Joe Thomson's mouth was set with a bulldog squareness. "Are we less able

than our forefathers?" he asked.

"As to sand--yes," Jerry replied, "but to myself, as a first

consideration, I'm dreadfully in trouble."

"Again?"

"Oh, always--in Kansas," Jerry declared. "First my whole inheritance is

smothered in plain sand--and dies--hard but quickly. Then I fight out a

battle for existence and win a schoolmarm's crown of--"

"Of service," Joe suggested, seriously.

"I hope so. I really do," Jerry assured him. "Next I lease my--dukedom

for a small but vital sum of money on which to exist till--till--"

"Yes, till wheat harvest, figuratively speaking," Joe declared.

"And this morning my purse is empty, robbed of every cent, and my

pearl-handled knife and a button-hook."

Joe had left his wagon and was standing beside Jerry's car, with one

foot on the running-board.

"Stolen! Why, why, where's York?" he asked, in amazement.

"I don't know. I don't think he took it," Jerry replied.

"Oh, but I mean what's he doing about it?" Joe questioned, anxiously.

"Nothing. He doesn't know it. I came to find you first, to get you to

help me."

"Me!" Joe could think of nothing more to say.

"You won't scold, and I'm afraid York would. I don't want to be

scolded," Jerry declared. "He would wonder why I hadn't put it in the

bank. And, besides, there have some queer things been happening in New

Eden--I can't explain them, for you might not understand, but I do

really need a friend right now. Did you ever need one?"

To the girl alone and under suspicion, however kind the friends who were

puzzled over her situation, conscious that too many favors were not to

be asked of the good-souled Junius Brutus Ponk, the young farmer seemed

the only one to whom she could turn. And she had the more readily halted

her car to wait for him because she had already begun to weave a romance

in homespun about this splendid young agriculturist and the good-hearted

country girl, Thelma Ekblad. He, himself, was impersonal to her.

"I'm always needing friends--and I'm more glad than you could know to

have you even think of me in your needs. But everybody turns to York

Macpherson. He's the lodestar for every Sage Brush compass," Joe said,

looking earnestly at Jerry.

"I'm on my way to the old Teddy Bear's house, your Fishing Teddy," Jerry

declared, "and I thought you would go with me. I don't want to go

alone."

"Let me take this machinery to the men--they are waiting for it to start

to work--and I'll be glad to go," Joe answered her.

The gray car followed the big wagon down the trail to the deep bend of

the Sage Brush in the angle of which Joe's ranch-house stood; and the

load of machinery was quickly given over to the workmen. As Joe seated

himself in the little gray car Jerry said:

"You are wondering why, and too polite to ask why, I go to Hans

Theodore's. Let me tell you." Then she told him of her dazed wanderings

down the river road two months before, and of her meal near old Teddy's

shack.

"He brought me fried fish on a cracked plate, and buttermilk in a silver

drinking-cup--a queer pattern with a monogram on the side. The next

morning I saw another cup exactly like that on the buffet in the

Macpherson dining-room. They told me there should be two of them. One

they found was suddenly missing. Later it suddenly was not missing. York

said their like was not to be had this side of old 'Castle Cluny' on the

ancient Kingussie holding of the invincible Clan Macpherson's forebears.

So this must have been the same cup. It was on the morning after you

called and took the old Teddy Bear home with you that the missing cup

reappeared. You remember he was shambling around the grounds the night

before, waiting for you?"

"Yes, I remember," Joe responded, gravely.

"Meantime Laura Macpherson lost her purse. It was found in my hand-bag.

I believe now that the one that took it became frightened or something,

and tried to put it on me. Maybe somebody knew how dreadfully near the

wall I was. Then York paid me lease money, as I told you--three hundred

dollars. It was in my purse last evening when I went out for a ride. As

I sat in the side porch alone, earlier in the evening, I saw the old

Teddy Bear shamble and shuffle about the shrubbery and disappear down

the slope in the shadows on the town side of the place. This morning my

money is all gone. I am going down here after it."

"And you didn't ask York to help you?" Joe queried, anxiously.

"Why, no. I wanted you to help me. Will you do it?" Jerry asked, looking

up into the earnest face of the big farmer beside her.

Was it selfishness, or thoughtlessness, or love of startling adventure,

or insight, or fate bringing her this way? Joe Thomson asked himself the

question in vain.

"I'll do whatever I can do. This is such a strange thing. I knew things

were missing by spells up in town, but we never lose anything down our

way, and you'd think we would come nearer having what old Fishing Teddy

would want if he is really a thief," Joe declared.

"I am going down to old Teddy's shack and ask him to give me my money,

anyhow," Jerry repeated.

"And if he has it and refuses, I'll pitch him into the river and hold

him under till he comes across. But if he really hasn't it?" Joe asked.

"Then he can't give it, that's all," Jerry replied.

"But how will you know?" Joe insisted.

"I don't know how I'll know, but when the time comes I'll probably find

a way to find out," Jerry declared. "Anyhow, I must do something, for

I'm clear penniless and it's this or go mad or go back East. I'm not

going to do either. I'm just going to get mad and stay mad till I get

what's mine."

"I'll be your faithful sleuth, but I can't believe you'll find your bag

of gold at the end of this rainbow. The old man is gentle, though, and

you couldn't have any fear, I suppose," Joe suggested.

"Not with you along I couldn't," Jerry replied.

She was watching the road, and did not see how his eyes filled with a

wonderful light at her words. She was not thinking of Joe Thomson, nor

of York Macpherson, nor yet of Junius Brutus Ponk. She was thinking far

back in her mind of how Eugene Wellington would admire her some day for

really not giving in. That faint line of indecision in his face as she

recalled it in the rose-arbor--oh, so long ago--that was only emphasized

by his real admiration for those who could stand fast by a

determination. She had always dared. He had always adored, but never

risked a danger.

Down by the deep fishing-hole the willows were beginning to droop their

long yellow leaves on the diminishing stream, and the stepping-stones

stood out bare and bleaching above the thin current that slipped away

between them. A little blue smoke was filtering out from the stove-pipe

behind the shack hidden among the bushes. Everything lay still under the

sunshine of late summer.

"You keep the car. I'm going in," Jerry declared, halting in the thin

shade by the deep hole.

"I think I'd better go, too," Joe insisted.

"I think not," Jerry said, with a finality in her tone there was no

refuting.

York Macpherson had well said that there was no duplicate for Jerry, no

forecasting just what she would do next.

As Jerry's form cast a shadow across his doorway old Fishing Teddy

turned with a start from a bowl of corn-meal dough that he was stirring.

The little structure was a rude domicile, fitted to the master of it in

all its features. On a plain unpainted table Jerry saw a roll of bills

weighted down by an old cob pipe. A few coins were neatly stacked beside

them, with a pearl-handled knife and button-hook lying farther away.

"I came for my money," Jerry said, quietly. "It's all I have until I can

earn some myself."

The old man's fuzzy brown cheeks seemed to grow darker, as if his blush

was of a color with the rest of his make-up. He shuffled quickly to the

table, gathered up all the money, and, coming nearer, silently laid it

in Jerry's hands.

The girl looked at him curiously. It was as if he were handing her a

handkerchief she had dropped, and she caught herself saying:

"Thank you. But what made you take it? Don't you know it is all I have,

and I must earn my living, too, just like anybody else?"

Old Fishing Teddy opened his mouth twice before his voice would act. "I

didn't take it. I was goin' to fetch it up to you soon as I could git up

there again," he squeaked out at last.

Jerry sat down on a broken chair and stared at him, as he seated himself

on the table, gripping the edge on either side with his scaly brown

hands, and gazed down at the floor of the cabin.

"If you didn't take it, why did you have it here? I saw you last night

on Macpherson's driveway," Jerry said, wondering, meanwhile, why she

should argue with an old thieving fellow like Fishing Teddy--Jerusha

Darby's niece and heir some fine day, if she only chose, to all of the

Darby dollars.

"I can't never explain to you, lady. They's troubles in everybody's

lots, I reckon. Mine ain't nothin' but a humble one, but it ain't so

much different from big folks's in trouble ways. An' we all have to do

the best we can with what comes to us to put up with. I 'ain't never

harmed nobody, nor kep' a thing 'at wa'n't mine longer 'n I could git it

back. You ask York Macpherson, an' he'll tell ye the truth. He never

sent ye down here, York didn't."

The old man ceased squeaking and looked down at his stubby legs and old

shoes. Was he lying and whining for mercy, being caught with the spoils

of his thieving?

Jerry's big eyes were fixed on him as she tried to fathom the real

situation. The bunch of grubs on the Winnowoc local--common country and

village folk--had been far below her range of interest, to say nothing

of sympathy. Yet here she sat in the miserable shack of a hermit

fisherman, an all-but-acknowledged thief, with his loot discovered,

studying him with a mind where pity and credulity were playing havoc

with her better judgment and her aristocratic breeding. Had she fallen

so low as this, or had she risen to a newer height of character than she

had ever known before?

Suddenly the old grub hunched down on the table before her looked up.

Jerry remembered afterward how clear and honest the gaze of those faded

yellow eyes set in a multitude of yellow wrinkles. His hands let go of

the table's edge and fitted knuckle into palm as he asked, in a

quavering voice:

"Be you really Jim Swaim's girl who used to live up in that there

Winnowoc country back yander in Pennsylvany?"

Jerry's heart thumped violently. It was the last word she had expected

from this creature. "Yes, I'm Jim's only child." The same winsome smile

that made the artistic Eugene Wellington of Philadelphia adore her

beamed now on this poor old outcast down by the deep hole of the Sage

Brush.

"An' be you hard up, an' earnin' your own livin' by yourself, did ye

say? 'Ain't ye got a rich kin back East to help ye none?" The voice

quavered up and down unsteadily.

"Yes, I have a rich aunt, but I'm taking care of myself. It makes me

freer, but I have to be particular not to--to--lose any money right

now," Jerry said, frankly.

"Then ye air doin' mighty well, an' it's the thing that 'u'd make your

daddy awful glad ef he only could know. It 'u'd be fulfillin' his own

wish. I know it would. I heered him say so onct."

Jerry Swaim's eyes were full of unshed tears. Keenly she remembered when

Uncle Cornie had told her the same thing at the doorway of the

rose-arbor in beautiful "Eden" in the beautiful June-time. How strange

that the same message should come to her again here in the shadow of New

Eden inside the doorway of a fisherman's hut. And how strange a thing is

life at any time!

"Please don't be unhappy about this." Jerry lifted the money which lay

in her lap. "It shall never trouble you."

And then for a brief ten minutes the two talked together, Geraldine

Swaim of Philadelphia, and old Fishing Teddy, the Sage Brush hermit.

Joe Thomson, sitting in the gray car, saw Jerry coming through the

bushes, her hat in her hand, the summer sunshine on her glorious crown

of hair, her face wearing a strange new expression, as if in Fishing

Teddy's old shack a revelation of life's realities had come to her and

she had found them worthy and beautiful.

Little was said between the two young people until they reached the

Thomson ranch-house again and Jerry had halted her car under the shade

of an elm growing before the door. Then, turning to Joe, she said:

"You are right about the old Teddy Bear. He isn't a thief. I don't know

what he is, but I do know what he isn't. Since you know so much about my

coming here already, may I tell you a few more things? I want to talk to

somebody who will understand me."

Jerry did not ask herself why she should choose Joe Thomson for such a

confidence. She went no deeper than to feel that something about Joe was

satisfying, and that was sufficient. Henceforth with York and the

hotel-keeper she must be on her guard. Joe was different.

In the half-hour that followed the two became fast friends. And when the

little gray runabout sped up the long trail toward New Eden Joe Thomson

watched it until it was only a dust-spot on the divide that tops the

slopes down to Kingussie Creek. He knew now the whole story of Laura's

purse and her suspicions, of Ponk's offer of help, and he shrewdly

guessed that the pompous little man had met a firm check to anything

more than mere friendship. For Jerry's comfort, he refuted the

possibility of the Macphersons' harboring a doubt regarding her honesty.

"A mere remark of the moment. We all make them," he assured her.

Lastly, he was made acquainted with the events inside of Hans Theodore's

shack.

"Something is wrong there, but it is deeper than we can reach now,"

Jerry said. "Maybe we can help the old fellow if he is tempted, and

shield him if he is wronged."

How fair the face, and soft and clear the voice! It made Joe Thomson's

own face harden to hide a feeling he would not let reveal itself.

