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                          THE RECLAIMERS

                     BY MARGARET HILL McCARTER

               _Author of_ "VANGUARDS OF THE PLAINS"


    HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
    NEW YORK AND LONDON

    The Reclaimers

    Copyright, 1918, by Harper & Brothers

    Printed in the United States of America

    Published October, 1918


                  TO
         MAY BELLEVILLE BROWN
    CRITIC, COUNSELLOR, COMFORTER


[Illustration]




CONTENTS


PART I

JERRY

I. THE HEIR APPARENT

II. UNCLE CORNIE'S THROW

III. HITCHING THE WAGON TO A STAR

IV. BETWEEN EDENS

V. NEW EDEN'S PROBLEM

VI. PARADISE LOST


PART II

JERRY AND JOE

VII. UNHITCHING THE WAGON FROM A STAR

VIII. IF A MAN WENT RIGHT WITH HIMSELF

IX. IF A WOMAN WENT RIGHT WITH HERSELF

X. THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER

XI. AN INTERLUDE IN "EDEN"

XII. THIS SIDE OF THE RUBICON


PART III

JERRY AND EUGENE--AND JOE

XIII. HOW A GOOD MOTHER LIVES ON

XIV. JIM SWAIM'S WISH

XV. DRAWING OUT LEVIATHAN WITH A HOOK

XVI. A POSTLUDE IN "EDEN"

XVII. THE FLESH-POTS OF THE WINNWOC

XVIII. THE LORD HATH HIS WAY IN THE STORM

XIX. RECLAIMED




THE RECLAIMERS




I

JERRY




I

THE HEIR APPARENT


Only the good little snakes were permitted to enter the "Eden" that
belonged to Aunt Jerry and Uncle Cornie Darby. "Eden," it should be
explained, was the country estate of Mrs. Jerusha Darby--a wealthy
Philadelphian--and her husband, Cornelius Darby, a relative by marriage,
so to speak, whose sole business on earth was to guard his wife's wealth
for six hours of the day in the city, and to practise discus-throwing
out at "Eden" for two hours every evening.

Of course these two were never familiarly "Aunt" and "Uncle" to this
country neighborhood, nor to any other community. Far, oh, far from
that! They were Aunt and Uncle only to Jerry Swaim, the orphaned and
only child of Mrs. Darby's brother Jim, whose charming girlish presence
made the whole community, wherever she might chance to be. They were
cousin, however, to Eugene Wellington, a young artist of more than
ordinary merit, also orphaned and alone, except for a sort of cousinship
with Uncle Cornelius.

"Eden" was a beautifully located and handsomely appointed estate of two
hundred acres, offering large facilities to any photographer seeking
magazine illustrations of country life in America. Indeed, the place
was, as Aunt Jerry Darby declared, "summer and winter, all shot up by
camera-toters and dabbed over with canvas-stretchers' paints," much to
the owner's disgust, to whom all camera-toters and artists, except
Cousin Eugene Wellington, were useless idlers. The rustic little railway
station, hidden by maple-trees, was only three or four good
discus-throws from the house. But the railroad itself very properly
dropped from view into a wooded valley on either side of the station.
There was nothing of cindery ugliness to mar the spot where the dwellers
in "Eden" could take the early morning train for the city, or drop off
in the cool of the afternoon into a delightful pastoral retreat. Beyond
the lawns and buildings, gardens and orchards, the land billowed away
into meadow and pasture and grain-field, with an insert of leafy grove
where song-birds builded an Eden all their own. The entire freehold of
Aunt Jerry Darby and Uncle Cornie, set down in the middle of a Western
ranch, would have been a day's journey from its borders. And yet in it
country life was done into poetry, combining city luxuries and
conveniences with the dehorned, dethorned comfort and freedom of idyllic
nature. What more need be said for this "Eden" into which only the good
little snakes were permitted to enter?

In the late afternoon Aunt Jerry sat in the rose-arbor with her Japanese
work-basket beside her, and a pearl tatting-shuttle between her thumb
and fingers. One could read in a thoughtful glance all there was to know
of Mrs. Darby. Her alert air and busy hands bespoke the habit of
everlasting industry fastened down upon her, no doubt, in a far-off
childhood. She was luxurious in her tastes. The satin gown, the diamond
fastening the little cap to her gray hair, the elegant lace at her
throat and wrists, the flashing jewels on her thin fingers, all
proclaimed a desire for display and the means wherewith to pamper it.
The rest of her story was written on her wrinkled face, where the strong
traits of a self-willed youth were deeply graven. Something in the
narrow, restless eyes suggested the discontented lover of wealth. The
lines of the mouth hinted at selfishness and prejudice. The square chin
told of a stubborn will, and the stern cast of features indicated no
sense of humor whereby the hardest face is softened. That Jerusha Darby
was rich, intolerant, determined, unimaginative, self-centered,
unforgiving, and unhappy the student of character might gather at a
glance. Where these traits abide a second glance is unnecessary.

Outside, the arbor was aglow with early June roses; within, the
cushioned willow seats invite to restful enjoyment. But Jerusha Darby
was not there for pleasure. While her pearl shuttle darted in and out
among her fingers like a tiny, iridescent bird, her mind and tongue were
busy with important matters.

Opposite to her was her husband, Cornelius. It was only important
matters that called him away from his business in the city at so early
an hour in the afternoon. And it was only on business matters that he
and his wife ever really conferred, either in the rose-arbor or
elsewhere. The appealing beauty of the place indirectly meant nothing to
these two owners of all this beauty.

The most to be said of Cornelius Darby was that he was born the son of a
rich man and he died the husband of a rich woman. His life, like his
face, was colorless. He fitted into the landscape and his presence was
never detected. He had no opinions of his own. His father had given him
all that he needed to think about until he was married. "Was married" is
well said. He never courted nor married anybody. He was never courted,
but he was married by Jerusha Swaim. But that is all dried stuff now.
Let it be said, however, that not all the mummies are in Egyptian tombs
and Smithsonian Institutions. Some of them sit in banking-houses all day
long, and go discus-throwing in lovely "Edens" on soft June evenings.
And one of them once, just once, broke the ancient linen wrappings from
his glazed jaws and spoke. For half an hour his voice was heard; and
then the bandages slipped back, and the mummy was all mummy again. It
was Jerry Swaim who wrought that miracle. But then there is little in
the earth, or the waters under the earth, that a pretty girl cannot work
upon.

"You say you have the report on the Swaim estate that the Macpherson
Mortgage Company of New Eden, Kansas, is taking care of for us?" Mrs.
Darby asked.

"The complete report. York Macpherson hasn't left out a detail. Shall I
read you his description?" her husband replied.

"No, no; don't tell me a thing about it, not a thing. I don't want to
know any more about Kansas than I know already. I hate the very name of
Kansas. You can understand why, when you remember my brother. I've known
York Macpherson all his life, him and his sister Laura, too. And I never
could understand why he went so far West, nor why he dragged that lame
sister of his out with him to that Sage Brush country."

"That's because you won't let me tell you anything about the West. But
as a matter of business you ought to understand the conditions
connected with this estate."

"I tell you again I won't listen to it, not one word. He is employed to
look after the property, not to write about it. None of my family ever
expects to see it. When we get ready to study its value we will give due
notice. Now let the matter of description, location, big puffing up of
its value--I know all that Kansas talk--let all that drop here." Jerusha
Darby unconsciously stamped her foot on the cement floor of the arbor
and struck her thin palm flat upon the broad arm of her chair.

"Very well, Jerusha. If Jerry ever wants to know anything about its
extent, agricultural value, water-supply, crop returns, etc., she will
find them on file in my office. The document says that the land in the
Sage Brush Valley in Kansas is now, with title clear, the property of
the estate of the late Jeremiah Swaim and his heirs and assigns forever;
that York Macpherson will, for a very small consideration, be the Kansas
representative of the Swaim heirs. That is all I have to say about it."

"Then listen to me," Mrs. Darby commanded. And her listener--listened.
"Jerry Swaim is Brother Jim and Sister Lesa's only child. She's been
brought up in luxury; never wanted a thing she didn't get, and never
earned a penny in her life. She couldn't do it to save her life. If I
outlive you she will be my heir if I choose to make my will in her
favor. She can be taken care of without that Kansas property of hers.
That's enough about the matter. We will drop it right here for other
things. There's your cousin Eugene Wellington coming home again. He's a
real artist and hasn't any property at all."

A ghost of a smile flitted across Mr. Darby's blank face, but Mrs. Darby
never saw ghosts.

"Of course Jerry and Gene, who have been playmates in the same game all
their lives, will--will--" Mrs. Darby hesitated.

"Will keep on playing the same game," Cornelius suggested. "If that's
all about this business, I'll go and look after the lily-ponds over
yonder, and then take a little exercise before dinner. I'm sorry I
missed Jerry in the city. She doesn't know I am out here."

"What difference if you did? She and Eugene will be coming out on the
train pretty soon," Mrs. Darby declared.

"She doesn't know he's there, maybe. They may miss each other," her
husband replied.

Then he left the arbor and effaced himself, as was his custom, from his
wife's presence, and busied himself with matters concerning the
lily-ponds on the far side of the grounds where pink lotuses were
blooming.

Meantime Jerusha Darby's fingers fairly writhed about her tatting-work,
as she waited impatiently for the sound of the afternoon train from the
city.

"It's time the four-forty was whistling round the curve," she murmured.
"My girl will soon be here, unless the train is delayed by that bridge
down yonder. Plague on these June rains!"

Mrs. Darby said "my girl" exactly as she would have said "my bank
stock," or "my farm." Hers was the tone of complete possession.

"She could have come out in the auto in half the time, the four-forty
creeps so, but the roads are dreadfully skiddy after these abominable
rains," Mrs. Darby continued.

The habit of speaking her thoughts aloud had grown on her, as it often
does on those advanced in years who live much alone. The little vista of
rain-washed meadows and growing grain that lay between tall lilac-trees
was lost to her eyes in the impatience of the moment's delay. What
Jerusha Darby wanted for Jerusha Darby was vastly more important to her
at any moment than the abstract value of a general good or a common
charm.

As she leaned forward, listening intently for the rumble of the train
down in the valley, a great automobile swung through the open gateway of
"Eden" and rounded the curves of the maple-guarded avenue, bearing down
with a birdlike sweep upon the rose-arbor.

"Here I am, Aunt Jerry," the driver's girlish voice called. "Uncle
Cornie is coming out on the train. I beat him to it. I saw the old
engine huffing and puffing at the hill beyond the third crossing of the
Winnowoc. It is bank-full now from the rains. I stopped on that high
fill and watched the train down below me creeping out on the trestle
above the creek. When it got across and went crawling into the cut on
this side I came on, too. I had my hands full then making this big gun
of a car climb that muddy, slippery hill that the railroad cuts through.
But I'd rather climb than creep any old day."

"Jerry Swaim," Mrs. Darby cried, staring up at her niece in amazement,
"do you mean to say you drove out alone over that sideling, slippery
bluff road? But you wouldn't be Lesa Swaim's daughter if you weren't
taking chances. You are your mother's own child, if there ever was one."

"Well, I should hope I am, since I've got to be classified somewhere. I
came because I wanted to," Jerry declared, with the finality of complete
excuse in her tone. All her life what Jerry Swaim had wanted was
abundant reason for her having. "It was dreadfully hot and sticky in the
city, and I knew it would be the bottom deep of mugginess on that
crowded Winnowoc train. The last time I came out here on it I had to sit
beside a dreadful big Dutchman who had an old hen and chickens in a
basket under his feet. He had had Limburger cheese for his dinner and
had used his whiskers for a napkin to catch the crumbs. Ugh!" Jerry gave
a shiver of disgust at the recollection. "An old lady behind us had
'_sky_-atick rheumatiz' and wouldn't let the windows be opened. I'd
rather have any kind of 'rheumatiz' than Limburger for the same length
of time. The Winnowoc special ought to carry a parlor coach from the
city and set it off at 'Eden' like it used to do. The agent let me play
in it whenever I wanted to when I was a youngster. I'm never going to
ride on any train again unless I go in a Pullman."

The girl struck her small gloved fist, like a spoiled child, against the
steering-wheel of her luxuriously appointed car, but her winsome smile
was all-redeeming as she looked down at her aunt standing in the doorway
of the rose-arbor.

"Come in here, Geraldine Swaim. I want to talk to you." Mrs. Darby's
affectionate tones carried also a note of command.

"Means business when she 'Geraldine Swaims' me," Jerry commented,
mentally, as she gave the car to the "Eden" man-of-all-work and followed
her aunt to a seat inside the blossom-covered retreat, where the pearl
shuttle began to grow tatting again beneath the thin, busy fingers.

It always pleased Jerusha Darby to be told that there was a resemblance
between these two. But, although the older woman's countenance was an
open book holding the story of inherited ideas, limited and intensified,
and the young face unmistakably perpetuated the family likeness, yet
Jerry Swaim was a type of her own, not easy to forejudge. In the shadows
of the rose-arbor her hair rippled back from her forehead in dull-gold
waves. One could picture what the sunshine would do for it. Her big,
dark-blue eyes were sometimes dreamy under their long lashes, and
sometimes full of sparkling light. Her whole atmosphere was that of
easeful, dependent, city life; yet there was something contrastingly
definite in her low voice, her firm mouth and square-cut chin. And
beyond appearances and manner, there was something which nobody ever
quite defined, that made it her way to walk straight into the hearts of
those who knew her.

"Where were you in the city to-day?" Mrs. Darby asked, abruptly, looking
keenly at the fair-faced girl much as she would have looked at any other
of her goodly possessions.

"Let me see," Jerry Swaim began, meditatively. "I was shopping quite a
while. The stores are gorgeous this June."

"Yes, and what else?" queried the older woman.

"Oh, some more shopping. Then I lunched at _La Señorita_, that beautiful
new tea-house. Every room represents some nationality in its decoration.
I was in the Delft room--Holland Dutch--whiskers and Limburger"--there
was a gleam of fun in the dark-blue eyes--"but it is restful and
charming. And the service is perfect. Then I strolled off to the Art
Gallery and lost myself in the latest exhibit. Cousin Gene would like
that, I'm sure. It was so cool and quiet there that I stayed a long
time. The exhibit is mostly of landscapes, all of them as beautiful as
'Eden' except one."

There was just a shade of something different in the girl's tone when
she spoke her cousin's name.

"And that one?" Mrs. Darby inquired. She did not object to shopping and
more shopping, but art was getting outside of her dominion.

"It was a desert-like scene; just yellow-gray plains, with no trees at
all. And in the farther distance the richest purples and reds of a
sunset sky into which the land sort of diffused. No landscape on this
earth was ever so yellow-gray, or any sunset ever so like the Book of
Revelation, nor any horizon-line so wide and far away. It was the
hyperbole of a freakish imagination. And yet, Aunt Jerry, there was a
romantic lure in the thing, somehow."

Jerry Swaim's face was grave as she gazed with wide, unseeing eyes at
the vista of fresh June meadows from which the odor of red clover,
pulsing in on the cool west breeze of the late afternoon, mingled with
the odor of white honeysuckle that twined among the climbing rose-vines
above her.

"Humph! What else?" Aunt Jerry sniffed a disapproval of unpleasant
landscapes in general and alluring romances in particular. Love of
romance was not in her mental make-up, any more than love of art.

"I went over to Uncle Cornie's bank to tell him to take care of my
shopping-bills. He wasn't in just then and I didn't wait for him. By
the way"--Jerry Swaim was not dreamy now--"since all the legal
litigations and things are over, oughtn't I begin to manage my own
affairs and live on my own income?"

Sitting there in the shelter of blossoming vines, the girl seemed far
too dainty a creature, too lacking in experience, initiative, or
ability, to manage anything more trying than a big allowance of
pin-money. And yet, something in her small, firm hands, something in the
lines of her well-formed chin, put the doubt into any forecast of what
Geraldine Swaim might do when she chose to act.

Aunt Jerry wrapped the lacy tatting stuff she had been making around the
pearl shuttle and, putting both away in the Japanese work-basket,
carefully snapped down the lid.

"When Jerusha Darby quits work to talk it's time for me to put on my
skid-chains," Jerry said to herself as she watched the procedure.

"Jerry, do you know why I called you your mother's own child just now?"
Mrs. Darby asked, gravely.

"From habit, maybe, you have said it so often." Jerry's smile took away
any suggestion of pertness. "I know I am like her in some ways."

"Yes, but not altogether," the older woman continued. "Lesa Swaim was a
strange combination. She was made to spend money, with no idea of how to
get money. And she brought you up the same way. And now you are grown,
boarding-school finished, and of age, you can't alter your bringing up
any more than you can change your big eyes that are just like Lesa's,
nor your chin that you inherited from Brother Jim. I might as well try
to give you little black eyes and a receding chin as to try to reshape
your ways now. You are as the Lord made you, and Providence molded you,
and your mother spoiled you."

"Well, I don't want to be anything different. I'm happy as I am."

"You won't need to be, unless you choose. But being twenty-one doesn't
make you too old to listen to me--and your uncle Cornie."

In all her life Jerry had never before heard her uncle's name brought in
as co-partner of Jerusha Darby's in any opinion, authority, or advice.
It was an unfortunate slip of the tongue for Uncle Cornie's wife, one of
those simple phrases that, dropped at the right spot, take root and grow
and bear big fruit, whether of sweet or bitter taste.

"Your mother was a dreamer, a lover of romance, and all sorts of
adventures, although she never had a chance to get into any of them.
That's why you went skidding on that sideling bluff road to-day; that
and the fact that she brought you up to have your own way about
everything. But, as I say, we can't change that now, and there's no need
to if we could. Lesa was a pretty woman, but you look like the Swaims,
except right across here."

Aunt Jerry drew her bony finger across the girl's brows, unwilling to
concede any of the family likeness that could possibly be retained. She
could not see the gleam of mischief lurking under the downcast eyelashes
of Lesa Swaim's own child.

"Your father was a good business man, level-headed, shrewd, and
honest"--Mrs. Darby spoke rapidly now--"but things happened in the last
years of his life. Your mother took pneumonia and died, and you went
away to boarding-school. Jim's business was considerably involved. I
needn't bother to tell you about that. It doesn't matter now, anyhow.
And then one night he didn't come home, and the next morning your uncle
found him sitting in his office, just as he had left him the evening
before. He had been dead several hours. Heart failure was what the
doctor said, but I reckon everybody goes of heart failure sooner or
later."

A bright, hard glow came into Jerry Swaim's eyes and the red lips were
grimly pressed together. In the two years since the loss of her parents
the girl had never tried to pray. As time went on the light spirit of
youth had come back, but something went out of her life on the day of
her father's death, leaving a loss against which she stubbornly
rebelled.

"To be plain, Jerry," Mrs. Darby hurried on, "you have your inheritance
all cleared up at last, after two whole years of legal trouble."

"Oh, it hasn't really bothered me," Jerry declared, with seeming
flippancy. "Just signing my name where somebody pointed to a blank line,
and holding up my right hand to be sworn--that's all. I've written my
full name and promised that the writing was mine, 's'welp me Gawd,' as
the court-house man used to say, till I could do either one under the
influence of ether. Nothing really bothersome about it, but I'm glad
it's over. Business is so tiresome."

"It's not so large a fortune, by a good deal, as it would have been if
your father had listened to me." Mrs. Darby spoke vaguely. "But you will
be amply provided for, anyhow, unless you yourself choose to trifle with
your best interest. You and I are the only Swaims living now. Some day,
if I choose, I can will all my property to you."

The square-cut chin and the deep lines around the stern mouth told
plainly that obedience to this woman's wishes alone could make a
beneficiary to that will.

"You may be a dreamer, and love to go romancing around into new scrapes
like your mother would have done if she could. But she was as
soft-hearted as could be, with all that. That's why she never denied you
anything you wanted. She couldn't do a thing with money, though, as I
said, except spend it. You are a good deal like your father, too, Jerry,
and you'll value property some day as the only thing on earth that can
make life anything but a hard grind. If you don't want to be like that
bunch of everlasting grubs that ride on the Winnowoc train every
afternoon, or the poor country folks around here that never ride in
anything but a rickety old farm-wagon, you'll appreciate what I--and
Uncle Cornie--can do for you."

Uncle Cornie again, and he never had shared in any equal consideration
before. It was a mistake.

"There's the four-forty whistling for the curve at last. It's time it
was coming. I must go in and see that dinner is just right. You run down
and meet it. Cousin Eugene is coming out on it. Your uncle Cornie is
here on the place somewhere. He came out after lunch on some business we
had to fix up. No wonder you missed him. But, Jerry"--the stern-faced
woman put a hand on the girl's shoulder with more of command than caress
in the gesture--"Eugene is a real artist with genius, you know."

"Yes, I know," Jerry replied, a sudden change coming into her tone.
"What of that?"

"You've always known him. You like him very much?" Jerusha Darby was as
awkward in sentiment as she was shrewd in a bargain.

The bloom on the girl's cheek deepened as she looked away toward the
brilliantly green meadows across which the low sun was sending rays of
golden light.

"Oh, I like him as much as he likes me, no doubt. I'll go down to the
station and look him over, if you say so."

Beneath the words lay something deeper than speech--something new even
to the girl herself.

As Jerry left the arbor Mrs. Darby said, with something half playful,
half final, in her tone: "You won't forget what I've said about
property, you little spendthrift. You will be sensible, like my sensible
brother's child, even if you are as idealizing as your sentimental
mother."

"I'll not forget. I couldn't and be Jerry Darby's niece," the last added
after the girl was safely out of her aunt's hearing. "My father and
mother both had lots of good traits, it seems, and a few poor ones. I
seem to be really heir to all the faulty bents of theirs, and to have
lost out on all the good ones. But I can't help that now. Not till after
the train gets in, anyhow."

Her aunt watched her till the shrubbery hid her at a turn in the walk.
Young, full of life, dainty as the June blossoms that showered her
pathway with petals, a spoiled, luxury-loving child, with an adventurous
spirit and a blunted and undeveloped notion of human service and divine
heritage, but with a latent capacity and an untrained power for doing
things, that was Jerry Swaim--whom the winds of heaven must not visit
too roughly without being accountable to Mrs. Jerusha Darby, owner and
manager of the universe for her niece.




II

UNCLE CORNIE'S THROW


Jerry was waiting at the cool end of the rustic station when the train
came in. How hot and stuffy it seemed to her as it puffed out of the
valley, and how tired and cross all the bunch of grubs who stared out of
the window at her. It made them ten times more tired and cross and hot
to see that girl looking so cool and rested and exquisitely gowned and
crowned and shod. The blue linen with white embroidered cuffs, the
rippling, glinting masses of hair, the small shoes, immaculately white
against the green sod--little wonder that, while the heir apparent to
the Darby wealth felt comfortably indifferent toward this uninteresting
line of nobodies in particular, the bunch of grubs should feel only envy
and resentment of their own sweaty, muscle-worn lot in life.

Jerry and Eugene Wellington were far up the shrubbery walk by the time
the Winnowoc train was on its way again, unconscious that the passengers
were looking after them, or that the talk, as the train slowly got under
way, was all of "that rich old codger of a Darby and his selfish old
wife"; of "that young dude artist, old Wellington's kid, too lazy to
work"; of "that pretty, frivolous girl who didn't know how to comb her
own hair, Jim Swaim's girl--poor Jim!" "Old Corn Darby was looking
yellow and thin, too. He would dry up and blow away some day if his
money wasn't weighting him down so he couldn't."

At the bend in the walk, the two young people saw Uncle Cornie crossing
the lawn.

"Going to get his discus. He'll have no appetite for dinner unless he
gets in a few dozen slings," the young man declared. "Let's turn in here
at the sign of the roses, Jerry. I'm too lazy to take another step."

"You should have come out with me in the car," Jerry replied as they sat
down in the cool arbor made for youth and June-time. "I didn't know you
were in the city."

"Well, little cousin girl, I'll confess I didn't dare," the young man
declared, boldly. "I've been studying awfully hard this year, and, now
I'm needed to paint The Great American Canvas, I can't end my useful
career under a big touring-car at the bottom of an embankment out on the
Winnowoc bluff road. So when I saw you coming into Uncle Cornie's office
in the bank I slipped away."

"And as to my own risk?" Jerry asked.

"Oh, Jerry Swaim, you would never have an accident in a hundred years.
There's nobody like you, little cousin mine, nobody at all."

Eugene Wellington put one well-formed hand lightly on the small white
hand lying on the wicker chair-arm, and, leaning forward, he looked down
into the face of the girl beside him. A handsome, well-set up, artistic
young fellow he was, fitted to adorn life's ornamental places. And if a
faint line of possible indecision of character might have suggested
itself to the keen-eyed reader of faces, other traits outweighed its
possibility. For his was a fine face, with a sort of gracious gentleness
in it that grows with the artist's growth. A hint of deeper
spirituality, too, that marks nobility of character, added to a winning
personality, put Eugene Wellington above the common class. He fitted the
rose-arbor, in "Eden" and the comradeship of good breeding. When a man
finds his element, all the rest of the world moves more smoothly
therefor.

"Nobody like me," Jerry repeated. "It's a good thing I'm the only one of
the kind. You'd say so if you knew what Aunt Jerry thinks of me. She has
been analyzing me and filing me away in sections this afternoon."

"What's on her mind now?" Eugene Wellington asked, as he leaned
easefully back in his chair.

"She says I am heir--" Jerry always wondered what made her pause there.
Years afterward, when this June evening came back in memory, she could
not account for it.

"Heir to what?" the young artist inquired, a faint, shadowy something
sweeping his countenance fleetly.

    "To all the sphere,
      To the seven stars and the solar year;

also to my father's entire estate that's left after some two years of
litigation. I hate litigations."

"So do I, Jerry. Let's forget them. Isn't 'Eden' beautiful? I'm so glad
to be back here again." Eugene Wellington looked out at the idyllic
loveliness of the place which the rose-arbor was built especially to
command. "Nobody could sin here, for there are no serpents busy-bodying
around in such a dream of a landscape as this. I'm glad I'm an artist,
if I never become famous. There's such a joy in being able to see, even
if your brush fails miserably in trying to make others see."

Again the man's shapely hand fell gently on the girl's hand, and this
time it stayed there.

"You love it all as much as I do, don't you, Jerry?" The voice was deep
with emotion. "And you feel as I do, how this lifts one nearer to God.
Or is it because you are here with me that 'Eden' is so fair to-night?
May I tell you something, Jerry? Something I've waited for the summer
and 'Eden' to give me the hour and the place to say? We've always known
each other. We thought we did before, but a new knowing came to me the
day your father left us. Look up, little cousin. I want to say
something to you."

June-time, and youth, and roses, and soft, sweet air, and nobody there
but blossoms, and whispering breezes, and these two. And they had known
each other always. Oh, always! But now--something was different now,
something that was grander, more beautiful in this place, in this day,
in each other, than had ever been before--the old, old miracle of a man
and a maid.

Suddenly something whizzed through the air and a snakelike streak of
shadow cut the light of the doorway. Out in the open, Uncle Cornie came
slowly stepping off the space to where his discus lay beside the
rose-arbor--one of the good little snakes. Every Eden has them, and some
are much better than others.

The discus-ground was out on a lovely stretch of shorn clover sod. Why
the discus should wander from the thrower's hand through the air toward
the rose-arbor no wind of heaven could tell. Nor could it tell why Uncle
Cornie should choose to follow it and stand in the doorway of the arbor
until the "Eden" dinner-hour called all three of the dwellers, Adam and
Eve and this good little snake, to the cool dining-room and what goes
with it.

Twilight and moonlight were melting into one, and all the sweet odors
of dew-kissed blossoms, the good-night twitter of homing birds, the
mists rising above the Winnowoc Valley, the shadows of shrubbery on the
lawn, and the darkling outline of the tall maples made "Eden" as
beautiful now as in the full sunlight.

Jerry Swaim sat in the doorway of the rose-arbor, watching Uncle Cornie
throwing his discus again along the smooth white clover sod. Aunt Jerry
had trailed off with Eugene to the far side of the spacious grounds to
see the lily-ponds where the pink lotuses were blooming.

"Young folks mustn't be together too much. They'll get tired of each
other too quickly. I used to get bored to death having Cornelius forever
around." Aunt Jerry philosophized, considering herself as wise in the
affairs of the heart as she was shrewd in affairs of the pocketbook. She
would make Jerry and Gene want to be together before they had the chance
again.

So Jerry Swaim sat alone, watching the lights and shadows on the lawn,
only half conscious of Uncle Cornie's presence out there, until he
suddenly followed his discus as it rolled toward the arbor and lay flat
at her feet. Instead of picking it up, he dropped down on the stone step
beside his niece and sat without speaking until Jerry forgot his
presence entirely. It was his custom to sit without speaking, and to be
forgotten.

Jerry's mind was full of many things. Life had opened a new door to her
that afternoon, and something strange and sweet had suddenly come
through it. Life had always opened pleasant doors to her, save that one
through which her father and mother had slipped away--a door that closed
and shut her from them and God, whose Providence had robbed her so
cruelly of what was her own. But no door ever showed her as fair a vista
as the one now opening before her dreamy gaze.

She glanced unseeingly at the old man sitting beside her. Then across
her memory Aunt Jerry's words came drifting, "Being twenty-one doesn't
make you too old to listen to me--and your uncle Cornie," and, "You'll
appreciate what I--and Uncle Cornie--can do for you."

Uncle Cornie was looking at her with a face as expressionless as if he
were about to say, "The bank doesn't make loans on any such security,"
yet something in his eyes drew her comfortably to him and she
mechanically put her shapely little hand on his thin yellow one.

"I want to talk to you before anything happens, Jerry," he began, and
then paused, in a confused uncertainty that threatened to end his
wanting here.

And Jerry, being a woman, divined in an instant that it was to talk to
her before anything happened that he had thrown that discus out of its
way when she and Gene had thought themselves alone in the arbor before
dinner. It was to talk to her that the thing had been rolled purposely
to her feet now. Queer Uncle Cornie!

"I'm not too old to listen to you. I appreciate what you can do for me."
Jerry was quoting her aunt's admonitions exactly, which showed how
deeply they had unconsciously impressed themselves on her mind. Her
words broke the linen bands about Uncle Cornie's glazed jaws, and he
spoke.

"Your estate is all settled now. What's left to you after that rascally
John--I mean after two years of pulling and hauling through the courts,
is a 'claim,' as they call it, in the Sage Brush Valley in Kansas. It
has never been managed well, somehow. There's not been a cent of income
from it since Jim Swaim got hold of it, but that's no fault of the man
who is looking after it--a York Macpherson. He's a gentleman you can
trust anywhere. That's all there is of your own from your father's
estate."

Jerry Swaim's dark-blue eyes opened wide and her face was lily white
under the shadow of dull-gold hair above it.

"You are dependent on your aunt for everything. Well, she's glad of
that. So am I, in a way. Only, if you go against her will you won't be
her heir any more. You mightn't be, anyhow, if she--went first. The
Darby estate isn't really Jerusha Swaim's; it's mine. But she thinks
it's hers and it's all right that way, because, in the end, I do control
it." Uncle Cornie paused.

Jerry sat motionless, and, although it was June-time, the little white
hand on the speaker's thin yellow one was very cold.

"If you are satisfied, I'm glad, but I won't let Jim Swaim's child think
she's got a fortune of her own when she hasn't got a cent and must
depend on the good-will of her relatives for everything she wants. Jim
would haunt me to my grave if I did."

Jerry stared at her uncle's face in the darkening twilight. In all her
life she had never known him to seem to have any mind before except what
grooved in with Aunt Jerry's commanding mind. Yet, surprised as she was,
she involuntarily drew nearer to him as to one whom she could trust.

"We agreed long ago, Jim and I did, when Jim was a rich man, that some
day you must be shown that you were his child as well as Lesa's--I mean
that you mustn't always be a dependent spender. You must get some Swaim
notions of living, too. Not that either of us ever criticized your
mother's sweet spirit and her ideal-building and love of adventure.
Romance belongs to some lives and keeps them young and sweet if they
live to be a million. I'm not down on it like your Aunt Jerry is."

Romance had steered wide away from Cornelius Darby's colorless days. And
possibly only this once in the sweet stillness of the June twilight at
"Eden" did that hungering note ever sound in his voice, and then only
for a brief space.

"Jim would have told you all this himself if he had got his affairs
untangled in time. And he'd have done that, for he had a big brain and a
big heart, but God went and took him. He did. Don't rebel always, Jerry.
God was good to him--you'll see it some day and quit your ugly
doubting."

Who ever called anything ugly about Jerry Swaim before? That a creature
like Cornelius Darby should do it now was one of the strange,
unbelievable things of this world.

"I just wanted to say again," Uncle Cornie continued, "if I go first
you'd be Jerusha's heir. We agreed to that long ago. That is, if you
don't cross her wishes and start her to make a will against you, as
she'd do if you didn't obey her to the last letter in the alphabet. If I
go after she does, the property all goes by law to distant relatives of
mine. That was fixed before I ever got hold of it--heirs of some
spendthrifts who would have wasted it long ago if they'd lived and had
it themselves."

The sound of voices and Eugene Wellington's light laughter came faintly
from the lily-pond.

"Eugene is a good fellow," Uncle Cornie said, meditatively. "He's got
real talent and he'll make a name for himself some day that will be
stronger, and do more good, and last longer than the man's name that's
just rated gilt-edged security on a note, and nowhere else. Gene will
make a decent living, too, independent of any aunts and uncles. But he's
no stronger-willed, nor smarter, nor better than you are, Jerry, even if
he is a bit more religious-minded, as you might say. You try awfully
hard to think you don't believe in anything because just once in your
life Providence didn't work your way. You can't fool with your own
opinions against God Almighty and not lose in the deal. You'll have to
learn that some time. All of us do, sooner or later."

"But to take my father--all I had--after I had given up mother, I can't
see any justice nor any mercy in it," Jerry broke out.

Uncle Cornie was no comforter with words. He had had no chance to
practise giving sympathy either before or after marriage. Mummies are
limited, whether they be in sealed sarcophagi or sit behind roller-top
desks and cut coupons. Something in his quiet presence, however, soothed
the girl's rebellious spirit more than words could have done. Cornelius
Darby did not know that he could come nearer to the true measurement of
Jerry's mind than any one else had ever done. People had pitied her when
her mother passed away and her father died a bankrupt--which last fact
she must not be told--but nobody understood her except Uncle Cornie, and
he had never said a word until now. He seemed to know now just how her
mind was running. The wisdom of the serpent--even the good little
snakes, of this "Eden"--is not to be misjudged.

"Jerry"--the old man's voice had a strange gentleness in that hour,
however flat and dry it was before and afterward--"Jerry, you understand
about things here."

He waved his hand as if to take in "Eden," Aunt Jerry and Cousin Eugene
strolling leisurely away from the lily-pond, himself, the Darby
heritage, and the unprofitable Swaim estate in the Sage Brush Valley in
far-away Kansas.

"You've never been crossed in your life except when death took Jim. You
don't know a thing about business, nor what it means to earn the money
you spend, and to feel the independence that comes from being so strong
in yourself you don't have to submit to anybody's will." Cornelius Darby
spoke as one who had dreamed of these things, but had never known the
strength of their reality. "And last of all," he concluded, "you think
you are in love with Eugene Wellington."

Jerry gave a start. Uncle Cornie and love! Anybody and love! Only in her
day-dreams, her wild flights of adventure, up to castles builded high in
air, had she really thought of love for herself--until to-day. And
now--Aunt Jerry had hinted awkwardly enough here in the late afternoon
of what was on her mind. Cousin Gene had held her hand and said, "I want
to say something to you." How full of light his eyes had been as he
looked at her then! Jerry felt them on her still, and a tingle of joy
went pulsing through her whole being. Then the discus had hurtled across
the doorway and Uncle Cornie had come, not knowing that these two would
rather be alone. At least he didn't look as if he knew. And now it was
Uncle Cornie himself who was talking of love.

"You think you are in love with Eugene Wellington," Uncle Cornie
repeated, "but you're not, Jerry. You're only in love with Love. Some
day it may be with Gene, but it's not now. He just comes nearer to what
you've been dreaming about, and so you think you are in love with him.
Jerry, I don't want you to make any mistakes. I've lived a sort of
colorless life"--the man's face was ashy gray as he spoke--"but once in
a while I've thought of what might be in a man's days if things went
right with him and if he went right with himself."

How often the last words came back to Jerry Swaim when she recalled the
events of this evening--"if he went right himself."

"And I don't want any mistakes made that I can help."

Uncle Cornie's other hand closed gently about the little hand that lay
on one of his. How firm and white and shapely it was, and how determined
and fearless the grip it could put on the steering-wheel when the big
Darby car skidded dangerously! And how flat and flabby and yellow and
characterless was the hand that held it close!

"Come on, folks, we are going to the house to have some music," Aunt
Jerry called, as she and Eugene Wellington came across the lawn from the
lily-pond.

Mrs. Darby, sure of the fruition of her plans now, was really becoming
pettishly jealous to-night. A little longer she wanted to hold these two
young people under her absolute dominion. Of course she would always
control them, but when they were promised to each other there would
arise a kingdom within a kingdom which she could never enter. The angry
voice of a warped, misused, and withered youth was in her soul, and the
jealousy of loveless old age was no little fox among her vines to-night.
Let them wait on her a little while. One evening more wouldn't matter.

As the two approached the rose-arbor Jerry's hand touched Uncle Cornie's
cheek in a loving caress--the first she had ever given him.

"I won't forget what you have said, Uncle Cornie," she murmured, softly,
as she rose to join her aunt and Eugene.

The moonlight flooding the lawn touched Jerry's golden hair, and the
bloom of love and youth beautified her cheeks, as she walked away beside
the handsome young artist into the beauty of the June night.

"Come on, Cornelius." Mrs. Darby's voice put the one harsh note into the
harmony of the moment.

"As soon as I put away my discus. That last throw was an awkward one,
and a lot out of line for me," he answered, in his dry, flat voice,
stooping to pick up the implement of his daily pastime.

Up in the big parlor, Eugene and Jerry played the old duets they had
learned together in their childhood, and sang the old songs that Jerusha
Darby had heard when she was a girl, before the lust for wealth had
hardened her arteries and dimmed her eyes to visions that come only to
bless. But the two young people forgot her presence and seemed to live
the hours of the beautiful June night only for each other.

It was nearly midnight when a peal of thunder boomed up the Winnowoc
Valley and the end of a perfect day was brilliant in the grandeur of a
June shower, with skies of midnight blackness cloven through with long
shafts of lightning or swept across by billows of flame, while the storm
wind's strong arms beat the earth with flails of crystal rain.

"Where is Uncle Cornie? I hadn't missed him before," Jerry asked as the
three in the parlor watched the storm pouring out all its wrath upon the
Winnowoc Valley.

"Oh, he went to put up his old discus, and then he went off to bed I
suppose," Aunt Jerry replied, indifferently.

Nothing was ever farther from his wife's thought than the presence of
Cornelius Darby. The two had never lived for each other; they had lived
for the accumulation of property that together they might gather in.

It was long after midnight before the family retired. The moon came out
of hiding as the storm-cloud swept eastward. The night breezes were cool
and sweet, scattering the flower petals, that the shower had beaten off,
in little perfumy cloudlets about the rose-arbor and upon its stone
door-step.

It was long after Jerry Swaim had gone to her room before she slept.
Over and over the events of the day passed in review before her mind:
the city shopping; the dainty lunch in the Delft room at _La Señorita_;
the art exhibit and that one level gray landscape with the flaming,
gorgeous sunset so unlike the green-and-gold sunset landscape of "Eden";
the homeward ride with all its dangerous thrills; the talk with Aunt
Jerry; Eugene, Eugene, Eugene; Uncle Cornie with his discus, at the door
of the rose-arbor, and all that he had said to her; the old, old songs,
and the thunder-storm's tremendous beauty, and Uncle Cornie again--and
dreams at last, and Jim Swaim, big, strong, shrewd; and Lesa,
sweet-faced, visionary; and then sound slumber bringing complete
oblivion.

Last to sleep and first to waken in the early morning was Jerry. Happy
Jerry! Nobody as happy as she was could sleep--and yet--Uncle Cornie's
last discus-throw had brought new thoughts that would not slip away as
the storm had slipped up the Winnowoc into nowhere. A rift in the lute,
a cloud speck in a blue June sky, was the memory of what Uncle Cornie
had told her when he let his discus roll up to her very feet by the door
of the rose-arbor. Jerry Swaim must not be troubled with lute rifts and
cloud specks. The call of the early morning was in the air, the dewy,
misty, rose-hued dawning of a beautiful day in a beautiful "Eden" where
only beautiful things belong. And loveliest among them all was Jerry
Swaim in her pink morning dress, her glorious crown of hair agleam in
the sun's early rays, her blue eye full of light.

The sweetest spot to her in all "Eden" on this morning was the
rose-arbor. It belonged to her now by right of Eugene and--Uncle Cornie.
The snatches of an old love-ballad, one of the songs she had sung with
Eugene the night before, were on her lips as she left the veranda and
passed with light step down the lilac walk toward the arbor. The very
grass blades seemed to sing with her, and all the rain-washed world
glowed with green and gold and creamy white, pink and heliotrope and
rose.

At the turn of the walk toward the arbor Jerry paused to drink in the
richness of all this colorful scene. And then, for no reason at all, she
remembered what Uncle Cornie had said about his colorless life. Strange
that she had never, in her own frivolous existence, thought of him in
that way before. But with the alchemy of love in her veins she began to
see things in a new light. His had been a dull existence. If Aunt Jerry
ever really loved him she must have forgotten it long ago. And he made
so little noise in the world, anyhow, it was easy to forget that he was
in it. She had forgotten him last night even after all that he had said.
He had had no part in their music, nor the beauty of the storm.

But here he was up early and sitting at the doorway of the rose-arbor
just as she had left him last night. He was leaning back in the angle of
the slightly splintered trellis, his colorless face gray, save where a
blue line ran down his cheek from a blue-black burn on his temple, his
colorless eyes looking straight before him; the discus he had stooped to
pick up in the twilight last night clasped in his colorless hands; his
colorless life race run. His clothing, soaked by the midnight storm,
clung wet and sagging about his shrunken form. But the rain-beaten
rose-vines had showered his gray head with a halo of pink petals, and
about his feet were drifts of fallen blossoms flowing out upon the rich
green sod. Nature in loving pity had gently decked him with her
daintiest hues, as if a world of lavish color would wipe away in a sweep
of June-time beauty the memory of the lost drab years.




III

HITCHING THE WAGON TO A STAR


Behind the most expensive mourner's crape to be had in Philadelphia
Jerusha Darby hid the least mournful of faces. Not that she had not been
shocked that one bolt out of all that summer storm-cloud, barely
splintering the rose-arbor, should strike the head leaning against it
with a blow so faint and yet so fatal; nor that she would not miss
Cornelius and find it very inconvenient to fill his place in her
business management. Every business needs some one to fetch and carry
and play the watch-dog. And in these days of expensive labor watch-dogs
come high and are not always well trained. But everybody must go
sometime. That is, everybody else. To Mrs. Darby's cast of mind the
scheme of death and final reckoning as belonging to a general experience
was never intended for her individually. After all, things work out all
right under Providential guidance. Eugene Wellington was a fortunate
provision of an all-wise Providence. Eugene had some of his late
cousin's ability. He would come in time to fill the vacant chair by the
roll-top desk in the city banking and business house. Moreover, to the
eyes of age he was a thousandfold more interesting and resourceful than
the colorless quiet one whose loss would be felt of course, of course.

The reddest roses of "Eden" bloomed the next June on Cornelius Darby's
grave, the brightest leaves of autumn covered him warmly from the
winter's snows, and the places that had never felt his living presence
missed him no more forever.

There was a steady downpour of summer rain on the day following the
funeral at "Eden." Mrs. Darby was very busy with post-mortem details and
Eugene Wellington's services were in constant demand by her, while Jerry
Swaim wandered aimlessly about the house with a sense of the uselessness
of her existence forcing itself upon her for the first time. Late in the
afternoon, when the big rooms with all their luxurious appointments
seemed unbearable, she slipped down the sodden way to the rose-arbor.
There was a shower of new buds showing now under the beneficence of the
warm rain, and all the withered petals of fallen blossoms were swept
from sight.

As Jerry dropped into an easy willow rocker her eye fell on the
splintered angle of the trellis by the doorway where Uncle Cornie had
sat when the last summons came to him. A folded paper lay under the
seat, inside the door, as if it had been blown from his pocket by a
whirl of wind in that midnight thunder-storm.

Jerry stared at the paper a long time before it occurred to her to pick
it up. At last, in a mechanical way, she took it from under the seat and
spread it out on the broad arm of her chair. As she read its contents
her listlessness fell away, the dreamy blue eyes glowed with a new
light, the firm mouth took on a bit more of firmness, and the strong
little hands holding the paper did not tremble.

"A claim in the Sage Brush Valley in Kansas." Jerry spoke slowly. "It
lies in Range--Township--Oh, that's all Greek to me! They must number
land out there like lots in the potter's-field corner of the cemetery
that we drove by yesterday. Maybe they may all be dead ones, paupers at
that, in Kansas. It is controlled, or something, by York Macpherson of
the Macpherson Mortgage Company of New Eden--_New Eden_--Kansas. Uncle
Cornie told me it hadn't brought any income, but that wasn't York
Macpherson's fault. Strange that I remember all that Uncle Cornie said
here the other night."

The girl read the document spread out before her a second time. When she
lifted her face again it was another Jerry Swaim who looked out through
the dark-blue eyes. The rain had ceased falling. A cool breeze was
playing up the Winnowoc Valley, and low in the west shafts of sunlight
were piercing the thinning gray clouds.

"Twelve hundred acres! A prince's holdings! Why 'Eden' has only two
hundred! And that is at _New_ Eden. It 'hasn't been well managed.' I
know who's going to manage it now. I'm the daughter of Jim Swaim. He was
a good business man. And Aunt Darby--" A smile broke the set line about
the red lips. "I'd never dare to say she didn't understand how to manage
things, Chief of Staff to the General who runs the Universe, she is."

Then the serious mood came back as the girl stared out at the meadows
and growing grain of the "Eden" farmland. A sudden resolve had formed in
her mind--Jerry Swaim the type all her own, not possible to forecast.

"Father wanted me to know what it means to be independent. I'll find
out. If this 'Eden' can be so beautiful and profitable, what can I not
make out of twelve hundred acres, in a New Eden? And it will be such a
splendid lark, just the kind of thing I have always dreamed of doing.
Aunt Jerry will say that I'm crazy, or that I'm Lesa Swaim's own child.
Well, I am, but there's a big purpose back of it all, too, the purpose
my father would have approved. He was all business--all money-making--in
his purposes, it seemed to some folks, but I think mother knew how to
keep him sweet. Maybe her adventurous spirit, and all that, kept her
interesting to him, and her romancing kept him her lover, instead of
their growing to be like Uncle Cornie and Aunt Jerry. There's something
else in the world besides just getting property--'if a man went right
with himself,' Uncle Cornie said. There was a good sermon in those seven
words. Uncle Cornie preached more to me than the man who officiated at
the funeral yesterday could ever do. 'If a man went right with himself.'
And Eugene." A quick change swept Jerry Swaim's countenance. "He said he
wanted to say something to me. I think I know what he wanted to say.
Maybe he will say it some day, but not yet, not yet. Here he comes now."

There was a something new, unguessable, and very sweet in Jerry Swaim's
face as Eugene Wellington came striding down the walk to the rose-arbor.

"I'm through at last, little cousin," he declared, dropping into a seat
beside her. "Really, Aunt Jerry is a wonderful woman. She seems to know
most of the details of Uncle Cornie's business since he began in
business. But now and then she runs against something that takes her
breath away. Evidently Uncle Cornie knew a lot of things he didn't tell
her or anybody else. She doesn't like to meet these things. It makes her
cross. She sent me away just now in a huff because she was opening up a
new line that I think she didn't want me to know anything about.
Something that took her breath away at first glance. But she didn't have
to coax me off the place. I ran out here when the chance came."

How handsome and well-groomed he was sitting there in the easy willow
seat! And how good he had been to Mrs. Darby in these trying days! A
dozen little services that her niece had overlooked had come naturally
to his hand and mind.

The words of Uncle Cornie came into Jerry Swaim's mind as she looked at
him: "He's a good fellow, with real talent, and he'll make a name for
himself some day. He'll make a decent living, too, independent of
anybody's aunts and uncles, but he's no stronger-willed nor smarter nor
better than you are." A thrill of pleasure quickened her pulse at the
recollection, making this new decision of hers the more firm.

