THE COBURN BOOK
And I see, from my higher level,
It is not the path but the pace
That wearies the back, and dims the eye,
And writes the lines on the face.
--Margaret E. Sangster.
Meanwhile the May sunshine beat hot upon the green prairie, and the
promised storm gathered itself together behind the horizon where the three
headlands were lost in an ash-colored blur. Wykerton, shut in by the
broken country about Big Wolf Creek, was more uncomfortable than the open
prairie. And especially was it uncomfortable in the "blind tiger" of the
Wyker eating-house.
Today the men of the old firm of Champers & Co. were again holding a
meeting in this little room that could have told of much lawless plotting
if walls could only tell.
"It's danged hot in here, Wyker. Open that window," Darley Champers
complained. "What kept you fellows so long, anyhow?"
"Business kep' me, and Smith here, he stop to peek at a pretty girl for
goot as ten minute," Hans Wyker said jocosely.
Champers stared at Thomas Smith, whose small eyes gleamed back at him.
"Oh, I just turned to look at Miss Shirley in the dining room. Can't a man
look at a pretty girl if he is past forty-five? She didn't see me,
though."
"Naw, she see nopotty but young Aydelot sitting mit her. Why you take oop
precious time peekin' trough der crack in der kitchen door? I be back in a
minute vonce. Smitt haf business mit you," Wyker declared as he turned to
the kitchen again.
Left together, the two men sat silent a moment. Then Champers said with a
frown:
"What do you want now? We've got no business with each other except as I
am agent for your rents and mortgages."
"You seem to fatten on them, or something," Smith answered insinuatingly.
"You lose no flesh with the years, I see."
"I've little occasion to worry," Darley Champers replied meaningly.
"Not with a fat income like yours and small returns to your employer who's
kept you all these years," Smith began, but Darley Champers mentally blew
up. It was in the bluffer's game that he always succeeded best.
"Now, see here, dang you. Get to business. You and Wyker and me dissolved
partnership long ago. I've been your agent years and years. I've did my
best. I never got so rich you could notice it on my breath. I'm not a
thief nor a murderer. I keep inside the law. I broke with you fellows
years ago, except straight contract that'll probate in any court. You are
a bully in power and a coward out of it. What the devil do you want with
me? I'm no bank. Be clear and quick about it and quit your infernal
dodgin' human beins like a cut-throat. I've signed your name to no end of
papers for you when you wouldn't put your own left-handed writin' in
sight. I have your written permit safe for doin' it. I reckon somebody
must a' put that right hand of yours out of commission sometime. I'll find
out about it one of these days myself."
Thomas Smith sat looking at the speaker with steady gaze. Many lines
crossed his countenance now, but the crooked scar had not faded with time.
In a coffin his would be the face of an old man. Alive, it was so
colorless and uninteresting in expression that not one person in a hundred
would turn to take a second look at him nor dream of the orgies of
dissipation his years could recount. Withal, he had the shabby, run-down
appearance as of a man in hard lines financially.
"I want money and I want it quick, or I'd not come clear out here. And you
are going to get it for me. That Cloverdale quarter I've held grown to
weeds so long you will sell to the first buyer now. Jim Shirley's at the
last of his string. I did what I wanted to do with him. He'll never own a
quarter again," Smith spoke composedly.
"Yes, I guess you're right. You've done him to his ruin. Jacobs has a
mortgage on his home, too, and a Jew's a Jew. He'll close on Jim with a
snap yet. It won't be the first time he's done it," Darley Champers
declared.
"And that niece, Tank's girl, he was to protect for Alice Leigh?" Smith
asked.
"Oh, eventually she'll either marry some hired man, I reckon, or go to
sewin' or something like it for a livin'. She's a danged pretty girl now,
but girls fade quick," Champers said.
For just one instant something like remorse swept Smith's face. Then he
hardened again as the ruling passion asserted itself.
"Serves her right," he said in a tone so brutal that Champers remembered
it.
