Читать книгу Judith of the Godless Valley - Honoré Morrow - Страница 8

"Looks as if we might be in real trouble to me!" muttered Douglas.

"It's growing daylight and there's the Pass, at last!" suddenly cried

Judith.

Douglas drew a deep breath and urged on the weary horses.

It was full nine o'clock when the team drew up at the post-office door. At Doug's halloo, Peter Knight appeared. Sister crowded out the door past him, pricked her ears forward and ran to sniff at the rear of the buckboard.

"What on earth brings you back at this hour?" demanded Peter.

"Trouble!" Douglas moistened his frost-cracked lips. "Oscar Jefferson was shot last night. We got his body here."

"Who shot him?" asked Peter.

"We don't know."

"Where was it? Here, Sister, get back in the house!" Peter jerked the door wide.

Judith answered. "Up beyond the cedars, across from the half-way house.

We found him while we were hunting for that devilish old mule."

Peter looked keenly at the two haggard young faces, then he said, "You two come in and eat and get warm. I'll do some telephoning."

"I want to get home to my mother," half sobbed Judith.

"Sha'n't we take him on to his house?" asked Douglas.

Peter replied impatiently, "You know he was baching it alone while young

Jeff's in California. You come as I tell you!"

Stiffly the two stumbled out of the stage and into the warmth of Peter's quarters. He had just begun his own breakfast and, at his orders, Douglas and Judith devoured it while Peter went to the telephone. In an incredibly short time John Spencer and Frank Day, the sheriff, galloped up to the door. To them and to Peter, the young people told their story.

The sheriff asked a number of questions. After he had finished Douglas queried anxiously:

"You ain't going to try and put it on us, Frank?"

Frank grinned. "Well, I might, if the suspicions I have as to another party prove wrong."

"Don't torture 'em, Frank!" protested Peter. "They've been through a good deal for kids."

"Scott Parsons was the only rider in the valley who didn't like Oscar," said John. "That war they've had for two years over the bull was bound to end in trouble. I warned Oscar."

"Oscar was more to blame than Scott," said the sheriff. "He was the meanest man for hanging out on a fool thing I ever knew. And I'm just as fond of Oscar as the rest of you. What was a bull to Oscar! He could buy a dozen of 'em. Scott hasn't a thing on earth except wages for riding and that mangy little herd of slicks he's picked up."

"Picked up is right!" grunted John. "That bull, whoever it belonged to, is standard bred."

"Scott was born with a nasty temper." Peter spoke thoughtfully. "He told

Oscar in front of me he would get him. That was about two weeks ago."

"Did Oscar tell any one he was going anywhere?" asked the sheriff.

"Not me," said Peter. "Why not let the kids go home?"

"Sure," agreed Frank. "You've done a good night's work, you two. Get some sleep now."

"You'll find Buster tied to my saddle, Doug," said John. "Judith, can

Swift still move?"

"You bet she can!" replied Judith.

There was a laugh, and the two young people gladly mounted and trotted into the home trail.

Oscar's wife had long been dead. His son was on a cattle-buying trip and could not be reached. Oscar had been one of the richest men in the very well conditioned valley, so, instead of taking the body up to the lonely ranch house, it was laid out in state in the post-office.

Grandma Brown always officiated at deaths and births in Lost Chief. After it was found impossible to get in touch with young Jeff and after the sheriff had made a three days' investigation, she ordered the funeral to take place at once.

"We could pack him down in the ice till a thaw opens up the cemetery a little," suggested Charleton Falkner. "You know what a god-awful job it is making a grave in the cemetery in winter, between the frost and the rocks."

"He's going to be buried now, while he's in good trim," declared Grandma. "I'm not going to have him ruined, waiting for spring. You men get to work now, in shifts, like you did for old Ma Day."

Grandma's word was law in Lost Chief, and the grave forthwith was prepared. John Spencer, Peter Knight, and Charleton Falkner were appointed by the old lady to do the work, and Douglas accompanied his father. Old Johnny Brown appeared while the work was in process.

The cemetery was fenced in, but except for a few simple headstones and monuments, it was unadorned.

"Queer the women folks have never fixed this place up a little," said

Peter Knight, standing waist-deep in the grave, with John. "Most places

I've been, women keep the graves like they would a little garden."

Charleton Falkner, resting on a neighboring headstone, smiled sardonically. "Lost Chief women have enough to do without dolling up graves."

Cold sweat stood on Doug's forehead. He stared from the gaping grave to the murmuring line of pines that marked the end of the cemetery and the beginning of the Forest Reserve, and shuddered. He had not been sleeping well since the night of the murder. Johnny Brown, small and very thin, with a scraggly iron-gray beard hung with little icicles and his blue eyes watering with the cold, moved away from the headstone against which he had been resting after his turn in the grave.

