Trail's End
CHAPTER XXII
WHINERS AT THE FUNERAL
Joe Lynch, the bone man, stopped at the well in the public square topour water on his wagon tires. A man was pestered clean out of hissenses by his tires coming off, his felloes shrinking up like a friedbacon rind in that dry weather, Joe said. It beat his time, that drouth.He had been through some hot and dry spells in the Arkansaw Valley, butnever one as dry and hot as this.
He told Morgan this as he poured water slowly on his wheels to swell thewood and tighten the tires, there at the town well in the mid-morning ofthat summer day. It was so hot already, the ceaseless day wind blowingas if it trailed across a fire, that one felt shivers of heat go overthe skin; so hot that the heat was bitter to the taste, and shade wasonly an aggravation.
This was almost a week after Morgan's forceful assertion of the law'ssupremacy in Ascalon, when Peden and his assassins fell in theirinsolence. It seemed that day as if Ascalon itself had fallen withPeden, and the blood of life had drained out of its body. There was aquietude over it that seemed the peace of death.
"I never thought, the day I hauled you into this town," said Joe, hishigh rasping voice harmonizing well with his surroundings, like akatydid on a dead limb, "you'd be the man to put the kibosh on 'em andclose 'em up like you done. I never saw the bottom drop out of no placeas quick as it's fell out of this town, and I've saw a good many go upin my day. The last of them gamblers pulled out a couple of days ago, Ihauled his trunk over to the depot. He went a cussin', and he pulled thehole in after him, I guess, on all the high-kickin' this town'll everdo. Well, I ain't a carin'; I've been waitin' my time."
"You were wiser than some of them, you knew it would come," Morgan said,glad to meet this bone-gathering philosopher in the desert he had madeof Ascalon, and stand talking with him, foot on his hub in friendly way.
"Not so much bones," said Joe reflectively, as if he had weighed thepossibilities long ago and now found them coming out according tocalculation, "as bottles. Thousands of bottles, every boy in this town'sout a pickin' up bottles for me. I reckon I'll have a couple of carloadsof nothing but bottles. Oh-h-h, they'll be _some_ bones, but theskeleton of this town is bottles. That's why I tell 'em it never willpick up no more. You've got to build a town on something solider'n abottle if you want it to stand up."
"I believe you," Morgan said.
"You've worked yourself out of a job. They won't no more need a marshalhere'n they will a fish net."
Morgan shook his head, got out his pipe, struck a match on the bleachedforehead of a buffalo skull in Joe's wagon.
"No. I'm leaving town in a week or two--when I make sure it _is_ dead,that they'll never come back and start the games again."
"They never will," said Joe, shaking a positive head. "Peden was theguts of this town; it can't never be what it was without him. So you'regoin' to leave the country, air you?"
"Yes."
"Give up that fool notion you had about raising wheat out here on thispe-rairie, heh?"
"Gave it up," Morgan replied, nodding in his solemn, expressive way.
"Well, you got _some_ sense hammered into you, anyhow. I told you rightat the jump, any man that thought he could farm in this here countryshould be bored for the simples. Look at that range, look at them cattlethat's droppin' dead of starvation and want of water all over it. Lookat them cattlemen shippin' out thousands of head that ain't ready formarket all along this railroad every day. This range'll be as bare ofstock by fall, I tell you, as the pa'm of my hand's bare of hairs.Bones? I'll have more bones to pick up than ever was in this countrybefore. Ascalon ain't all that's dead--the whole range's gone up.This'll clean 'em all out. It's the hottest summer and the longest dryspell that ever was."
"It couldn't be much worse."
"Worse!" Joe looked up from his pouring in his reprovingly surprisedway, stopping his dribbling stream on the wagon wheel. "You hang aroundhere a month longer and see what worse is! I'm goin' to begin pickin' upbones over on Stilwell's range in about a week; I'm givin' them wolvesand buzzards time to clean 'em up a little better. About then you'll seethe cattlemen begin to fight for range along the river where theirstock can eat the leaves off of the bushes and find a bunch of bluestemonce in a while that ain't frizzled and burnt up. You'll begin to seethe wolf side to some of these fellers in this country then."
Joe rumbled on to the car that he was loading, his tires being tightenough to hold him that far. Morgan sauntered down the shady side of thestreet, meeting few, getting what ease he could out of life with hispipe. He had put off his cowboy dress only that morning, feeling it outof place in the uneventful quiet of the town. He had not carried hisrifle since the night of his battle in Peden's hall. Today he wasbeginning to consider leaving off his revolver. A pocketknife forwhittling would be about all the armament a man would need in Ascalonfrom that time forward.
