Trail's End
CHAPTER XII
IN PLACE OF A REGIMENT
Morgan rode back to town in thoughtful, serious mood after conductingthe six desperadoes across the small trickle of the Arkansas River. Hewas not satisfied with the morning's adventure, no matter to what extentit reflected credit on his manhood and competency in the public mind ofAscalon. He would have been easier in all conscience and higher in hisown esteem if it had not happened at all.
He thought soberly now of getting his trunk over to Conboy's from thestation and changing back into the garb of civilization before meetingthat girl again, that wonderful girl, that remarkable woman who couldplay a tune on him to suit her caprice, he thought, as she would havefingered a violin.
Judge Thayer's little office, with the white stakes behind it markingoff the unsold lots like graves of a giant race, reminded Morgan of hisbroken engagement to look at the farm. He hitched his horse at the rackrunning out from one corner of the building, where other horses hadstood fighting flies until they had stamped a hollow like a buffalowallow in the dusty ground.
Judge Thayer got up from the accumulated business on his desk at thesound of Morgan's step in his door, and came forward with welcome in hisbeaming face, warmth of friendliness and admiration in every hair ofhis beard, where the gray twinkled like laughter among the black.
"I asked the governor for a company of militia to put down the disorderand outlawry in this town--I didn't think less than a company could doit," said the judge.
"Is he sending them?" Morgan inquired with polite interest.
"No, I'm glad to say he refused. He referred me to the sheriff."
"And the sheriff will act, I suppose?"
"Act?" Judge Thayer repeated, turning the word curiously. "Act!"--withall the contempt that could be centered in such a shortexpression--"yes, he'll act like a forsworn and traitorous coward, thefriend to thieves that he's always been! We don't need him, we don'tneed the governor's petted, stall-fed militia, when we've got one manthat's a regiment in himself!"
The judge must shake hands with Morgan again, and clap him on theshoulder to further express his admiration and the feeling of securityhis single-handed exploit against the oppressors of Ascalon had broughtto the town.
"I and the other officers and directors sat up in the bank four nights,lights out and guns loaded, sweatin' blood, expecting a raid by thatgang. They had this town buffaloed, Morgan. I'm glad you came back heretoday and showed us the pattern of a real, old-fashioned man."
"I guess I was lucky," Morgan said, with modest depreciation of hisvalor, exceedingly uncomfortable to stand there and hear thisloud-spoken praise of a deed he would rather have the public forget.
"Maybe you call it luck where you came from, but we've got another namefor it here in Ascalon."
"I'm sorry I couldn't keep my engagement to look at that farm, JudgeThayer. You must have heard my reason for it."
"Stilwell told me. It's a marvel you ever came back at all."
"If the farm isn't sold----"
"No," said the judge hastily, as if to turn him away from the subject."Come in and sit down--there's a bigger thing than farming on hand foryou if you can see your interests in it as I see them, Mr. Morgan. Aman's got to trample down the briars before he makes his bed sometimes,you know--come on in out of this cussed sun.
"Morgan, the situation in Ascalon is like this," Judge Thayer resumed,seated at his desk, Morgan between him and the door in much the sameposition that Seth Craddock had sat on the day of his arrival not longbefore; "we've got a city marshal that's bigger than the authority thatcreated him, bigger than anything on earth that ever wore a star. SethCraddock's enlarged himself and his authority until he's become a curseand a scourge to the citizens of this town."
"I heard something of his doings from Fred Stilwell. Why don't you firehim?"
"Morgan, I approached him," said the judge, with an air of injury. "Ibelieve on my soul the old devil spared my life only because I hadbefriended him in past days. There's a spark of gratitude in him thatthe drenching of blood hasn't put out. If it had been anybody else he'dhave shot him dead."
"Hm-m-m-m!" said Morgan, grunting his sympathy, eyes on the floor.
"Morgan, that fellow's killed eight men in as many days! He's got aregular program--a man a day."
