THE HOUR OF VENGEANCE
The proscribed of the earth were sleeping late in Ascalon that morning,
as they slept late every morning, bright or cloudy, head-heavy with the
late watch and debaucheries of the night. Few were on the street in
pursuit of the small amount of legitimate business the town transacted
during the burning hours when the moles of the night lay housed in
gloom, when Morgan walked from the baggage-room of the railroad depot.
Few who saw Morgan on the day of his arrival in Ascalon would have
recognized him now. He had been obliged to go to the bottom of his trunk
for the outfit that he treasured out of sentiment for the old days
rather than in any expectation of needing it again--the rig he had worn
into the college town, a matter of six hundred miles from his range, to
begin a new life. Now he had fallen from the eminence. He was going back
to the old.
The gray wool shirt was wrinkled and stained by weather and wear, the
roomy corduroy trousers were worn from saddle chafing, the big spurs
were rusted of rowel and shank. But the boots were new--he had bought
them before leaving the range, to wear in college, laying them aside
with regret when he found them not just the thing in vogue--and they
were still brave in glossy bronze of quilted tops, little marred by
that last long ride out of his far-away past. His cream-colored hat was
battered and old, for he had worn it five years in all weather, crushed
from the pressure of packing, but he pinched the tall crown to a point
as he used to wear it, and turned the broad brim back from his forehead
according to the habit of his former days.
This had been his gala costume in other times, kept in the bunkhouse at
the ranch for days of fiesta, nights of dancing, and wild dissipation
when he rode with his fellows to the three-days' distant town. His old
pistol was in his holster, and his empty cartridge belt about his
middle, the rifle, in saddle holster, that he used to carry for wolves
and rustlers, in his hand.
Morgan stood a moment, leaning the rifle against the depot end, to take
the bright silk handkerchief from about his neck, as if he considered it
as being too festive for the somber business before him. The station
agent stood at the corner of the building, watching him curiously.
The horse that Morgan had borrowed from Stilwell lifted its head with a
start as he approached where it stood at the side of the station
platform, as if it questioned him on the reason for this transformation
and the honesty of his purpose. Morgan did not mount the horse, although
he walked with difficulty in the tight boots which had lain like the
shed habits of his past so many years unstretched by a foot. He went
leading the horse, rein over his arm, to the hitching rack in front of
the hotel, under the plank canopy of which Stilwell and his son waited
his coming.
Stilwell had made it plain to Morgan at the beginning, to save his
feelings and his pride, that they were not attending him on the
expedition against his enemies with any intention of helping him. Just
to be there in case of outside interference, and to enjoy the spectacle
of justice being done by a strong hand. Stilwell's account, personally,
was not against these men, he said, although they had driven their herd
upon his range and spread infection among his cattle. That would be
taken up with Sol Drumm when he came back from Kansas City with the
money from his cattle sale.
Morgan went to the hardware store, two doors from the hotel, from which
he presently emerged with a coil of new rope, a row of new cartridges in
his belt, and pockets heavy with a reserve supply. Tom Conboy was
standing in his door, looking up and down the street in the manner of a
man who felt his position insecure. Morgan saw that he was haggard and
worn as from long vigils and anxieties, although he had about him still
an air of assurance and self-sufficiency. Morgan passed him in the door
and entered the office unrecognized, although Conboy searched him with a
disfavoring and suspicious eye.
In the office there was evidence of conflict and turmoil. The showcase
was broken, the large iron safe lay overturned on the floor. The blue
door leading into the dining-room had been burst from its hinges, its
panels cracked, and now stood in the office leaning against the
partition like a champion against the ropes. Conboy turned from his
watch at the street door with reluctance, to see what the visitor
desired, and at the same moment Dora appeared in the doorless frame
within.
"Mr. Morgan!" she cried, incredulity, surprise, pleasure, mingled in her
voice.
She paused a moment, eyes round, hands lifted, her pretty mouth agape,
but came on again almost at once, eagerness brushing all other emotions
out of her face. "Wherever in the world have you been? What in the name
of goodness is the matter with your face?" She turned Morgan a little to
let the light fall on his wound.
