IN PLACE OF A REGIMENT
Morgan rode back to town in thoughtful, serious mood after conducting
the six desperadoes across the small trickle of the Arkansas River. He
was not satisfied with the morning's adventure, no matter to what extent
it reflected credit on his manhood and competency in the public mind of
Ascalon. He would have been easier in all conscience and higher in his
own esteem if it had not happened at all.
He thought soberly now of getting his trunk over to Conboy's from the
station and changing back into the garb of civilization before meeting
that girl again, that wonderful girl, that remarkable woman who could
play a tune on him to suit her caprice, he thought, as she would have
fingered a violin.
Judge Thayer's little office, with the white stakes behind it marking
off the unsold lots like graves of a giant race, reminded Morgan of his
broken engagement to look at the farm. He hitched his horse at the rack
running out from one corner of the building, where other horses had
stood fighting flies until they had stamped a hollow like a buffalo
wallow in the dusty ground.
Judge Thayer got up from the accumulated business on his desk at the
sound of Morgan's step in his door, and came forward with welcome in his
beaming face, warmth of friendliness and admiration in every hair of
his beard, where the gray twinkled like laughter among the black.
"I asked the governor for a company of militia to put down the disorder
and outlawry in this town--I didn't think less than a company could do
it," said the judge.
"Is he sending them?" Morgan inquired with polite interest.
"No, I'm glad to say he refused. He referred me to the sheriff."
"And the sheriff will act, I suppose?"
"Act?" Judge Thayer repeated, turning the word curiously. "Act!"--with
all the contempt that could be centered in such a short
expression--"yes, he'll act like a forsworn and traitorous coward, the
friend to thieves that he's always been! We don't need him, we don't
need the governor's petted, stall-fed militia, when we've got one man
that's a regiment in himself!"
The judge must shake hands with Morgan again, and clap him on the
shoulder to further express his admiration and the feeling of security
his single-handed exploit against the oppressors of Ascalon had brought
to the town.
"I and the other officers and directors sat up in the bank four nights,
lights out and guns loaded, sweatin' blood, expecting a raid by that
gang. They had this town buffaloed, Morgan. I'm glad you came back here
today and showed us the pattern of a real, old-fashioned man."
"I guess I was lucky," Morgan said, with modest depreciation of his
valor, exceedingly uncomfortable to stand there and hear this
loud-spoken praise of a deed he would rather have the public forget.
"Maybe you call it luck where you came from, but we've got another name
for it here in Ascalon."
"I'm sorry I couldn't keep my engagement to look at that farm, Judge
Thayer. You must have heard my reason for it."
"Stilwell told me. It's a marvel you ever came back at all."
"If the farm isn't sold----"
"No," said the judge hastily, as if to turn him away from the subject.
"Come in and sit down--there's a bigger thing than farming on hand for
you if you can see your interests in it as I see them, Mr. Morgan. A
man's got to trample down the briars before he makes his bed sometimes,
you know--come on in out of this cussed sun.
"Morgan, the situation in Ascalon is like this," Judge Thayer resumed,
seated at his desk, Morgan between him and the door in much the same
position that Seth Craddock had sat on the day of his arrival not long
before; "we've got a city marshal that's bigger than the authority that
created him, bigger than anything on earth that ever wore a star. Seth
Craddock's enlarged himself and his authority until he's become a curse
and a scourge to the citizens of this town."
"I heard something of his doings from Fred Stilwell. Why don't you fire
him?"
"Morgan, I approached him," said the judge, with an air of injury. "I
believe on my soul the old devil spared my life only because I had
befriended him in past days. There's a spark of gratitude in him that
the drenching of blood hasn't put out. If it had been anybody else he'd
have shot him dead."
"Hm-m-m-m!" said Morgan, grunting his sympathy, eyes on the floor.
"Morgan, that fellow's killed eight men in as many days! He's got a
regular program--a man a day."
