Justin Wingate, Ranchman. Whitson John Harvey
by one the houses, all but those belonging to the town company, were torn down and borne away, the dream was not shattered. The dreamer became the agent of the company, charged with the care of the remaining houses until the dream should reach again toward fulfillment.
While he waited, the dreamer pictured the joy and devotion with which he would minister to the spiritual needs of the new people, who would love him he knew even as he should love them. And thus waiting, he moved the rounds of his simple life, in the midst of the few, who rewarded his love and zeal with ever-renewed devotion. Even those who cared nothing for religion cared for the religious teacher, and came regularly to hear him preach.
They could not give much to his support; they had not much themselves, but he needed so very little. He had his small stipend from the missionary organization of his denomination, the garden he tended on the low land by the stream yielded well in the favorable seasons, and the missionary barrel filled with clothing which some worthy ladies had sent him from the East two years before had held such a goodly store of cast-off garments that neither he nor the child, a stout boy now, had required anything in that line since. The shiny, long-tailed coat which he kept so scrupulously clean and which was a world too large for him, and the tight-fitting, ink-spattered sailor suit which the boy wore, had come from the depths of that barrel, which seemed as miraculous in its way as the widow’s cruse of oil.
And now, when he had seen no stranger in Paradise for months, and no new face except when he journeyed once a week to preach in the little railroad town at the base of the mountain, there had come this pleasant-voiced man, who spoke well of the prophetic sermon and seemed able to appreciate the promise and future of the land.
When Curtis Clayton returned from his ride night had fallen. The Milky Way had stretched its shining trail across the prairies of the sky, and the Dipper was pouring the clouds out of its great bowl and shaking them from its handle.
Clayton sat looking at the night sky, and as he sat thus the boy came out to put away his horse. Within the house, Wingate, busy with coffee pot and frying pan, directed him to the room he was to occupy, and announced that supper would be ready soon.
At the end of fifteen minutes the boy tapped on Clayton’s door. The latch had not caught, and the door flew open. The boy stood in hesitation, looking into the little room, wondering if he had offended. What he beheld puzzled him. Clayton had been burning letters in the tiny stove; and beside the lamp on the little table, with scorched edges still smoking, stood the photograph of a beautiful woman. Clayton had evidently committed it to the flames, and then relenting had drawn it back. Turning quickly now, when he heard the door moving on its hinges, he caught up the photograph and thrust it hastily into an inner pocket of his coat, but not before the boy had been given a clear view of the pictured face.
Wingate talked of his dream, when grace had been said and the supper was being eaten. The boy thought of the burned letters and of the scorched photograph showing that alluringly beautiful face, and wondered blindly. He saw that the stranger was not listening to the talk of the minister; and observed, too, what the dreamer did not, that the stranger ate very little, and without apparent relish. Though he could not define it, and did not at all understand it, something in the man’s face and manner moved him to sympathy.
For that reason, when, after supper, the minister had talked to the end of his dream and was about to begin all over again, the boy slipped away, and returning put a small book into the stranger’s hands. Clayton stared at it, then looked up, and for the first time saw the boy. He had already seen a face and form and a sailor suit, but not the boy. Now he looked into the clear open blue eyes, set in an attractive, wind-tanned face. His features lost their grim sadness and he smiled.
“Your son?” he said, speaking to Wingate.
The dreamer showed surprise. He had already spoken to this man of the boy.
“My adopted son, but a real son to me in all but the ties of blood.”
The boy drew open the little Bible he had placed in Clayton’s hands. Some writing showed on the fly-leaf. The boy’s fore-finger fell on the writing.
“My very own mother wrote those words, and my name there—Justin,” he announced, reverently.
Clayton looked at the writing, and then again at the boy. The record on the fly-leaf was but a simple memorandum, in faded ink:
“Justin, my baby boy, is now six months old. May God bless and preserve him and may he become a good man.”
A date showed, in addition to this, but that was all; not even the mother’s name was signed.
“This was in it, too; it is my hair.”
The boy pulled the book open at another place and extracted a brown wisp.
“We think it is his hair,” said Wingate. “It was found beside the writing on the fly-leaf.”
Then while the boy crowded close against Clayton’s knees, and Clayton sat holding the open Bible in his hands, Wingate told the story of this child, who now bore the name of Justin Wingate.
“The young fellow who brought him to me said there were some papers, which he had left behind, having forgotten them when he set out, and that he would fetch them later. But he never came again,—he was only a boy, and boys forget—and I even failed to get his name, being somewhat excited at the time, because of the strange charge given to me, a bachelor minister.”
Clayton read the words over slowly, and looked intently at the boy.
“It is a good name,” he said at length.
The boy took the book and placed the wisp of hair carefully between the pages as he closed it. He was still standing close against the knees of this man, as if he desired to help or comfort him, or longed for a little of the real father love he had never known. But Clayton, after that simple statement, dropped into silence. This absence of speech was not observed by Wingate, who had found in the story of the boy an opportunity to take up again the narrative of his introduction to Paradise and his life there since. Yet the boy noticed. His face flushed slowly; and when Clayton still remained mute and unresponsive, he slipped away, with a choke in his throat.
Shortly afterward he said good night to the visitor, kissed the dreamer on his bearded cheek, and with the Bible still in his hands crept away to bed. Wingate sat up until a late hour, talking of his dream, receiving now and then a monosyllabic assent to some prophetic statement. Having started at last to his room Clayton hesitated on the threshold and turned back.
“As you are the agent of the town company you could let one of those houses, I suppose?” was his unexpected inquiry.
The face of the dreamer flushed with pleasure.
“Most assuredly.”
“Then you may consider one of them rented—to me; it doesn’t matter which one. I think I should like to stop here awhile.”
It was one o’clock and the Sabbath was past. Wingate, his dream more vivid than it had been for months, sat down at his little writing desk, and in a fever of renewed hope began to pen a letter to the town company, announcing the letting of a house and prophesying an early revival of the boom.
CHAPTER II
WINGATE JOURNEYS ON
Justin Wingate tip-toed softly to and fro in front of the improvised book shelves and looked at the formidable array of books which, together with some furniture, had arrived for Clayton, and had been brought out from the town. The books were of a different character entirely from those which composed the minister’s scanty collection. Justin read the names slowly, without comprehension—“Spencer’s Synthetic Philosophy,” “Darwin’s Origin of Species,” “Tyndall’s Forms of Water,” and hard-worded titles affixed to volumes of the German metaphysicians. There were medical books too, a great many it seemed to the boy, in leather bindings, with gilt titles set in black squares on the backs.
Clayton came in while Justin was tip-toeing before the book shelves. His appearance and manner had changed for the better. He looked at the boy with kindly interest, and was almost cheerful.
“Do you think you would like to become an educated