Sand (Bechdolt)

by Frederick R. Bechdolt

SAND

By FREDERICK R. BECHDOLT.

THE Arizona Rangers was a picked body of peace officers, selected for that superlative degree of bravery that men call sand. The business of this company was to carry the statutes into places where there was no law, and to force their recognition at the hands of those who hitherto had laughed at them. The members did it in that Southwest land, where Apaches and cattle-wars and the baked desert itself had tried out every one until the very thieves had yawned in situations that spelled death. For eight years after 1900 they smoothed off the territory's rougher edges; they made man's law a mighty thing.

There were usually twenty-odd names on the company's roster; and the desert is wide in Arizona. Therefore the men worked nearly always against odds; and the odds came from a population that has made the region's name a synonym for hard-eyed, thin-lipped fearlessness. This shows that, in recruiting, the captains surely picked the choice ones from the crowd.

"He's as good as ten," was the standard toward which the captains aimed. To secure the nine-man ally with each new member of the band, they placed all candidates under surveillance; they demanded a long list of stern virtues which, in its entirety, amounted to temperance in words and repression in deeds. On that, they reasoned, was based this fine thing called sand.

In some instances the captains fell down. As a rule, however, they swore in such men as William Sparks. He was a quiet citizen, the sort who rolls his cigarettes unnoticed in a group. In time he rose to the rank of sergeant, which he held when he ran afoul of the Sheriff of Chiricahua.

The Sheriff was of the old type, the type whose names ring loud in Tombstone's lurid history; the iron men who, when the acrid smoke-wreaths lifted, filed the notches on their guns. He ran his county, and he ran it on the old theory—the theory of the pastoral days—that might was law because the statutes were remote.

That theory had come from necessity in a day when cattle-rustling had a dignity akin to border-raiding. In that day the law's machinery was simply an ally at the service of the strongest man. The cowtowns, holding as they did the bulk of the voting population, were usually tough. Many of the so-called cattle-wars on which elections hinged were but quarrels of their gamblers, saloonmen and stockthieves, in which the ranchers had to cast lots with one or the other faction in order to get protection when victory came. Sheriffs were leaders; their followers did pretty much as they pleased; while the henchmen of rival candidates avoided service of warrants or, at best, walked with circumspection.

On this theory, and in its day, the Sheriff of Chiricahua had fought his way to power among loud-sounding deeds of arms. Seated, he ruled the county; he was his own legislature and often his own court. When the years narrowed the ranges and brought more complicated conditions he hung to the tenets of yesterday. He stood fast in the way of progress.

The Rangers were bringing the law into other places. Cattle-rustling ceased to be a political privilege; shooting-up of towns became a misdemeanor, no matter whether the gunwielder was a republican or a democrat. Gambler and bandit went; the mists of other years slowly enwrapped them and made them fine to look upon. Carrying the statutes into Chiricahua, the Rangers found the Sheriff opposing the change. He still kept his following, and he continued to run the town. He protected his adherents even when these were wanted for felonies.

At first the opposition was widespread and vague, the Sheriff's followers against Rangers in general. Members of the company came to Chiricahua many times; now it was a horsethief, now a murderer, again a brawler, who departed with one of them. Often the Ranger went away alone, chagrined at failure that could always be traced to the tacit hindrance of the Sheriff. In time Sparks came to be the man who was most frequently detailed to the place. Gradually the Sheriff showed his attitude more openly. These two came at length into the position of antagonists; as issues do—it narrowed down to a man- to-man affair.

A score of circumstances helped to bring this about. Most potent among them was the element of personality; strong men, adherents of opposite beliefs that now clashed, the pair became, of themselves, pitted against each other. There was also the crowd's invariable desire to see a fight. Outsiders did their best to smooth the path toward the encounter; they came to look upon it as a certainty. Such was the situation when a cloudburst swept away a portion of the town, and brought the issue to a head.

Half a hundred cabins went down with the turgid flood that night. A score of dwellers by the riverbank were drowned. The recession of the waters, as sudden almost as their coming, left the ravine bed strewn with wreckage and household goods. Then came the inevitable result of a mixed population in a community where law was not for all. There was much vandalism. A swarm of Mexican halfbreeds began pillaging the ruined cabins and plundering the dead.

In crises such as this, where the situation was beyond the control of local officers, the Ranger company had often acted. A call for help went out to them, and Sergeant Sparks was ordered to the place with a companion. They went at once. To the Sheriff, their advent was an invasion of his bailiwick, an interference with what he regarded as his rights, the climax of a series of annoyances. The time, he said, had come to see whether he or this man Sparks administered the law in Chiricahua.

