The Man of Last Resort/The Grazier/Chapter 1
THE GRAZIER
I
The driller of the Bonnie Mag No. 3 had been keeping his weather eye on the public road all the long summer afternoon; exacting and laborious duties had obtained under the shadow of the oil derrick on this nineteenth day of August, quite sufficient to have distracted the attention of the ordinary man, but through it all the driller had maintained his watch. The pumper, a grimy mortal, who regarded the monster oil company as the sole and omnipotent power of the universe, had marked this apparent anxiety of the driller, and inquired, with some trace of humor, if that gentleman was expecting to see grease gush up out of the road. To which the driller had responded with barbaric profanity that the pumper had been employed to pump, and that he might hold his position by holding his tongue, but not otherwise. A suggestion that banished all levity from the speech of the pumper. Besides, there was a red glint in the eyes of the driller, and the underling of the great oil company appreciated perfectly the full significance of the sign. He had noticed it before on divers eventful occasions, especially on a certain morning when being interrupted by an order of the Circuit Court, the driller had promptly suggested to the deputy sheriff that he might go to the infernal regions with his injunction; and instead of suspending operations until the legal forum could determine the title to the realty, he had complied with his contract by pushing his well through to the Gordon sand.
It was true indeed that the Circuit Court had attached the body of the driller and bringing him up before its august presence fined him two hundred dollars for contempt, but the old man had paid over the money without the hesitation of a moment and immediately thereafter consigned the Circuit Court to the same heated region originally suggested to the deputy sheriff.
The sun had gone down, and the twilight was beginning to gather on the oil field. The shadows darkened across the long sloping valley, and the great derricks in the half light looked dark and gaunt and threatening like some grim engines of war. It was now difficult to observe the highway from the oil wells far up on the hill side, and the driller, who evidently intended to maintain his surveillance of the county thoroughfare at any cost, stepped out from the shadow of the derrick and began to wipe his hands on the grass; when he had finished he turned to the pumper. “Just keep your eye on that cable,” he said curtly, “I'll be back when you see me coming.” Then he turned and walked slowly down the path to the road.
The soft breath of wind creeping up from the North through the rift in the low hills brought with it no sound, save the dull ceaseless thump of the engines drawing streams of liquid wealth from a thousand narrow arteries leading down into the bosom of the earth. This great industry, not content with changing the civilization, had changed also the very face of the land; two years before this fluttering summer breeze had carried with it the murmur of ripening corn fields, the sweet odor of quiet pasture land where herds of fattening cattle wandered through fields of blue grass. Now, the lands were marked with wagon roads, studded with the rough shanties of the pumpers and the gigantic wooden tanks of the great oil companies; and here and there, like the twisted ugly back of some huge serpent, a black pipe line stretched its interminable length across the broken country. Greed ruled the world, and beauty, like many another gift of nature, was battered out under his hammer.
The oil driller stopped at the road side and leaned his long body on the rail fence. He was a thin, old man, with sharp, emaciated features, his hair and iron-gray beard were matted with oil, and his long arms, bare to the elbow and burned black by the sun, glistened greasy as the piston of his engine. The ancient workman kept his watch in dead silence, and beyond this his face showed no interest. This man belonged to that iron type upon which the world has depended so much for its civilization, that type which no matter where placed toils on in its station like a machine, unquestioning, tireless, reliable as a law. In the rank of their legions it had extended the rule of the Cæsars; on the broad decks of the men-of-war it had widened the dominion of Great Britain; and in the mines and mills and forests of America it had reared and maintained and enriched a Republic; growing greater than them all.
Presently in the deepening twilight a huge shadow appeared at the foot of the long hill, and the driller heard distinctly the sound of a horse coming leisurely up the sandy road. As it approached, the indefinite shadow took on a clear and decided outline, until one in the position of the driller could have seen that it was an enormous man, riding a red roan horse. The man was leaning forward, his head down and his hands resting on the pommel of his saddle, while the bridle reins dangled loose in his fingers. When they were opposite, the driller spoke.
“Is that you, Alshire?” he said.
The giant threw bark his great shoulders and stopped his horse with a wrench on the bridle “Morg Gaston!” he announced with some trace of surprise in his voice, then he added, half-apologetically, “what's the good word with you?”
The driller climbed heavily over the big staked-and-ridered fence, “I saw you go down this morning,” he said, “and I have been watching for you back; I want to tell you something.”
Then he came over to the middle of the road and rested his greasy chin on the mane of the red roan.
“Hell of a high horse,” said the driller.
“Seventeen hands,” responded the giant.
The old man ran his eyes slowly over the immense proportions of the traveller, his deep, powerful chest, his broad, thick shoulders and his massive limbs almost grotesquely huge.
