by Noel Loomis
“There’s been two other ways,” said Major. His boots had moved back into the low plane of light from the masked lantern, but his voice came from utter darkness, like a voice detached, thin, weary, and very old. “Right along there’s been two other ways. No; three. One was that Theron Replogle would see the light in time. Almost it looked as if he wasn’t going to; but Steve, his hand has been forced, I think!”
“Forced?” said Sessions.
“Just before dusk,” said Oliver Major, “there was that long dust, like driven stock to southward. It seemed to me that that dust didn’t come from no driven stock. I didn’t say nothing. I was almost afeared to believe. But the silence that’s come over Earl Shaw’s gang out there tells me now that it was so!”
“Tells you what?” demanded Sessions.
“That dust,” said Major, “was kicked up by ridden stock. The horses that made it are picketed out there now, maybe a half a mile off—between sixty and ninety head that came up under the saddle. Did you think the old-timers of the west would stand by and watch this thing with idle hands? Did you think the news wouldn’t run and spread that a rustling, gun-throwing gang had laid hands on the government, and was using the law itself to saw-whip an honest brand? Do you think the old cattlemen forget the men that rode with ’em, ever, while they live? If you think that, you’ve forgot the day that you was one of ’em, and swung a rope with the rest.”
“But Theron Replogle—” began Sessions.
“Earl Shaw knows tonight that a state isn’t made up of politics, nor technicalities in books. By God, the southwest is still made up of men! What Earl Shaw knows tonight, Governor Replogle will know tomorrow. Do you think he imagines he can fight the cowmen of the southwest, once they rise up and take the saddle? They made him, and they can bust him, and well he knows it. Let this be a lesson to the world, never to throw in a poker hand till the last card is down! Sessions, you ought to thank me for a swell ringside seat to the saving of the Buckhorn water!”
There was a brief silence, then Sessions said: “What was that third chance, Oliver?” The words came very thick and slow. If anything could have put a pall upon the exultant dead certainty of Oliver Major’s voice, it must certainly have been Stephen Sessions’ tone, for it was the tone of a man who looked ahead into things from which he would rather turn his face.
But the grim, indomitable faith of Oliver Major bent to no one, and to this man least of all. “Thank God,” he said, “it will never come to that third chance.”
“Are you sure?” said Sessions slowly.
“Wait and see!”
Sessions repeated, “Wait.”
Slowly the minutes dragged by; fifteen minutes, twenty-five. They had been under strain there a long time, too long to relax now before hearing the final word that would confirm Oliver Major’s faith. In their weariness they could not exult in, or perhaps wholly comprehend, die deliverance in which Oliver Major so firmly believed.
The end of uncertainty came in an unexpected way.
Across the night, thin and far, but clear and recognizable beyond any possibility of misinterpretation, came the notes of a bugle.
There was utter silence in the besieged adobe. The far bugle, distinct and sweet in the still night, was blowing taps, the slow sad call which the army uses in all circumstances denoting finality. “When your last…day is past…from afar, some bright star, o’er your grave…”
It was the hour of the night which had fixed that call; but to those who waited in the close, little-broken darkness of the ancient adobe, the notes of that familiar call seemed to bear another meaning, as if, of all possible messages, this one carried the deepest, the most inevadable meaning.
No one moved, nor spoke, while the far call played slowly through to the end: “Watch will keep…while you sleep…with the brave…”
When the last long note had died away there was still a moment’s silence more. It was Stephen Sessions who spoke then. His voice was shaking and queer, as if his throat was very dry and constricted; yet the words seemed to tumble from him. Too long that man of many words had maintained his stoic silence. There was almost a touch of hysteria in the words that poured from him now.
“You see—see, there’s your answer. There’s your answer from the cattlemen you looked to—the cattlemen that didn’t come! There’s your answer from the government, from Theron Replogle! You thought the governor would reverse himself? You thought the old west would rise up against the law to save your brand? There’s your answer to both—all the answer you could ever expect, and more! Ridden horses under that dust? By God, you know now what was under that dust. It was cavalry rode there! You hear me? That’s National Guard Cavalry called out by the governor to guarantee that first, last, and always, your old-time gun-throwers will keep their hands off the law. You heard their bugle—and by God, you know it for what it was!”