Grim as Morgan's business was that morning, bitter as his savage heart,
he had a nook in his soul for sympathetic Dora, and a smile that came so
hard and vanished so quickly that it seemed it must have hurt him in the
giving more than the breaking of a bone.
"_Mister_ Morgan!" said Dora, hardly a breath between her last word and
the next, "what_ever_ have you been doin' to your face?"
"No niggers in Ireland, now--no-o-o niggers in Ireland!" Conboy warned
her, coming forward with no less interest than his daughter's to peer
into Morgan's bruised and marred face. "Well, well!"--with much surprise
altogether genuine, "you're back again, Mr. Morgan?"
"Wherever _have_ you been?" Dora persisted, no more interested in
niggers in Ireland than elsewhere.
"I fell among thieves," Morgan told her, gravely. Then to Conboy: "Is
that gang from Texas stopping here?"
"No, they lay up at Peden's on the floor where they happen to fall,"
Conboy replied. "If there ever was a curse turned loose on a town that
gang--look at that showcase, look at that door, look at that safe. They
took the town last night, a decent woman didn't dare to show her face
outside the door and wasn't safe in the house. They tried to blow that
safe with powder when I wouldn't open it and give them the money. But
they didn't even jar it--your money's in there, Mr. Morgan, safe."
"Oh, it was awful!" said Dora. "Oh, you've got your gun! If some
man----"
"Sh-h-h! No nig----"
"Where's the marshal?" Morgan asked.
"Took the train east last night. The operator told me he got a wire from
Sol Drumm, boss of the outfit, to meet him in Abilene today. He swore
them six ruffians in as deputies before he went and left them in charge
of the town."
"Six? Where's the other one?"
Conboy looked at him with quick flashing of his shifty eyes. "Don't you
know?" he asked, with significant shrewdness, smiling a little as if to
show his friendly appreciation of the joke.
"What in the hell do you mean?" Morgan demanded.
"No niggers in Ireland, now," Conboy said soothingly, his face growing
white. "One of them was killed down by the railroad track the night you
left. They said you shot him and hopped a freight."
Morgan said no more, but turned toward the door to leave.
"The inquest hasn't been held over him yet, we've been kept so busy with
the marshal's cases we didn't get around to him," Conboy explained.
"Maybe you can throw some light on that case?"
"I can throw a lot of it," Morgan said, and walked out with that word to
where he had left his horse.
There Morgan cut six lengths from his new rope, drawing the pieces
through his belt in the manner of a man carrying string for sewing grain
sacks. He took the rifle from the saddle, filled its magazine, and
started toward Peden's place, which was on the next corner beyond the
hotel, on the same side of the square. When he had gone a few rods,
halting on his lame feet, alert as a hunter who expects the game to
break from cover, Stilwell and Fred got up from their apparently
disinterested lounging in front of the hotel and followed leisurely
after him.
Many of the little business houses around the square were closed. There
was a litter of glass on the plank sidewalk, where proprietors stood
gloomily looking at broken windows, or were setting about replacing them
with boards after the hurricane of deviltry that swept the town the
night past. Those who were abroad in the sunlight of early morning
making their purchases for the day, moved with trepidation, putting
their feet down quietly, hastening on their way.
An old man who walked ahead of Morgan appeared to be the only unshaken
and unconcerned person in this place of sleeping passions. He carried a
thick hickory stick with immense crook, which he pegged down in time to
his short steps, relying on it for support not at all, his lean old jaw
chopping his cud as nimbly as a sheep's. But when Morgan's shadow,
stretching far ahead, fell beside him, he started like a dozing horse,
whirled about with stick upraised, and stood so in attitude of menace
and defense until the stranger had passed on.
Conboy was alert in his door, watching to see what new nest of trouble
Morgan was about to stir with that threatening rifle. Others seemed to
feel the threat that stalked with this grim man. Life quickened in the
somnolent town as to the sound of a fire bell as he passed; people stood
watching after him; came to doors and windows to lean and look. A few
moments after his passing the street behind him became almost magically
alive, although it was a silent, expectant, fearful interest that
communicated itself in whispers and low breath.
