“It’s Warden, ain’t it?” grinned the conductor. “Well, I’ll be glad to take him. But I’ll have to wire for orders. This guy ain’t a bona fide passenger.”
He strode to the telegraphers window. There was a short wait; and during the interval Warden stirred and sat up, swaying from side to side and staring about him in bewilderment. Lawler stepped forward, leaned over the platform.
“Warden,” he said; “you are going East. You are not coming back. If you ever step a foot into this state again I will send you to prison for a term that will make you wish you were dead. I have a signed confession from Link and Givens that convicts you of a crime for which this state provides an adequate penalty. Do you understand?”
Warden nodded, wearily, and dropped his chin to his chest. After an interval, during which the crowd watched him intently, he staggered to his feet and reeled into the coach, and the crowd saw him no more. An instant later the conductor went toward the coach, grinning, signaling the engineer.
A low cheer rose from the crowd as the train started, and a man far back toward the station shouted, loudly:
“If they hadn’t been in such a damned hurry, we’d have raised a collection to send him to hell!”
A little later Lawler and Ruth and Shorty formed the van of the crowd that walked down the street toward the Wolf—where the Circle L men had left their horses. Ruth walked between Lawler and Shorty. Ruth was very pale, and her lips were trembling. In front of the Willets Hotel—in the flood of light that came through the windows, she clutched at Lawler’s sleeve.
“Hurry, Kane,” she begged; “they have killed daddy!”
“Don’t you believe it, Miss Ruth,” said Shorty, softly, into her ear. “When I left Joe Hamlin he was a whole lot alive—an’ gettin’ more alive right along. I left Andy Miller with him—an’ Andy’s got more sabe of medicine than any doctor in these parts!”
“Shorty!” she breathed, springing around in front of him and catching him by the shoulders—standing on tip-toe to do it. “Shorty, you don’t mean it?”
Shorty laughed lowly. “I’m reckonin’ to mean it, Miss Ruth.”
“But how,” she questioned, her hands still on his shoulders, her eyes wide and questioning; “how did you happen to go to the Two Bar?”
“Well, you see, Miss Ruth,” laughed the giant—while the crowd which had followed them stood off at a little distance and watched—“it was like this. Me an’ the boys—an’ your dad—had been tryin’ for a long time to ketch Singleton runnin’ an iron on the Circle L cattle. Your dad an’ me had run a bunch into that gully near the Two Bar, an’ tonight me an’ the boys was waitin’ in the gully for your dad to bring Singleton there. Your dad had been brandin’ stolen stock—at my orders—an’ tonight he was goin’ to refuse—makin’ Singleton do it. For Singleton was really doin’ the rustlin’. An’ your dad—”
“Was doing it all for you? Is that what you mean, Shorty?”
“Why, I reckon, Miss Ruth. You see—”
Ruth had to leap upward to do it. But somehow the height was achieved. Two arms went around Shorty’s neck and Ruth’s lips were pressed against his with a resounding smack.
“O Shorty!” she exclaimed as she hugged him tightly, after kissing him; “I just love you!”
Shorty blushed furiously. As soon as Ruth released him he grinned with embarrassment and walked with giant strides down the street to where he and his men had left the horses, the laughter and jibes of his fellows following him.
CHAPTER XLIII
THE MAJESTY OF PEACE
As upon another day that was vivid in his memory, Governor Lawler sat at his desk in his office in the capitol building. A big, keen-eyed man of imposing appearance was sitting at a little distance from Lawler, watching him. The big man was talking, but the governor seemed to be looking past him—at the bare trees that dotted the spacious grounds around the building. His gaze seemed to follow the low stone fence with its massive posts that seemed to hint of the majesty of the government Lawler served; it appeared that he was studying the bleak landscape, and that he was not interested in what the big man was saying.
