Lee stared at her in amazement. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean your real mother died when you was a tiny little babe. You see, I was your father’s second wife; in fact, you weren’t a year old when we married. Ed made me promise never to let you know. We were to bring you up just the same as if you was a child to both of us. Nobody knows but Reddy. I told him the day we started up here.”
The girl’s mind ran swiftly over the past as she listened. The truth of the revelation reached her instantly, explaining a hundred strange things which had puzzled her all her life. The absence of deep affection between herself and Lize was explained. Their difference in habit, temperament, thought—all became plain. “But my mother!” she said, at last. “Who was my mother?”
“I never saw her. You see, Ed came into the country bringing you, a little motherless babe. He always said your mother was a fine woman, but I never so much as saw a picture of her. She was an educated woman, he said—a Southern woman—and her name was Virginia, but that’s about all I can tell you of her. Now, I am going to let Ross know all of this as soon as I can. It will make a whole lot of difference in what he thinks of you.”
She uttered all this much as a man would have done, with steady voice and with bright eyes, but Lee Virginia could feel beneath her harsh inflections the deep emotion which vibrated there, and her heart went out toward the lonely woman in a new rush of tenderness. Now that she was released from the necessity of excusing her mother’s faults—faults she could now ignore; now that she could look upon her as a loyal friend, she was moved to pity and to love, and, rising, she went to her and put her arm about her neck, and said: “This won’t make any difference. I am going to stay with you and help you just the same.”
The tears came to the old woman’s eyes, and her voice broke as she replied: “I knew you would say that, Lee Virginia, but all the same I don’t intend to have you do any such thing. You’ve got to cut loose from me altogether, because some fine chap is going to come along one of these days, and he won’t want me even as a step-mother-in-law. No, I have decided that you and me had better live apart. I’ll get you a place to live up in Sulphur, where I can visit you now and again; but I guess I am elected to stay right here in the Fork. They don’t like me, and I don’t like them; but I have kind o’ got used to their ways of looking at me sidewise; they don’t matter as much as it would up there in the city.”
Lee turned back wistfully toward the story of her mother. “Where did my mother meet my father? Do you know that?”
“No, I don’t. It was a runaway match, Ed said. I never did know who her folks were—only I know they thought she was marrying the wrong man.”
The girl sighed as her mind took in the significance of her mother’s coming to this wild country, leaving all that she knew and loved behind. “Poor little mother. It must have been very hard for her.”
“I am afraid she did have a hard time, for Ed admitted to me that he hadn’t so much as a saddle when he landed in the State. He hadn’t much when I met him first, but everybody liked him. He was one of the handsomest men that ever jumped a saddle. But he was close-mouthed. You never could get anything out of him that he didn’t want to tell, and I was never able to discover what he had been doing in the southern part of the State.”
As she pondered on her changed relationship to Lize, Lee’s heart lightened. It would make a difference to Ross. It would make a difference to the Redfields. Traitorous as it seemed, it was a great relief—a joy—to know that her own mother, her real mother, had been “nice.” “She must have been nice or Lize would not have said so,” she reasoned, recalling that her stepmother had admitted her feeling of jealousy.
At last Lize rose. “Well, now, dearie, I reckon we had better turn in. It is getting chilly and late.”
As they were about to part at the door of the tent Virginia took Lize’s face between her hands. “Good-night, mother,” she said, and kissed her, to show her that what she had said would not make any difference.
But Lize was not deceived. This unwonted caress made perfectly plain to her the relief which filled the girl’s heart.
* * *
Lee Virginia was awakened some hours later by a roaring, crackling sound, and by the flare of a yellow light upon her tent. Peering out, she saw flames shooting up through the roof of the ranger’s cabin, while beside it, wrapped in a blanket, calmly contemplating it, stood Cavanagh with folded arms. A little nearer to the bridge Redfield was sitting upon an upturned box.
