War Comes to the Big Bend

by Zane Grey

  Most of the stores were open and well filled with men, but to Kurt’s sharp eyes there appeared to be much more gossip going on than business. The town was not as slow and quiet as was usual with Big Bend towns. He listened for war talk, and heard none. Two out of every three men who spoke in his hearing did not use the English language. Kurt went into the office of the first hotel he found. There was no one present. He glanced at an old register lying on the desk. No guests had registered for several days.

  Then Kurt went out and accosted a man leaning against a hitching rail. “What’s going on in this town?”

  The man stood rather indistinctly in the uncertain light. Kurt, however, made out his eyes and they were regarding him suspiciously. “Nothin’ onusual,” was the reply.

  “Has harvesting begun in these parts?”

  “Some barley cut, but no wheat. Next week, I reckon.”

  “How’s the wheat?”

  “Some bad an’ some good.”

  “Is this town a headquarters for the IWW?”

  “No. But there’s a big camp of IWWs near here. Reckon you’re one of them union fellers?”

  “I am not,” declared Kurt bluntly.

  “Reckon you sure look like one, with thet gun under your coat.”

  “Are you going to hire IWW men?” asked Kurt, ignoring the other’s observation.

  “I’m only a farmhand,” was the sullen reply. “An’ I tell you I won’t join no IWW.”

  Kurt spared himself a moment to give this fellow a few strong proofs of the fact that any farmhand was wise to take such a stand against the labor organization. Leaving the fellow gaping and staring after him, Kurt crossed the street to enter another hotel. It was more pretentious than the first, with a large, well-lighted office. There were loungers at the tables. Kurt walked to the desk. A man leaned upon his elbows. He asked Kurt if he wanted a room. This man, evidently the proprietor, was a German, though he spoke English.

  “I’m not sure,” replied Kurt. “Will you let me look at the register?”

  The man shoved the book around. Kurt did not find the name he sought.

  “My father, Chris Dorn, is in town. Can you tell me where I’ll find him?”

  “So you’re young Dorn,” replied the other with instant change to friendliness. “I’ve heard of you. Yes, the old man is here. He made a big wheat deal today. He’s eating his supper.”

  Kurt stepped to the door indicated, and, looking into the dining room, he at once espied his father’s huge head with its shock of gray hair. He appeared to be in earnest colloquy with a man whose bulk matched his own. Kurt hesitated, and finally went back to the desk.

  “Who’s the big man with my father?” he asked.

  “He is a big man, both ways. Don’t you know him?” rejoined the proprietor in a lower voice.

  “I’m not sure,” answered Kurt. The lowered tone had a significance that decided Kurt to admit nothing.

  “That’s Neuman from Walla Walla, one of the biggest wheat men in Washington.”

  Kurt repressed a whistle of surprise. Neuman was Anderson’s only rival in the great, fertile valley. What were Neuman and Chris Dorn doing with their heads together?

  “I thought he was Neuman,” replied Kurt, feeling his way. “Is he in on the big deal with father?”

  “Which one?” queried the proprietor, with shrewd eyes, taking Kurt’s measure. “You’re in on both, of course?”

  “Sure. I mean the wheat sale, not the IWW deal,” replied Kurt. He hazarded a guess with that mention of the IWW. No sooner had the words passed his lips than he divined he was on the track of sinister events.

  “Your father sold out to that Spokane miller. No, Neuman is not in on that.”

  “I was surprised to hear father had sold the wheat. Was it speculation or guarantee?”

  “Old Chris guaranteed sixty bushels. There were friends of his here who advised against it. Did you have rain over there?”

  “Fine. The wheat will go over sixty bushels. I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner.”

  “When it rained, you hurried over to boost the price. Well, it’s too late.”

  “Is Glidden here?” queried Kurt, hazarding another guess.

  “Don’t talk so loud,” warned the proprietor. “Yes, he just got here in a car with two other men. He’s upstairs, having supper in his room.”

  “Supper!” Kurt echoed the word, and averted his face to hide the leap of his blood. “That reminds me, I’m hungry.”

