The Land of Frozen Suns Part 1

The Land of Frozen Suns.

by Bertrand W. Sinclair.

CHAPTER I-THE GENESIS OF TROUBLE

Who was it, I wonder, made that sagacious remark about the road to h.e.l.l being paved with good intentions? He might have added an amendment to the effect that there's always a plentiful supply of material for that much travelled highway. We all contribute, more or less. I know I have done so. And so did my people before me. My father's intentions were good, but he didn't live long enough to carry them out. If he hadn't fallen a victim to an inborn streak of recklessness, a habit of taking chances,-well, I can't say just how things would have panned out. I'm not fatalist enough to believe that we crawl or run or soar through our allotted span of years according to some prearranged scheme which we are powerless to modify. Oh, no! It's highly probable, however, that if my father and mother had lived I should have gone into some commercial pursuit or taken up one of the professions. Either way, I should likely have pegged along in an uneventful sort of way to the end of the chapter-lots of men do. Not that I would have taken with enthusiasm to chasing the nimble dollar for the pure love of catching it, but because I was slated for something of the sort, and as the twig is bent so is the tree inclined; a man can't sit down and twiddle his thumbs and refuse to perform any useful act, because there is no glory in it. The heroic age has gone a-glimmering down the corridors of time.

As it happened, my feet were set in other paths by force of circ.u.mstances. Only for that the sage-brush country, the very place where I was born might have remained a terra incognita. I should always have felt, though, that I'd missed something, for I was ushered into this vale of tears at the Summer ranch on the Red River of the South.

Sumner _here_ hadn't developed into a cow monarch those days, but he was on the way. My earliest impressions were all of log and 'dobe buildings, _of long-horned cattle_, of wild, s.h.a.ggy-maned horses, and of wilder men who rode the one and drove the other in masterly fas.h.i.+on. For landscape there was rolling prairie, and more rolling prairie beyond; and here and there the eternal brown of it was broken by gray sage-grown flats and stretches of greasewood-as if Nature had made a feeble effort to break the monotony. I knew only this until I was big enough to tease for a pony. I cannot remember seeing a town when I was small. The world to me was a place of great plains, very still, and hot, and dry, a huddle of cabins, and corrals, and a little way to the south Red River slinking over its quicksands-except in time of storm; then it raged.

So that when my father bundled mother and myself off to a place called St. Louis, where great squadrons of houses stood in geometrical arrangement over a vast area, I had already begun to look upon things with the eyes of cattleland. I recollect that when we were settled in a roomy, old-fas.h.i.+oned house I cried because my mother would not let me go out to the corral and play.

"There are no corrals in a city, dear," she explained-and I cried the harder. I could conceive of no joy in a place where I could not go out to the corrals and have some brown-faced cowpuncher hoist me up on a gentle horse and let me hold the reins while the pony moved sedately about.

Left to himself, I think my father would have made a cowman of me, but mother had known the range when it was a place to try the nerves of strong men, and she hated it. I didn't know till I was nearly grown that she had made dad promise when I was born that if the cattle made money for us, I should never know the plains. She came of an old Southern family, and her life had been a sheltered one till she met and married Jack Sumner. And she would have had me walk in pleasant places, as the men of her family had done-doctors, lawyers, planters, and such. The life was too hard, too much of an elemental struggle, she said-and I was to be saved some of the knocks that my dad had taken in the struggling years. Poor mother mine-her son was the son of his father, I'm afraid.

But Sumner _pere_ made good on his promise when the Sumner herds fattened his bank account sufficiently; and I gyrated through school, with college and a yet-to-be-determined career looming on the horizon.

So my childish memories of the great open, that lies naked to the sun-glare and the chilling breath of the _northers_ year on year, grew fainter and more like something of which I had dreamed. Dad would come home occasionally, stay a day or two, perhaps a week, sometimes even a month; but my mother never went west of the Mississippi-nor did I. I often plagued them to let me go to the ranch during vacation, but they evidently considered it best to keep me away from the round-ups and horse-breaking and such, till I was old enough to see that there was another side to the life besides the suns.h.i.+ny, carefree one that makes an irresistible appeal to a youngster.

And then, just a week after my twentieth birthday, my dad, slow-voiced, easy-going old Jack Sumner rode his horse into the smiling Red and drowned under the eyes of twenty men.

I was sitting on our front steps grouching about the heat when the messenger brushed by me with the telegram in his hand. Mother signed for it, and he ran down the steps whistling, and went about his business.

