"New-Yorkers," said Franklin calmly.

"Wrong. Ye mustn't joke, me boy. No. It's the English. Shure,

they're the consatedest people in the whole worrld. An' now, thin,

who's the wisest people in the worrld?"

"The Americans," said Franklin promptly again.

"Wrong agin. It's thim same d----d domineerin' idjits, the

yally-headed subjecks o' the Widdy. An' pfwhy are they wise?"

"You'll have to tell," said Franklin.

"Then I'll till ye. It's because they have a _sacra fames_ fer all the

land on earth."

"They're no worse than we," said Franklin. "Look at our Land-Office

records here for the past year."

"Yis, the Yankee is a land-lover, but he wants land so that he may live

on it, an' he wants to see it before he gives his money for it. Now,

ye go to an Englishman, an' till him ye've a bit of land in the cintre

of a lost island in the middle of the Pacific say, an' pfwhat does he

do? He'll first thry to stale ut, thin thry to bully ye out of ut; but

he'll ind by buyin' ut, at anny price ye've conscience to ask, an'

he'll thrust to Providence to be able to find the island some day.

That's wisdom. I've seen the worrld, me boy, from Injy to the Great

American Desert. The Rooshan an' the Frinchman want land, as much land

as ye'll cover with a kerchief, but once they get it they're contint.

The Haybrew cares for nothin' beyond the edge of his counter. Now, me

Angly-Saxon, he's the prettiest fightin' man on earth, an' he's

fightin' fer land, er buyin' land, er stalin' land, the livin' day an'

cintury on ind. He'll own the earth!"

"No foreign Anglo-Saxon will ever own America," said Franklin grimly.

"Well, I'm tellin' ye he'll be ownin' some o' this land around here."

"I infer, Battersleigh," said Franklin, "that you have made a sale."

"Well, yis. A small matter."

"A quarter-section or so?"

"A quarter-township or so wud be much nearer," said Battersleigh dryly.

"You don't mean it?"

"Shure I do. It's a fool for luck; allowin' Batty's a fool, as ye've

always thought, though I've denied it. Now ye know the railroad's

crazy for poppylation, an' it can't wait. It fairly offers land free

to thim that'll come live on it. It asks the suffrin' pore o' Yurrup

to come an' honour us with their prisince. The railroad offers Batty

the Fool fifteen hundred acres o' land at three dollars the acre, if

Batty the Fool'll bring settlers to it. So I sinds over to me ould

Aunt's country--not, ye may suppose, over the signayture o' Cubberd

Allen Wiggit-Galt, but as Henry Battersleigh, agent o' the British

American Colonization Society--an' I says to the proper party there,

says I, 'I've fifteen hundred acres o' the loveliest land that ivver

lay out of dures, an' ye may have it for the trifle o' fifty dollars

the acre. Offer it to the Leddy Wiggit,' says I to him; 'she's a

philanthropist, an' is fer Bettherin' the Pore' ('savin' pore nephews,'

says I to mesilf). 'The Lady Wiggit,' says I, ''ll be sendin' a ship

load o' pore tinnints over here,' says I, 'an' she'll buy this land.

Offer it to her,' says I. So he did. So she did. She tuk it. I'll

be away before thim pisints o' hers comes over to settle here, glory

be! Now, wasn't it aisy? There's no fools like the English over land,

me boy. An' 'twas a simple judgment on me revered Aunt, the Leddy

Wiggit."

"But, Battersleigh, look here," said Franklin, "you talk of fifty

dollars an acre. That's all nonsense--why, that's robbery. Land is

dear here at five dollars an acre."

"Shure it is, Ned," said Battersleigh calmly. "But it's chape in

England at fifty dollars."

"Well, but--"

"An' that's not all. I wrote to thim to send me a mere matter of tin

dollars an acre, as ivvidence a' good faith. They did so, an' it was

most convaynient for settlin' the little bill o' three dollars an acre

which the railroad had against me, Batty the Fool."

"It's robbery!" reiterated Franklin.

"It wud 'av' been robbery," said Battersleigh, "had they sint no more

than that, for I'd 'av' been defrauded of me just jues. But whut do

you think? The murdherin' ould fool, me revered Aunt, the Leddy

Wiggit, she grows 'feard there is some intint to rob her of her

bargain, so what does she do but sind the entire amount at wance--not

knowin', bless me heart an' soul, that she's thus doin' a distinguished

kindness to the missin' relative she's long ago forgot! Man, would ye

call that robbery? It's Divine Providince, no less! It's justice. I

know of no one more deservin' o' such fortune than Battersleigh, late

of the Rile Irish, an' now a Citizen o' the World. Gad, but I've

a'most a mind to buy a bit of land me own silf, an' marry the Maid o'

the Mill, fer the sake o' roundin' out the play. Man, man, it's happy

I am to-day!"

"It looks a good deal like taking advantage of another's ignorance,"

said Franklin argumentatively.

"Sir," said Battersleigh, "it's takin' advantage o' their Wisdom. The

land's worth it, as you'll see yoursilf in time. The price is naught.

The great fact is that they who own the land own the earth and its

people. 'Tis out of the land an' the sea an' the air that all the

wilth must come. Thus saith Batty the Fool. Annyhow, the money's in

the bank, an' it's proper dhrunk'll be Batty the Fool this night, an'

likewise the Hon. Cubberd Allen Wiggit-Galt, Etcetera. There's two of

me now, an' it's twice the amount I must be dhrinkin'. I swear, I feel

a thirst risin' that minds me o' Ingy in the hills, an' the mess o' the

Rile Irish wance again."

"You'll be going away," said Franklin, sadly, as he rose and took

Battersleigh by the hand. "You'll be going away and leaving me here

alone--awfully alone."

"Ned," said the tall Irishman, rising and laying, a hand upon his

shoulder, "don't ye belave I'll be lavin' ye. I've seen the worrld,

an' I must see it again, but wance in a while I'll be comin' around

here to see the best man's country on the globe, an' to meet agin the

best man I ivver knew. I'll not till why I belave it, for that I can

not do, but shure I do belave it, this is the land for you. There'll

be workin' an' thinkin' here afther you an' Batty are gone, an' maybe

they'll work out the joy an' sorrow of ut here. Don't be restless, but

abide, an' take ye root here. For Batty, it's no odds. He's seen the

worrld."

Battersleigh's words caused Franklin's face to grow still more grave,

and his friend saw and suspected the real cause. "Tut, tut! me boy,"

he said, "I well know how your wishes lie. It's a noble gyurl ye've

chosen, as a noble man should do. She may change her thought

to-morrow. It's change is the wan thing shure about a woman."

Franklin shook his head mutely, but Battersleigh showed only impatience

with him. "Go on with your plans, man," said he, "an' pay no attintion

to the gyurl! Make ready the house and prepare the bridal gyarments.

Talk with her raysonable, an' thin thry unraysonable, and if she won't

love ye peaceful, thin thry force; an' she'll folly ye thin, to the ind

of the earth, an' love ye like a lamb. It's Batty has studied the sex.

Now, wance there was a gyurl--but no; I'll not yet thrust mesilf to

spake o' that. God rist her asy ivermore!"

"Yes," said Franklin sadly, "that is it. That is what my own answer

has been. She tells me that there was once another, who no longer

lives--that no one else--"

Battersleigh's face grew grave in turn. "There's no style of assault

more difficult than that same," said he. "Yet she's young; she must

have been very young. With all respect, it's the nature o' the race o'

women to yield to the livin', breathin' man above the dead an'

honoured."

"I had my hopes," said Franklin, "but they're gone. They've been doing

well at the Halfway House, and I've been doing well here. I've made

more money than I ever thought I should, and I presume I may make still

more. I presume that's all there is--just to make money, and then

more, if you can. Let it go that way. I'll not wear my heart on my

sleeve--not for any woman in the world."

Franklin's jaws set in fashion still more stern than their usual cast,

yet there had come, as Battersleigh did not fail to notice, an older

droop to the corners of his mouth, and a loss of the old brilliance of

the eye.

"Spoken like a man," said Battersleigh, "an' if ye'll stick to that

ye're the more like to win. Nivver chance follyin' too close in a

campaign ag'inst a woman. Parallel an' mine, but don't uncover your

forces. If ye advance, do so by rushes, an' not feelin' o' the way.

But tin to wan, if ye lie still under cover, she'll be sendin' out

skirmishers to see where ye are an' what ye are doin'. Now, ye love

the gyurl, I know, an' so do I, an' so does ivery man that ivver saw

her, for she's the sort min can't help adorin'. But, mind me, kape

away. Don't write to her. Don't make poetry about her--God forbid!

Don't do the act o' serrynadin' in anny way whativver. Make no

complaint--if ye do she'll hate ye, like as not; for when a gyurl has

wronged a man she hates him for it. Merely kape still. Ye've met your

first reverse, an' ye've had your outposts cut up a bit, an' ye think

the ind o' the worrld has come. Now, mind me, ould Batty, who's seen

the lands; only do ye attind to dhrill an' sinthry-go an' commissariat,

till in time ye find your forces in thrim again. By thin luk out fer

heads stickin' up over the hills on the side o' the inimy, who'll be

wonderin' what's goin' on. 'Go 'way,' she says to you, an' you go.

'Come back,' she whispers to herself, an' you don't hear it. Yet all

the time she's wonderin' pfwhy you don't!"

Franklin smiled in spite of himself. "Battersleigh's Tactics and

Manual of Strategy," he murmured. "All right, old man. I thank you

just the same. I presume I'll live, at the worst. And there's a bit

in life besides what we want for ourselves, you know."

"There's naught in life but what we're ready to take for oursilves!"

cried Battersleigh. "I'll talk no fable of other fishes in the say for

ye. Take what ye want, if ye'll have it. An' hearken; there's more to

Ned Franklin than bein' a land agent and a petty lawyer. It's not for

ye yersilf to sit an' mope, neyther to spind your life diggin' in a

musty desk. Ye're to grow, man; ye're to grow! Do ye not feel the day

an' hour? Man, did ye nivver think o' Destiny?"

