The Breaking Point (28 page)

"I'd better say here that Henry was fond of Clifton, although he didn't
approve of him. He'd never married, and the boy was like a son to him
for a good many years. He didn't have him at the ranch much, however,
for he was a Burgess through and through and looked like them. And he
was always afraid that somehow the story would get out.

"Then Clifton learned, somehow or other, of Clark's legacy to Henry, and
he put two and two together. There was a bad time, but Henry denied it
and they went upstairs to bed. That night Clifton broke into Henry's
desk and found some letters from Elihu Clark that told the story.

"He almost went crazy. He took the papers up to Henry's and wakened him,
standing over Henry with them in hand, and shaking all over. I think
they had a struggle, too. All Henry told me was that he took them from
him and threw them in the fire.

"That was a year before Henry died, and at the time young Jud Clark's
name was in all the newspapers. He had left college after a wild
career there, and although Elihu had tied up the property until Jud was
twenty-one, Jud had his mother's estate and a big allowance. Then, too,
he borrowed on his prospects, and he lost a hundred thousand dollars at
Monte Carlo within six weeks after he graduated.

"One way and another he was always in the newspapers, and when he saw
how Jud was throwing money away Clifton went wild.

"As Henry had burned the letters he had no proofs. He didn't know who
his mother was, but he set to work to find out. He ferreted into Elihu's
past life, and he learned something about Hattie Burgess, or Thorwald.
She was married by that time, and lived on a little ranch near Norada.
He went to see her, and he accused her downright of being his mother. It
must have been a bad time for her, for after all he was her son, and
she had to disclaim him. She had a husband and a boy by that husband,
however, by that time, and she was desperate. She threw him off the
track somehow, lied and talked him down, and then went to bed in
collapse. She sent for Henry later and told him.

"The queer thing was that as soon as she saw him she wanted him. He
was her son. She went to Henry one night, and said she had perjured her
soul, and that she wanted him back. She wasn't in love with Thorwald.
I think she'd always cared for Clark. She went away finally, however,
after promising Henry she would keep Clark's secret. But I have a
suspicion that later on she acknowledged the truth to the boy.

"What he wanted, of course, was a share of the Clark estate. Of course
he hadn't a chance in law, but he saw a chance to blackmail young Jud
Clark and he tried it. Not personally, for he hadn't any real courage,
but by mail. Clark's attorneys wrote back saying they would jail him if
he tried it again, and he went back to Dry River and after Henry again.

"That was in the spring of 1911. Henry was uneasy, for Clifton was not
like himself. He had spells of brooding, and he took to making long
trips on his horse into the mountains, and coming in with the animal run
to death. Henry thought, too, that he was seeing the Thorwald woman,
the mother. Thorwald had died, and she was living with the son on their
ranch and trying to sell it. He thought Hines was trying to have her
make a confession which would give him a hold on Jud Clark.

"Henry was not well, and in the early fall he knew he hadn't long to
live. He wrote out the story and left it in his desk for me to read
after he had gone, and as he added to it from time to time, when I got
it it was almost up to date.

"Judson came back to the Clark ranch in September, bringing along an
actress named Beverly Carlysle, and her husband, Howard Lucas. There was
considerable talk, because it was known Jud had been infatuated with
the woman. But no one saw much of the party, outside of the ranch. The
Carlysle woman seemed to be a lady, but the story was that both men were
drinking a good bit, especially Jud.

"Henry wrote that Hines had been in the East for some months at that
time, and that he had not heard from him. But he felt that it was only a
truce, and that he would turn up again, hell bent for trouble. He made
a will and left the money to me, with instructions to turn it over
to Hines. It is still in the bank, and amounts to about thirty-five
thousand dollars. It is not mine, and I will not touch it. But I have
never located Clifton Hines.

"In the last entry in his record I call attention to my brother's
statement that he did not regard Clifton Hines as entirely sane on this
one matter, and to his conviction that the hatred Hines then bore him,
amounting to a delusion of persecution, might on his death turn against
Judson Clark. He instructed me to go to Clark, tell him the story, and
put him on his guard.

