AT POINDEXTER'S
John Saxton trotted his pony through a broken gate into a great yard that had once been sown in blue grass, and at the center of which lay the crumbled ruins of a fountain. This was clearly no ordinary establishment, as he had been warned, and he was uncertain how to hail it. However, before he could make his presence known, a frowsy man in corduroy emerged from the great front door and came toward him.
"My name's Saxton, and you must be Snyder."
"Correct," said the man and they shook hands.
"Going to stay a while?"
"A day or two." John threw down the slicker in which he had wrapped a few articles from his bag at Great River, the nearest railway station.
"I got your letter all right," said Snyder. "Walk in and help yourself." He led the pony toward the outbuildings, while Saxton filled his pipe and viewed the pile before him with interest. He had been making a careful inspection of all the properties that had fallen to his care. This had necessitated a good deal of traveling. He had begun in Colorado and worked eastward, going slowly, and getting the best advice obtainable as to the value of his principals' holdings. Much of their property was practically worthless. Title had been gained under foreclosure to vast areas which had no value. A waterworks plant stood in the prairie where there had once been a Kansas town. The place was depopulated and the smokestack stood as a monument to blighted hopes. Ranch houses were inhabited by squatters, who had not been on his books at all, and who paid no tribute to Boston. He was viewed with suspicion by these tenants, and on inquiry at the county seats, he found generally that they were lawless men, and that it would be better for him to let them alone. It was patent that they would not pay rent, and to eject them merely in the maintenance of a principle involved useless expense and violence.
"This certainly beats them all," Saxton muttered aloud.
He had reached in his itinerary what his papers called the Poindexter property. He had found that the place was famous throughout this part of the country for the idiosyncrasies of its sometime owners, three young men who had come out of the East to show how the cattle business should be managed. They had secured an immense acreage and built a stone ranch house whose curious architecture imparted to the Platte Valley a touch of medievalism that was little appreciated by the neighboring cattlemen. One of the owners, a Philadelphian named Poindexter, who had a weakness for architecture and had studied the subject briefly at his university, contributed the buildings and his two associates bought the cattle. There were one thousand acres of rolling pasture here, much of it lying along the river, and a practical man could hardly have failed to succeed; but theft, disease in the herd and inexperience in buying and selling, had wrought the ranchmen's destruction. Before their money was exhausted, Poindexter and his associates lived in considerable state, and entertained the friends who came to see them according to the best usages of Eastern country life within, and their own mild approximation of Western life without. Tom Poindexter's preceptor in architecture, an elderly gentleman with a sense of humor, had found a pleasure which he hardly dared to express in the medieval tone of the house and buildings.
"All you need, Tom," he said, "to make the thing complete, is a drawbridge and a moat. The possibilities are great in the light of modern improvements in such things. An electric drawbridge, operated solely by switches and buttons, would be worth while." The folly of man seems to express itself naturally in the habitations which he builds for himself; the folly of Tom Poindexter had been of huge dimensions and he had built a fairly permanent monument to it. He and his associates began with an ambition to give tone to the cattle business, and if novel ideas could have saved them, they would not have failed. One of their happy notions was to use Poindexter's coat of arms as a brand, and this was only abandoned when their foreman declared that no calf so elaborately marked could live. They finally devised an insignium consisting of the Greek Omega in a circle of stars.
"There's a remnant of the Poindexter herd out there somewhere," Wheaton had said to Saxton. "The fellow Snyder, that I put in as a caretaker, ought to have gathered up the loose cattle by this time; that's what I told him to do when I put him there."
Saxton turned and looked out over the rolling plain. A few rods away lay the river, and where it curved nearest the house stood a group of cottonwoods, like sentinels drawn together for colloquy. Scattered here and there over the plain were straggling herds. On a far crest of the rolling pastures a lonely horseman paused, sharply outlined for a moment against the sky; in another direction, a blur drew his eyes to where a group of the black Polled Angus cattle grazed, giving the one blot of deep color to the plain.
Snyder reappeared, and Saxton followed him into the house.
