LIGHTS AND SHADOWS
They saw not the shadow that walked beside,
They heard not the feet with silence shod.
--Whittier.
With successive seasons of good crops, combining with the time of the
crest between two eras of financial depression, and with Eastern capital
easy to reach, a mania of speculation known as "the boom" burst forth; a
mania that swept men's minds as prairie fires sweep along the wide lengths
of the plains, changing both the face of the land and the fortunes of the
land owners, and marking an epoch in the story of the West. New counties
were organized out of the still unoccupied frontier. Thousands of citizens
poured into these counties. Scores of towns were chartered and hundreds of
miles of railroad were constructed. Colleges and universities sprouted up
from the virgin soil of the prairie. Loans on real estate were easy to
secure. Land, especially in town lots, took on an enormously inflated
valuation and the rapid investment in real estate and the rapid
transference from buyer to seller was bewildering, while voting bonds for
extensive and extravagant improvements in cities-to-be was not the least
phase of this brief mania of the fortune-making, fortune-breaking "boom."
When Hans Wyker had seen his own town wane as Careyville waxed, he
consigned the newer community, and all that it was, to all the purgatories
ever organized and some yet to be created.
Wykerton was at a standstill now. The big brewery had become a flouring
mill, but it was idle most of the time. The windows served as targets for
the sons of the men who consumed its brewing product in other days, and
the whole structure had a disconsolate, dismantled appearance.
There was neither a schoolhouse nor a church inside the corporation
limits. The land along Big Wolf was not like the rich prairies west of it,
and freeholds entered first with hopes in Wykerton's prosperity had proved
disappointing, if not disastrous, to their owners.
The rough ground, mortgaged now, and by the decline of the town, decreased
in value, began to fall into the hands of John Jacobs, who made no effort
at settlement, but turned it to grazing purposes. His holdings joined the
property foreclosed by Wyker when his town failed, but inhabited still by
tenants too poor to leave it. The boundary line between Wyker and Jacobs
was the same ugly little creek that Doctor Carey had turned his course to
avoid on that winter day when he had seen Virginia Aydelot's distress
signal and heard her singing a plaintive plea for help.
It was an ugly little stream, with much mire and some quicksand to be
avoided; with deep earth-canyons and sliding avalanches of dirt on steep
slopes, and now and then a stone outcrop jagged and difficult, not to say
dangerous, to footways, and impossible to stock. It was called Little Wolf
because it was narrower than the willow-fringed stream into which it
emptied. But Big Wolf Creek could rarely boast of half the volume of water
that the sluggish little tributary held. Big Wolf was shallow, with more
shale and sand along its bed. Little Wolf was narrow and deceivingly deep
in places.
One Spring day, John Jacobs and Asher Aydelot rode out to Jacobs' ranches
together.
"You are improving your stock every year, Stewart tells me," Asher was
saying. "I may try sheep myself next year."
"I am hoping to have only thoroughbreds some day. That's a good horse you
ride," Jacobs replied.
"Yes, he has a strain of Kentucky blue-blood. My wife owned a thoroughbred
when we came West. We keep the descent still. We've never been without a
black horse in the stable since that time. Do we turn here?"
They were following the lower trail by the willows, when Jacobs turned
abruptly to a rough roadway leading up a shadowy hollow.
"Yes. It's an ugly climb, but much shorter to the sheep range and the
cattle are near."
"How much land have you here, Jacobs?" Asher asked.
"From Little Wolf to the corporation line of Wykerton. Five hundred acres,
more or less; all fenced, too," Jacobs added. "This creek divides Wyker's
ground from mine. All the rest is measured by links and chains. We agreed
to metes and bounds for this because it averages the same, anyhow, and I'd
like a stream between Wyker and myself in addition to a barbed wire fence.
It gives more space, at least."
They had followed the rough way only a short distance when Asher, who was
nearest the creek, halted. The bank was steep and several feet above the
water.
"Does anybody else keep sheep around here?" he inquired.
"Not here," John Jacobs answered.
"Look over there. Isn't that a sheep?"
Asher pointed to a carcass lying half out of the water on a pile of drift
where the stream was narrow, but too deep for fording.
