A MIDNIGHT EXTRA
Dr. Slavens sat on the edge of his cot, counting his money. He hadn't a
great deal, so the job was not long. When he finished he tucked it all
away in his instrument-case except the few coins which he retained in
his palm.
It would not last much longer, thought he. A turn would have to be made
soon, or he must hunt a job on the railroad or a ranch. Walker had
talked a lot about having Dr. Slavens come in on the new sheep venture
with him, on the supposition, of course, that the physician had money.
Walker had told him also a great deal about men who had started in that
country as herders, "running a band of sheep" on shares, receiving so
much of the increase of the flock year by year. Many of the richest
sheepmen in that country had started that way only a few years before,
so Walker and others said.
Perhaps, thought Dr. Slavens, there might be a chance to hook up with
Walker under such an arrangement, put his whole life into it, and learn
the business from the ground up. He could be doing that while Agnes was
making her home on her claim, perhaps somewhere near--a few hundred
miles--and if he could see a gleam at the farther end of the undertaking
after a season he could ask her to wait. That was the best that he could
see in the prospect just then, he reflected as he sat there with his
useless instrument-case between his feet and the residue of the day's
expenses in his hand.
Agnes had gone into the section of the tent sacred to the women; he
supposed that she was going to bed, for it was nearly eleven o'clock.
Strong and Horace were asleep in their bunks, for they were to take the
early stage for Meander in the morning. Walker and William Bentley and
Sergeant Schaefer were out.
The little spark of hope had begun to glow under Slavens' breath.
Perhaps Walker and sheep were the solution of his life's muddle. He
would find Walker before the young man took somebody else in with him,
expose the true state of his finances, and see whether Walker would
entertain a proposal to give him a band of sheep on shares.
Like every man who is trying to do something that he isn't fitted to,
because he has failed of his hopes and expectations in the occupation
dearest to his heart, Slavens heated up like a tin stove under the
trashy fuel of every vagrant scheme that blew into his brain.
Sheep was all that he could see now. Already he had projected ahead
until he saw himself the complacent owner of vast herds; saw the miles
of his ranches; saw the wool of his flocks being trampled into the long
sacks in his own shearing-sheds. And all the time his impotent
instrument-case shone darkly in the light of his candle, lying there
between his feet at the edge of the canvas bed.
With a sigh he came back from his long flight into the future, and took
up his instrument-case with caressing hand. Placing it on his knees, he
opened it and lifted the glittering instruments fondly.
Of course, if he _could_ make it go at his profession that would be the
thing. It would be better than all the sheep on Wyoming's dusty hills. A
little surgery somewhere, with its enameled table and white fittings,
and automobiles coming and going all day, and Agnes to look in at
evening----. Yes, that _would_ be the thing.
Perhaps sheep for a few years would help to that end. Even five years
would leave him right in the middle stretch of life, with all his vigor
and all the benefit of experience. Sheep looked like the solution
indeed. So _thinking_, he blew out his candle and went out to look for
Walker.
At the door of the tent he stopped, thinking again of Agnes, and of the
moonlight on her face as they stood by the riverside, trembling again
when the weight of the temptation which had assailed him in that moment
swept over him in a heart-lifting memory. Perhaps Agnes condemned him
for refusing the opportunity of her lips. For when a woman expects to be
kissed, and is cheated in that expectation, it leaves her in censorious
mood. But scorn of an hour would be easier borne than regret of years.
So he reflected, and shook his head solemnly at the thought. He passed
into the shadows along the deserted street, going toward the sounds
which rose from beneath the lights beyond.
Comanche appeared livelier than ever as he passed along its thronged
streets. Those who were to leave as soon as they could get a train were
making a last reckless night of it; the gamblers were busy at their
various games.
The doctor passed the tent where Hun Shanklin had been stationed with
his crescent table. Shanklin was gone, and another was in his place with
an army-game board, or chuck-a-luck, doing well with the minnows in the
receding sea. Wondering what had become of Shanklin, he turned to go
down a dark little street which was a quick cut to the back entrance of
the big gambling-tent, where he expected to find Walker and go into the
matter of sheep.
