War Comes to the Big Bend

by Zane Grey

  “Pay? How?” she asked.

  “In the only way possible. I’ll see that a Dorn goes to war . . . who will show his American blood . . . who will fight and kill . . . and be killed.”

  His passion, then, was more than patriotism. It had its springs in the very core of his being. He had, it seemed, a debt that he must pay. But there was more than this in his grim determination. And Lenore divined that it lay hidden in his bitter reference to his German blood. He hated that—doubted himself because of it. She realized now that to keep him from going to war would be to make him doubt his manhood and eventually to despise himself. No longer could she think of persuading him to stay home. She must forget herself. She knew then that she had the power to keep him and she could use it, but she must not do so. This tragic thing was a matter of his soul. But if he went to war with this bitter obsession, with this wrong motive, this passionate desire to spill blood in him that he hated, he would lose his soul. He must be changed. All her love, all her woman’s flashing, subtle thought concentrated on this fact. How strange the choice that had been given her. Not only must she relinquish her hope of keeping him home, but she must perhaps go to desperate ends to send him away with a changed spirit. The moment of decision was agony for her.

  “Kurt, this is a terrible hour for both of us,” she said, “but, thank heaven, you have confessed to me. Now I will confess to you.”

  “Confess? You? What nonsense!” he exclaimed. But in his surprise he lifted his head from his hands to look at her.

  “When we came in here, my mind was made up to make you stay home. Father begged me to do it, and I had my own selfish motive. It was love. Oh, I do love you, Kurt, more than you can dream of. I justified my resolve. I told you that. But I wanted you. I wanted your love . . . your presence. I longed for a home with you as husband . . . master . . . father to my babies. I dreamed of all. It filled me with terror to think of you going to war. You might be crippled . . . mangled . . . murdered . . . Oh, my dear, I could not bear the thought. So I meant to overcome you. I had it all planned. I meant to love you . . . to beg you . . . to kiss you . . . to make you stay . . .”

  “Lenore, what are you saying?” he cried in shocked amaze.

  She flung her arms around his neck. “Oh, I could . . . I could have kept you,” she answered, low voiced and triumphant. “It fills me with joy . . . Tell me I could have kept you . . . tell me.”

  “Yes. I’ve no power to resist you. But I might have hated . . .”

  “Hush. It all might have . . . I’ve risen above myself.”

  “Lenore, you distress me. A little while ago you bewildered me with your sweetness and love . . . Now . . . you look like an angel or a goddess . . . Oh, to have your face like this . . . always with me. Yet it distresses me . . . so terrible in purpose. What are you about to tell me? I see something . . .”

  “Listen,” she broke in. “I meant to make you weak. I implore you now to be strong. You must go to war. But with all my heart and soul I beg you to go with a changed spirit . . . You were about to do a terrible thing. You hated the German in you and meant to kill it by violence. You despised the German blood and you meant to spill it. Like a wild man you would have rushed to fight, to stab and beat, to murder . . . and you would have left your breast open for a bayonet thrust . . . Oh, I know it. Kurt, you are horribly wrong. That is no way to go to war . . . War is a terrible business, but men don’t wage it for motives such as yours. We Americans all have different strains of blood . . . English . . . French . . . German. One is as good as another. You are obsessed . . . you are out of your head on this German question. You must kill that idea . . . kill it with one bayonet thrust of sense . . . You must go to war as my soldier . . . with my ideal. Your country has called you to help uphold its honor, its pledged word. You must fight to conquer an enemy who threatens to destroy freedom . . . You must be brave, faithful, merciful, clean . . . an American soldier. You are only one of a million. You have no personal need for war. You are as good, as fine, as noble as any man . . . my choice, sir, of all the men in the world. I am sending you. I am giving you up. Oh, my darling . . . you will never know how hard it is. But go. Your life has been sad. You have lost so much. I feel in my woman’s heart what will be . . . if only you’ll change . . . if you see God in this as I see. Promise me. Love that which you hated. Prove for yourself what I believe. Trust me . . . promise me . . . Then . . . oh, I know God will send you back to me.”

