Lahoma

CHAPTER XII

THE BIG WORLD

He did not come again. Lahoma used to go to the hill-island, which she called Turtle Hill because the big flattened rocks looked like turtles that had crawled up out of the cove to sun themselves; among these turtles she would lie, watching the open mouth of the mountain horseshoe in the vain hope that Wilfred would appear from around the granite wall. Occasionally she descended to the plain and scanned the level world, but it was pleasanter to watch from the cove because one never knew, while in that retreat, who might be coming along the range. On the plain, there were no illusions.

Lahoma courted illusions. And when she knew that Wilfred Compton had severed connections with Old Man Walker she merely exchanged one hope, one dream, for another. The opportunity to learn about the big world was withdrawn; but the anticipation of one day meeting Wilfred again was as strong as ever. She made no secret of this expectation.

Bill Atkins sought to dismiss it effectually. "You don't know about the big world, Lahoma," he declared, "if you think people meet up with each other after they've once lost touch. If all this part of America was blotted out of existence, people in the East wouldn't miss any ink out of the ink-bottle."

Lahoma tossed her head. "Maybe the world IS big," she conceded. "But if Wilfred isn't big enough to make himself seen in it when I go a-looking, I don't care whether I meet him again or not. When I'm in the big world, I expect to deal only with big people."

"I saw no bigness about HIM," Bill cried slightingly.

"If he isn't big enough to make himself seen," Lahoma serenely returned, "I won't never—"

"You won't ever—" Bill corrected.

"I won't ever have to wear specs for strained eyes," Lahoma concluded, smiling at Bill as if she knew why he was as he was, and willingly took him so because he couldn't help himself.

It was Brick who heard about Wilfred's adventures on leaving the Red River ranch, and as all three sat outside the cabin in the dusk of evening, he retailed them as gathered from a recent trip to the corral. That was a strange story unfolded to Lahoma's ears, a story rich with the romance of the great West, wild in its primitive strivings and thrilling in its realizations of countless hopes. The narrative lost nothing in the telling, for Brick Willock understood the people and the instincts that moved them, and though Wilfred Compton might differ from all in his motives and plans, he shared with all the same hardships, the same spur to ambition.

It was now ten years since the discovery had been made that in the western part of Indian Territory were fourteen million acres that had never been assigned to the red man and which, therefore, were public land, subject to homestead settlement. As long as the western immigrants could choose among the rich prairie-lands of Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Dakota and Kansas—and the choice was open to all, following the agreement of the plains tribes to retire to reservations,—it was not strange that the unassigned lands of Indian Territory should have escaped notice, surrounded as they were by the Cherokee Strip, the Osage and Creek countries, the Chickasaw Nation, the Wichita, Cado, Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes.

But other public lands were now scarce, or less inviting, and as far back as 1879, when Lahoma was five years old, colonies had formed in Kansas City, in Topeka and in Texas, to move upon the Oklahoma country. The United States troops had dispersed the "boomers," but in the following year the indefatigable Payne succeeded in leading a colony into the very heart of the coveted land. It was in order to escape arrest—for again the United States cavalry had descended on settlers—that several wagons, among them that of Gledware's, had driven hastily toward the Panhandle, to come to grief at the hands of ruffians from No-Man's Land.

As Brick Willock told of Payne's other attempts to colonize the Oklahoma country, of his arrests, of his attempts to bring his various cases to the trial, she felt that Willock was, in a way, dealing with her personal history, for had she not been named Lahoma in honor of that country which her step-father had seen only to loose? Time and again the colonists swarmed over the border, finding their way through Indian villages and along desolate trails to the land that belonged to the public, but was enjoyed only by the great cattlemen; as many times, they were driven from their newly-claimed homes by federal troops, not without severity, and their leaders were imprisoned.

