It fluttered its wings and flew away. Mrs. Myra Jenkins watched its winged flight through the still morning air with awed eyes. The pamphlet had promised that the unseen forces evoked by this morning ritual would give her some sign to know that the tuning in was going along satisfactorily, and she was sure that the mockingbird had been sent for just that purpose.

  He had appeared outside her window the very first morning that she began the prescribed ritual, and for three mornings now he had fluttered his wings and flown away just as she finished the twelfth exhalation. She knew, now, that it was no ordinary mockingbird. All the rest of his feathered tribe had left a month earlier for warmer weather, and he had appeared from nowhere that first morning to waken her in time to get in her deep breathing before the morning sun became visible. Certainly, she thought, no one could ask for a clearer sign than that.

  She left the window open and went back into the chill bedroom to toss off the bathrobe and dress swiftly; then she went out into the kitchen of her lonely ranch house and built a roaring fire in the big wood range.

  Mrs. Myra Jenkins was forty-five years old and she had been widowed two years. The loss of her husband had not been a numbing shock to her. She had grown used to Ted Jenkins through the years, but they had never been close to one another. Tod had been an earthy sort of man. A big hearty man, with healthy animal appetites. They had no children, and Mrs. Jenkins had wanted none. Tod Jenkins had humored her in her queer seeking after new religious manifestations, though he had never understood the thwarted desires that caused this seeking.

  She put on the coffee pot and set the kitchen table for two, laid thick slices of sowbelly in an iron frying pan and set it back on the stove, then hurried back to her bedroom and her mirror to let down the tight curls of her iron-gray hair and comb it out in a soft fluffy mass while she experimented with some more deep breathing exercises.

  The slices of sowbelly were crisp on one side when she went back into the kitchen, and the coffee was boiling. She deftly turned the pork and pushed the coffee pot back, turned to smile and say “Good morning” to a tall stoop-shouldered man who came in through the kitchen door.

  Jud Brinlow said, “Mornin’, ma’am,” and went to the stove to warm his hands. He had an ugly, good-natured face and was in his late fifties. He wore blue jeans and high-heeled boots and a leather jacket. He had been Tod Jenkins’ foreman for twenty years, and he stayed on in that capacity after Tod died. There were three other hands in the bunkhouse near the corral, but they slept late on Sunday mornings and would come in for their own breakfast after Mrs. Jenkins left to drive in to Dutch Springs for the morning church service which she never missed.

  “I got yore team harnessed to the buggy,” Jud rumbled in his slow voice. “You wanta sort of watch that there bay colt. He’s a mite frisky on a cold mawnin’.”

  Mrs. Jenkins nodded without taking her eyes off the frying slices of pork. “Why don’t you drive me in, Jud? You could take the friskiness out of the colt and the Lord would rejoice to see you worshiping in His house.”

  “Why no, ma’am. I reckon not. Seems to me like He’d rejoice a heap more if I stay here an’ tend to gettin’ the chuck wagon fixed up for round-up.”

  The widow lifted the bacon out onto a platter and compressed her lips. “That’s mighty nigh to being sacrilege, Jud, on a Sunday morning and all.” She put flour in the hot grease to make cream gravy and reached for a pitcher of milk as it began to brown. With her back to the ranch foreman, she went on, “Did you hear my mockingbird singing his little heart out to me this morning?”

  Jud Brinlow contracted bushy gray brows at her. “It’s a month past season for mockin’birds, ma’am.”

  “I know. That’s why it’s so wonderful. He comes down from out of the blue heavens at dawn just for me. I can’t help wondering if he’s a bird at all.”

  “See him, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes. Sitting on the cottonwood limb just outside my window. But I’ve wondered if a lost soul maybe hasn’t found a resting place in his body. A lost soul from eternity. Come back, maybe to lead me, a poor sinner, on the right path.”

  Jud grunted. “’Tain’t likely, I don’t reckon.” He sat down at the table and the widow poured coffee, set the sowbelly and cold biscuits and a bowl of hot gravy in front of him. He reached for a biscuit, then caught himself guiltily and folded his hands in his lap. Mrs. Myra Jenkins sat down opposite him and bowed her head. Her lips moved but she didn’t say anything aloud. After a time she lifted her head and said, “Pass the meat, please.”

