After a while Virginia looked back, and clutched my arm convulsively.
"There's a carriage overtaking us!" she whispered. "Don't stop! Help me to climb back and cover myself up!"
She was quite out of sight when the carriage turned out to pass, drove on ahead, and then halted partly across the road so as to show that the occupants wanted word with me. I brought my wagon to a stop beside them.
"We are looking," said the man in the carriage, "for a young girl traveling alone on foot over the prairie."
The man was clearly a preacher. He wore a tall beaver hat, though the day was warm, and a suit of ministerial black. His collar stood out in points on each side of his chin, and his throat rested on a heavy stock-cravat which went twice around his neck and was tied in a stout square knot under his chin on the second turn. Under this black choker was a shirt of snowy white, as was his collar, while his coat and trousers looked worn and threadbare. His face was smooth-shaven, and his hair once black was now turning iron-gray. He was then about sixty years old.
"A girl," said I deceitfully, "traveling afoot and alone on the prairie? Going which way?"
The woman in the carriage now leaned forward and took part in the conversation. She was Grandma Thorndyke, of whom I have formerly made mention. Her hair was white, even then. I think she was a little older than her husband; but if so she never admitted it. He was a slight small man, but wiry and strong; while she was taller than he and very spare and grave. She wore steel-bowed spectacles, and looked through you when she spoke. I am sure that if she had ever done so awful a thing as to have put on a man's clothes no one would have seen through her disguise from her form, or even by her voice, which was a ringing tenor and was always heard clear and strong carrying the soprano in the First Congregational Church of Monterey Centre after Elder Thorndyke had succeeded in getting it built.
"Her name is Royall," said Grandma Thorndyke--I may as well begin calling her that now as ever--"Genevieve Royall. When last seen she was walking eastward on this road, where she is subject to all sorts of dangers from wild weather and wild beasts. A man on horseback named Gowdy, with a negro, came into Independence looking for her this morning after searching everywhere along the road from some place west back to the settlement. She is sixteen years old. There wouldn't be any other girl traveling alone and without provision. Have you passed such a person?"
"No, I hain't," said I. The name "Genevieve" helped me a little in this deceit.
"You haven't heard any of the people on the road speak of this wandering girl, have you?" asked Elder Thorndyke.
"No," I answered; "and I guess if any of them had seen her they'd have mentioned it, wouldn't they?"
"And you haven't seen any lone girl or woman at all, even at a distance?" inquired Grandma Thorndyke.
"If she passed me," I said, turning and twisting to keep from telling an outright lie, "it was while I was camped last night. I camped quite a little ways from the track."
"She has wandered off upon the trackless prairie!" exclaimed Grandma Thorndyke. "God help her!"
"He will protect her," said the elder piously.
"Maybe she met some one going west," I suggested, rather truthfully, I thought, "that took her in. She may be going back west with some one."
"Mr. Gowdy told us back in Independence," returned Elder Thorndyke, "that he had inquired of every outfit he met from the time she left him clear back to that place; and he overtook the only two teams on that whole stretch of road that were going east. It is hard to understand. It's a mystery."
"Was he going on east?" I asked--and I thought I heard a stir in the bed back of me as I waited for the answer.
"No," said the elder, "he is coming back this way, hunting high and low for her. I have no doubt he will find her. She can not have reached a point much farther east than this. She is sure to be found somewhere between here and Independence--or within a short distance of here. There is nothing dangerous in the weather, the wild animals, or anything, but the bewilderment of being lost and the lack of food. God will not allow her to be lost."
"I guess not," said I, thinking of the fate which led me to my last night's camp, and of Gowdy's search having missed me as he rode by in the night.
They drove on, leaving us standing by the roadside. Virginia crept forward and peeked over the back of the seat after them until they disappeared over a hillock. Then she began begging me to go where Gowdy could not find us. He would soon come along, she said, with that tool of his, Pinck Johnson, searching high and low for her as that man had said. Everybody would help him but me. I was all the friend she had. Even those two good people who were inquiring were helping Gowdy. I must drive where he could not find us. I must!
"He can't take you from me," I declared, "unless you want to go!"
"What can you do?" she urged wildly. "You are too young to stand in his way. Nobody can stand in his way. Nobody ever did! And they are two to one. Let us hide! Let us hide!"
"I can stand in anybody's way," I said, "if I want to."
