Kitabı oku: «With Hoops of Steel», sayfa 13
CHAPTER XIX
The grand jury sat upon the Whittaker case and returned a true bill against Emerson Mead, indicting him for the murder of Will Whittaker. Mead was confined in the jail at Las Plumas to await his trial, which would not take place until the following autumn. The finding of Will Whittaker’s body convinced many who had formerly believed in his innocence that Mead was guilty. Everybody knew that his usual practice in shooting was to fire three quick shots, so rapidly that the three explosions were almost a continuous sound, pause an instant, and then, if necessary, fire three more in the same way. The three bullets were pretty sure to go where he meant they should, and if he wished he could put them so close together that the ragged edges of the holes touched one another, as did those in the back of Whittaker’s corpse. It was the number and character of those bullet holes that made many of Mead’s friends believe that he was guilty of the murder. “Nobody but Emerson could have put those bullets in like that,” they said to themselves, although publicly the Democrats all loudly and persistently insisted that he was innocent.
In the constant debate over the matter which followed the finding of the body the Democrats contended that the two men who had held Thomson Tuttle captive all night near the White Sands must have been the murderers. And it was on them and their mysterious conduct that Judge Harlin rested his only hope for his client. The lawyer did not believe they had Whittaker’s body in their wagon, although he intended to try to make the jury think so. Privately he believed that Mead was guilty, but he admitted this to no one, and in his talks with Mead he constantly assumed that his client was innocent. He had never asked Mead to tell him whether or not he had committed the murder.
Nick Ellhorn and Tom Tuttle lingered about Las Plumas for a short time, sending their gold to the mint, and trying to contrive some scheme by which Emerson Mead could be forced into liberty. Each of them felt it a keen personal injury that their friend was in jail, and they were ready to forego everything else if they could induce him to break his promise and with them make a wild dash for freedom. But he would listen to none of their plans and told them, over and over, that he had given his word and proposed to keep it.
“Of course,” he said, “when I made that promise to Wellesly I didn’t suppose they would find Will’s body. But they did, and I mean to keep my promise. I gave my word for you-all too, and I don’t want you to make any fool breaks that will cause people to think I’m trying to skip.”
Finally they gave up their plans and Tom returned to his duties with Marshal Black at Santa Fe and Nick went out to Mead’s ranch to keep things in order there.
Ellhorn returned to Las Plumas for his own trial, the result of which was that he was found guilty of assault and battery upon the Chinese and fined five hundred dollars. The moment sentence was pronounced upon him he strode to the judge’s desk and laid down his check for the amount of his fine. Then he straightened up, thrust his hands in his pockets, and exclaimed:
“Now, I want that pig tail!”
“You are fined five dollars for contempt of court,” said the judge, frowning at the tall Texan, who looked very much in earnest.
“All right, Judge! Here you are!” said Nick cheerfully, as he put a gold piece down beside the check. “Now, I want that Chiny pig tail! It’s mine! I’ve paid big for it! It’s cost me five hundred and five dollars, and no end of trouble, and it belongs to me.”
“You are fined ten dollars for contempt of court,” the judge said severely, biting his lips behind his whiskers.
“Here you are, Judge!” and Nick spun a ten-dollar gold piece on the desk. “I want that scalp as a memento of this affair, and to remind me not to mix my drinks again. I’ve paid for it, a whole heap more’n it’s worth, and I demand my property!” And Nick brought his fist down on the judge’s desk with a bang that made the gold coins rattle.
“Mr. Sheriff, remove this man!” ordered the Judge, and John Daniels stepped forward to seize his arm. Ellhorn leaped to one side, exclaiming, “I’ll not go till I get my property!” He thrust his hand into the accustomed place for his revolver, and with a look of surprise and chagrin on his face stood meekly before the sheriff.
“A man can’t get his rights unless he has a gun, even in a court,” he growled, as he submitted to be led out. At the door he looked back and called to the judge:
“That scalp’s mine, and I mean to have what I’ve paid for, if I have to sue your blamed old court till the day o’ judgment!” And he went at once and filed a suit against the district attorney for the recovery of the queue.