"I've never been able not to believe in it," said Franklin. "To some

men all things come easily, while others get on only by the hardest

knocks; and some go always close to success, but die just short of the

parapet. I haven't myself classified, just yet."

"Ye have your dreams, boy?"

"Yes; I have my dreams."

"All colours are alike," said Battersleigh. "Now, whut is my young

Injun savage doin', when he goes out alone, on top of some high hill,

an' builds him a little fire, an' talks with his familiar spirits,

which he calls here his 'drame'? Isn't he searchin' an' feelin' o'

himsilf, same as the haythin in far-away Ingy? Git your nose up, Ned,

or you'll be unwittin' classifyin' yersilf with the great slave class

which we lift behind not long ago, but which is follyin' us hard and

far. Git your nose up, fer it's Batty has been thinkin' ye've Destiny

inside your skin. Listen to Batty the Fool, and search your sowl.

I'll tell ye this: I've the feelin' that I'll be hearin' of ye, in all

the marrches o' the worrld. Don't disappoint me, Ned, for the ould man

has belaved in ye--more than ye've belaved in yersilf. As to the

gyurl--bah!--go marry her some day, av ye've nothin' more importhant on

yer hands.

"But, me dear boy, spakin' o' importhant things, I ralely must be goin'

now. I've certain importhant preparations that are essintial before I

get dhrunk this avenin'--"

"O Battersleigh, do be sensible," said Franklin, "and do give up this

talk of getting drunk. Come over here this evening and talk with me.

It's much better than getting drunk."

Battersleigh's hand was on the door knob. "The consate o' you!" he

said. "Thrue, ye're a fine boy, Ned, an' I know of no conversayshun

more entertainin' than yer own, but I tale that if I didn't get dhrunk

like a gintleman this avenin', I'd be violatin' me juty to me own

conscience, as well as settin' at naught the thraditions o' the Rile

Irish. An' so, if ye'll just excuse me, I'll say good-bye till, say,

to-morrow noon."

CHAPTER XXXII

THE CALLING

And now there still fared on the swift, sane empire of the West. The

rapid changes, the strivings, the accomplishments, the pretensions and

the failures of the new town blended in the product of human progress.

Each man fell into his place in the community as though appointed

thereto, and the eyes of all were set forward. There was no

retrospection, there were no imaginings, no fears, no disbeliefs. The

people were as ants, busy building their hill, underletting it with

galleries, furnishing it with chambers, storing it with riches,

providing it with defences; yet no individual ant looked beyond his own

antennae, or dreamed that there might be significance in the tiny

footprints which he left. There were no philosophers to tell these

busy actors that they were puppets in a great game, ants in a giant

hill. They lived, loved, and multiplied; which, after all, is Life.

To Franklin the days and months and years went by unpunctuated, his

life settling gradually into the routine of an unhappy calm. He

neglected too much the social side of life, and rather held to his old

friends than busied himself with the search for new. Battersleigh was

gone, swiftly and mysteriously gone, though with the promise to return

and with the reiteration of his advice and his well wishes. Curly was

gone--gone up the Trail into a far and mysterious country, though he,

too, promised to remember Ellisville, and had given hostage for his

promise. His friends of the Halfway House were gone, for though he

heard of them and knew them to be prosperous, he felt himself, by

reason of Mary Ellen's decision, in propriety practically withdrawn

from their personal acquaintance. Of the kaleidoscope of the oncoming

civilization his eye caught but little. There had again fallen upon

his life a season of blight, or self-distrust, of dull dissatisfaction

with the world and with living. As in earlier years he had felt unrest

and known the lack of settled purpose, so now, after having seen all

things apparently set in order before him for progressive

accomplishment, he had fallen back once more into that state of

disbelief, of that hopeless and desperate awakening properly reserved

only for old age, when the individual realizes that what he does is of

itself of no consequence, and that what he is or is not stops no single

star an atom in its flight, no blade of grass an iota in its growing.

Paralysis of the energies too often follows upon such self-revelations;

and indeed it seemed to Franklin that he had suffered some deep and

deadly benumbing of his faculties. He could not welcome the new days.

His memory was set rather on the old days, so recent and in some way so

dear. He loved the forgotten thunder of the buffalo, but in his heart

there rose no exultation at the rumble of the wheels. Still

conscientious, he plodded, nor did he cease to aspire even in his own

restricted avocations. Because of his level common sense, which is the

main ingredient in the success-portion, he went easily into the first

councils of the community. Joylessly painstaking and exact, he still

prospered in what simple practice of the law there offered, acting as

counsel for the railway, defending a rare criminal case, collecting

accounts, carrying on title contests and "adverse" suits in the many

cases before the Register of the Land Office, and performing all the

simple humdrum of the busy country lawyer. He made more and more

money, since at that time one of his position and opportunities could

hardly avoid doing so. His place in the business world was assured.

He had no occasion for concern.

For most men this would have been prosperity sufficient; yet never did

Edward Franklin lie down with the long breath of the man content; and

ever in his dreams there came the vague beckoning of a hand still half

unseen. Once this disturbing summons to his life was merely

disquieting and unformulated, but gradually now it assumed a shape more

urgent and more definite. Haunting him with the sense of the

unfulfilled, the face of Mary Ellen was ever in the shadow; of Mary

Ellen, who had sent him away forever; of Mary Ellen, who was wasting

her life on a prairie ranch, with naught to inspire and none to witness

the flowering of her soul. That this rare plant should thus fail and

wither seemed to him a crime quite outside his own personal concern.

This unreal Mary Ellen, this daily phantom, which hung faces on bare

walls and put words between the lines of law books, seemed to have some

message for him. Yet had he not had his final message from the actual

Mary Ellen? And, after all, did anything really matter any more?

So much for the half-morbid frame of mind due for the most part to the

reflex of a body made sick by an irregular and irrational life. This

much, too, Franklin could have established of his own philosophy. Yet

this was not all, nor was the total so easily to be explained away.

Steadily, and with an insistence somewhat horrible, there came to

Franklin's mind a feeling that this career which he saw before him

would not always serve to satisfy him. Losing no touch of the

democratic loyalty to his fellow-men, he none the less clearly saw

himself in certain ways becoming inexorably separated from his average

fellow-man. The executive instinct was still as strong within him, but

he felt it more creative, and he longed for finer material than the

seamy side of man's petty strifes with man, made possible under those

artificial laws which marked man's compromise with Nature. He found no

solace and no science in the study of the great or the small crimes of

an artificial system which did not touch individual humanity, and which

was careless of humanity's joys or sorrowings. Longing for the

satisfying, for the noble things, he found himself irresistibly facing

toward the past, and irresistibly convinced that in that past, as in

the swiftly marching present, there might be some lesson, not ignoble

and not uncomforting. Horrified that he could not rest in the way that

he had chosen, distracted at these intangible desires, he doubted at

times his perfect sanity; for though it seemed there was within him the

impulse to teach and to create, he could not say to himself what or how

was to be the form, whether mental or material, of the thing created,

the thing typified, the thing which he would teach.

Of such travail, of such mould, have come great architects, great

engineers, great writers, musicians, painters, indeed great men of

affairs, beings who stand by the head and shoulders above other men as

leaders. The nature of such men is not always at the first assured,

the imprimitive seal not always surely set on, so that of one thus

tormented of his inner self it may be mere accident which shall

determine whether it is to be great artist or great artisan that is to

be born again.

To Franklin, dreaming as he woke or slept, there sometimes waved a

hand, there sometimes sounded a Voice, as that which of old summoned

the prophet in the watches of the night. Neither in his waking nor his

sleeping hours could he call this spirit into materialization, however

much he longed to wrestle with it finally. It remained only to haunt

him vaguely, to join with the shade of Mary Ellen the Cruel to set

misery on a life which he had thought happily assured.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE GREAT COLD

The land lay trusting and defenceless under a cynical sky, which was

unthreatening but mocking. Dotting a stretch of country thirty miles

on either side of the railway, and extending as far to the east and

west along its line, there were scattered hundreds of homes, though

often these were separated one from the other by many miles of open

prairie. Fences and fields appeared, and low stacks of hay and straw

here and there stood up above the vast gray surface of the old buffalo

and cattle range. Some of these houses were board "shacks," while

others were of sods, and yet others, these among the earliest

established on the plains, the useful dugout, half above and half

beneath the ground. Yet each building, squat or tall, small or less

small, was none the less a home. Most of them contained families. Men

had brought hither their wives and children--little children, sometimes

babes, tender, needful of warmth and care. For these stood guardian

the gaunt coal chutes of the town, with the demands of a population of

twenty-five hundred, to say nothing of the settlers round about, a

hundred tons for a thousand families, scattered, dwelling out along

breaks and _coulees_, and on worn hillsides, and at the ends of long,

faint, wandering trails, which the first whirl of snow would softly and

cruelly wipe away.

Yet there was no snow. There had been none the winter before. The

trappers and skin-hunters said that the winter was rarely severe. The

railroad men had ranged west all the winter, throats exposed and coats

left at the wagons. It was a mild country, a gentle, tender country.

In this laughing sky who could see any cynicism? The wind was cold,

and the wild fowl flew clamouring south from the sheeted pools, but the

great hares did not change their colour, and the grouse stayed brown,

and the prairie dogs barked joyously. No harm could come to any one.

The women and children were safe. Besides, was there not coal at the

town? Quite outside of this, might not one burn coarse grass if

necessary, or stalks of corn, or even ears of corn? No tree showed in

scores of miles, and often from smoke to tiny smoke it was farther than

one could see, even in the clear blue mocking morn; yet the little

houses were low and warm, and each had its makeshift for fuel, and in

each the husband ate, and the wife sewed, and the babes wept and

prattled as they have in generations past; and none looked on the sky

to call it treacherous.

One morning the sun rose with a swift bound into a cloudless field.