"But I tell you I must have money. Two hundred dollars tonight and
fourteen hundred inside of two weeks. And you'll get it for me. You
understand that. And listen, now." Smith's voice slowly uncoiled itself to
Champers' senses as a snake moves leisurely toward a bird it means to draw
to itself. "You say you have signed my name for me and transacted
business, handling my money. If you care to air the thing in court, I'm
ready for you anytime. But do you dare? Well, bring me two hundred dollars
before tomorrow and the other fourteen hundred inside of two weeks. And
after this look out for yourself."
The threat in the last words was indescribable, and Champers would have
shuddered could he have seen Smith's countenance as he left the room.
"So he taunts me with being a coward and a brute, a thief and a
cut-throat; dares to strike me in the face when I've given him a living so
long he's forgotten who did it. I'm done with him. But he don't dare to
say a word."
He shut his lips tightly and slowly clinched his hands.
"For wy you stare so at dat door yet? Where's Champers?" Hans Wyker
demanded as he came in.
"The game's between us two now," Thomas Smith declared, turning to Hans
Wyker.
And a grim game was plotted then and there. Hans, who had been a perpetual
law-breaker since the loss of his brewery business, had let his hatred of
John Jacobs grow to a virulent poison in his system. While Thomas Smith,
whose character Darley Champers had read truly, followed so many wrong
paths down the years that conscience and manhood were strangers to him.
From being a financier he had dropped to the employment of a brewers'
association. His commission was to tempt young men and boys to drink; to
create appetites that should build up the brewing business for the future.
In the game now, Smith was to deliver beer and whisky into Wyker's hands.
Wyker would do the rest. Whoever opposed him must suffer for his
rashness.
It was cooler in the large dining-room where Thaine Aydelot and Leigh
Shirley had met by chance at noontime. Leigh's face wore a deeper bloom
and her eyes were shining with the exciting events of the day: the going
of Pryor Gaines and the business that had brought her to Wykerton.
Something like pain stabbed suddenly into Thaine Aydelot's mind as he
caught sight of her, a surprise to find how daintily attractive she was in
her cool summer gown of pale blue gingham and her becoming hat with its
broad brim above her brown-gold hair.
"I didn't expect to find you here," Leigh said as Thaine took the chair
opposite her at the little table.
"I came over to Little Wolf with Rosie Gimpke and some other colts. Then I
walked over here to catch a ride to Careyville, if I could," Thaine said
carelessly.
"You can ride with me if you want to. I'll be going soon after dinner,"
Leigh suggested.
"Oh, I'll want to all right. It may be well to start early. It's so hot I
expect there'll be a storm before night," Thaine suggested, wondering the
while what Leigh's business in Wykerton might be.
Darley Champers was in a fever when he came from his conference with
Thomas Smith. Smith had played large sums into his hands in the first
years of their partnership. Of late the sums had all gone the other way.
But Champers was entangled enough to know that he must raise the money
required, and the land was the only asset. Few things are more difficult
to accomplish than to find a buyer for what must be sold.
At the office Leigh was waiting for him. "Mr. Champers, I am Leigh Shirley
from the Cloverdale place on Grass River," she said, looking earnestly up
at him.
Darley Champers was no ladies' man, but so far as in his coarse-grained
nature lay, he was never knowingly rude to a woman, and Leigh's manner and
presence made the atmosphere of his office comfortingly different from the
place he had just quitted. The white lilac bush in the yard behind the
office whose blossoms sent a faint odor through the rear door, seemed to
double its fragrance.
"Sit down, madam. I'm pleased to meet you. Can I be of any service to you
today?" he said with bluff cordiality.
"Yes, sir. I want to buy the quarter section lying southeast of us. It was
the old Cloverdale Ranch once. It belongs to Champers & Co. now, the
records show, and I want to get it. It was my Uncle Jim Shirley's first
claim."
Darley Champers stared at the girl and said nothing.
"What do you ask for it?" Leigh inquired.
Still the real estate dealer was silent.
"Isn't it for sale? It is all weed-grown and hasn't been cultivated for
years."
The tremor in the girl's voice reached the best spot in Darley Champers'
trade-hardened heart.
"Lord, yes, it's for sale!" he broke out.
A sense of relief at this sudden opportunity, combined with the intense
satisfaction of getting even with Thomas Smith, overwhelmed him. Smith
would rave at the sale to a Shirley, yet this sale had been demanded.
