The Price of the Prairie Part 23

So, I heard myself exploited in the hotel lobby of the old Teft House.

"What's Tell Mapleson after this year, d'ye reckon? Come in a week ago.

He's the doggondest feller to be after somethin', an' gets it, too, somehow." The speaker was a seasoned politician of the hotel lobby variety.

"Oh, he's got a big suit of some kind back East. It's a case of money bein' left to heirs, and he's looking out that the heirs don't get it."

"Ain't it awful about the Saline country?" a bystander broke in here.

"Just awful! Saw a man from out there last night by the name of Morton.

He said that them Cheyennes are raidin' an' murderin' all that can't get into the towns. Lord pity the unprotected settlers way out in that lonely country. This man said they just killed the little children before their mothers' eyes, after they'd scalped and tomahawked the fathers. Just beat them to death, and then carried off the women. Oh, G.o.d! but it's awful."

Awful! I lived through the hours of that night from the time young Tell Mapleson had told of Jean Pahusca's plan to seize Marjie, to the moment when I saw her safe in the shelter of her mother's doorway. Awful! And this sort of thing was going on now in the Saline Valley. How could G.o.d permit it?

"There was one family out there, they got the mother and baby and just butchered the other children right before her eyes. They hung the baby to a tree later, and when they got ready they killed its mother. It was the only merciful thing they done, I guess, in all their raid, for they made her die a thousand deaths before they really cut off her poor pitiful life."

So I heard the talk running on, and I wondered at the bluff committeeman who broke up the group to get the men in line for a factional caucus.

Did the election of a party favorite, the nomination of a man whose turn had come, or who would be favorable to "our crowd" in his appointments match in importance this terrible menace to life on our Indian frontier?

I had heard much of the Saline and the Solomon River valleys. Union soldiers were homesteading those open plains. My father's comrades-in-arms they had been, and he was intensely interested in their welfare. These Union men had wounds still unhealed from service in the Civil War. And the nation they bore these wounds to save, the Government at Was.h.i.+ngton, was ignorant or indifferent to this danger that threatened them hourly--a danger infinitely worse than death to women.

And the State in the vital throes of a biennial election was treating the whole affair as a deplorable incident truly, but one the national government must look out for.

I was young and enthusiastic, but utterly without political ambition. I was only recently out of college, with a scholar's ideals of civic duty.

And with all these, I had behind me the years of a frontier life on the border, in which years my experience and inspiration had taught me the value of the American home, and a strong man's duty toward the weak and defenceless. The memories of my mother, the a.s.sociation and training of my father's sister, and my love for Marjie made all women sacred to me.

And while these feelings that stirred the finest fibres of my being, and of which I never spoke then, may have been the mark of a less practical nature than most young men have to-day, I account my life stronger, cleaner and purer for having had them.

I could take only a perfunctory interest in the political game about me, and I felt little elation at the courteous request that I should take a seat in the speakers' stand, when the clans did finally gather for a grand struggle for place.

The meeting opened with O'mie's band playing "The Star-Spangled Banner."

It brought the big audience to their feet, and the men on the platform stood up. I was the tallest one among them. Also I was least nervous, least anxious, and least important to that occasion. Perfunctorily, too, I listened to the speeches, hearing the grand old Republican party's virtues lauded, and the especial fitness of certain of its color-bearers extolled as of mighty men of valor, with "the burning question of the hour" and "the vital issue of the time" enlarged upon, and "the State's most pernicious evil" threatened with dire besetments. And through it all my mind was on the unprotected, scattered settlements of the Saline Valley, and the murdered children and the defenceless women, even now in the cruel slavery of Indian captivity.

