THE Secretary of State was far removed from the ordinary. He was one of those not infrequent persons whom men are quite unable to classify. At times he arose far beyond the limits set for him by his associates, and at times he dropped far below. There was about the man a sort of indefinite reserve that impressed his fellows and inspired confidence in those positions requiring rash and apparently impracticable moves. Ordinarily, in commonplace affairs, his judgment was not considered sound, or even valuable, and at such times no one would have thought for a moment of advising with this man. It was only when sound common-sense could see no way out that the machine appealed to Hergan, and at such times he came forward with some freak venture which was frightfully perilous and never ordinary, and never quite a failure.
Success, usually arose, however, not from the ultimate wisdom of Hergan's plans, but from the fact that his unique move would throw the affair into a sort of convulsion resulting in a new situation, and this new situation the sound judgment of his fellows would usually be able to control. The counsel of Ambercrombie Hergan was a protean agent.
The grave vice in the character of the Secretary of State lay in the fact that he possessed no idea of perspective. He would wager his last dollar with the same joyous unconcern with which he had wagered his first, and he would have staked the entire Southwest, if he possessed it, as readily as a Mexican peso, upon the turn of a card or the result of a horse race. As to the antecedents of the Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan, even conjecture was silent. He had come up from a mysterious substratum of New York,—for what, and by reason of what, no man inquired. This mighty new land traced no records and propounded no questions. The arena stood open with its doors thrown back. Any combatant who pleased could enter. Heralded or unheralded, it mattered not. Good or bad, learned or ignorant, of yokel blood or princely lineage, it mattered not. If he were fittest, he could win.
From this organic defect of his mental build, and not from evil animus, had resulted the sad state of the Secretary's accounts. He had never entirely appreciated the important distinction between his own money and that which belonged to the Commonwealth. He had been thoughtless, reckless, unconcerned, until now he was hopelessly involved. Yet even at this stage when his term of office was fast drawing to a close, he failed to appreciate the gravity of his position, and treated the matter with good-natured unconcern, as of no moment.
The Auditor and Secretary of State sat together in the Governor's library awaiting his return. In appearance the Auditor was a muscular little man of most marvellous vitality, with a fierce white mustache, and a fund of quaint oaths and semi-dramatic phrases hugely expressive and at times artistic; while the Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan was very tall and very broad, with a shock of heavy black hair, wide jaws, and a big crooked nose. Far back in his youth this nose had been straight, but one night, in a barroom on the Bowery, a difference of opinion had arisen over some inconsequential matter, and thereafter the gambler's nose had assumed a contour not contemplated in the original design.
The Major was talking, and pounding the table vigorously, when the Chinese servant entered with a tray and some glasses. The Virginian drew himself up and stepped back from the table.
“Well, Bumgarner,” he said, “I hail your resurrection; I glory in your return to life. You have been dead no inconsiderable period, sir.”
The Chinaman replied that he had been engaged in a laborious but unsuccessful hunt for the bottle of Angostura bitters.
“Angostura bitters?” cried the Major, “marvellous, inscrutable heathen! Will you deign to reveal your reason for requiring the Angostura bitters?”
The Celestial responded that he presumed bitters was an element requisite to the rather mysterious drink which he had been requested to compound.
“Hear him, hear him!” thundered the Major, as though addressing some present but invisible avenging demon; “hear the vandal! Bitters in a julep! Mighty, intelligent shade of Simple Simon! Attend and observe the idiocy of this savage!” Then he crossed to the astonished Chinaman and took him gently by the collar.
“Bumgarner,” he said softly, “you are a frightful example of man's neglect. You have been trained by a Massachusetts Yankee. Ergo, your lack of knowledge is sublime. Bitters you might put in a plebeian gin fizz, and be happy thereafter. Bitters you might put in a high ball of whiskey, and live thereafter. But bitters in a julep,magnum sacrum!the gods would crush you! Bumgarner, you are an awful throbbing error, and you have had a providential escape from death. Now,” continued the Major, seizing the Chinaman by the shoulder and turning him toward the door, “you may depart, and burn a few joss sticks, and ponder upon my remarks.”
The almond-eyed Celestial vanished, wondering vaguely if it had not been better to remain in San Francisco and launder shirts in a cellar than to attempt to cater to the depraved taste of such incomprehensible foreign devils.
“Now, Bill,” continued the Major, seating himself at the table, “I want to know what you are going to do.”
“About what?” asked the gambler.
“About this money which you owe the State,” said the Major. “Do you realize, sir, that our stand in the Southwest is just about closing, and that we have got to square up and pull out?”
“I reckon so,” replied the gambler, as though it were a matter of no importance.
“You reckon so! You irresponsible truck horse! You reckon so!” snorted the Major. “You will cease to indulge in the dainty pastime of speculation when you get a log-chain on your leg and a striped suit on your back.”
The Secretary of State laughed. “Something will turn up,” he said.
“Ambercrombie Hergan,” said the Major, pounding the table with his hand, “for a broken, a branded, a long-suffering cow pony of Satan, you have the blindest, most stupendous Presbyterian faith in Providence of any white creature ambling south of the Central Pacific Railroad; but you're sweetening on a bluff this hand, and I am going to call you.”
