CHAPTER XXVII

SUNSET BY THE SWEETWATER

And we count men brave who on land and wave fear not to die; but still,

Still first on the rolls of the world's great souls are the men who

have feared to kill.

--EDMUND VANCE COOKE.

Jean Pahusca turned at the sound of O'mie's step on the stone. The red

sun had blinded his eyes and he could not see clearly at first. When he

did see, O'mie's presence and the captive unbound and staggering to his

feet, surprised the Indian and held him a moment longer. The confusion

at the change in war's grim front passed quickly, however,--he was only

half Indian,--and he was himself again. He darted toward us, swift as a

serpent. Clutching O'mie by the throat and lifting him clear of the rock

shelf the Indian threw him headlong down the side of the bluff, crashing

the bushes as he fell. The knife that had cut the cords that bound me,

the same knife that would have scalped Marjie and taken the boy's life

in the Hermit's Cave, was flung from O'mie's hand. It rang on the stone

and slid down in the darkness below. Then the half-breed hurled himself

upon me and we clinched there by the cliff's edge for our last conflict.

I was in Jean's land now. I had come to my final hour with him. The

Baronets were never cowardly. Was it inherited courage, or was it the

spirit of power in that letter, Marjie's message of love to me, that

gave me grace there? Followed then a battle royal, brute strength

against brute strength. All the long score of defeated effort, all the

jealousy and hate of years, all the fury of final conflict, all the mad

frenzy of the instinct of self-preservation, all the savage lust for

blood (most terrible in the human tiger), were united in Jean. He

combined a giant's strength and an Indian's skill with the dominant

courage and coolness of a son of France. Against these things I put my

strength in that strange struggle on the rocky ledge in the gathering

twilight of that February day. The little cove on the bluff-side, was

not more than fifteen feet across at its widest place. The shelf of

sloping stone made a fairly even floor. In this little retreat I had

been bound and unable to move for an hour. My muscles were tense at

first. I was dazed, too, by a sudden deliverance from the slow torture

that had seemed inevitable for me. The issue, however, was no less awful

than swift. I had just cause for wreaking vengeance on my foeman. Twice

he had attempted to take O'mie's life. The boy might be dead from the

headlong fall at this very minute, for all I knew. The clods were only

two days old on Bud Anderson's grave. Nothing but the skill and

sacrifice of O'mie had saved Marjie from this brute's lust six years

before. While he lived, my own life was never for one moment safe. And

more than everything else was the possibility of a fate for Marjie too

horrible for me to dwell upon. All these things swept through my mind

like a lightning flash.

If ever the Lord in the moment of supreme peril gave courage and

self-control, these good and perfect gifts were mine in that evening's

strife. With the first plunge he had thrown me, and he was struggling to

free his hand from my grasp to get at my throat; his knee was on my

chest.

"You're in my land now," he hissed in my ear.

"Yes, but this is Phil Baronet still," I answered with a calmness so

dominant, it stayed the struggle for a moment. I was playing on him the

same trick by which he had so often deceived us,--the pretended

relaxation of all effort, and indifference to further strife. In that

moment's pause I gained my lost vantage. Quick as thought I freed my

other hand, and, holding still his murderous grip from my throat, I

caught him by the neck, and pushing his head upward, I gave him such a

thrust that his hold on me loosened a bit. A bit only, but that was

enough, for when he tightened it again, I was on my feet and the strife

was renewed--renewed with the fierceness of maddened brutes, lashed into

fury. Life for one of us meant death for the other, and I lost every

humane instinct in that terrible struggle except the instinct to save

Marjie first, and my own life after hers. Civilization slips away in

such a battle, and the fighter is only a jungle beast, knowing no law

but the unquenchable thirst for blood. The hand that holds this pen is

clean to-day, clean and strong and gentle. It was a tiger's claw that

night, and Jean's hot blood following my terrific blow full in his face

only thrilled me with savage courage. I hurled him full length on the

stone, my heavy cavalry boot was on his neck, and I would have stamped

the life out of him in an instant. But with the motion of a serpent he

wriggled himself upward; then, catching me by the leg, he had me on one

knee, and his long arms, like the tentacles of a devil-fish, tightened

about me. Then we rolled together over and under, under and over. His

hard white teeth were sunk in my shoulder to cut my life artery. I had

him by the long soft hair, my fingers tangled in the handfuls I had torn

from his head. And every minute I was possessed with a burning frenzy

to strangle him. Every desire had left my being now, save the eagerness

to conquer, and the consciousness of my power to fight until that end

should come.

We were at the cliff's edge now, my head hanging over; the blood was

rushing toward my clogging brain; the sharp rock's rim, like a stone

knife, was cutting my neck. Jean loosened his teeth from my shoulder,

and his murderous hand was on my throat. In that supreme crisis I

summoned the very last atom of energy, the very limit of physical

prowess, the quickness and cunning which can be called forth only by the

conflict with the swift approach of death.

Nature had given me a muscular strength far beyond that of most men. And

all my powers had been trained to swift obedience and almost unlimited

endurance. With this was a nervous system that matched the years of a

young man's greatest vigor. Strong drink and tobacco had never had the

chance to play havoc with my steady hand or to sap the vitality of my

reserve forces. Even as Jean lifted me by the throat to crush my head

backward over that sharp stone ledge, I put forth this burst of power in

a fierceness so irresistible that it hurled him from me, and the

struggle was still unended. We were on our feet again in a rage to reach

the finish. I had almost ceased to care to live. I wanted only to choke

the breath from the creature before me. I wanted only to save from his

hellish power the victims who would become his prey if he were allowed

to live.

Instinct led me to wrestle with my assailant across the ledge toward the

wall that shut in about the sanctuary, just as, a half-year before, on

our "Rockport" fighting ground, I strove to drag him through the bushes

toward Cliff Street, while he tried to fling me off the projecting rock.

And so we locked limb and limb in the horrible contortion of this

savage strife. Every muscle had been so wrenched, no pain or wound

reported itself fairly to the congested brain. I had nearly reached the

wall, and I was making a frantic effort to fling the Indian against it.

I had his shoulder almost upon the rocky side, and my grip was tight

about him, when he turned on me the same trick I had played in the early

part of this awful game. A sudden relaxation threw me off my guard. The

blood was streaming from a wound on my forehead, and I loosed my hold to

throw back my long hair from my face and wipe the trickling drops from

my eyes. In that fatal moment my mind went blank, whether from loss of

blood or a sudden blow from Jean, I do not know. When I did know myself,

I seemed to have fallen through leagues of space, to be falling still,

until a pain, so sharp that it was a blessing, brought me to my senses.

The light was very dim, but my right hand was free. I aimed one blow at

Jean's shoulder, and he fell by the cliff's edge, dragging me with him,

my weight on his body. His left hand hung over the cliff-side. I should

have finished with him then, but that the fallen hand, down in the black

shadows, had closed over a knife sticking in the crevice just below the

edge of the bluff--Jean Le Claire's knife, that had been flung from

O'mie's grip as he fell.

I caught its gleam as the half-breed flashed it upward in a swift stab

at my heart and my breath hung back. I leaped from him in time to save

my life, but not quickly enough to keep the villainous thing from

cutting a long jagged track across my thigh, from which spurted a

crimson flood. There could be only one thing evermore for us two. A

redoubled fury seized me, and then there swept up in me a power for

which I cannot account, unless it may be that the Angel of Life, who

guards all the passes of the valley of the shadow, sometimes turns back

the tide for us. A sudden calmness filled me, a cool courage contrasting

with Jean's frenzy, and I set my teeth together with the grip of a

bulldog. Jean had leaped to his feet as I sprang back from his

knife-thrust, and for the first time since the fight began we stood

apart for half a minute.

"I may die, but I'll never be cut to death. It must be an equal fight,

and when I go, Jean Pahusca, you are going with me. I'll have that knife

first and then I'll kill you with my own hands, if my breath goes out at

that same instant."

There must have been something terrible in my voice for it was the voice

of a strong man going down to death, firm of purpose, and unafraid.

The feel of the weapon gave the Indian renewed energy. He sprang at me

with a maniac's might. He was a maniac henceforth. Three times we raged

across the narrow fighting ground. Three times I struck that murderous

blade aside, but not without a loss of my own blood for each thrust,

until at last by sheer virtue of muscle against muscle, I wrenched it

from Jean's hand, dripping with my red life-tide. And even as I seized

it, it slipped from me and fell, this time to the ledges far below. Then

hell broke all bounds for us, and what followed there in that shadowy

twilight, I care not to recall much less to set it down here.

