REMEMBERING THE MAINE
The Twentieth Kansas was fortunate in opportunity,
and heroic in action, and has won a permanent
place in the hearts of a grateful people.
--William McKinley.
The sunny plains of Kansas were fair and full of growing in the spring of
1898. The alfalfa creeping out against the weeds of the old Cloverdale
Ranch was green under the April sunshine. The breezes sweeping down the
Grass River Valley carried a vigor in their caress. The Aydelot grove,
just budding into leaf, was full of wild birds' song. All the sights and
sounds and odors of springtime made the April day entrancing on the Kansas
prairies.
Leigh Shirley had risen at dawn and come up to the grove in the early
morning. She tethered her pony to graze by the roadside, and with her
drawing board on a slender easel she stood on the driveway across the
lakelet, busy for awhile with her paints and pencil. Then the sweetness of
the morning air, the gurgling waters at the lake's outlet, once the little
draw choked with wild plum bushes, and the trills of music from the
shimmering boughs above her head, all combined to make dreaming pleasant.
She dropped her brushes and stood looking at the lake and the bit of open
woodland, and through it to the wide level fields beyond, with the river
gleaming here and there under the touch of the morning light.
She recalled in contrast the silver and sable tones of the May night when
she and Thaine sat on the driveway and saw the creamy water lilies open
their hearts to the wooing moonlight and the caressing shadows. It was a
fairyland here that night. It was plain daylight now, beautiful, but real.
Life seemed a dream that night. It was very real this April morning. The
young artist involuntarily drew a deep breath that was half a sigh and
stooped to pick up her fallen brushes. But she dropped them again with a
glad cry. Far across the lake, in the leaf-checkered sunshine, Thaine
Aydelot stood smiling at her.
"Shall I stay here and spoil your landscape or come around and shake
hands?" he called across to her.
"Oh, come over here and tell me how you happened," Leigh cried eagerly.
Grass River people blamed the two years of the University life for
breaking Thaine Aydelot's interest in Jo Bennington. Not that Jo lacked
for admirers without him. Life had been made so pleasant for her that she
had not gone away to any school, even after her father's election to
office. And down at the University the pretty girls considered Thaine
perfectly heartless, for now in his second year they were still baffled by
his general admiration and undivided indifference toward all of them. His
eager face as he came striding up the driveway to meet Leigh Shirley would
have been a revelation to them.
"I 'happened' last night, too late to-wake up the dog," Thaine exclaimed.
"I happened to run against Dr. Carey, who had a hurry-up call down this
way, and he happened to drop me at the Sunflower Inn. He's coming by for
breakfast at my urgent demand. This country night practice is enough to
kill a doctor. His hair is whiter than ever, young as he is. He said he is
going to take a trip out West and have a vacation right soon. I told him
all my plans. You can tell him anything, you know. And, besides, I'm
hoping he will beat me to the house this morning and will tell the folks
I'm here."
"Doesn't your mother know you are here?" Leigh asked.
"Not yet. I wanted to come down early and tell the lake good-by. I have to
leave again in a few hours."
The old impenetrable expression had dropped over his face with the words.
And nobody knows why the sunshine grew dull and the birds' songs dropped
to busy twittering about unimportant things.
"Do you always tell it good-by?" Leigh asked, because she could think of
nothing else to say.
"Not always, but this time it's different. I'm so glad I found you. I
should have gone down to Cloverdale, of course, if you hadn't been here,
but this saves time."
A pink wave swept Leigh's cheek, but she smiled a pleasant recognition of
his thoughtfulness.
"I've come home to say good-by because I'm going to enlist in the first
Kansas regiment that goes to Cuba to fight the Spaniards. And I must hurry
back to Lawrence."
"Oh, Thaine! What do you mean?"
Leigh's face was very white.
"Be careful!"
Thaine caught her arm in time to save the light easel from being thrown
over.
"Don't look at me that way, Leigh. Don't you know that President McKinley
has declared war and has called for one hundred and twenty-five thousand
volunteers? Four or five thousand from old Kansas. Do you reckon we
Jayhawkers will wait till one hundred and twenty thousand have enlisted
and trail in on the last five thousand? It would be against all traditions
of the rude forefathers of the Sunflower State."
