: Emerson Hough
: 54-40 or Fight
: Sheba Blake Publishing
: 9783962177799
: 1
: CHF 3.60
:
: Hauptwerk vor 1945
: English
: 207
: kein Kopierschutz
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
For much of the nineteenth century, the boundaries of the United States were in flux. Frontier lawyer turned Western writer Emerson Hough takes on the topic of one such border controversy in the novel 54-40 or Fight, an action-packed account of the campaign to wrest control of the Pacific Northwest from the British. Emerson Hough (1857-1923) was an American author best known for writing western stories and historical novels. Hough was born in Newton, Iowa on June 28, 1857. He was in Newton High School's first graduating class of three in 1875. He graduated from the University of Iowa with a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1880 and later studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1882. His first article, 'Far From The Madding Crowd,' was published in Forest and Stream in 1882. He moved to White Oaks, New Mexico, practiced law there, and wrote for the White Oaks newspaper Golden Era for a year and a half, returning to Iowa when his mother was ill. He later wrote Story of the Outlaw, A Study of the Western Desperado, which included profiles of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. Hough moved to New Mexico after Garrett shot Billy the Kid, and he became a friend of Garrett. He wrote for various newspapers in Des Moines, Iowa, Sandusky, Ohio, Chicago, Illinois, St. Louis, Missouri, and Wichita, Kansas. In 1889 he got a position as western editor of Forest and Stream, editing the 'Chicago and the West' column. He was hired by George Bird Grinnell, the owner of Field and Stream, who founded the Audubon Society in 1886 which, along with Theodore Roosevelt's Boone and Crockett Club, was a leader in the conservation movement.

CHAPTER I


THE MAKERS OF MAPS

 

There is scarcely a single cause in which a woman is not engaged in some way fomenting the suit.--Juvenal.

"Then you offer me no hope, Doctor?" The gray mane of Doctor Samuel Ward waved like a fighting crest as he made answer:

"Not the sort of hope you ask." A moment later he added:"John, I am ashamed of you."

The cynical smile of the man I called my chief still remained upon his lips, the same drawn look of suffering still remained upon his gaunt features; but in his blue eye I saw a glint which proved that the answer of his old friend had struck out some unused spark of vitality from the deep, cold flint of his heart.

"I never knew you for a coward, Calhoun," went on Doctor Ward,"nor any of your family I give you now the benefit of my personal acquaintance with this generation of the Calhouns. I ask something more of you than faint-heartedness."

The keen eyes turned upon him again with the old flame of flint which a generation had known--a generation, for the most part, of enemies. On my chief's face I saw appear again the fighting flush, proof of his hard-fibered nature, ever ready to rejoin with challenge when challenge came.

"Did not Saul fall upon his own sword?" asked John Calhoun."Have not devoted leaders from the start of the world till now sometimes rid the scene of the responsible figures in lost fights, the men on whom blame rested for failures?"

"Cowards!" rejoined Doctor Ward."Cowards, every one of them! Were there not other swords upon which they might have fallen--those of their enemies?"

"It is not my own hand--my own sword, Sam," said Calhoun."Not that. You know as well as I that I am already marked and doomed, even as I sit at my table to-night. A walk of a wet night here in Washington--a turn along the Heights out there when the winter wind is keen--yes, Sam, I see my grave before me, close enough; but how can I rest easy in that grave? Man, we have not yet dreamed how great a country this may be. Wemust have Texas. Wemust have also Oregon. We must have--"

"Free?" The old doctor shrugged his shoulders and smiled at the arch pro-slavery exponent.

"Then, since you mention it, yes!" retorted Calhoun fretfully."But I shall not go into the old argument of those who say that black is white, that South is North. It is only for my own race that I plan a wider America. But then--" Calhoun raised a long, thin hand."Why," he went on slowly,"I have just told you that I have failed. And yet you, my old friend, whom I ought to trust, condemn me to live on!"

Doctor Samuel Ward took snuff again, but all the answer he made was to waggle his gray mane and stare hard at the face of the other.

"Yes," said he, at length,"I condemn you to fight on, John;" and he smiled grimly.

"Why, look at you, man!" he broke out fiercely, after a moment."The type and picture of combat! Good bone, fine bone and hard; a hard head and bony; little eye, set deep; strong, wiry muscles, not too big--fighting muscles, not dough; clean limbs; strong fingers; good arms, legs, neck; wide chest--"

"Then you give me hope?" Calhoun flashed a smile at him.

"No, sir! If you do your duty, there is no hope for you to live. If you do not do your duty, there is no hope for you to die, John Calhoun, for more than two years to come--perhaps five years--six. Keep up this work--as you must, my friend--and you die as surely as though I shot you through as you sit there. Now, is this any comfort to you?"

A gray pallor overspread my master's face. That truth is welcome to no man, morbid or sane, sound or ill; but brave men meet it as this one did.

"Time to do much