Judson Clark had taken his yacht and gone to Europe, and was reported
from here and there not too favorably. But when he came back, in early
September, he had apparently recovered from his infatuation, was his
old, carefully dressed self again, and when interviewed declared his
intention of spending the winter on his Wyoming ranch.
Of course he must have heard of Lucas's breakdown, and equally, of
course, he must have seen them both. What happened at that interview, by
what casual attitude he allayed Lucas's probable jealousy and the girl's
own nervousness, Bassett had no way of discovering. It was clear that
he convinced them both of his good faith, for the next note in the
reporter's book was simply a date, September 12, 1911.
That was the day they had all started West together, traveling in
Clark's private car, with Lucas, twitching slightly, smiling and waving
farewell from a window.
The big smash did not come until the middle of October.
Bassett sat back and considered. He had a fairly clear idea of the
conditions at the ranch; daily riding, some little reading, and a great
deal too much of each other. A sick man, too, unhappy in his exile,
chafing against his restrictions, lonely and irritable. The girl, early
seeing her mistake, and Clark's jealousy of her husband. The door into
their apartment closing, the thousand and one unconscious intimacies
between man and wife, the breakfast for two going up the stairs, and
below that hot-eyed boy, agonized and passionately jealous, yet meeting
them and looking after them, their host and a gentleman.
Lucas took to drinking, after a time, to allay his sheer boredom. And
Jud Clark drank with him. At the end of three weeks they were both
drinking heavily, and were politely quarrelsome. Bassett could fill
that in also. He could see the girl protesting, watching, increasingly
anxious as she saw that Clark's jealousy was matched by her husband's.
A queer picture, he reflected, the three of them shut away on the great
ranch, and every day some new tension, some new strain.
Then, one night at dinner, they quarreled, and Beverly left the table.
She was going to pack her things and go back to New York. She had felt,
probably, that something was bound to snap. And while she was upstairs
Clark had shot and killed Howard Lucas, and himself disappeared.
He had run, testimony at the inquest revealed, to the corral, and
saddled a horse. Although it was only October, it was snowing hard,
but in spite of that he had turned his horse toward the mountains. By
midnight a posse from Norada had started out, and another up the Dry
River Canyon, but the storm turned into a blizzard in the mountains, and
they were obliged to turn back. A few inches more snow, and they could
not have got their horses out. A week or so later, with a crust of ice
over it, a few of them began again, with no expectation, however, of
finding Clark alive. They came across his horse on the second day, but
they did not find him, and there were some among them who felt that,
after all, old Elihu Clark's boy had chosen the better way.