Even at that moment the lights were bright in the office of _The
Chieftain_. The editor was there, his green coat wide open, exposing his
egg-spattered shirt-front to all who stopped to look, and making a
prodigious show of excitement at the imposing-stone, where the form of
the last extra of the day lay under his nervous hand.
The printer was there also, his hair standing straight where he had
roached it back out of his eyes with inky fingers, setting type for all
he was worth. In a little while those on the street heard the familiar
bark of the little gasoline engine, and hundreds of them gathered to
inquire into the cause of this late activity.
"Running off an extra," said Editor Mong. A great, an important piece of
news had just reached the office of _The Chieftain_, and in a few
minutes an extra would be on the streets, with the secret at the
disposal of every man who had two bits in his pants. Those were the
identical words of that advance-guard of civilization and refinement,
Mr. J. Walter Mong.
It was midnight when the circulator of _The Chieftain_--engaged for that
important day only--burst out of the tent with an armful of papers,
crying them in a voice that would have been red if voices had been
colored in Comanche, it was so scorched from coming out of the tract
which carried liquor to his reservoir.
"_Ho-o-o!_ Git a extree! Git a extree! All about the mistake in the
winner of Number One! Git a extree! _Ho-o-o-o!_"
People caught their breaths and stopped to lean and listen. Mistake in
the winner of Number One? What was that? The parched voice was plain
enough in that statement:
"Mistake in the winner of Number One."
A crowd hundreds deep quickly surrounded the vender of extras, and
another crowd assembled in front of the office, where Editor Mong stood
with a pile of papers at his hand, changing them into money almost as
fast as that miracle is performed by the presses of the United States
Treasury.
Walker and William Bentley bored through the throng and bought a paper.
Standing under the light at a saloon door, they read the exciting news.
Editor Mong had cleared a place for it, without regard to the beginning
or the ending of anything else on the page, in the form which had
carried his last extra of the day. There the announcement stood in bold
type, two columns wide, under an exclamatory
EXTRA!
William Bentley read aloud:
Owing to a mistake in transmitting the news by telephone, the
name of the winner of Claim Number One in today's land-drawing at
Meander was omitted. The list of winners published heretofore in
_The Chieftain_ is correct, with the single exception that each
of them moves along one number. Number One, as announced, becomes
Number Two, and so on down the list.
The editor regrets this error, which was due entirely to the
excitement and confusion in the office at Meander, and takes this
earliest opportunity of rectifying it.
The editor also desires to announce that _The Chieftain_ will
appear no longer as a daily paper. Beginning with next Monday it
will be issued as a four-page, five-column weekly, containing all
the state, national, and foreign news. Price three dollars a year
in advance. The editor thanks you for your loyal support and
patronage.
The winner of Claim Number One is Dr. Warren Slavens, of Kansas
City, Missouri. Axel Peterson, first announced as the winner,
drew Number Two.
Editor Mong had followed the tradition of the rural school of journalism
in leaving the most important feature of his news for the last line.
"Well!" said the toolmaker. "So our doctor is the winner! But it's a
marvel that the editor didn't turn the paper over to say so. I never saw
such a botch at writing news!"
He did not know, any more than any of the thousands who read that
ingenuous announcement, that Editor Mong was working his graft overtime.
They did not know that he had entered into a conspiracy to deceive them
before the drawing began, the clerk in charge of the stage-office and
the one telephone of the place being in on the swindle.
Mong knew that the Meander stage would leave for Comanche at eight in
the morning, or two hours before the drawing began. It was the only
means, exclusive of the telephone, by which news could travel that day
between the two places, and as it could carry no news of the drawing his
scheme was secure.
Mong had feared that his extras might not move with the desired
celerity during the entire day--in which expectation he was agreeably
deceived--so he deliberately withheld the name of the winner of Number
One, substituting for it in his first extra the name of the winner of
Number Two. He believed that every person in Comanche would rush out of
bed with two bits in hand for the extra making the correction, and his
guess was good.
