Part 18

“Here, Mame,” said Jean, “is a letter from Cousin Annie Robinson. Listen. She says: ‘Please break it gently to Cousin Mame that her _beau ideal_ of a man, the Reverend Thomas Rogers, took to himself a wife before she had been gone a week. And who should it have been but that detestable Agnes Winter, who used to say such spiteful things about Mame? She won’t be as happy after a while as she is now, but she’ll know a whole lot more. Who could have believed that so saintly a sinner as the Reverend Thomas would prove so fickle? I hope Mame will see him with our eyes after this. He isn’t worthy of her passing thought.’”

Mary, whose dreams for long and weary months had been of a package of letters from the preacher that never came at all, faced suddenly the first great crisis in her life; and stilling, with a strong effort of the will, the tumultuous beatings of her heart, she walked rapidly on, ahead of the teams, from starting-time until nightfall, fighting her first great battle with herself alone, and gaining the mastery at last without human aid or sympathy.

The immigrants, having concluded their purchases, toiled up the narrow grade to the table-land above the bluffs, and pursued their way through the stately evergreen forests and level plains of the Willamette valley to the homes of relatives, who awaited their coming with joy that was changed to mourning when they learned for the first time of the death of Mrs. Ranger.

After a few days of much-needed rest among the hospitable pioneers who had preceded them by two years and were now installed on a beautiful and valuable donation claim, the immigrant party decided to remain in each other’s vicinity, and removed for the purpose to a beautiful vista of vacant land under the friendly shadow of the Cascade Mountains, with a westward outlook across the Willamette valley to the Coast Range, which alone intervened to shut from sight the surging billows of the Pacific Ocean.

It was here that the genius and education of Scotty, who will hereafter be designated by his lawful name, proved of inestimable value. Supplied only with a rope and a carpenter’s square, he led a private surveying party through the woods and prairies, locating their claims with such accuracy that the government survey, which was made years after, fully approved his work.

“You may not be a success at driving oxen or taking care of steers at night,” said Captain Ranger, “but you are an artist with a rope and a square.”

“Didn’t I tell you he’d be worth his weight in gold when he reached a place where he could have a chance to use his brains?” asked Mrs. McAlpin, who took as kindly and intelligently to her surroundings as if to the manner born.

“Women have a way of divination that I won’t attempt to analyze,” was the laughing reply.

The donation claim of each settler, the acreage of which had by this time been cut into halves by Act of Congress, was still of ample proportions, being a mile long and half a mile wide, and was so surveyed as to allow four families or claimants to settle on extreme corners of their land at points where four corners met.

“This will enable each claimant to build a cabin on his own claim, so he can reside upon and cultivate his own land, as required by the law, and at the same time have neighbors within call in case of accident or other need,” said Mr. Burns.

“What a grand and glorious prospect!” exclaimed Captain Ranger, standing on an eminence where his new house was to go up, and gazing abroad over the wide expanse of the Willamette valley, in which the winding river was gleaming through the openings in the forest; “but I can sense one drawback to your scheme, Mr. Burns.”

“What is it?”

“Some of us will be getting married before long and doubling our opportunity for holding government lands; and as each must reside upon and cultivate his claim and his wife’s, it will make it a little awkward, won’t it?”

“Not if the contracting parties exercise a little ordinary business ability and discretion, sir. They have but to locate their claims with a view to matrimony and settle their own bargains to suit themselves.”

But the Captain, who had dealt with the domestic infelicities of his neighbors too often to look upon all such bargains as imbued with old-time stability, had his doubts.

“If an engaged couple should tire of their bargain, and their change of sentiment should fail to fit the agreement,—what then?”

“It would be a blessing for them to discover their mistake in time to forestall the divorce court,” was the ready reply.

“Mr. Burns is right,” said Mrs. McAlpin. “Two-thirds of the unhappy marriages we hear about are the result of haste and lack of understanding. A couple will marry, and when it is too late to recede from the bargain they want to break it. I don’t mind telling you, Captain Ranger, that Mr. Burns and I expect to marry each other some day, and our claims were chosen accordingly; but we’ll wait until the law frees me from a bargain which I repudiated in spirit before it was consummated. And we’ll not marry then if we conclude we are making a mistake.”

“I am glad to hear you make so open and frank a statement in the presence of so competent a witness,” exclaimed Mrs. Benson, who still carried an important note in her pocket, frayed and travel-soiled, but none the less precious from being scarcely legible.

“I think it is a shame to make a commercial bargain of a matrimonial agreement,” exclaimed Mary Ranger.

“And so do I!” echoed Jean.

Nevertheless, when the boundaries of the several donation claims were established, and the different allotments were assigned to the proper claimants, it was noticed that, in addition to the Captain’s own quota of virgin acres, an extra claim was reserved adjacent to that of each of his daughters, Mary and Jean, and one next to that of Sally O’Dowd.

