George W. Ogden

“ Should a brakeman appear now on top of the car to which he was tied, Morgan knew he had little chance of making himself heard through the noise of the train, spent as he was already, gasping short breaths which he seemed unable to drive into his burning lungs.
How long could human strength and determination to cling to life endure this punishment! how long until he must fall and drag, unable to regain his feet, to be pounded at that cruel rope's end into a mangled, abhorrent thing! ”

“ There, in a cloud of obscuring dust from the trampled road, the horse holding the line taut, Morgan flung from the saddle in the nimble way of a range man, bent over the fallen slayer of men a little while. When the first of the crowd came breaking across the broad space intervening and drew up panting and breathless in admiration of the bold thing they had witnessed, Seth Craddock lay hog-tied and harmless on the ground, one pistol a few feet from where he struggled in his ropes, the other in the holster at his side. ”

“ And so evening found peace in Ascalon, after all its tragedy and pain.
Calvin Morgan and Rhetta Thayer stood at the bank corner at sunset, looking down the square where the great gap in its front made the scene unfamiliar. Morgan's disabled hand was bandaged; there was a cross of surgical tape on his chin, closing a deep cut where some citizen had tapped him with a revolver in the last fight of that tumultuous day.
Little groups of desolate, disheartened people stood along the line of hitching racks; dead coals, which the wind had sown as living fire over the square, littered the white dust. ”

“ There were a few cowboys in town that evening, and these as quiet as buzzards on a fence as they sat along the sidewalk near the hotel smoking their cigarettes. The wind had fallen, leaving a peace in the ears like the cessation of a hateful turmoil. There was the promise of a cool night in the unusual clearness of the stars. Morgan rode away into the moonless night, leaving the town to take care of its own dignity and peace. ”

“ Judge Thayer urged the rainmaker to his greatest efforts to stop it, turn it, bring it back; smoke green and black went up in volumes, to stream away on the cool, refreshing wind. Sulphur and rosin and pitch were identified in that smoke as surely as the spectrum reveals the composition of the sun. But the wind was against the rainmaker; nature conspired to mock him before men as the quack that he was.
The gloom of storm cleared from the streets of Ascalon, the worn and tired look came back into faces that had been illumined for a little while with hope. ”

“ Morgan lurched on over the uneven ground, still dizzy and weak from the bludgeoning he had undergone, unable to help his precarious balance by the use of his arms, doubly bound now by the rope about his middle which the Texans had drawn in running noose. It was Morgan's hope in the first few rods of this frightful journey that a brakeman might appear on top of the train, whose attention he might attract before the speed became so great he could no longer maintain it, or a lurch or a stumble in the ditch at the trackside might throw him under the wheels. ”

“ Santa Fé, at its worst, could not have been dustier than this town of Ascalon, and especially the plaza, or public square, in these summer days. Galloping horses set its dust flying in obscuring clouds; the restless wind that blew from sunrise till sunset day in and day out from the southwest, whipped it in sudden gusts of temper, and drove it through open doors, spreading it like a sun-defying hoarfrost on the low roofs. All considered, Ascalon was as dry, uncomfortable, unpromising of romance, as any place that man ever built or nature55 ever harassed with wearing wind and warping sun. ”

“ There were guns in men's hands all about him where guns did not belong. Morgan threw his determination and strength into a fling that cleared his right arm, and began a battle that marked for life some of them who clung to him and tried to drag him down.
They were crushing him, they were overwhelming him. Only a sudden jerk of the head, a dozen determined, silent men hanging to him, saved Morgan's neck from the flung rope. The man who cast it cursed; was drawing it back with eager haste to throw again, when Rhetta Thayer came. ”

“ And far and away, over the swell of gentle ridge, into the dip of gracious valley, spread the benediction of growing wheat. Wisdom and faith and love had worked their miracle. This land had become the nation's granary; it was a land redeemed.
Under the giant cottonwoods, gray-green of leaf as the desert grasses were gray-green in the old cattle days, the brown walls, the low roof, of a sod house stood, the lawn clipped smooth around its humble door, lilac clumps green beside its walls, sweet honeysuckle clambering over its little porch. ”

“ Eager to begin his harvest of revenge before the men from the Nueces struck south again over the long trail, Morgan determined to start at once in search of somebody to free him from his bonds. He could not return to Ascalon in this shameful plight, his ignominy upon him, an object of derision. There must be somebody living along the river close at hand who would cut his bonds and give him a plaster to stick over the wound he could feel drawing and gaping in his cheek. ”