  He fell upon his knees before her to bury his face in her lap. His whole frame shook. His hands plucked at her dress. A low sob escaped him.

  “Lenore,” he whispered brokenly, “I can’t see God in this . . . for me. I can’t promise.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Thirty masked men sat around a long, harvest mess table. Two lanterns furnished light enough to show a bare barn-like structure, the rough-garbed plotters, the grim set of hard lips below the half masks, and big hands spread out, ready to draw from the hat that was passing.

  The talk was low and serious. No names were spoken. A heavy man, at the head of the table, said: “We thirty, picked men, represent the country. Let each member here write on his slip of paper his choice of punishment for the IWWs . . . death or deportation . . .”

  The members of the band bent their masked faces and wrote in a dead silence. A noiseless wind blew through the place. The lanterns flickered; huge shadows moved on the walls. When the papers had been passed back to the leader, he read them.

  “Deportation,” he announced. “So much for the IWW men . . . Now for the leader . . . But before we vote on what to do with Glidden let me read an extract from one of his speeches. This is authentic. It has been furnished by the detective lately active in our interest. Also, it has been published. I read it because I want to bring home to you all an issue that goes beyond our own personal fortunes here.”

  Leaning toward the flickering flare of the lantern, the leader read from a slip of paper: “If the militia are sent out here to hinder the IWW, we will make it so damned hot for the government that no troops will be able to go to France . . . I don’t give a damn what this country is fighting for . . . I am fighting for the rights of labor . . . American soldiers are Uncle Sam’s scabs in disguise.”

  The deep, impressive voice ended. The leader’s huge fist descended upon the table with a crash. He gazed up and down the rows of sinister masked figures. “Have you anything to say?”

  “No,” replied one.

  “Pass the slips,” said another.

  And then a man, evidently on in years, for his hair was gray and he looked bent, got up. “Neighbors,” he began “I lived here in the early days. For the last few years I’ve been apologizing for my home town. I don’t want to apologize for it any longer.”

  He sat down. And a current seemed to wave from him around that dark square of figures. The leader cleared his throat as if he had much to say, but he did not speak. Instead he passed the hat. Each man drew forth a slip of paper and wrote upon it. The action was not slow. Presently the hat returned around the table to the leader. He spilled its contents, and with steady hand picked up the first slip of paper.

  “Death,” he read sonorously, and laid it down to pick up another. Again he spoke that grim word. The third brought forth the same, and likewise the next, and all, until the verdict had been called out thirty times.

  “At daylight we’ll meet,” boomed out that heavy voice. “Instruct Glidden’s guards to make a show of resistance . . . We’ll hang Glidden to the railroad bridge. Then each of you get your gangs together. Round up all the IWWs. Drive them to the railroad yard. There we’ll put them aboard a railroad train of empty cars. And that train will pass under the bridge where Glidden will be hanging . . . We’ll escort them out of the country.”

  * * * * *

  That August dawn was gray and cool, with gold and pink beginning to break over the dark eastern ranges. The town had not yet awakened. It slept unaware of the stealthy forms passing down the gray
road and of the distant hum of motorcars and trot of hoofs.

  Glidden’s place of confinement was a square warehouse, near the edge of town. Before the improvised jail guards paced up and down, strangely alert.

  Daylight had just cleared away the gray when a crowd of masked men appeared as if by magic and bore down upon the guards. There was an apparent desperate resistance, but, significantly, no cries or shots. The guards were overpowered and bound.

  The door of the jail yielded to heavy blows of an axe. In the corner of a dim, bare room groveled Glidden, bound so that he had little use of his body. But he was terribly awake. When six men entered, he asked hoarsely: “What’re you . . . after? What . . . do you mean?”

  They jerked him erect. They cut the bonds from his legs. They dragged him out into the light of breaking day.

  When he saw the masked and armed force, he cried: “My God! What’ll you . . . do with me?”

  Ghastly, working, sweating, his face betrayed his terror.

  “You’re to be hanged by the neck,” spoke a heavy, solemn voice.