The gambler's face grew serious. “What are you prodding for, Ned?” he asked.
The Auditor leaned forward on the table. “You are planning to slide out,” he said, “and it don't go.”
“Would it hurt you or Al?” asked the gambler anxiously.
The Auditor reached over and placed his hand on Hergan's arm. “It would not hurt me,” he continued, “and it would be no bones if it did, but it would hurt the boy, and he must not be hurt. Don't you know that the moment you are gone, Randal will sacrifice everything he possesses and pay up the deficit? And that would ruin him.”
The gambler's face lengthened. “I had not thought about that,” he said slowly, “but you are right, he would do that. He is that sort of a man. I have been a fool, an infernal fool, but I did not think about the boy getting hurt, not once.” The man shut his teeth tight together and the big muscles swelled out on his jaws.
The Auditor sat and watched the man across the table from him, and admired his iron nerve in the terrible struggle to decide between himself and the welfare of his friend. The man was evidently suffering. His face showed it plainly; the battle must be a bitter one. The Auditor wondered how it would result. He pitied the man, and in spite of all, half hoped that he would decide to save himself.
Presently the gambler turned slowly and lifted his face, white, haggard, ten years older than he had been an hour before.
“I don't see how to keep him from doing it,” he muttered; “I don't see how.”
The Auditor started. This man had not been thinking of himself at all.
“You see,” continued Hergan. “I am about fifty thousand short, and there is no way to raise that much money,—no way in God's world. If I slide over the Rio, Al will pay it to keep them from extraditing me; and if I stay here, he will pay it to keep them from sending me to the Pen. It's the devil's own trap, and works both ways.”
“Who got the money, Bill?” asked the Auditor.
“Crawley, and old Martin, of the Golden Horn Mining Company. Crawley got most of it.”
“A plague of fat old gamblers,” said the Major, solemnly; “they are both as rich as they are mean, and as mean as they are crooked.”
At this moment the door opened and the Governor entered.
THE Executive stopped for a moment and scrutinized his visitors quizzically; then he laughed. “May I inquire, gentlemen, whence arises this gloom?”
The Auditor bowed low. “Good sir,” he said, “your Excellency fails to distinguish between gloom and the gravity of sages.”
“If the funereal,” replied the Governor, “be asine qua nonof the converse of the wise, then there has been here this night great cause for envy on the part of Solomon, the Son of David, King of Israel; for such gloom I have not met with in a world of evil days.”
“And, sir,” responded the Auditor, waving his hand like a barbaric king, “if absence of respect for the dignity of the thoughtful be a symptom of organic mental defect, then there is now here, in truth, great cause for envy upon the part of Wamba, the Son of Witless, the Son of Weatherbrain. For such amiable impudence is marvellous to contemplate.”
“Boys,” said the gambler rising, “if you will kindly come down out of the clouds, I will be much obliged to you both, because I have got something to say, and this is just as good a time to say it as any.”
The Auditor resumed his seat at the table. The Governor took up a chair, moved it back deliberately into the shadow of the room and sat down.
“It is like this,” continued the gambler, “we three have stood in for a long time, and I guess we know each other pretty well. We did n't take no oath to stand by each other when we started, but I reckon that is what we calculated to do. Anyway that is what we did do. If we had n't a done it, we would n't have been deuce high in this Southwest. I did n't have no faith in Al's machine when it started; I thought it was a wild goose chase, but I did n't say nothing, because I had nothing to lose. I was broke, and anything coming my way was pure velvet, so I joined in and come out here.
“Since that time we have had our ups and downs, if God's creatures ever had 'em. We have lied a lot, and we've stole some, and we've starved most of the time, and we have been poor and miserable and broke, but we have played fair with each other, and we have never stacked the pack nor dealt from the bottom. Then, one day, the luck turned and we won out through the roof, just like it always does if you stay long enough and keep doubling the bet. You two were elected, and Al appointed me.
“I reckon none of us are going to forget the hell that appointment raised. They said I was an ignorant understrapper, a short card gambler, and a leary element; and it was true, every blooming word of it Then the newspapers pitched into Al; they said that it was to be hoped that the new Governor would now have 'the moral courage to at least suppress the shady member of his machine'—them are the very words; I'll never forget 'em, and they meant me.
“I guess I went to you boys, and told you I had better keep out, but I reckon I did n't put up a very stiff case, because I was hot at the row. I would n't have cared if the howlers had been better men than I was, but I knew they were all just the same kind of cattle—unbranded, straggling steers, gathered up from anywhere but a good place. As for being shady, there was n't a man between the Gila and the Pecos white enough to pass an Eastern grand jury, and as for being a gambler, there was n't a mother's son of the batch that would n't have coppered his soul on a black jack if the bank would have cashed it for a dollar.”
Hergan paused for a moment and looked at the Auditor. Then he added, “Exceptin' of course, you and Al.”
