John McGraw

“ A Mexican with a knife was solely responsible. Yet, worse than all of these disappointments is the fact that his name was not Gerald Van Alstyne. No, indeed. The Leading Man owned to the plain, homely, unromantic patronymic of Bob McGraw. The only thing romantic and—er—literary about Bob McGraw was his Roman-nosed mustang, Friar Tuck—so called because he had been foaled and raised on a wooded range near Sherwood in Mendocino county. ”

“ Of such comparisons between McGraw men who had succeeded and other university men who had failed Mr. Pound had so many at his fingers' ends as to be absolutely overwhelming. So before I had seen McGraw I was a McGraw man to the core, and my mentor, with a subtlety astonishing for him, missed no opportunity to increase my devotion. He even taught me the college yell in one of his lighter moments, and I, in turn, taught it to James that it might ring out with more volume from the barn-bridge of an evening. ”

“ McGraw, the issue would have been different had you been in Hennage's boots.”
“Possibly. But I didn't come here to gossip with you, Carey. I don't like you well enough for that. I want to finish my business and get back to San Pasqual to-night.”
“Certainly, certainly. But you're such an extraordinary young man, McGraw, that in spite of our former differences I must own to a desire to know more about you. I could use a man with your brains and ability, McGraw. You're the kind of a fellow I've been looking for—for a great many years, in fact. ”

“ Weel, I waited a wee, then I crawled oot masel,
And the big stuff wis gorin' and roarin' around,
And I seemed tae be under the oxter o' hell,
And Creation wis crackin' tae bits by the sound.
And I says in ma mind: "Gang ye back, ye auld fule!"
When I thrilled tae a note that wis saucy and sma';
And there in a crater, collected and cool,
Wi' his wee penny whistle wis Sandy McGraw.
Ay, there he wis playin' as gleg as could be,
And listenin' hard wis a spectacled Boche;
Then Sandy turned roon' and he noddit tae me,
And he says: "Dinna blab on me, Sergeant McTosh. ”

“ We will go through the doors together—me first to take his fire, and you behind to shoot him down."
"I guess no man can be as brave as a woman, Jack. No; I have to see McGurk alone. He faced my father alone and shot him down. I'll face McGurk alone and live long enough to put my mark on him."
"But you don't know him. He can't be hurt. Do you think my father and—and Dick Wilbur would fear any man who could be hurt? No, but McGurk has been in a hundred fights and never been touched. There's a charm over him, don't you see?"
"I'll break the charm, that's all."
"You're only a boy, Pierre." ”

“ Come with me and be a Pagan, my friend, and when you have finished the job I'll guarantee to plant you up on the slope of Kearsarge, where your soul, as it mounts to the God of a Square Deal, can look down on the valley that you have prepared for a happy people, and say: 'That is mine. I helped create it, and I did it for love. I finished what the Almighty commenced, and the job was worth while.' Will you play the game with me, T. Morgan Carey, and get some joy out of life?”
The land-grabber—the parasite who had lived only to destroy—looked up at Bob McGraw. ”

“ I've feared you, McGurk!"
He said it with a deep astonishment, as a grown man will speak of the way he feared darkness when he was a child. McGurk moistened his white lips. The white horse pawed the rocks as though impatient to be gone.
"Listen," said Pierre, "your horse grows restive. Suppose we stand here—it's a convenient distance apart, you see, and wait with our arms folded for the next time the white horse paws the rocks, because when I kill you, McGurk, I want you to die knowing that another man was faster on the draw and straighter with his bullets than you are. ”

“ I said. “It might be a chance, but the odds are it would prove a fake. Go home, and go to bed, and make up your mind that if you can find something for McGraw, he'll do better by you than lead you off on a wild-goose chase.” ”

“ He smote his thigh, “Well I'll be ding-swizzled and everlastingly flabbergasted. Lit out to get married an' never said a word to nobody. Pulls out o' town, dressed in her best suit o' clothes, like old man McGinty, an' heads north. Uh-huh! Bob McGraw's at the bottom o' this. He started south the day before, an' he ain't arrived in San Pasqual yet.”
He sat down at Donna's kitchen table and drew a letter and a telegram from his pocket.
“Huh! Huh—hum—m—m! Writes me on Monday from Sacramento that he's busted, an' to send him a money order to San Francisco, General Delivery. ”

