Judith of the Godless Valley. Honoré Morrow
fiercely, "and I'm glad you're not my real brother!"
"I don't see why my father ever married a woman with an ornery brat like you!" retorted Douglas.
"I wouldn't stay to associate with you another minute if you offered me a new pair of spurs! I'm going to meet Maud!" And Judith disappeared down the trail.
Douglas eased back in his saddle and lighted a cigarette, while he watched the distant figures approaching across the valley. The glory of the landscape made little impression on him. He had been born in Lost Chief and he saw only snow and his schoolmates racing over the converging trails.
The Rockies in mid-winter! High northern cattle country with purple sage deep blanketed in snow, with rarefied air below the zero mark, with sky the purest, most crystalline deep sapphire, and Lost Chief Valley, high perched in the ranges, silently awaiting the return of spring.
Fire Mesa, huge, profoundly striated, with red clouds forever forming on its top and rolling over remoter mesas, stood with its greatest length across the north end of the valley. At its feet lay Black Gorge, and half-way up its steep red front projected the wide ledge on which the schoolhouse stood. Dead Line Peak and Falkner's Peak abruptly closed the south end of the valley. From between these two great mountains, Lost Chief Creek swept down across the valley into the Black Gorge. Lost Chief Range formed the west boundary of the valley, Indian Range, the east. They were perhaps ten miles apart.
All this gives little of the picture Douglas might have been absorbing.
It tells nothing of the azure hue of the snow that buried Lost Chief
Creek and Lost Chief ranches. It gives no hint of the awful splendor of
Dead Line and Falkner's Peaks, all blue and bronze and crimson, backed by
myriads of other peaks, pure white, against the perfect sky.
It does not picture the brilliant yellow canyon wall which thrust Lost Chief Range back from the valley, nor the peacock blue sides of the Indian Range, clothed in wonder by the Forest Reserve. And finally, it does not tell of the infinite silence that lay this prismatic Sunday afternoon over the snow-cloaked world.
Douglas did not see the beauty of the valley, but as, far below, he saw Judith trot up to the Day's corral, he was smitten suddenly by his sense of loneliness. Too bad of Jude, he thought, always to be flying off at a tangent like that! A guy couldn't offer the least criticism of her fool horse, that she didn't lose her temper. Funny thing to see a girl with a hot temper. Ordinary enough in a man, but girls were usually just mean and spitty, like cats. A guy had to admit that there was nothing mean about Judith. She was fearless and straight like a first-class fellow. But temper! Whew! Funny things, tempers! He himself always found it hard to let go of his rage. It smouldered deep and biting inside of him and hard to get out into words. He usually had to tell himself to hit back. Funny about that, when his father was always boiling over like Judith. He wondered if her temper would grow worse as she grew older, as his father's had. Funny things, tempers! People in a temper always looked and acted fools. The guy that could keep hold was the guy that won out. Like being able to control a horse with a good curb-bit. Funny why he felt lonely. It was only lately that he had noticed it. Here was Buster and here was Prince, and here was the approaching joke of the preacher. Why then this sense of loneliness? Maybe loneliness wasn't the right word. Maybe it was longing. And for what? Not for Jude! Lord, no! Not for that young wildcat. But the feeling of emptiness was there, as real as hunger, and at this moment as persistent. Funny thing, longing. What in the world had a guy like him to long for?
A long coo-ee below the ledge interrupted his meditation. A young rider leaped from the trail to the level before the schoolhouse, broke into a gallop and slid, with sparks flying, to the door.
"Hello, Scott!" said Douglas, without enthusiasm.
"I thought Jude was here!" returned Scott. He was older and heavier than Douglas, freckled of face and sandy of hair, with something hard in his hazel eyes.
"He'd better leave Jude alone," thought Douglas, "the mangy pinto!"
There was a shriek and a gray horse, carrying a youth with the schoolmarm clinging behind him, flew across the yard and reared to avoid breaking his knees on the steps. The schoolmarm scrambled down, still screaming protests at the grinning rider. One after another now arrived, perhaps a dozen youngsters, varying in age from five to eighteen, each on his or her own lean, half-broken horse, each appearing with the same flying leap from the steep trail to the level, each racing across the yard as if with intent to burst through the schoolhouse door, each bringing up with the same pull back of foaming horse to its haunches. And with each horse came a dog of highly varied breed.
The youngsters had been racing about the ledge for some time before the grown people began to appear. The women, most of them very handsome, were dressed dowdily in mackinaws and anomalous foot covering. But the men were resplendent in chaps and short leather coats, with gay silk neckerchiefs, with silver spurs and embossed saddles.
When Judith returned with Maud Day there were thirty or forty people and almost as many dogs milling about the yard. The log school had weathered against the red wall of the mesa for fifty years. There probably was not a person in the crowd who had not gone to school there, who did not, like Judith, love every log in its ugly sides. Judith caught Douglas' sardonic gaze, tossed her curly head and urged Swift up the steps, where she looked toward the road to the Pass, shading her fine eyes with a mittened hand.
Finally she cried, "I see the preacher coming!"
"Somebody ought to go in and build the fire if we ain't going to freeze to death!" exclaimed Grandma Brown, jogging up on a flea-bitten black mule.
"He invited himself. Let him build his own fire!" cried Douglas.
Grandma pulled her spectacles down from her forehead to the bridge of her capable nose, and stared at Douglas.
"Well! Well! Doesn't take 'em long away from the nursing bottle to get smarty. Where's your father, Douglas?"
"Home with the toothache," replied Doug, flushed and irritated.
"Did he bring you up to let a stranger come to the house and build his own fire?"
"No, but it's the schoolmarm's job to build this one," replied Douglas.
"Jimmy Day, you and Doug go in and get that old stove going!" ordered
Grandma.
Both boys dismounted slowly, tied their horses, and amidst a general chuckle, disappeared into the schoolhouse.
Charleton Falkner, a black-browed rider of middle age, with a heavy black mustache, turned his horse toward Grandma.
"That's right, Charleton," the old lady went on, "you come over here and help me off of Abe. I ain't going to stay out here freezing till old Fowler comes. Riding ain't the novelty to me it seems to be to the rest of you."
This was the signal for all the grown people to tie up their horses and enter the building. Shortly Douglas and Jimmy came out, and scarcely had remounted when the minister rode slowly up over the ledge. He dismounted at the door and greeted the youngsters. They replied with cat-calls. Fowler stared at the group of robust young riders, his gray-bearded face somber, then he shook his head and opened the door.
Douglas jumped from his horse and, giving the reins to Jimmy Day, he followed the minister. The people within were seated quietly, and Doug slid into a rear bench. His eyes were very bright and he watched the preacher with eager interest. Mr. Fowler dropped his overcoat on a chair and strode up to the platform, where he smiled half wistfully, half benignly at his congregation. Then he raised his right hand.
"Let us pray!" he said. "O God, help me to speak truth to these people who ten years ago laughed me from this room. Help me to open their eyes that they may behold You! Show them that they lead a life of wickedness from the babes in arms to the very aged, from—"
"Tain't any such thing!" interrupted Grandma Brown. "There you go again, after all these years!"
"If you've come here to preach