Kitabı oku: «The Texican», sayfa 8
"That's old Babe, singin' his jag-song. He'll be in here pretty soon."
Babe! And he would be in there pretty soon! At that magic word a new life swept through Pecos Dalhart's veins; his drowsiness left him, and rousing up from his bunk he struggled forth and washed his face at the tap. Time and again he slapped the cool water upon his neck and hair; he drank a last draught of its freshness and paced the length of the corridor, his head bowed as if in thought – but listening above all other noises for the sound of Angy's voice. Bill Todhunter came and glanced at him impersonally, as he might gaze at a bronc that was about to be broke, but Pecos made no appeal. He had started out to wreck Boone Morgan's jail for him, break up his Kangaroo Court, and establish the revolution, and with Angy's help he would do it, yet. The jail gang edged in on him a little closer, dogging his steps as the wolf-pack follows its kill, but at every turn of his shaggy head they slunk away. Then at last, just as the clock tolled four, the keys clanked in the outer door; Hung Wo slipped in with his coffee-pot and can, and after him came Angevine Thorne, escorted by the deputy.
"Hello, Babe!" chimed a chorus from behind the bars. "Hey, Babe – sing 'Kansas'! Oh, Babe!" But Angevine Thorne had no thought for his quondam prison mates, he was placing himself on record in a protest against the law.
"The Constitution of the United States guarantees to every man a fair and speedy trial," he declaimed with drunken vehemence, "but look here and see what a mockery you have made the law! Look at these poor men, caged up here yet, waiting for their trial! Is that a fair and speedy hearing? Look at me; arrested for no offence; confined without cause; condemned without a hearing; imprisoned for no crime! Is that justice? Justice forsooth! It is conspiracy – treachery – crime! Yes, I say crime! You are the criminals and we the helpless victims of your hands! I appeal to God, if there is a God, to bear witness of my innocence! What? I must go in? Then throw open your prison doors – I die a martyr to the Cause!"
The clanging of the cell doors gave no pause to his impassioned eloquence, nor yet his sudden injection into jail; but when, as he swayed upon his heels, his eyes fell upon the haggard features of Pecos Dalhart, the apostle of civic equality stopped short and struck his brow with a despairing hand.
"What!" he cried. "Are you here, Cumrad? Then let me die forthwith, for tyranny has done its worst! Pecos Dalhart, immured within prison walls, torn from the fond embrace of his – but hush, I go too far. Pecos, old boy, in the years to come your name shall go down to posterity as a martyr to the Cause. You have been arrested, sir, for no crime in law or fact, but simply for your outspoken opposition to the foul conspiracy of capitalism. Oh, that I might stand before the people and plead your cause – But enough; how are you, Old Hoss?"
He gathered Pecos into his arms and embraced him, and to the astonishment of Hung Wo and the prisoners Pecos hugged him to his breast.
"I'm dam' glad to see you, Angy," he murmured, "and no mistake. Here – take this strap and keep them fellers off – I'm dyin' for a sleep." He reached back for the floor, slipped gently down and stretched out upon the hard concrete. When Angevine Thorne lifted up his head he was asleep.
"Poor old Pecos," said Angy, holding out his hands as Mark Antony did over Cæsar, "there he lies, a victim to his country's laws. But sleep, old friend, and the first man that disturbs your dreams will feel the weight of this!" He held up the alcalde's strap for emphasis, and a low rumble of disapproval went up from the rows of cells.
"He broke every head in jail last night," volunteered the deputy, "an' it's about time he was kangarooed!"
"Not while I live!" declared Angy tragically. "Right or wrong, the first man that lays hands on this poor corse will fight it out with me!"
A chorus of defiance and derision was his only answer, but Angevine Thorne, being a natural-born orator, knew better than to reiterate his remarks for emphasis. He balanced the big strap in his hand as a warrior might test his sword, and squatted down to eat. While the dinner hour lasted he was safe – after that he would feel his way. So he put his back to the bars and began to take a little nourishment, gnashing belligerently at his hunk of meat and fortifying himself with coffee – but that was not to be the limit of his fare. As he scuttled back and forth with the prison plates, Hung Wo had kept an attentive eye upon the prostrate form of his boss and, seeing no signs of returning animation, had looked worried. At last, as Angy's protectorate became evident, he returned to his copper can and produced a fine big pie.
"This for boss," he said, and placed it by Pecos's head.
