The Reclaimers

"All of which has what to do with the young lady from Philadelphia?" York inquired, blandly.

"Well, listen. Here's where tendin' to other folks's business comes in. A good-lookin' but inexperienced young lady comes out here from Philadelphia to find a claim left her by her deceased father. Out she goes to see said claim, payin' me good money for my best car – to ride in state over her grand province – of sand. And there wasn't much change but a pearl-handle knife an' a button-hook in her purse when she pays for the use of the car, even when I cut down half a buck on the regular hire. Her kind don't know rightly how to save money till they 'ain't none to save. But the look in her eyes when she come steamin' in from that jaunt was more 'n I could stand. York, she ain't the first Easterner to be fooled by the promise of the West. Not the real West, you understand, but the sham face o' things put up back East. An' here she be in our midst. Every day she goes by after the mail gets in, looking like one of them blue pigeons with all the colors of a opal on their necks, and every day she goes back with her face white around the mouth. She's walkin' on red-hot plowshares and never squealin'." Ponk paused, while York sat combing his fingers through his hair in silence.

"You know I'm some force on the school board, if I don't know much. I ain't there to teach anybody anything, but to see that such ignoramuses as me ain't put up to teach children. Now we are shy one teacher in the high-school by the sudden resignation of the mathematics professor to take on underwritin' of life insurance in the city. Do you suppose she'd do it? Would it help any if we offered the place to Miss Swaim? It might help to keep her in this town."

"Ponk, your heart's all right," York said, warmly. "It would help, I'm sure, if the lady is to stay here, for she is without means. She might or might not be willing to consider this opening. I can't forecast women. But, Ponk, could she teach mathematics? You know she was probably fashionably finished – never educated – in some higher school. If it were embroidery, or something like that, it might be all right."

"Oh, you trust me to judge a few things, even if I'm not up on the gentle art of foreclosin' mortgages and such. I know that girl could teach mathematics. Anybody who can run a car like she can with as true a eye for curves an' distances, and a head for bossin' a machine that runs by engine power, couldn't help but teach algebry and geometry just true as a right angle. But mebby," and Ponk's countenance fell – "mebby she'd not want to, nor thank me noways, nor you, neither, for interfering in the matter. But I just thought I'd offer you the chance to mebby help her get on her feet. I don't know, though. I'd hate to lose her good-will. I just couldn't stand it."

"Ponk, I appreciate your motive," York said, feelingly. "I will take this up as soon as I can with Miss Swaim. You see, she's our guest and I can't very gracefully suggest that she seek employment. And, to be frank with you, my sister has become very fond of her – Laura misses a good many good things on account of her lameness – and we would like to keep her our guest indefinitely; but we can't do that, of course."

"I don't wonder your sister wants her. Of course, you don't care nothin' about it yourself. An' I'll have the board hold the place awhile to see what 'll happen. I must soar back home now." And the little man left the office.

"Sound to the core, if he does strut when strangers come to town. Especially ladies. That's the only way some little men have of attracting attention to themselves. A kind-hearted man as ever came up the Sage Brush," York commented, as he watched his caller crossing the street to the hotel.

That evening Jerry Swaim sat alone on the porch of the Macpherson home, where shafts of silvery moonlight fell through the honeysuckle vines. What York Macpherson would have called a fight between Jim Swaim's chin and Lesa's eyes was going on in Jerry's soul this evening. Since her visit to her claim life had suddenly become a maze of perplexities. She had never before known a care that could not have been lifted from her by others, except the one problem of leaving Philadelphia, and the solution of that might have been the prank of a headstrong child, prompted by self-will and love of adventure, rather than by the grave decision of well-poised judgment. Heretofore in all her ventures a safe harbor had been near to shelter her. Now she was among the breakers and the storm was on.

For the first time in her memory her purse was light and there was no visible source from which to refill it. She was too well-bred to tax the hospitality of the Macpherson home, where she was made to feel herself so welcome. To return to Philadelphia meant to write and ask for the expenses of transportation. She had burned too many bridges behind her to meet the humility of such a request just yet; for that meant the subjection of her whole future to Jerusha Darby's will, and against such subjection Jerry's spirit rebelled mightily.

