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CHAPTER XXVI
O'MIE'S INHERITANCE
In these cases we still have judgment here.
– SHAKESPEARE.
True to his word, Tell Mapleson's time followed hard on the finishing up of Judson. My father did not make a step until he was sure of what the next one would be. That is why the supreme court never reversed his decisions. When at last he had perfected his plans, Tell Mapleson grew shy of pushing his claims. But Tell was a shrewd pettifogger, and his was a different calibre of mind from Judson's. It was not until my father was about to lay claim in his client's behalf to the valuable piece of land containing the big cottonwood and the haunted cabin, that Tell came out of hiding. This happened on the afternoon following the morning scene with Judson. And aside from the task of the morning, the news of Bud Anderson's untimely death had come that day. Nobody could foretell what next this winter's campaign might hold for the Springvale boys out on the far Southwest Plains, and my father's heart was heavy.
Tell Mapleson was tall and slight. He was a Southern man by birth, and he always retained something of the Southern air in his manner. Active, nervous, quick-witted, but not profound, he made a good impression generally, especially where political trickery or nice turns in the law count for coin. Professionally he and my father were competitors; and he might have developed into a man of fine standing, had he not kept store, become postmaster, run for various offices, and diffused himself generally, while John Baronet held steadily to his calling.
In the early afternoon Tell courteously informed my father that he desired an interview with the idea of adjusting differences between the two. His request was granted, and a battle royal was to mark the second half of the day. John Baronet always called this day, which was Friday, his black but good Friday.
"Good-afternoon, Mr. Mapleson, have a chair."
"Good-afternoon, Judge. Pretty stiff winter weather for Kansas."
So the two greeted each other.
"You wanted to see me?" my father queried.
"Yes, Judge. We might as well get this matter between us settled here as over in the court-room, eh?"
My father smiled. "Yes, we can afford to do that," he said. "Now, Mapleson, you represent a certain client in claiming a piece of property known as the north half of section 29, range 14. I also represent a claim on the same property. You want this settled out of court. I have no reason to refuse settlement in this way. State your claim."
Mapleson adjusted himself in his chair.
"Judge, the half section of land lying upon the Neosho, the one containing among other appurtenances the big cottonwood tree and the stone cabin, was set down in the land records as belonging to one Patrick O'Meara, the man who took up the land. He was a light-headed Irishman; he ran off with a Cheyenne squaw, and not long afterwards was killed by the Comanches. This property, however, he gave over to a friend of his, a Frenchman named Le Claire, connected in a business way with the big Choteau Fur-trading Company in St. Louis. This Frenchman brought his wife and child here to live. I knew them, for they traded at the 'Last Chance' store. That was before your day here, Baronet. Le Claire didn't live out in that cabin long, for his only child was stolen by the Kiowas, and his wife, in a frenzy of grief drowned herself in the Neosho. Then Le Claire plunged off into the Plains somewhere. Later he was reported killed by the Kiowas. Now I have the evidence, the written statement signed by this Irishman, of the turning of the property into Le Claire's hands. Also the evidence that Le Claire was not killed by the Indians. Instead, he was legally married to a Kiowa squaw, a sister of Chief Satanta, who is now a prisoner of war with General Custer in the Indian Territory. By this union there was one child, a son, Jean Pahusca he is called. To this son this property now belongs. There can be no question about it. The records show who entered the land. Here is the letter sworn to in my store by this same man, left by him to be given to Le Claire when he should come on from St. Louis. The Irishman was impatient to join these Cheyennes he'd met on a fur-hunting trip way up on the Platte, and with his affidavit before old Judge Fingal (he also was here before you) he left this piece of land to the Frenchman."
Mapleson handed my father a torn greasy bit of paper, duly setting forth what he had claimed.
"Now, to go on," he resumed. "This Kiowa marriage was a legal one, for the Frenchman had a good Catholic conscience. This marriage was all right. I have also here the affidavit of the Rev. J. J. Dodd, former pastor of the Methodist Church South in Springvale. At the time of this marriage Dodd, who was then stationed out near Santa Fé, New Mexico, was on his way east with a wagon train. Near Pawnee Rock Le Claire with a pretty squaw came to the train legally equipped and was legally married by Dodd. As a wedding fee he gave this letter of land grant to Dodd. 'Take it,' he said, 'I'll never use it. Keep it, or give it away.' Dodd kept it."