Champers had written Smith's name into too many documents to need the
owner's handwriting in this transaction. Smith would leave town in the
evening. The whole thing was easy enough. While Leigh waited, the real
humaneness of which Champers so often boasted found its voice within him.
"I'll sell it for sixteen hundred dollars if I can get two hundred down
today and the rest in cash inside of two weeks. But I must close the
bargain today, you understand."
He had fully meant to make it seventeen hundred fifty dollars. It was the
unknown humane thing in him that cut off his own commission.
"It's worth it," he said to himself. "Won't Thomas Smith, who's got no
name to sign to a piece of paper, won't he just cuss when it's all did!
It's worth my little loss just to get something dead on him. The tricky
thief!"
"I'll take it," Leigh said, a strange light glowing in her eyes and a firm
line settling about her red lips.
Champers couldn't realize an hour later how it was all done, nor why with
such a poor bargain for himself he should feel such satisfaction as he saw
Leigh Shirley and Thaine Aydelot driving down the road toward Little Wolf
together. Neither could he understand why the perfume of white lilac
blossoms from the bush in the back yard of his office should seem so sweet
this morning. He was not a flower lover. But he felt the two hundred
dollars of good money in his pocket and chuckled as he forecasted the
hour of Thomas Smith's discovery.
"This is a shadier road than the one I came over this morning," Leigh said
as she and Thaine followed the old trail toward Little Wolf Creek.
"It's a little nearer, too, and you'll see by casting a glimpse westward
that things are doing over Grass River way," Thaine replied.
Leigh saw that a sullen black cloud bank was heaving above the western
horizon and felt the heated air of the May afternoon.
"I don't like storms when I'm away from home," she said.
"Are you afraid, like Jo Bennington? She has the terrors over them. We
were out once when she nearly bankrupted everything, she was so scared."
Thaine recalled a stormy night when Jo had clung to his arm to the danger
of both of them and the frightened horse he could hardly control.
"No, I'm not afraid. I just don't like being blown about. I am glad I
happened to find you, to be blown about, too, if it's necessary," Leigh
replied.
"'Happened' is a good word, Leigh. You happened on what I managed you
should, else that long circus performance with Mademoiselle Rosella
Gimpkello, famous bareback rider, had not been put on the sawdust this hot
day."
"What are you saying, Thaine Aydelot?" Leigh asked.
"You said last night you were coming over here today and that after you
had come you might need my advice. Me for the place where my advice is
needed ever, on land or water. Rosie's hand isn't fit to use yet. I knew
that was a nasty glass cut, so I met her in the hall upstairs early this
morning and persuaded her to come over today. It gave me the excuse I
wanted--to get here by mere happening."
"And leave Mrs. Aydelot all the cleaning up to do. Humane son!" Leigh
exclaimed.
"Oh, Jo stayed all night, and I stopped at Todd Stewart's place and
persuaded him down to help mother and Jo. It wasn't hard work to get him
persuaded, either."
"Aren't you jealous of Todd?" Leigh asked, with a demure curve of her
lip.
"Ought I be? He hasn't anything I want," Thaine retorted.
"No, he's a farmer. Some folks don't like farmers."
"I don't blame them," Thaine said thoughtlessly. "I haven't much use for a
farm myself. But Leigh, am I an unnecessary evil? I really turned 'Rory
Rumpus' and 'rode a raw-boned racer' clear over here just to be ready to
help you. I wish now I'd stayed home and dried the knives and forks and
spoons for my mammie."
"Oh, Thaine, you are as good as--as alfalfa hay, and I need you more today
than I ever did in my life before."
"And I want to help you more than anything. Don't be a still cat,
Leighlie. Tell me what you are up to."
They had reached the steep hill beyond the Jacobs sheep range where the
narrow road with what John Jacobs called "the scary little twist" wound
down between high banks to a shadowy hollow leading out to the open trail
by the willows along Big Wolf. At the break in the bank, opening a rough
way down to the deep waters of Little Wolf, a draught of cool air swept
up refreshingly against their faces. Thaine flattened the buggy top under
the shade of overhanging trees and held the horse to the spot to enjoy the
delightful coolness. They had no such eerie picture to prejudice them
against the place as the picture that haunted John Jacobs' mind here.