"It isn't haunted or anything like that?" John asked, glancing over the long hall.
"No. They have a joke about that at Great River. They say the only reason is that there ain't any idiot ghosts."
There was much in the place to appeal to Saxton's quiet humor. The house was two stories high and there was a great hall, with an immense fireplace at one end. The sleeping rooms opened on a gallery above the hall. An effort had been made to give the house the appearance of Western wildness by introducing a great abundance of skins of wild beasts,—a highly dishonest bit of decorating, for they had been bought in Chicago. How else, indeed, would skins of German boars and Polar bears be found in a ranch house on the Platte River! Under one wing of the stairway, which divided to left and right at the center of the hall, was the dining-room; under the other was the ranch office.
"Those fellows thought a good deal of their stomachs," said Snyder, as Saxton opened and shut the empty drawers of the sideboard, which had been built into one end of the western wall of the room, in such a manner that a pane of glass, instead of a mirror, filled the center. The intention of this was obviously to utilize the sunset for decorative purposes, and Saxton chuckled as he comprehended the idea.
"I suppose our mortgage covers the sunset, too," he said. Nearly every portable thing of value had been removed, and evidently in haste; but the heavy oak chairs and the table remained. Snyder did his own modest cooking in the kitchen, which was in great disorder. The floor of the office was littered with scraps of paper. The original tenants had evidently made a quick settlement of their business affairs before leaving. Snyder slept here; his blanket lay in a heap on the long bench that was built into one side of the room, and a battered valise otherwise marked it as his lodging place. Saxton viewed the room with disgust; it was more like a kennel than a bedroom. His foot struck something on the floor; it was a silver letter-seal bearing the peculiar Poindexter brand, and he thrust it into his pocket with a laugh.
"My ranching wasn't so bad after all," he muttered.
"What's that?" asked Snyder, who was stolidly following him about.
"Nothing. If you have a pony we'll take a ride around the fences."
They spent the day in the saddle riding over the range. The ridiculous character of the Poindexter undertaking could not spoil the real value of the land. There was, Saxton could see, the making here of a great farming property; he felt his old interest in outdoor life quickening as he rode back to the house in the evening.
Snyder cooked supper for both of them, while Saxton repaired a decrepit windmill which had been designed to supply the house with water. He had formed a poor opinion of the caretaker, who seemed to know nothing of the property and who had, as far as he could see, no well defined duties. The man struck him as an odd person for the bank to have chosen to be the custodian of a ranch property. There was nothing for any one to do unless the range were again stocked and cattle raising undertaken as a serious business. Saxton was used to rough men and their ways. He had a happy faculty of adapting himself to the conversational capacities of illiterate men, and enjoyed drawing them out and getting their point of view; but Snyder's was not a visage that inspired confidence. He had a great shock of black hair and a scraggy beard. He lacked an eye, and he had a habit of drawing his head around in order to accommodate his remaining orb to any necessity. He did this with an insinuating kind of deliberation that became tiresome in a long interview.
"This place is too fancy to be of much use," the man vouchsafed, puffing at his pipe. "You may find some dude that wants to plant money where another dude has dug the first hole; but I reckon you'll have a hard time catching him. A real cattleman wouldn't care for all this house. It might be made into a stable, but a horse would look ridiculous in here. You might have a corn crib made out of it; or it would do for a hotel if you could get dudes to spend the summer here; but I reckon it's a little hot out here for summer boarders."
"The only real value is in the land," said Saxton. "I'm told there's no better on the river. The house is a handicap, or would be so regarded by the kind of men who make money out of cattle. Have you ever tried rounding up the cattle that strayed through the fences? The Poindexter crowd must have branded their last calves about two years ago. Assuming that only a part of them was sold or run off, there ought to be some two-year-olds still loose in this country and they'd be worth finding."
Snyder took his pipe from his mouth and snorted. "Yer jokin' I guess. These fellers around here are good fellers, and all that, but I guess they don't give anything back. I guess we ain't got any cattle coming to us."
