THE VIGILANTES
Bill Wilson came to the door of his saloon and stood with his hands
on his hips, looking out upon the heterogeneous assembly of virile
manhood that formed the bulk of San Francisco's population a year or
two after the first gold cry had been raised. Above his head flapped
the great cloth sign tacked quite across the rough building, heralding
to all who could read the words that this was BILL WILSON'S PLACE.
A flaunting bit of information it was, and quite superfluous; since
practically every man in San Francisco drifted towards it, soon or
late, as the place where the most whisky was drunk and the most gold
lost and won, with the most beautiful women to smile or frown upon the
lucky, in all the town.
The trade wind knew that Bill Wilson's place needed no sign save its
presence there, and was loosening a corner in the hope of carrying it
quite away as a trophy. Bill glanced up, promised the resisting cloth
an extra nail or two, and let his thoughts and his eyes wander
again to the sweeping tide of humanity that flowed up and down the
straggling street of sand and threatened to engulf the store which men
spoke of simply as "Smith's."
A shipload of supplies had lately been carted there, and miners
were feverishly buying bacon, beans, "self-rising" flour, matches,
tea--everything within the limits of their gold dust and their
carrying capacity--which they needed for hurried trips to the hills
where was hidden the gold they dreamed of night and day.
To Bill that tide meant so much business; and he was not the man to
grudge his friend Smith a share of it. When the fog crept in through
the Golden Gate--a gate which might never be closed against it--the
tide of business would set towards his place, just as surely as the
ocean tide would clamor at the rocky wall out there to the west. In
the meantime, he was not loath to spend a quiet hour or two with an
empty gaming hall at his back.
His eyes went incuriously over the familiar crowd to the little forest
of flag-foliaged masts that told where lay the ships in the bay below
the town. Bill could not name the nationality of them all; for the
hunting call had reached to the far corners of the earth, and
strange flags came fluttering across strange seas, with pirate-faced
adventurers on the decks below, chattering in strange tongues of
California gold. Bill could not name all the flags, but he could name
two of the bonds that bind all nations into one common humanity. He
could produce one of them, and he was each night gaining more of the
other; for, be they white men or brown, spoke they his language or
one he had never heard until they passed through the Golden Gate, they
would give good gold for very bad whisky.
Even the Digger Indians, squatting in the sun beside his door and
gazing stolidly at the town and the bay beyond, would sell their
souls--for which the gray-gowned padres prayed ineffectively in the
chapel at Dolores--their wives or their other, dearer possessions for
a very little bottle of the stuff that was fast undoing the civilizing
work of the Mission. The padres had come long before the hunting cry
was raised, and they had labored earnestly; but their prayers and
their preaching were like reeds beneath the tread of elephants, when
gold came down from the mountains, and whisky came in through the
Golden Gate.
Jack Allen, coming lazily down through the long, deserted room, edged
past Bill in the doorway.
"Hello," Bill greeted with a carefully casual manner, as if he had
been waiting for the meeting, but did not want Jack to suspect the
fact. "Up for all day? Where you headed for?"
"Breakfast--or dinner, whichever you want to call it. Then I'm going
to take a walk and get the kinks out of my legs. Say, old man, I'm
going to knock a board off the foot of that bunk, to-night, or else
sleep on the floor. Was wood scarce, Bill, when you built that bed?"
"Carpenter was a little feller," chuckled Bill, "and I guess he
measured it by himself. Charged a full length price, though, I
remember! I meant to tell you when you hired that room, Jack, that
you better take the axe to bed with you. Sure, knock a board off;
two boards, if you like. Take _all_ the boards off!" urged Bill, in
a burst of generosity. "You might better be making that bunk over,
m'son, than trying to take the whole blamed town apart and put it
together again, like you was doing last night." In this way Bill
tactfully swung to the subject that lay heavy on his mind.
Jack borrowed a match, cupped his fingers around his lips that wanted
to part in a smile, and lighted his before-breakfast cigarette--though
the sun hung almost straight overhead.
