A MINERS' MEETING
"Leiden oder triumphiren Hammer oder Amboss sein."--Goethe.
In a good-sized cabin, owned by Bonsor, down near the A. C., Judge
Corey was administering Miners' Law. The chief magistrate was already a
familiar figure, standing on his dump at Little Minóok, speculatively
chewing and discussing "glayshal action," but most of the time at the
Gold Nugget, chewing still, and discussing more guardedly the action
some Minóok man was threatening to bring against another. You may treat
a glacier cavalierly, but Miners' Law is a serious matter. Corey was
sitting before a deal table, littered with papers strewn round a
central bottle of ink, in which a steel pen stuck upright. The Judge
wore his usual dilapidated business suit of brown cheviot that had once
been snuff-coloured and was now a streaky drab. On his feet, stretched
out under the magisterial table till they joined the jury, a pair of
moccasins; on his grizzled head a cowboy hat, set well back. He could
spit farther than any man in Minóok, and by the same token was a better
shot. They had unanimously elected him Judge.
The first-comers had taken possession of the chairs and wooden stools
round the stove. All the later arrivals, including Keith and his
friends, sat on the floor.
"There's a good many here."
"They'll keep comin' as long as a lean man can scrouge in."
"Yes," said Keith, "everybody's got to come, even if it's only the
usual row between pardners, who want to part and can't agree about
dividing the outfit."
"Got to come?"
Keith laughed. "That's the way everybody feels. There'll be a debate
and a chance to cast a vote. Isn't your true-born American always
itching to hold a meeting about something?"
"Don't know about that," said McGinty, "but I do know there's more
things happens in a minute to make a man mad in Alaska, than happens in
a year anywhere else." And his sentiment was loudly applauded. The
plaintiff had scored a hit.
"I don't know but two partnerships," the ex-Governor was saying, "of
all those on my ship and on the Muckluck and the May West--just two,
that have stood the Alaska strain. Everyone that didn't break on the
boats, or in camp, went to smash on the trail."
They all admitted that the trail was the final test. While they smoked
and spat into or at the stove, and told trail yarns, the chief
magistrate arranged papers, conferred with the clerk and another man,
wrinkled deeply his leathery forehead, consulted his Waterbury, and
shot tobacco-juice under the table.
"Another reason everybody comes," whispered Keith, "is because the side
that wins always takes the town up to the Nugget and treats to hootch.
Whenever you see eighty or ninety more drunks than usual, you know
there's either been a stampede or else justice has been administered."
"Ain't Bonsor late?" asked someone.
"No, it's a quarter of."
"Why do they want Bonsor?"
"His case on the docket--McGinty v. Burt Bonsor, proprietor of the Gold
Nugget."
"If they got a row on----"
"If they got a row? Course they got a row. Weren't they pardners?"
"But McGinty spends all his time at the Gold Nugget."
"Well, where would he spend it?"
"A Miners' Meetin's a pretty poor machine," McGinty was saying to the
ex-Governor, "but it's the best we got."
"----in a country bigger than several of the nations of Europe put
together," responded that gentleman, with much public spirit.
"A Great Country!"
"Right!"
"You bet!"
"----a country that's paid for its purchase over and over again, even
before we discovered gold here."
"Did she? Good old 'laska."
"----and the worst treated part o' the Union."
"That's so."
"After this, when I read about Russian corruption and Chinese cruelty,
I'll remember the way Uncle Sam treats the natives up----"
"----and us, b'gosh! White men that are openin' up this great, rich
country fur Uncle Sam----"
"----with no proper courts--no Government protection--no help--no
justice--no nothin'."
"Yer forgittin' them reindeer!" And the court-room rang with derisive
laughter.
"Congress started that there Relief Expedition all right," the josher
went on, "only them blamed reindeer had got the feed habit, and when
they'd et up everything in sight they set down on the Dalton Trail--and
there they're settin' yit, just like they was Congress. But I don't
like to hear no feller talkin' agin' the Gover'ment."
"Yes, it's all very funny," said McGinty gloomily, "but think o' the
fix a feller's in wot's had a wrong done him in the fall, and knows
justice is thousands o' miles away, and he can't even go after her for
eight months; and in them eight months the feller wot robbed him has et
up the money, or worked out the claim, and gone dead-broke."
"No, sir! we don't wait, and we don't go trav'lin'. We stay at home and
call a meetin'."
The door opened, and Bonsor and the bar-tender, with great difficulty,
forced their way in. They stood flattened against the wall. During the
diversion McGinty was growling disdainfully, "Rubbidge!"
"Rubbidge? Reckon it's pretty serious rubbidge."
"Did you ever know a Miners' Meetin' to make a decision that didn't
become law, with the whole community ready to enforce it if necessary?
Rubbidge!
"Oh, we'll hang a man if we don't like his looks," grumbled McGinty;
but he was overborne. There were a dozen ready to uphold the majesty of
the Miners' Meetin'.
"No, sir! No funny business about our law! This tribunal's final."
"I ain't disputin' that it's final. I ain't talkin' about law. I was
mentionin' Justice."
"The feller that loses is always gassin' 'bout Justice. When you win
you don't think there's any flies on the Justice."
"Ain't had much experience with winnin'. We all knows who wins in these
yere Meetin's."
"Who?" But they turned their eyes on Mr. Bonsor, over by the door.
"Who wins?" repeated a Circle City man.
