"You need rest. Now I think I've had the smallpox—I know I've been vaccinated, and if you go to bed—"

"If you're saying all that preliminary to offering to come in here, you're wasting your breath. I don't intend to let you come any nearer than you are. There is work for you to do. Besides, there's my girl; you're detailed to look after her."

"Would a doctor come?" asked Ross, huskily, moved by Wetherford's words. "It's a hard climb. Would they think the dago worth it?"

Wetherford's face darkened with a look of doubt. "It is a hard trip for a city man, but maybe he would come for you—for the Government."

"I doubt it, even if I were to offer my next month's salary as a fee. These hills are very remote to the townsfolk, and one dago more or less of no importance, but I'll see what I can do."

Ross was really more concerned for Wetherford himself than for the Basque. "If the fever is something malignant, we must have medical aid," he said, and went slowly back to his own camp to ponder his puzzling problem.

One thing could certainly be done, and that was to inform Gregg and Murphy of their herder's illness; surely they would come to the rescue of the collie and his flock. To reach a telephone involved either a ride over into Deer Creek or a return to the Fork. He was tempted to ride all the way to the Fork, for to do so would permit another meeting with Lee; but to do this would require many hours longer, and half a day's delay might prove fatal to the Basque, and, besides, each hour of loneliness and toil rendered Wetherford just so much more open to the deadly attack of the disease.

Here was the tragic side of the wilderness. At such moments even the Fork seemed a haven. The mountains offer a splendid camping-place for the young and the vigorous, but they are implacable foes to the disabled man or the aged. They do not give loathsome diseases like pox, but they do not aid in defence of the sick. Coldly aloof, its clouds sail by. The night winds bite. Its rains fall remorselessly. Sheltering rocks there are, to be sure, but their comfort is small to the man smitten with the scourge of the crowded city. In such heights man is of no more value than the wolf or the cony.

It was hard to leave an old and broken man in such a drear and wind-contested spot, and yet it had to be done. So fastening his tent securely behind a clump of junipers, Cavanagh mounted his horse and rode away across the boundary of the forest into the Deer Creek Basin, which had been the bone of much contention for nearly four years.

It was a high, park-like expanse, sparsely wooded, beautiful in summer, but cold and bleak in winter. The summers were short, and frost fell almost every week even in July and August. It had once been a part of the forest, but under pressure the President had permitted it to be restored to the public lands open for entry. It was not "agricultural grounds," as certain ranchers claimed, but it was excellent summer pasture, and the sheepmen and cattle-men had leaped at once into warfare to possess it. Sheep were beaten to death with clubs by hundreds, herders were hustled out of the park with ropes about their necks and their outfits destroyed—and all this within a few miles of the forest boundary, where one small sentinel kept effective watch and ward.

Cavanagh had never been over this trail but once, and he was trying to locate the cliff from which a flock of sheep had been hurled by cattle-men some years before, when he perceived a thin column of smoke rising from a rocky hillside. With habitual watchfulness as to fire, he raised his glass to his eyes and studied the spot. It was evidently a camp-fire and smouldering dangerously, and turning his horse's head he rode toward it to stamp it out. It was not upon his patrol; but that did not matter, his duty was clear.

As he drew near he began to perceive signs of a broken camp; the ground was littered with utensils. It was not an ordinary camp-fire, and the ranger's heart quickened. "Another sheep-herder has been driven out, and his tent and provisions burned!" he exclaimed, wrathfully.

His horse snorted and shied as he rode nearer, and then a shudder passed through the ranger's heart as he perceived in the edge of the smouldering embers a boot heel, and then—a charred hand! In the smoke of that fire was the reek of human flesh.

For a long time the ranger sat on his horse, peering down into those ashes until at last it became evident to his eyes that at least two sheep-herders had been sacrificed on the cattle-man's altar of hate and greed.

All about on the sod the story was written, all too plain. Two men, possibly three, had been murdered—cut to pieces and burned—not many hours before. There stood the bloody spade with which the bodies had been dismembered, and there lay an empty can whose oil had been poured upon the mingled camp utensils, tent, and wagon of the herders, in the attempt to incinerate the hacked and dismembered limbs of the victims. The lawlessness of the range had culminated. The ferocity of the herder had gone beyond the savage. Here in the sweet autumn air the reek of the cattle-man's vengeance rose like some hideous vapor, poisonous and obscene.

The ranger sickened as the bloody tale unfolded itself before him. Then a fierce hate of such warfare flamed in his heart. Could this enormity be committed under any other civilized flag? Would any other Government intermingle so foolishly, so childishly its State and Federal authority as to permit such diabolism?

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.



XI

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.

Again he rose above it, to find it a fantastic sea lit by the sun, and glowing with pink and gold and violet. Celestial in its ethereal beauty, it threw into still more appalling shadow the smoking altar of passion toward which he spurred. From moment to moment the surface rose and shifted in swift, tumultuous, yet soundless waves, breaking round pine-clad promontories in shimmering breakers, faint, and far, and serene.

Down through a deep canon to the south a prodigious river of mist was rushing, a silent cataract of ashy vapor plunging to a soundless beach. Above and beyond it the high peaks shone in radiance so pure that the heart of the lover ached with the pain of its evanescent beauty. It was as if he were looking across a foaming flood upon the stupendous and shining park of some imperial potentate whose ornate and splendid country home lay just beyond. Rocky spires rose like cathedral towers, and fortresses abutted upon the stream. And yet in the midst of that glorified plain the smoke of the burning rose.

Slowly he led his horse along the mountain-side, grasping with eager desire at every changing aspect of this marvellous scene. It was infinitely more gorgeous, more compelling, than his moonlight experience the night before, for here reality, definite and powerful, was interfused with mystery. These foot-hills, hitherto pleasantly precipitous, had suddenly become grandiose. All was made over upon a mightier scale, each rock and tree being distorted by the passing translucent clouds into a kind of monstrous yet epic proportion.

Ghostly white ledges broke from the darker mist like fields of distant crusted snow. Castellated crags loomed from the mystic river like fortified islands. Cattle, silent, enormously aggrandized, emerged like fabled beasts of the eld, and stared upon him, their jaws dripping with dew. Bulls roared from the obscure deeps. Dead trees, with stark and sinister arms, menaced warningly. All was as unreal as the world of pain's delirium, and yet was as beautiful as the poet's vision; and the ranger, feeling that he was looking upon one of Nature's rarest displays, removed his hat in worship of it, thrilling with pride and satisfaction over the thought that this was his domain, his to guard and preserve.

