THE OPTIMIST EXPLAINS
Not more than two hours after the tragedy at the Elkhorn hotel, of which
he was the indirect cause, Calvin Morgan appeared at Judge Thayer's
little office. The judge had finished his preparation for the cattle
thief's case, and now sat ruminating it over his cob pipe. He nodded
encouragingly as Morgan hesitated at the door.
"Come in, Mr. Morgan," he invited, as cordially as if introductions had
passed between them already and relations had been established on a
footing pleasant and profitable to both.
Morgan smiled a little at this ready identification, remembering the
torn page of the hotel register, which all the reading inhabitants of
the town who were awake must have examined before this. He accepted the
chair that Judge Thayer pushed toward him, nodding to the bone-wagon man
who came sauntering past the door at that moment, the long lash of his
bullhide whip trailing in the dust behind him.
"You've come to settle with us, I hear?" said the judge.
"I'm looking around with that thought, sir."
"I don't know how you'll do at the start in the optical way, Mr.
Morgan--I'm afraid not much. I'd advise watch repairing and jewelry in
addition. This town is going to be made a railroad division point
before long, I could get you appointed watch inspector for the company.
Now, I've got a nice little storeroom----"
"I'm afraid you've got me in the wrong deck," Morgan interrupted,
unwilling to allow the judge to go on building his extravagant fancy. "I
could no more fix a watch than I could repair a locomotive, and
spectacles are as far out of my line as specters."
Judge Thayer's face reddened above his thick beard at this easy and
fluent denial of all that he had constructed from a hasty and indefinite
bit of information.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Morgan. It was Joe Lynch, the fellow that drives
the bone wagon, who got me wrong. He told me you were an oculist."
"I think that was his rendition of optimist, perhaps," Morgan said,
laughing with the judge's hearty appreciation of the twist. "I told him,
in response to a curious inquiry, that I was an optimist. I've tried
hard--very hard, sometimes--to live up to it. My profession is one that
makes a heavy drain on all the cheerfulness that nature or art ever
stocked a man with, Judge Thayer."
"It sounds like you might be a lawyer," the judge speculated, "or maybe
a doctor?"
"No, I'm simply an agriculturist, late professor of agronomy in the Iowa
State Agricultural College. It takes optimism, believe me, sir, to try
to get twenty bushels of wheat out of land where only twelve grew
before, or two ears of corn where only two-thirds of one has been the
standard."
"You're right," Judge Thayer agreed heartily; "it takes more faith,
hope, and courage to be a farmer than any other calling on earth. I
often consider the risks a farmer must take year by year in comparison
with other lines of business, staking his all, very frequently, on what
he puts into the furrows, turning his face to God when he has sown his
seed, in faith that rains will fall and frosts will be stayed. It is
heroic, sometimes it is sublimely heroic. And you are going to try your
fortunes here on the soil?"
"I've had my eye on this country a good while in spite of the dismal
tales of hardship and failure that have come eastward out of it. I've
looked to it as the place for me to put some of my theories to the test.
I believe alfalfa, or lucerne, as it is called back East, will thrive
here, and I'm going to risk your derision and go a little farther. I
believe this can be made the greatest wheat country in America."
Judge Thayer brought his hand down with a smack of the palm that made
his papers fly, his face radiating the pleasure that words alone could
not express.
"I've been telling them that for seven years, Morgan!" he said.
"Hasn't it ever been tried out?"
"Tried out? They don't stay long enough to try out anything, Morgan.
They're here today and gone tomorrow, cursing Kansas as they go,
slandering it, branding it as the Tophet of the earth. We've never had
the right kind of people here, they didn't have the courage, the faith,
and the vision. If a man hasn't got the grit and ability to stick
through his losses at any game in this life, Morgan, he'll never win.
And he'll never be anything but a little loser, put him down where you
will."
"I've met hundreds of them dragging their bones out of Kansas the past
four or five years," Morgan nodded. "From what I can gather by talking
with them, the trouble lies in their poverty when they come here. As you
say, they're not staked to play this stiff game. A man ought to
provision himself for a campaign against this country like he would for
an Arctic expedition. If he can't do it, he'd better stay away."
"I guess there's more to that than I ever stopped to consider myself,"
Judge Thayer admitted. "It is a hard country to break, but there are men
somewhere who can subdue it and reap its rewards."
"I tried to induce the railroad company to back me in an experimental
farm out here, but the officials couldn't see it," Morgan said. "I'm
going to tackle it now on my lonesome. The best proof of a man's
confidence in his own theories is to put them into practice himself,
anyway."
