Caleb Wright: A Story of the West

by John Habberton

XXII—SOME WAYS OF THE WEST

CALEB and the corn-meal sailed for Europe, but first Caleb wired the address of a firm that would do the fair thing with a car-load of walnut stumps. Miss Truett's brother Harold arrived at Claybanks soon afterward, and when he learned accidentally that Philip wished some walnut stumps extracted and that the land was stoneless, he offered to do the work quickly and cheaply, and his devices so impressed occasional beholders, accustomed to burning and digging as the only means of removing stumps, that the young man soon made several stump-extracting contracts, for which he was to be paid—in land. Meanwhile, from the back of Philip's horse he studied the swamp lands near the town; then he went over the ground with a level, and afterward reported to Philip that for the trifling sum of three thousand dollars, added to right of way for a main ditch, which the farmers should be glad to give free of cost, the swamp lands might be converted into dry, rich farming land.

"This county couldn't raise three thousand dollars in cash," Philip replied, "even if you could guarantee that the main ditch would flow liquid gold."

"If that is the case," said the young man, who had nothing to lose and everything to gain, "and as labor and farm tools are almost the only requirements,—except some cash for my services,—why not form an association of all the owners of swamp lands, determine the share of each in the cost, according to the amount of benefit he'll get, and let all, if they wish, pay in labor at a specified day-price per man, team, plough, or scraper, and go to work at once? Such things have been done. A farmer who hasn't enough working force on his place can generally hire a helper or two, on credit, against crop-selling time. This is just the time to do it, too; for a lot of farmers in the vicinity who have swamp land will have nothing especial to do, now that their winter wheat is cut, till the thrashing machine comes to them, and others are through with heavy work until corn ripens."

"I begin to see daylight," said Philip. "But, young man, how did you get all these practical wrinkles in New York?"

"By listening to men who've been in the business many years. Most of them have had to take scrub jobs once in a while. But please secure the right of way at once for the main ditch; that's where the work should begin. I shouldn't wonder if you could get a lot of volunteer labor from the villagers, if you go about it rightly; for your Doctor Taggess believes that to drain the swamps would be to greatly lessen the number and violence of malarial attacks,—perhaps banish malaria entirely,—and I suppose you know what it means for a town, in certain parts of the West, to have a no-malaria reputation. It means manufactures, and better prices for building sites, and perhaps the beginnings of a city."

"Mr. Truett, I shouldn't wonder if you've struck just the place to exercise your professional wits."

"I hope so. I'll soon find out, if you'll arrange that combination of land-owners, and secure that right of way. Now is the golden time, while the swamp land has least water and the earth is easiest handled."

Doctor Taggess, summoned for consultation on the drainage subject, promised to make an earnest speech at any general meeting that might be called; so Philip hurried about among the merchants, town and county officials, and other local magnates, and arranged for an anti-malaria, city-compelling mass-meeting at the court-house at an early date.

Political jealousies and personal dog-in-the-manger feeling are quite as common in small towns as in great ones, but the possibility of a village becoming a city, and farm property being cut up into building-lots at high prices, is the one darling hope of every little village in the far West, and at the right time—or even at the wrong one—it may be depended upon to weld all discordant elements into one great enthusiastic force. When the meeting was held, Doctor Taggess made a strong plea for the proposed improvement, from the standpoint of the public health; the young engineer read a mass of statistics on the amazing fertility of drained swamp lands, and announced his willingness to wait for his own pay until his work proved itself effective; and the county clerk told of scores of Western villages, settled no longer ago than Claybanks, that had become cities. The upshot was that the improvement plan was adopted without a dissenting voice, and the right of way was secured at the meeting itself, as was also a volunteer force to begin work at once on the main ditch.

"Truett," said Philip, after the meeting adjourned, and he, the engineer, and Doctor Taggess walked away together, "unless you've made some mistake in your figures, this enterprise will make you a great man in this section of country."

"That's what I wish it to do," was the reply, "for I must make a permanent start somewhere."

"Your offer to defer asking for pay till the drainage should prove successful," said the Doctor, "helped the movement amazingly, and it also made everybody think you a very fair man."

"Yes? Well, that's why I made it"

"H'm!" said Philip, "you've the stuff that'll make a successful Westerner of you."

"That's what I want to be."

