Down at the third bend of the river where long growths overhung the stream, the flames crossed easily. Even as Asher Aydelot watched the storm cloud, long tongues of fire came licking up the valley toward him, not a towering height, but a swift crawling destruction which he looked at with unseeing eyes, for his only thought was for Virginia.
"How could I have missed her if she started to meet me? Yet, where can she be now?" he groaned.
The hungry flames gnawed vainly about his broad fireguard, then wavered back and forth along the south prairie, while he watched them under the fascination the mastery of the elements can exert. He turned at last from the fire and storm to see Juno and her rider swinging down the northwest prairie, keeping close to the river line before the chill north wind.
"Oh, Virgie, Virgie," he cried, as she slipped from the saddle and he caught her in his arms. "I"ve lived a hundred years since I left you this afternoon. What made you run away?"
In the joy of her safe return, he forgot the fire.
"Why, don"t you see the wind is from the north? And it is blowing everything south now? I saw it begin away up the river. Did that guard really keep off that thing I saw from the high bluff up yonder?"
"I put it there to do it, and I"d take the chances. Awful as it is, it can"t do anything but burn, and there"s nothing here to burn. If it hadn"t been there, everything would have been gone and you would have come back to a pile of ashes if the wind had left a pile."
"And you put your puny hands to the plow handles and say to that awful fury, "So far, and no farther. This is my home." You, one little human being!" Virginia"s eyes were glowing with wonder at the miracle.
"Yes, with my puny hands. Me--a little man," Asher smiled quizzically, as he spread his broad brown hands before his face and drew himself up to his full six feet of height. "Only I say, "our home." But I was so scared about you, I forgot to notice the change in the wind. The fire is chasing to the south, and the hailstorm has veered off down that stream this side of those three headlands over there. The wind gives and the wind takes away. You can"t plow a guard around it."
They sat down by the cabin door to watch the storm and flame blown far away in whirls of glaring light and surging cloud, until the rain at last drowned all the fury and washed it over the edge of the south horizon out of the world.
"Sometime we"ll plant hedges and forest trees and checker the country with windbreaks until days like this will belong only to an old pioneer"s memory," Asher said, as the storm swept wide away.
"Then, I"m glad I came early enough to see this. I"m getting "plains-broke" along with Juno. Isn"t it wonderful to be a real pioneer?
Back in Virginia we were two centuries of generations away from the first settlers," Virginia exclaimed.
But Asher did not answer. He was thinking of Jim Shirley"s declaration: "She"s got endurance as well as grace and beauty."
CHAPTER IV
DISTRESS SIGNALS
Also, we will make promise. So long as the Blood endures, I shall know that your will is mine; ye shall feel that my strength is yours.
--A Song of the English.
Virginia Aydelot soon grew brown as a berry in the tanning prairie winds, and it seemed impossible that this strong young woman of the sod cabin, with her simple dress and her cheeks abloom, could have been the dainty child of the old Southern mansion house.
No other autumn had ever seemed quite so beautiful to the Aydelots as this, their first autumn together. Life was before them with its call to victory. Youth and health, exuberant spirits and love were theirs. Theirs, too, was the great boundless world of mists and mirages, of rainbow tinted gra.s.ses and opal heavens, where no two sunsets were ever the same. They could laugh at their poverty, believing in a time when Ease and Plenty would rule the land where now they must fight for the bare necessities of existence, picturing life not as it was then with its many hardships, but as it would be in a future day when the real world whose last outpost they had left almost fifty miles to the eastward, should move toward them and help to people the prairies.
All the week days were full of duties, but every Sabbath morning found the three settlers of the valley making a prairie sanctuary of the Aydelot cabin. The elder Aydelots had not united with any church, but Asher and Jim, when they were only boys, had been converted at a Methodist revival in Cloverdale. It was an old-fashioned kind of religious leading, but it was strong enough to hold the two for all the years that followed.
Virginia had been reared an Episcopalian, but the men out-voted her and declared that the Aydelot home was the Sunflower Inn for six days in the week, but on the seventh it was the "First Methodist Church of the Conference of the Prairies."
There was no levity in its service, however, and He who dwelleth not in temples made with men"s hands blessed with his own benediction of peace and trust and courage the three who set up their altar to Him in this far-away place.
On Sabbath afternoons they explored the sand dunes and gra.s.sy levels up and down the river. Sometimes they rode northward to the main trail in hope of sighting some prairie schooner coming hitherward, but not once that season did the trail hold a human being for them.
October slipped into November with a gradual sharpening of the frosty air.
Everything had been made as snug as possible for the winter. The corrals were enlarged for the stock. The houses and stables were thatched against the cold and storms; and fuel and food were carefully stored. But November was almost pa.s.sed before the end of the bright and sometimes even balmy days.
"We must have Jim up to the Sunflower Inn for Thanksgiving dinner. Might as well invite the whole neighborhood," Asher said one evening, as he helped Virginia with the supper dishes.
