Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories Part 14

"But the boy has steadily gone on, they say, from bad to worse; and now he has capped it all with this crime, which, in wilful and unprovoked brutality, was worthy of a criminal hardened by twice his years and experience.

"He and another young blade about as bad as he is (though this one seems to have been the one who planned it and led in its execution), went to the house of an old man, who lived alone a little farther up in the foothills toward the Yosemite Valley, and asked to be allowed to stay all night. The old man took them in, got supper for them, and made them as comfortable as he could. In the night they got up and murdered him, stole all his money--he had just sold some horses and cattle to the prisoner's father--and were preparing to skip the country and go to Australia, when they were arrested.

"The thing 's not been absolutely proved on young Hopkins yet, but the circ.u.mstantial evidence is so plain that, even if there is nothing else, I don't see how he 's going to escape the rope. I 've just heard a rumor, though, that there 's to be some new evidence this afternoon that will settle the matter without a doubt."

The room rapidly filled up, and as we waited for court to open, the Newspaper Man pointed out one and another hale old man whose clear eyes and fresh skin belied his years, and told tales of his daring forty years before, of the wealth he had dug from the earth, and of the reckless ways in which he had lost it. And at last came the prisoner and his father. The old man's figure was tall, erect, broad-chested, and muscular, and his bearing proud and reserved.

"I 'm always half expecting to see that old man get up," the Newspaper Man whispered to me, "fold his arms across that great chest of his, and say '_Roma.n.u.s sum_,' and then proudly lead his son away."

He must have been sixty-five years old or more, though he looked twenty years younger. His dark hair and beard were only sifted with gray, and he held himself so erect and with such dignity, and all the lines of his countenance expressed such force and n.o.bleness of character, that the suggestion of his appearance was of the strength of middle age.

But the boy was a painful contrast. His eye was shifty, his expression weak and sensual, and the hard lines of his face and the indifference of his manner told the story of a man old in criminal thoughts if not in years and deeds. For he looked no more than twenty-five, and may have been even younger.

The father sat near him, and although they seldom spoke together he frequently by some small act or apparently unconscious movement showed a tenderness and affection for the wayward son that seemed all the greater by contrast with his own proud reserve and the boy's hardened indifference.

The new testimony was brought in. The sheriff had set a go-between at work with the two prisoners, and with his aid had secured copies of all the notes they had at once begun writing to each other. In these letters, which were all produced in court, they had freely discussed their crime and argued about the points wherein they had made mistakes.

Young Hopkins had boasted to the other that they need not fear conviction, because his father would certainly get them clear; and they had planned what they would do after the trial was over, wallowing in antic.i.p.ations of a course of crime and debauchery.

When the sheriff began to give this testimony the old man's hand was resting affectionately on his son's shoulder. As it went on, laying bare the depravity of the boy's soul, the muscles of his face quivered a little, and presently, with just the suggestion of a flinching shudder in face and figure, he took his hand away and shrank back a little from the young man. I wondered as I watched him whether he was admitting to himself for the first time that this was the evil child of an evil woman, for whom there was no hope, or whether it was a revelation to him of a depth of depravity in his son's heart of which he had not guessed.

Then the prosecution asked for a few minutes' recess, announcing that it had a new witness to bring forward. After much hurrying to and fro, and whispering and consulting among lawyers and court and prison officials, young Hopkins's accomplice appeared on the witness-stand and turned State's evidence. He had learned of the intercepted letters, and, frightened by their probable result for himself, told the whole story of the crime, from the time Hopkins had first broached it to him until they were arrested in San Francisco. And during the entire narration of the cold-blooded, brutal, and cowardly deed, old Dan Hopkins sat with his eyes on the witness, as steady and unflinching in color and nerve and muscle as if he had been listening to a lecture or a sermon.

I think he had decided, even then, what he would do, no matter what the finding of the jury might be.

At last it was all over; the jury listened to the judge's charge, and filed out. "It's hanging, sure," said the Newspaper Man. "After that evidence and that charge there's only one verdict they can bring in.

It's a good thing as far as the boy's concerned, but I do feel sorry for his governor."

Every one felt so sure that the jury would soon return that none left their places, and a buzz of conversation soon filled the room. Old Dan Hopkins sat with his arms folded, his head erect, and his eyes, steady and clear, upon the empty witness chair. There were many sympathizing glances sent toward him, though no one approached or spoke to him; for it was evident from his compressed lips and frowning brow that he preferred to be left alone. He had moved a little away from his son, and sat scarcely ten feet distant on my left. When the jury returned, in less than half an hour, he bent upon them the same abstracted gaze and unmoved countenance.

The foreman stood up and glanced sadly toward the man who had been his friend and neighbor for many years. There were tears in his eyes, and his voice broke and trembled as he gave their verdict, "Guilty of murder in the first degree."

Not a sound broke the death-like stillness of the room as he sat down, and I noticed that every face within my view was turned away from the prisoner's chair and the old man who sat near it. The tense strain of the moment was broken by the prisoner's counsel, who arose and began a motion for a new trial.

But the click of a revolver sharply halted his first sentence, as Dan Hopkins jumped to his feet with a sudden, swift movement of his right arm. A dozen men leaped forward with outstretched arms crying, "Stop!

Stop!"

But even before they could reach him the report rang through the room, and just as they seized the father's arms the son dropped to the floor, dead. He waved back the men who were pressing around him.

"Stop!" he cried. "Stand back a minute!" And they fell back instinctively.

