Trail's End

  CHAPTER XVII

  WITH CLEAN HANDS

  Seth Craddock was a defiant, although a fallen man. He refused to resignthe office of marshal of the third-class city of Ascalon when Morganreleased his feet at Judge Thayer's direction, allowing him to stand.Somebody brought his hat and put it down harshly on his small,turtle-like head, flaring out his big red ears. There he stood,glowering, dusty, blood on his face from an abrasion he had got in therough handling at the end of Morgan's rope.

  Judge Thayer said it made no difference whether he gave up the officewillingly, he was without a voice in the matter, anyhow. He was fired,and that's all there was to it. But no, said Seth; not at all. Thestatutes upheld him, the constitution supported him, and hell anddamnation and many other forces which he enumerated in his red-tongueddefiance, could not move him out of that office. He demanded to beallowed to consult his lawyer, he glared around and cursed the curiousand unawed public which laughed at his plight and the figure he cut,ordering somebody to go and fetch the county attorney, on pain of deathwhen he should come again into the freedom of his hands.

  But nobody moved, except to shift from one foot to the other and laugh.The terror seemed to have departed out of Seth Craddock's name andpresence; a terrible man is no longer fearful when he has been draggedpublicly at the end of a cow rope and tied up in the public place like acalf for the branding iron.

  The county attorney was discreet enough to keep his distance. He did notcome forward with advice on habeas corpus and constitutional rights.Only Earl Gray, the druggist, with seven kinds of perfumery on his hair,came out of the crowd with smirking face, ingratiating, servile,offering Morgan a cigar. The look that Morgan gave him would have wiltedthe tobacco in its green leaf. It wilted Druggist Gray. He turned backinto the crowd and eliminated himself from the day's adventure likesmoke on the evening wind.

  Peden was seen, soon after Craddock's dusty downfall, making his wayback to the shelter of his hall, a cloud on his dark face, a sneer ofcontempt in his eyes. His bearing was proclamation that he had expecteda great deal more of Seth Craddock, and that the support of hisinfluence was from that moment withdrawn. But there was nothing in hismanner of a disturbed or defeated man. Those who knew him best, indeed,felt that he had played only a preliminary hand and, finding it weak,had taken up the deck for a stronger deal.

  Seth Craddock stood with his back to the station platform, hands boundbehind him, his authority gone. A little way to one side Morgan waitedbeside his horse, his pistol under his hand, rifle on the saddle, not soconfident that all was won as to lay himself open to a surprise. JudgeThayer was holding a session with Craddock, the town, good and bad,looking on with varying emotions of mirth, disappointment, and disgust.

  Judge Thayer unbuckled Craddock's belt and remaining pistol, picked upthe empty weapon from the ground, sheathed it in the holster oppositeits once terrifying mate, and gave them to Morgan. Morgan hung them onhis saddle horn, and the wives and mothers of Ascalon who had trembledfor their husbands and sons when they heard the roar of those guns indays past, drew great breaths of relief, and looked into each other'sfaces and smiled.

  "We can't hold you for any of the killings you've done here, Seth,though some of them were unjustified, we know," Judge Thayer said."You've been cleared by the coroner's jury in each case, there's no usefor us to open them again. But you'll have to leave this town. Yourfriends went yesterday, escorted by Mr. Morgan across the ArkansasRiver. You can follow them if you want to--you might overtake 'emsomewhere down in the Nation--you'll have to go in the same direction,in peace if you will, otherwise if you won't."

  "I'm marshal of this town," Seth still persisted, in the belief thatforces were gathering to his rescue, one could see. "The only way I'llever leave till I'm ready to go'll be in a box!"

  Certainly, Seth did not end the defiance and the declaration that way,nor issue it from his mouth in such pale and commonplace hues. JudgeThayer argued with him, after his kindly disposition, perhaps not alittle sorry for the man who had outgrown his office and abused thefriend who had elevated him to it.

  Seth remained as obdurate as a trapped wolf. He roved his eyes around,craned his long, wrinkled neck, looking for the succor that was so longin coming. He repeated, with blasting enlargement, that the only waythey could send him out of Ascalon would be in a box.

