Winning the Wilderness Part 45

"Not always, but this time it's different. I'm so glad I found you. I should have gone down to Cloverdale, of course, if you hadn't been here, but this saves time."

A pink wave swept Leigh's cheek, but she smiled a pleasant recognition of his thoughtfulness.

"I've come home to say good-by because I'm going to enlist in the first Kansas regiment that goes to Cuba to fight the Spaniards. And I must hurry back to Lawrence."

"Oh, Thaine! What do you mean?"

Leigh's face was very white.

"Be careful!"

Thaine caught her arm in time to save the light easel from being thrown over.

"Don't look at me that way, Leigh. Don't you know that President McKinley has declared war and has called for one hundred and twenty-five thousand volunteers? Four or five thousand from old Kansas. Do you reckon we Jayhawkers will wait till one hundred and twenty thousand have enlisted and trail in on the last five thousand? It would be against all traditions of the rude forefathers of the Sunflower State."

"Has war really been declared? We haven't had the papers for nearly a week. Everybody is so busy with farm work right now."

Leigh stood looking anxiously at Thaine.

"Declared! The first gun has been fired. The call for volunteers has come from Washington, and the Governor has said he will make Fred Funston Colonel of the first regiment of Kansas volunteers, and he sent out his appeal for loyal Kansas men to offer themselves. I tell you again, Leigh Shirley, I'll not be the one hundred and twenty-five thousandth man in the line. I'm going to be right close up to little Fred Funston, our Kansas boy, who is to be our Colonel. I have a notion that University students will make the right kind of soldiers. There will be plenty of ignorance and disloyalty and drafting into line on the Spanish side. America must send an intelligent private if the war is to be fought out quickly. I'm that intelligent gentleman."

"But why must we fight at all, Thaine? Spain has her islands in every sea.

We are almost an inland country. Spain is a naval power. Who ever heard of the United States being a naval power? I don't understand what is back of all this fuss." Leigh asked the questions eagerly.

"We fight because we remember the Maine," Thaine said a little boastfully.

"We are keeping in mind the two hundred and sixty-six American sailors who perished when our good ship was sunk in the harbor at Havana last February. If we aren't a naval power now we may develop some sinews of strength before we are through. Your Uncle Sam is a nervy citizen, and it was a sorry day for proud old Spain when she lighted the fuse to blow up our good warship. It was a fool's trick that we'll make Spain pay dearly for yet."

"So it's just for revenge, then, for the Maine horror. Thaine, think how many times worse than that this war might be. Isn't there any way to punish Spain except by sending more Americans to be killed by her fuses and her guns?" Leigh insisted.

"There is more than the _Maine_ affair," Thaine a.s.sured her. "You know, just off our coast, almost in sight of our guns, Spain has held Cuba for all these centuries in a bondage of degradation and ignorance and cruel oppression. You know there has been an awful warfare going on there for three years between the Spanish government and the rebels against it. And that for a year and a half the atrocities of Weyler, the Captain General of the Spanish forces, make an unprintable record. The United States has declared war, not to retaliate for the loss of the _Maine_ alone, awful as it was, but to right wrongs too long neglected, to put a twentieth century civilization instead of a sixteenth century barbarity in Cuba."

Thaine was reciting his lesson glibly, but Leigh broke in.

"But why must you go? You, an only child?"

She had never seen a soldier. Her knowledge of warfare had been given her by the stories Jim Shirley and Dr. Carey had told to her in her childhood.

"It's really not my fault that I'm an only child. It's an inheritance. My father was an only child, too. He went to war at the mature age of fifteen. I'll be twenty-one betimes." Thaine stood up with military stiffness.

"Your father fought to save his country. You just want gold lace and a lark. War is no frolic, Thaine Aydelot," Leigh insisted.

"I'm not counting on a frolic, Miss Shirley, and I don't want any gold lace till I have earned it," Thaine declared proudly.

"Then why do you go?" Leigh queried.

"I go in the name of patriotism. Wars don't just happen. At least, that is what the professor at the University tells us. Back of this Spanish fuss is a bigger turn waiting than has been foretold. Watch and see if I am not a prophet. This is a war to right human wrongs. That's why we are going into it."

"But your father wants you here. The Sunflower Ranch is waiting for you,"

Leigh urged.

