[Illustration: “With a boldness that gripped his throat he slipped his
hand along the back of the arbor seat”]
JUSTIN WINGATE, RANCHMAN
By
John H. Whitson
Author of “The Rainbow Chasers,” “Barbara, a Woman of the West,” etc.
With Illustrations from Drawings by
Arthur E. Becker
Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
Copyright, 1905,
by Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved.
Published April, 1905.
Printers, S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U. S. A.
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE—THE PREPARATION
CHAPTER I—THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM
CHAPTER II—WINGATE JOURNEYS ON
CHAPTER III—CLAYTON’S VISITORS
CHAPTER IV—SIBYL
CHAPTER V—THE INVASION OF PARADISE
CHAPTER VI—WHEN LOVE WAS YOUNG
CHAPTER VII—WILLIAM SANDERS
CHAPTER VIII—AND MARY WENT TO DENVER
CHAPTER IX—A REVELATION OF CHARACTER
CHAPTER X—PIPINGS OF PAN
CHAPTER XI—THE TRAGEDY OF THE RANGE
CHAPTER XII—WITH SIBYL AND MARY
CHAPTER XIII—WHEN AMBITION CAME
CHAPTER XIV—IN THE STORM
CHAPTER XV—A FLASH OF LIGHTNING
CHAPTER XVI—BEN DAVISON’S TRIUMPH
BOOK TWO—THE BATTLE
CHAPTER I—COWARDICE AND HEROISM
CHAPTER II—THE HARVEST OF THE FIRE
CHAPTER III—LEES OF THE WINE
CHAPTER IV—IN THE WHIRLPOOL
CHAPTER V—HARKNESS AND THE SEER
CHAPTER VI—THE MOTH AND THE FLAME
CHAPTER VII—THE COMPACT
CHAPTER VIII—THE THRALL OF THE PAST
CHAPTER IX—SANDERS TELLS HIS STORY
CHAPTER X—IN THE CRUCIBLE
CHAPTER XI—FATHER AND SON
CHAPTER XII—CHANGING EVENTS
CHAPTER XIII—IN PARADISE VALLEY
CHAPTER XIV—THE DOWNWARD WAY
CHAPTER XV—MARY’S DESPAIR
CHAPTER XVI—THE WAGES OF SIN
CHAPTER XVII—SHADOWS BEFORE
CHAPTER XVIII—PHILOSOPHY GONE MAD
CHAPTER XIX—SIBYL AND CLAYTON
CHAPTER XX—THE RIDE WITH DEATH
CHAPTER XXI—RECONCILIATION
CHAPTER XXII—THE DREAMS THAT CAME TRUE
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“With a boldness that gripped his throat he slipped his hand along
the back of the arbor seat”
“The woman sitting there on her chafing horse stared back at him”
“Sanders twisted round in his chair and began to draw from his
pocket a grimy memorandum book”
“Behind them broke a bellowing tumult, as the foremost cattle
began to plunge downward into the cañon”
JUSTIN WINGATE, RANCHMAN
BOOK ONE—THE PREPARATION
CHAPTER I
THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM
Before swinging out of the saddle in front of the little school
house which was serving as a church, Curtis Clayton, physician and
philosopher, looked over the valley which held the story of a romantic
hope and where he was to bury his own shattered dream. The rain of the
morning had cleared away the bluish ground haze, the very air had been
washed clean, and the land lay revealed in long levels and undulating
ridges. Behind towered the mountain, washed clean, too, its flat top
etched against the sky and every crag and peak standing out sharp and
hard as a cameo.
Clayton’s broncho pawed restlessly on the edge of a grass-grown
cellar. All about the tiny cluster of unoccupied houses were other
grass-grown cellars, and the foundation lines of vanished buildings,
marking the site of the abandoned town. Beside the school house, from
which came now the sound of singing, horses were tied to a long
hitching rack. A few farm wagons stood near, the unaccustomed mud
drying on their wheels.
Clayton dismounted and began to tie his horse. His left arm, stiff and
bent at the elbow, swung awkwardly and gave such scant aid that he
tightened the knot of the hitching strap by pulling it with his teeth.
He was dressed smartly, in dust-proof gray, and wore polished riding
boots. His unlined face showed depression and weariness. In spite of
this it was a handsome face, lighted by clear dark eyes. The brow,
massive and prominent, was the brow of a thinker. Over it, beneath the
riding cap, was a tangle of dark hair, now damp and heavy. When he
spoke to his horse his tones were suggestive of innate kindness. There
were no spurs on the heels of his riding boots, and he patted the
horse affectionately before turning to the door of the church.
The interior was furnished as a school house. Cramped into the seats,
with feet drawn up and arms on the tops of the desks, sat the few
people who composed the congregation, young farmers and their wives
and small children, with wind-burned, honest faces. Apart from the
others was a boy, whose slight form fitted easily into the narrow
space he occupied. He sat well forward and looked steadily at the
preacher, turning about, however, as all did, when Clayton came in at
the door.
Clayton’s entrance and the turning about of the people to look broke
the rhythmic swing of the hymn, but the preacher, standing behind the
teacher’s desk which served as pulpit, lifted his voice, beating the
time energetically with the book he held, and the hymn was caught up
again with vigor. He smiled upon Clayton, as the latter squeezed into
a rear seat, as if to assure him that he was welcome and had disturbed
no one.
The preacher took his text from the thirty-fifth chapter of Isaiah:
“The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the
desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom
abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing.... Strengthen ye
the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of
a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, fear not.’”
Clayton was not greatly interested in the Scripture read, in the
preacher, nor in the people. He had entered to get away from his own
thoughts more than anything else. But, weary of thinking, he tried now
to let the preacher lead him out of himself.
His attention was caught and held by the application of the text. The
preacher was using it not as a spiritual metaphor, but as a promise to
be fulfilled literally and materially in the near future and in that
place. Looking through the open windows at the level grasslands damp
with the recent rain, he saw the good omen. The desert was there now,
but men should till it and it should blossom as the rose; yellow grain
fields should billow before the breezes that came down from the
mountain; the blue bloom of alfalfa should make of the valley a violet
cup spilling its rich perfume on the air and offering its treasure of
honey for the ravishing of the bee; rice corn, Kaffir corn, and
sorghum should stand rank on rank, plumed, tufted, and burnished by
the sunlight. Paradise—Clayton heard the name of the valley and the
town for the first time—should become as the Garden of God.
Clayton saw that the man was a dreamer, putting into form the
cherished hopes of the people in the narrow seats before him. A land
boom had cast high its tide of humanity, then had receded, leaving
these few caught as the drift on the shore. The preacher was one of
them; and he looked into their eyes with loving devotion and flushing
face, as he contrasted the treeless valley of the present with the
Paradise of his desire. He was a dreamer who believed his dream and
was trying to make his hearers believe it.
At first Clayton had observed the outer man standing behind that
teacher’s desk; he had noted the shabby, shiny suit of black,
scrupulously clean, the coat much too long and every way too large,
the white neatly-set cravat, and the protruding cuffs, which he was
sure were scissors-trimmed. Now he looked only at the man’s face, with
its soft brown beard which the wind stirred at intervals, at the
straight goodly nose, at the deep-set dreamy eyes, and through the
eyes into the mind of the dreamer.
“The temperament of a seer, of a Druid priest, of a prophet of old!”
was his thought. “He prophesies the impossible; yet by and by some one
may appear who will be able to show that the impossible has had
fulfillment. It has happened before.”
Willing to forget himself further and know more of this man who, it
could be seen, longed for a mental companionship which the members of
his congregation could not give him, Clayton remained after the
services, accepting a pressing invitation to tarry awhile.
“We do not often have visitors here now,” said the preacher,
pathetically.
So through the hot afternoon they sat together in the preacher’s
little home, the one occupied house in the town, while he dilated on
his dream; and as the day grew cool, they walked together by the banks
of the tepid stream and looked at the deserted houses and the blaze of
the sun behind the flat-topped mountain. The boy who had sat so far
forward and given such apparent attention to the sermon walked out
with them. Absorbed in studying the personality of the preacher,
Clayton gave the silent boy little attention.
As the sun slipped down behind the mountain, throwing pleasant shadows
across the valley, Clayton took his horse from the preacher’s stable
and set out for a ride. And as he went the preacher stood in his
doorway, smiling and dreaming his dream.
From his boyhood, Peter Wingate had been a dreamer. In his college
days the zeal of the missionary was infused into his veins, and the
Far West, which he pictured as a rough land filled with rough and
Godless men, drew him. He had found it poorer than the East, more
direct and simple, more serious and sincere, but not Godless. And he
had come to love it. It was a hopeful, toiling land, rough perhaps,
but as yet unspoiled.
Then a day came which brought a new interest into his life. A youth
climbed down from a white-topped prairie schooner with a bundle in his
arms and entered the preacher’s house. The bundle held a baby, whose
mother had died in the white-topped wagon. As the youth, who was
almost a man in stature, but still a boy in years, told the story of
the child, and placed in Wingate’s hands its few belongings, he spoke
of Paradise. At first the spiritual-minded minister thought he
referred to spiritual things, then understood that he was speaking of
a new town, situated in a wonderful valley that widened down from the
mountains. Thenceforth, though the child had not come from this new
town, this new town and its promise became linked in the minister’s
mind with the child; and by and by he journeyed to it, when the boy
was well-grown and sturdy and the town had been caught up suddenly in
the whirl of a wild boom.
He began to preach in the new school house, and organized a new
church; and soon the fiery earnestness and optimism of the boom was
infused into his heart, supplementing the zeal of the missionary. He
no longer saw Paradise as it was, but as he wished it to be. The very
name allured him. He had long preached of a spiritual Paradise; here
was the germ of an earthly one. From rim to rim, from mountain to
mesa, it was, to his eyes, a favored valley, fitted for happy homes.
The town vanished, and the settlers departed, but the dream remained.
The dreamer still saw the possibilities and the beauties—the fruitful
soil, the sun-kissed grassy slopes, the alluring blue mountains. And
the dream was associated with the child; the dreamer, the dream, and
the child, were as one, for had not the child brought to the dreamer
his first knowledge of this smiling land?
So Wingate remained after the boom bubble broke, encouraging the few
sturdy farmers who clung with fondness to the valley. Even when one by
one the houses, all but those belonging to the town company, were torn
down and borne away, the dream was not shattered. The dreamer became
the agent of the company, charged with the care of the remaining
houses until the dream should reach again toward fulfillment.
While he waited, the dreamer pictured the joy and devotion with which
he would minister to the spiritual needs of the new people, who would
love him he knew even as he should love them. And thus waiting, he
moved the rounds of his simple life, in the midst of the few, who
rewarded his love and zeal with ever-renewed devotion. Even those who
cared nothing for religion cared for the religious teacher, and came
regularly to hear him preach.
They could not give much to his support; they had not much themselves,
but he needed so very little. He had his small stipend from the
missionary organization of his denomination, the garden he tended on
the low land by the stream yielded well in the favorable seasons, and
the missionary barrel filled with clothing which some worthy ladies
had sent him from the East two years before had held such a goodly
store of cast-off garments that neither he nor the child, a stout boy
now, had required anything in that line since. The shiny, long-tailed
coat which he kept so scrupulously clean and which was a world too
large for him, and the tight-fitting, ink-spattered sailor suit which
the boy wore, had come from the depths of that barrel, which seemed as
miraculous in its way as the widow’s cruse of oil.
And now, when he had seen no stranger in Paradise for months, and no
new face except when he journeyed once a week to preach in the little
railroad town at the base of the mountain, there had come this
pleasant-voiced man, who spoke well of the prophetic sermon and seemed
able to appreciate the promise and future of the land.
When Curtis Clayton returned from his ride night had fallen. The Milky
Way had stretched its shining trail across the prairies of the sky,
and the Dipper was pouring the clouds out of its great bowl and
shaking them from its handle.
Clayton sat looking at the night sky, and as he sat thus the boy came
out to put away his horse. Within the house, Wingate, busy with coffee
pot and frying pan, directed him to the room he was to occupy, and
announced that supper would be ready soon.
At the end of fifteen minutes the boy tapped on Clayton’s door. The
latch had not caught, and the door flew open. The boy stood in
hesitation, looking into the little room, wondering if he had
offended. What he beheld puzzled him. Clayton had been burning letters
in the tiny stove; and beside the lamp on the little table, with
scorched edges still smoking, stood the photograph of a beautiful
woman. Clayton had evidently committed it to the flames, and then
relenting had drawn it back. Turning quickly now, when he heard the
door moving on its hinges, he caught up the photograph and thrust it
hastily into an inner pocket of his coat, but not before the boy had
been given a clear view of the pictured face.
Wingate talked of his dream, when grace had been said and the supper
was being eaten. The boy thought of the burned letters and of the
scorched photograph showing that alluringly beautiful face, and
wondered blindly. He saw that the stranger was not listening to the
talk of the minister; and observed, too, what the dreamer did not,
that the stranger ate very little, and without apparent relish. Though
he could not define it, and did not at all understand it, something in
the man’s face and manner moved him to sympathy.
For that reason, when, after supper, the minister had talked to the
end of his dream and was about to begin all over again, the boy
slipped away, and returning put a small book into the stranger’s
hands. Clayton stared at it, then looked up, and for the first time
saw the boy. He had already seen a face and form and a sailor suit,
but not the boy. Now he looked into the clear open blue eyes, set in
an attractive, wind-tanned face. His features lost their grim sadness
and he smiled.
“Your son?” he said, speaking to Wingate.
The dreamer showed surprise. He had already spoken to this man of the
boy.
“My adopted son, but a real son to me in all but the ties of blood.”
The boy drew open the little Bible he had placed in Clayton’s hands.
Some writing showed on the fly-leaf. The boy’s fore-finger fell on the
writing.
“My very own mother wrote those words, and my name there—Justin,” he
announced, reverently.
Clayton looked at the writing, and then again at the boy. The record
on the fly-leaf was but a simple memorandum, in faded ink:
“Justin, my baby boy, is now six months old. May God bless and
preserve him and may he become a good man.”
A date showed, in addition to this, but that was all; not even the
mother’s name was signed.
“This was in it, too; it is my hair.”
The boy pulled the book open at another place and extracted a brown
wisp.
“We think it is his hair,” said Wingate. “It was found beside the
writing on the fly-leaf.”
Then while the boy crowded close against Clayton’s knees, and Clayton
sat holding the open Bible in his hands, Wingate told the story of
this child, who now bore the name of Justin Wingate.
“The young fellow who brought him to me said there were some papers,
which he had left behind, having forgotten them when he set out, and
that he would fetch them later. But he never came again,—he was only
a boy, and boys forget—and I even failed to get his name, being
somewhat excited at the time, because of the strange charge given to
me, a bachelor minister.”
Clayton read the words over slowly, and looked intently at the boy.
“It is a good name,” he said at length.
The boy took the book and placed the wisp of hair carefully between
the pages as he closed it. He was still standing close against the
knees of this man, as if he desired to help or comfort him, or longed
for a little of the real father love he had never known. But Clayton,
after that simple statement, dropped into silence. This absence of
speech was not observed by Wingate, who had found in the story of the
boy an opportunity to take up again the narrative of his introduction
to Paradise and his life there since. Yet the boy noticed. His face
flushed slowly; and when Clayton still remained mute and unresponsive,
he slipped away, with a choke in his throat.
Shortly afterward he said good night to the visitor, kissed the
dreamer on his bearded cheek, and with the Bible still in his hands
crept away to bed. Wingate sat up until a late hour, talking of his
dream, receiving now and then a monosyllabic assent to some prophetic
statement. Having started at last to his room Clayton hesitated on the
threshold and turned back.
“As you are the agent of the town company you could let one of those
houses, I suppose?” was his unexpected inquiry.
The face of the dreamer flushed with pleasure.
“Most assuredly.”
“Then you may consider one of them rented—to me; it doesn’t matter
which one. I think I should like to stop here awhile.”
It was one o’clock and the Sabbath was past. Wingate, his dream more
vivid than it had been for months, sat down at his little writing
desk, and in a fever of renewed hope began to pen a letter to the town
company, announcing the letting of a house and prophesying an early
revival of the boom.
CHAPTER II
WINGATE JOURNEYS ON
Justin Wingate tip-toed softly to and fro in front of the improvised
book shelves and looked at the formidable array of books which,
together with some furniture, had arrived for Clayton, and had been
brought out from the town. The books were of a different character
entirely from those which composed the minister’s scanty collection.
Justin read the names slowly, without comprehension—“Spencer’s
Synthetic Philosophy,” “Darwin’s Origin of Species,” “Tyndall’s Forms
of Water,” and hard-worded titles affixed to volumes of the German
metaphysicians. There were medical books too, a great many it seemed
to the boy, in leather bindings, with gilt titles set in black squares
on the backs.
Clayton came in while Justin was tip-toeing before the book shelves.
His appearance and manner had changed for the better. He looked at the
boy with kindly interest, and was almost cheerful.
“Do you think you would like to become an educated man, Justin?”
The boy’s eyes shone.
“I don’t know. Would I have to read all of those?”
A smile twitched the corners of Clayton’s dark eyes.
“Not all of them at once, and perhaps some of them never. At any rate
we wouldn’t try to begin so high up as that.”
He sat down and began to question the boy concerning his acquirements,
and found they were not inconsiderable, for the lonely minister had
tried to be faithful to his trust. Except in one line, the Scriptural,
the faculty of the imagination had alone been neglected; and that
seemed strange, for Peter Wingate was so quiveringly imaginative that
he lived perpetually in a dream world which he believed to be real.
Justin had never heard of the Greek gods and demi-gods; the brothers
Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, the Arabian Nights, were unknown names
to him; he had never visited Liliput and the land of the giants with
Gulliver, nor even gone sailing romantic seas and living in blissful
and lonely exile with Robinson Crusoe and Friday. Yet he knew all the
wonderful and attractive stories of the Bible. The friendship of David
and Jonathan was as real to him as the love that existed between
himself and the minister. He knew the height of Goliath, and had even
measured on the ground, with the minister’s help, the length of that
giant’s spear. He had seen the baby Moses drawn from his cradled nest
in the bulrushes; had witnessed the breaking pitchers and the flashing
lights of Gideon’s band; and had watched in awed wonder when, at the
command of Joshua, the sun had stopped over Gideon and the moon had
hung suspended above the valley of Ajalon.
Clayton’s dark eyes looked into the blue eyes of the boy as they
talked, and the choking ache which had been in his heart when he came
to that lonely home in that lonely valley all but ceased.
“You haven’t missed so very much after all, Justin. I guess there
aren’t any better stories than those you know anywhere in the world.
But you know them so well now that we will begin on something else.”
Stepping to a box he drew out a book. When he came back with it Justin
recognized the title, “Robinson Crusoe,” for he had once heard the
minister mention it in a sermon.
“Is it a story?” he asked, eagerly.
“One of the best stories ever written, I think. It has made boys run
away to sea, I’ve been told, but I don’t believe you will be harmed by
it in that way. Seven-league boots would be needed to run away to sea
from here. So we’ll risk reading it.”
He sat down and began to read; and the boy, standing close against his
knees as on that first night, felt a strange warmth steal through him.
He wanted to put his arms around the neck of this man; and when at
length Clayton in shifting his position dropped a hand softly on the
boy’s shoulder and let it rest there as he read on, the inner warmth
so increased in the heart of the boy that he could hardly follow the
story, fascinating as it was.
What may be called Justin’s course of instruction under Clayton began
that day, after Clayton had talked with Wingate and asked the
privilege of ordering certain books for Justin. The mail of a few days
later brought “Treasure Island.”
“A wild book and a bloody one,” said Clayton, as he took it from its
wrapping, while Justin looked on expectantly, “but a little wildness
will be a good thing in this stagnation, and the blood in such a book
doesn’t hurt a boy who isn’t bloody-minded. I think there must have
been pirates who went about bludgeoning folks in the days of the
cave-dwellers, and certainly books about pirates couldn’t have made
those fellows what they were.”
It was a delight to instruct such a natural, inquisitive, imaginative
boy as Justin. And the lessons were not confined to books. Clayton had
a little glass which he slipped in and out of his pocket at intervals
as he walked about with the boy. Looking through that glass the
greenish stuff that appeared on the stones by the margin of the tepid
stream was revealed as a beautiful green moss, the tufted head of a
dusty weed was seen to be set with white lilies, and tiny specks
became strange crawling and creeping things. Suddenly Justin had found
that the very air, the earth, even the water in the tepid pools of the
stream, swarmed with life, and it was an astonishing revelation. And
everywhere was order, and beauty of form and coloring; for even a
common rock, broken and viewed through that glass, showed beautiful
diamond-like crystals.
