The Sunset Trail

Marshal Ed had emerged from the Dance Hall into the glare of light which issued from its front windows when Mr. Wagner, walking deviously, his broad-rimmed hat cocked at an insulting angle, the offensive six-shooter flapping ostentatiously against his leg, brushed by. Mr. Wagner wore a challenging glance and was snorting defiance of the law.

It was now that Marshal Ed displayed that want of caution and indifference to precedent whereof Mr. Masterson had warned Mr. Kelly. Under the conditions presented vide licet the sudden, not to say warlike, return of Mr. Wagner, it was officially the business of Marshal Ed to shove the muzzle of his own gun into the face of Mr. Wagner and, to quote the words of Dodge as it digged the graves next day, “stand him up.” In case Mr. Wagner did not hold his hands above his head, Marshal Ed was to officially unhook his gun and put a period to Mr. Wagner’s career.

So far from following this rule of conduct, Marshal Ed reached out with both hands and seized Mr. Wagner by the shoulders. Thereupon Mr. Wagner yanked the Colt’s pistol of ivory butt from its scabbard; as a counter-move, Marshal Ed, while retaining a right-hand grip on Mr. Wagner’s shoulder, grabbed the pistol with his left hand and held the muzzle to one side. There the two stood, Mr. Wagner powerless to bring his weapon to bear, and Marshal Ed unable to wrest it from his grasp.

At this juncture Mr. Walker, who, in anticipation of what might occur, had privily provided himself with a pistol, came out of the darkness to the rear of the Dance Hall and thrust the weapon in the face of Marshal Ed. Mr. Walker pulled the trigger, the hammer descended, but instead of the expected report there came nothing more lethal than a sharp click. The cartridge, ashamed of the treachery in which it found itself employed, had refused to explode.

Before Mr. Walker could cock his weapon for a second trial three splitting flashes burned three holes in the night. Bang! bang! bang! The three reports were crowded as close together as the striking of a Yankee clock. Mr. Masterson, from sixty feet away, had put three bullets into Mr. Walker before the latter could fall. It was like puffing out a candle. Mr. Walker of the Cross-K was dead.

Mr. Masterson, from where he stood, would not chance a shot at Mr. Wagner; Marshal Ed was too much in the line of fire. Acting a next best part, he came up to the two on the run. But he came late. While he was still ten feet away Mr. Wagner, in the twists and turns of conflict, felt the muzzle of that new ivory-mounted Colt’s pistol press for one insignificant moment against the other’s breast; he pulled the trigger and Marshal Ed fell, shot through the lungs, his clothes afire from the burning powder. As Marshal Ed went down, Mr. Wagner followed him – dead – with a bullet in his temple from the revengeful pistol of Mr. Masterson.

Mr. Wright and Mr. Short carried Marshal Ed into the Long Branch. Mr. Masterson, who with unfluttered pulse had looked death in the eye a score of times, began to cry like a woman. Mr. Kelly, mayor, united his tears to Mr. Masterson’s.

“It was my fault, Bat,” wept Mr. Kelly; “I only wish I might have stopped that bullet myself.”

“It has turned out like I told you, Kell,” said Mr. Masterson; “those murderers out-managed him!”

Mr. Short reappeared and laid a sympathetic hand on Mr. Masterson’s shoulder.

“Bat,” said Mr. Short, “do you want to see Ed? He’s dyin’; he’s down to the last chip!”

“Poor Ed! No; I don’t want to see him!” said Mr. Masterson, tears falling like rain.

CHAPTER VII – WHY THE WEEKLY PLANET DIED

The Weekly Planet, founded and edited during its brief existence by Higginson Peabody, and issued every Saturday to the hebdomadal joy of Dodge, might have flourished unto this day if it hadn’t been for Jack. It was a circulation scheme proposed by Jack, and adopted by Higginson Peabody, which undid the destinies of the Weekly Planet to such a degree that, in the quicksands of a bottomless trouble into which they were thereby betrayed, a trouble, as Higginson Peabody averred, “so vast, that against it no human ingenuity could prevail,” they bogged down and disappeared.

