Douglas, a little white around the lips, glanced at Judith, who was calmly devouring the lavish piece of steak which she had served herself. Peter was rolling a cigarette.
"If Jude goes," John went on, "she goes with her Dad. And believe me, I am going to buy her the doggondest best outfit I can glom my hands on."
Peter caught Douglas' eye and almost imperceptibly shook his head.
"I'm going too," repeated Mary.
"You are not!" John's voice thickened. "You and Douglas run the place. If there's a rancher in the State deserves a vacation more than I do, I wish you'd name him."
"Give me a match, John," said Peter; "and if there's no objection, let's get out of this hot kitchen."
John tossed a match-box to the postmaster and led the way out to the corral. Peter and Douglas lined up on the fence beside him. Judith remained in the kitchen with her mother.
"Well, it was the best rodeo we ever had," said Peter.
"Jude was the whole show." John's handsome face showed vividly for a moment as he lighted his pipe. "I suppose there are other folks that ride as well, but she does it with an air!"
"It's her love of it gets across to people who are watching her," mused
Peter. "And she rides with a sort of ease that belongs to Jude and no one
else, to say nothing of her power over animals. There is a lot to Jude.
Too bad she lives in Lost Chief. She hasn't a chance in the world."
"Just how do you mean that?" demanded John.
"Exactly as I said it. She hasn't a chance in the world."
"Chance in the world for what?" John's voice was irritated. "Talk so a fool like me can understand you, Peter."
"I guess you understand me, John. Hello, Judith! I should think you'd be tired enough to go to bed."
"Who? Me?" Judith perched beside Peter. "I should say not! I'd like to go to a dance."
"I sure-gawd will try to give you your fill of dancing for once in
Mountain City." The anger had disappeared from John's voice.
"Judith's not going unless her mother goes!" said Douglas coolly.
Judith sniffed. "Her master's voice, again! You'd better horn out of this, Douglas."
"I haven't any intention of keeping out," retorted Douglas.
"You'd better," warned Judith. "If you think I'm going to turn down a chance for a real outfit, without hearing the argument, you're mistaken."
"I told you I'd help you," insisted Douglas.
"You! What could you buy!" jibed the girl.
"I was thinking, Jude," said John, "why don't you let me get you one of those regular riding suits like Eastern women wear, pants and one of those long coats."
"Everybody would laugh at me." Judith's voice was doubtful but deeply interested. "What do you think, Peter?"
"Women's clothes are out of my line," replied Peter.
"Aw, don't bribe her, Dad," protested Douglas.
"Bribe her!" snorted John. "For what?"
Peter gave a sardonic laugh that would have done credit to Charleton. "I'm going home, John, before I get hauled in on a family row. Doug, I'm pretty stiff. Will you help me saddle Yankee?"
Douglas rose reluctantly and followed Peter into the shed where Yankee was munching hay.
"Keep your fool mouth shut, Doug," whispered the postmaster. "You've got from now to September first to sidetrack this thing."
"If Jude passes her word to him, she'll go. And you know as well as I do, Peter, that most anybody would sell their soul to ride in that rodeo with a fine outfit."
"Certainly, I know it. But you keep out of it for a while."
"Peter, I can't! When Dad gets to working on Judith, I see red. Listen!
Just listen!"
Stillness and starlight and John's voice rich and sweet as Peter never had heard it.
"You're beautiful, Judith! A beautiful woman! Let me dress you as you ought to be dressed, give you the right kind of a horse, and the whole of the rodeo will be yours. I tell you, girl, all you've got to do is to ask me for what you want."
"Do other folks call me beautiful, Dad?" Judith's voice was breathless.
"Why do you call me Dad? I'm not your father, thank God!"
Douglas strode out of the shed and up to the fence, followed by Peter on
Yankee.
"I don't want to quarrel with you, Dad—" he began, furiously.
"Then don't start something you can't see the finish of," interrupted
Judith. "Let me run my own affairs, Doug."
"That's sound advice." John's voice was cool. "I don't want to quarrel with you either. But I'm still master of my own ranch and, by God, I'll knock you down if you interfere in this."
Peter leaned over and put his hand on Douglas' shoulder.
"Don't be a fool, Doug! Go off and think before you talk."
For a moment there was silence. Douglas stood tense under Peter's kindly hand, his face turned toward the beautiful shadow of Falkner's Peak. The heavens, deep purple and glorious with stars, were very near. Suddenly Douglas turned on his heel and clanked into the house, where he threw himself down on his bed.
The old, futile bitterness was on him again, and he was quite as bitter at Judith as at his father. Of what could the girl be thinking? What did girls think about men like John, or any other men for that matter? If only there were some woman to whom he might go for advice. Grandma Brown? No; he had talked to her once and she had failed him. Charleton's wife had failed with her own daughter. There remained Inez Rodman, who knew Judith better than any one else knew her. Inez! Doug's mind dwelt long on this name. But he felt sure that the woman of the Yellow Canyon had forgotten what she had thought and felt at sixteen. And, after all, he did not want again to see life through Inez' eyes. Long after the rest of the family slept, Douglas pursued his weary and futile self-examination, coming to a blind wall at the end.
The next day John mentioned casually that he and Judith had settled on taking the trip to Mountain City together. Douglas made no comment. Not that he had any intention of allowing Judith to make the trip under such circumstances, but he knew that for the present he could only bide his time.
CHAPTER IX
THE TRIP TO MOUNTAIN CITY
"Don't think. Just whistle. And always keep your poncho on the back of the saddle for when it rains."
—Jimmy Day.
Lost Chief was very proud of Judith's invitation and deeply interested in her preparations for the contest. Every day, now, she put Sioux and Whoop-la through their paces. Late in the afternoon when she was working the animals in the corral, it seldom happened that one of Lost Chief's riders was not perched on the buck fence, watching her and criticizing her and always assuring her, with the cowman's pessimism toward the outer world, that she had no chance of winning a prize.
Douglas watched the preparations with deep interest, but said nothing further against the trip. He usually joined the audience on the buck fence and smoked as he watched the really wonderful work in the corral.
One brilliant afternoon Grandma Brown and old Johnny rode up. Jimmy Day already was perched on the fence.
"Well," called Grandma, "I hear you've finally reached the goal of your ambition, Judith."
Judith, leaving Sioux for the moment, strolled over toward the old lady.
"Who told you that, Grandma?"
"Well, ain't you?"
"I don't know what my goal is, but it sure isn't this."
"I'm glad you haven't lost your head entirely," said the old lady. "Jimmy, I wish you'd ask Little Marion to come over and help me out for a day or so. Lulu is coming home for a little visit."