"Has war really been declared? We haven't had the papers for nearly a
week. Everybody is so busy with farm work right now."
Leigh stood looking anxiously at Thaine.
"Declared! The first gun has been fired. The call for volunteers has come
from Washington, and the Governor has said he will make Fred Funston
Colonel of the first regiment of Kansas volunteers, and he sent out his
appeal for loyal Kansas men to offer themselves. I tell you again, Leigh
Shirley, I'll not be the one hundred and twenty-five thousandth man in the
line. I'm going to be right close up to little Fred Funston, our Kansas
boy, who is to be our Colonel. I have a notion that University students
will make the right kind of soldiers. There will be plenty of ignorance
and disloyalty and drafting into line on the Spanish side. America must
send an intelligent private if the war is to be fought out quickly. I'm
that intelligent gentleman."
"But why must we fight at all, Thaine? Spain has her islands in every sea.
We are almost an inland country. Spain is a naval power. Who ever heard of
the United States being a naval power? I don't understand what is back of
all this fuss." Leigh asked the questions eagerly.
"We fight because we remember the Maine," Thaine said a little boastfully.
"We are keeping in mind the two hundred and sixty-six American sailors
who perished when our good ship was sunk in the harbor at Havana last
February. If we aren't a naval power now we may develop some sinews of
strength before we are through. Your Uncle Sam is a nervy citizen, and it
was a sorry day for proud old Spain when she lighted the fuse to blow up
our good warship. It was a fool's trick that we'll make Spain pay dearly
for yet."
"So it's just for revenge, then, for the Maine horror. Thaine, think how
many times worse than that this war might be. Isn't there any way to
punish Spain except by sending more Americans to be killed by her fuses
and her guns?" Leigh insisted.
"There is more than the _Maine_ affair," Thaine assured her. "You know,
just off our coast, almost in sight of our guns, Spain has held Cuba for
all these centuries in a bondage of degradation and ignorance and cruel
oppression. You know there has been an awful warfare going on there for
three years between the Spanish government and the rebels against it. And
that for a year and a half the atrocities of Weyler, the Captain General
of the Spanish forces, make an unprintable record. The United States has
declared war, not to retaliate for the loss of the _Maine_ alone, awful as
it was, but to right wrongs too long neglected, to put a twentieth century
civilization instead of a sixteenth century barbarity in Cuba."
Thaine was reciting his lesson glibly, but Leigh broke in.
"But why must you go? You, an only child?"
She had never seen a soldier. Her knowledge of warfare had been given her
by the stories Jim Shirley and Dr. Carey had told to her in her childhood.
"It's really not my fault that I'm an only child. It's an inheritance. My
father was an only child, too. He went to war at the mature age of
fifteen. I'll be twenty-one betimes." Thaine stood up with military
stiffness.
"Your father fought to save his country. You just want gold lace and a
lark. War is no frolic, Thaine Aydelot," Leigh insisted.
"I'm not counting on a frolic, Miss Shirley, and I don't want any gold
lace till I have earned it," Thaine declared proudly.
"Then why do you go?" Leigh queried.
"I go in the name of patriotism. Wars don't just happen. At least, that is
what the professor at the University tells us. Back of this Spanish fuss
is a bigger turn waiting than has been foretold. Watch and see if I am not
a prophet. This is a war to right human wrongs. That's why we are going
into it."
"But your father wants you here. The Sunflower Ranch is waiting for you,"
Leigh urged.
"His father wanted him to stay in Ohio, so our family history runs. But
Mr. Asher heard the calling of the prairies. His wilderness lay on the
Kansas plains, and he came out and drove back the frontier line and pretty
near won it. At least, he's got a wheat crop in this year that looks some
like success."
Thaine smiled, but Leigh's face was grave.
"Leighlie, my frontier is where the Spanish yoke hangs heavy on the necks
of slaves. I must go and win it. I must drive back my frontier line where
I find it, not where my grandfather found it. I must do a man's part in
the world's work."
His voice was full of earnestness and his dark eyes were glowing with the
fire of inspiration. By the patriotism and enthusiasm of the youth of
twenty-one has victory come to many a battlefield.
"But I don't want you to go away to war," Leigh pleaded.
"You don't want me here."
