THE TOPEKA RALLY
And men may say what things they please, and none dare stay their tongue.
But who has spoken out for these--the women and the young?
--KIPLING.
Henceforth I had one controlling purpose. Mine was now the task to prove
myself a man with power to create and defend the little kingdom whose
throne is builded on the hearthstone. I put into my work all the energy
of my youth and love and hope.
I applied myself to the study of law, and I took hold of my father's
business interests with a will. I was to enter into a partnership with
him when I could do a partner's work. He forebore favors, but he gave me
opportunity to prove myself. Stories of favoritism on account of my
father's position, of my wasteful and luxurious habits, ludicrous enough
in a little Kansas town in the sixties, were peddled about by the
restless little widower. By my father's advice I let him alone and went
my way. I knew that silently and persistently John Baronet was trailing
him. And I knew the cause was a righteous one. I had lived too long in
the Baronet family to think the head of it would take time to follow
after a personal dislike, or pursue a petty purpose.
There may have been many happy lovers on these sunny prairies that
idyllic summer, now forty years gone by. The story of each, though like
that of all the others, seems best to him who lived it. Marjie and I
were going through commonplace days, but we were very happy with the joy
of life and love. Our old playground was now our trysting place.
Together on our "Rockport" we planned a future wherein there were no
ugly shadows.
"Marjie, I'll always keep 'Rockport' for my shrine now," I said to her
one evening as we were watching the sunset lights on the prairie and the
river upstream. "If you ever hear me say I don't care for 'Rockport,'
you will know I do not care for you. Now, think of that!"
"Don't ever say it, Phil, please, if you can help it." Marjie's mood was
more serious than mine just then. "I used to be afraid of Indians. I am
still, if there were need to be, and I looked to you always somehow to
keep them away. Do you remember how I would always get on your side of
the game when Jean Pahusca played with us?"
"Yes, Marjie. That's where you belong--on my side. That's the kind of
game I'm playing."
"Phil, I am troubled a little with another game. I wish Amos Judson
would stay away from our house. He can make mother believe almost
anything. I don't feel safe about some matters. Judge Baronet tells me
not to worry, that he will keep close watch."
"Well, take it straight from me that he will do it," I assured her.
"Let's let the widower go his way. He talks about me; says I'm 'callow,
that's it, just callow.' I don't mind being callow, as long as it's not
catching. Look at the river, how it glistens now. We can almost see the
shallows up by the stone cabin below the big cottonwood. The old tree is
shapely, isn't it?"
We were looking upstream to where the huge old tree stood out against
the golden horizon.
"Let's buy that land, Phil, and build a house under the big cottonwood
some day."
"All right, I'm to go out there again soon. Will you go too?"
"Of course," Marjie assented, "if you want me to."
"I am sure I'd never want to take any other girl out there, but just
you, dear," I declared.
And then we talked of other things, and promised to put our letters next
day, into the deep crevice we had called our post-office these many
years. Before we parted that night, I said:
"I'm thinking of going up to Topeka when the band goes to the big
political speaking, next week. I will write to you. And be sure to let
me find a letter in 'Rockport' when I get back. I'll be so lonely up
there."
"Well, find some pretty girl and let her kill time for you."
"Will you and Judson kill time down here?"
"Ugh! no," Marjie shivered in disgust. "I can't bear the sight of his
face any more."
"Good! I'll not try to be any more miserable by being bored with
somebody I don't care for at Topeka. But don't forget the letter.
Good-night, little sweetheart," and after the fashion of lovers, I said
good-bye.
Kansas is essentially a land of young politicians. When O'mie took his
band to the capital city to play martial music for the big political
rally, there were more young men than gray beards on the speakers' stand
and on the front seats. I had gone with the Springvale crowd on this
jaunt, but I did not consider myself a person of importance.
"There's Judge Baronet's son; he's just out of Harvard. He's got big
influence with the party down his way. His father always runs away ahead
of his ticket and has the whole district about as he wants it. That's
the boy that saved Springvale one night when the pro-slavery crowd was
goin' to burn it, the year of the Quantrill raid."
So, I heard myself exploited in the hotel lobby of the old Teft House.
"What's Tell Mapleson after this year, d'ye reckon? Come in a week ago.
He's the doggondest feller to be after somethin', an' gets it, too,
somehow." The speaker was a seasoned politician of the hotel lobby
variety.
"Oh, he's got a big suit of some kind back East. It's a case of money
bein' left to heirs, and he's looking out that the heirs don't get it."
