Trail's End Read online

  CHAPTER IV

  THE OPTIMIST EXPLAINS

  Not more than two hours after the tragedy at the Elkhorn hotel, of whichhe was the indirect cause, Calvin Morgan appeared at Judge Thayer'slittle office. The judge had finished his preparation for the cattlethief's case, and now sat ruminating it over his cob pipe. He noddedencouragingly as Morgan hesitated at the door.

  "Come in, Mr. Morgan," he invited, as cordially as if introductions hadpassed between them already and relations had been established on afooting pleasant and profitable to both.

  Morgan smiled a little at this ready identification, remembering thetorn page of the hotel register, which all the reading inhabitants ofthe town who were awake must have examined before this. He accepted thechair that Judge Thayer pushed toward him, nodding to the bone-wagon manwho came sauntering past the door at that moment, the long lash of hisbullhide whip trailing in the dust behind him.

  "You've come to settle with us, I hear?" said the judge.

  "I'm looking around with that thought, sir."

  "I don't know how you'll do at the start in the optical way, Mr.Morgan--I'm afraid not much. I'd advise watch repairing and jewelry inaddition. This town is going to be made a railroad division pointbefore long, I could get you appointed watch inspector for the company.Now, I've got a nice little storeroom----"

  "I'm afraid you've got me in the wrong deck," Morgan interrupted,unwilling to allow the judge to go on building his extravagant fancy. "Icould no more fix a watch than I could repair a locomotive, andspectacles are as far out of my line as specters."

  Judge Thayer's face reddened above his thick beard at this easy andfluent denial of all that he had constructed from a hasty and indefinitebit of information.

  "I beg your pardon, Mr. Morgan. It was Joe Lynch, the fellow that drivesthe bone wagon, who got me wrong. He told me you were an oculist."

  "I think that was his rendition of optimist, perhaps," Morgan said,laughing with the judge's hearty appreciation of the twist. "I told him,in response to a curious inquiry, that I was an optimist. I've triedhard--very hard, sometimes--to live up to it. My profession is one thatmakes a heavy drain on all the cheerfulness that nature or art everstocked a man with, Judge Thayer."

  "It sounds like you might be a lawyer," the judge speculated, "or maybea doctor?"

  "No, I'm simply an agriculturist, late professor of agronomy in the IowaState Agricultural College. It takes optimism, believe me, sir, to tryto get twenty bushels of wheat out of land where only twelve grewbefore, or two ears of corn where only two-thirds of one has been thestandard."

  "You're right," Judge Thayer agreed heartily; "it takes more faith,hope, and courage to be a farmer than any other calling on earth. Ioften consider the risks a farmer must take year by year in comparisonwith other lines of business, staking his all, very frequently, on whathe puts into the furrows, turning his face to God when he has sown hisseed, in faith that rains will fall and frosts will be stayed. It isheroic, sometimes it is sublimely heroic. And you are going to try yourfortunes here on the soil?"

  "I've had my eye on this country a good while in spite of the dismaltales of hardship and failure that have come eastward out of it. I'velooked to it as the place for me to put some of my theories to the test.I believe alfalfa, or lucerne, as it is called back East, will thrivehere, and I'm going to risk your derision and go a little farther. Ibelieve this can be made the greatest wheat country in America."

  Judge Thayer brought his hand down with a smack of the palm that madehis papers fly, his face radiating the pleasure that words alone couldnot express.

  "I've been telling them that for seven years, Morgan!" he said.

  "Hasn't it ever been tried out?"

  "Tried out? They don't stay long enough to try out anything, Morgan.They're here today and gone tomorrow, cursing Kansas as they go,slandering it, branding it as the Tophet of the earth. We've never hadthe right kind of people here, they didn't have the courage, the faith,and the vision. If a man hasn't got the grit and ability to stickthrough his losses at any game in this life, Morgan, he'll never win.And he'll never be anything but a little loser, put him down where youwill."

  "I've met hundreds of them dragging their bones out of Kansas the pastfour or five years," Morgan nodded. "From what I can gather by talkingwith them, the trouble lies in their poverty when they come here. As yousay, they're not staked to play this stiff game. A man ought toprovision himself for a campaign against this country like he would foran Arctic expedition. If he can't do it, he'd better stay away."

  "I guess there's more to that than I ever stopped to consider myself,"Judge Thayer admitted. "It is a hard country to break, but there are mensomewhere who can subdue it and reap its rewards."

