Justin Wingate, Ranchman

“Do you mean that Mr. Davison is my father?” he cried.

“That’s jist what I mean!”

Sanders chewed again, and putting the memorandum book on his knee opened it carefully. Sibyl Dudley, though she had seen the book before, came forward softly from her chair to look. Her dark eyes had kindled. Justin stared at Sanders and the book. The shock of astonishment was still on him. He did not know what to think or say. Sanders appeared the least concerned of all.

“That’s jist what I mean, and hyer’s the little book in which your mother writ down the things I know about it; you can see it yerself, and you needn’t believe me. You was brought to that preacher, Mr. Wingate, by me, and left there. I took you and your mother into my wagon. She was too sick to walk even, and she died in it; and then, not knowin’ what to do with you, fer you was jist a baby, and I was only a kid myself, I took you to the preacher. I had left this mem’randum book behind, through a mistake; but I give him the Bible, and some other things, and calc’lated to bring this to him. But I didn’t right away, and then I lost track of him.”

Justin was trembling now. Though still unable to grasp the full meaning of this revelation, he saw that Sanders was recounting things he knew. There was no deception. He took the book in his shaking hands, when Sanders passed it to him. It was grimy and disreputable in appearance, but if Sander’s story were true it had been hallowed by his mother’s touch.

“When I heard the name of Wingate the first time that I come to the valley and stopped all night at Clayton’s I was goin’ to ask him all about you and tell him what I knowed; but he made me mad, when he cut me off that way, and I didn’t. 'Tain’t no good excuse fer not tellin’, I reckon, an’ you may think I hadn’t any better excuse later on, but that’s why I didn’t, anyway. Davison’s treatin’ me the way he did and that trouble I had with you made me keep my head shet till now. But that fortune teller, when I seen her the second time, said fer me to tell you the whole thing, and so I’m doin’ it, though mebbe it won’t please you.”

Sander’s tone was apologetic.

Justin heard in amazed bewilderment. Philip Davison his father! The thing was incredible, impossible. But he opened the memorandum book with reverent fingers, as Sanders wandered on with his explanations and excuses. This little diary at least was real. The first glance showed him the familiar handwriting which he knew to be his mother’s. He knew every curve and turn of the letters penned in the little Bible, which at that moment was in his trunk at the hotel. There she had written:

“Justin, my baby boy, is now six months old. May God bless and preserve him and may he become a good man.”

Here was the same handwriting, a portion of it in pencil so worn in places as to be almost illegible. Hardly hearing what Sanders was now saying Justin began to read. The dates were far apart. Some of the things set down had been written before Justin was born; others must have been penciled shortly before her death. Many were unrelated and told of trivial things. Others concerned her husband and her child. The details were more complete in the later pencilled notes, where she had sought to make a record for the benefit of her boy in the event of her death, which she seemed to foresee or fear. There was sadness here and tears and the story of a pitiful tragedy; and here also in full were the names of her husband and her son.

She was the wife of Philip Davison, and her son Justin was born a year after her marriage. Davison was then a small farmer, with a few cattle, living in a certain valley, which she named. Davison, as Justin knew, had come from that valley to the valley of Paradise. Davison’s habit of occasional intoxication was known to her before her marriage, as was also his violent outbursts of temper; but love had told her the old lie, that she could save him from himself. The result had been disaster. In a fit of drunken rage he had so abused her that she had fled from him in the night with her child. A terrible storm arose as she wandered through the foothills. But she had stumbled on, crazed by fear and more dead than alive. How she lived through the week that followed she declared in this yellowed writing that she did not know, but she had lived. She was journeying toward the distant railroad. Now and then some kind-hearted man gave her a seat in his wagon, and now and then she found shelter and food in the home of some lonely settler. She would not return to Davison, and she hoped he believed she had died in the storm.

The brief record ended in a blank, which had never been filled. Sanders—his name was not mentioned by her—had taken her into his prairie schooner—he was but a fatherless boy himself—and there she had died, worn out by suffering and exhaustion. But her baby had lived, and was now known as Justin Wingate.

A deep sense of indignation burned in Justin’s breast against Philip Davison, as he read the pathetic story. Against Sanders he could not be indignant, in spite of the wrong the man had done him by withholding this information through all the years; for Sanders had soothed the last moments of his mother, and Sanders’ wagon had given her the last shelter she had known. Justin’s fingers shook, and in his eyes there was a blinding dash of tears.

Sanders was still drawling on, stopping occasionally to chew at an unwilling sentence. It was an old story to him, and so had lost interest. Sibyl was standing expectantly by, watching Justin with solicitude for her plans. His feelings did not reach her.

“So I am Philip Davison’s son!”

Justin drew a long breath. His voice was choked and the words sounded hoarse and strange.

“I reckon I ought to 'a’ told you a good while ago,” Sanders apologized; “but I kinder felt that it would please Davison, and after that trouble you an’ me had I didn’t want to tell it; and, so, I didn’t.”

His cunning gray eyes shone vindictively.

“I don’t mind sayin’ to you that I wouldn’t turn my hand over to save Davison from the pit, if he is your father; he didn’t do right by me, an’ you didn’t do right by me. It won’t please him to know that you’re his son, fer you’re fightin’ him teeth an’ nail; and so I’m willin’ to tell it now.”

Sanders’ ulterior motive was exposed. First and last hatred of Philip Davison and of Justin had guided him.

“It must be a pleasure to you to know who your father really is,” said Sibyl, sweetly.

Justin regarded her steadily, without actually seeing her. His faculties were turned inward.

“Yes, that is true; I am glad to know who my father is. I have wondered about it many times. But I never dreamed it could be Mr. Davison. It doesn’t seem possible now.”

Yet in his hands he held the unimpeachable record.

Sanders rose, shuffling and awkward.

“I’ll turn the mem’randum over to you; I reckon it belongs by rights more to you than to Davison, and I don’t keer even to speak to him; he’s never done right by me.”

Justin aroused as Sanders moved toward the door.

“Sanders,” he said, “I’m obliged to you for this. I recognize this as my mother’s handwriting. You ought to have given it to me long ago, but I’m glad to get it now. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you did for her. I shall never forget it.”

“Oh, ’twasn’t nothin’ at all,” Sanders declared, glad to escape the denunciation he had feared.

“And I want you to tell me more about my mother,” Justin urged; “what she said when she came to you, and how she looked, and everything.”

