"I have brought the young lady to call on you," Mr. Ponk said,

presenting his companion with a flourish, as if she were a trophy cup or

a statue just unveiled. "Sorry I can't stay to visit with you, but my

clerk is out to-night. They'll take care of you beautiful, Miss Swaim.

No, thank you, no. I'll just soar back to the hotel."

He waved off the seat York had proffered him, and bowed himself away as

gracefully as a short, round man can bow.

Laura Macpherson had an inborn gift of hospitality, but she realized at

once that this guest brought an unusual and compelling interest. She was

conscious, too, in a vague way, of the portent of some permanent change

pending. What she saw clearly was a very pretty girl with a soft voice

and a definite, forceful personality.

"Miss Swaim, you must be tired after your long journey," Laura began,

courteously.

"Please don't call me that. I am so far from home I'll be 'Miss Swaimed'

enough, anyhow."

The appeal in the blue eyes broke down all reserve.

"Then I'll call you 'Jerry,' as I did when you were a little girl and I

was beginning to think about getting grown up," Laura exclaimed.

"And since you are far from home, we hope you may find a home welcome in

our house, and that you will come at once and be our guest

indefinitely," York added, with his winning smile that ought to have

sent him to Congress years ago.

Something about Jerry Swaim had caught Laura Macpherson in a moment. She

hoped that York had the same feeling. But York was one of the

impenetrable kind when he chose. And he certainly chose that evening to

prove his impenetrability.

"You are very kind," Jerry said, looking at York with earnest eyes, void

of all coquettishness. Then, turning to York's sister, she went on:

"I am not tired now. But the last part of my journey was frightful. The

afternoon was hot, and the wind blew terrifically. They had to close the

windows to keep out the dust. Then we were delayed in what they told me

was called a 'blowout.'" Her eyes were sparkling now, but her emphasis

on the term seemed to cut against York Macpherson's senses like burning

sand-filled wind as he sat studying her face.

"All the 'blowouts' I ever heard of were in the tires of our limousine

car," she continued, musingly. "And my cousin, Gene Wellington, of

Philadelphia, didn't know what to do about them at all. He is an artist,

and artists never do take to practical things. Gene was more helpless

when anything went wrong with the car than ever I was, and awfully

afraid of taking a risk or anything."

And that, it seemed to the Macphersons, must have been helpless indeed.

For as she sat there at ease in the shadowy dimness of the summer

evening, York Macpherson thought of Carlyle's phrasing, "Her feet to

fall on softness; her eyes to light on splendor," a creature fitted only

to adorn the upholstered places of life.

"Did you ever see that dreadful 'blowout' thing?" Jerry asked, coming

back from the recollection of limousine cars and Cousin Gene of

Philadelphia.

"No, I have only been here a short time myself, and the country is

almost as new to me as it is to you," Laura Macpherson replied.

"Oh, it is _such_ an awful place!" Jerry continued. "Everywhere and

everywhere one can see nothing but great sand-waves all over the land.

They have almost buried the palisades that protect the railroad. It just

seemed like the Red Sea dividing to let the Israelites go through, only

this was red-hot sand held back to let the train pass through a deep

rift. And to-day the wind had filled up the tracks so it couldn't go

through until the sand was cleaned out. There is only one kind of shrub,

a spiny looking thing, growing anywhere on all those useless acres. It

is a perfectly horrid country! Why was such land ever made?" Jerry

turned to York with the question.

"I can't tell you," York said, "but there are some good things here."

"Yes, there is my claim," Jerry broke in. "It's all I have left, you

know. Cousin Gene tried to persuade me it would be better off without

me, but I'm sure it must need the owner's oversight to make it really

profitable. There was no record, in settling up the estate, of its

having produced any income at all. I certainly need the income now.

Taking care of myself is a new experience for me."

All the vivacity and hopefulness of youth was in her words. But the

dreamy expression on her face that came and went with her moods soon

returned.

"Cousin Gene Wellington is not my real cousin, you know. He is Uncle

Darby's relative, not Aunt Jerry's. He is an artist, but without any

income right now, like myself. Both of us have to learn how to go alone,

you see, but I'm not going back to Philadelphia now, no matter what Aunt

Jerry Darby may say."

This was no appeal for sympathy. Taking care of oneself seemed easy

enough to Lesa Swaim's child, to whom the West promised only one grand

romantic adventure. There was something, too, in the tone in which she

pronounced the name of Gene Wellington that seemed to set it off from

every other name. And she pronounced it often enough to trouble York

Macpherson. No other name came so easily and so frequently and frankly

to her lips.

"We hope you will like the West. The Sage Brush isn't so bad when you

get acclimated to its moods," York assured her. "But don't expect too

much at first, nor too definite a way of securing an income."

Only Laura Macpherson caught the same minor chord of anxiety in her

brother's voice that she recalled had been in it when he told her of

Jerry's claim. It seemed impossible, however, that anything could refuse

to be profitable for this charming, blossomy kind of a girl who must

thrive on easy success or perish, like a flower.

"Oh, land always means an income, my father used to say. Aunt Jerry has

only two hundred acres, but it is a fortune to her," the girl declared.

"I'm not uneasy. As soon as I get a real hold on my property here I'll

be all right. It is getting late. I must go now. No, I am going by

myself," she declared, prettily, as York prepared to accompany her back

to the hotel. "It is straight up this light street and I am going to try

it alone from the very beginning. That's why I didn't go to your office

as soon as I got here to-day. I told Cousin Gene I could take care of

myself and make my own way out here, just as he is making his own way in

the East, working in his studio. No, you shall not go with me. Thank

you so much. No. Good-by." This to York Macpherson, who was wise enough

to catch the finality of her words.

The twilight was almost gone, but a young moon in the west made the

street still light as the two on the porch watched the girl going

firm-footed and unafraid, unconscious of their anxiety for what lay in

the days before her.

"Is it courage, or contempt for the West, that makes her fearless where

one would expect her to be timid? She seems a combination of ignorance

and assertiveness and a plea for sympathy all in one," Laura Macpherson

declared.

"She is the child of two different temperaments--Jim one, and Lesa

another; a type all her own, but taking on something of each parent,"

York asserted, as he watched until the girl had disappeared at the door

of the Commercial Hotel, far up the street.

The next day was an unusual one for four people in New Eden. The wind

came from the east, driving an all-day rain before it, and York

Macpherson did not go to the upper Sage Brush country. Instead, he

worked steadily in his office all day. Some files he had not opened for

months were carefully gone over, and township maps were much in

evidence. Every now and then he glanced toward the upper windows of the

Commercial Hotel. Mr. Ponk had said that Jerry had No. 7, the room he

had occupied for several years. He wondered if this rain was making her

homesick for the Winnowoc Valley and "Eden" and that wonderful Cousin

Gene, blast him! There was a smile in York's eyes whenever he looked

across the street. When he turned to his work again his face was stern.

What he thought was a determination not to be bothered by rainy-day

loafers coming into his office, what made him set his teeth and grip to

his work, was really the fight with a temptation to go over to the hotel

and look after a homesick girl.

Meantime Jerry Swaim, snug in a filmy gray kimona with pink facings and

soft gray slippers, was enjoying the day to the full limit. Secure from

strangers, relaxed from the weariness of travel, she slept dreamlessly,

and wakened, pink and rested, to watch the cool, life-giving rains and

dream her wonderful day-dreams wherein new adventure, victory over

obstacles, and Eugene each played a part. Jerry was in love with life.

Sunshine and rain, wind and calm, every season, were made to serve her,

all things in nature to bring her interest and pleasure--all except

_sand_. That hot hour and a half between sand-leaguered palisades seared

her memory. But that was all down-stream now, with the junction station,

and the country Thelma, and the tow-headed woman and flabby flopping

baby, and the little old Teddy Bear humping his yellow-brown fuzziness

against the swirl of cinders and prairie dust. The recollection of it

all was like the touch of a live coal on the cool surface of her

tranquil soul, a thing abhorred that yet would not be uncreated nor

forgotten.

"To-morrow will be Sunday." The little pagan would have one more idle

day. "I'll get a letter from Eugene on Monday. On Monday," dreamily,

"I'll beg into live here, not stay here. What charming folks the

Macphersons are! and--so different."

There was a difference. Jerry did not know, nor care to analyze it, nor

explain to herself, why these two people had in themselves alone begun

to make New Eden worth while for her. She for whom things, human and

otherwise, had heretofore been created--all except _sand_.

The third New-Edenite who had some special interests on this rainy day

was Junius Brutus Ponk. Often an idler in the Macpherson Company's

office, he was always interesting to York. There were never created two

of his kind. That in itself made him worth while to the big, strong man

of many affairs. And, much as York wanted to be alone to-day, he

welcomed the coming of Ponk. In the long, serious conversation that

followed, their usual bantering had no place. And when the little man

went slowly out, and slowly crossed the street to the hotel, indifferent

to the steady fall of rain, York Macpherson's eyes followed him

earnestly.

"He'll almost forget to strut if that girl stays here--but she won't

stay. And he will strut. He's made that way. But down under it all he's

a man, God bless him--a man any woman could trust."

Up at "Castle Cluny" the rainy day brought one caller whom "chilling

winds nor poisonous breath" could never halt--Mrs. Stellar Bahrr,

otherwise--"the Big Dipper"--the town gossip.

Mrs. Stellar Bahrr was a married, widowed-by-divorce, old-maid type,

built like a sky-scraper, of the lean, uncertain age just around sixty,

with the roundness of youth all gone, and the plump beauty of

matronliness all lacking, wrinkled with envy and small malice, living on

repeating what New Eden wanted kept untold. Hiding what New Eden should

have known of her, she maintained herself on a pension from some one,

known only to York Macpherson, and the small income derived just now

from trimming over last year's hats "to make them look like

four-year-olds," York declared.

The real milliner of the town was a brisk, bright business woman who had

Stellar Bahrr on her trail in season and out of season. Mrs. Bahrr

herself could not have kept up a business of any kind for a week, for

she changed callings almost with the moon's phases.

No more unwelcome caller could have intruded on the homey, delicious,

rainy-day seclusion of "Castle Cluny."

"I jis' run in to see the hat again you're goin' to wear to-morrow, Miss

Laury. I 'ain't got more 'n a minute. Ye ain't alone this dreary day,

are ye? The Lenwells was sayin' last night your brother was goin' to the

upper Sage Brush on some business with the Posers. But they're in town,

rainy as it is, an' all. Did he go?"

"No, he put it off till Monday," Laura replied, wondering what interest

York's going or coming could be to Stellar Bahrr.

"As I was sayin', the Posers is in town. Come to meet Nell and her baby.

They come in on the freight yesterday. The biggest, bald-headest young

un you ever see. Nell wants her hat fixed over, and nothin' on the

livin' earth to fix it with, ner money to pay for it. I'll make ol'

Poser do that, though. Lemme see your hat, so's I can get an idy or two.

You've got some 'commodation, if that blamed millinery-store hain't.

Thank ye for the favor."

Stellar had a way of pinning her eyes through one until her victim could

not squirm. She also had a way of talking so much she gave the

impression of running down and the promise of a speedy leave-taking,

which she never took until she had gained all the information she

wanted. Her talent in a good cause would have been invaluable, for she

was shrewd, patient, and everlastingly persistent.

Laura Macpherson reluctantly left the room to get her hat, wondering,

since it had not been out of the box before, how in the world Stellar

Bahrr knew anything about it. Mrs. Bahrr was standing by the dining-room

window when she returned.

"I jis' come out here to see if the Sage Brush is raisin' down yonder.

Who is that strange girl Ponk's running around with last night?" The

gossip turned the question suddenly. "I seen 'em comin' up here myself.

Folks down-town don't know yet." The sharp, steel-pointed eyes caught

into Laura like hooks.

"I don't--believe you'll like this hat." Laura had meant to say, "I

don't intend to tell you," but she was hooked too quickly.

"Who'd you say she is?"

There was no courteous way out now.

"She is a Miss Swaim."

"Say, this hat's a jew'l. Looks younger 'n the girls' hats does on 'em.

Where's she from?"

"East. This color is a bit trying for me, I think."

"Oh, no 'tain't! What's she here for?"

