Starlight Riders Boxed-Set 50 Western Classics in One Edition. Ernest Haycox

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      XIV. THE BEGINNING OF A TRAGEDY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      He was in the street later to see the prospective settlers off to the desert with their guide. And he added: "I want you to understand, gentlemen, that a part of my fortune is invested here. All of my fortune is back of it. I expect to make money—plenty of it." Smiling quite genially he returned to his office. Inside, the smile evaporated. He sent one of the clerks down the street and told the other to take a walk. Presently Luis Locklear came in, dour and stiff necked even in front of the man he knew to be his master.

      "Have you done what I told you to do, Locklear?"

      "Which?" grumbled the sheriff. "Yuh been tellin' me plenty, last couple days."

      Woolfridge evidenced an impatient disgust. "You're too slow on your feet. You are, moreover, rather stupid. The combination bores me. I use unimaginative men by preference, but I expect them to act fast and I don't expect them to assume an importance they haven't got. I hope that is plain enough to you."

      "Now look here, Woolfridge—"

      "'Mr. Woolfridge' if you please, Locklear. I don't care for familiarity. I'm getting a little weary of that. Usually I don't have to warn my men more than once. Now what have you done about those fellows I brought in for you to use a few days back?"

      Locklear's scowling, stubborn face was pulled around slantwise. He looked like a balky horse fighting the halter. This man knew very well he was kept and paid for; he knew exactly where he stood. Yet the authority of the star had inflamed his pride; the cantankerous, caviling spirit in him would not be still. He started to protest again. Woolfridge never turned a muscle, but the veil rose above his eyes a moment and Locklear, dull and self-wrapped man that he was, received a sharp, distinct warning to be on his guard. It shocked him—just as it would have shocked him to have looked down some hitherto empty hall and found a gun pointed at his chest. He had always credited Woolfridge with certain powers, but never for what appeared at that moment to lay half awake, half crouched beneath the freckled chubby cheeks.

      "I did what you said," grumbled Locklear finally. СКАЧАТЬ