"So that's it," he observed, when the smoke took on the sweet aroma
of a very mild tobacco. "I saw by the back of your neck that you had
something on your mind. What's the matter, Bill? Don't you think the
old town needs taking apart?"
"Oh, it needs it, all right. But it's too big a job for one man to
tackle. You leave that to Daddy Time; he's the only reformer--"
"Say, Bill, I never attempted to reform anybody or anything in my
life; I'd hate to begin with a job the size of this." He waved his
cigarette toward the shifting crowd. "But I do think--"
"And right there's where you make a big mistake. You don't want to
think! Or if you do, don't think out loud; not where such men as Swift
and Rawhide and the Captain can hear you. That's what I mean, Jack."
Jack eyed him with a smile in his eyes. "Some men might think you were
afraid of that bunch," he observed with characteristic bluntness. "I
know you aren't, and so I don't see why you want me to be. You know,
and I know, that the Vigilance Committee has turned rotten to the
core; every decent man in San Francisco knows it. You know that Sandy
killed that Spaniard in self-defense--or if you didn't see the fracas,
I tell you now that he did; I saw the whole thing. You know, at any
rate, that the Vigilantes took him out and hung him because they
wanted to get rid of him, and that came the nearest to an excuse they
could find. You know--"
"Oh, I know!" Bill's voice was sardonic. "I know they'll be going
around with a spy-glass looking for an excuse to hang you, too, if you
don't quit talking about 'em."
Jack smiled and so let a thin ribbon of smoke float up and away from
his lips.
Bill saw the smile and flushed a little; but he was not to be laughed
down, once he was fairly started. He laid two well-kept fingers upon
the other's arm and spoke soberly, refusing to treat the thing as
lightly as the other was minded to do.
"Oh, you'll laugh, but it's a fact, and you know it. Why, ain't
Sandy's case proof enough that I'm right? I heard you telling a crowd
in there last night--" Bill tilted his head backward towards the room
behind them--"that this law-and-order talk is all a farce. What if it
is? It don't do any good for you to bawl it out in public and get the
worst men in the Committee down on you, does it?
"What you'd better do, Jack, is go on down to Palo Alto where your
pardner is. He's got some sense. I wouldn't stay in the darned town
overnight, the way they're running things now, if it wasn't for my
business. Ever since they made Tom Perkins captain there's been hell
to pay all round. I can hold my own; I'm up where they don't dare
tackle me; but you take a fool's advice and pull out before the
Captain gets his eagle eye on you. Talk like you was slinging around
last night is about as good a trouble-raiser as if you emptied both
them guns of yours into that crowd out there."
"You're asking me to run before there's anything to run away from."
Jack's lips began to show the line of stubbornness. "I haven't
quarreled with the Captain, except that little fuss a month ago, when
he was hammering that peon because he couldn't talk English; I'm
not going to. And if they did try any funny work with me, old-timer,
why--as you say, these guns--"
"Oh, all right, m'son! Have it your own way," Bill retorted grimly.
"I know you've got a brace of guns; and I know you can plant a bullet
where you want it to land, about as quick as the next one. I haven't
a doubt but what you're equal to the Vigilantes, with both hands tied!
Of course," he went on with heavy irony, "I have known of some mighty
able men swinging from the oak, lately. There'll likely be more,
before the town wakes up and weeds out some of the cutthroat element
that's running things now to suit themselves."
Jack looked at him quickly, struck by something in Bill's voice that
betrayed his real concern. "Don't take it to heart, Bill," he said,
dropping his bantering and his stubbornness together. "I won't air my
views quite so publicly, after this. I know I was a fool to talk quite
as straight as I did last night; but some one else brought up the
subject of Sandy; and Swift called him a name Sandy'd have smashed him
in the face for, if he'd been alive and heard it. I always liked the
fellow, and it made me hot to see them hustle him out of town and hang
him like they'd shoot a dog that had bitten some one, when I _knew_ he
didn't deserve it. You or I would have shot, just as quick as he did,
if a drunken Spaniard made for us with a knife. So would the Captain,
or Swift, or any of the others.
