Winning the Wilderness

“Sit down, madam. I’m pleased to meet you. Can I be of any service to you today?” he said with bluff cordiality.

“Yes, sir. I want to buy the quarter section lying southeast of us. It was the old Cloverdale Ranch once. It belongs to Champers & Co. now, the records show, and I want to get it. It was my Uncle Jim Shirley’s first claim.”

Darley Champers stared at the girl and said nothing.

“What do you ask for it?” Leigh inquired.

Still the real estate dealer was silent.

“Isn’t it for sale? It is all weed-grown and hasn’t been cultivated for years.”

The tremor in the girl’s voice reached the best spot in Darley Champers’ trade-hardened heart.

“Lord, yes, it’s for sale!” he broke out.

A sense of relief at this sudden opportunity, combined with the intense satisfaction of getting even with Thomas Smith, overwhelmed him. Smith would rave at the sale to a Shirley, yet this sale had been demanded. Champers had written Smith’s name into too many documents to need the owner’s handwriting in this transaction. Smith would leave town in the evening. The whole thing was easy enough. While Leigh waited, the real humaneness of which Champers so often boasted found its voice within him.

“I’ll sell it for sixteen hundred dollars if I can get two hundred down today and the rest in cash inside of two weeks. But I must close the bargain today, you understand.”

He had fully meant to make it seventeen hundred fifty dollars. It was the unknown humane thing in him that cut off his own commission.

“It’s worth it,” he said to himself. “Won’t Thomas Smith, who’s got no name to sign to a piece of paper, won’t he just cuss when it’s all did! It’s worth my little loss just to get something dead on him. The tricky thief!”

“I’ll take it,” Leigh said, a strange light glowing in her eyes and a firm line settling about her red lips.

Champers couldn’t realize an hour later how it was all done, nor why with such a poor bargain for himself he should feel such satisfaction as he saw Leigh Shirley and Thaine Aydelot driving down the road toward Little Wolf together. Neither could he understand why the perfume of white lilac blossoms from the bush in the back yard of his office should seem so sweet this morning. He was not a flower lover. But he felt the two hundred dollars of good money in his pocket and chuckled as he forecasted the hour of Thomas Smith’s discovery.

“This is a shadier road than the one I came over this morning,” Leigh said as she and Thaine followed the old trail toward Little Wolf Creek.

“It’s a little nearer, too, and you’ll see by casting a glimpse westward that things are doing over Grass River way,” Thaine replied.

Leigh saw that a sullen black cloud bank was heaving above the western horizon and felt the heated air of the May afternoon.

“I don’t like storms when I’m away from home,” she said.

“Are you afraid, like Jo Bennington? She has the terrors over them. We were out once when she nearly bankrupted everything, she was so scared.”

Thaine recalled a stormy night when Jo had clung to his arm to the danger of both of them and the frightened horse he could hardly control.

“No, I’m not afraid. I just don’t like being blown about. I am glad I happened to find you, to be blown about, too, if it’s necessary,” Leigh replied.

“‘Happened’ is a good word, Leigh. You happened on what I managed you should, else that long circus performance with Mademoiselle Rosella Gimpkello, famous bareback rider, had not been put on the sawdust this hot day.”

“What are you saying, Thaine Aydelot?” Leigh asked.

“You said last night you were coming over here today and that after you had come you might need my advice. Me for the place where my advice is needed ever, on land or water. Rosie’s hand isn’t fit to use yet. I knew that was a nasty glass cut, so I met her in the hall upstairs early this morning and persuaded her to come over today. It gave me the excuse I wanted – to get here by mere happening.”

“And leave Mrs. Aydelot all the cleaning up to do. Humane son!” Leigh exclaimed.

“Oh, Jo stayed all night, and I stopped at Todd Stewart’s place and persuaded him down to help mother and Jo. It wasn’t hard work to get him persuaded, either.”

“Aren’t you jealous of Todd?” Leigh asked, with a demure curve of her lip.

“Ought I be? He hasn’t anything I want,” Thaine retorted.

“No, he’s a farmer. Some folks don’t like farmers.”

“I don’t blame them,” Thaine said thoughtlessly. “I haven’t much use for a farm myself. But Leigh, am I an unnecessary evil? I really turned ’Rory Rumpus’ and ’rode a raw-boned racer’ clear over here just to be ready to help you. I wish now I’d stayed home and dried the knives and forks and spoons for my mammie.”

“Oh, Thaine, you are as good as – as alfalfa hay, and I need you more today than I ever did in my life before.”

