George W. Ogden

“ Slavens was as dirty and unwashed as the foulest in that crowd. His khaki coat bore a varnish of grease, his hat was without band or binding, and the growth of beard which covered his face like the bristles of a brush gave him the aspect of one who had long been the companion and warder of sheep upon the hills. With the added disguise of the smoked-glass goggles, common to travelers in that glaring, dusty land, it would have required one with a longer and more intimate acquaintance with him than Hun Shanklin could claim to pick him out of a crowd. ”

“ The moonlight was sifting through the loose strands of her gleaming hair as she sat there bareheaded at his side, and the strength of his life reached out to her, and the deep yearning of his lonely soul. He knew that he wanted that woman out of all the world full of women whom he had seen and known–and passed. He knew that he wanted her with such strong need that from that day none other could come across the mirror of his heart and dim her image out of it.
Simply money would not win a woman like her ”

“ It seemed to be the belief in the Hotel Metropole that when a man stored a pistol beneath his pillow, or wedged it in between his ribs and the side of the bunk, he had secured the safety of the night.
At the distant end of the main street, standing squarely across its center, stood the little house which sheltered the branch of the United States land-office, the headquarters being at Meander, a town a day’s journey beyond the railroad’s end. A tight little board house it was, like a toy, flying the emblem of the brave and the free as gallantly as a schoolhouse or a forest-ranger station. ”

“ Still, the evening was as serene as past evenings; the caress of the wind was as soft as any of the south’s slow breathings of other days. For it is in the heart that men make and dismantle their paradises, and from the heart that the fountain springs which lends its color to every prospect that lies beyond.
Boyle’s dust had not settled before Smith came by, jangling a road-scraper behind his team. He was coming from his labor of leveling a claim, skip one, up the river. ”

“ I’ve heard of men doing riskier things than that for money,” he returned.
Agnes Horton’s excitement and concern seemed to pass with his words. She propped her chin in her palms and sat pensively, looking at the broken waters which reared around the barrier of scattered stones in its channel.
“Yes, men sometimes take big risks for money–even 36 the risk of honor and the everlasting happiness of others,” said she.
It was like the wind blowing aside a tent-flap as he passed, giving him a glimpse of its intimate interior. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a curious anomaly of civilization, everywhere under the flag which stretched its stripes in the wind above the little land-office at Comanche, that law-breaking thrives most prosperously under the protection of law.
Gambling in itself had not been prohibited by statute at that time in Wyoming, though its most profitable side diversions–such as dropping paralyzing poisons in a man’s drink, snatching his money and clearing out with it, cracking him on the head with a leaden billet, or standing him up at the point of a pistol and rifling him–were, as now, discountenanced under the laws. ”

“ If a man were looking for a master in that branch of frontier learning, a great opportunity was at hand.
Boyle leaned against the torrent of abuse and swallowed it, his face losing its fiery hue, blanching and fading as if every word fell on his senses like the blow of a whip to the back. The Governor’s son watched every muscle of Shanklin’s face as if to read the gambler’s intention in his eye, while his hand, stiff-set and clawlike, hovered within three inches of his pistol-butt. ”

“ The sun stood “the height of a lance” when Agnes slipped quietly to the door of the tent. Over the gray desert lands a smoky mist lay low. Comanche, stirring from its dreams, was lighting its fires. Here passed one, the dregs of sleep upon him, shoulders bent, pail in hand, feet clinging heavily to the road, making toward the hydrant where the green oats sprang in the fecund soil. There, among the horses in the lot across the way, another growled hoarsely as he served the crowding animals their hay. ”

“ Mrs. Mann was humming a little song as they started away toward the newspaper office, for she was tiring of Wyoming, where she had not seen a single cowboy yet; and the prospect of returning to the miller was growing dear to her heart. There was a quiet over Comanche that morning which seemed different from the usual comparative peace of that portion of the day–a strained and fevered quiet, as of hushed winds before a gale. It took hold of even June as the party passed through the main street, joining the stream of traffic which pressed in one direction only. ”

