Winning the Wilderness Part 51

heaven a'most, and just said sorter solemn like an' prophetic: 'I see a land fair as the Garden of Eden, with grazing herds on broad meadows, and fields on fields of wheat, and groves and little lakes and rivers--a land of comfortable homes and schoolhouses and churches, and no saloons nor breweries.' And then I broke in and told you I see a danged fool, and you says, 'Come down here in twenty-five year and make a hunt for me then.'

And, by golly, Aydelot, here I am. You've everlastingly conquered the prairies for sure, and you are a young man, not fifty-five yet."

"Well, you can see most of those things that I saw that day out yonder, can't you?"

Asher's eyes followed the waving young wheat and the blossoming orchards, the grove, full of birds' songs, and the line of Gra.s.s River running deeper year by year. Then he looked at his hard, brown hands and thought of the toil and faith and hope that had gone into the conquest.

"Yes, I'm still among the middle-aged," he said, straightening with his habitual military dignity of bearing. "But I don't know about this everlasting conquest of the prairies. There's still some of it waiting over beyond those headlands in the open range where John Jacobs has a big holding. I'll never feel that I have conquered until my boy proves himself in civil life as well as on the battlefield. If I can bring him back when he is through with the Orient, then, Darley Champers, I will have done something beside subdue the soil. Through him, I'll keep the wilderness from ever getting hold again. If we live so narrowly that our children hate the lines we follow and will not go on and do still bigger things than we have done, do we really make a success of life?"

At that moment Bo Peep appeared with Doctor Carey's letter, and the subject s.h.i.+fted to the problems of the far East.

"We aren't the only people who are having trouble," Asher said. "I read in the papers that the Boxer uprising that began in southern China last year is spreading northward and making no end of disturbance."

"What's them Boxers wantin'? Are they a band of prize ring fellers?"

Darley Champers asked.

"Pryor Gaines writes Jim s.h.i.+rley that they are a secret order of fanatics bent on stamping out all Christianity and all western ideas of advancement in the Orient. Things begin to look ugly in China, even from this distance. When a band of religious fanatics like the Boxers go on the warpath, their atrocities make a Cheyenne raid or a Kiowa ma.s.sacre look like a football game. I hope Pryor will not be in their line of march."

"Pryor Gaines'd better stayed right here. It's what's likely to happen to a man who goes missionarying too far, and we could 'a used him here."

It was an unusual concession for Darley Champers to make regarding the church, and Asher looked keenly at him.

"Say, Aydelot," Champers said suddenly, "you have more influence with John Jacobs 'n anybody else, I know. If you see the Jew, pa.s.s it on to him that Wyker's at his old cut-ups again over in Wykerton, and he's danged bitter against Jacobs. I can help him on the side like I did before, but the Jew's got hold of enough over there now to run things, with ownin'

land all round and holdin' mortgages on town property just to keep joints out of 'em. I do no end of business for Jacobs now. Never had dealin's with a straighter man. But he'd better look out for Wyker. The Dutchman's insides is all green with poison, he's hated Jacobs so many years."

"I guess John will make it hard on him if they come to blows again. The jail sentence and fine Jacobs fastened on him let Wyker down easy. John Jacobs is one of the state's big men," Asher responded.

"We lost another big man when we let Doc Carey go," Champers went on. "I used to set up nights and rest myself hatin' him. He done the biggest missionary work in me the two weeks I stayed at his house ever was done for a benighted heathen. I hated to see him go." The sadness of the tone was genuine. "But I mustn't be hangin' round here all the mornin'; I've got other things to do. Hope your boy'll keep a-goin' till his term's out.

Goodday!" And Champers was gone.

"Till his term's out!" Asher repeated with a smile. "Wouldn't that six-footer of a soldier boy, whose patriotism burns like a furnace, see the joke to that! Till he gets his stripes off and forgets the lock-step!

My Thaine, who is giving a young man's strength of body and inspiration of soul to his country's service! But Carey did do a missionary work in Champers. The fellow was crooked enough 'inside the law always,' as he said, but no more out of line than scores of reputable business men are today. And the fact that he's Jacobs' agent now measures the degree of trustworthiness Carey has helped to waken in him."

Darley Champers' business took him down the river to the Cloverdale Ranch, where he found Leigh s.h.i.+rley training the young vines up the trellis by the west porch.

"You got a mighty pretty place here; just looks like Jim s.h.i.+rley,"

Champers declared as he greeted the young gardener.

"Yes, Uncle Jim is never so happy as when he is puttering about the lawn and garden," Leigh answered.

"How's your alfalfa doin'?" Champers asked as he turned toward the level stretch of rich green alfalfa fields. "Danged money-maker for you," he added jovially.

"We'll clear the place with the first cutting this year. It's just the thing for Uncle Jim," Leigh a.s.serted.

"Yep, Jim's in clover--alfalfa, ruther. You had a good business head when you run your bluff some years ago, an' you wan't only nineteen then. You walked into my place an' jest bought that land on sheer bluff." Champers laughed uproariously, but he grew sober in the next minute.

"Miss s.h.i.+rley," he said gravely, "I ain't got much style nor sentiment in my makin's, but I've honestly tried to be humane by widders an' orphans.

