The Charles Alden Seltzer Megapack

by Charles Alden Seltzer

  Something vague and subtle had drawn them together during the ride, bridging the hiatus of strangeness, making them feel that they had been acquainted long. It did not seem impertinent to her that she should ask the question that she now put to him—she felt that her interest in him permitted it:

  “You are an easterner, and yet you have been out here for about ten years. Your house is big and substantial, but I should judge that it has no comforts, no conveniences. You live there alone, except for some men, and you have male servants—if you have any. Why should you bury yourself here? You are educated, you are young. There are great opportunities for you in the East!”

  She paused, for she saw a cynical expression in his eyes.

  “Well?” she said, impatiently, for she had been very much in earnest.

  “I suppose I’ve got to tell you,” he said, soberly. “I don’t know what has come over me—you seem to have me under a spell. I’ve never spoken about it before. I don’t know why I should now. But you’ve got to know, I presume.”

  “Yes.”

  “On your head rest the blame,” he said, his grin still cynical; “and upon mine the consequences. It isn’t a pretty story to tell; it’s only virtue is its brevity. I was fired out of college for fighting. The fellows I licked deserved what they got—and I deserved what I got for breaking rules. I’ve always broken rules. I may have broken laws—most of us have. My father is wealthy. The last time I saw him he said I was incorrigible and a dunce. I admit the former, but I’m going to make him take the other back. I told him so. He replied that he was from Missouri. He gave me an opportunity to make good by cutting off my allowance. There was a girl. When my allowance was cut off she made me feel cold as an Eskimo. Told me straight that she had never liked me in the way she’d led me to believe she did, and that she was engaged to a real man. She made the mistake of telling me his name, and it happened to be one of the fellows I’d had trouble with at college. The girl lost her temper and told me things he’d said about me. I left New York that night, but before I hopped on the train I stopped in to see my rival and gave him the bulliest trimming that I had ever given anybody. I came out here and took up a quarter-section of land. I bought more—after a while. I own five thousand acres, and about a thousand acres of it is the best coal land in the United States. I wouldn’t sell it for love or money, for when your father gets his railroad running, I’m going to cash in on ten of the leanest and hardest and lonesomest years that any man ever put in. I’m going back some day. But I won’t stay. I’ve lived in this country so long that it’s got into my heart and soul. It’s a golden paradise.”

  She did not share his enthusiasm—her thoughts were selfishly personal, though they included him.

  “And the girl!” she said. “When you go back, would you—”

  “Never!” he scoffed, vehemently. “That would convince me that I am the dunce my father said I was!”

  The girl turned her head and smiled. And a little later, when they were riding on again, she murmured softly:

  “Ten years of lonesomeness and bitterness to save his pride! I wonder if Hester Keyes knows what she has missed?”

  CHAPTER VII

  TWO LETTERS GO EAST

  After Agatha retired that night Rosalind sat for a long time writing at a little desk in the private car. She was tingling with excitement over a discovery she had made, and was yearning for a confidante. Since it had not been her habit to confide in Agatha, she did the next best thing, which was to indite a letter to her chum, Ruth Gresham. In one place she wrote:

  “Do you remember Hester Keyes’ love affair of ten years ago? You certainly must remember it! If you cannot, permit me to brush the dust of forgetfulness away. You cannot forget the night you met William Kinkaid? Of course you cannot forget that, for when you are Mrs. Kinkaid—But there! I won’t poke fun at you. But I think every married person needs to treasure every shred of romance against inevitable hum-drum days. Isn’t that a sad sentiment? But I want to get ahead with my reminder.”

  There followed much detail, having to do with Hester Keyes’ party, to which neither Rosalind nor Ruth Gresham had been invited, for reasons which Rosalind presently made obvious. She continued:

  “Of course, custom does not permit girls of fourteen to figure prominently at ‘coming-out’ parties, but after one is there and is relegated to a stair-landing, one may use one’s eyes without restriction. Do you remember my pointing out Hester Keyes’ ‘fellow’? But of course you didn’t pay much attention to him after Billy Kinkaid sailed into your vision! But I envied Hester Keyes her eighteen years—and Trevison Brandon! He had the blackest eyes and hair! And he simply adored Hester! It made me feel positively savage when I heard shortly afterward that she had thrown him over—after his father cut him off—to take up with that fellow Harvey—I never could remember his first name. And she married Harvey—and regretted it, until Harvey died.