I do not know how long we battled there, nor whose blood most stained

the stone of that sanctuary, nor how many times I was underneath, nor

how often on top of my assailant. Not all the struggles of my sixty

years combined, and I have known many, could equal that fight for life.

There came a night in later time when for what seemed an age to me, I

matched my physical power and endurance against the terrible weight of

broken timbers of a burning bridge that was crushing out human lives, in

a railroad wreck. And every second of that eternity-long time, I faced

the awful menace of death by fire. The memory of that hour is a pleasure

to me when contrasted with this hand to hand battle with a murderer.

It ended at last--such strife is too costly to endure long--ended with a

form stretched prone and helpless and whining for mercy before a

conqueror, whose life had been well-nigh threshed out of him; but the

fallen fighter was Jean Pahusca, and the man who towered over him was

Phil Baronet.

The half-breed deserved to die. Life for him meant torturing death to

whatever lay in his path. It meant untold agony for whomsoever his hand

fell upon. And greater to me than these then was the murderous conflict

just ended, in which I had by very miracle escaped death again and

again. Men do not fight such battles to weep forgiving tears on one

another's necks when the end comes. When the spirit of mortal strife

possesses a man's soul, the demons of hell control it. The moment for a

long overdue retribution was come. As we had clinched and torn one

another there Jean's fury had driven him to a maniac's madness. The

blessed heritage of self-control, my endowment from my father, had not

deserted me. But now my hand was on his throat, my knee was planted on

his chest, and by one twist I could end a record whose further writing

would be in the blood of his victims.

I lifted my eyes an instant to the western sky, out of which a clear,

sweet air was softly fanning my hot blood-smeared face. The sun had set

as O'mie cut my bonds. And now the long purple twilight of the Southwest

held the land in its soft hues. Only one ray of iridescent light

pointed the arch above me--the sun's good-night greeting to the Plains.

Its glory held me by a strange power. God's mercy was in that radiant

shaft of beauty reaching far up the sky, keeping me back from wilful

murder.

And then, because all pure, true human love is typical of God's eternal

love for his children, then, all suddenly, the twilight scene slipped

from me. I was in my father's office on an August day, and Marjie was

beside me. The love light in her dear brown eyes, as they looked

steadily into mine, was thrilling my soul with joy. I felt again the

touch of her hand as I felt it that day when I presented her to Rachel

Melrose. Her eyes were looking deep into my soul, her hand was in my

hand, the hand that in a moment more would take the life of a human

being no longer able to give me blow for blow. I loosed my clutch as

from a leprous wound, and the Indian gasped again for mercy. Standing

upright, I spurned the form grovelling now at my feet.

Lifting my bloody right hand high above me, I thanked God I had

conquered in a greater battle. I had won the victory over my worser

self.

But I was too wise to think that Jean should have his freedom. Stepping

to where the cut thongs that had bound me lay, I took the longest pieces

and tied the half-breed securely.

All this time I had fogotten O'mie. Now it dawned upon me that he must

be found. He might be alive still. The fall must have been broken

somehow by the bushes. I peered over the edge of the bluff into the

darkness of the valley below.

"O'mie!" I called, "O'mie!"

"Present!" a voice behind me responded.

I turned quickly. Standing there in the dim light, with torn clothing,

and tumbled red hair, and scratched face was the Irish boy, bruised, but

not seriously hurt.

"I climbed down and round and up and got back as soon as I come too," he

said, with that happy-go-lucky smile of his. "Bedad! but you've been

makin' some history, I see. Git up, you miserable cur, and we'll march

ye down to General Custer. You take entirely too many liberties wid a

Springvale boy what's knowed you too darned long already."

We lifted Jean, and keeping him before us we hurried him into the

presence of the fair-haired commander to whom we told our story, failing

not to report on the incident witnessed by O'mie on the river bank two

nights before, when Jean sent his murdered father's body into the waters

below him.

"And so that French renegade is dead, is he," Custer mused, never

lifting his eyes from the ground. He had heard us through without query

or comment, until now. "I knew him well. First as a Missionary priest to

the Osages. He was a fine man then, but the Plains made a devil of him;

and he deserved what he got, no doubt.

"Now, as to this half-breed, why the devil didn't you kill him when you

had the chance? Dead Indians tell no tales; but the holy Church and the

United States Government listen to what the live ones tell. You could

have saved me any amount of trouble, you infernal fool."

I stood up before the General. There was as great a contrast in our

appearance as in our rank. The slight, dapper little commander in full

official dress and perfect military bearing looked sternly up at the

huge, rough private with his torn, bloody clothing and lacerated hands.

Custer's yellow locks had just been neatly brushed. My own dark hair,

uncut for months, hung in a curly mass thrown back from my scarred

face.

I gave him a courteous, military salute. Then standing up to my full

height, and looking steadily down at the slender, graceful man before

me, I said:

"I may be a fool, General, but I am a soldier, not a murderer."

Custer made no reply for a time.

He sat down and, turning toward Jean Pahusca, he studied the young

half-breed carefully. Then he said briefly,

"You may go now."

We saluted and passed from his tent. Outside we had gone only a few

steps, when the General overtook us.

"Baronet," he said, "you did right. You are a soldier, the kind that

will yet save the Plains."

He turned and entered his tent again.

"Golly!" O'mie whistled softly. "It's me that thinks Jean Pahusca, son

av whoever his father may be, 's got to the last and worst piece av his

journey. I'm glad you didn't kill him, Phil. You're claner 'n ever in my

eyes."

We strolled away together in the soft evening shadows, silent for a

time.

"Tell me, O'mie," I said at last, "how you happened to find me up there

two hours ago?"

"I was trailin' you to your hidin'-place. Bud, Heaven bless him, told me

where your little sanctuary was, the night before he--went away." There

were tears in O'mie's voice, but soldiers do not weep. "I had hard work

to find the path. But it was better so maybe."

"You were just in time, you red-headed angel. Life is sweet." I breathed

deeply of the pleasant air. "Oh, why did Bud have to give it up, I

wonder."

We sat down behind the big bowlder round which Bud, wounded unto death,

had staggered toward me only a few days before.

"Talk, O'mie; I can't," I said, stretching myself out at full length.

"I was just in time to see Jean spring his trap on you. I waited and

swore, and swore and waited, for him to give me the chance to get

betwane you and the pollutin' pup! It didn't come until the sun took his

face full and square, and I see my chance to make two steps. He's so

doggoned quick he'd have caught me, if it hadn't been for that blessed

gleam in his eyes. He wa'n't takin' no chances. By the way," he added as

an afterthought, "the General says we break camp soon. Didn't say it to

me, av course. Good-night now. Sleep sweet, and don't get too far from

your chest protector,--that's me." He smiled good-bye with as light a

heart as though the hours just past had been full of innocent play

instead of grim tragedy.

* * * * *

February on the Plains was slipping into March when the garrison at Fort

Sill broke up for the final movement. This winter campaign, as war

records run, had been marked by only one engagement, Custer's attack on

the Cheyenne village on the Washita River. But the hurling of so large a

force as the Fort Sill garrison into the Indian stronghold in the depth

of winter carried to the savage mind and spirit a deeper conviction of

our power than could have been carried by a score of victories on the

green prairies of summer. For the Indian stronghold, be it understood,

consisted not in mountain fastnesses, cunning hiding-places, caves in

the earth, and narrow passes guarded by impregnable cliffs. This was no

repetition of the warfare of the Celts among the rugged rocks of Wales,

nor of the Greeks at Thermopylae, nor of the Swiss on Alpine footpaths.

This savage stronghold was an open, desolate, boundless plain, fortified

by distances and equipped with the slow sure weapons of starvation.

That Government was a terror to the Indian mind whose soldiers dared to

risk its perils and occupy the land at this season of the year. The

withered grasses; the lack of fuel; the absence of game; the salty

creeks, which mock at thirst; the dreary waves of wilderness sand; the

barren earth under a wide bleak sky; the never-ending stretch of

unbroken plain swept by the fierce winter blizzard, whose furious blast

was followed by a bitter perishing weight of cold,--these were the foes

we had had to fight in that winter campaign. Our cavalry horses had

fallen before them, dying on the way. Only a few of those that reached

Fort Sill had had the strength to survive even with food and care. John

Mac prophesied truly when he declared to us that our homesick horses

would never cross the Arkansas River again. Not one of them ever came

back, and we who had gone out mounted now found ourselves a helpless

intantry.