"Maybe some dog killed it and the carcass got into the creek. My sheep
can't get to the water because my pasture is fenced. That's on Wyker's
side, anyhow. I won't risk fording to get over there. It's as dead right
now as it will ever be," Jacobs asserted.
Their trail grew narrower and more secluded, winding up a steep hill
between high banks. Half way up, where the road made a sharp turn, a break
in the side next to the creek opened a rough way down to the water. As
they neared this, a woman coming down the hill caught sight of the two
horsemen around the bend, and made a swift movement toward this opening in
the bank, as if to clamber down from their sight. She was not quick
enough, however, and when she found she had been seen, she waited by the
roadside until the men had passed on.
Asher, who was next to her, looked keenly at her as he bade her good
morning, but John Jacobs merely lifted his hat without giving her more
than a glance.
The woman stared at both, but made no response to their greetings. She was
plainly dressed, with a black scarf tied over her tow-colored hair. She
had a short club in one hand and a big battered tin can in the other,
which she seemed anxious to conceal. When the men had passed, she looked
after them with an ugly expression of malice in her little pale gray
eyes.
"That's a bad face," Asher said, when they were out of her hearing. "I
wonder why she tried to hide that old salt can."
"How do you know it was a salt can?" Jacobs asked.
"Because it is exactly like a salt can I saw at Pryor Gaines' old cabin,
and because some salt fell out as she tipped it over," Asher replied.
"You have an eye for details," Jacobs returned. "That was Gretchen Gimpke,
Hans Wyker's girl. She married his bartender, and is raising a family of
little bartenders back in the hilly country there, while Gimpke helps Hans
run a perfectly respectable tavern in town."
"Well, I may misjudge her, but if I had any interest near here, I should
want her to keep on her own side of the creek," Asher declared.
And somehow both remembered the dead sheep down in the deep pool at the
foot of the hill.
The live sheep were crowding along the fence on the creek side of the big
range when the two men entered it.
"What ails the flock?" Asher asked, as they saw it following the fence
line eagerly.
"Let's ride across and meet them," Jacobs suggested.
The creek side was rough with many little dips and draws hiding the
boundary line in places. The men rode quietly toward the flock by the
shortest way. As they faced a hollow deepening to a draw toward the creek,
Asher suddenly halted.
"Look at that!" he cried, pointing toward the fence.
John Jacobs looked and saw where the ground was lowest that the barbed
wires had been dragged out of place, leaving an opening big enough for two
or more sheep to crowd through at a time. As they neared this point, Asher
said:
"It's a pretty clear case, Jacobs. See that line of salt running up the
bare ground, and here is an opening. The flock is coming down on that
line. They will have a chance to drink after taking their salt."
John Jacobs slid from his horse, and giving the rein to Asher, he climbed
through the hole in the fence and hastily examined the ground beyond it.
"It's a friendly act on somebody's part," he said grimly. "The creek cuts
a deep hole under the bank here. There's a pile of salt right at the edge.
Somebody has sprinkled a line of it clear over the hill to toll the flock
out where they will scramble for it and tumble over into that deep water.
All they need to do is to swim down to the next shallow place and wade
out. The pool may be full of them now, waiting their turn to go. Sheep are
polite in deep water; they never rush ahead."
"They swim well, too, especially if they happen to fall into the water
just before shearing time when their wool is long," Asher said
ironically.
"What did you say Gretchen Gimpke had in that tin can?" Jacobs inquired
blandly.
"Oil of sassafras, I think," Asher responded, as he tied the horses and
helped to mend the weakened fence.
"Nobody prospers long after such tricks. I'll not lose sleep over lost
sheep," John Jacobs declared. "Let's hunt up the cattle and forget this,
and the woman and the scary little twist in the creek trail."
[Illustration: "It's a friendly act on somebody's part." he said grimly]
"Why scary?" Asher asked. "Are you so afraid of women? No wonder you are a
bachelor."
Jacobs did not smile as he said:
"Once when I was a child I read a story of a man being killed at just such
an out-of-the-way place. Every time I go up that crooked, lonesome hill
road, I remember the picture in the book. It always makes me think of that
story."