The air was mild, dead, absolutely silent and motionless. The wires

along the railway alone sang loudly, as though in warning--a warning

unfounded and without apparent cause. Yet the sighing in the short

grass was gone. In the still air the smokes of the town rose directly

upright; and answering to them faint, thin spires rose here and there

far out over the prairies, all straight, unswerving, ominous, terrible.

There was a great hush, a calm, a pause upon all things. The sky was

blue and cloudless, but at last it could not conceal the mockery it

bore upon its face, so that when men looked at it and listened to the

singing of the wires they stopped, and without conscious plan hurried

on, silent, to the nearest company.

Somewhere, high up in the air, unheralded, invisible, there were

passing some thin inarticulate sounds, far above the tops of the

tallest smoke spires, as though some Titan blew a far jest across the

continent to another near the sea, who answered with a gusty laugh,

sardonic, grim, foreknowing. Every horse free on the range came into

the _coulees_ that morning, and those which were fenced in ran up and

down excitedly. Men ate and smoked, and women darned, and babes

played. In a thousand homes there was content with this new land, so

wild at one time, but now so quickly tamed, so calm, so gentle, so

thoroughly subdued.

The sun came on, valiantly stripped bare, knowing what was to be.

Still louder rose the requiem of the wire. The sky smiled on. There

was no token to strike with alarm these human beings, their faculties

dulled by a thousand years of differentiation. "Peace and goodwill,"

said men; for now it was coming on to Christmastide. But the wire was

seeking to betray the secret of the sky, which was resolved to carry

war, to sweep these beings from the old range that once was tenantless!

To the north there appeared a long, black cloud, hanging low as the

trail of some far-off locomotive, new upon the land. Even the old

hunters might have called it but the loom of the line of the distant

sand hills upon the stream. But all at once the cloud sprang up,

unfurling tattered battle flags, and hurrying to meet the sun upon the

zenith battle ground. Then the old hunters and trappers saw what was

betokened. A man came running, laughing, showing his breath white on

the air. The agent at the depot called sharply to the cub to shut the

door. Then he arose and looked out, and hurried to his sender to wire

east along the road for coal, train loads of coal, all the coal that

could be hurried on! This man knew the freight of the country, in and

out, and he had once trapped for a living along these same hills and

plains. He knew what was the meaning of the cloud, and the tall

pointed spires of smoke, and the hurrying naked sun.

The cloud swept up and onward, and all persons closed their doors, and

said that Christmas would be cold. In a quarter of an hour they saw

their chronology late by a day. In half an hour they noted a gray mist

drive across the sky. There was a faint wavering and spreading and

deflection at the top of the tallest spire of smoke. Somewhere, high

above, there passed a swarm of vast humming bees.

Out in the country, miles away from town, a baby played in the clear

air, resting its plump knees in the shallow layer of chips where once a

pile of wood had been. It turned its face up toward the sky, and

something soft and white and cool dropped down upon its cheek.

In mid-sky met the sun and the cloud, and the sun was vanquished, and

all the world went gray. Then, with a shriek and a whirl of a raw and

icy air which dropped, dropped down, colder and colder and still more

cold, all the world went white. This snow came not down from the sky,

but slantwise across the land, parallel with the earth, coming from the

open side of the coldest nether hell hidden in the mysterious North.

Over it sang the air spirits. Above, somewhere, there was perhaps a

sky grieving at its perfidy. Across the world the Titans laughed and

howled. All the elements were over-ridden by a voice which said, "I

shall have back my own!" For presently the old Plains were back again,

and over them rushed the wild winds in their favourite ancient game.

Once the winds pelted the slant snow through the interstices of the

grasses upon the furry back of the cowering coyote. Now they found a

new sport in driving the icy powder through the cracks of the loose

board shanty, upon the stripped back of the mother huddling her sobbing

children against the empty, impotent stove, perhaps wrapping her young

in the worn and whitened robe of the buffalo taken years ago. For it

was only the buffalo, though now departed, which held the frontier for

America in this unprepared season, the Christmas of the Great Cold.

The robes saved many of the children, and now and then a mother also.

The men who had no fuel did as their natures bid, some dying at the

ice-bound stove, and others in the open on their way for fuel; for this

great storm, known sometimes as the Double Norther, had this deadly

aspect, that at the end of the first day it cleared, the sky offering

treacherous flag of truce, afterward to slay those who came forth and

were entrapped. In that vast, seething sea of slantwise icy nodules

not the oldest plainsman could hold notion of the compass. Many men

died far away from home, some with their horses, and others far apart

from where the horses stood, the latter also in many cases frozen

stiff. Mishap passed by but few of the remoter homes found unprepared

with fuel, and Christmas day, deceitfully fair, dawned on many homes

that were to be fatherless, motherless, or robbed of a first-born.

Thus it was that from this, the hardiest and most self-reliant

population ever known on earth, there rose the heartbroken cry for

comfort and for help, the frontier for the first time begging aid to

hold the skirmish line. Indeed, back from this skirmish line there

came many broken groups, men who had no families, or families that had

no longer any men. It was because of this new game the winds had found

upon the plains, and because of the deceitful double storm.

Men came into Ellisville white with the ice driven into their buffalo

coats and hair and beards, their mouths mumbling, their feet stumbling

and heavy. They begged for coal, and the agent gave to each, while he

could, what one might carry in a cloth, men standing over the supply

with rifles to see that fairness was enforced. After obtaining such

pitiful store, men started back home again, often besought or ordered

not to leave the town, but eager to die so much the closer to their

families.

After the storm had broken, little relief parties started out, provided

with section maps and lists of names from the Land Office. These

sometimes were but counting parties. The wolves had new feed that

winter, and for years remembered it, coming closer about the

settlements, sometimes following the children as they went to school.

The babe that touched with laughter the cool, soft thing that fell upon

its cheek lay finally white and silent beneath a coverlid of white, and

upon the floor lay others also shrouded; and up to the flapping door

led tracks which the rescuing parties saw.

Sam Poston, the driver of the regular mail stage to the south, knew

more of the condition of the settlers in that part of the country than

any other man in Ellisville, and he gave an estimate which was

alarming. There was no regular supply of fuel, he stated, and it was

certain that the storm had found scores of families utterly unprepared.

Of what that signifies, those who have lived only in the routine of old

communities can have no idea whatever. For the most of us, when we

experience cold, the remedy is to turn a valve, to press a knob, to ask

forthwith for fuel. But if fuel be twenty miles away, in a sea of

shifting ice and bitter cold, if it be somewhere where no man may reach

it alive--what then? First, we burn the fence, if we can find it.

Then we burn all loose things. We burn the chairs, the table, the bed,

the doors-- Then we rebel; and then we dream.

Sam Poston came into the office where Franklin sat on Christmas eve,

listening to the clinking rattle of the hard snow on the pane. Sam was

white from head to foot. His face was anxious, his habitual

uncertainty and diffidence were gone.

"Cap," said he, with no prelude, "the whole country below'll be froze

out. This blizzard's awful."

"I know it," said Franklin. "We must get out with help soon as we can.

How far down do you think the danger line begins?"

"Well, up to three or four miles out it's thicker settled, an' most o'

the folks could git into town. As fur out as thirty mile to the south,

they might git a little timber yet, over on the Smoky. The worst strip

is fifteen to twenty-five mile below. Folks in there is sort o'

betwixt an' between, an' if they're short o' fuel to-day they'll have

to burn anything they can, that's all, fer a feller wouldn't last out

in this storm very long if he got lost. It's the worst I ever see in

the West."

Franklin felt a tightening at his heart. "About fifteen to twenty-five

miles?" he said. Sam nodded. Both were silent.

"Look here, Cap," said the driver presently, "you've allus told me not

to say nothin' 'bout the folks down to the Halfway House, an' I hain't

said a thing. I 'low you got jarred down there some. I know how that

is. All the same, I reckon maybe you sorter have a leanin' that way

still. You may be worried some--"

"I am!" cried Franklin. "Tell me, how were they prepared--would they

have enough to last them through?"

"None too much," said Sam. "The old man was tellin' me not long back

that he'd have to come in 'fore long to lay him in his coal for the

winter. O' course, they had the corrals, an' some boards, an' stuff

like that layin' 'round. They had the steps to the dugout, an' some

little wood about the win'mill, though they couldn't hardly git at the

tank--"

Franklin groaned as he listened to this calm inventory of resources in

a case so desperate. He sank into a chair, his face between his hands.

Then he sprang up. "We must go!" he cried.

"I know it," said Sam simply.

"Get ready," exclaimed Franklin, reaching for his coat.

"What do you mean, Cap--now?"

"Yes, to-night--at once."

"You d----d fool!" said Sam.

"You coward!" cried Franklin. "What! Are you afraid to go out when

people are freezing--when--"

Sam rose to his feet, his slow features working. "That ain't right,

Cap," said he. "I know I'm scared to do some things, but I--I don't

believe I'm no coward. I ain't afraid to go down there, but I won't go

to-night, ner let you go, fer it's the same as death to start now. We

couldn't maybe make it in the daytime, but I'm willin' to try it then.

Don't you call no coward to me. It ain't right."

Franklin again cast himself into his chair, his hand and arm smiting on

the table. "I beg your pardon, Sam," said he presently. "I know

you're not a coward. We'll start together in the morning. But it's

killing me to wait. Good God! they may be freezing now, while we're

here, warm and safe!"

"That's so," said Sam sententiously. "We can't help it. We all got to

go some day." His words drove Franklin again to his feet, and he

walked up and down, his face gone pinched and old.

"I 'low we won't sleep much to-night, Cap," said Sam quietly. "Come

on; let's go git some coffee, an' see if anybody here in town is

needin' help. We'll pull out soon as we kin see in the mornin'."

They went out into the cold, staggering as the icy sheet drove full

against them. Ellisville was blotted out. There was no street, but

only a howling lane of white. Not half a dozen lights were visible.

