BOOK II

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A Summer in the High Country

My first morning in the old Homestead without my mother was so poignant

with its sense of loss, so rich with memories both sweet and sorrowful,

that I shut myself in my study and began a little tribute to her, a

sketch which I called _The Wife of a Pioneer_. Into this I poured the

love I had felt but failed to express as fully as I should have done

while she was alive. To make this her memorial was my definite purpose.

As I went on I found myself deep in her life on the farm in Iowa, and

the cheerful heroism of her daily treadmill came back to me with such

appeal that I could scarcely see the words in which I was recording her

history. Visioning the long years of her drudgery, I recalled her early

rising, and suffered with her the never-ending round of dish-washing,

churning, sewing, and cooking, realizing more fully than ever before

that in all of this slavery she was but one of a million martyrs. All

our neighbors' wives walked the same round. On such as they rests the

heavier part of the home and city building in the West. The wives of the

farm are the unnamed, unrewarded heroines of the border.

For nearly a week I lingered upon this writing, and having completed it

I was moved to print it, in order that it might remind some other son of

his duty to his ageing parents sitting in the light of their lonely

hearth, and in doing this I again vaguely forecast the composition of an

autobiographic manuscript--one which should embody minutely and simply

the homely daily toil of my father's family, although I could not, at

the moment, define the precise form into which the story would fall.

The completion of the memorial to my mother eased my heart of its bitter

self-accusation, and a little later I returned to my accustomed routine,

realizing that in my wife now lay my present incentive and my future

support. She became the center of my world. In her rested my hope of

happiness. My mother was a memory.

To remain longer in the old home was painful, for to me everything

suggested the one for whom it had been established. The piano I had

bought for her, the chair in which she had loved to sit, her spectacles

on the stand--all these mute witnesses of her absence benumbed me as I

walked about her room. Only in my work-shop was I able to find even

momentary relief from my sense of irreparable and eternal loss.

Father, as though bewildered by the sudden change in his life, turned to

Zulime with a pathetic weakness which she met with a daughter's tender

patience and a woman's intuitive understanding. He talked to her of his

first meeting with "Belle" and his tone was that of a lover, one who had

loved long and deeply, and this I believe was true. In spite of

unavoidable occasional moments of friction, he and Isabel McClintock had

lived in harmony. They had been spiritually married, and now, in looking

back over the long road he and she had traveled together, he recalled

only its pleasant places. His memories were all of the sunlit meadows

and starry nights along the way. Prairie pinks and wild roses hid the

thorns and the thistles of the wayside.

His joy in the songs she had sung came back, intensified now by tender

association with her face and voice. The knowledge that she who had

voiced them so often, could voice them no more, gave to some of the

words an almost overpowering pathos, and when he asked me to sing them,

I could not immediately comply. To him they brought grateful tears and a

consoling sadness, to me they came with tragic significance.

"But that mother she is gone

Calm she sleeps beneath the stone"

was not a song but a reality.

More and more he dwelt upon the time when she was young, and as the

weeks went by his sorrow took on a wistful, vague longing for the past.

Through the gate of memory he reentered the world of his youth and

walked once more with William and David and Luke. The mists which filled

his eyes had nothing hot or withering in their touch--they comforted

him. Whether he hoped to meet his love in some other world or not I do

not know--but I think he did.

In the midst of these deep emotional personal experiences, I began to

write (almost as if in self-defense), a novel which I called _The Gray

Horse Troop_, a story which had been slowly forming in my mind ever

since my visit to Lame Deer in 1897. This was my first actual start upon

its composition and I was soon in full drive again, and just in

proportion as I took on these fictional troubles did my own lose their

power. To Zulime, with a feeling of confidence in myself, I now said,

"You need not remain here any longer. Go down to Chicago and wait for

me. I'll come as soon as father feels like letting me go. I am all right

now. I am at work."

She smiled but replied with firm decision, "I shall stay right here

until you can go with me. Father needs me more than he needs you."

This was true. She would have been deserting two men instead of one--and

so she stayed while I worked away at my story, finding comfort in the

realization of her presence.

At last my father said, "You mustn't stay here on my account; I can take

care of myself."

Here spoke the stark spirit of the man. Accustomed to provide for

himself in camp and on the trail, he saw no reason why he should not

contrive to live here in the sheltered village, surrounded by his

friends; but Zulime insisted upon his retaining our housekeeper, and to

this he consented, although he argued against it. "I've been keeping

house alone for six years out there in Dakota; I guess I can do as well

here."

"All right, father," I said, "we'll go, but if you need me let me know."

A return to the city did not interrupt my writing. My new novel now had

entire possession of me. So far as my mornings were concerned I was

forgetful of everything else--and yet, often, as I put aside my work for

the day, I caught myself saying, "_Now I must write to mother_,"--and a

painful clutch came into my throat as I realized, once again, that I no

longer had a mother waiting for a letter. For twenty years no matter

where I had been or what I had been doing I had written to her an almost

daily message and now she was no longer in my reach!--Was she near me on

some other plane?

The good friendship of the Eagles' Nest Campers was of the highest value

to me at this time. Without them Chicago would have been a desert. Henry

Fuller's gay spirit, Lorado's swift wit and the good fraternal

companionship of Charles Francis Browne were of daily comfort; but

above all others I depended upon my wife whose serenely optimistic

spirit carried me over many a deep slough of despond. How I leaned upon

her! Her patience with me was angelic.

A writer, like an artist, is apt to be a selfish brute, tending to

ignore everything which does not make for the progress of his beloved

manuscript. He resents every interruption every hindering distraction,

as a hellish contrivance, maliciously designed to worry or obstruct

him--At least I am that way. That I was a burden, an intolerable burden

to my wife, at times--many times--I must admit--but she understood and

was charitable. She defended me as best she could from interruption and

smoothed my daily course with deft hand. Slowly my novel began to take

shape and as I drew farther away from the remorseful days which made my

work seem selfish and vain, I recovered an illogical cheerfulness.

We saw very few Chicago people and in contrast with our previous

"season" in New York our daily walk was uneventful, almost rural, in its

quiet round. Christmas came to us without special meaning but 1900 went

out with _The Eagle's Heart_ on the market, and _Her Mountain Lover_

going to press. Aside from my sense of bereavement, and a certain

anxiety concerning my lonely old father, I was at peace and Zulime

seemed happy and confident.

There was no escaping my filial responsibility, however, for in the

midst of this serene season, a sudden call for help came from West

Salem. "Your father is ill and needs you," wrote the doctor and I went

at once to his aid.

It was a cheerless home-coming,--one that I could hardly endure the

thought of, and yet I was glad that I had not followed my first impulse

to delay it, for as I entered the door of the desolate lonely house I

found the old soldier stretched out on a couch, piteously depressed in

mind and flushed with fever. I had not arrived a minute too soon.

What a change had come over the Homestead! It was but a shell, a mansion

from which the spirit for whom it had been built was fled. Its empty,

dusty rooms, so cold and silent and dead--were dreadful to me, but I did

my best to fill them with cheer for my father's sake.

As the day wore on I said to him, "It seems like Sunday to me. I have a

feeling that mother and Zulime are away at church and that they may, at

any moment, come in together."

"I wish Zuleema would come," my father said, and as if in answer to his

wish, she surprised us by a telegram. "I am coming home," she wired,

"meet me at the station to-morrow morning," and this message made my

father so happy that it troubled me, for it revealed to me how deeply he

had missed her, and made plain to me also how difficult it would be for

me to take her away from him thereafter.

Her coming put such life in the house that I decided to invite a number

of my father's friends and neighbors to spend the evening with us, and

the thought of this party quite restored him to his natural optimism.

His confidence in his new daughter's ability had become fixed. He

accepted her judgments almost instantly. He bragged of her skill as a

cook, as an artist and as a musician, quite shamelessly; but as this

only amused her I saw no reason for interfering--I even permitted him to

boast of my singing. He believed me to be one of the most remarkable

ballad singers in the world, and to hear me sing "The Ninety and Nine"

with all the dramatic modulations of a professional evangelist afforded

him the highest satisfaction.

At his urging we made elaborate preparations for feeding our guests, and

Zulime arranged a definite program of entertainment. When conversation

slackened I was to sing while she played my accompaniment, and to fill

out the program I volunteered to read one of my short stories.

The outcome of the evening was amusingly destructive of all our kindly

plans. Before the women had fairly removed their wraps, Lottridge drew a

box of dominoes from his pocket, saying, "I didn't know but you'd be a

little short on 'bones,'" and Shane called out, "Well, now, Richard,

what about tables?" In five minutes they were all--every mother's son

and daughter of them--bent above a row of dominoes!

No entertainment on the part of host or hostess was necessary till the

time came to serve supper. All our literary and musical preparations

went for naught!--At ten o'clock they rose as one man, thanked us for a

pleasant evening and went home!

Zulime laughed merrily over the wreck of our self-sacrificing program

when we were alone. "Well, we'll know exactly what to do next time. All

we need to do is to furnish dominoes and tables, our guests will do the

rest."

My young wife's presence in the Homestead almost redeemed it from its

gloom, and yet I was not content. The complications in the situation

defied adjustment. My father needed us, but the city was essential to

me. As a writer, I should have been remorselessly selfish. I should have

taken my wife back to Chicago at once, but my New England conscience

would not let me forget how lonely that old man would be in this empty

house, silent, yet filled with voices of the moaning, swaying branches

of its bleak midwinter elms.

My problem was, in fact, only another characteristic cruel phase of

American family history. In a new land like ours, the rising generation

finds itself, necessarily, almost cruelly, negligent of its progenitors.

Youth moves on, away and up from the farm and the village. Age remains

below and behind. The tragedy of this situation lies in the fact that

there is no happy solution of the problem. Youth can not be shackled,

age can not be transplanted.

In my case, I foresaw that the situation would inevitably become more

and more difficult year by year. My father could not live in any city,

and for me to give up my life in Chicago and New York in order to

establish a permanent home in West Salem, involved a sacrifice which I

was not willing to make,--either on my own account or Zulime's. I had no

right to demand such devotion from her. Like thousands of other men of

my age I was snared in circumstances--forced to do that which appeared

unfilial and neglectful.

In the midst of these perplexities I was confronted by a new and

surprising problem--I had money to invest! For the serial use of _The

Eagle's Heart_ and _Her Mountain Lover_ I had received thirty-five

hundred dollars, and as each of these books had also brought in an

additional five hundred dollars advance royalty, I was for the moment

embarrassed with cash.

In this extremity I turned, naturally, toward Oklahoma. I recalled the

beautiful prairies I had crossed on my way to the Washitay. "Another

visit to Darlington will not only furnish new material for my book of

Indian stories, but enable me to survey and purchase a half-section of

land," I explained to my father. "Like Henry George we both understand

the value of unearned increment."

In this plan he agreed and two days after making this decision I was at

Colony, Oklahoma, where I spent nearly the entire month of May, and when

I returned I was the owner of three hundred and twenty acres of land.

My return to the Homestead found Zulime deep in the rush of the berry

season. As mistress of a garden her interest in its produce was almost

comical. She thought less of art, she neither modeled nor painted. She

cared less and less for the Camp at Eagle's Nest, exulting more and more

in the spacious rooms of her home, and in the abundance of her soil. Her

love of the Homestead delighted me, but I was a little disappointed by

the coolness with which she received my gift of a deed to a quarter

section of Oklahoma land. She smiled and handed it back to me as if it

were a make-believe deed.

