The Girl at the Halfway House, Emerson Hough [best summer books .TXT] 📗

his writing. Upon the table lay his whip, gloves, and hat, in exactly the same order as that which had been followed in the little chamber in the city. A strip of canvas made a carpet upon the hard earthen floor. A hanging cloth concealed a portion of the rear end of the tent. Such had been Battersleigh's quarters in many climes, under different flags, sometimes perhaps more luxurious, but nevertheless punctiliously neat, even when Fortune had left him servantless, as had happened now. Colonel Battersleigh as he wrote now and then looked out of the open door. His vision reached out, not across a wilderness of dirty roads, nor along a line of similar tents. There came to his ear no neighing of horses nor shouting of the captains, neither did there arise the din of the busy, barren city. He gazed out upon a sweet blue sky, unfretted by any cloud. His eye crossed a sea of faintly waving grasses. The liquid call of a mile-high mysterious plover came to him. In the line of vision from the tent door there could be seen no token of a human neighbourhood, nor could there be heard any sound of human life. The canvas house stood alone and apart. Battersleigh gazed out of the door as he folded his letter. "It's grand, just grand," he said. And so he turned comfortably to the feeding of his mice, which nibbled at his fingers intimately, as had many mice of many lands with Battersleigh. CHAPTER V THE TURNING OF THE ROAD

At the close of the war Captain Edward Franklin returned to a shrunken world. The little Illinois village which had been his home no longer served to bound his ambitions, but offered only a mill-round of duties so petty, a horizon of opportunities so restricted, as to cause in his mind a feeling of distress equivalent at times to absolute abhorrence. The perspective of all things had changed. The men who had once seemed great to him in this little world now appeared in the light of a wider judgment, as they really were—small, boastful, pompous, cowardly, deceitful, pretentious. Franklin was himself now a man, and a man graduated from that severe and exacting school which so quickly matured a generation of American youth. Tall, finely built, well set up, with the self-respecting carriage of the soldier and the direct eye of the gentleman, there was a swing in his step not commonly to be found behind a counter, and somewhat in the look of his grave face which caused men to listen when he spoke. As his hand had fitted naturally a weapon, so his mind turned naturally to larger things than those offered in these long-tilled fields of life. He came back from the war disillusionized, irreverent, impatient, and full of that surging fretfulness which fell upon all the land. Thousands of young men, accustomed for years to energy, activity, and a certain freedom from all small responsibility, were thrust back at once and asked to adjust themselves to the older and calmer ways of peace. The individual problems were enormous in the aggregate.

Before Franklin, as before many other young men suddenly grown old, there lay the necessity of earning a livelihood, of choosing an occupation. The paternal arm of the Government, which had guided and controlled so long, was now withdrawn. The young man must think for himself. He must choose his future, and work out his way therein alone and unsupported. The necessity of this choice, and the grave responsibility assumed in choosing, confronted and oppressed Edward Franklin as they did many another young man, whose life employment had not been naturally determined by family or business associations. He stood looking out over the way of life. There came to his soul that indefinite melancholy known by the young man not yet acquainted with the mysteries of life. Franklin had been taken away at the threshold of young manhood and crowded into a rude curriculum, which taught him reserve as well as self-confidence, but which robbed him of part of the natural expansion in experience which is the ordinary lot of youth. He had seen large things, and had become intolerant of the small. He wished to achieve life, success, and happiness at one assault, and rebelled at learning how stubborn a resistance there lies in that perpetual silent line of earth's innumerable welded obstacles. He grieved, but knew not why he grieved. He yearned, but named no cause.

To this young man, ardent, energetic, malcontent, there appeared the vision of wide regions of rude, active life, offering full outlet for all the bodily vigour of a man, and appealing not less powerfully to his imagination. This West—no man had come back from it who was not eager to return to it again! For the weak and slothful it might do to remain in the older communities, to reap in the long-tilled fields, but for the strong, for the unattached, for the enterprising, this unknown, unexplored, uncertain country offered a scene whose possibilities made irresistible appeal. For two years Franklin did the best he could at reading law in a country office. Every time he looked out of the window he saw a white-topped wagon moving West. Men came back and told him of this West. Men wrote letters from the West to friends who remained in the East. Presently these friends also, seized upon by some vast impulse which they could not control, in turn arranged their affairs and departed for the West. Franklin looked about him at the squat buildings of the little town, at the black loam of the monotonous and uninviting fields, at the sordid, set and undeveloping lives around him. He looked also at the white wagons moving with the sun. It seemed to him that somewhere out in the vast land beyond the Missouri there beckoned to him a mighty hand, the index finger of some mighty force, imperative, forbidding pause.

