DEFENDING THE TRAIL

XVIII

WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN

The mind hath a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one. 
—­BOURDILLON.

Busy years, each one a dramatic era all its own, made up the annals of the Middle West as the nation began to feel the thrill for expansion in its pulse-beat.  The territorial days of Kansas were big with the tragic events of border warfare, and her birth into statehood marked the commencement of the four years of civil strife whose record played a mighty part in shaping human destiny.

Meanwhile the sunny Kansas prairies lay waiting for the hearthstone and the plow.  And young men, trained in camp and battle-field, looked westward for adventure, fortune, future homes and fame.  But the tribes, whose hunting-grounds had been the green and grassy plains, yielded slowly, foot by foot, their stubborn claim, marking in human blood the price of each acre of the prairie sod.  The lonely homesteads were the prey of savage bands, and the old Santa Fe Trail, always a way of danger, became doubly perilous now to the men who drove the vans of commerce along its broad, defenseless miles.  The frontier forts increased:  Hays and Harker, Larned and Zarah, and Lyon and Dodge became outposts of power in the wilderness, whose half-forgotten sites to-day lie buried under broad pasture-lands and fields of waving grain.

One June day, as the train rolled through the Missouri woodlands along rugged river bluffs, Beverly Clarenden and I looked eagerly out of the car window, watching for signs of home.  It was two years after the close of the Civil War.  We had just finished six years of Federal service and were coming back to Kansas City.  We were young men still, with all the unsettled spirit that follows the laying aside of active military life for the wholesome but uneventful life of peace.

The time of our arrival had been uncertain, and the Clarenden household had been taken by surprise at our coming.

“I wonder how it will seem to settle down in a store, Bev, after toting shooting-irons for six years,” I said to my cousin, as the train neared Kansas City.

“I don’t know,” Beverly replied, with a yawn, “but I’m thinking that after we see all the folks, and play with Mat’s little boys awhile, and eat Aunty Boone’s good stuff till we begin to get flabby-cheeked and soft-muscled, and our jaws crack from smiling so much when we just naturally want to get out and cuss somebody—­about that time I’ll be ready to run away, if I have to turn Dog Indian to do it.”

“There’s a new Clarenden store at a place called Burlingame out in Kansas now, somewhere on the old trail.  Maybe it will be far enough away to let you get tamed gradually to civil life there, if Uncle Esmond thinks you are worth it,” I suggested.

“Rex Krane is to take charge of that as soon as we get home.  Yonder are the spires and minarets and domes of Kansas City.  Put on your company grin, Gail,” Beverly replied, as we began to run by the huts and cabins forming the outworks of the little city at the Kaw’s mouth.