OSCAR JEFFERSON
"Help those that need help."
_--Grandma Brown_.
The next morning while Doug was feeding in the corral, his father hitched
a team to the hay wagon. Just as he prepared to climb over the wheel,
Judith came out, ready for her ride to the Days' ranch, where she was
to spend the day.
"Say, Jude," called John. "I want Doug to go to the old ranch after some
colts. You come with me and help feed. I'm going to get all I can out of
you two until school begins again."
Judith crossed silently to the wagon and climbed aboard. Douglas dropped
his pitchfork and walked deliberately toward the fence. As he climbed it,
he said, "Judith, you aren't going. You keep your date with Maud." He
dropped from the fence to his father's side.
John turned to him with a look of entire astonishment.
"Jude's growing up, as you say," explained Douglas heavily. "If you
aren't going to look out for her, I am."
"O, you are! And why?" demanded his father.
"Because!" replied Doug. "Jude, you get down and get started on Swift."
Astonishment, amusement, anger, pursued their way across the older man's
face. Judith put out her tongue at her brother.
"Chase yourself, Doug Spencer! You're not my boss, you bet!"
John put his foot on the hub. "Good-by, Doug; I hope you recover from
your insanity by to-night."
Douglas put an unsteady hand on his father's shoulder. "She can't go with
you, Dad!"
His father struck him roughly aside. Douglas ran around the wagon. Judith
was sitting on the edge of the rick. He reached up, pulled her into his
arms, ran her into the feed shed, turned the key in the padlock and
put the key in his pocket. As he turned, his father met him with a blow
between the eyes. Mary Spencer appeared on the doorstep, pale and
silent.
It was but the work of a moment to subdue the boy, and to unlock the
door.
"Get into the wagon, Judith!" ordered John.
Douglas strode uncertainly to his father's side. "Judith, you go get on
your horse!"
The young girl stood staring at the two, something impish in the curl of
her lips, something wistful and unafraid and puzzled in her beautiful
gray eyes. Back of the two men lay the unblemished blue white of the
snow-choked fields and in awful proximity to these, Dead Line Peak flung
its head against the cloudless heavens. Judith looked from the Peak to
father and son as though deliberately appraising them. John, with ashen
hair, with bloodshot eyes and the tell-tales lines from nose to lip
corner, but handsome, dominating, choleric, with his reputation as a
conqueror of women, as a subduer of horses, as a two-gun man. Douglas,
with his thatch of gold blowing in the cold morning air, thin, awkward,
only a boy but with a spirit glowing in his blue eyes that Judith never
before had seen there. The girls of Lost Chief were sophisticated almost
from the cradle. Judith could interpret the lines in her stepfather's
face. But she did not know what the strange light in Douglas' eyes might
mean. Suddenly she sprang to Swift's back and put her to the gallop.
"You know what to expect when you come back, miss!" roared John.
But Judith did not seem to hear. Spencer turned to his son. "Now, sir,
you go into the house and get the whip!"
Douglas did not stir. "You aren't going to whip me any more, Dad. If you
want to fight me, put up your fists."
Mary Spencer ran through the snow toward the two. "Don't fight him, John!
Don't! He's just a child!"
John whirled at her with his fists raised. Douglas jumped before his
step-mother and caught the blow on his raised elbow.
"And that'll be about enough of that, too, Dad!"
John caught his breath, then poured out a string of oaths and invectives,
ending with, "Now before I thrash the cussedness out of you, young
fellow, what excuse have you got to put up?"
"I haven't any." Douglas was still pale and his voice broke, childishly.
"Only, all of a sudden it seems cowardly to me for you to hit Mother.
She's not a child. You haven't got the excuse that you're training her.
And you know she can't hit you. You're a good fighter, but I notice you
don't hit Peter Knight or Charleton Falkner, any time they peeve you a
little. It was all right to lick me and Jude when we were little. But now
I warn you. I'm going to hit back. And you got to leave Judith and her
mother alone."
John Spencer stood staring at his son. Twice he raised his heavy fist
to strike him. Twice he dropped it. Douglas, still pale and trembling,
wondered at his own temerity. He always had been so terribly afraid
of his father!
