Red Men and White Part 15

"Then I'll take a look at her--and him. You boys won't do anything till I come back, will you?"

"Why, if ye're so anxious to see us do it, sheriff," said the chatty neighbor, "I guess we can wait that long fer ye."

The officer walked to the tent. Drylyn was standing over the body, quiet and dumb. He was safe for the present, the sheriff knew, and so he left him without speaking and returned to the prisoner and his guard in front of the dance-hall. He found them duly waiting; the only change was that they had a rope there.

"Once upon a time," said the sheriff, "there was a man in Arkansaw that had no judgment."

"They raise 'em that way in Arkansaw," said the chatty neighbor, as the company made a circle to hear the story--a tight, cautious circle--with the prisoner and the officer beside him standing in the centre.

"The man's wife had good judgment," continued the narrator, "but she went and died on him."

"Well, I guess that _was_ good judgment," said the neighbor.

"So the man, he had to run the farm alone. Now they raised poultry, which his wife had always attended to. And he knew she had a habit of setting hens on duck eggs. He had never inquired her reasons, being shiftless, but that fact he knew. Well, come to investigate the hen-house, there was duck eggs, and hens on 'em, and also a heap of hens' eggs, but no more hens wishing to set. So the man, having no judgment, persuaded a duck to stay with those eggs. Now it's her I'm chiefly interested in. She was a good enough duck, but hasty. When the eggs hatched out, she didn't stop to notice, but up and takes them down to the pond, and gets mad with them, and shoves them in, and they drowns. Next day or two a lot of the young ducks, they hatched out and come down with the hen and got in the water all right, and the duck figured out she'd made some mistake, and she felt distressed. But the chickens were in heaven."

The sheriff studied his audience, and saw that he had lulled their rage a little. "Now," said he, "ain't you boys just a trifle like that duck?

I don't know as I can say much to you more than what I have said, and I don't know as I can do anything, fixed as I am. This thing looks bad for him we've got here. Why, I can see that as well as you. But, boys! it's an awful thing to kill an innocent man! I saw that done once, and--G.o.d forgive me!--I was one of them. I'll tell you how that was. He looked enough like the man we wanted. We were certainly on the right trail. We came on a cabin we'd never known of before, pretty far up in the hills--a strange cabin, you see. That seemed just right; just where a man would hide. We were mad at the crime committed, and took no thought.

We knew we had caught him--that's the way we felt. So we got our guns ready, and crept up close through the trees, and surrounded that cabin.

We called him to come out, and he came with a book in his hands he'd been reading. He did look like the man, and boys!--we gave him no time!

He never knew why we fired. He was a harmless old prospector who had got tired of poor luck and knocking around, and over his door he had painted some words: 'Where the wicked cease from troubling.' He had figured that up there by that mountain stream the world would let him alone. And ever since then I have thought my life belonged to him first, and me second. Now this afternoon I'm alone here. You know I can't do much. And I'm going to ask you to help me respect the law. I don't say that in this big country there may not be places, and there may not be times, when the law is too young or else too rotten to take care of itself, and when the American citizen must go back to bed-rock principles. But is that so in our valley? Why, if this prisoner is guilty, you can't name me one man of your acquaintance who would want him to live. And that being so, don't we owe him the chance to clear himself if he can? I can see that prospector now at his door, old, harmless, coming fearless at our call, because he had no guilt upon his conscience--and we shot him down without a word. Boys! he has the call on me now; and if you insist--"

The sheriff paused, satisfied with what he saw on the faces around him.

Some of the men knew the story of the prospector--it had been in the papers--but of his part in it they had not known. They understood quite well the sacrifice he stood ready to make now in defending the prisoner.

The favorable silence was broken by the sound of horses. Timeliness and discretion were coming up the hill. Drylyn at the same moment came out of the dead woman's tent, and, looking down, realized the intended rescue. With his mind waked suddenly from its dull dream and opened with a human impulse, he ran to help; but the sheriff saw him, and thought he was trying to escape.

"That's the man!" he shouted savagely to the ring.

Some of the Gap ran to the edge of the hill, and, seeing the hurrying Drylyn and the horses below, also realized the rescue. Putting the wrong two and two together, they instantly saw in all this a well-devised scheme of delay and collusion. They came back, running through the dance-hall to the front, and the sheriff was pinioned from behind, thrown down, and held.

"So ye were alone, were ye?" said the chatty neighbor. "Well, ye made a good talk. Keep quiet--we don't want to hurt ye."

At this supposed perfidy the Gap's rage was at white-heat again; the men ma.s.sed together, and fierce and quick as lightning the messenger's fate was wrought. The work of adjusting the rope and noose was complete and death going on in the air when Drylyn, meaning to look the ground over for the rescue, came cautiously back up the hill and saw the body, black against the clear sunset sky. At his outcry they made ready for him, and when he blindly rushed among them they held him, and paid no attention to his ravings. Then, when the rope had finished its work, they let him go, and the sheriff too. The driver's friend had left his horses among the pines, and had come up to see what was going on at the Gap. He now joined the crowd.

"You meant well," the sheriff said to him. "I wish you would tell the boys how you come to be here. They're thinking I lied to them."

"Maybe I can change their minds." It was Drylyn's deep voice. "I am the man you were hunting," he said.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'I'D LIKE TO HAVE IT OVER'"]

They looked at him seriously, as one looks at a friend whom an illness has seized. The storm of feeling had spent itself, the mood of the Gap was relaxed and torpid, and the serenity of coming dusk began to fill the mountain air.

