Trails End

by Ogden, George W

  "If you refuse to let father swear you in, Mr. Morgan, Craddock will say you were afraid. I'd hate to have him do that," said Rhetta.

  "He might," Morgan granted, and with subdued voice and thoughtful manner that gave them a fresh rebound of hope.

  And at length they had their will, but not until Morgan had gone the round of the business men on the public square, gathering the assurance of great and small that they were weary of bloodshed and violence, notoriety and unrest; that they would let the bars down to him if he would undertake cleaning up the town, and abide by what might come of it without a growl.

  When they returned to Judge Thayer's office Morgan took the oath to enforce the statutes of the state of Kansas and the ordinances of the city of Ascalon, Rhetta standing by with palpitating breast and glowing eyes, hands behind her like a little girl waiting her turn in a spelling class. When Morgan lowered his hand Rhetta started out of her expectant pose, producing with a show of triumph a short piece of broad white ribbon, with CITY MARSHAL stamped on it in tall black letters.

  Judge Thayer laughed as Morgan backed away from her when she advanced to pin it on his breast.

  "I set up the type and printed it myself on the proof press," she said, in pretty appeal to him to stand and be hitched to this sign of his new office.

  "It's so—it's rather—prominent, isn't it?" he said, still edging away.

  "There isn't any regular shiny badge for you, the great, grisly Mr. Craddock wore away the only one the town owns. Please, Mr. Morgan—you'll have to wear something to show your authority, won't he, Pa?"

  "It would be wiser to wear it till I can send for another badge, Morgan, or we can get the old one away from Seth. Your authority would be questioned without a badge, they're strong for badges in this town."

  So Morgan stood like a family horse while Rhetta pinned the ribbon to the pocket of his dingy gray woolen shirt, where it flaunted its unmistakable proclamation in a manner much more effective than any police shield or star ever devised. Rhetta pressed it down hard with the palm of her hand to make the stiff ribbon assume a graceful hang, so hard that she must have felt the kick of the new officer's heart just under it. And she looked up into his eyes with a glad, confident smile.

  "I feel safe now," she said, sighing as one who puts down a wearing burden at the end of a toilsome journey.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE HAND OF THE LAW

  The stars came out over a strange, silent, astonished, confounded, stupefied Ascalon that night. The wolf-howling of its revelry was stilled, the clamor of its obscene diversions was hushed. It was as if the sparkling tent of the heavens were a great bowl turned over the place, hushing its stridulous merriment, stifling its wild laughter and dry-throated feminine screams.

  The windows of Peden's hall were dark, the black covers were drawn over the gambling tables, the great bar stood in the gloom without one priest of alcohol to administer the hilarious rites across its glistening altar boards.

  As usual, even more than usual, the streets around the public square were lively with people, coming and passing through the beams of light from windows, smoking and talking and idling in groups, but there was no movement of festivity abroad in the night, no yelping of departing rangers. It was as if the town had died suddenly, so suddenly that all within it were struck dumb by the event.

  For the new city marshal, the interloper as many held him to be, the tall, solemn, long-stepping stranger who carried a rifle always ready like a man looking for a coyote, had put the lock of his prohibition on everything within the town. Everything that counted, that is, in the valuation of the proscribed, and the victims who came like ephemera on the night wind to scorch and shrivel and be drained in their bright, illusive fires. The law long flouted, made a joke of, despised, had come to Ascalon and laid hold of its alluring institutions with stern and paralyzing might.

  Early in the first hours of his authority the new city marshal, or deputy marshal, to be exact, had received from unimpeachable source, no less than a thick volume of the statutes, that the laws of the state of Kansas, which he had sworn to enforce, prohibited the sale of intoxicating liquors; prohibited gambling and games of chance; interdicted the operation of immoral resorts—put a lock and key in his hand, in short, that would shut up the ribald pleasures of Ascalon like a tomb. As for the ordinances of the city, which he also had obligated himself to apply, Morgan had not found time to work down to them. There appeared to be authority in the thick volume Judge Thayer had lent him to last Ascalon a long time. If he should find himself running short from that source, then the city ordinances could be drawn upon in their time and place.