"So you don't intend to obey me any more!" sneered John.
"Sure I do," replied Douglas. "Only I'm not going to be licked into doing
things blind, and I'm going to take care of Jude."
John uttered a contemptuous oath.
Doug swallowed with an effort but his steady temper was well under
control and he went on, "I'd like to be as good a rider and rancher as
you are and handle a gun as good as you do, but I'm hanged if I want my
woman to be as scared of me as Mother is of you."
"Think yourself a man, eh? Well, I'll tell you, young fellow, as long as
you live in that house, there, you'll obey and take the lickings I give
you. My father built that house and I was born in it and so were you.
Hemen come from our breed and only a sissy refuses to obey. I may not be
as well educated as my ancestors back East were, but I'm just as well
trained as any of 'em and you're going to be too. We Spencers boss our
own households. Go get me that whip!"
"No, sir, I won't do it," replied Douglas, a steady burning light in his
eyes.
"You mean you'll stand up to me and fight after you saw the way I could
handle you a few minutes ago?"
"Yes, sir, I do."
For a long moment there was silence, while Mrs. Spencer twisted her hands
together and Doug and his father stared at each other. Then John gave a
short laugh.
"By Sitting Bull! if you haven't got nerve, Doug! Go saddle Buster and
get up to the old ranch after those three-year-olds." Then he climbed
into the hay wagon, shouted at the team and was off.
Douglas' lips parted. The color returned to his face. Then he sat down
weakly on the lower bar of the buck fence and burst into tears, and he
was more frightened by his own tears than he had been by his father's
anger. Mary Spencer knelt in the snow before him and tried to pull his
head to her shoulder.
"Doug! Doug! You are a man!" she whispered. "You are a man!"
Douglas struggled heavily with the strangling sobs and after a moment sat
erect and embarrassed.
"Douglas, what happened? How did you come to do it?"
"Something he said to Jude last night scared me," mumbled Doug.
Mary tightened her hold on the boy's arm. "I've been so afraid! So
afraid! And no one to talk to!"
"Haven't you ever warned Jude about it?" demanded Douglas, with a sudden
sensing of a debt mothers owed to daughters that Mary might not be
discharging.
Mary shrank. "O, I couldn't, Doug!"
Douglas looked at her scornfully. "I don't see why that isn't your job."
Mary rose from her knees. She twisted her work-scarred hands together and
looked at the boy with pathetic wistfulness.
"Don't you see, Doug, that I couldn't make her understand? She's still
such a child she'd just laugh at me."
"Child!" scoffed Douglas, forgetting his own previous estimate of Judith.
"She knows a whole lot more than you do!"
Mary laughed drearily. "Now you're talking like a child!" Then her voice
cleared with unwonted purposefulness. "No one who hasn't been married can
possibly understand men, or fear them or despise them, like they ought to
be feared and despised. When I think what I was before I married and what
I am now, I feel like I wanted to put Judith where she never could see a
man. It's not right that a woman should suffer so. It's not right to lose
all your dreams like I've lost mine. Marriage was never meant to be so."
Douglas scowled in his astonishment. Mary had been feeling like this all
along when he'd been thinking of her as without nerve! Here, then, was
somebody else lonely, like himself and Judith.
"I'm sorry, Mother," he said awkwardly. "I'll do what I can to change
it."
"You can't do anything, my dear. What I'm suffering is in the nature of
things."
"Well, anyhow, you ought to warn Jude," repeated Douglas.
"I can't!" said Mary. "Doug, if I do she'd guess how cowardly I am and
how I suffer--in my mind, I mean," and she put her hands over her face
with a dry sob.
Douglas put his long young arm about her. "I'll take care of it for you,"
he said huskily. "Judith don't know it but she's got somebody besides old
Peter ridin' herd on her now. And you know I'm some little old herder,
Mother!"
"I know you're a man!" exclaimed Mary. "The kind of a man that's mighty
scarce in Lost Chief Valley." She turned away toward the house.
Douglas picked a bridle from the fence and started after Buster.
It was nearly supper time and Doug and his father were reading in the
living-room when Judith returned. The wind had risen and fine particles
of snow sifted under the eaves and over the table. The wood stove glowed
red hot and the smell of cedar mingled with that of frying beef in the
kitchen.
