West of Dodge/Chapter 23
Ora Simrall and five of his men were in jail at Damascus when the county attorney, Judge Waters and a marshal from the state supreme court arrived two days after Major Cottrell's funeral.
They were a badly battered outfit, several broken bones among them, one of them lying inert with a cracked skull. There was no spirit alive in their town to attempt a rescue. Even the sheriff had returned to Damascus when he found himself on the losing side, and was now one of the loudest of its partisans.
The county attorney had obtained a restraining order from the high court, which the official accompanying him had come to serve on Simrall and thirty others of the opposing faction. To make Simrall's knockout complete, Dine Fergus sought the county attorney within an hour after his return, urged to that virtuous course by his mother, who had an eye to the future and did not want to give up her growing business. Dine made a bargain for immunity, confessed his part in selling his electoral services to Simrall, and named the other nine.
Whether the county attorney who, as has been said, was not an incorruptible man, tipped it off to the bunch with a fraternal warning, people could only surmise. However it was, Larrimore and a bunch of petty gamblers were missing from their accustomed places next day. Fergus was accorded the promised immunity from prosecution as a reward for his betrayal. Some said he was obliged to split the five hundred dollars he got for his vote with the county attorney.
Dine appeared to consider himself a public benefactor. No taint had stuck to him in the transaction, as far as his rather dulled scent could discover, no disgrace whatever, according to his conscience, which was a very miniature affair, altogether. He strutted around town grinning and well satisfied; he held down his corner of Jim Justice's porch with equanimity and sang froid.
Damascus accepted his great public service in its notably jocular way, neither lifting nor lowering Fergus in the place that was his. They joked him about the money, and his designs for the outlay of it, making a very comfortable diversion out of the episode all around.
The wrecked invaders of Damascus' sanctuaries were under the ministrations of Old Doc Ross. Misfortune does not always make men honest; a drubbing seldom has acted as an agent of reform. This bunch from the rival town was sorer and wiser than when they came, but very likely in no particular a hair's breadth better. Old Doc Ross declared he never had set bones for such a doubly damned set of rakings from the settlings of horse-thievery as these.
Ora Simrall admitted his town was out of the contest for the county seat. Let him out of jail, he proposed, forget the trifling incident of bribery in the election, and he would lie down. The accommodating county attorney agreed, seeing a fertile field for votes when he should come out for circuit judge. The county attorney took great credit to himself for compounding the county's difficulties that way, leaving Simrall unsmirched. The talk of calling a grand jury to indict him for his crimes died down; Simrall and his men were taken home.
Damascus was not without gratitude for Dr. Hall, cynical as it was, and worldly superior to the weakness of human sympathy. He had protected and secured the county records at the hazard of his life. The scoffers, such as Charley Burnett, Kraus, and others who had composed the mob that clamored for Gus Sandiver's neck, said fool's luck, rather than courage and resourcefulness, had carried him through. They pointed to the fact that, somebody always stepped up at the critical moment in Hall's adventures and saved him from extinction.
No matter for this scoffing faction, which embraced some of the corner posts of Damascus society, Judge Waters and others were of the opinion that Hall's services to the town ought to be recognized by some public expression. There was a division on whether this concrete token should take the form of a gold-headed cane or a loving-cup, one being about as useful as the other to a man in the country west of Dodge.
This question still was being debated a week after the invasion and defeat of the Simrall raiders. It was a very spring in the desert to the humorists who gathered on Justice's porch, affording them great opportunities for the display of their native wit. While Larrimore's sardonic comment was missed, there was no lack of aspirants to fill his place at this round table of mud-slinging knights. Humorists hatch like maggots in places like Damascus. They are a hard breed to suppress, patient of their opportunity, watchful of their chance, eager to slip out into the sun. For every humorist, as well as every dog, must have his day.
Dr. Hall did not feel himself bound up any closer with the affairs of town and county, although each succeeding bit of trouble he put his foot into there appeared to involve him deeper. Viewing himself from an impersonal standpoint, he looked a little way off to be a man inextricably wound up in the web of that county's destiny. He had come to the habit of stepping aside and looking at himself in this connection, marveling at times how so much could have happened to him against his intention and desire to stand aloof from the affairs of that place.
Hot days had come to that high, treeless country west of Dodge; anxiety was growing into almost terror among the settlers in the wild country that had lured them by false, transitory promises of early spring. The corn they had planted was shriveling in the long ribbons of sod, the hot winds poured through the cracks of their little box houses, whistling around the rough board-ends of their eaves with melancholy note. It was said there would be no corn, which was equal to saying there would be nothing at all.