Slowly the tribes had come to Custer's terms. When delay and cunning

device were no longer of any avail they submitted--all except the

Cheyennes, who had escaped to the Southwest.

Spring was coming, and the Indians and their ponies could live in

comfort then. It was only in the winter that United States rations and

tents were vital. With the summer they could scorn the white man's help,

and more: they could raid again the white man's land, seize his

property, burn his home, and brain him with their cruel tomahawks; while

as to his wife and children, oh, the very fiends of hell could not

devise an equal to their scheme of life for them. The escape of the

Cheyennes from Custer's grasp was but an earnest of what Kiowa, Arapahoe

and Comanche could do later. These Cheyennes were setting an example

worthy of their emulation. Not quite, to the Cheyenne's lordly spirit,

not quite had the cavalry conquered the Plains. And now the Cheyenne

could well gloat over the failure of the army after all it had endured;

for spring was not very far away, the barren Staked Plains, in which the

soldier could but perish, were between them and the arm of the

Government, and our cavalrymen were now mere undisciplined

foot-soldiers. It was to subdue this very spirit, to strike the one most

effectual blow, the conquest of the Cheyennes, that the last act of that

winter campaign was undertaken. This, and one other purpose. I had been

taught in childhood under Christian culture that it is for the welfare

of the home the Government exists. Bred in me through many generations

of ancestry was the high ideal of a man's divine right to protect his

roof-tree and to foster under it those virtues that are built into the

nation's power and honor. I had had thrust upon me in the day of my

young untried strength a heavy sense of responsibility. I had known the

crushing anguish of feeling that one I loved had fallen a prey to a

savage foe before whose mastery death is a joy. I was now to learn the

truth of all the teaching along the way. I was to see in the days of

that late winter the finest element of power the American flag can

symbolize--the value set upon the American home, over which it is a

token of protection. This, then, was that other purpose of this

campaign--the rescue of two captive women, seized and dragged away on

that afternoon when Bud and O'mie and I leaned against the south wall of

old Fort Hays in the October sunshine and talked of the hazard of Plains

warfare. But of this other purpose the privates knew nothing at all. The

Indian tribes, now full of fair promises, were allowed to take up their

abode on their reservations without further guarding. General Custer,

with the Seventh United States Regiment, and Colonel Horace L. Moore,

in full command of the Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry, were directed to reach

the Cheyenne tribe and reduce it to submission.

A thousand men followed the twenty-one buglers on their handsome horses,

in military order, down Kansas Avenue in Topeka, on that November day in

1868, when the Kansas volunteers began this campaign. Four months later,

on a day in early March, Custer's regiment with the Nineteenth, now

dismounted cavalry, filed out of Fort Sill and set their faces

resolutely to the westward. Infantry marching was new business for the

Kansas men, but they bent to their work like true soldiers. After four

days a division came, and volunteers from both regiments were chosen to

continue the movement. The remainder, for lack of marching strength, was

sent up on the Washita River to await our return in a camp established

up there under Colonel Henry Inman.

Reed, one of my Topeka comrades, was of those who could not go farther.

O'mie was not considered equal to the task. I fell into Reed's place

with Hadley and John Mac and Pete, when we started out at last to

conquer the Cheyennes, who were slipping ever away from us somewhere

beyond the horizon's rim. The days that followed, finishing up that

winter campaign, bear a record of endurance unsurpassed in the annals of

American warfare.

I have read the fascinating story of Coronado and his three hundred

Spanish knights in their long weary march over a silent desolate level

waste day after day, pushing grimly to the northward in their fruitless

search for gold. What did this band of a thousand weary men go seeking

as they took the reverse route of Coronado's to the Southwest over these

ceaslessly crawling sands? Not the discoverer's fame, not the

gold-seeker's treasure led them forth through gray interminable reaches

of desolation. They were going now to put the indelible mark of

conquest by a civilized Government, on a crafty and dangerous foe, to

plough a fire-guard of safety about the frontier homes.

Small heed we gave to this history-making, it is true, as we pressed

silently onward through those dreary late winter days. It was a

soldier's task we had accepted, and we were following the flag. And in

spite of the sins committed in its name, of the evil deeds protected by

its power, wherever it unfurls its radiant waves of light "the breath of

heaven smells wooingly"; gentle peace, and rich prosperity, and holy

love abide ever more under its caressing shadow.

We were prepared with rations for a five days' expedition only. But

weary, ragged, barefoot, hungry, sleepless, we pressed on through

twenty-five days, following a trail sometimes dim, sometimes clearly

written, through a region the Indians never dreamed we could cross and

live. The nights chilled our famishing bodies. The short hours of broken

rest led only to another day of moving on. There were no breakfasts to

hinder our early starting. The meagre bit of mule meat doled out

sparingly when there was enough of this luxury to be given out, eaten

now without salt, was our only food. Our clothing tattered with wear and

tear, hung on our gaunt frames. Our lips did not close over our teeth;

our eyes above hollow cheeks stared out like the eyes of dead men. The

bloom of health had turned to a sickly yellow hue; but we were all

alike, and nobody noted the change.

As we passed from one deserted camp to another, it began to seem a

will-o'-the-wisp business, an elusive dream, a long fruitless chasing

after what would escape and leave us to perish at last in this desert.

But the slender yellow-haired man at the head of the column had an

indomitable spirit, and an endurance equalled only by his courage and

his military cunning. Under him was the equally indomitable Kansas

Colonel, Horace L. Moore, tried and trained in Plains warfare. Behind

them straggled a thousand soldiers. And still the March days dragged on.

Then the trails began to tell us that the Indians were gathering in

larger groups and the command was urged forward with more persistent

purpose. We slept at night without covering under the open sky. We

hardly dared to light fires. We had nothing to cook, and a fire would

reveal our whereabouts to the Indians we were pursuing. A thousand

soldiers is a large number; but even a thousand men, starving day after

day, taxing nerve and muscle, with all the reserve force of the body

feeding on its own unfed store of energy; a thousand men destitute of

supplies, cut off by leagues of desert sands from any base of

reinforcement, might put up only a weak defence against the hundreds of

savages in their own habitat. It was to prevent another Arickaree that

Custer's forces kept step in straggling lines when rations had become

only a taunting mockery of the memory.

The map of that campaign is kept in the archives of war and its official

tale is all told there, told as the commander saw it. I can tell it here

only as a private down in the ranks.

In the middle of a March afternoon, as we were silently swinging forward

over the level Plains, a low range of hills loomed up. Beyond them lay

the valley of the Sweetwater, a tributary of the Canadian River. Here,

secure in its tepees, was the Cheyenne village, its inhabitants never

dreaming of the white man's patience and endurance. Fifteen hundred

strong it numbered, arrogant, cunning, murderous. The sudden appearance

of our army of skeleton men was not without its effect on the savage

mind. Men who had crossed the Staked Plains in this winter time, men who

looked like death already, such men might be hard to kill. But lying and

trickery still availed.

There was only one mind in the file that day. We had come so far, we had

suffered such horrors on the way, these men had been guilty of such

atrocious crimes, we longed fiercely now to annihilate this band of

wretches in punishment due for all it had cost the nation. I thought of

the young mother and her baby boy on the frozen earth between the drifts

of snow about Satanta's tepee on the banks of the Washita, as Bud and I

found her on the December day when we searched over Custer's battle

field. I pictured the still forms lying on their blankets, and the long

line of soldiers passing reverently by, to see if by chance she might be

known to any of us--this woman, murdered in the very hour of her

release; and I gripped my arms in a frenzy. Oh, Satan takes fast hold on

the heart of a man in such a time, and the Christ dying on the cross up

on Calvary, praying "Father forgive them for they know not what they

do," seems only a fireside story of unreal things.

In the midst of this opportunity for vengeance just, and long overdue,

comes Custer's lieutenant with military courtesy to Colonel Moore, and

delivers the message, "The General sends his compliments, with the

instructions not to fire on the Indians."

Courtesy! Compliments! Refrain from any rudeness to the wards of the

Government! I was nearly twenty-two and I knew more than Custer and

Sheridan and even President Grant himself just then. I had a sense of

obedience. John Baronet put that into me back in Springvale years ago.

Also I had extravagant notions of military discipline and honor. But

for one brief moment I was the most lawless mutineer, the rankest

anarchist that ever thirsted for human gore to satisfy a wrong. Nor was

I alone. Beside me were those stanch fellows, Pete and John Mac, and

Hadley. And beyond was the whole line of Kansas men with a cause of

their own here. Before my fury left me, however, we were all about face,

and getting up the valley to a camping-place.