I was not really afraid of them if worst came to worst, but I did see that it was two to one; so I thought of evading the search, but the hiding of a team of four cows and a covered wagon on the open Iowa prairie was no easy trick. If I turned off the road my tracks would show for half a mile. If once the problem of hiding my tracks was solved, the rest would be easy. I could keep in the hollows for a few miles until out of sight of the Ridge Road, and Gowdy might rake the wayside to his heart's content and never find us except by accident; but I saw no way of getting off the traveled way without advertising my flight. Of course Gowdy would follow up every fresh track because it was almost the only thing he could do with any prospect of striking the girl's trail. I thought these things over as I drove on westward. I quieted her by saying that I had to think it out.
It was a hot afternoon by this time, and looked like a stormy evening. The clouds were rolling up in the north and west in lofty thunderheads, pearl-white in the hot sun, with great blue valleys and gorges below, filled with shadows. Virginia, in a fever of terror, spent a part of her time looking out at the hind-end of the wagon-cover for Gowdy and Pinck Johnson, and a part of it leaning over the back of the seat pleading with me to leave the road and hide her. Presently the clouds touched the sun, and in a moment the day grew dark. Far down near the horizon I could see the black fringe of the falling rain under the tumbling clouds, and in a quarter of an hour the wind began to blow from the storm, which had been mounting the sky fast enough to startle one. The storm-cloud was now ripped and torn by lightning, and deep rumbling peals of thunder came to our ears all the time louder and nearer. The wind blew sharper, and whistled shrilly through the rigging of my prairie schooner, there came a few drops of rain, then a scud of finer spray: and then the whole plain to the northwest turned white with a driving sheet of water which came on, swept over us, and blotted everything from sight in a great commingling of wind, water, fire and thunder.
Virginia cowered on the bed, throwing the quilt over her. My cattle turned their rumps to the storm and stood heads down, the water running from their noses, tails and bellies, and from the bows and yokes. I had stopped them in such a way as to keep us as dry as possible, and tried to cheer the girl up by saying that this wasn't bad, and that it would soon be over. In half an hour the rain ceased, and in an hour the sun was shining again, and across the eastern heavens there was displayed a beautiful double rainbow, and a faint trace of a third.
"That means hope," I said.
She looked at the wonderful rainbow and smiled a little half-smile.
"It doesn't mean hope," said she, "unless you can think out some way of throwing that man off our track."
"Oh," I answered, with the brag that a man likes to use when a helpless woman throws herself on his resources, "I'll find some way if I make up my mind I don't want to fight them."
"You mustn't think of that," said she. "You are too smart to be so foolish. See how well you answered the questions of that man and woman."
"And I didn't lie, either," said I, after getting under way again.
"Wouldn't you lie," said she, "for me?"
It was, I suppose, only a little womanly probe into character; but it thrilled me in a way the poor girl could not have supposed possible.
"I would do anything for you," said I boldly; "but I'd a lot rather fight than lie."
The cloud-burst had flooded the swales, and across the hollows ran broad sheets of racing water. I had crossed two or three of these, wondering whether I should be able to ford the next real watercourse, when we came to a broad bottom down the middle of which ran a swift shallow stream which rose over the young grass. For a few rods the road ran directly down this casual river of flood water, and as I looked back it all at once came into my mind that I might follow this flood and leave no track; so instead of swinging back into the road I took instantly the important resolution to leave the Ridge Road. By voice and whip I turned my cattle down the stream to the south, and for a mile I drove in water half-hub deep.
Looking back I saw that I left no trace except where two lines of open water showed through the grass on the high spots where cattle and wheels had passed, and I knew that in an hour the flood would run itself off and wipe out even this trace. I felt a sense of triumph, and mingled with this was a queer thrill that set my hands trembling at the consciousness that the prairie had closed about me and this girl with the milk-white neck and the fire in her hair who had asked me if I would not even lie "for her."
We wound down the flooded swale, we left the Ridge Road quite out of sight, we finally drew up out of the hollow and took to the ridges and hog-backs making a new Ridge Road for ourselves. Nowhere in sight was there the slightest trace of humanity or human settlement. We were alone. Still bearing south I turned westwardly, after rolling up the covers to let in the drying wind. I kept looking back to see if we were followed; for now I was suddenly possessed of the impulse to hide, like a thief making for cover with stolen goods. Virginia, wearied out with the journey, the strain of her escape, and the nervous tension, was lying on the couch, often asking me if I saw any one coming up from behind.