Men were coming from these homesteads every day, applying for work on the railroad, already harrassed by the fear of hardships which lay ahead. There was no use expending labor on their puny crops; they were leaving it all to a chance rain and the women and children to do what could be done. There was no place on the construction gang for these men, raw farmers unused to that kind of work. Bill Chambers was not a man with any great reputation for kindness or sympathy, but his face began to wear a shadow of sadness as he turned these gaunt applicants away day after day.
Dr. Hall's popularity had increased, his fame had spread among these courageous pioneers who had come to this last frontier of Kansas to make homes and establish an industry where success seemed not a chance in a thousand. Hardly a day passed without a call to some distant homestead, where too often the mother of the family had been overtaken by accident or disease.
These were not the type of pioneers Major Cottrell had supposed them to be. Those hardy, self-doctoring, self-burying frontiersmen which he had in mind belonged to a generation past. These were more the products of civilization and interdependence. They were even subject to appendicitis, ailment unknown among the tough sodbreakers who subdued the central Kansas plains a generation before these more modern people came into: the country west of Dodge.
They appeared to consider Dr. Hall a sort of public institution, as has been said, something like a county surveyor or recorder of deeds, except that no fee ever figured in any of their dealings with him. They called him without hesitation or restraint of delicacy, to set their bones and cure their fevers, service which he never accepted until the possibility of Old Doc Ross had been eliminated by that notable's blank refusal.
It had become such a common thing to be called into the country on these charitable missions that Dr. Hall had bought a horse, which he boarded in Kraus' barn. But as he had not purchased the horse from Kraus, the liveryman looked on the creature with scorn only a degree tempered from the contempt in which he held its owner. In these rides about the country tributary to Damascus, Hall often met the young settler Holbrook, who had come into that virgin land to grow the seed of kafir corn.
Holbrook was working as a sort of agrarian evangelist, trying to induce his neighbors to plant a few acres each of the grain then almost unknown to Kansas, since become so popular as the dependable drouth crop. He was offering the seed on the condition of repayment in kind, three bushels for one. Many were accepting, yet doubtfully, with little faith in a grain that could be planted in June and brought to maturity with little rain, as its sponsor claimed. Little patches of green were to be seen here and there, where the kafir had come up, undeterred by the hot wind, hearty and heartening in that place of failing hope.
Dr. Hall was returning from one of these distant calls on a Sunday evening something more than a week after the raid, bent toward melancholy by the scene he had left, the father of a large family down with typhoid, and in a bad way. The poor fellow was driving his team in his delirium, heedless of the pathetic assurance of his worn, sunken-eyed wife that the horses were turned out, and he was lying in bed, and everything was all right. It was such an unreasonable assurance that Hall did not wonder at its failure to quiet the sufferer's unrest.
The doctor was speculating, as he rode slowly toward town, on what would be the fate of this family if the man should die, and he was a strong, rough-modeled fellow, such as commonly fall to that insidious disease. He was thinking of this, and the great hunger that must urge a man away from the chances of employment with a certain reward, even though scant, into this life of hazard and hardship. A home, a piece of land with a fence around it, recorded at the county seat as his own. A social importance and dignity that freedom from wageearning servitude gives, the higher, nobler satisfaction of having a piece of this wide earth's ground that he could call his own.
It must be that, thought the doctor. It must be this great urge which has turned the faces of peoples westward, ever westward, in the world-old migrations of mankind. A home; a place to set a fence around and view with the satisfaction of something won.
Let it be barren, storm-swept, wind-plagued, sunstricken, such as this; let it be raw and unruly, heartbreaking to subdue, unfended, ungraced by the green leaf of even the stunted sumach of the more eastern prairie gulches. A place to set one's foot, and sit down after the toil of day; a place to stand in the midst of, and draw the breath of freedom with expansive pride. Home.
That was the answer to the world-old roaming, the world-old quest. That was the answer to this unequal contest against the unfriendly elements, this hard, unresponsive, rough-hummocked, wild, gray land. Home. That was the answer to it all.
Somebody on his way to Damascus, whose haste was greater than Dr. Hall's, came galloping up behind, breaking this meditative train. Hall glanced back to see if it was anybody he knew, concluding after a little study of the rider that it was not, although there seemed something familiar about the figure, whose long legs dangled far down below the body of his horse. Hall drew aside to give the rider an open road.
In a few moments the horseman was alongside, where he checked his gait to fall in with Hall. The doctor's thoughts had gone wandering from his present situation after the broken ends of his previous meditation. He drew up suddenly on his reins, looking sharply around to see who this was that wanted to visit with him along the way.
"Hello, Doc," the rider hailed, in slow, rather sadsounding voice. "I saw you from the top of a hill three mile back."
Dr. Hall was looking at the man keenly, surprised more by hearing him speak than by seeing him, for the traveler was no less notable person than Gus Sandiver, silent patient of a well remembered night.