But Lawler was not interested in the landscape. For many minutes, while listening to the big man—and answering him occasionally—he had been watching for a trim little figure that he knew would presently appear on one of the white walks leading to the great, wide steps that led to the entrance to the building. For he had heard the long-drawn plaint of a locomotive whistle some minutes before; he had seen the train itself come gliding over the mammoth plains that stretched eastward from the capitol; and he knew that Ruth would be on the train.
“The proposed bill is iniquitous,” said the big man. “It is more than that, Governor Lawler; it is discrimination without justification. We really have made unusual efforts to provide cars for the shipment of cattle. The bill you propose will conflict directly with the regulations of Federal Interstate Commerce. It will be unconstitutional.”
“We’ll risk it,” smiled Lawler. “The attorney-general is certain of the constitutionality of the bill.”
“We’ll never obey its provisions!” declared the big man, with some warmth.
Lawler looked at the other with a level gaze. “This is a cattle-raising state,” he said. “The interests of the state’s citizens are sacred to me. I intend to safeguard them. You run your railroad and I will run the state. Previous railroad commissioners have permitted the railroad companies to do largely as they pleased. We are going to have some regulation—regulation that will regulate.
“The proposed bill may seem drastic to you,” he added as he leaned forward the better to look out of the window he had looked out of before—to see the trim little figure he had expected coming up one of the white walks; “but if you fight it, we shall introduce others. The people of this state are pretty well worked up, and are demanding legislation that will curb the power of the railroads—that will make impossible a situation such as existed under the régime of my predecessor. What would you say to a law that would compel you to construct grade crossings at every street intersection along the right-of-way in every city and town in the state through which your railroad passes?”
The big man’s color fled; he stared at Lawler.
“Also,” went on Lawler; “there is an insistent demand for electrification of railroads, especially from city governments. Then, too, there is some agitation regarding rates—both freight and passenger. But I want to be fair—to go at these improvements gradually. Still, if your company insists on fighting the bill which is now pending—” He paused and looked at the big man.
The latter got up, smiling faintly.
“All right, Governor; we’ll be good. I never really favored that deal—which almost set the state afire—and made you governor. But my directors—”
“They’ll be sensible, now, I hope?”
The big man grimaced. “They’ll have to be sensible.” He extended a hand, and Lawler took it.
The big man went out. As the door closed behind him Lawler got up and walked to it, standing there, expectantly. The door suddenly opened and Ruth stood in the opening.
It was her first visit to the office, and the atmosphere of solemn dignity almost awed her.
After a little, when she had seated herself in the governor’s chair, from where she looked gayly at the big, smiling man who watched her, she got up and Lawler led her to one of the great windows.
“Father is much better, Kane,” she said. “In another week he will be able to ride. Your mother sent you her love, and Shorty told me to tell you to take care of yourself. Kane, Shorty actually loves you!”
“Shorty is a man, Ruth.”
“Oh, he is wonderful!” And then, with a direct look at him, she added:
“Della Wharton has gone East, Kane.”
Lawler’s eyes narrowed; he was silent.
Ruth’s voice was tremulous with happiness as she stood close to the man she had come to marry on the morrow, in the
big house which was awaiting both of them—the governor’s mansion. “Kane,” she said; “I used to dream of this day—tomorrow, I mean; but I never thought it would be like this—so terribly, solemnly happy.”
Lawler drew her closer to him—and nearer the window. “I wonder if you know how lonesome I used to feel as I sat at my desk, there, trying to look out over that great waste of world, stretching between us?”
“I know,” she said, lowly; “I used to feel the same way. There was a time—right after you went away to begin your campaign, when it seemed to me that: you had gone to the farthest limits of the earth.”
“And now?” he asked, smiling. And when she did not answer, he added; “the world seems to have become very small.”
“It is a wonderful world, Kane,” she said solemnly.
For a time both were silent, gazing out of the window. In the foreground were the bare trees of the capitol grounds; the white, curving walks, the low stone fence with its massive posts; the broad streets of the city animated by traffic; the roofs of buildings. But straight down a street that intersected the broad thoroughfare skirting the capitol grounds on the east, they could look beyond the limits of the city at the mighty level country that stretched into the yawning gulf of distance—toward Willets; straight to the section of world which had been the scene of the conflict that had tried them sorely.