Walker and Bentley hurried back to the Hotel Metropole to find that
Sergeant Schaefer had arrived ahead of them with the news. They were all
up in picturesque _déshabillé_, Horace with a blanket around him like a
bald-headed brave, his bare feet showing beneath it. The camp was in a
state of pleasurable excitement; but Dr. Slavens was not there to share
it, nor to receive the congratulations which all were ready to offer
with true sincerity.
"I wonder where he is?" questioned Horace a little impatiently.
He did not like to forego the ceremony, but he wanted to get back to
bed, for a man's legs soon begin to feel chilly in that mountain wind.
"He left here not very long ago," said Agnes; "perhaps not more than an
hour. I was just preparing to go to bed."
"It's a fine thing for him," commented Sergeant Schaefer. "He can
relinquish as soon as he gets his papers for ten or twelve thousand
dollars. I understand the railroad's willing to pay that."
"It's nice and comfortable to have a millionaire in our midst," said
June. "Mother, you'd better set your cap for him."
"June Reed!" rebuked her mother sharply above the laughter which the
proposal provoked.
But under the hand of the night the widow blushed warmly, and with a
little stirring of the treasured leaves of romance in her breast. She
_had_ thought of trying for the doctor, for she was only forty-seven,
and hope lives in the female heart much longer than any such trifling
term.
They sat and talked over the change this belated news would make in the
doctor's fortunes, and the men smoked their pipes, and the miller's wife
suggested tea. But nobody wanted to kindle a fire, so she shivered a
little and went off to bed.
The night wore on, Comanche howling and fiddling as it never had howled
and fiddled before. One by one the doctor's friends tired of waiting for
him and went to bed. Walker, William Bentley, and Agnes were the last of
the guard; the hour was two o'clock in the morning.
"I believe you'd just as well go to bed, Miss Horton," suggested
Bentley, "and save the pleasure of congratulating him until tomorrow. I
can't understand why he doesn't come back."
"I didn't know it was so late," she excused, rising to act on his
plainly sensible view of it.
"Walker and I will skirmish around and see if we can find him," said
Bentley. "It's more than likely that he's run across some old friend and
is sitting talking somewhere. You've no notion how time slips by in such
a meeting."
"And perhaps he doesn't know of his good fortune yet," she suggested.
"Oh, it's all over town long ago," Walker put in. "He knows all about it
by this time."
"But it isn't like him to keep away deliberately and shun sharing such
good news with his friends," she objected.
"Not at all like him," agreed Bentley; "and that's what's worrying me."
She watched them away until the gloom hid them; then went to her
compartment in the tent, shut off from the others like it by gaily
flowered calico, such as is used to cover the bed-comforts of the
snoring proletariat. It was so thin that the light of a candle within
revealed all to one without, or would have done so readily, if there had
been any bold person on the pry.
There she drew the blanket of her cot about her and sat in the dark
awaiting the return of Bentley and Walker. There was no sleep in her
eyes, for her mind was full of tumult and foreboding and dread lest
something had befallen Dr. Slavens in the pitfalls of that gray city,
the true terrors and viciousness of which she could only surmise.
Bentley and Walker went their way in silence until they came to the
lights. There was no thinning of the crowds yet, for the news in the
midnight extra had given everybody a fresh excuse for celebrating, if
not on their own accounts, then on account of their friends. Had not
every holder of a number been set back one faint mark behind the line of
his hopes?
Very well. It was not a thing to laugh over, certainly, but it was not
to be mended by groans. So, if men might neither groan nor laugh, they
could drink. And liquor was becoming cheaper in Comanche. It was the
last big night; it was a wake.
"Well, I'll tell you," said Walker, "I don't think we'd better look for
him too hard, for if we found him he wouldn't be in any shape to take
back there by now."
"You mean he's celebrating his good luck?" asked Bentley.
"Sure," Walker replied. "Any man would. But I don't see what he wanted
to go off and souse up alone for when he might have had good company."
"I think you've guessed wrong, Walker," said Bentley. "I never knew him
to take a drink; I don't believe he'd celebrate in that way."
Even if he had bowled up, protested Walker, there was no harm in it. Any
man might do it, he might do it himself; in fact, he was pretty sure
that he _would do it_, under such happy conditions, although he believed
a man ought to have a friend or two along on such occasions.
