THE GROVE OF DESTINY DOES ITS WORK
Virginia opened her eyes and smiled at me. I think this was the first
time that she had given me more than just a trace of a smile; but now
she smiled, a very sweet winning smile; and getting spryly out of the
wagon she said that she had been a lazy and useless passenger all the
time she had been with me, and that from then on she was going to do the
cooking. I told her that I wasn't going to let her do it, that I was
strong and liked to cook; and I stammered and blundered when I tried to
hint that I liked cooking for her. She looked very dense at this and
insisted that I should build the fire, and show her where the things
were; and when I had done so she pinned back her skirts and went about
the work in a way that threw me into a high fever.
"You may bring the new milk," said she, "and by that time I'll have a
fine breakfast for you."
When the milk was brought, breakfast was still a little behindhand, but
she would not let me help. Anyhow, I felt in spite of my talk that I
wanted to do some other sort of service for her: I wanted to show off,
to prove myself a protector, to fight for her, to knock down or drive
off her foes and mine; and as I saw the light smoke curling up through
the tree-tops I asked myself where those men were who had made their way
past us in such a dark and secret sort of way and with so much bad talk
back there in the middle of the night. I wondered if they had camped
where they could see the smoke of our fire, or hear our voices or the
other sounds we made.
I almost wished that they might. I had now in a dim, determined,
stubborn way claimed this girl in my heart for my own; and I felt
without really thinking of it, that I could best foreclose my lien by
defeating all comers before I dragged her yielding to my cave. It is the
way of all male animals--except spiders, perhaps, and bees--and a male
animal was all that I was that morning. I picked up my gun and told her
that I must find out where those men were before breakfast.
"No, no!" said she anxiously, "don't leave me! They might shoot
you--and--then--"
I smiled disdainfully.
"If there's any shooting to be done, I'll shoot first. I won't let them
see me, though; but I must find out what they are up to. Wait and keep
quiet. I'll soon be back."
I knew that I should find their horses' hoof-marks at whatever place
they had left the stream; and I followed the brook silently, craftily
and slowly, like a hunter trailing a wild beast, examining the bank of
soft black rooty earth for their tracks. Once or twice I passed across
open spaces in the grove. Here I crept on my belly through the brush and
weeds shoving my gun along ahead of my body.
My heart beat high. I never for a moment doubted the desperate character
of the men, and in this I think I showed good judgment; for what honest
horsemen would have left the Ridge Road, or if any honest purpose had
drawn them away, what honest men would have forced their horses to wade
in the channel of a swollen stream in the middle of the night? They must
have been trying to travel without leaving tracks, just as I had done.
Their talk showed them to be bad characters, and their fox-like actions
proved the case against them. So I crawled forward believing fully that
I should be in danger if they once found out that I had uncovered their
lurking-place. I carefully kept from making any thrashing or swishing of
boughs, any crackling of twigs, or from walking with a heavy footfall;
and I wondered more and more as I neared what I knew must be the other
end of the grove, why they had not left the water and made camp. For
what other purpose had they come to this patch of woods?
At last I heard the stamping of horses, and I lay still for a while and
peered all about me for signs of the animals or their possessors. I
moved slowly, then, so as to bring first this open space in line with my
eyes, and then that, until, crawling like a lizard, I found my men. They
were lying on the ground, wrapped in blankets, all asleep, very near the
other end of the grove. In the last open spot of the timber, screened
from view from the prairie by clumps of willows and other bushes, were
six horses, picketed for grazing. There were two grays, a black, two
bays and a chestnut sorrel--the latter clearly a race-horse. They were
all good horses. There were rifles leaning against the trees within
reach of the sleeping men; and from under the coat which one of them was
using for a pillow there stuck out the butt of a navy revolver.
Something--perhaps it was that consciousness which horses have of the
approach of other beings, scent, hearing, or a sense of their own which
we can not understand--made the chestnut race-horse lift his head and
nicker. One of the men rose silently to a sitting posture, and reached
for his rifle. For a moment he seemed to be looking right at me; but his
eyes passed on, and he carefully examined every bit of foliage and every
ant-hill and grass-mound, and all the time he strained his ears for
sounds. I held my breath. At last he lay down again; but in a few
minutes he got up, and woke the others.
