CHAPTER III
CLAYTON’S VISITORS
When jack-screws and moving teams had done their work in the town of Paradise but one house remained, the minister’s, and that only because Curtis Clayton had purchased it and moved into it, with Justin. The farmers of the valley wondered that he should remain, but tempered their surprise with gratitude.
He and Justin seemed even more closely linked now. But not even to Justin did he ever speak of why he had come to the valley or why he tarried. The coming appeared to have been a thing of chance, as when a batted ball rolling to some obscure corner of the field stops there because no force is applied to move it farther. If there was any observable change in him after Wingate’s death, it was that he became more restless. The mind of the dreamer, in its workings somewhat akin to his own, yet with a simple faith which he did not possess, had soothed and rested him.
Clayton wore out his increased restlessness by long walks with Justin, abandoning the rides apparently because he disliked to leave the boy alone. But his fame as a doctor was spreading through the thinly-settled country, and when forced away from home by calls he left Justin at the house of some farmer, usually that of Sloan Jasper, for there the boy found pleasant companionship in the person of Mary Jasper, a dark-eyed girl, with winning, mischievous ways and cheeks like wild rose petals. Time never hung heavily with Justin at Sloan Jasper’s.
In addition to his work of instructing Justin, and his reading, Clayton spent much time in writing, in the little room which the minister had fitted up as a study. Sometimes Justin was given the privilege of dusting this room, and once when so engaged he whisked from the table the scorched photograph he had seen before. Clayton had evidently been looking at it, had placed it under a large blotter, and then had neglected to put it away before admitting Justin. The boy stared intently into the beautiful face shadowed forth on that bit of cardboard, for he wondered; then he replaced it beneath the blotter and resumed his dusting. But a question had arisen in his heart.
To give Justin pleasant occupation and make the time pass more rapidly, Clayton purchased a few sheep and placed the boy over them as a herder; and, as if to furnish diversion for himself, he assisted Justin in building a sod-walled corral and sod shelters for the sheep.
It was a delight to Justin to guard the sheep on the grassy slopes and drive them to the tepid water-holes. Often he did this in company with Mary Jasper; he on foot, or high on Clayton’s horse, the rosy-cheeked girl swaying at his side on her lazy gray burro, which she had to beat continually with a small cudgel if she progressed at all.
Once Clayton remonstrated with her for what he deemed her cruelty to the beast.
“Doctor Clayton,” she said severely, wrinkling her small forehead, “the only way to make this critter go is to kill him; that’s what my paw says!” and she swayed on, pounding the burro’s back with the stick and kicking his sides energetically with her bare heels.
Yet the valley life was lonely, so that the coming of any one was an event; and it was a red-letter day when Lemuel Fogg drifted in with his black-topped, wine-colored photograph wagon, and William Sanders with his dirty prairie schooner. Fogg was a fat young man, whose mustache drooped limply over a wide good-humored mouth, and whose round face was splotched yellow with large freckles. Sanders was even younger than Fogg. He lacked Fogg’s buoyancy and humor, had shrewd little gray eyes that peered and pried, and slouched about in shabby ill-fitting clothing. Clayton gave them both warm welcome, and they remained with him over night.
Sanders, who was alone in his wagon, was looking for land on which to settle. Apparently Fogg’s present business was to take photographs, and he began by taking one of Justin standing in the midst of his sheep, with Mary Jasper sitting on her burro beside him, her bare feet and ankles showing below her dusty gray dress.
In addition to the land, which he looked over carefully with his shrewd little eyes, Sanders cast furtive glances at Clayton’s stiff arm. He ventured to word a question, when he and Fogg sat with Justin and Clayton in the little study after supper, surrounded by Clayton’s books and papers, while the sheep were securely housed in the sod corral and the unrelenting wind piped insistently round the house.
“'Tain’t any my business as I know of,” he began, apologetically, “but I can’t help lookin’ at that arm o’ your’n, and wonderin’ what made it so. I had my fortune told onc’t by a man who had an arm like that, and he said a tiger bit it. He was an East Injun, er a Malay, I reckon. It come to me that you might have met with an accident sometime, er somethin’ er 'nuther? There’s a story about it, I reckon?”
