Judith of the Godless Valley Part 24

His father and mother were in bed when he reached home. Judith's bed was empty. Douglas went out to the stable and climbed noiselessly to the loft. On the hay close to the open door lay Judith, her face dimly outlined in the moonlight. She was still sobbing in her sleep. Douglas stood looking down on her till his own eyes were tear-blinded. Then he knelt in the hay and kissed her softly on the lips. She stirred but did not open her eyes, and he slipped back to the ladder and down, without a sound.

He went to bed at once but was up in the morning before his father, leaving a note on the kitchen table:

I am going to work for Charleton till things are better here at home.

_Douglas._

He found Charleton grooming Democrat. "Charleton," he said, "you made a lot of trouble for Jude last night."

"What happened?" asked Charleton.

Douglas told him.

"That was a rotten trick!" exclaimed Charleton. "I just thought he'd lick her. John's got a mean temper."

"I want to work for you a while, Charleton. I'm sick of the rows at home."

"John willing?"

"I haven't asked him."

Charleton grinned. "I need a rider, sure. You finish currying Democrat while I go in and talk to the missis. Little Marion's visiting at Lone Bend. Maybe my wife will think it's too much cooking for two men."

But he came back in a little while, smiling cheerfully. "Come on in to breakfast. It's all right."

So Douglas settled to riding for Charleton Falkner. His father did not come after him, and when the two met on the Black Gorge trail a day or so after Doug's departure, John returned Douglas' muttered greeting with a silent, ugly stare. There was comment and conjecture in Lost Chief, but the fall round-up was coming and this soon engrossed the attention of the community. Of Scott, Douglas saw nothing.

The fall slipped into winter, which in Lost Chief country begins in September, and Christmas pa.s.sed with none of the Spencers at the schoolhouse party excepting Judith, who attended with Scott. February slipped into March and Douglas' eighteenth birthday pa.s.sed unnoticed.

The snows were too deep to allow Charleton to undertake any of those mysterious missions for which he was so much admired, and Elijah Nelson was allowed to flourish unmolested. It was reported that the Mormon had accused Lost Chief of running some of his cattle, but he evidently had no desire to start a controversy with the valley. And Douglas came more and more under Charleton's influence.

Peter Knight, watching the boy more closely than Doug at all realized, was deeply troubled by what he felt might permanently distort Doug's ideas of life.

"How are you and Judith making it, Doug?" Peter asked him one Sunday afternoon early in April, when he and the young rider were sunning themselves in the post-office door.

"You know Judith hasn't spoken to me since last August," replied Doug impatiently.

"Too bad!" grunted Peter.

"O, I don't know," replied Douglas. "I don't see much to this marriage game anyhow. Look at the couples round here and point me out any of 'em that's been married over five years that're really in love. Just a houseful of brats and a woman to nag you."

"Dry up, Doug! You are just quoting Charleton Falkner. I've heard plenty of his empty ideas in the last twenty years. You've worked for him long enough, anyhow. Better go back to your home; or if you're through with Jude, take my offer and go East to school."

"Forget it, Peter! As soon as Fire Mesa opens up, I'm going after wild horses with Charleton. And you can roast him all you want to, but he knows life."

"Knows your foot!" snorted Peter. "If anybody could catch Charleton with his skin off, we'd find he gets happiness and sorrow out of the same things the rest of us do. He's just a big bluff, Charleton is."

"He's lived too much to let anything get him," said Douglas stoutly.

Peter laughed. "n.o.body can accuse you of having lived too much, Douglas."

Then he added soberly, "You're disappointing me a lot, Douglas. I never thought you'd let go of Jude."

"Jude let go of me," replied Douglas. "I suppose she thought I'd come running back to her, but she's mistaken. I'm through with women."

"Don't talk like an idiot, Doug," said Peter, after a long careful look at Douglas' face. "I know you. You are breaking your heart this minute for Judith. And she misses you a whole lot more than she'll admit."

"How do you know? Have you talked to her?" asked Douglas quickly. "How are things going up there?"

"Yes, I've talked to her. She's all right, but she's getting too many of Inez' ideas in her head. She says John doesn't say ten words a day. You'd better go back, Doug."

"Go back! With Jude believing I double-crossed her and nothing but rows going all the time? I'll admit I'm unhappy, but at least it's peaceful at Charleton's. He and his wife don't fight. I tell you that if home's just a place to fight in, I don't want a home."

"What do you want, Douglas?" asked Peter.

"I don't know," muttered the young rider.

"I know," said Peter softly. "You want a guiding star, you want something that's not to be found in this valley, an ideal fine enough to save your soul alive. You come of stock that lived and died by a spiritual idea, Doug, and you are going to be unhappy till you find one."

Douglas turned this over in his mind soberly for a few minutes. "Have you got one, Peter?" he finally asked, wistfully.

"No! I might have had if your mother had lived. She was an idealist if ever there was one. Work yourself out a plan, Doug, that is based on something fine, then fight to put it over. That's the only way you'll ever be contented."

"What I want," cried Douglas, "is something to take away this emptiness inside of me."

"Exactly! And I'm telling you how. And the reason I know is because I started out in life with the idea that women and the day's work were enough. Maybe they are for a man like your father, though I doubt it.

But a man like you or me isn't built for promiscuity either in love or in work. We are the kind that have to choose a fine, straight line and then hew to it, keep our faith in it, never leave it."

He paused for so long a time that Douglas stirred uneasily, then said, "How did you learn different, Peter?"

"By doing all the things that impulse and youth suggested, regardless of any suggestions or advice, and arriving at middle life with my mind and heart as empty as yours. Don't do it, Doug. It makes tragedy of old age."

Douglas rose slowly. "I don't see what in the world I can do with myself," he said heavily, and he rode back to Charleton's ranch.

Books had perhaps been Douglas' greatest solace that long winter.

Charleton had a good many, mostly representing his young delvings into the realms of agnosticism. His later purchases simmered down to a few volumes of poetry. There were several of Shakespeare's plays around the cabin and these Douglas read again and again. He did not see much of Little Marion, who was a great gad-about, and who, when she was at home, was monopolized by Jimmy Day. Mrs. Falkner he found immensely companionable. She had a half-caustic wit which he enjoyed, but he liked best to have her argue with Charleton on what she called his dog-eat-dog theory of life.

He had reason, not long after his conversation with Peter, to recall the postmaster's comments on Charleton. Very early one morning Charleton roused him and told him to ride like forty furies after Grandma Brown.

Douglas obeyed him literally and arrived at the Brown ranch with the Moose in a sweating lather. When he banged on the door, Grandma, clutching her nightdress at the throat, put her head out.

"The baby, I suppose!" she snapped. "Is Little Marion there?"

"Yes!"

"Well, let me dress."

"Hurry, please, Grandma! Charleton seemed awful scared."

"Charleton! Huh! I'm going to get my proper clothes on and drink my coffee, no matter how Charleton Falkner worries. He always was a baby.

You go saddle Abe."