WHAT HAPPENED AT THE OAK
Jack sat looking after the crowd that shuffled through the doorway
into the sunlight. He thought he had believed that he would receive
the sentence which the juryman had spoken so baldly; yet, after the
words had been actually spoken, he stared blankly after Bill and the
others, and incredulously at the Captain, who seated himself upon a
bunk opposite to watch his prisoner, his pistol resting suggestively
upon his knee. The boy lingered to shake Jack's unresponsive hand and
mutter a broken sentence or two of gratitude and sympathy. But Jack
scarcely grasped his meaning, and his answer sounded chillingly calm;
so that the boy, wincing under the cold stare of the Captain and the
seeming indifference of the prisoner, turned away with downy chin
a-tremble and in his eyes the look of horrified awe which sometimes
comes to a youth who has seen death hesitate just over his head, pass
him by, and choose another. In the doorway he stopped and looked back
bewildered. Jack had said that he loved life and would hate to leave
it; and yet he sat there calmly, scraping idly with his boot-toe a
little furrow in the loose sand, his elbows resting on his knees, his
face unlined by frown or bitterness, his eyes bent abstractedly upon
the shallow trench he was desultorily digging. He did not look as the
boy believed a man should look who has just been condemned to die the
ignominious death of hanging. The boy shuddered and went out into
the sunlight, dazed with this glimpse he had got of the inexorable
hardness of life.
Jack did not even know when the boy left. He, also, was looking upon
the hardness of life, but he was looking with the eyes of the fighter.
So long as Jack Allen had breath in his body, he would fight to keep
it there. His incredulity against the verdict swung to a tenacious
disbelief that it would really come to the worst. So long as he
was alive, so long as he could feel the weight of the dagger in his
sleeve, it was temperamentally impossible for him to believe that he
was going to die that day.
Plans he made and smoothed them in the dirt with his toe. If they did
not bind his arms... They had not tied Sandy's arms, he remembered;
and he wondered if a dagger concealed in Sandy's sleeve would have
made any essential difference in the result of that particular crime
of the Committee. He sickened at a vivid memory of how Sandy had
ridden away, just a week or so before; and of the appealing glance
which he had sent toward Bill's place when Shorty started to lead the
buckskin from before the prison tent with six men walking upon either
side and a curious crowd straggling after. Would a dagger in Sandy's
sleeve have made any difference?
Then his thoughts swung to the Mexican who had told him of the trick,
only the night before. It had amused Jack to experiment with his own
knife; and the very novelty of the thing had impelled him to slip his
dagger into the new hiding-place that morning when he dressed. The
Captain had not discovered it there--but would it make any difference?
It occurred to him that he need not die the death of dangling and
strangling at the end of the rope, at any rate; if it came to dying...
Jack became acutely conscious of the steady beat in his chest, and
immediately afterward felt the same throb in his throat; he could stop
that beating whenever he chose, if they did not bind his arms.
"Horse's ready, Captain," announced Shorty succinctly, thrusting his
head through the closed flaps; and the Captain rose instantly and made
a commanding gesture to his prisoner.
Jack swept the loose dirt back into the furrow with one swing of his
foot and stood up. He went out quietly, two steps in advance of the
Captain and the Captain's drawn pistol, and advanced unflinchingly
towards the horse that stood saddled in the midst of the group of
executioners, with the same curious crowd looking on greedily at the
spectacle.
"Ever been on a horse?" asked the Captain, his deep voice little more
than a growl.
"Once or twice," Jack answered indifferently.
"Climb on, then!"
Jack was young and he was very human. It might be his last hour on
earth, but there rose up in him a prideful desire to show them whether
he had ever been on a horse; he caught the saddle-horn with one hand
and vaulted vaingloriously into the saddle without touching a toe to
the stirrup. The buckskin ducked and danced sidewise at the end of the
rope in Shorty's hand, and more than one gun flashed into sight at the
unexpectedness of the move.
The Captain scowled at the exclamations of admiration from the crowd.
"You needn't try any funny work, young man, or I'll tie you hand as
well as foot!" he threatened sternly. "Give me that rope, Davis."
