THE LAST BRIDGE BURNED
...Scores of better men had died.
I could reach the township living, but--He knew what terrors tore me--
But I didn't! But I didn't! I went down the other side.
--The Explorer.
Pryor Gaines never preached a better sermon than the one that followed the
singing of that old Portuguese hymn; and there were no doleful faces in
that little company when the service closed. The men stopped long enough
to discuss the best crops to put in for the fall, and how and where they
might get seeds for the same; to consider ways for destroying the eggs
left by the grasshoppers in the honey-combed ground, and to trade help in
the wheat-breaking to begin the next day. The women lingered to plan a
picnic dinner for the coming Saturday. Jim Shirley hummed an old love tune
as he helped Pryor Gaines to close the windows and door for the week. Only
little Todd Stewart, with sober face, scratched thoughtfully at the hard
earth with his hard little toes.
"Can't there be no more little children where there's grasshoppers and
Darley Champerses?" he asked his mother.
"Yes, yes, Todd. You won't be lonesome long," his mother assured him.
"Some time when you are a man you can say, 'I was the only little boy the
grasshoppers and Darley Champers didn't get.' You stout little Trojan!"
And then Todd, too, caught the spirit of the day and went singing
blithely away. Across the bare hollow of Grass River, and beyond the sand
dunes into the brown wastes that had been grassy prairies, his young voice
came trailing back still singing, as he rode behind his father, following
the long hot trail toward their home. And the other settlers went their
ways, each with courage renewed, for the new week's work.
Yet, they were lonesomely few in number, and the prairies were vast; they
were poverty-stricken, with little means by which to sustain life through
the coming season; on every hand the desolate plains lay robbed of every
green growth, and to this land they were nailed hand and foot as to a
cross of crucifixion. But they were young. They believed in the West and
in themselves. Their faces were set toward the future. They had voted
themselves into holding on, and, except for the Aydelots, no one family
had more resource than another. The Aydelots could leave the West if they
chose. But they did not choose. So together they laughed at hardship; they
made the most of their meager possessions; they helped each other as one
family--and they trusted to Providence for the future. And Providence,
albeit she shows a seamy side to poverty, still loves the man who laughs
at hard luck. The seasons following were not unkind. The late summer
rains, the long autumn, and the mild winter were blessings. But withal,
there were days on days of real hunger. Stock died for lack of
encouragement to live without food. And the grim while of waiting for seed
time and signs of prosperity was lived through with that old Anglo-Saxon
tenacity that has led the English speaking peoples to fight and colonize
to the ends of the earth.
"Virginia," Asher said one noontime, as the two sat at their spare meal,
"the folks are coming up tonight to hold a council. I saw Bennington this
morning and he had heard from the men over Todd Stewart's way. Dust the
piano, polish up the chandelier, and decorate with--smiles," he added, as
he saw the shadow on his wife's face.
"I'll have the maid put the reception room in order," Virginia replied,
with an attempt at merriment.
Then through the long afternoon she fought to a finish with the yearning
for the things she missed daily. At supper time, however, she was the same
cheery woman who had laughed at loss and lack so often that she wondered
sometimes if abundance might not really make her sad.
In the evening the men sat on the ground about the door of the Sunflower
Inn. Their wives had not come with them. One woman was sick at home;
little Todd Stewart was at the beginning of a fever, and the other women
were taking turns at nursing. Virginia's turn had been the night before.
She was weary now and she sat in the doorway listening to the men, and
remembering how on just such a moonlit September night she and Asher had
sat together under the Sign of the Sunflower and planned a future of
wealth and comfort.
"The case is desperate," Cyrus Bennington was saying. "Sickness and
starvation and the horses failing every day and the need for all the
plowing and getting winter fuel. Something must be done."
Others agreed, citing additional needs no less pressing.
"There are supplies and money coming from the East right now," Jim Shirley
declared. "A hunting party crossed south two days ago. I was down on lower
Plum Creek searching for firewood, and I met them. They said we might get
help from Wykerton if we went up right away."