The pair of Rangers arrived on the morning train, on the day following the disaster. They went straight from the depot to the water-swept ravine. Before noon they caught twelve Mexicans, some of them in the very act of robbery, others with damning evidence against them. They took the prisoners to the Chiricahua jail, then went back to the scene of devastation. They busied themselves in bringing order and in caring for the refugees and the sick. It was at this time, while he was picking his way among the heaps of flotsam that afternoon, that Sergeant Sparks learned of the Sheriff's declaration of hostility.

A word here from a friend and there a scowling threat from a member of the opposing faction gave him wind of coming trouble. But the Sergeant had his hands full in the ravine bed; he went on about his work, following the straight line along which he had started, nodding mute answer to a whispered warning, ignoring every sullen hint. Perhaps that contingency of overt opposition did not, even then, suggest itself to him as imminent; if it did, he let the future take care of itself. It was a long day, but evening followed it and passed, before he and his fellow Ranger sought their beds.

Morning was still young and they had been asleep but a few hours, when a pounding on the door awakened them. A man entered; he was one of the cowtown's law-abiding citizens, one of those who had looked upon the Rangers as harbingers of longed-for conditions. His whole appearance denoted haste and excitement.

"Your greasers," he said breathlessly, "are gone. The Sheriff turned the whole bunch loose."

Now that the contingency had developed suddenly into a fact, Sergeant Sparks remained as taciturn as he had been before. He was too busy getting into his clothes to talk, When he had dressed he hurried to the Justice of the Peace before whom he had sworn out the warrants for his prisoners. The Justice was an old citizen and he had been elected on the Sheriff's ticket; but he was progressive in his ideas of administration of statute law. He liked the Hangers as an institution. He explained the situation to Sergeant Sparks.

"You see," he said, "the Sheriff looks at it that you're interfering. He says you've gone too strong here for a long time. I hear he's passed the word that he won't stand for you fellows any longer."

"Meaning?" the Sergeant asked.

"He ain't goin' to let those greasers come to trial. He's said so."

"I'll get them back again," said Sparks. "You can try them in the morning."

The Justice had grown old during Chiricahua's hectic youth. He knew the Sheriff by the Sheriff's acts. He shook his head. "That means trouble," he said. "As sure as I call court, it starts."

"I'll look out for my end," said Sparks. "I've got to go."

He went back to the hotel and told his posse of one how matters stood. Trouble, in the vernacular of old residents like the Justice of the Peace, spelled only one thing. The Sheriff's followers were many, and they included a goodly number whose trigger-fingers itched. The Ranger company was badly scattered; most of the members were in distant parts of the territory. There were, however, six who might be reached in time. The pair went to the railway depot and filed six telegrams.

Then they started in again to gather up the twelve Mexicans. It was not a hard task.

They found the majority of the escaped prisoners lounging in the town's streets. Evidently these felons deemed the jail a joke. Sparks was of the same mind; he took them to an empty box car on the siding by the depot and he locked them in. He left the other Ranger here as a guard while he himself went back to the Justice of the Peace.

"I got them," said Sergeant Sparks. "You c'n try them in the morning all right."

"The Sheriff," said the Justice of the Peace, "has just sent word to me that as sure as I call court on these men there'll be shooting. I don't want you to look at it that I'm not game, but——"

"You go ahead," said Sergeant Sparks quietly. "I'll have these greasers on hand at nine o'clock. Your court'll be protected."

"That's all I'm lookin' for," the Justice said. That night Sergeant Sparks and his companion smoked countless cigarettes in the lee of the box car. The desert wind played in minor keys upon the telegraph wires. Coyotes shrieked their weird songs at the yellow stars. The hours dragged slowly by, and the Sergeant slowly evolved his plan. Finally the wan dawn pushed the blanket of darkness from the Earth. With eyes all red from weariness the two sentinels greeted the sunrise. They saw the cowtown awaken; they watched the morning passenger train arrive. Six Rangers dropped from the dustclad coaches and joined them.

Sparks looked upon them with satisfaction, and with satisfaction saw their faces harden as the situation was explained to them. They were good men; and he needed good men indeed to carry out the thing he had in mind, the plan that had come to him in the night. When it first came his eyes had narrowed and his jaw had set; even now there remained so that his followers saw it in his glance and heard it in his voice a metallic quality. It made them wonder what his project might be.

•••••••

The town was unusually quiet that morning; it was the quietude of a large excitement. The news of what had taken place had spread; the rumors of what would come were on every lip. The court was the center of anticipation. But no spectators went thither.

The hour of nine o'clock drew on. The Justice of the Peace came down the street alone. He entered the empty courtroom and went at once to his battered desk on its little platform. As he took his seat the street door opened.