"I know--I've got a nasty tongue when something riles me, and I lash
out without stopping to think. Dade has given me the devil for that,
more times than I can count. He went after me about this very thing,
too, the other day. I'll try and forget about Sandy; it doesn't make
pleasant remembering, anyway. And I'll promise to count a hundred
before I mention the Committee above a whisper, after this--nine
hundred and ninety-nine before I take the name of Swift or the Captain
in vain!" He smiled full at Bill--a smile to make men love him for the
big-hearted boy he was.
But Bill did not grin back. "Well, it won't hurt you any; they're bad
men to fuss with, both of 'em," he warned somberly.
"Come on out and climb a hill or two with me," Jack urged. "You've
got worse kinks in your system, to-day, than I've got in my legs. You
won't? Well, better go back and take another sleep, then; it may put
you in a more optimistic mood." He went off up the street towards the
hills to the south, turning in at the door of a tented eating-place
for his belated breakfast.
"Optimistic hell!" grunted Bill. "You can't tell a man anything he
don't think he knows better than you do, till he's past thirty. I was
a fool to try, I reckon."
He glowered at the vanishing figure, noting anew how tall and straight
Jack was in his close-fitting buckskin jacket, with the crimson sash
knotted about his middle in the Spanish style, his trousers tucked
into his boots like the miners, and to crown all, a white sombrero
such as the vaqueros wore. Handsome and headstrong he was; and Bill
shook his head over the combination which made for trouble in that
land where the primal instincts lay all on the surface; where men
looked askance at the one who drew oftenest the glances of the women
and who walked erect and unafraid in the midst of the lawlessness.
Jack Allen was fast making enemies, and no one knew it better than
Bill.
When the young fellow disappeared, Bill looked again at the shifting
crowd upon which his eyes were wont to rest with the speculative gaze
of a farmer who leans upon the fence that bounds his land, and regards
his wheat-fields ripening for the sickle. He liked Jack, and the soul
of him was bitter with the bitterness that is the portion of maturity,
when it must stand by and see youth learn by the pangs of experience
that fire will burn most agonizingly if you hold your hand in the
blaze.
One of his night bartenders came up; and Bill, dismissing Jack from
his mind, with a grunt of disgust, went in to talk over certain
changes which he meant to make in the bar as soon as he could get
material and carpenter together upon the spot.
He was still fussing with certain of the petty details that make or
mar the smooth running of an establishment like his, when his ear,
trained to detect the first note of discord in the babble which filled
his big room by night, caught an ominous note in the hum of the street
crowd outside. He lifted his head from examining a rickety table-leg.
"Go see what's happened, Jim," he suggested to the man, who had just
come up with a hammer and some nails; and went back to dreaming of the
time when his place should be a palace, and he would not have to nail
the legs on his tables every few days because of the ebullitions of
excitement in his customers. He had strengthened the legs, and was
testing them by rocking the table slightly with a broad palm upon it,
when Jim came back.
"Some shooting scrape, back on the flat," Jim announced indifferently.
"Some say it was a hold-up. Two or three of the Committee have gone
out to investigate."
"Yeah--I'll bet the Committee went out!" snorted Bill. "They'll be
lynching the Diggers' dogs for fighting, when the supply of humans
runs out. They've just about played that buckskin out, packing men
out to the oak to hang 'em lately," he went on glumly, sliding the
rejuvenated table into its place in the long row that filled that
side of the room. "I never saw such an enthusiastic bunch as they're
getting to be!"
"That's right," Jim agreed perfunctorily, as a man is wont to agree
with his employer. "Somebody'll hang, all right."
"There's plenty that need it--if the Committee only had sense enough
to pick 'em out and leave the rest alone," growled Bill, going from
table to table, tipping and testing for other legs that wobbled.