  He went into the big, dimly lighted dining room. There was a shelf on one side as he went in, and here, with his back turned to the room, he laid the disjointed gun and his hat. Several newspapers lying near attracted his eye. Quickly he slipped them under and around the gun, and then took a seat at the nearest table. A buxom German waitress came for his order. He gave it while he gazed around at his grim-faced old father and the burly Neuman, and his ears throbbed to the beat of his blood. His hand trembled on the table. His thoughts flashed almost too swiftly for comprehension. It took a stern effort to gain self-control.

  Evil of some nature was afoot. Neuman’s presence here was a strange, disturbing fact. Kurt had made two guesses, both alarmingly correct. If he had any more illusions or hopes, he dispelled them. His father had been won over by this arch conspirator of the IWW. And, despite his father’s close-fistedness where money was concerned, that $80,000, or part of it, was in danger.

  Kurt wondered how he could get possession of it. If he could, he would return it to the bank and wire a warning to the Spokane buyer that the wheat was not safe. He might persuade his father to turn over the amount of the debt to Anderson. While thinking and planning, Kurt kept an eye on his father and rather neglected his supper. Presently, when old Dorn and Neuman rose and left the dining room, Kurt followed them. His father was whispering to the proprietor over the desk, and at Kurt’s touch he glared his astonishment.

  “You here! What for?” he demanded gruffly in German.

  “I had to see you,” replied Kurt in English.

  “Did it rain?” was the old man’s second demand, husky and serious.

  “The wheat is made, if we can harvest it,” answered Kurt.

  The blaze of joy on old Dorn’s face gave Kurt a twinge of pain. He hated to dispel it. “Come aside, here, a minute,” he whispered, and drew his father over to a corner under a lamp. “I’ve got bad news. Look at this.” He produced the cake of phosphorus, careful to hide it from other curious eyes there, and with swift, low words he explained its meaning. He expected an outburst of surprise and fury, but he was mistaken.

  “I know about that,” whispered his father hoarsely. “There won’t be any thrown in my wheat.”

  “Father! What assurance have you of that?” queried Kurt, astounded.

  The old man nodded his gray head wisely. He knew, but he did not speak.

  “Do you think these IWW plotters will spare your wheat?” asked Kurt. “You are wrong. They may lie to your face. But they’ll betray you. The IWW is backed by . . . by interests that want to embarrass the government.”

  “What government?”

  “Why, ours . . . the U.S. government.”

  “That’s not my government. The more it’s embarrassed, the better it will suit me.”

  In the stress of the moment Kurt had forgotten his father’s bitter and unchangeable hatred. “But you’re . . . you’re stupid,” he hissed passionately. “That government has protected you for fifty years.”

  Old Dorn growled into his beard. His huge ox-eyes rolled. Kurt realized then finally how implacable and hopeless he was—how utterly German. Then Kurt importuned him to return the $80,000 to the bank until he was sure the wheat was harvested and hauled to the railroad.

  “My wheat won’t burn,” was old Dorn’s stubborn reply.

  “Well, then, give me Anderson’s thirty thousand. I’ll take it to him at once. Our debt will be paid. We’ll have it off our minds.”

  “No hurry about that,” replied hi
s father.

  “But there is hurry,” returned Kurt in a hot whisper. “Anderson came to see you today. He wants his money.”

  “Neuman holds the small end of that debt. I’ll pay him. Anderson can wait.”

  Kurt felt no amaze. He expected anything. But he could scarcely contain his fury. How this old man, his father, who he had loved—how he had responded to the influences that must destroy him!

  “Anderson shall not wait,” declared Kurt. “I’ve got some say in this matter. I’ve worked like a dog in those wheat fields. I’ve a right to demand Anderson’s money. He needs it. He has a tremendous harvest on his hands.”

  Old Dorn shook his huge head in somber and gloomy thought. His broad face, his deep eyes, seemed to mask and to hide. It was an expression Kurt had seldom seen there, but had always hated. It seemed so old to Kurt, that alien look, something not born of his time.

  “Anderson is a capitalist,” said Chris Dorn, deep in his beard. “He seeks control of farmers and wheat in the Northwest. Ranch after ranch he’s gained by taking up and foreclosing mortgages. He’s against labor. He grinds down the poor. He cheated Neuman out of a hundred thousand bushels of wheat. He bought up my debt. He meant to ruin me. He . . .”

