The Exile of The Lariat/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII
THE OLD RANCH
JOHNNY PARNELL confessed that he knew very little if anything, first hand, about installing a Governor in office. But he did know that Hugh had an entire disregard of pomp and ceremony, and Johnny, who loved gesture, proposed that his old range buddy should become chief executive of Wyoming with as elaborate a flourish as could be crowded into one short January day, and he therefore made himself master of the inaugural ceremonies. Nor did he propose that any convention should be overlooked. So he urged Hugh to have Jessie present at the morning ceremonies and at the inaugural ball in the evening.
“I doubt if she’ll come,” said Hugh, abruptly.
“She won’t for me. I’ve tried her out,” agreed Johnny, opening his jackknife and picking the ice out of his spurs. “But she will for you.”
“I don’t see why I should try to get her to do something she doesn’t want to do,” objected Hugh.
“Great suffering wildcats, man!” shouted Johnny. “She’d come if she knew you wanted her!”
“But I don’t want her,” grunted Hugh.
Johnny strode over to Hugh’s chair and stooped to look into Hugh’s face. “You mean to tell me, Stewart, after all that girl has done”
“You’re intruding again, Parnell!” Hugh returned succinctly.
Johnny turned on his heel and went out, slamming the door behind him. But he had succeeded in making Hugh uneasy, and about noon Fort Sioux saw the Governor elect mount Fossil and start through the deep, fresh fallen snow that covered the trail to the Dude Ranch.
It was one of the sapphire tinted days that makes a winter in the upper altitudes of Wyoming unforgetable. The plains were a translucent glowing blue, purple deep, where mighty drifts cast wave-like shadows. The sky delicately remote belled like a mighty turquoise over the glowing world. There was utter silence. Utter stillness. Hugh and Fossil moved alone in all the universe. Hugh breathed deep of the biting air and thought of the days to come at the Governor’s desk in Cheyenne. He was not sure that he was going to be able to stick it out.
Several miles from the ranch the solitude was broken when Hugh caught sight of a figure moving rapidly along the trail before him. He could not at first distinguish whether it was man or woman. He spurred Fossil on and shortly picked up ski tracks. A little later he saw that the skier was tall and slender and wore a scarlet mackinaw. It was Jessie, and he gave a long Sioux cry. She turned and moved slowly back toward him.
“Hello, Hughie!” she said as Fossil galloped up. “Cold, isn’t it?”
“Below zero, I guess. Been anywhere in particular, Jessie?”
“No! I like to ski. Magpie has gone lame.”
“I came up to ask you to come to the inaugural ceremonies with me, Jessie.”
Jessie looked up at him, cheeks crimson, eyes deep blue and inscrutable.
“Thanks, Hughie, I don’t care to go.”
“Johnny Parnell thinks it will look bad if you aren’t there,” said Hugh.
“Since when were you troubled by appearances?” drawled Jessie.
“Me? I’m not troubled at all. I want you to have the pleasure of being there.”
The color receded from Jessie’s cheeks, leaving her face singularly austere. She lifted her chin in the old gesture.
“Hughie, I guess you didn’t understand the last thing I said to you the other day. I meant that I was through. As long as you needed me, or I mean, as long as I could do things for you that no one else could, I was willing to humiliate myself. But now you don’t need me any more. And I’m going to live my own life to myself.”
“But don’t you want to come to the ceremonies?” blundered Hugh.
“As the unloved wife of the great man?” asked Jessie. “No, thank you, Hughie. I haven’t a sense of duty now to sustain me. I have planned an interesting life for myself. I don’t need you either. Go along and get yourself made into a Governor.”
Vaguely resentful, bewildered, Hugh stared at her. “You don’t care about me any more, Jessie?”
“Wouldn’t it relieve you to know that I was through?” asked his wife.
Hugh still stared at her white face. “I’d like to have something left out of the wreck of my life,” he exclaimed.
“What do you mean by wreck?” demanded Jessie.
“Everything that I have cared about. You don’t think I enjoy being Governor? You don’t think that I would swap one of those days I spent in the Dinosaur Cave getting out the triceratops for my whole term of office? O I’ll go through with it. But you, at least, must have no illusions about it.”
“Hughie, I’m truly sorry about your work. You don’t know how many of your speeches I’ve heard. You educated me just as you did every one else.”
“I wish I could have educated you years ago,” said Hugh, tensely. “Then you won’t come up to Cheyenne, Jessie?”
“No, Hugh! I’ve done my bit—I’m freezing to death, here. Will you come back to the ranch for a cup of coffee?”