The tank at the railway, the big hotel, the station-house, were

gone--wiped quite away. The Plains were back again!

"Don't git off the main street," gasped Sam as they turned their faces

down wind to catch their breath. "Touch the houses all along. Lord!

ain't it cold!"

Ellisville was safe, or all of it that they could stumblingly discover.

The town did not sleep. People sat up, greeting joyously any who came

to them, eating, drinking, shivering in a cold whose edge could not be

turned. It was an age till morning--until that morning of deceit.

At dawn the wind lulled. The clouds swept by and the sun shone for an

hour over a vast landscape buried under white. Sam was ready to start,

having worked half the night making runners for a sled at which his

wild team snorted in the terror of unacquaintedness. The sled box was

piled full of robes and coal and food and liquor--all things that

seemed needful and which could hurriedly be secured. The breath of the

horses was white steam, and ice hung on the faces of the men before

they had cleared the town and swung out into the reaches of the open

prairies which lay cold and empty all about them. They counted the

smokes--Peterson, Johnson, Clark, McGill, Townsend, one after another;

and where they saw smoke they rejoiced, and where they saw none they

stopped. Often it was but to nail fast the door.

With perfect horsemanship Sam drove his team rapidly on to the south,

five miles, ten miles, fifteen, the horses now warming up, but still

restless and nervous, even on the way so familiar to them from their

frequent journeyings. The steam of their breath enveloped the

travellers in a wide, white cloud. The rude runners crushed into and

over the packed drifts, or along the sandy grime where the wind had

swept the earth bare of snow. In less than an hour they would see the

Halfway House. They would know whether or not there was smoke.

But in less than two hours on that morning of deceit the sun was lost

again. The winds piped up, the cold continued, and again there came

the blinding snow, wrapping all things in its dancing, dizzy mist.

In spite of the falling of the storm, Franklin and his companion pushed

on, trusting to the instinct of the plains horses, which should lead

them over a trail that they had travelled so often before. Soon the

robes and coats were driven full of snow; the horses were anxious,

restless, and excited. But always the runners creaked on, and always

the two felt sure they were nearing the place they sought. Exposed so

long in this bitter air, they were cut through with the chill, in spite

of all the clothing they could wear, for the norther of the plains has

quality of its own to make its victims helpless. The presence of the

storm was awful, colossal, terrifying. Sometimes they were confused,

seeing dark, looming bulks in the vague air, though a moment later they

noted it to be but the packing of the drift in the atmosphere.

Sometimes they were gloomy, not hoping for escape, though still the

horses went gallantly on, driven for the most part down a wind which

they never would have faced.

"The wind's just on my right cheek," said Sam, putting up a mitten.

"But where's it gone?"

"You're frozen, man!" cried Franklin. "Pull up, and let me rub your

face."

"No, no, we can't stop," said Sam, catching up some snow and rubbing

his white cheek as he drove.

"Keep the wind on your right cheek--we're over the Sand Run now, I

think, and on the long ridge, back of the White Woman. It can't be

over two mile more.--Git along, boys. Whoa! What's the matter there?"

The horses had stopped, plunging at something which they could not

pass. "Good God!" cried Franklin, "whose fence is that? Are we at

Buford's?"

"No," said Sam, "this must be at old man Hancock's. He fenced across

the old road, and we had to make a jog around his d----d broom-corn

field. It's only a couple o' miles now to Buford's."

"Shall I tear down the fence?" asked Franklin.

"No, it's no use; it'd only let us in his field, an' maybe we couldn't

hit the trail on the fur side. We got to follow the fence a way. May

God everlastingly damn any man that'll fence up the free range!--Whoa,

Jack! Whoa, Bill! Git out o' here! Git up!"

They tried to parallel the fence, but the horses edged away from the

wind continually, so that it was difficult to keep eye upon the

infrequent posts of the meagre, straggling fence that this man had put

upon the "public lands."

"Hold on, Sam!" cried Franklin. "Let me out."

"That's right, Cap," said Sam. "Git out an' go on ahead a way, then

holler to me, so'st I kin come up to you. When we git around the

corner we'll be all right."

But when they got around the corner they were not all right. At such

times the mind of man is thrown off its balance, so that it does

strange and irregular things. Both these men had agreed a moment ago

that the wind should be on the right; now they disagreed, one thinking

that Hancock's house was to the left, the other to the right, their

ideas as to the direction of the Buford ranch being equally at

variance. The horses decided it, breaking once again down wind, and

striking a low-headed, sullen trot, as though they would out-march the

storm. And so the two argued, and so they rode, until at last there

was a lurch and a crash, and they found themselves in rough going, the

sled half overturned, with no fence, no house, no landmark of any sort

visible, and the snow drifting thicker than before. They sprang out

and righted the sled, but the horses doggedly pulled on, plunging down

and down; and they followed, clinging to reins and sled as best they

might.

Either accident or the instinct of the animals had in some way taken

them into rough, broken country, where they would find some shelter

from the bitter level blast. They were soon at the bottom of a flat

and narrow valley, and above them the wind roared and drove ever on a

white blanket that sought to cover them in and under.

"We've lost the trail, but we done the best we could," said Sam

doggedly, going to the heads of the horses, which looked questioningly

back at him, their heads drooping, their breath freezing upon their

coats in spiculae of white.

"Wait!" cried Franklin. "I know this hole! I've been here before.

The team's come here for shelter--"

"Oh, it's the White Woman breaks--why, sure!" cried Sam in return.

"Yes, that's where it is. We're less than half a mile from the house.

Wait, now, and let me think. I've got to figure this out a while."

"It's off there," said Sam, pointing across the _coulee_; "but we can't

get there."

"Yes, we can, old man; yes, we can!" insisted Franklin. "I'll tell

you. Let me think. Good God! why can't I think? Yes--see here, you

go down the bottom of this gully to the mouth of the _coulee_, and then

we turn to the left--no, it's to the right--and you bear up along the

side of the draw till you get to the ridge, and then the house is right

in front of you. Listen, now! The wind's north-west, and the house is

west of the head of the _coulee_; so the mouth is east of us, and that

brings the wind on the left cheek at the mouth of the _coulee_, and it

comes more and more on the right cheek as we turn up the ridge; and

it's on the front half of the right cheek when we face the house, I'm

sure that's right--wait, I'll mark it out here in the snow. God! how

cold it is! It must be right. Come on; come! We must try it, anyway."

"We may hit the house, Cap," said Sam calmly, "but if we miss it we'll

go God knows where! Anyhow, I'm with you, an' if we don't turn up, we

can't help it, an' we done our best."

"Come," cried Franklin once more. "Let's get to the mouth of the

_coulee_. I know this place perfectly."

And so, advancing and calling, and waiting while Sam fought the

stubborn horses with lash and rein out of the shelter which they

coveted. Franklin led out of the flat coulee, into the wider draw, and

edged up and up to the right, agonizedly repeating to himself, over and

over again, the instructions he had laid down, and which the dizzy

whirl of the snow mingled ever confusedly in his mind. At last they

had the full gale again in their faces as they reached the level of the

prairies, and cast loose for what they thought was west, fearfully,

tremblingly, the voyage a quarter of a mile, the danger infinitely

great; for beyond lay only the cruel plains and the bitter storm--this

double norther of a woeful Christmastide.

Once again Providence aided them, by agency of brute instinct. One of

the horses threw up its head and neighed, and then both pressed forward

eagerly. The low moan of penned cattle came down the wind. They

crashed into a fence of lath. They passed its end--a broken, rattling

end, that trailed and swept back and forth in the wind.

"It's the chicken corral," cried Sam, "an' it's down! They've been

burnin'--"

"Go on! go on--hurry!" shouted Franklin, bending down his head so that

the gale might not quite rob him of his breath, and Sam urged on the

now willing horses.

They came to the sod barn, and here they left the team that had saved

them, not pausing to take them from the harness. They crept to the low

and white-banked wall in which showed two windows, glazed with frost.

They could not see the chimney plainly, but it carried no smell of

smoke. The stairway leading down to the door of the dugout was

missing, the excavation which held it was drifted full of snow, and the

snow bore no track of human foot. All was white and silent. It might

have been a vault far in the frozen northern sea.

Franklin burst open the door, and they both went in, half pausing.

There was that which might well give them pause. The icy breath of the

outer air was also here. Heaps and tongues of snow lay across the

floor. White ashes lay at the doors of both the stoves. The table was

gone, the chairs were gone. The interior was nearly denuded, so that

the abode lay like an abandoned house, drifted half full of dry, fine

powdered snow. And even this snow upon the floors had no tracks upon

its surface. There was no sign of life.

Awed, appalled, the two men stood, white and huge, in the middle of the

abandoned room, listening for that which they scarce expected to hear.

Yet from one of the side rooms they caught a moan, a call, a

supplication. Then from a door came a tall and white-faced figure with

staring eyes, which held out its arms to the taller of the

snow-shrouded forms and said: "Uncle, is it you? Have you come back?

We were so afraid!" From the room behind this figure came a voice

sobbing, shouting, blessing the name of the Lord. So they knew that

two were saved, and one was missing.

They pushed into the remaining room. "Auntie went away," said the tall

and white-faced figure, shuddering and shivering. "She went away into

her room. We could not find the fence any more. Uncle, is it you?

Come!" So they came to the bedside and saw Mrs. Buford lying covered

with all her own clothing and much of that of Mary Ellen and Aunt Lucy,

but with no robe; for the buffalo robes had all gone with the wagon, as

was right, though unavailing. Under this covering, heaped up, though

insufficient, lay Mrs. Buford, her face white and still and

marble-cold. They found her with the picture of her husband clasped

upon her breast.

"She went away!" sobbed Mary Ellen, leaning her head upon Franklin's

shoulder and still under the hallucination of the fright and strain and

suffering. She seemed scarce to understand that which lay before them,

but continued to wander, babbling, shivering, as her arms lay on

Franklin's shoulder. "We could not keep her warm," she said. "It has

been very, very cold!"