Thaine let his hand rest gently on hers for a moment as it lay on top of
the easel; then hastily withdrew it.
"Has your alfalfa struck root deep enough to begin to pull up that
mortgage yet?" he inquired, as if to drop the unpleasant subject.
"Not yet," Leigh answered. "We make every acre help to seed more acres.
It's an uphill pull. It's my war with Spain, you know. But I'm doing
something with these little daubs of mine. I have sold a few pieces. The
price wasn't large, but it was something to put against a hungry interest
account. Some day I want to paint--"she hesitated.
"What?" Thaine asked.
Leigh was bending over her brushes and paints, and did not look up as she
said with an effort at indifference:
"Oh, the Purple Notches. It is so beautiful over there."
Thaine bit his lips to hold back the words, and Leigh went on:
"Dr. Carey says Uncle Jim couldn't have held out long at general farming.
But the Coburn book was right. The alfalfa is the silent subsoiler, and
when the whole quarter is seeded we'll pull that mortgage up by the roots,
all right."
She looked up with shining eyes, and Thaine took both of her hands in his,
saying:
"I must tell you good-by now. Mother will know I am here and will be
dragging the lake for me. This isn't like other good-bys. Of course, I may
come back a Brigadier General and make you very proud of me, or I might
not come at all, but I won't say that. Oh, Leigh, Leigh, may I tell you
once more how dear you are to me? Will you promise again to send me the
same message you sent to Prince Quippi when you want me to come back?"
"I will," Leigh replied in a low voice, and for that moment the grove
became for them a holy sanctuary, wherein their words were sacred vows.
When Thaine reached home again, Dr. Carey was just leaving, and the way
was prepared for the purpose of his own coming, as he had hoped it would
be.
"I've a call to make across the river. I'll be back in time to take you up
to catch the train. There's a feast of a breakfast waiting in there for
you. I know, for I had my share of it. Good-by for an hour or two."
The doctor waved his hand to Thaine and drove away.
"So the wanderlust and spirit of adventure in the Aydelot blood got you
after all," Asher Aydelot said as he looked across the breakfast table at
his son. "It seems such a little while ago that I was a boy in Ohio, a
foolish fifteen-year-old, crazy to see and be into what I've wished so
often since that I could forget."
"But you don't object, Father?" Thaine asked eagerly.
Asher did not reply at once. A rush of boyhood memories flooded his mind,
and as he looked at Virginia he recalled how his mother had looked at him
on the day he left home to join the Third Ohio regiment nearly forty
years ago. And then he remembered the moonlit night and his mother's
blessing when he told of his longing for the open West, where opportunity
hunts the man.
"No, Thaine," he answered gently at last. "All I ask is that you try to
foresee what is coming in hardship and responsibility. Young men go to war
for adventure mostly. The army life may make a hero of you, not by brevet
nor always by official record, but a hero nevertheless in bravery where
courage is needed, and in a sense of duty done. Or it can make a low-grade
scoundrel of you almost before you know it, if you do not put yourself on
guard duty over yourself twenty-four hours out of every twenty-four. War
means real hardship. It is in everything the opposite of peace. And this
war foreshadows big events. It may lead you to Cuba or to the Orient. Our
Asiatic squadron is ordered from Hong Kong. Dr. Carey tells me it is going
to meet the Spanish navy in the Philippines. I thought I fixed the West
when I came here as a scout and later a settler, and drove the frontier
back with my rifle and my hoe. Is it possible your frontier is further
westward still? Even across the Pacific Ocean, where another kind of
wilderness lies?"
Into Asher's clear gray eyes, that for all the years had held the vision
of the wide, pathless prairies redeemed to fruitfulness, there was a
vision now of the big things with which the twentieth century must cope.
The work of a generation younger than his own.
"Don't forget two things, Thaine, when you are fairly started in this
campaign. First, that wars do not last forever. They jar the frontier line
back by leaps, but after war is over the good old prairie soil is waiting
still for you--acres and acres yet unredeemed. And secondly, while you are
a soldier don't waste energy with memories. Fight when you wear a uniform,
and dream and remember when the guns are cold. You have my blessing,
Thaine, only remember the blessing of Moses to Asher of old, 'As your day
so will your strength be.' But you must have your mother's approval too."