I've done men to keep 'em from doin' me, or jest 'cause they was danged easy, but I never wronged no woman, not even my wife, who divorced me years ago back East 'cause I wouldn't turn my old mother out o' doors, but kep' her and provided for her long as she lived."

n.o.body in Kansas had ever heard Darley Champers mention his home relations before. Leigh looked at him gravely, and the sympathy in her deep blue eyes was grateful to the uncultured man before her.

"Miss s.h.i.+rley, I ain't wantin' to meddle none, but I come down here to ask you if you know anything about your father?"

Leigh gave a start and stared at her questioner, but her woman's instinct told her that only kindly purpose lay back of his question.

He had sat down on the edge of the porch and Leigh stood leaning against the trellis, clutching the narrow slats, as she looked at him.

"I think he is dead," she answered slowly. "Uncle Jim says he must be. He was a bad man, made bad not by blood but by selfishness. The s.h.i.+rleys are a fine family."

"Excuse me for sayin' it, Miss, but you took every good trait of that family, an' Nature jest s.h.i.+ed every bad trait as far from you as it took the sins of our old savage Anglo-Saxon ancestors off of our heads; them that used to kill an' eat their neighborin' tribes, like the Filipinos, they was. Don't never forget that you're a s.h.i.+rley an' not a Tank. Your grandma's name was Tank, I've been told."

Leigh made no response, but something in her face and in the poise of her figure bespoke the truth of Darley Champers' words.

"I jest come down to tell you," he continued, "that the man I represented when I sold you this quarter, he represented your father, Tank s.h.i.+rley, and Tank got it through this man away from Jim out of pure hate. I sold it back to you out of pure spite to Tank's agent, who was naggin' me. If your father is dead, there'd ought to be somethin' comin' back, as the money you paid for the land would help you some if we could get it back. I come as a friend. I'm kinder in Doc Carey's shoes while he's gone, you see. You've got the land as good as paid for. It will be clear, you say, by June. Buyin' it of your own father, if there's any estate left of him, you'd ought to have it. Money's always a handy commodity, an' I'd like to see you git what's your'n after your plucky bluff and winnin'. You could use it, I reckon?"

"We need it very much," Leigh a.s.sured him.

"Say, would you mind tellin' me if you find out anything about your father's whereabouts or anything?" Champers queried.

"Yes, I will," Leigh replied, "but will you tell me what you know about him; you must know something?"

It was Champers' turn to start now. "N-not much; not as much as I'm goin'

to know, and it's not for my profit, neither. I don't make money out of women's needs. I never made a cent on this sale to you, but it was worth it to get to do that agent once," Champers declared.

Leigh waited quietly.

"I'll be in better shape inside of two days to tell you something definite. I wish Carey was here. Do you know where he got the money he loaned you?"

"I never asked him," Leigh answered.

"He borrowed it of Miss Jane Aydelot of Cloverdale, Ohio."

Champers did not mean to be brutal, but the sharp cry of pain and the look of anguish on Leigh s.h.i.+rley's face told how grievous was the wound his words had made.

"Why, you paid it all back; she ain't lost nothin'. Besides, I heard with my own ears folks sayin' she'd always loved you and it was a pity Jim ever took you away from her. She might 'a done well by you, they said. You got no wrong due. Lord knows you've paid it conscientiously enough," Darley Champers insisted.

"Mr. Champers, will you be sure to tell me all you know as soon as possible? Meantime, I'll try to find out something to tell you."

"I sure will. Goodday to you."

When Champers rose to leave, Leigh put out her hand to him, and the winning smile that made all Gra.s.s River folk love her as they loved her uncle Jim now touched the best spot in the heart of the man before her.

"G.o.d knows it's a lot better to do for folks than to do 'em, and in the end I believe you prosper more at it. My business, except the infernal boom days, never was so good as it's been since I had that time with Carey, and it's all clean business, too, not a smirch on it. Wish I could forget a few things I've did, though." So Darley Champers thought, as he drove up the old Gra.s.s River trail in the glory of the April morning.

That morning, Leigh s.h.i.+rley wrote a long letter to Jane Aydelot of Cloverdale, Ohio. Leigh had written many letters to her before, but never one with a plea like this. Miss Jane had mentally grown up with Leigh and had built many a romance about her, which was only hinted at in the letters she received.

In the letter of this morning, Leigh begged for all the information Miss Jane could give concerning her father, and further, she pleaded boldly for the reconciliation of the Aydelot family, a thing she had never written of before. Five days later her letter came back "unclaimed" with a brief statement from the Cloverdale postmaster that Miss Jane Aydelot had pa.s.sed away on the day the letter was written, much beloved, etc.

John Jacobs had no need to be warned by Asher Aydelot of Hans Wyker's doings. He knew all of Wyker's movements through Rosie Gimpke. Jacobs had been kind to Rosie, whose bare, loveless life knew few kindnesses, and she harbored the memory of a good deed as her grandfather harbored his hatred.

Moreover, the Wyker joint had played havoc with the Gimpke family. Her father had died from a fall received in a drunken brawl there. Two brothers, too drunk to know better, had driven into Little Wolf in a spring flood and been drowned. A sister had married a drinking man who regularly beat her in his regular sprees. For a heavy-footed, heavy-brained, fat German girl, Rosie Gimpke could get into action with surprising alacrity for the safety of one who had shown her a kindness.