quinine every summer, instead of opening the woodland and draining the swamps. Nevertheless, I’ve left enough money in the Cloverdale bank to take you back East and start up some little sort of a living there, if you find you cannot stay here. I couldn’t bring you here and burn all the bridges. All you have to do is to say you want to go back, and you can go.”
“You are very good, Asher.” His wife’s voice was low and soft. “But I don’t want to go back. Not until we have failed here. And we shall not fail.”
And together that night on the far unconquered plains of Kansas, with the moon shining down upon them, these two, so full of hope and courage, planned their future. In the cottonwood trees by the river sands a night bird twittered sleepily to its mate; the chirp of many crickets in the short grass below the sunflowers had dwindled to a mere note at intervals. The soft breeze caressed the two young faces, then wandered far and far across the lonely land, and in its long low-breathed call to the night there was a sigh of sadness.
CHAPTER III
The Will of the Wind
Naught but the endless hills, dim and far and blue,
And sighing wind, and sailing cloud, and nobody here but you.
The next day, and for many days following, the wind blew; fiercely and unceasingly it blew, carrying every movable thing before it. Whatever was tending in its direction, it helped over the ground amazingly. Whatever tried to move in the face of it had to fight for every inch of the way. It whipped all the gold from the sunflowers and threshed them mercilessly about. It snapped the slender stems of the big, bulgy-headed tumble-weeds and sent them tumbling over and over, mile after mile, until they were caught at last in some draw, like helpless living things, to swell the heap for some prairie fire to feed upon. It lifted the sand from the river bed and swept it in a prairie simoon up the slope, wrapping the little cabin in a cloud of gritty dust. The cottonwoods along the waterway moaned as if in pain and flung up their white arms in feeble protest. The wild plum bushes in the draw were almost buried by the wind-borne drift smothering the narrow crevice, while out on the plains the long lashing waves of bended grass made the eyes burn with weariness. And the sun watched it all with unpitying stare, and the September heat was maddening. But it was cool inside the cabin. Sod houses shut out the summer warmth as they shed off the winter’s cold.
Virginia Aydelot stood at the west window watching her husband trying to carry two full pails of water which the wind seemed bent on blowing broadcast along his path. He had been plowing a double fireguard around the premises that morning and his face and clothes were gray with dust. These days of unceasing winds seemed to Virginia to sap the last atom of her energy. But she was young and full of determination.
“Why did you put the well so far away, Asher?” she asked, as he came inside.
The open door gave the wind a new crevice to fill, and it slapped wrathfully at the buckets, splashing the contents on the floor.
“We have to put wells close to the water in this country. I put this one in before I built here. And if we have a well, we are so glad we don’t try to move it. The wind might find it out and fill it up with sand while we were doing it. It’s a jealous wind, this.” Asher’s smile lit up his dust-grimed face.
“I’ve tried all day to keep the dust off the table. I meant to do a washing this morning, but how could any garment stay on the line out there and not be whipped to shreds?”
“Virginia, did you ever do a washing before the war?” Asher asked through the towel. He was trying to scrub his face clean with the least possible amount of water.
“Oh, that’s ancient history. No, nor did I do anything else. I was too young. Did you ever try to till a whole section of land back in Ohio before the war?” Virginia asked laughingly.
Asher took the towel from his head to look at her.
“You are older than when I first knew you – the little lady of the old Jerome Thaine mansion home. But you haven’t lost any of that girl’s charms and you have gained some new ones with the years.”
“Stop staring at me and tell me why you didn’t put the house down by the well, then,” Virginia demanded.
“I did pitch my tent there at first, but it is too near the river, and several things happened, beside,” he replied.
“Is that a river, really?” she inquired. “It looks like a weed trail.”
“Yes, it is very real when it elects to be. They call it Grass River because there’s no grass in it – only sand and weeds – and they call it a river because there is seldom any water in it. But I’ve seen such lazy sand-foundered streams a mile wide and swift as sin. So I take no risk with precious property, even if I have to tote barrels of water and slop the parlor rug on windy days.”
“Then, why didn’t you put another door in the kitchen end of the house?” Virginia questioned.
“Two reasons, dearie. First, can you keep one door shut on days like this, even when there is no draught straight through the house?” he inquired.
“Yes, when I put a chair against it, and the table against the chair, and the bed against the table, and the cookstove to back up the bed. I see. Shortage of furniture.”
“No, the effect on this cabin if the wind had a sweep through two weak places in the wall. I built this thing to stay till I get ready to go away from it, not for it to go off and leave me sitting here under the sky some stormy day. Of course, the real home, the old Colonial style of house, will stand higher up after awhile, embowered in trees, and the wind may play about its vine-covered verandas, and its stately front columns, but that comes later.”
“All right, but what was the second reason for the one doorway? You said you had two?” Virginia broke in.
“Oh, did I? Well, the other reason is insignificant, but effective in its way. I had only one door and no lumber within three hundred miles to make another, and no money to buy lumber, anyhow.”
“You should have married a fortune,” his wife said demurely.
“I did.” The smile on the lips did not match the look in the gray eyes. “My anxiety is that I shall not squander my possession, now I have it.”
“You are squandering your dooryard by plowing out there in front of the house. Isn’t there ground enough if the wind will be merciful, not to use up our lawn?” Virginia would not be serious.
“I have plowed a double fireguard, and I’ve burned off the grass between the two to put a wide band of protection about us. I take no chances. Everything is master in the wilderness except man. When he has tamed all these things – prairie fire, storm and drouth, winds and lonely distances, why, there isn’t any more wilderness. But it’s tough work getting acclimated to these September breezes, I know.”
Virginia did not reply at once. All day the scream of the wind had whipped upon her nerves until she wanted to scream herself. But it was not in the blood of the breed to give up easily. Something of the stubborn determination that had made the oldtime Thaines drive the Quakers from Virginia shone now in the dark eyes of this daughter of a well-bred house.
“It’s all a matter of getting one’s system and this September wind system to play the same tune,” she said.
“Virginia, you look just as you did that day when you said you were going through the Rebel ranks in a man’s dress to take a message
