A GENTLE COWBOY JOKE
As Morgan's faculties cleared out of their turgid whirl, and the stars
began to leave off their frivolous capers and stand still, he heard
voices about him in the dark, and they were discussing the very
interesting question of whether he should be hung like a horse thief or
loaded upon a train and shipped away like sheep.
Morgan's bruised senses assembled and righted at the first conscious
grasp of this argument, as a laboring, buffeted ship rights when its
shifted cargo is flung back to place by the shock of a mighty surge.
Nature was on guard again in a moment, straining and tense in its sentry
over the habitation of a soul so nearly deserted but a minute before.
Morgan listened, sweating in the desperation of his plight.
They had taken him away from the main part of town, as he was aware by
the sound of its revelry in the near distance. Close at hand a railroad
engine was frying and gasping; farther off another was snorting
impatiently as it jerked the iron vertebrae of a long freight train. And
these men whom he could not see around him in the darkness were
discussing the expediency of hanging him while unconscious, against the
morality of waiting for him to come to himself so he might have the
felon's last appeal of prayer.
One maintained that it was against all precedent to hang an unconscious
man and send him off to perdition without a chance to enter a plea for
his soul, and he argued soberly, in the manner of a man who had a spirit
of fairness in him, and a little gleam of reason and morality left. To
Morgan's relief and hope this man went further as he put his view of the
case, even so far as to question their right to hang the granger at all.
They clamored against him and tried to scoff him down, moving with
drunken, scuffing feet near the spot where Morgan lay, as if to put the
sentence into immediate execution.
"Wait a minute now, boys," this unknown, unseen champion pleaded, "let's
me and you talk this thing over some more. That kid put up a man's
fight, even if he is a granger--you'll have to give him credit for that.
I didn't find no knucks on him, and you didn't. He couldn't 'a' dropped
'em on the floor, and he couldn't 'a' swallered 'em. He didn't have no
knucks, boys--that hard-hoofed granger just naturally tore into the
Dutchman with his bare hands. I know he did, his hands is all cut and
swelled up--here, wait till I strike a match and show you."
Morgan thought it wise to feign insensibility while this apparently
sober man among the crew struck a match and rolled his body over to show
the granger's battered hands. The others were not convinced by this
evidence, nor softened in the least. He was a granger, anyhow, a fencer
of the range, an interloper who had come into their ancient domain like
others of his grasshopper tribe to fence up the grazing lands and drive
them from the one calling that they knew. If for no other reason, he
deserved hanging for that. Ask anybody; they'd say the same.
"That ain't no kind of talk," said the defender, reprovingly, "your
daddies and mine was grangers before us, and our kids'll have to be
grangers or nothin' after a while--if any of us ever has any. I was in
for havin' a little fun with this feller; I was in on it with the rest
of you to see the Dutchman hammer him flat, but the Dutchman wasn't a
big enough feller for the job. Where's he at?"
"Layin' up there on the depot platform," somebody said.
"This feller flattened _him_ out, done it like he had him on a anvil,"
the granger's advocate chuckled. "That there freight's goin' to pull out
in a little while--let's look along till we find a empty car and chuck
him in it. By morning he'll be in La Junta. He's had his lesson out of
the cowman's book, he'll never come back to plow up this range."
Morgan thought that, perhaps by adding his own argument to this unknown
friend's, he might move the rest of the bunch from their cruel
determination to have his life. He moved, making a breathing like a man
coming to his senses, and struggled to sit up.
There were exclamations of satisfaction that he had revived in time to
relieve them of the responsibility of sending a man out of the world
without a chance to pray. The man who had championed Morgan's cause
helped him to sit up, asking him with a curious rough kindness if he
wanted a drink. Morgan replied that he did. A bottle was put to his
lips, bruised and swollen until they stood open by the rough usage his
captors had given him while unconscious. He took a swallow of the
whisky, shutting the rest out with tongue against teeth when the fellow
insisted that he take a man's dose.