The blood rushed in a wave to Clayton’s face and appeared to suffuse even his dark eyes. He did not answer the question, being sensitive on the subject, and deeming it an impertinence.
Sanders waited a time, while Fogg talked; then he returned to his inquiry, with even greater emphasis.
“Yes, there is a story,” said Clayton, speaking slowly, after a moment of hesitation, while a ghastly smile took the attractiveness out of his thoughtful countenance. “It wasn’t an accident, though.”
“No?” said Sanders.
“The thing was done in cool deliberation. I was in college, in a medical college, for I’m a doctor you know. I was a student then; and it was the custom among the students to perform various operations on each other, by way of practice, so that when we went out from there to begin our work we would know how things should be done. One day I sawed a student’s skull open, took out a spoonful of his brains, and sewed the wound up so nicely that he was well in a week. The operation was a great success, but I dipped a little too deep and took out too much of the gray matter, and after that he was always omitting something or other that he should have remembered. In return for what he had permitted me to do he put me on the operating table one day, broke my arm with a mallet, and then proceeded to put it together again. In doing so he omitted the funny bone, and my arm has been this way ever since.”
Fogg broke into a roar of laughter. Sanders flushed slowly; and getting up walked to the other end of the room, chewing wrathfully, splintering the story with his teeth as he splintered the grass blades that he plucked and chewed when walking about to view the valley land.
“Huh!” he grunted, coming back and dropping lumpily into his chair. “Tell that to a fool an’ mebbe you’ll git a fool to believe ye, but I don’t!”
Fogg slapped his fat knee and roared again.
“Ha, ha! Ho, ho! Ask him something else, Sanders! Who-ee! Doc, I didn’t think it was in you! If you do anything like that again I’ll have to let a reef out of the band of my trousers. Fire another question at him, Sanders.”
“No,” said Sanders, while a sullen fire glowed in his little eyes; “I was goin’ to ask him some other things, but I’m done!”
Then he chewed again, tried hard to laugh, and seemed about to say something; but Fogg broke in.
“I say, Doc, you can tell a story so well you’d ought to be in my line. Story telling is my long suit. Lincoln ought to have altered his immortal saying before giving it to the world. My experience is that if you keep the people in a good humor you can fool _all_ of them _all_ of the time, and there ain’t any better way than by feeding them anecdotes and jollying them until they think they are the smartest ever. For instance, Sanders believes in fortune tellers; they jolly him, and that pleases him, and they get his coin. It’s the same way with everything and everybody.”
In addition to the photographic apparatus stored in the wine-colored wagon Fogg had a collection of Navajo blankets, Pueblo pottery, Indian baskets, bows and arrows, and such things. Seeing that his host was not to be a purchaser, and being in a communicative mood, he did not hesitate to expose now the secrets of his trade, in proof of his view of the gullibility of the general public.
“See that,” he said, taking up a hideous image of Pueblo workmanship. “Ninety men out of a hundred will believe that thing, with its froggy mouth, is a Pueblo idol, without you telling them, and the others will believe it when you do tell them.”
“Huh!” grunted Sanders, still angry; “if 'tain’t an Injun idol, what is it?”
It seemed natural for Fogg to laugh, and he laughed again, with easy gurgling.
“You may call it anything you want to, but it ain’t an idol. I’ve seen Pueblo idols; there’s a room full of them in the old Governor’s Palace in Santa Fé, and they look more than anything else like stone fence posts with holes gouged near one end for the eyes, nose and mouth. Them are genuine old Pueblo idols, but you bet the Pueblos didn’t sell them, and they didn’t give ’em away. Did you ever know of a people that would sell their God? I never did.”
“None, except Christians!” said Clayton, speaking slowly, but with emphasis.
Fogg set the staring image on the table and looked at him.
