I could take only a perfunctory interest in the political game about me, and I felt little elation at the courteous request that I should take a seat in the speakers' stand, when the clans did finally gather for a grand struggle for place.
The meeting opened with O'mie's band playing "The Star-Spangled Banner." It brought the big audience to their feet, and the men on the platform stood up. I was the tallest one among them. Also I was least nervous, least anxious, and least important to that occasion. Perfunctorily, too, I listened to the speeches, hearing the grand old Republican party's virtues lauded, and the especial fitness of certain of its color-bearers extolled as of mighty men of valor, with "the burning question of the hour" and "the vital issue of the time" enlarged upon, and "the State's most pernicious evil" threatened with dire besetments. And through it all my mind was on the unprotected, scattered settlements of the Saline Valley, and the murdered children and the defenceless women, even now in the cruel slavery of Indian captivity.
I knew only a few people in the capital city and I looked at the audience with the indifference of a stranger who seeks for no familiar face. And yet, subconsciously, I felt the presence of some one who was watching me, some one who knew me well. Presently the master of ceremonies called for the gifted educator, Richard Tillhurst of Springvale. I knew he was in Topeka, but I had not hunted for him any more than he had sought me out. We mutually didn't need each other. And yet local pride is strong, and I led the hand-clapping that greeted his appearance. He was visibly embarrassed, and ultra-dignified. Education had a representative above reproach in him. Pompously, after the manner of the circumscribed instructor, he began, and for a limited time the travelling was easy. But he made the fatal error of keeping on his feet after his ideas were exhausted. He lost the trail and wandered aimlessly in the barren, trackless realms of thought, seeking relief and finding none, until at length in sheer embarrassment he forced himself to retreat to his seat. Little enthusiasm was expressed and failure was written all over his banner.
The next speaker was a politician of the rip-roaring variety who pounded the table and howled his enthusiasm, whose logic was all expressed in the short-story form, sometimes witty, sometimes far-fetched and often profane. He interested me least of all, and my mind abstracted by the Tillhurst feature went back again to the Plains. I could not realize what was going on when the politician had finished amid uproarious applause, and the chairman was introducing the next speaker, until I caught my father's name, coupled with lavish praise of his merits. There was a graceful folding of his mantle on the shoulders of "his gifted son, just out of Harvard, but a true child of Kansas, with a record for heroism in the war time, and a growing prominence in his district, and an altogether good-headed, good-hearted, and, the ladies all agree, good-looking young man, the handsome giant of the Neosho." And I found myself thrust to the front of the speakers' stand, with applause following itself, and O'mie, the mischievous rascal, striking off a few bars of "See, the Conquering Hero Comes!"
I was taken so completely by surprise that I thought the earth especially unkind not to open at once and let me in. It must have been something of my inheritance of my father's self-control, coupled with my life experience of having to meet emergencies quickly, which all the children of Springvale knew, that pulled me through. The prolonged cheering gave me a moment to get the mastery. Then like an inspiration came the thought to break away from the beaten path of local politics and to launch forth into a plea for larger political ideals. I cited the Civil War as a crucible, testing men. I did not once mention my father, but the company knew his proud record, and there were many present who had fought and marched and starved and bled beside him, men whom his genius and his kindness had saved from peril, even the peril of death. And then out of the fulness of a heart that had suffered, I pled for the lives and homes of the settlers on our Plains frontier. I pictured, for I knew how to picture, the anguish of soul an Indian raid can leave in its wake, and the duty we owe to the homes, our high privilege as strong men and guardians to care for the defenceless, and our opportunity to repay a part at least of the debt we owe to the Union soldier by giving a State's defence to these men, who were homesteading our hitherto unbroken, trackless plains, and building empire westward toward the baths of sunset.
The effort was so boyish, so unlike every other speech that had been made, and yet so full of a young man's honest zeal and profound convictions from a soul stirred to its very depths, that the audience rose to their feet at my closing words, and cheer followed cheer, making the air ring with sound.
When the meeting had finished, I found myself in the centre of a group of men who knew John Baronet and just wouldn't let his son get away without a handshake. I was flushed with the pleasure of such a reception and was doing my best to act well, when a man grasped my hand with a grip unlike any other hand I had ever felt, so firm, so full of friendship, and yet so undemonstrative, that I instinctively returned the clasp. He was a man of some thirty years, small beside me, and there was nothing unusual in his face or dress or manner to attract my attention. A stranger might not turn to him a second time in a crowd, unless they had once spoken and clasped hands.
"My name is Morton," he said. "I know your father, I knew him in the army and before, back in Massachusetts. I am from the Saline River country, and I came down here hoping to find the State more interested in the conditions out our way. You were the only speaker who thought of the needs of the settlers. There are terrible things being done right now."
He spoke so simply that a careless ear would not have detected the strength of the feeling back of the words.
"I'll tell my father I met you," I said cordially, "and I hope, I hope to heaven the captives may be found soon, and the Indians punished. How can a man live who has lost his wife, or his sweetheart, in that way?"