THE MEAT HUNTER
There was one tree in the city of Ascalon, the catalpa in front of Judge
Thayer's office. This blazing noonday it threw a shadow as big as an
umbrella, or big enough that the judge, standing close by the trunk and
holding himself up soldierly, was all in the shade but the gentle swell
of his abdomen, over which his unbuttoned vest gaped to invite the
breeze.
Judge Thayer was far too big for the tree, as he was too big for
Ascalon, but, scholar and gentleman that he was, he made the most of
both of them and accepted what they had to offer with grateful heart.
Now he stood, his bearded face streaming sweat, his alpaca coat across
his arm, his straw hat in his hand, his bald head red from the
parboiling of that intense summer day, watching a band of Texas drovers
who had just arrived with three or four thousand cattle over the long
trail from the south.
These lank, wide-horned creatures were crowding and lowing around the
water troughs in the loading pens, the herdsmen shouting their
monotonous, melancholy urgings as they crowded more famished beasts into
the enclosures. Judge Thayer regarded the dusty scene with troubled
face.
"And so pitch hot!" said he, shaking his head in the manner of a man who
sees complications ahead of him. He stood fanning himself with his hat,
his brows drawn in concentration. "Twenty wild devils from the Nueces,
four months on the trail, and this little patch of Hades at the end!"
The judge entered his office with that uneasy reflection, leaving the
door standing open behind him, ran up his window shades, for the sun had
turned from the front of his building, took off his collar, and settled
down to work. One could see him from the station platform, substantial,
rather aristocratic, sitting at his desk, his gray beard trimmed to a
nicety, one polished shoe visible in line with the door.
Judge Thayer's office was a bit removed from the activities of Ascalon,
which were mainly profane activities, to be sure, and not fit company
for a gentleman even in the daylight hours. It was a snubby little
building with square front like a store, "Real Estate" painted its width
above the door. On one window, in crude black lettering:
WILLIAM THAYER
ATTORNEY
NOTARY
On the other:
MAYOR'S OFFICE
The office stood not above two hundred feet from the railroad station,
at the end of Main Street, where the buildings blended out into the
prairie, unfenced, unprofaned by spade or plow. Beyond Judge Thayer's
office were a coal yard and a livery barn; behind him the lots which he
had charted off for sale, their bounds marked by white stakes.
Ascalon, in those early days of its history, was not very large in
either the territory covered or the inhabitants numbered, but it was a
town of national notoriety in spite of its size. People who did not live
there believed it to be an exceedingly wicked place, and the farther one
traveled from Ascalon, in any direction whatever, the faster this ill
fame increased. It was said, no farther off than Kansas City, that
Ascalon was the wickedest place in the United States. So, one can image
what character the town had in St. Louis, and guess at the extent of its
notoriety in Pittsburg and Buffalo.
Porters on trains had a holy fear of Ascalon. They announced the train's
approach to it with suppressed breath, with eyes rolling white in fear
that some citizen of the proscribed town might overhear and defend the
reputation of his abiding-place in the one swift and incontrovertible
argument then in vogue in that part of the earth. Passengers of
adventurous nature flocked to the station platform during the brief
pause the train made at Ascalon, prickling with admiration of their own
temerity, so they might return home and tell of having set foot in the
wickedest town in the world.
And that was the fame of Ascalon, new and raw, for the greater part of
it, as it lay beside the railroad on that hot afternoon when Judge
Thayer stood in the shade of his little catalpa tree watching the Texans
drive their cattle into the loading pens.
Before the railroad reached out across the Great Plains, Ascalon was
there as a fort, under another name. The railroad brought new
consequence, new activities, and made it the most important loading
place for Texas cattle, driven over the long route on their slow way to
market.
It was a cattle town, living and fattening on the herds which grazed the
vast prairie lands surrounding it, and on the countless thousands which
came northward to its portal over the Chisholm Trail. As will have been
gathered from the scene already passed, agriculture had tried and failed
in that land. Ascalon was believed to be, in truth, far beyond the limit
of that gentle art, which was despised and contemned by the men who
roamed their herds over the free grass lands, and the gamesters who
flourished at their expense.
Not that all in Ascalon were vicious and beyond the statutory and moral
laws. There was a submerged desire for respectability in the grain of
even the worst of them which came to the front at times, as in defense
of the town's reputation, and on election day, when they put in such a
man as Judge Thayer for mayor. With a man like Judge Thayer at the head
of affairs, all charges of the town's utter abandonment to the powers of
evil seemed to fall and fade. But the judge, in reality, was only a
pillar set up for dignity and show. They elected him mayor, and went on
running the town to suit themselves, for the city marshal was also an
elective officer, and in his hands the scroll of the law reposed.
