The Reclaimers

"No, I have only been here a short time myself, and the country is almost as new to me as it is to you," Laura Macpherson replied.

"Oh, it is such an awful place!" Jerry continued. "Everywhere and everywhere one can see nothing but great sand-waves all over the land. They have almost buried the palisades that protect the railroad. It just seemed like the Red Sea dividing to let the Israelites go through, only this was red-hot sand held back to let the train pass through a deep rift. And to-day the wind had filled up the tracks so it couldn't go through until the sand was cleaned out. There is only one kind of shrub, a spiny looking thing, growing anywhere on all those useless acres. It is a perfectly horrid country! Why was such land ever made?" Jerry turned to York with the question.

"I can't tell you," York said, "but there are some good things here."

"Yes, there is my claim," Jerry broke in. "It's all I have left, you know. Cousin Gene tried to persuade me it would be better off without me, but I'm sure it must need the owner's oversight to make it really profitable. There was no record, in settling up the estate, of its having produced any income at all. I certainly need the income now. Taking care of myself is a new experience for me."

All the vivacity and hopefulness of youth was in her words. But the dreamy expression on her face that came and went with her moods soon returned.

"Cousin Gene Wellington is not my real cousin, you know. He is Uncle Darby's relative, not Aunt Jerry's. He is an artist, but without any income right now, like myself. Both of us have to learn how to go alone, you see, but I'm not going back to Philadelphia now, no matter what Aunt Jerry Darby may say."

This was no appeal for sympathy. Taking care of oneself seemed easy enough to Lesa Swaim's child, to whom the West promised only one grand romantic adventure. There was something, too, in the tone in which she pronounced the name of Gene Wellington that seemed to set it off from every other name. And she pronounced it often enough to trouble York Macpherson. No other name came so easily and so frequently and frankly to her lips.

"We hope you will like the West. The Sage Brush isn't so bad when you get acclimated to its moods," York assured her. "But don't expect too much at first, nor too definite a way of securing an income."

Only Laura Macpherson caught the same minor chord of anxiety in her brother's voice that she recalled had been in it when he told her of Jerry's claim. It seemed impossible, however, that anything could refuse to be profitable for this charming, blossomy kind of a girl who must thrive on easy success or perish, like a flower.

"Oh, land always means an income, my father used to say. Aunt Jerry has only two hundred acres, but it is a fortune to her," the girl declared. "I'm not uneasy. As soon as I get a real hold on my property here I'll be all right. It is getting late. I must go now. No, I am going by myself," she declared, prettily, as York prepared to accompany her back to the hotel. "It is straight up this light street and I am going to try it alone from the very beginning. That's why I didn't go to your office as soon as I got here to-day. I told Cousin Gene I could take care of myself and make my own way out here, just as he is making his own way in the East, working in his studio. No, you shall not go with me. Thank you so much. No. Good-by." This to York Macpherson, who was wise enough to catch the finality of her words.

The twilight was almost gone, but a young moon in the west made the street still light as the two on the porch watched the girl going firm-footed and unafraid, unconscious of their anxiety for what lay in the days before her.

"Is it courage, or contempt for the West, that makes her fearless where one would expect her to be timid? She seems a combination of ignorance and assertiveness and a plea for sympathy all in one," Laura Macpherson declared.

"She is the child of two different temperaments – Jim one, and Lesa another; a type all her own, but taking on something of each parent," York asserted, as he watched until the girl had disappeared at the door of the Commercial Hotel, far up the street.

The next day was an unusual one for four people in New Eden. The wind came from the east, driving an all-day rain before it, and York Macpherson did not go to the upper Sage Brush country. Instead, he worked steadily in his office all day. Some files he had not opened for months were carefully gone over, and township maps were much in evidence. Every now and then he glanced toward the upper windows of the Commercial Hotel. Mr. Ponk had said that Jerry had No. 7, the room he had occupied for several years. He wondered if this rain was making her homesick for the Winnowoc Valley and "Eden" and that wonderful Cousin Gene, blast him! There was a smile in York's eyes whenever he looked across the street. When he turned to his work again his face was stern. What he thought was a determination not to be bothered by rainy-day loafers coming into his office, what made him set his teeth and grip to his work, was really the fight with a temptation to go over to the hotel and look after a homesick girl.

