The Price of the Prairie: A Story of Kansas

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE CALL TO SERVICE

  We go to rear a wall of men on Freedom's Southern line, And plant beside the cotton-tree the rugged Northern pine!

  --WHITTIER.

  "Phil Baronet, you thon of a horthe-thief, where have you been keepingyourthelf? We've been waiting here thinthe Thummer before latht to meetyou."

  That was Bud Anderson's greeting. Pink-cheeked, sturdy, and stubby as afive-year-old, he was standing in my path as I slipped from my horse infront of old Fort Hays one October day a fortnight after the rescue ofColonel Forsyth's little company.

  "Bud, you tow-headed infant, how the dickens and tomhill did you manageto break into good society out here?" I cried, as we clinched in eachother's arms, for Bud's appearance was food to my homesick hunger.

  "When you git through, I'm nixt into the barber's chair."

  I had not noticed O'mie leaning against a post beside the way, untilthat Irish brogue announced him.

  "Why, boys, what's all this delegation mean?"

  "Aw," O'mie drawled. "You've been elected to Congress and we're theproud committy av citizens in civilians' clothes, come to inform you avyour elevation."

  "You mean you've come to get first promise of an office under me.Sorry, but I know you too well to jeopardize the interest of theRepublican party and the good name of Kansas by any rash promises. It'sdinner time, and I'm hungry. I don't believe I'll ever get enough to eatagain."

  Oh, it was good to see them, albeit our separation had amounted tohardly sixty days. Bud had been waiting for me almost a week; and O'mie,to Bud's surprise, had come upon him unannounced that morning. Thedining-room was crowded; and as soon as dinner was over we went outsideand sat down together where we could visit our fill unmolested. Theywanted to know about my doings, but I was too eager to hear all the homenews to talk of myself.

  "Everybody all right when I left," Bud asserted. "I got off a few daythbefore thith mitherable thon of Erin. Didn't know he'd tag me, or I'dhave gone to Canada." He gave O'mie an affectionate slap on the shoulderas he spoke.

  "Your father and Aunt Candace are well, and glad you came out of thecampaign you've been makin' a record av unfadin' glory in. Judge Baronetwas the last man I saw when I left town," O'mie said.

  "Why, where was Uncle Cam?" I asked.

  "Oh, pretendin' to be busy somewheres. Awful busy man, that Cam Gentry."O'mie smiled at the remembrance. He knew why tender-hearted Cam had fledfrom a good-bye scene. "Dave Mead's goin' to start to California in afew days." He rattled on, "The church supper in October was the biggestthey've had yet. Dever's got a boil on the back of his neck, and JimConlow's drivin' stage for him. Jim had a good job in Topeka, but comeback to Springvale. Can't keep the Conlows corralled anywhere else.Everybody else is doing fine except Grandma Mead. She's failin'. Oldtown looked pretty good to me when I looked back at it from the eastbluff of the Neosho."

  It had looked good to each one of us at the same place when each startedout to try the West alone. Somehow we did not care to talk, for a fewminutes.

  "What brought you out here, Bud?" I asked to break the spell.

  "Oh, three or four thingth. I wanted to thee you," Bud answered. "Younever paid me that fifteen thenth you borrowed before you went tocollege."

  "And then," he continued, "the old town on the Neosho'th too thmall forme. Our family ith related to the Daniel Boone tribe of Indianth, andcan't have too big a crowd around. Three children of the family are athome, and I wanted to come out here anyhow. I'd like to live alwayth onthe Plainth and have a quiet grave at the end of the trail where thewind blowth thteady over me day after day."

  We were lounging against the side of the low building now in the warmafternoon sunshine, and Bud's eyes were gazing absently out across thewide Plains. Although I had been away from home only two months, I felttwenty years older than this fair-haired, chubby boy, sitting there sofull of blooming life and vigor. I shivered at the picture his wordssuggested.