As he watched the girl's receding car he resolved anew to conquer that

formless enemy of sand and to reclaim for her her lost kingdom in

Kansas. His reward? That must come in its own time. Ponk was out of the

running. York was still a proposition. As for all that stuff of York's

about some Eastern fellow, Joe would not believe it.

And the girl driving swiftly homeward thought only of the romance of Joe

and Thelma, if she thought of them at all--for she was Lesa Swaim's

child still--and mainly and absorbedly she thought of her father's wish

to be fulfilled in her.

So the glorious Kansas autumn brought to Jerry Swaim all of its beauty,

in its soft air, its opal skies, its gold-and-brown-and-lavender

landscapes, its calm serenity. And under its benediction this girl of

luxurious, idle, purposeless days in sunny "Eden" on the Winnowoc was

beginning a larger existence in New Eden by the Sage Brush, and through

the warp and woof of that existence one name was all unconsciously woven

large--JOE.

XV

DRAWING OUT LEVIATHAN WITH A HOOK

For three years the seasons sped by, soft-footed and swift, and the

third June-time came smiling up the Sage Brush Valley. Many changes had

marked the passing of these seasons. Ranches had extended their

cultivated acres; trees spread a wider shade; a newly settled addition

had extended the boundaries of New Eden; and a new factory and a

high-school building for vocational training marked the progress of the

town. Budding youth had blossomed into manhood and womanhood and the

cemetery had gathered in its toll. Three years, however, had marked

little outward change in the young Eastern girl who stayed by her choice

of the Sage Brush country for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer.

She had flung all of her young energy into the dull routine of teaching

mathematics; romance had given place to reality; idleness and careless

dependence to regulated effort and carefully computed expenditures; gay

social interests to the companionship of lesser opportunities, but

broader vision. However, these things came at a sacrifice. When the

newness wore away from her work, Jerry's hours were not all easeful,

happy ones. Slowly, with the passing of the days, she began to learn the

hard lesson of overcoming, a lesson doubly hard for one whose life

hitherto had been given no preparation for duty. Yet, as her days

gathered surer purpose her dark-blue eyes were less often dreamy, her

fair cheeks took on a richer bloom, while her crown of glorious hair

lost no glint of its gold.

Her gift of winning friends, the old imperious power to make herself the

center of the universe, was in no wise disturbed by being a citizen and

a school-teacher instead of an Eastern lady of leisure sojourning

temporarily in the Sage Brush country. The young men of the valley tried

eagerly to win a greater place than that of mere friendship with her,

but she gave no serious consideration to any of them, least of all--so

she persuaded herself--to the young ranchman whom she had met so early

after her arrival in Kansas. Further, she had persuaded herself that the

pretty rural romance she had woven about him and his Norwegian neighbor,

Thelma Ekblad, must be a reality. Thelma had finished her university

course and was making a success of farming and of caring for her

crippled brother Paul and that roly-poly Belkap baby, now a

white-haired, blue-eyed, red-lipped chunk of innocence, responsibility,

and delight. Gossip, beginning at Stellar Bahrr's door, said that

interest in her neighbor, the big ranchman down the river, was

responsible for Thelma's staying on the Ekblad farm, now that she had

her university degree, because she could make a career for herself as a

botany specialist in any college in the West. Jerry knew that love for a

crippled brother and the care of a worse than orphaned child of the

woman that brother had loved were real factors in the life of this

country girl, but her air castles must be built for somebody, and they

seemed to cluster around the young Norwegian and the ranchman. Of

course, then, the ranchman, Joe Thomson, could interest Jerry only in a

general genial comradeship kind of way. Beginning in a common bond, the

presence of a common enemy--the blowout--chance meetings grew into

regular and helpful association. That was all that it meant to Jerry

Swaim.

Three stanch friends watched her closely. Ponk, of the Commercial Hotel

and Garage, believed blindly and wholly in her ability, laying all blame

for her defective work in the school upon other shoulders, standing

manfully by her in every crisis. Laura Macpherson, although never

blinded to the truth about Jerry in her impetuous, self-willed,

unsympathetic, undeveloped nature, loved her too well to doubt her

ultimate triumph over all fortune. Only York, who studied her closest of

all three, because he was the keenest reader of human nature, still held

that the final outcome for Jerry Swaim was a matter of uncertainty.

"I tell you, Laura," York said, one evening in the early spring of the

third year, when Jerry had gone with Joe Thomson for a long horseback

ride up the Sage Brush--"I tell you that girl is still a type of her

own, which means that sometimes she is soft-hearted, and romantic, and

frivolous, and impulsive, and affectionate, like Lesa Swaim, and

sometimes clear-eyed, hard-headed, close-fisted, with a keen judgment

for values, practical, and clever, like old Jim."

"And which parent, Sir Oracle, would you have her be most like?" Laura

inquired.

"Lord knows," York replied. "As He alone knows how much of the good of

each she may reject and how much of the weak and objectionable she may

appropriate."

"Being a free moral agent to just dissect her fond parents and choose

and refuse at will when she makes up her life and being for herself!

It's a way we all have of doing, you know," Laura said, sarcastically.

"Remember, York, when you elected to look like papa, only you chose

mother's wavy brown hair instead of her husband's straight black locks;

and you voted you'd have her clear judgment in business matters, which

our father never had."

"And gave to you the same which he never possessed. Yes, I remember,"

York retorted. "But how is all this psychological analysis going to help

matters here?"

"How's it going to help Joe Thomson, or keep him from being helped, you

mean?" Laura suggested.

A faint flush crept into York Macpherson's brown cheek.

"It's dead sure Jerry has little enough thought of Joe now," York said,

gravely. "She's living a day at a time, and underneath the three years'

veneer of genuine service the real Philadelphia Geraldine Swaim is still

a sojourner in the Sage Brush Valley, not a fixture here."

And York was right so far as Jerry Swaim's thought of Joe Thomson was

concerned.

After signing the lease with York Macpherson she rarely spoke of her

property to any one until it came to be forgotten to the few who knew of

it at all.

Once she had said to Joe:

"That heritage of mine is like the grave of an enemy. I couldn't look at

it forgivingly; so I would never, never want to see it again, and I

never want to hear the awful word 'blowout' spoken."

"Then forget it," Joe advised.

And Jerry forgot it.

But for Joe Thomson the seasons held another story. Down the Sage Brush,

fall and spring, great steam tractors furrowed the shifting sands of the

blowout, until slowly broom-corn and other coarse plants were coaxing a

thin soil deposit that spread northward from the south edge of the

sand-line. Little attention was paid to these efforts by the few farmer

folk who supposed that Joe was backing it, for they were all a busy

people, and the movement was too futile to be considered, anyhow.

Late in the summer of her first season in New Eden, affairs came to a

head suddenly. Three years before, Junius Brutus Ponk's well-meant

warning to Jerry to be on her guard against Stellar Bahrr's

mischief-making had not been without cause or results. Before the

opening of the school year, beginning with the Lenwells as a go-between,

percolating up through families where fall sewing was in progress, on to

the Macphersons and their closest friends, the impression grew toward

fact that Jerry was a sort of adventuress who had foisted herself upon

the Macphersons and had befuddled the brain of the vain little

hotel-keeper, who had overruled the other members of the school board

and forced her into a good place in the high school, although she was

without experience or knowledge of the branch to which she was elected.

And then she met young men in the cemetery and rode in Ponk's car over

the country alone.

One of the easy acts of the average, and super-average, mortal is to

respect a criticism made upon a fellow-mortal--doing it most generally

with no conscious malevolence, prompted largely by the common human

desire to be the bearer of new discoveries.

New Eden was no worse than the average little town at any point of the

compass. It took Stellar Bahrr at her par value, listened, laughed, and

declared it disbelieved her stories--and mainly in that spirit repeated

them, but in any spirit always repeated them. When the reports of Jerry

had gone to the farthest corners of town they came at last to the office

of York Macpherson. And it was Ponk himself who brought them, with some

unprintable language and violent denunciations of certain females who

were deadlier, he declared, than any males, even blackmails. York

forgave the atrocious pun because of the righteous wrath back of it. He

knew that Ponk's suit with Jerry failed temporarily, and he admired the

little man for his loyal devotion in spite of it.

The Macphersons had completely convinced Jerry of their faith in her,

and in that congenial association she had almost forgotten the incident

of the porch conversation about her. To Ponk's anxious query, "What will

you do?" (nobody ever said "can" to York Macpherson; he always could),

York had replied:

"I shall go straight to Jerry. She will hear it, anyhow, and she has

displayed such a deal of courage so far she'll not wither under this."

"You bet she won't, York, but what will stop it? I mean Stellar Bahrr's

mischief-makin'. She's subtler than the devil himself."

"We'll leave that to Jerry. She may have a way of her own. You never can

tell about Jerry." As he spoke York was turning his papers over in

search of something which he did not find, and he did not look up for a

minute.

"I'll leave the matter to you now," Ponk said. "I have other affairs of

state to engross my attention," and he left the office, muttering as he

strutted across to the garage door.

"Thinks he can pull the wool over my eyes by not lookin' at me. Well,

York wouldn't be the best man on the Sage Brush if he didn't fall in

love with Miss Jerry. She's not only the queen of hearts; she's got the

whole deck, includin' the joker, clear buffaloed."

York was true to his word as to telling Jerry, when the three were on

the porch that evening, what was in the air and on the lips of the "town

tattlers," as he called them. Jerry listened gravely. She was getting

used to things, now, that three months ago would have overwhelmed

her--if she hadn't been Jim Swaim's child. When he had finished and

Laura was about to pour out vials of indignation, Jerry looked up

without a line on her smooth brow, saying:

"Will you go over to Mrs. Bahrr's with me now, York?"

York rose promptly, questioning, nevertheless, the outcome of such an

interview.

Mrs. Bahrr had just followed her corkscrew way up to the side gate of

the Macpherson home as the two left the porch, when she heard Jerry call

back to Laura:

"If we find Mrs. Bahrr at home we won't be gone long."

"And if you don't?" Laura asked.

The answer was lost, for Mrs. Bahrr turned and fled across lots, by

alley gate and side walk-way and vacant yard, to her own rear door. One

of Mrs. Bahrr's strong points was that of being more ready than her

antagonist and her habit of thought had made her world an antagonistic

one.

York was curious to see how Jerry would meet her Waterloo, for that was

what this encounter would become, and he was glad that she had asked him

to go with her instead of running off alone, as she had done when she

wanted to see her estate.

Seated in the little front parlor, Jerry took her time to survey the

place before she came to her errand. It was a very humble home, with a

rag carpet, windows without draperies, but with heavy blinds; chairs

that became unsettled if one rocked in them; cheap, unframed chromos

tacked up on the walls; an old parlor organ; and a stand with a

crazy-quilt style of cover on which rested a dusty Bible. York saw a

look of pity in Jerry's eyes where three months before he felt sure

there would have been only disdain.

Very simply and frankly the girl told the purpose of her call, ending

with what might have been a command, but it was spoken in the clear,

soft voice that had always won her point in any argument.

"Whether these stories came from you or not you will be sure not to

repeat them."

Stella Bahrr bristled with anger. Whatever might have been said behind

her back, nobody except York Macpherson and Junius Brutus Ponk had ever

spoken so plainly to her face before. And they had never spoken in the

presence of a third party. And here comes a pretty, silly young thing

with a child's Sunday-school talk to her, right in York's presence, in

her own house. Jerry Swaim would pay well for her rudeness.

"I don't know as it's up to me to keep still when everybody's talkin'. I

won't promise nothin'. An' I 'ain't got nothin' to be afraid of." Mrs.

Bahrr hooked her eyes viciously into her caller.

"I'm afraid of a good many things, but I'm not so very much afraid of

people. I was a little afraid of you the first time I saw you. You

remember where that was, of course."

Jerry looked straight at Mrs. Bahrr with wide-open eyes. Something in

her face recalled Jim Swaim's face to York Macpherson, and he forgot the

girl's words as he stared at her.

"When I was a child," Jerry continued, "they used to say to me, 'The

goblins 'll git you ef you don't watch out.' Now I know it is the Teddy

Bear that gits you ef you don't watch out."

Mrs. Bahrr's lips seemed to snap together and her eyes tore their way

out of Jerry and turned to the window. Jerry stepped softly across to

her chair and, laying a hand on her shoulder, said, with a smile:

"Hereafter it will be all right between us."

And it was--apparently.

