<SPAN name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></SPAN>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</SPAN></span>
<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2><h3>THE AVATISM OF A MAN</h3>
<p>Morgan knew that the cogs of the slow machinery by which he had been
hoisted from the saddle to the professorial chair had slipped. As he lay
there on his back in the shallow ripple of the Arkansas River, the long
centipede railroad bridge dark-lined across the broad stream, he turned
it in his mind and knew that it was so.</p>
<p>He had gone back in that brief time of terrific torture to the plane
from which he had risen by hard and determined effort to make of himself
a man in the world of consequence and achievement; back to the savagery
of the old days when he rode the range in summer glare and winter storm.
For it was his life's one aim and intention now to rise from that cool
bed in the river presently and go back to Ascalon, try by sound of voice
those who had subjected him to this torture, separating by that test his
heroic friend from the guilty. The others he intended to kill, man by
man, down to the last unfeeling brute.</p>
<p>The water was not more than two or three inches deep where he lay, but a
little way beyond he could hear it passing with greater volume among the
spiles of the bridge. Fortune had spared him a fall into the deeper
channel, where even a foot of water might have drowned him, strengthless
and fettered as he was. Fate had reserved him for this hour of
vengeance. He<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</SPAN></span> turned, wallowing in the shallow water to soak the
rawhide rope, which was already growing soft, the pressure and pain of
it considerably eased on his arms.</p>
<p>He drank, and buried his face in the tepid water, grateful for life,
exulting in the fierce fire that rose in him, triumphing already in the
swift atonement he would call on those wretches to make. Back again to
the ethical standard of those old, hard-riding, hard-drinking,
hard-swearing days on the range, the refinements of his education
submerged, and not one regret for the slip.</p>
<p>Morgan did not realize in that moment of surrender to the primitive
desires which clamored within him how badly he was wrenched and mauled.
He tried the rawhide, swelling his bound arms in the hope that the
slipknot would give a little, but was unable to bring pressure enough on
the rope to ease it in the least.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>When it came to getting to his feet, Morgan learned that his desire had
outgrown his strength. A sickness swept him as he struggled to his
knees; blood burst from his nostrils, the taste of blood was on his
tongue. Dizzy, sick to the core of his heart, sore with a thousand<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</SPAN></span>
bruises, shot with a thousand pains which set up with every movement
like the clamor of harassing wolves, he dragged himself on his knees to
the edge of the water, where he lay on his face in the warm sand.</p>
<p>He waited there a long time for the gathering of strength enough to
carry him on his quest of a friendly hand. Only the savage determination
to strike his enemies down, head by head, kept him from perishing as he
lay there sore and bruised, chilled to the marrow in his welling agony
even that hot summer night.</p>
<p>Dawn was breaking when he at last found strength to mount the low bank
through the encumbering brush and vines. His arms were senseless below
the elbows, swollen almost to bursting of veins and skin by the gorged
blood. There was no choice in directions, only to avoid the town. He
faced up the river and trudged on, the cottonwood leaves beginning their
everlasting symphony, that is like the murmur of rain, as the wakening
wind moved them overhead.</p>
<p>Morgan stumbled over tin cans at the edge of the tall grass when the
rising sun was shining across his unprotected eyes. He stood for a
little while, wondering at first sight if this were only another mirage
of the plagued imagination, such as had risen like ephemera while he lay
on the sand bar at the river's edge. He stood with weak legs braced wide
apart to fix his reeling senses on the sight—the amazing, comforting
sight, of a field of growing corn. Only a little field, more properly a
patch, but it was tall and green, in full tassel, the delicate sweet of
its blossoms strong on the dew-damp morning.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Beyond the field he could see the roof of a sod house, and a little of
the brown wall that rose not much higher than the corn. Grass had grown
on the roof, for it was made of strips of sod, also, and turned sere and
brown in the sun. A wire fence stood a prickly barrier between roaming
cattle and this little field of succulent fodder. Morgan directed his
course to skirt the field, and came at last to the cabin door.</p>
<p>In front of the house there was no fence, but a dooryard that seemed to
embrace the rest of the earth. Around the door the ground was trampled
and bare; in front of the house three horses stood, saddled and waiting,
bridle reins on the ground. It looked like a cow camp to Morgan; it
seemed as if he had come back home. A dog rose slowly from where it lay
across the door, bristles rising, foot lifted as if the creature paused
between flight and attack, setting up such an alarm that the horses
bolted a little way and stood wondering.</p>
<p>A woman came to the door, lifted her hands in silent astonishment,
leaning a little to see.</p>
<p>"Heavens above! look at that man!" she cried, her words sounding as from
a great distance in Morgan's dulling ears.</p>
<p>Morgan saw her start toward him, running. He tried to step forward to
meet her, but only his body moved in accord with his will. The earth
seemed to rise and embrace him, letting him down softly, as the arms of
a friend.</p>
<p>It was a new pain that brought Morgan to his senses, the pain of
