Trail's End
CHAPTER XIV
SOME FOOL WITH A GUN
Morgan was roused out of his brief sleep at the Elkhorn hotel shortlyafter sunrise by the night telegrapher at the railroad station, who camewith a telegram.
"I thought you'd like to have it as soon as possible," the operatorsaid, in apology for his early intrusion, standing by Morgan's bed, TomConboy attending just outside the door with ear primed to pick up thesmallest word.
"Sure--much obliged," Morgan returned, his voice hoarse with brokensleep, his head not instantly clear of its flying clouds. The operatorlingered while Morgan ran his eye over the few words.
"Much obliged, old feller," Morgan said, warmly, giving the young man aquick look of understanding that must serve in place of more words,seeing that Conboy had his head within the door.
Morgan heard the operator denying Conboy the secret of the message inthe hall outside his door. Conboy had lived long enough in Ascalon toknow when to curb his curiosity. He tiptoed away from Morgan's door,repressing his desire behind his beard.
Knowing that he could not sleep again after that abrupt break in hisrest, Morgan rose and dressed. Once or twice he referred again to themessage that lay spread on his pillow.
Craddock wired Peden last night that he would arrive on number seven at 1:20 this afternoon.
That was the content of the message, not a telegram at all, but afriendly note of warning from the night operator, who had come over tothe hotel to go to bed. The young man had shrewdly adopted this means tocover his information, knowing that Peden's wrath was mighty and hisvengeance far-reaching. Nobody in town could question the delivery of atelegram.
Morgan had expected Craddock to hasten back and attempt to recover hisscepter and resume his sway over Ascalon, where the destructive sickleof his passion for blood could be plied with safety under the shelter ofhis prostituted office. But he did not expect him to return so soon. Itpleased him better that the issue was to be brought to a speedy trialbetween them. While he had his feet wet, he reasoned, he would just aswell cross the stream.
Conboy was sweeping the office, having laid the thick of the dust with asprinkling can. He paused in his work to give Morgan a shrewd, sharplook.
"Important news when it pulls a man out of bed this early," Conboyventured, "and him needin' sleep like you do."
"Yes," said Morgan, going on to the door.
Conboy came after him, voice lowered almost to a whisper as he spoke,eyes turning about as if he expected a spy to bob up behind hiscounter.
"I heard it passed around late last night that Craddock was comin'back."
"Wasn't he expected to?" Morgan inquired, indifferently, whollyundisturbed.
Conboy watched him keenly, standing half behind him, to note any sign ofpanic or uneasiness that would tell him which side he should supportwith his valuable sympathy and profound philosophy.
"From the way things point, I think they're lookin' for him back today,"he said.
"The quicker the sooner," Morgan replied in offhand cowboy way.
Conboy was left on middle ground, not certain whether Morgan would fleebefore the arrival of the man whose powers he had usurped, or stand hisground and shoot it out. It was an uncomfortable moment; a man must beon one side or the other to be safe. In the history of Ascalon it wasthe neutral who generally got knocked down and trampled, and lost hispocketbook and watch, as happens to the gaping nonparticipants in thesquabbles of humanity everywhere.
"From what I hear goin' around," Conboy continued, dropping his voice toa cautious, confidential pitch, "there'll be a bunch of bad men along ina day or two to help Craddock hold things down. It looks to me like it'sgoin' to be more than any one man can handle."
"It may be that way," Morgan said, lingering in the door, Conboy doinghis talking from the rear. Morgan was thinking the morning had afreshness in it like a newly gathered flower.
"It'll mean part closed and part open if that man takes hold of thistown again," Conboy said. "Him and Peden they're as thick as three in abed. Close all of 'em, like you did last night, or give everybody a fairwhack. That's what I say."
"Yes," abstractedly from Morgan.
"It was kind of quiet and slow in town last night, slowest night I'veever had since I bought this dump. I guess I'd have to move away ifthings run along that way, but I don't know. Maybe business would pickup when people got used to the new deal. Goin' to let 'em open tonight?"
"Night's a long way off," Morgan said, leaving the question open forConboy to make what he could out of it.
Conboy was of the number who could see no existence for Ascalon but avicious one, yet he was no partisan of Seth Craddock, having a sorenessin his recollection of many indignities suffered at the hands of thecity marshal's Texas friends, even of Craddock's overriding and sardonicdisdain. Yet he would rather have Craddock, and the town open, thanMorgan and stagnation. He came to that conclusion with Morgan's evasionof his direct question. The interests of Peden and his kind wereConboy's interests. He stood like a housemaid with dustpan and broom togather up the wreckage of the night.