They drew close around Morgan where he sat, back against this kind
fellow's knee. Morgan could see them plainly now, although it was too
dark to trace their features. One of them dropped the noose of a rope
over his head as the one who stood behind him took the flask from his
lips. Morgan knew by the feel of it against his neck that it was a
platted rawhide, such as the Mexicans term _reata_.
"Granger, if you got anything to say, say it," this one directed. Morgan
recognized him as the one who had opened the trouble in Peden's hall.
Morgan had considerable to say, and he said it without whimper or
tremor, his only appeal being to their fairness and sense of justice
between man and man. He went back a little farther in his simple history
than he had gone with Judge Thayer that afternoon, telling them how he
once had been a cowboy like themselves on the Nebraska and Wyoming
range, leading up briefly, so they might feel they knew him, to his
arrival in Ascalon that day, and his manner of incurring Seth Craddock's
enmity, for which they were considering such an unreasonable punishment.
Inflamed as they were by liquor, and all but insensible to reasonable
argument, this simple story, enforced by the renewed plea of the one who
befriended him, turned two or three others in Morgan's favor. They
probably would have set him free if it had not been for the Dutchman,
who joined them, apparently sober and bitterly vindictive, as they were
considering that step.
The Dutchman was for vengeance on his own account, Seth Craddock out of
the consideration entirely. The granger had slugged him, he maintained;
no man that ever walked on the grass was able to lay him out with bare
hands. If they didn't hang the granger he'd shoot him, then and there,
even though he would have to throw ashes on his stinking blood to keep
it from driving everybody out of town.
Wait a minute, the young man with the straddle suggested, speaking
eagerly, as if he had been struck by an inspiration. The freight train
was just pulling out; suppose they put the rope around the granger's
body instead of his neck, leave his hands tied as they were, and hitch
him to a car! In that way he'd hang himself. It would be plain suicide,
as anybody with eyes could see.
The innocence and humor of this sportful proposal appealed to them at
once. It also satisfied the Dutchman, who seconded it loudly, with
excited enthusiasm. The protests of the granger's defender and friend
were unavailing. They pushed him back, even threatening him with their
guns when he would have interfered to stay the execution of this
inspired sentence.
The train was getting under way; three of the gang laid hold of the
_reata_ and ran, dragging Morgan against his best efforts to brace his
feet and hold them, the others pushing him toward the moving train. The
long freight was bound westward. Morgan and his tormenters were beyond
the railroad station, not far from Judge Thayer's little white office
building, which Morgan could see through the gloom as he vainly turned
his eyes about in the hope of some passing stranger to whom he could
appeal.
Luckily for Morgan, railroad trains did not get under way as quickly in
those days of hand brakes and small engines as now. Added to the weight
of the long string of empty cattle cars which the engine was laboring to
get going was a grade, with several short curves to make it harder where
the road wound in and out among small sand hills. By the time Morgan's
captors had attached the rope to the ladder of a car, the headway of the
train had increased until they were obliged to trot to keep up with it.
Not being fleet of foot in their hobbling footgear when sober, they were
at a double disadvantage when drunk and weaving on their legs. They made
no attempt to follow Morgan and revel in his sufferings and peril, but
fell back, content to enjoy their pleasantry at ease.
Morgan lurched on over the uneven ground, still dizzy and weak from the
bludgeoning he had undergone, unable to help his precarious balance by
the use of his arms, doubly bound now by the rope about his middle which
the Texans had drawn in running noose. It was Morgan's hope in the first
few rods of this frightful journey that a brakeman might appear on top
of the train, whose attention he might attract before the speed became
so great he could no longer maintain it, or a lurch or a stumble in the
ditch at the trackside might throw him under the wheels.
A quick glance forward and back dispelled this hope; there was not the
gleam of a lantern in sight. But somebody was running after him, almost
beside him, and there were yells and shots out of the dark behind. Now
the runner was beside Morgan, hand on his shoulder as if to steady
himself, and Morgan's heart swelled with thankful gratitude for the
unknown friend who had thus risked the displeasure of his comrades to
set him free.
