CHAPTER XV
MARY’S DESPAIR
Justin had found Sloan Jasper one of the most troublesome of the water users. Jasper was almost as hard to please as William Sanders; and only the day before Sanders had denounced Justin as being in league with the company to defraud the farmers. For these reasons Justin always approached the farms of these men with trepidation. Trouble was brewed on each visit.
The trouble which brewed at Sloan Jasper’s on this particular occasion was, however, wholly unexpected, and of quite a different kind. Jasper came out to the trail with an anxious air.
“Mary is in the house and wants you to stop in and see her.”
Justin dismounted to enter the house. He had not known that Mary was at home.
“It’s about Ben,” said Jasper, “and I wish he was in hell! The way he is carryin’ on is killin’ my girl by inches.”
With this stout denunciation of Ben ringing in his ears Justin went in to see Mary. She had been crying. Jasper followed him into the house and stood within the doorway, in an uneasy, angry attitude, holding his soiled hat in his hands.
“I wanted to see you about Ben,” said Mary, rising to greet Justin.
Her cheeks were pale and her eyes lacked lustre. With that rose-leaf color gone, her face was so pallid that it deepened by contrast the darkness of her eyes and her hair. She was rather handsome, in spite of all, in one of those Denver dresses chosen by Sibyl Dudley, which served to make her look taller and more stately than she was.
Mary’s desire was to have Justin do something to induce Ben to let liquor alone. She acknowledged that she had lost all control over him, if she had ever had any. More than once he had treated her brutally while in a fit of intoxication. Yet she had clung to him. Having won her girlish love, he still held it. She had long hoped that he would abandon his wild ways after awhile and become a sober, sensible man, to whom she could trust her life and happiness. She admitted that the hope was growing faint.
“I don’t see what I can do,” said Justin, touched by her unhappiness, and perplexed. “If I go to Ben and say anything to him he will only insult me. He hasn’t liked me for a long time, as you know.”
“Perhaps if you would speak to Mr. Davison,” Mary urged, with pathetic persistence.
Justin was sure that would present almost as many difficulties. He knew that Philip Davison had long reasoned with Ben, and raved at him, in vain.
“Since it’s known that you are his half-brother, I thought possibly you could do something. I’ve tried until I don’t know what to try next.”
“Give the scamp the go-by,” said Jasper hotly. “Throw him over. Have some spunk about you, can’t ye? Why, if I was a woman, and a man should treat me as he has you, I’d send him hummin’ in a jiffy; I wouldn’t stand it.”
“But you don’t understand, father.”
“Don’t I? I understand too tarnal well. If I had my way I’d kick his ornery carcass out of this house, if he ever ventured to set foot in it ag’in. That’d be my way. Any other way is a fool’s way, and you ought to know it.”
“Don’t listen to him, Justin,” said Mary, tearfully. “You must know how I feel, even if he doesn’t. And if you can do anything to get Ben to stop drinking and running around with Clem Arkwright I wish you would.”
Never more than at that moment did Justin long for some influence with Ben. He knew he had none. He made what promises he could, but they were not very assuring. Mary followed him to the door, still urging him.
Riding on, thinking of Mary, Justin encountered Lucy. She joined him, and they rode together along the homeward trail. When she rallied him on his depressed manner, he told her of Mary’s appeal.
“Yes,” she admitted, “I had heard she was at home, and I know only too well that Ben has been drinking more than ever of late. I can see that it is hurting Uncle Philip very much. He has always believed that when Ben sows what he calls his wild oats he will change and be a man, but I’ve doubted it. There isn’t anything you can do, not a thing; but I shall go to see Mary, and try to make her feel better.”
She looked earnestly at Justin, riding beside her. He had put aside the checked business suit of gray, and was clad roughly, as became his muddy calling. Yet how manly he was, however he dressed; how broad his shoulders, how sturdy and well-knit his frame, how clear and open his countenance, and how intelligent and attractive the flash of his eyes, as he conversed with her! She knew that she loved him more than ever.
“One would never dream that you are related to Ben!”
“I hope I am not like him, even though he is my half-brother.”
“You aren’t, not in the least; I don’t think I could like you so well as I do if you were.”
“Then you do like me?”
He looked at her, smiling.
“It would be only natural for me to like the man I have promised to marry, wouldn’t it?”
“I was merely hoping that you love me; like is too mild a word.”
Then they began to talk again of that delightful day, ever hastening nearer, as they believed, when they should be not merely lovers, but husband and wife. It was a pleasant dream, and they lingered by the way, as they contemplated its beauties.