"You think you'd rather not try it?"
"Not much!" was the expressive reply. The fellow smoked slowly, bringing his eye into position to see how Saxton had taken his answer.
John was refilling his own pipe and did not look up.
"Who've you been reporting to, Snyder?"
"How's that?"
"Who have you been considering yourself responsible to?"
"Well, Jim Wheaton at the Clarkson National hired me, and I reckon I'd report to him if I reported to anybody. But if you're going to run this shebang and want to be reported to, I guess I can report to you." He brought his turret around again and Saxton this time met his eye.
"I want you to report to me," said John quietly. "In the first place I want the house and the other buildings cleaned out. After that the fences must be put in shape. And then we'll see if we can't find some of our cows. You can't tell; we may open up a real ranch here and go into business."
Snyder was sprawling at his ease in a Morris chair, and had placed his feet on a barrel. He did not seem interested in the activities hinted at.
"Well, if you're the boss I'll do it your way. I got along all right with Wheaton."
He did not say whether he intended to submit to authority or not, and Saxton dropped the discussion. John rose and found a candle with which he lighted himself to bed in one of the rooms above. The whole place was dirty and desolate. The house had never been filled save once, and that was on the occasion of a housewarming which Poindexter and his fellows had given when they first took possession. One of their friends had chartered a private car and had brought out a party of young men and women, who had enlivened the house for a few days; but since then no woman had entered the place. In the Poindexter days it had been carefully kept, but now it was in a sorry plight. There had been a whole year of neglect and vacancy, in which the house had been used as a meeting place for the wilder spirits of the neighborhood, who had not hesitated to carry off whatever pleased their fancy and could be put on the back of a horse. Saxton chose for himself the least disorderly of the rooms, in which the furniture was whole, and where there were even a few books lying about. He determined to leave for Clarkson the following morning, and formulated in his mind the result of his journey and plans for the future of the incongruous combination of properties that had been entrusted to him. He sat for an hour looking out over the moon-lit valley. He followed the long sweep of the plain, through which he could see for miles the bright ribbon of the river. A train of cars rumbled far away, on the iron trail between the two oceans, intensifying the loneliness of the strange house.
"I seem to find only the lonely places," he said aloud, setting his teeth hard into his pipe.
In the morning he ate the breakfast of coffee, hard-tack and bacon which Snyder prepared.
"I guess you want me to hustle things up a little," said Snyder, more amiably than on the day before. He turned his one eye and his grin on Saxton, who merely said that matters must take a new turn, and that if a ranch could be made out of the place there was no better time to begin than the present. He had not formulated plans for the future, and could not do so without the consent and approval of his principals; but he meant to put the property in as good condition as possible without waiting for instructions. Snyder rode with him to the railway station.
"Give my regards to Mr. Wheaton," he said, as Saxton swung himself into the train. "You'll find me here at the old stand when you come back."
"A queer customer and undoubtedly a bad lot," was Saxton's reflection.
When Saxton had written out the report of his trip he took it to Wheaton, to get his suggestions before forwarding it to Boston. He looked upon the cashier as his predecessor, and wished to avail himself of Wheaton's knowledge of the local conditions affecting the several properties that had now passed to his care. Wheaton undoubtedly wished to be of assistance, and in their discussion of the report, the cashier made many suggestions of value, of which Saxton was glad to avail himself.
"As to the Poindexter place," said Saxton finally, "I've been advertising it for sale in the hope of finding a buyer, but without results. The people at headquarters can't bother about the details of these things, but I'm blessed if I can see why we should maintain a caretaker. There's nothing there to take care of. That house is worse than useless. I'm going back in a few days to see if I can't coax home some of the cattle we're entitled to; they must be wandering over the country,—if they haven't been rustled, and then I suppose we may as well dispense with Snyder."
He had used the plural pronoun out of courtesy to Wheaton, wishing him to feel that his sanction was asked in any changes that were made.
