Winning the Wilderness Part 4

The next day, and for many days following, the wind blew; fiercely and unceasingly it blew, carrying every movable thing before it. Whatever was tending in its direction, it helped over the ground amazingly. Whatever tried to move in the face of it had to fight for every inch of the way. It whipped all the gold from the sunflowers and threshed them mercilessly about. It snapped the slender stems of the big, bulgy-headed tumble-weeds and sent them tumbling over and over, mile after mile, until they were caught at last in some draw, like helpless living things, to swell the heap for some prairie fire to feed upon. It lifted the sand from the river bed and swept it in a prairie simoon up the slope, wrapping the little cabin in a cloud of gritty dust. The cottonwoods along the waterway moaned as if in pain and flung up their white arms in feeble protest. The wild plum bushes in the draw were almost buried by the wind-borne drift smothering the narrow crevice, while out on the plains the long lashing waves of bended gra.s.s made the eyes burn with weariness. And the sun watched it all with unpitying stare, and the September heat was maddening.

But it was cool inside the cabin. Sod houses shut out the summer warmth as they shed off the winter's cold.

Virginia Aydelot stood at the west window watching her husband trying to carry two full pails of water which the wind seemed bent on blowing broadcast along his path. He had been plowing a double fireguard around the premises that morning and his face and clothes were gray with dust.

These days of unceasing winds seemed to Virginia to sap the last atom of her energy. But she was young and full of determination.

"Why did you put the well so far away, Asher?" she asked, as he came inside.

The open door gave the wind a new crevice to fill, and it slapped wrathfully at the buckets, splashing the contents on the floor.

"We have to put wells close to the water in this country. I put this one in before I built here. And if we have a well, we are so glad we don't try to move it. The wind might find it out and fill it up with sand while we were doing it. It's a jealous wind, this." Asher's smile lit up his dust-grimed face.

"I've tried all day to keep the dust off the table. I meant to do a washing this morning, but how could any garment stay on the line out there and not be whipped to shreds?"

"Virginia, did you ever do a washing before the war?" Asher asked through the towel. He was trying to scrub his face clean with the least possible amount of water.

"Oh, that's ancient history. No, nor did I do anything else. I was too young. Did you ever try to till a whole section of land back in Ohio before the war?" Virginia asked laughingly.

Asher took the towel from his head to look at her.

"You are older than when I first knew you--the little lady of the old Jerome Thaine mansion home. But you haven't lost any of that girl's charms and you have gained some new ones with the years."

"Stop staring at me and tell me why you didn't put the house down by the well, then," Virginia demanded.

"I did pitch my tent there at first, but it is too near the river, and several things happened, beside," he replied.

"Is that a river, really?" she inquired. "It looks like a weed trail."

"Yes, it is very real when it elects to be. They call it Gra.s.s River because there's no gra.s.s in it--only sand and weeds--and they call it a river because there is seldom any water in it. But I've seen such lazy sand-foundered streams a mile wide and swift as sin. So I take no risk with precious property, even if I have to tote barrels of water and slop the parlor rug on windy days."

"Then, why didn't you put another door in the kitchen end of the house?"

Virginia questioned.

"Two reasons, dearie. First, can you keep one door shut on days like this, even when there is no draught straight through the house?" he inquired.

"Yes, when I put a chair against it, and the table against the chair, and the bed against the table, and the cookstove to back up the bed. I see.

Shortage of furniture."

"No, the effect on this cabin if the wind had a sweep through two weak places in the wall. I built this thing to stay till I get ready to go away from it, not for it to go off and leave me sitting here under the sky some stormy day. Of course, the real home, the old Colonial style of house, will stand higher up after awhile, embowered in trees, and the wind may play about its vine-covered verandas, and its stately front columns, but that comes later."

"All right, but what was the second reason for the one doorway? You said you had two?" Virginia broke in.

"Oh, did I? Well, the other reason is insignificant, but effective in its way. I had only one door and no lumber within three hundred miles to make another, and no money to buy lumber, anyhow."

"You should have married a fortune," his wife said demurely.

"I did." The smile on the lips did not match the look in the gray eyes.