  Exclusive of the mighty Peden, the other traffickers in vice were inconsequential, mere retailers, hucksters, peddlers in their way. They were as vicious as unquenchable fire, certainly, and numerous, but small, and largely under the patronage of the king of the proscribed, Peden of the hundred-foot bar.

  And this Peden was a big, broad-chested, muscular man, whose neck rose like a mortised beam out of his shoulders, straight with the back of his head. His face was handsome in a bold, shrewd mold, but dark as if his blood carried the taint of a baser race. He went about always dressed in a long frock coat, with no vest to obscure the spread of his white shirt front; low collar, with narrow black tie done in exact bow; broad-brimmed white sombrero tilted back from his forehead, a cigar that always seemed fresh under his great mustache.

  This mustache, heavy, black, was the one sinister feature of the man's otherwise rather open and confidence-winning face. It was a cloud that more than half obscured the nature of the man, an ambush where his passions and dark subterfuges lay concealed.

  Peden had met the order to close his doors with smiling loftiness, easy understanding of what he read it to mean. Astonished to find his offer of money silently and sternly ignored, Peden had grown contemptuously defiant. If it was a bid for him to raise the ante, Morgan was starting off on a lame leg, he said. Ten dollars a night was as much as the friendship of any man that ever wore the collar of the law was worth to him. Take it or leave it, and be cursed to him, with embellishments of profanity and debasement of language which were new and astonishing even to Morgan's sophisticated ears. Peden turned his back to the new officer after drenching him down with this deluge of abuse, setting his face about the business of the night.

  And there self-confident defiance, fattened a long time on the belief that law was a thing to be sneered down, met inflexible resolution. The substitute city marshal had a gift of making a few words go a long way; Peden put out his lights and locked his doors. In the train of his darkness others were swallowed. Within two hours after nightfall the town was submerged in gloom.

  Threats, maledictions, followed Morgan as he walked the round of the public square, rifle ready for instant use, pistol on his thigh. And the blessing of many a mother whose sons and daughters stood at the perilous crater of that infernal pit went out through the dark after him, also; and the prayers of honest folk that no skulking coward might shoot him down out of the shelter of the night.

  Even as they cursed him behind his back, the outlawed sneered at Morgan and the new order that seemed to threaten the world-wide fame of Ascalon. It was only the brief oppression of transient authority, they said; wait till Seth Craddock came back and you would see this range wolf throw dust for the timber.

  They spoke with great confidence and kindling pleasure of Seth's return, and the amusing show that would attend his resumption of authority. For it was understood that Seth would not come alone. Peden, it was said, had attended to that already by telegraph. Certain handy gun-slingers would come with him from Kansas City and Abilene, friends of Peden who had made reputations and had no scruples about maintaining them.

  As the night lengthened this feeling of security, of pleasurable anticipation, increased. This little break in its life would do the town good; things would whirl away with recharged energy when the doors were opened again. Mo
ney would simply accumulate in the period of stagnation to be thrown into the mill with greater abandon than before by the fools who stood around waiting for the show to resume.

  And the spectacle of seeing Seth Craddock drive this simpleton clear over the edge of the earth would be a diversion that would compensate for many empty days. That alone would be a thing worth waiting for, they said.

  Time began to walk in slack traces, the heavy wain of night at its slow heels, for the dealers and sharpers, mackerels and frail, spangled women to whom the open air was as strange as sunlight to an earthworm. They passed from malediction and muttered threat against the man who had brought this sudden change in their accustomed lives, to a state of indignant rebellion as they milled round the square and watched him tramp his unending beat.

