Stepsons of Light

“Come on to the jail, Maginnis! The gang have closed up the Mermaid and they are now organizing their lynchin’ bee. We’ve just time to beat ’em to it!”

“How many?” asked Perrault, reaching up for a rifle.

“You don’t go, Perrault. This is no place for a family man.”

“But, Spinal – ”

“Shut up! No married man in this. Nor you, Preisser. You’re too old. Mr. See, this is Buck Hamilton. Shall we get someone else? Shaky Akins? Where’s Lull?”

“Lull is asleep. Let him be. Worn out. Akins is – we’ve no time for Akins. Here’s a plenty – us three, the jailer and Dines. Jailer all right, is he?”

“Any turn in the road. Do you usually tote three guns, young feller?”

“Two of these are momentums – no, mementos,” said Charlie. “I’ve been spoiling the Egyptians. Spoiled some six or eight, I guess – and a couple more soured on the job. That’ll keep. Tell you to-morrow. Let’s go!”

“Vait! Vait!” said Preisser. “Go by my place – I’ll gome vith you so far – science shall aid your brude force. Perrault and me, you say, ve stay here. Ve are not vit to sed in der vorevront of battles – vat? Good! Then ve vill send to represend us my specimens. I haf two lufly specimens of abblied psygology, galgulated to haf gontrolling influence vith a mob at the – ah, yes! – the zoölogical moment! You vill see, you vill say I am quide righdt! Gome on!”

“And they aim to get here sudden and soon?” Mr. George Gwinne smiled on his three visitors benevolently. “That’s good. We won’t have long to wait. I hate waiting. Bad for the nerves. Well, let’s get a wiggle. What you got in that box, Spinal? Dynamite?”

Spinal grinned happily.

“Ho! Dynamite? My, you’re the desprit character, ain’t you? Dynamite? Not much. Old stuff, and it shoots both ways. We’re up-to-date, we are. This here box, Mr. Gwinne – we have in this box the last straw that broke the camel’s back. Listen!”

He held up the box. Gwinne listened. His smile broadened. He sat down suddenly and – the story hates to tell this – Mr. Gwinne giggled. It was an unseemly exhibition, particularly from a man so large as Mr. Gwinne.

“Going to give Dines a gun?” inquired Hamilton.

Mr. Gwinne wiped his eyes. “No. That wouldn’t be sensible. They’d spring a light on us, see Dines, shoot Dines, and go home. But they don’t want to lynch us and they’ll hesitate about throwing the first shot. We’ll keep Dines where he is.”

He led the way to Johnny’s cell. The conversation had been low-voiced; Johnny was asleep. Gwinne roused him.

“Hey, Johnny! When is your friend coming to break you out?”

“Huh?” said Johnny.

“If he shows up, send him to the back door, and I’ll let him in. We’re going to have a lynchin’ bee presently.”

“Why, that was me!” said Charlie.

“Oh, was it? Excuse me. I didn’t recognize your voice. You was speakin’ pretty low, you see. I was right round the corner. Dog heard you, and I heard the dog. Well, that’s too bad. We could use another good man, right now.” Mr. Gwinne spoke the last words with some annoyance. “Well, come on – let’s get everything ready. You fellows had better scatter round on top of the cells. I reckon the iron is thick enough to turn a bullet. Anyhow, they can’t see you. I’ll put out the light. I’m going to have a devil of a time to keep this dog quiet. I’ll have to stay right with him or he’ll bark and spoil the effect.”

“They’re coming,” announced Spinal Maginnis, from a window. “Walkin’ quiet – but I hear ’em crossin’ the gravel.”

“By-by, Dinesy,” said See. “I’ve been rolling my warhoop, like you said.”

The jail was dark and silent. About it shadows mingled, scattered, and gathered again. There was a whispered colloquy. Then a score of shadows detached themselves from the gloom. They ranged themselves in a line opposite the jail door. Other shadows crept from either side and took stations along the wall, ready to rush in when the door was broken down.

A low whistle sounded. The men facing the door came forward at a walk, at a trot, at a run. They carried a huge beam, which they used as a battering ram. As they neared the door the men by the jail wall crowded close. At the last step the beam bearers increased their pace and heaved forward together.

Unlocked, unbolted, not even latched, the door flung wide at the first touch, and whirled crashing back against the wall; the crew of the battering ram, braced for a shock, fell sprawling across the threshold. Reserves from the sides sprang over them, too eager to note the ominous ease of that door forcing, and plunged into the silent darkness of the jail.