"It looks like something ought to be done to stop him."
"The old devil's shrewd, he's had legal counsel from no less illustrious
source than the county attorney, who's so crooked he couldn't lie on the
side of a hill without rollin' down it like a hoop. Seth knows he fills
an elective office, he's beyond the power of mayor and council to
remove. The only way he can be ousted is by proceedings in court, which
he could wear along till his term expired. We can't fire him, Morgan.
He'll go on till he depopulates this town!"
"It's a remarkable situation," Morgan said.
"He's a jackal, which is neither wolf nor dog. He's never killed a man
here yet out of necessity--he just shoots them down to see them kick, or
to gratify some monstrous delight that has transformed him from the man
I used to know."
"He may be insane," Morgan suggested.
"I don't know, but I don't think so. I can't abase my mind low enough to
fathom that man."
"It's a wonder somebody hasn't killed him," Morgan speculated.
"He never arrests anybody, there hasn't been a prisoner in the
calaboose since he took charge of this town. Notoriety has turned his
head, notoriety seems to put a halo around him that makes a troop of
sycophants look up to him as a saint. Look here--look at this!"
The judge held out a newspaper, shaking it viciously, his face clouded
with displeasure.
"Here's a piece two columns long about that scoundrel in the _Kansas
City Times_--the notoriety of the town is obscured by the bloody
reputation of its marshal."
"It must be gratifying to a man of his ambitions," Morgan commented,
glancing curiously over the story, his mind on the first victim of
Craddock's gun in that town.
"It's a disgrace that some of us feel, whatever it may be to him. I
expected him to confine his gun to gamblers and crooks and these vermin
that hang around the women of the dance houses, but he's right-hand man
with them, they're all on his staff."
Morgan looked up in amazement, hardly able to believe what he heard.
"It's enough to wind any decent man," Judge Thayer nodded. "You remember
his first case--that fool cowboy he killed at the hotel?"
"I was just thinking of him," Morgan said.
"That's the kind he goes in for, cowboys from the range, green, innocent
boys, harmless if you take 'em right. Yesterday afternoon he killed a
young fellow from Glenmore. It's going to bring retaliation and reprisal
on us, it's going to hurt us in this contest over the county seat."
"I shouldn't wonder," said Morgan, hoping the reprisal would be swift
and severe.
"I think the man's blood mad," Judge Thayer speculated, in a hopeless
way. "It must be the outcome of all that slaughter among the buffalo.
He's not a brave man, he lacks the bearing and the full look of the eye
of a courageous man, but he carries two guns now, Morgan, and he can
sling out and shoot a man with incredible speed. And we've got him
quartered on us for nearly two years unless somebody from Glendora comes
over and nails him. We can't fire him, we don't dare to approach him to
suggest his abdication. Morgan, we're in a three-cornered hell of a
fix!"
"Can't the fellow be prosecuted for some of these murders? Isn't there
some way the law can reach him?"
"The coroner's jury absolves him regularly," the judge replied wearily.
"At first they did it because it was the routine, and now they do it to
save their hides. No, there's just one quick and sure way of heading
that devil off in his red trail that I can see, Morgan, and that's for
me to act while he's away. He's gone on some high-flyin' expedition to
Abilene, leaving the town without a peace officer at the mercy of
bandits and thieves. I have the authority to swear in a deputy marshal,
or a hundred of them."
Morgan looked up again quickly from his speculative study of the boards
in Judge Thayer's floor, to meet the elder man's shrewd eyes with a look
of complete understanding. So they sat a moment, each reading the other
as easily as one counts pebbles at the bottom of a clear spring.
"I don't believe I'm the man you're looking for," Morgan said.
"You're the only man that can do it, Morgan. It looks to me like you're
appointed by Providence to step in here and save this town from this
reign of murder."
"Oh!" said Morgan, impatiently, discounting the judge's fervid words.
