Judith of the Godless Valley Part 15

"So was your mother too light and nervous for the kind of ranch work women have to do here. Women with blood and brains like most of the Lost Chief women are best used to keep alive the decencies and gentler things of life. Men lose those things in a cattle country unless the women keep 'em alive. If you keep women too close to the details of handling cattle and horses, they get rough and coa.r.s.e too. And I calculate that Lost Chief and the world needs some decency and delicacy."

Douglas pondered over this for a long time, his eyes on the glory of the Indian peaks. Then he said, "You knew my mother well?"

"Yes. I'd have married her, Doug, if she hadn't already married your father. She--she was so devilishly overworked and unhappy! But she never complained. Your father was crazy about her but he treats a woman like he does a horse. He doesn't know any different."

"O, don't tell me any more!" said Douglas brokenly. "The poor little thing! Seems as if I couldn't stand it. Peter, I'm glad she died!"

The older man was silent for a time, then went on. "Your mother came of good people. Her grandfather was a friend of Emerson's. Tucked away somewhere she had some letters the two men exchanged. Your grandfather dreamed dreams about establis.h.i.+ng a new New England out here. Those letters should have been saved for you."

The radiant light now swept across Lost Chief creek and to the foot of the wall, drenching the Rodman ranch in beauty and mystery. Sister crowded against her master's back and snored. Prince whined dolefully as he always did at the moon.

"So taking one thing with another," Peter Knight explained, "I thought I might see if you had anything in your head except horse wrangling; whether you're as much your Dad inside as outside."

"I don't see why ranching isn't a good enough profession for any one!"

protested the boy.

"In lots of places it is. But it's not in Lost Chief."

"I don't see why," repeated Douglas.

"It's awful hard here on the women is one reason. I never heard your mother swear or use a foul word," said Peter. "I've been on ranches in other places where the women would have been shocked at the idea. How about Judith?"

"You know she only curses like the other women do around here."

"Do you like it?" asked the postmaster.

"I never thought anything about it."

"There you are!" groaned Peter. "If I can only make you see! Doug, a woman lets down the first bar when she begins to swear and drink. She begins where Judith is beginning. She's mighty apt to end where Inez is ending. You just think about ranching in Lost Chief from your mother's point of view. It's a rough kind of a community, Douglas, compared with the same cla.s.s of people in other communities. The talk itself is rough; how rough you can't appreciate because you've never heard anything else."

There was another silence. Then Douglas asked heavily: "Peter, what am I going to do to keep Judith from going to Inez for advice?"

"Might not be such bad advice! Inez has no illusions about what she's doing or what she's paying."

"You don't mean to say Judith ought to go there?"

"No, I don't! But if a kid like you goes there himself, how can you preach to Judith? And she only goes there for the dancing and fun."

"But I'm a man!"

"I don't care what you are. You can't preach good sermons with a foul tongue. You ought to have the nerve to look at yourself as you are before you try to bring up Judith. Lost Chief is still fairly honest. Even your father calls Inez Rodman by her right t.i.tle. There's hope in that!"

"But what shall I do about Judith, Peter?"

"Might make a man of yourself, Doug!"

"What's the matter with me?" demanded Doug, indignantly.

"Douglas, you haven't a clean-cut idea to your name. And a kid of seventeen as self-satisfied as you are isn't worth baiting a coyote trap with."

"There's not a guy in the valley works harder than I do!"

"Right! Nor uses his brain less!"

"I suppose you mean I ought to go to college and let Judith go to the devil."

"Judith's pretty good stuff, herself," protested Peter. "A half-baked kid like you can't influence Judith!"

Douglas started to his feet. "By G.o.d, I will! You'll see!"

"There's only one way. Show yourself fit to influence her. Don't get a grouch at me, Doug. I've come a long, hard, lonely road. And all because I thought everybody was wrong but myself. I don't want your mother's son to make the same mistake, if I can help it."

"I'm the unhappiest guy in the world!" cried Douglas, pa.s.sionately.

He mounted his horse and, followed joyfully by Prince, turned down the trail. Peter did not stir. For a long time he sat with his arm around Sister. The moon was high over the valley before he said aloud:

"O Esther! Esther! The years are long!" Then he too mounted and rode away.

As Doug trotted through Rodman's door-yard, Inez crossed toward the corral.

"h.e.l.lo, Doug! Where've you been? What's the matter with Buster?"

Douglas drew up. "I gave him to Judith."

"Why, you blank little fool! It must have hurt you deep!"

"I guess Judith's worth it! Say, Inez, is there anything I can do for you to get you to keep Judith away from here?"

"I won't hurt her, Doug."

"Aw, Inez, what's the use of saying that! Make out you're sore at her."

"I could, but that won't do so much for her. Judith ought to have something to look forward to beside breeding calves and wrangling firewood for some lazy dog of a rancher, before she or any other Lost Chief girl will think keeping away from here is worth while."

There was a depth of bitterness in the woman's voice which Douglas felt rather than understood. He sat in awkward silence. Inez put her hand on his knee and looked up at him. Her face was tragically beautiful in the moonlight.

"Douglas, do you ever stop to think how beautiful Lost Chief country is?"

"Not often," admitted Doug.

Inez went on. "Peter Knight's been all over the United States and he says there's no place pa.s.ses it in beauty. Sometimes when I see the valley looking like it does to-night, I cry. Doug, you are more promising than these other kids. When you ride round on the range try to keep your mind a little bit off cattle and horses and women and keep it on that line of the Forest Reserve the way it looks to-night. Or the way this yellow wall looks in the snow and the sunrise on it. And then, when you get that habit, tell Judith about it and get her to thinking the same way. Beauty can't live on rot, Douglas. I know that now. I don't care what Charleton quotes."

"Inez," asked Douglas huskily, "why don't you burn that old cabin up?"

"It's too late," replied Inez shortly; and she turned on her heel and left him.

Douglas rode thoughtfully along the home trail. He was angry with Peter and sorry for Inez, and he missed his mother as he never had missed her before. He had been only a baby at the time of her death. This was the first time that he had been told of the type of woman she was though he had heard much of his mother's father, old Bill Douglas. He went to bed that night with an entirely new set of thoughts.

The heaviest ranch work of the year was now at hand. The hay harvest was begun. From dawn until dusk, Doug and Judith worked in the fields and tumbled to bed at night as soon as the ch.o.r.es were done. They had many opportunities during the day for conversations, however, for after the hay was raked, Douglas and Judith drove one rick team, John and old Johnny Brown the other. Heavy work it certainly was, but work of what fragrance, under skies of what an unbelievably deep blue, in air of what tingling warmth and clearness! What unthinkable distances were glimpsed from the wild hay patch on the flank of Dead Line Peak! It seemed to Douglas, lying at length, chin elbow-supported, on the top of the last load, which Judith had insisted on driving, that he never before had sensed the beauty of the haying season in Lost Chief Valley. And again he seemed to see Inez's tragic eyes, which had shed tears over the beauty of these very hills. He turned the memory of those eyes over in his mind with a memory of the sardonic twist of Charleton's mouth as he had uttered his philosophy of life, and suddenly Doug wished that he dared to talk to his father about these things. He had asked John about the Emerson letters but John professed never to have heard of them. And Douglas fell to wondering about his grandfather's dream for Lost Chief.