“ When one whom we have expected to rise up out of the smoke of obscurity or the fog of calumniation fails in what we feel to be his obligation to the world and ourselves–especially ourselves–faith falters in its place, and gives way to reproach, bitter words, hot arraignments. There is no scorn like the scorn of one who has been a friend.
And still Agnes kept her faith that Dr. Slavens was blameless for his unexplained disappearance and prolonged absence deep-anchored in her heart. ”

“ She looked at Smith and smiled. There was the glory of untrammeled space in her clear eyes, a yearning as of the desert-born on the far bounds of home. Smith drove on, his back very straight.
“Older,” said he with laconic finality after holding his peace for a quarter of a mile.
Smith spoke as if he had known both Adam and the butte for a long time, and so was an unquestionable authority. Agnes was not disposed to dispute him, so they lurched on in silence along the dust-cushioned road. ”

“ Smith jangled on, his scraper making toadish hops and tortoise-like tips and amblings over the inequalities in the way. She looked after him, a new light shining from her eyes, a new passion stirring her bosom, where his words had fallen like a spark upon tinder.
So that was the estimation in which men held Jerry Boyle–men like Smith, who moved along the lower levels of life and smoothed over the rough places for others to pass by and by! It must be but the reflection of thought in higher planes–“If I had a woman around the place!” ”

“ It was such a wide and empty land for a young heart, and its prospect was such a waste of years! The thought of refuge and peace was sweet, but there is refuge to be found and peace to be won among men and the works of men; among books, and the softer ways of life.
At that hour she was ready to give it up, mount her horse, and ride away. If giving it up would save Dr. Slavens his hard-won claim, she would not hesitate, she told herself, to ride to Comanche that night and take the first train for the East. ”

“ Boyle moved one foot slightly, as if to steady himself for a supreme effort. A little stone which he dislodged tumbled down the side of a four-inch gully with a noise that seemed the sound of an avalanche. With that alarm Shanklin’s arm moved swiftly. Like a reflection in a glass, Boyle’s arm moved with it.
Two shots; such a bare margin between them that the ear scarcely could mark the line. Then one.
Shanklin, his hands half lifted, his arms crooked at the elbow and extended from his sides, dropped his pistol, his mouth open, as if to utter the surprise which was pictured in his features. ”

“ In a sun-cracked and time-curled leather holster tacked to the seat at Smith’s right hand, a large revolver with a prodigious black handle hung ready for the disciplining of bandits or bears, as they might come across Smith’s way.
Smith rounded up before the tent with a curve like a skater, bringing his four horses to a stop in fine style. No matter how Smith’s parts might be exaggerated by rumor or humor in other ways, as a teamster he stood without a peer between Cody and Green River. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For Comanche was a place of secrets and deceits.
She laid a fire in the tin stove and put the kettle on to boil. Horace Bentley and Milo Strong were stirring within the tent, making ready for the stage, which departed for Meander at eight.
Mrs. Mann, the miller’s wife, came out softly, the mark of the comb in her hair, where it had become damp at the temples during her ablution. She looked about her swiftly as she stood a moment in the door, very trim and handsome in her close-fitting black dress, with a virginal touch of white collar and a coral pin. ”

“ But he knew that this was the opportunity to make the one big chance which the years had been keeping from him. At the start Slavens had told the old man that his son had a chance for life; he had not said how precariously it lay balanced upon the lip of the dark cañon, nor how an adverse breath might send it beyond the brink. The weight of the responsibility now lay on him alone. Failure would bring upon him an avalanche of blame; success a glorious impetus to his new career. ”

“ But all of them could see that in her heart the hope of Number One was as big as a can of tomatoes–in cowboy literature–to the eyes of a man dying of thirst in Death Valley.
Only the toolmaker, William Bentley–and he was gray at the curling hair which turned up at his broad temples–smiled as if he held it to be a pleasant fantasy, too nebulous and far-away to be realized upon, when any asked him of his intentions concerning Number One. ”

