Trail's End

by George W. Ogden

Through this small opening Seth cursed them, checking such of them off by name as he recognized, setting them down in his memory for the vengeance he declared he would return speedily and exact. There he stood, like Don Quixote in his cage, his red eye to the hole, swearing as terribly as any man that marched in that hard-boiled army in Flanders long ago.

Those who had been awed by his grim silence in the days when he ruled above all law in Ascalon, were surprised now by his volubility. Under provocation Craddock could say as much as the next man, it appeared. Unquestionably, he could express his limited thoughts in words luridly strange. He wearied of this arraignment at last, and subsided. Long before the train came he lapsed into his natural blue sulkiness, remaining as quiet behind his auger hole as one ready for the grave.

They loaded Craddock on a truck when the train from the west whistled, trundled him down the platform and posted him ready to load in the baggage-car, attended by a large, jubilant crowd. There was so much hilarity in this gathering for a funeral, indeed, and so much profanity, denunciation, and threat issuing out of the coffin box—for Seth broke out again the minute they moved him—that the baggage-man aboard the train demurred on receiving the shipment. He closed the door against the eager citizens who mounted the truck to shove the box aboard, leaving only opening enough for him to stand flatwise in and shout up the platform to the conductor.

This conductor was a notable man in his day on that pioneer railroad. He was a bony, irascible man, fiery of face, with a high hook nose that had been smashed to one side in some battle when he was construction foreman in his days of lowly beginning. He wore a pistol strapped around his long coat, which garment was braided and buttoned like an ambassador's, and he was notable throughout the land of cattle and cards as a man who could reach far and hit hard. If Seth Craddock had applied to him for instruction in invective and profanity, veteran that he was he would have been put at the very foot of the primer class.

Now this mighty man came striding down the platform, thrusting his way through the crowd with no gentle elbow, hand on his gun, displeasure ready to explode from his mouth. The baggage-man asked advice on accepting the proffered box, with fare and a half ticket attached as in the case of a corpse.

The conductor remarked, with terrible sarcasm, that the corpse was the noisiest one he ever had encountered, even in that cursed and benighted and seven times outcast hole. He knocked on the box and demanded of the occupant an account of himself, and the part he was bearing in this pleasant little episode, this beautiful little joke.

Seth lifted up his muffled voice to say that it was no joke, at least to him. He explained his identity and denounced his captors, swearing vengeance to the last eyebrow. The conductor faced the crowd with disdainful severity.

What were they trying to play off on him, anyhow? Who did they suppose he was? Maybe that was fun in Ascalon, but his company wasn't going to carry no man from nowhere against his will and be sued for it. Burn him and box up the ashes, boil him and bottle the soup; reduce him by any comfortable means they saw fit, according to their humane way, fetch him there in any guise but that of a living man, and the company would haul him to Hades if they billed him to that destination.

But not in his present shape and form; not as a living, swearing, suit-threatening man. Take him to hell out of there, the conductor ordered in rising temper. Don't insult him and his road by coming around there to make them a part in their idle, life-wasting, time-gambling, blasted to the seventh depth of Hades tricks.