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Bexar Scrip No. 2692

Short Stories

"Fox-in-the-Morning"

A Bird of Bagdad

A Blackjack Bargainer

A Call Loan

A Chaparral Christmas Gift

A Chaparral Prince

A Comedy in Rubber

A Cosmopolite in a Cafe

A Departmental Case

A Dinner at--------*

A Double-Dyed Deceiver

A Fog in Santone

A Harlem Tragedy

A Lickpenny Lover

A Little Local Colour

A Little Talk about Mobs

A Madison Square Arabian Night

A Matter of Mean Elevation

A Midsummer Knight's Dream

A Midsummer Masquerade

A Municipal Report

A Newspaper Story

A Night in New Arabia

A Philistine in Bohemia

A Poor Rule

A Ramble in Aphasia

A Retrieved Reformation

A Ruler of Men

A Sacrifice Hit

A Service of Love

A Snapshot at the President

A Strange Story

A Technical Error

A Tempered Wind

According to Their Lights

After Twenty Years

An Adjustment of Nature

An Afternoon Miracle

An Apology

An Unfinished Christmas Story

An Unfinished Story

Aristocracy Versus Hash

Art and the Bronco

At Arms With Morpheus

Babes in the Jungle

Best-Seller

Between Rounds

Bexar Scrip No. 2692

Blind Man's Holiday

Brickdust Row

Buried Treasure

By Courier

Calloway's Code

Caught

Cherchez La Femme

Christmas by Injunction

Compliments of the Season

Confessions of a Humorist

Conscience in Art

Cupid a La Carte

Cupid's Exile Number Two

Dickey

Dougherty's Eye-Opener

Elsie in New York

Extradited from Bohemia

Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled

Friends in San Rosario

From Each According to His Ability

From the Cabby's Seat

Georgia's Ruling

Girl

He Also Serves

Hearts and Crosses

Hearts and Hands

Helping the Other Fellow

Holding Up a Train

Hostages to Momus

Hygeia at the Solito

Innocents of Broadway

Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet

Jimmy Hayes and Muriel

Law and Order

Let Me Feel Your Pulse

Little Speck in Garnered Fruit

Lord Oakhurst's Curse

Lost on Dress Parade

Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches

Makes the Whole World Kin

Mammon and the Archer

Man About Town

Masters of Arts

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

Modern Rural Sports

Money Maze

Nemesis and the Candy Man

New York by Camp Fire Light

Next to Reading Matter

No Story

October and June

On Behalf of the Management

One Dollar's Worth

One Thousand Dollars

Out of Nazareth

Past One at Rooney's

Phoebe

Proof of the Pudding

Psyche and the Pskyscraper

Queries and Answers

Roads of Destiny

Roses, Ruses and Romance

Rouge et Noir

Round the Circle

Rus in Urbe

Schools and Schools

Seats of the Haughty

Shearing the Wolf

Ships

Shoes

Sisters of the Golden Circle

Smith

Sociology in Serge and Straw

Sound and Fury

Springtime a La Carte

Squaring the Circle

Strictly Business

Strictly Business

Suite Homes and Their Romance

Telemachus, Friend

The Admiral

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

The Assessor of Success

The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear

The Badge of Policeman O'Roon

The Brief Debut of Tildy

The Buyer From Cactus City

The Caballero's Way

The Cactus

The Caliph and the Cad

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

The Call of the Tame

The Chair of Philanthromathematics

The Champion of the Weather

The Church with an Overshot-Wheel

The City of Dreadful Night

The Clarion Call

The Coming-Out of Maggie

The Complete Life of John Hopkins

The Cop and the Anthem

The Count and the Wedding Guest

The Country of Elusion

The Day Resurgent

The Day We Celebrate

The Defeat of the City

The Detective Detector

The Diamond of Kali

The Discounters of Money

The Dog and the Playlet

The Door of Unrest

The Dream

The Duel

The Duplicity of Hargraves

The Easter of the Soul

The Emancipation of Billy

The Enchanted Kiss

The Enchanted Profile

The Ethics of Pig

The Exact Science of Matrimony

The Ferry of Unfulfilment

The Fifth Wheel

The Flag Paramount

The Fool-Killer

The Foreign Policy of Company 99

The Fourth in Salvador

The Friendly Call

The Furnished Room

The Gift of the Magi

The Girl and the Graft

The Girl and the Habit

The Gold That Glittered

The Greater Coney

The Green Door

The Guardian of the Accolade

The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss

The Hand that Riles the World

The Handbook of Hymen

The Harbinger

The Head-Hunter

The Hiding of Black Bill

The Higher Abdication

The Higher Pragmatism

The Hypotheses of Failure

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson

The Lady Higher Up