He paused for an instant, and Hughes could hear his hoarse breathing before the words welled up out of him again. Stephen Sessions had been an orator once, who could sway a multitude with the deep resonance of his voice, but that voice was thin, high, and shaky as he cried out in that constricted adobe now. “You know what it is now, not to listen to a man that deals in facts! You know now what friendship is worth, or old associations, like God knows I have reason to know myself. Where are your cattlemen? Where’s the old west that was going into the saddle to pull you out of the hole? I’ll tell you where they are! They’re every man of them laying low, each thinking of himself, and hoping he’s beyond trouble’s reach. It’s the day of the law, I tell you! And the day of the guns is gone!”
As he stopped a complete silence fell, so heavy, so curiously complete that Sessions must have felt that he was alone, unheard. It could only have been a few seconds, though it seemed vastly longer, before the apparent emptiness of the dark about him seemed to become too much for the old man of legalities and words. Abruptly he reached for the lantern upon the floor, and raised it above his head. As the dim flame of the lantern’s shielded light lifted, the figures in the room became suddenly visible, figures motionless as the walls. Old Oliver Major was sitting with his rifle across his knees, his hands locked upon the stock; and his face was like brown wax, its hard carved lineaments sagged and wilted, as if the wax had turned soft in the heat. It was the face of a man stunned, a man forsaken, not so much by the world as by the sudden demolition of hallucinations which he had held as solid and as real as the rock of the living rim.
But it was the face of Stephen Sessions to which Clay whipped his eyes, narrowed in an estimating scrutiny. And this face too had changed. All of that profound, unctuous surety was gone, and something of the granite too; it was no longer ruddy, but a dirty grey, and Hughes thought he had never seen such desolate and haggard eyes in living face.
Swiftly, as if his arm had suddenly weakened with the weight of the lantern, Sessions lowered the light to the floor again. The room’s motionless figures disappeared abruptly, leaving in the faint small circle of remaining light only the stirrup of a saddle, a bit of ragged hay, and a glimmer of polished walnut where rested a rifle stock.
Chapter Nineteen
There was the catch of a breath in the darkness near Hughes, and someone moving near him stumbled. Without seeing the figure as anything but a shadow in shadows, Clay knew that it was Sally Major. He drew her down beside him, and gathered her in his arms. In the brief span of days that they had known each other, he had never told her that he loved her, had hardly so much as touched her hand; but now she turned her face into the hollow of his shoulder and her tears were hot against his throat. It was as if they had both always known that Sally Major in tears belonged in the arms of Clay Hughes. In the stress that circumstance had put upon them they were pressed together by an individualized law of gravity, tacit and accepted. Without knowing exactly when or how, they had recognized one another, turned to each other across silences, understanding unspoken things.
It was Clay Hughes to whom Sally’s eyes
had turned when Sessions had raised the lantern; and if he could have seen himself as she saw him then, he would have wondered that she recognized him at all. The lantern light had shown a big gaunted, tangle-haired figure, with bloodshot blue eyes, very hard-edged as they turned upon the face of Stephen Sessions. Most of the buttons had got torn out of his shirt in one of his sorties to the roof, so that the dilapidated remainder hung ripped open to the belt; and a bristly five-day growth of sandy beard robbed his face of resemblance to itself. Few border ruffians have ever looked tougher than Hughes did that night. Yet, as his arms found her, her quick nervous vitality relaxed and she rested all her slight weight against him, hiding her wet eyes in the curve of his throat. He kissed her hair; and finding one of her hands, he put it inside his shirt against his ribs and held it tight against his side with his arm.
Dick Major called out from his post in the room where the ponies stood. “Well, do you hear him or not? Dutch Pete has hailed you three times, Dad! Do you want to talk to him, or shall I give him a shot?”
Oliver Major said in a dead voice, “To hell with him! Give him a—”
“Tell him,” Hughes ordered sharply, “to come up and talk if he wants!”