Marguerite Delarue kept on with her quiet life through the summer, caring for little Paul and attending to her father’s house. She did not see Emerson Mead again after the day when, with her little white sunbonnet pulled over her disordered hair, she helped her baby brother to mount his horse. Long before the summer was over she decided that he cared nothing for her and that she must no longer feel more interest in him than she did in any other casual acquaintance. But sometimes she wakened suddenly, or started at her work, seeming to feel the intent gaze of a pair of brown eyes. Then she would blush, cry a little, and scold herself severely.
It was late in the summer when Albert Wellesly made his next visit to Las Plumas. He had decided to buy a partly abandoned gold mine in the Hermosa mountains, and he explained to Marguerite Delarue, as he sat on her veranda the afternoon of his arrival, that he was making a hurried visit to Las Plumas in order to give it a thorough examination. And then he added in a lower tone and with a meaning look in his eyes, that that was not the only reason for the trip. She blushed with pleasure at this, and he felt well enough satisfied not to go any farther just then.
He came to see her again after he returned from the mine. It was Sunday afternoon, and they sat together on the veranda, behind the rose and honeysuckle vines, with Marguerite’s tea table between them. He told her about his trip to the mine and what he thought of its condition and deferentially asked her advice in some small matters that had an ethical as well as a commercial bearing. She listened with much pleasure and her blue eyes shone with the gratification that filled her heart, for never before had a man, fighting his battles with the world, turned aside to ask her whether or not he was doing right. Then he told her how much he valued her judgment upon such matters and how much he admired and reverenced the pure, high standard of her life. His tones grew more lover-like as he said it would mean far more to him than he could express if he might hope that her sweet influence would some day come intimately into his own life. Then he paused and looked at her lowered eyelids, bent head and burning cheeks. But she said nothing, sitting as still as one dead, save for her heaving breast. After a moment he went on, saying that he cared more for her than for any other woman he had ever known, and that if she did not love him then, he would be willing to wait many years to win her love, and make her his wife. Still she did not speak, and he laid one hand on hers, where it rested on the table, and whispered softly, “Marguerite, do you love me?” With that she lifted her head, and the troubled, appealing look in her eyes smote his heart into a brighter flame. He pressed her hand in a closer grasp and exclaimed, “Marguerite, dearest, say that you love me!”
The innocent, fluttering, maiden heart of her, glad and proud to feel that she had been chosen above all others, but doubtful of itself, and ignorant of everything else, leaped toward him then and a wistful little smile brightened her face. She opened her lips to speak, but suddenly she seemed to see, beside the gate, a tall and comely figure bending toward her with eyes that burned her cheeks and cast her own to the ground. She snatched her hand from Wellesly’s grasp and buried her face in her palms.
“I do not know,” she panted. “I must think about it.”
“Yes, certainly, dear – you will let me call you dear, won’t you – take time to think it over. I will wait for your answer until your heart is quite sure. I hope it will be what I want, and don’t make me wait very long, dear. Good-bye, sweetheart.”
He lifted her hand to his lips and went away. She sat quite still beside the table, her burning face in her hands, her breast a turmoil of blind doubts, and longings, and keen disappointments with, she knew not what, and over all an imperious, sudden-born wish to be loved.
Wellesly walked down the street smiling to himself in serene assurance of an easy victory. He was accustomed to having women show him much favor, and more than one had let him know that he might marry her if he wished. Moreover, he thought himself a very desirable match, and he did not doubt for an instant that any woman, who liked him as well as he was sure Marguerite did, would accept his offer.
“It was evidently her first proposal,” he thought, “and she did not know exactly what to do with it. She is as shy and as sweet as a little wood-violet. Some girls, after my undemonstrative manner this afternoon, would write me a sarcastic note with a ‘no’ in it as big as a house. But nothing else would have done with Marguerite. She isn’t one of the sort that wants every man she knows to begin kissing her at the first opportunity. And that is one of the reasons I mean to marry her. The other sort are all very well, but a man doesn’t want to marry one of them. I want my wife to have such dignity and modesty that I can feel sure no other man ever has, or ever will, kiss her but me. And I can feel sure of that with Marguerite – just as sure as I can that I’ll have a favorable answer from her by the time I make my next visit to Las Plumas.”
