The Price of the Prairie: A Story of Kansas

He knew he had gone too far, and angry as he was, he had the prudence to hold his tongue. But his purpose was undaunted. His temper was not settled, however, when Mapleson called on him later in the day. Lettie was busy marking down prices on a counter full of small articles and the two men did not know how easily they could be overheard. Judson had no reason to control himself with Tell, and his wrath exploded then and there. Neither did Mapleson have need for temperance, and their angry tones rose to a pitch they did not note at the time.

"I tell you, Amos," Lettie heard Tell saying, "you've got to get rid of this Conlow girl, or you're done for. Phil's lost that Melrose case entirely; and he's out where a certain Kiowa brave we know is creepin' on his trail night and day. He'll never come back. If his disappearance is ever checked up to Jean, I'll clear the Injun. You can't do a thing to the Baronets. If this thing gets up to Judge John, you're done for. I'll never stand by it a minute. You can't depend on me. Now, let her go."

"I tell you I'm going to marry Marjie, Lettie or no Lettie. Good Lord, man! I 've got to, or be ruined. It's too late now. I can get rid of this girl when I want to, but I'll keep her a while."

Lettie dropped her pencil and crept nearer to the glass partition over the top of which the angry words were coming to her ears. Her black eyes dilated and her heart beat fast, as she listened to the two men in angry wrangle.

"He's going to marry Marjie. He'll be ruined if he doesn't. And he says that after all he has promised me all this Fall and Winter! Oh!" She wrung her hands in bitterness of soul. Judson had not counted on having to reckon with Lettie, any more than with Marjie.

That night at prayer meeting, a few more prominent people were quietly let into the secret of the coming event, and the assurance with which the matter was put left little room for doubt.

John Baronet sat in his office looking out on the leafless trees of the courthouse yard and down the street to where the Neosho was glittering coldly. It was a gray day, and the sharp chill in the air gave hint of coming rough weather.

Down the street came Cris Mead on his way to the bank, silent Cris, whose business sense and moral worth helped to make Springvale. He saw my father at the window, and each waved the other a military salute. Presently Father Le Claire, almost a stranger to Springvale now, came up the street with Dr. Hemingway, but neither of them looked toward the courthouse. Other folks went up and down unnoted, until Marjie passed by with her music roll under her arm. Her dark blue coat and scarlet cap made a rich bit of color on the gray street, and her fair face with the bloom of health on her cheek, her springing step, and her quiet grace, made her a picture good to see. John Baronet rose and stood at the window watching her. She lifted her eyes and smiled a pleasant good-morning greeting and went on her way. Some one entered the room, and with the picture of Marjie still in his eyes, he turned to see Lettie Conlow. She was flashily dressed, and a handsome new fur cape was clasped about her shoulders. Self-possession, the lifetime habit of the lawyer and judge, kept his countenance impassive. He bade her a courteous good-morning and gave her a chair, but the story he had already read in her face made him sick at heart. He knew the ways of the world, of civil courts, of men, and of some women; so he waited to see what turn affairs would take. His manner, however, had that habitual dignified kindliness that bound people to him, and made them trust him even when he was pitted with all his strength against their cause.

Lettie had boasted much of what she could do. She had refused all of O'mie's well-meant counsel, and she had been friends with envy and hatred so long that they had become her masters.

It must have been a strange combination of events that could take her now to the man upon whom she would so willingly have brought sorrow and disgrace. But a passionate, wilful nature such as hers knows little of consistency or control.

"Judge Baronet," Lettie began in a voice not like the bold belligerent Lettie of other days, "I've come to you for help."

He sat down opposite her, with his back to the window.

"What can I do for you, Lettie?"

"I don't know," the girl answered confusedly. "I don't know – how much to tell you."

John Baronet looked steadily at her a moment. Then he drew a deep breath of relief. He was a shrewd student of human nature, and he could sometimes read the minds of men and women better than they read themselves. "She has not come to accuse, but to get my help," was his conclusion.

"Tell me the truth, Lettie, and as much of it as I need to know," he said kindly. "Otherwise, I cannot help you at all."