“ Three shots he fired, the roar of his rifle loud above the lighter sound of the revolvers. With the third shot Morgan raised his gun. In the smoke that was settling to the floor the taller of the gunmen lay stretched upon his face. The other, arms rigidly at his sides, held a little way from his body, head drooping to his chest, turned dizzily two or three times, spinning swiftly in his dance of death, gave at the knees, settled down gently in a strange, huddled heap.
Dead. Both of them dead. The work of one swift moment when the blood curse fell on this new, quick-handed marshal of Ascalon. ”

“ Men pushed through the press with ropes. Seth Craddock looked across at Morgan, and cursed him. One of the prisoners, the unwounded man, a youth no older than Fred Stilwell, began to beg and cry.
Morgan had not been alarmed up to the moment of his seeing Hutton inflaming the crowd against him, for the mob was composed of men whose faces were for the greater part familiar, mild men in their way, whom the violence in which they had lived had passed and left untouched. ”

“ No chance to drop a hand to a gun standing shoulder to shoulder with gizzards pressed against the bar; no chance to swerve or duck and make a quick sling of it and a quicker shot, with the bore of that big rifle ready to cough sixteen chunks of lead in half as many seconds, any one of them hitting hard enough to drill through them, man by man, down to the last head in the line. So their arms went up and strained high above their heads, as if eager to show their desire to comply without reservation to the unspoken command. Morgan had not said a word. ”

“ They don't stay long enough to try out anything, Morgan. They're here today and gone tomorrow, cursing Kansas as they go, slandering it, branding it as the Tophet of the earth. We've never had the right kind of people here, they didn't have the courage, the faith, and the vision. If a man hasn't got the grit and ability to stick through his losses at any game in this life, Morgan, he'll never win. ”

“ What he wanted was a man who would do more shooting than ever had been done before, a man who would clean the place of the too-ready gun-slingers who had gathered there, making the town's notoriety their capital, invading even the respectable districts in their nightly debaucheries to such insolent boldness that a man's wife or daughter dared not show her ear on the street after nightfall. ”

“ Bones of dead buffalo, bones of dead horses, bones of dead men. The tribute exacted by the Kansas prairie: bones. A waste of bones, a sepulcher that did not hide its bones, but spread them, exulting in its treasures, to bleach and crumble under the stern sun upon its sterile wastes. Bones of deserted houses, skeletons of men's hopes sketched in the dimming furrows which the grasses were reclaiming for their own.
A land of desolation and defeat it seemed to the traveler, indeed, as he followed the old trail along which the commerce of the illimitable West once was borne. ”

“ But the broad notoriety of Ascalon attended to this, bringing with the outlawed and debased a fresh and eager train of victims. The sons of families came from afar, sated with the diversions and debaucheries of eastern cities, looking for strange thrills and adventures to heat their surfeited blood. Unsophisticated young men came, following the lure of romance; farm boys from the midwestern states came, with a thought of pioneering and making a new empire of the plow, as their fathers had smoothed the land in the states already called old. ”

“ The shadow of the hotel fell far into the public square, and in front of the building, their chairs placed in what would have been the gutter of the street if the thoroughfare had been paved, their feet braced with probably more comfort than grace against the low sidewalk, a row of men was stationed, like crows on a fence. There must have been twenty or more of them, in various stages of undress from vest down to suspenders, from bright cravats flaunting over woolen shirts and white shirts, and striped shirts and speckled shirts, to unconfined necks laid bare to the breeze. ”

“ Nobody had been sworn in to take his place, for, as Judge Thayer had said, it did not appear as if any further calamity could be left in store among the misfortunes for that town, except it might be an earthquake or a cyclone, and a city marshal, even Morgan, could not fend against them if they were to come.
"You have trampled your place among the thorns," said Rhetta.
"It looks like I've pulled a good deal down with me," he returned, viewing the seat of fire with a softening of pity in his grave face.
"All that deserves to rise will rise again," she said in confidence. ”

“ Outside a crowd collected around the fallen man, for common as death by violence was in the streets of Ascalon, the awe of its swift descent, the hushing mystery of its silence, fell as coldly over the hearts of men there as in the walks of peace. Presently the busy undertaker came with his black wagon to gather up this broken shape of what had been a man but a few minutes past. ”

