THE CURSE OF BLOOD
Sensitive as a barometer to every variation, every shading, in public
sentiment and sympathy, Morgan patroled the town nightly until the
streets were deserted. Night by night he felt, rather than saw, the
growing insolence of the pale feeders on the profits of vice, the
confidence in some approaching triumph gleaming in their furtive eyes.
None of the principals, few of the attendant vultures, had left Ascalon.
The sheriff had returned from his excursion after cattle thieves, and,
contrary to the expectation of anybody, had brought one lean and hungry,
hound-faced man with him and locked him up in jail.
But the sheriff was taking no part in the new city marshal's campaign in
the town, certainly not to help him. If he worked against him in the way
his fat, big-jowled face proclaimed that it was his habit to work, no
evidence of it was in his manner when he met Morgan. He was a friendly,
puffy-handed man, loud in his hail and farewell to the riders who came
in from the far-off cow camps to see for themselves this wide-heralded
reformation of the godless town of Ascalon.
These visitors, lately food for the mills of the place, walked about as
curiously as fowls liberated in a strange yard after long confinement in
a coop. They looked with uncomprehending eyes on the closed doors of
Peden's famous temple of excesses; they turned respectful eyes on Morgan
as he passed them in his silent, determined rounds. And presently, after
meeting the white-shirted, coatless dealers, lookout men, _macquereaux_,
they began to have a knowing look, an air of expectant hilarity. After a
little they usually mounted and rode away, laughing among themselves
like men who carried cheerful tidings to sow upon the way.
In that manner Ascalon remained closed five nights, nobody contesting
the authority of the new marshal, not a shot fired in the streets. On
the afternoon of the sixth day an unusual tide of visitors began to set
in to this railroad port of Ascalon. By sundown the hitching rack around
the square was packed with horses; Dora Conboy told Morgan she never had
waited on so many people before in her hotel experience.
At dusk Morgan brought his horse from the livery stable, mounted with
his rifle under the crook of his knee. At nine o'clock Peden threw open
his doors, the small luminaries which led a dim existence in his
effulgence following suit, all according to their preconcerted plan.
There was a shout and a break of wild laughter, a scramble for the long
bar with its five attendants working with both hands; a scrape of
fiddles and a squall of brass; a squeaking of painted and bedizened
drabs, who capered and frisked like mice after their long inactivity.
And on the inflow of custom and the uprising of jubilant mirth, Peden
turned his quick, crafty eyes as he stood at the head of the bar to
welcome back to his doors this golden stream.
Close within Peden's wide door, one on either hand, two vigilant
strangers stood, each belted with two revolvers, each keeping a hand
near his weapons. One of these was a small, thin-faced white rat of a
man; the other tall, lean, leathery; burned by sun, roughened by
weather. A shoot from the tree that produced Seth Craddock he might have
been, solemn like him, and grim.
Dell Hutton, county treasurer, cigar planted so far to one corner of his
wide thin mouth that wrinkles gathered about it like the leathery folds
of an old man's skin, came to Peden where he stood at the bar.
"All's set for him," he said, drawing his eyes small as he peered around
through the fast-thickening smoke.
"Let him come!" said Peden, watching the door with expectant, vindictive
eyes.
The news of Peden's defiance swept over the town like a taint on the
wind. Not only that Peden had opened his doors to the long-thirsting
crowd gathered by the advertised news of a big show for that night, but
that he had posted two imported gun-fighters inside his hall with
instructions to shoot the city marshal if he attempted to interfere.
With the spread of this news men began to gather in front of Peden's to
see what the city marshal was going to do, how he would accept this
defiance, if he meant to accept it, and what the result to him would be.
Judge Thayer came down to the square without his alpaca coat, his
perturbation was so great, looking for Morgan, talking of swearing in a
large number of deputies to uphold the law.
This was received coldly by the men of Ascalon. Upholding the law was
the city marshal's business, they said. If he couldn't do it alone, let
the law drag; let it fall underfoot, where it seemed the best place for
it in that town, anyhow. So Judge Thayer went on, looking around the
square for Morgan, not finding him, nor anybody who had seen him within
the last half hour.
Rhetta was working late in the _Headlight_ office, preparing for the
weekly issue of the paper. This disquieting news had come in at her door
like the wave of a flood. She had no thought of work from that moment,
only to stand at the door listening for the dreaded sound of shooting
from the direction of Peden's hall.
Judge Thayer found her standing in the door when he completed his search
around the square, his heart falling lower at every step.
"He's gone! Morgan's deserted us!" he said.
