“Talk it out, Larry,” Jim said, as the other broke off from his half-laughing, wholly serious protest, and helped himself to a drink from the Rye whisky and water that stood on the small table close beside him. “Notions stick with me when I get ’em into my fool head. They take a deal of shifting. Still, I always reckon there’s things other folks can see that I’m mostly blind to, and I like to know about ’em.”
He gazed out over the shadowed, evening scene. It was as though the wand of some magician had passed over the valley he had known some two years back, when Hope and Despair had fought out their long battle in his half-starved soul.
The mighty background of it all was unchanged. There lay the shadowed forests sweeping up and about the giant hill-slopes, which helped to hold secret the sweet grass pastures which flooded the heart of the valley. There lay the calm, silvery winding path of the river that had once provided him with his principal means of life. There lay the unending pastures that had first inspired his imagination. It was all there, just as he had known it in the days when Dan Quinlan’s ministering visits had meant his moral as well as physical salvation. But it was no longer simply a splendid picture of Nature’s handiwork. A complete transformation had been wrought.
The outline of it all was still clearly visible in the last of the daylight. Night shadows were gathering, and a few twinkling lights dotted the fringe of the forest beyond the river. There were buildings in almost every direction within half a mile of where he stood. They were low, squat buildings of green logs and skilful thatch, and represented human habitations for the unfortunate freight that had come to people the valley. Nearer by stood a number of larger buildings. They were barns standing in the vicinity of the corrals, which were many and stout. Beyond these lay the rectangular outlines of fenced pastures, which seemed to extend so far into the distance that they became completely lost to view. Beyond that were several hundred acres of fenced ploughing that were beyond his view.
The lowing of cattle came back to him from the corrals and the far pastures. The night sounds of the river, where the frog chorus was unceasing, no longer emphasised the desolation he had once known. The whole valley was alive with all that which the human mind delights in. There were occasional echoes stirred by human voices, and the friendly yelp of dogs. And then there, where he was standing, was his own beautiful log-built home, furnished as civilisation demands, and full of human companionship.
His had been the controlling mind that had brought it all about. His had been the wealth that had made it possible. And in the work of it all he had been supported without stint by the loyalty of his sister, and this cheerful, freckled creature who was revelling in one of his occasional cautionary protests.
Laurence Manford laughed as he set his glass back on the table and lit a fresh cigar.
“It’s not a deal of use, Jim,” he declared. “I haven’t a thing to say against the notion of it all. It’s the sort of notion any feller who knows you right would look for. It seems to me there’s boys born into this pretty swell old world of ours with most of the juice you ought to find in their heads running around the valves of their foolish hearts. It’s not reasonable to figger a feller’s heart can think right with the things inside it that don’t belong there. That’s your trouble. Guess you were born with a heart that’s short-circuited your thinking machine. Now, I’m the other way about. I start in to think at the right end of me, and, when anything else butts in, just beat it over the head till it quits. Being that way, I got a pretty wide view of this enterprise of yours, and find myself guessing darn hard about the way it’s going to end. We got forty crooks around this layout,” he finished up significantly, “and some of ’em are pretty tough.”
“Well?”
Jim moved back to a chair and sat himself opposite his fiery-headed friend. He was smiling contentiously, and Larry recognised that he must make good his argument.