But, at last, April the twenty-second, 1889, had been appointed as the day on which the Oklahoma country was to be opened up to settlement, and it was to meet this event that Wilfred Compton had left Greer County. He was a unit in that immense throng that waited impatiently for the hour of noon—a countless host, stretching along the north on the boundary of the Cherokee Strip, on the south, at the edge of the Cherokee Nation; on the east, along the Kickapoo and Pottawatomie reservations; and on the west, blackening the extremity of the Cheyenne and Arapaho countries. He was one of those who, at the discharge of the carbines of the patrolling cavalrymen, joined in the deafening shout raised by men of all conditions and from almost every state in the Union—a shout as of triumph over the fulfillment of a ten-years' dream. And, leaning forward on his pony, he was one of the army of conquest that burst upon the desert, on foot, on horseback, and in vehicles of every description, in the mad rush for homes in a land that had never known the incense of the hearth or the civilizing touch of the plow.

At noon, a wilderness, at night, a land of tents, and on the morrow, a settled country of furrowed fields. "Pioneer work is awful quick, nowadays!" grumbled Bill Atkins, as Brick concluded. "It wasn't so in my time. Up there in the Oklahoma country, fifty years have been squeezed into a week's time—it's like a magician making a seed grow and sprout and blossom right before the audience. Lucky I came to Greer County, Texas—I don't guess IT'LL ever be anything but sand and a blow."

"It's a great story," Brick declared with enthusiasm. "I reckon it's the greatest story that America can put out, in the pioneering line. There they had everything in twenty-four hours that used to wear out our ancestors: Injuns, unbroken land, no sign of life for hundreds of miles—and just a turn of the hand and cities is a-coming up out of the ground, and saloons and churches is rubbing shoulders, and there's talk of getting out newspapers. What do you think of it, honey?"

Lahoma was sitting in grave silence, her hands clasped in her lap. She turned slowly and looked at Willock. "Brick, I'm disappointed."

"Which?" asked Willock, somewhat taken aback. "Where?"

"In him—in Wilfred."

"As how so?"

"Going into that wilderness-life, instead of taking his place in the world!"

"Well, honey if he hadn't come to THIS wilderness, you'd never of saw him."

"Yes—but he wasn't settled, and now he's settled in it. Is that the way to be a man? There's all those other people to do the thing he's doing. Then what's the use of him?"

"Ain't we in the same box?"

"Yes, and that's why I mean to get out of it, some day. But it's different with him. He's chosen his box, and gone in, and shut the lid on himself! I'm disappointed in him. I've been thinking him a real man. I guess I'm still to see what I'm looking for," added Lahoma, shaking her head.

"We'll let it go at that," muttered Bill who was anxious to turn Lahoma's mind from thoughts of Wilfred. "We'll just go ahead and look for new prospects."

"Not till I make a remark," said Willock, laying aside his pipe. "Honey, do yon know what I mean by a vision? It calls for a big vision to take in a big person, and you ain't got it. Maybe it wasn't meant for women, or at least a girl of fifteen to see further than her own foot-tracks, so no blame laid and nobody judged, according. If you don't see nothing in that army of settlers going into a raw land and falling to work to make it bloom like the rose, a-setting out to live in solitude for years that in due time the world may be richer by a great territory, why, you ain't got a big vision. I've got it, for I was born in the West, and I've lived all my life, peaceable and calm, right out here or hereabouts. You've got to breathe western air to get the big vision. You've got to see towns rise out of the turf over night and bust into cities before the harvest-fields is ripe, to know what can be did when men is free, not hampered by set-and-bound rules as holds 'em down to the ways of their fathers. Back East, folks is straining themselves to make over, and improve, and polish up what they found ready-to-hand—but here out West, we creates. It takes a big vision to see the bigness of the West, and you can't get no true idee by squinting at the subject."