  There were a dozen or more surreys and buggies lined up in front of the ugly little frame church building in Dutch Springs when Mrs. Jenkins drove up in her buggy. The wheezing notes of an old organ came out to her as she tied her team to the hitchrack, and she hurried because she hated to miss any of the hymn singing.

  The church was twenty feet wide and forty feet long, with a raised platform at the front with a wooden stand for the minister’s Bible. There were rows of straight chairs out in front, not more than a quarter occupied, for a great majority of the citizens of Powder Valley were like Jud Brinlow and felt they were serving the Lord better by staying home and tending to the chores instead of driving in to hear a sermon.

  The minister was a tall, thin, spectacled young man who clerked in Mr. Winters’ general store on weekdays. It was whispered that he had tuberculosis and had given up a parish in Kansas City to come West for his health, and the devout citizens of the Valley felt the Lord had blessed them by his coming because the community wasn’t large enough to support a pastor of its own.

  The minister was standing up on the platform beating out the time for an old hymn when Mrs. Jenkins hurried in. The couple of dozen worshipers were standing and singing loudly and unevenly. Mrs. Jenkins stopped at the first row of chairs that had occupants before she realized the two standing persons were complete strangers to her, and evidently city folks at that.

  One of them was a tall, severe-looking gentleman with long black sideburns and a bald head. He held a hymn book and his singing voice was loud and sonorous, with a sort of mournful sound which struck Mrs. Jenkins as being very appropriate for hymn singing.

  The girl on his right looked like she might be his daughter, though she was mighty pretty for that. She was dressed outlandishly fashionable for church, but she had a sweet face and a beautiful, true voice that carried out and above all the others.

  Daniel Deever glanced sideways at Mrs. Jenkins as she bustled up beside him. He saw a thin, leathery face beneath a rusty old black hat, and a black silk dress that came down to the tops of high buttoned shoes. He moved the hymn book questioningly and gallantly toward her, and she simpered at him and took hold of it with claw-like fingers. Her voice was thin and reedy, but not too loud, and he winced only a little when it sounded close to his left ear.

  The congregation sang two more hymns, and then bowed their heads while the earnest young minister besought the Lord to guide them into closer communion with Him, and then they seated themselves and listened to his sermon on the evils of self-indulgence, a subject about which the young man evidently had little personal knowledge.

  While he waited for the tiresome sermon to be over, Daniel Deever amused himself by studying the female members of the congregation seated in front of him and seeking to determine which one of them might possibly be the widow with abnormal religious cravings and clear title to a large ranch.

  Being able to view only the backs of their heads, Deever really didn’t have much to go on, but he studied them one by one, recalling what he could of the judge’s sketchy description, and allowing himself to become optimistic as he picked out two ladies sitting alone who didn’t look too offensive from the rear.

  He and Connie had arrived by stage yesterday, and Daniel Deever’s first impression of Dutch Springs was that the widow Jenkins would have to be fairly good-looking and mighty wealthy to make up to him for the prospect of spending much time in Powder Valley.

  Connie Dawson, on the other hand, professed herself delighted with Dutch Springs. Deever didn’t know whether Connie really meant it, or whether she was just pretending in order to irritate him. Posing as uncle and niece, they had gone to the Jewel Hotel and taken rooms there, and this visit to the village church was really their first opportunity to become acquainted with the men and women with whom they were to live during the coming months.

  But already, ever since she had left Denver, Connie had seemed different. The new wardrobe had much to do with the change. She had discarded all the frayed finery she had worn in the city and had selected new and simple things to wear in Dutch Springs while she masqueraded as a schoolteacher. They made her look younger and fresher, somehow, and the absence of cosmetics, curiously enough, also contributed to the same effect.

  She sat beside Daniel now with simple dignity while the young minister drooled on about the iniquity of sins of the flesh, and her eyes sparkled and her lips were parted as though she eagerly drank in every word he said.

