Table of Contents

Lost Chief Schoolhouse

​

IT was Sunday in Lost Chief; Sunday and mid-winter. For the first time in nearly ten years there was to be a sermon preached in the valley and every one who could move was making his way to the schoolhouse.

Douglas Spencer drove his spurs into Buster and finished the last hundred yards at a gallop. Judith, his foster sister, stood up in her stirrups, lashed Swift vigorously over the flanks with the knotted reins and when Buster slid on his haunches to the very doorstep, Swift brought her gnarled fore legs down on his sweeping tail and slid with him. She brought up when he did with her nose under his saddle blanket. The boy and girl avoided a mix-up by leaping from their saddles and jerking their mounts apart.

"Now look at here, Jude!" shouted Douglas, "you keep that ornery cow-pony of yours off of me or I'll make you sorry for it!"

Judith put her thumb to her small red nose, and without touching the stirrups leaped back into the saddle. Then she looked calmly about her.

"First ones here!" she said complacently. "Even the preacher hasn't come."

​"I suppose,"—Doug's voice was bitter—"that if I rode over toward Day's to meet Jimmy you'd have to tag!"

"I sure-gawd would. Swift would like the extra exercise."

Douglas swept Judith's thin bay mare with a withering glance. "That thing! Looks like the coyotes had been at it!"

Judith wore but one spur and this had a broken rowell, but she kicked Swift with it and Swift whirled against the nervous Buster and bit him on the cheek. Buster reared. "Take that back, you dogy cowboy you!" shrieked Judith.

Douglas brought Buster round and raised his hand to strike the girl. She eyed him fearlessly. The boy slowly lowered the threatening hand and returned her gaze, belligerently.

Prince, a gray, short-haired dog, of intricate ancestry, squatted on his haunches in the snow with his tongue between his teeth and his eyes on the two horses. Swift sagged with a sigh onto three legs. Perhaps the little mare deserved some of the aspersions Douglas and his father daily cast upon her. She was a half-broken, half-fed little mare which Douglas' father had cast off. She did not look strong enough to bear even Judith's slim weight. But as the only horse Judith was permitted to call her own, the little bay was the very apple of the young girl's eyes, and she wheedled wonderful performances from Swift in endurance and cat-like quickness.

Buster was a black which the older Spencer had bred as a cow-pony but had given up because he could not be broken of bucking. Doug had bested his father for the horse, and Buster, nervous, irritable and speedy, was a joy to the boy's sixteen-year-old heart.

Douglas sat tall in the saddle. He measured, in fact, ​a full five feet ten inches without his high-heeled riding-boots. He was so thin that his leather rider's coat bellowed in the wind, and the modeling of his cheekbones showed markedly under his tanned skin. His sombrero, pushed back from his forehead, disclosed a thick thatch of bright yellow hair above wide blue eyes that were set deep and far apart. His nose was high bridged, and his mouth, though still immature, gave promise of full-lipped strength in its curves.

Judith was fourteen and only a couple of inches shorter than Douglas. She was even thinner than he, but, like him, glowing with intense vitality. She had hung her cap on the pommel of her saddle and her curly black hair whipped across her face. She had a short nose, a large mouth, magnificent gray eyes and cheeks of flawless carmine. She wore a faded plaid mackinaw, and arctics half-way up her long, thin legs.

"I hate you, Doug Spencer," she said finally and fiercely, "and I'm glad you're not my real brother!"

"I don't see why my father ever married a woman with an ornery brat like you!" retorted Douglas.

"I wouldn't stay to associate with you another minute if you offered me a new pair of spurs! I'm going to meet Maud!" And Judith disappeared down the trail.

Douglas eased back in his saddle and lighted a cigarette, while he watched the distant figures approaching across the valley. The glory of the landscape made little impression on him. He had been born in Lost Chief and he saw only snow and his schoolmates racing over the converging trails.

The Rockies in mid-winter! High northern cattle country with purple sage deep blanketed in snow, with rarefied air below the zero mark, with sky the purest, ​most crystalline deep sapphire, and Lost Chief Valley, high perched in the ranges, silently awaiting the return of spring.

Fire Mesa, huge, profoundly striated, with red clouds forever forming on its top and rolling over remoter mesas, stood with its greatest length across the north end of the valley. At its feet lay Black Gorge, and half-way up its steep red front projected the wide ledge on which the schoolhouse stood. Dead Line Peak and Falkner's Peak abruptly closed the south end of the valley. From between these two great mountains, Lost Chief Creek swept down across the valley into the Black Gorge. Lost Chief Range formed the west boundary of the valley, Indian Range, the east. They were perhaps ten miles apart.

All this gives little of the picture Douglas might have been absorbing. It tells nothing of the azure hue of the snow that buried Lost Chief Creek and Lost Chief ranches. It gives no hint of the awful splendor of Dead Line and Falkner's Peaks, all blue and bronze and crimson, backed by myriads of other peaks, pure white, against the perfect sky.

It does not picture the brilliant yellow canyon wall which thrust Lost Chief Range back from the valley, nor the peacock blue sides of the Indian Range, clothed in wonder by the Forest Reserve. And finally, it does not tell of the infinite silence that lay this prismatic Sunday afternoon over the snow-cloaked world.