Hugh did not reply for the moment. He was staring at Jessie with all that Mrs. Ellis had said of her flooding his mind. Suddenly he found himself curious about what had been going on inside of Jessie’s brain. It was the first time he recalled ever having felt this particular curiosity.
“Yes,” he said, slowly, “I’ll go back to the ranch with you. Would you like to mount Fossil while I take the skis?”
“No, thanks I can keep up with Fossil’s trot.”
The sun was low in the west, and the unearthly blue of the world glowed with rose. Jessie, gliding slightly ahead of the trotting horse, was silhouetted against the limitless snowy wastes in lines of extraordinary virile grace. She was crimson and gold, as if, Hugh thought, the opalescent fire of the landscape centered upon her.
They made no attempt at conversation until the ranch was reached. There Hugh left Fossil at the door and followed Jessie into the living room. It was long since he had visited the old place. The great room still was decorated with the Navajos that his mother had hung on the walls. Jessie had had the fireplace built. It glowed now with cedar logs. There was the indescribable atmosphere of home about it. Jessie had not put this into their rooms in the hotel. And although The Lariat was home, it never, Hugh now suddenly realized, had been home-like.
“Sit down by the fire, Hugh, and I’ll tell Li Wing to make us coffee,” said Jessie, pulling off her mackinaw.
When she returned Hugh stared at her. “Jessie, I know why we drifted apart. We never needed each other.”
Jessie dropped into the armchair opposite Hugh. Her blue blouse, open at the neck, disclosed the fine white column of her throat. Her cheeks were deep rose from cold and exercise. Her eyes blue violet. Perhaps she was not beautiful, in the sense that Miriam had been beautiful, but surely her vitality, her strength, had a loveliness of their own. A loveliness that Hugh felt subconsciously while he concentrated on this new idea concerning their old relationship.
“I’m not sure that we didn’t need each other,” said Jessie in her deliberate way. “We were both too selfish and self-centered to understand our own or each other’s need.”
Hugh sighed. “Well, it’s a great pity we didn’t wake up years ago.”
“Why do you say that? Do you wish you never had met Miriam Page?” asked Jessie, her eyes deepening as she spoke.
“No I’m glad. She gave me some perfect hours and some exquisite dreams. The thing I can’t forgive her for is that she left the memory of those permanently tainted by her treachery.”
“It wasn’t exactly treachery,” protested Jessie, reluctantly.
“It was treachery,” insisted Hugh, uncompromisingly. “What her motives were only adds to the cruelty of it. I can’t bear the thought of the whole thing. And yet, Jessie, I have a strange feeling of destiny about her. I have suffered horribly about her. Her death was a terrible blow. Yet I don’t regret the episode.”
“Episode!” repeated Jessie. “Episode! Why, Hughie, little as I knew her, much as I hated her, I realized that it was the great thing of her life.”
“Her ambition was the great thing of Miriam’s life as my work was of mine,” contradicted Hugh.
“Was of yours, Hughie?”
Hugh hesitated. “Jessie, I care about it more than ever. I long for it with increasing hunger. And yet, I can see that there are things I can do that are more valuable; for the moment, at least.”
There was a long silence, during which Li Wing brought in coffee and rice cakes and shuffled out. When she had served Hugh, Jessie said, carefully:
“Hughie, if I had given you a divorce and you had married Miriam Page, what would you have demanded of your marriage to her?”
“I hadn’t thought of that. You’ll have to give me time, Jessie.” He finished his coffee in silence, then went on. “As I felt that summer she was here, I suppose that what I really wanted most was the wonderful sympathy for my work which I thought she had. As I feel now, I’d have wanted her to give me something I think she’d have been unwilling to give me, perhaps incapable of giving.”
Jessie nodded. “Hughie, has it ever occurred to you that perhaps the reason we all instinctively resented your being so absorbed in paleontology was because it cut you off from life? Wait a moment. It’s hard to find words. I mean that you had that wonderful long view, as you call it, of the past, which was fine as far as it went. But you always stopped flat with the dinosaurs. You didn’t see the march of life on into the future. You talked a lot about opening up the past for future generations to read. You never saw yourself as one of the torchbearers of life, with a race obligation to hand the lighted torch on.”
Hugh listened intently. When Jessie paused, he said, “I’ve realized that, Jess, but only since Christmas. Jessie, let me tell you what happened on Christmas Eve. You knew about the baby, of course. But let me give you the whole story.”
