UNCLEAN
Earl Gray came down the street hatless, the big news on his tongue.
Rhetta Thayer, in the door of the _Headlight_ office, where she had
stood in the pain of one crucified while the shots sounded in Peden's
hall, stopped him with a gasped appeal.
Dead. Peden and the gun-slingers he had brought there to kill Morgan;
any number of others who had mixed in the fight; Morgan himself--all
dead, the floor covered with the dead. That was the terrible word that
rolled from Gray's excited tongue. And when she heard it, Rhetta put out
her hands as one blind, held to the door frame a moment while the blood
seemed to drain out of her heart, staring with horrified eyes into the
face of the inconsequential man who had come in such avid eagerness to
tell this awful tale.
People were hastening by in the direction of Peden's, scattered at
first, like the beginning of a retreat, coming then by twos and threes,
presently overflowing the sidewalk, running in the street. Rhetta stood
staring, half insensible, on this outpouring. Riley Caldwell, the young
printer, rushed past her out of the shop, his roached hair like an
Algonquin's standing high above his narrow forehead, his face white as
if washed by death.
Impelled by a desire that was commanding as it was terrifying, moved by
a hope that was only a shred of a raveled dream, Rhetta joined the
moving tide that set toward Peden's door. Dead--Morgan was dead! Because
she had asked him, he had set his hand to this bloody task. She had sent
him to his death in her selfish desire for security, in her shrinking
cowardice, in her fear of riot and blood. And he was dead, the light was
gone out of his eyes, his youth and hope were sacrificed in a cause that
would bring neither glory nor gratitude to illuminate his memory.
She began to run, out in the dusty street where he had marched his
patrol that first night of his bringing peace to Ascalon; to run, her
feet numb, her body numb, only her heart sentient, it seemed, and that
yearning out to him in a great pain of pity and stifling labor of
remorse. It was only a little way, but it seemed heavy and long, impeded
by feet that could not keep pace with her anguish, swift-running to
whisper a tender word.
The lights were bright in Peden's hall, a great crowd leaned and
strained and pushed around its door. There were some who asked her
kindly to go away, others who appealed earnestly against her looking
into the place, as Rhetta pushed her way, panting like an exhausted
swimmer, through the crowd.
Nothing would turn her; appeals were dim as cries in drowning ears.
Gaining the door, she paused a moment, hands pressed to her cheeks, hair
fallen in disorder. Her eyes were big with the horror of her thoughts;
she was breathless as one cast by breakers upon the sand. She looked in
through the open door.
Morgan was standing like a soldier a little way inside the door, his
rifle carried at port arms, denying by the very sternness of his pose
the passage of any foot across that threshold of tragedy. There was
nothing in his bearing of a wounded man. Beyond him a few feet lay the
bodies of the two infamous guards who had been posted at the door to
take his life; along the glistening bar, near its farther end, Peden
stretched with face to the floor, his appealing hands outreaching.
A gambling table had been upset, chairs strewn in disorder about the
floor, when the rabble was cleared out of the place. Only Morgan
remained there with the dead men, like a lone tragedian whose part was
not yet done.
Rhetta looked for one terrifying moment on that scene, its tragic detail
impressed on her senses as a revelation of lightning leaps out of the
blackest night to be remembered for its surrounding terror. And in that
moment Morgan saw her face; the horror, the revulsion, the sickness of
her shocked soul. A moment, a glance, and she was gone. He was alone
amidst the blood that the curse of Ascalon had led his hand to pour out
in such prodigality in that profaned place.
Long after the fearful waste of battle had been cleared from Peden's
floor, and the lights of that hall were put out; long after the most
wakeful householder of Ascalon had sought his bed, and the last horseman
had gone from its hushed streets, Morgan walked in the moonlight,
keeping vigil with his soul. The curse of blood had descended upon him,
and she whose name he could speak only in his heart, had come to look
upon his infamy and flee from before his face.