“I hadn’t thought of that. Yes, I reckon they do, a good deal of the time. But an Indian wouldn’t; he would never sell his God. Maybe it’s because Christians think so little of theirs that they’re so ready to believe a Pueblo will sell his for 'most any old thing. Them images are just caricatures, made to sell. I go among the Pueblos three or four times a year and buy up a lot of their pottery, and I encourage them to make these images, which the average tourist thinks are gods, for they sell better even than the water jars and other things that they turn out.
“Then I buy blankets of the Navajos, which they make dirt cheap now. I helped to put ’em onto that. You can sell a dozen cheap blankets easier than a single expensive one, especially when the people you’re selling to think they’re getting the genuine goods at a bargain. It’s easier for the Navajo weavers to tear old government blankets to pieces and re-weave them and color them with analine dyes than it is for them to take their own wool and their own dyes and put the things together in the old way. They won’t wear of course, and the colors fade, but they sell like hot cakes.
“I buy for a dealer, who snaps up everything of the kind I can bring him and hollers for more. You ought to see the crowds of people, especially tourists, who wear out his floors. I’m going to have a store of that kind myself some day. I take photographs for him, of scenery and other things that will sell; and bring him loads of basket work and bows and arrows from the Jicarilla Apaches just over the New Mexican line. He grabs for the Jicarilla work, which I can get almost cheaper than anybody, for I know the head men. The Jicarillas used to be slow workers and too honest, like the Navajo weavers; but they’re onto their job now, and can put a willow basket together and dye it with patent dyes in almost no time.”
Thus Lemuel Fogg discoursed of his business methods, until he had succeeded in proving several things concerning himself, in addition to his easy belief that the whole world is either covetous or dishonest.
Fogg departed the next morning, on his way to Denver. Sanders lingered in the valley for two or three days, peeking and prying, at intervals visiting a fortune teller of local repute in the town, who saw land, houses, and cattle for him, in the grounds of a coffee cup. But he was angered against Clayton and did not return to his house. A dozen times he told inquiring farmers that he “reckoned” he would take land there and become one of them. But the grounds in the coffee cup did not settle just right, and at length he, too, departed.
CHAPTER IV
SIBYL
One day there came, across the level lands, a wave of horsemen and hounds in a rabbit hunt, the baying of the dogs breaking sharply on the peaceful calm of the valley. Justin rushed from the house when he heard the clamor. Clayton followed more slowly, and looked across the valley from his doorway. The flutter of skirts told him that some of the saddles bore women. He frowned. This slaughter of rabbits was particularly distasteful to him, though he knew that the few farmers on the low land by the stream would welcome it, if the horses and dogs did not cut up the cultivated fields.
Big gray jack rabbits, routed from their coverts, were bobbing on in advance of the baying hounds and galloping riders. More rabbits were seen to start up, bouncing out of bunches of grass or scattered clumps of sage. Following behind, driven at a lively gait, came a mule team, drawing a light spring wagon into which the slain rabbits were thrown.
The extended line had advanced in a big semicircle; and the ends bending in, the chase drew on toward the solitary home of the solitary doctor. Justin was filled with excitement. The lust of killing, which seems to be in the racial blood, stirred strongly within him, and was only held in partial leash by certain teachings and admonitions well hammered in by his instructor. Suddenly, quite carried away, he swung his hat and yelled:
“Mary is on one of those horses! See her, out there on the right side, on the white horse! She must have been at the station and joined them when they started.”
Clayton drew back from the doorway without a glance at the form of Mary Jasper borne onward with flying leaps. A rush of disgust shook him, so that he did not care to look longer. But Justin remained outside, swinging his hat and whooping at intervals, quite taken out of himself.
Then a louder clamor, and a cry from Justin, drew Clayton to the door again. One of the rabbits was approaching the house, springing on with indescribable swiftness, yet unable either by running or dodging to shake off the pursuit of the lithe-limbed, baying creatures that cleft the air behind it. Two of the foremost of the hounds were in chase of this rabbit, one twenty yards in advance of the other. Pushed hard, the rabbit crouched and dodged again with such celerity that the hound, whose open mouth at the instant was almost closing on it, was thrown headlong in a frantic effort to stop and turn as quickly as the rabbit itself. The second hound rushed at it, and the change of direction flung the fleeing rabbit upon the bit of trampled grass in front of the open door in which Clayton stood.
