Chapter 24

WHICH DESCRIBES A PLEASANT HOLIDAY AND A PRETTY STRATAGEM.

Two days later Bim suggested that they should take a day's ride in the
open and spend the night at the home of a friend of hers in a settlement
known as Plain's End, Harry having expressed a wish to get out on the
prairies in the saddle after his long term of travel on a steamboat.
"Are you sure that you can stand an all day's journey?" Bim asked.
"I! I could kill a bear with my hands and carry him home on my back and
eat him for dinner," the young man boasted.
"I've got enough of the wild West in me to like a man who can eat bears
if there's nothing better," said Bim. "I didn't know but you'd been
spoiled in the homes of those eastern millionaires. If you're willing to
take what comes and make the best of it, I'll give you a day that you
will remember. You will have to put up with a very simple hospitality but
I wouldn't wonder if you'd enjoy it."
"I can put up with anything so long as I have your help," the young man
answered.
"Then I shall send word that we are coming. We will leave here day after
to-morrow. Our horses will be at the door at eight o'clock in the
morning. We shall take some luncheon and reach our destination late in
the afternoon and return next day. It will give us a good long visit with
each other and you'll know me better before we get back."
"I want to know you as well as I love you," he said. "I suppose it will
be like studying law--one never gets through with it."
"I've found myself a rather abstruse subject--as bad as Coke, of which
Abe used to talk so much with my father," she declared. "I shall be glad
if it doesn't discourage you."
"The mystery of woman can not be solved by intellectual processes," the
young man remarked. "Observation is the only help and mine has been
mostly telescopic. We have managed to keep ourselves separated by a great
distance even when we were near each other. It has been like looking at a
star with a very limited parallax. It's a joy to be able to see you with
the naked eye."
"You will have little to look at on this holiday but me and the
prairies," said Bim.
"I think the prairies will be neglected. I shall wear my cavalry uniform
and try to get a pair of the best horses in Chicago for the trip."
"Then you would have to get mine. I have a handsome pair of black young
horses from Ohio--real high steppers. It is to be my party. You will have
to take what comes and make the best of it."
The day of their journey arrived--a warm, bright, cloudless day in
September 1841. The long story of those years of separation was told as
they rode along. Biggs had been killed in a drunken brawl at Alton.
Davis had gone to the far West--a thoroughly discredited man. Henry
Brimstead had got his new plow on the market and was prospering beyond
all his hopes. Eli had become a merchant of unusual ability and vision.
His square dealing and good sense had done much to break down prejudice
against the Jews in the democracy of the West. Agents of the store were
traveling in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana selling its goods to country
dealers. They carried with them the progressive and enlightened spirit of
the city and the news. Everywhere they insisted upon a high standard of
honesty in business. A man who had no respect for his contract was struck
off the list. They spread the every-day religion of the counting room.
They were a welcome, unifying and civilizing force in the middle country.
Samson Traylor was getting wealth and a reputation for good sense. He had
made the plan on which the business had developed. He had proved himself
a wise and far-seeing man. Sarah's friends had been out in Springfield
for a visit. They had invested money in the business. Her brother had
decided to bring his family West and settle in Sangamon County.
The lovers stopped in a grove at noon and fed their horses and Harry,
who had a bundle of Joe's lucifer matches in his pocket--a gift from
Samson--built a fire and made a broach of green sticks on which he
broiled beef steak.
A letter from Harry to Sarah Traylor tells of the beauty of the day--of
blue bells and scarlet lilies in the meadow grass, of the whistling
quail, of pigeons and wild geese flying across the sky and of his great
joy in seeing again the vast sunlit reaches of the level, virgin lands.
