But the mist grew gray, the aureole of fire faded, the sun went down behind the hills, and the chill of evening deepened on the trail, and as he reapproached the scene of man’s inhumanity to man the thought of camping there beside those charred limbs called for heroic resolution. He was hungry, too, and as the air pinched, he shivered.
“At the best, the sheriff cannot reach here before midnight,” he said, and settled down to his unsought, revolting vigil.
His one relief lay in the mental composition of a long letter to Lee Virginia, whose life at that moment was a comfort to him. “If such purity, such sweetness, can come from violence and vulgarity, then surely a new and splendid State can rise even out of the ashes of these murdered men. Perhaps this is the end of the old,” he mused, “perhaps this is the beginning of the new,” and as he pondered the last faint crimson died out of the west. “So must the hate and violence die out of America,” he said, “leaving the clear, sweet air of liberty behind.”
He was near to the poet at the moment, for he was also the lover. His allegiance to the great republic stood the test. His faith in democracy was shaken, but not destroyed. “I will wait,” he decided. “This shall be the sign. If this deed goes unavenged, then will I put off my badge and my uniform, and go back to the land where for a hundred years at least such deeds as these have been impossible.”
He built a fire, as night fell, to serve both as beacon and as a defence against the cold. He felt himself weirdly remote in this vigil. From his far height he looked abroad upon the tumbled plain as if upon an ocean dimly perceptible yet august. “At this moment,” he said, “curious and perhaps guilty eyes are wondering what my spark of firelight may mean.”
His mind went again and again to that tall old man in the ditch. What was the meaning of his scared and sorrowful glance? Why should one so peacefully employed at such a time and in such a place wear the look of a hunted deer? What meant the tremor in his voice?
Was it possible that one so gentle should have taken part in this deed? “Preposterous suspicion, and yet he had a guilty look.”
He was not a believer in ghosts, but he came nearer to a fear of the dark that night than ever before in his life. He brought his horse close to the fire for company, and was careful not to turn his back upon the dead. A corpse lying peacefully would not have produced this overpowering horror. He had seen battle-fields, but this pile of mangled limbs conquered even the hardened campaigner. He shivered each time his memory went back to what he had first looked upon—the charred hand, the helpless heel.
From his high hill of meditation he reviewed the history of the West. Based in bloody wars between the primitive races, and between the trappers and their allies, the land had passed through a thin adumbration of civilization as the stockmen drove out the buffalo and their hunters. Vigilantes, sheriff’s posses (and now and again the regular army) had swept over these grassy swells on errands of retributory violence, and so the territory had been divided at last into populous States. Then politics, the great national game, had made of them a power, with Senators to represent a mere handful of miners and herdsmen. In the Congress of the United States these commonwealths had played their unscrupulous games, trading for this and for that local appropriation. Happily in some instances these Senators had been higher than their State, but in other cases they represented only too loyally the violent and conscienceless cow-man or lumber king, and now, as Redfield had said, the land-boomer was to have his term. The man who valued residents, not Wild West performers, was about to govern and despoil; this promoter, almost as selfish as the cattle king, was about to advance the State along the lines of his conception of civilization; and so, perhaps, this monstrous deed, this final inexcusable inhuman offence against law and humanity, was to stand as a monument dividing the old from the new. Such, at least, was the ranger’s hope.
At last, far in the night, he heard the snort of a horse and the sound of voices. The law (such as it was) was creeping up the mountain-side in the person of the sheriff of Chauvenet County, and was about to relieve the ranger from his painful responsibility as guardian of the dead.
At last he came, this officer of the law, attended (like a Cheyenne chief) by a dozen lesser warriors of various conditions and kinds, but among them—indeed, second only to the sheriff—was Hugh Redfield, the Forest Supervisor, hot and eager with haste.
As they rode up to the fire, the officer called out: “Howdy, ranger! How about it?”
Ross stated briefly, succinctly, what he had discovered; and as he talked other riders came up the hill and gathered closely around to listen in wordless silence—in guilty silence, the ranger could not help believing.