Time had saved him for this excruciating hour; all his poor adventures,
slow striving, progression upward, had been designed to culminate in the
mockery of this night. Fate had shaped him to his bitter ending, drawing
him on with lure as bright as sunrise. And now, as he walked slowly in
the moonlight, feet encumbered by this tragedy, he felt that the essence
had been wrung out of life. His golden building was come to confusion,
his silver hope would ring its sweet chime in his heart no more. From
that hour she would abhor him, and shrink from his polluted hand.
He resented the subtle indrawing of circumstance that had thrust him in
the way of this revolting thing, that had thrust upon him this infamous
office that carried with it the inexorable curse of blood. Softly,
against the counsel of his own reason, he had been drawn. She who had
stared in horror on the wreckage of that night had inveigled him with
gentle word, with appeal of pleading eye.
This resentment was sharpened by the full understanding of his
justification, both in law and in morals, for the slaying of these
desperate men. Duty that none but a coward and traitor to his oath would
have shunned, had impelled him to that deed. Defense of his life was a
justification that none could deny him. But she had denied him that. She
had fled from the lifting of his face as from a thing unspeakably
unclean.
He could not chide her for it, nor arraign her with one bitter thought.
She had hoped it would be otherwise; her last word had been on her best
hope for him in a place where such hope could have no fruition--that he
would pass untainted by the bloody curse that fell on men in this place.
It could not be.
Because he had taken Seth Craddock's pistol away from him on that first
day, she had believed him capable of the superhuman task of enforcing
order in Ascalon without bloodshed. Sincere as she had been in her
desire to have him assume the duties of peace officer, she had acted
unconsciously as a lure to entangle him to his undoing.
Very well; he would clean up the town for her as she had looked to him
to do, sweep it clear of the last iniquitous gun-slinger, the last
slinking gambler, the last drab. He would turn it over to her clean,
safe for her day or night, no element in it to disturb her repose. At
what further cost of life he must do this, he could not then foresee,
but he resolved that it should be done. Then he would go his way,
leaving his new hopes behind him with his old.
Although it was a melancholy resolution, owing to its closing provision,
it brought him the quiet that a perturbed mind often enjoys after the
formation of a definite plan, no matter for its desperation. Morgan went
to the hotel, where Tom Conboy was still on duty smoking his cob pipe in
a chair tilted back against a post of his portico.
"Well, the light's out up at Peden's," said Conboy, feeling a new and
vast respect for this man who had proved his luck to the satisfaction of
all beholders in Ascalon that night.
"Yes," said Morgan, wearily, pausing at the door.
"They'll never be lit again in this man's town," Conboy went on, "and
I'm one that's glad to see 'em go. Some of these fellers around town was
sayin' tonight that Ascalon will be dead in the shell inside of three
weeks, but I can't see it that way. Settlers'll begin to come now, that
hall of Peden's'll make a good implement store, plenty of room for
thrashin' machines and harvesters. I may have to put up my rates a
little to make up for loss in business till things brighten up, but I'd
have to do it in time, anyhow."
"Yes," said Morgan, as listlessly as before.
"They say you made a stand with that gun of yours tonight that beat
anything a man ever saw--three of 'em down quicker than you could strike
a match! I heard one feller say--man! look at that badge of yours!"
Conboy got up, gaping in amazement. Morgan had stepped into the light
that fell through the open door, passing on his way to bed. The metal
shield that proclaimed his office was cupped as if it had been held
edgewise on an anvil and struck with a hammer. Morgan hastily detached
the badge and put it in his pocket, plainly displeased by the discovery
Conboy had made.
"Bullet hit it, square in the center!" Conboy said. "It was square over
your heart!"
"Keep it under your hat!" Morgan warned, speaking crossly, glowering
darkly on Conboy as he passed.
"No niggers in Ireland," said Conboy, knowingly; "no-o-o niggers in
Ireland!"
Morgan regretted his oversight in leaving the badge in place. He had
intended to remove it, long before. As he went up the complaining stairs
he pressed his hand to the sore spot over his heart where the bullet
almost had driven the badge into his flesh. Pretty sore, but not as sore
as it was deeper within his breast from another wound, not as sore as
that other hurt would be tomorrow, and the heavy years to come.