Winning the Wilderness Part 5

"How do you know that?" Asher inquired eagerly. "I believe she could hardly keep back the tears till I got away."

"Then why didn't you get away sooner? I know she will get over it, because she's as good a woman as we are men, and we stood for it."

"Well, here's your plow. Better get your guard thrown up. I can smell smoke now. There's a prairie fire sweeping in on this wind somewhere.

There's a storm brewing, too. Remember what a fight we had with fire a year ago?"

Asher was helping to put Jim's team in the harness.

"Yes, you saved your well and a few other little things. But you've got your grit, you darned Buckeye, to hold on and start again from the ashes.

And now you have your wife here. You are lucky," Jim declared.

"Where's that broken plow of yours? Is it bolt or weld? Maybe I can mend it." Asher was casting about for tools.

"It's bolt. Everything is on the stable shelves," Jim called back against the wind, as he drove the plow deep in the black soil. "Be sure you put 'em back when you are through with 'em, too."

"Poor Jim!" Asher said to himself with a smile. "The artist in him makes him keep the place in order. He'd stop to hang up his coat and vest if he had to fight a mad bull. Poor judgment puts a good many tragedies into lives as well as stage villain types of crime."

And then Asher thought of Virginia, and wondered what she was doing through the long afternoon. He was whistling softly with a smile in his eyes as Jim Shirley made the tenth round of the premises and stopped opposite the stable door.

"Hey, Asher, come out and see the sky now," he called. "It's prairie fire and equinoctial storm combined."

Asher hurried out to see the dull southwest heavens shutting off the sunlight out of which raged a wind searing the sky to a dun gray.

"Don't stand there staring, you idiot. Why don't you get your plowing done?" he cried to Shirley.

Shirley began to loose the trace-chain from the plow.

"That strip is wide enough now," he declared. "I've got a clover guard, anyhow. I don't need to back-fire like my neighbors do."

As Asher untied his ponies and climbed into the wagon, Jim held their reins.

"Stop a minute. Let a single man offer you a word of advice, will you?" he asked.

"All right, I need advice," Asher smiled down on Jim's earnest face.

"Then heed it, too. No use to tell you to take care of your wife. You'll do that to a fault. But don't make any mistake about Mrs. Asher Aydelot.

She went through Rebel and Union lines once to save your life. Don't doubt her strength to hold her own here as soon as the first fight is over. She is like that Kentucky thoroughbred of hers; she's got endurance as well as grace and beauty."

"Bless you, Jim," Asher said, as he clasped Shirley's hand. "I wish you had a wife."

"Well, they are something of an anxiety, too. Hustle home ahead of the storm. I've always wished that bluff at the deep bend didn't hide us from each other's sight. I'd like to blast it out."

Asher Aydelot hurried northward ahead of the hot winds and deepening shadows of the coming storm. And all the time, in spite of Jim's comforting words, an anxiety grew and grew. The miles seemed endless, the heavens darkened, and the wind suddenly gave a gasp and died away, leaving a hot, blank stillness everywhere.

Meanwhile, Virginia, alone in the cabin, had fallen asleep from sheer nerve weariness. When she awoke, it was late in the afternoon. The screaming outside had ceased, but the whir and whine were still going on, and the blaring light was toned by the dust-filled air.

"I was only tired," Virginia said to herself. "Now I am rested, I don't mind the wind."

She went out to watch the trail for Asher's coming. He was not in sight, so she came inside again, but nothing there could interest her.

"I'll go out and wait awhile," she thought.

Tying a veil over her head, she shut the cabin door and sat down outside.

The wind died suddenly away, the trail was lifeless, and all the plain cut by the trail as well. Then the solitude of the thing took up the flight where the wind had left off.

"How can I ever stand this," Virginia cried, springing up. "But Asher stood it before I came, or even promised to come. No knight of the old chivalry days ever endured such hardships as the claimholders on these Kansas plains must endure. But it takes women to make homes. They can never, never win here without wives. I could go back to Virginia if I would." She shut her teeth tightly, and the small hands were clenched.

"But I won't do it. I'll stay here with Asher Aydelot. Other men and women as eager as we are will come soon. We can wait, and some day, Oh, some day, we'll not miss what the Thaines lost by the war and the Aydelots lost by the Thaines, for we'll have a prince's holdings on these desolate plains!"

She stood with her hands clasped looking with far-seeing dark eyes down the long trail by the dry river bed, like a G.o.ddess of Conquest on a vast untamed prairie.