"I've bought a ranch, Thaine; the quarter section that Uncle Jim entered
in 1870," Leigh said calmly.
"Alice Leigh Shirley, are you crazy?" Thaine exclaimed.
"No, I'm safe and sane. But that's why I need your advice," Leigh
answered.
Something in the girl's appealing voice and perfect confidence of
friendship, so unlike Jo Bennington's pouting demands and pretty coquetry,
came as a revelation and a sense of loss to Thaine. For he loved Jo. He
was sure of that, cock-sure.
"It's this way," Leigh went on, "you know how Uncle Jim lost everything in
the boom except his honor. He's helped everybody who needed help, and
everybody likes him, I guess."
"I never knew anybody who didn't," Thaine agreed.
"So many things, I needn't name them all, bad crops, bad faith on the part
of others, bad luck and bad judgment and bad health, for all his size,
have helped till he is ready to go hopeless, and Uncle Jim's only
fifty-one. It's no time to quit till you're eighty in such a good old
state as Kansas," Leigh asserted. "Only, big as he is, he's not a real
strong man, and crumples down where small nervy men stand up."
"Well, lady landlord, how can I advise you? You are past advising. You
have already bought," Thaine said.
"You can tell me how to pay for the ranch," Leigh declared calmly. "I
bought of Darley Champers for sixteen hundred dollars. I paid two hundred
down just now. I've been saving it two years; since I left the high school
at Careyville. Butter and eggs and chickens and some other things." She
hesitated, and a dainty pink tint swept her cheek.
Why should a girl be so deliciously fair with the bloom of summer on her
cheeks and with little ringlets curling in baby-gold hair about her
temples and at her neck, and with such red lips sweet to kiss, and then
put about herself a faint invisible something that should make the young
man beside her blush that he would even think of being so rude as to try
to kiss her.
"And you paid how much?" Thaine asked gravely.
"Two hundred dollars. I want to borrow fourteen hundred more and get it
clear away from Darley Champers. I'm sure with a ranch again, Uncle Jim
will be able to win out," Leigh insisted.
"What's on it now?" Thaine asked.
"Just weeds and a million sunflowers. Enough to send Prince Quippi such a
message he'd have to write back a real love letter to me," Leigh replied.
"Leighlie, you can't do it. You might pay interest maybe, year in and year
out, the gnawing, wearing interest. That's all you'd do even with your
hens and butter. Don't undertake the burden."
"I've already done it," Leigh declared.
"Throw it up. You can't make it," Thaine urged.
"I know I can," Leigh maintained stoutly.
"You can't."
"I can."
"How?" Thaine queried hopelessly.
"If I can get the loan--"
"Which you can't," Thaine broke in. "Any man on Grass River will tell you
the same, if you don't want to believe the word of a nineteen-year-old
boy."
"Thaine, I must do something. Even our home is mortgaged. Everything is
slipping out from under us. You don't know what that means."
"My father and mother knew it over and over." Thaine's face was full of
sympathy.
"And they won out. I'm not so foolish after all. When they came out here,
they took the prairies as Nature had left them, grass-covered and waiting.
I'm taking them as the boom left them, weed-covered and waiting. I'll earn
the interest myself and make the land pay the principal and I know exactly
how it will do it, too."
"Tell me how," Thaine demanded.
"It's no dream. I got the idea out of a Coburn book last winter," Leigh
replied.
"You mean the State Agricultural Report of Secretary Coburn? Funny place
to hunt for inspiration; queer gospel, I'd say," Thaine declared. "Why
didn't you go to the census report of 1890, or Radway's Ready Relief
Almanac, or the Unabridged Dictionary?"
"All right, you despiser of small things. It was just an agricultural
report full of tables and statistics and comparative values and things
that I happened on one day when things were looking blackest, and right in
the middle I found a page that Foster Dwight Coburn must have put in just
for me, I guess. There was a little sketch of an alfalfa plant with its
long good roots, and just one paragraph beside it with the title, 'The
Silent Subsoiler.'"
"That sounds well," Thaine observed. He was listening eagerly in spite of
his joking, and his mind was alert to the girl's project.
