Down under the spreading oaks a young man in rough ranchman"s dress stood leaning against a low bough, absorbed in thought. He was tall, symmetrically built, and strong of muscle, without a pound of superfluous fat to suggest anything of ease and idleness in his day"s run. Some of the lines that mark the stubborn will were graven in his brown face, but the eyes were all-redeeming. Even as he stared out with unseeing gaze, lost in his own thoughts, the smile that lighted them hovered ready to illuminate what might otherwise have been a severe countenance.
In all the wide reach of level land there was no other living creature in sight. The breeze pulsing gently through the oak boughs poured the sunlight noiselessly down on the shadow-cooled gra.s.s about the tree-trunks. The freshness of the morning lingered in the air of the grove.
Suddenly the young man caught the sound of an automobile coasting down the long slide from the three cottonwoods, and turned to see a young girl in a shining gray car gliding down into the edge of the shade. A soft hat of Delft-blue, ornamented, valkyrie-wise, with two white wings; golden-gleaming hair overshadowing a face full of charm; blue eyes; cheeks of peach-blossom pink; firm, red lips; a well-defined chin and white throat; a soft gown, Delft-blue in color; and white gauntlet gloves--all these were in the blurred picture of that confused moment.
As for Jerry Swaim, all farmer folk looked alike to her. It was not the sudden appearance of a stranger, but the landscape beyond him, that held her speechless, until the shrill whistle of a train broke the silence.
"Is that the Sage Brush Railroad so near?" she asked, at last, with no effort at formal greeting.
"Yes, ma"am. It is just behind the palisades over there. You can"t see it from here because the sand-drifts are so high. That"s the morning freight now."
The light died out of Jerry Swaim"s eyes, the pink bloom faded to ivory in her cheeks, even the red lips grew pale, as she stared at the scene before her. For the oak-grove stood a lone outpost of greenness defending a more or less fertile countryside from a formless, senseless monster beyond it. Jerry had pictured herself standing in the very center of her heritage, where she might "run her eyes around," as Ponk had said, "and figure how many acres she could see, and they were all hers." And now she was here.
Wide away before her eyes rippled acre on acre, all hers, and all of billowing sand, pointed only by a few straggling green shrubs. The glare of the sunlight on it was intolerable, and the north wind, sweeping cool and sweet under the oak-trees, brought no comfort to this glaring desert.
Suddenly she recalled the pitying look in Ponk"s eyes when he had begged her to wait for York Macpherson to come with her to this place, and she had thought he might be envious of her good fortune. And then she remembered that Laura Macpherson had put up the same plea for York. He was the shield and buckler for all New Eden, it would seem. And the three, Laura and York and Ponk, all knew and were pitying her, Jerry Swaim, who had been envied many a time, but never, never pitied. Even in the loss of the Swaim estate in Philadelphia, Mrs. Jerusha Darby had made it clear to every one that her pretty niece was still to be envied as a child of good fortune.
Flinging aside her hat and gloves, unconscious of the stray sunbeams sifting down through the oak boughs on her golden hair, Jerry Swaim gazed toward the railroad with wide-open, burning eyes, and her white face was pitiful to see. At length she turned to the young man who still stood leaning against the oak bough beyond her car, waiting for her to speak.
"Can I be of any service to you?" he asked, courteously.
"Who are you?" Jerry questioned, with unconscious bluntness.
"My name is Joe Thomson." The smile in his eyes lighted his face as he spoke.
"Tell me all about this place, won"t you?" Jerry demanded, pointing toward the gleaming sands. "Was it always like this, here? I thought when the Lord finished the earth He looked on His work and found it good. Did He overlook this spot?"
Surprise and sarcasm and bitter disappointment were all in her tone as she asked these questions.
Joe Thomson frowned as he replied:
"It wasn"t an oversight at all. There was a fine piece of prairie here until a few years ago, with only one little sandy strip zigzagging across it. Ages back, there may have been a stream along that low place yonder that dried up and blew away some time, when the forest fires changed the prehistoric woodlands into prairies. I can"t be accurate about geology and such things if history and the Scriptures are silent on these fine points."
Joe Thomson still stood leaning against the oak limb. The confusion of meeting this handsome stranger had pa.s.sed. He was in his own territory now, talking of things of which he knew. He knew, too, how to put his thoughts into good, expressive English.
"There are beautiful farms up the river--ranches, I mean. What has changed this prairie to such an awful place?" Jerry questioned, eagerly.
"Eastern capital and lack of brains and energy," Joe answered her. "It is just a blowout, that"s all. It began in that sandy strip in that low place along over there by the railroad, where, as I say, some old river-bed, maybe the Sage Brush, might have been long ago before it made that big bend in its course up by my buildings. A crazy, money-mad fool from back East came out here and plowed up all this ground one dry season, a visionary fellow who dreamed of getting a fortune from the land without any labor. And when the thing began to look like real work he cut the whole game, just like a lot of other fools have done, and went back East, leaving all these torn, unsodded acres a plaything for the winds. There were three or four dry seasons right after that, and the soil all went to dust and blew away. But the sand grew, and multiplied, and surged over the face of this particular spot of the Lord"s earth until it has come to be a tyrant of power, covering all this s.p.a.ce and spreading slowly northward up over the next claim. That"s mine."
"What is it doing to your land?" Jerry asked.
"Ruining it," Joe replied, calmly.
"And you don"t go mad?" the girl cried, impulsively.
"We don"t go mad on the Sage Brush till the last resort, and we don"t often come to that. When we can"t do one thing, out West, we do another.
That"s all there is to it." The smile was in his eyes again as Joe said this.
"Do you know who owns this ground now?" Jerry tried to ask as carelessly as possible.
"An estate back in Pennsylvania, I believe," Joe replied.
"What is it worth?" Jerry"s voice was hardly audible.
"Look at it. What do _you_ think it is worth, as a whole, or cut up into town lots for a summer resort?" Joe demanded.
In spite of his calmness there was a harshness in his voice, and his eyes were stern.
Jerry twisted her white hands helplessly. "I don"t know--anything worth knowing," she said, faintly, looking full into the young man"s face for the first time.
Afterward she remembered that he was powerfully built, that his eyes were dark, and that his teeth showed white and even, as he repeated, with a smile:
"You don"t know anything worth knowing. You don"t quite look the part."
"Why don"t you answer my question?"
Back of the light in Jerry"s eyes Joe saw that the tears were waiting, and something in her face hurt him strangely.
"I think this claim is not worth--an effort," he declared, frankly, looking out at the wind-heaved ridges of sand.
"What brought you here to look at it, then?" Jerry demanded.
"Partly to despise the fool who owned it and let it become a curse."
"Do you know him?" the girl inquired.
"No. But if I did I should despise him just the same," Joe Thomson declared.
"What if he were dead?" Jerry asked.
"Pardon me, but may I ask what brought you down here to look at such a place?" Joe interrupted her.