Claim Number One

by Ogden, George W

  “Well, in spite of the high authority, I don’t believe it,” said she with undisturbed conviction.

  For a little while Bentley walked on beside her in silence. When he spoke there was the softness of reverence in his voice.

  “If I had the faith of a good woman in such measure as that,” said he, “I’d think I was next door to heaven!”

  “It is the being who inspires faith that is more admirable than the faith itself, it seems to me,” she rejoined. “Faith has lived in many a guilty heart–faith in somebody, something.”

  “Yes,” he agreed gently. And then, after a little while: “Yes.”

  “Will you be returning to the East soon?” she asked.

  “I’ve been thinking some of going on to Meander to get a fuller impression of this country and see how the boy is getting on,” he replied.

  “Then go with me,” she invited.

  “I wondered if you had faith enough in me to ask me,” he laughed.

  There was an extra stage out the next morning, owing to the movement toward Meander of people who must file on their claims within the next ten days. Smith was to drive it. He was in the office when they arrived.

  “I think I’ll assume the responsibility of taking the doctor’s two bags with me,” said Bentley.

  She agreed that there was little use in leaving them behind. Walker was to go to his ranch the next day; the others would break camp the following morning. There would be nobody to leave his possessions in charge of, except the hotel-keeper, who had a notoriously short memory, and who was very likely to forget all about it, even if the doctor ever returned.

  Bentley made arrangements for the transportation of that much excess baggage, therefore. The cost was reminiscent of freight charges in the days of the Santa Fé Trail.

  “We’ll leave word for him at the hotel-office,” said he.

  As they came out of the stage-office a man was mounting a horse before the stable door, a group of stage employees around him. He galloped off with a flourish. The man who had caparisoned his horse stood looking after him as he disappeared in the night.

  “That feller’s in a hurry–he couldn’t wait for the stage in the morning,” said Smith. “He’s ridin’ relay to Meander tonight on our horses, and he’ll be there long before we start. He’s the Governor’s son.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER IX

  DOUBLE CROOKEDNESS

  Comanche was drying up like a leaky pail. There remained only the dregs of the thronging thousands who had chopped its streets to dust beneath their heels; and they were worked out, panned down to scant profit, and growing leaner picking every day.

  The ginger was gone out of the barker’s spiel; the forced gaiety was dying out of the loud levees where the abandoned of the earth held their nightly carousals. Comanche was in the lethargy of dissolution; its tents were in the shadow of the approaching end.

  Most of the shows had gone, leaving great gaps in the tented streets where they had stood, their débris behind them, and many of the saloons were packing their furnishings to follow. It had been a seasonable reaping; quick work, and plenty of it while it lasted; and they were departing with the cream of it in their pouches. What remained ran in a stream too thin to divide, so the big ones were off, leaving the little fellows to lick up the trickle.

  A few gambling-joints were doing business still, for men will gamble when they will neither eat nor drink. Hun Shanklin had set up a tent of his own, the big one in which he had made his stand at the beginning having been taken down. To make sure of police protection, he had established himself on Main Street, next door to headquarters.

  Ten-Gallon, the chief, now constituted the entire force, all his special officers having been dropped to save expense to the municipality, since the population had begun to leak away so rapidly and the gamblers’ trust had been dissolved.

  The chief slept until the middle of each afternoon. Then he went on duty in Hun Shanklin’s tent, where he usually remained the rest of the day, his chair tilted back against the pole at the front end. It was generally understood that he had a large interest in the game, which was the same old one of twenty-seven.

  On the side there was an army-game outfit at which a pimple-faced young man presided, small whiskers growing between his humors where they had escaped the razor, like the vegetation of that harsh land in the low places, out of the destroying edge of the wind. For army-game was held so innocuous in Comanche that even a cook might run it.