"Mr. Coburn said," Leigh went on, "that there are some silent subsoilers
that do their work with ease and as effectually as any plow ever hitched,
and the great one of these is alfalfa; that it is a reservoir of wealth
that takes away the fear of protest and over-draft."
"Well, and what if Coburn is right?" Thaine queried.
"Listen, now. I planned how I'd get back that old claim of Uncle Jim's;
how I'd pay some money down and borrow the rest, and begin seeding it to
alfalfa. Then I'll churn and feed chickens and make little sketches of
water lilies, maybe, and pay the interest and let the alfalfa pay off the
principal. I haven't any father or mother, Thaine; Uncle Jim is all I
have. He hasn't always been successful in business ventures, but he's
always been honest. He has nothing to blush for, nothing to keep hidden. I
know we'll win now, for that writing of Foster Dwight Coburn's is true.
Don't try to discourage me, Thaine," she looked up with shining eyes.
"You are a silent little subsoiler yourself, Leigh, doing your work
effectually. Of course you'll win, you brave girl. I wish it was a
different kind of work, though."
A low peal of thunder rolled up from the darkening horizon, and the sun
disappeared behind the advancing clouds.
"That's our notice to quit the premises. I shouldn't want to ford Little
Wolf in a storm. It is ugly enough any time and was bank full when I took
Rosie Posie over this morning. And say, her mother's got a face like a
brass bedstead."
Thaine was lifting the buggy top as he spoke. Suddenly he exclaimed:
"Oh, Leigh, look down yonder."
He pointed down the little rift toward the water.
"Where?" Leigh asked, looking in the direction of his hand.
"Across the creek, around by the side of that hill. That's the Gimpke home
stuck in there where you'd never think of looking for a house from up
here. They can see anybody that goes up this lonely hill and nobody can
see them. If I was gunning for Gimpkes, I'd lie in wait right here,"
Thaine declared.
"Maybe, if the Gimpkes were gunning for you, they could pick you off as
you went innocently up this Kyber Pass and you'd never know what hit you
nor live to tell the tale; and they so snugly out of sight nobody but you
would ever have sighted them," Leigh replied. "But let's hurry on. It will
be cooler on the open prairie than down there along the creek trail. And
if we are storm-stayed, we are storm-stayed, that's all."
"You are the comfortablest girl a fellow could have, Leighlie. You aren't
a bit scared of storms like--"
"Yes, like Jo. I can't help it. I never was much of a 'fraid cat, but I
don't mind admitting I am fonder of water in lakes and rivers and
water-color drawings than thumping down on my head from the little end of
a cyclone funnel."
The air grew cooler in their homeward ride, while they followed the same
old Sunflower Trail that Asher and Virginia Aydelot had followed one
September day a quarter of a century before. And, for some reason, they
did not stop to question, neither was eager to reach the end of the trail
today.
As they came to a crest of the prairie looking down a long verdant slope
toward what was now a woodsy draw, Thaine said, "Leigh, my mother was lost
here somewhere once and Doctor Carey found her. Maybe Doctor Carey is the
man to help you now."
"Oh, Thaine, I believe I could ask Doctor Carey for anything. You are so
good to think of him," Leigh exclaimed. "I knew you'd help me out."
"Yes, I'm good. That's my trade," Thaine replied. "And I'm pretty brave to
offer advice, too. But if you want to talk any about courage, mine's a
different brand from yours. I may be a soldier myself some day. Brother
Aydelot of the Sunflower Ranch, trustee of the Grass River M. E. Church,
fit, bled, and died in the Civil War and was not quite my age now when he
came out all battle-scoured and gory. I always said I'd be a soldier like
my popper. But I'd fall in a dead faint before that alfalfa and mortgage
business you face like a hero. It's getting cooler. See, the storm didn't
get this side of the purple notches; it stayed over there with Pryor
Gaines and Prince Quippi."
They rode awhile in silence, then Thaine said: "Leigh, I will go up to
Careyville and send Doctor Carey down to Cloverdale to see you. It will
save you some time at least, and I'll tell him you want to see him
particularly and alone. You can tell me the result Sunday if you want to."
Leigh did not reply, but gratitude in the violet eyes made words
unnecessary.
