"It's growing daylight and there's the Pass, at last!" suddenly cried
Judith.
Douglas drew a deep breath and urged on the weary horses.
It was full nine o'clock when the team drew up at the post-office door. At Doug's halloo, Peter Knight appeared. Sister crowded out the door past him, pricked her ears forward and ran to sniff at the rear of the buckboard.
"What on earth brings you back at this hour?" demanded Peter.
"Trouble!" Douglas moistened his frost-cracked lips. "Oscar Jefferson was shot last night. We got his body here."
"Who shot him?" asked Peter.
"We don't know."
"Where was it? Here, Sister, get back in the house!" Peter jerked the door wide.
Judith answered. "Up beyond the cedars, across from the half-way house.
We found him while we were hunting for that devilish old mule."
Peter looked keenly at the two haggard young faces, then he said, "You two come in and eat and get warm. I'll do some telephoning."
"I want to get home to my mother," half sobbed Judith.
"Sha'n't we take him on to his house?" asked Douglas.
Peter replied impatiently, "You know he was baching it alone while young
Jeff's in California. You come as I tell you!"
Stiffly the two stumbled out of the stage and into the warmth of Peter's quarters. He had just begun his own breakfast and, at his orders, Douglas and Judith devoured it while Peter went to the telephone. In an incredibly short time John Spencer and Frank Day, the sheriff, galloped up to the door. To them and to Peter, the young people told their story.
The sheriff asked a number of questions. After he had finished Douglas queried anxiously:
"You ain't going to try and put it on us, Frank?"
Frank grinned. "Well, I might, if the suspicions I have as to another party prove wrong."
"Don't torture 'em, Frank!" protested Peter. "They've been through a good deal for kids."
"Scott Parsons was the only rider in the valley who didn't like Oscar," said John. "That war they've had for two years over the bull was bound to end in trouble. I warned Oscar."
"Oscar was more to blame than Scott," said the sheriff. "He was the meanest man for hanging out on a fool thing I ever knew. And I'm just as fond of Oscar as the rest of you. What was a bull to Oscar! He could buy a dozen of 'em. Scott hasn't a thing on earth except wages for riding and that mangy little herd of slicks he's picked up."
"Picked up is right!" grunted John. "That bull, whoever it belonged to, is standard bred."
"Scott was born with a nasty temper." Peter spoke thoughtfully. "He told
Oscar in front of me he would get him. That was about two weeks ago."
"Did Oscar tell any one he was going anywhere?" asked the sheriff.
"Not me," said Peter. "Why not let the kids go home?"
"Sure," agreed Frank. "You've done a good night's work, you two. Get some sleep now."
"You'll find Buster tied to my saddle, Doug," said John. "Judith, can
Swift still move?"
"You bet she can!" replied Judith.
There was a laugh, and the two young people gladly mounted and trotted into the home trail.
Oscar's wife had long been dead. His son was on a cattle-buying trip and could not be reached. Oscar had been one of the richest men in the very well conditioned valley, so, instead of taking the body up to the lonely ranch house, it was laid out in state in the post-office.
Grandma Brown always officiated at deaths and births in Lost Chief. After it was found impossible to get in touch with young Jeff and after the sheriff had made a three days' investigation, she ordered the funeral to take place at once.
"We could pack him down in the ice till a thaw opens up the cemetery a little," suggested Charleton Falkner. "You know what a god-awful job it is making a grave in the cemetery in winter, between the frost and the rocks."
"He's going to be buried now, while he's in good trim," declared Grandma. "I'm not going to have him ruined, waiting for spring. You men get to work now, in shifts, like you did for old Ma Day."
Grandma's word was law in Lost Chief, and the grave forthwith was prepared. John Spencer, Peter Knight, and Charleton Falkner were appointed by the old lady to do the work, and Douglas accompanied his father. Old Johnny Brown appeared while the work was in process.
The cemetery was fenced in, but except for a few simple headstones and monuments, it was unadorned.
"Queer the women folks have never fixed this place up a little," said
Peter Knight, standing waist-deep in the grave, with John. "Most places
I've been, women keep the graves like they would a little garden."
Charleton Falkner, resting on a neighboring headstone, smiled sardonically. "Lost Chief women have enough to do without dolling up graves."
Cold sweat stood on Doug's forehead. He stared from the gaping grave to the murmuring line of pines that marked the end of the cemetery and the beginning of the Forest Reserve, and shuddered. He had not been sleeping well since the night of the murder. Johnny Brown, small and very thin, with a scraggly iron-gray beard hung with little icicles and his blue eyes watering with the cold, moved away from the headstone against which he had been resting after his turn in the grave.
"That boy," he said, jerking his elbow at Doug, "will be massified for many a year for driving the preacher out of Lost Chief."
"How do you mean—massify!" demanded Doug, gruffly. Johnny might be half-witted, but his remarks were curiously penetrating sometimes.
"I mean massify," grunted Johnny.
Peter Knight heaved a great frosted boulder out to the ground level.
"Charleton," he said slowly, "doesn't the thought of lying in a forgotten grave give you dumb horrors?"
"Sometimes," replied Charleton laconically, as he beat his cold hands together. "But only sometimes."
Douglas strained forward in the intensity of his interest.
Douglas' father straightened his broad shoulders. "If I let myself think about it, I have to go out and get drunk," he muttered.
"You don't conject right about them things," cried Johnny. "You got to listen to things."
No one heeded the sad-faced little man. Peter stooped for another frozen clod. "I'd give my right hand for my mother's faith in a living God," he said.
"But if there isn't any God, what is there?" cried Douglas, with passionate protest in his voice.
"Don't you try to discuss matters you ain't old enough to understand, son," ordered John Spencer.
"Unbelief is the price we pay for scientific progress," said Charleton.
"Me, I'm willing to pay."
"I'm not," growled Peter, "but I don't see any way round it. Come on,
Johnny, do your share."
"I ain't going to dig any more," declared the little man. "You all say
I ain't all here, and the part that ain't here is the part that works.
Sabez?"
Everybody laughed.
"And," Johnny went on, seriously, "I ain't sure it's a good idea to plant 'em so deep. It takes a long time to grow up to heaven. It's a gregus far away place."
"Right you are, Johnny, old man," agreed Peter. "It sure is gregus far away."
Nobody urged Johnny to return to the job and the rest of the work was finished in silence.