The letter of Battersleigh to his friend Captain Franklin fell therefore upon soil already well prepared. Battersleigh and Franklin had been friends in the army, and their feet had not yet wandered apart in the days of peace. Knowing the whimsicality of his friend, and trusting not at all in his judgment of affairs, Franklin none the less believed implicitly in the genuineness of his friendship, and counted upon his comradeship as a rallying point for his beginning life in the new land which he felt with strange conviction was to be his future abiding place. He read again and again the letter Battersleigh had written him, which, in its somewhat formal diction and informal orthography, was as follows:

"To Capt. Edw. Franklin, Bloomsbury, Ill.

"MY DEAR NED: I have the honour to state to you that I am safely arrived and well-established at this place, Ellisville, and am fully disposed to remain. At present the Railway is built no further than this point, and the Labourers under charge of the Company Engineers make the most of the population. There is yet but one considerable building completed, a most surprising thing to be seen in this wild Region. It is of stone and built as if to last forever. It is large as a Courthouse of one of your usual Towns, and might seem absurd in this country did it not suggest a former civilization instead of one yet to come. It is full large enough for any Town of several thousand people. This is the property of the Co. that is building the Ry. It is said that the Co. will equip it fully, so that the country round about may depend upon it for Rations.

"There is another building, intended also for an Hotel, but of a different sort. This is called the Cottage, and is much frequented by fellows of the lower sort, the Labourers and others now stopping in this vicinity. It is the especial rendezvous of many men concerned with the handling of Cattle. I must tell you that this is to be a great market for these Western Beeves. Great numbers of these cattle are now coming in to this country from the far South, and since the Ry. is yet unable to transport these Animals as they arrive there is good Numbers of them in the country hereabout, as well as many strange persons curiously known as Cowboys or Cow-Punchers, which the same I may call a purely Heathan sort. These for the most part resort at the Cottage Hotel, and there is no peace in the Town at this present writing.

"For myself I have taken entry upon one hundred and sixty Acres Govt. Land, and live a little way out from the Town. Here I have my quarters under tent, following example of all men, for as yet there are scarce a dozen houses within fifty Miles. I find much opportunity for studies to be presented to the London Times, which paper as you know I represent, and I prosecute with great hopes the business of the British American Colonization Society, of which corporation I am resident Agent.

"I have Chosen this point because it was the furtherest one yet reached by Rail. Back of this, clean to the Missouri River, new Towns have grown up in most wonderful fashion. I have been advised that it is highly desirable to be in at the beginning in this Country if one is to stay in the Hunt, therefore I have come to a Town which has just Begun. Believe me, dear Ned, it is the beginning of a World. Such chances are here, I am Sure as do not exist in any other Land, for behind this land is all the Richer and older Parts, which are but waiting to pour money and men hither so soon as the Ry. shall be Fully completed. I have heard of many men who have made Fortunes since the War. It is truly a rapid Land.

"I am persuaded, my dear boy, that this is the place for you to come. There are an Hundred ways in which one may earn a Respectable living, and I find here no Class Distinction. It is an extraordinary fact that no man and no profession ranks another here. One man is quite good as another.

"Of society I regret to say we can not as yet offer you much. There is yet but four women in the place and for the men a Part seem mostly busy consuming Whisky at the Cottage, at which I wonder, for I have found the Whisky very bad. Let this not dishearten you, for many things will change when the Ry. is completed. We are to have Shops here, and I understand this is to be the seat of the county. A year from now, as I am told, we shall have 2,000 Persons living here, and in five years this will be a City. Conceive the opportunity meantime. The Cattle business is bound to grow, and I am advised that all this land will Ultimately be farmed and prove rich as that through which I Past in coming out. You are welcome, my dear Ned, as I am sure you know, to half my blankets and rations during your stay here, however long same may be, and I most cordially invite you to come out and look over this Country, nor do I have the smallest doubt that it will seem to you quite as it does to me, and I shall hope that we make a Citizen of you.

"Above all is this a man's country. For sport it has no equal I have ever seen, and as you know I have visited some Parts of the World. The Buffaloes is to be found by Millions within a few miles of this point, and certain of the savidge Tribes still live but a short journey from this point, though now the Army has pretty much Reduced them. Antelopes there is all around in thousands, and many Wolves. It is, indeed, my boy, as I have told you, a country entirely new. I have travelled much, as you know, and am not so Young as yourself, but I must say to you that your friend Batty feels like a boy again. There is something Strange in this air. The sky is mostly clear, and the Air very