The crowning glow of mystery and grace came as he led his horse out upon a projecting point of rocky ledge to rest. Here the cliff descended abruptly to an enormous depth, and upon the vaporous rolling flood beneath him a dome of darker shadow rested. At the summit of this shadow an aureole of rainbow light, a complete and glorious circle rested, in the midst of which his own image was flung, grotesque and gigantic.

"The Shadows of the Brocken!" he exclaimed, in ecstasy, all his bitterness, his care, forgotten. "Now I understand Goethe's lines." In all his life in the hills he had never before witnessed such a combination of peak and sun and cloud and shadow.

His love for the range came back upon him with such power that tears misted his eyes and his throat ached. "Where else will I find such scenes as this?" he asked himself. "Where in all the lowlands could such splendors shine? How can I leave this high world in which these wonders come and go? I will not! Here will I bring my bride and build my home. This is my world."

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.

But as he recalled the spot in which he lay and the uniform which hung upon the wall, he was frank to admit that the beautiful and rich heiress of whom his family dreamed was a very unsubstantial vision indeed, and that, to be honest with himself, he had nothing to offer for such shining good-fortune.

At breakfast next morning he said: "I must ride back and take some bread to the dog. I can't go away and leave him there without saying 'hello.'"

"Let me do that," suggested Wetherford. "I'm afraid to go down to the Fork. I reckon I'd better go back and tend the sheep till Gregg sends some one up to take my place."

"That might be too late to see Lize. Lee's voice showed great anxiety. She may be on her death-bed. No; you'd better go down with me to-day," he urged. And at last the old man consented.

Putting some bread in his pockets, Ross rode off up the trail to see how the dog and his flock were faring. He had not gone far when he heard the tinkle of the bells and the murmur of the lambs, and a few moments later the collie came toward him with the air of a boy who, having assumed to disregard the orders of his master, expects a scolding. He plainly said: "I've brought my sheep to you because I was lonesome. Please forgive me."

Cavanagh called to him cheerily, and tossed him a piece of bread, which he caught in his teeth but did not swallow; on the contrary, he held it while leaping for joy of the praise he heard in his new-found master's voice.

Turning the flock upward again toward the higher peaks, the ranger commanded the collie to their heels, and so, having redeemed his promise, rode back to the cabin, where he found Wetherford saddled and ready for his momentous trip to the valley. He had shaved away his gray beard, and had Ross been unprepared for these changes he would have been puzzled to account for this decidedly military figure sitting statuesquely on his pony before the door.

"You can prove an alibi," he called, as he drew near. "Gregg himself would never recognize you now."

Wetherford was in no mood for joking. "Lize will. I wore a mustache in the old days, and there's a scar on my chin."

As he rode he confided this strange thing to Cavanagh. "I know," said he, "that Lize is old and wrinkled, for I've seen her, but all the same I can't realize it. That heavy-set woman down there is not Lize. My Lize is slim and straight. This woman whom you know has stolen her name and face, that's all. I can't explain exactly what I feel, but Lee Virginia means more to me now than Lize."

"I think I understand you," said Cavanagh, with sympathy in his voice.

The nearer Wetherford came to the actual meeting with his wife the more he shook. At last he stopped in the road. "I don't believe I can do it," he declared. "I'll be like a ghost to her. What's the use of it? She'll only be worried by my story. I reckon I'd better keep dark to everybody. Let me go back. I'm plum scared cold."

While still he argued, two men on horseback rounded a sharp turn in the trail and came face to face with the ranger. Wetherford's face went suddenly gray. "My God, there's the deputy!"

"Keep quiet. I'll do the talking," commanded Cavanagh, who was instant in his determination to shield the man. "Good-morning, gentlemen," he called, cheerily, "you're abroad early!"

The man in front was the deputy sheriff of the county; his companion was a stranger.

"That was a horrible mess you stumbled on over on Deer Creek," the deputy remarked.

"It certainly was. Have any arrests been made?"

"Not yet, but we're on a clew. This is Marshal Haines, of Dallas, Mr. Cavanagh," pursued the deputy. The two men nodded in token of the introduction, and the deputy went on: "You remember that old cuss that used to work for Gregg?"

Again Cavanagh nodded.

"Well, that chap is wanted by the Texas authorities. Mr. Haines, here, wants to see him mighty bad. He's an escaped convict with a bad record."

"Is that so?" exclaimed Cavanagh. "I thought he seemed a bit gun-shy."

"The last seen of him was when Sam Gregg sent him up to herd sheep. I think he was mixed up in that killing, myself—him and Ballard—and we're going up to get some track of him. Didn't turn up at your station, did he?"

"Yes, he came by some days ago, on his way, so he said, to relieve that sick Basque, Ambro. I went up a couple of days ago, and found the Basque dead and the old man gone. I buried the herder the best I could, and I'm on my way down to report the case."

The deputy mused: "He may be hanging 'round some of the lumber-camps. I reckon we had better go up and look the ground over, anyhow. We might just chance to overhaul him."

"He may have pulled out over the range," suggested the ranger. "Anyhow, it's a long way up there, and you'll probably have to camp at my place to-night. You'll find the key hanging up over the door. Go in and make yourself comfortable."

The deputy thanked him, and was about to ride on when Cavanagh added: "I burned that Basque's tent and bedding for fear of contagion. His outfit was worthless, anyhow. You'll find the sheep just above my cabin, and the horse in my corral."

"The old man didn't take the horse, eh? Well, that settles it; he's sure at one of the camps. Much obliged. Good-day."

As the two officers rode away Wetherford leaned heavily on his pommel and stared at the ranger with wide eyes. His face was drawn and his lips dry. "They'll get me! My God, they'll get me!" he said.

"Oh no, they won't," rejoined Cavanagh. "You're all right yet. They suspected nothing. How could they, with you in uniform and in my company?"

"All the same, I'm scared. That man Haines had his eyes on me every minute. He saw right through me. They'll get me, and they'll charge me up with that killing."

"No, they won't, I tell you," insisted the ranger. "Haines suspected nothing. I had his eye. He never saw you before, and has nothing but a description to go by. So cheer up. Your uniform and your position with me will make you safe—perfectly safe. They'll find the Basque's camp burned and the sheep in charge of the dog, and they'll fancy that you have skipped across the range. But see here, old man," and he turned on him sharply, "you didn't tell me the whole truth. You said you were out on parole."