Douglas did not see the beauty of the valley, but as, far below, he saw Judith trot up to the Day's corral, he was smitten suddenly by his sense of loneliness. Too bad of Jude, he thought, always to be flying off at a tangent like that! A guy couldn't offer the least ​criticism of her fool horse, that she didn't lose her temper. Funny thing to see a girl with a hot temper. Ordinary enough in a man, but girls were usually just mean and spitty, like cats. A guy had to admit that there was nothing mean about Judith. She was fearless and straight like a first-class fellow. But temper! Whew! Funny things, tempers! He himself always found it hard to let go of his rage. It smouldered deep and biting inside of him and hard to get out into words. He usually had to tell himself to hit back. Funny about that, when his father was always boiling over like Judith. He wondered if her temper would grow worse as she grew older, as his father's had. Funny things, tempers! People in a temper always looked and acted fools. The guy that could keep hold was the guy that won out. Like being able to control a horse with a good curb-bit. Funny why he felt lonely. It was only lately that he had noticed it. Here was Buster and here was Prince, and here was the approaching joke of the preacher. Why then this sense of loneliness? Maybe loneliness wasn't the right word. Maybe it was longing. And for what? Not for Jude! Lord, no! Not for that young wildcat. But the feeling of emptiness was there, as real as hunger, and at this moment as persistent. Funny thing, longing. What in the world had a guy like him to long for?

A long coo-ee below the ledge interrupted his meditation. A young rider leaped from the trail to the level before the schoolhouse, broke into a gallop and slid, with sparks flying, to the door.

"Hello, Scott!" said Douglas, without enthusiasm.

"I thought Jude was here!" returned Scott. He was older and heavier than Douglas, freckled of face and ​sandy of hair, with something hard in his hazel eyes.

"He'd better leave Jude alone," thought Douglas, "the mangy pinto!"

There was a shriek and a gray horse, carrying a youth with the schoolmarm clinging behind him, flew across the yard and reared to avoid breaking his knees on the steps. The schoolmarm scrambled down, still screaming protests at the grinning rider. One after another now arrived, perhaps a dozen youngsters, varying in age from five to eighteen, each on his or her own lean, half-broken horse, each appearing with the same flying leap from the steep trail to the level, each racing across the yard as if with intent to burst through the schoolhouse door, each bringing up with the same pull back of foaming horse to its haunches. And with each horse came a dog of highly varied breed.

The youngsters had been racing about the ledge for some time before the grown people began to appear. The women, most of them very handsome, were dressed dowdily in mackinaws and anomalous foot covering. But the men were resplendent in chaps and short leather coats, with gay silk neckerchiefs, with silver spurs and embossed saddles.

When Judith returned with Maud Day there were thirty or forty people and almost as many dogs milling about the yard. The log school had weathered against the red wall of the mesa for fifty years. There probably was not a person in the crowd who had not gone to school there, who did not, like Judith, love every log in its ugly sides. Judith caught Douglas' sardonic gaze, tossed her curly head and urged Swift up the steps, where she looked toward the road to the Pass, shading her fine eyes with a mittened hand.

Finally she cried, "I see the preacher coming!"

​"Somebody ought to go in and build the fire if we ain't going to freeze to death!" exclaimed Grandma Brown, jogging up on a flea-bitten black mule.

"He invited himself. Let him build his own fire!" cried Douglas.

Grandma pulled her spectacles down from her forehead to the bridge of her capable nose, and stared at Douglas.

"Well! Well! Doesn't take 'em long away from the nursing bottle to get smarty. Where's your father, Douglas?"

"Home with the toothache," replied Doug, flushed and irritated.

"Did he bring you up to let a stranger come to the house and build his own fire?"

"No, but it's the schoolmarm's job to build this one," replied Douglas.

"Jimmy Day, you and Doug go in and get that old stove going!" ordered Grandma.

Both boys dismounted slowly, tied their horses, and amidst a general chuckle, disappeared into the school-house.

Charleton Falkner, a black-browed rider of middle age, with a heavy black mustache, turned his horse toward Grandma.

"That's right, Charleton," the old lady went on, "you come over here and help me off of Abe. I ain't going to stay out here freezing till old Fowler comes. Riding ain't the novelty to me it seems to be to the rest of you."

This was the signal for all the grown people to tie up their horses and enter the building. Shortly Douglas and Jimmy came out, and scarcely had remounted when the minister rode slowly up over the ledge. He dismounted at the door and greeted the youngsters. ​They replied with cat-calls. Fowler stared at the group of robust young riders, his gray-bearded face somber, then he shook his head and opened the door.

Douglas jumped from his horse and, giving the reins to Jimmy Day, he followed the minister. The people within were seated quietly, and Doug slid into a rear bench. His eyes were very bright and he watched the preacher with eager interest. Mr. Fowler dropped his overcoat on a chair and strode up to the platform, where he smiled half wistfully, half benignly at his congregation. Then he raised his right hand.

"Let us pray!" he said. "O God, help me to speak truth to these people who ten years ago laughed me from this room. Help me to open their eyes that they may behold You! Show them that they lead a life of wickedness from the babes in arms to the very aged, from—"

"'Tain't any such thing!" interrupted Grandma Brown. "There you go again, after all these years!"

"If you've come here to preach old-fashioned fire and brimstone, Fowler," said Charleton Falkner, "you might as well quit now. None of us believe a word of it. We most of us think everything ends when they plant us in the cemetery yonder, that is, if they put on enough rocks so the coyotes get discouraged."

Douglas shivered. "I wonder if that's what I'll believe when I get to thinking about such things," he thought. "Hanged if I'll think of 'em till I'm old!"