"Ain't it awful about the Saline country?" a bystander broke in here.
"Just awful! Saw a man from out there last night by the name of Morton.
He said that them Cheyennes are raidin' an' murderin' all that can't get
into the towns. Lord pity the unprotected settlers way out in that
lonely country. This man said they just killed the little children
before their mothers' eyes, after they'd scalped and tomahawked the
fathers. Just beat them to death, and then carried off the women. Oh,
God! but it's awful."
Awful! I lived through the hours of that night from the time young Tell
Mapleson had told of Jean Pahusca's plan to seize Marjie, to the moment
when I saw her safe in the shelter of her mother's doorway. Awful! And
this sort of thing was going on now in the Saline Valley. How could God
permit it?
"There was one family out there, they got the mother and baby and just
butchered the other children right before her eyes. They hung the baby
to a tree later, and when they got ready they killed its mother. It was
the only merciful thing they done, I guess, in all their raid, for they
made her die a thousand deaths before they really cut off her poor
pitiful life."
So I heard the talk running on, and I wondered at the bluff committeeman
who broke up the group to get the men in line for a factional caucus.
Did the election of a party favorite, the nomination of a man whose turn
had come, or who would be favorable to "our crowd" in his appointments
match in importance this terrible menace to life on our Indian frontier?
I had heard much of the Saline and the Solomon River valleys. Union
soldiers were homesteading those open plains. My father's
comrades-in-arms they had been, and he was intensely interested in their
welfare. These Union men had wounds still unhealed from service in the
Civil War. And the nation they bore these wounds to save, the Government
at Washington, was ignorant or indifferent to this danger that
threatened them hourly--a danger infinitely worse than death to women.
And the State in the vital throes of a biennial election was treating
the whole affair as a deplorable incident truly, but one the national
government must look out for.
I was young and enthusiastic, but utterly without political ambition. I
was only recently out of college, with a scholar's ideals of civic duty.
And with all these, I had behind me the years of a frontier life on the
border, in which years my experience and inspiration had taught me the
value of the American home, and a strong man's duty toward the weak and
defenceless. The memories of my mother, the association and training of
my father's sister, and my love for Marjie made all women sacred to me.
And while these feelings that stirred the finest fibres of my being, and
of which I never spoke then, may have been the mark of a less practical
nature than most young men have to-day, I account my life stronger,
cleaner and purer for having had them.
I could take only a perfunctory interest in the political game about me,
and I felt little elation at the courteous request that I should take a
seat in the speakers' stand, when the clans did finally gather for a
grand struggle for place.
The meeting opened with O'mie's band playing "The Star-Spangled Banner."
It brought the big audience to their feet, and the men on the platform
stood up. I was the tallest one among them. Also I was least nervous,
least anxious, and least important to that occasion. Perfunctorily, too,
I listened to the speeches, hearing the grand old Republican party's
virtues lauded, and the especial fitness of certain of its color-bearers
extolled as of mighty men of valor, with "the burning question of the
hour" and "the vital issue of the time" enlarged upon, and "the State's
most pernicious evil" threatened with dire besetments. And through it
all my mind was on the unprotected, scattered settlements of the Saline
Valley, and the murdered children and the defenceless women, even now in
the cruel slavery of Indian captivity.
I knew only a few people in the capital city and I looked at the
audience with the indifference of a stranger who seeks for no familiar
face. And yet, subconsciously, I felt the presence of some one who was
watching me, some one who knew me well. Presently the master of
ceremonies called for the gifted educator, Richard Tillhurst of
Springvale. I knew he was in Topeka, but I had not hunted for him any
more than he had sought me out. We mutually didn't need each other. And
yet local pride is strong, and I led the hand-clapping that greeted his
appearance. He was visibly embarrassed, and ultra-dignified. Education
had a representative above reproach in him. Pompously, after the manner
of the circumscribed instructor, he began, and for a limited time the
travelling was easy. But he made the fatal error of keeping on his feet
after his ideas were exhausted. He lost the trail and wandered aimlessly
in the barren, trackless realms of thought, seeking relief and finding
none, until at length in sheer embarrassment he forced himself to
retreat to his seat. Little enthusiasm was expressed and failure was
written all over his banner.