The sheriff, himself a cattle-man, heard Cavanagh without comment till he had ended with a gesture. “And there they are; I turn them over to you with vast relief. I am anxious to go back to my own peaceful world, where such things do not happen.”
The sheriff removed his hat and wiped his brow, then swore with a mutter of awe. “Well, by God, this is the limit! You say there were three bodies?”
“I lacked the courage to sort them out. I’ve been in battle, Mr. Sheriff, and I’ve seen dead men tumbled in all shapes, but someway this took the stiffening out of my knees. I rode away and left them. I don’t care to see them again. My part of this work is done.”
Redfield spoke. “Sheriff Van Horne, you and I have been running cattle in this country for nearly thirty years, and we’ve witnessed all kinds of shooting and several kinds of hanging, but when it comes to chopping and burning men, I get off. I shall personally offer a reward of a thousand dollars for the apprehension of these miscreants, and I hope you’ll make it your solemn duty to hunt them to earth.”
“You won’t have far to go,” remarked Ross, significantly.
“What do you mean?” asked the sheriff.
“I mean this slaughter, like the others that have taken place, was the work of cattle-men who claim this range. Their names are known to us all.”
“Can it be possible!” exclaimed Redfield, looking round at the silent throng, and in the wavering light certain eyes seemed to shift and fall.
“In what essential does it differ from the affair over on the Red Desert?” demanded Cavanagh. “Who would kill these poor sheep-herders but cattle-men warring for the grass on which we stand?”
“But they would not dare to do such work themselves.”
“No one else would do it. Hired assassins would not chop and burn. Hate and greed were both involved in this butchery—hate and greed made mad by drink. I tell you, the men who did this are less than a day’s ride of where we stand.”
A silence followed—so deep a silence that the ranger was convinced of the fact that in the circle of his listeners stood those who, if they had not shared in the slaughter, at least knew the names of the guilty men.
At last the sheriff spoke, this time with a sigh. “I hope you’re all wrong, Cavanagh. I’d hate to think any constituent of mine had sanctioned this job. Give me that lantern, Curtis.”
The group of ranchers dismounted, and followed the sheriff over to the grewsome spot; but Redfield stayed with the ranger.
“Have you any suspicion, Ross?”
“No, hardly a suspicion. However, you know as well as I that this was not a sudden outbreak. This deed was planned. It represents the feeling of many cattle-men—in everything but the extra horror of its execution. That was the work of drunken, infuriated men. But I am more deeply concerned over Miss Wetherford’s distress. Did she reach you by telephone to-night?”
“No. What’s the trouble?”
“Her mother is down again. I telephoned her, and she asked me to come to her, but I cannot go, for I have a case of smallpox up on the hill. Ambro, the Basque herder, is down with it, and another herder is up there alone with him. I must go back to them. But meanwhile I wish you would go to the Fork and see what you can do for her.”
His voice, filled with emotion, touched Redfield, and he said: “Can’
t I go to the relief of the herder?”
“No, you must not think of it; you are a man of a family. But if you can find any one who has had the smallpox send him up; the old herder who is nursing the patient is not strong, and may drop any moment. Then it’s up to me.”
The men came back to the camp-fire conversing in low voices, some of them cursing in tones of awe. One or two of them were small farmers from Deer Creek, recent comers to the State, or men with bunches of milk-cows, and to them this deed was awesome.
The sheriff followed, saying: “Well, there’s nothing to do but wait till morning. The rest of you men better go home. You can’t be of any use here.”
For more than three hours the sheriff and Redfield sat with the ranger waiting for daylight, and during this time the name of every man in the region was brought up and discussed. Among others, Ross mentioned the old man in the ditch.
“He wouldn’t hurt a bumblebee!” declared the sheriff. “He’s got a bunch of cattle, but he’s the mildest old man in the State. He’s the last rancher in the country to even stand for such work. What made you mention him?”