Then Jack paid in pain for his vanity, and paid in full. The Captain
did not bind his arms--perhaps because of the crowd and a desire to
seem merciful. But though he merely tied the prisoner's ankle after
the usual manner, he knotted the small rope with a vicious yank,
pulled it as tight as he could and passed the rope under the flinching
belly of the buckskin to Davis, on the other side. Also he sent a
glance of meaning which the other read unerringly and obeyed most
willingly. Davis drew the rope taut under the cinch and tied Jack's
other ankle as if he were putting the diamond hitch on a pack mule.
The two stepped back and eyed him sharply for some sign of pain, when
all was done.
"Thanks," drawled Jack. "Sorry I can't do as much for you." Whereupon
he set his teeth against the growing agony of strained muscles and
congesting arteries, and began to roll a cigarette with fingers which
he held rigidly from trembling.
Bill Wilson, returning gloomily to the doorway of his place, grated an
oath and turned away his head.
Some day, he promised himself vengefully, those two--yes, and the
whole group of murderers moving briskly away from the tent--would pay
for that outrage; and he prayed that the day might come soon.
He went heavily into the big room where men were already foregathering
to gossip between drinks of the trial and of the man who was to die.
Bill bethought him of the young stranger; made some inquiries of
certain inoffensive individuals among the crowd, and sent Jim out with
instructions to find the kid and bring him back with him.
Bill was standing in the door waiting for Jim to return, when, in a
swirl of dust, came Dade galloping around a corner and to the
very doorstep before he showed any desire to slow up. At the first
tightening of the reins, the white horse stiffened his front legs, dug
two foot-long furrows and stopped still. Bill had no enthusiasm for
the perfect accomplishment of the trick. He stood with his hands
thrust deep into his pockets and regarded the rider glumly.
"Well, you got here," he grunted, with the brevity of utter misery.
"You bet I did! I was away from the hacienda when the peon came, or
I'd have got here sooner," Dade explained cheerfully, swinging to the
ground with a jingle of his big, Mexican spurs that had little silver
bells to swell the tinkly chimes when he moved. "Where's Jack?"
Big Bill Wilson's jaw trembled with an impulse towards tears which
the long, harsh years behind him would not let him shed. "They've got
him," he said in a choked tone, and waved a hand toward the west.
"Who's got him?" Dade clanked a step closer and peered sharply into
Bill's face, with all the easy good humor wiped out of his own.
"The Committee. You're too late; they're taking him out to the oak.
Been gone about ten minutes. They had it in for him, and--I couldn't
do a thing! The men in this town--" Epithets rushed incoherently from
Bill's lips, just as violent weeping marks the reaction from a woman's
first silence in the face of tragedy.
Dade did not hear a word he was saying, after those first jerky
sentences. He stood looking past Bill at a drunken Irishman who was
making erratic progress up the street; and he was no more conscious of
the Irishman than he was of Bill's scorching condemnation of the town
which could permit such outrages.
"Watch Surry a minute!" he said abruptly, and hurried into the
gambling hall. In a minute he was back again and lifting foot to the
stirrup.
"How long did you say they've been gone?" he asked, without looking at
Bill.
"Ten or fifteen minutes. Say, you can't do anything!"
Dade was already half-way up the block, a swirl of sand-dust marking
his flight. Bill stared after him distressfully.
"He'll go and get his light put out--and he won't help Jack a damn
bit," he told himself miserably, and went in. Life that day looked
very hard to big-hearted Bill Wilson, and scarcely worth the trouble
of living it.
It broke the heart of Dade Hunter to see how near the sinister
procession was to the live oak that had come to be looked upon as the
gallows of the Vigilance Committee; a gallows whose broad branches
sheltered from rain and sun alike the unmarked graves of the men
who had come there shuddering and looked upon it, and shuddering had
looked no more upon anything in this world.
Until he was near enough to risk betraying his haste by the hoof-beats
of his horse, Dade kept Surry at a run. Upon the crest of the slope
which the procession was leisurely descending, he slowed to a lope;
and so overtook the crowd that straggled always out to the hangings,
came they ever so frequent. Reeling in the saddle, he came up with
the stragglers, singing and marking time with a half-empty bottle of
whisky.
The few who knew him looked at one another askance.
"Say, Hunter, ain't yuh got any feelin's? That there's your pardner on
the hoss," one loose-jointed miner expostulated.
