Claim Number One Read online

  CHAPTER VII

  A MIDNIGHT EXTRA

  Dr. Slavens sat on the edge of his cot, counting his money. He hadn't agreat deal, so the job was not long. When he finished he tucked it allaway in his instrument-case except the few coins which he retained inhis palm.

  It would not last much longer, thought he. A turn would have to be madesoon, or he must hunt a job on the railroad or a ranch. Walker hadtalked a lot about having Dr. Slavens come in on the new sheep venturewith him, on the supposition, of course, that the physician had money.Walker had told him also a great deal about men who had started in thatcountry as herders, "running a band of sheep" on shares, receiving somuch of the increase of the flock year by year. Many of the richestsheepmen in that country had started that way only a few years before,so Walker and others said.

  Perhaps, thought Dr. Slavens, there might be a chance to hook up withWalker under such an arrangement, put his whole life into it, and learnthe business from the ground up. He could be doing that while Agnes wasmaking her home on her claim, perhaps somewhere near--a few hundredmiles--and if he could see a gleam at the farther end of the undertakingafter a season he could ask her to wait. That was the best that he couldsee in the prospect just then, he reflected as he sat there with hisuseless instrument-case between his feet and the residue of the day'sexpenses in his hand.

  Agnes had gone into the section of the tent sacred to the women; hesupposed that she was going to bed, for it was nearly eleven o'clock.Strong and Horace were asleep in their bunks, for they were to take theearly stage for Meander in the morning. Walker and William Bentley andSergeant Schaefer were out.

  The little spark of hope had begun to glow under Slavens' breath.Perhaps Walker and sheep were the solution of his life's muddle. Hewould find Walker before the young man took somebody else in with him,expose the true state of his finances, and see whether Walker wouldentertain a proposal to give him a band of sheep on shares.

  Like every man who is trying to do something that he isn't fitted to,because he has failed of his hopes and expectations in the occupationdearest to his heart, Slavens heated up like a tin stove under thetrashy fuel of every vagrant scheme that blew into his brain.

  Sheep was all that he could see now. Already he had projected aheaduntil he saw himself the complacent owner of vast herds; saw the milesof his ranches; saw the wool of his flocks being trampled into the longsacks in his own shearing-sheds. And all the time his impotentinstrument-case shone darkly in the light of his candle, lying therebetween his feet at the edge of the canvas bed.

  With a sigh he came back from his long flight into the future, and tookup his instrument-case with caressing hand. Placing it on his knees, heopened it and lifted the glittering instruments fondly.

  Of course, if he _could_ make it go at his profession that would be thething. It would be better than all the sheep on Wyoming's dusty hills. Alittle surgery somewhere, with its enameled table and white fittings,and automobiles coming and going all day, and Agnes to look in atevening----. Yes, that _would_ be the thing.

  Perhaps sheep for a few years would help to that end. Even five yearswould leave him right in the middle stretch of life, with all his vigorand all the benefit of experience. Sheep looked like the solutionindeed. So _thinking_, he blew out his candle and went out to look forWalker.

  At the door of the tent he stopped, thinking again of Agnes, and of themoonlight on her face as they stood by the riverside, trembling againwhen the weight of the temptation which had assailed him in that momentswept over him in a heart-lifting memory. Perhaps Agnes condemned himfor refusing the opportunity of her lips. For when a woman expects to bekissed, and is cheated in that expectation, it leaves her in censoriousmood. But scorn of an hour would be easier borne than regret of years.

  So he reflected, and shook his head solemnly at the thought. He passedinto the shadows along the deserted street, going toward the soundswhich rose from beneath the lights beyond.

  Comanche appeared livelier than ever as he passed along its throngedstreets. Those who were to leave as soon as they could get a train weremaking a last reckless night of it; the gamblers were busy at theirvarious games.

  The doctor passed the tent where Hun Shanklin had been stationed withhis crescent table. Shanklin was gone, and another was in his place withan army-game board, or chuck-a-luck, doing well with the minnows in thereceding sea. Wondering what had become of Shanklin, he turned to godown a dark little street which was a quick cut to the back entrance ofthe big gambling-tent, where he expected to find Walker and go into thematter of sheep.