"It looks like something ought to be done to stop him."
"The old devil's shrewd, he's had legal counsel from no less illustrioussource than the county attorney, who's so crooked he couldn't lie on theside of a hill without rollin' down it like a hoop. Seth knows he fillsan elective office, he's beyond the power of mayor and council toremove. The only way he can be ousted is by proceedings in court, whichhe could wear along till his term expired. We can't fire him, Morgan.He'll go on till he depopulates this town!"
"It's a remarkable situation," Morgan said.
"He's a jackal, which is neither wolf nor dog. He's never killed a manhere yet out of necessity--he just shoots them down to see them kick, orto gratify some monstrous delight that has transformed him from the manI used to know."
"He may be insane," Morgan suggested.
"I don't know, but I don't think so. I can't abase my mind low enough tofathom that man."
"It's a wonder somebody hasn't killed him," Morgan speculated.
"He never arrests anybody, there hasn't been a prisoner in thecalaboose since he took charge of this town. Notoriety has turned hishead, notoriety seems to put a halo around him that makes a troop ofsycophants look up to him as a saint. Look here--look at this!"
The judge held out a newspaper, shaking it viciously, his face cloudedwith displeasure.
"Here's a piece two columns long about that scoundrel in the _KansasCity Times_--the notoriety of the town is obscured by the bloodyreputation of its marshal."
"It must be gratifying to a man of his ambitions," Morgan commented,glancing curiously over the story, his mind on the first victim ofCraddock's gun in that town.
"It's a disgrace that some of us feel, whatever it may be to him. Iexpected him to confine his gun to gamblers and crooks and these verminthat hang around the women of the dance houses, but he's right-hand manwith them, they're all on his staff."
Morgan looked up in amazement, hardly able to believe what he heard.
"It's enough to wind any decent man," Judge Thayer nodded. "You rememberhis first case--that fool cowboy he killed at the hotel?"
"I was just thinking of him," Morgan said.
"That's the kind he goes in for, cowboys from the range, green, innocentboys, harmless if you take 'em right. Yesterday afternoon he killed ayoung fellow from Glenmore. It's going to bring retaliation and reprisalon us, it's going to hurt us in this contest over the county seat."
"I shouldn't wonder," said Morgan, hoping the reprisal would be swiftand severe.
"I think the man's blood mad," Judge Thayer speculated, in a hopelessway. "It must be the outcome of all that slaughter among the buffalo.He's not a brave man, he lacks the bearing and the full look of the eyeof a courageous man, but he carries two guns now, Morgan, and he cansling out and shoot a man with incredible speed. And we've got himquartered on us for nearly two years unless somebody from Glendora comesover and nails him. We can't fire him, we don't dare to approach him tosuggest his abdication. Morgan, we're in a three-cornered hell of afix!"
"Can't the fellow be prosecuted for some of these murders? Isn't theresome way the law can reach him?"
"The coroner's jury absolves him regularly," the judge replied wearily."At first they did it because it was the routine, and now they do it tosave their hides. No, there's just one quick and sure way of headingthat devil off in his red trail that I can see, Morgan, and that's forme to act while he's away. He's gone on some high-flyin' expedition toAbilene, leaving the town without a peace officer at the mercy ofbandits and thieves. I have the authority to swear in a deputy marshal,or a hundred of them."
Morgan looked up again quickly from his speculative study of the boardsin Judge Thaye
r's floor, to meet the elder man's shrewd eyes with a lookof complete understanding. So they sat a moment, each reading the otheras easily as one counts pebbles at the bottom of a clear spring.
"I don't believe I'm the man you're looking for," Morgan said.
"You're the only man that can do it, Morgan. It looks to me like you'reappointed by Providence to step in here and save this town from thisreign of murder."
"Oh!" said Morgan, impatiently, discounting the judge's fervid words.