That afternoon the funeral took place. There were services at the post-office, where any one who wished spoke in praise of the dead man. There were many speeches and it was late afternoon when the funeral cortege reached the cemetery. The Forest Reserve was mysterious with shadows and with the unending murmur of the pines. Snow gleamed blue over the valley. The saddle horses and teams were hitched to the stout fence that surrounded the cemetery, and Lost Chief Valley crowded about the open grave.
John Spencer drove Mary down in the old bobsled but Judith and Douglas rode Swift and Buster as usual. Judith had been nervous and irritable ever since the trip to the half-way house, but she had refused to admit that the murder had anything to do with her state of mind. She had a boyish horror of admitting to fears, mental or physical. She stood opposite Douglas, with a round beaver cap pulled down over her curly hair, her cheeks not so red as usual, her dark eyes rimmed and puzzled. Douglas wondered what she was puzzling over and resolved that after the ceremonies were over, he would ask her.
Douglas could not know with what intensity his deep-set eyes turned from Judith and fastened upon Grandma Brown, who stood at the head of the grave. There was a contented assurance in the old lady's manner that was vaguely comforting to the boy. He wondered what she knew that his father and Peter and Charleton did not know.
As the coffin was lowered into the grave, Grandma said, "Does anybody feel like saying a few last words?"
There was a silence broken only by the murmur of the Forest, then Johnny Brown cleared his throat. "I might say a whole lot of things. I wasn't so goldarned proud of Oscar like the rest of you seemed to be. He had a gregus kind of a temper and oncet—"
Grandma turned on him. "Johnny Brown, ain't you ashamed of yourself!"
"No, I ain't! You say I ain't all here, and the part that I'd be ashamed with is the part that's gone," returned Johnny firmly.
Judith gave an irrepressible snort, then fastened solemn eyes on the sky. A restless clearing of throats swept the little assemblage; then Grandma, indignation still in her kind old voice, spoke once more.
"Can't any of you men that knew Oscar all his life say something comforting before you close his grave?" she urged. "Then I'll try to do it. I was brought up religious, myself." She lifted her serene old face to the evening sky. "O God, this man wandered far from You like all the rest of us here. But an old woman like me believes You're there and that you know Oscar hadn't a really bad hair in his head. Take his soul, Lord, and be as good to him as You can. I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord. He that believeth in me, even though he die, yet shall he have Eternal Life."
The tears were running down many cheeks when the old lady finished. Foolish old Johnny laughed, then he began to sing a hymn in which several of the women joined.
"God be with you till we meet again,
By his counsels guide, uphold you,
With his sheep securely fold you,
God be with you till we meet again."
And so the earthly career of Oscar Jefferson ended.
CHAPTER III
THE GRADUATION DANCE
"Horses, dogs, guns, women, whiskey, the open country of the
Rockies—enough for any man."
—Charleton Falkner.
Instead of riding home with Judith, after the ceremony, Douglas, on sudden impulse, took a roundabout way to the post-office, thence toward the Browns' ranch. Dusk was settling in the valley. The quivering aspens along Lost Chief creek were etched gray rose on the deep blue snow. Far to the east a single scarlet mountain-top pierced through the twilight blue. Buster loped swiftly through the swimming landscape.
When he reached the post-office Douglas did not stop but rode on along Black Gulch trail to the Browns'. Grandma, returning by the direct route from the cemetery, had been home for a half-hour before Doug arrived. She was coming out of the cow stable, lantern in hand, when the boy dismounted at the corral. Spurs clanking, brave chaps flapping, Douglas ran to her like a child and caught her apron in his gauntleted hand.
"Grandma! Tell me something! Did you believe what you said at the grave?"
The old lady held the lantern up to his face. "Come into the cow stable out of the wind, Doug."
Within the dim shelter she hung the lantern on a nail and sat down on a box, indicating another to the young rider.
"Yes, I believed it, boy. Didn't you?"
"No, Grandma! And none of the men do that count in this valley. Is it just old woman stuff, like they say?"
"Maybe!" sniffed Grandma.
"And if you believe it," Doug rushed on, "why did you let us run the preacher out?"
"O, the preacher! Pooh! He's nothing but a blankety blank sissy like the rest of the sky pilots!"
"But can't I believe like you do, Grandma? I'm just the unhappiest guy in the world!"
"You mean," the old lady spoke deliberately, "that this is the first funeral you've seen that's set you to thinking and the fear of death is on you for the first time. I hope it'll do you good, Doug. You're an awful rough little devil."
Douglas swallowed audibly. "Grandma," he cried passionately, "how can I get to believe what you do?"
Grandma looked thoughtfully from her plump milch cow to the lantern, and from the lantern to Douglas. "Doug, I don't think you can, living among the folks you do. To have my kind of faith, you've got to have a mother that breeds it in you from the time you're a baby."
Douglas, his face looking absurdly young above his broad shoulders, said despairingly, "I don't believe you want to help me."
"Well," Grandma was still deliberate, "I don't believe a wild young devil like you really wants help. You're just scared."
Douglas rose, drawing himself to his full height. He was deeply offended.
"I thought you might understand me!" he exclaimed. He strode out to
Buster and galloped home.
It was extremely difficult to find a moment alone with Judith in the two-room cabin; but the chores were late that night and Judith, instead of helping her mother with the supper preparations, went out to milk, and so Doug's second interview that evening was in the cow shed, for when he reached the home corral, Judith had not finished her task.
This time, he was not precipitate. He sauntered into the little stable with a manner of large leisure.
"Hello, Jude!"
"Hello, Douglas! Finished feeding?"
"No. I just got back. What did you think of the funeral?"
"I'm not thinking of it at all."
"Jude, don't you believe there's any hereafter?"
"Doug, I don't want to talk about it."
"But, Judith, I'm lonely and I've got to talk to some one."
Judith turned an indignant face toward the tall boy. "Don't you suppose I'm lonely, too? What good does talk do? Religion is all right for little kids but you can't believe in fairy tales as you grow up."
"But what can we do?" insisted Douglas, the sweat breaking out above his lips again. "Doesn't the thought of no God, no hereafter, just paralyze you?"
"I tell you," repeated Judith obstinately, "I just don't let myself think about it."
"Then what's made you so cross ever since that night?"
Judith rose and set the brimming milk pail in a feed box. Her eyes, in the lantern light, widened with a horror so devastating that Douglas clutched the manger behind him.
"How did you know? Doug, that's it and there's no place to go for help because there isn't any help for that!"
The sudden revelation of her need roused Douglas. He moistened his lips and said, "We've got to harden ourselves to stand it, like the rest of 'em do. And when it gets too bad we can talk to each other about it. That'll help."