“Then,” the gambler went on: “I guess Al got mad. He made a little speech; we was all there, and it was mighty good talk to hear. He said there had n't been no 'invidious distinctions'—them were his words,—during all the years when nothing had come our way but just one dose of bad luck after another until we reckoned there was n't no God at all,—least ways, if there was any, that He did n't operate south of the Central Pacific Railroad, and now when we had finally landed on our feet, there was n't going to be no 'invidious distinctions.' I am bound to say that it seemed mighty good to hear Al talk like he did, and I went ahead and let him appoint me.”
The Secretary of State moved a little nearer to the table, and an almost imperceptible shadow flitted across his face. “All the time,” he continued, “I knowed it was wrong. I knowed that what the mudslingers were sayin' was gospel. I knowed that I was n't fit for the job no more than a Chinaman is fit for a pope. I knowed that the gambler in me was ground in, and the other was just only rubbed on the outside, and that the gambler part was going to run things,—and it did.”
The man paused for a moment and turned to the Governor. “Now,” he said, “I have come to the point, and it's this: I got into this hole and I am going to get out of it; it's my game now; I am not going to stand any side bets. You have both got to promise me right here that you will keep your hands off this matter,—clear off—unless I say it goes.”
The gambler stopped, rested his arms heavily on the table and looked at his companions. The Virginian and the Executive were silent; both men realized fully the true import of Hergan's demand. He was seeking to prevent any sacrifice on their part; that was all, and if he had been the most skilful diplomat in the world, he could not have moved more adroitly.
The Governor looked up at the massive face of the gambler, marred by evil circumstance and the riot of dissipation, and wondered—as he had wondered many a time before,—at the splendid unselfishness of this man. From whence could have come this flower of nobility? The life of Ambercrombie Hergan had been sterile soil indeed for such a plant as this. How could it be in the economy of men that such princely fidelity obtained alone even without trace of the common attendant virtues?
For the obligations of the law Ambercrombie Hergan had no regard. For the obligations of the citizen he had no regard. Even for the common obligations of morality he maintained the most stolid unconcern. Honesty was a name to him, and right and duty and honor were merely names to him. Yet blooming in the barren garden of this gambler's heart was something fairer than them all.
“Well,” asked Hergan, with a trace of anxiety in his voice, “are you going to promise?”
The Governor arose. “This is a very serious matter,” he said slowly; “we must be given a few minutes in which to decide.”
“That 's fair enough,” replied the gambler. “You two can go into the other room. I'll wait.”
The Auditor and the Executive retired, and the Secretary of State resumed his seat beside the table, the suggestion of a smile on his face, he knew perfectly that if he could secure the promise of his companions it would be maintained inviolate.
Presently the door opened and the two men entered. “Bill,” said the Governor, “we promise.”
The gambler arose, and stretched his long limbs like one relieved from the weight of a crushing burden. Then he turned to his companions. “Boys,” he said almost gaily, “I may as well tell you now that I am going to New York Saturday night.”
“And I may add,” responded the Governor, “that I am going Friday night.”
YOU see,” the Governor was saying,” the failure of this bank in San Francisco has wiped out every penny I had in the world. On the fourth day of next March I will be poorer than the ordinary drayman. So poor that I must begin all over again, and I have no heart to do it.”
Miss Marion Lanmar was silent. Her bands rested upon the great aims of the chair in which she was seated. Her face might have been a cast; it was so very motionless.
“I should not mind if it were not for you,” the young man went on. “I mean,”—he hesitated for a moment,—“if I had never seen you; if I had never known you. But now the effort would seem so miserably inadequate, if it were not made for you. I have loved you and lived for you too long. I have grown accustomed to you as the mighty incentive. Every path that I have travelled has had you waiting at the end. Every battle I have fought has seemed to hold your happiness in its balance. Even the meagre gains of all the weary commonplace days have been to me so much or so little added to the kingdom of the queen. So I could have gone on to the end, but now, without you I have no heart at all.”
The man leaned over and rested his arm on the mantel-shelf. “I have read somewhere,” he continued, “how the evil fiend strove to destroy a man whom he hated; how he robbed him of his wealth, of his friends, of his fair fame, and how the man worked on, laughing in the demon's face, and how it all failed, until one morning the evil fiend reached down into the man's heart and plucked the motive out of his life, and then the man threw away his tools and came and sat in the doorway of his shop. I suppose it is all very cowardly, to talk as I am talking, but it would be very much worse, I should think, to deceive myself and you.” The woman did not answer. She was looking into the fire. The little blue flames in the wide fireplace danced up and down upon their bed of coal in impish merriment at all the trouble of men's lives.
Presently the man began again. “Yet a woman cannot wait always,” he said, “and I have no right to ask it of you. I must step aside out of your life and beg to be forgotten. It is a terrible ordeal for one who has gone down into themeléewith his lady's colors on his helm to return beaten and overthrown and say, 'This quest is not for me.' It is hard to have the hope of one's life battered out and to live on in the world, and yet men do, and I shall, I presume.