"It has seemed like a month since we sat here the evening before Uncle
Cornie passed away," Eugene began. "He made a bad discus-throw and came
over here just as I began to tell you something, Jerry. Do you remember
what we were saying when he appeared on the scene?"

"Yes, I remember." Jerry's voice was low, but there was no quaver in it.

Her face, as she lifted it, seemed to his eyes the one face he could
never paint. For him it was the fulfilment of a man's best dream.

"There's only one grief in my heart at this minute--that I can never put
your face as it is now on any canvas. But let me tell you some things
that Aunt Jerry has been telling me. She seems so fond of you, and she
says that after all the claims against your father's estate are settled
there is really no income left for you. But she assures me that it makes
no difference, because you can go on living with her exactly as you have
always done. She told me she had never failed in the fruition of a
single plan of hers, and she is too old to fail now. She has some plan
for you--" The young artist hesitated.

Jerry had never thought much about his good looks until in these June
days in "Eden" when Love had come noiselessly down the way to her. And
yet--a little faint, irresolute line in the man's face--a mere shadow, a
ghost of nothing at all, fixed itself in her image of his countenance. A
quick intuition flashed into her mind with the last words.

"Aunt Jerry is too old for lots of things besides the failure of her
plans. I know what she said, Gene, because I know what she thinks. She
isn't exactly fond of me; she wants to control me. I believe there are
only two planes of existence with her--one of absolute rule, and the
other of absolute submission. She couldn't conceive of me in the first
plane, of course, so I must be in the second."

"Why, Geraldine Swaim, I never heard you speak so of your aunt before!"
Eugene Wellington exclaimed. He had caught a new and very real line in
the girl's face as she spoke.

"Maybe not. But don't go Geraldine-ing me. It's too Aunt Jerry-ish. I'm
coming to understand her better because I'm doing my own thinking now,"
Jerry replied.

"As if you hadn't always done that, you little tyrant! I bear the scars
of your teeth on my arms now--or I would bear them if I hadn't given up
to you a thousand times years ago," Eugene declared, laughingly.

"That's just it," Jerry replied. "I've been let to have my own way until
Aunt Jerry thinks I must go on having just what she thinks I want, and
to do that I must be dependent on her. And--Wait a minute, Gene--you
will be dependent on her, too. You have only your gift. So both of us
are to be pensioners of hers. That's her plan."

"I won't be," Eugene Wellington declared, stoutly. And then, in loving
thought of Jerry, he added: "I don't want to, Jerry. I want to do great
things, the best that God has given me to do, not merely for myself, but
for your sake--and for all the world. That seems to me to be what
artists are for."

"And I won't be, either," Jerry insisted. "I won't. You needn't look so
incredulous. Let me tell you something. The evening before Uncle Cornie
died--" Jerry broke off suddenly.

It seemed unfair to betray the one burst of confidence that the
colorless old man had given up to on the last evening of his earthly
life. Jerry knew that it was to her, and for her alone, that he had
spoken.

"This is what I want to tell you. I have no income now. Aunt Jerry is
right, although she never told me that herself. But I have a plan to
make a living for myself."

Eugene Wellington leaned back and laughed aloud. "You, Miss Geraldine
Swaim, who never earned a dollar in your precious life! I always knew
you were a dreamer, but you are going wrong now, Jerry. You must look
out for belfry bats under that golden thatch of yours. Only artists dare
those wild flights so far--and they do it only on canvas and then get
rejected by the hanging committee."

Jerry paid no heed to his bantering words as she went on with serious
earnestness: "My estate--from my father--is a claim out at New Eden,
Kansas. Twelve hundred acres. It has never been managed well,
consequently it has never paid well. Look at 'Eden' here"--Jerry lifted
a hand for silence as Eugene was about to speak--"it has only two
hundred acres. Now multiply it by six and you'll have New Eden out in
Kansas. And I own it. And I am going to manage it. And I am not going to
be dependent on anybody. Won't it be one big lark for me to go clear to
the Sage Brush Valley? If it is as beautiful as the Winnowoc, just think
of its possibilities. It will be perfectly grand to feel oneself so free
and self-reliant. And when we have won out, you by your brush and I by
my Kansas farm, then, oh, Gene, how splendid life will be!"

The big, dreamy eyes were full of light. The level beams of the sun
stretched far across green meadows and shaven lawns, between tall
lilac-trees, to the rose-arbor, just to glorify that rippling mass of
brown-shadowed golden hair.

"Jerry"--Eugene Wellington's voice trembled--"you are the most wonderful
girl in the world. I am so proud of you. But, dear girl, it is an old,
threadbare fancy, this going to Kansas to get rich. My father tried it
years ago. He had a vision of great things, too. He failed. Not only
that, he ruined everybody connected with him. That's why I'm poor
to-day. Truly, little cousin mine, I don't believe the good Lord, who
makes Edens like this in the Winnowoc Valley, ever intended for
well-bred people to leave them and go New-Eden-hunting in the Sage Brush
Valley. We belong here where all the beauty of nature is about us and
the care of a loving God is over us. Why do you want to go to Kansas? I
wouldn't know how to pray out there where my father made such a botch of
living. I really wouldn't."

"I don't know how to pray here, Gene," Jerry said, softly, with no trace
of flippant irreverence in her tone. "I forgot how to do that when God
took my father away. But listen to me." The imperious power of the
uncontrolled will was Jerry's always. "You don't _live_ here; you _stay_
here. And you take a piece of canvas and go to the ends of the earth on
it, or down to the deeps, or into the heavens. You make what never did
and never will be, with your free brush. And folks call it good and you
earn a living by it. You are an artist. I am a foolish dreamer, but I am
going out to Kansas and work my dreams into reality and beauty--and
money--in a New Eden. If the Lord isn't there, I shall not mind any more
than I do here. I am going to Kansas, though, because I _want_ to."

"Look, Jerry, at the sunset yonder," Eugene said, gently, knowing of old
what "I want" meant. "They couldn't have such pictures of green and gold
out West as we see framed in here by the lilacs. You always have been a
determined little girl, so you will have your own way now, I suppose. We
can try it, anyhow, for a while. And if you find your way a rocky road
you must come back to 'Eden.' When your new playthings fail, you can
play with the old ones. But I really love your spirit of self-reliance.
I don't want you ever to be dependent. I don't want any other Jerry than
I have always known. And I want to work hard and make my little talent
pay me big, and make you proud of me."

"We are living a real romance, Gene. And we'll be true to our word to
make the best of ourselves and not let Aunt Jerry frighten us into
changing our plans, will we, Gene? My father's wish for me was that I
should not always be a spender of other folks's incomes, but that I
would find out what it means to live my own life. I never knew that
until last week. Everything seems changed for me since Uncle Cornie
died. Isn't it strange how suddenly we drop off one life and take up
another?" Jerry's eyes were on the deepening gold of the sunset sky.

"Yes, we have been two idlers. I'm glad to quit the job. But, somehow,
for you I could wish that you would stay here, if you were only
satisfied to do it," Eugene replied.

"I don't wish it." Jerry spoke decisively. "I couldn't be happy, now
I've this splendid Kansas thing to think about. Let's go and tell Aunt
Jerry and have it out with her."

"And if she says no?" the young man queried.

Jerry Swaim paused in the doorway and looked straight into Eugene
Wellington's face, without saying a word.

"Geraldine Swaim, there was a big mistake made in your baptismal
ceremony. You should have been christened 'The Sphinx.' Some day I'll
make a canvas of the Egyptian product and put your face on it. After
all, _are_ you really in earnest about this Sage Brush Valley New Eden?
It is so lovely here, I want you to stay here."

Again Jerry looked at him without speaking, and that faint line of
indecision that scarcely hinted at its own existence fixed itself in the
substratum of her memory.

Mrs. Darby met the young people in the parlor, where only a few nights
ago the three had watched the summer storm, not knowing that it was
beating down on the unconscious form of Cornelius Darby. Mrs. Darby felt
sure that the young people would be coming to her to-night. Well--the
end of her plan was in sight now. Really, it may have been better for
Cornelius to have gone when he did, since we must all go sometime.
Indeed, it would have been better--only Jerusha Darby never knew
that--if Cornelius had gone before that discus-throw. Everything might
have been different if he had gone earlier. But he lost the opportunity
of his life to serve his wife by staying over and making one awkward
fling too many.

The June evening was cool after the long rains. Aunt Jerry had a tiny
wood fire burning in the parlor grate, and the tall lamps with the
rose-colored shades lighted to add a touch of twilight charm to the
place, when the young lovers came in.

"Aunt Jerry, we want to tell you what we have been talking about,"
Eugene began, when the three were seated together. "Jerry and I have
decided that we must look on life differently now since--" Eugene
hesitated.

"Yes, I know." Mrs. Darby spoke briskly. "We must face the truth now and
speak of Cornelius freely. He was fond of both of you. Poor Cornelius!"

"Poor Cornelius," Jerry Swaim repeated, under her breath.

"Of course I know it is difficult for a girl reared as Jerry has been--"
Eugene began again.

"She can go on living just as she has been. This will be her home
always," Mrs. Darby broke in, abruptly.

"And I know that I have nothing but the prospect of earning a living and
winning to a successful career in my line--" the young man went on.

"Hasn't Jerry the prospect of enough for herself? I'll need you to help
me for several months. You know, Eugene, that I must have some one who
understands Cornelius's way of doing things." There was more of command
than request in the older woman's voice.

"I'll be glad to help you as long as I am needed, but I am speaking now
of my life-work. When I cannot serve you any longer I must begin on my
own career. I have some hopes and plans for the future."

"Humph! What's the use of talking about it? I tell you Jerry will have
enough for all her needs, and I want you here. I shall not consider any
more such notions, Eugene. You are both going to stay right here as you
have done. Let's talk of something else."

"We can't yet, Aunt Jerry, because I have not enough for myself, even if
Gene would accept a living from you," Jerry Swaim declared.

Jerusha Darby opened her narrow eyes and stared at her niece. If the
older woman had made one plea of loneliness, if she had even hinted at
sorrow for the loss of the companion of her business transactions, Jerry
Swaim would have felt uncomfortable, even though she knew her aunt too
well to be deceived by any such demonstration.

"Geraldine Swaim, what are you saying?" Mrs. Darby demanded, in a hard,
even voice. Something in her manner and face could always hold even the
brave-spirited in frightened awe of her.

Eugene Wellington lost courage to go on, and the same thing came again
that Jerry Swaim had twice seen on his face in the rose-arbor this
evening. The two were looking straight at the girl now. The firelight
played with the golden glory of her hair and deepened the rose hue of
her round cheeks. The dark-blue eyes seemed almost black, with a gleam
in their depths that meant trouble, and there was a strength in the low
voice as Jerry went on:

"I'm talking about what I know, Aunt Jerry. All there is of my heritage
from my father is a 'claim,' they call it, at New Eden, in the Sage
Brush Valley in Kansas; twelve hundred acres. I'm going out there to
manage it myself and support myself on an income of my own."

For a long minute Jerusha Darby looked steadily at her niece, her own
face as hard and impenetrable as if it were carven out of flint. Then
she said, sharply:

"Where did you find out all this?"

"It is all in a document here that I found in the rose-arbor this
afternoon," the girl replied. "Aunt Jerry, I must use what is mine. I
wouldn't be a Swaim if I didn't."

"You won't stay there two weeks." Mrs. Darby fairly clicked out the
words. Her face was very pale and something like real fright looked
through her eyes as she took the paper from her niece's hand.

"And then?" Jerry inquired, demurely.

"And then you will come back here where you belong and live as you
always have lived, in comfort."

"And if I do not come?"

Jerusha Darby's face was not pleasant to see just then. The firelight
that made the girl more winsomely pretty seemed to throw into relief all
the hard lines of a countenance which selfishness and stubbornness and a
dictatorial will had graven there.

"Jerry Swaim, you are building up a wild, adventurous dream. You are
Lesa Swaim over and over. You want a lark, that's what you want. And
it's you who have put Eugene up to his notions of a career and all that.
Listen to me. Nothing talks in this world like money. That you have to
have for your way of living, and that he's got to have if he wants to be
what he should be. Well, go on out to Kansas. You know more of that
prosperous property out there than I do. I'll let you find it out to the
last limit. But when you come back you must promise me never to take
another such notion. I won't stand this foolishness forever. I'll give
you plenty of money to get there. You can write me when you need funds
to come back. It won't take long to get that letter here."

"And if I shouldn't come?" Jerry asked, calmly.

"Look what you are giving up. All this beautiful home, to say nothing of
the town house--and Eugene--and other property."

"No, no; you don't count him as your property, do you?" Jerry cried,
turning to the young artist, whose face was very pale.

"Jerry, must you make this sacrifice?" he asked, in a voice of
tenderness.

"It isn't a sacrifice; it's just what I want to do," Jerry declared,
lightly.

Jerusha Darby's face darkened. The effect of a long and absolute
exercise of will, coupled with ample means, can make the same kind of a
tyrant out of a Kaiser and a rich aunt. The determination to have her
own way in this matter, as she had had in all other matters, became at
once an unbreakable purpose in her. She wanted to keep fast hold of
these young people for her own sake, not for theirs. For a little while
she sat measuring the two with her narrow, searching eyes.

"I can manage him best," she concluded to herself. At last she asked,
plaintively, "With all you have here, Jerry, why do you go hunting
opportunities in Kansas?"

"Because I want to," Jerry replied, and her aunt knew that, so far as
Jerry was concerned, everything was settled.

"Then we'll drop the matter here. I can wait for you to come to your
senses. Eugene, if you can give her up, when you've always been chums, I
certainly can."

With these words Mrs. Darby rose and passed out, leaving the two alone
under the rose-colored lights of the richly furnished parlor.

It was not like Jerusha Darby to make such a concession, and Jerry Swaim
knew it, but Eugene Wellington, who was of alien blood, did not know it.

The room was much more beautiful without her presence; and her sordid
hinting at the Darby wealth which Jerry must count on, and Eugene must
meekly help to guard for future gain, rasped harshly against their
souls, for they were young and more sentimental than practical. Left
alone to their youth, and strength, and nobler ideals, they vowed that
night to hold to better things. Together they builded a dream of a
rainbow-tinted world which they were going bravely forth to create. Of
what should follow that they did not speak, yet each one guessed what
was in the other's mind, as men and maidens have always guessed since
love began. And on this night there were no serpents at all in their
Eden.




IV

BETWEEN EDENS


The sun of a mid-June day glared down pitilessly on the little station
at the junction of the Sage Brush branch with the main line. There was
not a tree in sight. The south wind was raving across the prairie,
swirling showers of fine sand before it. Its breath came hot against
Jerry Swaim's cheek as she stood in the doorway of the station or
wandered grimly down between the shining rails that stretched toward a
boundless nowhere whither the "through" train had vanished nearly two
hours ago. As Jerry watched it leaving, a sudden heaviness weighed down
upon her. And when the Pullman porter's white coat on the rear platform
of the last coach melted into the dull, diminishing splotch on the
western distance, she felt as if she were shipwrecked in a pathless
land, with the little red station house, reefed about by cinders, as the
only resting-place for the soles of her feet. When her eyes grew weary
of the monotonous landscape, Jerry rested them with what she called "A
Kansas Interior." The rustic station under the maples at "Eden" was
always clean and comfortably appointed. Big flower-beds outside, Uncle
Cornie's gift, belonged to the station and its guests, with the spacious
grounds of "Eden," at which the travelers might gaze without cost, lying
just beyond it.

This "Kansas Interior" seemed only a degree less inviting than the whole
monotonous universe outside. The dust of ages dimmed the windows that
were propped and nailed and otherwise secured against the entrance of
cool summer breezes, or the outlet of bad, overheated air in winter.
Iron-partitioned seats, invention of the Evil One himself, stalled off
three sides of the room, intending to prove the principle that no one
body can occupy two spaces at the same time. In the center of the room a
"plain, unvarnished" stove, bare and bald, stood on a low pedestal
yellowed with time and tobacco juice. A dingy, fly-specked map of the
entire railway system hung askew on the wall--very fat and foreshortened
as to its own extent, very attenuated and ill-proportioned as to other
insignificant systems cutting spidery lines across it.

Behind a sealed tomb of a ticket-window Jerry could hear the "tick-tick,
tick-a-tick-tick, tick-tick" of a telegraph-wire. Somebody must be in
there who at set times, like a Saint Serapion from his hermit cell,
might open this blank wall and speak in almost human tones. Just now the
solitude of the grave prevailed, save for that everlasting "tick-a-tick"
behind the wall.

When Jerry Swaim gripped her hands on the plow handles, there would be
no looking back. She persuaded herself that she wasn't going to die of
the jiggermaroos in the empty nothingness here. It would be very
different at New Eden, she was sure of that. And this York Macpherson
must be a nice old man, honest and easy-going, because he had never
realized any income from her big Kansas estate. She pictured York
easily--a short, bald-headed old gentleman with gray burnsides and
benevolent pale-blue eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses, driving a fat
sorrel nag to an easy-going old Rockaway buggy, carrying a gold-headed
cane given him by the Sunday-school. Jerry had seen his type all her
life in the business circles of Philadelphia and among the better-to-do
country-dwellers around "Eden."

At last it was only fifteen minutes till the Sage Brush train would be
due; then she could find comfort in her Pullman berth. She wondered what
Aunt Jerry and Eugene were doing now. She had slipped away from "Eden"
on her wild adventure in the early dawn. She had taken leave of Aunt
Jerry the night before. Old women need their beauty sleep in the
morning, even if foolish young things are breaking all the laws by
launching out to hunt their fortunes. Eugene had been hurriedly sent
away on Darby estate matters without the opportunity of a leave-taking,
two days before Jerry was ready to start for Kansas. Everything was
prearranged, evidently, to make this going a difficult one. So, without
a single good-by to speed her on her quest, the young girl had gone out
from a sheltering Eden of beauty and idleness. But the tears that had
dimmed her eyes came only when she left the lilac walk to the station to
slip around by Uncle Cornie's grave beside the green-coverleted
resting-places of Jim and Lesa Swaim.

"Maybe mother would glory in what I am doing, and father might say I had
the right stuff in me. And Uncle Cornie--'If a man went right with
himself'--Uncle Cornie might have said 'if a woman went right with
herself,' too. I'm going to put that meaning into his words, even if he
never seemed to think much of women. Oh, father! Oh, mother! You _lived_
before you died, anyhow, and I'm going to do the same. Uncle Cornie died
before he ever really lived."

Jerry stretched out her hands to the one good-by in "Eden" coming to her
from these silent ripples of dewy green sod. Then youth and the June
morning and the lure of adventure into new lands came with their triple
strength to buoy her up to do and dare. Behind her were her lover to
be--for Eugene must love her--her home ties, luxury, dependent
inactivity. Before her lay the very ends of the earth, the Kansas end
especially. The spirit of Sir Galahad, of Robinson Crusoe, of Don
Quixote, combined with the spirit of a self-willed, inexperienced girl,
but dimly conscious yet of what lay back of her determination to go
forth--_because she wanted to go_.

Chicago and Kansas City offered easy ports for clearing. And the Kaw
Valley, unrolling its broad acres along the way, gave larger promise
than Jerry had yet dared to dream of for the New Eden farther west. The
train service, after the manner of a Pacific Coast limited, had been
perfect in every appointment. And then--this junction episode.

Two eternity-long hours before the Sage Brush branch could take her to
New Eden were almost ended.

"It's not so terrifying, after all." Jerry was beginning to "see things
again." "It's all in the game--and I am going to be as 'game' as the
thing I am playing. Things always come round all right for me. _They
must._"

The square white chin was very much a family feature just now. And the
shapely hands had no hint of weakness in their grip on the iron arms of
the station seat.

The door which the wind had slammed shut was slammed open again as three
prospective passengers for the Sage Brush train slammed through it laden
with luggage. At the same time the sealed-up ticket-window flew open,
showing the red, grinning face of the tick-tick man behind its iron
bars. If Jerry had never paid the slightest heed to the bunch of grubs
on the Winnowoc branch, except as they kept down the ventilation, or
crowded their odors of Limburger on her offended senses, the Sage Brush
grubs were a thousandfold less worthy of her consideration. As the
three crowded to the ticket-window, laughing among themselves, she
stared through the doorway, unconsciously reading the names on the cars
of a freight-train slowly heaving down alongside the station. Who
invented freight-cars, anyhow? The most uninteresting and inartistic
thing ever put on wheels by the master mechanic of the unbeautiful,
created mainly to shut off the view of mankind from what is really worth
looking at. Jerry read the dulled lettering mechanically: "Santa Fé"
with its symbol of a fat cross in a circle, "Iron Mountain," "Great
Northern," "Rock Island," "Frisco," "Union Pacific," "Grand Trunk," came
creeping by. "New York Central," "Lehigh Valley," "Pennsylvania Line."
These took her back to "Eden" and the Winnowoc country. The station
building shook; the ugly old cars slam-banged a bit faster back and
forth; the engine, with the breath almost knocked out of it, was puffing
down by the switch, and the whole body behind it quivered to a
standstill. But Jerry Swaim's tear-blurred eyes were seeing only the
green fields of the Darby country-place and the rose-arbor and Eugene
Wellington. A voice loud, but not unpleasant, and a laugh, a merry,
catching, giggling guffaw, drove the picture of "Eden" and all that
belonged to it into "viewless air" that went flapping and flaring across
the Kansas landscape.

"You don't mean it! He, he! Haw!" Everybody must smile now. "The old
Sage Brush local is locoed 'way up toward S'liny. Engine shortage, car
shortage, common sense shortage. He, he! And we must ride in that
sunflower de luxe limited standing out there. Come on, Thelmy. You can
take lower nothin', car one-half. We'll soar in now while the soarin's
good."

Jerry looked at the bunch of grubs for the first time. One had to see
where that big gloom-chasing giggle came from. Thelma was a spotlessly
clean, well-made country product, wherein the girl had easily given
place to the woman, erect, full-bosomed, strong of frame. The hazel eyes
were arched over by heavy brown brows. There was no rosebud curve to the
rather wide mouth that showed a set of magnificent white teeth. The
brown hair wound braid on braid about the head was proof of the glory of
Saint Paul's scriptural decree. Not that Jerry Swaim really noted any of
these features. She merely saw a country girl--a not offensive native.
The native's comrade, he with the big-laugh fixtures, was short and
stout, with a round face on the front side of a round head, set on top
of a tight-built body. Grub though he was, Jerry involuntarily smiled
with him. That far the fat little man controlled everybody. But the
funny little strut in his gait as he walked was irresistible. The third
passenger, the grubbiest of the three grubs, was a nondescript of whose
presence Jerry was not even aware until she heard his voice. It was a
thin, high, unused voice, and its pitch wabbled up and down.

"Be you goin' on the Sage Bresh train, lady?"

The questioner had turned back after the country girl and the fat man
had passed out.

Jerry looked at him without taking his question to herself. His shoes,
draped with wrinkled-down hose, were very much worn. His overalls
flapping around his legs, his shirt and neck and face and hair and hat,
were all of one complexion, a fuzzy, yellow brown.

"Be you goin' on this train, too?"

It was a humble, kindly voice, and the scaly old hand holding the door
open against the high prairie wind was only a fisherman's hand. The
deep-set eyes in the yellow-brown old face were trained to read the
river; the patient mouth set to wait for the catch of lines and nets.

Jerry had never in her life spoken to such a creature. So far as she was
concerned, he did not exist.

"This is the only train on the Sage Bresh to-day, lady. The reg'lar
train's busted through a culbert out yander," the high, quavering voice
persisted.

A sharp tooting from the engine down the line emphasized the statement,
and Jerry saw the grinning red-faced tick-tick man hastily wheeling
mail-sacks and sundry other parcels by the door. In a bewildered way she
rose and passed out, giving no recognition to the shabby old man who had
been thoughtful of her ignorance.

"We gotta go to the last car down yander, lady," the old man squeaked
out, as he started down the cinder-paved way with a bearlike, shuffling,
sidewise sort of gait.

Jerry followed him slowly to "the last car down yander."

A plain day coach, the sixtieth and last vertebra in this long
mechanical spine, was already crowded with a bunch of grubs, none of
whom could belong to Jerry Swaim's sphere. Moreover, they were all
tightly packed in and wedged down so that it was impossible to detect
the leaving off of the full-fare passenger and the beginning of
suit-cases, old-style telescopes, baskets, bundles, boxes, half-fare
children, bags of fruit, lunch-crates, pieces of farming tools, babes in
arms, groceries--everything to cabbages and kings. Jerry wondered where
all these _things_ came from. Every object in that car, human being or
salt pork, crying baby or kingbolt, was a _thing_ to Jerry Swaim. And
all of them were very warm and nervously tense, as if the hot June wind
had blown them all inside, that the hot June sun, through the closed
windows, might stew them stinkily; or, through the open windows, grime
their sweaty faces with hot dust off the hot prairie. There was only one
vacant seat left. It was on the shady side, facing the rear of the car,
and was half occupied already by the humble grub of the squeaky voice.
The girl, Thelma, and the fat little man had taken the seat opposite
him. As Jerry entered the car the little man was on his feet, bowing and
strutting and insisting that a woman with a babe in arms should exchange
seats with him, putting her on the cool side, while he took her place in
the sun across the aisle from Thelma. In the transfer he did not see
Jerry, who was looking in vain for an opening in that mass of "human
various." It was the humble grub who saw her standing there. Evidently
his little yellow-green eyes took her measure at a glance, but he did
not spread out his effects and stare out of the window as some other men
were doing, nor gather himself and his into his own half of the seat to
make room for her beside him. He rose, and in a shrill little quaver he
bade her take his place. It did not occur to Jerry to tell him that
there was room for two, as she saw him shuffle down the aisle with a
queer, limping hitch. In the same impersonal way she watched him through
the open door, sitting on the rear platform during the long afternoon,
humpbacked against the cinders and dust that beat upon him, swaying with
the rocking car, jerked along over a sun-baked, treeless prairie at the
tail of a long jerky freight-train. He meant nothing to this dainty city
product; his kind had never entered her world; no more had the
red-faced, tow-headed young mother, with white eyebrows and hat knocked
rakishly aslant, with her big, restless, bald-headed baby rolling over
her in waves, sprawling about Thelma, and threatening to bump its head
off as it overflowed all the narrow space, aimlessly and persistently.

But if Jerry Swaim felt out of her element in this company, her
fellow-passengers felt much more embarrassed by her presence. Thelma's
neat gingham dress became limp and mussy and common. The tired mother's
yellow lawn was rumpled into a dish-rag. And with every jerk of the
train she lost a hair-pin from her tow hair that was already stringing
down in long wisps on her neck. The baby, really a happy, white,
blue-veined infant, became a fussy flushed impossibility.

All this, it seemed, just because of the presence of a faultlessly
dressed, fair-faced stranger who awed everybody by not seeing them, but
whose very daintiness and beauty drew them hungrily to her. Nobody could
be in Jerry Swaim's presence and not feel the spell of her inherent
magnetism.

The laughter and complaints of the passengers dulled down to endurance.
Only the face of the short man wore a smile. But his mouth was made with
that kind of a curve, and he couldn't help it. Breathing deeply and
perspiring healthfully, he sat against the heat streaming into his side
of the car, and forgot his troubles in his unbreakable good nature. For
a long time he and Thelma had talked across the aisle above and through
the train's noises. Their talk was all of Paul and Joe's place, and the
crops; of how glad Thelma was to be at home again on Paul's account; and
how long it would take her yet if the alfalfa and wheat turned out well.

Jerry heard it all without knowing it, as she looked at the monotonous
landscape without knowing it. And then the dry prairies began to deepen
to a richer hue. Yellow wheat-fields and low-growing corn and stretches
of alfalfa broke into the high plains where cattle grazed. And then came
the gleam of a river, sometimes shallow along sandy levels, sometimes
deep, with low overhanging brush on either side. And there were
cottonwood-trees and low twisted elms and scrubby locust and oak
saplings, and the faint, fresh scent of moisture livening the air.

The train jerked itself to a standstill, thought better of it, and
hunched along again for a rod or two, then jostled itself quiet again.

Jerry was very drowsy now, but she was conscious of hearing the fat man
calling out, cheerfully:

"Home at last, Thelmy. There's Paul waiting for you. Well, good-by."

And of Thelma's "Good-by" in a louder tone than was necessary. Of more
strutting and bowing and no end of luggage clearing itself away.

Through the window Jerry caught sight of a tall, fair-haired boy, who
looked like Thelma, except that in his white face was the pathos of the
life-cripple. She saw Thelma kiss him, and then the two started down the
sunny, cindery side-track together. In the distance, close to the river,
there was a small plain house under a big cottonwood-tree. The glimpse
of red about a little porch meant that the crimson ramblers were in
bloom there. Oh, the roses of "Eden," and the cool rose-arbor! Jerry
must have dreamed then, for "Eden" was about her again. Through it the
limping grub came humbly to claim his sundry own from behind and under
the seat. Even in "Eden" she thought how much like a clumsy bear his
gait was. And when the little man called him "Teddy" she knew he was not
a fisherman sort of creature, but a real bear in yellow-brown overalls,
and that the general fuzziness of his make-up was fur, and that his
stubby, scaly hands were claws. He dropped off somewhere when the
freight took a siding very near the river. It was the Sage Brush, but it
ran through the "Eden" grounds and Uncle Cornie was throwing his discus
beside it. The rose-arbor was just across the aisle. The little fat man
was sitting in its doorway, with a new moon of a smile on the smooth
side of his round head where his face was, a half-quizzical,
half-sympathetic smile with no guile in it. Jerry really liked him for
that kind of a smile. It belonged to him. The rose-arbor was very warm,
for the man was sweating more copiously than ever.... Uncle Cornie was
gone. The limping Teddy Bear was gone.... It was very, very hot and
sunny in "Eden." The big maples and cool lilacs were gone.... "Eden" was
gone. In its stead came the art exhibit in the cool gallery in the city.
And that yellow-gray desert landscape with the flaming afterglow and
purple mists. The flames seemed almost real, and the yellow gray almost
real, and the art-gallery was getting warmer as "Eden" had done. It was
positively hot.... And then the Sage Brush freight was laboring slowly
and painfully through a desert with clack and roar and cloud of cindery
dust.... Jerry sat up, wide awake, and looked up at the fat stranger who
was looking at her, the smile on the inside of his face, as it were,
showing only in the eyes.

Outside, the river was gone, taking with it all the cool-breathing
alfalfa, and elm and cottonwood shade, and leaving in their stead only
bare earth-ridges and low dunes. As far as Jerry could see, there was
nothing but a hot yellow plain, wrinkled here and there in great barren
folds, with wave and crest and hollow of wind-shifted sand crawling
endlessly back and forth along the face of the landscape. A few spiny
green shrubs struggled through at intervals, but their presence only
intensified the barrenness about them.

The train was entering a deep wrinkle not unlike that cut beyond the
third crossing of the Winnowoc. Jerry remembered the day she had watched
that other train from the bluff road, and her exultation in pounding her
big car up the steep way instead of crawling through, as Eugene was
doing. Later she had found out that Eugene really preferred that to the
more daring climb. Jerry involuntarily gripped the car seat with a
subconscious longing to get out and drive over the whole thing. Across
the aisle, the smile on the fat man's face was coming outside as he
watched the stranger passenger.

They were deep in now--a valley-like thing that was hotter than any
other inch of the whole way they had come. On either side tall slabs of
timber, planted upright, closed in the right of way. They were barely
moving through this narrow lane. The engine was gasping for breath, and
the cars dragged themselves after it by inches. Then all came to a dead
stop.

"Everybody turn out and help," somebody in uniformed authority called
through the car door, and all the men passengers stirred to action.

"_The_ dickens!" the short fat man exclaimed to everybody. "Stuck in a
sand-drift in that danged blowout. That's what comes of letting this
wind go all day. I told 'em up at the junction to stop it, but they
wouldn't listen to me. Now we've got to soar out of here and shovel for
our lives."

When he laughed everybody else had to laugh, too, and it was a really
good-natured company of men that piled down from the train to help the
cause of railway transportation.

The fat man had been last to leave the car.

"Let me close all these windows," he urged, strutting from seat to seat.
"It'll be hot with 'em shut, but you'll be buried in sand in here if we
leave 'em open, and we men don't want to dig you and the engine all out
in one day. We mightn't find all the children, you know, and leave some
of 'em in here covered up. He, he! Haw!" He struggled with the last
windows until they were sealed down, then turned away to lend his aid in
a good cause.

The tow-headed woman and her little perpetual-motion baby, who had been
sleeping wearily for a few miles, roused at the jolly man's loud laugh.

"It's the blowout," the mother said, as Jerry looked at her for the
first time. "Them timbers is driv in to keep out all that sand. See how
it's heaped up ag'in' 'em on the outside. On awfully windy days it blows
over and fills the tracks and stops the train, and then the men all get
out and help to shovel it off. Gee whiz! but it's hot in here! We'd be
just smothered in sand if we left the windows open, though. There!
There!"

The last to the big baby, stirring uneasily, whom the mother patted off
to slumber again.

Jerry walked to the rear door and looked out at the narrow space walled
in by palisades, and at glimpses of sand waves on either side of the
road beyond them; at the little hot-looking green shrubs clinging for
life to their shifting depths, and the heat-quivering air visible above
them. In all her life she had never felt so uncomfortable as now; never
realized what it means to _endure_ physical misery. She had seen the
habitable globe features--lake-shore, and seaside, and mountain resorts;
big navigable rivers; big forests; narrow little valleys; sheer cliffs
and wonderful waterfalls. She didn't know that the world held such a
place as this that anybody but a Hottentot was supposed to inhabit.
Through a long hour and a half the train was held back by the sand of
what Jerry heard was a "blowout." She did not know nor care what the
term meant. _She wanted to get_ out of it and go on, and what Jerry
Swaim _wanted_ she had always had the right to have.

The sun was getting low in the west when the local freight labored up
the Sage Brush Valley to its terminal in the yards at New Eden. All of
the passengers except Jerry tumbled out, much as tired boys rush from
the church door after a long doctrinal sermon. The car was stopped at
the freight-station, some distance down the line from the
passenger-station, which was itself a long way out from New Eden, after
the manner of Western small towns. The middle '80's, when railroad
branch lines were building, found road directors and town councils
falling out over technicalities, with the result that the railroad
seldom secured the ground it wanted and the town was seldom given a
convenient station site.

The buses filled rapidly, and the mail and express wagons were rattling
off ahead of buses and foot passengers, and still the young stranger sat
in the car. A sudden sense of loneliness had enveloped her like a cloud.
She was not a novice abroad. She had gone to strange towns alone before.
She knew all the regulations of hotel service. She knew why she had come
here and what she had to do, and she had abundant means for all her
needs. But with all these points in her favor a helplessness swept over
her, and the "what next" for the moment perplexed her. The engine was
getting restless again. However long it may require a local freight to
get from one given point to another, the engine, like an ill-broken
colt, will keep stepping up or pulling back through every halt of the
train. Jerry sat inside, watching the last bus, loaded and hung-on-to,
swinging off down the dusty road toward the town, a full half-mile
across the prairie from the station. Life was getting a trifle too
interesting in this foreign clime, and when the short man appeared in
the doorway, even the full-moon face and half-moon smile, the profound
bow and comical strut, could not out-weigh the genuine comfort his
presence seemed to bring.

"Pardon me, Miss--Miss--"

"Miss Swaim," Jerry informed him, sure of herself and unafraid again.

"Oh, Miss Swaim! My name is Ponk--Junius Brutus Ponk. Pardon again if I
seem to intrude. This is the Sage Brush terminal. Excuse me if I say
thank the Lord for the end of _this_ day's journey! The buses are all
gone. May I take you to your destination here in my little gadabout? You
want to stop somewhere in New Eden overnight, anyhow."

"Thank you very much."

Jerry looked at him gratefully, even if he was only one of the bunch of
grubs she had been forced to ride with all this long afternoon, she who
had once repudiated the Winnowoc train and all trains without Pullman
accommodations. "The smile on her face was mightily winsome," Ponk
declared afterward, "and just took all my ramparts and citadels and
moats and drawbridges at one fell swoop."

He gathered up her bags and helped her off the car pompously, saying:

"Here she is, Miss Swaim. Step right in." And then with a flourish of
arms he had Jerry and her belongings stored inside a shiny gray runabout
and was off down the grassy road with a dash.

"Where shall I take you to, Miss Swaim?" he inquired, when the little
car had glided gracefully around the lumbering buses and rattling
wagons.

"To the best hotel, please," Jerry replied. "Do you know which one that
is?"

"Yes'm. There isn't but one. The Commercial Hotel and Gurrage. I'm the
proprietor, so I know." The smile that broke around the face of the
speaker was too good-natured to make his words seem presumptuous.

Jerry smiled, too, finding herself in the grasp of a strange and
complete confidence in the pompous little unknown chauffeur.

"Do you know an old gentleman here named York Macpherson, a Mortgage
Company man?" she asked, looking at him directly for the first time.

Ponk seemed to gulp down a smile before he replied: "Ye-es, I do know
York very well. He's prob'bly older than he looks. His office is right
across the street from the Commercial Hotel and Gurrage."

Afterward he declared: "From the minute that girl turned her eyes full
on me and I saw how blue them orbs were, I begun to wish I had a gold
button instead of a bone one in the back of my collar. I knew she could
see that cheap bone thing right through my neck and I was willing right
then to lay down and play dead if she wanted me to, and I'm never going
to recover, never."

"Would you do--me a favor?" Jerry asked, hesitatingly.

Asking favors was a new line for her and she followed it prettily.

"Wouldn't I!" Mr. Ponk exclaimed. "Try me."

"Even his voice has a strut in it," Jerry thought. Aloud she said: "I
have business with this old gentleman and I would be much obliged if you
would tell him that Miss Geraldine Swaim is in the city and would like
to meet him."

"Why, I'll soar right over there as soon as we get to the hotel and
gurrage."

Junius Brutus Ponk looked slyly at the face of his companion as he
spoke. What he was thinking just then it would have been hard to guess.
With a flourish and curve that were wholly Ponkish the fat little man
swung the gray car up to the brick-paved porch of the "Commercial Hotel
and Gurrage."

"Why, there's York now, reading his mail! I'll go right over and tell
him," Mr. Ponk declared. "Here, George, tell Georgette to give Miss
Swaim number seven."

George assisted Miss Swaim to the hotel register and Georgette led her
to room No. 7. Georgette wanted to linger a minute, for this guest was
so unlike the usual commercial-traveler kind of ladies who sold books,
or canvassed for extracts, or took orders for crayon portraits enlarged
from little photographs; but Miss Swaim's manner gave no excuse for
lingering. Alone, Jerry closed her door and turned, with a smile on her
lips, to face her surroundings. The room was clean and cool, with a big
window overhanging the street. Jerry sat down before it, realizing how
weary the long journey had made her. Across the street, the sign of the
Macpherson Mortgage Company in big gold letters hung above a plate-glass
window. Mr.

Ponk, who had just "soared" across, was sitting in his car before it.
Jerry saw a man inside at a desk very much like Uncle Cornie's in the
Philadelphia banking-house where Eugene Wellington was busy now helping
Aunt Jerry to settle things. This man was reading letters when the Ponk
car tooted before the big window. He waved a hand to the tooter, then
put his letters away and came leisurely outside. Jerry saw a tall,
finely proportioned man, the set of whose clothes had a city air, and
there was something in his whole manner that would have distinguished
him from every other man in New Eden.

The fat little man talked earnestly, with a flourish of the hand now and
then toward the room where Jerry sat watching the two. York Macpherson
rested one foot on the running-board, and leaned his arms on the side of
the car, listening intently to what Mr. Ponk was saying.

"So that is this York Macpherson who was never responsible for my estate
not making any returns. And I called him an old man. The hotel
proprietor must be telling him that now." Jerry laughed as she saw the
two men chuckling together. "Well, I hope the pompous little fellow
tells him I'm an old woman. It would even things up wonderfully."

Ten minutes later Jerry was shaking hands with York Macpherson and
promising him to go to his home and meet his sister as soon as she had
cleared her eyes of dust sufficiently to see anybody.

It must have been the dust in her eyes, Jerry thought, that made York
Macpherson appear so unlike the benevolent, inefficient old gentleman
she had pictured to herself. The hotel parlor was in twilight shadows,
which helped a little to conceal the surprise of these two when they met
there. Jerry knew what she had been anticipating. Whether York
Macpherson knew or not, he was clearly not expecting what he found in
the hotel parlor.

"I'll soar down to your shack with the lady as soon as she has had her
supper and got herself rightly in hand," Ponk declared to York when he
came into the hotel office. "You see, we got stuck in that danged,
infernal blowout, and it was as hard on the womenkind who had to sit
inside and swelter as on us men who nobly dug. 'Specially this Miss
Swaim. She must have 'wept to see such quantities of sand,' same as them
oysters and walruses and carpenters. We'll be along by and by, though.
Have a cigar. What do you make of her, anyhow, York?"

"I don't make anything. I leave that job to you," York replied, with a
smile, as he turned abruptly and left the hotel.

"Unless you see eight per cent. interest coming your way, I see. There
might be a bigger interest in this investment than any you ever made in
your life," Ponk called after him.

But York only waved off the words without looking back. Outside, the
sunset's splendor was filling the western sky--the same old prairie
sunset that he had seen many a time in his years in Kansas. And yet, on
this evening it did not seem quite the same; nor were the sunsets, New
Eden, and the Sage Brush Valley from this evening ever quite as they had
been before, to York Macpherson.




V

NEW EDEN'S PROBLEM


Because of a broken "culbert" out toward "S'liny" the afternoon train on
the Sage Brush branch was annulled for the day. Because of this
annulment the mail for the Sage Brush Valley was brought up on the local
freight, which is always behind time when it reaches its terminal, which
accounted for the late delivery of the mail at the New Eden post-office,
which made York Macpherson's dinner late because of a big batch of
letters to be read, and an important business call at the Commercial
Hotel following the reading and the delivery of Mr. Ponk's message.

Purple shadows were beginning to fold down upon the landscape, while
overhead the sky was still heliotrope and gold, but York Macpherson,
walking slowly homeward, saw neither the shadows nor the glory that
overhung them. It was evident to his sister Laura, who was waiting for
him in the honeysuckle corner of the big front porch, that his mind was
burdened with something unusual to-night.

York Macpherson was a "leading citizen" type of the Middle West.
Wholesome, ruggedly handsome, prosperous, shrewd to read men's minds,
quick to meet their needs, full of faith in the promise of the Western
prairies, with the sort of culture no hardship of the plains could ever
overcome--that was York. Although he was on the front edge of middle
life in years, with a few gray streaks in his wavy brown hair, he had
the young-looking face, the alert action, and vigorous atmosphere of a
young-hearted man just entered into his full heritage of manhood.

"The train was delayed down the river on account of sand drifted over
the track by the south wind, and that made the mail late," York
explained, when he reached the porch. "I'll bet you have had the house
shut up tight as wax and have gone about all day with a dust-cloth in
your hand. Given a south wind and Laura Macpherson, and you have a home
industry in no time. Let's hurry up the dinner" (it was always dinner to
the Macphersons and supper to the remainder of New Eden) "and get
outside again as soon as possible. I can't think in shut-up rooms."

"When there is a south wind it makes little difference whether or not
one does any thinking. I postpone that job to the cool of the evening,"
Laura Macpherson declared, as she led the way to the dining-room.

When the two came outside again the air off the prairie was delicious,
and there was promise of restfulness later in the black silence of the
June night that made them forget the nervous strain of the windy day.
The Macphersons had no problems that they could not talk over in the
shadowy stillness of that roomy porch on summer evenings.

York had been a bachelor boarder at the "Commercial Hotel and Garage"
for some years before the coming of his sister Laura, who was at once
his housekeeper, companion, and counselor. When he first went to the
hotel New Eden was in its infancy, and the raw beginnings of things were
especially underdone in this two-dollars-a-day, one-towel-a-week
establishment. It was through York that Junius Brutus Ponk had given up
an unprofitable real-estate business to become proprietor of the
Commercial Hotel--"and Gurrage" was added later with the advent of
automobiles, the "Gurrage" part being a really creditably equipped
livery for public service. By this change of occupation for Ponk, the
Macpherson Mortgage Company accomplished several things. It got rid of
an inefficient competitor whose very inefficiency would have made him a
more disagreeable enemy than a successful man would have been. Further,
it placed the ambitious little man where his talents could flourish
(flourish is the right word for J. B. Ponk), and it put into the growing
little town of New Eden a hotel with city comforts that brought business
to the town and added mightily to its reputation and respectability.

York Macpherson's business had grown with the town he had helped to
build. Long before other towns in this part of Kansas had dreamed it
possible for them, New Eden was lighted with electricity. Water-works
and a sewer system fore-ran cement sidewalks and a mile of paving, not
including the square around the court-house. And before any of these had
come the big stone school-house on the high ridge overlooking the Sage
Brush Valley for miles. That also was York Macpherson's task, which he
had carried out almost single-handed, and had the satisfaction of
bringing desirable taxpaying residents to live in New Eden who would
never have come but for the school advantages. Then Junius Brutus Ponk,
who had learned to couple with York, got himself elected to the board of
education and began to pay higher salaries to teachers than was paid by
any other town in the whole Sage Brush Valley; to the end that better
schools were housed in that fine school-building, and a finer class of
young citizens began to put the good name of New Eden above everything
else. The hoodlum element was there, of course, but it was not the
leading element. Boys stuck to the high-school faithfully and followed
it up with a college course, even though a large per cent. of them
worked for every dollar that the course cost them. Girls went to
college, too, until it became a rare thing to find a teacher in the
whole valley who had not a diploma from some institution of higher
learning.

It was only recently that Laura Macpherson had come to New Eden to make
her home with her brother. An accident a few years before had shortened
one limb, making her limp as she walked. She was some years older than
York, with a face as young and very much like her brother's; a comely,
companionable sort of woman, popular alike with men and women, young
folks and children.

Some time before her coming York had bought the best building-site in
New Eden, a wooded knoll inside the corporation limits, the only natural
woodland in the vicinity, that stood directly across the far end of
Broad Avenue, the main business street, whose mile of paving ended in
York's driveway. In one direction, this site commanded a view far down
Sage Brush Valley; in the other, it overlooked the best residence and
business portion of New Eden. Here York had, as he put it, "built a
porch, at the rear of which a few rooms were attached." The main glory
of the place, however, was the big porch.

York had named their home "Castle Cluny," and his big farm joining it
just outside the town limits "Kingussie," after some old Macpherson-clan
memories. There were no millionaires in the Sage Brush Valley, and this
home was far and away the finest, as well as the most popular, home in a
community where thrift and neatness abounded in the homes, and elegance
was very much lacking, as was to be expected in a young town on the far
edge of the Middle West.

"Joe Thomson came in to-day to see me about putting a mortgage on his
claim this side of the big blowout. Looks like a losing game for Joe.
His land is about one-third sand now," York commented, thoughtfully, as
he settled himself comfortably in his big porch chair.

"Well, why not let the sand have its own third, while he uses the other
two-thirds himself? They ought to keep him busy," Laura suggested.

The country around New Eden was still new to her. Although she
overflowed the town with her sunny presence, her lameness had kept her
nearer to "Castle Cluny" than her brother had comprehended. She did not
understand the laws, nor lawlessness, of what her brother called the
"blowout," nor had she ever seen the desolation that marked its
broadening path.

"A blowout is never satisfied until it has swallowed all the land in the
landscape," York explained. "I remember a few years ago there was just a
sandy outcrop along a little draw below Joe's claim, the line of some
prehistoric river-bed, I suppose. That was the beginning of the thing
Joe is fighting to-day. Something started the sand to drifting. It
increased as the wind blew away the soil; the more wind, the more sand;
the more sand, the more wind. They worked together until what had been a
narrow belt spread enormously, gradually overlapping Joe's claim, making
acres of waste ground. I hate to see Joe shoulder a mortgage to try to
drive back that monstrous thing. But Joe is one of those big,
self-contained fellows who takes the bit in his teeth and goes his own
gait in spite of all the danger signals you wigwag at him."

"Why do you loan him money if you know he can't succeed?" Laura
inquired.

"Making farm loans is the business of the Macpherson Mortgage Company.
That's how we maintain our meager existence," York replied, teasingly.
"Joe wants to fight back the blowout creeping over his south border
farther and farther each year. Our company gets its commission while he
fights. See?"