"I'll ask her," said Jimmy. "But she won't come. She isn't so well. You'd better stop by and see her."
Old Johnny suddenly laughed. "He depones like you was a doctor that went out to make visits, Sister."
The old lady grunted as she gave Jimmy a keen look. "What's her mother say about her?"
"Why, you know Mrs. Falkner isn't back from Mountain City yet. She left before Charleton went out after wild horses," replied Jimmy.
"How should I know? I've hardly been off the ranch this summer. I guess I will stop by."
Old Johnny cleared his throat. "I was thinking I'd ask John if he'd let me go along up with him and Judith when they went to Mountain City. I got quite a gregus sum of money saved up and I never did see Frontier Day yet."
"That's right, Johnny! You ask him," said Douglas, with a remote twinkle in his eye.
"Johnny, you are a fool, I swear!" exclaimed Grandma. "Let me catch you lally-gagging off to Mountain City! Come on, let's get started."
"Anyhow, Doug is my friend," said the old man, belligerently, as he followed his sister.
"If I go, I'll take you along, Johnny!" exclaimed Douglas. "See if I don't!"
"You sure are crazy, Doug!" laughed Jimmy.
"I like the old boy," insisted Douglas. "He and I had better go up and see Jude rake in the prizes."
"Right now every prize has been doled out to the regulars," cried Jimmy. "But you should care, Jude! You'll have the grandstand with you, every minute, if the judges aren't."
"It will be the big event of my life whether I win or not," said Judith. "What's the matter with Little Marion, Jimmy? I don't even remember her at the rodeo."
"O, she's busy, you see. I never did know a busier girl than Marion. I'm busy too, with Charleton gone so long. And that fourth-class postmaster of ours sent a lot of unclaimed magazines and mail order catalogs up to the house. We've been reading those. Say, I bet I know everything that's for sale in the United States. I'm the most price-listed rider in the Rockies."
"I'll be getting down to see Marion to-night or to-morrow," said Judith.
"O, you needn't bother," returned Jimmy. "It's a long trip, and she'll be all right."
"So you and Little Marion have been baching it!" mused Douglas. "Hang
Charleton, he promised to take me out after wild horses!"
"He generally goes by himself." Jimmy mounted his horse. "He's a lone hunter, Charleton."
"When are you folks going to be married?" asked Douglas.
Jimmy turned his roan homeward. "I don't know," he answered soberly.
"I wish I could have gone with Charleton," remarked Douglas, watching
Judith as she rubbed Sioux's head.
"Charleton! I should think you'd hate a long trip with that old coyote. I hate him."
"It isn't to be with Charleton I want to go. I want to get me some wild horses. But there was a time when I sure was crazy about being with him. I thought he knew more about how a fellow could get happiness out of life than any one."
"Nobody in the Valley knows as much as Inez."
"Do you call her happy?"
"No; she's really sad. That's why she knows what real happiness is."
"Judith, how do you suppose Inez will end?"
"Over in the cemetery with a coyote-proof grave like the rest of us. And
I ask you, Doug, since that's the end of it, why worry?"
"That's the very reason I worry! Life is so short and if we don't find happiness here, we are clean out of luck, forever."
Judith spurred the nervous Whoop-la into five minutes of active bucking, then she leaped from the saddle and came to perch on the fence beside Douglas. Her gaze wandered from his wistful face to the eternal crimson and orange clouds rolling across Fire Mesa.
"Outside of my riding," she said slowly, "I get most happiness out of my eyes."
Douglas followed her gaze. "Inez likes it too."
Judith nodded. "She got me to using my eyes years ago. She's a funny person. Reads almost nothing but poetry. She's got one she always quotes when she and I are looking at Fire Mesa."
"What is it?" asked Doug.
"I don't know but one verse:
"A fire mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jelly-fish and a saurian,
And caves where the cave-men dwell,
Then a sense of law and beauty
And a face turned from the clod,
Some call it Evolution
And others call it God."
"Say it again, slow!" ordered Douglas, his eyes still on Fire Mesa.
Judith obeyed.
"I didn't know Inez had got religious," he said, when Judith finished.
"She hasn't. She doesn't believe anything except that beauty is right and ugliness is wrong."
"Then she'd better clean up her door-yard!" exclaimed Douglas.
"O darn it!" sighed Judith. "I can't even discuss poetry with you without your heaving a brick."
"I'm not heaving bricks. O Judith, I'm so devilishly unhappy!"
"You ought to quit thinking so much and have something you are crazy about doing. When I get blue, I put Whoop-la to bucking."
"I'm crazy about something, all right. Judith, don't you think you're ever going to care about me."
"I don't know, Doug. Who does know, at sixteen?"
"I did."
"I wouldn't marry a man that expected me to be a ranch wife in Lost Chief, if I loved him black in the face." Judith jumped down from the fence and turned Whoop-la free for the night.
Douglas sat staring at her, wondering whether or not to mention the subject of the trip to Mountain City. He was firmly resolved that unless Judith gave in to her mother on the matter, he was going with her and his father. But finally he decided that he would not end their friendly conversation with a row and he clambered down and went about his chores.
And so the days passed and the time grew close for the departure to Mountain City. One evening, two days before the start, Douglas and Judith went to call on Little Marion and Jimmy. When they reached the ranch house, they found Little Marion in the big bed in the living-room and Jimmy sitting beside the unshaded lamp, reading to her.
"Well!" exclaimed Douglas. "What's happened to you, Marion?"
Marion put back her great braid of hair, but what answer she might have made they were not to know, for at that moment Charleton returned from his wild horse hunt. Dust-covered and sunburned he strode into the room with a pleasant grin.
"Hello, folks! Why, Marion, are you sick?"
"Kind of. What luck, Dad?"
"Fair. Brought in a good stallion and some weedy stuff. How's the ranch,
Jimmy?"
He asked this with his eyes still on his daughter.
"O.K., Charleton," replied Jimmy.
"You made a long trip, Charleton," said Douglas.
"Left the day after the rodeo," tossing his hat and gloves on the floor and sitting down on the edge of the bed. "I remember Little Marion was laid up then with a sprained ankle or something. What do you hear from your mother, Marion?"
"She's well and so's the baby. They'll be home anytime now."
"What's the matter with you, Marion?"
"O, I'm sort of used up."
"How do you mean used up? I don't like your looks. I'm not a fool, you know."
Marion burst into tears. "You know what it is!"
Charleton made a sudden spring at Jimmy; but Douglas caught him by the arm.