Judith, without waiting to take off her mackinaw, cheeks scarlet, eyes
brilliant, stood before her father.
"Here I am, Dad."
John looked up from his book. "Have you milked yet?"
"No, sir."
"Go out and do it."
"I want to know if you're going to lick me, Dad?"
"What did I promise you, last night?" he demanded.
"Do you mean to keep that promise?" asked Judith.
"Go out and tend to your milking!" roared John, rising to his feet and
throwing the book across the room. "Get out of my sight, you little fool,
you blankety-blank--" But Judith had fled and Douglas retired to the
kitchen.
Supper was a silent affair. But that evening when the family had gathered
under the lamp to read, Douglas said, "Scott Parsons wants me to take the
mail stage for him Wednesday."
"Where's he going?" asked John.
"Out after his registered bull. It's strayed again."
"Huh!" grunted John. "Are he and Oscar Jefferson still fighting over that
bull?"
"I guess so," replied Douglas. "Can I go, Dad?"
"It will put the dehorning off another day, but I guess you can go. That
extra money will come in handy. How would you like to drive the mail
regularly next winter, Douglas?"
The boy tossed "Treasure Island" on the table. "Do you mean you'd let me
have it?"
"What would you do with the money?"
Douglas hesitated.
Judith spoke. "I know what I'd do. I'd put half the money into books. The
other half I'd use to buy me some buckers and I'd go into training as a
lady bronco buster."
Everybody laughed, and Mrs. Spencer said, "You won't have time to keep
your nose in a book if you start in that line, Judith!"
"I'll always read," retorted Judith loftily.
"I'd buy me a silver-mounted saddle and silver spurs," said Douglas, "and
that dapple gray of Oscar Jefferson's and a good greyhound, and I'd go
into the wild horse catching business."
John groaned. "We've sure-gawd got an ambitious pair of kids here, Mary!
What about the money you get from this trip, Doug?"
"Will you let me keep it?" asked Douglas, eagerly.
"I'll see!" John picked up his book again.
"Let me go with you, Doug!" pleaded Judith.
"Nothing doing!" exclaimed her stepfather succinctly. "You go to bed now
before you get me aggravated."
Judith tossed her head but obediently retired to her corner of the room,
undressed and crawled into her bed. Douglas was not long in following her
example.
It was about eight o'clock Wednesday morning and twenty below zero when
the mail buckboard driven by Douglas took the rising trail from Black
Gorge eastward over the Mesa Pass. The snow was heavy and the trail
only indifferently opened. To add to the difficulties, Scott had hitched
Polly, a half-broken mule, to the stage in place of the mare who had gone
lame. James, the remaining horse, was steady, however, and Douglas had
only a moderate amount of trouble until the long steep grade up to the
Pass began. Here, after a quarter of an hour of reluctant going, the
mule balked. James did what he could to pull her along, Douglas plied the
blacksnake; but to no avail. When she finally did move it was to lie down
with deliberate slowness. Douglas jumped out into the drifts and by
risking his life among her agitated legs he managed to get her up. An
hour passed in the intense cold before she finally was harnessed and
meekly pulling more than her share.
At the top of the Pass, Douglas drew up to breathe the team. Bleak,
snow-covered rocks rose on either side of the trail, but opening beyond,
snow-topped ranges in rainbow tints gleamed against a sky of intensest
blue. Behind him, as he turned to look, lay Lost Chief Valley, with blue
clouds rolling from the tops of Dead Line and Falkner's Peaks. Douglas
shivered and urged the team on. But the mule again balked, and as Doug
gathered up the whip a gruff voice cried, "Hold up your hands!"
A six-shooter in a mittened fist appeared over a rock heap at the
roadside.
Douglas blanched, then looked keenly at the mitten. "Come out of that,
Jude! Darn it, I thought you'd gone to Grandma Brown's!"
Judith led Swift from behind the rock, and mounted. Her eyes were bright
with mischief.
"You turn right round and go home again, miss!" he cried, as Swift ranged
beside the buckboard.
Judith giggled. "You sure do need a hazer, Doug, while you're driving
that mule! I left a note for Mother."
