RIDERS OF THE CHISHOLM TRAIL
Peden's emporium of viciousness was a notable establishment in its day.
By far the largest in Ascalon, it housed nearly every branch of
entertainment at which men hazard their fortunes and degrade their
morality. It was a vast shell of planks and shingles, with skeleton
joists and rafters bare overhead, built hastily and crudely to serve its
ephemeral day.
In the farther end there was a stage, upon which mephitic females
displayed their physical lures, to come down and sell drinks at a
commission in the house, and dance with the patrons, at intervals.
Beyond the many small round tables which stood directly in front of the
stage was a clear space for dancing, and on the border of this festival
arena, in the front of the house, the gambling devices. A bar ran the
length of the building on one side from door to orchestra railing. It
was the pride of Ascalon that a hundred men could stand and regale
themselves before this counter at one time.
Five bartenders stood behind this altar of alcohol when Morgan set foot
in the place intent on putting himself in the way of the riders of the
Chisholm Trail. These Texas cowboys were easily identified among the
early activities of the place by the unusual amount of Mexican silver
and leather ornamentation of their apparel. They were a road-worn and
dusty crew, growing noisy and hilarious in their celebration of one of
their number being elevated to the place of so conspicuous power as city
marshal of that famous town. It appeared to have its humorous side from
the loud laughter they were spending over it, and the caressing thumps
which they laid on Seth Craddock's bony back.
They were lined up against the bar, Craddock in the midst of them, a
regiment of bottles before them. Morgan drew near, ordered a drink,
stood waiting the moment of his discovery and what might follow it. The
Texans were trying everything in the stock, from gin to champagne, gay
in the wide choice the marvelous influence of their comrade opened to
them without money or the hint of price.
Morgan lounged at the bar, turning meditatively the little glass of
amber liquor that was the passport to the estate of a proper man in
Ascalon, as in many places neither so notorious nor perilous in those
times. Each of the big metal kerosene lamps swung high on the joists
threw a circular blotch of shadow on the floor, but the light from them
fell brightly on the bar, increased in brilliancy by reflection from the
long row of mirrors.
In this sparkle of glass and bar furniture Morgan stood, conspicuous by
being apart, like a solitary who had ridden in for a jambouree of his
own without companion or friend. He wore his broad-brimmed black hat
with the high crown uncreased, and only for the lack of boots and pistol
he might have passed for a man of the range. The bartender who served
him looked at him with rather puzzled and frequent sidelong turning of
the eyes as he stood brooding over the untasted liquor, as if he sought
to place him in memory, or to classify him among the drift of men who
came in varying moods to his mahogany altar to pay their devotions to
its bottled gods.
Morgan's hat cast a shadow over half his face, making it as stern as a
Covenanter's portrait. His eyes were on the bar, where his great hand
turned and turned the glass, as if his mind were withdrawn a thousand
leagues from the noisy scene about him. But for all that apparently
wrapt and self-centered contemplation, Morgan knew the moment when Seth
Craddock looked his direction and discovered him. At that moment he
lifted his glass and drank.
Craddock turned to his companions, upon whom a quiet settled as they
drew together in brief conference. Presently the city marshal sauntered
out, leaving his comrades of the long trail to carry on their revelry
alone. A gangling young man, swart-faced, fired by the contending
crosses of alcoholic concoctions which he had swallowed, approached
Morgan where he leaned against the bar. This fellow straddled as if he
had a horse between his legs, and he was dusty and road-rough, but newly
shaved and clipped, and perfumed with all the strong scents of the
barber's stock.
"Good evenin', bud. How does your copperosticies seems to segastuate
this evenin'?" he hailed, in a bantering, insolent, overriding way.
"I'm able to be up and around and take a little grub," Morgan returned,
as good-humoredly as if there had been no insulting sneer in the
cowboy's words.
"I hear you're leaving town this evenin'?"
"I guess that's a mistake of the printer," Morgan said with casual ease.
The other men in the party drew around Morgan, some of them challenging
him with insolent glances, all of them holding their peace but the one
who had spoken, who appeared to have been selected for that office.
"A friend of mine told me you was hittin' the grit out of here tonight,"
the young man insisted, putting that in his voice which seemed to admit
no controversy. "This country ain't no place for a granger, bud;
farmin's the unhealthiest business here a man ever took up, they tell
me, he don't live no time at it. Sure, you're hittin' the road out of
here tonight--my friend appointed us a committee to see you off."
"I'm sorry to disappoint you, boys, but your friend's got the wrong
information on me and my movements, whoever he is. I'm goin' to hang
around this town some little time, till my farming tools come, anyhow.
Just pass that word along to your friend, will you, sport?"
"You ain't got erry gun stuck around in your pants, have you, bud?" the
Texan inquired with persuasive gentleness.
"Not the ghost of a gun."
"Grangers burn their eyebrows off and shoot theirselves through the feet
when they go totin' guns around," the fellow said, speaking in the
wheedling, ingratiating way that one addresses an irresponsible child or
a man in alcoholic paresis. The others appeared to find a subtle humor
in their comrade's mode of handling a granger. Morgan grinned with them
as if he found it funny himself.