Lettie sat silent a little while. A struggle was going on within her, the strife of ill-will against submission and penitent humiliation. Some men might not have been able to turn the struggle, but my father understood. The girl looked up at length with a pleading glance. She had helped to put misery in two lives dear to the man before her. She had even tried to drag down to disgrace the son on whom his being centred. In no way could she interest him, for his ideals of life were all at variance with hers. Small wonder, if distrust and an unforgiving spirit should be his that day. But as this man of wide experience and large ideals of right and justice looked at this poor erring girl, he put away everything but the determination to help her.

"Lettie," he said in that deep strong voice that carried a magnetic power, "I know some things you do not want to tell. It is not what you have done, but what you are to do that you must consider now."

"That's just it, Mr. Baronet," Lettie cried. "I've done wrong, I know, but so have other people. I can't help some things I've done to some folks now. It's too late. And I hated 'em."

The old sullen look was coming back, and her black brows were drawn in a frown. My father was quick to note the change.

"Never mind what can't be helped, Lettie," he said gravely. "A good many things right themselves in spite of our misdoing. But let's keep now to what you can do, to what I can do for you." His voice was full of a stern kindness, the same voice that had made me walk the straight line of truth and honor many a time in my boyhood.

"You can summon Amos Judson here and make him do as he has promised to do." Lettie cried, the hot tears filling her eyes.

"Tell me his promise first," her counsel said. And Lettie told him her story. As she went on from point to point, she threw reserve to the winds, and gave word to many thoughts she had meant to keep from him. When she had finished, John Baronet sat with his eyes on the floor a little while.

"Lettie, you want help, and you need it; and you deserve it on one condition only," he said slowly.

"What's that?" she asked eagerly.

"That you also be just to others. That's fair, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," she agreed. Her soul was possessed with a selfish longing for her own welfare, but she was before a just and honorable judge now, in an atmosphere of right thinking.

"You know my son Phil, have known him many years. Although he is my boy, I cannot shield him if he does wrong. Sin carries its own penalty sooner or later. Tell me the truth now, as you must answer for yourself sometime before the almighty and ever-living God, has Philip Baronet ever wronged you?"

How deep and solemn his tones were. They drove the frivolous trifling spirit out of Lettie, and a sense of awe and fear of lying suddenly possessed her. She dropped her eyes. The old trickery and evil plotting were of no avail here. She durst do nothing but tell the truth.

"He never did mistreat me," she murmured, hardly above a whisper.

"He took you home from the Andersons' party the night Dave Mead was at Red Range?" queried my father.

Lettie nodded.

"Of his own choice?"

She shook her head. "Amos asked him to," she said.

"And you told him good-bye at your own door?"

Another nod.

"Did you see him again that night?"

"Yes." Lettie's cheeks were scarlet.

"Who took you home the second time?"

A confusion of face, and then Lettie put her head on the table before her.

"Tell me, Lettie. It will open the way for me to help you. Don't spare anybody except yourself. You need not be too hard on yourself. Those who should befriend you can lay all the blame you can bear on your shoulders." He smiled kindly on her.

"Judge Baronet, I was a bad girl. It was Amos promising me jewelry and ribbons if I'd do what he wanted, making me think he would marry me if he could. I hated a girl because – " She stopped, and her cheeks flamed deeply.

"Never mind about the girl. Tell me where you were, and with whom."

"I was out on the West Prairie, just a little way, not very far. I was coming home."

"With Phil?" My father did not comment on the imprudence of a girl out on the West Prairie at this improper hour.

"No, no. I – I came home with Bud Anderson." Then, seeing only the kind strong pitying face of the man before her, she told him all he wanted to know. Would have told him more, but he gently prevented her, sparing her all he could. When she had finished, he spoke, and his tones were full of feeling.

"In no way, then, has Philip ever done you any wrong? Have you ever known him to deceive anybody? Has he been a young man of double dealing, coarse and rude with some company and refined with others? A father cannot know all that his children do. James Conlow has little notion of what you have told me of yourself. Now don't spare my boy if you know anything."