"Go home! Don't speak to me. This is no trip for a girl!"
"You mean you want me to go home and help Dad feed the two-year-olds?"
demanded Judith.
Douglas glared at her. For all the biting cold, her old knit cap was
hanging to the pommel, her mackinaw was open at the throat. Her cheeks
were deep scarlet, her gray eyes half filled with tears.
Douglas scrowled and his mouth settled into sullen lines. This was a
man's trip. Judith had no business to make it seem easy enough for a
girl! And with this new feeling for Judith, she was making the adventure
too difficult. Hang it all! The place for a girl was at home! But he knew
Jude and he was not going to try to repeat the triumph of Monday morning.
He called to the team and started on.
Judith, having won her point, dropped behind the buckboard and the
journey continued in silence. They reached the half-way cabin late in the
afternoon. The little log hut, with a rude horse shelter beside it, stood
in a clump of cedar close beside the trail. The snow was fresh trampled,
for the up stage had left at three o'clock. Judith and Douglas were very
cold. They hastily unharnessed, broke the ice at the little spring and
watered the horses, then rushed into the cabin. There was a bunk, covered
by soiled and ragged quilts, a table, a few cooking utensils, and boxes
for seats. They lighted a candle and unearthed canned beans, coffee, and
canned brown bread from beneath the bunk. After he had eaten his supper,
Doug grinned for the first time.
"Forgiven me, huh?" asked Judith.
Douglas nodded. "It would be darned lonely without you. You'd better get
to bed, Jude."
"Who gets the bunk?" asked Judith.
"You of course!" Douglas' voice was suddenly harsh again.
Judith sat down on the edge of the bunk. In the uncertain light of the
candle she looked all eyes.
"Doug, what is the matter lately? I never know when you're going to take
my head plumb off."
"Oh, shut up, can't you! I don't see why girls can't let a fellow alone!"
"Tell me, Doug: Why did you keep me from going with Dad on Monday
morning?"
Douglas straightened up, his back to the stove, scowled, sighed, then
said, "I feel like I wanted you to be like the girls in books and not
like these wild women round here. And if you don't know what I mean, you
are a fool."
"Douglas Spencer, you know I'm just as good as any girl that ever lived
in any book!"
"I know that, and I propose to keep you so." Doug lighted a cigarette.
"Since when were you so interested, I'd like to know?"
"That is none of your business. Only, from now on you toe the mark,
miss."
"You're not my boss, Doug Spencer!"
"Yes, I am," returned Douglas serenely. He finished making up a bed on
the floor, rolled himself in two of the quilts and pulled the corner of
one over his head.
Judith put out her tongue at his muffled form and crept under the quilts
that remained on the bunk. By and by the moonlight appeared through the
window. The stove grew cold. The howling of the coyotes circled nearer
and nearer. Suddenly a rifle-shot rung out, then another. The shots did
not waken the sleeping boy and girl, but the mule brayed and began to
kick with the rapidity of machine-gun fire. They both jumped up and ran
out. The mule was just disappearing across the trail. Douglas jumped on
Swift's bare back, catching the lariat from the saddle that lay on the
manger.
"I'll come too, on James!" cried Judith. "I'll ride to the right!"
Douglas urged Swift through the drifts, circled a cedar grove, and saw
the mule stop to sniff at a horse which stood beside a dark heap in the
snow. Judith appeared around the opposite side of the grove and the mule
dashed away. They both hurried toward the quiet heap on the ground. A man
lay in the drifts, his rifle beside him. It was Oscar Jefferson, with
blood running out of his temple into the snow.
"Is he dead?" whispered Judith, crowding James up against Swift.
"I guess so. Must have been the shot that scared the mule. Come on,
Judith! We've got to get him into the cabin, somehow."
Judith began to cry. "I couldn't touch a dead man, Douglas!"
Douglas' own lips were very uncertain in the moonlight but he answered,
firmly enough, "We've got to do it. The coyotes will get him here."
"They'll say we shot him!" sobbed Judith.
Doug gave a start. "They sure-gawd will! What shall we do, Jude?"
"Go off and leave him and say nothing about it."
