane Aydelot divined his thought.

"I am thinking of our own family," she said, looking into the heart of the wood fire. "I have my cousin Asher's heritage, which by law now neither he nor any child of his can receive from me."

"Miss Aydelot, he doesn't want it. And there is no prejudice in him against you at all. Moreover, if his dreams come true, little Thaine Aydelot will never need it." There was a sternness in Carey's voice that pained his hostess.

"But, Doctor Carey!" she began hesitatingly. Then, as if to change the trend of thought, she added simply, "I try to use it well."

Horace Carey was by nature and experience a keen reader of human minds. As Jane Aydelot studied the burning coals in the grate, he studied her face, and what he read there gave him both pleasure and pain. Between him and that face came the image of Virginia Aydelot, who should be there instead; of the brown-handed farmer's wife, who had given up so much for the West. And yet, that face, framed in its dark hair, lighted by luminous dark eyes, seemed to blot out the dainty pink and white Jane Aydelot. A strength of will, a view of life at wide angles of vision, a resourcefulness and power of sacrifice seemed to deify the plainly clad prairie home-maker, winning, not inheriting, her possessions. Had Jane been anywhere else save in the home that Virginia might have had, her future might have had another story. But why forecast the might-have-been?

"You do use your property well, I am sure," Doctor Carey said, replying to the last words spoken between them, "and yet, you would give it up?" He knew her answer, or he would not have asked the question.

For reply, she rose and went to the little writing desk where the Aydelot papers were kept. Taking therefrom two doc.u.ments, she placed them in Carey's hands.

"Read these," she said, "then promise me that in the hour when Leigh needs my help you will let me help her."

They were the will of Francis Aydelot and her own will. How much of sacrifice lay in that act of hers, only Horace Carey could understand.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Read these," she said, "then promise me that in the hour when Leigh needs my help you will let me help her"]

"I promise gladly, Miss Aydelot. I see why you are willing to give up little Leigh now," he said, looking up with eyes filled with sincerest admiration. "You are a wonderful woman. You have the same Aydelot heritage of endurance and patience and the large view of duty that characterizes your cousin Asher. Your setting is different. I hope the time may come soon when Ohio and Kansas will not be so far apart as they are tonight."

He rose and took her hand in his.

If Doctor Carey's magnetism made men admire him, it was no less an attractive force with women. As he looked into Jane Aydelot's gray eyes, he saw a new light there. And swiftly its meaning translated itself to him. He dropped her hand and turned away, and when their eyes met again, the light was gone.

It was still Indian-Summer weather on the prairie when Doctor Carey with little Leigh Shirley reached Careyville. He had a feeling that Jim would prefer meeting Leigh in his own home, so no word had been sent forward as to the time of the coming of the two.

All through the journey, the doctor had wondered how Jane Aydelot could have given Leigh up at all. She was such a happy prattler, such an honest, straightforward little body, such an innocent child, and, withal, so loving that Carey lost his own heart before the first half day was ended.

In her little gray wool gown and her gray cap with its scarlet quill above her golden hair, she was as dainty and pretty as a picture of childhood could be.

Down on the Gra.s.s River trail, the two came upon Thaine Aydelot trudging in from some errand to a distant neighbor, and the doctor hailed him at once.

"Come, ride with us. We'll take you home," he said, turning the wheel for Thaine's convenience. "This is Leigh Shirley, who is coming to live with her uncle, Jim. You'll like to go to the Cloverdale Ranch more than ever now."

Thaine was only a little country boy, unused to conventionalities, so he took Leigh on her face value at once. And Leigh, honest as she was innocent, returned the compliment. At the Sunflower Ranch, Carey drew rein to let Thaine leave them. Leigh, putting both arms about the little boy's neck, kissed him good-by, saying: "I have known you always because you are the Thaine"--she caught her breath, and added: "You must come to my uncle Jim's and see me."

"I will, I will," Thaine a.s.sured her.

Doctor Carey looked back to wave good-by just in time to see Virginia Aydelot coming toward Thaine, who stood watching the buggy. Instantly the pretty face of Jane Aydelot came to his mind, her face as she had looked on the night when they sat by the wood fire in the Aydelot farmhouse.

Against that picture stood the reality of Virginia with her richer coloring.

"Nor storm nor stress can rob her of her beauty," he thought. "However sweet and self-sacrificing Jane Aydelot may be, the Plains would have broken her long ago."

He turned about at once and came back to where Thaine stood beside his mother.

"This is Jim Shirley's little girl, Mrs. Aydelot," he said, gently patting Leigh's shoulder.

"That's my wife," little Thaine said gravely. "We will go and live at the purple notches when I come home from the war."

Virginia's heart warmed toward the motherless little one, and Leigh understood her at once. Nor once in all the years that followed did the two fail each other.