This was my first sight of Bowie Bushyager. Everybody in Monterey
County, and lots of other people will remember what the name of Bowie
Bushyager once meant; but it meant very little more than that of his
brother, Pitt Bushyager, who got up, grumbling and cursing when Bowie
shook him awake. Bowie was say twenty-eight then, and a fine specimen of
a man in build and size. He was six feet high, had a black beard which
curled about his face, and except for his complexion, which was almost
that of an Indian, his dead-black eye into which you could see no
farther than into a bullet, and for the pitting of his face by smallpox,
he would have been handsome.
"Shut up!" said he to his brother Pitt. "It's time we're gittin' our
grub and pullin' out."
Pitt was even taller than Bowie, and under twenty-five in years. His
face was smooth-shaven except for a short, curly black mustache and a
little goatee under his mouth His eyes were larger than Bowie's and deep
brown, his hair curled down over his rolling collar, and he moved with
an air of ease and grace that were in contrast with the slow power of
Bowie. There was no doubt of it--Pitt Bushyager was handsome in a rough,
daredevil sort of way.
I am describing them, not from the memory of that morning, but because I
knew them well afterward. I knew all the Bushyager boys, and their
father and mother and sisters; and in spite of everything, I rather
liked both Pitt and Claib. Bowie was a forbidding fellow, and Asher, who
was between Bowie and Pitt in age, while he was as big and strong as any
of them, was the gentlest man I ever saw in his manners. He did more of
the planning than Bowie did. Claiborne Bushyager was about my own age;
while Forrest was older than Bowie. He was always able to convince
people that he was not a member of the gang, and now, an old
white-haired, soft-spoken man, still owns the original Bushyager farm,
with two hundred acres added, where I must confess he has always made
enough money by good farming to account for all the property he has.
These men were an important factor in the history of Monterey County for
many years, and I knew all of them well; but had they known that I saw
them that morning in the grove I guess I should not have lived to write
this history; though it was years before the people came to believing
such things of them. The third man in the grove I never saw again.
Judging from what we learned afterward, I think it is safe to say that
this Unknown was one of the celebrated Bunker gang of bandits, whose
headquarters were on the Iowa River somewhere between Eldora and
Steamboat Rock, in Hardin County. He was a small man with light hair and
eyes, and kept both the Bushyagers on one side of him all the time I had
them in view. When he spoke it was almost in a whisper, and he kept
darting sharp glances from side to side all the time, and especially at
the Bushyagers. When they left he rode the black horse and led one of
the grays. I know, because I crept back to my own camp, took my
breakfast with Virginia, and then spied on the Bushyagers until
dinner-time. After dinner I still found them there arguing about the
policy of starting on or waiting until night. Bowie wanted to start; but
finally the little light-haired man had his way; and they melted away
across the knolls to the west just after sunset. I returned with all the
air of having driven them off, and ate my third meal cooked by
Virginia Royall.
2
I do not know how long we camped in this lonely little forest; for I
lost reckoning as to time. Once in a while Virginia would ask me when I
thought it would be safe to go on our way; and I always told her that it
would be better to wait.
I had forgotten my farm. When I was with her, I could not overcome my
bashfulness, my lack of experience, my ignorance of every manner of
approach except that of the canallers to the waterside women, with which
I suddenly found myself as familiar through memory as with the route
from my plate to my mouth; that way I had fully made up my mind to
adopt; but something held me back.
I now began leaving the camp and from some lurking-place in the distance
watching her as a cat watches a bird. I lived over in my mind a thousand
times the attack I would make upon her defense, and her yielding after a
show of resistance. I became convinced at last that she would not make
even a show of resistance; that she was probably wondering what I was
waiting for, and making up her mind that, after all, I was not much of
a man.