“We are taught in youth that the world is a happy place, and I judge that it is a bit of illusion, like the black goblin and the fairies, and yet we all try very hard to believe the old housewife tales, and cling to them, and give them up grudgingly and with regret. I shall always remember how very sorry I was when I first realized that there really were no fairies. I was only a child, but it made me unhappy for days. It seemed to put all my reckoning out of joint. And so I have always believed that happiness existed in the world, and that it came to men somewhere in their lives about as the beautiful princess comes in the fairy stories. It never occurred to me to doubt its coming. True, it never came, but everything that did come seemed only to prepare a way for its coming at some day farther on. Now I see that this is just an illusion like the others, and I confess that the discovery has jarred me frightfully.”
The man's voice wavered for a moment; then it grew stronger. “I don't quite see how the world can ever seem a beautiful place after to-night. The sky may be very blue indeed, but the man whose eyes ache will not look up to see it. The birds may sing gloriously in the trees, but the man whose heart is an empty house will not care at all.”
Randal stopped and looked down at the woman. He noticed how very soft and heavy her brown hair was, and how delicate and slender her hands were. He noted vaguely, too, the artistic effect of the folds of her gown and the shadows on her face.
“Marion,” he said, “If I did not love you better than any other thing in the world, I would not be urging these bitter arguments against my own happiness. I would not be so desperately anxious about your welfare. I should not be so fearful of the future. I should take the chance without the hesitation of a moment. But the very depth of my love makes me a coward. I could not bear to see you subject to all the evil things that come with poverty. I know what a frightful plight it is—how it crushes out the sweetness and the nobility of one's life, how it squeezes the heart, day after day, until it finally becomes a dry husk in one's breast.”
Randal's voice was now thick with emotion. “Marion,” he said, “do you hear me? Do you believe me?”
The woman's hands tightened on the great arms of the chair, and for a moment she was silent; then she began to speak, slowly and distinctly.
“I do not know.” she said. “I must have time to think. Yet I have believed you all these years. I must believe you now. Yes, I do believe you now. But you are wrong, frightfully wrong. You forget that a woman is a human being with a heart. You think I am afraid of the world, afraid of poverty, afraid of life as God makes it, as God wills it; that I am a fragile something that the rain and the sunlight would ruin if it touched; that I am a something more or less than you, a something that requires ease and luxury and all the gilded stage-setting of wealth—and you are wrong. If I love you, of what value to me are all those other things without you? If I love you, it is not all these things I want—it is you. I ask you to answer this, and by what is true in your heart, know what is true in mine: Would you be happy with all that wealth can give you and without me?”
“No,” said the man, “not after to-night. No.”
“No more would I,” added the woman.
The heart, as it is said, speaks clearer to the heart when tongues are silent, and it is said that grief and happiness when riding high in their meridian have no need for the cumbrous medium of language.
After a long silence, Miss Lanmar began again. “Men cannot understand,” she said; “a woman's heart is so miserably strange. Things either slip around it, leaving no mark at all, or they sink in and become a very part of the woman's heart itself. There is no middle ground; no half joy; no middle hurt. So it comes about that if one's image creeps into her heart, it must remain. True, the world may never know; the world is very stupid. But for all that, the woman's heart will hold its tenant, and when she is alone or in the dark, she will know and feel its presence. It may be that the woman will pray to be rid of the evil thing, or it may be that she will pray to hold it always as a gift of good, but be that as it happens, the woman's heart will remain forever helpless to evict its tenant.
“Is it strange, then, if I love you, that I should want to go with you and live with you, and be with you always, and make your joys and your burdens my joys and my burdens, and have a share and an interest in everything that comes to you? Is it strange that I should hold wealth or place or even honor as nothing against you? Is it strange that I should be miserable, thoroughly, utterly miserable with every other thing in the world, and you denied?”
The woman's voice faltered and broke; her hands relaxed, and began to slip from the great arms of the chair. The man came over, and knelt down beside her and put his arms around her.
“Marion, dear heart,” he said, “you do love me. You will trust me a little while,—just a little while?”
The woman's head slipped down on his shoulder. “Love you!” she murmured, “I have always loved you. Surely I shall always love you. But when you are gone, the world is so empty, so miserably empty!”
ITHOROUGHLY appreciate everything I you have mentioned, Mr. Hergan,” said the clerk Parks, “but it is quite impossible. Mr. Mason is entirely inaccessible. I should not dare interrupt him.”
“Look here, my friend,” responded the gambler. “I have heard this same talk every day for the last week, and it don't go any longer. I have got to see this lawyer, and I have got to see him now. Do you understand me?”
“Oh, yes,” replied the clerk, with a faint smile, “I understand you perfectly, but it is entirely useless to urge the matter any farther. The business with which Mr. Mason is at present engaged is of great magnitude. He would not permit an interview at all. I am very sorry, but, of course, I can do nothing for you.”
The gambler did not respond. For a few moments he was silent. Then he put his hands into the inside pocket of his coat and drew forth a rather battered leather pocket-book. He held the pocket-book under the table, opened it slowly, and selecting a fifty-dollar bill from among a number of others, laid it gently on the table.
“There,” he said, “is my ante. I want in the game.”
The eyes of the clerk began to contract slowly at the corners.
