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"I may as well let you know now why I can't be known in this," Thomas Smith said smoothly, even if the same gray hue did flit like a shadow a second time across his countenance a thing that did not escape the shrewd eye of Darley Champers this time. "Wyker is pitted against Jacobs. You are after Asher Aydelot's scalp, if you can get it. I must get Jim Shirley, fair or foul."
There was only a little ripple over a stony bed now, with shallow pools lost in the deeper basins here and there. The grasses lay flat and brown on the level prairie about it. Down the shaded valley a light cool breeze poured steadily. Beyond the stream a gentle slope reached far away to the foot of the three headlands the purple notches of Thaine Aydelot's childhood fancies. The day was ideal.
An' a copy of old Francis Aydelot's will. What's the value of that, d' you reckon? Also to be showed to Miss Leigh Shirley. An' here's what?" Darley Champers opened the last envelope and began to read. He stopped suddenly and gave a long surprised whistle. Beautiful as the morning was, the man laid down the papers, carefully locked both doors and drew down the front blinds.
"Oh, Leigh, it is no matter what our forefathers do they were all a bad lot if we go back far enough. It's what we do that counts. It's what I do as Thaine Aydelot, not as Asher Aydelot's son, that I must stand or fall by. It's how far we win our wilderness, little girl, not the wilderness our fathers won or lost." Thaine was sitting beside Leigh now, under the perfumy white honeysuckle blossoms.
We wait the chicken and plum pudding, Host Shirley." Jim's skill as a cook had not decreased since the day when he prepared Asher Aydelot's wedding supper, and the three men who sat together at that day's meal took large enjoyment in this quiet hour together. "I have a letter for you, Shirley," the doctor said at last.
That winter Jane Aydelot's hair turned white, but the pink bloom of her cheeks and the light of her clear gray eyes made her a sweet-faced woman still, whose loveliness grew with the years. The kiss of the same October breezes was on the Kansas prairie with the hazy horizon and the infinite beauty of wide, level landscapes, overhung by the infinite beauty of blue, tender skies.
Not since the night Darley Champers herded us into the schoolhouse and blew a boom down our throats through a goosequill," Cyrus Bennington declared. "See that black thing away across the prairie east of Aydelot's grove. Wait till the moon gets out from that cloud. Now!" Todd Stewart directed the eyes of all to a tall black object distinct in the moonlight.
I have come to see at last through Asher Aydelot's eyes that wars in any cause are short-lived, and, even with a Christian soldiery, very brutal; that after the wars come the empire-makers, who really conquer, and that the man who patiently wins from the soil its hundredfold of increase may be a king among men.
I never look at Aydelot's spreading acres of wheat increasing in area every year without wondering why the Lord let me be such a fool." "Well, you've spent a lot of days in an easy chair in the shade of a county office since then while I was driving a reaper in the hot sunshine," Asher insisted. "You are the strongest man here now, for all your farm work, Aydelot," John Jacobs asserted.
Thaine put his arm about her and drew her close to him as he said: "Then we'll go and build a house on the Purple Notches, a purple velvet house with gold knobs, and all that yellow prairie away to the west that was only grass land four years ago we'll turn to wheat fields like Asher Aydelot's here. John Jacobs was holding that ground for somebody like you and me. We'll buy it of his estate.
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