The country was getting more rolling and broken as we made our way down toward the Cedar River, or some large creek making into it--but, of course, journeying without a map or chart I knew nothing about the lay of the land or the watercourses. I knew, though, that I was getting into the breaks of a stream. Finally, in the gathering dusk I saw ahead of me the rounded crowns of trees; and pretty soon we entered one of those beautiful groves of hardwood timber that were found at wide distances along the larger prairie streams--I remember many of them and their names, Buck Grove, Cole's Grove, Fifteen Mile Grove, Hickory Grove, Crabapple Grove, Marble's Grove, but I never knew the name of this, the shelter toward which we had been making. I drove in between scattered burr oaks like those of the Wisconsin oak openings, and stopped my cattle in an open space densely sheltered by thickets of crabapple, plum and black-haw, and canopied by two spreading elms. Virginia started up, ran to the front of the wagon and looked about.
"Where are we?" she asked.
"This is our hiding-place," I replied.
"But that man--won't he follow our tracks?"
"We didn't leave any tracks," I said.
"How could we come without leaving tracks?" she queried, standing close to me and looking up into my face.
"Did you notice," said I, "that for miles we drove in the water--back there on the prairie after the rain?"
"Yes."
"We drove in the water when we left the road, and we left no tracks. Not even an Indian could track us. We can't be tracked. We've lost Gowdy--forever."
I thought at first that she was going to throw her arms about my neck; but instead she took both my hands and pressed them in a long clasp. It was the first time she had touched me, or shown emotion toward me--emotion of the sort for which I was now eagerly longing. I did not return her pressure. I merely let her hold my hands until she dropped them. I wanted to do a dozen things, but there is nothing stronger than the unbroken barriers of a boy's modesty--barriers strong as steel, which once broken down become as though they never were; while a woman even in her virgin innocence, is always offering unconscious invitation, always revealing ways of seeming approach, always giving to the stalled boy, arguments against his bashfulness--arguments which may prove absurd or not when he acts upon them. It is the way of a maid with a man, Nature's way--but a perilous way for such a time and such a situation.
That night we sat about the tiny camp-fire and talked. She told me of her life in Kentucky, of her grief at the loss of her sister, of many simple things; and I told her of my farm--a mile square--of my plans, of my life on the canal--which seemed to impress her as it had Rowena Fewkes as a very adventurous career. I was sure she was beginning to like me; but of one thing I did not tell her. I did not mention my long unavailing search for my mother, nor the worn shoe and the sad farewell letter in the little iron-bound trunk in the wagon. I searched for tales which would make of me a man; but when it grew dark I put out the fire. I was not afraid of Buck Gowdy's finding us; but I did not want any one to discover us. And that night I drew out the loads of chicken shot from my gun and reloaded it with buckshot.
I could not sleep. After Virginia had lain down in the wagon, I walked about silently so as not to rouse her, prowling like a wolf. I crept to the side of the wagon and listened for her breathing; and when I heard it my hands trembled, and my heart pounded in my breast. All the things through which I had lived without partaking of them came back into my mind. I thought of what I heard every day on the canal--that all women were alike; that they existed only for that sort of companionship with men with which my eyes were so ignorantly familiar; that all their protestations and refusals were for effect only; that a man need only to be a man, to know what he wanted, and conquer it. And I felt rising in me like a tide the feeling that I was now a man. The reader who has believed of me that I passed through that canal life unspotted by its vileness has asked too much of me. The thing was not possible. I now thought of the irregular companionships of that old time as inexplicable no longer. They were the things for which men lived--the inevitable things for every real man. Only this which agitated me so terribly was different from them--no matter what happened, it would be pure and blameless--for it would be us!
I suppose it may have been midnight or after, when I heard a far-off splashing sound in the creek far above us. At first I thought of buffalo--though there were none in Iowa so far as I knew at that time--and only a few deer or bear; but finally, as the sound, which was clearly that of much wading, drew even with my camp, I began to hear the voices of men--low voices, as if even in that wilderness the speakers were afraid of being overheard.
"I'm always lookin'," said one, "to find some of these damned movers campin' in here when we come in with a raise."
"If I find any," said another, "they will be nepoed, damned quick."
This, I knew--I had heard plenty of it--was the lingo of thieves and what the story-writers call bandits--though we never knew until years afterward that we had in Iowa a distinct class which we should have called bandits, but knew it not. They stole horses, dealt in counterfeit money, and had scattered all over the West from Ohio to the limits of civilization a great number of "stations" as they called them where any man "of the right stripe" might hide either himself or his unlawful or stolen goods. "A raise" was stolen property. "A sight" was a prospect for a robbery, and to commit it was, to "raise the sight," or if it was a burglary or a highway robbery, the man robbed was "raked down." A man killed was "nepoed"--a word which many new settlers in Wisconsin got from the Indians[9].
