Collected Works of Zane Grey

by Zane Grey

  It was a Saturday afternoon — a half-holiday for the bank. Huett had hoped to bank his cash upon receipt of it. Nevertheless nothing could concern him this day. On the sunny sidewalk he waited the Government man’s pleasure. Holbert and Doyle were with him, loyal, proud, excited. They both took some share of credit for Huett’s dramatic finish with the cattle.

  “Al, did I ever tell you about Abe’s shooting at the training camp?” asked Logan, fully aware of other listeners.

  “Not that I recollect,” replied Al.

  “Wal, it was sure great...The first day when Abe was marched out on the shooting range with a lot of green recruits a red-headed cuss of a sergeant shoved Abe up to the mark, and handed him a thirty Government rifle: ‘Hey, long legs, do you know one end of this from the other?’...Abe said he reckoned he did. ‘All right, then take your turn. Shoot,’ ordered the drill sergeant. ‘What at?’ asked Abe. ‘At the target, you dumb head!’...Then Abe saw a lot of white targets with black centre and rings. Fifty yards, a hundred, two hundred, and so on up to a thousand. Abe asked which one he should shoot at. ‘Rooky, look here. Can you shoot?’ yelled the sergeant, and Abe modestly replied that he reckoned he could not shoot very well. ‘But I wouldn’t want to shoot at this first target,’ added Abe...Then he threw up the rifle. Gosh! It always was wonderful to see Abe get set and aim. When he was a little boy he took to guns...Well, Abe took five shots at the thousand-yard target, off hand. The flag man waved back three bull’s-eyes and two shots inside the first circle...Ha! That red-headed sergeant got red in the face. ‘Hell, you said you couldn’t shoot.’ And Abe kind of kidded him cool and easy: ‘my ole man says I can’t.’”

  Mitchell finally called Huett into his office. Another official in khaki sat on the other side of a table containing a few papers and two large, neatly wrapped packages, identical in size and appearance.

  “Huett, my man’s count was thirty thousand nine hundred,” began Mitchell, cold of voice and mien.

  “All right. That’s near enough.”

  “Sign here,” went on the buyer, indicating a dotted line on an official-looking document. Huett bent over the table, and taking the proffered pen wrote his name with a fine flourish. “Witness his signature, Lieutenant.”

  When the official had done this, Mitchell folded the document and put it in his pocket. Then he handed one of the packages to Huett.

  “Here’s your money,” he said, brusquely, and shoved it into Huett’s hands as if it burned him. “I don’t need to tell an old westerner like you that the town’s full of bums, redskins, greasers...Good day.”

  Huett found himself out in the street, light-headed with a heavy, compellingly pregnant parcel under his arm.

  “Let’s have a drink,” he said, gaily to Holbert and Doyle.

  They went into the corner saloon and sat at a table. Huett placed his parcel between his knees out of sight. They drank. Huett would not hear of his friend’s returning the compliment — not on that day of days. Then he ordered another drink. Scarcely had they set down their glasses when Mitchell, accompanied by a stranger in civilian garb, entered the saloon. Mitchell espied Huett and his friends, and with a direct gesture and an elated laugh he drew the attention of his companion to them. They turned abruptly on their heels and went out.

  “Them Eastern army men are queer hombres,” remarked Holbert.

  “Wal, if you ask me,” drawled the shrewd Doyle, “that swelled-up galoot got took in by a plain westerner and snubbed by his daughter.”

  “Let’s have another drink,” said Huett, chuckling with a deep grin.

  Holbert and Doyle were the first to make a move. One on each side of Huett, they steered him through the crowd. The short fall day had almost closed. Cold wind slipped down from the dark peaks and the dust swirled. Huett’s comrades made sure no one was following them. They left him at the gate.

  “Wal, old-timer, cache that little windfall to-night and sleep with one eye open,” advised Doyle.

  “An’ have yore guns layin’ around,” added Holbert. “Some hombre might have seen you comin’ out of that office.”

  Logan went in and locked the door. The sitting-room was cheerful with lighted lamp and fire. A smell of ham and coffee was wafted in from the kitchen. Lucinda appeared wiping her hands on her apron and Barbara ran from her room.

  “Wal, Bab, have you seen your soldier admirer to-day?” asked Logan, cheerily, as he laid the parcel on the table.

