Trail's End Part 16

Morgan took the tool and sawed through the pole to which his captives were made fast. Stilwell held up the severed end while Morgan cut the other, freeing from the bolted posts the four-inch section of pole to which the cowboys were tied, leaving it hanging from the ropes at their wrists, dangling a little below their hands.

The late lords of the plains were such a dejected and altogether sneaking looking crew, shorn of their power by the hands of one man, stripped of their roaring weapons, tied like cattle to a hurdle, that the vengeful spirit of Ascalon veered in a glance to humorous appreciation of the comedy that was beginning before their eyes.

The cowboys who had stood ready a few minutes past to help hang the outfit, fairly rolled with laughter at the sight of this miserable example of complete degradation, through which the meanness of their kind was so ludicrously apparent. The citizenry and floating population of the town joined in the merriment, and the lowering clouds of tragedy were swept away on a gale of laughter that echoed along the jagged business front.

But the girl Rhetta was not laughing. Perplexed, troubled, she laid her hand on Morgan's arm as he stood beside his horse about to mount.

"What are you going to do with them now, Mr. Morgan?" she inquired.

"They're going to start for Texas down the Chisholm Trail," he said, smiling down at her from the saddle.

And in that manner they set out from Ascalon, carrying the pole at their backs, Morgan driving them ahead of him, starting them in a trot which increased to a hobbling run as they bore away past the railroad station and struck the broad trampled highway to the south.

Afoot and horseback the town and the visitors in it came after them, shooting and shouting, getting far more enjoyment out of it than they would have got out of a hanging, as even the most contrary among them admitted. For this was a drama in which the boys and girls took part, and even the Baptist preacher, who had a church as big as a mouse trap, stood grinning in appreciation as they pa.s.sed, and said something about it being a parallel of Samson, and the foxes with their tails tied together being driven away into the Philistines' corn.

The crowd followed to the rise half a mile south of town, where most of it halted, only the cowboys and mounted men accompanying Morgan to the river. There they turned back, also, leaving it to Morgan to carry out the rest of his program alone, it being the general opinion that he intended to herd the six beyond the cottonwoods on the farther sh.o.r.e and despatch them clean-handed, according to what was owing to him on their account.

Morgan urged his captives on, still keeping them on the trot, although it was becoming a staggering and wabbling progression, the weaker in the line held up by the more enduring. They were experiencing in a small and colorless measure, as faint by comparison, certainly, as the smell of smoke to the feel of fire on the naked skin, what they had given Morgan in the hour of their cruel mastery.

At last one of them could stumble on no farther. He fell, dragging down two others who were not able to sustain his weight. There Morgan left them, a mile or more beyond the river, knowing they would not have far to travel before they came across somebody who would set them free.

The Dutchman, stronger and fresher than any of his companions, turned as if he would speak when Morgan started to leave. Morgan checked his horse to hear what the fellow might have to say, but nothing came out of the ugly mouth but a grin of such derision, such mockery, such hate, that Morgan felt as if the bright day contracted to shadows and a chill crept into the pelting heat of the sun. He thought, gravely and soberly, that he would be sparing the world at large, and himself specifically, future pain and trouble by putting this scoundrel out of the way as a man would remove a vicious beast.

Whatever justification the past, the present, or the future might plead for this course, Morgan was too much himself again to yield. He turned from them, giving the Dutchman his life to make out of it what he might.

From the top one of the ridges such as billowed like swells of the sea that gray-green, treeless plain, Morgan looked back. All of them but the Dutchman were either lying or sitting on the ground, beaten and winded by the torture of their bonds and the hard drive of more than three miles in the burning sun. The Dutchman still kept his feet, although the drag of the pole upon him must have been sore and heavy, as if he must stand to send his curse out after the man who had bent him to his humiliation.

And Morgan knew that the Dutchman was not a conquered man, nor bowed in his spirit, nor turned one moment away from his thought of revenge.

Again the bright day seemed to contract and grow chill around him, like the oncoming shadow and breath of storm. He felt that this man would return in his day to trouble him, low-devising, dark and secret and meanly covert as a wolf prowling in the night.

The last look Morgan had of the Dutchman he was gazing that way still, his face peculiarly white, the weight of the pole and his fallen comrades dragging down on his bound arms. Morgan could fancy still, even over the distance between them, the small teeth, wide set in the red gums like a pup's, and the loathsome glitter of his sneering eyes.

