At Stewart’s words, Asher glanced at his wife, and he knew from her eyes what her choice would be.
“When I was a boy on the old farm back at Cloverdale, Ohio, my mother’s advice was as useful to me as my father’s.” Swift through Asher’s mind ran the memory of that moonlit April night on his father’s veranda five years before. “Out here it is our wives who bear the heaviest burdens. Let us have their thoughts on the situation.”
“That’s right,” Jim Shirley exclaimed. “Mrs. Aydelot, you are first in point of time in this settlement. What do you say?”
“It’s a big responsibility, Mrs. Aydelot,” Bennington, who had not smiled hitherto, said with a twinkle in his eye.
“As goes Asher Aydelot, so goes Grass River,” Todd 93 Stewart declared. “You speak for him, Mrs. Aydelot, and tell us what to do.”
“I cannot tell you what to do. I can speak only for the Aydelots,” Virginia said. “When we came West Asher told me he had left one bridge not burned. He had put aside enough money to take us back to Ohio and to start a new life, on small dimensions, of course, back East, whenever we found the prairies too hostile. They’ve often been rough, never worse than now, but”—her eyes were bright with the unconquerable will to do as she pleased, true heritage of the Thaines of old—“but I’m not ready to go yet.”
Jim Shirley clapped his hands, but Pryor Gaines spoke earnestly. “There is no failure in a land where the women will to win. By them the hearthstones stand or crumble to dust. The Plains are master now. They must be servant some day.”
“Amen!” responded Asher Aydelot, and the Sabbath service ended.
Two weeks later Darley Champers came again to the barren valley and met the settlers in the sod schoolhouse. Not a cloud had yet scarred the heavens, not a dewdrop had glistened in the morning sunlight. Clearly, August was outranking July as king of a season of glaring light and withering heat. The settlers drooped listlessly on the backless seats, and the barefoot children did not even try to recite the golden text.
“I’d like to speak to you, Aydelot,” Champers said at the door, as the school service ended.