Sanders sat down again, chewing the quid of reflection, and gave the details Justin demanded, for they had held well in his tenacious memory. Justin, listening with breathless interest, asked many questions, while Sibyl sat by in silent attention and studied his strong beardless face. He thanked Sanders again, when the story was ended.

Sanders appeared anxious to depart, now that he had performed his mission, and Sibyl was glad to have him go. Justin remained in the room. He was thinking of Lucy and desired to see her.

“When I got on the track of that story and understood what it meant, I felt it to be my duty to bring you and Mr. Sanders together and let you hear it from his own lips,” said Sibyl, regarding Justin attentively. “And I told him to be sure to bring that diary, for I knew you would want to see it and would prize it highly.”

It was in Justin’s pocket, but he took it out again, still handling it reverently.

“I thank you for that, Mrs. Dudley,” he said with deep sincerity. “The whole thing is so new, so unexpected, that I am not yet able to adjust myself to it; but it was a kindness on your part, and this book I shall hold beyond price.”

He studied again the yellowed writing.

“It is beyond price, for my mother wrote it!”

He put the book away and looked at Sibyl.

“The way I chanced to hear of the story was very queer,” Sibyl explained. “And the way it has turned out justifies the superstitious spasm which took me to that fortune teller. Sanders was coming out of her room as I went in. I had seen him in Paradise Valley, and so recognized him, though he did not notice me. When I passed in I spoke to the woman about him, telling her that I knew him; and then she gave me the story she had drawn from him, or which in a confidential moment he had told her. I saw the value of it to you, if true. I had an interview with him for the purpose of verifying it; and then I arranged this meeting, for I thought you ought to receive it straight from him.”

Justin thanked her again.

“I think I should like to see Lucy now,” he said, “if you have no objection.”

Sibyl seemed embarrassed, as she answered:

“I’m sorry to have to say that the servants inform me that she has gone out with Mary to spend the night with a friend in another part of the city. I thought she would be here, and I was sure you would want to have a talk with her after that.”

Justin was disappointed.

“I might as well be going then. It is late; too late I suppose to call on her at the place where she is stopping. I will see her to-morrow evening.”

He got out of his chair unsteadily. His emotions had been touched so strongly that he felt exhausted, though he had not realized it until he arose. Then he took his hat and went out, after again thanking Sibyl for her kindness.

CHAPTER X
IN THE CRUCIBLE

In his room at the hotel, Justin re-read that little memorandum book many times that night, and tried to accommodate his mind to its new environment. It was a difficult task. But at last the harshness he had felt toward Philip Davison went out of his soul. By degrees the submerged longing for a father’s love began to make itself felt. Philip Davison was his father; he did not doubt it now, though it seemed so strange. He had known from Ben and Lucy that Philip Davison had married twice. Ben was the child of the first marriage, and he the child of the second; and Ben was his half brother!

He saw resemblances now that he had never thought of. Looking at his reflection in the mirror, he beheld blue eyes like those of Philip Davison. The forehead, the nose, the length of body and limb, were all, when thus studied, reminders of Philip Davison. Davison was florid of face, and Justin would probably be florid of face when he grew older, for his complexion was now of that type. Davison’s face was seamed with the marks of petulance and many outbursts of bad temper. Justin did not see any of those marks in his own smooth youthful countenance, but he knew that if he gave way to the fits of rage that swept over him at times with almost uncontrollable force, similar marks might set there the seal of their disapproval.

He was sure, however, that in many ways he was not like Philip Davison, even though he had as a boy so admired Davison; and he was glad to believe that these better traits he inherited from his mother. Though he did not know it, from his mother he had inherited the iron will which was manifesting itself. It had manifested itself in her when she refused to turn back to the home from which she had fled, but traveled on, weak and faint, until death claimed her. Her body had broken, but her will had stood firm to the last; and it had shown itself up to the end in her resolute manner of putting down in that little book her story for the benefit of the child she hoped would live after she had failed and passed on. To Ben, the child of the first marriage, had descended Philip Davison’s weaknesses and from his mother had come the slight stature and the pale face. Except in his mental characteristics Ben resembled his father less than Justin did.

Justin did not sleep that night. He knew that Philip Davison was in town, and he began to long to see him. This desire rose by and by as a swelling tide, bearing with it the years’ suppressed longing for a father’s love. As a child Justin had felt that inexpressible longing. It had moved within him when Clayton came first to the preacher’s house and he had pressed closely against Clayton’s unresponsive knees while exhibiting the little Bible in which his mother had written. Clayton had afterward satisfied that longing in a measure; but only the knowledge that the touch of the hand laid on him was really the touch of the hand of his own father could ever satisfy it fully.

So, through the years, that desire had yearned. Justin felt it again now, deeper than hunger, more anguishing than thirst. And it was not lessened by the feeling that Philip Davison might not wish to satisfy it, and perhaps could not. For circumstances stood now like a wall between this father and son; circumstances which were not the choice of either, any more than were the intuitions and the motives, selfish or otherwise, which led them. They had traveled by different paths, and they stood apart. Nevertheless, the yearning was there, deep, pathetic, and it seemed that it would never be appeased. Justin forgot that white indignation that at first had burned with furnace heat against Philip Davison. Love took its place. Philip Davison was his father!

As this desire gained in strength Justin made an effort to see his father. He decided that he would put that little diary into his father’s hands and be guided by the result. He surely could trust the better impulses of his own father! But he failed to find Davison. Fogg was absent, probably in attendance upon some all-night caucus, and Fogg was the only man likely to know where Davison could be found.

In the morning Justin discovered that Davison was temporarily absent, possibly out of town, but was expected at any moment. Fogg told him this, and observed that Justin showed a flushed, anxious face and had passed a sleepless night. Thereupon, remembering the promise of Sibyl Dudley, Fogg’s courage rose. He dared not question Justin, and Justin was non-committal. This new knowledge Justin wished to share first of all with his father.

In his room a brief note was brought to him. Lucy Davison was in the ladies’ parlor, and he went down to see her. She was seated by one of the windows that overlooked the noisy street. When she arose to meet him he saw that Sibyl had told her everything. There was sympathy and glad happiness, mingled with anxiety, in her manner. Her emotions tinted her cheeks and shadowed her brown eyes. Being a man, Justin did not note how she was dressed, except that it was very becomingly. Being a woman, she not only knew that she was entirely presentable herself, but saw every detail of his garb, from his well-polished shoes to the set of his collar. And she knew that he was clean and handsome. He had never questioned that she was the most beautiful woman, as to him she had been the most beautiful girl, in the world. Mary Jasper’s rose-leaf complexion and midnight hair were juvenile and inane beside the glory of Lucy Davison’s maturing womanhood.

“I am so glad, Justin, for you!” she said, and gave him her hands without reserve.

“And I am glad!” His voice choked, as he led her back to the window, where the rumble of the street noises stilled other sounds. “I am glad; though at first I couldn’t believe it, for it seemed so improbable. But I’m sure now it is true.”

She looked at him with fond admiration; at the straight firm features, at the handsome head with its crown of dark hair, at the tall muscular form, and into the clear blue eyes. And the blue eyes looked into the brown with love in their glance.

“And you’re almost related to me,” she said, sympathetically, “for you’re Ben’s half-brother!”

He smiled at her, and tried to assume a cheerful, even a jovial tone.

“I had thought of that, and of what a good thing it is that we’re not wholly related!”

“Let me see! What is our relationship now?”

“You are my sweetheart now, and will be my wife some day!”

She flushed attractively.

“I didn’t mean that. Let me see—Ben’s mother and my mother were sisters. So Ben and I are cousins.”

“And I am Ben’s half-brother, so you and I are half-cousins.”

He tried to speak in playful jest.

“No, we’re not related at all!”

“Then we shall have to become related, at an early day.”

“Uncle Philip is my uncle by marriage, but not my blood uncle. I am a cousin to Ben through my mother and his mother, who were sisters. So if I have no blood relationship with Uncle Philip, your father, I have none with you, for your mother was not related to me in any way.”

“And I say again I am glad of it.” He retained his jesting tone, though his mood was serious. “But if you marry me you are going to marry bad luck, for it seems that my name is Davison. You know the rhyme:

“You insist on joking about it. You know that Davison was not my father’s name, but only the name I took when Uncle Philip adopted me.”

“And that will break the bad luck spell!”

“Don’t you think it will?”

“I think it will; I know it will!” he declared.

“I came to see you about something, as well as to congratulate you and sympathize with you.”

“I tried to see you last night and failed.”

“Yes, I know. I heard about it this morning. I wish I could have seen you last night, but it is as well this morning. What I want to ask you is if you intend to vote against the cattlemen to-day?”

The cheery light died out of his eyes.

“I have thought it over, and have talked with Mrs. Dudley, and it seems to me it is your duty to consider the matter very carefully now that you know your relationship to Uncle Philip.”

A conservative by nature, and unconsciously influenced by the atmosphere of the Davison home, Lucy Davison had begun to fear that Justin was in the wrong. From that there was but a step to the conclusion that it was her duty to tell him so. She did not dream that she was but a pawn in the game which was being played by Sibyl Dudley.

Justin looked into the earnest brown eyes, and his voice was grave.

“If any one in the world could make me vote against my opinion it would be you. I’m not going to argue with you, but let me say just this. If I vote with the cattlemen, or refuse to vote at all, it will place me in the position of sustaining them in a rebellious defiance of the national government, in addition to upholding the unsheltered range, a question on which perhaps we could not agree. But the fences which they maintain on government lands are so clearly illegal that the government has in some instances ordered them down. The cattlemen hope by sending a senator to Washington to have that order rescinded and the entire matter dropped. They have fenced untaken public lands, and lands which settlers occupy, or wish to occupy, and they want to continue this without interruption from Washington.”

“You said you didn’t intend to argue!”

“I do not intend to argue. I’m simply going to ask if you think I would be justified in using my vote, or withholding it, to continue a practice that is in defiance of the orders of the land department, even to please my own father?”

“That order is not, as I understand, a legal enactment, and it might be changed,” she urged.

“It will be changed, no doubt, if the cattlemen win; but should it be changed, or withdrawn?”

“It seems to me that the settlers are doing well enough, and those fences aren’t injuring anybody.”

He was silent a moment, thinking.

“I want to please your Uncle Philip—my father—and I want to please you. I’ll admit that I have myself had some doubts on this question lately, serious doubts. Yet I cannot make myself think that I have not been in the right from the first. If I thought I was wrong I would change in a minute without regard to the consequences.”

“It wouldn’t be right for me to urge you to vote against your conscience,” she admitted, touched by his fine sense of honor. “Only, as I’ve tried to think it over and get at the right of it, it has seemed to me that there are, must be, two sides to the question. Every question has two sides, you know.”

“Yes; that is so.”

She went on, not sure of her ground, nor altogether certain of herself; yet feeling that this was a crucial moment and that every argument ought to be duly weighed and considered.

“You won’t feel hurt if I remind you that you are inexperienced? New light may come to you, so that the opinions you now hold you may not hold a year from now.”

“That is true; but so long as I do hold them I must be honest about it.”

“It is the opinion of Uncle Philip that this annoyance of the settlers cannot last. He says there are only a few places where they can farm successfully. But in the meantime, while they are trying every place, they are making a vast amount of trouble, by thus spreading all over the country. You know, yourself, that some of them are taking land where water can never be got to it. The immediate result will be, Uncle Philip says, that the ranchmen will be almost ruined, by being forced to surrender land to them that can never be fit for anything but a cattle range. The settlers will find out by and by that the land cannot be farmed; but while they are finding it out, and bringing loss to themselves, they will bring the downfall of the cattlemen.”

“I have thought of all these things,” he said.

He looked at her earnestly. He was troubled.

“Lucy, I wish I only knew what I ought to do in this crisis! I must face it and do something. I have looked for your Uncle Philip, and intend to look for him again, and shall try to have a talk with him. He is my father, and when he knows that he is, and I ask him to advise me as a father would advise a son——.” He stopped, in hesitation. “Anyway, whatever I do—whatever I do—remember that I love you!”

As soon as she was gone, he began another search for his father, driven by the feeling that he must explain fully to Davison his views and motives, as well as hear Davison’s arguments and opinions, and so perhaps be able to stand erect in Philip Davison’s estimation, as well as in his own. This was an anxious, even a wild desire, and it pressed him hard.

Fogg, scenting a reconciliation, sent a messenger in hurried search of Davison. At the hotel, and at the state house, the lobbies were overflowing. Men began to come to. Justin not singly but in platoons. Somehow the word had gone round that he was weakening. But he was not ready to talk. To friends and enemies alike he was non-committal. He wanted to see his father; he wanted to place in his hands that memorandum book, and get an acknowledgment of their relationship. The interminable buzz of the anxious and excited politicians struck against deaf ears.

Philip Davison was out of town.

Fogg, with telegraph and telephone, was wildly trying to reach him. Sibyl Dudley had come to the state house in shivering expectancy. The jarring hum of the political machine rose ever higher and higher, yet Justin gave no indication of a changed or changing purpose.

The ordeal through which he had passed since coming to Denver had taught him how to keep silent amid the maddest tumult. At first he had sought to justify whatever course he intended to pursue, only to find his statements snapped up, distorted, spread abroad with amendments he had never thought of, and so mutilated that often even he could not recognize the mangled fragments. So, having learned his lesson well, he kept still. Other men could do the talking. To the men who besieged him he had “nothing to say.” Until he saw Philip Davison and placed that diary in his hands he felt that he could have nothing to say. Even then he might act without saying anything. From time to time he observed Fogg watching him covertly.

While he waited, senate and house convened and began to vote for the senatorial candidates. Fogg went into the senate chamber, after speaking to a member of the lower house. Justin, whose name was far down on the rolls, remained in the lobby until a sergeant-at-arms came summoning members of the house to vote. Then he entered. When he dropped heavily into his seat he was greeted by suppressed cheering and a buzz of anxious and excited comment. These things did not move him; what moved him was a mental view of his father’s face, and that inner tide of feeling demanding the satisfaction of a father’s love.

Suddenly he recalled Fogg’s covert and anxious looks, and like a flash came the question: Could this whole thing be but a plot to bewilder him and cause him to vote with the ranchmen, or not at all? He knew that Lucy would not deceive him, but she might herself be deceived. He could not doubt that record in the handwriting of his mother, but after all the reference might be to another Philip Davison. His nerves tingled and his brain reeled under the influence of this startling suggestion.

While thus bewildered, his name was called. He half rose, staggering to his feet, hardly knowing what his physical actions were. But his mind began to clear. Clayton’s face, the dream of Peter Wingate, and that picture of the unsheltered range, rose before him; again he saw the illegal fences; again starving cattle looked at him with hungry eyes, and their piteous moans were borne to him on the breath of the freezing wind. Once more he was the thrall of the past. His courage stiffened, the firm will was firm again. He felt that there was but one rock on which he could set his trembling feet, and that was the rock of righteousness. If in this crucial moment he failed to stand for that which in his innermost soul he knew to be right, the self-respect which had nurtured his sturdy young manhood would be gone. His face whitened and his hand shook; but his voice was firm, when he announced his vote. It rang with clear decision through the silence that had fallen on the house.

Sibyl Dudley had lost.

CHAPTER XI
FATHER AND SON

Philip Davison saw Lucy before she returned to Paradise Valley and learned from her the strange story which had been told by William Sanders. From Fogg and others he had already heard how Justin had voted. And the discovery that even after Justin had been informed of this relationship he had voted against the cattlemen hardened his heart. He refused to see Justin now, and went back to Paradise Valley angry and uncomfortable. There he sought out Sanders and obtained the story direct from him.

After his talk with Sanders, a talk in which Sanders revealed to the full the bitterness and vindictiveness of his narrow mind, Philip Davison shut himself up in his room at the ranch house, where he would not see any one, and through the greater part of the night sat reviewing the past, while he smoked many cigars. The drinking habit which had been the curse of his earlier years he had conquered. Since the night in which his wife had fled never to return, he had not set liquor to his lips; and Ben’s growing habits of intoxication threw him continually into a rage. Only that morning, encountering Clem Arkwright and Ben together in the town and seeing that both had been drinking, he had cursed Arkwright to his face, and with threats and warnings had ordered Ben home. That Ben had not obeyed did not make Philip Davison’s cup the sweeter that night.

The prosaic accuracy of the details of the story told by Sanders, with what he knew himself, convinced Davison of its truth, in spite of his previous belief that the cloud-burst which came shortly after his wife had fled from home had engulfed and slain both her and her child. His belief of her death had been based on the fact that nearly a year after her disappearance the unidentified bodies of a woman and child had been found in the foothills; and in a little, remote cemetery, where these bodies rested, a simple slab held the names of Esther and Justin Davison.

Davison recalled now that it was the name, more than anything else, that had induced him to give Justin employment on the ranch. The name of Justin and the memories it evoked had touched some hidden tendril of his heart, and had made him kind to Justin at times when but for that he might have been otherwise. As often as he had felt inclined to turn upon Justin in hot anger that name had softened his wrath. He had never a thought that Justin was his son; yet the name had won for Justin a warmer place in his regard than Justin could have won by his own merits.

As Davison sat thus in the shadowed memories of the past, there came to him a stirring of natural affection. But, whenever he turned to what he considered Justin’s dastardly betrayal of the ranch interests, this vanished. To combat it there was, too, a long-smoldering feeling against the woman who had deserted him, and who by so doing had revealed to the world his drunken rage and cruelty. That desertion he had never been quite able to forgive. For years he had tried not to think of her; but that night her memory rose strong and buoyant. He knew he had wronged her deeply, and had outraged her feelings cruelly. Perhaps that was at bottom why this long-smoldering recollection of her aroused his smothered anger.

By degrees, as he thought over the past, Davison began to resent what seemed an injury done him. It was as if fate had preserved this boy through all the years to avenge the wrongs of the mother. His own son had risen to oppose him, to thwart his desires, to smite him with mailed fist. And he had helped unwittingly to fit fighting armor to the stalwart shoulders of this son; for it was through his position on the ranch, as the companion and friend of the cowboys, that Justin had arrived at that condition of comradeship with them which had really given him his present place. Davison felt that Ben should have held that position—Ben, who had the ranch interests at heart, and would have voted right. Ben was disobedient, wild, intractable, but Ben would have voted right! Davison loved Ben. Justin seemed still an outsider, an intruder. And the feeble stir of natural affection passed away.

Justin remained in Denver through the remainder of the legislative session and cast his vote with the agriculturists on a number of questions. He wrote to Lucy frequently, but she did not re-visit Denver, so he did not see her again until his return to Paradise Valley. In her letters she acquainted him fully with the fact that Philip Davison did not feel kindly toward him. Justin wrote a letter also to Davison, but it was not answered. He did not again see Sibyl Dudley, nor Mary Jasper. And Fogg apparently had been permanently alienated.

When Justin came home, and it was known at the ranch that he was at Clayton’s, Philip Davison sent for him. Justin obeyed the summons with anxious hesitation, and took the little memorandum book with him, and also his mother’s Bible. He had not sent the diary to Davison with the letter as proof of their relationship, and he was resolved not to part with it now. Davison might examine it as much as he liked, but he should not keep it, nor should he destroy it.

Davison received Justin in the upper room where he had sat that night thinking of the past. His bearded face was flushed and his manner was constrained. Justin had a sense of confusion, as he stood face to face with this man whom he now knew to be his father. It seemed an unnatural situation. Yet in his heart was still that longing for a father’s recognition and love. He had not put off the clothing he had worn while in the city; he might not do so at all, as he did not intend to become again a cowboy or work on a ranch. That phase of his life was past. Philip Davison never wore cowboy clothing, except when engaged in actual work on the range or at the branding pens. Yet he was not dressed at his best, as he now received his son; and having come in from a long ride, his black coat was still covered with dust.

The blue eyes of the father and of the son met. Justin was as tall, and his features much resembled those of his father. But while one face was beardless, and young and strong, the other was bearded and prematurely aged. In Davison’s reddish beard, which was worn full and long, were many strands of white, and whitening locks showed in his thick dark hair. The blue eyes were heavy, and the fleshy pads beneath them seemed to have increased in fullness and size. Justin even fancied there were new lines in the seamed and florid face. Justin’s face was flushed and his swelling heart ached, as he stood before his father.

Davison waved him to a chair without extending his hand in greeting, and Justin sat down. Then Davison took a seat and looked at him across the intervening distance as if he would read there the truth or falsity of Sanders’ story. Apparently he was satisfied.

“I have had a talk with Sanders,” he began, speaking slowly and with an effort. “You have a memorandum book which I should like to see.”

Justin produced it with fumbling fingers. Philip Davison took it without apparent emotion, and opening it looked it through. Having done so he closed it and passed it back. In the same way he examined the Bible which Justin gave him.

“You are my son; I haven’t seen any of your mother’s handwriting for a long time, but I recognize it readily. The story told in that diary has been naturally colored by her feelings. I hope I am not quite as black as she has painted me. But all that is past, and it is not my intention to talk about it now. The point is, that you are my son. Since hearing about this matter I have been thinking over our relationship and asking myself what I ought to do. As my son, when I die I shall see that you are not unprovided for; but the bulk of my property will go to Ben, with something for Lucy. I wasn’t always as prosperous as I am now; I’ve had to fight for what I’ve got, and I still have to fight to keep it. I have done and am doing this for Ben. Your sympathies have been from the first with those who are my enemies, and in the legislature you voted with them from beginning to end. You were elected chiefly by ranch votes, and you betrayed all of the ranch interests. The thing is done now, and can’t be undone; yet, after all my struggles, it is not pleasant to know that the hand of my own son did this thing.”

He settled heavily back in his chair.

“So the most of what I have will go to Ben. He is wild, but he will settle down; I was wild in my youth. You are like your mother. She was an obstinate angel with an uncomfortable conscience, and for some men such a woman is an unpleasant thing to live with.”

Justin felt a swelling of indignation at this mention of his mother.

“You have all of her obstinacy and general wrong-headedness on matters which don’t concern you. I am willing to say to you frankly, that after a brief experience with her I ceased to desire to live with her; but even yet I do not think she had any good reason to leave me as she did. It took her to her death, and in the long run has made you pretty much what you are. So I do not see that I can blame you in all things, but I do blame you for the pig-headed obstinacy and foolishness you showed in Denver. You had a great opportunity to befriend those who had befriended you and would have helped you, and you wilfully, even maliciously, threw it away.”

In spite of his feelings Justin maintained a discreet silence. His longing for something more than a bare recognition of his relationship he saw was not to be gratified. He had returned the diary and the Bible to his pocket, where he felt them close against his heart. They seemed akin to an actual memory of his mother, and could not be taken from him, whatever happened. Their pressure was almost as the touch of his mother’s warm hand on his bosom.

“If you like,” Davison went on, “you may transfer yourself to this house and remain here, doing what work on the ranch you please. Some of the cowboys have been dismissed, and others will be soon. But for this fact that you are my son I should forbid you to come upon the place. There is going to be a change in the business, too; your votes at Denver helped to make that necessary, and perhaps in that change you may find work more congenial to you than ranch work. Think it over. I want to do what is right by you. I will see that you have employment if you want it, and in my will I shall see that you are not wholly unprovided for. That is all.”

He arose, and Justin stood up in flushed confusion, having said not a word either in justification of himself or his mother. He had no words now, as he passed from the room and from the house, though if he could have voiced anything it would have been the disappointment that murmured in his heart.

With the memory of that interview oppressing him, Justin questioned whether he had not after all been stubborn, pig-headed, and cruel. He reflected that perhaps he had been, even though he had sought to do only that which was right. His mother, he had been told, possessed an “uncomfortable conscience,” and he did not doubt he had one himself. It could not be wrong to do right, of course, but at times it seemed very inexpedient. Should a man bend himself to expediency? If he had done so, his father would have received him doubtless with warm words, instead of that biting chill which frosted the very glance of the sunshine.

Standing in the yard oppressed and tortured by doubt, Justin saw Lucy Davison coming toward him from the direction of the little grove. The cottonwoods were still bare, but that she had visited them seemed a good omen, and he moved toward her.

Her brown eyes smiled as they met his. She was temptingly beautiful; a mature woman now, with the beauty of a fragrant flower. Her clear complexion had not changed since her girlhood, and the tint which emotion gave to her cheeks was as the soft blush of the ripening peach. She was more beautiful than when a girl; all the angularities of girlhood were gone; and when from his greater height Justin looked down on her rounded throat and swelling bosom, and caught that kindly light in her eyes, he forgot the chill of the room from which he had come and the cold calm of his father’s speech.

“I am afraid you are a bad, bad boy,” she said, with a touch of sympathy, as she put her hand on his arm, “but I hope Uncle Philip hasn’t been saying terrible things to you. You have been to see him, I know?”

“Yes, I have been to see him, and the interview wasn’t wholly pleasant. Perhaps I have been the bad boy you suggest, and he may be justified; I’m sure I don’t know. All I know is I tried to do what was right, and appear to have made a mix of it.”

“Come in and we will talk it over. Uncle Philip told me this morning that you may come and go all you want to, or even make your home here now. That is pleasant news, anyway, isn’t it?”

Her pleasant manner softened the recollection of that painful interview with Philip Davison. So Justin passed from an unpleasant interview to one so pleasant that it almost took the bitterness and the sting out of the first.

CHAPTER XII
CHANGING EVENTS

Among those who were first to welcome Justin on his return to Paradise Valley were Steve and Pearl Harkness. They came to Clayton’s with their little daughter, of whom they were proud. They made their call in the evening. Harkness was clad in new brown over-alls and jacket of the same material, and looked too big for them. Mrs. Harkness rustled in a dress of real China silk, whose shade of red made her round red face seem even hotter and redder than it was, Helen was fluffy in white skirts that stood out like those of a ballet dancer. Clayton in his dusty snuff-colored clothing, and Justin in his business suit of checked gray were insignificant figures compared with Pearl Harkness and her daughter.

“Now, Helen, what was it I told you to do?” said Pearl, lifting a plump round finger and shaking it at Helen, as soon as Harkness had finished his boisterous greetings.

Helen hesitated, and Pearl catching her up deposited her in Justin’s lap.

“Now, what was it I told you to do?”

Then Helen remembered. Putting her chubby arms about Justin’s neck and leaning hard on his breast, while she squeezed to the utmost of her strength, she said:

“I love you, Justin; I love you!”

Justin clasped her tightly in his strong arms.

“I love you, too!” he declared, and kissed her.

Standing by while he held Helen thus, Pearl, with a touch that was almost motherly, pushed the clustering dark locks back from his forehead, revealing the scar of a burn. She gave it a little love pat.

“You won’t mind?” she said, and to Justin’s surprise her voice choked with a sudden rush of tears. “You seem almost like my own boy, Justin. You weren’t much more than a boy, you know, when you first came to the ranch; and I can’t help remembering how you got that scar. I wanted to see if it had gone away any.”

Harkness coughed suspiciously.

“If you ever git married, and your wife pulls out so much of your hair that you’re bald-headed, that scar’s goin’ to show,” he said.

Pearl caught Helen out of Justin’s lap, with sudden agitation.

“Helen, you’re getting dirt all over Justin’s nice new clothes!” With bare plump hand she brushed away some infinitesimal specks which Helen’s shoes had left. “I ought to have looked at her shoes before I put her up there! Why didn’t you tell me to, Steve? Helen, you’ll never be a lady, unless you keep your shoes clean.”

“All them heroes and hero-wines of Pearl’s keeps their shoes ferever spick an’ span an’ shinin’,” said Harkness. “People always do, you’ll notice, in books; at least them she reads about do. She was readin’ a book yisterday, and I looked at the picture of the hero. He had boots on that come to his thighs, and they’d jist been blacked. And the women in them books wear more fine clothes than you could find in a milliner’s shop.”

“Clothes aren’t found in a milliner’s shop, Steve!” Pearl corrected, as she settled Helen firmly on her feet and proceeded to spread out the fluffy white skirts. “Justin will think you don’t know anything.”

Helen, escaping from her mother’s clutches, and apparently glad to escape, made straight for Harkness, who caught her up, planted on her cheek a resounding kiss, and then plumped her down astride of one big knee. Pleased by this preference, his face was radiant.

“Justin,” his eyes shone with enthusiasm and delight, “there ain’t anything like bein’ married. Try it. I used to think I was havin’ fun, cuttin’ round skittish and wild like a loose steer on the range; this ain’t fun, mebbe, it’s comfort.”

“From what I hear, Justin intends to try it one of these days,” said Pearl, with a questioning look. “Don’t you think he is, Doctor Clayton? You’re hearing things like that, aren’t you?”

Clayton laughed, and glanced at Justin’s flushing face.

“I can’t say what his intentions are, but if they concern a certain young lady I could name, they have my hearty approval.”

“Yet it does seem almost like marrying relatives,” said Pearl. “I can’t get used to that yet. I had a cousin that married another cousin; and their children—well, you just ought to see their children!”

“Monkeys, air they?” said Harkness.

“Monkeys! Why, Steve, they’re plum fools! They don’t know enough to come into the house when it rains.”

“This would be a good country fer ’em to live in, then; don’t rain here more’n one’t in a year, and I reckon they could strain their intellects enough to git a move on ’em that often.”

He looked at Justin.

“Speakin’ of this country and rain, we’re reckonin’, Pearl and me, that we’ll take up farmin’, fer a change; think it might be healthy fer our pocket book. I’ve had notice from Davison to quit, the first of the month. I told him I’d quit to-morrow, if it suited him and he had a man to put in my place; that if he didn’t think I was earnin’ all the good money I got and a little bit more, I did, and I stood ready to go on short notice, or without any notice at all. I’ve knowed it was comin’ this good while, and I’ve been gittin’ ready fer it. Davison and Fogg air sellin’ off a good many cattle. The rest they’re goin’ to throw onto the mesa, an’ water at the water holes of the Purgatoire; the gover’ment is orderin’ down the fences, and it would take an army of cowboys to hold the cattle off the crops, with them fences gone.”

Clayton was interested.

“Do you think of farming here in the valley?” he asked.

“Yes, we’re figgerin’ on buyin’ Simpson’s place; it’s well up toward the head of the ditch, and if any water comes we’re reckonin’ that will give us a whack at it. Simpson’s made me an offer to sell. I’m jist waitin’ to see what’s goin’ to turn up here in the ditch line.”

“I tell him he’ll wait round till it’s too late,” said Pearl. “Fogg will buy that land before he knows it; he’s buying up farms everywhere, for himself and Davison.”

She turned to Justin with a smile.

“I’ve been wondering if you wouldn’t get married and settle down to farming, too; you never liked ranching.”

Pearl was as much of a match-maker as any dowager of her favorite novels.

“Pearl won’t never be satisfied until that weddin’ comes off,” said Harkness. “These women air bound to have a weddin’ happenin’ about one’t in so often, er they ain’t happy; if it can’t be their own weddin’, another woman’s will do. The weddin’s of a neighborhood air what keeps the old maids alive, I reckon; they live ferever, ye know, drawin’ happiness out of other women’s marriages.”

“I’m not an old maid!” Pearl asserted with spirit.

“No; I happened along!”

Before Mr. and Mrs. Harkness departed that evening, Dicky Carroll, galloping by, stopped for a few moments.

“I’ve got a job over at Borden’s,” he announced to Harkness. “He’ll be a better man to git along with than Davison, anyway; so I’m kinder glad to go. And if I stay round hyer longer I’ll be tempted to shoot Ben full of handsome little holes; he’s been meaner than a polecat to me ever sense that election.”

Then he shook hands with Justin and Clayton, who had come out into the yard. The moonlight revealed him in full cowboy attire, with his rope coiled at the saddle bow.

“They’re sayin’, Justin, that you helped to bu’st the cattle bizness round hyer. I ain’t believin’ it; but if you did, what’s the dif? There’ll be plenty of ranches fer as long a time as I’m able to straddle a pony and sling a rope, ranches back where the farmers can’t go. When I can’t ride a horse any longer I’ll quit cow-punchin’ and go to playin’ gentleman like Ben. From the fine clothes he wears I judge there’s money in it. Well, so long; luck to all of you!”

Fogg did not vary from his custom, when he visited Paradise Valley. He came over to Clayton’s, and sat in the little study, in the chair he loved, which, though big, was now almost too small for him. He put his fat hands on the arms of the chair, stretched out his fat legs, and with his watch chain shining like a golden snake across his big stomach, talked as amiably and laughed as loudly as ever.

Lemuel Fogg believed that it is better to bend before the storm than to be broken by it. The government at Washington had heard from the farming settlers and irrigationists of the West. Many states had spoken that winter, and their voice had been as one. The agricultural element, feeble and scorned at first, was becoming a power. Congress, heeding its voice, was beginning to devise ways and means by which vast areas of public land hitherto thought fit only for grazing, if for that, could be watered by irrigation. Even the East, long hostile because it did not want more rich Western lands opened to compete with Eastern agriculture, held modified opinions. The order of the land department for the removal of the illegal fences on the public domain was to be enforced, and the fences had begun to come down. Seeing the hand of fate, Fogg and Davison had sold some of their cattle, were contracting their grazing area, and had begun to take thought of other things.

“We’ll go with the tide,” said Fogg, whom Davison followed in most things pertaining to matters of business, for Fogg’s success had been phenomenal. “What do we care whether it’s cattle or something else, if we can get money out of it? Never buck against the government; it’s too strong, and you’ll get into trouble. We’ll turn farmer; we’ll irrigate.”

So Fogg and Davison were increasing their already considerable holdings of land in Paradise Valley, by purchases from settlers and from the mortgage companies. It was reported that in some places ranchmen secured land by inducing their cowboys to settle on quarter-sections and so obtain title from the government. Fogg and Davison would not do that. Not because they were too scrupulous, but because they were too wise. It would be an unpleasant thing to be haled into court for land swindling by the government agents who were ordering down the fences.

While thus securing the land, they had quietly obtained a controlling interest in the irrigating canal which the settlers had constructed. It was owned by a stock company; and before the farmers knew what was occurring it was to all intents and purposes in the possession of Davison and Fogg.

“It begins to look as though you were right, Justin, and that I was wrong, up there in Denver,” said Fogg, sliding his fingers along his watch chain and beaming on Justin. “I couldn’t see it then, but it really looks it; anyway, your side seems to be winning out, and I didn’t think it could.”

“I thought I was right,” Justin declared, with vigorous aggressiveness.

“Yes, I know you did; but I thought you was wrong, and of course I had to oppose you. But, anyway, it’s all right now; we’re going to make it all right. Some few of the farmers are kicking because Davison and I have got control of the ditch, but they’ll live to bless the day the thing happened. We’ll strengthen their dam and enlarge the canal and laterals and furnish plenty of water. Where they watered ten acres we’ll water hundreds. We’ve got the money to do it with, and they hadn’t; that’s the difference.”

His shining watch chain rose and fell on his heaving stomach, as he talked. Looking at it, Justin could almost fancy it had been wrought of that gold which Fogg, with heavy but nimble fingers, gathered from even the most unpromising places. Fogg seemed almost a Midas.

Fogg did not take his departure before midnight, but when he went he was in a very good humor with himself and all the world.

CHAPTER XIII
IN PARADISE VALLEY

Coming one forenoon from the kitchen, where she had been instructing the new cook installed in the position Pearl had held so long, Lucy observed Justin walking in a dejected manner down the trail that led to Clayton’s, and saw that he had been in conversation with Philip Davison. She knew what that conversation had been about, and when Davison came into the house she followed him up to his room. There was a heightened color in her cheeks, as she stood before her guardian. He looked up, a frown on his florid face.

“What is it?” he asked almost gruffly; but she was not to be put down.

“You won’t mind telling me what you said to Justin awhile ago?”

She slid into a chair, and sat up very straight and stiff.

“You sent him to me, I suppose?”

“I didn’t, but I have known he meant to speak to you.”

“He wants to marry you!”

“That isn’t news to me.”

“No, I suppose it isn’t. But what has he got to marry on?”

“Now, Uncle Philip, I’m going to say what I think! Justin is your son, and every father owes something to his child. Don’t you think so?”

Davison’s blue eyes snapped, but he would not be angry with this favorite niece.

“Well, yes, I suppose so, if you put it that way.”

“Justin and I have been just the same as engaged for a long time.”

“Yes, I’ve known that, too. I told him to show what there was in him; and,” his tone became bitter, “he has shown it!”

Lucy refused to become offended.

“Of course we can’t marry unless you help him along. Justin has been wanting to go to Denver. He thinks he could do well there by and by, after he became acquainted and had a start. Doctor Clayton knows a man there to whom he will give him a letter. But expenses are something terrific in a city, and we should have to wait a long time before Justin could work up to a salary that would justify us in getting married.”

“So it’s you that wants to get married, is it?”

“I am one who wants to get married; Justin is the other.”

Davison laughed in changing mood.

“What do you demand that I shall do?”

“I don’t demand anything, I simply suggest.”

“Then what do you suggest? He had the nerve to say that he thinks he is capable of managing the new ditch.”

“I simply suggest that you help him in some way, as a father who is able to should. He has worked for you a long time for very small wages; wages so small that he could save nothing out of them, as you know. I think that you ought to start him on one of the farms you have recently bought, or else give him some good position, with a salary that isn’t niggardly. It seems to me he is capable and worthy.”

“If I don’t give him a position, that will postpone this most important marriage?”

“I don’t want him to go to Denver.”

A smile wrinkled Davison’s face and lighted his blue eyes.

“You are a good girl, Lucy; and Justin is a—is a Davison! And that means he is hard-headed and has a good opinion of himself. I’ll think about it. Now run down and see that the cook doesn’t spoil the dinner. She burnt the bread yesterday until it was as black as coal and as hard as a section of asphalt pavement. By the way, I don’t suppose you could cook or do housework?”

“Try me!” she said, relaxing.

And she departed, for she did not yet trust the new cook.

The next day Davison offered Justin the position of ditch rider, at a salary that made Fogg wince and protest, though he believed Justin to be the very one for the place. That Justin should be given this position seemed even to Fogg advisable, as a business consideration. The “rider” of the canal and ditches comes into closer relationship with the water users than any other person connected with an irrigation company. He sees that the water is properly measured and delivered, and he makes the equitable pro-rata distribution when the supply is low or failing. Justin had the confidence of the farmers; and, as there were sure to be many complaints, he would be a good buffer to place between them and the company.

Justin accepted the position. In a financial sense, it promised to advance him very materially; and the prospect of the proper irrigation of Paradise Valley pleased both him and Clayton. It was the beginning of the fulfillment of Peter Wingate’s dream. Yet Justin knew he was asked to undertake a difficult task. Even when they had everything in their own hands, the farmers had wrangled interminably over the equitable distribution of the water.

Having control of the source of supply and of the canal and laterals, the first act of Fogg and Davison was to offer water to the farmers at increased rates. They were strengthening the dam, and widening the canal and laterals, at “terrific cost,” Fogg claimed, and reimbursement for this necessary outlay was but just.

It was Fogg who planned and Fogg who executed. This was new business to him, but no one would have guessed it. Over his oily, scheming face hovered perpetual sunshine. His manner and his arguments subdued even intractable men. It was said of him that he could get blood out of a grindstone. What he said of himself was, “Whenever I see that the props are kicked out from under me, I plan to have some kind of a good cushion to land on.” The cushion in this case was the exploitation of the inevitable, the irrigation of Paradise Valley, for the benefit of the exploiters.

Many new settlers were drawn in by attractively-worded advertisements. Then one of the things Justin had feared came to pass. Fogg sold more water than he could deliver, trouble arose, and this trouble descended, in great measure, on the head of the ditch rider. In spite of all he could do to distribute the water fairly complaints and protests were made.

Fogg had planned for this condition, and he was iron. He claimed that an unusually dry year had worked against the success of the company; and as there was a clause in the water notes covering such a failure to supply water, the farmers were forced, sometimes under the sheriff’s hammer, to pay the notes they had given. Buying sometimes from the sheriff, and sometimes through second parties from the farmers themselves, for numbers of them, in disgust, were willing to sell and leave the country, before the end of the first year Fogg and Davison had greatly increased their land holdings, by “perfectly legitimate” methods.

CHAPTER XIV
THE DOWNWARD WAY

Making the rounds of the house one night before retiring, Lucy came upon Ben Davison rummaging through the desk in his father’s room. The drawers of the desk had been pulled out, the small safe had been opened, and papers littered the chairs and floor. Surprised thus, Ben faced her with an angry oath. She saw that he had been drinking. Instead of putting color into his pale face, intoxication always made it unnaturally white and set a glassy stare in his eyes.

“What are you doing here, Ben?” she demanded.

“I’m looking for money,” he declared surlily. “Is it any of your business?”

“I think it is, when you begin to look for it in this way. Uncle Philip doesn’t know you’re up here.”

“I’m going to have money, that’s what!” he snarled. “Let him give me the money I need, instead of driving me to tricks like this.”

“He gave you money only the other day; I saw him.”

“How much? A hundred dollars! There’s money in this room, or there was, and I know it; and I’m going to have it. I’m going to have as much as I want, too, when I get my hands on it.”

“I shall have to report you, Ben!”

He caught her fiercely by the shoulders, with a clutch that made her wince and cry out in pain.

“You have hurt me, Ben!” she sobbed.

“I’ll kill you, if you come meddling with my affairs!”

He pushed her against the wall, and faced her with so threatening a mien that she was frightened. The glare in his glassy eyes was enough to make her tremble.

“If you say anything about this I’ll kill you! Do you hear? And if you know where the money is I want you to tell me.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” she declared.

“Curse you, I believe you do! I want money, and I’m going to have it. I’ve got to have a thousand dollars; it’s here, and I know it.”

He began to search again, tossing the papers about.

“Uncle Philip never keeps so much money as that in the house, and you should know that he doesn’t.”

“Well, he could get it for me if he wanted to. He’s got plenty of money. I’m tired of being treated like a beggar. He says he’s carrying on his business so that he’ll have money to leave me when he’s dead; but that isn’t what I want—I want it now.”

“Won’t you go down stairs, Ben?” she begged. “You almost broke my shoulder, but I shan’t mind that if you will go down stairs; and I’ll straighten up these papers for you and return them to their places.”

“I won’t! I’m going to see if that money he got from Fogg yesterday is here.”

“He put it in the bank of course, Ben; he wouldn’t run the risk of keeping it in the house.”

“You go down stairs or I’ll make you,” he threatened.

She did not go.

“What do you want the money for—to pay a gambling debt to Arkwright?”

“Arkwright!” he screamed at her. “It’s always Arkwright! But I’ll tell you, this money isn’t for him. Instead of troubling me, why don’t you go to that puler, Justin? He’ll be glad to see you, maybe; I’m not. So clear out.”

“He is your brother!”

“My half-brother, _he_ says; I’ve not acknowledged the relationship yet!”

She could do nothing with him, and she retreated down the stairs. For some time she heard him walking about; then he descended and left the house. When he was gone she went up to the room and found that he had tried to re-arrange the papers, but had made a mess of it. She put them away as well as she could, and closed the drawers and the safe. She did not believe that he had secured any money, but she did not know. And she passed a bad night, not knowing whether to acquaint Davison with this latest of Ben’s escapades or not.