THE HOUSE IN THE YELLOW CANYON
"Beauty: to see it, to hear it, to feel it: that's all that makes life
worth while."
--_Inez Rodman_.
Douglas was both elated and dejected by his conversation with Judith. He
was elated to feel that at last Judith knew his feeling toward her. He
was dejected because he felt that she had no understanding of the depth
and sincerity of this feeling. And with that marvelously naive egotism of
the male, he gave many hours of heavy thought to Judith's weaknesses and
temptations, none at all to his own. Perhaps more than anything, Judith's
friendship with Inez began to worry him. The more he pondered on it, the
more perturbed he became; and finally, a week or so after the dance, he
resolved to ask Inez to break with Judith.
The Rodman house was built against the sheer yellow stone facing at the
base of Lost Chief range, known incorrectly as the Yellow Canyon. The
house of half a dozen rooms was the most picturesque cabin in the valley,
for Grandfather Rodman had built the roof with an overhang, giving the
house the hospitable shadows of a little Swiss chalet. There were several
hundred acres belonging to the ranch. Free range had grown small before
Inez' father died and he had gotten his acres well into grass and
alfalfa. But when he and Inez' mother were wiped out by smallpox, leaving
the ranch to Inez, the fields rapidly returned to the wild. Inez, fifteen
at the time of her parents' death, was unwilling to lead the life of a
ranch woman and for ten years the ranch had been going to pieces.
When Douglas rode up to the outer corral in the dusk of the June evening,
he was struck anew by the disorder of the place. Cattle tramped freely
about the house. An old steer was poking his head in at the kitchen
window. Chickens roosted on a saddle, which was flung in the stable muck.
Tin cans, old wagon wheels, the ruin of a sheep wagon, were heaped in
confusion at one end of the cabin. Three or four dogs barked as Doug rode
up on old Mike. He called Prince in and looked inquiringly at two other
horses tied to the dilapidated corral fence. They were Beauty, his
father's horse, and Yankee, Peter's roan.
As Doug sat hesitating, John and Peter came out of the kitchen laughing.
They swung, spurs clanking, up to the fence.
"What the devil are you doing here, Doug?" asked Peter Knight.
"Hasn't he got a right to call on the Harlot of the Canyon?" demanded
John, with a chuckle. "Hustle up, Peter! The crowd'll be there for the
game before you are."
"They can't get in till I unlock," replied Peter. "Here, John, take the
key and ride on. I want to talk to Doug."
John caught the key and trotted off. Sister snarled at Prince, who wagged
his tail apologetically.
"Sister's a shrew, all right," grinned Douglas.
"She sure can run coyotes, though," said Peter.
"She and Grandma Brown run this valley," added Douglas.
Peter laughed. "I'm strong for the ladies! Did you ever watch the moon
rise, Doug, from the top of the bench back of the cabin there?"
"No," answered Douglas.
"Come on up! It's not a long ride. I've been wanting to make you a
proposition for some time."
Douglas followed the postmaster silently. The horses were panting and
sweating by the time they reached the top, and the rim of the moon was
just peering over the edge of the Indian Range. All the valley lay in
darkness. The two dismounted and threw themselves down on the ledge.
Douglas lighted a cigarette while Peter filled his pipe.
"What are you planning to do with yourself now you're through school,
Douglas?"
"Ride for Dad."
"How'd you like to go East to school?"
"Nothing doing! I've got more education now than I'll need as a rancher."
"Well, I guess that's not particularly so," said Peter. "I was
thinking--you know I'm alone in the world--that I might help you out if
you had any leaning toward college or a profession."
"Ranching is good enough for me, thank you all the same, Peter."
For some moments Peter did not speak again. Coyotes wailed in the peaks
above them. The moon showed more of its golden face.
"Does your father ever talk to you about your own mother, Doug?"
"No; I quit asking him questions years ago. Peter, all I know about my
mother is that her name was Esther, that the smallpox wiped her folks
out, and that they owned the north half of our ranch. There's an old
photograph of her in Dad's bureau drawer. She was awful pretty."
"She was more than that, Doug! I knew her well. You see, I'm the only man
in the valley that's a stranger, as you might say. I've only lived here
twenty years. So I could appreciate your mother more than the natives.
