Influenced by Clayton and by the circumstances and incidents of his ranch life, Justin could not help feeling that the open range stood for barbarous cruelty, and agriculture for the reverse. He was the thrall of the past. As often as that memory of the unsheltered range came back to him, and out of the swirling snows starving and freezing cattle looked at him with hungry eyes, while his ears caught their low meanings mingled with the death song of the icy wind, he felt that his intuitions were right, and his doubts fled away.
Then would come the conviction that he had been led, until he stood where he was now. Was it not a strange thing, he reflected at such times, that he, who as a boy had sickened at the branding of a calf, who later had suffered heart-ache with Clayton over the tragedies of the range, who from the first had sympathized with the farmers even as Wingate had sympathized with them, should stand where he stood now? In his hand lay great issues. If he proved true, he would become, without design or volition on his part, the sword of the irrigationists. The question which he faced was whether or not he should be true to that dream of a blossoming desert and to the teachings of Clayton.
Harkness had assured him, with much vehemence, that there were “no strings on him;” the cowboys had given him their votes because they desired to testify thus to their admiration of his bravery and their detestation of the conduct of Ben Davison. Yet Justin knew there were “strings on him,”—influences, friendships, feelings, hopes and desires, which he could nether forget nor ignore. No longing for place or power could have moved him now that he had taken his stand, and anything approaching the nature of a bribe would have filled him with indignation. But these other things bade him pause and consider; they even forced him to doubt. And with Justin, doubt weakened the very foundations of the structure of belief which at first he had thought so stable.
CHAPTER IX
SANDERS TELLS HIS STORY
The evening before the day set for the election of United States senator Lemuel Fogg received this message from Sibyl Dudley:
“Remember our agreement. I am prepared to do what I promised. I shall not fail, and you must not.”
At a late hour that same evening a messenger handed Justin a note. It was from Sibyl. She was waiting for him in the lobby, and had a carriage in the street.
“I want to take you home with me,” she said, in her pleasantest manner.
“Is Lucy there?” was his eager question.
“What a mind reader you are!” She laughed playfully. “She is there, and if you are good I will permit you to have a look at her.”