"You can supplant him, you can strip him of his badge of office when hesteps from the train, and you're the one man that _can_ do it!"
Morgan shook his head, whether in denial of his attributed valor andprowess, or in declination to assume the proffered honor, Judge Thayercould not tell.
"I believe you'd do it without ever throwing a gun down on him," JudgeThayer declared.
"I know he could!" said a clear, hearty, confident voice from the door.
"Come in and help me convince him, Rhetta," Judge Thayer said, hisgray-flecked beard twinkling with the pleasure that beamed from hiseyes. "Mr. Morgan, my daughter. You have met before."
Morgan rose in considerable confusion, feeling more like an abashed andclumsy cowboy than he ever had felt before in his life. He stood withhis battered hat held flat against his body at his belt, turning the oldthing foolishly like a wheel, so unexpectedly confronted by this girlagain, before whom he desired to appear as a man, and the best that wasin the best man that he could ever be. And she stood smiling before him,mischief and mastery in her laughing eyes, confident as one who hadsubjugated him already, playing a tune on him, surely--a tune that camelike a little voice out of his heart.
"I didn't know, I didn't suspect," he said.
"Of course not. She isn't anything like me." Judge Thayer laughed overit, mightily pleased by this evidence of confusion in a man who couldheat his branding iron to set his mark on half a dozen desperadoes, yetturned to dough before the eyes of a simple maid.
"No more than a bird is like a bear," said Morgan, thinking aloud,racing mentally the next moment to snatch back his words and shape themin more conventional phrase. But too late; their joint laughter drownedhis attempt to set it right, and the world lost a compliment that mighthave graced a courtier's tongue, perhaps. But, not likely.
Morgan proffered the chair he had occupied, but Rhetta knew of one inreserve behind the display of wheat and oats in sheaf on the table. Thisshe brought, seating herself near the door, making a triangle from whichMorgan had no escape save through the roof.
Judge Thayer resumed the discussion of the most vital matter in Ascalonthat hour, pressing Morgan to take the oath of office then and there.
"I wouldn't ask Mr. Morgan to take the office," said Rhetta when JudgeThayer paused, "if I felt safe to stay in Ascalon another day withanybody else as marshal."
"That's a compelling reason for a man to take a job," Morgan told her,looking for a daring moment into the cool clarity of her honest browneyes. "But I might make it worse instead of better. Trouble came tothis town with me; it seems to stick to my heels like a dog."
"You got rid of most of it this morning--_that_ gang will never comeback," she said.
Morgan looked out of the open door, a thoughtfulness in his eyes thatthe nearer attraction could not for the moment dispel. "One of themwill," he replied.
"Oh, one!" said she, discounting that one to nothing at all.
"The gamblers and saloon men are right about it," Morgan said, turningto the judge; "this town will dry up and blow away as soon as it losesits notorious name. If you want to kill Ascalon, enforce the law. Thequestion is, how many people here want it done?"
"The respectable majority, I can assure you on that."
"Nearly everybody you talk to say they'd rather have Ascalon a whistlingstation on the railroad, where you could go to sleep in peace and get upfeeling safe, than the awful place it is now," Rhetta said. She removedher sombrero as she spoke, and dropped it on the floor at her feet, asthough weary of the turmoil that vexed her days.
Morgan noted for the first time that she was not dressed for the saddletoday as on the occasion of their first meeting, but garbed in becomingsimplicity in serge skirt and brown linen waist, a little golden barwith garnets at her throat. Her redundant dark hair, soft in its duskyshade as summer shadows in a deep wood, was coiled in a twisted heap tofit the crown of her mannish sombrero. It came down lightly over thetips of her ears in pretty disorder, due to the excitement of themorning, and she was fair as a camelia blossom and fresh as an eveningprimrose of her native prairie land.
"I wouldn't like to be the man that killed Ascalon, after all its highlypainted past," Morgan said, trying to turn it off lightly. "It might bebetter for all the respectable people to go away and leave it whollywicked, according to its fame."
