“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.