Margaret Hill McCarter

“ No other light is ever so regal as the full moon above the prairie, where no black shadows can checker and blot out and hem in its limitless glory. Marjie and I were young and full of vigor, but the steady drain on mind and heart, and the days and nights of broken rest, were not without effect. And yet to-night, with hope once more for O'mie's life, with a sense of lifted care, and with the high tide of the year pouring out its riches round about us, the peace of the prairies fell like a benediction on us, as we loitered about the grassy spaces, quiet and very happy. ”

“ When the prairies blossomed again, and the Kansas springtime was in its daintiest green, when a blur of pink was on the few young orchards in the Neosho Valley, and the cottonwoods in the draws were putting forth their glittering tender leaves—in that sweetest time of all the year, a new joy came to me. Most girls married at sixteen in those days, and were grandmothers at thirty-five. Marjie was no longer a child. No sweeter blossom of young womanhood ever graced the West. All Springvale loved her, except Lettie Conlow. ”

“ Not a soul of us in those sand-pits had any thought that we should ever see another sunset. All we could do was to put the highest price upon our lives. It was ten o'clock in the forenoon. The firing about the island had almost ceased, and the silence was more ominous than the noise of bullets. Over on the bluff the powers were gathering. The sunlight glinted on their arms and lighted up their fantastic equipments of war. They formed in battle array. And then there came a sight the Plains will never see again, a sight that history records not once in a century. ”

“ No child ever yearned for home and mother as I longed for Springvale. And most of all came an overwhelming eagerness to see Marjie once more. She was probably Mrs. Judson now, unless Jean—but Hard Rope had eased my mind a little there—and I had no right even to think of her. Only I was young, and I had loved her so long. All that fierce battle with myself which I fought out on the West Prairie on the night she refused to let me speak to her had to be fought over again. And this time, marching northward over the April Plains toward Fort Hays, this time, I was hopelessly vanquished. ”

“ My first lesson in this campaign was the lesson of comradeship. My father had put me on a horse and I had felt at home when I was so short and fat my legs spread out on its back as if I were sitting on a floor. I was accounted a fair rider in Springvale. I had loved at first sight that beautiful sorrel creature whose bones were bleaching on the little island in Colorado, whose flesh a gnawing hunger had forced me to eat. But my real lessons in horsemanship began in Camp Crawford, with four jolly fellows whom I came to know and love in a way I shall never know or love other men—my comrades. ”

“ Life for one of us meant death for the other, and I lost every humane instinct in that terrible struggle except the instinct to save Marjie first, and my own life after hers. Civilization slips away in such a battle, and the fighter is only a jungle beast, knowing no law but the unquenchable thirst for blood. The hand that holds this pen is clean to-day, clean and strong and gentle. It was a tiger's claw that night, and Jean's hot blood following my terrific blow full in his face only thrilled me with savage courage. ”

“ Aye, and through it all, beside me, cheering each step, holding fast my hand, making life always fine and beautiful and gracious for me, has been my loved one, Marjie, the bride of my young manhood, the mother of my sons and daughters, the light of my life.
It is for such as she, for homes her kind have made, that men have fought and dared and died, fulfilling the high privilege of the American citizen, the privilege to safeguard the hearthstones of the land above which the flag floats a symbol of light and law and love. ”

“ I have never seen him since we parted on the prairie that August evening. The next day he went to Red Range to stay for a short time. By the end of a week I had left Springvale, and we are to each other only boyhood memories now.
Out on the open prairie, where there was room to think and be alone, I went to fight my battle. There was only a sweep of silver sky above me and a sweep of moonlit plain about me. Dim to the southwest crept the dark shadow of the wooded Fingal's Creek Valley, while against the horizon the big cottonwood tree was only a gray blur. The mind can act swiftly. ”

“ I was longing for the Plains again, for one more ride, reckless and free, across their broad stretches, for one more gorgeous sunset out on Red Range, one more soft, iridescent twilight purpling down to the evening darkness as I had seen it on "Rockport" all those years. How the real Rockport, the Massachusetts town, faded from me, and the sea, and the college halls, and city buildings. The steam and steel and brick and marble of an older civilization, all gave place to Nature's broad handiwork and the generous-hearted, capable, unprejudiced people of this new West. ”

“ I had told Marjie she was the light of my life: I did not understand the truth of the words until the light went out. Heavily, as I had staggered toward her mother's house on the night when I was sure Jean Pahusca had stolen her, I took my way now into the gathering shadows, slowly, to where I could hear the Neosho whispering and muttering in the deep gloom.
It comes sometimes to most of us, the wild notion that life, the gift of God alone, is a cheap thing not worth the keeping, and the impulse to fling it away uprears its ugly suggestion. ”