Meantime Jerry Swaim, snug in a filmy gray kimona with pink facings and soft gray slippers, was enjoying the day to the full limit. Secure from strangers, relaxed from the weariness of travel, she slept dreamlessly, and wakened, pink and rested, to watch the cool, life-giving rains and dream her wonderful day-dreams wherein new adventure, victory over obstacles, and Eugene each played a part. Jerry was in love with life. Sunshine and rain, wind and calm, every season, were made to serve her, all things in nature to bring her interest and pleasure – all except sand. That hot hour and a half between sand-leaguered palisades seared her memory. But that was all down-stream now, with the junction station, and the country Thelma, and the tow-headed woman and flabby flopping baby, and the little old Teddy Bear humping his yellow-brown fuzziness against the swirl of cinders and prairie dust. The recollection of it all was like the touch of a live coal on the cool surface of her tranquil soul, a thing abhorred that yet would not be uncreated nor forgotten.

"To-morrow will be Sunday." The little pagan would have one more idle day. "I'll get a letter from Eugene on Monday. On Monday," dreamily, "I'll beg into live here, not stay here. What charming folks the Macphersons are! and – so different."

There was a difference. Jerry did not know, nor care to analyze it, nor explain to herself, why these two people had in themselves alone begun to make New Eden worth while for her. She for whom things, human and otherwise, had heretofore been created – all except sand.

The third New-Edenite who had some special interests on this rainy day was Junius Brutus Ponk. Often an idler in the Macpherson Company's office, he was always interesting to York. There were never created two of his kind. That in itself made him worth while to the big, strong man of many affairs. And, much as York wanted to be alone to-day, he welcomed the coming of Ponk. In the long, serious conversation that followed, their usual bantering had no place. And when the little man went slowly out, and slowly crossed the street to the hotel, indifferent to the steady fall of rain, York Macpherson's eyes followed him earnestly.

"He'll almost forget to strut if that girl stays here – but she won't stay. And he will strut. He's made that way. But down under it all he's a man, God bless him – a man any woman could trust."

Up at "Castle Cluny" the rainy day brought one caller whom "chilling winds nor poisonous breath" could never halt – Mrs. Stellar Bahrr, otherwise – "the Big Dipper" – the town gossip.

Mrs. Stellar Bahrr was a married, widowed-by-divorce, old-maid type, built like a sky-scraper, of the lean, uncertain age just around sixty, with the roundness of youth all gone, and the plump beauty of matronliness all lacking, wrinkled with envy and small malice, living on repeating what New Eden wanted kept untold. Hiding what New Eden should have known of her, she maintained herself on a pension from some one, known only to York Macpherson, and the small income derived just now from trimming over last year's hats "to make them look like four-year-olds," York declared.

The real milliner of the town was a brisk, bright business woman who had Stellar Bahrr on her trail in season and out of season. Mrs. Bahrr herself could not have kept up a business of any kind for a week, for she changed callings almost with the moon's phases.

No more unwelcome caller could have intruded on the homey, delicious, rainy-day seclusion of "Castle Cluny."

"I jis' run in to see the hat again you're goin' to wear to-morrow, Miss Laury. I 'ain't got more 'n a minute. Ye ain't alone this dreary day, are ye? The Lenwells was sayin' last night your brother was goin' to the upper Sage Brush on some business with the Posers. But they're in town, rainy as it is, an' all. Did he go?"

"No, he put it off till Monday," Laura replied, wondering what interest York's going or coming could be to Stellar Bahrr.

"As I was sayin', the Posers is in town. Come to meet Nell and her baby. They come in on the freight yesterday. The biggest, bald-headest young un you ever see. Nell wants her hat fixed over, and nothin' on the livin' earth to fix it with, ner money to pay for it. I'll make ol' Poser do that, though. Lemme see your hat, so's I can get an idy or two. You've got some 'commodation, if that blamed millinery-store hain't. Thank ye for the favor."

Stellar had a way of pinning her eyes through one until her victim could not squirm. She also had a way of talking so much she gave the impression of running down and the promise of a speedy leave-taking, which she never took until she had gained all the information she wanted. Her talent in a good cause would have been invaluable, for she was shrewd, patient, and everlastingly persistent.