“I passed him as I was riding back,” replied Cavanagh, “and he had a scared look in his eyes.”
The sheriff grunted. “You imagined all that. The old chap always has a kind of meek look.”
Cavanagh, tired, hungry, and rebellious, waited until the first faint light in the east announced the dawn; then he rose, and, stretching his hand out toward it, said: “Here comes the new day. Will it be a new day to the State, or is it to be the same old round of savagery?”
Redfield expressed a word of hope, and in that spirit the ranger mounted and rode away back toward the small teepee wherein Wetherford was doing his best to expiate his past—a past that left him old and friendless at fifty-five. The sheriff and his men took up the work of vengeance which fell to them as officers of the law.
It was nearly noon of a glorious day as Cavanagh, very tired and very hungry, rode up to the sheep-herder’s tent. Wetherford was sitting in the sun calmly smoking his pipe, the sheep were feeding not far away, attended by the dog, and an air of peace covered his sunlit rocky world.
“How is the Basque?” asked the ranger.
Wetherford pointed upward. “All over.”
“Then it wasn’t smallpox?”
“I reckon that’s what it was; it sure was fierce. I judge it’s a case of Injun burial—no ceremony—right here in the rocks. I’ll let you dig the hole (I’m just about all in), but mind you keep to the windward all the time. I don’t want you spotted.”
Cavanagh understood the necessity for these precautions, but first of all came his own need of food and rest. Turning his tired horse to grass, he stretched himself along a grassy, sunny cranny between the rocks, and there ate and afterward slept, while all about him the lambs called and the conies whined.
He was awakened by a pebble tossed upon him, and when he arose, stiff and sore, but feeling stronger and in better temper, the sun was wearing low. Setting to work at his task, he threw the loose rock out of a hollow in the ledge near by, and to this rude sepulchre Wetherford dragged the dead man, refusing all aid, and there piled a cairn of rocks above his grave.
The ranger was deeply moved by the pitiless contrast of the scene and the drama. The sun was still shining warmly aslant the heavens; the wind, crisp and sweet, wandered by on laggard wings, the conies cried from the ledges; the lambs were calling—and in the midst of it one tattered fragment of humanity was heaping the iron earth upon another, stricken, perhaps, by the same dread disease.
Wetherford himself paused to moralize. “I suppose that chap has a mother somewhere who is wondering where her boy is. This isn’t exactly Christian burial, but it’s all he’ll get, I reckon; for whether it was smallpox or plain fever, nobody’s going to uselessly resurrect him. Even the coyotes will fight shy of his meat.”
Nevertheless, the ranger took a hand at the end and rolled some huge bowlders upon the grave, to insure the wolves’ defeat.
“Now burn the bedding,” he commanded—“the whole camp has got to go—and your clothing, too, after we get down the hill.”
“What will we do with the sheep?”
“Drive them over the divide and leave them.”
All these things Wetherford did, and leaving the camp in ashes behind him, Cavanagh drove the sheep before him on his homeward way. As night fell, the dog, at his command, rounded them up and put them to bed, and the men went on down the valley, leaving the brave brute on guard, pathetic figure of faithful guardianship.
“It hurts me to desert you, old fellow,” called the ranger, looking back, “but there’s no help for it. I’ll come up in the morning and bring you some biscuit.”
The collie seemed to understand. He waggled his tail and whined, as though struggling to express his wonder and pain, and Ross, moved to pity, called: “Come on, boy, never mind the sheep! Come along with us!”
But the dog, leaping from side to side, uttered a short howl and a sharp bark, as if to say: “I can’t! I can’t!”
“He’s onto his job,” remarked Wetherford. “It beats all how human they do seem sometimes. I’ve no manner of doubt that dago’s booted him all over the place many a time, and yet he seemed horrible sorry about his master’s trouble. Every few minutes, all night long, he’d come pattering and whining round the door of the tent—didn’t come in, seemed just trying to ask how things were coming. He was like a child, lonesome and grieving.”
It was long after dark when they entered the canon just above the cabin, and Wetherford was shivering from cold and weakness.
