Back-Trailers from the Middle Border | Page 5

an ineffaceable mark on him. He was not the man he was before going in We talked a little of politics and he frankly admitted the complete failure of the Progressive Party. "Americans are a two-party people," he said "There is no place for a third party in our polities." He was hard hit by the failure of this movement, but concealed it under a smiling resignation.
In response to his enquiry concerning my plans I told him that I was contemplating the establishment of a residence in New York He looked thoughtful as he replied, "I think of you as a resident of the prairie or the shortgrass country--"
"I know I belong out there, but I work better here."
"There is no better reason for coming," he replied. "What are you working on?"
I described to him my autobiographic serial, A Son of the Middle Border, whose opening chapters in Collier's Weekly had not been called to his notice He was interested but reverted to my Captain of the Gray Horse Troop which he had particularly liked, and to Main Travelled Roads which had brought about our acquaintance some twenty years before.
The closer I studied him the more he showed the ill effects of his struggle for life in the Brazilian wilderness. The fever which he had contracted there was still in his blood. His eyes were less clear, his complexion less ruddy. He ended our talk with a characteristic quip but I came away with a feeling of sadness, of apprehension. For the first time in our many meetings he acknowledged the weight of years and forecast an end to his activity. He was very serious during this interview, more subdued than I had ever known him to be.
Late in February I returned to Chicago suffering great pain and feeling (as I recorded it) "about ninety years of age. All this is a warning that the gate is closing for me. What I do else must be done quickly."
In spite of my disablement, I continued to give my illustrated talk, "The Life of the Forest Ranger." Travel seemed not to do me harm and I managed to conceal from my audiences my lack of confidence. In the intervals, when measurably free from pain, I worked on a book of short stories to be called They of the High Trwls, which I was eager to publish as a companion volume to M am Travelled Roads. I took especial pleasure in this work for it carried me in thought to the mountains in which I had spent so many inspiring summers. How glorious those peaks and streams and cliffs appeared, now that I knew I should never see them again. I recalled the White River Plateau, the Canon of the Gunmson, the colossal amphitheatre of Ouray and scores of other spots in which I had camped in the fullness of my powers and from which I had received so much in way of health and joy.
The homestead in Wisconsin was now a melancholy place and I had no intention of going back to it, but James Pond, one of my old friends in Dakota, had drawn from me a promise to speak in Aberdeen and early in the spring of 1915, although I dreaded the long trip, I kept my promise He insisted on driving me to the place where Ordway had been, and also to the farmhouse which I had helped to build and on whose door-step I had begun to write "Mrs. Ripley's Trip," one of the stories in Main Travelled Roads.
The country was at its best, green and pleasant, a level endless land, and as we motored over the road I had walked in the autumn of 1881, I found the plain almost unchanged. It was like a velvet-green sea* I sat on the rude low doorstep of the house where the opening lines of "Color in the Wheat" were written, and one of my friends photographed me there. It was well that he did so, for in less than a year the cabin burned down A small snap-shot is the only record I have of the home where my mother lived for so many years and in which my little sister died. Western landmarks are impermanent as fallen leaves Nothing endure* but the sky and the silent wares of the plain.
It was a sad revisitation for me. Every one I met was gray and timeworn, and our talk was entirely of the past No one spoke confidently of the future All were enduring with fortitude the monotony of sun and wind and barren sod.
"Of what value is such a life?" I thought "One by one these toil-worn human beings will sink into this ocean of grass as small broken ships sink into the sea. With what high hopes and