“What kind of things?” I asked, wondering if she, too, had breathed the air of mystery which surrounded the old ranch.
“Well, I don’t know exactly,” she hesitated, “you’ll think I’m silly, perhaps, but you know sometimes when I’m down there,” she pointed to the house among the trees, “makin’ out my postal reports, sometimes it’s eleven or twelve o’clock before I’m through. It’s awful quiet after everyone’s gone to sleep and I’ve heard all kinds of queer sounds, maybe they might be rats or the wind, but often and often, just as plain as I can hear your voice now, I’ve heard the sound of a violin like somebody was playin’. It give me an awful start when that man spoke of Bohm’s havin’ played the violin.”
“Perhaps somebody is playing,” I ventured, with a well remembered sensation of ice in the region of my spine. “The houses aren’t far away now; you could easily hear someone playing if the wind was in the right direction.”
Mrs. Parker shook her head.
“No, that ain’t it. There ain’t a violin in the country, and, besides, it’s too near; it’s like it came from here”—Mrs. Parker looked up at the bunkhouse door—“and none of Ethel’s plays.”
I said nothing. I remembered too well hearing the strains of the violin as they used to float out through the silent night while old Bohm played to himself up there in the bunkhouse, hour after hour. I was troubled as the echoes of the past grew louder.
“And then,” Mrs. Parker resumed, “there was that passage. I told you about that, didn’t I?”
“No. Passage! What passage?” I turned to her in the moonlight which showed a puzzled frown between her eyes.
“Why, the passage old Dad Patten found. I thought I’d told you about that, but maybe it was the year that you and Mr. Brook was away.” She paused a moment. “The third year after Ethel and John came here, John, he raised such a big crop of potatoes the cellar was plumb full, so he had Dad tear out some of the old bins under the bunk house to make some larger ones. Tom Lane was helpin’ him, and, of course, Tom was drunk. They’d tore out one or two, but when they come to the third, they found a deep hole behind it about four foot square. They stuck a spade into it, but it seemed to go back so far Dad he thought he’d investigate, so he begun to crawl into it to see how far it went. He was well in when Tom begun to laugh and act like he was goin’ to wall him up, so Dad backed out, for he said that he was afraid Tom was just drunk enough to do it. Dad said, though, that he went in the whole length of his body and stretched his arm out as far as he could, but didn’t touch nothin’, so he knew it went on further, and he said that it seemed to lead off in the direction of the old root cellar.”
“Root cellar,” I repeated, too perturbed to say anything else.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Parker, “but, you know, Dad, he’d never heard any of them stories about the root cellar; Dad’s too deaf to hear anything, so he didn’t think nothin’ about it except that it was some kind of an old dugout, and they went on and built the new bins, and about two months after John had got all his potatoes in Dad happened to say something about it. I was so beat I like to died, and when I told Dad what folks said about the old root cellar and Bohm, he turned as white as a sheet. You couldn’t get him up to the bunk house now if you was to drag him.”
“You don’t believe——” I began, then stopped as Mrs. Parker rose and put her hand on my shoulder.
“Childy, I don’t know whether I believe them tales or not. I’ve scarcely been off this place since you went away ten years ago and I’ve seen and heard some mighty strange things. There’s lots of things in life we can’t explain—we just have to accept ’em, and that’s the way I’ve had to do here. Maybe there’s spirits and maybe there ain’t, but there’s some facts there’s no gettin’ ’round”—Mrs. Morton’s very words again—“but Dad’s findin’ that passage sure made me believe ’em more than I ever did before, and I do believe that some terrible things have been done right here on this dear old place, and that somewhere old Bohm’s spirit’s mighty restless.”
Owen and I sat up before the fire talking until late that night, for one of the buyers wanted the home place. It was hard to give it up, for we both loved it, but the old life had passed, and we were not a part of the new. Owen’s business kept him almost constantly in Denver, and we were at the ranch so little it seemed useless to cling to it longer. The most difficult decision had been made ten years before. This, in a way, was more simple, yet this was final; it meant the breaking of the last tie which bound us to those broad acres, and we were both silent a long time after we had agreed that it was best to let the old place go.
Suddenly I thought of my conversation with Mrs. Parker, and told Owen of the finding of the passage under the bunk house. He sat looking into the fire, and made no comment until I had finished.
“It is strange, to say the least. I don’t suppose we shall ever know the real truth about it, but it doesn’t make much difference now; and if old Bohm’s spirit is wandering about here it will feel a little out of place in a cornfield.”
“It certainly will, but, Owen, don’t you hope ‘it’s mighty restless somewhere’?”
“Indeed I do,” he laughed, and then grew serious again. “It’s been wonderful from first to last, our life here.” He sighed a little. “What experiences we’ve had!”
“Yes, it has,” I said, getting up and standing by the fireplace, where Owen joined me. “It hasn’t always been easy, but I wouldn’t take anything for the things I’ve learned. I’m not the ‘Tenderfoot’ you brought out sixteen years ago; I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Westerner now. My whole view of life has changed. It has not only been a wonderful experience, Owen, but a wonderful privilege—to have lived here.”
Without a word we watched the last log break apart. The glowing sparks lighted the room for a single instant, then died down, and in the fading light of the coals we turned away.
That night I lay awake. Vivified by the thought of the final parting which was to come, our whole life on the ranch passed in review before me, the problems and the difficulties, the adjustments, the changed conditions and that disturbing sense of unsolved mystery.
I got up and stood by the window looking out upon a world of silver. Myriads of stars shone faintly in the heavens dimmed by the glory of the moon, the pale outline of the mountain was just visible, and, as on that first day when my heart was so heavy, I felt the sense of confusion give way to peace.
From the vast spaces, under the guardianship of that commanding summit, we had gained a new sense of proportion, freedom from hampering trivialities and a broader vision of life and its responsibilities.
Standing there in the moonlight facing the mountain, I saw in it more than a symbol and source of strength; to me it had become indeed the abiding place of a God.
Looking back over the years, all the changes revealed only the evolution of a wondrous plan. We had launched our frail barque in the midst of the prairie sea at the ebb of the tide of the wild, lawless days of the West; with the flow we had been carried through the years of a well-ordered pastoral existence to the era of agricultural productivity, and on each succeeding wave we had seen civilization borne higher and higher toward the ultimate goal set by the Great Spirit.
Ours had been, indeed, a wonderful experience.
THE END.