Who was this stranger with the mark of conflict on his face, this
unusual weapon in the brawls and tragedies of Ascalon held ready in his
hands? What grievance had he? what authority? Was he the bringer of
peace in the name of the law that had been so long degraded and defied,
or only another gambler in the lives of men? They waited, whispering, in
silence as of a deserted city, to see and hear.
There was only one priest of alcohol attending the long altar where men
sacrificed their manhood in Peden's deserted hall that morning. He was
quite sufficient for all the demands of the hour, his only customers
being the unprofitable gang of cattle herders whom Morgan sought. True
to their training in early rising, no matter what the stress of the
night past, no matter how broken by alarm and storm, they were all
awake, like sailors called to their watch. They were improving while it
might last the delegated authority of Seth Craddock, which opened the
treasures of a thousand bottles at a word.
The gambling tables in the front of the house were covered with black
cloths, which draped them almost to the floor, like palls of the dead.
Down at the farther end of the long hall a man was sweeping up the
débris of the night, his steps echoing in the silence of the place. For
there was no hilarity in the sodden crew lined up at the bar for the
first drink of the day. They were red-eyed, crumpled, dirty; frowsled of
hair as they had risen from the floor.
Peden's hall was not designed for the traffic of daylight. There was
gloom among its bare girders, shadows lay along its walls. Only through
the open door came in a broad and healthy band of light, which spread as
it reached and faltered as it groped, spending itself a little way
beyond the place where the lone bartender served his profitless
customers.
Morgan walked into the place down this path of light unnoticed by the
men at the bar or the one who served them, for they were wrangling with
him over some demand that he seemed reluctant to supply. At the end of
the bar, not a rod separating them, Morgan stopped like a casual
customer, waiting his moment.
The question between bartender and the gang quartered upon the town was
one of champagne. It was no drink, said the bartender, to lay the
foundation of a day's business with the bottle upon. Whisky was the
article to put inside a man's skin at that hour of the morning, and then
in small shots, not too often. They deferred to his experience,
accepting whisky. As they lined up with breastbones against the bar to
pour down the charge, Morgan threw his rifle down on them.
No chance to drop a hand to a gun standing shoulder to shoulder with
gizzards pressed against the bar; no chance to swerve or duck and make a
quick sling of it and a quicker shot, with the bore of that big rifle
ready to cough sixteen chunks of lead in half as many seconds, any one
of them hitting hard enough to drill through them, man by man, down to
the last head in the line. So their arms went up and strained high above
their heads, as if eager to show their desire to comply without
reservation to the unspoken command. Morgan had not said a word.
The bartender, accepting the situation as generally inclusive, put his
hands up along with his deadbeat patrons. And there they stood one
straining moment, the man with the broom down in the gloom of the
farther end of the building, unconscious of what was going on, whistling
as he swept among the peanut hulls.
Morgan signaled with his head for the bartender to come over the
barrier, which he did, with alacrity, and stood at the farther end of
the line, hands up, a raw-fisted, hollow-faced Irishman with bristling
short hair. Morgan jerked his head again, repeating the signal when the
bartender looked in puzzled fright into his face to read the meaning.
Then the fellow got it, and came forward, a vast relief spreading in his
combative features.
Morgan indicated the rope ends dangling at his belt. Almost beaming,
quite triumphant in his eagerness, the bartender grasped his meaning at
a glance. He began tying the ruffians' hands behind their backs, and
tying them well, with a zest in his work that increased as he traveled
down the line.
"Champagne, is it?" said he, mocking them, a big foot in the small of
the victim's back as he pulled so hard it made him squeal. "Nothing
short of champoggany wather will suit the taste av ye this fine marin',
and you with a thousand dollars' wort' of goods swilled into your
paunches the past week! I'll give you a dose of champoggany wather
you'll not soon forget, ye strivin' devils! This sheriff is the man
that'll hang ye for your murthers and crimes, ye bastes!" And with each
expletive a kick, but not administered in any case until he had turned
his head with sly caution to see whether it would be permitted by this
silent avenger who had come to Ascalon in the hour of its darkest need.