Earl Gray was leaning on one long leg in the door of his drug-store, oilon his fluffy brown hair. He was melancholy and downcast, plainlyresentful in his bearing toward Morgan as the contriver of this businessstagnation. He swept his hand around the emptiness of the town as Morgandrew near, giving voice to his contemplation.
"Look at it--not a dime been spent around this square this morning! Iain't sold but one box of pills in two days! If it wasn't for the littletrade in t'backer and cigars of a night when the cowboys come in, I'dhave to lock up and leave. I will anyhow--I can see it a-comin'."
Morgan leaned against the building close by the door, the indolence ofthe day over him. There was nothing to do but hear the dying town'scomplaint. He was not a doctor; he had nothing to prescribe. He realizedthat the merchants had been hit hard by this sudden paralysis. It wouldnot have been so much like disaster if the town had been left to die inits own way, as time and change would have attended to more slowly.
Morgan could not tell Druggist Gray, whose trade in pills had come to astandstill; he could not tell the hardware merchant, whose traffic infirearms and ammunition had fallen away; he could not explain to theproprietor of the Santa Fe cafe, or any of the other merchants of thetown who had come to regret their one spasm of virtue, induced by fear,that he had not considered either their prosperity or their loss when heclosed up the saloons and gambling-houses and drove the proscribed ofthe law away. They were squealing now, exactly as he had known theywould squeal in spite of their assurance before the event. Let themsqueal, let them stagnate, let dust settle on their wares that no mancame to buy.
For the security of somebody's sleep, for the tranquillity of somebody'sdreams; for the peace of two brown eyes, for the safety of a shortlittle white hand, strong and comforting just to see--for these, forthese alone, he had closed up the riotous places and swept away like apurging fire the chaff and pestilence of Ascalon. He could not tell themthis. Even her he could not tell.
Earl Gray, giving off perfume to the hot winds, was pursuing hiscomplaint.
"The undertaker's packin' up to leave, goin' to ship his stock today. Iwish I could go with him, but a man's got to have a place to lightbefore he starts out with a drug stock."
"I don't suppose anybody's sorry to see him go," Morgan said. "I thinkit's a good sign."
"They'll bury each other, as I told him, and they'll drug each otherwith mullein tea, as I told him the other day," Gray said,acrimoniously. "Yes, and they'll be eatin' each other before spring! I'dlike to know what they're goin' to live on, the few that's left in thistown--a little cow-punchin', a little clerkin' in the courthouse andgittin' jury and witness fees. That won't keep no town alive."
"Judge Thayer's got a big colonization project going that looks good, hesays. If he puts it through things will begin to pick up."
"Them Mennonites, I guess. They ain't the kind of people a man wants tosee come in here--whiskers all over 'em, never sell 'em a cake ofshavin' soap or a razor from Christmas to doomsday. Them fellers don'tshave, they never shave; they grow up from the cradle with whiskers allover 'em."
"They'll need horse liniment,
and stuff like that."
"There might be a livin' here for a drug-store if settlers begun to comein," Gray admitted, picking up a little hope. "They say this sod givesoff fevers and chills when it's broke up. Something poison in it."
Tom Conboy was on the sidewalk before his door, casting his eyes up anddown the street as if on the lookout for somebody that owed him a bill.He was in bed when Morgan left the hotel on his early round, and therewas a look about him still of fustiness and the cobwebs of sleep.
"If a man was to take a sack of meal and empty it, and spread the sackdown flat, he'd have something like this man's town's got to be," Conboycomplained. "Dead, not a breath left in it. I saw a couple of buzzardssailin' around over the square a while ago. I've been lookin' to seethem light on the courthouse tower."
"It is a little quiet, but they all say it will begin to pick up in aday or two," Morgan prevaricated, with a view to reeling him out, havingno other diversion.
"I don't know what it's goin' to pick up on," Conboy sighed. "Two forbreakfast outside of the regulars. I used to have twenty to thirty-fiveup to a week ago."
"Court will convene next month," Morgan reminded him by way of cheer.
"It'll bring a few," Conboy allowed, "not many, and all of them bigeaters. You don't make anything off of a man that rides thirty or fortymiles before breakfast when you sit him down to a twenty-five centmeal."
Morgan said he was not a hotel man, but it seemed pretty plain even tohim that there could be no wide border of profit in any suchtransaction.
"No, it was those night-working men, dealers, bartenders, and thatcrowd, that were the light and profitable eaters. A man that drinksheavy all night don't get up with a thirty-mile appetite in him nextday. Well, they're gone; they'll never come back to this man's town."