"I'm with you, Charleton!" called Oscar Jefferson, rumpling his silvery hair with his soft white cowman's hand.

The Reverend Mr. Fowler leaned over the desk. "Charleton Falkner, aren't you man enough to admit that you folks here in Lost Chief lead a wicked life?"

"How do you mean, wicked?" demanded Charleton.

​"I mean that you steal cattle, that you shoot to kill, that there is indecency among your children, that your young girls go unguarded and that your young men are no better than wild horses. I mean that your little girls drink whiskey. And I defy you to show me two mothers in the valley who have taught their children to pray and to walk with God."

"Aw!" sniffed Oscar Jefferson, "if that's what you've come a hundred miles to tell us, you'd better quit! That may do for foreigners and city slums, but it won't go down with the Lost Chief cowman. We're Americans, here."

"Americans!" cried Mr. Fowler. "How much does that mean?"

Jefferson rose to his full six feet. "By God, I'll tell you what it means! It means our ancestors conquered the Indians, in New England, that we fought the British in the Revolution and the rebels in the Civil War and the hombres in the Spanish-American War. It means that fifty years ago the father or the grandfather of every man in this room came out here and fought the Indians and the wolves and the Mormons—"

Charleton Falkner interrupted with his twisted smile that showed even, tobacco stained teeth. "Jeff, this ain't the Fourth of July celebration, you know!"

Jefferson somewhat sheepishly subsided to the desk on which he had been sitting.

"That's exactly why I came back!" cried the preacher. "I know that you and Lost Chief belong to the heroic early history of America. This should be a valley of old Puritan ideals. A church should stand here beside the school. You never have built a church. You never have allowed a minister to settle here. You never—"

Here Grandma Brown's brother-in-law, Johnny Brown, ​spoke. "I've deponed that many a time to this crowd of mavericks! You'd ought to—"

"Keep quiet, Johnny!" ordered Grandma. "Fowler. if you are going to give us a regular Bible sermon, go ahead. Otherwise, I'm going home. I can jaw, myself."

"Also, cuss some, Grandma," suggested a slow voice. Grandma did not heed.

"If you're going to preach, preach," she said to the minister.

Mr. Fowler threw his head back. "Ten years ago I let you drive me out of Lost Chief before I'd preached a sermon. God has never let me rest since, no matter where I was, and when I was re-appointed to Mountain City, before I preached my first sermon there, I came out here. You are going to have the Word of God preached to you to-day if you shoot me for it. And beware lest you come to Esau's fate for ye know how afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully, with tears."

He paused, took a Bible from his pocket and opened it.

Douglas waited tensely. The preacher looked to him as if weighted with mysterious knowledge, as if something infinitely illuminating were to issue from his bearded lips. The boy had a sudden conviction that Fowler was about to say something that would answer the longing that had so oppressed him lately. He hunched his broad, thin shoulders forward, his clear blue eyes on the preacher's face.

Fowler cleared his throat. "'Moreover, the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Now thou son of man, wilt thou judge, wilt thou hide the guilty city? Yea, thou shalt show her all her abominations.'"

​He closed the Bible. "Friends, this is my message and my text. I am going to show you your abominations of crookednesses. I am going to show you that hell is yawning for such as you."

Douglas sighed. "Old fool!" he muttered. "As Grandma Brown says, she can jaw. He's lost his chance with me." He slipped out of the doer, mounted his horse and nodded to the group of youngsters waiting for him. Then he urged Buster up the steps, through the door and up the aisle. The others followed him. A moment later, the schoolroom was chaos. Horses pranced over the desks. Dogs barked and fought among the horses' legs. Babies screamed. Oaths filled the air. Lost Chief rocked with laughter.

Fowler jumped upon the teacher's desk, appealing in dumb show for order. A plunging horse tipped the desk over and the minister went down among the prancing legs. In a moment he was up, and again he raised both hands in a plea for silence. Douglas, laughing gaily, twirled his lariat, and pinioned the two pleading hands, then, amidst shouts of laughter, he backed Buster from the room, drawing the minister none too gently with him. Outside, whither the crowd quickly followed, Douglas halted and, still laughing, allowed the preacher to free his hands.

"Now go on back to Mountain City, Mr. Preacher," he cried, "and don't come back till you've learned not to scold like an old woman."

Fowler pulled on his overcoat which somebody tossed him, and mounted his horse. Then he stood in his stirrups and pointed a trembling finger at Douglas.

"Ye shall find no place for repentance, though ye seek for it with tears."

​"Why should I repent?" demanded Douglas.

"Aw, run him! Run the bastard!" shouted Scott Parsons.

But Doug rode between the preacher and the threatening young rider. "Let him go, Scott. He's had enough!"

Fowler disappeared down the trail. Scott turned scowling toward Douglas, but before he could do more Judith cried, "Come on, everybody! Let's go down to the post-office and get Peter to open the hall for a dance!"

"I will if somebody brings whiskey," agreed Scott, turning his horse toward Swift.

"I'll go over to Inez Rodman's and get some if Maud will go with me," volunteered Judith.

"Let's all go to Rodman's," cried Maud.

The older people were riding slowly down the trail to the valley. The youngsters waited until the way was clear before leaving the school-yard, agreeing in the meantime that Judith and Maud should go after the whiskey while the others went to interview Peter; and the two girls departed forthwith.

"Some one besides me will have to work on Peter," said Scott. "He's sore at me. I tried to kick Sister."

