CHAPTER XVII
SHADOWS BEFORE
Philip Davison, conveyed to his home in Paradise Valley, hovered between life and death, attended by Doctor Clayton and waited upon by Lucy and Justin. Fogg lent a hand with hearty will, and Pearl Harkness, forgetting that there had ever been any disagreement between Davison and her husband, established herself again for a time in the Davison home, that she might assist Lucy. Steve Harkness, not to be outdone by his wife, offered his services in any way they could be utilized, and found that there was enough for him to do.
Davison improved somewhat, but could not leave his bed. From the strong man he had been reduced until he was as helpless as a child; and for a time his mental strength was but little better than his physical.
Before going back to Denver Fogg took Justin aside.
“I don’t see but I shall have to ask you to look after things here, Justin, while I am gone.”
“Command me in any way,” said Justin.
“It’s a lucky thing that you’re capable of taking hold now. Some one ought to visit the Purgatoire and see how the cattle are doing there, and some one must ride the ditch and look out for matters at this end of the line. Harkness can go to the Purgatoire; he will go if you ask him, though likely he wouldn’t for me; and you can have charge here.”
Fogg was mentally distressed. The shock had left its traces even on his buoyant nature. Through worry he had lost girth; the ponderous stomach on which the shining chain heaved up and down as he breathed heavily and talked was not so assertively protuberant, and his fat face had lost something of its unctuous shine. Somehow, though he could hardly account for it, for nothing in the shape of material wealth had so far been lost there by him, Paradise Valley oppressed him like a bad dream, and he was anxious to get away from it for a time.
“I shall be glad to do whatever I can,” Justin declared.
“It’s your own father who is lying in that room, which he’ll never get out of I’m afraid, and I knew of course you’d be willing to help out now all you can. Clayton doesn’t speak very favorably of the case. There isn’t really anything the matter with Davison, so far as any one can see. It’s his mind, I reckon; it must have been an awful shock to him, perfectly terrible, and it has simply laid him out. He thought everything of Ben. Well, I’m not a man to talk about the dead; but Ben would have tried the soul of a saint, and if I must say it to you I never saw anything very saintly in the character of your father.”
“It’s a good thing Harkness didn’t move out of the valley when he left the ranch.”
“A great thing for us now. He’s dropped everything over on his farm and stays here almost night and day. I’ll see that he doesn’t lose by it.”
While they were talking, William Sanders came up, chewing like a ruminant.
“When I had my fortune told that time in Denver the fortune teller said there was goin’ to be a heap of trouble down here, and it’s come. I don’t reckon that Paradise Valley is any too lucky a place to live in, after all. But them that makes trouble must expect trouble.”
Fogg did not deign to notice this.
“How are your crops, Mr. Sanders?” he asked, with his habitual smile.
“They might be better, if the ditch company and the ditch rider done their duty. I ain’t scarcely had any water fer a week, and that field of millet in the northeast corner of my place is dry as a dust heap. I been wonderin’ when I’ll git water to it. That’s why I come over.”
Justin promised to see to it.
“Davison ain’t doin’ as well as he might, I hear?”
He plucked a straw and set it between his teeth.
“Not doing well at all,” said Fogg.
“Well, it’s a pity; but them that makes trouble must expect trouble.”
When Lemuel Fogg returned to Paradise Valley a month later Philip Davison was not changed greatly. His mind was clear, but his physical condition was low. Clayton remained with him much of the time, when not called away to visit other patients. But Davison never spoke to him of Ben nor of Justin.
With Fogg at this time came a man who represented an Eastern home-builders’ association, whose object was to establish homes for worthy but comparatively poor men in favorable places on the cheap lands of the West. The association was conducted by charitable men and women who had collected funds for their enterprise. There were many excellent families, this man said, in cities and elsewhere, who would be glad to go upon farms, if only they could do so. It was the purpose of this society to help such people. It would place them upon farms, furnish comfortable houses, give them a start, and permit them to repay the outlay in longtime installments. The self-respect of a farming community thus established would be maintained, and that was a factor making for moral health which could not be overlooked.