Judith clutched his arm as if she felt the need of touching a human being. Douglas did not stir but as he stood looking down at her a strange aching gladness at her nearness and at her splendid girlhood flooded the horror out of his thought.
"I'll carry the milk pail in for you, Jude," he said.
"Fudge!" she returned scornfully. "As if I hadn't carried it in every night for four years! You'd better do your feeding before Dad gets after you."
Douglas suddenly laughed and went out.
For a day or so he was haunted, particularly after he went to bed, by the thought of the grave scene and by the comments Grandma Brown had made. But Doug was only sixteen, after all, and shortly he was absorbed by other matters: the hunt for Scott Parsons, the preparations for the dehorning, and his new and thrilling and secret feeling toward Judith.
The search for Scott delayed the round-up only for a short time. A day or so after the funeral it snowed and removed the last chance of finding Scott's tracks. The cold was intense, and the job really belonged to Sheriff Frank Day, so the posse broke up after a few days and the dehorning was undertaken.
Early in the morning, half a dozen young riders helped Douglas and Judith to cut out of the great herd in the swamp field the steers in need of dehorning. In proportion to their strength, Lost Chief girls were as clever as the men in handling horses and cattle. Judith was easily the best of them. There was a fire and vim about her work, a wild grace, that the other girls lacked. Douglas, his vision sharpened by his new attitude toward Judith, thought she never had looked so handsome as she did this morning, in her beaver cap, her new scarlet mackinaw, curls flying, sitting the excited little Swift as easily as a boy.
Out of the circular corral led a smaller one. A cedar fire burned in the middle of the lesser enclosure. John Spencer and two helpers stood near the fire, saws at hand, searing-iron heating, tar-pot simmering. The herd bellowed in the outer corral. The riders, ropes in hand, sat with laughing faces turned toward Judith, who was to rope the first steer. Douglas wished that there were not so many of the riders with admiration in their eyes. Judith sat Swift lightly, edging mischievously now against one rider, now another. Swift bit Buster, who reared while Douglas swore laughingly. Magpies swooped from the blue spruce at the edge of the corral, black and white against pale blue. The cattle, all Herefords, red and white, milled about and lowed and tossed worried heads. The riders, sheepskin chaps flapping, bright neckerchiefs fluttering, shouted and cursed and fingered their lariats. Dogs, yellow dogs, black dogs, gray dogs, spotted dogs, continuously encroached from without the fence and were ordered or lashed away.
Suddenly Swift shot from the group of horses. Judith spun her lariat and a lusty young steer, well back toward the south fence, turned and stumbled. Swift sat back on her haunches, turned as she rose and leaped toward the dehorning corral. The bellowing steer was dragged backward, his left foot securely roped. He fell as they reached the gate and skidded helplessly on his side through the trampled yellow snow.
The men by the fire were ready. One of them perched on the steer's flank and freed the lariat, while another sat astride his neck and amidst a gush of blood sawed off the horns close to the head. John seared the stubs with the hot iron dipped in tar. The poor brute bellowed with fright and pain. Judith recoiled her lariat and made way for Jimmy Day, who slid up with a protesting heifer.
"'Jude!" he shouted. "You're the cow ropingest girl in the Rockies! Say,
Jude, ain't you afraid that baa-baa you're riding will buck with you?
Swift! What a hell of a name for that thing!"
"She can beat you roping 'em at that, Jimmy!" cried Douglas.
"Better ride light, Jimmy," warned John. "She thinks more of that mare than she does of me."
"All right, John," laughed Jimmy. "Take this heifer, fellows! She thinks she's a moose!"
"She'll think she's a kitten when we finish with her," chuckled John.
There was an uproar now in the two corrals that echoed from mountain to mountain. The trampled snow was crimson. White angora and sheepskin chaps were gaumed with thick clots of blood. The horses, half frantic from the smell of the bleeding cattle, tried every means in their not limited repertoires to bolt the hateful job.
The work had gone fast and furiously for some time when Douglas touched his father on the arm.
"Dad, look up on the shoulder of old Dead Line!"
John straightened his back and shaded his eyes. A rider leading a
Hereford was coming down the ridge.
"That's Scott's horse, Grover," said Douglas. "Can you make out the rider?"
"Not yet." John continued to stare intently. Others noticed his posture and followed his gaze.
"It's Scott Parsons!" cried Charleton Falkner.
"Shall we go get him?" exclaimed Jimmy Day.
"No. He's starved out and giving up. Let's hear what he has to say," said
John.
The dehorning went on. Half a dozen more bleeding steers had been turned out before Scott, weary, gaunt, haggard beyond words, leading an emaciated young bull, drew rein beside the smaller corral. The roping came to a pause. John twisted a lariat round the neck of a steer he was working on and led it to the fence. The others followed.
"Well, why the committee of welcome?" asked Scott hoarsely. His bloodshot eyes turned from one to another.
"Where'd you find the bull, Scott?" asked John.
"First located him on Fire Mesa. Been round about considerable since."
"Whose bull is it now?" Charleton Falkner pushed Democrat toward the fence.
"Mine!" Scott spoke shortly, his freckled face unmoved.
"Do you think it was worth the price?" demanded Spencer.
Scott looked searchingly at the crowd before him. The steer John was holding had been dehorned but not seared. The blood had run down the brute's white face and formed a crimson icicle on its under lip. John had run his fingers through his ashen hair, leaving it blood-smeared. Charleton was lighting a blood-stained cigarette with the hot searing-iron. Judith pounded her half-frozen ringers together.
"What price did I pay?" asked Scott.
"Doug," commanded John, "you tell your story."
Douglas, with considerable embarrassment and assisted by Judith, told of their trip with the mail stage. Scott listened with little apparent interest. He said nothing when the story was done.
"It's like this, Scott," said John. "It looks like you killed him. You've got a bad temper. So had Oscar. You fought for over a year about that fool bull, first one of you branding it, then the other. You're young and you'd better give yourself up. You'll stand a better chance."
"Go ahead, Scott!" cried Judith. "I'll stand your friend like you did mine when I rode old Oscar's milch cow 'most to death!"
"Shut up, Jude!" exclaimed Douglas.
"Go ahead, Scott," John half smiled. "You needn't worry. You have a friend!"
"A friend won't do him much good, if he's guilty," grunted Charleton
Falkner.
"Anybody's better off for at least one friend," repeated Judith stoutly.
