Winning the Wilderness

Tonight the Aydelots were to give a party in honor of Thaine’s birthday, and the farmhouse was dressed for the occasion. Thaine had been busy all day carrying furniture in or out, mowing the front lawn where the old double fireguard once lay, and fixing a seat under the white honeysuckle trellis, “for the afflicted ones,” he declared to pretty Jo Bennington. Jo’s blush was becoming. Thaine felt sure that he must be in love with her. All the other boys were, too, he knew that well enough.

“What’s going on in the dining room?” Asher asked, as he sat at supper with Virginia in the kitchen.

“The decorating committee is fixing it up for dancing. Bo Peep is coming with his fiddle and there’ll be a sound of revelry by night.”

“Who’s the decorating committee?” Asher inquired.

“Jo Bennington is helping Thaine, and our new hired girl, Rosie Gimpke, from over on Little Wolf. She came this morning just after you left,” Virginia replied. “She acts and looks like she’d never had a kind word spoken to her.”

“Rosie Gimpke must be Hans Wyker’s granddaughter. There’s a nest of them over on Little Wolf. They give John Jacobs no end of trouble, but you must have help,” Asher said thoughtfully.

Virginia’s mind was not on hired help, however, as the sound of laughter came from the dining room.

“The bridal wreath and snowballs make it look like a wedding was expected in there,” she declared.

“Will the Arnolds and the Archibalds be up? Have you heard from the Spoopendykes and the Gilliwigs?” Asher inquired with a smile.

“Oh, Asher! What a change since the days when we invented parties for our lonely evenings here! What has become of the old prairie?”

“It’s out there still, under the wheat fields. We have driven the wilderness back; plowed a fireguard around the whole valley; tempered the hot winds by windbreaks and groves.”

“It seems impossible that there ever was a one-room sod cabin here, and only you and I and Jim and faithful old Pilot in all the valley.”

“Since so many things have come true it may be that many more will also by the time Thaine is as old as I was when I came out here and thought the Lord had forgotten all about this prairie until I reminded Him of it. We can almost forget the hard work and the waiting for results,” Asher said.

“Oh, we don’t want to forget,” Virginia replied. “Not a season’s joy or sorrow but had its uses for us. Do you remember that first supper here and the sunflowers in the old tin can?”

“Yes, and Jim sitting outside so lonely. What a blessing Leigh has been to his life. There they come now.”

The next moment Jim’s tall form filled the doorway.

“Good evening, folks. I can’t resist the habit of the sod shack days to come right into the kitchen. I understand that we forty-niners are to have an old settlers’ reunion while the young folks dance,” he said.

There were lines of care on his face now, suggesting a bodily weariness that might never grow less. The old hopefulness and purpose seemed fading away. But the kindly light of the eyes had not disappeared, nor the direct gaze of an honest man whose judgment might bring him to tragedy, while his sense of honor was still sublime.

“Come in, Jim. Where are Pryor and Leigh? Did you take it you were all we expected?” Asher asked.

“Leigh went in the front door like a Christian. As to Pryor,” he hesitated a moment. “I’ll tell you later about him.”

“Take this chair. I must help the children,” Virginia said cordially as she rose and left the kitchen.

Leigh Shirley was coming from the front hall as she entered the dining room, and Virginia paused a moment to look at her. Something about Leigh made most people want more than a glance. Tonight, as she stood in the doorway, Virginia could think of nothing but the pink roses that grew in the rose garden of the old Thaine mansion house of her girlhood. A vision swept across her memory of Asher Aydelot – just Thaine’s age then – of a moonlit night, sweet with the odor of many blossoms, and the tinkling waters of the fountain in the rose garden, and herself a happy young girl.

Leigh’s fair face was set in the golden brown shadows of her hair. On either side of her square white forehead the sunny ripples kept the only memory of the golden curls of babyhood. The darker eyebrows and heavy lashes and the deep violet-blue eyes, the pink bloom of the cheeks, and the resolute mouth gave to Leigh’s face all the charm of the sweet young girl. But the deeper charm that claimed the steady gaze lay in the spirit back of the face, in the self-reliance and penetrating power, combined with something of the artist’s dreams; and swayed altogether by genuine good nature and good will.

Tonight she wore a simple white gown revealing her white throat and the line of her neck and shoulder. White flowers nestled in the folds of her hair, and the whole effect enhanced the dainty coloring of cheeks and lips. Leigh had an artist’s eye in dress and knew by instinct what to wear. She had an artist’s hand also, as her mother had had before her, and was far more skilled in the painting of prairie landscapes than any of the Grass River folk dreamed of.