“And I want to help you more than anything. Don’t be a still cat, Leighlie. Tell me what you are up to.”

They had reached the steep hill beyond the Jacobs sheep range where the narrow road with what John Jacobs called “the scary little twist” wound down between high banks to a shadowy hollow leading out to the open trail by the willows along Big Wolf. At the break in the bank, opening a rough way down to the deep waters of Little Wolf, a draught of cool air swept up refreshingly against their faces. Thaine flattened the buggy top under the shade of overhanging trees and held the horse to the spot to enjoy the delightful coolness. They had no such eerie picture to prejudice them against the place as the picture that haunted John Jacobs’ mind here.

“I’ve bought a ranch, Thaine; the quarter section that Uncle Jim entered in 1870,” Leigh said calmly.

“Alice Leigh Shirley, are you crazy?” Thaine exclaimed.

“No, I’m safe and sane. But that’s why I need your advice,” Leigh answered.

Something in the girl’s appealing voice and perfect confidence of friendship, so unlike Jo Bennington’s pouting demands and pretty coquetry, came as a revelation and a sense of loss to Thaine. For he loved Jo. He was sure of that, cock-sure.

“It’s this way,” Leigh went on, “you know how Uncle Jim lost everything in the boom except his honor. He’s helped everybody who needed help, and everybody likes him, I guess.”

“I never knew anybody who didn’t,” Thaine agreed.

“So many things, I needn’t name them all, bad crops, bad faith on the part of others, bad luck and bad judgment and bad health, for all his size, have helped till he is ready to go hopeless, and Uncle Jim’s only fifty-one. It’s no time to quit till you’re eighty in such a good old state as Kansas,” Leigh asserted. “Only, big as he is, he’s not a real strong man, and crumples down where small nervy men stand up.”

“Well, lady landlord, how can I advise you? You are past advising. You have already bought,” Thaine said.

“You can tell me how to pay for the ranch,” Leigh declared calmly. “I bought of Darley Champers for sixteen hundred dollars. I paid two hundred down just now. I’ve been saving it two years; since I left the high school at Careyville. Butter and eggs and chickens and some other things.” She hesitated, and a dainty pink tint swept her cheek.

Why should a girl be so deliciously fair with the bloom of summer on her cheeks and with little ringlets curling in baby-gold hair about her temples and at her neck, and with such red lips sweet to kiss, and then put about herself a faint invisible something that should make the young man beside her blush that he would even think of being so rude as to try to kiss her.

“And you paid how much?” Thaine asked gravely.

“Two hundred dollars. I want to borrow fourteen hundred more and get it clear away from Darley Champers. I’m sure with a ranch again, Uncle Jim will be able to win out,” Leigh insisted.

“What’s on it now?” Thaine asked.

“Just weeds and a million sunflowers. Enough to send Prince Quippi such a message he’d have to write back a real love letter to me,” Leigh replied.

“Leighlie, you can’t do it. You might pay interest maybe, year in and year out, the gnawing, wearing interest. That’s all you’d do even with your hens and butter. Don’t undertake the burden.”

“I’ve already done it,” Leigh declared.

“Throw it up. You can’t make it,” Thaine urged.

“I know I can,” Leigh maintained stoutly.

“You can’t.”

“I can.”

“How?” Thaine queried hopelessly.

“If I can get the loan – ”

“Which you can’t,” Thaine broke in. “Any man on Grass River will tell you the same, if you don’t want to believe the word of a nineteen-year-old boy.”

“Thaine, I must do something. Even our home is mortgaged. Everything is slipping out from under us. You don’t know what that means.”

“My father and mother knew it over and over.” Thaine’s face was full of sympathy.

“And they won out. I’m not so foolish after all. When they came out here, they took the prairies as Nature had left them, grass-covered and waiting. I’m taking them as the boom left them, weed-covered and waiting. I’ll earn the interest myself and make the land pay the principal and I know exactly how it will do it, too.”

“Tell me how,” Thaine demanded.

“It’s no dream. I got the idea out of a Coburn book last winter,” Leigh replied.

“You mean the State Agricultural Report of Secretary Coburn? Funny place to hunt for inspiration; queer gospel, I’d say,” Thaine declared. “Why didn’t you go to the census report of 1890, or Radway’s Ready Relief Almanac, or the Unabridged Dictionary?”

