Claim Number One

by Ogden, George W

  There must be something in that place for him, as she had said; there must be an unimproved opportunity which Fate had fashioned for his hand. Hope lifted its resilient head again. Before the morning he must have a plan, and when he had the plan he would speak.

  “We’ll have to be breaking up camp in a day or two more,” Agnes said, disturbing the long silence which had settled between them.

  “I suppose so,” he responded; “but I don’t know what the plans of the others are.”

  “Mr. Strong is going to Meander in the morning,” she told him; “and Horace Bentley is going with him, poor fellow, to look around, he says. William Bentley told me this evening that he would leave for home in a day or two, and Mrs. Reed and her charges are waiting to hear from a friend of June’s who was in school with her–I think she is the Governor’s daughter, or maybe he’s an ex-governor–about a long-standing invitation to visit her in her summer home, which is near here, as they compute distances in Wyoming.”

  “And Schaefer is leaving in the morning,” reflected the doctor. “That leaves but you and me unaccounted for. Are you going on to Meander soon?”

  “Yes; I want to be there to file when my time comes.”

  “I’ve thought of going over there to feel things out, too,” Dr. Slavens went on. “This place will shrink in a few days like a piece of wet leather in the sun. They’ll have nothing left of it but the stores, and no business to sustain them until the country around here is settled. That may be a long time yet. Still, there may be something around here for me. I’m going to look into the possibilities tomorrow. And we’ll have at least another talk before we part?”

  “Many more, I hope,” she said.

  Her answer presented an alluring lead for him to say more, but before he could speak, even if minded to do it, she went on:

  “This has been a pleasant experience, this camping in the clean, unused country, and it would be a sort of Persian poet existence if we could go on with it always; but of course we can’t.”

  “It isn’t all summer and fair skies here,” he reminded her, “any more than it is in–well, Persia. Twenty below in winter sometimes, Smith said. Do you remember?”

  “Yes,” she sighed. “But it seems impossible.”

  “You wouldn’t believe this little river could turn into a wild and savage torrent, either, a few hundred yards along, if you had nothing to judge it by but this quiet stretch,” he returned. “But listen to it down there, crashing against the rocks!”

  “There’s no news of that rash man who went into the cañon for the newspaper?” Agnes asked.

  “He must have lodged in there somewhere; they haven’t picked him up on the other side,” he said, a thoughtful abstraction over him.

  “I hope you’ve given up the thought of trying to explore it?”

  “I haven’t thought much about it lately,” he replied; “but I’m of the same opinion. I believe the difficulties of the cañon are greatly exaggerated. In fact, as I told you before, the reward posted by that newspaper looks to me like easy money.”

  “It wouldn’t pay you if the reward were ten times as large,” she declared with a little argumentative heat.

  “Perhaps not,” said he, as if he had but a passing and shallow interest in the subject.

  Sitting there bareheaded to the wind, which was dropping down coldly from the far mountains, he seemed to be in a brooding humor.

  “The moon is late tonight,” he noted. “Shall we wait till it rises?”

  “Yes,” she answered, feeling the great gentleness that there was about him when he was in a serious way.

  Why he had not been successful in the profession for which nature plainly had designed him she could not understand; for he was a man to inspire confidence when he was at his best, and unvexed by the memory of the bitter waters which had passed his lips. She felt that there would be immeasurable solace in his hand for one who suffered; she knew that he would put down all that he had in life for a friend.

  Leaning her chin upon her palm, she looked at him in the last light of the west, which came down to them dimly, as if falling through dun water, from some high-floating clouds. As if following in her thought something that had gone before, she said:

  “No; perhaps you should not stay in this big, empty country when there are crowded places in the world that are full of pain, and little children in them dying for the want of such men as you.”

  He started and turned toward her, putting out his hand as if to place it upon her head.

  “How did you know that it’s the children that give me the strongest call back to the struggle?” he asked.

  “It’s in your eyes,” said she. And beneath her breath she added: “In your heart.”

  “About all the success that I ever won I sacrificed for a child,” he said, with reminiscent sadness.

  “Will you tell me about it?”

  “It was a charity case at that,” he explained, “a little girl who had been burned in a fire which took all the rest of the family. She needed twenty-two square inches of skin on her breast. One gave all that he could very well part with––”

  “That was yourself,” she nodded, drawing a little nearer to him quite unconsciously.

  “But that was not half enough,” he continued as if unaware of the interruption. “I had to get it into the papers and ask for volunteers, for you know that an average of only one in three pieces of cuticle adheres when set into a wound, especially a burn. The papers made a good deal of it, and I couldn’t keep my name out, of course. Well, enough school-children came forward to patch up three or four girls, and together we saved her.

  “No matter. The medical association of that city jumped me very promptly. The old chaps said that I had handled the case unprofessionally and had used it merely for an advertisement. They charged unprofessional conduct against me; they tried me in their high court and found me guilty. They dug the ground from under my feet and branded me as a quack. They broke me, they tried to have my license to practice revoked. But they failed in that. That was three years ago. I hung on, but I starved. So when I speak in what may seem a bitter way of the narrow traditions of my profession, you know my reason is fairly well grounded.”