  The man would have collapsed but for the strong hands that upheld him. “What . . . for?” he gasped.

  “For IWW crimes . . . for treason . . . for speeches no American can stand in days like these.” Then this deep-voiced man read to Glidden words of his own. “Do you recognize that?”

  Glidden saw how he had spoken his own doom. “Yes, I said that,” he had nerve left to say. “But . . . I insist on arrest . . . trial . . . justice! I’m no criminal . . . I’ve big interests behind me . . . You’ll suffer . . .”

  A loop of a lasso, slung over his head and jerked tight, choked off his intelligible utterance. But as the silent, ruthless men dragged him away, he gave vent to terrible, half-strangled cries.

  The sun rose red over the fertile valley—over the harvest fields and the pastures and the orchards, and over the many towns that appeared lost in the green and gold of luxuriance.

  In the harvest districts west of the river all the towns were visited by swift-flying motorcars that halted long enough for a warning to be shouted to the citizens: “Keep off the streets!”

  Simultaneously armed forces of men, on foot and on horseback, too numerous to count, appeared in the roads and the harvest fields. They accosted every man they met. If he were recognized or gave proof of an honest identity, he was allowed to go; otherwise he was marched along under arrest. These armed forces were thorough in their search, and in the country districts they had an especial interest in likely camping places, and around old barns and straw stacks. In the towns they searched every corner that was big enough to hide a man.

  So it happened that many motley groups of men were driven toward the railroad line, where they were held until a freight train of empty cattle cars came along. This train halted long enough to have the IWW contingent driven aboard, with its special armed guard following, and then it proceeded on to the next station. As stations were many, so were the halts, and news of the train with its strange freight flashed ahead. Crowds lined the railroad tracks. Many boys and men in these crowds carried rifles and pistols that they leveled at the IWW prisoners as the train passed. Jeers and taunts and threats accompanied this presentation of guns.

  Before the last station of that wheat district was reached fully three hundred members of the IWW, or otherwise suspicious characters, were packed into the open cars. At the last stop the number was greatly augmented, and the armed forces were cut down to the few guards who were to see the IWW deported from the country. Here provisions and drinking water were put into the cars. And amid a hurrahing roar of thousands the train with its strange load slowly pulled out.

  It did not at once gather headway. The engine whistled a prolonged blast—a signal or warning not lost on many of its passengers.

  From the front cars rose shrill cries that alarmed the prisoners in the rear. The reason soon became manifest. Arms pointed and eyes stared at the figure of a man hanging from a rope fastened to the center of a high bridge span under which the engine was about to pass.

  The figure swayed in the wind. It turned halfway around, disclosing a ghastly, distorted face, and a huge printed placard on the breast, then it turned back again. Slowly the engine drew one carload after another past the suspended body of the dead man. There were no more cries. All were silent in that slow-moving train. All faces were pale, all eyes transfixed.

  The placard on the hanged man’s breast bore in glaring red a strange message: Last warning. 3-7-77.

  The figures were the ones used in the frontier days by vigilantes.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  A dusty motorcar climbed the long road leading up to the Neuman Ranch. It was not far from Wade, a small hamlet of the wheat-growing section, and the slopes of the hills, bare and yellow with waving grain, bore some semblance to the Big Bend country. Four men—a driver and three cowboys—were in the automobile.

  A big stone gate marked the entrance to Neuman’s ranch. Cars and vehicles lined the roadside. Men were passing in and out. Neuman’s home was unpretentious, but his barns and granaries and stock houses were built on a large scale.

  “Bill, are you goin’ in with me after this pard of the Kaiser’s?” inquired Jake, leisurely stretching himself as the car halted. He opened the door and stiffly got out. “Gimme a hoss any day fer gittin’ places.”

  “Jake, my regard fer your rep as Anderson’s foreman makes me want to hug the background,” replied Bill. “I’ve done a hell of a lot these last forty-eight hours.”

  “Wal, I reckon you have, Bill, an’ no mistake . . . But I was figgerin’ on you wantin’ to see the fun.”