“ Never before had Bob McGraw unburdened his heart of its innermost secrets, its hopes, its fears, its aspirations; for a moment now he almost quivered at the thought that Donna would look upon him as a dreamer, an idealist—perhaps a fool—he, a penniless desert wanderer assuming to hold in his sunburnt palm the destinies of the under dogs of civilization—the cripples too weak and hopeless to be anything more than wretched camp-followers in the Army of Labor. ”

“ There was a vague fear that when he faced McGurk he would be unmanned again and frozen with fear; that his spirit would be broken and he would become a thing too despicable for a man to kill.
One thing was certain: if he was to act a man's part and die a man's death he must not stand long before McGurk. It seemed to him then that he would die happy if he had the strength to fire one shot before the end.
Then he tiptoed from the house and went over the snow to the barn and saddled the horse of Hal Boone. ”

“ There's your little old bag with your applications still untouched, although I will admit that I was mean enough to help you file some of those instruments of abandonment from your dummy entrymen. I must hurry along now. Thank you so much—”
The janitor entered. In his hand he held Mr. McGraw's suspenders.
“You might need these” he interrupted, “more particular if you're goin' to do any runnin', an' I'll bet you are.”
“Thank you” murmured Mr. McGraw. “You're very thoughtful,” and quite calmly he proceeded to remove his coat and vest and replace the suspenders. ”

“ It's only a lone wolf that will ever bring down McGurk. Think how he's rounded us up like a herd of cattle and brought us down one by one."
"By getting each man alone and killing him from behind."
"From the front, Jack. No, he's fought square with each one. The wounds of Black Gandil were all in front, and when McGurk and I meet it's going to be face to face."
Her tone changed, softened: "But what of me, Pierre?"
"You have to leave this life. Go down to the city, Jack. Live like a woman; marry some lucky fellow; be happy." ”

“ You're ready for the discard. I'm not going to kill you. I've thought of a finer hell than death, and that is to live as you shall live. I've beaten you, McGurk, beaten you fairly on the draw, and I've broken your heart by doing it. The next time you face a man you'll begin to think — you'll begin to remember how one other man beat you at the draw. And that wonder, McGurk, will make your hand freeze to your side, as you've made the hands of other men before me freeze. D'you understand?"
The lips of McGurk parted. The whisper of his dry panting reached Pierre, and the devil in him smiled. ”

“ The man with courage enough to turn outlaw and rob a stage had courage enough to kill his man, and Bob McGraw would have fought it out in the open, He would never have taken to the shelter of a sand-dune and fired from ambush. Bob McGraw, having brains, would have killed the messenger and gone back for his hat! He was too cunning a frontiersman to leave a trail like that behind him and it was no part of his nature to do a half-way job. Still, the man who had robbed that stage had had no hobbles on his courage. ”

“ The McPhersons still occupied a fragment of their ancestral dominions, lived on bread and cheese and a majestic sense of superiority, and hated the interloper with an amazing, entirely racial pertinacity. The fact that it was Hodge's English money that provided the bread and cheese and gave sustenance to the superiority, softened them not at all. Sandy McGrab, who with the rest of Kirk Humphries took cautious sides with the ousted clan, was explaining the exact merits of the unshrinkable tweeds to Sir John's patronizing innocence. ”

“ For his song's o' the heather, and here in the dirt
You listen and dream o' a land that's sae braw,
And he mak's you forget a' the harm and the hurt,
For he pipes like a laverock, does Sandy McGraw. ”

“ Sandy McGrab went into his ancestral dwelling and slammed the door.
II.
THE LAIRD ENTERTAINS.
“Well, I shall make one more attempt at a reconciliation,” said Sir John pompously and stretched out an unbooted foot in the direction of his valet. “The man's a fool, of course, going about with his nose in the air because his grandfather was a smarter sheep stealer than the others; but it's my duty as landowner to do the neighborly, and I shall ask him up to meet Donna Eleonora next week. The car at ten-thirty sharp, James.” ”

