Claim Number One Part 38

Dusk was settling when the doctor reached his tent. Before he dismounted he rode to a little clear place among the bewilderment of stones which gave him a view of half a mile, and he sat there looking a while down the stage-trail toward Comanche. Beyond him a few hundred yards another tent had been planted. In front of it a man sat cooking his supper over a little blaze.

"Boyle lost no time in getting here," muttered the doctor, turning to his own shelter and kindling a fire on the ashes of other days.

Ashes were graying again over the embers long after he had boiled his pot of coffee and put away his can of warmed-over beans. Night was charged with a threat of frost, as is not uncommon in those alt.i.tudes at the beginning of September. It was so chilly that Slavens had drawn a blanket over his back as he sat before his dying fire, Indian fashion, on the ground, drawing what solace he could from his pipe.

A sound of scrambling hoofs laboring up the sharp hill from the direction of Meander came to him suddenly, startling him out of his reflections. His thought leaped to the instant conclusion that it was Agnes; he laid light fuel to the coals, blowing it to quicken a blaze that would guide and welcome her.

When the rider appeared an eager flame was laving the rocks in the yellow light, and Slavens was standing, peering beyond its radius. A glance told him that it was not she for whom he had lighted his guiding fire. It was a man. In a moment he drew up on the other side of the blaze and leaned over, looking sharply into Slavens' face.

"h.e.l.lo!" he hailed loudly, as if shouting across a river.

Slavens returned his bellowed hail with moderation, recognizing in the dusty traveler Comanche's distinguished chief of police, Ten-Gallon, of the diamond rings. Slavens never had been able to feel anything but the most lively contempt for the fellow; now, since learning of Ten-Gallon's treatment of Agnes, and his undoubted hand in the plot of Hun Shanklin and Boyle against himself, the doctor held him to be nothing short of an open enemy.

"I'm lookin' for a man by the name of Boyle," announced Ten-Gallon. "Are you holdin' down camp for him?"

"He's on down the road a little way."

"Oh, yes," said Ten-Gallon, "I know you now. You're the feller that beat him to it. Well, I had a complaint ag'in' you for stealin' a man's coat over in Comanche."

"I'm out of your jurisdiction right now, I guess; but I'll go down to Comanche and give you a chance at me if you want to take it," the doctor told him, considerably out of humor, what with his own disappointment and the fellow's natural insolence.

The police chief of Comanche laughed.

"I'd be about the last man to lay hands on you for anything you done to that feller, even if you'd 'a' took his hide along with his coat," said he.

"Then the crime trust of Comanche must be dissolved?" sneered Slavens.

"I don't git you, pardner," returned Ten-Gallon with cold severity.

"Oh, never mind."

"You're the feller that beat Boyle to it, too," added the chief; "and I want to tell you, pardner, I take off my katy to you. You're one smart guy!"

"You'll find your man on down the road about a quarter," directed Slavens, on whose ear the encomiums of Ten-Gallon fell without savor.

"I heard in Meander today that you'd sold out to Boyle," said Ten-Gallon.

"Well, you got it straight," the doctor told him.

Ten-Gallon slued in his saddle, slouching over confidentially.

"Say, it ain't any of my business, maybe, but how much did you git out of this pile of rocks?"

"It isn't any of your business, but I'll tell you. I got more out of it than this whole blasted country's worth!" Slavens replied.

Ten-Gallon chuckled--a deep, fat, well-contented little laugh.

"Pardner," said he admiringly, "you certainly are one smart guy!"

Ten-Gallon rode on in his quest of Boyle, while Slavens sat again beside his fire, which he allowed to burn down to coals.

Slavens could not share the fellow's jubilation over the transfer of the homestead to Boyle, for he had surrendered it on Boyle's own terms--the terms proposed to Agnes at the beginning. As he filled his big, comforting pipe and smoked, Slavens wondered what she would say concerning his failure to return to her before signing the relinquishment. There would be some scolding, perhaps some tears, but he felt that he was steering the boat, and the return merely to keep his word inviolate would have been useless.

He reviewed the crowded events of the past two days; his arrival at Meander, his talk with the county attorney. While that official appeared to be outwardly honest, he was inwardly a coward, trembling for his office. He was candid in his expression that Boyle would make a case against Agnes if he wanted it made, for there was enough to base an action upon and make a public showing.

When it came to guarding that part of the people's heritage grandiloquently described as "the public domain," the Boyles were not always at the front, to be sure. They had entered hundreds of men on the public lands, paid them a few dollars for their relinquishment, and in that way come into illegal ownership of hundreds of thousands of acres of grazing land. But all the big fish of the Northwest did it, said the county attorney; you couldn't draw a Federal grand jury that would find a true bill in such a case against a big landowner, for the men in shadow always were drawn on the juries.

Of course, when one of them turned against somebody else that would be different. In the case of the person whose entry of lands was covered by the doctor's hypothetical statement, and whose name was not mentioned between them, the crime had been no greater than their own--not so great from a moral interpretation of the law. Cupidity prompted them; the desire for a home the other. Still, that would have no weight. If Boyle wanted to make trouble, said the county attorney, he could make it, and plenty of it.

Seeing how far the shadow of the Boyles fell over that land, Slavens at once dismissed the notion that he had carried to Meander with him of bringing some legal procedure against Boyle and Boyle's accomplices on account of the a.s.sault and attempted murder which they had practiced upon him. There could be no hope of an indictment if brought before the grand jury; no chance of obtaining a warrant for the arrest of Shanklin and Boyle by lodging complaint with the county attorney.