Thaine was busy on the top of the stepladder and did not see Leigh as she came in. Jo Bennington, who was holding sprays of spirea for him to festoon above the window, stared at Leigh until Thaine, waiting for the flowers, turned to see the pink-cheeked living picture framed against the shadows of the hall behind her.

“I thought you were coming early to help us. This Gimpke girl doesn’t know how to do a thing,” Jo exclaimed.

If her voice was a trifle high-pitched it was not out of keeping with her brilliant coloring and dashing manners. Even the thoughtless rebuke of the Gimpke girl seemed excusable from her lips, and Rosie Gimpke looked at her with unblinking eyes.

“You can put on my apron and finish, but don’t change a thing, now mind. I’ll go and dress. I brought my whole wardrobe over early in the week,” Jo rattled on, and thrusting her gingham apron into Leigh’s hands she dashed through the hall toward the stairway.

Rosie Gimpke, the tow-headed image of her mother, Gretchen Wyker, stared at Leigh, who smiled back at her. Rosie was stupid and ignorant, but she knew the difference between Jo Bennington’s frown and Leigh Shirley’s smile. A saving thing, the smile of good will, and worth its cost in any market.

“Shall I help you too, or shall Rosie and I look after the refreshments?” Virginia asked as she greeted Leigh.

“No, run along and get dressed. Rosie knows just how to fix things in the kitchen, and I never need anybody else if Leigh can help me,” Thaine declared. “How is this, Leigh?”

Leigh gave a quick glance and answered: “Too heavy everywhere? Can we fix it right?” “You bet we can. I’m not going to have a thing wrong tonight,” Thaine answered her. “But Jo fixed it, and you know Jo.”

Leigh made no reply, but went about the rearrangement with swift artistic skill; while Jo, who had changed her mind about being in a hurry, slipped down stairs to the dining room again. At the doorway she discovered the undoing of her work. For a minute or two she watched the pair, then passed unnoticed up stairs again. Leigh Shirley was the only girl who ever dared to oppose Jo, and she did it so quietly and completely that Jo could only ignore her. She could not retaliate.

“Jo Bennington, you are the prettiest girl in Kansas, and I claim the first dance and the last, and some in-betweens, right now,” Thaine declared when she appeared again.

Jo was tall and graceful and imperious in her manner. The oldest and handsomest child in a large family, she had had her own way at home and with her associates all her life. Her world was made to give way to her from the beginning, until nothing seemed possible or popular without her sanction. Tonight her heavy black hair was coiled in braids about her head, her black eyes were full of youthful glow and her cheeks were like June roses. She wore a pink lawn dress vastly becoming to her style, and a string of old-fashioned pearl beads was wound through her dark braids.

“You’d better make amends for spoiling all my pretty work as you and Leigh have done,” she said in reply to Thaine’s frank compliment. “I’ll make it a few more dances, for you do dance better than any of the other boys – ”

“Except Todd Stewart, Junior,” the owner of the name, who had just come in, declared. “There is to be a birthday party and an old settlers’ meeting, and maybe a French duel or two before midnight. I remember when I was the only kid in the Grass River Valley. There were others at first, but I always thought the grasshoppers or Darley Champers ate ’em. And Jo is the first white girl baby born in captivity here. We’ll lead the opening of this ball or shoot up the ranch. You can have Jo for the last dance, Thaine, my son, but me first.”

“Oh, that’s fine,” Jo declared as Thaine was about to protest. “Serves you right for spoiling my decorations. But, Thaine, I claim you for the in-betweens and the last. Let’s take one more look at the refreshments – that Gimpke girl may have them all in a mess by this time.”

There was a rush for the kitchen, where Leigh Shirley was already showing Rosie how to keep the table of dishes in order.

Meanwhile, Asher Aydelot had gone out to the seat Thaine had put up under the honeysuckle trellis.

“It is early for the crowd, Virgie. Come here and watch Boanerges Peeperville tuning up,” Asher Aydelot said as Virginia stood on the veranda a little later.

She came out to the seat under a bower of sweet white honeysuckle and sat down beside her husband.

“The same Bo Peep of the old Virginia days, only he was a half-grown boy then,” she said, watching the Negro bending above his violin. “How faithfully he has served Dr. Carey all these years. He’s past forty now. Asher, we are all getting along.”

“With a boy nineteen tonight, how can it be otherwise?” Asher replied. “But when the Careyville crowd gets here I’m going to ask you for a dance, anyhow, Miss Thaine.”

Virginia stood in the moonlight and looked out over the prairie slumbering in a silver-broidered robe of evening mist.

“How fast the years have gone. Do you remember the night in the old Thaine home in Virginia when you were our guest – too sick to dance?” she asked.

