FEW people are endowed with that exquisite balance of the faculties which restores full consciousness at once when a profound sleep is broken by some rude dissonance, such as a shot in a room upstairs. Angus Valorous was not one of them. When the crash, or smash—it was not by any license of descriptive fancy a crack—of Windy Moore's gun struck his sleeping senses, Angus sat up on his canvas cot with the stiffness and celerity of machinery, his mind straddling, it might be said, over the chasm between consciousness and sleep.
Angus sat that way a moment, wildly dishevelled, staring, mouth open; sprang from his bed, dashed to the middle of the office, where he turned round and round as if unwinding himself from the trammelling coils of some insidious thing that held his senses prisoner. He brought up presently with his shins against the cot, his balance in some measure restored, where he stood looking and listening, in posture of ludicrous strain, up the stairs.
"Wha's yat?" said Angus, thick with sleep and that indefinable anxiety of fuddled intelligence which is the exaggeration of fear and alarm: "Wha's yat?"
"Who's that shootin'?" Mrs. Cowgill inquired, in fear-shaken, querulous loud voice.
Angus bounded up the stairs just as the big whistle in the shops began to blow the sound of it thrilling him with an instant understanding of the crisis that had come in the hour of McPacken's deepest sleep. He stopped, thinking to go down and put on his shoes, bristling with little chills of excitement that ran along the marrow of his spine. Mrs. Cowgill called again, demanding who was shooting, her voice now sounding in the hall outside her bedroom door. Angus dashed on and swung into the hall, using the newel post for his pivot, after his own distinctive and original way.
Mrs. Cowgill stood at her door, the light of the hall lamp with its tin reflector—a brother of the one in the window down-stairs—strong on her dishabille. She was holding a skirt around her waist, the upper part of her insufficiently draped in a low-cut nightgown which discovered too much neck and collar-bone. Her hair was down, her eyes were big with the stare of wild astonishment that was too common to her countenance to be alarming now.
Louise Gardner was in the front end of the hall, her door open behind her. Angus was surprised and disappointed to see her fully dressed. She came running toward him, as if to shelter herself behind the fortification of his strength.
Windy Moore was at the farther end of the hall, his shirt off, his shoes off, his bulldog pistol in his hand.
"They took a shot at me!" he panted: "they took a shot at me through the winder!"
"My God! the whistle's a blowin'!" Mrs. Cowgill gasped.
"Who was it?" Angus demanded in rough, hoarse challenge.
"Feller on a horse—I saw him lopin' off!" Windy replied.
"I smell powder," said Angus, sniffing, alert as a hound.
"I was settin' by the winder—he rode right up," said Windy.
The railroaders were waking; deep voices were growling in the rooms. Windy ran back for his shoes; Angus swung around the newel post with admirable, agility, disappearing down the stairs.
"My God! listen to that whistle!" Mrs. Cowgill appealed.
Myron appeared in the door behind her, his simple toilet of overalls and shirt complete. He leaned against the wall to slip his feet into his congress gaiters, when he stood ready to observe from a discreet and neutral safety all that might come to pass.
"There's goin' to be bloodshed," he announced calmly, as if he spoke of rain.
Louise was unable to say anything at all. She stood staring as if she looked on the wreckage of some frightful disaster that her own meddlesome folly had caused. It was as if she had set off dynamite in ignorance of its properties, or turned a switch and ditched a train.
Windy Moore passed her, bareheaded, suspenders over his undershirt, pistol in his hand; railroaders opened doors along the hall and came out buttoning their garments, sleep and alarm making wild confusion in their faces. They hurried away after Windy Moore, the call of the whistle urging them as Baldy Evans pulled it now in short, excited jerks.
Myron took the bowl of his pipe from his hip pocket, the stem from the ruler slip along his leg, fitting the parts together as he went deliberately downstairs. Mrs. Cowgill turned to her room with startled quickness, as if a screen had been pulled down revealing her incomplete array to the boarders' eyes. Louise went down to the office, dumbly frantic in her despair.
Angus Valorous was sittng on the end of his cot, slewed around to give a clear passage, lacing his shoes. Myron had gone to the sidewalk; Windy Moore and the others had passed out of sight. Louise went to the edge of the walk and stood near Myron, who was filling his pipe with unshaken hand.