The Last Leaf

The Last of the Troubadours

The Lonesome Road

The Lost Blend

The Lotus And The Bottle

The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein

The Making of a New Yorker

The Man Higher Up

The Marionettes

The Marquis and Miss Sally

The Marry Month of May

The Memento

The Missing Chord

The Moment of Victory

The Octopus Marooned

The Passing of Black Eagle

The Pendulum

The Phonograph and the Graft

The Pimienta Pancakes

The Plutonian Fire

The Poet and the Peasant

The Pride of the Cities

The Princess and the Puma

The Prisoner of Zembla

The Proem

The Purple Dress

The Ransom of Mack

The Ransom of Red Chief

The Rathskeller and the Rose

The Red Roses of Tonia

The Reformation of Calliope

The Remnants of the Code

The Renaissance at Charleroi

The Roads We Take

The Robe of Peace

The Romance of a Busy Broker

The Rose of Dixie

The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball

The Rubber Plant's Story

The Shamrock and the Palm

The Shocks of Doom

The Skylight Room

The Sleuths

The Snow Man

The Social Triangle

The Song and the Sergeant

The Sparrows in Madison Square

The Sphinx Apple

The Tale of a Tainted Tenner

The Theory and the Hound

The Thing's the Play

The Third Ingredient

The Trimmed Lamp

The Unknown Quantity

The Unprofitable Servant

The Venturers

The Vitagraphoscope

The Voice of the City

The Whirligig of Life

The World and the Door

Thimble, Thimble

Tictocq

To Him Who Waits

Tobin's Palm

Tommy's Burglar

Tracked to Doom

Transformation of Martin Burney

Transients in Arcadia

Two Recalls

Two Renegades

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

Ulysses and the Dogman

Vanity and Some Sables

What You Want

While the Auto Waits

Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking

Witches' Loaves







Whenever you visit Austin you should by all means go to see the General
Land Office.

As you pass up the avenue you turn sharp round the corner of the court
house, and on a steep hill before you you see a medieval castle.

You think of the Rhine; the "castled crag of Drachenfels"; the Lorelei;
and the vine-clad slopes of Germany. And German it is in every line of
its architecture and design.

The plan was drawn by an old draftsman from the "Vaterland," whose heart
still loved the scenes of his native land, and it is said he reproduced
the design of a certain castle near his birthplace, with remarkable
fidelity.

Under the present administration a new coat of paint has vulgarized its
ancient and venerable walls. Modern tiles have replaced the limestone
slabs of its floors, worn in hollows by the tread of thousands of feet,
and smart and gaudy fixtures have usurped the place of the time-worn
furniture that has been consecrated by the touch of hands that Texas
will never cease to honor.

But even now, when you enter the building, you lower your voice, and
time turns backward for you, for the atmosphere which you breathe is
cold with the exudation of buried generations.

The building is stone with a coating of concrete; the walls are
immensely thick; it is cool in the summer and warm in the winter; it is
isolated and sombre; standing apart from the other state buildings,
sullen and decaying, brooding on the past.

Twenty years ago it was much the same as now; twenty years from now the
garish newness will be worn off and it will return to its appearance of
gloomy decadence.

People living in other states can form no conception of the vastness and
importance of the work performed and the significance of the millions of
records and papers composing the archives of this office.

The title deeds, patents, transfers and legal documents connected with
every foot of land owned in the state of Texas are filed here.

Volumes could be filled with accounts of the knavery, the
double-dealing, the cross purposes, the perjury, the lies, the bribery,
the alteration and erasing, the suppressing and destroying of papers,
the various schemes and plots that for the sake of the almighty dollar
have left their stains upon the records of the General Land Office.

No reference is made to the employees. No more faithful, competent and
efficient force of men exists in the clerical portions of any
government, but there is--or was, for their day is now over--a class of
land speculators commonly called land sharks, unscrupulous and greedy,
who have left their trail in every department of this office, in the
shape of titles destroyed, patents cancelled, homes demolished and torn
away, forged transfers and lying affidavits.

