Sebastian Hand choked as the dust and soot came free in a large brown cloud as he brushed off his jacket. The train rumbled, clanked and belched fire and black ash as it pulled away from the Ellsworth, Kansas, platform. He bent and picked up the two battered carpetbags holding their belongings.

"The town doesn't look like much, does it?" he asked his wife. From the expression on Laura Hand's pinched, sweating face, he knew she wished she were back in Chicago.

"Your brother said he'd meet us. I don't see Randolph anywhere." She pushed a dirty strand of dark hair back under her calico sunbonnet. Shifting impatiently from foot to foot, Laura Hand peered over the heads of others on the crowded railroad platform as she looked for her brother--in-law.

"You know how it is with Randolph," said Hand. "He'd be late for his own funeral."

"Sebastian, please. Don't even joke about such things. Speak of them often enough and they come to pass. You know that."

Hand sighed. Moving from the genteel society of Chicago to the frontier had made his wife edgy. The railroad trip to St. Louis had been easy enough, but Laura had not withstood the riverboat trip down the Mississippi well and had been sick since boarding the Kansas Pacific Railway passenger car in Kansas City. The dust and soot from the engine had turned them as black as the porter.

"Brother! There you are! Over here!" A boisterous voice boomed and drowned out lesser sounds. Randolph Hand hurried from the station master's office, pushing others aside as he hurried to meet them. "I thought I'd missed you." He caught up Laura in a bear hug that almost cracked the small woman's ribs. She pushed back and smiled weakly at the rotund man.

"You gave us a minute's surprise," Hand said, shaking hands with his brother. "I thought you'd lured us to this lovely city and then abandoned us."

"Ellsworth doesn't look like much," Randolph Hand admitted, "but it will. There's growth in all directions. It needs a judge, Sebastian. It needs you."

"It's not every day I'm offered a district judgeship," said Hand. He had worked as a trial lawyer in Chicago for almost two years and had grown tired of it. He felt trapped, at a dead-end in a career that seemed destined to remain forever undistinguished. The money he earned was adequate to support him and Laura, but an intellectual pall had robbed him of any real enjoyment. Worse, he needed a new way to exercise his philosophical leanings.

He wasn't helping anyone. Those he represented were seldom innocent. They were also seldom guilty of more than violating picayune city ordinances. Hand looked along the dusty, narrow street, across the rough-planked board walks and rudely lettered signs and down to the muddy bank of the Smoky River. He had truly arrived at the frontier. No rounded edges here. Sharp, vital, dangerous. Problems needed solving here. Problems a judge could decide.

"The editor of the Reporter wants to talk with you before too long," Randolph said, linking arms with his brother and sister-in-law. "He's just trying to scoop the Abilene Chronicle. Forget about him for now. Let's get on out to my place. Frannie's spent the day cooking. You won't believe the spread she's prepared!"

"Looks as if you've been partaking of that fine home cooking more than you should," said Hand, glancing significantly at his brother's considerable paunch. Randolph laughed and rested a meaty hand on top of it.

"Being a shipping point for all that Texas beef makes meat prices rock-bottom here. Frannie's a right fine cook. The smartest thing I ever did was marrying her. You'll both like her. I'm sure of it." Randolph Hand looked around as they walked to his rig, pointing to the many small cafes. "It's damned near impossible to find a place in town that doesn't serve up prime steaks."

"Other things of a far less palatable nature are served, also, I see," said Laura. She peered curiously at swinging doors leading into a saloon. The smell of stale beer and the sounds of boisterous laughter came from inside.

"That's part of the problem in Ellsworth," Randolph said. "We got a sheriff and an eager police force that wants to keep law and order, but it's just not that easy. The drovers come into town to blow off steam. It gets nasty sometimes."

"That wasn't what got me out here," said Hand. "You mentioned trouble between the homesteaders and the townspeople."

Randolph took their bags and heaved them into the rear of the buckboard. He patted the horse's head and fumbled in a watch pocket for a small lump of sugar. The horse nuzzled him wetly, then took it. A single quick gulp made the sugar vanish. Randolph shook his head to indicate that he had no more. The horse turned away, resigned to pulling three people out of town after having to bring in only one. The pay, a single lump of sugar, didn't seem worth it.