Marguerite sat behind her screen of honeysuckle vines, her face in her hands and a mob of blind, wild, incoherent desires and doubts making tumult in her heart, until she heard her father’s footsteps in the house. Pierre Delarue had been taking his Sunday afternoon siesta, and he came out upon the veranda in a very comfortable frame of mind. He patted Marguerite’s shoulder affectionately and asked her to make him a cup of tea. He was very fond of his fair young daughter, who had grown into the living likeness of the wife he had married in the days of his exuberant youth. But he rarely withdrew his thoughts from outside affairs long enough to be conscious of his affection, except on Sunday afternoons, when interest and excitement on Main street were at too low an ebb to attract his presence. On other days, she endeared herself to him by the sympathetic attention she gave to his accounts of what was going on down-town and to his rehearsals of the speeches he had made. On Sundays, when he had the leisure to feel a quickened sense of responsibility, he both pleased himself and felt that he was discharging a duty to her by discoursing upon his observations and experiences of the world and by propounding his theories of life and conduct. For Pierre prided himself on his philosophy quite as much as he did on his oratory.
Marguerite, on her part, was very fond of her father, but it was a fondness which considered his love of speech-making and his flighty enthusiasms with smiling tolerance. Her cooler and more critical way of looking at things had caused her, young as she was, to distrust his judgment in practical affairs, and about most matters she had long since ceased asking his advice.
She sat beside him and talked with him while he drank his cup of tea. A recently married young couple passed the house, and Marguerite made some disapproving comment on the man’s character, adding that she did not understand how so nice a girl could have married him.
“Oh, he has a smooth and ready tongue,” answered her father, “and I dare say it was easy for him to make love. When you are older you will know that it is the man who can talk love easily who can make the most women think they love him.” Pierre Delarue stopped to drink the last of his tea, and Marguerite blushed consciously, remembering the scene through which she had just passed. She rose to put his cup on the table, and was glad that her face was turned away from him when next he spoke:
“When a man tells a woman that he loves her,” Delarue went on, “and it rolls easily off his tongue, she should never believe a word that he says. If a man really loves a woman, those three little words, ‘I love you,’ are the hardest ones in the whole world for him to say. Most women do not know that when they hear their first proposals, but they ought to know it, especially in this country, where they make so much of love. But, after all, I do not know that it makes so much difference, because all women want to hear no end of love talked to them, and it is only the man who does not feel it very deeply who can talk enough about it to satisfy them. A woman is bound to be disappointed, whichever way she marries, for she is sure to find out after a while that the flow of words is empty, and the love without the words never satisfies. After all, it is better for a woman to think of other things than love when she marries. They manage these things better in France. Don’t you think so, my daughter?”
There was a deep thrill of passionate protest in her voice as she answered, “No, father, I certainly do not.”
He laughed indulgently and patted her hand as he said: “Ah, you are a little American!” Then he added, more seriously: “I suppose you, too, will soon be thinking of love and marriage.”
She threw her arms around his neck and there was a sob in her voice as she exclaimed: “Father, I shall never marry!”
He smoothed her brown hair and laid his hand on her shoulder saying, “Ah, that means you will surely be married within a year!”
She shook her head. “No, I mean it, father! I shall never marry!”
“My dear, I should be sorry if you did not,” he answered with dignity, and with a strong note of disapproval in his voice. “For what is a woman who does not marry and bear children? Nothing! She is a rose bush that never flowers, a grape vine that never fruits. She is useless, a weed that cumbers the earth. No, my daughter, you must marry, or displease your father very much.”
Marguerite lay awake long that night, trying to decide what she ought to do. Her father’s words gave sight to a blind, vague misgiving she had already felt, but at the same time she could not believe that Wellesly meant less than his words when he told her that he loved her and wished to make her his wife.
“Why should he propose to me if he does not wish to marry me?” she argued with herself, “and why should he want to marry me if he does not love me? No, he surely loves me. Perhaps father is right about the Frenchmen. He knows them, but he does not understand the Americans. They always feel so sure about things, and they do everything as if there was no possibility of failure. But I wish I knew if I love him! I suppose I do, for I felt so pleased that he should wish to marry me. But I don’t have to decide at once. I’ll wait till he comes to Las Plumas again before I give him an answer.”