"Hold on, Charleton!" cried Doug. "If things have gone wrong, you're as much to blame as any one."
"You clear out of here, Doug!" shouted Charleton.
"Don't you go, Doug and Judith!" sobbed Marion. "I need some one to stand by me."
"I'm standing by you, Marion," said Jimmy, who had not stirred from his chair. "I'd just as soon you'd beat me up, Charleton. A little sooner. But that isn't going to help matters."
Charleton stood glaring at his prospective son-in-law.
"Come off, Charleton!" cried Douglas disgustedly. "You are a fine one to raise trouble over a situation like this. Strikes me you've done everything you could do to bring it about."
Charleton did not seem to hear. His face was cold and hard. "Marion, you and Jimmy pack up and get out of here!"
"I can't, Dad! I'm too sick!" sobbed the girl.
"Sick or no sick, you get out of here!"
"Don't you do it, Marion!" cried Judith. "No man's got a right to act so at a time like this. I'll stick by you. Jimmy, you go get Grandma Brown. I'll bet she can fix Charleton."
Jimmy rushed out of the house.
"Now, Doug," Judith went on, walking over to take Marion's hand, "you and
Charleton go on out while I have a talk with Marion."
"This happens to be my house," said Charleton. "Marion, get up and get out!"
"I can't!" repeated the girl.
"You are a fine guy to tell a fellow how to live on wine, women and horses," exclaimed Douglas, "and then raise the devil when your chickens come home to roost. We all know Little Marion was born a month before you were married."
Charleton gave Douglas an ugly look. "I'll settle with you, for that, young fellow!" He stepped toward the bed. "Are you going to get out, Marion?"
"No, she isn't!" snapped Douglas. He made a sudden rush at Charleton and pushed him into the kitchen, Judith slammed and locked the door behind them.
It was on this scene that John Spencer appeared, closing the outer door innocently behind him.
"I wanted to borrow your buckboard for a couple of weeks," he began. Then he paused and looked inquiringly from his son to his old friend.
"Marion's in trouble," said Douglas, "and Charleton is trying to drive her out. Jude and I won't let him."
"Why should you butt in?" demanded John.
"Anybody with a decent heart would," replied Douglas.
"Get your kids out of here, John!" roared Charleton. "Judith's in there with the door locked!"
"Judith!" called John. "'Come here!"
"I can't, Dad. I promised Marion to stick by her."
"You come out or I'll break the door down and bring you!"
"If you do, I'll not go to Mountain City with you!"
John hesitated, though his face was purple.
"You couldn't keep her away from the rodeo and you know it," sneered
Charleton. "Fetch her out, John, unless you're afraid of Doug."
"Jude, are you coming?" shouted John.
"No, sir."
John heaved against the flimsy door and it broke on its hinges. He rushed into the inner room. Judith, her great eyes blazing, stood with one hand on Marion's shoulder.
"Aren't you ashamed of yourself, Dad! You put a finger on me or Marion if you dare!"
"Don't touch her, Dad!" Douglas' voice had the old note of warning in it.
But John, furious that his children should be defying him in public, was quite beyond any effort at self control. He rushed on toward the bed.
"You blank-blank!" screamed Judith. "You aren't fit to touch Little
Marion's feet! You or Charleton either!"
John seized Judith's arm. Quick as a lynx-cat, Douglas leaped across the room, seized his father from behind and was dragging him toward the door when Grandma Brown ran in.
"Now," she cried sternly, "what does this mean? Every one of you get out of here as fast as your feet will carry you!"
John stood up, sheepishly, Douglas eying him belligerently.
"Look here, Grandma," Charleton shook his finger in the old lady's face,
"I want you to understand that—"
"Understand!" shrilled Grandma. "Understand! You have the face to try to say anything to me, Charleton Falkner? Do you think any man in this valley can have anything to tell me I want to hear, least of all you, Charleton Falkner? I know your history, man! And yours too, John Spencer. And you can either get out or listen while I tell these children a few facts about you."
Charleton put a cigarette between his teeth, handed one to John, lighted his own, gave a light to John and, John at his heels, walked out into the night.
"You and Douglas go home, Judith," said Grandma briskly. "Jimmy, I want a talk with Little Marion. You put that door back on the hinges, then disappear."
So Judith and Douglas rode away. It was a heavenly night, with more than a hint of frost in the air, and the horses were as frolicsome as Prince.
"Now, will you tell me," asked Judith as she brought Buster back into the trail for the third time, "just why Charleton acted so?"
"It's just like I told you once," replied Douglas. "A man wants his own women to be straight no matter how much he does to make 'em crooked."
"Men are yellow," said Judith succinctly. "What's the use of Charleton—" She paused as if words failed her, and they rode their prancing horses in silence till John galloped up and pushed Beauty between them.
"I hope you two fools feel better!" he shouted. "You've got a row going with Charleton."
"Lot I care!" chuckled Judith. "I'll sic Grandma Brown on him again if he bothers me."
"I'd rather have a wolverine after me than Charleton," John went on excitedly. "You both ought to be licked!"
"Try it," suggested both the young people together.
"I've a notion not to take you up to Mountain City and I wouldn't if—"
Judith interrupted him. "You're not going to take me. I'm going with
Doug."
"O, no, you're not!" snarled John.
"And I'm not going to quarrel with you," Judith went on. "I'm sick of men. I don't like the way you acted to me to-night. I told you if you broke that door down I wouldn't go with you, and I always keep my word. I'm not going to take money from Douglas, either. I'll borrow from Inez. And I don't want to hear another word from you about it."
She put the spurs to Buster and was gone into the starlight. The men spurred after her, but she reached the home corral before they did. And John could storm only at the deeply perturbed Mary, for Doug and Judith went to bed, pulled the covers over their heads and were heard no more that night.
The next morning, before breakfast, half of Lost Chief had called the Spencers on the telephone to tell them that Little Marion had a daughter. The dominant note in the reports was one of huge laughter. Judith was serene, and so was John. But the serenity was not to last. When she went out to the corral to look after Sioux she came back stormily.
"Where's Sioux and Whoop-la?" she demanded of John, who was mending a spur strap.
"Put away!"
"Have you killed them?"
"No. I'll produce them as soon as you agree to keep your promise to go to
Mountain City with me."
"I never promised. I intended to go with you, but I never promised."
"Remember if we don't get started by to-morrow," roared John, "we can't get there in time."
"I said I wouldn't go with you after last night, and now, I wouldn't go with you if you were the last man on earth."
She rushed from the house, and Douglas followed her.
