THE MEAT HUNTER COMES
The few courageous and hopeful ones who remained loyal to Morgan were
somewhat assured, the doubtful ones agitated a bit more in their
indecision, when he appeared on horseback a little past the turn of day.
These latter people, whose courage had leaked out overnight, now began
to weigh again their business interests and personal safety in the
balance of their wavering judgment.
Morgan, on horseback, looked like a lucky man; they admitted that. Much
more lucky, indeed, than he had appeared that morning when he went
limping around the square. It was a question whether to come over to his
side again, openly and warmly, or to hold back until he proved himself
to be as lucky as he looked. A man might as well nail up his door and
leave town as fall under the disfavor of Seth Craddock. So, while they
wavered, they were still not quite convinced.
Prominent among the business men who had revised their attitude on
reform as the shadow of Seth Craddock approached Ascalon was Earl Gray,
the druggist, one of the notables on Dora Conboy's waiting list.
Druggist Gray was a man who wore bell-bottomed trousers and a moleskin
vest without a coat. His hair had a fetching crinkle to it, which he
prized above all things in bottles and out, and wore long, like the man
on the label.
There was so much hair about Mr. Gray, counting mustache and all, that
his face and body seemed drained and attenuated by the contribution of
sustenance to keep the adornment flourishing in its brown abundance. For
Gray was a tall, thin, bony-kneed man, with long flat feet like wedges
of cheese. His eyes were hollow and melancholy, as if he bore a sorrow;
his nose was high and bony, and bleak in his sharp, thin-cheeked face.
Gray expressed himself openly to the undertaker, in whom he found a
cautious, but warm supporter of his views. There would be fevers and
ills with Ascalon closed up, Gray said he knew very well, just as there
would be deaths and burials in the natural course of events under the
same conditions. But there would be neither patches for the broken,
stitches for the cut nor powders for the headaches of debauchery called
for then as now; and all the burying there would be an undertaker might
do under his thumb nail.
They'd go to drugging themselves with boneset tea, and mullein tea, and
bitter-root powders and wahoo bark, said Gray. Likewise, they'd turn to
burying one another, after the ways of pioneers, who were as resourceful
in deaths and funerals as in drugs and fomentations. Pioneers, such as
would be left in that country after Morgan had shut Ascalon up and
driven away those who were dependent on one another for their skinning
and fleecing, filching and plundering, did not lean on any man. Such as
came there to plow up the prairies would be of the same stuff,
rough-barked men and women who called in neither doctor to be born nor
undertaker to be buried.
It was a gloomy outlook, the town closed up and everybody gone, said
Gray. What would a man do with his building, what would a man do with
his stock?
"Maybe Craddock ain't no saint and angel, but he makes business in this
town," said Gray.
"Makes business!" the undertaker echoed, with abstraction and looking
far away as if he already saw the train of oncoming, independent,
self-burying pioneers over against the horizon.
"If this feller's luck don't go ag'in' him, you might as well ship all
your coffins away but one--they'll need one to bury the town in. What do
you think of him ridin' around the depot down there, drawin' a deadline
that no man ain't goin' to be allowed to cross till the one-twenty pulls
out? Kind of high-handed deal, I call it!"
"I've got a case of shrouds comin' in by express on that train, two
cases layin' in my place waitin' on 'em," the undertaker said,
resentfully, waking out of his abstraction and apparent apathy.
"_You_ have!" said Gray, eying him suddenly.
"He stopped me as I was goin' over to wait around till the train come
in, drove me back like I was a cow. He said it didn't make no difference
how much business I had at the depot, it would have to wait till the
train was gone. When a citizen and a taxpayer of this town can't even
cross the road like a shanghai rooster, things is comin' to a hell of a
pass!"
"Well, I ain't got no business at the depot this afternoon, or I bet you
a cracker I'd be over there," Gray boasted. "I think I'll close up a
while and go down to the hotel where I can see better--it's only forty
minutes till she's due."
"Might as well, everybody's down there. You won't sell as much as a pack
of gum till the train's gone and this thing's off of people's minds."
Gray went in for his hat, to spend a good deal of time at the glass
behind his prescription case setting it at the most seductive slant upon
his luxuriant brown curls. This was an extremely enticing small hat,
just a shade lighter brown than the druggist's wavy hair. It looked like
a cork in a bottle placed by a tipsy hand as Druggist Gray passed down
the street toward the hotel, to post himself where he might see how well
Morgan's luck was going to hold in this encounter with the meat hunter
of the Cimarron.
As the undertaker had said, nearly everybody in Ascalon was already
collected in front and in the near vicinity of the hotel, fringing the
square in gay-splotched crowds. Beneath the canopy of the Elkhorn hotel
many were assembled, as many indeed, as could conveniently stand, for
that bit of shade was a blessing on the sun-parched front of Ascalon's
bleak street.
Business was generally suspended in this hour of uncertainty, public
feeling was drawn as tight as a banjo head in the sun. In the courthouse
the few officials and clerks necessary to the county's business were at
the windows looking upon the station, all expecting a tragedy of such
stirring dimensions as Ascalon never had witnessed.