"What did you do that for?" asked Jimmy Day. "Are you sick of living?"

"She bit Ginger on the shoulder. I hate that dog."

"Jude can handle Peter," said Douglas. "Come on, let's get going."

The little cavalcade moved noisily down the trail, crossed the deep snows of Black Gorge and broke into a wild race when the road opened a mile below the post-office. The horses lunged and kicked through the drifts, the dogs barked, the girls squealed, the boys ​shouted. The post-office lay in the middle of the valley with neither tree nor house in its vicinity. It was a square log structure, two stories high, originally an inner fort built as a final retreat from the Indians. The upper room was now used as a dance-hall. The lower floor contained the post-office, a general store, and Peter Knight's living quarters.

Peter Knight was the only outsider in Lost Chief. He had lived there a scant twenty years. No one knew whence he came, nor why. He was a man of education and an ardent lover of animals, a somewhat sardonic, very lonely man, yet somehow having more influence in the valley than any one save Grandma Brown. He showed no actual fondness for any particular person save Judith and his big mongrel wolf-hound, Sister, Sister being every inch a person! Douglas had sometimes thought that Peter showed a real interest in him, but this interest was shown almost entirely by scathing vituperations, so the boy made no attempt to form the interest into friendship.

The crowd of riders drew up at the post-office, sparks and snow flying, just as Maud and Judith lashed their horses in from the west trail. Judith waved a bottle of whiskey.

"Some providers!" cried Scott, putting out his hand for the flask. He took a pull, then passed it on. Boys and girls alike took a drink, then Scott pocketed the bottle. During this procedure, the door of the post-office opened and Peter Knight appeared.

He was about forty-five years old, very tall, very, very thin, and as straight as he was thin. Thick, closely clipped gray hair stood up straight from his forehead. His eyes were deep sunk in his head and a piercing, light blue. He possessed a belligerent chin below an obstinate ​lower lip and a close-cropped gray mustache. He wore a gray flannel shirt and blue denim pants turned high over riding-boots.

He watched the passing of the whiskey bottle without comment.

"Hello, Peter!" called Judith. "Will you open the hall and let us have a dance?"

"What have you been doing to your horse, Jude?" demanded Peter, eying the panting and dejected Swift.

"Nothing!"

"Nothing! I tell you what, the way you little devils treat your horses would draw tears out of a coyote. Starving 'em, beating 'em, running 'em! You ought to be thrashed, every one of you worthless young slicks."

Curiously enough, none of the group which had shown so much temerity in man-handling the preacher now attempted to reply to Peter. A great shaggy gray dog, exactly like a coyote except that she was much larger, now appeared in the door beside the postmaster. A chorus of growls and whines immediately arose from the dogs congregated among the horses.

"What happened at the schoolhouse?" asked Peter abruptly.

"You're always preaching, yourself; I suppose that's why you didn't attend," grinned Scott Parsons.

"My Yankee horse is sick," said Peter, "and I couldn't leave him. How did it go?"

"We ran him out," laughed Douglas. "We gave him a chance to give us real talk but he couldn't come across, so we roped him and ran him."

"I thought that would happen. Poor Fowler!" Peter's voice was grave.

"Listen, Peter," cried Judith, "I want to ask you a favor."

​She mounted the steps and stood before the man. She was as thin as he and as straight. Peter looked down at her, still scowling.

"Now, Peter, listen! You know I love Swift and wouldn't hurt her for anything."

"Wouldn't hurt her! Haven't I told you a hundred times that running a horse through drifts like you do ruins 'em? No, don't try to soft-soap me, Judith! When you kids want a favor from me, don't come up with your horses dripping sweat in below zero weather."

He jerked Sister back into the building and slammed the door.

Judith turned. "Well, we can all go over to Inez' place. She asked us."

"Who's there?" demanded Doug.

"Nobody. She says we can dance if we want to."

There was a silence, broken after a moment by Jimmy Day. "You can't go, Maud."

"I am going if you do!" exclaimed Maud. "Make him let me go, Doug."

"What's the use of being so fussy about poor old Inez?" asked Scott. "What harm is there in a dance at her place?"

"I don't see why, if my mother don't stop me, yours should stop you," protested Judith.

"O, your mother couldn't boss a day-old calf!" said Jimmy impatiently.

"Don't you knock my mother!" shrilled Judith.

"Your mother—" began Maud.

"Dry up, Maud, or I'll smack your mouth!" ordered Douglas.

"No you won't!" cried Jimmy.

"I will, anybody that says anything against Jude's mother," returned Douglas promptly.

​"Aw, if you folks are going to start fighting, as usual, I'm going home," growled Scott Parsons. "Every time the crowd gets together, Jude has to start a scrap. It's getting god-awful cold, anyhow, and I've got chores to do." He spurred Ginger and was off.

"Same here!" chimed half a dozen voices, and more horses were spurred away.

Douglas glared at Judith. "Always making trouble! I should think you'd get sick of it."

"Let 'em not knock my mother, or my horse, or my dog, then," replied Judith, tossing her head.

"Your dog! Prince is my dog, miss, and don't you forget it for a minute," cried Douglas.

He spurred Buster onto the main trail which lifted gradually toward Dead Line Peak. Judith, after a pouting moment, followed him.