"I'll help you hunt for them, Judith," he said.
She turned to him, white to the lips. "We're not going to hunt for them. There are other Mountain City rodeos coming. If he thinks I'm going to make a joke of myself rushing round the neighborhood after my outfit, he's mistaken! I'm not a child. Don't bother me, Douglas; I'm going to Inez."
She put Buster to a gallop and was off, the dust following her in a golden, whirling spiral. Douglas went into the house and stood before his father, face flushed, golden hair rumpled, soft shirt clinging to his big gaunt chest.
"Dad, that's a rotten deal to put over Judith."
John rose slowly to his full height and the two men looked levelly into each other's eyes. John's expression was curiously concentrated. He tapped Douglas on the arm.
"Doug, you keep out of this, or I'll forget you are my son. You're smart and you've got a bossy way with you. But I'm still master here. There never was a Spencer that didn't rule his own family. Now, understand me. Keep out of this matter between me and Jude. I'm going to break that highty-tighty filly; and by God, she knows it!"
"You'll never break her while I'm alive," said Douglas, and he walked out of the house.
Mary, coming from the cow shed with a pail of milk, looked at him anxiously. "Let it go, Doug," she said in a low voice. "It's hard on Judith, but she's been very headstrong and she's point-blank disobeyed me in the matter. She deserves what she's got. Let it go."
Douglas looked at Mary's care-worn face, so appealingly like, yet so unlike Judith's. Suddenly his tense muscles relaxed. "I guess you are right. I'd better be thankful it is as it is. But it sure is a rotten trick of Dad's."
Mary shrugged her shoulders and went on into the house. Douglas went off to bring up horses for the fall round-up. A number of people rode up during the morning to see the start for Mountain City. They found the ranch deserted, except for Mary, who pleaded a sick headache and refused to talk. Inez had no such reticence, however, and at the post-office that night Judith's troubles ran neck and neck in popular interest with Little Marion's. Both situations were of a nature to appeal to Lost Chief's sense of humor. Douglas appeared during the session and learned that Charleton's wife had come home.
"I hope she won't go crazy too," he said.
"No danger!" Peter tossed a letter to Frank Day. "Charleton'll be in line by to-morrow. Too bad some one can't hobble John too."
"Plumb unnecessary, the whole affair," grunted the sheriff. "I suppose the next thing on the program will be a big wedding."
"I guess they'll manage it like the Browns did," volunteered Young Jeff, squirting his quid accurately to the center of the hearth. "Be around borrowing my car in two or three weeks, run up to Mountain City for to be married, then give a big party upstairs here, and nobody the worse off for anything."
Everybody nodded and grinned. Douglas sat on a pile of mail order catalogs smoking, his hat on the back of his head, his eyes thoughtful. "Anybody know how Jimmy's been behaving to-day?"
Frank Day laughed heartily. "I rode up there this morning after I heard the news, friendly like, of course. Grandma had Jimmy out in the yard, washing baby dresses, while she stood in the door giving him what for. Jimmy was dribbling cigarette ashes over the suds but he sure was game. He grinned and got red when he saw me. 'I'm the hen-peckedest damn fool in the Rockies,' he says."
There was a roar of laughter.
"What was Charleton doing?" asked Young Jeff, wiping his eyes.
"I found him in the corral. He'd slept in the alfalfa stack and he wasn't quoting poetry. I didn't stay with him but a minute."
Again there was laughter.
"Big Marion will calm him," said Peter.
"I know one thing," exclaimed Douglas. "None of us will be saying the things to Charleton we've been saying behind his back."
"We sure won't," agreed Frank. "I suppose Judith's all broke up, poor little devil!"
Douglas nodded.
"I saw her and Inez hobnobbing in the Rodmans' corral to-day," said Young
Jeff. "She'd better cut Inez out."
Douglas stared at the familiar faces around the room as if he never before had seen them. Peter, thin, melancholy, his long sinewy throat exposed by his buttonless blue shirt; Frank Day, big and keen of eye, squatting as usual against the wall; Young Jeff, ruddy and heavy-set, with his kind blue eyes and heavy jaw. All clean shaven, all in chaps and spurs, all good fellows, and all as helpless before the nameless mystery of life as Doug himself. The sweat started to his forehead. He rose, pulling on his gloves.
"It's early yet, Doug," said Peter.
"I'm going to call for Judith," replied Douglas. He went out into the night, whistled to Prince, mounted the Moose and galloped across to the west trail.
It was sharp and frosty but Inez and Judith, in mackinaws, were sitting on the back steps with a little fire of chips at their feet. Douglas dismounted and came into the fireglow. The light caught the point of his chin, his clean-cut nostrils, and the heavy overhang of his brows.
"Ready to come home, Jude, old girl?" he asked.
"Sit down and talk to us a little, Douglas," suggested Inez.
Douglas hauled up a broken wagon seat and sat down. Prince crawled up beside him and went to sleep with his head and one paw on Doug's knee.
"I suppose congress was sitting at the post-office, to-night?" said
Judith.
"Yes. Everybody's strong for you and Little Marion."
"I don't see why I should be bunched with her. Not that I care though!"
Judith tossed her head and then dropped her chin to the palm of her hand.
"I swear some one ought to give John Spencer a good thrashing!" exclaimed
Inez.
"Don't worry!" Judith spoke through set teeth. "I'll be even with him some day."
"I just as soon try to lick him," said Doug. "But what good would it do?"
The three sat in silence for a moment; then Douglas asked suddenly,
"Inez, do you believe that poetry about the Fire Mist that you taught
Judith?"
"No; but I think it's a beautiful poem, just the same."
"Say it all for me, will you, Inez?"
Inez, in her soft contralto, repeated the lines.
"And you don't believe it?" Douglas' voice was wistful. "Don't you wish you did?"
"I don't know as I do," replied Inez.
"But don't you see," urged Douglas, "that without believing it, there's no meaning to anything?"
"Well, what of it?" asked Inez.
"I'm the kind of a guy that has to see a purpose to things, I guess," replied Douglas, heavily. "Peter is dead right. Lost Chief is a rotten hole."
"It's a rotten place for women and a paradise for men," stated Judith flatly.
"Never was any place in the world more beautiful," mused Inez. "If you'd just see the beauty all around you, Doug, you'd do without the religion."
"I do see the beauty," replied Douglas. "I've been seeing it ever since you told me to look for it. But it just makes me blue."
"You're no cowman, Douglas," Inez spoke thoughtfully. "You ought to go
East to college and get into politics or something!"