She debated whether or not she ought to tell her father and ask his advice, but she feared that in his mind other considerations would outweigh the one she felt to be the chief, and she decided to say nothing to him until she knew her own mind in the matter. “If I refuse him,” she said to herself, “there will be no reason for me to say anything about it, and it wouldn’t be fair to Mr. Wellesly for me to tell father or any one else that he had proposed to me. Besides, father might possibly speak of it outside, and I couldn’t bear to think that people were gossiping about it. No, I will not say anything, unless I should decide that I want to marry him. Then I will ask father if he thinks I’d better.”
The next morning she woke with a sudden start, all her consciousness filled with an overwhelming desire to love and be loved, to be all of life to some one who would be more than life to her. She sat up, panting, pressing her hand to her heart. At once her thoughts leaped to Wellesly.
“He loves me, he has told me so, and surely this is love I feel now, and for him. I suppose – I do – love him.”
She lifted her nightgown above her bare feet and stood beside little Paul’s crib. With her disheveled hair falling in waving masses around her face she bent over him and lightly kissed his forehead.
“My little Bye-Bye, I would not leave you to be any man’s wife. But he will not wish me to leave you, because he thinks – that it is beautiful and noble that I – that I have cared for you – though how could I have done anything else – and that is partly why he loves me. Surely, I love him, and I suppose – it is best – for me to marry him. But I’ll wait till he comes again – there!”
With burning cheeks she stood erect and stamped one bare foot on the floor. Again the memory of the brown eyes smote suddenly into her consciousness. Her chin took a sharper angle and her red lips shut tightly as she threw back her head and twisted her fingers together.
“I will not think of him again,” she said slowly, in a low voice. “He is in jail, to be tried for murder, and he will probably be hung – ” She hesitated, her face turned white and there was a spasmodic throbbing in her throat, but she went resolutely on: “And he does not care the least thing about me. He was merely fond of my little Bye-Bye, and I am grateful to him for that. But he is nothing to me. I’ll marry Mr. Wellesly – I think – but I’ll wait – ” And then the throbbing in her throat choked her voice and she threw herself upon the bed and buried her face in the pillow and cried. Just as thousands of young girls have cried over their fluttering, doubtful, ignorant maiden hearts, ever since man gave up seizing the girl of his choice and carrying her away, willy-nilly, and began proposing to her instead.
CHAPTER XX
The first days of October were at hand, and the court session at which Emerson Mead was to be tried for the murder of Will Whittaker would soon open. The supreme court of the territory was sitting at Santa Fe, and its decision upon the shrievalty would be announced in a few days. The flames of partisan feeling were already breaking out in Las Plumas. The dividing line of Main street had begun to be drawn, although fitfully as yet, and conveniently forgotten if business called to the other an occupant of either side. But in the matter of mint juleps, cocktails, and the swapping of yarns Main street stretched its dusty length between Republicans and Democrats as grim and impassable as a mountain barrier. On both sides there were meaning glances and significant nods and half-spoken threats of assault and resistance. The Democrats professed to believe that the Republicans were determined to hold the office of sheriff through the trial of Emerson Mead, whatever should be the decision, in order that they might find some means to end his life should the court discharge him. The Republicans insisted that the Democrats were planning to seize the office by hook or by crook before the trial should begin in order that they might allow him to escape. And each side declared, with angry eyes and set teeth, that the other should not be allowed to thwart justice, if the streets of Las Plumas had to be paved with dead men.
Judge Harlin sent word to Mead’s ranch, asking Nick Ellhorn to come into town as soon as possible, and telegraphed to Tom Tuttle at Santa Fe to return to Las Plumas at once. But it happened that Tom was chasing an escaped criminal in the Gran Quivera country, far from railroads and telegraphs, and that Nick was out on the range and did not receive the message until nearly a week later.