  "I tried to induce the railroad company to back me in an experimentalfarm out here, but the officials couldn't see it," Morgan said. "I'mgoing to tackle it now on my lonesome. The best proof of a man'sconfidence in his own theories is to put them into practice himself,anyway."

  "These cattlemen around here will laugh at you and try to discourageyou, Morgan. I'm the standing joke of this country because I still stickto my theory of wheat."

  "The farmers in Iowa laughed their teeth loose when we book farmers atthe college told them they could add a million bushels a year to thecorn crop of the state by putting a few more grains on the ends of thecobs. Well, they did it, just the same, in time."

  "I heard about that," nodded the judge, quite warmed up to thislong-backed stranger.

  "Failure is written all over the face of this country," Morgancontinued; "I took a long tramp across it this morning. But I believeI've got the formula that will tame it."

  "I believe you, I believe you can do it," Judge Thayer indorsed him,with enthusiasm. "I believe you've brought the light of a new epoch intothis country, I believe you're carrying the key that's going to unlockthese prairies and liberate the gold under the grass roots."

  "It may be nothing but a dream," said Morgan softly, his eyes fixed onthe blue distances through the open door. "Maybe it will break me andscatter my bones on the prairie for that old scavenger of men to haulaway."

  Judge Thayer shook his head in denial of this possibility, making noteof this rugged dreamer's strong face, strong arms, large, capable hands.

  "We're not away out West, as most people seem to think," he said, "onlya little past the middle of the state. My observation through severalyears here has been that it rains about as much and as often in thispart of the country as it does in the eastern part of the state, enoughto make two crops in three, anyway, and that's as good as you can counton without irrigation anywhere."

  Morgan agreed with a nod. Judge Thayer went on, "The trouble is, thisprairie sheds water like the roof of a house, shoots it off so quickinto the draws and creeks it never has a chance to soak in. Plow it, Itell 'em, and keep on plowin' it, in season and out; fix it so it cansoak up the rain and hold it. Is that right?"

  "You've got the key to it yourself," Morgan told him, not a littlesurprised to hear this uncredited missionary preaching the very doctrinethat men of Morgan's profession had found so hard to make converts to inthe prairie country.

  "But it will be two or three years, at least, before you can begin yourexperiment with wheat," Judge Thayer regretted. "By that time I'm afraidthe settlers that are taking up land around here now will be broken anddiscouraged, gone to spread the curse against Kansas in the same oldbitterness of heart."

  "I hope to find a piece of land that somebody has abandoned or wants tosell, that has been farmed a year or two," Morgan confided. "If I canget hold of such a place I'll be able to put in a piece of wheat thisfall--even a few acres will start me going. I could enlarge my fieldswith my experience."

  Judge Thayer said he believed he had the very place Morgan was lookingfor, listed for sale. But there were so many of them listed for sale,the owners gone, their equities long since eaten up by unpaid taxes,that it took the judge a good while to find the particulars in thisspecial case
.

  "Man by the name of Gerhart, mile and a half west of town--that wouldbring him pretty near the river--offers his quarter for three hundreddollars. He's been there about four years, wife died this spring. Ithink he's got about eighty acres broken out. Some of that land ought tobe in pretty good shape for wheat by now."

  As the day was declining to evening, and Judge Thayer's supper hour wasnear, they agreed on postponing until morning the drive out to look atthe dissatisfied settler's land. Morgan was leaving when the judgecalled him back from the door.

  "I was just wondering whether you'd ever had any editorial experience?"he said.

  "No, I've never been an editor," Morgan returned, speculating alertly onwhat might be forthcoming.

  "We--our editor--our editor," said the judge, fumbling with it asif he found the matter a difficult one to fit to the proper words,"fell into an unfortunate error of judgment a short time ago,with--um-m-m--somewhat melancholy--melancholy--" the judge paused, as iffeeling of this word to see that it fitted properly, head bentthoughtfully--"results. Unlucky piece of business for this community,coming right in the thick of the contest for the county seat. There's afight on here, Mr. Morgan, as you may have heard, between Ascalon, thepresent county seat, and Glenmore, a God-abandoned little flyspeck onthe map seven miles south of here."

  "I hadn't heard of it. And what happened to the editor?"

  "Oh, one of our hot-headed boys shot him," said the judge, out ofpatience with such trivial and hasty yielding to passion. "Since thenI've been getting out the paper myself--I hold a mortgage on theproperty, I'll be obliged to foreclose to protect myself--with the helpof the printer. It's not much of a paper, Morgan, for I haven't got thetime to devote to it with the July term of court coming on, but I haveto get it out every week or lose the county printing contract. There's ahungry dog over at Glenmore looking on to snatch the bone on the leastpossible excuse, and he's got two of the county commissioners with him."