I knew only a few people in the capital city and I looked at the audience with the indifference of a stranger who seeks for no familiar face. And yet, subconsciously, I felt the presence of some one who was watching me, some one who knew me well. Presently the master of ceremonies called for the gifted educator, Richard Tillhurst of Springvale. I knew he was in Topeka, but I had not hunted for him any more than he had sought me out. We mutually didn't need each other. And yet local pride is strong, and I led the hand-clapping that greeted his appearance. He was visibly embarra.s.sed, and ultra-dignified. Education had a representative above reproach in him. Pompously, after the manner of the circ.u.mscribed instructor, he began, and for a limited time the travelling was easy. But he made the fatal error of keeping on his feet after his ideas were exhausted. He lost the trail and wandered aimlessly in the barren, trackless realms of thought, seeking relief and finding none, until at length in sheer embarra.s.sment he forced himself to retreat to his seat. Little enthusiasm was expressed and failure was written all over his banner.

The next speaker was a politician of the rip-roaring variety who pounded the table and howled his enthusiasm, whose logic was all expressed in the short-story form, sometimes witty, sometimes far-fetched and often profane. He interested me least of all, and my mind abstracted by the Tillhurst feature went back again to the Plains. I could not realize what was going on when the politician had finished amid uproarious applause, and the chairman was introducing the next speaker, until I caught my father's name, coupled with lavish praise of his merits. There was a graceful folding of his mantle on the shoulders of "his gifted son, just out of Harvard, but a true child of Kansas, with a record for heroism in the war time, and a growing prominence in his district, and an altogether good-headed, good-hearted, and, the ladies all agree, good-looking young man, the handsome giant of the Neosho." And I found myself thrust to the front of the speakers' stand, with applause following itself, and O'mie, the mischievous rascal, striking off a few bars of "See, the Conquering Hero Comes!"

I was taken so completely by surprise that I thought the earth especially unkind not to open at once and let me in. It must have been something of my inheritance of my father's self-control, coupled with my life experience of having to meet emergencies quickly, which all the children of Springvale knew, that pulled me through. The prolonged cheering gave me a moment to get the mastery. Then like an inspiration came the thought to break away from the beaten path of local politics and to launch forth into a plea for larger political ideals. I cited the Civil War as a crucible, testing men. I did not once mention my father, but the company knew his proud record, and there were many present who had fought and marched and starved and bled beside him, men whom his genius and his kindness had saved from peril, even the peril of death.

And then out of the fulness of a heart that had suffered, I pled for the lives and homes of the settlers on our Plains frontier. I pictured, for I knew how to picture, the anguish of soul an Indian raid can leave in its wake, and the duty we owe to the homes, our high privilege as strong men and guardians to care for the defenceless, and our opportunity to repay a part at least of the debt we owe to the Union soldier by giving a State's defence to these men, who were homesteading our hitherto unbroken, trackless plains, and building empire westward toward the baths of sunset.

The effort was so boyish, so unlike every other speech that had been made, and yet so full of a young man's honest zeal and profound convictions from a soul stirred to its very depths, that the audience rose to their feet at my closing words, and cheer followed cheer, making the air ring with sound.

When the meeting had finished, I found myself in the centre of a group of men who knew John Baronet and just wouldn't let his son get away without a handshake. I was flushed with the pleasure of such a reception and was doing my best to act well, when a man grasped my hand with a grip unlike any other hand I had ever felt, so firm, so full of friends.h.i.+p, and yet so undemonstrative, that I instinctively returned the clasp. He was a man of some thirty years, small beside me, and there was nothing unusual in his face or dress or manner to attract my attention. A stranger might not turn to him a second time in a crowd, unless they had once spoken and clasped hands.

"My name is Morton," he said. "I know your father, I knew him in the army and before, back in Ma.s.sachusetts. I am from the Saline River country, and I came down here hoping to find the State more interested in the conditions out our way. You were the only speaker who thought of the needs of the settlers. There are terrible things being done right now."

He spoke so simply that a careless ear would not have detected the strength of the feeling back of the words.

"I'll tell my father I met you," I said cordially, "and I hope, I hope to heaven the captives may be found soon, and the Indians punished. How can a man live who has lost his wife, or his sweetheart, in that way?"

I knew I was blus.h.i.+ng, but the matter was so terrible to me. Before he could answer, Richard Tillhurst pushed through the crowd and caught my arm.

