Claim Number One

by Ogden, George W

  There was no doubt that she had been indiscreet in the manner of taking up her homestead, but she could not drive herself to the belief that she had committed a moral crime. And the doctor. He would drop all his prospects in the land that he held if she should call on him, she well believed. He was big enough for a sacrifice like that, with never a question in his honest eyes to cloud the generosity of the act. If she had him by to advise her in this hour, and to benefit by his wisdom and courage, she sighed, how comfortable it would be.

  Perhaps she should have gone, mused she, pursuing this thought, to his place, and put the thing before him in all its ugliness, with no reservations, no attempts to conceal or defend. He could have told her how far her act was punishable. Perhaps, at the most, it would mean no more than giving up the claim, which was enough, considering all that she had founded on it. Yes, she should have ridden straight to Dr. Slavens; that would have been the wiser course.

  Considering whether she would have time to go and return that day, wasted as the morning was, she pulled up her horse and looked around to see if she could estimate by her location the distance from her camp. That she had penetrated the country east of the river farther than ever before, was plain at a glance. The surroundings were new to her. There was more vegetation, and marks of recent grazing everywhere.

  She mounted the hill-crest for a wider survey, and there in a little valley below her she saw a flock of sheep grazing, while farther along the ridge stood a sheep-wagon, a strange and rather disconcerting figure striding up and down beside it.

  Doubtless it was the shepherd, she understood. But a queer figure he made in that place; and his actions were unusual, to say the least, in one of his sedate and melancholy calling. He was a young man, garbed in a long, black coat, tattered more or less about the skirts and open in front, displaying his red shirt. His hair was long upon his collar, and his head was bare.

  As he walked up and down a short beat near his wagon, the shepherd held in his hand a book, which he placed before his eyes with a flourish now, and then with a flourish withdrew it, meantime gesticulating with his empty hand in the most extravagant fashion. His dog, sharper of perception than its master, lay aside from him a little way, its ears pricked up, its sharp nose lifted, sniffing the scent of the stranger. But it gave no alarm.

  Agnes felt that the man must be harmless, whatever his peculiarities. She rode forward, bent on asking him how far she had strayed from the river. As she drew near, she heard him muttering and declaiming, illustrating his arguments of protestation with clenched fist and tossing head, his long hair lifting from his temples in the wind.

  He greeted her respectfully, without sign of perturbation or surprise, as one well accustomed to the society of people above the rank of shepherd.

  “My apparent eccentric behavior at the moment when you first saw me, madam, or miss, perhaps, most likely I should say, indeed––”

  Agnes nodded, smiling, to confirm his penetration.

  “So, as I was saying, my behavior may have led you into doubt of my balance, and the consequent question of your safety in my vicinity,” he continued.

  “Nothing of the kind, I assure you,” said she. “I thought you might be a–a divinity student by your dress, or maybe a candidate for the legal profession.”

  “Neither,” he disclaimed. “I am a philosopher, and at the moment you first beheld me I was engaged in a heated controversy with Epictetus, whose Discourses I hold in my hand. We are unable to agree on many points, especially upon the point which he assumes that he has made in the discussion of grief. He contends that when one is not blamable for some calamity which bereaves him or strips him of his possessions, grief is unmanly, regret inexcusable.

  “‘How?’ say I, meeting him foot to foot on the controversy, ‘in case I lose my son, my daughter, my wife–the wife of my soul and heart–shall I not grieve? shall I not be permitted the solace of a tear?’

  “And Epictetus: ‘Were you to blame for the disease which cut them off? Did you light the fire which consumed them, or sink the ship which carried them down?’

  “‘No,’ I answer; ‘but because I’m blameless shall I become inhuman, and close my heart to all display of tenderness and pain?’

  “And there we have it, miss, over and over again. Ah, I am afraid we shall never agree!”

  “It is lamentable,” Agnes agreed, believing that the young man’s life in the solitudes had unsettled his mind. “I never agree with him on that myself.”