As they walked slowly homeward York and Jerry said little. The girl's

mind was busy with thoughts of her new work--the only work she had ever

attempted in her life; and York's thoughts were busy with--Jerry.

That night York sat alone on the porch of "Castle Cluny" until far

toward morning, beginning at last to fight out with himself the great

battle of his life. The big, kindly, practical man of affairs,

arrow-proof, bullet-proof, bomb-proof to all the munitions of Cupid,

courted and flattered and admired and looked up to by a whole community,

seemed hopelessly enmeshed now in the ripples of golden-brown hair, held

fast by the beautiful dark-blue eyes of a young lady whose strength to

withstand what lay before her he very much doubted.

"If I speak to her now, she'll run away from us and leave Laura lonely.

She can't go to the hotel, because I know Ponk has tried and failed. I'm

one degree behind him in that. Where would she go? And how would the Big

Dipper act? I've no faith in her keeping still if Jerry did use some

magic on her to-night. Nobody will ever Rumpelstilskin her out of

herself. I'll be a man, and wait and befriend my little girl whenever I

can, although I'm forced every day to see how she is growing to take

care of herself. When nothing else can decide events, time is sure to

settle them."

All this happened at the beginning of the three years whose ending came

in a June-time on the Kansas plains. Summer and winter, many a Sabbath

afternoon saw the hotel-keeper and the pretty mathematics-teacher

strolling out to the cemetery "to call on mother." The quaint, firm

faith of the pompous little man that "mother knew" had no place in Jerry

Swaim's code and creed. But she never treated his belief lightly, and

its homely sincerity at length began to bear fruit.

Not without its lasting effect, too, was the silent influence of Laura

Macpherson upon her guest. The bright, happy life in spite of a hopeless

lameness, the cheerful giving up of what that lameness denied the

having, all unconsciously wrought its beauty into the new Jerry whom the

"Eden" of an earlier day had never known. Nobody remembered when the

guest and friend of the Macphersons began to be a factor in the New Eden

church life, but everybody knew at the close of the third year that the

churches couldn't do without her. And neither the Baptist minister,

holding tenaciously to salvation by immersion, nor the Presbyterian,

clinging to the doctrine of infant damnation, nor the Methodist,

demanding instantaneous revival-meeting conversion from sin, asked once

that the fair Philadelphian should "become united with the church." That

would necessitate the query, "Which church?" And that would mean a loss

to two and a gain to only one. As far as the blowout sand differed from

"Eden" on the Winnowoc, so far Jerry's religious faith now differed from

the disbelief that followed the death of her father. In Kansas where the

artistic Eugene Wellington had declared his own faith would perish, she

had learned for the first time how to pray.

Letters had long since ceased to come from Aunt Jerry Darby to her

niece, although in a friendly and patiently expectant form Eugene

Wellington wrote beautiful missives breathing more and more of

commercialized ideals and less and less of esthetic dreams, and not at

all of the faith that had marked the spiritual refinement of his young

manhood.

The third spring brought busy, trying days. A sick teacher made it

necessary for the well ones to do double work. The youngest Lenwell boy,

leader of the Senior class, started the annual and eternally trivial and

annoying Senior-class fuss that seems fated to precede most high-school

commencements. For two years it had been Jerry Swaim, whose mathematical

mind seemed gifted with a wonderful generalship, who had managed to

bring the class to harmony with an ease never known in the New Eden High

School before. This year Clare Lenwell was perfectly irreconcilable, and

Jerry, overworked, as willing teachers always are, was too busy to bring

the belligerents to time before the bitterness of a town-split was upon

the community. When she did come to the rescue of the superintendent,

his own inefficiency to cope with the case became so evident that he at

once turned against the young woman who "tried to run things," as he

characterized her to the school board.

That caused an explosion of heavy artillery from the "Commercial Hotel

and Garage," which made one member of the board, an uncle of young

Lenwell, to rise in arms, and thus and so the fires of dissension

crisscrossed the town, threatening to fulmine over the whole Sage Brush

Valley. To make the matter more difficult, the town trouble-maker,

Stellar Bahrr, for once seemed to have been innocently drawn into the

thing, and everybody knew it was better to have Stellar Bahrr's

good-will than to start her tongue.

York Macpherson and Junius Brutus Ponk both felt sure that Stellar had

really stirred up the Lenwells, for whom she was constantly sewing; and,

besides, a distant relative of theirs had married into the Bahrr family

back where Stellar came from, "which must have been the Ark," Ponk

declared, "and the other one of the pair died of seasickness." Anyhow,

the local school row became the local town row, and it was a very real

and bitter row.

In these days of little foxes that were threatening the whole vineyard,

Jerry turned more and more to Joe Thomson. All of New Eden was tied up

in the fuss, took sides, and talked it, except the Macphersons and a few

of their friends, and they talked it without taking sides because the

thing was in the air constantly. Jerry could not find even in "Castle

Cluny" a refuge from what was uninteresting to her and thoroughly

distasteful in itself. Ponk, being by nature a rabid little game-cock,

was full of the thing, and was no more companionable than the

Macphersons. But when the quiet ranchman came up from the lower Sage

Brush country, his dark eyes glowing with pleasure and his poised mind

unbiased by neighborhood failings, he brought the breath of sweet clover

with his coming. When Jerry came home from their long rides

up-stream--they never rode toward the blowout region--she felt as if she

had a new grip on life and energy and ambition for her work. Joe was

becoming, moreover, the best of entertainers, and the comradeship was

the one thing Jerry had learned to prize most in her new life in the

Middle West.

When the spring had slipped into early May Joe's visits grew less

frequent, on account of his spring work. And once or twice he came to

town and hurried away without even seeing Jerry. It comforted her

greatly--she did not ask herself why--that he did drop a note into the

post-office for her, telling her he was in town and regretting that he

must hurry out without calling.

It was during this time that Thelma Ekblad came up to New Eden to do

some extensive shopping and spend a week with the Macphersons. There

were other guests at "Castle Cluny," and Thelma and Jerry shared the

same room.

Back in "Eden" the heir apparent would never have dreamed of sharing

anything with a Winnowoc grub. How times change us! Or do we change

them?

Thelma was sunny-natured, spotlessly neat in her dress, and altogether

vastly more companionable to Jerry than the Lenwell girls, who would

persist in pleading their little high-school Senior brother's cause; or

even the associate teachers, who were troubled and tired and overworked

like herself.

Jerry had met Thelma often, and thought of her oftener, in the three

years since they had come upon the Sage Brush branch of the local

freight together one hot, sand-blown June day, three summers before. She

had woven a romance about Thelma. Romances seemed now to belong to other

people. They never came to her. She was glad, however, when Thelma's

shopping was done and she went back to the farm down the Sage Brush, and

her brother Paul, and the growing, joyous Belkap child who filled the

plain farm-house with interest.

Stellar Bahrr, in Jerry's presence, had spoken ill of no one since the

memorable call three years ago. On the evening after Thelma left town

she cork-screwed over to "Castle Cluny" for a friendly chat with Laura.

"I run in to see Thelmy Ekblad. She 'ain't gone home, is she? Got her

shopping all done a'ready? Some girls can buy their weddin' finery

quicker 'n scat. Did she say who was to make that new white dress she

was buyin' yesterday at the Palace Emporium?" This straight at Jerry,

who was resting lazily in the porch swing after an unusually annoying

day.

"Not to me," Jerry replied, sliding another pillow behind her shoulders

and leaning back comfortably.

"Well, well! I s'posed girls always told them things to each other.

'Specially if they slep' together. She's gettin' a mighty fine man,

though--Thelmy is--at least, folks says she's gettin' him. He's there a

lot, 'specially 'long this spring. His farm's right near her and Paul's.

And she's one prince of a girl. Don't you say so, Miss Swaim?"

Jerry smiled in spite of herself, saying: "Yes, she's a prince of a

girl. I like her." And then, because she was tired that night, both of

Stellar and her topic, and the whole Sage Brush Valley, she turned away

that neither Laura nor Stellar might see how much she wanted to cry.

But turning was futile. Mrs. Bahrr's eyes went right through the girl

and she knew her shaft had hit home.

Joe had not been to town for weeks. It didn't matter to Jerry. Yet the

next day after Stellar's call lacked something--and the next and the

next. Not a definite lack, for Jerry's future was settled forever.

Down on the Sage Brush ranches Joe Thomson was trying to believe that

things wouldn't matter, too, if they failed to go his way. These were

lonely days for the young ranchman, who saw little of Jerry Swaim

because every possible minute of his time was given to wrestling with

the blowout.

There were many more lonely days, also, for Jerry, who now began to miss

Joe more than she thought it could be possible to miss anybody except

Gene Wellington, idealized into a sad and beautiful memory that kept

alive an unconscious hope. And, with all her energy and her

determination, many things combined to make her school-room duty a hard

task to one whose training had been so unfitting for serious labor. The

flesh-pots of the Winnowoc came temptingly to her memory, and there were

weary hours when the struggle to be sure and satisfied was greater than

her friends could have dreamed.

The third winter of her stay had seen an unusual snowfall for the Sage

Brush, and this spring following was an unusually rainy one. Everywhere

rank vegetation flourished, prairies reveled in luxurious growths, and

cultivated fields were burdened with the promise of record-breaking

harvests.

York Macpherson's business had begun to call him to the East for

prolonged trips, and he had less knowledge than formerly of the details

of the affairs of New Eden and its community.

One day not long after Thelma's shopping trip Joe Thomson dropped into

the office of the Macpherson Mortgage Company.

"How's the blowout?" This had become York's customary greeting.

"Never gentler." Joe's face was triumphant and his dark eyes were

shining with hope. "This rainy season and the good old steam-plows are

doing their perfect work. You haven't had any sand-storms lately, maybe

you have noticed. Well, wheat is growing green and strong over more than

half of that land now. There's not so much sand to spare as there used

to be."

"You don't mean it!" York exclaimed, incredulously.

"Go and look at it yourself, you doubting old Missourian who must be

shown," Joe retorted. "There's a stretch on the northeast toward the

bend in the Sage Brush that is low and baked hard after the rains, and

shifty and infernally stubborn in the dry weather."

York meditated awhile, combing his heavy hair with his fingers. "The

river runs by your place?" he asked, at length.

"Yes, my house is right at the bend, and there is no sand across the

Sage Brush," Joe replied.

"Well, the blowout will never stop till it gets up to the south bank of

the bend. As I've told you already, you'll have to take the Lord

Almighty into partnership to work a miracle. Otherwise this creeping up

from behind and beyond the thing will be a never-ending job of time and

money and labor. You'll never catch up with it. It's just too

everlastingly big, that's all. You'll be gray-bearded, and bald-headed,

and deaf, and dim-sighted before you are through."

"I will not," Joe declared, doggedly. "And I've already told you that

I've always taken the Lord Almighty into partnership, or I'd have been a

derelict on a sea of sand lang syne."

"Joe, your faith in the Lord and faith in the prairies might move

mountains, but they haven't yet moved the desert."

"Not entirely," Joe replied, "but if I do my part, who knows what

Providence may do?"

As he sat there in the hope and strength of his youth, something in Joe

Thomson's expectant face brought a pang to the man beside him.

"Joe, your lease will soon expire. I said to you three years ago that

women are shiftier than blowouts. You didn't believe me, but it's the

truth."

"Naturally the Macpherson Mortgage Company must acquire much knowledge

of such things in the development of their business," Joe responded,

jokingly. "Little Thelma Ekblad on the claim above mine has helped to

pay off the mortgage your company held, and sent herself to the

university, working in the harvest-fields and at the hay-baler to do it.

Thelma never seemed shifty to me. She's a solid little rock of a woman

who never flinches."

"I'll except Thelma. You ought--" But York went no further, for he knew

Joe's spirit would not respond to his thought, and he had no business

to be thinking, anyhow. He had known Joe Thomson from childhood. He

admired Jerry Swaim greatly for what she had been doing, but he knew

much of the Philadelphia end of the game, and his heart ached for the

young Westerner, who, he believed, had shouldered a stupendous, tragical

burden for the sake of a heart-longing only a strong nature like Joe's

could know.

"By the way, Jerry Swaim's aunt, back East, is in a bad way and may die

at any time, but she will never forgive Jerry to the point of

inheritance. I happen to be in the old lady's confidence that far."

"You are a social Atlas, York," Joe declared. "You hold the world on

your shoulders. But what you say doesn't interest me at all. So don't

prejudge any of us, maid or man."

