THERE was nothing in common between the railroaders of McPacken and the cowhands who rode in to refresh themselves with its shabby entertainment. Even the most prominent drovers, some of whom risked more in one season's speculation with the caprices of nature and the markets than the combined railroaders of McPacken earned in a year, were looked upon with a sort of patronizing tolerance by conductors and brakemen when they loaded for Kansas City and rode in the caboose on stock-shippers' passes.
The railroaders prided themselves on their sophistication, which was only a shallow pertness at the best. But the world came to McPacken every day. If it did not always stop and get out for a look around, it roared through with an upswirling of dust that made its passing all the more important. The latest slang was ready in the mouths of the railroaders; they could make sport of cowmen and cowhands in an unknown tongue.
A superior caste to range men and grangers, according to their own rating, these railroaders of McPacken. Yet every one of them was serving cattle, living and prospering on cattle. But for cattle they would not have been there at all.
Peace generally prevailed between railroad and range, although an outbreak came now and then. There was no public dance hall in McPacken, that being an institution belonging to the days before the town's beginning, but there was a big saloon with its three beerjerkers on busy nights and Sundays, where the soil was always raked for the seeds of trouble.
It was the custom still to carry guns on the range in those days, a habit that had become a tradition, rather than a necessity. The railroaders, with few exceptions, stuck pistols in their hip pockets when going out for the evening. Railroad taste favored that style of weapon known as bulldog, on account of its short and chunky build being adapted to gentlemanly concealment. It was considered boorish in railroad society to make a show of one's weapon, but there were men enough with guns stuck around them in McPacken every night to line up a considerable battle. That such general engagement between railroad and range never had taken place was the marvel of all peaceable citizens.
There were staid and respectable railroad men who had their families and homes in McPacken, who neither mingled in the swilling nor mixed in the barroom brawls, forerunners of the substantial respectability that railroad men, as a class, came in time to enjoy. In those days, especially out on the edge of things as in McPacken, a railroader was a man with a reputation for roughness, a notoriety that he fully enjoyed and sustained. In McPacken they were young men, mainly; car repairers, wipers, switchmen, machinists, brakemen and firemen, who had a pride in their calling, a glowing satisfaction in their generally hard name.
On the other hand there were the cowhands, as the men who followed the herds were commonly called in and around the town. Several hundred of them could have been rounded up within a three-days' ride of McPacken, youngsters full of cayenne and vinegar, with a snort and go to them such as free youth has in any calling, anywhere. There was a sprinkling of older men among them, hardy, wiry ones who had ridden the long trail from Texas to Montana, following slow herds over perilous ways.
Things were coming easier to the cowboy gentry in those McPacken days. The railroad was no longer a thousand miles away; lights and liquids were within three or four days' ride, at the farthest. These encroachments of civilization had shown their influence on the cowboy habit, which was growing somewhat gentler, due to frequent breaks, perhaps, in the long periods of drouth, or maybe coming of the fact that something easy to procure is no longer ardently desired. Whatever the cause, the effect was apparent to the older citizens of McPacken, who had recollections of times not very far back when those yelping revellers made night a torture in the town.
Altogether, the effect of business methods, which were supplanting the old-time make-or-lose gamble of cattle raising, were showing amazing results, not alone in the taming down of cowboys, but in stabilizing an industry left hitherto dependent on chance. This worked out to the advantage of McPacken and all withinit. More cattle, more railroaders; more railroaders, more money turned loose every pay-day to make everybody glad.
Mrs. Cowgill was pleased to hear of the five trains coming into her port with cattle from the burned-up range of Texas. Every carload brought in lean meant something more than a carload to go out again fat in the fall. More trains, more lay-over men for the Cottonwood Hotel. It was all very comfortable and satisfactory as Mrs. Cowgill contemplated the future, near and far, standing there as the station agent had left her, with arms across the pages of the open register.
Yet Mrs. Cowgill might as well have turned to her register after the station agent left her door, and written, in that log-book of her adventurous establishment: "So ends this day." As it was, she stood turning over in her mind the chance of the cattle trains arriving when the agent expected them, knowing the ways of such trains as well as any railroader. She concluded at last to spare Myron the slaughter of more chickens. The trains would not begin to get in before nine or ten o'clock. More than likely, out of a misguided sense of loyalty, the Texas cowhands would peg on up the street and get their supper in the Lone Star Cafe.