A line of men filed in. One by one they came until there were sixteen of them. Every member of the line wore a long revolver in the holster of his loose-hung, cartridge-studded belt. They wore the pistols openly as men had worn them a few years before, as they themselves had carried them in those bygone days. They were the Sheriff of Chiricahua and fifteen followers. He had sworn them in as deputies an hour before; a hard-faced posse, and their faces were no harder than their deeds had been. Like their leader, these men had justly earned the reputations that went along with their big-handled weapons.

In silence and with a grimness of bearing that was louder than shouted threats, the sixteen walked across the room and took their places in a row along the wall. They faced the street door; their position commanded the entire place. They wore the look of men who will surely carry through what they have in hand. The court surveyed them from his elevated seat; and if he cursed the necessities that had combined to bring about this moment his face gave no sign.

The room had two doors: the one through which these men had entered from the street, and another behind the platform leading into an anteroom. The latter opened now. From beyond it came the sound of shuffling feet, as Sergeant Sparks appeared. He crossed the rostrum, and the twelve prisoners, guarded by seven Rangers, followed him until he halted by the row of seats before the Justice. He said a word in Spanish and the Mexicans sat down. A number of them were looking steadfastly at the floor; others turned their heads toward the Sheriff and his fifteen armed deputies.

The shuffling of feet ceased; the last prisoner was in his chair. The Sergeant went to the door whence they had come and locked it. From their places by the wall the sixteen watched him do this. Their eyes showed curiosity.

He came back to his Rangers and nodded to them. The eight of them went to the wall opposite the sixteen; they halted there. Through the grimness that hung upon his features like a mask the Sheriff of Chiricahua allowed to creep a single flicker of his admiration, as he bent his eyes upon that short line. It died; the mask resumed its heavy immobility.

The room was silent now. The court, leaning a little forward, motionless in his elevated seat. The row of dark-faced prisoners, cowering, heads bent. The two lines: sixteen men girt with their sagging pistol-belts; eight men whose coats bulged above their revolver-butts. A bare instant; the Sergeant left his place again.

In drill-like unison the eyes of the sixteen went toward him as he moved. They followed him; narrowed now, but expressionless, they hung upon him. He was walking toward the street door. With a deliberation in his pace which made the tenseness in the air more tense he went. His back was to them. He paused before the door. He fumbled in his pocket and brought forth a bunch of keys.

Again the masklike grimness lifted from the Sheriff's face. A flash of wonderment sprang forth; it vanished; but there remained, for a single moment afterward, a deep furrow between his brows. The Sergeant picked a key and locked the door.

He returned to his place in the Rangers' line. He turned his face toward the Justice of the Peace, and said quite steadily, as though it did not matter in the least, "All right. Go ahead when you want to."

None moved. The Sergeant and the Sheriff were looking at each other now. Their eyes met; it was like the embrace of two wrestlers.

The room was locked. And it was time to shoot. The Sheriff had shot many times before. Unhampered by imagination he had peered through the acrid mists where orange flashings leaped behind the lead. He knew that grim game well. He had not played it by such rules as this, but he was an iron man.

An iron man. So hard, that in this silence when a Mexican coughed suddenly he did not shift his eyes from the Sergeant's eyes. He stood with his fifteen good men. Eight men across the room from them. The court was looking down over the row of prisoners, upon the two leaders. He would call the case. And then——

To shoot it out. The Sheriff had shot it out before. He knew the irrevocability of his right hand's first motion. He had tested it in the open. Always in the open. He had never run. But he could have run. Or the other could have run. Byways, side-alleys—he had never used them; he had never known before that he had needed them. This man across the room from him did not need them. The Sheriff's eyes never wavered from the Sergeant's eyes. He fought his battle with himself, within himself, as he stood there.

He had his pride, and pride is a mighty thing. An iron man, he struggled to proceed into the place that his imagination now pictured to him. There is a limit for the very good; beyond that hairline only the best may go. The furrow crept down between the Sheriff's brows. It deepened. A feeling of huge bewilderment passed over him; of wonder. His gaze wandered slowly to that locked door. The thing was beyond him.

He brought back his eyes to the Sergeant. His face tightened; his lips pressed close until they became a single line. He left his place and crossed the room to where the Sergeant stood. There was no sense of shame to show itself; he did not let his voice or his face betray his admiration. He simply told his limitations.

"This is going too strong for me," he said.

Then, from this other whom he had come to kill, he asked what he had now to ask.

"Give me that key," said he, "and we'll clear out."

When the last of the sixteen had filed into the street the Justice of the Peace sighed heavily and mopped his brow before he called the case.

The strange thing is that in recruiting the Arizona Rangers the captains quite frequently got men like this, every one of whom brought with him that nine-man ally, the quality of courage known as "sand."