"I couldn't tell you the whole truth," replied the fugitive. "But I will now. I was in for a life sentence. I was desperate for the open air and homesick for the mountains, and I struck down one of the guards. I was willing to do anything to get out. I thought if I could get back to this country and my wife and child I'd be safe. I said I'd be willing to go back to the pen if necessary, but I'm not. I can't do it. I'd die there in that hell. You must save me for my girl's sake."

His voice and eyes were wild with a kind of desperate fury of fear, and Cavanagh, moved to pity, assured him of his aid. "Now listen," he said. "I'm going to shield you on account of your work for that poor shepherd and for your daughter's sake. It's my duty to apprehend you, of course, but I'm going to protect you. The safest thing for you to do is to go back to my cabin. Ride slow, so as not to get there till they're gone. They'll ride over to the sawmill, without doubt. If they come back this way, remember that the deputy saw you only as a ragged old man with a long beard, and that Haines has nothing but a printed description to go by. There's no use trying to flee. You are a marked man in that uniform, and you are safer right here with me than anywhere else this side of Chicago. Haines is likely to cross the divide in the belief that you have gone that way, and, if he does, you have no one but the deputy to deal with."

He succeeded at last in completely rousing the older man's courage.

Wetherford rose to meet his opportunity. "I'll do it," he said, firmly.

"That's the talk!" exclaimed Cavanagh, to encourage him. "You can throw them off the track this time, and when I come back to-morrow I'll bring some other clothing for you, and then we'll plan some kind of a scheme that will get you out of the country. I'll not let them make a scapegoat of you."

The ranger watched the fugitive, as he started back over the trail in this desperate defiance of his pursuers, with far less confidence in the outcome than he had put into words.

"All depends on Wetherford himself. If his nerve does not fail him, if they take the uniform for granted, and do not carry the matter to the Supervisor, we will pull the plan through." And in this hope he rode away down the trail with bent head, for all this bore heavily upon his relationship to the girl waiting for him in the valley. He had thought Lize a burden, a social disability, but a convict father now made the mother's faults of small account.

The nearer he drew to the meeting with Lee Virginia the more important that meeting became. After all, woman is more important than war. The love of home and the child persists through incredible vicissitudes; the conqueror returns from foreign lands the lover still; and in the deep of flooded mines and on the icy slopes of arctic promontories dead men have been found holding in their rigid hands the pictured face of some fair girl. In the presence of such irrefutable testimony, who shall deny the persistence and the reality of love?

Cavanagh had seen Virginia hardly more than a score of times, and yet she filled his thought, confused his plans, making of his brain a place of doubt and hesitation. For her sake he had entered upon a plan to shield a criminal, to harbor an escaped convict. It was of no avail to argue that he was moved to shield Wetherford because of his heroic action on the peak. He knew perfectly well that it was because he could not see that fair, brave girl further disgraced by the discovery of her father's identity, for in the searching inquiry which would surely follow his secret would develop.

To marry her, knowing the character of her father and her mother, was madness, and the voice within him warned him of his folly. "Pure water cannot be drawn from corrupt sources," it is said. Nevertheless, the thought of having the girl with him in the wilderness filled him with divine recklessness. He was bewitched by the satin smoothness of her skin, the liquid light of her eye, the curve of her cheek, the swell of her bosom, and, most of all, by the involuntary movement of yielding which betrayed her trust and her love. While still he debated, alternately flushed with resolve to be happy and chilled by some strange dejection, he met Swenson, the young guard who guarded the forest on the south Fork.

As he rode up, Cavanagh perceived in the other man's face something profoundly serious. He did not smile in greeting, as was usual with him, and, taking some letters from his pocket, passed them over in ominous silence.

Cavanagh, upon looking them over, selected a letter evidently from Mrs. Redfield, and stuffed the others into his coat-pocket. It was a closely written letter, and contained in its first sentence something which deeply affected him. Slipping from his saddle, he took a seat upon a stone, that he might the better read and slowly digest what was contained therein. He read on slowly, without any other movement than that which was required to turn the leaves. It was a passionate plea from Eleanor Redfield against his further entanglement with Lize Wetherford's girl.

"You cannot afford to marry her. You simply cannot. The old mother is too dreadful, and may live on for years. The girl is attractive, I grant you, but she's tainted. If there is anything in the law of heredity, she will develop the traits of her mother or her father sooner or later. You must not marry her, Ross; and if you cannot, what will you do? There's only one thing to do. Keep away. I enclose a letter from your sister, pleading with me to urge you to visit them this winter. She is not very strong, as you can see by her writing, and her request will give you an excuse for breaking off all connection with this girl. I am sorry for her, Ross, but you can't marry her. You must not—you must not! Ride over and see us soon, and we will talk it all out together."

He opened another letter, but did not read it. He was too profoundly shaken by the first. He felt the pure friendship, the fine faith, and the guardianship of the writer, and he acknowledged the good sense of all she said, and yet—and yet—

When he looked up Swenson was staring down at him with a face of such bitterness that it broke through even the absorbed and selfish meditation into which he had been thrown.

"What's the matter, Swenson? You look as if you had lost a friend."

"I have," answered the guard, shortly, "and so have you. The chief is out."

"What?"

"They've got him!" he exclaimed. "He's out."

Cavanagh sprang up. "I don't believe it! For what reason? Why?"

"Don't that letter tell you? The whole town is chuckling. Every criminal and plug-ugly in the country is spitting in our faces this morning. Yes, sir, the President has fired the chief—the man that built up this Forestry Service. The whole works is goin' to hell, that's what it is. We'll have all the coal thieves, water-power thieves, poachers, and free-grass pirates piling in on us in mobs. They'll eat up the forest. I see the finish of the whole business. They'll put some Western man in, somebody they can work. Then where will we be?"

Cavanagh's young heart burned with indignation, but he tried to check the other man's torrent of protest.

"I can't believe it. There's some mistake. Maybe they've made him the secretary of the department or something."

"No, they haven't. They've thrown him out. They've downed him because he tried to head off some thievery of coal-mines in Alaska." The man was ready to weep with chagrin and indignant sorrow. His voice choked, and he turned away to conceal his emotion.

Cavanagh put the letter back into his pocket and mounted his horse. "Well, go on back to your work, Swenson. I'm going to town to get the Supervisor on the wire, and find out what it all means."

He was almost as badly stunned by the significance of Swenson's news as Swenson himself. Could it be possible that the man who had built up the field service of the bureau—the man whose clean-handed patriotism had held the boys together, making them every year more clearly a unit, a little army of enthusiasts—could it be possible that the originator, the organizer of this great plan, had been stricken down just when his influence was of most account? He refused to believe it of an administration pledged to the cause of conservation.