Not but what Jack was wholly true to the Weekly Planet and its fortunes. Indeed it was Jack, in his intense loyalty to the paper and those that gave it the aid and comfort of their countenance, and despite the fact that Mr. Masterson’s recommendation had originally paved his way into journalism, who misled that officer as to the flight-direction taken by Rattlesnake Sanders on the occasion of his winging Mr. Kelly. Perhaps, in defence of Jack, that episode should be briefly told.

Rattlesnake Sanders played a cold hand, being four kings and an ace, against a quartette of queens, the then armament of Mr. Kelly. Mr. Kelly pointed out the frigid character of those four kings, and thereupon Rattlesnake, in a feeling of chagrin natural to one who finds himself detected in a wrong, shot Mr. Kelly in the arm. Following this ebuillition of temper, Rattlesnake mounted his pony and spurred away into the dark.

The office of the Weekly Planet was on the northern fringe of Dodge. It was ten o’clock of the night when Rattlesnake expressed his dissatisfaction with Mr. Kelly in manner and form set forth. The editorial and mechanical forces of the Weekly Planet, made up of Higginson Peabody, Jack, and a trio of printers, were hard at work at the time and knew nothing of Rattlesnake and his exploits. Indeed, the earliest word which they received of Rattlesnake was when that impulsive cowboy pulled up at their door.

The cause of Rattlesnake’s pulling up was simple. When he and Mr. Kelly sat down to that friendly game, which in its finale was so disappointing, Rattlesnake, the evening being warm, had cast aside his coat and hat. Being more or less preoccupied when ready to leave, he forgot to reassume those garments. His halt at the Weekly Planet was with a purpose of repairs.

Bare of head and coatless, Rattlesnake called from the saddle to Higginson Peabody. The latter, with Jack at his elbow, appeared in the door.

“Got a hat and coat you don’t want?” asked Rattlesnake.

There were two six-shooters in the belt of Rattlesnake and a Winchester in its saddle-scabbard under his left leg, and it may have been this stock of ironware that awoke the generosity of Higginson Peabody. Whatever it was to move his benevolence, the truth remains that he took his own hat and coat from their peg and conferred them on Rattlesnake.

As he picked up the bridle reins to ride away Rattlesnake ran his hand into his pocket.

“What’s the damage?” he queried.

“Nothing,” returned Higginson Peabody; “they are freely yours.”

“What’s the subscription to this rag?” asked Rattlesnake, pointing up at the sign above the door. “How much does she cost for a year?”

“Two dollars,” broke in Jack, who was the circulating agency of the Weekly Planet.

“Thar’s a saw-buck,” quoth Rattlesnake, bringing up a ten-dollar goldpiece and tossing it to Jack. “Put down Rattlesnake Sanders for five years.” Then, as he buried a spur in his pony’s flank and fled like an arrow: “I’ll send th’ address as soon as I settle down.”

When Rattlesnake Sanders injured Mr. Kelly’s arm Mr. Masterson was at the other end of town. It was ten minutes before he heard of the gay doings of Rattlesnake. When word reached him he threw a saddle onto a pony and started in pursuit. Mr. Masterson also halted at the open door of the Weekly Planet, only he was after information, not apparel.

“Did you see a cowboy without coat or hat go by?” asked Mr. Masterson, on the bare chance that the phenomenon had caught the eye of Higginson Peabody.

“I just gave one my coat and hat,” replied Higginson Peabody.

“It was Rattlesnake Sanders,” said Mr. Masterson, settling himself in his stirrups for a run. “He’s creased Kelly. Which way did he go?”

Before Higginson Peabody could answer, Jack took reply from his mouth.