Gus had not changed in appearance, for better or worse, since his lone-handed attempt to step on the necks of his enemies in the county seat. He was still wearing the boots with collapsed and wrinkled tops, which appeared so short on his uncommon stretch of leg; the same shirt, apparently, and unquestionably the same hat. Of course, Dr. Hall admitted, a man could not be expected to undergo a great change in a few weeks' time, especially in the matter of boots and hat. The one great surprise about Gus was his voice.
"I didn't know you could talk, Gus," Dr. Hall said, dispensing with salutations, speaking what was forward in his mind.
"The last time you saw me there wasn't much talk in me, Doc," Gus replied, jogging along beside Hall in friendly proximity. "Satan was in me that night. He kep' me so tantalized and undecided between cussin' you and thankin' you I couldn't get the upper hand of him till you put me on my horse and started me off."
Dr. Hall looked at Gus, queerly puzzled, not understanding whether the dry old salamander meant it for a pleasantry. There was nothing jocular in the man's voice, which was slow and deep, and altogether lugubrious. If voices were to be classified by color, thought Dr. Hall, Gus Sandiver's would be called a faded blue.
"What was your final decision, Gus?" the doctor asked.
"It was the decision of any man with as much insides—to him as a garfish," Gus replied. "You saved my neck at the risk of your own. I could see that in them wolf faces pushed up around your door."
"I don't know about that," Hall said, indecisively.
"You know better than I do what you poured on that sponge, Doc. Maybe it was hartshorn, but I didn't get a sniff of it if it was; maybe it was some kind of stuff I never heard of, and maybe it was plain water, as I suspected at the time, and suspect harder the longer I think it over."
"Just so it worked," said Hall, depreciating the trick.
"I went over that night specially hopin' to sling a chunk of lead into you, Doc."
"Well, as long as you didn't do it, I guess we can forget it," Hall proposed, laughing over it a little, although he was not especially easy in his saddle just then.
He noted that Gus was wearing his gun, and that his right hand appeared to be in condition to use it, although it was bound around the wrist with a cloth, over which a broad strap was buckled.
"I was feelin' as mean as a skunk towards you, Doc, in spite of you stoppin' my bleedin' and dressin' my arm, till I heard you give it to them fellers straight in the ear about my kid brother. That was when the light begun to come back to me."
"I'm glad you understood it, Gus. I don't suppose your brother was any saint or angel, but they didn't give him a square deal that day, and the cowards swore it off on me."
"That was what got me started wrong. I fell for their put-up job. No, the kid wasn't no saint, and I'm afraid he's gittin' a touch of hellfire for his sins, for he died with 'em on him as thick as mud on a hog. But he went clean compared to what I'd 'a' been if I'd 'a' throwed lead into your carcass that night, Doc."
"It's all right; you didn't, so we'll let it drop."
"Yes, I'm a regenerated man," Gus sighed, as if unloading himself of the past. "The light's come back to me; I've been born again."
"You mean you've got religion, Gus?" Hall was farther away from this fellow's drift than ever. He wished there were three miles between them, instead of less than three feet.
"I didn't get it, I guess, Doc, but kind of recovered it, as the feller said. I used to be a righteous man, Doc. I was a preacher before I went to—before I went off wrong."
"You don't tell me!"
"I was," Gus nodded solemnly, "and I was a damn good one, too. I'm goin' back to pasturin' as soon as I practice up a little longer on breakin' off this da— this infernal cussin' habit."
Hall looked at him again in that slantwise, quizzical way of doubt, expecting to hear Gus cap the matter with a laugh. From all outward appearances the man was sincere. He nodded, slowly, like a horse, looking just about as mean and no-account as ever, in spite of his profession of reform.
"I used to be a 'vangelist," Gus explained, "back in the days before I drifted to that hell-hole of iniquity called Dodge City. That's what ruined me. Back in North Car'lina was where I started. They used to call me the fiddlin' preacher; I could play 'em up to the mourners' bench in droves. I'm goin' back to my callin', I've made up a team with a man in Saint Joe. He's got a tent he moves around from place to place. I can fight the devil better now than I ever could; I know more about his tricks."
"I wish you all kinds of luck, Gus," Hall said, not knowing what he ought to say, or might be expected to say. He felt embarrassed, due to his inability to accept wholly this reformation so solemnly proclaimed. He reached out his hand in earnest of his good wishes.
Gus met the friendly offer heartily, holding to the doctor as if he had designs for dragging him up to the penitential bench while he had him in hand.
"How is your arm?" Hall inquired, noticing it appeared to have plenty of energy in it to swing a gun.