  “Ruth, Trevison Brandon is out here. He calls himself ‘Brand’ Trevison. I met him two days ago, and I did not recognize him, he has changed so much. He puzzled me quite a little; but not even when I heard his name did I connect him with the man I had seen at Hester’s party. Ten years is such a long time, isn’t it? And I never did have much of a memory for names. But today he went with me to a certain ranch—Blakeley’s—which, by the way, father is going to buy—and on the way we became very much acquainted, and he told me about his love affair. I placed him instantly, then, and why I didn’t keel over was, I suppose, because of the curious big saddles they have out here, with enormous wooden stirrups on them. I can hear you exclaim over that plural, but there are no side-saddles. That is how it came that I was unchaperoned—Agatha won’t take liberties with them, the saddles. Thank Heaven!”

  There followed much more, with only one further reference to Trevison:

  “He must be nearly thirty now, but he doesn’t look it, he’s so boyish. I gather, though, that he is regarded as a man out here, where, I understand, manhood is measured by something besides mere appearances. He owns acres and acres of land—some of it has coal on it; and he is sure to be enormously wealthy, some day. But I am twenty-four, myself.”

  The startling irrelevance of this sentence at first surprised Ruth Gresham, and then caused her eyes to brighten understandingly, as she read the letter a few days later. She remarked, musingly:

  “The inevitable hum-drum days, eh? And yet most people long for them.”

  Another letter was written when the one to Ruth was completed. It was to J. Chalfant Benham.

  “Dear Daddy:

  “The West is a golden paradise. I could live here many, many years. I visited Mr. Blakeley today. He calls his ranch the Bar B. We wouldn’t have to change the brand, would we? Trevison says the ranch is worth all Blakeley asks for it. Mr. Blakeley says we can take possession immediately, so I have decided to stay here. Mrs. Blakeley has invited me, and I am going to have my things taken over tomorrow. Since the Blakeley’s are anxious to sell out and return South, don’t you think you had better conclude the deal at once?

  “Lovingly,

  “Rosalind.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE CHAOS OF CREATION

  The West saw many “boom” towns. They followed in the wake of “gold strikes;” they grew, mushroom-like, overnight—garish husks of squalor, palpitating, hardy, a-tingle with extravagant hopes. A few, it is true, lived to become substantial cities buzzing with the American spirit, panting, fighting for progress with an energy that shamed the Old World, lethargic in its smug and self-sufficient superiority. But many towns died in their gangling youth, tragic monuments to hopes; but monuments also to effort, and to the pioneer courage and the dreams of an empire-building people.

  Manti was destined to live. It was a boom town with material reasons for substantial growth. Behind it were the resources of a railroad company which would anticipate the development of a section of country bigger than a dozen Old-world states, and men with brains keen enough to rea
lize the commercial possibilities it held. It had Corrigan for an advance agent—big, confident, magnetic, energetic, suave, smooth.

  Manti had awaited his coming; he was the magic force, the fulfillment of the rumored promise. He had stayed away for three weeks, following his departure on the special car after bringing Judge Lindman, and when he stepped off the car again at the end of that time Manti was “humming,” as he had predicted. During the three weeks of his absence, the switch at Manti had never been unoccupied. Trains had been coming in regularly bearing merchandise, men, tools, machines, supplies. Engineers had arrived; the basin near Manti, choked by a narrow gorge at its westerly end (where the dam was to be built) was dotted with tents, wagons, digging implements, a miscellany of material whose hauling had worn a rutted trail over the plains and on the slope of the basin, continually active with wagon-train and pack horse, and articulate with sweating, cursing drivers.

  “She’s a pippin!” gleefully confided a sleek-looking individual who might have been mistaken for a western “parson” had it not been for a certain sophisticated cynicism that was prominent about him, and which imparted a distasteful taint of his profession. “Give me a year of this and I’ll open a joint in Frisco! I cleaned out a brace of bull-whackers in the Plaza last night—their first pay. Afterward I stung a couple of cattlemen for a hundred each. Look at her hum!”