One day Clayton plucked the leaf of a weed and holding it beneath the
glass let Justin look at it.
“It’s covered all over with fuzzy hairs!”
Clayton plucked another of a different kind.
“Isn’t it funny? You can’t see them, only through the glass, but the
edges are spiked, just as if there were little thorns set all along
it!”
Clayton sat down, toying with the weeds and the glass.
“What do you suppose those spikes and hairs are for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps no one really knows, but men may have theories. See that
little moth moving now across the weed blade. He is on the under side,
and the hairs help him to hold on. When he reaches the edge and wishes
to climb over, the hairs and the spikes help him to do that. That
shows, to me at least, that nature provides as completely for a moth
as for a man, and that God cares as much for the one as for the other;
only man, having a very high opinion of himself, doesn’t think so.
Aha! Mr. Moth’s wings are wet and he is having some trouble; we’ll see
if we can help him.”
He stretched out his hand to turn the grass blade over, and in doing
so crushed the moth; it was his half useless left hand, heavy and
clumsy. His face flushed as he looked at his crooked arm, and then at
the moth, its mail of silver dust smeared over the green, sword-like
blade.
“Poor little thing,” he said.
He put away the glass and rose, and there was no further lesson that
morning.
Sometimes Justin rode forth with him on a visit to the home of a
settler. All knew him soon, and were glad of his coming. That he
appeared to have established himself permanently in one of the
abandoned houses of the town gave them selfish pleasure, for it was
good to have a doctor near.
Often Clayton rode forth alone, spending whole days off in the hills,
or on the level lands stretching away from their base. He found Justin
always watching for him when he returned, and he never failed to bring
home something of interest in the shape of a crystal, a flower, a
lichen, or mayhap an abandoned bird’s nest, which furnished either a
lesson or food for conversation.
Always on his return from any trip, far or near, Wingate questioned
him with anxious yearning. Were the farmers still hopeful, what crops
looked most promising, did the deceptive clouds about the mountain
promise rain, had he seen any land-hunters or white-topped schooners
on the trail? And when Clayton had answered, the dreamer talked of his
dream. He was sure of its fulfillment some day.
“A baseless dream,” thought Clayton; “but all dreams are baseless,
gaudy, unsubstantial things, wrought by hope and fancy out of
foundationless air, and to shatter his dream would be to shatter his
heart.”
As he returned one day, Clayton beheld in the trail the vanishing
wheels of the mail carrier’s cart and saw Justin running toward him in
great excitement. Quickening the pace of his horse he was soon at the
boy’s side.
“Father—Mr. Wingate—has—had a fit, or something. He’s lying on the
floor and won’t speak to me, and I can’t lift him.”
Clayton leaped from the saddle and rushed into the house, with Justin
at his heels. The preacher lay on the floor, with arms spread out.
Beneath him was an open letter, across which he had fallen. Clayton
made a hurried examination, and with Justin’s aid placed him on the
low bed. Picking up the letter he glanced at it. It was from the
secretary of the town company, and was apparently an answer to one
which Wingate had sent:
“Mr. Peter Wingate.
“My Dear Sir:—We regret that we cannot view the prospects of the
town and valley of Paradise as hopefully as you do. In fact we
have concluded to abandon it definitely and permanently, and to
that end we have sold all the buildings. The agent of the
purchaser will visit you at once and make arrangements for their
removal.
“Very truly yours,
“Royce Gilbert,
“Secretary Paradise Land and Town Company.”
“Is he—very sick?” wailed the boy anxiously.
Clayton dropped the letter to the floor, and swinging about in his
chair drew Justin to him, pressing him close against his heart. There
were tears in his eyes and his voice choked.
“Justin,” he said, “you will need to be a very brave boy now; Mr.
Wingate is dead.”
CHAPTER III
CLAYTON’S VISITORS
When jack-screws and moving teams had done their work in the town of
Paradise but one house remained, the minister’s, and that only because
Curtis Clayton had purchased it and moved into it, with Justin. The
farmers of the valley wondered that he should remain, but tempered
their surprise with gratitude.
He and Justin seemed even more closely linked now. But not even to
Justin did he ever speak of why he had come to the valley or why he
tarried. The coming appeared to have been a thing of chance, as when a
batted ball rolling to some obscure corner of the field stops there
because no force is applied to move it farther. If there was any
observable change in him after Wingate’s death, it was that he became
more restless. The mind of the dreamer, in its workings somewhat akin
to his own, yet with a simple faith which he did not possess, had
soothed and rested him.
Clayton wore out his increased restlessness by long walks with Justin,
abandoning the rides apparently because he disliked to leave the boy
alone. But his fame as a doctor was spreading through the
thinly-settled country, and when forced away from home by calls he
left Justin at the house of some farmer, usually that of Sloan Jasper,
for there the boy found pleasant companionship in the person of Mary
Jasper, a dark-eyed girl, with winning, mischievous ways and cheeks
like wild rose petals. Time never hung heavily with Justin at Sloan
Jasper’s.
In addition to his work of instructing Justin, and his reading,
Clayton spent much time in writing, in the little room which the
minister had fitted up as a study. Sometimes Justin was given the
privilege of dusting this room, and once when so engaged he whisked
from the table the scorched photograph he had seen before. Clayton had
evidently been looking at it, had placed it under a large blotter, and
then had neglected to put it away before admitting Justin. The boy
stared intently into the beautiful face shadowed forth on that bit of
cardboard, for he wondered; then he replaced it beneath the blotter
and resumed his dusting. But a question had arisen in his heart.
To give Justin pleasant occupation and make the time pass more
rapidly, Clayton purchased a few sheep and placed the boy over them as
a herder; and, as if to furnish diversion for himself, he assisted
Justin in building a sod-walled corral and sod shelters for the sheep.
It was a delight to Justin to guard the sheep on the grassy slopes and
drive them to the tepid water-holes. Often he did this in company with
Mary Jasper; he on foot, or high on Clayton’s horse, the rosy-cheeked
girl swaying at his side on her lazy gray burro, which she had to beat
continually with a small cudgel if she progressed at all.
Once Clayton remonstrated with her for what he deemed her cruelty to
the beast.
“Doctor Clayton,” she said severely, wrinkling her small forehead,
“the only way to make this critter go is to kill him; that’s what my
paw says!” and she swayed on, pounding the burro’s back with the stick
and kicking his sides energetically with her bare heels.
Yet the valley life was lonely, so that the coming of any one was an
event; and it was a red-letter day when Lemuel Fogg drifted in with
his black-topped, wine-colored photograph wagon, and William Sanders
with his dirty prairie schooner. Fogg was a fat young man, whose
mustache drooped limply over a wide good-humored mouth, and whose
round face was splotched yellow with large freckles. Sanders was even
younger than Fogg. He lacked Fogg’s buoyancy and humor, had shrewd
little gray eyes that peered and pried, and slouched about in shabby
ill-fitting clothing. Clayton gave them both warm welcome, and they
remained with him over night.
Sanders, who was alone in his wagon, was looking for land on which to
settle. Apparently Fogg’s present business was to take photographs,
and he began by taking one of Justin standing in the midst of his
sheep, with Mary Jasper sitting on her burro beside him, her bare feet
and ankles showing below her dusty gray dress.
In addition to the land, which he looked over carefully with his
shrewd little eyes, Sanders cast furtive glances at Clayton’s stiff
arm. He ventured to word a question, when he and Fogg sat with Justin
and Clayton in the little study after supper, surrounded by Clayton’s
books and papers, while the sheep were securely housed in the sod
corral and the unrelenting wind piped insistently round the house.
“'Tain’t any my business as I know of,” he began, apologetically, “but
I can’t help lookin’ at that arm o’ your’n, and wonderin’ what made it
so. I had my fortune told onc’t by a man who had an arm like that, and
he said a tiger bit it. He was an East Injun, er a Malay, I reckon. It
come to me that you might have met with an accident sometime, er
somethin’ er 'nuther? There’s a story about it, I reckon?”
The blood rushed in a wave to Clayton’s face and appeared to suffuse
even his dark eyes. He did not answer the question, being sensitive on
the subject, and deeming it an impertinence.
Sanders waited a time, while Fogg talked; then he returned to his
inquiry, with even greater emphasis.
“Yes, there is a story,” said Clayton, speaking slowly, after a moment
of hesitation, while a ghastly smile took the attractiveness out of
his thoughtful countenance. “It wasn’t an accident, though.”
“No?” said Sanders.
“The thing was done in cool deliberation. I was in college, in a
medical college, for I’m a doctor you know. I was a student then; and
it was the custom among the students to perform various operations on
each other, by way of practice, so that when we went out from there to
begin our work we would know how things should be done. One day I
sawed a student’s skull open, took out a spoonful of his brains, and
sewed the wound up so nicely that he was well in a week. The operation
was a great success, but I dipped a little too deep and took out too
much of the gray matter, and after that he was always omitting
something or other that he should have remembered. In return for what
he had permitted me to do he put me on the operating table one day,
broke my arm with a mallet, and then proceeded to put it together
again. In doing so he omitted the funny bone, and my arm has been this
way ever since.”
Fogg broke into a roar of laughter. Sanders flushed slowly; and
getting up walked to the other end of the room, chewing wrathfully,
splintering the story with his teeth as he splintered the grass blades
that he plucked and chewed when walking about to view the valley land.
“Huh!” he grunted, coming back and dropping lumpily into his chair.
“Tell that to a fool an’ mebbe you’ll git a fool to believe ye, but I
don’t!”
Fogg slapped his fat knee and roared again.
“Ha, ha! Ho, ho! Ask him something else, Sanders! Who-ee! Doc, I
didn’t think it was in you! If you do anything like that again I’ll
have to let a reef out of the band of my trousers. Fire another
question at him, Sanders.”
“No,” said Sanders, while a sullen fire glowed in his little eyes; “I
was goin’ to ask him some other things, but I’m done!”
Then he chewed again, tried hard to laugh, and seemed about to say
something; but Fogg broke in.
“I say, Doc, you can tell a story so well you’d ought to be in my
line. Story telling is my long suit. Lincoln ought to have altered his
immortal saying before giving it to the world. My experience is that
if you keep the people in a good humor you can fool _all_ of them
_all_ of the time, and there ain’t any better way than by feeding
them anecdotes and jollying them until they think they are the
smartest ever. For instance, Sanders believes in fortune tellers; they
jolly him, and that pleases him, and they get his coin. It’s the same
way with everything and everybody.”
In addition to the photographic apparatus stored in the wine-colored
wagon Fogg had a collection of Navajo blankets, Pueblo pottery, Indian
baskets, bows and arrows, and such things. Seeing that his host was
not to be a purchaser, and being in a communicative mood, he did not
hesitate to expose now the secrets of his trade, in proof of his view
of the gullibility of the general public.
“See that,” he said, taking up a hideous image of Pueblo workmanship.
“Ninety men out of a hundred will believe that thing, with its froggy
mouth, is a Pueblo idol, without you telling them, and the others will
believe it when you do tell them.”
“Huh!” grunted Sanders, still angry; “if 'tain’t an Injun idol, what
is it?”
It seemed natural for Fogg to laugh, and he laughed again, with easy
gurgling.
“You may call it anything you want to, but it ain’t an idol. I’ve seen
Pueblo idols; there’s a room full of them in the old Governor’s Palace
in Santa Fé, and they look more than anything else like stone fence
posts with holes gouged near one end for the eyes, nose and mouth.
Them are genuine old Pueblo idols, but you bet the Pueblos didn’t sell
them, and they didn’t give ’em away. Did you ever know of a people
that would sell their God? I never did.”
“None, except Christians!” said Clayton, speaking slowly, but with
emphasis.
Fogg set the staring image on the table and looked at him.
“I hadn’t thought of that. Yes, I reckon they do, a good deal of the
time. But an Indian wouldn’t; he would never sell his God. Maybe it’s
because Christians think so little of theirs that they’re so ready to
believe a Pueblo will sell his for 'most any old thing. Them images
are just caricatures, made to sell. I go among the Pueblos three or
four times a year and buy up a lot of their pottery, and I encourage
them to make these images, which the average tourist thinks are gods,
for they sell better even than the water jars and other things that
they turn out.
“Then I buy blankets of the Navajos, which they make dirt cheap now. I
helped to put ’em onto that. You can sell a dozen cheap blankets
easier than a single expensive one, especially when the people you’re
selling to think they’re getting the genuine goods at a bargain. It’s
easier for the Navajo weavers to tear old government blankets to
pieces and re-weave them and color them with analine dyes than it is
for them to take their own wool and their own dyes and put the things
together in the old way. They won’t wear of course, and the colors
fade, but they sell like hot cakes.
“I buy for a dealer, who snaps up everything of the kind I can bring
him and hollers for more. You ought to see the crowds of people,
especially tourists, who wear out his floors. I’m going to have a
store of that kind myself some day. I take photographs for him, of
scenery and other things that will sell; and bring him loads of basket
work and bows and arrows from the Jicarilla Apaches just over the New
Mexican line. He grabs for the Jicarilla work, which I can get almost
cheaper than anybody, for I know the head men. The Jicarillas used to
be slow workers and too honest, like the Navajo weavers; but they’re
onto their job now, and can put a willow basket together and dye it
with patent dyes in almost no time.”
Thus Lemuel Fogg discoursed of his business methods, until he had
succeeded in proving several things concerning himself, in addition to
his easy belief that the whole world is either covetous or dishonest.
Fogg departed the next morning, on his way to Denver. Sanders lingered
in the valley for two or three days, peeking and prying, at intervals
visiting a fortune teller of local repute in the town, who saw land,
houses, and cattle for him, in the grounds of a coffee cup. But he was
angered against Clayton and did not return to his house. A dozen times
he told inquiring farmers that he “reckoned” he would take land there
and become one of them. But the grounds in the coffee cup did not
settle just right, and at length he, too, departed.
CHAPTER IV
SIBYL
One day there came, across the level lands, a wave of horsemen and
hounds in a rabbit hunt, the baying of the dogs breaking sharply on
the peaceful calm of the valley. Justin rushed from the house when he
heard the clamor. Clayton followed more slowly, and looked across the
valley from his doorway. The flutter of skirts told him that some of
the saddles bore women. He frowned. This slaughter of rabbits was
particularly distasteful to him, though he knew that the few farmers
on the low land by the stream would welcome it, if the horses and dogs
did not cut up the cultivated fields.
Big gray jack rabbits, routed from their coverts, were bobbing on in
advance of the baying hounds and galloping riders. More rabbits were
seen to start up, bouncing out of bunches of grass or scattered clumps
of sage. Following behind, driven at a lively gait, came a mule team,
drawing a light spring wagon into which the slain rabbits were thrown.
The extended line had advanced in a big semicircle; and the ends
bending in, the chase drew on toward the solitary home of the solitary
doctor. Justin was filled with excitement. The lust of killing, which
seems to be in the racial blood, stirred strongly within him, and was
only held in partial leash by certain teachings and admonitions well
hammered in by his instructor. Suddenly, quite carried away, he swung
his hat and yelled:
“Mary is on one of those horses! See her, out there on the right side,
on the white horse! She must have been at the station and joined them
when they started.”
Clayton drew back from the doorway without a glance at the form of
Mary Jasper borne onward with flying leaps. A rush of disgust shook
him, so that he did not care to look longer. But Justin remained
outside, swinging his hat and whooping at intervals, quite taken out
of himself.
Then a louder clamor, and a cry from Justin, drew Clayton to the door
again. One of the rabbits was approaching the house, springing on with
indescribable swiftness, yet unable either by running or dodging to
shake off the pursuit of the lithe-limbed, baying creatures that cleft
the air behind it. Two of the foremost of the hounds were in chase of
this rabbit, one twenty yards in advance of the other. Pushed hard,
the rabbit crouched and dodged again with such celerity that the
hound, whose open mouth at the instant was almost closing on it, was
thrown headlong in a frantic effort to stop and turn as quickly as the
rabbit itself. The second hound rushed at it, and the change of
direction flung the fleeing rabbit upon the bit of trampled grass in
front of the open door in which Clayton stood.
It saw the opening, and in desperation darted into it as into a cave,
whisking past Clayton’s legs. The hound came close after, yelping
fiendishly. With an exclamation that sounded like an oath, Clayton
kicked at it; but the hound almost overthrew him, leaped into the
house, and he heard the rabbit’s death cry, and a crunching of bones
as the dog’s ponderous jaws closed on its quivering body.
Then Clayton heard a pounding of hoofs, and with eyes blazing
wrathfully he looked up, and saw the original of the photograph which
he had hurled into the fire and then had drawn out and treasured as if
he could not bear to part with it. The blood receded from his face,
leaving it livid and ghastly.
“Sibyl!” he exclaimed.
[Illustration: “The woman sitting there on her chafing horse stared
back at him”]
The woman drew up her horse in front of the door through which the dog
had darted. She saw the man, and her clutch of the rein tightened.
Clayton looked up at her, and, standing in the doorway, while the dog,
having completed its bloody work panted out past him with furious
haste, he put his strong right hand against the side of the door, with
a faltering motion, as if he felt the need of aid to sustain him from
falling.
The woman sitting there on her chafing horse stared back at him, while
the clamor of the hounds broke over them. Her face had flushed more
than even the excitement of the chase warranted; yet he knew she was
marvellously beautiful, as he looked at her full rounded throat and
chin, at her olive cheeks in which dimples nestled, and into her great
dark eyes, that held now a surprised light. Her hair was as dark as
her eyes, and even though much hidden beneath her riding hat, it was
still a crown of glory. Clayton saw only enough of the blue riding
habit to know that it became her; his eyes were drawn to her face.
“Are you living here?” she asked in astonishment, giving a glance at
the small house.
“Yes,” he answered huskily. “I thought it as good a place as any, and
out of the world; but it seems you found your way here. And Death came
riding with you, as usual.”
“Curtis, you’re always ridiculous when you say foolish things! I’ve
been wondering where you were. You don’t intend to return to Denver?”
“No.”
“Not even if I wanted you to?”
She looked at him with her fascinating unfathomable eyes, noting his
manly presence, his clear-cut dark features, and the stiff, awkward
left arm. As she did so the color flamed back into his face.
“No! Not unless—”
“Unless I would consent to be as poky as you are!”
“No, not that. I shouldn’t expect you to take an interest in the
things I do. You never did, but I didn’t care for that.”
He stopped as if in hesitation and stood trembling.
“Well, I’m glad I’ve found where you’re living. I suppose your post
office address is the town over there by the side of the mountain,
where the station is? I shall have something to send you by mail by
and by.”
“Yes, my mail comes to the station post office.”
He still trembled and appeared to hesitate.
“It’s queer, how I happened to find you here, isn’t it? I have an
acquaintance in that little town, and she invited me down the other
day. Some other strangers to the place chanced to be there, and this
rabbit hunt was gotten up for our entertainment.”
“A queer form of entertainment!” he observed, with caustic emphasis.
“To you I suppose it isn’t anything short of murder?”
“It’s strange to me how any one can find pleasure in it.”
“I suppose that is as one looks at it. But I must be going. I don’t
care to have people see us talking too long together. I’m glad,
though, that I found you.”
“Good bye!” he said, his lips bloodless again.
She pulled her horse sharply about, and in another moment was
galloping on in the hunt, leaving him standing in the doorway staring
after her. He stood thus until the clamor of the dogs sounded faint
and she became a mere swaying speck, then he turned back into the
house. Justin came in at his heels. He had seen the woman and
recognized the pictured face of the photograph.
“Take the rabbit out and bury it somewhere, Justin,” said Clayton
wearily.
Then he passed on into his study and closed the door behind him.
A few days later the mail carrier brought him a Denver newspaper of
ancient date with ink lines drawn round a divorce notice. The paper
had been sent to his address by Sibyl. Clayton read the marked notice
carefully, and thrusting the paper into the stove touched a lighted
match to it.
CHAPTER V
THE INVASION OF PARADISE
Lemuel Fogg made other visits to Paradise Valley, as the seasons came
and went, and Justin learned to look forward with pleasure to his
coming. Always he stayed over night, and talked long with Clayton, for
whom he had conceived a liking.