"Until when?" my father asked.
Mapleson's hands twitched nervously.
"Until he signed it over to me," he replied. "I have everything secured," he added, smiling, and then he went on.
"Le Claire soon got tired of the Kiowas of course, and turned priest, repented of all his sins, renounced his wife and child, and all his worldly goods. It will be well for him to keep clear of old Satanta in his missionary journeys to the heathen, however. You know this priest's son, Jean Pahusca. He got into some sort of trouble here during the war, and he never comes here any more. He has assigned to me all his right to this property, on a just consideration and I am now ready to claim my own, by force, if necessary, through the courts. But knowing your position, and that you also have a claim on the same property, I figured it could be adjusted between us. Baronet, there isn't a ghost of a show for anybody else to get a hold on this property. Every legal claimant is dead except this half-breed. I have papers for every step in the way to possession; and as a man whose reputation for justice has never been diminished, I don't believe you will pile up costs on your client, nor deal unfairly with him. Have you any answer to my claim?"
At that moment the door opened quietly and Father Le Claire entered. He was embarrassed by his evident intrusion and would have retreated but my father called him in.
"You come at a most opportune time, Father Le Claire. Mapleson here has been proving some things to me through your name. You can help us both."
John Baronet looked at both men keenly. Mapleson's face had a look of pleasure as if he saw not only the opportunity to prove his cause, but the chance to grill the priest, whose gentle power had time and again led the Indians from his "Last Chance" saloon on annuity days, when the peaceful Osages and Kaws came up for their supplies. The good Father's face though serious, even apprehensive, had an undercurrent of serenity in its expression hard to reconcile with fear of accusation.
"Mr. Mapleson, will you repeat to Le Claire what you have just told me and show him your affidavits and records?" John Baronet asked.
"Certainly," Tell replied, and glibly he again set forth his basis to a claim on the valuable property. "Now, Le Claire," he added, "Baronet and I have about agreed to arbitrate for ourselves. Your name will never appear in this. The records are seldom referred to, and you are as safe with us as if you'd never married that squaw of old Satanta's household. We are all men here, if one is a priest and one a judge and the other a land-owner."
Le Claire's face never twitched a muscle. He turned his eyes upon the judge inquiringly, but unabashed.
"Will you help us out of this, Le Claire?" my father asked. "If you choose I will give you my claim first."
"Good," said Mapleson. "Let him hear us both, and his word will show us what to do."
"Well, gentlemen," my father began, "by the merest chance a few years ago I came upon the entry of the land in question. It was entered in the name of Patrick O'Meara. Happening to recall that the little red-headed orphan chore-boy down at the Cambridge House bore the same name, I made some inquiry of Cam Gentry about the boy's origin and found that he was an orphan from the Osage Mission, and had been brought up here by one of the priests who stopped here a day or two on his way from the Osage to St. Mary's, up on the Kaw. Cam and Dollie were kind to the child, and he begged the priest to stay with them. The good man consented, and while the guardianship remained with the people of the Mission, O'mie grew up here. It seemed not impossible that he might have some claim on this land. Everything kept pointing the fact more and more clearly to me. Then I was called to the war."
Tell Mapleson's mobile face clouded up a bit at this.
"But I had by this time become so convinced that I called in Le Claire here and held a council with him. He told me some of what he knew, not all, for reasons he did not explain" (my father's eyes were on the priest's face), "but if it is necessary he will tell."
"Now that sounds like a threat," Mapleson urged. Somehow, shrewd as he was, solid as his case appeared to himself, the man was growing uncomfortable. "I've known Le Claire's story for years. I never questioned him once. I had my papers from Dodd. Le Claire long ago renounced the world. His life has proved it. The world includes the undivided north half of section 29, range 14. That's Jean Pahusca's. It's too late now for his father to try to get it away from him, Baronet. You know the courts won't stand for it." Adroit as he was, the Southern blood was beginning to show in Tell's nervous manner and flashing eyes.