"There's an old friend of yours here, who wants to meet you, Mr.

Baronet," and he pulled me away.

"I hope I'll see you again," I turned to Mr. Morton to say, and in a moment more, I was face to face with Rachel Melrose. It was she whose presence I had somehow felt in that crowd of strangers. She was handsomer even than I had remembered her, and she had a style of dress new and attractive. One would know that she was fresh from the East, for our own girls and women for the most part had many things to consider besides the latest fas.h.i.+ons.

I think Tillhurst mistook my surprise for confusion. He was a man of good principles, but he was a human being, not a saint, and he pursued a purpose selfishly as most of us who are human do.

The young lady grasped my hand in both of hers impulsively.

"Oh, Mr. Baronet, I'm so glad to see you again. I knew you would come to Topeka as soon as you knew I had come West. I just got here two days ago, and I could hardly wait until you came. It's just like old times to see you again."

Then she turned to Tillhurst, standing there greedily taking in every word, his face beaming as one's face may who finds an obstacle suddenly lifted from his way.

"We are old friends, the best kind of friends, Mr. Tillhurst. Mr.

Baronet and I have recollections of two delightful years when he was in Harvard, haven't we?"

"Yes, yes," I replied. "Miss Melrose was the only girl who would listen to my praising Kansas while I was in Ma.s.sachusetts. Naturally I found her delightful company."

"Did he tell you about his girl here?" Tillhurst asked, a trifle maliciously, maybe.

"Of course, I didn't," I broke in. "We don't tell all we know when we go East."

"Nor all you have done in the East when you come back home, evidently,"

Tillhurst spoke significantly. "I've never heard him mention your name once, Miss Melrose."

"Has he been flirting with some one, Mr. Tillhurst? He promised me faithfully he wouldn't." Her tone took on a disappointed note.

"I'll promise anybody not to flirt, for I don't do it," I cried. "I came home and found this young educator trying to do me mischief with the little girl I told you about the last time I saw you. Naturally he doesn't like me."

All this in a joking manner, and yet a vein of seriousness ran through it somewhere.

Rachel Melrose was adroit.

"We won't quarrel," she said sweetly, "now we do meet again, and when I go down to Springvale to visit your aunt, as you insisted I must do, we'll get all this straightened out. You'll come and take tea with us of course. Mr. Tillhurst has promised to come, too."

The young man looked curiously at me at the mention of Rachel's visit to Springvale. A group of politicians broke in just here.

"We can't have you monopolize 'the handsome giant of the Neosho' all the time," they said, laughing, with many a compliment to the charming young monopolist. "We don't blame him, of course, now, but we need him badly.

Come, Baronet," and they hurried me away, giving me time only to thank her for the invitation to dine with her.

At the Teft House letters were waiting for me. One from my father asking me to visit Governor Crawford and take a personal message of some importance to him, with the injunction, "Stay till you do see him." The other was a fat little envelope inscribed in Marjie's handwriting.

Inside were only flowers, the red blossoms that grow on the vines in the crevices of our "Rockport," and a sheet of note paper about them with the simple message:

"Always and always yours, Marjie."

Willing or unwilling, I found myself in the thick of the political turmoil, and had it not been for that Indian raiding in Northwest Kansas, I should have plunged into politics then and there, so strong a temptation it is to control men, if opportunity offers. It was late before I could get out of the council and rush to my room to write a hurried but loving letter to Marjie. I had to be brief to get it into the mails. So I wrote only of what was first in my thoughts; herself, and my longing to see her, of the noisy political strife, and of the Saline River and Solomon River outrages, I hurried this letter to the outgoing stage and fell in with the crowd gathering late in the dining-room. I was half way through my meal before I remembered Rachel's invitation.

"I can only be rude to her, it seems, but I'll offer my excuses, and maybe she will let me have the honor of her company home. She will hunt me up before I get out of the hall, I am sure." So I satisfied myself and prepared for the evening gathering.

It was much on the order of the other meeting, except that only seasoned party leaders were given place on the programme.