I might have saved the strength the passion of fury costs. Custer knew

his business and mine also. Down in that Cheyenne village, closely

guarded, were two captive women, the women of my boyhood dream, maybe.

The same two women who had been carried from their homes up in the

Solomon River country in the early Fall. What they had endured in these

months of captivity even the war records that set down plain things do

not deem fit to enter. One shot from our rifles that day on the

Sweetwater would have meant for them the same fate that befell the

sacrifice on the Washita, the dead woman on the deserted battle field.

It was to save these two, then, that we had kept step heavily across the

cold starved Plains. For two women we had marched and suffered on day

after day. Who shall say, at the last analysis, that this young queen of

nations, ruling a beautiful land under the Stars and Stripes, sets no

value on the homes of its people, nor holds as priceless the life and

safety even of two unknown women.

Very adroitly General Custer visited, and exchanged compliments, and

parleyed and waited, playing his game faultlessly till even the

quick-witted Cheyennes were caught by it. When the precise moment came

the shrewd commander seized the chief men of the village and gave his

ultimatum--a life for a life. The two white women safe from harm must be

brought to him or these mighty men must become degraded captives. Then

followed an Indian hurricane of wrath and prayers and trickery. It

availed nothing except to prolong the hours, and hunger and cold filled

another night in our desolate camp.

Day brought a renewal of demand, a renewal of excuse and delay and an

attempt to outwit by promises. But a second command was more telling.

The yellow-haired general's word now went forth: "If by sunset to-morrow

night these two women are not returned to my possession, these chiefs

will hang."

So Custer said, and the grim selection of the gallows and the

preparation for fulfilment of his threat went swiftly forward. The

chiefs were terror-stricken, and anxious messages were sent to their

people. Meanwhile the Cheyenne forces were moving farther and farther

away. The squaws and children were being taken to a safe distance, and a

quick flight was in preparation. So another night of hunger and waiting

fell upon us. Then came the day of my dream long ago. The same people I

knew first on the night after Jean Pahusca's attempt on Marjie's life,

when we were hunting our cows out on the West Prairie, came now in

reality before me.

The Sweetwater Valley spread out under the late sunshine of a March day

was rimmed about by low hills. Beyond these, again, were the Plains, the

same monotony of earth beneath and sky above, the two meeting away and

away in an amethyst fold of mist around the world's far bound. There

were touches of green in the brown valley, but the hill slopes and all

the spread of land about them were gray and splotched and dull against a

blue-gray sickly sky. The hours went by slowly to each anxious soldier,

for endurance was almost at its limit. More heavily still they must have

dragged for the man on whom the burden of command rested. High noon, and

then the afternoon interminably long and dull, and by and by came the

sunset on the Sweetwater Valley, and a new heaven and a new earth were

revealed to the sons of men. Like a chariot of fire, the great sun

rolled in all its gorgeous beauty down the west. The eastern sky grew

radiant with a pink splendor, and every brown and mottled stretch of

distant landscape was touched with golden light or deepened into richest

purple, or set with a roseate bound of flame. Somewhere far away, a

feathery gray mist hung like a silvery veil toning down the earth from

the noonday glare to the sunset glory. Down in the very middle of all

this was a band of a thousand men; their faded clothing, their uncertain

step, their knotted hands, and their great hungry eyes told the price

that had been paid for the drama this sunset hour was to bring. Slowly

the moments passed as when in our little sanctuary above the pleasant

parks at Fort Sill I had watched the light measured out. And then the

low hills began to rise up and shut out the crimson west as twilight

crept toward the Sweetwater Valley.

Suddenly, for there had been nothing there a moment before, all

suddenly, an Indian scout was outlined on the top of the low bluff

nearest us. Motionless he sat on his pony a moment, then he waved a

signal to the farther height beyond him. A second pony and a second

Indian scout appeared. Another signal and then came a third Indian on a

third pony farther away. Each Indian seemed to call out another until a

line of them had been signalled from the purple mist, out of which they

appeared to be created. Last of all and farthest away, was a pony on

which two figures were faintly outlined. Down in the valley we waited,

all eyes looking toward the hills as these two drew nearer. Up in a

group on the bluff beyond the valley the Indians halted. The two riders

of the pony slipped to the ground. With their arms about each other, in

close embrace, they came slowly toward us, the two captive women for

whom we waited. It was a tragic scene, such as our history has rarely

known, watched by a thousand men, mute and motionless, under its spell.

Even now, after the lapse of nearly four decades, the picture is as

vivid as if it were but yesterday that I stood on the Texas Plains a

soldier of twenty-two years, feeling my heart throbs quicken as that

sunset scene is enacted before me.

We had thought ourselves the victims of a hard fate in that winter of

terrible suffering; but these two women, Kansas girls, no older than

Marjie, home-loving, sheltered, womanly, a maiden and a bride of only a

few months--shall I ever forget them as they walked into my life on that

March day in the sunset hour by the Sweetwater? Their meagre clothing

was of thin flour sacks with buckskin moccasins and leggins. Their hair

hung in braids Indian fashion. Their haggard faces and sad eyes told

only the beginning of their story. They were coming now to freedom and

protection. The shadow of Old Glory would be on them in a moment; a

moment, and the life of an Indian captive would be but a horror-seared

memory.

Then it was that Custer did a graceful thing. The subjection of the

Cheyennes could have been accomplished by soldiery from Connecticut or

South Carolina, but it was for the rescue of these two, for the

protection of Kansas homes, that the Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry had

volunteered. Stepping to our commander, Colonel Moore, Custer asked that

the Kansas man should go forward to meet the captives. With a courtesy a

queen might have coveted the Colonel received them--two half-naked,

wretched, fate-buffeted women.

The officers nearest wrapped their great coats about them. Then, as the

two, escorted by Colonel Moore and his officers next of rank, moved

forward toward General Custer, who was standing apart on a little knoll

waiting to receive them, a thousand men watching breathless with

uncovered heads the while, the setting sun sent down athwart the valley

its last rich rays of glory, the motionless air was full of an

opalescent beauty; while softly, sweetly, like dream music never heard

before in that lonely land of silence, the splendid Seventh Cavalry band

was playing "Home Sweet Home."

CHAPTER XXVII

THE HERITAGE

It is morning here in Kansas, and the breakfast bell is rung!

We are not yet fairly started on the work we mean to do;

We have all the day before us, and the morning is but young,

And there's hope in every zephyr, and the skies are bright and blue.

--WALT MASON.

It was over at last, the long painful marching; the fight with the

winter's blizzard, the struggle with starvation, the sunrise and sunset

and starlight on wilderness ways--all ended after a while. Of the three

boys who had gone out from Springvale and joined in the sacrifice for

the frontier, Bud sleeps in that pleasant country at Fort Sill. The

summer breezes ripple the grasses on his grave, the sunbeams caress it

lovingly and the winter snows cover it softly over--the quiet grave he

had wished for and found all too soon. Dear Bud, "not changed, but

glorified," he holds his place in all our hearts. For O'mie, the winter

campaign was the closing act of a comic tragedy, and I can never think

sadly of the brave-hearted happy Irishman. He was too full of the sunny

joy of existence, his heart beat with too much of good-will toward men,

to be remembered otherwise than as a bright-faced, sweet-spirited boy

whose span of years was short. How he ever endured the hardships and

reached Springvale again is a miracle, and I wonder even now, how,

waiting patiently for the inevitable, he could go peacefully through

the hours, making us forget everything but his cheery laugh, his

affectionate appreciation of the good things of the world, and his

childlike trust in the Saviour of men.

His will was a simple thing, containing the bequest of all his

possessions, including the half-section of land so long in litigation,

and the requests regarding his funeral. The latter had three wishes:

that Marjie would sing "Abide With Me" at the burial service, that he

might lie near to John Baronet's last resting-place in the Springvale

cemetery, and that Dave and Bill Mead, and the three Andersons, with

myself would be his pall bearers. Dave was on the Pacific slope then,

and O'mie himself had helped to bear Bud to his final earthly home. One

of the Red Range boys and Jim Conlow filled these vacant places.

Reverently, as for one of the town's distinguished men, there walked

beside us Father Le Claire and Judge Baronet, Cris Mead and Henry

Anderson, father of the Anderson boys, Cam Gentry and Dever. Behind

these came the whole of Springvale. It was May time, a year after our

Southwest campaign, and the wild flowers of the prairie lined his grave

and wreaths of the pink blossoms that grow out in the West Draw were

twined about his casket. He had no next of kin, there were no especial

mourners. His battle was ended and we could not grieve for his abundant

entrance into eternal peace.