Clayton continued to cling to his lonely home. Though more than once
tempted to depart he had never been able to make up his mind to do so.
He averred to Fogg, and to other acquaintances, that, having been
dropped down into Paradise Valley quite by chance, mental and physical
inertia held him there; he was lazy, he said, and the indolent life of
Paradise Valley had strong attraction for him.
Yet, as his reputation as an excellent doctor spread, he often rode
many weary miles to visit a patient. Always the studies went on, and
the writing, and the little glass slipping out of and into his pocket
made the whole earth radiant with life and beauty. And Justin became a
stalwart lad, whose strong handsome face, earnest blue eyes, and
attractive personality, won new friends and held old ones.
The few farmers who remained had learned well some lessons with the
passing of the years. Ceasing to rely on the uncertain rainfall, they
had decreased the areas of their tilled fields and pushed them close
to the stream, where the low-lying soil was blest with sufficient
sub-irrigation to swell the deep taproots of the alfalfa. They kept
small herds of cattle, and some sheep, which they grazed on the bunch
grass. The few things they had to sell, honey rifled from the alfalfa
blooms by the bees, poultry, eggs and butter, they found a market for
in the town, or shipped to Denver.
Sloan Jasper was of those who remained, and Mary, a tall girl now, had
taken the place of her mother in the farmer’s home. Mrs. Jasper had
given up the struggle with hard climatic conditions, and had passed
on, attended in her last illness by the faithful doctor.
With Lemuel Fogg there came, one day, a ranchman named Davison; and in
their wake followed herds of bellowing, half-wild cattle, and groups
of brisk-riding, shouting cowboys, who rode down the fields in the
moist soil by the stream, as they galloped in pursuit of their
refractory charges.
The advent of the cattle and the cowboys, the establishment of the
Davison ranch, the erection of houses and bunk-rooms, stables and
corrals, filled Justin’s life to the brim with excitement. He
fraternized with the cowboys, and struck up a warm friendship with
Philip Davison’s son Ben, a lively young fellow older than himself,
who could ride a horse not only like a cowboy, but like a circus
athlete, for he could perform the admirable feat of standing in the
saddle with arms folded across his breast while his well-trained
broncho tore around the new corral at a gallop.
When the other members of the Davison household came and were
domiciled in the new ranch house, Justin found that Lucy Davison, the
ranchman’s niece, the “cousin” of whom Ben had talked, was a beautiful
girl of Mary’s age, with more than Mary’s charm of manner. She was
paler than Mary, and had not her rose-leaf cheeks, but she was more
beautiful in her way, and she had something which Mary lacked. Justin
did not know what it was, for he was not yet analytical, but he was
interested in a wholly new manner. He could not be with her enough,
and when he was absent thoughts of her filled his mind and even his
dreams.
Mary Jasper hastened to call on Lucy Davison; and in doing so made the
acquaintance of that most interesting person, Miss Pearl Newcome,
Davison’s housekeeper. Miss Newcome had passed the beauty stage, if
indeed she had ever dwelt at all in that delectable period which
should come by right to every member of the sex; but she still
cherished the romantic illusions of her earlier years, and kept them
embalmed, as it were, in sundry fascinating volumes, which were warded
and locked in her trunk up stairs. She brought these out at
psychological moments, smelling sweetly of cedar and moth balls, and
read from them, to Mary’s great delight; for there never were such
charming romances in the world, and never will be again, no matter who
writes them. Some of them were in the form of pamphlets, yellow and
falling to pieces; others were in creaky-backed books; and still
others, and these the most read, in cunning bindings of Miss Newcome’s
own contriving.
Sitting on the flat lid of the trunk, with one foot tucked under her
for comfort, while Mary crouched on the floor with her rose-leaf
cheeks in her palms, Pearl Newcome would read whole chapters from
“Fanny the Flower Girl, or the Pits and Pitfalls of London,” from
“Lady Clare, or Lord Marchmont’s Unhappy Bride,” from “The Doge’s
Doom, or the Mysterious Swordsman of Venice,” and many others. The
mysterious swordsman in the “Doge’s Doom” was especially entrancing,
for he went about at night with a black mask over his face, and made
love and fought duels with the greatest imaginable nonchalance. It
taxed the memory merely to keep count of his many loves and battles,
and it was darkly hinted that he was a royal personage in disguise.
“The Black Mask’s scabbard clanked ominously as he sprang from the
gondola to the stone arches below the sombre building, while the
moonlight was reflected from his shining coat of mail and from the
placid waters of the deep lagoon, showing in the pellucid waves alike
the untamed locks that hung about his shoulders and the white
frightened face of the slender, golden-haired maiden who leaned toward
him with palpitating bosom from the narrow, open window above him.”
When that point was reached Mary clasped her hands tightly across her
knees and rocked in aching excitement; for who was to know whether the
Black Mask would succeed in getting the lovely maiden out of the
clutches of the foul doge who held her a prisoner, or whether some
guard concealed in a niche in the wall would not pounce out, having
been set there by the shrewd doge for the purpose, and slice the Black
Mask’s head off, in spite of the protecting coat of mail?
Aside from her duties as housekeeper, which she never neglected, there
was one other thing that could cause Pearl Newcome to surrender
voluntarily the joys of that perch on the trunk lid in the midst of
her redolent romances with Mary Jasper for an appreciative listener,
and that was the voice of Steve Harkness, the ranch foreman. The
attraction of the printed page palled when she heard Harkness’s heavy
tones, and stopping, with her finger between the leaves, she would
step to the window; and sometimes, to Mary’s regret, would go down
stairs, where she would cut out a huge triangle of pie and place it on
the kitchen table.
Harkness was big and jovial, and in no manner resembled the Black
Mask, who was slender, lithe, had a small supple wrist, hair of
midnight blackness, and “a voice like the tinkle of many waters.”
Harkness’s voice was big and heavy, and his wrist was large and red.
But he was usually clean-shaven, scented himself sweetly with cinnamon
drops, and was altogether very becoming, in the eyes of Pearl Newcome.
And she knew he liked pie. Sometimes Pearl came back to the trunk and
continued the dropped romance. That was when Harkness was in a hurry
and could not linger in the kitchen to joke and laugh with her. But if
time chanced to hang heavily on his hands and no troublesome cowboy or
refractory steer claimed his attention, she did not return at all, and
Mary, tired of waiting, crept down in disappointment.
Delightful as Mary Jasper and Justin Wingate found the people of the
new ranch, Curtis Clayton secluded himself more than ever with his
books and his writing, and was not to be coaxed out of his shell even
by Justin’s stories of Ben’s marvellous acrobatic and equestrian feats
and of Lucy’s brightness and clever talk.
Yet he was drawn out one day by a summons that could not be disobeyed.
Harkness had been hurled against the new wire corral by a savage
broncho, and Clayton’s services as a surgeon were demanded. He never
refused a call like that.
He found Harkness sitting in the kitchen of the ranch house, to which
he had come as to a shelter, with Pearl Newcome bending over him, a
camphor bottle in one of her hands and a blood-stained cloth in the
other. Davison, Fogg, and several cowboys, stood about in helpless
awkwardness. Harkness’s face looked white and faint, in spite of its
red tan. The sleeve of his flannel shirt had been rolled to the
shoulder and a bloody bandage was wound round the arm.
“Nothin’ to make a fuss about,” he said, when he saw Clayton. “I got
slung up ag’inst the barbed wire and my arm was ripped open. It’s been
bleedin’ some, but that’s good fer it.”
“I shall have to take a number of stitches,” Clayton announced, when
he had examined and cleansed the wound. He opened a pouch of his
saddle-bags.
“No chloryform ner anything of that kind fer me,” said Harkness,
regarding him curiously. “Jist go ahead with your sewin’.”
Clayton obeyed; while Harkness, setting a lighted cigarette between
his teeth, talked and laughed with apparent nonchalance.
Brought thus into close contact with the people of the ranch, the
shell of Clayton’s exclusiveness was shattered. After that, daily, for
some time, he rode or walked over to the ranch house to see how his
patient was doing, or Harkness came over to see him. And he found that
these people were good to know. They lessened the emptiness which had
gnawed. They were human beings, with wholly human hearts. And he
needed them quite as much as they needed him.
CHAPTER VI
WHEN LOVE WAS YOUNG
Justin shot up into a tall youth; he was beginning to feel that he was
almost a man; and love had come to him, as naturally and simply as the
bud changes into the flower. It flushed his face, as he came with Lucy
Davison up the path to the arbor seat in the cottonwoods, after a
stroll by the stream. Planted when the ranch was established, the
trees were now a cool and screening grove. Justin had made for her a
crown of the cottonwood leaves, and had set it on her brown hair. As
they walked along, hand in hand, he looked at her now and then, with
the light of young love in his eyes. He was sure he had never seen a
girl so beautiful and it gave him a strange and delightful pleasure
just to look at her.
“Tell me more about Doctor Clayton,” she said, dropping down upon the
arbor seat. “You told me about that scorched photograph. What is that
woman to him, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” he said, as he sat down by her.
“I think she must have been his sweetheart.”
“Just because he couldn’t burn her picture?”
“Because he came down here in that queer way and has stayed here ever
since. Something happened to separate them.”
“If that is so I ought to be sorry, I suppose, but I can’t; it was a
good thing for me; it kept me here, and gave me a chance to—get an
education.”
“And we do need a doctor here,” she said, with unnecessary emphasis.
“If he hadn’t come, I’m afraid I should have been sent away when Mr.
Wingate died, and then I shouldn’t ever have—met you.”
“Oh, you might have!” she declared, tossing her crowned head
coquettishly.
She crumpled a cottonwood leaf in her fingers. With a boldness that
gripped his throat he slipped his hand along the back of the arbor
seat.
“And if—if I had never met you?”
“Then you wouldn’t have known me!”
“No, I suppose not; but, as you said, I might have; it seems to me
that something would have drawn me to you, wherever you were.”
The hot color dyed her fair cheeks. Her brown eyes dropped and were
veiled by their dark lashes. A strand of the brown hair blown in a
tangle across the oval of her face, the delicate curve of the white
throat, the yielding touch of her body as he pressed his extended arm
close up against it, intoxicated his youthful senses.
“I don’t want to think how it would have been if I had never known
you,” he declared earnestly. “We have been good friends a long time,
Lucy.”
“We’re good friends now, aren’t we?”
“Yes, but I want it to be something more than just friends.”
He pressed his arm closer about her and bent toward her.
“I hope you won’t mind my saying it; but I do love you, and have
from—from the very first. I didn’t understand so well what it meant
then, but now I know—I know that I love you, and love you, and love
you!” The arm tightened still more. “And—and if you would only say
that you love me, too, and that—”
She lifted her face to his. A dash of tears shone in the brown eyes.
“I—I have—hurt your feelings!”
“No, Justin.”
The sight of those tears, and her tremulous lips, so moved him that,
with an impulsive motion, and a courage he would not have thought
possible, he stooped and kissed her.
“If you would only say that you do love me,” he urged.
“I do love you, Justin,” she said, with girlish earnestness, “and you
ought to know that I do.”
“I have always dreamed of this,” he declared, putting both arms about
her and drawing her close against his heart. “I have always dreamed of
this; that we might love each other, and be always together. I think
that has been in my heart since the day I first saw you.”
He held her tightly now, as if thus he would keep her near him
forever.
“Have you truly loved me always?” she asked, after a long silence.
“Always; ever since I knew you!”
“But you—you did care for Mary, before I came?”
“I always liked Mary.”
“And you like her now?”
“Yes, but I love you; and that is very different.”
She sat quite still, but picked at the leaf of the cotton wood. He
seemed so strong and so masterful that the touch of his hands and the
pressure of his arms gave her a delightful sense of weakness and
dependence, a hitherto unknown feeling.
“You never cared for Mary as—as you do me?”
“I truly never loved Mary at all; I liked her, and we used to have
great fun together. But we were only children then, you know!”
She saw one of the hands that enfolded her; the sleeve of his coat was
drawn up slightly, disclosing the clear white of the skin and the deep
line of tan at the wrist. She ventured to look at his face—the side
of it turned toward her; it was as tanned as his hand. Something more
than admiration shone in her brown eyes.
“And now you think you are a big man!”
“I am older,” he said, simply.
“And was that—that the reason why you tamed my mustang that day, so
that he wouldn’t be killed? Because you loved me? I’ve wondered about
that.”
“That was the reason; but I was anxious, too, to save him.”
She was silent again, as if pondering this.
“I’ve thought that might be the reason; and, you won’t laugh at me if
I tell you, that’s why I’ve ridden him so much since. Uncle Philip
didn’t want me to go near him after that. But I would; and I’ve ridden
him ever since; though Pearl has told me a dozen times that he would
throw me and kill me. But I was going to ride him if I could,
because—because you conquered him—for me.”
He kissed her again, softly.
“You musn’t take too many risks with the mustang; for—for some time,
you know, you are going to marry me, I hope?”
She did not answer.
“It’s a long way off, that some time, but—”
She did not look at him.
“Yes, some time, if I can,” she said timidly.
“If you can?”
“If Uncle Philip will let me.”
“He’s only your guardian, and you’ll be of age by and by.”
“It seems a good while yet.”
“But it will come.”
“Yes, it will come.”
“I’ll wait until that some time,” he promised in a low voice.
Time sped swiftly beneath the cottonwoods. To the boy and girl in the
morning glow of love hours are minutes. They did not know they had so
many things to talk over. Every subject was colored with a new light
and had a new relationship. But love itself was uppermost, on their
lips and in their hearts.
Justin bore away from that arbor seat a conflicting sense of
exaltation and unworthiness. The warm inner light that illumined him
flowed out upon the world and brightened it. He walked with a sense of
buoyancy. There was a tang in the air and a glow in the sky before
unknown.
Meeting Ben Davison he had a new sense of comradeship with him; and
though Ben talked of the young English setter he had recently
purchased, and sought to show off the good points of the dog, Justin
was thinking of Ben himself, who was a cousin to Lucy, and now shared
in some degree her superior merits.
Also, when Philip Davison came out of the ranch house and walked
toward the horse corrals, the glance of his blue eyes seemed brighter
and kindlier, his manner more urbane and noble, and the simple order
he gave to Ben concerning work to be done fell in kindlier tone.
Though Davison’s words bit like acid sometimes, Justin was resolved
now to remember always that he was Lucy’s uncle and guardian.
Walking homeward, Justin looked now and then at the ranch house. He
had seen Lucy flutter into it like a bird; she was in that house now,
he reflected, brightening it with her presence. The house, the
grounds, and more than all the cottonwood grove, became sacred.
CHAPTER VII
WILLIAM SANDERS
The feeling which hallowed the mere local surroundings of love held
its place tenaciously in Justin’s heart and seemed not likely to pass
away. It was no sickly sentimentality, but had the power to strengthen
his inner life and add to his growing manliness.
Justin was employed on the ranch now, and though there were many
distasteful things connected with the work, he desired to remain,
because it gave him so many opportunities to be near Lucy Davison. The
necessary cruelties connected with the rearing and handling of cattle
on a great range sickened him at times; for a love that was almost a
worship of all life, the lower forms equally with the higher, had been
instilled by Clayton into every fibre of his being. To Justin now even
the elements seemed to stir with consciousness. Did not certain
chemicals exhibited by Clayton rush together into precipitates and
crystals, as if they loved and longed to be united, and did not so
common a thing as fire throw out tentacles of flame, and grapple with
the wood as if hungry? And who was to say that the precipitates and
crystals and the fire did not know? Certainly not ignorant man.
With this love of every form of life there grew a manly gentleness,
broken strangely at times by outbursts of temper, so that often it
seemed whimsical.
Riding forth one day, in cowboy attire, along the line fence that held
in the cattle from the cultivated valley lands, he came upon Philip
Davison engaged in angry controversy with a young man of somewhat
shabby appearance. The shrewd little eyes of this man observed Justin
closely. Beside the fence was a dirty prairie schooner, from which the
man had descended, and to it two big raw-boned farm horses were
hitched. Eyeing Justin the man pushed back his hat, then awkwardly
extended his hand.
“So you’re Justin, air ye—the little boy I met one’t? I reckon you
don’t know me? I wouldn’t knowed you, but fer hearin’ the name.”
Justin acknowledged that the man’s face was unfamiliar.
“Well, I’m William Sanders!” He plucked a spear of grass and began to
splinter it with his teeth. “I landed hyer some seasons ago with Mr.
Fogg, and stayed all night with the doctor over there. Mebbe you’ll
remember me now. I’ve thought of you a good many times sense then.
You’ve growed a lot. I was thinkin’ about you t’other day while on my
way hyer; and a fortune teller I went to in Pueblo picked you out
straight off, from the cards she told with. She showed me the jack of
hearts, and said that was the young feller I had in mind. Sing’lar,
wasn’t it?”
Justin recalled this young man now, and shook his hand heartily.
“It was singular,” he admitted.
“We’ll have to talk over old times by and by,” said Sanders, amiably.
But Davison was not pleased to see Sanders, whom he had never met
before. Sanders, it appeared, had bought a quarter-section of land not
far from the stream, and had now come to occupy it. Trouble had arisen
over the fact that it was included in a large area of mortgaged and
government land which Davison had fenced for his cattle. Sanders was
demanding that he should cut the fence.
“Cut it and let me git my land,” he insisted, “er I’ll cut it fer ye.
I know my rights under the law.”
“You can’t farm there, and you know you can’t,” said Davison, in a
tone of expostulation. “This is simply a piece of blackmail. You want
me to pay you not to trouble me about the fence. But I won’t do it. If
I did I’d have dozens of men landed on me demanding the same thing.
You know that nothing but bunch grass will grow on that land.”
Though he chewed placidly on the grass spear, Sanders’ little eyes
glittered.
“Cut the fence and let me git to my land, er I’ll cut it fer ye!”
His love for Lucy, which extended now to Philip Davison as a warm
regard and intense boyish admiration, would have inclined Justin to
the ranchman’s side; but it was clear that Sanders was in the right
and Davison in the wrong.
“I’ll see you again, Mr. Sanders,” he said; and rode on while the two
men were still wrangling. It was remarkable, he thought, that Sanders
should have remembered him so long, and more remarkable that a fortune
teller who had never seen him should be able to describe him even in a
dim and uncertain way.
Farther along he encountered Ben, ranging the mesa with dog and gun,
training his young English setter. It was Ben’s duty to ride the line
on this particular day; but Ben had shirked, and Justin had been
assigned to his place. The current opinion of the cowboys was that Ben
was shiftless and unreliable.
“What’s that hayseed mouthing about?” Ben asked.
“He has bought some land in there, and wants your father to cut the
fence so that he can get to it.”
“These farmers are always making trouble,” Ben growled.
Then his face flushed.
“Why didn’t you stand up with me against that granger the other day,
when I told him that his horses, and not ours, had damaged his crops?”
Justin desired to think well of Ben and remain on terms of friendship
with him because of Lucy.
“I couldn’t very well,” he urged, “for I saw our horses in his millet,
myself.”
“Well, he didn’t; he was in town that day. He would have believed you,
if you had said they were his horses. You might have backed me up,
instead of flinching; I’d have done as much for you.”
“You’ve got a handsome dog there!” said Justin.
“Oh, that setter’s going to be fine when I get him broke,” Ben
asserted, with enthusiasm. “I only wish we had some Eastern quails
here. Harkness put you on this line today, did he? I wanted to train
my setter; so I told him I wasn’t well, and slipped out of it.”
As the dog was now far ahead, Ben hastened to overtake him, and Justin
rode on, thinking of Ben, of Lucy, and of William Sanders. Ben’s easy
disregard of certain things he had been taught to consider essentials
troubled him. He wanted to think well of Ben.
When Justin learned the outcome of the controversy between Davison and
Sanders he was somewhat astonished. Sanders’ truculence had made him
think the man would persist in his demands; but Sanders had agreed to
fence his own land, if Davison would but give him a right of way to
it.
Within a week Justin understood why. Sanders, visiting the ranch-house
to see Davison, had also seen Lucy. He became a familiar visitor,
where his presence was not desired. If Lucy rode out, William Sanders
invariably chanced to be in the trail going in the same direction. If
she remained at home he came to the house to get Davison’s advice as
to the best manner of constructing a fence, and Lucy’s advice
concerning the proper furnishing of a dug-out for a single man who
expected to live alone and do his own cooking.