On the Sabbath after the party, Thaine Aydelot waited at the church door
for Jo Bennington, who loitered out slowly, chatting the while with Todd
Stewart.
"Let me take you home, Jo. I see your carriage will be full with the
company you will have today," Thaine said.
Jo looked with a pretty pout at the invited guests gathered about her
mother and father waiting for her at the family carriage.
"Thank you, yes. I am glad to get away from those tiresome goody-goodies.
It looks like the Benningtons are taking the whole official board and the
'amen corner' home for dinner."
"Then come to the Sunflower Inn and dine with me. Rosie Gimpke came back
last night and she promised me shortcake and sauerkraut and pretzels and
schooners of Grass River water. Do come."
Indeed, Thaine had been most uncomfortable since the day at Wykerton, and
he wanted to be especially good to Jo now. He didn't know exactly why, nor
had he felt any jealousy at the bright looks and the leisure preference
she had just given to Todd Stewart.
"Oh, you are too good. Yes, I'll go, of course," Jo exclaimed. "Can't we
go down to the grove and see the lilies this afternoon, too?"
"Yes, we can go to China if we want to," Thaine declared. "Wait here in
the shade until I drive up."
Teams were being backed away from the hitching-rack, and much chatting of
neighbors was everywhere. Jim Shirley was not at church today, and Jo saw
Leigh Shirley going alone toward the farther end of the rack where her
buggy stood, while three or four young men were rushing to untie her
horse. Jo, turning to speak to some neighbors, did not notice who had
outdistanced the others in this country church courtesy until she realized
that the crowd was going, and down the deserted hitching line Leigh
Shirley sat in her buggy talking with Thaine, who was standing beside it
with his foot on the step, looking up earnestly into her face.
Jo was no better pleased that Leigh's face was like a fair picture under
her white hat, and she felt her own cheeks flushing as she saw how cool
and poised and unhurried her little neighbor appeared.
"Thank you, Thaine. All right. Don't forget, then," Jo heard her say as
she gathered up the reins, and noted that it was her motion and not the
young man's that cut short the interview.
"Leigh is a leech when she has the chance," Jo said jokingly, as the two
sat in the Aydelot buggy at last.
When one has grown up from babyhood the ruling spirit in a neighborhood,
her opinions are to be accepted.
Thaine gave Jo a quick look but said nothing.
"By the way, papa says Jim isn't very well this summer. Says he still
grieves over the farm he lost. Leigh hasn't much ahead of her, nailed down
to a chicken lot and a cow pasture and a garden. I wonder they don't move
to town. She'd get a clerkship, maybe."
Thaine only waited, and Jo ran on.
"I'd never stay in the country a minute if I could get to town. I'll be
glad when papa's elected treasurer, so we can live in Careyville again.
Poor Leigh. Doesn't she look like a drudge?"
Still Thaine was silent.
"Why don't you say something?" Jo demanded, looking coquettishly at him.
"About what?" he asked gravely.
"About Leigh. I don't want to do all the gossiping. Tell me what you think
of her."
"It would take a Cyclopedia Britannica set of volumes to do that," Thaine
replied.
"Oh, be serious and answer my questions," Jo demanded.
"'Doesn't she look like a drudge?' What kind of an answer--information or
just my opinion?"
"Oh, your opinion, of course," Jo said.
"If she looks like a drudge, it's what she is." The young man's eyes were
on his team.
"I thought you liked her," Jo insisted.
"I do," Thaine replied.
"How much, pray?"
"I haven't measured yet."
Thaine Aydelot was by inheritance a handsome young fellow, and as he
turned now to his companion, something in his countenance gave it a
manliness not usual to his happy-go-lucky expression. But the same
unpenetrable something beyond which no one could see was always on his
face when Jo talked of Leigh.
"How much do you like me?" The query was daringly put, but the beauty of
the girl's striking face seemed to warrant anything from her lips, however
daring.
"A tremendous lot, I know that," Thaine replied quickly, and Jo dropped
her eyes and began to chatter of other things.
In the afternoon the cool grove was inviting, and Thaine and Jo loitered
about in careless enjoyment of woodland shadows and wind-dimpled waters
and Sabbath quiet and one another.
