Claim Number One

by George W. Ogden

Ten-Gallon chuckled–a deep, fat, well-contented little laugh.

“Pardner,” said he admiringly, “you certainly are one smart guy!”

Ten-Gallon rode on in his quest of Boyle, while Slavens sat again beside his fire, which he allowed to burn down to coals.

Slavens could not share the fellow’s jubilation over the transfer of the homestead to Boyle, for he had surrendered it on Boyle’s own terms–the terms proposed to Agnes at the beginning. As he filled his big, comforting pipe and smoked, Slavens wondered what she would say concerning his failure to return to her before signing the relinquishment. There would be 297 some scolding, perhaps some tears, but he felt that he was steering the boat, and the return merely to keep his word inviolate would have been useless.

He reviewed the crowded events of the past two days; his arrival at Meander, his talk with the county attorney. While that official appeared to be outwardly honest, he was inwardly a coward, trembling for his office. He was candid in his expression that Boyle would make a case against Agnes if he wanted it made, for there was enough to base an action upon and make a public showing.

When it came to guarding that part of the people’s heritage grandiloquently described as “the public domain,” the Boyles were not always at the front, to be sure. They had entered hundreds of men on the public lands, paid them a few dollars for their relinquishment, and in that way come into illegal ownership of hundreds of thousands of acres of grazing land. But all the big fish of the Northwest did it, said the county attorney; you couldn’t draw a Federal grand jury that would find a true bill in such a case against a big landowner, for the men in shadow always were drawn on the juries.

Of course, when one of them turned against somebody else that would be different. In the case of the person whose entry of lands was covered by the doctor’s hypothetical statement, and whose name was not mentioned between them, the crime had been no greater than their own–not so great from a moral 298 interpretation of the law. Cupidity prompted them; the desire for a home the other. Still, that would have no weight. If Boyle wanted to make trouble, said the county attorney, he could make it, and plenty of it.

Seeing how far the shadow of the Boyles fell over that land, Slavens at once dismissed the notion that he had carried to Meander with him of bringing some legal procedure against Boyle and Boyle’s accomplices on account of the assault and attempted murder which they had practiced upon him. There could be no hope of an indictment if brought before the grand jury; no chance of obtaining a warrant for the arrest of Shanklin and Boyle by lodging complaint with the county attorney.

Yet he took up that matter with the little lawyer, whose blond hair stood out in seven directions when Slavens told him of the felonious attack and the brutal disposition of what they had doubtless believed to be his lifeless body. The county attorney shook his head and showed an immediate disposition to get rid of Slavens when the story was done. It was plain that he believed the doctor was either insane or the tallest liar that ever struck that corner of the globe.

“You couldn’t make a case stick on that,” said he, shifting his feet and his eyes, busying his hands with some papers on his desk, which he took up in assumed desire to be about the duties of his office without further loss of time. “All I can say to you on that is, when you get ready to leave the country, take a shot at them. That’s about the only thing that’s left open for 299 you to do if you want to even it up. This office can’t help you any.”