Perfection City

And where was Olive all this time? She and Cotterell rode out of Union Mills together, as we have seen, and as was seen by nearly all the men who had assembled there that morning in the expectation of seeing him hanged. They rode silently among “the boys” getting their horses ready, they silently passed among the trees to the south and crossed the ford of the Creek. Then Cotterell spoke, pouring forth his words of thanks and gratitude to her. He was not ashamed to show that he was deeply moved, now that none but Olive could see his emotion. She, on the other hand, seemed almost in an unconscious state so little heed did she give to his eager words.

“Speak to me, tell me what you wish,” he pleaded very gently, noticing her abstraction.

“I want you to go away,” she said slowly. “You are safe from their anger for this time, but do not stay here and court danger. This is no place for a man like you to live. Go while there is yet time. There is now a blood-feud between you and the Mills. They will mark you for vengeance, and they are wild bad men.”

“And you?” said Cotterell, looking anxiously at her. “I want to see you safely at home. You are ill, I fear.”

“I am all right,” answered Olive wearily. “You must go to the South Fork at once. Take the Kansas City stage this very night and go. There is no time to be lost.”

“I cannot, and will not,” answered Cotterell. “I must take you home first. You look frightfully tired and ill.”

“No, it would be the crudest thing you could do to bring me home. I want to go back to Ezra, I am so tired,” said Olive plaintively.

“Must I let you go all by yourself over this lonely prairie? I cannot bear the thought of it.”

“I have been two days and one night all by myself out on this lonely prairie in order to save you. Please do what I ask. Tie Queen Katharine’s rein to Rebel’s bit, they will then go quietly together.”

“Tell me,” said Cotterell breathlessly, “why have you been out all this time on the prairie alone?”

“I was following the men who had captured you in order to save you if I could.”

“Great Heavens!” he burst out, with his blue eyes aflame. “And you did this heroic act because you——”

“I did it because you are an innocent man, and I wanted you to go back to your country to live a better life and be a better man than you ever had been before.”

The light died out of his eyes. He looked down, his hands trembled as they had never trembled when on his trial.

“Your sacrifice shall not have been in vain,” he said in a low voice.

“Then good-bye, and all good blessings attend you.”

She shook hands with him and left him standing at the parting of the ways. When she was quite out of sight over the ridge on her way towards Cotton Wood Creek, he, with blinding tears streaming down his sun-burnt face, turned and walked to the South Fork, caught the Kansas City stage-coach and departed out of Olive’s life.

She hardly knew what she was doing she felt so ill. It seemed a relief not to have to talk any more, for she found it difficult to keep hold of her thoughts, they seemed constantly to be slipping away from her. The sun was burning hot, and she had a long way to go, for she had come out of Union Mills by the south side instead of the north. Therefore she must make a great sweep round to the right in order to reach her home, and she must remember that the Creek was only to be safely forded at certain places. She rode on and on, feeling the sun hotter and hotter and her head heavier and heavier. At last she was so dizzy she could no longer see where she was going. Whatever happened she must lie down for a few minutes. Somehow she got off her horse and lay down at the side of the track she had been following, but whether in sleep or in unconsciousness she never knew.

By and by she came to herself again. The horses were both gone! She had forgotten to picket them. She did not remember where she was, but mechanically stumbled along the road and at length was overtaken by a negro woman driving an ox-waggon. She begged of the woman to let her get into the waggon and take her home for she felt ill, and the negress, struck with pity, declared she would, “fo’ de po’ chile was mos’ sick to deaf anyhow.” Olive got into the waggon and knew no more for hours—or was it days, or was it weeks? Two nights out in the poisonous prairie dew had done their work: she was down with chills and fever, a raving panting lunatic, or else a stupid heavy sleeping log, taking no heed of day or night or the hours as they flew, only craving water to drink, ever more water to drink. By and by she began to have intervals when she knew that she was in a strange place with strange black faces around her. Then at last her senses returned, and she sent an imploring message to Ezra to come to her. In reply had come Madame, stern, fierce-eyed, to see her and crush her with the awful news that Ezra was dead. Olive fell back into unconsciousness under the blow, she did not know for how long. But after weary suffering she awoke again, still in that same strange place, still with those black faces around her, kind and pitying, but faces she did not know.