It chanced that July came in unusually dry and hot, and in the midst of

a dreadful week, she fell ill, so ill that she was confined to her bed

for nearly three weeks, and as I watched beside her during those

cloudless days and sultry nights, my mind turned with keenest longing

toward the snow-lined crests of the Colorado mountains, and especially

to the glorious forests of the White River Plateau. The roar of snowy

Uncompagre, the rush of the deep-flowing Gunnison, and the serrate line

of The Needle Peaks, called us both, and when at last, she was strong

enough to travel, we packed our trunks and fled the low country,

hurrying in almost desperate desire to reach the high, cool valleys of

Colorado.

O, that torturing journey! As we neared Omaha the thermometer rose to

105 in the Pullman car, and remained there nearly all day. For twelve

hours we steamed, sitting rigidly erect in our chairs, dreading to move,

sweltering in silence, waiting with passionate intensity for the cool

wind which we knew was certain to meet us somewhere on our upward

course.

The sun went down in murky flame and the very shadows were hot, but deep

in the night I was roused by a delicious puff of mountain air, and

calling to Zulime, suffering in her berth, I said, "Worry no longer

about the heat. From this hour on, every moment will be joy. You can

forget the weather in Colorado."

What exquisite relief came with that change of air! What sweetness of

promise! What buoyancy of expectation!--We went to sleep with the wind

blowing in upon us, and when we woke the mountains were in sight.

At the station in the Springs, our good friend Louis Ehrich again met

us, and in half an hour we stood in the same room which we had occupied

on our wedding trip, a room whose windows faced directly upon the

Rampart range, already deep purple with the shadow of the clouds. By

contrast with our torrid railway car this was Paradise itself--so clean,

so cool, so sweet, so tonic was the air, and when at noon a storm hid

the peaks, and lightning crashed above the foot hills, the arid burning

plain over which we came was forgotten--or remembered only to make our

enjoyment of the mountain air more complete.

The splendor of that mighty wall, the kiss of that wind, the memory of

that majestic peak looming amid the stars, comes back to me as I write,

filling me with an almost intolerable longing to recover the magic of

that summer, a summer which has receded with the speed of an eagle.

Each day we breakfasted and lunched and dined on a vine-clad porch in

full view of the mountains. Each afternoon we drove or rode horseback or

loitered on the lawn. Never in all my life had I come so near to

flawless content, and Zulime, equally joyous, swiftly returned to

perfect health. Her restoration was magical.

Louis Ehrich, one of the gentlest men I have ever known, rejoiced in our

presence. He lived but to fill our days with pleasure. He and I had been

friends for ten years, and his family now took my wife into favor--I was

about to say into equal favor, but that would not be true. They very

properly put her above me in the scale of their affection, and to this

subordination I submitted without complaint, or even question.

It chanced that on the second day of our stay the Ehrichs were due at a

garden party in "Glen Eyrie," General Palmer's palatial home in the foot

hills, and kindly obtained permission to bring us with them. That drive

across the mesa was like a journey into some far country--passage to a

land which was neither America nor England, neither East nor West. To

reach the Castle we entered a gate at the mouth of a narrow, wooded

canon and drove for nearly a mile toward the west through a most

beautiful garden in which all the native shrubs and wild flowers had

been assembled and planted with exquisite art.

People were streaming in over the mountain roads, some on horseback,

some on bicycles, some in glittering, gayly-painted wagons, and when we

reached the lawn before the great stone mansion, we found a very curious

and interesting throng of guests, and in the midst of them, the General,

tall, soldierly, clothed in immaculate linen and wearing a broad white

western hat, was receiving his friends, assisted by his three pretty

young daughters.

The house was a veritable chateau--the garden a wonderland of Colorado

plants and flowers, skilfully disposed among the native ledges and

scattered along the bases of the cliffs whose rugged sides enclosed the

mansion grounds. The towers (of gray stone) were English, but the plants

and blooms were native to the Rampart foot hills. In a very real fashion

"Glen Eyrie" bodied forth the singular and powerful character of its

owner, who was at once an English squire, a Pennsylvania civil war

veteran, and a western railway engineer.

Food and drink and ices of various kinds were being served under the

trees with lavish hospitality, and groups of young people were wandering

about the spacious grounds--grounds so beautiful by reason of nature's

adjustment, as well as by way of the landscape gardener's art, that

they made the senses ache with a knowledge of their exquisite

impermanency. It was a kind of poem expressed in green and gold and

scarlet.

Zulime greatly interested the Palmer girls, and the General, who

remembered me pleasantly, was most amiable to us both. "You must come

again," he said, and to me he added, "You must come over some day and

ride my trails with me."

As I mingled with that throng of joyous folk, I lost myself. I became an

actor in a prodigious and picturesque American social comedy. For stage

we had the lawn, banks of flowers, and the massive towers of the castle.

For background rose the rugged hills!--Nothing could have been farther

from our home in Neshonoc. Glowing with esthetic delight in the remote

and singular beauty of the place, Zulime took an artist's keen interest

in alien loveliness. It threw our life into commonplace drab. And yet it

was factitious. It had the transient quality of a dream in which we were

but masqueraders.

Two days later, at the invitation of General Palmer, we joined his party

in a trip over the short-line railway to Cripple Creek, traveling in his

private car, and the luxury of this novel experience made my wife's eyes

shine with girlish delight.--I professed alarm, "I don't know where all

this glory is going to land us," I warned, "after this Aladdin's-lamp

luxury and leisure, how can I get you back into washing dishes and

canning fruit in West Salem?"

She laughed at this, as she did at most of my fears. Serene acceptance

of what came was her dominant characteristic. Her faith in the future

was so perfect that she was willing to make the fullest use of the

present.

The day was gloriously clear, with great white clouds piled high above

the peaks, and as the train crept steadily upward, feeling its way

across the mountain's shoulder, we were able to look back and down and

far out upon the plain which was a shoreless sea of liquid opal. At ten

thousand feet the foot hills (flat as a rug) were so rich in color, so

alluring in their spread that we could scarcely believe them to be

composed of rocks and earth.

After a day of sight-seeing we returned, at sunset, to the Springs, with

all of the pomp of railway magnates _en tour_, and as we were about to

part at the railway station, the General in curt, off-hand way, asked,

"Why not join my camping party at Sierra Blanca? We're going down there

for a week or two, and I shall be very glad to have you with us. Come,

and stay as long as you can. We shall probably move on to Wagon Wheel

Gap later. Wagon Wheel ought to interest you."

He said this with a quizzical smile, for he had been reading my novel of

Colorado, and recognized in my scene the splendors of the San Juan

country. "Your friend Ehrich is coming," he added, "and I expect

Sterling Morton for a day or two. Why not all come down together?"

"Would you like me to bring my bed and tent?" I asked.

"As you please, although I have plenty of room in my own outfit."

* * * * *

It happened that Colorado Springs was holding a Quarto-Centenary, a kind

of Carnival and Wild-West Pageant, to which Vice-President Roosevelt was

coming as the chief guest of honor, and as soon as he arrived I called

upon him at his hotel. Almost at once he asked, "Where is your wife? I

want to see her. Is she here?"

"Yes, she is staying with some friends," I replied.

"I am very glad to know it. I shall call upon her tomorrow afternoon as

soon as my duties at the carnival are ended."

The thought of having the Vice-President of the United States go out of

his way to make a call upon my wife gave me a great deal of pleasure for

I realized how much it would mean to Zulime, but I replied, "We shall be

very glad to call upon _you_."

"No," he replied in his decisive fashion--"I shall call to-morrow at

four o'clock--if that is convenient to you. Meanwhile I want you and Mr.

Ehrich to breakfast with me here, at the hotel. I shall have some

hunters and rough riders at my table whom you will be interested to

meet."

Of course I accepted this invitation instantly, and hurried home to tell

my wife that "royalty" was about to call upon her.

The Vice-President's breakfast party turned out to be a very curious

collection of mutually repellent, but highly-developed individualities.

There was John Goff, well known as guide and hunter in western Colorado,

and Marshall Davidson, a rough-rider from New Mexico, Lieutenant

Llewellyn of the Rough Riders, Sterling Morton (former Secretary of

Agriculture), a big impassive Nebraska pioneer; Louis Ehrich (humanist

and art lover), and myself--I cannot say that I in any way reduced the

high average of singularity, but I was at least in the picture--Morton

and Ehrich were not; they remained curious rather than sympathetic

listeners. While no longer a hunter I was a trailer and was able to

understand and keenly enjoy the spirit of these hardy men of the open.

True to his word, Roosevelt called at the Ehrich's that afternoon, and

no one could have been more charming, more neighborly than he. He told

of our first meeting, smilingly called me "a Henry George crank," and

referred to other differences which existed between us. "Differences

which do not in the least interfere with our friendship," he assured

Zulime. "Your husband, for example, doesn't believe in hunting, and has

always stood out against my shooting," here he became quite

serious--"However, I've given up shooting deer and elk. I kill only

'varmints' now."

After half an hour of lively conversation, he rose to go and as I went

with him to the gate, where his carriage was waiting, he said with

earnest emphasis, "I congratulate you most heartily, my dear fellow.

Your wife is fine! fine!"

As Morton and Ehrich had accepted General Palmer's invitation to camp

with him, we all took train for Fort Garland, a mysterious little town

in Southern Colorado, near which the General was encamped. This

expedition particularly pleased me for it carried me into the shadow of

Sierra Blanca, one of the noblest of Colorado's peaks, and also into the

edge of the Mexican settlement. It all seemed very remote and splendid

to me that day.

We were met at the station by one of the General's retainers and ten

minutes later found ourselves in a mountain wagon and on our way toward

Old Baldy, the mountain which stands just north of Sierra Blanca, which

forms the majestic southern bastion of the Crestones.

Mexican huts lined the way, and dark-skinned farmers working in the

fields and about the corrals, gave evidence of the fact that this "land

grant" had been, at one time, a part of Old Mexico.

"It contains nearly seven hundred thousand acres," Ehrich explained,

"and is the property of General Palmer."

This statement aroused a sense of wonder in my mind. "Think of being

proprietor of one-half of Sierra Blanca?" I said to Morton. "Has any

individual a right to such a privilege?"

In a lovely grove on the bank of a rushing glorious stream, we found the

Lord of this Demesne and his three daughters encamped, attended by a

platoon of cooks, valets, maids, and hostlers. A "camp" which highly

amused Sterling Morton, although he had moments of resenting its

luxury. "Now this is the kind of 'roughing it' I believe in," he

declared with a smile. "It is suited to elderly old parties like Ehrich

and myself, but you, Garland, a youngster, a trailer--should have no

part in it. It's too corrupting."

Our luncheon, which contained five courses, came on with the plenitude

and precision of a meal at Glen Eyrie. The rusticity of the function was

altogether confined to the benches on which we sat and the tables from

which we ate--the butlering was for the most part urban.

"Why didn't Mrs. Garland come?" asked the General.

"She had an engagement or two that prevented her."

"Oh! She must come down," commanded the General. "Telegraph her at once

and ask her when she can get away. I'll send my car for her."