"My anxiety is that I shall not squander my possession, now I have it."

"You are squandering your dooryard by plowing out there in front of the house. Isn't there ground enough if the wind will be merciful, not to use up our lawn?" Virginia would not be serious.

"I have plowed a double fireguard, and I've burned off the gra.s.s between the two to put a wide band of protection about us. I take no chances.

Everything is master in the wilderness except man. When he has tamed all these things--prairie fire, storm and drouth, winds and lonely distances, why, there isn't any more wilderness. But it's tough work getting acclimated to these September breezes, I know."

Virginia did not reply at once. All day the scream of the wind had whipped upon her nerves until she wanted to scream herself. But it was not in the blood of the breed to give up easily. Something of the stubborn determination that had made the oldtime Thaines drive the Quakers from Virginia shone now in the dark eyes of this daughter of a well-bred house.

"It's all a matter of getting one's system and this September wind system to play the same tune," she said.

"Virginia, you look just as you did that day when you said you were going through the Rebel ranks in a man's dress to take a message for me to the Union officer of my command, although you ran the risk of being shot for a spy on either side of the lines. When I begged you not to do it, you only laughed at me. I thought then you were the bravest girl I ever saw. Now I know it."

"Well, I'll try not to get hysterical over the wind out here. It is a matter of time and adjustment. Let's adjust ourselves to dinner now."

Beyond her lightly spoken words Asher caught the undertone of courage, and he knew that a battle for supremacy was on, a struggle between physical outcry and mental poise.

After the meal, he said, "I must take my plow down to Shirley's this afternoon. His is broken and I can mend it while he puts in his fireguard with mine. I don't mind the wind, but I won't ask you to face it clear down to Shirley's claim. I don't like to leave you here, either."

"I think I would rather stay indoors. What is there to be afraid of, anyhow?" Virginia asked.

"Nothing in the world but loneliness," her husband replied.

"Well, I must get used to that, you know. I can begin now," Virginia said lightly.

But for all her courage, she watched him drive away with a sob in her throat. In all the universe there was nothing save a glaring sunlight and an endless cringing of yellow, wind-threshed gra.s.s.

Asher Aydelot had come here with half a dozen other young fellows, all of whom took up claims along Gra.s.s River. Six months later Jim Shirley had come to the settlement with a like company who extended the free-holdings until it was seven miles by the winding of the river from Aydelot's claim on the northwest down the river to Shirley's claim on the southeast.

Eighteen months later only two men were left in the Gra.s.s River valley, Aydelot and Shirley. The shorter trail as the crow flies between their claims was marked by a golden thread of sunflowers. At the third bend of the winding stream a gentle ripple of ground rose high enough to hide the cabin lights from each other that otherwise might have given a neighborly comfort to the two lone settlers.

Shirley's cabin stood on a tiny swell of ground, mark of a one-time island, set in a wide bend in the river that was itself a natural fireguard for most of the circle of the premises.

The house was snug as a squirrel's nest. Before it was a strip of white clover, as green and fresh looking as if it were on the banks of Clover Creek in Ohio. Above the door a plain board bore the one word, "Cloverdale."

Jim Shirley stood watching Asher coming down the trail against the wind, followed by the big shepherd dog, Pilot, who had bounded off to meet him.

"h.e.l.lo! How did you get away on a day like this?" he called, as the team drew near.

"Why, you old granny!" Asher stopped here.

Both men had been on the Kansas plains long enough not to mind the wind.

It flashed into Asher's mind that Jim was hoping to see his wife with him, and he measured anew the loneliness of the man's life.

"Most too rude for ladies just yet, although I didn't like to leave Virginia alone."

"What could possibly harm her? Your fireguard's done, double done; there's no water to drown in, no Indian to frighten, no wild beast to enter, no white man, in G.o.d knows how many hundred miles. Just nothing to be afraid of."

"Yes, that's it--just nothing. And it's enough to make even a braver woman afraid. It's the eternal vast nothingness, when the very silence cries out at you. It's the awful loneliness of the plains that makes the advance attack in this fight with the wilderness. Don't we both know that?"

"I reckon we do, but we got over it, and so will Mrs. Aydelot."