"Oh, you grasping loan shark! If I didn't know how easy it is for you to
lie I'd disown you," Laura declared, flinging a chair pillow at her
brother, who was chuckling at her earnestness.

But York was serious himself in the next minute.

"Our company doesn't want the prairie; it wants prosperity. A foreclosed
mortgage is bad business. It brings us responsibility and ill-will. What
we want is good-will and interest money. I have put the thing up to Joe
just as it is. Man is a free agent to choose or let alone. I have a
bigger problem than Joe to handle now. I had a letter this evening from
Miss Geraldine Swaim, of Philadelphia. Do you remember her, Laura? She
used to come up to Winnowoc when she was a little girl."

"I remember little Jerry Swaim, Jim and Lesa's only child," York's
sister declared. "She was considerably younger than I. I pushed her in
her baby-cab when I wasn't very big myself. When I went away to college
she was a little roly-poly beauty of ten or eleven, maybe. Wasn't she
named for her father's rich sister, Mrs. Darby? I never knew that Mrs.
Darby's name was Geraldine."

"It wasn't; it was Jerusha; and Jim's name was Jeremiah; and Lesa's was
plain Melissa," York explained. "But Lesa changed all of their names to
make them sound more romantic. Romance was Lesa's strong suit. She
called her daughter 'Jerry,' to please Mrs. Darby, but the child was
christened Geraldine--never Jerusha. Lesa wouldn't stand for that."

"And now what does this Geraldine want from my respected brother?" Laura
inquired, leaning back on the cushions of her chair to listen.

York's face was hidden by the darker shadows of the porch, but his
sister knew by his grave tone, when he spoke again, that something
deeper than a business transaction lay back of this message from
Philadelphia.

"It's an old story, Laura. The story of parents rearing a child in
luxury and then dying poor and leaving this child unprovided for and
unfitted to provide for herself. Jim Swaim was as clear-headed as his
wife was soft-hearted and idealizing. Every angle of his was a right
angle, even if he did grow a bit tight-fisted sometimes for his family's
sake. But a leech of a fellow, a sort of relative by marriage, got his
claws into Jim some way, and in the end got him, root and branch. Then
Lesa contracted pneumonia and died after a short illness. And just when
Jim was most needed to hold up his business interests and tide things
over, as well as look after his daughter, they found him dead in his
office one morning. Heart failure, the doctors said, the kind that gets
a brain-fagged business man. The estate has been in litigation for two
years. Now it is settled, and all that is left for Geraldine is a claim
her father held out here in the Sage Brush Valley. She thinks she is
going to live on that. She came in on the afternoon train and is
stopping at the Commercial Hotel. I called to see her a minute on my way
home. That was why I ate a cold dinner this evening. I asked her to come
here at once, but she refused. Some one from the hotel will bring her
over later. That means Ponk, of course. He's the whole Commercial Hotel
'and Gurrage.' We must have her here to stay with us awhile, of course."

"York Macpherson!" his sister fairly gasped. "Coming to call this
evening! Will stay with us awhile, of course. All right. I'm willing
she should stay with us awhile, but how can _she_ live on a Sage Brush
claim? Why doesn't her rich aunt Darby provide for her? What does she
look like?"

"I don't know," York drawled, provokingly. Then he added: "Mrs. Darby
also writes, saying that she hopes we will look after Jerry while she is
here, but that she herself can do nothing for her niece, because a
relative of her dear deceased husband, an artist of merit but no means,
is dependent on her, and she owes it to her dear deceased's memory to
look after this young man. I've a notion that there is something back of
both letters, but I haven't had time to read behind the lines yet."

"Turns out her own flesh and blood, a girl, too, to shift for herself,
and coddles this man, this artist thing, for her dear deceased's sake.
What _do_ you think of that?" Laura burst out.

"I don't think of that," York replied. "Not really knowing any woman but
my sister, I can't judge them by the sample. Besides, this 'girl thing'
may have elected to come to the Sage Brush herself; that would be like
Jim Swaim. Or she may be making a lark of the trip; that's her mother's
child. And, anyhow, she has property in her own name, you see."

"Property, bosh! Where is this precious claim that is to sustain this
luxuriously reared child?" Laura Macpherson insisted.

"It is an undeveloped claim down the Sage Brush, in a part of the
country you haven't seen yet. That is what this child of luxury has come
out for to live upon," York said, with a minor chord of anxiety in his
voice.

Then a silence fell, for Laura Macpherson felt that something tragical
must be bound up in the course of coming events.

It was the poet's hour of "nearly dark." The "high lights" were
beginning to gleam from the cupola of the court-house and high-school,
and station tower out across the open stretch that lay between it and
the town. New Eden was unusually well lighted for its size. York
Macpherson had forced that provision into the electric company's
franchise. But New-Edenites were still rural in their ways, and never
burned up the long summer twilight with bug-alluring street lights.
Homes, too, were mostly shadowy places, with the dwellers resting in
porch swings or lawn chairs. Moreover, although there was a little
leakage somewhere through which things disappeared occasionally, nobody
in town except bankers, postmasters, and mortgage companies locked their
doors. The jail was usually empty on the Saturday night, and the
churches were full on Sunday, as is the normal condition of Middle West
towns in a prohibition state.

"The wind is in the east. It will rain to-morrow," York said, after a
pause. "I had planned to go to the upper Sage Brush country for a
couple of days. I'll wait till after Sunday now."

Laura Macpherson did not know whether the last meant relief or anxiety.
York was not readable to-night.

"What are you staring at?" York asked, presently, from his
vine-sheltered angle, as he saw his sister looking intently down into
the street.

"Humans," Laura replied, composedly.

"Not the Big Dipper, I hope. Isn't the town big enough without her
ranging all over 'Kingussie'?"

"Oh, York, you will call Mrs. Bahrr 'the Big Dipper' to her face some
day, if you don't quit your private practice," Laura declared.

"Well, her name is Stella Bahrr. 'Stellar,' she calls it, and she
pronounces her surname just plain 'Bear.' If that isn't starry enough I
don't know my astronomy. And she is always dipping into other folks's
business and stirring up trouble with a high hand. Laura, once and for
all, never tie up with that little old hat-trimmer. She'll trim you if
you do."

"Don't be uneasy about our getting chummy. I'm positively rude to her
most of the time. She isn't coming here. She has veered off toward the
Lenwells'. But look who is coming, York."

York shifted his chair into line with the street.

"It's the fair Philadelphian and her pompous gentleman in waiting," York
declared.

"Look at little Brother Ponk strut, would you? 'A charge to keep I
have.' But, York, Miss Swaim appears a bit too Philadelphian for our New
Eden scenery!" Laura exclaimed.

"She is a type all her own, I would say. Jim Swaim's determined chin and
Lesa's dreamy eyes. She will be an interesting study, at least. I wonder
which parent will win in her final development," York replied, as the
two approached the house.

"I have brought the young lady to call on you," Mr. Ponk said,
presenting his companion with a flourish, as if she were a trophy cup or
a statue just unveiled. "Sorry I can't stay to visit with you, but my
clerk is out to-night. They'll take care of you beautiful, Miss Swaim.
No, thank you, no. I'll just soar back to the hotel."

He waved off the seat York had proffered him, and bowed himself away as
gracefully as a short, round man can bow.

Laura Macpherson had an inborn gift of hospitality, but she realized at
once that this guest brought an unusual and compelling interest. She was
conscious, too, in a vague way, of the portent of some permanent change
pending. What she saw clearly was a very pretty girl with a soft voice
and a definite, forceful personality.

"Miss Swaim, you must be tired after your long journey," Laura began,
courteously.

"Please don't call me that. I am so far from home I'll be 'Miss Swaimed'
enough, anyhow."

The appeal in the blue eyes broke down all reserve.

"Then I'll call you 'Jerry,' as I did when you were a little girl and I
was beginning to think about getting grown up," Laura exclaimed.

"And since you are far from home, we hope you may find a home welcome in
our house, and that you will come at once and be our guest
indefinitely," York added, with his winning smile that ought to have
sent him to Congress years ago.

Something about Jerry Swaim had caught Laura Macpherson in a moment. She
hoped that York had the same feeling. But York was one of the
impenetrable kind when he chose. And he certainly chose that evening to
prove his impenetrability.

"You are very kind," Jerry said, looking at York with earnest eyes, void
of all coquettishness. Then, turning to York's sister, she went on:

"I am not tired now. But the last part of my journey was frightful. The
afternoon was hot, and the wind blew terrifically. They had to close the
windows to keep out the dust. Then we were delayed in what they told me
was called a 'blowout.'" Her eyes were sparkling now, but her emphasis
on the term seemed to cut against York Macpherson's senses like burning
sand-filled wind as he sat studying her face.

"All the 'blowouts' I ever heard of were in the tires of our limousine
car," she continued, musingly. "And my cousin, Gene Wellington, of
Philadelphia, didn't know what to do about them at all. He is an artist,
and artists never do take to practical things. Gene was more helpless
when anything went wrong with the car than ever I was, and awfully
afraid of taking a risk or anything."

And that, it seemed to the Macphersons, must have been helpless indeed.
For as she sat there at ease in the shadowy dimness of the summer
evening, York Macpherson thought of Carlyle's phrasing, "Her feet to
fall on softness; her eyes to light on splendor," a creature fitted only
to adorn the upholstered places of life.

"Did you ever see that dreadful 'blowout' thing?" Jerry asked, coming
back from the recollection of limousine cars and Cousin Gene of
Philadelphia.

"No, I have only been here a short time myself, and the country is
almost as new to me as it is to you," Laura Macpherson replied.

"Oh, it is _such_ an awful place!" Jerry continued. "Everywhere and
everywhere one can see nothing but great sand-waves all over the land.
They have almost buried the palisades that protect the railroad. It just
seemed like the Red Sea dividing to let the Israelites go through, only
this was red-hot sand held back to let the train pass through a deep
rift. And to-day the wind had filled up the tracks so it couldn't go
through until the sand was cleaned out. There is only one kind of shrub,
a spiny looking thing, growing anywhere on all those useless acres. It
is a perfectly horrid country! Why was such land ever made?" Jerry
turned to York with the question.

"I can't tell you," York said, "but there are some good things here."

"Yes, there is my claim," Jerry broke in. "It's all I have left, you
know. Cousin Gene tried to persuade me it would be better off without
me, but I'm sure it must need the owner's oversight to make it really
profitable. There was no record, in settling up the estate, of its
having produced any income at all. I certainly need the income now.
Taking care of myself is a new experience for me."

All the vivacity and hopefulness of youth was in her words. But the
dreamy expression on her face that came and went with her moods soon
returned.

"Cousin Gene Wellington is not my real cousin, you know. He is Uncle
Darby's relative, not Aunt Jerry's. He is an artist, but without any
income right now, like myself. Both of us have to learn how to go alone,
you see, but I'm not going back to Philadelphia now, no matter what Aunt
Jerry Darby may say."

This was no appeal for sympathy. Taking care of oneself seemed easy
enough to Lesa Swaim's child, to whom the West promised only one grand
romantic adventure. There was something, too, in the tone in which she
pronounced the name of Gene Wellington that seemed to set it off from
every other name. And she pronounced it often enough to trouble York
Macpherson. No other name came so easily and so frequently and frankly
to her lips.

"We hope you will like the West. The Sage Brush isn't so bad when you
get acclimated to its moods," York assured her. "But don't expect too
much at first, nor too definite a way of securing an income."

Only Laura Macpherson caught the same minor chord of anxiety in her
brother's voice that she recalled had been in it when he told her of
Jerry's claim. It seemed impossible, however, that anything could refuse
to be profitable for this charming, blossomy kind of a girl who must
thrive on easy success or perish, like a flower.

"Oh, land always means an income, my father used to say. Aunt Jerry has
only two hundred acres, but it is a fortune to her," the girl declared.
"I'm not uneasy. As soon as I get a real hold on my property here I'll
be all right. It is getting late. I must go now. No, I am going by
myself," she declared, prettily, as York prepared to accompany her back
to the hotel. "It is straight up this light street and I am going to try
it alone from the very beginning. That's why I didn't go to your office
as soon as I got here to-day. I told Cousin Gene I could take care of
myself and make my own way out here, just as he is making his own way in
the East, working in his studio. No, you shall not go with me. Thank
you so much. No. Good-by." This to York Macpherson, who was wise enough
to catch the finality of her words.

The twilight was almost gone, but a young moon in the west made the
street still light as the two on the porch watched the girl going
firm-footed and unafraid, unconscious of their anxiety for what lay in
the days before her.

"Is it courage, or contempt for the West, that makes her fearless where
one would expect her to be timid? She seems a combination of ignorance
and assertiveness and a plea for sympathy all in one," Laura Macpherson
declared.

"She is the child of two different temperaments--Jim one, and Lesa
another; a type all her own, but taking on something of each parent,"
York asserted, as he watched until the girl had disappeared at the door
of the Commercial Hotel, far up the street.

The next day was an unusual one for four people in New Eden. The wind
came from the east, driving an all-day rain before it, and York
Macpherson did not go to the upper Sage Brush country. Instead, he
worked steadily in his office all day. Some files he had not opened for
months were carefully gone over, and township maps were much in
evidence. Every now and then he glanced toward the upper windows of the
Commercial Hotel. Mr. Ponk had said that Jerry had No. 7, the room he
had occupied for several years. He wondered if this rain was making her
homesick for the Winnowoc Valley and "Eden" and that wonderful Cousin
Gene, blast him! There was a smile in York's eyes whenever he looked
across the street. When he turned to his work again his face was stern.
What he thought was a determination not to be bothered by rainy-day
loafers coming into his office, what made him set his teeth and grip to
his work, was really the fight with a temptation to go over to the hotel
and look after a homesick girl.

Meantime Jerry Swaim, snug in a filmy gray kimona with pink facings and
soft gray slippers, was enjoying the day to the full limit. Secure from
strangers, relaxed from the weariness of travel, she slept dreamlessly,
and wakened, pink and rested, to watch the cool, life-giving rains and
dream her wonderful day-dreams wherein new adventure, victory over
obstacles, and Eugene each played a part. Jerry was in love with life.
Sunshine and rain, wind and calm, every season, were made to serve her,
all things in nature to bring her interest and pleasure--all except
_sand_. That hot hour and a half between sand-leaguered palisades seared
her memory. But that was all down-stream now, with the junction station,
and the country Thelma, and the tow-headed woman and flabby flopping
baby, and the little old Teddy Bear humping his yellow-brown fuzziness
against the swirl of cinders and prairie dust. The recollection of it
all was like the touch of a live coal on the cool surface of her
tranquil soul, a thing abhorred that yet would not be uncreated nor
forgotten.

"To-morrow will be Sunday." The little pagan would have one more idle
day. "I'll get a letter from Eugene on Monday. On Monday," dreamily,
"I'll beg into live here, not stay here. What charming folks the
Macphersons are! and--so different."

There was a difference. Jerry did not know, nor care to analyze it, nor
explain to herself, why these two people had in themselves alone begun
to make New Eden worth while for her. She for whom things, human and
otherwise, had heretofore been created--all except _sand_.

The third New-Edenite who had some special interests on this rainy day
was Junius Brutus Ponk. Often an idler in the Macpherson Company's
office, he was always interesting to York. There were never created two
of his kind. That in itself made him worth while to the big, strong man
of many affairs. And, much as York wanted to be alone to-day, he
welcomed the coming of Ponk. In the long, serious conversation that
followed, their usual bantering had no place. And when the little man
went slowly out, and slowly crossed the street to the hotel, indifferent
to the steady fall of rain, York Macpherson's eyes followed him
earnestly.

"He'll almost forget to strut if that girl stays here--but she won't
stay. And he will strut. He's made that way. But down under it all he's
a man, God bless him--a man any woman could trust."

Up at "Castle Cluny" the rainy day brought one caller whom "chilling
winds nor poisonous breath" could never halt--Mrs. Stellar Bahrr,
otherwise--"the Big Dipper"--the town gossip.

Mrs. Stellar Bahrr was a married, widowed-by-divorce, old-maid type,
built like a sky-scraper, of the lean, uncertain age just around sixty,
with the roundness of youth all gone, and the plump beauty of
matronliness all lacking, wrinkled with envy and small malice, living on
repeating what New Eden wanted kept untold. Hiding what New Eden should
have known of her, she maintained herself on a pension from some one,
known only to York Macpherson, and the small income derived just now
from trimming over last year's hats "to make them look like
four-year-olds," York declared.

The real milliner of the town was a brisk, bright business woman who had
Stellar Bahrr on her trail in season and out of season. Mrs. Bahrr
herself could not have kept up a business of any kind for a week, for
she changed callings almost with the moon's phases.

No more unwelcome caller could have intruded on the homey, delicious,
rainy-day seclusion of "Castle Cluny."

"I jis' run in to see the hat again you're goin' to wear to-morrow, Miss
Laury. I 'ain't got more 'n a minute. Ye ain't alone this dreary day,
are ye? The Lenwells was sayin' last night your brother was goin' to the
upper Sage Brush on some business with the Posers. But they're in town,
rainy as it is, an' all. Did he go?"

"No, he put it off till Monday," Laura replied, wondering what interest
York's going or coming could be to Stellar Bahrr.

"As I was sayin', the Posers is in town. Come to meet Nell and her baby.
They come in on the freight yesterday. The biggest, bald-headest young
un you ever see. Nell wants her hat fixed over, and nothin' on the
livin' earth to fix it with, ner money to pay for it. I'll make ol'
Poser do that, though. Lemme see your hat, so's I can get an idy or two.
You've got some 'commodation, if that blamed millinery-store hain't.
Thank ye for the favor."

Stellar had a way of pinning her eyes through one until her victim could
not squirm. She also had a way of talking so much she gave the
impression of running down and the promise of a speedy leave-taking,
which she never took until she had gained all the information she
wanted. Her talent in a good cause would have been invaluable, for she
was shrewd, patient, and everlastingly persistent.

Laura Macpherson reluctantly left the room to get her hat, wondering,
since it had not been out of the box before, how in the world Stellar
Bahrr knew anything about it. Mrs. Bahrr was standing by the dining-room
window when she returned.

"I jis' come out here to see if the Sage Brush is raisin' down yonder.
Who is that strange girl Ponk's running around with last night?" The
gossip turned the question suddenly. "I seen 'em comin' up here myself.
Folks down-town don't know yet." The sharp, steel-pointed eyes caught
into Laura like hooks.

"I don't--believe you'll like this hat." Laura had meant to say, "I
don't intend to tell you," but she was hooked too quickly.

"Who'd you say she is?"

There was no courteous way out now.

"She is a Miss Swaim."

"Say, this hat's a jew'l. Looks younger 'n the girls' hats does on 'em.
Where's she from?"

"East. This color is a bit trying for me, I think."

"Oh, no 'tain't! What's she here for?"

"I--You'll have to ask York." Laura rolled her burdens on her brother's
shoulders, as did likewise the remainder of New Eden, when crowded to
the wall.

"York! She ain't after him, I hope. Don't blush so. That's a good one
on York. An' he never met her at the station, even. Ponk--little fiend"
(Ponk always turned game-cock when Stellar approached him), "little
devil he is--he telephoned in from down at the sidin', by the deep
fishin'-hole."

Mrs. Bahrr caught her breath and bit her lips as she eyed her hostess
slyly. Laura Macpherson was white with disgust and anger. Of all the
long-tongues, here was the queen.

"Where's the deep fishing-hole?" she asked, innocently, to get her
unpleasant caller on another tack.

For a moment Mrs. Bahrr did not reply, busying herself with examining
the new hat's lining and brim-curves. If Laura had known what York
Macpherson knew she would have realized that here was the place to score
by dwelling on the deep fishing-hole. But Laura was new to Sage Brush
traditions.

"Ponk calls in to have his spanky new runabout all ready at the station.
George nearly busted hisself gettin' there. Then Ponk, the miserable
brute, he hangs around and keeps Miss Swine--"

"Swaim, Geraldine Swaim," Laura cried, in disgust.

"Yes, Geraldine Swim--keeps her inside, so's nobody gets a good look at
her. I was there myself, a-watchin' him. I'd gone to see if my fish 'd
been sent up, an' when they'd all cleared out he trots her out, big as
Cuffey, and races to the hotel with her. Maybe, though, York didn't
know she was comin', or had Ponk put up to lookin' after her for him.
You never can tell about these men. I noticed York never walked home
with her last night, neither. 'Course it was light as day. Well, well,
it's interestin' as can be. An' she come here purpose to see your
brother, too."

"If you are through with my hat"--Laura was fairly gray with anger and
her eyes flashed as she tried to control herself.

Nobody was wiser than Stellar Bahrr in situations like this.

"In jest a minute. Them's the daintiest roses yet. Thank you, Miss
Laury. You ain't above helping a person like me. There's them that is
here in New Eden. But I know 'em--I know 'em. They talk to your back and
never say a word to your face, not a blamed word. But you're not like
'em. Everybody says you're just like your brother, an' that's enough for
anybody to know in the Sage Brush country. He's been the best friend I
ever had, I know that. I hope that pink-'n'-white city girl 'll find out
that much pretty quick. Somebody ought to tell her, too. Well, good day,
Miss Laury. My umberel's right outside in the umberel-stand."

Poor Laura! She was no fighter from choice, no imputer of evil motives,
but her love for her brother amounted almost to idolatry.

"I'm her one weakness," York often said. "Her strength is in her sense
of humor, her kind heart, her love of beautiful things, and the power of
the old scrapping blood of the Macphersons that will stand so much--and
then Joan of Arc is a tennis-player alongside of my blessed sister in
her righteous wrath."

That rainy day ended with a problem in the minds of at least three New
Eden dwellers: York Macpherson, who carried a bigger load now than Joe
Thomson's unwise but determined mortgage matter; Junius Brutus Ponk, who
was sharing York's problem to a degree, and Laura Macpherson, who
realized that a malicious under-current was already started whose
undermining influence might sooner or later grow into a menacing power.

And Jerry Swaim, unconscious cause of all this problem element, ate and
slept and laughed and dreamed her pretty day-dreams in utter content. It
was well that the next day was Sunday. The rain-washed prairie and the
June sunshine did so much to lift the tension in this New Eden where
even the good little snakes are not always so very good.




VI

PARADISE LOST


Laura Macpherson came through the dining-room on Monday morning with her
hands full of wild flowers.

"Wherefore?" York asked, seeing the breakfast-table already decorated
with a vase of sweet-peas.

"Just a minute, York. I got these with the dew on them--all prairie
flowers. I thought Jerry might be up to see me to-day. I went out after
them for her," Laura explained, as she arranged the showy blossoms in
vases about the rooms.

York dropped behind his day-old paper, calling after her, indifferently:
"I doubt if they are worth it. You must have gone to the far side of
'Kingussie' for them. I doubt, too, if she comes here to-day, but I
haven't any doubt that I am hungry and likely to get hungrier before you
get ready for breakfast."

"Coming, coming." Laura came hastily to the table. "I forgot you in my
interest in Jerry."

"A prevalent disease in New Eden right now," York said, behind his
paper. "Ponk nearly fell down on getting me a chauffeur for to-day; the
superintendent didn't get the quarterlies to our Sunday-school class on
time yesterday morning; the Big Dipper took the wrong pew and kept it,
and now my breakfast must wait--all on account of this Jerry girl."

"Mournful, mournful!" Laura declared. "Such a little girl, too! I'd like
to tell you what your Big Dipper said about Jerry Saturday, but I
mustn't."

"Saturday was a rainy day," York commented, knowing Laura would answer
no questions if he should ask them now.

"All the more reason why the Big Dipper should come over to copy my new
hat for one of the Poser girls up the Sage Brush, and then fall to
questions and conclusions," Laura insisted.

"I thought yesterday was the grand opening for that lid of yours. Where
did the B. D. see it?" York would not ask for what he wanted most to
know.

"It had positively never been out of the box since it came here," Laura
declared. "But pshaw, York, it is the gossip you want to know, and I'm
really concerned about that."

"I'm not. I am really concerned about where Stellar Bahrr saw your hat."
York was very serious and his sister was puzzled for the minute. He
never looked that way when he joked--never.

"I don't know anything about Mrs. Bahrr's gift of second sight, York;
I'm simply telling what I do know. That hat-box was not opened. Let's
talk of better things. Mr. Ponk told me at church yesterday that when
Jerry first came she asked for 'an old gentleman named York
Macpherson.'" Laura's eyes were twinkling with mischief. "From what she
said to me yesterday she is going to depend on you for direction, just
like everybody else who comes to New Eden. I'm dead in love with her
already. Aren't you?"

"Desperately," York returned. "But seriously, Laura, she is 'most too
big a responsibility to joke about. There are a lot of things tied up
for her in this coming West. I have to go to the upper Sage Brush this
morning to be gone for a couple of days. I wish she would come here and
stay with you, so that she might be with the best woman in the world."
York beamed affectionately upon the sweet-faced woman opposite him. "I
wish I didn't have to leave this morning, but I'll be back by to-morrow
night or early Wednesday morning. It is going to be our job to map out
her immediate future. After that, things will take their course without
us, and New Eden, I imagine, will have to get along without her. When I
get back I'll take her down to see her claim. Ponk is the only man
besides myself who knows where it is, and I've fixed him. He can't run a
hotel and garage and play escort all at once. I want to prepare her in a
way, anyhow, for she won't find exactly what she is expecting--another
'Eden' six times enlarged. Meantime turn her gently, if you can, toward
our woolly Western life. I won't say lead. Geraldine Swaim, late of
Philadelphia, will never be led."

"York she's a lamb. Look at her big, pleading eyes," his sister
insisted.

"Laura, she's a rock. Look at her square chin. I'm going now, and I will
and bequeath her to your care. Good-by."

As he left the house his sister heard him whistling the air to the old
song, "I'll paddle my own canoe."

Evidently the fair Philadelphian was still on his mind.

"I wish," he said to himself, as he cleared the north limits of the New
Eden settlement and struck out toward the upper Sage Brush country--"I
wish to goodness I had pressed Laura to tell me more about what that
infernal Big Dipper said to her Saturday. I'll get that creature yet. I
believe she knows that as well as I do. I wish, too, I was sure things
would just stay put until I get back."

Half an hour after York had left town Jerry Swaim, dressed for a drive,
appeared at the door of Ponk's garage.

"Have you a good little runabout that I could hire this morning? I want
to go out into the country," she said to the proprietor.

"Why, yes, Miss Swaim, but I 'ain't got no shofer this morning. York
Macpherson, he took my last man and soared up the country, and they
won't be back for a couple of days. I'm sorry, but could you wait till,
say, about a-Thursday, or mebby a-Friday?"

Ponk's cheerful grin always threatened to eclipse his eyes, but this
morning there was something anxious back of his cheerfulness. Nature had
made him in a joking mood, round eyed, round headed, round bodied,
talkative, and pompous in an inverse ratio to his size. But there was
something always good and reliable about Ponk, and with all his
superficiality, too, there was a real depth to the man, and a keener
insight than anybody in New Eden, except York Macpherson, ever gave him
credit for having.

"I'm sorry I've got no shofer. There was a run on the livery business
this morning for some reason. That's why I'm office-boy here now, 'stead
of runnin' the office next door," Ponk explained, as blandly and
conclusively as possible.

"I don't want a chauffeur at all. I drive myself," Jerry declared.

"You say you do?" Ponk stared at her little hands in their close-fitting
white gauntlets.

"Now I'd never thought that. Yes," weakly, "I've got a dandy car for
them that can use it, which is mostly me. It's the little gray gadabout
we come up from the station in the other evening. There ain't another
one like it this side of the Mississippi River--S'liny, Kansas, anyhow.
You see, I have to be awful particular. I don't want it smashed against
a stone wall or run off of some bridge."

"I've never done that with a car yet. And I used to drive our big
eight-cylinder machine over all kinds of Pennsylvania roads."

The blue eyes were full of pathos as the memory of her home and all its
luxuries swept over Jerry. And Ponk understood.

"We don't have no stone walls out here, and there ain't no bridges,
either, except across the Sage Brush in a few places, because there
ain't never water enough out here to bridge over. Yes, you may take the
gadabout. I just know you'll be careful. That little car's just like a
colt, and noways bridle-wise under a woman's hand."

"Thank you. I'll take no risks."

When Jerry was seated in the shining gray car, with her hand on the
wheel, she turned to Mr. Ponk.

"By the way, do you know who owns any of the claims, as you call them,
in this valley?" she asked. "I was going to speak to Mr. Macpherson, but
you say he has gone out of town."

"Yes'm." Ponk fairly swelled with importance. "I know every claim, and
who owns it, from the hills up yonder clear to the mouth of that stream.
My hotel an' livery business together keeps me as well posted as the
Macpherson Mortgage Company that holds a mortgage on most of them."

"Can you tell me where to find the one belonging to the estate of the
late Jeremiah Swaim, of Philadelphia?" Jerry asked, in a low voice.

The short little man beside the car looked away in pity and surprise as
he said:

"Yes'm, I can. You follow this street south and keep on till you come to
where the Sage Brush makes a sharp bend to the east, right at a
ranch-house. From there you leave the trail (we still call that
down-stream road 'the trail') and strike across to three big
cottonwood-trees on a kind of a knoll, considerable distance away. You
can't miss 'em, for you can see 'em for miles. And then"--Ponk hesitated
as if trying to remember--"seems to me you turn, bias'n' like, southeast
a bit, and head for a little bunch of low oaks. From there you run your
eye around and figger how many acres you can see. An', it's all Jeremiah
Swaim's, or his heirs an' assignees. But, say, _you_ ain't any kin to
the late Mr. Swaim, who never seen that land of hisn, I reckon? I hadn't
thought about your names being the same. Odd I didn't."

There was something wistful in the query which Jerry set down merely as
plebeian curiosity, but she answered, courteously:

"Yes, he was my father. The land belongs to me."

"Say, hadn't you better wait and let York Macpherson soar down with
you?" Ponk suggested. "It might be better, after all, mebby, not to go
alone to spy out the land, even if you can drive yourself. Seems to me
York said he'd be goin' down that way the last of the week. I do wish
you'd wait for York to go with you first."

"I want to go alone," Jerry replied, and with a deft hand she made the
difficult curve to the street, leaving the proprietor of the garage
staring after her.

"Well, by heck! she can run a car anyhow!" he exclaimed, as he watched
her speeding away. "Smart as her dad, I reckon. Mebby a little smarter."

All of Lesa Swaim's love of romantic adventure was shining on Jerry
Swaim's bright face as she came upon Laura Macpherson on the cool side
porch a few minutes later.

"I'm going out to inspect my royal demesne," she cried, gaily.

"Not to-day. I want you to spend the day with me, and you don't know the
road. You haven't any way to go. York will be home soon. He wants to
take you there himself. He understands land values, and, anyhow, you
oughtn't go alone," Laura Macpherson said, emphatically.

"That is just what Mr. Ponk said at the garage, but I want to go alone."

That "I want" settled everything with Jerry Swaim in the Kansas New Eden
as in the old "Eden" in the green valley of the Winnowoc.

"I have hired a runabout of Mr. Ponk. He gave me directions so I can't
miss the way. Good-by."

The trail down the Sage Brush was full of delight this morning for the
young Eastern girl who sent her car swiftly along the level road, almost
forgetting the landmarks of the way in the exhilaration of youth and
June-time. And, however out of place she might seem on the Western
prairie, no one could doubt her ability to handle a car.

"'Where the stream bends sharp to the east away from a ranch-house,'"
Jerry was quoting Ponk. "I'm sure I can't miss it if I follow his
directions and the stream and bend and house and cottonwood-trees and
oak-grove are really there. I love oaks and I hope my woodland is full
of them. There must be a woodland on my farm, even if the trees are few
and small and scattered here, so far as I have seen. But there was
really something pitiful in the little man's eyes when he was talking to
me. Maybe he is a wee bit envious of my possessions. Some men are
jealous of women who have property. No doubt my workmen will need
managing, and some adjusting to a new head of affairs. I'll be very
considerate with them, but they must respect my authority. I wish Gene
was with me this morning."

Then she fell to musing.

"I wonder what message Gene will send me, and whether he will write it
himself, or, as he suggested, will send it through Aunt Jerry's letters
to York. It was his original way of doing to say I'd find things out
through Aunt Jerry, when she probably won't write me a line for a long
time. I know Gene will choose nobly, and I know everything will turn out
all right at last.... I wonder if my place is as beautiful as this. How
I wish Gene could see it with his artist eyes."

Jerry brought her engine down to slow speed as she passed a thrifty
ranch-house where barns and clustering silos, and fields of grain and
cattle-dotted prairies outlying all, betokened the possibilities of the
Sage Brush Valley. The blue eyes of Lesa Swaim's daughter were full of
dreamy light as she paused to picture here the possibilities of her own
possessions.

At the crest of a low ridge the road forked, one branch wandering in and
out among the small willow-trees along the river, and the other cutting
clean and broad across the rougher open land swelling away from the
narrowed valley.

"Here's something Mr. Junius Brutus Ponk left out of his map. I'll take
the rim road; it looks the more inviting," Jerry decided, because the
way of least resistance had been her life-road always.

This one grew narrow and clung close to the water's side. Its sandy bed
was damp and firm, and the slender trees on either side here and there
almost touched branches overhead. Mile after mile it seemed to stretch
without another given landmark to show Jerry her destination. Beyond
where the road curved sharply around a thicket of small trees and
underbrush Jerry halted her car. Before her the waters of the river
rippled into foam against a rocky ledge that helped to form a deep hole
above it. Below, the stream was shallow, and in dry midsummer here
offered rough stepping-stones across it. It was a lonely spot, with the
river on one side and a tangle of bushes and tall weeds on the other,
and the curves along the roadway, filled with underbrush and low timber
shutting off the view up-stream and down-stream.

At the coming of Jerry's car a man who had been kneeling over some
fishing-lines at the river's edge rose up beside the road, brushing the
wet sand from his clothes, and staring at her. He was small and old and
stooped and fuzzy, and thoroughly unpretty to see.

"It's the Teddy Bear who 'sat in the sand and the sun' coming up from
that horrid railroad junction. Who's afraid of bears? I'll ask him how
to find my lost empire."

Jerry did not reflect that it was the unconscious effect of this humble
creature's thoughtfulness for her that made her unafraid of him in this
lonely spot. Reflection was not yet one of her active psychological
processes.

"I want to find a ranch-house by a big bend in the river where it turns
east," Jerry said, looking at the man much as she would look at the bend
in the river--merely for the information to be furnished. He pushed his
brown cap back from his forehead and rubbed his fingers thoughtfully
through his thin sunburnt hair.

"It's Joe's place, eh?" the high, quavering voice squeaking like an
unused machine afraid of itself. "You'd ought to took the t'other fork
of the road back yander. It's a goodish mile on down this way now to
where you das to turn your cyar round. When you get where you kin turn,
then go back and take the t'other fork. It'll take you right to Joe's
door about."

The words came hesitatingly, as if the speaker had little use for
sounding them in his solitary, silent life. Fishermen don't catch fish
by talking to them.

"A mile! I think I'll turn right here," Jerry declared.

Then, as the meek unknown watched her in open-mouthed wonder, she swung
her car deftly about, the outer wheels barely keeping a toe-hold on the
edge of the river-bank, with hardly more than an inch of space between
them and the crumbling sand above the water. As she faced the way over
which she had come she reached out to drop a piece of silver into the
man's hand. He let it fall to the ground, then picked it up and laid it
on the top of the car door.

"I ain't workin' for the gov'mint," he quavered. "I thankee, but I don't
have no knowin's to sell. Ye're welcome to my ketch of information any
day ye're on the river."

He made an odd half-military salute toward his old yellow-brown cap and
shuffled across the road toward a narrow path running back through the
bushes.

At the bend in the river Jerry found herself.

"That must be the ranch-house that Mr. Ponk gave me for a landmark, for
there goes the river bending east, all right. What a quaint, picturesque
thing that is, and built of stone, too, with ivy all over it! It must
have been here a long time. And how well kept everything is! The old
Teddy Bear said it was 'Joe's place.' Well, Joe keeps it looking as
different from some of the places I've passed as 'Eden' differs from
other country-places back in Pennsylvania."

The long, low, stone ranch-house, nestling under its sheltering vines,
had an old and familiarly homey look to Jerry.

"That wide porch is a dream. I'll have one just like it on my place. I
wonder if this farm has any name. I suppose not. What shall I call mine?
'New Eden' wouldn't do, of course. I might call it 'Paradise Prairie.'
That's pretty and smooth. Gene would like that, and talk a lot about
going 'from Nature up to Nature's God.' I don't care a whiff about all
his religious talk, somehow. That's just one thing wherein we will never
agree. If I can go from nature to the finished produce I'll be
satisfied. Oh, yonder are my three trees."

At the bend of the Sage Brush Jerry left the stream road and sped
across a long level swell toward three cottonwood-trees standing
sentinel on a small rise of the prairie. From there she was to see the
oak-grove, the center of her own rich holdings. Oh, Jerry!

<tb>

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 grass 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 passed. 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 space 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.

"I came down here to find out its value. It belongs to me. My only
inheritance. I have always lived in a big city until now, and I know
little of country life except its beauty and comfort, and nothing at all
of the West. But I can understand you when you say that this claim is
not worth an effort. I hope I shall never, never see it again. Good-by."

The firm, red lips quivered and the blue eyes looked up through real
tears as Jerry Swaim drew on her gloves and fitted the soft blue hat
down on the golden glory of her hair. Then without another word she
turned her car about and sped away.




II

JERRY AND JOE




VII

UNHITCHING THE WAGON FROM A STAR


How long is a mid-June day? Ticked off by the almanac, it is so much
time as lies between the day-dawn and the dark of evening. But Jerry
Swaim lived a lifetime in that June day in which she went out to enter
upon her heritage. From the moment she had turned away from the young
farmer under the oak-trees until she reached the forks of the road again
she did not take cognizance of a single object. The three big cottonwood
sentinels, the vine-covered ranch-home, the deep bend of the Sage Brush
to the eastward, were passed unnoted. Ponk's gray gadabout seemed to
know the way home like a faithful horse.

There was no apparent reason why the junction of the two highways should
have momentarily called the bewildered disappointed girl to her calmer
self. No more was there anything logical in her choosing to turn again
down the narrow river road. The lone old fisherman was the farthest down
in the scale from Geraldine Swaim of any human being who had ever shown
her a favor. He could not have had any interest for her.... But York
Macpherson was correct in his estimate of Jerry. She was a type in
herself alone. She drove far beyond the narrow place by the deep hole
where, with accurate eye and clear skill, she had played a game of
chance with the river and fate and guardian angels. Her tires had cut a
wide, curving gash across the sand of the road.

"My gracious alive! that was a close turn!" she exclaimed, as she caught
sight of her wheel-marks. "No wonder the old Teddy Bear looked scared.
One inch or less! Well, there was that inch. But what for? To enter on
my vast landed--vast sanded--estate in the kingdom of Kansas!"

Jerry smiled grimly in ridicule of her foolish, defrauded self. Then in
a desperate effort to blot out of mind what she had seen she hurled the
gray car madly forward. With the bewildered gropings of a shipwrecked
landsman she was struggling to get her bearings, she for whom the earth
had been especially designed. As the hours passed the road became dry
and sunny, with the north breeze tempering the air to the coolness of a
rare Kansas June day, entirely unlike the hot and windy one on which
Jerry had first come up this valley. She did not, in reality, cover many
miles now, because she made long stops in sheltered places and at times
let the gray machine merely creep on the sunny stretches, but in her
mind she had girdled the universe.

In the late afternoon she turned about wearily, as one who has yet many
leagues of ground to cover before nightfall. The sunlight glistened
along the surface of the river and a richer green gleamed in what had
been the shadowy places earlier in the day; but the driver in the car
paid little heed to the lights and shadows of the way.

"If a man went right with himself." Cornelius Darby's words came
drifting across the girl's mind. "Poor Uncle Cornie! He didn't begin to
live, to me, until he was gone. Maybe he knew what it meant for a man
_not_ to go right with himself. And if a woman went right with herself!"

Jerry halted her car again by the deep hole and looked at nothing where
the Sage Brush waters were rippling over the rough ledge in its bed. For
the first time since she had sat under the oak-trees and looked at the
acres that were hers, Jerry Swaim really found herself on solid ground
again. The bloom came slowly back to the ashy cheeks, and the light into
the dark-blue eyes.

"If I can only go right with myself, I shall not fail. I need time,
that's all. There will be a letter from Eugene waiting when I get back
to town, and that will make up for a lot. There must be some way out of
all the mistakes, too. It wasn't my land that I saw. Mr. Ponk must have
directed me wrongly. That country fellow may not know the facts. I'll go
back and ask York Macpherson right away. Only, he's gone out of town for
two days. Oh dear!"

She wrung her hands as the picture of that oak-grove and all that lay
beyond it came vividly before her. She tried to forget it and for a
moment she smiled to herself deceivingly, and then--the smile was gone
and by the determined set of her lips Jerry was her father's own
resolute child again.

"I don't exactly know what next, except that I'm hungry. Why, it is five
o'clock! Where has this day gone, and where am I, anyhow?"

Her eyes fell on the broad ruts across the road. Then back in the bushes
she caught a glimpse of a low roof.

"I smell fish frying. I'll starve to death if I wait to get back to the
Commercial Hotel!" Jerry exclaimed. "Here's the wayside inn where I find
comfort for man and beast."

She called sharply with her horn. In a minute the fuzzy brown fisherman
came shuffling along the narrow path through the bushes.

"I'm dreadfully hungry," Jerry said, bluntly.

It did not occur to her to explain to this creature why she happened to
be here and hungry at this time. She wanted something; that was
sufficient.

"Can't you let me have some of your fish? I am desperate," she went on,
smiling at the surprised face of the man who stared up at her in
silence.

"Yes'm, I can give you what I eat. Just a minute," he squeaked out, at
last. Then he shuffled back to where the bit of roof showed through the
leaves.

While the girl waited a tall, slender woman came around the brushy bend
ahead. She halted in the middle of the road and stared a moment at
Jerry; then she came forward rapidly and passed the car without looking
up. She wore a plain, grayish-green dress, with a sunbonnet of the same
hue covering her face--all very much like the bushes out of which she
seemed to have come and into which she seemed to melt again. In her hand
she carried a big parcel lightly, as if its weight was slight. As Jerry
turned and looked after her with a passing curiosity, she saw that the
woman was looking back also. The young city-bred girl had felt no fear
of the strange country fellow in the far-away oak-grove; she had no fear
of this uncouth fisherman in this lonely hidden place; but when she
caught a mere glimpse of this woman's eyes staring at her from under the
shadows of the deep sunbonnet a tremor of real fright shook her hands
grasping the steering-wheel. It passed quickly, however, with the
reappearance of the host of the wayside inn.

"This is delicious," Jerry exclaimed, as the hard scaly hands lifted a
smooth board bearing her meal up to her.

Fried fish, hot corn-bread, baked in husks in the ashes, wild
strawberries with coarse brown sugar sprinkled on them, and a cup of
fresh buttermilk.

The girl ate with the healthy appetite that youth, a long fast, a day in
the open, and a well-cooked meal can create. When she had finished she
laid a silver half-dollar on the board beside the cracked plate.

"'Tain't nuthin'; no, 'tain't nuthin'. I jis' divided with ye," the
fisherman insisted, shrilly.

"Oh, it is worth a dollar to drink this good buttermilk!"

Jerry lifted the cup, a shining silver mug, and turned it in the light.
It was of an old pattern, with a quaint monogram on one side.

"This looks like an heirloom," she thought. "Why should a bear with
cracked plates and iron knives and forks offer me a drink in a silver
cup? There must be a story back of it. Maybe he's a nobleman in
disguise. Well, the disguise is perfect. After all, it's as good as a
novel to live in Kansas."

Jerry slowly sipped the drink as these thoughts ran through her mind.
The meal was helping wonderfully to take the edge off of the tragedy of
the morning. It would overwhelm her again later, but in this shady,
restful solitude it slipped away.

She smiled down at the old man at the thought of him in a story. _Him!_
But the smile went straight to his heart; that was Jerry's gift, making
him drop his board tray and break the cracked plate in his confusion.

"Here's another quarter. That was my fault," Jerry insisted.

"Oh no'm, no'm! 'Tain't nobody's fault." The voice quavered as the
scaly brown hand thrust back the proffered coin.

Jerry could not understand why this creature should refuse her money.
Tipping, to her mind, covered all the obligations her class owed to the
lower strata of the earth's formation.

<tb>

At sunset York Macpherson drove into Ponk's garage.

"Hello, fellow-townsman! You look like a sick man!" he exclaimed, as the
owner met him in the doorway.

"I'd 'a' been a dead man if you hadn't come this minute," Ponk growled
back.

"Congratulations! The good die young," York returned. "I failed to get
through to the place I wanted to see. That Saturday rain filled the dry
upper channels where a bridge would rot in the tall weeds, but an
all-day rain puts a dangerous flood in every ford, so I came back in
time to save your life. What's your grievance?"

Ponk's face was agonizing between smiles and tears. "Well, spite of all
I, or _anybody_ could do, Miss Swaim takes my little gadabout this
morning and makes off with it."

"And broke the wind-shield? I told you to keep her at home."

York still refused to be serious.

"I don't know what's broke, except my feelin's. You tried yet to _keep_
her anywhere? She would go off to that danged infernal blowout section
of the country, _and she ain't back yet_."

York Macpherson grasped the little man by the arm. "Not back yet! Where
is she, then?"

"She ain't; that's all I know," Ponk responded, flatly. "Yes, yes,
yonder she is just soarin' into the avenue up by 'Castle Cluny' this
minute. Thank the Lord an' that Quaker-colored gadabout!"

"Tell her I'll see her at the hotel as soon as I get my mail," York
said, and he hurried to his office.

A few minutes later Jerry Swaim brought the gray runabout up to the
doorway of the garage.

Ponk assisted her from it and took the livery hire mechanically.

"Thank you, Miss Swaim. Hope you had a safe day. No'm, that's too much,"
handing back a coin of the change. "That's regular. Yes'm." Then, as an
afterthought, he added, with a bow, "York Macpherson he's in town again,
an' he's waitin' to see you in the hotel 'parlor.'"

"Oh!" a gasp of surprise and relief. "Thank you, Mr. Ponk. Yes, I have
had a safe day." And Jerry was gone.

The little man stared after her for a full minute. Then he gave a long
whistle.

"She's a Spartan, an' she's goin' to die game. I'll gamble on that with
Rockefeller. This is the rummiest, bummiest world I ever lived in," he
declared to himself. "Why _the_ dickens does the blowouts have to fall
on the just as well as the unjust 's what I respectfully rise to ask of
the Speaker of all good an' perfect gifts. An' I'm goin' to keep the
floor till I get the recognition of Chair."

York Macpherson was standing with his back to the window, so that his
face was in the shadow, when Jerry Swaim came into the little parlor.
Her eyes were shining, and the pink bloom on her cheek betokened the
tenseness of feeling held in check under a calm demeanor.

"Pardon me for keeping you waiting, Mr. Macpherson. I've been away from
town all day and I wanted to get my mail before I came in. I'm a long
way from everybody, you know."

There may have been a hint of tears in the voice, but the blue eyes were
very brave.

"And you got it?"

That was not what York meant to say. It was well that his face was in
the shadow while Jerry's was in the light. There are times when a man's
heart may be cut to the quick, and because he is a man he must not cry
out.

"No, not to-day. I don't know why," Jerry replied, slowly, with a
determined set of her red lips, while the fire in her blue-black eyes
burned steadily and the small hands gripped themselves together.

"I haven't had a word since I left home, and I had hoped that I might
find a letter waiting for me here."

"Letters are delayed, and letter-writers, too, sometimes. Maybe they are
all busy with Mrs. Darby's affairs. I remember when I was a boy up on
the Winnowoc she could keep me busier than anybody else ever did," York
offered.

"It must be that. Of course it must. Aunt Jerry is as industrious as I
am idle." Jerry gave a sigh of relief.

After the strain of this day, it was vastly comforting to her to stop
thinking _forward_, and just remember how beautiful it must be at "Eden"
now; and Eugene was there, and it was twilight. But like a hot blast the
memory of the hot sand-heaps of her landed estate came back.

"Did you want to see me about something?" she asked, suddenly. "Mr. Ponk
said you did."

"Yes, Jerry. I came here to see you because my sister and I want you to
come out to our house at once, and I have orders from Laura not to come
home without you."

"You are very kind. You know where I have been to-day?"

York smiled. Even in her abstraction Jerry felt the genial force of that
smile. How big and strong he was, and there was such a sense of
protection in his presence.