I came here a roundabout way from Boston. So did your mother's folks,
about forty-five years ago. She looked as Yankee as her blood, thin and
delicate, with a refined face. And all the coarse work women have to
do in Lost Chief didn't coarsen her."
"How do you mean, coarse work?" asked Doug.
Dimly in the moonlight he saw the postmaster rub his hand across his
forehead.
"Why don't you put Buster to hauling and plowing?" asked Peter.
"Too light and nervous."
"So was your mother too light and nervous for the kind of ranch work
women have to do here. Women with blood and brains like most of the Lost
Chief women are best used to keep alive the decencies and gentler things
of life. Men lose those things in a cattle country unless the women keep
'em alive. If you keep women too close to the details of handling cattle
and horses, they get rough and coarse too. And I calculate that Lost
Chief and the world needs some decency and delicacy."
Douglas pondered over this for a long time, his eyes on the glory of the
Indian peaks. Then he said, "You knew my mother well?"
"Yes. I'd have married her, Doug, if she hadn't already married your
father. She--she was so devilishly overworked and unhappy! But she never
complained. Your father was crazy about her but he treats a woman like he
does a horse. He doesn't know any different."
"O, don't tell me any more!" said Douglas brokenly. "The poor little
thing! Seems as if I couldn't stand it. Peter, I'm glad she died!"
The older man was silent for a time, then went on. "Your mother came of
good people. Her grandfather was a friend of Emerson's. Tucked away
somewhere she had some letters the two men exchanged. Your grandfather
dreamed dreams about establishing a new New England out here. Those
letters should have been saved for you."
The radiant light now swept across Lost Chief creek and to the foot of
the wall, drenching the Rodman ranch in beauty and mystery. Sister
crowded against her master's back and snored. Prince whined dolefully as
he always did at the moon.
"So taking one thing with another," Peter Knight explained, "I thought I
might see if you had anything in your head except horse wrangling;
whether you're as much your Dad inside as outside."
"I don't see why ranching isn't a good enough profession for any one!"
protested the boy.
"In lots of places it is. But it's not in Lost Chief."
"I don't see why," repeated Douglas.
"It's awful hard here on the women is one reason. I never heard your
mother swear or use a foul word," said Peter. "I've been on ranches in
other places where the women would have been shocked at the idea. How
about Judith?"
"You know she only curses like the other women do around here."
"Do you like it?" asked the postmaster.
"I never thought anything about it."
"There you are!" groaned Peter. "If I can only make you see! Doug, a
woman lets down the first bar when she begins to swear and drink. She
begins where Judith is beginning. She's mighty apt to end where Inez is
ending. You just think about ranching in Lost Chief from your mother's
point of view. It's a rough kind of a community, Douglas, compared with
the same class of people in other communities. The talk itself is rough;
how rough you can't appreciate because you've never heard anything else."
There was another silence. Then Douglas asked heavily: "Peter, what am I
going to do to keep Judith from going to Inez for advice?"
"Might not be such bad advice! Inez has no illusions about what she's
doing or what she's paying."
"You don't mean to say Judith ought to go there?"
"No, I don't! But if a kid like you goes there himself, how can you
preach to Judith? And she only goes there for the dancing and fun."
"But I'm a man!"
"I don't care what you are. You can't preach good sermons with a foul
tongue. You ought to have the nerve to look at yourself as you are before
you try to bring up Judith. Lost Chief is still fairly honest. Even your
father calls Inez Rodman by her right title. There's hope in that!"
"But what shall I do about Judith, Peter?"
"Might make a man of yourself, Doug!"
"What's the matter with me?" demanded Doug, indignantly.
"Douglas, you haven't a clean-cut idea to your name. And a kid of
seventeen as self-satisfied as you are isn't worth baiting a coyote trap
with."
"There's not a guy in the valley works harder than I do!"
"Right! Nor uses his brain less!"
"I suppose you mean I ought to go to college and let Judith go to the
devil."
"Judith's pretty good stuff, herself," protested Peter. "A half-baked kid
like you can't influence Judith!"
Douglas started to his feet. "By God, I will! You'll see!"