"I want father to have a little boathouse over by the lily corner and make
a picnic place here sometime," Thaine said as they sat by the lake in the
late afternoon.
"Such a nice place for you to come in the summer. Aren't you glad you
don't just have to stay in the country?" Jo asked.
"Would you never be satisfied in the country, Jo?" Thaine queried. "Not if
you had a home there?"
Jo blushed and her face was exquisite in its rich coloring.
"Would you be?" she asked.
"Oh, I'd like to do something worth while," Thaine replied. "Father
doesn't say much, but he wants me here, I know."
"He will get over it, I'm sure," Jo insisted. "Why should the first
generation here weight us all down here, too? I hope you'll not give up to
your father. I wouldn't," Jo said defiantly.
"Did you ever give up to him?" Thaine asked.
"No, he gives up to me." The words were too sweetly said to seem harsh.
"I don't blame him," Thaine added.
"I don't believe any of our crowd will stay here like the old folks have
done, except Todd Stewart and, of course, Leigh," Jo declared.
"Say, Jo, my folks don't look old to me. Mummie is younger and
good-lookinger than anybody, except--"
"Leigh Shirley," Jo broke in.
Thaine looked at his watch without replying.
"Is it late? You must take me home, now," Jo said. "You'll be over
tonight, won't you? We will have some company from Careyville who want to
meet you."
"I'm sorry, but I promised Leigh up here at church that I'd go over to
Cloverdale for a little while tonight."
Thaine could not tell Jo of Leigh's affairs, and he felt that the
Shirleys' intimacy with his father's family and his own expressed
admiration and attention to Jo were sufficient to protect him from
jealousy. Jo stiffened visibly.
"Thaine Aydelot, what's the reason for your actions--Oh, I don't care. Go
to Shirley's, by all means. Everybody to his likes," she cried angrily.
"Well, that's my rathers for tonight, and I can't help it," Thaine
answered hotly.
"Of course you can't. Let's go home quick so you can get off early," Jo
said in an angered tone.
"I'll go as slowly as I can. You can't get rid of me so." Thaine was
getting control of himself again.
"Say, Thaine, tell me why you go away from our company tonight," Jo
pleaded softly, putting her hand on her companion's arm. "Don't you care
to come to our house any more?"
They were in the buggy now on the driveway across the lake. Thaine
recalled the moonlight hour when he sat with Leigh, of how little Leigh
seemed to be thinking of herself, of how he had admired her because she
demanded no admiration from him. Was there an obligation demanded here
today? And had he given grounds for such obligation? Past question, he
had.
"Jo, you must take me just as I am," he said. "All the boys are ready to
crowd into any place I vacate around Cyrus Bennington's premises. You
won't miss one from your company tonight. I may get desperate--and kill
off a few of them sometime to make you really miss me."
He knew he was talking foolishly. He had felt himself superior to the
other young men who obeyed every wish of Jo's. He had been flattered
always by her evident preference for his company, and had not thought of
himself as being controlled by her before. He had been too willing to do
her bidding. Today, for the first time, her rule was irksome. In spite of
his efforts to be agreeable, the drive homeward was not a happy one.
It was twilight when Thaine reached the Cloverdale Ranch and found Leigh
waiting for him on the wide porch. All the way down the river he had been
calling himself names and letting his conscience stab him unmercifully.
And once when something spoke within him, saying, "You never told Jo you
were fond of her. You have not done her any wrong," he stifled back the
pleasing voice and despised himself for trying to find such excuse. He was
only nineteen and had not had the stern discipline of war that Asher
Aydelot had known at the same age.
Jo had offered no further complaint at his refusing her invitation. She
played the vastly more effective part of being grieved but not angry, and
her quiet good-by was so unlike pretty imperious Jo Bennington that Thaine
was tempted to go back and spend the evening in her company. Yet,
strangely enough, he did not blame Leigh for being the cause of his
discomfort, as he should have done. As he neared her home, his conscience
grew less and less noisy, and when he sat at last in Jim Shirley's easy
porch chair with Leigh in a low rocker facing him, while the long summer
Sabbath twilight was falling on the peaceful landscape about him, he had
almost forgotten Jo's claim on him.