"Darn it! All of you picking on poor old Scott!"
"Lean on me, Grandpa!" piped Jimmy Day.
Scott's haggard eyes focused on Judith. "I'll hold you to that, Jude! By God, you're the only white man in the valley! I came in to give myself up, Jude. The cold got me. I shot him, after he'd rebranded the bull before my eyes and after he'd given me this."
He ripped open his mackinaw and shirt and tore a rag from his shoulder, disclosing a vivid wound. "I ain't the only one that's quick on the trigger!"
There was a quick murmur among the riders. John and Charleton, the oldest men in the group, looked at each other.
"Charleton, you and Jimmy Day ride to Scott's house with him," said John. "I'll go to the house and telephone to the sheriff." He mounted and rode off.
"Can your horse carry you so far, Scott?" asked Judith.
Scott nodded, with something curiously like tears in his hard hazel eyes. "You take the bull, Jude," he said. "I'd like for you to have him. He's standard bred."
Judith's eyes shone like stars. "If Dad'll only let me! Do you think he will, Doug?"
Douglas shrugged his shoulders. The bull was tied to the fence and Scott rode slowly away with his escort. When John returned from telephoning he gave a grudging consent to Judith's taking the bull, and the dehorning went on. Not until the blue velvet shadow of Falkner's Peak lay heavy on the incarnadined corral and the last bellowing steer had found solace at the haystacks did the riders start homeward. Douglas followed Judith, as she led the scare-crow bull.
"He's a good mate for Swift," he said.
"You're just jealous!" retorted Judith.
"Of what?" demanded Douglas.
"Of me starting a herd before you do!"
"Ha! Ha!" ejaculated Doug, without a smile, and nothing more was said until they reached the house.
At supper that night John asked Judith why she had shown so much friendship for Scott Parsons.
"I was sorry for him," she replied.
"But he killed our old neighbor!" exclaimed John.
"Yes, and Oscar had a notch on his gun, Dad; and you have one on yours."
"We put those notches there in the early days," returned John, "when every cowman carried the law on his hip. It's different now. You're altogether too highty-tighty, Jude, for a girl. You keep away from Scott Parsons, or I'll make you regret it."
Judith made no reply.
Scott's trial took place in April. It was a matter of deep interest, of course, to Lost Chief, and every one who could get to Mountain City by horse, wagon, or automobile, attended the court sessions. Judith and Douglas were chief witnesses and were royally entertained by young Jeff, who had returned to Lost Chief a week or so after his father's funeral.
Scott was acquitted on the plea of self-defense but he did not return at once to Lost Chief. The attitude of young Jeff did not make an early return seem diplomatic.
Douglas, when he came home from the trial, had a curious feeling that the winter just passed had ended his boyhood. He did not know why. He was not old enough to realize that when the fires of desire and the fear of death begin to sear a boy's mind, adolescence is passing and manhood has all but arrived.
Judith, who had accomplished her fifteenth birthday in March, a day or so before Doug arrived at the dignity of seventeen, had changed too. She had been less profoundly affected by the murder than Douglas; not that she was less sensitive or intelligent than he, but she was far less introspective than her foster-brother. And Judith had two unfailing foods for all hungers of the mind. One was her love of reading, the other, her love of riding; both absorbing, to the elimination of self investigation.
Douglas read a great deal, himself. Books and magazines furnished the only mental stimulants in the valley and it was a surprisingly well-read community. But Douglas, caring for Judith as he did, found it impossible to become fully absorbed in his old pastimes. He was restless, moody and lonely as only youth can be.
He and Judith both graduated from the log school early in June. There was the usual graduation dance at the post-office at which, as usual, Peter Knight officiated. It was a heavenly moonlit night. The air was fragrant from the acres of budding alfalfa and full of the lift and tingle that can belong to June only in the high altitudes. The ever strong, steady west wind of Lost Chief summers swirled down the valley.
The hall was dimly lighted by a single kerosene lamp. Cigarette smoke mingled with the pungent smell of whiskey, which seemed to be the chief ingredient of a concoction in a large pail, under the lamp. In the corner opposite the pail was a phonograph over which Peter presided.
Everybody danced. Even the dogs were not prohibited the floor. Only when Sister started a fight with Prince did any one protest and the dogs were driven back, temporarily, under the benches.
The schoolgirls in their white dresses were, of course, the belles of the occasion. Lost Chief, living its intensive life of isolation, probably did not realize of what superb physique were the youngsters of its third generation. Jimmy Day devoted himself to Little Marion Falkner, aged fourteen. Marion was called little to distinguish her from her mother, also Marion. The daughter at fourteen was five feet ten inches in height, the mother an inch taller. Even a badly cut muslin dress could not fully conceal the fine breadth of Little Marion's shoulders nor the splendid length and straightness of her legs.
Jocelyn Brown, Grandma's grand-daughter, dancing frequently with
Charleton Falkner, was at twelve only slightly shorter than Little
Marion. She had the face of an angel, the vocabulary of a cowman, and was
built of steel.
Inez Rodman, very fair and slender, easily five feet nine, was scorned by the older women but was brazenly popular with their husbands and the younger set of boys and girls.
Judith danced all the time but only occasionally with Douglas, who took her to task for her neglect.
"But, Doug, you and Dad are no novelty to dance with. What's the matter with you anyhow? You never used to want to dance with me."
"I'm just trying to keep you from dancing with all these roughneck riders." Douglas' chin was in the air above his bright blue silk neck scarf.
Judith's eyes swept him appraisingly. His white silk shirt hung loose on his thin, fine shoulders. His broad rider's belt, studded with blue enameled rings, encircled a waist almost as slender as Jude's own. His white duck trousers were turned up to display new riding boots, and his spurs, a graduation gift, were of silver and chimed at his slightest movement.
"You're almost as good-looking as Jimmy Day," she said with a sudden chuckle. "Run along, Doug. You aren't old enough to protect me from these bad men!" And she turned to dance with the waiting Jimmy.
It was nearing midnight when Douglas achieved his first dance with Inez.
She was the best dancer in the room, and Douglas told her so.
"I'll bet you haven't told that to the other girls," she said with a flash of her white teeth.
"I have! I said it to Jude when she turned me down for Dad."
"Smart! Helps both you and me with Jude, of course!"
"Much you care about that!" retorted Douglas.
"I like to be liked, of course," said Inez.
"You do?" Douglas' voice was so honestly incredulous that Inez exclaimed resentfully:
"Am I so much worse than a lot of the kids at school?"