  “But you saved the little girl!”

  It was too dark for him to see her eyes. The tears that lay in them could not drop their balm upon his heart.

  “She’s as good as new,” said he cheerfully, fingering the inner pocket of his coat. “She writes to me right along. Here’s a picture-card that followed me here, mailed from the home that the man who gave his tough old hide to mend her found for her when she was well. She lives in Oklahoma now, and her sweet fortitude under her misfortune has been a remembrance to sustain me over many a hungry day.”

  “But you saved the little girl!” Agnes repeated with unaccountable insistence, as if trying to beat down the injustice of his heavy penance with that argument.

  And then he saw her bow her head upon her folded arms like a little child, and weep in great sobs which came rackingly as if torn from the core of her heart.

  Dr. Slavens picked up his hat, put it on, got to his feet, and took a stride away from her as if he could not bear the sight of her poignant sympathy. Then he turned, came back, and stooped above her, laying his hand upon her hair.

  “Don’t do that!” he pleaded. “All that’s gone, all that I’ve missed, is not worth a single tear. You must not make my troubles your own, for at the worst there’s not enough for two.”

  She reached out her tear-wet hand and clung to his, wordless for a little while. As it lay softly within his palm he stroked it soothingly and folded it between his hands as if to yield it freedom nevermore. Soon her gust of sorrow passed. She stood beside him, breathing brokenly in the ebb of that overmastering tide. In the opening of the broad valley the moon stood redly. The wind trailed slowly from the hills to meet it, as if to warm itself at its beacon-fire.

  “You saved the little girl!” said she again, lay
ing her warm hand for a moment against his cheek.

  In that moment it was well for Dr. Warren Slavens that the lesson of his hard years was deep within his heart; that the continence and abnegation of his past had ripened his restraint until, no matter how his lips might yearn to the sweets which were not his own, they would not taste. He took hold of himself with a rough hand, for the moonlight was upon her trembling lips; it stood imprisoned in the undried tears which lay upon her cheeks.

  The invitation was there, and the time, such as the lines of a man’s life are plotted to lead up to from the beginning. But there was lacking too much on his part for an honest man to stoop and gather what presented. He might have folded his arms about her and drawn her to his breast, as the yearning of his soul desired; he might have kissed her lips and dispelled the moonlight from her trembling tears–and spoiled it all for both.

  For that would have been a trespass without mitigation, a sacrilege beyond excuse. When a man took a woman like that in his arms and kissed her, according to his old-fashioned belief, he took from every other man the right to do so, ever. In such case he must have a refuge to offer her from the world’s encroachments, and a security to requite her in all that she yielded for his sake.

  Such he had not. There was no hearthstone, there was no roof-tree, there was no corner of refuge in all the vast, gray world. He had no right to take where he could not give, although it wrenched his heart to give it up.

  He took the soft, warm hand which had bestowed its benediction on his cheek, and held it in childish attitude, swinging at his side. No word was said as they faced back to the unstable city, their shadows trailing them, long and grotesque, like the sins of men which come after them, and gambol and grimace for all the world to see but those who believe them hidden.

  * * *

  CHAPTER VII

  A MIDNIGHT EXTRA

  Dr. Slavens sat on the edge of his cot, counting his money. He hadn’t a great deal, so the job was not long. When he finished he tucked it all away in his instrument-case except the few coins which he retained in his palm.

  It would not last much longer, thought he. A turn would have to be made soon, or he must hunt a job on the railroad or a ranch. Walker had talked a lot about having Dr. Slavens come in on the new sheep venture with him, on the supposition, of course, that the physician had money. Walker had told him also a great deal about men who had started in that country as herders, “running a band of sheep” on shares, receiving so much of the increase of the flock year by year. Many of the richest sheepmen in that country had started that way only a few years before, so Walker and others said.

  Perhaps, thought Dr. Slavens, there might be a chance to hook up with Walker under such an arrangement, put his whole life into it, and learn the business from the ground up. He could be doing that while Agnes was making her home on her claim, perhaps somewhere near–a few hundred miles–and if he could see a gleam at the farther end of the undertaking after a season he could ask her to wait. That was the best that he could see in the prospect just then, he reflected as he sat there with his useless instrument-case between his feet and the residue of the day’s expenses in his hand.

  Agnes had gone into the section of the tent sacred to the women; he supposed that she was going to bed, for it was nearly eleven o’clock. Strong and Horace were asleep in their bunks, for they were to take the early stage for Meander in the morning. Walker and William Bentley and Sergeant Schaefer were out.

  The little spark of hope had begun to glow under Slavens’ breath. Perhaps Walker and sheep were the solution of his life’s muddle. He would find Walker before the young man took somebody else in with him, expose the true state of his finances, and see whether Walker would entertain a proposal to give him a band of sheep on shares.

  Like every man who is trying to do something that he isn’t fitted to, because he has failed of his hopes and expectations in the occupation dearest to his heart, Slavens heated up like a tin stove under the trashy fuel of every vagrant scheme that blew into his brain.