"I--You'll have to ask York." Laura rolled her burdens on her brother's

shoulders, as did likewise the remainder of New Eden, when crowded to

the wall.

"York! She ain't after him, I hope. Don't blush so. That's a good one

on York. An' he never met her at the station, even. Ponk--little fiend"

(Ponk always turned game-cock when Stellar approached him), "little

devil he is--he telephoned in from down at the sidin', by the deep

fishin'-hole."

Mrs. Bahrr caught her breath and bit her lips as she eyed her hostess

slyly. Laura Macpherson was white with disgust and anger. Of all the

long-tongues, here was the queen.

"Where's the deep fishing-hole?" she asked, innocently, to get her

unpleasant caller on another tack.

For a moment Mrs. Bahrr did not reply, busying herself with examining

the new hat's lining and brim-curves. If Laura had known what York

Macpherson knew she would have realized that here was the place to score

by dwelling on the deep fishing-hole. But Laura was new to Sage Brush

traditions.

"Ponk calls in to have his spanky new runabout all ready at the station.

George nearly busted hisself gettin' there. Then Ponk, the miserable

brute, he hangs around and keeps Miss Swine--"

"Swaim, Geraldine Swaim," Laura cried, in disgust.

"Yes, Geraldine Swim--keeps her inside, so's nobody gets a good look at

her. I was there myself, a-watchin' him. I'd gone to see if my fish 'd

been sent up, an' when they'd all cleared out he trots her out, big as

Cuffey, and races to the hotel with her. Maybe, though, York didn't

know she was comin', or had Ponk put up to lookin' after her for him.

You never can tell about these men. I noticed York never walked home

with her last night, neither. 'Course it was light as day. Well, well,

it's interestin' as can be. An' she come here purpose to see your

brother, too."

"If you are through with my hat"--Laura was fairly gray with anger and

her eyes flashed as she tried to control herself.

Nobody was wiser than Stellar Bahrr in situations like this.

"In jest a minute. Them's the daintiest roses yet. Thank you, Miss

Laury. You ain't above helping a person like me. There's them that is

here in New Eden. But I know 'em--I know 'em. They talk to your back and

never say a word to your face, not a blamed word. But you're not like

'em. Everybody says you're just like your brother, an' that's enough for

anybody to know in the Sage Brush country. He's been the best friend I

ever had, I know that. I hope that pink-'n'-white city girl 'll find out

that much pretty quick. Somebody ought to tell her, too. Well, good day,

Miss Laury. My umberel's right outside in the umberel-stand."

Poor Laura! She was no fighter from choice, no imputer of evil motives,

but her love for her brother amounted almost to idolatry.

"I'm her one weakness," York often said. "Her strength is in her sense

of humor, her kind heart, her love of beautiful things, and the power of

the old scrapping blood of the Macphersons that will stand so much--and

then Joan of Arc is a tennis-player alongside of my blessed sister in

her righteous wrath."

That rainy day ended with a problem in the minds of at least three New

Eden dwellers: York Macpherson, who carried a bigger load now than Joe

Thomson's unwise but determined mortgage matter; Junius Brutus Ponk, who

was sharing York's problem to a degree, and Laura Macpherson, who

realized that a malicious under-current was already started whose

undermining influence might sooner or later grow into a menacing power.

And Jerry Swaim, unconscious cause of all this problem element, ate and

slept and laughed and dreamed her pretty day-dreams in utter content. It

was well that the next day was Sunday. The rain-washed prairie and the

June sunshine did so much to lift the tension in this New Eden where

even the good little snakes are not always so very good.

VI

PARADISE LOST

Laura Macpherson came through the dining-room on Monday morning with her

hands full of wild flowers.

"Wherefore?" York asked, seeing the breakfast-table already decorated

with a vase of sweet-peas.

"Just a minute, York. I got these with the dew on them--all prairie

flowers. I thought Jerry might be up to see me to-day. I went out after

them for her," Laura explained, as she arranged the showy blossoms in

vases about the rooms.

York dropped behind his day-old paper, calling after her, indifferently:

"I doubt if they are worth it. You must have gone to the far side of

'Kingussie' for them. I doubt, too, if she comes here to-day, but I

haven't any doubt that I am hungry and likely to get hungrier before you

get ready for breakfast."

"Coming, coming." Laura came hastily to the table. "I forgot you in my

interest in Jerry."

"A prevalent disease in New Eden right now," York said, behind his

paper. "Ponk nearly fell down on getting me a chauffeur for to-day; the

superintendent didn't get the quarterlies to our Sunday-school class on

time yesterday morning; the Big Dipper took the wrong pew and kept it,

and now my breakfast must wait--all on account of this Jerry girl."

"Mournful, mournful!" Laura declared. "Such a little girl, too! I'd like

to tell you what your Big Dipper said about Jerry Saturday, but I

mustn't."

"Saturday was a rainy day," York commented, knowing Laura would answer

no questions if he should ask them now.

"All the more reason why the Big Dipper should come over to copy my new

hat for one of the Poser girls up the Sage Brush, and then fall to

questions and conclusions," Laura insisted.

"I thought yesterday was the grand opening for that lid of yours. Where

did the B. D. see it?" York would not ask for what he wanted most to

know.

"It had positively never been out of the box since it came here," Laura

declared. "But pshaw, York, it is the gossip you want to know, and I'm

really concerned about that."

"I'm not. I am really concerned about where Stellar Bahrr saw your hat."

York was very serious and his sister was puzzled for the minute. He

never looked that way when he joked--never.

"I don't know anything about Mrs. Bahrr's gift of second sight, York;

I'm simply telling what I do know. That hat-box was not opened. Let's

talk of better things. Mr. Ponk told me at church yesterday that when

Jerry first came she asked for 'an old gentleman named York

Macpherson.'" Laura's eyes were twinkling with mischief. "From what she

said to me yesterday she is going to depend on you for direction, just

like everybody else who comes to New Eden. I'm dead in love with her

already. Aren't you?"

"Desperately," York returned. "But seriously, Laura, she is 'most too

big a responsibility to joke about. There are a lot of things tied up

for her in this coming West. I have to go to the upper Sage Brush this

morning to be gone for a couple of days. I wish she would come here and

stay with you, so that she might be with the best woman in the world."

York beamed affectionately upon the sweet-faced woman opposite him. "I

wish I didn't have to leave this morning, but I'll be back by to-morrow

night or early Wednesday morning. It is going to be our job to map out

her immediate future. After that, things will take their course without

us, and New Eden, I imagine, will have to get along without her. When I

get back I'll take her down to see her claim. Ponk is the only man

besides myself who knows where it is, and I've fixed him. He can't run a

hotel and garage and play escort all at once. I want to prepare her in a

way, anyhow, for she won't find exactly what she is expecting--another

'Eden' six times enlarged. Meantime turn her gently, if you can, toward

our woolly Western life. I won't say lead. Geraldine Swaim, late of

Philadelphia, will never be led."

"York she's a lamb. Look at her big, pleading eyes," his sister

insisted.

"Laura, she's a rock. Look at her square chin. I'm going now, and I will

and bequeath her to your care. Good-by."

As he left the house his sister heard him whistling the air to the old

song, "I'll paddle my own canoe."

Evidently the fair Philadelphian was still on his mind.

"I wish," he said to himself, as he cleared the north limits of the New

Eden settlement and struck out toward the upper Sage Brush country--"I

wish to goodness I had pressed Laura to tell me more about what that

infernal Big Dipper said to her Saturday. I'll get that creature yet. I

believe she knows that as well as I do. I wish, too, I was sure things

would just stay put until I get back."

Half an hour after York had left town Jerry Swaim, dressed for a drive,

appeared at the door of Ponk's garage.

"Have you a good little runabout that I could hire this morning? I want

to go out into the country," she said to the proprietor.

"Why, yes, Miss Swaim, but I 'ain't got no shofer this morning. York

Macpherson, he took my last man and soared up the country, and they

won't be back for a couple of days. I'm sorry, but could you wait till,

say, about a-Thursday, or mebby a-Friday?"

Ponk's cheerful grin always threatened to eclipse his eyes, but this

morning there was something anxious back of his cheerfulness. Nature had

made him in a joking mood, round eyed, round headed, round bodied,

talkative, and pompous in an inverse ratio to his size. But there was

something always good and reliable about Ponk, and with all his

superficiality, too, there was a real depth to the man, and a keener

insight than anybody in New Eden, except York Macpherson, ever gave him

credit for having.

"I'm sorry I've got no shofer. There was a run on the livery business

this morning for some reason. That's why I'm office-boy here now, 'stead

of runnin' the office next door," Ponk explained, as blandly and

conclusively as possible.

"I don't want a chauffeur at all. I drive myself," Jerry declared.

"You say you do?" Ponk stared at her little hands in their close-fitting

white gauntlets.

"Now I'd never thought that. Yes," weakly, "I've got a dandy car for

them that can use it, which is mostly me. It's the little gray gadabout

we come up from the station in the other evening. There ain't another

one like it this side of the Mississippi River--S'liny, Kansas, anyhow.

You see, I have to be awful particular. I don't want it smashed against

a stone wall or run off of some bridge."

"I've never done that with a car yet. And I used to drive our big

eight-cylinder machine over all kinds of Pennsylvania roads."

The blue eyes were full of pathos as the memory of her home and all its

luxuries swept over Jerry. And Ponk understood.

"We don't have no stone walls out here, and there ain't no bridges,

either, except across the Sage Brush in a few places, because there

ain't never water enough out here to bridge over. Yes, you may take the

gadabout. I just know you'll be careful. That little car's just like a

colt, and noways bridle-wise under a woman's hand."

"Thank you. I'll take no risks."

When Jerry was seated in the shining gray car, with her hand on the

wheel, she turned to Mr. Ponk.

"By the way, do you know who owns any of the claims, as you call them,

in this valley?" she asked. "I was going to speak to Mr. Macpherson, but

you say he has gone out of town."

"Yes'm." Ponk fairly swelled with importance. "I know every claim, and

who owns it, from the hills up yonder clear to the mouth of that stream.

My hotel an' livery business together keeps me as well posted as the

Macpherson Mortgage Company that holds a mortgage on most of them."

"Can you tell me where to find the one belonging to the estate of the

late Jeremiah Swaim, of Philadelphia?" Jerry asked, in a low voice.

The short little man beside the car looked away in pity and surprise as

he said:

"Yes'm, I can. You follow this street south and keep on till you come to

where the Sage Brush makes a sharp bend to the east, right at a

ranch-house. From there you leave the trail (we still call that

down-stream road 'the trail') and strike across to three big

cottonwood-trees on a kind of a knoll, considerable distance away. You

can't miss 'em, for you can see 'em for miles. And then"--Ponk hesitated

as if trying to remember--"seems to me you turn, bias'n' like, southeast

a bit, and head for a little bunch of low oaks. From there you run your

eye around and figger how many acres you can see. An', it's all Jeremiah

Swaim's, or his heirs an' assignees. But, say, _you_ ain't any kin to

the late Mr. Swaim, who never seen that land of hisn, I reckon? I hadn't

thought about your names being the same. Odd I didn't."

There was something wistful in the query which Jerry set down merely as

plebeian curiosity, but she answered, courteously:

"Yes, he was my father. The land belongs to me."

"Say, hadn't you better wait and let York Macpherson soar down with

you?" Ponk suggested. "It might be better, after all, mebby, not to go

alone to spy out the land, even if you can drive yourself. Seems to me

York said he'd be goin' down that way the last of the week. I do wish

you'd wait for York to go with you first."

"I want to go alone," Jerry replied, and with a deft hand she made the

difficult curve to the street, leaving the proprietor of the garage

staring after her.

"Well, by heck! she can run a car anyhow!" he exclaimed, as he watched

her speeding away. "Smart as her dad, I reckon. Mebby a little smarter."

All of Lesa Swaim's love of romantic adventure was shining on Jerry

Swaim's bright face as she came upon Laura Macpherson on the cool side

porch a few minutes later.

"I'm going out to inspect my royal demesne," she cried, gaily.

"Not to-day. I want you to spend the day with me, and you don't know the

road. You haven't any way to go. York will be home soon. He wants to

take you there himself. He understands land values, and, anyhow, you

oughtn't go alone," Laura Macpherson said, emphatically.