"That might work to the satisfaction of all concerned, Mr. Morgan, if wehad wagons and tents, and nothing more," said the judge. "We could verywell pick up and pull out in that case. But a lot of us have staked allwe own on the future of this town and the country around it. We werehere before Ascalon became a plague spot and a by-word in the mouths ofmen; we started it right, but it went wrong as soon as it was able towalk."
"It seems to have wandered around quite a bit since then," Morgan said,sparing them a grin.
"It's been a wayward child," Rhetta sighed. "We're ashamed of ourresponsibility for it now."
"It would mean ruination to most of us to pull out and leave it to thesewolves," said the judge. "We couldn't think of that."
"Of course not, I was only making a poor joke when I talked of aretreat," Morgan said. "Things will begin to die down here in a year ortwo--I've seen towns like this before, they always calm down and take upbusiness seriously in time, or blow away and vanish completely. That'swhat happens to most of them if they're let go their course--change andshift, range breaking up into farms, cowboys going on, take care ofthat."
"I don't think Ascalon will go out that way--not if we can keep thecounty seat," Judge Thayer said. "If you were to step into the breachwhile that killer's away and rub even one little white spot in thetown----"
Morgan seemed to interpose in the manner of throwing out his hand, agesture speaking of the fatuity and his unwillingness to set himself tothe task.
"Not just temporarily, we don't mean just temporarily, Mr. Morgan, butfor good," Rhetta urged. "I want to take over editing the paper and beof some use in the world, but I couldn't think of doing it with all thiskilling going on, and a lot of wild men shooting out windows andeverything that way."
"No, of course you couldn't," Morgan agreed.
"The railroad immigration agent has been trying to locate a colony ofMennonites here," Judge Thayer said, "fifty families or more of them,but the notoriety of the town made the elders skittish. They were outhere this spring, liked the country, saw its future with eyes thatrevealed like telescopes, and would have bought ten sections of land tobegin with if it hadn't been for two or three killings while they werehere."
"It was the same way with those people from Pennsylvania," said Rhetta.
"We had a crowd of Pennsylvania Dutch out here a week or two after theMennonites," the judge enlarged, "smellin' around hot-foot on the trailas hounds, but this atmosphere of Ascalon and its bad influence on thecountry wouldn't be good for their young folks, they said. So _they_backed off. And that's the way it's gone, that's the way it will go. Theblight of Ascalon falls over this country for fifty miles around, thefinest country the Almighty ever scattered grass seed over.
"You saw the possibilities of it from a distance, Mr. Morgan; othershave seen it. Wouldn't you be doing humanity a larger service, a moreimmediate and applicable service, by clearing away the pest spot, curingthe repulsive infection that keeps them away from its benefits andrewards, than by plowing up eighty acres and putting in a crop of wheat?A man's got to trample down his bed-ground, as I've said already,Morgan, before he can spread his blankets sometimes. This is one of theplace
s, this is one of the times."
Morgan thought it over, hands on his thighs, head bent a little, eyes onhis boots, conscious that the girl was watching him anxiously, as one ontrial at the bar watches a doubtful jury when counsel makes the lastappeal.
"There's a lot of logic in what you say," Morgan admitted; "it ought toappeal to a man big enough, confident enough, to undertake and put thejob through."
He looked up suddenly, answering directly Rhetta Thayer's anxious,expectant, appealing brown eyes. "For if he should fail, bungle it, andhave to throw down his hand before he'd won the game, it would beKaty-bar-the-door for that man. He'd have to know how far the people ofthis town wanted him to go before starting, and there's only oneboundary--the limit of the law. If they want anything less than that aman had better keep hands off, for anything like a compromise betweenblack and white would be a fizzle."