The stage was set, the audience was in waiting, one of the principal
actors stood visible in the wings. With the rush of the passenger train
from the east Seth Craddock would make his dramatic entry, in true color
with his violent notoriety and prominence in the cast.
Unless friends came with Craddock, these two men would hold the stage
for the enactment of that swift drama alone. Morgan, silent, determined,
inflexible, had drawn his line around the depot, across which no man
dared to pass. No friend of Craddock should meet him for support of
warning word or armed hand; no innocent one should be jeopardized by a
curiosity that might lead to death.
The moving question now was, had Peden's gun-notable friends joined
Craddock? If so, it would call for a vast amount of luck to overcome
their combined numbers and dexterity.
Morgan was troubled by this same question as he waited in the saddle
where the sun bore hot upon him at the side of the station platform.
About there, at that point, the station agent had told him, the
smoking-car would stand when the train came to a stop, the engine at the
water tank. When Craddock came down out of the train, would he come
alone?
Morgan was mounted on the horse borrowed from Stilwell, an agile young
animal, tractable and intelligent. A yellow slicker was rolled and tied
at the cantle of the saddle; at the horn a coil of brown rope hung,
pliant and smooth from much use upon the range among cattle. Morgan's
rifle was slung on the saddle in its worn scabbard, its battered stock,
from which the varnish had gone long ago in the hard usage of many
years, close to the rider's hand.
It needed no announcement of wailing whistle or clanging bell to tell
Ascalon of the approach of a train from the east. In that direction the
fall of the land toward the Arkansas River began many miles distant from
the town, seeming to blend downward from a great height which dimmed out
in blue haze against the horizon. A little way along this high pitch of
land, before it turned down the grade that led into the river valley,
the railroad ran transversely.
The moment a train mounted this land's edge and swept along the straight
transverse section of track, it was in full sight of Ascalon, day or
night, except in stormy weather, although many miles away. A man still
had ample time to shine his shoes, pack his valise, put on his collar
and coat--if he wore them--walk to the depot and buy his ticket, after
the train came in sight on top of this distant hill.
Once the train headed straight for Ascalon it dropped out of sight, and
one unused to the trend of things might wonder if it had gone off on
another line. Presently it would appear again, laboring up out of a dip,
rise the intervening billow of land, small as a toy that one could hold
in the hand, and sink out of sight again. This way it approached
Ascalon, now promising, now denying, drawing into plainer sight with
every rise.
On this particular afternoon when the sun-baked people of Ascalon stood
waiting in such tensity of expectation that their minds were ready to
crack like the dry, contracting earth beneath their feet, it seemed that
nature had laid off that land across which the railroad ran with the
sole view of adding to the dramatic value of Seth Craddock's entry in
this historic hour. Certainly art could not have devised a more
effective means of whetting the anxiety, straining the suspense, than
this.
When the train first came in sight over the hill there was a murmur, a
movement of feet as people shifted to points believed to be more
advantageous for seeing the coming drama; watches clicked, comments
passed on the exactness to the schedule; breaths were drawn with fresh
tingling of hope, or falling of doubt and despair.
Morgan was watching that far skyline for the first smoke, for the first
gleam of windows in the sun as the train swept round the curve heading
for a little while into the north. He noted the murmur and movement of
the watchers as it came in sight; wondered if any breast but one was
agitated by a pang of friendly concern, wondered if any hand loosed
weapon in its sheath to strike in his support if necessity should call
for such intervention. He knew that Rhetta Thayer stood in the shade of
the bank with her father and others; he was cheered by the support of
her presence to witness his triumph or fall.
Now, as the train swept into the first obscuring swale, Morgan rode
around the depot again to see that none had slipped through either in
malice or curiosity. Only the station agent was in sight, pulling a
truck with three trunks on it to the spot where he estimated the
baggage-car would stop. Morgan rode back again to take his stand at the
point where arrivals by train crossed from depot into town. His left
hand was toward the waiting crowd, kept back by his injunction fifty
yards or more from the station; his right toward the track on which the
train would come.
Conversation in the crowd fell away. Peden, garbed in his long coat, was
seen shouldering through in front of the hotel, the nearest point to the
set and waiting stage. As always, Peden wore a pistol strapped about him
on ornate belt, the holster carrying the weapon under the skirt of his
coat. His presence on the forward fringe of the crowd seemed to many as
an upraised hand to strike the waiting horseman in the back.
Morgan saw Peden when he came and took his stand there, and saw others
in his employ stationed along the front of the line. He believed they
were there to throw their weight on Craddock's beam of the balance the
moment they should see him outmastered and outweighed.
Because he mistrusted these men, because he did not know, indeed,
whether there was a man among all those who had pledged their moral
support who would lift a hand to aid him even if summoned to do so,
Morgan kept his attention divided, one eye on the signs and portents of
the crowd, one on keeping the depot platform clear.
