CHAPTER X
PIPINGS OF PAN
The result of this quarrel was that Justin was banished temporarilyfrom the ranch, though it was not assigned as the reason for hisexile. Fogg had been forced to take a flock of sheep in payment for adebt owed him by a sheepman. The sheep were already in ParadiseValley, and were to be sent at once into the mountains. Davisonordered Justin to take charge of these sheep, and hurried shepherd andflock into the hills, while Lucy was temporarily away from home.Justin could not rebel against this order except mentally, if hewished to remain in Davison's employment and retain, or regain, hisgood-will.
Before setting forth he left a letter for Lucy with Pearl Newcome, andwas sure she would get it. Yet he departed from the ranch with a heavyheart; and as he went on his way he questioned why he and not anotherhad been selected for this life of lonely exile in the mountains. Hewas almost sure it was because of his trouble with Ben.
Justin was assisted in driving the sheep to the high altitudes, wherethey were to graze until cold weather would make it advisable to bringthem into the lower foot-hills. A sufficient supply of food for amonth or more was taken along, and he was helped in the work oferecting a brush-and-pole house.
He was well up among the pines and aspens, where the nights are alwayscool, with often a sharp frost even in mid-summer. Snow banks were insight, and here and there streams and small lakes of the purest icewater. Occasionally a lordly elk crashed through a grove, or came outwith such suddenness on the lonely herder and his woolly charges thatit whistled and fled in astonishment. Black-tailed deer passedfrequently on the slopes, and now and then Justin came upon the trackof a bear. The only animals he could not love were the worthlesscoyotes, that made life a burden to him and murdered sleep in theirefforts to slay the sheep.
Of all, the sheep were the most vexatious and stupid, having nooriginality of impulse, and being maddeningly, monotonously alike.When hungry, in the earlier part of the day, they exhausted hisstrength and that of his dog, as he followed them, while they swarmedeverywhere, nibbling, nibbling, with a continual, nerve-racking"baa-a-a! baa-a-a!" Justin could not wonder that sheep-herders oftengo mad. The sheep were more than two thousand in number; and to keepanything like a count of them, so that he might be sure that the flockwas not being devastated by the sly coyotes, was trying work.
But there were other times when he was given hours of lazy ease, whenhe could lie with the faithful dog on the cool grass and look up intothe cool sky; could listen to the foaming plunge of the mountainstream, to the fluttered whisperings of the aspens and the meanings ofthe pines, and could watch the flirting flight of the magpies, or thegambolings of playful deer.
So Justin had much opportunity for thought; and his thoughts andimaginings ran wide and far, with Lucy Davison and Doctor Clayton notvery far from both center and periphery wherever they ran or flew.That he had been forced to come away without a parting word with Lucytroubled him sorely.
He had his mother's little Bible with him, containing the wisp ofbrown hair, and the written flyleaf:
"Justin, my baby-boy, is now six months old. May God bless andpreserve him and may he become a good man."
He read in it much, in his leisure; and studied that writing many,many times, thinking of his mother, and wondering about his father.And he questioned as to what his life probably would have been if hismother had lived, or if he had known of his father. Yet he was verywell satisfied to have it as it had been ordered. It had brought tohim Lucy Davison; and he might have missed her, if fate had not ledhim to Paradise Valley and kept him there.
He was quite sure that no father could have done more for him thanClayton, nor loved him with a more unselfish love. To the missionarypreacher, Peter Wingate, and to Curtis Clayton, he acknowledged thathe owed all he was or could ever be. He thought very lovingly ofClayton, as he lay on the cool slopes looking into the cool sky.
And, indeed, the lonely doctor had been wondrously kind to the boywhose life and future had been so strangely committed to his keeping.Without intending anything in particular beyond the impartation ofknowledge, he had rounded, on the foundation laid by Peter Wingate, astructure of character that combined singular sweetness with greatnobility and strength, for Justin had inherited from his mothercertain qualities of sturdy resolution which Clayton himself lacked.The one great blemish, or fault, was a quick and inflammable temper,that almost resisted control.
Utterly unaware of the fact himself, as he lay thus among his sheep,while his thoughts ranged far and wide, Justin was like that ruddyDavid, youthful son of Jesse, with whose life story, told in hismother's little Bible, he was so familiar, or like Saul in his boyhooddays. His lusty youth, his length of limb, his shapely head coveredwith its heavy masses of hair, his tanned strong face with its kindly,clear-cut profile, and his steady unwinking eyes that looked into theblue skies with color as blue, all spoke of unrecognized power.
He dreamed of the future, as well as of the past, building cloudcastles as unsubstantial as the changing clouds that floated abovehim. He knew that many of them were but dreams. Others it seemed tohim might be made to come true, with Lucy Davison to help him. He didnot intend to remain either cowboy or sheep-herder, he was sure ofthat; and he did not think he would care to become a doctor, likeClayton. He would like to accomplish great things; yet if he couldnot, he would like to accomplish the small things possible to him in amanner that should be great. Not for his own sake--he felt sure it wasnot for his own sake--but for Lucy and Clayton! He wanted to be worthyof them both.
