Part 43

Here lay the legitimate fruit of the State's essential hoodlumism. Here was the answer to local self-government--to democracy. Such a thing could not happen in Australia or Canada; only in America could lynch law become a dramatic pastime, a jest, an instrument of private vengeance. The South and the West were alike stained with the blood of the lynched, and the whole nation was covered with shame.

In his horror, his sense of revolt, he cursed the State of which he was a citizen. He would have resigned his commission at the moment, so intense was his resentment of the supine, careless, jovial, slattern Government under which he was serving.

"By the Lord!" he breathed, with solemn intensity, "if this does not shame the people of this State into revolt, if these fiends are not hounded and hung, I will myself harry them. I cannot live and do my duty here unless this crime is avenged by law."

It did not matter to him that these herders were poor Basques; it was the utter, horrifying, destructive disregard of law which raised such tumult in his blood. His English education, his soldier's training, his native refinement--all were outraged. Then, too, he loved the West. He had surrendered his citizenship under the British flag--for this!

Chilled, shaking, and numb, he set spurs to his horse and rode furiously down the trail toward the nearest town, so eager to spread the alarm that he could scarcely breathe a deep breath. On the steep slopes he was forced to walk, and his horse led so badly, that his agony of impatience was deepened. He had a vision of the murderers riding fast into far countries. Each hour made their apprehension progressively the more difficult.

"Who were they?" he asked himself, again and again. "What kind of man did this thing? Was the leader a man like Ballard? Even so, he was hired. By whom? By ranchers covetous of the range; that was absolutely certain."

It was long after noon before he came to the end of the telephone-line in a little store and post-office at the upper falls of Deer Creek. The telephone had a booth fortunately, and he soon had Redfield's ear, but his voice was so strained and unnatural that his chief did not recognize it.

"Is that you, Ross? What's the matter? Your voice sounds hoarse."

Ross composed himself, and told his story briefly. "I'm at Kettle Ranch post-office. Now listen. The limit of the cattle-man's ferocity has been reached. As I rode down here, to get into communication with a doctor for a sick herder, I came upon the scene of another murder and burning. The fire is still smouldering; at least two bodies are in the embers."

At last, bit by bit, from hurried speech, the supervisor derived the fact, the location, the hour, and directed the herder to ride back and guard the remains till the sheriff arrived.

"Keep it all quiet," warned Ross, "and get the sheriff and a doctor to come up here as quick as you can. What in the name of God is this country coming to?" he cried, in despair. "Will this deed go unpunished, like the rest?"

Redfield's voice had lost its optimistic ring. "I don't know; I am stunned by it all. Don't do anything rash, Ross. Wait till I come. Perhaps this is the turning-point out here. I'll be up at the earliest moment."

The embittered and disheartened ranger then called up Lee Virginia, and the sound of her sweet voice turned his thoughts to other and, in a sense, more important matters; for when she heard his name she cried out with such eager longing and appeal that his heart leaped. "Oh, I wish you were here! Mother has been worse to-day. She is asking for you. Can't you come down and see us? She wants to tell you something."

"I can't--I can't!" he stammered. "I--I--I'm a long way off, and I have important work to do. Tell her I will come to-morrow."

Her voice was filled with disappointment and fear as she said: "Oh, I need you so! Can't you come?"

"Yes, I will come as soon as I can. I will try to reach you by daylight to-morrow. My heart is with you. Call up the Redfields; they will help you."

"Mother wants you. She says she must see you. Come as soon as you can. I don't know what she wants to tell you--but I do know we need you."

Her meaning was as clear as if she said: "I need you, for I love you. Come to me." And her prayer filled him with pain as well as pleasure. He was a soldier and under orders from his chief, therefore he said: "Dear girl, there is a sick man far up on the mountain-side with no one to care for him but a poor old herder who is in danger of falling sick himself. I must go back to them; but, believe me, I will come just as soon as my duties will let me. You understand me, don't you?"

Her voice was fainter as she said: "Yes, but I--it seems hard to wait."

"I know. Your voice has helped me. I was in a black mood when I came here. I'm going back now to do my work, and then I will come to you. Good-bye."

Strangely beautiful and very subtle was the vibrant stir of that wire as it conveyed back to his ear the little sigh with which she made answer to his plea. He took his way upward in a mood which was meditative but no longer bitter.

SHADOWS ON THE MIST

The decision which Cavanagh made between love and duty distinguished the officer from the man, the soldier from the civilian. He did not hesitate to act, and yet he suffered a mental conflict as he rode back toward the scene of that inhuman sacrifice on the altar of greed. His heart went out to Lee Virginia in longing. Her appealing voice still lay in his ear with an effect like the touch of her soft lips, and his flagging horse suffered from the unconscious pressure of his haste.

"It will be hours before any part of the sheriff's posse can reach the falls, even though they take to the swiftest motors, and then other long hours must intervene before I can ride down to her. Yes, at least a day and a night must drag their slow course before I can hope to be of service to her," and the thought drew a groan of anxiety from him. At such moments of mental stress the trail is a torture and the mountain-side an inexorable barrier.

Half-way to the hills he was intercepted by an old man who was at work on an irrigating ditch beside the road. He seemed very nervous and very inquisitive, and as he questioned the ranger his eyes were like those of a dog that fears his master's hand. Ross wondered about this afterward, but at the moment his mind was busy with the significance of this patient toiler with a spade. He was a prophetic figure in the most picturesque and sterile land of the stockman. "Here within twenty miles of this peaceful fruit-grower," he said, "is the crowning infamy of the free-booting cowboy. My God, what a nation we are!"

He wondered, as he rode on, whether the papers of the State would make a jest of this deed. "Will this be made the theme for caustic comment in the Eastern press for a day, and then be forgotten?"

As his hot blood cooled he lost faith in even this sacrifice. Could anything change the leopard West into the tameness and serenity of the ox? "No," he decided, "nothing but death will do that. This generation, these fierce and bloody hearts, must die; only in that way can the tradition of violence be overcome and a new State reared."

At the foot of the toilsome, upward-winding trail he dismounted, and led his weary horse. Over his head, and about half-way to the first hilltop, lay a roof of fleecy vapor, faint purple in color and seamless in texture. Through this he must pass, and it symbolized to him the line of demarkation between the plain and the mountain, between order and violence.