When Fogg had shown this man about the valley he introduced him to Justin, and later talked with Justin about him.
“I’ve listened to him,” he said, “and his proposition strikes me favorably. He wants to buy canal and dam, land and everything, and he offers a good price. If we accept, he will cut the tunnel through the ridge to the Warrior River and bring that water in here to irrigate the valley, and he will bring on his colony from the East. As soon as Davison is able to talk about it, I’ll put the matter before him. I think it would mean big money to us, if we sell a part of the land, enough for them to settle their colony on; and sell out to them, too, our interests in the irrigation company. They’re in shape to cut that tunnel to the Warrior and put in a good dam. When the thing has been developed as they propose to develop it, every acre in this valley will be worth ten times what it is now. So, you see my point. They’ll cut the tunnel, develop and settle the country, and thus make the land we shall still hold worth a good deal more than the whole of it is worth today, counting cattle and everything else in. But to induce them to take up this enterprise we’ve got to sell them our stock in the canal company and enough land to make it worth their while. If we don’t, there are other valleys in the state, and they’ll go elsewhere and do what they think of doing here.”
Fogg was enthusiastic. This new plan offered greater profit than anything that had yet been brought to his consideration. It built a new dream-world in Justin’s mind. In this dream-world the vision of Peter Wingate took actual form, and he saw the desert burst into bloom and fruitage.
At another time when Fogg came down there came with him a cattleman who desired to purchase the herd that grazed on the mesa above Paradise Valley and watered where the fenced chute opened upon the water-holes. It was still a considerable herd, and troublesome near the irrigated farms. Its grazing range lay on the now contracted area that stretched round to the southward of the valley and extended to and beyond the Black Cañon. The fence by the Black Cañon had been ordered down by the government agents, and the herd was for sale.
Davison’s condition was improved, and Fogg went in to discuss with him the subject of the sale of this herd, or a large portion of it, and also the proposition of the man from the East.
Coming out, he met Justin with a smile.
“You haven’t seen your father this morning?”
“Not this morning; but I was in his room awhile yesterday, and he seemed much better.”
“Very much better; he’s going to get well, in my opinion. I’ve had a long talk with him, and he agrees with me about those sales. The man who came down with me is ready to buy. We’ll let him have what he wants; the remainder of the herd we’ll throw over on the Purgatoire. You may tell Harkness about it, and things can be made ready for the transfer of the cattle. They’ll have to be driven to the station for shipment.”
CHAPTER XVIII
PHILOSOPHY GONE MAD
One day it became known that Sibyl Dudley had visited Paradise Valley and was stopping in the town. She had ridden out to call on Mary Jasper.
Justin carried the unpleasant news to Clayton.
“I hope I shan’t see her,” said Clayton, nervously. He had received the news in his study, where he had been writing. Now he laid down his pen. “I hope it isn’t her intention to call here. But tell me about it; why has she visited Mary?”
“That I don’t know. Lucy saw her as she left Jasper’s. She will find out for me.”
“And Mary? I haven’t heard about her for some time.”
“She is very much changed. You would hardly know her. She was in bed nearly a month after Ben’s death. But I’ve thought she looked better lately.”
“Youth is strong,” said Clayton; “it can survive much. But I am surprised that Mrs. Dudley has called there.”
When Justin had nothing further to communicate Clayton turned again to his writing. But that night he called Justin into his study, a place in which Justin had passed many pleasant hours. Clayton was hollow-cheeked and nervous. The news of the coming of Sibyl to Paradise Valley had not been without its evil effect.
“You are well, Justin?” he inquired solicitously.
“Quite well,” said Justin, with some show of surprise.
“I hoped so; but things have gone so wrong here lately that I worry about every one.”
He took up some sheets of paper on which he had been writing.
“In our latest talk I was telling you something about the new views I have worked out concerning spiritual matters. I told you I had come to the conclusion that the laws which apply to the material world apply also to the spiritual world. In the material world we have the law of evolution. We do not know how life begins, but we know how it develops. Applying this to the spiritual world, we may say that though we cannot know how spiritual life begins it must develop after it begins. And development implies different grades or orders of beings; name them angels, or what you will.”