Dick Major raised his voice to a hail. “All right, all right! Come on and talk, if you’ve got something to say this time!”
There was a moment or two of shouting back and forth. Dutch Pete did not like his job of envoy, but it was evident that powers outside himself had stuck him at it. In a little while more the thick-syllabled, inertly brutal voice of Earl Shaw’s chief killer was heard from a short distance outside.
“I’m standing twenty paces out in front,” it said, “which is as close as I aim to come. If you fellers want to take a shot at me—I ain’t armed; but twenty rifles will take a slam at the flash of your gun.”
Bart Holt called out in an unexpectedly strong voice from where he lay, “Quit worrying, you big yellow streak! As soon as you turn and run for it, I’m going to get up and salt you plenty!”
“Shut up, Bart,” said Hughes. Gently he released himself from Sally’s arms and went to a cigar-box sized window. He swung aside the shield. His right hand brought his six gun to the sill of the window before his face, and lay there, relaxed and ready, as he spoke again. “Speak your piece,” he ordered Dutch Pete.
The voice of Dutch Pete was dogged. He was a man performing an act in a way not his own. “I’m giving you your last chance,” he said. “The county’s wasted enough time and money, and there’s enough good men hurt on account of you hellions. If you think you’ve got a chance, why, that was a squadron of cavalry you seen come in tonight. What do you think about that, huh?”
“Oh, did you need help?” said Hughes. “Just exactly what is the cavalry going to do for you boys?”
Dutch Pete’s voice raised in exasperation. “The cavalry ain’t going to do nothing—that’s what they’re going to do!” he snarled back. “I’m telling you because it shows where the state stands, that’s all! That’s state troops, you hear?”
“If you came down here to ask my advice,” said Hughes, “I say, send back for four more squadrons, and a field piece!”
“I came down here to give you your chance,” Dutch Pete shouted back doggedly, carrying out his instructions against his preferences. “I’m telling you, I mean to stand for no more nonsense. You’ve run your little old bluff long enough, and you’re through. I’ve sent to Adobe Wells, and I’ve got a case of dynamite. I’m giving you an hour to make up your mind. Either you’ll come out with all hands reaching, or by God, I’ll blast you out! And if I have to blow you to hell to do it, that’s all right with me!”
“Where do you figure in this?” Hughes taunted him. “Go back and tell Earl Shaw that if he wants to talk to me he can come up here himself, and not be hiding behind the oversize chaps of a big square-head. Go back and tell your boss that you must have got the message all balled up; we couldn’t understand it!” He slammed the shield shut.
“Gun him, Ol’ver!” said Bart Holt in a dry croak. “Throw down on him, and it’ll be one less of ’em, anyway…”
There was a silence. “Well, you heard him,” said Hughes.
“It’s the last notch, Oliver,” said Stephen Sessions, his voice very deep and low, but harsh with strain.
The voice of Walk Ross interrupted him, coming thin and bodyless from where he lay. The blur of delirium was gone from his tongue for almost the first time since his second wound. “I’ve got it,” he said suddenly. “I know now! Just a little bit ago I was starting to tell you something. I’ve been tryin’ to remember what it was. I remember now. Listen, listen—get this! This—this is good!”
“Yes, Walk?” There was movement in the close dark as some of them moved closer to him. His story came out in ragged phrases.
“I know now how word got to Earl Shaw that Grasshopper Tanner knew something. I took the word in myself, though I was too dumb to know. You might say I took it in on my clothes. When I told Art French I was bound to go to town, he told me that Bill Finley, the bartender in the Red Dog Saloon, owed him a piece of money. Art says to me, ‘Grasshopper knows all about it and can dicker with him for me. Give Bill Finley this note.’ Art showed me the note. I don’t know why he showed it to me; unless it was because he couldn’t keep me from reading it anyway, if I got suspicious and set out to. So he showed it to me. It said something like this: ‘Grasshopper knows all about it. Better give it to Grasshopper for me. Art French.’”