The next speaker was a politician of the rip-roaring variety who pounded
the table and howled his enthusiasm, whose logic was all expressed in
the short-story form, sometimes witty, sometimes far-fetched and often
profane. He interested me least of all, and my mind abstracted by the
Tillhurst feature went back again to the Plains. I could not realize
what was going on when the politician had finished amid uproarious
applause, and the chairman was introducing the next speaker, until I
caught my father's name, coupled with lavish praise of his merits. There
was a graceful folding of his mantle on the shoulders of "his gifted
son, just out of Harvard, but a true child of Kansas, with a record for
heroism in the war time, and a growing prominence in his district, and
an altogether good-headed, good-hearted, and, the ladies all agree,
good-looking young man, the handsome giant of the Neosho." And I found
myself thrust to the front of the speakers' stand, with applause
following itself, and O'mie, the mischievous rascal, striking off a few
bars of "See, the Conquering Hero Comes!"
I was taken so completely by surprise that I thought the earth
especially unkind not to open at once and let me in. It must have been
something of my inheritance of my father's self-control, coupled with my
life experience of having to meet emergencies quickly, which all the
children of Springvale knew, that pulled me through. The prolonged
cheering gave me a moment to get the mastery. Then like an inspiration
came the thought to break away from the beaten path of local politics
and to launch forth into a plea for larger political ideals. I cited the
Civil War as a crucible, testing men. I did not once mention my father,
but the company knew his proud record, and there were many present who
had fought and marched and starved and bled beside him, men whom his
genius and his kindness had saved from peril, even the peril of death.
And then out of the fulness of a heart that had suffered, I pled for the
lives and homes of the settlers on our Plains frontier. I pictured, for
I knew how to picture, the anguish of soul an Indian raid can leave in
its wake, and the duty we owe to the homes, our high privilege as strong
men and guardians to care for the defenceless, and our opportunity to
repay a part at least of the debt we owe to the Union soldier by giving
a State's defence to these men, who were homesteading our hitherto
unbroken, trackless plains, and building empire westward toward the
baths of sunset.
The effort was so boyish, so unlike every other speech that had been
made, and yet so full of a young man's honest zeal and profound
convictions from a soul stirred to its very depths, that the audience
rose to their feet at my closing words, and cheer followed cheer, making
the air ring with sound.
When the meeting had finished, I found myself in the centre of a group
of men who knew John Baronet and just wouldn't let his son get away
without a handshake. I was flushed with the pleasure of such a reception
and was doing my best to act well, when a man grasped my hand with a
grip unlike any other hand I had ever felt, so firm, so full of
friendship, and yet so undemonstrative, that I instinctively returned
the clasp. He was a man of some thirty years, small beside me, and there
was nothing unusual in his face or dress or manner to attract my
attention. A stranger might not turn to him a second time in a crowd,
unless they had once spoken and clasped hands.
"My name is Morton," he said. "I know your father, I knew him in the
army and before, back in Massachusetts. I am from the Saline River
country, and I came down here hoping to find the State more interested
in the conditions out our way. You were the only speaker who thought of
the needs of the settlers. There are terrible things being done right
now."
He spoke so simply that a careless ear would not have detected the
strength of the feeling back of the words.
"I'll tell my father I met you," I said cordially, "and I hope, I hope
to heaven the captives may be found soon, and the Indians punished. How
can a man live who has lost his wife, or his sweetheart, in that way?"
I knew I was blushing, but the matter was so terrible to me. Before he
could answer, Richard Tillhurst pushed through the crowd and caught my
arm.
"There's an old friend of yours here, who wants to meet you, Mr.
Baronet," and he pulled me away.
"I hope I'll see you again," I turned to Mr. Morton to say, and in a
moment more, I was face to face with Rachel Melrose. It was she whose
presence I had somehow felt in that crowd of strangers. She was
handsomer even than I had remembered her, and she had a style of dress
new and attractive. One would know that she was fresh from the East, for
our own girls and women for the most part had many things to consider
besides the latest fashions.
I think Tillhurst mistook my surprise for confusion. He was a man of
good principles, but he was a human being, not a saint, and he pursued a
purpose selfishly as most of us who are human do.
The young lady grasped my hand in both of hers impulsively.
"Oh, Mr. Baronet, I'm so glad to see you again. I knew you would come to
Topeka as soon as you knew I had come West. I just got here two days
ago, and I could hardly wait until you came. It's just like old times to
see you again."
Then she turned to Tillhurst, standing there greedily taking in every
word, his face beaming as one's face may who finds an obstacle suddenly
lifted from his way.
"We are old friends, the best kind of friends, Mr. Tillhurst. Mr.
Baronet and I have recollections of two delightful years when he was in
Harvard, haven't we?"