  Notwithstanding that it was midday, Manti was teeming with life and action. Since the day that Miss Benham had viewed the town from the window of the private car, Manti had added more than a hundred buildings to its total. They were not attractive; they were ludicrous in their pitiful masquerade of substantial types. Here and there a three-story structure reared aloft, sheathed with galvanized iron, a garish aristocrat seemingly conscious of its superiority, brazen, in its bid for attention; more modest buildings seemed dwarfed, humiliated, squatting sullenly and enviously. There were hotels, rooming-houses, boarding-houses, stores, dwellings, saloons—and others which for many reasons need not be mentioned. But they were pulsating with life, electric, eager, expectant. Taking advantage of the scarcity of buildings, an enterprising citizen had erected tents in rows on the street line, for whose shelter he charged enormously—and did a capacity business.

  “A hundred came in on the last train,” complained the over-worked station agent. “God knows what they all expect to do here!”

  Corrigan had kept his promise to build Judge Lindman a courthouse. It was a flat-roofed structure, one story high, wedged between a saloon and Braman’s bank building. A sign in the front window of Braman’s bank announced that Jefferson Corrigan, agent of the Land & Improvement Company, of New York, had office space within, but on the morning of the day following his return to Manti, Corrigan was seated at one side of a flat-top desk in the courthouse, talking with Judge Lindman, who sat at the other side.

  “Got them all transcribed?” asked Corrigan.

  The Judge drew a thin ledger from his desk and passed it over to Corrigan. As Corrigan turned the pages and his face lighted, the Judge’s grew correspondingly troubled.

  “All right,” exulted Corrigan. “This purports to be an accurate and true record of all the land transactions in this section from the special grant to the Midland Company, down to date. It shows no intermediate owners from the Midland Company to the present claimants. As a document arraigning carelessness on the part of land buyers it cannot be excelled. There isn’t a present owner that has a legal leg to stand on!”

  “There is only one weak point in your case,” said the Judge, and his eyes gleamed with satisfaction, which he concealed by bowing his head. “It is that since these records show no sale of its property by the Midland Company, the Midland Company can come forward and re-establish its title.”

  Corrigan laughed and flipped a legal-looking paper in front of the Judge. The latter opened it and read, showing eagerness. He laid it down after reading, his hands trembling.

  “It shows that the Midland Company—James Marchmont, president—transferred to Jefferson Corrigan, on a date prior to these other transactions, one-hundred thousand acres of land here—the Midland Company’s entire holdings. Why, man, it is forgery!”

  “No,” said Corrigan quietly. “James Marchmont is alive. He signed his name right where it is. He’ll confirm it, too, for he happens to be in something of the fix that you are in. Therefore, there being no records of any sales on your books—as revised, of course—” he laughed; “Jeff Corrigan is the legal possessor of one-hundred thousand acres of land right in the heart of what is going to be the boom section of the West!” He chuckled, lit a cigar, leaned back in his chair and looked at the Judge. “All you have to do now is to enter that transaction on your records.”

  “You don’t expect the present owners to yield their titles without a fight, do you?” asked the Judge. He spoke breathlessly.

  Corrigan grunted. “Sure; they’ll fight. But they’ll lose. I’ve got them. I’ve got the power—the courts—the law, behind me. I’ve got them, and I’ll squeeze them. It means a mint of money, man. It will make you. It’s the biggest thing that any man ever attempted to pull off in this country!”

  “Yes, it’s big,” groaned the Judge; “it’s stupendous! It’s frightful! Why, man, if anything goes wrong, it would mean—” He paused and shivered.

  Corrigan smiled contemptuously. “Where’s the original record?” he asked.

  “I destroyed it,” said the Judge. He did not look at Corrigan. “How?” demanded the latter.

  “Burned it.”

  “Good.” Corrigan rubbed his palms together. “It’s too soon to start anything. Things are booming, and some of these owners will be trying to sell. Hold them off—don’t record anything. Give them any excuse that comes to your mind. Have you heard from Washington?”

  “The establishment of the court here has been confirmed.”

  “Quick work,” laughed Corrigan. He got up, murmuring something about having to take care of some leases. When he turned, it was to start and stand rigid, his jaws set, his face pale. A man stood in the open doorway—a man of about fifty apparently, furtive-eyed, slightly shabby, though with an atmosphere about him that hinted of past dignity of carriage.

