Trail's End Part 20

"Yes, and some of you'd be rootin' around somebody else's kitchen for biscuits to fill your craws if this town laid dead a little while longer," Conboy fired back, his true feeling in the matter revealed.

"I can get a job of biscuit shooter any day," Dora told him, untroubled by the outlook of disaster that attended upon peace and quiet. "I'd rather not have no guests than drunks that come in stagger blind and shoot the plaster off of the wall. It ain't so funny to wake up with your ears full of lime! Ma's sick of it, and I'm sick of it, and it'd be a blessin' if Mr. Morgan would keep the joints all shut till the drunks in this town dried up like dead snakes!"

"You, and your ma!" Conboy grumbled, bearing on an old grievance, an old theme of servitude and discontent.

Morgan recalled the gaunt anxiety of Mrs. Conboy's eyes, hollow of every emotion, as they seemed, but unrest and straining fear. Dora had gone unmarked yet by the cursed fires of Ascalon; only her tongue discovered that the poison of their fumes had reached her heart.

"I'd like to put strickenine in some of their biscuits!" Dora declared, with pa.s.sionate vehemence.

"Tut-tut! no n.i.g.g.e.rs----"

"How's your face, Mr. Morgan?" Dora inquired, out of one mood into another so quickly the transition was bewildering.

"Face?" said Morgan, embarra.s.sed for want of her meaning. "Oh," putting his hand to the forgotten wound--"about well, thank you, Miss Dora. I guess my good looks are ruined, though."

Dora half closed her eyes in arch expression, pursing her lips as if she meant to give him either a whistle or a kiss, laughed merrily, and ran off to cut patterns in a sheet of biscuit dough. She left such a clearness and good humor in the morning air that Morgan felt quite light at heart as he started for a morning walk.

Morgan was still wearing the cowboy garb that he had drawn from the bottom of his trunk among the things which he believed belonged to a past age and closed period of his life's story. He had deliberated the question well the night before, reaching the conclusion that, as he had stepped out of his proper character, lapsed back, in a word, to raw-handed dealings with the rough edges of the world, he would better dress the part. He would be less conspicuous in that dress, and it would be his introduction and credentials to the men of the range.

Last night's long vigil, tramping around the square in his high-heeled, tight-fitting boots, had not hastened the cure of his bruised ankles and sore feet. This morning he limped like a trapped wolf, as he said to himself when he started to take a look around and see whether any of the outlawed had made bold to open their doors.

Few people were out of bed in Ascalon at that hour, although the sun was almost an hour high. As Morgan pa.s.sed along he heard the crackling of kindling being broken in kitchens. Here and there the eager smoke of fresh fires rose straight toward the blue. No stores were open yet; the doors of the saloons remained closed as the night before. Morgan paused at the bank corner after making the round of the square.

Ahead of him the princ.i.p.al residence street of the town stretched, the houses standing in exclusive withdrawal far apart on large plots of ground, a treeless, dusty, unlovely lane. Here the summer sun raked roof and window with its untempered fire; here the winds of winter bombarded door and pane with shrapnel of sleet and charge of snow, whistling on cornice and eaves, fluttering in chimney like the beat of exhausted wings.

Morgan knew well enough how the place would appear in that bitter season; he had lived in the lonely desolation of a village on the bald, unsheltered plain. How did Rhetta Thayer endure the winter, he wondered, when she could not gallop away into the friendly solitude of the clean, unpeopled prairie? Where did she live? Which house would be Judge Thayer's among the bright-painted dwellings along that raw lane? He favored one of the few white ones, a house with a wide porch screened by morning-glory vines, a gallant row of hollyhocks in the distance.

Lawn gra.s.s had been sown in many of the yards, where it had flourished until the scorching summer drouth. Even now there were little rugs of green against north walls where the noonday shadows fell, but the rest of the lawns were withered and brown. Some hardy flowers, such as zinnias and marigolds, stood clumped about dooryards; in the kitchen gardens ta.s.seled corn rose tall, dust thick on the guttered blades.

Morgan turned from this scene in which Ascalon presented its better side, to skirmish along the street running behind Peden's establishment.

It might be well, for future exigencies, to fix as much of the geography of the place in his mind as possible. He wondered if there had been a back-door traffic in any of the saloons last night as he pa.s.sed long strings of empty beer kegs, concluding that it was very likely something had been done in that way.

Across the street from Peden's back door was a large vacant piece of ground, a wilderness of cans, bottles, packing boxes, broken barrels. On one corner, diagonally across from where Morgan stood, facing on the other street, a ragged, weathered tent was pitched. Out of this the sound of contending children came, the strident, commanding voice of a woman breaking sharply to still the commotion that shook her unstable home. Morgan knew this must be the home of the cattle thief whose case Judge Thayer had undertaken. He wondered why even a cattle thief would choose that site at the back door of perdition to pitch his tent and lodge his family.