  Sheep was all that he could see now. Already he had projected ahead until he saw himself the complacent owner of vast herds; saw the miles of his ranches; saw the wool of his flocks being trampled into the long sacks in his own shearing-sheds. And all the time his impotent instrument-case shone darkly in the light of his candle, lying there between his feet at the edge of the canvas bed.

  With a sigh he came back from his long flight into the future, and took up his instrument-case with caressing hand. Placing it on his knees, he opened it and lifted the glittering instruments fondly.

  Of course, if he could make it go at his profession that would be the thing. It would be better than all the sheep on Wyoming’s dusty hills. A little surgery somewhere, with its enameled table and white fittings, and automobiles coming and going all day, and Agnes to look in at evening––. Yes, that would be the thing.

  Perhaps sheep for a few years would help to that end. Even five years would leave him right in the middle stretch of life, with all his vigor and all the benefit of experience. Sheep looked like the solution indeed. So thinking, he blew out his candle and went out to look for Walker.

  At the door of the tent he stopped, thinking again of Agnes, and of the moonlight on her face as they stood by the riverside, trembling again when the weight of the temptation which had assailed him in that moment swept over him in a heart-lifting memory. Perhaps Agnes condemned him for refusing the opportunity of her lips. For when a woman expects to be kissed, and is cheated in that expectation, it leaves her in censorious mood. But scorn of an hour would be easier borne than regret of years.

  So he reflected, and shook his head solemnly at the thought. He passed into the shadows along the deserted street, going toward the sounds which rose from beneath the lights beyond.

  Comanche appeared livelier than ever as he passed along its thronged streets. Those who were to leave as soon as they could get a train were making a last reckless night of it; the gamblers were busy at their various games.

  The doctor passed the tent where Hun Shanklin had been stationed with his crescent table. Shanklin was gone, and another was in his place with an army-game board, or chuck-a-luck, doing well with the minnows in the receding sea. Wondering what had become of Shanklin, he turned to go down a dark little street which was a quick cut to the back entrance of the big gambling-tent, where he expected to find Walker and go into the matter of sheep.

  Even at that moment the lights were bright in the office of The Chieftain. The editor was there, his green coat wide open, exposing his egg-spattered shirt-front to all who stopped to look, and making a prodigious show of excitement at the imposing-stone, where the form of the last extra of the day lay under his nervous hand.

  The printer was there also, his hair standing straight where he had roached it back out of his eyes with inky fingers, setting type for all he was worth. In a little while those on the street heard the familiar bark of the little gasoline engine, and hundreds of them gathered to inquire into the cause of this late activity.

  “Running off an extra,” said Editor Mong. A great, an important piece of news had just reached the office of The Chieftain, and in a few minutes an extra would be on the streets, with the secret at the disposal of every man who had two bits in his pants. Those were the identical words of that advance-guard of civilization and refinement, Mr. J. Walter Mong.

  It was midnight when the circulator of The Chieftain–engaged for that important day only–burst out of the tent with an armful of papers, crying them in a voice that would have been red if voices had been colored in Comanche, it was so scorched from coming out of the tract which carried liquor to his reservoir.

  “Ho-o-o! Git a extree! Git a extree! All about the mistake in the winner of Number One! Git a extree! Ho-o-o-o!”

  People caught their breaths and stopped to lean and listen. Mistake in the winner of Number One? What was that? The parched voice was plain enough in that statement:

  “M
istake in the winner of Number One.”

  A crowd hundreds deep quickly surrounded the vender of extras, and another crowd assembled in front of the office, where Editor Mong stood with a pile of papers at his hand, changing them into money almost as fast as that miracle is performed by the presses of the United States Treasury.

  Walker and William Bentley bored through the throng and bought a paper. Standing under the light at a saloon door, they read the exciting news. Editor Mong had cleared a place for it, without regard to the beginning or the ending of anything else on the page, in the form which had carried his last extra of the day. There the announcement stood in bold type, two columns wide, under an exclamatory

  EXTRA!

  William Bentley read aloud:

  Owing to a mistake in transmitting the news by telephone, the name of the winner of Claim Number One in today’s land-drawing at Meander was omitted. The list of winners published heretofore in The Chieftain is correct, with the single exception that each of them moves along one number. Number One, as announced, becomes Number Two, and so on down the list.

  The editor regrets this error, which was due entirely to the excitement and confusion in the office at Meander, and takes this earliest opportunity of rectifying it.

  The editor also desires to announce that The Chieftain will appear no longer as a daily paper. Beginning with next Monday it will be issued as a four-page, five-column weekly, containing all the state, national, and foreign news. Price three dollars a year in advance. The editor thanks you for your loyal support and patronage.

  The winner of Claim Number One is Dr. Warren Slavens, of Kansas City, Missouri. Axel Peterson, first announced as the winner, drew Number Two.

  Editor Mong had followed the tradition of the rural school of journalism in leaving the most important feature of his news for the last line.