Trail's End Part 30

"You were one of the men that wanted the town cleaned up."

"No n.i.g.g.e.rs in Ireland, now, Morgan--no-o-o n.i.g.g.e.rs in Ireland!"

Conboy made a warning of his peculiar expression, as if he halted Morgan on ground that was dangerous to advance over as far as another word. It was impressive, almost threatening, given in his deep voice, with grave eye and face suddenly stern, but Morgan knew that it was all on the outside.

"Cowboys don't any more than hit the ground here till they hop on their horses and leave," Conboy continued. "Nothing to entertain them, no interest for a live man in a dead town, where the only drink he can get is out of the well. There was just three horses tied along the square last night, where there used to be fifty or a hundred. I'll have to leave this man's town; I can't stand the pressure."

"A man with a little nerve ought to swallow his present losses for his future gains," Morgan said, beginning to grow tired of this whining.

"If I could see any future gains comin' my way I'd gamble on them with any man," Conboy returned with some spirit. "I'm goin' over to Glenmore this afternoon and see what it looks like there. That's the comin' town, it seems to me; good crops over there in the valley, no cattle starvin'.

They may bend the railroad around to touch that town, too--they're talkin' of it. That's sure to happen if Glenmore wins the county seat this fall. Then you'll see skids put under every house in this town and moved over there. Ascalon will be a name some of us old-timers will remember twenty years from now, and that's all."

"If Judge Thayer and the railroad colonization agent put through a big deal they've got going, I don't see why this town shouldn't pick up again on a healthy business foundation," Morgan said.

"Them Pennsylvania Dutch?" Conboy scoffed. "They're not the kind of people that ever stay in a hotel, they carry their blankets with 'em and flop down under their wagons like Indians. When they come to town they bring a basket of grub along, they don't spend money for a meal in any man's hotel. You put Pennsylvania Dutch into this country and there'll never be another coroner's jury called!"

Morgan knocked the ashes out of his short, clubby little pipe, put it in his shirt pocket behind his badge, and went on. He paused at the door of the _Headlight_ office to look within, hoping to see a face that had been missing since the night of his great tragedy. Only Riley Caldwell, the printer, was there, working furiously, as if fired by an ambition that Ascalon, dead or alive, could not much longer contain. The droop-shouldered alpaca coat once worn by the editor now dead, hung beside the desk, like the hull he had cast when he took flight away from the troubles of his much-hara.s.sed life.

Only the day before Judge Thayer had told Morgan that Rhetta was still at Stilwell's ranch, whither she had gone to compose herself after the strain of so much turmoil. Morgan could only feel that she had gone there to avoid him, shrinking from the sight of his face.

There was not much warmth in Morgan's reception by the business men of Ascalon around the square that morning, hot as the weather was. It seemed as if some messenger had gone before him crying his coming, as a jaybird goes setting up an alarm from tree to tree before the squirrel hunter in the woods.

Earnest as their solicitations had been for him to a.s.sume the office of marshal, voluble as their protestations in the face of fear and insecurity of life and property that they would accept the result without a whimper, there were only a few who stood by their pledges like men. These were the merchants of solider character, whose dealings were with the cattlemen and homesteaders. The hope of these merchants was in the coming of more homesteaders, according to Judge Thayer's dream. They were the true patriots and pioneers.

While these few commended Morgan's stringent application of the letter and spirit of the state and town laws, their encouragement was only a flickering candle in the general gloom of the place. Morgan knew the grunters were saying behind his back that he had gone too far, farther than their expectations or instructions. All they had expected of him was that he knock off the raw edges, suppress the too evident, abate the promiscuous banging around of guns by every bunch of cowboys that arrived or left, and to cut down a little on the killing, at least confine it to the unprofitable cla.s.s.

They admitted they didn't want the cowboys killed off the way Craddock had been doing it, giving the town a bad name. But to shut the saloons all up, to go and shoot Peden down that way and kill the town with him, that was more than they had given him license for. So they growled behind his back, afraid of him as they feared lightning, without any ground for such fear in the world.

Judge Thayer appeared to be the only man in town who was genuinely happy over the result of Morgan's sweeping out the enc.u.mbering rubbish that blocked the country's progress by its noisome notoriety. But through all the judge's glow of grat.i.tude for duty well done, Morgan was conscious of a peculiar aloofness, not exactly fear such as was unmistakable in many others, but a withdrawing, as if something had fallen between them and changed their relations man to man.

Morgan knew that it was the blood of slain men. He was to this man, and to another of far greater consequence to Morgan's peace and happiness, like a pitcher that had been defiled.

Judge Thayer's friendliness was unabated, but it was the sort of friendliness that did not offer the hand, or touch the arm when walking by Morgan's side, as in the early hours of their acquaintance. Useful this man, to the work that must be done in this place to make it fit, and safe, and secure for property and life, but unclean. That was what Judge Thayer's att.i.tude proclaimed, as plainly as printed words.

This morning when Judge Thayer encountered Morgan on the street, not far from the little catalpa tree that was having a bitter struggle against wind and drouth, he invited the city marshal to accompany him to his office. News that would tickle his ears, he said; big news.

The biggest of this big news was that the railroad company was going to establish a division point there at once. The railroad officials had given Judge Thayer to understand, directly, that this decision had come as a result of the town waking up and shedding its leprous skin. They felt that it would be a safe place for their employees to live now, with the pitfalls closed, the temptations removed. And the credit, Judge Thayer owned, was Morgan's alone.

But there was more news. The eastern immigration agents of the railroad were spreading the news of Ascalon's pacification with gratifying result. Already parties of Illinois and Indiana farmers, who had been looking to that country for a good while, were preparing to come out and scout for locations.

