Mid-April came with its arabesquan days of sunlight and shadow and its
fragile broidery of new leaf and timid blossom. It was as if its coming
had stirred anew the life in Reno's divorce colony. All winter the
courts had been dull, most of the men and women seeking divorces
arriving in the early fall and biding their time of six months by
hibernating through the long, cold season. But now there was a renewed
activity in divorce circles. The court calendars were full and there was
a steady stream of gaily clad applicants making their way in and out of
the Washoe County court-house, going in with nervous, hasty, anxious
tread and coming out with a gait which spoke of a new freedom and a
smile that bespoke life as once again worth living.
It was one morning just after the flux of spring divorces had begun that
Sheriff Blodgett stood looking over the calendar in Judge Lemuel
Townsend's court-room. He scowled as he read the words announcing that
the first case was that of the Railroad Company versus John Marvin. He
patted the warrant which still occupied the waiting list in his pocket.
Placing a chair close to the court-room door, he waited for the crowd to
begin to file in. He knew that he could not arrest a man in the
court-room, but he intended to keep his eye on the corridor, and to that
end had propped one of the doors open with a chair so that he could see
clear to the swinging doors that led in from the street. If Marvin put
in an appearance, he intended to arrest him at once. The thought gave
him satisfaction and he sat twirling his long, drooping mustache with
one hand and fondling the handcuffs in his coat pocket with the other.
Revenge at last would play its part to-day, for, even if Marvin failed
to appear and therefore balked him again, the railroad company would get
judgment, anyway.
It was at this point in his reverie that Thomas entered the court-room,
greeting the sheriff with a genial, "Oh, hello there, Blodgett! I guess
our day's come."
With a patronizing pat on Blodgett's shoulder, Thomas passed and went to
the clerk, where he procured a list of the day's cases. He, too, nodded
in satisfaction, as he saw that the Pacific Railroad case, in which he
was attorney, was to come up first. Running his finger down the line, he
stopped at another close to the end, smiled again, and turned to the
sheriff.
"The Marvin case is first," he observed.
The sheriff nodded and a frown slowly puckered his brow. He walked
slowly up to Thomas, who stood at the clerk's desk just within the
railing. He hesitated, clearing his throat, and found the courage to
ask, with a slight timidity in his voice and manner, "You ain't a-goin'
to bring up the old story of my serving the warrant at Calivada, are
you?"
Thomas laughed. "No," he replied; "I don't think I'll have to go into
that. But I will ask you about the time you went to Marvin's camp."
Blodgett heaved his shoulders in relief, and, with hands in his pockets,
went back to his station at the door. "That's all right!" He exhaled a
full breath once again.
Thomas turned the leaves of the calendar, looked ahead for a day or two,
without noticing much that he saw, then turned the leaves back again to
the day's list. He went to the court-room window and looked out upon the
valley that ran from Reno up toward the foothills. He sniffed the keen,
cool air that was blown up to him. He stood contemplating the rushing
waters of the Truckee River below. After several minutes' thought he
faced Blodgett again.
"I'm going to ask you what time you were at Marvin's camp, for I want to
show he was taking down the timber," he announced.
"I didn't get out where the timber was," the sheriff replied.
"But you know he had a gang of lumbermen there?" In Thomas's tone and in
the gleam on his cold, blue eyes the sheriff caught the message of
persuasion.
"Oh, sure." He nodded with the air of a man who understood what was
wanted of him.
"And they drove you off by force?"
Blodgett nodded again.
"And you remember the date?"
"I guess I won't fergit it." There was emphasis in Blodgett's answer and
he arose impatiently from his chair and stood, his arms akimbo, peering
down the corridor. "Do you think Marvin'll be here to-day?" This time he
was interlocutor. "I got a notion he won't," he added, fathering his
disappointment by admitting the possibility of frustration in the one
desire that had held him ever since Marvin had foiled him by the
technicality of the state boundary-line. He was bound, however, that
there should be no opportunity for escape this time.