  It was the third day after the drawing, and the middle of the afternoon. That short-time had seen these many changes in Comanche, and every hour was witnessing more. Mrs. Reed and her party had gone that morning in the wagon sent for them from the Governor’s ranch. The Hotel Metropole, now almost entirely without guests for its many tents and cots, was being taken down.

  The red-nosed proprietor was loading cots into a wagon, his large wife, in a striped kimono with red ruffles at the sleeves and a large V of bare bosom showing, standing in the door of the office-tent directing his labors in a voice which suggested a mustache and knee-boots. A dangling strand of her greasy black hair swung in the wind across her cheek, at times lodging in the curve of it and obscuring her eye. As the lady’s hands were both employed, one in holding up the train of her florescent garb, the other in supporting her weight against the tent-pole, she had no free fingers to tuck the blowing wisp in place. So, when it lodged she blew it out of the way, slewing her mouth around to do so, and shutting one eye as if taking aim.

  All these employments left her no time for the man who had approached within a few feet of her and stood with an inquiring poise as if asking permission to speak. She went on with her directing, and skirt-holding, and leaning against the tent-pole, and blowing, without giving him a full look, although she had taken his appraisement with the corner of her eye.

  The man was not of an appearance to inspire the hope of gain in the bosom of the hostess. His band-less slouch-hat flapped down over his forehead and face, partly hiding a bandage, the sanguine dye of which told what it concealed. A black beard of some days’ growth, the dust of the range caught in it, covered his chin and jowls; and a greasy khaki coat, such as sheep-herders wear, threatened to split upon his wide shoulders every time he moved his arms.

  His trousers were torn, and streaked with the stain of rain and clay. He had pinned the rents about his knees together, but he seemed so insecurely covered that a strong wind might expose him, or a sudden start burst his seams and scant contrivances to shield his nakedness. He touched his hat in a moment when he caught the quick eye of the landlord’s wife upon him again, and moved a little nearer.

  “Can you tell me, madam,” said he respectfully, “what has become of the party that was camped in the tent around on the other side–four ladies and several men?”

  “We don’t lodge either sheep-herders or sheep-shearers unless they take a bath first,” said she, turning from him disdainfully.

  “But I am neither a herder nor a shearer,” he protested, “although I may––”

  “May be worse,” she finished, though perhaps not in the way he intended.

  “Suit yourself about it,” he yielded. “I don’t want lodging, anyhow.”

  The landlord came staggering in with an armload of cheap bed-covers and threw them down where his dragoon of a wife directed with imperious gesture.

  “Just look at all that money invested and no return!” she lamented.

  The battered stranger appealed to the landlord, repeating his question.

  “None of your business,” the landlord replied crabbedly. “But they’re gone, if that’ll do you any good.”

  “Did they leave two grips–a suitcase and a doctor’s instrument-case–with you?” inquired the man.

  “They left a pie-anno and a foldin’-bed, and a automobile and a safety-razor!” said the landlord, looking reproachfully at his big wife, who was motioning him out to his labors again.

  “Or any word for Dr. Slaven
s?” the stranger pursued with well-contained patience.

  “What do you want to know for?” asked the woman, turning upon him suddenly.

  “Because the grips belonged to me, madam; I am Dr. Slavens.”

  The landlord looked at him sharply.

  “Oh, you’re the feller that went off on a drunk, ain’t you? I remember you now. Well, they didn’t leave no grips here.”

  “And no word either that I know of,” added the woman.

  She swept Dr. Slavens with wondering eyes, for she had held a pretty good opinion of him before his sudden, and evidently heavy, fall.

  “But where in this world have you been, man?” she asked.

  “Nowhere in this world,” he answered. “I’ve been taking a little side-trip to hell!”

  “You cert’nly look like it, mister!” the woman shuddered, closing the wide V at her bosom, the flaring garment clutched in her great ring-encumbered hand.

  “Will you tell me, then, about my friends?” he asked.

  “Gone; that’s all we know,” said she.