"These cattlemen around here will laugh at you and try to discourage
you, Morgan. I'm the standing joke of this country because I still stick
to my theory of wheat."
"The farmers in Iowa laughed their teeth loose when we book farmers at
the college told them they could add a million bushels a year to the
corn crop of the state by putting a few more grains on the ends of the
cobs. Well, they did it, just the same, in time."
"I heard about that," nodded the judge, quite warmed up to this
long-backed stranger.
"Failure is written all over the face of this country," Morgan
continued; "I took a long tramp across it this morning. But I believe
I've got the formula that will tame it."
"I believe you, I believe you can do it," Judge Thayer indorsed him,
with enthusiasm. "I believe you've brought the light of a new epoch into
this country, I believe you're carrying the key that's going to unlock
these prairies and liberate the gold under the grass roots."
"It may be nothing but a dream," said Morgan softly, his eyes fixed on
the blue distances through the open door. "Maybe it will break me and
scatter my bones on the prairie for that old scavenger of men to haul
away."
Judge Thayer shook his head in denial of this possibility, making note
of this rugged dreamer's strong face, strong arms, large, capable hands.
"We're not away out West, as most people seem to think," he said, "only
a little past the middle of the state. My observation through several
years here has been that it rains about as much and as often in this
part of the country as it does in the eastern part of the state, enough
to make two crops in three, anyway, and that's as good as you can count
on without irrigation anywhere."
Morgan agreed with a nod. Judge Thayer went on, "The trouble is, this
prairie sheds water like the roof of a house, shoots it off so quick
into the draws and creeks it never has a chance to soak in. Plow it, I
tell 'em, and keep on plowin' it, in season and out; fix it so it can
soak up the rain and hold it. Is that right?"
"You've got the key to it yourself," Morgan told him, not a little
surprised to hear this uncredited missionary preaching the very doctrine
that men of Morgan's profession had found so hard to make converts to in
the prairie country.
"But it will be two or three years, at least, before you can begin your
experiment with wheat," Judge Thayer regretted. "By that time I'm afraid
the settlers that are taking up land around here now will be broken and
discouraged, gone to spread the curse against Kansas in the same old
bitterness of heart."
"I hope to find a piece of land that somebody has abandoned or wants to
sell, that has been farmed a year or two," Morgan confided. "If I can
get hold of such a place I'll be able to put in a piece of wheat this
fall--even a few acres will start me going. I could enlarge my fields
with my experience."
Judge Thayer said he believed he had the very place Morgan was looking
for, listed for sale. But there were so many of them listed for sale,
the owners gone, their equities long since eaten up by unpaid taxes,
that it took the judge a good while to find the particulars in this
special case.
"Man by the name of Gerhart, mile and a half west of town--that would
bring him pretty near the river--offers his quarter for three hundred
dollars. He's been there about four years, wife died this spring. I
think he's got about eighty acres broken out. Some of that land ought to
be in pretty good shape for wheat by now."
As the day was declining to evening, and Judge Thayer's supper hour was
near, they agreed on postponing until morning the drive out to look at
the dissatisfied settler's land. Morgan was leaving when the judge
called him back from the door.
"I was just wondering whether you'd ever had any editorial experience?"
he said.
"No, I've never been an editor," Morgan returned, speculating alertly on
what might be forthcoming.
"We--our editor--our editor," said the judge, fumbling with it as
if he found the matter a difficult one to fit to the proper words,
"fell into an unfortunate error of judgment a short time ago,
with--um-m-m--somewhat melancholy--melancholy--" the judge paused, as if
feeling of this word to see that it fitted properly, head bent
thoughtfully--"results. Unlucky piece of business for this community,
coming right in the thick of the contest for the county seat. There's a
fight on here, Mr. Morgan, as you may have heard, between Ascalon, the
present county seat, and Glenmore, a God-abandoned little flyspeck on
the map seven miles south of here."
"I hadn't heard of it. And what happened to the editor?"
"Oh, one of our hot-headed boys shot him," said the judge, out of
patience with such trivial and hasty yielding to passion. "Since then
I've been getting out the paper myself--I hold a mortgage on the
property, I'll be obliged to foreclose to protect myself--with the help
of the printer. It's not much of a paper, Morgan, for I haven't got the
time to devote to it with the July term of court coming on, but I have
to get it out every week or lose the county printing contract. There's a
hungry dog over at Glenmore looking on to snatch the bone on the least
possible excuse, and he's got two of the county commissioners with him."