Nick had settled the matter of the Chinaman’s queue on his last visit to Las Plumas, two weeks before, but not to his entire satisfaction. Judge Harlin had refused to conduct his suit for the recovery of the queue against Harry Gillam, the district attorney, and Nick had declared that he would be his own lawyer and get that “scalp,” if it “took till he was gray headed.” Secretly, he was glad that Judge Harlin would not take the case, because he had an active animosity against Harry Gillam, mainly because Gillam wore a silk hat, and he thought that, as his own lawyer, he could contrive to cast enough ridicule on the district attorney to set the whole town laughing and make Gillam so angry that he would lose his temper and want to fight. So he set about preparing his case, with advice and suggestion from Judge Harlin, who, while he did not wish to be openly connected with the matter, was very willing to see Gillam, who was a Republican and the judge’s chief professional rival, made a laughing stock and brought to grief. And he knew that the case, with Nick Ellhorn at the helm, would be the funniest thing that had happened in Las Plumas for many a day. Ellhorn’s plans began to be whispered about. Presently the whole town was chuckling and smiling in anticipation of the fun there would be at the trial. Gillam fidgeted in nervous apprehension for several days; then he put the pig tail in his pocket, hunted up Ellhorn and invited him to have a drink. As they drained their glasses he exclaimed:
“Oh, by the way, Nick, are you really in earnest about that fool suit you’ve filed against me?”
“You mean about my Chiny pigtail?” asked Ellhorn.
“About the Chinaman’s queue, yes.”
“You bet I am. That blamed thing’s cost me a whole heap more’n it’s worth to anybody except me and the Chinaman. I reckon he’s sold it to me for that five hundred dollars. It’s mine, and I mean to have it. I sure reckon I naturalized one heathen when I took that scalp. There’s one bias-eyed fan-tanner that won’t pull his freight for Chiny as soon as he gets his pockets full of good American money. I reckon I was a public benefactor when I sheared that washee-washee, and I deserve the pig tail as a decoration for my services. No, sir, the scalp’s mine, by every count you can mention, and you’ll have to give it up.”
“Is the queue all you want?”
“If that’s all you’ve got that belongs to me.”
“Well, then, take it, and stop your jackassing about the fool thing,” said Gillam, holding out the queue.
“The hell you say!” Nick exclaimed, quite taken aback and much disappointed.
“Yes, here it is. And I call these gentlemen to witness that I offer it to you freely and without any conditions.”
So Nick reluctantly took the braid and gave up his case against Gillam. “It was just like the blamed whelp,” he complained to Judge Harlin, “to back down and spoil all the fun, but it’s no more than you might expect from a man that wears a stove-pipe.” Harry Gillam was the only man in Las Plumas who wished, or dared to wear a silk hat, and his taste in the matter of headgear gave constant edge to Ellhorn’s feeling of contempt and aversion. “I’m blamed sorry for it,” Nick went on, “for I sure reckon half the kids in town would have been shyin’ rocks at that plug before the trial was over.”
“I guess he was buffaloed,” he said later, as he finished giving an account of the affair to Emerson Mead. “It was the meanest sort of a backdown you ever saw, but it just showed the fellow’s gait. A man with no more grit than that had better go back east, where he can wear a stove-pipe hat without lookin’ like a fool, which he sure is.”
“What made you so determined to have the thing, Nick?” Mead asked, examining the braid.
Nick gave a twist to the ends of his mustache and looked contemplatively at the ceiling. “Well,” he said slowly, and there were signs of the Irish roll in his voice, “it was my scalp. I took it, first, and then I was after payin’ for it. Sure and I wanted it, Emerson, to remind me not to mix my drinks again. It’s my pledge to take whisky straight and beer the next day. And I sure reckon whenever I look at it I’ll say to myself, ‘Nick, you’ve been a blooming, blasted, balky, blithering, bildaverous idiot once too often. Don’t you do it again.’”
Notwithstanding his feeling about it, Ellhorn went away and forgot the earnest of his future good behavior. Emerson smiled that evening as he saw it trailing its snaky length over the back of a chair and stuffed it in the side pocket of his coat, thinking he would give it to Ellhorn the next time his friend should come to the jail.
Judge Harlin thought Emerson Mead unaccountably despondent about the probable outcome of his trial, and at times even indifferent to his fate. He wondered much why this man, formerly of such buoyant and determined nature, should suddenly collapse, in this weak-kneed fashion, lose all confidence in himself, and seem to care so little what happened to him. The lawyer finally decided that it was all on account of his client’s honesty and uprightness of character, which would not allow him, being guilty, to make an effort to prove that he was not, and he lived in daily expectation of an order from Mead to change his plea to guilty. The time was drawing near for the opening of the case when Judge Harlin one day hurried excitedly to the jail for a conference with Mead.
