Trail's End
CHAPTER XXIII
ASCALON CURLS ITS LIP
It was the marvel and regret of people who made their adventuresvicariously, and lived the thrill of them by reading the newspapers,that Ascalon had come to a so sudden and unmistakable end of itsromance. For a little while there was hope that it might rise againstthis Cromwell who had reached out a long arm and silenced it; for a fewdays there was satisfaction in reading of this man's exploits in thiswickedest of all wicked towns, for newspapers sent men to study him, andinterview him, and write of his conquest of Ascalon on the very battleground.
Little enough they got out of Morgan, who met them kindly and talked ofthe agricultural future of the country lying almost unpeopled beyond thenotorious little city's door. Such as they learned of his methods oftaming a lawless community they got from looser tongues than the citymarshal's.
Even from Chicago and St. Louis these explorers among the fallen templesof adventure came, some of them veterans who had talked with Jesse Jamesin his day but recently come to a close. They waited around a few daysfor the shot that would remove this picturesque crusader, not believing,any more than the rest of the world, including Ascalon itself, believedthat this state of quiescence could prevail without end.
While they waited, sending off long stories by telegraph to theirpapers every night, they saw the exodus of the proscribed begin,increase, and end. The night-flitting women went first, urged away bythe necessities of the flaccid fish which lived upon their shame. Thegamblers and gamekeepers followed close behind.
A little while the small saloon-keepers who had nosed the floor andlicked up the crumbs which fell from Peden's bar hung around, hopingthat it was a flurry that would soon subside. They had big eyes forfuture prosperity, the overlord being now out of the way, and talkedexcitedly among themselves, even approached Morgan through an emissarywith proposals of a handsome subsidy.
But when they saw a Kansas City gambler come and strip Peden's hall ofits long bar and furnishings, of its faro tables and doctored roulettewheels, load them all on a car and ship them to his less notorious butsafer town, they knew it was the end. Ascalon had fallen with its mostnotable man, never to rise up again.
The last of the correspondents left on the evening of the day that JudgeThayer set the rainmaker to work. He sent the obituary of Ascalon, as hebelieved, ahead of him by wire.
Not that Ascalon was as dead as it appeared on the surface, or thegamblers would make it out to be. True, the undertaker's business hadgone, and he with it; Druggist Gray's trade in the bromides andrestoratives in demand after debauches, and repairs for bunged headsafter the nightly carousels, had fallen away to nothing; the Elkhornhotel and the Santa Fe cafe were feeding few, and the dealers invanities and fancies, punctured hosiery, lacy waists, must pack up andfollow those upon whom they had prospered.
But there was as much business as before in lumber and hardware,implements, groceries, and supplies for the cattle ranches and the manysettlers who were arriving without solicitation or proclamation andestablishing themselves to build success upon the ruins of failure leftby those who had gone before.
It was only the absence of the wastrels and those who preyed upon them,and the quiet of nights after raucous revelry, that made the place seemdead. Ascalon was as much alive as any town of its kind that had no morejustification for being in the beginning. It had more houses than itcould use now, since so many of its population had gone; empty storeswere numerous around the square, and more would be seen very soon. Thefair was over, the holiday crowd was gone. That was all.
Rhetta Thayer came back the same evening the last correspondent facedaway from Ascalon. Morgan saw her in the _Headlight_ office, where sheworked late that night to overtake her accumulated affairs, her prettyhead bent over a litter of proofs. Her door stood open as he passed, buthe hastened by softly, and did not return that way again.
He felt that she had gone away from Ascalon on his account, fearful thatshe would meet him with blood fresh upon his hands. The attitude ofJudge Thayer was but a faint reflection of her own, he was sure. It wasbest that they should not meet again, for blood had blotted out whathad seemed the beginning of a tender regard between them. That was at anend.
During the next few days little was seen of Morgan in Ascalon. When hewas not riding on long excursions into the outlying country he couldhave been found, if occasion had arisen demanding his presence on thesquare, in the station agent's office at the depot. There he spent hourshearing the little agent, whose head was as bald as a grasshopper's,nothing but a pale fringe from ear to ear at the back of his neck,recount the experiences that had fallen in his way during hisfive-years' occupancy of that place.
This period covered the most notorious history of the town. In thattime, according to the check the agent had kept on them, no fewer thanfifty-nine men had met violent death on the street and in the caves ofvice in Ascalon. This man also noted keenly every arrival in these slackdays, duly reporting them all to Morgan, for whom he had a genuinefriendship and respect. So there was little chance of anybody slippingin to set a new brewing of trouble over the dying embers of thatstamped-out fire.