As they thus talked and loitered, Ben Davison came driving by in his clog-cart, with Clem Arkwright. Arkwright’s pudgy form was not quite so pudgy, for he had not lived as well of late, but his face and nose were as red as ever, and his old manner had not forsaken him. He bowed elaborately to both Lucy and Justin.
“A great day,” he called, “a glorious day, and the old mountain is grand; just take a glance at it now and then as you ride along; you’ll never see anything finer!”
Ben did not look at Justin; but to Lucy he shouted:
“I’m going to town to sell the horse and dogcart. I told you I would. Arkwright knows a man who will buy them.”
When Lucy called on Mary, she heard details of a story which Mary had not ventured to hint to Justin. Mary had made a discovery too long delayed. Ben’s frequent visits to Denver were not merely to see her; the real attraction was Sibyl Dudley. Sibyl was the recipient of most of the money Ben had been able to wring from his father or gain at gambling. Her calls for money had increased his recklessness. Sibyl was the horse-leech’s daughter, crying ever for more, and Ben was weak.
Mary had pedestaled Sibyl and believed in her, refusing to see aught but goodness, until her foolish belief became no longer possible. Then, with her eyes opened, she marveled at her almost incomprehensible blindness. Why had she not seen before? If she had seen before she might have saved Ben, she thought. She recalled the genial Mr. Plimpton. Had Sibyl, by incessant demands for money, wrought the financial overthrow of Plimpton? Every suggestion that came to her now was sickening and horrible. Such an awakening is often disastrous in its results. Doubt of humanity itself is a fruit of that tree of knowledge, and that doubt had come to Mary.
Lucy took the unhappy girl in her arms. She was herself grieved and shocked.
“You poor dear!” was all she was able to say at first.
“And, oh, I am to blame for it all!” Mary sobbed, putting her arms about the neck of her comforter. “I can see what a fool I was, and it was pride that made me a fool. I went up there as ignorant as a child; I thought it would be fine to live in a city and be a lady and drive round in a carriage. How I hate that carriage! And that coachman. I know even he must have thought horrid things about me. And Plimpton! I know what Plimpton was now, and I hate him. It seems to me I could stamp on him if I saw him fall down in the street. And I—I hate—oh, there isn’t a word strong enough to tell how I hate Mrs. Dudley! I thought she was an angel, and she is—is—a brute!”
“You poor dear!” said Lucy, smoothing back the dark hair from the fevered and tear-wet face. “You poor dear! You have been cruelly deceived and abused. It doesn’t seem possible! I was as much deceived as you, for I thought Mrs. Dudley a very pleasant woman. There were some things about her I didn’t like, about the way she dressed and painted, yet I never thought but that she was a good woman. I didn’t suspect anything, for you told me she was rich.”
“And that’s what she told me, but she lied; she’s been getting her money from fools like Plimpton and Ben. And I used her money, and lived in her house, and rode about in her carriage with all Denver gaping at me, and never knew a thing. Even this dress I have on was bought with her money. I want to tear it off and stamp it into the mud; but I haven’t a thing to wear that she didn’t get for me, not a thing. And my—my silly pride is to blame—is to blame for Ben, and everything. If I hadn’t gone with her Ben might never have met her. But if Ben could only be induced to quit drinking, something could be done with him yet. I almost wish he would get sick; anything to keep him away from that woman.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
“Yes, he did, when I hinted at what I had discovered and told him I had left Denver for good and all; he told me I was a little idiot. But I didn’t mind that; I’ve got so used to his harsh words that I don’t mind them; but this I couldn’t stand, this about Sibyl. So then I put aside my shame, and I told him right to his face that I was a silly idiot or I would never speak to him again; and he confessed to me that he had been going there to see Mrs. Dudley more than me, and said he would go as often as he pleased, and that I could help myself; and he said, too, that he intended to marry her. But I know that isn’t so; he would never marry her now. I told him he wouldn’t, and begged him to remember his promises to me and keep away from her; and he told me to shut my mouth and mind my own business. As if that isn’t my own business!”
She began to cry again; and Lucy, holding her tightly, rocked her as if she were a child.
“And, oh, I was so happy! So happy, until I knew that! It was a selfish happiness I see now but I thought it was true happiness. I thought everything of Mrs. Dudley—just everything; and I thought she loved me as much as I loved her; and to have this come! It breaks my heart, it breaks my heart! Oh, Ben, Ben!”