A bullet clipping close past his ear, the sharp sound of a pistol shot behind him, startled him out of this speculation.

Morgan did not believe at once, even as he wheeled gun in hand to confront the careless gun-handler or the a.s.sa.s.sin, as the case might prove, that the shot could have been intended for him, but out of caution he darted as quick as an Indian behind a pyramid of beer kegs.

From that shelter he explored in the direction of the shot, but saw n.o.body.

There was ample barrier for a lurking man all along the street on Peden's side. From behind beer cases and kegs, whisky barrels, wagons, corners of small houses, one could have taken a shot at him; or from a window or back door. There was no smoke hanging to mark the spot.

Morgan slipped softly from his concealment, coming out at Peden's back door. Bending low, he hurried back over the track he had come, keeping the heaps of kegs, barrels, and boxes between him and the road. And there, twenty yards or so distant, in a s.p.a.ce between two wagons, he saw a man standing, pistol in hand, all set and primed for another shot, but looking rather puzzled and uncertain over the sudden disappearance of his mark.

Morgan was upon him in a few silent strides, unseen and unheard, his gun raised to throw a quick shot if the situation called for it. The man was Dell Hutton, the county treasurer. His face was white. There was the look in his eyes of a man condemned when he turned and confronted Morgan.

"Who was it that shot at you, Morgan?" he inquired, his voice husky in the fog of his fright. He was laboring hard to put a face on it that would make him the champion of peace; he peered around with simulated caution, as if he had rushed to the spot ready to uphold the law.

Morgan let the pitiful effort pa.s.s for what it was worth, and that was very little.

"I don't know who it was, Hutton," he replied, with a careless laugh, putting his pistol away. "If you see him, tell him I let a little thing like that pa.s.s--once."

Morgan did not linger for any further words. Several shock-haired children had come bursting from the tent, their contention silenced.

They stood looking at Morgan as he came back into the road, wonder in their muggy faces. Heads appeared at windows, back doors opened cautiously, showing eyes at cracks.

"Some fool shootin' off his gun," Morgan heard a man growl as he pa.s.sed under a window of a thin-sided house, from which the excited voices of women came like the squeaks of unnested mice.

"What was goin' on back there?" Conboy inquired as Morgan approached the hotel. The proprietor was a little way out from his door, anxiety, rather than interest, in his face.

"Some fool shootin' off his gun, I guess," Morgan replied, feeling that the answer fitted the case very well.

He gave Dora the same explanation when she met him at the blue door of the dining-room, trouble in her fair blue eyes. She looked at him with keen questioning, not satisfied that she had heard it all.

"I hope he burnt his fingers," she said.

CHAPTER XV

WILL HIS LUCK HOLD?

Dora escorted Morgan to a table apart from the few heavy feeders who were already engaged, indicating to the other two girls who served with her in the dining-room that this was her special customer and guest of honor. She whirled the merry-go-round caster to bring the salt and pepper to his hand; just so she placed his knife and fork, and plate overturned to keep the flies off the business side of it. Then she hurried away for his breakfast, asking no questions bearing on his preferences or desires.

A plain breakfast in those vigorous times was unvarying--beefsteak, ham or bacon to give it a savor, eggs, fried potatoes, hot biscuits, coffee.

It was the same as dinner, which came on the stroke of twelve, and none of your six-o'clock pretenses about _that_ meal, except there was no pie; identical with supper, save for the boiled potatoes and rice pudding. A man of proper proportions never wanted any more; he could not thrive on any less. And the only kind of a liver they ever worried about in that time on the plains of Kansas was a white one. That was the only disease of that organ known.

Dora was troubled; her face reflected her unrest as gla.s.s reflects firelight, her blue eyes were clouded by its gloom. She made a pretense of brushing crumbs from the cloth where there were no crumbs, in order to furnish an excuse to stoop and bring her lips nearer Morgan's ear.

"He's comin' on the one-twenty this afternoon--I got it straight he's comin'. I thought maybe you'd like to know," she said.

Morgan lifted his eyes in feigned surprise at this news, not having it in his heart to cloud her generous act by the revelation of a suspicion that it was no news to him.

"You mean----?"

"I got it straight," Dora nodded.

"Thank you, Miss Dora."

"I hope to G.o.d," she said, for it was their manner to speak ardently in Ascalon in those days, "you'll beat him to it when he gets off of the train!"

"A man can only do his best, Dora," he said gently, moved by her honest friendship, simple wild thing though she was.

"If I was a man I'd take my gun and go with you to meet him," she declared.

"I know you would. But maybe there'll not be any fuss at all."

"There'll be fuss enough, all right!" Dora protested. "If he comes alone--but maybe he'll not _come_ alone."