I saw her one evening, after looking about to see if she was observed,
take off her stockings and go wading in the deep cool water of the
creek--and I lay awake at night wondering whether, after all, she had
not known that I was watching her, and had so acted for my benefit--and
then I left my tossed couch and creeping to the side of the wagon
listened, trembling in every limb, with my ear to the canvas until I was
able to make out her regular breathing only a few inches from my ear.
And when in going away--as I always did, finally--I made a little noise
which awakened her, she called and asked me if I had heard anything, I
said no, and pacified her by saying that I had been awake and watching
all the time. Then I despised myself for saying nothing more.
I constantly found myself despising my own decency. I felt the girl in
my arms a thousand times as I had felt her for those delicious hours the
night she had invited me to share the wagon with her, and we had sat in
the spring seat wrapped in the buffalo-robe, as she slept with her head
on my shoulder. I tormented myself by asking if she had really slept, or
only pretended to sleep. Once away from her, once freed from the
innocent look in her eyes, I saw in her behavior that night every
advance which any real man might have looked for, as a signal to action.
Why had I not used my opportunity to make her love me--to force from her
the confession of her love? Had I not failed, not only in doing what I
would have given everything I possessed or ever hoped to possess to have
been able to do; but also had I not failed in that immemorial duty which
man owes to woman, and which she had expected of me? Would she not laugh
at me with some more forceful man when she had found him? Was she not
scorning me even now?
I had heard women talk of greenhorns and backwoods boys in those days
when I had lived a life in which women played an important, a
disturbing, and a baleful part for every one but the boy who lived his
strange life on the tow-path or in the rude cabin; and now these outcast
women came back to me and through the very memories of them poisoned and
corrupted my nature. They peopled my dreams, with their loud voices,
their drunkenness, their oaths, their obscenities, their lures, their
tricks, their awful counterfeit of love; and, a figure apart from them
in these dreams, partaking of their nature only so far as I desired to
have it so, walked Virginia Royall, who had come to me across the
prairie to escape a life with Buckner Gowdy. But to the meaning of this
fact I shut the eye of my mind. I was I, and Gowdy was Gowdy. It was no
time for thought. Every moment I pressed closer and closer to that
action which I was sure would have been taken by Eben Sproule, or Bill
the Sailor--the only real friends I had ever possessed.
We used to go fishing along the creek; and ate many a savory mess of
bullheads, sunfish and shiners, which I prepared and cooked. We had
butter, and the cows, eased of the labors of travel, grew sleek and
round, and gave us plenty of milk. I saved for Virginia all the eggs
laid by my hens, except those used by her in the cooking. She gave me
the daintiest of meals; and I taught her to make bread. To see her
molding it with her strong small hands, was enough to have made me
insane if I had had any sense left. She showed me how to make vinegar
pies; and I failed in my pies made of the purple-flowered prairie
oxalis; but she triumphed over me by using the deliriously acid leaves
as a flavoring for sandwiches--we were getting our first experience as
prairie-dwellers in being deprived of the common vegetable foods of the
garden and forest. One day I cooked a delicious mess of cowslip greens
with a ham-bone. She seemed to be happy; and I should have been if I had
not made myself so miserable. I remember almost every moment of this
time--so long ago.
One day as we were fishing we were obliged to clamber along the bank
where a tree crowded us so far over the water that Virginia, in stooping
to pass under the body of the tree, was about to fall; and I jumped down
into the stream and caught her in my arms as she was losing her hold. I
found her arms about my neck as she clung to me; and, standing in the
water, I turned her about in my arms, rather roughly of necessity,
caught one arm about her waist and the other under the hollows of her
knees and held her so.
"Don't let me fall," she begged.
"I won't," I said--and I could say no more.
"You've got your feet all wet," said she.
"I don't care," I said--and stopped.
"How clumsy of me!" she exclaimed.
"It was a hard place to get around," said I.
"I hope you didn't lose the fish," said she.
"No," said I, "I dropped the string of them in the grass."