Three of us had gone out with the Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry, and I am

the third. While we were creeping back to life at Camp Inman on the

Washita after that well-nigh fatal expedition across the Staked Plains

to the Sweetwater, I saw much of Hard Rope, chief man of the Osage

scouts. I had been accustomed to the Osages all my years in Kansas.

Neither this tribe, nor our nearer neighbors, the Kaws, had ever given

Springvale any serious concern. Sober, they were law-abiding enough, and

drunk, they were no more dangerous than any drunken white man. Bitter as

my experience with the Indian has been, I have always respected the

loyal Osage. But I never sought one of this or any other Indian tribe

for the sake of his company. Race prejudice in me is still strong, even

when I give admiration and justice free rein. Indians had frequent

business in the Baronet law office in my earlier years, and after I was

associated with my father there was much that brought them to us.

Possibly the fact that I did not dislike the Osages is the reason I

hardly gave them a thought at Fort Sill. It was not until afterwards

that I recalled how often I had found the Osage scouts there crossing my

path unexpectedly. On the day before we broke camp at the Fort, Hard

Rope came to my tent and sat down beside the door. I did not notice him

until he said slowly:

"Baronet?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Tobacco?" he asked.

"No, Hard Rope," I answered, "I have every other mark of a great man

except this. I don't smoke."

"I want tobacco," he continued.

What made me accommodating just then I do not know, but I suddenly

remembered some tobacco that Reed had left in my tent.

"Hard Rope," I said, "here is some tobacco. I forgot I had it, because I

don't care for it. Take it all."

The scout seized it with as much gratitude as an Indian shows, but he

did not go away at once.

"Something else now?" I questioned not unkindly.

"You Judge Baronet's son?"

I nodded and smiled.

He came very close to me, putting both hands on my shoulders, and

looking steadily into my eyes he said solemnly, "You will be safe. No

evil come near you."

"Thank you, Hard Rope, but I will keep my powder dry just the same," I

answered.

All the time in the Inman camp the scout shadowed me. On the evening

before our start for Fort Hays to be mustered out of service he came to

me as I sat alone beside the Washita, breathing deeply the warm air of

an April twilight. I had heard no word from home since I left Topeka in

October. Marjie must be married, as Jean had said. I had never known the

half-breed to tell a lie. It was so long ago that that letter of hers to

me had miscarried. She thought of course that I had taken it and even

then refused to stay at home. Oh, it was all a hopeless tangle, and now

I might be dreaming of another man's wife. I had somehow grown utterly

hopeless now. Jean--oh, the thought was torture--I could not feel sure

about him. He might be shadowing her night and day. Custer did not tell

me what had become of the Indian, and I had seen on the Sweetwater what

such as he could do for a Kansas girl. As I sat thus thinking, Hard Rope

squatted beside me.

"You go at sunrise?" pointing toward the east.

I merely nodded.

"I want to talk," he went on.

"Well, talk away, Hard Rope." I was glad to quit thinking.

What he told me there by the rippling Washita River I did not repeat for

many months, but I wrung his hand when I said good-bye. Of all the

scouts with Custer that we left behind when we started northward, none

had so large a present of tobacco as Hard Rope.

My father had demanded that I return to Springvale as soon as our

regiment was mustered out. Morton was still in the East, and I had no

foothold in the Saline Valley as I had hoped in the Fall to have. Nor

was there any other place that opened its doors to me. And withal I was

homesick--desperately, ravenously homesick. I wanted to see my father

and Aunt Candace, to look once more on the peaceful Neosho and the huge

oak trees down in its fertile valley. For nearly half a year I had not

seen a house, nor known a civilized luxury. No child ever yearned for

home and mother as I longed for Springvale. And most of all came an

overwhelming eagerness to see Marjie once more. She was probably Mrs.

Judson now, unless Jean--but Hard Rope had eased my mind a little

there--and I had no right even to think of her. Only I was young, and I

had loved her so long. All that fierce battle with myself which I fought

out on the West Prairie on the night she refused to let me speak to her

had to be fought over again. And this time, marching northward over the

April Plains toward Fort Hays, this time, I was hopelessly vanquished.

I, Philip Baronet, who had fought with fifty against a thousand on the

Arickaree; who had gone with Custer to the Sweetwater in the dreary

wastes of the Texas desert; I who had a little limp now and then in my

right foot, left out too long in the cold, too long made to keep step in

weary ways on endlessly wearing marches; I who had lost the softness of

the boy's physique and who was muscled like a man, with something of the

military bearing hammered mercilessly upon me in the days of soldier

life--I was still madly in love with a girl who had refused all my

pleadings and was even now, maybe, another man's wife. Oh, cold and

terror and starvation were all bad enough, but this was unendurable.

"I will go home as my father wishes," I said. "I do not need to stay

there, but I will go now for a while and feel once more what

civilization means. Then--I will go to the Plains, or somewhere else."

So I argued as we came one April day into Fort Hays. Letters from home

were awaiting me, urging me to come at once; and I went, leaving O'mie

to follow later when he should have rested at the Fort a little.

All Kansas was in its Maytime glory. From the freshly ploughed earth

came up that sweet wholesome odor that like the scent of new-mown hay

carries its own traditions of other days to each of us. The young

orchards--there were not many orchards in Kansas then--were all a blur

of pink on the hill slopes. A thousand different blossoms gemmed the

prairies, making a perfect kaleidoscope of brilliant hues, that blended

with the shifting shades of green. Along the waterways the cottonwood's

silvery branches, tipped with tender young leaves fluttering in the soft

wind, stood up proudly above the scrubby bronze and purple growths

hardly yet in bud and leaf. From every gentle swell the landscape swept

away to the vanishing line of distances in billowy seas of green and

gold, while far overhead arched the deep-blue skies of May. Fleecy

clouds, white and soft as foam, drifted about in the limitless fields of

ether. The glory of the new year, the fresh sweet air, the spirit of

budding life, set the pulses a-tingle with the very joy of being. Like a

dream of Paradise lay the Neosho Valley in its wooded beauty, with field

and farm, the meadow, and the open unending prairie rolling away from

it, wave on wave, in the Maytime grace and grandeur. Through this valley

the river itself wound in and out, glistening like molten silver in the

open spaces, and gliding still and shadowy by overhanging cliff and

wooded covert.

"Dever," I said to the stage driver when we had reached the top of the

divide and looked southward to where all this magnificence of nature was

lavishly spread out, "Dever, do you remember that passage in the Bible

about the making of the world long ago, 'And God saw that it was good'?

Well, here's where all that happened."

Dever laughed a crowing laugh of joy. He had hugged me when I took the

stage, I didn't know why. When it came to doing the nice thing, Dever

had a sense of propriety sometimes that better-bred folk might have

envied. And this journey home proved it.

"I've got a errant up west. D'ye's lief come into town that way?" he

asked me.

Would I? I was longing to slip into my home before I ran the gantlet of

all the streets opening on the Santa Fe Trail. I never did know what

Dever's "errant" was, that led him to swing some miles to the west, out

of the way to the ford of the Neosho above the old stone cabin where

Father Le Claire swam his horse in the May flood six years before. He

gave no reason for the act that brought me over a road, every foot

sacred to the happiest moments of my life. Past the big cottonwood, down

into the West Draw where the pink blossoms called in sweet insistent

tones to me to remember a day when I had crowned a little girl with

blooms like these, a day when my life was in its Maytime joy. On across

the prairie we swung to the very borders of Springvale, which was

nestling by the river and stretching up the hillslope toward where the

bluff breaks abruptly. I could see "Rockport" gray and sun-flecked

beyond its sheltering line of green bushes.

Just as we turned toward Cliff Street Dever said carelessly,

"Lots of changes some ways sence I took you out of here last August.

Judson, he's married two months ago."

The warm sunny glorious world turned drab and cold to me with the words.

"What's the matter, Baronet?--you're whiter'n a dead man!"

"Just a little faint. Got that way in the army," I answered, which was a

lie.

"Better now? As I was sayin', Judson and Lettie has been married two

months now. Kinder surprised folks by jinin' up sudden; but--oh, well,

it's a lot better quick than not at all sometimes."