  Judge Thayer drew apart to consult Morgan, in low tones. Morgan wasundisturbed by Craddock's unbending opinion that he had plenty of lawbehind him to sustain his contention that he could not be removed fromoffice. It did not matter how much ammunition a man had if he couldn'tshoot it. It was Morgan's opinion, given with the light of humorquickening in his eyes, that they ought to take Craddock at his word.

  "Ship him out?" said Judge Thayer.

  "In a box," Morgan nodded, face as sober as judgment, the humor growingin his eyes.

  "But we can't butcher the fellow like a hog!" Judge Thayer protested.

  "Live hogs are shipped in boxes, right along," Morgan explained.

  Judge Thayer saw the light; his pepper-and-salt whiskers twinkled andspread around his mouth, and rose so high in their bristling over hissilent laughter that they threatened his eyes. He turned to Craddock,forcing a sober front.

  "All right, Seth, we'll take you up on it. You're going out of town in abox," he said.

  Judge Thayer ordered the undertaker to bring over a coffin box, thelongest one he had. The word ran like a prairie fire from those whoheard the order given, that they were going to shoot Craddock for hiscrimes and bury him on the spot.

  There was not a little disappointment, but more relief, in the publicmind when it became understood that Craddock was not to be shot. As amockery of his past oppression and terrible name, he was to be nailed upin a box and shipped out like a snake. And so it turned out again inAscalon that comedy came in to end the play where tragedy had begun it.

  Morgan bore no part in this unexpected climax to his hard-straining anddoubt-clouded day. He stood by watchful and alert, a great peace in hismind, a great lightness. He had come through it according to RhettaThayer's wish, according to his own desire, with no man's blood upon hishands.

  There were many willing ones who came forward to make light the labor ofSeth Craddock's packing. They unbound his hands with derision andbundled him into the capacious long box against his strivings and curseswith scorn. Morgan suggested the enclosure of a jug of water. Let himfrizzle and fry, they said. They'd bore an auger hole or two in the boxto give him air, and that was greater humanity than he deserved. Morganinsisted on at least a bottle of water, and had his way, againstgrumbling.

  The undertaker officiated, as if it were a regular funeral, putting thelong screws in the stout lid while citizens sat on it to hold theexplosive old villain down. They fastened him in as securely as if hewere a dead man, in all sobriety, boxed up againt the worms of thegrave.

  Then the question rose of where to send him, and how. On the first partof it the public was of undivided mind. No matter where he went, or inwhat direction, let it be far. On the second division there was someargument. Some held for shipping him by freight, as livestock, and somewere for express as the quickest way to the end of a long journey. Forthe farther out of sight he could be carried in the shortest possibletime, they said, the better for all concerned.

  There the station agent was called in to lend the counsel of hisofficial position. A man could not be shipped by freight if alive, hesaid. He could be sent as a corpse is sent, by paying the rate of a fareand a half and stowing him in the baggage-car with trunks and dogs. Theundertaker was of the same opinion, which he expressed gravely, withbecoming sadness and gloom.

  Judge Thayer wrote the address on the shipping tag, the undertakertacked it on Seth Craddock's case, and then the amazed people of Ascaloncame forward surrounding the case, and read:

  Chief of Police, Kansas City, Missouri.

  That was the consignee of the strangest shipment ever billed out ofAscalon. People wo
ndered what the chief of police would do with hisgift. They wished him well of it, with all their hearts.

  Meantime Seth Craddock, with the blood of eight men on his hands, wasmaking more noise in the coffin box than a sack of cats. It was a mostundignified way for a man of his sanguinary reputation to accept thishumiliation at the hands of a public that he had outraged. A mule in abox stall could not have made a greater clatter with heels againstplanks than the fallen city marshal of Ascalon drummed up with his onthe stout end of the coffin box. He cursed as he kicked, and called inmuffled voice on the friends of his brief day of power to come and sethim free.

  But the sycophants who had hung to his heels like hand-fed dogs whenpower glorified him like a glistening garment and exalted him high aboveother men, turned out as all time-servers and cowardly courtiers alwaysfinish when the object of their transitory adulation falls with hisbelly in the dust. They sneered, they jeered, they turned white-shirtedcoatless backs upon his box with derisive, despising laughter on theirnight-pale faces. Seth Craddock was a mighty man as long as he had alicense to walk about and slay, but fastened up in a box like a corpsefor shipment at the rate of the dead, he was only a hull and an emptyhusk of a man.