Now this conversation lasted a second, from one way of looking at it,
and a very long time from another; and all the time I was standing
there, knee-deep in the water, with Virginia's arms about my neck, her
cheek almost against mine, one of my arms about her waist and the other
under the hollows of her knees--and I had made no movement for putting
her ashore.
"You're very strong," said she, "or you would have dropped me in the
water."
"Oh," said I, "that's nothing"--and I pressed her closer.
"How will you get me back on land?" she asked; and really it was a
subject which one might have expected to come up sooner or later.
I turned about with her and looked down-stream; then I turned back and
looked up-stream; then I looked across to the opposite bank, at least
six feet away; then I carried her up-stream for a few yards; then I
started back down-stream.
"There's no good place there," said I--and I looked a long, long look
into her eyes which happened to be scanning my face just then. She
blushed rosily.
"Any place will do," she said. "Let me down right here where I can get
the fish!"
And slowly, reluctantly, with great pains that she should not be
scratched by briars, bitten by snakes, brushed by poison-ivy, muddied by
the wet bank, or threatened with another fall, I put her down. She
looked diligently in the grass for the fish, picked them up, and ran off
to camp. After she had disappeared, I heard the bushes rustle, and
looked up as I sat on the bank wringing the water from my socks and
pouring it from my boots.
"Thank you for keeping me dry," said she. "You did it very nicely. And
now you must stay in the wagon while I dry your socks and boots for
you--you poor wet boy!"
3
She had not objected to my holding her so long; she rather seemed to
like it; she seemed willing to go on camping here as long as I wished;
she was wondering why I was so backward and so bashful; she was in my
hands; why hold back? Why not use my power? If I did not I should make
myself forever ridiculous to all men and to all women--who, according to
my experience, were never in higher feather than when ridiculing some
greenhorn of a boy. This thing must end. My affair with Virginia must be
brought to a crisis and pushed to a decision. At once!
I wandered off again and from my vantage-point I began to watch her and
gather courage from watching her. I could still feel her in my arms--so
much more of a woman than I had at first suspected from seeing her about
the camp. I could see her in my mind's eye wading the stream like a
beautiful ghost. I could think of nothing but her all the time,--of her
and the wild life of boats and backwoods harbors.
And at last I grew suddenly calm. I began to laugh at myself for my lack
of decision. I would carefully consider the matter, and that night I
would act.
I took my gun and wandered off across the prairie after a few birds for
our larder. There were upland plover in great plenty; and before I had
been away from the camp fifteen minutes I had several in my pockets. It
was early in the afternoon; but instead of walking back to camp at once
I sat down on a mound at the mouth of the old den of a wolf or badger
and laid my plans; much as a wolf or badger might have done.
Then I went back. The sun was shining with slanting mid-afternoon rays
down among the trees by the creek. I looked for Virginia; but she was
not about the wagon, neither sitting in the spring seat, nor on her
box by the fire, nor under her favorite crabapple-tree. I looked boldly
in the wagon, without the timid tapping which I had always used to
announce my presence--for what did I care now for her privacy?--but she
was not there. I began searching for her along the creek in the secluded
nooks which abounded, and at last I heard her voice.
I was startled. To whom could she be speaking? I would have nobody
about, now. I would show him, whoever he was! This grove was mine as
long as I wanted to stay there with my girl. The blood rose to my head
as I went quietly forward until I could see Virginia.
She was alone! She had taken a blanket from the wagon and spread it on
the ground upon the grass under a spreading elm, and scattered about on
it were articles of clothing which she had taken from her satchel--that
satchel to which the poor child had clung so tightly while she had come
to my camp across the prairie on the Ridge Road that night--which now
seemed so long ago. There was a dress on which she had been sewing; for
the needle was stuck in the blanket with the thread still in the
garment; but she was not working. She had in her lap as she sat
cross-legged on the blanket, a little wax doll to which she was babbling
and talking as little girls do. She had taken off its dress, and was
carefully wiping its face, telling it to shut its eyes, saying that
mama wouldn't hurt it, asking it if she wasn't a bad mama to keep it
shut up all the time in that dark satchel, asking it if it wasn't afraid
in the dark, assuring it that mama wouldn't let anybody hurt it--and all
this in the sweetest sort of baby-talk. And then she put its dress on,
gently smoothed its hair, held it for a while against her bosom as she
swayed from side to side telling it to go to sleep, hummed gently a
cradle song, and put it back in the satchel as a mother might put her
sleeping baby in its cradle. I crept silently away.
