DISTRESS SIGNALS
Also, we will make promise. So long as the Blood endures,
I shall know that your will is mine; ye shall feel that
my strength is yours.
--A Song of the English.
Virginia Aydelot soon grew brown as a berry in the tanning prairie winds,
and it seemed impossible that this strong young woman of the sod cabin,
with her simple dress and her cheeks abloom, could have been the dainty
child of the old Southern mansion house.
No other autumn had ever seemed quite so beautiful to the Aydelots as
this, their first autumn together. Life was before them with its call to
victory. Youth and health, exuberant spirits and love were theirs. Theirs,
too, was the great boundless world of mists and mirages, of rainbow tinted
grasses and opal heavens, where no two sunsets were ever the same. They
could laugh at their poverty, believing in a time when Ease and Plenty
would rule the land where now they must fight for the bare necessities of
existence, picturing life not as it was then with its many hardships, but
as it would be in a future day when the real world whose last outpost they
had left almost fifty miles to the eastward, should move toward them and
help to people the prairies.
All the week days were full of duties, but every Sabbath morning found the
three settlers of the valley making a prairie sanctuary of the Aydelot
cabin. The elder Aydelots had not united with any church, but Asher and
Jim, when they were only boys, had been converted at a Methodist revival
in Cloverdale. It was an old-fashioned kind of religious leading, but it
was strong enough to hold the two for all the years that followed.
Virginia had been reared an Episcopalian, but the men out-voted her and
declared that the Aydelot home was the Sunflower Inn for six days in the
week, but on the seventh it was the "First Methodist Church of the
Conference of the Prairies."
There was no levity in its service, however, and He who dwelleth not in
temples made with men's hands blessed with his own benediction of peace
and trust and courage the three who set up their altar to Him in this
far-away place.
On Sabbath afternoons they explored the sand dunes and grassy levels up
and down the river. Sometimes they rode northward to the main trail in
hope of sighting some prairie schooner coming hitherward, but not once
that season did the trail hold a human being for them.
October slipped into November with a gradual sharpening of the frosty air.
Everything had been made as snug as possible for the winter. The corrals
were enlarged for the stock. The houses and stables were thatched against
the cold and storms; and fuel and food were carefully stored. But November
was almost passed before the end of the bright and sometimes even balmy
days.
"We must have Jim up to the Sunflower Inn for Thanksgiving dinner. Might
as well invite the whole neighborhood," Asher said one evening, as he
helped Virginia with the supper dishes.
"I'm planning a real dinner, too," his wife declared, "just like old Mammy
Diane used to cook. You couldn't tell it from hers if you'd ever eaten one
of her spreads."
"I suppose it will taste about as near like one of Diane's meals as you
will look like the cook that made her meals," Asher answered.
"Well, I'm getting along that way. Look at my tanned arms now. There's a
regular dead line, a perfect fireguard at the elbow. And my muscles, Mammy
Diane would say, 'is jus' monst'ous.'"
Virginia pushed back her sleeve to show the well-marked line where white
above met tan below.
"Jim will think anything is better than eating alone out of his own grub
box, and your dinner will be a feast," Asher said, opening the door to
carry out the dish water. "What do you think of this?"
A gust of cold rain swished in as the door fell open.
"Our rain is here, at last. Maybe it will bring snow for Thanksgiving, and
we could have a touch of New England here," Virginia said.
The pelting rain and deepening chill made the little home a very snug nest
that night. There was only one stove to warm the house, but they kept up a
fiction of parlor and dining room, kitchen and bed chamber. Even the
library was there, although it encroached dreadfully on the parlor,
bedroom and kitchen, all three, for it consisted of space enough for two
chairs, one footstool, and a tiny lamp-stand, beside which they spent
their evenings.
"Who's likely to drop in tonight, and what's the program for the evening:
charades, music, readings, dancing, cribbage, or political speeches?"
Asher inquired.
They had invented all sorts of pastimes, with make-believe audiences, such
as little children create for their plays. For these two were children in
a big child world. The wilderness is never grown up. It is Nature's
little one waiting to be led on and disciplined to mature uses. Asher and
Virginia had already peopled the valley with imaginary settlers, each one
of a certain type, and they adapted their pastime to the particular
neighbors whom they chose to invite for the evening. How little the
helpless folk in the city, bored with their own dullness, and dependent on
others for amusement--how little could such as these cope with the
loneliness of the home on the plains, or comprehend the resourcefulness of
the home-makers there!