"There's only one way. Show yourself fit to influence her. Don't get a
grouch at me, Doug. I've come a long, hard, lonely road. And all because
I thought everybody was wrong but myself. I don't want your mother's son
to make the same mistake, if I can help it."
"I'm the unhappiest guy in the world!" cried Douglas, passionately.
He mounted his horse and, followed joyfully by Prince, turned down the
trail. Peter did not stir. For a long time he sat with his arm around
Sister. The moon was high over the valley before he said aloud:
"O Esther! Esther! The years are long!" Then he too mounted and rode
away.
As Doug trotted through Rodman's door-yard, Inez crossed toward the
corral.
"Hello, Doug! Where've you been? What's the matter with Buster?"
Douglas drew up. "I gave him to Judith."
"Why, you blank little fool! It must have hurt you deep!"
"I guess Judith's worth it! Say, Inez, is there anything I can do for you
to get you to keep Judith away from here?"
"I won't hurt her, Doug."
"Aw, Inez, what's the use of saying that! Make out you're sore at her."
"I could, but that won't do so much for her. Judith ought to have
something to look forward to beside breeding calves and wrangling
firewood for some lazy dog of a rancher, before she or any other Lost
Chief girl will think keeping away from here is worth while."
There was a depth of bitterness in the woman's voice which Douglas felt
rather than understood. He sat in awkward silence. Inez put her hand on
his knee and looked up at him. Her face was tragically beautiful in the
moonlight.
"Douglas, do you ever stop to think how beautiful Lost Chief country is?"
"Not often," admitted Doug.
Inez went on. "Peter Knight's been all over the United States and he says
there's no place passes it in beauty. Sometimes when I see the valley
looking like it does to-night, I cry. Doug, you are more promising than
these other kids. When you ride round on the range try to keep your mind
a little bit off cattle and horses and women and keep it on that line of
the Forest Reserve the way it looks to-night. Or the way this yellow wall
looks in the snow and the sunrise on it. And then, when you get that
habit, tell Judith about it and get her to thinking the same way. Beauty
can't live on rot, Douglas. I know that now. I don't care what Charleton
quotes."
"Inez," asked Douglas huskily, "why don't you burn that old cabin up?"
"It's too late," replied Inez shortly; and she turned on her heel and
left him.
Douglas rode thoughtfully along the home trail. He was angry with Peter
and sorry for Inez, and he missed his mother as he never had missed her
before. He had been only a baby at the time of her death. This was the
first time that he had been told of the type of woman she was though he
had heard much of his mother's father, old Bill Douglas. He went to bed
that night with an entirely new set of thoughts.
The heaviest ranch work of the year was now at hand. The hay harvest was
begun. From dawn until dusk, Doug and Judith worked in the fields and
tumbled to bed at night as soon as the chores were done. They had many
opportunities during the day for conversations, however, for after the
hay was raked, Douglas and Judith drove one rick team, John and old
Johnny Brown the other. Heavy work it certainly was, but work of what
fragrance, under skies of what an unbelievably deep blue, in air of what
tingling warmth and clearness! What unthinkable distances were glimpsed
from the wild hay patch on the flank of Dead Line Peak! It seemed to
Douglas, lying at length, chin elbow-supported, on the top of the last
load, which Judith had insisted on driving, that he never before had
sensed the beauty of the haying season in Lost Chief Valley. And again
he seemed to see Inez's tragic eyes, which had shed tears over the beauty
of these very hills. He turned the memory of those eyes over in his mind
with a memory of the sardonic twist of Charleton's mouth as he had
uttered his philosophy of life, and suddenly Doug wished that he dared
to talk to his father about these things. He had asked John about the
Emerson letters but John professed never to have heard of them. And
Douglas fell to wondering about his grandfather's dream for Lost Chief.
They were pulling through the swamp road above the home corral. It was
heavy going and when they reached the shade of a little clump of blue
spruce and aspen, Judith pulled the team up for a short rest. She pushed
her broad straw hat back from her face and half turned to look at
Douglas.
"Have you seen that new litter of pups of Sister's?" she asked Douglas.
He shook his head and Judith went on. "Peter says I can have the pick of
the lot, but there's only one I'd look at. He's the image of Sister. I'm
going to train him so's I can take him out to run wild horses with me
when he grows up."