"Yes, yes," I replied. "Miss Melrose was the only girl who would listen
to my praising Kansas while I was in Massachusetts. Naturally I found
her delightful company."
"Did he tell you about his girl here?" Tillhurst asked, a trifle
maliciously, maybe.
"Of course, I didn't," I broke in. "We don't tell all we know when we go
East."
"Nor all you have done in the East when you come back home, evidently,"
Tillhurst spoke significantly. "I've never heard him mention your name
once, Miss Melrose."
"Has he been flirting with some one, Mr. Tillhurst? He promised me
faithfully he wouldn't." Her tone took on a disappointed note.
"I'll promise anybody not to flirt, for I don't do it," I cried. "I came
home and found this young educator trying to do me mischief with the
little girl I told you about the last time I saw you. Naturally he
doesn't like me."
All this in a joking manner, and yet a vein of seriousness ran through
it somewhere.
Rachel Melrose was adroit.
"We won't quarrel," she said sweetly, "now we do meet again, and when I
go down to Springvale to visit your aunt, as you insisted I must do,
we'll get all this straightened out. You'll come and take tea with us of
course. Mr. Tillhurst has promised to come, too."
The young man looked curiously at me at the mention of Rachel's visit to
Springvale. A group of politicians broke in just here.
"We can't have you monopolize 'the handsome giant of the Neosho' all the
time," they said, laughing, with many a compliment to the charming young
monopolist. "We don't blame him, of course, now, but we need him badly.
Come, Baronet," and they hurried me away, giving me time only to thank
her for the invitation to dine with her.
At the Teft House letters were waiting for me. One from my father asking
me to visit Governor Crawford and take a personal message of some
importance to him, with the injunction, "Stay till you do see him." The
other was a fat little envelope inscribed in Marjie's handwriting.
Inside were only flowers, the red blossoms that grow on the vines in the
crevices of our "Rockport," and a sheet of note paper about them with
the simple message:
"Always and always yours, Marjie."
Willing or unwilling, I found myself in the thick of the political
turmoil, and had it not been for that Indian raiding in Northwest
Kansas, I should have plunged into politics then and there, so strong a
temptation it is to control men, if opportunity offers. It was late
before I could get out of the council and rush to my room to write a
hurried but loving letter to Marjie. I had to be brief to get it into
the mails. So I wrote only of what was first in my thoughts; herself,
and my longing to see her, of the noisy political strife, and of the
Saline River and Solomon River outrages, I hurried this letter to the
outgoing stage and fell in with the crowd gathering late in the
dining-room. I was half way through my meal before I remembered Rachel's
invitation.
"I can only be rude to her, it seems, but I'll offer my excuses, and
maybe she will let me have the honor of her company home. She will hunt
me up before I get out of the hall, I am sure." So I satisfied myself
and prepared for the evening gathering.
It was much on the order of the other meeting, except that only seasoned
party leaders were given place on the programme.
I asked Rachel for her company home, but she laughingly refused me.
"I must punish you," she said. "When do you go home?"
"Not for two days," I replied. "I have business for my father and the
person I am to see is called out of town."
"Then there will be plenty of time later for you. You go home to-morrow,
Mr. Tillhurst," she said coquettishly. "Tell his friends in Springvale,
he is busy up here." She was a pretty girl, but slow as I was, I began
to see method in her manner of procedure. I could not be rude to her,
but I resolved then not to go one step beyond the demands of actual
courtesy.
In the crowd passing up to the hotel that night, I fell into step with
my father's soldier friend, Morton.
"When you get ready to leave Springvale, come out and take a claim on
the Saline," he said. "That will be a garden of Eden some day."
"It seems to have its serpent already, Mr. Morton," I replied.
"Well, the serpent can be crushed. Come out and help us do it. We need
numbers, especially in men of endurance." We were at the hotel door.
Morton bade me good-bye by saying, "Don't forget; come our way when you
get the Western fever."
Governor Crawford returned too late for me to catch the stage for
Springvale on the same day. Having a night more to spend in the capital,
it seemed proper for me to make amends for my unpardonable forgetfulness
of Rachel Melrose's invitation to tea by calling on her in the evening.
Her aunt's home was at the far side of the town beyond the modest square
stone building that was called Lincoln College then. It was only a
stone's throw from the State Capitol, the walls of the east wing of
which were then being built.