"You boys think I'm touched in the head," said Drylyn, and paused. "This knife done it," said he. "This one I'm showing you."

They looked at the knife in his hand.

"He come between me and her," Drylyn pursued. "I was aiming to give him his punishment myself. That would have been square." He turned the knife over in his hand, and, glancing up from it, caught the look in their eyes. "You don't believe me!" he exclaimed, savagely. "Well, I'm going to make you. Sheriff, I'll bring you some evidence."

He walked to the creek, and they stood idle and dull till he returned.

Then they fell back from him and his evidence, leaving him standing beneath the dead man.

"Does them look like being touched in the head?" inquired Drylyn, and he threw down the overalls, which fell with a damp slap on the ground. "I don't seem to mind telling you," he said. "I feel as quiet--as quiet as them tall pines the sun's just quittin' for the night." He looked at the men expectantly, but none of them stirred. "I'd like to have it over,"

said he.

Still no one moved.

"I have a right to ask it shall be quick," he repeated. "You were quick enough with him." And Drylyn lifted his hand towards the messenger.

They followed his gesture, staring up at the wrong man, then down at the right one. The chatty neighbor shook his head. "Seems curious," he said, slowly. "It ought to be done. But I couldn't no more do it--gosh!

how _can_ a man fire his gun right after it's been discharged?"

The heavy Drylyn looked at his comrades of the Gap. "You won't?" he said.

"You better quit us," suggested the neighbor. "Go somewheres else."

Drylyn's eyes ran painfully over ditch and diggings, the near cabins and the distant hills, then returned to the messenger. "Him and me," he muttered. "It ain't square. Him and me--" Suddenly he broke out, "I don't choose him to think I was that kind of man!"

Before they could catch him he fell, and the wet knife slid from his fingers. "Sheriff," he began, but his tone changed. "I'm overtakin'

him!" he said. "He's going to know now. Lay me alongside--"

And so they did.

THE SECOND MISSOURI COMPROMISE

I

The Legislature had sat up all night, much absorbed, having taken off its coat because of the stove. This was the fortieth and final day of its first session under an order of things not new only, but novel. It sat with the retrospect of forty days' duty done, and the prospect of forty days' consequent pay to come. Sleepy it was not, but wide and wider awake over a progressing crisis. Hungry it had been until after a breakfast fetched to it from the Overland at seven, three hours ago. It had taken no intermission to wash its face, nor was there just now any apparatus for this, as the tin pitcher commonly used stood not in the basin in the corner, but on the floor by the Governor's chair; so the eyes of the Legislature, though earnest, were dilapidated. Last night the pressure of public business had seemed over, and no turning back the hands of the clock likely to be necessary. Besides Governor Ballard, Mr.

Hewley, Secretary and Treasurer, was sitting up too, small, iron-gray, in feature and bearing every inch the capable, dignified official, but his necktie had slipped off during the night. The bearded Councillors had the best of it, seeming after their vigil less stale in the face than the member from Silver City, for instance, whose day-old black growth blurred his dingy chin, or the member from Big Camas, whose scantier red crop bristled on his cheeks in spa.r.s.e wandering arrangements, like spikes on the barrel of a musical box. For comfort, most of the pistols were on the table with the Statutes of the United States. Secretary and Treasurer Hewley's lay on his strong-box immediately behind him. The Governor's was a light one, and always hung in the arm hole of his waistcoat. The graveyard of Boise City this year had twenty-seven tenants, two brought there by meningitis, and twenty-five by difference of opinion. Many denizens of the Territory were miners, and the unsettling element of gold-dust hung in the air, breeding argument. The early, thin, bright morning steadily mellowed against the windows distant from the stove; the panes melted clear until they ran, steamed faintly, and dried, this fresh May day, after the night's untimely cold; while still the Legislature sat in its shirt-sleeves, and several statesmen had removed their boots. Even had appearances counted, the session was invisible from the street. Unlike a good number of houses in the town, the State-House (as they called it from old habit) was not all on the ground-floor for outsiders to stare into, but up a flight of wood steps to a wood gallery. From this, to be sure, the interior could be watched from several windows on both sides; but the journey up the steps was precisely enough to disincline the idle, and this was counted a sensible thing by the law-makers. They took the ground that shaping any government for a raw wilderness community needed seclusion, and they set a high value upon unworried privacy.

The sun had set upon a concentrated Council, but it rose upon faces that looked momentous. Only the Governor's and Treasurer's were impa.s.sive, and they concealed something even graver than the matter in hand.

"I'll take a hun'red mo', Gove'nuh," said the member from Silver City, softly, his eyes on s.p.a.ce. His name was Powhattan Wingo.

The Governor counted out the blue, white, and red chips to Wingo, pencilled some figures on a thickly ciphered and cancelled paper that bore in print the words "Territory of Idaho, Council Chamber," and then filled up his gla.s.s from the tin pitcher, adding a little sugar.

"And I'll trouble you fo' the toddy," Wingo added, always softly, and his eyes always on s.p.a.ce. "Raise you ten, suh." This was to the Treasurer. Only the two were playing at present. The Governor was kindly acting as bank; the others were looking on.

"And ten," said the Treasurer.

"And ten," said Wingo.

"And twenty," said the Treasurer.

"And fifty," said Wingo, gently bestowing his chips in the middle of the table.

The Treasurer called.