Winning the Wilderness. Margaret Hill McCarter

it, and the table against the chair, and the bed against the table, and the cookstove to back up the bed. I see. Shortage of furniture.”

      “No, the effect on this cabin if the wind had a sweep through two weak places in the wall. I built this thing to stay till I get ready to go away from it, not for it to go off and leave me sitting here under the sky some stormy day. Of course, the real home, the old Colonial style of house, will stand higher up after awhile, embowered in 33 trees, and the wind may play about its vine-covered verandas, and its stately front columns, but that comes later.”

      “All right, but what was the second reason for the one doorway? You said you had two?” Virginia broke in.

      “Oh, did I? Well, the other reason is insignificant, but effective in its way. I had only one door and no lumber within three hundred miles to make another, and no money to buy lumber, anyhow.”

      “You should have married a fortune,” his wife said demurely.

      “I did.” The smile on the lips did not match the look in the gray eyes. “My anxiety is that I shall not squander my possession, now I have it.”

      “You are squandering your dooryard by plowing out there in front of the house. Isn’t there ground enough if the wind will be merciful, not to use up our lawn?” Virginia would not be serious.

      “I have plowed a double fireguard, and I’ve burned off the grass between the two to put a wide band of protection about us. I take no chances. Everything is master in the wilderness except man. When he has tamed all these things—prairie fire, storm and drouth, winds and lonely distances, why, there isn’t any more wilderness. But it’s tough work getting acclimated to these September breezes, I know.”

      Virginia did not reply at once. All day the scream of the wind had whipped upon her nerves until she wanted to scream herself. But it was not in the blood of the breed to give up easily. Something of the stubborn determination that had made the oldtime Thaines drive the Quakers 34 from Virginia shone now in the dark eyes of this daughter of a well-bred house.

      “It’s all a matter of getting one’s system and this September wind system to play the same tune,” she said.

      “Virginia, you look just as you did that day when you said you were going through the Rebel ranks in a man’s dress to take a message for me to the Union officer of my command, although you ran the risk of being shot for a spy on either side of the lines. When I begged you not to do it, you only laughed at me. I thought then you were the bravest girl I ever saw. Now I know it.”

      “Well, I’ll try not to get hysterical over the wind out here. It is a matter of time and adjustment. Let’s adjust ourselves to dinner now.”

      Beyond her lightly spoken words Asher caught the undertone of courage, and he knew that a battle for supremacy was on, a struggle between physical outcry and mental poise.

      After the meal, he said, “I must take my plow down to Shirley’s this afternoon. His is broken and I can mend it while he puts in his fireguard with mine. I don’t mind the wind, but I won’t ask you to face it clear down to Shirley’s claim. I don’t like to leave you here, either.”

      “I think I would rather stay indoors. What is there to be afraid of, anyhow?” Virginia asked.

      “Nothing in the world but loneliness,” her husband replied.

      “Well, I must get used to that, you know. I can begin now,” Virginia said lightly.

      But for all her courage, she watched him drive away with a sob in her throat. In all the universe there was nothing 35 save a glaring sunlight and an endless cringing of yellow, wind-threshed grass.

      Asher Aydelot had come here with half a dozen other young fellows, all of whom took up claims along Grass River. Six months later Jim Shirley had come to the settlement with a like company who extended the free-holdings until it was seven miles by the winding of the river from Aydelot’s claim on the northwest down the river to Shirley’s claim on the southeast.

      Eighteen months later only two men were left in the Grass River valley, Aydelot and Shirley. The shorter trail as the crow flies between their claims was marked by a golden thread of sunflowers. At the third bend of the winding stream a gentle ripple of ground rose high enough to hide the cabin lights from each other that otherwise might have given a neighborly comfort to the two lone settlers.

      Shirley’s cabin stood on a tiny swell of ground, mark of a one-time island, set in a wide bend in the river that was itself a natural fireguard for most of the circle of the premises.

      The house was snug as a squirrel’s nest. Before it was a strip of white clover, as green and fresh looking as if it were on the banks of Clover Creek in Ohio. Above the door a plain board bore the one word, “Cloverdale.”

      Jim Shirley stood watching Asher coming down the trail against the wind, followed by the big shepherd dog, Pilot, who had bounded off to meet him.

      “Hello! How did you get away on a day like this?” he called, as the team drew near.

      “Why, you old granny!” Asher stopped here.

      Both men had been on the Kansas plains long enough 36 not to mind the wind. It flashed into Asher’s mind that Jim was hoping to see his wife with him, and he measured anew the loneliness of the man’s life.

      “Most too rude for ladies just yet, although I didn’t like to leave Virginia alone.”

      “What could possibly harm her? Your fireguard’s done, double done; there’s no water to drown in, no Indian to frighten, no wild beast to enter, no white man, in God knows how many hundred miles. Just nothing to be afraid of.”

      “Yes, that’s it—just nothing. And it’s enough to make even a braver woman afraid. It’s the eternal vast nothingness, when the very silence cries out at you. It’s the awful loneliness of the plains that makes the advance attack in this fight with the wilderness. Don’t we both know that?”

      “I reckon we do, but we got over it, and so will Mrs. Aydelot.”

      “How do you know that?” Asher inquired eagerly. “I believe she could hardly keep back the tears till I got away.”

      “Then why didn’t you get away sooner? I know she will get over it, because she’s as good a woman as we are men, and we stood for it.”

      “Well, here’s your plow. Better get your guard thrown up. I can smell smoke now. There’s a prairie fire sweeping in on this wind somewhere. There’s a storm brewing, too. Remember what a fight we had with fire a year ago?”

      Asher was helping to put Jim’s team in the harness.

      “Yes, you saved your well and a few other little things. But you’ve got your grit, you darned Buckeye, to hold on 37 and start again from the ashes. And now you have your wife here. You are lucky,” Jim declared.

      “Where’s that broken plow of yours? Is it bolt or weld? Maybe I can mend it.” Asher was casting about for tools.

      “It’s bolt. Everything is on the stable shelves,” Jim called back against the wind, as he drove the plow deep in the black soil. “Be sure you put ’em back when you are through with ’em, too.”

      “Poor Jim!” Asher said to himself with a smile. “The artist in him makes him keep the place in order. He’d stop to hang up his coat and vest if he had to fight a mad bull. Poor judgment puts a good many tragedies into lives as well as stage villain types of crime.”

      And then Asher thought of Virginia, and wondered what she was doing through the long afternoon. He was whistling softly with a smile in his eyes as Jim Shirley made the tenth round of the premises and stopped opposite the stable door.

      “Hey, Asher, come out and see the sky now,” he called. “It’s prairie fire and equinoctial storm combined.”

      Asher hurried out to see the dull southwest heavens