Trying feebly to gather up again the threads of her life, she wished to send word to the friends at Perfection City that she was still alive. The negroes, who were the only inhabitants of the wretched house where she was, seemed not to heed her wishes. They refused to take any messages, but would not say why. Olive grew stronger, for her young vitality exerted itself. She demanded to know why they would not do as she wished, but they fled from her questions and left her to her suspicions. She tormented them with questions, and at last they said the white-faced lady had forbidden them ever to come near her house again, and they were afraid: she was a very terrible looking lady when she was angry. Then Olive used her powers of persuasion upon the negro lad and eventually got him to take her message in spite of what his mother said. That was the scrap of paper that had come into Ezra’s hands.

The Pioneers scattered in systematic search for Olive, spreading out in all directions in a way that could not fail to be speedily successful. Brother Green found her on the second day, while Ezra found the two horses which a thrifty settler had impounded in his own fields and was unobtrusively working until they should be called for by their owner.

Brother Green was overjoyed at finding Olive and was not so overwhelmed at hearing of her long illness as, under different circumstances, he might have been. In fact he was almost pleased, for that fact, taken together with the negro woman’s graphic account of finding her alone and ill on the prairie on the day “o’ de hoss-thief tryin’,” made it clear to him that she had never been with Cotterell since she was at the abortive trial. She was very weak and languid and took little heed of him or his remarks.

“Ezra will be out of his mind with joy,” he said, by way of rousing her to some interest, as he was settling her as comfortably as he could in the ox-waggon, preparatory to setting out on their return.

“Ezra is dead,” said Olive wearily.

Brother Green stared hard at her. “What crazy fancy is this? Ezra is alive and riding over towards Jacksonville at this moment hunting for you.”

“She told me he was dead,” said Olive, beginning to cry from the revulsion of feeling combined with physical suffering.

“How dared the woman tell such a lie!” exclaimed Brother Green angrily, and then after a moment he added more mildly, “Perhaps it was a mere mistake, she seems to have been kind to you, but negroes are not a truth-telling race.”

“It was not the negro woman, it was Madame,” said Olive in a hushed and awe-struck voice.

“Nonsense, you are raving, Sister Olive,” said he sharply.

“She came to me and told me during my illness.”

“When?”

“I can’t tell. I don’t remember when things happened. I was so ill.”

“Then depend upon it, you have fancied this. Fever fancies seem very real at times.”

He experienced a certain relief in speaking thus confidently on the subject to her.

“The negro woman knows. Ask her who came here and forbade them to bring any more messages from me to Perfection City.”

It was singular, considering the way he had spoken, that Brother Green did not take this simple means of assuring himself that Olive’s idea was the effect of the disordered workings of a fevered brain. But he said never a word to the negro woman on the subject, but drove slowly and thoughtfully back to Perfection City, with Olive in the ox-waggon, lying on a heap of corn-shucks covered with the ragged patch-quilt the woman had lent her. It was a long and a weary journey thus creeping back home over the blackened prairie. Olive sometimes wondered if she would get there alive, and she moaned in her misery. For the rest, Brother Green spoke but little. Since assuring Olive of the falseness of her idea that Madame had been to see her, he appeared to have lost the cheerfulness he had shown upon finding her. Brother Green was thinking of the future of Perfection City, and it looked black enough to him. It was no secret that Madame had refused to reveal Olive’s whereabouts to her husband, and in the light of that circumstance he could foresee nothing but strife, ill-will and enmity in Perfection City. How were Olive and Madame to meet, and above all how were they to live in harmony for the future? These were the thoughts that occupied his mind and kept him silent during that long slow drive.

Olive, too, was trying to look into the future, and she shivered with dread as she did so. Madame’s pitiless eyes were before her still, but Ezra would be there, he would shield her and comfort her, and she could rest her head peacefully on his honest breast. Dear Ezra! Why had he not come to her when she had sent for him? She hoped he would be there to greet her and to save her from that terrible woman, whose colourless face in its icy cruelty still haunted her, filling her with a great dread. She need not have been so afraid, for when she reached Perfection City Madame was gone.

The Pioneers had indeed a life of much inward excitement during these days. The return of Olive and the departure of Madame were events almost equally calculated to disturb their equanimity as a Community.