  "Don't joke, Bud. There's a grave at the end of most of the trails outhere. The trails aren't very long, some of 'em. The wind sweeps over 'emlonely and sad day after day. They're quiet enough, Heaven knows. Thewrangle and noise are all on the edge of 'em, just as you're gettingready to get in."

  "I'm not joking, Phil. All my life I have wanted to get out here. It'tha fever in the blood."

  We talked a while of the frontier, of the chances of war, and of theIndian raids with their trail of destruction, death, torture andcaptivity of unspeakable horror.

  The closing years of the decade of the sixties in American history sawthe closing events of the long and bitter, but hopeless struggle of asavage race against a superior civilized force. From the southern boundof British America to the northern bound of old Mexico the Plainswarfare was waged.

  The Western tribes, the Cheyenne and Arapahoe, and Kiowa, and Brule, andSioux and Comanche were forced to quarter themselves on theirreservations again and again with rations and clothing and equipmentsfor all their needs. With fair, soft promises in return from their chiefmen these tribes settled purringly in their allotted places. Througheach fall and winter season they were "good Indians," wards of thenation; their "untutored mind saw God in clouds, or heard him in thewind."

  Eastern churches had an "Indian fund" in their contribution boxes, andvery pathetic and beautifully idyllic was the story the sentimentaliststold, the story of the Indian as he looked in books and spoke on paper.But the Plains had another record, and the light called History ispitiless. When the last true story is written out, it has no favoringshadows for sentimentalists who feel more than they know.

  Each Winter the "good Indians" were mild and gentle. But with the warmthof Spring and the fruitfulness of summer, with the green grasses of thePlains for their ponies, with wild game in the open, and the labor ofthe industrious settler of the unprotected frontier as a stake for theeffort, the "good Indian" came forth from his reservation. Like therattlesnake from its crevice, he uncoiled in the warm sunshine, grewand flourished on what lay in his pathway, and full of deadly venom hemade a trail of terror and death.

  This sort of thing went on year after year until, in the late Summer of1868, the crimes of the savages culminated in those terrible raidsthrough western Kansas, whose full particulars even the official warrecords deem unfit to print.

  Such were the times the three of us from Springvale were discussing onthe south side of the walls of old Fort Hays in the warm sunshine of anOctober afternoon.

  We were new to the Plains and we did not dream of the tragedies thatwere taking place not many miles away from the shadow of the Fort onthat October afternoon, tragedies whose crimes we three would soon becalled forth to help to avenge. For even as we lounged idly there in thesoft sunshine, and looked away through shimmering seas of autumn hazetoward the still land where Bud was to find his quiet grave at the endof the trail--as we talked of the frontier and its needs, up in theSaline Valley, a band of Indians was creeping stealthily upon acornfield where a young man was gathering corn. In his little home justout of sight was a pretty, golden-haired girl, the young settler's brideof a few months. Through the window she caught sight of her husband'shorse racing wildly toward the house. She did not know that her husband,wounded and helpless, lay by the river bank, pierced by Indian arrows.Only one thought was hers, the thought that her husband had beenhurt--maybe killed--in a runaway. What else could this terrified horsewith its flying harness ends mean? She rushed from the house and startedtoward the field.

  A shout of fiendish glee fell on her ears. She was surrounded by paintedsavage men, human devils, who caught her by the arms, dragged her aboutby her long silky, golden hair, beat her brutally in her struggles tofree herself, bound her at last, and thrusting her on a pony, rode asonly Indians ride, away toward the sunset. And their captive, the sweetgirl-wife of gentle birth and gentle rearing, the happy-hearted younghome-maker on the prairie frontier, singing about her work an hourbefore, dreaming of the long, bright years with her lo
ved one--God pityher! For her the gates of a living Hell had swung wide open, and she,helpless and horror-stricken, was being dragged through them into aperdition no pen can picture. And so they rode away toward the sunset.

  On and on they went through days and days of unutterable blackness, ofsuffering and despair. On, until direction and space were lost tomeasure. For her a new, pitiless, far-off heaven looked down on a newagonized earth. The days ran into months, and no day had in it a ray ofhope, a line of anything but misery.

