Douglas flushed with pleasure.  “Had you, Judith?  Tell me why!”

“I don’t like to be under obligations to Dad; and Inez’ money—­well, I don’t feel keen about her money.  As for you—­Doug, it’s queer, but I’d just as soon ask you for anything.  I don’t know whether it’s a compliment to you or not.”

“I consider it a compliment,” said Douglas softly.  “I had no idea you had that sort of confidence in me.”

“O, I’m not such a wild woman that I don’t know a real man when I see one, Doug,—­even if you are making an idiot of yourself just now!  You should have planned to be more tactful about bringing your old sky pilot in here.”

“Tactful!  What a word!” exclaimed Douglas, “For heaven’s sake, Jude, don’t you get the idea better than that?  This is a matter of—­” He hesitated, at a loss for a moment for a word that should tell Judith something of the yearning conflict that obsessed him.  “This is a battle,” he said finally, “a fight to the finish for—­for—­” then he blurted out the word that in Lost Chief was taboo—­“for souls!” exclaimed Douglas.

Judith looked at him quickly; but to Douglas’ vast relief she did not laugh.  Instead, her eyes were deep with some emotion he could not name.

“I don’t think I understand you, Doug,” she said at last.  “I couldn’t get so worked up over anything that had to do with religion.  But I do see that it means a lot to you and I think you’re foolish to trust to a man like Fowler to put anything over in this valley for you.”

“You don’t know my old sky pilot like I do,” insisted Doug.

“Yes, you must have got a deep knowledge of him in one night!”

“I sure did!” said Douglas simply.

“You are sure that you realize how bitterly the Valley resents your doing this?”

“Yes.  And the Valley had better realize, if it plans trouble, that I’m neither soft, nor easy.”

“I just wish you weren’t trying to do it,” repeated Judith.

“What do you want me to do?” asked Douglas.

“Why, be a first-class rancher, make money, and travel and learn something about life.”

“That’s what I plan to do.  But I want to do more than that.  I want to fix Lost Chief so that a couple of kids like you and me don’t have to learn all they know about real things from a woman like Inez and a man like Charleton.  And if a sky pilot can answer those questions right, why I’m going to have one in here if I have to mount guard on him, day and night.  My kids are going to grow up right here in Lost Chief and they aren’t going round like little wild horses when it comes to asking questions about love and death.  No, ma’am!”

“Oh!  What does old Fowler know about such things?” cried Judith.

“That’s what I aim to find out,” replied Doug.

Twilight was up on the valley, though Falkner’s Peak still glowed crimson in outline, and the Forest Reserve to the east was silver blue, shot with lines of flame.  The evening star trembled above Fire Mesa.  Up on Dead Line Peak behind them, a pack of coyotes barked.