Jessie, wide-eyed, scarcely daring to breathe lest she mar this first of Hugh’s confidences, felt as if she could not bear the poignancy Hugh gave to this other woman’s sacrifice. When he had finished the account with the return of Marten and the doctor, he said, “No man could have gone through that and not have felt differently about his mother and his wife.”
Jessie clasped her hands desperately to her breast. “I never was a real wife to you. I refused motherhood,” with a little sob.
Hugh nodded. “Yes, Jessie, but I refused fatherhood, tacitly. I didn’t want a baby to interfere with my fossils.”
“And so,” exclaimed Jessie, “you gave up your fossils for the Children’s Code!”
“Yes,” replied Hugh.
Li Wing came in with a lighted lamp. Hugh, with a start, looked at his watch. “I’ve a conference at seven o’clock.” He rose, looking down on Jessie, half whimsically, “So you won’t come up to the inaugural, Jessie?”
Jessie smiled, but shook her head, “I meant what I said, Hughie. You don’t need me. My job is finished.”
“Do you need me, Jessie?” asked Hugh, with sudden seriousness.
Jessie looked into the fire. “Hughie,” she said, “it’s not my business to answer that question. It’s not a question of my demanding, but of your giving, of your seeing and wanting to give. And,” now looking bravely up into his eyes, “I’ve made up my mind that time will never come and I’m going to give you your divorce.”
“What!” shouted Hugh.
“Of course, I’ll get it. That’s the way it’s done,” said Jessie.
“But look here, Jessie, I’m not asking for that, am I?”
“You have asked for it before, Hughie. Now it’s I that ask for it. You go along now to your engagement and think it over.”
“But I’m not sure that I want to think it over. Jessie, are you beginning to care for some other man?”
“Certainly not!” exclaimed Jessie, indignantly. “It’s just that I finally understand your feeling toward me.”
“O you do, do you!” muttered Hugh. He turned, with a curious resentment, and jerked himself into his coat. Then, with a puzzled look in his eyes, he gave Jessie a long stare and an abrupt “Good-by!” and strode into the night.
He rode home entirely absorbed in reviewing this conversation with Jessie, concentrating his thoughts at last on its startling finale. He felt distinctly resentful. If Jessie cared for no one else, he could see no reason why matters should not remain as they were. Anyhow, divorce proceedings now, he told himself, would hurt his prestige as Governor. But he had the grace to laugh at himself at this last thought, as he recalled his many repudiations of Mrs. Ellis’ warnings along this very line.
Probably no one enjoyed the inauguration more than Johnny Parnell nor less than Hughie. Owing to the irrepressible instinct of the Wyomingite for the picturesque, there was no inconsiderable amount of pomp connected with the day. The high moment was at the close of Hugh’s inaugural address. Curiously enough, this never could be read in the archives of the state as a great speech. Yet the vast assemblage that listened to Hugh was fully persuaded that Wyoming had produced at last its great man. It was a situation peculiar to American politics.
Hugh’s story was familiar to every one now. Even the tale of the swap of the Sioux Tract for the Children’s Code had reached the remotest parts of the state. Here was romance, here was idealism, here was steadfastness and self-sacrifice. Outside of the political rings, they gave not a fig what his politics might be. Here was the man they had clothed in the finest of their dreams. And they were going by their half-mad enthusiasm to force him to wear the fabric as his own.
Hugh felt this keenly and sadly as the endless lines of people filed by him, clasping his hand, praising him, congratulating each other and the state. He wanted them to know how utterly inadequate he felt, but after one or two deprecatory remarks he gave up the attempt. Mob enthusiasm is not to be stayed by mere self-depreciation.
The most picturesque moment of the day occurred when Hugh was leaving the capitol building to attend a function at the Governor’s mansion. A crowd, half mob, half procession, was waiting to escort him. There were cavalrymen, spick and span in winter uniforms. There were cowmen with chaps and neckerchiefs fluttering. There were Indians in blankets and buckskins and miners and railroad men in overalls. There were two or three over land stage-coaches loaded with shouting school children. Hugh paused to smile at the motley gathering. Johnny’s idea of massing Wyoming’s short history into the Governor’s escort was picturesque in the extreme.
One of the Indians, catching sight of Hugh, galloped to the steps, leading a horse on whose back was a beautiful silver-mounted saddle. Reaching the steps, he deliberately forced his horse to mount and the led horse to follow.
“Red Wolf!” cried Hugh. “How are you, old timer?”
Red Wolf dismounted and shook hands gravely. There was sudden silence in the crowd below.
“Injuns of Wyoming bring the Governor greeting,” said the Indian.
