OHNNY PARNELL confessed that he knew very little if anything, first hand, about installing a Governor in office. But he did know that Hugh had an entire disregard of pomp and ceremony, and Johnny, who loved gesture, proposed that his old range buddy should become chief executive of Wyoming with as elaborate a flourish as could be crowded into one short January day, and he therefore made himself master of the inaugural ceremonies. Nor did he propose that any convention should be overlooked. So he urged Hugh to have Jessie present at the morning ceremonies and at the inaugural ball in the evening.
“I doubt if she’ll come,” said Hugh, abruptly.
“She won’t for me. I’ve tried her out,” agreed Johnny, opening his jackknife and picking the ice out of his spurs. “But she will for you.”
“I don’t see why I should try to get her to do something she doesn’t want to do,” objected Hugh.
“Great suffering wildcats, man!” shouted Johnny. “She’d come if she knew you wanted her!”
“But I don’t want her,” grunted Hugh.
Johnny strode over to Hugh’s chair and stooped to look into Hugh’s face. “You mean to tell me, Stewart, after all that girl has done”
“You’re intruding again, Parnell!” Hugh returned succinctly.
Johnny turned on his heel and went out, slamming the door behind him. But he had succeeded in making Hugh uneasy, and about noon Fort Sioux saw the Governor elect mount Fossil and start through the deep, fresh fallen snow that covered the trail to the Dude Ranch.
It was one of the sapphire tinted days that makes a winter in the upper altitudes of Wyoming . The plains were a translucent glowing blue, purple deep, where mighty drifts cast wave-like shadows. The sky delicately remote belled like a mighty turquoise over the glowing world. There was utter silence. Utter stillness. Hugh and Fossil moved alone in all the universe. Hugh breathed deep of the biting air and thought of the days to come at the Governor’s desk in Cheyenne. He was not sure that he was going to be able to stick it out.
Several miles from the ranch the solitude was broken when Hugh caught sight of a figure moving rapidly along the trail before him. He could not at first distinguish whether it was man or woman. He spurred Fossil on and shortly picked up ski tracks. A little later he saw that the skier was tall and slender and wore a scarlet mackinaw. It was Jessie, and he gave a long Sioux cry. She turned and moved slowly back toward him.
“Hello, Hughie!” she said as Fossil galloped up. “Cold, isn’t it?”
“Below zero, I guess. Been anywhere in particular, Jessie?”
“No! I like to ski. Magpie has gone lame.”
“I came up to ask you to come to the inaugural ceremonies with me, Jessie.”
Jessie looked up at him, cheeks crimson, eyes deep blue and inscrutable.
“Thanks, Hughie, I don’t care to go.”
“Johnny Parnell thinks it will look bad if you aren’t there,” said Hugh.
“Since when were you troubled by appearances?” drawled Jessie.
“Me? I’m not troubled at all. I want you to have the pleasure of being there.”
The color receded from Jessie’s cheeks, leaving her face singularly austere. She lifted her chin in the old gesture.
“Hughie, I guess you didn’t understand the last thing I said to you the other day. I meant that I was through. As long as you needed me, or I mean, as long as I could do things for you that no one else could, I was willing to humiliate myself. But now you don’t need me any more. And I’m going to live my own life to myself.”
“But don’t you want to come to the ceremonies?” blundered Hugh.
“As the unloved wife of the great man?” asked Jessie. “No, thank you, Hughie. I haven’t a sense of duty now to sustain me. I have planned an interesting life for myself. I don’t need you either. Go along and get yourself made into a Governor.”
Vaguely resentful, bewildered, Hugh stared at her. “You don’t care about me any more, Jessie?”
“Wouldn’t it relieve you to know that I was through?” asked his wife.
Hugh still stared at her white face. “I’d like to have something left out of the wreck of my life,” he exclaimed.
“What do you mean by wreck?” demanded Jessie.
“Everything that I have cared about. You don’t think I enjoy being Governor? You don’t think that I would swap one of those days I spent in the Dinosaur Cave getting out the triceratops for my whole term of office? O I’ll go through with it. But you, at least, must have no illusions about it.”
“Hughie, I’m truly sorry about your work. You don’t know how many of your speeches I’ve heard. You educated me just as you did every one else.”