  “Fun! Jake, it’ll be fun enough fer me to sit hyar an’ smoke in the shade, an’ watch fer you to come a-runnin’ from thet big German devil . . . Pard, they say he’s a bad man.”

  “Sure. I know thet. All them Germans is bad.”

  “If the boss hadn’t been so dog-gone’ strict about gun play, I’d love to go with you,” responded Bill. “But he didn’t give me no orders. You’re the whole outfit this roundup.”

  “Bill, you’d have to take orders from me,” said Jake coolly.

  “Sure. Thet’s why I come with Andy.”

  The other cowboy, called Andy, manifested uneasiness, and he said: “Aw, now, Jake, you ain’t a-goin’ to ask me to go in there? An’ me hatin’ Germans the way I do.”

  “Nope. I guess I’ll order Bill to go in an’ fetch Neuman out,” replied Jake, complacently, as he made as if to reenter the car.

  Bill collapsed in his seat. “Jake,” he expostulated weakly, “this job was given you because of your rep fer deploomacy . . . Sure I haven’t none of thet . . . An’ you, Jake, why you’re the smoothest an’ slickest talker thet ever come to the Northwest.”

  Evidently Jake had a vulnerable point. He straightened up with a little swagger. “Wal, you watch me,” he said. “I’ll fetch the big Dutchman eatin’ out of my hand . . . An’ say, when we git him in the car an’ start back, let’s scare the daylights out of him.”

  “Thet’d be powerful fine. But how?”

  “You fellers take a hunch from me,” replied Jake. And he strode off up the lane toward the ranch house.

  Jake had been commissioned to acquaint Neuman with the fact that recent developments demanded his immediate presence at Many Waters. The cowboy really had a liking for the job, though he pretended not to.

  Neuman had not yet begun harvesting. There were signs to Jake’s experienced eye that the harvest hands were expected this very day. Jake fancied he knew why the rancher had put off his harvesting. And, also, he knew that the extra force of harvest hands would not appear. He was regarded with curiosity by the women members of the Neuman household, and rather enjoyed it. There were several comely girls in evidence. Jake did not look a typical Northwest foreman and laborer. Booted and spurred, with his gun swinging visibly, and his big sombrero and gaudy scarf, he looked exactly what he was, a cowman of the open ranges.

 
; His inquiries elicited the fact that Neuman was out in the fields, waiting for the harvest hands.

  “Wal, if he’s expectin’ thet outfit of IWWs, he’ll never harvest,” said Jake, “for some of them is hanged an’ the rest run out of the country.”

  Jake did not wait to see the effect of his news. He strode back toward the fields, and with the eye of a farmer he appraised the barns and corrals, and the fields beyond. Neuman raised much wheat, and enough alfalfa to feed his stock. His place was large and valuable, but not comparable to Many Waters.

  Out in the wheat fields were engines with steam already up, with combines and threshers and wagons waiting for the word to start. Jake enjoyed the keen curiosity roused by his approach. Neuman strode out from a group of waiting men. He was huge of build, ruddy-faced and bearded, with deep-set eyes.

  “Are you Neuman?” inquired Jake.

  “That’s me,” gruffly came the reply.

  “I’m Anderson’s foreman. I’ve been sent over to tell you thet you’re wanted pretty bad at Many Waters.”

  The man stared incredulously. “What? Who wants me?”

  “Anderson. An’ I reckon there’s more . . . though I ain’t informed.”

  Neuman rumbled a curse. Amaze dominated him. “Anderson! Well, I don’t want to see him,” he replied.

  “I reckon you don’t,” was the cowboy’s cool reply.

  The rancher looked him up and down. However familiar his type was to Anderson, it was strange to Neuman. The cowboy breathed a potential force. The least significant thing about his appearance was that swinging gun. He seemed cool and easy, with hard, keen eyes. Neuman’s face took a shade off color.

  “But I’m going to harvest today,” he said. “I’m late. I’ve a hundred hands coming.”

  “Nope. You haven’t none comin’,” asserted Jake.

  “What!” ejaculated Neuman.

  “Reckon it’s near ten o’clock,” said the cowboy. “We run over here powerful fast.”