The Bluffton news. [volume] (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-current, 1942-05-28
CHAPTER 1

sheer drop of fourteen hundred and
sixty feet; and even on the quietest
day stream of warm air from the
desert boiled up the face of the rim,
SO that if a man stood at the break
off and tossed his hat outward it
invariably sailed back to him. Clay
Morgan had shown this to his
daughter Janet long ago. 1t was a
part of their ritual on the trip to
town, and as soon as they reached
the rim this afternoon, she remind
ed him of it again; whereupon he
sailed his hat across the rim, caught
it on the rebound, and witnessed her
delighted smile. Afterwards they
turned downgrade on a road steeply
and narrowly cut against the face
of the mountain.
AS they descended she began to
recite lines of "Hiawatha," in prep
aration for a school play. Riding
slightly back of her, Clay Morgan
watched her small arms gesture
and her naturally sober face tighten
and grow family dramatic. To him
it was matter of never-ending as
tonishment that one nine-year-old
girls head could hold so much.
The silence and the slow way she
had of judging people came from
him. The vivid imagination and the
growing beauty came from her
mother. 1t was something Clay Nor
gan had watched for, through the
years-and yet, much as he had ex-
pected it, it still was strange to see
in this girl the image of a woman
nine years dead, to know that the
tempestuous Lila who had been his
wife now reached out of the grave
to remind him of the one brief and
violent and miserable and beautiful
year of their marriage. In the be-
ginning she had said she loved him;
she had died hating him.
Powder Desert began at the bot
tom of the grade. Sand and sage
brush hummocks, built by the east
wind, Icy before them; around these
lumpy barriers, high as mans
shoulders, meandered the deep twin
ruts of the road. This September
days sun was half-down in the west
and heat lay heavy on the fiat;
and in the near distance, on the
benchland at the head of the desert,
the houses of War Pass made an
irregular outline. Toward this cat
tie town they travelled, Janet
dreaming her nine-year-old dreams
in sober stiffness, Clay Morgan hold
ing his clear intimations of trouble
ahead.
Turning at the corner of Gentry's
corral, Clay Morgan faced the
length of Main Street, with its dou-
BILE row of angular wooden buildings
and its deep golden dust. Under the
courthouse locusts at the corner of
Main and Stage, large group of
men idly waited; and he knew then
that the trial of the rustler, Ollie
Jacks, was still unfinished.
He dismounted by the stable and
permitted both horses to nose into
the water trough before tying them
to the rack. Janet said: II am 60
ing to Ann McGarrah's, Daddy"
She always had a quick smile for
him when she mentioned Ann Nc
Garrah's name, as though there
might be some secret involved. II
think" she added, 1--WE will eat sup
per there"-and watched him mo-
ment with her observant eyes.
"You seem pretty sure of that"
Morgan remained near the sta
ble's hitching-rack to roll up quick
smoke. But he was never a man
to let his eyes be idle; thus now,
while his fingers tapered off the Gig
arctic his glance ran down the
street, past the courthouse and post
office and the Long Grade saloon,
past the Mountain House hotel and
beyond that to the little cluster OF
brick and dobe buildings of Old
Town. Two cross-streets dropped
from higher level of the hillside.
Up there sat the high, square, IRON
ornamented houses owned by the
wealthier merchants and the big
cattlemen who liked to winter their
families in town. This was four
o'clock and already the street was
in shadow, though the far desert
burned up its brown-gray glitter.
Jesse Rusey, the towns marshal,
cruised the walk-short, broad body
swinging little. He had the shoul-
ders of wrestler; above the sweep
of his mustaches was glance as
cool as flint. This man had kind
of rocky solidness, kind of formid-
able courtesy. He said, How are
you, Clay?" and passed by.
Charley Hillhouse and Hack
Breathitt broke from the courthouse
group and walked toward him, their
boots putting up the streets dust;
but for a moment he remained
slackly by the hitching-rack, his
mind picking away at the mystery
of Jesse Rusey. This town marshal
had been in War Pass for twenty
years, yet nobody knew him, or
knew what he thought, or knew
where his sympathies actually lay.
Hillhouse and Breathitt came
cheerfully forward and for a mo-
ment these three fast friends stood
by the hitching-rack and swapped
gossip, pleased to be together again.
All of them had grown up in the
country, they had gone to school
together and had worked and hunt
ed and had their fun together, and
in trouble had stood inseparably side
by side. Clay Morgan said: Moth
ing new on Ollie Jacks ye.?"
Hillhouse shrugged his shoulders:
"They been arguing about it since
noon. I don't see nothin' to argue
about. We caught Ollie dead in his
tracks, bendin' over Three Pines