Show i I 1 A sto story ry of the 9 highlands vy ty i E t f WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE si i ninnon ninn Tn 1 1 1 III 11 IF H copyright 1922 by the lh Moc redlan co it the h e missouri river into CROSSING kansas the westbound west bound traveler begins a steady upward climb until lie readies reaches the summit of the Ko ckles the journey through kansas covers in four hundred miles nearly five thousand feet of the long upward slant in that long hillside there tire are three or four distinct kinds of landscape distinguished from one another by the trees tree that trim the bottom the hills and bluffs that roll away from the river are covered with scrub oaks elms walnuts and sycamore amores a As the wayfarer pushes westward the oak drops back then the sycamore follows the walnut and finally the elm disappears until three hundred miles to the vic Nc stward the horizon of the gently rolling prairie Is serrated by the scraggy cottonwood that rises awkwardly by some sand barred stream oozing over the land another fifty aty miles and it a garden city high up on the background of the panorama even the cottonwood cotton nood staggers rs and liere here and there around sonic some sinkhole sink holo in the great flat prairie droops a desolate willow the last weary pilgrim from the lowlands when the traveler has mounted to this high table land nearly four hundred miles froni from the Misso missouri url lie he may walk for days without seeing any green thing higher than his head lie ire way may journey for hours on horseback and not cliine a hill seeing before him only the level and often barren plain scarred now and then by irrigation ditches the even line of the horizon Is seldom marred the silence of such a scene gnaws the from the heart men become harsh and hard women grow withered and sodden under its blighting power the song of wood birds Is not heard even the mournful plaint of the meadow lark loses its sentiment where the dreary claril clanking drig drone of the Is the one song which really brings good tidings with it long and fiercely sounds this monody lu in the night when the traveler lies down to rest in the little sunburned sun burned itne board town the gaunt arms of the wheel hurt its imprecations at him ag aa he rises to resume his journey into the silence under the great gray dome with its canopy pegged tightly down about him everywhere crops are as bountiful in kansas as elsewhere on the globe it Is the constant cry for aid coming from this plateau only a small part of the state which reaches the worlds ears and the world blames kansas the fair springs on these highlands lure home seekers to their ruin hundreds of men and women have been tempted to death or worse by this lorelei of the pr prairies aIrles A young man named burkholder came out to fountain county in aw ire he had been a well to do young fellow in illinois was a graduate of an inland college a man of good judgment or sense of a well arranged mental perspective spec tive lve in IW 1885 money was plentiful ile ho stocked ills farm put on it a mortgage ga e and brought a wife back from the home of his boyhood she was a young woman of culture who put a bookshelf in the cotner comer of the best of the ll 11 three rooms in the yellow pine shanty in which she and her husband lived she brought her upright plano piano and adorned her bedroom door boor with bright rugs she bought magazines at the post book store of the i pralle town toun she was not despondent the vast stretches of green cheered tier her through the hot summer there was a novel fascination in the wide treeless horizon which charmed her tor for a while at first she bhe never tired of glancing up from her work through the south window of the kitchen to see the level green stretches and the road that merged into the distance she sat in the shade of the house and wrote home cheerful rollicking letters As for roughing it sho she enjoyed it thoroughly the he crops did not quite pay the expenses ot of the year so BO thomas burk holder and lizzle lizzie his wife put another mortgage on the farm the books and magazines from home still adorned ltd orned the best room and all through the winter and spring the prevailing spirits of the community buoyed up tle me young people it was during the summer of that the first hot winds came they blighted everything the kaffir corn the grass the dust laden needs by the wayside curled up under their fiery breath bre ath from the southwestern desert mrs burkholder stayed indoors the dust spread itself over everything it came into the house like a flood pouring through the loose window frames and weatherboarding mrs burkholder looking out of tier her window on these days could see only a great dust dr dragon agori writhing up and down the brown road and over the prairie for miles and miles the scene seemed weirdly dry she found hertelt herself ioda longing ing one day tor for a fleck ol of water in the landscape that longing grew upon her she said nothing ol of it but in her day dreams there was always a mental itching to put water into the lusterless picture framed by bj her kitchen window it was a kind of soul thirst in one of her letters letter she wrote die hot winds nave have killed every thing tills this year but most of all I 1 grieve for the little cottonwood saplings on 01 the tha eighty la in of vie house bouse there Is not a tree anywhere in sight and as the government requires that we should plant trees on our place as a partial payment for it I 1 was so in hopes that these would do well they are burned up now you dont know how lonesome it 1 seems without trees she d did ld not dot tell the homo home folk that her piano and the books had bad gone to buy provisions for the winter site she did not toll tell the home folk that she had not bought a new neu dress drees since she left illinois slie she did not let tier her petty cures cares burden tier her letter she wrote of generalities erali ties you do not know how I 1 miss the hills tom and I 1 rode twenty miles yesterday to a place called the taylor bottom it Is a deep sinkhole sink hole perhaps fifty feet deep containing about ten square acres ny by getting down into this we have the effect of f hills you cannot know liow how good and