Douglas shrugged his shoulders and replied, "Judith's straight. I've kept her so."
Inez laughed. "Judith's straight because she's that kind of a girl. Why don't you watch your dad instead of Jude?"
Douglas' lips tightened and Inez studied his face in silence for a moment; then she went on, "Pretty fond of Jude, aren't you, Doug? Your father is a devil with women—that big, bossy, good-looking kind always is. I tell Jude so every time I see her."
"How often do you see her?" demanded Douglas quickly.
"I guess she has a right to come to my house as often as she wants to."
"No, she hasn't," brusquely.
Inez sniffed, then smiled. She had a frank and lovely smile. Douglas' face softened and they finished the waltz in silence.
Not all the music was of the cheaply popular variety. Between dances
Peter slipped on occasional opera records. He was playing from Martha:
"Ah, so pure, so bright,
Burst her beauty upon my sight,
Ah, so mild, ah, so divine
She beguiled this heart of mine."
when a man called from the open door, "Good evening, folks!"
"Why, it's Scott Parsons!" cried Grandma Brown.
There was a pause, during which the tender voice of the phonograph thrilled on. Young Jeff, his red face even redder than his visits to the pail would warrant, put his hand to his hip. Judith darted before him and ran the length of the room.
"Hello, Scott! Welcome home! The next dance is yours."
"No, it's not!" shouted John Spencer. "You let Judith alone, you blank young outlaw you!"
"Get out of my way, Jude!" shouted Young Jeff. "I told Scott not to come back to Lost Chief!"
He strode down the room, his hand still on his gun. Scott's hand had been equally quick. Peter Knight turned off the machine. "Hold on, Jeff!" he cried. "You turned Scott over to the law, and the law acquitted him. If you'd wanted to take things in your own hands, you should have done so before the trial. If you kill Scott, you're no better than he is."
"That's right!" cried Grandma Brown. "And your record ain't so clean,
Young Jeff, that you can afford to start anything!"
Judith tossed her head. "I don't see why Young Jeff should be allowed to spoil a perfectly good party."
"If you can't put him out, Jude, I can!" cried Inez.
Everybody laughed. Jude seized one of Young Jeff's big hands, Inez the other. There was an uproarious scuffle which ended in the three, laughing immoderately, executing a hybrid folk dance to the one-step which Peter began to play. And Scott danced unmolested during the remainder of the night.
Charleton Falkner had drunk a good deal but was as yet little the worse for it. He and Douglas met at the pail shortly after midnight. Charleton gave the young man an amused glance.
"You look sort of bored, Doug! Come outside and talk a little."
Douglas gave a quick glance around the hall—at Judith, swooping in great circles with Scott Parsons, at Inez dancing with his father. "All right!" he said, and followed Charleton out into the moonlight. They perched on the buck fence and smoked for a time in silence.
"That's a good horse of Young Jeff's, eh?" said Charleton finally.
"Not as good as the dapple gray he gave me will be when I get time to break him," replied Douglas. "I don't know! I'm not as interested in things as I was."
"What's the matter?" asked Charleton, sympathetically.
"I guess Oscar's killing upset me," said Douglas vaguely.
"I don't suppose you ever heard of Weltschmerz," mused Charleton. "It's a kind of mental stomach-ache most young fellows get about the time they begin to fall in love."
Douglas grunted.
"Though you were pretty young to run into Oscar that way," Charleton went on thoughtfully.
"It isn't that; though I was scared stiff, of course. But it was seeing Oscar laid in the ground to rot and hearing you and Peter and Dad say that was all there was to it."
Charleton nodded. "I know! But you'll reach my state of don't give a hoop-la, when you're a little older. Wine and women and a good horse. They help."
Douglas drew a shuddering breath. "Is that all you've found out? All?"
"Of course, there's ambition," said Charleton. "I was ambitious, myself, once. You know my father was a college man and he wanted me to go back East to school. I almost went."
"Why didn't you go?" asked Douglas, immensely flattered at the mark of confidence being shown him. Charleton Falkner was notoriously reticent about himself.
"O, it's this easy life of the open! Why should I have gone into politics as my father wanted me to, when I could be happier with an easy living right here? And it would all end up there in the cemetery, anyhow. And what had ambition to offer me in comparison to the sport of running wild horses on Fire Mesa, or riding herd in the Reserve or hunting deer on Falkner's Peak. Horses, dogs, guns, women, whiskey, the open country of the Rockies. Enough for any man."
"Maybe!" muttered Douglas.
"What are you going to do now you're through school?" asked Charleton abruptly.
"Ride for Dad. He's promised me a herd of my own when I'm twenty-one."
"Listen!" said Charleton. "How'd you like to do a little business with me once in a while when John can spare you? You know, cattle, horses and such!"
Douglas grinned delightedly. "Do you really mean it? Why, you know, Charleton, as well as I do, there isn't a young rider in Lost Chief who wouldn't give anything to go out on trips with you."
"Fine! I'll be tipping you the wink one of these days. In the meantime, keep your mouth shut to every one but your father. Come in and we'll have a drink on the new partnership."
Douglas had as yet acquired no great taste for such fiery pollutions as the pail contained. But Charleton now applied himself so strenuously to the business of getting drunk that shortly he was leaning on the phonograph and reciting with powerful lungs:
"'Tis but a tent where takes his one day's rest
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest;
The Sultan rises and the dark Ferrash
Strikes and prepares it for another Guest."
No one heeded him particularly. He smiled amiably at Peter, leaned farther on the machine, and said, "Somebody will have to ease me to my horse," then he drowsed forward over the phonograph. Douglas and Peter, laughing, eased him to his horse, and Charleton, his arms around Democrat's neck, jogged slowly off on the home trail.
June dawn was peering over the Indian Range when the party broke up. Scott disappeared with Judith. When John discovered this, he bolted after the two.
"You'd better go see that nothing happens, Doug," said Mary Spencer.
"John's drunk too much."
"I'm going home," declared Douglas. "I got some pride, and Judith's treated me like a dog to-night. She's too fond of starting something she don't know the finish of."
Mary and he were riding alone in the dawn. "You promised me you'd look out for her. Don't you care for her any more, Douglas?"
"Yes, I do!"
"Have you ever told her so?"
"She's too young."
"No, she isn't, Douglas. You remember you told me she knew more than I do."
Douglas said nothing; and after a moment, his step-mother said, hesitatingly, "Doug, I hate to see you dancing so much with Inez."
