A SUMMONS AT SUNRISE
Three horses were standing in Stilwell's yard, bridle reins on the
ground, as three horses had stood on the morning that Morgan first found
his tortured way to that hospitable door. In the house the Stilwell
family and Morgan were at breakfast, attended by Violet, who bore on
biscuits and ham to go with the coffee that sent its cheer out through
the open door as if to find a traveler and lead him to refreshment.
Behind the cottonwoods along the river, sunrise was about to break.
"I'm gittin' so I can't wake up of a morning when I sleep in a house,"
Stilwell complained, his broad face radiating humor. "I guess I'll have
to take the blankets ag'in, old lady."
"I guess you can afford to sleep till half-past three in the morning
once in a while," Mrs. Stilwell said complacently. "Why, Mr. Morgan,
that man didn't sleep under a roof once a month the first five or six
years we were on this range! He just laid out like a coyote anywhere
night overtook him, watchin' them cattle like they were children. Now,
what's come of it!"
This last bitter note, ranging back to their recent loss from Texas
fever, took the cheer out of Stilwell's face. A brooding cloud came over
it; his merry chaff was stilled.
"Yes, and Drumm'll pay for them eight hundred head of stock he killed
for us, if I have to trail him to his hole in Texas!" Fred declared.
"Suit or no suit, that man's goin' to pay."
"I don't like to hear you talk that way, honey," his mother chided.
"Suit!" Fred scoffed; "what does that man care about a suit? He'll never
show his head in this country any more, the next drive he makes he'll
load west of here and we'll never know anything about it. There's just
one way to fix a man like him, and I know the receipt that'll cure _his_
hide!"
"If he ever drives another head of stock into this state I'll hear of
it, and I'll attach him. It'll be four or five years before the
railroad's built down into that country, he'll have to drive here or
nowheres. I'll set right here on this range till he comes."
"Did the rain strike any of your range?" Morgan inquired, eager to turn
them away from this gloomy matter of loss and revenge.
"Yes, we got a good soakin' over the biggest part of it. Plenty of water
now, grass jumpin' up like spring. It's the purtiest country, Cal, a man
ever set eyes on after a rain."
"And in the spring," said Mrs. Stilwell, wistfully.
"And when the wild roses bloom along in May," said Violet. "There's no
place in the world as pretty as this country then."
"I believe you," Morgan told them, nodding his head in undivided assent.
"Even dry as it is around Ascalon and that country north, it gets hold
of a man."
"You buy along on the river here somewhere, Cal, and put in a nice
little herd. It won't take you long to make a start, and a good start.
This country ain't begun to see the cattle it will----"
"Somebody comin'," said Violet, running to the door to see, a plate of
hot biscuits in her hand.
"Seems to be in a hurry for this early in the day," Stilwell commented,
listening to the approach of a galloping horse. He was not much
interested; horsemen came and went past that door at all hours of the
day and night, generally in a gallop.
"It's Rhetta!" Violet announced from the door, turning hurriedly to put
the plate of biscuits on the table, where it stood before unheeding
eyes.
"Rhetta?" Mrs. Stilwell repeated, getting up in excitement. "I wonder
what----"
Rhetta was at the door, the dust of her arrival making her indistinct to
those who hurried from the unfinished breakfast to learn the cause of
this precipitous visit. Morgan saw her leaning from the saddle, her
loosely confined hair half falling down.
"Is Mr. Morgan here?" she inquired.
The girl's voice trembled, her breath came so hard Morgan could hear its
suspiration where he stood. It was evident that she labored under a
tremendous strain of anxiety, arising out of a trouble that Morgan was
at no loss to understand. Yet he remained in the background as Stilwell
and Fred crowded to the door.
"Why, Rhetty! what's happened?" Stilwell inquired, hurrying out,
followed by his wife and son. Violet was already beside her perturbed
visitor, looking up into her terror-blanched face.
"Oh, they've come, they've come!" Rhetta gasped.
"Who?" Stilwell asked, mystified, laying hold of her bridle, shaking it
as if to set her senses right. "Who's come, Rhetty?"
"I came for Mr. Morgan!" she panted, as weak, it seemed, as a wounded
bird. "I thought he came here--he had your horse."
"He's here, honey," Mrs. Stilwell told her, consoling her like a hurt
child.
Morgan did not come forward. He stood as he had risen from his chair at
the table, one hand on the cloth, his head bent as if in a travail of
deepest thought. The shaft of tender new sunlight reaching in through
the open door struck his shoulders and breast, leaving his face in the
shadow that well suited the mood darkening over his soul like a storm. A
thousand thoughts rose up and swirled within him, a thousand harsh
charges, a thousand seeds of bitterness. Rhetta, leaning to peer under
the lintel of the low door, could see him there, and she reached out her
hand, appealing without a word.
"He is here, honey," Mrs. Stilwell repeated, assuringly, comfortingly.
"Tell him--tell him--Craddock's come!" Rhetta said.
"Craddock?" said Stilwell, pronouncing the name with inflection of
surprise. "Oh, I thought something awful had happened to somebody." He
turned with the ease of indifference in his manner, to go back and
finish his meal. "Well, didn't you look for him to come back? I knew all
the time he'd come."
Morgan lifted his head. The sun, broken by Rhetta's shadow, brightened
on the floor at his feet, and spread its beam upon his breast like a
golden stole. The old wound on his check bone was a scar now, irregular,
broad from the crude surgery that had bound it but illy. Its dark
disfigurement increased the somber gravity of his face, sunburned and
wind-hardened as any ranger's who rode that prairie waste. From where he
stood Morgan could not see the girl's face, only her restless hand on
the bridle rein, the brown of her riding skirt, the beginning of white
at her waist.