returning life to his half-dead arms.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</SPAN></span> Somebody was standing beside him
holding these members raised to let the blood drain out of them, chafing
them, and there was a smell of camphor and strong spirits in the place.</p>
<p>"The rope wouldn't 'a' slipped <i>down</i>, if they was tryin' to hang him,
anyhow," somebody said with conclusive finality.</p>
<p>"Looks like they lassoed him and drug him," another said, full of the
awe that hushes the human voice when one stands beside the dead.</p>
<p>"Whoever done it ought to be skinned alive!" a woman declared, and
Morgan thanked her in his heart for her sympathy, although there was a
weight of such absolute weakness on his eyes that he could not open them
to see her face.</p>
<p>There was a dim sound of something being stirred in a glass, and the
nerve-waking scent of more ardent spirits.</p>
<p>"If this don't fetch him to," said the voice of the first speaker, the
deep pectoral tone of a seasoned man, "you jump your horse and go for
the doctor, Fred."</p>
<p>Morgan shook his head to throw that obstinate weight from his eyes, or
thought he shook it, but it was only the shadow of a movement. Slight as
it was it brought an exclamation of relief in another voice, a woman's
voice, also, tuned in the music of youth.</p>
<p>"Oh! he moved!" she said. And she was the one who stood beside him,
holding aloft and chafing his blood-gorged arm.</p>
<p>"Blamed if he didn't! Here—try a little of this, son."</p>
<p>Morgan was gathering headway out of the fog so rapidly <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</SPAN></span>now that he began
to feel ashamed of this helpless situation in which so many kind hands
were ministering to him as if he were a sick horse. He made a more
determined effort to open his eyes, succeeding this time, although it
seemed to call for as much strength to lift his lids as to shoulder a
sack of wheat. He saw a large hand holding a spoon hovering near his
mouth, and the outline of big shoulders in a red shirt. Morgan swallowed
what was offered him, to feel it go tingling through his nerves with
vivifying warmth, like a message of cheer over a telegraph wire. The
large man who administered the dose was delighted. He spoke
encouragingly, working the spoon faster, as a man blows eagerly when he
sees a flame start weakly in a doubtful fire. The woman with the voice
of youth, who stood on Morgan's left hand, gently put his arm down, as
if modesty would no longer countenance this office of tenderness to a
conscious man.</p>
<p>"Any feelin' in your hands?" the man inquired, bending a whiskered face
down near Morgan's.</p>
<p>"Plenty of it, thank you," Morgan replied, his voice stubborn as a rusty
hinge.</p>
<p>"You'll be all right then, there's no bones broken as far as I can
locate 'em. You just stretch out and take it easy, you'll be all right."</p>
<p>"I gave up—I gave up—too easy," Morgan said, slowly, like a very tired
man.</p>
<p>"Lands alive! gave up!" said the matron of the household, who still held
Morgan's arm up to drain off the congested blood. "Look at your face,
look at your feet! Gave up—lands alive!"</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</SPAN></span></p>
<p>"You're busted up purty bad, old feller," said a young man who seemed to
appear suddenly at Morgan's feet, where he stood looking down with the
most friendly and feeling expression imaginable in his wholesome brown
face.</p>
<p>"That cut on your face ain't deep, it could be closed up and stuck with
strips of plaster and only leave a shallow scar, but it ought to be done
while it's fresh," the boss of the ranch said.</p>
<p>"I'd be greatly obliged to you," Morgan told him, by way of agreement to
the dressing of his wound.</p>
<p>By the time the pioneer of the Arkansas had treated his mysteriously
injured patient's hurts, Morgan had come to himself completely. He was
relieved to know that his collapse at the threshold of that hospitable
home was due to the suffering of his bound arms, rather than any
internal rupture or concussion as he at first feared.</p>
<p>Already his thoughts were running forward, his blood was pounding in his
arteries, in vengeful eagerness to take up the trail of the men who had
subjected him to this inhuman ordeal. He could not hope to repay them
cruelty for cruelty, for he was not a man who did much crippling when it
came to handling a gun, but if he had to follow them to the Nueces, even
to the Rio Grande, for his toll, then he would follow.</p>
<p>The business that had brought him into the Kansas plains could wait;
there was but one big purpose in his life now. He was eager to be up,
with the weight of a certain dependable pistol in his holster, the feel
of a certain rifle in its scabbard on the saddle under his knee.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Sore and bruised as he was, sorer that he would be tomorrow, Morgan
wanted to get up as soon as the long rough cut on his cheek had been
comfortably patched with adhesive tape. He asked the rancher if he would
oblige him with a horse to go to Ascalon, where his trunk containing his
much-needed wardrobe was still in the baggage-room at the depot.</p>
<p>"You couldn't ride to Ascalon this morning, son," the rancher told him,
severely kind.</p>
<p>"You'll do if you can make it in a week," the young man added his
opinion cheerfully.</p>
<p>"Yes, and then some, the way it looks to me," the elder declared.</p>
<p>Morgan started as if to spring from the low couch where they had laid
him when they carried him in, dusty and bloody, fearful and repulsive
sight of maimed flesh and torn clothing that he was.</p>
<p>"I can't stay a week—I can't wait a day! They'll be gone, man!" he
said.</p>
<p>"Maybe they will, son," the rancher agreed, gently pushing him back;
"maybe. But they'll leave tracks."</p>
<p>"Yes, by God! they'll leave tracks!" Morgan muttered.</p>
<p>"Don't you think I'd better send my boy over to town for the doctor?"