  And again beyond the Saline, where the little streams turn toward theRepublican River, in another household the same tragedy of the times wasbeing played, with all its settings of terror and suffering. Here thegrown-up daughter of the home, a girl of eighteen years, was wrenchedfrom arms that clung to her, and, bound on a pony's back, was hurriedthree hundred miles away into an unknown land. For her began the life ofa slave. She was the victim of brute lust, the object of the vengefuljealousy of the squaws. The starved, half-naked, wretched girl, whoseeighteen years had been protected in the shelter of a happy Christianhome, was now the captive laborer whose tasks strong men would staggerunder. God's providence seemed far away in those days of the winning ofthe prairie.

  Fate, by and by, threw these two women together. Their one ray ofcomfort was the sight of one another. And for both the days draggedheavily by, the two women of my boyhood's dreams. Women of whose fate Iknew nothing as we sat by the south side of old Fort Hays that afternoonforty years ago.

  "Did you know, boys, that General Sheridan is not going to let thosetribes settle down to a quiet winter as they've been allowed to do everyyear since they were put on their reservations?" I asked O'mie and Bud."I've been here long enough to find out that these men out here won'tstand for it any longer," I went on. "They're MEN on these Plains, whoare doing this homesteading up and down these river valleys, and youwrite every letter of the word with a capital."

  "What'th going to be done?" Bud queried.

  "Sheridan's going to carry a campaign down into their own country andlick these tribes into behaving themselves right now, before anotherSummer and another outbreak like that one two months ago."

  "What's these Kansas men with their capital letters got to do with it?"put in O'mie.

  "Governor Crawford has issued a call at Sheridan's command, for a Kansasregiment to go into service for six months, and help to do this thing upright. It means more to these settlers on the boundary out here than toanybody else. And you just see if that regiment isn't made up in ahurry."

  I was full of my theme. My two months beyond the soft, sheltered life ofhome had taught me much; and then I was young and thought I knew much,anyhow.

  "What are you going to do, Phil?" O'mie asked.

  "I? I'm going to stay by this thing for a while. The Baronets werealways military folks. I'm the last of the line, and I'm going to givemy fighting strength, what little I have, to buy these prairies forhomes and civilization. I'm going to see the Indian rule broken here, orcrawl into the lonely grave Bud talks about and pull the curly mesquiteover me for a coverlet. I go to Topeka to-morrow to answer GovernorCrawford's call for volunteers for a cavalry company to go out on awinter campaign against the rascally redskins. They're going to get whatthey need. If you mix up with Custer, you'll see."

  "And when the campaign's over," queried O'mie, "will you stay in thearmy?"

  "No, O'mie, I'll find a place. The world is wide. But look here, boy.You haven't told me how you got pried loose and kicked out yet. Bud's anexception. The rest of us boys had a reason for leaving the best town onearth."

  "You're just right, begorra!" O'mie replied with warmth. "I was kickedout av town by His Majesty, the prophet Amos, only you've got to spellit with an 'f' instead av a 'ph.'"

  "Now, O'mie, confess the whole sin at once, please."

  O'mie looked up with that sunshiny face that never stayed clouded long,and chuckled softly. "Judson's on the crest right now. Oh, let him ride.He's doomed, so let him have his little strut. He comes to me a few daysbackward into the gone on, and says, says he, important and commerciallike, 'O'mie, I shall not need you any more. I've got a person to takeyour place.' 'All right,' I responds, respectful, 'just as you please.When shall I lave off?' 'To-morrow mornin',' he answers, an' looks atme as if to say, 'Nothin' left for you but the poor-house.' And indade,a clerk under Judson don't make no such bank account as he made underIrving Whately. I ain't ready to retire yet."

  "And do you mean to say that because Amos Judson turned you off and cutyou out of his will, you had to come out to this forsaken land? Ithought better of the town," I declared.