"And don't you let your bloomin' self-confidence and ability to work

half-miracles be your undoing. A house builded on the sand may fall,

where one built on gold dust may stand firm," York retorted.

"Do you believe your own words?" Joe asked, rising to his feet.

"The point is for you to believe them, whether I do or not," York

answered, as Joe disappeared through the doorway.

"Why, in the name of fitness, can't that fellow fall in love with that

little Thelma Ekblad, a girl who knows what sacrifice on the Sage Brush

means and who has a grip on the real values of life? Oh, well, just to

watch the crowd run awry ought to be entertainment enough for a bachelor

like myself," York thought, as he sat staring after Joe. "I've lived to

see a few half-miracles myself in the last decade. Anybody whose lot is

cast in western Kansas can see as many of them as the old Santa Fe Trail

bull-whackers saw of mirages in the awful 'fifties. There's a lot of

reclaiming being done on the Sage Brush, even if that struggle of Joe's

with the blowout is a failure. Thelma Ekblad in her splendid victory

over ignorance, carrying a university degree; Stellar Bahrr"--York

smiled, "Ponk, who would put a flourish after his name if he were

signing his own death-warrant, the little hero of a hundred knocks,

living above everything but his funny little strut, and he's getting

over that a bit; old Fishing Teddy, brave old soul, down in his old

shack alone; Jerry, with her luxurious laziness and doubt in God and a

hereafter--all winning slowly to better things, maybe; but as to sand

and Joe--

"'Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook?' You'll never do it, Joe,

never, and you'll never win the goal you've set your heart on. Poor

fellow!"

That night, on the silent porch alone, York finished the battle he had

begun on the evening after he and Jerry had called on Stella Bahrr.

"It's the artist bank clerk against the field, and we'll none of us bat

above his average. Good night, old moon, and good night, York, to what

can't be."

He waved a hand at the dying light in the west, and a dying hope, and

went inside.

XVI

A POSTLUDE IN "EDEN"

Cornelius Darby had lain in his beautifully decorated grave for three

years, and a graceful white shaft pointing heavenward amid the

shrubbery had become a landmark for the bunch of grubs who rode the

Winnowoc local.

"Must be getting close to the deppo. Yonder is old Corn Darby's

gravestone over on the bluff," they would say, as the train chuffed up

out of the valley on either side of the station. That was all the memory

of him that remained, save as now and then a girl in a far-away Kansas

town remembered a June evening when a discus shied out from its course

and rolled to the door of a rose-arbor.

But "Eden," as a country estate, lost nothing by the passing of the

husband of its lady and mistress, who spared none of the Darby dollars

to make both the town and country home delightful in all appointments,

hoping and believing that in her policy of stubbornness and force she

could have her way, and bring back to the East the girl whom she would

never invite to return, the girl whose future she had determined to

control. The three years had found Jerusha Darby's will to have Jerry

Swaim become her heir under her own terms--mistaking dependence for

appreciation, and idleness for happiness--had ceased to be will and

become a mania, the ruling passion of her years of old age. She never

dreamed that she was being adroitly managed by her husband's relative,

Eugene Wellington, but she did recognize, and, strangely enough, resent,

the fact that the Darby strain in his blood was proving itself in his

ability, not to earn dollars, but to make dollars earn dollars once they

were put plentifully into his hands.

Since Mrs. Darby had only one life-purpose--to leave her property to

Jerry Swaim under her own terms--it galled her to think of it passing to

the hands of the relatives of the late Cornelius. She believed that love

of Eugene would bring Jerry back, for she was Lesa's own romance-loving

child--even if the luxuries that wealth can offer should fail; and she

had coddled Eugene Wellington for this very purpose. But after three

years he had failed to satisfy her. She was becoming slowly but

everlastingly set on one thing. She would put her property elsewhere by

will--when she was through with it. She could not do without Eugene as

long as she lived--which would be indefinitely, of course. But she would

have her say--and (in a whisper) it would _not_ be a Darby nor _kin_ of

a Darby who might be sitting around now, waiting for her to pass to her

fathers, who would possess it.

In this intense state of mind she called Eugene out to "Eden" in the

late May of the third year of Jerry Swaim's stay in Kansas. The

rose-arbor was aglow with the same blossoming beauty as of old, and all

the grounds were a dream of May-time verdure.

Eugene Wellington, driving out from the city in a big limousine car,

found them more to his taste than ever before, and he took in the

premises leisurely before going to the arbor to meet Mrs. Darby.

"If I could only persuade Jerry to come now, all would be well," he

meditated. "And I have hopes. The last news of her tells me a few

things. She hasn't fallen in love with York Macpherson. He'd hate me

less if she had, and he detests me. I saw that, all right, when he was

here last month. And she's pretty tired of the life of the wilderness. I

know that. If she would come right now it would settle things forever.

I'd go after her if the old lady would permit it. I'd go, anyhow, if I

dared. But I must keep an eye on Uncle Cornie's widow day and night,

and, hungry as I am for one glimpse of Jerry's sweet face, I couldn't

meet Jerusha D. in her wrath if I disobeyed her."

Eugene had the chauffeur pause while he surveyed the lilac-walk and the

big maples and the lotus-pond.

"If Jerry would come _now_," he began again, with himself, "she would be

heir to all this. If she doesn't come soon, there's trouble ahead for

Eugene of the soft snaps. To the rose-arbor, Henderson."

So Henderson whirled the splendid young product to the doorway of the

pretty retreat.

Mrs. Darby met her nephew with a sterner face even than she was

accustomed to wear.

"I want to see you at once," she said, as the young man loitered a

moment outside.

"Yes, Aunt Jerry," he responded, dutifully enough--as to form.

"What have you heard from Jerry recently?" she demanded.

"What York Macpherson told us--that she has had a hard year's work in a

school-room," Eugene replied.

"Humph! I knew that. What are you doing to bring her back to me?" Mrs.

Darby snapped off the words.

"Nothing now!" the young man answered her.

"'Nothing now!' Why not?" Mrs. Darby was in her worst of humors.

"Because there is positively nothing to do but to wait," Eugene said,

calmly. "She is not in love anywhere else. She is getting tired and

disgusted with her plebeian surroundings, and as to her estate--"

"What of her estate? I refused to let York Macpherson say a word,

although he tried to over-rule me. I told him two things: I'd never

forgive Jerry if she didn't come back uninvited by me; and I'd never

listen to him blow a big Kansas story of her wonderful possessions. What

do you know? You'd be unprejudiced." The old woman had never seemed

quite so imperious before.

"I have here a paper describing it. York Macpherson sent it to Uncle

Cornelius the very week he died. I found it among some other papers

shortly after his death and after Jerry left. When York was here he

confirmed the report at my insistent request. Read it."

Jerusha Darby read, realizing, as she did so, that neither her husband

nor York Macpherson had succeeded in doing what Eugene Wellington had

done easily. Each had tried in vain to have her read that paper.

"You knew the condition of this estate for three years, and never told

me. Why?" The old woman's face was very pale.

"I did not dare to do so," Eugene replied, that line of weakness in his

face which Jerry had noted three years before revealing itself for the

first time to her aunt.

"This is sufficient," she said, in a quiet sort of way. "To-morrow I

make my will--just to be sure. I shall probably outlive many younger

people than myself. Write and tell Jerry I have done it. This time

to-morrow night will see my estate settled so far as the next generation

is concerned. If I do not do it, Eugene, some distant and improvident

relatives of Cornelius will claim it. Send the lawyer out in the

morning."

"All right, Aunt Jerry. I must go now. I have a club meeting in the city

and I can make it easily. The car runs like the wind with Henderson at

the wheel. Good-by."

And Eugene Wellington was gone.

"Three years ago I'd have left everything to him if I had been ready to

make a will then. I'm ready now, and any time in the next ten years I

can change it if I want to. But this will bring things my way, after

all. I told York I'd never forgive Jerry!"

Mrs. Darby paused, and a smile lighted her wrinkled face.

"To think of that girl just shouldering her burden and walking off with

it. If she isn't Brother Jim over again! Never writing a word of

complaint. Oh, Jerry! Jerry! I'll make it up to you to-morrow."

To Jerusha Darby money made up for everything. She sat long in the

rose-arbor, thinking, maybe, of the years when Jerry's children and her

children's children would dominate the Winnowoc countryside as they of

the Swaim blood had always done. And then, because she was tired, and

the afternoon sunshine was warm, and her willow rocking-chair was very

comfortable--she fell asleep.

<tb>

"Went just like her brother, the late Jeremiah Swaim," the papers said,

the next evening.

Instead of the lawyer, it was the undertaker who came to officiate. And

the last will and testament, and the too-late evidence of a forgiving

good-will, all were impossible henceforth and forever.

The estate of the late Jerusha Darby, relict of the late Cornelius

Darby, no will of hers having been found, passed, by agreement under

law, to a distant relative of the late Cornelius, which relative being

Eugene Wellington, whose knowledge of the said possible conditions of

inheritance he had held in his possession for three years, since the day

he accidentally found them among the private papers of his late uncle,

knowing the while that any sudden notion of the late Jerusha might

result in putting her possessions, by her own signature, where neither

Jerry, as her favorite and heir apparent, nor himself, as heir-in-law

without a will, could inherit anything. Truly Gene had had a bothersome

time of it for three years, and he congratulated himself on having done

well--excellently well, indeed. Truly only the good little snakes ever

entered that "Eden" in the Winnowoc Valley in Pennsylvania.

XVII

THE FLESH-POTS OF THE WINNOWOC

The glory of that third springtime was on the Kansas prairies and in the

heart of a man and a maid, the best of good fellows each to the other,

who rode together far along their blossomy trails. The eyes of the man

were on the future and in his heart there was only one wish--that the

good-fellowship would soon end in the realization of his heart's desire.

The eyes of the maid were closed to the future. For her, too, there was

only one wish--that this kind of comradeship might go on unchanged

indefinitely. To Jerry no trouble seemed quite so big when Joe was with

her, and little foxes sought their holes when he came near. If the

spring work had not grown so heavy late in May, and Joe could have come

to town oftener, and one teacher had not fallen sick, and Clare Lenwell

hadn't been so stubborn, and if Stellar Bahrr had held her tongue--But

why go on with ifs? All these conditions did exist. What might have been

without them no man knoweth.

One of the humanest traits of human beings is to believe what is

pleasant to believe, and to doubt and question what would be an

undesirable fact. Jerry Swaim, clinging ever to a memory of what might

have been, building a pretty love dream, it is true, to be acted out

some far-away time by a young farmer and his neighbor in the Sage Brush

Valley, listened to Stellar Bahrr's version of Thelma Ekblad's shopping

mission, held back the tears that burned her eyeballs for a moment, and

then, being human, voted the whole thing as impossible, if not as

malicious as any of Stellar Bahrr's stories. Indeed, Thelma Ekblad was

now, as she had always been, the very least of Jerry's troubles.

The school row, that had become the community fuss, culminated in the

superintendent putting upon his teachers the responsibility of

settlement.

If they were willing to concede to the foolish demands of the class, led

by Clare Lenwell, and grant full credits in their branches of study, he

would abide by their decision. The easiest way, after all, to quiet the

thing, he said, might be to let the young folks have their way this

time, and do better with the class next year. They could begin in time

with them. As if Solomon himself could ever foresee what trivial demand

and stubborn claim will be the author and finisher of the disturbance

from year to year in the town's pride and glory--the high-school Senior

class, and its Commencement affairs. The final vote to break the tie and

make the verdict was purposely put on Jerry Swaim, who had more

influence in the high school than the superintendent himself. Jerry

protested, and asked for a more just agreement, finally spending a whole

afternoon with Clare Lenwell in an effort to induce him to be a

gentleman, offering, in return, all fairness and courtesy.

Young Lenwell's head was now too large for his body. He was the hero of

the hour. Rule or ruin rested on this young Napoleon of the Sage Brush,

divinely ordained to free the downtrodden youths of America from the

iron heel and galling chains with which the faculty of the average

American high school enthralls and degrades--and so forth, world without

end.

This at least was Clare Lenwell's attitude from one o'clock P.M. to five

o'clock P.M. of an unusually hot June day. At the stroke of five Jerry

rose, with calm face, but a dangerously square chin, saying, in an

untroubled tone:

"You may as well go. Good afternoon."

Young Lenwell walked out, the cock of the hour--until the next morning.