"When can I get breakfast?" Morgan inquired, turning suddenly, catchingConboy with his new resolution in his shifty, flickering eyes, readinghim to the marrow of his bones.
"It's a little early--not half-past five," Conboy returned, covering hisconfusion as well as he could by referring to his thick silver watch."We don't begin to serve till six, the earliest of 'em don't come inbefore then. If you feel like turnin' in for a sleep, we'll take care ofyou when you get up."
Morgan said he had sleep enough to carry him over the day. Dora,yawning, disheveled, appeared in the dining-room door at that moment,tying her all-enveloping white apron around her like Poor Polly Bawn.She blushed when she saw Morgan, and put up her hands to smooth herhair.
"I had the best sleep last night I can remember in a coon's age--I feltso _safe_," she said.
"You always was safe enough," Conboy told her, not in the best of humor.
"Safe enough! I can show you five bullet holes in the walls of my room,Mr. Morgan--one of 'em through the head of my bed!"
"Pretty close," Morgan said, answering the animation of her rosy,friendly face with a smile.
"Never mind about bullet holes--you go and begin makin' holes in a pieceof biscuit dough," her father commanded.
"When I get good and ready," said Dora, serenely. "You wouldn't care ifwe got shot to pieces every night as long as we could get up in themorning and make biscuits!"
"Yes, and some of you'd be rootin' around somebody else's kitchen forbiscuits to fill your craws if this town laid dead a little whilelonger," Conboy fired back, his true feeling in the matter revealed.
"I can get a job of biscuit shooter any day," Dora told him, untroubledby the outlook of disaster that attended upon peace and quiet. "I'drather not have no guests than drunks that come in stagger blind andshoot the plaster off of the wall. It ain't so funny to wake up withyour ears full of lime! Ma's sick of it, and I'm sick of it, and it'd bea blessin' if Mr. Morgan would keep the joints all shut till the drunksin this town dried up like dead snakes!"
"You, and your ma!" Conboy grumbled, bearing on an old grievance, an oldtheme of servitude and discontent.
Morgan recalled the gaunt anxiety of Mrs. Conboy's eyes, hollow of everyemotion, as they seemed, but unrest and straining fear. Dora had goneunmarked yet by the cursed fires of Ascalon; only her tongue discoveredthat the poison of their fumes had reached her heart.
"I'd like to put strickenine in some of their biscuits!" Dora declared,with passionate vehemence.
"Tut-tut! no niggers----"
"How's your face, Mr. Morgan?" Dora inquired, out of one mood intoanother so quickly the transition was bewildering.
"Face?" said Morgan, embarrassed for want of her meaning. "Oh," puttinghis hand to the forgotten wound--"about well, thank you, Miss Dora. Iguess my good looks are ruined, though."
Dora half closed her eyes in arch expression, pursing her lips as if sh
emeant to give him either a whistle or a kiss, laughed merrily, and ranoff to cut patterns in a sheet of biscuit dough. She left such aclearness and good humor in the morning air that Morgan felt quite lightat heart as he started for a morning walk.
Morgan was still wearing the cowboy garb that he had drawn from thebottom of his trunk among the things which he believed belonged to apast age and closed period of his life's story. He had deliberated thequestion well the night before, reaching the conclusion that, as he hadstepped out of his proper character, lapsed back, in a word, toraw-handed dealings with the rough edges of the world, he would betterdress the part. He would be less conspicuous in that dress, and it wouldbe his introduction and credentials to the men of the range.
Last night's long vigil, tramping around the square in his high-heeled,tight-fitting boots, had not hastened the cure of his bruised ankles andsore feet. This morning he limped like a trapped wolf, as he said tohimself when he started to take a look around and see whether any of theoutlawed had made bold to open their doors.
Few people were out of bed in Ascalon at that hour, although the sun wasalmost an hour high. As Morgan passed along he heard the crackling ofkindling being broken in kitchens. Here and there the eager smoke offresh fires rose straight toward the blue. No stores were open yet; thedoors of the saloons remained closed as the night before. Morgan pausedat the bank corner after making the round of the square.
Ahead of him the principal residence street of the town stretched, thehouses standing in exclusive withdrawal far apart on large plots ofground, a treeless, dusty, unlovely lane. Here the summer sun raked roofand window with its untempered fire; here the winds of winter bombardeddoor and pane with shrapnel of sleet and charge of snow, whistling oncornice and eaves, fluttering in chimney like the beat of exhaustedwings.