“Now you pull up just outside the gate, and wait there till I bring out some blankets; then you’ve got to strip to the skin and start the world all over again,” said Cavanagh. “I’ll build a fire here, and we’ll cremate your past. How about it?”
“I’m willing,” responded Wetherford. “You can burn everything that belongs to me but my wife and my girl.”
All through the ceremony which followed ran this self-banter. “I’ll be all ranger, barring a commission,” he said, with a grin, as he put on the olive-yellow shirt and a pair of dusty-green trousers. “And here goes my past!” he added, as he tossed his contaminated rags upon the fire.
“What a corking opportunity to make a fresh start,” commented Cavanagh. “I hope you see it.”
“I see it; but it’s hard to live up to your mark.”
When every precaution had been taken, the ranger led the freshly scrubbed, scoured, and transformed fugitive to his cabin.
“Why, man, you’re fit for the State Legislature,” he exclaimed, as they came into the full light. “My clothes don’t precisely meet every demand you make upon them, but they give you an air of command. I wish your wife could see you now.”
Wetherford was quite serious as he answered: “This uniform means more to me than you think. I wish I was entitled to wear it. The wild-wood is just about populous enough for me.”
“Good for you!” responded Cavanagh. “To convert a man of your record to a belief in conservation is to demonstrate once again the regenerative power of an idea.” Then, seeing that Wetherford was really in earnest, he added: “You can stay with me as long as you wish. Perhaps in time you might be able to work into the service as a guard, although the chief is getting more and more insistent on real foresters.”
There were tears in Wetherford’s eyes as he said: “You cannot realize what this clean, warm uniform means to me. For nine years I wore the prison stripes; then I was turned loose with a shoddy suit and a hat a size too big for me—an outfit that gave me away everywhere I went. Till my hair and beard sprouted I had a hard rustle of it, but my clothes grew old faster than my beard. At last I put every cent I had earned into a poor old horse, and a faded saddle, and once mounted I kept a-moving north.” He smoothed the sleeve of his coat. “It is ten years since I was dressed like a man.”
“You need not worry about food or shelter for the present,�
�� replied Cavanagh, gently. “Grub is not costly here, and house-rent is less than nominal, so make yourself at home and get strong.”
Wetherford lifted his head. “But I want to do something. I want to redeem myself in some way. I don’t want my girl to know who I am, but I’d like to win her respect. I can’t be what you say she thinks I was, but if I had a chance I might show myself a man again. I wouldn’t mind Lize knowing that I am alive—it might be a comfort to her; but I don’t want even her to be told till I can go to her in my own duds.”
“She’s pretty sick,” said Cavanagh. “I telephoned Lee Virginia last night, and if you wish you may ride down with me to-morrow and see her.”
The old man fell a-tremble. “I daren’t do that. I can’t bear to tell her where I’ve been!”
“She needn’t know. I will tell her you’ve been out of your mind. I’ll say anything you wish! You can go to her in the clothes you have on if you like—she will not recognize you as the prisoner I held the other night. You can have your beard trimmed, and not even the justice will know you.”
All reserve had vanished out of the convict’s heart, and with choking voice he thanked his young host. “I’ll never be a burden to you,” he declared, in firmer voice. “And if my lung holds out, I’ll show you I’m not the total locoe that I ’pear to be.”
No further reference was made to Lee Virginia, but Ross felt himself to be more deeply involved than ever by these promises; his fortunes seemed to be inextricably bound up with this singular and unhappy family. Lying in his bunk (after the lights were out), he fancied himself back in his ancestral home, replying to the questions of his aunts and uncles, who were still expecting him to bring home a rich and beautiful American heiress. Some of the Cavanaghs were drunkards and some were vixens, but they were on the whole rather decent, rather decorous and very dull, and to them this broken ex-convict and this slattern old barmaid would seem very far from the ideal they had formed of the family into which Ross was certain to marry.
Cavanaugh-Forest Ranger Page 16
