Judith of the Godless Valley | Page 3

the level before the schoolhouse, broke
into a gallop and slid, with sparks flying, to the door.
"Hello, Scott!" said Douglas, without enthusiasm.
"I thought Jude was here!" returned Scott. He was older and heavier
than Douglas, freckled of face and sandy of hair, with something hard
in his hazel eyes.
"He'd better leave Jude alone," thought Douglas, "the mangy pinto!"
There was a shriek and a gray horse, carrying a youth with the
schoolmarm clinging behind him, flew across the yard and reared to
avoid breaking his knees on the steps. The schoolmarm scrambled
down, still screaming protests at the grinning rider. One after another
now arrived, perhaps a dozen youngsters, varying in age from five to
eighteen, each on his or her own lean, half-broken horse, each
appearing with the same flying leap from the steep trail to the level,
each racing across the yard as if with intent to burst through the

schoolhouse door, each bringing up with the same pull back of foaming
horse to its haunches. And with each horse came a dog of highly varied
breed.
The youngsters had been racing about the ledge for some time before
the grown people began to appear. The women, most of them very
handsome, were dressed dowdily in mackinaws and anomalous foot
covering. But the men were resplendent in chaps and short leather coats,
with gay silk neckerchiefs, with silver spurs and embossed saddles.
When Judith returned with Maud Day there were thirty or forty people
and almost as many dogs milling about the yard. The log school had
weathered against the red wall of the mesa for fifty years. There
probably was not a person in the crowd who had not gone to school
there, who did not, like Judith, love every log in its ugly sides. Judith
caught Douglas' sardonic gaze, tossed her curly head and urged Swift
up the steps, where she looked toward the road to the Pass, shading her
fine eyes with a mittened hand.
Finally she cried, "I see the preacher coming!"
"Somebody ought to go in and build the fire if we ain't going to freeze
to death!" exclaimed Grandma Brown, jogging up on a flea-bitten black
mule.
"He invited himself. Let him build his own fire!" cried Douglas.
Grandma pulled her spectacles down from her forehead to the bridge of
her capable nose, and stared at Douglas.
"Well! Well! Doesn't take 'em long away from the nursing bottle to get
smarty. Where's your father, Douglas?"
"Home with the toothache," replied Doug, flushed and irritated.
"Did he bring you up to let a stranger come to the house and build his
own fire?"

"No, but it's the schoolmarm's job to build this one," replied Douglas.
"Jimmy Day, you and Doug go in and get that old stove going!"
ordered Grandma.
Both boys dismounted slowly, tied their horses, and amidst a general
chuckle, disappeared into the schoolhouse.
Charleton Falkner, a black-browed rider of middle age, with a heavy
black mustache, turned his horse toward Grandma.
"That's right, Charleton," the old lady went on, "you come over here
and help me off of Abe. I ain't going to stay out here freezing till old
Fowler comes. Riding ain't the novelty to me it seems to be to the rest
of you."
This was the signal for all the grown people to tie up their horses and
enter the building. Shortly Douglas and Jimmy came out, and scarcely
had remounted when the minister rode slowly up over the ledge. He
dismounted at the door and greeted the youngsters. They replied with
cat-calls. Fowler stared at the group of robust young riders, his
gray-bearded face somber, then he shook his head and opened the door.
Douglas jumped from his horse and, giving the reins to Jimmy Day, he
followed the minister. The people within were seated quietly, and Doug
slid into a rear bench. His eyes were very bright and he watched the
preacher with eager interest. Mr. Fowler dropped his overcoat on a
chair and strode up to the platform, where he smiled half wistfully, half
benignly at his congregation. Then he raised his right hand.
"Let us pray!" he said. "O God, help me to speak truth to these people
who ten years ago laughed me from this room. Help me to open their
eyes that they may behold You! Show them that they lead a life of
wickedness from the babes in arms to the very aged, from--"
"Tain't any such thing!" interrupted Grandma Brown. "There you go
again, after all these years!"

"If you've come here to preach old-fashioned fire and brimstone,
Fowler," said Charleton Falkner, "you might as well quit now. None of
us believe a word of it. We most of us think everything ends when they
plant us in the