"Clark and his party had been at the ranch only a day or two when one
night Hines turned up at Dry River. He wanted the fifty thousand, or
what was left of it, and when he failed to move Henry he attacked him.
The two men on the place heard the noise and ran in, but Hines got away.
Henry swore them to secrecy, and told them the story. He felt he might
need help.

"From what the two men at the ranch told me when I got there, I think
Hines stayed somewhere in the mountains for the next day or two, and
that he came down for food the night Henry died.

"Just what he contributed to Henry's death I do not know. Henry fell in
one room, and was found in bed in another when the hands had been taking
the cattle to the winter range, and he'd been alone in the house.

"When I got there the funeral was over. I read the letter he had left,
and then I talked to the two hands, Bill Ardary and Jake Mazetti. They
would not talk at first, but I showed them Henry's record and then
they were free enough. The autopsy had shown that Henry died from heart
disease, but he had a cut on his head also, and they believed that Hines
had come back, had quarreled with him again, and had knocked him down.

"As Henry had in a way handed over to me his responsibility for the boy,
and as I wanted to transfer the money, I waited for three weeks at the
ranch, hoping he would turn up again. I saw the Thorwald woman, but she
protested that she did not know where he was. And I made two attempts
to see and warn Jud Clark, but failed both times. Then one night the
Thorwald woman came in, looking like a ghost, and admitted that Hines
had been hiding in the mountains since Henry's death, that he insisted
he had killed him, and that he blamed Jud Clark for that, and for all
the rest of his troubles. She was afraid he would kill Clark. The three
of us, the two men at the ranch and myself, prepared to go into the
mountains and hunt for him, before he got snowed in.

"Then came the shooting at the Clark place, and I rode over that night
in a howling storm and helped the coroner and a Norada doctor in the
examination. All the evidence was against Clark, especially his running
away. But I happened on Hattie Thorwald outside on a verandah—she'd
been working at the house—and I didn't need any conversation to tell me
what she thought. All she said was:

"He didn't do it, doctor. He's still in the mountains."

"He's been here to-night, Hattie, and you know it. He shot the wrong
man."

"But she swore he hadn't been, and at the end I didn't know. I'll say
right now that I don't know. But I'll say, too, that I believe that
is what happened, and that Hines probably stayed hidden that night on
Hattie Thorwald's place. I went there the next day, but she denied it
all, and said he was still in the mountains. She carried on about the
blizzard and his being frozen to death, until I began to think she was
telling the truth.

"The next day I did what only a tenderfoot would do, started into the
mountains alone. Bill and Jake were out with a posse after Clark, and
I packed up some food and started. I'll not go into the details of that
trip. I went in from the Dry River Canyon, and I guess I faced death a
dozen times the first day. I had a map, but I lost myself in six hours.
I had food and blankets and an axe along, and I built a shelter and
stayed there overnight. I had to cut up one of my blankets the next
morning and tie up the horse's feet, so he wouldn't sink too deep in the
snow. But it stayed cold and the snow hardened, and we got along better
after that.

"I'd have turned back more than once, but I thought I'd meet up with
some of the sheriff's party. I didn't do that, but I stumbled on a
trail on the third day, toward evening. It was the trail made by John
Donaldson, as I learned later. I followed it, but I concluded after a
while that whoever made it was lost, too. It seemed to be going in a
circle. I was in bad shape and had frozen a part of my right hand, when
I saw a cabin, and there was smoke coming out of the chimney."

From that time on David's statement dealt with the situation in the
cabin; with Jud Clark and the Donaldsons, and with the snow storm, which
began again and lasted for days. He spoke at length of his discovery of
Clark's identity, and of the fact that the boy had lost all memory of
what had happened, and even of who he was. He went into that in detail;
the peculiar effect of fear and mental shock on a high-strung nature,
especially where the physical condition was lowered by excess and
wrong-living; his early attempts, as the boy improved, to pierce the
veil, and then his slow-growing conviction that it were an act of mercy
not to do so. The Donaldsons' faithfulness, the cessation of the search
under the conviction that Clark was dead, both were there, and also
David's growing liking for Judson himself. But David's own psychology
was interesting and clearly put.