This he did. The private Pullman, with a maid and a steward in charge,

went back that night and on the second morning Zulime came down the line

in lonely state.

I met her at the station, and for ten days we lived the most idyllic,

yet luxurious life beside that singing stream. We rode the trails, we

fished, we gathered wild flowers. Sometimes of an afternoon we visited

the ranches or mining towns round about, feasting at night on turtle

soup, and steak and mushrooms, drinking champagne out of tin cups with

reckless disregard of camp traditions, utterly without care or

responsibility--in truth we were all under military discipline!

The General was a soldier even in his recreations. Each day's program

was laid out in "orders" issued in due form by the head of the

expedition--and these arrangements held! No one thought of changing

them. Our duty was to obey--and enjoy.

Never before in all my life had anything like this freedom from

responsibility, from expense, come to me. So carefree, so beautiful was

our life, that I woke each morning with a start of surprise to find its

magic a reality. It was like the hospitality of oriental kings in the

fairy stories of my childhood.

For four weeks we lived this incredible life of mingled luxury and

mountaineering, attended by troops of servants and squadrons of horses,

threading the high forests, exploring deep mines, crossing Alpine

passes, and feasting on the borders of icy lakes--always with the

faithful "Nomad," the General's private Pullman car, waiting in the

offing ready in case of accident--and then, at last, after riding

through Slumgullion Gulch back to Wagon Wheel, Zulime and I took leave

of these good friends and started toward Arizona. I had not yet

displayed to her the Grand Canon of the Colorado!

Five years before, on a stage drawn by four wild-eyed bronchos I had

ridden from Flagstaff to Hance's Cabin in the glorious, exultant

old-time fashion, but now a train ran from Williams to the edge of the

abyss, and while I mourned over the prosaic change, I think Zulime

welcomed it, and when we had set up our little tent on a point of the

rim which commanded a view (toward the Southwest) of miles and miles of

purple pagodas, violet towers and golden peaks we were content. Nothing

could change the illimitable majesty of this view.

Day by day we watched the colorful play of sun-light and shadow along

those mighty walls, and one night we camped in the deeps, a dramatic

experience, for a mountain lion yowling from the cliffs gave voice to

the savage grandeur of the scene. Then at last, surfeited with splendor,

weary with magnificence, we turned our faces homeward. With only a stop

at Laguna to watch the Indian Corn Dance, we slid down to Kansas City

and at last to West Salem and home.

What a vacation it had been! Pike's Peak, Cripple Creek, Glen Eyrie, our

camp beside the singing stream at Baldy, Sierra Blanca, Wagon Wheel Gap,

Creede, Red Mountain, Lake City, Slumgullion, Tennessee Pass, noble

dinners on the car, trail-side lunches of goose-liver and sandwiches and

jam, iced watermelon and champagne in hot camps on the mesas--all these

scenes and experiences came back accompanied by memories of the good

talk, the cosmopolitan humor, of the Palmers and their guests.

From this royal ease, this incessant shift of scene and personality, we

returned to our shabby old homestead brooding patiently beneath its

maples, reflecting upon the glittering panorama which our magic lamp and

flying carpet had wrought so potently to display. As I had started out

to educate my wife in Western Life, it must be admitted that this summer

had been singularly successful in bringing to her a knowledge of the

splendors of Colorado and a perception of the varied character of its

population.--Best of all she returned in perfect health and happy as a

girl.

"This being married to a poor novelist isn't so bad after all," I

remarked with an air of self-congratulation. "True, our rewards come

without reason, but they sometimes rhyme with joy and pride."

Strange to say, I got nothing out of this summer, in a literary way,

except the story which I called _The Steadfast Widow Delaney_, a

conception which came to me on my solitary ascent of Sierra Blanca. All

the beauty and drama, all the humor and contrast of the trip with the

Palmers, had no direct fictional value to me. It is hard to explain why,

but so it was. I did not so much as write a poem based on that gorgeous

experience.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The White House Musicale

The Homestead on the day of our return, was not only a violent contrast

to the castle in Glen Eyrie, but its eaves were dripping with water and

its rooms damp and musty. It was sodden with loneliness. Father was in

Dakota and mother was away never to return, and the situation would have

been quite disheartening to me had it not been for Zulime who did not

share my melancholy, or if she did she concealed it under that smiling

stoicism which she derived from her deeply philosophic father. She

pretended to be glad of the peace of our plain reality.

Life with her was not lacking in variety. From the splendors of Colorado

and the luxury of private cars and palatial chambers, she now dropped,

with a suddenness which should have been disconcerting, to the level of

scouring pots and cooking her own meals. It was several days before we

succeeded in finding a cook. "This is what it means to be the wife of an

unpopular novelist," I said to her.

"I'm not complaining. It's fun," she replied.

The house was soon in order and when my brother arrived later in the

week, she greeted him with the composure of a leisured hostess. In such

wise she met every demand upon her.

It was Franklin's first night at home since mother went away, and I

labored to cheer him with the fiction that she was "on a visit" to some

of her old friends and would soon return.

The Junior as I called him, was in a serious mood for another reason.

After more than twelve years of life as an actor, he had decided to quit

the stage, something the player is traditionally supposed to be

incapable of doing, and he had come to me for aid and encouragement. "I

have a good opportunity to go into the management of a rubber

plantation," he explained, "and I'd like to have you buy out my share in

the Homestead in order to give me a little money to work on."

To this I agreed, although I had grave doubts of the rubber business. To

have him give up the stage I considered a gain, for while he was a

capable player of middle-aged character parts, I saw no lasting success

ahead of him--on the contrary I imagined him getting into a more and

more precarious condition. Nothing is more hopeless than an elderly

actor out of a job and subject to the curt dismissals of contemptuous

managers. Frank had always been gayly unconcerned about the future and

he was not greatly troubled now; he was merely desirous of a fixed home

and a place to vote. With the promise of my cash for his share of the

Homestead, and my support in his Mexican venture, he cheered up markedly

and went away almost as carefree as a boy.

In the quiet of the days which followed I worked each morning, sometimes

on _The Steadfast Widow Delaney_, and sometimes on a revision of the

novel which I had variously and from time to time called _On Special

Duty_, and _The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_. Having been accepted

by Lorimer, this story was about to be printed under this latter title

as a serial in the _Post_.

Each afternoon I saddled my Klondike horse who was in need of exercise,

and galloped about over the hills for an hour or two. We were familiar

figures by this time, and the farmers when they saw me leaping a pasture

fence or climbing a hill, would smile (I assume that they smiled), and

say, there goes that literary cuss, or words to that general effect. I

took a boyish delight in showing that Ladrone would walk a log or leap a

ditch at the mere touch of my heel.

Occasionally I went to LaCrosse with Zulime to visit our good friends

the Eastons, and it was on one of these visits that I had my first long

ride in an automobile. Incredible as it may seem now, there were very

few motor cars in the county in 1901, and Easton's machine would excite

laughter to-day. It was dumpy of form and noisy and uncertain of temper,

but it made the trip to Winona and _almost_ home again. It broke down

helplessly in the last mile, a treachery which caused its owner the

deepest chagrin, although it gave me the final touch for a humorous

story of our outing, a sketch which I sold to _Harper's Weekly_. The

editor had a fine illustration made for it, one which gave further force

to my description of the terrific speed with which we whirled through

the landscape. As I recall it we rose to nearly seventeen miles an hour!

As _The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_, actually began to appear in

_The Post_, I became sharply concerned with the question of preparing it

for book publication. I decided to go to New York and look the ground

over very carefully before making selection of another publisher.

My life in the Homestead was comfortable, almost too comfortable. It

lacked stimulus. Riding my horse, gathering hickory nuts, and playing

tennis or "rummy," were all very well in their way, but they left me

dissatisfied, and after the cold winds began to blow and my afternoons

were confined to the house, I stagnated. Like Prudden, Grinnell and

other of my trailer friends, I was disposed to pitch my winter camp

somewhere on Manhattan Island. The Rocky Mountains for four months in

summer and the rest of the year in New York City appeared an ideal

division of my life for a western novelist.

I had some reason to think this arrangement was also satisfactory to my

wife. To her the Wilderness was a strange and wonderful place in which

to try her powers of endurance, but the trail had none of the charms of

association which it possessed for me. She was quite ready to accompany

me to the city although she professed to be content with Neshonoc. She

was entirely urban whereas I was an absurd mixture of pioneer and

trailer, fictionist and farmer.

We left West Salem in late October and in less than three days were

settled in the little hotel in Fifteenth Street where we had lived

during two previous winters. My confidence in my new novel was not

sufficient to warrant me in paying more than twenty dollars per week for

our little apartment, and as for Zulime--she professed to wonder how I

dared to pay as much as seventeen.

One by one and two by two our faithful friends called, Burroughs,

Gilder, Howells, Marion and Edward MacDowell, the Pages, Juliet

Tompkins--no one appeared to think ill of us because we returned to our

shabby little suite. We dined at Katherine Herne's, finding James A.,

"away," and with Frank Norris and his wife who were (like ourselves),

just beginning to feel a little more secure of a living, while from

Seton and Bacheller who were passing from glory to glory, we had kindly

invitations to visit their new houses, for both of them were building,

Bacheller at Sound Beach and Seton at Coscob.

Seton admitted to me that he had already acquired five times the amount

he had once named as the summit of his hopes, and Bacheller awed me by

the quiet ease of his way of life. In the opulent presence of these men,

I sang a very meek and slender song. I hated to admit my poverty, but

what was the use of making any concealment?

It remains to say that neither Bacheller nor Seton expressed in the

slightest degree the sense of superiority which their larger royalties

might have warranted. I am quite sure they never went so far as to feel

sorry for me although they very naturally rejoiced in their own

triumphant progress. In some ways I envied them, but I begrudged them

nothing.

It chanced that the Setons were far enough along with their building to

announce a House Warming, and on New Year's Day, Zulime and I were

fortunate enough to be included in the list of their guests. On the

Saturday train we found Lloyd Osbourne, Richard Le Gallienne and several

others whom we knew and on arrival at the new house on its rocky ledge

above the lake, we found that the party also included Mary Fanton, Carl

Lumholz, Emery Pottle and Gertrude Lynch.

Seton and I spent part of the afternoon fixing up a teepee which we

constructed out of an old Sibley tent, while the other guests skated on

the pond. What a dinner we enjoyed that night! What youthful spirits we

brought to it! Afterward we sang and danced--we all danced, even Zulime

danced for the first time in her life--so she said.

No one had gray hair, no one doubted the future, no one acknowledged

impending cloud. We toasted the longevity of "Wyndygoul" and the

continued success of its builder. We pledged eternal allegiance to our

hostess, and so without a care of the future, watched the New Year dawn.

At two in the morning when I crept away to my bed, the tom-tom and the

piano were both sounding out with almost undiminished vigor. It was a

night to remember and I do remember it with the pleasure an old man has

in the days of his early manhood--not so very early either for I was on

the hither side of forty!

Upon our return to the city I found a letter from Bok with a check for

eight hundred dollars in it. This was in response to a note of mine

respecting an offer of seven hundred and fifty. "Better make it eight

hundred," I wrote, and so, in my triumph, I led Zulime to Vantine's and

there purchased for her a carved gold ring set with three rose diamonds,

the handsomest present I had ever dared to buy for her. "This is to make

amends for the measly little engagement ring you were forced to accept,"

I remarked by way of explanation.