"Gone!" she repeated in high scorn. "He'll be the last to go."
"I can't find him anywhere--I've hunted all over town. Nobody has seen
him. I tell you, Rhetta, he's gone."
"I wish to heaven he would go! What right have we got to ask him to give
his life to stop the mean, miserable squabbles of this suburb of hell!"
"I think you'd better run along home now--Riley will go with you. Why,
child, you're cold!"
He drew her into the office, urging her to put on her bonnet and go.
"I'll stay here and see it out," she said. "Oh, if he would go, if he
would go! But he'll never go."
She threw herself into the chair beside her littered desk, hands
clenched, face white as if she bore a mortal pain, only to leap up again
in a moment, run to the door, and listen as if she sought a voice out of
the riotous sound.
Judge Thayer had none of this poignant concern for Morgan's welfare. He
was not a little nettled over his failure to find the marshal, and that
officer's apparent shunning of duty in face of this mocking challenge to
his authority.
"Why, Rhetta, you wanted him to take the office, you urged him to," he
reminded her. "I don't understand this sudden concern for the man's
safety in disregard of his oath and duty, this--this--unaccountable----"
"I didn't know him then--I didn't _know_ him!" she said, in piteous low
moan.
Judge Thayer looked at her with a sudden sharp turning of the head, as
if her words had expressed something beyond their apparent meaning. He
came slowly to the door, where he stood beside her a little while in
silence, hand upon her shoulder tenderly.
"I'll look around again," he said, "and come back in a little while."
Meanwhile, in Peden's place the celebrants at the altar of alcohol were
rejoicing in this triumph of personal liberty. Where was this man-eating
city marshal? What had become of that knock-kneed horse wrangler from
Bitter Creek they had heard so much about? They drank fiery toasts to
his confusion, they challenged him in the profane emphasis of scorn.
Upon what was his fame based? they wanted to be told. The mere
corraling of certain stupid drunk men; the lucky throw of a rope. _He_
never had killed a man!
With the mounting of their hastily swilled liquor the hilarious patrons
of Peden's hall became more contemptuous of the city marshal. His
apparent avoidance of trouble, his unaccountable absence, his failure to
step up and meet this challenge from Peden, became a grievance against
him in their inflamed heads.
They had counted on him to make some kind of a bluff, to add something
either of tragedy or comedy to this big show. Now he was hiding out, and
they resented it in the proper spirit of men deprived of their rights.
They began to talk of going out to find him, of dragging him from his
hole and starting a noise behind him that would scare him out of the
country.
Peden encouraged this growing notion. If Morgan wouldn't bring his show
there, go after him and make him stand on his hind legs like a dog.
After a few more drinks, after a dance, after another stake on the
all-devouring tables of chance. They turned to these diversions in the
zest of long abstinence, in the redundant vitality of youth, mocking all
restraint, insolent of any reckoning of circumstance or time.
Peden distended with satisfaction to see the free spending, the free
flinging of money into his games. A little virtuous recess seemed to be
profitable; it was like giving a horse a rest. His two guards waited at
the door, his lookout at the faro table swept the hall from his high
chair with eyes keen to mark any hostile invasion. Morgan never could
come six feet inside his door.
Well satisfied with himself and the beginning of that night's business,
exceedingly comfortable in the thought that this defiance of the law
would bring a newer and wider notoriety to himself and the town of which
he was the spirit, Peden sauntered among the boisterous merrymakers on
his floor.
Dancers were worming and shuffling in close embrace, couples breaking
out of the whirl now and then to rush to the bar; players stood deep
around the tables; men reached over each other's shoulders to take their
drinks from the bar. All was haste and hilarity, all a crowding of
pleasure with hard-pursuing feet, a snatching at the elusive thing with
rough boisterous hands, with loud laughter, with wild yells.
Pleasure, indeed, seemed on the flight before these coarse revelers, who
pursued it blindfold down the steeps of destruction unaware.
Peden shouldered his way through the throng toward the farther end of
the long bar, nodding here with a friendly smile, stopping now and then
to shake hands with some specially favored patron, throwing commands
among his female entertainers from his cold, hard, soulless eyes as he
passed along.
And in that sociable progression down his thronging hall, ten feet from
the farther end of his famous bar, Peden came face to face with Morgan,
as grim as judgment among the crowd of wastrels and women of poisoned
lips, who fell back in breathless silence to let him pass.
Morgan was carrying his rifle; his pistol hung at his side. The big
shield of office once worn by Seth Craddock was pinned on the pocket of
his shirt; his broad-brimmed hat threw a shadow over his stern face.