"Yes. You denied me the privilege of escorting you on this journey. I
had written a full description of your property to Cornelius Darby, in
reply to some questions of his, but his death must have come before the
letter reached Philadelphia. In the mass of business matters Mrs. Darby
may have missed my report."

"She may have," Jerry echoed, faintly. "I cannot say. Then it is my
estate that is all covered with sand, barren and worthless as a desert?
I thought I might have been mistaken."

The hope died out of Jerry's face with the query.

"I wish I could have saved you this surprise," York said, earnestly.
"Come home with me now. 'Castle Cluny' must be your castle, too, as long
as you can put up with us. And you can take plenty of time to catch your
breath. The earth is a big place, and, while most of it is covered with
water, very little of it is covered entirely with sand."

How kind his tones were! Jerry remembered again that both his sister and
Mr. Ponk had urged her to wait for his coming. But she was not
accustomed to waiting for anybody. A faint but persistent self-blame
gripped her.

"May I stay with you until I find where I really am? Just now I'm all
smothered in bewildering sand-dunes." She smiled up at the tall man
before her with a confiding, appealing earnestness.

Many women smiled upon York Macpherson. Many women confided in him. He
was accustomed to it.

"Laura will consider it a boon, for you must know that she sometimes
gets a trifle lonely in New Eden. We'll call the compact finished." Only
a gracious intuition could have turned the favor so graciously back to
the recipient. But that was York's gift.

In the dining-room at "Castle Cluny" that evening Jerry noticed a silver
cup with a quaintly designed monogram on one side.

"That's an old heirloom," Laura said, as she saw her guest's eyes fixed
on it. "Like everything else in this house, it is coupled up with some
old Macpherson clan tradition, as befitting an old bachelor and old maid
of that ilk."

"We used to have two of them," York said.

"We have yet somewhere," Laura replied. "I hadn't missed one from the
sideboard before. It must be back in the silver-closet, with other old
silver and old memories."

Jerry's day had been full of changes, up and down, from hope to bitter
disappointment, from reality to forgetfulness, from clear conception to
bewildered confusion, her mind had run since she had left the oak-grove
in the forenoon. When she had occasion to remember that silver cup
again, she wondered how she could have passed it over so lightly at this
time.

Although Jerry's problem was very real, and she brought to its solution
neither experience nor discipline, unselfish breadth nor spiritual
trust, there was something in the homey atmosphere of "Castle Cluny"
that seemed to smooth away the long day's wrinkles for her. Out in the
broad porch in the twilight she nestled down like a tired child among
the cushions, and gazed dreamily out at the evening landscape. York had
been called away by a neighbor and Laura and her guest were alone.

"How beautiful it is here!" Jerry murmured, as the afterglow of a
prairie sunset flooded the sky with a splendor of rose and opal and
amethyst. "I saw a sunset like that not long ago in an art exhibit in
Philadelphia. I thought then there couldn't be such a real sunset. It
was in a landscape all yellow-gray and desert-like. I thought that was
impossible, too. I've seen both--land and sky--to-day, and both are
greater than the artist painted them."

"The artist never equals the thing he is trying to copy, neither can he
create anything utterly unreal. I missed the exhibits very much when I
first came West, but this is some compensation," Laura said,
meditatively.

"Do you ever get lonely here? I suppose not, for you didn't come to find
a great disappointment when you came to New Eden," Jerry declared,
watching the tranquil face of her hostess.

"No, Jerry, I brought my disappointment with me," Laura said, with a
smile that made her look very much like her brother. And Jerry realized
that Laura Macpherson's maimed limb had not broken her heart. Laura was
a very new type to her guest.

"Oh, I get lonely sometimes and resentful sometimes," Laura went on,
"but we get over a good many little things in the day's run. And then I
have York, you know, and now and then a guest who means a great deal to
me. I have so many interests here, too. You'll like New Eden when you
really know us. And up here this porch has become my holy of holies.
There is something soothing and healing in the breezes that sweep up the
Sage Brush on summer evenings. There is something restful in the stretch
of silent prairie out there, and the wide starlit sky above it. Kansas
sooner or later always has a message for the sons and daughters of men."

"And something always interesting in our neighbors. See who approaches."
York, who had just come up the side steps, supplemented his sister's
remark.

"Oh, that is Mrs. Stella Bahrr, the Daily Evening News. Jerry, York can
always unhitch your wagon from its star. She really is his black beast,
though; but you can't expect mere men to take an interest in milliners,
make-overs, at that, however much interest they take in millinery and
what is under it."

"And millinery bills, with or without interest," York interfered again.

"Mrs. Bahrr will want a full report of Jerry, with the blank spaces for
remarks filled out," Laura went on. "Why, she has changed her course and
is tacking away with the wind."

"Going over to the Lenwells', I suppose. They are in some way sort of
distantly related to her. Just near enough, anyhow, to listen to all her
stories, and then say: 'For goodness sake don't say I told it; I got it
from Stellar, you know.' She will put into any port right now. I'm her
lighthouse warning," York declared. "She never approaches when I'm
present."

York had risen and was standing in the doorway, where the growing moon
revealed him clearly. Mrs. Bahrr, coming up the walk toward the
Macpherson drive, suddenly turned about and hurried away, her tall,
angular form in relief against the sky-line in the open space that lay
between the Macpherson home and the nearest buildings down the slope
toward the heart of the town.

"Coming back to common things," York continued, dropping into his
favorite chair. "My sister scandalizes me on every occasion. Whether or
not you hitch your wagon to a star, Jerry, is not so important, after
all. The real test is in just what kind of a star you hitch to. That
will tell whether you are going to ride to glory or cut such a figure as
the cow did that jumped over the moon."

"It is not always that lawyers give counsel for nothing, Jerry," Laura
began, but the line of talk was again interrupted.

The coming of callers led to many lines of discussion during the long
summer evening, in which Jerry took little part. In this new hemisphere
in which she was trying to find herself, where east seemed south and her
right hand her left, there was so much of the old hemisphere against
which she had partly burnt her bridges. The friendly familiarity of New
Eden neighbors was very different from the caste exclusiveness of the
Darby-Swaim set in Philadelphia. With the Winnowoc Valley people the
rich landholders had no social traffic. But the broad range of
conversation to-night, token of general information, called up home
memories in Jerry's mind and the long evenings when Jim Swaim's friends
gathered there to discuss world topics with her father, while she
listened with delight to all that was said. Her mother didn't care for
these things and wondered why her artistic daughter could be so
interested in them. But when the Macphersons and their guests spoke of
the latest magazines and the popular fiction and the recent drama it
brought up Lesa Swaim in her element to the listening young stranger. It
seemed so easy for the Macphersons to entertain gracefully, to make
everybody at home in the shadowy comfort of that big porch, to bring in
limeade and nut-cakes in cut-glass and fine china service, to forget
none of the things due to real courtesy, and yet to envelop all in the
genuine, open-hearted informality of the genial, open-hearted West.

Long after the remainder of the Macpherson household was asleep Jerry
Swaim lay wide awake, her mind threshed upon with the situation in which
she had suddenly found herself. And over and over in the aisles of her
thoughts what York Macpherson had said about unhitching from a star ran
side by side with Uncle Cornie's words, "If a man went right with
himself."




VIII

IF A MAN WENT RIGHT WITH HIMSELF


There were two of a kind of the Swaim blood, Geraldine Swaim, who had
always had her own way, and Jerusha Swaim Darby, who had always had her
own way. When the wills and the ways of these two clashed--well, Jerusha
had lived many years and knew a thing or two by experience that niece
Geraldine had yet to learn.

On the very day that Jerry Swaim left "Eden" Mrs. Darby had gone into
the city for a conference with her late husband's business associates.
Sloth in action never deprived her of any opportunities; and quick
action now meant everything in the accomplishment of the purpose she had
before her.

"Cornelius was such a quiet man, he was never very much company. He
really did not care for people, like most men," Mrs. Darby said to her
business partners, who had known her husband intimately. "Eugene
Wellington has already surpassed him in getting hold of some things he
never quite reached to, being an older man. And now that Eugene is
proving such splendid help in taking up the less important details in my
affairs he ought to do fine clerical work in the House here. There is no
telling how much ability he may have for being useful to all of us along
the lines that Cornelius has developed. He has proved that he is equal
to a lot of things besides painting. People of little brain power and
financial skill ought to paint the pictures and not rob our big affairs
of business ability."

Mrs. Darby held a controlling interest in the House, so the outcome of
the conference was that an easy berth on more than moderate pay, with
possible prospects--just possible, of course--was what Mrs. Darby had to
take back to "Eden" to serve up to Eugene Wellington when he should
return from his brief errand up in the Winnowoc country. And as that was
what Mrs. Darby wished to accomplish, her day's journey to the city was
a success.

Only, that Winnowoc local was uncomfortably hot and crowded. Her trusty
chauffeur had resigned his position on the day after Cornelius was
buried, and Mrs. Darby was timid about the bluff road, anyhow. If only
Jerry had been here to drive for her! With all Jerry's dash and slash,
she was a fearless driver and always put the car exactly where she
wanted it to be. There was some satisfaction in having a hand like
Jerry's on the steering-wheel. So, pleased as to one horn of her
dilemma, but tired and perspiring, Mrs. Darby came home determined more
than ever to bring about her other purpose--to have Jerry Swaim in her
home, because she, Jerusha Darby, wanted her there.

Jerry always filled the place with interest. And Jerry was gone,
actually gone, bag and baggage. She had cleared out that morning early
on a fool's errand to Kansas. What right had Jerry to go off to earn a
living when a living was here ready-made merely for her subjection to a
selfish old woman's wishes? Mrs. Darby did not think it in such words,
because she no more understood her own mind than that pretty girl with
her dark-blue eyes and wavy, gold-tinged hair understood her own mind.
One thing she did understand--Jerry must come back.

A week later Eugene Wellington dropped off the morning train running
down from Winnowoc. It was too early for the household to be astir, save
the early feeder of stock and milker of kine, the early
man-of-all-odd-jobs who looked after the fowls, and the early
maid-of-all-good-things-to-eat who would have big puffy biscuit for
breakfast, with tender fried chicken and gravy that would stand alone.
All the homey sounds of the early summer morning flitted out from the
"Eden" kitchen and barn-yard. But the misty stillness of dawn rested on
the "Eden" lawns, whose owner, with the others of the household, was not
yet awake.

At the rose-arbor the young artist paused to let the refreshing morning
zephyrs sweep across his face. He wondered if Jerry was awake yet. Ever
since he had left "Eden" the hope had been growing in him that she would
change her mind. After all, Aunt Jerry might be right about it. This was
too beautiful a house to throw aside for a whim--an ideal, however
fine, of self-support and all that. Women were made to be cared for, not
to support themselves--least of all a pretty, wilful, but winsomely
magnetic creature like Jerry Swaim, with her appealing, beautiful eyes,
her brown hair all glinted with gold, her strong little white hands, and
her daring spirit, exhilarating as wine in its exuberant influence. No,
Jerry mustn't go. She belonged to the soft and lovely settings of life.

Eugene leaned against the door of the rose-arbor as these things filled
his mind, and a love of the luxuries that surrounded him here drove back
for the moment the high purpose of his own life.

In the woodwork of the arbor, where the lightning had left its imprint,
he saw a little white envelop wedged in a splintered rift. The rose-vine
had hid it from every angle except the one he had chanced to take. He
slipped it out and read this inscription:

"To Mr. Eugene Wellington, Artist."

Inside, on Jerry's visiting-card, in her own hand-writing, was the
message: "Write me at New Eden, Kansas, Care of Mr. York Macpherson.
Don't forget what we are going to do, and when we have done, and won,
we'll meet again. Good-by. Jerry."

The young artist dropped the card and stared down the lilac-bordered
avenue toward the shadowy gray-blue west whither Jerry Swaim was gone.
And all the world seemed gray-blue, a great void, where there was
neither top nor bottom. Then he picked up the card again and put it into
his pocket, and went into the house to get ready for breakfast.

Mrs. Darby greeted his return as warmly as it was in her repressed
nature to do, conveying to him, not by any word, the feeling that he
meant more to her now than he had ever meant before.

"Didn't Jerry leave suddenly? I didn't know she was going so soon. I--I
was hoping--to find her here," was what he was going on to say.

"That she would be willing to stay here; to give up this scheme of
hers." Mrs. Darby finished the sentence for him. "Yes, I hoped so, too.
That was the only right thing to do. She chose her own time for leaving,
but she will be back soon if we manage right. Don't be a bit
discouraged, Eugene, and don't give up to her too much. She loves a
resisting force. She always did."

Eugene looked anything but encouraged just then. All "Eden" was but an
echo of Jerry Swaim, and the droop of his well-formed lips suggested
only a feeble resisting force against her smallest wish.

"She is my own flesh and blood. I know her best, of course," Mrs. Darby
went on. "The only way to meet her is to let her meet you. But we will
drop that now. After breakfast I want you to look up the men. I have
told them to report to you on the crop values, and harvest plans, and
fall seeding later. Look over the place well, won't you? Then meet me in
the rose-arbor at ten o'clock for a cup of tea and we will counsel
together."

Mrs. Darby would have told the late Cornelius to "come in for
instructions later." But Eugene Wellington wasn't a sure result. He was
only in the process of solution. And Eugene, being very human, was
unconsciously flattered by this deference to a penniless young man. It
made him pleased with himself and gave him a vague sense of
proprietorship which Cornelius Darby, the real-in-law owner of this fine
country estate, never dreamed of enjoying.

"I wonder what Jerry is doing this morning," he thought as he rode
Cornelius Darby's high-school-gaited horse to the far side of the place.

"The more I see of this farm the finer it looks to me. Not a foot of
waste ground, not a nesting-place for weeds, not a broken fence; grove
and stream, and tilled fields, and gardens, and lawns, and well-kept
buildings. Not an unpainted board nor broken hinge--everything in
perfect repair except that splintered framework at the rose-arbor." He
paused on a little ridge above the Winnowoc from which the whole farm
lay in full view. His artistic eye noted the peaceful beauty of the
scene, the growing crops, the yellowing wheat, the black-green corn, the
fertile meadows swathed in June sunshine, the graceful shrubbery and big
forest trees through which the red-tiled roofs of the buildings glowed,
the pigeons circling about the cupolas of the barn. And not the least
attractive feature of the picture, although he was unconscious of it,
was the young artist himself, astride a graceful black horse, in relief
against a background of wooded border of the bluff above the clear
gurgling Winnowoc. Eugene looked well on horseback, although he was no
lover of horses, and preferred the steady, sure mounts to the spirited
ones.

"I wonder if Jerry's big estate can be as well appointed as this. I wish
she were here with me now." The rider fell to dreaming of Jerry, trying
to put her in a picture of this "Eden" six times enlarged.

<tb>

At this same hour Jerry Swaim was sitting in Junius Brutus Ponk's gray
runabout under the shade of the low oak-grove, gazing with burning eyes
at her own kingdom built out of Kansas sand.

<tb>

Mrs. Darby had hot coffee and cold chicken and cherry preserves and cake
with blackberry wine all daintily served for a hungry man to enjoy after
a long three hours on horseback in the sunshine. The rose-arbor was
odorous with perfume from the sweet-peas, clinging to the trellis that
ran between the side lawn and the grape-arbor.

What took place in that council had its results in the letter that
Eugene Wellington wrote that night to Jerry Swaim. He did not mail it
for several days, and when he went to his tasks on the morning after his
fingers had let go of it at the lip of the iron mail-box, the artist in
him said things to him that to the day of his death he would never quite
forget.

<tb>

Late one afternoon, a fortnight after the day of Jerry's visit to her
claim, Ponk, of the Commercial Hotel and Garage, slipped into the office
of the Macpherson Mortgage Company.

"York, what happens to folks that tends to other folks's affairs?" he
asked, as he spread his short proportions over a chair beside York's
desk.

"Sometimes they get the gratitude of posterity. More generally their
portion is present contempt and future obscurity. Are you in line for
promotion on that, Ponk?" York replied.

"I'm 'bout ready to take chances," Ponk said, with a good-natured grin.

"All right. Am I involved in your scheme of things?" York inquired.

"You bet you are," Ponk assured him. "And, to be brief, knowin' how
valuable your time is for gougin' mortgages out of unsuspectin'
victims--"

"Well, we haven't foreclosed on the Commercial Hotel and Garage yet,"
York interrupted.

"No, but you're likely to the minute my back's turned. That's why I have
to go facin' south all the time. But to get to real business now,
York--"

"I wish you would," York declared.

His caller paid no heed to the thrust, and continued, seriously, "I
can't get some things off my mind, and I've got to unload, that's all."

"Go ahead. I'm your dumping-ground," York said, with a smile.

"That's what you are, you son of a horse-thief. I mean the tool of a
grasping bunch of loan sharks known as the Macpherson Mortgage Company.
Well, it's that young lady at your house."

"I see. We robbed you of a boarder," York suggested.

"Aw, shut up an' listen, now, will you? You know I'm a man of affairs
here. Owner and proprietor and man-of-all-work at the Commercial Hotel
an' Gurrage, bass soloist in the Baptist choir, and--by the removal of
the late deceased incumbent--also treasurer of the board of education of
the New Eden schools--"

"All of which has what to do with the young lady from Philadelphia?"
York inquired, blandly.

"Well, listen. Here's where tendin' to other folks's business comes in.
A good-lookin' but inexperienced young lady comes out here from
Philadelphia to find a claim left her by her deceased father. Out she
goes to see said claim, payin' me good money for my best car--to ride in
state over her grand province--of sand. And there wasn't much change but
a pearl-handle knife an' a button-hook in her purse when she pays for
the use of the car, even when I cut down half a buck on the regular
hire. Her kind don't know rightly how to save money till they 'ain't
none to save. But the look in her eyes when she come steamin' in from
that jaunt was more 'n I could stand. York, she ain't the first
Easterner to be fooled by the promise of the West. Not the real West,
you understand, but the sham face o' things put up back East. An' here
she be in our midst. Every day she goes by after the mail gets in,
looking like one of them blue pigeons with all the colors of a opal on
their necks, and every day she goes back with her face white around the
mouth. She's walkin' on red-hot plowshares and never squealin'." Ponk
paused, while York sat combing his fingers through his hair in silence.

"You know I'm some force on the school board, if I don't know much. I
ain't there to teach anybody anything, but to see that such ignoramuses
as me ain't put up to teach children. Now we are shy one teacher in the
high-school by the sudden resignation of the mathematics professor to
take on underwritin' of life insurance in the city. Do you suppose she'd
do it? Would it help any if we offered the place to Miss Swaim? It might
help to keep her in this town."

"Ponk, your heart's all right," York said, warmly. "It would help, I'm
sure, if the lady is to stay here, for she is without means. She might
or might not be willing to consider this opening. I can't forecast
women. But, Ponk, could she teach mathematics? You know she was probably
fashionably finished--never educated--in some higher school. If it were
embroidery, or something like that, it might be all right."

"Oh, you trust me to judge a few things, even if I'm not up on the
gentle art of foreclosin' mortgages and such. I know that girl could
teach mathematics. Anybody who can run a car like she can with as true a
eye for curves an' distances, and a head for bossin' a machine that runs
by engine power, couldn't help but teach algebry and geometry just true
as a right angle. But mebby," and Ponk's countenance fell--"mebby she'd
not want to, nor thank me noways, nor you, neither, for interfering in
the matter. But I just thought I'd offer you the chance to mebby help
her get on her feet. I don't know, though. I'd hate to lose her
good-will. I just couldn't stand it."

"Ponk, I appreciate your motive," York said, feelingly. "I will take
this up as soon as I can with Miss Swaim. You see, she's our guest and I
can't very gracefully suggest that she seek employment. And, to be frank
with you, my sister has become very fond of her--Laura misses a good
many good things on account of her lameness--and we would like to keep
her our guest indefinitely; but we can't do that, of course."

"I don't wonder your sister wants her. Of course, you don't care nothin'
about it yourself. An' I'll have the board hold the place awhile to see
what 'll happen. I must soar back home now." And the little man left the
office.

"Sound to the core, if he does strut when strangers come to town.
Especially ladies. That's the only way some little men have of
attracting attention to themselves. A kind-hearted man as ever came up
the Sage Brush," York commented, as he watched his caller crossing the
street to the hotel.

That evening Jerry Swaim sat alone on the porch of the Macpherson home,
where shafts of silvery moonlight fell through the honeysuckle vines.
What York Macpherson would have called a fight between Jim Swaim's chin
and Lesa's eyes was going on in Jerry's soul this evening. Since her
visit to her claim life had suddenly become a maze of perplexities. She
had never before known a care that could not have been lifted from her
by others, except the one problem of leaving Philadelphia, and the
solution of that might have been the prank of a headstrong child,
prompted by self-will and love of adventure, rather than by the grave
decision of well-poised judgment. Heretofore in all her ventures a safe
harbor had been near to shelter her. Now she was among the breakers and
the storm was on.

For the first time in her memory her purse was light and there was no
visible source from which to refill it. She was too well-bred to tax the
hospitality of the Macpherson home, where she was made to feel herself
so welcome. To return to Philadelphia meant to write and ask for the
expenses of transportation. She had burned too many bridges behind her
to meet the humility of such a request just yet; for that meant the
subjection of her whole future to Jerusha Darby's will, and against such
subjection Jerry's spirit rebelled mightily.

Every day for two weeks the girl had gone to the post-office with an
eager, expectant face. Every evening she had asked York Macpherson if he
had heard anything from Philadelphia since her coming, the pretended
indifference in her tone hardly concealing the longing behind the query.
But not a line from the East had come to New Eden for her.

On the afternoon of this day the postmaster had hurried through the
letters because he, too, had caught the meaning of the hunger in the
earnest eyes watching him through the little window among the
letter-boxes. The mail was heavy to-day, but the distributer paused with
one letter, long enough to look at it carefully, and then, leaving his
work half finished, he hurried to the window.

"Here's something for you. Aren't you Miss Swaim?" he inquired,
courteously, as he pushed the letter toward Jerry's waiting hand.

He had lived in Kansas since the passage of the homestead law. He knew
the mark of homesickness on the face of a late arrival. Something in the
cultivation of a new land puts a gentler culture into the soul. Out of
the common heartache, the common sacrifice, the common need, have grown
the open-hearted, keen-sighted, fine-fibered folk of the big and
generous Middle West, the very heart of which, to the Kansan, is Kansas.

The postmaster turned quickly back to his task. He did not see the
girl's face; he only felt that she walked away on air.

At York Macpherson's office she hesitated a moment, then hurried inside.
York was in his private room, but the door to it stood open, and Jerry
caught sight of a woman within.

"I beg your pardon." She blushed confusedly. "I don't want to intrude; I
only wanted to stop long enough to read a letter from home."

Jerry's genuine embarrassment was very pretty and appealing, but York
was shrewd enough to know that it came from the letter in her hand, not
from any connection with his office or its occupants. Mrs. Stellar
Bahrr, however, who happened to be the woman in the inner room, did not
see the incident with York's eyes.

"Just come in here, Miss Swaim, and make yourself at home," York
insisted. "Come, Mrs. Bahrr, we can finish our talk for to-day in one
place as well as another. My sister and I are going across the river to
spend the evening, so it will be late to-morrow before I can get those
papers ready for you."

Mrs. Bahrr rose reluctantly, hooking her sharp eyes into the girl as she
passed out. What she noted was a very white face where the color of the
cheeks seemed burned in, and big, shining eyes. Of course the
broad-brimmed chiffon hat with beaded medallions, the beaded parasol to
match, and the beaded hand-bag of the same hues did not escape her eyes,
especially the pretty hand-bag.

York closed the door behind the two, leaving Jerry in quiet possession
of the inner room, while he seated Mrs. Bahrr in the outer office and
engaged in the business that had brought her to him. He knew that she
would be torn between two desires: one to hurry through and leave the
office, and so be able to start a story of leaving Jerry and himself in
a questionable situation; the other to stay and see the fair caller as
she came out, and to learn, if possible, why she had come, and to enjoy
her confusion in finding a woman still engaging York's time. Either
thing would be worth while to Mrs. Bahrr, and while she hesitated York
decided for her.

"I'll keep her with me, the old Long Tongue. Yea, she shall roost here
in my coop till the little girl gets clear to 'Castle Cluny.' She
sha'n't run off and overtake her prey and then cackle over it later.
Jerry has committed the unpardonable sin of being young and pretty and
good; the Big Dipper will make her pay for the personal insult."

In the midst of their business conversation Jerry Swaim came from the
inner room, and with a half-audible word of thanks left the office. Mrs.
Bahrr's back was toward the door, and, although she turned with a
catlike quickness, she failed to see anything worth while except to get
another good look at the hand-bag. Something told York Macpherson that
the message in her letter held a tragical meaning for the fair-faced
girl who had waited so eagerly for its coming.

At dinner that evening York was at his best.

"I must make our girl keep an appetite," he argued. "Nothing matters if
a dinner still carries an appeal. By George! I've got to do my best, or
I'll lose my own taste for what Laura can set up if I don't look out. We
are all getting thin except Laura. Even Ponk is losing his strut a bit.
And why? Oh, confound it! there is plenty of time to ask questions in
July and August when the town has its dull season."

So York came to dinner in one of his rarest moods, a host to make one's
worries flee away.

Jerry had reread her letter in the seclusion of her room at "Castle
Cluny." It did not need a third reading, for every word seemed graven on
the reader's brain. In carefully typewritten form, with only the
signature in the writer's own hand, it ran:

     MY ALWAYS DEAR JERRY,--I should have written you days ago, but
     I did not get back to "Eden" until you had been gone a week. We
     are all so eager to hear how you are, and to know about the
     Swaim estate which you went to find. But we are a hundred times
     more eager to see your face here again. I wish you were here
     to-night, for I have been in the depths of doubt and
     indecision, from which your presence would have lifted me. I
     hope I have done the right thing, now it is done, and I'll wait
     to hear from you more eagerly than I ever waited for a letter
     before. Yet I feel sure you will approve of my course after you
     get over your surprise and have taken time to think carefully.

     I had a long heart-to-heart talk with Aunt Jerry to-day. Don't
     smile and say a purse-to-purse talk. Full purses don't talk to
     empty ones. They speak a different language. But this to-day
     was a real confidence game as you might say. I received the
     confidence if I didn't die as game as you would wish me to.

     To be plain, little cousin mine, I want you dreadfully to come
     back, so much so that I have decided to give up painting for
     the present and take a clerkship in the bank with Uncle
     Cornie's partners. I can see your eyes open wide with surprise
     and disappointment when I tell you that Aunt Jerry has really
     converted me to her way of thinking. My hours are easy and the
     pay is good. Not so much as I had hoped to have some day from
     my brush and may have yet, if this work doesn't make me fat and
     lazy, for there is really very little responsibility about it,
     just a decent accuracy. This makes so many things possible, you
     see, and then I have the satisfaction of knowing I am doing a
     service for Aunt Jerry--and, to be explicit--to put myself
     where I shall not have to worry over things when you come home.
     So I'm happy now. And when you get here I shall begin to live
     again. I seem to be staying here now. Staying and waiting for
     something. Nobody really lives at "Eden" without little Jerry
     to keep us all alive and keyed up. Nobody to take the big car
     over the bluff road, beautiful as it is--for you know I'm too
     big a coward to drive it and to do a hundred things I'd do if
     you were here to brace me up.

     Write me at once, little cousin, and say you will come home
     just as soon as you have seen all of that God-forsaken country
     you care to look at. And meantime I'll write as often as you
     want me to. I think of you every day and remember you in my
     prayers every night. You remember I told you I couldn't pray
     out in Kansas. May the Lord be good to you and make you love
     Him more than you think you do now, and bring you safe and soon
     to our beautiful "Eden."

     Yours,

     EUGENE.

The sands of the blowout on Jerry's claim seared not more hotly her
fresh young hopes of prosperity, through her own effort and control,
than this sudden change from the artist, with his dreams of beauty and
power, to the man of easy clerical duty with a good salary and small
responsibility. Of course Aunt Jerry had been back of it all, but so
would Aunt Jerry have been back of her--if she had given up.

Jerry sat for a long time staring at the missive where it had fallen on
the floor, the typewritten neatness of the blue lettering only a blur to
her eyes. For she was back at "Eden," on the steep but beautiful bluff
road, with Eugene afraid to drive the big Darby car. She was in the
rose-arbor looking up to see that faint line of indecision in the dear,
handsome face. She was in the "Eden" parlor under the soft light of
rose-tinted lamps, facing Aunt Jerry and sure of herself, but catching
again that wavering line of uncertainty on Eugene Wellington's
countenance, and her own vague fear--unguessed then--that he might not
resist in the supreme test.

But idols die hard. Eugene was her idol. He couldn't die at once. He was
so handsome, so true, so gracious, so filled with a love of beautiful
things. How could she understand the temptation to the soul of an artist
in such lovely settings as "Eden" offered? It was all Aunt Jerry's
fault, and he would overcome it. He must.

It was so easy to blame Aunt Jerry. It made everything clear. He had
yielded to her cleverness and never known he was being ruled. With all
her flippant, careless youth, inexperience, and selfishness, Jerry was a
keener reader of human nature than her lack of training could account
for. She knew just the lines Aunt Jerry had laid, the net spread for
Eugene's feet. But--Oh, things must come out all right. He would change.

This one thought rang up and down her scale of thinking, as if repeating
would make true what Jerry knew was false.

"'If a man went right with himself.' Oh, Eugene, Eugene!" she murmured,
half aloud. "You hitched your wagon to a star, but to what kind of a
star--to what kind of a star?"

Then came a greater query: "Shall I go back to 'Eden,' to Aunt Jerry's
rule, to Eugene, to love, to easy, dependent, purposeless living? Shall
I?"

A blank wall seemed suddenly to be flung across her way. Should she
climb over it, hammer an opening through it, or turn back and run from
it?

With these questions stalking before her she had come out to dinner and
York Macpherson's genial, entertaining conversation, and to Laura
Macpherson's gracious intuition and soothing sympathy.

Early in the evening, as the Macphersons with their guest sat watching
the splendor of the sunset sky, Jerry said, suddenly:

"It has been two weeks to-day since I came here. Quite long enough for a
stranger's first visit."

"A 'stranger,'" Laura Macpherson repeated. "A 'stranger' who asked to be
called 'Jerry' the first thing. We are all so well acquainted with this
'stranger' that we wouldn't want to give her up now."

"But I must give you up pretty soon." Jerry spoke earnestly.

"Why 'must'? Has the East too strong a hold for the West to break?"
York asked.

"I came out here because I believed my land would support me, and I had
all sorts of foolish dreams of what I might find here that would be new
and romantic." Jerry's eyes had a far-away look in them as she recalled
the unrealized picture of her prairie domain.

"You haven't answered my question yet," York reminded her.

Jerry dropped her eyes, the bloom deepened on her fair cheek, and she
clasped her small hands together. For a long time no word was spoken.

"I didn't answer your question. I am not going back to Philadelphia.
There must be something else besides land in the West," Jerry said, at
last.

"Yes, _we_ are here. Do stay right here with us," Laura Macpherson
urged, warmly.

Every day the companionship of this girl had grown upon her, for that
was Jerry's gift. But to the eager invitation of her hostess the girl
only shook her head.

York Macpherson sat combing his fingers through the heavy brown waves of
his hair, a habit of his when he was thinking deeply. But if a vision of
what might be came to him unbidden now, a vision that had come unbidden
many times in the last two weeks, making sweeter the smile that won men
to him, he put it resolutely away from him for the time. He must help
this girl to help herself. Romance belonged to other men. He was not of
the right mold for that--not now, at least.

"I heard to-day that there is need of a mathematics teacher in our
high-school for next year. It pays eighty dollars a month," he said.

"Oh, York," Laura protested, earnestly. "You know Jerry never thought of
such a thing as teaching. And I really must have her here. You are away
so much, you know you are."

But her brother only smiled. When York Macpherson frowned he might be
giving in, but his sister knew that his smile meant absolute resistance.

"Ponk was talking to me to-day. He is the treasurer of the school board
now, and he mentioned the vacancy. He was casting about for some one
fitted to teach mathematics. Even though his mind runs more on his
garage than on education, he has a deep interest in the schools. He
admires your ability to manage a car so much it occurred to him that you
might consider this position. Fine course of reasoning, but he is sure
of his ground."

"Let me think it over," Jerry said, slowly.

"And then forget it," Laura suggested. "York and I are invited out this
evening. Won't you come with us? It is just a little informal doings
across the river."

"I would rather be alone to-night," her guest replied.

So the Macphersons let her have her way.




IX

IF A WOMAN WENT RIGHT WITH HERSELF


And thus it happened that Jerry Swaim was alone this evening behind the
honeysuckle-vines, with leaf shadow and moonbeams falling caressingly on
her filmy white gown and golden hair. For a long time she sat still.
Once she said, half aloud, unconscious that she was speaking at all:

"So Eugene Wellington has given up his art for an easy berth in the
Darby bank. He hadn't the courage to resist the temptation, though it
made him a tool instead of a master of tools. And we promised each other
we would each make our own way, independent of Aunt Jerry's money. Maybe
if I had been there things would have been different."

She gripped her hands in her quick, nervous way, as a homesick longing
swept her soul. She was searching a way out for Eugene, a cause for
putting all the blame on Aunt Jerry.

"I wish I had gone with the Macphersons. I could have forgotten, for a
while at least."

A light step inside the house caught her ear.

"Maybe Laura has come home," she thought, too absorbed in herself to
ask why Laura should have chosen the side door when she knew that Jerry
was alone on the front porch.

Again she heard a movement just inside the open door; then a step on the
threshold; and then a tall, thin woman walked out of the house and
half-way across the wide porch before she caught sight of Jerry in an
easy-chair behind the honeysuckle-vines. The intruder paused a second,
staring at the corner where the girl sat motionless. From her childhood
Jerry had possessed unusual physical courage. To-night it was curiosity,
rather than fright, that prompted her to keep still while the strange
woman's eyes were upon her. Evidently the intruder was more surprised
than herself, and Jerry let her make the first move in the game. The
woman was angular, with swift but ungraceful motion. For a long time, as
such seconds go, she stared at the white figure hidden by the shadows of
the vines. Then with a quick stride she thrust herself before the girl
and dropped into a chair.

"Well, well! This is Miss Swim, ain't it?"

"As well that as anything. I can't land anywhere," Jerry thought.

"I'm Mrs. Stellar Bahrr, a good friend of Laury Macpherson as she's got
in this town, unless it's you. I seen you in York's office this
afternoon. I was sorry I intruded on you two when you come purpose to
see him in his private office. When girls wants to see him that way they
don't want nobody, 'specially women, around."

Mrs. Bahrr paused to giggle and to give Jerry time to parry her thrust,
meanwhile pinning her through with the sharp points of her eyes that
fairly gleamed in the shadow-checkered moonlight of the porch. Jerry was
not accustomed to being accountable to anybody for what she chose to do,
nor did she know that every man in New Eden, except York Macpherson and
Junius Brutus Ponk--and every woman, without exception--really feared
Stella Bahrr, knowing that she would hesitate at no kind of warfare to
accomplish her purpose. It is generally easier to be decent than to be
courageous, and peace at any price may be more desired than nasty word
battles. Not knowing Stella for the woman she was, Jerry had no mind to
consider her at all, so she waited for her caller to proceed or to leave
her.

"You must excuse me if I seem to be interfering in your affairs. You are
a stranger here except to York and that man Ponk--" Stella began,
thrusting her hooks more viciously into her catch.

"Oh, you didn't interfere," Jerry interrupted her indifferently, and
then paused.

Mrs. Bahrr caught her breath. The girl was sinfully pretty and
attractive, her beauty and grace in themselves alone railing out at the
older woman's ugly spirit of envy. And she should be tender, with
feeling to be lacerated for these gifts of nature. Instead, she was firm
and hard, with no vulnerable spot for a poisoned shaft.

"I'm sure you had a right to go into a man's private office. It's
everybody's right, of course," she began, with that faint sneering tone
of hers that carried a threat of what might follow.

"Yes, but a little discourteous in me to drive you out. That was Mr.
Macpherson's fault, not mine," Jerry broke in, easily.

"Maybe that's her grievance. I'll be decent about it," the girl was
thinking.

"I'm awfully bored right now." The wind shifted quickly. "I run up to
see Laury a minute. Just slipped in the side-stoop way to save troublin'
you an' York out here. I knowed Laury wouldn't be here, an', would you
believe it? I clar forgot they was gone out, an' I seen you all leavin',
too--I mean them, of course."

The threatening tone could not be reproduced. It carried, however, a
most uncomfortable force like a cruel undertow beneath the seemingly
safe crest of a wave.

"It's a joke on me bein' so stupid, but you won't give me away to 'em,
will you?"

"I'm awfully bored, too," Jerry thought.

"You say you won't tell 'em at all that I come?" Mrs. Bahrr insisted.

"Not if you say so," Jerry replied, with a smile.

"I'm an awfully good friend of Laury's. She's a poor cripple, dependent
on her brother for everything, an' if he marries, as he's bound to do,
I'd hate to see her turned out of here. This house is just Laury
through and through. Don't you think so? 'Course, though, if York
marries again--" Stellar Bahrr stopped meditatively. "All the women in
the Sage Brush Valley's just crazy about York. He's some flirt, but
everybody thought he'd settled his mind once sure. But I guess he flared
up again, from what they say. She's too fur away from town a'most. Them
that's furtherest away don't have a chance like them that's nearest him.
But it may be all just gossip. There was a lot of talk about him an' a
girl down the river that's got a crippled brother--Paul Ekblad's his
name; hers is Thelmy--an' some considerable about one of the Poser girls
where he was up the Sage Brush to this week. The married one now, I
think, an' a bouncin' big baby, but what do you care for all that?"

"Nothing," Jerry replied, innocently.

The steel hooks turned slowly to lacerate deeper.

"Well, I must be goin'. You give me your word you wouldn't cheep about
my forgettin' an' runnin' in here. York's such a torment, I'd never hear
the last of it. I know you are a honorable one with your promises, an' I
like that kind. I'm glad I met you. An' I'll not say a word, neither,
'bout your goin' to see York in his private office. It's a bargain
'tween us two. Laury's an awfully good friend of yours an' she'll keep
you here a good long while, she's that hos_pit_able."

The steel hooks tore their way out, and the woman rose and strode
quickly away. In a minute she had literally dropped from view in the
shaded slope beyond the driveway.

"I might as well punch a stick in water or stick a pin in old Granddad
Poser's tombstone out in the cimetery, an' expect to find a hole left,
as to do anything with that pink-an'-white-an'-gold critter!" she
exclaimed, viciously, as she disappeared in the shadows. "I'm afraider
of her than I would be of a real mad-cat, but she can't scare me!"

Out on the lawn the moon just then seemed to cast a weird gleam of
light, and to veil rather than reveal the long street beyond it. For a
minute after the passing of her uninvited caller Jerry Swaim was filled
with an unaccountable fright. Then her pulse beat calmly again and she
smiled at herself.

"I don't seem to fear these Kansas men--Mr. Ponk, for example, nor that
Teddy-bear creature down by the deep hole in the Sage Brush. But these
Kansas women, except Laura--anybody would except Laura--are so
impossible. That dairy-maid type of a Thelma, and that woman-and-baby
combination, for example; and some of the women really scare me. That
aborigine down in the brush by the river, in her shabby clothes and
sunbonnet eclipse; and now this 'Stellar' comes catfooting out of the
house and lands over yonder in the shadows. She needn't have been bored
because she didn't find the folks at home, and she needn't frighten me
so. I never was afraid of Aunt Jerry. I ought to be proof against
anybody else. And yet maybe I am in the way here, even if they drive the
very idea away from me. Laura is good to me and her friendliness is
genuine. Little as I know, I _know_ that much. And York--oh, that was a
village gossip's tale! And she gets me scared--I, whom even Jerusha
Darby never cowed."

The poison was working, after all, and Stellar Bahrr's sting had not
been against marble, nor into water. With the memory of Jerusha Darby,
too, the burden came again to her niece's mind, only to be lifted again,
however, in a few minutes. Her memory had run back to her day down the
river and the oak-grove and the sand, and the young man whose name was
Joe Thomson--Jerry did not remember the name--and the crushing weight of
surprise and disappointment. The struggle to decide on a course for
herself immediately was rising again within her, when she saw a young
man turn from the street and come up the walk toward the porch.

"I can't have leisure to settle anything by myself, it seems, even with
the lord and lady of the castle leaving me in full seclusion here. One
caller goes and another comes. I wonder what excuse this one has for
intruding. He is another type--one I haven't met before."

In the time required for this caller to reach the porch there flashed
through Jerry's mind all the types she had seen in the West. Ponk and
Thelma and fuzzy Teddy, the woman-and-baby, Laura and York, and that
pin-eyed gossip--and the young country fellow whose land lay next to
hers. None of them concerned her, really, except these hospitable
friends who were sheltering her, and, in a way, in an upright, legal,
Jim Swaim kind of way, the young man down the Sage Brush, losing in the
game like herself and helpless like herself.

It was no wonder that Jerry did not recognize in this caller the
ranchman of the blowout. There was nothing of the clodhopper in this
well-dressed young fellow, although he was not exactly a model for
advertising high-grade tailoring.

"Is this Miss Swaim?" he asked, lifting his hat. "I am Joe Thomson. You
may remember that we met down in the blowout two weeks ago."

"I could hardly forget meeting you. Will you sit down?" Jerry offered
Joe a chair with a courtesy very unlike the blunt manner of her first
words to him a fortnight before.

But in the far recesses of her consciousness all the while the haunting,
ever-recurring picture of a handsome face and a faultlessly clad form,
even the face and form of a Philadelphia bank clerk, _né_ artist, made
the reality of Joe Thomson's presence very commonplace and uninteresting
at that moment, and her courtesy was of a perfunctory sort.

"I hope I don't intrude. Were you busy?" Joe asked, something of the
embarrassment of the first meeting coming back with the question.

"Yes, I was very busy," Jerry replied, with a smile. "Pick-up work,
though. I was just thinking. Lost in thought, maybe."

The moonlight can do so much for a pretty woman, but with Jerry Swaim
one could not say whether sunlight, moonlight, starlight, or dull gray
clouds did the most. For two weeks the memory of her fair face, as he
recalled it in the oak shade down beside the blowout, had not been
absent from the young ranchman's mind. And to-night this dainty girl out
of the East seemed entrancing.

"You were lost in thought when I saw you before. I had an idea that city
girls didn't do much thinking. Is it your settled occupation?" Joe
inquired, with a smile in his eyes.

"It is my only visible means of support right now; about as profitable,
too, as farming a blowout," Jerry returned.

"Which reminds me of my purpose in thrusting this call upon you," Joe
declared. "I didn't realize the situation the other day--and--well, to
be plain, I came to beg your pardon for my rudeness in what I said about
your claim. I had no idea who you were, you know, but that hardly
excuses me for what I said."

"It is very rude to speak so slightingly of land that behaves as
beautifully as mine does," Jerry said, with a smile that atoned for the
trace of sarcasm in her voice.

"It is very rude to speak as slightingly as I did of the former owner.
But you see I have watched that brainless blowout thing creep along,
season after season, eating up my acres--my sole inheritance, too."

"And you said you didn't go mad," Jerry interposed.

"Yes, but I didn't say I didn't get mad. I have worn out enough
profanity on that blowout to stock the whole Sage Brush Valley."

"But you aren't to the last resort, for you do go mad here then, you
told me. I wonder you aren't all madmen and women when I think of this
country and remember how different I had imagined it would be."

"When we come to the very last ditch, we really have two
alternatives--to go mad and to go back East. Most folks prefer the
former. But I say again, it's always a long way to the last ditch out on
the Sage Brush, so we seldom do either."

"What should I do now? Won't you tell me? I'm really near my last
ditch."

Jerry sat with clasped hands, looking earnestly into Joe's face, as she
said this. Oh, fair was she, this exquisite white-blossom style of girl,
facing her first life-problem, the big problem of living. Joe Thomson
made no reply to her question. What could this dainty, untrained
creature do with the best of claims? The frank sincerity of his silence
made an appeal to her that the wisest advice could not have made just
then.

York Macpherson was right when he said that Jim Swaim's child was a type
of her own. If Jerry, through her mother's nature, was impulsive and
imaginative, from her father she had inherited balance and clear vision.
Her young years had heretofore made no call upon her to exercise these
qualities. What might have been turned to the frivolous and romantic in
one parent, and the hard-headed and grasping in the other, now became
saving qualities for the child of these two. In an instant Jerry read
the young ranchman's character clearly and foresaw in him a friend and
helper. But there was neither romance nor selfishness in that vision.

"Mr. Thomson," the girl began, seriously, "you need not apologize for
what you could not help feeling about the condition of my estate and the
wrong that has been done to you. I know you do not hold me responsible
for it. Let's forget that you thought you had said anything unpleasant
to me, for I want to ask your advice."

"Mine!" Joe Thomson exclaimed.

This sweet-faced, soft-voiced girl was walking straight into another
heart in the Sage Brush Valley. Nature had given her that heritage,
wherever she might go.

"Yes, your advice, please." Jerry went on. "You have watched that sand
spreading northward over your claim. You have had days, months, years,
maybe, to see the blowout doing its work. I awakened suddenly one
morning from a beautiful day-dream. My only heritage left of all the
fortune I had been brought to expect to be mine, the inheritance I had
idealized with all the romantic beauty and prosperity possible to rural
life, in a minute all this turned to a desert before my eyes. You belong
to the West. Tell me, won't you, what is next for me?"

"What could I tell you, Miss Swaim?" Joe asked.

"Tell me what to do, I mean," Jerry exclaimed. "Tell me quickly, for I
am right against the bread-line now."

For a moment Joe stared at the girl in amazement. Her earnestness left
no room to misunderstand her. But his senses came back quickly, as one
whose life habit it had been to meet and answer hard questions suddenly.

"Why not go back East?" he asked.

"One of your two last resorts; the other one is madness. I won't do it,"
Jerry said, stubbornly. "Shall I tell you why?"

It was a delicious surprise to the young ranchman to be taken into the
confidence of this charming, gracious girl. The honeysuckle leaves,
stirred by the soft night breeze that came purring across the open
plain, gave the moonbeams leave to play with the rippling gold of her
hair, and to flutter ever so faintly the soft white draperies of her
gown. Her big dark eyes, her fair white throat and shoulders, the faint
pink hue of her cheeks, the shapely white arms below the elbow-frilled
sleeves, her soft voice, her frank trust in his judgment and integrity,
made that appeal that rarely comes to a young man's heart oftener than
once in a lifetime.

"My father lived a rich man and died a poor man, leaving me--for mother
went first--to the care of his wealthy sister. A half-forgotten claim on
the Sage Brush is my only possession after two years of litigation and
all that sort of thing." Jerry paused.

"Well?" Joe queried.

"I was offered one of two alternatives: I might be dependent on my
aunt's bounty or I could come out West and live on my claim. I chose the
West. Now what can I do?"

The pathos of the young face was touching. The question of maintenance
is hard enough for the resourceful and experienced to meet; how doubly
hard it must be to the young, untried, and untrained!

Joe Thomson looked out to where the open prairie, swathed in silvery
mist, seemed to flow up to the indefinite bounds of the town. All the
earth was beautiful in the stillness of the June night.

"I don't know how to advise you," he said, at length. "If you were one
of us--a real Western girl--it would be different."

To Jerry this sincerity outweighed any suggestion he could have offered.
From the point of romance this young man was impossible to Lesa Swaim's
child. Yet truly nobody before, not even York Macpherson, had ever
seemed like such a real friend to her, and the chance acquaintance was
reaching by leaps and bounds toward a genuine comradeship.

"Why do you stay here? You weren't born here, were you? Tell me about
yourself," Jerry demanded.

"There's a big difference between our cases," Joe replied, wondering how
this girl could care anything for his life-story. "I was the oldest
child of our family. My father came out here on account of his health,
but he came too late, and died, leaving me the claim on the Sage Brush
and my pledge on his death-bed never to leave the West, for fear I, too,
would become an invalid as he had been. There seems to be little danger
of that, and I like the West too well to leave it now. And then,
besides, I'm like a lot of other fellows who claim to love the Sage
Brush. I haven't the means to get away and start life anywhere else,
anyhow. You see, we are as frank out here about our conditions as you
Philadelphians are."

He smiled and looked down at his strong hands and sturdy arms. It would
be difficult to think of Joe Thomson as an invalid.