“All right, you despiser of small things. It was just an agricultural report full of tables and statistics and comparative values and things that I happened on one day when things were looking blackest, and right in the middle I found a page that Foster Dwight Coburn must have put in just for me, I guess. There was a little sketch of an alfalfa plant with its long good roots, and just one paragraph beside it with the title, ‘The Silent Subsoiler.’”

“That sounds well,” Thaine observed. He was listening eagerly in spite of his joking, and his mind was alert to the girl’s project.

“Mr. Coburn said,” Leigh went on, “that there are some silent subsoilers that do their work with ease and as effectually as any plow ever hitched, and the great one of these is alfalfa; that it is a reservoir of wealth that takes away the fear of protest and over-draft.”

“Well, and what if Coburn is right?” Thaine queried.

“Listen, now. I planned how I’d get back that old claim of Uncle Jim’s; how I’d pay some money down and borrow the rest, and begin seeding it to alfalfa. Then I’ll churn and feed chickens and make little sketches of water lilies, maybe, and pay the interest and let the alfalfa pay off the principal. I haven’t any father or mother, Thaine; Uncle Jim is all I have. He hasn’t always been successful in business ventures, but he’s always been honest. He has nothing to blush for, nothing to keep hidden. I know we’ll win now, for that writing of Foster Dwight Coburn’s is true. Don’t try to discourage me, Thaine,” she looked up with shining eyes.

“You are a silent little subsoiler yourself, Leigh, doing your work effectually. Of course you’ll win, you brave girl. I wish it was a different kind of work, though.”

A low peal of thunder rolled up from the darkening horizon, and the sun disappeared behind the advancing clouds.

“That’s our notice to quit the premises. I shouldn’t want to ford Little Wolf in a storm. It is ugly enough any time and was bank full when I took Rosie Posie over this morning. And say, her mother’s got a face like a brass bedstead.”

Thaine was lifting the buggy top as he spoke. Suddenly he exclaimed:

“Oh, Leigh, look down yonder.”

He pointed down the little rift toward the water.

“Where?” Leigh asked, looking in the direction of his hand.

“Across the creek, around by the side of that hill. That’s the Gimpke home stuck in there where you’d never think of looking for a house from up here. They can see anybody that goes up this lonely hill and nobody can see them. If I was gunning for Gimpkes, I’d lie in wait right here,” Thaine declared.

“Maybe, if the Gimpkes were gunning for you, they could pick you off as you went innocently up this Kyber Pass and you’d never know what hit you nor live to tell the tale; and they so snugly out of sight nobody but you would ever have sighted them,” Leigh replied. “But let’s hurry on. It will be cooler on the open prairie than down there along the creek trail. And if we are storm-stayed, we are storm-stayed, that’s all.”

“You are the comfortablest girl a fellow could have, Leighlie. You aren’t a bit scared of storms like – ”

“Yes, like Jo. I can’t help it. I never was much of a ’fraid cat, but I don’t mind admitting I am fonder of water in lakes and rivers and water-color drawings than thumping down on my head from the little end of a cyclone funnel.”

The air grew cooler in their homeward ride, while they followed the same old Sunflower Trail that Asher and Virginia Aydelot had followed one September day a quarter of a century before. And, for some reason, they did not stop to question, neither was eager to reach the end of the trail today.

As they came to a crest of the prairie looking down a long verdant slope toward what was now a woodsy draw, Thaine said, “Leigh, my mother was lost here somewhere once and Doctor Carey found her. Maybe Doctor Carey is the man to help you now.”

“Oh, Thaine, I believe I could ask Doctor Carey for anything. You are so good to think of him,” Leigh exclaimed. “I knew you’d help me out.”

“Yes, I’m good. That’s my trade,” Thaine replied. “And I’m pretty brave to offer advice, too. But if you want to talk any about courage, mine’s a different brand from yours. I may be a soldier myself some day. Brother Aydelot of the Sunflower Ranch, trustee of the Grass River M. E. Church, fit, bled, and died in the Civil War and was not quite my age now when he came out all battle-scoured and gory. I always said I’d be a soldier like my popper. But I’d fall in a dead faint before that alfalfa and mortgage business you face like a hero. It’s getting cooler. See, the storm didn’t get this side of the purple notches; it stayed over there with Pryor Gaines and Prince Quippi.”

They rode awhile in silence, then Thaine said: “Leigh, I will go up to Careyville and send Doctor Carey down to Cloverdale to see you. It will save you some time at least, and I’ll tell him you want to see him particularly and alone. You can tell me the result Sunday if you want to.”

Leigh did not reply, but gratitude in the violet eyes made words unnecessary.