CHAPTER XII

IN PLACE OF A REGIMENT

Morgan rode back to town in thoughtful, serious mood after conducting the six desperadoes across the small trickle of the Arkansas River. He was not satisfied with the morning's adventure, no matter to what extent it reflected credit on his manhood and competency in the public mind of Ascalon. He would have been easier in all conscience and higher in his own esteem if it had not happened at all.

He thought soberly now of getting his trunk over to Conboy's from the station and changing back into the garb of civilization before meeting that girl again, that wonderful girl, that remarkable woman who could play a tune on him to suit her caprice, he thought, as she would have fingered a violin.

Judge Thayer's little office, with the white stakes behind it marking off the unsold lots like graves of a giant race, reminded Morgan of his broken engagement to look at the farm. He hitched his horse at the rack running out from one corner of the building, where other horses had stood fighting flies until they had stamped a hollow like a buffalo wallow in the dusty ground.

Judge Thayer got up from the acc.u.mulated business on his desk at the sound of Morgan's step in his door, and came forward with welcome in his beaming face, warmth of friendliness and admiration in every hair of his beard, where the gray twinkled like laughter among the black.

"I asked the governor for a company of militia to put down the disorder and outlawry in this town--I didn't think less than a company could do it," said the judge.

"Is he sending them?" Morgan inquired with polite interest.

"No, I'm glad to say he refused. He referred me to the sheriff."

"And the sheriff will act, I suppose?"

"Act?" Judge Thayer repeated, turning the word curiously. "Act!"--with all the contempt that could be centered in such a short expression--"yes, he'll act like a forsworn and traitorous coward, the friend to thieves that he's always been! We don't need him, we don't need the governor's petted, stall-fed militia, when we've got one man that's a regiment in himself!"

The judge must shake hands with Morgan again, and clap him on the shoulder to further express his admiration and the feeling of security his single-handed exploit against the oppressors of Ascalon had brought to the town.

"I and the other officers and directors sat up in the bank four nights, lights out and guns loaded, sweatin' blood, expecting a raid by that gang. They had this town buffaloed, Morgan. I'm glad you came back here today and showed us the pattern of a real, old-fashioned man."

"I guess I was lucky," Morgan said, with modest depreciation of his valor, exceedingly uncomfortable to stand there and hear this loud-spoken praise of a deed he would rather have the public forget.

"Maybe you call it luck where you came from, but we've got another name for it here in Ascalon."

"I'm sorry I couldn't keep my engagement to look at that farm, Judge Thayer. You must have heard my reason for it."

"Stilwell told me. It's a marvel you ever came back at all."

"If the farm isn't sold----"

"No," said the judge hastily, as if to turn him away from the subject.

"Come in and sit down--there's a bigger thing than farming on hand for you if you can see your interests in it as I see them, Mr. Morgan. A man's got to trample down the briars before he makes his bed sometimes, you know--come on in out of this cussed sun.

"Morgan, the situation in Ascalon is like this," Judge Thayer resumed, seated at his desk, Morgan between him and the door in much the same position that Seth Craddock had sat on the day of his arrival not long before; "we've got a city marshal that's bigger than the authority that created him, bigger than anything on earth that ever wore a star. Seth Craddock's enlarged himself and his authority until he's become a curse and a scourge to the citizens of this town."

"I heard something of his doings from Fred Stilwell. Why don't you fire him?"

"Morgan, I approached him," said the judge, with an air of injury. "I believe on my soul the old devil spared my life only because I had befriended him in past days. There's a spark of grat.i.tude in him that the drenching of blood hasn't put out. If it had been anybody else he'd have shot him dead."

"Hm-m-m-m!" said Morgan, grunting his sympathy, eyes on the floor.

"Morgan, that fellow's killed eight men in as many days! He's got a regular program--a man a day."

"It looks like something ought to be done to stop him."

"The old devil's shrewd, he's had legal counsel from no less ill.u.s.trious source than the county attorney, who's so crooked he couldn't lie on the side of a hill without rollin' down it like a hoop. Seth knows he fills an elective office, he's beyond the power of mayor and council to remove. The only way he can be ousted is by proceedings in court, which he could wear along till his term expired. We can't fire him, Morgan.

He'll go on till he depopulates this town!"

"It's a remarkable situation," Morgan said.

"He's a jackal, which is neither wolf nor dog. He's never killed a man here yet out of necessity--he just shoots them down to see them kick, or to gratify some monstrous delight that has transformed him from the man I used to know."

"He may be insane," Morgan suggested.

"I don't know, but I don't think so. I can't abase my mind low enough to fathom that man."