"All right, Wo," responded Angy, "my friend, he sleep. Bimeby wakum up, I give him pie." He finished up his plate, glanced at the surly faces behind the bars, and cast a longing look at the fresh-baked pie. There was going to be a ruction, that was sure, and ructions are bad for pies. He took Pecos by the shoulder and shook him tentatively; then with a sigh of Christian resignation he reached over and picked up the pie. "Dam' shame to go and waste it," he muttered, "an' it's all right, too."
The prisoners watched him eat his way through the crust and down through the middle until finally he licked his finger-tips and smiled.
"Him good pie, Wo," he observed, rising to his feet, "make me hip stlong." He shoved Pecos back into the corner, took his place before him, and balanced the strap for battle. "All right, deputy," he said, "turn them tarriers loose, and if I don't tan their hides with this strap they ain't no hell no mo'!"
The cell doors clanged and flew open, the balked cohorts of the enemy stepped forth and gathered about him, and as Angy paced back and forth before his friend he opened wide the flood-gates of his wrath.
"See the skulkin' curs and cowards," he cried, lashing out at them with his strap, "see them cringe before the whip like the servile slaves they are. What has this man done that you should fall upon him? Broke up your court, hey? Well, what was the court to you? Didn't it punish you whether you were right or wrong? Didn't it tyrannize over you and force you to do its will? Ah, despicable dogs, that would lick the hand that strikes you – come out here, any one of you, and I swear I'll beat you to death. Hah! You are afraid! You are afraid to face an honest man and fight him hand to hand! Or is it something else?" The defiant tone left his voice of a sudden and he looked eagerly into their tense faces. "Or is it something else?" he cried. "Friends, you have been shut up here for months by that great crime they call the law. You know that law – how it protects the rich and crushes down the poor! What then – do you still worship its outworn forms so that you must suffer them even in jail? Must you still have a sheriff to harass you, a judge to condemn you, a district attorney to talk you blind? Must you still be tyrannized over by a false and illegal court, even in the shadow of the jail? God forbid! But what then? Ah, yes; what then! Friends, I bring you the Gospel of Equality; I stand before you to proclaim as our forebears proclaimed before us, that all men are born free and equal; I call upon you, even in this prison, to cast aside the superstition of government and proclaim the revolution! To hell with the Kangaroo Court! My friend here has beaten up its officers – let us abolish it forever! What? Is it a go? Then here's to the revolution!"
He waved his hand above his head, smiling upward at that fair Goddess of Liberty whom he discerned among the rods; and the gaping prisoners, carried away by his eloquence, let out a mighty yell of joy. Worn and jaded by the dull monotony of their life they seized upon the new religion with undiscriminating zest, passing up the big words and the moonshine and rejoicing in their noble freedom from restraint. As the first symptoms of a jail-riot began to develop Boone Morgan and his deputies rushed out to quell the disturbance, but the revolution gave no promise of a rough-house. As was to be expected, the prostrate form of Pecos Dalhart was draped across the foreground – and served him right, for trying to get too gay – but the other figures were not in good support. Angevine Thorne stood above the body of his friend, waving the alcalde's strap, but the Roman mob was sadly out of part. It was dancing around the room singing "Kansas."
"I'll tell you what they do —in Kansas,"
they howled.
"I'll tell you what they do —in Kansas,"
and at the end of each refrain Angy lifted up his vibrant tenor and added yet another chapter to the shameless tale. It was a bacchanalia of song, perhaps; or a saturnalia of inter-State revilings; but none of the onlookers recognized in the progressive dirtiness of the words a spirit of protest against the law. The revolution had come, but like many another promising child it was too young to be clearly differentiated from its twin brothers, License and Liberty.
CHAPTER XVI
BACK TO NATURE
AS to what the revolution is or is to be there are no two authorities who agree. It is not a thing, to be measured and defined; nay, it is a dream which, like our ideas of heaven, varies with individuals. To the philosopher it is an earthly realization of all our heavenly aspirations; to the low-browed man-of-hands something less, since his aspirations are less, but still good to cure all social ills. When Pecos Dalhart entered the Geronimo County jail he turned it into his own idea of the revolution – a fighting man's paradise, like the Valhalla of the ancients, where the heroes fought all day and were made good as new over night; but when he woke up from his long sleep, behold, Angy had established a philosophical revolution in its stead! At first he was so glad to wake up at all that he did not inspect the new social structure too closely – it had saved him from a terrible beating, that was sure – but as the day wore on and a gang of yeggs began to ramp about he shook his head and frowned.