"I don't see that there's anything else to do," Wheaton answered. "I've been to the ranch, and there's little personal property there worth caring for. That man Snyder came along one day and asked for a job and I sent him out there thinking he'd keep things in order until the Trust Company sent its own representative here."
There were times when Wheaton's black eyes contracted curiously, and this was one of the times.
"I don't like discharging a man that you've employed," Saxton replied.
"Oh, that's all right. You can't keep him if he performs no service. Don't trouble about him on my account. How soon are you going back there?"
"Next week some time."
"Traveling about the country isn't much fun," Wheaton said, sympathetically.
"Oh, I rather like it," replied Saxton, putting on his hat.
Saxton was not surprised when he returned to the ranch to find that Snyder had made no effort to obey his instructions. He made his visit unexpectedly, leaving the train at Great River, where he secured a horse and rode over to the ranch. He reached the house in the middle of the morning and found the front door bolted and barred on the inside. After much pounding he succeeded in bringing Snyder to the door, evidently both surprised and displeased at his interruption.
"Howdy, boss," was the salutation of the frowsy custodian; "I wasn't feeling just right to-day and was takin' a little nap."
The great hall showed signs of a carousal. The dirt had increased since Saxton's first appearance. Empty bottles that had been doing service as candlesticks stood in their greasy shrouds on the table. Saxton sat down on a keg, which had evidently been recently emptied, and lighted a pipe. He resolved to make quick work of Snyder.
"How many cattle have you rounded up since I was here?" he demanded.
"Well, to tell the truth," began Snyder, "there ain't been much time for doing that since you was here."
"No; I suppose you were busy mending fences and cleaning house. Now you have been drawing forty dollars a month for doing nothing. I'll treat you better than you deserve and give you ten dollars bonus to get out. I believe the pony in the corral belongs to you. We'll let it go at that. Here's your money."
"Well, I guess as Mr. Wheaton hired me, he'd better fire me," the fellow began, bringing his eye to bear upon Saxton.
"Yes, I spoke to Mr. Wheaton about you. He understands that you're to go."
"He does, does he?" Snyder replied with a sneer. "He must have forgot that I had an arrangement with him by the year."
"Well, it's all off," said Saxton, rising. He began throwing open the windows and doors to let in fresh air, for the place was foul with the stale fumes of whisky and tobacco.
"Well, I guess I'll have to see Mr. Wheaton," Snyder retorted, finding that Saxton was paying no further attention to him. He collected his few belongings, watching in astonishment the violence with which Saxton was gathering up and disposing of rubbish.
"Going to clean up a little?" he asked, with his leer.
"No, I'm just exercising for fun," replied Saxton. "If you're ready, you'd better take your pony and skip."
Snyder growled his resentment and moved toward the door with a bundle under his arm and a saddle and bridle thrown over his shoulder.
"I'll be up town to see Mr. Wheaton in a day or two," he declared, as he slouched through the door.
"He seems to be more interested in Wheaton than Wheaton is in him," observed Saxton to himself.
Saxton spent a week at Great River. He hired a man to repair fences and put the house in order. He visited several of the large ranch owners and asked them for aid in picking out the scattered remnants of the Poindexter herd. Nearly all of them volunteered to help, with the result that he collected about one hundred cattle and sold them at Great River for cash. He expected to see or hear of Snyder in the town but the fellow had disappeared.
The fact was that Snyder had ridden over to the next station beyond Great River for his spree, that place being to his liking because it was beyond the jurisdiction of the sheriff whose headquarters were maintained at Great River,—an official who took his office seriously, and who had warned Snyder that his latest offense—getting drunk and smashing a saloon sideboard—must not be repeated. After he had been satisfactorily drunk for a week and had gambled away such of his fortune as the saloonkeeper had not acquired in direct course of commerce, Snyder came to himself sufficiently to send a telegram. Then he sat down to wait, with something of the ease of spirit with which an honest man sends forth a sight draft for collection from a town where he is a stranger, and awaits returns in the full enjoyment of the comforts of his inn.
On the third day, receiving no message from the outside world, Snyder sold his pony and took the train for Clarkson.