"Oh, let's just spend the evening alone. It's too stormy for the Arnolds
and Archibalds beyond the Deep Bend, and the Spoopendykes have relatives
from the East and the Gilliwigs are all down with colds."
Virginia had tucked herself down in the one rocking chair, with her feet
on the footstool.
"It's such a nice night to be to ourselves. Watch the rain washing that
west window. It's getting worse. I always think of Jim on nights like
this."
"So do I," Asher said, as he sat down in the armed chair he had made for
himself of cottonwood limbs with a gunny sack seat. "He's all alone with
his dog these dark nights, and loneliness cuts to the heart of a man like
Jim. I'm glad I have you, Virginia. I couldn't do without you now. The
rain is getting heavier every minute. Sounds like it was thumping on the
door. Listen to that wind!"
"Tell me about Jim, Asher. What made him come out here anyhow?" Virginia
asked.
"I don't know all the story. Jim has never seemed to want to tell me, and
I've never cared to ask him," Asher replied. "When we were away together
at school, he was in love with one of the prettiest girls that Ohio ever
grew. She lived in the country up the valley from Cloverdale. Her name was
Alice Leigh, and she was a whole cut above the neighborhood. Jim said she
was an artist, could do wonderful things with a brush and she was just
wild to go somewhere and take lessons.
"Jim was planning always how to give her the opportunity to do it, but her
mother, who owned a lot of land for that country and could afford to send
Alice away to study, couldn't see any dollar sign in it, so she kept her
daughter on the farm."
Asher paused and looked at Virginia. His own happiness made his voice
tremble as he went on.
"He has a brother Tank. I suppose his real name is Thaddeus, or Tantalus,
or something like it; I never knew, and I never liked him well enough to
ask. Tank was a black-eyed little runt whom none of the boys liked, a
grasping cuss, younger than Jim, and as selfish as Jim is kind.
"Just before I came West to scout the Indians off the map, Jim came back
to school one time so unlike himself that I made him tell me what was the
matter. It was Tank, he said, who was making trouble for him up in the
Leigh neighborhood, and he was so grieved and unhappy, I wouldn't ask any
more about it. I left for the West soon after that. When I went back to
Cloverdale, Tank Shirley had married Alice Leigh and her mother's farm,
and Jim had left the country. I ran on to him by accident up at Carey's
Crossing when I came West again, but I've never heard him say a word about
the matter, and, of course, I don't mention it, although I believe it
would do Jim good if he could bring himself to tell me about it. He's
never been quite the same since. He has a little tendency to lung trouble,
which the plains air is taking out of him, but he's had a bad attack of
pneumonia, and it's an old enemy of his, as it always is to a man of his
physique. He's a good worker, but lacks judgment to make his work count.
Doesn't really seem to have much to work for. But he's a friend to the
last ditch. Just hear the rain!"
"It seems to be knocking against the door again," Virginia said, "and how
the wind does howl! Poor Jim!"
"Listen to that! Sounds like something loose against the window. There's
something out there." Asher started up with the words.
Something white had seemed to splash up against the window and drop back
again. It splashed up a second time, and fell again. Asher hurried to the
door, and as he opened it, Pilot, the big white-throated dog from the
Shirley claim, came bounding in, so wet and shaggy he seemed to bring all
the storm in with him.
"Why, Pilot, what's the news?" Asher asked. "Jim's sent him, Virgie. He's
done this trick often."
Pilot slipped to the warm stove and shook a whole shower out of his long,
wet hair, while Asher carefully untied a little leather bag fastened to
the collar under the dog's throat.
"You brave fellow. You've come all the way in the rain to bring me this."
He held up a little metal box from which he took a bit of paper. Bending
close to the lamp, he read the message it contained.
"Something is wrong, Virginia. He says, 'I need you.' What's the matter
with Jim, Pilot? Come here and get up in the chair!"
The dog whimpered and sat still.
"Come out here, then! Come on, I tell you!" Asher started as if to open
the door, but the dog did not move.
"He's not out of doors, and he isn't sitting up in a chair. Tell me, now,
Pilot, exactly where Jim is! Jim, mind you!"
The dog looked at him with watchful eyes.
"Where's Jim? Poor Jim!" Asher repeated, and Pilot, with a sorrowful yelp,
stretched himself at full length beside the stove.
"Jim's sick, then?"
Pilot wagged his tail understandingly.
"Virgie, Jim needs me. I must go to him." Asher looked at his wife.