As he entered the town he was struck instantly by the change in the faces turned toward him, in the jocular greetings hurled at him. "Hello, Mr. Cossack! What do you think of your chief now?"

"This will put an end to your infernal nonsense," said another. "We'll have a man in there now who knows the Western ways, and who's willing to boom things along. The cork is out of your forest bottle."

Gregg was most offensive of all. "This means throwing open the forest to anybody that wants to use it. Means an entire reversal of this fool policy."

"Wait and see," replied Cavanagh, but his face was rigid with the repression of the fear and anger he felt. With hands that trembled he opened the door to the telephone-booth, closed it carefully behind him, and called for the Supervisor's office. As soon as Redfield replied, he burst forth in question: "Is it true that the chief is out?"

Redfield's voice was husky as he replied, "Yes, lad, they've got him."

"Good Lord! What a blow to the service!" exclaimed Cavanagh, with a groan of sorrow and rage. "What is the President thinking of—to throw out the only man who stood for the future, the man who had built up this corps, who was its inspiration?" Then after a pause he added, with bitter resolution: "This ends it for me. Here's where I get off."

"Don't say that, boy. We need you now more than ever."

"I'm through. I'm done with America—with the States. I shall write my resignation at once. Send down another man to take my place."

Redfield's pleadings were of no avail. Cavanagh went directly from the booth to the post-office, and there, surrounded by jeering and exultant citizens, he penned his resignation and mailed it. Then, with stern and contemptuous face, he left the place, making no reply to the jeers of his enemies, and, mounting his horse, mechanically rode away out upon the plains, seeking the quiet, open places in order to regain calmness and decision. He did not deliberately ride away from Lee Virginia, but as he entered upon the open country he knew that he was leaving her as he was leaving the forests. He had cut himself off from her as he had cut himself off from the work he loved. His heart was swollen big within his breast. He longed for the return of "the Colonel" to the White House. "What manner of ruler is this who is ready to strike down the man whose very name means conservation, and who in a few years would have made this body of forest rangers the most effective corps of its size in the world?" He groaned again, and his throat ached with the fury of his indignation.

"Dismissed for insubordination," the report said. "In what way? Only in making war on greed, in checking graft, in preserving the heritage of the people."

The lash that cut deepest was the open exultation of the very men whose persistent attempt to appropriate public property the chief had helped to thwart. "Redfield will go next. The influence that got the chief will get Hugh. He's too good a man to escape. Then, as Swenson says, the thieves will roll in upon us to slash, and burn, and corrupt. What a country! What a country!"

As he reached the end of this line of despairing thought, he came back to the question of his remaining personal obligations. Wetherford must be cared for, and then—and then! there was Virginia waiting for him at this moment. In his weakness he confessed that he had never intended to marry her, and yet he had never deliberately intended to do her wrong. He had always stopped short of the hideous treachery involved in despoiling her young love. "And for her sake, to save her from humiliation, I will help her father to freedom."

This brought him back to the hideous tragedy of the heights, and with that thought the last shred of faith in the sense of justice in the State vanished.

"They will never discover those murderers. They will permit this outrage to pass unpunished, like the others. It will be merely another 'dramatic incident' in the history of the range."

His pony of its own accord turned, and by a circuitous route headed at last for the home canon as if it knew its master's wavering mind. Cavanagh observed what he was doing, but his lax hand did not intervene. Helpless to make the decision himself, he welcomed the intervention of the homing instinct of his horse. With bent head and brooding face he returned to the silence of the trail and the loneliness of the hills.



XII

CAVANAGH'S LAST VIGIL BEGINS

On his solitary ride upward and homeward the ranger searched his heart and found it bitter and disloyal. Love had interfered with duty, and pride had checked and defeated love. His path, no longer clear and definite, looped away aimlessly, lost in vague, obscure meanderings. His world had suddenly grown gray.

The magnificent plan of the Chief Forester (to which he had pledged such buoyant allegiance) was now a thing apart, a campaign in which he was to be merely an onlooker. It had once offered something congenial, helpful, inspiring; now it seemed fantastic and futile without the man who shaped it. "I am nearing forty," he said; "Eleanor is right. I am wasting my time here in these hills; but what else can I do?"

He had no trade, no business, no special skill, save in the ways of the mountaineer, and to return to his ancestral home at the moment seemed a woful confession of failure.

But the cause of his deepest dismay and doubt was the revelation to himself of the essential lawlessness of his love, a force within him which now made his duties as a law-enforcer sadly ironic. After all, was not the man who presumed upon a maiden's passion and weakness a greater malefactor than he who steals a pearl or strangles a man for his gold? To betray a soul, to poison a young life, is this not the unforgivable crime?

"Here am I, a son of the law, complaining of the lawlessness of the West—fighting it, conquering it—and yet at the same time I permit myself to descend to the level of Neill Ballard, to think as the barbaric man thinks."

He burned hot with contempt of himself, and his teeth set hard in the resolution to put himself beyond the reach of temptation. "Furthermore, I am concealing a criminal, cloaking a convict, when I should be arresting him," he pursued, referring back to Wetherford. "And why? Because of a girl's romantic notion of her father, a notion which can be preserved only by keeping his secret, by aiding him to escape." And even this motive, he was obliged to confess, had not all been on the highest plane. It was all a part of his almost involuntary campaign to win Virginia's love. The impulse had been lawless, lawless as the old-time West, and the admission cut deep into his self-respect.

It was again dusk as he rode up to his own hitching-pole and slipped from the saddle.

Wetherford came out, indicating by his manner that he had recovered his confidence once more. "How did you find things in the valley?" he inquired, as they walked away toward the corral.

"Bad," responded the ranger.

"In what way?"

"The chief has been dismissed and all the rascals are chuckling with glee. I've resigned from the service."

Wetherford was aghast. "What for?"

"I will not serve under any other chief. The best thing for you to do is to go out when I do. I think by keeping on that uniform you can get to the train with me."

"Did you see Lize and my girl?"

"No, I only remained in town a minute. It was too hot for me. I'm done with it. Wetherford, I'm going back to civilization. No more wild West for me." The bitterness of his voice touched the older man's heart, but he considered it merely a mood.

"Don't lose your nerve; mebbe this ends the reign of terror."