Morgan knew well enough how the place would appear in that bitterseason; he had lived in the lonely desolation of a village on the bald,unsheltered plain. How did Rhetta Thayer endure the winter, he wondered,when she could not gallop away into the friendly solitude of the clean,unpeopled prairie? Where did she live? Which house would be JudgeThayer's among the bright-painted dwellings along that raw lane? Hefavored one of the few white ones, a house with a wide porch screened bymorning-glory vines, a gallant row of hollyhocks in the distance.
Lawn grass had been sown in many of the yards, where it had flourisheduntil the scorching summer drouth. Even now there were little rugs ofgreen against north walls where the noonday shadows fell, but the restof the lawns were withered and brown. Some hardy flowers, such aszinnias and marigolds, stood clumped about dooryards; in the kitchengardens tasseled corn rose tall, dust thick on the guttered blades.
Morgan turned from this scene in which Ascalon presented its betterside, to skirmish along the street running behind Peden's establishment.It might be well, for future exigencies, to fix as much of the geographyof the place in his mind as possible. He wondered if there had been aback-door traffic in any of the saloons last night as he passed longstrings of empty beer kegs, concluding that it was very likely somethinghad been done in that way.
Across the street from Peden's back door was a large vacant piece ofground, a wilderness of cans, bottles, packing boxes, broken barrels. Onone corner, diagonally across from where Morgan stood, facing on theother street, a ragged, weathered tent was pitched. Out of this thesound of contending children came, the strident, commanding voice of awoman breaking sharply to still the commotion that shook her unstablehome. Morgan knew this must be the home of the cattle thief whose caseJudge Thayer had undertaken. He wondered why even a cattle thief wouldchoose that site at the back door of perdition to pitch his tent andlodge his family.
A bullet clipping close past his ear, the sharp sound of a pistol shotbehind him, startled him out of this speculation.
Morgan did not believe at once, even as he wheeled gun in hand toconfront the careless gun-handler or the assassin, as the case mightprove, that the shot could have been intended for him, but out ofcaution he darted as quick as an Indian behind a pyramid of beer kegs.From that shelter he explored in the direction of the shot, but sawnobody.
There was ample barrier for a lurking man all along the street onPeden's side. From behind beer cases and kegs, whisky barrels, wagons,corners of small houses, one could have taken a shot at him; or from awindow or back door. There was no smoke hanging to mark the spot.
Morgan slipped softly from his concealment, coming out at Peden's backdoor. Bending low, he hurried back over the track he had come, keepingthe heaps of kegs, barrels, and boxes between him and the road. Andthere, twenty yards or so distant, in a space between two wagons, he sawa man standing, pistol in hand, all set and primed for another shot, butlooking rather puzzled and uncertain over the sudden disappearance ofhis mark.
Morgan was upon him in a few silent strides, unseen and unheard, his gunraised to throw a quick shot if the situation called for it. The man wasDell Hutton, the county treasurer. His face was white. There was thelook in his eyes of a man condemned when he turned and confrontedMorgan.
"Who was it that shot at you, Morgan?" he inquired, his voice husky inthe fog of his fright. He was laboring hard to put a face on it thatwould make him the champion of peace; he peered around with simulatedcaution, as if he had rushed to the spot ready to uphold the law.
Morgan let the pitiful effort pass for what it was worth, and that wasvery little.
"I don't know who it was, Hutton," he replied, with a careless laugh,putting his pistol away. "If you see him, tell him I let a little thinglike that pass--once."
Morgan did not linger for any further words. Several shock-hairedchildren had come bursting from the tent, their contention silenced.They stood looking at Morgan as he came back into the road, wonder intheir muggy faces. Heads appeared at windows, back doors openedcautiously, showing eyes at cracks.
"Some fool shootin' off his gun," Morgan heard a man growl as he passedunder a window of a thin-sided house, from which the excited voices ofwomen came like the squeaks of unnested mice.
"What was goin' on back there?" Conboy inquired as Morgan approached thehotel. The proprietor was a little way out from his door, anxiety,rather than interest, in his face.
"Some fool shootin' off his gun, I guess," Morgan replied, feeling thatthe answer fitted the case very well.
He gave Dora the same explanation when she met him at the blue door ofthe dining-room, trouble in her fair blue eyes. She looked at him withkeen questioning, not satisfied that she had heard it all.
"I hope he burnt his fingers," she said.