the rancher asked.</p>
<p>"Not unless you're uneasy about me."</p>
<p>"No, your head's all right and your bones are whole. You'll heal up, but
it'll take some time."</p>
<p>Morgan said he felt th<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</SPAN></span>at more had been done for him already than any
number of doctors could have accomplished, for the service had been one
of humanity, with no thought of reward. They would let the doctor stay
in Ascalon, and Morgan would go to him if he felt the need coming on.
The rancher disclaimed credit for a service such as one man owed another
the world over, he said. But it was plain that he was touched by the
outspoken gratitude of this wreckage of humanity that had come halting
in bonds to his door.</p>
<p>"I'm a stranger to this country," Morgan explained, "I arrived in
Ascalon yesterday—" pausing to ponder it, thinking it must have been
longer than a day ago—"yesterday"—with conviction, "a little after
noon. Morgan is my name. I came here to settle on land."</p>
<p>"You're the man that took the new marshal's gun away from him," the
rancher said, nodding slowly. "My daughter knew you the minute she saw
you—she was over there yesterday after the mail."</p>
<p>Morgan's heart jumped. He looked about the room for her, but she and her
mother had withdrawn.</p>
<p>"I guess I made a mistake when I mixed up with him," Morgan said, as if
he excused himself to the absent girl.</p>
<p>"The only mistake you made was when you handed him back his gun. You
ought to 'a' handed it back to a corpse," the rancher said.</p>
<p>"We knew that feller he killed," the younger man explained, with a world
of significance in his voice.</p>
<p>"He used to live up here in this country before he went to Abilene; he'd
come back to blow his money in Ascalon, I guess," the rancher said. "He
was one of them harmless bluffin' boys you could take by the ear and
lead around like he had a ring<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</SPAN></span> in his nose."</p>
<p>"That's what I told them," Morgan commented, in thoughtful, distracted
way.</p>
<p>"You sized him up right. He wouldn't 'a' pulled his gun, quick as he was
to slap his hand on it and run a sandy. I guess it was just as well it
happened to him then as some other time. Somebody was bound to kill him
when he got away among strangers."</p>
<p>The rancher, who introduced himself as Stilwell, asked for the details
of the killing, which Morgan gave, together with the trivial thing that
led up to it. The big rancher sighed, shaking his head sadly.</p>
<p>"You ought to took his gun away from him and bent it around his fool
head," he said.</p>
<p>"It would have been better for him, and for me, I guess," Morgan agreed.</p>
<p>"Yes, that marshal was purty sore on you for takin' his gun away from
him right out in public, it looks like," the rancher suggested, a bid in
his manner for the details of his misfortune which Morgan felt were his
by right of hospitality.</p>
<p>"I ran into some of his friends later on. He'd turned the town over to
them, a bunch of cowpunchers just up from the Nueces."</p>
<p>The rancher started at the word, exchanging a startled, meaning look
with his son.</p>
<p>"That outfit that loaded over at Ascalon yesterday?" he inquired.</p>
<p>"Yes; seven or eight of them stayed behind to look after the
horses—eight with the marshal, he's one of the outfit."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</SPAN></span></p>
<p>"Did them fellers rope you and drag you away out here?" Stilwell
inquired, leaning over in the tensity of his feeling, his tanned face
growing pale, as if the thought of such atrocity turned his blood cold.</p>
<p>"They hitched me to a freight train. The rope broke at the river."</p>
<p>The rancher turned to his son again, making a motion with open hand
outflung as if displaying evidence in some controversy between them that
clinched it on his side without another word. The younger man came a
step nearer Morgan's couch, where he stood with grave face, hesitant, as
if something came forward in his mind to speak. The elder strode to the
door and looked out into the sun of early morning, and the cool shadows
of the cottonwood trees at the riverside which reached almost to his
walls.</p>
<p>"To a train! God A'mighty—to a train!" Morgan heard him say.</p>
<p>"How far is it from Ascalon to the river?" Morgan asked.</p>
