Justin Wingate, Ranchman

CHAPTER I

COWARDICE AND HEROISM

Though Justin Wingate was no longer connected with the Davison ranch he was not the less concerned when he beheld the sudden flare of flame near the head of the cañon and the cloud of smoke which now concealed it. A fire starting there in the tall grass and sedge might destroy much of the Davison range, and would endanger the unharvested crops and the homes of the valley farmers. Forest fires were ravaging the mountains, and for days the air had been filled with a haze of smoke through which the sun shone like a ball of copper. The drought of late summer had made mountain and mesa a tinder box. Hence Justin turned from the trail and rode rapidly toward the fire.

There had been many changes in Paradise Valley; but except that it had grown more bitter with the passage of time, there had been none in the attitude of the farmers and cattlemen toward each other. William Sanders was still vindictively hostile to the people of the ranch, and they disliked him with equal intensity of feeling. As for Justin, he had developed rather than changed. He was stronger mentally and physically, better poised, more self-reliant and resourceful. He had come to maturity.

He was on his way to Borden’s ranch, with some medicines for one of Clayton’s patients there. The distance was long, and he had a pair of blankets and a slicker tied together in a roll behind his saddle. Lucy Davison was in the town, making a call on an acquaintance, and he was journeying by the valley trail, hoping to meet her, or see her, as he passed that way. But thoughts of Lucy fled when he saw that fire. As he rode toward it and passed through the strong gate into the fenced land, he wondered uneasily if any plum gatherers were in the sand-plum thickets by the cañon.

Justin had not proceeded far when he heard a pounding of hoofs, and looking back he beheld Steve Harkness riding toward him at top speed. He drew rein to let Harkness approach.

“Seen Pearl and Helen anywhere?” Harkness bellowed at him.

Helen was the child of Steve and Pearl Harkness, and was now nearly two years old.

“No,” said Justin, thinking of the plum bushes. “Are they out this way?”

“I dunno where they air; but they said at the house Pearl come this way with Helen. That was more’n an hour ago. They was on horseback, she carryin’ Helen in front of her; and she had a tin bucket. So she must have been goin’ after plums. That fire made me worried about ’em.”

He rode on toward the plum bushes, and Justin followed him, through the smoke that now filled the air and obscured the sun. Harkness’s horse was the speedier, and he disappeared quickly. As he vanished, Ben Davison dashed out of the smoke and rode across the mesa. In the roar and crackle of the fire Justin heard Harkness shout at Ben, but he could not distinguish the words. Justin called to Ben, repeating what he believed had been Harkness’s question, asking if he had seen Pearl and Helen; but Ben did not hear him, or did not wish to answer. He rode right on, as if frightened. And indeed that fire, which pursued him even as he fled, was not a thing to be regarded lightly. Yet Justin wondered at Ben’s action, his wonder changing to bewilderment when he saw that a woman’s saddle was on the horse Ben rode.

A horrible suspicion was forced upon him. He knew that Ben had deteriorated; had become little better than a loafer about the stores of the little town, consorting with Clem Arkwright and kindred spirits. Arkwright had also changed for the worse. He had lost his position as justice-of-the-peace, and was now often seedy and much given to drinking. He was said to be an inveterate gambler, gaining an uncertain livelihood by the gambler’s arts. Ben Davison was never seedy. Whether he obtained his money from Davison or secured it in other ways Justin did not know, but Ben was always well dressed and had an air of prosperity.

Ben was again the candidate of the ranch interests for the legislature. Lemuel Fogg, also representing the ranch interests, had secured for himself a nomination to the state senate; for which purpose he had become temporarily a resident of the town of Cliveden, some miles away, where he had established a branch of his Denver store.

Justin’s desire for justice made him put aside the conclusion almost inevitably forced upon him by that sight of Ben Davison riding wildly away from the fire in a woman’s saddle.