"You can supplant him, you can strip him of his badge of office when he
steps from the train, and you're the one man that _can_ do it!"
Morgan shook his head, whether in denial of his attributed valor and
prowess, or in declination to assume the proffered honor, Judge Thayer
could not tell.
"I believe you'd do it without ever throwing a gun down on him," Judge
Thayer declared.
"I know he could!" said a clear, hearty, confident voice from the door.
"Come in and help me convince him, Rhetta," Judge Thayer said, his
gray-flecked beard twinkling with the pleasure that beamed from his
eyes. "Mr. Morgan, my daughter. You have met before."
Morgan rose in considerable confusion, feeling more like an abashed and
clumsy cowboy than he ever had felt before in his life. He stood with
his battered hat held flat against his body at his belt, turning the old
thing foolishly like a wheel, so unexpectedly confronted by this girl
again, before whom he desired to appear as a man, and the best that was
in the best man that he could ever be. And she stood smiling before him,
mischief and mastery in her laughing eyes, confident as one who had
subjugated him already, playing a tune on him, surely--a tune that came
like a little voice out of his heart.
"I didn't know, I didn't suspect," he said.
"Of course not. She isn't anything like me." Judge Thayer laughed over
it, mightily pleased by this evidence of confusion in a man who could
heat his branding iron to set his mark on half a dozen desperadoes, yet
turned to dough before the eyes of a simple maid.
"No more than a bird is like a bear," said Morgan, thinking aloud,
racing mentally the next moment to snatch back his words and shape them
in more conventional phrase. But too late; their joint laughter drowned
his attempt to set it right, and the world lost a compliment that might
have graced a courtier's tongue, perhaps. But, not likely.
Morgan proffered the chair he had occupied, but Rhetta knew of one in
reserve behind the display of wheat and oats in sheaf on the table. This
she brought, seating herself near the door, making a triangle from which
Morgan had no escape save through the roof.
Judge Thayer resumed the discussion of the most vital matter in Ascalon
that hour, pressing Morgan to take the oath of office then and there.
"I wouldn't ask Mr. Morgan to take the office," said Rhetta when Judge
Thayer paused, "if I felt safe to stay in Ascalon another day with
anybody else as marshal."
"That's a compelling reason for a man to take a job," Morgan told her,
looking for a daring moment into the cool clarity of her honest brown
eyes. "But I might make it worse instead of better. Trouble came to
this town with me; it seems to stick to my heels like a dog."
"You got rid of most of it this morning--_that_ gang will never come
back," she said.
Morgan looked out of the open door, a thoughtfulness in his eyes that
the nearer attraction could not for the moment dispel. "One of them
will," he replied.
"Oh, one!" said she, discounting that one to nothing at all.
"The gamblers and saloon men are right about it," Morgan said, turning
to the judge; "this town will dry up and blow away as soon as it loses
its notorious name. If you want to kill Ascalon, enforce the law. The
question is, how many people here want it done?"
"The respectable majority, I can assure you on that."
"Nearly everybody you talk to say they'd rather have Ascalon a whistling
station on the railroad, where you could go to sleep in peace and get up
feeling safe, than the awful place it is now," Rhetta said. She removed
her sombrero as she spoke, and dropped it on the floor at her feet, as
though weary of the turmoil that vexed her days.
Morgan noted for the first time that she was not dressed for the saddle
today as on the occasion of their first meeting, but garbed in becoming
simplicity in serge skirt and brown linen waist, a little golden bar
with garnets at her throat. Her redundant dark hair, soft in its dusky
shade as summer shadows in a deep wood, was coiled in a twisted heap to
fit the crown of her mannish sombrero. It came down lightly over the
tips of her ears in pretty disorder, due to the excitement of the
morning, and she was fair as a camelia blossom and fresh as an evening
primrose of her native prairie land.
"I wouldn't like to be the man that killed Ascalon, after all its highly
painted past," Morgan said, trying to turn it off lightly. "It might be
better for all the respectable people to go away and leave it wholly
wicked, according to its fame."
