Page:Honore Willsie--Judith of the godless valley.djvu/316

 unshaved. Nevertheless, standing, with his broad shoulders back, his blue eyes wide and steady yet full of a consuming anxiety, his youth was very appealing.

"Have you been out long?" she asked.

"Since Sunday dawn."

"She's your sister, you say?"

Douglas looked down at the woman. She could not have been much over thirty and her brown eyes were kindly. "She's only a foster sister," he replied, his low voice a little husky. "I—I—" he hesitated, then gave way for a moment. "If I'd stayed at home as her mother wanted me to, instead of bringing the preacher in, it never would have happened! Religion! Look what it's brought me and Judith!"

"Religion never brought anything but good to any one," said Elijah Nelson. "It's religion now that makes me allow you within my doors."

Douglas gave the Mormon a quick glance. Somewhere back of his anxiety it occurred to him that he would like to ask this man some of the questions that had troubled him for years. But now he said urgently to the woman, "If Judith was here, for God's sake, tell me! She must not try to cross Black Devil Pass."

The woman turned to Elijah. "Tell him, Pa!"

Elijah scratched his head, eying Douglas keenly the while. "Peter Knight told me something about you. You don't seem to have been tarred with the same brush as the rest of the Gentiles in Lost Chief. That isn't saying I excuse the way you talked to me up at your chapel, but I guess you're to be trusted as far as women are concerned. The girl came in here last night. She was pretty well tuckered but as mad as hops. She told me that Saturday night she had a violent quarrel with John Spencer and that she fled from home in a