"What harm was there in it?"
"I don't know that I can tell you, Doug. When I was a girl, going to the log schoolhouse, we girls never thought of touching whiskey. Our mothers would have killed us if we had."
"The world do move!" grunted Douglas.
"I don't believe it's the world. Not from the books I read. I think it's just Lost Chief. The old folks in my day had real influence in the valley. There were many like Grandma Brown. But now! Why, your father will never be the good influence his father was, and I'd never be like Grandma. I don't know why."
"You can't even train your own daughter," said Douglas with entire frankness.
"Can the other mothers?" asked Mary resentfully. "What can I do when the other mothers are so easy?"
"It ain't exactly easy." Douglas spoke thoughtfully. "The Lord knows, all the kids in Lost Chief work hard enough and get walloped enough."
Mary sighed deeply. Douglas watched her face, so like Judith's but bearing tragic lines it would have broken his heart to see around Judith's young lips. With unwonted gentleness he leaned over to put his hand on Mary's while he smiled at her half sadly.
"Poor Mother! We are an ornery lot! But you are as good as gold, and Jude and I both know it!"
Quick tears stung Mary's gray eyes. She lifted his hand to her cheek for a moment, then, as he drew it away, she tried to return his smile. But nothing more was said until they reached home.
Just as they entered the living-room, Judith rushed in,
"I hate Dad! I hate him! Scott and I were jogging home by way of the west trail as peaceful as anything when Dad has to come along and start a row going!"
"Anybody hurt?" asked Douglas, watching Judith as she sat down on the edge of her bed, big tears on her cheeks.
"No, but no thanks to Dad! Scott turned round and left because I asked him to. There's Dad now!"
John clanked in, but before he could speak Judith rose and shook her forefinger in his face.
"Now, Dad," she said steadily, "there's going to be no rowing and no cursing. I'm sick of it! Right here and now I warn you to stop interfering with me or I'll leave!"
John raised his ready fist.
"None of that!" Doug's voice was quiet. "Finish what you have to say,
Jude."
John scowled, breathing heavily, his eyes never leaving Judith.
"I'm sick of it," she repeated. "There must be places in the world where there's something beside family rows."
"Are you through?" demanded John.
"Yes, I am."
"Then I've got one thing to say. You let Scott Parsons alone." John flung himself on the bed, and before Mary had taken off his spurred riding boots he was asleep.
Douglas went out to the corral where, soon after, Judith appeared with her milking pail. The tender pink mists rolled slowly away from the yellow wall of Lost Chief range. Judith, with heavy eyes and burning cheeks, looked from the mists to Douglas, who leaned on the fence and watched her.
"Jude," he said, "you are on the wrong foot. You ought to let whiskey and
Inez Rodman alone."
"Why don't you let 'em alone?" demanded Judith.
"It's different with a man!"
"O, don't give me that old stuff!" cried the girl. "We women do men's work in this valley. We'll have the men's kind of fun if we want it!"
"That's not the point," returned Douglas. "Women have to pay a price the men don't and that's all there is to it."
"It's not fair! It's not fair! I hate the world! I hate it! Looks like you'd either got to be like Mother or Inez Rodman."
"Your mother's all right. Only Dad's broke her just like he broke old
Molly horse."
"Did I ever say my mother wasn't all right? Only I'll tell you one thing, Doug Spencer, Inez Rodman's given me more sensible warnings about men than my mother ever did."
Douglas wore a worried expression. "Seems like there's something wrong about that. Mother knows all about those things." He cleared his throat.
The half angry look on Judith's face gave way to a smile.
"O Doug! Doug! You old owl! What's the matter with you? After all, it's good to be alive! I wish I had a horse as good as Buster and I wouldn't ask for much more in life."
"I'll give you Buster," said Douglas suddenly.
Judith's jaw dropped. "Give me Buster!"
"I mean it."
"But—but—why, Douglas, what's happened to you?"
"Judith!" Douglas tossed back his yellow; hair and put a brown hand over
Judith's. "Judith! I love you. Won't you be engaged to me?"
"Love me?" Judith's beautiful gray eyes opened their widest. "Why, it doesn't seem more than yesterday that you were calling me a pug-nosed maverick. And besides, I'm only fifteen and you're only seventeen."
"Is it Scott?" asked Douglas.
"It isn't anybody! Why, Douglas, you must be crazy!"
"Do I look crazy?"
Judith stared deep into Douglas' blue eyes. "No," slowly, "you don't."
"You can have Buster and Prince too," said Douglas.
"No, sir, Doug! Why, they're all you've got in the world!"
"I have that dapple gray Young Jeff gave me after the trial. He's old enough to break now."
There were tears in Judith's eyes. "Douglas Spencer, you are a gentleman! If I do have a horse like Buster, I can be lots more help handling the cattle."
"He's yours from this minute," repeated Douglas. "And so am I yours. But I'm not going to nag you about it. I'm just going to try to look out for you."
There was something so sober, so gentle, and so determined about Douglas that for once in her life Judith was at a loss for a reply. She started slowly for the cow shed. Then she turned back.
"But I'm not going to take Prince, Douglas. That's too much!"
"Well," said Douglas. "Maybe I will keep Prince for a while. It'll be kind of lonesome."
"Lonesome!" Judith repeated the phrase as though it struck a familiar chord. "Life is lonesome, isn't it Doug! Seems as though I never dare to be myself any more, since Oscar's death. That was the first time I ever realized how lonely you can be."
Douglas nodded, his eyes full of an understanding that was pitiful. Youth should not be allowed to contemplate this sort of loneliness. It is soul searing.
"But remember, Judith," he said, "that you've always got me."
She gave him an enigmatic look and returned to her work.
CHAPTER IV
THE HOUSE IN THE YELLOW CANYON
"Beauty: to see it, to hear it, to feel it: that's all that makes life worth while."
—Inez Rodman.
Douglas was both elated and dejected by his conversation with Judith. He was elated to feel that at last Judith knew his feeling toward her. He was dejected because he felt that she had no understanding of the depth and sincerity of this feeling. And with that marvelously naive egotism of the male, he gave many hours of heavy thought to Judith's weaknesses and temptations, none at all to his own. Perhaps more than anything, Judith's friendship with Inez began to worry him. The more he pondered on it, the more perturbed he became; and finally, a week or so after the dance, he resolved to ask Inez to break with Judith.