“You know I said I wasn’t able to agree with you about all those things,” Justin reminded, gently.
“That doesn’t matter; it is nothing to me who believes or disbelieves. Whatever is truth is truth, if it is never accepted by any one. I simply work out these results for my own satisfaction, and I like to talk them over with you.”
Justin settled in his chair to listen. This new view of Clayton’s seemed strange, but it was sure to be presented in an interesting manner.
“I think I have made a startling discovery.” Clayton’s eyes shone and his manner astonished Justin. “In the material world man is the highest product of evolution, though he has not reached the highest possible state. In the spiritual world, which must be more advanced, the highest state has been reached, and he who has reached it we call God. The one best fitted to reach it of all spiritual beings has reached it, and has become absolute. Yet every spiritual being is entitled to reach that state, if he is worthy, each in turn. Being infinite, God could prevent that, and occupy the throne forever. The common belief is that he does so occupy it. But, being just, as well as infinite, he abdicates—suicides, if I may use the word without irreverence—so that another spirit, becoming perfect through ages of development, may take the throne; and when he does so we have what is popularly conceived of as ‘the end of the world’—the universe goes back in the twinkling of an eye to fire-mist and chaos, and all tilings begin over again. That is the great day of fire, when all things are consumed; the day of which the Revelator wrote when he said, ‘And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together.’”
There was something in Clayton’s eyes which Justin had never seen before, and which he did not like; it forced him to combat Clayton’s astonishing views.
“But the logic of the situation compels that belief,” Clayton insisted.
“Then I refuse to accept the premises.”
“But you can’t!” His earnestness grew. “See here!” He read over some of the things he had written. “It comes to that, and there is no way of getting round it.”
“I get round it by refusing to believe any of it.”
“And Justin!” The dark eyes shone with a still brighter light. “I put the question to you:—If God, the Infinite, may commit suicide for a good reason, why may not a man? I put it to you.”
Seeing the black thought which lay back of these words Justin began to reason with Clayton, combating the idea with all the vigor and eloquence at his command, and years of training under Clayton had made him a good reasoner. But he could not break the chain of false logic which Clayton had forged, or at least he could not make Clayton see that it was broken, though he talked long and earnestly.
Justin passed an uneasy night, waking at intervals with a nervous start, and listening for something, he hardly knew what. Once, hearing Clayton stirring, he sat up in bed, shivering, ready to leap out and force his way into Clayton’s room, if it seemed necessary. He was alarmed, and he thought he had ground for his alarm. The coming of Sibyl to the valley he charged with being responsible for Clayton’s strange and changed manner. Sibyl’s malevolent influence seemed to lie over everything that came near her, like the blight of the fabled upas.
In the morning Clayton was very quiet, and even listless. He did not recur to the talk of the previous evening, though Justin momentarily expected him to, and was forging more arguments to combat this new and distressing theory which had wormed its way into Clayton’s troubled mind. During the day, when there were so many things to hold his attention, Clayton was not likely to give so much thought to Sibyl and his new conclusions; he had a number of patients, including Davison, who demanded his attention, and as a physician he threw himself into his work without reserve or thought of himself. Therefore, Justin felt easier when Clayton saddled his horse and rode away to visit a sick man, who was one of the newer settlers in the valley.
CHAPTER XIX
SIBYL AND CLAYTON
Returning that afternoon from a long and somewhat wearing journey, and being distressed and troubled, Clayton encountered Sibyl, as he turned into the Paradise trail.
She was mounted on a spirited bay horse, which she had obtained in the town, and was riding out to make a call on Mary Jasper. She drew her horse in, when she beheld Clayton, and sat awaiting him. He would have fled, when he saw her there, but that such an act savored of ungallantry and cowardice. So he continued on until he reached her side. She looked into his troubled face with a smile, pushing back her veil with a jeweled white hand from which she had drawn the glove. He had always admired the beauty of her hands.
