CHANGING EVENTS
Among those who were first to welcome Justin on his return to Paradise
Valley were Steve and Pearl Harkness. They came to Clayton’s with
their little daughter, of whom they were proud. They made their call
in the evening. Harkness was clad in new brown over-alls and jacket of
the same material, and looked too big for them. Mrs. Harkness rustled
in a dress of real China silk, whose shade of red made her round red
face seem even hotter and redder than it was, Helen was fluffy in
white skirts that stood out like those of a ballet dancer. Clayton in
his dusty snuff-colored clothing, and Justin in his business suit of
checked gray were insignificant figures compared with Pearl Harkness
and her daughter.
“Now, Helen, what was it I told you to do?” said Pearl, lifting a
plump round finger and shaking it at Helen, as soon as Harkness had
finished his boisterous greetings.
Helen hesitated, and Pearl catching her up deposited her in Justin’s
lap.
“Now, what was it I told you to do?”
Then Helen remembered. Putting her chubby arms about Justin’s neck and
leaning hard on his breast, while she squeezed to the utmost of her
strength, she said:
“I love you, Justin; I love you!”
Justin clasped her tightly in his strong arms.
“I love you, too!” he declared, and kissed her.
Standing by while he held Helen thus, Pearl, with a touch that was
almost motherly, pushed the clustering dark locks back from his
forehead, revealing the scar of a burn. She gave it a little love pat.
“You won’t mind?” she said, and to Justin’s surprise her voice choked
with a sudden rush of tears. “You seem almost like my own boy, Justin.
You weren’t much more than a boy, you know, when you first came to the
ranch; and I can’t help remembering how you got that scar. I wanted to
see if it had gone away any.”
Harkness coughed suspiciously.
“If you ever git married, and your wife pulls out so much of your hair
that you’re bald-headed, that scar’s goin’ to show,” he said.
Pearl caught Helen out of Justin’s lap, with sudden agitation.
“Helen, you’re getting dirt all over Justin’s nice new clothes!” With
bare plump hand she brushed away some infinitesimal specks which
Helen’s shoes had left. “I ought to have looked at her shoes before I
put her up there! Why didn’t you tell me to, Steve? Helen, you’ll
never be a lady, unless you keep your shoes clean.”
“All them heroes and hero-wines of Pearl’s keeps their shoes ferever
spick an’ span an’ shinin’,” said Harkness. “People always do, you’ll
notice, in books; at least them she reads about do. She was readin’ a
book yisterday, and I looked at the picture of the hero. He had boots
on that come to his thighs, and they’d jist been blacked. And the
women in them books wear more fine clothes than you could find in a
milliner’s shop.”
“Clothes aren’t found in a milliner’s shop, Steve!” Pearl corrected,
as she settled Helen firmly on her feet and proceeded to spread out
the fluffy white skirts. “Justin will think you don’t know anything.”
Helen, escaping from her mother’s clutches, and apparently glad to
escape, made straight for Harkness, who caught her up, planted on her
cheek a resounding kiss, and then plumped her down astride of one big
knee. Pleased by this preference, his face was radiant.
“Justin,” his eyes shone with enthusiasm and delight, “there ain’t
anything like bein’ married. Try it. I used to think I was havin’ fun,
cuttin’ round skittish and wild like a loose steer on the range; this
ain’t fun, mebbe, it’s comfort.”
“From what I hear, Justin intends to try it one of these days,” said
Pearl, with a questioning look. “Don’t you think he is, Doctor
Clayton? You’re hearing things like that, aren’t you?”
Clayton laughed, and glanced at Justin’s flushing face.
“I can’t say what his intentions are, but if they concern a certain
young lady I could name, they have my hearty approval.”
“Yet it does seem almost like marrying relatives,” said Pearl. “I
can’t get used to that yet. I had a cousin that married another
cousin; and their children—well, you just ought to see their
children!”
“Monkeys, air they?” said Harkness.
“Monkeys! Why, Steve, they’re plum fools! They don’t know enough to
come into the house when it rains.”
“This would be a good country fer ’em to live in, then; don’t rain
here more’n one’t in a year, and I reckon they could strain their
intellects enough to git a move on ’em that often.”
He looked at Justin.
“Speakin’ of this country and rain, we’re reckonin’, Pearl and me,
that we’ll take up farmin’, fer a change; think it might be healthy
fer our pocket book. I’ve had notice from Davison to quit, the first
of the month. I told him I’d quit to-morrow, if it suited him and he
had a man to put in my place; that if he didn’t think I was earnin’
all the good money I got and a little bit more, I did, and I stood
ready to go on short notice, or without any notice at all. I’ve knowed
it was comin’ this good while, and I’ve been gittin’ ready fer it.
Davison and Fogg air sellin’ off a good many cattle. The rest they’re
goin’ to throw onto the mesa, an’ water at the water holes of the
Purgatoire; the gover’ment is orderin’ down the fences, and it would
take an army of cowboys to hold the cattle off the crops, with them
fences gone.”
Clayton was interested.
“Do you think of farming here in the valley?” he asked.
“Yes, we’re figgerin’ on buyin’ Simpson’s place; it’s well up toward
the head of the ditch, and if any water comes we’re reckonin’ that
will give us a whack at it. Simpson’s made me an offer to sell. I’m
jist waitin’ to see what’s goin’ to turn up here in the ditch line.”
