Chapter 1 - THE FRONTIER ORCHARDl

Johnny Appleseed had known the night before that warm showers would bring out a rosy foam of apple- blossoms, so all through the soft spring darkness he had slept on the bench in the sapling stoop that shaded his cabin door, where he would awake to the incense from the orchard. That surf of bloom, tossing in the wind of dawn and scattering a scented spray of raindrops, was the first thing his eyes rested upon. But he was aroused, as was every one in the fron- tier town of Pittsburg on that April morning in the last year of the eighteenth century, bythe blowing of bugles from boat-yards, land- ings and ferries along the water-front.

The rivers had risen in the night. In the days before weather-reports snow melted on the mountains unnoted, and floods fell un- prophesied down the valleys of the Allegheny and Monongahela. If both streams rose at once, at a time when the tide of westward migration was at its height, the bugles blew for the men ox the town to be up and stirring. There was a procession of emigrants to be fer- ried across to Ohio, and river craft, that had lain stranded in back-water since the going down of the last freshet, to be swiftly loaded and set adrift.

All this bustle of arrival and departure would bring a rush of business to every ware- house, outfitting store and craft-shop along the terraced and gullied banks. Therefore, at the blare of the bugles, the log-and-plank- built town of fifteen hundred people, that was wedged in the muddy fork of the swollen streams, swarmed like an untidy ant-hill. And up on the wooded slopes to the east, men who had been delayed by low water ran out of camps and back again, seeing the need of haste in getting their families, animals and goods down to the boat and ferry- landings.

To Jonathan Chapman, orchardist, these matters were of small concern. He was, pos- sibly, the only man living in Pittsburg who would not be counting his gains at the end of the day, although no other had such attrac- tive wares to offer as he. But he could not honestly sell young apple-trees that would die on the long, slow journeys into the wilderness of the Northwest Territory, so he was obliged to discourage men from buying. Neverthe- less he would have as busy a day as any, just in being a little brother to wayfaring man and beast.

His nursery and orchard lay on the main- traveled road, on the brow of Grant's Hill, the very first bit of rising ground eastward of the town. From that green and flowery slope the ancient woods had long since retreated, so from rude doorways below, from forest camps above, and from boats on the flanking, bluff- bordered streams Johnny's blossoming trees were visible that morning as a drift of dawn. To the nearer view of passers-by the nursery- man and his orchard offered a moment of rest and refreshment from the feverish activitiesof the day. Every traveler stopped at his gate, for in a never-failing spring that bubbled up, cold and clear, in a cobble-lined basin by the roadside, Johnny had "next water" in and out of Pittsburg.

People who lived in the region cheerfully went a mile out of their way to water their animals at that famous spring and to have the pleasure of passing the time of day with Johnny. Incoming horses found that mossy fountain with their noses as soon as they broke through the forest wall.

The first team of the morning's procession came down the steep road on the run; and when the horses stopped of their own accord, with mouths plunged deep in the pool, two people looked out of the clumsy covered wagon in delighted surprise. To travelers who had seen nothing for two hundred miles except mountains, forests, brawling streams, and now and then a God-forgotten cabin, the squalid town below seemed incredibly big and friendly and reassuring. But that was a day of fierce independence and land-hunger, when it was the dream of men to hew out homes in the Western wilds. Pittsburg was but the Gateway to the West, a place to be gone

through and left behind. This young home- seeker gave but one glance to the town and then turned back to the dream-come-true of Johnny's orchard. It was a heartening thing to find it there, fronting the unbroken woods and unbridled flood.

"If this don't look for all the world like a farm in Little Old Rhody!"

The still younger, homesick wife, scared white and thin by weeks of wild travel, cried, "O-o-oh!" clutched her husband's arm, swal- lowed hard, and stared as at a vision. It was a home of long security, of peace and beauty, such as she had not hoped ever to see again. Indeed, the orchards of grudging New Eng- land made no such growth or lavish promises as this that bowered Johnny's little gray-and- brown nest of a mill-slab cabin. And no- where in the East was to be seen such a vast apple-tree, like a forest oak, as flung its blos- somy banners out over picket fence, pool and roadway.

Before the horses had finished drinking Johnny came whistling down the path. He was extraordinarily happy because he had so much to share. There were seasons when he had nothing besides cold water and a friendlyword. But this morning he had a heap of wrinkled, winey apples, brought up from winter pits, at the gate, and his orchard was a thing of breathless beauty to delight the eyes of all comers.