One fellow stood a little apart from the rest of the band, studying
Morgan with an expression of insolence such as might well warrant the
belief that he held feud with all grangers and made their discomfiture,
dislodgment, and extermination the chief business of his life. This was
a man of unlikely proportions for a trade aback of a horse--short of
legs, heavy of body, long in the reach of his arms. His face was round
and full, fair for one who rode abroad in all seasons under sun and
storm, his teeth small and far apart.
This man said nothing, took no part in the side comment that passed
among his comrades, only grinned occasionally, his eyes unwaveringly on
Morgan's face. Morgan was drawn to note him particularly among this
mainly trifling and innocuous bunch, uneasily impressed by the cold
curiosity of his round, tigerish eyes. He thought the fellow appeared to
be calculating on how much blood a granger of that bulk contained, and
how long it would take him to drink it.
"You ain't got a twenty-two hid around in your pocket nowhere?" the
inquisitor pressed, with comically feigned surprise. Morgan denied the
ownership of even a twenty-two. "I'll have to feel over you and see--I
never saw a granger in my life that didn't tote a twenty-two," the Texan
declared, stepping up to Morgan to put his declaration into effect.
Morgan had stood through this mocking inquisition in careless posture,
elbows on the bar at his back, with as much good humor as if he were a
member of the band taking his turn as the butt of the evening's
merrymaking. Now, as the young Texan approached with the evident
intention of searching him for a weapon, Morgan came suddenly out of his
lounging posture into one of watchfulness and defense. He put up his
hand in admonitory gesture to stay the impending degradation.
"Hands off, pardner!" he warned.
The cowboy stopped, turned to his comrades in simulated amazement.
"Did you hear the pore feller make that noise?" he asked, turning his
head as if he listened, not quite convinced that his ears had not
deceived him.
"He's sick, he orto have a dose of turkentime for the holler horn," said
one.
"He's got the botts--drench him for the botts," another prescribed.
That suggestion appealed to their humor. It was endorsed with laughter
as they pressed around Morgan to cut off his escape.
"I was told you men were looking for me," Morgan said, estimating them
individually and collectively with calculative eyes, "so I stepped in
here where you could find me if you had anything worth a man's time to
say to me. I guess you've shot your wad, and you've got my answer. You
can tell your friend I'm stopping at the Elkhorn hotel, if he don't know
it already."
Morgan moved away from the bar as if to leave the place. They bunched in
front of him to bar his passage, one laying hold of his arm.
"We're fixin' up a little drink for you," this detainer said, indicating
the former spokesman, who was busy at the bar pouring something of the
contents of the various bottles into one that bore a champagne label.
"I've had my drink, it isn't time for another," Morgan said, swinging
his arm, sending the fellow who clung to it headlong through the ranks
of his companions.
At this show of resistance the mask of humor that had covered their
sinister intention was flung aside. The man with the wide-set teeth
stepped into action there, the others giving place to him as to a
recognized champion. He whirled into Morgan, planting a blow just above
the bridge of his nose that sent him back against the bar with a jolt
that made the bottles dance.
It was such a sudden and mighty blow that Morgan was dazed for a moment,
almost blinded. He saw his assailant before him in wavering lines as he
guarded instinctively rather than scientifically against the fierce
follow-up by which the fellow seemed determined to make an inglorious
end of it for the despised granger. Morgan cleared out of the mists of
this sudden assault in a moment, for he was a man who had taken and
given hard blows in more than one knock-down and drag-out in his day. He
caught the swing that was meant for a knock-out on his left guard, and
drove his able right fist into the fellow's face.
The pugilistic cowboy, rare fellow among his kind, went to the floor.
But there was good stuff in him, worthy the confidence his comrades
reposed. For a breath or two he lay on his back as he fell, twisted to
his side with a springy movement of incredible swiftness, and sprang to
his feet. Blood was running from his battered nose and already puffed
lips. The cheers of his comrades warmed him back to battle, and the
onlookers who came pressing from all quarters, drew aside to give them
room to fight.
They began to mix it at a furious pace, both of them sledging heavily,
the advantage of reach and height sparing Morgan much of the heavy
punishment his opponent lacked the cleverness to avoid. While the fellow
doubtless was a champion among the men of his range, he had little
chance against Morgan, imperfect as he was at that game. In a few
minutes of incessant hammering, no breathing spell to break the fierce
encounter, Morgan had chopped the cowboy's face severely. Five times
Morgan knocked him down in less than half as many minutes, the elastic,
enduring fellow coming back each time with admirable courage and vigor.
Morgan's hands were cut from this bare-knuckled mauling, but his
opponent had not landed a damaging blow on his face since the first
unexpected and unguarded one. He could see, from their crowding and
attempts to interfere, that the spirit of fairness had gone out of the
rest of the bunch. An end must be made speedily, or they would climb him
like a pack of wildcats and crush him like a rabbit in a fall. With this
menace plainly before him, Morgan put his best into the rush and wallop
that he meant to finish the fight.