"Sure, I got feelin's! Have a d-drink?" Dade leered drunkenly at the
speaker. "Jack's--no good anyway. Tol' 'im he'd get hung if he--have a
d-drink?"
The loose-jointed one would, and so would his neighbors. The Captain
glanced back at them, gave a contemptuous lift to his upper lip and
faced again to the front.
Dade uncoiled his riata with aimless, fumbling fingers and swung the
noose facetiously toward the bottle, uptilted over the eager mouth of
a weazened little Irishman. He caught bottle and hand together, let
them go with a quick flip of the rawhide and waggled his head in
apology.
"_Excuse_ me, Mike," he mumbled, while the Irishman stopped and
glared. "Go awn! Have a drink. Mighta spilled it--shame!"
Jack looked back, his heart thumping heavily at sound of the voice,
thick though it was and maudlin. Dade drunk and full of coarse foolery
was a sight he had never before looked upon; but Dade's presence,
drunk or sober, made his own plight seem a shade less hopeless. He did
not dare a second glance, with Davis and the Captain walking at either
stirrup; but he listened anxiously--listened and caught a drunken
mumble from the rear, and a chorus of chuckling laughs coming after.
He looked ahead. The great oak was close, so close that he might have
counted the narrow little ridges of red soil beneath; the ridges which
he knew were the graves of those who had died before him. The great
bough that reached out over the spot where the earth was trampled
smooth in horrible significance--the branch from which a noosed
rope dangled sinuously in the breeze that came straight off the
ocean--swayed with majestic deliberation as if Fate herself were
beckoning.
He clasped his hands upon the saddle-horn and, stealthily loosening
the dagger-point from the hem of his sleeve, slid the weapon
cautiously into his hand. When he felt the handle against his palm,
he knew that he had been holding his breath, and that the sigh he gave
was an involuntary relief that the others had not glimpsed the blade
under his clasped fingers. He would not have to dangle from that
swinging rope, at any rate.
"Hello, pard!" Dade's voice called thickly from close behind. "Looking
for some rope?"
Jack turned his head just as the looped rawhide slithered past him and
settled taut over the head of the startled buckskin. Like a lightning
gleam slashing through the dark he saw Dade's plan, and played his own
part unhesitatingly.
Two movements he made while the buckskin sat back upon his haunches
and gathered his muscles for a forward spring. The first was to lean
and send a downward sweep of the dagger across the rope by which
Shorty was leading the horse, and the second was a backward lunge that
drove the knife deep into the bared throat of the Captain, stunned
into momentary inaction by the suddenness of Dade's assault.
The buckskin gave a mighty leap that caught Shorty unawares and
sent him into a crumpled heap in the sand. Dade's riata, tight as a
fiddle-string at first, slackened as the buckskin, his breath coming
in snorts, surged alongside. Jack leaned again--this time to snatch
the ivory-handled revolver from the holster on Dade's saddle. As well
as he could with his legs held rigid by the rope that tied his ankles,
he twisted in the saddle and sent leaden answer to the spiteful
barking of the guns that called upon them to halt.
[Illustration: He twisted in the saddle and sent leaden answer to the
spiteful barking of the guns.]
Davis he shot, and saw him sway and fall flat, with a smoking gun in
his hand. Another crumpled forward; and Shorty, just getting painfully
upon his feet, he sent into the sand again to stay; for his skill with
small arms was something uncanny to witness, and his temper was up and
turning him into a savage like the rest.
But the range was rapidly growing to rifle-length, and death fell
short of his enemies after Shorty went down. When he saw his fourth
bullet kick up a harmless little geyser of sand two rods in advance of
the agitated crowd, he left off and turned to his friend.
"I thought you were drunk," he observed inanely, as is common to men
who have just come through situations for which no words have been
coined.
"You ain't the only one who made that mistake," Dade retorted grimly,
and looked back. "Good thing those hombres are afoot. We'll get on a
little farther and then we'll fix a hackamore so you can do your own
riding,"
"I can't stand it to ride any farther--"
"Are you shot?" Dade pulled in a little and looked anxiously into his
face.