"When I came back from the war," my father went on, ignoring the interruption, "I found that the courthouse records had been juggled with. Some of them, with some other papers, had been stolen. It happened on a night when for some reason O'mie, a harmless, uninfluential Irish orphan, was hunted for everywhere in order to be murdered. Why? He stood in the way of a land-claim, and human life was cheap that night."
Tell Mapleson's face was ashy gray with anger; but no heed was given to him, as my father continued.
"It happened that Jean Pahusca, who took him out of town by mistake and left him unconscious and half dead on the bank of Fingal's Creek, was ordered back by the ruffians to find his body, and if he was alive to finish him in any way the Indian chose. That same night the courthouse was entered, and the record of this land-entry was taken."
"I have papers showing O'Meara's signing it over – " Tell began; but my father waved his hand and proceeded.
"Briefly put, it was concealed in the old stone cabin by one Amos Judson. Le Claire here was a witness to the transaction."
The priest nodded assent.
"But for reasons of his own he did not report the theft. He did, however, remove the papers from their careless hiding-place in an old chest to a more secure nook in the far corner of the dark loft. Before I came home he had left Springvale, and business matters called him to France. He has not been here since, until last September when he spent a few days out at the cabin. The lead box had been taken from the loft and concealed under the flat stone that forms the door step, possibly by some movers who camped there and did some little harm to the property.
"I have the box in the bank vault now. Le Claire turned it over to me. There is no question as to the record. Two points must be settled, however. First, did O'Meara give up the land he entered? And second, is the young man we call O'mie heir to the same? Le Claire, you are just back from the Osage Mission?"
The priest assented.
"Now, will you tell us what you know of this case?"
A sudden fear seized Tell Mapleson. Would this man lie now to please Judge Baronet? Tell was a good reader of human nature, and he had thoroughly believed in the priest as a holy man, one who had renounced sin and whose life was one long atonement for a wild, tragic, and reckless youth. He disliked Le Claire, but he had never doubted the priest's sincerity. He could have given any sort of bribe had he deemed the Frenchman purchasable.
"Just one word please, Judge," he said suavely. "Look here, Le Claire, Baronet's a good lawyer, a rich man, and a popular man with a fine reputation; but by jiminy! if you try any tricks with me and vary one hair from the truth, I'll have you before the civil and church courts so quick you'll think the Holy Inquisition's no joke. If you'll just tell the truth nobody's going to know through me anything about your former wives, nor how many half-breed papooses claim you. And I know Baronet here well enough to know he never gossips."
Le Claire turned his dark face toward Mapleson, and his piercing black eyes seemed to look through the restless lawyer fidgeting in his chair. In the old days of the "Last Chance" saloon the two had played a quiet game, each trying to outwit the other – the priest for the spiritual and financial welfare of the Indian pensioners, Mapleson for his own financial gain. Yet no harsh word had ever passed between them. Not even after Le Claire had sent his ultimatum to the proprietor of the "Last Chance," "Sell Jean Pahusca another drink of whiskey and you'll be removed from the Indian agency by order from the Secretary of Indian affairs at Washington."
"Mr. Mapleson, I hope the truth will do you no harm. It is the only thing that will avail now, even the truth I have for years kept back. I am no longer a young man, and my severe illness in October forced me to get this business settled. Indeed, I in part helped to bring matters to an issue to-day."
Mapleson was disarmed at once by the priest's frankness. He had waited long to even up scores with the Roman Catholic who had kept many a dollar from his till.
"You are right, gentlemen, in believing that I hold the key to this situation. The Judge has asked two questions: 'Did Patrick O'Meara ever give up his title to the land?' and 'Is O'mie his heir, and therefore the rightful owner?' Let me tell you first what I know of O'mie.
"His mother was a dear little Irish woman who had come, a stranger, to New York City and was married to Patrick O'Meara when she was quite young. They were poor, and after O'mie was born, his father decided to try the West. Fate threw him into the way of a Frenchman who sent him to St. Louis to the employment of a fur-trading company in the upper Missouri River country. O'Meara knew that the West held large possibilities for a poor man. He hoped in a short time to send for his wife and child to join him."
The priest paused, and his brow darkened.
