SUNSET
Evening saw the fires of Ascalon subdued and confined. With the falling
of the wind the danger of the disaster spreading to embrace the entire
town decreased almost to safety, although the wary, scorched townsmen
stood watch over the smoldering coals which lay deep where the principal
part of Ascalon lately stood.
Fred Stilwell had been taken to Judge Thayer's house, where his mother
and Violet attended him. The doctor said youth and a clean body would
carry him through. As for Drumm, whose bullet had brought the young man
down, his horse with the black saddle-roll had stood hitched to Judge
Thayer's fence until evening, when the sheriff came with a writ of
attachment in Stilwell's favor and took it away. Drumm's body was lying
on a board in the calaboose, diverted for that dark day in Ascalon's
history into a morgue.
The sheriff reported that the Texas cattleman had carried more than
fifty thousand dollars in currency behind his saddle. That was according
to the custom of the times, and usage of the range, where many a man's
word was as good as his bond, but no man's check was as good as money.
Tom Conboy was already hiring carpenters to rebuild the hotel, his eye
full of the business that would come to his doors when the railroad
shops were running, and the trainmen of the division point were there
to be housed and fed. Dora and Riley had been wandering around town all
afternoon, very much like two pigeons looking for a place to nest.
And so evening found peace in Ascalon, after all its tragedy and pain.
Calvin Morgan and Rhetta Thayer stood at the bank corner at sunset,
looking down the square where the great gap in its front made the scene
unfamiliar. Morgan's disabled hand was bandaged; there was a cross of
surgical tape on his chin, closing a deep cut where some citizen had
tapped him with a revolver in the last fight of that tumultuous day.
Little groups of desolate, disheartened people stood along the line of
hitching racks; dead coals, which the wind had sown as living fire over
the square, littered the white dust. Morgan had taken off his badge of
office, having made a formal resignation to Judge Thayer, mayor of the
town. Nobody had been sworn in to take his place, for, as Judge Thayer
had said, it did not appear as if any further calamity could be left in
store among the misfortunes for that town, except it might be an
earthquake or a cyclone, and a city marshal, even Morgan, could not fend
against them if they were to come.
"You have trampled your place among the thorns," said Rhetta.
"It looks like I've pulled a good deal down with me," he returned,
viewing the seat of fire with a softening of pity in his grave face.
"All that deserves to rise will rise again," she said in confidence.
"It's a good thing it burned--it's purged of its old shame and old
monuments of corruption. I'm glad it's gone."
There was a quiet over the place, as if the heart of turbulence had been
broken and its spirit had taken flight. In the southwest, in the faces
of the two watchers at the margin of this ruin, a vast dark cloud stood
like a landfall rising in the mariner's eye out of the sea. It had been
visible since four o'clock, seeming to hesitate as if nature intended
again to deny this parched and suffering land the consolation of rain.
Now it was rising, already it had overspread the sunset glow, casting a
cool shadow full of promise over the thirsting prairie wastes.
"It will rain this time," Rhetta prophesied. "It always comes up slowly
that way when it rains a long time."
"A rain will work wonders in this country," he said, his face lifted to
the promise of the cloud.
"And wisdom and faith will do more," she told him, her voice tender and
low.
"And love," said he, voice solemn as a prophet's, yet gentle as a
dove's.
"And love," she whispered, the wind, springing like an inspiration
before the rain, lifting her shadowy hair.
Joe Lynch came driving into the stricken square down the road beside
them, bringing a load of bones.
"Had to burn the town to fetch a rain, huh?" said Joe, his ghostly dry
old face tilted to catch the savor of the wind. So saying, he drove on,
and paused not in his labor of off-bearing the waste of failure that
must be cleared for the new labor of wisdom, faith, and love.
* * * * *
Thirty years will do for a cottonwood what two centuries will do for an
oak. Thirty years had built the cottonwoods of great girth, and lifted
them in dignity high above the roof of Calvin Morgan's white farmhouse,
his great barns and granaries. Elm trees, bringing their blessings of
wide-spreading branch more slowly, led down a broad avenue to the white
manse with its Ionian portico. Over the acres of smooth, luxuriant green
lawn, the long shadows of closing day reached like the yearning of men's
unfinished dreams.
Before the house a broad roadway, smooth as a city boulevard, ran
straight to the bright, clean, populous city where Ascalon, with its
forgotten shame and tragedies, once stood. And far and away, over the
swell of gentle ridge, into the dip of gracious valley, spread the
benediction of growing wheat. Wisdom and faith and love had worked their
miracle. This land had become the nation's granary; it was a land
redeemed.
* * * * *
Under the giant cottonwoods, gray-green of leaf as the desert grasses
were gray-green in the old cattle days, the brown walls, the low roof,
of a sod house stood, the lawn clipped smooth around its humble door,
lilac clumps green beside its walls, sweet honeysuckle clambering over
its little porch. And there came, in the tender last beams of the
setting sun, a man and woman to its door.
Not old, not bent, not gnarled by the rack of blind-groping, undirected
toil, for such of the chosen out of nature's nobility are never old.
Hair once dark as woodland shadows was shot with the sunlight of many
years; hair once bright as the mica tossed by joyous waves upon a sunny
beach was whitened now by the unmelting snows of winters numbered
swiftly in the brief calendar of man. But shoulders were unbent by the
burdens which they had borne joyously, and their feet went quickly as
lovers' to a tryst.
This little sod house stood with all its old-time furnishings, like a
shrine, and on this day, which seemed to be an anniversary, it had been
brightened with vases of flowers. This man and this woman, not old,
indeed, entered and stood within its door, where the light was dimming
through the little window high in the thick wall. The man crossed the
room, and stood where a belt with holsters hung upon the wall. She drew
near him, and lifted his great hand, and nestled it against her cheek.
"Old Seth Craddock's guns," he said, musing as on a recurring memory.
"His guns!" she murmured, drawing closer into the shadow of his
strength.
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Transcriber's Notes:
1. The author's consistent use of a lower-case letter following an
exclamation point or a question mark inside quoted dialect has
been retained.
2. Punctuation has been changed to contemporary standards.
3. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.