Trail's End

by George W. Ogden

Once the train headed straight for Ascalon it dropped out of sight, and one unused to the trend of things might wonder if it had gone off on another line. Presently it would appear again, laboring up out of a dip, rise the intervening billow of land, small as a toy that one could hold in the hand, and sink out of sight again. This way it approached Ascalon, now promising, now denying, drawing into plainer sight with every rise.

On this particular afternoon when the sun-baked people of Ascalon stood waiting in such tensity of expectation that their minds were ready to crack like the dry, contracting earth beneath their feet, it seemed that nature had laid off that land across which the railroad ran with the sole view of adding to the dramatic value of Seth Craddock's entry in this historic hour. Certainly art could not have devised a more effective means of whetting the anxiety, straining the suspense, than this.

When the train first came in sight over the hill there was a murmur, a movement of feet as people shifted to points believed to be more advantageous for seeing the coming drama; watches clicked, comments passed on the exactness to the schedule; breaths were drawn with fresh tingling of hope, or falling of doubt and despair.

Morgan was watching that far skyline for the first smoke, for the first gleam of windows in the sun as the train swept round the curve heading for a little while into the north. He noted the murmur and movement of the watchers as it came in sight; wondered if any breast but one was agitated by a pang of friendly concern, wondered if any hand loosed weapon in its sheath to strike in his support if necessity should call for such intervention. He knew that Rhetta Thayer stood in the shade of the bank with her father and others; he was cheered by the support of her presence to witness his triumph or fall.

Now, as the train swept into the first obscuring swale, Morgan rode around the depot again to see that none had slipped through either in malice or curiosity. Only the station agent was in sight, pulling a truck with three trunks on it to the spot where he estimated the baggage-car would stop. Morgan rode back again to take his stand at the point where arrivals by train crossed from depot into town. His left hand was toward the waiting crowd, kept back by his injunction fifty yards or more from the station; his right toward the track on which the train would come.

Conversation in the crowd fell away. Peden, garbed in his long coat, was seen shouldering through in front of the hotel, the nearest point to the set and waiting stage. As always, Peden wore a pistol strapped about him on ornate belt, the holster carrying the weapon under the skirt of his coat. His presence on the forward fringe of the crowd seemed to many as an upraised hand to strike the waiting horseman in the back.

Morgan saw Peden when he came and took his stand there, and saw others in his employ stationed along the front of the line. He believed they were there to throw their weight on Craddock's beam of the balance the moment they should see him outmastered and outweighed.

Because he mistrusted these men, because he did not know, indeed, whether there was a man among all those who had pledged their moral support who would lift a hand to aid him even if summoned to do so, Morgan kept his attention divided, one eye on the signs and portents of the crowd, one on keeping the depot platform clear.

Morgan did not know whether even Judge Thayer and the men who had guarded the bank with him would risk one shot in his defense if the outlawed forces should sweep forward and overwhelm him. He doubted it very much. It was well enough to delegate this business to a stranger, one impartial between the lines, but they could not be expected to turn their weapons on their fellow-townsmen and depositors in the bank, no matter how their money came, no matter how much the law might lack an upholding hand.

The train came clattering over the switch, safety valve roaring, bell ringing as gaily as if arriving in Ascalon were a joyous event in its day. Conductor and brakeman stood on the steps ready to swing to the platform; the express messenger lolled with bored weariness in the door of his car, scorning the dangerous notoriety of the town by exposing to the eye all the boxed treasure that it contained. Passengers crowded platforms, leaning and looking, ready to alight for a minute, so they might be able to relate the remainder of their lives how they braved the perils of Ascalon one time and came out unsinged.