“I’ll show you, Mr. Masterson,” observed the eager Jack, pointing westward towards the Cimarron Crossing. “He lined out in that direction. An’ say, he was simply hittin’ the high places!”

Now, be it known that Rattlesnake had fled away to the north and east, as though heading for Hays – a course the reverse of that given by Jack. The intervention, and the brisk falsehoods so cheerfully fulminated, took away the breath of Higginson Peabody. Before he regained it Mr. Masterson was a mile on his way to the Cimarron Crossing.

“How could you lie like that?” demanded Higginson Peabody, regarding Jack with wondering horror; “how could you lie like that, and you but fourteen! That Rattlesnake man went east, not west; and Mr. Masterson is an officer of the law!”

“What of it?” retorted Jack, indignantly; “d’you think I’d throw down a subscriber?” Then, as he reached for his cap: “I reckon I’d better go over to the Alhambra an’ see how hard old Kell got plugged. It ought to be good for a column. Say!” and Jack beamed on Higginson Peabody, “if he’d only beefed old Kell, wouldn’t it have been hot stuff?”

Higginson Peabody, when he graduated from Harvard, had been invited into the counting-room of his father’s State Street bank. But the old migratory instinct of his puritan ancestry was rife within him, and he hungered to go abroad into the land. The expanding West invited him; also, he distasted a bank and liked the notion of a paper.

“Well,” said the elder Peabody, “I don’t blame you. Massachusetts and Boston aren’t what they were. New England to-day is out in Kansas and Nebraska.”

Higginson Peabody resolved to start a paper. Dodge occurred to him; a friend returning had told him that newsy things were prone to happen in Dodge. The soil, by the friend’s word, was kindly; Higginson Peabody thought it would nourish and upbuild a paper. Wherefore, one bright autumnal morning, he dropped off at Dodge. Going over to the hotel he took a room by the month and confided to Mr. Wright that he would found the Weekly Planet.

Mr. Wright squeezed the hand of Higginson Peabody until it hung limp as a rag.

“It was an inspiration when you decided to come to Dodge,” said Mr. Wright.

“Do you think,” asked Higginson Peabody, painfully separating each finger from its fellows, “do you think your city ready for the birth of a great paper?”

“Ready? Dodge’ll sit up nights to rock its cradle and warm its milk!” quoth Mr. Wright.

Mr. Wright went down to the Long Branch and told Mr. Short. As information radiated from the Long Branch the extremest corner of Dodge was filled with the news in an hour.

When Mr. Wright withdrew to the Long Branch he left Higginson Peabody sitting on the hotel porch. The costume of Higginson Peabody culminated in a silk hat that would have looked well on Boston Common. The tall, shiny hat excited the primitive interest of Cimarron Bill, who lightly shot it from the head of its owner. Then, with bullet following bullet, he rolled it along the sidewalk. Several gentlemen joined Cimarron Bill in this sprightly pastime of the hat. Full twenty took part, and Higginson Peabody’s headgear, to quote Cimarron Bill as he reported the episode later to Mr. Masterson, was:

“A heap shot up.”

“He’s an editor,” warned Mr. Masterson, “and going to start a paper. Mind, you mustn’t hurt him!”

“Hurt him!” retorted Cimarron Bill. “If I do I hope to go afoot the balance of my life – I do, shore!”

Mr. Wright returned from the Long Branch, bringing Mr. Short. Higginson Peabody mentioned the adventures of his hat.

“It’s my fault,” said Mr. Wright; “I’d ought to have told you. That breed of war-bonnet is ag’inst the rules of our set.”

“That’s right,” coincided Mr. Short; “only sooicides wear ’em in Dodge.”

“We’ll fix it,” observed Mr. Wright, who noticed that Higginson Peabody looked cast down. “What’s the size of your head?”

“Seven and an eighth,” returned Higginson Peabody, doubtfully.

“Seven and an eighth!” repeated Mr. Wright: “It’ll grow in Dodge. See if it ain’t two sizes larger in a month.”

