Justin Wingate, Ranchman. Whitson John Harvey
ain’t any herd law. You’re a justice-of-the-peace, and I reckon a lawyer, or a half of a one. We can have a herd law passed, can’t we? And what’s to keep me from shootin’ them steers when I catch ’em in here? Powder and lead air cheap, and that’s what I’ll do; and then I’ll let Davison do the sum’. I ain’t got nothin’ much, and he’ll find it hard work to git blood out of a turnip. Let him do the sum’, and see if he can collect damages; you say I can’t.”
“You’re hopeless, Jasper!
“'A primrose by the river’s brim, A yellow primrose was to him— And it was nothing more!’”
Arkwright made the quotation and sighed, as Clayton rode up. “But see the fading light on those clouds! Was there ever anything like it? What does it make you think of?”
“It makes me think that if I had my way I could improve on nature a bit in this valley; I wouldn’t send all the rain in a bunch and jump the river out of its banks and roll it over everything, but distribute it a little through some of the other months of the year.”
Arkwright turned his pudgy form about.
“Ah, Doctor! Glad to see you. You ought to get over to the town oftener. You wouldn’t care to ride up this evening, I suppose? The sunlight is going, and I must be going, too.”
Clayton did not care to ride to town. When Arkwright was gone he questioned Jasper concerning the occasion of his visit.
“I reckon he come down for a word with Ben Davison; I don’t know what else. He and Ben air gittin’ thick as fleas lately. It’s my opinion that Ben’s gamblin’ away his wages up there in the town with him, but I don’t know; and I don’t care. I’d be glad to have both of ’em keep away from me. Look at that millet, Doctor; just look at it! Ruined by Davison’s cattle; and Arkwright tells me I can’t do anything, because there ain’t any herd law in this county. But I can shoot ’em; and I’ll do it next time they git in here, see if I don’t.”
Clayton had heard Jasper rave in that way before, and nothing had ever come of it. Other settlers had raved in the same manner, and then realized their helplessness. Looking into Jasper’s angry face, he tried now to speak of Mary.
“I hear that your daughter has gone to Denver, Mr. Jasper!”
Jasper drew himself up, forgetful for the moment of his millet. A look of pride and pain overspread his hairy face.
“Yes, she’s gone there to stay awhile with Mrs. Dudley. I didn’t want her to, but she would go; it makes it mighty lonesome here, but she’ll be happier up there, I reckon. Mrs. Dudley took a likin’ to Mary, and wants to give her a better chance fer an ejication and other things than she can have here. So I reckon it’s all right, though I didn’t see at first how I could git along without her.”
All at once Clayton’s heart seemed to shrivel and shrink. He fumbled with the yellow mane of the broncho and with the reins that swung against its neck. When he spoke after a little, trying to go on, his voice was husky.
“That woman is—”
“Yes, I allow Mrs. Dudley is a fine woman!”
Clayton’s resolution failed utterly.
“And she’s smart,” Jasper declared, “smart as a steel-trap; when she talked with me about takin’ Mary, and what she could do fer her, I could see that. She’s mighty good-lookin’, too; though I don’t think anybody can come up in looks to my Mary. I wisht you could have seen her with some of her new fixin’s on, which Mrs. Dudley bought fer her. She was certainly handsome. And she’s goin’ to enjoy herself there, I don’t doubt. I’ve already had a letter from her, tellin’ me how happy she is. I reckon I ought to be willin’ fer her to have things her mother never had, fer she’s fit fer it, and not have to slave as her mother did, and as I’ve always done. Yes, I reckon I’m glad she’s gone; though ’tis a bit lonesome here, fer I ain’t got anybody with me at all now, you see.”
Though Curtis Clayton had visited Sloan Jasper for the express purpose of uttering a warning against Sibyl, he permitted Jasper to talk on, and the warning words remained unsaid. Jasper was inexpressibily lonely, now that his daughter was gone; yet it was plain that he would not call her back, and equally plain that he knew she would not return if he called never so loudly. And he was trusting that the thing he could not help was the very best thing for the child he loved. Clayton felt that he could not stir up in the heart of this man a useless, peace-destroying, and perhaps a groundless, distrust.
So he rode away as the night shadows were falling, and gathered a great contempt for himself as he returned slowly homeward. He had no right to judge Sibyl, and possibly, very probably, misjudge her, he thought; yet he had a fear, amounting almost to conviction, that she was not a woman to whom should be given the charge and training of such a girl as Mary Jasper. That fear had sent him to Jasper; his retreat seemed a cowardly flight.
As for Mary, she was childishly happy in Denver. The only present cloud on the sky of her life was that her father had not really wished her to go. He had objected stoutly at first, but ever since her mother’s departure from the earthly Paradise, which had been full of all manner of hard labor, to that upper and better one where, her simple faith had assured her, she should toil no more, Mary had contrived to do pretty much as she pleased. Her head was filled with romantic ideas, garnered from Pearl Newcome’s much-read novels. In this matter, as in all others, she had taken her own way, like a high-headed young horse clamping the bit tightly between its teeth and choosing its road in defiance of the guiding rein. And her father had submitted, when he could do nothing else, had admired and praised her in the wonderful new clothing provided for her by Mrs. Dudley, and had driven her to the station with her little trunk packed with pretty trifles. He had kissed her good bye there, bravely enough, with hardly a quiver in his voice, and so she had gone away. She recalled him often now, standing, a pathetic figure, in his cheap clothing, waving his hand to her as she looked from the car window to throw a kiss as a final farewell.
But this picture seldom troubled her long. Denver was too attractive to the girl who had scarcely in her whole life seen a place larger than the little town at the base of the familiar flat-topped mountain. And what a gay, care-free life Denver led, as viewed by her through the eyes of Mrs. Dudley! This was Vanity Fair, though Mary had never even heard that name. Mrs. Dudley kept a carriage, which rolled with shining wheels through the Denver streets to the merry tattoo of trotting hoofs and the glint of silver-mounted harness. A driver sat on the box in blue livery, and the easy sway and jounce of the springs made her feel as if she were being lifted forward on velvet cushions.
Young men and old men turned about to admire her and the woman who sat by her side, as the carriage rolled along. Women looked at them, too, sometimes with shining eyes of envy; looked at the carriage, at the beautiful clothing, and the two bright faces. Mary wore jewels now, and Sibyl had roped her slender neck with a heavy gold thread which bore a neat little locket at its end. Into that locket Mary had put the gnarled wisp of hair which in a moment of devotion at home she had clipped from her father’s head. To wear it now was something of a penance for leaving him in his loneliness.
Sibyl had a “set,” which was very gay and overflowed with parties where cards were played for favors, and in little dances which were said to be very “select.” Gay debonair men and handsomely dressed women attended these dances and parties and made life one never-ending round of merriment. Mary thought she had never known what it was to really live until now. Sibyl delighted in her; the girl’s fresh flower-like face and inevitable gaucherie set off and added to Sibyl’s own attractiveness.
Mary wrote to her father with religious regularity every Sunday. Sunday was a religious day, and the writing of a letter to her father was performed almost as a sacred duty, so that Sunday seemed the appropriate day for it. She wrote also to Ben Davison, more fully than to her father, describing to him the joys of her new mode of life, and appealing to him not to be “savage” about her comments concerning some of the young men she met.
“Dear Ben,” she said in one of her letters, “Sibyl Dudley is a perfect darling. I am surprised that you didn’t know she had been married. I thought you knew all the time. She is divorced now, I think, though