Thaine looked lovingly at his mother, and the picture of her fine face
lighted by eyes full of mother love staid with him through all the months
that followed. And all the old family pride of the Thaines of Virginia,
all the old sense of control and daring was in her tone as she answered:
"You have come to a man's estate. You must choose for yourself. But big as
the world is, it is too little for mothers to be lost in. You cannot find
a frontier so far that a mother's love has not outrun you to it. Go out
and win."
"You are a Trojan, mother. I hope I'll always be worthy of your love,
wherever I am," her son murmured.
Two hours later, when Dr. Carey stopped for Thaine, Virginia Aydelot came
down to his buggy. Her face was very white and her eyes were shining with
heroic resolve to be brave to the last.
"Horace, you may be glad you have no children," she said, as they waited
for Thaine and his father to come out.
"My life has had many opportunities for service that must make up for the
lack of other blessings. It may have further opportunity soon. May I ask a
favor of you?"
Virginia was not to blame that her heart was too full to catch the
undertone of sorrow in Horace Carey's words as she replied graciously:
"Anything that I can grant."
"Life is rather uncertain--even with a good doctor in the community--"Dr.
Carey's smile was always winning. "I have hoarded less than I should have
done if there had been a Carey to follow me. There will be nobody but Bo
Peep to miss me, especially after awhile. I want you to give him a home if
he ever needs one. He has some earnings to keep him from want. But you and
I are the only Virginians in the valley. Promise me!"
"Of course I will, always, Horace. Be sure of that."
"Thank you, Virginia. I am planning to start to California in a few days.
I may be gone for several months. I'll tell you good-by now, for I may not
be down this way again before I go."
Virginia remembered afterward the doctor's strong handclasp and the steady
gaze of his dark eyes and the pathos of his voice as he bade her good-by.
But she did not note these then, for at that moment Thaine came down the
walk with his father, and in the sorrow of parting with her son she had no
mind for other things.
Dreary rains filled up the first days of May. At Camp Leedy, where the
Kansas volunteers mobilized on the old Fair Ground on the outskirts of
Topeka, Thaine Aydelot sat under the shelter of his tent watching the
water pouring down the canvas walls of other tents and overflowing the
deep ruts that cut the grassy sod with long muddy gashes. Camp Leedy was
made up mostly of muddy gashes crossed by streams of semi-liquid mud
supposed to be roads. Thaine sat on a pile of sodden straw. His clothing
was muddy, his feet were wet, and the chill of the cold rain made him
shiver.
"Noble warfare, this!" he said to himself. "Asher Aydelot knew his bearing
when he told me that war was no ways like peace. I wonder what's going on
right now down at the Sunflower Ranch. The rain ought to fill that old
spillway draw from the lake down in the woods. It's nearly time for the
water lilies to bloom, too."
The memory of the May night two years before with Leigh Shirley, all pink
and white and sweet and modest, came surging across his mind as a heavy
dash of rain deluged the tent walls about him.
"Look here, Private Thaine Aydelot, Twentieth Kansas Volunteers, if you
are going to be a soldier stop that memory business right here, except to
remember what Private Asher Aydelot, of the Third Ohio Infantry, told you
about guard duty twenty-six hours out of twenty-four. Heigh ho!"
Thaine ended with a sigh, then he shut his teeth grimly and stared at the
unceasing downpour with unseeing eyes.
A noisy demonstration in the camp roused him, and in a minute more young
Todd Stewart lay stretched at full length in the mud before his tent.
"Welcome to our city, whose beauties have overcome others also," Thaine
said, as he helped Todd to rise from the mud.
"Well, you look good to me, whether I do to you or not," Todd declared, as
he scraped at the muddy plaster on his clothing.
"Enter!" Thaine exclaimed dramatically, holding back the tent flaps. "I
hope you are not wounded."
Todd limped inside and sat down on the wet straw.
"No, my company just got to camp. I was so crazy to see anybody from the
short grass country that I made a slide your way too swiftly. I don't mind
these clothes, for I'll be getting my soldier's togs in a minute anyhow,
but I did twist that ankle in my zeal. Where's your uniform?" Todd asked,
staring at Thaine's clothes.
"With yours, still. Make a minute of it when you get it, won't you?"