I caught my breath. My "spell" contracted in the army was passing. And

here were Cliff Street and the round turret-like corners of Judge

Baronet's stone-built domicile. It was high noon, and my father had just

gone into the house. I gave Dever his fare and made the hall door at a

leap. My father turned at the sound and--I was in his arms. Then came

Aunt Candace, older by more than ten months. Oh, the women are the ones

who suffer most. I had not thought until that moment what all this

winter of absence meant to Candace Baronet. I held her in my strong arms

and looked down into her love-hungry eyes. Men are such stupid unfeeling

brutes. I am, at least; for I had never read in this dear woman's face

until that instant what must have been written there all these

years,--the love that might have been given to a husband and children of

her own, this lonely, childless woman had given to me.

"Aunty, I'll never leave you again," I declared, as she clung to me, and

patted my cheeks and stroked my rough curly hair.

We sat down together to the midday meal, and my father's blessing was

like the benediction of Heaven to my ears.

Springvale also had its measure of good breeding. My coming was the

choicest news that Dever had had to give out for many a day, and the

circulation was amazing in its rapid transit. I had a host of friends

here where I had grown to manhood, and the first impulse was to take

Cliff Street by storm. It was Cam Gentry who counselled better methods.

"Now, by hen, let's have some sense," he urged, "the boy's jest got

here. He's ben through life and death, er tarnation nigh akin to it.

Let's let him be with his own till to-morror. Jest ac like we'd had a

grain o' raisin' anyhow, and wait our turn. Ef he shows hisself down on

this 'er street we'll jest go out and turn the Neoshy runnin' north for

an hour and a half while we carry him around dry shod. But now, to-day,

let him come out o' hidin', and we'll give him welcome; but ef he stays

up there with Candace, we'll be gentlemen fur oncet ef it does purty

nigh kill some of us."

"Cam is right," Cris Mead urged. "If he comes down here he'll take his

chances, but we'll hold our fire on the hill till to-morrow."

"Well, by cracky, the Baronets never miss prayer meeting, I guess.

Springvale will turn out to-night some," Grandpa Mead declared.

And so while I revelled in a home-coming, thankful to be alone with my

own people, the best folks on earth were waiting and dodging about, but

courteously abstaining from rushing in on our sacred home rights.

In the middle of the afternoon Cam Gentry called to Dollie to come to

his aid.

"Jest tie the end of this rope good and fast around this piazzer post,"

he said.

His wife obeyed before she noted that the other end was fastened around

Cam's right ankle. To her wondering look he responded:

"Ef I don't lariat myself to something, like a old hen wanting to steal

off with her chickens, I'll be up to Baronet's spite of my efforts, I'm

that crazy to see Phil once more."

Through the remainder of the May afternoon he sat on the veranda, or

hopped the length of his tether to the side-walk and looked longingly up

toward the high street, that faced the cliff, but his purpose did not

change.

Springvale showed its sense of delicacy in more ways than this. Marjie

was the last to hear of my leaving when all suddenly I turned my back on

the town nearly ten months before. And now, while almost every family

had discussed my return--anything furnishes a little town a

sensation--the Whately family had had no notice served of the

momentarily interesting topic. And so it was that Marjie, innocent of

the suppressed interest, went about her home, never dreaming of anything

unusual in the town talk of that day.

The May evening was delicious in its balmy air and the deepening purple

of its twilight haze. The spirit of the springtime, wooing in its tone

of softest music, voiced a message to the sons and daughters of men.

Marjie came out at sunset and slowly took her way through the sweetness

of it all up to the "Rockport" of our childhood, the trysting place of

our days of love's young dream. Her fair face had a womanly strength and

tenderness now, and her form an added grace over the curves of girlhood.

But her hair still rippled about her brow and coiled in the same soft

folds of brown at the back of her head. Her cheeks had still the pink of

the wild rose bloom, and the dainty neatness in dress was as of old.

She came to the rock beyond the bushes and sat down alone looking

dreamily out over the Neosho Valley.

"You'll go to prayer meeting, Phil?" Aunt Candace asked at supper.

"Yes, but I believe I'll go down the street first. Save a place for me.

I want to see Dr. Hemingway next to you of all Springvale." Which was my

second falsehood for that day. I needed prayer meeting.

The sunset hour was more than I could withstand. All the afternoon I had

been subconsciously saying that I must keep close to the realities.

These were all that counted now. And yet when the evening came, all the

past swept my soul and bore every resolve before it. I did not stop to

ask myself any questions. I only knew that, lonely as it must be, I must

go now to "Rockport" as I had done so many times in the old happy past,

a past I was already beginning numbly to feel was dead and gone forever.

And yet my step was firm and my head erect, as with eager tread I came

to the bushes guarding our old happy playground. I only wanted to see it

once more, that was all.

The limp had gone from my foot. It was intermittent in the earlier

years. I was combed and groomed again for social appearing. Aunt Candace

had hung about my tie and the set of my coat, and for my old army

head-gear she had resurrected the jaunty cap I had worn home from

Massachusetts. With my hands in my pockets, whistling softly to abstract

my thoughts, I slipped through the bushes and stood once more on

"Rockport."

And there was Marjie, still looking dreamily out over the valley. She

had not heard my step, so far away were her thoughts. And the picture,

as I stood a moment looking at her--will the world to come hold anything

more fair, I wondered. It was years ago, I know, but so clearly I

recall it now it could have been a dream of yesterday. Before me were

the gray rock, the dark-green valley, the gleaming waters of the Neosho,

the silvery mist on the farther bluff iridescent with the pink tints of

sunset reflected on the eastern sky, the quiet loveliness of the May

twilight, and Marjie, beautiful with a girlish winsomeness, a woman's

grace, a Madonna's tenderness.

"Were you waiting for me, dearie? I am a little late, but I am here at

last."

I spoke softly, and she turned quickly at the sound of my voice. A look

of dazed surprise as she leaped to her feet, and then the reality dawned

upon her.

"Come, sweetheart," I said. "I have been away so long, I'm hungering for

your welcome."

I held out my hands to her. Her face was very white as she made one step

toward me, and then the love-light filled her brown eyes, the glorious

beauty of the pink blossoms swept her cheek. I put my arms around her

and drew her close to me, my own little girl, whom I had loved and

thought I had lost forever.

"Oh, Phil, Phil, are you here again? Are you--" she put her little hand

against my hair curling rebelliously over my cap's brim. "Are you mine

once more?"

"Am I, Marjie? Six feet of me has come back; but, little girl, I have

never been away. I have never let you go out of my life. It was only the

mechanical action that went away. Phil Baronet stayed here! Oh, I know

it now--I was acting out there; I was really living here with you, my

Marjie, my own."

I held her in my arms as I spoke, and we looked out at the sweet sunset

prairie. The big cottonwood, shapely as ever, was outlined against the

horizon, which was illumined now with all the gorgeous grandeur of the

May evening. The level rays of golden light fell on us, as we stood

there, baptizing us with its splendor.

"Oh, Marjie, it was worth all the suffering and danger to have such a

home-coming as this!" I kissed her lips and pushed back the little

ringlets from her white forehead.

"It is vouchsafed to a man sometimes to know a bit of heaven here on

earth," Father Le Claire had said to me out on this rock six years

before. It was a bit of heaven that came down to me in the purple

twilight of that May evening, and I lifted my face to the opal skies

above me with a prayer of thankfulness for the love that was mine once

more. In that hour of happiness we forgot that there was ever a storm

cloud to darken the blue heavens, or ever a grief or a sin to mar the

joy of living. We were young, and we were together. Over the valley

swept the sweet tones of the Presbyterian Church bell. Marjie's face,

radiant with light, was lifted to mine.

"I must go to prayer meeting, Phil. I shall see you again--to-morrow?"

She put the question hesitatingly, even longingly.

"Yes, and to-night. Let's go together. I haven't been to prayer meeting

regularly. We lost out on that on the Staked Plains."

"I must run home and comb my hair," she declared; and indeed it was a

little tumbled. But from the night I first saw her, a little girl in her

father's moving-wagon, with her pink sun-bonnet pushed back from her

blowsy curls, her hair, however rebellious, was always a picture.

"Go ahead, little girl. I will run home, too. I forgot something. I will

be down right away."

Going home, I may have walked on Cliff Street, but my head was in the

clouds, and all the songs that the morning-stars sing together--all the

music of the spheres--was playing itself out for me in the shadowy

twilight as I went along.

At the gate Aunt Candace and my father were waiting for me.

"You needn't wait," I cried. "I will be there presently."

"Oh, joined the regular army this time," my father said, smiling. "Sorry

we can't keep you, Phil." But I gave no heed to him.

