Trail's End Part 21

A man who rose from a near-by table came over to shake hands with Morgan, and express his appreciation for the good beginning he had made as peace officer of the town. Dora s.n.a.t.c.hed Morgan's cup and hastened away for more coffee. When she returned the citizen was on his way to the door.

"Craddock used to come in here and wolf his meals down," she said, picking up her theme in the same troubled key, "just like it didn't amount to nothing to kill a man a day. I looked to see blood on the tablecloth every time his hand touched it."

"It's a shame you girls had to wait on the brute," Morgan said.

"Girls! he wouldn't let anybody but me wait on him." Dora frowned, her face coloring. She bent a little, lowering her voice. "Why, Mr. Morgan, what do you suppose? He wanted me to _marry_ him!"

"That old buffalo wrangler? Well, he _is_ kind of previous!"

"He's too fresh to keep, I told him. Marry _him_! He used to come in here, Mr. Morgan, and put his hat down by his foot so he could grab it and run out and kill another man without losin' time. He never used to take his guns off and hang 'em up like other gentlemen when they eat. He just set there watchin' and turnin' his mean old eyes all the time. He's afraid of them, I know by the way he always tried to look behind him without turnin' his head, never sayin' a word to anybody, he's afraid."

"Afraid of whom, Dora?"

"The ghosts of them murdered men!"

Morgan shook his head after seeming to think it over a little while. "I don't believe they'd trouble him much, Dora."

"I'd rather wait on a dog!" she said, scorn and rebellion in her pretty eyes.

"You can marry somebody else and beat him on that game, anyhow. I'll bet there are plenty of them standing around waiting."

"O Mr. Morgan!" Dora was drowned in blushes, greatly pleased. "Not so many as you might think," turning her eyes upon him with coquettish challenge, "only Mr. Gray and Riley Caldwell, the printer on the _Headlight_."

"Mr. Gray, the druggist?"

"Yes, but he's too old for me!" Dora sighed, "forty if he's a day. He's got money, though, and he's perfec'ly _grand_ on the pieanno. You ought to hear him play _The Maiden's Prayer_!"

"I'll listen out for him. I saw him washing his window a while ago--a tall man with a big white shirt."

"Yes," abstractedly, "that was him. He's an elegant fine man, but I don't give a snap for none of 'em. I wish I could leave this town and never come back. You'll be in for dinner, won't you?" as Morgan pushed back from the repletion of that standard meal.

"And for supper, too, I hope," he said, turning it off as a joke.

"I hope to G.o.d!" said Dora fervently, seeing no joke in the uncertainty at all.

Excitement was laying hold of Ascalon even at that early hour. When Morgan went on the street after breakfast he found many people going about, gathering in groups along the shady fronts, or hastening singly in the manner of men bound upon the confirmation of unusual news. The pale fish of the night were out in considerable numbers, leaking cigarette smoke through all the apertures of their faces as they grouped according to their kind to discuss the probabilities of the day. Seth Craddock was coming back with fire in his red eyes; their deliverer was on his way.

There was no secret of Seth's coming any longer. Even Peden leered in triumph when he met Morgan as he sauntered outside his closed door in the peculiar distinction of his black coat, which the strong sun of that summer morning was not powerful enough to strip from his broad back.

None of the saloons or resorts made an attempt to open their doors to business. The proprietors appeared to have, on the other hand, a secret pleasure in keeping them closed, perhaps counting on the gain that would be theirs when this brief prohibition should come to its end.

Opposed to this pleasurable expectancy of the proscribed was the uneasiness and doubt of the respectable. True, this man Morgan had taken Seth Craddock's gun away from him once, but luck must have had much to do with his preservation in that perilous adventure. Morgan had rounded up the Texas men quartered on the town under Craddock's patronage, also, but they were sluggish from their debauch, and he had approached them with the caution of a man coming up on the blind side of a horse.

Yesterday that had looked like a big, heroic thing for one man to accomplish, but in the light of reflection today it must be admitted that it was mainly luck.

Yes, Morgan had closed up the town last night, defying even Peden in his own hall, where defiance as a rule meant business for the undertaker.