  “Jim Marchmont!” said Corrigan. He stepped forward, threateningly, his face dark with wrath. Without speaking another word he seized the newcomer by the coat collar, snapping his head back savagely, and dragged him back of a wooden partition. Concealed there from any of the curious in the street, he jammed Marchmont against the wall of the building, held him there with one hand and stuck a huge fist into his face.

  “What in hell are you doing here?” he demanded. “Come clean, or I’ll tear you apart!”

  The other laughed, but there was no mirth in it, and his thin lips were curved queerly, and were stiff and white. “Don’t get excited, Jeff,” he said; “it won’t be healthy.” And Corrigan felt something hard and cold against his shirt front. He knew it was a pistol and he released his hold and stepped back.

  “Speaking of coming clean,” said Marchmont. “You crossed me. You told me you were going to sell the Midland land to two big ranch-owners. I find that you’re going to cut it up into lots and make big money—loads of it. You handed me a measly thousand. You stand to make millions. I want my divvy.”

  “You’ve got your nerve,” scoffed Corrigan. “You got your bit when you sold the Midland before. You’re a self-convicted crook, and if you make a peep out here I’ll send you over the road for a thousand years!”

  “Another thousand now,” said Marchmont: “and ten more when you commence to cash in. Otherwise, a thousand years or not, I’ll start yapping here and queer your game.”

  Corrigan’s lips were in an ugly pout. For an instant it seemed he was going to defy his visitor. Then without a word to him he stepped around the partition, walked out the door and entered the bank. A few minutes later he passed a bundle of greenbacks to Marchmont and escorted him to the front door, where he stood, watching, his fa
ce unpleasant, until Marchmont vanished into one of the saloons.

  “That settles you, you damned fool!” he said.

  He stepped down into the street and went into the bank. Braman fawned on him, smirking insincerely. Corrigan had not apologized for striking the blow, had never mentioned it, continuing his former attitude toward the banker as though nothing had happened. But Braman had not forgiven him. Corrigan wasted no words:

  “Who’s the best gun-man in this section?”

  Braman studied a minute. “Clay Levins,” he said, finally.

  “Can you find him?”

  “Why, he’s in town today; I saw him not more than fifteen minutes ago, going into the Elk!”

  “Find him and bring him here—by the back way,” directed Corrigan.

  Braman went out, wondering. A few minutes later he returned, coming in at the front door, smiling with triumph. Shortly afterward Corrigan was opening the rear door on a tall, slender man of thirty-five, with a thin face, a mouth that drooped at the corners, and alert, furtive eyes. He wore a heavy pistol at his right hip, low, the bottom of the holster tied to the leather chaps, and as Corrigan closed the door he noted that the man’s right hand lingered close to the butt of the weapon.

  “That’s all right,” said Corrigan; “you’re perfectly safe here.”

  He talked in low tones to the man, so that Braman could not hear. Levins departed shortly afterwards, grinning crookedly, tucking a piece of paper into a pocket, upon which Corrigan had transcribed something that had been written on the cuff of his shirt sleeve. Corrigan went to his desk and busied himself with some papers. Over in the courthouse, Judge Lindman took from a drawer in his desk a thin ledger—a duplicate of the one he had shown Corrigan—and going to the rear of the room opened the door of an iron safe and stuck the ledger out of sight under a mass of legal papers.

  * * * *

  When Marchmont left Corrigan he went straight to the Plaza, where he ordered a lunch and ate heartily. After finishing his meal he emerged from the saloon and stood near one of the front windows. One of the hundred dollar bills that Corrigan had given him he had “broke” in the Plaza, getting bills of small denomination in change, and in his right trousers’ pocket was a roll that bulked comfortably in his hand. The feel of it made him tingle with satisfaction, as, except for the other thousand that Corrigan had given him some months ago, it was the only money he had had for a long time. He knew he should take the next train out of Manti; that he had done a hazardous thing in baiting Corrigan, but he was lonesome and yearned for the touch and voice of the crowds that thronged in and out of the saloons and the stores, and presently he joined them, wandering from saloon to saloon, drinking occasionally, his content and satisfaction increasing in proportion to the quantity of liquor he drank.