Then all of the Seniors were recorded as having received full credits

for graduation from all of the faculty--except one pupil, who lacked one

teacher's signature. Clare Lenwell was held back by Miss Swaim, teacher

of the mathematics department.

The earthquake followed.

In the session of the school board on the afternoon of Commencement Day

Junius Brutus Ponk, who presided over the meeting, sat "as firm as Mount

Olympus, or Montpelier, Vermont," he said, afterward; "the uncle Lenwell

suffered eruption, Vesuviously; and the third man of us just cowed down,

and shriveled up, and tried to slip out in the hole where the

electric-light wire comes through the wall. But I fetched him back with

a button-hook, knowin' he'd get lost in that wide passageway and his

remains never be recovered to his family."

It was not, however, just a family matter now among the Lenwells. In the

presence of the superintendent and Mrs. Bahrr, Miss Swaim was called to

trial by her peers--the board of education. In this executive session,

whose proceedings were not ever to be breathed--for York Macpherson

would have the last man of them put in jail, he was that

influential--_Other Things Were Made Known_--Things that, after the

final settlement, became in time common property, and so forgotten.

Herein Stellar Bahrr's three years of pent-up anger at last found vent.

She had been preparing for this event. She had adroitly set the trap for

the first difficulty, that had its start in the Lenwell family, while

she was doing their spring sewing. Incessantly and insidiously she laid

her mines and strung her wires and stored her munitions, determined to

settle once for all with the pretty, stuck-up girl who had held a whip

over her for three whole years.

Charges were to be brought against Miss Swaim of a _serious_ character,

and she was to be tried and condemned in _secret session_ and allowed to

_leave_ the town _quietly_. _Nothing_ would be said _aloud_ until she

was _gone_.

In despair, Ponk sought York Macpherson two hours before the trial

began.

"There's two against me. And no matter what I _say_, they'll outvote me.

It's the durned infernal ballot-box that's a curse to a free

government. If it wasn't for that, republics would flourish. Bein' an

uncrowned king don't keep a man from bein' a plain short-eared

jackass--and they's three of us of the same breed--two against one."

York's face was gray with anger, and he clutched his fingers in his wavy

hair as if to get back the hold on himself.

"You will have your trial, of course. Demand two things--that the

accused and the accusers meet face to face. It will be hard on Jerry."

"Has she flinched or fell down once in three years, York Macpherson?

Ain't she stronger and handsomer to-day than she was the day I had the

honor to bring her up from the depot in that new gadabout of mine? If I

could I'd have had it framed and hung on the wall and kept, for what it

done for her."

The two men looked into each other's eyes, and what each read there made

a sacred, unbreakable bond between them for all the years to come.

The trial was held in the hotel parlor, behind closed doors. The charges

were vague and poorly supported by evidence, but the venom back of them

was definite. Plainly stated, a pretty, incompetent girl had come West

_for some reason_ never made clear to New Eden. Come as an heiress in

"style and stuckuppitude of manner" (that was Stellar Bahrr's phrasing);

had suddenly become poor and dependent on the good-will of J. B. Ponk,

who had fought to the bitter end to give her "a place on the town

pay-roll and keep her there" (that was the jealous superintendent's

phrasing); and on the patronage of York Macpherson, who had really took

her in, he and his honorable sister, even if they really were the worse

"took in" of the two. At this point Ponk rapped for a better expression

of terms. The young person had tried to "run things" in the church and

schools and society. Even the superintendent himself had to be sure of

her approval before he dared to start any movement in the high school.

And no one of the preachers would invite her to unite with his church.

But to the charges now:

First: She had refused to let Clare Lenwell graduate who wasn't any

worse than the rest of the class.

Secondly: She had a way of riding around over the country with young men

on moonlight nights on horseback. Of going, the Lord knows where, with

young men, _joy-riding_ in cars, or of going alone wherever she pleased

in hired livery cars. And _some_ thought she met strange men and was

acquainted with rough characters, and the moral influence of that was

awfully bad; and there was something _even worse_, if that were

possible, WORSE!

Things had disappeared around town often, but in _the last three years_

especially. If folks were poor, they needed money.

Then Stellar Bahrr came into the ring.

Jerry had sat and listened to the proceedings as an indifferent

spectator to what could in no wise concern her. With the entrance of

Mrs. Bahrr to the witness-stand, the girl's big, dreamy eyes grew

brighter and her firm mouth was set, but no mark of anxiety showed

itself in her face or manner.

Mrs. Bahrr whined a bit as to wishing only to do the right thing, but

her steel-pointed eyes, as she fixed them in Jerry, wrote as with a

stylus across the girl's understanding:

"You are hopelessly in the minority. Now I can say what I please."

What Mrs. Bahrr really knew, of course, she couldn't swear to in any

court, because of Laura and York Macpherson. She wouldn't shame them,

because they had befriended a fraud, all with good intentions. She only

came now because she'd been promised protection by the board from what

folks would say, and she was speaking what must _never_ be repeated.

"Most of us need that kind of protection when you are around," Ponk

declared, vehemently, knowing that, while the school board would keep

her words sacred, nothing said or done in that trial would be held

sacred by her as soon as the decision she wished for was reached.

Stellar, feeling herself safe, paid no heed to Ponk. What she really

knew was that a certain young lady had been known to take money from her

hostess and, being caught, had been forced to give it up. Stellar

herself saw and heard the whole thing when it happened. Laura had told

her about the matter, and then, when she was just leaving, Jerry had

returned the money. She was right outside of the vines on the porch, and

she knew. Stellar knew that dollars and dollars, jewelry, silverware,

and other valuables had been taken, and some of them never restored; but

some was sneaked back when the pressure got too strong. In a word,

through much talk and little sense, Miss Geraldine Swaim was branded a

high-toned thief. And worse than that. For three years strange men had

slipped to the Macpherson home when the folks were away, and been let

out by the side door. Real low-down-looking fellows. Stellar had seen

them herself. She had a way of running 'cross lots up to Laury's

evenings, and _she knew_ what she was talking about. Stellar dropped her

eyes now, not caring to look at Jerry. Her blow had hit home and she was

exultant.

"Has the young lady anything to say?" Lenwell of the school board asked,

feeling a twinge of pity, after all, because the case was even stronger

than he had hoped it could be made.

Jerry looked over at Stellar Bahrr until she was forced to lift her eyes

to the girl's face.

"I cannot understand the degree of hate that can be developed in a human

mind," she said, calmly. "That is all I have to say."

Junius Brutus Ponk's round face seemed to blacken like a Kansas sky

before the coming of a hail-storm. Lenwell gave a snort of triumph, and

the third member of the board grinned.

At that moment the door of the hotel parlor opened. Jerry, who sat

opposite to it, caught sight of York Macpherson in the hall. And York

saw her, calm and brave, in what he read, in the instant, was defeat for

her. Before her were dismissal, failure, and homelessness. But neither

he nor any one else dreamed how far the influence of those Sunday

afternoons of "calling on mother," with the fat little hotel-keeper, had

led this girl into a "trust in every time of trouble," and she faced her

future bravely.

It was not York Macpherson, but the little, fuzzy, shabby figure of old

Fishin' Teddy who shuffled inside and closed the door, demanding in a

quavering squeak to be heard.

Ponk gave a start of surprise; Lenwell was annoyed; the third man was

indifferent now, being safe, anyhow. Stellar Bahrr and the

superintendent stared in amazement, but Jerry's face was wonderful to

see.

"'Ain't I got a right to say a word here, gentlemen?" old Teddy asked,

looking at Ponk.

"If it's on the subject of this meeting, yes. If it's anything about

fish, either in the Sage Brush or in Kingussie Creek, no. This really

ain't no place for fish stories. We're overstocked with 'em right now,

till this hotel and gurrage will have a 'ancient and a fishlike smell'

as the Good Book says, for a generation."

"I just got wind of what was on up here. A man from your town come down

to see me on business, an' he bringed me up."

"York Macpherson's the only man I ever knew had business with old Teddy.

Lord be praised!" Ponk thought.

"I got a little testimony myself to offer here, for the one that's bein'

blackmailed. I'll tell it fast as I can," Teddy declared.

"Take your time an' get it straight. None of us is in a hurry now," Ponk

assured him.

Then the Teddy Bear, without looking at Jerry, gave testimony:

"Back in Pennsylvany, where I come from, in the Winnowoc country, I

knowed Jim Swaim, this young lady's father. I wasn't no fisherman then.

I was a hard-workin', well-meanin', honest man. My name was Hans

Theodore--and somethin' else I have no use for since I come to the Sage

Brush in Kansas."

He hesitated and looked down at his scaly brown paws and shabby clothes.

"I ain't telling this 'cause I want to, but 'cause I want to do justice

to Jim Swaim's girl. Jim was my friend an' helped me a lot of ways. He

was a hard-fisted business man, but awfully human with human bein's; an'

his daughter's jes' like him, seems to me."

Jerry's cheeks were swept with the bloom of "Eden" roses as she sat with

her eyes fixed on the old man. To her in that moment came a vision of

Uncle Cornie in the rose-arbor when the colorless old man had pleaded

with her to become as her father had been.

"I got into trouble back there. This is a secret session, hain't it?"

The old man hesitated again.

"Yes, dead secret," Ponk assured him. "Nothin' told outside of here

before it's first told inside, which is unusual in such secret

proceedings, so you are among friends. Go on."

Stellar Bahrr sat with her eyes piercing the old man like daggers, while

his own faded yellow-brown eyes drooped with a sorrowful expression.

"I won't say how it happened, but I got mixed up in some stealin'

scrape--that's why I changed my name or, ruther, left off the last of

it. I'd gone to the Pen--though ever' scrap I ever stole, or its money

value, was actually returned to them that had lost it. Jim Swaim stood

by me, helpin' me through, an' I paid him as I earnt it. Then he give me

money to get started here, an' befriended me every way, just 'cause it

was in him. I've lived out here on the Sage Brush alone 'cause I ain't

fit to live with folks. But when the old _mainy_, as you say of crazy

folk, comes, why, things is missin' up in town. They land in my shack

sometimes, an' sometimes I'm honest enough to bring 'em back when I can

do it. I'm the one that hangs around in the shadders, an' if you ketch

sight of strange men at side doors, Mrs. Bahrr, it's me. An' when this

Jerry Swaim (I knowed her when she was a baby; I carried her in my arms

'cross the Winnowoc once, time of a big flood up in Pennsylvany)--when

her purseful of money was stole, three years ago, an' she comes down to

my shack and finds it all there, why, she done by me then jus' like her

own daddy 'd 'a' done, she never told on me at all. An' she hain't told

all these years, and wa'n't goin' to tell on me now. I don't know what

you mean 'bout these stories on her. She never done nothin' to be

ashamed of in her life. 'Tain't in her family to be ashamed. They dunno

how. If they's blame for stealin' in New Eden, though, jus' lay it on

old Fishin' Teddy. You 'quit her now."

The old man's voice quavered as he squeaked out his words, and he

shuffled aside, to be less in evidence in the parlor, where he had for

the one time in his life been briefly the central figure.

The silence that followed his words was broken by Jerry's clear, low

voice. Her face was beautiful in the soft light there. To Ponk she had

never seemed so adorable before, not even on still Sabbath afternoons in

the quiet corner of the cemetery where they talked as friends of

mother-love and God, and Life after life.

"Friends, this old hermit fisherman is telling you a falsehood to try to

shield me because of some favor my father showed him in the years gone

by. If he is not willing to say more, to tell you the real truth, he

will force me to say to you that I am the guilty one after all. I cannot

let him make such a sacrifice for me."

She spoke as though she were explaining the necessity for changing cars

in Chicago in order to reach Montreal. Old Fishin' Teddy lifted his

clubby brown hands in protest.

"'Tain't so, an' 'tain't right," he managed to make the words come

out--thin and trembling words, shaking like palsied things.

"No, it isn't so, and it isn't right, and he must not bear a disgrace he

doesn't deserve. I'll do it for him," Jerry said, smiling upon the

shabby old man--a common grub of the Sage Brush Valley.

There is nothing grander in human history, nothing which can more deeply

touch the common human heart of us all, than the lesson of

self-sacrifice taught on Mount Calvary. From the thief on the cross,

down through all the centuries, has the blessed power of that Spirit

softened the hearts of evil-doers, great or small. Jerry had not once

turned toward Stellar Bahrr since the entrance of Fishin' Teddy. When

she had ceased speaking, the silence of the room was broken by the town

busybody's whining tone:

"They ain't neither one of 'em a thief, Mr. Ponk. It's me. They sha'n't

do no such sacrificing thing."