Mr. Wright sent over to that mart whereof he was proprietor, and presently a pearl-gray sombrero appeared.

“There you are!” exclaimed Mr. Wright. “As good a Stetson as ever rode in a round-up! Price? Not a word! I’ll take it out in advertising.”

Mr. Wright became as an elder brother to Higginson Peabody. On the morning following the latter’s advent the two sat convenient to the hotel bar and talked of Indians. That is, Mr. Wright talked of Indians, and Higginson Peabody gulped and listened, pale of cheek.

Mr. Wright said a Cheyenne was as full of the unexpected as a career in Wall Street. He hoped the Cheyennes wouldn’t kill and scalp anybody about Dodge between then and Christmas. Mr. Wright set his limit at Christmas because that was three months away, and three months was as long as even an optimist was licensed to hope anything of a Cheyenne.

No, Mr. Wright did not think the Cheyennes would immediately bother Dodge. They were busy with the buffaloes at that season. Moreover, there were a number of buffalo hunters along the Medicine Lodge and the Cimarron whom they, the Cheyennes, might capture and burn at the stake. This would, so Mr. Wright argued, slake the Cheyenne thirst for immediate amusement. Later, when they had burned up that year’s stock of buffalo hunters and were suffering from ennui, the Cheyennes would doubtless visit Dodge.

“But,” declared Mr. Wright, triumphantly, “we generally beat ’em off. They never capture or kill more’n fifty of us before we have ’em routed. Sure; we down three times as many of them as they do of us. Which reminds me: come down to Kelly’s Alhambra and let me show you the head-dresses and bead jackets we shucked from the last outfit we wiped out.”

Mr. Wright exhibited to Higginson Peabody what trophies had been brought north from the ’Dobe Walls and were then adorning the walls of the Alhambra. Also, he had Mr. Kelly, who was their custodian, bring out the eighty scalps, and counted them into the shrinking fingers of Higginson Peabody, who handled them gingerly. They were one and all, so Mr. Wright averred, stripped from slaughtered Cheyennes in the streets of Dodge.

“Isn’t that so, Kell?” asked Mr. Wright, appealing to Mr. Kelly.

“Shore!” assented Mr. Kelly. Then, by way of particular corroboration and picking out a brace of scalps whereof the braided hair was unusually long and glossy, “I killed an’ skelped these two right yere in the s’loon.”

Higginson Peabody was impressed and said he would one day write up what he had heard for the Weekly Planet.

Mr. Wright invited Higginson Peabody to explore the region lying back of Dodge. They would make the trip on ponies. Mr. Wright held that the exploration was requisite to the right editing of a local paper.

“For how,” demanded Mr. Wright, plausibly, “can you get out a paper and know nothing of the country you’re in? As for Cheyennes, you need entertain no fear. You’ll have a pony under you that can beat an antelope.”

Higginson Peabody, with Mr. Wright as guide, philosopher and friend, broke into the gray rolling desert to the north of Dodge. At the end of the first mile Dodge dropped out of sight behind a swell and Higginson Peabody found himself surrounded by naught save the shadowless plains – as grimly stark as when they slipped from the palm of the Infinite! The very picture of loneliness, the scene pressed upon the unsophisticated sensibilities of Higginson Peabody like a menace. He wanted to return to Dodge, but he didn’t like to say so.

Mr. Wright became replete of reminiscences. He showed Higginson Peabody where a party of emigrants had been butchered by the Cheyennes only eight weeks before.

By the side of a water hole Mr. Wright pointed to the ashes of a fire. The Cheyennes had there grilled a victim on the coals.

“You see,” explained Mr. Wright, in apology for the Cheyennes, “they didn’t have any stake. The best they could do was tie him, wrist and heel, toss him in the fire and then keep him there with their lances.”

“Was he from Dodge?” faltered Higginson Peabody.

