Judith of the Godless Valley Part 55

It was not until they had nearly reached Doug's corral that he found courage to tell her about the death of Prince. She said nothing, for a moment, but she brought the mare up close to the Moose and laid her hand on Douglas' knee.

"Dear old boy!" she said. "I know!" Then she sobbed for a moment against his shoulder. But when he would have put his arm about her she straightened herself and said, "But weren't you glad you were strong enough to thrash him!"

"Yes!" replied Douglas.

They said no more about it, but after the dehorning was done, Douglas saw Judith stand for a long time beside the chapel. He knew how her heart was aching, for she too was a lover of dogs.

CHAPTER XIV

THE BATTLE OF THE BULLS

"The free plains were wonderful, but Judith's hand on my bit is more wonderful."

--_The Little Wild Mare_.

Douglas felt somehow, after this day, that Judith was nearer to him. Not that she changed in her manner at all, but there was an indefinable something about her that gave him hope: hope strong enough at least to put up a creditable struggle with the despair that was forever creeping upon him at unguarded moments.

He slept in the chapel on Sat.u.r.day night, just to make sure that no mischief was done under cover of the darkness. And on Sunday, Mr. Fowler preached an uninterrupted sermon. Scott was present, giving apparently an undivided ear to the preacher's discourse. Charleton was there, too.

He ignored Douglas entirely. He had probably told no one of his trouble with Douglas and, knowing Douglas, he apparently felt that Lost Chief would remain in ignorance of the fight. So his saturnine face was as serenely insolent as ever, barring the remains of a very black eye.

Considered from an entirely detached point of view, the sermon was a thing of exceeding beauty. Inez should have been satisfied. The old preacher had a fine voice and he spoke without notes. Many a noted interpreter of the gospel might have envied him his control of voice and language.

The text was one of the most intriguing in the Bible. "Jesus said, I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world seeth me no more. But ye see me. Because I live, ye shall live also." Around about this, Mr. Fowler wove picture after picture of pa.s.sionate faith in an hereafter. He told of the death of his own father, who with the death-rattle in his throat had sat erect in his bed crying, "O Christ, I see your face at last!"

He told of hardened criminals who had heard G.o.d's voice in their dreams.

He told of children, who like little Samuel had been called by the Almighty in a voice as articulate as that of their own fathers. He told of the authenticity of the Biblical history of Christ and of the scientific explanations of Christ's miracles. He told of the faith of the ancestors of the people of Lost Chief, a faith which had led them across the Atlantic and through those first terrible years on the bleak New England sh.o.r.es. He concluded with a prayer for the return of the sheep to the fold, a prayer delivered with tears pouring down his weather-beaten cheeks, a prayer delivered in anguish of spirit and in a voice of heart-moving sincerity.

At the end, he sank into his chair by the table and covered his eyes with his shaking hand. Lost Chief sat silent for a moment, then Grandma Brown said in a quavering voice, "Let us sing _Rock of Ages_." But only she knew the words, and after a single verse she stopped, in some embarra.s.sment.

Charleton coughed, yawned and rose. The little congregation followed him out into the yard, where horses and dogs were milling the half-melted snow into yellow muck.

"Well, Grandma," asked Charleton as he helped the old lady into her saddle, "what did you think of the sermon?"

"A pretty good sermon!" replied Grandma. "Made me feel like a girl again."

"My gawd, Grandma," exclaimed Charleton, "do you mean to say that an old Indian fighter like you swallowed that stuff!"

"I was believing that stuff before you were born, Charleton! If Fowler is going to keep this pace up, I'll say I'm sorry I ever called him a sissy. What did you think of it, Peter?"

Peter was leaning thoughtfully against his horse. "It was interesting.

Ethics, as such, are too cold to interest most folks. So we sugar-coat 'em with flowery speech and sleight-of-hand and try to give 'em authority with a big threat. Then some hard-head like Charleton says, because the sugar-coating is silly, that there is nothing to ethics.

Which is where he talks like a fool."

He whistled to Sister and trotted homeward. There was considerable elation in Doug's cabin that evening. The preacher said little but old Johnny was in fine fettle.

