Winning the Wilderness Part 46

Into Asher's clear gray eyes, that for all the years had held the vision of the wide, pathless prairies redeemed to fruitfulness, there was a vision now of the big things with which the twentieth century must cope.

The work of a generation younger than his own.

"Don't forget two things, Thaine, when you are fairly started in this campaign. First, that wars do not last forever. They jar the frontier line back by leaps, but after war is over the good old prairie soil is waiting still for you--acres and acres yet unredeemed. And secondly, while you are a soldier don't waste energy with memories. Fight when you wear a uniform, and dream and remember when the guns are cold. You have my blessing, Thaine, only remember the blessing of Moses to Asher of old, 'As your day so will your strength be.' But you must have your mother's approval too."

Thaine looked lovingly at his mother, and the picture of her fine face lighted by eyes full of mother love staid with him through all the months that followed. And all the old family pride of the Thaines of Virginia, all the old sense of control and daring was in her tone as she answered:

"You have come to a man's estate. You must choose for yourself. But big as the world is, it is too little for mothers to be lost in. You cannot find a frontier so far that a mother's love has not outrun you to it. Go out and win."

"You are a Trojan, mother. I hope I'll always be worthy of your love, wherever I am," her son murmured.

Two hours later, when Dr. Carey stopped for Thaine, Virginia Aydelot came down to his buggy. Her face was very white and her eyes were shining with heroic resolve to be brave to the last.

"Horace, you may be glad you have no children," she said, as they waited for Thaine and his father to come out.

"My life has had many opportunities for service that must make up for the lack of other blessings. It may have further opportunity soon. May I ask a favor of you?"

Virginia was not to blame that her heart was too full to catch the undertone of sorrow in Horace Carey's words as she replied graciously:

"Anything that I can grant."

"Life is rather uncertain--even with a good doctor in the community--"Dr.

Carey's smile was always winning. "I have h.o.a.rded less than I should have done if there had been a Carey to follow me. There will be n.o.body but Bo Peep to miss me, especially after awhile. I want you to give him a home if he ever needs one. He has some earnings to keep him from want. But you and I are the only Virginians in the valley. Promise me!"

"Of course I will, always, Horace. Be sure of that."

"Thank you, Virginia. I am planning to start to California in a few days.

I may be gone for several months. I'll tell you good-by now, for I may not be down this way again before I go."

Virginia remembered afterward the doctor's strong handclasp and the steady gaze of his dark eyes and the pathos of his voice as he bade her good-by.

But she did not note these then, for at that moment Thaine came down the walk with his father, and in the sorrow of parting with her son she had no mind for other things.

Dreary rains filled up the first days of May. At Camp Leedy, where the Kansas volunteers mobilized on the old Fair Ground on the outskirts of Topeka, Thaine Aydelot sat under the shelter of his tent watching the water pouring down the canvas walls of other tents and overflowing the deep ruts that cut the gra.s.sy sod with long muddy gashes. Camp Leedy was made up mostly of muddy gashes crossed by streams of semi-liquid mud supposed to be roads. Thaine sat on a pile of sodden straw. His clothing was muddy, his feet were wet, and the chill of the cold rain made him shiver.

"n.o.ble warfare, this!" he said to himself. "Asher Aydelot knew his bearing when he told me that war was no ways like peace. I wonder what's going on right now down at the Sunflower Ranch. The rain ought to fill that old spillway draw from the lake down in the woods. It's nearly time for the water lilies to bloom, too."

The memory of the May night two years before with Leigh Shirley, all pink and white and sweet and modest, came surging across his mind as a heavy dash of rain deluged the tent walls about him.

"Look here, Private Thaine Aydelot, Twentieth Kansas Volunteers, if you are going to be a soldier stop that memory business right here, except to remember what Private Asher Aydelot, of the Third Ohio Infantry, told you about guard duty twenty-six hours out of twenty-four. Heigh ho!"

Thaine ended with a sigh, then he shut his teeth grimly and stared at the unceasing downpour with unseeing eyes.

A noisy demonstration in the camp roused him, and in a minute more young Todd Stewart lay stretched at full length in the mud before his tent.

"Welcome to our city, whose beauties have overcome others also," Thaine said, as he helped Todd to rise from the mud.

"Well, you look good to me, whether I do to you or not," Todd declared, as he sc.r.a.ped at the muddy plaster on his clothing.

"Enter!" Thaine exclaimed dramatically, holding back the tent flaps. "I hope you are not wounded."

Todd limped inside and sat down on the wet straw.

"No, my company just got to camp. I was so crazy to see anybody from the short gra.s.s country that I made a slide your way too swiftly. I don't mind these clothes, for I'll be getting my soldier's togs in a minute anyhow, but I did twist that ankle in my zeal. Where's your uniform?" Todd asked, staring at Thaine's clothes.

