Judith of the Godless Valley Part 46

"Dad said he'd let me have it, and so did Inez. But I'd rather borrow from you."

Douglas flushed with pleasure. "Had you, Judith? Tell me why!"

"I don't like to be under obligations to Dad; and Inez' money--well, I don't feel keen about her money. As for you--Doug, it's queer, but I'd just as soon ask you for anything. I don't know whether it's a compliment to you or not."

"I consider it a compliment," said Douglas softly. "I had no idea you had that sort of confidence in me."

"O, I'm not such a wild woman that I don't know a real man when I see one, Doug,--even if you are making an idiot of yourself just now! You should have planned to be more tactful about bringing your old sky pilot in here."

"Tactful! What a word!" exclaimed Douglas, "For heaven's sake, Jude, don't you get the idea better than that? This is a matter of--" He hesitated, at a loss for a moment for a word that should tell Judith something of the yearning conflict that obsessed him. "This is a battle," he said finally, "a fight to the finish for--for--" then he blurted out the word that in Lost Chief was taboo--"for souls!"

exclaimed Douglas.

Judith looked at him quickly; but to Douglas' vast relief she did not laugh. Instead, her eyes were deep with some emotion he could not name.

"I don't think I understand you, Doug," she said at last. "I couldn't get so worked up over anything that had to do with religion. But I do see that it means a lot to you and I think you're foolish to trust to a man like Fowler to put anything over in this valley for you."

"You don't know my old sky pilot like I do," insisted Doug.

"Yes, you must have got a deep knowledge of him in one night!"

"I sure did!" said Douglas simply.

"You are sure that you realize how bitterly the Valley resents your doing this?"

"Yes. And the Valley had better realize, if it plans trouble, that I'm neither soft, nor easy."

"I just wish you weren't trying to do it," repeated Judith.

"What do you want me to do?" asked Douglas.

"Why, be a first-cla.s.s rancher, make money, and travel and learn something about life."

"That's what I plan to do. But I want to do more than that. I want to fix Lost Chief so that a couple of kids like you and me don't have to learn all they know about real things from a woman like Inez and a man like Charleton. And if a sky pilot can answer those questions right, why I'm going to have one in here if I have to mount guard on him, day and night. My kids are going to grow up right here in Lost Chief and they aren't going round like little wild horses when it comes to asking questions about love and death. No, ma'am!"

"Oh! What does old Fowler know about such things?" cried Judith.

"That's what I aim to find out," replied Doug.

Twilight was up on the valley, though Falkner's Peak still glowed crimson in outline, and the Forest Reserve to the east was silver blue, shot with lines of flame. The evening star trembled above Fire Mesa. Up on Dead Line Peak behind them, a pack of coyotes barked.

"We miss you down at the house," said Judith suddenly.

Douglas' heart suddenly lifted. There was a sweetness in Judith's voice that he never before had heard there.

"I miss you, Judith! Every moment of the day I'm missing you. The ache for you in my heart is as much a part of my life as my very heart-throbs."

"I wish you wouldn't, Douglas! I wish you wouldn't! I'm not ready to talk of those things!"

"What do you mean, Judith?"

"I mean that I don't see love as you see it; that even if I did care for any one, I'm not ready to give way to it."

She paused as if she too were struggling to express the inarticulate.

"O, I am so disappointed in life! It isn't at all what I thought it would be! People aren't what I dreamed they were. Everything is hard and rough and difficult. I don't like life a bit!"

"I don't like it as it is, either," agreed Douglas. "That's why I'm trying to change it, here in Lost Chief. But I wouldn't change my love for you, no matter how it hurts. That's the one beautiful thing in Lost Chief and in me."

He turned to the face, so dimly rebellious, so vaguely sweet in the dark, and his whole soul was in his steady deep voice.

"Judith, won't you marry me? You are my whole life!"

Judith's voice rose pa.s.sionately. "Don't talk about it! Don't! I don't believe in marriage. I tell you I don't, Douglas!"

"Why not?"

"I've told you again and again. Marriage is too hard on a woman. Why should I want to cook your meals and darn your socks and wash your clothes for you the rest of my life? Yes, and listen to you swear and lay down the law and spit tobacco juice? And when I'm a little older and beginning to get knotty with the hard work, see you take notice of girls who are younger and prettier than I. No, Doug!"

"O, love isn't like that!" exclaimed Douglas vehemently.

"My love won't be like that, I can tell you!" The excitement still was evident in Judith's voice. "I'm not going to kill it, by marrying."

"I wish that Inez were dead and in h.e.l.l!" cried Douglas, with such an acc.u.mulation of bitterness in his voice that Judith drew a quick breath.

"And I wish I could quit loving you! I tried my best to, all the time I was at Charleton's. But I can't! It just grows as I grow and every day it's a bigger pain and trouble to me. I wish I could have peace!"

"I wish I could have it myself!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the girl. She rose suddenly.

"I'm so tired of this burning struggle. But I won't settle down to being an old horse on a ranch. I will do something that gives me a chance to use my brain. I will!"

She leaped into the saddle.

Douglas seized the mare's bridle. "Just what do you mean by being tired of a burning struggle?" he demanded tensely. "Are you caring for somebody, Jude?"

"Let me go, Douglas," said Judith.

For a moment, the two stared at each other in the fading light, then Douglas released the bridle and Judith galloped away.

He stood very still for a long time, gazing down the dim line of the trail. How lonely, how very lonely Judith appeared to be! How lonely, for that matter, were most people, pondering in the solitude of their own minds on all the matters of life that really counted. And how utterly impossible it seemed to be for him and Judith to cross the threshold of each other's reticences. More difficult perhaps for Judith than for him. That, perhaps, was because she did not love him. Or perhaps, because she was not capable of feeling sympathy for spiritual hunger. But he put aside this thought, impatiently. No one could have lived with Judith and not have learned that below her tempestuous nature must be deeps greater than even she herself had realized. Why, O why, could he never have more than a glimpse of those deeps! Evidently something more than love was demanded as a pa.s.sword.

He had been able, quickly enough, at her request to formulate his own demands on life. What were Judith's demands? Were they only for a love that should be unhampered by the ordinary facts of life? He knew that this could not be so. Yet, he had grown up with Judith, had asked her to marry him, and had no idea of what her actual mental and spiritual needs might be. Perhaps they were such that he never could satisfy them.

Perhaps Judith recognized this. Of course, she recognized it!--as a bitter memory of her picture of marriage in Lost Chief returned to him.

With a groan he bowed his head against the smooth trunk of an aspen. How utterly inexplicable women were! How bitter and how beautiful was this scourging fire, called love!

CHAPTER XII

THE FIRST SERMON