Following Harkness toward the plum thickets, where the roar of the fire was loudest, he heard a woman’s scream. It was off at one side, away from the fire. Justin pulled his horse about and galloped toward the fire through the pall of smoke. In a few moments he beheld the plump form of Pearl Harkness. Helen was not with her. Seeing Justin, she ran toward him, screaming frantically.

“Helen! Helen!”

Justin stopped his horse.

“What is it? Where is she?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know! I’ve lost her! She was right here a while ago. The fire started, and I left her to get the horse; but the horse was gone, and when I tried to find her I couldn’t, the smoke was so thick. I must have got turned round.” She started on again, wildly. “Helen! Helen!”

“Can you stay here just a minute? I’ll find her, and I’ll bring her to you. Stay right here. The fire can’t get here for at least ten minutes. Stay right here.”

He feared to leave her, yet felt that he must if he hoped to save the child. Pearl Harkness seemed not to hear him. Calling the name of her child she ran on, in an agony of apprehension, choking and gasping. Lifted high above her by his horse, Justin found breathing difficult. His mind was in a puzzled whirl, when he heard the fog-horn bellow of Harkness’s heavy voice. Pearl heard it also, and ran toward Harkness with hysterical cries. Justin rode after her. Harkness appeared out of the smoke like a spectre, his horse at a dead run. When he saw Pearl he drew rein and jumped to the ground.

“Helen! Helen!” she screamed at him, stretching out her hands.

Then, before either Harkness or Justin could reach her, she pitched forward, overcome by excitement and the thick smoke. Harkness lifted her in his strong arms, clinging to his bridle rein as he did so. The bronchos were snorting and uneasy.

“I’ve got to git her out of here,” said Harkness, with tender solicitude. “Where’s Helen?”

“She must be right here somewhere; over that way, your wife said. I’ll find her.”

Harkness glared at the smoke.

“Yes, find her, and find her quick! That fire will be right on top of this place in another minute.”

He swung Pearl toward the saddle. Justin assisted him to hoist the heavy woman to the back of the horse, and held her there while he mounted. Harkness took the limp form in his arms.

“We ain’t got any time to lose!” he gasped. “Find Helen! For God’s sake, save Helen! It will kill Pearl, and me too, if you don’t. The fire is right here. For God’s sake, save her; I know you’ll do it if anybody can.”

Justin was in the saddle.

“Save your wife!” he cried. “Save your wife! I’ll find Helen! I’ll find her!”

“You’ve got to find her! Don’t stop till you find her! I reckon I’d better help you look for her.”

He could not abandon Helen; and holding his wife in his arms he rode toward the fire.

“Save your wife!” Justin shouted to him.

He was already moving off, forcing the broncho toward the point where the smoke lay heaviest. Again he shouted to Harkness, begging him to save his wife. Then a moving wall of smoke swept between them.

“Helen! Helen!” Justin began to call, circling swiftly about the spot where Pearl Harkness believed she had left her child.

The heat and smoke were becoming unbearable.

“I must find her!” was his thought, as he recalled Pearl’s hysterical screams and the anguished face of Steve Harkness.

Then, as if in a fire-framed picture, he saw her, well up toward the head of the cañon, whither she had fled in a panic of fright. The strong upward pull of the heated air, lifting the smoke for an instant, revealed her, clad in her short dress of striped calico, her yellow head bare.

As the flames flared thus on high, their angry red blending and tangling with the thick black smoke on the rim of the cañon, Justin’s broncho became almost unmanageable. He struck it now, pounding his fist against its body, kicking it mercilessly, and jerking like a madman at the sharp bit. Fighting with the scared broncho, he drove it toward the child.

She heard him call to her; and seeing him, she began to run toward him. She stumbled and fell, and rose crying. Her small face was smeared with soot and tears, with charred plum leaves and with sand. All about her, as the flames and the smoke lifted and fell under the force of the wind, flakes of soot, plum leaves, and burning grass, floated and flew. It was a wonder to Justin that her striped dress was not already ablaze. In a few moments he was at her side.