       *       *       *       *       *
"It was my great day of fulfillment, all the dearer because I had come
back to health and youth and beloved scenes out of those years shadowed
with loneliness and despair," he writes. "The best part of it, I assure
you, was the face I loved and that musical voice ringing like a bell in
merry laughter and in the songs which had stirred my heart in the days
of its tender youth. You--the dear and gentle mother of my later
boyhood--are entitled to know of my happiness when I heard that voice
tell me in its sweeter tone of the love which has endured through all
these years of stern trial. We talked of our plans as we sat among the
ferns and mosses in the cool shade sweetened by the incense of burning
fagots, over that repast to which we shall be returning often for
refreshment in poorer days. We had thought of you and of the man so well
beloved of you and us in all these plans. We shall live in Springfield so
that we may be near you and him and our friend, Honest Abe."
       *       *       *       *       *
It is a long letter presenting minute details in the history of that
sentimental journey and allusion to matters which have no part in this
record. Its substance being fully in the consciousness of the writer, he
tenderly folds it up and returns it to the package--yellow and brittle
and faded and having that curious fragrance of papers that have lain for
scores of years in the gloom and silence of a locked mahogany drawer. So
alive are these letters with the passion of youth in long forgotten years
that the writer ties the old ribbon and returns them to their tomb with a
feeling of sadness, finding a singular pathos in the contrast of their
look and their contents. They are turning to dust but the soul of them
has gone into this little history.
The young man and woman mounted their horses and resumed their journey.
It was after two o'clock. The Grand Prairie lay ahead of them. The
settlement of Plain's End was twenty-one miles away on its farther
side. They could just see its tall oak trees in the dim distance.
"We must hurry if we get there before dark," said the girl. "Above all we
must be careful to keep our direction. It's easy to get lost down in the
great prairie."
They heard a cat-bird singing in a near thicket as they left their camp.
It reminded Bim of her favorite ballad and she sang it with the spirit of
old:
  "My sweetheart, come along--
   Don't you hear the glad song
   As the notes of the nightingale flow?
   Don't you hear the fond tale of the sweet nightingale
   As she sings in the valleys below?
   As she sings in the valleys below?"
They went on shoulder-deep in the tall grass on the lower stretches of
the prairie. Here and there it gave Harry the impression that he was
swimming his horse in "noisy, vivid green water." They startled a herd
of deer and a number of wild horses. When they lost sight of the woods at
Plain's End the young man, with his cavalry training, was able to ride
standing on his saddle until he had got it located. It reminded him
of riding in the Everglades and he told of his adventures there as they
went on, but very modestly. He said not a word of his heroic fight the
day that he and sixty of his comrades were cut off and surrounded in
the "land of the grassy waters." But Bim had heard the story from other
lips.
Late in the afternoon the woods loomed in front of them scarcely a mile
off. Near the end of the prairie they came to a road which led them past
the door of a lonely cabin. It seemed to be deserted, but its windows
were clean and a faint column of smoke rose from its chimney. There
were hollyhocks and sunflowers in its small and cleanly dooryard. A
morning-glory vine had been trained around the windows.
"Broad Creek is just beyond," said Bim. "I don't know how the crossing
will be."
They came presently to the creek, unexpectedly swollen. A man stood on
the farther shore with some seventy feet of deep and rapid water between
him and the travelers.
"That man looks like Stephen Nuckles," said Harry.
"It is Stephen Nuckles," Bim answered.
"Hello, Steve!" the young soldier called.
"Howdy, boy!" said the old minister. "That ar creek is b'ilin' over.
I reckon you'll have to swim the hosses."
"They're young city horses and not broke to deep water but we'll try
them," said Bim.
They tried but Bim's horse refused to go beyond good footing.
"You kin light at that ar house an' spend the night but the folks have
gone erway," the minister called.
"I guess you'll have to marry us right here and now," Harry proposed.
"Night is coming and that house is our only refuge."
"Poor boy! There seems to be no escape for you!" Bim exclaimed with a
sigh. "Do you really and honestly want to marry me? If there's any doubt
about it I'll leave the horses with you and swim the creek. You could put
them in the barn and swim with me or spend the night in the cabin."