Peden stopped with a little start of withdrawal at sight of Morgan,
surprised out of his poise, chilled, perhaps, at the thought of the long
pistol shot between this unexpected visitor and the hired killers at his
front door, the way between them blocked by a hundred revelers.
So, this was the cunning of this range wolf, to come in at his back door
and fall upon him in surprise! Peden's resentment rose in that second of
reflection with the dull fire that spread in his dark face. He flung his
hand to his revolver, throwing aside the skirt of his long coat.
"Let your gun stay where it is," Morgan quietly advised him. "Get these
people out of here, and close this place."
"Show me your authority!" Peden demanded, scouting for a moment of
precious time.
The musicians in the little orchestra pit behind Morgan ceased playing
on a broken note, the shuffle of dancing feet stopped short. Up the long
bar the loud hilarity quieted; across the hall the clash of pool balls
cut sharply into the sudden stillness. As quickly as wind makes a rift
in smoke the revelers fell away from Morgan and Peden, leaving a fairway
for the shooting they expected to begin at the door. Peden stood as he
had stopped, hand upon his gun.
Morgan stepped up to him in one long, quick stride, rifle muzzle close
against Peden's broad white shirt front. In that second of hesitant
delay, that breath of portentous bluff, Morgan had read Peden to the
roots. A man who had it in him to shoot did not stop at anybody's word
when he was that far along the way.
"Clear this place and lock it up!" Morgan repeated.
The temperature of the crowded hall seemed to fall forty degrees in the
second or two Morgan stood pushing his rifle against Peden's breastbone.
Those who had talked with loud boasts, picturesque threats, high-pitched
laughter, of going out to find this man but a little while before, were
silent now and cold around the gills as fish.
Morgan was watching the two men at the front door while he held Peden up
those few seconds. He knew there was no use in disarming Peden, to turn
him loose where he could get fifty guns in the next two seconds if he
wanted them. He believed, in truth, there was not much to fear from this
fellow, who depended on his hired retainers to do his killing for him.
So, when Peden, watching Morgan calculatively, shifted a little to get
himself out of line so he would not stand a barrier between his
gun-slingers and their target and longer block the opening of operations
to clear the hall of this upstart, Morgan let him go. Then, with a
sudden bound, Peden leaped across into the crowd.
A moment of strained waiting, quiet as the empty night, Morgan standing
out a fair target for any man who had the nerve to pull a gun. Then a
stampede in more of sudden fear than caution by those lined up along
the bar, and the two hired killers at the front of the house began to
shoot.
Morgan pitched back on his heels as if mortally hit, staggered, thrust
one foot out to stay his fall. He stood bracing himself in that manner
with out-thrust foot, shooting from the hip.
Three shots he fired, the roar of his rifle loud above the lighter sound
of the revolvers. With the third shot Morgan raised his gun. In the
smoke that was settling to the floor the taller of the gunmen lay
stretched upon his face. The other, arms rigidly at his sides, held a
little way from his body, head drooping to his chest, turned dizzily two
or three times, spinning swiftly in his dance of death, gave at the
knees, settled down gently in a strange, huddled heap.
Dead. Both of them dead. The work of one swift moment when the blood
curse fell on this new, quick-handed marshal of Ascalon.
There was a choking scream, and a woman's cry. "Look out! look out!"
Peden, on the fringe of a crowd of shrinking, great-eyed women, ghastly
in the painted mockery of their fear, fired as Morgan turned. Morgan
blessed the poor creature who was woman enough in her debauched heart to
cry out that warning, as the breath of Peden's bullet brushed his face.
Morgan could not defend himself against this assault, for the coward
stood with one shoulder still in the huddling knot of women, and fired
again. Morgan dropped to the floor, prone on his face as the dead man
behind him.
Peden came one cautious step from his shelter, leaning far over to see,
a smile of triumph baring his gleaming teeth; another step, while the
crowd broke the stifling quiet with shifted feet. Morgan, quick as a
serpent strikes, raised to his elbow and fired.
Morgan had one clear look at Peden's face as he threw his arms high and
fell. Surprise, which death, swift in its coming had not yet overtaken,
bulged out of his eyes. Surprise: no other emotion expressed in that
last look upon this life. And Peden lay dead upon his own floor, his hat
fallen aside, his arms stretched far beyond his head, his white cuffs
pulled out from his black coat sleeves, as if he appealed for the mercy
that was not ever for man or woman in his own cold heart.