The silence of the moment before was a shout compared to the dead

silence now.

"Yes, it's me. I was born that way, an' it just seems I can't help it.

I've done all the liftin', I guess, that's been done in this town

a'most--'tain't so much, of course; but I ain't mean clear through, an'

I jus' wouldn't ever rest in my grave if I don't speak now. I thought

I'd always hide it, but I know I never will."

Old Teddy shrank back in a heap on his chair, while all of the rest

except Jerry Swaim sat as if thunderstruck.

"I'm goin' clear through with it, now I've begun. Maybe I'll be a better

woman if I am disgraced forever by it." Mrs. Bahrr's voice grew steadier

and her eyes were fixed on the ground.

"Hans Theodore--the last part of his name is Bahrr--he's my husband. It

was for my sins that he left Pennsylvany. Jim Swaim saved us from a lot

of disgrace, and persuaded us to come West an' start over, an' helped us

a lot. I couldn't break myself of wrong-doing just by changing climate,

though. We tried Indiany first an' failed, then we come to S'liny,

Kansas, next an' then we come on here. An' at last Theodore give me up

an' went off alone an' changed his name. Mr. Lenwell's folks here is

distant relatives, but they never would 'a' knowed Theodore. Didn't know

he'd never got a divorce, and never stop supportin' me; like he'd said

when we was married, he'd 'keep me unto death,' you know; and he'd come

to see me once in a while, to be sure I wasn't needin' nothin'. I jus'

worked along at one thing or another, an' Teddy earnt money an' paid it

in to York Macpherson, like a pension, an' he paid me, York did. But

Teddy wouldn't never live with me, though he never told York why. An'

when I took things--"

Mrs. Bahrr paused and looked at Jerry deprecatingly.

"Like that silver cup I saw down at the deep hole?" Jerry asked,

encouragingly.

"Yes, like that. I seen you down there that day. I was the woman that

passed your car--"

"I know it," Jerry said, "I remember your sunbonnet and gray-green

dress. I've often seen both since."

"Yes, an' you remember, too, the time I come out on the porch sudden when

you first come here, an' made you promise not to tell." Mrs. Bahrr's

voice quavered now.

"An' 'cause I knowed Teddy'd bring that right back to Macpherson's and

you'd remember it, an' 'cause you were Jim Swaim's child that knowed my

fault an' made me do what I didn't want to do, even if I was in the

wrong, I hated you an' vowed to myself I'd fix you. It was me slipped

into your room an' stuck Laury's purse into your beaded hand-bag, an' it

was me took your roll of money from your own purse. Teddy took it away,

though, that very night. Teddy he'd take whatever I picked up an'

pretend he'd sell it, but he'd git it back to 'em some way if he could;

an' he's saved an' sold fish an' lived a hermit life an' never told on

me. He's slipped up to town to git me to put back or let him put back

what I was tempted to pilfer, 'cause it seemed I just couldn't help it.

York's been awful patient with me, too. But I can't set here an' be a

woman and see Teddy shieldin' me, a hypocrite, an' her shieldin' him,

an' not tellin' on me, like wimmen does on wimmen generally, an' not

make a clean breast of it. An' if you'll not tell on me, an' all help

me, I'll jus' try once more--"

"Won't anything go out of this room except what you tell yourself,

Stellar Bahrr," Ponk said, gravely. "Now you go home an' begin to act

better and think better, an' this'll be a heap cleaner town forever

after. An' if you live right the rest of your days you 'll keep on

livin' after you're dead, like mother does. The charges of this case is

all settled. I congratulate you, Miss Fair Defendant. You are a Joan of

Arc, an' a Hannah Dustin, an Boaz's Ruth, an' Barbara Fritchie, all in

one."

While the other two members of the board were shamefacedly shaking hands

and offering Jerry half of New Eden as a recompense, old Fishin' Teddy

slipped out of the side door through the dining-room and on to where

Ponk's best livery car waited to take him to his rude shack beside the

deep hole in the Sage Brush.

As Jerry passed into the hall she found a crowd waiting for her--the

three ministers from the churches, the mayor of New Eden, the friends of

the Macphersons, York himself, and many more of the town's best, who had

gathered to congratulate Jerry and to assure her of their pride in her

ability and appreciation of her as a citizen of New Eden.

With the Commencement that night the school fuss and town split

disappeared at one breath and passed into history.

When they reached the doorway of "Castle Cluny," after the Commencement

exercises, York handed Jerry a letter. It was a long and affectionately

worded message from Eugene Wellington, telling of the passing of Jerusha

Darby, of his inheritance, and of his intention to come at once to

Kansas and take her back to the "Eden" she had neglected so long.

And Jerry, worn with the events of the last few weeks, feeling the

strain suddenly lifted, welcomed the letter and shed a tear upon it,

saying, softly:

"Oh, I'm so tired of everything now! If he comes for me, he'll find me

ready to meet him. The flesh-pots of the Winnowoc are better to me than

this weary desert."

<tb>

Came an evening three days before the date for the lease on the Swaim

land to expire. Jerry sat alone on the Macpherson porch. It had been an

extremely hot day for June, with the dead, tasteless air that presages

the coming of a storm, and to-night the moon seemed to struggle up

toward the zenith against choking gray clouds that threatened to smother

out its light.

Jerry was not happy to-night. She wanted Joe Thomson to come this

evening. It had been such a long while since he had had time to leave

the ranch for an evening with her.

And with the wishing Joe came. With firm step and the face of a victor

he came. From his dark eyes hope and tenderness were looking out.

"I haven't seen you for ages, and ages are awfully long, you know,"

Jerry declared.

"I've been very busy," Joe replied. "You know you can't break the laws

of the ranch and expect a harvest, any more than you can break the laws

of geometry and depend on results. I would have been up sooner, though,

but for one thing: a fellow on the ranch above mine who got hurt once

with a mowing-machine had another accident and I've been helping the

owner, that stout-hearted little Norwegian girl, Thelma Ekblad, to take

care of their crops, too. Thelma is a courageous soul who has worked her

way through the university, and she is a mighty capable girl, too. She

would be a splendid success as a teacher, she is so well trained, but

her family need her, and all of us down there need her."

Jerry caught her breath. It was the first time in three years that Joe

had ever mentioned any girl with interest. But now this was all right

and just as things should be. A neighbor, a capable Western girl--women

see far, after all, and Jerry's romance had not been a foolish one.

"That's all right, Joe, but I have been wanting to see you"--the old "I

want" as imperative again to-night as in the days when all of this

girl's wants had been met by the mere expression of them.

"And I'm always wanting to see you, and never so much as to-night," Joe

began, earnestly.

"Let me tell you first why I have wanted to see you once more," Jerry

broke in, hastily.

In the dull light her dreamy dark-blue eyes and her golden hair falling

away from her white brow left an imprint that Joe Thomson's mind kept

henceforth; at the same time that "once more" cut a deeper wound than

Jerry could know.

"My aunt Jerry Darby is dead." The girl's voice was very low. "I can't

grieve for her, for she was old and tired of life and unhappy. You

remember I told you about her one night here three years ago."

Joe did remember.

"She left all her fortune to Cousin Gene Wellington."

"The artist who turned out to be a bank clerk?" Joe asked. "I really

always doubted that story."

"Yes, but, you know, he did it to please Aunt Jerry. Think of a

sacrifice like that! Giving up one's dearest life-work!"

"I'm thinking of it. Excuse me. Go on," Joe said.

Jerry lifted her big dreamy eyes. The sparkle was gone and only the soft

light of romance illumined them now.

"Gene is coming out to see me soon. I look for him any day. Everything

is all settled about the property, and everything is going to be all

right, after all, I am sure. And I'm so tired of teaching." Jerry broke

off suddenly.

"But, oh, Joe," she began presently, "you will never, never know how

much your comradeship has helped me through these three trying years of

hard work and hopelessness. We have been only friends, of course, and

you are such a good, helpful kind of a friend. I never could have gotten

through without you."

"Thank you, the pleasure is mine. I--I think I must go now."

Joe rose suddenly and started to leave the porch. In an instant the very

earth had slidden out from under his feet. The memory of York

Macpherson's warning swept across his mind as the blowout sands sweep

over the green prairie. And he had come to say such different words

to-night. He had reached the end of a long, heart-breaking warfare with

nature and he had won. And now a new warfare broke forth in his soul.

At that moment a sudden boom of thunder crashed out of the horizon and

all the lightnings of the heavens were unleashed, while a swirling

dust-deluge filled the darkening air. Jerry sprang forward, clutching

Joe's arm with her slender fingers.

"The storm will be here in a minute," she cried, "You must not leave

now. You mustn't face this wind. Look at that awful black cloud and see

how fast it is coming on. I don't want you to go away. Where can you

go?"

But Joe only shook off her grip, saying, hoarsely:

"I'm going down the Sage Brush. If you ever want me again, you'll find

me beyond the blowout."

The word struck like a blow. For three years Jerry had not heard it

spoken. It was the one term forever dropped from her vocabulary. All who

loved her must forget its very existence.

There was a sudden dead calm in the hot yellow air; a moment of

gathering forces before the storm would burst upon the town.

"If you ever see me beyond that blowout, you'll know that I do want

you," Jerry said, slowly.

In the blue lightning glare that followed, her white face and big dark

eyes recalled to Joe Thomson's mind the moment, so long ago now, it

seemed, when Jerry had first looked out at the desert from under the

bough of the oak-grove.

During the prolonged, terrific burst of thunder that followed, the young

ranchman strode away and the darkness swallowed his stalwart form as the

worst storm the Sage Brush country had ever known broke furiously upon

the whole valley.

And out on the porch steps stood a girl conscious, not of the

storm-wind, nor the beating rain, nor cleaving lightning; conscious only

that something had suddenly gone out of her life into the blackness

whither Joe Thomson had gone; and with the heartache of the loss of the

moment was a strange resentment toward a brave-hearted little Norwegian

girl--a harvest-hand with a crippled brother, an adopted baby, and a

university education.

XVIII

THE LORD HATH HIS WAY IN THE STORM

Laura Macpherson sat on the porch, watching her brother coming slowly up

the street, seemingly as oblivious to the splendor of the sunset

to-night as he had been on a June evening three summers ago.

"That was the worst cloudburst I ever heard of out here," he declared,

when he reached the porch. "Every man in town who could carry a shovel

has been out all day, up-stream or down-stream, helping to dig out the

bottomland farms. I've been clear to the upper Sage Brush, doing a stunt

or two myself. I left my muddy boots and overalls at the office so that

I wouldn't be smearing up your old Castle here."

Even in the smallest things York's thoughts were for his crippled

sister.

"There's a lot of wild stories out about buildings being swept away and

lives being lost, here and there in the valley. You needn't believe all

of them until your trustworthy brother confirms them for you, little

sister. Such events have their tragedies, but the first estimate is

always oversize."

"Even if your Big Dipper tells me, shall I wait for your confirmation?"

Laura inquired, blandly.

"Oh, Laura, I'm going to cut out all that astronomical business now,

even if I always did know that the right way to pronounce the name Bahrr

is plain Bear, however much you have to stutter to spell it. Stellar has

been, as the Methodists say, 'redeemed and washed in the blood of the

Lamb.' I'm taking her in on probation, myself, and if she sticks it out

for six months I'll take her into full membership."

"What do you mean, York?" Laura inquired.

"I mean that since they settled the school row in secret session, Mrs.

Bahrr has been as different a woman as one can be who has let the habit

of evil thinking become a taskmaster. I've never told you that her

husband is still living, a shabby old fellow who gives me money for her

support as fast as he can earn it, but he won't live with her. She flies

from hat-trimming to sewing and baking and nursing and back to sewing,

and she never earns much anywhere, and works up trouble just for pure

cussedness. But to-day she went to the upper Sage Brush to help old Mrs.

Poser. The Posers were nearly washed away, and the old lady is sick and

lonely and almost helpless. She needs somebody to stay with her. Yes,

Stellar is really becoming a star--a plain, homely planet, doing a

good-angel line where she's most useful. We'll let the past stay where

it belongs, and count her reclaimed to better things now."

"Amen! And what about the valley down-stream? It must be worse, because

the storm came up from that way," Laura declared.

"There are plenty of rumors, but I haven't heard anything definite yet,

for I just got here, you know, and, as I telephoned you, found Mr.