“I tell him he’ll wait round till it’s too late,” said Pearl. “Fogg
will buy that land before he knows it; he’s buying up farms
everywhere, for himself and Davison.”
She turned to Justin with a smile.
“I’ve been wondering if you wouldn’t get married and settle down to
farming, too; you never liked ranching.”
Pearl was as much of a match-maker as any dowager of her favorite
novels.
“Pearl won’t never be satisfied until that weddin’ comes off,” said
Harkness. “These women air bound to have a weddin’ happenin’ about
one’t in so often, er they ain’t happy; if it can’t be their own
weddin’, another woman’s will do. The weddin’s of a neighborhood air
what keeps the old maids alive, I reckon; they live ferever, ye know,
drawin’ happiness out of other women’s marriages.”
“I’m not an old maid!” Pearl asserted with spirit.
“No; I happened along!”
Before Mr. and Mrs. Harkness departed that evening, Dicky Carroll,
galloping by, stopped for a few moments.
“I’ve got a job over at Borden’s,” he announced to Harkness. “He’ll be
a better man to git along with than Davison, anyway; so I’m kinder
glad to go. And if I stay round hyer longer I’ll be tempted to shoot
Ben full of handsome little holes; he’s been meaner than a polecat to
me ever sense that election.”
Then he shook hands with Justin and Clayton, who had come out into the
yard. The moonlight revealed him in full cowboy attire, with his rope
coiled at the saddle bow.
“They’re sayin’, Justin, that you helped to bu’st the cattle bizness
round hyer. I ain’t believin’ it; but if you did, what’s the dif?
There’ll be plenty of ranches fer as long a time as I’m able to
straddle a pony and sling a rope, ranches back where the farmers can’t
go. When I can’t ride a horse any longer I’ll quit cow-punchin’ and go
to playin’ gentleman like Ben. From the fine clothes he wears I judge
there’s money in it. Well, so long; luck to all of you!”
Fogg did not vary from his custom, when he visited Paradise Valley. He
came over to Clayton’s, and sat in the little study, in the chair he
loved, which, though big, was now almost too small for him. He put his
fat hands on the arms of the chair, stretched out his fat legs, and
with his watch chain shining like a golden snake across his big
stomach, talked as amiably and laughed as loudly as ever.
Lemuel Fogg believed that it is better to bend before the storm than
to be broken by it. The government at Washington had heard from the
farming settlers and irrigationists of the West. Many states had
spoken that winter, and their voice had been as one. The agricultural
element, feeble and scorned at first, was becoming a power. Congress,
heeding its voice, was beginning to devise ways and means by which
vast areas of public land hitherto thought fit only for grazing, if
for that, could be watered by irrigation. Even the East, long hostile
because it did not want more rich Western lands opened to compete with
Eastern agriculture, held modified opinions. The order of the land
department for the removal of the illegal fences on the public domain
was to be enforced, and the fences had begun to come down. Seeing the
hand of fate, Fogg and Davison had sold some of their cattle, were
contracting their grazing area, and had begun to take thought of other
things.
“We’ll go with the tide,” said Fogg, whom Davison followed in most
things pertaining to matters of business, for Fogg’s success had been
phenomenal. “What do we care whether it’s cattle or something else, if
we can get money out of it? Never buck against the government; it’s
too strong, and you’ll get into trouble. We’ll turn farmer; we’ll
irrigate.”
So Fogg and Davison were increasing their already considerable
holdings of land in Paradise Valley, by purchases from settlers and
from the mortgage companies. It was reported that in some places
ranchmen secured land by inducing their cowboys to settle on
quarter-sections and so obtain title from the government. Fogg and
Davison would not do that. Not because they were too scrupulous, but
because they were too wise. It would be an unpleasant thing to be
haled into court for land swindling by the government agents who were
ordering down the fences.
While thus securing the land, they had quietly obtained a controlling
interest in the irrigating canal which the settlers had constructed.
It was owned by a stock company; and before the farmers knew what was
occurring it was to all intents and purposes in the possession of
Davison and Fogg.
“It begins to look as though you were right, Justin, and that I was
wrong, up there in Denver,” said Fogg, sliding his fingers along his
watch chain and beaming on Justin. “I couldn’t see it then, but it
really looks it; anyway, your side seems to be winning out, and I
didn’t think it could.”
“I thought I was right,” Justin declared, with vigorous
aggressiveness.
“Yes, I know you did; but I thought you was wrong, and of course I had
to oppose you. But, anyway, it’s all right now; we’re going to make it
all right. Some few of the farmers are kicking because Davison and I
have got control of the ditch, but they’ll live to bless the day the
thing happened. We’ll strengthen their dam and enlarge the canal and
laterals and furnish plenty of water. Where they watered ten acres
we’ll water hundreds. We’ve got the money to do it with, and they
hadn’t; that’s the difference.”
His shining watch chain rose and fell on his heaving stomach, as he
talked. Looking at it, Justin could almost fancy it had been wrought
of that gold which Fogg, with heavy but nimble fingers, gathered from
even the most unpromising places. Fogg seemed almost a Midas.
Fogg did not take his departure before midnight, but when he went he
was in a very good humor with himself and all the world.