"This Frenchman, although he was of noble birth, had all the evil traits and none of the good ones of all the generations, and withal he was a wild, restless, romantic dreamer and adventurer. You two do not know what heartlessness means. This man had no heart, and yet," the holy man's voice trembled, "his people loved him – will always love his memory, for he could be irresistibly charming and affectionate when he chose. To make this painful story short, he fell in love – madly as only he could love – with this pretty little auburn-haired Irish woman. He had a wife in France, but Mrs. O'Meara pleased him for the time; and he was that kind of a beast.
"O'Meara came to Springvale, and finding here a chance to get hold of a good claim, he bought it. He built a little cabin and sent money to New York for his wife and child to join him here. Mails were slow in preterritorial days. The next letter O'Meara had from New York was from this Frenchman telling him that his wife and child were dead. Meanwhile the villain played the kind friend and brother to the little woman and helped her to prepare for her journey to the West. He had business himself in St. Louis. He would precede her there and accompany her to her husband's new home. Oh, he knew how to deceive, and he was as charming in manner as he was dominant in spirit. No king ever walked the earth with a prouder step. You have seen Jean Pahusca stride down the streets of Springvale, and you know his regal bearing. Such was this Frenchman.
"In truth," the priest went on, "he had cause to leave New York. Word had come to him that his deserted French wife was on her way to America. This French woman was quick-tempered and jealous, and her anger was something to flee from.
"It is a story of utter baseness. From St. Louis to Springvale Mrs. O'Meara's escort was more like a lover than a friend and business director of her affairs. This land was an Osage reservation then. O'Meara's half-section claim was west of here. The home he built was that little stone cabin near where the draw breaks through the bluff up the river, this side of the big cottonwood."
Le Claire paused and sat in silence for a while.
"Much as I have dealt with all sorts of people," he continued, "I never could understand this Frenchman's nature. Fickle and heartless he was to the very core. The wild frontier life attracted him, and he, who could have adorned the court of France or been a power in New York's high circles, plunged into this wilderness. When they reached the cabin the cause for his devoted attentions was made plain. O'Meara was not there, had indeed been gone for weeks. Letters left at Springvale directed to this Frenchman read:
"'I'm gone for good. A pretty Cheyenne squaw away up on the Platte is too much for me. Tell Kathleen I'm never coming back. So she is free to do what she wants to. You may have this ground I have preëmpted, for your trouble. Good-bye.'
"This letter, scrawled on a greasy bit of paper, was so unlike anything Patrick O'Meara had ever said, its spirit was so unlike his genial true-hearted nature that his wife might have doubted it. But she was young and inexperienced, alone and penniless with her baby boy in a harsh wilderness. The message broke her heart. And then this man used all the force of his power to win her. He showed her how helpless she was, how the community here would look upon her as his wife, and now since she was deserted by her husband, the father of her child, her only refuge lay with him, her true lover.
"The woman's heart was broken, but her fidelity and honor were founded on a rock. She scorned the villain before her and drove him from her door. That night she and O'mie were alone in that lonely little cabin. The cruel dominant nature of the man was aroused now, and he determined to crush the spirit of the only woman who had ever resisted him. Two days later a band of Kiowas was passing peaceably across the Plains. Here the Frenchman saw his chance for revenge by conniving with the Indians to seize little O'mie playing on the prairie beyond the cabin.
"The women out in Western Kansas have had the same agony of soul that Kathleen O'Meara suffered when she found her boy was stolen. In her despair she started after the tribe, wandering lost and starving many days on the prairie until a kind-hearted Osage chief found her and took her to our blessed Mission down the river. Here a strange thing happened. Before she had been there a week, her husband, Thomas O'Meara, came from a trapping tour on the Arkansas River. With him was a little child he had rescued from the Kiowas in a battle at Pawnee Rock. It was his own child, although he did not know it then. In this battle he was told that a Frenchman had been killed. The name was the same as that of the Frenchman he had known in New York. Can you picture the joy of that reunion? You who have had a wife to love, a son to cherish?"
My father's heart was full. All day his own boy's face had been before him, a face so like to the woman whose image he held evermore in sacred memory.