"There's that," Randolph admitted cautiously. "Sometimes it gets violent. Ellsworth has its share of trouble with the Texans, but the folks who live here year 'round are the real source of misery. Nobody'd want to give up the hotels and cafes and prosperity the beeves bring to Ellsworth--nobody except the farmers who complain that the herds destroy their crops and that the cowboys shoot up their houses."

"Are they unable to restrain their animal instincts?" asked Laura.

"Dear, it's hard on the trail," explained Hand. "The drovers don't get paid much. They want to raise a little hell. We just can't allow them to do it at the expense of the homesteaders."

"Well said, brother. Let's hope you get the chance to rule on the herd laws."

"Herd laws?" asked Hand. He helped Laura into the buckboard. She settled down gingerly on the hard seat. Seeing that dust would be a continual problem on the way to Randolph's house, she daintily held a handkerchief over his nose and mouth.

"It has to do with grazing rights. The homesteaders have been trying to get herd laws enacted requiring fences and control on the beeves. Those wanting to graze across the prairie are opposed to such laws, of course. Along with them are the town merchants. The drovers don't cotton much to the notion, and what they don't like, the merchants don't either."

Sebastian Hand smiled as he studied the buildings slowly going past him. This was the type of place where he could make a difference. Disputes had to be settled peacefully, according to law. A strong judge could turn Ellsworth and its violent ways into a civilized city rivalling Chicago.

He cringed as a saloon door blasted outward. A heavy-set cowboy tumbled into the street, flat on his back. The man shook his head and started to rise from the muddy street. A tall, thin man with a sawed-off shotgun stood in the doorway. Hand grabbed his brother's arm and indicated the deadly tableau.

"Don't let it worry you," Randolph Hand said easily. "That's just old Jake throwing out a rowdy cowhand. He hasn't killed anybody in well nigh a month now." He laughed at his small joke and used the reins to get his horse moving faster.

Hand looked at his wife. She had turned deathly pale behind the handkerchief. He started to comfort her but she moved away. He settled down on the hard bench seat and tried to ride out the jolts to his backside caused by the rough, pothole-ridden dirt road and the lack of decent springs on the buckboard. Ellsworth wasn't paradise, but it might be one day.

#

"There's Frannie now!" Randolph Hand urged the horse to work even harder getting up the small incline leading to the simple whitewashed frame house. "She'll have a nice, cool drink waiting for us, you wait and see."

Laura Hand coughed into her handkerchief. She turned cold brown eyes on her husband, accusing him of unspecified crimes. They had been married four years. In that time, he had learned to interpret her subtler signals. There was nothing roundabout her stare now. She openly indicted him for dragging her to this God-forsaken wilderness so far from her native Chicago.

Hand stood and stared across the prairie from this vantage. The land was barren, empty and dry this spring of 1876. Kansas has endured drought and even famine before. Recovery had been swift because of the spirit of the people settling here. He admired that, even as he wondered how anyone could live off this dusty plain that stretched level and empty to the horizon.

"Randolph!" exclaimed Laura. "Why didn't you tell us?"

Hand looked around to see what had brought his wife out of her bad temper. For several seconds he didn't understand. Then he saw the broad grin on his brother's face and the prominent bulge of Frannie Hand's belly.

"Going to be a son, yes, sir," Randolph Hand declared. "He's due about this time next month."

"Congratulations!" Sebastian Hand jumped down, helped Laura to the ground and then pounded his brother on the shoulder. He turned to the pregnant woman and kissed her on the cheek. "Let's hope it's a girl," he said to Frannie. "Dealing with Randolph is hard enough. Having a miniature version around aping him would be too much."

"Do come inside. It's hot and getting hotter. By noontime in Kansas it's unbearable. I've made up some of my special lemonade. Don't have any ice, but the lemonade's good anyway." Frannie and Laura went inside the clapboard house to find the promised liquid, leaving the men to tend to horse and buckboard.

"Surely am glad you saw fit to take the job, Sebastian," said Randolph Hand as he curried the horse. "Ellsworth needs law brought to it."