"You were one of the men that wanted the town cleaned up."
"No niggers in Ireland, now, Morgan--no-o-o niggers in Ireland!"
Conboy made a warning of his peculiar expression, as if he halted Morganon ground that was dangerous to advance over as far as another word. Itwas impressive, almost threatening, given in his deep voice, with graveeye and face suddenly stern, but Morgan knew that it was all on theoutside.
"Cowboys don't any more than hit the ground here till they hop on theirhorses and leave," Conboy continued. "Nothing to entertain them, nointerest for a live man in a dead town, where the only drink he can getis out of the well. There was just three horses tied along the squarelast night, where there used to be fifty or a hundred. I'll have toleave this man's town; I can't stand the pressure."
"A man with a little nerve ought to swallow his present losses for hisfuture gains," Morgan said, beginning to grow tired of this whining.
"If I could see any future gains comin' my way I'd gamble on them withany man," Conboy returned with some spirit. "I'm goin' over to Glenmorethis afternoon and see what it looks like there. That's the comin' town,it seems to me; good crops over there in the valley, no cattle starvin'.They may bend the railroad around to touch that town, too--they'retalkin' of it. That's sure to happen if Glenmore wins the county seatthis fall. Then you'll see skids put under every house in this town andmoved over there. Ascalon will be a name some of us old-timers willremember twenty years from now, and that's all."
"If Judge Thayer and the railroad colonization agent put through a bigdeal they've got going, I don't see why this town shouldn't pick upagain on a healthy business foundation," Morgan said.
"Them Pennsylvania Dutch?" Conboy scoffed. "They're not the kind ofpeople that ever stay in a hotel, they carry their blankets with 'em andflop down under their wagons like Indians. When they come to town theybring a basket of grub along, they don't spend money for a meal in anyman's hotel. You put Pennsylvania Dutch into this country and there'llnever be another coroner's jury called!"
Morgan knocked the ashes out of his short, clubby little pipe, put it inhis shirt pocket behind his badge, and went on. He paused at the door ofthe _Headlight_ office to look within, hoping to see a face that hadbeen missing since the night of his great tragedy. Only Riley Caldwell,the printer, was there, working furiously, as if fired by an ambitionthat Ascalon, dead or alive, could not much longer contain. Thedroop-shouldered alpaca coat once worn by the editor now dead, hungbeside the desk, like the hull he had cast when he took flight away fromthe troubles of his much-harassed life.
Only the day before Judge Thayer had told Morgan that Rhetta was stillat Stilwell's ranch, whither she had gone to compose herself after thestrain of so much turmoil. Morgan could only feel that she had gonethere to avoid him, shrinking from the sight of his face.
There was not much warmth in Morgan's reception by the business men ofAscalon around the square that morning, hot as the weather was. Itseemed as if some messenger had gone before him crying his coming, as ajaybird goes setting up an alarm from tree to tree before the squirrelhunter in the woods.
Earnest as their solicitations had been for him to assume the office ofmarshal, voluble as their protestations in the face of fear andinsecurity of life and property that they would accept the resultwithout a whimper, there were only a few who stood by their pledges likemen. These were the merchants of solider character, whose dealings werewith the cattlemen and homesteaders. The hope of these merchants was inthe coming of more homesteaders, according to Judge Thayer's dream. Theywere the true patriots and pioneers.
While these few commended Morgan's stringent application of the letterand spirit of the state and town laws, their encouragement was only aflickering candle in the general gloom of the place. Morgan knew thegrunters were saying behind his back that he had gone too far, fartherthan their expectations or instructions. All they had expected of himwas that he knock off the raw edges, suppress the too evident, abate thepromiscuous banging around of guns by every bunch of cowboys thatarrived or left, and to cut down a little on the killing, at leastconfine it to the unprofitable class.
They admitted they didn't want the cowboys killed off the way Craddockhad been doing it, giving the town a bad name. But to shut the saloonsall up, to go and shoot Peden down that way and kill the town with him,that was more than they had given him license for. So they growledbehind his back, afraid of him as they feared lightning, without anyground for such fear in the world.
Judge Thayer appeared to be the only man in town who was genuinely happyover the result of Morgan's sweeping out the encumbering rubbish thatblocked the country's progress by its noisome notoriety. But through allthe judge's glow of gratitude for duty well done, Morgan was consciousof a peculiar aloofness, not exactly fear such as was unmistakable inmany others, but a withdrawing, as if something had fallen between themand changed their relations man to man.