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE ARTFULNESS OF SAM

In the early days of Ellisville society was alike in costume and

custom, and as unsuspicious as it would have been intolerant of any

idea of rank or class. A "beef" was a beef, and worth eight dollars.

A man was a man, worth as much as his neighbour, and no more. Each man

mended his own saddle. Thus society remained until there ensued that

natural division which has been earlier mentioned, by which there

became established two groups or classes--the dwellers in the Cottage

and the dwellers in the Stone Hotel. This was at first a matter of

choice, and carried no idea of rank or class distinction,

For a brief time there might have been found support for that ideally

inaccurate statement of our Constitution which holds that all men are

born free and equal, entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of

happiness. With all our might we belie this clause, though in the time

of Ellisville it might have had some footing. That day has long since

passed.

The men of the Cottage Hotel continued big, brown, bespurred and

behatted, yet it might have been observed that the tenantry of the

Stone Hotel became gradually less sunburned and more immaculate.

Mustaches swept not so sunburned, blonde and wide, but became in the

average darker and more trim. At the door of the dining-room there

were hat racks, and in time they held "hard hats." The stamping of the

social die had begun its work. Indeed, after a time there came to be

in the great dining-room of the Stone Hotel little groups bounded by

unseen but impassable lines. The bankers and the loan agents sat at

the head of the hall, and to them drifted naturally the ministers, ever

in search of pillars. Lawyers and doctors sat adjacent thereunto, and

merchants not far away. There was yet no shrug at the artisan, yet the

invisible hand gradually swept him apart. Across the great gulfs, on

whose shores sat the dining-room tables, men and women looked and

talked, but trod not as they came in to meat, each person knowing well

his place. The day of the commercial traveller was not yet, and for

these there was no special table, they being for the most part assigned

to the Red Belt; there being a certain portion of the hall where the

tablecloths were checkered red and white. It was not good to be in the

Red Belt.

Sam, the owner of the livery barn, had one table in the corner, where

he invariably sat. His mode of entering the dining-room varied not

with the passing of the years. Appearing at the door, he cast a

frightened look at the occupants who had preceded him, and in whose

faces he could imagine nothing but critical censure of his own person.

Becoming aware of his hat, he made a dive and hung it up. Then he trod

timidly through the door, with a certain side-draught in his step, yet

withal an acceleration of speed which presently brought him almost at a

run to his corner of refuge, where he dropped, red and with a gulp.

Often he mopped his brow with the unwonted napkin, but discovery in

this act by the stern eye of Nora, the head waitress, caused him much

agony and a sudden search for a handkerchief. When Nora stood at his

chair, and repeated to him frostily the menu of the day, all the world

went round to Sam, and he gained no idea of what was offered him. With

much effort at nonchalance, he would again wipe his face, take up his

fork for twiddling, and say always the same thing.

"Oh, I ain't very hungry; jes' bring me a little pie an' beef an'

coffee." And Nora, scornfully ignoring all this, then departed and

brought him many things, setting them in array about his plate, and

enabling him to eat as really he wished. Whether Sam knew that Nora

would do this is a question which must remain unanswered, but it is

certain that he never changed the form of his own "order."

Sam was a citizen. He had grown up with the town. He was, so to

speak, one of the charter members of Ellisville, and thereby entitled

to consideration. Moreover, his business was one of the most lucrative

in the community, and he was beyond the clutching shallows and upon the

easy flood of prosperity. No man could say that Sam owed him a dollar,

nor could any man charge against him any act of perfidy, except such as

might now and then be connected with the letting of a "right gentle"

horse. There was no reason why Sam might not look any man in the face,

or any woman. But this latter Sam had never done. His admiration for

Nora bade fair to remain a secret known of all but the one most

interested. Daily Sam sat at the table and listened to Nora's icy

tones. He caught his breath if the glitter of her glasses faced him,

and went in a fever as he saw her sail across the floor. Daily he

arose with the stern resolve that before the sun had set he would have

told this woman of that which so oppressed him; yet each day, after he

had dined, he stole furtively away to the hat rack and slouched across

the street to his barn, gazing down at his feet with abasement on his

soul. "I ain't afeard o' any hoss that ever stood up," said he to

himself, "but I can't say a word to that Nory girl, no matter how I

try!"

It was one of Sam's theories that some day he would go in late to

dinner, when there was no one else left in the great hall. He would

ask Nora to come to serve him. Then he would grasp her hand, there as

she stood by him, and he would pour forth to her the story of his long

unuttered love. And then--but beyond this Sam could not think. And

never yet had he dared go into the dining hall and sit alone, though it

was openly rumoured that such had been the ruse of Curly with the

"littlest waiter girl," before Curly had gone north on the Wyoming

trail.

Accident sometimes accomplishes that which design fails to compass.

One day Sam was detained with a customer much later than his usual

dinner hour. Indeed, Sam had not been to dinner at the hotel for many

days, a fact which the district physician at the railway might have

explained. "Of course," said Sam, "I done the drivin', an' maybe that

was why I got froze some more than Cap Franklin did, when we went down

south that day." Frozen he had been, so that two of his fingers were

now gone at the second joint, a part of his right ear was trimmed of

unnecessary tissue, and his right cheek remained red and seared with

the blister of the cold endured on that drive over the desolated land.

It was a crippled and still more timid Sam who, unwittingly very late,

halted that day at the door of the dining-room and gazed within. At

the door there came over him a wave of recollection. It seemed to him

all at once that he was, by reason of his afflictions, set still

further without the pale of any possible regard. He dodged to his

table and sat down without a look at any of his neighbours. To him it

seemed that Nora regarded him with yet more visible scornfulness.

Could he have sunk beneath the board he would have done so. Naught but

hunger made him bold, for he had lived long at his barn on sardines,

cheese, and crackers.

One by one the guests at the tables rose and left the room, and one by

one the waiter girls followed them. The dining hour was nearly over.

The girls would go upstairs for a brief season of rest before changing

their checked gingham mid-day uniform for the black gown and white

apron which constituted the regalia for the evening meal, known, of

course, as "supper." Sam, absorbed in his own misery and his own

hunger, awoke with a start to find the great hall apparently quite

deserted.

It is the curious faculty of some men (whereby scientists refer us to

the ape) that they are able at will to work back and forth the scalp

upon the skull. Yet other and perhaps fewer men retain the ability to

work either or both ears, moving them back and forth voluntarily. It

was Sam's solitary accomplishment that he could thus move his ears.

Only by this was he set apart and superior to other beings. You shall

find of very many men but few able to do this thing. Moreover, if you

be curious in philosophy, it shall come to be fixed in your memory that

woman is disposed to love not one who is like to many, but to choose

rather one who is distinct, superior, or more fit than his fellow-men;

it being ever the intent of Nature that the most excellent shall

attract, and thus survive.

As Sam sat alone at the table, his spoon rattling loud upon his plate

in evidence of his mental disturbance, he absent-mindedly began to work

back and forth his ears, perhaps solicitous to learn if his

accomplishment had been impaired by the mishap which had caused him

other loss. As he did this, he was intensely startled to hear behind

him a burst of laughter, albeit laughter quickly smothered. He turned

to see Nora, his idol, his adored, standing back of him, where she had

slipped in with professional quiet and stood with professional

etiquette, waiting for his departure, so that she might hale forth the

dishes he had used. At this apparition, at this awful thought--for

never in the history of man had Nora, the head waitress, been known to

smile--the heart of Sam stopped forthwith in his bosom.

"I-I-I-I b-b-beg your--I-I d-didn't know you was there," he stammered

in abject perturbation.

Nora sniffed. "I should think you might of knowed it," said she.

"I d-d-don't b-b-blame you fer laughin', M-M-Miss M-M-M-Markley," said

Sam miserably.

"What at?" demanded Nora fiercely.

"At m-m-my air. I know it's funny, cut off, that way. But I c-c-can't

help it. It's gone."

"I didn't," exclaimed Nora hotly, her face flushing. "Your ears is all

right. I was laughin' at seein' you move 'em. I beg your pardon. I

didn't know anybody could, that way, you know. I'm--I'm sorry."

A great light broke over Sam. A vast dam crashed free. His soul

rushed forth in one mad wave.

"M-M-Miss M-M-Markley--Miss--Nory!" he exclaimed, whirling about and

facing her, "d-d-d-do y-y-you l-l-like to s-s-see me work my airs?"

"Yes, it's funny," admitted Nora, on the point of another outbreak in

spite of herself.

This amiability was an undreamed thing, yet Sam saw his advantage. He

squared himself about, and, looking solemnly and earnestly in Nora's

face, he pulled first his right and then his left ear forward until the

members stood nearly at right angles to his head.

After all, the ludicrous is but the unexpected. Many laugh who see an

old woman fall upon the slippery pavement. This new spectacle was the

absolutely undreamed-of to Nora, who was no scientist. Her laughter

was irrepressible. In a trice the precedents of years were gone. Nora

felt the empire of her dignity slipping away, but none the less could

not repress her mirth. And more than this; as she gazed into the

honest, blue-eyed face before her she felt a lessening of her desire to

retain her icy pedestal, and she struggled the less against her

laughter. Indeed, with a sudden fright, she found her laughter growing

nervous. She, the head waitress, was perturbed, alarmed!

Sam followed up his advantage royally. "I can work 'em both to onct!"

he exclaimed triumphantly. And did so. "There! They was a boy in our

school onct that could work his airs one at a time, but I never did see

no one else but me that could work 'em both to onct. Look a-here!" He

waggled his ears ecstatically. The reserve of Nora oozed, waned,

vanished.

Even, the sternest fibre must at length succumb under prolonged

Herculean endeavour. No man may long continuously wag his ears, even

alternately; therefore Sam perforce paused in time. Yet by that

time--in what manner it occurred no one may know--Nora was seated on

the chair next to him at the table. They were alone. Silence fell.