  They said he was a coward; they had known it all along. It called for acoward to shoot men down like rabbits. That was not the way of a braveand worthy man. This great moral conclusion they reached readily enough,Seth Craddock securely caged before them. If Morgan's rope had missedits mark, if a snarl had shortened it a foot; if Craddock had been asecond sooner in starting to draw his gun, this wave of moral exaltationwould not have descended upon Ascalon that day.

  There was some concern over the holding quality of the box. Peoplefeared Craddock might burst out of it before going far, and returnagainst them for the reckoning so volubly threatened. The undertakerquieted these fears by tapping the box around with his hammer, pointingout its reenforced strength with melancholy pride. A ghost might get outof it if some other undertaker put the lid on, he said, but even thatthin and vaporous thing would have to call for help if _he_ screwed himshut in that most competent container of the mortal remains of man.

  Thus assured, the citizens carried the box in festive spirit, with morecharity and kindness toward old Seth than he deserved, and stood it onend in the shadow of the depot. There was an auger hole on a level withSeth's eye, through which he could glower out for his last look onAscalon, and the people who gathered around to deride him and triumph inhis overthrow.

  Through this small opening Seth cursed them, checking such of them offby name as he recognized, setting them down in his memory for thevengeance he declared he would return speedily and exact. There hestood, like Don Quixote in his cage, his red eye to the hole, swearingas terribly as any man that marched in that hard-boiled army in Flanderslong ago.

  Those who had been awed by his grim silence in the days when he ruledabove all law in Ascalon, were surprised now by his volubility. Underprovocation Craddock could say as much as the next man, it appeared.Unquestionably, he could express his limited thoughts in words luridlystrange. He wearied of this arraignment at last, and subsided. Longbefore the train came he lapsed into his natural blue sulkiness,remaining as quiet behind his auger hole as one ready for the grave.

  They loaded Craddock on a truck when the train from the west whistled,trundled him down the platform and posted him ready to load in thebaggage-car, attended by a large, jubilant crowd. There was so muchhilarity in this gathering for a funeral, indeed, and so much profanity,denunciation, and threat issuing out of the coffin box--for Seth brokeout again the minute they moved him--that the baggage-man aboard thetrain demurred on receiving the shipment. He closed the door against theeager citizens who mounted the truck to shove the box aboard, leavingonly opening enough for him to stand flatwise in and shout up theplatform to the conductor.

  This conductor was a notable man in his day on that pioneer railroad. Hewas a bony, irascible man, fiery of face, with a high hook nose that hadbeen smashed to one side in some battle when he was construction foremanin his days of lowly beginning. He wore a pistol strapped around hislong coat, which garment was braided and buttoned like an ambassador's,and he was notable throughout the land of cattle and cards as a man whocould reach far and hit hard. If Seth Craddock had applied to him forinstruction in invective and profanity, veteran that he was he wouldhave been put at the very foot of the primer class.

  Now this mighty man came striding down the platform, thrusting his waythrough the crowd with no gentle elbow, hand on his gun, displeasureready to explode from his mouth. The baggage-man asked advice onaccepting the proffered box, with fare and a half ticket attached as inthe case of a corpse.

  The conductor remarked, with terrible sarcasm, that the corpse was thenoisiest one he ever had encountered, even in that cursed and benightedand seven times outcast hole. He knocked on the box and demanded of theoccupant an account of himself, and the part he was bearing in thispleasant little episode, this beautiful little joke.

  Seth lifted up his muffled voice to say that it was no joke, at least tohim. He explained his identity and denounced his captors, swearingvengeance to the last eyebrow. The conductor faced the crowd withdisdainful severity.

  What were they trying to play off on him, anyhow? Who did they supposehe was? Maybe that was fun in Ascalon, but his company wasn't going tocarry no man from nowhere against his will and be sued for it. Burn himand box up the ashes, boil him and bottle the soup; reduce him by anycomfortable means they saw fit, according to their humane way, fetch himthere in any guise but that of a living man, and the company would haulhim to Hades if they billed him to that destination.