On the Sabbath after the party, Thaine Aydelot waited at the church door for Jo Bennington, who loitered out slowly, chatting the while with Todd Stewart.

“Let me take you home, Jo. I see your carriage will be full with the company you will have today,” Thaine said.

Jo looked with a pretty pout at the invited guests gathered about her mother and father waiting for her at the family carriage.

“Thank you, yes. I am glad to get away from those tiresome goody-goodies. It looks like the Benningtons are taking the whole official board and the ’amen corner’ home for dinner.”

“Then come to the Sunflower Inn and dine with me. Rosie Gimpke came back last night and she promised me shortcake and sauerkraut and pretzels and schooners of Grass River water. Do come.”

Indeed, Thaine had been most uncomfortable since the day at Wykerton, and he wanted to be especially good to Jo now. He didn’t know exactly why, nor had he felt any jealousy at the bright looks and the leisure preference she had just given to Todd Stewart.

“Oh, you are too good. Yes, I’ll go, of course,” Jo exclaimed. “Can’t we go down to the grove and see the lilies this afternoon, too?”

“Yes, we can go to China if we want to,” Thaine declared. “Wait here in the shade until I drive up.”

Teams were being backed away from the hitching-rack, and much chatting of neighbors was everywhere. Jim Shirley was not at church today, and Jo saw Leigh Shirley going alone toward the farther end of the rack where her buggy stood, while three or four young men were rushing to untie her horse. Jo, turning to speak to some neighbors, did not notice who had outdistanced the others in this country church courtesy until she realized that the crowd was going, and down the deserted hitching line Leigh Shirley sat in her buggy talking with Thaine, who was standing beside it with his foot on the step, looking up earnestly into her face.

Jo was no better pleased that Leigh’s face was like a fair picture under her white hat, and she felt her own cheeks flushing as she saw how cool and poised and unhurried her little neighbor appeared.

“Thank you, Thaine. All right. Don’t forget, then,” Jo heard her say as she gathered up the reins, and noted that it was her motion and not the young man’s that cut short the interview.

“Leigh is a leech when she has the chance,” Jo said jokingly, as the two sat in the Aydelot buggy at last.

When one has grown up from babyhood the ruling spirit in a neighborhood, her opinions are to be accepted.

Thaine gave Jo a quick look but said nothing.

“By the way, papa says Jim isn’t very well this summer. Says he still grieves over the farm he lost. Leigh hasn’t much ahead of her, nailed down to a chicken lot and a cow pasture and a garden. I wonder they don’t move to town. She’d get a clerkship, maybe.”

Thaine only waited, and Jo ran on.

“I’d never stay in the country a minute if I could get to town. I’ll be glad when papa’s elected treasurer, so we can live in Careyville again. Poor Leigh. Doesn’t she look like a drudge?”

Still Thaine was silent.

“Why don’t you say something?” Jo demanded, looking coquettishly at him.

“About what?” he asked gravely.

“About Leigh. I don’t want to do all the gossiping. Tell me what you think of her.”

“It would take a Cyclopedia Britannica set of volumes to do that,” Thaine replied.

“Oh, be serious and answer my questions,” Jo demanded.

“‘Doesn’t she look like a drudge?’ What kind of an answer – information or just my opinion?”

“Oh, your opinion, of course,” Jo said.

“If she looks like a drudge, it’s what she is.” The young man’s eyes were on his team.

“I thought you liked her,” Jo insisted.

“I do,” Thaine replied.

“How much, pray?”

“I haven’t measured yet.”

Thaine Aydelot was by inheritance a handsome young fellow, and as he turned now to his companion, something in his countenance gave it a manliness not usual to his happy-go-lucky expression. But the same unpenetrable something beyond which no one could see was always on his face when Jo talked of Leigh.

“How much do you like me?” The query was daringly put, but the beauty of the girl’s striking face seemed to warrant anything from her lips, however daring.

“A tremendous lot, I know that,” Thaine replied quickly, and Jo dropped her eyes and began to chatter of other things.

In the afternoon the cool grove was inviting, and Thaine and Jo loitered about in careless enjoyment of woodland shadows and wind-dimpled waters and Sabbath quiet and one another.

“I want father to have a little boathouse over by the lily corner and make a picnic place here sometime,” Thaine said as they sat by the lake in the late afternoon.

“Such a nice place for you to come in the summer. Aren’t you glad you don’t just have to stay in the country?” Jo asked.