"If Jim needs you, you'll need me," she replied.
"And we'll both need Pilot. So we'll keep all the human beings together,"
Asher said, as he helped his wife to fasten her heavy cloak and tie a long
old-fashioned nubia about her head.
Then they went out into the darkness and the chilling rain, as neighbor to
neighbor, answering this cry for help.
Pilot ran far ahead of them and was waiting with a dog's welcome when they
reached Shirley's cabin. But the master, lying where he caught the chill
draught from the open door, was rigid with cold. A sudden attack of
pneumonia had left him helpless. And tonight, Pilot, doing a dog's best,
did not understand the danger of leaving doors open, and of joyously
shaking his wet fur down on the sick man to whom help was coming none too
soon.
"Hello, Jim! We're all here, doctor, nurse, cook, and hired man, and the
little dog under the wagon," Asher said cheerily, bending over Jim's bunk.
"That pup pretty nearly killed you with kindness, didn't he?"
Jim smiled wanly, then looked blankly away and lay very still.
The plains frontier had no use for the one talent folk. People must know
how to take care of life there. Asher's first memory of Virginia was when
she bent over him, fighting the fever in a prison hospital. He knew her
talent for helping, and he had fairly estimated her quick ingenuity for
this sod house emergency. But a new vision of the plains life came to her
as she watched him, gentle-handed, swift, but unhurried, never giving an
inch to the enemy in fighting with death for the life of Jim Shirley.
"He's safe from that congestion," Asher said when the morning broke. "But
his fever will come on now."
"Where did you learn to do all these things for sick people?" Virginia
asked.
"Partly from a hospital nurse I had in the war. Also, it's a part of the
game here. I learned a few things fighting the cholera in sixty-seven. We
must look everything on the frontier squarely in the face, danger and
death along with the rest, just as we have to do everywhere else, only we
have to depend on each other more here. Hold on there, Jim!"
Asher sprang toward Shirley, who was sitting upright, staring wildly at
the two. Then a struggle began, for the sick man, crazed with delirium,
was bent on driving his helpers from the cabin. When he lay back exhausted
at length, Asher turned to his wife.
"One of us must go to Carey's Crossing for a doctor. You can't hold Jim.
It's all I can do to hold him. But it's a long way to Carey's. Can you
go?"
"I'll try," Virginia replied. And Asher remembered what Jim had said on
the windy September day: "She's as good a woman as we are men."
"You must take Pilot with you and leave him at home. You can't get lost,
for you know the way up to the main trail, and that runs straight to the
Crossing. Dr. Carey knows Jim, and he will come if he can, I am sure. He
pulled Jim back once a year or two ago when the pneumonia had him. Heaven
keep you safe, you brave little soul. Jim may turn the trick for us some
day."
He kissed her good-by and watched her gallop away on her errand of mercy.
"The men will have all the credit by and by for settling this country.
Little glory will come to their wives," he thought. "And yet, the women
make anchor for every hearthstone, and share in every deed of daring and
every test of endurance. God make me worthy of such a wife!"
Virginia Aydelot had spoken truly when she declared that the war had left
the Thaines little except inherited pride and the will to do as they
pleased. Inherited tendencies take varying turns. What had made a reformer
of old Jean Aydelot made a narrow bigot of his descendant, Francis. What
had made a proud, exclusive autocrat of Jerome Thaine, in Virginia Thaine
developed into a pride of conquest for the good of others. It was this
pride and the Thaine will to do as she pleased in defiance of the prairie
perils that sent her now on this errand of mercy for a neighbor in need.
And she took little measure of the reality of the journey. But she was
prudent enough to stop at the Sunflower Inn and make ready for it. She
slipped on a warm jacket under her heavy cloak, and put on her thickest
gloves and overshoes. She wound a long red scarf about her neck and
swathed her head in the gray nubia. Then she mounted her horse for her
long, hard ride.
The little sod house with all its plainness seemed very cosy as she took
leave of it, and the woman instinct for home made its outcry in her when
she turned her face resolutely from its sheltering warmth and felt the
force of the north wind whipping mercilessly upon her. But she steeled
herself to meet the cold, and her spirits rose with the effort.
"You are a mean little wind. Not half as big as the September zephyrs. Do
your worst, you can't scare me," she cried, tucking her head down against
its biting breath.
Upon the main trail the snow that had fallen after midnight deepened in
the lower places as the wind whirled it from the prairie swells. It was
not smooth traveling, although the direction of the trail was clear enough
at first.