But the glamour of his morning's success was still over him at that time; Peden and his bouncers were a little cautious, a little cowed. He could not close the town up another night; murmurs of defiance were beginning to rise already.

And so the people who had applauded his drastic enforcement of the law last night, became of no more support to Morgan today than a furrow of sand. Luck was a great thing if a man could play it forever, they said, but it was too much to believe that luck would hold even twice with Morgan when he confronted Seth Craddock that afternoon.

Morgan walked about the square that morning like a stranger. Few spoke to him, many turned inward from their doors when they saw him coming, afraid that a little friendship publicly displayed might be laid up against them for a terrible reckoning of interest by and by. Morgan was neither offended nor downcast by this public coldness in the quarter where he had a right to expect commendation and support. He understood too well the lengths that animosities ran in such a town as Ascalon. A living coward was more comfortable than a dead reformer, according to their philosophy.

It was when pa.s.sing the post-office, about nine o'clock in the morning, that Morgan met Rhetta Thayer. She saw him coming, and waited. Her face was flushed; indignation disturbed the placidity of her eyes.

"They don't deserve it, the cowards!" she burst out, after a greeting too serious to admit a smile.

"Deserve what?" he inquired, looking about in mystification, wondering if something had happened in the post-office to fire this indignation.

"The help and protection of a brave man!" she said.

Morgan was so suddenly confused by this frank, impetuous appreciation of his efforts, for there was no mistaking the application, that he could not find a word. Rhetta did not give him much time, to be sure, but ran on with her denunciation of the citizenry of the town.

"I wouldn't turn a hand for them again, Mr. Morgan--I'd throw up the whole thing and let them cringe like dogs before that murderer when he comes back! It's good enough for them, it's all they deserve."

"You can't expect them to be very warm toward a stranger," he said, excusing them according to what he knew to be their due.

"They're afraid you can't do it, they're telling one another your luck will fail this time. Luck! that's all the sense there is in _that_ bunch of cowards."

"They may be right," he said, thoughtfully.

"You know they're not right!" she flashed back, defending him against himself as though he were another.

"I don't expect any generosity from them," he said, gentle in his tone and undisturbed. "They're afraid if my luck should happen to turn against me they'd have to pay for any friendship shown me here this morning. Business is business, even in Ascalon."

"Luck!" she scoffed. "It's funny you're the only lucky man that's struck this town in a long time, then. If it's all luck, why don't some of them try their hands at rounding up the crooks and killers of this town and showing them the road the way you did that gang yesterday? Yes, I know all about that kind of luck."

Morgan walked with her toward Judge Thayer's office, whither she was bound with the mail. Behind them the loafers snickered and pa.s.sed quips of doubtful humor and undoubted obscenity, but careful to present the face of decorum until Morgan was well beyond their voices. No matter what doubt they had of his luck holding with Seth Craddock, they were not of a mind to make a trial of it on themselves.

"I think the best thing to do with this town is just let it go till it dries up and blows away," she said, with the vindictive impatience of youth. "What little good there is in it isn't worth the trouble of cleaning up to save."

"Your father's got everything centered here, he told me. There must be a good many honest people in the same boat."

"Maybe we could sell out for something, enough to take us away from here. Of course we expected Ascalon to turn out a different town when we came here, the railroad promised to do so much. But there's nothing to make a town when the cattle are gone. We might as well let it begin to die right now."

"You're gloomy this morning, Miss Thayer. You remember the Mennonites that wanted to settle here and were afraid?"

"There's no use for you to throw your life away making the country safe for them."

"Of course not. I hadn't thought of them."

"Nor any of these cold-nosed cowards that turn their backs on you for fear your luck's going to change. Luck! the fools!"

"They don't figure in the case at all, Miss Thayer."

"If it's on account of your own future, if you're trampling down a place in the briars to make your bed, as pa called it, then I think you can find a nicer place to camp than Ascalon. It never will repay the peril you'll run and the blood you'll lose--have lost already."

"I'm further out of the calculation than anybody, Miss Thayer."

"I don't see what other motive there can be, then," she reflected, eyes bent to the ground as she walked slowly by his side.