“ The man of sixty years may smile at the intensity of feeling in the boy of twenty-one, but that makes it no easier for the boy. I watched the sun go down that night, and then I waited through the dark hour till the moon, now past the full, should once more illumine the Neosho Valley. Although I have always been a lover of nature, that sunset and the purple twilight following, the darkness of the early evening hour and the glorious moonrise are tinged with a sorrow I have never quite lost even in the happier years since then. ”

“ I can hear it always—the Call of the Prairie. The passing of sixty Winters has left me a vigorous man, although my hair is as white as the January snowdrift in the draws, and the strenuous events of some of the years have put a tax on my strength. I shall always limp a little in my right foot—that was left out on the plains one freezing night with nothing under it but the earth, and nothing over it but the sky. Still, considering that although the sixty years were spent mainly in that pioneer time when every day in Kansas was its busy day, I am not even beginning to feel old. ”

“ Most of all we forgot about an alien down in the Hermit's Cave, "a good Indian" turned bad in one brief hour. Dear are the memories of that springtide. Many a glorious April have I seen in this land of sunshine, but none has ever seemed quite like that one to me. Nor waving yellow wheat, nor purple alfalfa bloom, nor ramparts of dark green corn on well-tilled land can hold for me one-half the beauty of the windswept springtime prairie. No sweet odor of new-ploughed ground can rival the fragrance of the wild grasses in their waving seas of verdure. ”

“ How little the Kansas boys and girls to-day can understand what that morning meant to us, when we saw our fathers riding down the Santa Fé Trail to the east, and waving good-bye to us at the far side of the ford! How the fire of patriotism burned in our hearts, and how the sudden loss of all our strongest and best men left us helpless among secret cruel enemies! And then that spirit of manhood leaped up within us, the sudden sense of responsibility come to "all the able-bodied boys" to stand up as a wall of defence about the homes of Springvale. ”

“ The blizzard that had swept across the land had caught the Indian tribes on their way to the coverts of the Wichita Mountains, and forced them into winter quarters. The villages of the Cheyenne, the Kiowa, and the Arapahoe extended up and down the sheltering valley of the Washita for many miles. Here were Black Kettle and his band of Cheyenne braves—they of the loving heart at Fort Hays, they who had filled all the fair northern prairie lands with terror, whose hands reeked with the hot blood of the white brothers they professed to love. ”

“ And then out of the fulness of a heart that had suffered, I pled for the lives and homes of the settlers on our Plains frontier. I pictured, for I knew how to picture, the anguish of soul an Indian raid can leave in its wake, and the duty we owe to the homes, our high privilege as strong men and guardians to care for the defenceless, and our opportunity to repay a part at least of the debt we owe to the Union soldier by giving a State's defence to these men, who were homesteading our hitherto unbroken, trackless plains, and building empire westward toward the baths of sunset. ”

“ We were new to the Plains and we did not dream of the tragedies that were taking place not many miles away from the shadow of the Fort on that October afternoon, tragedies whose crimes we three would soon be called forth to help to avenge. For even as we lounged idly there in the soft sunshine, and looked away through shimmering seas of autumn haze toward the still land where Bud was to find his quiet grave at the end of the trail—as we talked of the frontier and its needs, up in the Saline Valley, a band of Indians was creeping stealthily upon a cornfield where a young man was gathering corn. ”

“ How easily forgotten things come back when we least expect them. There came to me, as O'mie spoke, the memory of my dream the night after Jean had sought Marjie's life out on the Red Range prairie. The night after I talked with my father of love and of my mother. That night two women whom I had never seen before were in my dreams, and I had struggled to save them from peril as though they were of my own flesh and blood. ”

“ Hidden inside of my belt as a last defence was the short, sharp knife bearing Jean Le Claire's name in script lettering.
I shall never forget the moment when a low bluff beyond a bend in the Saline River shut off the distant town from my view and I stood utterly alone in a wide, silent world, left just as God had made it. Humility and uplift mingle in the soul in such a time and place. One question ran back and forth across my mind: What conquering power can ever bring the warmth of glad welcome to the still, hostile, impenetrable beauty of these boundless plains? ”

“ For once the ponies seemed willing to stand quiet, and Marjie and I looked long at the magnificent stretch of sky and earth. There were a few white clouds overhead, deepening to a dull gray in the southwest. All the sunny land was swathed in the midsummer yellow green, darkening in verdure along the river and creeks, and in the deepest draws. Even as we rested there the clouds rolled over the horizon's edge, piling higher and higher, till they hid the afternoon sun, and the world was cool and gray. ”