Before the modern tiles were laid upon the floors, there were deep
hollows in the limestone slabs, worn by the countless feet that daily
trod uneasily through its echoing corridors, pressing from file room to
business room, from commissioner's sanctum to record books and back
again.

The honest but ignorant settler, bent on saving the little plot of land
he called home, elbowed the wary land shark who was searching the
records for evidence to oust him; the lordly cattle baron, relying on
his influence and money, stood at the Commissioner's desk side by side
with the preemptor, whose little potato patch lay like a minute speck of
island in the vast, billowy sea, of his princely pastures, and played
the old game of "freeze-out," which is as old as Cain and Abel.

The trail of the serpent is through it all.

Honest, earnest men have wrought for generations striving to disentangle
the shameful coil that certain years of fraud and infamy have wound.
Look at the files and see the countless endorsements of those in
authority

"Transfer doubtful--locked up."

"Certificate a forgery--locked up."

"Signature a forgery."

"Patent refused--duplicate patented elsewhere."

"Field notes forged."

"Certificates stolen from office"--and soon ad infinitum.

The record books, spread upon long tables, in the big room upstairs, are
open to the examination of all. Open them, and you will find the dark
and greasy finger prints of half a century's handling. The quick hand of
the land grabber has fluttered the leaves a million times; the damp
clutch of the perturbed tiller of the soil has left traces of his
calling on the ragged leaves.

Interest centres in the file room.

This is a large room, built as a vault, fireproof, and entered by but a
single door.

There is "No Admission" on the portal; and the precious files are handed
out by a clerk in charge only on presentation of an order signed by the
Commissioner or chief clerk.

In years past too much laxity prevailed in its management, and the files
were handled by all corners, simply on their request, and returned at
their will, or not at all.

In these days most of the mischief was done. In the file room, there are
about ---- files, each in a paper wrapper, and comprising the title
papers of a particular tract of land.

You ask the clerk in charge for the papers relating to any survey in
Texas. They are arranged simply in districts and numbers.

He disappears from the door, you hear the sliding of a tin box, the lid
snaps, and the file is in your hand.

Go up there some day and call for Bexar Scrip No. 2692.

The file clerk stares at you for a second, says shortly:

"Out of file."

It has been missing twenty years.

The history of that file has never been written before.

Twenty years ago there was a shrewd land agent living in Austin who
devoted his undoubted talents and vast knowledge of land titles, and the
laws governing them, to the locating of surveys made by illegal
certificates, or improperly made, and otherwise of no value through
non-compliance with the statutes, or whatever flaws his ingenious and
unscrupulous mind could unearth.

He found a fatal defect in the title of the land as on file in Bexar
Scrip No. 2692 and placed a new certificate upon the survey in his own
name.

The law was on his side.

Every sentiment of justice, of right, and humanity was against him.

The certificate by virtue of which the original survey had been made was
missing.

It was not be found in the file, and no memorandum or date on the
wrapper to show that it had ever been filed.

Under the law the land was vacant, unappropriated public domain, and
open to location.

The land was occupied by a widow and her only son, and she supposed her
title good.

The railroad had surveyed a new line through the property, and it had
doubled in value.

Sharp, the land agent, did not communicate with her in any way until he
had filed his papers, rushed his claim through the departments and into
the patent room for patenting.

Then he wrote her a letter, offering her the choice of buying from him
or vacating at once.

He received no reply.

One day he was looking through some files and came across the missing
certificate. Some one, probably an employee of the office, had by
mistake, after making some examination, placed it in the wrong file, and
curiously enough another inadvertence, in there being no record of its
filing on the wrapper, had completed the appearance of its having never
been filed.

Sharp called for the file in which it belonged and scrutinized it
carefully, fearing he might have overlooked some endorsement regarding
its return to the office.

On the back of the certificate was plainly endorsed the date of filing,
according to law, and signed by the chief clerk.

If this certificate should be seen by the examining clerk, his own
claim, when it came up for patenting, would not be worth the paper on
which it was written.

Sharp glanced furtively around. A young man, or rather a boy about
eighteen years of age, stood a few feet away regarding him closely with
keen black eyes. Sharp, a little confused, thrust the certificate into
the file where it properly belonged and began gathering up the other
papers.

The boy came up and leaned on the desk beside him.