In the little while since Windy Moore's shot had brought this precipitate alarm over sleeping McPacken, daylight had increased rapidly. Louise could see the stock yards dimly, and the piles of railroad ties which lay at the corner of the pens. The cattle were moving about, uneasy in their confinement, lifting their highstrained, lonesome plaint of impatience and hunger. Louise could not see whether Laylander was on guard.
The whistle stopped blowing, rounding out the long alarm in one swelling, roaring, jarring blast, leaving a silence like the subsidence of a storm.
"Look at 'em come!" said Myron, thumb over the bowl of his pipe, match-head against his leg.
The railroaders were far more in earnest than Louise had believed them to be. She saw them running across the railroad yards, heard them clattering along the plank sidewalks, quick to leap at the summons of the whistle and rush to the defense of the cow jerry, who held their note of gratitude, payable on demand.
There was no insincerity, no bluff nor idle show in this quick response. They were assembling in the sober intention of killing somebody, not counting the cost of being killed themselves if it should turn out that way.
Angus Valorous came to the edge of the sidewalk, drawn between duty to the hotel and desire to be away. He was at such a high emotional strain that it seemed he would have given off sparks, like a cat, if touched even with the finger's end. Presently he dashed back into the office, to appear immediately with a small rifle. He laughed as he ran off to join the gathering forces, his deep, snorting noise of pleasure that sounded like nothing else in the world but the grunt of a little stallion.
Myron lit his pipe and stood smoking, Louise near him, both watching and listening. A few straggling railroad men were running toward the stock pens, which grew plainer momentarily as daylight spread.
Meantime, those who had gathered at the alarm for which Windy Moore's dream was responsible, found nobody lined up to fight. They questioned each other, wondering how it started. Windy told his story again, enlarging a bit with his repetition according to his way, and the way of mankind in general.
Windy knew very well that he had pulled the trigger of his pistol in his dream, and that the bullet had gone through the open window instead of his leg, or the wall, or anywhere that would have left a mark of evidence that would have been difficult to deny. There is no knowing whether he would have been so quick to rush to the front if his alarm had been genuine, his activity not prompted by the necessity of saving his face.
As it was, Windy did not believe Cal Withers was within twenty miles of McPacken. He could tell his story, and blow it up as big as it would go without popping, and come off a hero almost as grand as he was in the frustrated vision.
"He was right under my winder," Windy declared, "so clost to me my room was full of smoke. Baldy heard the gun and turned the whistle loose."
Nobody questioned that a gun had been shot off, but some of the men who knew Windy better than most of the rest did express doubt that it had been shot off at him. If it had been, where did the bullet strike?
Windy said he hadn't waited to examine the walls of his room, but he was sure they'd find it there somewhere.
Well, what did anybody want to kill him for? they wanted to know. It was Laylander they would be after, not Windy Moore. The doubters appealed to Laylander. Didn't he think it was some fool cowboy leaving town late, who had fired a parting shot as he passed the hotel?
Laylander was saved the necessity of replying to this question by the arrival of Angus Valorous, who burst among them with his rabbit rifle in his hand, snorting as if he was one of Pharaoh's horses broken out of the picture on Mrs. Cowgill's parlor wall.
"They're comin'!" Angus announced. "They was just leavin' the square a minute ago!"
Angus's alarm was a true and valid one. Cal Withers was hauling up in front of the saloon that moment, with eight men at his back, having made a hard ride of it from his nearest camp to arrive at that slack hour of dawn, when most men would rather sleep than get up and fight.
Withers had felt the hostility of the railroaders the evening before. He believed there was some kind of a scheme on foot to stand behind the cow jerry, who had become such an admirable figure in the railroad eye. Withers did not want to have any trouble with the railroad men. He knew that a feud once established would take a long time to quiet; that every excursion of his men into town would be attended by brawls and jailings, which would react on him in appeals for bond, and lawyers' costs, and all kinds of trouble in getting cars when he wanted them. The best thing to do was hang back on that move to get his cattle by force until the railroaders had gone to bed.
But he was determined to have his cattle, if he had to fight the whole town. If any railroaders were foolish enough to stand in his way, they'd have to take the medicine he was in town that morning to dispense. He got down at the saloon for a bracer all around, and to find out what the whistle had blown for so early in the morning.
