Justin Wingate, Ranchman

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.”

CHAPTER XX

THE RIDE WITH DEATH

Sibyl had buttoned her glove, and she now took the rein herself and settled firmly in the saddle.

“Do you think there is danger? How horrid to have a thing like this happen and spoil our ride!”

To her unpracticed eyes the appearance of the moiling herd was not as threatening as at first. The cattle in front were pushing into those behind and staying their forward progress. Farther back, where the stampede madness was doing its deadliest work, she could not see, for the cattle there were hidden by the dust cloud.

“We must get out of this,” said Clayton, in a nervous voice, as he set his horse in motion. “Unless we ride fast they may cut us off at the lower end of the cañon.”

The forward line of moving cattle was hurled on again, as the receding wave is caught by the one behind it and flung against the shore. The thunder of pounding hoofs rose like the lashing of surf on a rocky coast. Then that long line, flashing out of the dust, deepened backward beneath the lifting cloud until it resembled a stretch of tossing sea. The resemblance was more than fanciful. The irregular heaving motion of a choppy sea was there, the white glint of horns was as the shine of wave crests, the tumultuous roar rose and fell like the thunder of billows, and the dust cloud hovered like thick mist.

Clayton and Sibyl were galloping at a swift pace. Terror clutched at her heart now and shone in her dark eyes. She heard the mad roar behind her, and dared not look back. Clayton looked back, and his face became set and white.

“A little faster,” he begged, when he had thus glanced behind.

He struck her horse with his hand to urge it on, while his heels flailed the sides of his own beast. Her ribboned whip lifted and fell, and she cried out to her horse in fear. The whole herd was in motion.

It was crescent-shaped; widest in its center, like the horned moon; one end rested, or rather moved, on the cañon’s rim; the other, out on the flat mesa, was swinging in toward the cañon, farther down. It was this lower point of the crescented herd that Clayton feared most; the great moon-shaped mass was crumpling together, its ends were converging, and if that lower point reached the cañon before the riders could pass through the gap which now beckoned there, they would be caught in the loop of the crumpled crescent and crushed to death or hurled into the cañon. The only hope lay in passing through that opening while it still remained an opening. And toward that gap they were riding, with a portion of the herd thundering behind along the cañon wall.

“We can make it,” Clayton cried hopefully; “we can make it!”

And he urged the horses on.

Though the words encouraged her, Sibyl could not fail to perceive the deadly peril of the closing gap toward which they were speeding.

Fortunately the ground was level, broken only by grassy hillocks and bunches of sage. The few obstructing plum bushes that had survived the fire or had sprouted since that time had been passed already.