“My dear man,” he said, “I should like to do this for you, but I don't see how I can. I don't believe Mr. Mason would even listen to me just now. I don't——”
“Wait,” responded the gambler; “I sweeten it.”
Thereupon he selected another bill from the pocket-book and spread it out carefully beside the other upon the table.
The little bald clerk began to drum on the chair with his fingers. His eyes wandered from the money to the door of Mason's private office, and back again. Presently he turned to the gambler.
The Hon. Ambercrombie Herman held up two fingers. “Don't call,” he said, “I tilt it to one hundred and fifty.” And he added another bill to the two, and pushed the money across the table to the clerk. Then he closed the pocket-book deliberately and replaced it in his coat.
Parks arose, picked up the money without a word, and passed into Randolph Mason's private office, closing the door carefully behind him. In a very few moments the clerk returned. He came up dose to the gambler and put his hand confidentially on his shoulder.
“My friend,” he said, in a low tone, “you are not a fool. I have told some lies to get you this interview. Look sharp, and say as little as possible.”
“What lies?” asked the gambler, arising.
“Such as were useful,” responded the clerk. “Quite too tedious to enumerate. Please walk into Mr. Mason's office, sir, and remember that you are my brother-in-law. Answer the questions which are put to you, and don't volunteer talk. It is n't wise.”
The gambler opened the door to Randolph Mason's private office and entered.
HE Secretary of State came slowly down the steps from Randolph Mason's office. At the entrance to the great building he stopped and looked up and down the busy, jostling thoroughfare. It had been but a few years since he was a grain in this vortex, and now that past seemed ages removed. He was not conscious of anything of interest in the very familiar scene. Just why he had stopped to look, this man would not have been quite able to explain. In truth, he was striving to obtain his mental bearings. He had been flung violently upon another view point, and he was endeavoring to comprehend the loom of this new land. His sensations were not unlike those of one who but an hour before had gone into the operating room of a surgeon, walking as he believed to his death, and now returned with the tumor dissected out, and the hope of life big in his bosom. The world was an entirely different place from what it had been some hours before, and the gambler's steps were firmer, and his ancient careless spirit had returned.
At this moment, as it pleased Fate, a cab stopped before a broker's office on the opposite-side of the street, and the Governor stepped out. The gambler darted across and caught his companion by the shoulder. The Governor turned suddenly.
“Well,” he said, in astonishment, “is this an assaultvi et armis?”
“No,” said the gambler. “It's worse than that, Al. It's a mandamus. You are not to go in that broker's office.”
“Not to go in?” echoed the Executive. “Why not?”
“Al,” said the gambler, grinning like a Hindoo idol, “I said this here was a mandamus. I guess the judge don't ever explain 'why not' in a mandamus.”
“Good chancellor,” replied the Governor, with mock gravity, “I resist the order.”
“On what ground?” said the lion. Ambercrombie Hergan, with such a sage judicial air as might obtain with a truck horse.
“First,” replied the Governor, “that the mandamus was improvidently awarded. Second, that the Court issuing the writ was without jurisdiction. And, third, that the act sought to be restrained is not entirely ministerial, but one largely within the discretion of the officer.”
“All them objections,” said the gambler, “this Court overrules.”
“But,” continued the Executive, “in this case the mandamus cannot lie. I move to quash the writ.”
“But it does lie,” asserted the powerful devotee of fortune, hooking his arm through that of the Executive and turning him down the street, “and she can't be squashed.”
The Governor had observed the very great change in the man, and knowing the Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan, he knew that this erratic person had chanced upon some solution for his dilemma—strange and but half-practical, the Governor had no doubt, but certainly not commonplace, and so he made no further offer of resistance.
“Al,” said the gambler, hurrying his companion through the crowded street, “do you know where you are going?”
“I have n't the slightest idea,” observed the Governor, with greatest unconcern.
“Well, I'll tell you. You are going first to the hotel, then to the railroad, then to the Southwest, and you have just fifty-nine minutes between you and the train.”
The Governor stopped short. “I can't go, Bill. I must sell these stocks.”
“That's just the point,” said the gambler. “You aint going to sell them stocks. That's why I issued this here mandamus.” And he seized the Executive by the arm and fairly dragged him across the street.
“Bill,” protested the Governor, “Bill, this is all nonsense. It don't go.”
“Everything goes,” said the gambler. “Come on. We have lost three of them fifty-nine minutes already.”
THE Emporium of Crawley was not quite a trading-place as the Greek root of the word would indicate, unless transactions in which the unwary bartered his gain for experience, and the great unscrubbed of the Southwest pitted their wage against the riot of dissipation, could be held to partake of the nature of commerce. It was a fad with Crawley to assert that his Emporium was a clearinghouse,—a rather grim jest, heavy with truth. Indeed, all the currency of this primitive land seemed to pass, sooner or later, through the mammoth establishment of First Class Crawley, and in season and out of season as the dollar went through, a portion paused and remained in the fingers of the proprietor. And for this, also,—as the common-law pleader would put it,—truth clung to the pet declaration of Crawley.
