Red Men and White Part 8

"I never knew that either. You seem to have found out all about the family, Amanda. What were they going to lynch the brother for?"

The ample lady folded her fat, middle-aged hands on the edge of the table, and eyed her husband with bland displeasure. "Judge Campbell!"

she uttered, and her lips shut wide and firm. She would restrain herself, if possible.

"Well, my dear?"

"You ask me that. You pretend ignorance of that disgraceful scene. Who was it said to me right in the street that he disapproved of lynching? I ask you, judge, who was it right there at the jail--"

"Oh!" said the enlightened judge.

"--Right at the left-hand side of the door of the jail in this town of Siskiyou, who was it got that trembling boy safe inside from those yelling fiends and talked to the crowd on a barrel of number ten nails, and made those wicked men stop and go home?"

"Amanda, I believe I recognize myself."

"I should think you did, Judge Campbell. And now they've caught the other one, and he'll be up with the sheriff on to-night's train, and I suppose they'll lynch _him_ now!"

"There's not the slightest danger," said the judge. "The town wants them to have a fair trial. It was natural that immediately after such an atrocious act--"

"Those poor boys had never murdered anybody before in their lives,"

interrupted Amanda.

"But they did murder Montgomery, you will admit."

"Oh yes!" said Mrs. Campbell, with impatience. "I saw the hole in his back. You needn't tell me all that again. If he'd thrown out the express box quicker they wouldn't have hurt a hair of his head. Wells and Fargo's messengers know that perfectly. It was his own fault. Those boys had no employment, and they only wanted money. They did not seek human blood, and you needn't tell me they did."

"They shed it, however, Amanda. Quite a lot of it. Stage-driver and a pa.s.senger too."

"Yes, you keep going back to that as if they'd all been murdered instead of only one, and you don't care about those two poor boys locked in a dungeon, and their gray-haired father down in Fresno County who never did anything wrong at all, and he sixty-one in December."

"The county isn't thinking of hanging the old gentleman," said the judge.

"That will do, Judge Campbell," said his lady, rising. "I shall say no more. Total silence for the present is best for you and best for me.

Much best. I will leave you to think of your speech, which was by no means silver. Not even life with you for twenty-five years this coming 10th of July has inured me to insult. I am capable of understanding whom they think of hanging, and your speaking to me as if I did not does you little credit; for it was a mere refuge from a woman's just accusation of heartlessness which you felt, and like a man would not acknowledge; and therefore it is that I say no more but leave you to go down the street to the Ladies' Lyceum where I shall find companions with some spark of humanity in their bosoms and milk of human kindness for those whose hasty youth has plunged them in misery and delivered them to the hands of those who treat them as if they were stones and sticks full of nothing but monstrosity instead of breathing men like themselves to be shielded by brotherhood and hope and not dashed down by cruelty and despair."

It had begun stately as a dome, with symmetry and punctuation, but the climax was untrammelled by a single comma. The orator swept from the room, put on her bonnet and shawl, and the judge, still sitting with his eggs, heard the front door close behind her. She was president of the Ladies' Reform and Literary Lyceum, and she now trod thitherward through Siskiyou.

"I think Amanda will find companions there," mused the judge. "But her notions of sympathy beat me." The judge had a small, wise blue eye, and he liked his wife more than well. She was sincerely good, and had been very courageous in their young days of poverty. She loved their son, and she loved him. Only, when she took to talking, he turned up a mental coat-collar and waited. But if the male s.e.x did not appreciate her powers of eloquence her sister citizens did; and Mrs. Campbell, besides presiding at the Ladies' Reform and Literary Lyceum in Siskiyou, often addressed female meetings in Ashland, Yreka, and even as far away as Tehama and Redding. She found companions this morning.

"To think of it!" they exclaimed, at her news of the capture, for none had read the paper. They had been too busy talking of the next debate, which was upon the question, "Ought we to pray for rain?" But now they instantly forgot the wide spiritual issues raised by this inquiry, and plunged into the fascinations of crime, reciting once more to each other the details of the recent tragedy. The room hired for the Lyceum was in a second story above the apothecary and book shop--a combined enterprise in Siskiyou--and was furnished with fourteen rocking-chairs. Pictures of Mount Shasta and Lucretia Mott ornamented the wall, with a photograph from an old master representing Leda and the Swan. This typified the Lyceum's approval of Art, and had been presented by one of the husbands upon returning from a three days' business trip to San Francisco.