While Mrs. Cowgill was revolving these thoughts, and arriving at her wise conclusions, the nearest of the five cattle trains was still a hundred miles distant from McPacken. On top of this train, back a few cars from the engine to give the cinders a chance to cool before they hit him, a young man was sitting, his prodpole between his knees, watching the Kansas landscape as the train jogged by.
Tom Laylander was favorably impressed by the state. They had left the region of elms and maples along the streams, the dark-green fields of corn, and mellow stubble-lands where wheat shocks stood amazingly thick, it seemed to him, accustomed to the thin yields of that sandy postoak land beyond the Brazos. Now they were passing through a paradise of prairies, big enough, it seemed, to pasture all the starving herds between the Panhandle and the Big Bend. It was an empty country, as far as he could see, shaggy with gray-green short grass, heaved in gently-rounded hills that looked like the backs of gigantic buffalo. It looked like a place where a man might turn out his herd with nobody to set bounds to his coming and going.
Tom Laylander knew that it was not so; that men of his calling had all that country under their control, in one way or another; that bounds were set and respected, and that a stranger with five hundred-odd starving cattle, such as the thirty cars in that train of his contained, must go where he was apportioned and pay what he was asked. Better than starving down on the Brazos, he reflected; better than hanging on there, hoping for the rain that had been nearly three years in coming, except an aggravating shower now and then.
The bones of many a herd whitened that sandy country, set with its tenacious, never-dying postoak trees; hundreds of his father's cattle had gone in that miserable way while the old man had hung on in the belief that his losses would not equal the expense of running away from the drouth, hoping for the rain that never before had played him quite such a disastrous trick.
It had broken the old cowman at last, and put him in his grave. Young Tom had picked up what was left and set out for Kansas, in the hope that he might save enough to return to Texas after the drouth was broken, and start another herd. Kansas was a good place to retreat upon in the day of necessity, but Texas was the only place to live. The only place, because it was the only place he knew.
Calhoun Withers, the biggest cattle speculator in the southwest, had come into that famine-stricken neighborhood and pretty well cleaned it up at his own price. It was a bone and hide price, Withers had said. That was all the cattle of that country were worth. His purchases were coming along behind Tom Laylander, twenty-five hundred head or more.
Withers, as an old friend of Tom Laylander's father, had advised the young man not to sell at these famine prices. There was going to be a shortage in cattle, with good prices as a consequence, that fall, owing to the unfitness of the Texas supply for the butcher's block. Load, he advised, and ship to Kansas, where he had range to rent at a reasonable figure.
Tom had been in the mind for this all along, and here he was on his way to gamble with Kansas for the remnant of his herd. He had arranged to pay Withers by the head for the use of his range, settlement to be deferred until the cattle were sold. It was the young adventurer's hope that his bones and hides would become beeves in the course of three or four months.
Mrs. Cowgill woke in the night to hear them unloading the cattle into the whitewashed pens, the high-pitched tremolo of man and steer sounding lonesome as the plaint of creatures which belong by right to wide and distant places wailing in the dark for home. There always was something in that wild cowboy note more of melancholy than jubilation to Mrs. Cowsgill's ear. Like coyotes, she often thought, shivering and howling in hunger of a winter night in bleak places among the snow. Why this thought always came to her with the sound she did not know; only that it was so.
It was evening before Laylander got his herd across the river and spread in the green and abundant valley. The cattle were being held there for their first feed on Kansas grass, by two cowboys who had accompanied Laylander from Texas. They were mounted on horses borrowed from Withers.
Tom's intention was to pay these boys off as soon as they had worked the herd out to the range he was to occupy, and let them go back home or find employment in Kansas, as they might elect. He planned to do his own herding, such as might be necessary. Withers had said he could handle the cattle alone on that range, where the feeding was so plentiful they did not travel far.
Laylander wanted to sniff bay rum, and feel the barber's shears around his ears once more. It seemed a long time since he had enjoyed those luxuries; his beard felt long enough to hide a rabbit. He was greatly cheered by his hopeful outlook as he rode one of Withers's horses to McPacken to leave his mane and tail, as he said, in the barber shop.
