Langford of the Three Bars Part 20

"Jim Munson. Jim Munson's my name-yep."

Gordon smiled.

"You needn't insist on it, Mr. Munson," he advised. "We know it now.

Where do you live?"

"h.e.l.lity d.a.m.n! I live at the Three Bars ranch."

"In Kemah County?"

"It sure is."

"What is your business, Mr. Munson?"

"Jim's shorter, d.i.c.k. Well, I work for the Boss, Mr. Paul Langford."

"In what capacity?"

"If you mean what do I do, why, I ride the range, I punch cows, I always go on the round-up, I'm a fair bronco-breaker and I make up bunks and clean lamp chimblies between times," he recited, glibly, bound to be terse yet explicit, by advice of the Boss.

There was a gale of laughter in the bar. Even the Court smiled.

"Oh, Jim! Jim! You have perjured yourself already!" murmured the Boss.

"Clean lamp chimneys-ye G.o.ds!"

"Well, grin away!" exploded Jim, his quick ire rising. He had forgotten that Judge Dale's court was not like Justice McAllister's. His fingers fairly itched to draw a pistol and make the scoffers laugh and dance to a little music of his own. But something in Gordon's steady though seemingly careless gaze brought him back to the seriousness of the scene they were playing-without guns.

The examination proceeded. The air was getting stifling. Windows were thrown open. Damp-looking clouds had arisen from nowhere seemingly and spread over the little prairie town, over the river and the hills. It was very warm. Weather-seasoned inhabitants would have predicted storm had they not been otherwise engaged. There was no breath of air stirring. Mrs. Higgins had said it was a sorry day for the cattle when the river was running in December. Others had said so and so believed, but people were not thinking of the cattle now. One big-boned, long-horned steer held the stage alone.

The State proceeded to Munson's identification of the steer in question.

After many and searching questions, Gordon asked the witness:

"Jim, would you be willing to swear that the steer you had held over at the stock-yards was the very same steer that was the mascot of the Three Bars ranch?"

This was Jim's big opportunity.

"Know Mag? Swear to Mag? d.i.c.k, I would know Mag ef I met him on the golden streets of the eternal city or ef my eyes was full o' soundin'

cataracts! Yep."

"I am not asking such an impossible feat, Mr. Munson," cut in Gordon, nettled by the digressions of one of his most important witnesses.

"Answer briefly, please. Would you be willing to swear?"

Jim was jerked back to the beaten track by the sharp incision of Gordon's rebuke. No, this was indeed not Jimmie Mac's court.

"Yep," he answered, shortly.

Billy Brown was called. After the preliminary questions, Gordon said to him:

"Now, Mr. Brown, please tell the jury how you came into possession of the steer."

"Well, I was shippin' a couple o' car loads to Sioux City, and I was drivin' the bunch myself with a couple o' hands when I meets up with Jesse Black here. He was herdin' a likely little bunch o' a half dozen or so-among 'em this spotted feller. He said he wasn't shippin' any this Fall, but these were for sale-part of a lot he had bought from Yellow Wolf. So the upshot of the matter was, I took 'em off his hands. I was just lackin' 'bout that many to make a good, clean, two cars full."

"You took a bill-of-sale for them, of course, Mr. Brown?"

"I sure did. I'm too old a hand to buy without a bill-o'-sale."

The doc.u.ment was produced, marked as an exhibit, and offered in evidence.

The hearing of testimony for the State went on all through that day. It was late when the State rested its case-so late that the defence would not be taken up until the following day. It was all in-for weal or for woe. In some way, all of the State's witnesses-with the possible exception of Munson, who would argue with the angel Gabriel at the last day and offer to give him lessons in trumpet blowing-had been imbued with the earnest, honest, straightforward policy of the State's counsel.

Gordon's friends were hopeful. Langford was jubilant, and he believed in the tolerable integrity of Gordon's hard-won jury. Gordon's presentation of the case thus far had made him friends; fickle friends maybe, who would turn when the wind turned-to-morrow,-but true it was that when court adjourned late in the afternoon, many who had jeered at him as a visionary or an unwelcome meddler acknowledged to themselves that they might have erred in their judgment.