They stiffened in their tracks. For a shaft of light swept across the dark, a trembling cone of radiance, a dancing light on the clump of masked men who shrank aside from that shining circle, on a doorway where maskers crowded in. A melancholy voice floated through the darkness.

“Come in,” said Gwinne. “Come in – if you don’t mind the smoke.”

The lynchers crowded back, they huddled against the walls in the darkness beyond that cone of dazzling light.

“Are you all there?” said Gwinne. His voice was bored and listless. “Shaw, Ellis, Clark, Clancy, Tucker, Woodard, Bruno, Toad Hales – ”

“I want Sim!” announced Charlie See’s voice joyously. “Sim is mine. Somebody show me which is Sim! Is that him pushin’ back toward the door?”

A clicking sound came with the words, answered by similar clickings here and there in the darkness.

“Tom Ross has got Sim covered,” said the unhurried voice of Spinal Maginnis. “You and Hiram Yoast be sure to get that big fellow in front. I got my man picked.”

A chuckle came from across the way. “You, Vet Blackman! Remember what I told you? This is me – Buck Hamilton. You’re my meat!”

“Oh, keep still and let me call the roll,” complained Gwinne’s voice – which seemed to have shifted its position. “Kroner, Jody Weir, Eastman, Wiley, Hover, Lithpin Tham – ”

The beam of light shifted till it lit on the floor halfway down the corridor; it fell on three boxes there.

From the outer box a cord led up through the quivering light. This cord tightened now, and raised a door at the end of the box; another cord tilted the box steeply.

“Look! Look! Look!” shrieked someone by the door.

Two rattlesnakes slid squirming from the box into that glowing circle – they writhed, coiled, swayed. Z-z-z – B-z-z-zt! The light went out with a snap.

“Will you fire first, gentlemen of the blackguards?” said Gwinne.

Someone screamed in the dark – and with that scream the mob broke. Crowding, cursing, yelling, trampling each other, fighting, the lynchers jammed through the door; they crashed through a fence, they tumbled over boulders – but they made time. A desultory fusillade followed them; merely for encouragement.

XII

“Ostrich, n. A large bird to which (for its sins, doubtless) nature has denied the hinder toe in which so many pious naturalists have seen a conspicuous evidence of design. The absence of a good working pair of wings is no defect, for, as has been ingeniously pointed out, the ostrich does not fly.”

– The Devil’s Dictionary.“Fare you well:Hereafter, in a better world than this,I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.”– As You Like It.

Mr. Benjamin Attlebury Wade paced a narrow beat on the matted floor. Johnny Dines, shirt-sleeved, in the prisoners’ box, leaned forward in his chair to watch, delighted. Mr. Benjamin Attlebury Wade was prosecuting attorney, and the mat was within the inclosure of the court room, marked off by a wooden rail to separate the law’s machinery from the materi – That has an unpleasant sound. To separate the taxpayer from – No, that won’t do. To separate the performers from the spectators – that is much better. But even that has an offensive sound. Unintentionally so; groping, we near the heart of the mystery; the rail was to keep back the crowd and prevent confusion. That it has now become a sacramental barrier, a symbol and a sign of esoteric mystery, is not the rail’s fault; it is the fault of the people on each side of the rail. Mr. Wade had been all the long forenoon examining Caney and Weir, and was now searching the deeps of his mind for a last question to put to Mr. Hales, his last witness. Mr. Wade’s brow was furrowed with thought; his hands were deep in his own pockets. Mr. Wade’s walk was leisurely important and fascinating to behold. His foot raised slowly and very high, very much as though those pocketed hands had been the lifting agency. When he reached the highest point of each step his toe turned up, his foot paused, and then felt furtively for the floor – quite as if he were walking a rope, or as if the floor might not be there at all. The toe found the floor, the heel followed cautiously, they planted themselves on the floor and took a firm grip there; after which the other foot ventured forward. With such stealthy tread the wild beast of prey creeps quivering to pounce upon his victim. But Mr. Wade never leaped. And he was not wild.

The court viewed Mr. Wade’s constitutional with some impatience, but Johnny Dines was charmed by it; he felt a real regret when Mr. Wade turned to him with a ferocious frown and snapped: “Take the witness!”

Mr. Wade parted his coat tails and sat down, performing that duty with the air of a sacrament. Johnny did not rise. He settled back comfortably in his chair and looked benevolently at the witness.

“Now, Mr. Hales, about that yearling I branded in Redgate cañon – what color was it?”

Mr. Wade rose, indignant.