"That is just what Mr. Ponk said at the garage, but I want to go alone."

That "I want" settled everything with Jerry Swaim in the Kansas New Eden

as in the old "Eden" in the green valley of the Winnowoc.

"I have hired a runabout of Mr. Ponk. He gave me directions so I can't

miss the way. Good-by."

The trail down the Sage Brush was full of delight this morning for the

young Eastern girl who sent her car swiftly along the level road, almost

forgetting the landmarks of the way in the exhilaration of youth and

June-time. And, however out of place she might seem on the Western

prairie, no one could doubt her ability to handle a car.

"'Where the stream bends sharp to the east away from a ranch-house,'"

Jerry was quoting Ponk. "I'm sure I can't miss it if I follow his

directions and the stream and bend and house and cottonwood-trees and

oak-grove are really there. I love oaks and I hope my woodland is full

of them. There must be a woodland on my farm, even if the trees are few

and small and scattered here, so far as I have seen. But there was

really something pitiful in the little man's eyes when he was talking to

me. Maybe he is a wee bit envious of my possessions. Some men are

jealous of women who have property. No doubt my workmen will need

managing, and some adjusting to a new head of affairs. I'll be very

considerate with them, but they must respect my authority. I wish Gene

was with me this morning."

Then she fell to musing.

"I wonder what message Gene will send me, and whether he will write it

himself, or, as he suggested, will send it through Aunt Jerry's letters

to York. It was his original way of doing to say I'd find things out

through Aunt Jerry, when she probably won't write me a line for a long

time. I know Gene will choose nobly, and I know everything will turn out

all right at last.... I wonder if my place is as beautiful as this. How

I wish Gene could see it with his artist eyes."

Jerry brought her engine down to slow speed as she passed a thrifty

ranch-house where barns and clustering silos, and fields of grain and

cattle-dotted prairies outlying all, betokened the possibilities of the

Sage Brush Valley. The blue eyes of Lesa Swaim's daughter were full of

dreamy light as she paused to picture here the possibilities of her own

possessions.

At the crest of a low ridge the road forked, one branch wandering in and

out among the small willow-trees along the river, and the other cutting

clean and broad across the rougher open land swelling away from the

narrowed valley.

"Here's something Mr. Junius Brutus Ponk left out of his map. I'll take

the rim road; it looks the more inviting," Jerry decided, because the

way of least resistance had been her life-road always.

This one grew narrow and clung close to the water's side. Its sandy bed

was damp and firm, and the slender trees on either side here and there

almost touched branches overhead. Mile after mile it seemed to stretch

without another given landmark to show Jerry her destination. Beyond

where the road curved sharply around a thicket of small trees and

underbrush Jerry halted her car. Before her the waters of the river

rippled into foam against a rocky ledge that helped to form a deep hole

above it. Below, the stream was shallow, and in dry midsummer here

offered rough stepping-stones across it. It was a lonely spot, with the

river on one side and a tangle of bushes and tall weeds on the other,

and the curves along the roadway, filled with underbrush and low timber

shutting off the view up-stream and down-stream.

At the coming of Jerry's car a man who had been kneeling over some

fishing-lines at the river's edge rose up beside the road, brushing the

wet sand from his clothes, and staring at her. He was small and old and

stooped and fuzzy, and thoroughly unpretty to see.

"It's the Teddy Bear who 'sat in the sand and the sun' coming up from

that horrid railroad junction. Who's afraid of bears? I'll ask him how

to find my lost empire."

Jerry did not reflect that it was the unconscious effect of this humble

creature's thoughtfulness for her that made her unafraid of him in this

lonely spot. Reflection was not yet one of her active psychological

processes.

"I want to find a ranch-house by a big bend in the river where it turns

east," Jerry said, looking at the man much as she would look at the bend

in the river--merely for the information to be furnished. He pushed his

brown cap back from his forehead and rubbed his fingers thoughtfully

through his thin sunburnt hair.

"It's Joe's place, eh?" the high, quavering voice squeaking like an

unused machine afraid of itself. "You'd ought to took the t'other fork

of the road back yander. It's a goodish mile on down this way now to

where you das to turn your cyar round. When you get where you kin turn,

then go back and take the t'other fork. It'll take you right to Joe's

door about."

The words came hesitatingly, as if the speaker had little use for

sounding them in his solitary, silent life. Fishermen don't catch fish

by talking to them.

"A mile! I think I'll turn right here," Jerry declared.

Then, as the meek unknown watched her in open-mouthed wonder, she swung

her car deftly about, the outer wheels barely keeping a toe-hold on the

edge of the river-bank, with hardly more than an inch of space between

them and the crumbling sand above the water. As she faced the way over

which she had come she reached out to drop a piece of silver into the

man's hand. He let it fall to the ground, then picked it up and laid it

on the top of the car door.

"I ain't workin' for the gov'mint," he quavered. "I thankee, but I don't

have no knowin's to sell. Ye're welcome to my ketch of information any

day ye're on the river."

He made an odd half-military salute toward his old yellow-brown cap and

shuffled across the road toward a narrow path running back through the

bushes.

At the bend in the river Jerry found herself.

"That must be the ranch-house that Mr. Ponk gave me for a landmark, for

there goes the river bending east, all right. What a quaint, picturesque

thing that is, and built of stone, too, with ivy all over it! It must

have been here a long time. And how well kept everything is! The old

Teddy Bear said it was 'Joe's place.' Well, Joe keeps it looking as

different from some of the places I've passed as 'Eden' differs from

other country-places back in Pennsylvania."

The long, low, stone ranch-house, nestling under its sheltering vines,

had an old and familiarly homey look to Jerry.

"That wide porch is a dream. I'll have one just like it on my place. I

wonder if this farm has any name. I suppose not. What shall I call mine?

'New Eden' wouldn't do, of course. I might call it 'Paradise Prairie.'

That's pretty and smooth. Gene would like that, and talk a lot about

going 'from Nature up to Nature's God.' I don't care a whiff about all

his religious talk, somehow. That's just one thing wherein we will never

agree. If I can go from nature to the finished produce I'll be

satisfied. Oh, yonder are my three trees."

At the bend of the Sage Brush Jerry left the stream road and sped

across a long level swell toward three cottonwood-trees standing

sentinel on a small rise of the prairie. From there she was to see the

oak-grove, the center of her own rich holdings. Oh, Jerry!

<tb>

Down under the spreading oaks a young man in rough ranchman's dress

stood leaning against a low bough, absorbed in thought. He was tall,

symmetrically built, and strong of muscle, without a pound of

superfluous fat to suggest anything of ease and idleness in his day's

run. Some of the lines that mark the stubborn will were graven in his

brown face, but the eyes were all-redeeming. Even as he stared out with

unseeing gaze, lost in his own thoughts, the smile that lighted them

hovered ready to illuminate what might otherwise have been a severe

countenance.

In all the wide reach of level land there was no other living creature

in sight. The breeze pulsing gently through the oak boughs poured the

sunlight noiselessly down on the shadow-cooled grass about the

tree-trunks. The freshness of the morning lingered in the air of the

grove.

Suddenly the young man caught the sound of an automobile coasting down

the long slide from the three cottonwoods, and turned to see a young

girl in a shining gray car gliding down into the edge of the shade. A

soft hat of Delft-blue, ornamented, valkyrie-wise, with two white wings;

golden-gleaming hair overshadowing a face full of charm; blue eyes;

cheeks of peach-blossom pink; firm, red lips; a well-defined chin and

white throat; a soft gown, Delft-blue in color; and white gauntlet

gloves--all these were in the blurred picture of that confused moment.

As for Jerry Swaim, all farmer folk looked alike to her. It was not the

sudden appearance of a stranger, but the landscape beyond him, that held

her speechless, until the shrill whistle of a train broke the silence.

"Is that the Sage Brush Railroad so near?" she asked, at last, with no

effort at formal greeting.

"Yes, ma'am. It is just behind the palisades over there. You can't see

it from here because the sand-drifts are so high. That's the morning

freight now."

The light died out of Jerry Swaim's eyes, the pink bloom faded to ivory

in her cheeks, even the red lips grew pale, as she stared at the scene

before her. For the oak-grove stood a lone outpost of greenness

defending a more or less fertile countryside from a formless, senseless

monster beyond it. Jerry had pictured herself standing in the very

center of her heritage, where she might "run her eyes around," as Ponk

had said, "and figure how many acres she could see, and they were all

hers." And now she was here.

Wide away before her eyes rippled acre on acre, all hers, and all of

billowing sand, pointed only by a few straggling green shrubs. The glare

of the sunlight on it was intolerable, and the north wind, sweeping cool

and sweet under the oak-trees, brought no comfort to this glaring

desert.

Suddenly she recalled the pitying look in Ponk's eyes when he had begged

her to wait for York Macpherson to come with her to this place, and she

had thought he might be envious of her good fortune. And then she

remembered that Laura Macpherson had put up the same plea for York. He

was the shield and buckler for all New Eden, it would seem. And the

three, Laura and York and Ponk, all knew and were pitying her, Jerry

Swaim, who had been envied many a time, but never, never pitied. Even in

the loss of the Swaim estate in Philadelphia, Mrs. Jerusha Darby had

made it clear to every one that her pretty niece was still to be envied

as a child of good fortune.

Flinging aside her hat and gloves, unconscious of the stray sunbeams

sifting down through the oak boughs on her golden hair, Jerry Swaim

gazed toward the railroad with wide-open, burning eyes, and her white

face was pitiful to see. At length she turned to the young man who still

stood leaning against the oak bough beyond her car, waiting for her to

speak.

"Can I be of any service to you?" he asked, courteously.

"Who are you?" Jerry questioned, with unconscious bluntness.

"My name is Joe Thomson." The smile in his eyes lighted his face as he

spoke.

"Tell me all about this place, won't you?" Jerry demanded, pointing

toward the gleaming sands. "Was it always like this, here? I thought

when the Lord finished the earth He looked on His work and found it

good. Did He overlook this spot?"

Surprise and sarcasm and bitter disappointment were all in her tone as

she asked these questions.

Joe Thomson frowned as he replied:

"It wasn't an oversight at all. There was a fine piece of prairie here

until a few years ago, with only one little sandy strip zigzagging

across it. Ages back, there may have been a stream along that low place

yonder that dried up and blew away some time, when the forest fires

changed the prehistoric woodlands into prairies. I can't be accurate

about geology and such things if history and the Scriptures are silent

on these fine points."

Joe Thomson still stood leaning against the oak limb. The confusion of

meeting this handsome stranger had passed. He was in his own territory

now, talking of things of which he knew. He knew, too, how to put his

thoughts into good, expressive English.

"There are beautiful farms up the river--ranches, I mean. What has

changed this prairie to such an awful place?" Jerry questioned,

eagerly.

"Eastern capital and lack of brains and energy," Joe answered her. "It

is just a blowout, that's all. It began in that sandy strip in that low

place along over there by the railroad, where, as I say, some old

river-bed, maybe the Sage Brush, might have been long ago before it made

that big bend in its course up by my buildings. A crazy, money-mad fool

from back East came out here and plowed up all this ground one dry

season, a visionary fellow who dreamed of getting a fortune from the

land without any labor. And when the thing began to look like real work

he cut the whole game, just like a lot of other fools have done, and

went back East, leaving all these torn, unsodded acres a plaything for

the winds. There were three or four dry seasons right after that, and

the soil all went to dust and blew away. But the sand grew, and

multiplied, and surged over the face of this particular spot of the

Lord's earth until it has come to be a tyrant of power, covering all

this space and spreading slowly northward up over the next claim. That's

mine."

"What is it doing to your land?" Jerry asked.

"Ruining it," Joe replied, calmly.

"And you don't go mad?" the girl cried, impulsively.

"We don't go mad on the Sage Brush till the last resort, and we don't

often come to that. When we can't do one thing, out West, we do another.

That's all there is to it." The smile was in his eyes again as Joe said

this.

"Do you know who owns this ground now?" Jerry tried to ask as carelessly

as possible.

"An estate back in Pennsylvania, I believe," Joe replied.

"What is it worth?" Jerry's voice was hardly audible.