  The philosopher’s hollow, weathered face glowed as she gave this testimony. He drew a little nearer to her, shaking the long, dark, loose hair back from his forehead.

  “I am glad that you don’t think me demented,” said he. “Many, who do not understand the deeper feelings of the soul, do believe it. The hollow-minded and the unstable commonly lose their small balance of reason in these hills, miss, with no companionship, month in and month out, but a dog and the poor, foolish creatures which you see in the valley yonder. But to one who is a philosopher, and a student of the higher things, this situation offers room for the expansion of the soul. Mine has gone forth and enlarged here; it has filled the universe.”

  “But a man of your education and capabilities,” she suggested, thinking to humor him, “ought to be more congenially situated, it seems to me. There must be more remunerative pursuits which you could follow?”

  “Remuneration for one may not be reward for another,” he told her. “I shall remain here until my mission is accomplished.”

  He turned to his flock, and, with a motion of the arm, sped his dog to fetch in some stragglers which seemed straying off waywardly over the crest of the opposite hill. As he stood so she marked his ascetic gauntness, and noted that the hand which swung at his side twitched and clenched, and that the muscles of his cleanly shaved jaws swelled as he locked his teeth in determination.

  “Your mission?” she asked, curious regarding what it might be, there in the solitude of those barren hills.

  “I see that you are armed,” he observed irrelevantly, as if the subject of his mission had been put aside. “I have a very modern weapon of that pattern in the wagon, but there is little call for the use of it here. Perhaps you live in the midst of greater dangers than I?”

  “I’m one of the new settlers over in the river bottom,” she explained. “I rode up to ask you how far I’d strayed from home.”

  “It’s about seven miles across to the river, I should estimate,” he told her. “I graze up to the boundary of the reservation, and it’s called five miles from there.”

  “Thank you; I think I’ll be going back then.”

  “Will you do me the favor to look at this before you go?” he asked, drawing a folded paper from the inner pocket of his coat and handing it to her.

  It was a page from one of those so-called Directories which small grafters go about devising in small cities and out-on-the-edge communities, in which the pictures of the leading citizens are printed for a consideration. The page had been folded across the center; it was broken and worn.

  “You may see the person whose portrait is presented there,” said he, “and if you should see him, you would confer a favor by letting me know.”

  “Why, I saw him yesterday!” she exclaimed in surprise. “It’s Jerry Boyle!”

  The sheep-herder’s eyes brightened. A glow came into his brown face.

  “You do well to go armed where that wolf ranges!” said he. “You know him–you saw him yesterday. Is he still there?”

  “Why, I think he’s camped somewhere along the river,” she told him, unable to read what lay behind the excitement in the man’s manner.

  He folded the paper and returned it to his pocket, his breath quick upon his lips. Suddenly he laid hold of her bridle with one hand, and with the other snatched the revolver from her low-swinging holster.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” said he; “but I want to know. Tell me true–lean over and whisper in my ear. Is he your friend?”


  “No, no! Far from it!” she whispered, complying with his strange order out of fear that his insanity, flaming as it was under the spur of some half-broken memory, might lead him to take her life.

  He gave her back the revolver and released the horse.

  “Go,” said he. “But don’t warn him, as you value your own life! My mission here is to kill that man!”

  Perhaps it was a surge of unworthiness which swept her, lifting her heart like hope. The best of us is unworthy at times; the best of us is base. Selfishness is the festering root of more evil than gold. In that flash it seemed to her that Providence had raised up an arm to save her. She leaned over, her face bright with eagerness.

  “Has he wronged you, too?” she asked.

  He lifted his hand to his forehead slowly, as if in a gesture of pain. The blood had drained from his face; his cheek-bones were marked white through his wind-hardened skin.

  “It’s not a subject to be discussed with a woman, sir,” said he absently. “There was a wife–somewhere there was a wife! This man came between us. I was not then what I am today–a shepherd on the hills.... But I must keep you here; you will betray me and warn him if I let you go!” he cried, rousing suddenly, catching her bridle again.