The Rodman house was built against the sheer yellow stone facing at the base of Lost Chief range, known incorrectly as the Yellow Canyon. The house of half a dozen rooms was the most picturesque cabin in the valley, for Grandfather Rodman had built the roof with an overhang, giving the house the hospitable shadows of a little Swiss chalet. There were several hundred acres belonging to the ranch. Free range had grown small before Inez' father died and he had gotten his acres well into grass and alfalfa. But when he and Inez' mother were wiped out by smallpox, leaving the ranch to Inez, the fields rapidly returned to the wild. Inez, fifteen at the time of her parents' death, was unwilling to lead the life of a ranch woman and for ten years the ranch had been going to pieces.
When Douglas rode up to the outer corral in the dusk of the June evening, he was struck anew by the disorder of the place. Cattle tramped freely about the house. An old steer was poking his head in at the kitchen window. Chickens roosted on a saddle, which was flung in the stable muck. Tin cans, old wagon wheels, the ruin of a sheep wagon, were heaped in confusion at one end of the cabin. Three or four dogs barked as Doug rode up on old Mike. He called Prince in and looked inquiringly at two other horses tied to the dilapidated corral fence. They were Beauty, his father's horse, and Yankee, Peter's roan.
As Doug sat hesitating, John and Peter came out of the kitchen laughing.
They swung, spurs clanking, up to the fence.
"What the devil are you doing here, Doug?" asked Peter Knight.
"Hasn't he got a right to call on the Harlot of the Canyon?" demanded John, with a chuckle. "Hustle up, Peter! The crowd'll be there for the game before you are."
"They can't get in till I unlock," replied Peter. "Here, John, take the key and ride on. I want to talk to Doug."
John caught the key and trotted off. Sister snarled at Prince, who wagged his tail apologetically.
"Sister's a shrew, all right," grinned Douglas.
"She sure can run coyotes, though," said Peter.
"She and Grandma Brown run this valley," added Douglas.
Peter laughed. "I'm strong for the ladies! Did you ever watch the moon rise, Doug, from the top of the bench back of the cabin there?"
"No," answered Douglas.
"Come on up! It's not a long ride. I've been wanting to make you a proposition for some time."
Douglas followed the postmaster silently. The horses were panting and sweating by the time they reached the top, and the rim of the moon was just peering over the edge of the Indian Range. All the valley lay in darkness. The two dismounted and threw themselves down on the ledge. Douglas lighted a cigarette while Peter filled his pipe.
"What are you planning to do with yourself now you're through school,
Douglas?"
"Ride for Dad."
"How'd you like to go East to school?"
"Nothing doing! I've got more education now than I'll need as a rancher."
"Well, I guess that's not particularly so," said Peter. "I was thinking—you know I'm alone in the world—that I might help you out if you had any leaning toward college or a profession."
"Ranching is good enough for me, thank you all the same, Peter."
For some moments Peter did not speak again. Coyotes wailed in the peaks above them. The moon showed more of its golden face.
"Does your father ever talk to you about your own mother, Doug?"
"No; I quit asking him questions years ago. Peter, all I know about my mother is that her name was Esther, that the smallpox wiped her folks out, and that they owned the north half of our ranch. There's an old photograph of her in Dad's bureau drawer. She was awful pretty."
"She was more than that, Doug! I knew her well. You see, I'm the only man in the valley that's a stranger, as you might say. I've only lived here twenty years. So I could appreciate your mother more than the natives. I came here a roundabout way from Boston. So did your mother's folks, about forty-five years ago. She looked as Yankee as her blood, thin and delicate, with a refined face. And all the coarse work women have to do in Lost Chief didn't coarsen her."
"How do you mean, coarse work?" asked Doug.
Dimly in the moonlight he saw the postmaster rub his hand across his forehead.
"Why don't you put Buster to hauling and plowing?" asked Peter.
"Too light and nervous."
"So was your mother too light and nervous for the kind of ranch work women have to do here. Women with blood and brains like most of the Lost Chief women are best used to keep alive the decencies and gentler things of life. Men lose those things in a cattle country unless the women keep 'em alive. If you keep women too close to the details of handling cattle and horses, they get rough and coarse too. And I calculate that Lost Chief and the world needs some decency and delicacy."
Douglas pondered over this for a long time, his eyes on the glory of the
Indian peaks. Then he said, "You knew my mother well?"
"Yes. I'd have married her, Doug, if she hadn't already married your father. She—she was so devilishly overworked and unhappy! But she never complained. Your father was crazy about her but he treats a woman like he does a horse. He doesn't know any different."
"O, don't tell me any more!" said Douglas brokenly. "The poor little thing! Seems as if I couldn't stand it. Peter, I'm glad she died!"
The older man was silent for a time, then went on. "Your mother came of good people. Her grandfather was a friend of Emerson's. Tucked away somewhere she had some letters the two men exchanged. Your grandfather dreamed dreams about establishing a new New England out here. Those letters should have been saved for you."
The radiant light now swept across Lost Chief creek and to the foot of the wall, drenching the Rodman ranch in beauty and mystery. Sister crowded against her master's back and snored. Prince whined dolefully as he always did at the moon.
"So taking one thing with another," Peter Knight explained, "I thought I might see if you had anything in your head except horse wrangling; whether you're as much your Dad inside as outside."
"I don't see why ranching isn't a good enough profession for any one!" protested the boy.
"In lots of places it is. But it's not in Lost Chief."
"I don't see why," repeated Douglas.
"It's awful hard here on the women is one reason. I never heard your mother swear or use a foul word," said Peter. "I've been on ranches in other places where the women would have been shocked at the idea. How about Judith?"
"You know she only curses like the other women do around here."
"Do you like it?" asked the postmaster.
"I never thought anything about it."
"There you are!" groaned Peter. "If I can only make you see! Doug, a woman lets down the first bar when she begins to swear and drink. She begins where Judith is beginning. She's mighty apt to end where Inez is ending. You just think about ranching in Lost Chief from your mother's point of view. It's a rough kind of a community, Douglas, compared with the same class of people in other communities. The talk itself is rough; how rough you can't appreciate because you've never heard anything else."
There was another silence. Then Douglas asked heavily: "Peter, what am I going to do to keep Judith from going to Inez for advice?"
"Might not be such bad advice! Inez has no illusions about what she's doing or what she's paying."
"You don't mean to say Judith ought to go there?"
"No, I don't! But if a kid like you goes there himself, how can you preach to Judith? And she only goes there for the dancing and fun."
"But I'm a man!"