  On the other hand, it was quite an ordeal for Daniel. He’d sat through lots of sermons in his day, but had never learned to enjoy them. He didn’t mind preaching one himself, for he enjoyed the sound of his own voice and the feeling of importance and power that came with standing before a congregation while they were forced to sit and listen to him, but he had never enjoyed being a listener.

  He wondered, now, when they were going to take up the collection, who took it up, and whether it would be worth fooling with on following Sundays. He hardly thought so, as he counted the small congregation. Most of them looked like people who would feel they’d bought a share of salvation for a dime or a quarter, and he doubted whether even a good rousing sales talk would wean as much as a dollar from any of them.

  He was glad when the sermon was over and they stood up to sing the final hymn. He again courteously shared his hymnal with the stringy, faded woman at his left, and steeled himself against the penetrating sound of her voice in his ear.

  When the hymn was ended the minister dismissed them with a brief prayer and without, to Deever’s intense astonishment, the passing of a collection plate at all. He could scarcely believe the service was indeed over, until people began milling around, greeting each other and asking grave questions about the condition of the range and the weight of yearling calves.

  Connie nudged him as he stood there, and whispered, “Let’s get going before we’re surrounded,” and he moved out into the aisle and waited for her to take his arm, and then strode up the aisle toward the rear door with the slight limp that distinguished his gait.

  The Reverend Lowpeck was before them, however. After the final prayer he had sprinted up a side aisle and now stood in the doorway to greet each of his flock with a soft handshake and a murmured greeting.

  Daniel Deever and Connie were the first to reach him, and he spoke effusively to the strangers, blinking his eyes rapidly at Connie behind thick lenses and trying to pretend he was unaware of her worldly beauty.

  “You’re Mr. Deever, I believe, sir. Judge Prink—ah—spoke of your coming. Let me welcome you, sir. Let me make you most welcome. You’re—ah—a fellow-worker in the vineyard, are you not? I understood from Judge Prink that you—ah—”

  “Quite correct,” Deever told him heartily. “In my humble way I seek to follow in the footsteps of our Lord. It has been my good fortune in the past to guide a goodly number of erring souls into the pathway of righteousness. And allow me to congratulate you on your sermon this morning, sir. A wonderful effort on a theme too often neglected. Uh—have you met my niece, Brother?”

  “I’m delighted. Charmed. I’m—ah—”

  “Miss Connie Dawson,” Deever told him. “In her own way a spiritual influence too. She’s come to instruct the younger ones, you understand.”

  “The new schoolteacher. Of course. I know. Everyone’s expected—that is—ah—we’ve all wondered.—Why Mrs. Jenkins. How-d’you-do this morning?”

  Daniel Deever turned his head slowly. He flinched and closed his eyes when he heard a reedy voice close behind him saying:

  “I manage to stay mighty spry, Reverend Lowpeck. Yessir, mighty spry. And I’ll tell you what does it though you’ll never believe me. On my soul you won’t. You’ll scoff, like as not. But it’s a mockingbird that does it. And breathing. The Rule of Twelve.”

  Daniel Deever opened his eyes slowly. He set his teeth and turned to look at Mrs. Myra Jenkins, to see if he could find any redeeming feature he hadn’t noticed while she stood beside him during service. He couldn’t. She was as leathery and as stringy as he had first noted. But he had a strong constitution and an iron will. He intoned sepulchrally, “In Tune with the Infinite.”

  The widow Jenkins caught in her breath sharply, sucking in her lower lip and indenting it with small upper teeth. “Are you—a believer?” she whispered.

  Daniel Deever bowed his head. Inwardly he said, “God help me,” but outwardly he proclaimed, “I am a seeker after the Truth, madam, in all its various manifestations. I have groped through canonical bypaths, searching behind the veil of orthodoxy into the realm of theological investigation on the higher astral planes.”

  “Yes indeed,” said the Reverend Lowpeck confusedly. “Most interesting. May I present Mr. Deever of Denver, Mrs. Jenkins. He and his charming niece are—ah—have come—”

  “To dwell among you for a time,” Daniel helped him out. “And it is a good portent, Mrs. Jenkins, to hear the sacred Rule of Twelve mentioned not in jest. But the mockingbird? I confess I am not familiar with that aspect of the Rule.”