  “You’re talking IWW rot,” whispered Kurt, shaking with the effort to subdue his feelings. “Anderson is fine, big, square . . . a developer of the Northwest. Not an enemy. He’s our friend. Oh, if only you had an American’s eyes, just for a minute. Father, I want that money for Anderson.”

  “My son, I run my own business,” replied Dorn sullenly, with a pale fire in his opaque eyes. “You’re a wild boy, unfaithful to your blood. You’ve fallen in love with an American girl . . . Anderson says he needs money.” With hard, gloomy face the old man shook his head. “He thinks he’ll harvest.” Again that strange shake of finality. “I know what I know . . . I keep my money . . . We’ll have other rule . . . I keep my money.”

  Kurt had vibrated to those most significant words and he stared speechlessly at his father.

  “Go home. Get ready for harvest,” suddenly ordered old Dorn, as if he had just awakened to the fact of Kurt’s disobedience in lingering here.

  “All right, Father,” replied Kurt, and, turning on his heel, he strode outdoors.

  When he got beyond the light, he turned and went back to a position where in the dark he could watch without being seen. His father and the hotel proprietor were again engaged in earnest colloquy. Neuman had disappeared. Kurt saw the huge shadow of a man pass across a drawn blind in a room upstairs. Then he saw smaller shadows, and arms raised in vehement gesticulation. The very shadows were sinister. Men passed in and out of the hotel. Once old Dorn came to the door and peered all around. Kurt observed that there was a dark side entrance to this hotel. Presently Neuman returned to the desk and said something to old Dorn, who shook his head emphatically, and then threw himself into a chair, in a brooding posture that Kurt knew well. He had seen it so often that he knew it had to do with money. His father was refusing demands of some kind. Neuman again left the office, this time with the proprietor. They were absent some little time.

  During this period Kurt leaned against a tree, hidden in the shadow, with keen eyes watching and with puzzled, anxious mind. He had determined, in case his father left that office with Neuman, on one of those significant disappearances, to slip into the hotel at the side entrance and go upstairs to listen at the door of the room with the closely drawn blind. Neuman returned soon with the hotel man, and the two of them half led, half dragged old Dorn out into the street. They took the direction toward the railroad. Kurt followed at a safe distance on the opposite side of the street. Soon they passed the stores with lighted windows, then several dark houses, and at length the railroad station. Perhaps they were bound for the train. Kurt heard rumbling in the distance. But they went beyond the station, across the track, and turned to the right.

  Kurt was soft-footed and keen-eyed. He just kept the dim shadows in range. They were heading for some freight cars that stood upon a sidetrack. The dark figures disappeared behind them. Then one figure reappeared, coming back. Kurt crouched low. This man passed within a few yards of Kurt and he was whispering to himself. After he was safely out of earshot, Kurt stole on stealthily until he reached the end of the freight cars. Here he paused, listening. He thought he heard low voices, but he could not see the men he was following. No doubt they were waiting in the secluded gloom for the other men apparently necessary for that secret conference. Kurt had sensed this event and he had determined to be present. He tried not to conjecture. It was best for him to apply all his faculties to the task of slipping unseen and unheard close to these men who had involved his father in some dark plot.

  Not long after Kurt hid himself on the other side of the freight car he heard soft-padded footsteps and subdued voices. Dark shapes appeared to come out of the gloom. They passed him. He distinguished low, guttural voices, speaking German. These men, three in number, were scarcely out of sight when Kurt laid his rifle on the projecting shelf of the freight car and followed them.

  Presently he came to deep shadow, where he paused. Low voices drew him on again, then a light made him thrill. Now and then the light appeared to be darkened by moving figures. A dark object loomed up to cut off Kurt’s view. It was a pile of railroad ties, and beyond it loomed another. Stealing along these, he soon saw the light again, quite close. By its glow he recognized his father’s huge frame, back to him, and the burly Neuman on the other side, and Glidden, whose dark face was working as he talked. These three were sitting, evidently on a flat pile of ties, and the other two men stood behind. Kurt could not make out the meaning of the low voices. Pressing closer to the freight car, he cautiously and noiselessly advanced.