  Even at that moment the lights were bright in the office of _TheChieftain_. The editor was there, his green coat wide open, exposing hisegg-spattered shirt-front to all who stopped to look, and making aprodigious show of excitement at the imposing-stone, where the form ofthe last extra of the day lay under his nervous hand.

  The printer was there also, his hair standing straight where he hadroached it back out of his eyes with inky fingers, setting type for allhe was worth. In a little while those on the street heard the familiarbark of the little gasoline engine, and hundreds of them gathered toinquire into the cause of this late activity.

  "Running off an extra," said Editor Mong. A great, an important piece ofnews had just reached the office of _The Chieftain_, and in a fewminutes an extra would be on the streets, with the secret at thedisposal of every man who had two bits in his pants. Those were theidentical words of that advance-guard of civilization and refinement,Mr. J. Walter Mong.

  It was midnight when the circulator of _The Chieftain_--engaged for thatimportant day only--burst out of the tent with an armful of papers,crying them in a voice that would have been red if voices had beencolored in Comanche, it was so scorched from coming out of the tractwhich carried liquor to his reservoir.

  "_Ho-o-o!_ Git a extree! Git a extree! All about the mistake in thewinner of Number One! Git a extree! _Ho-o-o-o!_"

  People caught their breaths and stopped to lean and listen. Mistake inthe winner of Number One? What was that? The parched voice was plainenough in that statement:

  "Mistake in the winner of Number One."

  A crowd hundreds deep quickly surrounded the vender of extras, andanother crowd assembled in front of the office, where Editor Mong stoodwith a pile of papers at his hand, changing them into money almost asfast as that miracle is performed by the presses of the United StatesTreasury.

  Walker and William Bentley bored through the throng and bought a paper.Standing under the light at a saloon door, they read the exciting news.Editor Mong had cleared a place for it, without regard to the beginningor the ending of anything else on the page, in the form which hadcarried his last extra of the day. There the announcement stood in boldtype, two columns wide, under an exclamatory

  EXTRA!

  William Bentley read aloud:

  Owing to a mistake in transmitting the news by telephone, the name of the winner of Claim Number One in today's land-drawing at Meander was omitted. The list of winners published heretofore in _The Chieftain_ is correct, with the single exception that each of them moves along one number. Number One, as announced, becomes Number Two, and so on down the list.

  The editor regrets this error, which was due entirely to the excitement and confusion in the office at Meander, and takes this earliest opportunity of rectifying it.

  The editor also desires to announce that _The Chieftain_ will appear no longer as a daily paper. Beginning with next Monday it will be issued as a four-page, five-column weekly, containing all the state, national, and foreign news. Price three dollars a year in advance. The editor thanks you for your loyal support and patronage.

  The winner of Claim Number One is Dr. Warren Slavens, of Kansas City, Missouri. Axel Peterson, first announced as the winner, drew Number Two.

  Editor Mong had followed the tradition of the rural school of journalismin leaving the most important feature of his n
ews for the last line.

  "Well!" said the toolmaker. "So our doctor is the winner! But it's amarvel that the editor didn't turn the paper over to say so. I never sawsuch a botch at writing news!"

  He did not know, any more than any of the thousands who read thatingenuous announcement, that Editor Mong was working his graft overtime.They did not know that he had entered into a conspiracy to deceive thembefore the drawing began, the clerk in charge of the stage-office andthe one telephone of the place being in on the swindle.

  Mong knew that the Meander stage would leave for Comanche at eight inthe morning, or two hours before the drawing began. It was the onlymeans, exclusive of the telephone, by which news could travel that daybetween the two places, and as it could carry no news of the drawing hisscheme was secure.

  Mong had feared that his extras might not move with the desiredcelerity during the entire day--in which expectation he was agreeablydeceived--so he deliberately withheld the name of the winner of NumberOne, substituting for it in his first extra the name of the winner ofNumber Two. He believed that every person in Comanche would rush out ofbed with two bits in hand for the extra making the correction, and hisguess was good.