"Oh, Judge Baronet, Phil never did a thing but be a gentleman all his life. It made me mad to see how everybody liked him, and yet I don't know how they could help it." The tears were streaming down her cheeks now.

And then the thought of her own troubles swept other things away, and she would again have begged my father to befriend her, but his kind face gave her comfort.

"Lettie, go back to the store now. I'll send a note to Judson and call him here. If I need you, I will let you know. If I can do it, I will help you. I think I can. But most of all, you must help yourself. When you are free of this tangle, you must keep your heart with all diligence. Good-bye, and take care, take care of every step. Be a good woman, Lettie, and the mistakes and wrong-doing of your girlhood will be forgotten."

As Lettie went slowly down the walk, to the street, my father looked steadily after her. "Wronged, deceived, neglected, undisciplined," he murmured. "If I set her on her feet, she may only drop again. She's a Conlow, but I'll do my best. I can't do otherwise. Thank God for a son free from her net."

CHAPTER XXV

JUDSON SUMMONED

Though the mills of the gods grind slowly,Yet they grind exceeding small.– FRIEDRICH VON LOGAN.

Half an hour later Amos Judson was hurrying toward the courthouse with a lively strut in his gait, answering a summons from Judge Baronet asking his immediate presence in the Judge's office.

The irony of wrong-doing lies much in the deception it practices on the wrong-doer, blunting his sense of danger while it blunts his conscience, leading him blindly to choose out for himself a way to destruction. The little widower was jubilant over the summons to the courthouse.

"Good-morning, Baronet," he cried familiarly as soon as he was inside the door of the private office. "You sent for me, I see."

My father returned his greeting and pointed to a chair. "Yes, I sent for you. I told you I would when I wanted to see you," he said, sitting down across the table from the sleek little man.

"Yes, yes, I remember, so you did. That's it, you did. I've not been back since, knowing you'd send for me; and then, I'm a business man and can't be loafing. But now this means business. That's it, business; when a man like Baronet calls for a man like me, it means something. After all, I'm right glad that the widow did speak to you. I was a little hard on her, maybe. But, confound it, a mother-in-law's like a wife, only worse. Your wife's got to obey, anyhow. The preacher settles that, but you must up and make your mother-in-law obey. Now ain't that right? You waited a good while; but I says, 'Let him think. Give him time.' That's it, 'give him time.' But to tell the truth I was getting a little nervous, because matters must be fixed up right away. I don't like to boast, but I've got the whip hand right now. Funny how a man gets to the top in a town like this." Oh, the poor little knave! Whom the gods destroy they first make silly, at least.

"And by the way, did you settle it with the widow, too? I hope you did. You'd be proud of me for a son, now Phil's clear out of it. And you and Mrs. Whately'd make the second handsomest couple in this town." He giggled at his own joke. "But say now, Baronet, it's took you an awful time to make up your mind. What's been the matter?" His familiarity and impudence were insufferable in themselves.

"I hadn't all the evidence I needed," my father answered calmly.

In spite of his gay spirits and lack of penetration that word "evidence" grated on Judson a little.

"Don't call it 'evidence'; sounds too legal, and nobody understands the law, not even the lawyers." He giggled again. "Let's get to business." A harsher tone in spite of himself was in his voice.

"We will begin at once," my father declared. "When you were here last Summer I was not ready to deal with you. The time has come for us to have an understanding. Do you prefer any witness or counsel, or shall we settle this alone?"

Judson looked up nervously into my father's face, but he read nothing there.

"I – well, I don't know quite what you mean. No, I don't want no witnesses, and I won't have 'em, confound it. This is between us as man to man; and don't you try to bring in no law on this, because you know law books. This is our own business and nobody else's. I'd knock my best friend out of the door if he come poking into my private matters. Why, man alive! this is sacred. That's it – an affair of the heart. Now be careful." His voice was high and angry and his self-control was slipping.

"Amos Judson, I've listened patiently to your words. Patiently, too, I have watched your line of action, for three years. Ever since I came home from the war I have followed your business methods carefully."

The little man before him was turning yellow in spite of his self-assurance and reliance on his twin gods, money and deception, to carry him through any vicissitude. He made one more effort to bring the matter to his own view.