"Say, Angy," he said, "what did you tell them fellers last night to make 'em take on like this?"
"Told 'em the same old story, Cumrad – how the monopolistic classes has combined with the hell hounds of the law to grind us pore men down. Ain't it glorious how the glad news has touched their hearts? Even within the walls of our prison they are happy!"
"Umph!" grunted Pecos, and scowled up at a tall Mexican who had ventured to call him compadre. "What's all this compañero talk that's goin' on amongst the Mexicans – are they in on the deal, too?"
"Surest thing!" responded Angy warmly.
"Huh!" said Pecos, "I hope they don't try no buen' amigo racket on me – I was raised to regard Mexicans like horny toads."
"All men is brothers – that's my motto. And they's good Mexicans, too, remember that. Just think of Joe Garcia!"
"Yes!" rejoined Pecos, with heat, "think of 'im! If it wasn't for that saddle-colored dastard I'd be free, 'stead of rottin' in this hole. I says to the judge: 'I bought that cow and calf off of Joe Garcia – there he is, standin' over there – I summon him for a witness.' 'Is that your calf?' says the judge. 'Kin savvy,' he says, humpin' up his back. 'Did you sell him to this man?' 'Yo no se!' says Joe, and he kept it up with his 'No savvys' and his 'I don't knows' until the dam' judge throwed me into jail. Sure! I'm stuck on Mexicans! I'll brother 'em, all right, if they come around me – I'll brother 'em over the head with a club!"
"Jest the same, it was Mexicans that saved your bacon last night," retorted Angy, with spirit. "Some of these white men that you had beat up were for pushin' your face in while you was asleep, but when I made a little talk in Spanish, touchin' on your friendly relations with the Garcia family, the Mexicans came over in a body and took your part. That was pretty good, hey?"
"Um," responded Pecos, but he assented without enthusiasm. Barring the one exception which went to prove the rule, he had never had much use for Mexicans – and Marcelina was a happy accident, not to be looked for elsewhere in the Spanish-American world. Still, a man had to have some friends; and a Mex was better than a yegg, anyhow. He looked around until he found the tall man who had called him compadre and beckoned him with an imperious jerk of the head. The Mexican came over doubtfully.
"You speak English?" inquired Pecos. "That's good – I want to tell you something. My friend here says you and your compadres stood up for me last night when I was down and out – hey? Well, that's all right – I'm a Texano and I ain't got much use for Mexicanos in general, but any time you boys git into trouble with them yeggs, jest call on me! Savvy?"
The tall man savvied and though Pecos still regarded them with disfavor the Mexican contingency persisted in doing him homage – only now they referred to him as El Patrón. Patrón he was, and Boss, though he never raised a hand. Interpreting aright his censorious glances the sons of Mexico confined their celebration of the Dawn of Freedom to a carnival of neglect, lying in their bunks and smoking cigarritos while the filth accumulated in the slop cans. Under the iron rule of Pete Monat they had been required to do all the cleaning up – for in Arizona a Mexican gets the dirty end of everything – but no sooner had Babe sung his clarion call for freedom than they joined him, heart and hand. If the Society of the Revolution was at all related to the Sons of Rest they wanted to go down as charter members – and they did.
The time may come when cleanliness will be an inherited instinct but at present most of the cleaning up in the world is done under compulsion. Parents compel their children to wash and change their clothes; employers compel their wage-slaves to scrub and clean and empty; cities compel their householders to dispose of sewage and garbage; but not even among members of the capitalistic classes is there shown any clean-cut desire to do the work themselves. The Arizona Indians escape their obligations by moving camp at intervals, and God's sunshine helps out the settlers; but in the Geronimo jail there was no sunshine, nor could any Indian break camp. They were shut in, and there they had to lie, three deep, until the judge should decide their fate. For two days they had luxuriated in anarchy, philosophical and real, but neither kind emptied any garbage. The jail was the dwelling place of Freedom, but it smelled bad. That was a fact. Even the Mexicans noticed it, but they did not take it to heart. It was only when Boone Morgan came down for a batch of prisoners that the community got its orders to clean up.
