The Price of the Prairie: A Story of Kansas. McCarter Margaret Hill
He's not dead yet, I'm sure. But I must go at once and hunt again."
"Where will you go now?" she queried.
"I don't know. I'm just being led," I replied.
"Phil," Aunt Candace was at the door now, "have you thought of the Hermit's Cave?"
Her words went through me like a sword-thrust.
"Why, why, – oh, Aunt Candace, let me think a minute."
"I've been thinking for twelve hours," said my aunt. "Until you try that place don't give up the hunt."
"But I don't know how to get there."
"Then make a way. You are not less able to do impossible things than the Pilgrim Fathers were. If you ever find O'mie it will be in that place. I feel it, I can't say why. But, Phil, you will need the boys and Father Le Claire. Take time to get breakfast and get yourself together. You will need all your energy. Don't squander it the first thing."
Dear Aunt Candace! This many a year has her grave been green in the Springvale cemetery, but greener still is her memory in the hearts of those who knew her. She had what the scholars of to-day strive to possess – the power of poise.
I ate my breakfast as calmly as I could, and before I left home Aunt Candace made me read the Ninety-first Psalm. Then she kissed me good-bye and bade me God-speed. Something kept telling me to hurry, hurry, as I tried to be deliberate, and quickened my thought and my step. At the tavern Cam Gentry met us.
"It ain't no use to try, boys, O'mie's down in the river where the cussed Copperheads put him; but you're good to keep tryin'." He sat down in a helpless resignation, so unlike his natural buoyant spirit it was hard to believe that this was the same Cam we had always known.
"Judson's baby's to be buried to-day, but we can't even bury O'mie. Oh, it's cruel hard." Cam groaned in his chair.
The dew had not ceased to glitter, and the sun was hardly more than risen when Father Le Claire and the crowd of boys, reinforced now by Tell Mapleson and Jim Conlow, started bravely out, determined to find the boy who had been missing for what seemed ages to us.
"If we find O'mie, we'll send word by the fastest runner, and you must ring the church bell," Le Claire arranged with Cam. "All the town can have the word at once then."
"We'll go to the Hermit's Cave first," I announced.
The company agreed, but only Bud Anderson seemed to feel as I did. To the others it was a wasted bit of heroism, for if none of us had yet found the way to this retreat, why should we look for O'mie there? So the boys argued as we hurried to the river. The Neosho was inside its banks again, but, deep and swift and muddy, it swept silently by us who longed to know its secrets.
"Philip, why do you consider the cave possible?" Le Claire asked as we followed the river towards the cliff.
"Aunt Candace says so," I replied.
"Well, it's worth the trial if only to prove a woman's intuition – or whim," he said quietly.
The same old cliff confronted us, although the many uprooted trees showed a jagged outcrop this side the sheer wall. We looked up helplessly at the height. It seemed foolish to think of O'mie being in that inaccessible spot.
"If he is up there," Dave Mead urged, "and we can get to him, it will be to put him alongside Judson's baby this afternoon."
All the other boys were for turning back and hunting about Fingal's Creek again, all except Bud. Such a pink and white boy he was, with a dimple in each cheek and a blowsy tow head.
"Will you stay with me, Bud, till I get up there?" I asked him.
"Yeth thir! or down there. Let'th go round an' try the other thide."
"Well, I guess we'll all stay with Phil, you cottontop," Tell Mapleson put in.
We all began to circle round the bluff to get beyond this steep, forbidding wall. Our plan was to go down the river beyond the cave, and try to climb up from that point. Crossing along by the edge of the bluff we passed the steepest part and were coming again to where the treetops and bushes that clung to the side of the high wall reached above the crest, as they do across the street from my own home. Just ahead of us, as we hurried, I caught sight of a flat slab of the shelving rock slipped aside and barely balancing on the edge, one end of it bending down the treetops as if newly slid into that place. All about the stone the thin sod of the bluff's top was cut and trampled as if a struggle had been there. We examined it carefully. A horse's tracks were plainly to be seen.
"Something happened here," Le Claire said. "Looks like a horse had been urged up to the very edge and had kept pulling back."
"And that stone is just slipped from its place," Clayton Anderson declared. "Something has happened here since the rains."
As we came to the edge, we saw a pile of earth recently scraped from the stone outcrop above.
"Somebody or something went over here not long ago," I cried.
"Look out, Phil," Bill Mead called, "or somebody else will follow somebody before 'em – "
Bill's warning came too late. I had stepped on the balanced slab. It tipped and went over the side with a crash. I caught at the edge and missed it, but the effort threw me toward the cliff and I slid twenty feet. The bushes seemed to part as by a well-made opening and I caught a strong limb, and gained my balance. I looked back at the way I had come. And then I gave a great shout. The anxious faces peering down at me changed a little.
"What is it?" came the query.
I pointed upward.
"The nicest set of hand-holds and steps clear up," I called. "You can't see for the shelf. But right under there where Bud's head is, is the best place to get a grip and there's a foothold all the way down." I stared up again. "There's a rope fastened right under there. Bend over, Bud, careful, and you'll find it. It will let you over to the steps. Swing in on it."
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