She protested at my reckless waste of money (as she had done with regard

to the brown cloak), but to no avail, and thereafter if she occasionally

brought the conversation round to Oriental jewelry, I am sure she is not

to be blamed. She is still wearing that ring, though she no longer finds

the same girlish pleasure in displaying it.

The actual making of my serial into book form began soon after New

Years, for I find records of my contract with Harper and Bros., and the

arrival of bundles of proof. By the end of February the book was

substantially made and ready for distribution, and a handsome book it

was--to me. Whatever it had started out to be, it had ended as a

fictional study of the red man in his attempt to walk the white man's

road, and as a concept of his tragic outlook I still think it worth

while.

The three men in control of the reorganized firm of Harper and Bros.,

George Harvey, Frederick Duneka and Frank Leigh, all professed a firm

belief in _The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_, and promised me such a

boost as I had never had. This promise they set about to fulfill.

As the day of publication came on they took generous squares of space in

the daily papers, and whole pages in the magazines. They astonished and

somewhat daunted me by putting an almost life-size portrait on the bill

boards of all the elevated roads, and then to the consternation of my

wife, _The Weekly_ published a full page reproduction of her photograph,

a portrait which they had obtained from me to use, as I supposed, in the

ordinary way in the literary column of the Sunday papers. I had no idea

of its being a full page illustration. I was troubled and uneasy about

this for a day or two, but realizing that the firm was doing its best to

make my book known to the public, I could not with justice complain. In

truth the use of the portrait seemed not to make any difference one way

or the other. It certainly did Zulime no harm.

At my request the firm made up a very handsome special copy of the novel

which I sent to President Roosevelt, with a word of explanation

concerning the purpose which underlaid the writing of the tale.

Early in March the book appeared with everything in its favor. True

there was opportunity for controversy in its delineation of aggressive

cattlemen, but those who had so bitterly criticized my pictures of the

prairie life in _Main Traveled Roads_, were off their guard with respect

of the mountains. My reviewers quite generally accepted the novel as a

truthful presentation of life on an Indian reservation in the nineties.

Furthermore my sympathetic interpretation of the Army's attitude toward

the red men caused the story to be quite generally commended by the

officers. This surprised and delighted me, but I was especially

gratified by Roosevelt's hearty praise of it. "It is your best work so

far," he wrote me, "and I am in full sympathy with your position."

Requests for stories, interviews, articles and biographical notes,

flowed in upon me. It really looked like a late second arrival of Hamlin

Garland. Not since the excitement of putting _Main Traveled Roads_ on

the market had I been so hopeful and in the midst of my other honors

came a note from the President, inviting me to visit him, and with it a

card to a musicale at the White House.

Life in the East as the reader can see, was very alluring to Zulime as

well as to me, and though as April came on, we both felt the call of the

West, I am not sure whether we would have wrought our courage to the

point of deserting our little apartment on Fifteenth Street, had it not

been for the President's invitation, which was in effect a command, an

honor as well as a pleasure, which we did not think of disregarding.

As I had not voted the Republican ticket and had no political standing

with the Administration, this invitation was personal. It came from

Roosevelt as a friend and fellow-trailer--a fact which enhanced its

value to me. We began at once to plan our return to Chicago in such wise

that it would include a week in Washington, which we had not visited

since our wedding journey.

It must have been about this time that the Annual Meeting of the

Institute took place. I recall Howells presiding with timidity and very

evident embarrassment when it came to the duty of putting certain

resolutions to vote. He seemed sad and old that night--indeed as I

looked around the table, I was startled to find how many of the men I

had considered "among the younger writers" were gray and haggard. Mabie,

Page, Hopkinson Smith, Gilder and Stedman--all were older than I had

remembered them. Edward MacDowell, who was sitting beside me, remarked

upon the change, and I replied, "Yes, you and I are young only by

contrast. To Frank Norris and Stewart White, we are already veterans."

[That was twenty years ago, and I am three score years and more, and

most of those who dined with me that night are in their graves, only

Page, of all the group, is left. Another generation altogether is on the

stage whilst I and Stewart White are grouped together as "older men." I

am seeing literary history made whether I am credited with making any of

it, myself, or not. At times I have an appalling sense of the onward

sweep of the years. Are they carrying us to higher grounds in fiction

and in other arts, or are they descending to lower levels of motive and

workmanship?]

* * * * *

It was glorious spring when we reached Washington, and in the glow of my

momentary sense of triumph we went to one of the best hotels and enjoyed

for the moment the sense of being successful and luxurious folk.

In calling on the President the following day I was a little taken aback

by his frankness in speaking of my changing point of view. "You have

pictured the reverse side of the pioneer," he said with a gleam of

mischief in his eyes. "In your study of the Indian's case you have

discovered the fact that the borderer is often the aggressor and

sometimes the thief." He repeated his praise of the book and then said,

"I shall make use of your knowledge of the conditions on the Western

reservations. You and George Bird Grinnell know what is going on out

there and I intend to use you both--unofficially."

To this I agreed, and when he gave me a card to the Secretary of the

Interior and told me to take up with the Commissioner certain reforms

which I had suggested, I put the card in my pocket and set about the

task. It was only a small card, a visiting card, and when, in my

ignorance of official life, I walked in on the Secretary with that tiny

slip of pasteboard in my hand, I had no idea of its explosive power. The

Secretary who was lounging at his desk like a tired and discouraged old

man, did not think me important enough to warrant a rise out of his

chair, until he read the card which I handed to him. After that I owned

the office! That card made me the personal representative of the

President--for the moment.

On the following day Roosevelt allowed me to sit in at some of the

meetings in the Executive Chamber, and it was at one of these that I met

for the first time the most engaging Chief of the Forestry Bureau,

Gifford Pinchot. At night Zulime and I dined with William Dudley Foulke

and at nine o'clock we went to the White House Musicale.

That musicale at the White House is one of the starry nights in Zulime's

life, as well as in my own, for not only did we meet the President and

Mrs. Roosevelt and many of the best known figures in American art,

letters, politics, and statesmanship, we also heard Paderewski play as

we had never heard him play before.

We were seated close to the piano and when that potent, shock-haired

Pole spread his great hands above the keys I fancied something of the

tiger in the lithe grace of his body, and in his face a singular and

sultry solemnity was expressed. Inspired no doubt by the realization

that he was playing before a mighty ruler--a ruler by the divine right

of brain power,--he played with magnetic intensity. Something

mysterious, something grandly moving went out from his fingers. No other

living musician could, at that moment have equaled him.

For a few hours Zulime and I enjoyed the white light which beat upon two

of the great personalities of that day--one the world's greatest piano

player, the other the most powerful and the most popular man in all

America--and when we retired to the obscurity of our hotel we were

silent with satisfaction. For the moment it seemed that fortune was

about to empty her golden horn at my feet. I was happily married, my

latest book was a hit, and I had the friendship and the favor of the

President.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Signs of Change

As a matter of record, and for the benefit of young readers who may be

contemplating authorship, I here set down the fact that notwithstanding

my increasing royalties, my gross income for 1901 was precisely $3,100.

Out of this we saved five hundred dollars. Neither my wife nor I had any

great hopes of the future. Neither of us felt justified in any unusual

expenditures, and as for speculation--nothing could induce me to buy a

share of stock--or even a bond (gilt-edged or otherwise), for I owned a

prejudice, my father's prejudice, against all forms of intangible

wealth. Evidences of wealth did not appeal to me. I wanted the real

thing, I wanted the earth. Nothing but land gave me the needed sense of

security.

In my most exalted moments I began to dream of using my income from _The

Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_ in the purchase of more Oklahoma land.

In imagination I saw myself in a wide-rimmed hat and white linen suit

sitting at ease on the porch of a broad-roofed house (built in the

Mexican style with a patio) looking out over my thousand acres--I had

decided to have just a thousand acres, it made such a mouth-filling

announcement to one's friends.

I did not go so far as to think of a life without labor (I expected to

work in the North till February, then rest and ride horse-back for three

months in the South), but I did hope to relieve Zulime of some of her

drudgery. Now that I think back to it, I am not at all sure that my wife

rejoiced over my plan to go to Weatherford to purchase another farm. It

is probable that I overcame her objections by telling her that I wanted

more material for my book of Indian tales; anyhow I left her in Chicago

almost as soon as we arrived there, and went again to Darlington and

Colony to see Major Stouch and John Seger, and to make certain

observations for President Roosevelt.

Seger, unskilled as he was with the pen, could talk with humor and

pictorial quality, and some of his stories had so stimulated my

imagination that I was eager to have more time with him among his wards.

Without precisely following his narratives I had found myself able to

reproduce the spirit of them in my own diction. His ability as a

sign-talker was of especial service to me for, as he signed to his

visitors, he muttered aloud, for my benefit, what he was expressing in

gesture, and also what the red man signed in reply. In this way I got at

the psychology of the Cheyenne to a degree which I could not possibly

compass through an interpreter.

While looking for farms during the day, I drew from Seger night by

night, the amazing story of his career among the Southern Cheyennes. It

was a rough and disjointed narrative, but it was stirring and valuable

as authentic record of the Southwest. "The Red Pioneer," "Lone Wolf's

Old Guard," and many more of my tales of red people were secured on this

trip. Several dealing with the Blackfeet and Northern Cheyennes, like

"the Faith of His Fathers" and "White Weasel" I gained from Stouch. None

of them are true in the sense of being precisely the way they were told,

for I took very few notes. They are rather free transcripts of the

incidents which chanced to follow my liking--but they reflect the spirit

of the original narratives and are bound together by one underlying

motive which is to show the Indian as a human being, a neighbor. "We

have had plenty of the 'wily redskin' kind of thing," I said to Stouch.

"I am going to tell of the red man as you and Seger have known him, as a

man of the polished stone age trying to adapt himself to steam and

electricity."

It happened that plenteous rains had made Oklahoma very green and

beautiful, and as I galloped about over the wide swells of the Caddo

country, I was disposed to buy all the land that joined me. Imagining

myself the lord of a thousand acres, I achieved a profound joy of

living. It was good to glow in the sunlight, to face the sweet southern

wind, and to feel once more beneath my knees the swelling muscles of a

powerful horse. In a very vivid sense I relived the days when, as a lad

of twelve, I rode with Burton and my sister Harriet along the prairie

swells of the Cedar Valley some thirty years before. "Washitay," at such

moments was not only the land of the past but the hope of the future.

My red neighbors interested me. The whole problem of their future was

being worked out almost within sight of my door. Here the men of the

Polished Stone Age and the men of gasoline engines and electrical

telephones met and mingled in a daily adjustment which offered material

of surpassing value to the novelist who could use it. Humor and pathos,

tragic bitterness and religious exaltation were all within reach of my

hand.

The spring nights which came to me there at Colony were of a quality

quite new to me. The breeze, amiable and moist, was Southern, and the

moonlight falling from the sky like a silent, all-enveloping cataract of

silver, lay along the ground so mystically real that I could feel it

with my hand. The air was at once tropic and Western, and this subtle

blending of the North and the South, the strange and the familiar,

appealed to me with such power that I wrote Zulime a statement of my

belief that in becoming a part-owner in this land, I had assured for us

both a happy and prosperous future. "I shall come here every spring," I

declared, and in the glow of this enthusiasm, I purchased another farm

of two hundred and forty acres and arranged with Seger for its

management.

