Trail's End
CHAPTER XVIII
A BONDSMAN BREATHES EASIER
There was a little ripple, more of mirth than excitement or concern, inAscalon next morning when it became known that Seth Craddock had kickeda hole in the burned corner of the calaboose and leaked out of it intothe night.
Let him go; it was as well that way as any, they said, since it relievedthem at once of the charge of his keep and the trouble of disposing ofhim in the end. He never would come back to that town, let him ravage inother parts of the world as he might. What the town had lost innotoriety by his going would be offset by the manner of his degradation,already written at length by the local correspondent of the _Kansas CityTimes_ and sent on to be printed with a display heading in a prominentposition in that paper and copied by other papers all over the land.
Seth Craddock and his reign were behind the closed door of the past,through which he was not likely to kick a hole and emerge again, afterhis manner of going from the calaboose. That matter off the town's mind,it ranged itself along the shady side of the street to watch the presentcontest between the law and those who lived beyond it.
Up to this point it appeared that the law was going to have it accordingto its mandate. Peden made no attempt to open his place on the nightfollowing Craddock's deposition, the lesser lights following hisvirtuous example.
But there was in this quiescent confidence, in this lull almostthreatening, something similar to the impertinent repression of anincorrigible child who yields to authority immediately above him,knowing that presently it will be overruled. Something was clouding upto break over Ascalon; the sleepiest in the town was aware of that.
How much more keenly, then, was this charged atmosphere sensed andexplored with the groping hand of trepidation by Rhetta Thayer, finelytuned as a virtuoso's violin. She knew something was hatching in thatSatan's nest of iniquity that would result in an outbreak of defiance,but what form it would take, and when, she could not determine, althoughfriends tried to sound for her the bottom of this pit.
Morgan knew it; all the scheme was as plain to him as the line ofhitching racks around the square. They were waiting to gather force,when they meant to rise up and crush him, fling wide their doors, invitethe outlawed of the world in, and proceed as in the past. All there wasto be done was wait the uncovering of their hands.
Meantime, there was a breathing spell between, a spell of pleasant hoursin the little newspaper office, reading the exchanges, helping on thearrangement of such news as the town and country about it yielded, andhaving many a good laugh over their bungling of the job, himself and thepretty, brown-eyed editor, that was better for their bodies and soulsthan all the physic on Druggist Gray's shelves. And not one lineconcerning Morgan's adventures appeared in the _Headlight_ during thattime.
In this manner, Ascalon enjoyed as it might three days of peace out ofthis summer solstice. The drouth was aggravating in its duration andgrowing hardships. Many families in town were without water, and obligedto carry it from the deep well in the public square. Numberless cattlewere being driven to the loading pens for shipment to market, weeksahead of their day of doom, unfattened, unfit. The range was becoming abarren; disaster threatened over that land with a torch in itsblind-striking hand.
On the evening of this third day, between sunset and twilight, RhettaThayer stopped Morgan as he was passing the _Headlight_ office at thebeginning of his nightly patrol. She was disturbed by an agitation thatshe could not conceal; her eyes stood wide as if some passing terror hadopened their windows.
"He shot at you, and you didn't tell me!" she said, reproachfully,facing him just inside the door.
"Well, he isn't much of a shot," Morgan told her, cheerful assurance inhis words. "I can assure you I was at no time in any danger."
"Oh! you didn't tell me!" she said, her voice little above a whisper onher quick-coming breath.
"It didn't amount to anything," Morgan discounted, wondering how she hadheard of it. "All that puzzled me was why the little rat did it--I neverstepped in front of him anywhere."
"That woman in the tent--the rustler's wife--told me--she told me justa little while ago. Oh! if he--if he'd have hit you!"
"The kids all came running out of the tent--I thought he'd hit one ofthem," Morgan said, humorously, thinking only to calm her greatagitation and quiet her friendly--if there could be no dearerinterest--concern.
"It was Peden got him to do it," she declared.
"Peden? Why should Hutton go out to do that fellow's gunning?"
"Dell Hutton's gambling the county's money, he killed Mr. Smith becausehe charged him with it! Pa knows it, pa's on his bond, and if he keepson losing the county funds there on Peden's game we'll have to make itgood. It will take everything we've got--if he keeps on."