“I thought it was you,” she said in her sweetest manner. “So I waited for you to come up.”
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, hoarsely.
“I have friends in the town, you know, and I came down to visit them; just now I am on my way to call on Mary. But it’s such a pleasure to see you, Curtis, that if you don’t object I’ll ride with you a short distance.”
The blood came into his face under that winning smile. He knew he ought to hate this woman, and he had a sense of self-contempt when he could not.
“I thought yesterday of calling on you,” she went on.
“I’m glad you didn’t,” he contrived to say.
“Now, don’t be foolish and unreasonable, Curtis. I know what you’ve thought, and all the horrid things that have been said about me since Ben Davison’s death, but they weren’t true. It isn’t any pleasanter for me to be lied about and misunderstood than it is for you and Justin. Mary’s mind has been poisoned against me, but I’ll make her see even yet that I’m not the woman she thinks I am.”
He sat looking at her in hesitation, the strange light which Justin had noticed again in his eyes; he hardly heard her words, but he could not fail to hear the music of her voice. It had not lost its charm.
“Good God, Sibyl,” he burst out, “if you could only have been true to me, and we could have lived happily together!”
There was agony and yearning in his tone.
“You have thought many foolish things, which you had no right to think, just like other people. Shall we ride along? There is a good path leading by those bushes.”
“Yes, the trail past the Black Cañon.”
The fence hedging the mesa from the valley had been lately removed. He turned his horse toward the path, and they rode along together. At first he did not speak, but listened to her, with a glance at her now and then as she sat, firmly erect and beautiful, on that handsome bay. Her gray veil fluttered above her face. It was an attractive face, even a beautiful one, after all the years, and the strain and turmoil of them. There were a few fine hair-like wrinkles about the dark eyes, but she knew how to conceal them. The rouge which Lemuel Fogg had noticed in Denver was absent, or, having been deftly applied, was unnoticed by Clayton. Her blue close-fitting riding habit, with a dash of bright color at the throat, became her and heightened her charm. And it was her beauty, unchanged, it seemed to him, which Clayton devoured when he glanced at her; it was her beauty which had won his boyish heart, and it had not lost its power.
“Good God, Sibyl, if you could only have been true to me!” he exclaimed again.
She showed no irritation.
“You have thought many things that weren’t true; for you were never willing to believe anything but the worst. This is a lovely country here, isn’t it? And that cañon; it’s a horrid-looking hole, but fascinating.”
“As fascinating as sin, or a beautiful woman.”
She laughed lightly.
“You always had a way of saying startling things. If you had set your mind to it you might have been a great and successful flatterer.”
“I might have been many things, if other things had been different.”
“I suppose that is true of all of us. The trouble is that there seems to be no forgiveness for mistakes.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Her dark eyes looked into his. As they were withdrawn they took in every detail of his face and figure.
“I really didn’t know you were so good looking, Curtis! You’re really stunning on a horse, in that dark suit and those tan riding boots. I think you must have prospered down here?”
“I have lived.”
“What I meant was that you never have been able to forgive any of my mistakes.”
“Your sins, you mean.”
“Believing evil of me, you say sins. But I have been lied about, Curtis, cruelly lied about; I’m not perfect, any more than you are, but I’m not as bad as you think. You said a while ago, in one of your dramatic ways, that if I could only have been true to you, and we could have lived happily together! If I went wrong once, is that any reason why I couldn’t be true to you now?”
His hand shook on the rein.
“I don’t believe you could be true to any man or any thing.”
“Now is that quite fair?”
“Perhaps it is not quite fair, but you know I have had good cause for saying it.”
“Judge me by the present, not by the past. Do as you would be done by. That’s been one of the tenets of your creed, I believe.”
“Judge you by the present?”
“Yes; give me a chance to show that I can be true to you.”
“You mean live with me again as my wife?”
“Why not?”
Again her dark eyes were scanning his face and figure. Plimpton was gone, Ben Davison was dead, and the years were passing. Even Mary had deserted her. She had no money, and soon might not have even so much as a shelter to which she could turn. Mary’s desertion and loss of faith in her had been the heaviest blow of all. It uprooted violently a genuine affection.