When the population gathered night after night under the roof of his Emporium, their troubles came also; and when the smoke grew thick and the tanglefoot whiskey began to assert itself, there were other things to clear up beside matters of currency. Matters of consequence and matters of no consequence were cleared by the same rapid, drastic measures. Bad men here decided who was the worst or the best, as they were pleased with the term. The henchmen of rival cattle kings submitted the vexatious question of a brand on a stray heifer to this court of instant resort and quick decision, and other concerns of the citizen, affecting perhaps his truth, or honor, or ability for a vice, were determined suddenly and for all time without the wrangling of counsel or the tedium of courts.
If a Mexican was so short sighted as to slip his knife into a tenderfoot, some one shot the Mexican, and the crowd “lickered up.” If the faro dealer killed his man, it was usually because the man needed killing, and certainly the faro dealer was the best judge of this. On the contrary, if one shot the dealer, this was considered a public calamity, demanding an explanation, since the dealer was aquasipublic functionary, and the convenience of the citizen required that the game should continue. One's life was perhaps the cheapest thing below the Central Pacific Railroad, and it was entirely the duty of the individual to see that it was maintained. If one was unsteady on the trigger, or caught napping on the draw, one was held to have died by virtue of contributory negligence.
To be sure there was law, and machinery for its execution; but the machinery was liberal, and had ideas of its own, and the law adhered with supreme unconcern to its maxim—De minimis non curat lex.
First Class Crawley had been splendidly trained for the duties of his position. If Fortune had been moving of design, she could not have schooled him better for such a life. Some thirty years before, he had been a sutler with the Army of the Potomac—not the sutler of romance, but the sutler of reality; following the army bravely, but at such a distance to the rear as to be at all times extremely safe, and exacting for his valuable public service every gain that human ingenuity could discover. It was no wrong in the mind of Crawley to cheat the common soldier out of his eyes; belike the soldier would be shot on the morrow, and then all opportunity to cheat him would cease, and if prior opportunity had not been seized and enjoyed, Crawley would regret.
When the “bitterness of death” had passed, Crawley became a justice of the peace in Ohio. Here the field for his talent was broader, and Crawley arose and spread like the bay tree of Biblical record. Crawley held it as a basic principle that the machinery of human justice could not be maintained without ample sinews of war. It was best, to be sure, if these sinews could be wrested from the wrong-doer, but, failing that, the innocent must contribute. Every litigant was presumed to proceed at the peril of costs. The matter of costs was one vital to Crawley, and loomed constantly. The right or justice of a cause was never for a moment permitted to obscure it. If the plaintiff was impecunious, then the decision must be against the defendant, else the costs could not be had, andvice versaas it had pleased Providence to place substance.
This was a high conception of human justice; since it passed by the trivial controversy of the litigants, and placed the burden of legal procedure upon the one best able to support It. First Class Crawley maintained further that it was the part of wisdom in a government promptly to release the criminal who “shelled out,” since the revenues of the State arose largely from the fines imposed upon the evildoer, and it was certainly quite useless to retain the criminal at public expense after having squeezed him thoroughly, when he could be returned to society and squeezed again later on.
Crawley might have been the father of a school, had he not found the school in Ohio established to his uses. Consequently his fame was local, and his methods being of ancient origin in this Commonwealth, provoked no comment, and indeed he might have passed on, with the usual career of such ambitious spirits, to a seat in the legislature, had he not unwittingly crossed into a neighboring State in order to attend a reunion of the Grand Army of the Republic. Here one, smarting from a hurt, pounced down upon him with a warrant for a felony, and that same night the visiting justice was a guest of the State. But First Class Crawley was no man of feeble resources, and two days later he gave a straw bond and vanished like a newspaper war cloud.
In the Southwest, Crawley was a person of importance—a court of last resort on all matters, barring none. If bets were made, Crawley was umpire. If questions w ere argued, Crawley was judge. If one wanted advice, one went to him. If one wanted information, one went to him; and if one needed money, one went always to First Class Crawley, and put up everything but his life. No function was complete without the presence of this celebrity, be it bull tight or prize fight, or dog fight, or a prearranged resort to the arbitration of the Winchester. Crawley was a great man, in counterdistinction to a bad man. Personally, he neither quarrelled nor fought, and one would have no more considered shooting at Crawley than he would have considered shooting at his grandmother. This proprietor of the Emporium maintained his position, not by virtue of arms and skill in their use, but by virtue of an interesting something which passed with him for an intellect.
Consequently, when he and Hiram Martin, of the Golden Horn Mining Company, sat down in the private gambling room of the Emporium to a private interview with the Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan, they were expecting to realize from the time expended. They were both attentive and interested, since the reckless Secretary of State was known in the lingo of the guild as an “easy member.” If he had money, or could obtain money, it would eventually fall into their clutches as it had always done. Hence their interest was genuine.
“Boys,” said the Secretary of State, “I have a scheme to make a stake, and I want you in on it. I have been over in the East, and I have got it all figured out, and it's a cinch.”
The owner of the Golden Horn folded his hands over the vast expanse of his stomach and smiled benignly. He knew all about the usual combination of circumstances set down in the elegant diction of the gambler as a “cinch.”