[9]This bit of frontier argot was rather common in the West in the 'fifties. The reappearance in the same sense of "napoo" for death in the armies of the Allies in France is a little surprising.--G.v.d.M.
In a country in which horses constitute the means of communication, the motive power for the farm and the most easily marketable form of property, the stealing of horses was the commonest sort of crime; and where the population was so sparse and unorganized, and unprovided with means of sending news abroad, horse-stealing, offering as it did to the criminally inclined a ready way of making an easy living, gradually grew into an occupation which flourished, extended into other forms of crime, had its connections with citizens who were supposed to be honest, entered our politics, and finally was the cause of a terrible crisis in the affairs of Monterey County, and, indeed, of other counties in Iowa as well as in Illinois.
I softly reached for my shotgun, and then lay very quiet, hoping that the band would pass our camp by. There were three men as I made them out, each riding one horse and leading another. They had evidently made their way into the creek at some point higher up, and were wading down-stream so as to leave no trail. Cursing as their mounts plunged into the deep holes in the high water, calling one another and their steeds the vilest of names seemingly as a matter of ordinary conversation, they went on down-stream and out of hearing. It did not take long for even my slow mind to see that they had come to this grove as I had done, for the purpose of hiding, nor to realize that it might be very unsafe for us to be detected in any discovery of these men in possession of whatever property they might have seized. It did not seem probable that we should be "nepoed"--but, after all, why not? Dead men tell no tales, cattle as well as merchandise were salable; and as for Virginia, I could hardly bring myself to look in the face the dangers to which she might be exposed in this worst case which I found myself conjuring up.
I listened intently for any sound of the newcomers, but everything was as silent as it had been before they had passed like evil spirits of the night; and from this fact I guessed that, they had made camp farther down-stream among the trees. I stepped to the back of the wagon, and putting in my hand I touched the girl's hair. She took my hand in hers, and then dropped it.
"What is it?" she whispered.
"Don't be scared," I said, "but be very still. Some men just went by, and I'm afraid they are bad."
"Is it that man?" she asked.
"No," said I, "strangers--bad characters. I want them to go on without knowing we're here."
She seemed rather relieved at that, and told me that she was not frightened. Then she asked me where they went. I told her, and said that when it got lighter I meant to creep after them and see if they were still in the grove.
"Don't leave me," said she. "I reckon I'm a little frightened, after all, and it's very lonesome in here all alone. Please get into the wagon with me!"
I said nothing. Instead I sat for some time on the wagon-tongue and asked myself what I should do, and what she meant by this invitation. At last I started up, and trembling like a man climbing the gallows, I climbed into the wagon. There, sitting in the spring seat in the gown she had worn yesterday, with her little shoes on the dashboard, sat Virginia trying to wrap herself in the buffalo-robe.
I folded it around her and took my seat by her side. With scarcely a whisper between us we sat there and watched the stars wheel over to the west and down to their settings. At last I felt her leaning over against my shoulder, and found that she was asleep; and softly putting my arms about her outside the warm buffalo-robe, I held her sleeping like a baby until the shrill roundelays of the meadow-larks told me it was morning.
Then after taking away my arms I awakened her.
Virginia opened her eyes and smiled at me. I think this was the first time that she had given me more than just a trace of a smile; but now she smiled, a very sweet winning smile; and getting spryly out of the wagon she said that she had been a lazy and useless passenger all the time she had been with me, and that from then on she was going to do the cooking. I told her that I wasn't going to let her do it, that I was strong and liked to cook; and I stammered and blundered when I tried to hint that I liked cooking for her. She looked very dense at this and insisted that I should build the fire, and show her where the things were; and when I had done so she pinned back her skirts and went about the work in a way that threw me into a high fever.
"You may bring the new milk," said she, "and by that time I'll have a fine breakfast for you."
When the milk was brought, breakfast was still a little behindhand, but she would not let me help. Anyhow, I felt in spite of my talk that I wanted to do some other sort of service for her: I wanted to show off, to prove myself a protector, to fight for her, to knock down or drive off her foes and mine; and as I saw the light smoke curling up through the tree-tops I asked myself where those men were who had made their way past us in such a dark and secret sort of way and with so much bad talk back there in the middle of the night. I wondered if they had camped where they could see the smoke of our fire, or hear our voices or the other sounds we made.