"Nothing will end the moral shiftlessness of this country but the death of the freebooter. You can't put new wine into old bottles. These cattle-men, deep in their hearts, sympathize with the wiping-out of those sheep-herders. The cry for justice comes from the man whose ear is not being chewed—the man far off—and from the town-builder who knows the State is being hurt by such atrocities; but the ranchers over on Deer Creek will conceal the assassins—you know that. You've had experience with these free-grass warriors; you know what they are capable of. That job was done by men who hated the dagoes—hated 'em because they were rival claimants for the range. It's nonsense to attempt to fasten it on men like Neill Ballard. The men who did that piece of work are well-known stock-owners."

"I reckon that's so."

"Well, now, who's going to convict them? I can't do it. I'm going to pull out as soon as I can put my books in shape, and you'd better go too."

They were standing at the gate of the corral, and the roar of the mountain stream enveloped them in a cloud of sound.

Wetherford spoke slowly: "I hate to lose my girl, now that I've seen her, but I guess you're right; and Lize, poor old critter! It's hell's shame the way I've queered her life, and I'd give my right arm to be where I was twelve years ago; but with a price on my head and old age comin' on, I don't see myself ever again getting up to par. It's a losing game for me now."

There was resignation as well as despair in his voice and Cavanagh felt it, but he said, "There's one other question that may come up for decision—if that Basque died of smallpox, you may possibly take it."

"I've figured on that, but it will take a day or two to show on me. I don't feel any ache in my bones yet. If I do come down, you keep away from me. You've got to live and take care of Virginia."

"She should never have returned to this accursed country," Cavanagh harshly replied, starting back toward the cabin.

The constable, smoking his pipe beside the fireplace, did not present an anxious face; on the contrary, he seemed plumply content as he replied to the ranger's greeting. He represented very well the type of officer which these disorderly communities produce. Brave and tireless when working along the line of his prejudices, he could be most laxly inefficient when his duties cut across his own or his neighbor's interests. Being a cattle-man by training, he was glad of the red herring which the Texas officer had trailed across the line of his pursuit.

This attitude still further inflamed Cavanagh's indignant hate of the country. The theory which the deputy developed was transparent folly. "It was just a case of plain robbery," he argued. "One of them dagoes had money, and Neill Ballard and that man Edwards just naturally follered him and killed the whole bunch and scooted—that's my guess."

Cavanagh's outburst was prevented by the scratching and whining of a dog at his door. For a moment he wondered at this; his perturbed mind had dropped the memory of the loyal collie.

As he opened the door, the brute, more than half human in his gaze, looked beseechingly at his new master, as if to say, "I couldn't help it—I was so lonely. And I love you."

"You poor beastie," the ranger called, pityingly, and the dog leaped up in a frenzy of joyous relief, putting his paws on his breast, then dropped to the ground, and, crouching low on his front paws, quivered and yawned with ecstasy of worship. It seemed that he could not express his passionate adoration, his relief, except by these grotesque contortions.

"Come in, Laddie!" Ross urged, but this the dog refused to do. "I am a creature of the open air," he seemed to say. "My duties are of the outer world. I have no wish for a fireside—all I need is a master's praise and a bit of bread."

Cavanagh brought some food, and, putting it down outside the door, spoke to him, gently: "Good boy! Eat that and go back to your flock. I'll come to see you in the morning."

When Cavanagh, a few minutes later, went to the door the dog was gone, and, listening, the ranger could hear the faint, diminishing bleating of the sheep on the hillside above the corral. The four-footed warden was with his flock.

An hour later the sound of a horse's hoofs on the bridge gave warning of a visitor, and as Cavanagh went to the door Gregg rode up, seeking particulars as to the death of the herder and the whereabouts of the sheep.

The ranger was not in a mood to invite the sheepman in, and, besides, he perceived the danger to which Wetherford was exposed. Therefore his answers were short. Gregg, on his part, did not appear anxious to enter.

"What happened to that old hobo I sent up?" he asked.

Cavanagh briefly retold his story, and at the end of it Gregg grunted. "You say you burned the tent and all the bedding?"

"Every thread of it. It wasn't safe to leave it."

"What ailed the man?"

"I don't know, but it looked and smelled like smallpox."

The deputy rose with a spring. "Smallpox! You didn't handle the cuss?"

Cavanagh did not spare him. "Somebody had to lend a hand. I couldn't see him die there alone, and he had to be buried, so I did the job."

Gregg recoiled a step or two, but the deputy stood staring, the implication of all this sinking deep. "Were you wearing the same clothes you've got on?"

"Yes, but I used a slicker while working around the body."

"Good King!" The sweat broke out on the man's face. "You ought to be arrested."

Ross took a step toward him. "I'm at your service."

"Keep off!" shouted the sheriff.

Ross smiled, then became very serious. "I took every precaution, Mr. Deputy; I destroyed everything that could possibly carry the disease. I burned every utensil, including the saddle, everything but the man's horse and his dog!"

"The dog!" exclaimed the deputy, seized with another idea. "Not that dog you fed just now?"

"The very same," replied Cavanagh.

"Don't you know a dog's sure to carry the poison in his hair? Why, he jumped on you! Why didn't you shoot him?" he demanded, fiercely.

"Because he's a faithful guardian, and, besides, he was with the sheep, and never so much as entered the tent."

"Do you know that?"

"Not absolutely, but he seemed to be on shy terms with the herder, and I'm sure—"

The officer caught up his hat and coat and started for the door. "It's me for the open air," said he.

As the men withdrew Ross followed them, and, standing in his door, delivered his final volley. "If this State does not punish those fiends, every decent man should emigrate out of it, turning the land over to the wolves, the wildcats, and other beasts of prey."

Gregg, as he retreated, called back: "That's all right, Mr. Ranger, but you'd better keep to the hills for a few weeks. The settlers down below won't enjoy having a man with smallpox chassayin' around town. They might rope and tie you."

Wetherford came out of his hiding-place with a grave face. "I wonder I didn't think of that collie. They say a cat's fur will carry disease germs like a sponge. Must be the same with a dog."

"Well, it's too late now," replied Cavanagh. "But they're right about our staying clear of town. They'll quarantine us sure. All the same, I don't believe the dog carried any germs of the disease."

Wetherford, now that the danger of arrest was over, was disposed to be grimly humorous. "There's no great loss without some small gain. I don't think we'll be troubled by any more visitors—not even by sheriffs or doctors. I reckon you and I are in for a couple of months of the quiet life—the kind we read about."

* * * * *

Cavanagh, now that he was definitely out of the Forest Service, perceived the weight of every objection which his friends and relatives had made against his going into it. It was a lonely life, and must ever be so. It was all very well for a young unmarried man, who loved the woods and hills beyond all things else, and who could wait for advancement, but it was a sad place for one who desired a wife. The ranger's place was on the trail and in the hills, and to bring a woman into these high silences, into these lone reaches of forest and fell, would be cruel. To bring children into them would be criminal.