"I inherited, besides my claim and my promise, the provision for two
younger sisters, housed with relatives in the East, but supported by
contributions from this same Sage Brush claim on which I have had to
wrestle with the heat and drought that sear the prairies. And now, when
both my sisters, who married young, are provided for and settled in
homes of their own, and I can begin to live my own life a little, comes
my enemy, the blowout--"

"Oh, I never want to think of that awful thing!" Jerry cried. "I shall
give the Macpherson Mortgage Company control of the entire sand-pile.
I'll never play there again, never!"

In the silence that followed something in the beauty of the midsummer
night seemed to fall like a benediction on this man and this woman, each
facing big realities. And, however different their equipment for their
struggles had been in previous years, they were not so far apart now as
their differing circumstances of life would indicate.

"I must be going now. I did not mean to take so much of your time. I
came only to assure you that I am not always so rude as the mood you
found me in the other day would indicate." Joe rose to go with the
words.

Jerry's mind had run back again, dreamily, to Gene Wellington, of
Philadelphia, the Gene as she knew and remembered him. It was not until
afterward that she recalled her surprise that this ranchman of the
Western prairies should have such a simple and easy manner whose home
life had evidently been so unlike her own.

"You haven't stayed too long," she said, frankly. "And you haven't yet
suggested what an undertrained Philadelphia girl can do to keep the
coyote from her dugout portal."

If only she had been a little less bewitchingly pretty, a little less
sure that the distance of planet from planet lay between them, a strange
sense of sorrow, and a strange new purpose would not have found a place
in Joe Thomson's heart then. With a perception much keener than her own,
he read Jerry's mind that night as she had never tried to read it
herself.

"I'm better up on soils and farm products than on civic problems and
social economy and such. Dry farming, clerking, sewing, household
economics in somebody's cook-shack, teaching school, giving music
lessons, canvassing for magazines--the Sage Brush girls do things like
these. I wish I could name a calling more suitable for you, but this is
the only line I can offer," Joe said, thinking how impossible it would
be for the girl beside him to fit into the workaday world of the Sage
Brush Valley. On the next ranch to his own up the river a fair-haired,
sun-browned girl was working in the harvest-field this season to save
the price of a hired hand, toward going to college that fall. Jolly,
strong-handed, strong-hearted Thelma Ekblad, whose name was yet to
adorn an alumni record of the big university proud to call her its
product. Jerry Swaim would never thrive in the same soil with this stout
Norwegian.

They were standing on the porch steps now, and the white moonbeams
glorified Jerry's beauty, for the young ranchman, as she looked up at
him with a smile on her lips and eyes full of light, a sudden decision
giving new character to her countenance. The suddenness of it, that was
her mother's child. The purpose, that was the reflection of Jim Swaim's
mind.

"I'm on the other side of my Rubicon. I'm going to teach mathematics in
the New Eden high-school. Will you help me to keep across the river?
There's an inspiration for me in the things that you can do?"

"You! Teach mathematics! They always have a man to teach that!" Joe
exclaimed, wondering behind his words if he only dreamed that she had
asked him to help to keep her across her Rubicon, or if she had really
said such a beautiful thing to him, Joe Thomson, sand-fighter and
general loser, who wouldn't be downed.

"Oh, I don't wonder you are surprised! I always jump quickly when I do
move. You think I couldn't teach A, B, C, the known quantities, let
alone x, y, z, the unknown quantities, don't you?" Jerry said, gaily.
"When I went to school I was a flunker in languages and sciences. I was
weak in boarding-school embroidery, too, because I never cared for those
things, nor was I ever made to study anything unless I chose to do it.
But I was sure in trigonometry and calculus, which I might have dodged
and didn't. I reveled in them. My mother was scandalized, and Gene
Wellington, an artist, who, by the way, has just given up his career for
a good bank clerkship in Philadelphia, a sort of cousin of mine, was
positively shocked. It seemed so unrefined and strong-minded. But my
father said I was just his own flesh and blood in that line. Yes, I'll
teach school. Mr. Ponk is going to offer me the position, and it's a
whole lot better than the poor-house, or madness, or the East, maybe,"
she added, softly, with a luminous glow in her beautiful eyes.

The old Sage Brush world seemed to slip out from under Joe Thomson's
feet just then.

"Is your friend related to John Wellington, who once lived in
Philadelphia?" he asked, after a pause, his mind far away from his
query.

"Why, he's John Wellington's son! John Wellington was a sort of partner
of my father's once," Jerry said. Even in the soft light Joe saw the
pink flush deepen on the girl's cheek. "Good night." She offered him her
hand. "I hope I may see you often. Oh, I hate that blowout, and you
ought to hate me on account of it."

"It is a brainless, hateful thing," Joe Thomson declared, as he took her
proffered hand. "All my streams seem to be Rubicons, even to the crooked
old Sage Brush. I can't be an inspiration to anybody. It is you who can
give me courage. If you can teach mathematics in New Eden, _I believe I
can kill that blowout_."

The strength of a new-born purpose was in the man's voice.

"Oh, no, you can't, for it's mostly on my land yet!" Jerry replied.

"Well, what of it? You say you won't play in that old sand-pile any
more. What do you care who else plays there? Good night."

"Good night, Mr. Thomson. Why, what is that?" Jerry's eyes were on a
short, squat figure standing in the middle of the gateway to the
Macpherson grounds.

"That's 'Fishing Teddy,' an old character who lives a hermit kind of
life down the Sage Brush. He comes to town about four times a year;
usually walks both ways; but I promised to take him out with me
to-night. He's harmless and gentle. Everybody likes him--I mean of our
sort. You wouldn't be interested in him. His real name is Hans Theodore,
but, of course, nobody calls him Mr. Theodore. Everybody calls him
'Fishing Teddy.' Good night, Miss Swaim."

Joe Thomson lifted his hat and walked away.

Jerry saw the old man shuffle out and join him, and the two went down
the street together, one, big and muscular, with head erect and an easy,
fearless stride; the other, humped down, frowsy, shambling, a sort of
half-product of humanity, whose companion was the river, whose days were
solitary, who had no part in the moonlight, the perfume of honeysuckle
blossoms, the pleasure of companionship, the easy comfort that wealth
can bring. His to bear the heat and the cinders on the rear platforms of
jerky freight-trains, his to serve his best food to imperious young city
girls lost in an impetuous passion of disappointment in a new and
bewildering land. And yet his mind was serene. Knowing the river would
bring him his food in the morning and his commodity of commerce for his
needs, he was vastly more contented with his lot to-night than was the
stalwart young man who stalked beside him, grimly resolving to go out
and do things.

Jerry watched the two until they turned into a side-street and
disappeared. The moonlight was wondrously bright and the air was like
crystal. A faint, sweet odor from hay-fields came up the valley now and
then, and all the world was serenely silent under the spell of night.
The net seemed torn away from about the girl's feet, the cloud lifted
from her brain, the blinding, blurring mists from before her eyes.

"I have crossed my Rubicon," she murmured, standing still in the
doorway of the porch trellis, breathing deeply of the pure evening air.
"I'm glad he came. I am free again, and I'm really happy. I suppose I am
queer. If anybody should put me in a novel, the critics would say 'such
a girl never came to Kansas.' But then if Gene should paint that
blowout, the critics would say 'there never was such a landscape in
Kansas.' These critics know so much. Only Gene will never paint any more
pictures--not masterpieces, anyhow. But I'm going to live my life my own
way. I won't go back to idleness and a life of sand at 'Eden.' I'll win
out here--I will, I will! 'If a woman goes right with herself.' Oh,
Uncle Cornie, I am starting. Whether I hold out depends on the way--and
myself."

When Laura Macpherson peeped into Jerry's room late that night she saw
her guest sleeping as serenely as if her mind had never a puzzling
question, her sunny day never a storm-cloud. So far Jerry had gone right
with herself.




X

THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER


The big dramas of life are enacted in the big centers of human
population. Great cities foster great commercial institutions; they
father great constructive enterprises; they endow great educational
systems; they build up great welfare centers; and they reach out and
touch and shape great national and international conditions. In them the
big tragedies and comedies of life--political, religious, social,
domestic--have their settings. And under the power of their combined
units empires appear and disappear. But, set in smaller font, all the
great dramas of life are printed, without a missing part, in the humbler
communities of the commonwealth. All the types appear; all conditions,
aspirations, cunning seditions, and crowning successes have their
scenery and _persona_ so true to form that sometimes the act itself
takes on the dignity of the big world drama. And the actor who produces
it becomes a star, for villainy or virtue, as powerful in his sphere as
the great star-courted suns of larger systems. Booth Tarkington makes
one of his fiction characters say, "There are as many different kinds of
folks in Kokomo as there are in Pekin."

New Eden in the Sage Brush Valley, on the far side of Kansas, might
never inspire the pen of a world genius, and yet in the small-town
chronicle runs the same drama of life that is enacted on the great stage
with all its brilliant settings. Only these smaller actors play with the
simplicity of innocence, never dreaming that what they play so well are
really world-sized parts fitted down to the compass of their settings.

Something like this philosophy was in York Macpherson's mind the next
morning as he listened to his sister and her guest loitering comfortably
over their breakfast. A cool wind was playing through the south windows
that might mean hot, sand-filled air later on. Just now life was worth
all the cost to York, who was enjoying it to the limit as he sat
studying the two women before him.

"For a frivolous, spoiled girl, Jerry can surely be companionable," he
thought, as he noted how congenial the two women were and how easily at
home Jerry was even on matters of national interest. "I never saw a type
of mind like hers before--such a potentiality for doing things coupled
with such dwarfed results."

York's mind was so absorbed, as he sat unconsciously staring at the
fair-faced girl opposite him, that he did not heed his sister's voice
until she had spoken a second time.

"York, oh York! wake up. It's daylight!"

York gave a start and he felt his face flush with embarrassment.

"As I was saying half an hour ago, brother, have you seen my little silk
purse anywhere? There was too much of my scant income in it to have it
disappear entirely."

"Yes, I took it. I 'specially needed the money for a purpose of my own.
I meant to tell you, but I forgot it. I'll bring back the purse later,"
York replied.

Of course Laura understood that this was York's return for catching him
at a disadvantage, but she meant to pursue the quest in spite of her
brother's teasing, for she was really concerned.

Only a few days before, the New Eden leak had opened again and some
really valuable things, far scattered and hardly enough to be considered
separately, had disappeared. Laura by chance had heard that week of two
instances on the town side of the river, and on the evening previous of
one across the river.

Before she spoke again she saw that Jerry's eyes were fixed on the
buffet, where two silver cups, exactly alike, sat side by side. There
was a queer expression about the girl's mouth as she caught her
hostess's eye.

"Is there any more silver of that pattern in this part of the country?"
she asked, with seeming carelessness, wrestling the while with a little
problem of her own.

"Not a pennyweight this side of old 'Castle Cluny' in Scotland, so far
as I know," York replied. "There's your other cup, after all, Laura. By
the way, Miss Jerry, how would you like to take a horseback ride over
'Kingussie'? I must go to the far side of the ranch this morning, and I
would like a companion--even yourself."

"Do go, Jerry. I don't ride any more," Laura urged, with that cheerful
smile that told how heroically she bore her affliction. "I used to ride
miles with York back in the Winnowoc country."

"And York always misses you whenever he rides," her brother replied,
beaming affectionately upon his brave, sweet sister. "Maybe, though,
Jerry doesn't ride on horseback," he added.

At Laura's words Jerry's mind was flooded with memories of the Winnowoc
country where from childhood she had taken long, exhilarating rides with
her father and her cousin Gene Wellington.

"I've always ridden on horseback," she said, dreamily, without looking
up.

"She's going to ride with me, not with ghosts of Eastern lovers, if she
rides to-day," York resolved, a sudden tenseness catching at his throat.

"What kind of mounts are you afraid of? I can have Ponk send up
something easy," he said, in a quiet, fatherly way.

Jerry's eyes darkened. "I can ride anything your Sage Brush grows that
you call a saddle-horse," she declared, with pretty daring. "Why, 'I was
the pride of the countryside' back in a country where fine horses grew.
Really and seriously, it was Cousin Gene who was afraid of spirited
horses, and he looked so splendid on them, too. But he couldn't manage
them any more than he could run an automobile over the bluff road above
the big cut this side of the third crossing of the Winnowoc. He
preferred to crawl through that cut in the slow old local train while I
climbed over the bluffs in our big car. You hadn't figured on my
boasting qualities, had you?" she added, with a smile at her own
vaunting words.

"Oh, go on," Laura urged. "I heard your father telling us once that your
cousin, on the Darby side, would ride out with you bravely enough, but
that you traded horses when you got off the place and you always came
back home on the one they were afraid for you to take out and your
cousin was afraid to ride back."

"She _climbed_ while Cousin Gene _crawled_. I believe she said something
there, but she doesn't know it yet; and it's not my business to tell her
till she asks me." York shut his lips grimly at the unspoken words.
"We'll be back, appetite and sundries, for the best meal the
scullery-maid can loot from the village," he said, as they rose from the
table.

When Jerry came out of the side door, where York was waiting for her,
she suggested at once a model for a cover illustration of an outing
magazine, an artistic advertisement for well-tailored results, and a
type of young American beauty. As they rode back toward the barns and
cattle-sheds that belonged to the ranch edging the corporation limits of
New Eden, neither one noticed the tall, angular form of Mrs. Stellar
Bahrr as she came striding across lots toward the driveway.

Stellar lived in a side street. Her back yard bordered a vacant lot on
the next side street above her. Crossing this, she could slip over the
lawn of a vacant house and down the alley half a block, and on by the
United Brethren minister's parsonage. That let her sidle between a
little carpenter-shop and a shoe-shop to the rear gateway into an alley
that led out to the open ground at the foot of the Macpherson knoll.
Stellar preferred this corkscrew route to the "Castle." It gave her
several back and side views, with "listening-posts" at certain points.

"Oh, good morning, Laury! I'm so glad to find you alone. I'm in a little
trouble, an' mebby you can help me out. You are everybody's friend, just
like your brother, exactly. Only his bein' that way's bound to get him
into trouble sooner or before that. Eh! What's that you're lookin' at?"

Laura had gone to the buffet after the riders had started away. She had
a singular feeling about that cup appearing so suddenly. She remembered
now that Jerry had asked twice about those cups, and had looked at them
with such a peculiar expression on each occasion. Laura had not remarked
upon it to herself the first time, but the trifling incident at the
table just now stayed in her mind. Yet why? The housekeeper often
rearranged the dining-room features in her endeavor to keep things free
from dust. That would not satisfy the query. That cup and Jerry Swaim
were dodging about most singularly in Laura's consciousness, and she
could not know that the reason for it lay in the projecting power of the
mind of the woman coming across lots at that moment to call on her.

Yet when Mrs. Bahrr thrust herself into the dining-room unannounced, as
was her habit, with her insistent greeting, and her query, "What's that
you're lookin' at?" the mistress of "Castle Cluny" had a feeling of
having been caught holding a guilty suspicion; and when Stellar Bahrr
ran her through with steely eyes she felt herself blushing with surprise
and chagrin.

"How can I help you, Mrs. Bahrr?" she asked, recovering herself in a
moment.

It was, however, the loss of the moment that always gave the woman
before her the clue she wanted.

"I'm needin' just a little money--only a few dollars. I'm quittin'
hat-trimmin' since them smarties down-town got so busy makin' over, an'
trimmin' over, an' everything. I'm goin' to makin' bread. I've got six
customers already, an' I'm needin' a gasoliner the worst way. I lack
jist five--mebby I could squeeze out with four dollars if I had it right
away. You never knowed what it means to be hard up, I reckon; never had
no trouble at all; no husband to up an' leave you and not a soul to
lean on. You've always had York to lean on. I 'ain't got nobody."

The drooping figure and wrinkled face were pitiful enough to keep Laura
Macpherson from reminding her that she was older than her brother and
once the leaning had been the other way. Here was a needy, lonely,
friendless woman. What matter that her greatest enemy was herself? All
of us are in that boat.

"Of course I'll help you, Mrs. Bahrr. I'll get the money right away."

She rose to leave the room, then sat down again hastily.

"I'm afraid I can't help you right now, either. I have mislaid my purse.
But when I find it I'll let you have the money. When York comes back
maybe I can get it of him. Could you come over this afternoon?"

"Mebby York won't let you have it to loan where there ain't no big
interest comin'. I'd ruther he didn't know it if you wasn't sure."

Laura recalled what her brother had said about not becoming entangled
with Stellar Bahrr, and she knew he would oppose the loan. She knew,
too, that in the end he would consent to it, because he himself was
continually befriending the poor, no matter how shiftless they might be.

"I think I can bring York round, all right," Laura assured her caller.
"He's not unreasonable."

"I'd ruther he didn't know. Men are so different from women, you know.
You say you lost your purse. Ain't that funny? Where?"

"The funny thing is I don't know where," Laura replied.

Mrs. Bahrr had settled down, and, having accomplished her open purpose,
began to train her batteries for her hidden motive.

"Things gits lost funny ways, queer ways, and sometimes ornery ways.
Ever' now an' then things is simply missin' here in this burg--just
missin'. But again there's such queer folks even in what you call the
best s'ciety. Now ain't that so?"

Laura agreed amiably. In truth, she wanted to get her mind away from its
substratum of unpleasant and unusual thought for which she could not
account. Nothing could take her farther from it than Mrs. Bahrr's small
talk about people and things. She knew better than to accept the gossip
for facts, but there was no courteous way of stopping Stellar now,
anyhow. One had to meet her on the threshold for that.

"'Tain't always the little, petty thievin' sneak gits the things, even
if they do git the blame of it. No, 'tain't." Mrs. Bahrr rambled on,
fixing her hook eyes square into her hostess at just the right moment
for emphasis. "I knowed the same thing happen twice. Once back in
Indiany, where I come from--jist a little town on White River. There was
a girl come to that town from"--hesitatingly--"from Californy; said to
be rich, an' dressed it all right; had every man there crazy about her,
an' her spendin' money like water pours over a mill-wheel in March. Tell
you who she looked like--jist a mite like this Miss Swim stayin' at your
house now--big eyes an' innocent-lookin' like her, but this Californy
girl was a lot the best-lookin' of the two--a lot. An' she was rich--or
so everybody thought. This un ain't. I got that out of Ponk 'fore he
knowed it. An'--well, to make a story end somewhere this side of
eternity, I never could bear them ramblin' kind of folks--first thing
folks knowed a rich old bachelor got animated with her, just clear
_animated_, an' literally swore by her. An'--well, things got to missin'
a little an' a little more, an', sir--well"--slowly and
impressively--"it turned out at last that this girl who they said was so
rich was a _thief_, takin' whatever she could get, 'cause she was hard
up an' too proud to go back to Oregon to tell her folks. An' that rich
bachelor jist defended her ever' way--'d say he took things accidental,
an' then help her to git 'em back, or git away with them--it was like a
real drammy jist like they acted out in the picture show t'other night
down-town. There was lots of talk, an' it nearly broke his sister's--I
mean his mother's--heart. But, pshaw! that all happened years ago down
in Indiany on the White River. It's all forgot long 'go. Guess I'd
never thought of it again if this Swim girl hadn't come here with her
big eyes, remindin' me of that old forgot eppisode, an' your losin'
your purse mysterious. How things happen, year in an' year out,
place after place, the same kind of things; good folks everywhere,
though--everywhere. I was in York's office late yistyday afternoon, an'
this girl comes in. Too bad she's so poor an' so pretty."

There was a venomous twist of the hooks at that word "pretty."

"But she's in trouble some way, all right, I know, an' York 'll help her
out. _I_ wouldn't ask him. Men take more int'rist naturally in young an'
pretty women. But it's different with older women. I hope York never
gits caught sometime like that man I knowed back in Indiany. He's too
smart for that. Miss Swim must have told York about her money shortage
yistyday. The postmaster said she'd been waitin' for a check
considerable. I couldn't get nothin' out of _him_, whether it had come
yet or not. But I guess not. But la! la! she's your guest; you wouldn't
let her suffer; an' I ain't tellin' a soul what I know about things. I
do know what they say, of course. York won't let her suffer. But I'm so
much obliged to you. Four dollars will be all I need, an' I'll pay you
with the first bakin's. I guess I'll set some folks thinkin' when they
see I can make my own way--"

Laura Macpherson was on her feet and it was her eyes now that were
holding the woman of the steel hooks.

"Miss Swaim is our guest, the daughter of an old friend of the
Macphersons. Of course we--"

Oh what was the use? Laura's anger fell away. It was too ridiculous to
engage in a quarrel with the town long-tongue. York was right. The only
way to get along with Stellar Bahrr was not to traffic with her. Mrs.
Bahrr rose also, gripping at the chance for escape uninjured.

"I'll see you this afternoon if you still feel like helpin' me, an' York
is willin'. I clear forgot to put out my ice-card. Good day. Good day."

The woman shuffled away, leaving the mistress of "Cluny Castle" in the
grip of many evil spirits. The demon of anger, of doubt, of contempt, of
incipient distrust, of self-accusation for even listening--these and
others contended with the angel of the sense of humor and the natural
courtesy of a well-bred woman.

And then the lost purse came up again.

"I may have left it in Jerry's room when I went to that closet after my
wrap last evening. I'll never learn to keep my clothes out of our
guest-room, I suppose," Laura said to herself, going at once to Jerry's
room.

As she pushed aside some dresses suspended by hoops to a pole in the
closet, Jerry's beaded hand-bag fell from a shelf above the hangings,
and the fastening, loosened by the fall, let the contents roll out and
lay exposed on the floor.

As Laura began to gather them up and put them back in their place, she
saw her own silk purse stuffed tightly into the bottom of her guest's
hand-bag. And then and there the poison tips of Stellar Bahrr's shafts
began a festering sore deep and difficult to reach.

<tb>

It was high noon when York Macpherson and his fair companion returned
from the far side of the big Macpherson ranch. Jerry's hair was blown in
ringlets about her forehead and neck. Her cheeks were blooming and her
eyes were like stars. With the fresh morning breeze across the prairie,
the exhilarating ride on horseback, and the novel interest in a ranch
whose appointments were so unlike "Eden" and the other Winnowoc Valley
farms, Jerry had the ecstasy of a new freedom to quicken her pulse-beat.
She had solved her problem; now she was free for her romantic nature to
expand. It was such a freedom as she had never in her wilful life known
before, because it had a purpose in it such as she had never known
before, a purpose in which the subconscious knowledge of dependence on
somebody else, the subjection to somebody else's ultimate control,
played no part.

To Laura Macpherson she seemed to have burst from the bud to the
full-blown flower in one short forenoon.

York's face, however, was wearing that impenetrable mask that even his
sister's keen and loving eyes could never pierce. He had been
impenetrable often in the last few weeks. But of the York back of that
unreadable face Laura was sure. Even in their mutual teasings the deep,
brotherly affection was unwavering. As far as it lay in York's power he
would never fail to make up to his companionable sister for what
circumstances had taken from her. And yet--the substratum of her
disturbed consciousness would send an upheaval to the surface now and
then. All normal minds are made alike and played upon by the same
influences. The difference lies in the intensity of control to subdue or
yield to the force of these influences. Things had happened in that
morning ride that York had planned merely for the beneficence of the
prairie breezes upon the bewildered purposes of the guest of the house.

On the far side of the "Kingussie" ranch the two riders had halted in
the shade of a clump of wild plum-trees beside the trail that follows
the course of the Sage Brush. Below them a little creek wound through a
shelving outcrop of shale, bordered by soft, steep earth banks wherever
the shale disappeared. This Kingussie Creek was sometimes a swift,
dangerous stream, but oftener it was a mere runlet with deep water-holes
carved here and there in the yielding shale. Just now, at the approach
of July heat, there was only a tiny thread of water trickling clear
over yellow rock, or deep pools lying in muddy thickness in the stagnant
places.

"Not much like the Winnowoc," York suggested, as his companion sat
staring down at the stream-bed below.

"Everything is different here," Jerry said, meditatively. "I've traveled
quite a little before; been as far as the White Mountains and the
beautiful woodsy country up in York State. There's a lot of upness and
downness to the scenery, but the people--except, of course--" Jerry
smiled bewitchingly.

"Except Ponk, of course," York supplied, with a twinkle in his eyes.

"How well you comprehend!" Jerry assured him. "But, seriously, the world
is so different out here--the--the people and their ways and all."

"No, Jerry, it isn't that. The climate is different. The shapes of
things differ. Instead of the churned-up ridged and rugged timber-decked
lands of Pennsylvania and York State, the Creator of scenery chose to
pour out this land mainly a smooth and level and treeless prairie--like
chocolate on the top of a layer cake."

"Chocolate is good, with sand instead of sugar," Jerry interrupted.

"But as to the people--the real heart of the real folks of the Sage
Brush--there's no difference. They all have 'eyes, hands, organs,
senses, affections, passions.' They are all 'fed with the same food,
hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed with
the same means, warmed and cooled with the same summer and winter' as
the cultured and uncultured folk of the Winnowoc Valley and the city of
Philadelphia. The trouble with us is we don't take time to read
them--nor even first of all to read ourselves. Of course I might except
old Fishing Teddy, that fellow you see away down there where the shade
is deepest," York added, to relieve the preachment he didn't want to
seem to be giving, yet really wanted this girl to understand. "He's a
hermit-crab and seldom comes among us. Every community has its
characters, you know."

"He was among us last night, and went home with Joe Thomson," Jerry
replied, looking with curious interest at the motionless brown figure
up-stream in the shadow of a tall earth bank.

York gave a start and stared at the girl in surprise. "How do you know?
Did the Big Dipper come calling on you? That sort of information is in
the Great Bear's line."

Jerry flushed hotly as she remembered her promise not to tell of Mrs.
Bahrr's call. In a dim sort of way she felt herself entangled for the
moment. Then she looked full at York, with deep, honest eyes, saying,
simply:

"Joe Thomson was calling on me last night, and I saw this old fellow,
Hans Theodore, Joe named him, waiting on the driveway, and the two went
away together, a pair of aces."

"How do you know, fair lady, that this is the same creature? And how do
you happen to know Joe Thomson?" York inquired, blandly, veiling his
curious interest with indifference.

"I happened to meet both of these country gentlemen on a certain day. In
fact, I dined _al fresco_ with one when I was riding in my chariot,
incognito, alone, unattended by gallant outriders, about my blank blank
rural estate in the heart of the Sage Brush country of Kansas. The
'blank blank' stands for a term not profane at all, but one I never want
to hear again--that awful word '_blowout_.'"

Jerry's humor was mixed with sarcasm and confusion, both of which
troubled the mind of her companion. This girl had so many sides. She was
so unused to the Western ways and he was trying to teach her a deeper
understanding of human needs, and the human values regardless of
geography, when she suddenly revealed a self-possession telling of
scraps of her experience in a matter-of-fact way; and yet a confusion
for some deeper reason possessed her at certain angles. Why? That
mention of Joe Thomson was annoying to York. Why? Jerry's assumed
familiarity with such a hermit outcast as the old fisherman was
puzzling. Why? York must get back to solid ground at once. This girl was
throwing him off his feet. Clearly she was not going to chatter idly of
all her experiences. She could know things and not tell them.

"Seriously, Jerry, there are no geographical limits for culture and
strength of character. If you stay here long enough you will appreciate
that," he began again where he had thrown himself off the trail to avoid
a preachment.

"Yes," Jerry agreed, with the same degree of seriousness.

"See, coming yonder." York pointed up the trail to where a much-worn
automobile came chuffing down the shaly road toward the ford of
Kingussie Creek. "That is Thelma Ekblad and her crippled brother Paul.
If you look right you will see the same lines of courage and sweetness
in his face that are in my sister's. And yet, although their lives have
been cast in widely different planes, their crosses are the same and
they have lifted them in the same way."

Jerry hadn't really seen the lines in Laura Macpherson's face, because
she had been too full of her own troubles. With York's words she felt a
sense of remorse. Finding fault with herself was new to her and it made
her very uncomfortable. Also this girl coming, this Thelma Ekblad, was
the one whom Mrs. Bahrr had said York had pretended to be interested in
once. Jerry had remembered every word of Stellar Bahrr's gossipy tongue,
because her mind had been in that high-strung, tense condition last
night to receive and hold impressions unconsciously, like a sensitized
plate. The thought now made her peculiarly unhappy.

"Joe Thomson's farm is next to hers. Some day I'll tell you her story.
It is a story--a real-life drama--and his."

York's words added another degree to Jerry's disturbed mental frame.

"How do you do, Thelma? Hello, Paul! Fine weather for cutting alfalfa.
My machines are at it this morning." York greeted the occupants of the
car cordially.

"Good morning, York. We are rushing a piece of the mower up to the shop.
Had a breakdown an hour ago."

Thelma was tanned brown, but her fair braids gleamed about her uncovered
head, and when she smiled a greeting her fine white teeth were worth
seeing. Paul Ekblad waved a thin white hand as the car passed the two on
horseback, and the delicate lines of his pale, studious face justified
York's comparison of it with Laura Macpherson's. Jerry saw her hostess
at that moment in a new light. Burdened for the moment as she was under
the discomfort of what seemed half-consciously to rebuke the frivolous
girl that she dimly knew herself to be, the sudden memory of her resolve
declared to Joe Thomson in the shadow-flecked porch the night before
came as a balm and a stimulant in one, to give her purpose,
self-respect, and peace.

Thus it was that Jerry came in to "Castle Cluny" at high noon the
picture of health and high spirits, shaming Laura Macpherson's doubt and
sorrow which her morning had brought her. Laura was thoroughly
well-bred, and she had, beyond that, a strong and virtuous heritage of
Scotch blood that made for uprightness and sincerity. With one effort
she swept out of her mind all that had harassed it since the cup episode
at the breakfast-table, establishing anew within her understanding the
force of her brother's admonition concerning any affiliation with the
Big Dipper, the town meddler and trouble-maker.

Late that afternoon, as Laura sat sewing in the shade of the
honeysuckle-vines, Stellar Bahrr hurried across lots again and hitched
cautiously up to the side door. Listening a moment, she heard the sound
of Laura's scissors falling on the cement floor of the porch, and
Laura's impatient exclamation, "There you go again!" as she reached to
pick them up and examine the points of their blades.

Stellar hitched cautiously a little further along the wall, and stood in
the shade of the house, outside the porch vines.

"Laury," she called, in a sibilant voice, "I jis' run in to say I won't
need that money at all. I'm goin' to go out sewin', an' I can git all I
can do, now the wheat harves' promises so well. Ever'body's spending
money on clo'es an' a lot of summer an' fall sewin' goin' to rot, you
might say. I'll be jis' blind busy, an' I can sew better than I can bake
or trim. But I'm same obliged."

"Won't you come in?" Laura must not be rude, at any cost.

"No, I can't. I must run back. My light bread's raisin' and it'll raise
the ruff if I don't work the meanness out of it."

Just then Jerry Swaim came bounding through the hall doorway. "Look
here, Laura! See what I have found." She held up her beaded hand-bag and
pulled the stuffed silken purse out of it. "Now how did it ever get in
there? I'm a good many things, but I never knew I was a shoplifter,"
Jerry declared, laughingly, a bit of confused blush making her prettier
than usual.

"Why--why--" Laura was embarrassed, not for Jerry's sake, but on account
of those steel hooks thrusting themselves into her back through the
honeysuckle-vines.

"Say, Laury, I jis' wanted to say I'm goin' to Mis' Lenwell's first.
Good-by." Stellar Bahrr's voice, sharp and thin, cut through the vines.

As Laura turned to reply Jerry saw her fair face redden, and her voice
was almost harsh as she spoke clearly, to be well heard.

"I remember now. I must have put it in there by mistake when you were
down-town yesterday afternoon. I guess I thought it was my bag."

Mrs. Bahrr, turning to go, had caught sight of Jerry's hand-bag through
the leaves, and remembered perfectly that Jerry had carried it with her
down-town the day before, and how well it matched the beaded trimming of
her parasol, her wide-brimmed chiffon hat, and the sequins of her sash
trimmings against her silk walking-skirt.

Jerry recalled taking the bag with her, too, and she recalled just then
what Mrs. Stellar Bahrr had hinted about Laura not wanting York to
admire other women. Why did that thought come to the girl's mind just
now? Was the wish of the evil mind of the woman hitching away across
lots and corkscrewing down alleyways projecting itself so far as this?




XI

AN INTERLUDE IN "EDEN"


An interlude should be brief. This one ran through a few midsummer days
with amazing rapidity, considering that in its duration the current of a
life was changed from one channel, whither it had been tending for
almost a quarter of a century, to another and widely different course
that ran away from the very goal-mark of all its years of inspiring
ambition.

It was late afternoon of a July day. Jerusha Darby sat in the
rose-arbor, fanning and rocking in rhythmic motion. The rose-vines had
ceased to bloom. Their thinning foliage was augmented now by the heavier
shade of thrifty moon-vines.

Midsummer found "Eden" no less restful and luxuriant in its July setting
than it was in the freshness of June.

The afternoon train had crawled lazily up the Winnowoc Valley on
schedule time, permitting Eugene Wellington, in white flannels, white
oxfords, and pink-pin-striped white silk shirt, fresh from shave and
shower-bath, to come on schedule time to the rose-arbor for a conference
with Mrs. Darby.

The swift flow of events had not outwardly affected the handsome young
man. The time of the early June roses had found him poor in worldly
goods, but rich in a trained mind, a developed genius, a yearning after
all things beautiful, a faith in divine Providence, abounding confidence
in his own power to win to the mastery in his beloved art, and glorying
in his freedom to do the thing he chose to do. It found him in love, and
the almost accepted lover of a beautiful, wilful, magnetic girl--a girl
with a sturdy courage in things wherein he was lacking; a frivolous,
untrained girl, yet with surprising dependableness in any crisis. It
found him the favorite nephew of a quiet, uninteresting, rich old
money-grubbing uncle and his dominant, but highly approving wife, whose
elegant home was always open to him the while he felt himself a
pensioner on its hospitality.

Mid-July found him, in effect, the master where he had been the poor
relation; the rich uncle gone forever from earthly affairs; a dominant
aunt still ruling--so she fancied--as she had always ruled, but with the
consciousness of her first defeated purpose rankling bitterly within
her. It found Eugene still in love with the same beautiful, wilful girl,
but far from any assurance of being a really accepted lover. It found
him insensibly forgetting the aspirations of a lifetime and beginning,
little by little, to grasp after the Egyptian flesh-pots. Life was fast
becoming a round of easy days, whose routine duties were more than
compensated by its charming domestic settings. The one unsatisfied
desire was for the presence of the bright, inspiring girl who had left a
void when she went away, for whose return all "Eden" was waiting.

The swift course of events had created other changes. Some growths are
slow, and some amazingly swift, depending upon the nature of the
life-germ in the seed and the soil of the planting. In Eugene Wellington
the love of beauty found its comfort in his present planting. It was
easier to stay where beauty was ready-made than to go out and create it
in some less lovely surroundings. Combine with this artistic temperament
an inherent lack of initiative and courage, a less resistant force, and
the product is sure. Moreover, this very falling away from the incentive
to artistic endeavor exacted its penalty in a dulled spirituality.
Whoever denies the allegiance due, in however small a measure, to the
call of art within him pays always the same price--a pound of tender
bleeding flesh nearest his heart. For Eugene Wellington the Shylock
knife was sharpening itself.

This July afternoon there were no misgivings in his soul, however--no
black shadows of failure ahead. All the serpents of "Eden" were very
good little snakes indeed. After a while he would paint again,
leisurely, exquisitely; especially would he paint when Jerry came home.

As he lighted a cigarette, a recent custom of his, and strolled down the
shady way to the rose-arbor to meet Mrs. Darby, he drew deep draughts
of satisfaction. It had been an unusually good day for him. Unusually
good. Business had made it necessary to open some closed records in the
late Cornelius Darby's affairs, records that Mrs. Jerusha Darby herself
had not yet examined. They put a new light on the whole Darby situation.
They went further and threw some side-lights on the late Jim Swaim's
transactions. Altogether they were worth knowing. And Eugene, wielding a
high hand with himself, had, once for all, stilled his finer sense of
fitness in his right to know these things. He had also made rapid
strides in this brief time toward comprehending business ethics as
differing from church ethics and artistic ethics. Face to face in a
conflict with Jerry Swaim, with Aunt Jerry Darby, with his conscience,
his God, he was never sure of himself. But as to managing things, once
he had shut his doors and barred them, he was confident. It was a truly
confident Gene who stepped promptly into the rose-arbor on the moment
expected. To the old woman waiting for him there he was good to look
upon.

"I'm glad you are on time, Gene," Mrs. Darby began, rocking and fanning
more deliberately. "I'm ready now to settle matters once for all."

"Yes, Aunt Jerry," Eugene responded, fitting himself gracefully into the
settings of this summer retreat, with a look of steady penetration
coming into his eyes as he took in the face before him.

"Any news from the Argonaut to-day?" he asked, at length, as Mrs. Darby
sat silently rocking.

"Not a line. I guess Jerry is waiting for me to ask her to come back.
She must be through with her romantic fling by this time, and about out
of money, too. So now's the time to act and settle matters, as I say,
once for all. Jerry _must come home_."

"Amen, and amen," Eugene agreed, fervently.

"And if she won't come home herself, she must be brought--to see things
as we do. _Must_, I say, Eugene."

"I'm glad she didn't say 'brought home' if she's going to send me after
her," the young man thought. The memory of having been sent after Jerry
in years gone by, and of coming back empty-handed, but full-hearted and
sore-headed, were still strong within him. "How shall we make her see?"
he inquired.

Mrs. Darby rocked vigorously for a few minutes. Then she brought her
chair to a dead stop and laid down the law without further shifting of
anchors.

"All my property, my real estate, country and city, my bank stocks, my
government bonds, my business investments--everything--is mine to keep
for my lifetime, and to pass by will to whomsoever I choose. Of course
it's only natural I should choose the only member of my family now
living to succeed to my possessions."

How the "my" sounded out as the woman talked of her god, to whose
service she was bound, but of whose blessings she understood so little!

Eugene sat waiting and thinking.

"Of course, whoever marries Jerry with my approval will come into a
fortune worth having."

"He certainly will," Eugene declared, fervently.

A clear vision of Jerry and June roses swept his soul with refreshing
sweetness, followed by the no less clear imagery of Uncle Cornie
stepping slowly but persistently at the wrong moment after his wabbling
discus. He looked away down the lilac-walk, unconsciously expecting the
familiar, silent, uninteresting face and figure to come again to view.
To the artist spirit in him the old man was there as real to vision as
he had been on that last--lost--June day.

"You are thinking of Jerry herself. I am thinking of her inheritance,
which is a deal more sensible, although Jerry is an unusually
interesting and surprising girl," the old woman was saying.

"Unusually," Eugene echoed. "And in case you do not make a will?"

The young man was still looking down the lilac-walk as he asked the
question, seemingly oblivious to the narrow eyes of Mrs. Darby
scrutinizing his face.

"I have already made it. If things do not please me I shall change it. I
may do that half a dozen times if I choose before I'm through with it.
Now listen to me." The woman spoke sharply.

Eugene listened, wondering the while what sort of lightning-rod she
carried, to speak with such assurance of all she meant to do before she
was through with the transactions of this life. Uncle Cornie had not
been so well defended.

"I want you to write to Jerry to come home. You can pay her expenses.
She will take the money quicker from you than from me. She's as proud as
Lucifer in some things, once she's set. But she's in love with you, and
where a girl's in love she listens."

Eugene looked up quickly. "Are you sure?" he asked, eagerly.

"Of course I am! Why shouldn't I know love when I see it?" Mrs. Darby
inquired.

Yes, why?

"But you mustn't give in, nor plead with her. Just tell her how well
fixed you are, and how much she is missing here, and that you will wait
her time, only she must come back, and promise to stay here, or I'll cut
my will to bits, I certainly shall. I'll write myself to York
Macpherson. He's level-headed and honorable as truth. If he was dead in
love with Jerry himself--as he no doubt is by this time--he'd just put
it all away if he found out he was denying me my rights. I'll put it up
to his honor. And so with him at that end of the line, and you here, and
me really moving the chessmen, it can't be a losing game, Eugene. It
simply can't. Jerry may not get tired of her new playthings right away,
but she will after a while. It isn't natural for her to take to a life
so awfully different from her bringing up. When the new wears off she'll
come home, even if necessity didn't drive her, as it's bound to sooner
or later. She's nearly out of money right now, and she can't sponge off
the Macphersons forever and be Jim Swaim's child. Is everything clear to
you now?"

Eugene threw away his cigarette and lighted a fresh one, his face the
while as expressionless as ever the dry, dull face of Cornelius Darby
had been. At last he answered:

"Mrs. Darby has made a will, presumably in favor of her niece, Geraldine
Swaim--a will subject to replacement by any number of wills creating
other beneficiaries. In any event, Mrs. Darby proposes to have a voice
in the final disposition of her property."

Mrs. Darby nodded emphatically. "I certainly do."

Eugene smiled approval of such good judgment. "You are right, Mrs.
Darby. What is your own you should control, always. But, frankly, Aunt
Jerry, it is Geraldine Swaim herself who is my fortune--if I can ever
acquire it."

"You don't object to her prospects, I hope," Mrs. Darby interrupted,
with a twinkle in her eye.

"I couldn't, for her sake. And I am artistic enough to love the charm of
an estate like this; and sensible enough, maybe, to appreciate the
influence and opportunity that are afforded by the other financial
assets of the Darby possessions. I'll do all in my power to bring Jerry
back to a life of ease and absence of all anxiety and responsibility.
Shall I go out to Kansas after her?"

An uncomfortable feeling about that York Macpherson had begun now to
pull hard upon Eugene's complacent assurance, although he had rebelled a
few minutes ago at the thought of going anywhere after Jerry.

"Never," Mrs. Darby responded. "It would just give her another chance
for adventure and seem to acknowledge that we couldn't do without her."

In truth, Mrs. Darby was shrewd enough to know that with Eugene on the
ground she could not count on York Macpherson as her ally. York would
naturally champion Jerry's cause, and she knew that Eugene Wellington
would be no match for the diplomatic man of affairs whom she had known
intimately from his childhood.

"Aunt Jerry, how much do you know of the value of this Swaim estate?"
Eugene asked, suddenly.

"Very little. Cornelius told me that he had a full account of it. That
was on the very day he was--he passed away. The papers, except the one
Jerry found here the day after the funeral, have all been mislaid."

"Then I'd advise you to write to this Macpherson person and find out
exactly what we have to fight against," the young man suggested.
"Meantime I'll write to Jerry. I'm sure she should be ready to listen
now. All I claim to know of that beastly region out West I learned from
my father, but that is enough for me. If there were really a bit of
landscape worth the cost of the canvas I might go out there and paint
it. But who cares to paint in only two colors, blue one half--that's
sky, unclouded, monotonous; and chrome yellow, the other half--that's
land. I could paint the side of the cattle-barn over yonder half yellow,
half blue, and put as much expression into it."

Mrs. Darby listened approvingly. "I'm very thankful that you see things
so sensibly. The sooner you replace what isn't worth while with what is
the sooner you will know you are a success in your business. We will
write those letters to-night. I'm having your favorite dishes for dinner
now, and we'll be served here. It is so pleasant here at this time of
day. I'll go and see to things right away, and we'll have everything
brought out pretty soon."

The owner of all this dainty comfort and restfulness and beauty hurried
away, leaving Eugene Wellington alone in the rose-arbor--alone with
memories of Jerry Swaim, and Uncle Cornie, and life, and love, and hope
and high ambition, and himself--the self that a man must go right with,
if he goes with him at all.

For a long half-hour he sat there in the rose-arbor, the appealing call
of his divine gift filling his artist soul. Then his judgment prevailed.
What he most wanted to have was here, ready to have now--and to hold
later with only a little patient waiting. A few weeks, or months, or
maybe even a year, a run of four swift seasons, and the girl of his
heart's heart would come back into her own, and find him ready for her
coming. That impossible York was not to be considered. Jerry was no
fool, if she was sometimes a bit foolish in her pranks. And he, Eugene
Wellington, had only this day learned of the whole Swaim situation, what
was vastly valuable to know. Meantime, his the task to keep that
precious Jerusha Darby will intact; or, failing in that, came the more
difficult and delicate task of controlling or holding back the pen that
would write another will. And in the end Jerry would love him forever
for what he would save for her--for her--

The memory of what he had learned that day in the business house in the
city came with its testimony that he was shaping his life course well.
Only one little foxy fear dodged about in his mind--the fear that
Jerry--the Jerry he knew, lovable in spite of all her little failings,
beautiful, picturesque, and surprising--that this Jerry, whom he
thought he knew so well, might prove to be an unknowable, unguessable
Jerry whose course would baffle all his plans, his efforts, his heart
longings. It must not be. He would prevent that. But could he?

The coming of dainty viands with exquisite appointments gave nourishment
to his ready appetite, and dulled for a time the thing within him that
sometime must cry out to power or be sleeked down into fat and unfeeling
subjection.

That night two letters were written to New Eden, Kansas, but neither
writer really knew the reader to whom the letter was written, nor
measured life purposes by the same gauge, so setting anew the world-old
stage for a drama in human affairs whose crowning act shapes human
destinies.




XII

THIS SIDE OF THE RUBICON


In the late afternoon of a July Sabbath Jerry Swaim had gone for a
stroll along the quiet outskirts of New Eden. Laura was napping in the
porch swing, and York had gone to his office in answer to a telephone
call. Jerry was rarely lonely with herself and she was a good walker.
She was learning, too, the need for being alone with herself, for there
were many things crowding into her mind that demanded recognition.

Jerry attended church with the Macphersons every Sunday, but it was a
mere perfunctory act on her part. To-day the minister was away. He had
gone to the upper Sage Brush to officiate at the funeral of Mrs. Nell
Belkap that had been Nell Poser, she of the tow hair and big-lunging
baby. She had died of congestion, following over-heating in cooking for
threshing-hands for her mother, her father being the kind of man that
objected to hired help for "wimmin folks." All that was nothing to
Jerry, who found herself wondering, in a vague sort of way, just where
that baby would sprawl itself, unattached to its mother's anchorage.
Babies were not in Jerry's scheme of things at all.

The substitute minister was more interesting to think about. He had a
three-piece country charge over which to spread the Gospel, "Summit
School-House," "Slack Crick Church," and "Locust Grove Grange." He said
"have went" and he called the members of one of Saint Paul's churches
"The Thessalonnykins." And he really didn't know the Lord's Prayer
correctly, for he said "forgive us our trespasses," instead of "our
debts," as dear accurate Saint Matthew has written it.

Jerry's mind was on him as an aside, on him, and that Paul Ekblad whom
she caught sight of in the Ekblad car with Thelma. They had stopped a
minute to speak with York Macpherson as they were on their way to that
up-country Poser funeral. Why should Paul Ekblad go so far to a funeral?

Jerry strolled aimlessly along the smooth road leading out to the New
Eden cemetery, her bead-trimmed parasol shading her bare head, and her
pale-green organdie gown making her appear very summery. Jerry had the
trick of fitting all weather except the heated, sand-filled days of
mid-June on a freight-train, which condition Junius Brutus Ponk declared
"was enough to muss a angel's wings an' make them divine partial-eclipse
angel draperies look dingier than dish-rags."

There were half a dozen well-grown cottonwood-trees in the cemetery,
with rows of promising little elms, catalpas, and box-elders all
symmetrically set. The grass was brown, but free from weeds; the walks
were only smooth paths. But the shade of the cottonwood group, and the
quiet of the place, seemed inviting. Every foot of the wind-swept
elevation was visible to the whole town, but the distance was guarantee
for undisturbed meditation. Jerry had no interest in cemeteries. She had
rarely visited the corner of "Eden" where the few elect by family ties
had their last resting-place. She walked down the grassy paths toward
the largest cottonwoods, now, indifferent alike to the humble headstone
and the expensive and sometimes grotesque granite memorial. By the
tallest shaft in the place, designated by Stellar Bahrr as "Granddad
Poser's monniment," she sat down in the shade of the biggest trees, and
looked out at New Eden in its Sabbath-afternoon nap; at the winding Sage
Brush and the green and yellow fields, and black hedgerows, and rolling
prairies, with purple-shadowed draws and pale-brown swells, and groves
about distant farmhouses. She sat still for a long time, and she was so
lost in this view that she did not hear steps approaching until Mr. Ponk
was almost beside her.

"Good afternoon, Miss Swaim. Takin' a constitutional? They ain't no
Swaims laid away out here I reckon."

"Oh no," Jerry replied. "I shouldn't come here for that if there were."