"Aunt Candace," I said in a low voice. "May I see you just a minute? I

want to get something."

"It's in the top drawer in my room, Phil. The key is in the little tray

on my dresser," Aunt Candace said quietly. She always understood me.

When I reached the Whately home, Marjie was waiting for me at the gate.

I took her little hand in my own strong big one.

"Will you wear it again for me, dearie?" I asked, holding up my mother's

ring before her.

"Always and always, Phil," she murmured.

Isn't it Longfellow who speaks of "the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots

of the angels," blossoming "in the infinite meadows of heaven"? They

were all a-bloom that May night, and dewy and sweet lay the earth

beneath them. We were a little late to prayer meeting. The choir was in

its place and the audience was gathered in the pews. Judge Baronet

always sat near the front, and my place was between him and Aunt Candace

when I wasn't in the choir. Bess Anderson was just finishing a voluntary

as we two went up the aisle together. I hadn't thought of making a

sensation, I thought only of Marjie. Passing around the end of the

chancel rail I gently led her by the arm up the three steps to the

choir place, and turning, faced all the town as I went to my seat

beside my father. I was as happy as a lover can be; but I didn't know

how much of all this was written on my countenance, nor did I notice the

intense hush that fell on the company. I had faced the oncoming of Roman

Nose and his thousand Cheyenne warriors; there was no reason why I

should feel embarrassed in a prayer meeting in the Presbyterian Church

at Springvale. The service was short. I remember not one word of it

except the scripture lesson. That was the Twenty-third Psalm:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;

He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul;

He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me.

These words had sounded in my ears on the night before the battle on the

Arickaree, and again in the little cove on the low bluff at Fort Sill,

the night Jean Pahusca was taunting me through the few minutes he was

allowing me to live. That Psalm belonged to the days when I was doing my

part toward the price paid out for the prairie homes and safety and

peace. But never anybody read for me as Dr. Hemingway read it that

evening. With the close of the service came a prayer of thanksgiving for

my return. Then for the first time I was self-conscious. What had I done

to be so lovingly and reverently welcomed home? I bowed my head in deep

humility, and the tears welled up. Oh, I could look death calmly between

the eyes as I had watched it creeping toward me on the heated Plains of

the Arickaree, and among the cold starved sand dunes of the Cimarron,

but to be lauded as a hero here in Springvale--the tears would come.

Where were Custer, and Moore, and Forsyth, and Pliley, and Stillwell,

and Morton, if such as I be called a hero?

Cam Gentry didn't lead the Doxology that night, he chased it

clear into the belfry and up into the very top of the steeple;

and his closing burst of melody "Praise Father, Son, and

Holy Ghost," had, as Bill Mead declared afterwards, a regular

"You-couldn't-have-done-it-better-Lord-if-you-had-been-there-yourself"

ring to it.

Then came the benediction, fervent, holy, gentle, with Dr. Hemingway's

white face (crowned now with snowy hair) lifted up toward heaven. After

that I never could remember, save that there was a hush, then a clamor,

that was followed pretty soon by embraces from the older men and women,

pounding thumps from the younger men and handshaking with the girls. And

all the while, with a proprietary sense I had found myself near Marjie,

whom I kept close beside me now, her brown head just above my shoulder.

More than once in the decades since then it has been my fortune to

return to Springvale and be met at the railway station and escorted home

by the town band. Sometimes for political service, sometimes for civic

effort, and once because by physical strength and great daring and quick

cool courage I saved three human lives in a terrible wreck; but never

any ovation was like that prayer meeting in the Presbyterian Church

nearly forty years ago.

The days that followed my home-coming were busy ones, for my place in

the office had been vacant. Clayton Anderson had devoted himself to the

Whately affairs, although nobody but those in the secret knew when

Judson gave up proprietorship and went on a clerk's pay again where he

belonged. Springvale was kind to Judson, as it has always been to the

man who tries honestly to make good in this life's struggle. It is in

the Kansas air, this broader charity, this estimation of character,

redeemed or redeemable.

My father did not tell me of his part in the Whately business affairs at

once, and I did not understand when, one evening, some time later, Aunt

Candace said at the supper table:

"Dollie Gentry tells me Dr. John (so we called John Anderson now),

reports a twelve-pound boy over at Judsons'. They are going to christen

him 'John Baronet Judson.' Aren't you proud of the name, John?"

"I am of the Judson part," my father answered, with that compression of

the lips that sometimes kept back a smile, and sometimes marked a

growing sternness.

I met O'mie at Topeka and brought him to Springvale. It was not until in

May of the next year that he went away from us and came not back any

more, save in loving remembrance.

In August Tillhurst went East. Somehow I was not at all surprised when

the Rockport, Massachusetts, weekly newspaper, that had come to our

house every Tuesday while we had lived on Cliff Street, contained the

notice of the marriage of Richard Tillhurst and Rachel Agnes Melrose.

The happy couple, the paper said, would reside in Rockport.

"They may reside at the bottom of the sea for all that I care," I said

thoughtlessly, not understanding then the shadow that fell for the

moment on my aunt's serene face.

Long afterwards when she slept beside my father in the quiet Springvale

cemetery on the bluff beyond Fingal's Creek, I found among her letters

the romance of her life. I knew then for the first time that Rachel's

uncle, the Ferdinand Melrose whose life was lost at sea, was the one for

whom this brave kind woman had mourned. Loving as the Baronets do, even

unto death, she had gone down the lonely years, forgetting herself in

the broad, beautiful, unselfish life she gave to those about her.

It was late in the August of the following year, when the Kansas

prairies were brownest and the summer heat the fiercest, that I was met

at the courthouse door one afternoon by a lithe, coppery Osage Indian

boy, who handed me a bundle, saying, "From Hard Rope, for John Baronet's

son."

"Well, all right, sonny; only it's about time for the gentleman in there

to be known as Philip Baronet's father. He never fought the Cheyennes.

He's just the father of the man who did. What's the tariff due on this

junk?"

The Osage did not smile, but he answered mildly enough, "What you will

pay."

I was not cross with the world. I could afford to be generous, even at

the risk of having the whole Osage tribe trailing at my heels, and

begging for tobacco and food and trinkets. I loaded that young buck to

the guards with the things an Indian prizes, and sent him away.

Then in my own office I undid the bundle. It was the old scarlet blanket

with the white circular centre, the pattern Jean Pahusca always wore.

This one was dirty and frayed and splotched. I turned from it with

loathing. In the folds of the cloth a sealed letter was securely

fastened. Some soldier had written it for Hard Rope, and the penmanship

and language were more than average fine. But the story it told I could

not exult over, although a sense of lifted pressure in some corner of

my mind came with the reading.

Briefly it recited that Jean Pahusca, Kiowa renegade, was dead. Custer's

penalty for him had been to give him over to the Kiowas as their

captive. When the tribe left Fort Sill in March, Satanta had had him

brought bound to the Kiowa village then on the lower Washita. His crime,

committed on the day of Custer's fight with Black Kettle, was the

heinous one of stealing his Uncle Satanta's youngest and favorite wife,

and leaving her to perish miserably in the cold of that December month

in which we also had suffered. His plan had been to escape from the

Kiowas and reach the Cheyennes on the Sweetwater before we did, to meet

me there, and this time, to give no moment for my rescue. So Hard Rope's

message ran. But this was not all. The punishment that fell on Jean

Pahusca was in proportion to his crime, as an Indian counts justice. He

was sold as a slave to the Apaches and carried captive to the mountains

of Old Mexico. Nor was he ever liberated again. Up above the snow line,

with the passes guarded (for Jean was as dangerous to his mother's race

as to his father's), he had fretted away his days, dying at last of cold

and cruel neglect among the dreary rocks of the icy peaks. This much

information Hard Rope's letter brought. I burned both the letter and the

blanket, telling no one of them except my father.

"This Hard Rope was for some reason very friendly to me on your

account," I said. "He told me on the Washita the night before we left

Camp Inman that he had shadowed Jean all the time he was at Fort Sill,

and had more than once prevented the half-breed from making an attack on

me. He promised to let me know what became of Pahusca if he ever found

out. He has kept his word."

"I know Hard Rope," my father said. "I saved his life one annuity day

long ago. Tell Mapleson had made Jean Pahusca drunk. You know what kind

of a beast he was then. And Tell had run this Osage into Jean's path,

where he would be sure to lose his life, and Tell would have the big

pile of money Hard Rope carried. That's the kind of beast Tell was. An

Indian has his own sense of obligation; and then it is a good asset to

be humane all along the line anyhow, although I never dreamed I was

saving the man who was to save my boy."