* * * * *

“Equality before the law is a fundamental idea in the government of the United States of America,” the Captain explained at the Land Office; “and I am glad to see it practically applied to the property rights of the pioneer women of Oregon. It is a good beginning, and none can see the end.”

“Sally O’Dowd isn’t a free woman, and she can’t get married, thank goodness!” cried Jean, as she and her sisters talked the matter over together between themselves alone.

“That’s so,” echoed Mary. “Sally has a husband living, and so there is no danger of our losing father.”

“Let’s not be too certain,” cried Jean. “If you’d kept your eyes open for the last month, as I have, you wouldn’t be surprised at anything. Sally’s case was up on appeal when she left the States, but it has doubtless gone by default. She has the custody of her children, and that was all she asked of Sam O’Dowd.”

“Then Sally is a free woman,” said Marjorie.

“No woman is free when she is married,” retorted Jean. “The laws of men do not recognize the individuality of a married woman. I, for instance, am Jean Ranger to-day, but if I should marry to-morrow, I’d be—”

“Nothing but a nonentity named Mrs. Ashton Ashleigh,” interrupted Mary. “Women delight in surrendering their names in marriage to the man they love.”

“You’re right,” cried Jean, her eyes blazing. “I’d surrender to-morrow if Ashton would come to claim his own. But it would be a partnership, and not a one-sided agreement.”

“That’s what every woman thinks when she puts her neck in the noose,” laughed Marjorie; “but when the man comes along who is able to capture her heart, she is ready to make the venture.”

“That’s because the fundamental principle of matrimony is correct,” retorted Jean.

“Dat’s so, honey,” said Susannah. “Women is jist like pigs. When one of ’em burns his nose in a trough o’ hot mash, dey’ll all hurry to ’vestigate an’ git de same sperience.”

“Of course you’ll get some land,” said Jean.

“I’ve done axed de Cap’n ’bout it, an’ he’s looked up de law. He says I can’t take up no lan’ ’cos I’m nothin’ but a niggah. De laws o’ Oregon are ag’in it; so are de laws o’ de gen’ral gov’ment. A free country’s a great blessin’ to women an’ niggahs! It’s a great blessin’ to be bawn in a free country; ain’t it, Geo’die Wah?”

The coon, who had grown and flourished under his six months’ regimen of flapjacks and bacon, shook his bright brown curls and grinned, displaying an even set of polished ivories.

“I couldn’t git married if I wanted to,” added the negress, “’cos the law is sot ag’in mixed matches; but da’hs no law nowhar ag’in coons”; and she ended hers harangue with a characteristic “Yah! yah! yah!”

“Then, if you can’t marry, you can always work for wages, Susannah; and you’ll be better off than Mrs. McAlpin,”—she was coming to join the group,—“who is going to be married soon, if I can read the stars correctly,” laughed Marjorie.

“No, Marjorie; I cannot even talk of marriage with the man whom God created for me, and me only. I am not even a grass widow. I cannot legally file upon a claim because I am the victim of a marriage I cannot honor. And the law cannot set me free because the party of the second part objects.”

“What’s that you were saying to the Ranger girls, Daphne?” asked Mrs. Benson, who had been engaged in assisting Captain Ranger and Mr. Burns to plan the two sets of log houses that were to be erected a mile apart, and to be so arranged as to form separate abodes for four families.

“Nothing, mamma, only I was bewailing my fate.”

“Come with me, Daphne; I have something to show you,” said Mrs. Benson, in a low tone.

“Listen to this letter,” said the mother, as soon as they were seated among the trees. “The time has come for you to know its contents:—

“MY DEAR MRS. BENSON,—You have been a brave, devoted mother to an unhappily environed daughter. I have long known that you and I were made for each other. We became mismatched through adherence to false customs. Daphne does not love me, and has never willingly accepted our union, as you have painful reason to know. You love me! Pardon this abrupt announcement. You have never told me so, but I have known the truth for years. To have this opportunity to tell you that I reciprocate, is at present my only joy.

“I will meet you in the wilds of Oregon. Daphne’s latest erratic movements to escape me have all along been known. To follow you I became a wanderer in these Western wilds. I will take measures to set your beautiful daughter free. A couple whom God hath _not_ joined together it is man’s duty to put asunder. Keep your own counsel till such time as you are strong enough to take your life and destiny into your own hands, and declare yourself accountable primarily to yourself and God for your own actions.

“I will be in Portland, Oregon, by November first. We shall surely meet again.

“Faithfully, through time and for eternity, your devoted but never yet accredited counterpart,

“DONALD MCPHERSON.”

The daughter clasped her mother’s hand and fervently exclaimed, “Thank God!”