"That's bad, that's mighty bad," Morgan said, deeply concerned,curiously awakened to the inner workings of things in Ascalon. "Still, Idon't see what connection I have in it, why he'd want to take a shot atme on the quiet that way."
"He shoots from behind, he shot Mr. Smith in the back, and it was atnight, besides. Don't you see how it was? Peden must have bribed him todo it, promised to make good his losses, or something like that."
"Plain as a wagon track," Morgan said.
"I don't know why I ever got you into this tangle," she lamented, "Idon't know what made me so selfish and so blind."
"It's just one more little complication in Ascalon's sickness," hecomforted her, "it doesn't amount to beans. The poor little fool was soscared that morning he could hardly lift his gun. He'll never makeanother break."
"If I only thought he wouldn't! He's as treacherous as a snake, youcan't tell where he's sneaking to bite you. Give it up, Mr. Morgan,won't you, please?" She turned to him suddenly, appealing with her eyes,with her wistful lips, with every line of her sympathetic, anxious face.
"Give it up?" he repeated, her meaning not quite clear.
"The office, I mean. Surely, as I coaxed you into taking it, I've got aright to ask you to give it up. You've done what you took the place todo, you've got Craddock out of it and away from here. Your work's done,you can quit now with a good conscience and no excuse to anybody."
"Why," said Morgan, reflectively, "I don't believe I could quit rightnow, Miss Rhetta. There's something more to come, it isn't quitefinished yet."
"There's a great deal more to come, the end of all this fighting andkilling and grinning treachery never will come!" she said, in greatbitterness. "What's the use of one man putting his life against all thisviciousness? There's no cure for the curse of Ascalon but time. Let itgo, Mr. Morgan--I beg you to give it up."
Morgan took the hand that she reached out to him in her appeal. Thegreat fervor of her earnest heart had drawn the blood away from it,leaving it cold. He clasped it, tightly, to warm it in his big palm, andspoke comfortingly, yet he would not, could not, tell her that he wouldgive over the office and leave the town to its devices. The work he hadbegun on her account, at her appeal, was not finished. He wanted to giveher a peace that would make permanent the placidity of her eyes such ashad warmed his heart during those three days. But he could not tell herthat.
"If it goes on," she said, sad that he would not yield to her appeal,"you'll have to--you'll have to--do what the rest of them have done. AndI don't want you to do that, Mr. Morgan. I want you to keep clean."
"As it must be, so it will be," he said. "But I don't see any reason whyI can't keep on the way I've started. There's nobody doing any shootinghere now."
"They're only waiting," she said.
"I'll have to watch them a little longer, then," he told her; "somebodymight shoot your windows out."
He led her away from the subject of Ascalon's dangers and unrest, itssinister ferment and silent threat, but she would come back to it in alittle while, and to Dell Hutton, who shot men in the back.
"He's over there in the courthouse now--that's his office where you seethe light--trying to doctor up his books to hide his stealing, I know,"she declared
.
Morgan left her, his rifle in his hand, to go on his patrol of the townaccording to his nightly program. As he tramped around the square, hewatched the light in the courthouse window, thinking of the account onhis own books against the old-faced young man who labored there alone tohide his peculations for a little while longer. And so, watching andconsidering, thinking and devising, the night came down over him,guardian of the peace of Ascalon, where there was no peace.
Rhetta Thayer, leaving the _Headlight_ office at nine o'clock, saw twomen come down the courthouse steps, shadowy and indistinct in the duskof starlight and early night. She paused on her way, wondering, and herwonder and mystification grew when she saw them cut across the square inthe direction of Peden's dark and silent hall. One of them was DellHutton. The other she had no need to name.
When Dell Hutton, county treasurer, deposited three thousand dollars ofthe county's funds in the bank next morning, a certain man who stoodsurety on his bond wiped the sweat of vast relief from his forehead. Andwhen Rhetta heard of it, she smiled, and the incense of gratitude roseout of her heart for the strong-handed man who had stopped this leak inthe slender finances of the county, a thing which he believed he washolding secret in the simplicity of his honest soul.