  “Have I? Dad, not half an hour ago he sneered at me and laughed in my face. I didn’t know what to make of it.’

  “Luce, pull down the blinds — and shut the kitchen door...I’ve something to show you.”

  His big hands shook as he stripped the tight rubber bands from the heavy parcel. “Thirty thousand nine hundred at twenty-eight!” he whispered tensely.

  “Oh Dad — hurry...I feel...”

  Logan rasped the stiff paper covers flat. A neat pile of cut newspaper and tinfoil pieces spread out over the table.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  IT WAS DUSK when Huett stamped out of the cottage, deaf to Lucinda’s entreaties and Barbara’s cries, his big fist tight about a ragged wad of bogus paper money, his mind blocked at what he thought could be only a stupendous joke.

  Yet his breast seemed to be crushed with a paralysing fear. The night watchman was lighting the street lamps. Huett strode on faster. He found Mitchell’s office empty and vacated. Then he remembered that the cattle-buyer and his associate in the saloon had been carrying hand baggage. They were leaving Flagg. Then on the moment he heard a distant shrill whistle of the East-bound train. Whereupon Huett, who had not run for years, broke into a dash for the station. He arrived there strangled for breath, his great chest heaving like a bellows. In the waiting-room he found a woman at the ticket window. He stamped through to the platform.

  The usual loungers were there, and hurrying station-men, and waiting passengers. Down the railroad track shone the headlight of the train entering Flagg. Huett rushed on. At last, under one of the yellow street lamps, he espied Mitchell, the lieutenant who had been in the office, and two other men, and several young women. Huett broke into the circle to confront Mitchell.

  “You — you...What do you mean?” exploded Huett, in a husky almost incoherent voice, and he extended the big fist still clutching the cut papers.

  “Hello, Huett,” replied the Government man, in cool irritation. “No time for you. I’m saying good-bye to friends.”

  “By God — you’ve time — for me!...That package you — gave me...Cut newspaper and tin foil...Not money!...Damn poor joke.”

  “Man, you must be drunk,” flashed Mitchell, his piercing eyes like cold steel.

  “Drunk?...Hellsfire!” thundered Huett. “You gave me paper — instead of cash...Look!”

  Huett opened his huge fist to disclose pieces of shiny tin foil and crumpled cuts of paper. Some of them fell to the platform.

  “You’re either drunk or crazy,” replied Mitchell, sharply. “I paid you in cash. I have your receipt. Lieutenant Caddell witnessed your signature. We warned you to be careful with all that cash. But you didn’t heed. We saw you drinking in that dive.”

  Huett stood transfixed and mute, his spread hand still out-held, the fingers shaking, while Mitchell looked to his Lieutenant for confirmation of his claims.

  “That’s right, Huett,” declared Mitchell’s companion, crisply. “I saw Mr. Mitchell pay you cash. I saw you take the money and sign the receipt, and I witnessed it. Later I understand you were drinking with your cronies in the worst joint in town. But what happened to you after, you left our office with the money is no concern of ours. That’s all.”

  “Mistake — wrong package!” gasped Huett, suffocatingly.

  Caddell made a gesture of scornful dismissal. Mitchell turned to the black-eyed, staring girl who held his arm. The train rumbled into the station, with puffing engine and grinding wheels. Baggage and mail-cars passed on down the platform. Then with a jerk the tr
ain stopped.

  Huett’s mind cleared. A terrible flash of truth swept away the fog of stupefaction. This man had cheated him. Like an imbecile he had walked into a hellishly clever trap inspired by his demand for payment in cash.

  This swift deduction gave way to a slow metamorphosis in Huett’s feeling. Violent release of dammed-up blood forced spasmodic expansion and movement of muscles. As he stood there, with that great hand outstretched, the quivering, calloused fingers like a claw, he felt the rise of a maelstrom of fury. In all his life Huett had never been subjected to a full storm of passion. It transformed him. An expulsion of breath whistled through his teeth. His sight filmed with a tinge of red, colouring the pretty faces of the young women, the paling visage of Caddell, and the averted one of Mitchell. Disjointed thoughts blocked Huett’s mind...to rend — to beat down these baffling foes — to kill — to tear from them his money, which surely they had.