Mrs. Benson wept.

“It will never do for you and me to meet again after this revelation,” said the daughter, after a long silence. “I will take up my permanent abode in this new country, and you can rejoin Donald in New York or Philadelphia, _via_ the city of Panama. But you must go to Portland now. We will not set idle tongues to wagging here. It is fortunate indeed that Donald took his mother’s name as a part of his last inheritance.”

XXXIII

_LOVE FINDS A WAY_

“You needn’t select any lands for me, Captain,” said Mrs. Benson. “I have decided to go to Portland to-morrow with the team that’s going down for supplies. I shall not return. But my daughter will remain and take a claim. She has decided to turn rancher, but I do not like the life.”

“Isn’t this a rather sudden change in your programme, Mrs. Benson?”

“Not at all. I didn’t intend to remain when I came here. I wouldn’t have come any farther than Oregon City, but I wanted to get a view of the future home of Daphne; and now, as she has chosen for herself and has a fair prospect of happiness ahead, I am ready to look out for myself. I shall stop awhile in Portland, and be ready to take the next steamer for San Francisco. I will go to New York by way of the Isthmus, and will spend the evening of my days in Paris or London.”

“I’m sure I wish you well, Mrs. Benson.”

“Thank you, Captain. My heart is too full for words! I know you will always be a friend to my dear daughter.”

“You surely do not mean to go where you can never see your daughter again!”

“Yes, Captain. Do you recall that tall and bronzed and handsome man of whom you bought the buffalo robe you gave to your wife a short time before her death?”

“You mean Donald McPherson?”

“Yes, sir. The fates have settled it. He is to be my husband, and Daphne and I must part.”

“You have my best wishes for success and happiness,” said the Captain, earnestly, as he offered his hand.

“There is some peculiar mystery about all this!” he exclaimed to himself the next day, as Mrs. Benson climbed into the wagon and started off to meet her fate. “But it’s the way of women. They are as fickle as the wind.” He thought bitterly of his own budding and now blighted hopes.

“Don’t grieve for her, Daphne,” said Mr. Burns, in a husky voice, as the wagon disappeared. “She was kind to me when I was crippled and cross, and I shall never forget her watchfulness and care for me under the most trying conditions. She is your mother, too, and that of itself is enough to inspire my everlasting gratitude. I have no respect for the man who fails to appreciate the woman to whom he is indebted for his wife.”

“It is well for the three of us that we have learned our lesson, Rollin. We are all young yet, and all eternity is before us.”

“Yes, Daphne! Eternity is both before and behind us. We are henceforth to be all in all to each other, as I believe we have been in the past, my darling.”

“No, Mr. Burns, do not ‘darling’ me yet. We must await the tardy action of that human imperfection called the law before I can honorably become your ‘darling.’”

Nevertheless, being human, she feigned not to notice the prolonged pressure of his hand at parting, nor did she refrain from answering his eager and tender gaze with a look that quickened every pulse and sent a thrill of gladness to his heart.

* * * * *

At the primitive hotel in the primitive little city of Portland, Mrs. Benson met an Indian woman, the mother of many children, who was introduced to her as Mrs. Addicks. The woman was richly and stylishly gowned and seemed much at home among the guests. Her mien and carriage were queenly, as she moved about the little parlor, exchanging a word here and there among the loiterers, with whom she seemed a general favorite.

“Haven’t I met you somewhere before?” asked Mrs. Benson, with whom, in truth, she had exchanged greetings on the plains under circumstances quite different from the present, as one, at least, had cause to remember.

“I do not recall a former meeting, madam. But you might have met me on the plains. I was on my way to Portland when you saw me, if you saw me at all. A frontier trading-post is no proper place to bring up a lot of Indian half-breeds. I came here to educate my children.”

“Then your husband is a white man?”

“Yes.”

“I beg your pardon, but you do not speak and act like the other Indians I have met.”

“I am a chieftain’s daughter, and I was educated in London. You spoke of travelling in the Ranger train. Mr. Ranger is my husband’s brother.”

“Does Captain Ranger know of this?”

“I neither know nor care! One thing is certain. I shall do my best to train and educate my children in such a way that he will be proud some day to own them as relatives. I have the girls in school at the Academy of the Sacred Heart. The boys are at the Brothers’ School.”

“Do you know Dr. McLoughlin?”

“Yes, and my husband knows him well. I saw him as the children and I passed through Oregon City. He was very kind, and bade me be of good cheer. He has an Indian wife himself, as you know. But he did not ask me in to see her, so we did not meet.”

* * * * *

As Donald McPherson had not yet arrived in Portland, Mrs. Benson had ample leisure for letter-writing.

