The Reclaimers

"Even his voice has a strut in it," Jerry thought. Aloud she said: "I have business with this old gentleman and I would be much obliged if you would tell him that Miss Geraldine Swaim is in the city and would like to meet him."

"Why, I'll soar right over there as soon as we get to the hotel and gurrage."

Junius Brutus Ponk looked slyly at the face of his companion as he spoke. What he was thinking just then it would have been hard to guess. With a flourish and curve that were wholly Ponkish the fat little man swung the gray car up to the brick-paved porch of the "Commercial Hotel and Gurrage."

"Why, there's York now, reading his mail! I'll go right over and tell him," Mr. Ponk declared. "Here, George, tell Georgette to give Miss Swaim number seven."

George assisted Miss Swaim to the hotel register and Georgette led her to room No. 7. Georgette wanted to linger a minute, for this guest was so unlike the usual commercial-traveler kind of ladies who sold books, or canvassed for extracts, or took orders for crayon portraits enlarged from little photographs; but Miss Swaim's manner gave no excuse for lingering. Alone, Jerry closed her door and turned, with a smile on her lips, to face her surroundings. The room was clean and cool, with a big window overhanging the street. Jerry sat down before it, realizing how weary the long journey had made her. Across the street, the sign of the Macpherson Mortgage Company in big gold letters hung above a plate-glass window. Mr.

Ponk, who had just "soared" across, was sitting in his car before it. Jerry saw a man inside at a desk very much like Uncle Cornie's in the Philadelphia banking-house where Eugene Wellington was busy now helping Aunt Jerry to settle things. This man was reading letters when the Ponk car tooted before the big window. He waved a hand to the tooter, then put his letters away and came leisurely outside. Jerry saw a tall, finely proportioned man, the set of whose clothes had a city air, and there was something in his whole manner that would have distinguished him from every other man in New Eden.

The fat little man talked earnestly, with a flourish of the hand now and then toward the room where Jerry sat watching the two. York Macpherson rested one foot on the running-board, and leaned his arms on the side of the car, listening intently to what Mr. Ponk was saying.

"So that is this York Macpherson who was never responsible for my estate not making any returns. And I called him an old man. The hotel proprietor must be telling him that now." Jerry laughed as she saw the two men chuckling together. "Well, I hope the pompous little fellow tells him I'm an old woman. It would even things up wonderfully."

Ten minutes later Jerry was shaking hands with York Macpherson and promising him to go to his home and meet his sister as soon as she had cleared her eyes of dust sufficiently to see anybody.

It must have been the dust in her eyes, Jerry thought, that made York Macpherson appear so unlike the benevolent, inefficient old gentleman she had pictured to herself. The hotel parlor was in twilight shadows, which helped a little to conceal the surprise of these two when they met there. Jerry knew what she had been anticipating. Whether York Macpherson knew or not, he was clearly not expecting what he found in the hotel parlor.

"I'll soar down to your shack with the lady as soon as she has had her supper and got herself rightly in hand," Ponk declared to York when he came into the hotel office. "You see, we got stuck in that danged, infernal blowout, and it was as hard on the womenkind who had to sit inside and swelter as on us men who nobly dug. 'Specially this Miss Swaim. She must have 'wept to see such quantities of sand,' same as them oysters and walruses and carpenters. We'll be along by and by, though. Have a cigar. What do you make of her, anyhow, York?"

"I don't make anything. I leave that job to you," York replied, with a smile, as he turned abruptly and left the hotel.

"Unless you see eight per cent. interest coming your way, I see. There might be a bigger interest in this investment than any you ever made in your life," Ponk called after him.

But York only waved off the words without looking back. Outside, the sunset's splendor was filling the western sky – the same old prairie sunset that he had seen many a time in his years in Kansas. And yet, on this evening it did not seem quite the same; nor were the sunsets, New Eden, and the Sage Brush Valley from this evening ever quite as they had been before, to York Macpherson.

V

NEW EDEN'S PROBLEM

Because of a broken "culbert" out toward "S'liny" the afternoon train on the Sage Brush branch was annulled for the day. Because of this annulment the mail for the Sage Brush Valley was brought up on the local freight, which is always behind time when it reaches its terminal, which accounted for the late delivery of the mail at the New Eden post-office, which made York Macpherson's dinner late because of a big batch of letters to be read, and an important business call at the Commercial Hotel following the reading and the delivery of Mr. Ponk's message.

Purple shadows were beginning to fold down upon the landscape, while overhead the sky was still heliotrope and gold, but York Macpherson, walking slowly homeward, saw neither the shadows nor the glory that overhung them. It was evident to his sister Laura, who was waiting for him in the honeysuckle corner of the big front porch, that his mind was burdened with something unusual to-night.