"That might work to the satisfaction of all concerned, Mr. Morgan, if we
had wagons and tents, and nothing more," said the judge. "We could very
well pick up and pull out in that case. But a lot of us have staked all
we own on the future of this town and the country around it. We were
here before Ascalon became a plague spot and a by-word in the mouths of
men; we started it right, but it went wrong as soon as it was able to
walk."
"It seems to have wandered around quite a bit since then," Morgan said,
sparing them a grin.
"It's been a wayward child," Rhetta sighed. "We're ashamed of our
responsibility for it now."
"It would mean ruination to most of us to pull out and leave it to these
wolves," said the judge. "We couldn't think of that."
"Of course not, I was only making a poor joke when I talked of a
retreat," Morgan said. "Things will begin to die down here in a year or
two--I've seen towns like this before, they always calm down and take up
business seriously in time, or blow away and vanish completely. That's
what happens to most of them if they're let go their course--change and
shift, range breaking up into farms, cowboys going on, take care of
that."
"I don't think Ascalon will go out that way--not if we can keep the
county seat," Judge Thayer said. "If you were to step into the breach
while that killer's away and rub even one little white spot in the
town----"
Morgan seemed to interpose in the manner of throwing out his hand, a
gesture speaking of the fatuity and his unwillingness to set himself to
the task.
"Not just temporarily, we don't mean just temporarily, Mr. Morgan, but
for good," Rhetta urged. "I want to take over editing the paper and be
of some use in the world, but I couldn't think of doing it with all this
killing going on, and a lot of wild men shooting out windows and
everything that way."
"No, of course you couldn't," Morgan agreed.
"The railroad immigration agent has been trying to locate a colony of
Mennonites here," Judge Thayer said, "fifty families or more of them,
but the notoriety of the town made the elders skittish. They were out
here this spring, liked the country, saw its future with eyes that
revealed like telescopes, and would have bought ten sections of land to
begin with if it hadn't been for two or three killings while they were
here."
"It was the same way with those people from Pennsylvania," said Rhetta.
"We had a crowd of Pennsylvania Dutch out here a week or two after the
Mennonites," the judge enlarged, "smellin' around hot-foot on the trail
as hounds, but this atmosphere of Ascalon and its bad influence on the
country wouldn't be good for their young folks, they said. So _they_
backed off. And that's the way it's gone, that's the way it will go. The
blight of Ascalon falls over this country for fifty miles around, the
finest country the Almighty ever scattered grass seed over.
"You saw the possibilities of it from a distance, Mr. Morgan; others
have seen it. Wouldn't you be doing humanity a larger service, a more
immediate and applicable service, by clearing away the pest spot, curing
the repulsive infection that keeps them away from its benefits and
rewards, than by plowing up eighty acres and putting in a crop of wheat?
A man's got to trample down his bed-ground, as I've said already,
Morgan, before he can spread his blankets sometimes. This is one of the
places, this is one of the times."
Morgan thought it over, hands on his thighs, head bent a little, eyes on
his boots, conscious that the girl was watching him anxiously, as one on
trial at the bar watches a doubtful jury when counsel makes the last
appeal.
"There's a lot of logic in what you say," Morgan admitted; "it ought to
appeal to a man big enough, confident enough, to undertake and put the
job through."
He looked up suddenly, answering directly Rhetta Thayer's anxious,
expectant, appealing brown eyes. "For if he should fail, bungle it, and
have to throw down his hand before he'd won the game, it would be
Katy-bar-the-door for that man. He'd have to know how far the people of
this town wanted him to go before starting, and there's only one
boundary--the limit of the law. If they want anything less than that a
man had better keep hands off, for anything like a compromise between
black and white would be a fizzle."