"Dear! dear!" said Mrs. Parsons, after they had all shuddered anew over the shooting and the blood. "With so much suffering in the world, how fulsome seems that gay music!" She referred to the Siskiyou bra.s.s-band, which was rehearsing the march from "Fatinitza" in an adjacent room in the building. Mrs. Parsons had large, mournful eyes, a poetic vocabulary, and wanted to be president of the Lyceum herself.

"Melody has its sphere, Gertrude," said Mrs. Campbell, in a wholesome voice. "We must not be morbid. But this I say to you, one and all: Since the men of Siskiyou refuse, it is for the women to vindicate the town's humanity, and show some sympathy for the captive who arrives to-night."

They all thought so too.

"I do not criticise," continued their president, magnanimously, "nor do I complain of any one. Each in this world has his or her mission, and the most sacred is Woman's own--to console!"

"True, true!" murmured Mrs. Sloc.u.m.

"We must do something for the prisoner, to show him we do not desert him in his hour of need," Mrs. Campbell continued.

"We'll go and meet the train!" Mrs. Sloc.u.m exclaimed, eagerly. "I've never seen a real murderer."

"A bunch of flowers for him," said Mrs. Parsons, closing her mournful eyes. "Roses." And she smiled faintly.

"Oh, lilies!" cried little Mrs. Day, with rapture. "Lilies would look _real_ nice."

"Don't you think," said Miss Sissons, who had not spoken before, and sat a little apart from the close-drawn clump of talkers, "that we might send the widow some flowers too, some time?" Miss Sissons was a pretty girl, with neat hair. She was engaged to the captain of Siskiyou's baseball nine.

"The widow?" Mrs. Campbell looked vague.

"Mrs. Montgomery, I mean--the murdered man's wife. I--I went to see if I could do anything, for she has some children; but she wouldn't see me,"

said Miss Sissons. "She said she couldn't talk to anybody."

"Poor thing!" said Mrs. Campbell. "I dare say it was a dreadful shock to her. Yes, dear, we'll attend to her after a while. We'll have her with us right along, you know, whereas these unhappy boys may--may be--may soon meet a cruel death on the scaffold." Mrs. Campbell evaded the phrase "may be hanged" rather skilfully. To her trained oratorical sense it had seemed to lack dignity.

"So young!" said Mrs. Day.

"And both so full of promise, to be cut off!" said Mrs. Parsons.

"Why, they can't hang them both, I should think," said Miss Sissons. "I thought only one killed Mr. Montgomery."

"My dear Louise," said Mrs. Campbell, "they can do anything they want, and they will. Shall I ever forget those ruffians who wanted to lynch the first one? They'll be on the jury!"

The clump returned to their discussion of the flowers, and Miss Sissons presently mentioned she had some errands to do, and departed.

"Would that that girl had more soul!" said Mrs. Parsons.

"She has plenty of soul," replied Mrs. Campbell, "but she's under the influence of a man. Well, as I was saying, roses and lilies are too big."

"Oh, _why_?" said Mrs. Day. "They would _please_ him so."

"He couldn't carry them, Mrs. Day. I've thought it all out. He'll be walked to the jail between strong men. We must have some small bokay to pin on his coat, for his hands will be shackled."

"You don't say!" cried Mrs. Sloc.u.m. "How awful! I must get to that train. I've never seen a man in shackles in my life."

So violets were selected; Mrs. Campbell brought some in the afternoon from her own borders, and Mrs. Parsons furnished a large pin. She claimed also the right to affix the decoration upon the prisoner's breast because she had suggested the idea of flowers; but the other ladies protested, and the president seemed to think that they all should draw lots. It fell to Mrs. Day.

"Now I declare!" twittered the little matron. "I do believe I'll never dare."

"You must say something to him," said Amanda; "something fitting and choice."

"Oh dear no, Mrs. Campbell. Why, I never--my gracious! Why, if I'd known I was expected--Really, I couldn't think--I'll let _you_ do it!"

"We can't hash up the ceremony that way, Mrs. Day," said Amanda, severely. And as they all fell arguing, the whistle blew.

"There!" said Mrs. Sloc.u.m. "Now you've made me late, and I'll miss the shackles and everything."