With Hoops of Steel Part 23

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, c.o.c.ktails, and the swapping of yarns Main street stretched its dusty length between Republicans and Democrats as grim and impa.s.sable as a mountain barrier. On both sides there were meaning glances and significant nods and half-spoken threats of a.s.sault 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 gla.s.ses 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 jacka.s.sing about the fool thing,"

said Gillam, holding out the queue.

"The h.e.l.l 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 la.s.so 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 a.s.suringly. "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 att.i.tude 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, s.h.i.+vering 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 pa.s.sed 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 Sat.u.r.day 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.

Men who were next door neighbors, or friends of long standing, pa.s.sed each other with scowls or averted faces, if they were members of the opposing parties. Mrs. John Daniels was planning to give a swell breakfast to a dozen chosen friends early the next week, the first appearance of that form of entertainment in Las Plumas society, and she was delightedly pluming herself over the talk the function would be sure to create and the envious admiration her friends would feel because she had introduced something new. She had talked the matter over with her dearest friend, Mrs. Judge Harlin, whom she had sworn to secrecy, and she was on her way to the post-office to mail her invitations when she saw that the threatened storm was breaking. Her glance swept up Main street on one side and down on the other, and she turned about and hurried home to subst.i.tute in her list of guests for those whose sympathies were Democratic, others whose masculine affiliations were Republican.

Hurried messages were sent out to mines and cattle ranches, and in the afternoon fighting men of both parties began to come in from the country. A procession of hors.e.m.e.n poured into the town, bronzed and grim-faced men, each with a roll of blankets behind him, a revolver at his side, a rifle swung to his saddle, or a shot-gun across its pommel. They loped about the town, sometimes surrounding the court-house, angrily discussing whether or not the clerk of the court was probably hiding the official order, and sometimes lining the two sides of Main street, as if they were two opposing companies of cavalry ready to join battle. Among the Republican forces Judge Harlin saw a red-whiskered Mexican who, he learned, was Antone Colorow. The man's broken wrists had healed, but they had lost all their suppleness, and he could never throw the lariat again. He could shoot as well as ever though, and not a day had pa.s.sed since that morning at the round-up when he had not sworn to himself that Emerson Mead should die by his hand. He hated Mead with all the vengefulness and fierceness of his race. His mind held but one idea, to work upon the man who had ruined his occupation the crudest possible revenge, in whatever way he could compa.s.s it. He had allied himself with the Republican forces only because they were opposed to his enemy, and he hoped that in the impending clash he would find opportunity to carry out his purpose.

CHAPTER XXI

On that same Sat.u.r.day Marguerite Delarue received a letter from Albert Wellesly saying he would be in Las Plumas the following Tuesday, when he hoped he would hear from her own lips the answer for which he had been waiting. She was no nearer a decision than she had been weeks before, and in her perplexity she at last decided that she must ask her father's advice. But he was so absorbed in the factional feud that she could scarcely catch sight of him. In the late afternoon of Sunday she took little Paul and walked to the mesa east of the town, toward the Hermosa mountains. For the hundredth time she debated the matter, for the hundredth time she told herself that he loved her and that she loved him, that it would please her father, and that there was no reason why she should not marry him. And for the hundredth time her misgivings held her back and would not let her say conclusively that she would be Wellesly's wife. Then she would think that her hesitancy was because she really preferred not to marry any one, and that she would always feel the same doubts.

She was so absorbed in her own thoughts that she did not notice the unusual abstraction of the child. With one chubby fist grasping her forefinger and the other trailing, head downward, a big yellow chrysanthemum, he trudged silently by her side, his red fez making a spot of bright color against her white dress. He was wondering why he had no mamma. Many times he had talked the matter over with Marguerite, but she had never been able to explain it to his entire satisfaction. He accepted her statements when she made them, but as they did not seem to him to justify the fact, she had to make them all over again the next time he thought of the subject. That day he had visited a little playmate who had both a big sister and a mamma, and as he walked across the mesa with Marguerite his small brain was busy with the problem and his childish heart was full of longing. He lifted his serious, puzzled face, with its big, blue, childishly earnest eyes to his sister, who was as absorbed in her problem as was he in his.

"Say, Daisy, why haven't I got a mamma, just like Janey?"

"Darling, our mamma, yours and mine, has gone to Heaven."

"What did she go there for?"

"Because G.o.d wanted her to go there and live with Him."

"Did G.o.d take her to Heaven?"

"Yes, dear."

"Well, it was awful mean for Him to do that."