"But their joy was short-lived, for Mrs. O'Meara never recovered from her hardships on the prairie; she died in a few weeks. Her husband was killed by the Comanches shortly after her death. His claim here he left to his son, over whom the Mission assumed guardianship. O'mie was transferred to St. Mary's for some reason, and the priest who started to take him there stopped here to find out about his father's land. But the records were not available. Fingal, for whom Fingal's Creek was named, also known as Judge Fingal, held possession of all the records, and – how, I never knew – but in some way he prevented the priest from finding out anything. Fingal was a Southern man; he met a violent death that year. You know O'mie's story after that." Le Claire paused, and a sadness swept over his face.
"But that doesn't finish the Frenchman's story," he continued presently.
"The night that O'mie's mother left her home in the draw, the French woman who had journeyed far to find her husband came to Springvale. You know what she found. The belongings of another woman. It was she who slipped into the Neosho that night. The Frenchman was in the fight at Pawnee Rock. After that he disappeared. But he had entered a formal claim to the land as the husband of Patrick O'Meara's widow, heir to her property. You see he held a double grip. One through the letter – forged, of course – the other through the claim to a union that never existed."
"Seems to me you've a damned lot to answer for," Tell Mapleson hissed in rage. "If the Church can make a holy man out of such a villain, I'm glad I'm a heretic."
"I'm answering for it," the priest said meekly. Only my father sat with face impassive and calm.
"This half-section of land in question is the property of Thomas O'Meara, son and heir to Patrick O'Meara, as the records show. These stolen records I found where Amos Judson had hastily concealed them, as Judge Baronet has said. I put them in the dark loft for safer keeping, for I felt sure they were valuable. When I came to look for them, they had been moved again. I supposed the one who first took them had recovered them, and I let the matter go. Meanwhile I was called home. When I came here last Fall I found matters still unsettled, and O'mie still without his own. I spent several days in the stone cabin searching for the lost papers. The weather was bad, and you know of my severe attack of pneumonia. But I found the box. In the illness that followed I was kept from Springvale longer than I wished. When I came again O'mie had gone."
The priest paused and sat with eyes downcast, and a sorrowful face.
"Is this your story?" Tell queried. "Your proof of O'mie's claim you consider incontestable, but how about these affidavits from the Rev. Mr. Dodd who married you to the Kiowa squaw? How – "
But Le Claire lifted his hand in commanding gesture. A sudden sternness of face and attitude of authority seemed to clothe him like a garment.
"Gentlemen, there is another story. A bitter, painful story. I have never told it, although it has sometimes almost driven me from the holy sanctuary because of my silence."
It was a deeply impressive moment, for all three of the men realized the importance of the occasion.
"My name," said the priest, "is Pierre Rousseau Le Claire. I am of a titled house of France. We have only the blood of the nobility in our veins. My father had two sons, twins – Pierre the priest, and Jean the renegade, outlawed even among the savages; for his scalp will hang from Satanta's tepee pole if the chance ever comes. Mapleson, here, has told you the truth about his being married to a sister of Chief Satanta. He also is the father of Jean Pahusca. You have noticed the boy's likeness to me. If he, being half Indian, has such a strong resemblance to his family, you can imagine how much alike we are, my brother and myself. In form and gesture, everything – except – well, I have told you what his nature was, and – you have known me for many years. And yet, I have never ceased to pray for him, wicked as he is. We played together about the meadows and vine-clad hill slopes of old France, in our happy boyhood. We grew up and loved and might both have been happily wedded there, – but – I've told you his story. There is nothing of myself that can interest you. That letter of Mapleson's, purporting to be from Patrick O'Meara, is a mere forgery. I have just come up from the Mission. The records and letters of O'Meara have all been kept there. This handwriting would not stand, in court, Mapleson. The land was O'Meara's. It is now O'mie's."
Mapleson sat with rigid countenance. For almost fifteen years he had matched swords with John Baronet. He had felt so sure of his game, he had guarded every possible loophole where success might escape him, he had paved every step so carefully that his mind, grown to the habitual thought of winning, was stunned by the revelation. Like Judson in the morning, his only defence lay In putting blame on somebody else.
"You are the most accomplished double-dealer I ever met," he declared to the priest. "You pretend to follow a holy calling, you profess a love for your brother, and yet you are trying to rob his child of his property. You are against Jean Pahusca, son of the man you love so much. Is that the kind of a priest you are?"