Alas, for my piece of mind! On my way homeward, at Reno, I encountered a

simoon of most appalling power. An equatorial wind which pressed against

the car and screamed at the window--a hot, unending pitiless blast

withering the grain and tearing the heart out of young gardens--a storm

which brought back to me the dreadful blizzard of dust which swept over

our Iowa farm in the spring of '72. There was something grand as well as

sorrowful in this unexpected display of desert ferocity.

My dream of a thousand-acre ranch shriveled with the plants. The prairie

abandoning its youthful, buoyant air, took on a sinister and savage

grandeur. To escape from the ashes of these ruined fields was now a

passionate desire. The value of my land in Washitay fell almost to the

vanishing point. Illinois became a green and pleasant pasture toward

which I drove with gratitude and relief.

[I insert a line to say that this was only a mood. I went on with my

purchase of lands till I had my thousand acres, but these acres were in

scattered plots and the house with the patio and the porch was never

built.]

At the Agency just before I left for the North I had hired some Cheyenne

women to make for me a large council teepee which I had in mind to set

up as my dwelling at Eagle's Nest Camp, where Zulime and I had agreed to

spend the summer. Boyishly eager to reproduce as well as I could a

Cheyenne house, I assembled all my blankets, parfleches, willow beds and

other furnishings and raised my lodge on poles on the edge of the wood

just inside the Camp's entrance.

It made a singularly appropriate addition to the reservation, to my

thinking, at least, and I took inordinate pride in its ownership. Trim

and white and graceful it stood against the forest wall, its crossed

poles sprangling from its top with poetic suggestion of aboriginal life,

and when, with elaborate ceremony, I laid the fuel for its first fire,

calling upon our patron, Wallace Heckman, to touch a match to the

tinder, I experienced a sense of satisfaction.

To my artist friends it was a "picturesque accessory"--to me it was a

talisman of things passing. The smoke of the hickory faggots filling

that conical roof-tree brought back to me a cloud of memories of the

prairies of the Sioux, the lakes of the Chippewa, and the hills of the

Cheyenne. Thin as were its walls, they shut out (for me) the commonplace

present, helping me to reconstruct the world of Blackhawk and the

Sitting Bull, and when I walked past it, especially at night, my mind

took joy in its form, and a pleasant stir within my blood made manifest

of its power.

Browne acknowledged its charm and painted a moonlight sketch of it, and

Seton, who came by one day, helped me dedicate its firehole. In the

light of its embers, he and I renewed our youth while smoking the

beautiful Pipe of Meditation, which a young Cheyenne chief had given me

in token of his friendship.

It happened that I was scheduled to give a series of lectures at the

University of Chicago on _The Outdoor Literature of America_, and with a

delightful feeling of propriety in the fact I set to work to write these

addresses in my canvas lodge, surrounded by all its primitive

furnishings. It made an admirable study, but at night as I lay on my

willow couch, I found the moonlight so intense and the converging lines

of the lodge poles so suggestive of other folk and other times that

slumber was fitful. The wistful ghosts of Blackhawk and his kind seemed

all about me. Not till the moon set or the shadows of the forest

covered me, was I able to compose myself to sleep.

For several weeks I wrote at ease upon my theme and then, into the

carefree atmosphere of my Lodge of Dreams came the melancholy news that

William McClintock, my giant uncle, had been stricken by the same

mysterious malady which had broken my mother's heart, and that he was

lying motionless on his bed in the narrow space of his chamber. The

"stroke" (so my aunt wrote) had come upon him (as upon my mother)

without the slightest warning, and with no discoverable cause.

On my return to the Homestead I went at once to see him. He was sitting

in my mother's wheeled chair, quite helpless, yet cheerful and confident

of ultimate recovery. He had always been a man of dignity, and

singularly abstemious of habit, and these qualities were strongly

accentuated by his sudden helplessness. He was very gentle, very

patient, and the sight of him lying there made speaking very difficult

for me.

When the doctor would permit, he loved to lie in his chair on the porch

of his little cottage where he could look out upon the hills, his eyes

reflecting his beloved landscape like those of a dreaming cage-weary

lion. Inarticulate, like my mother, he was nevertheless the poet, and

never failed to respond--at least with a meaning glance--to any

imaginative word in my discourse.

How much he had meant to me in all the days of my boyhood! As the master

of the threshing machine forty years agone, he had filled my childish

heart with worship. As the swift-footed deer trailer, the patient

bee-hunter, the silent lover of the forest, he had held my regard and

though he had never quite risen to the high place which my Uncle David

occupied in my boyhood's worship, he had always been to me a picturesque

and kindly figure. Year by year I had watched his giant form stoop, and

his black beard wax thin and white, and now, here he sat almost at the

end of his trail, unable to move, yet expressing a kind of elemental

bravery, a philosophic patience which moved me as no words of

lamentation could have done.

Strange malady! He who had never met his match in stark strength could

not now by the exercise of all his will, lift that limp arm from his

side and as I sat beside him I recalled my last sad meeting with Major

Powell, the man who first guided a canoe through the Grand Canon of the

Colorado, and in my mind arose a conception of what these two men, each

in his kind represented in the story of American pioneering. One the

far-famed explorer, the other the unknown rifleman behind the plow. With

William McClintock--with my father, with Major Powell, a whole world, a

splendid and heroic world was passing never to return, and when I took

my uncle's hand in parting I was almost certain that I should never see

him again.

Once he was king of forest men.

To him a snow-capped mountain range

Was but a line, a place of mark,

A view-point on the trail. Then

He had no dread of dark,

No fear of change.

Now an uprolled rug upon the floor

Appalls his feet. His withered arm

Shakes at the menace of a door,

And every wind-waft does him harm.

God! 'Tis a piteous thing to see

This ranger of the hills confined

To the small compass of his room

Like a chained eagle on a tree,

Lax-winged and gray and blind.

Only in dreams he sees the bloom

On far hills where the red deer run.

Only in memory guides the light canoe

Or stalks the bear with dog and polished gun.

In him behold the story of the West,

The chronicle of rifleman behind the plow,

Typing the life of those who knew

No barrier but the sunset in their quest.

On his bent head and grizzled hair

Is set the crown of those who shew

New cunning to the wolf, new courage to the bear.

Another evidence of melancholy change came to me in the failing powers

of Ladrone, my mountain horse, who had come through the winter very

badly. I found him standing in the pasture, weak and inactive, taking no

interest in the rich grasses under his feet. In the belief that exercise

would do him good, I saddled him and started to ride about the square,

but soon drew rein. He had not the strength to carry me!

Sadly dismounting I led him back to the stable. It was evident that he

would never again career with me across the hills. Bowed and dejected he

resumed his place in the paddock. Standing thus, with hanging head, he

appeared to be dreaming of the days when as a part of the round-up, in

the far Northwest, he had carried his master over the range and through

the herd with joyous zeal. Each time I looked at him I felt a twinge of

pain.

Everything I could do for him was done, every remedial measure was

tried, but he grew steadily worse, and at last, I called a neighbor to

my aid and said, "Oliver, my horse is very sick. I fear his days are

numbered. Study him, do what you can for him, and if you find he cannot

be cured, put him away. Don't tell me when it is done or how it is

done--I don't want to know. You understand?"

He understood, and one morning, a few days later, as I looked in the

pasture for the gray pony, he was nowhere to be seen. In the dust of the

driveway, I detected the marks of his small feet. The toes of his shoes

pointed toward the gate, and there were no returning foot-prints. He had

gone away on the long trail which leads to the River of Darkness and The

Wide Lands Beyond It.

His bridle and saddle were hanging in the barn (they are still there),

silent memorials of the explorations in which he and I had played a

resolute part.

Something grips me by the throat as I remember his eyes,

"Brown, clear and calm, with color down deep,

Where his brave, proud soul seemed to lie."

I recall the first days we spent together, beautiful days in the Frazer

Valley, when jubilant cranes bugled from the skies, and humming birds

moved in myriads along the river's banks--memories of those desperate

days in the Skeena forests, amid dank and poisonous plants--of marches

on the tundra along the high Stickeen Divide--all these come back. I see

him crowding close to my fire, thin and weak.

I relive once more that bitter night on the wharf in Glenora when

(chilled by the cold wind), he first began to cough. I am thinking of

his journey on the boat with me to Wrangell; of the day when I left him

there (the only horse on the coast); of my return; of our long trip to

Seattle; of his trust in me as he faced the strange monsters of the

city; of his long dark ride to St. Paul; of the joyous day when I opened

his prison door and finding him safe and well, rode him forth to the

admiration of my uncles at the county fair. A vast section of my life

faded with the passing of that small gray horse. "Lost my Ladrone, gone

the wild living. I dream, but my dreaming is vain."

My sense of uneasiness was deepened by another warning, a third sign of

decay. One morning my father while apparently in his usual health,

suddenly grew dizzy and fell and as I bent above him he gazed up at me

with an expression which I had never before seen in his face, a humble,

helpless, appealing look. It seemed that he was going as William had

gone.

Happily I was mistaken. His indomitable soul reasserted itself. He

refused to surrender. He rallied. "I'm all right," he said at last, a

grim line coming back into his mouth. "It's passing off. I can move,"

and lifting his arm he opened and shut his hand in proof of it. "I'm

better than a dozen dead men yet."

He was distinctly stronger next day, and when, looking from my window I

saw him going about his work in the garden, bareheaded as was his habit,

resolute and unsubdued, I was reassured, but never again did he move

with the same vigor as before. For the first time he acknowledged his

age.

During all these melancholy experiences so significant of the dying

border, I had the comfort of my undaunted wife whose happy spirit

refused to be clouded by what she recognized as merely the natural decay

of the preceding generation. Her mind was set on the future, our future.

She refused to yield her youthful right to happiness, and under the

influence of her serene philosophy I went back to my writing, or at

least to the serious consideration of another mountain theme, which was

taking shape in my brain.

With a mere love-story I had never been content. For me a sociological

background was necessary in order to make fiction worth while, and I was

minded to base my next novel on a study of the "war" which had just

taken place, at Cripple Creek, between the Free Miner, the Union Miner

and the Operator or Capitalist.

The suggestion for this theme had come to me during a call on some

friends in New York City, where I had been amused and somewhat

embarrassed, by the ecstatic and outspoken admiration of a boy of

fourteen, who was (as his mother put it) "quite crazy over miners,

Indians and cowboys. His dream is to go West and illustrate your books,"

she had said to me.

This lad's enthusiasm for the West and his ambition to be an illustrator

of western stories had started me on a tale in which a fine but rather

spoiled New York girl was to be carried to Colorado by the enthusiasm of

her youthful brother, and there plunged (against her will) into the

warfare of mountaineers and miners, a turbulence which her beloved

brother would insist on sharing. Such a girl might conceivably find

herself in the storm center of a contest such as that which had taken

place on Bull Hill in the late nineties.

I called this study _Hesper, or the Cowboy Patrol_ for the reason that

in "the Cripple Creek War," cattlemen had acted as outposts for the

union miners, and in this fact I perceived something picturesque and new

and telling, something which would give me just the imaginative impulse

I required.