Laura Macpherson reluctantly left the room to get her hat, wondering, since it had not been out of the box before, how in the world Stellar Bahrr knew anything about it. Mrs. Bahrr was standing by the dining-room window when she returned.

"I jis' come out here to see if the Sage Brush is raisin' down yonder. Who is that strange girl Ponk's running around with last night?" The gossip turned the question suddenly. "I seen 'em comin' up here myself. Folks down-town don't know yet." The sharp, steel-pointed eyes caught into Laura like hooks.

"I don't – believe you'll like this hat." Laura had meant to say, "I don't intend to tell you," but she was hooked too quickly.

"Who'd you say she is?"

There was no courteous way out now.

"She is a Miss Swaim."

"Say, this hat's a jew'l. Looks younger 'n the girls' hats does on 'em. Where's she from?"

"East. This color is a bit trying for me, I think."

"Oh, no 'tain't! What's she here for?"

"I – You'll have to ask York." Laura rolled her burdens on her brother's shoulders, as did likewise the remainder of New Eden, when crowded to the wall.

"York! She ain't after him, I hope. Don't blush so. That's a good one on York. An' he never met her at the station, even. Ponk – little fiend" (Ponk always turned game-cock when Stellar approached him), "little devil he is – he telephoned in from down at the sidin', by the deep fishin'-hole."

Mrs. Bahrr caught her breath and bit her lips as she eyed her hostess slyly. Laura Macpherson was white with disgust and anger. Of all the long-tongues, here was the queen.

"Where's the deep fishing-hole?" she asked, innocently, to get her unpleasant caller on another tack.

For a moment Mrs. Bahrr did not reply, busying herself with examining the new hat's lining and brim-curves. If Laura had known what York Macpherson knew she would have realized that here was the place to score by dwelling on the deep fishing-hole. But Laura was new to Sage Brush traditions.

"Ponk calls in to have his spanky new runabout all ready at the station. George nearly busted hisself gettin' there. Then Ponk, the miserable brute, he hangs around and keeps Miss Swine – "

"Swaim, Geraldine Swaim," Laura cried, in disgust.

"Yes, Geraldine Swim – keeps her inside, so's nobody gets a good look at her. I was there myself, a-watchin' him. I'd gone to see if my fish 'd been sent up, an' when they'd all cleared out he trots her out, big as Cuffey, and races to the hotel with her. Maybe, though, York didn't know she was comin', or had Ponk put up to lookin' after her for him. You never can tell about these men. I noticed York never walked home with her last night, neither. 'Course it was light as day. Well, well, it's interestin' as can be. An' she come here purpose to see your brother, too."

"If you are through with my hat" – Laura was fairly gray with anger and her eyes flashed as she tried to control herself.

Nobody was wiser than Stellar Bahrr in situations like this.

"In jest a minute. Them's the daintiest roses yet. Thank you, Miss Laury. You ain't above helping a person like me. There's them that is here in New Eden. But I know 'em – I know 'em. They talk to your back and never say a word to your face, not a blamed word. But you're not like 'em. Everybody says you're just like your brother, an' that's enough for anybody to know in the Sage Brush country. He's been the best friend I ever had, I know that. I hope that pink-'n'-white city girl 'll find out that much pretty quick. Somebody ought to tell her, too. Well, good day, Miss Laury. My umberel's right outside in the umberel-stand."

Poor Laura! She was no fighter from choice, no imputer of evil motives, but her love for her brother amounted almost to idolatry.

"I'm her one weakness," York often said. "Her strength is in her sense of humor, her kind heart, her love of beautiful things, and the power of the old scrapping blood of the Macphersons that will stand so much – and then Joan of Arc is a tennis-player alongside of my blessed sister in her righteous wrath."

That rainy day ended with a problem in the minds of at least three New Eden dwellers: York Macpherson, who carried a bigger load now than Joe Thomson's unwise but determined mortgage matter; Junius Brutus Ponk, who was sharing York's problem to a degree, and Laura Macpherson, who realized that a malicious under-current was already started whose undermining influence might sooner or later grow into a menacing power.

And Jerry Swaim, unconscious cause of all this problem element, ate and slept and laughed and dreamed her pretty day-dreams in utter content. It was well that the next day was Sunday. The rain-washed prairie and the June sunshine did so much to lift the tension in this New Eden where even the good little snakes are not always so very good.