York Macpherson was a "leading citizen" type of the Middle West. Wholesome, ruggedly handsome, prosperous, shrewd to read men's minds, quick to meet their needs, full of faith in the promise of the Western prairies, with the sort of culture no hardship of the plains could ever overcome – that was York. Although he was on the front edge of middle life in years, with a few gray streaks in his wavy brown hair, he had the young-looking face, the alert action, and vigorous atmosphere of a young-hearted man just entered into his full heritage of manhood.

"The train was delayed down the river on account of sand drifted over the track by the south wind, and that made the mail late," York explained, when he reached the porch. "I'll bet you have had the house shut up tight as wax and have gone about all day with a dust-cloth in your hand. Given a south wind and Laura Macpherson, and you have a home industry in no time. Let's hurry up the dinner" (it was always dinner to the Macphersons and supper to the remainder of New Eden) "and get outside again as soon as possible. I can't think in shut-up rooms."

"When there is a south wind it makes little difference whether or not one does any thinking. I postpone that job to the cool of the evening," Laura Macpherson declared, as she led the way to the dining-room.

When the two came outside again the air off the prairie was delicious, and there was promise of restfulness later in the black silence of the June night that made them forget the nervous strain of the windy day. The Macphersons had no problems that they could not talk over in the shadowy stillness of that roomy porch on summer evenings.

York had been a bachelor boarder at the "Commercial Hotel and Garage" for some years before the coming of his sister Laura, who was at once his housekeeper, companion, and counselor. When he first went to the hotel New Eden was in its infancy, and the raw beginnings of things were especially underdone in this two-dollars-a-day, one-towel-a-week establishment. It was through York that Junius Brutus Ponk had given up an unprofitable real-estate business to become proprietor of the Commercial Hotel – "and Gurrage" was added later with the advent of automobiles, the "Gurrage" part being a really creditably equipped livery for public service. By this change of occupation for Ponk, the Macpherson Mortgage Company accomplished several things. It got rid of an inefficient competitor whose very inefficiency would have made him a more disagreeable enemy than a successful man would have been. Further, it placed the ambitious little man where his talents could flourish (flourish is the right word for J. B. Ponk), and it put into the growing little town of New Eden a hotel with city comforts that brought business to the town and added mightily to its reputation and respectability.

York Macpherson's business had grown with the town he had helped to build. Long before other towns in this part of Kansas had dreamed it possible for them, New Eden was lighted with electricity. Water-works and a sewer system fore-ran cement sidewalks and a mile of paving, not including the square around the court-house. And before any of these had come the big stone school-house on the high ridge overlooking the Sage Brush Valley for miles. That also was York Macpherson's task, which he had carried out almost single-handed, and had the satisfaction of bringing desirable taxpaying residents to live in New Eden who would never have come but for the school advantages. Then Junius Brutus Ponk, who had learned to couple with York, got himself elected to the board of education and began to pay higher salaries to teachers than was paid by any other town in the whole Sage Brush Valley; to the end that better schools were housed in that fine school-building, and a finer class of young citizens began to put the good name of New Eden above everything else. The hoodlum element was there, of course, but it was not the leading element. Boys stuck to the high-school faithfully and followed it up with a college course, even though a large per cent. of them worked for every dollar that the course cost them. Girls went to college, too, until it became a rare thing to find a teacher in the whole valley who had not a diploma from some institution of higher learning.

It was only recently that Laura Macpherson had come to New Eden to make her home with her brother. An accident a few years before had shortened one limb, making her limp as she walked. She was some years older than York, with a face as young and very much like her brother's; a comely, companionable sort of woman, popular alike with men and women, young folks and children.

Some time before her coming York had bought the best building-site in New Eden, a wooded knoll inside the corporation limits, the only natural woodland in the vicinity, that stood directly across the far end of Broad Avenue, the main business street, whose mile of paving ended in York's driveway. In one direction, this site commanded a view far down Sage Brush Valley; in the other, it overlooked the best residence and business portion of New Eden. Here York had, as he put it, "built a porch, at the rear of which a few rooms were attached." The main glory of the place, however, was the big porch.

York had named their home "Castle Cluny," and his big farm joining it just outside the town limits "Kingussie," after some old Macpherson-clan memories. There were no millionaires in the Sage Brush Valley, and this home was far and away the finest, as well as the most popular, home in a community where thrift and neatness abounded in the homes, and elegance was very much lacking, as was to be expected in a young town on the far edge of the Middle West.

"Joe Thomson came in to-day to see me about putting a mortgage on his claim this side of the big blowout. Looks like a losing game for Joe. His land is about one-third sand now," York commented, thoughtfully, as he settled himself comfortably in his big porch chair.

"Well, why not let the sand have its own third, while he uses the other two-thirds himself? They ought to keep him busy," Laura suggested.

The country around New Eden was still new to her. Although she overflowed the town with her sunny presence, her lameness had kept her nearer to "Castle Cluny" than her brother had comprehended. She did not understand the laws, nor lawlessness, of what her brother called the "blowout," nor had she ever seen the desolation that marked its broadening path.