Some of my friendly critics were still occasionally writing to me to

ask, "Why don't you give us more _Main Traveled Roads_ stories," and it

was not easy to make plain to them that I had moved away from that mood,

and that my life and farm life had both greatly altered in thirty years.

To repeat the tone of that book would have been false not only to my

art, but to the country as well.

Furthermore, I had done that work. I had put together in _Main Traveled

Roads_ and its companion volumes a group of thirty short stories

(written between 1887 and 1891), in which I had expressed all I had to

say on that especial phase of western life. To attempt to recover the

spirit of my youth would not only have been a failure but a bore--even

to those who were urging me to the task. It was my business to keep

moving--to accompany my characters as they migrated into the happier,

more hopeful West. Like them I was "Campin' through, podner, just a

campin' through."

As in _The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_, I had dealt with the

three-cornered fight of the cattlemen, the Indian, and the soldier, so

now, in 1902, I returned to the mountain West, to picture another

conflict, equally stirring and possessing a still finer setting and

back-ground. In _Hesper_ I was concerned with a war, in which most of

the action had taken place among the clouds, on the hilltops nearly two

miles above sea-level. There was something grandly pictorial in this

drama; but, after writing a few chapters of it, I felt the need of

revisiting the scene.

Zulime again accompanied me and as our train slid down the familiar road

leading to Colorado Springs and we could see the lightning flashing

among the high summits on which I had laid the scenes of my story,

Zulime glowed with joy and I took on a renewed sense of power. For an

hour I felt equal to my task, to be historian of the free miner seemed

to me a worthy office.

The Ehrichs were again our hosts and they (as well as Russell Wray, the

Editor of the _Gazette_) took the keenest interest in my design. From

Wray and his friends I began at once to derive an understanding of the

part which "Little London" (as the miners called the Springs) had taken

in the war. I relied on a visit to Bull Hill and Victor to furnish the

Sky-town or "Red-neck" point of view.

Wray was especially valuable to me, for he had taken part in the famous

expedition of the "Yaller Legs" and his experiences as a reporter and

his sense of humor had enabled him to report both sides of the

controversy. He had many friends in the camp, to whom he gave me

letters.

The character which interested me most, in all the warring factions, was

the free miner, the prospector, the man of the trail. Him I clearly

understood. He had been companion in most of my trips into the wild. He

was blood brother to my father, and cousin to my heroic uncles. He

represented the finest phases of pioneering. "Matt Kelley," "Rob

Raymond" and "Jack Munroe," I knew and loved, and their presence in this

labor war redeemed it from the sordid, uninspired struggle which such

contests usually turn out to be. In my design these three characters

filled heroic place.

Zulime (with no literary problems to distract her) had another easeful,

idyllic summer. The Ehrichs, the Wrays and the Palmers welcomed her as

an old friend, and in their companionship she rode and camped and dined

in easeful leisure, but I was on the move. I visited a ranch on the

plains of Eastern Colorado, joined a round-up in the Sierra Blanca

country, explored the gambling-houses and mines of Cripple Creek and

Victor, and spent two weeks reexploring the White River Plateau, this

time with Walter Wykoff, of Princeton. For a week or two, Wykoff, Miss

Ehrich and Zulime and I camped high on the shoulder of Pike's Peak. Vast

and splendid scenes of storm and sun were printed on my mind, and, while

the actual writing of my novel halted, I felt certain that I was doing

just the right thing. I felt sure of finishing it in the proper spirit

of enthusiasm.

The trip not only enabled me to finish _Hesper_--it suggested several of

the stories which went into _They of the High Trails_ and gave me the

plan of _The Forester's Daughter_. I returned to West Salem, brown as an

Indian and bursting with energy, and for several weeks toiled with

desperate haste to put my impressions, imaginings in form.

Each morning of those peaceful days I took to mother's room, on the

sunward side of the old Homestead, and there wrought into final shape

the materials I had gathered. I had only to shut my eyes to see again

the clouds circling the walls of Shavano. In imagination I rode once

more with Matt Kelley up Bull Hill, or, sitting opposite the chief of

the Miners' Union, reenjoyed his graphic account of the coming of the

Federal troops. The bawling roar of the round-up on the meadow came back

to fill my eyes with pictures of the Sierra Blanca foothills. In truth I

had no need of notes. I was embarrassed with material. I threw my

note-books into a drawer and forgot them.

Letters from my publishers informed me that _The Captain of the Gray

Horse Troop_ was marching on, but that they hoped I was at work on

something to follow it. To this I replied:

"Yes, I am in the midst of a story which I hope will be as good as _The

Captain_, but don't hurry me!"

Whilst I, busied with my fiction, kept to my study, Zulime was

ecstatically rearranging furniture. During our absence in Colorado,

father had moved to another house, relinquishing all claim on the

Homestead, and for the first time in our lives my wife and I were

authentic householders in full possession of every room. We had a

door-bell, and our clock was our own. Our meal-times conformed to our

will, and not to another's. We went to bed when we pleased, and rose

when we got ready.

Zulime's joy of ownership was almost comical. Leading me from room to

room she repeated, "This is _our_ house. Don't you like our house? Isn't

it fun to have it all to ourselves?"

Her rapture instructed me. I perceived that the old Homestead had not

yet served its purpose. So far as my father was concerned it was a story

told, a drama almost ended, but as the undivided home of my young wife

it developed new meaning. Another soul was coming into being; another

tenant was about to take its place beneath our roof. Small feet would

soon be dancing through those silent rooms, careless of the men and

women whose gray heads and gaunt limbs had been carried out over their

thresholds to a final resting-place beneath the sod.

A new interest, a new phase of life, was coming to Zulime, and to me.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Old Pioneer Takes the Back Trail

In the midst of this period of hard work on _Hesper_, news of the death

of Frank Norris came to me. Frank Norris the most valiant, the happiest,

the handsomest of all my fellow craftsmen. Nothing more shocking, more

insensate than the destruction of this glorious young fictionist had

come to my literary circle, for he was aglow with a husband's happiness,

gay with the pride of paternity, and in the full spring-tide of his

powers. His going left us all poorer and took from American literature

one of its strongest young writers.

The papers at once wired me for tributes, and these I gave, gladly, and

later when one of the magazines paid me for an article, I used the money

in the purchase of a tall clock to serve as a memorial. This time-piece

stands in the hall of my city home and every time I pass it I am

reminded of the fine free spirit of Frank Norris. In my small corner of

the world he remains a vital memory.

All through October I wrote on my novel, but as the dark days of autumn

came on, I began as usual to dwell upon my interests in the city and not

even Zulime's companionship could keep me from a feeling of

restlessness. I longed for literary comradeship. Theoretically my native

village was an ideal place in which to write, actually it sapped me and

after a few weeks depressed me. With no literary "atmosphere," damnable

word, I looked away to New York for stimulus. I did not go so far as one

of my friends who declined to have anything to do with his relatives

simply because he did not like them, but I clearly recognized that my

friends in the city meant more to me than any of my Wisconsin neighbors

and it became more and more evident that to make and keep an arbitrary

residence in a region which did not in itself stimulate or satisfy me,

was a mistake. There was nothing to do in West Salem but write.

Above all other considerations, however, I had a feeling, perhaps it was

a mistaken one,--that my powers grew in proportion as I went Eastward.

In West Salem I was merely an amateur gardener, living a life which

approached the vegetable,--so far as external action went. In Chicago I

was a perversity, a man of mis-directed energy. In New York I was, at

least respected as a writer.

In short New York allured me as London allures the writers of England,

and as Paris attracts the artists of Europe. It was my literary capital.

Theoretically I belonged to Wisconsin, as Hardy belonged to Wessex or

Barrie to Scotland, actually my happiest home was adjacent to Madison

Square. Only as I neared the publishing centers did I feel the slightest

confidence in the future. This increased sense of importance may have

been based upon an illusion but it was a very real emotion nevertheless.

Why should I not feel this? From my village home, from digging potatoes

and doing carpenter work, I went (almost directly) to a luncheon at the

White House, and the following night I attended a dinner given to Mark

Twain on his sixty-seventh birthday with William Dean Howells, Thomas B.

Reed, Wayne McVeagh, Brander Matthews, H. H. Rogers, George Harvey,

Pierpont Morgan, Hamilton Wright Mabie and a dozen others who were

leaders in their chosen work, as my table mates. Perhaps I was not

deserving of these honors--I'm not urging that point--I am merely

stating the facts which made my home in West Salem seem remote and

lonely to me. Acknowledging myself a weak mortal I could not entirely

forego the honors which the East seemed willing to bestow, and as father

was in good health with a household of his own, I felt free to spend the

entire winter in New York. For the first time in many years, I felt

relieved of anxiety for those left behind.

New York was in the worst of its subway upheaval when we landed there,

but having secured a small furnished apartment in a new but obscure

hotel on Forty-seventh street, Zulime and I settled down for the winter.

Our tiny three-room suite (a lovely nest for a woman) was not in the

least like a home for an old trailer and corn-husker like myself. Its

gas log and gimcrack mantel, its "Mission" furniture and its "new art"

rugs were all of hopeless artificiality, but our sitting-room (on the

quiet side of the building) received the sun, and there on the lid of a

small desk I took up and carried forward the story of _Hesper_ which my

publishers had asked me to prepare for the spring trade.

Before we had time to unpack, a note came from President Roosevelt

asking me to return to Washington to confer on a phase of the Indian

service with which I was familiar, and I went at once--glad to be of any

service--especially an unofficial service.

It was always a pleasure as well as an honor to meet Roosevelt. He was

our first literary president. His esthetic interests were not only keen,

but discriminating. He knew what each of us had published, and valued

each of us for the particular contributions we were making to American

literature. Each of us gave him something--in my case it was a knowledge

of the West. Notwithstanding the multiple duties of his office, he put

aside a part of each day for reading and when he read, he concentrated

upon his page with such intensity that he remembered all that was

important in the writing.

He knew the masters in the other arts also. If he had a problem in

architecture or medaling or painting to decide, he went to Mead or St.

Gaudens, or Blashfield. Under his administration the White House had

resumed its fine colonial character. At his direction Mead and McKim had

restored it to the noble simplicity of Madison's time. They had cleared

out the business offices and removed the absurd mixture of political

machinery and household furniture which had accumulated under the rule

of his predecessors, most of whom (coming from small inland towns) knew

nothing of any art but government, and in some cases not too much of

that. On this particular visit I recall the fact that repairs were going

on, for the President invited me to take luncheon with his family, and

we ate in a small room on the front of the house for the reason that the

dining-room was in process of being restored and the howl of the floor

polisher was resounding through the hall.

It may interest the reader to know that while my wife and I occasionally

lunched or dined with "the choice ones of the earth," we prudently

practiced "light housekeeping" between our splendid feasts. Like a

brown-bearded Santa Claus I often ran the gauntlet of the elevator boy

with pockets bulging bottles of milk, hunks of cheese, hot muffins, and

pats of butter, and frequently, when the weather was bad, or when some

one had neglected to invite us out, we supped in our room.

Once when I entered laden in this fashion I was sharply taken aback by

the presence of several belated callers, very grand ladies, and only the

most skilful manoeuvering enabled me to slide into the closet and out

of my overcoat without betraying my cargo. My predicament highly amused

Zulime, while at the same time she inwardly trembled for fear of a

smash. I mention this incident in order to reveal the reverse side of

our splendid social progress. We were in no danger of becoming "spoiled"

with feasting, so long as we kept to our Latin Quarter methods of

lunching.