I remember it was a beautiful moonlit night, in early August, and Rachel
asked me to take a stroll over the prairie to the southwest. The day had
been very hot, and the west had piled up some threatening thunderheads.
But the evening breezes fanned them away over the far horizon line and
the warm night air was light and dry. The sky was white with the clear
luminous moonlight of the open Plains country.
Rachel and I had wandered idly along the gentle rise of ground until we
could quite overlook the little treeless town with this Lincoln College
and the jagged portion of the State House wing gleaming up beyond.
"Hadn't we better turn back now? Your aunt cautioned us two strangers
here not to get lost." I was only hinting my wishes.
"Oh, let's go on to that tree. It's the only one here in this forsaken
country. Let's pay our respects to it," Rachel urged.
She was right. To an Easterner's eye it was a forsaken country. From the
Shunganunga Creek winding beneath a burden of low, black underbrush,
northward to the river with its fringe of huge cottonwoods, not a tree
broke the line of vision save this one sturdy young locust spreading its
lacy foliage in dainty grace on the very summit of the gentle swell of
land between the two streams. Up to its pretty shadowed spaces we took
our way. The grass was dry and brown with the August heat, and we rested
awhile on the moonlit prairie.
Rachel was strikingly handsome, and the soft light lent a certain tone
to her beauty. Her hair and eyes were very dark, and her face was clear
cut. There was a dash of boldness, an assumption of authority all
prettily accented with smiles and dimples that was very bewitching. She
was a subtle flatterer, and even the wisest men may be caught by that
bait. It was the undercurrent of sympathy, product of my life-long
ideals, my intense pity for the defenceless frontier, that divided my
mind and led me away from temptation that night.
"Rachel Melrose, we must go home," I insisted at last. "This tree is all
right, but I could show you a cottonwood out above the Neosho that
dwarfs this puny locust. And yet this is a gritty sort of sapling to
stand up here and grow and grow. I wonder if ever the town will reach
out so far as this."
I am told the tree is green and beautiful to-day, and that it is far
inside the city limits, standing on the old Huntoon road. About it are
substantial homes. South of it is a pretty park now, while near it on
the west is a handsome church, one of the city's lions to the stranger,
for here the world-renowned author of "In His Steps" has preached every
Sabbath for many years. But on that night it seemed far away from the
river and the town nestling beside it.
"I'll go down and take a look at your cottonwood before I go home. May
I? You promised me last Spring." Rachel's voice was pleasant to hear.
"Why, of course. Come on. Mr. Tillhurst will be there, I am sure, and
glad as I shall be to see you."
"Oh, you rogue! always hunting for somebody else. I am not going to
loose you from your promise. Remember that you said you'd let everybody
else alone when I came. Now your Mr. Tillhurst can look after all the
girls you have been flirting with down there, but you are my friend.
Didn't we settle that in those days together at dear old Rockport? We'll
just have the happiest time together, you and I, and nobody shall
interfere to mar our pleasure."
She was leaning toward me and her big dark eyes were full of feeling. I
stood up before her. "My dear friend," I took her hand and she rose to
her feet. "You have been very, very good to me. But I want to tell you
now before you come to Springvale"--she was close beside me, her hand on
my arm, gentle and trembling. I seemed like a brute to myself, but I
went on. "I want you to know that as my aunt's guest and mine, your
pleasure will be mine. But I am not a flirt, and I do not care to hide
from you the fact that my little Springvale girl is the light of my
life. You will understand why some claims are unbreakable. Now you know
this, let me say that it will be my delight to make your stay in the
West pleasant." She bowed her proud head on my arm and the tears fell
fast. "Oh, Rachel, I'm a beast, a coarse, crude Westerner. Forgive my
plain speech. I only wanted you to know."
But she didn't want to know. She wanted me to quit saying anything to
her and her beautiful dark hair was almost against my cheek. Gently as I
could, I put her from me. Drawing her hand through my arm, I patted it
softly, and again I declared myself the bluntest of speakers. She only
wept the more, and asked me to take her to her aunt's. I was glad to do
it, and I bade her a humble good-bye at the door. She said not a word,
but the pressure of her hand had speech. It made me feel that I had
cruelly wronged her.
As I started for town beyond the college, I shook my fist at that lone
locust tree. "You blamed old sapling! If you ever tell what you saw
to-night I hope you'll die by inches in a prairie fire."
Then I hurried to my room and put in the hours of the night, wakeful and
angry at all the world, save my own Springvale and the dear little girl
so modest and true to me. The next day I left Topeka, hoping never to
see it again.