Douglas shook his head. "I'm like Charleton. I couldn't leave these hills and plains for anything the East has to offer me." He rose slowly, and Inez stared up at him. Tall, slender, straight, his young face a little strained, a little wistful, he was to the older woman something finer than Lost Chief knew.
"Judith," she said suddenly, "you're an awful fool!"
Judith grunted, immersed in her own troubles.
"Come, old lady," said Douglas. "We must get home."
"I'm going to stay all night with Inez."
"No, you're not, Jude," said Douglas quietly, and he stood waiting.
"Let her stay, Doug. She'll be all right," urged Inez.
"No," replied the young rider, with the familiar straightening of his chin. "Come, Judith!"
The tall girl rose, shrugged her shoulders, and followed slowly to the corral after Douglas. Inez did not move and shortly they trotted away, leaving her alone in the firelight.
The next day, sullenly enough, John ordered Doug to make the horses ready for the round-up. Frost had set in and he suddenly announced himself as fearful lest snows catch the herds high on the mountains. So Douglas and Judith spent the day bringing in several stout horses from the range. On the morning following, before breakfast was finished, Scott Parsons hallooed from the corral. The family went to the door.
Scott was leading Sioux and Whoop-la.
"Found these in the old Government corral up on Lost Chief Mountain," he said laconically.
"I suppose you're going to get something worth while from Dad for this!" cried Judith passionately.
Scott looked at the girl curiously. "You sure are crazy, Jude! Do you suppose I'd help John Spencer do you like that? John's a blank-blank and he knows it."
Douglas moved to stand by Ginger's head.
"No man says that to me without a grin." John drew his gun.
"Jude!" said Doug sharply. He reached up and seized Scott's hand and with a sudden twist relieved him of his six-shooter.
Judith struck up her father's arm and a shot scattered dust from the sod roof of the cabin. John smacked Judith on the cheek. She threw herself on him like a fighting she-bear. John dropped his gun to seize her wrists and Mary promptly picked the weapon up and gave it to Douglas.
"Now," said Doug, when Judith stood panting like a young Diana, her eyes black with anger and excitement, "if you two men want to fight, take your fists and go to it!"
John suddenly grinned, his eyes on Judith. "I don't see anybody spoiling for a fist fight but Judith. You little lynx-cat! You get handsomer every day!"
"I'd hate to let a woman make putty of me like that," sneered Scott. "Let me have my shooting-iron, Doug."
Douglas had broken the revolver and unloaded it. He gave it back, receiving the lead ropes of the two animals in return, and Scott trotted away.
"I'm much obliged to you, Scott!" shrieked Judith. "I'll ride up and tell you all about it, some day."
Scott waved his hand but did not look back. John, still holding Judith's wrists, suddenly drew her to him and kissed her full on the lips. Then, with a laugh, he freed her and returned to his breakfast. Douglas swore under his breath and turned the uneasy Sioux and Whoop-la into the corral. The day went forward as if nothing had happened.
That night, Charleton and John appeared at the post-office gathering for the first time since the birth of Little Marion's baby. Only Peter had the intrepidity to comment on recent events.
"I didn't want Judith to go alone with you to Mountain City, John," he said. "But, all the same, that was a rotten deal you gave her."
"She's a disobedient little hussy," John's voice was truculent, "and it was the only way I could get at her."
"You mean the fight she put up to help Little Marion?" demanded Peter.
"O, dry up, Peter!" exclaimed Charleton. "Me, I'm sick of the sound of a woman's name. They're all alike, ungrateful minxes."
"Ungrateful is the word," agreed Peter grimly. "But I'd like to know just what Marion was under obligation to you for?"
Charleton did not reply.
"When are they going to be married?" asked Peter, after a moment.
"First of the month. We'll give 'em a party up here in the hall that Lost
Chief will never forget. John, do you ride to-morrow?"
"Yes, Charleton. Everybody's reported but you."
"I'll be there. Start from your place, as usual?"
John nodded, and the rest of the evening was given over to a discussion of details of the round-up.
The fall round-up was always a long and arduous affair. The cattle were scattered all through the ranges covered by the Forest Reserve. Slowly and with infinite labor and skill, they were sought out and herded down into Hidden Gorge Canyon, below Fire Mesa. Thence, they were driven to the plains east of the post-office, where the riders cut out their own cattle.
The weather held for two weeks, star-brilliant at night, with the low of mother-cows separated from their calves from mountain to mountain, with the crisp wind bringing down the frosted leaves of the aspens, and at noon the hot dust swirling up from the horses' hoofs into the sweating faces of the riders.
Perhaps thirty men rode in the Lost Chief crowd. The work was more or less solitary by day, but at night over the camp-fires, there was society enough. Douglas enjoyed it all to the very tips of his being. He was coming now into the great strength that belonged to his height and could do his full share of the heavy work. He had thought that, rolled in his blankets, under the stars, he would find inspiration that would help him solve the problem of life. But long before the camp-fire was low, he would drop into slumber that ended only when his father shook him at dawn.
When the round-up reached the plains, the women set up a camp kitchen and served hot meals. The weather this year held clear to the last day, when a blizzard swept down from Dead Line Peak and the last of the cutting out was finished in blinding snow. Douglas and John, after putting the last of their yearlings into the cut over fields, staggered into the warm ranch kitchen half-perished with the cold.
CHAPTER X
WILD HORSES
"If I could believe in God and a heaven I'd ask nothing more of life except a good-saddle-horse."
—Charleton's Wife.
And so another long winter was upon Lost Chief. It was much like other winters for Douglas except for the fact that he began systematically to trap for pelts. It was a heavy winter and game was plentiful, with pelts of exceptionally fine quality for which there was a good market in St. Louis. Douglas worked hard and began the accumulation of a sum of money which he planned to use eventually to start his own ranch on the old Douglas section, which was to be his when he came of age.
But although to the young rider the money earned seemed the main aspect of the winter's work, the important result really lay in the deepening it gave to his appreciation of the beauty and mystery of this mountain valley.
Lost Chief was lovely in the summer with its crystal glory of color on hill and plain. But Lost Chief in winter was awe-inspiring in its naked splendor. Dead Line Peak and Falkner's Peak, barren save for the great blue snows and for the black shadows that crept up and down their tremendous flanks, were separated from each other by a long, narrow, slowly rising valley. Down this valley rushed a tiny brook whose murmur the bitterest weather could not quite still. Along this brook grew quivering aspens, and beside it coyotes kept open a little trail. Along this trail, Doug set his traps, as well as up on the wall of the mountains where lynx-cats and wolverine were hid.