  “No, I’ll not warn him,” Agnes assured him.

  “If I thought you would”–he hesitated, searching her face with his fevered eyes, in which red veins showed as in the eyes of an angry dog–“I’d have to sacrifice you!”

  Agnes felt that she never could draw her weapon in time, in case the eccentric tried to take it away again, and her heart quailed as she measured the distance she would have to ride before the fall of the ground would protect her, even if she should manage to break his hold on the bridle, and gallop off while he was fetching his pistol from the wagon.

  “I’ll not warn him,” said she, placing her hand on his arm. “I give you my sincere word that I’ll do nothing to save him from what I feel to be your just vengeance.”

  “Go, before I doubt you again!” he cried, slapping her horse with his palm as he let go the bridle.

  From the tip of the hill she looked back. He had disappeared–into the wagon, she supposed; and she made haste to swerve from the straight course to put another hill between them, in case he might run after her, his mad mind again aflame with the belief that she would cheat him of his revenge.

  Agnes arrived in camp full of tremors and contradictory emotions. One minute she felt that she should ride and warn Boyle, guilty as he might be, and deserving of whatever punishment the hand of the wronged man might be able to inflict; the next she relieved herself of this impulse by arguing that the insane sheep-herder was plainly the instrument of fate–she lacked the temerity, after the first flush, to credit it to Providence–lifted up to throw his troubles between her and her own.

  She sat in the sun before her tent thinking it over, for and against, cooling considerably and coming to a saner judgment of the situation. Every little while she looked toward the hills, to see if the shepherd had followed her. She had seen no horse in the man’s camp; he could not possibly make it on foot, under two hours, even if he came at all, she told herself.

  Perhaps it was an imaginary grievance, based upon the reputation which Boyle had earned for himself; maybe the poor, declaiming philosopher had forgotten all about it by now, and had returned to his discourses and his argument. She brewed a pot of tea, for the shadows were marking noonday, and began to consider riding down the river to find Boyle and tell him of the man’s threat, leaving him to follow his own judgment in the matter. His conscience would tell him whether to stand or fly.

  Strong as her resentment was against the man who had come into her plans so unexpectedly and thrown them in a tangle, she felt that it would be wrong to her own honesty to conceal from him the knowledge of his danger. Perhaps there remained manliness enough in him to cause him to withdraw his avaricious scheme to oust Dr. Slavens in return for a service like that. She determined at last to seek Boyle in his camp.

  She brought up her horse and saddled it, took a look around camp to see that everything was in shape–for she liked to leave things tidy, in case some of the neighbors should stop in–and was about to mount, when a man’s head and shoulders appeared from behind her own cottonwood log. A glance showed her that it was the sheep-herder. His head was bare, his wild hair in his eyes.

  He got to his feet, his pistol in his hand.

  “I watched you,” said he, sheathing the weapon, as if he had changed his mind about the use of it. “I knew you’d go!”

  “But I didn’t intend to when I parted from you up there on the hill,” she declared, greatly confused over being caught in this breach of faith with even a crazy man.

  “I considered that, too,” said the philosopher. “But I watched you. I’ll never be fool enough to entirely trust a woman again. You all lie!”

  She wondered how he had arrived there so quickly and silently, for he gave no evidence of fatigue or heat. She did not know the dry endurance which a life like his builds up in a man. Sheep-herders in that country are noted for their fleetness. It is a common saying of them that their heels are as light as their heads.

  But there he was, at any rate, and her good intentions toward Boyle must be surrendered. Conscience had a palliative in the fact that she had meant to go.

  “Heaven knows I have as little reason to wish him well as you!” said she, speaking in low voice, as if to herself, as she began to undo the saddle girth.

  “Stay here, then,” said the sheep-herder, watching her with glistening eyes. “I’ll kill him for both of us! Where is his camp?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied, shuddering.