We had many notable dinners that winter, but our long anticipated visit

to Mark Twain's house in Riverdale stands out above them all. We reached

the house about seven o'clock, by way of an ancient hack which met us at

the depot and carried us up the hill, into the yard of an old-fashioned

mansion sheltered by great trees.

Mark came running lightly down the broad stairs to meet us in the hall,

seemingly in excellent health, although his spirits were not at all as

boyish as his step. "I'm glad to see you," he said cordially, "but

you'll find the house a hospital. The girls have both been miserable and

Mrs. Clemens, I'm sorry to say, is still too ill to see you. I bring her

greetings to you and her apology."

Thereupon he related with invincible humor and vivid phraseology, the

elaborate scheme of deception to which they had been forced during

Jean's illness. Mrs. Clemens was very weak, so low that the slightest

excitement--so the doctor warned us--might prove fatal; hence we were

obliged to pretend that Jean was well but busy doing this or doing that,

in order that her mother might not suspect the truth of the situation.

"I was protected by the doctor's orders, which forbade me from spending

more than two minutes in Mrs. Clemens' room, but Clara, who was allowed

to nurse her mother, was forced to enter upon a season of unveracity

which taxed her imagination to the uttermost. She had to pretend that

Jean was away on a visit, or that she was in town shopping or away at a

dinner. Together we invented all kinds of social engagements for her and

that involved the description of new gowns and a list of the guests of

each entertainment. Oh, it was dreadful. Fortunately Clara had a good

reputation with her mother, and was able to carry conviction, whereas I

had a very hard time. I kept getting into shoal water."

He was very funny--I can only report the substance of his tale--and yet

there was a tone in his voice which enabled me to understand the tragic

situation. Mrs. Clemens' illness was hopeless.

All through the dinner he talked on in the same enthralling fashion,

picturesque, humorous, tragic. He dealt with June bugs, alcohol,

Christian Science, the Philippine outrage and a dozen other apparently

unrelated subjects. He imitated a horse-fly. He swore. He quoted poetry.

We laughed till our sides ached--and yet, all the while, beneath it all,

he had in mind (as we had in mind)--that sweetly-patient invalid waiting

upstairs for his good-night caress.

As a bitter agnostic as well as a tender humorist Mark Twain loomed

larger in my horizon after that night. The warmly human side of him was

revealed to me as never before, and thereafter I knew him and I felt

that he knew me. That remote glance from beneath those shaggy eyebrows

no longer deceived me. He was a tender and loyal husband. Later when I

came to read the marvelous story of his life as related by Albert

Bigelow Paine, I found a part of my intuitions recorded as facts. He was

an elemental western American--with many of the faults and all of the

excellencies of the border.

Meanwhile I was at work. In my diary of this date I find these words,

"This is living! The sunlight floods our tiny sitting-room whose windows

look out on a blue-and-white mountainous 'scape of city roofs. We have

dined and the steam is singing in our gilded radiator. The noise and

bustle of the city is far away.--I foresee that I shall be able to do a

great deal of work on my novel."

In that last sentence I was reckoning without the effect of my wife's

popularity. Invitations to luncheons, dinners, and theater parties began

to pile up, and I could not ask Zulime to deny herself these pleasures,

although I tried to keep my forenoons sacred to my pen. I returned to

the manuscript of _Hesper_ and succeeded in writing at least a thousand

words each day; on fortunate mornings I was able to turn off a full

chapter.

It was a gay and satisfying season. We met all our old friends and made

many new ones, finding ourselves more and more at home in the city. We

rode to grand receptions in the street cars--as usual--and while we ate

our luncheons at inexpensive cafes, we often dined with our more

prosperous fellow-craftsmen. In spite of many interruptions I managed to

complete my novel. By the first of March _Hesper_ was ready for the

printer and I turned it over to Duneka.

On Zulime's birthday as I was putting the last chapter in final shape, I

received a letter from father which said, "I am coming East. Meet me in

Washington on the 21st." To this request there was but one answer: "I'll

be there."

It was the first time that the old pioneer had taken "the back trail"

since leaving Boston, nearly fifty years before, and I rejoiced in his

decision. The thought of leading him into the halls of Congress and

pointing out for him the orators whose doings had been so long his chief

concern, was pleasureable to me. From my earliest childhood I had heard

him comment on the weekly record of Congressional debates. He loved

oratory. He was a hero-worshiper. With him the Capitol meant Lincoln and

Grant and Blaine and Sherman. It was not a city, it was a shrine.

When he stepped from the train in Washington the following week, I was

there to meet him, and for several days I led him from splendor to

splendor. With me he saw Mount Vernon, the White House, Congress, the

library, and his patriotism intensified as the glories of his country's

capital unrolled before his eyes. He said little, only looked, and when

he had harvested as much of Washington as he could carry I took him to

Philadelphia, in order that he might breathe the air of Continental Hall

and gaze upon its sacred Liberty Bell. His patriotism had few

reservations. All these relics were of high solemnity to him.

At last as a climax we approached New York, whose glittering bays,

innumerable ships and monstrous buildings awed him and saddened him. It

was a picture at once incredible and familiar, resembling illustrations

he had seen in the magazines, only mightier more magnificent than he had

imagined any of it to be. It overwhelmed him, wearied him, disheartened

him, and so it came about that the quiet dinners he took with me at my

club were his most enduring pleasures, for there he rested, there he saw

me at home. He acquired an understanding of my endurance of the vast and

terrible town.

Up to this time the story of my doings in the East had been to him like

those of characters in highly-colored romance. He had believed me (in a

sense) when, in West Salem, I had spoken of meetings with Roosevelt and

Howells and other famous men, and yet, till now, he had never been able

to realize the fact that I _belonged_ in New York, and that men of large

affairs were actually my friends. He comprehended now (in some degree)

my good fortune, and it gratified him while it daunted him. He

understood why I could not live in West Salem.

If he was proud to acknowledge me as a son, I, on my part, was proud to

acknowledge him as my father, for as he sat with me in the dining-room

of the club or walked about the Library to examine the relics and

portraits of Booth (for whom he had a passionate admiration) he was

altogether admirable.

At the end of our third day, I suggested Boston. To this he replied,

"No, I've had enough," and there was a tired droop in his voice. "I'm

ready to go home. I'm all tired out with 'seeing things,' and besides

it's time to be getting back to my garden."

To urge him to remain longer would have been a mistake. Boston would

have disturbed and bewildered him. Not only would he have failed to

find the city of his youth, he would have been saddened by the changes.

His loss of power to remember troubled me. He retained but few of his

impressions of Washington, and with sorrow I acknowledged that it no

longer mattered whether he saw Boston or not. He had waited too long for

his great excursion. He was old and timid and longing for rest.

As he went to his train (surfeited with strange glories, crowds and

exhibitions) he repeated that his dinners with me at the club remained

his keenest pleasures. In tasting a few of my comforts he understood why

I loved the great city. He saw me also in an established position, and

this he considered a gain. His faith in my future was now complete.

* * * * *

For years he had talked of this expedition, planned for it, calculated

upon its expense, and now it was accomplished. He went back to his

garden with a sense of pride, of satisfaction which he would share with

his cronies as they met in Johnson's Drug Store or Anderson's Meat

Market. What he said of me I do not know, but I fear he reported me as

living in unimaginable luxury and consorting on terms of equality with

the great ones of New York.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

New Life in the Old House

Meanwhile, Chicago rushing toward its two million mark, had not, alas!

lived up to its literary promise of '94. In music, in painting, in

sculpture and architecture it was no longer negligible, but each year

its authors appeared more and more like a group of esthetic pioneers

heroically maintaining themselves in the midst of an increasing tumult

of material upbuilding.

One by one its hopeful young publishing houses had failed, and one by

one its aspiring periodicals had withered in the keen wind of Eastern

competition. _The Dial_ alone held on, pathetically solitary, one might

almost say alien and solitary.

Against all this misfortune even my besotted optimism could not prevail.

My pioneering spirit, subdued by years of penury and rough usage,

yielded more and more to the honor and the intellectual companionship

which the East offered. To Fuller I privately remarked: "As soon as I

can afford it I intend to establish a home in New York."

"I'd go further," he replied. "I would live in Italy if I could."

It was a very significant fact that Chicago contained in 1903 but a

handful of writers, while St. Louis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit and

Kansas City had fewer yet. "What is the reason for this literary

sterility?" I asked of my companions. "Why should not these powerful

cities produce authors? Boston, when she had less than three hundred

thousands citizens had Lowell, Longfellow, Emerson and Holmes."

The answer was (and still is), "Because there are few supporters of

workers in the fine arts. Western men do not think in terms of art.

There are no literary periodicals in these cities to invite (and pay

for) the work of the author and the illustrator, and there is moreover a

tendency on the part of our builders to give the eastern sculptor,

painter or architect the jobs which might be done by local men. Until

Chicago has at least one magazine founded like a university, and

publishing houses like Scribners and Macmillans our authors and artists

must go to New York." Of course none of these answers succeeded in

clearing up the mystery, but they were helpful.

Some of the writers in the Little Room were outspokenly envious of my

ability to spend half my winters in the East, but Lorado Taft stoutly

declared that the West inspired him, satisfied him. "Chicago suits me,"

he asserted, "and besides I can't afford to run away from my job. You

should be the last man to admit defeat, _you_ who have been preaching

local color and local patriotism all your days."

In truth Taft was one of the few who could afford to remain in Chicago

for its public supported him handsomely, but those of us who wrote had

no organizations to help sustain our self-esteem. Nevertheless I

permitted him to imagine my pessimism to be only a mood which, in some

degree it was, for I had many noble friends in the city who invited me

to dinner even if they did not read my books.

The claims of Chicago upon me had been strengthened by the presence of

Professor Taft who had given up his home in Kansas and was now settled

not far from his son and near the University. He had brought all his

books and other treasures with intent to spend the remaining years of

his life in the neighborhood of his illustrious son and his two

daughters, a fact which I could not overlook in any plans for changing

my own residence.

Don Carlos Taft was a singular and powerful figure, as I have already

indicated, a stoic, of Oriental serenity, one who could smile in the

midst of excruciating pain. With his eyes against a blank wall he was

able to endlessly amuse himself by calling up the deep-laid concepts of

his earlier years of study. Though affected with some obscure spinal

disorder which made every movement a punishment, he concealed his

suffering, no matter how intense it might be, and always answered,

"Fine, fine!" when any of us asked "How are you to-day?"

He lived in Woodlawn as he had lived in Kansas, like a man in a diving

bell. His capacious brain filled with "knowledges" of the days when

Gladstone was king and Darwin an outlaw, had little room for the

scientific theories of Bergson and his like. He remained the

old-fashioned New England theologian converted to militant agnosticism.

Although at this time over seventy years of age his mind was notably

clear, orderly and active, and his talk (usually a carefully constructed

monologue) was stately, formal and precise. He used no slang, and

retained scarcely a word of his boyhood's vernacular. The only emotional

expression he permitted himself was a chuckle of glee over an

intellectual misstatement or a historical bungle. Novels, theaters,

music possessed no interest for him.