"A right interesting office, sir!" he said. "I have never been in here
before. All those papers, now, they are about lands, are they not? The
titles and deeds, and such things?"

"Yes," said Sharp. "They are supposed to contain all the title papers."

"This one, now," said the boy, taking up Bexar Scrip No. 2692, "what
land does this represent the title of? Ah, I see 'Six hundred and forty
acres in B---- country? Absalom Harris, original grantee.' Please tell
me, I am so ignorant of these things, how can you tell a good survey
from a bad one. I am told that there are a great many illegal and
fraudulent surveys in this office. I suppose this one is all right?"

"No," said Sharp. "The certificate is missing. It is invalid."

"That paper I just saw you place in that file, I suppose is something
else--field notes, or a transfer probably?"

"Yes," said Sharp, hurriedly, "corrected field notes. Excuse me, I am a
little pressed for time."

The boy was watching him with bright, alert eyes.

It would never do to leave the certificate in the file; but he could not
take it out with that inquisitive boy watching him.

He turned to the file room, with a dozen or more files in his hands, and
accidentally dropped part of them on the floor. As he stooped to pick
them up he swiftly thrust Bexar Scrip No. 2692 in the inside breast
pocket of his coat.

This happened at just half-past four o'clock, and when the file clerk
took the files he threw them in a pile in his room, came out and locked
the door.

The clerks were moving out of the doors in long, straggling lines.

It was closing time.

Sharp did not desire to take the file from the Land Office.

The boy might have seen him place the file in his pocket, and the
penalty of the law for such an act was very severe.

Some distance back from the file room was the draftsman's room now
entirely vacated by its occupants.

Sharp dropped behind the outgoing stream of men, and slipped slyly into
this room.

The clerks trooped noisily down the iron stairway, singing, whistling,
and talking.

Below, the night watchman awaited their exit, ready to close and bar the
two great doors to the south and cast.

It is his duty to take careful note each day that no one remains in the
building after the hour of closing.

Sharp waited until all sounds had ceased.

It was his intention to linger until everything was quiet, and then to
remove the certificate from the file, and throw the latter carelessly on
some draftsman's desk as if it had been left there during the business
of the day.

He knew also that he must remove the certificate from the office or
destroy it, as the chance finding of it by a clerk would lead to its
immediately being restored to its proper place, and the consequent
discovery that his location over the old survey was absolutely
worthless.

As he moved cautiously along the stone floor the loud barking of the
little black dog, kept by the watchman, told that his sharp ears had
heard the sounds of his steps. The great, hollow rooms echoed loudly,
move as lightly as he could.

Sharp sat down at a desk and laid the file before him. In all his queer
practices and cunning tricks he had not yet included any act that was
downright criminal. He had always kept on the safe side of the law, but
in the deed he was about to commit there was no compromise to be made
with what little conscience he had left.

There is no well-defined boundary line between honesty and dishonesty.

The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he
who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in one
domain and sometimes in the other; so the only safe road is the broad
highway that leads straight through and has been well defined by line
and compass.

Sharp was a man of what is called high standing in the community. That
is, his word in a trade was as good as any man's; his check was as good
as so much cash, and so regarded; he went to church regularly; went in
good society and owed no man anything.

He was regarded as a sure winner in any land trade he chose to make, but
that was his occupation.

The act he was about to commit now would place him forever in the ranks
of those who chose evil for their portion--if it was found out.

More than that, it would rob a widow and her son of property soon to be
of great value, which, if not legally theirs, was theirs certainly by
every claim of justice.

But he had gone too far to hesitate.

His own survey was in the patent room for patenting. His own title was
about to be perfected by the State's own hand.

The certificate must be destroyed.

He leaned his head on his hands for a moment, and as he did so a sound
behind him caused his heart to leap with guilty fear, but before he
could rise, a hand came over his shoulder and grasped the file.

He rose quickly, as white as paper, rattling his chair loudly on the
stone floor.

The boy who land spoken to him earlier stood contemplating him with
contemptuous and flashing eyes, and quietly placed the file in the left
breast pocket of his coat.

"So, Mr. Sharp, by nature as well as by name," he said, "it seems that I
was right in waiting behind the door in order to see you safely out. You
will appreciate the pleasure I feel in having done so when I tell you my
name is Harris. My mother owns the land on which you have filed, and if
there is any justice in Texas she shall hold it. I am not certain, but I
think I saw you place a paper in this file this afternoon, and it is
barely possible that it may be of value to me. I was also impressed with
the idea that you desired to remove it again, but had not the
opportunity. Anyway, I shall keep it until to-morrow and let the
Commissioner decide."

