“And yet–” mused the Colonel, “–well, here’s to our mothers! And may we ever be dutiful sons! After all, my friend, no man can escape his duty; and if duty should call us to endure a certain martyrdom we have the example of Socrates to sustain us. If report is true he had a scolding wife–the name of Xanthippe has become a proverb–and yet what more noble than Socrates’ rebuke to his son when he behaved undutifully towards his mother? Where else in all literature will you find a more exalted statement of the duty we all owe our parents than in Socrates’ dialogue with Lamprocles, his son, as recorded in the Memorabilia of Xenophon? And if, living with Xanthippe and listening to her railings, he could yet attain to such heights of philosophy is it not possible that men like you and me might come, through his philosophy, to endure it? It is that which I am pondering while I am alone here in the desert; but my spirit is weak and that accursed camp robber made off with my volume of Plato.”

“Well, personally,” stated Wiley, his mind on the Widow, “I think I agree more with Plato. Let ’em keep in their place and not crush into business with their talk and their double-barreled shotguns.”

278“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the Colonel, drawing himself up gravely, “but did you happen to come through Keno?”

“Never mind;” grumbled Wiley, “you might be the Sheriff. Tell me more about this married man, Socrates.”

279CHAPTER XXXI
The Broken Trust

To seek always for Truth and Justice and the common good of mankind has seldom had its earthly reward but, twenty-three hundred and fifteen years after he drank the cup of hemlock, the soul of Socrates received its oration. Not that the Colonel was hipped upon the subject of the ancients, for he talked mining and showed some copper claims as well; but a similar tragedy in his own domestic life had evoked a profound admiration for Socrates. And if Wiley understood what lay behind his words he gave no hint to the Colonel. Always, morning, noon and night, he listened respectfully, his lips curling briefly at some thought; and at the end of a week the Colonel was as devoted to him as he had been formerly to his father.

Yet when, as sometimes happened, the Colonel tried to draw him out, he shook his head stubbornly and was dumb. The problem that he had could not be solved by talk; it called for years to recover and forget; and if the Colonel once knew that his own daughter was involved he might rise up and demand a retraction. In his first rush of 280bitterness Wiley had stated without reservation that Virginia had sold him out for money, and the pride of the Huffs would scarcely allow this to pass unnoticed–and yet he would not retract it if he died for it. He knew from her own lips that Virginia had betrayed him, and it could never be explained away.

If she argued that she was misled by Blount and his associates, he had warned her before she left; and if she had thought that he was doing her an injustice, that was not the way to correct it. She had accepted a trust and she had broken that trust to gain a personal profit–and that was the unpardonable sin. He could have excused her if she had weakened or made some mistake, but she had betrayed him deliberately and willfully; and as he sat off by himself, mulling it over in his mind, his eyes became stern and hard. For the killing of Stiff Neck George he had no regrets, and the treachery of Blount did not surprise him; but he had given this woman his heart to keep and she had sold him for fifty thousand dollars. All the rest became as nothing but this wound refused to heal, for he had lost his faith in womankind. Had he loved her less, or trusted her less, it would not have rankled so deep; but she had been his one woman, whose goings and comings he watched for, and all the time she was playing him false.

He sat silent one morning in the cool shade of a wild grapevine, jerking the meat of a mountain sheep that he had killed; and as he worked mechanically, 281shredding the flesh into long strips, he watched the lower trail. Ten days had gone by since he had fled across the Valley, but the danger of pursuit had not passed and, as he saw a great owl that was nesting down below rise up blindly and flop away he paused and reached for his gun.