He embraced and kissed her in a way that left no doubt of his wishes.
"It's a cool evening and the creek is very wet," he answered. "I'm going
to take this matter in my own hands."
He called to the minister: "Steve, this is the luckiest moment of my life
and you are just the man of all others I would have chosen for its most
important job. Can you stand right where you are and marry us?"
"You bet I kin, suh," the minister answered. "I've often said I could
marry any one half a mile erway if they would only talk as loud as I kin.
I've got the good book right hyah in my pocket, suh. My ol' woman is
comin'. She'll be hyah in a minute fer to witness the perceedin's."
Mrs. Nuckles made her appearance on the river bank in a short time.
Then the minister shouted: "We'll begin by readin' the nineteenth chapter
of Matthew."
He shouted the chapter and the usual queries, knelt and prayed and
pronounced them man and wife.
The young man and woman walked to the cabin and put their horses in its
barn, where they found an abundance of hay and oats. They rapped at the
cabin door but got no response. They lifted its latch and entered.
A table stood in the middle of the room set for two. On its cover of
spotless white linen were plates and cups and saucers and a big platter
of roasted prairie chickens and a great frosted cake and preserves and
jellies and potato salad and a pie and a bottle of currant wine. A clock
was ticking on the shelf. There were live embers in the fireplace and
wood in the box, and venison hanging in the chimney.
The young soldier looked about him and smiled.
"This is wonderful!" he exclaimed. "To whom are we indebted?"
"You don't think I'd bring you out here on the plains and marry you and
not treat you well," Bim laughed. "I warned you that you'd have to take
what came and that the hospitality would be simple."
"It's a noble and benevolent conspiracy that has turned this cabin into
a Paradise and brought all this happiness upon me," he said as he kissed
her. "I thought it strange that Mr. Nuckles should be on hand at the
right moment."
"The creek was a harder thing to manage," she answered with a smile. "I
told my messenger to see that the gate of the reservoir was opened at
four o'clock. So, you see, you had to marry or swim. Now I've made a
clean breast of it. I felt sure something would happen before you got
back from Milwaukee. I was plum superstitious about it."
The young man shook with laughter and said: "You are the new woman born
of the democracy of the West."
"I began to fear that I should be an old woman before I got to be Mrs.
Needles."
"Whose house is this?" he asked in a moment.
"It is the home of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Lukins. Their land near Chicago is
now used for a cattle yard and slaughter-house and is paying them a good
income. They moved here some time ago. He looks after the reservoir. Mrs.
Lukins is a famous cook as you will see. We can stay here as long as we
want to. We shall find everything we need in the well, the chimney, the
butt'ry and the cellar. And here is the wedding supper all ready for us
and I as hungry as a bear."
"In the words of Mrs. Lukins 'it is very copasetic,' and I begin to feel
that I have made some progress in the study of Bim Kelso. Come, let's
have our supper."
"Not until you have broiled a piece of venison. It will take a lot of
food to satisfy me. I'll get the cream and butter out of the well and
make a pot of coffee. Hurry up, Harry, I'm starving."
Darkness fell upon the busy lovers and soon the firelight and the glow of
many candles filled the homely cabin with flickering shadows and a soft
beautiful color.
"Supper is ready," she said, when the venison steak had been deposited on
the platter.
"Bim, I love you not as most men love," he said as They stood a moment by
the side of the table. "From the bottom of my heart I do respect you for
your honor and good faith and when I think of that and of all you have
suffered for my sake I bow my head and ask God to make me worthy of such
a helper."
They sat down to this unusual wedding feast and as we leave them the
windows of the little cabin fling their light far out upon the level
plain; we hear the sound of merry laughter and of the tall grasses
rustling and reeling joyously in the breeze. The moon in mid-heaven and
the innumerable host around it seem to know what is passing on the edge
of the Grand Prairie and to be well pleased. Surely there is nothing
that finds a quicker echo in the great heart of the world than human
happiness!