Wellington had registered at Ponk's inn. The traveling-men who were on

the branch line have brought the first word to town to-day. The train is

stuck somewhere down the valley, and the tracks, for the most part, are

at the bottom of the Sage Brush. There are washouts all along the

road-bed, and the passengers have been hauled up the stream, across

fields, and every other way, except by the regular route. No automobile

can travel the trail now, so our Philadelphia gentleman arrives a good

bit disgusted with this bloomin' Western country, don't you know; and

sore from miles of jolting; and hungry; and sort of mussy-looking for a

banker; but cocksure of a welcome and of the power to bring salvation to

one of us at least."

York dropped down on the porch step with a frown, flinging aside his hat

and thrusting his fingers savagely into his heavy hair.

"Oh, well!" he exclaimed, dejectedly. "There's been a three years'

running fight between Jim Swaim's determined chin and Lesa's tender

eyes. I had hoped to the Lord that Jim would win the day, but that

whirlwind campaign of pleading and luxury-tempting letters came just at

the end of a hard year's work in the high school, with all that infernal

fuss in the Senior class, splitting the town open for a month and being

forgotten in an hour, and the jealousy toward the best teacher we've

ever had here, etcetera. So the '_eyes_' seem to have it. If there were

no ladies present," York added, with a half-smile, "I'd feel free to

express my lordly judgment of the whole damned sex."

"Don't hesitate, Yorick; a little cussing might ease your liver," Laura

declared, surprised and amused at her brother's unexpected vehemence of

feeling.

"There's nothing in the English language, as she is cussed, to do the

subject justice, but I might practise a few minutes at least," York

began.

"Hush, York! That is Mr. Eugene Wellington coming yonder. I'll call

Jerry. Poor Joe!" Laura added, pityingly. "I have a feeling he is the

real sufferer here."

"Yes, poor Joe!" York echoed, sadly. "Ponk will just soar above his

hurt, but men of Joe's dogged make-up die a thousand deaths when they do

die."

Lesa Swaim's daughter was gloriously beautiful to Eugene Wellington's

artistic eyes as he sat beside her on the porch on this beautiful

evening. And Eugene himself held a charm in his very presence. All the

memories of the young years of culture and ease; all the daintiness of

perfect dress and perfect manners; all the assurance that a vague, sweet

dream was becoming real; all the sense of a struggle for a livelihood

now ended; all the breaking of the grip of stern duty, and an unbending

pride in a clear conscience, although their rewards had been inspiringly

sweet--all these seemed to Jerry Swaim to lift her suddenly and

completely into the real life from which these three busy, strange years

had taken her. Oh, she had been only waiting, after all. Nothing

mattered any more. Eugene and she had looked at duty differently. That

was all. He was here now, here for her sake. Henceforth his people were

to be her people--his God her God. Uncle Cornie was wise when he said of

Eugene: "He comes nearer to what you've been dreaming about." He seemed

not so much a lover as a fulfilment of a craving for love.

The first sweet moment of meeting was over. Her future, their future,

shrouded only by a rose-hued mist, beyond which lay light and ease, was

waiting now for them to enter upon. In this idyllic hour Geraldine,

daughter of Lesa Swaim, had come to the very zenith of life's romance.

"It has been a cruel three years, Jerry," Eugene was saying, as, their

first greetings over, he lighted a cigarette and adjusted himself

picturesquely and easefully in York Macpherson's big porch chair--a

handsome, perfectly groomed, artistic fellow, he appeared fitted as

never before to adorn life's ornamental places.

"But they are past now. You won't have to teach any more, little cousin

o' mine. York Macpherson says your land lease expires to-day. So your

business transactions here are over, and we'll just throw that ground in

the river and forget it."

He might have taken the girl's hand in his as they sat together, but

instead he clasped his own hands gracefully and studied their fine

outlines.

"I have all the Darby estate in my own name now, you know, and I didn't

have to work a stroke at earning it. God! I wonder how a fellow can

stand it to work for every dollar he gets until he is comfortably fixed.

I simply filled in my banking-hours in a perfunctory way, and I didn't

kill myself at it, either. See what I have saved by it for myself and

you, and how much better my course was than yours, after all. Just three

years of waiting, and dodging all the drudgery I possibly could. And you

can just bet I'm a good dodger, Jerry."

Something like a chill went quivering through Jerry Swaim's whole being,

but the smile in her eyes seemed fixed there, as Eugene went on:

"Now if I had stuck to art, where would I have been and where would you

be right now? I've always wanted to paint the prairies. If I can stand

this blasted, crude country long enough, and if I'm not too lazy, we'll

play around here a little while, till I have smeared up a few canvases,

and then we'll go home, never to return, dear. Art is going to be my

pastime hereafter, you know, as it was once my--my--"

"Oh, never mind what it once was." Jerry helped to end the sentence.

The sunset on the Sage Brush was never more radiantly beautiful than it

was on this evening, and the long midsummer twilight gave promise of its

rarest grandeur of coloring. But a dull veil seemed to be slowly

dropping down upon Jerry's world.

Eugene Wellington looked at her keenly.

"Why, Jerry, aren't you happy to see me--glad for us to be together

again?" he asked, with just a tinge of sharpness edging his tones.

"I have looked forward to this meeting as a dream, an impossible joy. I

hardly realize yet that it isn't a dream any more," Jerry answered him.

"Say, cousin girl," Eugene Wellington exclaimed, suddenly, "I have been

trying all this time to find out what it is that is changed in your

face. Now I know. You have grown to look so much more like your father

than you did three years ago. Better looking, of course, but his face,

and I never noticed it before. Only you will always have your mother's

beautiful eyes."

"Thank you, Gene. They were, each in his and her way, good to me. I hope

I shall never put a stain upon their good names," Jerry murmured,

wondering strangely whether the feeling that gripped her at the moment

could be joy or sorrow.

"They didn't leave you much of an inheritance. That's the only thing

that could be said against them. My father was partly to blame for that,

I guess, but I never had the courage to tell you so till now. You know

courage and Eugene Wellington never got on well together." Somehow his

words seemed to rattle harshly against Jerry's ears. "You know, my dad,

John Wellington, came out here to this very forsaken Sage Brush Valley

somewhere and started in to be a millionaire himself on short notice,

by the short-cut plan of finance. When the thing began to look like work

he threw up the whole blamed concern, just as I would have done. Work

never was a strong element in the Wellington blood, any more than

courage, you know." Gene stopped to light another cigarette. Then he

went on: "Well, after that, dad clung close to Jim Swaim and Uncle Darby

till he died. I guess, if the truth were told, he helped most to tear

your father down financially. He could do that kind of thing, I know.

Jim Swaim spent thousands stopping the cracks after dad, to save the

good name of Wellington for his daughter to wear--as your mother always

hoped you would, because I was an artist then. You see, Mrs. Swaim loved

art--and, as Aunt Darby always insisted (that was before you ran away

from her), because it would keep her money and Uncle Darby's all in the

family. That's why I'm so glad to bring all this fortune that I do to

you now. I'm just making up to you what your father lost through mine,

you see, and it came to me so easily, without my having to grub for it.

Just pleasing Aunt Darby and taking a soft snap of clerical work, with

short hours and good pay, instead of toiling at painting, even if I do

love the old palette and brush. And I used to think I'd rather do that

sort of thing than anything else in the world."

Jerry's eyes were fixed on the young artist's face with a gaze that

troubled him.

"Don't stare at me that way, Jerry. That isn't the picture I want you to

pose for when I paint your portrait, Saint Geraldine. Now listen,"

Eugene continued. "Your York Macpherson was East this spring, and he

told me that that wild-goose chase of dad's out here had left a desert

behind him. He said a poor devil of a fellow had fought for years

against the sand that dad sowed (I don't know how he did the sowing),

till it ate up about all this poor wretch had ever had. The unfortunate

cuss! York tried to tell Aunt Darby (but I headed him off successfully)

that dad started a thing that became what they call a 'blowout' here.

York Macpherson wanted to put up a big spiel to her about justice to you

and some other folks--this poor critter who got sanded over, maybe. But

it didn't move me one mite, and I didn't let it get by to Aunt Jerry's

ears, although I half-way promised York I would, to get rid of the thing

the easiest way, for that's my way, you know. Did you ever see such a

precious thing as a 'blowout' here, Jerry?"

Jerry's face was white and her eyes burned blue-black now with a steady

glow. "Never, till to-night," she said, slowly. "I never dreamed till

now how barren a thing a lust for property can create."

Gene Wellington dropped his cigarette stub and stared a moment. He did

not grasp her meaning at all, but her voice was not so pleasant, now, as

her merry laugh and soft words had been three years ago.

"By the way, coming up to-day, I heard of a dramatic situation. I think

I'll hunt up the local color for a canvas for it," Eugene began, by way

of changing the theme. "You know you had a horribly rotten storm of

thunder and lightning and wind, and a cloudburst down the river valley

where our train was stuck in the mud, and the tracks were all lost in

the sand-drift and other vile debris. Well, coming up here from the

derailed train, some one said that the young fellow who had leased that

land, or owned the land, that is just above the sand-line, the poor

devil who had such a struggle, you know--well, he was lost when the

river overflowed its banks. But somebody else said he might be marooned,

half starved, on an island of sand out in the river, waiting for the

flood to go down. The roads are just impassable around there, so they

can't get in to see what has become of him. His house was washed away,

it seems--I saw a part of it in the river--but nobody knows where he is.

Hard luck, wasn't it? I know you'll be glad to leave this God-forsaken

country, won't you, dearie? How you ever stood it for three whole years

I can't comprehend. Only you always were the bravest girl I ever knew.

Just as soon as I paint a few of its drearinesses we'll be leaving it

forever. What's the matter?"

Jerry Swaim had sprung to her feet and was standing, white and silent,

staring at her companion with wide-open, burning eyes. Against all the

culture and idle ease of her trivial, purposeless years were matched

these three times twelve months of industry and purpose that came at a

price, with the comradeship of one who had met life's foes and

vanquished them, who earned his increase, and served and sacrificed.

"What's the matter, Jerry?" Gene repeated. "Did I shock you? It is a

tragical sort of story, I know, but you used to love the romantic and

adventurous. Every big storm, and every flood, has such incidents. I

never remember them a minute, except the storm that took Uncle Cornie

and left me a fortune. They are so unpleasant. But there is a touch of

romance in this for you. They told me that a young Norwegian girl down

there was moving heaven and earth to find this poor lost devil, because

he had been so good to her always and had helped her when her brother

was badly hurt. I guess her brother went down-stream, bottom side up,

too. See the drift of it all? The time, the place, and the girl--there's

your romance, Cousin Jerry, only the actors are terribly common, you

know."

Who can forecast the trend of the human heart? Three days ago Jerry had

thought complacently of the convenience of this stout little Thelma for

Joe's future comfort. Now the thought that Thelma had seen him last, had

caught the last word, the last brave look, smote her heart with

anguish.

"Doesn't anybody know where Joe is?" she cried, wringing her hands.

"I don't know if his name is Joe. I don't know if anybody knows where he

is. I really don't care a sou about it all, Jerry." Gene drawled his

words intentionally. "The roads are awful down that way. They nearly

bumped me to pieces coming up, hours and hours, it seemed, in a wagon,

where a decent highway and an automobile would have brought me in such a

short time. It would be hard to find this Joe creature, dead or alive.

Let's talk about something more artistic."

"Gene, I can't talk now. I can't stay here a minute longer. I _must_ go

and find this man. I must! I must!"

In the frenzy of that moment, the strength of character in Jerry's face

made it wonderful to see.

"Jerry!" Eugene Wellington exclaimed, emphatically. "You perfectly shock

me! This horrid country has almost destroyed your culture. Go and find

this man--"

But Jerry was already hurrying up the street toward Ponk's Commercial

Hotel and Garage.

<tb>

"Miss Swaim, you can't never get by in a car down there," Ponk was

urging, five minutes later. "I know you can drive like--like you can

work algebra, logyruthms, and never slip a cog. But you'll never get

down the Sage Brush that far to-night. If them Norwegians on beyond the

ranch yon side of the big bend 'ain't done nothing, you just can't. The

Ekblads and the other neighbors will do all a body can, especially

Thelmy. The river's clear changed its channel an' you could run a car up

to the top of Bunker Hill Monument, back in New Hampshire, easier than

you could cut the gullies an' hit the levels of the lower Sage Brush

trail after this flood."