Lahoma did not reply, and Bill feared that under the conviction of her friend's eloquence, she had begun to idealize the efforts of Wilfred Compton. He need not have been afraid. To her imagination, "big people" were not living in dugouts, or tents, far from civilization; "big people" were going to the opera every night, and riding in splendid carriages along imposing boulevards every day. Brick and Bill had contrived to live as well as they desired from profits on skins obtained in the mountains and the small tract of ground they had cultivated in a desultory manner had done little beyond supplying themselves with vegetables and the horses with some extra feed. She had no great opinion of agriculture; and though she had taken part in planting and hoeing with a pleasurable zest, she had never entertained herself with the thought that she was engaged in a great work. As to dugouts, they had no place in her dreams of the future. Since Wilfred had chosen to handicap himself with the same limitations that bound her, even the thought of him was to be banished from her world, banished absolutely.

Her day-dreams did not cease, but became more dreamy, more unreal, since the hero of her fancies, for whom she now had no flesh-and-blood prototype, was suggested only by her moods and her books. As the sun-clear days of maidenhood melted imperceptibly into summer glow and winter spaces, the memory of Wilfred's face and voice sometimes surprised her at unexpected turns of solitary musings. But the face grew less defined, the voice lost its distinctive tone, as the years passed uninterruptedly by.

"I reckon it ain't right," said Brick Willock to Bill Atkins as they went one morning to examine their traps before Lahoma was astir, "to keep our little gal to ourselves as we're doing. You're getting old, Bill, awful old—"

"Well, damn it," growled Bill, "I guess I don't have to be told!"

"You ain't very long for this world, Bill, not in the ordinary course of nature. And when I've laid you to rest under the rock-pile, Lahoma ain't going to find the variety in me that she now has in the two of us. Besides which, I'm in the fifties myself, and them is halves of hundreds."

"Yes," Bill growled, "and give Lahoma time, she'll die, too. Nothing but the mountain'll be left to look out on the plains. Lord, Brick, who do you reckon'll be living in that cove, when we three are dead and gone?"

"Guess I'll be worrying about something else, then."

"Do you reckon," pursued Bill, in an unwonted tone of mellowness, "that those who come to live in our dugout will ever imagine what happy hours we've passed there, just sitting around quiet and enjoying ourselves and one another?"

"They wouldn't imagine YOU was enjoying of yourself, not if they was feeding their eyes on you every day. But I'm awful bothered about Lahoma. I tell you, it ain't right to keep her shut up as in a cage. Can't you see she's pining for high society such as I ain't got it in me to supply, and you are too cussed obstinate to display?"

"I guess that's so." Bill drew himself stiffly up by the tree above—they were ascending the wooded gully that extended from base to mountain-top.

"Well, what's the hurry? She's only seventeen years old."

"Yes, she was only seventeen years old, two years ago; but she's nineteen, now."

Bill Atkins sank upon a rock at the foot of a bristling cedar. "Nineteen! Who, LAHOMA? Then where've I been all the time?"

"You've been a-traveling along at a pretty fast clip toward your last days, that's where you've been. Just look at yourself! Ain't you always careful in making your steps as if scared of breaking something? And now, you're out of breath!"

"It was knocked out by the thought of her being so old—but I guess you're right. Well, I wouldn't call her life caged-up. The settlers have been moving in pretty steadily, and she has friends amongst all the families where there's women-folks. She has her own pony, and is gone more than suits me; and although there's no young man disposable, we ain't fretting about that, nor her neither."

"I used to think she might be foolish about Wilfred Compton—but Lahoma, she ain't foolish about nothing. Nevertheless, Bill, it ain't right. Settlers is settlers, and what she yearns for is the big world. I would long since of took her out to see it, but dassn't from a liability to be catched up for divers deeds that was unlawfully charged to me in times past. You could have guided her along the city trails, but was too cussed obstinate."