  "No, I'm not an editor," Morgan repeated, speculatively, as if he sawpossibilities of distinction in that road.

  "Without the press, we are a community disarmed in the midst of ourenemies," said the judge. "Glenmore will overwhelm us and rob us of ourrights, without a champion whose voice is as the voice of a thousandmen."

  "I'd never be equal to that," Morgan said, shaking his head in allseriousness. "Is the editor out of it for good? Is he dead?"

  "They have a devilish peculiarity of seldom wounding a man here inAscalon, Mr. Morgan. I've wished more than once they were not so cursedproficient. The poor fellow fell dead, sir, at the first shot, while hewas reaching for his gun."

  "I've seen something of their proficiency here," Morgan said, with plaincontempt.

  Judge Thayer looked at him sharply. "You refer to that affair at thehotel this afternoon?"

  "It was a brutal and uncalled-for sacrifice of human life! it was murderin the name of the law."

  "I think you are somewhat hasty and unjust in your criticism, Mr.Morgan," the judge mildly protested. "I know the marshal to be acool-headed man, a man who can see perils that you and I might overlookuntil too late for our own preservation. The fellow must have made somebreak for his gun that you didn't see."

  "I hope it was that way," Morgan said, willing to give the marshal everyshadow of justification possible.

  "I've known Seth Craddock a long time; he was huntin' buffalo for therailroad contractors when I first came to this country. Why, I appointedSeth to the office not more than an hour before that mix-up at thehotel."

  "He's beginning early," Morgan said.

  "The man that's going to clean this town up must begin early and worklate," Judge Thayer declared. "An officer that would allow a man to runa bluff on him wouldn't last two hours."

  "I suppose not," Morgan admitted.

  "As I told Seth when I swore him in, what we want in Ascalon is amarshal that will use his gun oftener, and to better purpose, than themen that have gone before him. This town must be purified, the offal ofhumanity that makes a stench until it offends the heavens and spreadsour obscene notoriety to the ends of the earth, must be swept out beforewe can induce sober and substantial men to bring their families intothis country."

  "It looks reasonable enough," Morgan agreed.

  "Hell's kettle is on the fire in this town, Mr. Morgan; the devil's ownstew is bubbling in it. If I could induce you to defer your farmingexperiment a few months, as much as I approve it, anxious as I am to seeyou demonstrate your theories and mine, I believe we could accomplishthe regeneration of this town. With a man of Craddock's caliber on thestreet, and you in the _Headlight_ office speaking with the voice of athousand men, we could reverse public opinion and draw friends to ourside. Without some such support, I view the future with gloom andmisgiving. Glenmore is bound to displace us as the capital of thiscounty; Ascalon will decline to a whistling station by the side of thetrack."

  "I'm afraid I wouldn't care to hitch up with Mr. Craddock in theregeneration of Ascalon," Morgan said. "We'd pull so hard in oppositedirections we'd break the harness."

  Judge Thayer expressed his regret while he slipped on his black alpacacoat, asking Morgan to wait until he locked his door, when he would walkwith him as far as the hotel corner. On the way they met a young man whocame bowling along with a great air of importance and self-assurance, afresh cigar tilted up in his mouth to such an angle that it threatenedthe brim of his large white hat.

  Judge Thayer introduced this man as Dell Hutton, county treasurer.Hutton wrung Morgan's hand with ardent grip, as if he welcomed him intothe brotherhood of the elect in Ascalon, speaking out of the corner ofhis mouth around his cigar. He was a thin-mouthed man of twenty-five, orperhaps a year or two older, with a shrunken weazenness about his facethat made him look like a very old man done over, and but poorlyrenovated. His eyes were pale, with shadows in them as of inquiry anddistrust; his stature was short, his frame slight.

  Hutton seemed to be deeply, even passionately, interested in the ventureMorgan had come to make in that country. He offered his services in anyexigency where they might be applied, shaking hands again with hardgrip, accompanied by a wrinkling of his thin mouth about his cigar as heclamped his jaws in the fervor of his earnestness. But he appeared to beunder a great pressure to go his way, his eyes controverting thesincerity of his words the while.

  "He's rather a young man to be filling such a responsible position,"Morgan ventured as they resumed their way.

  "Dell wasn't elected to the office," Judge Thayer explained. "He'sfilling out his father's term."

  "Did he--die?" Morgan inquired, marveling over the mortality among thenotables of the town.