“I want my mamma!” she wailed, as he leaped down by her. “Where is my mamma?”

She pushed back the tangle of yellow hair that the wind tumbled into her face, and coughed violently. Her chubby hands were stained with tears and soot. She doubled one of them and gouged it into her eyes.

“I want my mamma!”

“I will take you to her,” Justin promised, as he tore the blankets and slicker from behind the saddle.

One of the blankets he wrapped about her; the other he threw over his shoulders and secured in place with a pin. The slicker he cast away, fearing its coating of oil would make it inflammable. Having done this, he clambered into the saddle, with the child in his arms.

But the fire had been as busy. A long red prong thrown in the direction of the ranch buildings had widened and was drawing back toward the cañon. It lapped across the open grassy space toward which he rode before he could gallop a dozen rods, thus hemming them in.

As Justin dashed furiously at this wall of flame, he drew the hood of the blanket well over his head; and while still holding the child closely wrapped, and clinging to the rein, he sought protection for his hands in the folds of the blanket. There was no protection for the horse. Yet he drove it to the plunge, which it took with blind and maddened energy.

The fire flashed about him and roared like a furnace. The flesh of his hands and face cried out in pain and seemed to crisp under the lash of that whip of flame. Giddy and reeling, he set his teeth hard and gouged his booted heels furiously into the broncho’s flanks. The blanket seemed to be burning about his head.

For a few brief moments after that he was but half conscious; then he felt the broncho fall under him, and was pitched from the saddle. He staggered to his feet, still holding the child. His blanket had been torn aside by the fall; and he saw that he had broken through the cordon of flame, and that the fire was behind him. The broncho lay quivering where it had dropped, having run to the last gasp. He could not have recognized it. Its hair was burnt off, and blood gushed from its nostrils.

Helen seemed to be uninjured, though she cried lustily. Still resolved to save her from the fire, Justin began to stagger with her across the unburned grass. As he did so he heard a shout, followed by galloping hoofs. He saw the horsemen dimly as they rode toward him, and he ran in their direction. As he thus ran on he fell.

When he came to himself he was on a horse in front of some one who clasped him firmly about the body. Horses’ feet were rustling noisily over the grass. The sky was black with smoke; its taste was in his mouth, it cut his lungs and pinched his quivering nostrils. His face and eyes; his hands, his whole body, throbbed with the smarting pain of fire.

“You’re still all right, air ye?”

It was the voice of Dicky Carroll, one of the cowboys.

It was Dicky’s arms that held him, and he was on Dicky’s horse. He drew himself up, looked about, and saw Steve Harkness galloping at Dicky’s side with Helen in his arms.

“He’s got to be made all right if he ain’t,” he heard Harkness shout. “He’s too gamy to be let die!”

CHAPTER II

THE HARVEST OF THE FIRE

The fire ravaged a large part of the mesa range. In the valley it did small damage, for the farmers checked it there by flooding the canals and laterals with the water they had stored for the fall irrigation. Some of their hay land was swept over, and a few stacks of alfalfa were destroyed, but no house was burned. One of the destroyed stacks belonged to William Sanders. And it did not mitigate his hostility to the people of the Davison ranch to know that the fire had been started by Ben Davison.

Ben was voluble with excuses and explanations. He stated that he had gone to the plum bushes by the rim of the cañon. There, tossing away a smoked-out cigarette, it had fallen into some dry grass, which at once leaped into flame. He had tried to stamp out the fire, and failed. Startled by the rapidity with which it spread, and by the increasing heat and smoke, he had fled. As he did so he came on a loose horse, bearing a woman’s saddle. No one was near it, or to be seen, and he supposed very naturally that the rider had let the horse get away. At any rate, it offered him a chance to escape from the fire, which he believed to be ringing him in, and he accepted it. He did not hear Harkness shout at him, he said, nor Justin. Riding toward the ranch house, he had encountered the cowboys who were hastening to the fire, and had turned back with them, thus meeting Steve Harkness, who was holding his wife in front of him and had ridden out of the smoke. And he had continued with the cowboys, and was with them when Justin appeared with Helen.

