The Greatest Works of Melville Davisson Post: 40+ Titles in One Edition. Melville Davisson Post
decision made but a few minutes before. He remembered also that through it all he had been very foolish and very confident and idiotically happy, and how at the parting he had kissed Miss Lanmar's hand and blushed like a school-girl, and then jumped down from the moving train at the peril of his life.
The Governor stood upon the platform and watched the great train as it thundered away in the distance. The interview which had just ended, although a thing apparently unreal, had swept him out from under the influence of an illusion that had served to make his life in the great Southwest bearable, even happy. From this time forth it could never be what it had been. The man felt like one who, having been so long a captive in a dungeon that he was half content, and his memories of the world had become vague and unreal, is suddenly and without warning lifted into the sunshine of the great glorious world and held there until his heart is filled to drunkenness with the beauty of it all, and then, ruthlessly and on the instant, is thrust back into the rayless gloom of his dungeon.
Randal stood for a time looking at the rows of dim lights scattered about the station like dismal fireflies. Then he crossed to the freight train upon which he was to return and climbed up into the cab with the driver.
"What time shall we get in?" he asked.
"By the top of the night, Governor, if we have luck," answered the driver, pulling open the throttle.
The engine snorted and pounded along in the dark like some huge beast. The Governor sat in the cab window and looked out. The night air was sweet and cool, his face was hot. Two hours before he had decided what he should do, and dismissed the matter; but new and powerful elements had arisen and ordered him to rehear and decide anew.
Ambercrombie Hergan had lost and wasted the money of the State. There was now a deficit in his accounts of some fifty thousand dollars. There was no way by which this loss could be met unless Randal should pay it, and to do this would take everything he had on earth. It would mean the sacrifice of his mining stock, which, if held, promised great returns. It would be ruin, utter ruin, to make good the loss; yet the gambler, although a gambler, was his friend, and two hours before he had not hesitated at all.
Motives, mighty, selfish motives, which until this hour he had beaten back, now leaped up clamoring to be heard, howling for time against his decision, time to show the right of their cause, the wisdom of it, the ultimate justice of it. Something asked him roughly what right had he to jeopardize the future of this woman who loved him. What right had he to deceive, to sacrifice her? Who was Hergan that he should be considered against this woman? Who, but a reckless and improvident adventurer? It was not his own happiness urged the something; that would be a matter of little moment. It was the happiness of another, and that other was true, innocent of wrong, superlatively just. What contrast could be drawn between the woman and this gambler? Duty? What duty could he owe to the irresponsible Hergan that could approach in the slightest part the measure of the duty which he owed to the woman who had trusted him for so many years, and waited, and loved him?
Yet against all this, certain pictures came up from the past,—vivid, proclaiming a mighty truth, a truth which the man knew and acknowledged in his heart, the truth that if these positions were reversed, Hergan, gambler though he was, would not hesitate for a moment. Had he hesitated that morning in the Rio Grande when Randal's horse had fallen and was being swept down with the current, carrying his master under him, tangled in the stirrup strap? Had he hesitated when it became necessary deliberately to steal and burn the bogus ballots in Garfield County, when to do so seemed little less than deliberate suicide? Had he hesitated that terrible day on the Rio Sonora, when there was no time for warning, but time only to spring forward and take the knife in his shoulder? Had this man ever hesitated when the welfare of Randal was at stake? Would he not gladly, and without comment, give up his life to-morrow if the Governor should ask it of him?
The Governor passed his hand across his forehead and closed his eyes. When he opened them he had decided, and against this second decision there should be now no appeal and no rehearing.
III
The Secretary of State was far removed from the ordinary. He was one of those not infrequent persons whom men are quite unable to classify. At times he arose far beyond the limits set for him by his associates, and at times he dropped far below. There was about the man a sort of indefinite reserve that impressed his fellows and inspired confidence in those positions requiring rash and apparently impracticable moves. Ordinarily, in commonplace affairs, his judgment was not considered sound, or even valuable, and at such times no one would have thought for a moment of advising with this man. It was only when sound common-sense could see no way out that the machine appealed to Hergan, and at such times he came forward with some freak venture which was frightfully perilous and never ordinary, and never quite a failure.
Success, usually arose, however, not from the ultimate wisdom of Hergan's plans, but from the fact that his unique move would throw the affair into a sort of convulsion resulting in a new situation, and this new situation the sound judgment of his fellows would usually be able to control. The counsel of Ambercrombie Hergan was a protean agent.
The grave vice in the character of the Secretary of State lay in the fact that he possessed no idea of perspective. He would wager his last dollar with the same joyous unconcern with which he had wagered his first, and he would have staked the entire Southwest, if he possessed it, as readily as a Mexican peso, upon the turn of a card or the result of a horse race. As to the antecedents of the Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan, even conjecture was silent. He had come up from a mysterious substratum of New York,—for what, and by reason of what, no man inquired. This mighty new land traced no records and propounded no questions. The arena stood open with its doors thrown back. Any combatant who pleased could enter. Heralded or unheralded, it mattered not. Good or bad, learned or ignorant, of yokel blood or princely lineage, it mattered not. If he were fittest, he could win.
From this organic defect of his mental build, and not from evil animus, had resulted the sad state of the Secretary's accounts. He had never entirely appreciated the important distinction between his own money and that which belonged to the Commonwealth. He had been thoughtless, reckless, unconcerned, until now he was hopelessly involved. Yet even at this stage when his term of office was fast drawing to a close, he failed to appreciate the gravity of his position, and treated the matter with good-natured unconcern, as of no moment.
The Auditor and Secretary of State sat together in the Governor's library awaiting his return. In appearance the Auditor was a muscular little man of most marvellous vitality, with a fierce white mustache, and a fund of quaint oaths and semi-dramatic phrases hugely expressive and at times artistic; while the Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan was very tall and very broad, with a shock of heavy black hair, wide jaws, and a big crooked nose. Far back in his youth this nose had been straight, but one night, in a barroom on the Bowery, a difference of opinion had arisen over some inconsequential matter, and thereafter the gambler's nose had assumed a contour not contemplated in the original design.
The Major was talking, and pounding the table vigorously, when the Chinese servant entered with a tray and some glasses. The Virginian drew himself up and stepped back from the table.
"Well, Bumgarner," he said, "I hail your resurrection; I glory in your return to life. You have been dead no inconsiderable period, sir."
The Chinaman replied that he had been engaged in a laborious but unsuccessful hunt for the bottle of Angostura bitters.
"Angostura bitters?" cried the Major, "marvellous, inscrutable heathen! Will you deign to reveal your reason for requiring the Angostura bitters?"
The Celestial responded that he presumed bitters was an element requisite to the rather mysterious drink which he had been requested to compound.
"Hear him, hear him!" thundered the Major, as though addressing some present but invisible avenging demon; "hear the vandal! Bitters in a julep! Mighty, intelligent shade of Simple Simon! Attend and observe the idiocy of this savage!" Then he crossed to the astonished Chinaman and took him gently by the