A slenderly built and beardless young man of twenty-four, in the rough garb of the frontier, Johnny was in no way remarkable except for gentleness of speech and manners, and for sympathetic understanding of other people's difficulties. There was tribute to the courage of these pilgrims in the way he lifted his hat of felted rabbit fur, and offered help in his hand-clasp. He had bought this place, which dated from the days of old Fort Pitt, at the close of the Indian War five years before; and the stream of migration that had flowed by his gate to enter upon a long strug- gle in Ohio was, to him, an inspiring but poignant thing.

Now a youth who has his feet set in some safe and pleasant way of living must needs be looking for the dear other-self to share it. And where was Johnny to look, in that day when romance set sail from all Eastern ports and voyaged westward, if not in these canvas- spread ships of the mountains? But if he

glanced first into the Conestoga wagon, with eyes unconsciously eager, he was, in the next instant, offering the best of the withered fruit and breaking a spray from the great tree.

"For me!" stammered the young woman. "You are robbing yourself of the harvest."

"It is a wild tree; my big bouquet. The French officers at old Fort Duquesne brought comforts from Canada, and they had gay picnics on this hillside. The tree must have grown from an apple-core that was thrown away. The fruit is as tough and bitter as a crab-apple of the woods, but the blossoms have a deeper color and richer fragrance than those of the tame trees."

They all looked up through the branches that were flung in rugged and pink profu- sion against the sky. And neither the half- century-old tree, nor the orchard that was planted when the victory at Yorktown was still good news, looked to be more securely or joyously rooted in that soil than did Johnny. The woman saw that, and something wistful in her face made the man grip her hand and speak with bluff tenderness :

"We'll have a place in Ohio like this, one of these days, little woman,"


"Oh, let's have it now!" she cried. She was so young, and life so long. It stretched before her, down that broad vale, so wild and lonely.

Johnny was comforting the horses with apples, and trying not to see or hear a plea that tugged at his own heartstrings. It was unlikely that people of this first generation in the backwoods of Ohio would be able to have orchards around their stark and comfortless cabins in the clearings. So many were going out in that vain belief. So many would have the hope kindled in their breasts this morning by the sight of his blossoming trees. A little gray cloud obscured the sun for a moment, dimming the perfect blue and gold of the morning.

Now and then one of the lion-hearted men who opened the iron trails to the West had a glimpse of what the loved woman suffered; and when he had it his own resolution broke as a tree cracks in the frost. This was not the first emigrant who had turned to Johnny and asked, in a voice gone husky:

"Is this place for sale?"

Johnny shook his head. The question was asked almost daily. To a man on horseback

he could say, "There isn't enough money in Uncle Sam's treasury to buy my orchard." But to the man in a wagon, with a family, he said, compassionately, "I wish I could give you one just like it." No one ever doubted his sincerity, or ever forgot the look of broth- erly love from his dark -gray, black -lashed eyes when he said it. To the most eager and intelligent he offered a small buckskin bag of seeds, with the plea, " Won't you try to grow some apple-trees for yourself?"

This man wisely refused the gift. The growing of nursery stock was a business in itself, and he would have all he could do for the next few years to save their souls alive. By the time he could care properly for young fruit-trees he thought there would be nursery- men in Ohio.

Again Johnny shook his head. "Not for a generation, except perhaps in Marietta and Cincinnati. Really to serve the pioneers scattered and lost in that forty thousand square miles of forest, an orchardist would have to have the courage and zeal of John the Baptist."

There was a gasping sigh from the woman. She suddenly reached for the little bag of seedsand put it in the bosom of her homespun gown. They drove away slowly, but looking back, as so many did; and, as he so often did, Johnny ran after them. It would be a weary day on'the crowded river-bank. Wouldn't the young wife rather rest under his trees?

She was over the wheel in a moment, and she never stopped running until she stood, shining-eyed, under that canopy of wondrous bloom. Rustic benches and stools were in the orchard for expected guests, but for this appealing visitor who had special need of ease, Johnny went into the house to fetch a Franklin chair. He had bought it in Phila- delphia for the Puritan grandmother who had come out with him from Boston. Now that she lay under a grassy mound in the orchard, the chair had the air of waiting for another occupant.

A little, low, splint-bottomed rocker, it was so lightly balanced that a breeze through an opening door set it in motion. Johnny never saw it so without also seeing in it a young wife and mother. She was surely coming to him, as a bird to its nest, perhaps on this very wave of migration that was now breaking over the mountain wall. The fire was laid ready for

"how long must we wait for our orchard?"her on the hearth, the house was swept, the cellar stored, the spining-wheel oiled. For her the apple-trees blossomed and fruited, the bees gathered nectar, and a pure and steady flame burned in Johnny's heart.

