With Hoops of Steel Part 22

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. "n.o.body 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sault and battery upon the Chinese and fined five hundred dollars. The moment sentence was p.r.o.nounced 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 a.s.surance 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed. 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 pa.s.sionate 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 c.u.mbers 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 ma.s.ses 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 n.o.ble 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, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, and began proposing to her instead.