"Doctor Carey came down to see me," Leigh was saying, "just as you were
kind enough to ask him to do. He told me he had no money of his own to
loan, but he knew of a fund he might control in a few days. He had to
leave Kansas yesterday on a business trip, but he will see me as soon as
he comes back."
"Better than gold! Your plans just fall together and fit in, don't they?"
Thaine exclaimed. "Will he be back in time, though?"
"Yes. But really, Thaine," Leigh's eyes were beautiful in the twilight, "I
never should have thought of Doctor Carey if it hadn't been for you."
"I am of some use to the community after all," Thaine said with serious
face.
"You are a great deal of use to me," Leigh assured him.
"Oh, anybody else could do all I do for you," he retorted.
"But I wouldn't ask anybody else," the girl replied.
"Not even my mother? She thinks there is no girl like you this side of
heaven, or Virginia, anyhow, and she'd have taken it up with father,"
Thaine declared.
"I thought of her," Leigh answered, "but in things like this, it is
impossible. You said yourself that no man on Grass River would think it a
wise plan. Your father won his fight out here, even his fight against the
boom. We have a different wilderness to overcome, I guess. Mine is
reclaiming that Cloverdale ranch from the Champers Company and the weeds.
I don't know where your battlefield lies, but you'll have it, and it's
because you haven't won yet that I can come to you. You have helped me and
you always will."
"I'm glad you came to me, anyhow," Thaine assured her.
They sat awhile looking out at the prairies and the line of the river
glistening in the gloaming. A faint pink tone edged some gray cloud flakes
in the southwest sky and all the scene was restful in the soft evening
light.
At last Thaine said thoughtfully: "I haven't heard the bugle trumpet for
my call to battle yet. Maybe I'll find out down at the University and make
everybody proud of me some day as I am proud of you in your fight for a
weed-covered quarter of prairie soil. Jo Bennington is always ridiculing
country life, and yet she's pretty fond of Todd Stewart, who is more of a
farmer every day."
A little smile curved the corners of Leigh's mouth, and Thaine knew her
thoughts.
"You are not a bit alike, you two girls," he exclaimed.
"Does it make any difference? There's only one of a kind of anything in
this world, flower or fruit or leaf or life," Leigh added. "I found that
out in painting. There's only one Jo, and one Pryor Gaines, and one Jane
Aydelot as I remember her back in Ohio; one anything or anybody."
"And only one Leigh in all the world."
It was not the usual bantering tone now, and there was something in the
expression of Thaine's handsome face; something looking out from his dark
eyes that Leigh did not see, because she was looking out at the lights
and shadows of evening.
The sunset's afterglow had thrown a splendor far up the sky. In its
reflected light, softened by twilight shadows, Leigh made a picture
herself that an artist might love to paint.
She turned away at his words, and a quiver of pain swept her face as
Thaine leaned toward her eagerly.
"Oh, Leigh, I wasn't joking. You are so unlike anybody else." He broke off
suddenly. But Leigh was herself again and, smiling frankly, she added,
"Let's count our blessings, then, and be thankful it's no worse."
Thaine rose at once.
"I must be going. It is after eight and I ought to be at Bennington's now.
I am so glad, I am so honored, to have your confidence. Won't you keep
telling me your plans, and if I can help you, will you let me do it?"
He had taken Leigh's hand in good-by and held it as he put the question.
"I'll be so glad to have your help, for we will see things alike, not as
the older people see for us. It is only at our age that we dare take
risks. Your father and Uncle Jim wouldn't come to Kansas now if it were
now like it was when they were twenty-one."
Thaine did not release her hand.
"I'm glad there is only one Leigh," he said softly.
The light of his eyes and the sympathetic tone seemed all unlike the heir
of the Sunflower Ranch, yet very much like the spirit of the father who
had wrested it from the wilderness, and the mother who had courageously
shared his every need.
"I don't know tonight where my wilderness lies. But I hope, little girl, I
hope I'll fight as good a battle on my frontier as my father has done--as
you are doing. Good-night."
He hurried away and, falling into the gay company at Bennington's, was
welcomed by Jo as a penitent, and abundantly forgiven.
While down at Cloverdale, Leigh Shirley sat long alone, looking with
unseeing eyes at the twilight into which he had vanished.