He stopped the chair gently as it rocked in the breeze, and when he brought it out his visitor's first musing speech sank into his thoughts as water sinks into the grateful earth :

"How happy a woman could be here with a brood of little children." She laid her hand in the low crotch of a sprawling tree. "I had one like this to climb into when I was a child. How long must we wait for our orchard?"

"Not so many years as in New England  if you have luck with your seeds. Don't count upon that too much."

So many things had happened to trees that he had sold and seeds that he had given away, to disappoint hopes!

He told her something of the letters that had come back, to him from forest clearings. For a moment of repulsion she leaned her head against the dear tree, with closed eyes and quivering lips. Then she looked up with the

bright bravery that in pioneer women was one of God's miracles.

" Nothing must happen to my seeds. I could not bear it, because  "

She held up a tiny, unfinished garment of tow linen for him to see. Men and women and children told the secrets of their hearts to Johnny. She began at once to sew, and to hum a lullaby, as she rocked in his little chair.

Another caravan was at the gate. For three hours Johnny was kept busy stuffing hands and pockets with apples, breaking sprays from the wild tree, swinging the gate wide for those who could stop, waving good- bys to those who must go on, and now and then offering the forlorn hope of a little bag of seeds.

Of those who gathered under his trees few had anything more palatable to eat than the dry corn dodgers and cold game of the camp. But Johnny had milk and honey, and he built a fire in his out-oven of brick and filled it with potatoes and apples to bake for the noonday meal.

It was eaten under the trees, where birds flitted about tunefully and bees wandered inthe labyrinths of bloom. Then those chil- dren crusaders, safe from all alarms, went to sleep on the sun-dappled clover. The women had a social afternoon which, when they had lived long, marooned on islands of clearings twenty miles from a neighbor across a sea of trees, became historic in their memories. With the going down of the sun these pathetic guests would be gone, Johnny reflected, but he would be here to-morrow and the next year, in this safe little Eden.

His thoughts often ran into some such dis- turbing channel. He was glad to have them interrupted now by a farmer who hailed him from the Allegheny. Running down the grassy terraces above the town, he held the nose of the boat while the man talked. Would Johnny take a note for trees set out in the fall? He had meant to pay for them, but he had not got enough money for a boat- load of potatoes to buy a bushel of New York State salt for his cattle.

Such were the difficulties of transportation over the mountains, and the scarcity of money in Pittsburg, that produce went begging, and farmers who lived in rude abundance could not pay their debts. Johnny took the note

of this honest man to save his pride, and put it into a wallet with a sheaf of other notes that were as little likely ever to be paid, or to be pressed for payment. He wrung the man's hand, shoved the boat into the current, and flung himself on the sloping bank, his thoughts thrust back into the flood of self- questioning by the farmer's last remark:

"Men out my way are feeding their left- over apples to the hogs."

Apples, too, were a drug in the market of Pittsburg. Quantities of them were turned into cider, fed to stock, or left to rot on the ground, while a hundred miles to the west they were as unobtainable as though they grew on another planet.

Johnny turned and lay with his face on his arms. Because it was unsafe and unprofit- able for a nurseryman to venture to serve the wilderness, must a generation of brave men, wistful women and defrauded children miss the comfort and beauty and fond mem- ories of orchards?

The letters that had come back to him!  letters written on wrapping-paper, on birch bark, on the fly-leaves of precious Bibles and spelling-books; letters posted in hollow treesfor hunters, traders, and friendly Indians to find and carry on; letters weeks on the way, and sent with the postage for Johnny to pay out of the always scanty supply of coins in his pocket!

The people who wrote asked nothing more of him; but, very certain that he would care, they wanted to tell Johnny of the disasters that had overtaken his gifts. Young trees had died or had been swept away in fording streams. Seeds had been lost, mildewed by damp, or planted in improper soils. Plants that had sprouted had been killed by drought, choked by weeds, browsed by deer or cattle, or burned by the Indians in their annual firing of underbrush. How could it be otherwise where men must fell trees, raise cabins, grub stumps, plow corn, fence out wild beasts and hunt against famine?

In time the wilderness must give way before the souls of such dauntless men. But it would yield to nothing less. It rejected Johnny's gifts of tender seeds and trees long cherished. It would always refuse them unless  he gave himself to their defense.

As clear as the bugles that began to blow, to announce that the boats were going out,



Johnny heard that voiceless call to go and plant orchards in* the wilds. He had no ties or duties to hold him here; no work that a man much older than himself could not do as well.

But could he give up all the days of his youth  his dream of love and home? In such a lifelong wandering he could not have a cabin and a family. He must sow in soli- tude, and see his harvests gathered to cheer the firesides of other men. He could have no love but that of mankind, no children be- sides the tender seeds of his planting. And at the end he must come to some death obscure and lonely.