Ezra being still away looking for his wife in the wrong direction, there was no one to receive her when she got home. Therefore Brother Green took her to Sister Mary Winkle’s at once on their arrival. Olive was weak, ill, and peevish, she cried with disappointment at not seeing Ezra. Sister Mary Winkle administered a stimulant in the way of advice.

“I wouldn’t take on so like a baby, Olive Weston, if I were you. Ezra’ll come home probably to-day or to-morrow, and one day more or less ain’t much in a life-time.”

Olive dried her eyes with energy.

“Everybody said you had gone off with that man Cotterell, and so we all thought too,” observed Sister Winkle conversationally.

“How dare you suggest such a thing to me?” exclaimed Olive, with an amount of angry energy surprising in one so weak.

“Well, we had it from the people who saw you go away with him, and who heard you say you were going. I don’t see how we could possibly have thought other than we did.”

“You must be a wicked woman to think such a thing,” said Olive. Her chin began to quiver piteously.

“I am not going to condemn you,” replied Sister Winkle, in a philosophic vein. “If you found you preferred him to Ezra I don’t think you would have been wrong in showing your preference in an unmistakable manner. Marriage is a partnership which either side should be free to dissolve. Mistakes are sometimes made in it as in other affairs. Our marriage is not a mistake, because Wright and I don’t make mistakes, but other people are different, and I don’t see why they should be punished for an honest mistake. Marriage should be free. Perfection City was founded on freedom. We thought that you had used your right of choice, and since you liked Cotterell best had gone with him. We thought that Madame would soon marry Ezra, since he was now free, and she had always wanted to.”

Olive sprang from her chair and steadied herself with her trembling hands by clutching the back of it.

“Mary Winkle, I hate you,” she said, in a voice choking with emotion. “Perfection City is a sinful, wicked place. I wish I had never seen it. If I live, and Ezra loves me, I hope he will take me away so I may never hear its name again.”

She stamped bravely out of the house under the influence of her anger, but her strength did not carry her far, and she sank down upon the wood-pile weeping bitterly, unable to walk another step. Sister Mary, somewhat disgusted at the way in which her philosophy had been received, resolved to let her cool off a little before going out to offer Olive an arm to conduct her back into the house. Thus it came about that Olive was still sitting weeping on the wood-pile when Uncle David came hurrying up, having just heard of her arrival, and close behind him came Ezra running like a mad-man. When Olive saw him she started towards her husband with outstretched arms, but her weakness overcame her, and she would have fallen to the ground only that he was just in time to catch her in his arms, where she fell laughing and crying in the most incoherent manner imaginable.

“Oh, Ezra, you didn’t believe that wicked story? And you do love me, don’t you? And you won’t marry her, and you aren’t dead, are you? Tell Mary Winkle you hate her too. And why didn’t you come to me when I sent for you?”

Ezra could only kiss her, and pet her, and soothe her in every way while Olive kept saying hysterically, “You won’t, will you?” and “You will, won’t you?” All of which Ezra promised faithfully to perform. She absolutely refused to re-enter Sister Mary Winkle’s house, whereupon the latter, somewhat conscience-stricken, offered to send in food for their supper at their own house, provided Olive was not told who had sent it. The secret was kept, and Olive partook heartily of what otherwise would undoubtedly have choked her.

Uncle David hovered over her with anxious love and remorse. “Bless her heart, o’ course he didn’t b’lieve nothin’ ’bout her goin’ off. Yer bet he didn’t, he knowed it was all right, on’y she was so long a-com-in’ home he sorter kinder got oneasy, an’ that’s why they went out to fin’ her, an’ dear, dear, had she been an’ gone an’ got that plaguey ague, an’ he not there to see a’ter her, an’ there wasn’t nothin’ like Ayre’s Ague Cure for that, an’ he would go right ’long home this minute an’ get her some right away.”

Ezra wanted to hear her story, and she told him everything from the beginning to the end. When she came to the end and told him of Madame’s visit, he shivered and said it must have been delirium, he bade her think no more of it and never speak of it again. His mind started back from the thoughts such a story raised up before him. He was afraid, and looked away from the abyss, terrified at what lay but half hidden there.