"No, I'm not an editor," Morgan repeated, speculatively, as if he saw
possibilities of distinction in that road.
"Without the press, we are a community disarmed in the midst of our
enemies," said the judge. "Glenmore will overwhelm us and rob us of our
rights, without a champion whose voice is as the voice of a thousand
men."
"I'd never be equal to that," Morgan said, shaking his head in all
seriousness. "Is the editor out of it for good? Is he dead?"
"They have a devilish peculiarity of seldom wounding a man here in
Ascalon, Mr. Morgan. I've wished more than once they were not so cursed
proficient. The poor fellow fell dead, sir, at the first shot, while he
was reaching for his gun."
"I've seen something of their proficiency here," Morgan said, with plain
contempt.
Judge Thayer looked at him sharply. "You refer to that affair at the
hotel this afternoon?"
"It was a brutal and uncalled-for sacrifice of human life! it was murder
in the name of the law."
"I think you are somewhat hasty and unjust in your criticism, Mr.
Morgan," the judge mildly protested. "I know the marshal to be a
cool-headed man, a man who can see perils that you and I might overlook
until too late for our own preservation. The fellow must have made some
break for his gun that you didn't see."
"I hope it was that way," Morgan said, willing to give the marshal every
shadow of justification possible.
"I've known Seth Craddock a long time; he was huntin' buffalo for the
railroad contractors when I first came to this country. Why, I appointed
Seth to the office not more than an hour before that mix-up at the
hotel."
"He's beginning early," Morgan said.
"The man that's going to clean this town up must begin early and work
late," Judge Thayer declared. "An officer that would allow a man to run
a bluff on him wouldn't last two hours."
"I suppose not," Morgan admitted.
"As I told Seth when I swore him in, what we want in Ascalon is a
marshal that will use his gun oftener, and to better purpose, than the
men that have gone before him. This town must be purified, the offal of
humanity that makes a stench until it offends the heavens and spreads
our obscene notoriety to the ends of the earth, must be swept out before
we can induce sober and substantial men to bring their families into
this country."
"It looks reasonable enough," Morgan agreed.
"Hell's kettle is on the fire in this town, Mr. Morgan; the devil's own
stew is bubbling in it. If I could induce you to defer your farming
experiment a few months, as much as I approve it, anxious as I am to see
you demonstrate your theories and mine, I believe we could accomplish
the regeneration of this town. With a man of Craddock's caliber on the
street, and you in the _Headlight_ office speaking with the voice of a
thousand men, we could reverse public opinion and draw friends to our
side. Without some such support, I view the future with gloom and
misgiving. Glenmore is bound to displace us as the capital of this
county; Ascalon will decline to a whistling station by the side of the
track."
"I'm afraid I wouldn't care to hitch up with Mr. Craddock in the
regeneration of Ascalon," Morgan said. "We'd pull so hard in opposite
directions we'd break the harness."
Judge Thayer expressed his regret while he slipped on his black alpaca
coat, asking Morgan to wait until he locked his door, when he would walk
with him as far as the hotel corner. On the way they met a young man who
came bowling along with a great air of importance and self-assurance, a
fresh cigar tilted up in his mouth to such an angle that it threatened
the brim of his large white hat.
Judge Thayer introduced this man as Dell Hutton, county treasurer.
Hutton wrung Morgan's hand with ardent grip, as if he welcomed him into
the brotherhood of the elect in Ascalon, speaking out of the corner of
his mouth around his cigar. He was a thin-mouthed man of twenty-five, or
perhaps a year or two older, with a shrunken weazenness about his face
that made him look like a very old man done over, and but poorly
renovated. His eyes were pale, with shadows in them as of inquiry and
distrust; his stature was short, his frame slight.
Hutton seemed to be deeply, even passionately, interested in the venture
Morgan had come to make in that country. He offered his services in any
exigency where they might be applied, shaking hands again with hard
grip, accompanied by a wrinkling of his thin mouth about his cigar as he
clamped his jaws in the fervor of his earnestness. But he appeared to be
under a great pressure to go his way, his eyes controverting the
sincerity of his words the while.
"He's rather a young man to be filling such a responsible position,"
Morgan ventured as they resumed their way.
"Dell wasn't elected to the office," Judge Thayer explained. "He's
filling out his father's term."
"Did he--die?" Morgan inquired, marveling over the mortality among the
notables of the town.