Every day for two weeks the girl had gone to the post-office with an eager, expectant face. Every evening she had asked York Macpherson if he had heard anything from Philadelphia since her coming, the pretended indifference in her tone hardly concealing the longing behind the query. But not a line from the East had come to New Eden for her.

On the afternoon of this day the postmaster had hurried through the letters because he, too, had caught the meaning of the hunger in the earnest eyes watching him through the little window among the letter-boxes. The mail was heavy to-day, but the distributer paused with one letter, long enough to look at it carefully, and then, leaving his work half finished, he hurried to the window.

"Here's something for you. Aren't you Miss Swaim?" he inquired, courteously, as he pushed the letter toward Jerry's waiting hand.

He had lived in Kansas since the passage of the homestead law. He knew the mark of homesickness on the face of a late arrival. Something in the cultivation of a new land puts a gentler culture into the soul. Out of the common heartache, the common sacrifice, the common need, have grown the open-hearted, keen-sighted, fine-fibered folk of the big and generous Middle West, the very heart of which, to the Kansan, is Kansas.

The postmaster turned quickly back to his task. He did not see the girl's face; he only felt that she walked away on air.

At York Macpherson's office she hesitated a moment, then hurried inside. York was in his private room, but the door to it stood open, and Jerry caught sight of a woman within.

"I beg your pardon." She blushed confusedly. "I don't want to intrude; I only wanted to stop long enough to read a letter from home."

Jerry's genuine embarrassment was very pretty and appealing, but York was shrewd enough to know that it came from the letter in her hand, not from any connection with his office or its occupants. Mrs. Stellar Bahrr, however, who happened to be the woman in the inner room, did not see the incident with York's eyes.

"Just come in here, Miss Swaim, and make yourself at home," York insisted. "Come, Mrs. Bahrr, we can finish our talk for to-day in one place as well as another. My sister and I are going across the river to spend the evening, so it will be late to-morrow before I can get those papers ready for you."

Mrs. Bahrr rose reluctantly, hooking her sharp eyes into the girl as she passed out. What she noted was a very white face where the color of the cheeks seemed burned in, and big, shining eyes. Of course the broad-brimmed chiffon hat with beaded medallions, the beaded parasol to match, and the beaded hand-bag of the same hues did not escape her eyes, especially the pretty hand-bag.

York closed the door behind the two, leaving Jerry in quiet possession of the inner room, while he seated Mrs. Bahrr in the outer office and engaged in the business that had brought her to him. He knew that she would be torn between two desires: one to hurry through and leave the office, and so be able to start a story of leaving Jerry and himself in a questionable situation; the other to stay and see the fair caller as she came out, and to learn, if possible, why she had come, and to enjoy her confusion in finding a woman still engaging York's time. Either thing would be worth while to Mrs. Bahrr, and while she hesitated York decided for her.

"I'll keep her with me, the old Long Tongue. Yea, she shall roost here in my coop till the little girl gets clear to 'Castle Cluny.' She sha'n't run off and overtake her prey and then cackle over it later. Jerry has committed the unpardonable sin of being young and pretty and good; the Big Dipper will make her pay for the personal insult."

In the midst of their business conversation Jerry Swaim came from the inner room, and with a half-audible word of thanks left the office. Mrs. Bahrr's back was toward the door, and, although she turned with a catlike quickness, she failed to see anything worth while except to get another good look at the hand-bag. Something told York Macpherson that the message in her letter held a tragical meaning for the fair-faced girl who had waited so eagerly for its coming.

At dinner that evening York was at his best.

"I must make our girl keep an appetite," he argued. "Nothing matters if a dinner still carries an appeal. By George! I've got to do my best, or I'll lose my own taste for what Laura can set up if I don't look out. We are all getting thin except Laura. Even Ponk is losing his strut a bit. And why? Oh, confound it! there is plenty of time to ask questions in July and August when the town has its dull season."

So York came to dinner in one of his rarest moods, a host to make one's worries flee away.