These were busy days with Boone – opening court, arraigning prisoners, summoning witnesses, roping in jurymen, speaking a good word for some poor devil in the tanks – and it kept him on the run from sun-up to dark. He knew that Pecos Dalhart had broken up his Kangaroo Court and that Angevine Thorne had pulled off some kind of a tin-horn revolution on him, but he didn't mind a little thing like that. Jail life had its ups and downs, but so long as the cage was tight the birds could do as they pleased – short of raising a riot. At least, that was Boone Morgan's theory, based on the general proposition that he could stand it as long as they could – but when at the end of the second day he caught a whiff of the sublimated jail-smell that rose from the abiding place of liberty he let out a "whoosh" like a bear.
"Holy Moses, Bill," he cried, "make these rascals clean up! M-mmm! That would drive a dog out of a tan-yard! What's the matter – is somebody dead?"
"Not yet," responded Bill Todhunter, "but they will be, if we don't git some trusty in there. Them fellers won't do nuthin'– an' I can't go in there and make 'em! You better appoint another alcalde."
"What's the matter with Pete?"
"His head is too sore – he won't be able to put up a fight for a month."
"Umm, and Mike is fixed worse yet – where's that crazy cowman, Pecos Dalhart?"
They found Pecos comfortably bestowed in the bunk of the end cell, philosophically smoking jail tobacco as a deodorizer.
"Say," said the sheriff, brusquely addressing him through the bars, "things are gittin' pretty rotten around here – somebody ought to make them Mexicans clean up. You put my Kangaroo Court out of business – how'd you like the job yourself?"
Pecos grunted contemptuously.
"Don't want it, hey? Well, you don't have to have it – I can get that big sheep-man down from the upper tanks."
A cold glint came into Pecos Dalhart's eyes, but he made no remarks – a big sheep-man would just about fall in with his mood.
"I got to have some kind of a trusty," observed Morgan, but as Pecos did not rise to the bait, he passed down the run-around grumbling.
"He's a sulky brute," said Bill Todhunter, as they retreated from the stench, "better leave him alone a while and see if we can't stink him out."
"Well, you order them Mexicans to clean up," rumbled the sheriff, "and if this here Pecos Dalhart makes any more trouble I'll see that he gits roped and hog-tied. And say, throw old Babe out of there as soon as he gits his supper. Them two fellers are side-kickers in this business and we got to bust 'em up. It's a good thing the grand jury ain't in session now – I'd git hell for the condition of that jail."
There never was a jail so clean it didn't smell bad, but that night the Geronimo jail broke into the same class with the Black Hole of Calcutta, yet the inmates seemed to enjoy it. The yegg gang in particular – a choice assortment of Chi Kids, Denver Slims, and Philly Blacks who had fled from the Eastern winter – were having the time of their lives, rampaging up and down the corridor, upsetting cuspidors, throwing water from the wash-room, and making themselves strictly at home. When the sturdy form of Pecos Dalhart appeared in the door of Cell One they slackened their pace a little, but now that the moral restraint of Babe was gone they felt free as the prairie wind. Only in their avoidance of Mexicans did they show a certain consciousness of authority, for the word had passed that Pecos was buen' amigo with the umbres and no one was looking for a rough-house. As for Pecos, he put in his time thinking, standing aloof from friends and enemies alike – and his thoughts were of the revolution. When he had been off by himself reading the Voice of Reason he had been astounded at the blank stupidity of the common people, which alone was holding mankind back from its obvious destiny. "Think, Slave, think!" it used to say; and thinking was so easy for him. But the blind and brutish wage slaves who were dragged at the chariot wheels of capitalism – well, perhaps they had not yet learned how. Anyway, he had seen how inevitable was the revolution, and whichever way he turned he saw new evidences of that base conspiracy between wealth and government which keeps the poor man down. Nay, he had not only seen it – he had suffered at its hand. Yet there was one thing which he had never realized before, though the Voice of Reason was full of it – the low and churlish spirit of the masses which incapacitated them for freedom. Take those yeggs, now. They had been freed from the hard and oppressive hand of tyranny and yet as soon as the Kangaroo Court was abolished they began to raise particular hell. It was discouraging. There was only one way to beat sense into some people, and that was with a club. A cuspidor came the length of the corridor and Pecos rose slowly from his couch. What was the use of trying the revolution on a gang of narrow-headed yeggs!
"Hey," he challenged, "you yaps want to key down a little or I'll rattle your heads together. Go on into your cells now, and shut up." He fixed the yegg-men sternly with his eye, but the blood had gone to their heads from gambolling about and they still had their dreams of heaven.