Dicky Carroll’s version, poured into the ears of Justin Wingate as he lay convalescing from the effects of his burns, held some peppery additions:

“Gee! wasn’t Harkness wild; wasn’t he hot? He was hotter than the fire he had run from. He was simply crazy. He didn’t say anything to Ben when we first met him, fer there wasn’t time right at that minute. But he come on him at the ranch house. That was after you was carried in, and while Doc Clayton was fingerin’ you over to see if you was all there. Ben was standin’ by the door; and Harkness stepped up to him, his face as white as a sheet, where it wasn’t all smoked up; and he says to him, jest like this:

“‘Damn you fer a sneakin’ coward! You took my wife’s horse, and left her and Helen in that hell of fire to be roasted to death!’ And then he hit him square on the mouth and knocked him up ag’inst the side of the house.

“After that he never said a word to Ben, but as soon as the Old Man come he told him what he’d done, and handed in his resignation as ranch foreman. The Old Man was as hot as Harkness, the fellers say that saw it; fer a minute he looked as swelled up and porkupiny as a horned toad. Then he calmed down. ‘I’ll see Ben,’ he says, jest like, that. And he did see Ben; and of all the roastin’s, that feller got it; things couldn’t have been much warmer fer him if he’d let the horse go and stayed in the fire. And Harkness is still foreman. He’s too good a man, you see, fer Davison to lose. But there’s one thing to be said fer Ben, which I reckon he don’t want to say fer hisself. He was drinkin’ that day, up by the cañon. Nobody but a drunk man or a fool would have throwed that burnin’ cigarette butt into grass as dry as that. Ben was too drunk to realize the danger, and I reckon he was too drunk to know or care whose horse he took. But he was middlin’ sober, I tell you, when we met him. The scare did that. He was scared good. And I will say fer him that he turned right round, though he’d been ridin’ like the devil was after him, and went back with us, and afterward he done his part in puttin’ out the fire.”

Lucy Davison must have heard this story from Pearl Harkness; and it was possible, as Justin knew, that she had seen Harkness strike Ben. Yet she said nothing to Justin on the subject, but left him to his own conclusions.

In one way, the aftermath of that unpleasant experience was not unpleasant to Justin. Much of the time he had for a nurse no less a person than Lucy Davison herself. Whether engaged in the actual work of nursing him or otherwise, she made constant and solicitous inquiries which strengthened and soothed him more than anything within the range of Clayton’s skill. Her presence would have more than counter-balanced the suffering but for one thing. He knew that his appearance was worse than grotesque. Even a comely youth loses all comeliness, with his eyelashes and eyebrows gone, and his face disfigured by burns and bandages.

Somewhat reluctantly Justin was at length obliged to confess himself so nearly well that he could go home with Clayton. Thanks to the latter’s skill he had escaped permanent disfigurement. Nevertheless, his injuries confined him for some time to the house, and to short walks and rides near it.

Lucy made him many visits, and brought him the news and gossip of the valley. She had “finished” at Mrs. Lassell’s school, so was not to go East again, and that was a pleasant thought to both. Philip Davison was deep in his plans for Ben’s advancement, and Fogg was working earnestly to secure his own election. The thing that sorely troubled both Davison and Fogg now, as it also troubled Ben, was the story which was spreading, that Ben had cut the dam the night of the storm.

“I hope no one will think I told that!” thought Justin.

Yet the repositories of that secret, he was sure, were Lucy, Fogg and himself.

Justin inquired concerning the political action of the farmers. Apparently, they had not desired to turn to him again; they had chosen a candidate, and were working for Ben’s defeat.