Lucy came to Justin with the burden of her woes.
“He follows me round all the time, just as if he were my dog!”
“You ought to feel flattered,” said Justin, though he was himself
highly indignant. “I don’t suppose you want me to say anything to him
about it?”
“Oh, no—no!” she gasped, terrified by the threat concealed behind the
words.
“I’ve noticed he hasn’t come near me since our meeting down by the
line fence. He told me then that he wanted to have a talk about old
times, but he hasn’t seemed in any hurry to begin it.”
As Justin rode away in an angry mood Lucy Davison looked at his
receding figure with some degree of uneasiness. Justin had on a few
occasions showed a decidedly inflammable temper. Ordinarily mild in
word and manner, borrowing much of that mildness doubtless from
Clayton, when he gave way to a sudden spasm of rage it was likely to
carry him beyond the bounds of reason.
The provocation came in a most unexpected, and at the time
inexplicable, way. Justin, riding along the trail by the stream, saw
Lucy come out from the shadows of the young cottonwoods near Sloan
Jasper’s and walk in his direction, as if to join him. The sight of
her there filled his sky with brightness and the music of singing
birds. He pricked up his broncho and turned it from the trail.
As he did so he beheld William Sanders appear round the end of the
cottonwood grove, mounted on one of his big, raw-boned horses. Riding
up to Lucy, Sanders slipped from his saddle and walked along by her
side. Justin’s anger burned. It was apparent to him, great as was the
separating distance, that Sanders’ presence and words were distasteful
to her. She stopped and seemed about to turn back to the grove. Justin
saw Sanders put out his hand as if to detain her. As he did so she
stooped; then she screamed, and fell forward, apparently to avoid him.
Justin drove his broncho from a trot into a wild gallop. His anger
increased to smoking rage. It passed to ungovernable fury, when he
beheld Sanders catch the screaming girl in his arms, lift her to the
back of his horse, and scramble up behind her in the saddle. Justin
yelled at him.
“Stop—stop, you villain!”
In utter disregard of him and his shouted command Sanders plunged his
spurs into the flanks of his big horse, and began to ride away from
the cottonwoods at top speed. Lucy lay limp in his arms.
“I’ll have his life!” Justin cried, longing now for one of the cowboy
revolvers he had made it a practice, on the advice of Clayton, never
to carry; and he drove the broncho into furious pursuit of the big
horse that was bearing Lucy and Sanders away.
The light, clean-limbed broncho, unimpeded by a cumbersome double
weight, began to gain in the mad race. Justin ploughed its sides
mercilessly with the spurs, struck it with his hands, and yelled at
it, to increase its speed.
“Go, go!” he cried; “we must catch that scoundrel quick!”
His line of action when that was accomplished was not formulated,
further than that he knew he would hurl himself on Sanders, tear him
from the saddle, and punish him as it seemed he deserved.
Steadily the separating distance was decreased. Sanders still sent the
big horse on, almost without a backward glance. He held Lucy tightly
in his arms. Apparently she had fainted, for Justin could not observe
that she struggled to release herself.
Again Justin bellowed a command to Sanders to halt. He was close upon
the big horse now. Sanders turned in his saddle heavily, for the
weight of the girl impeded his movements. Justin fancied he could see
the man’s little eyes glitter, as they did that day when he delivered
his ultimatum to Davison.
“You go to hell!” he bellowed back.
The momentary slacking of his rein caused his horse to stumble, and it
fell to the ground.
Justin galloped up in an insanity of blazing wrath. Lucy, hurled from
the back of the horse with Sanders, sprang up with a cry, and ran
toward Justin. Sanders, having picked himself up uninjured, stared at
her. His flushed face whitened and his little eyes showed a singular
and ominous gleam.
“Take her,” he said, hoarsely; “damn you, take her—I was doin’ the
best I could!”
Lucy’s face was white—piteously white; her dry hot eyes gushed with
tears, and a sob choked in her throat.
“Justin—Justin, it was not—his fault—nothing he did; it was the
snake; see, it bit me, here!” She thrust forward her hand. “Near the
wrist, there; and—and it is swelling fast, fast! We—we must—get to
Doctor Clayton’s quick—quick!”
Justin staggered under the revulsion of feeling. He caught the shaking
and terrified girl in his arms.
“Help me—get her into the saddle, Sanders,” he begged, stammering the
words. “And—and I ask your pardon! Later I will tell you what I—but
now I need you to—”
Sanders sprang to his assistance.
“Better take my horse; he’s bigger!”
“The broncho is faster,” said Justin. “That’s right. Now—that’s
right!”
He climbed shakily into the saddle. He felt his very brain reeling.
Then the broncho leaped forward. Sanders struck it a smart blow to
hurry it on; and stood looking at them, as they galloped wildly on
toward Clayton’s, which had been his own destination.
“Damn him!” he cried hoarsely. His little eyes glittered and his lips
foamed. “I was doin’ the best I could, and I would have made it all
right.” He clenched his fists. “I would 'a’ been his friend—and
helped him; but now—”
The sentence, the threat, died, gurgling, in his throat.
As for Justin, he had no thought now but to reach Doctor Clayton’s in
the quickest time possible. He did not spare the broncho. Yet, even in
these minutes of whirling excitement, when anxiety, fright, love,
chagrin, and regret, fought within him for the mastery, he did not
forget some of the things learned of Clayton. He took out his
handkerchief, rolled it into a cord with hands and teeth, and with
hands and teeth knotted it round the bitten arm just above the two
small punctures made by the teeth of the rattlesnake.
The arm was already swollen, and he thought it was becoming
discolored. At times burning tears gushed from his eyes in a way to
blind him and keep him from seeing anything clearly. Lucy lay in his
arms as if dead. For aught he knew she might even then be dying. The
poison of the rattlesnake had been injected near the great artery of
the wrist, as she stooped in her embarrassment to pluck a flower, and
it would be speedy in its malignant effects. With that terrible fear
upon him, Justin blamed himself ceaselessly for the delay he had
wrought in the mistaken notion that Sanders was acting with sinister
intent. If that brief delay should aid to a fatal result he knew he
should go mad or kill himself.
When Lucy stirred, or moaned, he bent over her with wild words of
inquiry. Her eyes were closed, and she was very white.
“We are almost there—almost there!” he cried.
Yet how long the distance seemed!
Clayton came to the door, when he heard the clatter of hoofs. He wore
a faded smoking jacket and had a black skull cap perched on the top of
his head. His half lounging manner changed when he saw the trembling
broncho, dripping sweat and panting with labored breath from the
strain of its terrible run, and saw Justin climbing heavily out of the
saddle with Lucy. When her feet touched the ground she stood erect,
but tottered, clinging weakly to Justin’s arm. She made a brave effort
to walk, as Clayton hurried to her side. He saw the knotted
handkerchief and the swollen arm, and knew what had happened.
“Into the house,” he said, tenderly supporting her. “Don’t be
frightened, Lucy—don’t be frightened! Justin, help me on the other
side—ah, that’s right! A little girl was here only the other day,
from the Purgatoire, who had been bitten hours before, and I had her
all right in a little while. So, there’s really nothing to be alarmed
about.”
Clayton’s cheering words were a stimulant. Yet the battle was not
fought out. Before victory was announced, word had gone to the
ranch-house and to Jasper’s. Philip Davison came, with Harkness and
Pearl Newcome, and Mary Jasper rode in on her pony, wild-eyed and
tremulous. Among others who arrived was William Sanders.
Justin found him in the yard, out by the grass-grown cellar, where he
stood in a subdued manner, holding the reins of his raw-boned horse.
His manner changed and his little eyes burned when he saw Justin.
“I don’t keer to have you speak to me,” he said, abruptly. “I reckon
from this on our ways lays in different directions. I don’t know what
you thought I was up to, but I was doin’ the best I could to git that
girl to this place in a hurry. You chipped in. I s’pose you think it
was all right, and that you helped matters?”
“I have already asked your pardon, and I ask it again. I see now that
I was a fool. We’ll forget the whole thing, if you’re willing.”
Justin held out his hand in an amicable manner.
Sanders disdained to take it.
“I’m not willin’ to fergit it, myself. I wanted to think well of you,
rememberin’ when I first come to this house, and some other things,
but that’s past. You made me look and feel cheaper than thirty cents
Mexican, and I ain’t expectin’ to fergit it.”
He turned away, and walked along the edge of the old cellar, leading
his horse. That William Sanders had in him all the elements of a
vicious hater was shown then, and many times afterward. He did not
speak to Justin again that day; and when the announcement came that
Clayton had won his hard fight and Lucy was on the high road to
recovery, he mounted and rode away.
CHAPTER VIII
AND MARY WENT TO DENVER
Mary Jasper did not know that she went to Denver because she had read
Pearl Newcome’s romances; but so it was. She was in love with Ben, and
expected to become his wife by and by, but her day-dreams were of
conquests and coronets.
The alluringly beautiful lace of Sibyl had reappeared in Paradise
Valley. On her first visit, long before, Sibyl had marked the rare
dark beauty of Mary Jasper. Mary was now a fair flower bursting into
rich bloom, and wherever a fair flower grows some covetous hand is
stretched forth to pluck it.
Though Sibyl had flung Curtis Clayton aside with as little compunction
as if his pure heart were no more than the gold on the draggled wings
of the butterfly crushed in the road, curiosity and vanity had drawn
her again and again to the little railroad town at the base of the
flat-topped mountain. There in the home of an acquaintance she had
found means to gratify her curiosity concerning the life led by
Clayton, and could feed her vanity with the thought that he had
immured himself because of her.
Twice she had seen him, having taken rides through the valley for the
purpose; once beholding him from afar, watching him as he strolled
near the willows by the stream, unconscious of her surveillance, his
bent left arm swinging as he walked. On the second occasion they had
met face to face in the trail, while he was on his way to the town to
inspect some books he had ordered conditionally. Sibyl was on a
mettlesome bay, and he on his quick-stepping buckskin broncho. She
towered above him from the back of the larger horse. He lifted his hat
with a gentle gesture, flushing, and holding the reins tightly in his
stiff left hand.
“You are looking well!” she cried gaily. It touched her to know that
he still carried himself erect, that he was still a handsome,
pleasant-eyed man, whom any woman might admire. “And really I’ve been
thinking you were moping down here, and suffering from loneliness and
hopeless love!”
“Love is no longer hopeless, when it is dead!” he declared, voicing an
indifference he did not feel. Her light laugh fell like the sting of a
whip. “Oh, dear me! Is it so serious as that? But of course I don’t
believe anything you say. Love is a bright little humming-bird of a
boy, who never dies. Truly, it must be lonesome down here, in this
poky place. I can’t understand why you stay here. You might come to
Denver!” She looked at him archly, half veiling her dark eyes with
their lustrous lashes, while her horse pawed fretfully at the bank. “I
mean it, Curtis. You could be as far from me in Denver as you are down
here, if you wished to be. You know that as well as I do.”
“I don’t think I could,” he said, and though his voice showed pain it
showed resolution. “I find this a very good place. I like the quiet.”
“So that no one will ever trouble you while you’re studying or
writing! You’ll be a great author or scientist some day, I don’t
doubt.”
He did not answer.
“Well, good bye, Curtis. I’m not so bad as I seem, perhaps; you don’t
see any horns or cloven hoof about me, do you?” She waved her hand.
“And I’m glad to know you’re looking so well, and are so contented and
happy!”
She gave her horse a cut with her riding whip and galloped away.
How many more times Sibyl Dudley (she had taken her maiden name) came
to the little town by the mountain Curtis Clayton did not know, and
never sought to discover; but one day he was almost startled, when
Justin brought him news that Mary Jasper had accompanied Sibyl to
Denver, and was to remain there with her.
Clayton at once mounted his horse and rode up the valley in the waning
afternoon, to where Sloan Jasper’s house squatted by the stream in the
midst of a green plume of cottonwoods of his own planting. He found
Jasper in a stormy temper. There had been heavy August rains and a
cloud-burst. The sluggish stream had overleaped its banks, smearing
the alfalfa fields with sticky yellow mud and a tangle of weedy drift,
in addition to softening the soil until it was a spongy muck. Hundreds
of cattle had ploughed through the softened soil during the night, for
the storm had torn out a section of fence and let them drift into the
cultivated area of the valley. Standing with Jasper was Clem
Arkwright.
“Glorious, sublime!” Arkwright was saying.
He had taken off his hat, and stood in reverent attitude before the
lighted mountain, a young, red-faced, pudgy man, with thick mustache.
Though Sloan Jasper was not gifted with keen discernment he felt the
attitude to be that of the Pharisee proclaiming his own excellence
rather than that of his Maker. Arkwright seemed to be saying to him,
“Behold one who has been endowed with a capacity which you lack, the
capacity to appreciate and enjoy this sublime picture!”
All the way up the valley trail Curtis Clayton had been delighting in
the beauty of that evening scene. The misty clouds lingering after the
storm had hung white draperies about the wide shoulders of the
mountain. Into these the descending sun had hurled a sheaf of
fire-tipped arrows, and straightway the white draperies had burned red
in streaks and the whole top of the mountain had flamed. The colors
were fading now.
“Glorious, sublime!” Arkwright repeated.
“The sunlight on that mountain don’t interest me a little bit,
Arkwright,” said Jasper, with curt emphasis; “what I want to know is
how I’m going to protect myself? You say there ain’t any herd law.
You’re a justice-of-the-peace, and I reckon a lawyer, or a half of a
one. We can have a herd law passed, can’t we? And what’s to keep me
from shootin’ them steers when I catch ’em in here? Powder and lead
air cheap, and that’s what I’ll do; and then I’ll let Davison do the
sum’. I ain’t got nothin’ much, and he’ll find it hard work to git
blood out of a turnip. Let him do the sum’, and see if he can collect
damages; you say I can’t.”
“You’re hopeless, Jasper!
“'A primrose by the river’s brim,
A yellow primrose was to him—
And it was nothing more!’”
Arkwright made the quotation and sighed, as Clayton rode up. “But see
the fading light on those clouds! Was there ever anything like it?
What does it make you think of?”
“It makes me think that if I had my way I could improve on nature a
bit in this valley; I wouldn’t send all the rain in a bunch and jump
the river out of its banks and roll it over everything, but distribute
it a little through some of the other months of the year.”
Arkwright turned his pudgy form about.
“Ah, Doctor! Glad to see you. You ought to get over to the town
oftener. You wouldn’t care to ride up this evening, I suppose? The
sunlight is going, and I must be going, too.”
Clayton did not care to ride to town. When Arkwright was gone he
questioned Jasper concerning the occasion of his visit.
“I reckon he come down for a word with Ben Davison; I don’t know what
else. He and Ben air gittin’ thick as fleas lately. It’s my opinion
that Ben’s gamblin’ away his wages up there in the town with him, but
I don’t know; and I don’t care. I’d be glad to have both of ’em keep
away from me. Look at that millet, Doctor; just look at it! Ruined by
Davison’s cattle; and Arkwright tells me I can’t do anything, because
there ain’t any herd law in this county. But I can shoot ’em; and I’ll
do it next time they git in here, see if I don’t.”
Clayton had heard Jasper rave in that way before, and nothing had ever
come of it. Other settlers had raved in the same manner, and then
realized their helplessness. Looking into Jasper’s angry face, he
tried now to speak of Mary.
“I hear that your daughter has gone to Denver, Mr. Jasper!”
Jasper drew himself up, forgetful for the moment of his millet. A look
of pride and pain overspread his hairy face.
“Yes, she’s gone there to stay awhile with Mrs. Dudley. I didn’t want
her to, but she would go; it makes it mighty lonesome here, but she’ll
be happier up there, I reckon. Mrs. Dudley took a likin’ to Mary, and
wants to give her a better chance fer an ejication and other things
than she can have here. So I reckon it’s all right, though I didn’t
see at first how I could git along without her.”
All at once Clayton’s heart seemed to shrivel and shrink. He fumbled
with the yellow mane of the broncho and with the reins that swung
against its neck. When he spoke after a little, trying to go on, his
voice was husky.
“That woman is—”
“Yes, I allow Mrs. Dudley is a fine woman!”
Clayton’s resolution failed utterly.
“And she’s smart,” Jasper declared, “smart as a steel-trap; when she
talked with me about takin’ Mary, and what she could do fer her, I
could see that. She’s mighty good-lookin’, too; though I don’t think
anybody can come up in looks to my Mary. I wisht you could have seen
her with some of her new fixin’s on, which Mrs. Dudley bought fer her.
She was certainly handsome. And she’s goin’ to enjoy herself there, I
don’t doubt. I’ve already had a letter from her, tellin’ me how happy
she is. I reckon I ought to be willin’ fer her to have things her
mother never had, fer she’s fit fer it, and not have to slave as her
mother did, and as I’ve always done. Yes, I reckon I’m glad she’s
gone; though ’tis a bit lonesome here, fer I ain’t got anybody with me
at all now, you see.”
Though Curtis Clayton had visited Sloan Jasper for the express purpose
of uttering a warning against Sibyl, he permitted Jasper to talk on,
and the warning words remained unsaid. Jasper was inexpressibily
lonely, now that his daughter was gone; yet it was plain that he would
not call her back, and equally plain that he knew she would not return
if he called never so loudly. And he was trusting that the thing he
could not help was the very best thing for the child he loved. Clayton
felt that he could not stir up in the heart of this man a useless,
peace-destroying, and perhaps a groundless, distrust.
So he rode away as the night shadows were falling, and gathered a
great contempt for himself as he returned slowly homeward. He had no
right to judge Sibyl, and possibly, very probably, misjudge her, he
thought; yet he had a fear, amounting almost to conviction, that she
was not a woman to whom should be given the charge and training of
such a girl as Mary Jasper. That fear had sent him to Jasper; his
retreat seemed a cowardly flight.
As for Mary, she was childishly happy in Denver. The only present
cloud on the sky of her life was that her father had not really wished
her to go. He had objected stoutly at first, but ever since her
mother’s departure from the earthly Paradise, which had been full of
all manner of hard labor, to that upper and better one where, her
simple faith had assured her, she should toil no more, Mary had
contrived to do pretty much as she pleased. Her head was filled with
romantic ideas, garnered from Pearl Newcome’s much-read novels. In
this matter, as in all others, she had taken her own way, like a
high-headed young horse clamping the bit tightly between its teeth and
choosing its road in defiance of the guiding rein. And her father had
submitted, when he could do nothing else, had admired and praised her
in the wonderful new clothing provided for her by Mrs. Dudley, and had
driven her to the station with her little trunk packed with pretty
trifles. He had kissed her good bye there, bravely enough, with hardly
a quiver in his voice, and so she had gone away. She recalled him
often now, standing, a pathetic figure, in his cheap clothing, waving
his hand to her as she looked from the car window to throw a kiss as a
final farewell.
But this picture seldom troubled her long. Denver was too attractive
to the girl who had scarcely in her whole life seen a place larger
than the little town at the base of the familiar flat-topped mountain.
And what a gay, care-free life Denver led, as viewed by her through
the eyes of Mrs. Dudley! This was Vanity Fair, though Mary had never
even heard that name. Mrs. Dudley kept a carriage, which rolled with
shining wheels through the Denver streets to the merry tattoo of
trotting hoofs and the glint of silver-mounted harness. A driver sat
on the box in blue livery, and the easy sway and jounce of the springs
made her feel as if she were being lifted forward on velvet cushions.
Young men and old men turned about to admire her and the woman who sat
by her side, as the carriage rolled along. Women looked at them, too,
sometimes with shining eyes of envy; looked at the carriage, at the
beautiful clothing, and the two bright faces. Mary wore jewels now,
and Sibyl had roped her slender neck with a heavy gold thread which
bore a neat little locket at its end. Into that locket Mary had put
the gnarled wisp of hair which in a moment of devotion at home she had
clipped from her father’s head. To wear it now was something of a
penance for leaving him in his loneliness.
Sibyl had a “set,” which was very gay and overflowed with parties
where cards were played for favors, and in little dances which were
said to be very “select.” Gay debonair men and handsomely dressed
women attended these dances and parties and made life one never-ending
round of merriment. Mary thought she had never known what it was to
really live until now. Sibyl delighted in her; the girl’s fresh
flower-like face and inevitable gaucherie set off and added to Sibyl’s
own attractiveness.
Mary wrote to her father with religious regularity every Sunday.