Thaine replied. "Our common Uncle wants soldiers. He has no time to give
to their clothes. A ragged shirt or naked breast will stop a Spanish
bullet as well as a khaki suit."
"Do you mean to say you haven't your soldier uniform yet?" Todd broke in.
"A few of us have, but most of us haven't. They cost something," Thaine
said with a shiver, for the May afternoon was chilly.
"Then I'll not stay here and risk my precious life for a government so
darned little and stingy."
Todd sprang up with the words, but fell down again, clasping his ankle.
"Oh, yes, you will. You've enlisted already, and you have a bad ankle
already. Let me see it."
Thaine examined the sprained limb carefully. He had something of his
father's ability for such things combined with his mother's gentle touch.
"Let me bind it up a little while you tell me about Grass River. Then hie
thee to a hospital," he said.
"There's nothing new, except that Dr. Carey has gone West for a
vacation and John Jacobs is raising cain over at Wykerton because a hired
hand, just a waif of an orphan boy, got drunk in Hans Wyker's joint
and fell into Big Wolf and was drowned. Funny thing about it was that
Darley Champers came out against Wyker for the first time. It may go
hard with the old Dutchman yet. Jim Shirley isn't very well, but he never
complains, you know. Jo Bennington was wild to have me enlist. I
suppose some pretty University girl was backing you all the time," Todd
said enthusiastically.
"The only pretty girl I care for didn't want me to go to the war at all,"
Thaine replied, staring gloomily out at the rain.
"Well, why do you go, then?" Todd inquired.
"Oh, she doesn't specially care for me here, either," Thaine replied.
"Girls don't control this game for me. But we have some princes of men
here all right."
"As for instance?" Todd queried.
"My captain, Adna Clarke, and his lieutenants, Krause and Alford. They
were first to enlist in our company down in the old rink at Lawrence.
Captain Clarke is the kind of a man who makes you feel like straightening
right up to duty when you see him coming, and he is so genial in his
discipline it is not like discipline. Lieutenant Krause fits in with
him--hand and glove. But, Todd," Thaine went on enthusiastically, "if you
meet a man on this campground with the face of a gentleman, the manners of
a soldier, a smile like sunshine after a dull day in February, and a, well
a sort of air about him that makes you feel he's your friend and that
doing a kind act is the only thing a fellow should ever think of
doing--that's Lieutenant Alford. There are some fine University boys here
and we have all packed up our old Kansas University yell, 'Rock Chalk!
Jay Hawk! K U!' to use on the Spanish. We'll make them learn to run
whenever they hear that yell. The whole regiment is a credit to Kansas, if
we haven't the clothes right now. You are rather a disreputable looking
old mudball yourself. Let's try to get to the hospital tent."
Thaine lifted Todd Stewart to his feet, and as they started up the slushy
way to the hospital tent, he said:
"Yonder is Lieutenant Alford now."
A young man with a face as genial as his manner was dignified responded
pleasantly to the private's salute, and the rainfall seemed less dreary
and all the camp more cheerful for this lieutenant's presence. No wonder
he seemed a prince to the enthusiastic young soldier whose admiration
deepened into an abiding love he was never to lose out of his life in all
the years to come. In the months that followed Thaine came to know Captain
Clarke and his two lieutenants, Krause and Alford, as soldier knows
soldier. Nor did ever Trojan nor Roman military hero have truer homage
from the common private than the boy from the Grass River Valley paid to
these young men commanding his company.
The hardships of soldier life began for Thaine Aydelot and his regiment
with the day of enlistment. The privations at Camp Leedy were many. The
volunteers had come in meagerly clothed because they expected to be fully
supplied by the government they were to serve. The camp equipments were
insufficient. The food was poor, and day after day the rain poured
mercilessly down on the muddy campground, where the volunteers slept on
wet straw piled on the wet earth. Sore throats, colds, and pneumonia
resulted, and many a homesick boy who learned to wade the rice swamps and
to face the Mauser's bullets fearlessly had his first hard lesson of
endurance taught to him before he left Camp Leedy on the old Topeka Fair
Ground.
Wonderful history-making filled up the May days. While the fleets and land
forces were moving against Cuba, the deep sea cable brought the brief
story from Commodore Dewey in the harbor of Manila, "Eleven Spanish
warships destroyed and no Americans killed."