From place to place they threaded their way through the throng, which
ran in back-currents and cross-currents, leaving behind it upon the bars
and gaming-tables an alluvium of gold. Dr. Slavens was not at any of the
tables; he was not reeling against any of the bars; nor was he to be
seen anywhere in the sea of faces, mottled with shadows under the smoky
lights.
"Walker, I'm worried," Bentley confessed as they stood outside the last
and lowest place of diversion that remained to be visited in the town.
"I tell you, it flies up and hits a man that way," protested Walker.
"Sheep-herders go that way all of a sudden after a year or two without a
taste of booze, sometimes. He'll turn up in a day or two, kind of mussed
up and ashamed; but we'll show him that it's expected of a gentleman in
this country once in a while, and make him feel at home."
"Yes, of course," Bentley agreed, his mind not on the young man's
chatter nor his own reply. "Well, let's run through this hole and have
it over with."
Inside the door four dusty troopers, on detached duty from the military
post beyond Meander, sat playing cards. As they appeared to be fairly
sober, Walker approached them with inquiries.
No, they hadn't seen Dr. Slavens. Why? What had he done? Who wanted
him?
Explanations followed.
"Well," said a sergeant with service-stripes on his sleeve and a broad,
blue scar across his cheek, "if I'd 'a' drawed Number One you bet you
wouldn't have to be out lookin' for me. I'd be up on the highest point
in Comanche handin' out drinks to all my friends. Ain't seen him,
pardner. He ain't come in here in the last two hours, for we've been
right here at this table longer than that."
They passed on, to look upon the drunken, noisy dance in progress beyond
the canvas partition.
"Not here," said Walker. "But say! There's a man over there that I
know."
Bentley looked in that direction.
"The one dancing with the big woman in red," directed Walker.
Bentley had only a glance at Walker's friend, for the young man pulled
his arm and hurried him out. Outside Walker seemed to breathe easier.
"I'll tell you," he explained. "It's this way: I didn't suppose he'd
want to be seen in there by anybody that knew him. You see, he's the
Governor's son."
"Oh, I see," said Bentley.
"So if we happen to run across him tomorrow you'll not mention it, will
you?"
"I'll not be advertising it that I was in there in very big letters,"
Bentley assured him.
"A man does that kind of a thing once in a while," said Walker. "It
bears out what I was saying about the doctor. No matter how steady a man
is, it flies up and hits him that way once in a while."
"Maybe you're right," yielded Bentley. "I think we'd just as well go to
bed."
"Just as well," Walker agreed.
The chill of morning was in the air. As they went back the crowds had
thinned to dregs, and the lights in many tents were out.
"She thinks a lot of him, doesn't she?" observed Walker reflectively.
"Who?" asked Bentley, turning so quickly that it seemed as if he
started.
"Miss Horton," Walker replied. "And there's class to that girl, I'm here
to tell you!"
Agnes, in the darkness of her compartment, strained forward to catch the
sound of the doctor's voice when she heard them enter, and when she knew
that he was not there a feeling which was half resentment, half
accusation, rose within her. Was she to be disappointed in him at last?
Had he no more strength in the happy light of his new fortune than to go
out and "celebrate," as she had heard the sergeant confidentially
charging to Horace, like any low fellow in the sweating throng?
But this thought she put away from her with humiliation and self-reproach,
knowing, after the first flash of vexation, that it was unjust. Her fears
rose towering and immense again; in the silence of the graying morning
she shivered, drawing her cold feet up into the cot to listen and wait.
Walker and Bentley had gone quietly to bed, and in the stillness around
her there was an invitation to sleep. But for her there was no sleep in
all that night's allotment.
The roof of the tent toward the east grew transparent against the sky.
Soon the yellow gleam of the new sun struck it, giving her a sudden warm
moment of hope.
It is that way with us. When our dear one lies dying; when we have
struggled through a night hideous with the phantoms of ruin and
disgrace, then the dawn comes, and the sun. We lift our seamed faces to
the bright sky and hope again. For if there is still harmony in the
heavens, how can the discord of the earth overwhelm us? So we comfort
our hearts, foolishly exalting our troubles to the plane of the eternal
consonance.
