The ordeal through which he had passed since coming to Denver had taught him how to keep silent amid the maddest tumult. At first he had sought to justify whatever course he intended to pursue, only to find his statements snapped up, distorted, spread abroad with amendments he had never thought of, and so mutilated that often even he could not recognize the mangled fragments. So, having learned his lesson well, he kept still. Other men could do the talking. To the men who besieged him he had “nothing to say.” Until he saw Philip Davison and placed that diary in his hands he felt that he could have nothing to say. Even then he might act without saying anything. From time to time he observed Fogg watching him covertly.

While he waited, senate and house convened and began to vote for the senatorial candidates. Fogg went into the senate chamber, after speaking to a member of the lower house. Justin, whose name was far down on the rolls, remained in the lobby until a sergeant-at-arms came summoning members of the house to vote. Then he entered. When he dropped heavily into his seat he was greeted by suppressed cheering and a buzz of anxious and excited comment. These things did not move him; what moved him was a mental view of his father’s face, and that inner tide of feeling demanding the satisfaction of a father’s love.

Suddenly he recalled Fogg’s covert and anxious looks, and like a flash came the question: Could this whole thing be but a plot to bewilder him and cause him to vote with the ranchmen, or not at all? He knew that Lucy would not deceive him, but she might herself be deceived. He could not doubt that record in the handwriting of his mother, but after all the reference might be to another Philip Davison. His nerves tingled and his brain reeled under the influence of this startling suggestion.

While thus bewildered, his name was called. He half rose, staggering to his feet, hardly knowing what his physical actions were. But his mind began to clear. Clayton’s face, the dream of Peter Wingate, and that picture of the unsheltered range, rose before him; again he saw the illegal fences; again starving cattle looked at him with hungry eyes, and their piteous moans were borne to him on the breath of the freezing wind. Once more he was the thrall of the past. His courage stiffened, the firm will was firm again. He felt that there was but one rock on which he could set his trembling feet, and that was the rock of righteousness. If in this crucial moment he failed to stand for that which in his innermost soul he knew to be right, the self-respect which had nurtured his sturdy young manhood would be gone. His face whitened and his hand shook; but his voice was firm, when he announced his vote. It rang with clear decision through the silence that had fallen on the house.

Sibyl Dudley had lost.

CHAPTER XI
FATHER AND SON

Philip Davison saw Lucy before she returned to Paradise Valley and learned from her the strange story which had been told by William Sanders. From Fogg and others he had already heard how Justin had voted. And the discovery that even after Justin had been informed of this relationship he had voted against the cattlemen hardened his heart. He refused to see Justin now, and went back to Paradise Valley angry and uncomfortable. There he sought out Sanders and obtained the story direct from him.

After his talk with Sanders, a talk in which Sanders revealed to the full the bitterness and vindictiveness of his narrow mind, Philip Davison shut himself up in his room at the ranch house, where he would not see any one, and through the greater part of the night sat reviewing the past, while he smoked many cigars. The drinking habit which had been the curse of his earlier years he had conquered. Since the night in which his wife had fled never to return, he had not set liquor to his lips; and Ben’s growing habits of intoxication threw him continually into a rage. Only that morning, encountering Clem Arkwright and Ben together in the town and seeing that both had been drinking, he had cursed Arkwright to his face, and with threats and warnings had ordered Ben home. That Ben had not obeyed did not make Philip Davison’s cup the sweeter that night.

The prosaic accuracy of the details of the story told by Sanders, with what he knew himself, convinced Davison of its truth, in spite of his previous belief that the cloud-burst which came shortly after his wife had fled from home had engulfed and slain both her and her child. His belief of her death had been based on the fact that nearly a year after her disappearance the unidentified bodies of a woman and child had been found in the foothills; and in a little, remote cemetery, where these bodies rested, a simple slab held the names of Esther and Justin Davison.

Davison recalled now that it was the name, more than anything else, that had induced him to give Justin employment on the ranch. The name of Justin and the memories it evoked had touched some hidden tendril of his heart, and had made him kind to Justin at times when but for that he might have been otherwise. As often as he had felt inclined to turn upon Justin in hot anger that name had softened his wrath. He had never a thought that Justin was his son; yet the name had won for Justin a warmer place in his regard than Justin could have won by his own merits.