  "Oh, don't you mind! Cris Mead offered me a place in the bank. Dr.Hemingway was fur havin' me fill his pulpit off an' on. He's gettin'old. An' Judge Baronet was all but ready to adopt me in the place av ason he'd lost. But I knowed the boy'd soon be back."

  O'mie gave me a sidelong glance, but I gave no hint of any feeling.

  "No, I was like Bud, ready to try the frontier," he added moreseriously. "I'm goin' down with you to join this Kansas regiment."

  "Now what the deuce can you do in the army, O'mie?" I could not think ofhim anywhere but in Springvale.

  "I want to live out av doors till I get rid av this cough," he answered."And ye know I can do a stunt in the band. Don't take giants to fiddleand fife. Little runts can do that. Who do you reckon come to Springvalelast month?"

  "Give it up," I answered.

  "Father Le Claire."

  "Oh, the good man!" Bud exclaimed.

  "Where has he been? and where was he going?" I asked coldly.

  O'mie looked at me curiously. He was shrewder than Bud, and he caughtthe tone I had meant to conceal.

  "Where? Just now he's gone to St. Louis. He's in a hospital there. He'sbeen sick. I never saw him so white and thin as whin he left. He toldme he expected to be with the Osages this Winter."

  "I'm glad of that," I remarked.

  "Why?" O'mie spoke quickly.

  "Oh, I was afraid he might go out West. It's hard on priests in theWest."

  O'mie looked steadily at me, but said nothing.

  "Who taketh your plathe, O'mie?" Bud asked.

  "That's the beauty av it. It's a lady," O'mie answered.

  Somehow my heart grew sick. Could it be Marjie, I wondered. I knew moneymatters were a problem with the Whatelys, but I had hoped for betterfortune through my father's help. Maybe, though, they would have none ofhim now any more than of myself. When Marjie and I were engaged I didnot care for her future, for it was to be with me, and my burden was myjoy then. Not that earning a living meant any disgrace to the girl. Weall learned better than that early in the West.

  "Well, who be thaid lady?" Bud questioned.

  "Miss Letitia Conlow," O'mie answered with a grave face.

  "Oh, well, don't grieve, O'mie; it might be worse. Cheer up!" I saidgayly.

  "It couldn't be, by George! It just couldn't be no worse." O'mie wasmore than grave, he was sad now. "Not for me, bedad! I'm glad." Hebreathed deeply of the sweet, pure air of the Plains. "I can live outhere foine, but there's goin' to be the divil to pay in the town avSpringvale in the nixt six months. I'm glad to be away."

  The next day I left the fort for Topeka. My determination to stay in thestruggle was not merely a young man's love of adventure, nor was mydeclaration of what would be done to the Indian tribes an idle boast.The tragic days of Kansas were not all in its time of territorial strifeand border ruffianism. The story of the Western Plains--the short grasscountry we call it now--in the decade following the Civil War is atragedy of unparalleled suffering and danger and heroism. In the coldcalculation of the official reports the half-year I had entered on hasits tabulated record of one hundred and fifty-eight men murdered,sixteen wounded, forty-one scalped, fourteen women tortured, four womenand twenty-four children carried into captivity. And nearly all thisrecord was made in the Saline and Solomon and Republican River valleysin Kansas.

  The Summer of the preceding year a batta
lion of soldiers called theEighteenth Kansas Cavalry spent four months on the Plains. Here they metand fought two deadly foes, the Indians and the Asiatic cholera. Theirswas a record of bravery and endurance; and their commander, Major HoraceL. Moore, keeps always a place in my own private hall of fame.

  Winter had made good Indians out of the savage wretches, as usual; butthe Summer of 1868 brought that official count of tragedy with all theunwritten horror that history cannot burden itself to carry. Only onething seemed feasible now, to bear the war straight into the heart ofthe Indian country in a winter campaign, to deal an effectual blow tothe scourge of the Plains, this awful menace to the frontier homes.General Sheridan had asked Kansas to furnish a cavalry regiment forUnited States military service for six months.