As on the previous night, Gordon was tired. He walked aimlessly to a window within the bar and leaned against it, looking at the still, oppressive, cloudy dampness outside, with the early December darkness coming on apace. Lights were already twinkling in kitchens where housewives were busy with the evening meal.

"Well, d.i.c.k," said Langford, coming up cheery and confident.

"Well, Paul, it's all in."

"And well in, old man."

"I-don't know, Paul. I hope so. That quiet little man from down country has not been much heard from, you know. I am afraid, a moral uplift isn't my stunt. I'm tired! I feel like a rag."

Langford was called away for a moment. When he returned, Gordon was gone. He was not at supper.

"He went away on his horse," explained Louise, in answer to Langford's unspoken question. "I saw him ride into the country."

When the party separated for the night, Gordon had not yet returned.

CHAPTER XVII

GORDON RIDES INTO THE COUNTRY

Gordon rode aimlessly out of the little town with its twinkling lights.

He did not care where he went or what direction he pursued. He wanted to ride off a strange, enervating dejection that had laid hold of him the moment his last testimony had gone in. It all seemed so pitifully inadequate-without Williston,-now that it was all in. Why had he undertaken it? It could only go for another defeat counted against him.

Though what was one defeat more or less when there had been so many? It would be nothing new. Was he not pursuing merely the old beaten trail?

Why should the thought weigh so heavily now? Can a man never attain to that higher-or lower, which is it?-alt.i.tude of strifeless, unregretful hardness? Or was it, he asked himself in savage contempt of his weakness, that, despite all his generous and iron clad resolutions, he had secretly, unconsciously perhaps, cherished a sweet, shy, little reservation in his inmost heart that maybe-if he won out-

"You poor fool," he said, aloud, with bitter harshness.

Suppose he did. A brave specimen, he, if he had the shameful egoism to ask a girl-a girl like Louise-a gentle, highbred, protected, cherished girl like that-to share this new, bleak, rough life with him. But the very sweetness of the thought of her doing it made him gasp there in the darkness. How stifling the air was! He lifted his hat. It was hard to breathe. It was like the still oppressiveness preceding an electrical storm. His mare, unguided, had naturally chosen the main travelled trail and kept it. She followed the mood of her master and walked leisurely along while the man wrestled with himself.

If he really possessed the hardihood to ask Louise to do this for him, she would laugh at him. Stay! That was a lie-a black lie. She would not laugh-not Louise. She was not of that sort. Rather would she grieve over the inevitable sadness of it. If she laughed, he could bear it better-he had good, stubborn, self-respecting blood in him,-but she would not laugh. And all the rest of his long life must be spent in wishing-wishing-if it could have been! But he would never ask her to do it. Not even if the impossible came to pa.s.s. It was a hard country on women, a hard, treeless, sun-seared, unkindly country. Men could stand it-fight for its future; but not women like Louise. It made men as well as unmade them. And after all it did not prove to be the undoing of men so much as it developed in them the perhaps. .h.i.therto hidden fact that they were already wanting. These latent, const.i.tutional weaknesses thus laid bare, the bad must for a while prevail-bad is so much noisier than good. But this big, new country with its infinite possibilities-give it time-it would form men out of raw material and make over men mistakenly made when that was possible, or else show the dividing line so clearly that the goats might not herd with the sheep. Some day, it would be fit for women-like Louise. Not now. Much labor and sorrow must be lived through; there must be many mistakes, many experiments tried, there must be much sacrifice and much refining, and many must fall and lose in the race before its big destiny be worked out and it be fit for women-like Louise. Down in the southern part of the State, and belonging to it, a certain big barred building sheltered many women, when the sun of the treeless prairies and the gazing into the lonesome distances surrounding their homesteads seeped into their brains and stayed there so that they knew not what they did. There were trees there and fountains and restful blue-gra.s.s in season, and flowers, flowers, flowers-but these came too late for most of the women.

Louise was not of that sort. The roughness and the loneliness would simply wear her away and she would die-smiling to the last. What leering fate had led her hither to show him what he had missed by choosing as he had chosen to throw himself into the thankless task of preparing a new country for-a future generation? This accomplished, she would flit lightly away and never know the misery she had left behind or the flavor and zest she had filched from the work of one man, at least, who had entered upon it with lofty ambition, high hopes, and immutable purpose.

What then would he have wished? That she had not come at all?