Morgan avoided the _Headlight_ office, for there was a sensitive spot inhis heart that Rhetta's abhorrence of him hurt keenly. But more thanthat he had the thought of sparing her the embarrassment of a meeting,even of his shadow passing her door.
Twice he saw her at a distance in the street, and once she stood waitingas if to speak to him. But the memory of her face at Peden's door thatnight was with him always; he could not believe she would seek ameeting out of a spontaneous and honest desire to see him. Only becausetheir lives were thrown together for a little while in that dice-box offate, and avoidance seemed studied and a thing that might set foolishtongues clapping, she paused and looked his way as if waiting for him toapproach. She was serving convention, not with a wish of her heart. Sohe believed, and turned the other way.
Cattlemen from the range at hand, and several from Texas who had driventheir herds to finish on the far-famed Kansas grass for the fall market,were loading great numbers of cattle in Ascalon every day. The drouthwas driving them to this sacrifice. Lean as their cattle were, theywould be leaner in a short time.
This activity brought scores of cowboys to town daily. Under the oldorder business would have been lively at night, when most of theherdsmen were at leisure. As it was, they trooped curiously around thesquare, some of them who had looked forward on the long drive to ahilarious blowout at the trail's end resentfully sarcastic, but thegreater number humorously disposed to make the most of it.
Sober, these men of the range were very much like reservation Indians intown on a holiday. They walked slowly around and around the square,looking at everything closely, saying little, to dispose themselvesalong the edge of the sidewalk after a while and smoke. There were nofights, nobody let off a gun. When Morgan passed them on his quietrounds, they nudged each other, and looked after him with low comments,for his fame had gone far in a little while.
These men had no quarrel with Morgan, disappointed of their revelry,thirsty after their long waiting, sour as some of them were over findingthis oasis of their desert dry. They only looked on him with silentrespect. Nobody cared to provoke him; it was wise to give the road whena fellow met that man. So they talked among themselves, somewhatdisappointed to find that Morgan was not carrying his rifle about withhim these peaceful days, unusual weapon for a gun-fighting man in thatcountry.
In this way, with considerable coming and going through its doors, yetall in sobriety and peace, Ascalon passed the burning, rainless summerdays. But not without a little cheer in the hard glare of the parchingrange, not without a laugh and a chuckle, and a grin behind the hand.The town knew all about the rainmaker at work behind the shielding rowsof tall corn in Judge Thayer's garden. An undertaking of such scope wastoo big to sequester in any man's back yard.
Whether the rainmaker believed in his formula, or whether he was a plainfraud who was a little sharper
on weather conditions than most men, andgood on an estimate of a drouth's duration, he seemed to be doingsomething to earn his money. Day and night he kept something burning ina little tin stove with a length of pipe that came just above the corn,sending up a smoke that went high toward the cloudless sky before thewind began to blow in the early morning hours, and after it ceased atevening, after its established plan. During the day this smoke dispersedvery generally over town, causing some coughing and sneezing, and not alittle swearing and scoffing.
Sulphur, mainly, the doctor and Druggist Gray pronounced the chemical tobe. It was a sacrilege, the Baptist preacher declared, an offering toSatan, from the smell of it, rather than a scientific assault upon thelocked heavens to burst open the windows and let out a dash of rain. Ifthe effort of the mysterious stranger brought anything at all, it wouldbring disaster, the preacher declared. A cyclone, very likely, andlightning, in expression of the Almighty's wrath.
Those who did not accept it wrathfully, as the preacher, or resentfully,as Druggist Gray, from whom the experimenter bought none of hischemicals, or humorously, as the doctor and many of higher intelligence,had a sort of sneaking hope that something might come of it. If the rainman could stir up a commotion and fetch a soaker, it would be thesalvation of that country. The range would revive, streams would flow,water would come again into dry wells, and the new farmers who had comein would be given hope to hang on another year and by their trade keepAscalon from perishing utterly.
But mainly the disposition was to laugh. Judge Thayer was a well-meaningman, but easy. He believed he was bringing a doctor in to cure thecountry's sickness, where all of his hopes were staked out in town lots,when he had brought only a quack. A hundred dollars, even if the fakermade no more, was pretty good pay for seven days' work, they said. Adollar's worth of sulphur would cover his expenses. And if it happenedto turn out a good guess, and a rain did blow up on time, Judge Thayerwas just fool enough to give the fellow a letter that would help him puthis fraud through in another place.