Morgan did not know whether even Judge Thayer and the men who had
guarded the bank with him would risk one shot in his defense if the
outlawed forces should sweep forward and overwhelm him. He doubted it
very much. It was well enough to delegate this business to a stranger,
one impartial between the lines, but they could not be expected to turn
their weapons on their fellow-townsmen and depositors in the bank, no
matter how their money came, no matter how much the law might lack an
upholding hand.
The train came clattering over the switch, safety valve roaring, bell
ringing as gaily as if arriving in Ascalon were a joyous event in its
day. Conductor and brakeman stood on the steps ready to swing to the
platform; the express messenger lolled with bored weariness in the door
of his car, scorning the dangerous notoriety of the town by exposing to
the eye all the boxed treasure that it contained. Passengers crowded
platforms, leaning and looking, ready to alight for a minute, so they
might be able to relate the remainder of their lives how they braved the
perils of Ascalon one time and came out unsinged.
A movement went over the watching people of the town, assembled along
its business front, as wind ripples suddenly a field of grain. Nobody
had breath for a word; dry lips were pressed tightly in the varying
emotions of hope, fear, expectancy, desire. Morgan was seen to be busy
for a moment with something about his saddle; it was thought he was
drawing his rifle out of its case.
Nearly opposite where Morgan waited, the first coach of the train
stopped. Instantly, like children freed from school, the eager
passengers poured off for their adventurous breath of this most wicked
town's intoxicating air. Morgan's whole attention was now fixed on the
movement around the train. He shifted his horse to face that way,
risking what might develop behind him, one hand engaged with the bridle
rein, the other seemingly dropped carelessly on his thigh.
And in that squaring of expectation, that pause of breathless waiting,
Seth Craddock descended from the smoking-car, his alpaca coat carried in
the crook of his left elbow, his right hand lingering a moment on the
guard of the car step. The hasty ones who had waited on the car platform
were down ahead of him, standing a little way from the steps; others who
wanted to get off came pressing behind him, in their ignorance that they
were handling a bit of Ascalon's most infernal furnishing, pushing him
out into the timid crowd of their fellows.
A moment Craddock stood, taller than the tallest there, sweeping his
quick glance about for signs of the expected hostility, the trinkets of
silver on the band of his costly new sombrero shining in the sun. Then
he came striding among the gaping passengers, like a man stalking among
tall weeds, something unmistakably expressive of disdain in his
carriage.
There he paused again, and put on his coat, plainly mystified and
troubled by the absence of townspeople from the depot, and the sight of
them lined up across the square as if they waited a circus parade. All
that he saw between himself and that fringe of puzzling, silent people
was a cowboy sitting astraddle of his bay horse at the end of the
station platform.
And as Craddock started away from the crowd of curious passengers who
were whispering and speculating behind him, pointing him out to each
other, wondering what notable he might be; as Craddock started down the
platform away from there, the voice of the conductor warning all to
clamber aboard, the waiting cowboy tightened the reins a little, causing
his horse to prick up its ears and start with a thrill of expectancy
which the rider could feel ripple over its smooth hide under the
pressure of his knees.
Craddock came on down the platform, turning his head on his long neck in
the way of a man entirely mystified and suspicious, alone, unsupported
by even as much as the shadow of a strange gun-slinger or local friend.
What was passing through the fellow's head Morgan could pretty well
guess. There was a little break of humor in it, for all the tight-drawn
nerves, for all the chance, for all the desperation of the gathering
moment. The grim old killer couldn't make out whether it was through
admiration of him the people had gathered to welcome him home, or in
expectation of something connected with the arrival of the train. Two
rods or so from where Morgan waited him, Craddock stopped to look back
at the train, now gathering slow headway, and around the deserted
platform, down which the station agent came dragging a mail sack.
It was when he turned again from this suspicious questioning into things
which gave him back no reply, that Craddock recognized the hitherto
unsuspected cowboy. In a start he stiffened to action, flinging hand to
his pistol. But a heartbeat quicker, like a flash of sunbeam from a
mirror, the coiled rope flew out from Morgan's high-flung arm.
As the swift-running noose settled over Craddock's body, the horse
leaped at the pressure of its rider's knees. Craddock fired as the
flying rope snatched him from his feet, the noose binding his arms
impotently to his sides; in his rage he fired again and again as he
dragged in ludicrous tangle of long, thrashing legs from the platform
into the dust.
There, in a cloud of obscuring dust from the trampled road, the horse
holding the line taut, Morgan flung from the saddle in the nimble way of
a range man, bent over the fallen slayer of men a little while. When the
first of the crowd came breaking across the broad space intervening and
drew up panting and breathless in admiration of the bold thing they had
witnessed, Seth Craddock lay hog-tied and harmless on the ground, one
pistol a few feet from where he struggled in his ropes, the other in the
holster at his side.
And there came Judge Thayer, in his capacity as mayor, officious and
radiant, proud and filled with a new feeling of safety and importance,
and took the badge of office from Craddock's breast, in all haste, as if
it were the most important act in this spectacular triumph, this
bloodless victory over a bloody man.