Justin Wingate, Ranchman. Whitson John Harvey
with its froggy mouth, is a Pueblo idol, without you telling them, and the others will believe it when you do tell them.”
“Huh!” grunted Sanders, still angry; “if 'tain’t an Injun idol, what is it?”
It seemed natural for Fogg to laugh, and he laughed again, with easy gurgling.
“You may call it anything you want to, but it ain’t an idol. I’ve seen Pueblo idols; there’s a room full of them in the old Governor’s Palace in Santa Fé, and they look more than anything else like stone fence posts with holes gouged near one end for the eyes, nose and mouth. Them are genuine old Pueblo idols, but you bet the Pueblos didn’t sell them, and they didn’t give ’em away. Did you ever know of a people that would sell their God? I never did.”
“None, except Christians!” said Clayton, speaking slowly, but with emphasis.
Fogg set the staring image on the table and looked at him.
“I hadn’t thought of that. Yes, I reckon they do, a good deal of the time. But an Indian wouldn’t; he would never sell his God. Maybe it’s because Christians think so little of theirs that they’re so ready to believe a Pueblo will sell his for 'most any old thing. Them images are just caricatures, made to sell. I go among the Pueblos three or four times a year and buy up a lot of their pottery, and I encourage them to make these images, which the average tourist thinks are gods, for they sell better even than the water jars and other things that they turn out.
“Then I buy blankets of the Navajos, which they make dirt cheap now. I helped to put ’em onto that. You can sell a dozen cheap blankets easier than a single expensive one, especially when the people you’re selling to think they’re getting the genuine goods at a bargain. It’s easier for the Navajo weavers to tear old government blankets to pieces and re-weave them and color them with analine dyes than it is for them to take their own wool and their own dyes and put the things together in the old way. They won’t wear of course, and the colors fade, but they sell like hot cakes.
“I buy for a dealer, who snaps up everything of the kind I can bring him and hollers for more. You ought to see the crowds of people, especially tourists, who wear out his floors. I’m going to have a store of that kind myself some day. I take photographs for him, of scenery and other things that will sell; and bring him loads of basket work and bows and arrows from the Jicarilla Apaches just over the New Mexican line. He grabs for the Jicarilla work, which I can get almost cheaper than anybody, for I know the head men. The Jicarillas used to be slow workers and too honest, like the Navajo weavers; but they’re onto their job now, and can put a willow basket together and dye it with patent dyes in almost no time.”
Thus Lemuel Fogg discoursed of his business methods, until he had succeeded in proving several things concerning himself, in addition to his easy belief that the whole world is either covetous or dishonest.
Fogg departed the next morning, on his way to Denver. Sanders lingered in the valley for two or three days, peeking and prying, at intervals visiting a fortune teller of local repute in the town, who saw land, houses, and cattle for him, in the grounds of a coffee cup. But he was angered against Clayton and did not return to his house. A dozen times he told inquiring farmers that he “reckoned” he would take land there and become one of them. But the grounds in the coffee cup did not settle just right, and at length he, too, departed.
CHAPTER IV
SIBYL
One day there came, across the level lands, a wave of horsemen and hounds in a rabbit hunt, the baying of the dogs breaking sharply on the peaceful calm of the valley. Justin rushed from the house when he heard the clamor. Clayton followed more slowly, and looked across the valley from his doorway. The flutter of skirts told him that some of the saddles bore women. He frowned. This slaughter of rabbits was particularly distasteful to him, though he knew that the few farmers on the low land by the stream would welcome it, if the horses and dogs did not cut up the cultivated fields.
Big gray jack rabbits, routed from their coverts, were bobbing on in advance of the baying hounds and galloping riders. More rabbits were seen to start up, bouncing out of bunches of grass or scattered clumps of sage. Following behind, driven at a lively gait, came a mule team, drawing a light spring wagon into which the slain rabbits were thrown.
The extended line had advanced in a big semicircle; and the ends bending in, the chase drew on toward the solitary home of the solitary doctor. Justin was filled with excitement. The lust of killing, which seems to be in the racial blood, stirred strongly within him, and was only held in partial leash by certain teachings and admonitions well hammered in by his instructor. Suddenly, quite carried away, he swung his hat and yelled:
“Mary is on one of those horses! See her, out there on the right side, on the white horse! She must have been at the station and joined them when they started.”
Clayton drew back from the doorway without a glance at the form of Mary Jasper borne onward with flying leaps. A rush of disgust shook him, so that he did not care to look longer. But Justin remained outside, swinging his hat and whooping at intervals, quite taken out of himself.
Then a louder clamor, and a cry from Justin, drew Clayton to the door again. One of the rabbits was approaching the house, springing on with indescribable swiftness, yet unable either by running or dodging to shake off the pursuit of the lithe-limbed, baying creatures that cleft the air behind it. Two of the foremost of the hounds were in chase of this rabbit, one twenty yards in advance of the other. Pushed hard, the rabbit crouched and dodged again with such celerity that the hound, whose open mouth at the instant was almost closing on it, was thrown headlong in a frantic effort to stop and turn as quickly as the rabbit itself. The second hound rushed at it, and the change of direction flung the fleeing rabbit upon the bit of trampled grass in front of the open door in which Clayton stood.
It saw the opening, and in desperation darted into it as into a cave, whisking past Clayton’s legs. The hound came close after, yelping fiendishly. With an exclamation that sounded like an oath, Clayton kicked at it; but the hound almost overthrew him, leaped into the house, and he heard the rabbit’s death cry, and a crunching of bones as the dog’s ponderous jaws closed on its quivering body.
Then Clayton heard a pounding of hoofs, and with eyes blazing wrathfully he looked up, and saw the original of the photograph which he had hurled into the fire and then had drawn out and treasured as if he could not bear to part with it. The blood receded from his face, leaving it livid and ghastly.
“Sibyl!” he exclaimed.
The woman drew up her horse in front of the door through which the dog had darted. She saw the man, and her clutch of the rein tightened. Clayton looked up at her, and, standing in the doorway, while the dog, having completed its bloody work panted out past him with furious haste, he put his strong right hand against the side of the door, with a faltering motion, as if he felt the need of aid to sustain him from falling.
The woman sitting there on her chafing horse stared back at him, while the clamor of the hounds broke over them. Her face had flushed more than even the excitement of the chase warranted; yet he knew she was marvellously beautiful, as he looked at her full rounded throat and chin, at her olive cheeks in which dimples nestled, and into her great dark eyes, that held now a surprised light. Her hair was as dark as her eyes, and even though much hidden beneath her riding hat, it was still a crown of glory. Clayton saw only enough of the blue riding habit to know that it became her; his eyes were drawn to her face.
“Are you living here?” she asked in astonishment, giving a glance at the small house.
“Yes,” he answered huskily. “I thought it as good a place as any, and out of the world; but it seems you found your way here. And Death came riding with you, as usual.”
“Curtis, you’re always ridiculous when you say foolish things! I’ve been wondering where you were. You don’t intend to return to Denver?”
“No.”
“Not even if I wanted you to?”
She looked at him with her fascinating unfathomable eyes, noting his manly presence, his clear-cut dark features, and the stiff, awkward left arm. As she did so the color flamed back