Claim Number One Part 9

"Oh, I didn't know!" she stammered, all confusion over the familiarity that she had been taking all day. "I didn't know your other name--n.o.body ever told me."

"No; not many of 'em down here knows it," he responded. "But up at Meander, at the barn, they know it. It's Phogenphole."

"Oh!"

"But if you don't like it," added Smith, speaking with great fervor, and leaning toward her a little eagerly and earnestly, "I'll have a bill put through the Legislature down at Cheyenne and change it!"

They ate supper that evening by lantern-light, with the night noise of Comanche beginning to rise around them earlier than usual. Those who were there for the reaping realized that it would be their last big night, for on the morrow the drawing would fall. After the first day's numbers had been taken from the wheel at Meander, which would run up into the thousands, the waiting crowds would melt away from Comanche as fast as trains could carry them. So those who were on the make had both hands out in Comanche that night.

They all wondered how it would turn out for them, the lumberman and the insurance agent--who had not been of the party that day in Smith's coach--offering to lay bets that n.o.body in the mess would draw a number below five hundred. There were no takers. Then they offered to bet that all in the mess would draw under five hundred. Mrs. Reed rebuked them for their gambling spirit, which, she said, was rampant in Comanche, like a plague.

CHAPTER VI

THE DRAWING

As has been previously said, one must go fast and far to come to a place where there is neither a Hotel Metropole nor a newspaper. Doubtless there are communities of civilized men on the North American continent where there is neither, but Comanche was not one of them.

In Comanche the paper was a daily. Its editor was a single-barreled grafter who wore a green mohair coat and dyed whiskers. His office and establishment occupied an entire twelve-by-sixteen tent; the name of the paper was _The Chieftain_.

_The Chieftain_ had been one of the first enterprises of Comanche. It got there ahead of the first train, arriving in a wagon, fully equipped.

The editor had an old zinc cut of a two-storied brick business house on a corner, which he had run with a grocery-store advertis.e.m.e.nt when he was getting out a paper in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This he now made use of with impressive effect and inspiring display of his cheerful confidence in his own future and that of the town where, like a blowing seed of cottonwood, he had found lodgment.

He ran this cut in every issue at the top of what would have been his editorial column if there had been time for him to write one, with these words:

FUTURE HOME OF _THE CHIEFTAIN_ ON THE CORNER THIS PAPER NOW OCCUPIES, AS DESIGNED BY THE EDITOR AND OWNER, J. WALTER MONG

From the start that Editor Mong was making in Comanche his dream did not appear at all unreasonable. Everybody in the place advertised, owing to some subtle influence of which Mr. Mong was master, and which is known to editors of his brand wherever they are to be found. If a business man had the s.h.i.+eld of respectability to present to all questioners, he advertised out of pride and civic spirit; if he had a past, J. Walter Mong had a nose, sharpened by long training in picking up such scents; and so he advertised out of expediency.

That being the way matters stood, _The Chieftain_ carried very little but advertis.e.m.e.nts. They paid better than news, and news could wait its turn, said the editor, until he settled down steadily into a weekly and had room for it.

But Mr. Mong laid himself out to give the returns from the drawing for homesteads, it being one of those rare chances in which an editor could combine business and news without putting on an extra form. The headquarters of the United States land-office for that territory being at Meander, the drawing was to take place there. Meander was sixty miles farther along, connected with the railroad and Comanche by stage and telephone. So, every hour of the eventful day, Editor Mong was going to issue an extra on telephonic information from the seat of the drawing.

On the day of the drawing, which came as clear and bright as the painted dreams of those who trooped Comanche's streets, there remained in the town, after the flitting entrants had come and gone, fully thirty thousand expectant people. They were those in whom the hope of low numbers was strong. For one drawing a low number must make his selection of land and file on it at Meander within a few days.

In the case of the first number, the lucky drawer would have but three days to make his selection and file on it. If he lapsed, then Number Two became Number One, and all down the line the numbers advanced one.

So, in case that the winner of Number One had registered and gone home to the far East or the middle states, he couldn't get back in time to save his valuable chance. That gave big hope to those who expected nothing better than seven or nine or something under twenty. Three or four lapses ahead of them would move them along, each peg adding thousands to their winnings, each day running out for them in golden sands.

By dawn the streets were filled by early skirmishers for breakfast, and sunrise met thousands more who, luggage in hand, talked and gesticulated and blocked the dusty pa.s.sages between the unstable walls of that city of chance, which soon would come down and disappear like smoke from a wayside fire. The thousands with their bags in hand would not sleep another night beneath its wind-restless roofs. All those who expected to draw Claim Number One were ready to take the stage or hire a special conveyance to Meander, or, failing of their expectations in the lottery, to board the special trains which the railroad had made ready, and leave for home.