  "He was a victim of this feud in the rivalry for the county seat," JudgeThayer explained, with sadness. "It was due to Hutton, more than anyother force, that we didn't lose the county seat at the lastelection--he kept the cattlemen lined up, was a power among them,followed that business a long time himself. Yes. He was the first manthat ever drove a herd of cattle from Texas to load for market when thisrailroad was put through. Some of those skulkers from Glenmore shot himdown at his door two months after he took office."

  "I thought the boy looked like he'd been trained on the range," Morgansaid, thoughtfully.

  "Yes, Dell was raised in the saddle, drove several trips from Texas uphere. Dell"--softly, a little sorrowfully, Morgan thought--"was theother principal in that affair with our late editor."

  "Oh, I see. He was exonerated?"

  "Clear case of self-defense, proved that Smith--the editor wasSmith--reached for his gun first."

  Morgan did not comment, but he thought that this seemed a thing easilyproved in Ascalon. He parted from the judge at the bank corner, whichwas across the way from the hotel.

  The shadow of the hotel fell far into the public square, and in front ofthe building, their chairs placed in what would have been the gutter ofthe street if the thoroughfare had been paved, their feet braced withprobably more comfort than grace against the low sidewal
k, a row of menwas stationed, like crows on a fence. There must have been twenty ormore of them, in various stages of undress from vest down to suspenders,from bright cravats flaunting over woolen shirts and white shirts, andstriped shirts and speckled shirts, to unconfined necks laid bare to thebreeze.

  Whether these were guests waiting supper, or merely loafers waitinganything that might happen next, Morgan had not been long enough in townto determine. He noticed the curious and, he thought, unfriendly eyeswhich they turned on him as he approached. And as Morgan set foot on thesidewalk porch of the hotel, Seth Craddock, the new city marshal, roseout of the third chair on the end of the row nearest him, hand lifted incommanding signal to halt.

  "You've just got time to git your gripsack," Craddock said, comingforward as he spoke, but stopping a little to one side as if to allowMorgan passage to the door.

  "Time's no object to me," Morgan returned, good-humored and undisturbed,thinking this must be one of the jokes at the expense of strangers forwhich Ascalon was famous.

  Some of the loafers were standing by their chairs in attitude ofindecision, others sat leaning forward to see and hear. Traffic bothways on the sidewalk came to a sudden halt at the spectacle of two menin a situation recognized at a glance in quick-triggered Ascalon assignificant, those who came up behind Morgan clearing the way by edgingfrom the sidewalk into the square.

  "The train'll be here in twelve minutes," Craddock announced, watch inhis palm.

  "On time, is she?" Morgan said indifferently, starting for the door.

  Again Seth Craddock lifted his hand. Those who had remained seated alongthe gutter perch up to this moment now got to their feet with such hastethat chairs were upset. Craddock put his hand casually to his pistol, asa man rests his hand on his hip.

  "You're leavin' on it," he said.

  "I guess you've got the wrong man," Morgan suggested, noting everythingwith comprehensive eye, not a little concerned by the marshal'sthreatening attitude. If this were going to turn out a joke, Morganwished it might begin very soon to show some of its risible features onthe surface, in order that he might know which way to jump to make thebest figure possible.

  "No, I ain't got no wrong man!" Craddock returned, making mockery ofthe words, uttering them jeeringly out of the corner of his mouth. Heblasted Morgan with the glare of his malevolent red eyes, redder nowthan before his weapon had moistened the street of Ascalon with blood."You're the feller that's been shootin' off your mouth about murder inthe name of the law, and you bein' able to take his gun away from thatfeller. Well, kid, I'm afraid it's goin' to be a little too rough foryou in this town. You're leavin'--you won't have time to git yourgripsack now, you can write for it!"

  Morgan felt the blood flaming into his face with the hot swell of anger.A moment he stood eye to eye with Craddock, fighting down the defiancethat rose for utterance to his lips. Then he started again toward thehotel door.

  Craddock whipped out his pistol with arm so swift that the eyemultiplied it like a spoke in a quick-spinning wheel. He stood holdingthe weapon so, his wrist rather limber, the muzzle of the pistolpointing in the general direction of Morgan's feet.

  "Maybe you can take a gun away from me, little feller?" Craddockchallenged in high mockery, one nostril of his long nose twitching,lifting his mustache on that side in a snarl.

  "Don't point that gun at me, Craddock!" Morgan warned, his voiceunshaken and cool, although the surge of his heart made his seasonedbody vibrate to the finger tips.

