Now I know it.”
“Well, I’ll try not to get hysterical over the wind out here. It is a matter of time and adjustment. Let’s adjust ourselves to dinner now.”
Beyond her lightly spoken words Asher caught the undertone of courage, and he knew that a battle for supremacy was on, a struggle between physical outcry and mental poise.
After the meal, he said, “I must take my plow down to Shirley’s this afternoon. His is broken and I can mend it while he puts in his fireguard with mine. I don’t mind the wind, but I won’t ask you to face it clear down to Shirley’s claim. I don’t like to leave you here, either.”
“I think I would rather stay indoors. What is there to be afraid of, anyhow?” Virginia asked.
“Nothing in the world but loneliness,” her husband replied.
“Well, I must get used to that, you know. I can begin now,” Virginia said lightly.
But for all her courage, she watched him drive away with a sob in her throat. In all the universe there was nothing save a glaring sunlight and an endless cringing of yellow, wind-threshed grass.
Asher Aydelot had come here with half a dozen other young fellows, all of whom took up claims along Grass River. Six months later Jim Shirley had come to the settlement with a like company who extended the free-holdings until it was seven miles by the winding of the river from Aydelot’s claim on the northwest down the river to Shirley’s claim on the southeast.
Eighteen months later only two men were left in the Grass River valley, Aydelot and Shirley. The shorter trail as the crow flies between their claims was marked by a golden thread of sunflowers. At the third bend of the winding stream a gentle ripple of ground rose high enough to hide the cabin lights from each other that otherwise might have given a neighborly comfort to the two lone settlers.
Shirley’s cabin stood on a tiny swell of ground, mark of a one-time island, set in a wide bend in the river that was itself a natural fireguard for most of the circle of the premises.
The house was snug as a squirrel’s nest. Before it was a strip of white clover, as green and fresh looking as if it were on the banks of Clover Creek in Ohio. Above the door a plain board bore the one word, “Cloverdale.”
Jim Shirley stood watching Asher coming down the trail against the wind, followed by the big shepherd dog, Pilot, who had bounded off to meet him.
“Hello! How did you get away on a day like this?” he called, as the team drew near.
“Why, you old granny!” Asher stopped here.
Both men had been on the Kansas plains long enough not to mind the wind. It flashed into Asher’s mind that Jim was hoping to see his wife with him, and he measured anew the loneliness of the man’s life.
“Most too rude for ladies just yet, although I didn’t like to leave Virginia alone.”
“What could possibly harm her? Your fireguard’s done, double done; there’s no water to drown in, no Indian to frighten, no wild beast to enter, no white man, in God knows how many hundred miles. Just nothing to be afraid of.”
“Yes, that’s it – just nothing. And it’s enough to make even a braver woman afraid. It’s the eternal vast nothingness, when the very silence cries out at you. It’s the awful loneliness of the plains that makes the advance attack in this fight with the wilderness. Don’t we both know that?”
“I reckon we do, but we got over it, and so will Mrs. Aydelot.”
“How do you know that?” Asher inquired eagerly. “I believe she could hardly keep back the tears till I got away.”
“Then why didn’t you get away sooner? I know she will get over it, because she’s as good a woman as we are men, and we stood for it.”
“Well, here’s your plow. Better get your guard thrown up. I can smell smoke now. There’s a prairie fire sweeping in on this wind somewhere. There’s a storm brewing, too. Remember what a fight we had with fire a year ago?”
Asher was helping to put Jim’s team in the harness.
“Yes, you saved your well and a few other little things. But you’ve got your grit, you darned Buckeye, to hold on and start again from the ashes. And now you have your wife here. You are lucky,” Jim declared.
“Where’s that broken plow of yours? Is it bolt or weld? Maybe I can mend it.” Asher was casting about for tools.
“It’s bolt. Everything is on the stable shelves,” Jim called back against the wind, as he drove the plow deep in the black soil. “Be sure you put ’em back when you are through with ’em, too.”
“Poor Jim!” Asher said to himself with a smile. “The artist in him makes him keep the place in order. He’d stop to hang up his coat and vest if he had to fight a mad bull. Poor judgment puts a good many tragedies into lives as well as stage villain types of crime.”
And then Asher thought of Virginia, and wondered what she was doing through the long afternoon. He was whistling softly with a smile in his eyes as Jim Shirley made the tenth round of the premises and stopped opposite the stable door.
“Hey, Asher, come out and see the sky now,” he called. “It’s prairie fire and equinoctial storm combined.”
Asher hurried out to see the dull southwest heavens shutting off the sunlight out of which raged a wind searing the sky to a dun gray.
“Don’t stand there staring, you idiot. Why don’t you get your plowing done?” he cried to Shirley.
Shirley began to loose the trace-chain from the plow.
“That strip is wide enough now,” he declared. “I’ve got a clover guard, anyhow. I don’t need to back-fire like my neighbors do.”
As Asher untied his ponies and climbed into the wagon, Jim held their reins.
“Stop a minute. Let a single man offer you a word of advice, will you?” he asked.
“All right, I need advice,” Asher smiled down on Jim’s earnest face.
“Then heed it, too. No use to tell you to take care of your wife. You’ll do that to a fault. But don’t make any mistake about Mrs. Asher Aydelot. She went through Rebel and Union lines once to save your life. Don’t doubt her strength to hold her own here as soon as the first fight is over. She is like that Kentucky thoroughbred of hers; she’s got endurance as well as grace and beauty.”
“Bless you, Jim,” Asher said, as he clasped Shirley’s hand. “I wish you had a wife.”
“Well, they are something of an anxiety, too. Hustle home ahead of the storm. I’ve always wished that bluff at the deep bend didn’t hide us from each other’s sight. I’d like to blast it out.”
Asher Aydelot hurried northward ahead of the hot winds and deepening shadows of the coming storm. And all the time, in spite of Jim’s comforting words, an anxiety grew and grew. The miles seemed endless, the heavens darkened, and the wind suddenly gave a gasp and died away, leaving a hot, blank stillness everywhere.
Meanwhile, Virginia, alone in the cabin, had fallen asleep from sheer nerve weariness. When she awoke, it was late in the afternoon. The screaming outside had ceased,