Asher caught her arm and drew her to the seat beside him.

“I remember the jessamine vines and the arbor at the end of the rose garden.”

“We are not old until we forget our own romance days,” Virginia said. “You were my hero that night. You are my hero still.”

“Even with a son as old now as I was that night? The real romance of the prairie, you’ve said it often, Virgie, is Thaine Aydelot’s romance. There’s little chance for the rest of us.”

The coming of the guests just then called the host and hostess to the parlor, and the evening’s festivities began.

In the building of the Aydelot home there was a memory of the old farmhouse beside the National pike road in Ohio and the old Thaine mansion house of the South. The picture the mirage had revealed to Virginia Aydelot on the afternoon when she rode the long lonely miles from Wykerton with John Jacob’s message of hope in her keeping – that wonderful mirage picture had grown toward a reality with the slowly winning years. Tonight, with the lighted rooms and the music of the violin, and the sound of laughter and the rhythm of dancing feet, and outside the May moonlight on the veranda with its vine-draped columns, and the big elm trees throwing long shadows down the lawn, with the odor of plowed fields and blossoming grain and shrub mingled with the perfume floating from the creamy catalpa blooms in the shadowy grove, all made a picture not unworthy to hang beside the painting of an Ohio landscape or an old Virginia mansion.

“Here’s where the forty-niners get the best of it,” Jim Shirley declared, as the older men gathered about the veranda steps. “We’re dead certain of ourselves now. We’re not like those youngsters in there with their battles before ’em.”

“There hasn’t been such a gathering as this in ten years. Not since the night Darley Champers herded us into the schoolhouse and blew a boom down our throats through a goosequill,” Cyrus Bennington declared.

“See that black thing away across the prairie east of Aydelot’s grove. Wait till the moon gets out from that cloud. Now!” Todd Stewart directed the eyes of all to a tall black object distinct in the moonlight.

“That’s the Cloverdale Farmers’ Company’s elevator. Looks like a lighthouse stretching up in that sea of wheat.”

“There are plenty of derelicts in that sea as well as some human derelicts left afloat,” Jim said, with a laugh. “Let’s take the census.”

“Begin with Darley Champers,” Asher suggested.

“Not present. Who got his excuse?” Jim inquired.

“He sent it by me,” Horace Carey spoke up. “Business still keeping him busy. He’s a humane man.”

“Up to a point he is,” John Jacobs broke in. “Let’s be fair. He is a large-sized boomer and a small-sized rascal. A few deals won’t bear the light of day, but mainly they are inside the law. I’ve let him handle all but my grazing land around Wykerton. He’s done well by me. But he’s been at his line a quarter of a century and he’ll end where he began – in a real estate office over in Wykerton, trying to get something for nothing and calling it business.”

“Horace Carey?” Jim Shirley called next.

“Here,” Carey replied.

“With a big H,” Todd Stewart declared. “Same doctor of the old school. Why don’t you get married or take a trip to India, Doctor? Not that we aren’t satisfied all over with you as you are, though, and wouldn’t hear to your doing either one. You belong to all of us now.”

“I may have a call to a bigger practice some day, a service that will make you proud of your former honorable townsman. At present I’m satisfied,” Carey said, with a smile.

Four years later the men remembered this reply and the attractive face of the speaker, the sound of his voice, and the whole magnetic presence of the man.

“John Jacobs?” Shirley called next.

“The merchant prince of Careyville,” Asher Aydelot declared. “The money-loaning Shylock. Didn’t let the boom so much as turn one hair black or white. Land owner and stock raiser of the Wolf Creek Valley and hater of saloons seven days in the week. Whatever it may mean in New York and Cincinnati and Chicago, being a Jew means being a gentleman in this corner of Kansas,” Asher was running on, till John Jacobs threw a chair cushion at his head and Jim called out:

“Cyrus Bennington.”

“Busted by the boom. Lived at the public crib ever since. Held every little county office possible to get, asking now for your votes this fall for County Treasurer. Will end his days seeking an election and go at last to be with the elected,” Cyrus Bennington frankly described himself.

“Not so bad yet as Todd Stewart,” Todd declared. “He lost everything in the boom except his old Scotch Presbyterian faith. Now head clerk in J. Jacobs’ dry goods and general merchandise store. Had the good sense, though, this old Todd did, to send his son back to the land and make a farmer out of him, and the second generation of Stewarts in this valley promises to make it yet. Why don’t you revert to the soil, too, Bennington?”

“Todd is doing well with his leases,” Asher Aydelot declared. “He’ll be a landowner yet.”