  Glidden was importuning with expressive hands and swift, low utterance. His face gleamed dark, hard, strong, intensely strung with corded, quivering muscles, with eyes apparently green orbs of fire. He spoke in German.

  Kurt dared not go closer unless he wanted to be discovered, and not yet was he ready for that. He might hear some word to help explain his father’s strange, significant intimations about Anderson.

  “. . . must . . . have . . . money,” Glidden was saying. To Kurt’s eyes treachery gleamed in that working face. Neuman bent over to whisper gruffly in Dorn’s ear. One of the silent men standing rubbed his hands together. Old Dorn’s head was bowed. Then Glidden spoke so low and so swiftly that Kurt could not connect sentences, but with mounting blood he stood transfixed and horrified, to gather meaning from word on word, until he realized Anderson’s doom, with other rich men of the Northwest, was sealed—that there were to be burnings of wheat fields and of storehouses and of freight trains—destruction everywhere.

  “I give money,” said old Dorn, and with heavy movement he drew from inside his coat a large package wrapped in newspaper. He laid it before him in the light and began to unwrap it. Soon there were disclosed two bundles of bills—the $80,000.

  Kurt thrilled in all his being. His poor father was being misled and robbed. A melancholy flash of comfort came to Kurt. Then at sight of Glidden’s hungry eyes and working face and clutching hands Kurt pulled his hat far down, drew his revolver, and leaped forward with a yell: “Hands up!”

  He discharged the revolver right in the faces of the stunned plotters, and, snatching up the bundle of money, he leaped over the light, knocking one of the men down, and was gone into the darkness, without having slowed in the least his swift action.

  Wheeling around the end of the freight car, he darted back, risking a hard fall in the darkness, and ran along the several cars to the first one, where he grasped his rifle and kept on. He heard his father’s roar, like that of a mad bull, and shrill yells from the other men. Kurt laughed grimly. They would never catch him in the dark. While he ran, he stuffed the money into his inside coat pockets. Beyond the railroad station he slowed down to catch his breath. His breast was heaving, his pulse hammering, and his skin was streaming. The e
xcitement was the greatest under which he had ever labored.

  “Now . . . what shall . . . I do?” he panted. A freight train was lumbering toward him and the headlight was almost at the station. The train appeared to be going slowly through without stopping. Kurt hurried on down the track a little farther. Then he waited. He would get on that train and make his way somehow to Walla Walla, there to warn Anderson of the plot against his life.

  Chapter Ten

  Kurt rode to Adrian on that freight, and, upon arriving in the yards there, he jumped off, only to mount another, headed south. He meant to be traveling while it was dark. No passenger trains ran at night and he wanted to put as much distance between himself and Krupp as possible before daylight.

  He had piled into an open boxcar. It was empty, at least of freight, and the floor appeared to have a thin covering of hay. The train, gathering headway, made a rattling, rolling roar. Kurt hesitated about getting up and groping back in the pitch-black corners of the car. He felt that it contained a presence besides his own. And suddenly he was startled by an object blacker than the shadow, that sidled up close to him. Kurt could not keep the cold chills from chasing up and down his back. The object was a man, who reached for Kurt and felt of him with a skinny hand.

  “IWW?” he whispered hoarsely in Kurt’s ear.

  “Yes,” replied Kurt.

  “Was that Adrian where you got on?”

  “It sure was,” answered Kurt with grim humor.

  “Then you’re the feller?”

  “Sure,” replied Kurt. It was evident that he had embarked upon an adventure.

  “When do we stall this freight?”

  “Not while we’re on it, you can gamble.”

  Other dark forms sidled out of the gloomy depths of that cavern-like corner and drew close to Kurt. He realized that he had fallen in with IWW men who apparently had taken him for an expected messenger or leader. He was importuned for tobacco, drink, and money, and he judged that his begging companions consisted of an American tramp, an Austrian, a Negro, and a German. Fine society to fall into. That $80,000 dollars became a tremendous burden.