Morgan knew that it was the blood of slain men. He was to this man, andto another of far greater consequence to Morgan's peace and happiness,like a pitcher that had been defiled.
Judge Thayer's friendliness was unabated, but it was the sort offriendliness that did not offer the hand, or touch the arm when walkingby Morgan's side, as in the early hours of their acquaintance. Usefulthis man, to the work that must be done in this place to make it fit,and safe, and secure for property and life, but unclean. That was whatJudge Thayer's attitude proclaimed, as plainly as printed words.
This morning when Judge Thayer encountered Morgan on the street, not farfrom the little catalpa tree that was having a bitter struggle againstwind and drouth, he invited the city marshal to accompany him to hisoffice. News that would tickle his ears, he said; big news.
The biggest of this big news was that the railroad company was going toestablish a division point there at once. The railroad officials hadgiven Judge Thayer to understand, directly, that this decision had comeas a result of the town waking up and shedding its leprous skin. Theyfelt that it would be a safe place for their employees to live now, withthe pitfalls closed, the temptations removed. And the credit, JudgeThayer owned, was Morgan's alone.
But there was more news. The eastern immigration age
nts of the railroadwere spreading the news of Ascalon's pacification with gratifyingresult. Already parties of Illinois and Indiana farmers, who had beenlooking to that country for a good while, were preparing to come out andscout for locations.
"They're getting tired of farming that high-priced land, Morgan. They'rewearing it out, it costs them more for fertilizers than they take off ofit. They're coming here, where a man can plow a furrow forty miles long,we tell them--and it's the gospel truth, a hundred miles, or two hundredif he wanted to--and never hit a stump."
Judge Thayer got up at that point, and stood in his door looking at thedull sky sullen with heat; looking at the glimmer that rose likeimpalpable smoke from the hard surface of the cracked, baked earth.
"But I wish we could get a good rain before they begin to come," hesighed, "and I think--" cautiously, with a sly wink at Morgan--"we'regoing to get it. I've got a man here right now working on it, alongscientific principles, Morgan--entirely scientific."
"A rainmaker?" said Morgan, his incredulity plain in his tone.
"He came to me highly recommended by bankers and others in Nebraska,where he undoubtedly brought rain, and in Texas, where the proof isindisputable. But I'm doing it solely on my own account," Judge Thayerhastened to explain, "carrying the cost alone. He's under contract tobring a copious rain not later than seven days from today."
"What's the bill?" Morgan asked, amused by this man's eager credulity.
"One hundred dollars on account, four hundred to be paid the day hedelivers the rain--provided that he delivers it within the specifiedtime. I've bound him up in a contract."
"I think he'll win," said Morgan, drily, looking meaningly at the murkysky.
"It's founded on science, pure science, Morgan," Judge Thayer declared,warmly. "I'm telling you this in confidence, not another soul in townknows it outside of my own family. We'll keep it a pleasant secret--Iwant to give the farmers and cattlemen of this valley the present of asurprise. When the proper time comes I'll announce the responsibleagency, I'll show that crowd over at Glenmore where the progressivepeople of this county live, I'll prove to the doubters and knockerswhere the county seat belongs!"
"It's a great scheme," Morgan admitted. "How does the weather doctorwork?"
"Chemicals," Judge Thayer whispered, mysteriously; "sends up vapors dayand night, invisible, mainly, but potent, causing, as near as I cancome to it from his explanation--which is technical and thoroughlyscientific, Morgan--" this severely, as if to rebuke the grin thatdawned on Morgan's face. "Causing, as near as I can come to it, adispersion of the hot belt of atmosphere, this superheated belt thatencircles the globe in this spot like a flame of fire, causing a breakin this belt, so to speak, drilling a hole in it, bringing down theupper frigid air."
Judge Thayer looked with triumph at Morgan when he delivered this,sweating a great deal, as if the effort to elucidate this scientificman's methods of conspiring against nature to beat it out of a rain wereequal to a ten-mile walk in the summer sun.
"Yes, sir," said Morgan, with more respect in his voice and manner thanhe felt. "And then what happens?"
"Why, when the cold and the hot currents meet, condensation is thenatural result," said the judge. "Plain, simple, scientific as afiddle."
"Just about," said Morgan.
Judge Thayer passed it, either ignoring it as a fling beneath the noticeof a scientific man, or not catching the note of ridicule.
"He's at work in my garden now," he said, "sending up his invisiblevapors. I want to center the downpour from the heavens over thisGod-favored spot, right over this God-favored spot of Ascalon."