CHAPTER VII
MAINTAINING A REPUTATION
The abduction of Sassoon, which signalized de Spain’s entry into the stage-line management, created a sensation akin to the exploding of a bomb under the range. The whole mountain country, which concentrates, sensibly, on but one topic at a time, talked for a week of nothing else. No such defiance of the traditions of the Morgan rule along the reaches of the Spanish Sinks had been attempted in years––and it was recalled more than once, when de Spain’s feat was discussed at the ranches, on the trails, and in the haunts of gunmen in Calabasas, that no one of those who had ever braved the wrath of the Sink rulers had lived indefinitely to boast of it.
Experienced men, therefore, in the high country––men of that class who, wherever found, are old in the ways of the world, and not promptly moved by new or youthful adventure––dismissed the incident after hearing the details, with the comment or the conclusion that there would hardly be for de Spain more than one additional chapter to the story, and that this would be a 88 short one. The most active Morgans––Gale, Duke, and the easy-going Satterlee––were indeed wrought to the keenest pitch of revengeful anger. No question of the right or wrong of the arrest was discussed––justification was not considered. It was an overwhelmingly insolent invasion––and worst of all, a successful invasion, by one who had nothing but cool impudence, not even a budding reputation to justify his assault on the lifelong prestige of the Gap clan. Gale Morgan strode and rode the streets of Sleepy Cat looking for de Spain, and storming.
De Spain himself, somewhat surprised at the storm he had kicked up, heeded the counsel of Scott, and while the acute stage of the resentment raged along the trail he ran down for a few days to Medicine Bend to buy horses. Both Gale and Duke Morgan proclaimed, in certain public places in Sleepy Cat, their intention of shooting de Spain on sight; and as a climax to all the excitement of the week following his capture, the slippery Sassoon broke jail and, after a brief interval, appeared at large in Calabasas.
This feat of the Morgan satellite made a loud laugh at de Spain’s expense. It mitigated somewhat the humiliation of Sassoon’s friends, but it in no wise diminished their expressed resolve to punish de Spain’s invasion. Lefever, who as 89 the mixer among the stage men, kept close to the drift of public sentiment, decided after de Spain’s return to Sleepy Cat that the stage-line authorities had gained nothing by Sassoon’s capture.
“We ought to have thought of it before, Henry,” he said frankly one night in Jeffries’s office, “but we didn’t think.”
“Meaning just what, John?” demanded de Spain without real interest.
“Meaning, that in this country you can’t begin on a play like pulling Sassoon out from under his friends’ noses without keeping up the pace––without a second and third act. You dragged Sassoon by his hair out of the Gap; good. You surprised everybody; good. But you can’t very well stop at that, Henry. You have raised hopes, you have led people to invest you with the faint glimmerings of a reputation. I say, the glimmerings, because such a feat by itself doesn’t insure a permanent reputation, Henry. It is, so to say, merely a ‘demand’ reputation––one that men reserve the right to recall at any moment. And the worst of it is, if they ever do recall it, you are worse off than when before they extended the brittle bauble to you.”