In the summer of 1889, notwithstanding a widening opportunity for lectures in the East, I decided to make another trip to the West. In all my mother's letters I detected a tremulous undertone of sadness, of longing, and this filled me with unrest even in the midst of the personal security I had won. I could not forget the duty I owed to her who had toiled so uncomplainingly that I might be clothed and fed and educated, and so I wrote to her announcing the date of my arrival.
My friend, Dr. Cross, eager to see The Short-Grass Country which was a far-off and romantic territory to him, arranged to go with me. It was in July, and very hot the day we started, but we were both quite disposed to make the most of every good thing and to ignore all discomforts. I'm not entirely certain, but I think I occupied a sleeping car berth on this trip; if I did so it was for the first time in my life. Anyhow, I must have treated myself to regular meals, for I cannot recall being ill on the train. This, in itself, was remarkable.
Strange to say, most of the incidents of the journey between Boston and Wisconsin are blended like the faded figures on a strip of sun-smit cloth, nothing remains definitely distinguishable except the memory of our visit to my Uncle William's farm in Neshonoc, and the recollection of the pleasure we took in the vivid bands of wild flowers which spun, like twin ribbons of satin, from beneath the wheels of the rear coach as we rushed across the state. All else has vanished as though it had never been.
These primitive blossoms along the railroad's right-of-way deeply delighted my friend, but to me they were more than flowers, they were cups of sorcery, torches of magic incense. Each nodding pink brought back to me the sights and sounds and smells of the glorious meadows of my boyhood's vanished world. Every weed had its mystic tale. The slopes of the hills, the cattle grouped under the trees, all wrought upon me like old half-forgotten poems.
My uncle, big, shaggy, gentle and reticent, met us at the faded little station and drove us away toward the sun-topped "sleeping camel" whose lines and shadows were so lovely and so familiar. In an hour we were at the farm-house where quaint Aunt Maria made us welcome in true pioneer fashion, and cooked a mess of hot biscuit to go with the honey from the bees in the garden. They both seemed very remote, very primitive even to me, to my friend Cross they were exactly like characters in a story. He could only look and listen and smile from his seat in the corner.
William, a skilled bee-man, described to us his methods of tracking wild swarms, and told us how he handled those in his hives. "I can scoop 'em up as if they were so many kernels of corn," he said. After supper as we all sat on the porch watching the sunset, he reverted to the brave days of fifty-five when deer and bear came down over the hills, when a rifle was almost as necessary as a hoe, and as he talked I revived in him the black-haired smiling young giant of my boyhood days, untouched of age or care.
He was a poet, in his dreamy reticent way, for when next morning I called attention to the beauty of the view down the valley, his face took on a kind of wistful sweetness and a certain shyness as he answered with a visible effort to conceal his feeling—"I like it—No place better. I wish your father and mother had never left the valley." And in this wish I joined.
On the third day we resumed our journey toward Dakota, and the Doctor, though outwardly undismayed by the long hard ride and the increasing barrenness of the level lands, sighed with relief when at last I pointed out against the level sky-line the wavering bulk of the grain elevator which alone marked the wind-swept deserted site of Ordway, the end of our journey. He was tired.
Business, I soon learned, had not been going well on the border during the two years of my absence. None of the towns had improved. On the contrary, all had lost ground.
Another dry year was upon the land and the settlers were deeply disheartened. The holiday spirit of eight years before had entirely vanished. In its place was a sullen rebellion against government and against God. The stress of misfortune had not only destroyed hope, it had brought out the evil side of many men. Dissensions had grown common. Two of my father's neighbors had gone insane over the failure of their crops. Several had slipped away "between two days" to escape their debts, and even little Jessie, who met us at the train, brave as a meadow lark, admitted that something gray had settled down over the plain.