"With our horses' tracks all round him! You're crazy! Anyhow, we couldn't
go off and leave a neighbor like this. 'Tisn't Lost Chief manners."
"All right." Jude wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "Let's put the lariat
round his feet and let Jeff's horse pull him to the cabin. It won't hurt
him in the soft snow."
"Nothing will hurt him any more, poor old Jeff," said Douglas.
He dismounted and moved toward the body. Then, with teeth chattering
audibly, he tied the lariat round Jeff's feet and told Jude to get on to
the saddled horse.
"Guide him easy. I'll walk and lead the other horses and see that nothing
goes wrong."
Still whimpering, Judith obeyed, and the strange little procession moved
toward the cabin. When they reached the shed, Doug loosened the lariat.
"Judith," he said, "the best thing we can do is to put him in the
buckboard and take him home."
"I'm so afraid of a dead man, Doug!"
"So am I. But it's only poor old Oscar, after all, who's been our
next-door neighbor all our lives. We can't leave him here alone, like
a dead horse. We'll take him home. That's what Dad or any of the men
would do. Come on, Jude."
They established poor Oscar on the floor of the buckboard, among the mail
bags. They hitched up James and Oscar's big black, and tied Swift to the
tail end. All this time the moon shone coldly on the white hills, and the
coyotes howled nearer and nearer.
"Cover him deep with the quilts, Doug," whispered Judith. "I'm going to
make up a pot of hot coffee, before we start."
"How about that mule?" whispered Douglas.
"Let it go plumb to hell!" returned Judith. "Scott's the one should have
been shot, for sending you out with such a brute!"
"If it hadn't been for the mule, we'd never have found him," muttered
Douglas.
It was not much after eleven when the two, huddled together on the seat
of the buckboard, started back for Lost Chief. The cold was so intense
that they were obliged to take turns driving. When the road permitted,
they walked until even their hardy lungs demanded rest. Then they huddled
together again, their knees touching the dashboard, lest Oscar's poor
dead feet should thrust against theirs.
They talked very little except to guess as to the probable name of the
murderer. Toward dawn, when the moon had set and Douglas was trusting the
trail to the horses, he said:
"Do you remember at the schoolhouse Sunday, when Charleton said he didn't
believe in a hereafter, old Jeff chimed in and said, 'Me too'?"
"I remember," replied Judith.
"What do you suppose Jeff thinks about it now?"
"He ain't thinking. He's gone. There's no hereafter. Dad says so." Judith
huddled still closer.
"Isn't it horrible!" shuddered Douglas. "Horrible!"
Judith began to cry again. "If there was just a heaven," she sobbed, "I
wouldn't mind living or dying either."
"Well, there isn't any." Douglas heaved a great sigh. "I wonder if they
hang kids as young as us for murder?"
"Let them try hanging me, just once! That's all I've got to say!"
exclaimed Judith stoutly, in spite of her chattering teeth. "The worst
I ever did to Oscar Jefferson was to play bucking bronco on that old
milch cow, Jinny, of his. And she sure-gawd could buck! But I was only
a little girl then and I can prove it."
"Looks as if we might be in real trouble to me!" muttered Douglas.
"It's growing daylight and there's the Pass, at last!" suddenly cried
Judith.
Douglas drew a deep breath and urged on the weary horses.
It was full nine o'clock when the team drew up at the post-office door.
At Doug's halloo, Peter Knight appeared. Sister crowded out the door past
him, pricked her ears forward and ran to sniff at the rear of the
buckboard.
"What on earth brings you back at this hour?" demanded Peter.
"Trouble!" Douglas moistened his frost-cracked lips. "Oscar Jefferson was
shot last night. We got his body here."
"Who shot him?" asked Peter.
"We don't know."
"Where was it? Here, Sister, get back in the house!" Peter jerked the
door wide.
Judith answered. "Up beyond the cedars, across from the half-way house.
We found him while we were hunting for that devilish old mule."
Peter looked keenly at the two haggard young faces, then he said, "You
two come in and eat and get warm. I'll do some telephoning."
"I want to get home to my mother," half sobbed Judith.
"Sha'n't we take him on to his house?" asked Douglas.