VI

PARADISE LOST

Laura Macpherson came through the dining-room on Monday morning with her hands full of wild flowers.

"Wherefore?" York asked, seeing the breakfast-table already decorated with a vase of sweet-peas.

"Just a minute, York. I got these with the dew on them – all prairie flowers. I thought Jerry might be up to see me to-day. I went out after them for her," Laura explained, as she arranged the showy blossoms in vases about the rooms.

York dropped behind his day-old paper, calling after her, indifferently: "I doubt if they are worth it. You must have gone to the far side of 'Kingussie' for them. I doubt, too, if she comes here to-day, but I haven't any doubt that I am hungry and likely to get hungrier before you get ready for breakfast."

"Coming, coming." Laura came hastily to the table. "I forgot you in my interest in Jerry."

"A prevalent disease in New Eden right now," York said, behind his paper. "Ponk nearly fell down on getting me a chauffeur for to-day; the superintendent didn't get the quarterlies to our Sunday-school class on time yesterday morning; the Big Dipper took the wrong pew and kept it, and now my breakfast must wait – all on account of this Jerry girl."

"Mournful, mournful!" Laura declared. "Such a little girl, too! I'd like to tell you what your Big Dipper said about Jerry Saturday, but I mustn't."

"Saturday was a rainy day," York commented, knowing Laura would answer no questions if he should ask them now.

"All the more reason why the Big Dipper should come over to copy my new hat for one of the Poser girls up the Sage Brush, and then fall to questions and conclusions," Laura insisted.

"I thought yesterday was the grand opening for that lid of yours. Where did the B. D. see it?" York would not ask for what he wanted most to know.

"It had positively never been out of the box since it came here," Laura declared. "But pshaw, York, it is the gossip you want to know, and I'm really concerned about that."

"I'm not. I am really concerned about where Stellar Bahrr saw your hat." York was very serious and his sister was puzzled for the minute. He never looked that way when he joked – never.

"I don't know anything about Mrs. Bahrr's gift of second sight, York; I'm simply telling what I do know. That hat-box was not opened. Let's talk of better things. Mr. Ponk told me at church yesterday that when Jerry first came she asked for 'an old gentleman named York Macpherson.'" Laura's eyes were twinkling with mischief. "From what she said to me yesterday she is going to depend on you for direction, just like everybody else who comes to New Eden. I'm dead in love with her already. Aren't you?"

"Desperately," York returned. "But seriously, Laura, she is 'most too big a responsibility to joke about. There are a lot of things tied up for her in this coming West. I have to go to the upper Sage Brush this morning to be gone for a couple of days. I wish she would come here and stay with you, so that she might be with the best woman in the world." York beamed affectionately upon the sweet-faced woman opposite him. "I wish I didn't have to leave this morning, but I'll be back by to-morrow night or early Wednesday morning. It is going to be our job to map out her immediate future. After that, things will take their course without us, and New Eden, I imagine, will have to get along without her. When I get back I'll take her down to see her claim. Ponk is the only man besides myself who knows where it is, and I've fixed him. He can't run a hotel and garage and play escort all at once. I want to prepare her in a way, anyhow, for she won't find exactly what she is expecting – another 'Eden' six times enlarged. Meantime turn her gently, if you can, toward our woolly Western life. I won't say lead. Geraldine Swaim, late of Philadelphia, will never be led."

"York she's a lamb. Look at her big, pleading eyes," his sister insisted.

"Laura, she's a rock. Look at her square chin. I'm going now, and I will and bequeath her to your care. Good-by."

As he left the house his sister heard him whistling the air to the old song, "I'll paddle my own canoe."

Evidently the fair Philadelphian was still on his mind.

"I wish," he said to himself, as he cleared the north limits of the New Eden settlement and struck out toward the upper Sage Brush country – "I wish to goodness I had pressed Laura to tell me more about what that infernal Big Dipper said to her Saturday. I'll get that creature yet. I believe she knows that as well as I do. I wish, too, I was sure things would just stay put until I get back."

Half an hour after York had left town Jerry Swaim, dressed for a drive, appeared at the door of Ponk's garage.

"Have you a good little runabout that I could hire this morning? I want to go out into the country," she said to the proprietor.

