Mystery Ranch Part 24

"That's the last thing in the world you should do," said the Indian agent, in a low voice. "There isn't a jury that will convict you. If it's expiation you seek, do you think that cowardly sort of expiation is going to bring anything but new unhappiness to _her_ out there?"

"No," said Sargent. "I give you my word this will not be attempted again."

s.p.a.ce meeting s.p.a.ce--plains and sky welded into harmonies of blue and gray. Cloud shadows racing across billowy uplands, and sagebrush nodding in a breeze crisp and electric as only a breeze from our upper Western plateau can be. Distant mountains, with their allurements enhanced by the filmiest of purple veils. Bird song and the chattering of prairie dogs from the foreground merely intensifying the great, echoless silence of the plains.

Lowell and Helen from a ridge--_their_ ridge it was now!--watched the changes of the panorama. They had dismounted, and their horses were standing near at hand, reins trailing, and manes rising and falling with the undulations of the breeze. It was a month after Sargent's confession and his surrender as the slayer of the recluse of the Greek Letter Ranch. As Lowell had prophesied, Sargent's acquittal had been prompt.

His story was corroborated by brief testimony from Lowell and Helen.

Citizens crowded about him, after the jury had brought in its verdict of "Not guilty," and one of the first to congratulate him was Jim McFann, who had been acquitted when he came up for trial for slaying Talpers.

The half-breed told Sargent of Talpers's plan to kill Helen.

"I'm just telling you," said the half-breed, "to ease your mind in case you're feeling any responsibility for Talpers's death."

Soon after his acquittal Sargent departed for California, where he married Miss Scovill--the outcome of an early romance. Helen was soon to leave to join her foster parents, and she and Lowell had come for a last ride.

"I cannot realize the glorious truth of it all--that I am to come soon and claim you and bring you back here as my wife," said Lowell. "Say it all over again for me."

He was standing with both arms about her and with her face uptilted to his. No doubt other men and women had stood thus on this glacier-wrought promontory--lovers from cave and tepee.

"It is all true," Helen answered, "but I must admit that the responsibilities of being an Indian agent's wife seem alarming. The thought of there being so much to do among these people makes me afraid that I shall not be able to meet the responsibilities."

"You'll be bothered every day with Indians--men, women, and babies.

You'll hear the thumping of their moccasined feet every hour of the day.

They'll overrun your front porch and seek you out in the sacred precincts of your kitchen, mostly about things that are totally inconsequential."

"But think of the work in its larger aspects--the good that there is to be done."

Lowell smiled at her approvingly.

"That's the way you have to keep thinking all the time. You have to look beyond the ma.s.s of detail in the foreground--past all the minor annoyances and the red tape and the seeming ingrat.i.tude. You've got to figure that you're there to supply the needed human note--to let these people understand that this Government of ours is not a mere machine with the motive power at Was.h.i.+ngton. You've got to feel that you've been sent here to make up for the indifference of the outside world--that the kiddies out in those ramshackle cabins and cold tepees are not going to be lonely, and suffer and die, if you can help it. You've got to feel that it's your help that's going to save the feeble and sick--sometimes from their own superst.i.tions. There's no reason why we can't in time get a hospital here for Indians, like Fire Bear, who have tuberculosis.

We're going to save Fire Bear, and we can save others. And then there are the school-children, with lonely hours that can be lightened, and with work to be found for them in the big world after they have learned the white man's tasks. But there are going to be heartaches and disillusionments for a woman. A man can grit his teeth and smash through some way, unless he sinks back into absolute indifference as a good many Indian agents do. But a woman--well, dear, I dread to think of your embarking on a task which is at once so alluring and so endless and thankless."

Helen put her hand on his lips.

"With you helping me, no task can seem thankless."

"Well, then, this is our kingdom of work," said Lowell, with a sweep of his sombrero which included the vast reservation which smiled so inscrutably at them. "There's every human need to be met out there in all that bigness. We'll face it together--and we'll win!"

They rode back leisurely along the ridge and took the trail that led to the ranch. The house was closed, as Wong was at the agency, ready to leave for the Sargents' place in California. The old white horse, which Helen rode, tried to turn in at the ranch gate.

"The poor old fellow doesn't understand that his new home is at the agency," said Helen. "He is the only one that wants to return to this place of horrors."

"The leasers will be here soon," replied Lowell. "They are going to put up buildings and make a new place all told. The Greek letter on the door will be gone, but, no matter what changes are made, I have no doubt that people will continue to know it as Mystery Ranch."

THE END