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Justin Wingate, Ranchman
Justin Wingate, Ranchman
BOOK ONE—THE PREPARATION
CHAPTER I
THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM
Before swinging out of the saddle in front of the little school house which was serving as a church, Curtis Clayton, physician and philosopher, looked over the valley which held the story of a romantic hope and where he was to bury his own shattered dream. The rain of the morning had cleared away the bluish ground haze, the very air had been washed clean, and the land lay revealed in long levels and undulating ridges. Behind towered the mountain, washed clean, too, its flat top etched against the sky and every crag and peak standing out sharp and hard as a cameo.
Clayton’s broncho pawed restlessly on the edge of a grass-grown cellar. All about the tiny cluster of unoccupied houses were other grass-grown cellars, and the foundation lines of vanished buildings, marking the site of the abandoned town. Beside the school house, from which came now the sound of singing, horses were tied to a long hitching rack. A few farm wagons stood near, the unaccustomed mud drying on their wheels.
Clayton dismounted and began to tie his horse. His left arm, stiff and bent at the elbow, swung awkwardly and gave such scant aid that he tightened the knot of the hitching strap by pulling it with his teeth. He was dressed smartly, in dust-proof gray, and wore polished riding boots. His unlined face showed depression and weariness. In spite of this it was a handsome face, lighted by clear dark eyes. The brow, massive and prominent, was the brow of a thinker. Over it, beneath the riding cap, was a tangle of dark hair, now damp and heavy. When he spoke to his horse his tones were suggestive of innate kindness. There were no spurs on the heels of his riding boots, and he patted the horse affectionately before turning to the door of the church.
The interior was furnished as a school house. Cramped into the seats, with feet drawn up and arms on the tops of the desks, sat the few people who composed the congregation, young farmers and their wives and small children, with wind-burned, honest faces. Apart from the others was a boy, whose slight form fitted easily into the narrow space he occupied. He sat well forward and looked steadily at the preacher, turning about, however, as all did, when Clayton came in at the door.
Clayton’s entrance and the turning about of the people to look broke the rhythmic swing of the hymn, but the preacher, standing behind the teacher’s desk which served as pulpit, lifted his voice, beating the time energetically with the book he held, and the hymn was caught up again with vigor. He smiled upon Clayton, as the latter squeezed into a rear seat, as if to assure him that he was welcome and had disturbed no one.
The preacher took his text from the thirty-fifth chapter of Isaiah:
“The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing.... Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, fear not.’”
Clayton was not greatly interested in the Scripture read, in the preacher, nor in the people. He had entered to get away from his own thoughts more than anything else. But, weary of thinking, he tried now to let the preacher lead him out of himself.
His attention was caught and held by the application of the text. The preacher was using it not as a spiritual metaphor, but as a promise to be fulfilled literally and materially in the near future and in that place. Looking through the open windows at the level grasslands damp with the recent rain, he saw the good omen. The desert was there now, but men should till it and it should blossom as the rose; yellow grain fields should billow before the breezes that came down from the mountain; the blue bloom of alfalfa should make of the valley a violet cup spilling its rich perfume on the air and offering its treasure of honey for the ravishing of the bee; rice corn, Kaffir corn, and sorghum should stand rank on rank, plumed, tufted, and burnished by the sunlight. Paradise—Clayton heard the name of the valley and the town for the first time—should become as the Garden of God.
Clayton saw that the man was a dreamer, putting into form the cherished hopes of the people in the narrow seats before him. A land boom had cast high its tide of humanity, then had receded, leaving these few caught as the drift on the shore. The preacher was one of them; and he looked into their eyes with loving devotion and flushing face, as he contrasted the treeless valley of the present with the Paradise of his desire. He was a dreamer who believed his dream and was trying to make his hearers believe it.