Something about Ponk always made her good-natured. He was so grotesquely
impossible to her--a caricature cut from some comic magazine, rounded
out and animated.

"Say you wouldn't? Now that's real queer." The short man opened his
little eyes wide with surprise. "Now I soar down here regular every
Sunday evenin' of the world, summer and winter."

"What for?" Jerry asked, looking up at the speaker with curiosity.

New Eden was still in that stage when a funeral was a public event. And
the belief was still maintained that the dead out in the cemetery must
be conscious of every attention or lack of it shown to their memory by
visits and flowers, and the price of tombstones. In a word, to the New
Eden living, the New Eden dead were not really in the Great Hereafter,
but here, demanding consideration in the social economy of the
community.

Ponk was more shocked at Jerry's query than she could begin to
comprehend, and his interest in her and pity for her took a still
stronger grip on life.

"Why, Miss Swaim, I come out here to see my mother. I 'ain't never
failed to bring her a flower in summer, or a green leaf in winter, one
single Sunday since she was laid out there on the south slope one Easter
day eight Aprils ago."

"But she isn't there." Jerry spoke gently now, realizing that she had
hurt him unintentionally.

"She is to me, an' I'd ruther think it thataway an' feel like I was
callin' every Sunday, never forgettin'," Ponk said, sadly.

"Where's your dead to you, Miss Swaim?" he asked, after a pause.

Jerry, who was gazing down the Sage Brush Valley, turned slowly at his
words, her big eyes luminous with tears.

"They are not." She waved a hand against viewless air.

"Oh yes, they are, walkin' beside you every day, lovin' you and proud of
you! A good mother just lives on an' keeps doin' good, and so does a
father, if you let 'em." Ponk hesitated, and his moon-round face was
flushed. "I ain't tryin' to preach," he added, hastily. "They's some
things, though, we all got to cling to or else get hustled off our feet
into a big black void where we just sink and die. It ain't just
Sage-Brushers, but it's all Christians--Baptists and Cammylites and High
Church and everybody. It's safer to stand in the light than sink in the
bottomless night. But, say, look who's comin' an' see what's trailin'
him. I guess I'll be soarin' back to the hotel now. Pleased to meet
you--always am pleased." Ponk lifted his hat and bowed uncovered, and
uncovered walked away.

What he had said in the sincerity of his spiritual belief fell on
fertile soil in the mind of his listener. He had preached a sermon to
her that was good for her to hear.

Jerry looked out in the direction he had indicated and saw York
Macpherson, walking a bit briskly for him and the place and the
afternoon.

It was no wonder that Jerusha Darby should expect York to be caught by
the charms of his guest. As she sat there in the shade of the
cottonwoods, where, in all the cemetery, the blue grass grew rankest,
with her pale-green gown, her smooth pink cheeks, and the wavy masses of
golden-brown hair coiled low at the back of her head, York wondered if
the spirit of the wild rose in bloom and the spirit of some Greek nymph
had not combined in the personification before him.

At the gateway he met Ponk.

"Why do you run away? I have a special-delivery letter for Miss Swaim. I
thought I'd better come and find her, but that needn't interfere with
you."

"Oh, you smooth-bore! But I have to go, anyhow. I'm headin' off what's
trailin' you. Don't look back. It's Stellar Bahrr, comin' out to see
who's been to see their folks to-day and who's neglectin' 'em,
'specially late arrivals. She's seen my game, though, now, an' she's
shabbin' off to the side gate, knowin' I'd head her back to town. Say,
York, she's after Miss Swaim now. You watch out. Them that's the
worthlessest and has the least influence in a community can start the
biggest fires burnin'. Everybody in New Eden's been buffaloed by
her--just scared blue--except maybe us two. You ain't, I know, and I'm
right sure I ain't."

"Ponk, you are as good as you are good-looking," York said, heartily.
"The Big Dipper could start a tale of our guest meeting gentlemen
friends in the cemetery. And yet for privacy it's about like meeting
them on the sidewalk before the Commercial Hotel. However, she's started
scandal with less material. I have business with Miss Swaim, so I'll
walk home with her."

Jerry waited for her host under the flickering, murmuring leaves of the
cottonwood. She had seen some woman wandering diagonally from the
cemetery road toward the corner of the inclosure, but she had no
interest in strangers and might never have thought of her again but for
a word of York's that day.

He had seen the girl looking after Stellar as she made a wide flank
movement. A sense of duty coupled with a strange interest in Jerry, for
which he had as yet given no account to himself, was urging him to tell
her, as he had told his sister, to have no traffic with the town's
greatest liability, but with all of Ponk's warning he could not bring
himself to speak now.

"May I sit here with you awhile?" he asked, lifting his hat as he spoke.

"Certainly. It is so quiet and peaceful out here, and, as I have no
associations with this place, I can sit here without being unhappy or
irreverent," Jerry replied.

"I came out to find you. There are callers at home now, so I'll give you
my message here, unless you want to follow Mr. Ponk's example and
'soar' off home."

"That man interests me," Jerry declared. "He said some good things about
his mother just now. And yet he's so--so funny."

"Oh, Ponk's outside is against him. If he could be husked out of himself
and let the community get down to the kernel of him he is really fine
wheat," York said, conscious the while that he had not meant, for some
reason, to praise the strutting fellow. Yet he had never felt so toward
the little man before.

"I have a special-delivery letter for you which came this afternoon.
While you read it I'll go out to the gate and speak to the Ekblads,
coming yonder."

Jerry read her letter--the one Eugene had written after his conference
with Jerusha Darby in the rose-arbor. In it he had been faithful to the
old woman's smallest demands, but the message itself was a masterpiece.
It was gracefully written, for Eugene Wellington's penmanship was art
itself; and gracefully worded, and it breathed the perfumes of that
lovely "Eden" on every page.

Jerry closed her eyes for a moment in the midst of the reading, and the
wind-swept cemetery and all the summer-seared valley of the Sage Brush
vanished. The Macphersons; Ponk; Thelma Ekblad in the automobile by the
cemetery gate, holding something in her arms, and her fair-haired
brother, Paul; Joe Thomson (why Joe?)--all were nothing. Before her eyes
all was Eugene--Eugene and "Eden." Then she read on to the end. One
reading was enough. When York came back she was sitting with the letter
neatly folded into its envelope again, lying in her lap.

York had a shrewd notion of what that letter contained, but there was
nothing in Jerry's face by which to judge of its effect on her. Two
things he was learning about her--one, that she didn't tell all she
knew, after the manner of most frivolous-minded girls; the other, that
she didn't tell anything until she was fully ready to do so. He admired
both traits, even though they baffled him. In his own pocket was Jerusha
Darby's letter, also specially delivered. He sat down by Jerry and
waited for her to speak.

"Were those the people we saw on the south border of 'Kingussie'?" she
asked.

"Yes," York replied.

"Do they interest you?" she questioned.

"Very much."

"Why?" Jerry was killing something--time, or thought.

"Because, as I told you the other day, the same life problems come to
all grades. And life problems are always interesting," York declared.

"Has Thelma Ekblad a blowout farm, too?" Jerry's face was serious, but
her eyes betrayed her mood.

"Better a blowout farm than a blowout soul," York thought. "No. I wonder
what she would do with it if she had," he said, aloud.

"Just what I am doing, no doubt, since all of us, 'Colonel's lady and
Judy O'Grady,' are alike. Tell me more about her," Jerry demanded.

"She's talking against time now, I know, but I'll tell her a few
things," York concluded.

"Jerry, there are not many women like this Norwegian farmer girl who is
working her way through the State University down at Lawrence. A few
years ago her brother Paul was in love with a girl up the Sage Brush,
the daughter of a prosperous, stupid, stingy old ranchman. Paul was
chewed up in a mowing-machine one day when the horses got scared and ran
away, but his girl was true to him in spite of her father's objections
to him. Then came a woman--a sharp-tongued gossip (she's over yonder now
by the side gate)--who managed to stir up trouble purely for the
infernal joy of gossip, I suppose, between this girl and Thelma. I
needn't go into detail; you probably do not care much for the general
outline."

"Go on," Jerry commanded.

"Well, it was the rough course of true love over again. Between the
father and the sister the match was broken off, and before things could
be reconciled the girl's father forced the marriage of his daughter to a
worthless scamp who posed as a rich man, or an heir expectant to riches.
The Ekblads are hard-working farmer folk. When it was too late the
misunderstanding was cleared up. The rich fellow soon proved a fraud
and a rascal and a wife-deserter. And the girl came home with her baby.
Her father, as I said, was too stingy to hire help. So this girl-mother
overworked in threshing-time, and--was buried this afternoon up the Sage
Brush--old man Poser's daughter, Nell Belkap. The Ekblads have just come
from the funeral. Old Poser has refused to care for Nell's baby and
intended to put it in an orphan asylum. Thelma Ekblad brought it home
with her. It was in her arms just now, and she's going to keep it and
adopt it. When she's away at school--she has a year yet before she
graduates--that crippled brother, Paul, will take care of it. All of
which is out of your line, Jerry, but interesting to us in the valley
here."

As York paused and looked at Jerry, all that Stellar Bahrr had said of
him and the Poser girl swept through her mind. Not the least meanness of
a lie is in its infectious poisoning power.

"It is very interesting. I wonder how she can take care of that baby.
Babies are so impossible," Jerry said, musingly.

"We were all impossibles once. Some of us are still improbables," York
replied.

Jerry looked up at him quickly. "Not altogether hopeless, maybe. Thelma
is doing this for her brother's sake, I can see that. And the story has
a sweeter side than if she were doing it just for herself. It makes it
more worth while."

It was the first time that York had caught the note of anything outside
of self in Jerry's views of life.

He involuntarily pressed his hand against the specially delivered letter
he himself had received that afternoon, and his lips were set grimly.
The plea of the old woman, and the soul of the young woman, which called
loudest now?

"Will this young Ekblad go up to his sweetheart's grave every Sunday,
like Mr. Ponk comes here?" Jerry asked, after a pause.

"No, he will probably never go near it," York replied.

"Why not? I thought that was the customary way of doing here," Jerry
declared.

"Because it isn't his grave. It belongs to Bill Belkap, who doesn't care
for it. Paul Ekblad will find his solace in caring for Nell Poser's
child and in knowing it was her wish that he is fulfilling. That is the
real solace for the loss of loved ones."

Jerry remembered Uncle Cornie and his withered yellow hand under her
plump white one as he told her of Jim Swaim's wish for his child.

"If I carry out that wish I will be true to my father--and--he will be
happier," she thought, and a great load seemed lifting itself from her
soul.

"Oh, father, father! You are not in the 'Eden' burial-plot. You are here
with me. I shall never lose you." The girl's face was tenderly sweet
with silent emotion as she turned to the man beside her.

"I'm glad you told me that story. May I come down to your office in the
morning for a little conference? I can come at ten."

"Certainly. Come any time," York assured her, wishing the while that the
plea of Jerusha Darby's that lay in his pocket was in the bottom of
Fishing Teddy's deep hole down the Sage Brush.

The next morning Jerry Swaim came into the office of the Macpherson
Mortgage Company promptly at the stroke of ten by the town clock.

"If I were only a younger man," York Macpherson thought, feeling how the
presence of this girl transformed the room she entered--"if I were only
younger I would fall at her shrine, without a question. Now I keep
asking myself how a woman can be so charming, on the one hand, and so
characterless maybe, shallow anyhow, on the other. But the test is on
for sure now."

No hint of this thought, however, was in his face as he laid aside his
pen and asked, in his kindly, stereotyped way:

"What can I do for you?"

"You can be my father-confessor for a minute or two, and then make out
my last will and testament for me," Jerry replied, with a demure smile.

"So serious as all that?" York inquired, gravely, picking up a blank
lease form as if to write.

"So, and worse," Jerry assured him. But in an instant her face was
grave. "You know my present situation," she began, "and that I must
decide at once what to do, and then _do_ it. I'm so grateful that you
understand and do not try to offer me friendship for service."

York looked at her earnest face and glowing dark-blue eyes wonderingly.
This girl was forever surprising him, either by flippant indifference or
by unexpected insight.

"You know a lot about my affairs, of course," Jerry went on, hurriedly.
"Aunt Darby offered both of us--me, I mean, a home with her, a life of
independent dependence on her--charity--for that, at bottom, was all
that it was. And when I refused her offer she simply cut me until such
time as I shall repent and go back. Then the same thing would be waiting
for me. I know now that it was really wilfulness and love of adventure
that most influenced me to break away from Philadelphia and--and its
flesh-pots. But, York, I don't want to go back--not yet awhile, anyhow."

It was the first time she had ever called him by that name, and it sent
a thrill through her listener.

"Is it wilfulness and love of adventure still, or something else, that
holds you here 'yet awhile'?" York asked, with kindly seriousness.

"Oh, wait and see!" Jerry returned.

"She is not going to be _led_, whichever way she goes. I told Laura
so," was York's mental comment.

"Does this finish your 'confession'?" he asked.

"I may as well tell you the other side of the story." Jerry's voice
trembled a little. "Cousin Gene Wellington was in the same boat with me,
a dependent like myself. But now that he has given up to Aunt Jerry's
wishes, I suppose he will be her heir some day, unless I go back and get
forgiven."

"This artist's father was in business with your father once, wasn't he?"
York asked.

"Yes, and there was something I never could understand, and Aunt Jerry
never mentioned, about that; but she did say often that Cousin Gene
would make up for what John Wellington lacked, if things went her way.
They haven't all gone her way--only half of them, so far."

"Do you fully understand what you are giving up, Jerry?" York asked,
earnestly. "That life might be a much pleasanter story back East, even
if it were a bit less romantic than the story on the Sage Brush. Might
not your good judgment take you back, in spite of a little pride and the
newness of a different life here?"

As York spoke, Jerry Swaim sat looking earnestly into his face, but when
he had finished she said, lightly:

"I thought before I saw you that you were an old man. You seem more like
a brother now. I never had a brother, nor a sister--nothing but myself,
which makes too big a houseful anywhere." She grew serious again as she
continued: "I do understand what I'm giving up. It was tabulated in a
letter to me yesterday, and I do not give up lightly nor for a girl's
whim now. I have my time extended. There seems to be indefinite patience
at the other end of the line, if I'll only be sure to agree at last."

"Pardon me, Jerry, if I ask you if it is a question of mere funds." York
spoke carefully. "I know that Mrs. Darby may be drawn on at any time for
that purpose."

"Did she tell you so?" Jerry asked, bluntly.

"She did--when you first came here," York replied, as bluntly.

Jerry did not dream of the struggle that was on in the mind of the man
before her, but her own strife had made her more thoughtful.

For a little while neither spoke. Then York Macpherson's face cleared,
as one who has reached the top of a difficult height and sees all the
open country on the other side. Jerusha Darby's plea had won.

"Jerry, you do not understand what is before you. Whoever takes up the
business of self-support, depending solely on the earnings that must be
won, has a sure battle with uncertainty, failure, sacrifice, and
slow-wearing labor. Of course it is a glorious old warfare--but it has
that other side. In the face of the fact that I am your fortunate host,
and that my sister is happier now than she has ever been before in New
Eden, and hopes to keep you here, I urge you, Jerry, to consider well
before you refuse to go back to your father's sister and your artist
cousin."

The "father's sister" was a master-stroke. It caught Jerry at an angle
she had not expected. But that "artist cousin"! If Gene had been truly
the artist, Jerry Swaim had yielded then. The failure to be true to
oneself has long tentacles that reach far and grip back many things that
else had come in blessing to him who lies to his own soul.

"I won't go back. That is settled. Now as to my last will and testament,
please," Jerry said, prettily.

"Imprimis," York began, with his pen on the lease form before him.

"Oh, drop the Latin," Jerry urged. "Say, 'I, Geraldine Darby Swaim,
being of sound mind and in full possession of all my faculties, and of
nothing else worth mentioning, being about to pass into the final estate
and existence of an old-maid school-teacher, a high-school teacher of
mathematics'--Please set that down."

"So you are going to teach. I congratulate you." York rose and took the
girl's hand.

"Thank you. Yes, I just 'soared' over to the hotel and signed my
contract with Mr. Ponk and the other two members in good standing, or
whatever they are." Jerry would not be serious now. "And the remainder
of my will: 'I hereby give and bequeath all my worldly goods, excepting
my gear, to wit: one claim of twelve hundred acres, containing three
cottonwood-trees, three times three acres of oak timber, and three times
three times three million billion grains of golden sand, to the
Macpherson Mortgage Company to have and to hold, free of all expense to
me, and to lease or give away to any lunatic, or lunatics, at the
company's good-will and pleasure, for a term not to exceed three million
years. All of which duly signed and sworn to.'"

As Jerry ran on, York wrote busily on the lease form before him.

"Please sign here," he said, gravely pointing to a blank space when he
had finished. "It is a three years' lease to your property herein
legally described. The Macpherson Mortgage Company will pay you
twenty-five cents per acre, per year, with the exclusive right to all
the profits accruing on the land, and to sublease the same at will."

"That is about half of what Aunt Jerry spent on my wardrobe just before
I came West," Jerry exclaimed. "But I couldn't take twenty-five cents a
year. I've seen the property, you know, and I don't want charity here
any more than I did in Philadelphia."

"Then sign up the lease. This is business. Our company is organized on a
strictly financial basis for strictly financial transactions. It is a
matter of 'value received' both ways with us."

York Macpherson never trifled in business matters, even in the smallest
details, and there was always something commanding about him. It pleased
him now to note that Jerry read every word of the document before
accepting it, and he wondered how much a girl of such inherent business
qualities in the small details of affairs would waver in steadfastness
of purpose in the larger interests of life.

"Will you let me give a receipt for the cash instead of taking a check?"
Jerry asked, as York reached for his check-book.

"Why do you prefer that?" York asked, with business frankness.

"Because I do not care to have the transaction known to any one besides
your company," Jerry replied.

"But suppose I should sublease this land?" York suggested.

"That would be different, of course, even if the lessee was a lunatic.
Otherwise I don't care to have it known to any one that I draw an income
from what is not worth an effort," Jerry declared, quoting Joe Thomson's
words regarding her possessions.

"If I give my word to exclude every one else from knowing of this
transaction it means every one--even my sister Laura." York looked at
Jerry questioningly.

"Even your sister Laura," Jerry repeated, conclusively.

York was too well-bred to ask her why, and, while he voluntarily
refrained from telling his sister many things, she was his counselor in
so many affairs that he wondered not a little at Jerry's request, while
he chafed a little under his promise. He was so accustomed to being
master of himself in all affairs that it surprised him to find how
easily he had put himself where he would rather not have been placed.

Half an hour later Joe Thomson came into the office.

"What can I do for you to-day, Joe?" York inquired.

"Do you control the sections south of mine?" Joe asked. "I want to lease
them, but I shouldn't care to have the owner know anything about it."

"That old blowout! What's your idea, Joe?"

"I want to try an experiment," Joe replied.

York Macpherson had the faculty of reading some men like open books.

"You must have been hanging around eavesdropping this morning. I just
got a three years' lease on Miss Swaim's land at twenty-five cents an
acre, and here you come for it. I took it on a venture, of course,
hoping to sell sand to the new cement-works up the river, sand being
scarce in these parts." There was a twinkle in York's eyes as he said
this. "I can sublease it, of course, and at the same price, but you
know, Joe, that the land is worthless."

"I don't know it," Joe said, stubbornly. "You seem to have been willing
enough to get the lease secured this morning."

York ignored the thrust. "You know I leased that land merely to help
Miss Swaim, but you don't know yet whether or not you can tame your own
share of that infernal old sand-pile that you want to put a mortgage on
your claim to fight," York reminded him.

"I'll take a part of that loan to pay for the lease, and the rest I'll
use on the Swaim land, not on mine. I'm going to go beyond the blowout
to begin, and work north the same way it goes," Joe explained.

"All of which sounds pretty crazy to me. You are shouldering a big load,
young man--a regular wildcat venture. There's one of you to myriads of
sand-heaps. You'll have to take the Lord Almighty into partnership to
work a miracle before you win out. I've known the Sage Brush since the
first settler stuck in a plow, and I've never known one single miracle
yet," York admonished him.

"As to miracles," Joe replied, "they are an every-day occurrence on the
Sage Brush, if you can only look far enough above money-loaning to see
them, you Shylock."

Calling York Macpherson a Shylock was standard humor on the Sage Brush,
he was so notoriously everybody's friend and helper.

"And I've had to take the Lord in for a partner all my life," Joe added,
seriously.

York looked at the stern face and stalwart form of the big, sturdy
fellow before him, recalling, as he did so, the young ranchman's years
of struggle through his boyhood and young manhood.

"Of course you can win," he assured Joe. "Your kind doesn't know what
failure means. It isn't the _work_, it is the stake that makes me
uneasy."

Joe looked up quickly and York knew that he understood.

"I read your page clearly enough, my boy," he said, earnestly. "You are
taking a hand in a big game, and the other fellow keeps his cards under
the table. Blowouts are not as uncertain as women, Joe. Let me tell you
something. You will find it out, anyhow. I can ease the thing up now.
Back in Philadelphia a rich old widow has given two young lovers the
opportunity to earn their living or depend on her bounty--a generous
one, too. Being childless and selfish, she secretly wanted to hold them
dependent on her, that she may demand their love and esteem. It is an
old mistake that childless wealth and selfishness often make. The girl,
being temperamentally romantic and inherently stubborn, voted to go
alone. These things, rather than any particularly noble motive--I hate
to disillusion you, Joe, but I must hold to facts--have landed her
practically penniless in our midst; and she is not acquainted yet with
either lack of means or the labor of earning. The young man, gifted in
himself, which his sweet-heart is not, son of a visionary spendthrift,
has chosen the easier way, a small clerkship and a luxurious home
seeming softer to his artistic nature than the struggling up-climb with
his real gift. This old lady won't last forever. Her disinherited niece
won't want to work at teaching forever. The waiting clerk will come
after the heir apparent just when she is most tired of the Sage Brush
and the things thereof, and--they will live tamely ever after on the
aunt's money. Do you see what you are up against, Joe? Don't waste
energy on a dream--with nothing to show for your labor at last but debt
and possible failure, and the beautiful Sage Brush Valley turned to a
Sodom before your eyes."

"Whenever you are ready I'll sign up the lease," was Joe's only reply.

So the transaction was completed in silence.




III

JERRY AND EUGENE--AND JOE




XIII

HOW A GOOD MOTHER LIVES ON


New Eden never saw a more beautiful autumn, even in this land of
exquisite autumn days, than the first one that Jerry Swaim passed in the
Middle West. And Jerry reveled in it. For, while she missed the splendid
colorings of the Eastern woodlands, she never ceased to marvel at the
clear, bright days, the sweet, bracing air, the wondrous sweeps of
landscapes overhung by crystal skies, the mist-wreathed horizons holding
all the softer hues, from jasper red to purest amethyst, that range the
foundation stones of heaven's walls as Saint John saw them in his dream
exquisite.

It had never occurred to Jerry that a beauty impossible to a wooded
broken country might be found on the October prairies. Her dream of a
Kansas "Eden" exactly like the Pennsylvania "Eden," six times enlarged,
had been shattered with one glimpse of her possession--a possession
henceforth to be a thing forgotten. But life had opened new pages for
her and she was learning to read them rapidly and well.

One thought of the past remained, however. The memory of a romance begun
in her Eastern home would not die with the telling. And while Jerry
Swaim persuaded herself that what Eugene Wellington called success to
her was failure, and while every day widened the breach between the two,
time and distance softened her harsher judgment, and she remembered her
would-be lover with a tender sadness that made her heart cold to the
thought of any other love.

This did not make her the less charming, however--this pretty girl
without any trace of coquetry, who knew how to win hearts to her. Sure
of the wideness that separated her life from the life of the Sage Brush
Valley, she took full measure of interest in living, unconsciously
postponing for herself the future's need for the solace of love. The
small income from her lease to the Macpherson Mortgage Company filled
her purse temporarily, and she began at once upon a course of economic
estimates worthy of Jim Swaim's child, however seemingly impossible in
Lesa Swaim's pretty, dueless daughter. Another trait, undeveloped
heretofore, began to be emphasized--namely, that while she could chatter
glibly on embroideries and styles, and prettily on art, and seriously
and intelligently on affairs of national interest, as any all-round
American girl should do--she was discreet and uncommunicative regarding
her business affairs. Not that she meant to be secretive; she was simply
following the inherited business ability of an upright, well-balanced
man, her father. Coupled with this was a pride in her determination to
win--to prove to Aunt Jerry Darby and Eugene Wellington that she had
made no mistake; and until victory was hers she would be silent about
her endeavors.

The Macphersons had insisted that Jerry should remain their guest at
least until the opening of the school in September. And if the girl
imagined that she found a faint hint of fervor gone from Laura
Macpherson's urging, her hostess made up for it in the abundant kindness
of little acts of hospitality. Jerry was frankly troubled, and yet she
could not say why, for it was all the impressions of a mind sensitized
to comprehend unspoken things. Jerry's memory would call up that
incident of the lost purse found in her hand-bag, and of Laura's excuse
for it, which she, Jerry, knew was impossible. And yet the girl felt
that it was a contemptible thing to impute a distrust to Laura that,
placed in the same position, she herself would scorn to harbor.

"I see no way but the everlasting run of events. I wish they would run
fast and clear it up," Jerry said to herself, dismissing the matter
entirely, only to have it bobbing up for consideration again on the
first occasion.

At the close of a hot summer day Jerry was in her room, finishing a
letter to Jerusha Darby, to whom she wrote faithfully, but from whom she
had rarely received a line. York and Laura were on the porch, as usual.
The hammock that day had been swung to a shadier position, on account of
the slipping southward of the late summer sun; and Laura forgot that
Jerry's window opened almost against it now, so that she could hear all
that was said at that corner of the porch. As Jerry finished her letter
she caught a sentence outside that interested her. She was innocent of
any intention of eavesdropping afterward, but what she heard held her
motionless.

"The leak has opened again, York," Laura was saying. "Things are
beginning to disappear, especially money."

York's face took on a sort of bulldog grimness, but he made no reply.

Inside, Jerry glanced at her beaded hand-bag lying on the top of the
little desk, saying to herself:

"I'll open a bank-account to-morrow. I've been foolish to leave that
roll of bills lying around; all I have, too, between me and the last
resort in Kansas--'to go mad or go back East.' I'm certainly a brilliant
business woman--I am."

And then, unconscious at first that she was listening, her ear caught
what followed outside:

"York, the queer thing is that it's just at 'Castle Cluny' that things
are disappearing right now. Mrs. Bahrr was over to-day and told me the
Lenwells had even gone to Kansas City and forgot to lock their back
door, and not a thing was missing, although Clare Lenwell left five
silver dollars stacked up on the dresser in plain view."

"If anybody would know the particulars it would be the Big Dipper," York
declared.

"Oh, now don't begin on that tune, York, for I'm really uneasy," Laura
began.

"For why?" York inquired.

And then Laura told him the story of her lost purse, omitting Stellar
Bahrr's part in the day's events, and adding:

"Of course, I hate myself for even daring to carry a hint of suspicion
for a minute, but Jerry knew as well as I did that I hadn't put my purse
in her hand-bag by mistake, for she carried it with her up-town that
day. But I could forget the whole thing if it had ended there. I know
that the dear girl was dreadfully short of money until just recently.
Now her purse is full of bills. I couldn't help seeing that when she
displays it so indifferently. She says she will have no funds from
Philadelphia. Where does she get money when I can't keep a bill around
the house?"

"Then I would quit the stocking-toe banking system that mother and all
the other women and most of the men back in Winnowoc used to employ. You
might try the First National Bank of New Eden. I'm one of the directors,
and a comparatively safe man for all that," York advised, gravely.

"The loss of the money is nothing to the possible loss of confidence,"
Laura went on, ignoring her brother's thrust. "Could such a thing be
possible that this dear girl is discouraged and tempted to hide her
necessities?" The woman's voice was full of kindly sorrow. "York,
couldn't you tell her?"

"I see myself doing that," York fairly exploded. "Laura, there may be a
big leak in this house where valuables seep through. I'm not saying
otherwise. But as for Jerry Swaim, it's simply preposterous--impossible.
Never let such a thing cross your mind, let alone your lips again, you
dear best of sisters. You know you don't believe a word of it."

"I know I don't, too, York; of course I don't; but I must have needed
you to assure me of it. It all began in circumstance and an ugly
suspicion that a story of Stellar Bahrr's suggested. And when I missed
my own money and saw that great roll of bills--Oh, I must be crazy or
just a plain human creature full of evil--"

"Or both," York added. "We are all more or less human and more than less
crazy, especially if we will listen to old wives' tales against the
expressed command of our wise brothers. As for Jerry having money"--York
suddenly recalled his promise to Jerry not to discuss her affairs--"it's
hardly likely she would display carelessly what was acquired by extreme
care. Let's call her out here and think of better things."

As Laura looked up she realized for the first time the nearness of the
hammock to Jerry's open window. The grief of being overheard by one whom
she would not wound for worlds, with the self-rebuke for giving ear to
Stellar Bahrr's gossip, almost overcame her.

"You go after Jerry, please," she said, faintly.

York went into the hall, calling at Jerry's open door, but she was not
there. He looked in the living-room, but it was empty. Through the
dining-room he passed to the side porch, where a dejected, lonely little
figure was half hidden by the vines that covered it. At sight of her
York stopped to get a grip on himself.

At her host's explosive declaration, "I see myself doing it," Jerry had
come to herself. Surprised and wounded, but realizing the justice of the
ground for suspicion against her--her--Jerry Swaim, who had always had
first concern in those about her--she left her room hastily and passed
out of the house by the side door. In the little vine-covered entry she
sat down and stared out at the lawn, where the fireflies were beginning
to twinkle against the shrubbery bordering the driveway. She had thought
the disposition of her estate, and the choice of occupation, and the
putting away of Eugene Wellington, had settled things for her future.
Here was the fulfilling of a sense of something wrong that had recently
possessed her, hardly letting itself be more than a sense till now. What
did life mean, anyhow? "To go mad or go back East?" Why should she do
either one, who had not offended anybody?

As Jerry gazed out at the shadowy side lawn the sound of a step caught
her ear--a shuffling of feet across the grass, and the noise of a hard
sole on the cement driveway. Jerry's eyes mechanically followed a
short, shambling figure, suggesting a bear almost as much as a human
being, as it passed forward a step or two; then, dividing the
spirea-bushes on the farther edge, it disappeared into the deeper shadow
of the slope toward the town below "Kingussie."

It was Fishing Teddy--old Hans Theodore; Jerry recognized him at a
glance, and in the midst of her confused struggle to find herself she
paused to wonder about him. Intense mental states often experience such
pauses, when the mind grappling in an internal combat rests for a moment
on an impression coming through the senses.

"What's the old Teddy Bear doing here?" Jerry asked herself, and then
she remembered his coming once before almost to this very spot. That was
the night Joe Thomson had called--the big farmer whose property her own
was helping to destroy. There was something strong and unbreakable about
this Joe. A million leagues from her his lot was cast, of course, and
yet she hoped somehow that Joe might be near and that the Teddy Bear was
waiting for him.

"Jerry! Jerry!" York called through the hall, and then he came out to
where she sat on the side porch.

"I was hunting for you. You have a caller, my lady, a gentleman who
wants to take you for a ride up the river. It will be gloriously cool
on the ridges up-stream. He will give you a splendid hour before the
curfew rings--the lucky dog!"

Jerry looked up expectantly. "It must be Joe Thomson," she thought, and
she was glad to have him come again.

On the front porch little Junius Brutus Ponk was strutting back and
forth, chatting with Laura.

"Good evening, Miss Swaim. I just soared down to invite you to take a
little drive in my gadabout. I hope it will suit you to go."

"Nothing would please me more," Jerry said, lightly. "Let me get my
wrap." As she returned to her room her eye fell on her hand-bag, lying
on her desk. A sense of grief swept over her, for one moment, followed
by a strange lightness of heart as if her latest problem had solved
itself suddenly.

As they passed down the walk to the little gray car York Macpherson
looked after them, conscious of the impossible thing in Ponk's mind, and
wondering wherein lay the charm of this pink-and-white inefficient girl
to grip with so strong a hold on the heart of a sensible man like Ponk.

"It is her power to be what she has never been, but what she will
become," he said to himself. "She's the biggest contradiction to all
rules that I ever knew, but she's a dead-sure proposition."

The coming of callers found York in his best mood, and when his sister
bade him good night he put his arms around her, saying, gently:

"You are the best woman in the world, Laura, and you mustn't carry a
single hidden worry."

"Neither must you, York," Laura replied, and each knew that the other
understood.

Meantime, out on the upper Sage Brush road Jerry was letting the beauty
of the evening lift the weight from her mind. She was just beginning to
understand that, while she had imagined herself to be doing her own
thinking heretofore, she had been merely willing that her thinking
should be done for her. She was now at the place where her will meant
little and her judgment everything in shaping her acts. The recognition
brought a sense of freedom she had never known before. What she had
overheard from the porch seemed far away, and her wounded spirit grew
whole again as she began to find herself standing on her own feet, not
commanding that somebody else should hold her up. Jerry's mind worked
rapidly, and before the gray car had been turned at the northern end of
the evening's ride it was not the Jerry Swaim of an hour ago, but a
young warrior, clad in armor, with shining weapons in her hand, who sat
beside the adoring little hotel-keeper of the faulty grammar and the
kindly heart.

Ponk halted the car at the far end of the drive up-stream, to take in a
moonlight view of the Sage Brush Valley.

"Them three lights down yonder's the court-house an' the school-house
an' the station. The other town glims are all hid by trees an' bushes
and sundry in the wrinkles of the praira." Ponk always said "praira."
"But it's a beautiful country when you douse the sunshine and turn on
the starlight, or a half-size moon like that young pullet in the west
sky yonder. Ever see the blowout by moonlight? Sorta reclaims its cussed
ugliness, you might say, an' the dimmer glow softens down an' subdues
the infernal old beast considerable."

Jerry turned quickly toward her companion. "Blowout is a word taboo in
my presence," she said, gravely. "Anybody who wants to be listed as a
friend of mine will never mention it to me, for to me there is no such
thing. I have no real estate in Kansas, nor anywhere else, for that
matter. I'm just a poor orphan child." The girl smiled brightly. "All
the world is mine, even though none of it really belongs to me. If you
want my good-will, even my speaking acquaintance, you'll remember the
road to it is _never_ to _mention_ that _horrid thing_ to me again."

"I never won't," Ponk declared, seriously. "If that's the only
restriction, I'm in the middle of your good-will so far I'll never find
the outside gate again."

"I hope you won't," Jerry said, lightly.

"I'm seriouser than you are, Miss Swaim, and I asked you to take this
ride for three reasons," Ponk returned.

"Name them," Jerry demanded, in the dim light noting the flush on his
round cheeks.

"Firstly, and mainly, just selfish pleasure. Secondly, because I wanted
to do you a favor if I might presume, and thirdly, to tell you why I
wanted to do it."

"You are very kind," Jerry said, sincerely.

"What I want to say in that favor business is the same I told York to
say that Sunday we met you in the cemetery, where I'd been callin' on
mother, and you come to get away from New Eden and all that in it is,
for a little while. You remember York came trailing after you with some
excuse or other, an' right behind him comes another trailer, a
womankind?"

"I remember York, that's all," Jerry replied, trying to recall the
woman, whom she had forgotten.

"Well, she didn't forget you. It's that Stellar Bahrr, and she made
capital, principal, and compound interest out of the innocent event, as
she does out of every move everybody in that burg makes. But don't let
it disturb you a mite."

"I won't," Jerry replied, indifferently. "But tell me why she should
make capital out of me?"

"'Cause she hates you," Ponk said, calmly.

"Me? Why?" Jerry's eyes were black now, and the faintly gleaming ripples
above her white forehead and her faintly pink cheeks in the light of the
moon made a delicious picture.

"Just because you are you, young, admired. I don't dare to say no more,
no matter what I feel. It's a snaky jealousy, and she'll trail you
constant. It's got to be the habit of her life, and it's ruined her as
it will any person."

"Well, let her trail." Jerry's voice had a clear defiance now. "I'm here
to earn an honest living by my own efforts. I shall pay my bills and
take care of my own business. I have not intentionally injured anybody."

She paused and remembered Laura Macpherson, her shapely hands gripped
together, emphasizing her unbreakable determination.

"And you are goin' to win. Don't never be afraid of the end and finis.
But, knowin' Sage Brush, an' how scared it is of Mrs. Bahrr, yet
listenin' constant to every word she says, I felt it my duty to warn you
of breakers ahead. I've known more 'n one, bein' innocent, to fall for
her tricks. And I'm telling you out of pure kindness. There's only two
ways to handle her--keep still and try to live above her, or stand
straight up an' tell her to go to the devil. Excuse me, Miss Swaim, I'm
not really a profane man, but I mean well by you, and I'm not just
settin' here to gossip about a fellow-citizenness."

"I know you mean well, Mr. Ponk. You have been more than kind to me ever
since the night I reached New Eden, and I do appreciate your friendship
and good-will," Jerry said, earnestly. "Now as to Mrs. Bahrr, which
course do you advise me to follow?"

Junius Brutus Ponk was hanging on every word of Jerry's, and his face
was a full moon of pleasure, for he was frankly and madly in love with
her, and he knew it.

"I can't advise at all; it just ain't for me to do that. You are
honorin' us by stoppin' in our midst. What I want you to do is to be on
the lookout, an' if things start wrong, anywhere--school or church or
with your friends, the Macphersons, for instance, as they might--just
run down old Stellar before you go to guessin', or misunderstandin', and
if you can't do it alone"--Ponk smote his broad bosom dramatically--"I'm
here to help. That leads me to the thirdly of my triplet purpose in
askin' the pleasure of your company."

Jerry looked up with a smile. The little man was so thoroughly good, and
yet so impossible. York Macpherson seemed head and shoulders above any
other man she had ever known in her life--except her father. In fact, he
seemed like a sort of father to her--and Joe Thomson. That was just a
shadow across her consciousness, for all these men belonged here and at
heart were not of her world.

"Miss Swaim, will you let me, without no recompense, be a friend at
court whenever you need my help? You seem to me like a sort of female
Robinson Crusoe cast away on the desert island of the Sage Brush country
in Kansas. Let me be your Man Friday. I'd like to be your Saturday and
Sunday and Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. York Macpherson would come
lopin' in to claim Thursday, I reckon."

The sincerity of the fat little man offset the pompous ridiculousness of
his speech.

"If I seem cuttin' into the Macpherson melon-patch it's because I got on
to some of Stellar Bahrr's gossip that set me thinkin'. She's up to
turnin' Miss Laury against you because of York's admiring you so much."

Jerry grasped the situation now. The hotel-keeper was not only wishing
to befriend and shield her--he thought he was in love with her. And he
thought that York Macpherson was also in love. Was he? The girl's mind
worked rapidly. Little as she cared for the opinion of New-Edenites,
outside of these three good friends, she realized that these same
New-Edenites were interested in her and dared to discuss her affairs;
and that if she stayed here, as she meant to do, she must meet them and
be, in a way, of them. How much of this newly discovered admiration
which her companion evidently felt, and which he felt sure York
Macpherson possessed, might be really the outgrowth of pity for her in
the new position in which she found herself? And there was Laura.
Stellar Bahrr had hinted about her being neglected by her brother for
other women. Whatever might be the real motive, Jerry and love had
parted company on the day that Eugene Wellington's letter had come
telling of his renunciation of his art for an easy clerkship. But Laura
didn't know that, and she might have heard the town-meddler--Oh, bother
Stellar and all her works! Jerry Swaim would have none of them. And
Laura was such a sweet, companionable, refined friend. This thing must
be overcome in some way.

"Tell me, Mr. Ponk, why do the New Eden people listen to a sharp-tongued
trouble-maker, since they know her power?" Jerry asked, after a pause.

"Why? 'Cause they enjoy it when 'tain't about them--all of us do that,
bein' human. Are you right sure you wouldn't believe her yourself, much
as you despised any story of hers you'd be forced to listen to? Well as
I know her, I have to keep pinchin' my right arm to see if it's got
nerve enough to strike back if I'm hit, you might say."

On Jerry's cheeks the bloom deepened. She had let a word of Mrs. Bahrr's
set her to wondering about both her host and hostess.

"They's one more thing I want to say, the third reason for askin' you
out this evenin'," Ponk went on, and the pompous manner fell from him
somewhat in his earnestness. "I don't want you to leave Macpherson's
home for anything, right now. They want you and--well, I hope you won't.
Even at the loss of a boarder for myself at the hotel and gurrage I
hope you won't. But if some time--if it was ever possible you'd find a
need for me more 'n what we spoke of--I ain't no show. I'm clear below
your society back East, but, if you ever needed a real, devoted, honest
man who tried to be a Christian--"

Jerry caught his full meaning now. "You are a Christian, Mr. Ponk. I'm
not. You are kind to me in my need, and I shall rely on your sincerity
and your friendship, and if there is any way in which I could return it,
even in a small measure, I would be so happy. We will be the best of
friends."

Jerry's smile was winsome as she frankly put out her hand to seal the
bond in a clasp of good-fellowship. And Junius Brutus Ponk understood.

"It's no use," he said to himself, sadly. "I wish it might have been,
but it ain't. I ain't such a fool I can't see a door when it's shut
right before me. I'm blessed to be her friend, and I'll be it if the
heavens drop. I'm in my Waterloo an' must just wade across an' shake
myself. That's all."

His sunny nature always overcame his disappointments, but from that hour
in an upper niche of his heart's shrine he placed Jerry's image, one of
the beautiful things of life he might do homage to but could never
possess.

"They's just one favor I want to ask of you," he said, aloud, "an' that
is that you'll go with me to call on mother out to the cemetery
sometimes. I'd like her to know you, too. She was good, and a good
mother just lives on."

Jerry's cheek paled a shade, but she said, graciously: "I'll be glad to
do that, Mr. Ponk. Maybe it will make me a little less rebellious, and
you will be doing me the favor."

Ponk's face beamed with pleasure at her words the while a real tear
rolled unnoticed down his cheek. That night marked the beginning of a
new spiritual life for Jerry Swaim.




XIV

JIM SWAIM'S WISH


The next morning, when Jerry Swaim was ready to go to the bank, her
pretty beaded bag seemed light as she lifted it, and when she opened her
purse she found it empty. Then she sat down and stared at herself in the
mirror opposite her.

"Well, what next? Go mad or go back East? This must be the last ditch,"
she murmured. "Joe Thomson said he didn't _go_ mad, but he did _get_
mad. I'm mad clear to my Swaim toes, and I'm not going to take another
bump. It's been nothing but bumps ever since I reached the junction of
the main line with the Sage Brush branch back in June, and I'm tired of
it. Gene Wellington said the West got the better of his father. The East
seems to have gotten the best of his father's son."

Across her mind swept the thought of how easy Gene's way was being made
for him in the East, and how the way of the West for her had to be
fought over inch by inch.

"Neither East nor West shall get me." She tossed her head imperiously,
for Jim Swaim's chin, York Macpherson would have said, was in command,
and the dreamy eyes were flashing fire.

An hour later Ponk's gray runabout was spinning off the miles of the
trail down the Sage Brush, with Jerry Swaim's hands gripping the wheel
firmly, though her cheeks were pink with excitement. Where a road from
the west crossed the trail, the stream cut through a ledge of shale,
leaving a little bluffy bank on either side, with a bridge standing high
above the water.

Joe Thomson, in a big farm wagon, had just met his neighbor, Thelma
Ekblad, in her plain car, at the end of the bridge, when Jerry's horn
called her approach. Before they had time to shift aside the gray car
swept by with graceful curve, missing the edge of the bridge abutment by
an eyelash.

"Great Scott! Thelma, I didn't notice that this big gun of mine was
filling up all the road," Joe exclaimed. "That was the neatest curve I
ever saw. That's Ponk's car from New Eden, but only a civil engineer's
eye could have kept out of the river right there."

"The pretty girl who is visiting the Macphersons was the driver," Thelma
said.

"No! Was it, sure?" Joe queried, looking with keen eyes down the trail,
whither the gray runabout was gliding like a bird on the wing.

"Why, of course it was!" Thelma assured him, feeling suddenly how shabby
her own machine became in comparison. "I must go now. Come over and see
Paul when you can."

"I will. How is the baby?" Joe asked.

"Oh, splendid, and so much company for Paul!" Thelma declared.

"Yes, a baby is the preacher and the whole congregation sometimes. Let
me know if you need any help. Good-by."

So in neighborly good-will they separated, Joe to follow the gray car
down the trail, and Thelma to wonder briefly at the easy life of the
beautiful Eastern girl whose lot was so unlike her own. Only briefly,
however, for Thelma was of too happy a temperament, of too calm and
philosophical a mentality, to grieve vainly. It always put a song in her
day, too, to meet Joe upon the way. Not only on common farm topics were
she and Joe congenial companions, but in politics, the latest books, the
issues of foreign affairs, the new in science, they found a common
ground.

Joe's thoughts were of the Eastern girl, too, as he thundered down the
trail in his noisy wagon.

"I wish I could overtake her before she gets to the forks of the road,"
he said to himself. "I know she's not going to go my way farther than
that. But why is she here at all? There's nobody living down the river
road for miles, except old Fishing Teddy. She did dine at his expense
the day she came out to her sand-pile. He told me all about it the night
when we rode down from town together. Funny old squeak he is. But he
can't interest her. Hello! Yonder we are."

In three minutes he was beside the gray car, that was standing at the
point where the river road branched from the main trail.

"Good morning, Mr. Thomson. I knew you were coming this way, so I waited
for you here. I don't go down that road. You know why."

Jerry pointed toward the way down which her own land lay.

Joe lifted his hat in greeting, his cheeks flushing through the tan, for
his heart would jump furiously whenever he came into this girl's
presence.

"Good morning, Miss Swaim. I am glad you waited," he managed to say.
"You certainly know how to guide a car. I didn't know I was filling the
whole highway up at the bridge."

"Oh, there was plenty of room," Jerry said, indifferently.

"Yes, plenty if you know how to stick to it. That's the secret of a lot
of things, I guess--not finding a wider trail, but knowing how to drive
straight through on the one you have found."

Joe was talking to gain time with himself, for he was inwardly angry at
being upset every time he met this pretty girl.

This morning she seemed prettier than ever to his eyes. She was wearing
a cool gray-green hat above her golden-gleaming hair, and her sheer
gingham gown was stylishly summery. Exquisite taste in dress, as well as
love of romance, was a heritage from Lesa Swaim.

"You are a real philosopher and a poet," Jerry exclaimed, looking up
with wide-open eyes.

"A sort of Homer in homespun," Joe suggested.

"Probably; but I have a prose purpose in detaining you and I am in great
luck to have found you," Jerry replied.

"Thank you. The luck will be mine if I can serve you."

The bronze young farmer's gallantry was as gracious as ever the
well-groomed Philadelphia artist's had been.

"Kansas seems determined to get rid of me, if hard knocks mean anything.
I've had nothing but bumps and knotty problems since I landed on these
sand-shifting prairies. It makes me mad and I'm not going to be run off
by it." Jerry's eyes were darkly defiant and her lifted hand seemed
strong to strike for herself.

"You have the real pioneer spirit," Joe declared. "It was that very
determination not to be gotten rid of by a sturdy bunch of forefathers
and mothers that has subdued a state, sometimes boisterous and
belligerent, and sometimes snarling and catty, and made it willing to
eat out of their hands."

"Oh, it's not all subdued yet. It never will be." Jerry pointed down the
trail toward the far distance where her twelve hundred blowout-cursed
acres lay.

Joe Thomson's mouth was set with a bulldog squareness. "Are we less able
than our forefathers?" he asked.

"As to sand--yes," Jerry replied, "but to myself, as a first
consideration, I'm dreadfully in trouble."

"Again?"

"Oh, always--in Kansas," Jerry declared. "First my whole inheritance is
smothered in plain sand--and dies--hard but quickly. Then I fight out a
battle for existence and win a schoolmarm's crown of--"

"Of service," Joe suggested, seriously.

"I hope so. I really do," Jerry assured him. "Next I lease my--dukedom
for a small but vital sum of money on which to exist till--till--"

"Yes, till wheat harvest, figuratively speaking," Joe declared.

"And this morning my purse is empty, robbed of every cent, and my
pearl-handled knife and a button-hook."

Joe had left his wagon and was standing beside Jerry's car, with one
foot on the running-board.

"Stolen! Why, why, where's York?" he asked, in amazement.

