Winning the Wilderness Part 50

"We are going across to Luna's stronghold in a few minutes. Watch him go into eclipse before Fred Funston. If you stand right here, you'll see me helping at the job. Good-by," Thaine declared, and, at the bugle call, fell into his place.

Beyond the river a steady fire was opened on the American forces, and no bridge nor boat was there by which to cross. Doctor Carey stood watching the situation with a strange sense of unrest in his mind.

"There must be rafts," declared Colonel Funston.

And there were rafts, hastily made of bamboo poles.

"Somebody must swim across and fasten a cable over there by which to tow the rafts across. Who will volunteer? You see what's before you," Funston a.s.serted.

Horace Carey saw two soldiers, Corporal Trembly and Private Edward White, seize the cable, plunge into the river, and strike out directly toward the farther side filled with Filipino forces. Rifle b.a.l.l.s split the water about them. Bullet after bullet cut the air above them. Shot after shot from the ambushed enemy hurtled toward them. The two young men surged steadily ahead, bent only on reaching the bank and fastening the cable.

They knew only one word, duty, and they did the thing they had agreed to do. Once across the river, they ran nimbly up the bank and made fast the rope's end, while cheer after cheer rose from their comrades watching them, and the battle cry of the Fighting Twentieth, "Rock Chalk, Jay Hawk, K. U.," went pulsing out across the waters of the Rio Grande as full and strong as in the days when it rolled out on the university campus on far-away Mount Oread, beside the Kaw.

The rafts sped along the cable, and squad after squad went pell mell into General Luna's stronghold, under stubborn fire from the frantic rebels.

Thaine Aydelot was on the last raft to cross the river. Doctor Carey watched with eager gaze as the last men reached the farther bank. He saw them scrambling up from the water's edge. He saw Thaine turn back to lift up a comrade blinded, but not injured, by the smoke of a gun. He saw the two start forward. Then the faint "ping" of a Mauser came to his ears, and Thaine threw up his hands and fell backward into the water and sank from sight, while the other soldiers, unknowing, rushed forward into battle.

For a moment, Horace Carey stood like a statue, then he sprang into the river and swam against the fire of the hidden foe to where Thaine Aydelot had disappeared. Ten minutes later, while Luna's forces were trying vainly to resist the daring Americans, Thaine Aydelot lay on a raft which Carey, with a Red Cross aid, was pulling toward the south bank.

When the Fighting Twentieth soldiers were relieved from service, and turned their faces gladly toward the Kansas prairies, whither hundreds of proud fathers and mothers and wives and sweethearts were waiting to give eager, happy welcome, Thaine Aydelot lay hovering between life and death in the hospital at Manila. The white-haired doctor who had saved him from the waters of the Rio Grande watched hourly beside him, relying not so much on the ministrations of his calling as in his trust in an Infinite Father, through whom at last the sick may be made whole.

CHAPTER XX

THE CROOKED TRAIL

Life may be given in many ways, And loyalty to truth be sealed As bravely in the closet as the field.

--Lowell.

"Here's yo' letter from the Fillippians, Mis' Virginia; Mr. Champers done bring hit for you all." Boanerges Peeperville fairly danced into the living room of the Sunflower Inn. "They ain't no black mournin' aidge bindin' it round nuthah, thank the good Lawd foh that."

Virginia Aydelot opened the letter with trembling fingers. It was only a brief page, but the message on it was big with comfort for her.

"It is from Horace," she said, as her eyes followed the lines. "He was with Thaine when he wrote it. Thaine is perfectly well again and busy as ever. He and Horace seem to be needed over there yet awhile. Isn't it wonderful how Thaine ever lived through that dreadful bullet wound and fever?"

"I jus' wondeh how you all stand up undeh such 'flictions. Seems to me a motheh done wilt down, but they don't. Mothehs is the bravest things they is," Bo Peep declared with a broad grin of admiration.

"Oh, we get schooled to it. Asher's mother waited through six years while he was in army service; and remember how long I waited in Virginia for him to come back to me! I wondered at the test of my endurance then. I know now it was to prepare me for Thaine's time of service for his country."

"I done remember, all right, 'bout that time in ol' Virginia, an' the day I taken you the letteh up in the little glen behind the ol' mansion house whah hit wah so cool and the watah's so cleah. Misteh Horace wah home that day, too. Say, Mis' Virginia, did--did he done mention my name anywhar in that letteh?"