"I"m planning a real dinner, too," his wife declared, "just like old Mammy Diane used to cook. You couldn"t tell it from hers if you"d ever eaten one of her spreads."
"I suppose it will taste about as near like one of Diane"s meals as you will look like the cook that made her meals," Asher answered.
"Well, I"m getting along that way. Look at my tanned arms now. There"s a regular dead line, a perfect fireguard at the elbow. And my muscles, Mammy Diane would say, "is jus" monst"ous.""
Virginia pushed back her sleeve to show the well-marked line where white above met tan below.
"Jim will think anything is better than eating alone out of his own grub box, and your dinner will be a feast," Asher said, opening the door to carry out the dish water. "What do you think of this?"
A gust of cold rain swished in as the door fell open.
"Our rain is here, at last. Maybe it will bring snow for Thanksgiving, and we could have a touch of New England here," Virginia said.
The pelting rain and deepening chill made the little home a very snug nest that night. There was only one stove to warm the house, but they kept up a fiction of parlor and dining room, kitchen and bed chamber. Even the library was there, although it encroached dreadfully on the parlor, bedroom and kitchen, all three, for it consisted of s.p.a.ce enough for two chairs, one footstool, and a tiny lamp-stand, beside which they spent their evenings.
"Who"s likely to drop in tonight, and what"s the program for the evening: charades, music, readings, dancing, cribbage, or political speeches?"
Asher inquired.
They had invented all sorts of pastimes, with make-believe audiences, such as little children create for their plays. For these two were children in a big child world. The wilderness is never grown up. It is Nature"s little one waiting to be led on and disciplined to mature uses. Asher and Virginia had already peopled the valley with imaginary settlers, each one of a certain type, and they adapted their pastime to the particular neighbors whom they chose to invite for the evening. How little the helpless folk in the city, bored with their own dullness, and dependent on others for amus.e.m.e.nt--how little could such as these cope with the loneliness of the home on the plains, or comprehend the resourcefulness of the home-makers there!
"Oh, let"s just spend the evening alone. It"s too stormy for the Arnolds and Archibalds beyond the Deep Bend, and the Sp.o.o.pend.y.k.es have relatives from the East and the Gilliwigs are all down with colds."
Virginia had tucked herself down in the one rocking chair, with her feet on the footstool.
"It"s such a nice night to be to ourselves. Watch the rain washing that west window. It"s getting worse. I always think of Jim on nights like this."
"So do I," Asher said, as he sat down in the armed chair he had made for himself of cottonwood limbs with a gunny sack seat. "He"s all alone with his dog these dark nights, and loneliness cuts to the heart of a man like Jim. I"m glad I have you, Virginia. I couldn"t do without you now. The rain is getting heavier every minute. Sounds like it was thumping on the door. Listen to that wind!"
"Tell me about Jim, Asher. What made him come out here anyhow?" Virginia asked.
"I don"t know all the story. Jim has never seemed to want to tell me, and I"ve never cared to ask him," Asher replied. "When we were away together at school, he was in love with one of the prettiest girls that Ohio ever grew. She lived in the country up the valley from Cloverdale. Her name was Alice Leigh, and she was a whole cut above the neighborhood. Jim said she was an artist, could do wonderful things with a brush and she was just wild to go somewhere and take lessons.
"Jim was planning always how to give her the opportunity to do it, but her mother, who owned a lot of land for that country and could afford to send Alice away to study, couldn"t see any dollar sign in it, so she kept her daughter on the farm."
Asher paused and looked at Virginia. His own happiness made his voice tremble as he went on.
"He has a brother Tank. I suppose his real name is Thaddeus, or Tantalus, or something like it; I never knew, and I never liked him well enough to ask. Tank was a black-eyed little runt whom none of the boys liked, a grasping cuss, younger than Jim, and as selfish as Jim is kind.
"Just before I came West to scout the Indians off the map, Jim came back to school one time so unlike himself that I made him tell me what was the matter. It was Tank, he said, who was making trouble for him up in the Leigh neighborhood, and he was so grieved and unhappy, I wouldn"t ask any more about it. I left for the West soon after that. When I went back to Cloverdale, Tank Shirley had married Alice Leigh and her mother"s farm, and Jim had left the country. I ran on to him by accident up at Carey"s Crossing when I came West again, but I"ve never heard him say a word about the matter, and, of course, I don"t mention it, although I believe it would do Jim good if he could bring himself to tell me about it. He"s never been quite the same since. He has a little tendency to lung trouble, which the plains air is taking out of him, but he"s had a bad attack of pneumonia, and it"s an old enemy of his, as it always is to a man of his physique. He"s a good worker, but lacks judgment to make his work count.
Doesn"t really seem to have much to work for. But he"s a friend to the last ditch. Just hear the rain!"
"It seems to be knocking against the door again," Virginia said, "and how the wind does howl! Poor Jim!"
"Listen to that! Sounds like something loose against the window. There"s something out there." Asher started up with the words.