She lay in Lucy’s arms. Their tears flowed together. But what could be said to comfort her?
“Did Mrs. Dudley say anything?”
“When I reproached her she was indignant and denied it; she cried, and said I was an ungrateful girl and did not deserve to have a friend. She declared that Ben came only to see me; but in her very confusion I could see that she was lying, for when my eyes began to open they became sharp as needles. Oh, I could see through her, after that! I told her she had stolen Ben from me, and all for his money, and that she was ruining him, and that it would kill me. I don’t know what I said, for I was crazy, and I was crying so that I thought my heart would break. And just as soon as I could get out of the house I did, and I came right down here; but even then I had to use her money, a little money she had given me, to pay car fare, for I hadn’t any other. But just the thought of it made me want to jump off that train and kill myself.”
“You poor dear!”
And Lucy, holding her in a close embrace, kissed the tear-stained face.
CHAPTER XVI
THE WAGES OF SIN
The knowledge of why Mary had returned so suddenly came first to Justin through Sloan Jasper himself. Jasper met Justin as he rode along the trail the next day, and told him all about it, without veiled words, and with many fierce oaths.
“He’s killed my girl, damn him; broke her heart! She’s home, cryin’ her eyes out day and night, and all on account of him. She’s a fool; I wouldn’t look at the skunk ag’in, if’t was me; but she’s a woman and that accounts fer it, and it’s killin’ her.”
Justin hastened to convey the news to Curtis Clayton, whom he found at home, in the front yard, engaged in freeing a butterfly from the spoke-like web of a geometric spider. A flush of indignation swept through Justin, as the thought came to him that perhaps Clayton had known all along and had kept silent. Clayton took the butterfly in his hands and began to remove the clinging mesh from its golden wings. When he had done so his fingers were smeared with its gold dust and it crawled along unable to fly. He regarded it thoughtfully.
“I’ve done the best I could; I released it, but I can’t put the gold back on its wings, nor mend them. The rest of its life it will be a draggled wreck, but luckily its life will be short.”
Then Justin told him what he had learned from Sloan Jasper.
Clayton cast the draggled butterfly away and sank to a seat on the door-step. His face filled with a troubled look. For a little while he said nothing.
“I suppose that I am partly to blame for that,” he confessed, humbly. “I have never talked to you about Mrs. Dudley, but I will tell you now that she was once my wife.”
Justin showed no surprise.
“I knew it.”
“You knew it! How? I never mentioned it to you.”
“No, but I have seen that photograph of her you have treasured, and I saw her that day of the rabbit hunt. Putting those two things together, with something that Mary told Lucy, made me sure that she had once been your wife.”
Clayton was bewildered.
“Something Mary told Lucy?”
“Yes, about your arm; Mrs. Dudley told Mary how you came to have a stiff arm, and though she did not admit that she was the woman who caused it, and Mary did not suspect it then, Lucy did; and she told me about it.”
Clayton stared at the butterfly crawling away through the grass.
“When I heard that Mary had gone with Mrs. Dudley to Denver, I rode over to Sloan Jasper’s to tell him that I feared it was not wise. But, really, I had nothing on which to base a charge, except my suspicions. I knew why I had left her, but nothing more. And my courage failed. I said nothing, and I should have said something. But,” he leaned back wearily against the door, “when you come to love a woman as I loved her, Justin, you will perhaps know how I felt, and why I hesitated. I was weak, because of that love; that is all I can say about it.”
The contempt growing for Clayton in Justin’s heart was swept away. He knew what love, true love, is; the love which believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things; which changes never, though all the world is changed.
“I loved her,” Clayton went on, his deep voice trembling, “and rather than say anything that might not be true I said nothing. I did wrong. And I am punished, for this thing hurts me more than you can know.”
Justin had come close to Clayton’s heart many times, but never closer than now. He looked at the suffering man with much sympathy. Clayton swung his stiff arm toward the crawling butterfly.
“It can never be the same again; I was never the same again, nor can Ben be. It has been in the web, and its wings are broken and the gold gone. We think that under given circumstances we would not do certain things, but we don’t know. Environment, heredity, passions of various kinds, selfishness, pull us this way and that; and when we declare, as so many do, that if we were this person or that we should not do as he or she does, we simply proclaim our ignorance. There is not a man alive who knows himself to the innermost core of his being. I am a dozen men rolled into one, and the whole dozen are contemptible. I despise myself more than you can.”
“Why should you say that?”
“You did despise me, or came near it, a moment ago; I saw it in your manner.”