"Just about well, Doc. The doctor thought I was goin' to lose it at first, but he didn't know how I was set on keepin' it. Where would a fiddlin' preacher be at with his right arm off? Tell Old Doc Ross when you see him I said it was all right. Tell him I don't hold nothin' agin him. I know he acted for the best, and I thank him for it."
"I didn't know he attended you," Hall said in surprise. "I never saw you in Damascus, not even the day of the raid."
"You're a funny feller," Gus said, his face a little redder than its ordinary infernal hue. "I wasn't with them fool boys when they went over to raid the court house; I'm not ridin' in lawless by-paths any more. But at the first I sent word over to Old Doc Ross I was comin' to Damascus as soon as I was able to swing a gun and take a shot at him. But tell him it's all off. I ain't out gunnin' any more."
"Take a shot at him?" said Hall, more mystified than before, staring blankly at Sandiver, who was riding along with his head bent pensively, about as hard-looking scraping of a man as the country west of Dodge could produce.
"Yeah. I passed the word along to him."
"Did you know him in Dodge?"
"I heard of him, I didn't know him. I wasn't stayin' around much in society in them days, Doc."
"If I get a chance, I'll tell him what you've said," Hall promised. "I suppose he'll understand?"
"Oh, he'll understand, all right. Tell him I said I felt I owed him a debt, in place of havin' one standin' agin him to collect. Well, both me and you owe him for that shot, I reckon, Doc."
"That shot?" Hall repeated in amazement. "What shot are you talking about, Gus?"
"What other one but that one," Gus replied, sadly, holding up his bandaged arm. "It was the only one he ever took at me."
"It's the first I've heard of it," Hall declared.
"It is?" said Gus, astonished in his turn. "Why ain't you heard?"
"Because nobody ever told me. Are you sure it was Ross?"
"Because nobody never told you!" Gus repeated, out of breath in his amazement at such great innocence, or great stupidity. "Everybody in Simrall knows it, and I'd bet money, if I was a sinner, everybody in Damascus knows it but you—if you're givin' it to me straight."
"He's the last person in the world I'd have guessed. What proof have you got it was Ross?"
"A cowboy from one of Simrall's outfits was standin' by the old rooster when he pulled his gun and busted my arm. It was Old Doc Ross, all right, no difference how them fellers have been stringin' you along it was somebody else. He can shoot the eyes out of a crawfish when he's sober, they say."
"I suppose Burnett and that gang know," Hall reflected. "I thought they'd been keeping some trick up their sleeves on me. You see, I don't belong to the town, Gus. I'm an outsider. They think I'm a kind of a joke."
"There ain't ten men in that town that's worth a hallroom in hell, Doc," Gus said, in the mild, dispassionate way of a man stating a well-known truth. "It was Old Doc Ross shot me that night—nobody else. It don't cut no ice what they've been passin' out to you; it was Old Doc Ross."
"I'm glad to get it straight," said Hall, but looking far from jubilant.
Gus was on his way to Dodge, carrying what he possessed behind his saddle in no very imposing roll. He said he thought it unlikely he ever would come back to that country again, his plans being laid for a visit to his boyhood home at the end of his engagement with the tent evangelist. When they reached the parting of the roads, near Major Cottrell's famous landmark at the edge of Damascus, Gus stopped to shake hands in farewell.
The former horsethief, for that pursuit, Hall was sure, had engaged his talents until a short time ago, just how recently he did not know, went on his way. Dr. Hall continued slowly and thoughtfully toward Kraus' barn to stable his horse.
He was not entirely convinced of either the probity or reformation of Gus. Still, the old reptile had seemed earnest enough when dictating his message of assurance and peace to Old Doc Ross. Hall felt chastened, cheapened, lowered greatly in his egotistical estimation. It was a humiliating situation, having gone prancing around all those weeks in debt to Old Doc Ross for saving his skin a large puncture and never making acknowledgment of it, never paying even one little word of thanks on account. Old Doc Ross must despise him from the bottom of his whisky-pickled heart.
The sod house was closed, curtains drawn down over the long narrow windows. Hall thought, as he rode by, that it appeared to have closed its eyes and died with its builder, never to come to life again. Elizabeth and her mother had gone away with Captain Cottrell to Fort Leavenworth. It was not likely, Hall believed, that gray sad country, with all its memories of contention and tragedy, should ever call them back again.
It was easier for him that Elizabeth was gone, to have this thing about Old Doc Ross come out on him that way. He had clung to the pleasing conviction that Elizabeth had stood his friend that night, in spite of her ingenuous denial, there being nobody else who fitted pleasantly into his scheme. It hurt to remove her from that warm little nest of gratitude, into which the unruly figure of Old Doc Ross would not fit at all, let him try never so hard and conscientiously to adjust him to the place.