“You are not little yourself,” he observed, as though announcing a discovery, “and I am darned glad of it, leastways I was darned glad of it that morning old Ward's rotten derrick blowed down, and you chanced along and lifted her off me. I was pinned under them timbers like a rat.”
The man laughed, but his face in the dark was not merry. The driller extended his close inspection to the horse; when he had finished he stepped back in the road and an expression of intense admiration spread itself over his rugged features.
“By jolly!” he said, “you are a pair to draw to.”
The giant patted the withers of the great horse.
“Cardinal is a good colt,” he replied, “good as they grow.”
The driller stood for some moments gazing almost worshipfully at the pair; then he straightened suddenly and coming up close to the horse rested his arms, wet with petroleum, on the pommel of the saddle.
“Alshire,” he said, lowering his voice, “the Company thinks there is grease under your land. I was up to see the manager last night, and while I was there the engineers came in with the maps, and they all agreed that the head of the pool was about under your farm. You are nigh on to three miles east of the development, but the belt is surely running your way; this here last well that the Company plugged is forty barrels better than the No. 1 five hundred feet west; and I'll tell you another thing, there ain't no more boring in this region until the Company gets its clutches on all this land laying to the east, yours included. My instructions is to make this last one dry, and move over into Ohio.”
The great Alshire bent over and placed his broad hand on the greasy arm of the driller. “I'm obliged to you, Morg,” he said slowly. “I'll lookout.”
“By jolly!” continued the old workman, “you better had, they are a smooth set of divels, and whatever you do, keep your mouth plugged. I ain't never given the Company the double cross before, but I couldn't see them skin you, by jolly, I couldn't!”
The old driller spoke rapidly, as though half ashamed of his treason, and when he had finished turned and began climbing the high fence.
“Morg,” called the giant. “Morg.”
“That's all right,” answered the driller, as he vanished up the dark hill side, “just keep your mouth plugged; that's all right.”
The giant touched his horse in the flank with his heel and rode on.
Rufus Alshire was a grazier, a business almost exclusively followed in this magnificent grass country. Many years before, his great-grandfather, an English Tory, had fled into this inland country in order to escape certain unpleasant relations with the colonial government. Here he had builded an enormous log manor-house, and surrounding himself with rather worthless retainers, maintained a sort of baronial existence. Others followed, and after a time the country was cleared and came to be divided into great tracts of pasture land, owned by these powerful families. But the elements of the feudal system, although suffering some modifications, remained. The tenants were, for the most part, born and reared on the stock land, and were almost fixtures.
The descendants of this independent ancestry continued to reside as near to the central part of their estate as possible, and maintained huge residences, rough at times and not quite comfortable perhaps, but always enormous. The nature of the country being especially adapted to the fattening of beef cattle, this industry soon came to be the exclusive business of this powerful people. It was a profitable and supremely independent industry, and gave wide play to the baronial instincts of the Anglo-Saxon; who, even after the golden time of his race had gone out so many hundred years, still loved the open sky, and the blue hills, and the monster oak trees, and hated in his heart with a stubborn bitter spirit of rebellion the least shadow of restraint. He was willing to serve God if need be, but while he lived he would not serve men. In stature the descendants of the long dead Saxon were huge specimens of the race, almost as big of limb as the fabled barbarians of Lygia; powerful men, whom close and intimate relations with the mother nature kept strong and immensely vital to the very evening of life. But withal the hospitality of the Saxon was profligate, his impulses were kindly, and he was quite content to leave the affairs of government and the problems of civilization to other hands, provided the minions of these powers held their feet back from his soil.
The twilight had deepened into night; on the crest of the far-off hills the great oak trees stood outlined against the sky like mighty silent figures waiting for some mystic word that should call them into life.
The rim of the moon was rising slowly from behind the oil field, red like battered brass; the road, covered with shifting light and shadow, stretched across the rolling country like a silver ribbon. The grazier rode slowly, his hands hanging idly at his sides, and his face set with deep thought; from time to time he raised his ponderous right hand and struck it heavily against the tree of his saddle as though to indicate thereby some important decision finally reached, but as often he dropped the hand back to its place.
The important information of the oil driller had added a mighty element to the matters with which he was evidently concerned. The horse, left to his own inclinations, quickened his pace and presently the shadow of a huge house loomed upon the crest of the hill at the roadside. The horse stopped at the gate, and the man, aroused from his reverie, dismounted slowly, and opening the gate led the horse through; as he closed the gate he stopped for a moment and rested his enormous elbow on the latch. “Well,” he said, as though announcing his temporary conclusion to himself, “I'll ship the cattle to-morrow, and I'll see Jerry.”