"Aw, gwan," said Philly Black, "we ain't doin' nawthin' – give a feller a show, can't ye?"
"W'y, sure, I'll give you a show!" thundered Pecos wrathfully. "You yeggs think because I licked Pete Monat I give you license to prize up hell. You got this jail like a hog-waller already in two days. Now, clean up, you dastards, and the first man that opens his face to me will go to the doctor!"
There was no easy answer to an argument like that and the gang slouched sullenly to their task, making all the motions of a superficial cleaning up but leaving the jail dirtier than ever. With his strap poised Pecos stood over them, reading well the insubordination in their black hearts and waiting only for some one to start the fray. At every move the yeggs became viler and more slipshod in their methods, spilling half the contents of every can upon the floor, and still Pecos Dalhart eyed them grimly, while the awe-stricken Mexicans huddled together in their cells waiting for the catastrophe. At last Philly Black, emboldened by his immunity, was moved to take a chance. Seizing recklessly upon the nearest can he made a rush for the wash-room, slopping filth and corruption as he went. As he passed Pecos his hold slipped, accidentally, of course, and the can fell to the floor with a final overflowing of uncleanness.
"Clean that up," Pecos said, as Philly Black came to a crouch, but Philly only looked over his shoulder. "Clean that up!" commanded Pecos, drawing nearer. "Clean– " but Philly was cleaning up. His gang had not rallied to his aid. Slowly and slovenly, and making ugly faces, he bent to his unwilling task, scowling beneath his black mop of hair at Denver and Chi and the gang.
"I said clean up!" rumbled Pecos, as Philly grabbed his can to go. "Clean up! You don't call that clean, do you?"
"Aw, go t'hell!" bellowed Philly Black, hurling his slop-can once more upon the floor. "Let the dam' Mexicans clean up!"
He dodged the swift swing of the strap and leapt in, calling on his fellows for aid. For a moment they wrestled furiously, and as the yeggs rushed in to help, the Mexicans swarmed out to meet them; but before either side could lend a hand Philly Black slipped on his own dirty floor and went down with a deadly thud. Pecos rode him to the floor, clutching fiercely at his throat; for an instant he waited for him to fight back, then he sprang up and waded into the yeggs. Philly was where he would make no trouble for quite a while.
Once more at the clamor of battle the jail deputies came rushing to the rescue, bending their futile pistols upon the yelling prisoners.
"It's that blankety-blank, Pecos Dalhart!" shouted Bill Todhunter as he goggled through the bars. "Well, the son of a goat, ain't he a fightin' fool!" There was a note almost of admiration in his voice, for Pecos was punching heads and belting yeggs with the calculating rage of a conqueror.
"Git out of my way, umbres!" he yelled to his Mexican retainers. "Vaya se—vamos– I can fix 'em!" And he surely did. In his strong hands the alcalde's strap was a deadly weapon; he swung it with a puncher's skill and laid it on like a horse-wrangler. Shrieks for mercy were mingled with howls of pain and every time a man stood up to him he slugged him with all his strength. The floor was strewn with yeggs and when he had beaten down all opposition he flogged them into their cells.
"You will turn this jail into a hog-waller, will you?" he demanded, when the corridor was cleared of men. "You will throw slops on the floor and not half clean 'em up! Well, come outer there, you low-browed hobos —I'll show you how it's done! Now take them swabs and fill your cans with water and wash this floor up right. No, you stay where you are, umbres; I want to show these brake-beam tourists who's the boss. Jump now, you panhandlers, or I'll burn you up with this!" He swung his wet strap and popped it behind the Chi Kid, and Chi went on his way. Bill Todhunter and the jail deputy looked curiously on through the bars; the reporter for the morning Blade showed up suddenly from nowhere and began to ask leading questions, but Pecos did not unbend. In vain the reporter tried to beckon him up to the bars – Pecos remembered him too well as the fresh young man who had made a jest of his breaking into jail; also he hoped he could do a little job of house-cleaning without going on record as the friend of old Boone Morgan. He might be a little weak on the revolution but he knew his natural enemies. These were the men who had thrown him into jail for branding his own cow's calf; they were the hirelings of the System, friends to the rich and enemies to the poor; to them the agony of his soul was no more than a passing jest. He turned on the reporter and scowled.
"Go take a run and jump at yourself!" he said.