<p>"Over two miles! And your hands tied—God A'mighty!"</p>
<p>"You take it easy, they'll not leave Ascalon till Sol Drumm, their boss,
comes back from Kansas City," the young man said. "We're layin' for him
ourselves, we've got a bill against him."</p>
<p>"And we've got about as much show to collect it as we have to dip a
hatful of stars out of the river," Stilwell said, turning gloomily from
the door.</p>
<p>"We'll se<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</SPAN></span>e about that!" the younger one returned, in high and defiant
stubbornness.</p>
<p>"We've already lost upwards of five hundred head of stock from that
feller's trespass on our range," Stilwell explained. "That gang drove in
here three weeks ago to rest and feed up for market, payin' no attention
to anybody's range or anybody's warning to keep off. They had the men
with them to go where they pleased. Them Texas cattle come up here
loaded with fever ticks, and the bite of them little bugs means death to
a northern herd. They sowed ticks all over my range. I'm still a losin'
cattle, and Lord knows where it will stop."</p>
<p>"You've been working to get a quarantine law passed, I remember," Morgan
said, feeling this outrage as if the cattle were his own.</p>
<p>"Yes, but Congress is asleep, and them fellers down in Texas never shut
their eyes. I warned Drumm to keep off my range, asked him first like a
gentleman, but he drove in one night between my pickets and mixed his
poison cattle with mine out of pure cussidness. He claimed they got
away, and him with fifteen or twenty men to ride herd! It's cost me ten
thousand dollars, at the lowest figure, already, and more goin'. It
looks like it would clean me out."</p>
<p>"You ought to have some recourse against him in law," Morgan said.</p>
<p>"Yes, I thought so, too. I went to the county attorney and wanted to
bring an attachment on Drumm's herd, but he told me there wasn't any law
he could act under, it was anybody's range as much as mine, Texas fever
or no Texas fever. I could sue him, he said, but it was a slim chance.
Well, I'm goin' to see another lawyer—I'll take it up with Judge
Thayer, and see what he can do."<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</SPAN></span></p>
<p>"Drumm'll pay it, down to the last dime!" the young man declared.</p>
<p>"We can't hold him up and take it away from him, Fred," the older man
reproved. "That would be as big a crime as his."</p>
<p>"He'll pay it!" Fred repeated, with what Morgan thought to be admirable
tenacity, even though his means to the desired end might be hard to
justify.</p>
<p>They helped Morgan to another room, where they outfitted him with
clothing to replace his own shredded garments. Stilwell insisted that he
remain as his guest until his hurts were mended, although, he explained,
he could not stay at home to keep him company. His wife and daughter
would talk his arm off without help from the rest of the family. He
would call them in and introduce them.</p>
<p>"My girl's got a new piano—lucky I sent for it before that Texas outfit
struck this range—she can try it out on you," Stilwell said, a laugh
still left in him for an amusing situation in spite of the ruin he
faced.</p>
<p>Morgan could hear the girl and her mother talking in the kitchen, their
voices quite distinct at times as they passed an open door that he could
not see. Lame and aching, hands swollen and purple, he sat in a
rocking-chair by the open window, not so broken by his experiences nor
so depressed by his pains but he yet had the pleasure of anticipation in
meeting this girl. He had determined only a few hours ago that the
country was not big enough to hide her from him. Now Fate had jerked
him with rough hand to the end of his quest before it was fairly begun.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</SPAN></span></p>
<p>As he thought this, Stilwell came back, convoying his ample red-faced
wife, and almost as ample, and quite as red-faced, daughter. So, there
must have been more than one young lady after mail in Ascalon yesterday
afternoon, thought Morgan, as he got up ruefully, with much pain in his
feet and ankles, rather shamed and taken back, and bowed the best way he
could to this girl who was not <i>his</i> girl, after all his eager
anticipation.</p>
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