Justin Wingate, Ranchman

CHAPTER XII

CHANGING EVENTS

Among those who were first to welcome Justin on his return to Paradise Valley were Steve and Pearl Harkness. They came to Clayton’s with their little daughter, of whom they were proud. They made their call in the evening. Harkness was clad in new brown over-alls and jacket of the same material, and looked too big for them. Mrs. Harkness rustled in a dress of real China silk, whose shade of red made her round red face seem even hotter and redder than it was, Helen was fluffy in white skirts that stood out like those of a ballet dancer. Clayton in his dusty snuff-colored clothing, and Justin in his business suit of checked gray were insignificant figures compared with Pearl Harkness and her daughter.

“Now, Helen, what was it I told you to do?” said Pearl, lifting a plump round finger and shaking it at Helen, as soon as Harkness had finished his boisterous greetings.

Helen hesitated, and Pearl catching her up deposited her in Justin’s lap.

“Now, what was it I told you to do?”

Then Helen remembered. Putting her chubby arms about Justin’s neck and leaning hard on his breast, while she squeezed to the utmost of her strength, she said:

“I love you, Justin; I love you!”

Justin clasped her tightly in his strong arms.

“I love you, too!” he declared, and kissed her.

Standing by while he held Helen thus, Pearl, with a touch that was almost motherly, pushed the clustering dark locks back from his forehead, revealing the scar of a burn. She gave it a little love pat.

“You won’t mind?” she said, and to Justin’s surprise her voice choked with a sudden rush of tears. “You seem almost like my own boy, Justin. You weren’t much more than a boy, you know, when you first came to the ranch; and I can’t help remembering how you got that scar. I wanted to see if it had gone away any.”

Harkness coughed suspiciously.

“If you ever git married, and your wife pulls out so much of your hair that you’re bald-headed, that scar’s goin’ to show,” he said.

Pearl caught Helen out of Justin’s lap, with sudden agitation.

“Helen, you’re getting dirt all over Justin’s nice new clothes!” With bare plump hand she brushed away some infinitesimal specks which Helen’s shoes had left. “I ought to have looked at her shoes before I put her up there! Why didn’t you tell me to, Steve? Helen, you’ll never be a lady, unless you keep your shoes clean.”

“All them heroes and hero-wines of Pearl’s keeps their shoes ferever spick an’ span an’ shinin’,” said Harkness. “People always do, you’ll notice, in books; at least them she reads about do. She was readin’ a book yisterday, and I looked at the picture of the hero. He had boots on that come to his thighs, and they’d jist been blacked. And the women in them books wear more fine clothes than you could find in a milliner’s shop.”

“Clothes aren’t found in a milliner’s shop, Steve!” Pearl corrected, as she settled Helen firmly on her feet and proceeded to spread out the fluffy white skirts. “Justin will think you don’t know anything.”

Helen, escaping from her mother’s clutches, and apparently glad to escape, made straight for Harkness, who caught her up, planted on her cheek a resounding kiss, and then plumped her down astride of one big knee. Pleased by this preference, his face was radiant.

“Justin,” his eyes shone with enthusiasm and delight, “there ain’t anything like bein’ married. Try it. I used to think I was havin’ fun, cuttin’ round skittish and wild like a loose steer on the range; this ain’t fun, mebbe, it’s comfort.”

“From what I hear, Justin intends to try it one of these days,” said Pearl, with a questioning look. “Don’t you think he is, Doctor Clayton? You’re hearing things like that, aren’t you?”

Clayton laughed, and glanced at Justin’s flushing face.

“I can’t say what his intentions are, but if they concern a certain young lady I could name, they have my hearty approval.”

“Yet it does seem almost like marrying relatives,” said Pearl. “I can’t get used to that yet. I had a cousin that married another cousin; and their children—well, you just ought to see their children!”

“Monkeys, air they?” said Harkness.

“Monkeys! Why, Steve, they’re plum fools! They don’t know enough to come into the house when it rains.”

“This would be a good country fer ’em to live in, then; don’t rain here more’n one’t in a year, and I reckon they could strain their intellects enough to git a move on ’em that often.”

He looked at Justin.

“Speakin’ of this country and rain, we’re reckonin’, Pearl and me, that we’ll take up farmin’, fer a change; think it might be healthy fer our pocket book. I’ve had notice from Davison to quit, the first of the month. I told him I’d quit to-morrow, if it suited him and he had a man to put in my place; that if he didn’t think I was earnin’ all the good money I got and a little bit more, I did, and I stood ready to go on short notice, or without any notice at all. I’ve knowed it was comin’ this good while, and I’ve been gittin’ ready fer it. Davison and Fogg air sellin’ off a good many cattle. The rest they’re goin’ to throw onto the mesa, an’ water at the water holes of the Purgatoire; the gover’ment is orderin’ down the fences, and it would take an army of cowboys to hold the cattle off the crops, with them fences gone.”