The pathos of the dark face was pitiful.

"'My best love to Bo Peep.'" Virginia pointed to the line as she read.

"Kin I please have this huh envelope?" Bo Peep pleaded, and, clutching it as a sacred treasure, he said: "Mis' Virginia, didn't I done tellen you Misteh Thaine would come back?"

"How did you know?" Virginia asked with shining eyes.

"Becuz of what Doctoh Horace lef for me to tell you. It cain't do no hahm to tell hit thus fah."

Bo Peep hesitated, and Virginia looked curiously at him.

"Doctor Horace won't never come back. I tol' you that sufficiency times.

When he lef, he say, 'Tel Mis' Virginia, if I don't come back, I'se done goin' to be with Misteh Thaine an' take care of him, 'cause I love the boy,--hit cain't do no hahm to tell you that while Misteh Horace still writen to us. An' didn't he tak' care of Misteh Thaine? Didn't he lef his place an' go down to that Rigrand Riveh, an' didn't he see Misteh Thaine fall back with a bullet pushin' him right into the watah? Yes, an' be drownded if Doctoh Horace hadn't done swum right then and fish him out.

An' didn't he stay night time an' day time right by the blessed boy, till he's pullin' him out of dangeh of death's wing? Oh, yo' son done comin'

back 'cause Misteh Horace say he sho' goin' jus' tak' care of him."

"But, Bo Peep, why do you not believe we'll have Horace here again?"

Virginia asked.

The black man only shook his head mournfully as he answered determinedly, "Ef yo' saves a life, you has to give one for hit, mos' eveh time, an' mo'

specially in the Fillippians whah they's so murderful and slaughterous."

"Oh, you ought not think that way," Virginia urged. "Run quick, now, and take the news to Asher. I don't know where he is this morning."

"He's talkin' to Mr. Dabley Champehs out to the barn," Bo Peep said as he hurried away.

Asher Aydelot was standing before the big barn doors when Darley Champers turned from the main road and drove into the barnyard. It was a delicious April morning, with all the level prairie lands smiling back at the skies above them, and every breath of the morning breeze bearing new vigor and inspiration in its caressing touch.

"Good morning, Champers; fine morning to live," Asher called out cheerily.

"Mornin', Aydelot; fine day, fine! Miss Shirley told me last fall she got her first inspiration for buyin' a quarter of land with nothin' and faith, and makin' it pay for itself, out of one of Coburn's Agricultural Reports.

I reckon if a book like that could inspire a woman, they's plenty in a mornin' like this to inspire old Satan to a more uprighteous line of goods than he generally carries. I never see the country look better. Your wheat is tremendous. How's the country look to you?" Champers responded.

"I can remember when it looked a good deal worse," Asher replied. "The Coburn Reports must have helped to turn bare prairie and weedy boom lots into harvest fields."

The two men had seated themselves on the sloping driveway before the barn doors. Asher was chewing the tender joint of a spear of foxtail gra.s.s, and Champers had lighted a heavy cigar.

"You don't smoke, I believe," he said cordially, "or I'd insist on offering the mate."

"No, I just chew," Asher replied, as he bent the foxtail thoughtfully in his fingers and looked out toward the wheat fields already rippling like waves under the morning breeze.

"Say, Aydelot, do you remember the day I come down this valley and tried my danged best to get you to sell out for a song? I've done some pretty scaly things, all inside the letter of the law, since then, but never anything that's stuck in my craw like that. I guess you ain't forgot it, neither?"

"I remember more of those first years than of these later ones, and I haven't forgotten when you came to the Gra.s.s River schoolhouse one hot Sunday about gra.s.shopper time, but I don't believe anybody holds it against you. You were out for business just as we were," Asher replied with a genial smile.

"Say! D'recollect what you said to me when I invited you to cast your glims over this very country, a burnt-up old prairie that day, so scorched it was too dry and hot to cut up into town lots for an addition to Hades?"

Asher laughed now.

"No, I don't remember anything about that. It was just the general line of events that stayed with me," he said.

"Well, I do; and I'll never forget the look in your eyes when you said it, neither. I'd told you, as I say, just to look at this G.o.d-forsaken old plain and tell me what you see. And you looked, like you was glimpsin'