The Man of Last Resort/The Governor's Machine/Chapter 3
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 collar.
“Bumgarner,” he said softly, “you are a frightful example of man's neglect. You have been trained by a Massachusetts Yankee. Ergo, your lack of knowledge is sublime. Bitters you might put in a plebeian gin fizz, and be happy thereafter. Bitters you might put in a high ball of whiskey, and live thereafter. But bitters in a julep, magnum sacrum! the gods would crush you! Bumgarner, you are an awful throbbing error, and you have had a providential escape from death. Now,” continued the Major, seizing the Chinaman by the shoulder and turning him toward the door, “you may depart, and burn a few joss sticks, and ponder upon my remarks.”
The almond-eyed Celestial vanished, wondering vaguely if it had not been better to remain in San Francisco and launder shirts in a cellar than to attempt to cater to the depraved taste of such incomprehensible foreign devils.
“Now, Bill,” continued the Major, seating himself at the table, “I want to know what you are going to do.”
“About what?” asked the gambler.
“About this money which you owe the State,” said the Major. “Do you realize, sir, that our stand in the Southwest is just about closing, and that we have got to square up and pull out?”
“I reckon so,” replied the gambler, as though it were a matter of no importance.
“You reckon so! You irresponsible truck horse! You reckon so!” snorted the Major. “You will cease to indulge in the dainty pastime of speculation when you get a log-chain on your leg and a striped suit on your back.”
The Secretary of State laughed. “Something will turn up,” he said.
“Ambercrombie Hergan,” said the Major, pounding the table with his hand, “for a broken, a branded, a long-suffering cow pony of Satan, you have the blindest, most stupendous Presbyterian faith in Providence of any white creature ambling south of the Central Pacific Railroad; but you 're sweetening on a bluff this hand, and I am going to call you.”
The gambler's face grew serious. “What are you prodding for, Ned?” he asked.
The Auditor leaned forward on the table. “You are planning to slide out,” he said, “and it don't go.”
“Would it hurt you or Al?” asked the gambler anxiously.
The Auditor reached over and placed his hand on Hergan's arm. “It would not hurt me,” he continued, “and it would be no bones if it did, but it would hurt the boy, and he must not be hurt. Don't you know that the moment you are gone, Randal will sacrifice everything he possesses and pay up the deficit? And that would ruin him.”
The gambler's face lengthened. “I had not thought about that,” he said slowly, “but you are right, he would do that. He is that sort of a man. I have been a fool, an infernal fool, but I did not think about the boy getting hurt, not once.” The man shut his teeth tight together and the big muscles swelled out on his jaws.
The Auditor sat and watched the man across the table from him, and admired his iron nerve in the terrible struggle to decide between himself and the welfare of his friend. The man was evidently suffering. His face showed it plainly; the battle must be a bitter one. The Auditor wondered how it would result. He pitied the man, and in spite of all, half hoped that he would decide to save himself.
Presently the gambler turned slowly and lifted his face, white, haggard, ten years older than he had been an hour before.
“I don't see how to keep him from doing it,” he muttered; “I don't see how.”
The Auditor started. This man had not been thinking of himself at all.
“You see,” continued Hergan. “I am about fifty thousand short, and there is no way to raise that much money,—no way in God's world. If I slide over the Rio, Al will pay it to keep them from extraditing me; and if I stay here, he will pay it to keep them from sending me to the Pen. It's the devil's own trap, and works both ways.”
“Who got the money, Bill?” asked the Auditor.
“Crawley, and old Martin, of the Golden Horn Mining Company. Crawley got most of it.”
“A plague of fat old gamblers,” said the Major, solemnly; “they are both as rich as they are mean, and as mean as they are crooked.”
At this moment the door opened and the Governor entered.