While Morgan's captives cursed him, knowing now who he was, and cursed
the bartender whom they had overriden and mocked, insulted and abused in
the security of their collective strength and notorious deeds, the
shadow of two men fell across the threshold of Peden's door. There the
shadows lay through the brief moments of this little drama's enactment,
immovable, as though cast by men who watched.
The porter came forward from his sweeping to look on this degradation of
the desperados, mocking them, returning them curse for curse, voluble in
picturesque combinations of damning sentences as if he had practiced
excommunication longer than the oldest pope who ever lived. In the
excess of his scorn for their fallen might he smeared his filthy broom
across their faces, paying back insult for insult, bold and secure under
the protection of this stern eagle of a man who had dropped on Ascalon
as from a cloud.
When the last man was bound, the last kick applied by the bartender's
great, square-toed foot, Morgan motioned his sullen captives toward the
door.
"Wait a minute--have something on the house," the bartender urged.
Morgan lifted his hand in gesture at once silencing and denying, and
marched out after the heroes of the Chisholm Trail. Through it all he
had not spoken.
They cursed Morgan as he drove them into the street, and surged against
their bonds, the only silent one among them the Dutchman, and the only
sober one. Now and then Morgan saw his face as the others bunched and
shifted in their struggles to break loose, his mocking, sneering, pasty
white face, his wide-set teeth small and white as a young pup's. His
eyes were hateful as a rattlesnake's; lecherous eyes, debased.
Morgan herded them into the public square beyond the line of hitching
racks which stood like a skeleton fence between courthouse and business
buildings. People came pouring from every house to see, hurrying,
crowding, talking in hushed voices, wondering in a hundred conjectures
what this man was going to do. Gamblers and nighthawks, roused by the
very feeling of something unusual, hastened out half dressed, to stand
in slippers and collarless shirts, looking on in silent speculation.
Citizens, respectable and otherwise, who had suffered loss and
humiliation, danger and terror at the hands of these men, exulted now in
their downfall. Some said this man was a sheriff from Texas, who had
tracked them to Ascalon and was now taking them to jail to await a
train; some said he was a special government officer, others that the
governor had sent him in place of troops, knowing him to be sufficient
in himself. Boys ran along in open-mouthed admiration, pattering their
bare feet in the thick dust, as Morgan drove his captives down the
inside of the hitching racks; the outpouring of citizens, parasites,
outcasts of the earth, swept after in a growing stream.
From all sides they came to witness this great adventure, unusual for
Ascalon in that the guilty had been humbled and the arrogant brought
low. Across the square they came running, on the courthouse steps they
stood. In front of the hotel there was a crowd, which moved forward to
meet Morgan as he came marching like an avenger behind his captives, who
were now beginning to show alarm, sobered by their unexampled situation,
sweating in the agony of their quaking hearts.
At the hitching rack where his horse stood, Morgan halted the six men.
He took the remainder of his new rope from the saddle, laced it through
the bonds on the Texans' wrists, backed them up to the horizontal pole
of the hitching rack, and tied them there in a line, facing inward upon
the square. As he moved about his business with deliberate, yet swift
and sure hand of vengeance well plotted in advance, Morgan kept his
rifle leaning near, watching the crowd for any outbreak of friends who
might rise in defense of these men, or any movement that might threaten
interference with his plans.
When he had finished binding the six men, backs to the rack, Morgan
beckoned a group of boys to him, spoke to them in undertone that even
the nearest in the crowd did not hear. Off the youngsters ran, so full
of the importance of their part in that great event that they would not
stay to be questioned nor halt for the briefest word.
In a little while the lads came hurrying back, with empty goods boxes
and barrels, fragments of packing cases, all sorts of dry wood to which
they could lay their eager hands. This they piled where Morgan
indicated, to stand by panting, eyes big in excitement and wondering
admiration for this mighty man.
Mrs. Conboy, standing at the edge of the sidewalk before her door, not
more than ten yards from the spot where Morgan was making these
unaccountable preparations, leaned with a new horror in her fear-haunted
eyes to see.
"My God! he's goin' to burn them!" she said. "Oh, my God!"