Sunday was a religious day, and the writing of a letter to her father
was performed almost as a sacred duty, so that Sunday seemed the
appropriate day for it. She wrote also to Ben Davison, more fully than
to her father, describing to him the joys of her new mode of life, and
appealing to him not to be “savage” about her comments concerning some
of the young men she met.
“Dear Ben,” she said in one of her letters, “Sibyl Dudley is a perfect
darling. I am surprised that you didn’t know she had been married. I
thought you knew all the time. She is divorced now, I think, though
she never says anything to me about it. I’m sure there must be a
beautiful romance in her life, as lovely as any of those Pearl reads,
for sometimes when she thinks I’m busy she sits for a long time
perfectly silent, as if thinking of something serious. But in spite of
that she is as gay and happy as can be. Yes, she is a darling; and so
are you, you old grumpy, grizzly bear! I wish you could send me a
pony—not a broncho! It would be such fun to go galloping on my own
pony through the streets. I ride a good deal, but these Denver horses
are such big things. Mrs. Dudley is a superb horsewoman. Is that
right, horsewoman?—it sounds funny, worse than cowboy. Sometimes when
we meet people she introduces me as her niece, and the people smile
and say how much we look alike. Isn’t that funny, too?”
Sibyl abounded in “charities,” and had numbers of feeble men and old
women who devoutly, or otherwise, blest her shadow as she passed.
Under her tutelage Mary also found it pleasant to play Lady Bountiful.
It gave her quite as much comfort as the penning of that Sunday letter
to her father. Her father had lived a saving and scrimping life and
had never given anything to anybody, so that to Mary this was an
entirely new and pleasing phase of life’s conduct. It made her feel so
superior to bestow with unstinting hand, and be blest for the largess,
as if the donor were a veritable gift-showering angel, or
luxury-distributing fairy, with red gold on her wings.
All in all, Mary found Denver to be a place of unheard-of delights, in
which, especially to those who were not poor and in want, life passed
like one of the plays which she sometimes witnessed from a box in the
opera house, or after the fashion of the rollicking fanfare of the
romances in Pearl Newcome’s wonderful trunk. And it was good, all of
it; much better than Paradise Valley, or even the society of Ben
Davison, though she was sure that she still loved Ben.
CHAPTER IX
A REVELATION OF CHARACTER
William Sanders did not forget nor forgive.
He ceased to annoy Lucy Davison, and even in time affected to overlook
the humiliation to which he felt Justin had subjected him; but deep in
his heart he nursed both for Philip Davison and Justin an ineradicable
hate, which revealed itself at times in disputes fomented with the
farmers.
Sanders’ half-veiled enmity troubled Justin less than the discovery
which came to him one day of the innate dishonesty of Ben Davison’s
character.
Philip Davison was in one of the bunk rooms, paying off his “hands,”
when Justin and Ben arrived from the high mesa where for a month they
had been line-riding together. Bronchos stood outside on the trampled
grass. Within, where the walls above the rude wooden bunks were hung
with bridles and quirts, saddles and ponchos, ropes and spurs, sat
Davison, at a small unpainted table, counting out money to his
employes and keeping a record of the amounts paid by writing names and
sums with a stub pencil in a soiled account book. Davison was fifty
years of age now, red-faced, blue-eyed, and bearded. Justin had
learned to admire and like him, for there were admirable traits in his
character. Though he swore horrible oaths at times, which he
complained a man had to do if he handled cattle and cowboys, he had
generally been kind to Justin, and he had conceived a fondness for
Clayton, whom he respected for his learning and skill as a physician.
Having received his wages from the hands of Philip Davison, Justin
went out behind the bunk house, and was counting his bills in the
drizzle that was falling, when Ben appeared, his manner nervous and
his eyes shining.
“I’m ahead this time!” he said.
Then, to Justin’s astonishment, he lifted one of his boots, and there,
sticking to the muddy sole, was a five-dollar bill. He pulled it away
with a chuckle, wiped off the mud as well as he could, and added it to
the pile in his hands.
Justin stared at him, with a look which Ben resented.
“Some money was on the table and the wind flirted that bill to the
floor. I set my boot on it, and when I walked out it walked out with
me.”
“You didn’t do that!”
“What’s the difference? Father will never know! And he’s got plenty
more where that came from. He only pays me beastly cowboy’s wages,
when I’m his own son. So I helped myself, when I saw my chance.”
Justin’s look showed reproof, and Ben flushed in angry irritation.
“You’d tell, would you?”
“That’s stealing!”
A flush of red waved into Ben’s face. Stung by the inner knowledge of
his wrong, this blunt condemnation roused the latent devil in him. He
leaped at Justin blindly, and struck him in the face.
Justin had never fought any one in his life, nor could he remember
that he had ever before been struck in anger. But when that blow fell
on his face with stinging force, his head became unaccountably hot, he
trembled violently, and with a hoarse cry gurgling from his lips he
sprang upon Ben and struck him to the earth with one blow of his fist.
Having done that, he drew back, shaken and dismayed. He had knocked
Ben Davison down, when but a moment before they had been friends! He
stared at Ben, who had dropped heavily to the ground. Already he was
remorseful and almost frightened. Ben scrambled up, cursing.
“I’ll make you pay for that!” he said, wiping a speck of blood from
his trembling lips with his hand.
“It—it was your fault! I—”
Philip Davison came round the corner of the building upon this scene,
having heard the blows and the fall. He saw Ben’s cut and quivering
lip, his clothing wet and muddy, and Justin standing before him with
hot, flushed face.
“You struck Ben?” he cried.
Ben was his pride.
Justin looked at him, after an appealing glance at Ben.
“Yes,” he acknowledged, with humility and a feeling of repentant
uneasiness. He had gained Ben’s enmity, and he feared he had lost
Philip Davison’s regard, which he valued highly.
Ben was crumpling together the wad of bills, and thrust them into his
pocket.
“Yes, he struck me, but I hit him first,” he confessed. “We had a
little quarrel, a few words, that’s all.”
Though no larger than Justin, he was older, and it humiliated him to
confess even this much.
Davison was annoyed and angry.
“Go into the house, Ben,” he commanded; “I’ll see you later.”
When Ben was gone he turned to Justin.
“I’ve tried to do right by you, Justin, and I’ve liked your work; but
you must remember that Ben is my son. I can’t think that you had any
good reason to strike him.”
“I didn’t intend to strike him,” Justin urged, “and I shouldn’t have
done so if he hadn’t struck me first.”
“Well, I won’t have you two quarreling and fighting. Just remember
that, will you?”
“He struck me first!” said Justin, sturdily, though deeply troubled by
the knowledge that he had offended Philip Davison.
Davison followed Ben into the house, leaving Justin weak and
bewildered. He had smothered his sudden explosive rage, yet he still
felt its influence. That he could have struck Ben in that way seemed
incredible; yet he tried to justify the deed to himself. He was about
to walk away, when Ben reappeared and came up to him.
“Justin, you’re a brick, to stand by a fellow that way! You knocked me
down, but I don’t hold it against you, for you can keep your mouth
shut.”
“You still have that money?”
“Of course.”
“I haven’t changed my opinion about that!”
Ben’s face reddened again.
“What if I did keep it? You’re fussy, and you’re a fool! What is my
father’s is mine, or it will be mine some day; I just took a little of
it ahead of time, that’s all. It will all be mine, when he goes over
the divide.”
Justin was horrified. Ben had expressed reckless and defiant views on
many subjects, but nothing like this flippant speculation concerning
his father’s death.
“I won’t listen to you when you talk that way,” he declared; and he
moved away.
CHAPTER X
PIPINGS OF PAN
The result of this quarrel was that Justin was banished temporarily
from the ranch, though it was not assigned as the reason for his
exile. Fogg had been forced to take a flock of sheep in payment for a
debt owed him by a sheepman. The sheep were already in Paradise
Valley, and were to be sent at once into the mountains. Davison
ordered Justin to take charge of these sheep, and hurried shepherd and
flock into the hills, while Lucy was temporarily away from home.
Justin could not rebel against this order except mentally, if he
wished to remain in Davison’s employment and retain, or regain, his
good-will.
Before setting forth he left a letter for Lucy with Pearl Newcome, and
was sure she would get it. Yet he departed from the ranch with a heavy
heart; and as he went on his way he questioned why he and not another
had been selected for this life of lonely exile in the mountains. He
was almost sure it was because of his trouble with Ben.
Justin was assisted in driving the sheep to the high altitudes, where
they were to graze until cold weather would make it advisable to bring
them into the lower foot-hills. A sufficient supply of food for a
month or more was taken along, and he was helped in the work of
erecting a brush-and-pole house.
He was well up among the pines and aspens, where the nights are always
cool, with often a sharp frost even in mid-summer. Snow banks were in
sight, and here and there streams and small lakes of the purest ice
water. Occasionally a lordly elk crashed through a grove, or came out
with such suddenness on the lonely herder and his woolly charges that
it whistled and fled in astonishment. Black-tailed deer passed
frequently on the slopes, and now and then Justin came upon the track
of a bear. The only animals he could not love were the worthless
coyotes, that made life a burden to him and murdered sleep in their
efforts to slay the sheep.
Of all, the sheep were the most vexatious and stupid, having no
originality of impulse, and being maddeningly, monotonously alike.
When hungry, in the earlier part of the day, they exhausted his
strength and that of his dog, as he followed them, while they swarmed
everywhere, nibbling, nibbling, with a continual, nerve-racking
“baa-a-a! baa-a-a!” Justin could not wonder that sheep-herders often
go mad. The sheep were more than two thousand in number; and to keep
anything like a count of them, so that he might be sure that the flock
was not being devastated by the sly coyotes, was trying work.
But there were other times when he was given hours of lazy ease, when
he could lie with the faithful dog on the cool grass and look up into
the cool sky; could listen to the foaming plunge of the mountain
stream, to the fluttered whisperings of the aspens and the meanings of
the pines, and could watch the flirting flight of the magpies, or the
gambolings of playful deer.
So Justin had much opportunity for thought; and his thoughts and
imaginings ran wide and far, with Lucy Davison and Doctor Clayton not
very far from both center and periphery wherever they ran or flew.
That he had been forced to come away without a parting word with Lucy
troubled him sorely.
He had his mother’s little Bible with him, containing the wisp of
brown hair, and the written flyleaf:
“Justin, my baby-boy, is now six months old. May God bless and
preserve him and may he become a good man.”
He read in it much, in his leisure; and studied that writing many,
many times, thinking of his mother, and wondering about his father.
And he questioned as to what his life probably would have been if his
mother had lived, or if he had known of his father. Yet he was very
well satisfied to have it as it had been ordered. It had brought to
him Lucy Davison; and he might have missed her, if fate had not led
him to Paradise Valley and kept him there.
He was quite sure that no father could have done more for him than
Clayton, nor loved him with a more unselfish love. To the missionary
preacher, Peter Wingate, and to Curtis Clayton, he acknowledged that
he owed all he was or could ever be. He thought very lovingly of
Clayton, as he lay on the cool slopes looking into the cool sky.
And, indeed, the lonely doctor had been wondrously kind to the boy
whose life and future had been so strangely committed to his keeping.
Without intending anything in particular beyond the impartation of
knowledge, he had rounded, on the foundation laid by Peter Wingate, a
structure of character that combined singular sweetness with great
nobility and strength, for Justin had inherited from his mother
certain qualities of sturdy resolution which Clayton himself lacked.
The one great blemish, or fault, was a quick and inflammable temper,
that almost resisted control.
Utterly unaware of the fact himself, as he lay thus among his sheep,
while his thoughts ranged far and wide, Justin was like that ruddy
David, youthful son of Jesse, with whose life story, told in his
mother’s little Bible, he was so familiar, or like Saul in his boyhood
days. His lusty youth, his length of limb, his shapely head covered
with its heavy masses of hair, his tanned strong face with its kindly,
clear-cut profile, and his steady unwinking eyes that looked into the
blue skies with color as blue, all spoke of unrecognized power.
He dreamed of the future, as well as of the past, building cloud
castles as unsubstantial as the changing clouds that floated above
him. He knew that many of them were but dreams. Others it seemed to
him might be made to come true, with Lucy Davison to help him. He did
not intend to remain either cowboy or sheep-herder, he was sure of
that; and he did not think he would care to become a doctor, like
Clayton. He would like to accomplish great things; yet if he could
not, he would like to accomplish the small things possible to him in a
manner that should be great. Not for his own sake—he felt sure it was
not for his own sake—but for Lucy and Clayton! He wanted to be worthy
of them both.
It must be confessed that his wandering thoughts were chiefly occupied
with Lucy Davison. He delighted to recall those happy moments under
the cottonwoods. Always in his dreams she was true to him, as he was
to her; and she was longing for his letters, as he was for hers.
Naturally, other things and people were often in Justin’s thoughts. He
thought of Philip Davison, of Ben, with whom he had quarreled, and of
Mary Jasper and her father. With a keen sense of sympathy he pictured
Sloan Jasper plodding his slow rounds, trying to satisfy with his
horses and his cows that desire for loving companionship which only
the presence of his daughter could satisfy. He marveled that Mary
could leave her father to that life of loneliness for even the
gayeties of Denver. And thinking thus, he pitied Mary.
Often Justin lay under the night sky, rolled in his blankets, when the
coyotes were most annoying, ready to leap up at the first alarm given
by the dog. He carried a revolver for use in defending the sheep
against the coyotes. This was a case in which, as he knew, even Curtis
Clayton would approve of slaying. He began to see clearly, too, in
this warfare with the coyotes, that nature, instead of being uniformly
kind, as Clayton liked to think, is often pitilessly cruel, and seems
to be in a state of armed combat in which there is never the flutter
of the white flag of truce.
It was the visualizing to him of that age-old conflict in which only
the fittest survive. As he looked out upon this warring world, all the
animals, with few exceptions, seemed to be trying to devour all the
others. The coyotes slew the sheep, the mountain lions pulled down the
deer, the wild cats devoured the birds, and for all the fluttering,
flying insect life the birds made of the glorious turquoise skies an
endless hell of fear.
Often there came to Justin under the night sky rare glimpses of the
wild life of the mountains. Playful antelopes gamboled by, all
unconscious of his presence, frisking and leaping in the light of
early morning, or scampering in wild rushes of fright when they
discovered his presence or the dog gave tongue; bucks clattered at
each other with antlered horns, or called across the empty spaces;
wild cat and cougar leaped the rocks with padded footfalls and
occasionally pierced the still air with screams as startling in their
suddenness as the staccato, Indian-like clamor of the coyotes. Always
wild cat, cougar and coyote brought Justin from beneath his blankets
with every sense alert, and sent the dog scurrying into the gloom in
the direction of the sound.
Clayton’s habits of study and writing had not been lost on Justin, and
now and then he tried to set down in his little note book some
description of the things that moved him. He composed letters, too, to
Lucy, many letters which he never meant to send. In them he told her
of his life with the sheep, and of how much he loved her. Often these
letters were composed, but not written at all.
In one of those letters to Lucy which were not intended to be sent he
incorporated some of his thoughts concerning the farmers of the
valley, together with a bit of verse. The old hope of Peter Wingate
had come back to him for the moment, and he saw the valley as Wingate
saw it in his dream of the future:
“The crooking plumes of the rice-corn,
The sorghum’s emerald spear,
The rustle of blue alfalfa,
Out on this wild frontier,
Whisper of coming thousands,
Whose hurrying, eager tread
Shall change this mould into kerneled gold
And give to the millions bread.
“Tis now but a dream prophetic;
The plover tilts by the stream,
The coyote calls from the hilltop,
And the——”
Justin got no further. The impossibility of the fulfillment of that
dream had come to him as he sought to picture the present.
When the driver of the “grub wagon” came with supplies and the news of
the ranch, he brought a letter from Lucy; and he took away a letter
for her, when he departed. The news from home was cheering. Outwardly
at least matters had not changed there. No one had come, and no one
had gone, and the usual work was going on.
More than once the driver came, and each time Justin saw him depart
with unspoken longing. He would have given much to be privileged to go
back with him. Yet Justin was not and had not been lonely in the
ordinary meaning of that word; he was lonely for the companionship of
Lucy Davison, for the glance of her brown eyes, for the music of her
words; but, possessing that inner light of the mind in which Clayton
believed, it brightened his isolation as with a sacred fire, filled
the wooded slopes and craggy heights with life and beauty, and
suggested deep thoughts and deeper imaginings.
Filled with dreams and work, with desire and accomplishment, the slow
months rolled by. With the descent of the snow-line on the high peaks
the sheep were driven into the foot-hills, and then on down into the
plain itself, where not only grass, but the various sages—black,
white, salt and bud sage—together with shad-scale and browse,
furnished an abundance of the food they liked.
Then they were taken away, their summer herding having been a good
investment for Fogg; and Justin returned to Paradise Valley,
clear-eyed, sturdy, and handsomer even than before. He had learned
well the to him necessary lesson of patience, and had tasted the joy
of duty well done. More than all, he had begun to find himself, and to
know that childhood and youth had fallen from him, and that he was a
man.
CHAPTER XI
THE TRAGEDY OF THE RANGE
Justin was startled by the changes which had come to Paradise Valley
in the closing weeks of his long isolation in the mountains. Steve
Harkness and Pearl Newcome were married, and Lucy Davison had been
sent East to school. The latter filled him almost with a feeling of
dismay. Among the other changes to be noted was that William Sanders
had written letters to a number of farmers, some of whom were now in
the valley and had taken government land or purchased mortgaged
quarter-sections.
Justin discovered, in talks with them, that these men had been
neighbors of Sanders on the irrigated lands at Sumner. They had sold
out there, as Sanders had done, and having heard from him of the
possibilities of Paradise Valley, they had moved to it, with their
families and belongings. Others, it was reported, were coming. Some of
them brought a few cows, as well as horses; and before the winter
storms came they erected cheap dug-outs for themselves, and prepared
flimsy shelters and cut wild hay for their stock. It was their
intention to try irrigation.
Justin soothed his disappointment at not seeing Lucy Davison by
writing many letters to her, to which she replied sparingly. He was
away from home much of the time, riding lonely lines with other
cowboys. Whenever he came home and found no letter from Lucy he felt
discouraged; when one was there, he returned to his work cheered and
comforted. As for Ben, Justin saw little of him. Davison kept them
well apart, by giving them separate assignments.
In the severest of the winter storms, when the grass of the range had
been covered with snow for many days, the cattle breached the fences,
and mingling with cattle from other ranches they began to roam over
the mesas and valley, a terror to the settlers, and as destructive as
the locusts of Egypt. The cowboys could do nothing with them; could
not hold them on the open lines, and could not repair the broken
fences in the bitter cold and the blinding snow. It was a repetition
in miniature of the days when the whole of the Great Plains was an
open range, and cattle, shelterless and without food, wandered in the
winter storms in pitiable distress, dying by thousands.
As it was useless and perilous to try to ride any line, Justin and the
other cowboys came home. Justin’s feet and hands were frosted, and he
went to Clayton’s, where he remained, to have the benefit of Clayton’s
medical skill as well as his companionship.
Clayton was so troubled by the sufferings of the cattle that he could
talk of little else. From his frost-covered windows weary bands of the
starving animals could be seen ploughing through the drifts. In each
band the largest and strongest were usually in the lead, breaking a
way through the snow; the others followed, moving slowly and weakly,
in single file, across the white wastes, their legs raw and bleeding
from contact with the cutting snow-crust. Their hair was so filled
with fine snow beaten in and compacted that often they resembled snow
banks, and they were wild-eyed, and gaunt to emaciation.
Now and then a band would turn on its course and move back along the
path it had broken, eating the frozen grass which the trampling had
uncovered. Nothing in the way of food came amiss. The dry pods and
stalks of the milk-weed and the heads of thistles protruding through
the snow were hungrily snatched at. Unfenced stacks of wild hay
prepared by the farmers and settlers for their own stock, disappeared
like snow drifts in the spring sun, unless the owners were vigilant
and courageous enough to beat back the desperate foragers. Many wild
combats took place between the cattle and the exasperated farmers, and
more than one man escaped narrowly the impaling horns of some
infuriated steer. It seemed cruel to drive the cattle from the food
they so much needed, but the farmers were forced to it.
Even Clayton and Justin found it necessary to issue forth, armed with
prodding pitchforks, and fight with the famishing cattle for the stack
of hay which Clayton had in store for his horse. He had fenced it in,
but the cattle breached the fence and he could not repair it perfectly
while the storm lasted.