“Your honor, I object! The question is irrelevant, incompetent and immaterial. Aside from its legal status, such a question is foolish and absurd, and an insult to the court.”

“Why, now, I didn’t object to any of your foolish and absurd questions all morning.” Johnny’s eyes widened with gentle reproach. “I let you ask all the questions you wanted.”

Mr. Wade’s nose twisted to a triumphant sneer.

“‘He who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client!’”

“I didn’t want to take any unfair advantage,” explained Johnny.

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” expostulated the court.

“You gallows meat!” snarled Wade. “You dirty – ”

Johnny shook his head in a friendly warning. “He means you, too,” he whispered.

The gavel fell heavily. The court rose up and the court’s eyes narrowed.

“This bickering has got to stop! It is disgraceful. I don’t want to see any more of it. Mr. Wade, for that last remark of yours you ought to pay a heavy fine, and you know it very well. This prisoner is being tried for murder. That does not make him a murderer. Your words were unmanly, sir.”

“May it please the court,” said Wade, white faced and trembling with rage, “I acknowledge myself entirely wrong, and I beg the court’s pardon. I own that I was exasperated. The prisoner insulted me grossly.”

“You insulted him first. You have been doing it right along. You lawyers are always browbeating witnesses and prisoners. You get ’em where they can’t talk back and then you pelt ’em with slurs and hints and sneers and insults. You take a mean advantage of your privileged position to be overbearing and arrogant. I’ve watched you at it. I don’t think it is very sporting to say in the court room what you wouldn’t dare say on the street. But when someone takes a whack at you – wow! that’s different! Then you want the court to protect you.” He paused to consider.

The justice of the peace – Judge Hinkle, Andy Hinkle – was a slim, wizened man, brown handed, brown faced, lean and wrinkled, with thin gray hair and a thin gray beard and faded blue eyes, which could blaze blue fire on occasion. Such fire, though a mild one, now died away from those old eyes, and into them crept a slightly puzzled expression. He looked hard at Mr. Wade and he looked hard at Mr. Dines. Then he proceeded.

“Mr. Wade, this court – Oh, let’s cut out the court – that makes me tired! ‘This court fines you twenty-five dollars for contempt of court.’ How would that sound?”

Wade managed a smile, and bowed, not ungracefully. “It would sound unpleasant – perhaps a little severe, sir.”

The court twinkled. “I was only meaning how silly it seemed to a plain man for him to have to refer to himself as the court. I’m not going to fine you, Mr. Wade – not this time. I could, of course, but I won’t. It would be unfair to lecture you first and then fine you. Besides, there is something else. You have had great provocation and I feel compelled to take that into consideration. Your apology is accepted. I don’t know who began it – but if you have been insulting the prisoner it is no less true that the prisoner has been aggravating you. I don’t know as I ever saw a more provoking man. I been keepin’ an eye on him – his eyebrows, the corners of his eyes, the corners of his mouth, his shoulder-shrugging, and his elbows, and his teeth and his toes. Mr. Wade, your moldy old saw about a fool for a client was never more misplaced. This man can out talk you and never open his mouth. I’d leave him alone if I was you – he might make a fool of you.”

Johnny half opened his mouth. The judge regarded him sternly. The mouth closed hastily. Johnny dimpled. The judge’s hammer fell with a crash.

“I give you both fair notice right now,” said Judge Hinkle, “if you start any more of this quarreling I’m goin’ to slap on a fine that’ll bring a blister.”

Johnny rose timidly and addressed the court.

“Your Honor, I’m aimin’ to ’tend strictly to my knittin’ from now on. But if I should make a slip, and you do have to fine me – couldn’t you make it a jail sentence instead? I’m awful short of money, Your Honor.”

He reached behind him and hitched up the tail of his vest with both hands, delicately; this accomplished, he sank into his chair, raised his trousers gently at the knee and gazed about him innocently.

“My Honor will be – ”

The judge bit the sentence in two, leaving the end in doubt; he regarded the prisoner with baleful attention. The prisoner gazed through a window. The judge beckoned to Mr. Gwinne, who sat on the front seat between See and Hobby Lull. Mr. Gwinne came forward. The judge leaned across the desk.

“Mr. Gwinne, do you feed this prisoner well?”

“Yes, sir.”

“About what, now, for instance?”

“Oh – beefsteak, ham and eggs, enchilados, canned stuff – most anything.”

“Mr. Gwinne, if I told you to put this prisoner on a strict ration, would you obey orders?”