The sun stood "the height of a lance" when Agnes slipped quietly to the
door of the tent. Over the gray desert lands a smoky mist lay low.
Comanche, stirring from its dreams, was lighting its fires. Here passed
one, the dregs of sleep upon him, shoulders bent, pail in hand, feet
clinging heavily to the road, making toward the hydrant where the green
oats sprang in the fecund soil. There, among the horses in the lot
across the way, another growled hoarsely as he served the crowding
animals their hay.
Agnes looked over the sagging tent-roofs with their protruding
stovepipes and wondered what would be revealed if all were swept
suddenly away. She wondered what fears besides her own they covered,
silent in the pure light of day. For Comanche was a place of secrets and
deceits.
She laid a fire in the tin stove and put the kettle on to boil. Horace
Bentley and Milo Strong were stirring within the tent, making ready for
the stage, which departed for Meander at eight.
Mrs. Mann, the miller's wife, came out softly, the mark of the comb in
her hair, where it had become damp at the temples during her ablution.
She looked about her swiftly as she stood a moment in the door, very
trim and handsome in her close-fitting black dress, with a virginal
touch of white collar and a coral pin.
Agnes was bending over a bed of coals, which she was raking down to the
front of the stove for the toast--a trick taught the ladies of the camp
by Sergeant Schaefer--and did not seem to hear her.
"Dr. Slavens hasn't come back?" Mrs. Mann whispered, coming over softly
to Agnes' side.
Agnes shook her head, turning her face a moment from the coals.
"I heard you get up," said Mrs. Mann, "and I hurried to join you. I know
just how you feel!"
With that the romantic little lady put an arm around Agnes' neck and
gave her a hurried kiss, for Horace was in the door. A tear which sprang
suddenly leaped down Agnes' face and hissed upon the coals before the
girl could take her handkerchief from her sweater-pocket and stop its
wilful dash. Under the pretext of shielding her face from the glow she
dried those which might have followed it into the fire, and turned to
Horace with a nod and smile.
What was there, she asked herself, to be sitting there crying over, like
a rough-knuckled housewife whose man has stayed out all night in his
cups? If he wanted to stay away that way, let him stay! And then she
recalled his hand fumbling at the inner pocket of his coat, and the
picture post-card which he had handed her at the riverside.
Still, it wasn't a matter to cry about--not yet at least. She would
permit no more disloyal thoughts. There was some grave trouble at the
bottom of Dr. Slavens' absence, and she declared to herself that she
would turn Comanche over, like a stone in the meadow of which the
philosopher wrote, and bare all its creeping secrets to the healthy sun,
but that she would find him and clear away the unjust suspicions which
she knew were growing ranker in that little colony hour by hour.
They all gathered to bid Sergeant Schaefer good-bye, for he was to
rejoin them no more. June pressed upon him a paper-bag of fudge, which
she had prepared the day before as a surprise against this event. The
sergeant stowed it away in the side pocket of his coat, blushing a great
deal when he accepted it.
There was a little sadness in their hearts at seeing the soldier go, for
it foretold the dissolution of the pleasant party. And the gloom of Dr.
Slavens' absence was heavy over certain of them also, even though
Sergeant Schaefer tried to make a joke of it the very last thing he
said. They watched the warrior away toward the station, where the engine
of his train was even then sending up its smoke. In a little while
Horace and Milo followed him to take the stage.
There came a moment after the men had departed when Agnes and William
Bentley found themselves alone, the width of the trestle-supported table
between them. She looked across at him with no attempt to veil the
anxiety which had taken seat in her eyes. William Bentley nodded and
smiled in his gentle, understanding way.
"Something has happened to him," she whispered, easing in the words the
pent alarm of her breast.
"But we'll find him," he comforted her. "Comanche can't hide a man as
big as Dr. Slavens very long."
"He'll have to be in Meander day after tomorrow to file on his claim,"
she said. "If we can't find him in time, he'll lose it."