  “Part went on the train, two or three days ago; some went on the stage; and the rest left in a wagon this morning,” said the landlord.

  But he couldn’t tell who went on the train, the stage, or the wagon. It was none of his business, he said. They paid their bill; that was all he knew, or cared.

  “May I take a look around the tent to see if they left any written word for me there?” the doctor requested.

  “Go on,” said the woman, a little softening of sympathy coming into her hard eyes.

  Dr. Slavens went back to the tent, which stood as it had been left that morning when the last of the party went away. The canvas under which their table stood stretched there hospitably still, and the stove with the morning’s ashes cold upon its little hearth. Inside, the cots were all in place, but there was not a line of writing from any friendly hand to tell him where they had gone, or where his property had been left.

  He walked toward the business part of the town and turned down Main Street, considering with himself what turn to make next. His head bent in meditation, he passed along lamely, his hands in the pockets of his torn trousers, where there was nothing, not even the thickness of a dime, to cramp his finger-room. Pausing in the aimless way of one who has no unfinished business ahead of him, he looked around, marking the changes which had come upon the street during those few days.

  The litter of broken camp was on every hand; broken barrels, piles of boxes, scattered straw, bottles sown as thickly upon the ground as if someone had planted them there in the expectation of reaping a harvest of malt liquors and ardent spirits. Here the depression of a few inches marked where a tent had stood, the earth where the walls had protected it from the beating feet showing a little higher all around; there in the soft ground was the mark of a bar, the vapors of spilled liquors rising sharply in the sun.

  Bands of boys and camp-dregs, of whom he might have been one from his appearance, scraped and dug among the débris, searching for what might have been dropped from careless or drunken hands and trampled out of sight. That they were rewarded frequently was attested by the sharp exclamations and triumphant cries.

  Across from where he stood was the site of a large place, its littered leavings either already worked over or not yet touched. No one scratched and peered among its trash-heaps or clawed over its reeking straw. Dr. Slavens took possession of the place, turning the loose earth and heaped accumulations with his feet as he rooted around like a swine. It must have been worked over and exhausted, he concluded, for it turned no glint of silver to the sun. Persisting, he worked across the space which the tent had covered, and sat down on a box to rest.

  The sun was low; the tops of two tall, round tents across the way came between it and his eyes when he sat down. That was the luck of some people, thought he, to arrive too late. The pay-dirt was all worked out; the pasturage was cropped; the dry sage was all gathered and burned.

  No matter. A man had but one moment of life to call his own, wrote Marcus Aurelius. The moment just passed into the score of time’s count, the moment which the hand of the clock trembles over, a hair’s breadth yet to go–these are no man’s to claim. One is gone forever; the other may mark the passing of his soul. Only this moment, this throb of the heart, this half-drawn breath, is a living man’s to claim. The beggar has it; the monarch can command no more. Poor as he was, Dr. Slavens thought, smiling as he worked his foot, into the trampled dust, he was as rich in life’s allotment as the best.

  The sole of his cut and broken shoe struck some little thing which resisted, then turned up white beneath his eye. Broken porcelain, or bone fragment, it appeared. He would have pushed it aside with his toe; but just then it turned, showing the marking of a die.

  Here was a whimsical turn of circumstance, thought he. An outcast die for a broken man, recalling by its presence the high games of chance which both of them had played in their day and lost, perhaps. It was a little, round-cornered die, its spots marked deep and plain. As it lay in his hand it brought reminiscences of Hun Shanklin, for it was of his pattern of dice, and his size, convenient for hiding between the fingers of his deceptive hand.

  Dr. Slavens rolled it on the box beside him. It seemed a true and honest die, for it came up now an ace, now trey; now six, now deuce. He rolled it, rolled it, thinking of Hun Shanklin and Hun’s long, loose-skinned hand.

