Winning the Wilderness Part 54

Darley Champers opened the last envelope and began to read. He stopped suddenly and gave a long surprised whistle.

Beautiful as the morning was, the man laid down the papers, carefully locked both doors and drew down the front blinds. He took up the envelope and read its contents. He read them a second time. Then he put down the neatly written pages and sat staring at nothing for a long time. He took them up at length for a third reading.

"Everything comes out at last," he murmured. "Oh, Lord, I'm glad Doc Carey got hold of me when he did."

Slowly he ran his eyes down the lines as he read in a half whisper:

I was walking down the National pike road toward Cloverdale with little Leigh in the twilight. Where the railroad crosses Clover Creek on the high fill we saw Tank Shirley and the young cashier, Terrence Smalley, who had disappeared after the bank failure. It seems Tank had promised to pay Smalley to stay away and to find Jim and get his property away from him.

Evidently Tank had not kept his word, for they were quarreling and came to blows until the cashier's face was cut and bleeding above the eye. There was a struggle, and one pushed the other over the bank into the deep water there. Little as Leigh was, she knew one of the men was her father, and we thought he had pushed Smalley into the creek. He had a sort of paralyzed arm and could not swim. I tried to make her forget all about it. I promised her my home and farm some day if she would never tell what she had seen. She shut her lips, but if she forgot, I cannot tell.

That night I went alone to the fill and found Terrence Smalley with a cut face and a twisted shoulder lying above the place where Tank went down. I helped him to my home and dressed his wounds. I may have done wrong not to deliver him to the authorities, but he had a bad story to tell of Tank's bank record that would have disgraced the Shirley family in Ohio, so we made an agreement. He would never make himself known to Leigh, nor in any way disturb her life nor reveal anything of her father's life to disgrace her name, if I let him go. And I agreed not to report what I had seen, nor to tell what I knew to his hurt. He promised me also never to show his face in Cloverdale again. He was a selfish, dishonest man, who used Tank Shirley's hatred of his brother and his other sins to hide his own wrongdoing. But I tried to do my duty by the innocent ones who must suffer, when I turned him loose with his conscience. I do not know what has become of him, but, so far as I do know, he has kept the secret of Tank Shirley's crooked dealing with the Cloverdale bank, and he has never annoyed Leigh, nor brought any disgrace to her name. This statement duly witnessed, etc.

Slowly Darley Champers read. Then, laying down the pages, he said as slowly: "'Unknown' in the Gra.s.s River graveyard. 'Unknown' to Jim Shirley and Asher Aydelot, whose eyes he'd never let see him. I understand now, why. Known to me as Thomas Smith, an escaped defaultin' bank cashier who didn't commit suicide. Known to the late Miss Aydelot as Tank Shirley's murderer. If the devil knows where to git on the track of that scoundrel an' locate him properly in h.e.l.l, he'll do it without my help. By the Lord Almighty, I'll never tell what I know. An' this paper goes to ashes here.

Oh, Caesar! If I could only burn up the recollection that I was ever low-down an' money-grubbin' enough to collute with such as him for business. I'm danged glad I had that quarter kep' in Leigh's name 'stead of Jim's. That's why Thomas Smith threatened and didn't act. He didn't dare to go against Leigh as long as Jane Aydelot was livin'."

He stuck a blazing match to the letter and watched it crumple to ashes on the rusty stove-hearth. Then he carefully swept the ashes on a newspaper, and, opening his doors again, he scattered them in the dusty main street of Wykerton.

That afternoon Champers went again to the Cloverdale Ranch. Leigh was alone, busy with her brushes and paint-board in the seat on the lawn where Thaine Aydelot had found her on the summer day painting sunflowers. The first little sunflower was blooming now by the meadow fence.

"Don't git up, Miss Shirley. Keep your seat, mom. I dropped in on a little business. I'm glad to set out here."

Champers took off his hat and fanned his red face as he sat on the ground and looked out at the winding river bordered by alfalfa fields.

"Nice stand you got out there." He pointed with his hat toward the fields.

"Where's Jim?"

"He and Asher Aydelot have gone to Careyville to settle some of John Jacobs' affairs. They and Todd Stewart are named as trustees in the will,"

Leigh replied.

She had laid aside her brushes and sat with her hands folded in her lap.

Champers pulled up a spear of blue-gra.s.s and chewed it thoughtfully. At length he said:

"Yes, I knew that. Jacobs left no end of things in the way of property for me to look after. I'll report to them now. I seem to be general handy man.

Doc Carey left matters with me, too."

"Yes?" Leigh said courteously.