The regular boarders in the Cottonwood Hotel took their meals at a long table that extended in state down the middle of the dining-room. Casual guests, such as drummers and cowhands, did not share this table d'hote. Goosie Cowgill, who usually combined the duties of reception committee and waiter, piloted them to the small side tables, at which two or four might sit in such comfort as the stale pie-crust atmosphere of the dining-hall offered.
The railroaders and other regulars were pretty well cleared out of the dining-room when Tom Laylander arrived. Goosie, being engaged in an exchange of wit with the roundhouse foreman, did not see the hesitant stranger as he paused with a question that amounted to an apology for his intrusion, near the door. Louise Gardner, who had taken to her new job with confident alacrity, caught the arrival's eye and beckoned him on with hearty signal.
"Back up!" said a brakeman, who saw the signal from his place at the long table.
The few others at this common board looked up from their various engagements and laughed. The brakeman, his essay as a humorist thus approved, repeated the sign, looking across at Tom Laylander, who stood in confusion, his big hat in his hand.
"She wants you to make a couplin' with that flat down there on the house track," the brakeman explained.
Laylander grinned, going on to the table where the new biscuit-shooter waited, a chair pulled out to receive him.
"Oh, leave her alone," Goosie laughed. "You was green once yourself."
"Who's green?" The brakeman feigned a large surprise. "That girl learnt biscuit-shootin' in college. They've got a class of 'em down at Lawrence."
"What're you sore about, Windy?" the roundhouse boss inquired with patronizing contempt. "Did she step on your steak?"
"Ya-a, y' clinker-puller!" the brakeman sneered.
"A little shack got his neck broke in Argentine last week, tryin' to stretch himself out to pass for a man," the roundhouse boss returned, his sarcasm sharper than any knife on the table.
While this passing of pleasantries across the table between the railroading caste was going on, Louise was taking stock of the customer bound for her table. It seemed to her that a window had been opened to the broad prairies, admitting a cool wind with the soft, indefinable scents of lonely places in it, there was such a frank confession of unworldliness in this young man's face.
It was a plump face, boyish, ruddy through the brown of wind and sun, freckled a little in keeping with the sandy hair. The young man came walking on his toes, as if afraid he might disturb somebody, his pistol against his thigh, spurs tinkling on his freshly polished boots. His scarlet neckerchief made a fine effect along with the tawny gray of his cougar-skin vest, both of them carried from Texas in his gripsack on top of a cattle car, reserved for an hour such as this.
He was a tall and slender youth, younger in appearance than in fact, as the new biscuit-shooter could see, yet with something of competence and assurance in his forehead, rather narrow and combative; and in his blue eyes, small, with light lashes peculiarly noticeable, arched by sandy eyebrows as delicate and long as a girl's.
The young Texas man took off his pistol before seating himself, hanging it on the back of his chair, in respect to the hospitality of that house, perhaps, or maybe in observance of the ancient custom among armed men when they sat down together to bread. Whatever the purpose or the prompting, Louise Gardner thought better of him for the act. She seemed to get a little look into his simple ethics, and to find them Strongly enforced by honor, a quality that did not speak from the faces of many who filled their bunkers at Mrs. Cowgill's board.
As for Tom Laylander, he felt that he had been served a banquet before Louise brought him the bread and butter. Her voice seemed to touch a rib, or something equally remote and mysterious inside of him, making it vibrate with a pleasant feeling that hummed through him. He felt so glad he wanted to whoop. He thought it must be because he was away off up there in a strange country, kind of lonesome and cold around the gills, and she had spoken to him in that friendly, understanding way.
He looked after her when she went to the kitchen, carrying her tray beside her in the way he had come in carrying his hat. He just sat and looked, drawing in his breath. The farther she went the longer he drew that breath, as if its expiration might dissolve her, and sweep away the enchanting bit of romance like a flood.
Tom was not more than half through his supper when one of the men that he had left with the cattle came in looking for him, breathing hard as if he had run across the river, excitement pushing out his eyes. Louise saw Laylander rise at the first hurried words and buckle on his gun. He picked up his hat and started for the door; stopped, seeming to consider the situation, the cowboy arguing earnestly, hand on the young man's shoulder, as if to stop him in some unwise design.