"Well, you are Mr. Swift, Jim," one of the men exclaimed. "If you knew it
two days ago, why in thunder didn't you report. We'd have made a wooden
horse gallop to Wykerton before night."
"How'd I round up the neighborhood? I didn't get home till nearly noon
today. And, besides, they said Darley Champers has the distributing of the
supplies and money, and he's putting it where it will do the most good,
not giving to everybody alike, he says."
A sudden blankness fell upon each face, as each recalled the last words of
Champers when he left them on the Sabbath day in August.
"Well, you said a wooden horse could have galloped up to Wykerton." Jim
Shirley tried to speak cheerfully. "A horse of iron might, too, but who's
got a critter in Grass River Valley right now that could make a trip like
that? Mine couldn't. It took me two days and a half to haul up a load of
stuff, mostly sunflower stalks, that I gathered down south."
"Aydelot's black mare could do it if anything could," Pryor Gaines
declared, trying to speak cheerfully, yet he was the least able to meet
the hardships of that season.
"Yes, maybe," Shirley commented. "She's a thoroughbred, and they finally
win, you know. But knowing what you do, who of you wants to face Darley
Champers?"
Again a hopeless despair filled the hearts of the little company. Todd
Stewart clinched his hands together. The husband of the sick woman set his
jaws like iron. Pryor Gaines turned his face away and offered no further
word. Asher Aydelot sat looking out across the prairie, touched to silvery
beauty by the pitying moonlight, and Jim Shirley bowed his head and said
nothing.
"I will go to Wykerton," Virginia Aydelot's soft voice broke the silence.
"I'll take Juno and go tomorrow morning. If Darley Champers refuses me, he
would do the same to you."
"Oh, Mrs. Aydelot, will you go? Can you try it? Do you think you could do
it?" The questions came from the eager settlers.
"We'll try it, Juno and I," Virginia replied.
"Thoroughbreds, both of 'em," Jim Shirley murmured under his breath, and
Pryor Gaines' face expressed the things he could not say.
"I believe that is the best thing to do," Asher Aydelot declared.
Then the settlers said good night, and sought their homes.
As Virginia Aydelot rode away in the early morning, the cool breeze came
surging to her out of the west. The plains were more barren than she had
ever seen them before, but the sky above them had lost nothing of its
beauty. No color had faded from the eastern horizon line, no magnificence
had slipped away from the sunset.
"'The heavens declare the glory of God,'" Virginia said to herself. "Has
He forgotten the earth which is His also?"
She turned at the little swell to the northward to wave good-by to Asher,
standing with arms folded beside a corral post, looking after her.
"Is he thinking of Cloverdale and the big cool farmhouse and the well-kept
farm, and the many people coming and going along that old National pike
road? He gave it all up for me--all his inheritance for me and this."
She looked back once more at the long slope of colorless land and the
solitary figure watching her in the midst of it all.
"I'll tell him tonight I'm ready to go back East. We can go to Ohio, and
Asher can live where his boyhood days were spent. My Virginia can never be
as it was in my childhood, but Asher can have some of the pleasures of his
eastern home." She pushed back the sunbonnet from her face, and let the
west breeze sweep across it.
"I used to wear a veil and was somewhat acquainted with cold cream, and my
hands were really white and soft. They are hard and brown now. When I get
home I'll put it straight to Asher about going back to civilization, even
if there are only a few dollars waiting to take us there, and nothing
waiting for us to do."
With a sigh, half of anticipation and half of regret, she rode away toward
the little town of Wykerton in the Big Wolf Creek settlement.
There were few differences between the new county seat and Carey's
Crossing, except that there were a few more houses, and over by the creek
bank the brewery, by which Hans Wyker proposed to save the West. There
was, however, one difference between the vanished Carey's Crossing and
this place, the difference between the community whose business leaders
have ideals of citizenship, and the community wherein commerce is advanced
by the degradation of its citizens. Wykerton had no Dr. Carey nor John
Jacobs to control it. The loafers stared boldly at Virginia Aydelot as
she rode up before the livery stable and slipped from her saddle. Not
because a woman in a calico dress and sunbonnet, a tanned, brown-handed
woman, was a novelty there, but because the license of the place was one
of impudence and disrespect.