The cowboy's extraordinary resistance broke with the blow; he lay so
long like a dead man where he fell that his comrades brought whisky to
revive him. Presently he struggled to hands and knees, where he stood
coughing blood, Morgan waiting by to see what would follow.
"Take them knucks away from him! he slugged me!" Morgan was amazed to
hear the fellow charge.
"That's not so!" Morgan denied. "Here--search me," he offered, lifting
his arms.
In the code governing personal encounter in those days of the frontier,
which was not so very long ago, just one tick in the great clock of
history, it was permissible to straddle one's enemy when one got him
down, and churn his head against the ground; to gouge out his eyes; to
bite off his ears; to kick him, carve him, mutilate him in various and
unsportsman-like and unspeakable ways. But it was the high crime of the
code to slug him with brass or steel knuckles, commonly called knucks.
The man who carried this reenforcement for the natural fist in his
pocket and used it in a fight was held the lowest of all contemptible
and namelessly vile things. So, these Texas cowboys turned on Morgan at
their comrade's accusation, deaf to any denial, flaming with vengeful
resentment.
They probably would have made an end of Morgan then and there, but for
the interference of Peden, proprietor of the place, who appeared on the
scene of the turmoil at that moment, calm and unruffled, expensive white
sombrero on the back of his head, fresh cigar in his mouth, black frock
coat striking him almost to the knees.
Peden pushed in among the cowboys as they made a rush for Morgan, who
stood his ground, back to the bar, regretting now the foolish impulse
that had led him into this pack of wolves. Peden stepped in front of
Morgan, authority in his very calmness, and restrained the inflamed
Texans.
He asked them to consider the ladies. The ladies were in a terrible
panic, he said, sweeping his hand toward the farther end of the room
where a dozen or so of the creatures whom he dignified with the name
were huddled under the restraint of the chief fiddler, who stood before
them with fiddle in one hand, bow in the other, like sword and buckler.
There was more curiosity than fright in the women, as the most
unsophisticated observer could have read in their kalsomined
countenances. Peden's only object in keeping them back from a closer
enjoyment of the battle was entirely commercial, humanity and delicacy
being no part of his business plan. A live lady was worth a great deal
more to his establishment than one with a stray bullet in her skin,
waiting burial at his expense in the busy undertaker's morgue.
The cowboys yielded immediately to Peden's appeal in behalf of the
ladies, although they very likely would have resented a more obscure
citizen's interference with their plans. They fronted the bar again on
Peden's invitation to pour another drink. Two of them lifted from the
floor the man whom Morgan had fought, and supported him in a weak-kneed
advance upon the bar. They cheered him in his half-blind and bleeding
wretchedness with promise of what that marvelous elixir, whisky, would
do for him once he began to feel the quickening of its potent flame.
Peden indicated by a lifting of the eyebrows, a slight movement of the
head toward the door, that Morgan was to improve this moment by making
a quiet and expeditious get-away. Morgan needed no urging, being quite
willing to allow matters to rest where they stood. He started for the
door, making a little detour to put a faro table, around which several
men were standing, between himself and the men to whom Seth Craddock had
delegated the business of his expulsion from the town. One of the men
supporting their defeated champion saw Morgan as he rounded the table,
and set up the alarm that the granger was breaking for the range.
Even then Morgan could have escaped by a running dash, for those
high-heeled horseback men were not much on foot. But he could not pay
that much for safety before the public of Ascalon, despicable as those
of it gathered there might be. He made a pretense of watching the faro
game while the Texans put down their glasses to rush after him and make
him prisoner, threatening him with clubbed pistols above his head.
The lookout at the faro game, whose patrons were annoyed by this renewal
of the brawl, jumped from his high seat and took a hand in the row.
Friends of the marshal or friends of the devil, he said, made no
difference to him. They'd have to go outside to finish their fuss. This
man, a notorious slayer of his kind, quicker of hand than any man in
Ascalon, it was said, urged them all toward the door.
The cowboys protested against this breach of hospitality, but Peden
stood in his customary pose of calmness to enforce his bouncer's word,
hand pushing back his long black coat where it fell over the holster at
his belt.
Morgan was in no mind to go with them, for he began to have a disturbing
alarm over what these men might do in their drunken vengeance, relieved
as they thought themselves to be of all responsibility to law by the
liberty their friend Craddock had given them. Without regard to the
bouncer's orders or Peden's threatening pose, he began to lay about him
with his fists, making a breach in the ranks of his captors that would
have opened the way to the door in a moment, the outbreak was so
unexpected and violent, if it had not been for a quieting tap the
bouncer gave him with one of the lethal instruments which he carried for
such exigencies.
Morgan was conscious of a sensation of expulsion, which seemed swift,
soft, and soundless, with a dim sense of falling at the end. When his
dispersed senses returned to their seat again, he found himself in the
open night, stretched on the ground, hands bound behind his back.