"Guess we showed 'em!" he said, frying the bacon with a skilled hand. "I bet we had words in that sermon none of 'em ever dreamed of before.

You'd ought to use 'gregus,' Mr. Fowler. It's a hard word and so's depone. I told Grandma to come up Sunday and we'd have words looked out that would sure twist her gullet to say."

Mr. Fowler was seized with a sudden coughing fit from which he merged into violent laughter.

"What did your sister say?" he asked when he found his voice.

"She told me not to go any crazier than I already was, and I deponed to her how Doug felt about me, and she went home."

The sermon had indeed gone so well and the week that followed was so peaceful that Douglas did not sleep in the chapel on the following Sat.u.r.day night. When Mr. Fowler unlocked the door on Sunday morning, a skunk fled from under the pulpit out into the aspens, and there was no service that day.

On the next Sunday, Charleton gave an all-day dance in the post-office hall and only half a dozen of the older people appeared at the chapel, to listen to a sermon on the Resurrection. He repeated the dance for three Sundays in succession and Douglas was in despair. Old Johnny was deeply wrought up over Douglas' state of mind, and one Sat.u.r.day night he disappeared, returning at dawn. On that Sunday it was found that the stove in the dance-hall had disappeared and a check was put upon Charleton's compet.i.tion.

And still, with no dances to rival the sermons, the attendance at the log chapel grew smaller and smaller. The lack of interest that was growing, now that the Valley's first curiosity had been satisfied, was more deadly than open warfare. Douglas saw clearly enough that the sermons were dull and he spent evening after evening sounding Fowler's mind to its depths in the endeavor to find some angle in it that would tempt Lost Chief into the chapel.

It was a good mind, that of this preacher, stored with a very fair amount of cla.s.sical learning and packed with stories of western adventure. But cla.s.sical lore had no appeal for modern-minded Lost Chief and Mr. Fowler's adventure could be surpa.s.sed by any man in the Valley.

Judith treated the sermons with open scorn. "No, indeed; I won't come up to the chapel," she replied to Doug's appeal. "Why should I suffer when I don't have to? If it would help you--! But it wouldn't! The sooner you learn what a fool the old sky pilot is, the better. Or, I tell you, Douglas! You preach the next sermon and I promise to come and bring the crowd."

Douglas grinned feebly. "I value my life," he answered.

Mary Spencer, who was listening to the conversation which took place in her kitchen, now made a suggestion.

"Why don't you feed 'em, Doug? Announce a series of fifty-cent dinners up at the chapel and while the folks eat, let Mr. Fowler preach."

Douglas laughed delightedly. "That's a 'gregus' idea! I'll do it. I'll begin this Sunday with a venison dinner!"

Mary nodded. "You get the food together and there are three or four of us women who would be glad to cook it for you."

"You are a real friend, Mother!" exclaimed Douglas. "I believe you've solved my problem!"

And so, in spite of Mr. Fowler's protest, a venison dinner was announced for Sunday and received by the Valley in a spirit of hilarious enthusiasm. The preacher refused to deliver the sermon while the meal was in progress, but it was such a gustatory success that at its close, the guests sat in complete docility through a sermon on future punishment. It was a good sermon, quite as modern in most aspects as Lost Chief. Douglas had seen to that. Mr. Fowler had reached the closing sentence when a bull bellowed outside and the door opened disclosing Elijah Nelson, with his horse close behind him. The preacher paused.

"Excuse me!" exclaimed Nelson. "I thought this was just a dinner!"

He was a big man, perhaps fifty years of age, with a smooth-shaven ruddy face. He wore a sheepskin vest over his corduroy coat, and one of the small boys bleated. Grandma Brown promptly smacked him on the mouth.

"Will you come in and eat?" asked Fowler.

"No, thank you," replied the Mormon; adding with a determined thrust of his lower jaw, "I want Scott Parsons to come out. I won't disturb the rest of you."

"What do you want of me?" demanded Scott from his place between Judith and Inez.

"Come outside and I'll tell you."

Scott grunted derisively. "It sure-gawd has got to be something more than that to win me out of this position. I'm the envy of Lost Chief, old sheep-man!"

There was a general laugh.

"Go on out and see what he wants, Scott," said Peter.