"Wild horses! The last time it was bronco busting you were going into.
What's it all about, anyhow, Jude?"
"You don't suppose I'm going to spend my life in Lost Chief, do you?"
demanded Judith.
Douglas swept the landscape with a lazy glance. "I don't see how you
could beat it."
"O, for looks and stunts, yes!" Judith's voice was impatient. "But it's
no place for a woman! I'm going to earn enough money to take me out where
I can go on with my education and amount to something."
"I guess Peter's been talking to you," said Douglas.
Judith nodded. "Yes, and he offered to loan me the money for college. But
I won't be beholden to a man outside the family. I'll earn it myself."
"What'll you do with a college education after you get it?" Doug's glance
was not lazy now, as it rested on the young girl's eager face.
"I'll do something beside cooking and horse wrangling for some old Lost
Chief rancher, I can tell you that!" cried Judith. "I'm going to get out
and see the world and know life!"
"And give up your horses and dogs and the big old mountains? Jude, you'll
never do it. I'd like to get out myself sometimes, but I know I'll never
be happy anywhere else."
"I don't expect to be happy, but I've got to know things."
"What things, Judith?"
The girl turned from Douglas to gaze at the far light on Fire Mesa.
"The truth about things," she said at last. "Inez says there's just one
big fact at the bottom of everything and that is sex, and that there's
only one thing worth living for, to make sex beautiful."
"She's a liar!" exclaimed Douglas indignantly, as if Inez had said
something shameful. "Where does she get that rotten stuff?"
"From Charleton and poetry, I guess. How do you know she's wrong, Doug?"
Douglas sat up, his clear eyes blazing like blue stars out of his
sunburned face. "Because I know! I want to have the biggest, finest ranch
in the Rockies. Is that sex? You want a good education. Is that sex?
Peter wants me to carry on some dreams my mother and grandfather had. Is
that sex? What does that woman think the world was made for, I'd like to
know?"
"That's just it," Judith sighed with all the sadness of sixteen, "what is
it made for?"
There was silence for a moment on the hay rick while the two young
questioners gazed at the incomparable grandeur about them. And as he
gazed there returned to Douglas the sense of panic that had harassed him
after Oscar's death. What did it all mean? Whither was he directed and by
what? How long before he too would be swept into the awful void beyond
the grave?
"That's what religion did for folks all these years," he said suddenly.
"They never asked these questions, I'll bet. I wish I had it."
"I don't want to believe fairy tales just because I'm scared!" Judith
tossed her head stoutly.
"I don't either," agreed Douglas dejectedly.
"I'm going to drive on home and get something to eat," said Judith,
lifting the reins. "Food's the only thing that'll rid me of the dumb
horrors."
Douglas settled back against the hay, and the rest of the ride was
continued in silence.
Old Johnny Brown stayed on for a day or so to clean up odd jobs neglected
during the haying season. He was a gentle, timid little chap, the butt of
the entire valley, of course, and particularly of John Spencer. Douglas
often wondered why old Johnny consented to work each year at this season
for his father. This wonderment was solved the day after Doug's and
Jude's conversation on the load of hay and in a manner destined in a
small way to have its influence on Douglas' affairs in the years to come.
Just before supper Judith returned from the post-office and rushed into
the kitchen with a huge, long-legged, ugly puppy in her arms. She set him
on the floor where his four knotty legs pointed in four different
directions and where his long back sagged like the letter U. He was
covered with rough gray hair and his eyes were huge and brown.
"Isn't he a perfect lamb? He's mine!" cried Judith, squatting beside him.
"Oh! A lamb!" grunted John, who was combing his hair at the wash-basin in
the corner. "I thought it was a buffalo calf."
"Don't be stupid!" cried Judith. "Of course, you're no judge of dogs, but
Peter says he's just like Sister was at two months, only bigger."
Mary Spencer looked him over critically, coffee-pot in hand. "Isn't he
awful homely, even for a mongrel, Judith?" she asked.
"Mongrel! What is the matter with all you folks?" exclaimed Judith. "He's
no more mongrel than anybody else! Come here to your missis, you
precious!" and she gathered the great pup into her lap, where he sat
complacently, his legs in a hopeless tangle.
