Judith of the Godless Valley Part 10

"Doug, I don't want to talk about it."

"But, Judith, I'm lonely and I've got to talk to some one."

Judith turned an indignant face toward the tall boy. "Don't you suppose I'm lonely, too? What good does talk do? Religion is all right for little kids but you can't believe in fairy tales as you grow up."

"But what can we do?" insisted Douglas, the sweat breaking out above his lips again. "Doesn't the thought of no G.o.d, no hereafter, just paralyze you?"

"I tell you," repeated Judith obstinately, "I just don't let myself think about it."

"Then what's made you so cross ever since that night?"

Judith rose and set the br.i.m.m.i.n.g milk pail in a feed box. Her eyes, in the lantern light, widened with a horror so devastating that Douglas clutched the manger behind him.

"How did you know? Doug, that's it and there's no place to go for help because there isn't any help for that!"

The sudden revelation of her need roused Douglas. He moistened his lips and said, "We've got to harden ourselves to stand it, like the rest of 'em do. And when it gets too bad we can talk to each other about it.

That'll help."

Judith clutched his arm as if she felt the need of touching a human being. Douglas did not stir but as he stood looking down at her a strange aching gladness at her nearness and at her splendid girlhood flooded the horror out of his thought.

"I'll carry the milk pail in for you, Jude," he said.

"Fudge!" she returned scornfully. "As if I hadn't carried it in every night for four years! You'd better do your feeding before Dad gets after you."

Douglas suddenly laughed and went out.

For a day or so he was haunted, particularly after he went to bed, by the thought of the grave scene and by the comments Grandma Brown had made.

But Doug was only sixteen, after all, and shortly he was absorbed by other matters: the hunt for Scott Parsons, the preparations for the dehorning, and his new and thrilling and secret feeling toward Judith.

The search for Scott delayed the round-up only for a short time. A day or so after the funeral it snowed and removed the last chance of finding Scott's tracks. The cold was intense, and the job really belonged to Sheriff Frank Day, so the posse broke up after a few days and the dehorning was undertaken.

Early in the morning, half a dozen young riders helped Douglas and Judith to cut out of the great herd in the swamp field the steers in need of dehorning. In proportion to their strength, Lost Chief girls were as clever as the men in handling horses and cattle. Judith was easily the best of them. There was a fire and vim about her work, a wild grace, that the other girls lacked. Douglas, his vision sharpened by his new att.i.tude toward Judith, thought she never had looked so handsome as she did this morning, in her beaver cap, her new scarlet mackinaw, curls flying, sitting the excited little Swift as easily as a boy.

Out of the circular corral led a smaller one. A cedar fire burned in the middle of the lesser enclosure. John Spencer and two helpers stood near the fire, saws at hand, searing-iron heating, tar-pot simmering.

The herd bellowed in the outer corral. The riders, ropes in hand, sat with laughing faces turned toward Judith, who was to rope the first steer. Douglas wished that there were not so many of the riders with admiration in their eyes. Judith sat Swift lightly, edging mischievously now against one rider, now another. Swift bit Buster, who reared while Douglas swore laughingly. Magpies swooped from the blue spruce at the edge of the corral, black and white against pale blue. The cattle, all Herefords, red and white, milled about and lowed and tossed worried heads. The riders, sheepskin chaps flapping, bright neckerchiefs fluttering, shouted and cursed and fingered their lariats. Dogs, yellow dogs, black dogs, gray dogs, spotted dogs, continuously encroached from without the fence and were ordered or lashed away.

Suddenly Swift shot from the group of horses. Judith spun her lariat and a l.u.s.ty young steer, well back toward the south fence, turned and stumbled. Swift sat back on her haunches, turned as she rose and leaped toward the dehorning corral. The bellowing steer was dragged backward, his left foot securely roped. He fell as they reached the gate and skidded helplessly on his side through the trampled yellow snow.

The men by the fire were ready. One of them perched on the steer's flank and freed the lariat, while another sat astride his neck and amidst a gush of blood sawed off the horns close to the head. John seared the stubs with the hot iron dipped in tar. The poor brute bellowed with fright and pain. Judith recoiled her lariat and made way for Jimmy Day, who slid up with a protesting heifer.

"'Jude!" he shouted. "You're the cow ropingest girl in the Rockies! Say, Jude, ain't you afraid that baa-baa you're riding will buck with you?

Swift! What a h.e.l.l of a name for that thing!"

"She can beat you roping 'em at that, Jimmy!" cried Douglas.

"Better ride light, Jimmy," warned John. "She thinks more of that mare than she does of me."

"All right, John," laughed Jimmy. "Take this heifer, fellows! She thinks she's a moose!"

"She'll think she's a kitten when we finish with her," chuckled John.

There was an uproar now in the two corrals that echoed from mountain to mountain. The trampled snow was crimson. White angora and sheepskin chaps were gaumed with thick clots of blood. The horses, half frantic from the smell of the bleeding cattle, tried every means in their not limited repertoires to bolt the hateful job.

The work had gone fast and furiously for some time when Douglas touched his father on the arm.

"Dad, look up on the shoulder of old Dead Line!"

John straightened his back and shaded his eyes. A rider leading a Hereford was coming down the ridge.

"That's Scott's horse, Grover," said Douglas. "Can you make out the rider?"

"Not yet." John continued to stare intently. Others noticed his posture and followed his gaze.

"It's Scott Parsons!" cried Charleton Falkner.

"Shall we go get him?" exclaimed Jimmy Day.

"No. He's starved out and giving up. Let's hear what he has to say," said John.

The dehorning went on. Half a dozen more bleeding steers had been turned out before Scott, weary, gaunt, haggard beyond words, leading an emaciated young bull, drew rein beside the smaller corral. The roping came to a pause. John twisted a lariat round the neck of a steer he was working on and led it to the fence. The others followed.

"Well, why the committee of welcome?" asked Scott hoa.r.s.ely. His bloodshot eyes turned from one to another.

"Where'd you find the bull, Scott?" asked John.

"First located him on Fire Mesa. Been round about considerable since."

"Whose bull is it now?" Charleton Falkner pushed Democrat toward the fence.

"Mine!" Scott spoke shortly, his freckled face unmoved.

"Do you think it was worth the price?" demanded Spencer.

Scott looked searchingly at the crowd before him. The steer John was holding had been dehorned but not seared. The blood had run down the brute's white face and formed a crimson icicle on its under lip. John had run his fingers through his ashen hair, leaving it blood-smeared.

Charleton was lighting a blood-stained cigarette with the hot searing-iron. Judith pounded her half-frozen ringers together.

"What price did I pay?" asked Scott.

"Doug," commanded John, "you tell your story."

Douglas, with considerable embarra.s.sment and a.s.sisted by Judith, told of their trip with the mail stage. Scott listened with little apparent interest. He said nothing when the story was done.

"It's like this, Scott," said John. "It looks like you killed him. You've got a bad temper. So had Oscar. You fought for over a year about that fool bull, first one of you branding it, then the other. You're young and you'd better give yourself up. You'll stand a better chance."

"Go ahead, Scott!" cried Judith. "I'll stand your friend like you did mine when I rode old Oscar's milch cow 'most to death!"

"Shut up, Jude!" exclaimed Douglas.