I almost wished that they might. I had now in a dim, determined, stubborn way claimed this girl in my heart for my own; and I felt without really thinking of it, that I could best foreclose my lien by defeating all comers before I dragged her yielding to my cave. It is the way of all male animals--except spiders, perhaps, and bees--and a male animal was all that I was that morning. I picked up my gun and told her that I must find out where those men were before breakfast.
"No, no!" said she anxiously, "don't leave me! They might shoot you--and--then--"
I smiled disdainfully.
"If there's any shooting to be done, I'll shoot first. I won't let them see me, though; but I must find out what they are up to. Wait and keep quiet. I'll soon be back."
I knew that I should find their horses' hoof-marks at whatever place they had left the stream; and I followed the brook silently, craftily and slowly, like a hunter trailing a wild beast, examining the bank of soft black rooty earth for their tracks. Once or twice I passed across open spaces in the grove. Here I crept on my belly through the brush and weeds shoving my gun along ahead of my body.
My heart beat high. I never for a moment doubted the desperate character of the men, and in this I think I showed good judgment; for what honest horsemen would have left the Ridge Road, or if any honest purpose had drawn them away, what honest men would have forced their horses to wade in the channel of a swollen stream in the middle of the night? They must have been trying to travel without leaving tracks, just as I had done. Their talk showed them to be bad characters, and their fox-like actions proved the case against them. So I crawled forward believing fully that I should be in danger if they once found out that I had uncovered their lurking-place. I carefully kept from making any thrashing or swishing of boughs, any crackling of twigs, or from walking with a heavy footfall; and I wondered more and more as I neared what I knew must be the other end of the grove, why they had not left the water and made camp. For what other purpose had they come to this patch of woods?
At last I heard the stamping of horses, and I lay still for a while and peered all about me for signs of the animals or their possessors. I moved slowly, then, so as to bring first this open space in line with my eyes, and then that, until, crawling like a lizard, I found my men. They were lying on the ground, wrapped in blankets, all asleep, very near the other end of the grove. In the last open spot of the timber, screened from view from the prairie by clumps of willows and other bushes, were six horses, picketed for grazing. There were two grays, a black, two bays and a chestnut sorrel--the latter clearly a race-horse. They were all good horses. There were rifles leaning against the trees within reach of the sleeping men; and from under the coat which one of them was using for a pillow there stuck out the butt of a navy revolver.
Something--perhaps it was that consciousness which horses have of the approach of other beings, scent, hearing, or a sense of their own which we can not understand--made the chestnut race-horse lift his head and nicker. One of the men rose silently to a sitting posture, and reached for his rifle. For a moment he seemed to be looking right at me; but his eyes passed on, and he carefully examined every bit of foliage and every ant-hill and grass-mound, and all the time he strained his ears for sounds. I held my breath. At last he lay down again; but in a few minutes he got up, and woke the others.
This was my first sight of Bowie Bushyager. Everybody in Monterey County, and lots of other people will remember what the name of Bowie Bushyager once meant; but it meant very little more than that of his brother, Pitt Bushyager, who got up, grumbling and cursing when Bowie shook him awake. Bowie was say twenty-eight then, and a fine specimen of a man in build and size. He was six feet high, had a black beard which curled about his face, and except for his complexion, which was almost that of an Indian, his dead-black eye into which you could see no farther than into a bullet, and for the pitting of his face by smallpox, he would have been handsome.
"Shut up!" said he to his brother Pitt. "It's time we're gittin' our grub and pullin' out."
Pitt was even taller than Bowie, and under twenty-five in years. His face was smooth-shaven except for a short, curly black mustache and a little goatee under his mouth His eyes were larger than Bowie's and deep brown, his hair curled down over his rolling collar, and he moved with an air of ease and grace that were in contrast with the slow power of Bowie. There was no doubt of it--Pitt Bushyager was handsome in a rough, daredevil sort of way.
I am describing them, not from the memory of that morning, but because I knew them well afterward. I knew all the Bushyager boys, and their father and mother and sisters; and in spite of everything, I rather liked both Pitt and Claib. Bowie was a forbidding fellow, and Asher, who was between Bowie and Pitt in age, while he was as big and strong as any of them, was the gentlest man I ever saw in his manners. He did more of the planning than Bowie did. Claiborne Bushyager was about my own age; while Forrest was older than Bowie. He was always able to convince people that he was not a member of the gang, and now, an old white-haired, soft-spoken man, still owns the original Bushyager farm, with two hundred acres added, where I must confess he has always made enough money by good farming to account for all the property he has.