"Now, don't be so serious, Baronet. This is a little love affair of mine. If you're interested, all right; if not, let it go. That's it, let it go, and I'm through with you." He rose to his feet.

"But I'm not through with you. Sit down. I sent for you because I wanted to see you. I am not through with this interview. Whether it's to be the last or not will depend on conditions."

Judson was very uncomfortable and blindly angry, but he sat as directed.

"When I came home, I found you in possession of all the funds left by my friend, Irving Whately, to his wife and child. A friend's interest led me to investigate the business fallen to you. Irving begged me, when his mortal hours were few, to befriend his loved ones. It didn't take long to discover how matters were shaping themselves. But understanding and belief are one thing, and legal evidence is another."

"What was it your business?" Judson stormed. My father rose and, going to his cabinet, he took from an inner drawer a folded yellow bit of paper torn from a note book. Through the centre of it was a ragged little hole, the kind a bullet might have cut.

"This," he said, "was in Whately's notebook. We found it in his pocket. The bullet that killed him went through it, and was deadened a trifle by it, sparing his life a little longer. These words he had written in camp the night before that battle at Missionary Ridge:

"'If I am killed in battle I want John Baronet to take care of my wife and child.' It was witnessed by Cris Mead and Howard Morton. Morton's in the hospital in the East now, but Cris is down in the bank. Both of their signatures are here."

Judson sat still and sullen.

"This is why it was my business to find out, at least, if all was well with Mrs. Whately and her daughter. It wasn't well, and I set about making it well. I had no further personal interest than this then. Later, when my son became interested in the Whately family, I dropped the matter – first, because I could not go on without giving a wrong impression of my motives; and secondly, because I knew my boy could make up to Marjie the loss of their money."

"Phil hasn't any property," the widower broke in, the ruling passion still controlling him.

"None of Whately's property, no," my father replied; "but he has a wage-earning capacity which is better than all the ill-begotten property anybody may fraudulently gather together. Anyhow, I reasoned that if my boy and Whately's girl cared for each other, I would not be connected with any of their property matters. I have, however, secured a widow's pension and some back-pay for Mrs. Whately, and not a minute too soon." He smiled a little. "Oh, yes, Tell Mapleson went East on the same train I did in October. I just managed to outwit him in time, and all his affidavits and other documents were useless. He would have cut off that bit of assistance from a soldier's widow to help your cause. It would have added much value to your stock if Irving Whately's name should have been so dishonored at Washington that his wife should receive no pension for his service and his last great sacrifice. But so long as Phil and Marjie were betrothed, I let your business alone."

Judson could not suppress a grin of satisfaction.

"Now that there is no bond other than friendship between the two families, and especially since Marjie has begged me to take hold of it, I have probed this business of yours to the bottom. Don't make any mistake," he added, as Judson took on a sly look of disbelief. "You will be safer to accept that fact now. Drop the notion that your tracks are covered. I've waited for some time, so that one sitting would answer."

There was a halting between cowardly cringing and defiance, overlaid all with a perfect insanity of anger; for Judson had lost all self-control.

"You don't know one thing about my business, and you can't prove a word you say, you infernal, lying, old busybody, not one thing," he fairly hissed in his rage.

John Baronet rose to his full height, six feet and two inches. Clasping his hands behind his back he looked steadily down at Judson until the little man trembled. No bluster, nor blows, could have equalled the supremacy of that graceful motion and that penetrating look.

"It takes cannon for the soldier, the rope for the assassin, the fist for the rowdy; but, by Heaven! it's a ludicrous thing to squander gunpowder when insect powder will accomplish the same results. I told you, I had waited until I had the evidence," he said. "Now you are going to listen while I speak."

It isn't the fighter, but the man with the fighting strength, who wins the last battle. Judson cowered down in his chair and dropped his eyes, while my father seated himself and went on.