"Look at it. What do _you_ think it is worth, as a whole, or cut up into

town lots for a summer resort?" Joe demanded.

In spite of his calmness there was a harshness in his voice, and his

eyes were stern.

Jerry twisted her white hands helplessly. "I don't know--anything worth

knowing," she said, faintly, looking full into the young man's face for

the first time.

Afterward she remembered that he was powerfully built, that his eyes

were dark, and that his teeth showed white and even, as he repeated,

with a smile:

"You don't know anything worth knowing. You don't quite look the part."

"Why don't you answer my question?"

Back of the light in Jerry's eyes Joe saw that the tears were waiting,

and something in her face hurt him strangely.

"I think this claim is not worth--an effort," he declared, frankly,

looking out at the wind-heaved ridges of sand.

"What brought you here to look at it, then?" Jerry demanded.

"Partly to despise the fool who owned it and let it become a curse."

"Do you know him?" the girl inquired.

"No. But if I did I should despise him just the same," Joe Thomson

declared.

"What if he were dead?" Jerry asked.

"Pardon me, but may I ask what brought you down here to look at such a

place?" Joe interrupted her.

"I came down here to find out its value. It belongs to me. My only

inheritance. I have always lived in a big city until now, and I know

little of country life except its beauty and comfort, and nothing at all

of the West. But I can understand you when you say that this claim is

not worth an effort. I hope I shall never, never see it again. Good-by."

The firm, red lips quivered and the blue eyes looked up through real

tears as Jerry Swaim drew on her gloves and fitted the soft blue hat

down on the golden glory of her hair. Then without another word she

turned her car about and sped away.

II

JERRY AND JOE

VII

UNHITCHING THE WAGON FROM A STAR

How long is a mid-June day? Ticked off by the almanac, it is so much

time as lies between the day-dawn and the dark of evening. But Jerry

Swaim lived a lifetime in that June day in which she went out to enter

upon her heritage. From the moment she had turned away from the young

farmer under the oak-trees until she reached the forks of the road again

she did not take cognizance of a single object. The three big cottonwood

sentinels, the vine-covered ranch-home, the deep bend of the Sage Brush

to the eastward, were passed unnoted. Ponk's gray gadabout seemed to

know the way home like a faithful horse.

There was no apparent reason why the junction of the two highways should

have momentarily called the bewildered disappointed girl to her calmer

self. No more was there anything logical in her choosing to turn again

down the narrow river road. The lone old fisherman was the farthest down

in the scale from Geraldine Swaim of any human being who had ever shown

her a favor. He could not have had any interest for her.... But York

Macpherson was correct in his estimate of Jerry. She was a type in

herself alone. She drove far beyond the narrow place by the deep hole

where, with accurate eye and clear skill, she had played a game of

chance with the river and fate and guardian angels. Her tires had cut a

wide, curving gash across the sand of the road.

"My gracious alive! that was a close turn!" she exclaimed, as she caught

sight of her wheel-marks. "No wonder the old Teddy Bear looked scared.

One inch or less! Well, there was that inch. But what for? To enter on

my vast landed--vast sanded--estate in the kingdom of Kansas!"

Jerry smiled grimly in ridicule of her foolish, defrauded self. Then in

a desperate effort to blot out of mind what she had seen she hurled the

gray car madly forward. With the bewildered gropings of a shipwrecked

landsman she was struggling to get her bearings, she for whom the earth

had been especially designed. As the hours passed the road became dry

and sunny, with the north breeze tempering the air to the coolness of a

rare Kansas June day, entirely unlike the hot and windy one on which

Jerry had first come up this valley. She did not, in reality, cover many

miles now, because she made long stops in sheltered places and at times

let the gray machine merely creep on the sunny stretches, but in her

mind she had girdled the universe.

In the late afternoon she turned about wearily, as one who has yet many

leagues of ground to cover before nightfall. The sunlight glistened

along the surface of the river and a richer green gleamed in what had

been the shadowy places earlier in the day; but the driver in the car

paid little heed to the lights and shadows of the way.

"If a man went right with himself." Cornelius Darby's words came

drifting across the girl's mind. "Poor Uncle Cornie! He didn't begin to

live, to me, until he was gone. Maybe he knew what it meant for a man

_not_ to go right with himself. And if a woman went right with herself!"

Jerry halted her car again by the deep hole and looked at nothing where

the Sage Brush waters were rippling over the rough ledge in its bed. For

the first time since she had sat under the oak-trees and looked at the

acres that were hers, Jerry Swaim really found herself on solid ground

again. The bloom came slowly back to the ashy cheeks, and the light into

the dark-blue eyes.

"If I can only go right with myself, I shall not fail. I need time,

that's all. There will be a letter from Eugene waiting when I get back

to town, and that will make up for a lot. There must be some way out of

all the mistakes, too. It wasn't my land that I saw. Mr. Ponk must have

directed me wrongly. That country fellow may not know the facts. I'll go

back and ask York Macpherson right away. Only, he's gone out of town for

two days. Oh dear!"

She wrung her hands as the picture of that oak-grove and all that lay

beyond it came vividly before her. She tried to forget it and for a

moment she smiled to herself deceivingly, and then--the smile was gone

and by the determined set of her lips Jerry was her father's own

resolute child again.

"I don't exactly know what next, except that I'm hungry. Why, it is five

o'clock! Where has this day gone, and where am I, anyhow?"

Her eyes fell on the broad ruts across the road. Then back in the bushes

she caught a glimpse of a low roof.

"I smell fish frying. I'll starve to death if I wait to get back to the

Commercial Hotel!" Jerry exclaimed. "Here's the wayside inn where I find

comfort for man and beast."

She called sharply with her horn. In a minute the fuzzy brown fisherman

came shuffling along the narrow path through the bushes.

"I'm dreadfully hungry," Jerry said, bluntly.

It did not occur to her to explain to this creature why she happened to

be here and hungry at this time. She wanted something; that was

sufficient.

"Can't you let me have some of your fish? I am desperate," she went on,

smiling at the surprised face of the man who stared up at her in

silence.

"Yes'm, I can give you what I eat. Just a minute," he squeaked out, at

last. Then he shuffled back to where the bit of roof showed through the

leaves.

While the girl waited a tall, slender woman came around the brushy bend

ahead. She halted in the middle of the road and stared a moment at

Jerry; then she came forward rapidly and passed the car without looking

up. She wore a plain, grayish-green dress, with a sunbonnet of the same

hue covering her face--all very much like the bushes out of which she

seemed to have come and into which she seemed to melt again. In her hand

she carried a big parcel lightly, as if its weight was slight. As Jerry

turned and looked after her with a passing curiosity, she saw that the

woman was looking back also. The young city-bred girl had felt no fear

of the strange country fellow in the far-away oak-grove; she had no fear

of this uncouth fisherman in this lonely hidden place; but when she

caught a mere glimpse of this woman's eyes staring at her from under the

shadows of the deep sunbonnet a tremor of real fright shook her hands

grasping the steering-wheel. It passed quickly, however, with the

reappearance of the host of the wayside inn.

"This is delicious," Jerry exclaimed, as the hard scaly hands lifted a

smooth board bearing her meal up to her.

Fried fish, hot corn-bread, baked in husks in the ashes, wild

strawberries with coarse brown sugar sprinkled on them, and a cup of

fresh buttermilk.

The girl ate with the healthy appetite that youth, a long fast, a day in

the open, and a well-cooked meal can create. When she had finished she

laid a silver half-dollar on the board beside the cracked plate.

"'Tain't nuthin'; no, 'tain't nuthin'. I jis' divided with ye," the

fisherman insisted, shrilly.

"Oh, it is worth a dollar to drink this good buttermilk!"

Jerry lifted the cup, a shining silver mug, and turned it in the light.

It was of an old pattern, with a quaint monogram on one side.

"This looks like an heirloom," she thought. "Why should a bear with

cracked plates and iron knives and forks offer me a drink in a silver

cup? There must be a story back of it. Maybe he's a nobleman in

disguise. Well, the disguise is perfect. After all, it's as good as a

novel to live in Kansas."

Jerry slowly sipped the drink as these thoughts ran through her mind.

The meal was helping wonderfully to take the edge off of the tragedy of

the morning. It would overwhelm her again later, but in this shady,

restful solitude it slipped away.

She smiled down at the old man at the thought of him in a story. _Him!_

But the smile went straight to his heart; that was Jerry's gift, making

him drop his board tray and break the cracked plate in his confusion.

"Here's another quarter. That was my fault," Jerry insisted.

"Oh no'm, no'm! 'Tain't nobody's fault." The voice quavered as the

scaly brown hand thrust back the proffered coin.

Jerry could not understand why this creature should refuse her money.

Tipping, to her mind, covered all the obligations her class owed to the

lower strata of the earth's formation.

<tb>

At sunset York Macpherson drove into Ponk's garage.

"Hello, fellow-townsman! You look like a sick man!" he exclaimed, as the

owner met him in the doorway.

"I'd 'a' been a dead man if you hadn't come this minute," Ponk growled

back.

"Congratulations! The good die young," York returned. "I failed to get

through to the place I wanted to see. That Saturday rain filled the dry

upper channels where a bridge would rot in the tall weeds, but an

all-day rain puts a dangerous flood in every ford, so I came back in

time to save your life. What's your grievance?"

Ponk's face was agonizing between smiles and tears. "Well, spite of all

I, or _anybody_ could do, Miss Swaim takes my little gadabout this

morning and makes off with it."

"And broke the wind-shield? I told you to keep her at home."

York still refused to be serious.

"I don't know what's broke, except my feelin's. You tried yet to _keep_

her anywhere? She would go off to that danged infernal blowout section

of the country, _and she ain't back yet_."

York Macpherson grasped the little man by the arm. "Not back yet! Where

is she, then?"

"She ain't; that's all I know," Ponk responded, flatly. "Yes, yes,

yonder she is just soarin' into the avenue up by 'Castle Cluny' this

minute. Thank the Lord an' that Quaker-colored gadabout!"

"Tell her I'll see her at the hotel as soon as I get my mail," York

said, and he hurried to his office.

A few minutes later Jerry Swaim brought the gray runabout up to the

doorway of the garage.

Ponk assisted her from it and took the livery hire mechanically.

"Thank you, Miss Swaim. Hope you had a safe day. No'm, that's too much,"

handing back a coin of the change. "That's regular. Yes'm." Then, as an

afterthought, he added, with a bow, "York Macpherson he's in town again,

an' he's waitin' to see you in the hotel 'parlor.'"

"Oh!" a gasp of surprise and relief. "Thank you, Mr. Ponk. Yes, I have

had a safe day." And Jerry was gone.

The little man stared after her for a full minute. Then he gave a long

whistle.

"She's a Spartan, an' she's goin' to die game. I'll gamble on that with

Rockefeller. This is the rummiest, bummiest world I ever lived in," he

declared to himself. "Why _the_ dickens does the blowouts have to fall

on the just as well as the unjust 's what I respectfully rise to ask of

the Speaker of all good an' perfect gifts. An' I'm goin' to keep the

floor till I get the recognition of Chair."

York Macpherson was standing with his back to the window, so that his

face was in the shadow, when Jerry Swaim came into the little parlor.

Her eyes were shining, and the pink bloom on her cheek betokened the

tenseness of feeling held in check under a calm demeanor.

"Pardon me for keeping you waiting, Mr. Macpherson. I've been away from

town all day and I wanted to get my mail before I came in. I'm a long

way from everybody, you know."

There may have been a hint of tears in the voice, but the blue eyes were

very brave.

"And you got it?"

That was not what York meant to say. It was well that his face was in

the shadow while Jerry's was in the light. There are times when a man's

heart may be cut to the quick, and because he is a man he must not cry

out.

"No, not to-day. I don't know why," Jerry replied, slowly, with a

determined set of her red lips, while the fire in her blue-black eyes

burned steadily and the small hands gripped themselves together.

"I haven't had a word since I left home, and I had hoped that I might

find a letter waiting for me here."

"Letters are delayed, and letter-writers, too, sometimes. Maybe they are

all busy with Mrs. Darby's affairs. I remember when I was a boy up on

the Winnowoc she could keep me busier than anybody else ever did," York

offered.