"There ought to be men enough in Ascalon to take care of Craddock,"
Violet said.
"He's not alone, some of those Texas cowboys are with him," Rhetta
explained, her voice firmer, her words quicker. "Mr. Morgan is still
marshal--he gave me his badge, but please tell him I didn't--I forgot to
turn it in with his resignation."
"I don't see that it's Cal's fight this time, Rhetty," Stilwell said.
"He's done enough for them yellow pups over in Ascalon, to be yelped at
and cussed for savin' their dirty hides."
"They're looking for him, they think he's hiding!"
"Well, let 'em look. If they come over here they'll find him--Cal ain't
makin' no secret of where he's at. And they'll find somebody standin'
back to back with him, any time they want to come." Stilwell's
resentment of Ascalon's ingratitude toward his friend was plainer in his
mouth than print.
"They're going to burn the town to drive him out!" Rhetta said, gasping
in the terror that shook her heart.
"I guess it'll be big enough to hold all the people that's in it when
they're through," said Stilwell, unfeelingly.
"Here's his badge," said Rhetta, offering it frantically. "Tell him he's
still marshal!"
"Yes, you can come for him--now!" said Violet, accusingly. "I told
you--you remember now what I told you!"
"O Violet, Violet! If you knew what I've paid for that--if you knew!"
"Not as much as you owe him, if it was the last drop of blood in your
heart!" said Violet. And she turned away, and went and stood by the
door.
"They'll burn the town!" Rhetta moaned. "Oh, isn't anybody going to help
me--won't you call him, Violet?"
"No," said Violet. "He can hear you--he'll come if he wants to--if he's
fool enough to do it again!"
"Violet!" her mother cautioned.
"How many are with him?" Fred inquired.
"Seven or eight--I didn't see them all. Pa's collecting a posse to guard
the bank--they're going to rob it!"
"They're welcome to all I've got in it," Stilwell said. "You better come
in and have a cup of coffee, Rhetty, before----"
"The one they call the Dutchman's there, and Drumm----"
"Drumm?" Fred and his father spoke like a chorus, both of them jumping
to alertness.
"And some others of that gang Mr. Morgan drove out of town. They were
setting the hotel afire when I left!"
Stilwell did not wait for all of it. He was in the house at a jump,
reaching down his guns which hung beside the door. Close after him Fred
came rushing in, snatching his weapons from the buffalo horns on the
wall.
"I'm goin' to git service on that man!" Stilwell said. "Are you goin'
with us, Cal?"
But Cal Morgan did not reply. He went to the bedroom where he had slept,
took up his gun, stood looking at it a moment as if considering
something, snatched his hat from the bedpost and turned back, buckling
his belt. Mrs. Stilwell and Violet were struggling with husband and
brother to restrain them from rushing off to this battle, raising a
turmoil of pleading and protesting at the door.
As Morgan passed Stilwell, who was greatly impeded in his efforts to
buckle on his guns by his wife's clinging arms and passionate pleadings
to remain at home, Fred broke away from his sister and ran for the
kitchen door.
"Let Drumm go--let all of them go--let the cattle go, let everything go!
none of it's worth riskin' your life for!" Stilwell's affectionate good
wife pleaded with him.
"Now, Mother, I'm not goin' to git killed," Morgan heard Stilwell say,
his very assurance calming. But the poor woman, who perhaps had
recollections of past battles and perils which he had gone through,
burst out again, weeping, and clung to him as if she could not let him
go.
Morgan paused a moment at the threshold, as if reconsidering something.
Violet, who had stood leaning her head on her bent arm, weeping that
Fred was rushing to throw his life away, lifted her tearful face,
reached out and touched his arm.
"Must you go?" she asked.
For reply Morgan put out his hand as if to say farewell. She took it,
pressed it a moment to her breast, and ran away, choked on the grief she
could not utter. Morgan stepped out into the sun.
Rhetta Thayer stood at the door, a little aside, as if waiting for him,
as if knowing he would come. She was agitated by the anxious hope that
spoke out of her white face, but restrained by a fear that could not
hide in her wide-straining eyes. She moved almost imperceptibly toward
him, her lips parted as if to speak, but said nothing.
As Morgan lifted his hand to his hat in grave salute, passing on, she
offered him the badge of his office which she had held gripped in her
hand. He took it, inclining his head as in acknowledgment of its safe
keeping through the night, and hastened on to one of the horses that
stood dozing on three legs in the early sun.
As he left her, Rhetta followed a few quick steps, a cry rising in her
heart for him to stay a moment, to spare her one word of forgiveness out
of his grim, sealed lips. But the cry faltered away to a great, stifling
sob, while tears rose hot in her eyes, making him dim in her sight as he
threw the rein over the horse's head, starting the animal out of its
sleep with a little squatting jump. She stood so, stretching out her
hands to him, while he, unbending in his stern answer to the challenge
of duty, unseeing in the hard bitterness of his heart, swung into the
saddle and rode away.
Rhetta groped for her saddle, blind in her tears. Morgan was hidden by
the dust that hung in the quiet morning behind him as she mounted and
followed.
Half a mile or so along the road, Fred passed her, bending low as he
rode, as if his desire left the saddle and carried him ahead of his
horse; a little while, and Stilwell thundered by, leaving her last and
alone on that road leading to what adventures her heart shrunk in her
bosom to contemplate.
Ahead of her the smoke of Ascalon's destruction rose high.