And even now,as the night comes,and the shadows gather round,And you tell the old-time story,I can almost hear the sound Of the horses'hoofs in the silence,and the voices of struggling men;For the night is the same forever,and the time comes back again.
--JAMES W.STEELE
FROM the beginning of things in the Walnut Valley,the Kickapoo Corral had its uses.Nature built it to this end.The river course follows the pattern of the letter S faced westward instead of eastward.
The upper half of the letter is properly shaped,but the sharpened curve at the middle leaves only a narrow distance across the lower space.
In this outline runs the Walnut,its upper curve almost surrounding a little wooded peninsula that slopes gently on its side to the water's edge.
But the farther bank stands up in a straight limestone bluff forming a high wall of protection about the river-encircled ground.
A less severe bluff crosses the open part of the peninsula,reaching the hither side of the river below the sharp bend.
The space inside,stone-walled and water-bound,made an ideal shelter for the wild life that should inhabit it.And Nature saw that it was good and went away and left it,not forgetting to lock the door upon it.
For the enemy who would enter this protecting shelter must come through the gateway of the river.There was only one right place to do this.
Deceivingly near to the shallow rock-based ford before the Corral,so near that only the wise ones knew how to miss it,Nature placed the cruelest whirlpool that ever swung an even surface up stream,its gentle motion telling nothing of the fatal suction underneath that level stretch of steady,slow moving,irresistible water.
What use the primitive tribes made of this spot the river has never told.
But in the day of the Kickapoo supremacy it came to its christening.
Here the tribe found a refuge and harbored its stolen plunder.
From this wooded covert it sent its death-singing arrows through the heart of its enemy who dared to stand in relief on that stone bluff.
Here it laughed at the drowning cries of those who were caught in the fatal whirlpool beyond the curve in the river wall,and here it endured siege and slaughter when foes were valiant enough,and numerous enough to storm into its stronghold over the dead bodies of their own vanguard.
Weird and tragical are the legends of the Kickapoo Corral,left for a stronger race to marvel over.For,with the swing of time,the white man cut a road down the steep bluff at the sharpest bend and made a ford in the shallow place between the whirlpool and the old Corral,and the Nature-built stockade became a peaceful spot,specially ordained by Providence,the Sunrise Freshmen claimed,as a picnic ground for their autumn holiday.At least the young folk for whom Professor Burgess was acting as chaperon took it so,and reveled in the right.
Interest in Greek had greatly increased in Sunrise with the advent of the handsome young Harvard man,and his desired seclusion for profound research had not yet been fully realized.
Types for study were plentiful,however,especially the type of the presumptuous young fellow who dared to admire Elinor Wream.By divine right she was the most popular girl in Sunrise,which pleased Professor Burgess up to a certain point.
That point was Victor Burleigh.The silent antagonism between these two daily grew stronger;why,neither one could have told up to this holiday.
The day had been perfect--the weather,the dinner,the company,the woodland--even the amber light in the sky softening the glow as the afternoon slipped down toward twilight in the sheltered old Corral.
"Come,Vic Burleigh,help me to start this fire for supper,"Dennie Saxon called."We won't get our coffee and ham and eggs ready before midnight.""Here,Trench,or some of you fellows,get busy,"Vic called back to the big right guard of the Sunrise football squad."Elinor and I are going to climb the west bluff to see what's the matter with the sun.It looks sick.
I've been hired man all day;carried nineteen girls across the shallows,packed all the lunch-baskets,toted all the wood,built all the fires,washed all the dishes--""Ate all the dinner,drank all the grape juice,stepped on all the custard pies,upset all the cream bottles.Oh,you piker,get out!"Trench aimed an empty lunch-basket at Vic's head with the words.
Being a chaperon was a pleasant office to Professor Burgess today but for the task of throwing a barrier about Elinor every time Vic Burleigh came near.
And Burleigh,lacking many other things more than insight,kept him busy at barrier building.
"Miss Wream,you can't think of climbing that rough place,"Burgess protested,with a sharp glance of resentment at the big young fellow who dared to call her Elinor.
The tiger-light blazed in the eyes that flashed back at him,as Vic cried daringly.
"Oh,come on,Elinor;be a good Indian!"
"Don't do it,Miss Wream,"Vincent Burgess pleaded.
Elinor looked from the one to the other,and the very magnetism of power called her.
"I mean to try,anyhow,"she declared."Will you pick me up if I fall,Victor?""Well,I wouldn't hardly go away and leave you to perish miserably,"Vic assured her,and they were off together.
The Wream men were slender,and all of them,except Lloyd Fenneben,the stepbrother,wore nose glasses and drank hot water at breakfast,and ate predigested foods,and talked of acids and carbons,and took prescribed gestures for exercise.The joyousness of perfect health was in every motion of this young man.His brown sweater showed a hard white throat.
He planted his feet firmly.And he leaped up the bluffside easily.
If Elinor slipped,the strength of his grip on her arm reassured her,until climbing beside him became a joy.
The bluff was less surly than it appeared to be down in the Corral,and the benediction of autumn was in the view from its crest.