Sibyl Dudley, in spite of a brave outward show, was beginning to feel the terrifying loneliness of isolation; the protection of even that broken arm of Curtis Clayton, which she had scorned in other days, would be a comfort now. She knew that he had never ceased to love her, and she might win and hold him again. That would at least forefend the terrors of poverty and loneliness which threatened her in the shadows of the gathering years.
Clayton did not reply to her question instantly. He looked off into space with dark eyes that were troubled. Sibyl, glancing at him, saw the stiff left arm swinging heavily, and thought of the flower in that cañon long ago and of the foolish girl who stood on the cañon wall and called to her devoted lover to get it for her. Afterward, that foolish girl had trampled in the dust even the beautiful flower of his perfect love. It began to seem that she would live to regret it, if she were not regretting it already. The mills of the gods are still turned by the river of Time, and they still grind exceeding fine.
“If I could but trust you!” he said, after a while, with a sigh.
They went on, past the granite wall of the cañon, and out upon the high mesa beyond. Behind them lay Paradise Valley, smiling in the sunshine of the warm afternoon. Before them was a dust of moving cattle. Harkness, having received his instructions from Justin, was bunching the mesa herd, with the assistance of cowboys, preparatory to cutting out the cattle that had been sold and driving them to the station for shipment.
“If I could but trust you!” Clayton repeated, when she made further protest. “Perfect love casteth out fear, but I haven’t that perfect love any longer.”
He turned on her an anguished face.
“Yet, even while I say that, I know that I have never stopped loving you a single minute in all these years. Such love should have had a better reward.”
“I was foolish, Curtis. And I have paid for my foolishness.”
The dark eyes turned to his were half veiled by the dark lashes, in the old fascinating way. Cleopatra must have looked thus upon Antony.
“For all the heart-ache I have caused you I beg forgiveness. Kindness has always been your hobby, kindness to everything, even the dumb brutes; and now I think you ought to be a little bit kind to me, when I come to you and tell you that I am sorry for everything, for all that has been and all that you have believed.”
“I forgive you,” he said, breathing hard. “I forgave you from the first.”
“But I want your love again. It isn’t often that a woman comes to a man begging in this way.”
“You have always had my love, and you have it now; I never loved any one else. I have never looked on any woman with thought of love since I left you and came to this valley.”
The dust cloud had thickened, and from the mesa before them came shouts and confused cries. Then from the right, out of the deep trough-like depression which the cowboys called “the draw,” there heaved suddenly a line of moving backs and clicking horns.
Sibyl was putting on the glove she had carried in her jeweled hand and was arranging her veil. She had kept the hand ungloved that its beauty might be displayed, but had begun to feel that both face and hand needed protection from the hot sunshine. Clayton drew rein, when that heaving line rose before him, apparently out of the earth. Until then he had forgotten where he was, had forgotten everything but the woman beside him.
Sibyl’s face whitened when she saw those tossing horns; and the veil, escaping in her agitation, was blown toward the cattle. Startled by having come so suddenly on these riders, the cattle were halting in confusion. The fluttering veil, whirled into their midst by the wind, completed the work of fear.
The rustle of a leaf as it scrapes and bobs over the ground, a flash of sunlight from a bit of broken glass, the scampering of a coyote to his covert, or the tumbling to earth of an unhorsed cowboy, will sometimes throw a moving herd into a panic of fright and bring on a wild stampede, though at other times all these things combined would not have the slightest effect. The reason must be sought in the psychology of fear.
The cattle in front whirled to race away from that fluttering object of terror, while those behind crowded them on. In the midst of the confusion, the larger herd plunged into view out of the dust cloud, hurried along by the cowboys. A quiver of fright ran through the entire heaving mass, and in an instant the stampede madness was born.
“We must get out of this!” Clayton shifted the reins to his stiff left hand and turned her horse about. “You used to be a good horsewoman, and we may have to do some sharp riding.”