Eighteen months later only two men were left in the Grass River valley, Aydelot and Shirley. The shorter trail as the crow flies between their claims was marked by a golden thread of sunflowers. At the third bend of the winding stream a gentle ripple of ground rose high enough to hide the cabin lights from each other that otherwise might have given a neighborly comfort to the two lone settlers.
Shirley’s cabin stood on a tiny swell of ground, mark of a one-time island, set in a wide bend in the river that was itself a natural fireguard for most of the circle of the premises.
The house was snug as a squirrel’s nest. Before it was a strip of white clover, as green and fresh looking as if it were on the banks of Clover Creek in Ohio. Above the door a plain board bore the one word, “Cloverdale.”
Jim Shirley stood watching Asher coming down the trail against the wind, followed by the big shepherd dog, Pilot, who had bounded off to meet him.
“Hello! How did you get away on a day like this?” he called, as the team drew near.
“Why, you old granny!” Asher stopped here.
Both men had been on the Kansas plains long enough 36 not to mind the wind. It flashed into Asher’s mind that Jim was hoping to see his wife with him, and he measured anew the loneliness of the man’s life.
“Most too rude for ladies just yet, although I didn’t like to leave Virginia alone.”
“What could possibly harm her? Your fireguard’s done, double done; there’s no water to drown in, no Indian to frighten, no wild beast to enter, no white man, in God knows how many hundred miles. Just nothing to be afraid of.”
“Yes, that’s it—just nothing. And it’s enough to make even a braver woman afraid. It’s the eternal vast nothingness, when the very silence cries out at you. It’s the awful loneliness of the plains that makes the advance attack in this fight with the wilderness. Don’t we both know that?”