Jerry had reread her letter in the seclusion of her room at "Castle Cluny." It did not need a third reading, for every word seemed graven on the reader's brain. In carefully typewritten form, with only the signature in the writer's own hand, it ran:

My always dear Jerry, – I should have written you days ago, but I did not get back to "Eden" until you had been gone a week. We are all so eager to hear how you are, and to know about the Swaim estate which you went to find. But we are a hundred times more eager to see your face here again. I wish you were here to-night, for I have been in the depths of doubt and indecision, from which your presence would have lifted me. I hope I have done the right thing, now it is done, and I'll wait to hear from you more eagerly than I ever waited for a letter before. Yet I feel sure you will approve of my course after you get over your surprise and have taken time to think carefully.

I had a long heart-to-heart talk with Aunt Jerry to-day. Don't smile and say a purse-to-purse talk. Full purses don't talk to empty ones. They speak a different language. But this to-day was a real confidence game as you might say. I received the confidence if I didn't die as game as you would wish me to.

To be plain, little cousin mine, I want you dreadfully to come back, so much so that I have decided to give up painting for the present and take a clerkship in the bank with Uncle Cornie's partners. I can see your eyes open wide with surprise and disappointment when I tell you that Aunt Jerry has really converted me to her way of thinking. My hours are easy and the pay is good. Not so much as I had hoped to have some day from my brush and may have yet, if this work doesn't make me fat and lazy, for there is really very little responsibility about it, just a decent accuracy. This makes so many things possible, you see, and then I have the satisfaction of knowing I am doing a service for Aunt Jerry – and, to be explicit – to put myself where I shall not have to worry over things when you come home. So I'm happy now. And when you get here I shall begin to live again. I seem to be staying here now. Staying and waiting for something. Nobody really lives at "Eden" without little Jerry to keep us all alive and keyed up. Nobody to take the big car over the bluff road, beautiful as it is – for you know I'm too big a coward to drive it and to do a hundred things I'd do if you were here to brace me up.

Write me at once, little cousin, and say you will come home just as soon as you have seen all of that God-forsaken country you care to look at. And meantime I'll write as often as you want me to. I think of you every day and remember you in my prayers every night. You remember I told you I couldn't pray out in Kansas. May the Lord be good to you and make you love Him more than you think you do now, and bring you safe and soon to our beautiful "Eden."

Yours,Eugene.

The sands of the blowout on Jerry's claim seared not more hotly her fresh young hopes of prosperity, through her own effort and control, than this sudden change from the artist, with his dreams of beauty and power, to the man of easy clerical duty with a good salary and small responsibility. Of course Aunt Jerry had been back of it all, but so would Aunt Jerry have been back of her – if she had given up.

Jerry sat for a long time staring at the missive where it had fallen on the floor, the typewritten neatness of the blue lettering only a blur to her eyes. For she was back at "Eden," on the steep but beautiful bluff road, with Eugene afraid to drive the big Darby car. She was in the rose-arbor looking up to see that faint line of indecision in the dear, handsome face. She was in the "Eden" parlor under the soft light of rose-tinted lamps, facing Aunt Jerry and sure of herself, but catching again that wavering line of uncertainty on Eugene Wellington's countenance, and her own vague fear – unguessed then – that he might not resist in the supreme test.

But idols die hard. Eugene was her idol. He couldn't die at once. He was so handsome, so true, so gracious, so filled with a love of beautiful things. How could she understand the temptation to the soul of an artist in such lovely settings as "Eden" offered? It was all Aunt Jerry's fault, and he would overcome it. He must.

It was so easy to blame Aunt Jerry. It made everything clear. He had yielded to her cleverness and never known he was being ruled. With all her flippant, careless youth, inexperience, and selfishness, Jerry was a keener reader of human nature than her lack of training could account for. She knew just the lines Aunt Jerry had laid, the net spread for Eugene's feet. But – Oh, things must come out all right. He would change.

This one thought rang up and down her scale of thinking, as if repeating would make true what Jerry knew was false.

"'If a man went right with himself.' Oh, Eugene, Eugene!" she murmured, half aloud. "You hitched your wagon to a star, but to what kind of a star – to what kind of a star?"

Then came a greater query: "Shall I go back to 'Eden,' to Aunt Jerry's rule, to Eugene, to love, to easy, dependent, purposeless living? Shall I?"