Rhetta nodded, her bosom quivering with the pounding of her expectant
heart, her throat throbbing, her hands clenched as if she held on in
desperate hope of rescue. Judge Thayer said no more. He sat watching
Morgan's face, knowing well when a word too many might change the
verdict to his loss.
"The question is, how far do they want a man to go in the regeneration
of Ascalon? How many are willing to put purity above profit for a while?
Business would suffer; it would be as dead here as a grasshopper after a
prairie fire while readjustment to new conditions shaped. It might be a
year or two before healthy legitimate trade could take the place of this
flashy life, and it might never rebound from the operation. A man would
want the people who are calling for law and order here to be satisfied
with the new conditions; he wouldn't want any whiners at the funeral."
"New people would come, new business would grow, as soon as the news got
abroad that a different condition prevailed in this town," Judge Thayer
said. "I can satisfy you in an hour that the business men want what
they're demanding, and will be satisfied to take the risk of the
result."
"I came out here to farm," Morgan said, unwilling to put down his plans
for a questionable and dangerous service to a doubtful community.
"There'll not be much sod broken between now and late fall, from the
present look of things," the judge said. "We've had the longest dry
spell I've ever seen in this country--going on four weeks now without a
drop of rain. It comes that way once every five or seven years, but that
also happens back in Ohio and other places men consider especially
favored," he hastened to conclude.
"I didn't intend to break sod," Morgan reflected, "a man couldn't sow
wheat in raw sod. That's why I wanted to look at that claim down by the
river."
"It will keep. Or you could buy it, and hire your crop put in while
you're marshal here in town."
"And I could edit the paper. Between us we could save the county seat."
Rhetta spoke quite seriously, so seriously, indeed, that her father
laughed.
"I had forgotten all about saving the county seat--I was considering
only the soul of Ascalon," he said.
"If you refuse to let father swear you in, Mr. Morgan, Craddock will say
you were afraid. I'd hate to have him do that," said Rhetta.
"He might," Morgan granted, and with subdued voice and thoughtful manner
that gave them a fresh rebound of hope.
And at length they had their will, but not until Morgan had gone the
round of the business men on the public square, gathering the assurance
of great and small that they were weary of bloodshed and violence,
notoriety and unrest; that they would let the bars down to him if he
would undertake cleaning up the town, and abide by what might come of it
without a growl.
When they returned to Judge Thayer's office Morgan took the oath to
enforce the statutes of the state of Kansas and the ordinances of the
city of Ascalon, Rhetta standing by with palpitating breast and glowing
eyes, hands behind her like a little girl waiting her turn in a spelling
class. When Morgan lowered his hand Rhetta started out of her expectant
pose, producing with a show of triumph a short piece of broad white
ribbon, with CITY MARSHAL stamped on it in tall black letters.
Judge Thayer laughed as Morgan backed away from her when she advanced to
pin it on his breast.
"I set up the type and printed it myself on the proof press," she said,
in pretty appeal to him to stand and be hitched to this sign of his new
office.
"It's so--it's rather--prominent, isn't it?" he said, still edging away.
"There isn't any regular shiny badge for you, the great, grisly Mr.
Craddock wore away the only one the town owns. Please, Mr.
Morgan--you'll have to wear _something_ to show your authority, won't
he, Pa?"
"It would be wiser to wear it till I can send for another badge, Morgan,
or we can get the old one away from Seth. Your authority would be
questioned without a badge, they're strong for badges in this town."
So Morgan stood like a family horse while Rhetta pinned the ribbon to
the pocket of his dingy gray woolen shirt, where it flaunted its
unmistakable proclamation in a manner much more effective than any
police shield or star ever devised. Rhetta pressed it down hard with the
palm of her hand to make the stiff ribbon assume a graceful hang, so
hard that she must have felt the kick of the new officer's heart just
under it. And she looked up into his eyes with a glad, confident smile.
"I feel safe _now_," she said, sighing as one who puts down a wearing
burden at the end of a toilsome journey.