"I don't think you'll regret it," said the Doctor; "for much though I sometimes long to return to the East, and plainly though I see the poverty and limitations of this part of the country, the West is the proper starting-place for a young man, unless he chances to have abundant capital. Even then he might do worse; for, of course, the newer the country, the greater the number of natural resources to be discovered and developed. The people, too, are interested in everything new, and stand together, to a degree unknown at the East, in favor of any improvements that are possible. They do their full share of grumbling and complaining, to say nothing of their full share of suffering, but there's scarcely one of them who doesn't secretly hope and expect to become rich some day, or at least to be part of a rich community; and they're not more than half wrong, for railways and manufactures must reach us, in the ordinary course of events, and all our people expect to see them. Let me give you an illustration. A year or two ago I drove out one Sunday to see a family of my acquaintance, living in a specially malarious part of the county, who were out of quinine—a common matter of forgetfulness, strange though it may seem. As I neared the house, I heard singing, of a peculiar, irregular kind. As 'twas Sunday, I supposed a neighborhood meeting was in progress. But there wasn't. One of the hundreds of projected Pacific railways had been surveyed through the farm a few months before. On the day of my call three of the seven members of the family were shaking with chills; so to keep up their spirits they were singing, to the music of a hymn-tune, some verses written and printed in the West long ago, and beginning:—

"'The great Pacific railroad
To California, hail!
Bring on the locomotive,
Lay down the iron rail.'

There's Western spirit for you—fighting a chill with hopes of a railway that thus far was only a line of stakes and indefinite promises! Such people are worth tying to; their like cannot be found in any other part of the country."

The work at the main ditch continued without interruption, thanks to a month almost rainless, until the ditch was completed to the creek at one end and to the swamps at the other. Then the main lines in the swamps themselves were opened, one by one, and the swamps became dry for the first time in their history, though small laterals, some to drain springs, others to guard against the accidents of a rainy season, were still to be cut by private enterprise. But the people of Claybanks and vicinity were delighted to so great an extent that dreams of a golden future would not satisfy them, so they planned a monster celebration and procession, and there seemed no more appropriate route of march than up one side of the main ditch and down the other, with a halt midway for speeches and feasting.

The happiest man in all the town—happiest in his own estimation, at least—was Philip; for within a few days he had learned that the despised mining stock which was his only material inheritance from his father had suddenly become of great value. He had sent it to New York to be sold, and learned that the result was almost ten thousand dollars, which had been deposited to his credit at a bank which he had designated. At last he had something wholly his own, should sickness or possible business reverses ever make him wish to abandon his inheritance from his uncle. Grace shared his feeling, and was correspondingly radiant and exuberant, for ten thousand dollars in cash made Philip a greater capitalist than any other man within fifty miles. He could buy real estate in his own right, to be in readiness for the coming "boom" of Claybanks; he could become a banker, manufacturer, perhaps even a railway president, so potent would ten thousand dollars be in an impecunious land.

"You're an utter Westerner—a wild, woolly-brained Westerner," said Philip, after listening to some of his wife's rose-tinted rhapsodies over the future.

"I suspect I am, and I don't believe you're a bit better," was the reply. "Tis in the air; we can't help it."

On the day of the celebration Grace gave herself up to fun with her camera, for which she had ordered many plates in anticipation of the occasion; for never before had there been such an opportunity to get pictures of all the county's inhabitants in their Sunday clothes. She was hurrying from group to group, during the great feast at the halt, when Pastor Grateway, who was looking westward, said:—

"Mrs. Somerton, I've heard that you're fond of chasing whirlwinds with your camera. There comes one that looks as if it might make a good picture, if you could get near enough to it."

"Isn't it splendid!" Grace exclaimed. "Doctor Taggess, do look at this magnificent whirlwind!"

The Doctor looked; then he frowned, looked about him, and muttered:—

"At last!"

"Why, Doctor, what is the matter?"

"Nothing, I hope. It may go clear of us. Listen—carefully. Come apart from the crowd; my ears are not as keen as they used to be. Do you hear any sound in that direction?"

"Nothing—except buzz-buzz, as if a hive of bees were swarming."

"I'm glad of it; it mayn't be so bad as I feared. I'm not acquainted with the things, except through common report. Where's Mr. Truett? He had field-glasses slung from his shoulder this morning. Here, you boys!" the Doctor shouted to several youngsters who were playing leap-frog near by, "scatter—find Mr. Truett—the man who bossed the big ditch, and ask him to come here—right away!"

"Doctor!" exclaimed Grace. "Do tell me what you fear."

"Tell me first about that noise. Is it any louder?"

"Yes. It sounds now like a distant railway train. What does it mean?"

"It means a cyclone. How bad a one, we can't tell until it has passed. If it keeps its present course, it will pass north of the crowd, but I am afraid it will strike the town."

By this time many of the people had noticed the great cloud in the west, and soon the entire assemblage heard a deep, continuous roar. Then men, women, and children began to run, for the cloud increased in blackness and noise at a terrifying rate, but the Doctor shouted:—

"Stay where you are! Get to the windward of the platform, and wagons and horses! Pass the word around—quick! Ah, Mr. Truett! What do you see?"