Peter replied impatiently, "You know he was baching it alone while young
Jeff's in California. You come as I tell you!"
Stiffly the two stumbled out of the stage and into the warmth of
Peter's quarters. He had just begun his own breakfast and, at his orders,
Douglas and Judith devoured it while Peter went to the telephone. In an
incredibly short time John Spencer and Frank Day, the sheriff, galloped
up to the door. To them and to Peter, the young people told their story.
The sheriff asked a number of questions. After he had finished Douglas
queried anxiously:
"You ain't going to try and put it on us, Frank?"
Frank grinned. "Well, I might, if the suspicions I have as to another
party prove wrong."
"Don't torture 'em, Frank!" protested Peter. "They've been through a good
deal for kids."
"Scott Parsons was the only rider in the valley who didn't like Oscar,"
said John. "That war they've had for two years over the bull was bound to
end in trouble. I warned Oscar."
"Oscar was more to blame than Scott," said the sheriff. "He was the
meanest man for hanging out on a fool thing I ever knew. And I'm just as
fond of Oscar as the rest of you. What was a bull to Oscar! He could buy
a dozen of 'em. Scott hasn't a thing on earth except wages for riding and
that mangy little herd of slicks he's picked up."
"Picked up is right!" grunted John. "That bull, whoever it belonged to,
is standard bred."
"Scott was born with a nasty temper." Peter spoke thoughtfully. "He told
Oscar in front of me he would get him. That was about two weeks ago."
"Did Oscar tell any one he was going anywhere?" asked the sheriff.
"Not me," said Peter. "Why not let the kids go home?"
"Sure," agreed Frank. "You've done a good night's work, you two. Get some
sleep now."
"You'll find Buster tied to my saddle, Doug," said John. "Judith, can
Swift still move?"
"You bet she can!" replied Judith.
There was a laugh, and the two young people gladly mounted and trotted
into the home trail.
Oscar's wife had long been dead. His son was on a cattle-buying trip and
could not be reached. Oscar had been one of the richest men in the very
well conditioned valley, so, instead of taking the body up to the lonely
ranch house, it was laid out in state in the post-office.
Grandma Brown always officiated at deaths and births in Lost Chief. After
it was found impossible to get in touch with young Jeff and after the
sheriff had made a three days' investigation, she ordered the funeral
to take place at once.
"We could pack him down in the ice till a thaw opens up the cemetery a
little," suggested Charleton Falkner. "You know what a god-awful job it
is making a grave in the cemetery in winter, between the frost and the
rocks."
"He's going to be buried now, while he's in good trim," declared Grandma.
"I'm not going to have him ruined, waiting for spring. You men get to
work now, in shifts, like you did for old Ma Day."
Grandma's word was law in Lost Chief, and the grave forthwith was
prepared. John Spencer, Peter Knight, and Charleton Falkner were
appointed by the old lady to do the work, and Douglas accompanied his
father. Old Johnny Brown appeared while the work was in process.
The cemetery was fenced in, but except for a few simple headstones and
monuments, it was unadorned.
"Queer the women folks have never fixed this place up a little," said
Peter Knight, standing waist-deep in the grave, with John. "Most places
I've been, women keep the graves like they would a little garden."
Charleton Falkner, resting on a neighboring headstone, smiled
sardonically. "Lost Chief women have enough to do without dolling
up graves."
Cold sweat stood on Doug's forehead. He stared from the gaping grave to
the murmuring line of pines that marked the end of the cemetery and the
beginning of the Forest Reserve, and shuddered. He had not been sleeping
well since the night of the murder. Johnny Brown, small and very thin,
with a scraggly iron-gray beard hung with little icicles and his blue
eyes watering with the cold, moved away from the headstone against which
he had been resting after his turn in the grave.
"That boy," he said, jerking his elbow at Doug, "will be massified for
many a year for driving the preacher out of Lost Chief."
"How do you mean--massify!" demanded Doug, gruffly. Johnny might be
half-witted, but his remarks were curiously penetrating sometimes.
"I mean massify," grunted Johnny.
Peter Knight heaved a great frosted boulder out to the ground level.
"Charleton," he said slowly, "doesn't the thought of lying in a forgotten
grave give you dumb horrors?"