“Would you never be satisfied in the country, Jo?” Thaine queried. “Not if you had a home there?”

Jo blushed and her face was exquisite in its rich coloring.

“Would you be?” she asked.

“Oh, I’d like to do something worth while,” Thaine replied. “Father doesn’t say much, but he wants me here, I know.”

“He will get over it, I’m sure,” Jo insisted. “Why should the first generation here weight us all down here, too? I hope you’ll not give up to your father. I wouldn’t,” Jo said defiantly.

“Did you ever give up to him?” Thaine asked.

“No, he gives up to me.” The words were too sweetly said to seem harsh.

“I don’t blame him,” Thaine added.

“I don’t believe any of our crowd will stay here like the old folks have done, except Todd Stewart and, of course, Leigh,” Jo declared.

“Say, Jo, my folks don’t look old to me. Mummie is younger and good-lookinger than anybody, except – ”

“Leigh Shirley,” Jo broke in.

Thaine looked at his watch without replying.

“Is it late? You must take me home, now,” Jo said. “You’ll be over tonight, won’t you? We will have some company from Careyville who want to meet you.”

“I’m sorry, but I promised Leigh up here at church that I’d go over to Cloverdale for a little while tonight.”

Thaine could not tell Jo of Leigh’s affairs, and he felt that the Shirleys’ intimacy with his father’s family and his own expressed admiration and attention to Jo were sufficient to protect him from jealousy. Jo stiffened visibly.

“Thaine Aydelot, what’s the reason for your actions – Oh, I don’t care. Go to Shirley’s, by all means. Everybody to his likes,” she cried angrily.

“Well, that’s my rathers for tonight, and I can’t help it,” Thaine answered hotly.

“Of course you can’t. Let’s go home quick so you can get off early,” Jo said in an angered tone.

“I’ll go as slowly as I can. You can’t get rid of me so.” Thaine was getting control of himself again.

“Say, Thaine, tell me why you go away from our company tonight,” Jo pleaded softly, putting her hand on her companion’s arm. “Don’t you care to come to our house any more?”

They were in the buggy now on the driveway across the lake. Thaine recalled the moonlight hour when he sat with Leigh, of how little Leigh seemed to be thinking of herself, of how he had admired her because she demanded no admiration from him. Was there an obligation demanded here today? And had he given grounds for such obligation? Past question, he had.

“Jo, you must take me just as I am,” he said. “All the boys are ready to crowd into any place I vacate around Cyrus Bennington’s premises. You won’t miss one from your company tonight. I may get desperate – and kill off a few of them sometime to make you really miss me.”

He knew he was talking foolishly. He had felt himself superior to the other young men who obeyed every wish of Jo’s. He had been flattered always by her evident preference for his company, and had not thought of himself as being controlled by her before. He had been too willing to do her bidding. Today, for the first time, her rule was irksome. In spite of his efforts to be agreeable, the drive homeward was not a happy one.

It was twilight when Thaine reached the Cloverdale Ranch and found Leigh waiting for him on the wide porch. All the way down the river he had been calling himself names and letting his conscience stab him unmercifully. And once when something spoke within him, saying, “You never told Jo you were fond of her. You have not done her any wrong,” he stifled back the pleasing voice and despised himself for trying to find such excuse. He was only nineteen and had not had the stern discipline of war that Asher Aydelot had known at the same age.

Jo had offered no further complaint at his refusing her invitation. She played the vastly more effective part of being grieved but not angry, and her quiet good-by was so unlike pretty imperious Jo Bennington that Thaine was tempted to go back and spend the evening in her company. Yet, strangely enough, he did not blame Leigh for being the cause of his discomfort, as he should have done. As he neared her home, his conscience grew less and less noisy, and when he sat at last in Jim Shirley’s easy porch chair with Leigh in a low rocker facing him, while the long summer Sabbath twilight was falling on the peaceful landscape about him, he had almost forgotten Jo’s claim on him.

“Doctor Carey came down to see me,” Leigh was saying, “just as you were kind enough to ask him to do. He told me he had no money of his own to loan, but he knew of a fund he might control in a few days. He had to leave Kansas yesterday on a business trip, but he will see me as soon as he comes back.”

“Better than gold! Your plans just fall together and fit in, don’t they?” Thaine exclaimed. “Will he be back in time, though?”

“Yes. But really, Thaine,” Leigh’s eyes were beautiful in the twilight, “I never should have thought of Doctor Carey if it hadn’t been for you.”

“I am of some use to the community after all,” Thaine said with serious face.