  He shut that spread hand into a ponderous fist. His bellow brought Mitchell around just in time to meet a blow like that from a battering-ram. Blood squirted as Mitchell went down, dragging two of the screaming girls with him. Caddell shouted lustily for help, and leaped to avoid Huett’s fist. The other two men seized Huett from behind. He threw them sprawling and lunged upon the prostrate Mitchell, to half strip him of clothing. Then a crowd of men dragged Huett off his victim, back from the platform to the road. At length Huett stopped surging like a lassoed bull, and stood quiet in the grip of many hands, to see Mitchell carried on the train and his baggage thrown on after him. Caddell stood on the car-step, trying to rid himself of the clinging, hysterical young women. The train started with a jerk, gathered momentum and passed on out of the station. Then the excitement of the crowd centred upon, Huett.

  “Let go of me,” he rumbled.

  “All right, men,” called the sheriff. “Huett, you don’t ‘pear to be drunk. What’n hell was the matter? Who was you tryin’ to kill? I didn’t get here in time to see.”

  “Mitchell, the Government cattle-buyer. I sold him thirty thousand and nine hundred head...He was to pay me in cash...Gave me a package. Got my receipt...I didn’t open that package at once. Had some drinks with Doyle and Holbert...When I got home — I opened it — found I’d been swindled...My cash was cut newspaper and tin foil!”

  “For cripe’s sake!” ejaculated the sheriff, while the circle of men gave vent to like exclamations. “Huett, are you out of your haid?”

  “I was there, for a little...I’d have killed him. Glad you pulled me off.”

  “You look queer, but I guess you’re not loco. Huett, can you prove what you say? I’ll wire Slocum at Holbrook and have him stop that train an’ arrest Mitchell. We mustn’t let him get out of the State.”

  “Prove it?” laboured Huett, ponderingly. “I’ve that package — and all the bogus money — except the handful I grabbed.”

  “But somebody else who was on to this cash pay-off might have switched packages on you...Let’s go see Mr. Little. This deal has a damn queer look, but it’s too big for me to buck alone.”

  Huett passed through the murmuring crowd with the sheriff and up town towards where the lawyer lived. They found him at supper. This time Huett told the story of the hoax more lucidly and in detail. Little’s black eyes snapped.

  “Wire Holbrook to stop that train and hold both men,” he ordered.

  “I’ll do that pronto,” replied the sheriff and hurried away. “Huett, this story of yours confirms suspicions I got to-day,” went on the lawyer. “Mitchell has been buying horses and cattle for the Government. Charteris, who did some of his banking, told me Mitchell paid so much for stock and padded his report to the Government. If we can stop him we’ll sure make him sweat. But this is war-time, Huett, rampant with greed, graft, crookedness. Mitchell has pulled a slick one on you. Good God, man, why did you demand cash?”

  “I didn’t want to wait for my money. Charteris said a Government draft would be good, but there wasn’t that much cash in his bank. He’d have to wait for the money.”

  “Eight hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars! Whew! A fortune! Huett, I’m damned sorry, while I could cuss you for being such a fool. Certainly we ought to get that money. The case is flagrant enough. But these times!...Your drinking with Al and Holbert would hold against you. It’s serious...Go home now. Don’t make the mistake of drinking any more. If we can get Mitchell back here to-morrow, we want you sober.”

  Huett went home in a daze. Little’s evident concern put him right back where he had been before he was sure of the trick. But his consciousness would not harbour any doubt of his securing payment for his cattle. He told Lucinda and Barbara what had transpired at the railroad station. Lucinda wept. “I never — thought — we’d get all — that money,” she said. But Barbara reacted differently. “You bet your life we’ll get it,” she cried, hotly, and flared into a passionate denunciation of Mitchell.

  Huett paced the floor for hours, went out into the night to plod up and down the walk, and when at last he went to bed, it was not to sleep. Morning came, cold and drab, with wind moaning in the trees presaging winter. Huett built the fires. The women arose to get breakfast. He forced down a little food and a drink of coffee, then went down town.

  That day Huett was to learn that the Holbrook officers had flagged the train designated, but Mitchell could not be found aboard. Lawyer Little took this news with grave disquiet.

  “Why did you let the man get on that train?” he demanded.