Presently Laylander returned to his supper, the cowboy with him. Louise noted as she served the other man that Tom's news had filled him; he did not seem to have room for another bite. It was indigestible news; it had brought a cloud to the young man's clear eyes, a lowering, portentous shadow over his good-humored face. Louise hoped it might not be as bad as his face reflected it, whatever it might be. She moved his plate aside and slipped the pie before him. He thanked her with his eyes, but did not touch the pie.
The cowboy finished his hastily gobbled meal and left in as much of a hurry as he had come, plainly on the young drover's order. Laylander buckled on his gun again and stooped to get his hat from under the table, where it had been kicked in the excitement of the conference.
"Don't you like pie?" Louise inquired, coming forward with her tray.
"Yes ma'am, I love it," Laylander replied, red from the stooping for his hat, and something more. "But I just got some news that kind of took away my appetite for pie, if you'll excuse me, ma'am."
"I noticed it. You're one of the Texas boys that came in with the cattle last night, aren't you? I hope it wasn't about your cattle, stampeded or something?"
"It was about my cattle, ma'am," Laylander replied, his eyes on the door, the desire big in him to be gone, she could see. She wanted to hold him, in a woman's unaccountable way, not so much to have her curiosity satisfied as just to hold him when he was itching to be gone.
"I'm sorry," she said, her hands busy among the dishes, her eyes lifted for one sympathetic glance. "I used to hear so much about the foolish things cattle do on the range—"
"They wasn't to blame, ma'am," he corrected her with grave courtesy. "I've been turned a trick—"
Louise saw him stiffen as for a jump, his words broken off there and left hanging. Mrs. Cowgill was bringing a man into the dining-room with considerable importance; a tall, heavy-shouldered gray man, with broad red suspenders over his gray woolen shirt, a colored cotton handkerchief awry about his neck. He was dusty and saddle-soiled, but full of loud words and boisterous animation, his big voice ringing in the dining-room audible to its remote corners. He was belted with a pistol; a shaggy gray mustache dropped over his mouth.
"Excuse me, ma'am," said Laylander, going forward to meet the man under Mrs. Cowgill's solicitous convoy.
Louise could feel trouble in the air, trouble in the way the young Texan stepped out to meet this man. The new guest stopped when he saw Laylander, squaring off as if to stand on the defense.
"Colonel Withers, is it true you've sent the sheriff out and attached my cattle?" Laylander demanded.
"You seem to be posted about right," Withers replied.
They stood set, each waiting for the other to make a move, each knowing the man before him well enough to understand what a false start would bring.
"I don't owe you, or any other man in Kansas, a cent, Colonel Withers. What kind of a trumped-up trick is this you're tryin' to throw over on me?"
"I don't trump up tricks, bud. You'll learn to pick your words better if you hang around where I'm at for a while. Maybe you don't owe me anything, personally, but your old daddy owed me ten thousand dollars long enough to make it an heirloom. I've been waitin' four years for him to send a herd into this state, but I never could git a twist on the old wolf's tail, so I trapped the cub."
"I never heard of any debt owin' to you," the young man said. He spoke more in challenge than denial, the ruddiness fading out of his face.
"Likely not, kid. But the longer you live the more you're due to pick up. I've got old Tom Laylander's note for ten thousand dollars, and it's a good and legal paper. I'm out to collect on it."
"You tolled me on to ship up here so you could levy on my herd!" Tom charged indignantly.
"You guessed it," Withers replied, exulting in the success of his deception.
"Debt or no debt, Colonel Withers, it was a low-handed, sneakin' trick! It was a trick that no man outside of a thief and a liar—"
Withers spun half around, hand on his gun, presenting himself side-on, like a fencer. He seemed to contract and expand, to bunch and spread, concentrating his strength for an outburst of destruction.
"Any man that spits them words in my face has got to eat 'em! got to eat 'em!" he said.
"You know the way to the door," Tom Laylander replied.
Calhoun Withers, called colonel from his auctioneering days, turned and marched toward the door, followed by young Laylander, whose courage was as high as his honor. Mrs. Cowgill was thrown into a frenzy of consternation by this sudden shaping of tragedy among her peaceful tables. She lifted her arms in impotent signal of distress, running to the long table where the few railroaders lingered over their late supper.
"Stop 'em, stop em, some of you men!" she appealed. "Cal Withers is goin' to kill him, and his supper ain't paid for!"