"All sorts of things," said Truett, from behind his field-glasses. "Lightning—and tree boughs—and corn-stalks—and boards—and something that looks like a roof. Also, oceans of rain. We're in for a soaking unless we hurry back to town."

"The soaking's the safer," said the Doctor, adjusting the proffered glasses to his own eyes. "Ah, 'tis as I feared: it is tearing its way through the town. There goes the court-house roof—and the church steeple." Abruptly returning the glasses, the Doctor shouted as the great cloud passed rapidly to the northward and rain fell suddenly in torrents:—

"Men—only men—hurry to town, and keep close to me when you get there." Then he found his horse and buggy and led a wild throng of wagons, horsemen, and footmen, behind whom, despite the Doctor's warning, came the remaining components of the procession, and up to heaven went an appalling chorus of screams, prayers, and curses, for the word "cyclone"—the word most dreaded in the West since the Indian outbreaks ended—had passed through the crowd.

The outskirts of the town were more than a mile distant, and before they were reached, the throng saw that several buildings were burning, though the rainfall seemed sufficient to extinguish any ordinary conflagration. Philip, who was riding with several other men in a farm wagon, saw, when the wagon turned into the main street, that one of the burning buildings was his own store. Apparently it had been first unroofed and crushed by the storm, for all that remained of it and its contents seemed to be in a pit that once was the cellar, and from which rose a little flame and a great column of smoke and steam.

"Let's save people first; property afterward!" he replied to the men in the wagon when they offered to remain with him and fight the fire. Afterward he received for his speech great credit which was utterly undeserved, for after an instant of angry surprise at his loss he was conscious of a strange, wild elation. A week earlier, such a blow would have been a serious reverse—perhaps ruin; now, thanks to his long-forgotten mining stock, he was fairly well off and could start anew elsewhere, entirely by himself and unhampered by conditions. He had tried hard to accept Claybanks as his home for life, and thought he had succeeded; but now, through the gloom of the storm, the outer world, especially all parts out of the cyclone belt, seemed delightfully inviting.

"Where'll we find the people to save?" This question, from a man in the wagon, recalled Philip's better self, and he replied quickly:—

"In the path of the storm, and wherever Doctor Taggess is."

It soon became evident that the cyclone path had been quite narrow,—not much wider, indeed, than the business street,—but the whirling funnel had gone diagonally over the town and thus destroyed or injured more than forty houses, the débris of which did much additional injury. Philip and the men passed rapidly from house to house along the new, rude clearing, and searched the ruins for dead and wounded. Fortunately almost all of the inhabitants of the town had taken part in the celebration. Those who remained were numerous enough to provide many fractures and bruises to be treated by Doctor Taggess and his corps of volunteer nurses, but apparently not one in the town had been killed outright. To obtain this gratifying assurance required long hours of searching far into the night, for some missing persons were found far from their homes, and with extraordinary opinions as to how their change of location had been effected.

Philip worked as faithfully as any one until all the missing were accounted for and all the houseless ones fed and sheltered. Grace had given all possible help to many women and children by taking them into her own home. At midnight, when husband and wife met for the first time since the storm, they reminded each other of what might have happened had there been no celebration and they had been in the store and unconscious of the impending disaster. Together they looked at their own ruins, for which Philip had hired a watchman, so that he might be roused if the smouldering fire should gain headway and threaten the house.

"It might have been worse," Grace said. "We have a roof to shelter us."

"Yes, and we may select a new roof elsewhere in the world, if we like. Perhaps the cyclone was, for us, a blessing in disguise—eh?"

Grace did not answer at once, though her husband longed for a reply in keeping with his own feelings. He placed his arm around his wife, drew her slowly toward the house, and said:—

"You deserve a better sphere of life than this, dear girl. You know well that you would never have accepted this if we had not foolishly committed ourselves to it without forethought or knowledge. Your energy and sympathy will keep you fairly contented almost anywhere, but you shouldn't let them make you unjust to yourself. For my own part, I've done no complaining, but my life here has been full of drudgery and anxiety. Now it seems as though deliverance had been doubly provided for both of us—first by the sale of our mining stock, and to-day through the destruction of our principal business interest. We can injure no one by going away; if the property reverts to the charities which were to be the legatees in case I declined, Caleb will be provided for, even if he, too, chooses to leave Claybanks. What shall it be—stay, or go? Dear girl, there are tears in your eyes—they are saying 'Go!' Let me kiss them away, in token of thanks."

"Tears sometimes tell shocking fibs," said Grace, trying to appear cheerful. "I wouldn't trust my eyes, or my tongue, or even my heart to decide anything to-night, after such a day. There's but one place in the whole world I shall ever care to be, after this, and that is in your arms—close to your heart."

"And that is so far away, and so hard to reach!" said Philip, forgetting in an instant the day and all pertaining to it.