The Greatest Works of Melville Davisson Post: 40+ Titles in One Edition. Melville Davisson Post

      VIII

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      The Emporium of Crawley was not quite a trading-place as the Greek root of the word would indicate, unless transactions in which the unwary bartered his gain for experience, and the great unscrubbed of the Southwest pitted their wage against the riot of dissipation, could be held to partake of the nature of commerce. It was a fad with Crawley to assert that his Emporium was a clearinghouse,—a rather grim jest, heavy with truth. Indeed, all the currency of this primitive land seemed to pass, sooner or later, through the mammoth establishment of First Class Crawley, and in season and out of season as the dollar went through, a portion paused and remained in the fingers of the proprietor. And for this, also,—as the common-law pleader would put it,—truth clung to the pet declaration of Crawley.

      When the population gathered night after night under the roof of his Emporium, their troubles came also; and when the smoke grew thick and the tanglefoot whiskey began to assert itself, there were other things to clear up beside matters of currency. Matters of consequence and matters of no consequence were cleared by the same rapid, drastic measures. Bad men here decided who was the worst or the best, as they were pleased with the term. The henchmen of rival cattle kings submitted the vexatious question of a brand on a stray heifer to this court of instant resort and quick decision, and other concerns of the citizen, affecting perhaps his truth, or honor, or ability for a vice, were determined suddenly and for all time without the wrangling of counsel or the tedium of courts.

      If a Mexican was so short sighted as to slip his knife into a tenderfoot, some one shot the Mexican, and the crowd "lickered up." If the faro dealer killed his man, it was usually because the man needed killing, and certainly the faro dealer was the best judge of this. On the contrary, if one shot the dealer, this was considered a public calamity, demanding an explanation, since the dealer was a quasi public functionary, and the convenience of the citizen required that the game should continue. One's life was perhaps the cheapest thing below the Central Pacific Railroad, and it was entirely the duty of the individual to see that it was maintained. If one was unsteady on the trigger, or caught napping on the draw, one was held to have died by virtue of contributory negligence.

      To be sure there was law, and machinery for its execution; but the machinery was liberal, and had ideas of its own, and the law adhered with supreme unconcern to its maxim—De minimis non curat lex.

      First Class Crawley had been splendidly trained for the duties of his position. If Fortune had been moving of design, she could not have schooled him better for such a life. Some thirty years before, he had been a sutler with the Army of the Potomac—not the sutler of romance, but the sutler of reality; following the army bravely, but at such a distance to the rear as to be at all times extremely safe, and exacting for his valuable public service every gain that human ingenuity could discover. It was no wrong in the mind of Crawley to cheat the common soldier out of his eyes; belike the soldier would be shot on the morrow, and then all opportunity to cheat him would cease, and if prior opportunity had not been seized and enjoyed, Crawley would regret.

      When the "bitterness of death" had passed, Crawley became a justice of the peace in Ohio. Here the field for his talent was broader, and Crawley arose and spread like the bay tree of Biblical record. Crawley held it as a basic principle that the machinery of human justice could not be maintained without ample sinews of war. It was best, to be sure, if these sinews could be wrested from the wrong-doer, but, failing that, the innocent must contribute. Every litigant was presumed to proceed at the peril of costs. The matter of costs was one vital to Crawley, and loomed constantly. The right or justice of a cause was never for a moment permitted to obscure it. If the plaintiff was impecunious, then the decision must be against the defendant, else the costs could not be had, and vice versa as it had pleased Providence to place substance.

      This was a high conception of human justice; since it passed by the trivial controversy of the litigants, and placed the burden of legal procedure upon the one best able to support It. First Class Crawley maintained further that it was the part of wisdom in a government promptly to release the criminal who "shelled out," since the revenues of the State arose largely from the fines imposed upon the evildoer, and it was certainly quite useless to retain the criminal at public expense after having squeezed him thoroughly, when he could be returned to society and squeezed again later on.

      Crawley might have been the father of a school, had he not found the school in Ohio established to his uses. Consequently his fame was local, and his methods being of ancient origin in this Commonwealth, provoked no comment, and indeed he might have passed on, with the usual career of such ambitious spirits, to a seat in the legislature, had he not unwittingly crossed into a neighboring State in order to attend a reunion of the Grand Army of the Republic. Here one, smarting from a hurt, pounced down upon him with a warrant for a felony, and that same night the visiting justice was a guest of the State. But First Class Crawley was no man of feeble resources, and two days later he gave a straw bond and vanished like a newspaper war cloud.

      In the Southwest, Crawley was a person of importance—a court of last resort on all matters, barring none. If bets were made, Crawley was umpire. If questions w ere argued, Crawley was judge. If one wanted advice, one went to him. If one wanted information, one went to him; and if one needed money, one went always to First Class Crawley, and put up everything but his life. No function was complete without the presence of this celebrity, be it bull tight or prize fight, or dog fight, or a prearranged resort to the arbitration of the Winchester. Crawley was a great man, in counterdistinction to a bad man. Personally, he neither quarrelled nor fought, and one would have no more considered shooting at Crawley than he would have considered shooting at his grandmother. This proprietor of the Emporium maintained his position, not by virtue of arms and skill in their use, but by virtue of an interesting something which passed with him for an intellect.

      Consequently, when he and Hiram Martin, of the Golden Horn Mining Company, sat down in the private gambling room of the Emporium to a private interview with the Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan, they were expecting to realize from the time expended. They were both attentive and interested, since the reckless Secretary of State was known in the lingo of the guild as an "easy member." If he had money, or could obtain money, it would eventually fall into their clutches as it had always done. Hence their interest was genuine.

      "Boys," said the Secretary of State, "I have a scheme to make a stake, and I want you in on it. I have been over in the East, and I have got it all figured out, and it's a cinch."

      The owner of the Golden Horn folded his hands over the vast expanse of his stomach and smiled benignly. He knew all about the usual combination of circumstances set down in the elegant diction of the gambler as a "cinch."

      He was an expert upon things of this sort, but he volunteered no information, and no comment. He merely smiled and murmured "Yes," in a voice which