He had read, I believe, one or two of my books but never alluded to

them, although he manifested a growing respect for my ability to earn

money, and especially delighted in my faculty for living within my

means. He watched the slow growth of my income with approving eyes. To

him as to my father, earning money was a struggle, saving it a virtue,

and wasting it a crime.

In almost every other characteristic he was my father's direct

antithesis--my father, whose faith approximated that of a Sioux warrior.

"I take things as they come," was one of his sayings. He was not

concerned with the theories of Evolution, the Pragmatic Philosophy or

any other formal system of learning or ethics. With him the present was

filled with duties, the remote past or the distant future was of

indifferent concern. To deal justly and to leave the world a little

better than he found it, was his creed.

The one point of contact between these widely divergent pioneers was

their love of Zulime, for my father was almost as fond of her as Don

Carlos himself, and distinctly more expressive of his love--for Father

Taft held affection to be something not quite decorous when openly

declared. He never offered a caress or spoke an affectionate word so far

as I know.

There was something pathetic in his situation in these days. Full of

learning and eager to share it with youth he could find no one willing

to listen to him--not even his children. In the midst of a vast city he

was sadly solitary. None of his children appeared interested in his

allusions to Hammurabi or Charlemagne, on the contrary, monologues of

any kind were taboo in the artistic circles where Lorado reigned. We was

too busy, we were all too busy with our small plans and daily struggles,

to take any interest in Locke or Gibbon or Hume, therefore the ageing

philosopher sat forlornly among his faded, musty books, dreaming his

days away on some abstruse ethical problem, or carving with his patient

knife some quaintly ornate piece of furniture, while my own father (at

the opposite pole of life) weeded his garden, read the daily paper or

played cinch with the men at the village drugstore.

Nevertheless, with full knowledge of these fundamental divergencies in

the lives of our sires, I urged Zulime to invite Professor Taft to spend

a few weeks in West Salem. "He and father will disagree, but the one is

a philosopher accustomed to pioneer types and the other a man of reason

and I am willing to risk their coming together if you are."

Don Carlos seemed pleased by this invitation and promised to come "one

of these days."

Our return to Wisconsin in April was a return to winter. On looking from

our car windows at dawn, we found the ground white with snow, and flakes

of frost driving through the budding branches of the trees. Every bird

was mute, as if with horror and the tender amber-and-green leaves of the

maples shone through the rime with a singular and pathetic beauty.

Happily this was only a cold wave. Toward noon the sun came out, the icy

cover sank into the earth and the robins began to sing again as if to

reassure themselves as well as us.

We came back to the Homestead now with a full sense of our

proprietorship. It was entirely ours and it was waiting for us. Father

was at the gate, it is true, but he was there this time merely as

care-taker, as supervisor of the garden--our garden.

His greeting of Zulime had a deeper note of tenderness than he had ever

used hitherto, for he was aware of our hope, and shared our joyous

expectancy. "I'm glad you've come," he said simply. "I hate to see the

house standing here cold and empty. It don't seem natural or right."

His first act was to lead us out to the garden where orderly beds of

springing vegetables testified to his care. "I didn't do anything about

the flowers," he confessed rather shamefacedly. "I'm no good at that

kind of work."

As the days went by I discovered that father's heart clung to the old

place. He loved to spend his days upon it. He was comfortable in his own

little cottage, but it seemed too small and too "slick" for him. He

liked our trees and lawn and barn, and I was glad to have him continue

his supervision of them. They gave him something to think about,

something to do. The curse of the "tired farmers" of the village was

their enforced idleness. There was almost nothing for them to exercise

upon.

He spent most of each day tinkering around the barn, overseeing the

garden or resting on the back porch where mother used to sit and look

out on the valley. On Sunday he came in to supper, and afterward called

for "The Sweet Story of Old" and "The Palace of the King." He listened

in silence, a blur in his dreaming eyes, for the past returned on the

wings of these songs.

Nobly considerate in his attitude toward Zulime he seemed to understand,

perfectly, her almost childish joy in the possession of a nest of her

own. He never came to a meal without invitation, though he was seldom

without the invitation, for Zulime was fond of him and had only one

point of contention with him: "I wish you wouldn't wear your working

clothes about the street," she said--and artfully added, "You are so

handsome when you are in your Sunday suit, I wish you would wear it all

the time."

He smiled with pleasure, but replied: "I'd look fine hoeing potatoes in

my Sunday suit, wouldn't I!" Nevertheless he was mindful of her request

and always came to dinner in, at worst, his second best.

Each day the gardens about us took on charm. The plum and cherry trees

flung out banners of bloom and later the apple trees flowered in

pink-and-white radiance. Wonder-working sap seemed to spout into the air

through every minute branch. Showers of rain alternated with vivid

sunshine, and through the air, heavy with perfume, the mourning dove

sang with sad insistence as if to remind us of the impermanency of May's

ineffable loveliness. Butterflies suddenly appeared in the grass, and

the bees toiled like harvesters, so eager, so busy that they tumbled

over one another in their haste. Nature was at her sweetest and

loveliest, and in the midst of it walked my young wife, in quiet

anticipation of motherhood.

Commonplace to others our rude homestead grew in beauty and significance

to us. Day by day we sat on our front porch, and watched the clouds of

blossoms thicken. If we walked in our garden we felt the creative loam

throbbing beneath our feet. Each bird seemed as proud of the place as

we. Each insect was in a transport of activity.

Into the radiant white of the cherry blossoms, impetuous green shoots

(new generations) appeared as if in feverish haste, unwilling to await

the passing of the flowers. The hills to the south were soaring bubbles

of exquisite green vapor dashed with amber and pink and red. Each

morning the shade of the maple trees deepened, and on the lawn the

dandelions opened, sowing with pieces of gold the velvet of the sward.

The songs of the robin, the catbird and the thrush became more

confident, more prolix until, at last, the drab and angular little

village was transfigured into celestial beauty by the heavenly light and

melody of completed spring.

In a certain sense here was the wealth I had been struggling to secure.

Here were--seemingly--all the elements of man's content, a broad roof, a

generous garden, spreading trees, blossoming shrubs, a familiar horizon

line, a lovely wife--and the promise of a child!

Truly, I should have been happy, and in my sour, big-fisted way I was

happy. I tried, honestly, to grasp and hold the ecstasy which these days

offered. I who had lived for twelve years on railway trains, in camp, on

horse-back or in wretched little city hotels, was now a portly

householder, a pampered husband and a prospective parent. And yet--such

is my perverse temperament--I could not overlook the fact that this

tranquil village like thousands of others scattered over the West, was

but a half-way house, a pleasant hospital into which many of the

crippled, worn-out and white-haired farmers and their wives had come to

rest for a little while on their way to the grave.

As I walked the shaded street, perceiving these veterans of the hoe and

plow, digging feebly in the earth of their small gardens, or sitting

a-dream on the narrow porches of their tiny cottages my joy was

embittered. Age, age was everywhere. Here in the midst of the flowering

trees the men of the Middle Border were withering into dust.

In the city one does not come into anything like this close relationship

with a dying generation. The tragedy is obscured. Here Zulime and I,

young and strong, were living in the midst of an almost universal

senility and decay. There was no escape from these grim facts.

Looked at from a distance there was comfort in the thought of these

pioneers, released from the grind of their farm routine, dozing at ease

beneath the maple trees, but closely studied they became sorrowful. I

knew too much about them. Several of them had been my father's

companions in those glorious days in fifty-five. Yonder white-haired

invalid, sitting in the sun silently watching his bees, had been a

famous pilot on the river, and that bushy-haired giant, halting by on a

stick, was the wreck of a mighty hunter. The wives of these men equally

worn, equally rheumatic and even more querulous, had been the rosy,

laughing, dancing companions of Isabel McClintock in the days when

Richard Garland came a-courting. All, all were camping in lonely

cottages while their sons and daughters, in distant cities or far-off

mountain valleys, adventuring in their turn, were taking up the

discipline and the duties of a new border, a new world.

As a novelist I could not fail to observe these melancholy features of a

life which on its surface seemed idyllic. In New York, in Chicago I was

concerned mainly with happy, busy people of my own age or younger,--here

I was brought into close contact daily--almost hourly--with the passing

of my father's generation and, also, I was made aware of the coming in

of an alien, uninspiring race. The farms of the Dudleys, the McKinleys,

the Coburns were being taken by the Smeckpeffers, the Heffelfingers, and

the Bergmans! Already the pages of the village newspaper were peppered

with such names, and a powerful Congregation was building a German

church on the site of the old-time Methodist meeting house of my

boyhood. My strain was dying out--a new and to my mind less admirable

America was coming on.

As June deepened my father (who realized something of the changes going

on) proposed a trip to the town in Iowa near which we had lived for

twelve years, and to this I consented, feeling that this visit could not

safely be postponed another year.

He had never been back to our prairie farm in Mitchell County since

leaving it, over twenty years before, and now (with money and leisure)

he was eager to go, and as my old Seminary associates had asked me to

speak at their Commencement, we rode away one lovely June day up along

the Mississippi to Winona, thence by way of a winding coulee, to the

level lands, and so across to Mitchell County, our old home. The

railroad, which was new to us, ran across Dry Run prairie within half a

mile of our school-house, but so flat and monotonous did the whole

country now appear, we could not distinguish any familiar landmarks. The

"hills" along the creek were barely noticeable from the car, and all the

farm-steads were hidden by groves of trees. We passed our former home

without recognizing it!

Osage, we soon discovered, was almost as much of an asylum for the aged

as West Salem. It, too, was filled with worn-out farmers, men with whom

my father had subdued the sod in the early days. Osmond Button, William

Frazer, Oliver Cole, David Babcock were all living "in town" on narrow

village lots, "taking it easy" as they called it, but they were by no

means as contented as they seemed to the casual onlooker. Freed from the

hard daily demands of the farm, many of them acknowledged a sense of

uselessness, a fear of decay.

As fast as they learned of our presence, scores of loyal friends swarmed

about us expressing a sincere regard for my father, and a kind of

wondering respect for me. Some of them clung to my father's hand as

though in hope of recovering through him some gleam of the beauty, some

part of the magic of the brave days gone--days when the land was new and

they were young. "You must come home with me," each man insisted, "the

women folks all want to see you."

Twenty years had wrought great changes in the men as well as in the

county, and my father was bewildered and saddened by the tale. One by

one he called the names of those who had been his one-time friends and

neighbors. Some were dead, others had moved away--only one or two

remained where he had left them, and it was in the hope of seeing these

men and at the same time to visit the farm and school-house on Dry Run,

and the church at Burr Oak, that I hired a carriage and drove my father

out along the well-remembered lane to the north and east--I say

"well-remembered" although the growth of the trees and the presence of

new buildings made its appeal mixed and unsatisfactory to us both.

We found our house almost hid in the trees which we had planted on the

bare prairie thirty years before. As we stood in the yard I spoke of the

silver wedding which took place there. The yard was attractive but the

house (infested by the family of a poor renter) was repulsive. The

upstairs chamber in which I had slept for so many years presented a

filthy clutter of chicken feathers, cast-off furniture and musty

clothing. Our stay was short.

Strangers were in all of the other houses along the way--we found but

two of our former neighbors at home, and the farther we drove the more

melancholy we both became.