"That boy," he said, jerking his elbow at Doug, "will be massified for many a year for driving the preacher out of Lost Chief."

"How do you mean—massify!" demanded Doug, gruffly. Johnny might be half-witted, but his remarks were curiously penetrating sometimes.

"I mean massify," grunted Johnny.

Peter Knight heaved a great frosted boulder out to the ground level.

"Charleton," he said slowly, "doesn't the thought of lying in a forgotten grave give you dumb horrors?"

"Sometimes," replied Charleton laconically, as he beat his cold hands together. "But only sometimes."

Douglas strained forward in the intensity of his interest.

Douglas' father straightened his broad shoulders. "If I let myself think about it, I have to go out and get drunk," he muttered.

"You don't conject right about them things," cried Johnny. "You got to listen to things."

No one heeded the sad-faced little man. Peter stooped for another frozen clod. "I'd give my right hand for my mother's faith in a living God," he said.

"But if there isn't any God, what is there?" cried Douglas, with passionate protest in his voice.

"Don't you try to discuss matters you ain't old enough to understand, son," ordered John Spencer.

"Unbelief is the price we pay for scientific progress," said Charleton.

"Me, I'm willing to pay."

"I'm not," growled Peter, "but I don't see any way round it. Come on,

Johnny, do your share."

"I ain't going to dig any more," declared the little man. "You all say

I ain't all here, and the part that ain't here is the part that works.

Sabez?"

Everybody laughed.

"And," Johnny went on, seriously, "I ain't sure it's a good idea to plant 'em so deep. It takes a long time to grow up to heaven. It's a gregus far away place."

"Right you are, Johnny, old man," agreed Peter. "It sure is gregus far away."

Nobody urged Johnny to return to the job and the rest of the work was finished in silence.

That afternoon the funeral took place. There were services at the post-office, where any one who wished spoke in praise of the dead man. There were many speeches and it was late afternoon when the funeral cortege reached the cemetery. The Forest Reserve was mysterious with shadows and with the unending murmur of the pines. Snow gleamed blue over the valley. The saddle horses and teams were hitched to the stout fence that surrounded the cemetery, and Lost Chief Valley crowded about the open grave.

John Spencer drove Mary down in the old bobsled but Judith and Douglas rode Swift and Buster as usual. Judith had been nervous and irritable ever since the trip to the half-way house, but she had refused to admit that the murder had anything to do with her state of mind. She had a boyish horror of admitting to fears, mental or physical. She stood opposite Douglas, with a round beaver cap pulled down over her curly hair, her cheeks not so red as usual, her dark eyes rimmed and puzzled. Douglas wondered what she was puzzling over and resolved that after the ceremonies were over, he would ask her.

Douglas could not know with what intensity his deep-set eyes turned from Judith and fastened upon Grandma Brown, who stood at the head of the grave. There was a contented assurance in the old lady's manner that was vaguely comforting to the boy. He wondered what she knew that his father and Peter and Charleton did not know.

As the coffin was lowered into the grave, Grandma said, "Does anybody feel like saying a few last words?"

There was a silence broken only by the murmur of the Forest, then Johnny Brown cleared his throat. "I might say a whole lot of things. I wasn't so goldarned proud of Oscar like the rest of you seemed to be. He had a gregus kind of a temper and oncet—"

Grandma turned on him. "Johnny Brown, ain't you ashamed of yourself!"

"No, I ain't! You say I ain't all here, and the part that I'd be ashamed with is the part that's gone," returned Johnny firmly.

Judith gave an irrepressible snort, then fastened solemn eyes on the sky. A restless clearing of throats swept the little assemblage; then Grandma, indignation still in her kind old voice, spoke once more.

"Can't any of you men that knew Oscar all his life say something comforting before you close his grave?" she urged. "Then I'll try to do it. I was brought up religious, myself." She lifted her serene old face to the evening sky. "O God, this man wandered far from You like all the rest of us here. But an old woman like me believes You're there and that you know Oscar hadn't a really bad hair in his head. Take his soul, Lord, and be as good to him as You can. I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord. He that believeth in me, even though he die, yet shall he have Eternal Life."

The tears were running down many cheeks when the old lady finished. Foolish old Johnny laughed, then he began to sing a hymn in which several of the women joined.

"God be with you till we meet again,

By his counsels guide, uphold you,

With his sheep securely fold you,

God be with you till we meet again."

And so the earthly career of Oscar Jefferson ended.