Now, in these summer days, there was a vacancy in this most important
office, three months, only, after election. The term had almost two
years to run, the appointment of a man to the vacancy being in the
mayor's hands. As a consequence there was being exerted a great deal of
secret and open pressure on the mayor in favor of certain favorites. It
was from a conference with several of the town's financial powers that
the mayor had returned to his office when you first beheld him under his
catalpa tree. The sweat on his face was due as much to internal
perplexity as outward heat, for Judge Thayer was a man who wanted to
please his friends, and everybody that counted in Ascalon was his
friend, although they were not all friends among themselves.
No later than the night before the vacancy in the marshalship had
fallen; it would not do to allow the town to go unbridled for even
another night. A strong man must be appointed to the place, and no fewer
than three candidates were being urged by as many factions, each of
which wanted its peculiar interests especially favored and protected. So
Judge Thayer was in a sweat with good reason. He wished in his honest
soul that he could reach out and pick up a disinterested man somewhere,
set him into the office without the strings of fear or favor on him, and
tell him to keep everybody within the deadline, regardless of whose
business prospered most.
But there were not men raining down every day around Ascalon competent
to fill the office of city marshal. Out of the material offered there
was not the making of one side of a man. Two of them were creatures of
the opposing gambling factions, the other a weak-kneed fellow with the
pale eyes of a coward, put forward by the conservative business men who
deplored much shooting in the name of the law.
How they were to get on without much shooting, Judge Thayer did not
understand. Not a bit of it. What he wanted was a man who would do more
shooting than ever had been done before, a man who would clean the place
of the too-ready gun-slingers who had gathered there, making the town's
notoriety their capital, invading even the respectable districts in
their nightly debaucheries to such insolent boldness that a man's wife
or daughter dared not show her ear on the street after nightfall.
Judge Thayer put the town's troubles from him with a sigh and leaned to
his work. He was preparing a defense for a cattle thief whom he knew to
be guilty, but whose case he had undertaken on account of his wife and
several small children living in a tent behind the principal
gambling-house. Because it seemed a hopeless case from the jump, Judge
Thayer had set his beard firmer in the direction of the fight. Hopeless
cases were the kind that had come most frequently his way all the days
of his life. He had been fronting for the under pup so long that his own
chances had dwindled down to a distant point in his gray-headed years.
But there was lots of satisfaction behind him to contemplate even though
there might not be a great deal of prosperity ahead. That helped a man
wonderfully when it came to casting up accounts. So he was bent to the
cattle thief's case when a man appeared in his door.
This was a tall, bony man with the dust of the long trail on him; a
sour-faced man of thin visage, with long and melancholy nose, a lowering
frown in his unfriendly, small red eyes. A large red mustache drooped
over his mouth, the brim of his sombrero was pressed back against the
crown as if he had arrived devil-come-headlong against a heavy wind.
Judge Thayer took him for a cattleman seeking legal counsel, and invited
him in. The visitor shifted the chafed gear that bore his weapon, as if
to ease it around his gaunt waist, and entered, removing his hat. He
stood a little while looking down at Judge Thayer, a disturbance in his
weathered face that might have been read for a smile, a half-mocking,
half-humorous expression that twitched his big mustache with a catlike
sneer.
"You're the mayor of this man's town, are you, Judge?" he asked.
As the visitor spoke, Judge Thayer's face cleared of the perplexity that
had clouded it. He got up, beaming welcome, offering his hand.
"Seth Craddock, as sure as little apples! I knew you, and I didn't know
you, you old scoundrel! Where have you been all these years?"
Seth Craddock only expanded his facial twitching at this friendly
assault until it became a definite grin. It was a grin that needed no
apology, for all evidence was in its favor that it was so seldom seen by
the eyes of men that it could be forgiven without a plea.
"I've been ridin' the long trail," said Seth.
"With that bunch that just arrived?"
"Yeh. Drove up from the Nueces. I'm quittin'."
"The last time I saw you, Seth, you were butchering two tons of buffalo
a day for the railroaders. I often wondered where you went after you
finished your meat contract."
"I scouted a while for the gover'ment, but we run out of Indians. Then I
went to Texas and rode with the rangers a year or two."
"I guess you kept your gun-barrel hot down in that country, Seth?"
"Yeh. Once in a while it was lively. Dyin' out down there now, quiet as
a school."
"So you turned back to Kansas lookin' for high life. Heard of this burg,
I guess?"
"I kind of thought something might be happenin' off up here, Judge."
"And I was sitting here frying out my soul for the sight of a full-sized
man when you stepped in the door! Sit down; let's you and me have a
talk."
Seth drew a dusty chair from against the wall and arranged himself in
the draft between the front and back doors of the little house. He
leaned his storm-beaten sombrero against the leg of his chair near his
heel, as carefully as if making preparations for quick action in a
hostile country, shook his head when the judge offered a cigar, shifted
his worn cartridge belt a bit with a movement that appeared to be as
unconscious as unnecessary.