Yet he took up that matter with the little lawyer, whose blond hair stood out in seven directions when Slavens told him of the felonious attack and the brutal disposition of what they had doubtless believed to be his lifeless body. The county attorney shook his head and showed an immediate disposition to get rid of Slavens when the story was done. It was plain that he believed the doctor was either insane or the tallest liar that ever struck that corner of the globe.

"You couldn't make a case stick on that," said he, shifting his feet and his eyes, busying his hands with some papers on his desk, which he took up in a.s.sumed desire to be about the duties of his office without further loss of time. "All I can say to you on that is, when you get ready to leave the country, take a shot at them. That's about the only thing that's left open for you to do if you want to even it up. This office can't help you any."

And that was his advice, lightly offered doubtless, with no thought that it would be accepted and carried out; but strange advice, thought Slavens, for the protector of the people's peace and dignity to give. In case he should take it, he would have to be ready to leave, that was certain.

At his meeting with Boyle in the hotel at Meander on the appointed hour, Slavens found the Governor's son more arrogant and insistent than before. Boyle set a limit of noon for Slavens to meet his demand.

"I've got everything greased," he boasted, "and I'll cut the string if you don't come up to the lick-log then."

He offered to take Slavens to interview the official in charge of the land-office if the doctor doubted that things had not been set in motion to cause trouble for Agnes in the event of Slavens' refusal to yield.

While Slavens believed this to be pure bluff, knowing that whatever influence Boyle might have with the person in question, the official would be too wise to show his subserviency in any such manner, at the same time the doctor was well enough convinced of Boyle's great and pernicious influence without a further demonstration. He saw nothing to be gained by holding out until he could return to Agnes and place the situation before her, if Boyle had been willing to forego moving against her that long.

They went to the land-office together, Boyle advancing the money to Slavens for the outright purchase of the land under the provision of the act of Congress under which the reservation had been opened. Slavens immediately transferred t.i.tle to Boyle, drew the money which he had on deposit in the bank at Meander, and rode away with the intention of quitting the state as soon as might be. How soon, depended upon the readiness of someone to go with him.

Boyle had told him that he might take his own time about removing his possessions from the land; but it was his intention, as he gloomed there by his low fire, to get them off the next day. In the morning, he intended to go to Comanche, which was only ten miles distant, and try to find out what had become of Agnes. From there he would send out a wagon to bring in his tent and baggage.

He turned again in his mind every reason, tenable and untenable, that he could frame to account for Agnes' sudden and unexplained trip. He thought she probably had gone for her mail, or to send a telegram and receive a reply, or for money, or something which she needed in camp.

More than once he took up the probability that she had gone off on some forlorn scheme to adjust their mutual affairs; but there was not a hook of probability to sustain the weight of this conjecture, so with little handling it had to be put down as profitless.

At the best she was gone, and had been gone now two days--a long time for a trip to Comanche. He wondered if anything had happened to her on the way; whether she had fled the state in precipitation, so that his homestead might be saved from Boyle. She was generous enough to do it, but not so thoughtless, he believed, knowing as she must know the concern and worry to which he would be subject until he could have word from her.

But for Agnes' return to round it out, Slavens' adventure in that country had come to a close. Without Agnes it would be incomplete, as without her there would be missing a most important part in the future pattern of his life. He could not go without Agnes, although he had nothing yet of success to offer her.

But that was on the way. The knocks which he had taken there in those few weeks had cracked the insulation of hopelessness which the frost of his profitless years had thickened upon him. Now it had fallen away, leaving him light and fresh for the battle.

Agnes had said little about the money which Dr. Slavens had taken from Shanklin at the gambler's own crooked game. Whether she countenanced it or not, Slavens did not know. Perhaps it was not honest money, in every application of the term, but it was entirely current, and there was a most comfortable sense in the feel of it there bulked in the inner pocket of his coat. He had no qualms nor scruples about it at all. Fate had put it in his hands for the carrying out of his long-deferred desires. If it hadn't worked honestly for Shanklin, it was about to set in for a mighty reformation.

But there was the trouble of Agnes' absence, which persisted between him and sleep when he arranged himself in his blankets. He turned with it, and sighed and worked himself into a fever of anxiety. Many times he got up and listened for the sound of hoofs, to go back to his tent and tell himself that it was unreasonable to think that she would ride by night over that lonely road.

When morning began to creep in it brought with it a certain a.s.surance that all was well with her, as daylight often brings its deceptive consolation to a heart that suffers the tortures of despair in the dark.

Sleep caught him then, and held him past the hour that he had set for its bound. When he awoke the sun was shining over the cold ashes of his last night's fire.

Slavens got up with a deeper feeling of resentment against Boyle than he ever had felt for any man. It seemed to come over him unaccountably, like a disagreeable sound, or a chill from a contrary wind. It was not a pettish humor, but a deep, grave feeling of hatred, as if the germ of it had grown in the blood and spread to every tissue of his body. The thought of Boyle's being so near him was discordant. It pressed on him with a sense of being near some unfit thing which should be removed.

Dr. Slavens never had carried arms in his life, and he had no means of buckling Hun Shanklin's old revolver about him, but he felt that he must take it with him when he left the tent. Big and clumsy as it was, he thrust it under the belt which sustained his trousers, where it promised to carry very well, although it was not in a free-moving state in case an emergency should demand its speedy use.

There would be no time for breakfast. Even then he should have been in Comanche, he told himself with upbraidings for having slept so long. His horse had strayed, too. Slavens went after it in resentful mood. The creature had followed the scant grazing to the second bench, an elevation considerably above its present site.