“Thank you, Red Wolf,” returned Hugh. “What is the extra horse for, Chief?”
“For you. From Red Wolf and Eagle Wing. The gray stallion!”
“The gray stallion? Why, so it is, Red Wolf!” exclaimed Hugh.
“Pink, he have ’im up on horse ranch he start in Big Fang country,” the Indian chief said gravely.
Hugh smiled in spite of himself. “Thank you for bringing him, Red Wolf,” he exclaimed, casting as he did an interesting eye toward the listening crowd. Pink, he supposed, was somewhere in the throng.
His supposition was entirely correct. There was a commotion at the bottom of the steps and Pink, pursued by Fred Allward in a miner’s garb, puffed up the steps. Pink had lost his head. He made a lunge at the Indian. Red Wolf, resplendent in chief’s robe and war bonnet, did not move a muscle. Hugh caught Pink by the throat and forced him to stand quietly before him.
“Don’t you dare to start anything here, Pink!” he said.
“Go on, Governor!” cried a voice from the crowd. “You don’t need to be afraid of anything he can say!”
“He sure is afraid!” called some one else. “Pink has a grudge because Stewart’s his son-in-law and don’t live with his wife.”
Hisses drowned the voice. Red Wolf looked contemptuously at Pink.
“Let ’em speak, Hughie,” said the Indian. “He no can hurt you or me.”
Hugh slowly released his hold on his father-in-law’s throat. Pink straightened himself, rubbed his throat and turned toward the now altogether enthralled crowd. He looked the very perfect picture of a fat, good-natured cowman.
“I ain’t a public speaker!” exclaimed Pink, “but I guess I can prove to you that that stallion is mine.”
“Is it the real, original gray stallion?” asked somebody.
“Yes, it is,” replied Pink, glancing at the beautiful plunging brute. “I found it running the plains last spring. It was a wild horse. I brought it in and put it in my corral. That same night it disappeared. Either the Governor or this Injun’s son had taken it.”
“That’s a heap lie!” exclaimed Red Wolf. “Stallion in Billy Chamberlain’s old adobe three days. Then my boy, he follow Pink while Pink he take ’em stallion one night up to old Stone Devil’s Cave. He wait long time to see what Pink do there. My boy afraid go in Stone Devil’s Cave. Pink get away with stallion, my son lose ’em.”
“That’s a lie!” roared Pink. “I never saw the stallion till I found it in the Dinosaur Cave and took it up to my ranch.”
“Shut up, Pink, and let the Injun finish!” said several voices.
“What made you think the stallion was yours, Red Wolf? Tell the crowd,” cried Fred Allward.
“I rope ’em up in Wild Horse country beyond Big Fang. I bring ’em down. I meet Hughie. He help me. Down by bridge they drink, all my wild horses, about one hundred and forty. Fred Allward, he learning run airplane, he run airplane into my wild horses. Kill heap many. Stampede rest. Hughie, he have fight with gray stallion, rope ’em, tie ’em to bridge, tell Pink Morgan take care of ’em.”
“That’s right!” shouted Fred Allward. “That airplane did some battling among them horses!”
The crowd roared and applauded. “Looks like this was a foolish move on your part, Pink,” grinned Fred.
Pink stood, the picture of martyrdom, until the applause died down. Then he said, firmly:
“I found that horse, a wild horse, running free on the flats across from Fort Sioux. I took him up to my ranch and broke him. A week ago this Injun came up there and attacked me and scalped me!”
A gasp went through the audience. All its restless, colorful movement was stilled as Pink took off his cap and, wincing as he did so, tore away the bandage on the top of his head. The wound was like a dull red disk.
Indian hate still lives in our frontier states. Many a man and woman in that audience had lived through horrors of Indian warfare of which the mark on Pink’s head was the sign manual. Pink Morgan was more or less of a joke, but the scalp mark on his head brought tragedy to the memory of every pioneer who saw it.
A murmur rose. Hugh looked quickly at Red Wolf. The old chief stood silent, unafraid.
“You’d better go, Red Wolf,” Hugh said to him quietly. “Take your horse straight through the Capitol to the rear door.”
Red Wolf grunted. “No will do.” He suddenly shot a bronze palm upward and outward, a gesture of such power and dignity that the murmur ceased.
“Red Wolf, he took the scalp lock,” he said in a voice that carried to the outer edge of the crowd where the school children in the old yellow stage-coaches hung from the windows in precarious attitudes of absorbed attention. “Red Wolf he took scalp lock. Pink long ago take my ranch. Pink, he smash up Stone Devil for Hughie here. Hughie, he my friend, best friend. Pink, he hurt Hughie here,” laying a bronze hand on Hughie’s heart. “Hughie, he never lie, he never break promise. Pink, he heap crooked. Red Wolf, he take scalp lock.”