Clayton was interested.

“Do you think of farming here in the valley?” he asked.

“Yes, we’re figgerin’ on buyin’ Simpson’s place; it’s well up toward the head of the ditch, and if any water comes we’re reckonin’ that will give us a whack at it. Simpson’s made me an offer to sell. I’m jist waitin’ to see what’s goin’ to turn up here in the ditch line.”

“I tell him he’ll wait round till it’s too late,” said Pearl. “Fogg will buy that land before he knows it; he’s buying up farms everywhere, for himself and Davison.”

She turned to Justin with a smile.

“I’ve been wondering if you wouldn’t get married and settle down to farming, too; you never liked ranching.”

Pearl was as much of a match-maker as any dowager of her favorite novels.

“Pearl won’t never be satisfied until that weddin’ comes off,” said Harkness. “These women air bound to have a weddin’ happenin’ about one’t in so often, er they ain’t happy; if it can’t be their own weddin’, another woman’s will do. The weddin’s of a neighborhood air what keeps the old maids alive, I reckon; they live ferever, ye know, drawin’ happiness out of other women’s marriages.”

“I’m not an old maid!” Pearl asserted with spirit.

“No; I happened along!”

Before Mr. and Mrs. Harkness departed that evening, Dicky Carroll, galloping by, stopped for a few moments.

“I’ve got a job over at Borden’s,” he announced to Harkness. “He’ll be a better man to git along with than Davison, anyway; so I’m kinder glad to go. And if I stay round hyer longer I’ll be tempted to shoot Ben full of handsome little holes; he’s been meaner than a polecat to me ever sense that election.”

Then he shook hands with Justin and Clayton, who had come out into the yard. The moonlight revealed him in full cowboy attire, with his rope coiled at the saddle bow.

“They’re sayin’, Justin, that you helped to bu’st the cattle bizness round hyer. I ain’t believin’ it; but if you did, what’s the dif? There’ll be plenty of ranches fer as long a time as I’m able to straddle a pony and sling a rope, ranches back where the farmers can’t go. When I can’t ride a horse any longer I’ll quit cow-punchin’ and go to playin’ gentleman like Ben. From the fine clothes he wears I judge there’s money in it. Well, so long; luck to all of you!”

Fogg did not vary from his custom, when he visited Paradise Valley. He came over to Clayton’s, and sat in the little study, in the chair he loved, which, though big, was now almost too small for him. He put his fat hands on the arms of the chair, stretched out his fat legs, and with his watch chain shining like a golden snake across his big stomach, talked as amiably and laughed as loudly as ever.

Lemuel Fogg believed that it is better to bend before the storm than to be broken by it. The government at Washington had heard from the farming settlers and irrigationists of the West. Many states had spoken that winter, and their voice had been as one. The agricultural element, feeble and scorned at first, was becoming a power. Congress, heeding its voice, was beginning to devise ways and means by which vast areas of public land hitherto thought fit only for grazing, if for that, could be watered by irrigation. Even the East, long hostile because it did not want more rich Western lands opened to compete with Eastern agriculture, held modified opinions. The order of the land department for the removal of the illegal fences on the public domain was to be enforced, and the fences had begun to come down. Seeing the hand of fate, Fogg and Davison had sold some of their cattle, were contracting their grazing area, and had begun to take thought of other things.

“We’ll go with the tide,” said Fogg, whom Davison followed in most things pertaining to matters of business, for Fogg’s success had been phenomenal. “What do we care whether it’s cattle or something else, if we can get money out of it? Never buck against the government; it’s too strong, and you’ll get into trouble. We’ll turn farmer; we’ll irrigate.”

So Fogg and Davison were increasing their already considerable holdings of land in Paradise Valley, by purchases from settlers and from the mortgage companies. It was reported that in some places ranchmen secured land by inducing their cowboys to settle on quarter-sections and so obtain title from the government. Fogg and Davison would not do that. Not because they were too scrupulous, but because they were too wise. It would be an unpleasant thing to be haled into court for land swindling by the government agents who were ordering down the fences.

While thus securing the land, they had quietly obtained a controlling interest in the irrigating canal which the settlers had constructed. It was owned by a stock company; and before the farmers knew what was occurring it was to all intents and purposes in the possession of Davison and Fogg.