  But not in his present shape and form; not as a living, swearing,suit-threatening man. Take him to hell out of there, the conductorordered in rising temper. Don't insult him and his road by coming aroundthere to make them a part in their idle, life-wasting, time-gambling,blasted to the seventh depth of Hades tricks.

  The baggage-man closed the door, the conductor gave the signal to pullout, and the train departed, leaving Seth Craddock on the truck, therather shamed and dampened citizens standing around. They concluded theywould have to hang him, after all their trouble for a more romantic,picturesque, and unusual exit. And hanging was such a common, ordinaryway of getting rid of a distasteful man that the pleasure was taken outof their day.

  Judge Thayer was firmly against hanging. He ordered the undertaker toopen the box, which he did with fear and trembling, seeing in a futurehour the vengeance of Seth Craddock descending on his solemn head.Craddock, sweat-drenched and weak from his rebellion and the heat of hisclose quarters, sat up with scarcely a breath left in him for a curse.Judge Thayer delivered him to Morgan, with instructions to lock him up.

  The city calaboose was an institution apart from the county jail. Due tosome past rivalry between the county and city officials, the palatial jailwas closed to offenders against the lowly and despised-by-the-sherifftown ordinances. So, out of its need, the city had built this littlehouse with bars across the one small window, and a barred door formed ofwagon tires to close outside the one of wood.

  No great amount of business ever had been done in this calaboose, forminor infractions of the law were not troubled with in that town. Ifthere ever was anybody left over from a shooting he usually went alongabout his business or his pleasure until the coroner's jury assembledand let him off. The last man confined in the calaboose had stolen abottle of whisky, a grave and reprehensible offense which set all thetown talking and speculating on the proper punishment. This poor bug hadmade a fire of his hay bedding in the night, and perished as miserablyas everybody said he deserved. The charred boards in one corner stillattested to his well-merited end.

  Morgan was not at all confident of the retaining powers of thecalaboose, neither was he greatly concerned. He believed that ifCraddock could break out he would make a streak away from Ascalon,hooked up at high speed, never to return. It was not in the nature of aman humbled from a high place, moc
ked by the lowly, derided by thosewhom he had oppressed, contemned by the false friends he had favored, tocome back on an errand of revenge. The job was too general in a caselike Craddock's. He would have to exterminate most of the town.

  They left him in the calaboose with whatever reflections were his. Thewindow was too high in the wall for anybody on the outside to see in, orfor Craddock, tall as he was, to see anything out of it but the sky.Public interest had fallen away since he was neither to be shipped outnor hanged, only locked up like a whisky thief. Only a few boys hungaround the calaboose, which stood apart in the center of at least halfan acre of ground, as if ashamed of its office in a community that usedit so seldom when it was needed so often.

  Morgan returned to the square for his horse, rather dissatisfied nowwith the day's developments. It was going to be troublesome to have thisfellow on his hands. Judge Thayer should not have interfered with thelast decree of public justice. It would have been over with by now.

  Rhetta Thayer was in the door of the newspaper office. She came to theedge of the sidewalk as Morgan approached, leading his horse. She didnot reflect the public satisfaction from her handsome face and troubledeyes that Ascalon in general enjoyed over Craddock's humiliation. Morganwondered why.

  "I asked too much of you, Mr. Morgan," she said, coming at once to thematter that clouded her honest eyes.

  "You couldn't ask too much of me," he returned, with no unction offlattery, but the cheerfully frank expression of an ingenuous heart.

  "I didn't realize the disadvantage you would be under, I didn't knowwhat I expected of you when I urged you into this. Meeting thatdesperate man with a rope instead of a gun!"

  "You didn't know I was going to meet him with a rope," he said.

  He stood before her, hat in hand, wholesomely honest in his homelyruggedness, a flush of embarrassment tinging his face. The sun in hisshort hair seemed laughing, picking out little flecks of gold as micaflakes in the sea waves turn and flash.

  "You might have been killed! When I saw him throw his hand to his gun!Oh! it was terrible!"

  "So you're the editor now?" he said, cheerfully, trying to turn her fromthis disturbing subject.

  "My heart jumped clear out of my mouth when you threw your rope!"

  "It came over and helped me," he said, in manner sincere and grave.