"Before Irving Whately went to the war he had me draw up a will. You witnessed it. It listed his property – the merchandise, the real estate, the bank stock, the cash deposits, and the personal effects. One half of this was to become Marjie's at the age of twenty (Marjie was twenty on Christmas Day), and the whole of it in the event of her mother's death. He did not contemplate his wife's second marriage, you see. That will, with other valuable papers, was put into the vault here in the courthouse for safe keeping, and you carried the key. While most of the loyal, able-bodied men were fighting for their country's safety, you were steadily drawing on the bank account in the pretence of using it for the store. Nobody can find from your bookkeeping how matters were in that business during those years.

"On the night Springvale was to be burned, you raided the courthouse, taking these and other papers away, because you thought the courthouse was to be burned that night. Mapleson got mixed up in his instructions, you remember, and Dodd nearly lost his good name in his effort to get these same papers out of the courthouse to burn them. You and Tell didn't 'tote fair' with him, and he thought you were here in town. You wouldn't have treated the parson well, had your infamous scheme succeeded. But you were not in town. You left your sick baby and faithful wife to carry that will and that property-list out to the old stone cabin, where you hid them. You meant to go back and destroy them after you had examined them more carefully. But you never could find them again. They were taken from your hiding-place and put in another place. You thought you were alone out there; also you thought you had outwitted Dodd. You could manage the Methodist Church South, but you failed to reckon with the Roman Catholics. While you were searching the draw to get back across the flood, Father Le Claire, wet from having swum the Neosho up above there, stopped to rest in the gray of the morning. You didn't see him, but he saw you."

My father paused and, turning his back on the cowardly form in the chair, walked to the window. Presently he sat down again.

"Mrs. Whately was crushed with grief over her husband's death; she was trustful and utterly ignorant in business matters; and in these circumstances you secured her signature to a deed for the delivery of all her bank stock to you. She had no idea what all that paper meant. She only wanted to be alone with her overwhelming sorrow. I need not go through that whole story of how steadily, by fraud, and misuse, and downright lie, you have eaten away her property, getting everything into your own name, until now you would turn the torture screw and force a marriage to secure the remnant of the Whately estate, you greedy, grasping villain!

"But defrauding Irving Whately's heirs and getting possession of that store isn't the full limit of your 'business.' You and Tell Mapleson, after cutting Dodd and Conlow out of the game, using Conlow only as a cat's paw, you two have been conducting a systematic commerce on commission with one Jean Pahusca, highway robber and cut-throat, who brings in money and small articles of value stolen in Topeka and Kansas City and even St. Louis, with the plunder that could be gathered along the way, all stored in the old stone cabin loft and slipped in here after dark by as soft-footed a scoundrel as ever wore a moccasin. You and Tell divide the plunder and promise Jean help to do his foes to death – fostering his savage blood-thirsty spirit."

"You can't prove that. Jean's word's no good in law; and you never found it out through Le Claire. He's Jean's father; Dodd says so." Judson was choking with rage.

"The priest can answer that charge for himself," my father said calmly. "No, it was your head clerk, Thomas O'Meara, who took a ten days' vacation and stayed at night up in the old stone cabin for his health. You know he has weak lungs. He found out many things, even Jean's fear of ghosts. That's the Indian in Jean. The redskin doesn't live that isn't afraid of a ghost, and O'mie makes a good one. This traffic has netted you and Mapleson shamefully large amounts.

"Where's my evidence?" he asked, as Judson was about to speak. "Ever since O'mie went into the store, your books have been kept, and incidentally your patronage has increased. That Irishman is shrewd and to the last penny accurate. All your goods delivered by Dever's stage, or other freight, with receipts for the same are recorded. All the goods brought in through Jean's agency have been carefully tabulated. This record, sworn to before old Joseph Mead, Cris's father, as notary, and witnessed by Cam Gentry, Cris Mead, and Dr. Hemingway, lies sealed and safe in the bank vault.

"One piece of your trickery has a double bearing; here, and in another line. Your books show that gold rings, a watch chain, sundry articles of a woman's finery charged to Marjory Whately, taken from her mother's income, were given as presents to another girl. Among them are a handsome fur collar which Lettie Conlow had on this very morning, and some beautiful purple ribbon, a large bow of which fastened with a valuable pin set with brilliants I have here."