It saw the opening, and in desperation darted into it as into a cave, whisking past Clayton’s legs. The hound came close after, yelping fiendishly. With an exclamation that sounded like an oath, Clayton kicked at it; but the hound almost overthrew him, leaped into the house, and he heard the rabbit’s death cry, and a crunching of bones as the dog’s ponderous jaws closed on its quivering body.
Then Clayton heard a pounding of hoofs, and with eyes blazing wrathfully he looked up, and saw the original of the photograph which he had hurled into the fire and then had drawn out and treasured as if he could not bear to part with it. The blood receded from his face, leaving it livid and ghastly.
“Sibyl!” he exclaimed.
The woman drew up her horse in front of the door through which the dog had darted. She saw the man, and her clutch of the rein tightened. Clayton looked up at her, and, standing in the doorway, while the dog, having completed its bloody work panted out past him with furious haste, he put his strong right hand against the side of the door, with a faltering motion, as if he felt the need of aid to sustain him from falling.
The woman sitting there on her chafing horse stared back at him, while the clamor of the hounds broke over them. Her face had flushed more than even the excitement of the chase warranted; yet he knew she was marvellously beautiful, as he looked at her full rounded throat and chin, at her olive cheeks in which dimples nestled, and into her great dark eyes, that held now a surprised light. Her hair was as dark as her eyes, and even though much hidden beneath her riding hat, it was still a crown of glory. Clayton saw only enough of the blue riding habit to know that it became her; his eyes were drawn to her face.
“Are you living here?” she asked in astonishment, giving a glance at the small house.
“Yes,” he answered huskily. “I thought it as good a place as any, and out of the world; but it seems you found your way here. And Death came riding with you, as usual.”
“Curtis, you’re always ridiculous when you say foolish things! I’ve been wondering where you were. You don’t intend to return to Denver?”
“No.”
“Not even if I wanted you to?”
She looked at him with her fascinating unfathomable eyes, noting his manly presence, his clear-cut dark features, and the stiff, awkward left arm. As she did so the color flamed back into his face.
“No! Not unless—”
“Unless I would consent to be as poky as you are!”
“No, not that. I shouldn’t expect you to take an interest in the things I do. You never did, but I didn’t care for that.”
He stopped as if in hesitation and stood trembling.
“Well, I’m glad I’ve found where you’re living. I suppose your post office address is the town over there by the side of the mountain, where the station is? I shall have something to send you by mail by and by.”
“Yes, my mail comes to the station post office.”
He still trembled and appeared to hesitate.
“It’s queer, how I happened to find you here, isn’t it? I have an acquaintance in that little town, and she invited me down the other day. Some other strangers to the place chanced to be there, and this rabbit hunt was gotten up for our entertainment.”
“A queer form of entertainment!” he observed, with caustic emphasis.
“To you I suppose it isn’t anything short of murder?”
“It’s strange to me how any one can find pleasure in it.”
“I suppose that is as one looks at it. But I must be going. I don’t care to have people see us talking too long together. I’m glad, though, that I found you.”
“Good bye!” he said, his lips bloodless again.
She pulled her horse sharply about, and in another moment was galloping on in the hunt, leaving him standing in the doorway staring after her. He stood thus until the clamor of the dogs sounded faint and she became a mere swaying speck, then he turned back into the house. Justin came in at his heels. He had seen the woman and recognized the pictured face of the photograph.
“Take the rabbit out and bury it somewhere, Justin,” said Clayton wearily.
Then he passed on into his study and closed the door behind him.
A few days later the mail carrier brought him a Denver newspaper of ancient date with ink lines drawn round a divorce notice. The paper had been sent to his address by Sibyl. Clayton read the marked notice carefully, and thrusting the paper into the stove touched a lighted match to it.
CHAPTER V
THE INVASION OF PARADISE
Lemuel Fogg made other visits to Paradise Valley, as the seasons came and went, and Justin learned to look forward with pleasure to his coming. Always he stayed over night, and talked long with Clayton, for whom he had conceived a liking.