"What's restin' so heavy on your mind, Judge?" he inquired.
"Our city marshal stepped in the way of a fool feller's bullet last
night, and all the valuable property in this town is lying open and
unguarded today."
"Don't nobody want the job?"
"Many are called, or seem to feel themselves nominated, but none is
appointed. The appointment is in my hands; the job's yours if you'll do
an old friend a favor and take it. It pays a hundred dollars a month."
Seth's heavy black hair lay in disorder on his high, sharp forehead,
sweated in little ropes, more than half concealing his immense ears. He
smoothed it back now with slow hand, holding a thoughtful silence;
shifted his feet, crossed his legs, looked out through the open door
into the dusty street.
"How does the land lay?" he asked at length.
"You know the name of the town, everybody knows the name of the town.
Well, Seth, it's worse than its name. It's a job; it's a double man's
job. If it was any less, I wouldn't lay it down before you."
"Crooks run things, heh?"
"I'm only a knot on a log. The marshal we had wasn't worth the powder
that killed him. Oh-h, he did kill off a few of 'em, but what we need
here is a man that can see both sides of the street and behind him at
the same time."
"How many folks have you got in this man's town by now, Judge?"
"Between six and seven hundred. And we could double it in three months
if we could clean things up and make it safe."
"How would you do it, Judge? marry everybody?"
"I mean we'd bring settlers in here and put 'em on the land. The
railroad company could shoot farmers in here by the hundreds every month
if it wasn't for the hard name this town's got all over the country. A
good many chance it and come as it is. We could make this town the
supply point for a big territory, we could build up a business that'd
make us as respectable as we're open and notorious now. For I tell you,
Seth, this country around here is God Almighty's granary--it's the wheat
belt of the world."
Seth made no reply. He slewed himself a little to sweep the country over
beyond the railroad station with his sullen red eyes. The heat was
wavering up from the treeless, shrubless expanse; the white sun was over
it as hot as a furnace blast. From the cattle pens the dusty, hoarse
cries of the cowboys sounded, "Ho, ho, ho!" in what seemed derision of
the judge's fervent claims.
"A lot of us have staked our all on the outcome here in Ascalon, we
fellows who were here before the town turned out to be the sink-hole of
perdition that it is today. We built our homes here, and brought our
families out, and we can't afford to abandon it to these crooks and
gamblers and gun-slingers from the four corners of the earth. I let them
put me in for mayor, but I haven't got any more power than a stray dog.
This chance to put in a marshal is the first one I've had to land them a
kick in the gizzards, and by Jeems River, Seth, I want to double 'em
up!"
"It looks like your trick, Judge."
"Yes, if I had the marshal with me the two of us could run this town the
way it ought to be run. And we'd keep the county seat here as sure as
sundown."
"Considerin' a change?"
"The folks over in Glenmore are--the question will come to a vote this
fall. The county seat belongs here, not away off there at Glenmore,
seven miles from the railroad."
"What's your chance?"
"Not very heavy right now. We can out-vote them in town, but the
country's with Glenmore, all on account of our notorious name. Folks
hate to come in here to court, it's got so bad. But we could do a lot of
cleaning up between now and November, Seth."
Seth considered it in silence, his red eyes on the dusty activities of
his late comrades at the cattle pens. He shifted his dusty feet as if
dancing to his slow thoughts, scraping his boot soles grittily on the
floor.
"Yes, I reckon we could, Judge."
"Half the people in Glenmore want to come over to the railroad. They'd
vote with us if they could be made to feel this was a town to bring
their families to."
Seth seemed to take this information like a pill under his tongue and
dissolve it in his reflective way. Judge Thayer left him to his
ruminations, apparently knowing his habits. After a little Seth reached
down for his hat in the manner of a man about to depart.
"All right, Judge; we'll clean up the town and part its hair down the
middle," he said.
Judge Thayer did not give vent to his elation on Seth Craddock's
acceptance of the office of city marshal, although his satisfaction
gleamed from his eyes and radiated from his kindly face. He merely shook
hands with his new officer in the way of men sealing a bargain, swore
him in, and gave him the large shield which had been worn by the many
predecessors of the meat hunter in that uncomfortable office, three of
whom had gone out of the world with lead enough in them to keep them
from tossing in their graves.
This ceremony ended, Seth put his hat firmly on his small, reptilian
head, adding greatly to the ferociousness of his thirsty countenance by
his way of pulling the sombrero down upon his ears.
"Want to walk around with me and introduce me and show me off?" he
asked.
"It'll be the biggest satisfaction in ten years!" Judge Thayer
declared.