“The cattle business as it is carried on in this country is certainly
one of the most cruel forms of cruelty to animals,” Clayton declared,
as he came in exhausted by one of these rights for the preservation of
his little haystack. “The cattlemen provide no feed or shelter; in
fact, with their immense herds that would be an impossible thing; and
you see the result. Their method works well enough when the winters
are mild, but more than half of them are not mild. Yet,” he continued
sarcastically, “the cattlemen will tell you that it pays! If they do
not lose over twenty per cent, in any one year the business can stand
it. Think of it! A deliberate, coldblooded calculation which admits
that twenty out of every hundred head of cattle may be sacrificed in
this method of raising cattle on the open range! And the owners of the
cattle will stand up and talk to you mildly about such heartless
cruelty, and dare to call themselves men! Even Fogg will do it. As for
Davison, I suppose he was born and bred to the business and doesn’t
know any better. But it’s a burning shame.”
Justin was stirred as deeply. Clayton’s viewpoint had become his own.
It lashed his conscience to feel that he was in some slight measure
responsible for the condition he was witnessing. He was connected with
the Davison ranch, if only as an employee. As for holding the cattle
behind the fences and the open lines, that had not been possible; yet,
if it could have been done, their condition would have been worse. By
breaking away they were given more land to roam over, and that meant
more milk-weed pods and thistle heads, and more slopes where a bit of
frosted grass was bared by the knife-like winds, to say nothing of the
stacks of hay now and then encountered.
Yes, it was a burning shame. Justin felt it; and he grew sick at heart
as day by day he watched that tragedy of the unsheltered range, where
hundreds of hapless cattle were yielding up their lives.
CHAPTER XII
WITH SIBYL AND MARY
On her way home for a brief visit at the close of the summer, which
she had spent in the East, Lucy Davison stopped in Denver, to visit
Mary Jasper, from whom she had received glowing letters. Mary had not
written for several weeks, and Lucy was surprised to find her ill; an
illness resulting from the unaccustomed excitement of the Denver life
she led under the guidance of Sibyl Dudley and the too sudden
transition from the quiet of Paradise Valley. She was not seriously
ill, however, and looked very attractive, as she lay propped about
with cushions and pillows, her dark hair framing her face and her dark
eyes alight with eagerness when Lucy appeared. Lucy was almost
envious, as she contemplated Mary’s undeniable beauty.
Sibyl lavished attention and care on her charge, and she greeted Lucy
with every evidence of delight and affection.
“My dear, you are tired!” she said. “Let me have some cakes and tea
brought up for you at once. A little wine, or some champagne, would be
good for you. You wouldn’t care for it? Then we’ll have the tea and
cakes. And Mary may sit up in bed a few minutes, just in honor of this
visit. It was so good of you to stop off in Denver to see her.”
Sibyl was very beautiful herself, quite as beautiful as Mary, though
very much older. Lucy thought she had not aged a day in appearance
since she had first met her, in the home of that acquaintance in the
little town at the entrance to Paradise Valley. Sibyl was past-master
of that wonderful preservative art which defies wrinkles and gray
hairs and the noiseless flight of that foe of all beautiful women,
Time. She defied Time, as she defied everything, except the small
conventionalities of life, and the changing fashions. She made friends
with these, and they served her well.
While talking with Lucy, and nibbling at the cake or sipping the tea,
she stopped now and then to caress with coaxing tones her canary,
which she had brought into the room and hung in its gilded cage at the
window to brighten the place for Mary. She possessed naturally, or had
cultivated, that soft, low voice which a Great Poet has declared to be
an excellent thing in a woman, and she had assiduously cultivated an
outward appearance of much kindness; so that altogether she was very
charming, even in the eyes of Lucy Davison, and a most agreeable
hostess. Mary was delighted with her.
“Do you know,” said Mary, in a burst of confidence, which a favorable
opportunity brought, “she is so good! And she is as kind to the poor
as she can be. I know of two old women, and one old man, whom she
nearly supports. Of course it isn’t really any sacrifice for her to do
it, for she is wealthy. It’s the funniest thing, the way she speaks
about it. She says she gives things to poor people just because the
giving makes her feel good. ‘Give a quarter to a beggar,’ she says,
‘and you will feel warm inside all day. It is a cheap way to purchase
comfort.’”
In that same conversation Mary chanced to mention Curtis Clayton.
“I spoke of him to Mrs. Dudley one day, and I asked her if she knew
him.”
“‘Oh, yes, I know him,’ she said; ‘he is a fool, a poor fool!’
“‘He looks so comical,’ I said to her, ‘swinging that stiff arm!’
“Then she looked at me—oh, I can’t tell you how funny her eyes were
then, just as if coals were shining behind them, and she said, awfully
quiet:
“‘I happen to know how he got that—it was by doing a brave and
unselfish deed! He was in love with a beautiful but silly girl, whom I
knew.’
“Then she told me the story. He was with this girl on his vacation. He
was in Yale then, and she was the daughter of a worthless
hotel-keeper. He first met her at the hotel while he was spending a
summer in the mountains. She knew that he loved her, and she was vain
of it, and she wanted to make him show it. There was a flower growing
in a cleft of a cañon, and she asked him to get it for her. He
descended. It was dangerous; and she, looking over and pointing out
the flower, lost her footing and fell. She was caught by some bushes,
but she had a good fall, and landed at a point where she could not get
up. The fright that he got by seeing her fall caused him to lose his
footing, and he slipped and broke his left arm. To get her up he had
to reach down with one hand and hold to an aspen with the other. He
could only hold with his right hand, for his left arm was broken; so
he dangled his broken left arm over for her to clutch; and she,
frightened and selfish, gripped the hand, and after a great effort
scrambled up. He held on until she was safe, and then (he had already
turned white as death) he fainted. He revived after a time, and they
got out of there, forgetting the flower; and though the doctors did
what they could, he has had a stiff arm ever since.”
Mary shivered a little, sympathetically.
“I can’t ever think of Doctor Clayton now without seeing him with that
girl, dragging her out of that place with his broken arm. I asked Mrs.
Dudley if the girl married him after all that; and she said yes, but
it would have been better for him if she hadn’t, if she had gone to
her death in the cañon that day, for she wasn’t a girl who could ever
make any man happy. And do you know, I think it must have been that
girl who caused him to live the life he is living!”
A sudden confusion had attacked Lucy Davison, who recalled certain
conversations with Justin. They were in the nature of sacred
confidences, so could not be mentioned even to Mary Jasper; but she,
at least, knew that Sibyl was herself the girl whom Clayton had drawn
from the cañon with that dangling broken arm, and whom he had
afterward married. Why had he deserted her, or she him? And why were
they now living apart? Believing that the name of Sibyl’s husband had
been Dudley, Mary had failed to guess the truth.
Mary told Lucy that it would not be surprising if Mrs. Dudley married
again, as there was “just the dearest man” who called on her with much
frequency and seemed to be greatly enamored of her.
“He has a funny little bald head,” said Mary, “and he wears glasses,
the kind you pinch on your nose; he keeps them dangling against his
coat by a black cord. And he is as kind as kind can be, and a perfect
gentleman. Mrs. Dudley says he is very rich, and I really believe she
will marry him some time, for she seems to like him.”
The name of this amiable gentleman, Lucy learned, was Mr. Plimpton,
and he was a Denver stock broker. Neither Mary nor Lucy dreamed of the
truth of his relations with Sibyl Dudley.
Having recurred to people and affairs in Paradise Valley, Mary
chattered on like a gay little blackbird, and knew she was very
bewitching, bolstered among the pillows. Her illness had taken some of
the color out of her cheeks, yet they still showed a rosy tint when
contrasted with the pillows, and the whiteness of the pillows
emphasized the color of her eyes and hair. She asked Lucy to move the
little dresser farther along the wall, that she might see herself in
the mirror. She desired to get certain stubborn tangles out of her
hair, she averred; but she really wanted to contemplate her own
loveliness.
“Mrs. Dudley puts the dresser that way for me sometimes, even when I
don’t ask her to; and often I lay for hours, looking into the mirror,
when she has gone out of the room. It’s like looking into the clouds,
you know. You remember how we used to lie on the rocks there by the
edge of the Black Cañon and look up at the clouds? We could see all
kinds of things in them—men and horses, and wild animals, and just
everything. When I let myself dream into the mirror that way I can see
the same things there. And sometimes I try to picture what my future
will be. Once I thought I saw a man’s face looking out at me, and it
wasn’t Ben’s! Mrs. Dudley said I had been dreaming, and didn’t see
anything, but it seemed real. I suppose I shall marry Ben, of course,
just as you will marry Justin.”
Lucy’s face flushed.
“I don’t see why that should be a matter of course!”
“So you’ve seen some one in the East who is better looking? You can’t
fool me! I know! What’s his name?”
“Truly I haven’t seen any one in the East who is better looking. I
wasn’t thinking of anything of the kind.”
“Then he is still the best looking, is he? If you still think so, it’s
a sure sign that you’ll marry him. That’s why I think I shall marry
Ben. I haven’t seen any one in Denver I like as well as Ben, or who is
as good looking; and one has a chance to see a good many men in a city
like this.”
“Has Ben been to call on you?”
“Oh, yes; he was here only last week. When I first came up here I
couldn’t get him to call, though I was told I might invite him. But
when he got started he kept coming and coming, and now he comes almost
too often. Mrs. Dudley has been very kind and good to him, and
sometimes I’m almost jealous, thinking he likes her almost as much as
he does me. I should be truly jealous, I think, if I didn’t know about
Mr. Plimpton.”
She studied her mirrored reflection, wondering if it could be possible
for Ben to find Mrs. Dudley, who was so much older and had already
been married, more charming than herself. It was so unpleasant a
thought that she frowned; and then, remembering that frowns will spoil
even the smoothest forehead, she drove the frown away, and began to
talk again.
Though Lucy Davison would not admit it, she was anxious to hasten on
to Paradise Valley; so she remained but a day with Mary Jasper. Yet in
that time Sibyl contrived to exhibit to her the carriage, the
magnificent horses and the liveried driver, taking her as she did so
on a long drive through some of the fashionable streets and avenues.
As the carriage swung them homeward Sibyl made a purchase of fruits
and flowers, with which she descended into a shabby dwelling. When she
came out she was followed to the door by a slatternly woman, who
curtsied and thanked her volubly with a foreign accent.
“She’s an Italian—just a dago, as some people say—but her husband
has been sick for a month or more, and I try to brighten her home up a
bit. I don’t know what he does when he’s well; works for the railroad,
I believe.”
Then the carriage moved on again, away from the cheap tenements, and
into the wealthier sections once more, where Sibyl lived.
“You mustn’t tell father that I’m sick,” was Mary’s parting injunction
to Lucy. “If he knew he might want me to come home. I will be entirely
well by another week. I write to him every Sunday, just as if I was in
the best of health; and so long as I don’t tell him he thinks I’m as
well as ever. And truly I am as well as ever, or will be in a few
days. If you tell him anything, tell him I’ll be down to see him this
fall. I thought I should go last winter, but those awful storms came
on, and I was so busy besides, that I just didn’t. But I do think of
him often, and you may tell him that, too, if you tell him anything.”
CHAPTER XIII
WHEN AMBITION CAME
Lucy Davison was seldom absent from Justin’s mind; and he was thinking
of her as he drove to town to make some purchases for Pearl, who,
though married, was still the housekeeper at the ranch. The knowledge
that Lucy was to arrive at home in a short time filled him with
longing and delight.
As he drove along he could but note the appearance of the valley, and
the houses of the new settlers and the old. Sanders had purchased more
land, and had moved his dug-out close up to the trail and much nearer
to the river. He had been indefatigable in his efforts to induce
settlers to come into the valley, and successful to a degree that
surprised Justin and the Davisons, Of the newer arrivals several were
men of force and intelligence. They had given the valley their
approval, and had set to work.
Sanders, it now appeared, had sold his land at Sumner for a
considerable sum of money. At Sumner, irrigation was being practiced
successfully. He was firm in his belief that Paradise Valley could be
irrigated as easily, and would make an agricultural section as rich.
Therefore, he and the new farmers, joined by certain of the older
ones, among them Sloan Jasper, had built a dam across the stream near
Jasper’s and turned the water thus secured into some small canals,
from which laterals conveyed it to the places where it was required.
They were working under unfavorable conditions, however; their dam was
cheaply and hastily constructed, and the canals and ditches being new
sucked up the water almost as fast as it could be turned into them.
Naturally Davison and Fogg were not pleased. The water which the
farmers were using decreased the supply in the water-holes, and
threatened suffering for the cattle if a dry season came on. They did
not accept the theory promulgated by the farmers, that the water would
find its way back through the soil into the stream. That the new
enterprise troubled the ranchmen gave secret joy to William Sanders,
whose bitter and vindictive mind was filled with ineradicable hatred
of Davison and all connected with him. To strike a blow at Davison
delighted him immeasurably.
Justin had a dusty drive that afternoon, for the land was dry. For
several days a strong south wind had been blowing, and the mountain
was draping its wide shoulders in misty vapor. These were good
portents of rain; and when rain came at that season, after a period of
drought, it came usually in a heavy storm.
Ben Davison had set out for the town ahead of Justin, on his pony. Ben
had practically ceased to work on the ranch, except at intervals. He
was much in the company of Clem Arkwright, and enjoyed certain
pleasures of the town, to which Arkwright had introduced him. For one
thing, Arkwright played a game of poker that few men could beat.
Arkwright was a small politician, and by virtue of that fact held the
office of justice-of-the-peace. Arkwright had thrown his political
following to Ben’s support, in a recent county convention; and that,
with the influence of Davison and Fogg, had given to Ben Davison the
nomination to the state legislature.
As the bronchos climbed to the summit of a low divide, giving a long
view of the trail, Justin saw Ben, far ahead, nearing the town. It
gave him thought. Ben was not only ahead of him on the trail that day,
but in other ways.
That summer of patient toil and sturdy thought spent high in the
mountains with the sheep had brought to Justin the knowledge that he
was now a man. As a man he was beginning to feel that he must do
something, must set about the work of making a place and a name for
himself in the world. Influenced by the idealist, Clayton, and by his
love for Lucy, he had heretofore fed on love and dreams. He still
loved, and he still dreamed, but he knew now that to these must be
added action and accomplishment.
No one understood Ben Davison’s unworthiness more thoroughly than
Justin. Because of the influence of his father and the support given
to his candidacy by a tricky politician Ben was apparently on the high
road to political preferment and honors. His name was mentioned in the
Denver dailies, and his picture was in the county paper.
Philip Davison was pleased, probably Lucy was pleased also, and Justin
felt that he really ought to look upon the matter in a kindly and
amiable light. Yet, even as he thought so, he felt his heart burning.
“I might have had that nomination, if things had been different!”
That was Justin’s thought. He knew to the core of his being that in
every way he was better qualified than Ben Davison to fill that
important place. He had not only mental but moral qualities which Ben
totally lacked. In addition, the position and the honor appealed to
his growing desire to be something and do something. It would give
opportunity to talents which he was sure he possessed. Denver
represented the great world beyond, where men struggled for the things
worth while. Ben Davison would go to Denver, become a member of the
legislature, and would have the doors of possibility opened to him,
when he had not the ability nor the moral stamina to walk through them
when they were opened, and he—Justin—would remain—a cowboy.
When Justin reached the town, which consisted of a double row of frame
houses strung along the railroad track, he hitched the bronchos to the
pole in front of one of the stores and proceeded to the purchase of
the groceries required by the housekeeper. That done he walked to
the postoffice for the ranch mail. As he came out with it in his hands
and began to look over the county paper, where he saw Ben Davison’s
name and political qualifications blazoned, he observed several men
converging toward a low building. Over its door was a sign, “Justice
of the Peace.”
“Arkwright’s got a trial on to-day,” said one of the men, speaking to
him. “You ranchers air gittin’ pugnacious. Borden has brought suit
against Sam Turner for the killin’ of them cattle. I s’pose you heard
about it?”
Justin’s interest was aroused. He was acquainted with both Arkwright
and Borden, and he knew of the killing of the cattle, but he had not
heard of the lawsuit. Borden’s ranch lay over beyond the first mesa,
along Pine Creek. It had been established since the Davison ranch. Not
all the line between the two ranches was fenced, and the open line
Justin had ridden for a time with one of Borden’s cowboys.
There were a few settlers along Pine Creek, one of them being Sam
Turner, a young farmer from Illinois. Justin remembered Turner well,
and Turner’s wife, a timid little woman wholly unfit for the life she
was compelled to live in this new country. She had a deathly fear of
Borden’s cowboys, a fear that was too often provoked by their actions.
They were chiefly Mexicans and half-breeds, a wild lot, much given to
drinking, and often when they came riding home from the town in their
sprees they came with their bronchos at a dead run, firing their
revolvers and yelling like Indians as they swept by Turner’s house.
Whenever she saw them coming Mrs. Turner would catch up her little
girl in her arms, dart into the house, lock and bar the doors, and
pull down the blinds. The cowboys observed this, and it aroused them
to even wilder demonstrations; so that now they never passed Turner’s
without a fusillade and a demoniacal outburst of yells.
The death of the cattle had come about through no fault of Turner.
They had simply broken down a fence during a storm, and getting into
Turner’s sorghum had so gorged themselves with the young plants that
some of them had died. It did not seem to matter to Borden that
Turner’s sorghum had been devoured. In his rage over his loss Turner
had threatened violence, and Borden was answering with this suit for
damages for the loss of the cattle.
Justin squeezed into the midst of the crowd that already filled the
office. Clem Arkwright’s red face showed behind his desk, which was
raised on a platform. Justin, still thinking of Lucy and Ben, looked
at Arkwright with interest. He did not admire Arkwright himself, but
Ben Davison thought highly of him, and that was something. A heap of
law books was stacked on Arkwright’s desk. A pair of pettifogging
lawyers had been kicking up a legal dust, and one of them, Borden’s
lawyer, was still at it. As the lawyer talked, Clem Arkwright took
down one of the books and began to examine a decision to which his
attention was called.
While Arkwright looked at the decision, the lawyer went right on,
pounding the book he held in his hand and shaking his fist now and
then at the justice and now and then at Sam Turner and the opposing
lawyer. Turner sat with his counsel, and at intervals whispered in his
ear. Justin had never attended a trial and he found it interesting.
His sympathies were with Turner.
From the claims made by Borden’s lawyer, it appeared that Sam Turner
was wholly in the wrong. He should have guarded his crops or fenced
his land. He had done neither, and as a result Borden’s cattle had
lost their lives and Borden had sustained financial loss. Borden was
not required to maintain a fence, nor to employ riders to hold the
cattle beyond any certain imaginary line, the lawyer maintained; but
he had kept riders so employed, and had built a fence on a part of his
range. He had done these things, that his cattle might not become
mixed up with cattle belonging to other ranches, and particularly, as
it appeared, in pure kindness of heart, that they might not trespass
on the farms of such men as the defendant. It was admitted that Turner
had a perfect right to live on and cultivate his land; it was his, to
do with as he pleased, by virtue of title conveyed to him by the
government under the homestead laws. But he was compelled, if he
wished to prevent trespass of this kind, to erect and maintain a
stock-tight fence, or guard his land in some other substantial way;
and having failed to do that, he should be mulcted in damages for the
loss sustained by the plaintiff.
Justin was listening with much interest to the argument of Borden’s
lawyer, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning about he beheld
William Sanders.
“We want to see you outside a minute er two,” said Sanders.
He tried to smile pleasantly, but there was a queer gleam in his
little eyes.
“All right,” said Justin, wondering what Sanders could want.
Several farmers and a few of the citizens of the town were awaiting
him outside, he discovered, and had sent Sanders in to get him.
“We want to have a talk with you about the election,” said one of
them. “We’ll go into that back room over there; we’ve got the
privilege of using it awhile.”
Sloan Jasper shambled up, his hands in his pockets.
“Howdy, Justin!” he exclaimed, with an anxious smile. “I’ve been
talkin’ round a bit amongst my friends, and what I’ve said about you I
don’t take back for any man.”
Somewhat bewildered, Justin accompanied these men into the vacant room
they had indicated, back of one of the stores. Here William Sanders
established himself at a small table; the doors were closed, the men
dropped into seats, and Sanders rapped with his knuckles for order.