"She's your cousin," retorted Bill, "and it wasn't for me to act her guardian. Besides, did you want to lose her? You couldn't take Lahoma where she'd be seen and known, and expect to get her back again. Maybe it isn't exactly fair to keep her boarded up—but the times are changing all that, and sorry am I to see it. Do you know, Brick, I once thought you and me and Lahoma could just live here in the cove till time was no more, reading our books, and smoking our pipes, and taking peaceful morning trips like this—to see whether we'd caught a coyote in our traps, or a bobcat, or a skunk."

"Yes, that's all right for us; but Lahoma ain't smoking no pipe, nor is her interest in skunks such as ours."

"Just so—but see how Greer County is getting settled up—that's what's going to save us, Brick—civilization is coming to Lahoma, she won't have to go out gunning after it."

"Of course I've thought of that. I ain't got your grammar, but my mind don't have to wait to let in an idea after it's put its clothes on. Maybe they comes in nothing but a nightshirt, but I ain't ever knowed YOU to think of nothing yet, that I hadn't entertained in some fashion. Of course, civilization is a-creeping up to the mountain, and I reckon by the time Lahoma is my age it'll be playing an organ in church. But she's at the age that calls for quick work—she's got the rest of her life to settle down in. Most all of a person's life is spent in settling and it's befitting to lay in the foundation aforetime. Look at that dear girl in The Children of the Abbey, all them love-passages and the tears she sheds—she was being a young woman! What would that noble book of been had that lovely creature been shut up in a cove till nineteen year of age? Is Lahoma going to have a chance like that amongst these settlers? Will she ever hear that high talk, that makes your flesh sort of creep with pride in your race when you read it aloud?"

"Do you want Lahoma to have a lover, Brick Willock?"

"Bill, if he is fit, I say she ought to have a chance."

"And where are you going to find the man?"

"I'm going to help Lahoma find him. I'm like you, Bill, I hates that lover like a snake this minute, though I ain't no idea who, where, or what he is, or may be. I hates him—but I ain't going to stand in Lahoma's way. No, sir, I 'low to meet civilization half-way. There it is—look!"

Willock stood erect and pointed toward the plain, where perhaps twenty tents had been pitched within the last two weeks. Bill gave an unwilling glance, shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, and resumed progress up the difficult defile.

Willock continued: "Two weeks ago, there wasn't nothing there but naked sand. Now there's three saloons, a hardware store, a grocery, a bank—all of 'em under canvas—and the makings of a regular town. Right out there in the broiling sun! Carloads of lumber and machinery is on its way, and the stage-coach will be putting off mail there before long. That's how civilization is a-seeking out our little gal. But I means to meet it halfway."

"Oh, come on, don't say anything more about it—when I look at those tents I can't breathe freely. What do you gamble on—a skunk, or a coyote, in the traps?"

"'Tain't them tents that's seeping your breath, it's pure unalloyed age. Yes, sir, I means to meet civilization half-way. I've already been prospecting. There's a party over there in Tent City that's come on from Chicago just from the lust of seeing pioneer-life at first hand, people that haven't no idee of buying or settling—it's a picnic to them. They're camping out, watching life develop—and what's life-and-death earnestness to others is just amusement to them. That there's a test of people high-up. Real folks in the big world don't do nothing, it takes all their time just being folks. You and me could bag a dozen polecats whilst a fine lady was making her finger-nails ready for the day. And these Chicago people is that kind."

"Do you think they'll make friends with Lahoma just to suit you? The kind of people you're talking about are more afraid of getting to know strangers than they are of being set on by wildcats."

"They'll make friends with Lahoma, all right, and invite her home with 'em. That's the way I 'low to set her out in the big world. Lahoma don't know my plans and neither do they, but I was never a man to make my plans knowed when I was going to hold up people. Of course I'M speaking in a figger, but in a figger I may say I've held up several, in my day."

"THEY won't invite Lahoma to Chicago, not if they are the right sort."

"They will invite Lahoma to Chicago," retorted Willock firmly, "and they are the right sort. Wait and see; and when you have saw, render due honor to your Uncle Brick."