He paused and for a full moment there was silence, with the brilliant winter sunlight glowing over the multi-colored crowd and centering on the old Sioux’s marvelous beaded tunic, the high spot in all that vivid scene.
Pink broke the silence. “Well, do I get the stallion or don’t I? Do I get this Injun jailed, or don’t I?”
“You’ll get neither,” said Hugh in a calm voice. “Red Wolf keeps the stallion. Indian or no Indian, he’s a thoroughbred. Am I not right?” appealing with a smile to the listening throng.
Johnny Parnell, in the whitest angora chaps and the most vivid blue handkerchief ever seen in Cheyenne, jingled up the steps.
“Look here, folks, looks like Pink has made you jury on this case. I want to tell you that I know personally that every word the Sioux says is true. The reason I know is that for a little while I played around with Pink Morgan at the game he was putting over. Till I saw a great light and undertook to help make this man’s man the Governor. Now, my advice to Pink is, don’t start anything with Hugh Stewart. He ain’t a nice boy when he gets mad. The Eastern Electric Corporation got him mad and he stopped digging fossils long enough to make himself Governor so’s he could tend to their case properly.
“Hughie Stewart thought more of that Old Sioux Tract than he did of anything else on earth. He gave up more than any of you imagine to save it, for a national fossil field. And yet, when he got out of his boneyards into human living and found out what the Children’s Code meant, he told Charley Whitson he could have the Thumb Butte site, if he’d give Wyoming the Code.
“And that’s the man this here little Pink Morgan has tried to injure.”
A roar went up from the crowd. Johnny shook his head and the crowd caught breath and listened.
Johnny went on: “I have a suggestion. Pink, he values that scalp lock awful high. As you see, he ain’t got any hair to spare. So I say, let Red Wolf return that scalp lock and let Hughie keep the gray stallion, and let Pink be thankful I ain’t told everything I know about him and me.”
For the first time during the scene Red Wolf’s sense of humor gleamed in his eyes. While the audience rocked with laughter, he detached from his belt a tiny lock of hair and handed it to Johnny. Johnny, with a broad grin, offered it to Pink, and Pink suddenly bolted across the portico into the building.
“Mount the gray stallion, Governor!” shouted a voice.
Hugh turned an inquiring eye on Red Wolf, who nodded and said, his eyes still twinkling, “Pink, he broke him heap good.”
Hugh sprang into the saddle and amidst the thunder of applause rode the prancing stallion down the steps. And the much belated parade began.
The day dragged on for Hugh through function after function. He was confused and conscious of a sense of loneliness that he never had experienced in the most isolated spot where his fossil prospecting had taken him. This then was that political life for which those nearest him considered him so preeminently well fitted! He groaned in spirit.
At every moment when something more formal was not being pressed upon him, the politicians of both parties were waiting on him with requests for a share in the spoils. These requests bewildered and puzzled Hugh.
“Mrs. Ellis,” he asked during an unexpected lull, “am I under obligations to everybody in the state? Isn’t there any one with whom I break even?”
The mother of the Code chuckled, then said, seriously, “You owe nothing. You went in absolutely without obligations except as to the Sioux Tract and the Children’s Code. You’ve canceled those debts. If I were you, I’d give nothing to any one until you have been in office long enough to know what you want for Wyoming.”
“Then I’ll see no more of them today,” Hugh’s voice expressed relief.
Except Charley Whitson. I promised him I’d arrange for you to see him before the ball tonight.”
“What does he want?” asked Hugh.
“I don’t know. But we’ll need him for the Code.”
Hugh smiled. “You’re more loyal to the Code than I’ve been to my dinosaurs.”
Mrs. Ellis laid a plump hand on his arm. “You’ve helped me to be so, my dear. I shall never forget it. Here comes Johnny. I’m sorry for you, Hughie,” she laughed and slipped away.
Lonely and sad the day was, yes, and yet Hugh arrived at the Governor’s mansion for the hour’s rest permitted him by the ferocious Johnny, with a curious feeling of satisfaction. There was something gratifying in realizing that the people of Wyoming believed he would lead them into that nebulous, elusive finer life that the lowliest and the worst of us longs for and seldom achieves. Only in certain restricted directions could Hugh open a trail for them, he knew. But, he told himself after the day of adulation, he would take a keen pride in doing all that lay within him.