All the next day, while Wetherford pottered about the cabin or the yard, Cavanagh toiled at his papers, resolved to leave everything in the perfect order which he loved. Whenever he looked round upon his belongings, each and all so redolent of the wilderness—he found them very dear. His chairs (which he had rived out of slabs), his guns, his robes, his saddles and their accoutrements—all meant much to him. "Some of them must go with me," he said. "And when I am settled down in the old home I'll have one room to myself which shall be so completely of the mountain America that when I am within it I can fancy myself back in the camp."

He thought of South Africa as a possibility, and put it aside, knowing well that no other place could have the same indefinable charm that the Rocky Mountains possessed, for the reason that he had come to them at his most impressionable age. Then, too, the United States, for all their faults, seemed merely an extension of the English form of government.

Wetherford was also moving in deep thought, and at last put his perplexity into a question. "What am I to do? I'm beginning to feel queer. I reckon the chances for my having smallpox are purty fair. Maybe I'd better drop down to Sulphur and report to the authorities. I've got a day or two before the blossoms will begin to show on me."

Cavanagh studied him closely. "Now don't get to thinking you've got it. I don't see how you could attach a germ. The high altitude and the winds up there ought to prevent infection. I'm not afraid for myself, but if you're able, perhaps we'd better pull out to-morrow."

Later in the day Wetherford expressed deeper dejection. "I don't see anything ahead of me anyhow," he confessed. "If I go back to the 'pen' I'll die of lung trouble, and I don't know how I'm going to earn a living in the city. Mebbe the best thing I could do would be to take the pox and go under. I'm afraid of big towns," he continued. "I always was—even when I had money. Now that I am old and broke I daren't go. No city for me."

Cavanagh's patience gave way. "But, man, you can't stay here! I'm packing up to leave. Your only chance of getting out of the country is to go when I go, and in my company." His voice was harsh and keen, and the old man felt its edge; but he made no reply, and this sad silence moved Cavanagh to repentance. His irritability warned him of something deeply changing in his own nature.

Approaching the brooding felon, he spoke gently and sadly. "I'm sorry for you, Wetherford, I sure am, but it's up to you to get clear away so that Lee will never by any possible chance find out that you are alive. She has a romantic notion of you as a representative of the old-time West, and it would be a dreadful shock to her if she knew you as you are. It's hard to leave her, I know, now that you've seen her, but that's the manly thing to do—the only thing to do."

"Oh, you're right—of course you're right. But I wish I could be of some use to her. I wish I could chore round for the rest of my life, where I could kind o' keep watch over her. I'd be glad enough to play the scullion in her kitchen. But if you're going to take her—"

"But I'm not," protested Ross. "I'm going to leave her right here. I can't take her."

Wetherford looked at him with steady eyes, into which a keen light leaped. "Don't you intend to marry her?"

Ross turned away. "No, I don't—I mean it is impossible!"

"Why not? Don't tell me you're already married?" He said this with menacing tone.

"No, I'm not married, but—" He stopped without making his meaning plain. "I'm going to leave the country and—"

Wetherford caught him up. "I reckon I understand what you mean. You consider Lize and me undersirable parents—not just the kind you'd cut out of the herd of your own free will. Well, that's all right, I don't blame you so far as I'm concerned. But you can forget me, consider me a dead one. I'll never bother her nor you."

Cavanagh threw out an impatient hand. "It is impossible," he protested. "It's better for her and better for me that I should do so. I've made up my mind. I'm going back to my own people."

Wetherford was thoroughly roused now. Some part of his old-time fire seemed to return to him. He rose from his chair and approached the ranger firmly. "I've seen you act like a man, Ross Cavanagh. You've been a good partner these last few days—a son couldn't have treated me better—and I hate like hell to think ill of you; but my girl loves you—I could see that. I could see her lean to you, and I've got to know something else right now. You're going to leave here—you're going to throw her off. What I want to know is this: Do you leave her as good as you found her? Come, now, I want an answer, as one man to another."

Cavanagh's eyes met his with firm but sorrowful gaze. "In the sense in which you mean, I leave her as I found her."

The old man's open hand shot out toward his rescuer. "Forgive me, my lad," he said, humbly; "for a minute I—doubted you."

Ross took his hand, but slowly replied: "It will be hard for you to understand, when I tell you that I care a great deal for your daughter, but a man like me—an Englishman—cannot marry—or he ought not to marry—to himself alone. There are so many others to consider—his friends, his sisters—"

Wetherford dropped his hand. "I see!" His tone was despairing. "When I was young we married the girls we loved in defiance of man, God, or the cupboard; but you are not that kind. You may be right. I'm nothing but a debilitated old cow-puncher branded by the State—a man who threw away his chance—but I can tell you straight, I've learned that nothing but the love of a woman counts. Furthermore," and here his fire flashed again, "I'd have killed you had you taken advantage of my girl!"

"Which would have been your duty," declared Cavanagh, wearily.

And in the face of this baffling mood, which he felt but could not understand, the old man fell silent.



XIII

CAVANAGH ASKS FOR HELP

Lee Virginia waited with increasing impatience for Ross Cavanagh's return, expecting each noon to see him appear at the door; but when three days passed without word or sign from him, her uneasiness deepened into alarm. The whole town was profoundly excited over the murder, that she knew, and she began to fear that some of the ranger's enemies had worked their evil will upon him.

With this vague fear in her heart, she went forth into the street to inquire. One of the first men she met was Sifton, who was sitting, as usual, outside the livery-barn door, smiling, inefficient, content. Of him she asked: "Have you seen Mr. Cavanagh?"

"Yes," he answered, "I saw him yesterday, just after dinner, down at the post-office. He was writing a letter at the desk. Almost immediately afterward he mounted and rode away. He was much cut up over his chief's dismissal."

"Why has he not written to me," she asked herself, "and why should he have gone away without a word of greeting, explanation, or good-bye? It would have taken but a moment's time to call at the door."

The more she dwelt upon this neglect the more significant it became. After the tender look in his eyes, after the ardent clasp of his hand, the thought that he could be so indifferent was at once a source of pain and self-reproach.

With childish frankness she went to Lize and told her what she had learned, her eyes dim with hot tears. "Ross came to town, and went away back to his cabin without coming to see me."

"Are you sure he's been here?"