When the fence was made secure, the two rode away to look after the
cattle. And if a Shadow rode beside them, it was mercifully unseen, and in
nowise dimming to the clear light of the spring day.
It was high noon when they reached Wykerton, where Hans Wyker still fed
the traveling public, although the flourishing hotel where Virginia
Aydelot first met John Jacobs had disappeared. The eating-place behind the
general store room was divided into two parts, a blind partition wall
cutting off a narrow section across the farther end. Ordinary diners went
through the store into the dining room and were supplied from the long
kitchen running parallel with this room.
There were some guests, however, who entered the farther room by a rear
door and were likewise supplied from the kitchen on the side. But as there
was no opening between the two rooms, many who ate at Wyker's never knew
of the narrow room beyond their own eating-place and of the two entrances
into the kitchen covering the side of each room. Of course, the prime
reason for such an arrangement lay in Wyker's willingness to evade the law
and supply customers with contraband drinks. But the infraction of one law
is a breach in the wall through which many lawless elements may crowd. The
place became, by natural selection, the council chamber of the lawless,
and many an evil deed was plotted therein.
"How would you like to keep a store in a place like this, Jacobs?" Asher
Aydelot asked, as the two men waited for their meal.
"I had the chance once. I turned it down. How would you like to keep a
tavern in such a place?" Jacobs returned.
"I turned down a bigger tavern than this once to be a farmer. I have never
regretted it," Asher replied.
"The Sunflower Ranch has always interested me. How long have you had it?"
Jacobs asked.
"Since 1869. I was the first man on Grass River. Shirley came soon
afterward," Asher said.
"And your ranches are typical of you, too," John Jacobs said thoughtfully.
"How much do you own now?"
"Six quarters," Asher replied. "I've added piece by piece. Mortgaged one
quarter to buy another. There's a good deal of it under mortgage now."
"You seem to know what's ahead pretty well," Jacobs remarked.
"I know what's in the prairie soil pretty well. I know that crops will
fail sometimes and boom sometimes, and I know if I live I mean to own
three times what I have now; that I'll have a grove a mile square on it,
and a lake in the middle, and a farmhouse of colonial style up on the
swell where we are living now and that neither John Jacobs nor the First
National Bank of Careyville will hold any mortgage on it." Asher's face
was bright with anticipation.
"You are a dreamer, Aydelot."
"No, Jim Shirley's a dreamer," Asher insisted. "Mrs. Aydelot and I planned
our home the first night she came a bride to our little one-roomed soddy.
There are cottonwoods and elms and locust trees shading our house now
where there was only a bunch of sunflowers then, and except for Jim's
little corn patch and mine, not a furrow turned in the Grass River Valley.
We have accomplished something since then. Why not the whole thing?"
"You have reason for your faith, I admit. But you are right, Shirley is a
dreamer. What's the matter with him?"
"An artistic temperament, more heart than head, a neglected home life in
his boyhood, and a fight for health to do his work. He'll die mortgaged,
but he has helped so many other fellows to lift theirs, I envy Jim's
'abundant entrance' by and by. But now he dreams of a thousand things and
realizes none. Poor fellow! His dooryard is a picture, while the weeds
sometimes choke his garden."
"Yes, he'll die mortgaged. He's never paid me interest nor principal on my
little loan, yet I'd increase it tomorrow if he asked me to do it," John
Jacobs declared.
"You are a blood-sucking Shylock, sure enough," Asher said with a smile.
"I wish Jim would take advantage of you and quit his talking about the
boom and his dreams of what it might do for him."
"How soon will you be platting your Sunflower Ranch into town lots for the
new town that I hear is to be started down your way?" John Jacobs
inquired.
"Town lots do not appeal to me, Jacobs," Asher replied. "I'm a
slow-growing Buckeye, I'll admit, but I can't see anything but mushrooms
in these towns out West where there is no farming community about them.
I've waited and worked a good while; I'm willing to work and wait a while
longer. Some of my dreams have come true. I'll hold to my first position,
even if I don't get rich so fast."