"He was a victim of this feud in the rivalry for the county seat," Judge
Thayer explained, with sadness. "It was due to Hutton, more than any
other force, that we didn't lose the county seat at the last
election--he kept the cattlemen lined up, was a power among them,
followed that business a long time himself. Yes. He was the first man
that ever drove a herd of cattle from Texas to load for market when this
railroad was put through. Some of those skulkers from Glenmore shot him
down at his door two months after he took office."
"I thought the boy looked like he'd been trained on the range," Morgan
said, thoughtfully.
"Yes, Dell was raised in the saddle, drove several trips from Texas up
here. Dell"--softly, a little sorrowfully, Morgan thought--"was the
other principal in that affair with our late editor."
"Oh, I see. He was exonerated?"
"Clear case of self-defense, proved that Smith--the editor was
Smith--reached for his gun first."
Morgan did not comment, but he thought that this seemed a thing easily
proved in Ascalon. He parted from the judge at the bank corner, which
was across the way from the hotel.
The shadow of the hotel fell far into the public square, and in front of
the building, their chairs placed in what would have been the gutter of
the street if the thoroughfare had been paved, their feet braced with
probably more comfort than grace against the low sidewalk, a row of men
was stationed, like crows on a fence. There must have been twenty or
more of them, in various stages of undress from vest down to suspenders,
from bright cravats flaunting over woolen shirts and white shirts, and
striped shirts and speckled shirts, to unconfined necks laid bare to the
breeze.
Whether these were guests waiting supper, or merely loafers waiting
anything that might happen next, Morgan had not been long enough in town
to determine. He noticed the curious and, he thought, unfriendly eyes
which they turned on him as he approached. And as Morgan set foot on the
sidewalk porch of the hotel, Seth Craddock, the new city marshal, rose
out of the third chair on the end of the row nearest him, hand lifted in
commanding signal to halt.
"You've just got time to git your gripsack," Craddock said, coming
forward as he spoke, but stopping a little to one side as if to allow
Morgan passage to the door.
"Time's no object to me," Morgan returned, good-humored and undisturbed,
thinking this must be one of the jokes at the expense of strangers for
which Ascalon was famous.
Some of the loafers were standing by their chairs in attitude of
indecision, others sat leaning forward to see and hear. Traffic both
ways on the sidewalk came to a sudden halt at the spectacle of two men
in a situation recognized at a glance in quick-triggered Ascalon as
significant, those who came up behind Morgan clearing the way by edging
from the sidewalk into the square.
"The train'll be here in twelve minutes," Craddock announced, watch in
his palm.
"On time, is she?" Morgan said indifferently, starting for the door.
Again Seth Craddock lifted his hand. Those who had remained seated along
the gutter perch up to this moment now got to their feet with such haste
that chairs were upset. Craddock put his hand casually to his pistol, as
a man rests his hand on his hip.
"You're leavin' on it," he said.
"I guess you've got the wrong man," Morgan suggested, noting everything
with comprehensive eye, not a little concerned by the marshal's
threatening attitude. If this were going to turn out a joke, Morgan
wished it might begin very soon to show some of its risible features on
the surface, in order that he might know which way to jump to make the
best figure possible.
"No, I ain't got no wrong man!" Craddock returned, making mockery of
the words, uttering them jeeringly out of the corner of his mouth. He
blasted Morgan with the glare of his malevolent red eyes, redder now
than before his weapon had moistened the street of Ascalon with blood.
"You're the feller that's been shootin' off your mouth about murder in
the name of the law, and you bein' able to take his gun away from that
feller. Well, kid, I'm afraid it's goin' to be a little too rough for
you in this town. You're leavin'--you won't have time to git your
gripsack now, you can write for it!"
Morgan felt the blood flaming into his face with the hot swell of anger.
A moment he stood eye to eye with Craddock, fighting down the defiance
that rose for utterance to his lips. Then he started again toward the
hotel door.
Craddock whipped out his pistol with arm so swift that the eye
multiplied it like a spoke in a quick-spinning wheel. He stood holding
the weapon so, his wrist rather limber, the muzzle of the pistol
pointing in the general direction of Morgan's feet.
"Maybe you can take a gun away from me, little feller?" Craddock
challenged in high mockery, one nostril of his long nose twitching,
lifting his mustache on that side in a snarl.
"Don't point that gun at me, Craddock!" Morgan warned, his voice
unshaken and cool, although the surge of his heart made his seasoned
body vibrate to the finger tips.