"Yes. Mr. Sifton saw him go. He came in, got some letters at the post-office, and then rode away—" Her voice broke as her disappointment and grief overcame her.

Lize struggled to a sitting position. "There's some mistake about this. Ross Cavanagh never was the whifflin' kind of man. You've got to remember he's on duty. Probably the letter was some order that carried him right back to his work."

"But if he had really cared, he could have ridden by to say just a word; but he didn't, he went away without a sign, after promising to come." She buried her face in the coverlet of her mother's bed, and wept in childish grief and despair.

Lize was forced to acknowledge that the ranger's action was inexplicable, but she did her best to make light of it. "He may have hurried to town on some errand, and hadn't a moment to spare. These are exciting days for him, remember. He'll be in to-morrow sure."

With a faint hope of this, the girl rose and went about her daily tasks; but the day passed, and another, without word or sign of the recreant lover, and each day brought a deeper sense of loss, but her pride would not permit her to show her grief.

Young Gregg, without knowing in the least the cause of her troubled face, took this occasion to offer comfort. His manner toward her had changed since she no longer had a part in the management of the eating-house, and for that reason she did not repulse him as sharply as she had been wont to do. He really bore Cavanagh no ill-will, and was, indeed, shrewd enough to understand that Lee admired the ranger, and that his own courtship was rather hopeless; nevertheless, he persisted, his respect for her growing as he found her steadfast in her refusal to permit any familiarity.

"See here, Miss Virginia," he cried, as she was passing him in the hall, "I can see you're worried about Lize (I mean your mother), and if I can be of any use I hope you'll call on me." As she thanked him without enthusiasm, he added: "How is she to-night?"

"I think she's better."

"Can I see her?"

His tone was so earnest that the girl was moved to say: "I'll ask her."

"I wish you would; I want to say something to her."

Lize's voice reached where they stood. "Come in, Joe, the door's open."

He accepted her invitation rather awkwardly, but his face was impassive as he looked down upon her.

"Well, how about it?" she asked. "What's doing in the town?"

"Not much of anything—except talk. The whole country is buzzing over this dismissal of the Chief Forester."

"They'd better be doing something about that murder."

"They are; they're going up there in streams to see where the work was done. The coroner's inquest was held yesterday." He grinned. "'Parties came to their death by persons unknown.'"

Lize scowled. "It's a wonder they don't charge it up to Ross Cavanagh or some other ranger."

"That would be a little too raw, even for this country. They're all feeling gay over this change in the forestry head; but see here, don't you want to get out for a ride? I've got my new machine out here; it rides like silk."

"I reckon a hearse is about my kind," she replied, darkly. "If you could take me up to Cavanagh's cabin, I'd go," she added. "I want to see him."

"I can take you part way," he instantly declared. "But you'd have to ride a horse the last ten miles."

"Couldn't do it, Joe," she sighed. "These last few days I've been about as boneless as an eel. Funny the way a fellow keeps going when he's got something to do that has to be done. I'll tell you what, if you want to take me and Lee up to Sulphur, I'll go ye."

"Sure thing. What day?"

"Not for a day or two. I'm not quite up to it just now; but by Saturday I'll be saddle-wise again."

Joe turned joyously to Lee. "That will be great! Won't you come out for a spin this minute?"

For a moment Lee was tempted. Anything to get away from this horrible little den and the people who infested it was her feeling, but she distrusted Gregg, and she knew that every eye in the town would be upon her if she went, and, besides, Ross might return while she was away. "No, not to-day," she replied, finally; but her voice was gentler than it had ever been to him.

The young fellow was moved to explain his position to Lize. "You don't think much of me, and I don't blame you. I haven't been much use so far, but I'm going to reform. If I had a girl like Lee Virginia to live up to, I'd make a great citizen. I don't lay my arrest up against Cavanagh. I'm ready to pass that by. And as for this other business—this free-range war in which the old man is mixed up—I want you to know that I'm against it. Dad knows his day is short; that's what makes him so hot. But he's a bluff—just a fussy old bluff. He knows he has no more right to the Government grass than anybody else, but he's going to get ahead of the cattle-men if he can."

"Does he know who burned them sheep-herders?"

"Of course he knows, but ain't going to say so. You see, that old Basque who was killed was a monopolist, too. He went after that grass without asking anybody's leave; moreover, he belonged to that Mexican-Dago outfit that everybody hates. The old man isn't crying over that job; it's money in his pocket. All the same it's too good a chance to put the hooks into the cattle-men, hence his offering a reward, and it looks as if something would really be done this time. They say Neill Ballard was mixed up in it, and that old guy that showed me the sheep, but I don't take much stock in that. Whoever did it was paid by the cattle-men, sure thing." The young fellow's tone and bearing made a favorable impression upon Lize. She had never seen this side of him, for the reason that he had hitherto treated her as a bartender. She was acute enough to understand that her social status had changed along with her release from the cash-register, and she was slightly more reconciled, although she could not see her way to providing a living for herself and Lee. For all these reasons she was unwontedly civil to Joe, and sent him away highly elated with the success of his interview.

"I'm going to let him take us up to Sulphur," she said to Lee. "I want to go to town."

Lee was silent, but a keen pang ran through her heart, for she perceived in this remark by her mother a tacit acknowledgment of Ross Cavanagh's desertion of them both. His invitation to them to come and camp with him was only a polite momentary impulse. "I'm ready to go," she announced, at last. "I'm tired of this place. Let us go to-morrow."

On the following morning, while they were busy packing for this journey, Redfield rolled up to the door in company with a young man in the uniform of a forester.

"Go ask Reddy to come in," commanded Lize. "I want to see him."

Redfield met the girl at the door and presented his companion as "Mr. Dalton, District Forester." Dalton was a tall young fellow with a marked Southern accent. "Is Cavanagh, the ranger, in town?" he asked.

"No," Lee replied, with effort; "he was here a few days ago, but he's gone back to the forest."

Redfield studied the girl with keen gaze, perceiving a passionate restraint in her face.

"How is your mother?" he asked, politely.

Lee smiled faintly. "She's able to sit up. Won't you come in and see her?"

"With pleasure," assented Redfield, "but I want to see you alone. I have something to say to you." He turned to his superior. "Just go into the cafe, Dalton. I'll see you in a moment."

Lee Virginia, hitherto ashamed of the house, the furniture, the bed—everything—led the way without a word of apology. It was all detached now, something about to be left behind, like a bad garment borrowed in a time of stress. Nothing mattered since Ross did not return.