Jim sensed the rebuff in his tone and went back to the door, around
which a knot of men engaged in desultory conjectures while they waited
expectantly. A large tent that Perkins had found convenient as a
temporary jail for those unfortunates upon whom his heavy hand fell
swiftly, stood next to Bill's place; and it spoke eloquently of the
manner in which the Committee then worked, that men gathered there
instinctively at the first sign of trouble. For when the Committee
went out after culprits, it did not return empty-handed, as the
populace knew well. Zealous custodians of the law were they, as Bill
had said; and though they might have exchanged much of their zeal for
a little of Bill's sense of justice (to the betterment of the town),
few of the waiting crowd had the temerity to say so.
Up the street, necks (whose owners had not thought it worth while to
wade through the sand to the scene of the shooting) were being craned
towards the flat behind the town, where the Captain and a few of his
men had hurried at the first shot.
"They're comin'," Jim announced, thrusting his head into the gambling
hall and raising his voice above the sound of the boss's nail-driving.
"Well--what of it?" snapped Bill. "Why don't you yell at me that the
sun is going to set in the west to-night?" Bill drove the head of a
four-cornered, iron nail clean out of sight in a table top. And Jim
prudently withdrew his head and turned his face and his attention
towards the little procession that was just coming into sight at the
end of the rambling street, with the crowd closing in behind it as the
water comes surging together behind an ocean liner.
Jim worshiped his boss, but he knew better than to argue with him when
Bill happened to be in that particular mood, which, to tell the truth,
was not often. But in five minutes or less he had forgotten the snub.
His head popped in again.
"Bill!"
There may be much meaning in a tone, though it utters but one
unmeaning word. Bill dropped a handful of nails upon a table and came
striding down the long room to the door; pushed Jim unceremoniously
aside and stood upon the step. He was just in time to look into the
rageful, blue eyes of Jack Allen, walking with a very straight back
and a contemptuous smile on his lips, between the Captain and one of
his trusted lieutenants.
Bill's fingers clenched suggestively upon the handle of the hammer.
His jaw slackened and then pushed itself forward to a fighting angle
while he stared, and he named in his amazement that place which the
padres had taught the Indians to fear.
The Captain heard him and grinned sourly as he passed on. Jack heard
him, and his smile grew twisted at the tone in which the word was
uttered; but he still smiled, which was more than many a man would
have done in his place.
Bill stood while the rest of that grim procession passed his place.
There was another, a young fellow who looked ready to cry, walking
unsteadily behind Jack, both his arms gripped by others of the
Vigilance Committee. There were two crude stretchers, borne by
stolid-faced miners in red flannel shirts and clay-stained boots.
On the first a dead man lay grinning up at the sun, his teeth just
showing under his bushy mustache, a trickle of red running down from
his temple. On the next a man groaned and mumbled blasphemy between
his groanings.
Bill took it all in, a single glance for each,--a glance trained by
gambling to see a great deal between the flicker of his lashes. He
did not seem to look once at the Captain, yet he knew that Jack's
ivory-handled pistols hung at the Captain's rocking hips as he went
striding past; and he knew that malice lurked under the grizzled hair
which hid the Captain's cruel lips; and that satisfaction glowed in
the hard, sidelong glance he gave his prisoner.
He stood until he saw Jack duck his head under the tent flaps of the
jail and the white-faced youth follow shrinking after. He stood while
the armed guards took up their stations on the four sides of the
tent and began pacing up and down the paths worn deep in tragic
significance. He saw the wounded man carried into Pete's place across
the way, and the dead man taken farther down the street. He saw the
crowd split into uneasy groups which spoke a common tongue, that they
might exchange unasked opinions upon this, the biggest sensation since
Sandy left town with his ankles tied under the vicious-eyed buckskin
whose riders rode always toward the west and whose saddle was always
empty when he came back to his stall at the end of the town. Bill saw
it all, to the last detail; but after his one explosive oath, he was
apparently the most indifferent of them all.