  The capital city was a wide-awake place that October. The call fortwelve hundred men was being answered by the veterans of the Plains andby the young men of Kansas. The latter took up the work as many avolunteer in the Civil War began it--in a sort of heyday of excitementand achievement. They gave little serious thought to the cost, or thehistory their record was to make. But in the test that followed theystood, as the soldiers of the nation had stood before them, courageous,unflinching to the last. Little notion had those rollicking youngfellows of what lay before them--a winter campaign in a strange countryinfested by a fierce and cunning foe who observed no etiquette ofcivilized warfare.

  At the Teft House, where Bud and O'mie and I stopped, I met RichardTillhurst. We greeted each other cordially enough.

  "So you're here to enlist, too," he said. "I thought maybe you were onyour way home. I am going to enlist myself and give up teachingaltogether if I can pass muster." He was hardly of the physical buildfor a soldier. "Have you heard the news?" he went on. "Judson andMarjory are engaged. Marjie doesn't speak of it, of course, but Judsontold Dr. Hemingway and asked him to officiate when the time comes. Mrs.Whately says it's between the young people, and that means she has givenher consent. Judson spends half his time at Whately's, whether Marjie'sthere or not. There's something in the air down there this Fall that'sgot everybody keyed up one way or another. Tell Mapleson's been like aboy at a circus, he's so pleased over something; and Conlow has a grinon his face all the time. Everybody seems just unsettled and anxious,except Judge Baronet. Honestly, I don't see how that town could keepbalanced without him. He sails along serene and self-possessed. Alwaysknows more than he tells."

  "I guess Springvale is safe with him, and we can go out and save thefrontier," I said carelessly.

  "For goodness' sake, who goes there?" Tillhurst pushed me aside and madea rush out of doors, as a lady passed before the windows. I followed andcaught a glimpse of the black hair and handsome form of Rachel Melrose.At the same moment she saw me. Her greeting lacked a little of itsformer warmth, but her utter disregard of anything unpleasant havingbeen between us was positively admirable. Her most coquettish smiles,however, were for Tillhurst, but that didn't trouble me. Our interviewwas cut short by the arrival of the stage from the south just then, andI turned from Tillhurst to find myself in my father's embrace. Whatfollowed makes one of the sacred memories a man does not often put intoprint.

  We wanted to be alone, so we left the noisy hotel and strolled outtoward the higher level beyond the town. There was only brown prairiethen stretching to the westward and dipping down with curve and ravineto the Kaw River on the one side and the crooked little ShunganungaCreek on the other. Away in the southwest the graceful curve ofBurnett's Mound, a low height like a tiny mountain-peak, stood outpurple and hazy in the October sunlight. A handful of sturdy youngpeople were taking their way to Lincoln College, the little stonestructure that was to be dignified a month later by a new title,Washburn College, in honor of its great benefactor, Ichabod Washburn.

  "Why did the powers put the State Capitol and the College so far fromtown, I wonder," I said as we loitered about the walls of the former.

  "For the same reason that the shortsighted colonists of the Revolutionput Washington away off up the Potomac, west of the thirteen States,"my father answered. "We can't picture a city here now, but it will bebuilt in your day if not in mine."

  And then we walked on until before us stood that graceful little locusttree, the landmark of the prairie. Its leaves were falling in goldenshowers now, save as here and there a more protected branch still heldits summer green foliage.

  "What a beautiful, sturdy little pioneer!" my father exclaimed. "It hasearned a first settler's right to the soil. I hope it will be given thechance to live, the chance most of the settlers have had to fight for,as it has had to stand up against the winds and hold its own against thedrouth. Any enterprising city official who would some day cut it downshould be dealt with by the State."