A blank wall seemed suddenly to be flung across her way. Should she climb over it, hammer an opening through it, or turn back and run from it?

With these questions stalking before her she had come out to dinner and York Macpherson's genial, entertaining conversation, and to Laura Macpherson's gracious intuition and soothing sympathy.

Early in the evening, as the Macphersons with their guest sat watching the splendor of the sunset sky, Jerry said, suddenly:

"It has been two weeks to-day since I came here. Quite long enough for a stranger's first visit."

"A 'stranger,'" Laura Macpherson repeated. "A 'stranger' who asked to be called 'Jerry' the first thing. We are all so well acquainted with this 'stranger' that we wouldn't want to give her up now."

"But I must give you up pretty soon." Jerry spoke earnestly.

"Why 'must'? Has the East too strong a hold for the West to break?" York asked.

"I came out here because I believed my land would support me, and I had all sorts of foolish dreams of what I might find here that would be new and romantic." Jerry's eyes had a far-away look in them as she recalled the unrealized picture of her prairie domain.

"You haven't answered my question yet," York reminded her.

Jerry dropped her eyes, the bloom deepened on her fair cheek, and she clasped her small hands together. For a long time no word was spoken.

"I didn't answer your question. I am not going back to Philadelphia. There must be something else besides land in the West," Jerry said, at last.

"Yes, we are here. Do stay right here with us," Laura Macpherson urged, warmly.

Every day the companionship of this girl had grown upon her, for that was Jerry's gift. But to the eager invitation of her hostess the girl only shook her head.

York Macpherson sat combing his fingers through the heavy brown waves of his hair, a habit of his when he was thinking deeply. But if a vision of what might be came to him unbidden now, a vision that had come unbidden many times in the last two weeks, making sweeter the smile that won men to him, he put it resolutely away from him for the time. He must help this girl to help herself. Romance belonged to other men. He was not of the right mold for that – not now, at least.

"I heard to-day that there is need of a mathematics teacher in our high-school for next year. It pays eighty dollars a month," he said.

"Oh, York," Laura protested, earnestly. "You know Jerry never thought of such a thing as teaching. And I really must have her here. You are away so much, you know you are."

But her brother only smiled. When York Macpherson frowned he might be giving in, but his sister knew that his smile meant absolute resistance.

"Ponk was talking to me to-day. He is the treasurer of the school board now, and he mentioned the vacancy. He was casting about for some one fitted to teach mathematics. Even though his mind runs more on his garage than on education, he has a deep interest in the schools. He admires your ability to manage a car so much it occurred to him that you might consider this position. Fine course of reasoning, but he is sure of his ground."

"Let me think it over," Jerry said, slowly.

"And then forget it," Laura suggested. "York and I are invited out this evening. Won't you come with us? It is just a little informal doings across the river."

"I would rather be alone to-night," her guest replied.

So the Macphersons let her have her way.

IX

IF A WOMAN WENT RIGHT WITH HERSELF

And thus it happened that Jerry Swaim was alone this evening behind the honeysuckle-vines, with leaf shadow and moonbeams falling caressingly on her filmy white gown and golden hair. For a long time she sat still. Once she said, half aloud, unconscious that she was speaking at all:

"So Eugene Wellington has given up his art for an easy berth in the Darby bank. He hadn't the courage to resist the temptation, though it made him a tool instead of a master of tools. And we promised each other we would each make our own way, independent of Aunt Jerry's money. Maybe if I had been there things would have been different."

She gripped her hands in her quick, nervous way, as a homesick longing swept her soul. She was searching a way out for Eugene, a cause for putting all the blame on Aunt Jerry.

"I wish I had gone with the Macphersons. I could have forgotten, for a while at least."

A light step inside the house caught her ear.

"Maybe Laura has come home," she thought, too absorbed in herself to ask why Laura should have chosen the side door when she knew that Jerry was alone on the front porch.