When the Captain ended his curt instructions to the guard and came
towards him, Bill showed a disposition to speak.
"Who's the kid?" he drawled companionably, while his fingers itched
upon the hammer, and the soul of him lusted for sight of the hole it
could make in the skull of the Captain. "I don't recollect seeing him
around town--and there ain't many faces I forget, either."
The Captain shot him a surprised look that was an unconscious tribute
to Bill's diplomatic art. But Bill's level glance would have disarmed
a keener man than Tom Perkins.
Perkins stopped. "Stranger, from what he said--though I've got my
doubts. Some crony of Allen's, I expect. It was him done the shooting;
the kid didn't have any gun on him. Allen didn't deny it, either."
"No--he's just bull-headed enough to tough it out," commented Bill.
"What was the row about--do yuh know?"
Perkins stiffened. "That," he said with some dignity, "will come out
at the trial. He killed Rawhide outright, and Texas Bill will die,
I reckon. The trial will show what kinda excuse he thought he had."
Having delivered himself, thus impartially and with malice towards
none, Perkins started on.
"Oh, say! You don't mind if I talk to 'em?" Bill gritted his teeth at
having to put the sentence in that favor-seeking tone, but he did it,
nevertheless.
The Captain scowled under his black, slouch hat. "I've give strict
orders not to let anybody inside the tent till after the trial," he
said shortly.
"Oh, that's all right. I'll talk to 'em through the door," Bill agreed
equably. "Jack owes me some money."
The Captain muttered unintelligibly and passed on, and Bill chose to
interpret the mutter as consent. He strolled over to the tent, joked
condescendingly with the guard who stood before it, and announced that
the Captain had said he might talk to the prisoners.
"I did not," said the Captain unexpectedly at his shoulder. "I said
you couldn't. After the trial, you can collect what's coming to you,
Mr. Wilson. That is," he added hastily, "in case Allen should be
convicted. If he ain't, you can do as you please." He looked full at
the guard. "Shoot any man that attempts to enter that tent or talk to
the prisoners without my permission, Shorty," he directed, and turned
his back on Bill.
Bill did not permit one muscle of his face to twitch. "All right," he
drawled, "I guess I won't go broke if I don't get it. You mind what
your Captain tells you, Shorty! He's running this show, and what he
says goes. You've got a good man over yuh, Shorty. A fine man. He'll
weed out the town till it'll look like grandpa's onion bed--if the
supply of rope don't give out!" Whereupon he strolled carelessly back
to his place, and went in as if the incident were squeezed dry of
interest for him. He walked to the far end of the big room, sat
deliberately down upon a little table, and rewarded himself for his
forbearance by cursing methodically the Captain, the Committee of
which he was the leader, the men who had witlessly given him the
power he used so ruthlessly as pleased him best, and Jack Allen, whose
ill-timed criticisms and hot-headed freedom of speech had brought upon
himself the weight of the Committee's dread hand.
"Damn him, I tried to tell him!" groaned Bill, his face hidden behind
his palms. "They'll hang him--and darn my oldest sister's cat's eyes,
somebody'll sweat blood for it, too!" (Bill, you will observe, had
reached the end of real blasphemy and was forced to improvise milder
expletives as he went along.) "There ought to be enough decent men in
this town to--"
"Did you git to see Jack?" ventured Jim, coming anxiously up to his
boss.
The tone of him, which was that hushed tone which we employ in the
presence of the dead, so incensed Bill that for answer he threw the
hammer viciously in his direction. Jim took the hint and retreated
hastily.
"No, damn 'em, they won't let me near him," said Bill, ashamed of his
violence. "I knew they'd get him; but I didn't think they'd get him so
quick. I sent a letter down by an Injun this morning to his pardner to
come up and get him outa town before he--But it's too late now. That
talk he made last night--"
"Say, he shot Swift in the arm, too," said Jim. "Pity he didn't kill
him. They're getting a jury together already. Say! Ain't it hell?"