The train was picking up speed rapidly, taxing Morgan's strength to hold
pace with it trussed up as he was, the strain of the hauling rope
feeling as if it would cut his arms to the bone. The man who labored to
hold abreast of Morgan was slashing at the rope. Morgan felt the blade
strike it, the tension yield for a second as if several strands had been
cut. But not severed, not weakened enough to break it. It stiffened
again immediately and the man, clinging desperately to Morgan's shoulder
to hold his place in the quickening race, struck at it again and missed.
There came more shots and shouts. Morgan's heroic friend stumbled, lost
his hold on the shoulder of the man he was trying to save, fell behind
out of sight.
Morgan's poor hope for release from present torture and impending death
now rested in the breaking of the rawhide rope where it had been
weakened by that one desperate slash of the knife. He tried lunging back
against the rope, but the speed of the train was too great; he could not
brace a foot, he could not pause. There were gravel and small boulders
in the ditch here. Morgan feared he would lose his footing and be
dragged to his miserable end.
But onward through the dark he struggled and stumbled, at a pace that
would have taxed an unhampered man to maintain, the strain of the
cutting rope about his body and arms like a band of hot iron. Should a
brakeman appear now on top of the car to which he was tied, Morgan knew
he had little chance of making himself heard through the noise of the
train, spent as he was already, gasping short breaths which he seemed
unable to drive into his burning lungs.
How long could human strength and determination to cling to life endure
this punishment! how long until he must fall and drag, unable to regain
his feet, to be pounded at that cruel rope's end into a mangled,
abhorrent thing!
On, the grind of wheels, the jolt of loose-jointed cars over the
clanking track drowning even the noise of the engine laboring up that
merciful grade; on, staggering and swaying, flung like a pebble on a
cord, shoulder now against the car, feet now flying, half lifted from
the ground, among the stones of the ditch, over the uneven earth, across
gullies, over crossings where there paused no traveler in the black
despair of that night to give him the help for which he perished.
On, the breath that he drew in gasping stridulation like liquid fire in
his throat; on, the calm stars of the unemotional universe above his
head; on, the wind of the wide prairie lands striking his face with
their indefinable sweet scents which even clutching death did not deny
his turbulent senses; on, pain in every nerve; on, joints straining and
starting in their sockets; on, dragged, whipped, lashed from ditch to
ties' end, flung from rocking car to crumbling bank, where jagged rocks
cut his face and freed his blood to streak coldly upon his cheek.
There was no likelihood that the train would stop in many miles--even
now it was gaining speed, the engine over the crest of the grade. Only
for a post that he might snub that stubborn strand of leather upon! only
for a bridge where his swinging weight might break it!
Faster--the train was going faster! The pain of his torture dulling as
overcharged nerves refused to carry the growing load, Morgan still clung
to his feet, pounding along in the dark. He was growing numb in body and
mind, as one overwhelmed by a narcotic drug, yet he clung to the
desperate necessity of keeping on his feet.
How far he had come, how long he might yet endure, he had no thought to
measure. He lived only for the insistent, tenacious purpose of keeping
on his feet, rather than of keeping on his feet to live. He must run and
pant, under the lash of nature that would not let him drop down and die,
as long as a spark of consciousness remained or flying limbs could equal
the speed of the train, helped on by the drag of that rawhide strand
that would not break.
No thought of death appalled him now as at first; its revolting terror
at that rope's end had no place in his thought this crowded, surging
moment. Only to live, to fight and live, to run, unfeeling feet striking
like wood upon the wayside stones, and run, as a maimed, scorched
creature before a fire, to fall into some cool place and live. And live!
and live! In spite of all, to live!
And presently the ground fell away beneath his feet, a swish of branches
was about him, the soft, cool touch of leaves against his face. A moment
he was flung and tangled among willows--it was a strange revelation
through a chink of consciousness in that turmoil of life and death that
swept the identifying scent of willows into his nostrils--and then he
dropped, striking softly where water ran, and closed his eyes, thinking
it must be the end.