The saloon was on one side of the livery stable and the postoffice was on
the other side. Darley Champers' office stood next to the postoffice, a
dingy little shack with much show of maps and real estate information.
Behind the office was a large barren yard where one little lilac bush
languished above the hard earth. The Wyker hotel and store were across the
street.
Virginia had been intrusted with small sums for sundry purchases for the
settlement, especially for the staple medicines and household
needs--camphor and turpentine, quinine and certain cough syrups for the
winter; castor oil, some old and tried ointment, and brand of painkiller;
thread and needles and pins--especially pins--and buttons for everybody's
clothes. One settler had ridden back at midnight to ask for the purchase
of a pair of shoes for his wife. It was a precious commission that
Virginia Aydelot bore that day, although to the shopper in a Kansas city
today, the sum of money would have seemed pitifully small.
In the postoffice, printed rulings and directions regarding the supplies
were posted on the wall, and Virginia read them carefully. Then with many
misgivings and a prayer for success, she crossed the street to Darley
Champers' place of business.
In spite of her plain dress, Virginia Aydelot was every inch a lady, and
Darley Champers, dull as he was in certain lines, felt the difference her
presence made in the atmosphere of his office when she entered there.
"I understood, Mr. Champers, that you have charge here of the supplies
sent into the state for the relief of those who suffered from the
grasshoppers," she said, when she was seated in the dingy little room.
"Yes, mom!" Champers replied.
"I am Mrs. Asher Aydelot, and I represent the Grass River settlement. I
have come to ask for a share of this relief fund, and as I must start back
as soon as possible after dinner, perhaps we can make all arrangements
now."
She never knew how near her gentle manner and pleasant voice came to
winning the day at once. Champers' first impulse was to grant her anything
she asked for; his second was to refuse everything; his third, his ruling
principle always, was to negotiate to his own advantage. He dropped his
eyes and began to play for time.
"I don't know as I can help you at all, madam," he said, half
sympathetically. "The supplies and money is about gone, except what's
promised, and, well--you ought to have come sooner. I'd a been glad to
help you, but I thought you Grass River folks had about everything you
needed for the winter."
"Oh, Mr. Champers," Virginia cried, "you know that nobody could foretell
the coming of the plague. We were as well off as hundreds of other
settlers this dry summer before the grasshoppers came."
"Yes, yes, madam, but the supplies is gone, about."
"And you cannot promise that any more will be coming soon?" The pathos of
the woman's voice was appealing.
"If you could only understand how poor and how brave those settlers are!"
"I thought your man had some little means to get you and him away, if he'd
use it that way."
The sorrow of failure here and the suffering that must follow it made
Virginia sick at heart. A homesick longing suddenly possessed her; a wish
to get away from the country and forget it altogether. And Champers was
cunning enough to understand.
"You'd just like to get away from it, now, wouldn't you?" he asked
persuasively.
"I surely would, when I think of the suffering there will be," Virginia
replied. "Our staying won't help matters any."
"Not a bit! Not a bit," Champers asserted. "It's too bad you can't go."
Virginia looked up wonderingly.
"Madam, I haven't no supplies. They're all gone, I think. But if you'll
come in right after dinner, I'll see if I can't do something. I'm a humane
man."
"I'll be here at one o'clock," she replied.
It was the last hope, and anything was better than utter failure in her
errand.
When she registered her name at the hotel for dinner, Virginia's eye was
caught by the two names on the page. Both belonged to strangers, but it
was the sharp contrast of the writing that made her read them. One
recorded in a cramped little hand the name of Thomas Smith, Wilmington,
Delaware. The other in big, even, backward slanting letters spelled out
the name of John Jacobs, Cincinnati, Ohio.
The dining room was crowded with men when Virginia entered. Whoever is
hunting for evidence of good breeding and unselfishness, must not expect
too much in any eating-house, be it dining car on the Empire Limited or
grub shack on the western frontier, if only men are accustomed to feed
there. The best places were filled with noisy talkers and eaters, who
stared at her indifferently, and it was not until Gretchen Wyker,
tow-haired, pimpled, and short-necked like her father, chose to do so,
that she finally pointed out a chair at a shabby side table and waved her
empty tin waiter toward it. Virginia was passing the long table of staring
men to reach this seat, when a man rose from the small table at the other
side of the room and crossed hastily to her.