"I don't know. I don't think he took it," Jerry replied.

"Oh, but I mean what's he doing about it?" Joe questioned, anxiously.

"Nothing. He doesn't know it. I came to find you first, to get you to
help me."

"Me!" Joe could think of nothing more to say.

"You won't scold, and I'm afraid York would. I don't want to be
scolded," Jerry declared. "He would wonder why I hadn't put it in the
bank. And, besides, there have some queer things been happening in New
Eden--I can't explain them, for you might not understand, but I do
really need a friend right now. Did you ever need one?"

To the girl alone and under suspicion, however kind the friends who were
puzzled over her situation, conscious that too many favors were not to
be asked of the good-souled Junius Brutus Ponk, the young farmer seemed
the only one to whom she could turn. And she had the more readily halted
her car to wait for him because she had already begun to weave a romance
in homespun about this splendid young agriculturist and the good-hearted
country girl, Thelma Ekblad. He, himself, was impersonal to her.

"I'm always needing friends--and I'm more glad than you could know to
have you even think of me in your needs. But everybody turns to York
Macpherson. He's the lodestar for every Sage Brush compass," Joe said,
looking earnestly at Jerry.

"I'm on my way to the old Teddy Bear's house, your Fishing Teddy," Jerry
declared, "and I thought you would go with me. I don't want to go
alone."

"Let me take this machinery to the men--they are waiting for it to start
to work--and I'll be glad to go," Joe answered her.

The gray car followed the big wagon down the trail to the deep bend of
the Sage Brush in the angle of which Joe's ranch-house stood; and the
load of machinery was quickly given over to the workmen. As Joe seated
himself in the little gray car Jerry said:

"You are wondering why, and too polite to ask why, I go to Hans
Theodore's. Let me tell you." Then she told him of her dazed wanderings
down the river road two months before, and of her meal near old Teddy's
shack.

"He brought me fried fish on a cracked plate, and buttermilk in a silver
drinking-cup--a queer pattern with a monogram on the side. The next
morning I saw another cup exactly like that on the buffet in the
Macpherson dining-room. They told me there should be two of them. One
they found was suddenly missing. Later it suddenly was not missing. York
said their like was not to be had this side of old 'Castle Cluny' on the
ancient Kingussie holding of the invincible Clan Macpherson's forebears.
So this must have been the same cup. It was on the morning after you
called and took the old Teddy Bear home with you that the missing cup
reappeared. You remember he was shambling around the grounds the night
before, waiting for you?"

"Yes, I remember," Joe responded, gravely.

"Meantime Laura Macpherson lost her purse. It was found in my hand-bag.
I believe now that the one that took it became frightened or something,
and tried to put it on me. Maybe somebody knew how dreadfully near the
wall I was. Then York paid me lease money, as I told you--three hundred
dollars. It was in my purse last evening when I went out for a ride. As
I sat in the side porch alone, earlier in the evening, I saw the old
Teddy Bear shamble and shuffle about the shrubbery and disappear down
the slope in the shadows on the town side of the place. This morning my
money is all gone. I am going down here after it."

"And you didn't ask York to help you?" Joe queried, anxiously.

"Why, no. I wanted you to help me. Will you do it?" Jerry asked, looking
up into the earnest face of the big farmer beside her.

Was it selfishness, or thoughtlessness, or love of startling adventure,
or insight, or fate bringing her this way? Joe Thomson asked himself the
question in vain.

"I'll do whatever I can do. This is such a strange thing. I knew things
were missing by spells up in town, but we never lose anything down our
way, and you'd think we would come nearer having what old Fishing Teddy
would want if he is really a thief," Joe declared.

"I am going down to old Teddy's shack and ask him to give me my money,
anyhow," Jerry repeated.

"And if he has it and refuses, I'll pitch him into the river and hold
him under till he comes across. But if he really hasn't it?" Joe asked.

"Then he can't give it, that's all," Jerry replied.

"But how will you know?" Joe insisted.

"I don't know how I'll know, but when the time comes I'll probably find
a way to find out," Jerry declared. "Anyhow, I must do something, for
I'm clear penniless and it's this or go mad or go back East. I'm not
going to do either. I'm just going to get mad and stay mad till I get
what's mine."

"I'll be your faithful sleuth, but I can't believe you'll find your bag
of gold at the end of this rainbow. The old man is gentle, though, and
you couldn't have any fear, I suppose," Joe suggested.

"Not with you along I couldn't," Jerry replied.

She was watching the road, and did not see how his eyes filled with a
wonderful light at her words. She was not thinking of Joe Thomson, nor
of York Macpherson, nor yet of Junius Brutus Ponk. She was thinking far
back in her mind of how Eugene Wellington would admire her some day for
really not giving in. That faint line of indecision in his face as she
recalled it in the rose-arbor--oh, so long ago--that was only emphasized
by his real admiration for those who could stand fast by a
determination. She had always dared. He had always adored, but never
risked a danger.

Down by the deep fishing-hole the willows were beginning to droop their
long yellow leaves on the diminishing stream, and the stepping-stones
stood out bare and bleaching above the thin current that slipped away
between them. A little blue smoke was filtering out from the stove-pipe
behind the shack hidden among the bushes. Everything lay still under the
sunshine of late summer.

"You keep the car. I'm going in," Jerry declared, halting in the thin
shade by the deep hole.

"I think I'd better go, too," Joe insisted.

"I think not," Jerry said, with a finality in her tone there was no
refuting.

York Macpherson had well said that there was no duplicate for Jerry, no
forecasting just what she would do next.

As Jerry's form cast a shadow across his doorway old Fishing Teddy
turned with a start from a bowl of corn-meal dough that he was stirring.
The little structure was a rude domicile, fitted to the master of it in
all its features. On a plain unpainted table Jerry saw a roll of bills
weighted down by an old cob pipe. A few coins were neatly stacked beside
them, with a pearl-handled knife and button-hook lying farther away.

"I came for my money," Jerry said, quietly. "It's all I have until I can
earn some myself."

The old man's fuzzy brown cheeks seemed to grow darker, as if his blush
was of a color with the rest of his make-up. He shuffled quickly to the
table, gathered up all the money, and, coming nearer, silently laid it
in Jerry's hands.

The girl looked at him curiously. It was as if he were handing her a
handkerchief she had dropped, and she caught herself saying:

"Thank you. But what made you take it? Don't you know it is all I have,
and I must earn my living, too, just like anybody else?"

Old Fishing Teddy opened his mouth twice before his voice would act. "I
didn't take it. I was goin' to fetch it up to you soon as I could git up
there again," he squeaked out at last.

Jerry sat down on a broken chair and stared at him, as he seated himself
on the table, gripping the edge on either side with his scaly brown
hands, and gazed down at the floor of the cabin.

"If you didn't take it, why did you have it here? I saw you last night
on Macpherson's driveway," Jerry said, wondering, meanwhile, why she
should argue with an old thieving fellow like Fishing Teddy--Jerusha
Darby's niece and heir some fine day, if she only chose, to all of the
Darby dollars.

"I can't never explain to you, lady. They's troubles in everybody's
lots, I reckon. Mine ain't nothin' but a humble one, but it ain't so
much different from big folks's in trouble ways. An' we all have to do
the best we can with what comes to us to put up with. I 'ain't never
harmed nobody, nor kep' a thing 'at wa'n't mine longer 'n I could git it
back. You ask York Macpherson, an' he'll tell ye the truth. He never
sent ye down here, York didn't."

The old man ceased squeaking and looked down at his stubby legs and old
shoes. Was he lying and whining for mercy, being caught with the spoils
of his thieving?

Jerry's big eyes were fixed on him as she tried to fathom the real
situation. The bunch of grubs on the Winnowoc local--common country and
village folk--had been far below her range of interest, to say nothing
of sympathy. Yet here she sat in the miserable shack of a hermit
fisherman, an all-but-acknowledged thief, with his loot discovered,
studying him with a mind where pity and credulity were playing havoc
with her better judgment and her aristocratic breeding. Had she fallen
so low as this, or had she risen to a newer height of character than she
had ever known before?

Suddenly the old grub hunched down on the table before her looked up.
Jerry remembered afterward how clear and honest the gaze of those faded
yellow eyes set in a multitude of yellow wrinkles. His hands let go of
the table's edge and fitted knuckle into palm as he asked, in a
quavering voice:

"Be you really Jim Swaim's girl who used to live up in that there
Winnowoc country back yander in Pennsylvany?"

Jerry's heart thumped violently. It was the last word she had expected
from this creature. "Yes, I'm Jim's only child." The same winsome smile
that made the artistic Eugene Wellington of Philadelphia adore her
beamed now on this poor old outcast down by the deep hole of the Sage
Brush.

"An' be you hard up, an' earnin' your own livin' by yourself, did ye
say? 'Ain't ye got a rich kin back East to help ye none?" The voice
quavered up and down unsteadily.

"Yes, I have a rich aunt, but I'm taking care of myself. It makes me
freer, but I have to be particular not to--to--lose any money right
now," Jerry said, frankly.

"Then ye air doin' mighty well, an' it's the thing that 'u'd make your
daddy awful glad ef he only could know. It 'u'd be fulfillin' his own
wish. I know it would. I heered him say so onct."

Jerry Swaim's eyes were full of unshed tears. Keenly she remembered when
Uncle Cornie had told her the same thing at the doorway of the
rose-arbor in beautiful "Eden" in the beautiful June-time. How strange
that the same message should come to her again here in the shadow of New
Eden inside the doorway of a fisherman's hut. And how strange a thing is
life at any time!

"Please don't be unhappy about this." Jerry lifted the money which lay
in her lap. "It shall never trouble you."

And then for a brief ten minutes the two talked together, Geraldine
Swaim of Philadelphia, and old Fishing Teddy, the Sage Brush hermit.

Joe Thomson, sitting in the gray car, saw Jerry coming through the
bushes, her hat in her hand, the summer sunshine on her glorious crown
of hair, her face wearing a strange new expression, as if in Fishing
Teddy's old shack a revelation of life's realities had come to her and
she had found them worthy and beautiful.

Little was said between the two young people until they reached the
Thomson ranch-house again and Jerry had halted her car under the shade
of an elm growing before the door. Then, turning to Joe, she said:

"You are right about the old Teddy Bear. He isn't a thief. I don't know
what he is, but I do know what he isn't. Since you know so much about my
coming here already, may I tell you a few more things? I want to talk to
somebody who will understand me."

Jerry did not ask herself why she should choose Joe Thomson for such a
confidence. She went no deeper than to feel that something about Joe was
satisfying, and that was sufficient. Henceforth with York and the
hotel-keeper she must be on her guard. Joe was different.

In the half-hour that followed the two became fast friends. And when the
little gray runabout sped up the long trail toward New Eden Joe Thomson
watched it until it was only a dust-spot on the divide that tops the
slopes down to Kingussie Creek. He knew now the whole story of Laura's
purse and her suspicions, of Ponk's offer of help, and he shrewdly
guessed that the pompous little man had met a firm check to anything
more than mere friendship. For Jerry's comfort, he refuted the
possibility of the Macphersons' harboring a doubt regarding her honesty.


"A mere remark of the moment. We all make them," he assured her.

Lastly, he was made acquainted with the events inside of Hans Theodore's
shack.

"Something is wrong there, but it is deeper than we can reach now,"
Jerry said. "Maybe we can help the old fellow if he is tempted, and
shield him if he is wronged."

How fair the face, and soft and clear the voice! It made Joe Thomson's
own face harden to hide a feeling he would not let reveal itself.

As he watched the girl's receding car he resolved anew to conquer that
formless enemy of sand and to reclaim for her her lost kingdom in
Kansas. His reward? That must come in its own time. Ponk was out of the
running. York was still a proposition. As for all that stuff of York's
about some Eastern fellow, Joe would not believe it.

And the girl driving swiftly homeward thought only of the romance of Joe
and Thelma, if she thought of them at all--for she was Lesa Swaim's
child still--and mainly and absorbedly she thought of her father's wish
to be fulfilled in her.

So the glorious Kansas autumn brought to Jerry Swaim all of its beauty,
in its soft air, its opal skies, its gold-and-brown-and-lavender
landscapes, its calm serenity. And under its benediction this girl of
luxurious, idle, purposeless days in sunny "Eden" on the Winnowoc was
beginning a larger existence in New Eden by the Sage Brush, and through
the warp and woof of that existence one name was all unconsciously woven
large--JOE.




XV

DRAWING OUT LEVIATHAN WITH A HOOK


For three years the seasons sped by, soft-footed and swift, and the
third June-time came smiling up the Sage Brush Valley. Many changes had
marked the passing of these seasons. Ranches had extended their
cultivated acres; trees spread a wider shade; a newly settled addition
had extended the boundaries of New Eden; and a new factory and a
high-school building for vocational training marked the progress of the
town. Budding youth had blossomed into manhood and womanhood and the
cemetery had gathered in its toll. Three years, however, had marked
little outward change in the young Eastern girl who stayed by her choice
of the Sage Brush country for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer.
She had flung all of her young energy into the dull routine of teaching
mathematics; romance had given place to reality; idleness and careless
dependence to regulated effort and carefully computed expenditures; gay
social interests to the companionship of lesser opportunities, but
broader vision. However, these things came at a sacrifice. When the
newness wore away from her work, Jerry's hours were not all easeful,
happy ones. Slowly, with the passing of the days, she began to learn the
hard lesson of overcoming, a lesson doubly hard for one whose life
hitherto had been given no preparation for duty. Yet, as her days
gathered surer purpose her dark-blue eyes were less often dreamy, her
fair cheeks took on a richer bloom, while her crown of glorious hair
lost no glint of its gold.

Her gift of winning friends, the old imperious power to make herself the
center of the universe, was in no wise disturbed by being a citizen and
a school-teacher instead of an Eastern lady of leisure sojourning
temporarily in the Sage Brush country. The young men of the valley tried
eagerly to win a greater place than that of mere friendship with her,
but she gave no serious consideration to any of them, least of all--so
she persuaded herself--to the young ranchman whom she had met so early
after her arrival in Kansas. Further, she had persuaded herself that the
pretty rural romance she had woven about him and his Norwegian neighbor,
Thelma Ekblad, must be a reality. Thelma had finished her university
course and was making a success of farming and of caring for her
crippled brother Paul and that roly-poly Belkap baby, now a
white-haired, blue-eyed, red-lipped chunk of innocence, responsibility,
and delight. Gossip, beginning at Stellar Bahrr's door, said that
interest in her neighbor, the big ranchman down the river, was
responsible for Thelma's staying on the Ekblad farm, now that she had
her university degree, because she could make a career for herself as a
botany specialist in any college in the West. Jerry knew that love for a
crippled brother and the care of a worse than orphaned child of the
woman that brother had loved were real factors in the life of this
country girl, but her air castles must be built for somebody, and they
seemed to cluster around the young Norwegian and the ranchman. Of
course, then, the ranchman, Joe Thomson, could interest Jerry only in a
general genial comradeship kind of way. Beginning in a common bond, the
presence of a common enemy--the blowout--chance meetings grew into
regular and helpful association. That was all that it meant to Jerry
Swaim.

Three stanch friends watched her closely. Ponk, of the Commercial Hotel
and Garage, believed blindly and wholly in her ability, laying all blame
for her defective work in the school upon other shoulders, standing
manfully by her in every crisis. Laura Macpherson, although never
blinded to the truth about Jerry in her impetuous, self-willed,
unsympathetic, undeveloped nature, loved her too well to doubt her
ultimate triumph over all fortune. Only York, who studied her closest of
all three, because he was the keenest reader of human nature, still held
that the final outcome for Jerry Swaim was a matter of uncertainty.

"I tell you, Laura," York said, one evening in the early spring of the
third year, when Jerry had gone with Joe Thomson for a long horseback
ride up the Sage Brush--"I tell you that girl is still a type of her
own, which means that sometimes she is soft-hearted, and romantic, and
frivolous, and impulsive, and affectionate, like Lesa Swaim, and
sometimes clear-eyed, hard-headed, close-fisted, with a keen judgment
for values, practical, and clever, like old Jim."

"And which parent, Sir Oracle, would you have her be most like?" Laura
inquired.

"Lord knows," York replied. "As He alone knows how much of the good of
each she may reject and how much of the weak and objectionable she may
appropriate."

"Being a free moral agent to just dissect her fond parents and choose
and refuse at will when she makes up her life and being for herself!
It's a way we all have of doing, you know," Laura said, sarcastically.
"Remember, York, when you elected to look like papa, only you chose
mother's wavy brown hair instead of her husband's straight black locks;
and you voted you'd have her clear judgment in business matters, which
our father never had."

"And gave to you the same which he never possessed. Yes, I remember,"
York retorted. "But how is all this psychological analysis going to help
matters here?"

"How's it going to help Joe Thomson, or keep him from being helped, you
mean?" Laura suggested.

A faint flush crept into York Macpherson's brown cheek.

"It's dead sure Jerry has little enough thought of Joe now," York said,
gravely. "She's living a day at a time, and underneath the three years'
veneer of genuine service the real Philadelphia Geraldine Swaim is still
a sojourner in the Sage Brush Valley, not a fixture here."

And York was right so far as Jerry Swaim's thought of Joe Thomson was
concerned.

After signing the lease with York Macpherson she rarely spoke of her
property to any one until it came to be forgotten to the few who knew of
it at all.

Once she had said to Joe:

"That heritage of mine is like the grave of an enemy. I couldn't look at
it forgivingly; so I would never, never want to see it again, and I
never want to hear the awful word 'blowout' spoken."

"Then forget it," Joe advised.

And Jerry forgot it.

But for Joe Thomson the seasons held another story. Down the Sage Brush,
fall and spring, great steam tractors furrowed the shifting sands of the
blowout, until slowly broom-corn and other coarse plants were coaxing a
thin soil deposit that spread northward from the south edge of the
sand-line. Little attention was paid to these efforts by the few farmer
folk who supposed that Joe was backing it, for they were all a busy
people, and the movement was too futile to be considered, anyhow.

Late in the summer of her first season in New Eden, affairs came to a
head suddenly. Three years before, Junius Brutus Ponk's well-meant
warning to Jerry to be on her guard against Stellar Bahrr's
mischief-making had not been without cause or results. Before the
opening of the school year, beginning with the Lenwells as a go-between,
percolating up through families where fall sewing was in progress, on to
the Macphersons and their closest friends, the impression grew toward
fact that Jerry was a sort of adventuress who had foisted herself upon
the Macphersons and had befuddled the brain of the vain little
hotel-keeper, who had overruled the other members of the school board
and forced her into a good place in the high school, although she was
without experience or knowledge of the branch to which she was elected.
And then she met young men in the cemetery and rode in Ponk's car over
the country alone.

One of the easy acts of the average, and super-average, mortal is to
respect a criticism made upon a fellow-mortal--doing it most generally
with no conscious malevolence, prompted largely by the common human
desire to be the bearer of new discoveries.

New Eden was no worse than the average little town at any point of the
compass. It took Stellar Bahrr at her par value, listened, laughed, and
declared it disbelieved her stories--and mainly in that spirit repeated
them, but in any spirit always repeated them. When the reports of Jerry
had gone to the farthest corners of town they came at last to the office
of York Macpherson. And it was Ponk himself who brought them, with some
unprintable language and violent denunciations of certain females who
were deadlier, he declared, than any males, even blackmails. York
forgave the atrocious pun because of the righteous wrath back of it. He
knew that Ponk's suit with Jerry failed temporarily, and he admired the
little man for his loyal devotion in spite of it.

The Macphersons had completely convinced Jerry of their faith in her,
and in that congenial association she had almost forgotten the incident
of the porch conversation about her. To Ponk's anxious query, "What will
you do?" (nobody ever said "can" to York Macpherson; he always could),
York had replied:

"I shall go straight to Jerry. She will hear it, anyhow, and she has
displayed such a deal of courage so far she'll not wither under this."

"You bet she won't, York, but what will stop it? I mean Stellar Bahrr's
mischief-makin'. She's subtler than the devil himself."

"We'll leave that to Jerry. She may have a way of her own. You never can
tell about Jerry." As he spoke York was turning his papers over in
search of something which he did not find, and he did not look up for a
minute.

"I'll leave the matter to you now," Ponk said. "I have other affairs of
state to engross my attention," and he left the office, muttering as he
strutted across to the garage door.

"Thinks he can pull the wool over my eyes by not lookin' at me. Well,
York wouldn't be the best man on the Sage Brush if he didn't fall in
love with Miss Jerry. She's not only the queen of hearts; she's got the
whole deck, includin' the joker, clear buffaloed."

York was true to his word as to telling Jerry, when the three were on
the porch that evening, what was in the air and on the lips of the "town
tattlers," as he called them. Jerry listened gravely. She was getting
used to things, now, that three months ago would have overwhelmed
her--if she hadn't been Jim Swaim's child. When he had finished and
Laura was about to pour out vials of indignation, Jerry looked up
without a line on her smooth brow, saying:

"Will you go over to Mrs. Bahrr's with me now, York?"

York rose promptly, questioning, nevertheless, the outcome of such an
interview.

Mrs. Bahrr had just followed her corkscrew way up to the side gate of
the Macpherson home as the two left the porch, when she heard Jerry call
back to Laura:

"If we find Mrs. Bahrr at home we won't be gone long."

"And if you don't?" Laura asked.

The answer was lost, for Mrs. Bahrr turned and fled across lots, by
alley gate and side walk-way and vacant yard, to her own rear door. One
of Mrs. Bahrr's strong points was that of being more ready than her
antagonist and her habit of thought had made her world an antagonistic
one.

York was curious to see how Jerry would meet her Waterloo, for that was
what this encounter would become, and he was glad that she had asked him
to go with her instead of running off alone, as she had done when she
wanted to see her estate.

Seated in the little front parlor, Jerry took her time to survey the
place before she came to her errand. It was a very humble home, with a
rag carpet, windows without draperies, but with heavy blinds; chairs
that became unsettled if one rocked in them; cheap, unframed chromos
tacked up on the walls; an old parlor organ; and a stand with a
crazy-quilt style of cover on which rested a dusty Bible. York saw a
look of pity in Jerry's eyes where three months before he felt sure
there would have been only disdain.

Very simply and frankly the girl told the purpose of her call, ending
with what might have been a command, but it was spoken in the clear,
soft voice that had always won her point in any argument.

"Whether these stories came from you or not you will be sure not to
repeat them."

Stella Bahrr bristled with anger. Whatever might have been said behind
her back, nobody except York Macpherson and Junius Brutus Ponk had ever
spoken so plainly to her face before. And they had never spoken in the
presence of a third party. And here comes a pretty, silly young thing
with a child's Sunday-school talk to her, right in York's presence, in
her own house. Jerry Swaim would pay well for her rudeness.

"I don't know as it's up to me to keep still when everybody's talkin'. I
won't promise nothin'. An' I 'ain't got nothin' to be afraid of." Mrs.
Bahrr hooked her eyes viciously into her caller.

"I'm afraid of a good many things, but I'm not so very much afraid of
people. I was a little afraid of you the first time I saw you. You
remember where that was, of course."

Jerry looked straight at Mrs. Bahrr with wide-open eyes. Something in
her face recalled Jim Swaim's face to York Macpherson, and he forgot the
girl's words as he stared at her.

"When I was a child," Jerry continued, "they used to say to me, 'The
goblins 'll git you ef you don't watch out.' Now I know it is the Teddy
Bear that gits you ef you don't watch out."

Mrs. Bahrr's lips seemed to snap together and her eyes tore their way
out of Jerry and turned to the window. Jerry stepped softly across to
her chair and, laying a hand on her shoulder, said, with a smile:

"Hereafter it will be all right between us."

And it was--apparently.

As they walked slowly homeward York and Jerry said little. The girl's
mind was busy with thoughts of her new work--the only work she had ever
attempted in her life; and York's thoughts were busy with--Jerry.

That night York sat alone on the porch of "Castle Cluny" until far
toward morning, beginning at last to fight out with himself the great
battle of his life. The big, kindly, practical man of affairs,
arrow-proof, bullet-proof, bomb-proof to all the munitions of Cupid,
courted and flattered and admired and looked up to by a whole community,
seemed hopelessly enmeshed now in the ripples of golden-brown hair, held
fast by the beautiful dark-blue eyes of a young lady whose strength to
withstand what lay before her he very much doubted.

"If I speak to her now, she'll run away from us and leave Laura lonely.
She can't go to the hotel, because I know Ponk has tried and failed. I'm
one degree behind him in that. Where would she go? And how would the Big
Dipper act? I've no faith in her keeping still if Jerry did use some
magic on her to-night. Nobody will ever Rumpelstilskin her out of
herself. I'll be a man, and wait and befriend my little girl whenever I
can, although I'm forced every day to see how she is growing to take
care of herself. When nothing else can decide events, time is sure to
settle them."

All this happened at the beginning of the three years whose ending came
in a June-time on the Kansas plains. Summer and winter, many a Sabbath
afternoon saw the hotel-keeper and the pretty mathematics-teacher
strolling out to the cemetery "to call on mother." The quaint, firm
faith of the pompous little man that "mother knew" had no place in Jerry
Swaim's code and creed. But she never treated his belief lightly, and
its homely sincerity at length began to bear fruit.

Not without its lasting effect, too, was the silent influence of Laura
Macpherson upon her guest. The bright, happy life in spite of a hopeless
lameness, the cheerful giving up of what that lameness denied the
having, all unconsciously wrought its beauty into the new Jerry whom the
"Eden" of an earlier day had never known. Nobody remembered when the
guest and friend of the Macphersons began to be a factor in the New Eden
church life, but everybody knew at the close of the third year that the
churches couldn't do without her. And neither the Baptist minister,
holding tenaciously to salvation by immersion, nor the Presbyterian,
clinging to the doctrine of infant damnation, nor the Methodist,
demanding instantaneous revival-meeting conversion from sin, asked once
that the fair Philadelphian should "become united with the church." That
would necessitate the query, "Which church?" And that would mean a loss
to two and a gain to only one. As far as the blowout sand differed from
"Eden" on the Winnowoc, so far Jerry's religious faith now differed from
the disbelief that followed the death of her father. In Kansas where the
artistic Eugene Wellington had declared his own faith would perish, she
had learned for the first time how to pray.

Letters had long since ceased to come from Aunt Jerry Darby to her
niece, although in a friendly and patiently expectant form Eugene
Wellington wrote beautiful missives breathing more and more of
commercialized ideals and less and less of esthetic dreams, and not at
all of the faith that had marked the spiritual refinement of his young
manhood.

The third spring brought busy, trying days. A sick teacher made it
necessary for the well ones to do double work. The youngest Lenwell boy,
leader of the Senior class, started the annual and eternally trivial and
annoying Senior-class fuss that seems fated to precede most high-school
commencements. For two years it had been Jerry Swaim, whose mathematical
mind seemed gifted with a wonderful generalship, who had managed to
bring the class to harmony with an ease never known in the New Eden High
School before. This year Clare Lenwell was perfectly irreconcilable, and
Jerry, overworked, as willing teachers always are, was too busy to bring
the belligerents to time before the bitterness of a town-split was upon
the community. When she did come to the rescue of the superintendent,
his own inefficiency to cope with the case became so evident that he at
once turned against the young woman who "tried to run things," as he
characterized her to the school board.

That caused an explosion of heavy artillery from the "Commercial Hotel
and Garage," which made one member of the board, an uncle of young
Lenwell, to rise in arms, and thus and so the fires of dissension
crisscrossed the town, threatening to fulmine over the whole Sage Brush
Valley. To make the matter more difficult, the town trouble-maker,
Stellar Bahrr, for once seemed to have been innocently drawn into the
thing, and everybody knew it was better to have Stellar Bahrr's
good-will than to start her tongue.

York Macpherson and Junius Brutus Ponk both felt sure that Stellar had
really stirred up the Lenwells, for whom she was constantly sewing; and,
besides, a distant relative of theirs had married into the Bahrr family
back where Stellar came from, "which must have been the Ark," Ponk
declared, "and the other one of the pair died of seasickness." Anyhow,
the local school row became the local town row, and it was a very real
and bitter row.

In these days of little foxes that were threatening the whole vineyard,
Jerry turned more and more to Joe Thomson. All of New Eden was tied up
in the fuss, took sides, and talked it, except the Macphersons and a few
of their friends, and they talked it without taking sides because the
thing was in the air constantly. Jerry could not find even in "Castle
Cluny" a refuge from what was uninteresting to her and thoroughly
distasteful in itself. Ponk, being by nature a rabid little game-cock,
was full of the thing, and was no more companionable than the
Macphersons. But when the quiet ranchman came up from the lower Sage
Brush country, his dark eyes glowing with pleasure and his poised mind
unbiased by neighborhood failings, he brought the breath of sweet clover
with his coming. When Jerry came home from their long rides
up-stream--they never rode toward the blowout region--she felt as if she
had a new grip on life and energy and ambition for her work. Joe was
becoming, moreover, the best of entertainers, and the comradeship was
the one thing Jerry had learned to prize most in her new life in the
Middle West.

When the spring had slipped into early May Joe's visits grew less
frequent, on account of his spring work. And once or twice he came to
town and hurried away without even seeing Jerry. It comforted her
greatly--she did not ask herself why--that he did drop a note into the
post-office for her, telling her he was in town and regretting that he
must hurry out without calling.

It was during this time that Thelma Ekblad came up to New Eden to do
some extensive shopping and spend a week with the Macphersons. There
were other guests at "Castle Cluny," and Thelma and Jerry shared the
same room.

Back in "Eden" the heir apparent would never have dreamed of sharing
anything with a Winnowoc grub. How times change us! Or do we change
them?

Thelma was sunny-natured, spotlessly neat in her dress, and altogether
vastly more companionable to Jerry than the Lenwell girls, who would
persist in pleading their little high-school Senior brother's cause; or
even the associate teachers, who were troubled and tired and overworked
like herself.

Jerry had met Thelma often, and thought of her oftener, in the three
years since they had come upon the Sage Brush branch of the local
freight together one hot, sand-blown June day, three summers before. She
had woven a romance about Thelma. Romances seemed now to belong to other
people. They never came to her. She was glad, however, when Thelma's
shopping was done and she went back to the farm down the Sage Brush, and
her brother Paul, and the growing, joyous Belkap child who filled the
plain farm-house with interest.

Stellar Bahrr, in Jerry's presence, had spoken ill of no one since the
memorable call three years ago. On the evening after Thelma left town
she cork-screwed over to "Castle Cluny" for a friendly chat with Laura.

"I run in to see Thelmy Ekblad. She 'ain't gone home, is she? Got her
shopping all done a'ready? Some girls can buy their weddin' finery
quicker 'n scat. Did she say who was to make that new white dress she
was buyin' yesterday at the Palace Emporium?" This straight at Jerry,
who was resting lazily in the porch swing after an unusually annoying
day.

"Not to me," Jerry replied, sliding another pillow behind her shoulders
and leaning back comfortably.

"Well, well! I s'posed girls always told them things to each other.
'Specially if they slep' together. She's gettin' a mighty fine man,
though--Thelmy is--at least, folks says she's gettin' him. He's there a
lot, 'specially 'long this spring. His farm's right near her and Paul's.
And she's one prince of a girl. Don't you say so, Miss Swaim?"

Jerry smiled in spite of herself, saying: "Yes, she's a prince of a
girl. I like her." And then, because she was tired that night, both of
Stellar and her topic, and the whole Sage Brush Valley, she turned away
that neither Laura nor Stellar might see how much she wanted to cry.

But turning was futile. Mrs. Bahrr's eyes went right through the girl
and she knew her shaft had hit home.

Joe had not been to town for weeks. It didn't matter to Jerry. Yet the
next day after Stellar's call lacked something--and the next and the
next. Not a definite lack, for Jerry's future was settled forever.

Down on the Sage Brush ranches Joe Thomson was trying to believe that
things wouldn't matter, too, if they failed to go his way. These were
lonely days for the young ranchman, who saw little of Jerry Swaim
because every possible minute of his time was given to wrestling with
the blowout.

There were many more lonely days, also, for Jerry, who now began to miss
Joe more than she thought it could be possible to miss anybody except
Gene Wellington, idealized into a sad and beautiful memory that kept
alive an unconscious hope. And, with all her energy and her
determination, many things combined to make her school-room duty a hard
task to one whose training had been so unfitting for serious labor. The
flesh-pots of the Winnowoc came temptingly to her memory, and there were
weary hours when the struggle to be sure and satisfied was greater than
her friends could have dreamed.

The third winter of her stay had seen an unusual snowfall for the Sage
Brush, and this spring following was an unusually rainy one. Everywhere
rank vegetation flourished, prairies reveled in luxurious growths, and
cultivated fields were burdened with the promise of record-breaking
harvests.

York Macpherson's business had begun to call him to the East for
prolonged trips, and he had less knowledge than formerly of the details
of the affairs of New Eden and its community.

One day not long after Thelma's shopping trip Joe Thomson dropped into
the office of the Macpherson Mortgage Company.

"How's the blowout?" This had become York's customary greeting.

"Never gentler." Joe's face was triumphant and his dark eyes were
shining with hope. "This rainy season and the good old steam-plows are
doing their perfect work. You haven't had any sand-storms lately, maybe
you have noticed. Well, wheat is growing green and strong over more than
half of that land now. There's not so much sand to spare as there used
to be."

"You don't mean it!" York exclaimed, incredulously.

"Go and look at it yourself, you doubting old Missourian who must be
shown," Joe retorted. "There's a stretch on the northeast toward the
bend in the Sage Brush that is low and baked hard after the rains, and
shifty and infernally stubborn in the dry weather."

York meditated awhile, combing his heavy hair with his fingers. "The
river runs by your place?" he asked, at length.

"Yes, my house is right at the bend, and there is no sand across the
Sage Brush," Joe replied.

"Well, the blowout will never stop till it gets up to the south bank of
the bend. As I've told you already, you'll have to take the Lord
Almighty into partnership to work a miracle. Otherwise this creeping up
from behind and beyond the thing will be a never-ending job of time and
money and labor. You'll never catch up with it. It's just too
everlastingly big, that's all. You'll be gray-bearded, and bald-headed,
and deaf, and dim-sighted before you are through."

"I will not," Joe declared, doggedly. "And I've already told you that
I've always taken the Lord Almighty into partnership, or I'd have been a
derelict on a sea of sand lang syne."

"Joe, your faith in the Lord and faith in the prairies might move
mountains, but they haven't yet moved the desert."

"Not entirely," Joe replied, "but if I do my part, who knows what
Providence may do?"

As he sat there in the hope and strength of his youth, something in Joe
Thomson's expectant face brought a pang to the man beside him.

"Joe, your lease will soon expire. I said to you three years ago that
women are shiftier than blowouts. You didn't believe me, but it's the
truth."

"Naturally the Macpherson Mortgage Company must acquire much knowledge
of such things in the development of their business," Joe responded,
jokingly. "Little Thelma Ekblad on the claim above mine has helped to
pay off the mortgage your company held, and sent herself to the
university, working in the harvest-fields and at the hay-baler to do it.
Thelma never seemed shifty to me. She's a solid little rock of a woman
who never flinches."

"I'll except Thelma. You ought--" But York went no further, for he knew
Joe's spirit would not respond to his thought, and he had no business
to be thinking, anyhow. He had known Joe Thomson from childhood. He
admired Jerry Swaim greatly for what she had been doing, but he knew
much of the Philadelphia end of the game, and his heart ached for the
young Westerner, who, he believed, had shouldered a stupendous, tragical
burden for the sake of a heart-longing only a strong nature like Joe's
could know.

"By the way, Jerry Swaim's aunt, back East, is in a bad way and may die
at any time, but she will never forgive Jerry to the point of
inheritance. I happen to be in the old lady's confidence that far."

"You are a social Atlas, York," Joe declared. "You hold the world on
your shoulders. But what you say doesn't interest me at all. So don't
prejudge any of us, maid or man."

"And don't you let your bloomin' self-confidence and ability to work
half-miracles be your undoing. A house builded on the sand may fall,
where one built on gold dust may stand firm," York retorted.

"Do you believe your own words?" Joe asked, rising to his feet.

"The point is for you to believe them, whether I do or not," York
answered, as Joe disappeared through the doorway.

"Why, in the name of fitness, can't that fellow fall in love with that
little Thelma Ekblad, a girl who knows what sacrifice on the Sage Brush
means and who has a grip on the real values of life? Oh, well, just to
watch the crowd run awry ought to be entertainment enough for a bachelor
like myself," York thought, as he sat staring after Joe. "I've lived to
see a few half-miracles myself in the last decade. Anybody whose lot is
cast in western Kansas can see as many of them as the old Santa Fé Trail
bull-whackers saw of mirages in the awful 'fifties. There's a lot of
reclaiming being done on the Sage Brush, even if that struggle of Joe's
with the blowout is a failure. Thelma Ekblad in her splendid victory
over ignorance, carrying a university degree; Stellar Bahrr"--York
smiled, "Ponk, who would put a flourish after his name if he were
signing his own death-warrant, the little hero of a hundred knocks,
living above everything but his funny little strut, and he's getting
over that a bit; old Fishing Teddy, brave old soul, down in his old
shack alone; Jerry, with her luxurious laziness and doubt in God and a
hereafter--all winning slowly to better things, maybe; but as to sand
and Joe--

"'Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook?' You'll never do it, Joe,
never, and you'll never win the goal you've set your heart on. Poor
fellow!"

That night, on the silent porch alone, York finished the battle he had
begun on the evening after he and Jerry had called on Stella Bahrr.

"It's the artist bank clerk against the field, and we'll none of us bat
above his average. Good night, old moon, and good night, York, to what
can't be."

He waved a hand at the dying light in the west, and a dying hope, and
went inside.




XVI

A POSTLUDE IN "EDEN"


Cornelius Darby had lain in his beautifully decorated grave for three
years, and a graceful white shaft pointing heavenward amid the
shrubbery had become a landmark for the bunch of grubs who rode the
Winnowoc local.

"Must be getting close to the deppo. Yonder is old Corn Darby's
gravestone over on the bluff," they would say, as the train chuffed up
out of the valley on either side of the station. That was all the memory
of him that remained, save as now and then a girl in a far-away Kansas
town remembered a June evening when a discus shied out from its course
and rolled to the door of a rose-arbor.

But "Eden," as a country estate, lost nothing by the passing of the
husband of its lady and mistress, who spared none of the Darby dollars
to make both the town and country home delightful in all appointments,
hoping and believing that in her policy of stubbornness and force she
could have her way, and bring back to the East the girl whom she would
never invite to return, the girl whose future she had determined to
control. The three years had found Jerusha Darby's will to have Jerry
Swaim become her heir under her own terms--mistaking dependence for
appreciation, and idleness for happiness--had ceased to be will and
become a mania, the ruling passion of her years of old age. She never
dreamed that she was being adroitly managed by her husband's relative,
Eugene Wellington, but she did recognize, and, strangely enough, resent,
the fact that the Darby strain in his blood was proving itself in his
ability, not to earn dollars, but to make dollars earn dollars once they
were put plentifully into his hands.

Since Mrs. Darby had only one life-purpose--to leave her property to
Jerry Swaim under her own terms--it galled her to think of it passing to
the hands of the relatives of the late Cornelius. She believed that love
of Eugene would bring Jerry back, for she was Lesa's own romance-loving
child--even if the luxuries that wealth can offer should fail; and she
had coddled Eugene Wellington for this very purpose. But after three
years he had failed to satisfy her. She was becoming slowly but
everlastingly set on one thing. She would put her property elsewhere by
will--when she was through with it. She could not do without Eugene as
long as she lived--which would be indefinitely, of course. But she would
have her say--and (in a whisper) it would _not_ be a Darby nor _kin_ of
a Darby who might be sitting around now, waiting for her to pass to her
fathers, who would possess it.

In this intense state of mind she called Eugene out to "Eden" in the
late May of the third year of Jerry Swaim's stay in Kansas. The
rose-arbor was aglow with the same blossoming beauty as of old, and all
the grounds were a dream of May-time verdure.

Eugene Wellington, driving out from the city in a big limousine car,
found them more to his taste than ever before, and he took in the
premises leisurely before going to the arbor to meet Mrs. Darby.

"If I could only persuade Jerry to come now, all would be well," he
meditated. "And I have hopes. The last news of her tells me a few
things. She hasn't fallen in love with York Macpherson. He'd hate me
less if she had, and he detests me. I saw that, all right, when he was
here last month. And she's pretty tired of the life of the wilderness. I
know that. If she would come right now it would settle things forever.
I'd go after her if the old lady would permit it. I'd go, anyhow, if I
dared. But I must keep an eye on Uncle Cornie's widow day and night,
and, hungry as I am for one glimpse of Jerry's sweet face, I couldn't
meet Jerusha D. in her wrath if I disobeyed her."

Eugene had the chauffeur pause while he surveyed the lilac-walk and the
big maples and the lotus-pond.

"If Jerry would come _now_," he began again, with himself, "she would be
heir to all this. If she doesn't come soon, there's trouble ahead for
Eugene of the soft snaps. To the rose-arbor, Henderson."

So Henderson whirled the splendid young product to the doorway of the
pretty retreat.

Mrs. Darby met her nephew with a sterner face even than she was
accustomed to wear.

"I want to see you at once," she said, as the young man loitered a
moment outside.

"Yes, Aunt Jerry," he responded, dutifully enough--as to form.

"What have you heard from Jerry recently?" she demanded.

"What York Macpherson told us--that she has had a hard year's work in a
school-room," Eugene replied.

"Humph! I knew that. What are you doing to bring her back to me?" Mrs.
Darby snapped off the words.

"Nothing now!" the young man answered her.

"'Nothing now!' Why not?" Mrs. Darby was in her worst of humors.

"Because there is positively nothing to do but to wait," Eugene said,
calmly. "She is not in love anywhere else. She is getting tired and
disgusted with her plebeian surroundings, and as to her estate--"

"What of her estate? I refused to let York Macpherson say a word,
although he tried to over-rule me. I told him two things: I'd never
forgive Jerry if she didn't come back uninvited by me; and I'd never
listen to him blow a big Kansas story of her wonderful possessions. What
do you know? You'd be unprejudiced." The old woman had never seemed
quite so imperious before.

"I have here a paper describing it. York Macpherson sent it to Uncle
Cornelius the very week he died. I found it among some other papers
shortly after his death and after Jerry left. When York was here he
confirmed the report at my insistent request. Read it."

Jerusha Darby read, realizing, as she did so, that neither her husband
nor York Macpherson had succeeded in doing what Eugene Wellington had
done easily. Each had tried in vain to have her read that paper.

"You knew the condition of this estate for three years, and never told
me. Why?" The old woman's face was very pale.

"I did not dare to do so," Eugene replied, that line of weakness in his
face which Jerry had noted three years before revealing itself for the
first time to her aunt.

"This is sufficient," she said, in a quiet sort of way. "To-morrow I
make my will--just to be sure. I shall probably outlive many younger
people than myself. Write and tell Jerry I have done it. This time
to-morrow night will see my estate settled so far as the next generation
is concerned. If I do not do it, Eugene, some distant and improvident
relatives of Cornelius will claim it. Send the lawyer out in the
morning."

"All right, Aunt Jerry. I must go now. I have a club meeting in the city
and I can make it easily. The car runs like the wind with Henderson at
the wheel. Good-by."

And Eugene Wellington was gone.

"Three years ago I'd have left everything to him if I had been ready to
make a will then. I'm ready now, and any time in the next ten years I
can change it if I want to. But this will bring things my way, after
all. I told York I'd never forgive Jerry!"

Mrs. Darby paused, and a smile lighted her wrinkled face.

"To think of that girl just shouldering her burden and walking off with
it. If she isn't Brother Jim over again! Never writing a word of
complaint. Oh, Jerry! Jerry! I'll make it up to you to-morrow."

To Jerusha Darby money made up for everything. She sat long in the
rose-arbor, thinking, maybe, of the years when Jerry's children and her
children's children would dominate the Winnowoc countryside as they of
the Swaim blood had always done. And then, because she was tired, and
the afternoon sunshine was warm, and her willow rocking-chair was very
comfortable--she fell asleep.

<tb>

"Went just like her brother, the late Jeremiah Swaim," the papers said,
the next evening.

Instead of the lawyer, it was the undertaker who came to officiate. And
the last will and testament, and the too-late evidence of a forgiving
good-will, all were impossible henceforth and forever.

The estate of the late Jerusha Darby, relict of the late Cornelius
Darby, no will of hers having been found, passed, by agreement under
law, to a distant relative of the late Cornelius, which relative being
Eugene Wellington, whose knowledge of the said possible conditions of
inheritance he had held in his possession for three years, since the day
he accidentally found them among the private papers of his late uncle,
knowing the while that any sudden notion of the late Jerusha might
result in putting her possessions, by her own signature, where neither
Jerry, as her favorite and heir apparent, nor himself, as heir-in-law
without a will, could inherit anything. Truly Gene had had a bothersome
time of it for three years, and he congratulated himself on having done
well--excellently well, indeed. Truly only the good little snakes ever
entered that "Eden" in the Winnowoc Valley in Pennsylvania.




XVII

THE FLESH-POTS OF THE WINNOWOC


The glory of that third springtime was on the Kansas prairies and in the
heart of a man and a maid, the best of good fellows each to the other,
who rode together far along their blossomy trails. The eyes of the man
were on the future and in his heart there was only one wish--that the
good-fellowship would soon end in the realization of his heart's desire.
The eyes of the maid were closed to the future. For her, too, there was
only one wish--that this kind of comradeship might go on unchanged
indefinitely. To Jerry no trouble seemed quite so big when Joe was with
her, and little foxes sought their holes when he came near. If the
spring work had not grown so heavy late in May, and Joe could have come
to town oftener, and one teacher had not fallen sick, and Clare Lenwell
hadn't been so stubborn, and if Stellar Bahrr had held her tongue--But
why go on with ifs? All these conditions did exist. What might have been
without them no man knoweth.

One of the humanest traits of human beings is to believe what is
pleasant to believe, and to doubt and question what would be an
undesirable fact. Jerry Swaim, clinging ever to a memory of what might
have been, building a pretty love dream, it is true, to be acted out
some far-away time by a young farmer and his neighbor in the Sage Brush
Valley, listened to Stellar Bahrr's version of Thelma Ekblad's shopping
mission, held back the tears that burned her eyeballs for a moment, and
then, being human, voted the whole thing as impossible, if not as
malicious as any of Stellar Bahrr's stories. Indeed, Thelma Ekblad was
now, as she had always been, the very least of Jerry's troubles.

The school row, that had become the community fuss, culminated in the
superintendent putting upon his teachers the responsibility of
settlement.

If they were willing to concede to the foolish demands of the class, led
by Clare Lenwell, and grant full credits in their branches of study, he
would abide by their decision. The easiest way, after all, to quiet the
thing, he said, might be to let the young folks have their way this
time, and do better with the class next year. They could begin in time
with them. As if Solomon himself could ever foresee what trivial demand
and stubborn claim will be the author and finisher of the disturbance
from year to year in the town's pride and glory--the high-school Senior
class, and its Commencement affairs. The final vote to break the tie and
make the verdict was purposely put on Jerry Swaim, who had more
influence in the high school than the superintendent himself. Jerry
protested, and asked for a more just agreement, finally spending a whole
afternoon with Clare Lenwell in an effort to induce him to be a
gentleman, offering, in return, all fairness and courtesy.

Young Lenwell's head was now too large for his body. He was the hero of
the hour. Rule or ruin rested on this young Napoleon of the Sage Brush,
divinely ordained to free the downtrodden youths of America from the
iron heel and galling chains with which the faculty of the average
American high school enthralls and degrades--and so forth, world without
end.

This at least was Clare Lenwell's attitude from one o'clock P.M. to five
o'clock P.M. of an unusually hot June day. At the stroke of five Jerry
rose, with calm face, but a dangerously square chin, saying, in an
untroubled tone:

"You may as well go. Good afternoon."

Young Lenwell walked out, the cock of the hour--until the next morning.
Then all of the Seniors were recorded as having received full credits
for graduation from all of the faculty--except one pupil, who lacked one
teacher's signature. Clare Lenwell was held back by Miss Swaim, teacher
of the mathematics department.

The earthquake followed.

In the session of the school board on the afternoon of Commencement Day
Junius Brutus Ponk, who presided over the meeting, sat "as firm as Mount
Olympus, or Montpelier, Vermont," he said, afterward; "the uncle Lenwell
suffered eruption, Vesuviously; and the third man of us just cowed down,
and shriveled up, and tried to slip out in the hole where the
electric-light wire comes through the wall. But I fetched him back with
a button-hook, knowin' he'd get lost in that wide passageway and his
remains never be recovered to his family."