  A little flame of color lifted in her pale cheek. She looked at thedusty road, her hand pressed to her bosom as if to make certain that thetruant heart had come back to her like a dove to its cote out of thestorm. She looked up presently, and smiled a bit; looked down again, thehot blood writing a confession in her face.

  "I hope it did," she said.

  Morgan felt himself in such a suffocation of strange delight he couldfind no word that seemed the right word, and left it to silence, which,perhaps was best. He looked at the road, also, as if he would searchwith her there for grains of gold, or for lost hearts which leap out ofmaidens' breasts, in the white dust marked by many feet.

  Together they looked up, faces white, breath faltering on dry lips. Sothe fire leaps in a moment such as this and enwraps the soul. It is nomystery, it is no process of long distillation. In a moment; so.

  "Here are his guns," said he, his voice trembling as if it strained inleaping the subject that lay in its door to go back to the business ofthe day.

  "His guns!" she repeated after him, shuddering at the thought.

  "Hang them over your desk--you might need them, now you're the editor."

  She accepted them from his hand, but dubiously, holding them far outfrom contact with her dress as something unclean. Morgan reproachedhimself for offering her these instruments which had sent so many mento sudden, undefended death. He reached to relieve her hand.

  "Let me do it for you, Miss Thayer."

  "No," she denied him, putting down her qualm, clutching the heavy beltfirmly. "It is a notable trophy, a great distinction you're giving me,Mr. Morgan. I'm afraid you'll think I'm a coward," smiling wanly as shelifted her face.

  "You're not afraid to edit the paper. That seems to me the mostdangerous job in town."

  "Most dangerous job in town!" she reproved him, giving him to understandvery plainly that she could name one attended by greater perils."They've only killed _one_ editor, so far."

  "Can you shoot?" he asked, as seriously concerned as if the fate ofeditors in Ascalon darkened over her already.

  "Everybody in this town can shoot," she sighed. "It's every boy'sambition to own and carry a pistol, and most of them do."

  "I hope you'll never have to defend the independence of the press witharms," he said, making a small pleasantry of it. "More than likelythey're gentlemen enough to let you say whatever you want to, and makeno kick."

  "The _Headlight_ is going to be an awful joke with Riley Caldwell and megetting it out. But I'm not going to try to please anybody. That way Imay please them all."

  "It sounds like the sensible way. Have you edited before?"

  "I used to help Mr. Smith, the editor they killed. That was in thesummer vacation, just. I taught school the rest of the time."

  "You must have been the busiest person in town," he said, with pride inher activities as if they had touched his own life long ago.

  "I'm a poor stick of an editor, I'm afraid, though--I seem to be allmussed up with legal notices and this sudden flood of news. And I can'tset type worth a cent!"

  "Just let the news go," he suggested, not without concern for the parthe might bear in her chronicle of late events in Ascalon.

  "Let the news go!" She censured him with her softly chiding eyes. "Iwish I could write like Mr. Smith--I'd wake this town up! Poor man, hiscoat is hanging in the office by the desk, so suggestive of him it makesme cry. I haven't had the heart to take it away--it would seem likeexpelling his spirit from the place. He was a slender, gentle littleman, more like a minister than an editor. It took an awful coward toshoot him down that way."

  "You're right; I met him," Morgan said, remembering Dell Hutton amongthe wagons, his smoking gun in his hand.

  "Sneaking little coward!"

  "Well, he'll hardly sling his gun down on you," Morgan reflected, as ifhe communed with himself, yet thinking that Hutton scarcely would bebeyond even that.

  "Hardly," she replied, in abstraction. "What are you going to do withthat old brigand you've got locked in the calaboose?"

  "I expect we'll turn him loose in the morning. There doesn't seem to beanything we can hold him for, guilty as he is."

  "If he'll leave, and never come back," doubtfully. "I'm glad now itturned out the way it did, I'm so thankful you didn't have to--that youcame through _without blood on your hands_!"

  "It would have been a calamity the other way," he said.

  When Morgan went his way presently, leaving her in the door of thelittle boxlike newspaper office, from where she gave him a partingsmile, it was with a revised opinion of the day's achievements. He feltpeculiarly exalted and satisfied. He had accomplished something, afterall.

  Whatever this was, he did not confess, but he smiled, and felt renewedwith a lifting gladness, as he went on to the livery barn, his horse athis heels.