It did not appear, as the days passed, that the rainmaker was drivingmuch of a hole in the hot air that pressed down upon that tortured land.No commotion was apparent in the upper regions, no cloud lifted to cutoff for an hour the shafts of the fierce sun. Ascalon lay panting,exhausted, dry as tow, the dust of driven herds blowing through itsbare, bleak streets.
Gradually, as dry burning day succeeded the one in all particulars likeit that had gone before, what little hope the few had in Judge Thayer'sweather doctor evaporated and passed away. Those who had scoffed at thebeginning jeered louder now, making a triumph of it. The Baptistpreacher said the evil of meddling in the works of the Almighty wasbecoming apparent in the increasing severity of the hot wind. Ascalon,for its sins past and its sacrilege of the present, was to writhe andscorch and wither from the face of the earth.
For all this, interest in the rainmaker's efforts did not lax. Peoplesniffed his smoke, noting every change in its flavor, and pressed aroundJudge Thayer's garden fence trying to get a look at the operations.Judge Thayer was not a little indignant over the scoffings anddenunciations, and this impertinent curiosity to pry upon what he gavethem to understand was his own private venture.
Keep off a safe distance from this iniquitous business, he warned withsarcasm; don't lean on the fence and risk the wrath of the Almighty.Let the correction of Providence fall on his own shoulders, which hadbeen carrying the sins of Ascalon a long time; don't get so close as toendanger their wise heads under the blow. At the same time he gave themto understand that if any rain came of the efforts of his weather doctorit would be his, the judge's, own private and individual rain, wrungfrom denying nature by science, and that science paid for by the judge'sown money.
The scoffers laughed louder at this, the sniffers wrinkled their noses alittle more. But the Baptist preacher only shook his head, the hot windblowing his wide overalls against his thin legs.
Morgan stood aloof from doubters, hopers, scoffers, and all, saying noword for or against the rainmaker. Every morning now he took a ride intothe country, to the mystification of the town, coming back before theheat mounted to its fiercest, always on hand at night to guard againstany outbreak of violence among the visitors.
There were not a few in town who watched him away each morning in thehope that something would overtake him and prevent his return; many morewho felt their hearts sink as he rode by their doors with the fear thateach ride would be his last. Out there in the open some enemy might belying behind a clump of tangled briars. These women's prayers went withthe city marshal as he rode.
On a certain morning Morgan overtook Joe Lynch, driving toward town withhis customary load of bones. Morgan walked his horse beside Joe's wagonto chat with him, finding always a charm of originality and rather morethan superficial thinking about the old fellow that was refreshing inthe intellectual stagnation of the town.
"Is that rain-crow feller still workin' over in town?" Joe inquired assoon as greetings had passed.
"I suppose he is, I don't believe his seven days are up yet."
"This is his sixth, I'm keepin' notches on him. I thought maybe he'dskinned out. Do you think he'll be able to fetch it?"
"I hope he can, but I've got my doubts, Joe."
"Yes, and I've got more than doubts. Science is all right, I reckon, asfur as I ever heard, but no science ain't able to rake up clouds in thesky like you'd rake up hay in a field and fetch on a rain. Even if theydid git the clouds together, how're they goin' to split 'em open and letthe rain out?"
"That would be something of a job," Morgan admitted.
"You've got to have lightnin' to bust 'em, and no science that ever wascan't make lightnin', I'm here to tell you, son. If some feller _did_happen on how it was done, what do you reckon'd become of that man?"
"Why, they do make it, Joe--they make it right over at Ascalon, keep itin jars under that table at the depot. Didn't you ever see it?"
"That ain't the same stuff," Joe said, with high disdain, almostcontempt. "Wire lightnin' and sky lightnin' ain't no more alike thanmilk's like whisky. Well, say that science _did_ make up a batch of skylightnin'--but I ain't givin' in it can be done--how air they goin' togit up to the clouds, how're they goin' to make it do the bustin' at theright time?"
"That's more than I can tell you, Joe. It's too deep for me."
"Yes, or any other man. They'd let it go all at once and cause awaterspout, that's about what they'd do, and between a waterspout and adry spell, give me the dry spell!"
"I never was in one, but I've seen 'em tearin' up the hills."
"Then you know what they air. It'd suit me right up to the han'le ifthis feller could bring a rain, for I tell you I never saw so muchsufferin' and misery as these settlers are goin' through out here onthis cussid pe-rairie right now. Some of these folks is haulin' waterfrom the river as much as thirty mile!"