He walked calmly to the judge's desk and laid down his smoking pistol.

Then he folded his arms and faced about, with head thrown back, flashing eyes, and colorless face. He looked at the sheriff, who, with the sense of official duty strong upon him, had stepped out from the huddled crowd and was coming toward him.

"Wait one minute, let me speak," he said. "I believe you are all my friends, for I have lived most of my life here, among you, and I hope I have the respect and confidence and friendship of you all. But that,"

and his flashing eyes rested for a moment upon the sheriff, the lawyers, and then upon the judge, "must have no influence upon the penalty I shall pay for what I have just done. The knowledge has been bitter enough to me this afternoon that that poor boy there deserved death. For the first time I have been convinced that he was bad from the bottom of his heart, and that there was no hope for him. But with my own hand I have killed him, that he might be saved the last horror and disgrace. Let them, and the law's justice, be my portion, for I deserve them for having given him life in the first place. Mine was the first sin, and it is right that I should suffer the disgrace and the penalty."

He turned to the sheriff, holding out his arms for the handcuffs.

"Now, I am ready. Arrest me."

OUT OF THE MOUTH OF BABES

Perhaps it was a mere matter of nerves, but it seemed to me that morning that it was the cliffs of the Valley. Those mighty, overshadowing, everlasting walls and towers of the Yosemite seem to be endowed with the power to produce numberless changes of feeling.

Sometimes you gaze at them, and they lift up your spirit and hold it aloft in the free air, and send it up, and up, and up, until it reaches the very blue of heaven, and you know that you are free and powerful and enn.o.bled, made one with the saints and mighty ones of earth.

The next morning you go forth and look up at those silent granite heights, and expect them to repeat their miracle. But they will not.

They frown upon you and crush you down into the earth you are made of.

Like an accusing conscience, they lift their stern, forbidding faces above you on all sides and look you steadily in the eyes with their insistence upon your unworthiness, until, in despair, you are ready to shut yourself up to escape their persecutions.

Of course, as I said before, it may not be the cliffs at all. It may be nothing but nerves. But I think it is the walls of the Valley.

On that particular morning they had made me bite the dust until I could no longer endure the sight of them. To escape their solemn, contemptuous faces I ran down a little path which led into a dense thicket of young pines and cedars. The trees grew so close together that they shut out all view of everything beyond a few feet on each side of the path. The ground was brown with their cast-off needles, and the air was pungent with their fragrance. Overhead there were glimpses of a smiling blue sky, and the cool, fragrant shadows of the thicket were brightened by patches of gleaming sunshine. The friendly sounds of woodp.e.c.k.e.rs hammering the trees, and of birds singing among the branches, pleased my ears and diverted my thoughts.

The only reminder of those towering granite Preachers, with their everlasting "All is vanity," was the roaring and crashing of the Yosemite Falls, which filled the Valley with their thunder and made the air tremble.

The sights, the sounds, the odors, enveloped my senses and filled me with delighted, languorous content. It was very comforting, and I sat down on a log in the edge of a little opening, all pink and fragrant with wild roses, to enjoy the sensuous delight of it all and so take revenge upon the great stone Preachers waiting for me outside the thicket.

Presently there came from beyond the glade a soft, crooning noise, which in an instant more became that sweetest of sounds, the voice of a happy child alone with nature.

A little girl, perhaps four or five years old, came slowly down the path. She was talking to herself and to the trees and birds and squirrels, and even to the brown pine-needles under her feet. Her hat, which she had stuck full of wild roses, hung at the back of her head, the ends of her brown curls just peeping below it. Without the least trace of childish shyness she came straight to where I sat, mounted the log beside me, and asked me to take a thorn from her finger.

"Did it hurt you?" I asked, as I patted the chubby brown fist after the operation. "You are a very brave little girl not to cry."

"Yes, I know it," she replied, looking at me with big violet eyes, frank and confiding. She was a beautiful child, with a glorious perfection of feature and complexion. "I 'm always brave. My papa says so, and my new mamma says so, too. I 've got two mammas--my new mamma and my gone-away mamma. But I like my new mamma best."

"Do you? Why?"

"'Cause she's always and always dust as good as she can be. And she never and never says 'Stop this minute!' er 'at I make her head ache, er 'at I 'm naughty, er anything. She dust puts her arms all 'round me and says, 'Dear little girl.' An' 'en I 'm good. And I love my new mamma, I do, better than my gone-away mamma." And she gave a decided little nod, as if in defiance of some privately urged claim.

"Where has your other mamma gone?" I asked, expecting to hear but the one answer. She raised her long lashes and looked at me seriously.

"You 're a tourist lady, ain't you? That's why you don't know. Well, it was a tourist man, 'at stayed a long time, who tooked my gone-away mamma away."

"A tourist man? Why did he do that?"

"'Cause he did n't want me 'round, I guess. When the flowers was here that other time he comed to the store where my mamma sold all the pretty things my papa made dust every day an' every day. An' I did n't like him a bit, I did n't."

"Why didn't you like him?"

"'Cause he did n't like me, and did n't want me 'round. When my mamma was there and I was there, he would come and talk to my mamma, an' 'en he would tell her to send me away. An' 'en she would put me in the back room; an' if I cried an' kicked the door, she would put me in the closet. If the tourist man wasn't there, she loved me most all the time."

"Did n't she love you all the time, anyway?"

For answer the small maiden shut her eyes tightly and shook her head rapidly and decidedly.

"Why do you think she did n't love you all the time?"