These men were an important factor in the history of Monterey County for many years, and I knew all of them well; but had they known that I saw them that morning in the grove I guess I should not have lived to write this history; though it was years before the people came to believing such things of them. The third man in the grove I never saw again. Judging from what we learned afterward, I think it is safe to say that this Unknown was one of the celebrated Bunker gang of bandits, whose headquarters were on the Iowa River somewhere between Eldora and Steamboat Rock, in Hardin County. He was a small man with light hair and eyes, and kept both the Bushyagers on one side of him all the time I had them in view. When he spoke it was almost in a whisper, and he kept darting sharp glances from side to side all the time, and especially at the Bushyagers. When they left he rode the black horse and led one of the grays. I know, because I crept back to my own camp, took my breakfast with Virginia, and then spied on the Bushyagers until dinner-time. After dinner I still found them there arguing about the policy of starting on or waiting until night. Bowie wanted to start; but finally the little light-haired man had his way; and they melted away across the knolls to the west just after sunset. I returned with all the air of having driven them off, and ate my third meal cooked by Virginia Royall.
I do not know how long we camped in this lonely little forest; for I lost reckoning as to time. Once in a while Virginia would ask me when I thought it would be safe to go on our way; and I always told her that it would be better to wait.
I had forgotten my farm. When I was with her, I could not overcome my bashfulness, my lack of experience, my ignorance of every manner of approach except that of the canallers to the waterside women, with which I suddenly found myself as familiar through memory as with the route from my plate to my mouth; that way I had fully made up my mind to adopt; but something held me back.
I now began leaving the camp and from some lurking-place in the distance watching her as a cat watches a bird. I lived over in my mind a thousand times the attack I would make upon her defense, and her yielding after a show of resistance. I became convinced at last that she would not make even a show of resistance; that she was probably wondering what I was waiting for, and making up her mind that, after all, I was not much of a man.
I saw her one evening, after looking about to see if she was observed, take off her stockings and go wading in the deep cool water of the creek--and I lay awake at night wondering whether, after all, she had not known that I was watching her, and had so acted for my benefit--and then I left my tossed couch and creeping to the side of the wagon listened, trembling in every limb, with my ear to the canvas until I was able to make out her regular breathing only a few inches from my ear. And when in going away--as I always did, finally--I made a little noise which awakened her, she called and asked me if I had heard anything, I said no, and pacified her by saying that I had been awake and watching all the time. Then I despised myself for saying nothing more.
I constantly found myself despising my own decency. I felt the girl in my arms a thousand times as I had felt her for those delicious hours the night she had invited me to share the wagon with her, and we had sat in the spring seat wrapped in the buffalo-robe, as she slept with her head on my shoulder. I tormented myself by asking if she had really slept, or only pretended to sleep. Once away from her, once freed from the innocent look in her eyes, I saw in her behavior that night every advance which any real man might have looked for, as a signal to action. Why had I not used my opportunity to make her love me--to force from her the confession of her love? Had I not failed, not only in doing what I would have given everything I possessed or ever hoped to possess to have been able to do; but also had I not failed in that immemorial duty which man owes to woman, and which she had expected of me? Would she not laugh at me with some more forceful man when she had found him? Was she not scorning me even now?
I had heard women talk of greenhorns and backwoods boys in those days when I had lived a life in which women played an important, a disturbing, and a baleful part for every one but the boy who lived his strange life on the tow-path or in the rude cabin; and now these outcast women came back to me and through the very memories of them poisoned and corrupted my nature. They peopled my dreams, with their loud voices, their drunkenness, their oaths, their obscenities, their lures, their tricks, their awful counterfeit of love; and, a figure apart from them in these dreams, partaking of their nature only so far as I desired to have it so, walked Virginia Royall, who had come to me across the prairie to escape a life with Buckner Gowdy. But to the meaning of this fact I shut the eye of my mind. I was I, and Gowdy was Gowdy. It was no time for thought. Every moment I pressed closer and closer to that action which I was sure would have been taken by Eben Sproule, or Bill the Sailor--the only real friends I had ever possessed.
We used to go fishing along the creek; and ate many a savory mess of bullheads, sunfish and shiners, which I prepared and cooked. We had butter, and the cows, eased of the labors of travel, grew sleek and round, and gave us plenty of milk. I saved for Virginia all the eggs laid by my hens, except those used by her in the cooking. She gave me the daintiest of meals; and I taught her to make bread. To see her molding it with her strong small hands, was enough to have made me insane if I had had any sense left. She showed me how to make vinegar pies; and I failed in my pies made of the purple-flowered prairie oxalis; but she triumphed over me by using the deliriously acid leaves as a flavoring for sandwiches--we were getting our first experience as prairie-dwellers in being deprived of the common vegetable foods of the garden and forest. One day I cooked a delicious mess of cowslip greens with a ham-bone. She seemed to be happy; and I should have been if I had not made myself so miserable. I remember almost every moment of this time--so long ago.