"I notice all the creeks and branches are dry. But it's only a littleway to plenty of water all over this country if they'll dig. Some ofthem have put down wells during this dry spell and hit all the waterthey need. There's a sheet of water flowing under this country from themountains in Colorado."
"Oh, you git out!"
"Just the same as the Arkansas River, only spread out for miles," Morganinsisted. "A drouth here doesn't mean anything to that water supply;I've been riding around over this country trying to show people that.Most of them think I'm crazy--till they dig."
"I don't guess you're cracked yit," Joe allowed, "but you will be if youstay in this country. If it wasn't for the bones you wouldn't find mehangin' around here--I'd make for Wyoming. They tell me there's anyamount of bones that's never been touched up in that country."
"I noticed several other wagons out gathering bones. They'll soon cleanthem up here, Joe."
"They're all takin' to it," Joe said, with the resentment of a man whofeels competition, "hornin' in on my business, what's mine by rights ofbein' the first man to go into it in this blame country. Let 'em--let'em r
un their teams down scourin' around after bones--I'll be here topick up the remains of 'em all. I was here first, I've stuck through therushes of them fellers that's come into this country and dried up, andI'll be here when this crowd of 'em dries up. Them fellers haul in bonesand trade 'em at the store for flour and meal, they don't git half outof 'em what I do out of mine, and they're hurtin' the business, drivin'it down to nothin'."
"Hotter than usual this morning," Morgan remarked, not so muchinterested in bones and the competition of bones.
"Wind's dying down; I noticed that some time ago. Goin' to leave us tosizzle without any fannin'. Ruther have it that way, myself. Thiseternal wind dries a man's brains up after a while. I'd say, if I wasanywhere else, it was fixin' up to rain."
"Or for a cyclone."
"Too late in the season for 'em," Joe declared, not willing to granteven that diversion to the drouth-plagued land of bones.
Joe reverted to the bones; he could not keep away from bones. There wasnot much philosophy in him today, not much of anything but a plaint anda denunciation of competition in bones. Morgan thought the wind must behaving its effect on Joe's brains; they seemed to be so hydrated thatmorning they would have rattled against his skull. Morgan consideredriding on and leaving him, at the risk of giving offense, dismissing thenotion when they rose a hill and looked down on Ascalon not more than amile away.
"I believe there's a cloud coming up over there," said Morgan, pointingto the southwest.
"Which?" said Joe, rousing as briskly as if he had been doused with abucket of water. "Cloud? No, that ain't no cloud. That's dust. More windbehind that, a regular sand storm. Ever been through one of 'em?"
"In Nebraska," Morgan replied, with detached attention, watching what hestill believed to be a cloud lifting above the hazy horizon.
"Nothin' like the sand storms in this country," Joe discounted, neverwilling to yield one point in derogative comparison between that landand any other. "Feller told me one time he saw it blow sand so hard hereit started in wearin' a knot hole in the side of his shanty in theevenin', and by mornin' the whole blame shack was gone. Eat them boardsup clean, that feller said. Didn't leave nothin' but the nails. But Ialways thought he was stretchin' it a little," Joe added, not a gleam ofhumor to be seen anywhere in the whole surface of his wind-dried face.
"That's a cloud, all right," Morgan insisted, passing the reduction byattrition of the settler's shack.
"Cloud?" said Joe, throwing up his head with renewed alertness. Hesquinted a little while into the southwest. "Bust my hub if it _ain't_ acloud! Comin' up, too--comin' right along. Say, do you reckon thatrain-crow feller brought that cloud up from somewheres?"
"He didn't have anything to do with it," Morgan assured him, grinning alittle over the quick shift in the old man's attitude, for there was awein his voice.
"No, I don't reckon," said Joe thoughtfully, "but it looks kind ofsuspicious."
The cloud was lifting rapidly, as summer storms usually come upon thatunprotected land, sullen in its threat of destruction rather thanpromise of relief. A great dark fleece rolled ahead of the green-huedrain curtain, the sun bright upon it, the hush of its oncoming over thewaiting earth. No breath of wind stirred, no movement of naturedisturbed the silent waiting of the dusty land, save the lunging offoolish grasshoppers among the drooping, withered sunflowers beside theroad as the travelers passed.
"I'm goin' to see if I can make it to town before she hits," said Joe,lashing out with his whip. "Lordy! ain't it a comin'!"