"It must be that. Of course it must. Aunt Jerry is as industrious as I

am idle." Jerry gave a sigh of relief.

After the strain of this day, it was vastly comforting to her to stop

thinking _forward_, and just remember how beautiful it must be at "Eden"

now; and Eugene was there, and it was twilight. But like a hot blast the

memory of the hot sand-heaps of her landed estate came back.

"Did you want to see me about something?" she asked, suddenly. "Mr. Ponk

said you did."

"Yes, Jerry. I came here to see you because my sister and I want you to

come out to our house at once, and I have orders from Laura not to come

home without you."

"You are very kind. You know where I have been to-day?"

York smiled. Even in her abstraction Jerry felt the genial force of that

smile. How big and strong he was, and there was such a sense of

protection in his presence.

"Yes. You denied me the privilege of escorting you on this journey. I

had written a full description of your property to Cornelius Darby, in

reply to some questions of his, but his death must have come before the

letter reached Philadelphia. In the mass of business matters Mrs. Darby

may have missed my report."

"She may have," Jerry echoed, faintly. "I cannot say. Then it is my

estate that is all covered with sand, barren and worthless as a desert?

I thought I might have been mistaken."

The hope died out of Jerry's face with the query.

"I wish I could have saved you this surprise," York said, earnestly.

"Come home with me now. 'Castle Cluny' must be your castle, too, as long

as you can put up with us. And you can take plenty of time to catch your

breath. The earth is a big place, and, while most of it is covered with

water, very little of it is covered entirely with sand."

How kind his tones were! Jerry remembered again that both his sister and

Mr. Ponk had urged her to wait for his coming. But she was not

accustomed to waiting for anybody. A faint but persistent self-blame

gripped her.

"May I stay with you until I find where I really am? Just now I'm all

smothered in bewildering sand-dunes." She smiled up at the tall man

before her with a confiding, appealing earnestness.

Many women smiled upon York Macpherson. Many women confided in him. He

was accustomed to it.

"Laura will consider it a boon, for you must know that she sometimes

gets a trifle lonely in New Eden. We'll call the compact finished." Only

a gracious intuition could have turned the favor so graciously back to

the recipient. But that was York's gift.

In the dining-room at "Castle Cluny" that evening Jerry noticed a silver

cup with a quaintly designed monogram on one side.

"That's an old heirloom," Laura said, as she saw her guest's eyes fixed

on it. "Like everything else in this house, it is coupled up with some

old Macpherson clan tradition, as befitting an old bachelor and old maid

of that ilk."

"We used to have two of them," York said.

"We have yet somewhere," Laura replied. "I hadn't missed one from the

sideboard before. It must be back in the silver-closet, with other old

silver and old memories."

Jerry's day had been full of changes, up and down, from hope to bitter

disappointment, from reality to forgetfulness, from clear conception to

bewildered confusion, her mind had run since she had left the oak-grove

in the forenoon. When she had occasion to remember that silver cup

again, she wondered how she could have passed it over so lightly at this

time.

Although Jerry's problem was very real, and she brought to its solution

neither experience nor discipline, unselfish breadth nor spiritual

trust, there was something in the homey atmosphere of "Castle Cluny"

that seemed to smooth away the long day's wrinkles for her. Out in the

broad porch in the twilight she nestled down like a tired child among

the cushions, and gazed dreamily out at the evening landscape. York had

been called away by a neighbor and Laura and her guest were alone.

"How beautiful it is here!" Jerry murmured, as the afterglow of a

prairie sunset flooded the sky with a splendor of rose and opal and

amethyst. "I saw a sunset like that not long ago in an art exhibit in

Philadelphia. I thought then there couldn't be such a real sunset. It

was in a landscape all yellow-gray and desert-like. I thought that was

impossible, too. I've seen both--land and sky--to-day, and both are

greater than the artist painted them."

"The artist never equals the thing he is trying to copy, neither can he

create anything utterly unreal. I missed the exhibits very much when I

first came West, but this is some compensation," Laura said,

meditatively.

"Do you ever get lonely here? I suppose not, for you didn't come to find

a great disappointment when you came to New Eden," Jerry declared,

watching the tranquil face of her hostess.

"No, Jerry, I brought my disappointment with me," Laura said, with a

smile that made her look very much like her brother. And Jerry realized

that Laura Macpherson's maimed limb had not broken her heart. Laura was

a very new type to her guest.

"Oh, I get lonely sometimes and resentful sometimes," Laura went on,

"but we get over a good many little things in the day's run. And then I

have York, you know, and now and then a guest who means a great deal to

me. I have so many interests here, too. You'll like New Eden when you

really know us. And up here this porch has become my holy of holies.

There is something soothing and healing in the breezes that sweep up the

Sage Brush on summer evenings. There is something restful in the stretch

of silent prairie out there, and the wide starlit sky above it. Kansas

sooner or later always has a message for the sons and daughters of men."

"And something always interesting in our neighbors. See who approaches."

York, who had just come up the side steps, supplemented his sister's

remark.

"Oh, that is Mrs. Stella Bahrr, the Daily Evening News. Jerry, York can

always unhitch your wagon from its star. She really is his black beast,

though; but you can't expect mere men to take an interest in milliners,

make-overs, at that, however much interest they take in millinery and

what is under it."

"And millinery bills, with or without interest," York interfered again.

"Mrs. Bahrr will want a full report of Jerry, with the blank spaces for

remarks filled out," Laura went on. "Why, she has changed her course and

is tacking away with the wind."

"Going over to the Lenwells', I suppose. They are in some way sort of

distantly related to her. Just near enough, anyhow, to listen to all her

stories, and then say: 'For goodness sake don't say I told it; I got it

from Stellar, you know.' She will put into any port right now. I'm her

lighthouse warning," York declared. "She never approaches when I'm

present."

York had risen and was standing in the doorway, where the growing moon

revealed him clearly. Mrs. Bahrr, coming up the walk toward the

Macpherson drive, suddenly turned about and hurried away, her tall,

angular form in relief against the sky-line in the open space that lay

between the Macpherson home and the nearest buildings down the slope

toward the heart of the town.

"Coming back to common things," York continued, dropping into his

favorite chair. "My sister scandalizes me on every occasion. Whether or

not you hitch your wagon to a star, Jerry, is not so important, after

all. The real test is in just what kind of a star you hitch to. That

will tell whether you are going to ride to glory or cut such a figure as

the cow did that jumped over the moon."

"It is not always that lawyers give counsel for nothing, Jerry," Laura

began, but the line of talk was again interrupted.

The coming of callers led to many lines of discussion during the long

summer evening, in which Jerry took little part. In this new hemisphere

in which she was trying to find herself, where east seemed south and her

right hand her left, there was so much of the old hemisphere against

which she had partly burnt her bridges. The friendly familiarity of New

Eden neighbors was very different from the caste exclusiveness of the

Darby-Swaim set in Philadelphia. With the Winnowoc Valley people the

rich landholders had no social traffic. But the broad range of

conversation to-night, token of general information, called up home

memories in Jerry's mind and the long evenings when Jim Swaim's friends

gathered there to discuss world topics with her father, while she

listened with delight to all that was said. Her mother didn't care for

these things and wondered why her artistic daughter could be so

interested in them. But when the Macphersons and their guests spoke of

the latest magazines and the popular fiction and the recent drama it

brought up Lesa Swaim in her element to the listening young stranger. It

seemed so easy for the Macphersons to entertain gracefully, to make

everybody at home in the shadowy comfort of that big porch, to bring in

limeade and nut-cakes in cut-glass and fine china service, to forget

none of the things due to real courtesy, and yet to envelop all in the

genuine, open-hearted informality of the genial, open-hearted West.

Long after the remainder of the Macpherson household was asleep Jerry

Swaim lay wide awake, her mind threshed upon with the situation in which

she had suddenly found herself. And over and over in the aisles of her

thoughts what York Macpherson had said about unhitching from a star ran

side by side with Uncle Cornie's words, "If a man went right with

himself."

VIII

IF A MAN WENT RIGHT WITH HIMSELF

There were two of a kind of the Swaim blood, Geraldine Swaim, who had

always had her own way, and Jerusha Swaim Darby, who had always had her

own way. When the wills and the ways of these two clashed--well, Jerusha

had lived many years and knew a thing or two by experience that niece

Geraldine had yet to learn.

On the very day that Jerry Swaim left "Eden" Mrs. Darby had gone into

the city for a conference with her late husband's business associates.

Sloth in action never deprived her of any opportunities; and quick

action now meant everything in the accomplishment of the purpose she had

before her.

"Cornelius was such a quiet man, he was never very much company. He

really did not care for people, like most men," Mrs. Darby said to her

business partners, who had known her husband intimately. "Eugene

Wellington has already surpassed him in getting hold of some things he

never quite reached to, being an older man. And now that Eugene is

proving such splendid help in taking up the less important details in my

affairs he ought to do fine clerical work in the House here. There is no

telling how much ability he may have for being useful to all of us along

the lines that Cornelius has developed. He has proved that he is equal

to a lot of things besides painting. People of little brain power and

financial skill ought to paint the pictures and not rob our big affairs

of business ability."

Mrs. Darby held a controlling interest in the House, so the outcome of

the conference was that an easy berth on more than moderate pay, with

possible prospects--just possible, of course--was what Mrs. Darby had to

take back to "Eden" to serve up to Eugene Wellington when he should

return from his brief errand up in the Winnowoc country. And as that was

what Mrs. Darby wished to accomplish, her day's journey to the city was

a success.

Only, that Winnowoc local was uncomfortably hot and crowded. Her trusty

chauffeur had resigned his position on the day after Cornelius was

buried, and Mrs. Darby was timid about the bluff road, anyhow. If only

Jerry had been here to drive for her! With all Jerry's dash and slash,

she was a fearless driver and always put the car exactly where she

wanted it to be. There was some satisfaction in having a hand like

Jerry's on the steering-wheel. So, pleased as to one horn of her

dilemma, but tired and perspiring, Mrs. Darby came home determined more

than ever to bring about her other purpose--to have Jerry Swaim in her

home, because she, Jerusha Darby, wanted her there.

Jerry always filled the place with interest. And Jerry was gone,

actually gone, bag and baggage. She had cleared out that morning early

on a fool's errand to Kansas. What right had Jerry to go off to earn a

living when a living was here ready-made merely for her subjection to a

selfish old woman's wishes? Mrs. Darby did not think it in such words,

because she no more understood her own mind than that pretty girl with

her dark-blue eyes and wavy, gold-tinged hair understood her own mind.

One thing she did understand--Jerry must come back.

A week later Eugene Wellington dropped off the morning train running

down from Winnowoc. It was too early for the household to be astir, save

the early feeder of stock and milker of kine, the early

man-of-all-odd-jobs who looked after the fowls, and the early

maid-of-all-good-things-to-eat who would have big puffy biscuit for

breakfast, with tender fried chicken and gravy that would stand alone.

All the homey sounds of the early summer morning flitted out from the

"Eden" kitchen and barn-yard. But the misty stillness of dawn rested on

the "Eden" lawns, whose owner, with the others of the household, was not

yet awake.

At the rose-arbor the young artist paused to let the refreshing morning

zephyrs sweep across his face. He wondered if Jerry was awake yet. Ever

since he had left "Eden" the hope had been growing in him that she would

change her mind. After all, Aunt Jerry might be right about it. This was

too beautiful a house to throw aside for a whim--an ideal, however

fine, of self-support and all that. Women were made to be cared for, not

to support themselves--least of all a pretty, wilful, but winsomely

magnetic creature like Jerry Swaim, with her appealing, beautiful eyes,

her brown hair all glinted with gold, her strong little white hands, and

her daring spirit, exhilarating as wine in its exuberant influence. No,

Jerry mustn't go. She belonged to the soft and lovely settings of life.

Eugene leaned against the door of the rose-arbor as these things filled

his mind, and a love of the luxuries that surrounded him here drove back

for the moment the high purpose of his own life.

In the woodwork of the arbor, where the lightning had left its imprint,

he saw a little white envelop wedged in a splintered rift. The rose-vine

had hid it from every angle except the one he had chanced to take. He

slipped it out and read this inscription:

"To Mr. Eugene Wellington, Artist."