"The very kind – even worse," Le Claire responded. "I went back to France before my aged father died. My mother died of a broken heart over Jean long ago. While our father yet lived I persuaded him to give all his estate – it was large – to the Holy Church. He did it. Not a penny of it can ever be touched."
Mapleson caught his breath like a drowning man.
"It spoiled a beautiful lawsuit, I know," Le Claire continued looking meaningly at him. "For that fortune in France, put into the hands of Jean Pahusca's attorneys here, would have been rich plucking. It can never be. I fixed that before our father's death. Why?"
"Yes, you narrow, grasping robber of orphans, why?" Tell shouted in his passion.
"For the same reason that I stood between Jean Pahusca and this town until he was outlawed here. The half-breed cares nothing for property except as it can buy revenge and feed his appetites. He would sell himself for a drink of whiskey. You know how dangerous he is when drunk. Every man in this town except Judge Baronet and myself has had to flee from him at some time or other. Sober, he is a devil – half Indian, half French, and wholly fiendish. Neither he nor his father has any property. I used my influence to prevent it. I would do it again. Jean Le Claire has forfeited all claims to inheritance. So have I. Among the Indians he is a renegade. I am only a missionary priest trying as I may to atone for my own sins and for the sins of my father's son, my twin brother. That, gentlemen, is all I can say."
"We are grateful to you, Le Claire," John Baronet said. "Mapleson said before you began that your word would show us what to do. It has shown us. It is now time, when some deeds long past their due, must be requited." He turned to Tell sitting defiantly there casting mentally in every direction for some legal hook, some cunning turn, by which to win victory away from defeat.
"Tell Mapleson, the hour has come for us to settle more than a property claim between an Irish orphan and a half-breed Kiowa. And now, if it was wise to settle the other matter out of court, it will be a hundred times safer to settle this here this afternoon. You have grown prosperous in Springvale. In so far as you have done it honestly, I rejoice. You know yourself that I have more than once proved my sincerity by turning business your way, that I could as easily have put elsewhere."
Tell did know, and with something of Southern politeness, he nodded assent.
"You are here now to settle with me or to go before my court for some counts you must meet. You have been the headpiece for all the evil-doing that has wrecked the welfare of Springvale and that has injured reputation, brought lasting sorrow, even cost the life of many citizens. Sooner or later the man who does that meets his own crimes face to face, and their ugly powers break loose on him."
"What do you mean?" Tell's voice was suppressed, and his face was livid.
"I mean first: you with Dick Yeager and others, later in Quantrill's band, in May of 1863 planned the destruction of this town by mob violence. The houses were to be burned, every Union man was to be murdered with his wife and children, except such as the Kiowa and Comanche Indians chose to spare. My own son was singled out as the choicest of your victims. Little O'mie, for your own selfish ends, was not to be spared; and Marjory Whately, just blooming into womanhood, you gave to Jean Pahusca as his booty. Your plan failed, partly through the efforts of this good man here, partly through the courage and quick action of the boys of the town, but mainly through the mercy of Omnipotent God, who sent the floods to keep back the forces of Satan. That Marjory escaped even in the midst of it all is due to the shrewdness and sacrifice of the young man you have been trying to defraud – O'mie.
"In the midst of this you connived with others to steal the records from the courthouse. You were a treble villain, for you set the Rev. Mr. Dodd to a deed you afterwards held over him as a threat and drove him from the town for fear of exposure, forcing him to give you the papers he held against Jean Le Claire's claims to the half-section on the Neosho. Not that his going was any loss to Springvale. But Dodd will never trouble you again. He cast his lot with the Dog Indians of the plains, and one of them used him for a shield in Custer's battle with Black Kettle's band last December. He had not even Indian burial.
"Those deeds against Springvale belong to the days of the Civil War, but your record since proves that the man who planned them cannot be trusted as a safe citizen in times of peace. Into your civil office you carried your war-time methods, until the Postmaster-General cannot deal longer with you. Your term of office expires in six days. Your successor's commission is already on its way here. This much was accomplished in the trip East last Fall." My father spoke significantly.
