Judith of the Godless Valley Part 8

"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 G.o.d-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 s.h.i.+fts, 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 ma.s.sified for many a year for driving the preacher out of Lost Chief."

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

"I mean ma.s.sify," 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 G.o.d," he said.

"But if there isn't any G.o.d, what is there?" cried Douglas, with pa.s.sionate 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."