He was an expert upon things of this sort, but he volunteered no information, and no comment. He merely smiled and murmured “Yes,” in a voice which reminded one of oil being poured from a very full barrel.
“You see,” continued the Honorable Ambercrombie
Hergan, “it's this way. There is a broker in Chicago who is a friend of mine. I saved him from the jug when he was a kid, and he never forgot it. Well, he went to Chicago, raked together a bunch of money, and bought a seat in the Stock Exchange. He was lucky, and now he is away up. He is on the inside, and he says that there is going to be a big raise in oil stocks; that the Standard Oil Company has been forcing it down in order to squeeze out the little dealers, and that they are right now at the bottom, and when they let go, it will fly back to a dollar.”
At this point in the narrative, Crawley murmured “Yes,” then leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He was not quite ready to puncture Mr. Hergan's balloon, and it was not his way to offer objections to unfinished propositions.
“Now,” said Hergan, leaning over and resting his arms on the table, “the plan is to form a big pool and buy oil, and make enough at one haul to go back to civilization and live like a king. That is the scheme, boys. It's good.” First Class Crawley opened his eyes slowly, and putting out his fat hand, began to caress the green cloth on the little round poker table.
“Billy,” he said slowly, “I expect that is a good scheme, and I expect there is money in it,—may be tubs of money, but me and Martin aint speculators; we never so much as saw a ticking machine in our life. We don't know anything about new-fangled ways to get rich. We're both old fogies,—just common old fogies, and I reckon we had better stay out. Of course, I aint knocking on the scheme. It looks good, mighty good, but me and Martin aint young any longer; we're getting old and heavy on our pins, and we aint got no nerve like we used to have. Still I aint knocking. Me and Martin would like to see you make a pile of money, would n't we, Martin?”
“Yes,” gurgled the owner of the Golden Horn, “we would that.”
The Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan straightened up and thrust his hands into his pockets. “Of course, boys,” he said, “it's a gamble, but it's a ten-to-one shot better than a faro bank. If it goes our way, we will have all kinds of money; if it goes the other way, we are skinned to a standstill. I am tired of little gambles, and I am going to make one big play if I eat snowballs for the next twenty years. I would like to have you boys in, but if you don't believe that the thing is easy to beat, you can stay out.”
An inspiration came to First Class Crawley, and he seized it with the avidity of a shark. “Billy,” he said, with amiable confidence, “you have no better friends in this here country' than me and Martin—has he, Martin?”
“No,” muttered the fat owner of the oleaginous voice, “he aint.”
“And me and Martin,” the proprietor went on, “would go in anything in the world that you wanted us to go in, and it would n't make no difference to us what it was, if you said it was a good thing. But me and Martin are pretty nigh sixty, and if we would go broke, we could never get on our feet no more. We are skeery, Billy; me and Martin are skeery, but we are ready to do anything for you that we can. We are ready to help you any way you want to be helped, because you are dead game, Billy,—that's what you are—you're dead game.”
The wary Hiram Martin was totally in the dark as to what Crawley was probing for, but he had unlimited confidence in the proprietor of the Emporium, and he assented blandly. Crawley, he knew, followed no cold trail; Crawley worked no salted lead, and if he stooped to “crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,” there was something in it for Crawley, and at no great distance.
“Well,” responded the Secretary of State,
“I am obliged to you both, but I guess there is nothing I need just now. Of course, I, have got to raise a bunch of money for this deal, but I sort of arranged that in New York.”
The ulterior motive of Crawley was now quite clear to the owner of the Golden Horn. Hergan would require money,—perhaps a large sum for his venture. If good security could be given, there was no reason why they should not advance the cash at a large and comfortable discount.
The officer of the Commonwealth moved his chair back from the table as an indication that the secret conference was at an end. As he did so, the proprietor of the Emporium leaned over and spread out his fat hands on the green cloth.
“Billy, old man,” he said, in a voice that indicated gentle reproach, “there was no necessity for you to go among strangers to raise any money you wanted; me and Martin have saved up a little, and me and Martin would be glad to let you have it if it is any accommodation, would n't we, Martin?”
First Class Crawley failed to add that both he and Martin would require the trifling detail of a substantial surety, but they concluded shrewdly that if Hergan could raise money in New York, he had obtained some first-class support, and if this security were sufficient for an Eastern bank, it was amply sufficient for all purposes known to commerce. Hence the apparently unconcerned Martin consented most amiably.
The Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan settled back in his chair and grew thoughtful. “I aint closed the loan,” he said, after some little consideration, “and I would just as leave borrow it of you, boys. The fact is, I would a little rather borrow it of you. I am paying pretty stiff for the money, and I would rather pay my friends than the Yankees in the East.”
“Yes,” observed the unctuous mining magnate, although he had not intended to speak at all.
“But,” continued the Secretary of State, “I reckon you would n't like to put up as much as I need. I am going to crowd the bank this once.”
“Well, Billy,” drawled the proprietor of the Emporium, “I expect me and Martin can make it up for you. If we aint got enough, we can get some around and piece out. Least ways, we will try. About what sum might you need?”
“I reckon,” responded Hergan, “that I shall want about fifty thousand.”
