Page:Honore Willsie--Judith of the godless valley.djvu/311

 "Planned!" Douglas' blue eyes burned. "She's gone off her head with anger and disgust and she doesn't care where she goes as long as she's rid of him. I know Jude!"

"You don't know Jude!" contradicted Peter. "Help me to lift John to the bunk. He's got to be taken care of." Douglas turned on his heel, took a quilt from the bunk and laid it over old Johnny, gray and silent against the wall. Then without a word, he lifted the door-latch.

"Don't forget that this is your father after all."

"But I have forgotten!" returned Douglas clearly.

"Stop that kind of talk," said Peter sharply, "and help me get his boot off!"

Douglas gave Peter a long stare of resentment; then, without a word, he rushed out of the cabin. He watered the horses, mounted Justus, and took the lead rope of his pack-animal, putting both horses to the gallop. When he reached the point where Judith had left the main trail he turned and followed her tracks, which were rapidly drifting over with snow.

The whole world was white. Lifting from the valley to the right, little hills rolled over into one another like foaming billows. Beyond these were distant ranges blue, white, and gold. Judith's trail led along the base of the little hills into a grove of Lebanon cedars, gnarled and wind-distorted. There was little snow among the trees and so for a while the trail was lost. But when the cedars opened out on a circular mesa where the snow was taking on the saffron tints of the evening sky, he picked it up again.

The mesa ended abruptly in a drifted mountain, opalescent pink from its foot to its cone-shaped head. The snow on the mesa was not deep, and Douglas realized