When Fogg called at Clayton’s, Justin, in a private conversation with him, declared with heat that he had remained silent about the dam, even though that silence had distressed his conscience. Fogg, tricky himself, hence ready to impute trickery to others, might not have believed Justin, if it had not come out soon that Ben had given the story wings himself, as he boasted one night, while he sat gambling and drinking with Clem Arkwright and some cronies in the town. Ben denied this strenuously to his father. But after that, the suspicions of Lemuel Fogg against Justin were blown to the wind.

There was some wild talk among the farmers of prosecuting Ben, which ended in talk, for there was a lack of first-hand proof. But to the work of defeating him at the polls they had set themselves with might and main.

Then, as suddenly as the fire itself, a surprising change came in the political situation. From the first, as now appeared, the campaign against Ben had been engineered craftily by crafty men. At the last moment, the name of the opposition candidate was taken down, and another name hoisted in its stead—the name of Justin Wingate, used without his knowledge. Cowboys made hurried night rides, moving with secrecy. Ben’s conduct at the time of the fire had laid up for him in their hearts a store of smothered rage and contempt, which now found expression. Everywhere the cowboys rallied to the support of Justin Wingate—and he was elected.

Because he was confined so closely to the house and its vicinity, but more because the sudden movement to elect him was sedulously concealed both from him and from Clayton, Justin’s election came to him as a stunning surprise. His astonishment was mingled with pain and anxiety. The hopes of the Davisons were in the dust. He knew that Ben must be humiliated beyond measure, and he feared that Davison would resent it as a personal insult to his son and an act of treachery. And what would Lucy think? That was, to Justin, the most important of all.

Clayton brought him the news early on the morning after the election. Justin, who had been walking about in the yard enjoying the bright autumn sunshine, dropped to a seat on the doorsteps, startled, weak and unnerved. Clayton began to make the thing clear to him.

“After that affair, the cowboys couldn’t stand Ben Davison, and the story that he cut the dam killed him with a good many of the town people, as well as the farmers. When your name was mentioned, the suggestion caught as quickly as that fire Ben started. At Borden’s ranch, at Wilson’s, at Lindborg’s, and all over the county, where the story of the fire had gone, the thing was taken up by the cowboys; and it was all done so quickly and quietly that neither Davison nor Ben, nor even Fogg, knew a thing of it, until it was too late. I’m as surprised as you are; I knew of the talk against Ben, but I didn’t dream of this.”

Lemuel Fogg, shrewd and astute, hurried to Davison’s, as soon as he heard the astounding news. Davison was in a white rage. But for Fogg’s timely intervention he would have discharged all of his cowboys at once, together with Steve Harkness. They were angry, and they stood ready to go.

“Don’t do it!” Fogg begged. “We can’t fight all of the cowboys of the county, and they all went against Ben. The thing to do is to make Justin see that the cowboys—and in that sense the ranch interests—elected him. Though the cowboys united with the farmers this time, they are not naturally with them; Justin knows that. We mustn’t let him go to Denver feeling that he owes his election to the farmers. He is a cowboy, and if we work him right we can hold him to our side.”

“I can’t believe yet but that Justin knew all about it,” said Davison, angrily.

“I don’t think he did; but whether he did or didn’t, he’s elected.”

“He may not accept the place; he might give way, if pressure is brought to bear on him?”

“Don’t you believe that for even a minute,” said Fogg. “I know Justin. He’s not a fool, and he’d be a fool if he did that. He will go to Denver and sit in that legislature, and we want him to go as our friend, not our enemy. Don’t stir up the cowboys, don’t make trouble with them; just give me a free hand—I think I can work this thing.”

Lemuel Fogg set about the work at once. He suggested to certain men that it would be a good idea for the friends of the ranch interests to meet publicly at Clayton’s that evening and show Justin that they regarded him as their friend, and not their enemy; and, having done that, he walked over to Clayton’s to see Justin himself, and congratulate him. Some of the farmers, he learned, had already visited Clayton’s for that purpose; and he felt that for the ranchmen to permit the “farming jays” to get ahead of them in that way was a tactical mistake.