Clayton continued to cling to his lonely home. Though more than once tempted to depart he had never been able to make up his mind to do so. He averred to Fogg, and to other acquaintances, that, having been dropped down into Paradise Valley quite by chance, mental and physical inertia held him there; he was lazy, he said, and the indolent life of Paradise Valley had strong attraction for him.
Yet, as his reputation as an excellent doctor spread, he often rode many weary miles to visit a patient. Always the studies went on, and the writing, and the little glass slipping out of and into his pocket made the whole earth radiant with life and beauty. And Justin became a stalwart lad, whose strong handsome face, earnest blue eyes, and attractive personality, won new friends and held old ones.
The few farmers who remained had learned well some lessons with the passing of the years. Ceasing to rely on the uncertain rainfall, they had decreased the areas of their tilled fields and pushed them close to the stream, where the low-lying soil was blest with sufficient sub-irrigation to swell the deep taproots of the alfalfa. They kept small herds of cattle, and some sheep, which they grazed on the bunch grass. The few things they had to sell, honey rifled from the alfalfa blooms by the bees, poultry, eggs and butter, they found a market for in the town, or shipped to Denver.
Sloan Jasper was of those who remained, and Mary, a tall girl now, had taken the place of her mother in the farmer’s home. Mrs. Jasper had given up the struggle with hard climatic conditions, and had passed on, attended in her last illness by the faithful doctor.
With Lemuel Fogg there came, one day, a ranchman named Davison; and in their wake followed herds of bellowing, half-wild cattle, and groups of brisk-riding, shouting cowboys, who rode down the fields in the moist soil by the stream, as they galloped in pursuit of their refractory charges.
The advent of the cattle and the cowboys, the establishment of the Davison ranch, the erection of houses and bunk-rooms, stables and corrals, filled Justin’s life to the brim with excitement. He fraternized with the cowboys, and struck up a warm friendship with Philip Davison’s son Ben, a lively young fellow older than himself, who could ride a horse not only like a cowboy, but like a circus athlete, for he could perform the admirable feat of standing in the saddle with arms folded across his breast while his well-trained broncho tore around the new corral at a gallop.
When the other members of the Davison household came and were domiciled in the new ranch house, Justin found that Lucy Davison, the ranchman’s niece, the “cousin” of whom Ben had talked, was a beautiful girl of Mary’s age, with more than Mary’s charm of manner. She was paler than Mary, and had not her rose-leaf cheeks, but she was more beautiful in her way, and she had something which Mary lacked. Justin did not know what it was, for he was not yet analytical, but he was interested in a wholly new manner. He could not be with her enough, and when he was absent thoughts of her filled his mind and even his dreams.
Mary Jasper hastened to call on Lucy Davison; and in doing so made the acquaintance of that most interesting person, Miss Pearl Newcome, Davison’s housekeeper. Miss Newcome had passed the beauty stage, if indeed she had ever dwelt at all in that delectable period which should come by right to every member of the sex; but she still cherished the romantic illusions of her earlier years, and kept them embalmed, as it were, in sundry fascinating volumes, which were warded and locked in her trunk up stairs. She brought these out at psychological moments, smelling sweetly of cedar and moth balls, and read from them, to Mary’s great delight; for there never were such charming romances in the world, and never will be again, no matter who writes them. Some of them were in the form of pamphlets, yellow and falling to pieces; others were in creaky-backed books; and still others, and these the most read, in cunning bindings of Miss Newcome’s own contriving.
Sitting on the flat lid of the trunk, with one foot tucked under her for comfort, while Mary crouched on the floor with her rose-leaf cheeks in her palms, Pearl Newcome would read whole chapters from “Fanny the Flower Girl, or the Pits and Pitfalls of London,” from “Lady Clare, or Lord Marchmont’s Unhappy Bride,” from “The Doge’s Doom, or the Mysterious Swordsman of Venice,” and many others. The mysterious swordsman in the “Doge’s Doom” was especially entrancing, for he went about at night with a black mask over his face, and made love and fought duels with the greatest imaginable nonchalance. It taxed the memory merely to keep count of his many loves and battles, and it was darkly hinted that he was a royal personage in disguise.