“ Slavens left him standing there and entered the tent, feeling that Shanklin was as irresponsible morally as a savage. Evidently the inconsequential matter of an attempt at murder should not be allowed to stand between friends, according to the flat-game man’s way of viewing life. It appeared that morning as if Shanklin had no trace of malice in him on account of the past, and no desire to pursue further his underhanded revenge. Conscience was so little trouble to him that he could sit at meat with a man one hour and stick a knife in his back the next. ”

“ For, according to all the signs, the poison was so deep in the supposed sheep-herder’s blood that nothing but the loss of all his hoard would cool it again.
Slavens nervously counted down twenty-five dollars again, keeping the remainder of his winnings in his hand, as if ready to take chance on the jump.
A man must have it given to him both ways in order to key him up to the right place, Hun Shanklin knew. All winning would no more do than all loss. So this time the loaded dice were switched into the box, and the charmed number came out again. ”

“ Agnes fired up her stove and sat by it, watching the eager sparks make their brave plunge into the vast night which so soon extinguished them, as the world engulfs and silences streams and clouds of little men who rush into it with a roar. So many of them there are who go forth so day by day, who avail, with all their fuss and noise, no more against it than the breath of an infant against a stone. ”

“ Reed to Mrs. Mann when Agnes went in for a wrap as the chill of night began to settle.
Mrs. Mann, charitable and romantic as she was in her mild way, shook her head sadly.
“I’m afraid he wasn’t,” said she.
“I’m sorry that I can’t take June away from here tomorrow,” lamented Mrs. Reed. “There’s something hidden in that woman’s life!”
Agnes had come out silently, as anyone must have come over that velvet-soft earth, which much trampling only made the softer. In the gloom she stood just behind Mrs. Reed. ”

“ But Slavens would not permit him to quit the tent until he could no longer be of assistance.
It was not the wounded body of Jerry Boyle that the pot-bellied peace officer feared, but the stiffening frame of Hun Shanklin, lying out there in the bright sun. Every time he looked that way he drew up on himself, like a snail. At length Slavens gave him permission to leave, charging him to telephone to Meander for the coroner the moment that he arrived in Comanche, and to get word to Boyle’s people at the earliest possible hour. ”

“ Of all the disheartened, blue, and beaten men on that dusty train that dusty day, Dr. Warren Slavens, late of Missouri, was without question the deepest down in the quagmire of failure. He hated himself for the fizzle that he had made of it, and he hated the world that would not open the gates and give him one straight dash for the goal among men of his size. ”

“ If, amid the contempt and indifference of the successful, he’d had some incentive besides his own ambition to struggle for all this time, some splendid, strong-handed woman to stand up in his gloom like the Goddess of Liberty offering an ultimate reward to the poor devils who have won their way to her feet across the bitter seas from hopeless lands, he might have stuck to it back there and won in the end. ”

“ The lowest elevation on the doctor’s claim was several hundred feet above the river, from which he hauled the water which he drank and used for culinary purposes. If there was wealth in the land and rocks, nature had masked it very well indeed. The pick and the hammer revealed nothing; long hours of prying and exploring yielded no gleam of metal to confirm his fast-shrinking belief that he had pitched on something good.
His only comfort in those first days was the thought of the money which he had taken from Shanklin, with the aid of the gambler’s own honest little die. ”

“ They passed beyond the straggling limits of Comanche, where the town blended out into the plain in the tattered tents and road-battered wagons of the most earnest of all the home-seekers, those who had staked everything on the hope of drawing a piece of land which would serve at last as a refuge against the world’s buffeting. ”

“ Slavens appeared to be getting the upper hand of his melancholy, and to be drawing the comfort from his black pipe that it was designed to give. Next to the sergeant he was the handiest man in the camp, showing by his readiness to turn a full hand at anything, from paring potatoes to making a fire, that he had shifted for himself before that day. The ladies all admired him, as they always admire a man who has a little cloud of the mysterious about him. Mrs. Reed wondered, audibly, in the presence of June and Miss Horton, if he had deserted his wife. ”