Winning the Wilderness Part 26

The live sheep were crowding along the fence on the creek side of the big range when the two men entered it.

"What ails the flock?" Asher asked, as they saw it following the fence line eagerly.

"Let's ride across and meet them," Jacobs suggested.

The creek side was rough with many little dips and draws hiding the boundary line in places. The men rode quietly toward the flock by the shortest way. As they faced a hollow deepening to a draw toward the creek, Asher suddenly halted.

"Look at that!" he cried, pointing toward the fence.

John Jacobs looked and saw where the ground was lowest that the barbed wires had been dragged out of place, leaving an opening big enough for two or more sheep to crowd through at a time. As they neared this point, Asher said:

"It's a pretty clear case, Jacobs. See that line of salt running up the bare ground, and here is an opening. The flock is coming down on that line. They will have a chance to drink after taking their salt."

John Jacobs slid from his horse, and giving the rein to Asher, he climbed through the hole in the fence and hastily examined the ground beyond it.

"It's a friendly act on somebody's part," he said grimly. "The creek cuts a deep hole under the bank here. There's a pile of salt right at the edge.

Somebody has sprinkled a line of it clear over the hill to toll the flock out where they will scramble for it and tumble over into that deep water.

All they need to do is to swim down to the next shallow place and wade out. The pool may be full of them now, waiting their turn to go. Sheep are polite in deep water; they never rush ahead."

"They swim well, too, especially if they happen to fall into the water just before shearing time when their wool is long," Asher said ironically.

"What did you say Gretchen Gimpke had in that tin can?" Jacobs inquired blandly.

"Oil of sa.s.safras, I think," Asher responded, as he tied the horses and helped to mend the weakened fence.

"n.o.body prospers long after such tricks. I'll not lose sleep over lost sheep," John Jacobs declared. "Let's hunt up the cattle and forget this, and the woman and the scary little twist in the creek trail."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "It's a friendly act on somebody's part." he said grimly]

"Why scary?" Asher asked. "Are you so afraid of women? No wonder you are a bachelor."

Jacobs did not smile as he said:

"Once when I was a child I read a story of a man being killed at just such an out-of-the-way place. Every time I go up that crooked, lonesome hill road, I remember the picture in the book. It always makes me think of that story."

When the fence was made secure, the two rode away to look after the cattle. And if a Shadow rode beside them, it was mercifully unseen, and in nowise dimming to the clear light of the spring day.

It was high noon when they reached Wykerton, where Hans Wyker still fed the traveling public, although the flourishing hotel where Virginia Aydelot first met John Jacobs had disappeared. The eating-place behind the general store room was divided into two parts, a blind part.i.tion wall cutting off a narrow section across the farther end. Ordinary diners went through the store into the dining room and were supplied from the long kitchen running parallel with this room.

There were some guests, however, who entered the farther room by a rear door and were likewise supplied from the kitchen on the side. But as there was no opening between the two rooms, many who ate at Wyker's never knew of the narrow room beyond their own eating-place and of the two entrances into the kitchen covering the side of each room. Of course, the prime reason for such an arrangement lay in Wyker's willingness to evade the law and supply customers with contraband drinks. But the infraction of one law is a breach in the wall through which many lawless elements may crowd. The place became, by natural selection, the council chamber of the lawless, and many an evil deed was plotted therein.

"How would you like to keep a store in a place like this, Jacobs?" Asher Aydelot asked, as the two men waited for their meal.

"I had the chance once. I turned it down. How would you like to keep a tavern in such a place?" Jacobs returned.

"I turned down a bigger tavern than this once to be a farmer. I have never regretted it," Asher replied.

"The Sunflower Ranch has always interested me. How long have you had it?"

Jacobs asked.

"Since 1869. I was the first man on Gra.s.s River. Shirley came soon afterward," Asher said.

"And your ranches are typical of you, too," John Jacobs said thoughtfully.

"How much do you own now?"

"Six quarters," Asher replied. "I've added piece by piece. Mortgaged one quarter to buy another. There's a good deal of it under mortgage now."

"You seem to know what's ahead pretty well," Jacobs remarked.