snug and tucked in and comfy it seemed it la Is so naked at the house with the knife edge on the horizon and only the sky oi 0 er you tom and I 1 have been busy I 1 had time to read the story in the magazine you sent me tom cant get corduroys corduroys out here you should see him in av overalls 11 mrs burkholder helped her husband look after the cattle the hired man went away in the early fall this she did not write home cit cluer lier all through the winter days she heard the keen wind whistle around the lie house and when slie she was alone a dread blanched blan clied tier her face the great gray dome seemed to be holding her its prisoner she felt chained under it IL she shut tier eyes and strove to get away from it in fancy to think of green hills and woodland but lier her eyes v tore pen open and with a hypnotic terror she went to the window where the lie prairie thrall ahral I 1 bound her again in its chains the cemetery for the prairie town had been started during the spring before and some one had planted therein a solitary cottonwood sapling its two dead gaunt branches seemed to be beckoning her and all day she thought she heard the winds shriek through the new iron fences around the graves and through the grass that grew wild mild about the dead the scene haunted her it was tor for this end cud that the gray dome held tier lier she thought thou glit as she listened during the cold nights to the hard dry snow as it beat against the board shanty wherein she lay awake in the spring the movers caravan filed by the house starting eastward before planting time when the train of wagons lad had passed the year before sirs mrs burkholder had been amused by the fantastic legends which the wagon covers white clean prosperous had borne kansas or bust they used to read when headed westward busted was the laconic legend written under the old motto on their first eastward trip going back to cifes folks had been a common jocose motto at first sirs ills burkholder and her husband had laughed over this tho the year before but this year as she saw the long line lie file out of the west into the east cast she missed the banners she noticed with a mental pung pang that those wiio mio came out of the country this year seemed to he thankful to get out at all there evere eo times when she had to struggle to conceal tier her cowardice for she wished to turn away from the fight to flee from the gray dome and from the beckoning of the dead cottonwood in 1 the graveyard the spring slipped away and ar another iother sultry summer came on and then a long drywall dry fall mrs burkholder and her husband lius band worked together there were whole weeks when silo neglected her toilet she tried to brighten up in the evening and dull fully went at the magazines that were regularly sent to her by the home folks but she seemed to need sleep and the cares of the day weighed upon tier lier the interests of the world of culture grew small in her vision the york work before her seemed to demand all tier her thought so that serial after serial slipped through the magazines unread and new literary men laen and fads rose and fell all unknown to tier her the pile of magazines at the foot of the bed grew dustier every day the burl holders got their share of the feerd grain sent to fountain county by the kansas legislature and just after planting time in IM 1880 the iti land was gloriously green but before july the promises had been mocked by the hiss of the hot wind in the dead grass that fall one of their horses died saturday after saturday burkholder went to the prairie to town tonn nn and brought home groceries and coal it was a source of constant terror to him that some day ills wife might ask him how hov belbot these supplies she hid it from herself lier self as long as she could all winter they would not admit to each other that they alicy living on aid on many a gray blustering afternoon when burkholder holder was in the village getting provisions a straggler on the road might see his wife comins coming around the house with two buckets of water in tier lier ban hands the water splashing against her feet which were encased in a pair of tier her husbands old shoes the wind pushing her thin calico skirts against tier lier stiff limbs and her frail hody body bent stiffly in the mans coat that she wore rier her arms anna rind and shoulders seemed to shiver and crouch with the cold and tier lier blue features were so drawn that her friendly smile at the wayfarer was anlyn grimace in the spring many men in fountain county went east looking for work they left their wives with god and the county commissioners burkholder dumbly went with them in march the covered wagon w igon train began to file past the burkholder house by april it was a continuous line sli shabby abby tat rickety dying here came a wagon covered bed quilts there another topped with nith oilcloth table covers another followed patched with everything for two years the movers caravan trailing across the plains had taken the shape of a huge dust colored serpent in the womans comans fancy now IT ir seemed to sirs burkholder that the terrible creature was wag withering away that this was its skeleton the treeless landscape worried her more and more the steel dome seemed set tighter over tier her and slie she sat thirsting for water in the landscape after a months communion with iber her fancies mrs burkholder nailed a black rag over the kitchen window but the arms of the dead sapling in the cemetery gyrated wildly in her sick imagination it was a long summer and when it was done there was one 7 x 00 0 0 I 1 her blue features were so drawn that her friendly smile at the wayfarer was only a grimace more vacant house one more among hundreds far out on the highlands there Is one more mound in the bleak country graveyard where the wind shrieking through the iron fences and the crackling dead cottonwood branches has never neve learned a slumber song to sob for a tired soul brt bet there lucre are times u athen lien the wind seeing to moan upon its sun parched chords like the cry of some lone spirit spir it grop groping ing 11 its tangled way back to the lowlands aln d the green pastures the still wa waters aers and to the peace that hasselh understanding |