Lize, looking unwontedly refined and gentle, was sitting in a big rocking-chair with her feet on a stool, her eyes fixed on the mountains, which showed through the open window. All the morning a sense of profound change, of something passing, had oppressed her. Now that she was about to leave the valley, its charm appealed to her. She was tearing up a multitude of tiny roots of whose existence she had hitherto remained unaware. "I belong here," she acknowledged, silently. "I'd be homesick anywhere else on God's earth. It's rough and fly-bit, and all that, but so am I. I wouldn't fit in anywhere that Lee belonged."

She acknowledged an especial liking for Redfield, and she had penetration enough, worldly wisdom enough, to know that Lee belonged more to his world than to her own, and that his guidance and friendship were worth more, much more, than that of all the rest of the country, her own included. Therefore, she said: "I'm mighty glad to see you, Reddy. Sit down. You've got to hear my little spiel this time."

Redfield, perched on the edge of a tawdry chair, looked about (like the charity visitor in a slum kitchen) without intending to express disgust; but it was a dismal room in which to be sick, and he pitied the woman the more profoundly as he remembered her in the days when "all out-doors" was none too wide for her.

Lize began, abruptly: "I'm down, but not out; in fact, I was coming up to see you this afternoon. Lee and I are just about pulling out for good."

"Indeed! Why not go back with me?"

"You can take the girl back if you want to, but now that I'm getting my chance at you I may not go."

Redfield's tone was entirely cordial as he turned to Lee. "I came hoping to carry you away. Will you come?"

"I'm afraid I can't unless mother goes," she replied, sadly.

Lize waved an imperative hand. "Fade away, child. I want to talk with Mr. Redfield alone. Go, see!"

Thus dismissed, Lee went back to the restaurant, where she found the Forester just sitting down to his luncheon. "Mr. Redfield will be out in a few minutes," she explained.

"Won't you join me?" he asked, in the frank accent of one to whom women are comrades. "The Supervisor has been telling me about you."

She took a seat facing him, feeling something refined in his long, smoothly shaven, boyish face. He seemed very young to be District Forester, and his eyes were a soft brown with small wrinkles of laughter playing round their corners.

He began at once on the subject of his visit. "Redfield tells me you are a friend of Mr. Cavanagh's; did you know that he had resigned?"

She faced him with startled eyes. "No, indeed. Has he done so?"

"Yes, the Supervisor got a letter yesterday enclosing his resignation, and asking to be relieved at once. And when I heard of it I asked the Supervisor to bring me down to see him; he's too good a man to lose."

"Why did he resign?"

"He seemed very bitter over the chief's dismissal; but I hope to persuade him to stay in the service; he's too valuable a man to lose just now when the war is so hot. I realize that his salary is too small; but there are other places for him. Perhaps when he knows that I have a special note to him from the chief he will reconsider. He's quite capable of the Supervisor's position, and Mr. Redfield is willing to resign in his favor. I'm telling you all this because Mr. Redfield has told me of your interest in Mr. Cavanagh—or rather his interest in you."

Sam Gregg, entering the door at this moment, came directly to the Forester's table. He was followed by the sheriff, a bearded old man with a soiled collar and a dim eye.

Gregg growled out, "You'd better keep your man Cavanagh in the hills, Mr. Forester, or somebody will take a pot-shot at him."

"Why, what's new?"

"His assistant is down with smallpox."

"Smallpox!" exclaimed Dalton.

Every jaw was fixed and every eye turned upon the speaker.

"Smallpox!" gasped Lee.

Gregg resumed, enjoying the sensation he was creating. "Yes, that Basque herder of mine—the one up near Black Tooth—sent word he was sick, so I hunted up an old tramp by the name of Edwards to take his place. Edwards found the dago dying of pox, and skipped out over the range, leaving him to die alone. Cavanagh went up and found the dago dead, and took care of him—result is, he's full of germs, and has brought his apprentice down with it, and both of 'em must be quarantined right where they are."

"Good heavens, man!" exclaimed Dalton. "This is serious business. Are you sure it's smallpox?"

"One of my men came from there last night. I was there myself on Monday, so was the deputy. The sheriff missed Tom this morning, but I reached him by 'phone, and Cavanagh admitted to us that the Basque died of smallpox, and that he buried him with his own hands."

The sheriff spoke up. "The criminal part of it is this, Mr. Dalton: Cavanagh didn't report the case when he came down here, just went about leaving a trail of poison. Why didn't he report it? He should be arrested."

"Wait a moment," said Dalton. "Perhaps it wasn't pox, perhaps it was only mountain-fever. Cavanagh is not the kind of man to involve others in a pestilence. I reckon he knew it was nothing but a fever, and, not wishing to alarm his friends, he just slid into town and out again."

A flash of light, of heat, of joy went through Lee's heart as she listened to Dalton's defence of Cavanagh. "That was the reason why he rode away," she thought. "He was afraid of bringing harm to us." And this conviction lighted her face with a smile, even while the Forester continued his supposition by saying, "Of course, proper precautions should be taken, and as we are going up there, the Supervisor and I will see that a quarantine is established if we find it necessary."

Gregg was not satisfied: "Cavanagh admitted to the deputy and to me that he believed the case to be smallpox, and said that he had destroyed the camp and everything connected with it except the horse and the dog, and yet he comes down here infectin' everybody he meets." He turned to Lee. "You'd better burn the bed he slept on. He's left a trail of germs wherever he went. I say the man is criminally liable, and should be jailed if he lives to get back to town."

Lee's mind was off now on another tangent. "Suppose it is true?" she asked herself. "Suppose he has fallen sick away up there, miles and miles from any nurse or doctor—"

"There's something queer about the whole business," pursued Gregg. "For instance, who is this assistant he's got? Johnson said there was an old man in ranger uniform potterin' round. Why didn't he send word by him? Why did he let me come to the door? He might have involved me in the disease. I tell you, if you don't take care of him the people of the county will."

The Forester looked grave. "If he knew it was pox and failed to report it he certainly did wrong; but you say he took care of this poor shepherd—nursed him till he died, and buried him, taking all precautions—you can't complain of that, can you? That's the act of a good ranger and a brave man. You wouldn't have done it!" he ended, addressing Gregg. "Sickness up there two full miles above sea-level is quite a different proposition from sickness in Sulphur City or the Fork. I shall not condemn Mr. Cavanagh till I hear his side of the story."

Lee turned a grateful glance upon him. "You must be right. I don't believe Mr. Cavanagh would deceive any one."

"Well, we'll soon know the truth," said Dalton, "for I'm going up there. If the ranger has been exposed, he must not be left alone."