Judith of the Godless Valley. Honoré Morrow
after eleven when the two, huddled together on the seat of the buckboard, started back for Lost Chief. The cold was so intense that they were obliged to take turns driving. When the road permitted, they walked until even their hardy lungs demanded rest. Then they huddled together again, their knees touching the dashboard, lest Oscar's poor dead feet should thrust against theirs.
They talked very little except to guess as to the probable name of the murderer. Toward dawn, when the moon had set and Douglas was trusting the trail to the horses, he said:
"Do you remember at the schoolhouse Sunday, when Charleton said he didn't believe in a hereafter, old Jeff chimed in and said, 'Me too'?"
"I remember," replied Judith.
"What do you suppose Jeff thinks about it now?"
"He ain't thinking. He's gone. There's no hereafter. Dad says so." Judith huddled still closer.
"Isn't it horrible!" shuddered Douglas. "Horrible!"
Judith began to cry again. "If there was just a heaven," she sobbed, "I wouldn't mind living or dying either."
"Well, there isn't any." Douglas heaved a great sigh. "I wonder if they hang kids as young as us for murder?"
"Let them try hanging me, just once! That's all I've got to say!" exclaimed Judith stoutly, in spite of her chattering teeth. "The worst I ever did to Oscar Jefferson was to play bucking bronco on that old milch cow, Jinny, of his. And she sure-gawd could buck! But I was only a little girl then and I can prove it."
"Looks as if we might be in real trouble to me!" muttered Douglas.
"It's growing daylight and there's the Pass, at last!" suddenly cried
Judith.
Douglas drew a deep breath and urged on the weary horses.
It was full nine o'clock when the team drew up at the post-office door. At Doug's halloo, Peter Knight appeared. Sister crowded out the door past him, pricked her ears forward and ran to sniff at the rear of the buckboard.
"What on earth brings you back at this hour?" demanded Peter.
"Trouble!" Douglas moistened his frost-cracked lips. "Oscar Jefferson was shot last night. We got his body here."
"Who shot him?" asked Peter.
"We don't know."
"Where was it? Here, Sister, get back in the house!" Peter jerked the door wide.
Judith answered. "Up beyond the cedars, across from the half-way house.
We found him while we were hunting for that devilish old mule."
Peter looked keenly at the two haggard young faces, then he said, "You two come in and eat and get warm. I'll do some telephoning."
"I want to get home to my mother," half sobbed Judith.
"Sha'n't we take him on to his house?" asked Douglas.
Peter replied impatiently, "You know he was baching it alone while young
Jeff's in California. You come as I tell you!"
Stiffly the two stumbled out of the stage and into the warmth of Peter's quarters. He had just begun his own breakfast and, at his orders, Douglas and Judith devoured it while Peter went to the telephone. In an incredibly short time John Spencer and Frank Day, the sheriff, galloped up to the door. To them and to Peter, the young people told their story.
The sheriff asked a number of questions. After he had finished Douglas queried anxiously:
"You ain't going to try and put it on us, Frank?"
Frank grinned. "Well, I might, if the suspicions I have as to another party prove wrong."
"Don't torture 'em, Frank!" protested Peter. "They've been through a good deal for kids."
"Scott Parsons was the only rider in the valley who didn't like Oscar," said John. "That war they've had for two years over the bull was bound to end in trouble. I warned Oscar."
"Oscar was more to blame than Scott," said the sheriff. "He was the meanest man for hanging out on a fool thing I ever knew. And I'm just as fond of Oscar as the rest of you. What was a bull to Oscar! He could buy a dozen of 'em. Scott hasn't a thing on earth except wages for riding and that mangy little herd of slicks he's picked up."
"Picked up is right!" grunted John. "That bull, whoever it belonged to, is standard bred."
"Scott was born with a nasty temper." Peter spoke thoughtfully. "He told
Oscar in front of me he would get him. That was about two weeks ago."
"Did Oscar tell any one he was going anywhere?" asked the sheriff.
"Not me," said Peter. "Why not let the kids go home?"
"Sure," agreed Frank. "You've done a good night's work, you two. Get some sleep now."
"You'll find Buster tied to my saddle, Doug," said John. "Judith, can
Swift still move?"
"You bet she can!" replied Judith.
There was a laugh, and the two young people gladly mounted and trotted into the home trail.
Oscar's wife had long been dead. His son was on a cattle-buying trip and could not be reached. Oscar had been one of the richest men in the very well conditioned valley, so, instead of taking the body up to the lonely ranch house, it was laid out in state in the post-office.
Grandma Brown always officiated at deaths and births in Lost Chief. After it was found impossible to get in touch with young Jeff and after the sheriff had made a three days' investigation, she ordered the funeral to take place at once.
"We could pack him down in the ice till a thaw opens up the cemetery a little," suggested Charleton Falkner. "You know what a god-awful job it is making a grave in the cemetery in winter, between the frost and the rocks."
"He's going to be buried now, while he's in good trim," declared Grandma. "I'm not going to have him ruined, waiting for spring. You men get to work now, in shifts, like you did for old Ma Day."
Grandma's word was law in Lost Chief, and the grave forthwith was prepared. John Spencer, Peter Knight, and Charleton Falkner were appointed by the old lady to do the work, and Douglas accompanied his father. Old Johnny Brown appeared while the work was in process.
The cemetery was fenced in, but except for a few simple headstones and monuments, it was unadorned.
"Queer the women folks have never fixed this place up a little," said
Peter Knight, standing waist-deep in the grave, with John. "Most places
I've been, women keep the graves like they would a little garden."
Charleton Falkner, resting on a neighboring headstone, smiled sardonically. "Lost Chief women have enough to do without dolling up graves."
Cold sweat stood on Doug's forehead. He stared from the gaping grave to the murmuring line of pines that marked the end of the cemetery and the beginning of the Forest Reserve, and shuddered. He had not been sleeping well since the night of the murder. Johnny Brown, small and very thin, with a scraggly iron-gray beard hung with little icicles and his blue eyes watering with the cold, moved away from the headstone against which he had been resting after his turn in the grave.
"That boy," he said, jerking his elbow at Doug, "will be massified for many a year for driving the preacher out of Lost Chief."
"How do you mean—massify!" demanded Doug, gruffly. Johnny might be half-witted, but his remarks were curiously penetrating sometimes.
"I mean massify," grunted Johnny.
Peter Knight heaved a great frosted boulder out to the ground level.
"Charleton," he said slowly, "doesn't the thought of lying in a forgotten grave give you dumb horrors?"