Ernest Haycox - Ernest Haycox - Ultimate Collection - Western Classics & Historical Novels

"Then we'll push right on to Nelson and battle this through," he decided. His eyes wandered toward the closed house door; he stared at Quagmire. "Is that all the news?"

Quagmire squinted up to the heavens. "Yeah," he mumbled.

Gillette got down and came around to give Lorena a hand. "You're sure you've got to go on with this?"

She nodded her head, and of a sudden her attention rose above him. The house door had opened. Christine Ballard stood there, a splendid picture in the sunlight, as self-contained and enigmatic as he had ever seen her. She was smiling at him, waiting for him to come up; and the familiar cadence of her voice reached him.

"Welcome home. Tom. We have kept the fort."

Lorena dropped to the ground, going directly toward the other girl. Half across the interval she looked around, and it seemed to Tom Gillette he saw a touch of fear in those sombre gray eyes. She nodded and went on. There was a murmur between the women; Christine Ballard threw back her head, then the two of them passed inside and the door was closed. Gillette swept the circle with an irritable glance. "Snake out a couple fresh horses. Hustle it—hustle it. Quagmire, you're riding to Nelson with me."

And five minutes later he and the puncher were heading away on the last leg of their journey. Quagmire raised a skinny arm to the sky. "Ask no favours o' this world an' yo' won't never be disappointed."

"Quagmire, she won't get away from me again."

"Women has got ten times the cold nerve of a man," reflected Quagmire. And he shook his head. "If that girl figgers to go through with a thing, yo' better save yore breath."

Senator William Costaine had a nickname that sometimes was spoken around the corridors and committee rooms of the Capitol. It was bestowed humourously, yet as in most nicknames it contained a measure of significance. They called him the "wrath of God," and many a man who had felt the force of his outthrust jaw, his rapierlike questioning, as well as the devastating sarcasm of his speeches, went away from that ordeal with the firm conviction that the term was nothing less than appropriate. When the Senator got on the trail of corruption he seemed to generate volcanic fumes, he had all the overwhelming energy of a steam roller.

In this humour he struck Nelson a full week before Gillette returned; and within one hour of his arrival his room at the hotel became a chamber of inquisition. He summoned a notary and installed the man beside him and then in turn he sent out a series of brief invitations—to ranchers and surveyors, to the United States Marshal and allied officials, to Grist and to the land-office agent. The Senator asked questions, he listened to statements, and he asked more questions while the heavy boots tramped up the stairway and the room grew clouded with smoke. The depositions thickened to a respectable pile on the notary's table and into the Senator's frigid eyes there came a gleam that anyone back in Washington instantly would have recognized. It was the light of battle, the flickering of an ironic pleasure; the Senator was establishing a case, and presently there would be men scurrying for shelter while the halls of Congress heard his husky lawyer's voice piling up evidence and laying the mark of Judas across the names of certain gentlemen he long had suspected. Costaine was no pettifogger, nor did he ever raise the cry of "turn the rascals out" just to hear himself talk. When he had no evidence he kept silent and went on with his interminable digging. Therein lay his authority and his manifest power.

Presently the room was cleared. He lighted himself another cigar and tilted back his chair, nodding at the secretary.

"Nicholas, we've got Invering scorched. He'll wear no more purple, and he'll run for his hole like a scared rabbit. I detest and I suspect a man who continually and publicly wraps the flag around him and bares his breast to the arrows of iniquity. Oh, yes, Ignacius is scorched. The gentleman's dream of royal robes is sadly blasted. Nicholas, we leave for Washington by the next train. Arrange it." And presently, after shuffling through his depositions he raised his iron-gray head. "That fellow Grist didn't come, did he? Nor the land agent. Well, we'll pay 'em a visit. Come on."

Down to the land office he went. The agent knew very well who Costaine was, but he affected ignorance, only asking "What can I do for you?"

The Senator laid his card on the counter. "I want to see the records of this office, sir. Want to see 'em all."

"Not open for inspection," said the agent, inclined to be surly.

Costaine bent over the counter, frigidly polite. "Oh, yes, they are. Don't tell me what the regulations are. And you had better drop that public-be-condemned manner, sir. I want to see every dot and comma in this office."

"You can't come out here and tell me what to do!" snapped the agent. "I take my orders from the department! You senators think you run the government, but you don't run the land office. My books are all in order, and I'll open 'em to the proper authorities."

"So," mused the Senator. "Either I see those books or your head will be chopped off in the next forty-eight hours. And moreover, you will find yourself answering certain distinct charges. Nicholas, find me a chair in this rattletrap of an office."

The land agent capitulated. The Senator put on his steel spectacles and started down the pages in a kind of flat-footed patience; all of his life he had done just exactly this sort of thing, and there was no man in America more experienced in smelling out discrepancies. Better than two hours later he left the office, turned back to the hotel, and from thence went to the station and got aboard the train. But Costaine was no hand for delay, and a long telegram preceded him to Washington.

"It will be interesting to discover," he confided to the everpresent Nicholas, "by what extraordinary circumlocution those fine gentlemen got around the plain intent of the law."

In the course of the Senator's investigation he had failed to interview one man. Christopher Grist was in town all during the day; he had been told that Costaine wanted to see him, and later, from his office, he saw the Senator pass along the street to the land agent's. But Grist avoided a meeting: as quietly as possible he left the back door of his office and as quietly disappeared, not to appear again until night. But when he did return he found the land-office man waiting for him uneasy and uncertain.

"Look here—did you meet the Senator?"

Grist smiled. "I made it a point not to, my dear fellow. I'm doing no explaining. Let the bosses stand inspection."

"I know his reputation, the dam' muckraker," growled the agent. "It's his kind that cause all the trouble in America. Well, he looked at my records, but he never found anything. They've got nothing to pin on me, Grist! I'll face 'em!"

"That's right," assented Grist cheerfully.

The agent pointed angrily at him. "It's your cursed outfit that's got me in trouble! You've got to take some of the blame, I'll not be the goat."

"Thought you said there was nothing to pin on you," replied Grist.

"Oh, well, don't be a fool. That man means to manufacture trouble."

Grist touched a match to his cigar. "Let me tell you something, old fellow. The Senator doesn't need to manufacture anything. If he looks he will find—and from the bird's-eye view I had of the gentleman I'd judge he was one hell of a good bloodhound."

"That's a fine way for you to talk," grumbled the agent.

"It's not my land, not my cattle. I'm only working for folks. If you want to know the truth about it, I've acquired an extraordinary detached point of view about the P.R.N. in the last few hours. What that outfit can't stand is daylight. Public attention will kill 'em quick as a shot. And I forecast much attention in the next few weeks. Watch out for it. Those fellows are the world's best evaders of responsibility. That's why I've got a detached point of view—and stand quite ready to detach myself from their employ."