“ Some said this man was a sheriff from Texas, who had tracked them to Ascalon and was now taking them to jail to await a train; some said he was a special government officer, others that the governor had sent him in place of troops, knowing him to be sufficient in himself. Boys ran along in open-mouthed admiration, pattering their bare feet in the thick dust, as Morgan drove his captives down the inside of the hitching racks; the outpouring of citizens, parasites, outcasts of the earth, swept after in a growing stream. ”

“ Judge Thayer laughed over it, mightily pleased by this evidence of confusion in a man who could heat his branding iron to set his mark on half a dozen desperadoes, yet turned to dough before the eyes of a simple maid.
"No more than a bird is like a bear," said Morgan, thinking aloud, racing mentally the next moment to snatch back his words and shape them in more conventional phrase. ”

“ Morgan herded them into the public square beyond the line of hitching racks which stood like a skeleton fence between courthouse and business buildings. People came pouring from every house to see, hurrying, crowding, talking in hushed voices, wondering in a hundred conjectures what this man was going to do. Gamblers and nighthawks, roused by the very feeling of something unusual, hastened out half dressed, to stand in slippers and collarless shirts, looking on in silent speculation. ”

“ On this particular afternoon when the sun-baked people of Ascalon stood waiting in such tensity of expectation that their minds were ready to crack like the dry, contracting earth beneath their feet, it seemed that nature had laid off that land across which the railroad ran with the sole view of adding to the dramatic value of Seth Craddock's entry in this historic hour. ”

“ Rhetta nodded, her bosom quivering with the pounding of her expectant heart, her throat throbbing, her hands clenched as if she held on in desperate hope of rescue. Judge Thayer said no more. He sat watching Morgan's face, knowing well when a word too many might change the verdict to his loss.
"The question is, how far do they want a man to go in the regeneration of Ascalon? How many are willing to put purity above profit for a while? Business would suffer; it would be as dead here as a grasshopper after a prairie fire while readjustment to new conditions shaped. ”

“ Morgan lifted his eyes in feigned surprise at this news, not having it in his heart to cloud her generous act by the revelation of a suspicion that it was no news to him.
"You mean——?"
"I got it straight," Dora nodded.
"Thank you, Miss Dora."
"I hope to God," she said, for it was their manner to speak ardently in Ascalon in those days, "you'll beat him to it when he gets off of the train!"
"A man can only do his best, Dora," he said gently, moved by her honest friendship, simple wild thing though she was.
"If I was a man I'd take my gun and go with you to meet him," she declared. ”

“ Rhetta did not give him much time, to be sure, but ran on with her denunciation of the citizenry of the town.
"I wouldn't turn a hand for them again, Mr. Morgan—I'd throw up the whole thing and let them cringe like dogs before that murderer when he comes back! It's good enough for them, it's all they deserve."
"You can't expect them to be very warm toward a stranger," he said, excusing them according to what he knew to be their due.
"They're afraid you can't do it, they're telling one another your luck will fail this time. Luck! that's all the sense there is in that bunch of cowards." ”

“ But no, said Seth; not at all. The statutes upheld him, the constitution supported him, and hell and damnation and many other forces which he enumerated in his red-tongued defiance, could not move him out of that office. He demanded to be allowed to consult his lawyer, he glared around and cursed the curious and unawed public which laughed at his plight and the figure he cut, ordering somebody to go and fetch the county attorney, on pain of death when he should come again into the freedom of his hands. ”

“ Your work's done, you can quit now with a good conscience and no excuse to anybody."
"Why," said Morgan, reflectively, "I don't believe I could quit right now, Miss Rhetta. There's something more to come, it isn't quite finished yet."
"There's a great deal more to come, the end of all this fighting and killing and grinning treachery never will come!" she said, in great bitterness. "What's the use of one man putting his life against all this viciousness? There's no cure for the curse of Ascalon but time. ”

“ The heat of the place was terrific; burning shingles swirled on the wind, coals and burning brands fell in a rain all over the square. At the corner of the broad street that came into the square at Peden's hall, another raider was stationed.
The citizens who were making a weak defense were being driven back, the sound of firing was behind the stores, and falling off as if the raiders pressed them hard. Morgan quickly concluded that Craddock and the rest of the outfit were over there silencing this resistance, probably in the belief that he was concerned in it. ”

“ As I told Seth when I swore him in, what we want in Ascalon is a marshal that will use his gun oftener, and to better purpose, than the men that have gone before him. This town must be purified, the offal of humanity that makes a stench until it offends the heavens and spreads our obscene notoriety to the ends of the earth, must be swept out before we can induce sober and substantial men to bring their families into this country. ”