One day as we were fishing we were obliged to clamber along the bank where a tree crowded us so far over the water that Virginia, in stooping to pass under the body of the tree, was about to fall; and I jumped down into the stream and caught her in my arms as she was losing her hold. I found her arms about my neck as she clung to me; and, standing in the water, I turned her about in my arms, rather roughly of necessity, caught one arm about her waist and the other under the hollows of her knees and held her so.
"Don't let me fall," she begged.
"I won't," I said--and I could say no more.
"You've got your feet all wet," said she.
"I don't care," I said--and stopped.
"How clumsy of me!" she exclaimed.
"It was a hard place to get around," said I.
"I hope you didn't lose the fish," said she.
"No," said I, "I dropped the string of them in the grass."
Now this conversation lasted a second, from one way of looking at it, and a very long time from another; and all the time I was standing there, knee-deep in the water, with Virginia's arms about my neck, her cheek almost against mine, one of my arms about her waist and the other under the hollows of her knees--and I had made no movement for putting her ashore.
"You're very strong," said she, "or you would have dropped me in the water."
"Oh," said I, "that's nothing"--and I pressed her closer.
"How will you get me back on land?" she asked; and really it was a subject which one might have expected to come up sooner or later.
I turned about with her and looked down-stream; then I turned back and looked up-stream; then I looked across to the opposite bank, at least six feet away; then I carried her up-stream for a few yards; then I started back down-stream.
"There's no good place there," said I--and I looked a long, long look into her eyes which happened to be scanning my face just then. She blushed rosily.
"Any place will do," she said. "Let me down right here where I can get the fish!"
And slowly, reluctantly, with great pains that she should not be scratched by briars, bitten by snakes, brushed by poison-ivy, muddied by the wet bank, or threatened with another fall, I put her down. She looked diligently in the grass for the fish, picked them up, and ran off to camp. After she had disappeared, I heard the bushes rustle, and looked up as I sat on the bank wringing the water from my socks and pouring it from my boots.
"Thank you for keeping me dry," said she. "You did it very nicely. And now you must stay in the wagon while I dry your socks and boots for you--you poor wet boy!"
She had not objected to my holding her so long; she rather seemed to like it; she seemed willing to go on camping here as long as I wished; she was wondering why I was so backward and so bashful; she was in my hands; why hold back? Why not use my power? If I did not I should make myself forever ridiculous to all men and to all women--who, according to my experience, were never in higher feather than when ridiculing some greenhorn of a boy. This thing must end. My affair with Virginia must be brought to a crisis and pushed to a decision. At once!
I wandered off again and from my vantage-point I began to watch her and gather courage from watching her. I could still feel her in my arms--so much more of a woman than I had at first suspected from seeing her about the camp. I could see her in my mind's eye wading the stream like a beautiful ghost. I could think of nothing but her all the time,--of her and the wild life of boats and backwoods harbors.
And at last I grew suddenly calm. I began to laugh at myself for my lack of decision. I would carefully consider the matter, and that night I would act.
I took my gun and wandered off across the prairie after a few birds for our larder. There were upland plover in great plenty; and before I had been away from the camp fifteen minutes I had several in my pockets. It was early in the afternoon; but instead of walking back to camp at once I sat down on a mound at the mouth of the old den of a wolf or badger and laid my plans; much as a wolf or badger might have done.
Then I went back. The sun was shining with slanting mid-afternoon rays down among the trees by the creek. I looked for Virginia; but she was not about the wagon, neither sitting in the spring seat, nor on her box by the fire, nor under her favorite crabapple-tree. I looked boldly in the wagon, without the timid tapping which I had always used to announce my presence--for what did I care now for her privacy?--but she was not there. I began searching for her along the creek in the secluded nooks which abounded, and at last I heard her voice.
I was startled. To whom could she be speaking? I would have nobody about, now. I would show him, whoever he was! This grove was mine as long as I wanted to stay there with my girl. The blood rose to my head as I went quietly forward until I could see Virginia.