"Shall we tell Le Claire?" I asked.

"Only that both Jean and his father are dead. We'll spare him the rest.

Le Claire has gone to St. Louis to a monastery. He will never be strong

again. But he is one of the kings of the earth; he has given the best

years of his manhood to build up a kingdom of peace between the white

man and the savage. No record except the Great Book of human deeds will

ever be able to show how much we owe to men like Le Claire whose

influence has helped to make a loyal peaceful tribe like the Osages. The

brutal fiendishness of the Plains Indians is the heritage of Spanish

cruelty toward the ancestors of the Apache and Kiowa and Arapahoe and

Comanche, and you can see why they differ from our tribes here in

Eastern Kansas. Le Claire has done his part toward the purchase of the

Plains, and I am glad for the quiet years before him."

* * * * *

It was the custom in Springvale for every girl to go up to Topeka for

the final purchases of her bridal belongings. We were to be married in

October. In the late September days Mrs. Whately and her daughter spent

a week at the capital city. I went up at the end of the visit to come

home with them. Since the death of Irving Whately nothing had ever

roused his wife to the pleasure of living like this preparation for

Marjie's marriage, and Mrs. Whately, still a young and very pretty

woman, bloomed into that mature comeliness that carries a grace of

permanence the promise of youth may only hint at. She delighted in every

detail of the coming event, and we two most concerned were willing to

let anybody look after the details. We had other matters to think about.

"Come, little sweetheart," I said one night after supper at the Teft

House, "your mother is to spend the evening with a friend of hers. I

want to take you for a walk."

Strange how beautiful Topeka looked to me this September. It had all the

making of a handsome city even then, although the year since I came up

to the political rally had brought no great change except to extend the

borders somewhat. Like two happy young lovers we strolled out toward the

southwest, past the hole in the ground that was to contain the

foundation of the new wings for the State Capitol, past Washburn

College, and on to where the slender little locust tree waved its dainty

lacy branches in graceful welcome.

"Marjie, I want you to see this tree. It's not the first time I have

been here. Rachel--Mrs. Tillhurst--and I came here a few times."

Marjie's hand nestled softly against my arm. "I always made faces at it

as soon as I got away from it; but it is a beautiful little tree, and I

want to put you with it in my mind. It was here last Fall that my father

said he didn't believe that you were engaged to Amos Judson."

"Didn't believe," Marjie cried; "why, Phil, he knew I wasn't. I told him

so when he was asked to urge me to marry Amos."

"He urge you to marry Amos! Now Marjie, girl, I hate to be hard on the

gentleman; but if he did that it's my duty to scalp him, and I will go

home and do it."

But Marjie explained. We sat in the moonlight by the locust-tree just as

Rachel and I had done; only now Topeka and the tree and the silvery

prairie and the black-shadowed Shunganunga Creek, winding down toward

the Kaw through many devious turns, all seemed a fairy land which the

moonbeams touched and glorified for us two. I can never think of Topeka,

even to-day, with its broad avenues and beautiful shaded parks and paved

ways, its handsome homes and churches and colleges, with all these to

make it a proud young city--I can never think of it and leave out that

sturdy young locust, grown now to a handsome tree. And when I think of

it I do not think of the beautiful black-haired Eastern girl, with her

rich dress and aristocratic manner. But always that sweet-faced,

brown-eyed Kansas girl is with me there. And the open prairie dipping

down to the creek, and the purple tip of Burnett's Mound, make a setting

for the picture.

* * * * *

One October day when the wooded valley of the Neosho was in its autumn

glory, when the creeping vines on the gray stone bluff were aflame with

the frost's rich scarlet painting, and the west prairies were all one

shimmering sea of gold flecked with emerald and purple; while above all

these curved the wide magnificent skies of Kansas, unclouded,

fathomless, and tenderly blue; when the peace of God was in the air and

his benediction of love was on all the land,--on such a day as this, the

clear-toned old Presbyterian Church bell rang the wedding chimes for

Marjory Whately and Philip Baronet. Loving hands had made the church a

bower of autumn coloring with the dainty relief of pink and white asters

against the bronze richness of the season. Bess Anderson played the

wedding march, as we two came up the aisle together and met Dr.

Hemingway at the chancel rail. I was in my young manhood's zenith, and I

walked the earth like a king. Marjie wore my mother's wedding veil. Her

white gown was soft and filmy, a fabric of her mother's own choosing,

and her brown wavy hair was crowned with orange blossoms.

Springvale talked of that wedding for many a moon, for there was not a

feature of the whole beautiful service, even to the very least

appointment, that was not perfect in its simplicity and harmonious in

its blending with everything about it.

Among the guests in the Baronet home, where everybody came to wish us

happiness, was my father's friend and my own hero, Morton of the Saline

Valley. Somehow I needed his presence that day. It kept me in touch with

my days of greatest schooling. The quiet, forceful friend, who had

taught me how to meet the realities of life like a man, put into my

wedding a memory I shall always treasure. O'mie was still with us then.

When his turn came to greet us he held Marjie's hand a moment while he

slyly showed her a poor little bunch of faded brown blossoms which he

crumpled to dust in his fingers.

"I told you I wouldn't keep them no longer'n till I caught the odor of

them orange blooms. They are the little pink wreath two other fellows

threw away out in the West Draw long ago. The rale evidence of my

good-will to you two is locked up in Judge Baronet's safe."

We laughed, but we did not understand. Not until the Irish boy's will

was read, more than half a year later, when the pink flowers were

blooming again in the West Draw, did we comprehend the measure of his

good-will. For by his legal last wish all his possessions, including the

land, with the big cottonwood and the old stone cabin, became the

property of Marjory Whately and her heirs and assigns forever.

Out there in later years we built our country home. The breezes of

summer are always cool there, and from every wide window we can see the

landscape the old cottonwood still watches over. Above the gateway to

the winding road leading up from the West Draw is inscribed the name we

gave the place,

O'MIE-HEIM.

Sixty years, and a white-haired, young-hearted young man I am who write

these lines. For many seasons I have sat on the Judge's bench. Law has

been my business on the main line, with land dealings on the side, and

love for my fellowmen all along the way. Half a century of my life has

run parallel with the story of Kansas, whose beautiful prairies have

been purchased not only with the coin of the country, but with the coin

of courage and unparalleled endurance. To-day the rippling billows of

yellow wheat, the walls on walls of black-green corn, the stretches of

emerald alfalfa set with its gems of amethyst bloom; orchard and meadow,

grove and grassy upland, where cattle pasture; populous cities and

churches and stately college halls; the whirring factory wheels, the

dust of the mines, the black oil derrick and the huge reservoirs of

natural gas, with the slender steel pathways of the great trains of

traffic binding these together; and above all, the sheltered happy

homes, where little children play never dreaming of fear; where

sweet-browed mothers think not of loneliness and anguish and peril--all

these are the splendid heritage of a land whose law is for the whole

people, a land whose God is the Lord.

Slowly, through tribulation, and distress, and persecution, and famine,

and nakedness, and peril, and sword; through fire and flood; through

summer's drought and winter's blizzard; through loneliness, and fear,

and heroism, and martyrdom too often at last, the brave-hearted,

liberty-loving, indomitable people have come into their own, paying foot

by foot, the price that won this prairie kingdom in the heart of the

West.

Down through the years of busy cares, of struggle and achievement, of

hopes deferred and victories counted, my days have run in shadow and

sunshine, with more of practical fact than of poetic dreaming. And

through them all, the call of the prairie has sounded in my soul, the

voice of a beautiful land, singing evermore its old, old song of victory

and peace. Aye, and through it all, beside me, cheering each step,

holding fast my hand, making life always fine and beautiful and gracious

for me, has been my loved one, Marjie, the bride of my young manhood,

the mother of my sons and daughters, the light of my life.

It is for such as she, for homes her kind have made, that men have

fought and dared and died, fulfilling the high privilege of the American

citizen, the privilege to safeguard the hearthstones of the land above

which the flag floats a symbol of light and law and love.

And I who write this know--for I have learned in the years whose story

is here only a half-told thing under my halting pen--I know that however

fiercely the storms may beat, however wildly the tempests may blow,

however bitter the fighting hours of the day may be, beyond the heat

and burden of it all will come the quiet eventide for me, and for all

the sons and daughters of this prairie land I love. Though the roar of

battle fill all the noontime, in the blessed twilight will come the

music of "_HOME, SWEET HOME_."