“I certainly would.”

“That’s all,” said the judge. “Thank you. Mr. Dines, you may go on with the case. The witness may answer the question. Objection overruled. State your question again, Mr. Dines.”

“Mr. Hales, will you tell His Honor what color was the calf I branded in Redgate Cañon, day before yesterday, about two o’clock in the afternoon?”

“I don’t know,” answered Hales sulkily.

“Oh! You didn’t see it, then?”

“No.”

“Then you are not able to state that it was a calf belonging to Adam Forbes?”

“No.”

Johnny’s eyes sought the window. “Nor whether it was a calf or a yearling?”

“Of course not.”

“Did you see me brand the calf?”

“I did not!” Hales spat out the words with venomous emphasis. Johnny was unmoved.

“Will you tell the court if the brand I put on this heifer calf or bull yearling was my brand or Adam Forbes’ brand?”

The gavel fell.

“Objection!” barked Wade.

“Sustained. The question is improperly put. The witness need not answer it. The counsel for the defense need not continue along these lines. I am quite able to distinguish between evidence and surmise, between a stated fact and unfair suggestion.”

“Does Your Honor mean to insinuate – ”

“Sit down, Mr. Wade! Sit down! My Honor does not mean to insinuate anything. My Honor means to state that you have been trying to throw dust in my eyes. My Honor wishes to state that you should never have been allowed to present your evidence in any such shape, and if the prisoner had been represented by a competent lawyer you would not have been allowed – ”

The judge checked himself; his face fell; he wheeled his chair slowly and glared at the prisoner with awful solemnity. “Dines! Is that why you made no objections? So the prosecuting attorney would queer himself with this court by attempting unfair tactics? Answer me, sir!”

“But is it likely, Your Honor, that I could see ahead as far as that?”

“Humph!” snorted His Honor. He turned back to the prosecuting attorney. “Mr. Wade, I am keeping cases on you. Your questions have been artfully framed to lead a simple old man astray – to bewilder him until he is ready to accept theory, surmise and suggestion as identical with a statement of facts or statements purporting to be facts. I’m simple and old, all right – but I never did learn to lead.”

Mr. Benjamin Attlebury Wade sprang to his feet.

“Your Honor, I protest! You have been openly hostile to the prosecution from the first.”

“Ah!” said the judge mildly. “You fear my remarks may unduly influence my decision – is that it? Calm yourself, Mr. Wade. I cannot say that I blame you much, however. You see, I think United States, and when I have to translate into the customary idiomcies of the law I do a bum job.” He turned his head and spoke confidentially to the delighted court room. “Boys, it’s gettin’ me!” he said. “Did you hear that chatter I put out, when all I wanted to say was that I still knew sugar from salt and sawdust from cornmeal – also, in any case of extreme importance, as hereinbefore mentioned, and taking in consideration the fine and subtle nuisances of delicate thought, as it were, whereas, being then and there loaded with shot and slugs, I can still tell a hawk from a handsaw. Why, I’m getting so I talk that jargon to my jackass when I wallop him over the place made and provided on him, the said jackass, with a curajo pole! I’ll tell you what – the first man I catch voting for me next year I’m going to pat him over the head with a pickhandle. You may proceed with the case, Mr. Dines.”

“This is an outrage!” bawled the furious and red-faced prosecutor. “This is an outrage! An outrage! These proceedings are a mockery! This whole trial is a travesty on justice!”

The gavel banged down.

“This court is now adjourned,” announced Judge Hinkle.

He leaned back in his chair and sighed luxuriously. He took out a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles and polished them; he held them poised delicately in one hand and beamed benevolently on the crowded court room.

“We have had a very trying forenoon,” observed Mr. Hinkle blandly. “Perhaps some of us are ruffled a little. But I trust that nothing which has happened in this court room will cause any hard feeling of a lasting character. And I strongly advise that under no circumstances will any of you feel impelled to take any man and put his head under a pump, and pump on his head.” The gavel rapped smartly. “This court will now come to order! Mr. Dines, as I remarked before recess, you will now proceed with the case.”

“I’ll not detain you long, Mr. Hales,” said Johnny. “I didn’t bother to cross-examine the previous witnesses” – he smiled upon Caney and Weir – “because they are suffering from the results of an accident. In the mines, as I hear. Mining is a dangerous business. Very. Sometimes a man is just one-sixteenth of a second slow – and it gets him trouble. I understand, Mr. Hales, that you three gentlemen were together when you found the murdered man?”

“Yes.”