There were between thirty and forty railroad men assembled at the stock yards, most of them young fellows about Laylander's age. The conductor who had been prominent the evening before in his official coat and unofficial trousers, was present, unofficial throughout; and Bill Pinkerton, foreman of the night switching crew; together with three young engineers and a few firemen, a clinker-puller from the roundhouse, some wipers and shopmen. Orrin Smith's gang of jerries was not represented.
Laylander seemed embarrassed and reluctant, standing among them with his rifle. He wanted to say something that stood so big in his mind the dumbest of them could see it. They pressed around him, waiting for him to speak.
"Gentlemen," Laylander began, slowly, as if it hurt, "I beg of you to leave this little matter of personal business to me. I can't expect, I can't ask you, to take up my troubles in this generous way."
"If that's all you've got to say, you'd better go down to that gate and stand there with your gun," the conductor suggested kindly. "That'll be the point they'll break for to let the cattle out."
"I can't tell you, gentlemen, how much I appreciate your kind and noble spirit," said Laylander, warming up to his argument, which was a grave and earnest one to him, "but I can't allow you to put yourselves in danger for this little fool business of mine. You don't owe me anything, gentlemen; you don't owe me a thing."
"Get around behind that pile of ties, men," the conductor ordered, in calm, authoritative voice, assuming command by a sort of natural selection. "Duck so you can't be seen, and wait till I say go."
Laylander followed the crowd behind the long pile of oak ties, where no more than the top of his old white hat could have been seen by Withers if he had come charging down on the pens that moment.
Withers and his men were still in the saloon, trying to get out of the bartender, but with little success, the reason for the early morning alarm. Withers knew it could not have been to warn of his coming, for it had started to blow while he was a mile from town. The bartender said he hadn't been able to learn what the whistle had blown for, although he knew well enough. He was considering that there would be plenty of railroaders left to buy beer after the last cowman was gone from the Arkansas Valley range.
Almost two score bulldogs were out of pockets behind the pile of ties. There was a clicking of triggers, a whispering and loading. Ammunition was being passed from hand to hand with very serious and business-like intent; there was a constrained eagerness over the young men, who would sooner have a crack at somebody than not. Tom Laylander tried to make his case again.
"Colonel Withers has come here to take these cattle away from me if he can, boys," he began.
"Sure thing—if he can," said a cheerful voice. This brought a laugh. It was quite an early morning lark for the railroad men.
"He's not the kind of a man that stops for anything in the road," said Tom, trying to impress them with the gravity of the situation, which they seemed to underrate in their confidence. Perhaps the sight of so many bulldogs had much to do with Tom's earnest solicitation. He shuddered at the innocent confidence of a man who would go into a fight with such an implement in his hand.
"He'll stop, all right all right," the conductor said, with bland assurance.
"If we can't stop him, what're you goin' to do alone?" one of the young engineers inquired, with a sort of friendly tenderness as if he considered a younger brother's plight.
"I'll do the best I can," Tom replied, "but I don't want you gentlemen to run any risk on account of me."
The conductor put his hand on Tom's shoulder and turned him to look him squarely in the eyes. He was a big man, with a little gray showing in his beard, old enough to be Laylander's elder brother, and wise in the experience of many a frontier fray.
"This has passed out of your hands, son," he said. "It's McPacken's business, and McPacken is out here to take care of it. If you want to help, we don't mind. Go on down to that gate, and stand behind the post. If any of them get by us, you can have what's left."
Tom saw that their gay determination was inflexible. There was nothing to do but go to the gate, and he went. Instead of getting behind the thick post upon which the heavy gate was swung, he climbed up and sat on top of it, his rifle across his thighs. He was the most prominent object in the landscape, yet quite undisturbed by any thought for his own peril.
Laylander was profoundly concerned, however, over what might happen when Withers and his crowd came charging down the road. They'd come at a gallop, determined to have it over quickly. Part of them would cut in behind the pile of ties at the first shot from that, quarter, and clean out those generous, but foolishly mistaken boys.
"They're comin' out!" Angus Valorous announced.
Windy Moore was feeling himself over, with the look of consternation in his face of a man who had lost his all.
"I left my catridges in my room—my gun's empty!" he said. He showed his bulldog to prove it, looking like a man undone.
"Is it a thirty-eight?" somebody inquired.
"I'll bust over to the hotel and git 'em," said Windy, with desperate eagerness, "I'll only be a minute."
"Is your gun a thirty-eight?" the young man who had spoken inquired again, with a sharp challenge, a sharper look into Windy Moore's pale, cowardly eyes.