Except for this steady lift from seven thousand feet at Black Gorge to eight thousand feet at the base of Dead Line and Falkner's Peaks, the valley was as level as a floor. The sun was setting as the two left the post-office. Lost Chief Range, on their right, was black against fire. The snow of the valley was as blue as indigo. A gentle but bitterly cold wind rose from the east. Prince, yelping, set off after a skulking coyote. When he had disappeared beyond a distant herd grazing through the snow, Judith pushed her horse up beside Buster.

"Doug, am I any scrappier than the rest of them?"

Douglas, his cigarette hanging negligently from a corner of his mouth, nodded.

"Well, I have to be, Doug," insisted Judith.

"No, you don't. You just look for trouble, all the time. Why do you have to be?"

"Who is there to look out for me?" demanded the girl, chin in the air.

​"Pshaw! You don't need a guard, do you? Besides, what's the matter with me?"

"Huh! You don't really care what happens to me. I'm not your real sister and you never forget it. I'm lonely."

Douglas gave her a curious glance. Was she, he wondered, experiencing that feeling of loneliness and longing which had been haunting him for months? He wanted to ask her about it but he could not. She laughed at him too easily.

They rode on in silence for a while, Judith's thin young body sagging dejectedly in the saddle. The lavendar twilight was gathering. White stars hung within hand touch. Prince returned to the trail and a coyote barked derisively from beyond an alfalfa stack.

"Douglas," exclaimed Judith suddenly, "if I thought when I got married, my husband would treat me like Dad does Mother, I'd never get married. Getting married in real life isn't a bit like the books show it."

Douglas grunted. "I wouldn't worry about getting married for a few years yet."

"I'm fourteen," returned Judith. "I've got a right to think about it. Don't you ever?"

"No."

"You think about girls, though," insisted Judith.

"That isn't thinking about marrying, is it?"

"What do you think about mostly, Doug?"

Douglas sighed. "It's hard to say. I've been awful sad lately. I don't know why. I think about that and I plan a lot about what I'm going to do when I finish school."

"Would you like to marry Maud Day?"

"Who's talking about marrying!" shouted Doug with ​sudden and overwhelming exasperation. "What makes you such a fool, Jude?"

"How can I help talking about it when it's my mother your father's so rough with. Of course, you don't care."

"I do, too, care. I think a lot of her, but he don't mean half he says."

"Well, he'd better begin to stop knocking me around when he's mad, or I'll run away."

"Especially in the winter, I suppose," sniffed Douglas, "when it would be plain suicide."

"I don't care if it's in a blizzard," insisted Judith. "When I've had enough, I'll go."

Douglas laughed. "Hanged if I don't think you would, too, Jude. You've got the nerve of a wolverine."

"I hope Dad's tooth is better," said Judith, as dim buildings and a lighted window shone though the dusk.

"Are you really afraid of Dad?" asked Douglas suddenly.

"No," replied Judith, thoughtfully, "but sometimes I hate him."

"I think he's a pretty good old scout in spite of his temper," said the boy.

"Well," admitted Judith, "I guess I do too. At least, I can see why so many women like him. He's awful good-looking. I can see that now I'm growing up."

"Growing up!" mocked Douglas.

But before Judith could pick up the gauntlet, the horses came to pause before the lighted window. Judith jumped from Swift, unsaddled her and turned her into the corral. Then she went hurriedly into the house. Douglas unsaddled more slowly, and strode toward the sheds where calves were bellowing and cows lowing.

For half an hour he worked in the starlight, throwing alfalfa to the crowding stock. It was so cold that by the ​time he had finished he scarcely could turn the door-knob with his aching fingers. He entered the kitchen.

It was a large room, with the log walls neatly chinked and whitewashed. An unshaded kerosene lamp burned on the big table in the middle of the room. Judith was cutting bread. The air was heavy with smoke from frying beef. A tall, slender woman, with round shoulders, stood over the red-hot stove, stirring the potatoes. She was a very beautiful, very worn edition of Judith, though one wondered if she ever burned with even a small portion of Judith's eager, wistful fires. She turned as Douglas came in and gave him a quick smile.

"Cold, Douglas?" she asked.

The boy nodded. "Where's Dad?"

"In the other room. His tooth still aches, I guess."

"Is he sore because I'm late?" asked the boy, scowling.

Judith answered with a curious jerking of her breath. "He tried to kick me. I hate him!"

Douglas grunted and marched through the inner door into the one other room of the house. It was at least twenty-five feet square. The log walls were white-washed like the kitchen and from one of the huge pine rafters hung a lamp which shed a pleasant light on a center table. Beds occupied three corners of the room. There were several comfortable rocking-chairs, a big mahogany bureau and a sewing-machine. Over the double bed hung an ancient saber and over a low bookcase was a framed sampler. There were several good old-fashioned engravings and some framed lithographs with numerous books and piles of dilapidated magazines. Doug's father stood by the table with a book in his hand.

John Spencer at forty-six was still a superb physical specimen, standing six feet two in his felt slippers. His face, so like, yet so unlike his son's, showed heavy lines ​from the nostril to the corner of the mouth. Beneath his eyes were faint pouches. The thick thatch of yellow hair had lost its yellow light and now was drab in tone. His flannel shirt, unbuttoned at the throat, showed a strong neck, and the rider's belt that circled the top of his blue denim pants outlined a waist as slim and hard as Doug's.

He looked up. "What do you mean by coming in at this hour, you young hound?"

"I think I might have Sunday afternoon to myself," said Douglas sulkily.

"So do I. But that don't mean you are to have all Sunday night, too. Did you feed the calves?"

"Yes."