  “Hell! I knocked him flat. I had his clothes half torn off when they dragged me away. If I’d been packing a gun I’d have shot him. And that’d have been better.”

  “Yes, it would. The man’s a crook, and if we had him here, dead or alive, we could prove it...Now we’ll have to resort to the slow offices of the law.”

  Impatient days and weeks of waiting destined Huett to realize the law’s delay. But Mr. Little was nothing if not energetic and persistent in his efforts to get some court action. In this he laboured in vain, so far as Flagg was concerned. Then he went to Prescott, the capital, in Huett’s interest, and finally got the State congressman at Washington interested in the case.

  Meanwhile Flagg settled down and holed-in, as the old-timers called it, to a real Arizona winter at high altitude. Huett spent most of his daylight hours chopping wood, and the rest sitting before a warm fire. He received some meagre comfort out of this, as it brought back so much of his life that had been spent gazing into the heart of a log fire. When he spread his broad hands to the heat, something soothing and quieting happened to him. But he never enjoyed his strong-smelling black pipe after this loss, and finally ceased smoking altogether.

  The war went on, now of secondary interest to Huett. He had three sons at the front, and that was doing more than his share towards whipping Germany. His whole thought was taken up by this treachery of the Government cattle-buyer and the recovery of his money. When Barbara received a letter — and she haunted the post-office — Huett would lift out of his gloom to listen to her reading it. This letter would be from Abe, and it would be most exasperatingly censored and cut. Huett always cursed at this. “Since I’ve got three boys over there, why the hell can’t I hear what they’re doing? I declare I’m getting queer notions about this Government.”

  Lucinda’s letters would be from George and Grant, and they came regularly once or twice a month. If it were needed, those epistles always spurred Huett’s women-folk to greater efforts in the war relief work. They were not needed to acquaint Lucinda and Barbara with the havoc the war was doing to American boys. Lucinda grew sombre and calm. Barbara became a pale ghost of her old self, with haunted eyes and nerves at high tension.

  Huett did not give up. All this might have made more impression upon him but for his obsession with what the Government owed him. Thus far in his life of vicissitudes he had not yet been beaten down by adversity. He kept waiting, hoping, fighting on.

  Late in January his lawyer received an important letter from Washin
gton. Through the Arizona congressman the matter of a purchase of one Logan Huett’s cattle had been thoroughly investigated. The sum of money for cattle had been paid in cash by the Government buyer, Mitchell, and that transfer of cash, and the signature of the seller, had been witnessed by Lieutenant Caddell. The receipt was in the Government’s hands, along with information that said Logan Huett was addicted to the bottle and questionably associated.

  “I feared it;” declared Little, hoarsely, white of face. “They’ve got us nailed. Only one chance in a million, and that is to carry the case to Washington. But I can’t give up my work here. And, Logan, you can’t afford a trial there. With the U.S. Government at war! My God! It’d be worse than folly.”

  “All the same, I’ll go,” declared Huett, and bidding Little write out all suggestions as to how he should proceed, he went home to tell Lucinda and Barbara. His wife thought it a forlorn hope. “If we were only back at Sycamore!” she exclaimed. But Barbara was keen to have him go and begged to be taken along. “Mother, you can forward Abe’s letters. Oh, Dad, take me!” she cried.

  “No, I reckon you’d better stay here with Maw,” replied Huett, ponderingly.

  “Barbara, have you forgotten that you’re with child?” queried Lucinda, in amazement.

  “Oh! I had forgotten,” replied Barbara, her white face flaming scarlet. “I’m ashamed...this war has almost driven me mad.”

  So it came about that Logan Huett went to Washington, D.C.

  As a young man Huett had been to Chicago, and at that period he had lived in Kansas City. But Washington was a magnificent city, the Nation capital, and at this time of the war it struck Huett as being bedlam.

  He forgot what he had come for, and when he remembered he realized sickeningly that his hope was no more than a drop of rain in a storm. The city’ was thronged with civilians, soldiers, and strangers of many nations. A ceaseless stream of automobiles passed up and down t the streets. Huett came to a dozen huge hotels before he found one that he thought of entering. Having secured a room, he went out again, and before he knew what was happening he had been shoved aboard a sight-seeing bus.