That queer gleam still shone in his little eyes.
“Gentlemen,” he said, rising, “I’m goin’ to ask Mr. Jasper to set out
the object of this meetin’. Me and him talked it up first, I guess;
and he understands it as well as I do, and maybe can set it out
better.”
Sloan Jasper shambled to his feet, declaring that he was no speaker;
and then proceeded to a heated denunciation of the ranchmen and their
methods.
“How many times have they tramped me an’ my farm under foot as if we
was muck?” he asked. “That trial over there before that scoundrel,
Arkwright, is a sample of it. They’ve run the county till they think
they own it. But they don’t own me! Justin hyer is a cowboy and can
draw cowboy votes. We all think well of him, because we know he can be
depended on to do the fair thing by everybody. That’s all we’re
askin’—the fair thing; we don’t want to take advantage of anybody, er
injure anybody; but we do intend to protect ourselves, and to do it
we’ve got to stand together, and stand up fer men who will stand up
fer us. There’s certain things that will come before this next
legislature in which we’re interested. If Ben Davison sets in it as
the representative frum this county he’ll vote ag’inst us every time.
Now, there’s a lot o’ men in this town who don’t like him, ner
Arkwright; and all over the county it’s the same way. So I say if
we’ll stand together, us farmers, as one man, and can git somebody
that the cowboys like to run ag’inst Ben Davison, we can beat him out
of his boots, fer he ain’t popular, though the newspaper and his
friends is tryin’ to make it out that he is. And that’s why we’re
hyer—a sort of delegation of the farmers an’ the people of the town
who have talked the thing over; an’ we’re goin’ to ask Justin Wingate
to make the race fer us ag’inst Ben Davison. If he does it, we’ll take
off our coats and work fer him until the sun goes down on the day of
election; and so help me God, I believe as truly as I stand hyer, that
we can elect him, and give Ben Davison the worst beatin’ he’ll ever
git in his life.”
Sloan Jasper sat down with flushed face, amid a round of applause.
Before Justin could get upon his feet, William Sanders was speaking.
He said he had come to see that Justin was the man they wanted—the
man who could make the race and have a chance of winning; and for that
reason he favored him, and would do all in his power for him, if he
would run.
Justin was confused and gratified. His pulses leaped at the bugle call
of a new ambition. He knew how justly unpopular Ben was. It was
possible, it even seemed probable, that if he became the candidate of
the men who would naturally oppose the ranching interests he could
defeat Ben Davison. But would not such an attempt be akin to
treachery? He was in the employ of Philip Davison.
“I don’t think I ought to consider such a thing,” he urged, in some
confusion, without rising to his feet. “Mr. Davison has treated me
well. I want to remain on friendly terms with him and with Ben. I
couldn’t do that, if I ran against Ben. I’m obliged to you, just the
same, you know, for the compliment and the honor; but, really, I don’t
think I ought to consider it.”
He saw these men believed that he and Ben Davison were not on terms of
good friendship; on that they based their hope that he would become
their candidate. They were not to be dissuaded easily, and they
surrounded him, and plied him with appeals and arguments.
“We’ll give you till Thursday to think it over,” they said, still
hoping to win him. “We’re going to put some one up against Ben, and
you’re the one we want.”
Though Justin did not retreat from his declaration that it was a thing
he should not consider, they observed that he did not say he would not
consider it. The stirrings of ambition, the flattery of their words,
and the gratifying discovery that the world regarded him now as a
full-grown man, kept him from saying that.
Just beyond the town, as he proceeded homeward, he was overtaken by
Ben Davison, who had ridden hard after him on his pony. Ben’s face was
white, his eyes unnaturally bright, and his hand shook on his
bridle-rein.
“I’ve been hearing that talk in town,” he began, “and I want to know
about it!”
Justin felt the hot blood sing in his ears. With difficulty he crowded
down the violent temper that leaped for utterance.
“What did you hear?” he asked.
“That you intend to run against me.”
Justin gave him a look that made the shining eyes shift and turn away.
“Some of the farmers, and others, want you to run,” said Ben.
“Yes, that is true.”
“And do you intend to?”
“I haven’t said that I did.”
“Well, I want to know!”
“What if I decline to answer?”
Ben changed his tone.
“It will make trouble for me, if you run. If you keep out of it I’ve
got the thing cinched—they can’t beat me, for I will pull the cowboy
vote. You might split that vote. I don’t say I think you could be
elected, for I don’t; but it would make me a lot of trouble, and would
kick up bad feeling all round.”
“In what way?” said Justin, speaking coldly. He was studying Ben
closely; he had never seen his face so white nor his eyes so
unnaturally bright.
“Well, with father, for one thing. He wouldn’t like it; he wants me to
be elected, and has already spent a lot of money.”
“Ben,” said Justin, speaking slowly, “you have yourself to blame
largely for this stirring up of the farmers. You have made them hate
you. They will put up some one against you, whether I run or not.”
“They can’t beat me, unless they run some fellow who can swing the
cowboy vote, and they know it. That’s why they came to you.”
“Yes; they said it was.”
“You told them you wouldn’t run?”
“I told them I ought not consider it.”
“Well, that’s right; you oughtn’t.”
“But I want you to understand, Ben, that I have just as good a right
to run as you have!”
“I don’t think so; not while you’re working for father, and when I’m
already in the race.”
Mentally, Justin acknowledged that this was a point well taken.
“You won’t run?” said Ben, anxiously.
Justin hesitated, shifting uneasily on the high spring seat.
“N-o, I hardly think I ought to.”
“Thank you! I wanted to make sure.”
Ben wheeled his pony, and galloped back toward the town.
“Am I easy?” Justin asked himself, as his eyes followed the receding
figure. “But, really, it does seem that I oughtn’t to think of such a
thing, under the circumstances. Davison would be angry—and I don’t
suppose Lucy would be at all pleased.”
He drove on, turning the matter over in his mind, recalling with
pleasure the flattery of the farmers, and wondering why Ben Davison’s
face looked so unnaturally white and his eyes so bright. He knew that
anger alone was not the cause.
CHAPTER XIV
IN THE STORM
The threatened rainstorm broke, bringing early night, as Justin
reached home. Lemuel Fogg was at the ranch house with Davison. Fogg’s
shining photograph wagon had been brought out and a pair of horses
hitched to it.
“Ben isn’t here,” said Davison; “I suppose he’s in town, looking after
election matters; so, as soon as you can get those things into the
house, I want you to ride along the line fence and see that everything
is all right, for we don’t want any cattle breaking out and making
trouble with the farmers just now. Fogg and I are going up the trail
together in his wagon. He wants to get a photograph. We’ll be near the
dam, or a short distance below it, where Jasper’s lateral makes out
into his fields. I think you will find us at the bridge there over the
lateral, and you can come there and make your report, when you’ve
looked at the fence. Report promptly, if there’s any trouble.”
Fogg came out of the house in oil hat and slicker, buttoned to the
chin against the storm. He resembled a yellow, overgrown Santa Claus,
minus the beard.
“Hello, Justin!” he cried, advancing and extending his hand, as Justin
swung a bag of meal to the ground. “We’re in for a good ground-soaker,
I guess. The lightning is beginning to play fine. It’s great over
there on the mountain. When she gets to going good I’ll try to nail
one of the flashes down on a negative. I’ve tried a dozen times and
failed; now I’m going to try again.”
Having shaken hands, Fogg ran heavily toward the wine-colored wagon;
the rain was beginning to roar, and the interior of the wagon, as he
knew, was as tight as a house. Then the shining wagon whirled away,
with the rain drops glistening on it, revealed by the lightning, which
was already waving fiery swords in the sky.
Justin followed on his cow-pony as quickly as he could, garbed like
Fogg in a yellow oil slicker, and galloped along the wire fence that
ran here toward the town. It was not a pleasant ride. The gusty rain
beat in his face and the wind blew a tempest. The lightning,
increasing in frequency, showed the fence intact, as far as the lower
end of the deep chasm called the Black Cañon, which cut through the
mesa above Jasper’s. There was no need to go farther than this, for he
had inspected that portion of the fence earlier in the day.
The storm was in full swing before he reached Jasper’s lateral. He
followed it until he came to the tiny bridge that spanned it, and
there found the photograph wagon. Sheltered within the wagon, Fogg had
trained his camera toward the mountain. There the play of the
lightning had become something stupendous. Davison was trying to hold
the bronchos and keep them quiet in the beating rain.
“I’ve taken several exposures already,” Fogg announced, when Justin
made his appearance and his report. “If those horses can be kept still
another minute I’ll try it there just over the dam.”
A blinding flash burned across the sky. It was so vivid that Justin
closed his eyes against it. The burst of the thunder, like the
explosion of a cannon, was thrown back by the stony walls of the
mountain, and rolled away, booming and bellowing in the clouds. The
thunder roll was followed shortly by a confused and jarring crash.
“I got that flash all right, I think,” said Fogg, “and there goes the
side of the mountain!”
Landslides occurred occasionally on the sides of the mountain, and
Fogg thought this was one.
“No,” Davison shouted, “it’s—the dam!”
Another crash was heard, accompanied by a popping of breaking timbers;
then, with a roar like a cyclone, the dam went out, sweeping down the
swollen stream in a great tangle of logs and splintered timbers.
Justin galloped toward the stream.
“Better look out there, Justin,” Fogg bellowed at him. “That will
bring the river out on the jump, and you don’t want to get caught by
it!”
Justin heard the wagon being driven away from the little bridge. It
was an exciting minute, yet he had time to think with regret of what
the loss of the dam would mean to the farmers. His reflections were
cut short by a scream, followed by a cry for help.
Then in the lightning’s white glare he saw on the ground before him a
woman clinging to the prostrate form of a man. Justin galloped wildly,
and reaching them leaped down. To his amazement the woman was Lucy
Davison and the man was Ben. She had apparently dragged him beyond the
reach of the water that splashed and rolled in a wild flood but a few
yards away.
“Help me,” she said, without explanation. “He—he is hurt, I think.”
Justin had his arms round Ben instantly, and began to lift him. The
rain was falling in sheets, and both Lucy and Ben were drenched. Ben
began to help himself, and climbed unsteadily to his feet, with
Justin’s assistance. Only in the intervals between the vivid lightning
flashes could Justin see either Ben or Lucy.
“I’m—I’m all right!” said Ben, staggering heavily.
“I’m afraid he was hit by one of the timbers of the dam,” Lucy
declared.
To Justin she seemed abnormally brave. She took hold of Ben’s arm and
assisted in supporting him.
“We must get him to the house—to Jasper’s,” she urged, tremulously.
“The photograph wagon is right over there,” Justin informed her.
“We’ll take him to that. If you’ll lead my horse maybe I can carry
him.”
“I don’t need to be carried,” said Ben, stubbornly. “I tell you I’m
all right. I slipped and fell—that’s all. Take your hands off of me;
I can walk.”
Lucy clung to him, and Justin did not release his hold. He hallooed
now to Davison and Fogg. They did not hear him in the roar of the
storm, but by the glare of the lightning they saw the little group
swaying near the margin of the wild stream and drove back to discover
the meaning of the strange sight. They shouted questions of surprise,
as they came up. Justin had not attempted to voice his bewilderment.
Lucy became the spokesman of the group.
“Uncle Philip, we will explain later,” she said, with emphasis. “The
first thing is to get Ben home.”
“Yes, that’s so!” Davison admitted, his anxiety for Ben betrayed in
his shaking voice.
Ben was helped into the photograph wagon; where he would not lie down,
but insisted on sitting in the driver’s seat. Justin assisted Lucy
into the wagon. It was a large wagon, in which Fogg had lived and
slept in the old days when he went about taking photographs and
selling curios. Justin wished he might climb in there by Lucy’s side,
and do something, or say something, that would allay her evident
distress. Her voice was unnaturally hard, and her manner singularly
abrupt and emphatic. He knew that she was suffering.
And he had not known she was in Paradise Valley! That was the most
inexplicable of all—that she should be there and no one on the ranch
aware of the fact.
“She must have arrived on the evening train,” was his conclusion.
However, that explained little. How did she and Ben chance to be
there by the river? Had they been walking home from the town
together—through the storm? Where was Ben’s pony? That might have
escaped from him, or he might have left it somewhere; but the other
question was not to be answered readily. The whole subject was so
cloaked in the mysterious that it seemed to defy analysis.
The storm still raged, with sheets of beating rain, with lightning
fire and roll of thunder, as the wagon moved swiftly in the direction
of the ranch house along the soaked and gullied trail. And behind it,
galloping on his cow-pony, rode Justin, pondering the meaning and the
mystery of the things he had seen and heard.
Yet through it all there was a certain sense of joy and gratification.
He had been able to serve the woman he loved, and she was here at
home. The first long, long separation was ended—she was home again.
CHAPTER XV
A FLASH OF LIGHTNING
As the photograph wagon was halted at the gate which led to the ranch
house grounds Lucy Davison spoke to Justin, from the rear of the
wagon. Her tones were solicitous, and anxious:
“Justin,” she said, “it’s too bad to have to ask you to do it in this
storm, but I wish you would go back to Mr. Jasper’s and get Ben’s
pony, which he left there in the stable. I have a horse there, too,
which I rode out from town. Get both of them, and put them in the
stable here. You won’t mind the extra trip? I ought to have spoken to
you of it before.”
Justin was about to assure her that he would go willingly; when she
continued, in lower tones:
“And Justin! Don’t say anything about getting the horses from there,
please. I will tell you why later. And I will explain everything to
Uncle Philip.”
She had lifted the closed flap that protected the rear end of the
wagon, and in the flame of the lightning which still burned across the
skies he saw her pale and anxious face. She had always been beautiful
in his eyes, but never more so than at that moment, while making this
distressed appeal, even though her clothing exuded moisture and her
hair was plastered to her head by the rain. Her pleading look haunted
him for hours afterward.
“I’ll go,” he said promptly, “and I will have the horses here in a
little while.”
“Thank you, Justin,” she said, in a way she had never spoken to him
before. “And say nothing to anybody! I think you will not find Mr.
Jasper at home; but you know where the stable is, and how to get into
it.”
The wagon rolled on into the ranch house grounds, where Ben was helped
out and into the house; and Justin galloped back along the trail to
Sloan Jasper’s, having been given another surprise and further food
for thought.
When he returned with Ben’s pony and the horse Lucy had hired in the
town, and had put them in the stable with his own dripping animal, he
entered the ranch house. Pearl opened the door for him; and as he
removed his wet slicker he heard Philip Davison explaining to Steve
Harkness that the farmers’ dam had been torn out by the storm. Then
Fogg came toward him, and in the light at the farther end of the long
hall he saw Lucy, who had changed her clothing and descended from her
room. Ben Davison was not to be seen.
“I reckon you’re as wet as they make ’em,” said Fogg, “but, just the
same, if you’ll step in here we’ll see what I’ve got on this plate.”
He was on his way to the dark room he had fitted up in the house for
his photographic work.
Lucy came up to Justin, as Fogg walked on to this room. She looked him
anxiously in the face.
“Yes, I brought the horses?” he said, interpreting the look.
“And said nothing to any one?”
“I have spoken to no one.”
She thanked him with her eyes.
“You are just soaked,” she said, “and you ought to go out to the bunk
rooms and get dry clothing at once. I don’t want to have you get sick
because of that.”
“A little wetting won’t hurt me, and I’m going in here before I change
my clothes. Fogg wants to show me his picture, if he got one.”
He followed Fogg, and she went with him, without invitation.
“What sort of picture did he take? I heard him saying something about
it.”
“He was trying to photograph a flash of lightning. I don’t know how he
succeeded.”
He stopped at the doorway and might have said more, if Fogg had not
requested him to come on in and close the door.
“This is the last plate I exposed, and I’m going to try it first,”
said Fogg, as he made his preparations.
Fogg was an enthusiast on the subject of photography, and had long
desired to catch a lightning flash with his camera.
“If I haven’t got it now I’ll never have a better chance. That flash,
just before the dam broke—wasn’t it great? The whole sky flamed in a
way to blind a fellow. For a second or so I couldn’t see a thing. I
had the camera focussed and pointed just right to get that in great
shape, it seems to me. Now we’ll see the result.”
He placed the plate in the tray and turned the developer on it. Justin
and Lucy were standing together, with heads almost touching, watching
with interest to see the picture appear.
“I’ve got something, anyhow,” said Fogg, when he saw the streak which
the lightning had printed stand out, as it were, on the plate. “I
think I’ve got a picture of the dam, too. The camera was trained on
the mountain, right across the top of the dam; I thought if I got the
lightning I might have a great combination, with the dam and other
things showing.”
“You’ve got the lightning flash all right,” said Justin, bending
forward.
“Yes, that’s coming out great; see the image develop!”
He stopped, with a whistle of astonishment.
“Hello!” he exclaimed. “What’s this?”
A remarkable picture was coming—had come—into view. Fogg stared,
with rounded eyes; Lucy uttered a little cry of dismay and fright;
Justin caught his breath with a gasp of astonishment.
Small wonder. On the end of the dam nearest the trail two human
figures were shown—a man standing on the dam with axe descending and
a woman rushing toward him over the slippery logs. The figures were
not large, but they were portrayed clearly. They were the figures of
Ben and Lucy Davison, caught there by the camera, in the mad turmoil
of the lashing storm.
For a moment not a word was spoken, while the figures seemed to swim
more clearly into view. Lucy broke the dead silence.
“May I see that plate, Mr. Fogg?”
Her voice was repressed and hard, as if she struggled with some
violent emotion.
“I—don’t—why, yes, of course, look at it all you want to. But I
don’t—”
The sentence was broken by a crash of falling glass. Lucy had either
dashed the plate to the floor, or had let it fall in her agitation.
Justin almost leaped when he heard that sound. Lucy looked at him, and
for a moment he thought she was going to cry out. But again she spoke,
turning to Fogg.
“Well, I’m glad it’s broken!” she declared, nervously. “You saw what
you saw, Mr. Fogg; but there is no reason why you should remember it.
I hope you won’t. Perhaps one of the other plates will show a
lightning flash. You couldn’t have used this, anyway.”
“Well, may I be—” Fogg caught himself. “Lucy, you broke that
intentionally!”
She turned on him with flashing eyes.
“Mr. Fogg, I did. You saw what was in that picture. You know what it
told, or you will know when you think it over. I broke it so that it
could never be used or seen by anybody. I’m glad I saw it just when I
did. I beg your pardon, but I had to do it.”
Was this the Lucy Justin fancied he knew so well? He was astonished
beyond measure.
“Yes, I guess you’re right,” Fogg admitted, as soon as he was able to
say anything. “That dam went out, and—yes, I guess you’re right! It
wouldn’t do for that picture to be seen. I’ve been wondering how you
happened to be where we found you, and what you and Ben were doing
there.”
“Mr. Fogg,” her tones were sharp, “don’t accuse me even in your mind;
I had nothing to do with it, but tried to stop it.” She hesitated.
“And—whatever you think, please don’t say anything to Uncle Philip;
not now, at any rate; and don’t tell him about the picture.”
She turned to the door.
“Justin,” she said, and her tones altered, “I’ll see you to-morrow; or
this evening, if you like.”
“This evening,” he begged; and following her from the room, he hurried
out to the bunk house to shift into dry clothing.
When he saw her again, in the little parlor, she was pale, and he
thought she had been crying, but her agitation and her strange manner
were both gone. He came to the window where she stood, and with her
looked out into the stormy night. The white glare of the lightning
illuminated the whole valley at times. About the top of the mountain
it burned continually. The cottonwoods and willows were writhing by
the stream. On the roof and the sides of the house the dashing rain
pounded furiously.
“Justin,” she said, as he stood beside her, “I must explain that to
you. You know what that picture meant?”
He wanted to fold her in his arms and comfort her, when he heard her
voice break, but he checked the desire.
“I could guess,” he said.
“I came down from Denver on the late train, having missed the earlier
one.”
“I was in town when the earlier one came in,” he informed her,
regretting for the moment that his too speedy return had kept him from
meeting her there. “If I had known you were coming!”
She looked at him fondly, as in the old days. How beautiful she was,
though now very pale! He felt that he had not been mistaken in
thinking her the most beautiful girl in the world. The East had
certainly been kind to her.
“It was to be a surprise for you—you great boy, and for Uncle Philip.