“Was my manner different? I didn’t know it, and didn’t intend that it should be. But I couldn’t understand how you could keep still so long, if you knew.”
“I kept still because I am a coward, and because I loved that woman. That explains everything; explains why I am here in Paradise Valley, living like a hermit. I wanted to get away, and I wanted to forget. I got away, but if one could take the wings of the morning he could never out-fly memory. I could never live happily with that woman, and I have never been able to live happily without her. When she came into my life she wrecked it. Some women are born to that fate, I suppose; and if that is so, perhaps they ought not to be blamed too severely. But I am sorry for Mary Jasper, and I am more than sorry for Ben. He was already going to the devil at a lively gait. Sibyl is one of those women whose feet take hold on hell, and she will drag him down with her, if he does not get out of her web, or is not helped out. And I’m afraid he can’t be helped out.”
Clayton set out to see Davison, and have a talk with him on this disagreeable subject; but, as before when he desired to speak to Sloan Jasper, he turned back without saying anything.
Davison seemed not to know what had occurred. He and Fogg went often to and from Denver, as they continued their work of exploiting Paradise Valley for the benefit of their pockets. From Denver they had brought an engineer, who had made a survey and report on the available sources of water. Behind a granite ridge, at the head of the valley, flowed Warrior River, a swift stream that wasted itself uselessly in the deep gorges that lay to the southwest. The engineer’s report showed that a tunnel cut through that ridge would pour Warrior River into Paradise Creek and water many thousands of acres of land which could not now be touched.
“We’ll do it later,” Fogg had said to Davison, when they examined the plans and estimates. “It’s going to take too much money right now. We’ll try to get those thousands of acres into our own hands first. Then we’ll cut that tunnel and build that dam, and we’ll squeeze a fortune out of the business. We may have to float irrigating bonds, and put blanket mortgages on the land, but it will pay big in the end.”
Davison was subservient to the man who had the Midas touch. It was still for Ben, all for Ben; to gain wealth for Ben he was permitting himself to be led by one who in matters of business never had a straight thought.
As they returned from Denver one night by a late train, a lantern was swung across the track at the cut near the head of Paradise Valley, a mile above the town. The whistle screamed, and the air-brakes being applied, the train came to a stop so suddenly that the passengers were almost thrown from their seats. Before the grinding of the wheels had ceased shots were heard outside.
Fogg clutched the big wallet tucked in the inner pocket of his coat.
“By George, it’s a hold-up,” he cried, his fat body trembling, “and I’ve got a thousand dollars in cash here to give to those fool farmers who wouldn’t accept our checks in payment for their land!”
He sank back into the seat, quivering like a bag of jelly. Fear of the loss of that money unnerved him. Davison was of different mold. As the shots continued, and he heard voices, and saw men jumping from their seats, he sprang into the aisle, tugging at the revolver he carried in his hip pocket. Fogg sought to restrain him.
“Sit down! Don’t be a fool! Let the other fellows do the fighting. That’s always my rule, and it’s a good one. If I’m not troubled here, I’ll promise not to trouble anybody.”
But Davison was gone, following close after a man he saw hurrying to the platform. He and Fogg were in the smoking car, which was next to the combination baggage-and-express car. Other men dropped from the platform steps to the ground as he did, and some of them began to fire off their revolvers, shooting apparently into the air.
Davison was not a man to waste his ammunition in a mere effort to frighten the robbers by the rattle of a harmless fusillade. He saw a masked figure moving near the forward car, and he let drive, with aim so true that the masked figure pitched forward on its face. The other robbers, disconcerted by the resistance, were already in retreat.
With a grim feeling of satisfaction Davison called loudly for a lantern. One was brought hurriedly; and a train man, whipping out his knife, severed the strings that held the mask in place over the face of the slain robber. Fogg was still in the smoker, his fat body shaking with fear.
As the mask dropped aside, the light of the lantern revealed to the startled gaze of Philip Davison Ben’s pallid, dissipated face. He was bending forward to look, and with a hoarse and inarticulate cry he fell headlong across the body of his son.
One of the robbers was captured that night, as he attempted to escape into the hills. The town and the valley had been aroused. Steve Harkness led the capturing party, and short work was made of this robber. When morning dawned a rope and a telegraph pole alone upheld him from the earth. As the body swung at the sport of the wind, the blackened face was turned now and then toward the flat-topped mountain. On the breast was displayed this scrawl:
“SO’S HE CAN LOOK AT THE SCENERY.”
The body was that of Clem Arkwright.