"It's the rope. They tied it so tight it's torture. I'd never have
believed it could hurt so--but they gave me an extra twist or two to
show their friendship, I reckon."
Dade rode on beyond a little, wooded knoll before he stopped, lest
the crowd, seeing them halt, might think it worth while to follow them
afoot.
"They surely didn't intend you to fall off," he said whimsically, when
his knife released the strain. But his lips tightened at the outrage;
and his eyes, bent upon Jack's left ankle, wore the look of one who
could kill without pity.
"They'll never do it to another man," declared Jack, with vindictive
relish. "It was Davis and the Captain; I killed 'em both." He rolled
stiffly from the saddle, found his feet like dead things and stumbled
to a little hillock, where he sat down.
Dade, kneeling awkwardly in his heavy, bearskin chaparejos, picked at
the bonds with the point of his knife. "Lucky you had on boots," he
remarked. "Even as it is, you're likely to carry creases for a while.
How the deuce did you manage to get into this particular scrape?--if I
might ask!"
"I didn't get into it. This particular scrape got me. Say, it's lucky
you happened along just when you did."
To this very obvious statement the other made no reply. He cut the
last strand of the rope that bound Jack's ankles so mercilessly, and
stood up. "You better take off your boots and rub some feeling into
your feet while I make a hackamore for that horse. The sooner we get
out of this, the better. What's left of the Committee will probably be
pretty anxious to see you."
"Oh, damn the Committee!--as Bill remarked after the trial." Jack made
an attempt to remove one of his boots, found the pain intolerable and
desisted with a groan. "I wish they would show up," he declared. "I'd
like to give them a taste of this foot-tying business!"
Dade went on tying the hackamore with a haste that might be called
anxious. With just two bullets left in the pistol and with no powder
upon his person for further reloading, he could not share Jack's
eagerness to meet the Committee again. When Surry gave over rolling
with his tongue the little wheel in his bit, and with lifted head
and eyes alert perked his ears forward towards the hill they had just
crossed, he slipped the hackamore hurriedly into place and turned to
his friend.
"You climb on to Surry, and we'll pull out," he said shortly. "I
wouldn't give two pesos for this buckskin, but we're going to add
horse-stealing to our other crimes; and while it's all right to damn
the Committee, it's just as well to do it at a distance, just now, old
man."
The caution fell flat, for Jack was wholly absorbed by the pain in
his feet and ankles, as the blood was being forced into the congested
veins. Dade led the white horse close, to save him the discomfort
of hobbling to it, and waited until Jack was in the saddle before
he vaulted upon the tricky-eyed buckskin. He led the way down into a
shallow depression which wound aimlessly towards the ocean; and later,
when trees and bushes and precipitous bluffs threatened to bar their
way, he swung abruptly to the east and south.
"Maybe you won't object so hard to Palo Alto now," he bantered at
last, when at dusk he ventured out upon "El Camino Real" (which is
pure Spanish for "The King's Highway"), that had linked Mission to
Mission all down the fertile length of California when the land was
wilderness. "Solitude ought to feel good, after to-day." When he got
no answer, Dade looked around at the other.
Jack's face showed vaguely through the night fog creeping in from the
clamorous ocean off to the west. His legs were hanging free of the
stirrups, and his hands rested upon the high saddle-horn.
"Say, Dade," he asked irrelevantly and with a mystifying earnestness,
"which do you think would kill a man quickest--a slash across the
throat, or a stab in the heart?"
"I wouldn't call either one healthy. Why?"
"I was just wondering," Jack returned ambiguously. "If you hadn't
happened along--say, how did you happen to come? Was that another
sample of my fool's luck?" Since the coincidence had not struck him
before, one might guess that he was accustomed to having Dade at his
elbow when he was most needed.
"Bill Wilson sent word that you were making seven kinds of a fool of
yourself--Bill named a few of them--and advised me to get you out
of town. I've more respect for Bill's judgment than ever. I took his
advice as it stood--and therefore, you're headed for safer territory
than you were awhile ago. It ain't heaven," he added, "but it's next
thing to it."
"I'm not hankering after heaven, right now," averred Jack. "Most any
other place looks good to me; I'm not feeling a hit critical, Dade.
And if I didn't say it before, old man, you're worth a whole regiment
to a fellow in a fix."