It was a bleak picture; the plains dead and drear, barren of verdure—a dull, drab expanse of waste world with no life or movement in it, stretching below gray, cold clouds.
But while they watched, a rift appeared in the clouds. It grew, expanded, and a shaft of sunlight pierced it, shimmering, glowing—touching the waste of world with a brilliance that thrilled them.
It was evident that Ruth seemed to feel that the glimmering shaft was a promise of happiness to come, for when Lawler turned, her eyes were shining with a light that caused his own to deepen with sympathy and understanding.
‘DRAG’ HARLAN
Originally published in 1921.
CHAPTER I
A DESERT RIDER
From out of the shimmering haze that veiled the mystic eastern space came a big black horse bearing a rider. Swinging wide, to avoid the feathery dust that lay at the base of a huge sand dune, the black horse loped, making no sound, and seeming to glide forward without effort. Like a somber, gigantic ghost the animal moved, heroic of mold, embodying the spirit of the country, seeming to bear the sinister message of the desert, the whispered promise of death, the lingering threat, the grim mockery of life, and the conviction of futility.
The black horse had come far. The glossy coat of him was thickly sprinkled with alkali dust, sifted upon him by the wind of his passage through the desert; his black muzzle was gray with it; ropes of it matted his mane, his forelock had become a gray-tinged wisp which he fretfully tossed; the dust had rimmed his eyes, causing them to loom large and wild; and as his rider pulled him to a halt on the western side of the sand dune—where both horse and rider would not be visible on the sky line—he drew a deep breath, shook his head vigorously, and blew a thin stream of dust from his nostrils.
With head and ears erect, his eyes flaming his undying courage and his contempt for distance and the burning heat that the midday sun poured upon him, he gazed westward, snorting long breaths into his eager lungs.
The rider sat motionless upon him—rigid and alert. His gaze also went into the west; and he blinked against the white glare of sun and distance, squinting his eyes and scanning the featureless waste with appraising glances.
In the breathless, dead calm of the desert there was no sound or movement. On all sides the vast gray waste stretched, a yawning inferno of dead, dry sand overhung with a brassy, cloudless sky in which swam the huge ball of molten silver that for ages had ruled that baked and shriveled land.
A score of miles westward—twoscore, perhaps—the shadowy peaks of some mountains loomed upward into the mystic haze, with purple bases melting into the horizon; southward were other mountains, equally distant and mysterious; northward—so far away that they blurred in the vision—were still other mountains. Intervening on all sides was the stretching, soundless, aching void of desolation, carrying to the rider its lurking threat of death, the promise of evil to come.
The man, however, seemed unperturbed. In his narrowed, squinting eyes as he watched the desert was a gleam of comprehension, of knowledge intimate and sympathetic. They glowed with the serene calm of confidence; and far back in them lurked a glint of grim mockery. It was as though they visualized the threatened dangers upon which they looked, answering the threat with contempt.
The man was tall. His slim waist was girded by a cartridge belt which was studded with leaden missiles for the rifle that reposed in the saddle holster, and for the two heavy pistols that sagged at his hips. A gray woolen shirt adorned his broad shoulders; a scarlet neckerchief at his throat which had covered his mouth as he rode was now drooping on his chest; and the big, wide-brimmed felt hat he wore was jammed far down over his forehead. The well-worn leather chaps that covered his legs could not conceal their sinewy strength, nor could the gauntleted leather gloves on his hands hide the capable size of them.
He was a fixture of this great waste of world in whose center he sat. He belonged to the country; he was as much a part of it as the somber mountains, the sun-baked sand, the dead lava, and the hardy, evil-looking cacti growth that raised its spined and mocking green above the arid stretch. He symbolized the spirit of the country—from the slicker that bulged at the cantle of the saddle behind him, to the capable gloved hands that were now resting on the pommel of the saddle—he represented the force which was destined to conquer the waste places.