"I know what's in the prairie soil pretty well. I know that crops will fail sometimes and boom sometimes, and I know if I live I mean to own three times what I have now; that I'll have a grove a mile square on it, and a lake in the middle, and a farmhouse of colonial style up on the swell where we are living now and that neither John Jacobs nor the First National Bank of Careyville will hold any mortgage on it." Asher's face was bright with antic.i.p.ation.

"You are a dreamer, Aydelot."

"No, Jim Shirley's a dreamer," Asher insisted. "Mrs. Aydelot and I planned our home the first night she came a bride to our little one-roomed soddy.

There are cottonwoods and elms and locust trees shading our house now where there was only a bunch of sunflowers then, and except for Jim's little corn patch and mine, not a furrow turned in the Gra.s.s River Valley.

We have accomplished something since then. Why not the whole thing?"

"You have reason for your faith, I admit. But you are right, Shirley is a dreamer. What's the matter with him?"

"An artistic temperament, more heart than head, a neglected home life in his boyhood, and a fight for health to do his work. He'll die mortgaged, but he has helped so many other fellows to lift theirs, I envy Jim's 'abundant entrance' by and by. But now he dreams of a thousand things and realizes none. Poor fellow! His dooryard is a picture, while the weeds sometimes choke his garden."

"Yes, he'll die mortgaged. He's never paid me interest nor princ.i.p.al on my little loan, yet I'd increase it tomorrow if he asked me to do it," John Jacobs declared.

"You are a blood-sucking Shylock, sure enough," Asher said with a smile.

"I wish Jim would take advantage of you and quit his talking about the boom and his dreams of what it might do for him."

"How soon will you be platting your Sunflower Ranch into town lots for the new town that I hear is to be started down your way?" John Jacobs inquired.

"Town lots do not appeal to me, Jacobs," Asher replied. "I'm a slow-growing Buckeye, I'll admit, but I can't see anything but mushrooms in these towns out West where there is no farming community about them.

I've waited and worked a good while; I'm willing to work and wait a while longer. Some of my dreams have come true. I'll hold to my first position, even if I don't get rich so fast."

"You are level-headed," Jacobs a.s.sured him. "You notice I have not turned an acre in on this boom. Why? I'm a citizen of Kansas. And while I like to increase my property, you know my sect bears that reputation--"Jacobs never blushed for his Jewish origin--"I want to keep on living somewhere.

Why not here? Why do the other fellows out of their goods, as we Jews are always accused of doing, if it leaves me no customer to buy? I want farmers around my town, not speculators who work a field from hand to hand, but leave it vacant at last. It makes your merchant rich today but bankrupt in a dead town tomorrow. I'm a merchant by calling."

"Horace Greeley said thirty years ago that the twin curses of Kansas were the land agent and the one-horse politician," Asher observed.

"You are a grub, Aydelot. You have no ambition at all. Why, I've heard your name mentioned favorably several times for the legislature next winter," Jacobs insisted jokingly.

"Which reminds me of that rhyme of Hosea Bigelow:

If you're arter folks o' gumption You've a darned long row to hoe.

"I'm not an office seeker," Asher replied.

"Do I understand you won't sell lots off that ranch of yours to start a new town, and you won't run for the legislature when you're dead sure to be elected. May I ask how you propose to put in the fall after wheat harvest?" Jacobs asked, with a twinkle in his black eyes.

"I propose to break ground for wheat again, and to experiment with alfalfa, the new hay product, and to take care of that Aydelot grove and build the Aydelot lake in the middle of it. And I'll be supplying the wheat market and banking checks for hay one of these years when your town starters will be hunting clerkships in your dry goods emporium, and your farmers, who imagine themselves each a Cincinnatus called to office, will be asking for appointment as deputy county a.s.sessor or courthouse custodian. Few things can so unfit a Kansas fellow for the real business of life as a term in the lower house of the Kansas legislature. If you are a merchant, I'm a farmer, and we will both be booming the state when these present-day boomers are gone back East to wife's folks, blaming Kansas for their hard luck. Now, mark my words. But to change the subject," Asher said smiling, "I thought we should have company for dinner. I saw Darley Champers and another fellow head in here before us. Darley is in clover now, planning to charter a town for every other section on Gra.s.s River.

Did you know the man who was with him?"