"Well, referrin' to that matter regardin' your father we spoke of the other day, I find, through Doc Carey's helpin' an' some other ways, that your father, Mr. Tank Shirley, was accidentally drowned in Clover Creek, Ohio, some years ago. So far as I can find out, he died insolvent. If I discover anything further, I'll let you know."

Leigh sat very still, her eyes on the far-away headlands that seemed like blue cloud banks at the moment.

"Had you heard of Miss Jane Aydelot's demise? I reckon you had, of course.

But do you know what her intentions were?"

Leigh looked steadily at her questioner. All her life she had had a way of keeping her own counsel, nor was it ever easy to know what her thoughts might be.

"Miss Shirley, the late Miss Jane Aydelot trusted Doc Carey to look after her affairs. Doc Carey, he trusted me to take his place. Can you trust me to be the last link of the chain in doin' her business? My grammar's poor, but my hands is clean now, thank the Lord!"

"Yes, Mr. Champers, I am sure of your uprightness."

Leigh did not dream how grateful these words were to the man before her, honestly trying to beat back to better ideals of life.

"When I was a very little girl," Leigh went on, "Miss Jane told me I was to be her heir."

Darley gave a start, but as Leigh's face was calm, he could only wonder how much she had remembered.

"All the years since I've lived in Kansas I've been kept in mind in many ways of her favor toward me. I came to know long ago that she was determined to leave me all the old Aydelot estate. And I knew also that it should have been Asher's, not mine."

Darley thought of Thaine, and, dull as he was, he read in a flash a romance that many a finer mind might have missed.

"Well, sufferin' catfish!" he said to himself. "Danged plucky girl; forges along an' bucks me into sellin' her this ranch an' sets it into alfalfy an' sets up Jim Shirley for life, 'cause putterin' in the garden an' bein'

kind to the neighbors is the limit to that big man's endurance. An' this pretty girl, knowin' that Aydelot property ought to be Thaine Aydelot's, just turns it down, an', by golly, I'll bet she turns him down, too, fearin' he wouldn't feel like takin' it. An' he's clear hiked to the edges of Chiny. Well, it's a danged queer world. I'm glad I've only got Darley Champers to look out for. The day I see them two drivin' out of Wykerton towards Little Wolf, the time she'd closed the Cloverdale ranch deal, I knowed the white lilac mother used to love was sweeter in my back lot."

"I could not take Miss Jane's property and be happy," Leigh went on.

"Besides, I can earn a living. See what my brushes can do, and see the secret I learned in the Coburn book."

Leigh held up the sketch she was finishing, then pointed to the broad alfalfa acres, refreshingly green in the May sunlight.

"Well, I brought down a copy of the late Miss Aydelot's will that she left with Doc Carey, who is goin' to Chiny in a few days, him an' Thaine Aydelot, Doc writes me. An' you can look over it. I've got to go to Cloverdale next week an' settle things there, an' see that the probatin's are straight. Lemme hear from you before I go. I must be gettin' on.

Danged fine country, this Gra.s.s River Valley. Who'd a' thought it back in the seventies when Jim Shirley an' Asher Aydelot squatted here? Goodday."

Left alone, Leigh Shirley opened the big envelope holding the will of Francis Aydelot and read in it the stern decree that no child of Virginia Thaine should inherit the Aydelot estate in Ohio.

"That's why Miss Jane couldn't leave it to Asher's son," she murmured.

Then she read the will of the late Jane Aydelot. When she lifted her face from its pages, her fair cheeks were pink with excitement, her deep violet eyes were shining, her lips were parted in a glad smile. She went down to the meadow fence and plucked the first little golden sunflower from its stem, and stood holding it as she looked away to where the three headlands stood up clear and shimmering in the light of the May afternoon.

That night two letters were hurried to the postoffice. One went no farther than Wykerton to tell Darley Champers that Leigh would heartily approve of any action he might take in the business that was taking him to Ohio.

CHAPTER XXII

THE FARTHER WILDERNESS

And beyond the baths of sunset found new worlds.

--London.

Dr. Carey and Thaine Aydelot sat watching the play of a fountain in a moonlit garden of tropical loveliness. In the Manila hospital Thaine had gone far down the Valley of the Shadow of Death before he reached a turning point. But youth, good blood, a const.i.tution seasoned by camp and field, the watchful care of his physician, and the blessing of the Great Physician, from whom is all health, at last prevailed, and he came back st.u.r.dily to life and strength.

As the two men sat enjoying the hour Dr. Carey suddenly asked:

"After this hospital service, what next?"

"How soon does this involuntary servitude end?" Thaine inquired.

"A fortnight will do all that is possible for us," Carey answered.