Each day at noon, mounted on the Moose, with Prince at heel, he rode the circuit of the traps, seldom reaching home until long after supper was cleared away. There were days when, on leaving the ranch for the long, bitter-cold ride, it seemed to Douglas that he never could come back again, that the pain of living in the same house with Judith in her girlish indifference was to be endured no longer. The primitive intimacy in which the family dwelt made every hour at home a sort of torture to him, a torture that he did not wish to forego yet that he scarcely could endure. One cannot say how much of Douglas' self-control was due to innate refinement, how much to expediency, how much to the male power of inhibition when fighting to win the love of a woman.
But, whatever the cause, Douglas was developing a power of self-control possessed by no other man in the valley. It made him, even at eighteen, a little grim, a little lonely, a little abstracted. And he rode his traps like a man in a dream. He thought much, but not constantly, of Judith; though she perfumed all his thoughts. For the most part he pondered on the blank mystery of life and on the enigma of love, which to him seemed far more productive of pain than of joy. Little by little, he found himself eager to get into the hills. Quite consciously he left the ranch each day with the thought that when he reached the crest of old Falkner's lower shoulder, where his lynx trap was set, and beheld the unspeakable strength and purity of the far-flung ranges, to whose vastness the Lost Chief peaks were but foothills, he would find a wordless peace.
And thus the winter slipped away and blue-birds dipped again in the spring beyond the corral. And again alfalfa perfumed the alkaline dust that followed the birds into the Reserve; and then again, frost laid waste the struggling gardens of high altitudes; and for another winter Doug followed traps, varying the monotony by getting out pine-logs for his ranch house.
The winter that Judith was twenty and Douglas twenty-two was one of the most severe ever known in Lost Chief country. It was preceded by a summer of drought and the alfalfa and wild hay fields failed. Feed could not be bought. Steers and horses died by the score. Doug did little trapping. He and his father spent the bitter storm-swept days fighting to save their stock. By March they were cutting young aspens and hauling them to the famished herds to nibble. Coyotes moved brazenly by day across the home fields, stealing refuse from the very door-yards. Eagles perched on fence-posts near the chicken runs. Jack-rabbits in herds of many score milled about the wind-swept barrens, gnawing the grass already cattle-cropped to the roots. The cold and snow persisted till mid-April, and even then Lost Chief was only beginning to thaw on its lower northern edge.
It was a winter of tremendous nerve strain. There had been little opportunity for the neighbors to get together, and the battle with the cold never ceased. John Spencer, always at his best when great physical demands were being made upon him, came through the winter better than Douglas, whose profound restlessness was beginning to tell even on his youthful strength. It was almost as much of a relief to Doug's family as to Doug to have Charleton Falkner insist, late in April, that Doug go on a wild horse hunt with him.
It was like the opening of a prison door to the young rider. He had dwelt within himself too much, had seen too much of Judith, had been too deeply perplexed by his own relation to life. He resolved that during the week they were to be out on the hunt, he would not once permit himself a serious thought.
They left Charleton's ranch early one morning, driving a sheep wagon which trailed four saddle horses. On the tail-board of the wagon were a bale of alfalfa and several bags of oats, for which Charleton had scraped Lost Chief to the bottom of its bins.
The snow was running off the trail in roaring streams. There was brilliant sun. Magpies dipped across the blue. Charleton drove while Douglas lay across the bunk, his spurred boots resting on an embroidered sofa cushion which he had purloined from Mary for lack of a pillow. He lay thus all day, except at meal time, neither man caring to talk. All day long, they pushed north, over the hills, each hill and valley lower than the last. When they made their night camp, the snows were gone. The next day, too, they pursued ever-dropping trails, that disappeared toward noon, leaving Charleton to find his way through barren hills that were criss-crossed only by antelope and coyote tracks. At mid-afternoon, from the crest of one of these hills they beheld a winding, black river with a flush of green along its borders. They covered the miles to this at a trot and made their camp beside the rushing waters. The eager horses almost rended harness and halter in their desire to taste the budding grass around the sage-brush roots.
They carried food and fodder only for a week, so they dared allow but two days for the actual hunting. At dawn they had finished breakfast and were riding up into the rolling hills to the west. Brown hills against a pale blue morning sky, then a sudden flood of crimson against a high horizon line. Against this crimson, a row of grazing horses!
"We'll separate now," said Charleton. "Do like we always do. Pick out one horse and ride him down. They will be awful soft after such a winter. Don't get side-tracked from one horse to another. They'd kill the Moose off at that. He's getting pretty old for this kind of thing. I'll see you at camp to-night."
Douglas dropped into a valley which twisted under the hill where the wild horses were grazing. Here he dismounted and, leading his horse, began to snake his way upward through the sage-brush which covered the hillside. When he was within a hundred yards of the herd, he paused. There were fifteen horses, of every kind and color. Douglas selected a jet black mare with a wonderful tail and mane. Then he turned to mount. Charleton, at this moment, appeared on the far side of the hill. The Moose nickered, and the herd tossed heads and broke.
The mare dropped over the east side of the hill as if she had been shot. Douglas turned the Moose after her and they hurled down the steep slope with thundering hoofs. For some moments, the Moose sought to turn hither and yon as different horses flashed across his vision. But Doug held him to the black mare, and once the Moose realized that she alone was their quarry Douglas was able to give almost all his attention to watching her strategy.
She did not show fight nor did she double on her tracks. Fleet as a bird, she flew over the hills, dropping into canyons, leaping draws, jumping rock heaps, until little by little she drew ahead of the Moose until she became no larger than a black coyote against the yellow hills. But Douglas would not allow the Moose to break from his swift trot. As long as he could keep the mare in sight he was content.
The sun was sailing high and the Moose was winded when the mare, cantering painfully along the ridge of a hill, stumbled and fell. She was up again at once but her gait slowed, perceptibly. In less than a half-hour Doug was within roping distance of her. As the lariat sung above her head, she half turned, gave Doug a look of anguished surprise, leaped sideways and disappeared up a crevice in a canyon wall. Douglas spurred the Moose in after her. They were in a little valley, thick grown with dwarf willow. The mare was not to be seen.
Now began a search that persisted till the Moose's sturdy legs were trembling. Douglas threaded the valley again and again. There was no exit save through the one crevice by which they had entered. He had all but concluded that the mare had been swallowed up by the earth when he found her trail, turning up the south wall. He spurred the Moose upward, and there in a clump of cedars he found her hiding. With a laugh he again twirled his rope and it slipped over the tossing black head. As the Moose turned and the rope tightened, the mare gave a scream that was like that of a human being in dire agony. For a moment she dragged back, then, head drooping, trembling in every muscle, she followed in.