And suddenly the center of interest shifted from the Cuban Island near at
hand to the Philippines on the other side of the world. The front door of
America that for four centuries had opened on the Atlantic ocean opened
once and forever on Pacific waters. A new frontier receding ever before
the footprint of the Anglo-American flung itself about the far-off island
of the Orient with its old alluring call:
Something lost behind the Ranges!
Over Yonder! Go you there!
And the Twentieth Kansas, under Colonel Fred Funston, broke camp and
hurried to San Francisco to be ready to answer that call.
Thaine Aydelot had never been outside of Kansas before. Small wonder that
the mountains, the desert, the vinelands, and orchard-lands, and
rose-lands of California, the half-orientalism of San Francisco and the
Pacific Ocean with its world-old mystery of untamed immensity should fill
each day with a newer interest; or that the conditions of soldier life at
Camp Merritt beside the Golden Gate, to which the eager-hearted, untrained
young student from the Kansas prairie brought all his youthful enthusiasm
and patriotism and love of adventure, should wound his spirit and test his
power of self-control. Small wonder, too, that the Twentieth Kansas
Regiment, poorly equipped, undrilled, and non-uniformed still, should make
only a sorry showing among the splendid regiments mobilized there; or that
to the big, rich City of San Francisco the ragged fellows from the
prairies, who were dubbed the "Kansas Scarecrows," should become the
byword and laughing stock among things military.
One neglect followed another for the Kansas Twentieth. The poorest camping
spot was their portion. The chill of the nights, the heat of the days
oppressed them. The filth of their unsanitary grounds bred discomfort and
disease.
But no military favors were shown them, and the same old stupid jests and
jibes of the ignorant citizen of the other states were repeated on the
Pacific seaboard. When the thirtieth of May called forth the military
forces in one grand parade the Twentieth Kansas was not invited to take
part.
For Thaine Aydelot, to whom Decoration Day was a sacred Sabbath always,
this greatest of all indignities cut deep where a man's soul feels
keenest. And when transport after transport sailed out of the San
Francisco harbor, loaded with regiments for the Philippines, and still the
Twentieth Kansas was left in idle waiting on the dreary sand lots of Camp
Merritt and the Presidio reservation, the silent campaign that really
makes a soldier was waged daily in Thaine and his comrades.
"Don't complain, boys," Captain Clarke admonished his company. "We'll be
ready when we are called, and that's what really counts."
Other commanders of the regiment gave the same encouragement. So the daily
drilling went on. The sons of the indomitable men and women who had
conquered the border ruffian, the hostile Plains Indian, and the
unfriendly prairie sod, these sons kept their faith in themselves, their
pride in the old Kansas State that bore them, and their everlasting good
humor and energy and ability to learn. Such men are the salt of the
earth.
Todd Stewart made a brave struggle, but his slide on the muddy ground at
Camp Leedy was his military undoing, and his discharge followed.
"I'm going to start back to old Grass River tomorrow," he said to Thaine
Aydelot, who had called to see him with face aglow. "I've made the best
fight I could, but the doctor says the infantry needs two legs, and
neither one wooden. But best of all, Thaine, Jo has written that she wants
me to come home. It's not so bad if there's a welcome like that waiting.
She is slowly overcoming her dislike for country life. But I can't help
envying you."
"Oh, you'll stand on both feet all right when you get them both on the
short grass of the prairie again, and, as you say, the welcome makes up
for a good many losses."
Something impenetrable came into his eyes for the moment only and then the
fire of enthusiasm burned again in them, for Thaine's nerves were a-tingle
with the ambition and anticipation of the young soldier waiting immediate
orders, and he changed the subject eagerly.
"I came to tell you something, Todd. We are to sail the seas on the next
transport to Manila, sure. And we'll see service yet, all right."
Thaine threw his cap in air and danced about the bed in his enthusiasm.
"Glory be! Won't Fred Funston do things when he hits the Orient? Best
colonel that ever had the U. S. military engines to buck against."
Todd rejoiced, even in his own disappointment.
"But see here, Thaine, me child, I also have a bit of news that may
interest you plumb through. My surgeon isn't equal to the Philippines
either, nor the Ephesians, nor Colossians, and he's going back to some
fort in the mountains. Who do you s'pose will take his place? Now, who?"
