



Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net.

THE LAND OF FROZEN SUNS

A Novel

BY

BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR

Author of "Raw Gold," Etc.




Copyright 1909, BY
STREET & SMITH.

Copyright, 1910, BY
G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY.

The Land of Frozen Suns.

Made in U. S. A.




Contents


  - CHAPTER I--THE GENESIS OF TROUBLE
  - CHAPTER II--BY WAY OF THE "NEW MOON"
  - CHAPTER III--WHICH SHOWS THAT THE WORM DOES NOT ALWAYS TURN
  - CHAPTER IV--A FORTHRIGHT FIGHTING-MAN
  - CHAPTER V--THE RELATIVE MERITS OF THE FRYING-PAN AND THE FIRE
  - CHAPTER VI--SLOWFOOT GEORGE
  - CHAPTER VII--THE SEAT OF THE SCORNFUL
  - CHAPTER VIII--BY WAYS THAT WERE DARK
  - CHAPTER IX--MR. MONTELL
  - CHAPTER X--"THERE'S MONEY IN IT"
  - CHAPTER XI--A TRICK OF THE "TRADE."
  - CHAPTER XII--THE FIRST MOVE
  - CHAPTER XIII--A FORETASTE OF STRONG MEASURES
  - CHAPTER XIV--INTEREST ON A DEBT
  - CHAPTER XV--STRANGERS TWAIN
  - CHAPTER XVI--CLAWS UNSHEATHED
  - CHAPTER XVII--NINE POINTS OF THE LAW
  - CHAPTER XVIII--THE LONG ARM OF THE COMPANY
  - CHAPTER XIX--THE STRENGTH OF MEN--AND THEIR WEAKNESS




CHAPTER I--THE GENESIS OF TROUBLE


Who was it, I wonder, made that sagacious remark about the road to hell
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
circumstances. 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, shaggy-maned horses, and of wilder men
who rode the one and drove the other in masterly fashion. 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-fashioned 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 sunshiny, 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 pass 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 entitled 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. Shifting 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 assented. "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  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 shiny 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