There was no sound within. I had no hint of trouble, till a maid screamed. Then, I rushed in. Mother was drooping over the arm of a Morris chair, and the bit of yellow paper lay on the rug where it had fluttered from her hand. I carried her to a couch, and called a doctor.

But he could do nothing. Her heart was weak, he said, and might have stopped any time; the shock had merely hastened her end.

I'm going to pa.s.s lightly over the week that followed. I was just a kid, remember, and I took it pretty hard. It was my first speaking acquaintance with death. A few of my mother's people came, and when it was over with I went to Virginia with an uncle, a kindly, absent-minded, middle-aged bachelor. But I couldn't settle down. For a week or ten days I fidgeted about the sleepy Southern village, and then I bade my uncle an abrupt good-bye and started for St. Louis. Little as I knew of business and legal matters I was aware that now the Sumner herds and ranches were mine, and I had a hankering to know where I stood. Except that there was a ranch and cattle in Texas I knew nothing of my father's business. It didn't even occur to me, at first, that I was a minor and consequently devoid of power to transact any business of importance. I knew that certain property was rightfully mine, and that was all.

Once in St. Louis, however, I began to get the proper focus on my material interests. It occurred to me that Sumner _pere_ had done more or less business with a certain bank, a private concern engineered by two ultra-conservative citizens named Bolton and Kerr. I hunted them up, thinking that they would likely be able to tell me just what I needed to know. And it happened that by luck I came in the nick of time. A clerk took in my card, and returned immediately for me. I found the senior member, wrapping the bit of pasteboard around his forefinger when I was ushered in. We shook hands, and he motioned to a chair. I asked for information, and I got it, straight from the shoulder. Bolton was very economical in the use of words.

"Yes, I knew your father well. There is a sum of money to his account in the bank. He died intestate," he told me bluntly. "In view of a communication I have just received, you will have little to do with any property until you are of age. The estate is now in the hands of an administrator-appointed by a Texas court. The court will probably order that you be allowed a certain monthly sum until your majority."

"I see," said I thoughtfully; I hadn't considered that phase of it, although in a hazy way I knew something of the regular procedure. "Will our place here be managed by this administrator?"

"Very likely," Bolton returned. "He has served us with a court order for the estate funds now in our hands. But you are legally ent.i.tled to the use and occupancy of the family residence until such time as the estate is appraised and the inventory returned. After that the administrator has discretionary power; he can make any disposition of the property, meanwhile making provision for your support."

"It seems to me," I hazarded, "that some relative should have been appointed."

"Exactly," Bolton nodded. "They made no move, though. And this Texas person acted at once: I dare say it's all right. However, you're a minor. Better have some responsible person appointed your guardian. Then if there's any mismanagement, you can take court action to have it remedied. Frankly, I don't like the look of this haste to administer.

May be all right; may be all wrong."

"See here," I burst out impulsively, for I had taken a sudden liking to this short-spoken individual who talked to me with one foot on a desk and a half-smoked cigar tucked in the corner of his mouth, "what's the matter with you becoming my guardian? None of my people seem to have thought of it. I'm sure we'd get along all right. It would be a mere matter of form, anyway."

He smiled. My naive way of saddling myself upon him, along with a lot of possible responsibilities was doubtless amusing to a hard-headed financier like Bolton. I saw nothing out of the way in such an arrangement at the time. It struck me as a splendid idea, in fact. But he made allowance for my juvenile point of view. s.h.i.+fting his cigar to the other corner of his mouth he surveyed me critically for a few seconds, crinkling his black brows thoughtfully.

"I'll do it," he finally a.s.sented. "The position ought to be a sinecure.

Run in to-morrow morning at ten-thirty, and we'll step around to the courthouse and have the thing legally executed. You're staying at the old place, I suppose?"

"I'm going to," I replied. "I haven't been at the house; I came straight here from the train."

"Well, run along, son," he said good-naturedly. "I'd take you home to my family, only I don't happen to possess one. I live at the club-the Arion-mostly."

"Oh, by the way," he called to me as I neared the door. "How are you off for funds?"

"To tell the truth," I owned, rather shamefacedly, "I'm getting in pretty low water. I think I've some change at home, but I'm not sure.

Dad never gave me a regular allowance; he'd just send me a check now and then, and let it go at that. I'm afraid I'm a pretty good spender."

"You'll have to reform, young man," he warned, mock-seriously. "Here"-he dug a fifty dollar bill out of his pocket-book-"that'll keep you going for a while. I'll keep you in pocket money till this administrator allows you a monthly sum for maintenance. Don't forget the time, now.