"You said that the nearest judge was over in Abilene. That's not more than sixty miles off. I'm not disputing the need, but paying a judge looks to be a strain for the town."

Randolph Hand nodded. He led the horse into a stall and fastened a simple rope across the front to keep the horse from straying. "Let's walk a spell and talk. There's plenty of time for you to oh and aw over Frannie's condition."

"You should have told us."

"Wanted it to be a surprise. And I didn't want to think that was what got you out here."

Sebastian Hand stared at his brother and wondered at his real motives for wrangling the judgeship. They had always gotten on well, but it had been more than six years since Hand had seen Randolph. The older brother had taken it into his head that was a fortune to be made in Kansas. Together with four others, Randolph Hand had started a mercantile store in Kansas City. It had prospered, and Sebastian had heard of even more opportunity at the western terminus of the Kansas Pacific Railway. Hand was certain that Randolph had flourished here, as well. The house differed from so many of the half-buried sod huts Hand had seen from the train as they came to Ellsworth.

"Tell me about the town," he said. "How's your store doing?"

"Since the railroad finished the link with Denver, we've done respectably well. Nothing like it was in Kansas City, but we're not hurting any." Randolph Hand took a deep breath. "There's more, Sebastian."

"Why draw it out? Tell me."

"I can see that Laura isn't taking kindly to you dragging her to the edge of the world. Chicago society always appealed to her. I always saw that. Can't rightly understand it. Too many stuffed shirts for my taste. But I can appreciate it."

"She knows what it means to me being offered a judgeship. In Chicago there was no hope of it. Politics dictated differently."

Randolph Hand nodded as he stared out across the sun-baked prairie. "It's better out here. Not much at times. The Grange is controlled by the Republicans and no one who isn't approved gets squat."

"Being appointed judge might come from a political decision," said Sebastian Hand, "but being judge can't be."

"Fine words. Just like you, brother. And I'm happy to hear them. Ellsworth is dying out. It doesn't look it now, but it's true. Dodge City, Abilene, the other towns are taking away the Texas drovers. The railroad helps. Fact is, it's about all that's keeping Ellsworth going."

"The drought is hurting the farmers, isn't it?"

"The Panic of '73 well nigh eliminated most of them. They came back when aid from the East poured in. That didn't set well with many of these proud, folks, though."

"Handouts aren't what they want," agreed Hand.

"They want justice, Sebastian. They want to live good lives without having cattle trampling their fields and eating their silage. They want as town where their families can go without the women being raped and the children accidentally shot in gunfights between drunks. They want freedom from disease brought up from Texas." Randolph Hand spat and wiped his mouth before continuing. "We've been real lucky this year. So far, there hasn't been any Texas fever."

"Splenic fever? From ticks?"

"That's not been showed," Randolph Hand said. "Most of the folks in these parts want a complete quarantine put on the beeves coming in from the south for at least six months to keep their own dairy stock from catching the fever."

Sebastian Hand's thoughts turned to legal decisions about open range and grazing privileges, contagious diseases, quarantine and the more general rules of acceptable public behavior. He wondered how many men had been killed in hotheaded, thoughtless brawls in Ellsworth's many saloons and bawdy houses catering to the Texas drovers. Too many, he guessed.

"The ladies are expecting us inside," said Randolph Hand. He hitched up his drawers and started for the house. His brother stared out across the land and saw a curious beauty to it, in spite of the way Nature had ravaged it with blistering heat and meager spring thundershowers. Sere grass waved in the hot wind and in the far distance a few brown specks that might be cows moved, oblivious to the hammer of the sun's burning intensity.

"Sebastian, you coming? I got a passel of boxes for you. I reckon they must be your law books. They arrived days ago."

"My books!" The thought of again running his fingers over the finely grained leather bindings confirmed what he already knew. He wanted to be judge in this savage land. And by all that was holy, he'd be a good judge.

Sebastian Hand slipped into the coolness of his brother's house and quickly lost himself in acquainting himself with a sister-in-law he'd never met and the prospect of being an uncle.

And judge. Always that, he kept reminding himself proudly. Always that.

copyright  ©  1989 Robert E. Vardeman