With a cry of alarm she aroused her mother, and Lize, heavy-eyed, laggard with sleep, rose slowly and peered out at the scene with eyes of dull amazement. “Why don’t they try to put it out?” she demanded, as she took in the import of the passive figures.
Dressing with tremulous haste, Lee stepped from the tent just in time to see Swenson come from behind the burning building and join the others in silent contemplation of the scene. There was something uncanny in the calm inaction of the three strong men.
A dense fog hung low, enveloping the whole canon in a moist, heavy, sulphurous veil, through which the tongues of flame shot with a grandiose effect; but the three foresters, whose shadows expanded, contracted, and wavered grotesquely, remained motionless as carven figures of ebony. It was as if they were contemplating an absorbing drama, in whose enactment they had only the spectator’s curious interest.
Slowly, wonderingly, the girl drew near and called to Cavanagh, who turned quickly, crying out: “Don’t come too close, and don’t be frightened. I set the place on fire myself. The poor old herder died last night, and is decently buried in the earth, and now we are burning the cabin and every thread it contains to prevent the spread of the plague. Hugh and Swenson have divided their garments with me, and this blanket which I wear is my only coat. All that I have is in that cabin now going up in smoke—my guns, pictures, everything.”
“How could you do it?” she cried out, understanding what his sacrifice had been.
“I couldn’t,” he replied. “The Supervisor did it. They had to go. The cabin was saturated with poison; it had become to me a plague spot, and there was no other way to stamp it out. I should never have felt safe if I had carried out even so much as a letter.”
Dumb and shivering with the chill of the morning, Lee Virginia drew nearer, ever nearer. “I am so sorry,” she said, and yearned toward him, eager to comfort him, but he warningly motioned her away.
“Please don’t come any nearer, for I dare not touch you.”
“But you are not ill?” she cried out, with a note of apprehension in her voice.
He smiled in response to her question. “No, I feel nothing but weariness and a little depression. I can’t help feeling somehow as if I were burning up a part of myself in that fire—the saddle I have ridden for years, my guns, ropes, spurs, everything relating to the forest, are gone, and with them my youth. I have been something of a careless freebooter myself, I fear; but that is all over with now.” He looked her in the face with a sad and resolute glance. “The Forest Service made a man of me, taught me to regard the future. I never accepted responsibility till I became a ranger, and in thinking it all over I have decided to stay with it, as the boys say, ‘till the spring rains.’”
“I am very glad of that,” she said.
“Yes; Dalton thinks I can qualify for the position of Supervisor, and Redfield may offer me the supervision of this forest. If he does, I will accept it—if you will go with me and share the small home which the Supervisor’s pay provides. Will you go?”
In the light of his burning cabin, and in the shadow of the great peaks, Lee Virginia could not fail of a certain largeness and dignity of mood. She neither blushed nor stammered, as she responded: “I will go anywhere in the world with you.”
He could not touch so much as the hem of her garment, but his eyes embraced her, as he said: “God bless you for the faith you seem to have in me!”
* * *
Redfield’s voice interrupted
with hearty clamor. “And now, Miss Virginia, you go back and rustle some breakfast for us all. Swenson, bring the horses in and harness my team; I’m going to take these women down the canon. And, Ross, you’d better saddle up as soon as you feel rested and ride across the divide, and go into camp in that little old cabin by the dam above my house. You’ll have to be sequestered for a few days, I reckon, till we see how you’re coming out. I’ll telephone over to the Fork and have the place made ready for you, and I’ll have the doctor go up there to meet you and put you straight. If you’re going to be sick we’ll want you where we can look after you. Isn’t that so, Lee Virginia?”
“Indeed it is,” replied the girl, earnestly.
“But I’m not going to be sick,” retorted Cavanagh. “I refuse to be sick.”
“Quite right,” replied Redfield; “but all the same we want you where we can get at you, and where medical aid of the right sort is accessible. I’m going to fetch my bed over here and put you into it. You need rest.”