Ten-thirty, sharp. Ta ta." And he hustled me out of the office in the midst of my thanks. I was thankful, too, for I'd put it mildly when I told him that I was getting near the rocks. I was on them. I'd paid my last cent for a meal on the train that morning. And while I did feel tolerably sure of finding some loose silver in the pockets of my clothing at home, I knew it would not amount to more than four or five dollars. Oh, I was an improvident youth, all right. The necessity for being careful with money never struck me as being a matter of importance; I'd never had to do stunts in economy, that was the trouble.

From the bank I went straight home. We hadn't kept a very pretentious establishment, even though Sumner _pere_ had gone on increasing his pile all through the years since we'd moved to the city. A cook and a house-maid, a colored coachman and a gardener-the four of them had been with us for years, and old Adam was waiting by the steps for me when I came up the walk, his s.h.i.+ny black face beaming welcome. I had to go to the stable and look over the horses, and tell Adam that everything was fine, before the old duffer would rest.

In the house everything was as I'd left it. All that evening I moped around the big, low-ceiled living-room. There was little comfort in the place; it was too lonely. The hours dragged by on leaden feet. I couldn't get over expecting to see mother come trailing quietly down the wide stairway, or dad walk in the front door packing a battered old grip and greeting me with his slow smile. I know it was silly, but the feeling drove me out of the house and down town, where there was a crush of humans, and the glitter of street lights and the noise of traffic.

There I met a chum or two, and subsequent proceedings tore a jagged hole in Bolton's fifty dollar bill before I landed home in the little hours.

Even then I couldn't sleep in that still, old house.

The long night came to an end, as nights have a habit of doing, and breakfast time brought with it the postman. The mail was mostly papers and other uninteresting junk, but one missive, postmarked Amarillo, Texas, and addressed to myself I opened eagerly. It was from the administrator, as I had surmised.

Most of the communication was taken up with an explanation of how he came to jump into the breach so quickly. He had been, it seemed, a close friend of my father's. He knew that Jack Sumner had a son who was not yet of age, and who, even if he were, knew little or nothing about stock. Things needed looking after, he said; my father's sudden death had left the business without a responsible head, and the ranch foreman and the range boss were bucking each other. Things were going to the devil generally, so he felt called upon to step into the breach, seeing that none of the Sumner family showed up to protect their interests. I wouldn't be under any obligation to him, he frankly explained, for as administrator he would be paid for what he was doing. He also stated that if I felt that my affairs would be more capably managed in the hands of someone whom I knew better he would cheerfully turn over control of the estate without any tiresome litigation. And he concluded his letter with an urgent invitation to come down to headquarters and see the wheels go round for myself. He signed himself in a big heavy hand, Jake Howey, and the signature gave me an impression of a bluff, hard-riding cowman-picturesque and thoroughly Western. If I had been born a girl I expect my disposition would have been termed romantic.

Anyway, Mr. Jake Howey's letter made a hit with me.

When I went to keep my appointment with Bolton later in the forenoon I took the letter with me. He glanced over it, and tucked it back in the envelope.

"I don't much believe in long distance judgment of men," he declared, "but I'd be willing to take a chance on this Texas person. I should say you can expect a square deal from him-if this missive represents his true personality."

"That's the way it struck me, too," I confessed. "I think I'd like to go down there for a while."

"Yes? What about school?" he put in.

"Well, I suppose it's necessary for me to go through college," I admitted. "Dad intended me to. I was to begin this coming school year-September, isn't it? But that's nearly three months away. I would like to see that Red River ranch. I was born there, you know."

"You'll have to cut your eye-teeth in the business sometime," he mused.

"You'll be less likely to get into mischief there than you will in town.

Yes, I daresay you might as well take the trip. But no funking school this fall, mind. I've known youngsters to go to the cattle country and stick there. Your father did."

"I won't," I promised, "even if I want to stay, I'll be ready to dig in when September comes."

"You'd better." He laughed at my earnestness. "Or I'll be down there after you. When do you propose to start?"

"As soon as I can." Having paved the way to go, I wanted, boy-fas.h.i.+on, to be on the way at once.

"Any idea how to get there?" he queried; as if he had his doubts about the development of my b.u.mp of location.

But I had him there.

"Oh, yes. Dad used to take the train through Little Rock to Fort Worth, and on up into the Panhandle from there. Sometimes he took a steamer from here to Memphis. I think I'd like the river trip best."