Dusk was falling when Douglas made the camp. Charleton already had started a fire in the little cook-stove. He came out and examined the mare as well as the failing light and her extreme timidity permitted.
"She's a beauty, Doug. Don't believe she's over four years old. Any brand on her?"
"No. From the looks of her hoofs, I'd say she'd been born with the herd.
What luck did you have, Charleton?"
"None at all. I took after a young stallion and he wore my horse out. I know where he's bedding down to-night and I'll get him to-morrow or shoot him."
"You'll get him," said Douglas.
Charleton chuckled. "Nice thing if the mare is all we bring in. Make some coffee, Doug. The biscuits are baking. I could eat one of Sister's coyotes to-night." Charleton jammed another sage-brush knot into the little stove.
They were off at dawn. Douglas rode this day a young bay horse he had recently broken and named Pard. But though Pard was strong and willing, he lacked the skill of the Moose in running this rough country, and by noon Douglas was obliged to give up the pursuit of a dapple gray he had selected. He was far out on the plains when he made the decision to turn campward. To the distant south, in the Lost Chief ranges, a snowstorm was raging; but Pard and Douglas were dripping with sweat, under a sweltering sun. Strange, thimble-shaped green hills, dotted the plains about them. Douglas drew up at the base of one of these to rest his horse. Scarcely had he done so when a tiny herd of antelope trotted casually round the neighboring hillock. They halted, sniffed, and turned, but not before Douglas had drawn his saddle gun and fired at the leader. The creature went lame at once but disappeared with his fellows among the green hills.
Douglas followed and shortly found a spot of blood that was repeated at irregular intervals for a mile or so. Pard was grunting now, but Douglas rowelled him and pushed on until he saw the antelope kneeling in the lee of an outcropping of rock. It struggled to its feet and fell again, its beautiful head dropping against its crimsoned breast.
"Wonder if I can get you home alive to Judith?" said Douglas.
After a moment of thought, he loosened his lariat, swung and roped the antelope around the horns, dragging it from its futile sanctuary. Then he dismounted and removed the lariat. The antelope bleated but lay trembling, making no attempt to rise. Douglas examined the shattered shoulder.
"You poor devil!" he said. "Even if you weren't hurt so badly, you'd die of fright before I could get you home. Well, of course I'm sorry venison is out of season, but a man must eat!" He put his gun to the delicate head, and an hour later Pard was snorting under a gunny-sack of venison. Douglas lighted a cigarette and, whistling gaily, started once more for camp.
But this, if not a day of what Lost Chief would call real adventure, was at least to be a day of episode. About mid-afternoon Doug heard the tinkle of a sheep-bell. He was not surprised, for he knew that he was well within sheep country. He followed the tinkle and came shortly to a wide draw where moved a mighty gray mass of sheep. The herder, on a bay horse, responded to Doug's halloo with a wave of his hand. Douglas made his way round the edge of the draw and waited for the herder, who rode slowly up to meet him. Then he stared at the stranger's gray-bearded face with the utmost surprise.
"Mr. Fowler!" he cried. "What are you doing out here?"
The older man, in shabby blue overalls and jumper, a black slouch hat pulled over his eyes, smiled grimly.
"You have the advantage of me, young man. I don't remember your face."
"I'm glad you don't!" replied Douglas. "But I've always wanted to tell you I sure-gawd was ashamed of myself. I was the kid that made you trouble at Lost Chief seven or eight years ago."
Fowler's blade brows met as he studied the young rider's frank face.
"So you are!" he said slowly. "So you are! Well, I'll never have that kind of trouble again. Have you eaten? I'm late about dinner. Fact is, I get careless about my meals, living alone!"
"No, I've been out after wild horses and don't plan to eat till I get back to camp ten miles yonder on the creek."
"Better break bread with me," suggested the preacher.
"That's sure white of you. I don't mind if I do." Douglas returned Mr.
Fowler's grim look with one of wistful curiosity.
The preacher silently led the way to the sheep-herder's wagon which perched on the peak of a hill above the draw. "I don't have much to offer you but beans," he said as they dismounted.
Douglas looked from the blood-stained gunny-sack to the clergyman's deep-set eyes, hesitated, then said, "Beans are good and the sheep-man's staple." He followed into the wagon and sat on the edge of the bunk while Fowler prepared the frugal meal.
"Do you mind telling me," asked Doug, "why you are herding sheep instead of folks?"
"I couldn't earn a decent living herding folks. My wife died. I took anything that offered that would take me away from men and their accursed ways. There was something about sheep-herding that made me think of Jesus Christ and the country round about Bethlehem. I have found a kind of peace here."
Douglas cleared his throat. "How long have you been at it?"
"A couple of years."
"How was it you couldn't earn a living, preaching?"
"It's an age of unfaith," replied the preacher.
"I don't believe it's, an age of unfaith." Douglas puffed slowly on a cigarette. "That is, not like you mean. That Sunday, if you'd given us something we could have set our teeth in, we'd have listened to you. I remember distinctly, I sat down in the back of the room, saying to myself, 'Now if this old-timer has something interesting to say, I won't let the kids in.' But you—excuse me, Mr. Fowler—you just got up and bleated like a Montana sheep-man."
The preacher set the coffee-pot on the stove, straightened himself, and shouted, "I spoke the word of God!"
"I don't know whether there's a God or not. Probably there isn't any. But if there is, I'll bet He never talked foolish threats that a fellow has hard work to understand." Mr. Fowler gasped. "Now wait a moment," protested Douglas. "Don't get mad and throw me out like I did you! I'm a man now, and I tell you, Mr. Fowler, I'm troubled about many things and I want you to let me talk to you."
The beautiful, sympathetic light of the shepherd of souls shone in the clergyman's eyes. "Talk on, my boy! I too am troubled about many things. But not about God. I know Him."
"How do you know Him?"
"By His works, the sun, the stars, the universe, through His holy word, the Bible."
Douglas waved his hands irritably. "Words! Just words! How can they mean anything to a hard-headed man like me? Everything came out of a fire mist. How do you know it was a mind made that fire mist? Why couldn't it have been a—a—Christ, what could it have been?" Douglas paused with lips agape with horror as he gazed on the evil of the universe.
Fowler motioned the young rider to a seat at the table. "God bless our food and give us understanding," he said. Then he served Doug and sat staring thoughtfully at his own coffee-cup. "Were you ever in love?" he finally asked Douglas.