Again she heard a movement just inside the open door; then a step on the threshold; and then a tall, thin woman walked out of the house and half-way across the wide porch before she caught sight of Jerry in an easy-chair behind the honeysuckle-vines. The intruder paused a second, staring at the corner where the girl sat motionless. From her childhood Jerry had possessed unusual physical courage. To-night it was curiosity, rather than fright, that prompted her to keep still while the strange woman's eyes were upon her. Evidently the intruder was more surprised than herself, and Jerry let her make the first move in the game. The woman was angular, with swift but ungraceful motion. For a long time, as such seconds go, she stared at the white figure hidden by the shadows of the vines. Then with a quick stride she thrust herself before the girl and dropped into a chair.

"Well, well! This is Miss Swim, ain't it?"

"As well that as anything. I can't land anywhere," Jerry thought.

"I'm Mrs. Stellar Bahrr, a good friend of Laury Macpherson as she's got in this town, unless it's you. I seen you in York's office this afternoon. I was sorry I intruded on you two when you come purpose to see him in his private office. When girls wants to see him that way they don't want nobody, 'specially women, around."

Mrs. Bahrr paused to giggle and to give Jerry time to parry her thrust, meanwhile pinning her through with the sharp points of her eyes that fairly gleamed in the shadow-checkered moonlight of the porch. Jerry was not accustomed to being accountable to anybody for what she chose to do, nor did she know that every man in New Eden, except York Macpherson and Junius Brutus Ponk – and every woman, without exception – really feared Stella Bahrr, knowing that she would hesitate at no kind of warfare to accomplish her purpose. It is generally easier to be decent than to be courageous, and peace at any price may be more desired than nasty word battles. Not knowing Stella for the woman she was, Jerry had no mind to consider her at all, so she waited for her caller to proceed or to leave her.

"You must excuse me if I seem to be interfering in your affairs. You are a stranger here except to York and that man Ponk – " Stella began, thrusting her hooks more viciously into her catch.

"Oh, you didn't interfere," Jerry interrupted her indifferently, and then paused.

Mrs. Bahrr caught her breath. The girl was sinfully pretty and attractive, her beauty and grace in themselves alone railing out at the older woman's ugly spirit of envy. And she should be tender, with feeling to be lacerated for these gifts of nature. Instead, she was firm and hard, with no vulnerable spot for a poisoned shaft.

"I'm sure you had a right to go into a man's private office. It's everybody's right, of course," she began, with that faint sneering tone of hers that carried a threat of what might follow.

"Yes, but a little discourteous in me to drive you out. That was Mr. Macpherson's fault, not mine," Jerry broke in, easily.

"Maybe that's her grievance. I'll be decent about it," the girl was thinking.

"I'm awfully bored right now." The wind shifted quickly. "I run up to see Laury a minute. Just slipped in the side-stoop way to save troublin' you an' York out here. I knowed Laury wouldn't be here, an', would you believe it? I clar forgot they was gone out, an' I seen you all leavin', too – I mean them, of course."

The threatening tone could not be reproduced. It carried, however, a most uncomfortable force like a cruel undertow beneath the seemingly safe crest of a wave.

"It's a joke on me bein' so stupid, but you won't give me away to 'em, will you?"

"I'm awfully bored, too," Jerry thought.

"You say you won't tell 'em at all that I come?" Mrs. Bahrr insisted.

"Not if you say so," Jerry replied, with a smile.

"I'm an awfully good friend of Laury's. She's a poor cripple, dependent on her brother for everything, an' if he marries, as he's bound to do, I'd hate to see her turned out of here. This house is just Laury through and through. Don't you think so? 'Course, though, if York marries again – " Stellar Bahrr stopped meditatively. "All the women in the Sage Brush Valley's just crazy about York. He's some flirt, but everybody thought he'd settled his mind once sure. But I guess he flared up again, from what they say. She's too fur away from town a'most. Them that's furtherest away don't have a chance like them that's nearest him. But it may be all just gossip. There was a lot of talk about him an' a girl down the river that's got a crippled brother – Paul Ekblad's his name; hers is Thelmy – an' some considerable about one of the Poser girls where he was up the Sage Brush to this week. The married one now, I think, an' a bouncin' big baby, but what do you care for all that?"

"Nothing," Jerry replied, innocently.

The steel hooks turned slowly to lacerate deeper.