  Walker and Bentley hurried back to the Hotel Metropole to find thatSergeant Schaefer had arrived ahead of them with the news. They were allup in picturesque _deshabille_, Horace with a blanket around him like abald-headed brave, his bare feet showing beneath it. The camp was in astate of pleasurable excitement; but Dr. Slavens was not there to shareit, nor to receive the congratulations which all were ready to offerwith true sincerity.

  "I wonder where he is?" questioned Horace a little impatiently.

  He did not like to forego the ceremony, but he wanted to get back tobed, for a man's legs soon begin to feel chilly in that mountain wind.

  "He left here not very long ago," said Agnes; "perhaps not more than anhour. I was just preparing to go to bed."

  "It's a fine thing for him," commented Sergeant Schaefer. "He canrelinquish as soon as he gets his papers for ten or twelve thousanddollars. I understand the railroad's willing to pay that."

  "It's nice and comfortable to have a millionaire in our midst," saidJune. "Mother, you'd better set your cap for him."

  "June Reed!" rebuked her mother sharply above the laughter which theproposal provoked.

  But under the hand of the night the widow blushed warmly, and with alittle stirring of the treasured leaves of romance in her breast. She_had_ thought of trying for the doctor, for she was only forty-seven,and hope lives in the female heart much longer than any such triflingterm.

  They sat and talked over the change this belated news would make in thedoctor's fortunes, and the men smoked their pipes, and the miller's wifesuggested tea. But nobody wanted to kindle a fire, so she shivered alittle and went off to bed.

  The night wore on, Comanche howling and fiddling as it never had howledand fiddled before. One by one the doctor's friends tired of waiting forhim and went to bed. Walker, William Bentley, and Agnes were the last ofthe guard; the hour was two o'clock in the morning.

  "I believe you'd just as well go to bed, Miss Horton," suggestedBentley, "and save the pleasure of congratulating him until tomorrow. Ican't understand why he doesn't come back."

  "I didn't know it was so late," she excused, rising to act on hisplainly sensible view of it.

  "Walker and I will skirmish around and see if we can find him," saidBentley. "It's more than likely that he's run across some old friend andis sitting talking somewhere. You've no notion how time slips by in sucha meeting."

  "And perhaps he doesn't know of his good fortune yet," she suggested.

  "Oh, it's all over town long ago," Walker put in. "He knows all about itby this time."

  "But it isn't like him to keep away deliberately and shun sharing suchgood news with his friends," she objected.

  "Not at all like him," agreed Bentley; "and that's what's worrying me."

  She watched them away until the gloom hid them; then went to hercompartment in the tent, shut off from the others like it by gailyflowered calico, such as is used to cover the bed-comforts of thesnoring proletariat. It was so thin that the light of a candle withinrevealed all to one without, or would have done so readily, if there hadbeen any bold person on the pry.

  There she drew the blanket of her cot about her and sat in the darkawaiting the return of Bentley and Walker. There was no sleep in hereyes, for her mind was full of tumult and foreboding and dread lestsomething had befallen Dr. Slavens in the pitfalls of that gray city,the true terrors and viciousness of which she could only surmise.

  Bentley and Walker went their way in silence until they came to thelights. There was no thinning of the crowds yet, for the news in themidnight extra had given everybody a fresh excuse for celebrating, ifnot on their own accounts, then on account of their friends. Had notevery holder of a number been set back one faint mark behind the line ofhis hopes?

  Very well. It was not a thing to laugh over, certainly, but it was notto be mended by groans. So, if men might neither groan nor laugh, theycould drink. And liquor was becoming cheaper in Comanche. It was thelast big night; it was a wake.

  "Well, I'll tell you," said Walker, "I don't think we'd better look forhim too hard, for if we found him he wouldn't be in any shape to takeback there by now."

  "You mean he's celebrating his good luck?" asked Bentley.

  "Sure," Walker replied. "Any man would. But I don't see what he wantedto go off and souse up alone for when he might have had good company."

  "I think you've guessed wrong, Walker," said Bentley. "I never knew himto take a drink; I don't believe he'd celebrate in that way."