There was a silence. “So that was how it was,” said Oliver Major slowly at last. “You hear that, Steve? That clinches the case against Art French.”
“Art French is dead.”
Walk Ross closed his eyes. His face looked very white and drawn. In spite of the blankets piled upon him he had shaken with repeated chills. “I’m a fool,” he said in a loud distinct voice. Then, more faintly, “I been resting here, saving my strength. I’ll be all right when I get up. I got Art French. I’m going to get a couple more. That’s all I want.”
“Be quiet, Walk,” said Sally.
“You see,” said Major, “you see, there’s another that they would never dare let live to tell his story in court.” He seemed to be speaking to himself; the fruitless argument with Stephen Sessions he had abandoned long ago, hardly later than the hour in which the convincing of Sessions had ceased to be of use. “Now that we know the truth about Tanner, I suppose there isn’t a man here that they can afford to bring to trial or leave on the loose.”
“Oliver,” said Stephen Sessions, “even so, it’s the only chance.”
Hughes noticed that he no longer was prepared to scoff at Oliver Major’s theory that Shaw and his men would take execution into their own hands without legal procedure. It was the first time that he had admitted by phrasing or tone that there was any sane objection to complete submission to the law.
“Never in the world,” said Oliver Major with utter conviction. “Anything but that!”
“What else can you do?” cried Stephen Sessions, something very like panic creeping into his voice.
It was Sally Major’s voice which answered Sessions. It rang clear and cool, fearless and defiant.
“Fight,” she said, “first, last and always! We can always do that.”
Dick Major said, “We can at least have a whack at shooting our way out—”
“And leave Walk Ross and Dusty Rivers behind? They can’t be moved.”
Clay Hughes lifted the lantern once more; now, at the last, it seemed that it offered no extra hazard. He hung it on a hock in a beam overhead.
“But the girl?” plead Stephen Sessions.
“What of the girl?” Sally blazed at him. Her face was white, proud, and her eyes were clearer and more keen than those of any of the men. “Do you think there is anything in the world for me with my men rubbed out?”
“But—” Sessions tried.
“The trouble with you,” said Sally, her low voice an icy whip, “is that you’r
e fat, and soft, and a coward. You can’t bear to face facts in your mind. Even yet, you’re trying to smooth things over and let yourself down easy, twisting the facts around, because it isn’t in you to look them in the eye!”
“Speaking of me—” said Sessions. He tried to put a light twist to his approach to this last and nearest subject of all, and the effect was ghastly—“speaking of me, what about me? If you still mean to hold me here—”
A crazy laugh cracked Oliver Major’s voice. “Speaking of you—speaking of you—”
“Just a minute,” Clay Hughes cut in. “Mr. Major, I haven’t asked a favor yet. I want one now.” They waited in silence. “I’ve stood this thing through with you,” said Hughes, “and I’m with you yet. I’m entitled to this one thing. Will you give it to me?”
“Anything you say,” said Oliver Major, as if nothing could make any difference in this world.
“Then,” said Hughes, “give me this man.”
“Sessions? What do you want with him?”
“What do you care what I want with him? I’m asking for him. Give me this man!”
“Take him,” said Major. “Do what you like.”
Hughes turned to Sessions, his voice even and cold. “Your race is run,” he said. “You want to go, don’t you? You want to save your hide. Well, I’m going to let you go… Not yet! Wait a minute more.
“Before you go, I want you to understand why I’m letting you go. It’s because shooting is too good for you. I want you to live and take the gaff. Your race is run. Ask yourself why the National Guard Cavalry has been called out by the governor. To squash us, with fifty men against us already?
“You know why! It’s because public opinion is already so strong that Theron Replogle is afraid. Afraid that enough cowmen will rise up to ride over this posse of fifty men like they’d ride down sheep! Ask yourself what Theron Replogle knew before he called out the National Guard—as the defense for a posse of fifty men! Theron Replogle hasn’t quite as much savvy as you have, I should judge. You wouldn’t have done it in his place. You’d have known better than to do it. And you know now, already, that he’s through, and you with him. And that’s not all.