  They moved aside together to make way for other members of the congregation on their way out. Connie Dawson stepped alone over the threshold into the thin clear sunlight. She hadn’t met Mr. Rudd Fleming yet. And she wished she didn’t have to meet him.

  5

  The Dutch Springs bank was on Main Street, in the same block as the Jewel Hotel but down the street and on the opposite side from it. The small lobby was separated from the street by plate glass windows, and at the back of the lobby was a wooden partition with two grillwork openings facing the street.

  A neat wooden sign above one grille said TELLER. Mrs. Dodds sat behind that opening from nine to four every day waiting to take in money for deposit, or to pay out cash on checks presented to her. Mostly, Mrs. Dodds waited.

  A sign over the other grille said CASHIER. There was a high wooden stool behind it for Rudd Fleming, but he seldom sat on it. He spent most of the time fooling around with the big ledgers in the rear, or counting the cash, or sitting in his little private office at the back and explaining to ranchers why the bank would need more collateral for a loan.

  Mr. Rudd Fleming was very good at explaining such things. He was very patient and he always had plenty of time for everyone. He had a way of making a man feel good while he was being refused a much-needed loan. On the other hand, he often loaned out money without any collateral at all—and the bank never lost on those transactions, for Rudd Fleming was a shrewd judge of human nature.

  He was just naturally a born banker. He was only thirty-five years old, but he had the instinct for it. And he was popular in Powder Valley. Even those who had been refused loans couldn’t help liking the young fellow. He made them feel it was their fault and not the bank’s.

  Though his official title was only Cashier, Rudd Fleming ran the Dutch Springs bank practically as a one-man show. He made the policies and directed them. There was a Board of Directors consisting of a few wealthy ranchers who owned stock in the bank, but they only met semi-annually to approve Rudd Fleming’s report and pat him on the back when he handed out dividends.

  Rudd didn’t look like a banker, or at least he didn’t look like most bankers. He had broad shoulders and a strong athletic body, and he wore baggy pants and an old sweater or a leather jacket even at such important times as when he met with the Board.

  He had a strong, clean-shaven face with laughing gray eyes and a determined chin, and a good, wide, generous mouth. None of the residents of Powder Valley could quite figure out why he had come there from the East and invested a lot of capital in a little one-horse bank. He looked like he ought to be on Wall Street, or riding around over the ocean on a yacht, or something like that.

  But he’d been in Dutch Springs now for going on four years, and he seemed perfectly contented to stay there. Of course, the Board knew he had some personal money not invested in the bank which he often loaned out at higher-than-legal interest rates to borrowers that weren’t considered good risks by the bank; and it was generally conceded that he was making plenty of money all right, but that still didn’t seem a good enough reason for him to stay.

  He lived at the Jewel Hotel and ate his meals there, and had exemplary habits. He never took a drink and he never gambled, and he sent off to New York for books which he read in the evenings up in the solitude of his hotel room.

  School let out the same time the bank closed, at four o’clock. The schoolhouse was two blocks farther down the street, on the outskirts of the town.

  For a week, now, Rudd Fleming had managed to have his bookwork finished and to be puttering around in the front behind the plate glass windows at a little after four o’clock when the school children and their teacher came along the street from school.

  Each afternoon Connie Dawson looked in and smiled at him as she passed. They had been introduced in the lobby of the hotel the first Sunday afternoon after Connie and Daniel Deever arrived from Denver. She and her religiously-inclined uncle had taken rooms in the hotel for the first few days after their arrival, until Mrs. Leroy who had a big house up the street decided the hotel wasn’t a fitting place for the nice young teacher to stay and offered Connie and Mr. Deever room and board in her house.

  Rudd Fleming found the evenings dull and flavorless after Connie moved away from the hotel. He had spoken to her only that first time when they were introduced, but it had been pleasant to watch her eating supper at a table across the dining room, and when she sat awhile in the lobby after supper he’d found he was reluctant to go upstairs to his reading which had always been enough for him in the past.