Chapter V: Part III: Jerry and Eugene--And Joe (5)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At dinner that evening York was at his best.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yours,

EUGENE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So the Macphersons let her have her way.

IX

IF A WOMAN WENT RIGHT WITH HERSELF

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

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

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

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

A light step inside the house caught her ear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Nothing," Jerry replied, innocently.

The steel hooks turned slowly to lacerate deeper.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Mine!" Joe Thomson exclaimed.

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

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

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

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

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

"Why not go back East?" he asked.

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

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

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

"Well?" Joe queried.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joe Thomson lifted his hat and walked away.

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

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

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

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

X

THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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