The hands of Hiram Martin tightened over his stomach, and for a moment Crawley studied the ceiling with placid indifference. He had turned Hergan into his own channel, and the transaction being assured, it was now the part of wisdom to affect gravity. Presently he spoke, slowly and anxiously: “That's a powerful big wad of money. Still, me and Martin——” Here he stopped short and turned to his companion.
“Powerful big,” echoed the mine owner, and volunteered no further observation. He understood First Class Crawley as few men are understood, and such observations were quite useless between them, except for the effect upon the victim at hand.
“Still,” continued the proprietor of the Emporium, “I expect we can raise it some way. About what terms do you allow on?”
“I guess thirty days will be long enough,” responded Hergan. “Thirty days at twelve per cent, is how I have been figuring it.”
“Yes,” drawled the gambling king, “and the security?”
“Well,” said the Secretary of State, “I have calculated to give the Governor and Culverson.”
“They are good, I reckon,” observed the wary Crawley. “Aint they good, Martin?”
“Might be worse,” responded the oily owner of the Golden Horn, “but it aint that. It's the rate. Seems like mighty little on a short loan.”
“It is mighty little,” continued Crawley, after a silence of some moments. “We would have to give more than that for what we borrowed 'round. There would n't be nothing in it for us, Billy,—not a cent to me and Martin.”
“I tell you what I'll do,” put in the Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan, abruptly, as though the idea was new and sudden in its coming, “I'll give you twelve per cent, for the money for a month, and I will enter into an agreement to turn over to you two one-eighth of what I win on the gamble.”
Crawley was very grave. The proposition pleased him hugely, but emotions found no expression with him. To loan fifty thousand dollars on good security at an enormous rate of interest, and in addition to have a substantial share in a speculation without standing to lose a cent, was a condition of affairs not likely to arise with much regularity in the span of a gambler's precarious life. Yet Crawley was not anxious. To the spectator he was sad and unconcerned. He knew quite well that this proposition was Hergan's ultimatum, and he was going to accept, but desired to appear to accept rather as a matter of kindly feeling toward Hergan than by reason of the fact that the inducement had increased.
“Billy,” he said slowly, almost sadly, “me and Martin don't want to make anything off of you, and we will try to fix it any way you want it. If you want to arrange the thing that way, why it suits us—it suits me and Martin.”
“All right,” responded the Secretary of State, getting up from the table. “I'll go over to the Governor's house and have Al fix the papers. The sooner I get it, the better chance I'll have to win a stake.”
“Billy,” called the proprietor of the Emporium, as the official of the Commonwealth was passing out through the door, “just make the note payable to Martin.”
The Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan nodded his assent, and departed, leaving the fat gambling kings of the Southwest to prolong the secret session.
When the door was closed, First Class Crawley turned to his companion, his little gray eyes slipping around in their puffy sockets.
“Martin,” he said, “aint he a mark?”
The stomach of the rotund Martin undulated like a rubber bag filled with fluid. “Of all damn fools,” he gurgled.
“Were it clear?” inquired the proprietor of the Emporium.
“Plain as a speckled pup,” responded Martin, “except the note.”
“You see,” said First Class Crawley, turning around in his chair, “you live in New Mexico, and I wanted the note in your name so that if we had to sue we could get it in the United States court. You can't ever tell what the State courts are going to do with you, but old Uncle Sam's courts don't stand no flim-flam.”
“Crawley,” announced the owner of the Golden Horn, “Crawley, you are built like a white man, but you have got a head on you like a Yankee.”
When the Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan returned to the Governor's residence he found that celebrated official and Major Culverson in the library. The irrepressible Major was engaged in presenting a lurid and highly dramatic history of how he had straightened the tangled exigencies of the Commonwealth during the absence of his associates, and how, by virtue of his magnificent personality, the entire Southwest, from the borders of lower Utah to the Rio Grande, was now the placid abode of peace and fraternal good-will. He stopped short as the Secretary of State entered, and bowed. Then thrusting his hand into the front of his coat, he exclaimed, with the affected manner of a tenth-rate actor, “Good morrow, good gambler.”
“Top chop,” responded the Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan. “And a favorite.”
“I opine,” continued the Major, “I opine, sir, from your gladsome tone that the fat sharks have been successfully harpooned.”
“Gentlemen,” said the Secretary of State, dropping into a chair by the table, “the reports of this race will announce that Hiram Martin and First Class Crawley 'also ran.'”
“Which being translated,” observed the Governor, “means that these gentlemen will advance you the money on the line suggested by your New York lawyer.”
“Yes,” said the gambler. “You are to fix up the papers, and I am to go down there to-night. Everything turned out just like Randolph Mason said it would. If the rest goes through as slick, we will be riding in carriages.”
“Produce the sealed orders,” said the Governor, partaking of the mock dramatic atmosphere.
The Secretary of State drew a big envelope from his pocket and threw it down on the table. The Executive leaned over, opened the paper, and, after having examined it carefully, took up a pen and began to write.
Major Culverson wandered over to the window and looked out at the hot, monotonous, sterile country. “I wonder,” he murmured, “if this is really the passing of the Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan?”