"His father wanted him to stay in Ohio, so our family history runs. But Mr. Asher heard the calling of the prairies. His wilderness lay on the Kansas plains, and he came out and drove back the frontier line and pretty near won it. At least, he's got a wheat crop in this year that looks some like success."

Thaine smiled, but Leigh's face was grave.

"Leighlie, my frontier is where the Spanish yoke hangs heavy on the necks of slaves. I must go and win it. I must drive back my frontier line where I find it, not where my grandfather found it. I must do a man's part in the world's work."

His voice was full of earnestness and his dark eyes were glowing with the fire of inspiration. By the patriotism and enthusiasm of the youth of twenty-one has victory come to many a battlefield.

"But I don't want you to go away to war," Leigh pleaded.

"You don't want me here."

Thaine let his hand rest gently on hers for a moment as it lay on top of the easel; then hastily withdrew it.

"Has your alfalfa struck root deep enough to begin to pull up that mortgage yet?" he inquired, as if to drop the unpleasant subject.

"Not yet," Leigh answered. "We make every acre help to seed more acres.

It's an uphill pull. It's my war with Spain, you know. But I'm doing something with these little daubs of mine. I have sold a few pieces. The price wasn't large, but it was something to put against a hungry interest account. Some day I want to paint--"she hesitated.

"What?" Thaine asked.

Leigh was bending over her brushes and paints, and did not look up as she said with an effort at indifference:

"Oh, the Purple Notches. It is so beautiful over there."

Thaine bit his lips to hold back the words, and Leigh went on:

"Dr. Carey says Uncle Jim couldn't have held out long at general farming.

But the Coburn book was right. The alfalfa is the silent subsoiler, and when the whole quarter is seeded we'll pull that mortgage up by the roots, all right."

She looked up with shining eyes, and Thaine took both of her hands in his, saying:

"I must tell you good-by now. Mother will know I am here and will be dragging the lake for me. This isn't like other good-bys. Of course, I may come back a Brigadier General and make you very proud of me, or I might not come at all, but I won't say that. Oh, Leigh, Leigh, may I tell you once more how dear you are to me? Will you promise again to send me the same message you sent to Prince Quippi when you want me to come back?"

"I will," Leigh replied in a low voice, and for that moment the grove became for them a holy sanctuary, wherein their words were sacred vows.

When Thaine reached home again, Dr. Carey was just leaving, and the way was prepared for the purpose of his own coming, as he had hoped it would be.

"I've a call to make across the river. I'll be back in time to take you up to catch the train. There's a feast of a breakfast waiting in there for you. I know, for I had my share of it. Good-by for an hour or two."

The doctor waved his hand to Thaine and drove away.

"So the wanderl.u.s.t and spirit of adventure in the Aydelot blood got you after all," Asher Aydelot said as he looked across the breakfast table at his son. "It seems such a little while ago that I was a boy in Ohio, a foolish fifteen-year-old, crazy to see and be into what I've wished so often since that I could forget."

"But you don't object, Father?" Thaine asked eagerly.

Asher did not reply at once. A rush of boyhood memories flooded his mind, and as he looked at Virginia he recalled how his mother had looked at him on the day he left home to join the Third Ohio regiment nearly forty years ago. And then he remembered the moonlit night and his mother's blessing when he told of his longing for the open West, where opportunity hunts the man.

"No, Thaine," he answered gently at last. "All I ask is that you try to foresee what is coming in hardship and responsibility. Young men go to war for adventure mostly. The army life may make a hero of you, not by brevet nor always by official record, but a hero nevertheless in bravery where courage is needed, and in a sense of duty done. Or it can make a low-grade scoundrel of you almost before you know it, if you do not put yourself on guard duty over yourself twenty-four hours out of every twenty-four. War means real hardship. It is in everything the opposite of peace. And this war foreshadows big events. It may lead you to Cuba or to the Orient. Our Asiatic squadron is ordered from Hong Kong. Dr. Carey tells me it is going to meet the Spanish navy in the Philippines. I thought I fixed the West when I came here as a scout and later a settler, and drove the frontier back with my rifle and my hoe. Is it possible your frontier is further westward still? Even across the Pacific Ocean, where another kind of wilderness lies?"