“My family, especially the girls, object to living on a farm,” Cyrus Bennington said gravely. “They have notions of city life I can’t overcome. Jo especially dislikes the country and Jo runs things round the Bennington place.”

“James Shirley, Esquire,” Jim announced and added quickly:

“The biggest sucker in the booming gang. Lost his farm to the Champers Company. Holds a garden patch and homestead only, where once the Cloverdale Ranch smiled. All under mortgage also to other capitalists. Boys, I’d be ready to give up if it wasn’t for my little girl. What’s the use in a man as big as I am, with no lung power, keeping at it?” There was a sad hopelessness in Shirley’s tone.

“No, no!” the men chorused in one voice. “Go on, Jim, go on!”

“Asher Aydelot.” Jim pretended it was the rollcall they demanded.

“Gentlemen,” John Jacobs began seriously. But at that moment Leigh Shirley, followed by Rosie Gimpke, came from the side door with a tray of glasses and a pitcher of lemonade.

“Gentlemen, a toast to the man who stuck to the soil and couldn’t be blasted to financial ruin by a boom, the wheat king of these prairies. Our host, Asher Aydelot.”

“The clod-hopper, Buckeye farmer,” Jim added affectionately, and they drank to Asher’s health.

“Lord bless you, Aydelot. You said the money was in the soil, not on top of it. I remember you looked like a prophet when you said it,” Cyrus Bennington declared. “But I was wild to get rich quick and let my soil go. I never look at Aydelot’s spreading acres of wheat increasing in area every year without wondering why the Lord let me be such a fool.”

“Well, you’ve spent a lot of days in an easy chair in the shade of a county office since then while I was driving a reaper in the hot sunshine,” Asher insisted.

“You are the strongest man here now, for all your farm work, Aydelot,” John Jacobs asserted. “It is the store that really breaks a man down.”

“Not in his nerve, nor in pocketbook,” Todd Stewart added. “Here’s a toast, now, to the second generation, and especially to Thaine Aydelot, son of the Sunflower Ranch. Nineteen years old tonight.”

“What is Thaine going to follow, Asher?” someone inquired. “I suppose you’ll be making a gentleman out of him, since he’s your only child.”

“My father tried to make a gentleman out of me and failed, as you see,” Asher replied.

“Tragic failure,” Jim groaned.

“Seriously, Aydelot, what’s Thaine to do?” The query came from Dr. Carey; the company awaited the answer.

“He isn’t wanting to follow anything right now. He has a notion that the earth is following him,” Asher said with a smile. “And having handled Aydelots all my life, I’m letting him alone a little with the hope that at last he’ll come back to the soil as I did. He goes to the Kansas University this fall and he has all sorts of notions, even a craving for military glory. I can’t blame him. I had the same disease once. I don’t believe in any wild oats business. I hope Thaine will be a gentleman, but I don’t wonder that a green country boy who has looked out all his life on open prairies and lonely distances should have a longing for city pavements and the busy haunts of men. How well he will make his way and what he will let these things fit him to do depends somewhat on how well grounded the farm life and home life have made him. The old French Aydelot blood had something of the wanderlust in it. I hope that trait may not reappear in Thaine. But where’s Pryor Gaines in this rollcall? We are getting away from the subject before the house.”

Jim Shirley’s handsome face grew sorrowful.

“He was not affected by the boom. He has been the same man in spirit and fortune for twenty-five years. But we are going to lose him. That’s why he’s not here tonight,” Jim hurried on as the others were about to interrupt him. “He won’t say good-by to anybody. You can understand why. He’s going to start for China tomorrow morning – missionary! It’s the last of Pryor Gaines for us. I promised not to tell till he was gone. I’ve lied to him. That’s all. But you’ll not tell on me nor let him know. He says he’s ’called.’ And when a preacher gets that in his blood there’s no stopping him.”

At that moment Virginia Aydelot and a group of matrons came thronging out.

“Come in for the Virginia Reel,” they demanded. “The young folks are having refreshments on the side porch and Bo Peep wants us to dance for him.”

“May I have the honor?” Horace Carey said, bowing to Virginia Aydelot.

“With pleasure, Horace,” Virginia replied with a smile.

As they led the way to the dining room, Dr. Carey said:

“I congratulate you tonight, Virginia, on your son, your kingly husband, and your busy, useful life. You’ve won the West, you two.”

“Not yet,” Virginia replied. “Not until our son proves himself. He’s a farmer’s boy now. Wait five years till he is the age his father was when he came out here. The test of victory is the second generation.”

Bo Peep’s fiddle began its song and the still young middle-aged guests with their host and hostess kept time to its rhythm.