"I don't care whether he turns up or not," Thomas answered, going to the
lawyers' table, opening his brief-case, and setting them out before him
as he swung gracefully into a chair. "The case is a cinch," he
emphasized, with a grin that found reflection in Blodgett's eyes.
With a warning to the clerk to keep an eye on things until he should
return, Blodgett left the court-room and swaggered up the corridor,
stopping at the door of the other rooms and taking a frowning survey of
the occupants, hoping that Marvin had entered one of them by mistake. If
John Marvin was in Reno he was not going to escape arrest this day. With
this comforting conclusion in mind, he took up his stand just outside of
the court-house door at the top of the steps.
In the mean time Everett Hammond, escorting Mrs. Jones and Millie
Buckley, entered Judge Townsend's court-room and were greeted effusively
by Thomas.
"Oh, good morning!" He bowed low over Mrs. Jones's hand, which he held
in his. "I'm glad to see you." Staring at Millie, who looked very
fetching in a trim blue serge tailor suit, he beamed. "How fine you look
this morning; quite irresistible, I assure you!"
Millie blushed and looked with frightened glance from the judge's bench
to the lawyers' table, and from there to the witness-stand and back
toward the door, for all the world as if she were contemplating a rapid
escape. She took a deep breath. "I don't feel irresistible," she said.
"I feel just as if I wanted to cry and run away." She pouted at Thomas,
with entreaty in her pretty eyes.
Thomas laughed, put his hand on her arm in deprecation, and shrugged her
fears away. "Oh, the trial won't amount to anything, little lady. What
do you say to that, Mrs. Jones?"
The older woman's brown eyes were staring straight ahead, as if she saw
a real horror and was without power to controvert it. "All I can say,"
she replied, in a high-pitched, high-strung voice, "is that I'm here."
She waited for a moment, casting furtive glances at Hammond and Thomas,
who stood one on each side of her. Having found the courage to assert
herself, she burst out, "And I wish I wasn't!"
"Now, now, Mrs. Jones!" There was banter in Hammond's voice, but there
was concern in the wise direction of his eyes toward Thomas. "You're a
mighty brave woman and I know you're going through with this, for it
means that you'll be in a much better position to find your husband and
look out for your old age after you get the money for the place."
Mrs. Jones made no response, but cast anxious eyes about the room, and
she folded her hands in resignation across her ample waist-line.
"It's like going to the dentist. The worst part is making up your mind
to it." Thomas leaned over Mrs. Jones and smiled his most engaging
smile. He received no answer to it, so he turned to Millie, who stood at
the other side of him.
Before he could speak, the girl rid herself of the question that had
been ever present in her mind now for six months, and one which she had
never failed to ask him every time she saw him or wrote to him.
"Have you heard anything of daddy?"
Thomas's smile disappeared. He left the little group of four in the
middle of the space inside of the rails and sat down again at the table,
annoyance in the slump with which he threw himself into his chair. "No,
we haven't been able to locate him." He would have been sullen had he
dared, but his game was too nearly played and he did not wish to foozle
at the last, so he controlled his mood and forced a smile as he thought
of a method of getting away from his client's importunity for awhile.
"It must be distasteful for you two women to remain in here any longer
than possible," he said, rising from his chair again and pointing to a
door at one side of the court-room. "Lennon," he called to the clerk,
"my clients can wait in there, can't they?"
The clerk acquiescing, he and Hammond courteously escorted Mrs. Jones
and Millie to the door and showed them into a small room which had been
fitted up for hysterical women overcome with the proceeding in their
cases, or for those who, like Mrs. Jones and Millie, wished to avoid the
embarrassment of a long wait in the court-room.
As the two women went through the door, Thomas turned to Hammond and
advised, in a low voice: "You better go, too, Hammond. Keep them
cheered up."
With bad grace in his shrug and in his eyes, he followed Thomas's
suggestion, first murmuring in his partner's ear: "I'll be damn glad
when this day is over. All I've been doing this last week is to keep
these darned women from backing out."