“You had been prospecting together?”

“Prospecting, and looking for saddle thieves.”

“Did you find the saddle thieves?”

“No; I told you once.”

“No,” said Johnny; “you told Mr. Wade. Find any mines?”

“Yes.”

“Good prospect?”

“I think so.”

“Um – yes.” Johnny hesitated, and fell silent. Hales fidgeted. “And the murdered man,” began Johnny slowly, and stopped. Hales heaved a sigh of relief. Johnny darted a swift glance at the judge. “And the murdered man had been shot three times?”

“Three times. In the back.”

“The shots were close together?”

“Yes. My hand would have covered all three.”

“Sure of that?”

“Positive.”

“In your opinion, these shots had been fired at close range?”

An interruption came. Four men trooped into the door, booted and spurred; three of the John Cross men – Tom Ross, Frank Bojarquez, Will Foster; with Hiram Yoast, of the Bar Cross: four fit to stand by Cæsar. A stir ran through the court room. They raised their hands to Johnny in grave salute; they filed to a bench together.

Johnny repeated the question: “You say, Mr. Hales, that these three shots had been fired at close range?”

“The dead man’s shirt was burned. The gun must have been almost between his shoulder blades.”

“Was there any blood on Forbes’ saddle?”

“I didn’t see Forbes’ saddle,” growled Hales; “or Forbes’ horse.”

“Oh, yes. But in your opinion, Forbes was riding when he was killed?”

“In my opinion, he was.”

“What makes you think so?”

“We found the tracks where Forbes was dragged, twenty feet or so, before his foot come loose from the stirrup, and blood in the track all the way. I told all this before.”

“So you did, so you did. Now about these wounds. Did the path of the bullets range up or down from where they entered the body?”

“Down.”

“Sure of that?”

“Yes.”

“Did you examine the body?”

“How else would I know? Of course I did.”

“Show the court, on your own body, about where the wounds were located.”

“They went in about here” – indicating – “and come out about here.”

“Thank you. Then the shots passed obliquely through the body, entering behind, somewhere near the left shoulder blade, and coming out at a point slightly lower, and under the right breast?”

“About that, yes.”

“All indicating that the murderer rode at his victim’s left hand, and a little behind him, when these shots were fired?”

“I think so, yes.”

“And that the gun muzzle must have been a little higher than the wounds made by the entering bullets, because the bullets passed through the body with a slightly downward trend?”

“That is right.”

“How big was the murdered man?”

“He was a very large man.”

“Very heavy or very tall?”

“Both, I should say. It is hard to judge a dead man’s height. He was very heavily built.”

“You lifted him?”

“I turned him over.”

“How tall was he, would you say?”

“I tell you, I don’t know.” Hales was visibly more impatient with each question.

“Of course you don’t know. But you can make a guess. Come, give the court your estimate.”

“Not less than six feet, I should say. Probably more.”

“Did you see Adam Forbes’ horse – no, you told us that. But you saw my horse when you arrested me?”

“Yes.”

“Was my horse a small horse or a large one?”

“A small one.”

Johnny rose and strolled to the window.

“Well, about how high?”

“About fourteen hands. Possibly an inch more.”

“Would you know my horse again?”

“Certainly.”

“So you could swear to him?”

“Yes.”

“What color was he?”

“A grullo– a very peculiar shade of grullo– a sleek glossy, velvety blue.”

“Was he thin or fat?”

“Neither. Smooth – not fat.”

“Did you notice his brand?”

“Of course.”

“Describe it to the court.”

“He was branded K I M on the left hip.”

“On which side did his mane hang?”

“On the left.”

“Thank you. Now, Mr. Hales, would you describe me as a large man or a small one?”

Hales looked an appeal to the prosecutor.

“I object to that question – improper, irrelevant, incompetent and immaterial. And that is not all. This man, this man Dines, is arguing the case as he goes along, contrary to all rule.”

“I like it that way,” observed the judge placidly. “If he makes his point as the evidence is given, I’m not likely to miss any bets, as I might do if he waited for the summing up.”

“I objected to the question,” snapped the prosecutor. “I demand your ruling.”

“Has the defense anything to offer? That question would certainly seem to be superfluous on the face of it,” said the court, mildly.

“Your Honor,” said Johnny, “I want to get this down on the record in black and white. Someone who has never seen me may have to pass on this evidence before we get done. I want that person to be sure of my size.”

“Objection overruled.”

“Please describe me – as to size – Mr. Hales.”

“A very small man,” answered Hales sulkily.