"Next Sunday you be here by five o'clock, understand?"

"Yes."

"Supper's ready!" called Judith.

The table was covered by a red-checked cloth. A huge platter of fried beef, another of fried potatoes, another of baking-powder biscuits, and a pot of coffee steamed on the table. John did not speak until his first hunger had been satisfied. When he received his second cup of coffee, however, he said, "Well, my tooth's better. What happened this afternoon, children?"

Judith did not reply, but Douglas, with a chuckle, told the story of Mr. Fowler's discomfiture. John and Mary shouted with laughter.

"By old Sitting Bull, it serves him right!" John wiped his eyes. "What became of him?"

"O, he beat it for the Pass!" replied Douglas.

"What did you do after that?" inquired Mrs. Spencer.

"We went up to the post-office to get Peter to let us ​have a dance, but there was nothing doing. He just gave us all a jaw because our horses were sweating."

"I'll bet Swift was the worst off," chuckled John.

'That's right! Pick on me!" cried Judith.

"Judith! Be careful!" protested her mother.

"Let her alone, Mary." John's blue eyes twinkled as he watched the young girl. "She's kept out of a row about as long as she can without choking."

"Some day, when you least expect it," said Judith with a little quiver in her voice, "I'm going to run away."

The others laughed.

"Where to, Jude?" asked her stepfather.

"To some place where folks like me."

"I like you, Jude!" protested John.

Judith turned to him quickly. "Why do you thrash me and kick me, then?"

"Kids have to be trained, and you are as hard bitted as Buster," answered John.

"No such thing!" Judith suddenly rose from the table. "It's just bad temper."

"Judith! Judith! Don't!" pleaded her mother.

"Let her alone!" John's voice was not angry. He was eying Judith with inscrutable gaze.

"The next time you even try to kick me, I'm going to run away."

She paused and suddenly Douglas thought, "Jude knows what real loneliness is. She's a very lonely person." He leaned forward and watched her with unwonted sympathy. She swallowed once or twice, and then went on:

"A woman, a dog, and a horse, you don't kick any of them. Peter Knight says so. Maud Day's father never kicks her. He hits her with a belt, maybe, when she ​doesn't get his horse quickly enough, and maybe he hits her mother when he's drinking, but that's all." Judith began to gather up the dishes with trembling fingers.

"How old are you, Judith?" asked John.

"You know. I was fourteen last spring."

"By jove, you are almost a woman grown!" John swept her with a look, then rose and went into the living room.

Douglas followed him and, sitting down on the edge of his bed, he unbuckled his spurs. John settled himself under the lamp with his book, but he did not begin to read at once.

"Yes, Doug? that girl is a woman now and she has any woman in Lost Chief beaten for beauty and nerve."

Douglas gave his father a startled glance; then he said, with elaborate carelessness, "Rats! She's just a fighting kid!"

John chuckled. "I'm glad you're still only a sixteen-year-old fool, Doug."

The boy said nothing more. He scowled and sat staring at his father long after that strenuous person was absorbed in his book. Then he kicked off his boots, pulled off his vest and trousers and crawled into bed. Not long after, Mrs. Spencer came in, glanced at her husband, sighed wearily, then she too went to bed. Judith finished wiping the dishes, sauntered in to the center table and shortly was absorbed in "Bleak House." Mrs. Spencer was snoring quietly and Douglas had not stirred for an hour when he heard his father say in a low voice:

"Jude, old girl, I'm never going to lay finger on you again."

Jude gave a little gasp of surprise. "What's happened, Dad?"

​"You've happened! By jove, you've grown to be a beautiful woman!"

"Huh! Doug says I'm a homely, pug-nosed outlaw."

"Doug's a fool kid. It takes a man like me that knows women to appreciate you, Jude."

"Doug'll hear you," warned the girl.

"He's been dead for an hour. Give me a kiss, Judith."

"I don't think I will, I'm too sleepy and tired. Guess I'll go to bed!" She rose, dropping "Bleak House" as she did so.

Mrs. Spencer woke with a start. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing! I just dropped a book." Judith retired to her own corner and shortly she too was asleep.

But Douglas, new thoughts surging through his brain, lay awake long after his father had turned out the light and crawled in beside Mary. Of a sudden, he had seen Judith through his father's eyes and he found himself very unwilling to permit John to see her so. Her loneliness had assumed an entirely new aspect to him. It was the loneliness of girlhood, of girlhood without father, mother, or brother. That was what it amounted to, he told himself. He never had been a real brother to Judith, never had looked out for her as if she had been his sister. And Jude's mother! Just tired and sweet and broken, about as well fitted to cope with her fiery daughter as with the unbroken Morgan colt which was John's pride. As for his father—! Douglas turned over with a deep breath. Let his father take heed! Judith! Judith with her glowing wistful eyes, her crimson cheeks, her dauntless courage, her vivid mind! Judith, with her loneliness, was his to guard from now ​on. Funny how a guy could feel so all of a sudden! Funny, if he really should love old Jude, with her fiery temper and more fiery tongue. And if this were love, love was not so comfortable a feeling, after all. It was a profound uneasiness, that uprooted every settled habit of his spiritual being. It was, he told himself, before he fell asleep, a funny thing, love!

Oscar Jefferson

​

THE next morning while Doug was feeding in the corral, his father hitched a team to the hay wagon. Just as he prepared to climb over the wheel, Judith came out, ready for her ride to the Days' ranch, where she was to spend the day.

