Judith of the Godless Valley. Honoré Morrow
replied Charleton laconically, as he beat his cold hands together. "But only sometimes."
Douglas strained forward in the intensity of his interest.
Douglas' father straightened his broad shoulders. "If I let myself think about it, I have to go out and get drunk," he muttered.
"You don't conject right about them things," cried Johnny. "You got to listen to things."
No one heeded the sad-faced little man. Peter stooped for another frozen clod. "I'd give my right hand for my mother's faith in a living God," he said.
"But if there isn't any God, what is there?" cried Douglas, with passionate protest in his voice.
"Don't you try to discuss matters you ain't old enough to understand, son," ordered John Spencer.
"Unbelief is the price we pay for scientific progress," said Charleton.
"Me, I'm willing to pay."
"I'm not," growled Peter, "but I don't see any way round it. Come on,
Johnny, do your share."
"I ain't going to dig any more," declared the little man. "You all say
I ain't all here, and the part that ain't here is the part that works.
Sabez?"
Everybody laughed.
"And," Johnny went on, seriously, "I ain't sure it's a good idea to plant 'em so deep. It takes a long time to grow up to heaven. It's a gregus far away place."
"Right you are, Johnny, old man," agreed Peter. "It sure is gregus far away."
Nobody urged Johnny to return to the job and the rest of the work was finished in silence.
That afternoon the funeral took place. There were services at the post-office, where any one who wished spoke in praise of the dead man. There were many speeches and it was late afternoon when the funeral cortege reached the cemetery. The Forest Reserve was mysterious with shadows and with the unending murmur of the pines. Snow gleamed blue over the valley. The saddle horses and teams were hitched to the stout fence that surrounded the cemetery, and Lost Chief Valley crowded about the open grave.
John Spencer drove Mary down in the old bobsled but Judith and Douglas rode Swift and Buster as usual. Judith had been nervous and irritable ever since the trip to the half-way house, but she had refused to admit that the murder had anything to do with her state of mind. She had a boyish horror of admitting to fears, mental or physical. She stood opposite Douglas, with a round beaver cap pulled down over her curly hair, her cheeks not so red as usual, her dark eyes rimmed and puzzled. Douglas wondered what she was puzzling over and resolved that after the ceremonies were over, he would ask her.
Douglas could not know with what intensity his deep-set eyes turned from Judith and fastened upon Grandma Brown, who stood at the head of the grave. There was a contented assurance in the old lady's manner that was vaguely comforting to the boy. He wondered what she knew that his father and Peter and Charleton did not know.
As the coffin was lowered into the grave, Grandma said, "Does anybody feel like saying a few last words?"
There was a silence broken only by the murmur of the Forest, then Johnny Brown cleared his throat. "I might say a whole lot of things. I wasn't so goldarned proud of Oscar like the rest of you seemed to be. He had a gregus kind of a temper and oncet—"
Grandma turned on him. "Johnny Brown, ain't you ashamed of yourself!"
"No, I ain't! You say I ain't all here, and the part that I'd be ashamed with is the part that's gone," returned Johnny firmly.
Judith gave an irrepressible snort, then fastened solemn eyes on the sky. A restless clearing of throats swept the little assemblage; then Grandma, indignation still in her kind old voice, spoke once more.
"Can't any of you men that knew Oscar all his life say something comforting before you close his grave?" she urged. "Then I'll try to do it. I was brought up religious, myself." She lifted her serene old face to the evening sky. "O God, this man wandered far from You like all the rest of us here. But an old woman like me believes You're there and that you know Oscar hadn't a really bad hair in his head. Take his soul, Lord, and be as good to him as You can. I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord. He that believeth in me, even though he die, yet shall he have Eternal Life."
The tears were running down many cheeks when the old lady finished. Foolish old Johnny laughed, then he began to sing a hymn in which several of the women joined.
"God be with you till we meet again,
By his counsels guide, uphold you,
With his sheep securely fold you,
God be with you till we meet again."
And so the earthly career of Oscar Jefferson ended.
CHAPTER III
THE GRADUATION DANCE
"Horses, dogs, guns, women, whiskey, the open country of the
Rockies—enough for any man."
—Charleton Falkner.
Instead of riding home with Judith, after the ceremony, Douglas, on sudden impulse, took a roundabout way to the post-office, thence toward the Browns' ranch. Dusk was settling in the valley. The quivering aspens along Lost Chief creek were etched gray rose on the deep blue snow. Far to the east a single scarlet mountain-top pierced through the twilight blue. Buster loped swiftly through the swimming landscape.
When he reached the post-office Douglas did not stop but rode on along Black Gulch trail to the Browns'. Grandma, returning by the direct route from the cemetery, had been home for a half-hour before Doug arrived. She was coming out of the cow stable, lantern in hand, when the boy dismounted at the corral. Spurs clanking, brave chaps flapping, Douglas ran to her like a child and caught her apron in his gauntleted hand.
"Grandma! Tell me something! Did you believe what you said at the grave?"
The old lady held the lantern up to his face. "Come into the cow stable out of the wind, Doug."
Within the dim shelter she hung the lantern on a nail and sat down on a box, indicating another to the young rider.
"Yes, I believed it, boy. Didn't you?"
"No, Grandma! And none of the men do that count in this valley. Is it just old woman stuff, like they say?"
"Maybe!" sniffed Grandma.
"And if you believe it," Doug rushed on, "why did you let us run the preacher out?"
"O, the preacher! Pooh! He's nothing but a blankety blank sissy like the rest of the sky pilots!"
"But can't I believe like you do, Grandma? I'm just the unhappiest guy in the world!"
"You mean," the old lady spoke deliberately, "that this is the first funeral you've seen that's set you to thinking and the fear of death is on you for the first time. I hope it'll do you good, Doug. You're an awful rough little devil."
Douglas swallowed audibly. "Grandma," he cried passionately, "how can I get to believe what you do?"
Grandma looked thoughtfully from her plump milch cow to the lantern, and from the lantern to Douglas. "Doug, I don't think you can, living among the folks you do. To have my kind of faith, you've got to have a mother that breeds it in you from the time you're a baby."
Douglas, his face looking absurdly young above his broad shoulders, said despairingly, "I don't believe you want to help me."
"Well," Grandma was still deliberate, "I don't believe a wild young devil like you really wants help.