She was alone! She had taken a blanket from the wagon and spread it on the ground upon the grass under a spreading elm, and scattered about on it were articles of clothing which she had taken from her satchel--that satchel to which the poor child had clung so tightly while she had come to my camp across the prairie on the Ridge Road that night--which now seemed so long ago. There was a dress on which she had been sewing; for the needle was stuck in the blanket with the thread still in the garment; but she was not working. She had in her lap as she sat cross-legged on the blanket, a little wax doll to which she was babbling and talking as little girls do. She had taken off its dress, and was carefully wiping its face, telling it to shut its eyes, saying that mama wouldn't hurt it, asking it if she wasn't a bad mama to keep it shut up all the time in that dark satchel, asking it if it wasn't afraid in the dark, assuring it that mama wouldn't let anybody hurt it--and all this in the sweetest sort of baby-talk. And then she put its dress on, gently smoothed its hair, held it for a while against her bosom as she swayed from side to side telling it to go to sleep, hummed gently a cradle song, and put it back in the satchel as a mother might put her sleeping baby in its cradle. I crept silently away.
It was dark when I returned to camp, and she had supper ready and was anxiously awaiting me. She ran to me and took my hand affectionately.
"What kept you so long?" she asked earnestly. "I have been anxious. I thought something must have happened to you!"
And as we approached the fire, she looked in my face, and cried out in astonishment.
"Something has happened to you. You are as white as a sheet. What is it? Are you sick? What shall I do if you get sick!"
"No," I said, "I am not sick. I am all right--now."
"But something has happened," she insisted. "You are weak as well as pale. Let me do something for you. What was it?"
"A snake," I said, for an excuse. "A rattlesnake. It struck at me and missed. It almost struck me. I'll be all right now."
The longer I live the surer I am that I told her very nearly the truth.
That night we sat up late and talked. She was only a dear little child, now, with a bit of the mother in her. She was really affectionate to me, more so than ever before, and sometimes I turned cold as I thought of how her affection might have been twisted into deviltry had it not been so strangely brought home to me that she was a child, with a good deal of the mother in her. I turned cold as I thought of her playing with her doll while I had been out on the prairie laying poison plots against her innocence, her defenselessness, her trust in me.
Why, she was like my mother! I had not thought of my mother for days. When she had been young like Virginia, she must have been as beautiful; and she had played with dolls; but never except while she was an innocent child, as Virginia now was.
For the first time I talked of mother to Virginia. I told her of my mother's goodness to me while Rucker was putting me out to work in the factory--and Virginia grew hot with anger at Rucker, and very pitiful of the poor little boy going to work before daylight and coming home after dark. I told her of my running away, and of my life on the canal, with all the beautiful things I had seen and the interesting things I had done, leaving out the fighting and the bad things. I told her of how I had lost my mother, and my years of search for her, ending at that unmarked grave by the lake. Virginia's eyes shone with tears and she softly pressed my hand.
I took from my little iron-bound trunk that letter which I had found in the old hollow apple-tree, and we read it over together by the flickering light of a small fire which I kindled for the purpose; and from the very bottom of the trunk, wrapped in a white handkerchief which I had bought for this use, I took that old worn-out shoe which I had found that dark day at Tempe--and I began telling Virginia how it was that it was so run over, and worn in such a peculiar way.
My mother had worked so hard for me that she had had a good deal of trouble with her feet--and such a flood of sorrow came over me that I broke down and cried. I cried for my mother, and for joy at being able to think of her again, and for guilt, and with such a mingling of feeling that finally I started to rush off into the darkness--but Virginia clung to me and wiped away my tears and would not let me go. She said she was afraid to be left alone, and wanted me with her--and that I was a good boy. She didn't wonder that my mother wanted to work for me--it must have been almost the only comfort she had.
"If she had only lived," I said, "so I could have made a home for her!"
"She knows all about that," said Virginia; "and when she sees you making a home for some one else, how happy it will make her!"
Virginia was the older of the two, now, the utterer of words of comfort; and I was the child. The moon rose late, but before we retired it flooded the grove with light. The wolves howled on the prairie, and the screech-owls cried pitifully in the grove; but I was happy. I told Virginia that we must break camp in the morning and move on. I must get to my land, and begin making that home. She sighed; but she did not protest. She would always remember this sojourn in the grove, she said; she had felt so safe! She hardly knew what she would do when we reached the next settlement; but she must think out some way to get back to Kentucky. When the time came for her to retire, I carried her to the wagon and lifted her in--and then went to my own bed to sleep the first sound sweet sleep I had enjoyed for days. The air had been purified by the storm.