"Excuse me, madam," he said politely. "Will you come over to our table? We
are strangers to you, but you will get better service here than you might
get alone. My name is Jacobs. I saw you in the store this morning, and I
know nearly every man in your settlement."
It was a small service, truly, but to Virginia it was a grateful one in
that embarrassing moment.
"You can take Dr. Carey's place. He's away today, locating a claim on the
upper fork of Grass River somewhere. He hasn't been back a month, but he's
busy as ever. Tell me about your neighborhood," Jacobs said.
Virginia told the story of the community that differed little from the
story of the whole frontier line of Kansas settlements in the early
seventies.
"Do you have hope of help through Mr. Champers?" Jacobs asked.
"I don't know what to hope for from Mr. Champers. He seems kind-hearted,"
Virginia replied.
"I hope you will find him a real friend. He is pretty busy with a man from
the East today," Jacobs answered, with a face so neutral in its expression
that Virginia wondered what his thought might be.
As she rose to leave the table, Mr. Jacobs said:
"I shall be interested in knowing how you succeed this afternoon. I hope
you may not be disappointed. I happen to know that there are funds and
goods both on hand. It's a matter of getting them distributed without
prejudice."
"You are very kind, Mr. Jacobs," Virginia replied. "It is a desperate
case. I feel as if I should be ready to leave the West if I do not get
relief for our neighborhood today."
Jacobs looked at her keenly. "Can you go?" he asked. "I wonder you have
waited until now."
"I've never wanted to go before. I wouldn't now. I could stand it for our
household." The dark eyes flashed with the old Thaine will to do as she
pleased. "But it is my sympathy for other people, for our sick, for
discouraged men."
Jacobs smiled kindly and bowed as she left the room.
When she returned to Champers' office Mr. Thomas Smith was already there,
his small frame and narrow, close-set eyes and secretive manner seeming
out of place in the breezy atmosphere of the plain, outspoken West of the
settlement days. In the conversation that followed it seemed to Virginia
that he controlled all of the real estate dealer's words.
"I am sorry to say that there ain't anything left in the way of supplies,
Mrs. Aydelot, except what's reserved for worthy parties. I've looked over
things carefully." Darley Champers broke the silence at once.
"Who draws the line between the worthy and the unworthy, Mr. Champers?"
Virginia asked. "I am told the relief supply is not exhausted."
"Oh, the distributin's in my hands in a way, but that don't change
matters," Champers said.
"I read the rulings in the postoffice," Virginia began.
"Yes, I had 'em put there. It saves a lot of misunderstandin'," the
guardian of supplies declared. "But it don't change anything here."
Virginia knew that her case was lost and she rose to leave the room. She
had instinctively distrusted Darley Champers from their first meeting. She
had disliked him as an ill-bred, blustering sort of man, but she had not
thought him vindictive until now. Now she saw in him a stubborn,
unforgiving man, small enough to work out of petty spite to the complete
downfall of any who dared oppose his plans.
"Sit down, Mrs. Aydelot. As I said this mornin', it's too bad you can't go
back East now," Champers said seriously.
"We can." Virginia could not keep back the words.
Champers and Smith exchanged glances.
"No, mom, you can't, Mrs. Aydelot. Let me show you why."
He opened the drawer of his rickety desk and out of a mass of papers he
fished up a copy of the _Cincinnati Enquirer_, six weeks old. "Look at
this," and he thrust it into Virginia's hand.
The head-lines were large, but the story was brief. The failure of the
Cloverdale bank, the disappearance of the trusted cashier, the loss of
deposits--a story too common to need detail. Virginia Aydelot never knew
until that moment how much that reserve fund had really meant to her. She
had need of the inherited pride of the Thaines now.
"The papers are not always accurate," she said quietly.
"No, mom. But Mr. Smith here has interests in Cloverdale. He's just come
from there, and he says it's even worse than this states it."