"Get the car ready quick. _I want to go_," Jerry commanded, and Ponk

obeyed. A minute later a gray streak whizzed by the Macpherson home,

where Eugene Wellington stood on the porch staring in speechless

amazement.

"Bless her heart!" he ejaculated, at length. "She is self-willed like

her dad. Aunt Darby always told me I'd have to manage her with gloves

on, but not to forget to manage her, anyhow."

He strolled back to the Commercial Hotel, where the best-natured man in

Kansas lay in wait for him.

"You're in early. Have a real cigar--a regular Havany-de-Cuby--off of

me. An' take a smoke out here where it's cool."

Eugene took the proffered cigar and the seat on the side porch of the

hotel that commanded a view of the street clear to "Castle Cluny."

"Town's pretty quiet this evenin'. All the men are gone up-stream or

down, to see if they can help in the storm region. Every store shut up

tight as wax. Three preachers, station-agent, the three movie men--gone

with the rest. We are a sympathetic bunch out here, an' rather quick to

get the S O S signal and respond noble."

"So it seems," Eugene replied, wondering the while how he should be able

to kill the time till Jerry's return, resolving not to tarry here to

paint a single canvas. The sooner Geraldine Swaim was out of Kansas the

better for her perverted sense of the esthetic, and the safer for her

happiness--and his own.

"Yes," Ponk was going on to say, "everybody helps. Why, I just now let

out the pride of the gurrage to a young lady. She's just heard that a

man she knows well is lost or marooned on a island in the floods of the

Sage Brush. And if anybody'll ever save him, she will. She's been doin'

impossible things here for three years, and the town just worships her."

"I should think it would," Eugene Wellington said, with a sarcasm in his

tone.

"It does," Ponk assured him. "She's the real stuff--even mother, out

yonder, loves her."

The little man's face was turned momentarily toward the hill-slope

cemetery beyond the town. "And when a girl like that comes to me for my

fastest-powered car to go where no car can't go, for the sake of as good

a man as ever lived on earth, a man she's been _comrading_ with for

three years, and with that look in her fine eyes, they's no mistakin' to

any sensible man on God's earth why she's doin' it."

"If my room is ready I'll go to it," Eugene broke in, curtly.

"Yes, Georgette, call George to take the gentleman to number seven, an'

put him to bed."

Then the little keeper of the Commercial Hotel and Garage turned toward

the street again, and his full-moon face went into a total eclipse. But

what lay back of that shadow of the earth upon it no man but Junius

Brutus Ponk could know.

XIX

RECLAIMED

Down the Sage Brush trail Jerry Swaim's car swept on in spite of ruts

and gullies and narrow roadways and obstructing debris, flood-washed

across the land. But though the machine leaped and climbed and skidded

most perilously, nothing daunted the girl with a grip on the

steering-wheel. The storm-center of destruction had been at the big bend

of the river, and no hand less skilful, nor will less determined, would

have dared to drive a car as Jerry Swaim drove hers into the heart of

the Sage Brush flood-lands in the twilight of this June evening.

Where the forks of the trail should have been the girl paused and looked

down the road she had followed three years before; once when she had

lost her way in her drive toward the Swaim estate; again, when she

herself was lost in the overwhelming surprise and disappointment of her

ruined acres; and lastly when she had come with Joe Thomson to recover

her stolen money from the old grub whose shack was close beside the deep

fishing-hole. The road now was all a part of the mad, overwhelming Sage

Brush hurrying its flood waters to the southeast with all its might.

Where was the flimsy little shack now, and where was the old Teddy Bear

himself? Did his shabby form lie under the swirling current of that

angry river, his heroic old heart stilled forever?

A group of rescuers, muddy and tired, came around a growth of low bushes

on the higher ground toward her. All day they had been locating homeless

flood victims, rescuing stock, and dragging farm implements above the

water-line. The sight of Ponk's best car, mud-smeared and panting,

amazed them. This wasn't a place for cars. But the face of the driver

amazed them more.

"Why, it's Miss Swaim, that teacher up at New Eden!" one man exclaimed.

At the word, a boy, unrecognizable for the mud caking him over, leaped

forward toward Jerry's car.

"What are you doing, Miss Swaim?" he cried. "You mustn't go any farther!

The river's undermined everything! Please don't go! Please don't!" he

pleaded.

"Why, Clare Lenwell!" Jerry exclaimed, in surprise.

"Yes. This isn't my full-dress I wore at Commencement the other night,

but I've been saving lives to-day, and feeding the hungry, too," the boy

declared, forgetting his besmeared clothing in the thought of his

service.

"Tell me, Clare, where is Joe Thomson--I mean the young man whose ranch

is just below here."

Clare's face couldn't go white under that mud, but Jerry saw his hand

tremble as it caught the edge of her wind-shield.

"He's gone down-stream, I'm afraid. They say his home is clean gone. We

have been across the river and came over on that high bridge. I don't

know much about this side. They said Thelma Ekblad tried to save him and

nearly got lost herself. Her brother, the cripple, you know, couldn't

get away. Their house is gone now. He and the Belkap baby were given up

for lost when old Fishin' Teddy got to them some way. He knew the high

stepping-stones below the deep hole and hit them true every step. They

said he went nearly neck deep holding Paul and striking solid rock every

time. He'd lived by the river so long he knew the crossing, deep as the

flood was over it. Paul made him take the baby first, and he got out

with it, all right, and would have been safe, but he was bound to go

back for Paul, too; and he got him safe to land, where the baby was; but

I guess the effort was too much for the old fellow, and he loosed his

hold and fell back into the river before they could catch him. He saved

two lives, though, and he wasn't any use to the community, anyhow. A man

that lives alone like that never is, so it isn't much loss, after all.

But that big Joe Thomson's another matter. And he was so strong, he

could swim like a whale; but the Sage Brush got him--I'm afraid."

Jerry's engine gave a great thump as she flung on all the power and

dashed away on the upper road toward Joe Thomson's ranch.

"At the bend of the river you turn toward the three cottonwoods." Jerry

recalled the directions given her on her first and only journey down

this valley three years before.

"Why, why, there is no bend any more!" she cried as she halted her car

and gazed in amazement and horror at the river valley where a broad,

full stream poured down a new-cut channel straight to the south.

"Joe's home isn't gone at all! Yonder it stands, safe and high above the

flood-line. Oh, where did the river take Joe?" She twisted her hands in

her old quick, nervous way, and stiffened every muscle as if to keep off

a dead weight that was crushing down upon her.

"He said if I wanted him he would be down beyond the blowout. I'm going

to look for him there. I don't know where else to go, and I want him."

The white, determined face and firm lips bespoke Jim Swaim's own child

now. And if the speed of her car was increased, no one would ever know

that the thought of reaching her goal ahead of any possible Thelma might

be the impetus that gave the increase.

"Yonder are the three cotton woods. From there I can see the oak-grove

and all of my rare old acres of sand. What beautiful wheat everywhere!

The storm seems to have hit the other side of the river as it runs now,

and left all this fine crop to Joe. But what for, if it took him?"

Her quick imagination pictured possibilities too dreadful for words.

<tb>

Down in the oak-grove, Joe Thomson stood leaning against a low bough,

staring out at the river valley, with the shimmering glow of the

twilight sky above it. At the soft whirring sound of an automobile he

turned, to see a gray runabout coasting down the long slope from the

three cottonwoods.

"Jerry!" The glad cry broke from his lips involuntarily.

Jerry did not speak. After the first instant of assurance that Joe was

alive, her eyes were not on the young ranchman, but on the landscape

beyond him. There, billow on billow of waving young wheat breaking

against the oak-wood outpost swept in from far away, where once she had

looked out on nothing but burning, restless sand, spiked here and there

by a struggling green shrub.

"What has done all this?" she cried, at last.

"I'm partly 'what,'" Joe Thomson replied. The shadows were on his face

again, and his loss, after that moment of glad surprise, seemed to be

doubly heavy.

"But how? I don't understand. I'm dreaming. You really are here, and not

dead, are you?"

"No, you are not dreaming. I only wish you were," Joe responded,

gloomily. "But no matter. Yes, I'm here. 'Part of me lived, but most of

me died,'" he muttered Kipling's line half audibly. "I subleased your

land from the Macpherson Mortgage Company three years ago. The lease

expires to-day. You remember what it was worth when you saw it before. I

shall hand it over to you now, worth thirty dollars an acre. Thirty

thousand dollars, at the very least, besides the value of the crop. I

got beyond the blowout and followed it up. I plowed and planted. Lord!

how I plowed and planted! And as with old Paul and Apollos, it was God

who gave the increase."

"Joe! Oh, Joe! You are a miracle-worker!" Jerry cried.

"A worker, all right, maybe. And all life is a miracle," Joe declared,

gravely.

"But your own land, Joe. They told me that your house was gone and that

maybe you had gone with it, and that these roads down here were

impassable and nobody could find you."

Joe came to the side of the little gray car where Jerry sat with her

white hands crossed on the steering-wheel. Her soft white gown, fitted

for a summer afternoon on the Macpherson porch, seemed far more lovely

in the evening light down by the oak-trees. Her golden hair was blown in

little ringlets about her forehead, and her dark-blue eyes--Joe wondered

if Nature ever gave such eyes to another human being!

"No, Jerry, my house isn't gone. My father built it up pretty high above

the river, and I saved almost everything loose before the flood reached

my place. It was the Ekblad house that went down the river. I went over

there to help Thelma get her brother and the baby to safety on the high

ground. She had started out to warn old Fishin' Teddy, thinking her own

family was secure, and afraid he would get caught. She could not get

back to them, nor anywhere else. I saved her, all right, but when I went

back after Paul and the baby, the home and those in it were gone

down-stream. Thelma thought we were all lost. That's how the story got

started. Old Teddy is gone, but I heard later that the others are saved.

Their home wasn't worth so very much. They got most of the real

valuable things--photographs of their dead father and mother, and the

family Bible, and deeds, and a few trinkets. Other things don't count.

Money will replace them. Anyhow, York Macpherson is buying their land at

a good figure. It will give Thelma the chance she's wanted--to go to a

college town and teach botany. She will make her way and carry a name

among educators yet, and support Paul and the baby, all right, too. Did

the folks miss me and say I had gone down the river? Well, I didn't. I'm

here. And as to all this"--he waved his hand toward the wheat--"I can

net a right good bank-account for myself and I can pay off the mortgage

I put on my claim to pay the lease on yours, and for steam-plows and

such things. It has been a bumper year for wheat down here. I have

reclaimed the land from the desert. It will revert to you now--you and

your artist cousin jointly, I suppose. The river helped to finish the

work for me--found its old bed in that low sandy streak where years ago

the blowout began. It has straightened its bend for itself and got away

from that ledge below the deep hole, and left the rest of the ground,

all the upper portion of the blowout, yours and mine, covered with a

fine silt, splendid for cultivation. The blowout is dead. It took hard

work and patience and a big risk, of course, and the Lord Almighty at

last for a partner in the firm to kill it off. Your own comes back to

you now. Can I be of any further service to you?"

As he stood there with folded arms beside the car, tall and rugged, with

the triumph of overcoming deep written on his sad face, the width of the

earth seemed suddenly to yawn between him and the lucky artist who had

inherited a fortune without labor.

"You have done more than to reclaim this ground, Joe," Jerry exclaimed.

"Miraculous as it all is, there is a bigger desert than this, the waste

and useless desert in the human heart. You have helped to reclaim to a

better life a foolish, romancing, daring girl, with no true conception

of what makes life worth while. All the Sage Brush Valley has been good

to me. York and Laura Macpherson in their well-bred, wholesome

friendship; little Mr. Ponk in his deep love for his mother and faith in

God; even old Teddy Bear, poor lost creature, in his sublime devotion to

duty, protecting the woman he had vowed once at the marriage altar that

he would protect; and, most of all"--Jerry's voice was soft and low--"a

sturdy, brave young farmer has helped me by his respect for honest labor

and his willingness to sacrifice for others.

"Joe"--Jerry spoke more softly still--"when you said good-by the other

night in the storm, you told me that if I ever wanted you I'd find you

down beyond the blowout. The word was like a blow in the face then. But

to-night I left Cousin Gene up at New Eden and came here to find you,

because _I want you_."

With all of Jim Swaim's power to estimate values written in her firm

mouth and chin, but with Lesa Swaim's love of romance shining in her

dark eyes, Jerry looked up shyly at Joe. And Joe understood.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Reclaimers, by Margaret Hill McCarter