“It begins to look as though you were right, Justin, and that I was wrong, up there in Denver,” said Fogg, sliding his fingers along his watch chain and beaming on Justin. “I couldn’t see it then, but it really looks it; anyway, your side seems to be winning out, and I didn’t think it could.”

“I thought I was right,” Justin declared, with vigorous aggressiveness.

“Yes, I know you did; but I thought you was wrong, and of course I had to oppose you. But, anyway, it’s all right now; we’re going to make it all right. Some few of the farmers are kicking because Davison and I have got control of the ditch, but they’ll live to bless the day the thing happened. We’ll strengthen their dam and enlarge the canal and laterals and furnish plenty of water. Where they watered ten acres we’ll water hundreds. We’ve got the money to do it with, and they hadn’t; that’s the difference.”

His shining watch chain rose and fell on his heaving stomach, as he talked. Looking at it, Justin could almost fancy it had been wrought of that gold which Fogg, with heavy but nimble fingers, gathered from even the most unpromising places. Fogg seemed almost a Midas.

Fogg did not take his departure before midnight, but when he went he was in a very good humor with himself and all the world.

CHAPTER XIII

IN PARADISE VALLEY

Coming one forenoon from the kitchen, where she had been instructing the new cook installed in the position Pearl had held so long, Lucy observed Justin walking in a dejected manner down the trail that led to Clayton’s, and saw that he had been in conversation with Philip Davison. She knew what that conversation had been about, and when Davison came into the house she followed him up to his room. There was a heightened color in her cheeks, as she stood before her guardian. He looked up, a frown on his florid face.

“What is it?” he asked almost gruffly; but she was not to be put down.

“You won’t mind telling me what you said to Justin awhile ago?”

She slid into a chair, and sat up very straight and stiff.

“You sent him to me, I suppose?”

“I didn’t, but I have known he meant to speak to you.”

“He wants to marry you!”

“That isn’t news to me.”

“No, I suppose it isn’t. But what has he got to marry on?”

“Now, Uncle Philip, I’m going to say what I think! Justin is your son, and every father owes something to his child. Don’t you think so?”

Davison’s blue eyes snapped, but he would not be angry with this favorite niece.

“Well, yes, I suppose so, if you put it that way.”

“Justin and I have been just the same as engaged for a long time.”

“Yes, I’ve known that, too. I told him to show what there was in him; and,” his tone became bitter, “he has shown it!”

Lucy refused to become offended.

“Of course we can’t marry unless you help him along. Justin has been wanting to go to Denver. He thinks he could do well there by and by, after he became acquainted and had a start. Doctor Clayton knows a man there to whom he will give him a letter. But expenses are something terrific in a city, and we should have to wait a long time before Justin could work up to a salary that would justify us in getting married.”

“So it’s you that wants to get married, is it?”

“I am one who wants to get married; Justin is the other.”

Davison laughed in changing mood.

“What do you demand that I shall do?”

“I don’t demand anything, I simply suggest.”

“Then what do you suggest? He had the nerve to say that he thinks he is capable of managing the new ditch.”

“I simply suggest that you help him in some way, as a father who is able to should. He has worked for you a long time for very small wages; wages so small that he could save nothing out of them, as you know. I think that you ought to start him on one of the farms you have recently bought, or else give him some good position, with a salary that isn’t niggardly. It seems to me he is capable and worthy.”

“If I don’t give him a position, that will postpone this most important marriage?”

“I don’t want him to go to Denver.”

A smile wrinkled Davison’s face and lighted his blue eyes.

“You are a good girl, Lucy; and Justin is a—is a Davison! And that means he is hard-headed and has a good opinion of himself. I’ll think about it. Now run down and see that the cook doesn’t spoil the dinner. She burnt the bread yesterday until it was as black as coal and as hard as a section of asphalt pavement. By the way, I don’t suppose you could cook or do housework?”

“Try me!” she said, relaxing.

And she departed, for she did not yet trust the new cook.

The next day Davison offered Justin the position of ditch rider, at a salary that made Fogg wince and protest, though he believed Justin to be the very one for the place. That Justin should be given this position seemed even to Fogg advisable, as a business consideration. The “rider” of the canal and ditches comes into closer relationship with the water users than any other person connected with an irrigation company. He sees that the water is properly measured and delivered, and he makes the equitable pro-rata distribution when the supply is low or failing. Justin had the confidence of the farmers; and, as there were sure to be many complaints, he would be a good buffer to place between them and the company.