By nine o'clock it seemed to the waiting throngs that several ordinary days had pa.s.sed since they left their sagging canvas cots at daybreak to stand attendant upon the whim of chance. They gathered in the blazing sun in front of the office of the paper, looking in at Editor Mong, who seemed more like a quack doctor that morning than ever before, with his wrinkled coat-sleeves pushed above his elbows and his cuffs tucked back over them, his black-dyed whiskers gleaming in shades of green when the sun hit them, like the plumage of a crow.

For all the news that came to Comanche over the telephone-wire that day must come through the office of _The Chieftain_. There was but one telephone in the town; that was in the office of the stage-line, and by arrangement with its owners, the editor had bottled up the slightest chance of a leak.

There would be no bulletins, the editor announced. Anyone desiring news of the drawing must pay twenty-five cents for a copy of the paper containing it. It was the editor's one great chance for graft, and he meant to work it until it was winded.

The lottery was to open in Meander at ten o'clock; but long before that hour the quivering excitement which shook the fabric of Comanche had reached the tent where Mrs. Reed mothered it over the company of adventurers. The lumberman and insurance agent were away early; Sergeant Schaefer and Milo Strong followed them to the newspaper office very shortly; and the others sat out in front, watching the long shadows contract toward the peg that June had driven in the ground the day before at the line of ten o'clock.

"Well, this is the day," said William Bentley. "What will you take for your chance, Doctor?"

"Well, it wouldn't take very much to get it this morning," Dr. Slavens replied, peering thoughtfully at the ground, "for it's one of those things that grow smaller and smaller the nearer you approach."

"I'd say twenty-five hundred for mine," offered Horace.

"Great lands!" exclaimed Mrs. Reed, blinking, as she looked out across the open toward the river. "If anybody will give me three dollars for my chance he can take it, and welcome."

"Then you'd feel cheap if you won," June put in. "It's worth more than that even up in the thousands; isn't it, Mr. Walker?"

Walker was warm in his declaration that it would be a mighty small and poor piece of Wyoming that wouldn't be worth more than that.

"We haven't heard from you, Miss Horton," said William Bentley.

"I'm afraid nothing would tempt me to part with my chance," Agnes replied. "I hold it just the reverse of Dr. Slavens. The longer I look at it the bigger it gets."

The doctor was the only one present who understood fully how much she had built around that chance. Their eyes met as he looked across at her; he remembered what she had said of planting trees, and having roses beside her door.

"It's almost there!" cried June, looking at her stake.

"Twenty minutes yet," announced Horace, who sat with his watch in his palm.

They were all bonneted and booted, ready for an expedition, although they had none in sight. It was as if they expected Number One to come flying through the town, to be caught and held by the swiftest of foot, the one alert and ready to spring up and dash after it.

"Shall we go over to the newspaper office?" asked the doctor, looking across again and catching Agnes' eyes.

June jumped up and accepted the proposal for all.

"Oh, let's do!" she exclaimed. "Let's be there to get the very first word!"

On the part of the ladies there was a dash into the tent to adjust their headgear before gla.s.ses and to renew the powder on their noses. While they were gone Horace Bentley, the lawyer, stood with his watch exposed to his impatient eye.

"In five minutes," he announced as the ladies rejoined them, "they will draw the first name from the wheel at Meander. I hope that it may be the name of someone in this party."

"I hope it will be yours," said Dr. Slavens' eyes as he looked earnestly at Agnes; and: "Number Two would do very well for me in case your name came first," her eyes seemed to answer him.

But there was none by who knew what had pa.s.sed between them of their hopes, so none could read the messages, even if there had been any so curious as to try.

Mrs. Mann was humming a little song as they started away toward the newspaper office, for she was tiring of Wyoming, where she had not seen a single cowboy yet; and the prospect of returning to the miller was growing dear to her heart. There was a quiet over Comanche that morning which seemed different from the usual comparative peace of that portion of the day--a strained and fevered quiet, as of hushed winds before a gale. It took hold of even June as the party pa.s.sed through the main street, joining the stream of traffic which pressed in one direction only.

They could not arrive within a square of the newspaper-tent, for the crowd around it was packed and dense; so they stopped where there was breathing-s.p.a.ce among groups of men who stood with their gripsacks between their feet, waiting for the first word.

At five minutes past ten the editor of _The Chieftain_ handed his printer a slip of paper, and the name of the winner of Claim Number One was put in type. The news was carried by one who pushed through the throng, his hat on the back of his head, sweat drenching his face. The man was in a buck-ague over the prospect of that name being his own, it seemed, and thought only of drawing away from the sudden glare of fortune until he could collect his wits.

Some people are that way--the timid ones of the earth. They go through life leaving a string of baited traps behind them, lacking courage to go back and see what they have caught.