  Even if he had bowled up, protested Walker, there was no harm in it. Anyman might do it, he might do it himself; in fact, he was pretty surethat he _would do it_, under such happy conditions, although he believeda man ought to have a friend or two along on such occasions.

  From place to place they threaded their way through the throng, whichran in back-currents and cross-currents, leaving behind it upon the barsand gaming-tables an alluvium of gold. Dr. Slavens was not at any of thetables; he was not reeling against any of the bars; nor was he to beseen anywhere in the sea of faces, mottled with shadows under the smokylights.

  "Walker, I'm worried," Bentley confessed as they stood outside the lastand lowest place of diversion that remained to be visited in the town.

  "I tell you, it flies up and hits a man that way," protested Walker."Sheep-herders go that way all of a sudden after a year or two without ataste of booze, sometimes. He'll turn up in a day or two, kind of mussedup and ashamed; but we'll show him that it's expected of a gentleman inthis country once in a while, and make him feel at home."

  "Yes, of course," Bentley agreed, his mind not on the young man'schatter nor his own reply. "Well, let's run through this hole and haveit over with."

  Inside the door four dusty troopers, on detached duty from the militarypost beyond Meander, sat playing cards. As they appeared to be fairlysober, Walker approached them with inquiries.

  No, they hadn't seen Dr. Slavens. Why? What had he done? Who wantedhim?

  Explanations followed.

  "Well," said a sergeant with service-stripes on his sleeve and a broad,blue scar across his cheek, "if I'd 'a' drawed Number One you bet youwouldn't have to be out lookin' for me. I'd be up on the highest pointin Comanche handin' out drinks to all my friends. Ain't seen him,pardner. He ain't come in here in the last two hours, for we've beenright here at this table longer than that."

  They passed on, to look upon the drunken, noisy dance in progress beyondthe canvas partition.

  "Not here," said Walker. "But say! There's a man over there that Iknow."

  Bentley looked in that direction.

  "The one dancing with the big woman in red," directed Walker.

  Bentley had only a glance at Walker's friend, for the young man pulledhis arm and hurried him out. Outside Walker seemed to breathe easier.

  "I'l
l tell you," he explained. "It's this way: I didn't suppose he'dwant to be seen in there by anybody that knew him. You see, he's theGovernor's son."

  "Oh, I see," said Bentley.

  "So if we happen to run across him tomorrow you'll not mention it, willyou?"

  "I'll not be advertising it that I was in there in very big letters,"Bentley assured him.

  "A man does that kind of a thing once in a while," said Walker. "Itbears out what I was saying about the doctor. No matter how steady a manis, it flies up and hits him that way once in a while."

  "Maybe you're right," yielded Bentley. "I think we'd just as well go tobed."

  "Just as well," Walker agreed.

  The chill of morning was in the air. As they went back the crowds hadthinned to dregs, and the lights in many tents were out.

  "She thinks a lot of him, doesn't she?" observed Walker reflectively.

  "Who?" asked Bentley, turning so quickly that it seemed as if hestarted.

  "Miss Horton," Walker replied. "And there's class to that girl, I'm hereto tell you!"

  Agnes, in the darkness of her compartment, strained forward to catch thesound of the doctor's voice when she heard them enter, and when she knewthat he was not there a feeling which was half resentment, halfaccusation, rose within her. Was she to be disappointed in him at last?Had he no more strength in the happy light of his new fortune than to goout and "celebrate," as she had heard the sergeant confidentiallycharging to Horace, like any low fellow in the sweating throng?

  But this thought she put away from her with humiliation and self-reproach,knowing, after the first flash of vexation, that it was unjust. Her fearsrose towering and immense again; in the silence of the graying morningshe shivered, drawing her cold feet up into the cot to listen and wait.

  Walker and Bentley had gone quietly to bed, and in the stillness aroundher there was an invitation to sleep. But for her there was no sleep inall that night's allotment.

  The roof of the tent toward the east grew transparent against the sky.Soon the yellow gleam of the new sun struck it, giving her a sudden warmmoment of hope.

