Back-Trailers from the Middle Border | Page 5

making a permanent stay up there " I urged him to take things
easy and he replied, "My financial condition will not permit me to take
things easy. I must go on earning money for a few years more."
It was plain that the River of Doubt had left 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