  We sat down by the tree and talked of many things, but my fathercarefully avoided the mention of Marjie's name. When he gave the littlegirl the letter that had fallen from her cloak pocket he read her storyin her face, but he had no right or inclination to read it aloud to me.I tried by all adroit means to lead him to tell me of the Whatelys. Itwas all to no purpose. On any other topic I would have quitted the game,but--oh, well, I was just the same foolish-hearted boy that put the pinkblossoms on a little girl's brown curls and kissed her out in the purpleshadows of the West Draw one April evening long ago. And now I was aboutto begin a dangerous campaign where the hazard of war meant a namelessgrave for a hundred, where it brought after years of peace and honor toone. I must hear something of Marjie. The love-light in her brown eyesas she gave me one affectionate glance when I presented her to RachelMelrose in my father's office--that pledge of her heart, I pictured overand over in my memory.

  "Father, Tillhurst says he has heard that Amos Judson and Marjie areengaged. Are they?" I put the question squarely. My father was strippingthe gold leaves one by one off a locust spray.

  "Yes, I have heard it, too," he replied, and to save my life I could nothave judged by word or manner whether he cared one whit or not. He wasstudying me, if toying with a locust branch and whistling softly andgazing off at Burnett's Mound are marks of study. He had nothing ofhimself to reveal. "I have heard it several times," he went on. "Judsonhas made the announcement quietly, but generally."

  He threw away the locust branch, shook down his cuff and settled it inhis sleeve, lifted his hat from his forehead and reset it on his head,and then added as a final conclusion, "I don't believe it."

  He had always managed me most skilfully when he wanted to find outanything; and when the time came that I began in turn to manage him,being of his own blood, the game was interesting. But before I knew it,we had drifted far away from the subject, and I had no opportunity tocome back to it. My father had found out all he wanted to know.

  "Phil, I must leave on the train for Kansas City this evening," he saidas we rose to go back to town. "I'm to meet Morton there, and we may goon East together. He will have the best surgeons look after that woundof his, Governor Crawford tells me."

  Then laying his hand affectionately on my shoulder he said, "Icongratulate you on the result of your first campaign. I had hoped itwould be your last; but you are a man, and must choose for yourself.Yet, if you mean to give yourself to your State now, if you choose aman's work, do it like a man, not like a schoolboy on a picnicexcursion. The history of Kansas is made as much by the privates down inthe ranks as by the men whose names and faces adorn its record. You aremaking that record now. Make it strong and clean. Let the glory side go,only do your part well. When you have finished this six months and aremustered out, I want you to come home at once. There are some businessmatters and family matters demanding it. But I must go to Kansas City,and from there to New York on important business. And since nobody has alease on life, I may as well say now that if you get back and I'm notthere, O'mie left his will with me before he went away."

  "His will? Now what had he to leave? And who is his beneficiary?"

  "That's all in the will," my father said, smiling, "but it is a matterthat must not be overlooked.
In the nature of things the boy will gobefore I do. He's marked, I take it; never has gotten over the hardshipsof his earliest years and that fever in '63. Le Claire came back to seehim and me in September."

  "He did? Where did he come from?"

  My father looked at me quickly. "Why do you ask?" he queried.

  "I'll tell you when we have more time. Just now I'm engaged to fight theCheyennes, the Arapahoes, the Comanches, and the Kiowas, in which lasttribe my friend Jean Pahusca has pack right. He was in that gang ofdevils that fought us out on the Arickaree."

  For once I thought I knew more than my father, but he replied quietly,"Yes, I knew he was there. His tether may be long, but its limit will bereached some day."

  "Who told you he was there, father?" I asked.

  "Le Claire said so," he answered.

  "Where was he at that time?" I was getting excited now.

  "He spent the week in the little stone cabin out by the big cottonwood.Took cold and had to go to St. Louis to a hospital for a week or two."

  "He was in the haunted cabin the third week in September," I repeatedslowly; "then I don't know black from white any more."

  My father smiled at me. "They call that being 'locoed' out on thePlains, don't they?" he said with a twinkle in his eye. "You have adelusion mixed up in your gray matter somewhere. One thing more," headded as an unimportant afterthought, "I see Miss Melrose is still inTopeka."