A sudden sweep of the wind aroused her, and the loneliness of the plains rose up again.

"I'll get Juno and follow the trail till I meet Asher. I can't get lost where there's nothing but s.p.a.ce," she said aloud, as she hurried to the stable and led out the petted thoroughbred.

Horses are very human creatures, responding not only to the moods of their masters, but to the conditions that give these moods. The West was no kinder to the eastern-bred horse than to the eastern-bred man. All day Juno had plunged about the stable and pawed the hard earth floor in sheer nervousness. She leaped out of doors now at Virginia's call, as eager for comfort as a homesick child.

"We'll chase off and meet Asher, darling."

Even the soft voice the mare had heard all her days did not entirely soothe her. As Virginia mounted the wind flung shut the stable door with a bang. Juno leaped as from a gunshot, and dashed away up the river to the northwest. Her rider tried in vain to change her course and quiet her spirit. The mare only surged madly forward, as if bent on outrunning the tantalizing, grinding wind. With the sense of freedom, and with the boundlessness of the plains, some old instinct of the unbridled days of by-gone generations woke to life and power in her, and with the bit between her teeth, she swept away in unrestrained speed.

Virginia was a skilled horsewoman, and she had no fear for herself, so she held the reins and kept her place.

"I can go wherever you can, you foolish Juno," she cried, giving herself up to the exhilarating ride. "We'll stay together to the end of the race, and we will get it out of our systems once for all, and come back 'plains-broke.'"

Beyond a westward sweeping curve of the river's course the chase became a climb up a long slope that grew steeper and steeper, cutting off the view of the stream. Here Juno's speed slackened, then dropped into a steady canter, as she listened for a command to turn back.

"We'll go on to the edge of that bluff, lady, now we are here, and see what is across the river," Virginia said. "Then we will hurry home to Asher and prairie hay."

When they came at last over a rough shale outcrop to the highest headland, the river bed lay between its base and a barren waste of sand dunes, with broad gra.s.sy regions beyond them spreading southward. The view from the bluff's top was magnificent. Virginia held Juno to the place and looked in wonder at the vast southwest on this strange September afternoon. Across a reach of level land, miles wide, a prairie fire was sweeping in the majesty of mastery. The lurid flames leaped skyward, while roll on surging roll of black smoke-waves, with folds of gray ashes smothering between, poured out along the horizon. Beyond the fire was the dark blue storm-cloud, banded across the front by the hail mark of coppery green.

Virginia sat enchanted by the grandeur of the scene. The veil had fallen from her head, and with white face and fascinated eyes, she watched the glowing fury, a graceful rider on a graceful black horse, on the crest of the lone headland outlined against the sky.

Suddenly the terror of it broke upon her. She was miles from the cabin with its double fireguard. Asher had said such fires could leap rivers.

Between her and safety were many level banks where the sandy stream bed was narrow, and many gra.s.sy stretches where there was no water at all.

Distance, storm wind, fire and hail, all seemed ready to close down upon her, making her senses reel. One human being, alone before the wrath of Nature! In all the years that followed, she never forgot that scene. For in that moment a whisper came from somewhere out of the void, "The Eternal G.o.d is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms," and she clasped her hands in a wordless prayer.

The wind that had been cruel all day grew suddenly kind. A dead calm held the air in a hot stillness. Then with a whip and a whirl, it swung its course about and began to pour cool and strong out of the northwest.

"The wind is changing," Virginia cried, as she felt its chill and saw the flame and smoke tower upward and bend back from the way. "It is blowing the fire to the east, to the southeast. But, will it catch Asher? Oh, you good Wind, blow south! blow south!" she pleaded, as she dashed down the long slope for the homeward race.

When Asher reached his claim, he looked in vain for Virginia's face as he pa.s.sed the cabin window. He hurried the ponies into the corral, and the wagon under the lean-to beside the stable, half conscious that something was missing inside. Then he hastened to the cabin, but Virginia was not there.

"She may be in the stable." He half whispered the words in his anxiety.

The ponies in the corral were greedily eating their hay, but the black mare Juno was gone. As Asher turned toward the house, he caught the low roaring of the tempest and felt a rush of cool wind from somewhere. A huge storm-wave of yellow dust was rolling out of the southwest; beyond it the heavens were copper-green, and back of that, midnight darkness; while, borne onward by its force, low waves of prairie fire were swept along the ground.