"With yours, still. Make a minute of it when you get it, won't you?"

Thaine replied. "Our common Uncle wants soldiers. He has no time to give to their clothes. A ragged shirt or naked breast will stop a Spanish bullet as well as a khaki suit."

"Do you mean to say you haven't your soldier uniform yet?" Todd broke in.

"A few of us have, but most of us haven't. They cost something," Thaine said with a shiver, for the May afternoon was chilly.

"Then I'll not stay here and risk my precious life for a government so darned little and stingy."

Todd sprang up with the words, but fell down again, clasping his ankle.

"Oh, yes, you will. You've enlisted already, and you have a bad ankle already. Let me see it."

Thaine examined the sprained limb carefully. He had something of his father's ability for such things combined with his mother's gentle touch.

"Let me bind it up a little while you tell me about Gra.s.s River. Then hie thee to a hospital," he said.

"There's nothing new, except that Dr. Carey has gone West for a vacation and John Jacobs is raising cain over at Wykerton because a hired hand, just a waif of an orphan boy, got drunk in Hans Wyker's joint and fell into Big Wolf and was drowned. Funny thing about it was that Darley Champers came out against Wyker for the first time. It may go hard with the old Dutchman yet. Jim Shirley isn't very well, but he never complains, you know. Jo Bennington was wild to have me enlist. I suppose some pretty University girl was backing you all the time," Todd said enthusiastically.

"The only pretty girl I care for didn't want me to go to the war at all,"

Thaine replied, staring gloomily out at the rain.

"Well, why do you go, then?" Todd inquired.

"Oh, she doesn't specially care for me here, either," Thaine replied.

"Girls don't control this game for me. But we have some princes of men here all right."

"As for instance?" Todd queried.

"My captain, Adna Clarke, and his lieutenants, Krause and Alford. They were first to enlist in our company down in the old rink at Lawrence.

Captain Clarke is the kind of a man who makes you feel like straightening right up to duty when you see him coming, and he is so genial in his discipline it is not like discipline. Lieutenant Krause fits in with him--hand and glove. But, Todd," Thaine went on enthusiastically, "if you meet a man on this campground with the face of a gentleman, the manners of a soldier, a smile like sunshine after a dull day in February, and a, well a sort of air about him that makes you feel he's your friend and that doing a kind act is the only thing a fellow should ever think of doing--that's Lieutenant Alford. There are some fine University boys here and we have all packed up our old Kansas University yell, 'Rock Chalk!

Jay Hawk! K U!' to use on the Spanish. We'll make them learn to run whenever they hear that yell. The whole regiment is a credit to Kansas, if we haven't the clothes right now. You are rather a disreputable looking old mudball yourself. Let's try to get to the hospital tent."

Thaine lifted Todd Stewart to his feet, and as they started up the slushy way to the hospital tent, he said:

"Yonder is Lieutenant Alford now."

A young man with a face as genial as his manner was dignified responded pleasantly to the private's salute, and the rainfall seemed less dreary and all the camp more cheerful for this lieutenant's presence. No wonder he seemed a prince to the enthusiastic young soldier whose admiration deepened into an abiding love he was never to lose out of his life in all the years to come. In the months that followed Thaine came to know Captain Clarke and his two lieutenants, Krause and Alford, as soldier knows soldier. Nor did ever Trojan nor Roman military hero have truer homage from the common private than the boy from the Gra.s.s River Valley paid to these young men commanding his company.

The hardships of soldier life began for Thaine Aydelot and his regiment with the day of enlistment. The privations at Camp Leedy were many. The volunteers had come in meagerly clothed because they expected to be fully supplied by the government they were to serve. The camp equipments were insufficient. The food was poor, and day after day the rain poured mercilessly down on the muddy campground, where the volunteers slept on wet straw piled on the wet earth. Sore throats, colds, and pneumonia resulted, and many a homesick boy who learned to wade the rice swamps and to face the Mauser's bullets fearlessly had his first hard lesson of endurance taught to him before he left Camp Leedy on the old Topeka Fair Ground.

Wonderful history-making filled up the May days. While the fleets and land forces were moving against Cuba, the deep sea cable brought the brief story from Commodore Dewey in the harbor of Manila, "Eleven Spanish warships destroyed and no Americans killed."

And suddenly the center of interest shifted from the Cuban Island near at hand to the Philippines on the other side of the world. The front door of America that for four centuries had opened on the Atlantic ocean opened once and forever on Pacific waters. A new frontier receding ever before the footprint of the Anglo-American flung itself about the far-off island of the Orient with its old alluring call: