The result of this quarrel was that Justin was banished temporarily from the ranch, though it was not assigned as the reason for his exile. Fogg had been forced to take a flock of sheep in payment for a debt owed him by a sheepman. The sheep were already in Paradise Valley, and were to be sent at once into the mountains. Davison ordered Justin to take charge of these sheep, and hurried shepherd and flock into the hills, while Lucy was temporarily away from home. Justin could not rebel against this order except mentally, if he wished to remain in Davison’s employment and retain, or regain, his good-will.
Before setting forth he left a letter for Lucy with Pearl Newcome, and was sure she would get it. Yet he departed from the ranch with a heavy heart; and as he went on his way he questioned why he and not another had been selected for this life of lonely exile in the mountains. He was almost sure it was because of his trouble with Ben.
Justin was assisted in driving the sheep to the high altitudes, where they were to graze until cold weather would make it advisable to bring them into the lower foot-hills. A sufficient supply of food for a month or more was taken along, and he was helped in the work of erecting a brush-and-pole house.
He was well up among the pines and aspens, where the nights are always cool, with often a sharp frost even in mid-summer. Snow banks were in sight, and here and there streams and small lakes of the purest ice water. Occasionally a lordly elk crashed through a grove, or came out with such suddenness on the lonely herder and his woolly charges that it whistled and fled in astonishment. Black-tailed deer passed frequently on the slopes, and now and then Justin came upon the track of a bear. The only animals he could not love were the worthless coyotes, that made life a burden to him and murdered sleep in their efforts to slay the sheep.
Of all, the sheep were the most vexatious and stupid, having no originality of impulse, and being maddeningly, monotonously alike. When hungry, in the earlier part of the day, they exhausted his strength and that of his dog, as he followed them, while they swarmed everywhere, nibbling, nibbling, with a continual, nerve-racking “baa-a-a! baa-a-a!” Justin could not wonder that sheep-herders often go mad. The sheep were more than two thousand in number; and to keep anything like a count of them, so that he might be sure that the flock was not being devastated by the sly coyotes, was trying work.
But there were other times when he was given hours of lazy ease, when he could lie with the faithful dog on the cool grass and look up into the cool sky; could listen to the foaming plunge of the mountain stream, to the fluttered whisperings of the aspens and the meanings of the pines, and could watch the flirting flight of the magpies, or the gambolings of playful deer.
So Justin had much opportunity for thought; and his thoughts and imaginings ran wide and far, with Lucy Davison and Doctor Clayton not very far from both center and periphery wherever they ran or flew. That he had been forced to come away without a parting word with Lucy troubled him sorely.
He had his mother’s little Bible with him, containing the wisp of brown hair, and the written flyleaf:
“Justin, my baby-boy, is now six months old. May God bless and preserve him and may he become a good man.”
He read in it much, in his leisure; and studied that writing many, many times, thinking of his mother, and wondering about his father. And he questioned as to what his life probably would have been if his mother had lived, or if he had known of his father. Yet he was very well satisfied to have it as it had been ordered. It had brought to him Lucy Davison; and he might have missed her, if fate had not led him to Paradise Valley and kept him there.
He was quite sure that no father could have done more for him than Clayton, nor loved him with a more unselfish love. To the missionary preacher, Peter Wingate, and to Curtis Clayton, he acknowledged that he owed all he was or could ever be. He thought very lovingly of Clayton, as he lay on the cool slopes looking into the cool sky.
And, indeed, the lonely doctor had been wondrously kind to the boy whose life and future had been so strangely committed to his keeping. Without intending anything in particular beyond the impartation of knowledge, he had rounded, on the foundation laid by Peter Wingate, a structure of character that combined singular sweetness with great nobility and strength, for Justin had inherited from his mother certain qualities of sturdy resolution which Clayton himself lacked. The one great blemish, or fault, was a quick and inflammable temper, that almost resisted control.
Utterly unaware of the fact himself, as he lay thus among his sheep, while his thoughts ranged far and wide, Justin was like that ruddy David, youthful son of Jesse, with whose life story, told in his mother’s little Bible, he was so familiar, or like Saul in his boyhood days. His lusty youth, his length of limb, his shapely head covered with its heavy masses of hair, his tanned strong face with its kindly, clear-cut profile, and his steady unwinking eyes that looked into the blue skies with color as blue, all spoke of unrecognized power.
He dreamed of the future, as well as of the past, building cloud castles as unsubstantial as the changing clouds that floated above him. He knew that many of them were but dreams. Others it seemed to him might be made to come true, with Lucy Davison to help him. He did not intend to remain either cowboy or sheep-herder, he was sure of that; and he did not think he would care to become a doctor, like Clayton. He would like to accomplish great things; yet if he could not, he would like to accomplish the small things possible to him in a manner that should be great. Not for his own sake—he felt sure it was not for his own sake—but for Lucy and Clayton! He wanted to be worthy of them both.
It must be confessed that his wandering thoughts were chiefly occupied with Lucy Davison. He delighted to recall those happy moments under the cottonwoods. Always in his dreams she was true to him, as he was to her; and she was longing for his letters, as he was for hers.
Naturally, other things and people were often in Justin’s thoughts. He thought of Philip Davison, of Ben, with whom he had quarreled, and of Mary Jasper and her father. With a keen sense of sympathy he pictured Sloan Jasper plodding his slow rounds, trying to satisfy with his horses and his cows that desire for loving companionship which only the presence of his daughter could satisfy. He marveled that Mary could leave her father to that life of loneliness for even the gayeties of Denver. And thinking thus, he pitied Mary.
Often Justin lay under the night sky, rolled in his blankets, when the coyotes were most annoying, ready to leap up at the first alarm given by the dog. He carried a revolver for use in defending the sheep against the coyotes. This was a case in which, as he knew, even Curtis Clayton would approve of slaying. He began to see clearly, too, in this warfare with the coyotes, that nature, instead of being uniformly kind, as Clayton liked to think, is often pitilessly cruel, and seems to be in a state of armed combat in which there is never the flutter of the white flag of truce.
It was the visualizing to him of that age-old conflict in which only the fittest survive. As he looked out upon this warring world, all the animals, with few exceptions, seemed to be trying to devour all the others. The coyotes slew the sheep, the mountain lions pulled down the deer, the wild cats devoured the birds, and for all the fluttering, flying insect life the birds made of the glorious turquoise skies an endless hell of fear.
Often there came to Justin under the night sky rare glimpses of the wild life of the mountains. Playful antelopes gamboled by, all unconscious of his presence, frisking and leaping in the light of early morning, or scampering in wild rushes of fright when they discovered his presence or the dog gave tongue; bucks clattered at each other with antlered horns, or called across the empty spaces; wild cat and cougar leaped the rocks with padded footfalls and occasionally pierced the still air with screams as startling in their suddenness as the staccato, Indian-like clamor of the coyotes. Always wild cat, cougar and coyote brought Justin from beneath his blankets with every sense alert, and sent the dog scurrying into the gloom in the direction of the sound.
Clayton’s habits of study and writing had not been lost on Justin, and now and then he tried to set down in his little note book some description of the things that moved him. He composed letters, too, to Lucy, many letters which he never meant to send. In them he told her of his life with the sheep, and of how much he loved her. Often these letters were composed, but not written at all.
In one of those letters to Lucy which were not intended to be sent he incorporated some of his thoughts concerning the farmers of the valley, together with a bit of verse. The old hope of Peter Wingate had come back to him for the moment, and he saw the valley as Wingate saw it in his dream of the future:
Justin got no further. The impossibility of the fulfillment of that dream had come to him as he sought to picture the present.
When the driver of the “grub wagon” came with supplies and the news of the ranch, he brought a letter from Lucy; and he took away a letter for her, when he departed. The news from home was cheering. Outwardly at least matters had not changed there. No one had come, and no one had gone, and the usual work was going on.
More than once the driver came, and each time Justin saw him depart with unspoken longing. He would have given much to be privileged to go back with him. Yet Justin was not and had not been lonely in the ordinary meaning of that word; he was lonely for the companionship of Lucy Davison, for the glance of her brown eyes, for the music of her words; but, possessing that inner light of the mind in which Clayton believed, it brightened his isolation as with a sacred fire, filled the wooded slopes and craggy heights with life and beauty, and suggested deep thoughts and deeper imaginings.
Filled with dreams and work, with desire and accomplishment, the slow months rolled by. With the descent of the snow-line on the high peaks the sheep were driven into the foot-hills, and then on down into the plain itself, where not only grass, but the various sages—black, white, salt and bud sage—together with shad-scale and browse, furnished an abundance of the food they liked.
Then they were taken away, their summer herding having been a good investment for Fogg; and Justin returned to Paradise Valley, clear-eyed, sturdy, and handsomer even than before. He had learned well the to him necessary lesson of patience, and had tasted the joy of duty well done. More than all, he had begun to find himself, and to know that childhood and youth had fallen from him, and that he was a man.
Justin was startled by the changes which had come to Paradise Valley in the closing weeks of his long isolation in the mountains. Steve Harkness and Pearl Newcome were married, and Lucy Davison had been sent East to school. The latter filled him almost with a feeling of dismay. Among the other changes to be noted was that William Sanders had written letters to a number of farmers, some of whom were now in the valley and had taken government land or purchased mortgaged quarter-sections.
Justin discovered, in talks with them, that these men had been neighbors of Sanders on the irrigated lands at Sumner. They had sold out there, as Sanders had done, and having heard from him of the possibilities of Paradise Valley, they had moved to it, with their families and belongings. Others, it was reported, were coming. Some of them brought a few cows, as well as horses; and before the winter storms came they erected cheap dug-outs for themselves, and prepared flimsy shelters and cut wild hay for their stock. It was their intention to try irrigation.
Justin soothed his disappointment at not seeing Lucy Davison by writing many letters to her, to which she replied sparingly. He was away from home much of the time, riding lonely lines with other cowboys. Whenever he came home and found no letter from Lucy he felt discouraged; when one was there, he returned to his work cheered and comforted. As for Ben, Justin saw little of him. Davison kept them well apart, by giving them separate assignments.
In the severest of the winter storms, when the grass of the range had been covered with snow for many days, the cattle breached the fences, and mingling with cattle from other ranches they began to roam over the mesas and valley, a terror to the settlers, and as destructive as the locusts of Egypt. The cowboys could do nothing with them; could not hold them on the open lines, and could not repair the broken fences in the bitter cold and the blinding snow. It was a repetition in miniature of the days when the whole of the Great Plains was an open range, and cattle, shelterless and without food, wandered in the winter storms in pitiable distress, dying by thousands.
As it was useless and perilous to try to ride any line, Justin and the other cowboys came home. Justin’s feet and hands were frosted, and he went to Clayton’s, where he remained, to have the benefit of Clayton’s medical skill as well as his companionship.
Clayton was so troubled by the sufferings of the cattle that he could talk of little else. From his frost-covered windows weary bands of the starving animals could be seen ploughing through the drifts. In each band the largest and strongest were usually in the lead, breaking a way through the snow; the others followed, moving slowly and weakly, in single file, across the white wastes, their legs raw and bleeding from contact with the cutting snow-crust. Their hair was so filled with fine snow beaten in and compacted that often they resembled snow banks, and they were wild-eyed, and gaunt to emaciation.
Now and then a band would turn on its course and move back along the path it had broken, eating the frozen grass which the trampling had uncovered. Nothing in the way of food came amiss. The dry pods and stalks of the milk-weed and the heads of thistles protruding through the snow were hungrily snatched at. Unfenced stacks of wild hay prepared by the farmers and settlers for their own stock, disappeared like snow drifts in the spring sun, unless the owners were vigilant and courageous enough to beat back the desperate foragers. Many wild combats took place between the cattle and the exasperated farmers, and more than one man escaped narrowly the impaling horns of some infuriated steer. It seemed cruel to drive the cattle from the food they so much needed, but the farmers were forced to it.
Even Clayton and Justin found it necessary to issue forth, armed with prodding pitchforks, and fight with the famishing cattle for the stack of hay which Clayton had in store for his horse. He had fenced it in, but the cattle breached the fence and he could not repair it perfectly while the storm lasted.
“The cattle business as it is carried on in this country is certainly one of the most cruel forms of cruelty to animals,” Clayton declared, as he came in exhausted by one of these rights for the preservation of his little haystack. “The cattlemen provide no feed or shelter; in fact, with their immense herds that would be an impossible thing; and you see the result. Their method works well enough when the winters are mild, but more than half of them are not mild. Yet,” he continued sarcastically, “the cattlemen will tell you that it pays! If they do not lose over twenty per cent, in any one year the business can stand it. Think of it! A deliberate, coldblooded calculation which admits that twenty out of every hundred head of cattle may be sacrificed in this method of raising cattle on the open range! And the owners of the cattle will stand up and talk to you mildly about such heartless cruelty, and dare to call themselves men! Even Fogg will do it. As for Davison, I suppose he was born and bred to the business and doesn’t know any better. But it’s a burning shame.”
Justin was stirred as deeply. Clayton’s viewpoint had become his own. It lashed his conscience to feel that he was in some slight measure responsible for the condition he was witnessing. He was connected with the Davison ranch, if only as an employee. As for holding the cattle behind the fences and the open lines, that had not been possible; yet, if it could have been done, their condition would have been worse. By breaking away they were given more land to roam over, and that meant more milk-weed pods and thistle heads, and more slopes where a bit of frosted grass was bared by the knife-like winds, to say nothing of the stacks of hay now and then encountered.
Yes, it was a burning shame. Justin felt it; and he grew sick at heart as day by day he watched that tragedy of the unsheltered range, where hundreds of hapless cattle were yielding up their lives.
On her way home for a brief visit at the close of the summer, which she had spent in the East, Lucy Davison stopped in Denver, to visit Mary Jasper, from whom she had received glowing letters. Mary had not written for several weeks, and Lucy was surprised to find her ill; an illness resulting from the unaccustomed excitement of the Denver life she led under the guidance of Sibyl Dudley and the too sudden transition from the quiet of Paradise Valley. She was not seriously ill, however, and looked very attractive, as she lay propped about with cushions and pillows, her dark hair framing her face and her dark eyes alight with eagerness when Lucy appeared. Lucy was almost envious, as she contemplated Mary’s undeniable beauty.
Sibyl lavished attention and care on her charge, and she greeted Lucy with every evidence of delight and affection.
“My dear, you are tired!” she said. “Let me have some cakes and tea brought up for you at once. A little wine, or some champagne, would be good for you. You wouldn’t care for it? Then we’ll have the tea and cakes. And Mary may sit up in bed a few minutes, just in honor of this visit. It was so good of you to stop off in Denver to see her.”
Sibyl was very beautiful herself, quite as beautiful as Mary, though very much older. Lucy thought she had not aged a day in appearance since she had first met her, in the home of that acquaintance in the little town at the entrance to Paradise Valley. Sibyl was past-master of that wonderful preservative art which defies wrinkles and gray hairs and the noiseless flight of that foe of all beautiful women, Time. She defied Time, as she defied everything, except the small conventionalities of life, and the changing fashions. She made friends with these, and they served her well.
While talking with Lucy, and nibbling at the cake or sipping the tea, she stopped now and then to caress with coaxing tones her canary, which she had brought into the room and hung in its gilded cage at the window to brighten the place for Mary. She possessed naturally, or had cultivated, that soft, low voice which a Great Poet has declared to be an excellent thing in a woman, and she had assiduously cultivated an outward appearance of much kindness; so that altogether she was very charming, even in the eyes of Lucy Davison, and a most agreeable hostess. Mary was delighted with her.
“Do you know,” said Mary, in a burst of confidence, which a favorable opportunity brought, “she is so good! And she is as kind to the poor as she can be. I know of two old women, and one old man, whom she nearly supports. Of course it isn’t really any sacrifice for her to do it, for she is wealthy. It’s the funniest thing, the way she speaks about it. She says she gives things to poor people just because the giving makes her feel good. ‘Give a quarter to a beggar,’ she says, ‘and you will feel warm inside all day. It is a cheap way to purchase comfort.’”
In that same conversation Mary chanced to mention Curtis Clayton.
“I spoke of him to Mrs. Dudley one day, and I asked her if she knew him.”
“‘Oh, yes, I know him,’ she said; ‘he is a fool, a poor fool!’
“‘He looks so comical,’ I said to her, ‘swinging that stiff arm!’
“Then she looked at me—oh, I can’t tell you how funny her eyes were then, just as if coals were shining behind them, and she said, awfully quiet:
“‘I happen to know how he got that—it was by doing a brave and unselfish deed! He was in love with a beautiful but silly girl, whom I knew.’
“Then she told me the story. He was with this girl on his vacation. He was in Yale then, and she was the daughter of a worthless hotel-keeper. He first met her at the hotel while he was spending a summer in the mountains. She knew that he loved her, and she was vain of it, and she wanted to make him show it. There was a flower growing in a cleft of a cañon, and she asked him to get it for her. He descended. It was dangerous; and she, looking over and pointing out the flower, lost her footing and fell. She was caught by some bushes, but she had a good fall, and landed at a point where she could not get up. The fright that he got by seeing her fall caused him to lose his footing, and he slipped and broke his left arm. To get her up he had to reach down with one hand and hold to an aspen with the other. He could only hold with his right hand, for his left arm was broken; so he dangled his broken left arm over for her to clutch; and she, frightened and selfish, gripped the hand, and after a great effort scrambled up. He held on until she was safe, and then (he had already turned white as death) he fainted. He revived after a time, and they got out of there, forgetting the flower; and though the doctors did what they could, he has had a stiff arm ever since.”
Mary shivered a little, sympathetically.
“I can’t ever think of Doctor Clayton now without seeing him with that girl, dragging her out of that place with his broken arm. I asked Mrs. Dudley if the girl married him after all that; and she said yes, but it would have been better for him if she hadn’t, if she had gone to her death in the cañon that day, for she wasn’t a girl who could ever make any man happy. And do you know, I think it must have been that girl who caused him to live the life he is living!”
A sudden confusion had attacked Lucy Davison, who recalled certain conversations with Justin. They were in the nature of sacred confidences, so could not be mentioned even to Mary Jasper; but she, at least, knew that Sibyl was herself the girl whom Clayton had drawn from the cañon with that dangling broken arm, and whom he had afterward married. Why had he deserted her, or she him? And why were they now living apart? Believing that the name of Sibyl’s husband had been Dudley, Mary had failed to guess the truth.
Mary told Lucy that it would not be surprising if Mrs. Dudley married again, as there was “just the dearest man” who called on her with much frequency and seemed to be greatly enamored of her.
“He has a funny little bald head,” said Mary, “and he wears glasses, the kind you pinch on your nose; he keeps them dangling against his coat by a black cord. And he is as kind as kind can be, and a perfect gentleman. Mrs. Dudley says he is very rich, and I really believe she will marry him some time, for she seems to like him.”
The name of this amiable gentleman, Lucy learned, was Mr. Plimpton, and he was a Denver stock broker. Neither Mary nor Lucy dreamed of the truth of his relations with Sibyl Dudley.
Having recurred to people and affairs in Paradise Valley, Mary chattered on like a gay little blackbird, and knew she was very bewitching, bolstered among the pillows. Her illness had taken some of the color out of her cheeks, yet they still showed a rosy tint when contrasted with the pillows, and the whiteness of the pillows emphasized the color of her eyes and hair. She asked Lucy to move the little dresser farther along the wall, that she might see herself in the mirror. She desired to get certain stubborn tangles out of her hair, she averred; but she really wanted to contemplate her own loveliness.
“Mrs. Dudley puts the dresser that way for me sometimes, even when I don’t ask her to; and often I lay for hours, looking into the mirror, when she has gone out of the room. It’s like looking into the clouds, you know. You remember how we used to lie on the rocks there by the edge of the Black Cañon and look up at the clouds? We could see all kinds of things in them—men and horses, and wild animals, and just everything. When I let myself dream into the mirror that way I can see the same things there. And sometimes I try to picture what my future will be. Once I thought I saw a man’s face looking out at me, and it wasn’t Ben’s! Mrs. Dudley said I had been dreaming, and didn’t see anything, but it seemed real. I suppose I shall marry Ben, of course, just as you will marry Justin.”
Lucy’s face flushed.
“I don’t see why that should be a matter of course!”
“So you’ve seen some one in the East who is better looking? You can’t fool me! I know! What’s his name?”
“Truly I haven’t seen any one in the East who is better looking. I wasn’t thinking of anything of the kind.”
“Then he is still the best looking, is he? If you still think so, it’s a sure sign that you’ll marry him. That’s why I think I shall marry Ben. I haven’t seen any one in Denver I like as well as Ben, or who is as good looking; and one has a chance to see a good many men in a city like this.”
“Has Ben been to call on you?”
“Oh, yes; he was here only last week. When I first came up here I couldn’t get him to call, though I was told I might invite him. But when he got started he kept coming and coming, and now he comes almost too often. Mrs. Dudley has been very kind and good to him, and sometimes I’m almost jealous, thinking he likes her almost as much as he does me. I should be truly jealous, I think, if I didn’t know about Mr. Plimpton.”
She studied her mirrored reflection, wondering if it could be possible for Ben to find Mrs. Dudley, who was so much older and had already been married, more charming than herself. It was so unpleasant a thought that she frowned; and then, remembering that frowns will spoil even the smoothest forehead, she drove the frown away, and began to talk again.
Though Lucy Davison would not admit it, she was anxious to hasten on to Paradise Valley; so she remained but a day with Mary Jasper. Yet in that time Sibyl contrived to exhibit to her the carriage, the magnificent horses and the liveried driver, taking her as she did so on a long drive through some of the fashionable streets and avenues.
As the carriage swung them homeward Sibyl made a purchase of fruits and flowers, with which she descended into a shabby dwelling. When she came out she was followed to the door by a slatternly woman, who curtsied and thanked her volubly with a foreign accent.
“She’s an Italian—just a dago, as some people say—but her husband has been sick for a month or more, and I try to brighten her home up a bit. I don’t know what he does when he’s well; works for the railroad, I believe.”
Then the carriage moved on again, away from the cheap tenements, and into the wealthier sections once more, where Sibyl lived.
“You mustn’t tell father that I’m sick,” was Mary’s parting injunction to Lucy. “If he knew he might want me to come home. I will be entirely well by another week. I write to him every Sunday, just as if I was in the best of health; and so long as I don’t tell him he thinks I’m as well as ever. And truly I am as well as ever, or will be in a few days. If you tell him anything, tell him I’ll be down to see him this fall. I thought I should go last winter, but those awful storms came on, and I was so busy besides, that I just didn’t. But I do think of him often, and you may tell him that, too, if you tell him anything.”
Lucy Davison was seldom absent from Justin’s mind; and he was thinking of her as he drove to town to make some purchases for Pearl, who, though married, was still the housekeeper at the ranch. The knowledge that Lucy was to arrive at home in a short time filled him with longing and delight.
As he drove along he could but note the appearance of the valley, and the houses of the new settlers and the old. Sanders had purchased more land, and had moved his dug-out close up to the trail and much nearer to the river. He had been indefatigable in his efforts to induce settlers to come into the valley, and successful to a degree that surprised Justin and the Davisons, Of the newer arrivals several were men of force and intelligence. They had given the valley their approval, and had set to work.
Sanders, it now appeared, had sold his land at Sumner for a considerable sum of money. At Sumner, irrigation was being practiced successfully. He was firm in his belief that Paradise Valley could be irrigated as easily, and would make an agricultural section as rich. Therefore, he and the new farmers, joined by certain of the older ones, among them Sloan Jasper, had built a dam across the stream near Jasper’s and turned the water thus secured into some small canals, from which laterals conveyed it to the places where it was required.
They were working under unfavorable conditions, however; their dam was cheaply and hastily constructed, and the canals and ditches being new sucked up the water almost as fast as it could be turned into them.
Naturally Davison and Fogg were not pleased. The water which the farmers were using decreased the supply in the water-holes, and threatened suffering for the cattle if a dry season came on. They did not accept the theory promulgated by the farmers, that the water would find its way back through the soil into the stream. That the new enterprise troubled the ranchmen gave secret joy to William Sanders, whose bitter and vindictive mind was filled with ineradicable hatred of Davison and all connected with him. To strike a blow at Davison delighted him immeasurably.
Justin had a dusty drive that afternoon, for the land was dry. For several days a strong south wind had been blowing, and the mountain was draping its wide shoulders in misty vapor. These were good portents of rain; and when rain came at that season, after a period of drought, it came usually in a heavy storm.
Ben Davison had set out for the town ahead of Justin, on his pony. Ben had practically ceased to work on the ranch, except at intervals. He was much in the company of Clem Arkwright, and enjoyed certain pleasures of the town, to which Arkwright had introduced him. For one thing, Arkwright played a game of poker that few men could beat. Arkwright was a small politician, and by virtue of that fact held the office of justice-of-the-peace. Arkwright had thrown his political following to Ben’s support, in a recent county convention; and that, with the influence of Davison and Fogg, had given to Ben Davison the nomination to the state legislature.
As the bronchos climbed to the summit of a low divide, giving a long view of the trail, Justin saw Ben, far ahead, nearing the town. It gave him thought. Ben was not only ahead of him on the trail that day, but in other ways.
That summer of patient toil and sturdy thought spent high in the mountains with the sheep had brought to Justin the knowledge that he was now a man. As a man he was beginning to feel that he must do something, must set about the work of making a place and a name for himself in the world. Influenced by the idealist, Clayton, and by his love for Lucy, he had heretofore fed on love and dreams. He still loved, and he still dreamed, but he knew now that to these must be added action and accomplishment.
No one understood Ben Davison’s unworthiness more thoroughly than Justin. Because of the influence of his father and the support given to his candidacy by a tricky politician Ben was apparently on the high road to political preferment and honors. His name was mentioned in the Denver dailies, and his picture was in the county paper.
Philip Davison was pleased, probably Lucy was pleased also, and Justin felt that he really ought to look upon the matter in a kindly and amiable light. Yet, even as he thought so, he felt his heart burning.
“I might have had that nomination, if things had been different!”
That was Justin’s thought. He knew to the core of his being that in every way he was better qualified than Ben Davison to fill that important place. He had not only mental but moral qualities which Ben totally lacked. In addition, the position and the honor appealed to his growing desire to be something and do something. It would give opportunity to talents which he was sure he possessed. Denver represented the great world beyond, where men struggled for the things worth while. Ben Davison would go to Denver, become a member of the legislature, and would have the doors of possibility opened to him, when he had not the ability nor the moral stamina to walk through them when they were opened, and he—Justin—would remain—a cowboy.
When Justin reached the town, which consisted of a double row of frame houses strung along the railroad track, he hitched the bronchos to the pole in front of one of the stores and proceeded to the purchase of the groceries required by the housekeeper. That done he walked to the postoffice for the ranch mail. As he came out with it in his hands and began to look over the county paper, where he saw Ben Davison’s name and political qualifications blazoned, he observed several men converging toward a low building. Over its door was a sign, “Justice of the Peace.”
“Arkwright’s got a trial on to-day,” said one of the men, speaking to him. “You ranchers air gittin’ pugnacious. Borden has brought suit against Sam Turner for the killin’ of them cattle. I s’pose you heard about it?”
Justin’s interest was aroused. He was acquainted with both Arkwright and Borden, and he knew of the killing of the cattle, but he had not heard of the lawsuit. Borden’s ranch lay over beyond the first mesa, along Pine Creek. It had been established since the Davison ranch. Not all the line between the two ranches was fenced, and the open line Justin had ridden for a time with one of Borden’s cowboys.
There were a few settlers along Pine Creek, one of them being Sam Turner, a young farmer from Illinois. Justin remembered Turner well, and Turner’s wife, a timid little woman wholly unfit for the life she was compelled to live in this new country. She had a deathly fear of Borden’s cowboys, a fear that was too often provoked by their actions. They were chiefly Mexicans and half-breeds, a wild lot, much given to drinking, and often when they came riding home from the town in their sprees they came with their bronchos at a dead run, firing their revolvers and yelling like Indians as they swept by Turner’s house. Whenever she saw them coming Mrs. Turner would catch up her little girl in her arms, dart into the house, lock and bar the doors, and pull down the blinds. The cowboys observed this, and it aroused them to even wilder demonstrations; so that now they never passed Turner’s without a fusillade and a demoniacal outburst of yells.
The death of the cattle had come about through no fault of Turner. They had simply broken down a fence during a storm, and getting into Turner’s sorghum had so gorged themselves with the young plants that some of them had died. It did not seem to matter to Borden that Turner’s sorghum had been devoured. In his rage over his loss Turner had threatened violence, and Borden was answering with this suit for damages for the loss of the cattle.
Justin squeezed into the midst of the crowd that already filled the office. Clem Arkwright’s red face showed behind his desk, which was raised on a platform. Justin, still thinking of Lucy and Ben, looked at Arkwright with interest. He did not admire Arkwright himself, but Ben Davison thought highly of him, and that was something. A heap of law books was stacked on Arkwright’s desk. A pair of pettifogging lawyers had been kicking up a legal dust, and one of them, Borden’s lawyer, was still at it. As the lawyer talked, Clem Arkwright took down one of the books and began to examine a decision to which his attention was called.
While Arkwright looked at the decision, the lawyer went right on, pounding the book he held in his hand and shaking his fist now and then at the justice and now and then at Sam Turner and the opposing lawyer. Turner sat with his counsel, and at intervals whispered in his ear. Justin had never attended a trial and he found it interesting. His sympathies were with Turner.
From the claims made by Borden’s lawyer, it appeared that Sam Turner was wholly in the wrong. He should have guarded his crops or fenced his land. He had done neither, and as a result Borden’s cattle had lost their lives and Borden had sustained financial loss. Borden was not required to maintain a fence, nor to employ riders to hold the cattle beyond any certain imaginary line, the lawyer maintained; but he had kept riders so employed, and had built a fence on a part of his range. He had done these things, that his cattle might not become mixed up with cattle belonging to other ranches, and particularly, as it appeared, in pure kindness of heart, that they might not trespass on the farms of such men as the defendant. It was admitted that Turner had a perfect right to live on and cultivate his land; it was his, to do with as he pleased, by virtue of title conveyed to him by the government under the homestead laws. But he was compelled, if he wished to prevent trespass of this kind, to erect and maintain a stock-tight fence, or guard his land in some other substantial way; and having failed to do that, he should be mulcted in damages for the loss sustained by the plaintiff.
Justin was listening with much interest to the argument of Borden’s lawyer, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning about he beheld William Sanders.
“We want to see you outside a minute er two,” said Sanders.
He tried to smile pleasantly, but there was a queer gleam in his little eyes.
“All right,” said Justin, wondering what Sanders could want.
Several farmers and a few of the citizens of the town were awaiting him outside, he discovered, and had sent Sanders in to get him.
“We want to have a talk with you about the election,” said one of them. “We’ll go into that back room over there; we’ve got the privilege of using it awhile.”
Sloan Jasper shambled up, his hands in his pockets.
“Howdy, Justin!” he exclaimed, with an anxious smile. “I’ve been talkin’ round a bit amongst my friends, and what I’ve said about you I don’t take back for any man.”
Somewhat bewildered, Justin accompanied these men into the vacant room they had indicated, back of one of the stores. Here William Sanders established himself at a small table; the doors were closed, the men dropped into seats, and Sanders rapped with his knuckles for order. That queer gleam still shone in his little eyes.
“Gentlemen,” he said, rising, “I’m goin’ to ask Mr. Jasper to set out the object of this meetin’. Me and him talked it up first, I guess; and he understands it as well as I do, and maybe can set it out better.”
Sloan Jasper shambled to his feet, declaring that he was no speaker; and then proceeded to a heated denunciation of the ranchmen and their methods.
“How many times have they tramped me an’ my farm under foot as if we was muck?” he asked. “That trial over there before that scoundrel, Arkwright, is a sample of it. They’ve run the county till they think they own it. But they don’t own me! Justin hyer is a cowboy and can draw cowboy votes. We all think well of him, because we know he can be depended on to do the fair thing by everybody. That’s all we’re askin’—the fair thing; we don’t want to take advantage of anybody, er injure anybody; but we do intend to protect ourselves, and to do it we’ve got to stand together, and stand up fer men who will stand up fer us. There’s certain things that will come before this next legislature in which we’re interested. If Ben Davison sets in it as the representative frum this county he’ll vote ag’inst us every time. Now, there’s a lot o’ men in this town who don’t like him, ner Arkwright; and all over the county it’s the same way. So I say if we’ll stand together, us farmers, as one man, and can git somebody that the cowboys like to run ag’inst Ben Davison, we can beat him out of his boots, fer he ain’t popular, though the newspaper and his friends is tryin’ to make it out that he is. And that’s why we’re hyer—a sort of delegation of the farmers an’ the people of the town who have talked the thing over; an’ we’re goin’ to ask Justin Wingate to make the race fer us ag’inst Ben Davison. If he does it, we’ll take off our coats and work fer him until the sun goes down on the day of election; and so help me God, I believe as truly as I stand hyer, that we can elect him, and give Ben Davison the worst beatin’ he’ll ever git in his life.”
Sloan Jasper sat down with flushed face, amid a round of applause. Before Justin could get upon his feet, William Sanders was speaking. He said he had come to see that Justin was the man they wanted—the man who could make the race and have a chance of winning; and for that reason he favored him, and would do all in his power for him, if he would run.
Justin was confused and gratified. His pulses leaped at the bugle call of a new ambition. He knew how justly unpopular Ben was. It was possible, it even seemed probable, that if he became the candidate of the men who would naturally oppose the ranching interests he could defeat Ben Davison. But would not such an attempt be akin to treachery? He was in the employ of Philip Davison.
“I don’t think I ought to consider such a thing,” he urged, in some confusion, without rising to his feet. “Mr. Davison has treated me well. I want to remain on friendly terms with him and with Ben. I couldn’t do that, if I ran against Ben. I’m obliged to you, just the same, you know, for the compliment and the honor; but, really, I don’t think I ought to consider it.”
He saw these men believed that he and Ben Davison were not on terms of good friendship; on that they based their hope that he would become their candidate. They were not to be dissuaded easily, and they surrounded him, and plied him with appeals and arguments.
“We’ll give you till Thursday to think it over,” they said, still hoping to win him. “We’re going to put some one up against Ben, and you’re the one we want.”
Though Justin did not retreat from his declaration that it was a thing he should not consider, they observed that he did not say he would not consider it. The stirrings of ambition, the flattery of their words, and the gratifying discovery that the world regarded him now as a full-grown man, kept him from saying that.
Just beyond the town, as he proceeded homeward, he was overtaken by Ben Davison, who had ridden hard after him on his pony. Ben’s face was white, his eyes unnaturally bright, and his hand shook on his bridle-rein.
“I’ve been hearing that talk in town,” he began, “and I want to know about it!”
Justin felt the hot blood sing in his ears. With difficulty he crowded down the violent temper that leaped for utterance.
“What did you hear?” he asked.
“That you intend to run against me.”
Justin gave him a look that made the shining eyes shift and turn away.
“Some of the farmers, and others, want you to run,” said Ben.
“Yes, that is true.”
“And do you intend to?”
“I haven’t said that I did.”
“Well, I want to know!”
“What if I decline to answer?”
Ben changed his tone.
“It will make trouble for me, if you run. If you keep out of it I’ve got the thing cinched—they can’t beat me, for I will pull the cowboy vote. You might split that vote. I don’t say I think you could be elected, for I don’t; but it would make me a lot of trouble, and would kick up bad feeling all round.”
“In what way?” said Justin, speaking coldly. He was studying Ben closely; he had never seen his face so white nor his eyes so unnaturally bright.
“Well, with father, for one thing. He wouldn’t like it; he wants me to be elected, and has already spent a lot of money.”
“Ben,” said Justin, speaking slowly, “you have yourself to blame largely for this stirring up of the farmers. You have made them hate you. They will put up some one against you, whether I run or not.”
“They can’t beat me, unless they run some fellow who can swing the cowboy vote, and they know it. That’s why they came to you.”
“Yes; they said it was.”
“You told them you wouldn’t run?”
“I told them I ought not consider it.”
“Well, that’s right; you oughtn’t.”
“But I want you to understand, Ben, that I have just as good a right to run as you have!”
“I don’t think so; not while you’re working for father, and when I’m already in the race.”
Mentally, Justin acknowledged that this was a point well taken.
“You won’t run?” said Ben, anxiously.
Justin hesitated, shifting uneasily on the high spring seat.
“N-o, I hardly think I ought to.”
“Thank you! I wanted to make sure.”
Ben wheeled his pony, and galloped back toward the town.
“Am I easy?” Justin asked himself, as his eyes followed the receding figure. “But, really, it does seem that I oughtn’t to think of such a thing, under the circumstances. Davison would be angry—and I don’t suppose Lucy would be at all pleased.”
He drove on, turning the matter over in his mind, recalling with pleasure the flattery of the farmers, and wondering why Ben Davison’s face looked so unnaturally white and his eyes so bright. He knew that anger alone was not the cause.
The threatened rainstorm broke, bringing early night, as Justin reached home. Lemuel Fogg was at the ranch house with Davison. Fogg’s shining photograph wagon had been brought out and a pair of horses hitched to it.
“Ben isn’t here,” said Davison; “I suppose he’s in town, looking after election matters; so, as soon as you can get those things into the house, I want you to ride along the line fence and see that everything is all right, for we don’t want any cattle breaking out and making trouble with the farmers just now. Fogg and I are going up the trail together in his wagon. He wants to get a photograph. We’ll be near the dam, or a short distance below it, where Jasper’s lateral makes out into his fields. I think you will find us at the bridge there over the lateral, and you can come there and make your report, when you’ve looked at the fence. Report promptly, if there’s any trouble.”
Fogg came out of the house in oil hat and slicker, buttoned to the chin against the storm. He resembled a yellow, overgrown Santa Claus, minus the beard.
“Hello, Justin!” he cried, advancing and extending his hand, as Justin swung a bag of meal to the ground. “We’re in for a good ground-soaker, I guess. The lightning is beginning to play fine. It’s great over there on the mountain. When she gets to going good I’ll try to nail one of the flashes down on a negative. I’ve tried a dozen times and failed; now I’m going to try again.”
Having shaken hands, Fogg ran heavily toward the wine-colored wagon; the rain was beginning to roar, and the interior of the wagon, as he knew, was as tight as a house. Then the shining wagon whirled away, with the rain drops glistening on it, revealed by the lightning, which was already waving fiery swords in the sky.
Justin followed on his cow-pony as quickly as he could, garbed like Fogg in a yellow oil slicker, and galloped along the wire fence that ran here toward the town. It was not a pleasant ride. The gusty rain beat in his face and the wind blew a tempest. The lightning, increasing in frequency, showed the fence intact, as far as the lower end of the deep chasm called the Black Cañon, which cut through the mesa above Jasper’s. There was no need to go farther than this, for he had inspected that portion of the fence earlier in the day.
The storm was in full swing before he reached Jasper’s lateral. He followed it until he came to the tiny bridge that spanned it, and there found the photograph wagon. Sheltered within the wagon, Fogg had trained his camera toward the mountain. There the play of the lightning had become something stupendous. Davison was trying to hold the bronchos and keep them quiet in the beating rain.
“I’ve taken several exposures already,” Fogg announced, when Justin made his appearance and his report. “If those horses can be kept still another minute I’ll try it there just over the dam.”
A blinding flash burned across the sky. It was so vivid that Justin closed his eyes against it. The burst of the thunder, like the explosion of a cannon, was thrown back by the stony walls of the mountain, and rolled away, booming and bellowing in the clouds. The thunder roll was followed shortly by a confused and jarring crash.
“I got that flash all right, I think,” said Fogg, “and there goes the side of the mountain!”
Landslides occurred occasionally on the sides of the mountain, and Fogg thought this was one.
“No,” Davison shouted, “it’s—the dam!”
Another crash was heard, accompanied by a popping of breaking timbers; then, with a roar like a cyclone, the dam went out, sweeping down the swollen stream in a great tangle of logs and splintered timbers. Justin galloped toward the stream.
“Better look out there, Justin,” Fogg bellowed at him. “That will bring the river out on the jump, and you don’t want to get caught by it!”
Justin heard the wagon being driven away from the little bridge. It was an exciting minute, yet he had time to think with regret of what the loss of the dam would mean to the farmers. His reflections were cut short by a scream, followed by a cry for help.
Then in the lightning’s white glare he saw on the ground before him a woman clinging to the prostrate form of a man. Justin galloped wildly, and reaching them leaped down. To his amazement the woman was Lucy Davison and the man was Ben. She had apparently dragged him beyond the reach of the water that splashed and rolled in a wild flood but a few yards away.
“Help me,” she said, without explanation. “He—he is hurt, I think.”
Justin had his arms round Ben instantly, and began to lift him. The rain was falling in sheets, and both Lucy and Ben were drenched. Ben began to help himself, and climbed unsteadily to his feet, with Justin’s assistance. Only in the intervals between the vivid lightning flashes could Justin see either Ben or Lucy.
“I’m—I’m all right!” said Ben, staggering heavily.
“I’m afraid he was hit by one of the timbers of the dam,” Lucy declared.
To Justin she seemed abnormally brave. She took hold of Ben’s arm and assisted in supporting him.
“We must get him to the house—to Jasper’s,” she urged, tremulously.
“The photograph wagon is right over there,” Justin informed her. “We’ll take him to that. If you’ll lead my horse maybe I can carry him.”
“I don’t need to be carried,” said Ben, stubbornly. “I tell you I’m all right. I slipped and fell—that’s all. Take your hands off of me; I can walk.”
Lucy clung to him, and Justin did not release his hold. He hallooed now to Davison and Fogg. They did not hear him in the roar of the storm, but by the glare of the lightning they saw the little group swaying near the margin of the wild stream and drove back to discover the meaning of the strange sight. They shouted questions of surprise, as they came up. Justin had not attempted to voice his bewilderment.
Lucy became the spokesman of the group.
“Uncle Philip, we will explain later,” she said, with emphasis. “The first thing is to get Ben home.”
“Yes, that’s so!” Davison admitted, his anxiety for Ben betrayed in his shaking voice.
Ben was helped into the photograph wagon; where he would not lie down, but insisted on sitting in the driver’s seat. Justin assisted Lucy into the wagon. It was a large wagon, in which Fogg had lived and slept in the old days when he went about taking photographs and selling curios. Justin wished he might climb in there by Lucy’s side, and do something, or say something, that would allay her evident distress. Her voice was unnaturally hard, and her manner singularly abrupt and emphatic. He knew that she was suffering.
And he had not known she was in Paradise Valley! That was the most inexplicable of all—that she should be there and no one on the ranch aware of the fact.
“She must have arrived on the evening train,” was his conclusion.
However, that explained little. How did she and Ben chance to be there by the river? Had they been walking home from the town together—through the storm? Where was Ben’s pony? That might have escaped from him, or he might have left it somewhere; but the other question was not to be answered readily. The whole subject was so cloaked in the mysterious that it seemed to defy analysis.
The storm still raged, with sheets of beating rain, with lightning fire and roll of thunder, as the wagon moved swiftly in the direction of the ranch house along the soaked and gullied trail. And behind it, galloping on his cow-pony, rode Justin, pondering the meaning and the mystery of the things he had seen and heard.
Yet through it all there was a certain sense of joy and gratification. He had been able to serve the woman he loved, and she was here at home. The first long, long separation was ended—she was home again.
As the photograph wagon was halted at the gate which led to the ranch house grounds Lucy Davison spoke to Justin, from the rear of the wagon. Her tones were solicitous, and anxious:
“Justin,” she said, “it’s too bad to have to ask you to do it in this storm, but I wish you would go back to Mr. Jasper’s and get Ben’s pony, which he left there in the stable. I have a horse there, too, which I rode out from town. Get both of them, and put them in the stable here. You won’t mind the extra trip? I ought to have spoken to you of it before.”
Justin was about to assure her that he would go willingly; when she continued, in lower tones:
“And Justin! Don’t say anything about getting the horses from there, please. I will tell you why later. And I will explain everything to Uncle Philip.”
She had lifted the closed flap that protected the rear end of the wagon, and in the flame of the lightning which still burned across the skies he saw her pale and anxious face. She had always been beautiful in his eyes, but never more so than at that moment, while making this distressed appeal, even though her clothing exuded moisture and her hair was plastered to her head by the rain. Her pleading look haunted him for hours afterward.
“I’ll go,” he said promptly, “and I will have the horses here in a little while.”
“Thank you, Justin,” she said, in a way she had never spoken to him before. “And say nothing to anybody! I think you will not find Mr. Jasper at home; but you know where the stable is, and how to get into it.”
The wagon rolled on into the ranch house grounds, where Ben was helped out and into the house; and Justin galloped back along the trail to Sloan Jasper’s, having been given another surprise and further food for thought.
When he returned with Ben’s pony and the horse Lucy had hired in the town, and had put them in the stable with his own dripping animal, he entered the ranch house. Pearl opened the door for him; and as he removed his wet slicker he heard Philip Davison explaining to Steve Harkness that the farmers’ dam had been torn out by the storm. Then Fogg came toward him, and in the light at the farther end of the long hall he saw Lucy, who had changed her clothing and descended from her room. Ben Davison was not to be seen.
“I reckon you’re as wet as they make ’em,” said Fogg, “but, just the same, if you’ll step in here we’ll see what I’ve got on this plate.”
He was on his way to the dark room he had fitted up in the house for his photographic work.
Lucy came up to Justin, as Fogg walked on to this room. She looked him anxiously in the face.
“Yes, I brought the horses?” he said, interpreting the look.
“And said nothing to any one?”
“I have spoken to no one.”
She thanked him with her eyes.
“You are just soaked,” she said, “and you ought to go out to the bunk rooms and get dry clothing at once. I don’t want to have you get sick because of that.”
“A little wetting won’t hurt me, and I’m going in here before I change my clothes. Fogg wants to show me his picture, if he got one.”
He followed Fogg, and she went with him, without invitation.
“What sort of picture did he take? I heard him saying something about it.”
“He was trying to photograph a flash of lightning. I don’t know how he succeeded.”
He stopped at the doorway and might have said more, if Fogg had not requested him to come on in and close the door.
“This is the last plate I exposed, and I’m going to try it first,” said Fogg, as he made his preparations.
Fogg was an enthusiast on the subject of photography, and had long desired to catch a lightning flash with his camera.
“If I haven’t got it now I’ll never have a better chance. That flash, just before the dam broke—wasn’t it great? The whole sky flamed in a way to blind a fellow. For a second or so I couldn’t see a thing. I had the camera focussed and pointed just right to get that in great shape, it seems to me. Now we’ll see the result.”
He placed the plate in the tray and turned the developer on it. Justin and Lucy were standing together, with heads almost touching, watching with interest to see the picture appear.
“I’ve got something, anyhow,” said Fogg, when he saw the streak which the lightning had printed stand out, as it were, on the plate. “I think I’ve got a picture of the dam, too. The camera was trained on the mountain, right across the top of the dam; I thought if I got the lightning I might have a great combination, with the dam and other things showing.”
“You’ve got the lightning flash all right,” said Justin, bending forward.
“Yes, that’s coming out great; see the image develop!”
He stopped, with a whistle of astonishment.
“Hello!” he exclaimed. “What’s this?”
A remarkable picture was coming—had come—into view. Fogg stared, with rounded eyes; Lucy uttered a little cry of dismay and fright; Justin caught his breath with a gasp of astonishment.
Small wonder. On the end of the dam nearest the trail two human figures were shown—a man standing on the dam with axe descending and a woman rushing toward him over the slippery logs. The figures were not large, but they were portrayed clearly. They were the figures of Ben and Lucy Davison, caught there by the camera, in the mad turmoil of the lashing storm.
For a moment not a word was spoken, while the figures seemed to swim more clearly into view. Lucy broke the dead silence.
“May I see that plate, Mr. Fogg?”
Her voice was repressed and hard, as if she struggled with some violent emotion.
“I—don’t—why, yes, of course, look at it all you want to. But I don’t—”
The sentence was broken by a crash of falling glass. Lucy had either dashed the plate to the floor, or had let it fall in her agitation.
Justin almost leaped when he heard that sound. Lucy looked at him, and for a moment he thought she was going to cry out. But again she spoke, turning to Fogg.
“Well, I’m glad it’s broken!” she declared, nervously. “You saw what you saw, Mr. Fogg; but there is no reason why you should remember it. I hope you won’t. Perhaps one of the other plates will show a lightning flash. You couldn’t have used this, anyway.”
“Well, may I be—” Fogg caught himself. “Lucy, you broke that intentionally!”
She turned on him with flashing eyes.
“Mr. Fogg, I did. You saw what was in that picture. You know what it told, or you will know when you think it over. I broke it so that it could never be used or seen by anybody. I’m glad I saw it just when I did. I beg your pardon, but I had to do it.”
Was this the Lucy Justin fancied he knew so well? He was astonished beyond measure.
“Yes, I guess you’re right,” Fogg admitted, as soon as he was able to say anything. “That dam went out, and—yes, I guess you’re right! It wouldn’t do for that picture to be seen. I’ve been wondering how you happened to be where we found you, and what you and Ben were doing there.”
“Mr. Fogg,” her tones were sharp, “don’t accuse me even in your mind; I had nothing to do with it, but tried to stop it.” She hesitated. “And—whatever you think, please don’t say anything to Uncle Philip; not now, at any rate; and don’t tell him about the picture.”
She turned to the door.
“Justin,” she said, and her tones altered, “I’ll see you to-morrow; or this evening, if you like.”
“This evening,” he begged; and following her from the room, he hurried out to the bunk house to shift into dry clothing.
When he saw her again, in the little parlor, she was pale, and he thought she had been crying, but her agitation and her strange manner were both gone. He came to the window where she stood, and with her looked out into the stormy night. The white glare of the lightning illuminated the whole valley at times. About the top of the mountain it burned continually. The cottonwoods and willows were writhing by the stream. On the roof and the sides of the house the dashing rain pounded furiously.
“Justin,” she said, as he stood beside her, “I must explain that to you. You know what that picture meant?”
He wanted to fold her in his arms and comfort her, when he heard her voice break, but he checked the desire.
“I could guess,” he said.
“I came down from Denver on the late train, having missed the earlier one.”
“I was in town when the earlier one came in,” he informed her, regretting for the moment that his too speedy return had kept him from meeting her there. “If I had known you were coming!”
She looked at him fondly, as in the old days. How beautiful she was, though now very pale! He felt that he had not been mistaken in thinking her the most beautiful girl in the world. The East had certainly been kind to her.
“It was to be a surprise for you—you great boy, and for Uncle Philip. I had no idea how it would turn out. In the town I got a horse. The storm was threatening, but I thought I could get home. Just before I reached Jasper’s I overtook Ben on his pony. I’m telling you this, Justin, because I know you will never mention it!”
“I will never speak of it,” he promised.
“I knew you wouldn’t. Now, you must never mention this, either—but Ben had been drinking.”
Justin understood now the meaning of Ben’s white face and glittering eyes.
“I never knew him to drink before,” she went on, “and I shouldn’t have known it this evening but for the way he talked. Politics, and that man Arkwright, caused it, I’m sure. He was raging, Justin—that is the word, raging—against you and the farmers, and particularly against Mr. Jasper and Mr. Sanders. He claimed they had tried to get you to run against him for the legislature. He talked like a crazy man, and made such wild threats that he frightened me.”
Justin wanted to express his mind somewhat emphatically. It seemed best to say nothing; yet that picture of Ben Davison raging against him and frightening Lucy gave him a suffocating sense of wrath.
“The storm struck us just before we reached Mr. Jasper’s house, and we turned in there for shelter. Jasper wasn’t at home, but the door wasn’t locked and we went in.”
“Jasper was in town,” said Justin.
“Ben put the horses in the stable,” she went on, without noticing the interruption. “When he had done that, and had come into the house out of the rain, he began to rave again. After awhile he said he would go out and see how the horses were doing and give them some hay; but I saw him pick up an axe in the yard and start toward the dam. Though the storm was so bad, I followed him, for he had been swearing vengeance against the farmers, and from some things he had said I guessed what he meant to do. When I reached him he was on the dam, chopping at one of the key logs, and had cut it almost in two.”
She trembled, as that memory swept over her.
“I rushed out upon the dam, when I saw what he was doing, and begged him to stop. He tried to push me away, and I came near falling into the water; but I clung to him, and then the axe slipped out of his hands and fell into the stream. The logs began to crack; and that, with the loss of the axe, made him willing to go back with me. We ran, and had just reached the shore when the dam gave way. The ground was slippery, and he fell as we ran toward the house through the storm; and when he lay there like a log, and I couldn’t get him up, my nerves gave way, and I screamed. Then you heard me. That is all; except the photograph.”
The calm she had maintained with difficulty forsook her as she finished, her voice broke, and her tears fell like rain.
Justin slipped his arm about her.
“You were brave, Lucy!” was all he could find to say.
He had never realized how brave she could be.
“And, Justin, nothing must ever be said about it! It would ruin Ben; it might even put him in prison. I needn’t have told you; but I wanted to, and I know you won’t say anything about it.”
Justin did not stop to think whether this were right or wrong. He gave the promise instantly.
They began to talk of other things. She seemed not to want to say anything more on the disagreeable subject; and Justin was glad to have her talk of herself, of her school life, and her Eastern experiences. Somehow the old sense of intimacy had in a measure departed. He withdrew his hand from about her waist, that was still slender and girlish. She had been removed to a great distance from him, it seemed. Yet, outwardly, she had not changed, except for the better. She was more womanly, more gracious, now that her tears had been shed and her thoughts had turned into other channels, even than in the old days. Nevertheless, Justin could not at once summon courage to say to her the old sweet nothings in which both had delighted.
“You are still my sweetheart?” he ventured timidly, by and by. “The East hasn’t changed you any in that respect, I hope?”
She looked at him earnestly, and her eyes grew luminous.
“No, Justin, not in the least; but there is one thing, which has come to me while I was away. We aren’t children any longer.”
“I am well aware of that fact,” he said; “I have been painfully aware of it, all evening.”
She knew what he meant.
“We aren’t children any longer; you are a man now, and I am a woman. I heard a sermon the other Sunday, from those verses in which Paul said he had put away childish things and no longer acted or thought as a child. Long ago I told you that I loved you, and promised to marry you some time; I haven’t forgot that.”
“I shall never forget it!”
“But now that we’re no longer children, I think it is your duty to speak to Uncle Philip.”
The thought of facing Philip Davison on such a mission flushed Justin’s face. Yet he did not hesitate.
“I will do so,” he promised; “I ought to have been courageous enough to do it long ago, and without you telling me to.”
Instantly he felt taller, stronger, more manly. He knew he was deliriously happy. To feel the soft pressure of her body against his, the electric touch of her hand, and to hear her say that she loved him, and would some time marry him, thrilled him. He looked down into her face, with the love light strong in his eyes. He recalled how he had loved her during her long absence.
“You didn’t see any one while you were gone that you thought you could love better?”
He believed he knew what the answer would be, but he awaited it breathlessly.
“I oughtn’t to say so, Justin, until after you have spoken to Uncle Philip; but I saw no one I could love half as much as you—no one.”