CHAPTER XLI

EASTERN CAPITAL

THE passengers who descended from the train left the coaches nearly empty. The head of steel was to the westward and new towns were projected for thirty miles; but the greater fame of Abilene, the city of the future stockyards, capital of a coming cow trade, still acted as magnet for a majority of the traders and buyers, adventurers, hunters, all the curious-minded gentry then eagerly exploiting a West which never yet had lived. The rumors of northern drives of Texas cattle had in some way gone abroad; this first arrival was a news event of the first water.

Before these arrivals now spread the vastest, sweetest empire that ever fell to gaze of any adventurers of new fortunes. The very feel of it was in the warm but vital air that blew across the waving prairies; lay in the far horizon that swept untarnished by any settler’s smoke, far as the eye might reach. The flowers here also had not yet known a bee and there was not a weed. At times the edge of the buffalo grass was east of the Western border. The bluestem had not yet fully got to Abilene. The buffalo that year moved a little farther west. Their wallows dotted the surface of the earth thereabout for years to come. The great checkerboard of the gods, four vast spaces in the corners of the greatest crossroads of the world, still lay out as the Range—mesquite and grama in the Southwest, bunch grass and buffalo grass in the Northwest; native—and later bluestem—grasses in the Northeast; redtop and its fellows in the Southeast; all lapping, encroaching, passing, augmenting as the swift years altered the range. From Spanish-moss lands to the sagebrush steppes, from the scant grama to the waist-high green, lay the country of the cows. At that time it was but imperfectly known. The original, the aboriginal titles had not yet been extinguished.

The raw little village of itself meant not so much to most of these men, who had seen such villages before, east of the Missouri. The scanty edifices were accepted at least as sufficient. There were saloons, stores, a hotel. The travelers looked to their weapons and their luggage, and then, each after his own fashion, headed out toward the signs which made offerings to civilized man. Most went to the saloons, a few moved toward the Drovers’ Cottage, where even now, before her formal opening, Lou Gore was making mankind comfortable on the frontier. Others wandered up and down the street, gazing this way or that. None passed the corrals of the Abilene Stockyards without a curious gaze at the gaunt, long-haired creatures which now marked a renaissance of the entire cattle trade in America. It all was crude, young, new and unspeakably alluring—this strange new world, offspring of time and the whim of the immortal gods at play on their great four-squared checkerboard.

McMasters called Hickok aside, spoke to him quietly, after a time.

“Our men have gone over to the new saloon,” said he. “I see one is headed for the Twin Livery Barn. They’ve probably got horses there, or are looking for some.”

“Well,” said Hickok, “you know them best. They haven’t made any break yet and I’ve got nothing on them. None of them ever harmed me. What’s the game?”

“I want you to watch them for a little while,” replied McMasters. “I’ll not leave much to you except the watching. I’ll be with you very soon. Just now I want to find out what’s going to be done about the sale of this herd. McCoyne has got some man in tow; and yon’s Nabours, the Del Sol trail boss—he’s just come in. I think I ought to know what goes on there.”

McCoyne, the exuberant and irresistible prophet of Abilene, indeed now was bringing forward a stranger, a bearded, stocky, self-contained man of nondescript dress, yet rather of Western look himself. The three little groups now joined.

“Mr. McMasters,” begun McCoyne, “and you, too, Mr. Nabours, and Marshal Hickok, this, now, is Mr. Pattison, just come to town. He’s in the market to buy some range stuff. He’s been in the packing business in Indianapolis for several years, and he has just come out to Junction City, a couple of hours over east, to start a packing plant of his own out here; though I don’t see why he didn’t pick on Abilene for that. Anyhow he has to come here for his cattle.”

“Good morning, gentlemen,” said the stranger thus introduced, smiling humorously. “I am glad to meet you. Yes, I am looking for some cattle. I don’t know how you guessed it.”

“Where’d you want them delivered?” inquired Jim Nabours, coming to the thing on his own mind. “We got some cows. I can testify they’re good travelers.”

“Well, not far,” replied Pattison. “That some of your cattle over in the pens? Junction City is just over here a couple of days’ march. I am going to try to pack a few cattle in there this year. I shouldn’t wonder if we started some stockyards in Kansas City before long. My friend, old Mitch, has been talking of it a long time. If they get the yards it won’t be long until a packing house is started there. That would save a lot of distance in shipping East.

“I know that two Milwaukee and Chicago men—Plankinton is the name of one and Armour, I think, is the other man—well, they are figuring on going into the packing-house business in Kansas City. They’ve got a man out there now, looking things over.”

“Then where does it leave you at Junction City?” demanded McCoyne.

Pattison spread out his hands with a shrug.

“Of course, their man is crazy. He’s talking of using a hundred thousand cattle every year. I shouldn’t wonder if they did put down half that many. All this Western country is going to take a mighty jump since the railroad has gone West. That’s why I am here, of course. I’ve come out to look over this whole business myself. If it’s all the same to you I’d like to look over your herd. Mr. McCoyne says it isn’t far out to where you are holding it.”

“How’d right now do?” asked Nabours calmly. “How much time do you want to look over our cows? With me it’s sharp’s the word and quick’s the motion.”

“About five minutes. I’ve seen your sample in the corrals here. How much a pound do you figure you ought to get?”

“How much a pound? I don’t know nothing about that. I don’t know how much a cow weighs.”

“Well, I can tell you. One of your sample steers will weigh about nine hundred pounds. They look like greyhounds crossed on a window shutter. Two cents a pound would be a lot for them. Now, a fat steer will weigh twelve hundred instead of nine hundred, and he’ll bring four cents instead of two. Say I give you eighteen dollars for your lean steers, right off the trail. I could give you thirty-six dollars if they was fat; say if they’d been wintered up here and fed north.”

“Mister,” said Jim Nabours, “you’re talking foolish, though pleasing. I don’t know how much nine hundred pounds is, nor twelve hundred pounds; but when you tell me any Texas steer is worth more than thirty dollars you make me think you ain’t got no money to buy nothing. You don’t mean to say that in the presence of witnesses?”

“I certainly do mean to say it,” rejoined Pattison. “But that isn’t all. Your Texas steers will bring a good deal more than thirty dollars when you have taken time to move them up north of the edge of winter and ranged them and fattened them and bred the horns off of them. That can all be done in five years.”

“I ain’t got no five years,” said Jim Nabours. “You allowed five minutes will do. Well, let’s climb on top our broncs and ride out and see; it’s only about two miles or so north.

“Come on, Dan.” He turned towards McMasters. “Ride along with us. I rely some on your judgment.”

McMasters turned toward Hickok with a quiet word or so, and waving his hand strolled off to pick up his own horse. McCoyne, anxious as he was to see a trade effected, did not dare forsake the city of Abilene at so critical a time. The newly christened Lone Star was full. Besides, he was mayor of the town.

“Bill,” said he, accosting Hickok, “I got you here now, and I’m going to have you elected town marshal. We can’t hold any election right now, and we may need a town marshal right soon. I appoint you marshal right now, and Mr. McMasters as your deputy.”

Hickok looked at him lazily and smiled.