“Can’t there be no more little children where there’s grasshoppers and Darley Champerses?” he asked his mother.
“Yes, yes, Todd. You won’t be lonesome long,” his mother assured him. “Some time when you are a man you can say, ‘I was the only little boy the grasshoppers and Darley Champers didn’t get.’ You stout little Trojan!”
And then Todd, too, caught the spirit of the day and 104 went singing blithely away. Across the bare hollow of Grass River, and beyond the sand dunes into the brown wastes that had been grassy prairies, his young voice came trailing back still singing, as he rode behind his father, following the long hot trail toward their home. And the other settlers went their ways, each with courage renewed, for the new week’s work.
Yet, they were lonesomely few in number, and the prairies were vast; they were poverty-stricken, with little means by which to sustain life through the coming season; on every hand the desolate plains lay robbed of every green growth, and to this land they were nailed hand and foot as to a cross of crucifixion. But they were young. They believed in the West and in themselves. Their faces were set toward the future. They had voted themselves into holding on, and, except for the Aydelots, no one family had more resource than another. The Aydelots could leave the West if they chose. But they did not choose. So together they laughed at hardship; they made the most of their meager possessions; they helped each other as one family—and they trusted to Providence for the future. And Providence, albeit she shows a seamy side to poverty, still loves the man who laughs at hard luck. The seasons following were not unkind. The late summer rains, the long autumn, and the mild winter were blessings. But withal, there were days on days of real hunger. Stock died for lack of encouragement to live without food. And the grim while of waiting for seed time and signs of prosperity was lived through with that old Anglo-Saxon tenacity that has led the English speaking peoples to fight and colonize to the ends of the earth. 105
“Virginia,” Asher said one noontime, as the two sat at their spare meal, “the folks are coming up tonight to hold a council. I saw Bennington this morning and he had heard from the men over Todd Stewart’s way. Dust the piano, polish up the chandelier, and decorate with—smiles,” he added, as he saw the shadow on his wife’s face.
“I’ll have the maid put the reception room in order,” Virginia replied, with an attempt at merriment.
Then through the long afternoon she fought to a finish with the yearning for the things she missed daily. At supper time, however, she was the same cheery woman who had laughed at loss and lack so often that she wondered sometimes if abundance might not really make her sad.
In the evening the men sat on the ground about the door of the Sunflower Inn. Their wives had not come with them. One woman was sick at home; little Todd Stewart was at the beginning of a fever, and the other women were taking turns at nursing. Virginia’s turn had been the night before. She was weary now and she sat in the doorway listening to the men, and remembering how on just such a moonlit September night she and Asher had sat together under the Sign of the Sunflower and planned a future of wealth and comfort.
“The case is desperate,” Cyrus Bennington was saying. “Sickness and starvation and the horses failing every day and the need for all the plowing and getting winter fuel. Something must be done.”
Others agreed, citing additional needs no less pressing.