"Sometimes," replied Charleton laconically, as he beat his cold hands
together. "But only sometimes."
Douglas strained forward in the intensity of his interest.
Douglas' father straightened his broad shoulders. "If I let myself think
about it, I have to go out and get drunk," he muttered.
"You don't conject right about them things," cried Johnny. "You got to
listen to things."
No one heeded the sad-faced little man. Peter stooped for another frozen
clod. "I'd give my right hand for my mother's faith in a living God," he
said.
"But if there isn't any God, what is there?" cried Douglas, with
passionate protest in his voice.
"Don't you try to discuss matters you ain't old enough to understand,
son," ordered John Spencer.
"Unbelief is the price we pay for scientific progress," said Charleton.
"Me, I'm willing to pay."
"I'm not," growled Peter, "but I don't see any way round it. Come on,
Johnny, do your share."
"I ain't going to dig any more," declared the little man. "You all say
I ain't all here, and the part that ain't here is the part that works.
Sabez?"
Everybody laughed.
"And," Johnny went on, seriously, "I ain't sure it's a good idea to plant
'em so deep. It takes a long time to grow up to heaven. It's a gregus far
away place."
"Right you are, Johnny, old man," agreed Peter. "It sure is gregus far
away."
Nobody urged Johnny to return to the job and the rest of the work was
finished in silence.
That afternoon the funeral took place. There were services at the
post-office, where any one who wished spoke in praise of the dead man.
There were many speeches and it was late afternoon when the funeral
cortege reached the cemetery. The Forest Reserve was mysterious with
shadows and with the unending murmur of the pines. Snow gleamed blue over
the valley. The saddle horses and teams were hitched to the stout fence
that surrounded the cemetery, and Lost Chief Valley crowded about the
open grave.
John Spencer drove Mary down in the old bobsled but Judith and Douglas
rode Swift and Buster as usual. Judith had been nervous and irritable
ever since the trip to the half-way house, but she had refused to admit
that the murder had anything to do with her state of mind. She had a
boyish horror of admitting to fears, mental or physical. She stood
opposite Douglas, with a round beaver cap pulled down over her curly
hair, her cheeks not so red as usual, her dark eyes rimmed and puzzled.
Douglas wondered what she was puzzling over and resolved that after the
ceremonies were over, he would ask her.
Douglas could not know with what intensity his deep-set eyes turned from
Judith and fastened upon Grandma Brown, who stood at the head of the
grave. There was a contented assurance in the old lady's manner that
was vaguely comforting to the boy. He wondered what she knew that his
father and Peter and Charleton did not know.
As the coffin was lowered into the grave, Grandma said, "Does anybody
feel like saying a few last words?"
There was a silence broken only by the murmur of the Forest, then Johnny
Brown cleared his throat. "I might say a whole lot of things. I wasn't so
goldarned proud of Oscar like the rest of you seemed to be. He had a
gregus kind of a temper and oncet--"
Grandma turned on him. "Johnny Brown, ain't you ashamed of yourself!"
"No, I ain't! You say I ain't all here, and the part that I'd be ashamed
with is the part that's gone," returned Johnny firmly.
Judith gave an irrepressible snort, then fastened solemn eyes on the sky.
A restless clearing of throats swept the little assemblage; then Grandma,
indignation still in her kind old voice, spoke once more.
"Can't any of you men that knew Oscar all his life say something
comforting before you close his grave?" she urged. "Then I'll try to do
it. I was brought up religious, myself." She lifted her serene old face
to the evening sky. "O God, this man wandered far from You like all the
rest of us here. But an old woman like me believes You're there and that
you know Oscar hadn't a really bad hair in his head. Take his soul, Lord,
and be as good to him as You can. I am the Resurrection and the Life,
saith the Lord. He that believeth in me, even though he die, yet shall he
have Eternal Life."
The tears were running down many cheeks when the old lady finished.
Foolish old Johnny laughed, then he began to sing a hymn in which several
of the women joined.
"God be with you till we meet again,
By his counsels guide, uphold you,
With his sheep securely fold you,
God be with you till we meet again."
And so the earthly career of Oscar Jefferson ended.