Lee still lingered after Redfield left them. “Please do as Mr. Redfield tells you,” she pleaded, “for I shall be very anxious till you get safely down the mountains. If that poor old man has any relatives they ought to be told how kind you have been. You could not have been kinder to one of your own people.”
These words from her had a poignancy of meaning which made his reply difficult. His tone was designedly light as he retorted: “I would be a fraud if I stood here listening to your praise without saying—without confessing—how deadly weary I got of the whole business. It was simply that there was nothing else to do. I had to go on.”
Her mind still dwelt on the tragic event. “I wish he could have had some kind of a service. It seems sort of barbarous to bury him without any one to say a prayer over him. But I suppose that was impossible. Surely some one ought to mark his grave, for some of his people may come and want to know where he lies.”
He led her thoughts to pleasanter paths. “I am glad you are going with the Supervisor. You are going, are you not?”
“Yes, for a few days, till I’m sure you’re safe.”
“I shall be tempted to pretend being sick just to keep you near me,” he was saying, when Redfield returned, bringing his sleeping-couch. Unrolling this under a tree beside the creek, the Supervisor said: “Now, get into that.”
Cavanagh resigned Lee with a smile. “Good-night,” he said. “Oh, but it’s good to remember that I shall see you to-morrow!”
With a happy glance and a low “Good-bye” she turned away.
Laying aside his blanket and his shoes, Cavanagh crept into the snug little camp-bed. “Ah,” he breathed, with a delicious sense of relief, “I feel as if I could sleep a week!” And in an instant his eyes closed in slumber so profound that it was barren even of dreams.
When he awoke it was noon, and Swenson, the guard, was standing over him. “I’m sorry, but it’s time to be moving,” he said; “it’s a long ride over there.”
“What time is it?” inquired Cavanagh, with some bewilderment.
“Nearly noon. I’ve got some coffee ready. Want some?”
“Do I? Just watch me!” And he scrambled out of his bed with vigor, and stretched himself like a cat, exclaiming: “Wow! but it does feel good to know that I am out of jail!”
Going down to the stream, he splashed his face and neck in the clear cold water, and the brisk rubbing which followed seemed to clear his thought as well as sharpen his appetite.
“You seem all right so far,” hazarded the guide.
“I am all right, and I’ll be all right to-morrow, if that’s what you mean,” replied Cavanagh. “Well, now, pack up, and we’ll pull out.”
For a few moments after he mounted his horse Cavanagh looked about the place as if for the last time—now up at the hill, now down at the meadow, and last of all at the stream. “I hope you’ll enjoy this station as much as I have, Swenson. It’s one of the prettiest on the whole forest.”
Together they zigzagged up the side of the hill to the north, and then with Cavanagh in the lead (followed by his pack-horse), they set up the long lateral moraine which led by a wide circle through the wooded park toward the pass. The weather was clear and cold. The wind bit, and Cavanagh, scantily clothed as he was, drew his robe close about his neck, saying: “I know now how it feels to be a blanket Indian. I must say I prefer an overcoat.”
A little later the keen eyes of the guard, sweeping the mountain-side, were suddenly arrested. “There’s a bunch of cowboys coming over the pass!” he called.
“I see them,” responded Cavanagh. “Get out your glasses and tell me who they are.”
Swenson unslung his field-glasses and studied the party attentively. “Looks like Van Horne’s sorrel in the lead, and that bald-face bay just behind looks like the one Gregg rides. The other two I don’t seem to know.”
“Perhaps it’s the sheriff after me for harboring Edwards,” suggested Cavanagh.
But Swenson remained sober. He did not see the humor of the remark. “What are they doing on the forest, anyhow?” he asked.
Half an hour later the two parties came face to face on a little stretch of prairie in the midst of the wooded valley. There were four in the sheriff’s party: Gregg, the deputy, and a big man who was a stranger to Cavanagh. Their horses were all tired, and the big civilian looked saddle-weary.