"Yes."
"Did she love you?"
"Not that I can find out!"
"Does she know that you love her?" pursued the minister.
"Yes, I told her so."
"But," said Mr. Fowler, "love isn't something you can put your teeth in.
How can she believe you?"
"Because, I'm something she can put her teeth in! Believe me, Mr. Fowler, if God once convinced me He was real, I'd believe anything He told me. Just give me facts. That's all I want."
"The universe is a fact."
"Yes, but the universe being a fact doesn't prove there's any hereafter. Hang it, Mr. Fowler, can't you preachers get it through your heads that what people want you to prove to them is that there is a hereafter? That's all there is to your job. Prove that and you can lead us round by the nose. But if you can't show us that the soul doesn't die, there is no meaning in anything, and we might as well be like we are in Lost Chief."
"What's the matter with Lost Chief?" Mr. Fowler's smile was grim.
"Peter Knight says it's that we have no ethics. Inez Rodman says it's that we don't know beauty when we see it."
"Inez Rodman? O, that woman of the Yellow Canyon! If there were a minister in Lost Chief, she wouldn't be in the Valley."
"O, I don't know! Religion doesn't seem to affect her kind, anywhere. But
Peter says we'd ought to have built a church along with the schoolhouse.
I don't see myself how the kind of Bible stuff you teach could help a
hard living, hard thinking kind of people like us."
"Did you ever read the Bible, Douglas?" asked the preacher.
"I've tried to. If you ask me to read it like it was only more or less true history, I could get away with it. But when you tell me it's the actual word of God and show me a picture of God in long white whiskers and a white robe, why you can't get away with it, that's all. I know that nothing like that ever produced Fire Mesa or Lost Chief Range or—or Judith."
Mr. Fowler groaned. "Douglas, you are blasphemous!"
"I'm not. I'm just unhappy. I think I was meant to be a religious guy. I'm of New England stock and they all depended a lot on religion. But I just can't swallow it."
"And you never will as long as you take the point of view you do. You must wipe your mind clear of all you have read and thought, for God says that unless we become as little children, we cannot believe. Religion is not a matter of knowledge and reason. Religion is a matter of hope and faith."
Douglas sat turning this over in his mind, his yellow hair rumpled, his clear eyes, with the sun wrinkles in the corners, fixed on the far snowy gleam of Lost Chief Range.
"Hope and faith," he repeated softly.
There was a shout from without. "O, you Doug!" and Charleton rode up at a gallop. He stopped before the open door. "I've been trailing you for two hours. I got three horses penned up in a draw and I need your help. Hello, Fowler! What the devil are you doing out here?"
"Come in and have a bite of grub, Falkner," exclaimed the preacher.
"Don't care if I do!" Charleton threw a weary leg across the saddle and dismounted. Douglas, who had finished his meal, returned to the bunk and Charleton took his place.
"Kind of funny to find you and Doug eating together," said Charleton.
"He should have given me a swift kick," agreed Douglas. "Instead, he fed me."
"That's sound religion, isn't it?" asked Mr. Fowler, pouring Charleton a cup of coffee.
"It's sound hospitality, anyhow," replied Charleton.
"Aw, any one would admit Fowler lives up to his faith," expostulated
Douglas.
Charleton glanced at the young rider in surprise. "What's happened to you, old trapper?"
"Nothing. Only I wish I had the same religion he's got."
"So's you could herd the sheep?" asked Charleton.
"So's I could have peace," retorted Douglas.
"Peace? What does a kid like you want of peace? Anybody that can't find peace in Lost Chief is a fool."
"I'm no fool!" contradicted Doug, with a growing irritation at Charleton for interrupting his talk with Fowler. "And where is there a peaceful person in Lost Chief?"
"Douglas," said Charleton, "when you are as old as I am you'll realize that Lost Chief is as near heaven as man can hope to get. A poke of salt and a gun on your saddle, a blanket tied behind, a good horse under you, the Persian poet in your pocket, all time and the ranges before you, and what more could mortal man desire?"
"A woman, you've always said before," grunted Douglas.
"I was holding back out of respect to the sky pilot," laughed Charleton. "But since you mentioned it, there's Inez, who's always ready for a trip."
Mr. Fowler shot a quick look at Douglas, who again grunted indifferently and rolled a cigarette.
"Are you and Douglas partners, Falkner?" asked the preacher.
"Once in a while. Why are you herding sheep, Fowler? This herd yours?"
"No. They belong to a Denver man. I'm herding because I couldn't keep a church together."
Charleton nodded. "The day of the church is over."
There was silence during which Charleton devoured beans, Douglas smoked, and the preacher sat with his eyes on the slow moving herd.
Finally Charleton said, "And why do you think something is the matter with Lost Chief, Douglas?"
"In other parts of the country," replied Douglas, his blue eyes fixed unwaveringly on Charleton's dark face, "among people of our kind and breed, a girl like Judith couldn't run with a girl like Inez and be considered decent. And a couple like Jimmy and Little Marion couldn't have a party a week after they were married, the baby attending, and be considered O.K. by the so-called best folks and nothing more said."
Charleton's face grew darkly red. "Who told you that?" he asked in an ugly voice.
"I'm not a fool, as I've told you before. And as you very well know, I've wanted Judith for my wife ever since I was a boy and I haven't wanted her man-handled. And you know, as Jude said once, a girl has about as much chance of staying straight in Lost Chief as a cottontail has with a coyote pack. She's good because, well, because she's Judith, that's all. Now, I tell you when things are as hard as that for a young girl in a beautiful place like our valley, there's something wrong. And look at Little Marion!"
"Leave her out or you'll regret it," snarled Charleton.
"I'm not afraid of you, Charleton," said Douglas, with indifference not at all assumed. "Little Marion is a peach of a girl. She should have been a big influence. She's—she's had a wrong start."
"She's got a fine baby and a good husband."
"I never could argue with you, Charleton. But I know Lost Chief is a bad place for girls. Why, I'll bet there isn't a finer bunch of girls than ours in the world, for looks and nerve and smartness. Peter says he's never seen any that could touch them. And take the stories you read. Where's a heroine like Judith?"
There was something so simple and so earnest in Doug's manner and voice that the red died out of Charleton's face and he said, "I'm with you on that point, Douglas."
"Peter told me once," Douglas went on, "that the Greek race was the finest in the world in their minds and their looks and in every way, until the Greek women got promiscuous. That as soon as that happened the race began to decay. And he said that there isn't a nation in the world any stronger than the virtue of its women."