Winning the Wilderness

by Margaret Hill McCarter

“I used to wear a veil and was somewhat acquainted with cold cream, and my hands were really white and soft. They are hard and brown now. When I get home I’ll put it straight to Asher about going back to civilization, even if there are only a few dollars waiting to take us there, and nothing waiting for us to do.”

With a sigh, half of anticipation and half of regret, she rode away toward the little town of Wykerton in the Big Wolf Creek settlement.

There were few differences between the new county seat and Carey’s Crossing, except that there were a few more houses, and over by the creek bank the brewery, by which Hans Wyker proposed to save the West. There was, however, one difference between the vanished Carey’s Crossing and this place, the difference between the community whose business leaders have ideals of citizenship, and the community wherein commerce is advanced by the degradation of its citizens. Wykerton had no Dr. Carey nor John 109 Jacobs to control it. The loafers stared boldly at Virginia Aydelot as she rode up before the livery stable and slipped from her saddle. Not because a woman in a calico dress and sunbonnet, a tanned, brown-handed woman, was a novelty there, but because the license of the place was one of impudence and disrespect.

The saloon was on one side of the livery stable and the postoffice was on the other side. Darley Champers’ office stood next to the postoffice, a dingy little shack with much show of maps and real estate information. Behind the office was a large barren yard where one little lilac bush languished above the hard earth. The Wyker hotel and store were across the street.

Virginia had been intrusted with small sums for sundry purchases for the settlement, especially for the staple medicines and household needs—camphor and turpentine, quinine and certain cough syrups for the winter; castor oil, some old and tried ointment, and brand of painkiller; thread and needles and pins—especially pins—and buttons for everybody’s clothes. One settler had ridden back at midnight to ask for the purchase of a pair of shoes for his wife. It was a precious commission that Virginia Aydelot bore that day, although to the shopper in a Kansas city today, the sum of money would have seemed pitifully small.

In the postoffice, printed rulings and directions regarding the supplies were posted on the wall, and Virginia read them carefully. Then with many misgivings and a prayer for success, she crossed the street to Darley Champers’ place of business.

In spite of her plain dress, Virginia Aydelot was every inch a lady, and Darley Champers, dull as he was in certain 110 lines, felt the difference her presence made in the atmosphere of his office when she entered there.

“I understood, Mr. Champers, that you have charge here of the supplies sent into the state for the relief of those who suffered from the grasshoppers,” she said, when she was seated in the dingy little room.

“Yes, mom!” Champers replied.

“I am Mrs. Asher Aydelot, and I represent the Grass River settlement. I have come to ask for a share of this relief fund, and as I must start back as soon as possible after dinner, perhaps we can make all arrangements now.”