It was dark when I returned to camp, and she had supper ready and was
anxiously awaiting me. She ran to me and took my hand affectionately.
"What kept you so long?" she asked earnestly. "I have been anxious. I
thought something must have happened to you!"
And as we approached the fire, she looked in my face, and cried out in
astonishment.
"Something has happened to you. You are as white as a sheet. What is it?
Are you sick? What shall I do if you get sick!"
"No," I said, "I am not sick. I am all right--now."
"But something has happened," she insisted. "You are weak as well as
pale. Let me do something for you. What was it?"
"A snake," I said, for an excuse. "A rattlesnake. It struck at me and
missed. It almost struck me. I'll be all right now."
The longer I live the surer I am that I told her very nearly the truth.
That night we sat up late and talked. She was only a dear little child,
now, with a bit of the mother in her. She was really affectionate to me,
more so than ever before, and sometimes I turned cold as I thought of
how her affection might have been twisted into deviltry had it not been
so strangely brought home to me that she was a child, with a good deal
of the mother in her. I turned cold as I thought of her playing with her
doll while I had been out on the prairie laying poison plots against her
innocence, her defenselessness, her trust in me.
Why, she was like my mother! I had not thought of my mother for days.
When she had been young like Virginia, she must have been as beautiful;
and she had played with dolls; but never except while she was an
innocent child, as Virginia now was.
For the first time I talked of mother to Virginia. I told her of my
mother's goodness to me while Rucker was putting me out to work in the
factory--and Virginia grew hot with anger at Rucker, and very pitiful of
the poor little boy going to work before daylight and coming home after
dark. I told her of my running away, and of my life on the canal, with
all the beautiful things I had seen and the interesting things I had
done, leaving out the fighting and the bad things. I told her of how I
had lost my mother, and my years of search for her, ending at that
unmarked grave by the lake. Virginia's eyes shone with tears and she
softly pressed my hand.
I took from my little iron-bound trunk that letter which I had found in
the old hollow apple-tree, and we read it over together by the
flickering light of a small fire which I kindled for the purpose; and
from the very bottom of the trunk, wrapped in a white handkerchief
which I had bought for this use, I took that old worn-out shoe which I
had found that dark day at Tempe--and I began telling Virginia how it
was that it was so run over, and worn in such a peculiar way.
My mother had worked so hard for me that she had had a good deal of
trouble with her feet--and such a flood of sorrow came over me that I
broke down and cried. I cried for my mother, and for joy at being able
to think of her again, and for guilt, and with such a mingling of
feeling that finally I started to rush off into the darkness--but
Virginia clung to me and wiped away my tears and would not let me go.
She said she was afraid to be left alone, and wanted me with her--and
that I was a good boy. She didn't wonder that my mother wanted to work
for me--it must have been almost the only comfort she had.
"If she had only lived," I said, "so I could have made a home for her!"
"She knows all about that," said Virginia; "and when she sees you making
a home for some one else, how happy it will make her!"
Virginia was the older of the two, now, the utterer of words of comfort;
and I was the child. The moon rose late, but before we retired it
flooded the grove with light. The wolves howled on the prairie, and the
screech-owls cried pitifully in the grove; but I was happy. I told
Virginia that we must break camp in the morning and move on. I must get
to my land, and begin making that home. She sighed; but she did not
protest. She would always remember this sojourn in the grove, she said;
she had felt so safe! She hardly knew what she would do when we reached
the next settlement; but she must think out some way to get back to
Kentucky. When the time came for her to retire, I carried her to the
wagon and lifted her in--and then went to my own bed to sleep the first
sound sweet sleep I had enjoyed for days. The air had been purified by
the storm.