"What's his name?" asked old Johnny, mildly.
"Wolf Cub. And you wait till I'm through with him! You'll see the best
trained dog in the valley, like Sioux will be the best trained bull and
Buster the best trained horse. O, look, Doug!" as Douglas came in. "See
what I've got!"
"I dare you to name its pedigree, Doug!" chuckled John.
Douglas lifted the pup to the floor and ran his hands over its skull,
along its back, and down its erratic legs. "Some dog, Judith! You'll have
to muzzle him by the time he's six months old."
Judith smiled triumphantly. "No, I won't! Wait till you see how I train
him."
"You get that from your mother, Judith. She was always gregus smart with
critters," said old Johnny.
Judith laughed skeptically. "She was!" The little old man nodded his
head. "I remember. I deponed that same thing to Peter the other day. How
Mary could break anything when she was a girl, like you."
"Well, but Mother won't touch anything that isn't broke now!" exclaimed
Judith.
"Just what I deponed," nodded Johnny. "John broke her just like he broke
old Molly horse, so she lost her nerve. I deponed just that. An awful
rough breaker. I deponed just that."
"O dry up, Johnny!" grunted John, drawing his chair up to the table.
"I've put up with an awful lot of drool from you, and I'm getting sick of
it."
Old Johnny was always most explanatory when he was most frightened. "I
wasn't drooling, John. I was just deponing. Any one can do that, can't
they? And Mary did used to be like Judith."
"Will you shut up!" shouted John.
The puppy, startled, gave a sudden loud howl.
"Put that thing out and come to supper, Jude! If he howls to-night, I'll
shoot him." Judith left the house indignantly.
"No, you won't, Dad," said Douglas quietly, as he buttered a biscuit.
"If you're going to give me back talk, young fellow, you leave the table
now, before I lose my temper."
"I'm not giving you any more back talk than you deserve," replied
Douglas. "Any man that would threaten to shoot a pup because it howls
deserves something more than back talk. Let's forget it. Johnny, how
about this stunt of Mother's breaking horses?"
Old Johnny gave John a timid glance. "I don't remember," he muttered.
Mary laughed. "What's the use of a woman breaking horses when she's got a
man to do it for her?"
"Did you ever see her break a horse, Johnny?" insisted Doug.
"Once," said the old man, "a lot of the boys tied me on a mule and the
mule ran away. It wasn't broke, that mule. Seem like it had run a gregus
long way when Mary come along. She was just a walking and she reached up
and grabbed the mule and she rode him back with me. And she made them
untie me. And I loved her ever since. I came up here every year to see
how John is treating her. I depone--"
John rose and, striding around the table, he seized the old man by the
collar. Douglas put his hand on his father's arm.
"Drop it, Dad, or I swear I'll think old Johnny is a better man than you.
I asked him to tell. Throw me out if you want to. Keep your hands off
this little chap. One thing is sure. He appreciates Mother more than any
of the rest of us have."
"Get the half-wit out of my sight, then," growled John, returning to his
seat.
"I wish a lot of folks with whole wits knew how to be as good a friend as
Johnny," said Douglas stoutly.
"So do I!" Mary's voice trembled, but her glance at the little old man
was very lovely.
The rest of the meal was finished in silence, Douglas turning over in
his mind this strange new picture of Judith's mother. Could anything,
he wondered, change Judith so? A curious anger against his father's
stupidity was at that moment born in Douglas' heart, an anger that never
was wholly to leave him.
That evening, as Douglas sat in his favorite place beside the alfalfa
stack, old Johnny led up his little gray mare.
"I'll be cowling myself along home now, Doug," he said. "John is awful
insidious to me. I just want to say, Doug, that you're the first man in
this valley ever stuck up for me and some day I depone I'll get even
with you."
"Good for you, Johnny!" nodded Douglas. "When I get my old ranch going,
you come up and work for me."
"I will so do," replied the old man solemnly, and he rode away in the
moonlight.
And Douglas returned to the new theme old Johnny had given him. Of
what were women made that they could be over-broken as his father had
over-broken Mary? And why should Lost Chief, so small that control was
simple, permit such a thing to be?