Virginia looked toward Mr. Smith, who nodded assent.
"The failure is complete. Fortunately, I lost but little," he said.
"Why hasn't Mr. Aydelot been notified?" she demanded.
"It does seem queer he wasn't," Thomas Smith assented.
Something in his face made Virginia distrust him more than she distrusted
Darley Champers.
"Now, Mrs. Aydelot, seein' your last bridge is burned, I'm humane enough
to help you. You said this mornin' you wanted to get away. Mr. Smith and I
control some funds together, and he's willing to take Shirley's place and
I'll give you a reasonable figger, not quite so good as I could 'a done
previous to this calamity--but I'll take the Aydelot place off your
hands." Champers smiled triumphantly.
"The Aydelot place is not for sale. Good afternoon." And Virginia left the
office without more words.
When she was gone Champers turned to Smith with a growl.
"It's danged hard to turn agin a woman like her. What made you so
bitter?"
Smith half grinned and half snarled in reply:
"Oh, her neighbor, Shirley, you know."
Hopeless and crushed, Virginia sat down on the bench before the Wyker
House to wait for Juno to be brought to her from the stables. The
afternoon sun was beginning to creep under the roof shading the doorway.
Before her the dusty street ran into the dusty trail leading out to the
colorless west. It was the saddest moment she had known in the conflict
with the wilderness.
"Thy shoes shall be iron and brass," ran the blessing of Asher through her
mind. "It must be true today as in the desert long ago. And Asher lives by
the memory of his mother's blessing." The drooping shoulders lifted. The
dark eyes brightened.
"I won't give up. I'm glad the money's gone," she declared to herself. "We
did depend on it so long as we knew we had it."
"What luck, Mrs. Aydelot?" It was John Jacobs who spoke as he sat down
beside her.
"All bad luck, but we are not discouraged," she replied bravely, and
Jacobs read the whole story in the words.
A silence fell. Virginia sat looking at the vacant street, while the young
man studied her face. Then Juno was brought to the door and Virginia rose
to mount her.
"Mrs. Aydelot," John Jacob's sharp eyes seemed to pierce to her very soul
as he said slowly, "I believe you are not discouraged. You believe in this
country, you, and your neighbors. I believe in it, and I believe in you.
Stewart and I had to dissolve partnership when Carey's Crossing dissolved.
He took a claim. It was all he could do. I went back to Cincinnati, but
only for a time. I'm ready to start again. I will organize a company of
town builders, not brewery builders. You must not look for favors in a
whisky-ridden place like this. There'll be no saloon to rule our town."
Virginia listened interestedly but not understandingly.
"What of this?" Jacobs continued. "I have some means. I'm waiting for
more. I'll invest them in Grass River. Go back and tell your
homesteaders that I'll make a small five-year loan to every man in the
settlement according to his extreme needs. I'll take each man's note with
five per cent interest and the privilege of renewing for two years if
crops fail at the end of the term. I am selfish, I'll admit," he declared,
as Virginia looked at him incredulously, "and I want dollar for
dollar--always--sometimes more. My people are popularly known as
Shylocks. But you note that my rate of usury is small, the time long,
and that I want these settlers to stay. I am not trying to get rid of
them in order to speculate on their land in coming days of
prosperity--the days when you will be landlords over broad acres and I a
merchant prince. I say again, I believe in the West and in you farmer
people who must turn the West from a wilderness to a land of plenty. I'm
willing to risk something on your venture."
"Oh, Mr. Jacobs," was all Virginia could say, and, womanlike, the tears
filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks.
"Tell the men to send a committee up here with their needs listed," Jacobs
said hastily, "or better, I'll go out there myself the day after tomorrow.
I want to see what kind of a claim Carey has preempted. Good-by, now,
good-by."
He hurried Virginia to her horse and watched her ride away.
Down at the ford of Wolf Creek the willow brush fringed the main trail
thinly for a little distance and half hid the creek trail, winding up a
long canyon-like hollow, until a low place in the bank and a steep climb
brought it up to the open prairie. It was the same trail that Dr. Carey
had spoken of as belonging to an ugly little creek running into Big Wolf,
the trail he had wanted to avoid on the day he had heard Virginia singing
when she was lost on the prairie one cold day.