“No,” said Mr. Wright, carelessly, “if my memory serves, he was a sot from Abilene.”

Ten minutes later they were winding along a dry arroya.

“What’s that?” exclaimed Mr. Wright, and he leaped from his pony.

Mr. Wright held up a moccasin which, apparently, he had taken from the ground.

“Cheyenne,” said Mr. Wright, sinking his voice to a whisper. “Warm, too; that moccasin was on its owner not five minutes ago!”

Higginson Peabody took the buckskin footgear in his hands, which shook a little. The moccasin was warm. It could hardly have been otherwise since Mr. Wright had carried it in an inside pocket.

Mr. Wright glanced furtively about.

“We’d better skin out for Dodge,” said he.

Higginson Peabody wheeled, being quite in the humour for Dodge. He was on the threshold of saying so when a medley of yelps and yells broke forth. Higginson Peabody cast a look to the rear; a score of befeathered and ochre-bedabbled demons were in open cry not a furlong away.

Mr. Wright had made no idle brag when he said the pony bestrode by Higginson Peabody could outstrip an antelope. The latter gave that animal its head and the scenery began racing rearward in a slate-coloured blur. Mr. Wright’s pony was panting on the flank of its flying mate.

“Ride hard!” shouted Mr. Wright. “To be captured is death by torture!”

Higginson Peabody did ride hard. There was a rattle of rifles and six-shooters; the high lead ripped and whined and whistled – new sounds to the shrinking ears of Higginson Peabody! Now and again a bullet scuttered along the ground to right or left and threw up ominous pinches of dust. Suddenly Mr. Wright reeled in the saddle.

“Save yourself!” he gasped. “Tell Masterson and the boys – ”

The rest was lost to Higginson Peabody, for Mr. Wright’s pony, evidently as badly wounded as its rider, began falling to the rear.

On tore Higginson Peabody. Dodge at last! Drawing a deep breath he swept down the main street like a tornado.

“Indians! Indians!” yelled Higginson Peabody.

Arriving opposite its home corral the pony set four hoofs and skated; recovering, it wheeled to the left. Higginson Peabody, by these abrupt manoeuvres, was spilled from the saddle “like a pup from a basket,” according to Mr. Kelly, who watched the ceremony from the Alhambra door.

Higginson Peabody reached the grass in a convenient ball. After a prolonged roll of twenty feet he scrambled up uninjured.

“Get your guns!” he cried to Mr. Kelly, and then began to run.

It was afterward a matter of regret in Dodge that no arrangements had been made for timing Higginson Peabody. He had only covered one hundred yards when he ran into the arms of Mr. Masterson, but it was the dispassionate judgment of both Mr. Kelly and Mr. Short, who, from their respective houses of entertainment, reviewed the feat, that he did those one hundred yards in better than ten seconds. Indeed, so much was popular admiration excited by the winged work of Higginson Peabody that, in commemoration thereof, Dodge renamed him the “Jackrabbit,” by which honourable appellation he was ever afterward known to its generous inhabitants.

“Get your guns!” shouted Higginson Peabody when stopped by the outspread arms.

“What’s the trouble?” asked Mr. Masterson.

“Indians!” yelled the fugitive, making an effort to resume his flight.

“Come,” said Mr. Masterson, refusing to be shaken off, “it’s only a joke. What you need now is a drink. Let’s push for Luke Short’s.”

While Higginson Peabody stood at the Long Branch bar and restored that confidence in his fellow-men which a two-days’ stay in Dodge had done much to shake, Cimarron Bill and a select bevy, clad in full Cheyenne regalia, faces painted, blankets flying, feathers tossing, came whooping down the street. They jumped from their steaming ponies and joined Mr. Masterson and their victim.

“The drinks is on me!” shouted Cimarron Bill, giving the counter a resounding slap. “Which I’m as dry as a covered bridge!”