  It is that way with us. When our dear one lies dying; when we havestruggled through a night hideous with the phantoms of ruin anddisgrace, then the dawn comes, and the sun. We lift our seamed faces tothe bright sky and hope again. For if there is still harmony in theheavens, how can the discord of the earth overwhelm us? So we comfortour hearts, foolishly exalting our troubles to the plane of the eternalconsonance.

  The sun stood "the height of a lance" when Agnes slipped quietly to thedoor of the tent. Over the gray desert lands a smoky mist lay low.Comanche, stirring from its dreams, was lighting its fires. Here passedone, the dregs of sleep upon him, shoulders bent, pail in hand, feetclinging heavily to the road, making toward the hydrant where the greenoats sprang in the fecund soil. There, among the horses in the lotacross the way, another growled hoarsely as he served the crowdinganimals their hay.

  Agnes looked over the sagging tent-roofs with their protrudingstovepipes and wondered what would be revealed if all were sweptsuddenly away. She wondered what fears besides her own they covered,silent in the pure light of day. For Comanche was a place of secrets anddeceits.

  She laid a fire in the tin stove and put the kettle on to boil. HoraceBentley and Milo Strong were stirring within the tent, making ready forthe stage, which departed for Meander at eight.

  Mrs. Mann, the miller's wife, came out softly, the mark of the comb inher hair, where it had become damp at the temples during her ablution.She looked about her swiftly as she stood a moment in the door, verytrim and handsome in her close-fitting black dress, with a virginaltouch of white collar and a coral pin.

  Agnes was bending over a bed of coals, which she was raking down to thefront of the stove for the toast--a trick taught the ladies of the campby Sergeant Schaefer--and did not seem to hear her.

  "Dr. Slavens hasn't come back?" Mrs. Mann whispered, coming over softlyto Agnes' side.

  Agnes shook her head, turning her face a moment from the coals.

  "I heard you get up," said Mrs. Mann, "and I hurried to join you. I knowjust how you feel!"

  With that the romantic little lady put an arm around Agnes' neck andgave her a hurried kiss, for Horace was in the door. A tear which sprangsuddenly leaped down Agnes' face and hissed upon the coals before thegirl could take her handkerchief from her sweater-pocket and stop itswilful dash. Under the pretext of shielding her face from the glow shedried those which might have followed it into the fire, and turned toHorace with a nod and smile.

  What was there, she asked herself, to be sitting there crying over, likea rough-knuckled housewife whose man has stayed out all night in hiscups? If he wanted to stay away that way, let him stay! And then sherecalled his hand fumbling at the inner pocket of his coat, and thepicture post-card which he had handed her at the riverside.

  Still, it wasn't a matter to cry about--not yet at least. She wouldpermit no more disloyal thoughts. There was some grave trouble at thebottom of Dr. Slavens' absence, and she declared to herself that shewould turn Comanche over, like a stone in the meadow of which thephilosopher wrote, and bare all its creeping secrets to the healthy sun,but that she would find him and clear away the unjust suspicions whichshe knew were growing ranker in that little colony hour by hour.

  They all gathered to bid Sergeant Schaefer good-bye, for he was torejoin them no more. June pressed upon him a paper-bag of fudge, whichshe had prepared the day before as a surprise against this event. Thesergeant stowed it away in the side pocket of his coat, blushing a greatdeal when he accepted it.

  There was a little sadness in their hearts at seeing the soldier go, forit foretold the dissolution of the pleasant party. And the gloom of Dr.Slavens' absence was heavy over certain of them also, even thoughSergeant Schaefer tried to make a joke of it the very last thing hesaid. They watched the warrior away toward the station, where the engineof his train was even then sending up its smoke. In a little whileHorace and Milo followed him to take the stage.

  There came a moment after the men had departed when Agnes and WilliamBentley found themselves alone, the width of the trestle-supported tablebetween them. She looked across at him with no attempt to veil theanxiety which had taken seat in her eyes. William Bentley nodded andsmiled in his gentle, understanding way.

  "Something has happened to him," she whispered, easing in the words thepent alarm of her breast.

  "But we'll find him," he comforted her. "Comanche can't hide a man asbig as Dr. Slavens very long."

  "He'll have to be in Meander day after tomorrow to file on his claim,"she said. "If we can't find him in time, he'll lose it."