“ Now that I was face to face with the real issue, life became very sweet to me. How grand over war and hate were the thoughts of peace and love! And yet every foot of this beautiful land must be bought with a price. No matter where the great blame lies, nor who sinned first in getting formal possession, the real occupation is won only by sacrifice. And I was confronted with my part of the offering. Strange thoughts come in such an hour. Sitting there in the twilight, I asked myself why I should want to live; and I realized how strong, after all, was the tie that bound me to Springvale ”

“ And as to protecting my father's name, Judge Baronet, it needs no protection. Before Heaven, he never did a dishonest thing in all his life. There has been a tangling of his affairs by somebody, but that does not change the truth. The surest way to bring dishonor to his name is for me to marry a man I do not and could not love; a man I believe to be dishonest in money matters, and false to everybody. It is no disgrace to work for a living here in Kansas. ”

“ Of the three boys who had gone out from Springvale and joined in the sacrifice for the frontier, Bud sleeps in that pleasant country at Fort Sill. The summer breezes ripple the grasses on his grave, the sunbeams caress it lovingly and the winter snows cover it softly over—the quiet grave he had wished for and found all too soon. Dear Bud, "not changed, but glorified," he holds his place in all our hearts. For O'mie, the winter campaign was the closing act of a comic tragedy, and I can never think sadly of the brave-hearted happy Irishman. ”

“ We had left Fort Beecher with five days' rations and three days' forage. Seven days later we went into bivouac on a crooked little stream that empties its salty waters into the Cimarron. It was a moonless, freezing night. Fires were impossible, for there was no wood, and the buffalo chips soaked with rain were frozen now and buried under the snow. A furious wind threshed the earth; the mercury hovered about the zero mark. Alkali and salt waters fill the streams of that land, and our food supply was a memory two days old.
How precious a horse can become, the Plains have taught us. ”

“ He had resigned the office of Chief Executive of Kansas to take command of our regiment. The lustre of the military pageantry began to fade by the time we had crossed the Wakarusa divide, and the capital city, nestling in its hill-girt valley by the side of the Kaw, was lost to our view. Ours was to be a campaign of endurance, of dogged patience, of slow, grinding inactivity, the kind of campaign that calls for every resource of courage and persistence from the soldier, giving him in return little of the inspiration that stimulates to conquest on battle fields. ”

“ Boys bathing in the shallows up-stream sometimes caught a glimpse of him moving about among the bushes. And sometimes at night from far to the east a light could be seen twinkling half way up the dark cliff-side. Every boy in Springvale had an ambition to climb to the Hermit's Cave and explore its mysteries; for the old man died as he had lived, unknown. One winter day his body was found on the sand bar below the rapids where the waters had carried him after his fall from the point of rock above the deep pool. ”

“ Keeping well in the shadow that no eye from below might see him, Jean walked toward the edge of the shelf.
"It will be down in a minute more; look and see," he said, in that soft tone that veiled a fiend's purpose. Then he turned away, and glancing out over the valley he made a gesture of defiance at the cantonment. His back was toward me. The red sun was on the horizon bar, half out of sight.
"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." ”

“ The wooded Neosho Valley grew dark before the evening lights had left the prairies beyond the west bluff, and the waters that sang all day a song of cheer as they rippled over the rocky river bed seemed always after nightfall to gurgle murderously as they went their way down the black-shadowed valley.
The main street was as broad as an Eastern boulevard. Space counted for nothing in planning towns in a land made up of distances. At the end of this street stood the "Last Chance" general store, the outpost of civilization. ”

“ There was no aristocrat, autocrat, nor plutocrat in Springvale; but the purest democracy was among the children. Life was before us; we loved companionship, and the same dangers threatened us all. The first time I saw Marjie she asked, "Are you afraid of Indians?" They were the terror of her life. Even to-day the mere press despatch of an Indian uprising in Oklahoma or Arizona will set the blood bounding through my veins and my first thought is of her.
I shall never forget the day my self-appointed guardianship of her began. ”

“ The glory of the new year, the fresh sweet air, the spirit of budding life, set the pulses a-tingle with the very joy of being. Like a dream of Paradise lay the Neosho Valley in its wooded beauty, with field and farm, the meadow, and the open unending prairie rolling away from it, wave on wave, in the Maytime grace and grandeur. Through this valley the river itself wound in and out, glistening like molten silver in the open spaces, and gliding still and shadowy by overhanging cliff and wooded covert. ”

“ And I who should have read this letter out on "Rockport" in the August sunset, I was listening to it now out on this gray rock in a lonely land as I lay bound for the death awaiting me. But the reading brought joy. Jean watching my face saw his mistake and he cursed me in his anger.
"You care so much for another man's wife? So! I can drive away your happiness as easily as I brought it to you," he argued. "I go back to Springvale. Nobody knows when I go. Bud's out of the way; O'mie won't be there. Suddenly, silently, I steal upon Star-face when she least thinks of me. ”