"Father," I bluntly said, "you've been chasing a will-o'-the-wisp. For fifty years you've been moving westward, and always you have gone from certainty to uncertainty, from a comfortable home to a shanty. For thirty years you've carried mother on a ceaseless journey—to what end? Here you are,—snowbound on a treeless plain with mother old and crippled. It's a hard thing to say but the time has come for a 'bout face. You must take the back trail. It will hurt, but it must be done."
"I can't do it!" he exclaimed. "I've never 'backed water' in my life, and I won't do it now. I'm not beaten yet. We've had three bad years in succession—we'll surely have a crop next year. I won't surrender so long as I can run a team."
"Then, let me tell you something else," I resumed. "I will never visit you on this accursed plain again. You can live here if you want to, but I'm going to take mother out of it. She shall not grow old and die in such surroundings as these. I won't have it—it isn't right."
At last the stern old Captain gave in, at least to the point of saying, "Well, we'll see. I'll come down next summer, and we'll visit William and look the ground over.—But I won't consider going back to stay till I've had a crop. I won't go back to the old valley dead-broke. I can't stand being called a failure. If I have a crop and can sell out I'll talk with you."
"Very well. I'm going to stop off at Salem on my way East and tell the folks that you are about to sell out and come back to the old valley."
This victory over my pioneer father gave me such relief from my gnawing conscience that my whole sky lightened. The thought of establishing a family hearth at the point where my life began, had a fine appeal. All my schooling had been to migrate, to keep moving. "If your crop fails, go west and try a new soil. If disagreeable neighbors surround you, sell out and move,—always toward the open country. To remain quietly in your native place is a sign of weakness, of irresolution. Happiness dwells afar. Wealth and fame are to be found by journeying toward the sunset star!" Such had been the spirit, the message of all the songs and stories of my youth.
Now suddenly I perceived the futility of our quest. I felt the value, I acknowledged the peace of the old, the settled. The valley of my birth even in the midst of winter had a quiet beauty. The bluffs were draped with purple and silver. Steel-blue shadows filled the hollows of the sunlit snow. The farmhouses all put forth a comfortable, settled, homey look. The farmers themselves, shaggy, fur-clad and well-fed, came into town driving fat horses whose bells uttered a song of plenty. On the plain we had feared the wind with a mortal terror, here the hills as well as the sheltering elms (which defended almost every roof) stood against the blast like friendly warders.
The village life, though rude and slow-moving, was hearty and cheerful. As I went about the streets with my uncle William—gray-haired old pioneers whose names were startlingly familiar, called out, "Hello, Bill"—adding some homely jest precisely as they had been doing for forty years. As young men they had threshed or cradled or husked corn with my father, whom they still called by his first name. "So you are Dick's boy? How is Dick getting along?"
"He has a big farm," I replied, "nearly a thousand acres, but he's going to sell out next year and come back here."