The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox - Ernest Haycox

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a bite and get out."

      The man departed, glad to be clear of Woolfridge's presence. A stouter fellow would have resigned. This man was not of that caliber. Woolfridge had known as much at the time of hiring.

      For perhaps an hour after Woolfridge had gone from the bank Mark Eagle tended to business. At the end of this time he very quietly laid down his pen, removed his light coat, and slid into his heavier one. He left the cage, closed the door, and went to Craib's office. Craib was busy, so Mark Eagle waited in entire patience until the older man pulled free from a ledger.

      "I'd like my money," said Eagle.

      Craib solemnly figured the days and dug into his own pocket for the cash. "Your dad pretty sick?"

      "Yes," replied Mark. "Thank you." It was still before closing time, yet the Indian left the bank and walked to his room in a private house over near the rodeo field. A little later he reappeared on the street again with a paper bundle beneath his arm, going directly to the stable. Will Leaver, the spare stable hand, saw Mark enter and spoke casually. "How's tricks, old- timer?"

      "Fair enough, Will. It is getting colder. Winter early this year."

      The stable hand nodded. Mark Eagle walked to the rear of the place and slipped into a litle alley made by the high stacks of baled hay. He was gone for quite a while and the stable hand, thinking it somewhat curious, at last rose and started out the back. Midway, he was stopped dead and struck speechless. Mark Eagle stepped out from the alley.

      When Eagle entered that alley he was much like any other man in Roaring Horse—dressed in the same conventional clothes, using the same speech and owning the same manners. Possibly he was more reserved and possibly he carried himself a little straighter, for he was proud of his education and proud of his place in a white man's society. Nothing about Mark Eagle, save the color of his skin, set him apart from the average run of townsmen, and even that was overlooked through many years of close contact. Roaring Horse spoke of him as a good man, nothing more and nothing less. Yet, as he stood now before Will Leaver, all the trappings of civilization had been flung aside. The woolen suit was gone, the derby hat and the leather shoes were cast aside. Mark Eagle was stripped to the waist; he wore a pair of leather breeches and a set of moccasins. His jet black hair stood upright, heavy with grease, and twin blotches of red paint emblazoned his cheek bones. Poising there in the half light of the stable's vault he stared at Will Leaver out of burning, haughty eyes, and the perfect picture of some wild savage emerged from the past.

      Will Leaver started to speak. Mark Eagle raised a hand, around the wrist of which dangled a beaded quirt. And he muttered: "Ha—me red! I go!" His body bent, he slipped around Leaver at a dog trot. Down the driveway to the door and into the street. There he halted, copper body shining in the cold sunlight, crimson paint creating a weird and repulsive mask of his face.

      Leaver woke from his wonder and ran after Eagle, shouting: "Hey, Mark, yuh can't do that! Yuh'll get pinched. Come back here, yuh damndarn fool, before folks see yuh!"

      Mark Eagle threw up his hands. A wild, exultant cry went ringing down along the building walls of Roaring Horse, waking barbaric echoes, shocking all hearers out of the afternoon drowse. Then he whirled. When Will Leaver reached the door he saw Mark Eagle leaping into the saddle of a tethered pony. Leaver yelled again, men came up on the run. But Mark Eagle, full blood, was on his way with the winds, out into the open desert, bound for the high and distant ridges he had looked at so long from the imprisoning streets of the white man's town.

      XIV. THE BEGINNING OF A TRAGEDY

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      Within three days Roaring Horse was visibly notified of the changing lines, distinctly warned that control had passed to other hands. The notification came swiftly and almost arrogantly, as if to strike a hard lesson home to those unreformed men who had fought against change. First—and this happened the night following Miz Satterlee's surrender—was William Wells Woolfridge's public avowal of ownership. Roaring Horse woke one morning to find his name emblazoned below the sign of the land office; found it proclaimed on the panels of the Gusher Hotel, on Ellsberg's Mercantile House, above the arch of the livery stable, and as far down the street as the lumber yard.

      Woolfridge was shrewd enough to know that this wide-flung display would create resentment and bitterness among the discontented; Roaring Horse was not wholly won to his side. Yet he rode his high horse with a purpose. If it created anger he also believed it would create discouragement. He had established the fact of his ruthless ability to plow ahead; he hoped that the remaining dissenters would lose heart and leave the country.

      The town of a sudden came a beehive of activity. Freighters rolled in, heavy laden with lumber for the yard, against the future needs of the settlers. New lodgepole corrals rose behind the stable, and a bronc peeler from Woolfridge's outfit drove in a bunch of half-wild saddle stock and took up the business of gentling them out on the rodeo field. A man slipped off the stage and joined the clerk at the land office. Maps burgeoned forth upon the walls of that office. Small piles of the desert's soil appeared in the window with a written analysis behind each. And there was an artist's picture of what Roaring Horse would look like five years hence—a town of brick buildings surrounded by a country of square, green farms in which great barns and fine houses and tall poplar trees stood in shapely arrangement. A crew of men began to dig out the foundations for some unknown structure beyond the rodeo field.

      It all went to create a picture of optimism and growth, yet Roaring Horse looked on, half believing, half disbelieving. Even Woolfridge's flaring ad in the weekly paper failed to convince the skeptics. Roaring Horse had been exclusively a cattle country for some generations. It would remain so, believed these skeptics, after Woolfridge was dead and gone. But when on the fourth day a line of wagons drew into town and stopped abreast the land office the skeptics were silenced and an electric thrill of surprise woke the citizens from their doubt.

      It was the vanguard of the homesteaders, the first answer to Woolfridge's broadcast invitation. Gay Thatcher, looking down from the window of her hotel room, saw the wagons, their occupants and contents, and marveled. Somehow the spectacle was so full of pathos that it almost made her cry. On these long and clumsy vehicles was packed the assorted gathering of a lifetime—plows, stoves, kitchen cabinets, barrels of dishes, bedding rolls. The household articles overflowed and hung outward from every possible angle of suspension. The men—she counted five—were middle aged and weather beaten; the women sat silently, bonnets pulled down and hands folded. Children and dogs swarmed to the ground the very instant this queer caravan halted. Presently Woolfridge came out of the land office and shook hands with the arrivals. And the men descended and slouched back with him. These were not the prosperous farmers from which a successful project was made; they were the type who had left one hopeless stretch of land and always were ready to travel on the hint of something better.

      "It is criminal!" exclaimed Gay. "Nothing less than criminal! All the money they have will go into this desert and why, those poor women!"

      They looked cold and very weary. Probably they were hungry as well. A baby cried somewhere in the clutter; the men returned, all smiling broadly, and swung up to the wagon seats. As the caravan proceeded down the street and turned into the livery stable Gay Thatcher saw that the women were smiling, too. Hope had met them. The girl turned away from the window, passionately angry. "It isn't fair!"

      Probably Gay Thatcher would have thought it less fair had she overheard what Woolfridge told the men.

      "You are the first to enter the project," said that gentleman, pointing to the counter map. "Therefore, you have unlimited choice. Area One, as you see it here, includes the lands nearest the main canal. Area Two is that part of the project somewhat more removed. I want to impress on you, however, that the soil in Area Two is as good as any. And since you probably are not prepared to invest a great sum of money, you will find exactly what you want there. Run your wagons into the stable, settle your families, and come back. I'll have a man with horses to take you on an inspection trip."

      He was in the street later to see

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