Nora's hand moved nervously among the spoons. Upon it dropped the

mutilated one of Sam.

"Nory," said he, "I'd--I'd work 'em all my life--fer you!" And to

Nora, who turned away her head now, not for the purpose of hiding a

smile, this seemed always a perfectly fit and proper declaration of

this man's regard.

"I know I'm no good," murmured Sam. "I'm a awful coward. I-I-I've

l-l-loved you ever sence the fust time that I seen you, but I was such

a coward, I--I couldn't--couldn't--"

"You're not!" cried Nora imperiously.

"Oh, yes, I am," said Sam.

"Look at them," said Nora, almost touching his crippled fingers.

"Don't I know?"

"Oh, that," said Sam, hiding the hand under the droop of the

tablecloth. "Why, that? I got froze some, a-drivin'."

"Yes, and," said Nora accusingly, "how did you get froze? A-drivin'

'way down there, in the storm, after folks. No one else'd go."

"Why, yes. Cap Franklin, he went," said Sam. "That wasn't nothin'.

Why, o' _course_ we'd go."

"No one else wouldn't, though."

Sam wondered. "I was always too much a coward to say a word to you,"

he began. And then an awful doubt sat on his soul.

"Nory," he resumed solemnly, "did ever any feller say anything to you

about my--I-I-I--well, my lovin' you?"

"I should say not!" said Nora. "I'd a' slapped his face, mighty quick!

What business--"

"Not never a single one?" said Sam, his face brightening.

"No, 'ndeed. Why, I'd like to know? Did you ever ask any one to!"

"I should say not!" said Sam, with the only lie he ever told, and one

most admirable. "I should say not!" he repeated with emphasis, and in

tones which carried conviction even to himself.

"You'd better not!" said Nora. "I wouldn't of had you if they had!"

Sam started. "What's that, Nory?" he said. "Say that ag'in! Did you

say you wouldn't of _had_ me--you wouldn't _of_?" His hand found hers

again.

"Yes," faltered Nora, seeing herself entrapped by her own speech.

"Then, Nory," said Sam firmly, casting a big arm about her waist, "if

you wouldn't _of_ had me then, I reckon now you _do_." And neither

from this subtlety nor from the sturdy arm did Nora seek evasion,

though she tugged faintly at the fingers which held fast her waist.

"I don't care," she murmured vaguely. "There ain't no coward would of

done it!" Whereat Sam, seeing himself a hero, wisely accepted fate and

ceased to argue. The big arm tightened manfully, and into his blue

eyes came the look of triumph.

"Nory," whispered he loyally, "I'll never work my airs ag'in for any

woman in the world but you!"

CHAPTER XXXV

THE HILL OF DREAMS

Franklin found himself swept along with a tide of affairs other than of

his own choosing. His grasp on the possibilities of the earliest days

of this new civilization had been so full and shrewd that he needed now

but to let others build the house whose foundation he had laid. This

in effect has been the history of most men who have become wealthy, the

sum of one man's efforts being in no great disparity actually superior

to those of his fellow-man.

Yet Franklin cared little for mere riches, his ambition ceasing at that

point where he might have independence, where he might be himself, and

where he might work out unfettered the problems of his own

individuality. Pursued by a prosperity which would not be denied, his

properties growing up about him, his lands trebling in value within a

year and his town property rising steadily in value, he sometimes

smiled in very grimness as he thought of what this had once and so

recently been, and how far beyond his own care the progress of his

fortunes had run. At times he reflected upon this almost with regret,

realizing strongly the temptation to plunge irrevocably into the battle

of material things. This, he knew, meant a loosing, a letting go, a

surrender of his inner and honourable dreams, an evasion of that

beckoning hand and a forgetting of that summoning voice which bade him

to labour agonizingly yet awhile toward other aims. The inner man,

still exigent, now exhorted, now demanded, and always rebelled.

Franklin's face grew older. Not all who looked upon him understood,

for to be _hors concours_ is to be accursed.

Something was left to be desired in the vigour and energy of Franklin's

daily life, once a daily joy in virile effort and exertion. Still too

much a man to pity himself, none the less he brooded. His hopes and

dreams, he reflected, had once flowered so beautifully, had shown so

fair for one brief summer day, and lay now so dead and shrivelled and

undone! There was no comfort in these later days.

And then he thought yearningly of the forceful drama of the wild life

which had shrunk so rapidly into the humdrum of the uneventful. At

times he felt a wild yearning to follow this frontier--to follow till

the West sunk into the sea, and even then to follow, until he came to

some Fortunate Islands where such glorious days should die no more. He

recalled the wild animals and the wild men he had known, and saw again

the mocking face of the old wide plains, shifting and evading, even as

the spirit of his own life evaded him, answering no questions directly,

always beckoning, yet always with finger upon lip, forbidding speech.

Almost with exultation he joined in the savage resentment of this land

laid under tribute, he joined in the pitiless scorn of the savage

winter, he almost justified in his own soul the frosted pane and the

hearth made cold, and the settlers' homes forever desolated.

Yet ever a chill struck Franklin's soul as he thought of the lost

battle at the Halfway House. There was now grass grown upon the dusty

trail that once led up to the low-eaved house. The green and gray of

Nature were shrouding busily the two lonely graves of those who had

fought the, frontier and been vanquished in that night of terror, when

the old West claimed its own. The Halfway House of old was but a

memory. It had served its purpose, had fulfilled its mission, and

those who once ruled it now were gone. The wild herds and the wild men

came there no longer, and there were neither hosts nor those needing

hospitality. And Mary Ellen, the stately visitant of his sleeping or

his waking dreams, no longer might be seen in person at the Halfway

House. Recreant, defeated, but still refusing aid, she had gone back

to her land of flowers. It was Franklin's one comfort that she had

never known into whose hands had passed--at a price far beyond their

actual worth--the lands of the Halfway House, which had so rapidly

built up for her a competency, which had cleared her of poverty, only

to re-enforce her in her pride.

Under all the fantastic grimness, all the mysticism, all the

discredited and riotous vagaries of his insubordinate soul, Franklin

possessed a saving common sense; yet it was mere freakishness which led

him to accept a vagrant impulse as the controlling motive at the

crucial moment of his life. His nature was not more imaginative than

comprehensive.

To a very few men Edward Franklin has admitted that he once dreamed of

a hill topped by a little fire, whose smoke dipped and waved and caught

him in its fold. In brief, he got into saddle, and journeyed to the

Hill of Dreams.

The Hill of Dreams dominated the wide and level landscape over which it

had looked out through hundreds of slow, unnoted years. From it once

rose the signal smokes of the red men, and here it was that many a

sentinel had stood in times long before a white face was ever seen upon

the Plains. Here often was erected the praying lodge of the young

aspirant for wisdom, who stood there and lifted up his hands, saying:

"O sun! O air! O earth! O spirits, hear me pray! Give me aid, give

me wisdom, so that I may know!"

Here on the Hill of Dreams, whence the eye might sweep to the fringed

sand hills on the south, east to the river many miles away, and north

and west almost to the swell of the cold steppes that lead up to the

Rocky Range, the red men had sometimes come to lay their leaders when

their day of hunting and of war was over. Thus the place came to have

extraordinary and mysterious qualities ascribed to it, on which

account, in times gone by, men who were restless, troubled, disturbed,

dissatisfied, came thither to fast and pray. Here they builded their

little fires, and here, night and day, they besought the sky, the sun,

the firmament to send to them each his "dream," his unseen counsellor,

which should speak to him out of its more than earthly wisdom.

When the young man was troubled and knew not which course he should

pursue, he went up to this hill alone, and so laid hold upon Fate that

it fain communed with him. He held up his hands at night to the stars,

very far above him, and asked that they should witness him and be

merciful, for that he was small and weak, and knew not why things

should be as they were. He called upon the spirits of the great dead

about him to witness the sincerity of his prayer. He placed offerings

to the Dream People. He prayed to the sun as it rose, and besought it

of its strength to strengthen him.

Sometimes when a young man had gone up alone from the village to this

hill to pray, there were seen at night more forms than one walking upon

the summit of the hill, and sometimes voices were heard. Then it was

known that the young man had seen his "dream," and that they had held a

council.

Very many men had thus prayed upon the summit of the Hill of Dreams in

the days gone by. Its top was strewn with offerings. It was a sacred

place. Sometimes the stone cairns did not withstand the wolves, but

none the less the place was consecrate. Hither they bore the great

dead. It was upon the Hill of Dreams that his people buried White

Calf, the last great leader of the Plains tribes, who fell in the

combat with the not less savage giant who came with the white men to

hunt in the country near the Hill of Dreams. Since that time the power

of the Plains tribes had waned, and they had scattered and passed away.

The swarming white men--Visigoths, Vandals--had found out this spot for

centuries held mysteriously dear to the first peoples of that country.

They tore open the graves, scattered the childlike emblems, picked to

pieces the little packages of furs and claws, jibing at the "medicine"

which in its time had meant so much to the man who had left it there.

The Visigoths and Vandals laughed and smote upon their thighs as they

thus destroyed the feeble records of a faith gone by. Yet with what

more enduring and with how dissimilar a faith did they replace that at

which they mocked? White but parallels red. Our ways depart not

widely from the ways of those whom we supplanted, our religion is

little more than theirs, our tokens of faith but little different from

theirs. We still wonder, we still beseech, we still grope, and

continually we implore. On the eminences of our lives the solitary

still keep vigil. In the air about us there still are Voices as of

old, there still are visions wistfully besought. Now, as then,

dwarfed, blighted, wandering humanity prays, lifting up its hands to

something above its narrow, circumscribing world. Now, as then, the

answer is sometimes given to a few for all. Now, as then, the solemn

front of the Hill of Dreams still rises, dominating calmly the wide

land, keeping watch always out over the plains for those who are to

come, for that which is to be. Warden of destiny, it well might smile

at any temples we may build, at any fetiches that we may offer up!