"I don't care what you are. You can't preach good sermons with a foul tongue. You ought to have the nerve to look at yourself as you are before you try to bring up Judith. Lost Chief is still fairly honest. Even your father calls Inez Rodman by her right title. There's hope in that!"
"But what shall I do about Judith, Peter?"
"Might make a man of yourself, Doug!"
"What's the matter with me?" demanded Doug, indignantly.
"Douglas, you haven't a clean-cut idea to your name. And a kid of seventeen as self-satisfied as you are isn't worth baiting a coyote trap with."
"There's not a guy in the valley works harder than I do!"
"Right! Nor uses his brain less!"
"I suppose you mean I ought to go to college and let Judith go to the devil."
"Judith's pretty good stuff, herself," protested Peter. "A half-baked kid like you can't influence Judith!"
Douglas started to his feet. "By God, I will! You'll see!"
"There's only one way. Show yourself fit to influence her. Don't get a grouch at me, Doug. I've come a long, hard, lonely road. And all because I thought everybody was wrong but myself. I don't want your mother's son to make the same mistake, if I can help it."
"I'm the unhappiest guy in the world!" cried Douglas, passionately.
He mounted his horse and, followed joyfully by Prince, turned down the trail. Peter did not stir. For a long time he sat with his arm around Sister. The moon was high over the valley before he said aloud:
"O Esther! Esther! The years are long!" Then he too mounted and rode away.
As Doug trotted through Rodman's door-yard, Inez crossed toward the corral.
"Hello, Doug! Where've you been? What's the matter with Buster?"
Douglas drew up. "I gave him to Judith."
"Why, you blank little fool! It must have hurt you deep!"
"I guess Judith's worth it! Say, Inez, is there anything I can do for you to get you to keep Judith away from here?"
"I won't hurt her, Doug."
"Aw, Inez, what's the use of saying that! Make out you're sore at her."
"I could, but that won't do so much for her. Judith ought to have something to look forward to beside breeding calves and wrangling firewood for some lazy dog of a rancher, before she or any other Lost Chief girl will think keeping away from here is worth while."
There was a depth of bitterness in the woman's voice which Douglas felt rather than understood. He sat in awkward silence. Inez put her hand on his knee and looked up at him. Her face was tragically beautiful in the moonlight.
"Douglas, do you ever stop to think how beautiful Lost Chief country is?"
"Not often," admitted Doug.
Inez went on. "Peter Knight's been all over the United States and he says there's no place passes it in beauty. Sometimes when I see the valley looking like it does to-night, I cry. Doug, you are more promising than these other kids. When you ride round on the range try to keep your mind a little bit off cattle and horses and women and keep it on that line of the Forest Reserve the way it looks to-night. Or the way this yellow wall looks in the snow and the sunrise on it. And then, when you get that habit, tell Judith about it and get her to thinking the same way. Beauty can't live on rot, Douglas. I know that now. I don't care what Charleton quotes."
"Inez," asked Douglas huskily, "why don't you burn that old cabin up?"
"It's too late," replied Inez shortly; and she turned on her heel and left him.
Douglas rode thoughtfully along the home trail. He was angry with Peter and sorry for Inez, and he missed his mother as he never had missed her before. He had been only a baby at the time of her death. This was the first time that he had been told of the type of woman she was though he had heard much of his mother's father, old Bill Douglas. He went to bed that night with an entirely new set of thoughts.
The heaviest ranch work of the year was now at hand. The hay harvest was begun. From dawn until dusk, Doug and Judith worked in the fields and tumbled to bed at night as soon as the chores were done. They had many opportunities during the day for conversations, however, for after the hay was raked, Douglas and Judith drove one rick team, John and old Johnny Brown the other. Heavy work it certainly was, but work of what fragrance, under skies of what an unbelievably deep blue, in air of what tingling warmth and clearness! What unthinkable distances were glimpsed from the wild hay patch on the flank of Dead Line Peak! It seemed to Douglas, lying at length, chin elbow-supported, on the top of the last load, which Judith had insisted on driving, that he never before had sensed the beauty of the haying season in Lost Chief Valley. And again he seemed to see Inez's tragic eyes, which had shed tears over the beauty of these very hills. He turned the memory of those eyes over in his mind with a memory of the sardonic twist of Charleton's mouth as he had uttered his philosophy of life, and suddenly Doug wished that he dared to talk to his father about these things. He had asked John about the Emerson letters but John professed never to have heard of them. And Douglas fell to wondering about his grandfather's dream for Lost Chief.
They were pulling through the swamp road above the home corral. It was heavy going and when they reached the shade of a little clump of blue spruce and aspen, Judith pulled the team up for a short rest. She pushed her broad straw hat back from her face and half turned to look at Douglas.
"Have you seen that new litter of pups of Sister's?" she asked Douglas.
He shook his head and Judith went on. "Peter says I can have the pick of the lot, but there's only one I'd look at. He's the image of Sister. I'm going to train him so's I can take him out to run wild horses with me when he grows up."
"Wild horses! The last time it was bronco busting you were going into.
What's it all about, anyhow, Jude?"
"You don't suppose I'm going to spend my life in Lost Chief, do you?" demanded Judith.
Douglas swept the landscape with a lazy glance. "I don't see how you could beat it."
"O, for looks and stunts, yes!" Judith's voice was impatient. "But it's no place for a woman! I'm going to earn enough money to take me out where I can go on with my education and amount to something."
"I guess Peter's been talking to you," said Douglas.
Judith nodded. "Yes, and he offered to loan me the money for college. But
I won't be beholden to a man outside the family. I'll earn it myself."
"What'll you do with a college education after you get it?" Doug's glance was not lazy now, as it rested on the young girl's eager face.
"I'll do something beside cooking and horse wrangling for some old Lost Chief rancher, I can tell you that!" cried Judith. "I'm going to get out and see the world and know life!"
"And give up your horses and dogs and the big old mountains? Jude, you'll never do it. I'd like to get out myself sometimes, but I know I'll never be happy anywhere else."
"I don't expect to be happy, but I've got to know things."
"What things, Judith?"
The girl turned from Douglas to gaze at the far light on Fire Mesa.
"The truth about things," she said at last. "Inez says there's just one big fact at the bottom of everything and that is sex, and that there's only one thing worth living for, to make sex beautiful."
"She's a liar!" exclaimed Douglas indignantly, as if Inez had said something shameful. "Where does she get that rotten stuff?"
"From Charleton and poetry, I guess. How do you know she's wrong, Doug?"