'Firebrand' Trevison - Charles Alden Seltzer (top 10 books of all time .txt) 📗

The West saw many “boom” towns. They followed in the wake of “gold strikes;” they grew, mushroom-like, overnight—garish husks of squalor, palpitating, hardy, a-tingle with extravagant hopes. A few, it is true, lived to become substantial cities buzzing with the American spirit, panting, fighting for progress with an energy that shamed the Old World, lethargic in its smug and self-sufficient superiority. But many towns died in their gangling youth, tragic monuments to hopes; but monuments also to effort, and to the pioneer courage and the dreams of an empire-building people.

Manti was destined to live. It was a boom town with material reasons for substantial growth. Behind it were the resources of a railroad company which would anticipate the development of a section of country bigger than a dozen Old-world states, and men with brains keen enough to realize the commercial possibilities it held. It had Corrigan for an advance agent—big, confident, magnetic, energetic, suave, smooth.

Manti had awaited his coming; he was the magic force, the fulfillment of the rumored promise. He had stayed away for three weeks, following his departure on the special car after bringing Judge Lindman, and when he stepped off the car again at the end of that time Manti was “humming,” as he had predicted. During the three weeks of his absence, the switch at Manti had never been unoccupied. Trains had been coming in regularly bearing merchandise, men, tools, machines, supplies. Engineers had arrived; the basin near Manti, choked by a narrow gorge at its westerly end (where the dam was to be built) was dotted with tents, wagons, digging implements, a miscellany of material whose hauling had worn a rutted trail over the plains and on the slope of the basin, continually active with wagon-train and pack horse, and articulate with sweating, cursing drivers.

“She’s a pippin!” gleefully confided a sleek-looking individual who might have been mistaken for a western “parson” had it not been for a certain sophisticated cynicism that was prominent about him, and which imparted a distasteful taint of his profession. “Give me a year of this and I’ll open a joint in Frisco! I cleaned out a brace of bull-whackers in the Plaza last night—their first pay. Afterward I stung a couple of cattlemen for a hundred each. Look at her hum!”

Notwithstanding that it was midday, Manti was teeming with life and action. Since the day that Miss Benham had viewed the town from the window of the private car, Manti had added more than a hundred buildings to its total. They were not attractive; they were ludicrous in their pitiful masquerade of substantial types. Here and there a three-story structure reared aloft, sheathed with galvanized iron, a garish aristocrat seemingly conscious of its superiority, brazen, in its bid for attention; more modest buildings seemed dwarfed, humiliated, squatting sullenly and enviously. There were hotels, rooming-houses, boarding-houses, stores, dwellings, saloons—and others which for many reasons need not be mentioned. But they were pulsating with life, electric, eager, expectant. Taking advantage of the scarcity of buildings, an enterprising citizen had erected tents in rows on the street line, for whose shelter he charged enormously—and did a capacity business.

“A hundred came in on the last train,” complained the over-worked station agent. “God knows what they all expect to do here!”

Corrigan had kept his promise to build Judge Lindman a courthouse. It was a flat-roofed structure, one story high, wedged between a saloon and Braman’s bank building. A sign in the front window of Braman’s bank announced that Jefferson Corrigan, agent of the Land & Improvement Company, of New York, had office space within, but on the morning of the day following his return to Manti, Corrigan was seated at one side of a flat-top desk in the courthouse, talking with Judge Lindman, who sat at the other side.

“Got them all transcribed?” asked Corrigan.

The Judge drew a thin ledger from his desk and passed it over to Corrigan. As Corrigan turned the pages and his face lighted, the Judge’s grew correspondingly troubled.

“All right,” exulted Corrigan. “This purports to be an accurate and true record of all the land transactions in this section from the special grant to the Midland Company, down to date. It shows no intermediate owners from the Midland Company to the present claimants. As a document arraigning carelessness on the part of land buyers it cannot be excelled. There isn’t a present owner that has a legal leg to stand on!”

