  CHAPTER I The Blessing of Asher CHAPTER II The Sign of the Sunflower CHAPTER III The Will of the Wind CHAPTER V A Plainsman of the Old School CHAPTER VI When the Grasshopper Was a Burden CHAPTER VII The Last Bridge Burned CHAPTER VIII Anchored Hearthstones CHAPTER IX The Beginning of Service CHAPTER XIV The Second Generation CHAPTER XVI The Humaneness of Champers CHAPTER XVII The Purple Notches CHAPTER XVIII Remembering the Maine CHAPTER XIX The "fighting Twentieth" CHAPTER XXI Jane Aydelot's Will CHAPTER XXII The Farther Wilderness CHAPTER XXIII The End of the Wilderness CHAPTER XXIV The Call of the Sunflower Winning the Wilderness
WINNING THE WILDERNESS BY MARGARET HILL McCARTER Author of “The Price of the Prairie,” “A Wall of Men,” “The Peace of the Solomon Valley,” “A Master’s Degree,” etc. ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. N. MARCHAND CHICAGO A. C. McCLURG & CO. 1914 Copyright A. C. McClurg & Co. 1914 Published September, 1914 Copyrighted in Great Britain W. F. HALL PRINTING COMPANY, CHICAGO To THAT FARMER FATHER AND MOTHER WITH THEIR HANDS ON TODAY BUT WITH THEIR EYES ON TOMORROW WHO THROUGH LABOR AND LONELINESS AND HOPES LONG DEFERRED HAVE WON A DESERT TO FRUITFULNESS A WILDERNESS TO BEAUTY FOREWORD A reach of level prairie bounded only by the edge of the world—misty ravelings of heliotrope and amber, covered only by the arch of heaven—blue, beautiful and pitiless in its far fathomless spaces. To the southwest a triple fold of deeper purple on the horizon line—mere hint of commanding headlands thitherward. Across the face of the prairie streams wandering through shallow clefts, aimlessly, somewhere toward the southeast; their course secured by gentle swells breaking into sheer low bluffs on the side next to the water, or by groups of cottonwood trees and wild plum bushes along their right of way. And farther off the brown indefinite shadowings of half-tamed sand dunes. Aside from these things, a featureless landscape—just grassy ground down here and blue cloud-splashed sky up there. The last Indian trail had disappeared. The hoofprints of cavalry horses had faded away. The price had been paid for the prairie—the costly measure of death and daring. But the prairie itself, in its loneliness and loveliness, was still unsubdued. Through the fury of the winter’s blizzard, the glory of the springtime, the brown wastes of burning midsummer, the long autumn, with its soft sweet air, its opal skies, and the land a dream of splendor which the far mirage reflects and the wide horizon frames in a curtain of exquisite amethyst—through none of these was the prairie subdued. Only to the coming of that king whose scepter is the hoe, did soul of the soil awake to life and promise. To him the wilderness gave up everything except its beauty and the sweep of the freedom-breathing winds that still inspire it. CONTENTS PART I
PART II
ILLUSTRATIONS
PART ONE THE FATHER
Winning the Wilderness |
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