"They're getting tired of farming that high-priced land, Morgan. They're wearing it out, it costs them more for fertilizers than they take off of it. They're coming here, where a man can plow a furrow forty miles long, we tell them--and it's the gospel truth, a hundred miles, or two hundred if he wanted to--and never hit a stump."

Judge Thayer got up at that point, and stood in his door looking at the dull sky sullen with heat; looking at the glimmer that rose like impalpable smoke from the hard surface of the cracked, baked earth.

"But I wish we could get a good rain before they begin to come," he sighed, "and I think--" cautiously, with a sly wink at Morgan--"we're going to get it. I've got a man here right now working on it, along scientific principles, Morgan--entirely scientific."

"A rainmaker?" said Morgan, his incredulity plain in his tone.

"He came to me highly recommended by bankers and others in Nebraska, where he undoubtedly brought rain, and in Texas, where the proof is indisputable. But I'm doing it solely on my own account," Judge Thayer hastened to explain, "carrying the cost alone. He's under contract to bring a copious rain not later than seven days from today."

"What's the bill?" Morgan asked, amused by this man's eager credulity.

"One hundred dollars on account, four hundred to be paid the day he delivers the rain--provided that he delivers it within the specified time. I've bound him up in a contract."

"I think he'll win," said Morgan, drily, looking meaningly at the murky sky.

"It's founded on science, pure science, Morgan," Judge Thayer declared, warmly. "I'm telling you this in confidence, not another soul in town knows it outside of my own family. We'll keep it a pleasant secret--I want to give the farmers and cattlemen of this valley the present of a surprise. When the proper time comes I'll announce the responsible agency, I'll show that crowd over at Glenmore where the progressive people of this county live, I'll prove to the doubters and knockers where the county seat belongs!"

"It's a great scheme," Morgan admitted. "How does the weather doctor work?"

"Chemicals," Judge Thayer whispered, mysteriously; "sends up vapors day and night, invisible, mainly, but potent, causing, as near as I can come to it from his explanation--which is technical and thoroughly scientific, Morgan--" this severely, as if to rebuke the grin that dawned on Morgan's face. "Causing, as near as I can come to it, a dispersion of the hot belt of atmosphere, this superheated belt that encircles the globe in this spot like a flame of fire, causing a break in this belt, so to speak, drilling a hole in it, bringing down the upper frigid air."

Judge Thayer looked with triumph at Morgan when he delivered this, sweating a great deal, as if the effort to elucidate this scientific man's methods of conspiring against nature to beat it out of a rain were equal to a ten-mile walk in the summer sun.

"Yes, sir," said Morgan, with more respect in his voice and manner than he felt. "And then what happens?"

"Why, when the cold and the hot currents meet, condensation is the natural result," said the judge. "Plain, simple, scientific as a fiddle."

"Just about," said Morgan.

Judge Thayer pa.s.sed it, either ignoring it as a fling beneath the notice of a scientific man, or not catching the note of ridicule.

"He's at work in my garden now," he said, "sending up his invisible vapors. I want to center the downpour from the heavens over this G.o.d-favored spot, right over this G.o.d-favored spot of Ascalon."

CHAPTER XXIII

ASCALON CURLS ITS LIP

It was the marvel and regret of people who made their adventures vicariously, and lived the thrill of them by reading the newspapers, that Ascalon had come to a so sudden and unmistakable end of its romance. For a little while there was hope that it might rise against this Cromwell who had reached out a long arm and silenced it; for a few days there was satisfaction in reading of this man's exploits in this wickedest of all wicked towns, for newspapers sent men to study him, and interview him, and write of his conquest of Ascalon on the very battle ground.

Little enough they got out of Morgan, who met them kindly and talked of the agricultural future of the country lying almost unpeopled beyond the notorious little city's door. Such as they learned of his methods of taming a lawless community they got from looser tongues than the city marshal's.

Even from Chicago and St. Louis these explorers among the fallen temples of adventure came, some of them veterans who had talked with Jesse James in his day but recently come to a close. They waited around a few days for the shot that would remove this picturesque crusader, not believing, any more than the rest of the world, including Ascalon itself, believed that this state of quiescence could prevail without end.

While they waited, sending off long stories by telegraph to their papers every night, they saw the exodus of the proscribed begin, increase, and end. The night-flitting women went first, urged away by the necessities of the flaccid fish which lived upon their shame. The gamblers and gamekeepers followed close behind.

A little while the small saloon-keepers who had nosed the floor and licked up the crumbs which fell from Peden's bar hung around, hoping that it was a flurry that would soon subside. They had big eyes for future prosperity, the overlord being now out of the way, and talked excitedly among themselves, even approached Morgan through an emissary with proposals of a handsome subsidy.

But when they saw a Kansas City gambler come and strip Peden's hall of its long bar and furnishings, of its faro tables and doctored roulette wheels, load them all on a car and ship them to his less notorious but safer town, they knew it was the end. Ascalon had fallen with its most notable man, never to rise up again.

The last of the correspondents left on the evening of the day that Judge Thayer set the rainmaker to work. He sent the obituary of Ascalon, as he believed, ahead of him by wire.

Not that Ascalon was as dead as it appeared on the surface, or the gamblers would make it out to be. True, the undertaker's business had gone, and he with it; Druggist Gray's trade in the bromides and restoratives in demand after debauches, and repairs for bunged heads after the nightly carousels, had fallen away to nothing; the Elkhorn hotel and the Santa Fe cafe were feeding few, and the dealers in vanities and fancies, punctured hosiery, lacy waists, must pack up and follow those upon whom they had prospered.