It was not, however, just a family matter now among the Lenwells. In the
presence of the superintendent and Mrs. Bahrr, Miss Swaim was called to
trial by her peers--the board of education. In this executive session,
whose proceedings were not ever to be breathed--for York Macpherson
would have the last man of them put in jail, he was that
influential--_Other Things Were Made Known_--Things that, after the
final settlement, became in time common property, and so forgotten.

Herein Stellar Bahrr's three years of pent-up anger at last found vent.
She had been preparing for this event. She had adroitly set the trap for
the first difficulty, that had its start in the Lenwell family, while
she was doing their spring sewing. Incessantly and insidiously she laid
her mines and strung her wires and stored her munitions, determined to
settle once for all with the pretty, stuck-up girl who had held a whip
over her for three whole years.

Charges were to be brought against Miss Swaim of a _serious_ character,
and she was to be tried and condemned in _secret session_ and allowed to
_leave_ the town _quietly_. _Nothing_ would be said _aloud_ until she
was _gone_.

In despair, Ponk sought York Macpherson two hours before the trial
began.

"There's two against me. And no matter what I _say_, they'll outvote me.
It's the durned infernal ballot-box that's a curse to a free
government. If it wasn't for that, republics would flourish. Bein' an
uncrowned king don't keep a man from bein' a plain short-eared
jackass--and they's three of us of the same breed--two against one."

York's face was gray with anger, and he clutched his fingers in his wavy
hair as if to get back the hold on himself.

"You will have your trial, of course. Demand two things--that the
accused and the accusers meet face to face. It will be hard on Jerry."

"Has she flinched or fell down once in three years, York Macpherson?
Ain't she stronger and handsomer to-day than she was the day I had the
honor to bring her up from the depot in that new gadabout of mine? If I
could I'd have had it framed and hung on the wall and kept, for what it
done for her."

The two men looked into each other's eyes, and what each read there made
a sacred, unbreakable bond between them for all the years to come.

The trial was held in the hotel parlor, behind closed doors. The charges
were vague and poorly supported by evidence, but the venom back of them
was definite. Plainly stated, a pretty, incompetent girl had come West
_for some reason_ never made clear to New Eden. Come as an heiress in
"style and stuckuppitude of manner" (that was Stellar Bahrr's phrasing);
had suddenly become poor and dependent on the good-will of J. B. Ponk,
who had fought to the bitter end to give her "a place on the town
pay-roll and keep her there" (that was the jealous superintendent's
phrasing); and on the patronage of York Macpherson, who had really took
her in, he and his honorable sister, even if they really were the worse
"took in" of the two. At this point Ponk rapped for a better expression
of terms. The young person had tried to "run things" in the church and
schools and society. Even the superintendent himself had to be sure of
her approval before he dared to start any movement in the high school.
And no one of the preachers would invite her to unite with his church.

But to the charges now:

First: She had refused to let Clare Lenwell graduate who wasn't any
worse than the rest of the class.

Secondly: She had a way of riding around over the country with young men
on moonlight nights on horseback. Of going, the Lord knows where, with
young men, _joy-riding_ in cars, or of going alone wherever she pleased
in hired livery cars. And _some_ thought she met strange men and was
acquainted with rough characters, and the moral influence of that was
awfully bad; and there was something _even worse_, if that were
possible, WORSE!

Things had disappeared around town often, but in _the last three years_
especially. If folks were poor, they needed money.

Then Stellar Bahrr came into the ring.

Jerry had sat and listened to the proceedings as an indifferent
spectator to what could in no wise concern her. With the entrance of
Mrs. Bahrr to the witness-stand, the girl's big, dreamy eyes grew
brighter and her firm mouth was set, but no mark of anxiety showed
itself in her face or manner.

Mrs. Bahrr whined a bit as to wishing only to do the right thing, but
her steel-pointed eyes, as she fixed them in Jerry, wrote as with a
stylus across the girl's understanding:

"You are hopelessly in the minority. Now I can say what I please."

What Mrs. Bahrr really knew, of course, she couldn't swear to in any
court, because of Laura and York Macpherson. She wouldn't shame them,
because they had befriended a fraud, all with good intentions. She only
came now because she'd been promised protection by the board from what
folks would say, and she was speaking what must _never_ be repeated.

"Most of us need that kind of protection when you are around," Ponk
declared, vehemently, knowing that, while the school board would keep
her words sacred, nothing said or done in that trial would be held
sacred by her as soon as the decision she wished for was reached.

Stellar, feeling herself safe, paid no heed to Ponk. What she really
knew was that a certain young lady had been known to take money from her
hostess and, being caught, had been forced to give it up. Stellar
herself saw and heard the whole thing when it happened. Laura had told
her about the matter, and then, when she was just leaving, Jerry had
returned the money. She was right outside of the vines on the porch, and
she knew. Stellar knew that dollars and dollars, jewelry, silverware,
and other valuables had been taken, and some of them never restored; but
some was sneaked back when the pressure got too strong. In a word,
through much talk and little sense, Miss Geraldine Swaim was branded a
high-toned thief. And worse than that. For three years strange men had
slipped to the Macpherson home when the folks were away, and been let
out by the side door. Real low-down-looking fellows. Stellar had seen
them herself. She had a way of running 'cross lots up to Laury's
evenings, and _she knew_ what she was talking about. Stellar dropped her
eyes now, not caring to look at Jerry. Her blow had hit home and she was
exultant.

"Has the young lady anything to say?" Lenwell of the school board asked,
feeling a twinge of pity, after all, because the case was even stronger
than he had hoped it could be made.

Jerry looked over at Stellar Bahrr until she was forced to lift her eyes
to the girl's face.

"I cannot understand the degree of hate that can be developed in a human
mind," she said, calmly. "That is all I have to say."

Junius Brutus Ponk's round face seemed to blacken like a Kansas sky
before the coming of a hail-storm. Lenwell gave a snort of triumph, and
the third member of the board grinned.

At that moment the door of the hotel parlor opened. Jerry, who sat
opposite to it, caught sight of York Macpherson in the hall. And York
saw her, calm and brave, in what he read, in the instant, was defeat for
her. Before her were dismissal, failure, and homelessness. But neither
he nor any one else dreamed how far the influence of those Sunday
afternoons of "calling on mother," with the fat little hotel-keeper, had
led this girl into a "trust in every time of trouble," and she faced her
future bravely.

It was not York Macpherson, but the little, fuzzy, shabby figure of old
Fishin' Teddy who shuffled inside and closed the door, demanding in a
quavering squeak to be heard.

Ponk gave a start of surprise; Lenwell was annoyed; the third man was
indifferent now, being safe, anyhow. Stellar Bahrr and the
superintendent stared in amazement, but Jerry's face was wonderful to
see.

"'Ain't I got a right to say a word here, gentlemen?" old Teddy asked,
looking at Ponk.

"If it's on the subject of this meeting, yes. If it's anything about
fish, either in the Sage Brush or in Kingussie Creek, no. This really
ain't no place for fish stories. We're overstocked with 'em right now,
till this hotel and gurrage will have a 'ancient and a fishlike smell'
as the Good Book says, for a generation."

"I just got wind of what was on up here. A man from your town come down
to see me on business, an' he bringed me up."

"York Macpherson's the only man I ever knew had business with old Teddy.
Lord be praised!" Ponk thought.

"I got a little testimony myself to offer here, for the one that's bein'
blackmailed. I'll tell it fast as I can," Teddy declared.

"Take your time an' get it straight. None of us is in a hurry now," Ponk
assured him.

Then the Teddy Bear, without looking at Jerry, gave testimony:

"Back in Pennsylvany, where I come from, in the Winnowoc country, I
knowed Jim Swaim, this young lady's father. I wasn't no fisherman then.
I was a hard-workin', well-meanin', honest man. My name was Hans
Theodore--and somethin' else I have no use for since I come to the Sage
Brush in Kansas."

He hesitated and looked down at his scaly brown paws and shabby clothes.

"I ain't telling this 'cause I want to, but 'cause I want to do justice
to Jim Swaim's girl. Jim was my friend an' helped me a lot of ways. He
was a hard-fisted business man, but awfully human with human bein's; an'
his daughter's jes' like him, seems to me."

Jerry's cheeks were swept with the bloom of "Eden" roses as she sat with
her eyes fixed on the old man. To her in that moment came a vision of
Uncle Cornie in the rose-arbor when the colorless old man had pleaded
with her to become as her father had been.

"I got into trouble back there. This is a secret session, hain't it?"
The old man hesitated again.

"Yes, dead secret," Ponk assured him. "Nothin' told outside of here
before it's first told inside, which is unusual in such secret
proceedings, so you are among friends. Go on."

Stellar Bahrr sat with her eyes piercing the old man like daggers, while
his own faded yellow-brown eyes drooped with a sorrowful expression.

"I won't say how it happened, but I got mixed up in some stealin'
scrape--that's why I changed my name or, ruther, left off the last of
it. I'd gone to the Pen--though ever' scrap I ever stole, or its money
value, was actually returned to them that had lost it. Jim Swaim stood
by me, helpin' me through, an' I paid him as I earnt it. Then he give me
money to get started here, an' befriended me every way, just 'cause it
was in him. I've lived out here on the Sage Brush alone 'cause I ain't
fit to live with folks. But when the old _mainy_, as you say of crazy
folk, comes, why, things is missin' up in town. They land in my shack
sometimes, an' sometimes I'm honest enough to bring 'em back when I can
do it. I'm the one that hangs around in the shadders, an' if you ketch
sight of strange men at side doors, Mrs. Bahrr, it's me. An' when this
Jerry Swaim (I knowed her when she was a baby; I carried her in my arms
'cross the Winnowoc once, time of a big flood up in Pennsylvany)--when
her purseful of money was stole, three years ago, an' she comes down to
my shack and finds it all there, why, she done by me then jus' like her
own daddy 'd 'a' done, she never told on me at all. An' she hain't told
all these years, and wa'n't goin' to tell on me now. I don't know what
you mean 'bout these stories on her. She never done nothin' to be
ashamed of in her life. 'Tain't in her family to be ashamed. They dunno
how. If they's blame for stealin' in New Eden, though, jus' lay it on
old Fishin' Teddy. You 'quit her now."

The old man's voice quavered as he squeaked out his words, and he
shuffled aside, to be less in evidence in the parlor, where he had for
the one time in his life been briefly the central figure.

The silence that followed his words was broken by Jerry's clear, low
voice. Her face was beautiful in the soft light there. To Ponk she had
never seemed so adorable before, not even on still Sabbath afternoons in
the quiet corner of the cemetery where they talked as friends of
mother-love and God, and Life after life.

"Friends, this old hermit fisherman is telling you a falsehood to try to
shield me because of some favor my father showed him in the years gone
by. If he is not willing to say more, to tell you the real truth, he
will force me to say to you that I am the guilty one after all. I cannot
let him make such a sacrifice for me."

She spoke as though she were explaining the necessity for changing cars
in Chicago in order to reach Montreal. Old Fishin' Teddy lifted his
clubby brown hands in protest.

"'Tain't so, an' 'tain't right," he managed to make the words come
out--thin and trembling words, shaking like palsied things.

"No, it isn't so, and it isn't right, and he must not bear a disgrace he
doesn't deserve. I'll do it for him," Jerry said, smiling upon the
shabby old man--a common grub of the Sage Brush Valley.

There is nothing grander in human history, nothing which can more deeply
touch the common human heart of us all, than the lesson of
self-sacrifice taught on Mount Calvary. From the thief on the cross,
down through all the centuries, has the blessed power of that Spirit
softened the hearts of evil-doers, great or small. Jerry had not once
turned toward Stellar Bahrr since the entrance of Fishin' Teddy. When
she had ceased speaking, the silence of the room was broken by the town
busybody's whining tone:

"They ain't neither one of 'em a thief, Mr. Ponk. It's me. They sha'n't
do no such sacrificing thing."

The silence of the moment before was a shout compared to the dead
silence now.

"Yes, it's me. I was born that way, an' it just seems I can't help it.
I've done all the liftin', I guess, that's been done in this town
a'most--'tain't so much, of course; but I ain't mean clear through, an'
I jus' wouldn't ever rest in my grave if I don't speak now. I thought
I'd always hide it, but I know I never will."

Old Teddy shrank back in a heap on his chair, while all of the rest
except Jerry Swaim sat as if thunderstruck.

"I'm goin' clear through with it, now I've begun. Maybe I'll be a better
woman if I am disgraced forever by it." Mrs. Bahrr's voice grew steadier
and her eyes were fixed on the ground.

"Hans Theodore--the last part of his name is Bahrr--he's my husband. It
was for my sins that he left Pennsylvany. Jim Swaim saved us from a lot
of disgrace, and persuaded us to come West an' start over, an' helped us
a lot. I couldn't break myself of wrong-doing just by changing climate,
though. We tried Indiany first an' failed, then we come to S'liny,
Kansas, next an' then we come on here. An' at last Theodore give me up
an' went off alone an' changed his name. Mr. Lenwell's folks here is
distant relatives, but they never would 'a' knowed Theodore. Didn't know
he'd never got a divorce, and never stop supportin' me; like he'd said
when we was married, he'd 'keep me unto death,' you know; and he'd come
to see me once in a while, to be sure I wasn't needin' nothin'. I jus'
worked along at one thing or another, an' Teddy earnt money an' paid it
in to York Macpherson, like a pension, an' he paid me, York did. But
Teddy wouldn't never live with me, though he never told York why. An'
when I took things--"

Mrs. Bahrr paused and looked at Jerry deprecatingly.

"Like that silver cup I saw down at the deep hole?" Jerry asked,
encouragingly.

"Yes, like that. I seen you down there that day. I was the woman that
passed your car--"

"I know it," Jerry said, "I remember your sunbonnet and gray-green
dress. I've often seen both since."

"Yes, an' you remember, too, the time I come out on the porch sudden when
you first come here, an' made you promise not to tell." Mrs. Bahrr's
voice quavered now.

"An' 'cause I knowed Teddy'd bring that right back to Macpherson's and
you'd remember it, an' 'cause you were Jim Swaim's child that knowed my
fault an' made me do what I didn't want to do, even if I was in the
wrong, I hated you an' vowed to myself I'd fix you. It was me slipped
into your room an' stuck Laury's purse into your beaded hand-bag, an' it
was me took your roll of money from your own purse. Teddy took it away,
though, that very night. Teddy he'd take whatever I picked up an'
pretend he'd sell it, but he'd git it back to 'em some way if he could;
an' he's saved an' sold fish an' lived a hermit life an' never told on
me. He's slipped up to town to git me to put back or let him put back
what I was tempted to pilfer, 'cause it seemed I just couldn't help it.
York's been awful patient with me, too. But I can't set here an' be a
woman and see Teddy shieldin' me, a hypocrite, an' her shieldin' him,
an' not tellin' on me, like wimmen does on wimmen generally, an' not
make a clean breast of it. An' if you'll not tell on me, an' all help
me, I'll jus' try once more--"

"Won't anything go out of this room except what you tell yourself,
Stellar Bahrr," Ponk said, gravely. "Now you go home an' begin to act
better and think better, an' this'll be a heap cleaner town forever
after. An' if you live right the rest of your days you 'll keep on
livin' after you're dead, like mother does. The charges of this case is
all settled. I congratulate you, Miss Fair Defendant. You are a Joan of
Arc, an' a Hannah Dustin, an Boaz's Ruth, an' Barbara Fritchie, all in
one."

While the other two members of the board were shamefacedly shaking hands
and offering Jerry half of New Eden as a recompense, old Fishin' Teddy
slipped out of the side door through the dining-room and on to where
Ponk's best livery car waited to take him to his rude shack beside the
deep hole in the Sage Brush.

As Jerry passed into the hall she found a crowd waiting for her--the
three ministers from the churches, the mayor of New Eden, the friends of
the Macphersons, York himself, and many more of the town's best, who had
gathered to congratulate Jerry and to assure her of their pride in her
ability and appreciation of her as a citizen of New Eden.

With the Commencement that night the school fuss and town split
disappeared at one breath and passed into history.

When they reached the doorway of "Castle Cluny," after the Commencement
exercises, York handed Jerry a letter. It was a long and affectionately
worded message from Eugene Wellington, telling of the passing of Jerusha
Darby, of his inheritance, and of his intention to come at once to
Kansas and take her back to the "Eden" she had neglected so long.

And Jerry, worn with the events of the last few weeks, feeling the
strain suddenly lifted, welcomed the letter and shed a tear upon it,
saying, softly:

"Oh, I'm so tired of everything now! If he comes for me, he'll find me
ready to meet him. The flesh-pots of the Winnowoc are better to me than
this weary desert."

<tb>

Came an evening three days before the date for the lease on the Swaim
land to expire. Jerry sat alone on the Macpherson porch. It had been an
extremely hot day for June, with the dead, tasteless air that presages
the coming of a storm, and to-night the moon seemed to struggle up
toward the zenith against choking gray clouds that threatened to smother
out its light.

Jerry was not happy to-night. She wanted Joe Thomson to come this
evening. It had been such a long while since he had had time to leave
the ranch for an evening with her.

And with the wishing Joe came. With firm step and the face of a victor
he came. From his dark eyes hope and tenderness were looking out.

"I haven't seen you for ages, and ages are awfully long, you know,"
Jerry declared.

"I've been very busy," Joe replied. "You know you can't break the laws
of the ranch and expect a harvest, any more than you can break the laws
of geometry and depend on results. I would have been up sooner, though,
but for one thing: a fellow on the ranch above mine who got hurt once
with a mowing-machine had another accident and I've been helping the
owner, that stout-hearted little Norwegian girl, Thelma Ekblad, to take
care of their crops, too. Thelma is a courageous soul who has worked her
way through the university, and she is a mighty capable girl, too. She
would be a splendid success as a teacher, she is so well trained, but
her family need her, and all of us down there need her."

Jerry caught her breath. It was the first time in three years that Joe
had ever mentioned any girl with interest. But now this was all right
and just as things should be. A neighbor, a capable Western girl--women
see far, after all, and Jerry's romance had not been a foolish one.

"That's all right, Joe, but I have been wanting to see you"--the old "I
want" as imperative again to-night as in the days when all of this
girl's wants had been met by the mere expression of them.

"And I'm always wanting to see you, and never so much as to-night," Joe
began, earnestly.

"Let me tell you first why I have wanted to see you once more," Jerry
broke in, hastily.

In the dull light her dreamy dark-blue eyes and her golden hair falling
away from her white brow left an imprint that Joe Thomson's mind kept
henceforth; at the same time that "once more" cut a deeper wound than
Jerry could know.

"My aunt Jerry Darby is dead." The girl's voice was very low. "I can't
grieve for her, for she was old and tired of life and unhappy. You
remember I told you about her one night here three years ago."

Joe did remember.

"She left all her fortune to Cousin Gene Wellington."

"The artist who turned out to be a bank clerk?" Joe asked. "I really
always doubted that story."

"Yes, but, you know, he did it to please Aunt Jerry. Think of a
sacrifice like that! Giving up one's dearest life-work!"

"I'm thinking of it. Excuse me. Go on," Joe said.

Jerry lifted her big dreamy eyes. The sparkle was gone and only the soft
light of romance illumined them now.

"Gene is coming out to see me soon. I look for him any day. Everything
is all settled about the property, and everything is going to be all
right, after all, I am sure. And I'm so tired of teaching." Jerry broke
off suddenly.

"But, oh, Joe," she began presently, "you will never, never know how
much your comradeship has helped me through these three trying years of
hard work and hopelessness. We have been only friends, of course, and
you are such a good, helpful kind of a friend. I never could have gotten
through without you."

"Thank you, the pleasure is mine. I--I think I must go now."

Joe rose suddenly and started to leave the porch. In an instant the very
earth had slidden out from under his feet. The memory of York
Macpherson's warning swept across his mind as the blowout sands sweep
over the green prairie. And he had come to say such different words
to-night. He had reached the end of a long, heart-breaking warfare with
nature and he had won. And now a new warfare broke forth in his soul.

At that moment a sudden boom of thunder crashed out of the horizon and
all the lightnings of the heavens were unleashed, while a swirling
dust-deluge filled the darkening air. Jerry sprang forward, clutching
Joe's arm with her slender fingers.

"The storm will be here in a minute," she cried, "You must not leave
now. You mustn't face this wind. Look at that awful black cloud and see
how fast it is coming on. I don't want you to go away. Where can you
go?"

But Joe only shook off her grip, saying, hoarsely:

"I'm going down the Sage Brush. If you ever want me again, you'll find
me beyond the blowout."

The word struck like a blow. For three years Jerry had not heard it
spoken. It was the one term forever dropped from her vocabulary. All who
loved her must forget its very existence.

There was a sudden dead calm in the hot yellow air; a moment of
gathering forces before the storm would burst upon the town.

"If you ever see me beyond that blowout, you'll know that I do want
you," Jerry said, slowly.

In the blue lightning glare that followed, her white face and big dark
eyes recalled to Joe Thomson's mind the moment, so long ago now, it
seemed, when Jerry had first looked out at the desert from under the
bough of the oak-grove.

During the prolonged, terrific burst of thunder that followed, the young
ranchman strode away and the darkness swallowed his stalwart form as the
worst storm the Sage Brush country had ever known broke furiously upon
the whole valley.

And out on the porch steps stood a girl conscious, not of the
storm-wind, nor the beating rain, nor cleaving lightning; conscious only
that something had suddenly gone out of her life into the blackness
whither Joe Thomson had gone; and with the heartache of the loss of the
moment was a strange resentment toward a brave-hearted little Norwegian
girl--a harvest-hand with a crippled brother, an adopted baby, and a
university education.




XVIII

THE LORD HATH HIS WAY IN THE STORM


Laura Macpherson sat on the porch, watching her brother coming slowly up
the street, seemingly as oblivious to the splendor of the sunset
to-night as he had been on a June evening three summers ago.

"That was the worst cloudburst I ever heard of out here," he declared,
when he reached the porch. "Every man in town who could carry a shovel
has been out all day, up-stream or down-stream, helping to dig out the
bottomland farms. I've been clear to the upper Sage Brush, doing a stunt
or two myself. I left my muddy boots and overalls at the office so that
I wouldn't be smearing up your old Castle here."

Even in the smallest things York's thoughts were for his crippled
sister.

"There's a lot of wild stories out about buildings being swept away and
lives being lost, here and there in the valley. You needn't believe all
of them until your trustworthy brother confirms them for you, little
sister. Such events have their tragedies, but the first estimate is
always oversize."

"Even if your Big Dipper tells me, shall I wait for your confirmation?"
Laura inquired, blandly.

"Oh, Laura, I'm going to cut out all that astronomical business now,
even if I always did know that the right way to pronounce the name Bahrr
is plain Bear, however much you have to stutter to spell it. Stellar has
been, as the Methodists say, 'redeemed and washed in the blood of the
Lamb.' I'm taking her in on probation, myself, and if she sticks it out
for six months I'll take her into full membership."

"What do you mean, York?" Laura inquired.

"I mean that since they settled the school row in secret session, Mrs.
Bahrr has been as different a woman as one can be who has let the habit
of evil thinking become a taskmaster. I've never told you that her
husband is still living, a shabby old fellow who gives me money for her
support as fast as he can earn it, but he won't live with her. She flies
from hat-trimming to sewing and baking and nursing and back to sewing,
and she never earns much anywhere, and works up trouble just for pure
cussedness. But to-day she went to the upper Sage Brush to help old Mrs.
Poser. The Posers were nearly washed away, and the old lady is sick and
lonely and almost helpless. She needs somebody to stay with her. Yes,
Stellar is really becoming a star--a plain, homely planet, doing a
good-angel line where she's most useful. We'll let the past stay where
it belongs, and count her reclaimed to better things now."

"Amen! And what about the valley down-stream? It must be worse, because
the storm came up from that way," Laura declared.

"There are plenty of rumors, but I haven't heard anything definite yet,
for I just got here, you know, and, as I telephoned you, found Mr.
Wellington had registered at Ponk's inn. The traveling-men who were on
the branch line have brought the first word to town to-day. The train is
stuck somewhere down the valley, and the tracks, for the most part, are
at the bottom of the Sage Brush. There are washouts all along the
road-bed, and the passengers have been hauled up the stream, across
fields, and every other way, except by the regular route. No automobile
can travel the trail now, so our Philadelphia gentleman arrives a good
bit disgusted with this bloomin' Western country, don't you know; and
sore from miles of jolting; and hungry; and sort of mussy-looking for a
banker; but cocksure of a welcome and of the power to bring salvation to
one of us at least."

York dropped down on the porch step with a frown, flinging aside his hat
and thrusting his fingers savagely into his heavy hair.

"Oh, well!" he exclaimed, dejectedly. "There's been a three years'
running fight between Jim Swaim's determined chin and Lesa's tender
eyes. I had hoped to the Lord that Jim would win the day, but that
whirlwind campaign of pleading and luxury-tempting letters came just at
the end of a hard year's work in the high school, with all that infernal
fuss in the Senior class, splitting the town open for a month and being
forgotten in an hour, and the jealousy toward the best teacher we've
ever had here, etcetera. So the '_eyes_' seem to have it. If there were
no ladies present," York added, with a half-smile, "I'd feel free to
express my lordly judgment of the whole damned sex."

"Don't hesitate, Yorick; a little cussing might ease your liver," Laura
declared, surprised and amused at her brother's unexpected vehemence of
feeling.

"There's nothing in the English language, as she is cussed, to do the
subject justice, but I might practise a few minutes at least," York
began.

"Hush, York! That is Mr. Eugene Wellington coming yonder. I'll call
Jerry. Poor Joe!" Laura added, pityingly. "I have a feeling he is the
real sufferer here."

"Yes, poor Joe!" York echoed, sadly. "Ponk will just soar above his
hurt, but men of Joe's dogged make-up die a thousand deaths when they do
die."

Lesa Swaim's daughter was gloriously beautiful to Eugene Wellington's
artistic eyes as he sat beside her on the porch on this beautiful
evening. And Eugene himself held a charm in his very presence. All the
memories of the young years of culture and ease; all the daintiness of
perfect dress and perfect manners; all the assurance that a vague, sweet
dream was becoming real; all the sense of a struggle for a livelihood
now ended; all the breaking of the grip of stern duty, and an unbending
pride in a clear conscience, although their rewards had been inspiringly
sweet--all these seemed to Jerry Swaim to lift her suddenly and
completely into the real life from which these three busy, strange years
had taken her. Oh, she had been only waiting, after all. Nothing
mattered any more. Eugene and she had looked at duty differently. That
was all. He was here now, here for her sake. Henceforth his people were
to be her people--his God her God. Uncle Cornie was wise when he said of
Eugene: "He comes nearer to what you've been dreaming about." He seemed
not so much a lover as a fulfilment of a craving for love.

The first sweet moment of meeting was over. Her future, their future,
shrouded only by a rose-hued mist, beyond which lay light and ease, was
waiting now for them to enter upon. In this idyllic hour Geraldine,
daughter of Lesa Swaim, had come to the very zenith of life's romance.

"It has been a cruel three years, Jerry," Eugene was saying, as, their
first greetings over, he lighted a cigarette and adjusted himself
picturesquely and easefully in York Macpherson's big porch chair--a
handsome, perfectly groomed, artistic fellow, he appeared fitted as
never before to adorn life's ornamental places.

"But they are past now. You won't have to teach any more, little cousin
o' mine. York Macpherson says your land lease expires to-day. So your
business transactions here are over, and we'll just throw that ground in
the river and forget it."

He might have taken the girl's hand in his as they sat together, but
instead he clasped his own hands gracefully and studied their fine
outlines.

"I have all the Darby estate in my own name now, you know, and I didn't
have to work a stroke at earning it. God! I wonder how a fellow can
stand it to work for every dollar he gets until he is comfortably fixed.
I simply filled in my banking-hours in a perfunctory way, and I didn't
kill myself at it, either. See what I have saved by it for myself and
you, and how much better my course was than yours, after all. Just three
years of waiting, and dodging all the drudgery I possibly could. And you
can just bet I'm a good dodger, Jerry."

Something like a chill went quivering through Jerry Swaim's whole being,
but the smile in her eyes seemed fixed there, as Eugene went on:

"Now if I had stuck to art, where would I have been and where would you
be right now? I've always wanted to paint the prairies. If I can stand
this blasted, crude country long enough, and if I'm not too lazy, we'll
play around here a little while, till I have smeared up a few canvases,
and then we'll go home, never to return, dear. Art is going to be my
pastime hereafter, you know, as it was once my--my--"

"Oh, never mind what it once was." Jerry helped to end the sentence.

The sunset on the Sage Brush was never more radiantly beautiful than it
was on this evening, and the long midsummer twilight gave promise of its
rarest grandeur of coloring. But a dull veil seemed to be slowly
dropping down upon Jerry's world.

Eugene Wellington looked at her keenly.

"Why, Jerry, aren't you happy to see me--glad for us to be together
again?" he asked, with just a tinge of sharpness edging his tones.

"I have looked forward to this meeting as a dream, an impossible joy. I
hardly realize yet that it isn't a dream any more," Jerry answered him.

"Say, cousin girl," Eugene Wellington exclaimed, suddenly, "I have been
trying all this time to find out what it is that is changed in your
face. Now I know. You have grown to look so much more like your father
than you did three years ago. Better looking, of course, but his face,
and I never noticed it before. Only you will always have your mother's
beautiful eyes."

"Thank you, Gene. They were, each in his and her way, good to me. I hope
I shall never put a stain upon their good names," Jerry murmured,
wondering strangely whether the feeling that gripped her at the moment
could be joy or sorrow.

"They didn't leave you much of an inheritance. That's the only thing
that could be said against them. My father was partly to blame for that,
I guess, but I never had the courage to tell you so till now. You know
courage and Eugene Wellington never got on well together." Somehow his
words seemed to rattle harshly against Jerry's ears. "You know, my dad,
John Wellington, came out here to this very forsaken Sage Brush Valley
somewhere and started in to be a millionaire himself on short notice,
by the short-cut plan of finance. When the thing began to look like work
he threw up the whole blamed concern, just as I would have done. Work
never was a strong element in the Wellington blood, any more than
courage, you know." Gene stopped to light another cigarette. Then he
went on: "Well, after that, dad clung close to Jim Swaim and Uncle Darby
till he died. I guess, if the truth were told, he helped most to tear
your father down financially. He could do that kind of thing, I know.
Jim Swaim spent thousands stopping the cracks after dad, to save the
good name of Wellington for his daughter to wear--as your mother always
hoped you would, because I was an artist then. You see, Mrs. Swaim loved
art--and, as Aunt Darby always insisted (that was before you ran away
from her), because it would keep her money and Uncle Darby's all in the
family. That's why I'm so glad to bring all this fortune that I do to
you now. I'm just making up to you what your father lost through mine,
you see, and it came to me so easily, without my having to grub for it.
Just pleasing Aunt Darby and taking a soft snap of clerical work, with
short hours and good pay, instead of toiling at painting, even if I do
love the old palette and brush. And I used to think I'd rather do that
sort of thing than anything else in the world."

Jerry's eyes were fixed on the young artist's face with a gaze that
troubled him.

"Don't stare at me that way, Jerry. That isn't the picture I want you to
pose for when I paint your portrait, Saint Geraldine. Now listen,"
Eugene continued. "Your York Macpherson was East this spring, and he
told me that that wild-goose chase of dad's out here had left a desert
behind him. He said a poor devil of a fellow had fought for years
against the sand that dad sowed (I don't know how he did the sowing),
till it ate up about all this poor wretch had ever had. The unfortunate
cuss! York tried to tell Aunt Darby (but I headed him off successfully)
that dad started a thing that became what they call a 'blowout' here.
York Macpherson wanted to put up a big spiel to her about justice to you
and some other folks--this poor critter who got sanded over, maybe. But
it didn't move me one mite, and I didn't let it get by to Aunt Jerry's
ears, although I half-way promised York I would, to get rid of the thing
the easiest way, for that's my way, you know. Did you ever see such a
precious thing as a 'blowout' here, Jerry?"

Jerry's face was white and her eyes burned blue-black now with a steady
glow. "Never, till to-night," she said, slowly. "I never dreamed till
now how barren a thing a lust for property can create."

Gene Wellington dropped his cigarette stub and stared a moment. He did
not grasp her meaning at all, but her voice was not so pleasant, now, as
her merry laugh and soft words had been three years ago.

"By the way, coming up to-day, I heard of a dramatic situation. I think
I'll hunt up the local color for a canvas for it," Eugene began, by way
of changing the theme. "You know you had a horribly rotten storm of
thunder and lightning and wind, and a cloudburst down the river valley
where our train was stuck in the mud, and the tracks were all lost in
the sand-drift and other vile debris. Well, coming up here from the
derailed train, some one said that the young fellow who had leased that
land, or owned the land, that is just above the sand-line, the poor
devil who had such a struggle, you know--well, he was lost when the
river overflowed its banks. But somebody else said he might be marooned,
half starved, on an island of sand out in the river, waiting for the
flood to go down. The roads are just impassable around there, so they
can't get in to see what has become of him. His house was washed away,
it seems--I saw a part of it in the river--but nobody knows where he is.
Hard luck, wasn't it? I know you'll be glad to leave this God-forsaken
country, won't you, dearie? How you ever stood it for three whole years
I can't comprehend. Only you always were the bravest girl I ever knew.
Just as soon as I paint a few of its drearinesses we'll be leaving it
forever. What's the matter?"

Jerry Swaim had sprung to her feet and was standing, white and silent,
staring at her companion with wide-open, burning eyes. Against all the
culture and idle ease of her trivial, purposeless years were matched
these three times twelve months of industry and purpose that came at a
price, with the comradeship of one who had met life's foes and
vanquished them, who earned his increase, and served and sacrificed.

"What's the matter, Jerry?" Gene repeated. "Did I shock you? It is a
tragical sort of story, I know, but you used to love the romantic and
adventurous. Every big storm, and every flood, has such incidents. I
never remember them a minute, except the storm that took Uncle Cornie
and left me a fortune. They are so unpleasant. But there is a touch of
romance in this for you. They told me that a young Norwegian girl down
there was moving heaven and earth to find this poor lost devil, because
he had been so good to her always and had helped her when her brother
was badly hurt. I guess her brother went down-stream, bottom side up,
too. See the drift of it all? The time, the place, and the girl--there's
your romance, Cousin Jerry, only the actors are terribly common, you
know."

Who can forecast the trend of the human heart? Three days ago Jerry had
thought complacently of the convenience of this stout little Thelma for
Joe's future comfort. Now the thought that Thelma had seen him last, had
caught the last word, the last brave look, smote her heart with
anguish.

"Doesn't anybody know where Joe is?" she cried, wringing her hands.

"I don't know if his name is Joe. I don't know if anybody knows where he
is. I really don't care a sou about it all, Jerry." Gene drawled his
words intentionally. "The roads are awful down that way. They nearly
bumped me to pieces coming up, hours and hours, it seemed, in a wagon,
where a decent highway and an automobile would have brought me in such a
short time. It would be hard to find this Joe creature, dead or alive.
Let's talk about something more artistic."

"Gene, I can't talk now. I can't stay here a minute longer. I _must_ go
and find this man. I must! I must!"

In the frenzy of that moment, the strength of character in Jerry's face
made it wonderful to see.

"Jerry!" Eugene Wellington exclaimed, emphatically. "You perfectly shock
me! This horrid country has almost destroyed your culture. Go and find
this man--"

But Jerry was already hurrying up the street toward Ponk's Commercial
Hotel and Garage.

<tb>

"Miss Swaim, you can't never get by in a car down there," Ponk was
urging, five minutes later. "I know you can drive like--like you can
work algebra, logyruthms, and never slip a cog. But you'll never get
down the Sage Brush that far to-night. If them Norwegians on beyond the
ranch yon side of the big bend 'ain't done nothing, you just can't. The
Ekblads and the other neighbors will do all a body can, especially
Thelmy. The river's clear changed its channel an' you could run a car up
to the top of Bunker Hill Monument, back in New Hampshire, easier than
you could cut the gullies an' hit the levels of the lower Sage Brush
trail after this flood."

"Get the car ready quick. _I want to go_," Jerry commanded, and Ponk
obeyed. A minute later a gray streak whizzed by the Macpherson home,
where Eugene Wellington stood on the porch staring in speechless
amazement.

"Bless her heart!" he ejaculated, at length. "She is self-willed like
her dad. Aunt Darby always told me I'd have to manage her with gloves
on, but not to forget to manage her, anyhow."

He strolled back to the Commercial Hotel, where the best-natured man in
Kansas lay in wait for him.

"You're in early. Have a real cigar--a regular Havany-de-Cuby--off of
me. An' take a smoke out here where it's cool."

Eugene took the proffered cigar and the seat on the side porch of the
hotel that commanded a view of the street clear to "Castle Cluny."

"Town's pretty quiet this evenin'. All the men are gone up-stream or
down, to see if they can help in the storm region. Every store shut up
tight as wax. Three preachers, station-agent, the three movie men--gone
with the rest. We are a sympathetic bunch out here, an' rather quick to
get the S O S signal and respond noble."

"So it seems," Eugene replied, wondering the while how he should be able
to kill the time till Jerry's return, resolving not to tarry here to
paint a single canvas. The sooner Geraldine Swaim was out of Kansas the
better for her perverted sense of the esthetic, and the safer for her
happiness--and his own.

"Yes," Ponk was going on to say, "everybody helps. Why, I just now let
out the pride of the gurrage to a young lady. She's just heard that a
man she knows well is lost or marooned on a island in the floods of the
Sage Brush. And if anybody'll ever save him, she will. She's been doin'
impossible things here for three years, and the town just worships her."

"I should think it would," Eugene Wellington said, with a sarcasm in his
tone.

"It does," Ponk assured him. "She's the real stuff--even mother, out
yonder, loves her."

The little man's face was turned momentarily toward the hill-slope
cemetery beyond the town. "And when a girl like that comes to me for my
fastest-powered car to go where no car can't go, for the sake of as good
a man as ever lived on earth, a man she's been _comrading_ with for
three years, and with that look in her fine eyes, they's no mistakin' to
any sensible man on God's earth why she's doin' it."

"If my room is ready I'll go to it," Eugene broke in, curtly.

"Yes, Georgette, call George to take the gentleman to number seven, an'
put him to bed."

Then the little keeper of the Commercial Hotel and Garage turned toward
the street again, and his full-moon face went into a total eclipse. But
what lay back of that shadow of the earth upon it no man but Junius
Brutus Ponk could know.




XIX

RECLAIMED


Down the Sage Brush trail Jerry Swaim's car swept on in spite of ruts
and gullies and narrow roadways and obstructing debris, flood-washed
across the land. But though the machine leaped and climbed and skidded
most perilously, nothing daunted the girl with a grip on the
steering-wheel. The storm-center of destruction had been at the big bend
of the river, and no hand less skilful, nor will less determined, would
have dared to drive a car as Jerry Swaim drove hers into the heart of
the Sage Brush flood-lands in the twilight of this June evening.

Where the forks of the trail should have been the girl paused and looked
down the road she had followed three years before; once when she had
lost her way in her drive toward the Swaim estate; again, when she
herself was lost in the overwhelming surprise and disappointment of her
ruined acres; and lastly when she had come with Joe Thomson to recover
her stolen money from the old grub whose shack was close beside the deep
fishing-hole. The road now was all a part of the mad, overwhelming Sage
Brush hurrying its flood waters to the southeast with all its might.
Where was the flimsy little shack now, and where was the old Teddy Bear
himself? Did his shabby form lie under the swirling current of that
angry river, his heroic old heart stilled forever?

A group of rescuers, muddy and tired, came around a growth of low bushes
on the higher ground toward her. All day they had been locating homeless
flood victims, rescuing stock, and dragging farm implements above the
water-line. The sight of Ponk's best car, mud-smeared and panting,
amazed them. This wasn't a place for cars. But the face of the driver
amazed them more.

"Why, it's Miss Swaim, that teacher up at New Eden!" one man exclaimed.

At the word, a boy, unrecognizable for the mud caking him over, leaped
forward toward Jerry's car.

"What are you doing, Miss Swaim?" he cried. "You mustn't go any farther!
The river's undermined everything! Please don't go! Please don't!" he
pleaded.

"Why, Clare Lenwell!" Jerry exclaimed, in surprise.

"Yes. This isn't my full-dress I wore at Commencement the other night,
but I've been saving lives to-day, and feeding the hungry, too," the boy
declared, forgetting his besmeared clothing in the thought of his
service.

"Tell me, Clare, where is Joe Thomson--I mean the young man whose ranch
is just below here."

Clare's face couldn't go white under that mud, but Jerry saw his hand
tremble as it caught the edge of her wind-shield.

"He's gone down-stream, I'm afraid. They say his home is clean gone. We
have been across the river and came over on that high bridge. I don't
know much about this side. They said Thelma Ekblad tried to save him and
nearly got lost herself. Her brother, the cripple, you know, couldn't
get away. Their house is gone now. He and the Belkap baby were given up
for lost when old Fishin' Teddy got to them some way. He knew the high
stepping-stones below the deep hole and hit them true every step. They
said he went nearly neck deep holding Paul and striking solid rock every
time. He'd lived by the river so long he knew the crossing, deep as the
flood was over it. Paul made him take the baby first, and he got out
with it, all right, and would have been safe, but he was bound to go
back for Paul, too; and he got him safe to land, where the baby was; but
I guess the effort was too much for the old fellow, and he loosed his
hold and fell back into the river before they could catch him. He saved
two lives, though, and he wasn't any use to the community, anyhow. A man
that lives alone like that never is, so it isn't much loss, after all.
But that big Joe Thomson's another matter. And he was so strong, he
could swim like a whale; but the Sage Brush got him--I'm afraid."

Jerry's engine gave a great thump as she flung on all the power and
dashed away on the upper road toward Joe Thomson's ranch.

"At the bend of the river you turn toward the three cottonwoods." Jerry
recalled the directions given her on her first and only journey down
this valley three years before.

"Why, why, there is no bend any more!" she cried as she halted her car
and gazed in amazement and horror at the river valley where a broad,
full stream poured down a new-cut channel straight to the south.

"Joe's home isn't gone at all! Yonder it stands, safe and high above the
flood-line. Oh, where did the river take Joe?" She twisted her hands in
her old quick, nervous way, and stiffened every muscle as if to keep off
a dead weight that was crushing down upon her.

"He said if I wanted him he would be down beyond the blowout. I'm going
to look for him there. I don't know where else to go, and I want him."

The white, determined face and firm lips bespoke Jim Swaim's own child
now. And if the speed of her car was increased, no one would ever know
that the thought of reaching her goal ahead of any possible Thelma might
be the impetus that gave the increase.

"Yonder are the three cotton woods. From there I can see the oak-grove
and all of my rare old acres of sand. What beautiful wheat everywhere!
The storm seems to have hit the other side of the river as it runs now,
and left all this fine crop to Joe. But what for, if it took him?"

Her quick imagination pictured possibilities too dreadful for words.

<tb>

Down in the oak-grove, Joe Thomson stood leaning against a low bough,
staring out at the river valley, with the shimmering glow of the
twilight sky above it. At the soft whirring sound of an automobile he
turned, to see a gray runabout coasting down the long slope from the
three cottonwoods.

"Jerry!" The glad cry broke from his lips involuntarily.

Jerry did not speak. After the first instant of assurance that Joe was
alive, her eyes were not on the young ranchman, but on the landscape
beyond him. There, billow on billow of waving young wheat breaking
against the oak-wood outpost swept in from far away, where once she had
looked out on nothing but burning, restless sand, spiked here and there
by a struggling green shrub.

"What has done all this?" she cried, at last.

"I'm partly 'what,'" Joe Thomson replied. The shadows were on his face
again, and his loss, after that moment of glad surprise, seemed to be
doubly heavy.

"But how? I don't understand. I'm dreaming. You really are here, and not
dead, are you?"

"No, you are not dreaming. I only wish you were," Joe responded,
gloomily. "But no matter. Yes, I'm here. 'Part of me lived, but most of
me died,'" he muttered Kipling's line half audibly. "I subleased your
land from the Macpherson Mortgage Company three years ago. The lease
expires to-day. You remember what it was worth when you saw it before. I
shall hand it over to you now, worth thirty dollars an acre. Thirty
thousand dollars, at the very least, besides the value of the crop. I
got beyond the blowout and followed it up. I plowed and planted. Lord!
how I plowed and planted! And as with old Paul and Apollos, it was God
who gave the increase."

"Joe! Oh, Joe! You are a miracle-worker!" Jerry cried.

"A worker, all right, maybe. And all life is a miracle," Joe declared,
gravely.

"But your own land, Joe. They told me that your house was gone and that
maybe you had gone with it, and that these roads down here were
impassable and nobody could find you."

Joe came to the side of the little gray car where Jerry sat with her
white hands crossed on the steering-wheel. Her soft white gown, fitted
for a summer afternoon on the Macpherson porch, seemed far more lovely
in the evening light down by the oak-trees. Her golden hair was blown in
little ringlets about her forehead, and her dark-blue eyes--Joe wondered
if Nature ever gave such eyes to another human being!

"No, Jerry, my house isn't gone. My father built it up pretty high above
the river, and I saved almost everything loose before the flood reached
my place. It was the Ekblad house that went down the river. I went over
there to help Thelma get her brother and the baby to safety on the high
ground. She had started out to warn old Fishin' Teddy, thinking her own
family was secure, and afraid he would get caught. She could not get
back to them, nor anywhere else. I saved her, all right, but when I went
back after Paul and the baby, the home and those in it were gone
down-stream. Thelma thought we were all lost. That's how the story got
started. Old Teddy is gone, but I heard later that the others are saved.
Their home wasn't worth so very much. They got most of the real
valuable things--photographs of their dead father and mother, and the
family Bible, and deeds, and a few trinkets. Other things don't count.
Money will replace them. Anyhow, York Macpherson is buying their land at
a good figure. It will give Thelma the chance she's wanted--to go to a
college town and teach botany. She will make her way and carry a name
among educators yet, and support Paul and the baby, all right, too. Did
the folks miss me and say I had gone down the river? Well, I didn't. I'm
here. And as to all this"--he waved his hand toward the wheat--"I can
net a right good bank-account for myself and I can pay off the mortgage
I put on my claim to pay the lease on yours, and for steam-plows and
such things. It has been a bumper year for wheat down here. I have
reclaimed the land from the desert. It will revert to you now--you and
your artist cousin jointly, I suppose. The river helped to finish the
work for me--found its old bed in that low sandy streak where years ago
the blowout began. It has straightened its bend for itself and got away
from that ledge below the deep hole, and left the rest of the ground,
all the upper portion of the blowout, yours and mine, covered with a
fine silt, splendid for cultivation. The blowout is dead. It took hard
work and patience and a big risk, of course, and the Lord Almighty at
last for a partner in the firm to kill it off. Your own comes back to
you now. Can I be of any further service to you?"

As he stood there with folded arms beside the car, tall and rugged, with
the triumph of overcoming deep written on his sad face, the width of the
earth seemed suddenly to yawn between him and the lucky artist who had
inherited a fortune without labor.

"You have done more than to reclaim this ground, Joe," Jerry exclaimed.
"Miraculous as it all is, there is a bigger desert than this, the waste
and useless desert in the human heart. You have helped to reclaim to a
better life a foolish, romancing, daring girl, with no true conception
of what makes life worth while. All the Sage Brush Valley has been good
to me. York and Laura Macpherson in their well-bred, wholesome
friendship; little Mr. Ponk in his deep love for his mother and faith in
God; even old Teddy Bear, poor lost creature, in his sublime devotion to
duty, protecting the woman he had vowed once at the marriage altar that
he would protect; and, most of all"--Jerry's voice was soft and low--"a
sturdy, brave young farmer has helped me by his respect for honest labor
and his willingness to sacrifice for others.

"Joe"--Jerry spoke more softly still--"when you said good-by the other
night in the storm, you told me that if I ever wanted you I'd find you
down beyond the blowout. The word was like a blow in the face then. But
to-night I left Cousin Gene up at New Eden and came here to find you,
because _I want you_."

With all of Jim Swaim's power to estimate values written in her firm
mouth and chin, but with Lesa Swaim's love of romance shining in her
dark eyes, Jerry looked up shyly at Joe. And Joe understood.


THE END





End of Project Gutenberg's The Reclaimers, by Margaret Hill McCarter