Rhetta nodded, her bosom quivering with the pounding of her expectantheart, her throat throbbing, her hands clenched as if she held on indesperate hope of rescue. Judge Thayer said no more. He sat watchingMorgan's face, knowing well when a word too many might change theverdict to his loss.
"The question is, how far do they want a man to go in the regenerationof Ascalon? How many are willing to put purity above profit for a while?Business would suffer; it would be as dead here as a grasshopper after aprairie fire while readjustment to new conditions shaped. It might be ayear or two before healthy legitimate trade could take the place of thisflashy life, and it might never rebound from the operation. A man wouldwant the people who are calling for law and order here to be satisfiedwith the new conditions; he wouldn't want any whiners at the funeral."
"New people would come, new business would grow, as soon as the news gotabroad that a different condition prevailed in this town," Judge Thayersaid. "I can satisfy you in an hour that the business men want whatthey're demanding, and will be satisfied to take the risk of theresult."
"I came out here to farm," Morgan said, unwilling to put down his plansfor a questionable and dangerous service to a doubtful community.
"There'll not be much sod broken between now and late fall, from thepresent look of things," the judge said. "We've had the longest dryspell I've ever seen in this country--going on four weeks now without adrop of rain. It comes that way once every five or seven years, but thatalso happens back in Ohio and other places men consider especiallyfavored," he hastened to conclude.
"I didn't intend to break sod," Morgan reflected, "a man couldn't sowwheat in raw sod. That's why I wanted to look at that claim down by theriver."
"It will keep. Or you could buy it, and hire your crop put in whileyou're marshal here in town."
"And I could edit the paper. Between us we could save the county seat."
Rhetta spoke quite seriously, so seriously, indeed, that her fatherlaughed.
"I had forgotten all about saving the county seat--I was consideringonly the soul of Ascalon," he said.
"If you refuse to let father swear you in, Mr. Morgan, Craddock will sayyou were afraid. I'd hate to have him do that," said Rhetta.
"He might," Morgan granted, and with subdued voice and thoughtful mannerthat gave them a fresh rebound of hope.
And at length they had their will, but not until Morgan had gone theround of the business men on the public square, gathering the assuranceof great and small that they were weary of bloodshed and violence,notoriety and unrest; that they would let the bars down to him if hewould undertake cleaning up the town, and abide by what might come of itwithout a growl.
When they returned to Judge Thayer's office Morgan took the oath toenforce the statutes of the state of Kansas and the ordinances of thecity of Ascalon, Rhetta standing by with palpitating breast and glowingeyes, hands behind her like a little girl waiting her turn in a spellingclass. When Morgan lowered his hand Rhetta started out of her expectantpose, producing with a show of triumph a short piece of broad whiteribbon, with CITY MARSHAL stamped on it in tall black letters.
Judge Thayer laughed as Morgan backed away from her when she advanced topin it on his breast.
"I set up the type and printed it myself on the proof press," she said,in pretty appeal to him to stand and be hitched to this sign of his newoffice.
"It's so--it's rather--prominent, isn't it?" he said, still edging away.
"There isn't any regular shiny badge for you, the great, grisly Mr.Craddock wore away the only one the town owns. Please, Mr.Morgan--you'll have to wear _something_ to show your authority, won'the, Pa?"
"It would be wiser to wear it till I can send for another badge, Morgan,or we can get the old one away from Seth. Your authority would bequestioned without a badge, they're strong for badges in this town."
So Morgan stood like a family horse while Rhetta pinned the ribbon tothe pocket of his dingy gray woolen shirt, where it flaunted itsunmistakable proclamation in a manner much more effective than anypolice shield or star ever devised. Rhetta pressed it down hard with thepalm of her hand to make the stiff ribbon assume a graceful hang, sohard that she must have felt the kick of the new officer's heart justunder it. And she looked up into his eyes with a glad, confident smile.
"I feel safe _now_," she said, sighing as one who puts down a wearingburden at the end of a toilsome journey.