Justin accepted the position. In a financial sense, it promised to advance him very materially; and the prospect of the proper irrigation of Paradise Valley pleased both him and Clayton. It was the beginning of the fulfillment of Peter Wingate’s dream. Yet Justin knew he was asked to undertake a difficult task. Even when they had everything in their own hands, the farmers had wrangled interminably over the equitable distribution of the water.

Having control of the source of supply and of the canal and laterals, the first act of Fogg and Davison was to offer water to the farmers at increased rates. They were strengthening the dam, and widening the canal and laterals, at “terrific cost,” Fogg claimed, and reimbursement for this necessary outlay was but just.

It was Fogg who planned and Fogg who executed. This was new business to him, but no one would have guessed it. Over his oily, scheming face hovered perpetual sunshine. His manner and his arguments subdued even intractable men. It was said of him that he could get blood out of a grindstone. What he said of himself was, “Whenever I see that the props are kicked out from under me, I plan to have some kind of a good cushion to land on.” The cushion in this case was the exploitation of the inevitable, the irrigation of Paradise Valley, for the benefit of the exploiters.

Many new settlers were drawn in by attractively-worded advertisements. Then one of the things Justin had feared came to pass. Fogg sold more water than he could deliver, trouble arose, and this trouble descended, in great measure, on the head of the ditch rider. In spite of all he could do to distribute the water fairly complaints and protests were made.

Fogg had planned for this condition, and he was iron. He claimed that an unusually dry year had worked against the success of the company; and as there was a clause in the water notes covering such a failure to supply water, the farmers were forced, sometimes under the sheriff’s hammer, to pay the notes they had given. Buying sometimes from the sheriff, and sometimes through second parties from the farmers themselves, for numbers of them, in disgust, were willing to sell and leave the country, before the end of the first year Fogg and Davison had greatly increased their land holdings, by “perfectly legitimate” methods.

CHAPTER XIV

THE DOWNWARD WAY

Making the rounds of the house one night before retiring, Lucy came upon Ben Davison rummaging through the desk in his father’s room. The drawers of the desk had been pulled out, the small safe had been opened, and papers littered the chairs and floor. Surprised thus, Ben faced her with an angry oath. She saw that he had been drinking. Instead of putting color into his pale face, intoxication always made it unnaturally white and set a glassy stare in his eyes.

“What are you doing here, Ben?” she demanded.

“I’m looking for money,” he declared surlily. “Is it any of your business?”

“I think it is, when you begin to look for it in this way. Uncle Philip doesn’t know you’re up here.”

“I’m going to have money, that’s what!” he snarled. “Let him give me the money I need, instead of driving me to tricks like this.”

“He gave you money only the other day; I saw him.”

“How much? A hundred dollars! There’s money in this room, or there was, and I know it; and I’m going to have it. I’m going to have as much as I want, too, when I get my hands on it.”

“I shall have to report you, Ben!”

He caught her fiercely by the shoulders, with a clutch that made her wince and cry out in pain.

“You have hurt me, Ben!” she sobbed.

“I’ll kill you, if you come meddling with my affairs!”

He pushed her against the wall, and faced her with so threatening a mien that she was frightened. The glare in his glassy eyes was enough to make her tremble.

“If you say anything about this I’ll kill you! Do you hear? And if you know where the money is I want you to tell me.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” she declared.

“Curse you, I believe you do! I want money, and I’m going to have it. I’ve got to have a thousand dollars; it’s here, and I know it.”

He began to search again, tossing the papers about.

“Uncle Philip never keeps so much money as that in the house, and you should know that he doesn’t.”

“Well, he could get it for me if he wanted to. He’s got plenty of money. I’m tired of being treated like a beggar. He says he’s carrying on his business so that he’ll have money to leave me when he’s dead; but that isn’t what I want—I want it now.”

“Won’t you go down stairs, Ben?” she begged. “You almost broke my shoulder, but I shan’t mind that if you will go down stairs; and I’ll straighten up these papers for you and return them to their places.”

“I won’t! I’m going to see if that money he got from Fogg yesterday is here.”

“He put it in the bank of course, Ben; he wouldn’t run the risk of keeping it in the house.”

“You go down stairs or I’ll make you,” he threatened.

She did not go.

“What do you want the money for—to pay a gambling debt to Arkwright?”

“Arkwright!” he screamed at her. “It’s always Arkwright! But I’ll tell you, this money isn’t for him. Instead of troubling me, why don’t you go to that puler, Justin? He’ll be glad to see you, maybe; I’m not. So clear out.”