He could not do it.

Very certain of that he got to his feet, shaken by the spiritual struggle. His guests were already in the bustle and excitement of hurried departure, and there was no time for lingering good-bys or backward looks. Hastily loading them with fruit and blossoms, he helped the smallest children down the steep hill to the town.

There every able-bodied man was needed. A string of boats had come down from yards farther up the Monongahela, and a hundredunmanageable craft were all in a tangle on the current that was running five miles an hour. There was a pandemonium of shouts and screams from water- washed decks, and from the banks that were crowded with spec- tators, as collisions were threatened, boats grazed rocks or went aground on mud-bars.

With other men and boys Johnny raced into the flood that covered Water Street, to pull a luckless raft from under the keel of the mail-packet. Lending a hand with pole or oar or rope to boats in trouble, he made his way along shore, scrambling over picket fences of gardens that were under water. When the danger was past he mounted the outside stairs to the upper story of the little, old brick blockhouse of Fort Pitt, that still stood on the first bank above the fork of the rivers.

An Irish widow lived there in the sixteen- foot-square redoubt of Colonel Boquet, with a progeny as numerous as that of the old woman in the shoe. Children tumbled up and down the muddy steps; pigeons flew in and out of the powder-burned loopholes under the timbered eaves ; and over the great pond below, which filled the approach to Du- quesne Way, thousands of wild ducks made

a deafening clamor. But, next to his orchard on the hill, this was the best lookout in the town. Johnny always stood there, if he could get a foothold in the press, to watch the wagons and boats go out.

For miles the caravans could be seen mov- ing along the northern bank of the Ohio, and the fleet drifting down the flood in a rude pageantry of migration that was epic in its proportions and daring. To the depths of him it stirred Johnny. Out on that horizon of brooding woods and uncharted waters lay the task of the time, and these were the people who, with any tool or skill, crude strength or sheer courage they possessed, leaped to the doing of it. There would be small reward for these of the vanguard, no return in glory. It had the thrill of heroic adventure, the splendor of self-sacrifice, the tragic mischances of battle. Johnny burned with shame as he remembered how he had been counting the cost. While the boats went by he stood un- covered.

His earliest guests of the morning passed the fork with another family on a clumsy flat- boat. The woman was leaning on the board- ed-up stern, looking up to the orchard on thehillcrest. When she saw Johnny she waved a branch of apple-blossoms, and held up the little bag of seeds, to show that she still had it safe. A lurch of the raft, as it swung into the current of the Ohio, threw her off her balance. The seeds were wrenched from her hold and flung into the flood.

For a long moment she stood motionless and stared into the swirl of turbid water in the wake of the boat, in frightened disbelief that they were gone. Johnny, too, gazed at the spot where they went down, remember- ing what she had said in the morning:

" Nothing must happen to my seeds. I could not bear it, because  "

The pity of it ! All those little promises of beautiful and fruitful years; all those happy times and memories for the child unborn, drowned in the river's slime. For a moment she gripped the rail and smiled back at Johnny her brightest and bravest, as if to reassure him that she meant to bear what she could not. But suddenly she crumpled up on the deck and flung her arms out in piteous appeal.

It was a prayer ! Countless backward looks and letters were translated. For five years

the wilderness had been flinging his futile gifts in his face and besieging his spirit with prayer.

SHE HELD UP THE LITTLE BAG OF SEEDS, TO SHOW THAT SHE STILL HAD IT SAFE

Above the noises on the river he could not make her hear a consoling word even if, in hisconfusion, he could find one to say; but he stood there with bent head until the sun, too, dropped into the flood and the boats dis- appeared in the twilight behind the islands.

Hill-slope and orchard lay in the radiance of a high moon when Johnny went up through the town. As he opened the cabin door the silvery light filled the dear, familiar home and the breeze set the little chair into a ghostly rocking. A gust of emotion swept over him. But after a moment he stopped the chair, as one closes the eyes of the beloved dead, and put it back against the wall where it could rock no more.

All night he lay on the bench in the sap- ling stoop, like one of his own trees uprooted. The birds sang their mating songs in a dawn of rose and pearl. Then the orchard was a surf of bloom that, to Johnny's enlarged spir- itual vision, had a rarer loveliness than that of color and perfume.

Apple-blossoms were the year's first assur- ance of a fruitful autumn, and men were as trees walking. His gift for planting and nur- turing, his poetic feeling, his fellowship for men and his yearning desire to serve them, had been nothing more than the brief blush

and fragrance of the wild tree that ripened only to a harvest of bitter disappointment.

God helping him, he would bring these blossoms of his soul to the good fruits of a thousand orchards in the wilderness.