I had no idea how it would turn out. In the town I got a horse. The
storm was threatening, but I thought I could get home. Just before I
reached Jasper’s I overtook Ben on his pony. I’m telling you this,
Justin, because I know you will never mention it!”
“I will never speak of it,” he promised.
“I knew you wouldn’t. Now, you must never mention this, either—but
Ben had been drinking.”
Justin understood now the meaning of Ben’s white face and glittering
eyes.
“I never knew him to drink before,” she went on, “and I shouldn’t have
known it this evening but for the way he talked. Politics, and that
man Arkwright, caused it, I’m sure. He was raging, Justin—that is the
word, raging—against you and the farmers, and particularly against
Mr. Jasper and Mr. Sanders. He claimed they had tried to get you to
run against him for the legislature. He talked like a crazy man, and
made such wild threats that he frightened me.”
Justin wanted to express his mind somewhat emphatically. It seemed
best to say nothing; yet that picture of Ben Davison raging against
him and frightening Lucy gave him a suffocating sense of wrath.
“The storm struck us just before we reached Mr. Jasper’s house, and we
turned in there for shelter. Jasper wasn’t at home, but the door
wasn’t locked and we went in.”
“Jasper was in town,” said Justin.
“Ben put the horses in the stable,” she went on, without noticing the
interruption. “When he had done that, and had come into the house out
of the rain, he began to rave again. After awhile he said he would go
out and see how the horses were doing and give them some hay; but I
saw him pick up an axe in the yard and start toward the dam. Though
the storm was so bad, I followed him, for he had been swearing
vengeance against the farmers, and from some things he had said I
guessed what he meant to do. When I reached him he was on the dam,
chopping at one of the key logs, and had cut it almost in two.”
She trembled, as that memory swept over her.
“I rushed out upon the dam, when I saw what he was doing, and begged
him to stop. He tried to push me away, and I came near falling into
the water; but I clung to him, and then the axe slipped out of his
hands and fell into the stream. The logs began to crack; and that,
with the loss of the axe, made him willing to go back with me. We ran,
and had just reached the shore when the dam gave way. The ground was
slippery, and he fell as we ran toward the house through the storm;
and when he lay there like a log, and I couldn’t get him up, my nerves
gave way, and I screamed. Then you heard me. That is all; except the
photograph.”
The calm she had maintained with difficulty forsook her as she
finished, her voice broke, and her tears fell like rain.
Justin slipped his arm about her.
“You were brave, Lucy!” was all he could find to say.
He had never realized how brave she could be.
“And, Justin, nothing must ever be said about it! It would ruin Ben;
it might even put him in prison. I needn’t have told you; but I wanted
to, and I know you won’t say anything about it.”
Justin did not stop to think whether this were right or wrong. He gave
the promise instantly.
They began to talk of other things. She seemed not to want to say
anything more on the disagreeable subject; and Justin was glad to have
her talk of herself, of her school life, and her Eastern experiences.
Somehow the old sense of intimacy had in a measure departed. He
withdrew his hand from about her waist, that was still slender and
girlish. She had been removed to a great distance from him, it seemed.
Yet, outwardly, she had not changed, except for the better. She was
more womanly, more gracious, now that her tears had been shed and her
thoughts had turned into other channels, even than in the old days.
Nevertheless, Justin could not at once summon courage to say to her
the old sweet nothings in which both had delighted.
“You are still my sweetheart?” he ventured timidly, by and by. “The
East hasn’t changed you any in that respect, I hope?”
She looked at him earnestly, and her eyes grew luminous.
“No, Justin, not in the least; but there is one thing, which has come
to me while I was away. We aren’t children any longer.”
“I am well aware of that fact,” he said; “I have been painfully aware
of it, all evening.”
She knew what he meant.
“We aren’t children any longer; you are a man now, and I am a woman. I
heard a sermon the other Sunday, from those verses in which Paul said
he had put away childish things and no longer acted or thought as a
child. Long ago I told you that I loved you, and promised to marry you
some time; I haven’t forgot that.”
“I shall never forget it!”
“But now that we’re no longer children, I think it is your duty to
speak to Uncle Philip.”
The thought of facing Philip Davison on such a mission flushed
Justin’s face. Yet he did not hesitate.
“I will do so,” he promised; “I ought to have been courageous enough
to do it long ago, and without you telling me to.”
Instantly he felt taller, stronger, more manly. He knew he was
deliriously happy. To feel the soft pressure of her body against his,
the electric touch of her hand, and to hear her say that she loved
him, and would some time marry him, thrilled him. He looked down into
her face, with the love light strong in his eyes. He recalled how he
had loved her during her long absence.
“You didn’t see any one while you were gone that you thought you could
love better?”
He believed he knew what the answer would be, but he awaited it
breathlessly.
“I oughtn’t to say so, Justin, until after you have spoken to Uncle
Philip; but I saw no one I could love half as much as you—no one.”
“Yet you saw many men?”
She laughed lightly; it was like sunshine after rain.
“Not so very many as you might think. Mrs. Lassell’s Finishing School
for Young Ladies is a very exclusive and select place, you must
remember. She holds a very tight rein over the girls placed in her
charge.”
“Is it so bad as that? It’s a good thing for me, I guess, that she is
so careful; you might get to see someone you could like better than
me.”
She laughed again, seeing the anxiety he strove to cover.
“If you’ve been accumulating wrinkles and gray hairs on account of
that you’ve been very foolish.”
“Your last letter didn’t seem quite as genial as some others!”
“I didn’t underscore the important words, or write them in red ink?”
She became suddenly grave. The events of the evening haunted her like
a bad dream.
He stooped low above her bended head.
“I love you,” he whispered; “and I’m going to ask you again if you
love me, just to hear you say it!”
She looked up at him, tremulously.
“Justin, I love you, and I love you! There, don’t ask me again, until
after you have spoken to Uncle Philip.”
His blue eyes were shining into the depths of her brown ones; and with
a quick motion he stooped and kissed her.
“No one was looking, and no one could see us in here,” he said, as she
gave a start and her pale face flushed rosy red.
“I will speak to Mr. Davison to-morrow,” he promised, as if to make
amends.
CHAPTER XVI
BEN DAVISON’S TRIUMPH
Justin made that call on Philip Davison in much trepidation, and
broached the subject with stammering hesitation and flushed face.
Davison was non-committal, until he had heard him through. Yet,
looking earnestly at this youth, he saw how prepossessing Justin was
in appearance, how clear-cut, frank and intelligent was his face, with
its expressive blue eyes, how shapely the head under its heavy,
dark-brown hair. Justin’s costume was that of a cowboy, but it became
him. There was a not unkindly light in Davison’s florid face and he
stroked his beard thoughtfully, as Justin made his plea. But his words
were not precisely what Justin hoped to hear.
“I don’t blame you for thinking well of Lucy,” he said; “she is a rare
girl; and the man who takes her for his wife with my consent must show
some qualities that will make me think he is worthy of her. I’ve
thought well of you, Justin, and I think well of you now. That you’re
a cowboy isn’t anything that I would hold against you; a cowboy can
become a cattle king, if he’s got the right kind of stuff in him.
Everything depends on that.”
“I intend to do something, to become something, make something of
myself,” Justin urged, his face very hot and uncomfortable. “I haven’t
had time to do much yet, and my opportunities haven’t been very good.
I’ve succeeded in getting a pretty fair education.”
“But would you have done even that, if Clayton hadn’t driven you on to
it? You’ve got brains, and he coaxed you to study, and of course you
learned. But in other things you’re not doing nearly so well as Ben,
for instance. Ben will go into the state legislature this fall, and
he’s not so very much older than you.”
The flush deepened on Justin’s face.
“I shall try to make the most of myself,” he declared, somewhat
stiffly. That reference to Ben was not pleasing.
“See that you do. Then you can come to me later. I shall speak to Lucy
about this. There isn’t any hurry in the matter, for she has two more
years in that school.”
He dismissed the matter abruptly, with an inquiry about the line
fences and a mention of the destroyed dam.
“I told those farmers their dam wouldn’t hold,” he declared, with
something akin to satisfaction in his tone. “I knew it couldn’t, the
way they put it together. They wouldn’t believe me, for they thought I
had some axe to grind in saying it; but now they see for themselves.”
Justin wondered what Philip Davison would say if he knew the truth. He
did not even comment on Davison’s statement, but left the room as soon
as he could do so without brusqueness.
Sloan Jasper, representing the opposition to Ben Davison, came to him
the next day, which was Thursday.
“How about that, Justin?” he asked, anxious yet hopeful.
Justin had been given time to think, and his answer was ready.
“It wouldn’t be possible for me to run against Ben—it wouldn’t be
right.”
“He ain’t fit fer the place, and you know it!”
“I can’t run against him, Mr. Jasper.”
Jasper was almost angry.
“Well, we’ll git somebody that will. You could split the cowboy vote.”
“Perhaps I could, but I can’t make the race.”
“Maybe Davison thinks we’re done fer, jist because that dam went out;
but he’ll soon know better. We’ll put in a new dam, and we’ll have our
rights hyer in the valley; and we’re goin’ to beat Ben Davison fer the
legislature, if talk and votes and hard work can do it.”
Sloan Jasper and the farmers were very much in earnest. They found a
man who was willing to stand in opposition to Ben Davison, and the
campaign which followed was heated and bitter. With sealed lips Justin
continued his round of work on the ranch. A word from him, from Fogg,
or from Lucy Davison, would not only have wrecked Ben’s political
prospects, but would have landed him in prison. That word was not
spoken. The opposition exerted its entire strength, but Ben Davison
was elected triumphantly.
The day Ben drove away from the ranch on his way to Denver, to become
one of the legislators of the state, Philip Davison spoke again to
Justin.
“There goes Ben, a member of the legislature! He’s not so very much
older than you, Justin; yet see what he has accomplished, young as he
is.”
“Yes, I see!” said Justin, quietly.
BOOK TWO—THE BATTLE
CHAPTER I
COWARDICE AND HEROISM
Though Justin Wingate was no longer connected with the Davison ranch
he was not the less concerned when he beheld the sudden flare of flame
near the head of the cañon and the cloud of smoke which now concealed
it. A fire starting there in the tall grass and sedge might destroy
much of the Davison range, and would endanger the unharvested crops
and the homes of the valley farmers. Forest fires were ravaging the
mountains, and for days the air had been filled with a haze of smoke
through which the sun shone like a ball of copper. The drought of late
summer had made mountain and mesa a tinder box. Hence Justin turned
from the trail and rode rapidly toward the fire.
There had been many changes in Paradise Valley; but except that it had
grown more bitter with the passage of time, there had been none in the
attitude of the farmers and cattlemen toward each other. William
Sanders was still vindictively hostile to the people of the ranch, and
they disliked him with equal intensity of feeling. As for Justin, he
had developed rather than changed. He was stronger mentally and
physically, better poised, more self-reliant and resourceful. He had
come to maturity.
He was on his way to Borden’s ranch, with some medicines for one of
Clayton’s patients there. The distance was long, and he had a pair of
blankets and a slicker tied together in a roll behind his saddle. Lucy
Davison was in the town, making a call on an acquaintance, and he was
journeying by the valley trail, hoping to meet her, or see her, as he
passed that way. But thoughts of Lucy fled when he saw that fire. As
he rode toward it and passed through the strong gate into the fenced
land, he wondered uneasily if any plum gatherers were in the sand-plum
thickets by the cañon.
Justin had not proceeded far when he heard a pounding of hoofs, and
looking back he beheld Steve Harkness riding toward him at top speed.
He drew rein to let Harkness approach.
“Seen Pearl and Helen anywhere?” Harkness bellowed at him.
Helen was the child of Steve and Pearl Harkness, and was now nearly
two years old.
“No,” said Justin, thinking of the plum bushes. “Are they out this
way?”
“I dunno where they air; but they said at the house Pearl come this
way with Helen. That was more’n an hour ago. They was on horseback,
she carryin’ Helen in front of her; and she had a tin bucket. So she
must have been goin’ after plums. That fire made me worried about
’em.”
He rode on toward the plum bushes, and Justin followed him, through
the smoke that now filled the air and obscured the sun. Harkness’s
horse was the speedier, and he disappeared quickly. As he vanished,
Ben Davison dashed out of the smoke and rode across the mesa. In the
roar and crackle of the fire Justin heard Harkness shout at Ben, but
he could not distinguish the words. Justin called to Ben, repeating
what he believed had been Harkness’s question, asking if he had seen
Pearl and Helen; but Ben did not hear him, or did not wish to answer.
He rode right on, as if frightened. And indeed that fire, which
pursued him even as he fled, was not a thing to be regarded lightly.
Yet Justin wondered at Ben’s action, his wonder changing to
bewilderment when he saw that a woman’s saddle was on the horse Ben
rode.
A horrible suspicion was forced upon him. He knew that Ben had
deteriorated; had become little better than a loafer about the stores
of the little town, consorting with Clem Arkwright and kindred
spirits. Arkwright had also changed for the worse. He had lost his
position as justice-of-the-peace, and was now often seedy and much
given to drinking. He was said to be an inveterate gambler, gaining an
uncertain livelihood by the gambler’s arts. Ben Davison was never
seedy. Whether he obtained his money from Davison or secured it in
other ways Justin did not know, but Ben was always well dressed and
had an air of prosperity.
Ben was again the candidate of the ranch interests for the
legislature. Lemuel Fogg, also representing the ranch interests, had
secured for himself a nomination to the state senate; for which
purpose he had become temporarily a resident of the town of Cliveden,
some miles away, where he had established a branch of his Denver
store.
Justin’s desire for justice made him put aside the conclusion almost
inevitably forced upon him by that sight of Ben Davison riding wildly
away from the fire in a woman’s saddle.
Following Harkness toward the plum thickets, where the roar of the
fire was loudest, he heard a woman’s scream. It was off at one side,
away from the fire. Justin pulled his horse about and galloped toward
the fire through the pall of smoke. In a few moments he beheld the
plump form of Pearl Harkness. Helen was not with her. Seeing Justin,
she ran toward him, screaming frantically.
“Helen! Helen!”
Justin stopped his horse.
“What is it? Where is she?”
“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know! I’ve lost her! She was right here a
while ago. The fire started, and I left her to get the horse; but the
horse was gone, and when I tried to find her I couldn’t, the smoke was
so thick. I must have got turned round.” She started on again, wildly.
“Helen! Helen!”
“Can you stay here just a minute? I’ll find her, and I’ll bring her to
you. Stay right here. The fire can’t get here for at least ten
minutes. Stay right here.”
He feared to leave her, yet felt that he must if he hoped to save the
child. Pearl Harkness seemed not to hear him. Calling the name of her
child she ran on, in an agony of apprehension, choking and gasping.
Lifted high above her by his horse, Justin found breathing difficult.
His mind was in a puzzled whirl, when he heard the fog-horn bellow of
Harkness’s heavy voice. Pearl heard it also, and ran toward Harkness
with hysterical cries. Justin rode after her. Harkness appeared out of
the smoke like a spectre, his horse at a dead run. When he saw Pearl
he drew rein and jumped to the ground.
“Helen! Helen!” she screamed at him, stretching out her hands.
Then, before either Harkness or Justin could reach her, she pitched
forward, overcome by excitement and the thick smoke. Harkness lifted
her in his strong arms, clinging to his bridle rein as he did so. The
bronchos were snorting and uneasy.
“I’ve got to git her out of here,” said Harkness, with tender
solicitude. “Where’s Helen?”
“She must be right here somewhere; over that way, your wife said. I’ll
find her.”
Harkness glared at the smoke.
“Yes, find her, and find her quick! That fire will be right on top of
this place in another minute.”
He swung Pearl toward the saddle. Justin assisted him to hoist the
heavy woman to the back of the horse, and held her there while he
mounted. Harkness took the limp form in his arms.
“We ain’t got any time to lose!” he gasped. “Find Helen! For God’s
sake, save Helen! It will kill Pearl, and me too, if you don’t. The
fire is right here. For God’s sake, save her; I know you’ll do it if
anybody can.”
Justin was in the saddle.
“Save your wife!” he cried. “Save your wife! I’ll find Helen! I’ll
find her!”
“You’ve got to find her! Don’t stop till you find her! I reckon I’d
better help you look for her.”
He could not abandon Helen; and holding his wife in his arms he rode
toward the fire.
“Save your wife!” Justin shouted to him.
He was already moving off, forcing the broncho toward the point where
the smoke lay heaviest. Again he shouted to Harkness, begging him to
save his wife. Then a moving wall of smoke swept between them.
“Helen! Helen!” Justin began to call, circling swiftly about the spot
where Pearl Harkness believed she had left her child.
The heat and smoke were becoming unbearable.
“I must find her!” was his thought, as he recalled Pearl’s hysterical
screams and the anguished face of Steve Harkness.
Then, as if in a fire-framed picture, he saw her, well up toward the
head of the cañon, whither she had fled in a panic of fright. The
strong upward pull of the heated air, lifting the smoke for an
instant, revealed her, clad in her short dress of striped calico, her
yellow head bare.
As the flames flared thus on high, their angry red blending and
tangling with the thick black smoke on the rim of the cañon, Justin’s
broncho became almost unmanageable. He struck it now, pounding his
fist against its body, kicking it mercilessly, and jerking like a
madman at the sharp bit. Fighting with the scared broncho, he drove it
toward the child.
She heard him call to her; and seeing him, she began to run toward
him. She stumbled and fell, and rose crying. Her small face was
smeared with soot and tears, with charred plum leaves and with sand.
All about her, as the flames and the smoke lifted and fell under the
force of the wind, flakes of soot, plum leaves, and burning grass,
floated and flew. It was a wonder to Justin that her striped dress was
not already ablaze. In a few moments he was at her side.
“I want my mamma!” she wailed, as he leaped down by her. “Where is my
mamma?”
She pushed back the tangle of yellow hair that the wind tumbled into
her face, and coughed violently. Her chubby hands were stained with
tears and soot. She doubled one of them and gouged it into her eyes.
“I want my mamma!”
“I will take you to her,” Justin promised, as he tore the blankets and
slicker from behind the saddle.
One of the blankets he wrapped about her; the other he threw over his
shoulders and secured in place with a pin. The slicker he cast away,
fearing its coating of oil would make it inflammable. Having done
this, he clambered into the saddle, with the child in his arms.
But the fire had been as busy. A long red prong thrown in the
direction of the ranch buildings had widened and was drawing back
toward the cañon. It lapped across the open grassy space toward which
he rode before he could gallop a dozen rods, thus hemming them in.
As Justin dashed furiously at this wall of flame, he drew the hood of
the blanket well over his head; and while still holding the child
closely wrapped, and clinging to the rein, he sought protection for
his hands in the folds of the blanket. There was no protection for the
horse. Yet he drove it to the plunge, which it took with blind and
maddened energy.
The fire flashed about him and roared like a furnace. The flesh of his
hands and face cried out in pain and seemed to crisp under the lash of
that whip of flame. Giddy and reeling, he set his teeth hard and
gouged his booted heels furiously into the broncho’s flanks. The
blanket seemed to be burning about his head.
For a few brief moments after that he was but half conscious; then he
felt the broncho fall under him, and was pitched from the saddle. He
staggered to his feet, still holding the child. His blanket had been
torn aside by the fall; and he saw that he had broken through the
cordon of flame, and that the fire was behind him. The broncho lay
quivering where it had dropped, having run to the last gasp. He could
not have recognized it. Its hair was burnt off, and blood gushed from
its nostrils.
Helen seemed to be uninjured, though she cried lustily. Still resolved
to save her from the fire, Justin began to stagger with her across the
unburned grass. As he did so he heard a shout, followed by galloping
hoofs. He saw the horsemen dimly as they rode toward him, and he ran
in their direction. As he thus ran on he fell.
When he came to himself he was on a horse in front of some one who
clasped him firmly about the body. Horses’ feet were rustling noisily
over the grass. The sky was black with smoke; its taste was in his
mouth, it cut his lungs and pinched his quivering nostrils. His face
and eyes; his hands, his whole body, throbbed with the smarting pain
of fire.
“You’re still all right, air ye?”
It was the voice of Dicky Carroll, one of the cowboys.
It was Dicky’s arms that held him, and he was on Dicky’s horse. He
drew himself up, looked about, and saw Steve Harkness galloping at
Dicky’s side with Helen in his arms.
“He’s got to be made all right if he ain’t,” he heard Harkness shout.
“He’s too gamy to be let die!”