"Why, yes, Miss Swaim, but I 'ain't got no shofer this morning. York Macpherson, he took my last man and soared up the country, and they won't be back for a couple of days. I'm sorry, but could you wait till, say, about a-Thursday, or mebby a-Friday?"

Ponk's cheerful grin always threatened to eclipse his eyes, but this morning there was something anxious back of his cheerfulness. Nature had made him in a joking mood, round eyed, round headed, round bodied, talkative, and pompous in an inverse ratio to his size. But there was something always good and reliable about Ponk, and with all his superficiality, too, there was a real depth to the man, and a keener insight than anybody in New Eden, except York Macpherson, ever gave him credit for having.

"I'm sorry I've got no shofer. There was a run on the livery business this morning for some reason. That's why I'm office-boy here now, 'stead of runnin' the office next door," Ponk explained, as blandly and conclusively as possible.

"I don't want a chauffeur at all. I drive myself," Jerry declared.

"You say you do?" Ponk stared at her little hands in their close-fitting white gauntlets.

"Now I'd never thought that. Yes," weakly, "I've got a dandy car for them that can use it, which is mostly me. It's the little gray gadabout we come up from the station in the other evening. There ain't another one like it this side of the Mississippi River – S'liny, Kansas, anyhow. You see, I have to be awful particular. I don't want it smashed against a stone wall or run off of some bridge."

"I've never done that with a car yet. And I used to drive our big eight-cylinder machine over all kinds of Pennsylvania roads."

The blue eyes were full of pathos as the memory of her home and all its luxuries swept over Jerry. And Ponk understood.

"We don't have no stone walls out here, and there ain't no bridges, either, except across the Sage Brush in a few places, because there ain't never water enough out here to bridge over. Yes, you may take the gadabout. I just know you'll be careful. That little car's just like a colt, and noways bridle-wise under a woman's hand."

"Thank you. I'll take no risks."

When Jerry was seated in the shining gray car, with her hand on the wheel, she turned to Mr. Ponk.

"By the way, do you know who owns any of the claims, as you call them, in this valley?" she asked. "I was going to speak to Mr. Macpherson, but you say he has gone out of town."

"Yes'm." Ponk fairly swelled with importance. "I know every claim, and who owns it, from the hills up yonder clear to the mouth of that stream. My hotel an' livery business together keeps me as well posted as the Macpherson Mortgage Company that holds a mortgage on most of them."

"Can you tell me where to find the one belonging to the estate of the late Jeremiah Swaim, of Philadelphia?" Jerry asked, in a low voice.

The short little man beside the car looked away in pity and surprise as he said:

"Yes'm, I can. You follow this street south and keep on till you come to where the Sage Brush makes a sharp bend to the east, right at a ranch-house. From there you leave the trail (we still call that down-stream road 'the trail') and strike across to three big cottonwood-trees on a kind of a knoll, considerable distance away. You can't miss 'em, for you can see 'em for miles. And then" – Ponk hesitated as if trying to remember – "seems to me you turn, bias'n' like, southeast a bit, and head for a little bunch of low oaks. From there you run your eye around and figger how many acres you can see. An', it's all Jeremiah Swaim's, or his heirs an' assignees. But, say, you ain't any kin to the late Mr. Swaim, who never seen that land of hisn, I reckon? I hadn't thought about your names being the same. Odd I didn't."

There was something wistful in the query which Jerry set down merely as plebeian curiosity, but she answered, courteously:

"Yes, he was my father. The land belongs to me."

"Say, hadn't you better wait and let York Macpherson soar down with you?" Ponk suggested. "It might be better, after all, mebby, not to go alone to spy out the land, even if you can drive yourself. Seems to me York said he'd be goin' down that way the last of the week. I do wish you'd wait for York to go with you first."

"I want to go alone," Jerry replied, and with a deft hand she made the difficult curve to the street, leaving the proprietor of the garage staring after her.

"Well, by heck! she can run a car anyhow!" he exclaimed, as he watched her speeding away. "Smart as her dad, I reckon. Mebby a little smarter."

All of Lesa Swaim's love of romantic adventure was shining on Jerry Swaim's bright face as she came upon Laura Macpherson on the cool side porch a few minutes later.

"I'm going out to inspect my royal demesne," she cried, gaily.