"First of all," he dictated, in his careful old voice, "it must be
remembered that I was not certain that the boy had committed the crime.
I believed, and I still believe, that Lucas was shot by Clifton Hines,
probably through an open window. There were no powder marks on the body.
I believed, too, and still believe, that Hines had fled after the crime,
either to Hattie Thorwald's house or to the mountains. In one case he
had escaped and could not be brought to justice, and in the other he was
dead, and beyond conviction.

"But there is another element which I urge, not in defense but in
explanation. The boy Judson Clark was a new slate to write on. He had
never had a chance. He had had too much money, too much liberty, too
little responsibility. His errors had been wiped away by the loss of his
memory, and he had, I felt, a chance for a new and useful life.

"I did not come to my decision quickly. It was a long fight for his
life, for he had contracted pneumonia, and he had the drinker's heart.
But in the long days of his convalescence while Maggie worked in
the lean-to, I had time to see what might be done. If in making an
experiment with a man's soul I usurped the authority of my Lord and
Master, I am sorry. But he knows that I did it for the best.

"I deliberately built up for Judson Clark a new identity. He was my
nephew, my brother Henry's son. He had the traditions of an honorable
family to carry on, and those traditions were honor, integrity,
clean living and work. I did not stress love, for that I felt must be
experienced, not talked about. But love was to be the foundation on
which I built. The boy had had no love in his life.

"It has worked out. I may not live to see it at its fullest, but I defy
the world to produce today a finer or more honorable gentleman, a more
useful member of the community. And it will last. The time may come when
Judson Clark will again be Judson Clark. I have expected it for many
years. But he will never again be the Judson Clark of ten years ago.
He may even will to return to the old reckless ways, but as I lie here,
perhaps never to see him, I say this: he cannot go back. His character
and habits of thought are established.

"To convict Judson Clark of the murder of Howard Lucas is to convict
a probably or at least possibly innocent man. To convict Richard
Livingstone of that crime is to convict a different man, innocent of the
crime, innocent of its memory, innocent of any single impulse to lift
his hand against a law of God or the state."

For a month Haverly had buzzed with whispered conjectures. It knew
nothing, and yet somehow it knew everything. Doctor David was ill at
the seashore, and Dick was not with him. Harrison Miller, who was never
known to depart farther from his comfortable hearth than the railway
station in one direction and the Sayre house in the other, had made a
trip East and was now in the far West. Doctor Reynolds, who might or
might not know something, had joined the country club and sent for his
golf bag.

And Elizabeth Wheeler was going around with a drawn white face and a
determined smile that faded the moment one looked away.

The village was hurt and suspicious. It resented its lack of knowledge,
and turned cynical where, had it been taken into confidence, it would
have been solicitous. It believed that Elizabeth had been jilted, for
it knew, via Annie and the Oglethorpe's laundress, that no letters came
from Dick. And against Dick its indignation was directed, in a hot flame
of mainly feminine anger.

But it sensed a mystery, too, and if it hated a jilt it loved a mystery.

Nina had taken to going about with her small pointed chin held high, and
angrily she demanded that Elizabeth do the same.

"You know what they are saying, and yet you go about looking crushed."

"I can't act, Nina. I do go about."

And Nina had a softened moment.

"Don't think about him," she said. "He isn't sick, or he would have
had some one wire or write, and he isn't dead, or they'd have found his
papers and let us know."

"Then he's in some sort of trouble. I want to go out there. I want to go
out there!"

That, indeed, had been her constant cry for the last two weeks. She
would have done it probably, packed her bag and slipped away, but she
had no money of her own, and even Leslie, to whom she appealed, had
refused her when he knew her purpose.