“Lite, boys, lite,” was his command, “and give your horses a good rubbin’ down, though it ain’t of much use, neither, nussin’ up such good for nothin’ but pullin’ beasts. Thar isn’t five miles an hour left in any one of them, and ef we catch the red-skins, we’ll have to travel faster than that by a considerable sight. But give them a good rubbin’ down, and, ef worst comes to worst, it will help them to get back to the train.”
“Then you think, Waltermyer, that there is little chance of overtaking them?” asked the anxious father.
“Yours, yes. And I might as well tell you the truth, stranger, now as any time. I’ve kept it back because I was rale sorry for you, and couldn’t find words soft enough. Kirk Waltermyer calls himself a man, but he has a woman’s heart about some things, and when he sees a fine old gray-headed chap like you a-weepin’ for a daughter, he can’t help thinkin’ of a sister he had once—a little blue-eyed darlin’, that went to sleep when the early snow-flakes were fallin’, and never woke again.”
The stout frontiersman drew a hand across his eyes to free them from the tears that swelled into them.
“God knows how much I love Esther, and—”
“Esther? Yes, I had almost forgotten; but the little child that the minister said had gone to heaven to be an angel—them war his own words, stranger—was named Esther. Est—little Est, I used to call her, and—but, stranger,” and his words were toned down into a deeply-breathed whisper, as if coming from the very bottom of his heart, “but, stranger, do you think a man that has lived the life I have can ever go thar?” his finger was pointed reverently upward as he spoke, and an anxious glance shone out through his tears.
“Heaven is ever in sight, my friend. It is as near to you here in the wilderness, as if you lived within the sound of church-going bells.”
“Stranger, I thank you.” He wrung the hand of Morse convulsively, and then continued: “Yes, stranger, Kirk Waltermyer, thanks you, and that is a thing he doesn’t often do, for he has lived with Diggers and Greasers until he has got to be a’most as unpolite as they are. I have often thought of this thing when ridin’ along alone over the wide perarers, but never had any schoolin’, and, therefore, couldn’t make up my mind. Sometimes, stranger, I have thought I heard that far-off bell tolling again, just as it did when they laid poor little Est in the ground. And then again, when campin’ by myself—when layin’ out nights, with nothin’ under me but the bare ground, and nothin’ over me but the starry blanket they call heaven, I have thought I could see her blue eyes looking down upon me, and have heard her whisper, just as she used to do, ‘Now I lay me down.’ I’ve forgotten the rest, stranger, but I always try to be better afterward, for poor little Est’s sake.”
There was something so pitiful in the sorrow of the hardy frontiersman, so unusual and different from any that he had before seen, that Miles Morse felt that the accustomed common expressions of condolence would be entirely out of place, and wisely refrained from giving them utterance. Ah, when such men weep—when their strong natures are melted into tears, be sure the grief is deep, and far too sacred for human cure. Believe, full surely, that there is a spot somewhere, concealed though it be from public gaze, a sacred cleft in which a tiny flower is budding for heaven.
Incompetent to give sympathy, there remained but one way to give Waltermyer relief, that of changing the subject, and this Morse hastened to do, believing that his volatile nature would soon recover. And in this he was right. A prairie life is one of constant changes and excitement. Few are the moments that can be spared from watchfulness, amid its ever-present danger, to give to regret. The tear must be dashed from the eye to sight the deadly rifle, and the hand that is performing the last acts of affection for the departed must turn hastily away for self-protection. It is a school, the like of which there is not elsewhere on earth, for training men to be self-reliant, brave to recklessness, scornful of privation, uncaring for hardship, and steady and unquailing in the hour of strife. Turn to the blood-written records of Henry, Donelson, Pittsburg Landing, and read there the proof of the matchless daring, unflinching bravery, and almost hopeless victories won by our frontiersmen—the hardy, prairie-nurtured and trained gladiators of the West.