“Good evenin’, gentlemen!” called the sheriff, in Southern fashion, as he drew near.
“Good evenin’, Mr. Sheriff,” Cavanagh civilly answered. “What’s the meaning of this invasion of my forest?”
The sheriff, for answer, presented the big stranger. “Mr. Cavanagh, this is Mr. Simpson, the county attorney.”
Cavanagh nodded to the attorney. “I’ve heard of Mr. Simpson,” he said.
Simpson answered the question Ross had asked. “We were on our way to your station, Mr. Cavanagh, because we understand that this old man Dunn who shot himself had visited you before his death, giving you information concerning the killing of the Mexican sheep-herders. Is that true?”
“It is.”
“When did he visit you?”
“Two days ago, or maybe three. I am a little mixed about it. You see, I have been pretty closely confined to my shack for a few days.”
Gregg threw in a query. “How is the old man?”
“He’s all right; that is to say, he’s dead. Died last night.”
The sheriff looked at Simpson meaningly. “Well, I reckon that settles his score, judge. Even if he was implicated, he’s out of it now.”
“He couldn’t have been implicated,” declared the ranger, “for he was with me at the time the murder was committed. I left him high on the mountain in the Basque herder’s camp. I can prove an alibi for him. Furthermore, he had no motive for such work.”
“What did Dunn tell you?” demanded the sheriff. “What names did he give you?”
“Wait a moment,” replied Cavanagh, who felt himself to be on his own territory, and not to be hurried. “There’s a reward offered for the arrest of these men, is there not?”
“There is,” replied the attorney.
“Well, before I make my statement I’d like to request that my share of the reward, if there is any coming to me, shall be paid over to the widow of the man who gave me the information. Poor chap, he sacrificed himself for the good of the State, and his family should be spared all the suffering possible.”
“Quite right, Mr. Cavanagh. You may consider that request granted. Now for the facts.”
“Before going into that, Mr. Attorney, I’d like to speak to you alone.”
“Very well, sir,” replied the attorney. Then waving his hand toward the others, he said: “Boys, just ride off a little piece, will you?”
When they were alone, Cavanagh remarked: “I don’t think it wise to give these names to the wind, for if we do, there will be more fugitives.”
“I see your point,” Simpson agreed.
Thereupon, rapidly and concisely,
the ranger reported what Dunn had said, and the attorney listened thoughtfully without speaking to the end; then he added: “That tallies with what we have got from Ballard.”
“Was Ballard in it?” asked Cavanagh.
“Yes, we forced a confession from him.”
“If he was in it, it was merely for the pay. He represented some one else.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because he was crazy to return to the show with which he used to perform, and desperately in need of money. Have you thought that Gregg might have had a hand in this affair? Dunn said he had, although he was not present at any of the meetings.”
This seemed to surprise the attorney very much. “But he’s a sheepman!” he exclaimed.
“I know he is; but he’s also a silent partner in the Triangle cattle outfit, and is making us a lot of trouble. And, besides, he had it in for these dagoes, as he calls them, because they were sheeping territory which he wanted himself.”
“I don’t think he’s any too good for it,” responded Simpson, “but I doubt if he had any hand in the killing; he’s too cunning and too cowardly. But I’ll keep in mind what you have said, and if he is involved in any degree, he’ll have to go down the road with the others—his money can’t save him.”
As they came back to the party Cavanagh thought he detected in Gregg’s eyes a shifting light that was not there before, but he made no further attempt to impress his opinion upon the attorney or the sheriff. He only said: “Well, now, gentlemen, I must go on over the divide. I have an appointment with the doctor over there; also with a bed and a warmer suit of clothes than I have on. If I can be of any service to you when I am out of quarantine, I hope you will call upon me.”
“It is possible that we may need you in order to locate some of the men whose names you have given me.”
“Very good,” replied Cavanagh. “If they come upon the forest anywhere, the Supervisor and I will find them for you.”
Cavanaugh-Forest Ranger Page 23