"Scratch gravel for the depot!" Craddock commanded, lowering the muzzle
of his gun as if he intended to hasten the going by a shot between the
offender's feet.
The men were separated by not more than two yards, and Morgan made no
movement to widen the breach immediately following the marshal's command
to go. On the contrary, before any that saw him standing there in
apparent indecision, and least of all among them Seth Craddock, could
measure his intention, Morgan stepped aside quicker than the watchers
calculated any living man could move, reached out his long arm a flash
quicker than he had shifted on his feet, and laid hold of the city
marshal's hairy wrist, wrenching it in a twist so bone-breaking that
nerves and muscles failed their office. Nobody saw exactly how he
accomplished it, but the next moment Morgan stepped back from the city
marshal, that officer's revolver in his hand.
"Mr. Craddock," he said, in calm, advisory way, "I expect to stay around
this part of the country some little time, and I'll be obliged to come
to Ascalon once in a while. If you think you're going to feel
uncomfortable every time you see me, I guess the best thing for you to
do is leave. I'm not saying you must leave, I don't set myself up to
tell a man when to come and go without I've got that right over him. I
just suggest it for your comfort and peace of mind. If you stay here
you'll have to get used to seeing me around."
Craddock stood for a breath glaring at the man who had humiliated him in
his new dignity, clutching his half-paralyzed wrist. He said nothing,
but there was the proclamation of a death feud in his eyes.
"Give him a gun, somebody!" said a fool in the crowd that pressed to
the edge of the sidewalk at the marshal's back.
Tom Conboy, standing in his door ten feet away, interposed quickly,
waving the crowd back.
"Tut, tut! No niggers in Ireland, now!" he said.
"He can have this one," said Morgan, still in the same measured, calm
voice. He offered the pistol back to its owner, who snatched it with
ungracious hand, shoved it into his battered scabbard, turned to the
crowd at his back with an oath.
"Scatter out of here!" he ordered, covering his degradation as he might
in this tyrannical exercise of authority.
Morgan looked into the curious faces of the people who blocked the
sidewalk ahead of him, withdrawn a discreet distance, not yet venturing
to come on. Except for the red handkerchief that he had worn about his
neck, he was dressed as when he arrived in Ascalon in Joe Lynch's wagon,
coatless, the dust of the road on his shoes. In place of the bright
handkerchief he now wore a slender black necktie, the ends of it tucked
into his gray woolen shirt.
He felt taller, rawer, more angular than nature had built him as he
stood there looking at the people who had gathered like leaves against a
rock in a brook. He was ashamed of his part in the public show, sorry
that anybody had been by to witness it. In his embarrassment he pushed
his hat back from his forehead, looking around him again as if he would
break through the ranks and hide himself from such confusing publicity.
The crowd was beginning to disperse at Seth Craddock's urging, although
those who had come to a stand on the sidewalk seemed timid about passing
Morgan. They still held back as if to give him room, or in uncertainty
whether it was all over yet. Perhaps they expected Craddock to turn on
Morgan again when he had cleared a proper space for his activities.
As for Morgan, he had dismissed the city marshal from his thoughts, for
something else had risen in his vision more worthy the attention of a
man. This was the face of a girl on the edge of the crowd in front of
him, a tall, strong, pliant creature who leaned a little as if she
looked for her reflection in a stream. She was garbed in a brown duck
riding skirt, white waist with a bright wisp of cravat blowing at her
breast like the red of bittersweet against snow. Her dusty sombrero
threw a shadow over her eyes, but Morgan could see that they were dark
and friendly eyes, as no shadow but night could obscure. The other faces
became in that moment but the incidental background for one; his heart
lifted and leaped as the heart moves and yearns with tender quickening
at the sound of some old melody that makes it glad.
Morgan stepped back, thinking only of her, seeing only her, making a way
for her, only, to pass. That others might follow was not in his mind. He
stepped out of the way for her.
She came on toward him now, one finished, one refined, among that press
of crudity, one unlooked for in that place of wild lusts and dark
passions unrestrained. She carried a packet of newspapers and letters
under her bent arm, telling of her mission on the street; the thong of
her riding quirt was about her wrist. Her soft dark hair was low on her
neck, a flush as of the pleasure that speaks in bounding blood when
friend meets friend glowed in her face. Morgan removed his hat as she
passed him. She looked into his face and smiled.
The little crowd broke and followed, but Morgan, oblivious to the
movement around him, stood on the sidewalk edge looking after her, his
hat in his hand.