  A little way inside the line of hitching racks Morgan walked, away from the thronged sidewalk, in the clear where all could see him and a shot from some dark window would not imperil the life of another. Around and around the square he tramped in the dusty, hoof-cut street, keeping his own counsel, unspeaking and unspoken to, the living spirit of the mighty law.

  It was a high-handed piece of business, the bleached men and kalsomined women declared, as they passed from the humor of contemplating Seth Craddock's return to fretful chafing against the restraint of the present hour. How did it come that one man could lord it over a whole town of free and independent Americans that way? Why didn't somebody take a shot at him? Why didn't they defy him, go and open the doors and let this thirsty, money-padded throng up to the gambling tables and bars?

  They asked to be told what had become of the manhood of Ascalon, and asked it with contempt. What was the fame of the town based upon but a bluff when one man was able to shut it up as tight as a trunk, and strut around that way adding the insult of his tyrannical presence to the act of his oppressive hand. There were plenty of questions and suggestions, but nobody went beyond them.

  The moon was in mid-heaven, untroubled by a veil of cloud; the day wind was resting under the edge of the world, asleep. Around and around the public square this sentinel of the new moral force that had laid its hand over Ascalon tramped the white road. Rangers from far cow camps, disappointed of their night's debauch, began to mount and ride away, turning in their saddles as they went for one more look at the lone sentry who was a regiment in himself, indeed.

  The bleached men began to yawn, the medicated women to slip away. Good citizens who had watched in anxiety, fearful that this rash champion of the new order would find a bullet between his shoulders before midnight, began to breathe easier and seek their beds in a strange state of security. Ascalon was shut up; the howling of its wastrels was stilled. It was incredible, but true.

  By midnight the last cowboy had gone galloping on his long ride to carry the news of Ascalon's eclipse over the desolate gray prairie; an hour later the only sign of life in the town was the greasy light of the Santa Fé café, where a few lingering nondescripts were supping on cove oyster stew. These came out at last, to stand a little while like stranded mariners on a lonesome beach watching for a rescuing sail, then parted and went clumping their various ways over the rattling board walks.

  Morgan stopped at the pump in the square to refresh himself with a drink. A dog came and lapped out of the trough, stood a little while when its thirst was satisfied, turning its head listening, as though it missed something out of the night. It trotted off presently, in angling gait like a ferry boat making a crossing against an outrunning tide. It was the last living thing on the streets of the town but the weary city marshal, who stood with hat off at the pump to feel the cool wind that came across the sleeping prairie before the dawn.

  At that same hour another watcher turned from her open window, where she had sat a long time straining into the silence that blessed the town. She had been clutching her heart in the dread of hearing a shot, full of upbraidings for the peril she had thrust upon this chivalrous man. For he would not have assumed the office but for her solicitation, she knew well. She stretched out her hand into the moonlight as if she wafted him her benediction for the peace he had brought, a great, glad surge of something more tender than gratitude in her warm young bosom.

  In a little while she came to the window again, when the moonlight was slanting into it, and stood leaning her hands on the sill, her dark hair coming down in a cloud over her white night dress. She strained again into the quiet night, listening, and listening, smiled. Then she stood straight, touched finger tips to her lips and waved away a kiss into the moonlight and the little timid awakening wind that came out of the east like a young hare before the dawn.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XIV

  SOME FOOL WITH A GUN

  Morgan was roused out of his brief sleep at the Elkhorn hotel shortly after sunrise by the night telegrapher at the railroad station, who came with a telegram.

  "I thought you'd like to have it as soon as possible," the operator said, in apology for his early intrusion, standing by Morgan's bed, Tom Conboy attending just outside the door with ear primed to pick up the smallest word.

  "Sure—much obliged," Morgan returned, his voice hoarse with broken sleep, his head not instantly clear of its flying clouds. The operator lingered while Morgan ran his eye over the few words.

  "Much obliged, old feller," Morgan said, warmly, giving the young man a quick look of understanding that must serve in place of more words, seeing that Conboy had his head within the door.

