“All bad luck, but we are not discouraged,” she replied bravely, and Jacobs read the whole story in the words.
A silence fell. Virginia sat looking at the vacant street, while the young man studied her face. Then Juno was brought to the door and Virginia rose to mount her.
“Mrs. Aydelot,” John Jacob’s sharp eyes seemed to pierce to her very soul as he said slowly, “I believe you are not discouraged. You believe in this country, you, and your neighbors. I believe in it, and I believe in you. Stewart and I had to dissolve partnership when Carey’s Crossing dissolved. He took a claim. It was all he could do. I went back to Cincinnati, but only for a time. I’m ready to start again. I will organize a company of town 117 builders, not brewery builders. You must not look for favors in a whisky-ridden place like this. There’ll be no saloon to rule our town.”
Virginia listened interestedly but not understandingly.
“What of this?” Jacobs continued. “I have some means. I’m waiting for more. I’ll invest them in Grass River. Go back and tell your homesteaders that I’ll make a small five-year loan to every man in the settlement according to his extreme needs. I’ll take each man’s note with five per cent interest and the privilege of renewing for two years if crops fail at the end of the term. I am selfish, I’ll admit,” he declared, as Virginia looked at him incredulously, “and I want dollar for dollar—always—sometimes more. My people are popularly known as Shylocks. But you note that my rate of usury is small, the time long, and that I want these settlers to stay. I am not trying to get rid of them in order to speculate on their land in coming days of prosperity—the days when you will be landlords over broad acres and I a merchant prince. I say again, I believe in the West and in you farmer people who must turn the West from a wilderness to a land of plenty. I’m willing to risk something on your venture.”
“Oh, Mr. Jacobs,” was all Virginia could say, and, womanlike, the tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks.
“Tell the men to send a committee up here with their needs listed,” Jacobs said hastily, “or better, I’ll go out there myself the day after tomorrow. I want to see what kind of a claim Carey has preempted. Good-by, now, good-by.” 118
He hurried Virginia to her horse and watched her ride away.
Down at the ford of Wolf Creek the willow brush fringed the main trail thinly for a little distance and half hid the creek trail, winding up a long canyon-like hollow, until a low place in the bank and a steep climb brought it up to the open prairie. It was the same trail that Dr. Carey had spoken of as belonging to an ugly little creek running into Big Wolf, the trail he had wanted to avoid on the day he had heard Virginia singing when she was lost on the prairie one cold day.
Virginia paused in this semblance of shade to let Juno drink. She pushed back her sunbonnet and sat waiting. Her brown face grew radiant as she thought of the good news she was bearing to the waiting home-makers of the Grass River Valley. A song came to her lips, and as she sang a soft little measure she remembered how somewhere down a tributary to this very creek she had sung for help in pleading tones one cold hopeless day three years before. So intent was she on the triumph of the hour she did not even look up the willow-shadowed creek trail.