For two days he had been fighting the desert; and in the serene calm of his eyes was the identical indomitability that had been in them when he had set forth. As he peered westward the strong lines around his mouth relaxed, his lips opened a trifle, and a mirthless smile wreathed them. He patted the shoulder of the black horse, and the dead dust ballooned from the animal’s coat and floated heavily downward.
“We’re about halfway, Purgatory,” he said aloud, his voice coming flat and expressionless in the dead, vacuum-like silence. He did not cease to peer westward nor to throw sharp glances north and south. He drew off a glove and pushed his hat back, using a pocket handkerchief to brush the dust from his face and running the fingers of the hand through his hair—thereby producing another ballooning dust cloud which splayed heavily downward.
“What’s botherin’ me is that shootin’,” he went on, still speaking to the black horse. “We sure enough heard it—didn’t we?” He laughed, again patting the black’s shoulder. “An’ you heard it first—as usual—with me trailin’ along about half a second behind. But we sure heard ’em, eh?”
The black horse whinnied lowly, whereupon the rider dismounted, and stretched himself.
From a water-bag at the cantle of the saddle he poured water into his big hat, watching sympathetically while the big horse drank. Some few drops that still remained in the hat after the horse had finished he playfully shook on the animal’s head, smiling widely at the whinny of delight that greeted the action. He merely wet his own lips from the water-bag. Then for an instant, after replacing the bag, he stood at the black’s shoulder, his face serious.
“We’ll hit the Kelso water-hole about sundown, I reckon, Purgatory,” he said. “That’s certain. There’s only one thing can stop us—that shootin’. If it’s Apaches, why, I reckon there’s a long dry spell ahead of us; but if it’s only Greasers—”
He grinned with grim eloquence, patted the black again, and climbed into the saddle. Again, as before, he sat silent upon his mount, scanning the sun-scorched waste; and then he rode forward.
An hour later, during which he loped the black horse slowly, he again drew the animal to a halt and gazed around him, frowning, his eyes gleaming with a savage intolerance.
The shooting he had heard some time previous to his app
earance at the base of the big sand dune had not been done by Indians. He was almost convinced of that now. Or, if Indians had done the shooting, they had not yet observed him. The fact that he had seen no smoke signals proved that.
Still, there was the deep silence on every hand to bring doubt into his mind; and he knew that Indians—especially Apaches—were tricky, sometimes foregoing the smoke signals to lie in ambush. And very likely—if they had seen him coming—they were doing that very thing: waiting for him to ride into the trap they had prepared. He had not been able to locate the point from which the reports had come. It had seemed to him that they had come from a point directly westward; but he could not be sure, for he had seen no smoke.
He talked no more to the horse, sitting rigidly in the saddle, erect, his head bent a little forward, his chin thrusting, his lips curving with a bitterly savage snarl. He felt the presence of living things with him in the desert; a presentiment had gripped him—a conviction that living men were close and hostile.
Reaching downward, he drew the rifle from the saddle holster and examined its mechanism. Placing it across his knee, he drew out his heavy pistols, one after another, slowly twirling the cylinders. He replaced the pistols, making sure that the holster flaps were out of the way so that they would not catch or drag at the weapons when he wanted to use them—and with the rifle resting across his legs near the saddle horn, he rode slowly forward.
He swung wide of even the small sand dunes as he passed them, and he kept a vigilant eye upon the dead rocks that dotted the level at infrequent intervals. Even the cactus clumps received flattering attention; and the little stretches of greasewood that came within range of his vision were examined closely.
At the end of half an hour he had seen nothing unusual. Here and there he had noticed a rattler lurking in the shade of a rock or partly concealed under the thorny blade of a sprawling cactus; and he had seen a sage hen nestling in the hot sand. But these were fixtures—as was also the Mexican eagle that winged its slow way in mile-wide circles in the glaring, heat-pulsing sky.
The Charles Alden Seltzer Megapack Page 113