“The drinks is on the house,” said Mr. Short, severely. Then to Higginson Peabody, “Here’s to you, stranger! An’ let me say,” concluded Mr. Short, while a colour of compliment showed through his tones, “that if ever you do run a footrace I’ll string my money on you.”

As he considered the incident, Higginson Peabody was inclined to refuse the boon of Mr. Wright’s further acquaintance, but Mr. Masterson and Mr. Kelly explained that to do so would be regarded, by the liberal sentiment of Dodge, as churlish in the extreme.

“That scamper into camp,” urged Mr. Kelly, “oughtn’t to count. It’s only folks we like an’ intend to adopt into our midst on whom we confer them rites of initiation.”

“That’s whatever,” observed Cimarron Bill, who came up. “Which we shore wouldn’t take that much trouble with any gent onless we liked him.”

During his last year at Harvard Higginson Peabody edited the college paper, and that, when he landed in Dodge, had been the whole of his journalistic experience. While he conducted that vehicle of college information his one notable triumph was an article on Bible reading, in which he urged that all Bibles be bound in red. He pointed out an inherent interest to abide in red and quoted its effect on turkey gobblers. On the other hand, black, the usual cover-colour of Bibles, was a hue sorrowful and repellant; so far from inviting human interest, it daunted it. Higginson Peabody insisted that were every copy of the scriptures bound in red a score would read where only one perused them in their black uniform of gloom. This article gained him the compliment of a reprimand from the university heads and an accusation on the part of rivals that he was trying to promote an importance for his college colours.

Notwithstanding this meagre apprenticeship in journalism Higginson Peabody, from its initial issue, made the Weekly Planet a highly readable paper. This was peculiarly the case after he, on Mr. Masterson’s endorsement, had added Jack to his staff. It was Jack who brought in those spicy personal items which told in complimentary fashion the daily or rather nightly doings at Mr. Kelly’s Alhambra, Mr. Short’s Long Branch, Mr. Webster’s Alamo, and Mr. Peacock’s Dance Hall, to say nothing of the Dodge Opera House and Mr. Wright’s store, and which caused every reader to pick up the paper with pleasure and lay it down with regret. Also, it was Jack who taught Higginson Peabody the money value of a line of advertising that published cattle brands and set forth the boundaries of ranges, so that round-up outfits might intelligently hold the herds and cut out each ranchman’s cattle in what regions they belonged. Indeed, with Jack at his elbow Higginson Peabody carried the Weekly Planet to a point where it almost paid.

It was when the Weekly Planet had counted its thirteenth issue that Higginson Peabody took up the question of a circulation. At that time the paper owned but thirty-four subscribers. Dodge was small; the paper could be passed from hand to hand; those thirty-four copies, during the seven days when they were fresh, were read and appreciated by every eye in Dodge. Under such circumstances thirty-four copies would be enough; the demands of Dodge did not call for any more. Clearly, some argument beyond the argument of mere news was required to build up a Weekly Planet circulation.

Higginson Peabody, in conference with Jack, said that he thought of starting a baby contest. The paper would offer a prize for the most beautiful baby in Dodge.

Jack stood like a rock against this proposition. He showed how in all Dodge there were but two babies, and that the mother in each marvellous instance held her darling to be a cherub fresh descended from on high. That mother would make trouble for the Weekly Planet and all connected therewith if any rival infant were pitched upon as that cherub’s superior.

“The mother,” said Jack, ominously, “whose young one got beat would let her hair down her back, give her war-yell, and simply leave the Weekly Planet on both sides of the Arkansaw. Besides, that gent don’t jingle a spur in Dodge who’s game to act as judge. But,” continued Jack, when Higginson Peabody, impressed by the serpent-like wisdom of his young assistant, had abandoned every notion of a baby contest, “I’ve thought up a play that ought to make the paper as popular as tortillas with a Mexican. How about a pie contest? Wouldn’t that meet the needs of the hour?” And Jack’s mouth took on an unctuous expression.