Inside, on Jerry's visiting-card, in her own hand-writing, was the

message: "Write me at New Eden, Kansas, Care of Mr. York Macpherson.

Don't forget what we are going to do, and when we have done, and won,

we'll meet again. Good-by. Jerry."

The young artist dropped the card and stared down the lilac-bordered

avenue toward the shadowy gray-blue west whither Jerry Swaim was gone.

And all the world seemed gray-blue, a great void, where there was

neither top nor bottom. Then he picked up the card again and put it into

his pocket, and went into the house to get ready for breakfast.

Mrs. Darby greeted his return as warmly as it was in her repressed

nature to do, conveying to him, not by any word, the feeling that he

meant more to her now than he had ever meant before.

"Didn't Jerry leave suddenly? I didn't know she was going so soon. I--I

was hoping--to find her here," was what he was going on to say.

"That she would be willing to stay here; to give up this scheme of

hers." Mrs. Darby finished the sentence for him. "Yes, I hoped so, too.

That was the only right thing to do. She chose her own time for leaving,

but she will be back soon if we manage right. Don't be a bit

discouraged, Eugene, and don't give up to her too much. She loves a

resisting force. She always did."

Eugene looked anything but encouraged just then. All "Eden" was but an

echo of Jerry Swaim, and the droop of his well-formed lips suggested

only a feeble resisting force against her smallest wish.

"She is my own flesh and blood. I know her best, of course," Mrs. Darby

went on. "The only way to meet her is to let her meet you. But we will

drop that now. After breakfast I want you to look up the men. I have

told them to report to you on the crop values, and harvest plans, and

fall seeding later. Look over the place well, won't you? Then meet me in

the rose-arbor at ten o'clock for a cup of tea and we will counsel

together."

Mrs. Darby would have told the late Cornelius to "come in for

instructions later." But Eugene Wellington wasn't a sure result. He was

only in the process of solution. And Eugene, being very human, was

unconsciously flattered by this deference to a penniless young man. It

made him pleased with himself and gave him a vague sense of

proprietorship which Cornelius Darby, the real-in-law owner of this fine

country estate, never dreamed of enjoying.

"I wonder what Jerry is doing this morning," he thought as he rode

Cornelius Darby's high-school-gaited horse to the far side of the place.

"The more I see of this farm the finer it looks to me. Not a foot of

waste ground, not a nesting-place for weeds, not a broken fence; grove

and stream, and tilled fields, and gardens, and lawns, and well-kept

buildings. Not an unpainted board nor broken hinge--everything in

perfect repair except that splintered framework at the rose-arbor." He

paused on a little ridge above the Winnowoc from which the whole farm

lay in full view. His artistic eye noted the peaceful beauty of the

scene, the growing crops, the yellowing wheat, the black-green corn, the

fertile meadows swathed in June sunshine, the graceful shrubbery and big

forest trees through which the red-tiled roofs of the buildings glowed,

the pigeons circling about the cupolas of the barn. And not the least

attractive feature of the picture, although he was unconscious of it,

was the young artist himself, astride a graceful black horse, in relief

against a background of wooded border of the bluff above the clear

gurgling Winnowoc. Eugene looked well on horseback, although he was no

lover of horses, and preferred the steady, sure mounts to the spirited

ones.

"I wonder if Jerry's big estate can be as well appointed as this. I wish

she were here with me now." The rider fell to dreaming of Jerry, trying

to put her in a picture of this "Eden" six times enlarged.

<tb>

At this same hour Jerry Swaim was sitting in Junius Brutus Ponk's gray

runabout under the shade of the low oak-grove, gazing with burning eyes

at her own kingdom built out of Kansas sand.

<tb>

Mrs. Darby had hot coffee and cold chicken and cherry preserves and cake

with blackberry wine all daintily served for a hungry man to enjoy after

a long three hours on horseback in the sunshine. The rose-arbor was

odorous with perfume from the sweet-peas, clinging to the trellis that

ran between the side lawn and the grape-arbor.

What took place in that council had its results in the letter that

Eugene Wellington wrote that night to Jerry Swaim. He did not mail it

for several days, and when he went to his tasks on the morning after his

fingers had let go of it at the lip of the iron mail-box, the artist in

him said things to him that to the day of his death he would never quite

forget.

<tb>

Late one afternoon, a fortnight after the day of Jerry's visit to her

claim, Ponk, of the Commercial Hotel and Garage, slipped into the office

of the Macpherson Mortgage Company.

"York, what happens to folks that tends to other folks's affairs?" he

asked, as he spread his short proportions over a chair beside York's

desk.

"Sometimes they get the gratitude of posterity. More generally their

portion is present contempt and future obscurity. Are you in line for

promotion on that, Ponk?" York replied.

"I'm 'bout ready to take chances," Ponk said, with a good-natured grin.

"All right. Am I involved in your scheme of things?" York inquired.

"You bet you are," Ponk assured him. "And, to be brief, knowin' how

valuable your time is for gougin' mortgages out of unsuspectin'

victims--"

"Well, we haven't foreclosed on the Commercial Hotel and Garage yet,"

York interrupted.

"No, but you're likely to the minute my back's turned. That's why I have

to go facin' south all the time. But to get to real business now,

York--"

"I wish you would," York declared.

His caller paid no heed to the thrust, and continued, seriously, "I

can't get some things off my mind, and I've got to unload, that's all."

"Go ahead. I'm your dumping-ground," York said, with a smile.

"That's what you are, you son of a horse-thief. I mean the tool of a

grasping bunch of loan sharks known as the Macpherson Mortgage Company.

Well, it's that young lady at your house."

"I see. We robbed you of a boarder," York suggested.

"Aw, shut up an' listen, now, will you? You know I'm a man of affairs

here. Owner and proprietor and man-of-all-work at the Commercial Hotel

an' Gurrage, bass soloist in the Baptist choir, and--by the removal of

the late deceased incumbent--also treasurer of the board of education of

the New Eden schools--"

"All of which has what to do with the young lady from Philadelphia?"

York inquired, blandly.

"Well, listen. Here's where tendin' to other folks's business comes in.

A good-lookin' but inexperienced young lady comes out here from

Philadelphia to find a claim left her by her deceased father. Out she

goes to see said claim, payin' me good money for my best car--to ride in

state over her grand province--of sand. And there wasn't much change but

a pearl-handle knife an' a button-hook in her purse when she pays for

the use of the car, even when I cut down half a buck on the regular

hire. Her kind don't know rightly how to save money till they 'ain't

none to save. But the look in her eyes when she come steamin' in from

that jaunt was more 'n I could stand. York, she ain't the first

Easterner to be fooled by the promise of the West. Not the real West,

you understand, but the sham face o' things put up back East. An' here

she be in our midst. Every day she goes by after the mail gets in,

looking like one of them blue pigeons with all the colors of a opal on

their necks, and every day she goes back with her face white around the

mouth. She's walkin' on red-hot plowshares and never squealin'." Ponk

paused, while York sat combing his fingers through his hair in silence.

"You know I'm some force on the school board, if I don't know much. I

ain't there to teach anybody anything, but to see that such ignoramuses

as me ain't put up to teach children. Now we are shy one teacher in the

high-school by the sudden resignation of the mathematics professor to

take on underwritin' of life insurance in the city. Do you suppose she'd

do it? Would it help any if we offered the place to Miss Swaim? It might

help to keep her in this town."

"Ponk, your heart's all right," York said, warmly. "It would help, I'm

sure, if the lady is to stay here, for she is without means. She might

or might not be willing to consider this opening. I can't forecast

women. But, Ponk, could she teach mathematics? You know she was probably

fashionably finished--never educated--in some higher school. If it were

embroidery, or something like that, it might be all right."

"Oh, you trust me to judge a few things, even if I'm not up on the

gentle art of foreclosin' mortgages and such. I know that girl could

teach mathematics. Anybody who can run a car like she can with as true a

eye for curves an' distances, and a head for bossin' a machine that runs

by engine power, couldn't help but teach algebry and geometry just true

as a right angle. But mebby," and Ponk's countenance fell--"mebby she'd

not want to, nor thank me noways, nor you, neither, for interfering in

the matter. But I just thought I'd offer you the chance to mebby help

her get on her feet. I don't know, though. I'd hate to lose her

good-will. I just couldn't stand it."

"Ponk, I appreciate your motive," York said, feelingly. "I will take

this up as soon as I can with Miss Swaim. You see, she's our guest and I

can't very gracefully suggest that she seek employment. And, to be frank

with you, my sister has become very fond of her--Laura misses a good

many good things on account of her lameness--and we would like to keep

her our guest indefinitely; but we can't do that, of course."

"I don't wonder your sister wants her. Of course, you don't care nothin'

about it yourself. An' I'll have the board hold the place awhile to see

what 'll happen. I must soar back home now." And the little man left the

office.

"Sound to the core, if he does strut when strangers come to town.

Especially ladies. That's the only way some little men have of

attracting attention to themselves. A kind-hearted man as ever came up

the Sage Brush," York commented, as he watched his caller crossing the

street to the hotel.

That evening Jerry Swaim sat alone on the porch of the Macpherson home,

where shafts of silvery moonlight fell through the honeysuckle vines.

What York Macpherson would have called a fight between Jim Swaim's chin

and Lesa's eyes was going on in Jerry's soul this evening. Since her

visit to her claim life had suddenly become a maze of perplexities. She

had never before known a care that could not have been lifted from her

by others, except the one problem of leaving Philadelphia, and the

solution of that might have been the prank of a headstrong child,

prompted by self-will and love of adventure, rather than by the grave

decision of well-poised judgment. Heretofore in all her ventures a safe

harbor had been near to shelter her. Now she was among the breakers and

the storm was on.

For the first time in her memory her purse was light and there was no

visible source from which to refill it. She was too well-bred to tax the

hospitality of the Macpherson home, where she was made to feel herself

so welcome. To return to Philadelphia meant to write and ask for the

expenses of transportation. She had burned too many bridges behind her

to meet the humility of such a request just yet; for that meant the

subjection of her whole future to Jerusha Darby's will, and against such

subjection Jerry's spirit rebelled mightily.

Every day for two weeks the girl had gone to the post-office with an

eager, expectant face. Every evening she had asked York Macpherson if he

had heard anything from Philadelphia since her coming, the pretended

indifference in her tone hardly concealing the longing behind the query.

But not a line from the East had come to New Eden for her.

On the afternoon of this day the postmaster had hurried through the

letters because he, too, had caught the meaning of the hunger in the

earnest eyes watching him through the little window among the

letter-boxes. The mail was heavy to-day, but the distributer paused with

one letter, long enough to look at it carefully, and then, leaving his

work half finished, he hurried to the window.

"Here's something for you. Aren't you Miss Swaim?" he inquired,

courteously, as he pushed the letter toward Jerry's waiting hand.

He had lived in Kansas since the passage of the homestead law. He knew

the mark of homesickness on the face of a late arrival. Something in the

cultivation of a new land puts a gentler culture into the soul. Out of

the common heartache, the common sacrifice, the common need, have grown

the open-hearted, keen-sighted, fine-fibered folk of the big and

generous Middle West, the very heart of which, to the Kansan, is Kansas.

The postmaster turned quickly back to his task. He did not see the

girl's face; he only felt that she walked away on air.

At York Macpherson's office she hesitated a moment, then hurried inside.

York was in his private room, but the door to it stood open, and Jerry

caught sight of a woman within.

"I beg your pardon." She blushed confusedly. "I don't want to intrude; I

only wanted to stop long enough to read a letter from home."

Jerry's genuine embarrassment was very pretty and appealing, but York

was shrewd enough to know that it came from the letter in her hand, not

from any connection with his office or its occupants. Mrs. Stellar

Bahrr, however, who happened to be the woman in the inner room, did not

see the incident with York's eyes.

"Just come in here, Miss Swaim, and make yourself at home," York

insisted. "Come, Mrs. Bahrr, we can finish our talk for to-day in one

place as well as another. My sister and I are going across the river to

spend the evening, so it will be late to-morrow before I can get those

papers ready for you."