  "Scratch gravel for the depot!" Craddock commanded, lowering the muzzleof his gun as if he intended to hasten the going by a shot between theoffender's feet.

  The men were separated by not more than two yards, and Morgan made nomovement to widen the breach immediately following the marshal's commandto go. On the contrary, before any that saw him standing there inapparent indecision, and least of all among them Seth Craddock, couldmeasure his intention, Morgan stepped aside quicker than the watcherscalculated any living man could move, reached out his long arm a flashquicker than he had shifted on his feet, and laid hold of the citymarshal's hairy wrist, wrenching it in a twist so bone-breaking thatnerves and muscles failed their office. Nobody saw exactly how heaccomplished it, but the next moment Morgan stepped back from the citymarshal, that officer's revolver in his hand.

  "Mr. Craddock," he said, in calm, advisory way, "I expect to stay aroundthis part of the country some little time, and I'll be obliged to cometo Ascalon once in a while. If you think you're going to feeluncomfortable every time you see me, I guess the best thing for you todo is leave. I'm not saying you must leave, I don't set myself up totell a man when to come and go without I've got that right over him. Ijust suggest it for your comfort and peace of mind. If you stay hereyou'll have to get used to seeing me around."

  Craddock stood for a breath glaring at the man who had humiliated him inhis new dignity, clutching his half-paralyzed wrist. He said nothing,but there was the proclamation of a death feud in his eyes.

  "Give him a gun, somebody!" said a fool in the crowd that pressed tothe edge of the sidewalk at the marshal's back.

  Tom Conboy, standing in his door ten feet away, interposed quickly,waving the crowd back.

  "Tut, tut! No niggers in Ireland, now!" he said.

  "He can have this one," said Morgan, still in the same measured, calmvoice. He offered the pistol back to its owner, who snatched it withungracious hand, shoved it into his battered scabbard, turned to thecrowd at his back with an oath.

  "Scatter out of here!" he ordered, covering his degradation as he mightin this tyrannical exercise of authority.

  Morgan looked into the curious faces of the people who blocked thesidewalk ahead of him, withdrawn a discreet distance, not yet venturingto come on. Except for the red handkerchief that he had worn about hisneck, he was dressed as when he arrived in Ascalon in Joe Lynch's wagon,coatless, the dust of the road on his shoes. In place of the brighthandkerchief he now wore a slender black necktie, the ends of it tuckedinto his gray woolen shirt.

  He felt taller, rawer, more angular than nature had built him as hestood there looking at the people who had gathered like leaves against arock in a brook. He was ashamed of his part in the public show, sorrythat anybody had been by to witness it. In his embarrassment he pushedhis hat back from his forehead, looking around him again as if he wouldbreak through the ranks and hide himself from such confusing publicity.

  The crowd was beginning to disperse at Seth Craddock's urging, althoughthose who had come to a stand on the sidewalk seemed timid about passingMorgan. They still held back as if to give him room, or in uncertaintywhether it was all over yet. Perhaps they expected Craddock to turn onMorgan again when he had cleared a proper space for his activities.

  As for Morgan, he had dismissed the city marshal from his thoughts, forsomething else had risen in his vision more worthy the attention of aman. This was the face of a girl on the edge of the crowd in front ofhim, a tall, strong, pliant creature who leaned a little as if shelooked for her reflection in a stream. She was garbed in a brown duckriding skirt, white waist with a bright wisp of cravat blowing at herbreast like the red of bittersweet against snow. Her dusty sombrerothrew a shadow over her eyes, but Morgan could see that they were darkand friendly eyes, as no shadow but night could obscure. The other facesbecame in that moment but the incidental background for one; his heartlifted and leaped as the heart moves and yearns with tender quickeningat the sound of some old melody that makes it glad.

  Morgan stepped back, thinking only of her, seeing only her, making a wayfor her, only, to pass. That others might follow was not in his mind. Hestepped out of the way for her.

  She came on toward him now, one finished, one refined, among that pressof crudity, one unlooked for in that place of wild lusts and darkpassions unrestrained. She carried a packet of newspapers and lettersunder her bent arm, telling of her mission on the street; the thong ofher riding quirt was about her wrist. Her soft dark hair was low on herneck, a flush as of the
pleasure that speaks in bounding blood whenfriend meets friend glowed in her face. Morgan removed his hat as shepassed him. She looked into his face and smiled.

  The little crowd broke and followed, but Morgan, oblivious to themovement around him, stood on the sidewalk edge looking after her, hishat in his hand.