“My dear Daphne,” she wrote, “a letter from Mr. McPherson awaited me, as I expected. He had sent it forward by a courier from the plains, in care of one of Dr. McLoughlin’s agents. I need not repeat its contents. Suffice it to say, that I am serene and calm. God has been very merciful to us all. Within the letter was a letter of credit, upon which I am now able to draw ample funds. I will place on deposit, subject to your order, all the money you will need. Do not hesitate to accept it. It is mine, to do with as I choose; and this is my choice of methods to expend the portion I have assigned to you.

“I have decided not to meet him till after you are a free woman, Daphne. I know you and Donald will guard our secret carefully; but I have doubts about Jean Ranger. She brought me that unsealed note, and, as you know, she is such a precocious little witch she might have read it before giving it into my possession. Could you, in some way, get at the truth of this without letting her see just what you are after?”

To which Mrs. McAlpin replied: “I will not do Jean the injustice to imagine for a moment that she would read a private note that was intrusted to her care and honor. Tell Donald that I will honor him as my step-father, but I will never see his face again. He was very patient with me during all the trying years when the Juggernaut of public opinion, combined with the inquisition of the law, kept us in bondage; and I thank him for his patience with all my heart. I am as painfully aware of the unconventionality of our proceedings as yourself, dear mamma, but as what the public doesn’t know doesn’t disturb that composite being in the least, we’ll keep our own counsel and be happy.

“My donation claim lies parallel to Sally O’Dowd’s. Captain Ranger’s claim adjoins hers on the south,—a plan that implies foreknowledge, if not foreordination.

“Mr. Burns and Albert Evans, our faithful teamster, have selected their land adjacent to mine. Evans has chosen a double allotment, having in prospect a wife who is a mere child, belonging to a neighbor about three miles away. I am disgusted with the venality of the transaction, which the child’s father regards with satisfaction, and the mother with tears.”

A few days later, Mrs. Benson wrote to Captain Ranger, as follows:—

“I have met here an interesting and highly educated Indian woman, who says she is the wife of the post-trader you met in Utah. She says that trader is your brother Joseph, whom for many years you mourned as dead. She is here to educate her boys at the Brothers’ School, and her girls at the Academy of the Sacred Heart.

“When we saw her on the plains, she looked nothing but an ordinary squaw. Now she and the children are well and fashionably dressed, and as presentable in every way as any family in this primitive hostelry; and that is saying a good deal, for there are ladies here of high rank and breeding from the Eastern cities, and also from over the seas. Mrs. Ranger (she still answers to the name of Addicks) was educated in London, she says, where, as the daughter of an Indian chieftain of the land of the Dakotas, she was admitted into the most aristocratic circles. After completing her education she returned to her native haunts and met your brother, who made her his wife. She seems to have plenty of money; her children are bright and intelligent,—the girls especially so, they being, she says, more like their father than the boys; and for this, as you know, there is a physiological reason.”

“I’ll see that woman the very first time I go to Portland,” said the Captain, aloud, as he folded the letter deliberately.

“What woman?” asked Sally O’Dowd.

“Nobody in particular,” he answered, thrusting the letter hurriedly into his pocket, and looking confused and foolish as he returned to his work.

The labor of felling, hewing, hauling, and finally raising into houses the timbers for the big log buildings which were to afford homes for the half-dozen or more families who had, by common consent, adopted a sort of corporate method for residing upon and cultivating their claims, told heavily upon the men, who, already depleted in strength by much hardship, were poorly equipped for their tasks. But there was no shirking of duties nor complaint over backaches, and the borderers’ homes arose like magic.

“How do you like the appearance of the new buildings?” asked Captain Ranger, addressing Sally O’Dowd.

“Why should you ask me?” was the curt response.

Surprised at her reply but disposed to be communicative, he added: “If all goes well, I’ll have a sawmill up yonder in the timber by this time next year.”

“That’s none of my business,” she retorted testily.

He looked at her for a moment in blank astonishment. “Why isn’t it your business?” he asked, at length. “Haven’t we agreed to first get you free from a bad bargain, and after that take up our line of march together? And won’t your belongings then be mine, and mine yours?”

“What about that other woman you are going to Portland to see? Do you take me for an idiot, Squire?”

He looked her in the face for an instant, nonplussed. Then as the reason for her change of manner dawned upon him, he threw back his head and laughed heartily.

“So that’s what the matter with us, is it?” he exclaimed, approaching her with a proffered caress. “We’ve been a trifle jealous, haven’t we?”

“Behave yourself, sir!” elbowing him away. “Go to Portland and see that other woman. No doubt a party by the name of Benson is expecting you.”

He guffawed again, making her angrier still.

“Come, Sally; let’s have no more nonsense,” he said, after his laughter had ceased, motioning her to a seat beside him on the doorway.

She stood irresolute.