Mrs. Bahrr rose reluctantly, hooking her sharp eyes into the girl as she

passed out. What she noted was a very white face where the color of the

cheeks seemed burned in, and big, shining eyes. Of course the

broad-brimmed chiffon hat with beaded medallions, the beaded parasol to

match, and the beaded hand-bag of the same hues did not escape her eyes,

especially the pretty hand-bag.

York closed the door behind the two, leaving Jerry in quiet possession

of the inner room, while he seated Mrs. Bahrr in the outer office and

engaged in the business that had brought her to him. He knew that she

would be torn between two desires: one to hurry through and leave the

office, and so be able to start a story of leaving Jerry and himself in

a questionable situation; the other to stay and see the fair caller as

she came out, and to learn, if possible, why she had come, and to enjoy

her confusion in finding a woman still engaging York's time. Either

thing would be worth while to Mrs. Bahrr, and while she hesitated York

decided for her.

"I'll keep her with me, the old Long Tongue. Yea, she shall roost here

in my coop till the little girl gets clear to 'Castle Cluny.' She

sha'n't run off and overtake her prey and then cackle over it later.

Jerry has committed the unpardonable sin of being young and pretty and

good; the Big Dipper will make her pay for the personal insult."

In the midst of their business conversation Jerry Swaim came from the

inner room, and with a half-audible word of thanks left the office. Mrs.

Bahrr's back was toward the door, and, although she turned with a

catlike quickness, she failed to see anything worth while except to get

another good look at the hand-bag. Something told York Macpherson that

the message in her letter held a tragical meaning for the fair-faced

girl who had waited so eagerly for its coming.

At dinner that evening York was at his best.

"I must make our girl keep an appetite," he argued. "Nothing matters if

a dinner still carries an appeal. By George! I've got to do my best, or

I'll lose my own taste for what Laura can set up if I don't look out. We

are all getting thin except Laura. Even Ponk is losing his strut a bit.

And why? Oh, confound it! there is plenty of time to ask questions in

July and August when the town has its dull season."

So York came to dinner in one of his rarest moods, a host to make one's

worries flee away.

Jerry had reread her letter in the seclusion of her room at "Castle

Cluny." It did not need a third reading, for every word seemed graven on

the reader's brain. In carefully typewritten form, with only the

signature in the writer's own hand, it ran:

MY ALWAYS DEAR JERRY,--I should have written you days ago, but

I did not get back to "Eden" until you had been gone a week. We

are all so eager to hear how you are, and to know about the

Swaim estate which you went to find. But we are a hundred times

more eager to see your face here again. I wish you were here

to-night, for I have been in the depths of doubt and

indecision, from which your presence would have lifted me. I

hope I have done the right thing, now it is done, and I'll wait

to hear from you more eagerly than I ever waited for a letter

before. Yet I feel sure you will approve of my course after you

get over your surprise and have taken time to think carefully.

I had a long heart-to-heart talk with Aunt Jerry to-day. Don't

smile and say a purse-to-purse talk. Full purses don't talk to

empty ones. They speak a different language. But this to-day

was a real confidence game as you might say. I received the

confidence if I didn't die as game as you would wish me to.

To be plain, little cousin mine, I want you dreadfully to come

back, so much so that I have decided to give up painting for

the present and take a clerkship in the bank with Uncle

Cornie's partners. I can see your eyes open wide with surprise

and disappointment when I tell you that Aunt Jerry has really

converted me to her way of thinking. My hours are easy and the

pay is good. Not so much as I had hoped to have some day from

my brush and may have yet, if this work doesn't make me fat and

lazy, for there is really very little responsibility about it,

just a decent accuracy. This makes so many things possible, you

see, and then I have the satisfaction of knowing I am doing a

service for Aunt Jerry--and, to be explicit--to put myself

where I shall not have to worry over things when you come home.

So I'm happy now. And when you get here I shall begin to live

again. I seem to be staying here now. Staying and waiting for

something. Nobody really lives at "Eden" without little Jerry

to keep us all alive and keyed up. Nobody to take the big car

over the bluff road, beautiful as it is--for you know I'm too

big a coward to drive it and to do a hundred things I'd do if

you were here to brace me up.

Write me at once, little cousin, and say you will come home

just as soon as you have seen all of that God-forsaken country

you care to look at. And meantime I'll write as often as you

want me to. I think of you every day and remember you in my

prayers every night. You remember I told you I couldn't pray

out in Kansas. May the Lord be good to you and make you love

Him more than you think you do now, and bring you safe and soon

to our beautiful "Eden."

Yours,

EUGENE.

The sands of the blowout on Jerry's claim seared not more hotly her

fresh young hopes of prosperity, through her own effort and control,

than this sudden change from the artist, with his dreams of beauty and

power, to the man of easy clerical duty with a good salary and small

responsibility. Of course Aunt Jerry had been back of it all, but so

would Aunt Jerry have been back of her--if she had given up.

Jerry sat for a long time staring at the missive where it had fallen on

the floor, the typewritten neatness of the blue lettering only a blur to

her eyes. For she was back at "Eden," on the steep but beautiful bluff

road, with Eugene afraid to drive the big Darby car. She was in the

rose-arbor looking up to see that faint line of indecision in the dear,

handsome face. She was in the "Eden" parlor under the soft light of

rose-tinted lamps, facing Aunt Jerry and sure of herself, but catching

again that wavering line of uncertainty on Eugene Wellington's

countenance, and her own vague fear--unguessed then--that he might not

resist in the supreme test.

But idols die hard. Eugene was her idol. He couldn't die at once. He was

so handsome, so true, so gracious, so filled with a love of beautiful

things. How could she understand the temptation to the soul of an artist

in such lovely settings as "Eden" offered? It was all Aunt Jerry's

fault, and he would overcome it. He must.

It was so easy to blame Aunt Jerry. It made everything clear. He had

yielded to her cleverness and never known he was being ruled. With all

her flippant, careless youth, inexperience, and selfishness, Jerry was a

keener reader of human nature than her lack of training could account

for. She knew just the lines Aunt Jerry had laid, the net spread for

Eugene's feet. But--Oh, things must come out all right. He would change.

This one thought rang up and down her scale of thinking, as if repeating

would make true what Jerry knew was false.

"'If a man went right with himself.' Oh, Eugene, Eugene!" she murmured,

half aloud. "You hitched your wagon to a star, but to what kind of a

star--to what kind of a star?"

Then came a greater query: "Shall I go back to 'Eden,' to Aunt Jerry's

rule, to Eugene, to love, to easy, dependent, purposeless living? Shall

I?"

A blank wall seemed suddenly to be flung across her way. Should she

climb over it, hammer an opening through it, or turn back and run from

it?

With these questions stalking before her she had come out to dinner and

York Macpherson's genial, entertaining conversation, and to Laura

Macpherson's gracious intuition and soothing sympathy.

Early in the evening, as the Macphersons with their guest sat watching

the splendor of the sunset sky, Jerry said, suddenly:

"It has been two weeks to-day since I came here. Quite long enough for a

stranger's first visit."

"A 'stranger,'" Laura Macpherson repeated. "A 'stranger' who asked to be

called 'Jerry' the first thing. We are all so well acquainted with this

'stranger' that we wouldn't want to give her up now."

"But I must give you up pretty soon." Jerry spoke earnestly.

"Why 'must'? Has the East too strong a hold for the West to break?"

York asked.

"I came out here because I believed my land would support me, and I had

all sorts of foolish dreams of what I might find here that would be new

and romantic." Jerry's eyes had a far-away look in them as she recalled

the unrealized picture of her prairie domain.

"You haven't answered my question yet," York reminded her.

Jerry dropped her eyes, the bloom deepened on her fair cheek, and she

clasped her small hands together. For a long time no word was spoken.

"I didn't answer your question. I am not going back to Philadelphia.

There must be something else besides land in the West," Jerry said, at

last.

"Yes, _we_ are here. Do stay right here with us," Laura Macpherson

urged, warmly.

Every day the companionship of this girl had grown upon her, for that

was Jerry's gift. But to the eager invitation of her hostess the girl

only shook her head.

York Macpherson sat combing his fingers through the heavy brown waves of

his hair, a habit of his when he was thinking deeply. But if a vision of

what might be came to him unbidden now, a vision that had come unbidden

many times in the last two weeks, making sweeter the smile that won men

to him, he put it resolutely away from him for the time. He must help

this girl to help herself. Romance belonged to other men. He was not of

the right mold for that--not now, at least.

"I heard to-day that there is need of a mathematics teacher in our

high-school for next year. It pays eighty dollars a month," he said.

"Oh, York," Laura protested, earnestly. "You know Jerry never thought of

such a thing as teaching. And I really must have her here. You are away

so much, you know you are."

But her brother only smiled. When York Macpherson frowned he might be

giving in, but his sister knew that his smile meant absolute resistance.

"Ponk was talking to me to-day. He is the treasurer of the school board

now, and he mentioned the vacancy. He was casting about for some one

fitted to teach mathematics. Even though his mind runs more on his

garage than on education, he has a deep interest in the schools. He

admires your ability to manage a car so much it occurred to him that you

might consider this position. Fine course of reasoning, but he is sure

of his ground."

"Let me think it over," Jerry said, slowly.

"And then forget it," Laura suggested. "York and I are invited out this

evening. Won't you come with us? It is just a little informal doings

across the river."

"I would rather be alone to-night," her guest replied.

So the Macphersons let her have her way.

IX

IF A WOMAN WENT RIGHT WITH HERSELF

And thus it happened that Jerry Swaim was alone this evening behind the

honeysuckle-vines, with leaf shadow and moonbeams falling caressingly on

her filmy white gown and golden hair. For a long time she sat still.

Once she said, half aloud, unconscious that she was speaking at all:

"So Eugene Wellington has given up his art for an easy berth in the

Darby bank. He hadn't the courage to resist the temptation, though it

made him a tool instead of a master of tools. And we promised each other

we would each make our own way, independent of Aunt Jerry's money. Maybe

if I had been there things would have been different."

She gripped her hands in her quick, nervous way, as a homesick longing

swept her soul. She was searching a way out for Eugene, a cause for

putting all the blame on Aunt Jerry.

"I wish I had gone with the Macphersons. I could have forgotten, for a

while at least."

A light step inside the house caught her ear.

"Maybe Laura has come home," she thought, too absorbed in herself to

ask why Laura should have chosen the side door when she knew that Jerry

was alone on the front porch.

Again she heard a movement just inside the open door; then a step on the

threshold; and then a tall, thin woman walked out of the house and

half-way across the wide porch before she caught sight of Jerry in an

easy-chair behind the honeysuckle-vines. The intruder paused a second,

staring at the corner where the girl sat motionless. From her childhood

Jerry had possessed unusual physical courage. To-night it was curiosity,

rather than fright, that prompted her to keep still while the strange

woman's eyes were upon her. Evidently the intruder was more surprised

than herself, and Jerry let her make the first move in the game. The

woman was angular, with swift but ungraceful motion. For a long time, as

such seconds go, she stared at the white figure hidden by the shadows of

the vines. Then with a quick stride she thrust herself before the girl

and dropped into a chair.

"Well, well! This is Miss Swim, ain't it?"

"As well that as anything. I can't land anywhere," Jerry thought.

"I'm Mrs. Stellar Bahrr, a good friend of Laury Macpherson as she's got

in this town, unless it's you. I seen you in York's office this

afternoon. I was sorry I intruded on you two when you come purpose to

see him in his private office. When girls wants to see him that way they

don't want nobody, 'specially women, around."

Mrs. Bahrr paused to giggle and to give Jerry time to parry her thrust,

meanwhile pinning her through with the sharp points of her eyes that

fairly gleamed in the shadow-checkered moonlight of the porch. Jerry was

not accustomed to being accountable to anybody for what she chose to do,

nor did she know that every man in New Eden, except York Macpherson and

Junius Brutus Ponk--and every woman, without exception--really feared

Stella Bahrr, knowing that she would hesitate at no kind of warfare to

accomplish her purpose. It is generally easier to be decent than to be

courageous, and peace at any price may be more desired than nasty word

battles. Not knowing Stella for the woman she was, Jerry had no mind to

consider her at all, so she waited for her caller to proceed or to leave

her.

"You must excuse me if I seem to be interfering in your affairs. You are

a stranger here except to York and that man Ponk--" Stella began,

thrusting her hooks more viciously into her catch.