The Cloverdale homestead never had known such a gala fixing as Jim Shirley had kept there for nearly a week awaiting the doctor's return. Truly, love is genius in itself, and only genius could have put so many quaint and attractive touches to such common surroundings as now embellished the little four-roomed house in the bend of Gra.s.s River.

Doctor Carey tied his horses to the post beside the trail, and, lifting Leigh from the buggy, he said:

"Uncle Jim is up there waiting for you, and oh, so glad, so glad to have you come. Go and meet him, Leigh."

Leigh smoothed her little gray wool frock down with her dainty little hands. Then, pushing back the gray cap with its scarlet quill from her forehead where the golden hair fell in soft rings, she pa.s.sed up the gra.s.sy way to meet Jim Shirley. He could never have looked bigger and handsomer than he did at that moment. In his eyes all the heart hunger of years seemed centered as he watched the little six-year-old child coming towards him.

Just before reaching the doorway, she paused, and with that clear penetration only a little child possesses, she looked up into the strong man's face.

"Uncle Jim. My Uncle Jim," she cried. "I can love you always."

Jim gathered her close in his arms, and she clung about his neck, softly patting his brown cheek as they pa.s.sed into the house. While all unseen, the light of love went in with them, a light that should never fade from the hearthstone, driving loneliness and sorrow from it, far away.

Leigh Shirley's coming marked an epoch in the annals of the Gra.s.s River settlement, for her uncle often declared that he could remember only two events in the West before that time: the coming of Mrs. Aydelot and the gra.s.shopper raid. With Leigh in his home, he almost forgot that he had ever been sad-hearted. This loving little child was such a constant source of interest and surprise. She was so innocently plain-spoken and self-dependent sometimes, and such a strange little dreamer of dreams at other times. She would drive a shrewd bargain for whatever she wanted--some more of Uncle Jim's good cookies, or a ride all alone on the biggest pony, or a two-days' visit at the Aydelot ranch, scrupulously rendering back value received of her own wares--kisses, or washing all the supper dishes for her tired uncle, or staying away from her play to watch that the chickens did not scratch in the garden.

But there were times when she would go alone to the bend in the river and people her world with folk of her own creation and live with them and for them. Chief among them all was a certain Prince Quippi, who would come from China some day to marry her and take her away to a house made of purple velvet and adorned with gold k.n.o.bs. She had to send a letter to Prince Quippi every day or he would think she did not love him. Of course, she loved Uncle Jim best of what she called folks--but Prince Quippi was big and brown and handsome; and, strangely enough, the only kind of letter he could read from her was in a flower.

So Leigh dropped a flower on the waters of Gra.s.s River every day to float away to China telling her love to Prince Quippi. And oftenest it was the tawny sunflower, because it was big and strong and could tell a big love story. Thus she dreamed her happy dreams until one day Thaine Aydelot, listening to her, said:

"Why my papa sent my mamma a sunflower once, and made her love him very much. I'll be your real Prince Quippi--not a--a paper-doll, thinkish one, and come after you."

"Clear from China?" Leigh queried.

"Yes, when I'm a big soldier like my papa, and we'll go off to the purple notches and live."

"You don't look like my Prince Quippi," Leigh insisted.

"But I can grow to look like _any_ thing I want to--like a big elephant or a hippopopamus or a--angel, or _any_ _thing_," Thaine a.s.sured her.

"Well, escuse me from any of the free--a angel or a elephant. I don't know what the poppy one is, but it's too poppy," Leigh said decisively.

There were others in the Gra.s.s River settlement who would have envied the mythical Prince Quippi also. For even at six years of age Leigh had the same quality that marked her uncle. People must love her if they cared for her at all; and they couldn't help caring for her. She fitted into the life of the prairie, too, as naturally as Thaine Aydelot did, who was born to it. The baby gold was soon lost from her hair for the brown-gold like the shimmering sunlight on the brown prairie. The baby blue eyes deepened to the deep violet-blue of overhead skies in June. The pretty pink and white complexion, however, did not grow brown under the kisses of the prairie winds. The delicate china-doll tinting went with other baby features, but, save for the few little brown freckles in midsummer, Leigh Shirley kept year after year the clear complexion with the peach blossom pink on her cheeks that only rarely the young girls of the dry western plains possessed in those days of shadeless homes.

Thaine Aydelot looked like a gypsy beside her, he was so brown, and his big dark eyes and heavy mane of dark hair, and ruddy cheeks made the contrast striking. From the first day of their meeting, the children were playmates and companions as often as opportunity offered. They sat together in the Gra.s.s River Sabbath School; they exchanged days on days of visits, and the first sorrow of their hitherto unclouded lives came when they found that Leigh was too far away to attend the week-day school.