"How should I know? Seeing I've got to get this regiment off, I have to
leave the hospital corps to you. Who is it?" Thaine asked.
"Dr. Horace Carey, M.D.!" Todd replied.
"You don't mean it!" Thaine gasped.
"Yes, he does, Thaine." It was Horace Carey who spoke, as he entered the
hospital quarter, and, as everywhere else, the same engaging smile and
magnetic charm of personality filled the place.
Thaine turned and gathered him in close embrace.
"Oh, Dr. Carey, are you really going?" He whistled, and shouted, and
executed jigs in his joy. "Why do you go? Can you leave Kansas? You and me
both? Oh, hurry home, Todd, and show Governor Leedy how to run things
without us." And much more to like effect.
"I've a notion I'm the right man to go," Horace Carey answered. "I had
experience in the late Civil War, which seems trifling to you fellows at
the Presidio. I rode the Plains for some years more when rattlesnakes and
Indian arrows--poisoned at that--and cholera and mountain fever called for
a surgeon's aid. I have diplomas and things from the best schools in the
East. I have also some good military friends in authority to back me in
getting a surgeon's place in the army--and, lastly, I haven't a soul to
miss me, nor home to leave dreary, if I get between you and the enemy;
nobody but Boanerges Peeperville to care personally, and Mrs. Aydelot, as
the only other aristocrat in the Grass River Valley, has promised to give
him a home. He has always adored Virginia, Thaine, since he could remember
anything."
Thaine Aydelot was only twenty-one, with little need hitherto for
experience in reading human nature. Moreover, he was alert in every
tingling nerve with the anticipation of an ocean voyage and of strange new
sights and daring deeds half a world away. Yet something in Dr. Carey's
strong face seemed to imply a deeper purpose than his words suggested. A
faint sense of the nobility of the man gripped him and grew upon him, and
never in the years that followed was separate from the memory of the
doctor he had loved from babyhood.
* * * * *
When the Ohio woodlands were gorgeous with the frost-fired splendor of
October word came to Miss Jane Aydelot, of the old Aydelot farmhouse
beside the National pike road, that one Thaine Aydelot had sailed from San
Francisco with the Twentieth Kansas Regiment to see service in the
Philippine Islands. On board the same transport was Dr. Horace Carey, of
the military medical staff. That winter Jane Aydelot's hair turned white,
but the pink bloom of her cheeks and the light of her clear gray eyes made
her a sweet-faced woman still, whose loveliness grew with the years.
The kiss of the same October breezes was on the Kansas prairie with the
hazy horizon and the infinite beauty of wide, level landscapes, overhung
by the infinite beauty of blue, tender skies. Boanerges Peeperville,
established as cook in the Sunflower Inn, was at home in his cosy little
quarter beside the grape arbor of the rear dooryard.
"Tell me, Bo Peep, why Dr. Carey should enter the army again and go to the
Philippines?" Virginia Aydelot asked on the day the news reached the
Sunflower Ranch.
Bo Peep did not answer at once. Virginia was busy arranging some big
yellow chrysanthemums in a tall cut-glass vase that Dr. Carey had left to
be sent down to her when Bo Peep should come to the Aydelots to make his
home.
"See, Bo Peep, aren't they pretty? Set them in the middle of the table
there, carefully. The first bouquet we ever had on our table was a few
little sunflowers in an old peach can wrapped round with a newspaper. You
didn't answer my question. Why did Horace go so far away?"
The servant took the vase carefully and placed it as commanded. Then he
turned to Virginia with a face full of intense feeling.
"Miss Virgie, I done carry messages for him all my days." The pathos of
the soft voice was touching. "I wasn't to give this las' one to you less'n
he neveh come back. An Mis' Virgie, Doctoh Carey won't neveh come back no
mo'. But I kaint tell you yet jus' why he done taken hisself to the
Fillippians, not yet."
"Why do you think he will never come back? You think Thaine will come home
again, don't you?" Virginia queried.
"Oh, yas'm! yas'm! Misteh Thaine, he'll come back all right. But hit's
done fo'casted in my bones that Doctoh Horace won't neveh come. An' when
he don't, I'll tell you why he leff'n Grass Riveh, Kansas, for the
Fillippians."