  For a place of wiles, such as Comanche had been and doubtless was still, it was a very honest little die, indeed. What use would anybody have for it there? he wondered. The memory of what he had seen dice do there moved him to smile. Then the recollection of what had stood on that spot came to him; the big tent, with the living pictures and variety show, and Hun Shanklin’s crescent table over against the wall.

  That must have been the very spot of its location, with the divided wall of the tent back of him, through which he had disappeared on the night that Walker lost his money and Shanklin dropped his dice. Of course. That was the explanation. The little cube in Slavens’ palm was one of Shanklin’s honest dice, with which he tolled on the suckers. He had lost one of them in his precipitate retreat.

  Dr. Slavens put the cube in his pocket and got up, turning the débris of the camp again with his foot, watching for the gleam of silver. As he worked, a tubby man with whiskers turned out of the thin stream of traffic which passed through the street and sat on one of the boxes near at hand. He sat there wiping his face, which was as red and sweat-drenched as if he had just finished a race, holding his hat in his hand, exclaiming and talking to himself.

  He was so self-centered in his overflowing indignation that he did not notice the man kicking among the rubbish just a few feet away. Presently the little man drew out a roll of money and counted it on his knee, to look up when he had finished, and shake his fist at the tent which stood shoulder-to-shoulder by the police station. The gesture was accompanied by maledictions upon crooks and robbers, and the force of his expressions made necessary the use of the handkerchief again. This the man took from his hat, which he held in his hand ready to receive it again like a dish, and scrubbed his fiery face, set over with fiery whiskers and adorned with a fiery nose. When he had cooled himself a bit he sat watching the doctor at his labor, lifting his eyebrows every time he blinked.

  “Lost something?” he asked.

  “Yes,” replied the doctor, kicking away, not even looking at his questioner.

  “Well, if you dropped it out of your hand or through a hole in your pocket you’re lucky!” said the little man, shaking his fist at the tent where his wrath appeared to center. “This place is full of crooks. They’ll rob you when you’re asleep and they’ll skin you when you’re awake, with both eyes open.”

  The doctor had nothing to add to this, and no comment to append. The man on the box put on his hat, with a corner of handkerchief dangling from it over his ear.

  “You live here?” he inquired.

  “Yes; right now I do,” the doctor
replied.

  “Well, do you know anything about a long, lean, one-eyed man that runs a dice-game over there in that tent?”

  “I’ve heard of him,” said the doctor.

  “Well, he skinned me out of two hundred dollars a little while ago, blast his gizzard!”

  “You’re not the first one, and it’s not likely that you’ll be the last,” the doctor assured him, drawing a little nearer and studying the victim from beneath his hanging hat-brim.

  “No; maybe not,” snapped the other. “But I’ll even up with him before I go away from here.”

  “Would you be willing to risk ten dollars more on a chance to get it back?” asked the doctor.

  “Show me the man who can tell me how to do it, and watch me,” bristled the victim.

  “I know that man, and I know his scheme,” said the doctor, “and I’ve got one that will beat it.”

  The whiskered man put his hand into the pocket where the remainder of his roll was stored, and looked at the battered stranger with a disfavoring scowl.

  “How do I know you ain’t another crook?” he asked.

  “You don’t know, and maybe I am a crook in a small way. I’m in hard luck right now.”

  “What’s your scheme?”

  “That’s my capital,” the doctor told him. “If I had a few dollars I’d put it through without splitting with anybody; but I haven’t a cent. I’ve been kicking this straw and trash around here for the last hour in the hope of turning up a dime. I’ll say this to you: I’ll undertake to recover your two hundred dollars for you if you’ll put up ten. If I get it back, then you are to give me twenty-five of it, and if I win more I’m to keep all above the two hundred. And you can hold on to your ten dollars till we stand up to the table, and then you can hold to my coat. I can’t get away with it, but I don’t guarantee, you understand, that I’ll win.”

  The little man was thoughtful a spell. When he looked up there was the glitter of hope in his sharp scrutiny.