It must be confessed that his wandering thoughts were chiefly occupiedwith Lucy Davison. He delighted to recall those happy moments underthe cottonwoods. Always in his dreams she was true to him, as he wasto her; and she was longing for his letters, as he was for hers.
Naturally, other things and people were often in Justin's thoughts. Hethought of Philip Davison, of Ben, with whom he had quarreled, and ofMary Jasper and her father. With a keen sense of sympathy he picturedSloan Jasper plodding his slow rounds, trying to satisfy with hishorses and his cows that desire for loving companionship which onlythe presence of his daughter could satisfy. He marveled that Marycould leave her father to that life of loneliness for even thegayeties of Denver. And thinking thus, he pitied Mary.
Often Justin lay under the night sky, rolled in his blankets, when thecoyotes were most annoying, ready to leap up at the first alarm givenby the dog. He carried a revolver for use in defending the sheepagainst the coyotes. This was a case in which, as he knew, even CurtisClayton would approve of slaying. He began to see clearly, too, inthis warfare with the coyotes, that nature, instead of being uniformlykind, as Clayton liked to think, is often pitilessly cruel, and seemsto be in a state of armed combat in which there is never the flutterof the white flag of truce.
It was the visualizing to him of that age-old conflict in which onlythe fittest survive. As he looked out upon this warring world, all theanimals, with few exceptions, seemed to be trying to devour all theothers. The coyotes slew the sheep, the mountain lions pulled down thedeer, the wild cats devoured the birds, and for all the fluttering,flying insect life the birds made of the glorious turquoise skies anendless hell of fear.
Often there came to Justin under the night sky rare glimpses of thewild life of the mountains. Playful antelopes gamboled by, allunconscious of his presence, frisking and leaping in the light ofearly morning, or scampering in wild rushes of fright when theydiscovered his presence or the dog gave tongue; bucks clattered ateach other with antlered horns, or called across the empty spaces;wild cat and cougar leaped the rocks with padded footfalls andoccasionally pierced the still air with screams as startling in theirsuddenness as the staccato, Indian-like clamor of the coyotes. Alwayswild cat, cougar and coyote brought Justin from beneath his blanketswith every sense alert, and sent the dog scurrying into the gloom inthe direction of the sound.
Clayton's habits of study and writing had not been lost on Justin, andnow and then he tried to set down in his l
ittle note book somedescription of the things that moved him. He composed letters, too, toLucy, many letters which he never meant to send. In them he told herof his life with the sheep, and of how much he loved her. Often theseletters were composed, but not written at all.
In one of those letters to Lucy which were not intended to be sent heincorporated some of his thoughts concerning the farmers of thevalley, together with a bit of verse. The old hope of Peter Wingatehad come back to him for the moment, and he saw the valley as Wingatesaw it in his dream of the future:
"The crooking plumes of the rice-corn, The sorghum's emerald spear, The rustle of blue alfalfa, Out on this wild frontier, Whisper of coming thousands, Whose hurrying, eager tread Shall change this mould into kerneled gold And give to the millions bread.
"Tis now but a dream prophetic; The plover tilts by the stream, The coyote calls from the hilltop, And the----"
Justin got no further. The impossibility of the fulfillment of thatdream had come to him as he sought to picture the present.
When the driver of the "grub wagon" came with supplies and the news ofthe ranch, he brought a letter from Lucy; and he took away a letterfor her, when he departed. The news from home was cheering. Outwardlyat least matters had not changed there. No one had come, and no onehad gone, and the usual work was going on.
More than once the driver came, and each time Justin saw him departwith unspoken longing. He would have given much to be privileged to goback with him. Yet Justin was not and had not been lonely in theordinary meaning of that word; he was lonely for the companionship ofLucy Davison, for the glance of her brown eyes, for the music of herwords; but, possessing that inner light of the mind in which Claytonbelieved, it brightened his isolation as with a sacred fire, filledthe wooded slopes and craggy heights with life and beauty, andsuggested deep thoughts and deeper imaginings.
Filled with dreams and work, with desire and accomplishment, the slowmonths rolled by. With the descent of the snow-line on the high peaksthe sheep were driven into the foot-hills, and then on down into theplain itself, where not only grass, but the various sages--black,white, salt and bud sage--together with shad-scale and browse,furnished an abundance of the food they liked.
Then they were taken away, their summer herding having been a goodinvestment for Fogg; and Justin returned to Paradise Valley,clear-eyed, sturdy, and handsomer even than before. He had learnedwell the to him necessary lesson of patience, and had tasted the joyof duty well done. More than all, he had begun to find himself, and toknow that childhood and youth had fallen from him, and that he was aman.
Justin Wingate, Ranchman Page 10