Virginia paused in this semblance of shade to let Juno drink. She pushed
back her sunbonnet and sat waiting. Her brown face grew radiant as she
thought of the good news she was bearing to the waiting home-makers of the
Grass River Valley. A song came to her lips, and as she sang a soft little
measure she remembered how somewhere down a tributary to this very creek
she had sung for help in pleading tones one cold hopeless day three years
before. So intent was she on the triumph of the hour she did not even look
up the willow-shadowed creek trail.
Dr. Horace Carey, coming in from a distant claim, had dropped into this
trail for the bits of shade here and there and was letting his pony take
its way leisurely along the side of the creek bed. There were only a few
shallow pools now where the fall rains would soon put a running stream,
and as the doctor's way lay along the moist places the pony's feet fell
noiselessly on the soft ground. As he rounded a bend in the stream he
caught sight of Virginia, her face outlined against the background of
willow sprays, making a picture worth a journey to see, it was such a
hopeful, happy face at that moment. Dr. Carey involuntarily checked his
pony at the sight. His own countenance was too pale for a Kansas
plainsman, and he sat so still that the low strain of Virginia's song
reached his ears.
Presently Juno lifted her head and Virginia rode away out on the Sunflower
Trail, bordered now only by dead pest-ridden stalks. Suddenly lifting her
eyes she saw far across a stretch of burned prairie a landscape of
exquisite beauty. In a foreground lay a little lake surrounded by grassy
banks and behind it, on a slight elevation, stood a mansion house of the
old Colonial style with white pillared portico, and green vines and forest
trees casting cool shade. Beyond it, wrapped in mist, rose a mountain
height with a road winding picturesquely in and out along its side.
Virginia caught her breath as a great sob rose in her throat. This was all
so like the old Thaine mansion house of her childhood years.
"It's only the mirage," she said aloud. "But it was so like--what?" She
held Juno back as she looked afar at the receding painting of the plains.
"It's like the house we'll have some day on that slope beyond the
Sunflower Inn. The mountains are misty. They are only the mountains of
memory. But the home and the woods and the water--all may be real."
Then she thought of Asher and of the dull prairie everywhere.
"I wonder if he would want to go back if he could see this as I see it,"
she questioned. "But I know he has seen it daily. I can tell by that look
in his gray eyes."
It was long after moonrise when Asher Aydelot, watching by the corral,
heard the sound of hoof-beats and saw the faint outline of a horse and
rider swinging in from the northward as once before he had watched the
same horse and rider swinging over the same trail before the cool north
wind that beat back the September prairie fire.
"I have supper all ready. See what grew just for you!" Asher said as he
and his wife entered the house.
A bunch of forlorn little sunflowers in a brown pitcher graced the table.
They could scarcely be called flowers, but to Virginia, who had hardly
seen a blossom through the days of drouth, the joy they brought was keener
than the joy that the roses and orchids gave in the days of a later
prosperity.
"I found them in the draw where the wild plums grow," Asher said. "How
they ever escaped the hoppers is a miracle."
"We will christen our claim 'The Sunflower Ranch' tonight, and these are
our decorations for the ceremony. It is all we have now. But it is ours,"
Virginia declared.
And then she told the story of the bank failure at Cloverdale.
"The last bridge is burned surely," Asher commented as he looked across
the table at Virginia. "This is the only property we have except youth and
health and hope--and--each other."
"And the old Aydelot heritage to stand for principle, and your mother's
belief in the West and in you, and the Thaine stubbornness about giving up
what they want to keep," Virginia declared.
"As our days so shall our strength be," Asher added, as he saw his wife's
face bright with hope and determination, and remembered the sweet face of
his mother as it had looked that night on the veranda of the old
farmhouse by the National pike road.
* * * * *
For a long time down by the willows thinly shadowing Wolf Creek a
white-faced man sat looking out toward the west, where a horse and rider
had vanished into the mellow tones of distance.