Far back among Mr. Sharp's ancestors there must have been some of the
old berserker blood, for his caution, his presence of mind left him, and
left him possessed of a blind, devilish, unreasoning rage that showed
itself in a moment in the white glitter of his eye.

"Give me that file, boy," he said, thickly, holding out his hand.

"I am no such fool, Mr. Sharp," said the youth. "This file shall be laid
before the Commissioner to-morrow for examination. If he finds--Help!
Help!"

Sharp was upon him like a tiger and bore him to the floor. The boy was
strong and vigorous, but the suddenness of the attack gave him no chance
to resist. He struggled up again to his feet, but it was an animal, with
blazing eyes and cruel-looking teeth that fought him, instead of a man.

Mr. Sharp, a man of high standing and good report, was battling for his
reputation.

Presently there was a dull sound, and another, and still one more, and a
blade flashing white and then red, and Edward Harris dropped down like
some stuffed effigy of a man, that boys make for sport, with his limbs
all crumpled and lax, on the stone floor of the Land Office.

The old watchman was deaf, and heard nothing.

The little dog barked at the foot of the stairs until his master made
him come into his room.

Sharp stood there for several minutes holding in his hand his bloody
clasp knife, listening to the cooing of the pigeons on the roof, and the
loud ticking of the clock above the receiver's desk.

A map rustled on the wall and his blood turned to ice; a rat ran across
some strewn papers, and his scalp prickled, and he could scarcely
moisten his dry lips with his tongue.

Between the file room and the draftsman's room there is a door that
opens on a small dark spiral stairway that winds from the lower floor to
the ceiling at the top of the house.

This stairway was not used then, nor is it now.

It is unnecessary, inconvenient, dusty, and dark as night, and was a
blunder of the architect who designed the building.

This stairway ends above at the tent-shaped space between the roof and
the joists.

That space is dark and forbidding, and being useless is rarely visited.

Sharp opened this door and gazed for a moment up this narrow cobwebbed
stairway.

* * * *

After dark that night a man opened cautiously one of the lower windows
of the Land Office, crept out with great circumspection and disappeared
in the shadows.

* * * *

One afternoon, a week after this time, Sharp lingered behind again after
the clerks had left and the office closed. The next morning the first
comers noticed a broad mark in the dust on the upstairs floor, and the
same mark was observed below stairs near a window.

It appeared as if some heavy and rather bulky object had been dragged
along through the limestone dust. A memorandum book with "E. Harris"
written on the flyleaf was picked up on the stairs, but nothing
particular was thought of any of these signs.

Circulars and advertisements appeared for a long time in the papers
asking for information concerning Edward Harris, who left his mother's
home on a certain date and had never been heard of since.

After a while these things were succeeded by affairs of more recent
interest, and faded from the public mind.

* * * *

Sharp died two years ago, respected and regretted. The last two years of
his life were clouded with a settled melancholy for which his friends
could assign no reason. The bulk of his comfortable fortune was made
from the land he obtained by fraud and crime.

The disappearance of the file was a mystery that created some commotion
in the Land Office, but he got his patent.

* * * *

It is a well-known tradition in Austin and vicinity that there is a
buried treasure of great value somewhere on the banks of Shoal Creek,
about a mile west of the city.

Three young men living in Austin recently became possessed of what they
thought was a clue of the whereabouts of the treasure, and Thursday
night they repaired to the place after dark and plied the pickaxe and
shovel with great diligence for about three hours.

At the end of that time their efforts were rewarded by the finding of a
box buried about four feet below the surface, which they hastened to
open.

The light of a lantern disclosed to their view the fleshless bones of a
human skeleton with clothing still wrapping its uncanny limbs.

They immediately left the scene and notified the proper authorities of
their ghastly find.

On closer examination, in the left breast pocket of the skeleton's coat,
there was found a flat, oblong packet of papers, cut through and through
in three places by a knife blade, and so completely soaked and clotted
with blood that it had become an almost indistinguishable mass.

With the aid of a microscope and the exercise of a little imagination
this much can be made out of the letter; at the top of the papers:

B--x a-- ---rip N--2--92.




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