Lon told her. “I’m sorry about Black, but Jake sure had it comin’,” he finished.
The foreman passed into the other room to tell Clint the news.
In a hushed voice Betty talked the tragedy over with Tug. The swiftness with which Nemesis had overtaken and obliterated Prowers was appalling to her. She had a momentary vision, vivid and amazingly sure, of God in the shadows passing judgment on the sins of men. It was as though they were back in the days of the old Hebrew prophets when the hand of the Lord stretched out and laid itself upon wicked men for their punishment when the measure of their time was full.
“He tried to stand above the law in this valley,” Hollister told her. “He wanted to stop progress—said there shouldn’t be any dam to reclaim the Flat Tops for settlers. Merrick will rebuild it. The land will be watered. Your ranch will be good as ever in three months. And he’ll be buried and forgotten.”
“And poor Don Black?” she whispered. “Poor Don, who never had a chance in this world, or, if he had one, muddled it so badly?”
He could only hope that Don had gone to a better-ordered world where circumstances did not dominate good intentions.
Betty’s sense of tragedy lingered just now no longer than a cinema picture. The life urge in her clamored for expression. No world could be a sad one with her and Tug in it.
“Shall I go in and tell your father now?” the young man asked.
“Soon.” She made a rustling little motion toward him and found herself in his arms. “Isn’t it splendid, boy? To-day’s the best ever, and to-morrow will be better than to-day—oh, heaps better—and after that all the years forever and ever.”
He looked into the deep lustrous eyes of his straight slim girl. What a wife she would be! How eager and provocative, this white flame of youth so simple and so complex! Her happiness now would be in his hands. The responsibility awed him, filled him with a sense of solemnity.