“There is only one weak point in your case,” said the Judge, and his eyes gleamed with satisfaction, which he concealed by bowing his head. “It is that since these records show no sale of its property by the Midland Company, the Midland Company can come forward and re-establish its title.”

Corrigan laughed and flipped a legal-looking paper in front of the Judge. The latter opened it and read, showing eagerness. He laid it down after reading, his hands trembling.

“It shows that the Midland Company—James Marchmont, president—transferred to Jefferson Corrigan, on a date prior to these other transactions, one-hundred thousand acres of land here—the Midland Company’s entire holdings. Why, man, it is forgery!”

“No,” said Corrigan quietly. “James Marchmont is alive. He signed his name right where it is. He’ll confirm it, too, for he happens to be in something of the fix that you are in. Therefore, there being no records of any sales on your books—as revised, of course—” he laughed; “Jeff Corrigan is the legal possessor of one-hundred thousand acres of land right in the heart of what is going to be the boom section of the West!” He chuckled, lit a cigar, leaned back in his chair and looked at the Judge. “All you have to do now is to enter that transaction on your records.”

“You don’t expect the present owners to yield their titles without a fight, do you?” asked the Judge. He spoke breathlessly.

Corrigan grunted. “Sure; they’ll fight. But they’ll lose. I’ve got them. I’ve got the power—the courts—the law, behind me. I’ve got them, and I’ll squeeze them. It means a mint of money, man. It will make you. It’s the biggest thing that any man ever attempted to pull off in this country!”

“Yes, it’s big,” groaned the Judge; “it’s stupendous! It’s frightful! Why, man, if anything goes wrong, it would mean—” He paused and shivered.

Corrigan smiled contemptuously. “Where’s the original record?” he asked.

“I destroyed it,” said the Judge. He did not look at Corrigan. “How?” demanded the latter.

“Burned it.”

“Good.” Corrigan rubbed his palms together. “It’s too soon to start anything. Things are booming, and some of these owners will be trying to sell. Hold them off—don’t record anything. Give them any excuse that comes to your mind. Have you heard from Washington?”

“The establishment of the court here has been confirmed.”

“Quick work,” laughed Corrigan. He got up, murmuring something about having to take care of some leases. When he turned, it was to start and stand rigid, his jaws set, his face pale. A man stood in the open doorway—a man of about fifty apparently, furtive-eyed, slightly shabby, though with an atmosphere about him that hinted of past dignity of carriage.

“Jim Marchmont!” said Corrigan. He stepped forward, threateningly, his face dark with wrath. Without speaking another word he seized the newcomer by the coat collar, snapping his head back savagely, and dragged him back of a wooden partition. Concealed there from any of the curious in the street, he jammed Marchmont against the wall of the building, held him there with one hand and stuck a huge fist into his face.

“What in hell are you doing here?” he demanded. “Come clean, or I’ll tear you apart!”

The other laughed, but there was no mirth in it, and his thin lips were curved queerly, and were stiff and white. “Don’t get excited, Jeff,” he said; “it won’t be healthy.” And Corrigan felt something hard and cold against his shirt front. He knew it was a pistol and he released his hold and stepped back.

“Speaking of coming clean,” said Marchmont. “You crossed me. You told me you were going to sell the Midland land to two big ranch-owners. I find that you’re going to cut it up into lots and make big money—loads of it. You handed me a measly thousand. You stand to make millions. I want my divvy.”

“You’ve got your nerve,” scoffed Corrigan. “You got your bit when you sold the Midland before. You’re a self-convicted crook, and if you make a peep out here I’ll send you over the road for a thousand years!”

“Another thousand now,” said Marchmont: “and ten more when you commence to cash in. Otherwise, a thousand years or not, I’ll start yapping here and queer your game.”

Corrigan’s lips were in an ugly pout. For an instant it seemed he was going to defy his visitor. Then without a word to him he stepped around the partition, walked out the door and entered the bank. A few minutes later he passed a bundle of greenbacks to Marchmont and escorted him to the front door, where he stood, watching, his face unpleasant, until Marchmont vanished into one of