"Say, Jude," called John. "I want Doug to go to the old ranch after some colts. You come with me and help feed. I'm going to get all I can out of you two until school begins again."

Judith crossed silently to the wagon and climbed aboard. Douglas dropped his pitchfork and walked deliberately toward the fence. As he climbed it, he said, "Judith, you aren't going. You keep your date with Maud." He dropped from the fence to his father's side.

John turned to him with a look of entire astonishment.

"Jude's growing up, as you say," explained Douglas heavily. "If you aren't going to look out for her, I am."

"O, you are! And why?" demanded his father.

"Because!" replied Doug. "Jude, you get down and get started on Swift."

Astonishment, amusement, anger, pursued their way ​across the older man's face. Judith put out her tongue at her brother.

"Chase yourself, Doug Spencer! You're not my boss, you bet!"

John put his foot on the hub. "Good-by, Doug; I hope you recover from your insanity by to-night."

Douglas put an unsteady hand on his father's shoulder. "She can't go with you, Dad!"

His father struck him roughly aside. Douglas ran around the wagon. Judith was sitting on the edge of the rick. He reached up, pulled her into his arms, ran her into the feed shed, turned the key in the padlock and put the key in his pocket. As he turned, his father met him with a blow between the eyes. Mary Spencer appeared on the door-step, pale and silent.

It was but the work of a moment to subdue the boy, and to unlock the door.

"Get into the wagon, Judith!" ordered John.

Douglas strode uncertainly to his father's side. "Judith, you go get on your horse!"

The young girl stood staring at the two, something impish in the curl of her lips, something wistful and unafraid and puzzled in her beautiful gray eyes. Back of the two men lay the unblemished blue white of the snow-choked fields and in awful proximity to these, Dead Line Peak flung its head against the cloudless heavens. Judith looked from the Peak to father and son as though deliberately appraising them. John, with ashen hair, with bloodshot eyes and the tell-tales lines from nose to lip corner, but handsome, dominating, choleric, with his reputation as a conqueror of women, as a subduer of horses, as a two-gun man. Douglas, with his thatch of gold blowing in the cold morning air, thin, awkward, only a boy but with a spirit glowing in ​his blue eyes that Judith never before had seen there. The girls of Lost Chief were sophisticated almost from the cradle. Judith could interpret the lines in her stepfather's face. But she did not know what the strange light in Douglas' eyes might mean. Suddenly she sprang to Swift's back and put her to the gallop.

"You know what to expect when you come back, miss!" roared John.

But Judith did not seem to hear. Spencer turned to his son. "Now, sir, you go into the house and get the whip!"

Douglas did not stir. "You aren't going to whip me any more, Dad. If you want to fight me, put up your fists."

Mary Spencer ran through the snow toward the two. "Don't fight him, John! Don't! He's just a child!"

John whirled at her with his fists raised. Douglas jumped before his stepmother and caught the blow on his raised elbow.

"And that'll be about enough of that, too, Dad!"

John caught his breath, then poured out a string of oaths and invectives, ending with, "Now before I thrash the cussedness out of you, young fellow, what excuse have you got to put up?"

"I haven't any." Douglas was still pale and his voice broke, childishly. "Only, all of a sudden it seems cowardly to me for you to hit Mother. She's not a child. You haven't got the excuse that you're training her. And you know she can't hit you. You're a good fighter, but I notice you don't hit Peter Knight or Charleton Falkner, any time they peeve you a little. It was all right to lick me and Jude when we were little. But now I warn you. I'm going to hit back. And you got to leave Judith and her mother alone."

​John Spencer stood staring at his son. Twice he raised his heavy fist to strike him. Twice he dropped it. Douglas, still pale and trembling, wondered at his own temerity. He always had been so terribly afraid of his father!

"So you don't intend to obey me any more!" sneered John.

"Sure I do," replied Douglas. "Only I'm not going to be licked into doing things blind, and I'm going to take care of Jude."

John uttered a contemptuous oath.

Doug swallowed with an effort but his steady temper was well under control and he went on, "I'd like to be as good a rider and rancher as you are and handle a gun as good as you do, but I'm hanged if I want my woman to be as scared of me as Mother is of you."

"Think yourself a man, eh? Well, I'll tell you, young fellow, as long as you live in that house, there, you'll obey and take the lickings I give you. My father built that house and I was born in it and so were you. He-men come from our breed and only a sissy refuses to obey. I may not be as well educated as my ancestors back East were, but I'm just as well trained as any of 'em and you're going to be too. We Spencers boss our own households. Go get me that whip!"

"No, sir, I won't do it," replied Douglas, a steady burning light in his eyes.

"You mean you'll stand up to me and fight after you saw the way I could handle you a few minutes ago?"

"Yes, sir, I do."

For a long moment there was silence, while Mrs. Spencer twisted her hands together and Doug and his ​father stared at each other. Then John gave a short laugh.

"By Sitting Bull! if you haven't got nerve, Doug! Go saddle Buster and get up to the old ranch after those three-year-olds." Then he climbed into the hay wagon, shouted at the team and was off.

Douglas' lips parted. The color returned to his face. Then he sat down weakly on the lower bar of the buck fence and burst into tears, and he was more frightened by his own tears than he had been by his father's anger. Mary Spencer knelt in the snow before him and tried to pull his head to her shoulder.

"Doug! Doug! You are a man!" she whispered. "You are a man!"

Douglas struggled heavily with the strangling sobs and after a moment sat erect and embarrassed.