  The demented shepherd’s way of speaking of taking a human life, even though a worthless one, or a vicious one, was eager and hungry. He licked his lips like a dog.

  “You said he was camped on the river. Where?”

  “I don’t know,” she returned again.

  “I’ll tell you,” said he, staying her hand as she tugged on a strap. “Both of us will go! You shall ride, and I’ll run beside you. But”–he bent over, grinding his teeth and growling between them–“you sha’n’t help kill him! That’s for me, alone!”

  She drew back from his proposal with a sudden realization of what a desperately brutal thing this unstrung creature was about to do, with a terrible arraignment of self-reproach because she had made no effort to dissuade him or place an obstacle in the way of accomplishing his design. It was not strange, thought she, with a revulsion of self-loathing, that he accepted her as a willing accomplice and proposed that she bear a hand. Even her effort to ride and find Boyle had been half-hearted. She might have gone, she told herself, before the herder arrived.

  “No, no! I couldn’t go! I couldn’t!” she cried, forgetting that she was facing an unbalanced man, all the force of pleading in her voice.

  “No, you want to kill him yourself!” he charged savagely. “Give me that horse–give it to me, I tell you! I’ll go alone!”

  He sprang into the saddle, not waiting to adjust the stirrups to his long legs. With his knees pushed up like a jockey’s, he rode off, the pointer of chance, or the cunning of his own inscrutable brain, directing him the way Boyle had gone the evening before.

  His going left her nerveless and weak. She sat and watched him out of sight beyond the cottonwoods and willows, thinking what a terrible thing it was to ride out with the cold intention of killing a man. This man was irresponsible; the strength of his desire for revenge had overwhelmed his reason. The law would excuse him of murder, for in the dimness of his own mind there was no conception of crime.

  But what excuse could there be for one who sat down in deliberation––

  Base Jerry Boyle might be, ready to sacrifice unfeelingly the innocent for his own pleasure and gain, ready to strike at their dearest hopes, ready to trample under his feet the green gardens of their hearts’ desire; yet, who should sit in judgment on him, or seek a justifi
cation in his deeds to–to–– Even then she could not bring her thoughts to express it, although her wild heart had sung over it less than twenty-four hours before.

  A shiver of sickness turned her cold. With quick, nervous fingers she unbuckled the belt which held her revolver and cartridges; she carried the weapon into the tent and flung it to the ground.

  At dusk the sheep-herder returned, with the horse much blown.

  “He had been there, but he’s gone,” he announced. “I followed him eastward along the stage-road, but lost his trail.”

  He dismounted and dropped the reins to the ground. Agnes set about to relieve the tired animal of the burden of the saddle, the sheep-herder offering no assistance. He stood with his head bent, an air of dejection and melancholy over him, a cloud upon his face. Presently he walked away, saying no more. She watched him as he went, moodily and unheeding of his way, until he passed out of view around a thicket of tangled shrubs which grew upon the river-bank.

  While her horse was relieving his weariness in contented sighs over his oats, Agnes made a fire and started her evening coffee. She had a feeling of cleanness in her conscience, and a lightness of heart which she knew never could have been her own to enjoy again if the crazed herder had come back with blood upon his hands.

  There was no question about the feeling of loneliness that settled down upon her with aching intensity when she sat down to her meal, spread on a box, the lantern a yellow speck in the boundless night. A rod away its poor, futile glimmer against such mighty odds was understood, standing there with no encompassing walls to mark the boundary of its field. It was like the struggle of a man who stands alone in the vastness of life with no definite aim to circumscribe his endeavor, wasting his feeble illumination upon a little rod of earth.

  We must have walls around us, both lanterns and men, rightly to fill the sphere of our designed usefulness; walls to restrain our wastrel forces; walls to bind our lustful desires, our foolish ambitions, our outwinging flights. Yet, in its way, the lantern served nobly, as many a man serves in the circle which binds his small adventures, and beyond which his fame can never pass.