“Emerson,” he said, “some member of the last grand jury has been leaking, and it has come to my ears that testimony was given there by some one who declared he saw you kill Whittaker. And I’ve just found out that the other side has got a witness, presumably the same one, who will swear to the same thing.”
Mead’s face set into a grim defiance that rejoiced Harlin more than anything that had happened since his client’s imprisonment, as he answered:
“I’ve been expecting this. Who is it and what’s his testimony?”
“I haven’t been able to learn any details about it – merely that he will swear he saw you kill Whittaker. I’m not positive who the man is, but I feel reasonably sure I’ve spotted him. I think he is a Mexican, a red-headed Mexican, called Antone Colorow.”
Mead nodded. “I think likely,” he said, and then he told Judge Harlin how Antone had tried to lasso him and of the angry man’s threats of revenge for his broken wrists. “I’ve expected all along,” he added, “that they’d come out with some such lay as that. I don’t see how we can buck against it,” he went on, despondently, “for I can’t prove an alibi. Unless you can break down his testimony we might as well give up.”
“I guess there won’t be any difficulty about that,” said Harlin assuringly. “What you’ve just told me will be a very important matter, and if I can keep Mexicans off the jury it won’t take much to convince Americans that he is lying, just because he is a Mexican.”
After Judge Harlin went away Mead sat on the edge of his bed, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, and his broad shoulders rounded into an attitude of deep dejection.
“What is the use?” his thoughts ran. “They are bound to get me sooner or later, and it might just as well be now as any time. It won’t make any difference whether they clear me or convict me. She will believe me guilty anyway, because her father and all her friends will say so.” He rose and began pacing the room and his thoughts turned persistently to Marguerite Delarue. Since he had heard the rumor of her approaching marriage to Wellesly he had tried not to let his thoughts rest upon her, but sometimes the rush of his scanty memories would not be forbidden.
Again he recalled the day when he first saw her, as she stood with her sick baby brother in her arms. She was so young, so blooming, so fair, that her anxious face and troubled eyes seemed all the more appealing. He remembered that he had looked at her a moment before he could speak, and in that moment love smote his heart. He had wished to see her father and she had laid the sick child on a couch while she left the room. The little one had fretted and he had sat down beside it and shown it his watch and his revolver, and it had put out its hands to him, and when Marguerite came back she had found the big, tall, broad-shouldered man cradling the sick child in his arms. He halted in his moody pacing of the cell and a sudden, shivering thrill shot through his whole big body as he saw again the look of pleasure and of trustful admiration which had lighted her face and shone in her dark blue eyes. The child had clung to him and, pleased, he had asked if he might not take it in his arms for a short ride on his horse. And after that, whenever he had passed the Delarue house alone, he had tried to see the little boy, and had tried still more, in roundabout ways, to bring the child’s sister outside the house, where he might see her and hear her voice. Four times he had done that, and once he had seen her in her father’s store and had held a few minutes’ conversation with her. He remembered every word she had said. He repeated them all to himself, and went over again every least incident of the times he had stopped his horse at her gate and had taken the laughing child from her arms and they had looked at each other and he had tried to say something – anything, and then had ridden away.
When the meager little memories were all done he sat down on his bed again and felt that nothing mattered, since she was to marry Albert Wellesly and would surely believe him guilty of all that was charged against him. He felt no jealousy of her chosen husband, and no anger toward Wellesly because he had won her. He was conscious only of a vague wonder that any man had dared ask Marguerite Delarue to be his wife.
On Saturday of the first week in October Judge Harlin received a private dispatch from Santa Fe saying that the supreme court had decided the shrievalty contest in favor of Joe Davis, the Democratic candidate. At once the threatened storm began to break. By noon Main street was again divided into two opposing camps. Every rifle, revolver and shot-gun in the town that was not carried on some man’s person was put within easy reach of ready hands. Shops and offices, stores and gardens were deserted, and men hurried to the center of the town, where they drifted along the sidewalk or stood in doorways in excited groups, each side anxiously and angrily on the alert for some open act of hostility from the other. The Republicans said they had not received official notice of the decision of the court, and that they would not surrender the office until it should reach them. The Democrats demanded that it be given up at once and accused the other side of secreting the court order with the intention of holding the office through Emerson Mead’s trial. The district court was to convene at Las Plumas on the following Monday. Mead’s case was the first on the docket.