"You are level-headed," Jacobs assured him. "You notice I have not turned
an acre in on this boom. Why? I'm a citizen of Kansas. And while I like to
increase my property, you know my sect bears that reputation--"Jacobs
never blushed for his Jewish origin--"I want to keep on living somewhere.
Why not here? Why do the other fellows out of their goods, as we Jews are
always accused of doing, if it leaves me no customer to buy? I want
farmers around my town, not speculators who work a field from hand to
hand, but leave it vacant at last. It makes your merchant rich today but
bankrupt in a dead town tomorrow. I'm a merchant by calling."
"Horace Greeley said thirty years ago that the twin curses of Kansas were
the land agent and the one-horse politician," Asher observed.
"You are a grub, Aydelot. You have no ambition at all. Why, I've heard
your name mentioned favorably several times for the legislature next
winter," Jacobs insisted jokingly.
"Which reminds me of that rhyme of Hosea Bigelow:
If you're arter folks o' gumption
You've a darned long row to hoe.
"I'm not an office seeker," Asher replied.
"Do I understand you won't sell lots off that ranch of yours to start a
new town, and you won't run for the legislature when you're dead sure to
be elected. May I ask how you propose to put in the fall after wheat
harvest?" Jacobs asked, with a twinkle in his black eyes.
"I propose to break ground for wheat again, and to experiment with
alfalfa, the new hay product, and to take care of that Aydelot grove and
build the Aydelot lake in the middle of it. And I'll be supplying the
wheat market and banking checks for hay one of these years when your town
starters will be hunting clerkships in your dry goods emporium, and your
farmers, who imagine themselves each a Cincinnatus called to office, will
be asking for appointment as deputy county assessor or courthouse
custodian. Few things can so unfit a Kansas fellow for the real business
of life as a term in the lower house of the Kansas legislature. If you are
a merchant, I'm a farmer, and we will both be booming the state when these
present-day boomers are gone back East to wife's folks, blaming Kansas for
their hard luck. Now, mark my words. But to change the subject," Asher
said smiling, "I thought we should have company for dinner. I saw Darley
Champers and another fellow head in here before us. Darley is in clover
now, planning to charter a town for every other section on Grass River.
Did you know the man who was with him?"
"That's one fly-by-night calling himself Thomas Smith. Innocent name and
easy to lose if you don't want it. Not like Gimpke or Aydelot, now. He's
from Wilmington, Delaware--maybe."
"You seem to doubt his genuineness," Asher remarked.
"I don't believe he will assay well," Jacobs agreed. "I've doubted him
since the day he landed in Carey's Crossing fifteen years ago. Inside of
an hour and a half I caught him and Champers in a consultation so secret
they fastened newspapers across the window to keep from being seen."
"Where were you meanwhile?"
"Up on the roof, fixing the sign the wind had blown loose. When they saw
me through the uncovered upper pane, they shaded that, too. I've little
interest in a man like that."
"Does he come here often?" Asher inquired.
"He's here and away, but he never sets foot in Careyville. My guess is
that he's a part of the 'Co.' of 'Champers and Co.' and that Hans Wyker is
the rest of it. Also that in what they can get by fair means, each of the
trio reserves the right to act alone and independently of the other two,
but when it comes to a cut-throat game, they combine as readily as
hydrogen and sulphur and oxygen; and, combined, they have the same effect
on a proposition that sulphuric acid has on litmus paper. But this is all
only a Jew's guess, of course. For myself, I have business with only one
of the three, Wyker. He doesn't like my sheep, evidently, because he knows
I keep track of his whisky selling in this town and keep the law forever
hanging over him. But I've sworn under high heaven to fight that curse to
humanity wherever I find it threatening, and under high heaven I'll do it,
too."
Jacobs' face was the face of a resolute man with whom law was law. Then
the two talked of other things as they finished their meal.
John Jacobs was city bred, a merchant by instinct, a Jew in religion, and
a strictly honest and exacting business man. Asher Aydelot had been a
country boy and was by choice a farmer. He was a Protestant of the
Methodist persuasion. It must have been his business integrity that first
attracted Jacobs to him. Jacobs was a timid man, and no one else in
Kansas, not even Doctor Carey, understood him or appreciated him quite as
keenly as Asher Aydelot did.