"Douglas, what happened? How did you come to do it?"

"Something he said to Jude last night scared me," mumbled Doug.

Mary tightened her hold on the boy's arm. "I've been so afraid! So afraid! And no one to talk to!"

"Haven't you ever warned Jude about it?" demanded Douglas, with a sudden sensing of a debt mothers owed to daughters that Mary might not be discharging.

Mary shrank. "O, I couldn't, Doug!"

Douglas looked at her scornfully. "I don't see why that isn't your job."

Mary rose from her knees. She twisted her work-scarred hands together and looked at the boy with pathetic wistfulness.

"Don't you see, Doug, that I couldn't make her understand? She's still such a child she'd just laugh at me."

​"Child!" scoffed Douglas, forgetting his own previous estimate of Judith. "She knows a whole lot more than you do!"

Mary laughed drearily. "Now you're talking like a child!" Then her voice cleared with unwonted purposefulness. "No one who hasn't been married can possibly understand men, or fear them or despise them, like they ought to be feared and despised. When I think what I was before I married and what I am now, I feel like I wanted to put Judith where she never could see a man. It's not right that a woman should suffer so. It's not right to lose all your dreams like I've lost mine. Marriage was never meant to be so."

Douglas scowled in his astonishment. Mary had been feeling like this all along when he'd been thinking of her as without nerve! Here, then, was somebody else lonely, like himself and Judith.

"I'm sorry, Mother," he said awkwardly. "I'll do what I can to change it."

"You can't do anything, my dear. What I'm suffering is in the nature of things."

"Well, anyhow, you ought to warn Jude," repeated Douglas.

"I can't!" said Mary. "Doug, if I do she'd guess how cowardly I am and how I suffer—in my mind, I mean," and she put her hands over her face with a dry sob.

Douglas put his long young arm about her. "I'll take care of it for you," he said huskily. "Judith don't know it but she's got somebody besides old Peter ridin' herd on her now. And you know I'm some little old herder, Mother!"

"I know you're a man!" exclaimed Mary. "The kind of a man that's mighty scarce in Lost Chief Valley." She turned away toward the house.

​Douglas picked a bridle from the fence and started after Buster.

It was nearly supper time and Doug and his father were reading in the living-room when Judith returned. The wind had risen and fine particles of snow sifted under the eaves and over the table. The wood stove glowed red hot and the smell of cedar mingled with that of frying beef in the kitchen.

Judith, without waiting to take off her mackinaw, cheeks scarlet, eyes brilliant, stood before her father.

"Here I am, Dad."

John looked up from his book. "Have you milked yet?"

"No, sir."

"Go out and do it."

"I want to know if you're going to lick me, Dad?"

"What did I promise you, last night?" he demanded.

"Do you mean to keep that promise?" asked Judith.

"Go out and tend to your milking!" roared John, rising to his feet and throwing the book across the room. "Get out of my sight, you little fool, you blankety-blank—" But Judith had fled and Douglas retired to the kitchen.

Supper was a silent affair. But that evening when the family had gathered under the lamp to read, Douglas said, "Scott Parsons wants me to take the mail stage for him Wednesday."

"Where's he going?" asked John.

"Out after his registered bull. It's strayed again."

"Huh!" grunted John. "Are he and Oscar Jefferson still fighting over that bull?"

"I guess so," replied Douglas. "Can I go, Dad?"

"It will put the dehorning off another day, but I guess you can go. That extra money will come in handy.

​How would you like to drive the mail regularly next winter, Douglas?"

The boy tossed "Treasure Island" on the table. "Do you mean you'd let me have it?"

"What would you do with the money?"

Douglas hesitated.

Judith spoke. "I know what I'd do. I'd put half the money into books. The other half I'd use to buy me some buckers and I'd go into training as a lady bronco buster."

Everybody laughed, and Mrs. Spencer said, "You won't have time to keep your nose in a book if you start in that line, Judith!"

"I'll always read," retorted Judith loftily.

"I'd buy me a silver-mounted saddle and silver spurs," said Douglas, "and that dapple gray of Oscar Jefferson's and a good greyhound, and I'd go into the wild horse catching business."

John groaned. "We've sure-gawd got an ambitious pair of kids here, Mary! What about the money you get from this trip, Doug?"

"Will you let me keep it?" asked Douglas, eagerly.

"I'll see!" John picked up his book again.

"Let me go with you, Doug!" pleaded Judith.

"Nothing doing!" exclaimed her stepfather succinctly. "You go to bed now before you get me aggravated."

Judith tossed her head but obediently retired to her corner of the room, undressed and crawled into her bed. Douglas was not long in following her example.

It was about eight o'clock Wednesday morning and twenty below zero when the mail buckboard driven by Douglas took the rising trail from Black Gorge eastward over the Mesa Pass. The snow was heavy and the trail only indifferently opened. To add to the difficulties, ​Scott had hitched Polly, a half-broken mule, to the stage in place of the mare who had gone lame. James, the remaining horse, was steady, however, and Douglas had only a moderate amount of trouble until the long steep grade up to the Pass began. Here, after a quarter of an hour of reluctant going, the mule balked. James did what he could to pull her along, Douglas plied the black-snake; but to no avail. When she finally did move it was to lie down with deliberate slowness. Douglas jumped out into the drifts and by risking his life among her agitated legs he managed to get her up. An hour passed in the intense cold before she finally was harnessed and meekly pulling more than her share.