Winning the Wilderness

Margaret McCarter

McCarter Margaret Hill

Winning the Wilderness

In all the story of the world of man,

Who blazed the way to greater, better things?

Who stopped the long migration of wild men,

And set the noble task of building human homes?

The learned recluse? The forum teacher?

The poet-singer? The soldier, voyager,

Or ruler? ’T was none of this proud line.

The man who digged the ground foretold the destiny

Of men. ’T was he made anchor for the heart;

Gave meaning to the hearthstone, and the birthplace,

And planted vine and figtree at the door.

He made e’en nations possible. Aye, when

With his stone axe he made a hoe, he carved,

Unwittingly, the scepter of the world.

The steps by which the multitudes have climbed

Were all rough-hewn by this base implement.

In its rude path have followed all the minor

Arts of men. Hark back along the centuries,

And hear its march across the continents.

From zone to zone, all ’round the bounteous world,

The man whose skill makes rich the barren field

And causes grass to grow, and flowers to blow,

And fruits to ripen, and grain turn to gold —

That man is King! Long live the King!

    – Mrs. J. K. Hudson.

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.

PART ONE

THE FATHER

The old Antaean fable of strength renewed from the ground

Was a human truth for the ages; since the hour of the Eden-birth.

That man among men was strongest who stood with his feet on the earth!

    – Sharlot M. Hall.

CHAPTER I

The Blessing of Asher

Unless there be in the background a mother, no portrait of a man is complete.

– Winston Churchill

The old Aydelot farm reached quite down to the little village of Cloverdale, from which it was separated by Clover Creek. But the Aydelot farmhouse stood a good half-mile away up the National pike road toward the Virginia state line. The farm consisted of two long narrow strips of ground, bordering the road on either side and walled about by forests hiding stagnant marshes in their black-shadowed depths. Francis Aydelot had taken up the land from the government before the townsite was thought of. Farming was not to his liking and his house had been an inn