  Morgan heard the operator denying Conboy the secret of the message in the hall outside his door. Conboy had lived long enough in Ascalon to know when to curb his curiosity. He tiptoed away from Morgan's door, repressing his desire behind his beard.

  Knowing that he could not sleep again after that abrupt break in his rest, Morgan rose and dressed. Once or twice he referred again to the message that lay spread on his pillow.

  Craddock wired Peden last night that he would arrive on number seven at 1: 20 this afternoon.

  That was the content of the message, not a telegram at all, but a friendly note of warning from the night operator, who had come over to the hotel to go to bed. The young man had shrewdly adopted this means to cover his information, knowing that Peden's wrath was mighty and his vengeance far-reaching. Nobody in town could question the delivery of a telegram.

  Morgan had expected Craddock to hasten back and attempt to recover his scepter and resume his sway over Ascalon, where the destructive sickle of his passion for blood could be plied with safety under the shelter of his prostituted office. But he did not expect him to return so soon. It pleased him better that the issue was to be brought to a speedy trial between them. While he had his feet wet, he reasoned, he would just as well cross the stream.

  Conboy was sweeping the office, having laid the thick of the dust with a sprinkling can. He paused in his work to give Morgan a shrewd, sharp look.

  "Important news when it pulls a man out of bed this early," Conboy ventured, "and him needin' sleep like you do."

  "Yes," said Morgan, going on to the door.

  Conboy came after him, voice lowered almost to a whisper as he spoke, eyes turning about as if he expected a spy to bob up behind his counter.

  "I heard it passed around late last night that Craddock was comin' back."

  "Wasn't he expected to?" Morgan inquired, indifferently, wholly undisturbed.

  Conboy watched him keenly, standing half behind him, to note any sign of panic or uneasiness that would tell him which side he should support with his valuable sympathy and profound philosophy.

  "From the way things point, I think they're lookin' for him back today," he said.

  "The quicker the sooner," Morgan replied in offhand cowboy way.

  Conboy was left on middle ground, not certain whether Morgan would flee before the arrival of the man whose powers he had usurped, or stand his ground and shoot it out. It was an uncomfortable moment; a man must be on one side or the other to be safe. In the history of Ascalon it was the neutr
al who generally got knocked down and trampled, and lost his pocketbook and watch, as happens to the gaping nonparticipants in the squabbles of humanity everywhere.

  "From what I hear goin' around," Conboy continued, dropping his voice to a cautious, confidential pitch, "there'll be a bunch of bad men along in a day or two to help Craddock hold things down. It looks to me like it's goin' to be more than any one man can handle."

  "It may be that way," Morgan said, lingering in the door, Conboy doing his talking from the rear. Morgan was thinking the morning had a freshness in it like a newly gathered flower.

  "It'll mean part closed and part open if that man takes hold of this town again," Conboy said. "Him and Peden they're as thick as three in a bed. Close all of 'em, like you did last night, or give everybody a fair whack. That's what I say."

  "Yes," abstractedly from Morgan.

  "It was kind of quiet and slow in town last night, slowest night I've ever had since I bought this dump. I guess I'd have to move away if things run along that way, but I don't know. Maybe business would pick up when people got used to the new deal. Goin' to let 'em open tonight?"

  "Night's a long way off," Morgan said, leaving the question open for Conboy to make what he could out of it.

  Conboy was of the number who could see no existence for Ascalon but a vicious one, yet he was no partisan of Seth Craddock, having a soreness in his recollection of many indignities suffered at the hands of the city marshal's Texas friends, even of Craddock's overriding and sardonic disdain. Yet he would rather have Craddock, and the town open, than Morgan and stagnation. He came to that conclusion with Morgan's evasion of his direct question. The interests of Peden and his kind were Conboy's interests. He stood like a housemaid with dustpan and broom to gather up the wreckage of the night.