"Oh, you didn't interfere," Jerry interrupted her indifferently, and

then paused.

Mrs. Bahrr caught her breath. The girl was sinfully pretty and

attractive, her beauty and grace in themselves alone railing out at the

older woman's ugly spirit of envy. And she should be tender, with

feeling to be lacerated for these gifts of nature. Instead, she was firm

and hard, with no vulnerable spot for a poisoned shaft.

"I'm sure you had a right to go into a man's private office. It's

everybody's right, of course," she began, with that faint sneering tone

of hers that carried a threat of what might follow.

"Yes, but a little discourteous in me to drive you out. That was Mr.

Macpherson's fault, not mine," Jerry broke in, easily.

"Maybe that's her grievance. I'll be decent about it," the girl was

thinking.

"I'm awfully bored right now." The wind shifted quickly. "I run up to

see Laury a minute. Just slipped in the side-stoop way to save troublin'

you an' York out here. I knowed Laury wouldn't be here, an', would you

believe it? I clar forgot they was gone out, an' I seen you all leavin',

too--I mean them, of course."

The threatening tone could not be reproduced. It carried, however, a

most uncomfortable force like a cruel undertow beneath the seemingly

safe crest of a wave.

"It's a joke on me bein' so stupid, but you won't give me away to 'em,

will you?"

"I'm awfully bored, too," Jerry thought.

"You say you won't tell 'em at all that I come?" Mrs. Bahrr insisted.

"Not if you say so," Jerry replied, with a smile.

"I'm an awfully good friend of Laury's. She's a poor cripple, dependent

on her brother for everything, an' if he marries, as he's bound to do,

I'd hate to see her turned out of here. This house is just Laury

through and through. Don't you think so? 'Course, though, if York

marries again--" Stellar Bahrr stopped meditatively. "All the women in

the Sage Brush Valley's just crazy about York. He's some flirt, but

everybody thought he'd settled his mind once sure. But I guess he flared

up again, from what they say. She's too fur away from town a'most. Them

that's furtherest away don't have a chance like them that's nearest him.

But it may be all just gossip. There was a lot of talk about him an' a

girl down the river that's got a crippled brother--Paul Ekblad's his

name; hers is Thelmy--an' some considerable about one of the Poser girls

where he was up the Sage Brush to this week. The married one now, I

think, an' a bouncin' big baby, but what do you care for all that?"

"Nothing," Jerry replied, innocently.

The steel hooks turned slowly to lacerate deeper.

"Well, I must be goin'. You give me your word you wouldn't cheep about

my forgettin' an' runnin' in here. York's such a torment, I'd never hear

the last of it. I know you are a honorable one with your promises, an' I

like that kind. I'm glad I met you. An' I'll not say a word, neither,

'bout your goin' to see York in his private office. It's a bargain

'tween us two. Laury's an awfully good friend of yours an' she'll keep

you here a good long while, she's that hos_pit_able."

The steel hooks tore their way out, and the woman rose and strode

quickly away. In a minute she had literally dropped from view in the

shaded slope beyond the driveway.

"I might as well punch a stick in water or stick a pin in old Granddad

Poser's tombstone out in the cimetery, an' expect to find a hole left,

as to do anything with that pink-an'-white-an'-gold critter!" she

exclaimed, viciously, as she disappeared in the shadows. "I'm afraider

of her than I would be of a real mad-cat, but she can't scare me!"

Out on the lawn the moon just then seemed to cast a weird gleam of

light, and to veil rather than reveal the long street beyond it. For a

minute after the passing of her uninvited caller Jerry Swaim was filled

with an unaccountable fright. Then her pulse beat calmly again and she

smiled at herself.

"I don't seem to fear these Kansas men--Mr. Ponk, for example, nor that

Teddy-bear creature down by the deep hole in the Sage Brush. But these

Kansas women, except Laura--anybody would except Laura--are so

impossible. That dairy-maid type of a Thelma, and that woman-and-baby

combination, for example; and some of the women really scare me. That

aborigine down in the brush by the river, in her shabby clothes and

sunbonnet eclipse; and now this 'Stellar' comes catfooting out of the

house and lands over yonder in the shadows. She needn't have been bored

because she didn't find the folks at home, and she needn't frighten me

so. I never was afraid of Aunt Jerry. I ought to be proof against

anybody else. And yet maybe I am in the way here, even if they drive the

very idea away from me. Laura is good to me and her friendliness is

genuine. Little as I know, I _know_ that much. And York--oh, that was a

village gossip's tale! And she gets me scared--I, whom even Jerusha

Darby never cowed."

The poison was working, after all, and Stellar Bahrr's sting had not

been against marble, nor into water. With the memory of Jerusha Darby,

too, the burden came again to her niece's mind, only to be lifted again,

however, in a few minutes. Her memory had run back to her day down the

river and the oak-grove and the sand, and the young man whose name was

Joe Thomson--Jerry did not remember the name--and the crushing weight of

surprise and disappointment. The struggle to decide on a course for

herself immediately was rising again within her, when she saw a young

man turn from the street and come up the walk toward the porch.

"I can't have leisure to settle anything by myself, it seems, even with

the lord and lady of the castle leaving me in full seclusion here. One

caller goes and another comes. I wonder what excuse this one has for

intruding. He is another type--one I haven't met before."

In the time required for this caller to reach the porch there flashed

through Jerry's mind all the types she had seen in the West. Ponk and

Thelma and fuzzy Teddy, the woman-and-baby, Laura and York, and that

pin-eyed gossip--and the young country fellow whose land lay next to

hers. None of them concerned her, really, except these hospitable

friends who were sheltering her, and, in a way, in an upright, legal,

Jim Swaim kind of way, the young man down the Sage Brush, losing in the

game like herself and helpless like herself.

It was no wonder that Jerry did not recognize in this caller the

ranchman of the blowout. There was nothing of the clodhopper in this

well-dressed young fellow, although he was not exactly a model for

advertising high-grade tailoring.

"Is this Miss Swaim?" he asked, lifting his hat. "I am Joe Thomson. You

may remember that we met down in the blowout two weeks ago."

"I could hardly forget meeting you. Will you sit down?" Jerry offered

Joe a chair with a courtesy very unlike the blunt manner of her first

words to him a fortnight before.

But in the far recesses of her consciousness all the while the haunting,

ever-recurring picture of a handsome face and a faultlessly clad form,

even the face and form of a Philadelphia bank clerk, _ne_ artist, made

the reality of Joe Thomson's presence very commonplace and uninteresting

at that moment, and her courtesy was of a perfunctory sort.

"I hope I don't intrude. Were you busy?" Joe asked, something of the

embarrassment of the first meeting coming back with the question.

"Yes, I was very busy," Jerry replied, with a smile. "Pick-up work,

though. I was just thinking. Lost in thought, maybe."

The moonlight can do so much for a pretty woman, but with Jerry Swaim

one could not say whether sunlight, moonlight, starlight, or dull gray

clouds did the most. For two weeks the memory of her fair face, as he

recalled it in the oak shade down beside the blowout, had not been

absent from the young ranchman's mind. And to-night this dainty girl out

of the East seemed entrancing.

"You were lost in thought when I saw you before. I had an idea that city

girls didn't do much thinking. Is it your settled occupation?" Joe

inquired, with a smile in his eyes.

"It is my only visible means of support right now; about as profitable,

too, as farming a blowout," Jerry returned.

"Which reminds me of my purpose in thrusting this call upon you," Joe

declared. "I didn't realize the situation the other day--and--well, to

be plain, I came to beg your pardon for my rudeness in what I said about

your claim. I had no idea who you were, you know, but that hardly

excuses me for what I said."

"It is very rude to speak so slightingly of land that behaves as

beautifully as mine does," Jerry said, with a smile that atoned for the

trace of sarcasm in her voice.

"It is very rude to speak as slightingly as I did of the former owner.

But you see I have watched that brainless blowout thing creep along,

season after season, eating up my acres--my sole inheritance, too."

"And you said you didn't go mad," Jerry interposed.

"Yes, but I didn't say I didn't get mad. I have worn out enough

profanity on that blowout to stock the whole Sage Brush Valley."

"But you aren't to the last resort, for you do go mad here then, you

told me. I wonder you aren't all madmen and women when I think of this

country and remember how different I had imagined it would be."

"When we come to the very last ditch, we really have two

alternatives--to go mad and to go back East. Most folks prefer the

former. But I say again, it's always a long way to the last ditch out on

the Sage Brush, so we seldom do either."

"What should I do now? Won't you tell me? I'm really near my last

ditch."

Jerry sat with clasped hands, looking earnestly into Joe's face, as she

said this. Oh, fair was she, this exquisite white-blossom style of girl,

facing her first life-problem, the big problem of living. Joe Thomson

made no reply to her question. What could this dainty, untrained

creature do with the best of claims? The frank sincerity of his silence

made an appeal to her that the wisest advice could not have made just

then.

York Macpherson was right when he said that Jim Swaim's child was a type

of her own. If Jerry, through her mother's nature, was impulsive and

imaginative, from her father she had inherited balance and clear vision.

Her young years had heretofore made no call upon her to exercise these

qualities. What might have been turned to the frivolous and romantic in

one parent, and the hard-headed and grasping in the other, now became

saving qualities for the child of these two. In an instant Jerry read

the young ranchman's character clearly and foresaw in him a friend and

helper. But there was neither romance nor selfishness in that vision.

"Mr. Thomson," the girl began, seriously, "you need not apologize for

what you could not help feeling about the condition of my estate and the

wrong that has been done to you. I know you do not hold me responsible

for it. Let's forget that you thought you had said anything unpleasant

to me, for I want to ask your advice."

"Mine!" Joe Thomson exclaimed.

This sweet-faced, soft-voiced girl was walking straight into another

heart in the Sage Brush Valley. Nature had given her that heritage,

wherever she might go.

"Yes, your advice, please." Jerry went on. "You have watched that sand

spreading northward over your claim. You have had days, months, years,

maybe, to see the blowout doing its work. I awakened suddenly one

morning from a beautiful day-dream. My only heritage left of all the

fortune I had been brought to expect to be mine, the inheritance I had

idealized with all the romantic beauty and prosperity possible to rural

life, in a minute all this turned to a desert before my eyes. You belong

to the West. Tell me, won't you, what is next for me?"

"What could I tell you, Miss Swaim?" Joe asked.

"Tell me what to do, I mean," Jerry exclaimed. "Tell me quickly, for I

am right against the bread-line now."

For a moment Joe stared at the girl in amazement. Her earnestness left

no room to misunderstand her. But his senses came back quickly, as one

whose life habit it had been to meet and answer hard questions suddenly.

"Why not go back East?" he asked.

"One of your two last resorts; the other one is madness. I won't do it,"

Jerry said, stubbornly. "Shall I tell you why?"

It was a delicious surprise to the young ranchman to be taken into the

confidence of this charming, gracious girl. The honeysuckle leaves,

stirred by the soft night breeze that came purring across the open

plain, gave the moonbeams leave to play with the rippling gold of her

hair, and to flutter ever so faintly the soft white draperies of her

gown. Her big dark eyes, her fair white throat and shoulders, the faint

pink hue of her cheeks, the shapely white arms below the elbow-frilled

sleeves, her soft voice, her frank trust in his judgment and integrity,

made that appeal that rarely comes to a young man's heart oftener than

once in a lifetime.

"My father lived a rich man and died a poor man, leaving me--for mother

went first--to the care of his wealthy sister. A half-forgotten claim on

the Sage Brush is my only possession after two years of litigation and

all that sort of thing." Jerry paused.

"Well?" Joe queried.

"I was offered one of two alternatives: I might be dependent on my

aunt's bounty or I could come out West and live on my claim. I chose the

West. Now what can I do?"

The pathos of the young face was touching. The question of maintenance

is hard enough for the resourceful and experienced to meet; how doubly

hard it must be to the young, untried, and untrained!

Joe Thomson looked out to where the open prairie, swathed in silvery

mist, seemed to flow up to the indefinite bounds of the town. All the

earth was beautiful in the stillness of the June night.

"I don't know how to advise you," he said, at length. "If you were one

of us--a real Western girl--it would be different."