"It's a special make, special size; I had it made to order," Windy said.
The young man laid hold of the gun with unexpected start, twisted it out of Windy's reluctant hand, broke it and peered into the chambers.
"It's a forty-four," he announced. "Special! You're a special! Who's got some forty-fours?"
The need was supplied immediately, the gun loaded and put back into Windy Moore's nerveless hand.
Windy was white to the gills. His legs were so weak he had to sit down on the protruding end of a tie, his hand shaking so he could not have hit anything more than the ground under him. The piquant flavor of life was gone out of his dry mouth; there was no desire in him any longer to be seen as a general of men.
"Here they come!" said Angus Valorous, who had climbed up the pile of ties to see over it. He came down with the report, his quick, grunting, hoarse little stallion laugh snorted out through his nose.
To have it over in a second; that was Withers's plan. If the law wouldn't help a man, damn the law. Laylander's fame, reputation, notoriety—according to the way one esteemed him—was nothing to Withers. He was confident in numbers. It was his way, always, to do his fighting with somebody flanking him, somebody at his back. There was a feeling of security in force that made him audaciously brave.
Withers came on at a gallop, a man on each side of him, six of them spread across the road behind him. He rode with his gun in his hand, swinging it up and down, up and down with a little movement of his bent arm, as if he held himself calculatively in reserve.
On the hotel sidewalk Louise Gardner and Myron stood watching the riders charge the cattle pens, the dust their horses flung up cutting them off for a moment now and then in a cloud. Myron turned to the door.
"There's goin' to be bullets flyin' around here in a minute; you'd better come in," he said.
Myron went in, pausing at the door to knock the ashes out of his pipe on the arm of the green bench. He was not concerned that Louise did not follow him. She heard the screen door slam, dimly conscious that Myron had gone.
Withers gathered speed as he rode, his dust rising thicker behind him. There was nobody in sight but that fool Tom Laylander, sitting like a crow on the fence, lifted up a fair mark, a contemptuous defiance in his attitude, it seemed. This got under Withers's hide. The sight of Laylander sitting on the gatepost, his rifle across his thighs in a restful posture of security, just as if he had no need for it that moment, nor expected to have for some peaceful time to come, roiled the old man up to such a pitch of anger that he forgot his lifelong rule, threw down his gun and fired the first shot. It was too long a shot to do him any good, or Laylander any harm, but it tumbled Withers into the trap that the crafty conductor-general of McPacken's bulldog forces had set for him.
McPacken had the law on its side, as far as grand juries, and petit juries, and coroner's juries were concerned. Nothing else in or about the law concerned McPacken. If a man could get past those barriers, he was safe. Withers had fired the first shot; he was outlawed.
At that moment Withers was not yet quite abreast the long pile of ties which concealed the force of which he knew nothing. The conductor lifted his hand in a high-sign.
"Go!" he shouted.
They went. They did not stop to breathe, or think, or look, until their guns were empty and the dust and smoke began to lift and clear. It was only a few seconds in passing, that storm of fire and lead, with its trampling and confusion, its wild yells of terror and triumph, its mad galloping away.
When the railroaders paused to reload, Angus Valorous was discovered standing on top of the breastworks, putting a cartridge in his rabbit gun. There was a man down in the road. A little way beyond him, where it had dropped at it turned to follow the retreating cowboys, the fallen rider's horse lay motionless. That was all.
The sound of the retreat passing through the town was drawing rapidly on towards the square. Fathers of families, and other cautious men who had sprung out of bed and armed, but were restrained by prudence or wives from joining the combat, took shots at the wildriding cowboys as they galloped by. Windy Moore climbed to the top near Angus Valorous, and fired off his bulldog into the dust the flying men had raised, putting a period by this defiant deed to the battle between railroad and range that had been hovering in dark imminence over the head of McPacken for so many years.
Cal Withers was the man whom retribution had laid hold of and thrown down in the dust. There was a black wound in his forehead, much blood on his face. They bent over him, lifted his arms, moved his head, and pronounced him dead. Tom Laylander came from his place on the gatepost. He knew more about men who met the mischance of fight. He said Withers was alive.
They picked him up and carried him to the hotel, and laid him on the sofa in the parlor. He was dusty, grisly, senseless and limp; a shudderful and fearful thing to see.