“The Black Mask’s scabbard clanked ominously as he sprang from the gondola to the stone arches below the sombre building, while the moonlight was reflected from his shining coat of mail and from the placid waters of the deep lagoon, showing in the pellucid waves alike the untamed locks that hung about his shoulders and the white frightened face of the slender, golden-haired maiden who leaned toward him with palpitating bosom from the narrow, open window above him.”
When that point was reached Mary clasped her hands tightly across her knees and rocked in aching excitement; for who was to know whether the Black Mask would succeed in getting the lovely maiden out of the clutches of the foul doge who held her a prisoner, or whether some guard concealed in a niche in the wall would not pounce out, having been set there by the shrewd doge for the purpose, and slice the Black Mask’s head off, in spite of the protecting coat of mail?
Aside from her duties as housekeeper, which she never neglected, there was one other thing that could cause Pearl Newcome to surrender voluntarily the joys of that perch on the trunk lid in the midst of her redolent romances with Mary Jasper for an appreciative listener, and that was the voice of Steve Harkness, the ranch foreman. The attraction of the printed page palled when she heard Harkness’s heavy tones, and stopping, with her finger between the leaves, she would step to the window; and sometimes, to Mary’s regret, would go down stairs, where she would cut out a huge triangle of pie and place it on the kitchen table.
Harkness was big and jovial, and in no manner resembled the Black Mask, who was slender, lithe, had a small supple wrist, hair of midnight blackness, and “a voice like the tinkle of many waters.” Harkness’s voice was big and heavy, and his wrist was large and red. But he was usually clean-shaven, scented himself sweetly with cinnamon drops, and was altogether very becoming, in the eyes of Pearl Newcome. And she knew he liked pie. Sometimes Pearl came back to the trunk and continued the dropped romance. That was when Harkness was in a hurry and could not linger in the kitchen to joke and laugh with her. But if time chanced to hang heavily on his hands and no troublesome cowboy or refractory steer claimed his attention, she did not return at all, and Mary, tired of waiting, crept down in disappointment.
Delightful as Mary Jasper and Justin Wingate found the people of the new ranch, Curtis Clayton secluded himself more than ever with his books and his writing, and was not to be coaxed out of his shell even by Justin’s stories of Ben’s marvellous acrobatic and equestrian feats and of Lucy’s brightness and clever talk.
Yet he was drawn out one day by a summons that could not be disobeyed. Harkness had been hurled against the new wire corral by a savage broncho, and Clayton’s services as a surgeon were demanded. He never refused a call like that.
He found Harkness sitting in the kitchen of the ranch house, to which he had come as to a shelter, with Pearl Newcome bending over him, a camphor bottle in one of her hands and a blood-stained cloth in the other. Davison, Fogg, and several cowboys, stood about in helpless awkwardness. Harkness’s face looked white and faint, in spite of its red tan. The sleeve of his flannel shirt had been rolled to the shoulder and a bloody bandage was wound round the arm.
“Nothin’ to make a fuss about,” he said, when he saw Clayton. “I got slung up ag’inst the barbed wire and my arm was ripped open. It’s been bleedin’ some, but that’s good fer it.”
“I shall have to take a number of stitches,” Clayton announced, when he had examined and cleansed the wound. He opened a pouch of his saddle-bags.
“No chloryform ner anything of that kind fer me,” said Harkness, regarding him curiously. “Jist go ahead with your sewin’.”
Clayton obeyed; while Harkness, setting a lighted cigarette between his teeth, talked and laughed with apparent nonchalance.
Brought thus into close contact with the people of the ranch, the shell of Clayton’s exclusiveness was shattered. After that, daily, for some time, he rode or walked over to the ranch house to see how his patient was doing, or Harkness came over to see him. And he found that these people were good to know. They lessened the emptiness which had gnawed. They were human beings, with wholly human hearts. And he needed them quite as much as they needed him.