"I think I'll ride on," said Morgan, feeling a natural desire forshelter against that grim-faced storm.
The oncoming cloud had swept its flank across the sun before Morgan rodeinto town, and in the purple shadow of its threat people stood beforetheir houses, watching it unfold. In Judge Thayer's garden--it was thehouse Morgan had fixed on that first morning of his exploration--therainmaker was firing up vigorously, sending up a smoke of such densityas he had not employed in his labors before. This black column rose buta little way, where it flattened against the cool current that wassetting in ahead of the storm, and whirled off over the roofs of Ascalonto mock the scoffers who had laughed in their day.
Morgan stabled his horse and went to the square, where many of thetown's inhabitants were gathered, all faces tilted to watch the storm.Judge Thayer was there, glorifying in the success of his undertaking,sparing none of those who had mocked him for a sucker and a fool. A coolbreath of reviving wind was moving, fresh, sweet, rain-scented; ashopeful, as life-giving, as a reprieve to one chained among faggots atthe stake of intolerance.
"It looks like you're going to win, Judge," Morgan said.
"Win? I've won! Look at it, pourin' rain over at Glenmore, the advanceof it not three miles from here! It'll be here inside of five minutes,rainin' pitchforks."
But it did not happen so. The rain appeared to have taken to dallying onthe way, in spite of the thickening of clouds over Ascalon. Strainingfaces, green-tinted in the gloomy shadow of the overhanging cloud,waited uplifted for the first drops of rain; the dark outriders of thestorm wheeled and mingled, turned and rolled, low over the dusty roofs;lightning rived the rain curtain that swept the famished earth, so nearat hand that the sensitive could feel it in their hair; deep thundersent its tremor through the ground, jarring the windows of Ascalon thathad looked in their day upon storms of human passion which were butinsect strife to this.
Yet not a drop of rain fell on roof, on trampled way, on waiting face,on outstretched hand, in all of Ascalon.
Judge Thayer was seen hurrying from the square, making for home and theweather doctor, who was about to let the rain escape.
"He's goin' to head it off," said one of the scoffers to Morgan,beginning to feel a return of his exultation.
"It's goin' to miss us," said Druggist Gray, his head thrown back, hisAdam's apple like an elbow of stovepipe in his thin neck.
"We may get a good shower out of one end of it," Conboy still hoped,pulling for the rain as he might have boosted for a losing horse.
"Nothing more than a sprinkle, if that much," said the station agent,shaking his head, which he had bared to the cool wind.
"He's got him firin' up like he was tryin' to hive a swarm of bees," onereported, coming from the seat of scientific labors.
"It's breakin', it's passin' by us--we'll not get a drop of it!"
So it appeared. Overhead the swirling clouds were passing on; in thedistance the thunder was fainter. The wind began to freshen from thetrack of the rain, the pigeons came out of the courthouse tower for alook around, light broke through the thinning clouds.
Not more than a mile or two southward of Ascalon the rain was falling ina torrent, the roar of it still quite plain in the ears of those whosethirst for its cooling balm was to be denied. The rain was going on,after soaking and reviving Glenmore, which place Judge Thayer would havegiven a quarter of his possessions to have had it miss.
A mockery, it seemed, a rebuke, a chastisement, the way nature conductedthat rain storm. Judge Thayer urged the rainmaker to his greatestefforts to stop it, turn it, bring it back; smoke green and black wentup in volumes, to stream away on the cool, refreshing wind. Sulphur androsin and pitch were identified in that smoke as surely as the spectrumreveals the composition of the sun. But the wind was against therainmaker; nature conspired to mock him before men as the quack that hewas.
The gloom of storm cleared from the streets of Ascalon, the worn andtired look came back into faces that had been illumined for a littlewhile with hope. Farther away, fainter, the thunder sounded, dimmer themurmur of the withdrawing rain.
The cool wind still blew like whispered consolation for a great, apangful loss, but it could not soften the hard hearts of those who hadstood with lips to the fountain of life and been denied. The peopleturned again to their pursuits, their planning, their gathering ofcourage to hold them up against the blaze of sun which soon must breakupon them for a parching season again. The dust lay deep under theirfeet, gray on t
heir roofs where shingles curled like autumn leaves inthe sun. The rainmaker sent up his vain, his fatuous, foolish,infinitesimal breath of smoke. The rain went on its way.
"Aw, hell!" said Ascalon, in its derisive, impious way; "Aw, hell!"