“When I heard the name of Wingate the first time that I come to the valley and stopped all night at Clayton’s I was goin’ to ask him all about you and tell him what I knowed; but he made me mad, when he cut me off that way, and I didn’t. 'Tain’t no good excuse fer not tellin’, I reckon, an’ you may think I hadn’t any better excuse later on, but that’s why I didn’t, anyway. Davison’s treatin’ me the way he did and that trouble I had with you made me keep my head shet till now. But that fortune teller, when I seen her the second time, said fer me to tell you the whole thing, and so I’m doin’ it, though mebbe it won’t please you.”
Sander’s tone was apologetic.
Justin heard in amazed bewilderment. Philip Davison his father! The thing was incredible, impossible. But he opened the memorandum book with reverent fingers, as Sanders wandered on with his explanations and excuses. This little diary at least was real. The first glance showed him the familiar handwriting which he knew to be his mother’s. He knew every curve and turn of the letters penned in the little Bible, which at that moment was in his trunk at the hotel. There she had written:
“Justin, my baby boy, is now six months old. May God bless and preserve him and may he become a good man.”
Here was the same handwriting, a portion of it in pencil so worn in places as to be almost illegible. Hardly hearing what Sanders was now saying Justin began to read. The dates were far apart. Some of the things set down had been written before Justin was born; others must have been penciled shortly before her death. Many were unrelated and told of trivial things. Others concerned her husband and her child. The details were more complete in the later pencilled notes, where she had sought to make a record for the benefit of her boy in the event of her death, which she seemed to foresee or fear. There was sadness here and tears and the story of a pitiful tragedy; and here also in full were the names of her husband and her son.
She was the wife of Philip Davison, and her son Justin was born a year after her marriage. Davison was then a small farmer, with a few cattle, living in a certain valley, which she named. Davison, as Justin knew, had come from that valley to the valley of Paradise. Davison’s habit of occasional intoxication was known to her before her marriage, as was also his violent outbursts of temper; but love had told her the old lie, that she could save him from himself. The result had been disaster. In a fit of drunken rage he had so abused her that she had fled from him in the night with her child. A terrible storm arose as she wandered through the foothills. But she had stumbled on, crazed by fear and more dead than alive. How she lived through the week that followed she declared in this yellowed writing that she did not know, but she had lived. She was journeying toward the distant railroad. Now and then some kind-hearted man gave her a seat in his wagon, and now and then she found shelter and food in the home of some lonely settler. She would not return to Davison, and she hoped he believed she had died in the storm.
The brief record ended in a blank, which had never been filled. Sanders—his name was not mentioned by her—had taken her into his prairie schooner—he was but a fatherless boy himself—and there she had died, worn out by suffering and exhaustion. But her baby had lived, and was now known as Justin Wingate.
A deep sense of indignation burned in Justin’s breast against Philip Davison, as he read the pathetic story. Against Sanders he could not be indignant, in spite of the wrong the man had done him by withholding this information through all the years; for Sanders had soothed the last moments of his mother, and Sanders’ wagon had given her the last shelter she had known. Justin’s fingers shook, and in his eyes there was a blinding dash of tears.
Sanders was still drawling on, stopping occasionally to chew at an unwilling sentence. It was an old story to him, and so had lost interest. Sibyl was standing expectantly by, watching Justin with solicitude for her plans. His feelings did not reach her.
“So I am Philip Davison’s son!”