Toward the Hill of Dreams Franklin journeyed, because it had been

written. As he travelled over the long miles he scarcely noted the

fields, the fences, the flocks and herds now clinging along the path of

the iron rails. He crossed the trails of the departed buffalo and of

the vanishing cattle, but his mind looked only forward, and he saw

these records of the past but dimly. There, on the Hill of Dreams, he

knew, there was answer for him if he sufficiently besought; that answer

not yet learned in all the varying days. It seemed sure to him that he

should have a sign.[*]

Franklin looked out over a deserted and solitary land as he rode up to

the foot of the hill. There were no longer banners of dust where the

wild game swept by, nor did the eye catch any line of distant horsemen.

It was another day. Yet, as did the candidate of old, he left his

horse at the foot of the hill and went up quite alone.

It was afternoon as he sat down. The silence and solitude folded him

about, and the sun sank so fitly slow that he hardly knew, and the

solemn night swept softly on. . . . Then he built a little fire. . . .

In the night, after many hours, he arose and lifted up his hands. . . .

At the foot of the hill the pony stopped cropping grass, tossed his

head, and looked up intently at the summit.

It was morning. The sun rose calm and strong. The solitary figure

upon the hill sat motionless, looking out. There might have passed

before him a perspective of the past, the Plains peopled with their

former life; the oncoming of the white men from below; the remnant of

the passing Latin race, typified in the unguided giant who, savage with

savage, fought here near by, one brutal force meeting another and both

passing before one higher and yet more strong. To this watcher it

seemed that he looked out from the halfway point of the nation, from

the halfway house of a nation's irresistible development.

Franklin had taken with him a small canteen of water, but bethinking

himself that as of old the young man beseeching his dream neither ate

nor drank until he had his desire, he poured out the water at his side

as he sat in the dark. The place was covered with small objects, bits

of strewn shells and beads and torn "medicine bundles"--pieces of

things once held dear in earlier minds. He felt his hand fall by

accident upon some small object which had been wetted by the wasted

water. Later, in the crude light of the tiny flame which he had

kindled, this lump of earth assumed, to his exalted fancy, the grim

features of an Indian chieftain, wide-jawed, be-tufted, with low brow,

great mouth, and lock of life's price hanging down the neck. All the

fearlessness, the mournfulness, the mysticism of the Indian face was

there. Franklin always said that he had worked at this unconsciously,

kneading the lump between his fingers, and giving it no thought other

than that it felt cooling to his hand and restful to his mind. Yet

here, born ultimately of the travail of a higher mind, was a man from

another time, in whose gaze sat the prescience of a coming day. The

past and the future thus were bridged, as may be done only by Art, the

enduring, the uncalendared, the imperishable.

Shall we say that this could not have been? Shall we say that Art may

not be born in a land so young? Shall we say that Art may not deal

with things uncatalogued, and dare not treat of unaccepted things?

Nay, rather let us say that Art, being thought, has this divine right

of elective birth. For out of tortures Art had here won the deep

_imprimatur_.

Edward Franklin, a light-hearted man, rode homeward happily. The past

lay correlated, and for the future there were no longer any wonderings.

His dream, devoutly sought, had given peace.

[*]Before his twenty-ninth year Edward Franklin's hair had always been

a dark reddish brown. When he returned from a certain journey it was

noticed that upon his temple there was a lock of snowy whiteness.

Shon-to, a Cheyenne Indian, once noticed this and said to Franklin:

"You have slept upon the Dreaming Hill, and a finger has touched you!

Among my people there was a man who had a spot of white in his hair,

and his father had this spot, and his son after him. These men were

thought to have been touched by the finger of a dream many years ago.

These men could see in the dark." The Indian said this confidently.

CHAPTER XXXVI

AT THE GATEWAY

In a certain old Southern city there stands, as there has stood for

many generations, and will no doubt endure for many more, a lofty

mansion whose architecture dates back to a distant day. Wide and

spacious, with lofty stories, with deep wings and many narrow windows,

it rests far back among the ancient oaks, a stately memorial of a day

when gentlemen demanded privacy and could afford it. From the iron

pillars of the great gateway the white front of the house may barely be

seen through avenues made by the trunks of the primeval grove. The

tall white columns, reaching from gallery floor to roof without pause

for the second lofty floor, give dignity to this old-time abode, which

comports well with the untrimmed patriarchal oaks. Under these trees

there lies, even today, a deep blue-grass turf which never, from the

time of Boone till now, has known the touch of ploughshare or the tool

of any cultivation.

It was the boast of this old family that it could afford to own a

portion of the earth and own it as it came from the hand of Nature.

Uncaught by the whirl of things, undisturbed essentially even by the

tide of the civil war, this branch of an old Southern family had lived

on in station unaffected, though with fortune perhaps impaired as had

been those of many Southern families, including all the Beauchamp line.

To this strong haven of refuge had come Mary Ellen Beauchamp from the

far-off Western plains, after the death of her other relatives in that

venture so ill-starred. The white-haired old widow who now represented

the head of the Clayton family--her kin somewhat removed, but none the

less her "cousins," after the comprehensive Southern fashion--had taken

Mary Ellen to her bosom, upbraiding her for ever dreaming of going into

the barbarian West, and listening but little to the plea of the girl

that poverty had driven her to the company of those who, like herself,

were poor. Now, such had been the turn of the wheel, the girl was

nearly as rich in money as her older relative, and able to assume what

little of social position there remained in her ambition.

Mary Ellen was now well past twenty-seven, a tall, matured, and

somewhat sad-faced woman, upon her brow written something of the

sorrows and uncertainties of the homeless woman, as well as the record

of a growing self-reliance. If Mary Ellen were happy or not none might

say, yet surely she was dutiful and kind; and gradually, with something

of the leadership she had learned in her recent life, she slipped into

practical domestic command of this quiet but punctilious _menage_. By

reason of an equal executive fitness Aunt Lucy rose in the kitchen also

into full command. The Widow Clayton found her cousin Mary Ellen a

stay and comfort, useful and practical to a degree unknown in the

education of the Southern young lady of the time.

Of her life in the West Mary Ellen spoke but little, though never with

harshness, and at times almost with wistfulness. Her history had

seemed too full of change to be reality. For the future she made no

plans. It seemed to her to be her fate ever to be an alien, a

looker-on. The roses drooped across her lattice, and the blue grass

stood cool and soft and deep beyond her window, and the kind air

carried the croon of the wooing mocking bird; yet there persisted in

her brain the picture of a wide, gray land, with the sound of an urgent

wind singing in the short, tufted grasses, and the breath of a summons

ever on the air. Out there upon the Plains it had been ever morning.

Here life seemed ever sinking toward its evening-tide.

This old family and the family house were accepted unquestioningly by

the quiet Southern community now, as they had ever been, as a part of

the aristocracy of the land, and as appurtenances there-to. The way of

life had little change. The same grooms led out the horses from the

stables, the same slow figures cut the grass upon the lawn. Yet no

longer were the doors thrown open upon a sea of light and colour. The

horses were groomed and broken, but they brought no great carriage of

state sweeping up the drive between the lion-headed pillars of the

gateway. When Mrs. Clayton feebly sought to propose brighter ways of

life for the young woman, the latter told her gently that for her, too,

life was planned and done, the struggle over, and that she asked only

that she might rest, and not take up again any questions for

readjustment.

"You will change after a while, honey," said her protectress; but Mary

Ellen only smiled. It was enough to rest here in this haven, safe from

the surging seas of doubt and hope and fear, of love and self-distrust.

Let it be settled. Let it be ended. Let these tall white columns mark

the grave of her heart. Let this wide sea of green mirror that which

should one day lie above her bosom in this land of finished things.

Let the great lion gates guard off all intrusion, all curiosity, even

all well-intended courtesy. For her no cavalier should ever come

riding up the gravelled way, nor should lights ever set dancing again

the shadows in the great dining hall over the heads of guests assembled

in her honour. It was done--finished. And Mary Ellen was not yet

twenty-eight.

One morning the little street car stood, as was its wont, at the

terminus of the track, near the front of the wide grounds of the old

mansion house. This was far out upon the edge of the little city, and

few were the patrons that might be expected; but it was held but mere

courtesy to offer the services of the street-car line to this family,

so long recognised as one of the unimpeachably best of this Southern

city. This modern innovation of the street car was not readily taken

up by the conservative community, and though it had been established

for some years, it might be questioned whether its shares had ever paid

much interest upon their face value. Now and then a negress with a

laundry bundle, a schoolgirl with her books, a clerk hurrying to his

counter, might stop the lazy mules and confer the benefit of an

infrequent coin.

At this terminus of the line at the outskirts of the town there was

each morning enacted the same little scene. The driver slowly

unhitched his mules and turned them about to the other end of the car,

in readiness for the return journey. Matters having progressed this

far, the mules fell at once into a deep state of dejection and

somnolence, their ears lopping down, their bodies drooping and

motionless, save as now and then a faint swish of tail or wag of a

weary ear bespoke the knowledge of some bold, marauding fly. The

driver, perched upon his seat, his feet upon the rail, his knees pushed

toward his chin, sat with his broad hat drawn down upon his forehead,

his hands clasped between his legs, and all his attitude indicative of

rest. Slow clouds of dust passed along the road near by, and the glare

of the sun grew warm; but no motion came to either team or driver,

undisturbed by any care and bound by no inconvenient schedule. From

the big oaks came now and then the jangle of a jay, or there might be

seen flitting the scarlet flame of the cardinal. These things were

unnoted, and the hour droned on.

Presently from a side street, faced by a large brick dwelling, there

came with regular and unhurried tread a tall and dignified figure,

crowned with a soft Panama, and tapping with official cane. As it

approached the car the driver straightened a trifle on the seat.

"Good mawnin', Judge Wilson," he said.

"Uh-ah, good mawnin', James," replied the judge. "Uh-ah, Doctah Gregg

li'l late this mawnin', eh?"

"Yessah, seems like," said the driver, his head again falling.

