PERCH OF THE
DEVIL
BY
GERTRUDE ATHERTON
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1914, by
Frederick A. Stokes Company
All rights reserved, including that of translation into
foreign languages
Fourth Printing
TO
MR. FRANK J. EDWARDS AND
MR. WILTON G. BROWN
OF HELENA, MONTANA
PART I
PERCH OF THE DEVIL
PART I
I
“THE shining mountains,” said Gregory Compton softly,throwing back his head, his eyes travelling along thehard bright outlines above the high valley in which hisranch lay. “The shining mountains. That is what the Indianscalled them before the white man came.”
His wife yawned frankly. “Pity they don’t shineinside as well as out—what we’ve got of ’em.”
“Who knows? Who knows?”
“We don’t. That’s the trouble.”
But although she spoke tartly, she nestled into his arm,for she was not unamiable, she had been married but sixteenmonths, and she was still fond of her husband “in away”; moreover, although she cherished resentments openand secret, she never forgot that she had won a prize “asmen go.” Many girls in Butte[A] had wanted to marry GregoryCompton, not only because he had inherited a ranch ofeleven hundred and sixty acres, but because, comprehensively,he was superior to the other young men of his class.He had graduated from the High School before he wassixteen; then after three years’ work on the ranch underhis unimaginative father, he had announced his intentionof leaving the State unless permitted to attend the Schoolof Mines in Butte. The old man, who by this time hadtaken note of the formation of his son’s jaw, gave his consentrather than lose the last of his children; and for twoyears and a semester Gregory had been the most brilliantfigure in the School of Mines.
“Old Man Compton,” who had stampeded from hissmall farm in northern New York in the sixties to meet[2]with little success in the mines, but more as a rancher, hadbeen as typical a hayseed as ever punctuated politics withtobacco juice in front of a corner grocery-store, but hadpromised his wife on her death-bed that their son shouldhave “schooling.” Mrs. Compton, who had arrived inMontana soon after the log house was built, was a large,dark, silent woman, whom none of her distant neighbourshad ever claimed to know. It was currently believed inthe New York village whence she came that in the earlydays of the eighteenth century the sturdy Verrooy stockhad been abruptly crossed by the tribe of th