Virginia's heart bounded hopefully as Juno covered mile after mile with
that persistent, steady canter that means everything good for a long ride.
But the open plains were bitterly cold and the wind grew fiercer as the
hours passed. High spirits and hope began to give place to determination
and endurance. Virginia shut her teeth in a dogged resolve not to give up.
Indeed, she dared not give up. She must go on. A life depended on her now,
and two lives might be forfeited if she let this unending wind chill her
to forgetfulness.
And so, alone in a white cruelty of solitary land, bounded only by the
gray cruelty of the sky, with a dimming trail before her under a deeper
snowfall, and with long miles behind her, she struggled on.
She tried to think of everything cheerful and good. She tried to find
comfort in the help she would take to Jim. Truly, she was not nearly so
cold now and she was very weary and a wee bit sleepy. A tendency to droop
in the saddle was overcoming her. She roused herself quickly, and with a
jerk at the reins plunged forward at a gallop.
"It will take the stupor out of me," she cried.
Then the reins drooped and the fight with the numbing cold began again.
"I wonder how far along I am. I must be nearly there. I remember we lost
sight of Carey's Crossing soon after we left last September. Some swell of
ground cut us off quickly--and I've never seen a human being since then,
except Asher and Jim Shirley and Pilot," she added.
"The snow is so much heavier right here. It varies so. I've passed half a
dozen changes, but this is the deepest yet. I'm sure I can see the town
beyond this slope ahead. Why! where's the trail, anyhow?"
It was nearing mid-afternoon. Neither horse nor rider had had food nor
water, save once when Juno drank at a crossing. Virginia sat still,
conscious suddenly that she has missed the trail somewhere.
"It isn't far, I know. Could I have left it when I took that gallop?" she
asked herself.
She was wide awake now, for the reality of the situation was upon her, and
she searched madly for some sign of the trail. In that level prairie sea
there was no sign to show where the trail might lie. The gray sky was
pitiless still, and with no guiding ray of sunshine the points of the
compass failed, and the brave woman lost all sense of direction.
"I won't give up," she said at last, despairingly, "but we may as well
rest a little before we try again."
She had dropped down a decided slope and hurried to a group of low bushes
in a narrow draw. While the wind was sliding the snow endlessly back and
forth on the higher ground, the bushes were moveless. Slipping to the
ground beside them, she stamped her feet and swung her arms until the
blood began to warm her chilled body.
"It is so much warmer here. But what next? Oh, dear Father, help me, help
me!" she cried in the depth of her need.
And again the same clear whisper that had spoken to her on the headland
when she watched the September prairie fire, a voice from out of the vast
immensity of the Universe, came to her soul with its calm strength.
"The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms."
How many a time in the days of winning the wilderness did the blessed
promise come to the pioneer women who braved the frontier to build the
homes of a conquering nation.
"I can't try that blind game again for awhile," Virginia said to herself.
"I'll run up a distress signal; maybe somewhere help is coming to me. I
know now how Jim felt all alone with only a dog's instinct to depend on.
I'm glad I've tried to help him, even if I have failed."
She unwound the long red scarf from her neck and bound her nubia closer
about her throat. Then bending the tallest bush that she could reach she
fastened the bright fabric to its upper limbs and let it swing to its
place again. The scarf spread a little in the breeze and hung above her, a
dumb signal of distress where help was not.
The minutes dragged by like hours to Virginia, trying vainly to decide on
what to do next. The fury of a Plains blizzard would have quickly overcome
her, but this was a lingering fight against cold and a pathless solitude.
Suddenly the memory of one lonely Sabbath day came to her, and how Asher,
always resourceful, had said:
"When you are afraid, pray; but when you are lonely, sing."
She had prayed, and comfort had come with the prayer. She could sing for
comfort, if for nothing else. Somebody might hear. And so she sang. The
song heard sometimes in the little prayer meeting in some country church;
sometimes by sick beds when the end of days is drawing near; sometimes in
hours of shipwreck, above the roar of billows on wide, stormy seas; and
sometimes on battlefields when mangled forms lie waiting the burial trench
and the mournful drumbeat of the last Dead March--the same song rose now
on the lonely prairie winds sweeping out across the hidden trails and
bleak open plains.
Nearer, my God, to thee,
Nearer to thee,
E'en though it be a cross
That raiseth me.
Still all my song shall be
Nearer, my God, to thee,
Nearer to thee.