  "Yes," I answered.

  "And Tillhurst, too," he went on. "Well, there has been quite a littlestory going around Conlow's shop and the post-office and Fingal's Creekand other social centres about you two; and now when Tillhurst gets back(he'll never make the cavalry), he's square, but a little vain andthin-skinned, and he may add something of color and interest to thestory. Let it go. Just now it may be better so."

  I thought his words were indefinite, for one whose purposes were alwaysdefinite, and in the wisdom of my youth I wondered whether he reallywanted me to follow Rachel's leading, or whether he was, after all,inclined to believe Judson's assertion about his engagement, and familypride had a little part to play with him. It was unlike John Baronet tostoop to a thing like that.

  "Father," I said, "I'm going away, too. I may never come back, and formy own sake I want to assure you of one thing: no matter what Tillhurstmay say, if Rachel Melrose were ten times more handsome, if she had inher own name a fortune such as I can never hope to acquire myself, shewould mean nothing to me. I care nothing for the stories now"--ahopelessness would come into my voice--"but I do not care for hereither. I never did, and I never could."

  My eyes were away on Burnett's Mound, and the sweet remembrance ofMarjie's last affectionate look made a blur before them. We stood insilence for some time.

  "Phil," said John Baronet in a deep, fervent tone, "I have a matter Imeant to take up later, but this is a good time. Let the young folks gonow. This is a family matter. Years ago a friend of the older Baronetsdied in the East leaving some property that should sooner or later cometo me to keep in trust for you. This time was to be at the death of theman and his wife who had the property for their lifetime. Philip, youhave been accused by the Conlow-Judson crowd of wanting a rich wife. Ialso am called grasping by Tell Mapleson's class. And," he smiled alittle, "indeed, Iago's advice to Roderigo, 'Put money in thy purse,'was sound philosophy if the putting be honestly done. But this littleproperty in the East that should come to you is in the hands of a manwho is now ill, probably in his last sickness. He has one child thatwill have nothing else left to her. Shall we take this money at herfather's death?"

  "Why, father, no. I don't want it. Do you want it?"

  I knew him too well to ask the question. Had I not seen the unselfish,kindly, generous spirit that had marked all his business career?Springvale never called him grasping, save as his prosperity grated onmen of Mapleson's type.

  "Will you sign a relinquishment to your claim, and trust to me that itis the best for us to do?" he asked.

  "Just as soon as we get to an inkstand," I answered. Nor did I ever holdthat such a relinquishment is anything but Christian opportunity.

  That evening I said good-bye to my father, and when I saw him again itwas after I had gone through the greatest crisis of these sixty years.On the same train that bore my father to the East were his friend Mortonand his political and professional antagonist, Tell Mapleson. The nextday I enlisted in Troop A of the Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry, and wasquartered temporarily in the State House, north of Fifth Street, onKansas Avenue. Tillhurst was not admitted to the regiment, as my fatherhad predicted. Neither was Jim Conlow, who had come up to Topeka forthat purpose. Good-natured, shallow-pated "Possum," no matter where hefound work to do, he sooner or later drifted back to Springvale to hisfather's forge. He did not realize that no Conlow of the Missouri breedought ever to try anything above a horse's hoofs, in cavalry matters.The Lord made some men to shoe horses, and some to ride them. TheConlows weren't riders, and Jim's line was turned again to his father'ssmithy.

  Tillhurst took his failure the more grievously that Rachel, who had beenmost gracious to him at first, transferred her attentions to me. And I,being only a man and built of common clay, with my lifetime hopedestroyed, gave him good reason to believe in my superior influence withthe beautiful Massachusetts girl. I had a game to play with Rachel, forTopeka was full of pretty girls, and I made the most of my time. I knewsomewhat of the gayety the Winter on the Plains was about to offer. Aslong as I could I held to the pleasures of the civilized homes andsheltered lives. And with all and all, one sweet girl-face, enshrined inmy heart's holy of holies, held me back from idle deception and turnedme from temptation.