“ What would you think of detailing Paddy McGraw to give the young men a fast ride—they have heard of him. I talked yesterday with one of them. He wanted to see a train robber and I introduced him to Conductor O'Brien, but he never saw the joke, and you know how depressing explanations are. Don't, my dear Bucks, put me on a private car with these people for four weeks—my brother died of paresis——"
"Oh!" He turned. The stenographer's cheeks were burning; she was astonishingly pretty. "I'm going too fast, I'm afraid," said Glover. ”

“ There were three clothiers in Kirk Humphries, but the firm of McGrab & Son had done more in the line of gulling the credulous upstart English than the other two put together, and consequently was the most noted for its strict integrity. Not that the McGrabs were dishonest. Far from it. But they were Scotch, and their customers were English—and further explanation is superfluous.
Sandy McGrab was selling a warranted heather mixture to Sir John Hodge. Sir John Hodge—of Hodge's Patent Baby Food fame—had bought Glen Every, the McPhersons' estate on the other side of the loch, and wore kilts. ”

“ Come up into Owens valley three years from now and I'll prove it to you. Good-day.”
“One moment, McGraw. Don't go for a minute or two. I—I'd like to believe that what you say is true, but the trouble is—you see, McGraw, I have never encountered your point of view heretofore. Tell me, McGraw—don't lie to me—do you feel the slightest desire to see me suffer, or is this—er—brotherly-love talk of yours plain buncombe?”
Bob McGraw advanced toward the man he had beaten. He held out his hand. “I try to be a man” he said—“to be too big to hate and put myself on a level with a brute. ”

“ But I tell you this McGraw man's a Desert Rat. The desert's got him. Generally it don't get 'em so young, but once in a while it does, An' of all the Desert Rats that ever sucked a niggerhead cactus, the feller that goes huntin' lost mines is the worst. They never get over it.”
Donna permitted herself a very small smile.
“Sometimes they do” she reminded him.
“I wouldn't be surprised. But not until they've found what they're lookin' for. However, we'll wait an' see if Bob McGraw—like that name, Miss Donna?” ”

“ I'll no move on——”
“My poor young man——” the curate interrupted, and then stopped short. Even in broad daylight, the travel-stained kilt must have been quite unrecognizable, but whether Stuart or McPherson or Macduff, it was still indubitably a kilt. Sandy McGrab's knees were stained with the damp soil, and the glory of silver buckles was no more. John Andrews drew his breath quickly. “Man,” he said almost with passion, “you're not real?” ”

“ He was kind. Harley P. Hennage was right. Bob McGraw was a Desert Rat. But a Desert Rat lives close to the great heart of Mother Nature, and his own heart is clean.
The dawn-light came filtering across the desert and lit up the room where she sat. She turned to the bed and saw that Bob McGraw was watching her again, and on his face was that little, cheerful, mocking, inscrutable smile.
Again Donna found herself powerless to resist the appeal in the man's eyes. ”

“ From where they stood, they could see the lights of the big thoroughfare, and the rumble of the motor busses had lost every poetic resemblance. Sandy McGrab set his tam-o'-shanter firmly on his head. He swayed a little, but the set of his jaw was grim.
“It's a very big place,” he said, half to himself and with a faint wistfulness; “a big place. It will be no so easy to find a lady without a name, I'm thinking.”
“You never will,” said John Andrews solemnly. “I pray you never will. Go back to Kirkhumphries, mon. Go back before your faith in womanhood is broken forever. ”

“ The Reverend John Andrews slipped into his host's vacant chair, and leaned forward eagerly.
“Sandy McGrab,” he said, in a hurried undertone, “are ye here as a wolf in sheep's clothing?”
“I dinna ken what ye mean,” McGrab retorted sullenly.
“Ye ken weel eno'. These puir, honest folk—do they ken what ye are—a play actor—a mon on thebroad road that leadeth——”
“They'll ken in guid time,” McGrab interrupted.
“A mon who is to marry a play actress——”
“It's no true—I mean——” He broke off, aghast at the horrible significance of his own words. “I mean I'm no engaged to any woman——” he stammered. ”