In perhaps five or ten minutes, perhaps half an hour, there would be

heard the tapping of another cane, and Dr. Gregg, also tall, not quite

so portly, and wearing a white beaver instead of a soft Panama, would

appear from the opening of yet another side street tributary to the car.

"Good mawnin', James," said the doctor as he passed; and the driver

answered respectfully.

"Good mornin', Doctah. You li'l late this mornin', seems like."

"Well, yessah, I may be a leetle late, just a leetle.--Good mawnin',

Judge; how are you this mawnin', sah?"

"Very well, Doctah, sah, thank you, sah. Step in an' seddown. Right

wahm, this mawnin'. Uh-ah!"

So the judge and the doctor sat down in the car, and conversed, easily

and in no haste, perhaps for five or ten minutes, perhaps for half an

hour. Now and then the driver cast a glance out of the side of his eye

over toward the lion-headed gates, but no one was uneasy or anxious.

The mules were to apparent view very sad and still, yet really very

happy within their souls.

"Young lady li'l late this mawnin', seems like," remarked the Judge.

"Oh, yes, but she'll be 'long direckly, I reckon," replied the doctor.

"You know how 'bout these young folks. They don't always realize the

impohtance o' pressin' business mattehs. But we must fo'give heh.

Judge, we must fo'give heh, foh she suhtinly is well wo'th waitin' foh;

yes indeed."

"Uh-ah! quite right, Doctah, quite right! Fine young lady, fine young

lady. Old stock, yes indeed! Beechams o' Fehginny. Too bad Cousin

Sarann Clayton keeps heh so close like. She fitten to be received,

sah, to be received!"

"Yes, indeed," assented the doctor. "Yes, sah. Now, ain't that the

young lady a-comin' down the walk?"

Judge and doctor and driver now turned their gaze beyond the

lion-headed gateway to the winding walk that passed among the trees up

to the old mansion house. Far off, through the great columns of the

trees, there might indeed this morning now be seen the flutter of a

gown of white. The faint sound of voices might be heard. Mary Ellen,

conscientious marketer, was discussing joints and salads with her aunt.

And then Mary Ellen, deliberately tying the strings of her bonnet under

her chin, turned, answering her aunt's summons for replevin of a

forgotten fan. Then, slowly, calmly, the gown of white became more

distinct as she came nearer, her tall figure composing well with the

setting of this scene. For her patiently waited the judge and the

doctor and the driver.

"Good mawnin', Miss Beecham," said the driver as she passed, touching

his hat and infusing more stiffness to his spine.

"Good morning, sir," she replied pleasantly.

"Uh-ah, good mawnin', Miss Beecham, good mawnin'," said Judge Wilson;

and "Good mawnin'," said Dr. Gregg.

"Good morning, Judge Wilson," replied Mary Ellen, as she entered the

car.--"Good morning, Dr. Gregg." The gentlemen made way for her upon

the shady side of the car, and lifted their hats ceremoniously.

"L'il late this mawnin', Miss Beecham, seems like," said the judge,

with no trace of resentment in his tones.

Dr. Gregg upon this morning began his customary reproach also, but it

halted upon his tongue. "Miss Beecham," he said, "pardon me, allow

me--are you ill?"

For Mary Ellen, settling herself for her regular morning ride with her

regular companions, all at once went pale as she gazed out the window.

She scarcely heard the kind remark. She was looking at a man--a tall

man with a brown face, with broad shoulders, with a long, swinging,

steady stride. This man was coming up the side of the street, along

the path between the fence and the burdocks that lined the ditch. His

shoes were white with the limestone dust, but he seemed to care nothing

for his way of locomotion, but reached on, his head up, his eye

searching eagerly.

Not with equipage, not mounted as a Southern cavalier, not announced,

but in the most direct and swiftest way in his power had Edward

Franklin come. Strong, eager, masterful, scorning the blazing sun, his

reckless waste of energy marked him as a stranger in that place. He

stopped at the gateway for one moment, looking up the path, and then

turned swiftly toward the car as though called audibly.

As with a flash his face lighted, and he strode straight on toward a

woman whose heart was throbbing in a sudden tumultuous terror. She saw

him stoop at the car door, even as once before she had seen him enter

at another lowly door, in another and far-off land. She felt again the

fear which then she half admitted. But in a moment Mary Ellen knew

that all fear and all resistance were too late.

The eyes of Franklin, direct, assured, almost sad, asked her no

question, but only said, "Here am I!" And Mary Ellen knew that she

could no longer make denial or delay. Her thoughts came rapid and

confused; her eyes swam; her heart beat fast. Afar she heard the

singing of a mocker in the oaks, throbbing, thrilling high and sweet as

though his heart would break, with what he had to say.

Judge Wilson and Dr. Gregg politely removed their hats as Franklin

entered the car and addressed Mary Ellen. Confused by the abruptness

of it all, it was a moment before she recognised local requirements,

and presented Franklin to the gentlemen. For an instant she planned

flight, escape. She would have begged Franklin to return with her.

Fate in the form of the driver had its way. "Git ep, mewel!" sounded

from the front of the car. There was a double groan. A little bell

tinkled lazily. The rusty wheels began slowly to revolve.

"It's an awful hour to call," admitted Franklin under the rumble of the

wheels. "I couldn't get a carriage, and I hadn't any horse. There

wasn't any car. Forgive me."

Part of this was open conversation, and Franklin made still further

polite concessions to the company. Yes, he himself was a member of the

bar--a very unworthy one. He had a relative who was a physician. A

lovely city, this, which they had. Beautiful old places, these along

the way. A rare and beautiful life, that of these old Southern

families. Delightful, the South. He had always loved it in so far as

he had ever known it, and he felt the better acquainted, having known

Miss Beauchamp so well in her former home in the West. And the Judge

said, "Uh-ah!" and the doctor bowed, looking the while with

professional admiration at the chest and flank of this brown, powerful

man, whose eye smote like a ray from some motor full of compressed

energy.

Beyond this it is only to be said that both Judge and doctor were

gentlemen, and loyal to beauty in distress. They both earned Mary

Ellen's love, for they got off eight blocks sooner than they should

have done, and walked more than half a mile in the sun before they

found a place of rest.

"Oh, well, yessah, Judge," said Dr. Gregg, half sighing, "we were young

once, eh, Judge?--young once ouhselves."

"Lucky dog!" said the judge; "lucky dog! But he seems a gentleman, and

if he has propah fam'ly an' propah resources, it may be, yessah, it may

be she's lucky, too. Oh, Northehn, yessah, I admit it. But what would

you expeck, sah, in these times? I'm told theh are some vehy fine

people in the No'th."

"Deep through," said the doctor, communing with himself. "Carries his

trunk gran'ly. Splendid creatuah--splendid! Have him? O' co'se

she'll have him! What woman wouldn't? What a cadaver! What a

subjeck--"

"Good God! my dear sir!" said the judge. "Really!"

Meantime the dingy little car was trundling down the wide, sleepy

street, both driver and mules now fallen half asleep again. Here and

there a negro sat propped up in the sun, motionless and content. A

clerk stretched an awning over some perishable goods. A child or two

wandered along the walk. The town clock pointed to half past eleven.

The warm spring sun blazed down. A big fly buzzed upon the window

pane. No more passengers came to the car, and it trundled slowly and

contentedly on its course toward the other end of its route.

Franklin and Mary Ellen sat looking out before them, silent. At last

he turned and placed his hand over the two that lay knit loosely in her

lap. Mary Ellen stirred, her throat moved, but she could not speak.

Franklin leaned forward and looked into her face.

"I knew it must be so," he whispered quietly.

"What--what must you think ?" broke out Mary Ellen, angry that she

could not resist.

"There, there, dearest!" he said, "don't trouble. I knew it was to be.

I came straight to you." He tightened his grip upon her hands. Mary

Ellen straightened and looked him in the face.

"I'll admit it," she said. "I knew that you were coming. I must have

dreamed it."

There in the street car, upon the public highway, Franklin cast his arm

about her waist and drew her strongly to him. "Dear girl," he said,

"it was to be! We must work out our lives together. Will you be

happy--out there--with me?"

Again Mary Ellen turned and looked at him with a new frankness and

unreserve.

"That's the oddest of it," said she. "Out on the prairies I called the

South 'back home.' Now it's the other way."

They fell again into silence, but already, lover-like, began to read

each the other's thoughts and to find less need of speech.

"You and I, dearest," said Franklin finally, "you and I together,

forever and ever. We'll live at the Halfway House. Don't shiver,

child; I've built a fine new house there--"

"You've built a house?"

"Yes, yes. Well, I'll confess it--I bought the place myself."

"Then it was your money?"

"And it is your money."

"I've a notion," began Mary Ellen, edging away, biting her lip.

"And so have I," said Franklin, stooping and kissing her fingers with

scandalous publicity. "I've a notion that you shall not speak of that.

It is ours. We've more than a thousand acres of land there, and plenty

of cattle. Curly shall be foreman--he's married the little waiter

girl, and has come back to Ellisville; they live next door to Sam and

Nora. Aunt Lucy shall be our cook. We shall have roses, and green

grass, and flowers. And you and I--you and I--shall live and shall do

that which has been sent to us to do. Mary Ellen--dear Mary Ellen--"

Again the girl threw up her head, but her pride was going fast.

"Then--then you think--you think it is no sin? Is there no lapse in

this for me? You think I shall not be--"

Franklin drew her closer to him. "That which is before us now is

Life," he said. "Dearest, how sweet--how very sweet!"

A caged mocking bird at a little near-by house burst out into a shrill

paean, fellow to that of the wild bird of the oaks. Mary Ellen felt

her senses melting into a mysterious, bewildering joy. Unconsciously

she swayed slightly against the shoulder of her lover. In her heart

the music of the bird thrilled on, even when the tinkle of the little

bell ceased, even when Franklin, stepping from the car, held up his

hands to her and whispered, "Come."