"The feller that's got the most friends."
"It's so," whispered Keith.
"----same at Circle," returned the up-river man.
McGinty looked at him. Was this a possible adherent?
"You got a Push at Circle?" he inquired, but without genuine interest
in the civil administration up the river. "Why, 'fore this yere town
was organised, when we hadn't got no Court of Arbitration to fix a
boundary, or even to hang a thief, we had our 'main Push,' just like we
was 'Frisco." He lowered his voice, and leaned towards his Circle
friend. "With Bonsor's help they 'lected Corey Judge o' the P'lice
Court, and Bonsor ain't never let Corey forgit it."
"What about the other?" inquired a Bonsorite, "the shifty Push that got
you in for City Marshal?"
"What's the row on to-night?" inquired the Circle City man.
"Oh, Bonsor, over there, he lit out on a stampede 'bout Christmas, and
while he was gone a feller by the name o' Lawrence quit the game.
Fanned out one night at the Gold Nugget. I seen for days he was wantin'
to be a angil, and I kep' a eye on 'im. Well, when he went to the
boneyard, course it was my business, bein' City Marshal, to take
possession of his property fur his heirs!"
There was unseemly laughter behind the stove-pipe.
"Among his deeds and traps," McGinty went on, unheeding, "there was
fifteen hundred dollars in money. Well, sir, when Bonsor gits back he
decides he'd like to be the custodian o' that cash. Mentions his idee
to me. I jest natchrally tell him to go to hell. No, sir, he goes to
Corey over there, and gits an order o' the Court makin' Bonsor
administrator o' the estate o' James Lawrence o' Noo Orleens, lately
deceased. Then Bonsor comes to me, shows me the order, and demands that
fifteen hundred."
"Didn't he tell you you could keep all the rest o' Lawrence's stuff?"
asked the Bonsorite.
McGinty disdained to answer this thrust.
"But I knows my dooty as City Marshal, and I says, 'No,' and Bonsor
says, says he, 'If you can't git the idee o' that fifteen hundred
dollars out o' your head, I'll git it out fur ye with a bullet,' an' he
draws on me."
"An' McGinty weakens," laughed the mocker behind the stove-pipe.
"Bonsor jest pockets the pore dead man's cash," says McGinty, with
righteous indignation, "and I've called this yer meetin' t' arbitrate
the matter."
"Minoók doesn't mind arbitrating," says Keith low to the Colonel, "but
there isn't a man in camp that would give five cents for the interest
of the heirs of Lawrence in that fifteen hundred dollars."
A hammering on the clerk's little table announced that it was seven
p.m.
The Court then called for the complaint filed by McGinty v. Bonsor, the
first case on the docket. The clerk had just risen when the door was
flung open, and hatless, coatless, face aflame, Maudie stood among the
miners.
"Boys!" said she, on the top of a scream, "I been robbed."
"Hey?"
"Robbed?"
"Golly!"
"Maudie robbed?" They spoke all together. Everybody had jumped up.
"While we was on that stampede yesterday, somebody found my--all
my----" She choked, and her eyes filled. "Boys! my nuggets, my dust, my
dollars--they're gone!"
"Where did you have 'em?"
"In a little place under--in a hole." Her face twitched, and she put
her hand up to hide it.
"Mean shame."
"Dirt mean."
"We'll find him, Maudie."
"An' when we do, we'll hang him on the cottonwood."
"Did anybody know where you kept your----"
"I didn't think so, unless it was----No!" she screamed hysterically,
and then fell into weak crying. "Can't think who could have been such a
skunk."
"But who do you suspect?" persisted the Judge.
"How do I know?" she retorted angrily. "I suspect everybody till--till
I know." She clenched her hands.
That a thief should be "operating" in Minoók on somebody who wasn't
dead yet, was a matter that came home to the business and the bosoms of
all the men in the camp. In the midst of the babel of speculation and
excitement, Maudie, still crying and talking incoherently about skunks,
opened the door. The men crowded after her. Nobody suggested it, but
the entire Miners' Meeting with one accord adjourned to the scene of
the crime. Only a portion could be accommodated under Maudie's roof,
but the rest crowded in front of her door or went and examined the
window. Maudie's log-cabin was a cheerful place, its one room, neatly
kept, lined throughout with red and white drill, hung with marten and
fox, carpeted with wolf and caribou. The single sign of disorder was
that the bed was pulled out a little from its place in the angle of the
wall above the patent condenser stove. Behind the oil-tank, where the
patent condensation of oil into gas went on, tiers of shelves,
enamelled pots and pans ranged below, dishes and glasses above. On the
very top, like a frieze, gaily labelled ranks of "tinned goods." On the
table under the window a pair of gold scales. A fire burned in the
stove. The long-lingering sunlight poured through the "turkey-red" that
she had tacked up for a half-curtain, and over this, one saw the
slouch-hats and fur caps of the outside crowd.
Clutching Judge Corey by the arm, Maudie pulled him after her into the
narrow space behind the head-board and the wall.
"It was here--see?" She stooped down.
Some of the men pulled the bed farther out, so that they, too, could
pass round and see.
"This piece o' board goes down so slick you'd never know it lifted
out." She fitted it in with shaking hands, and then with her nails and
a hairpin got it out. "And way in, underneath, I had this box. I always
set it on a flat stone." She spoke as if this oversight were the
thief's chief crime. "See? Like that."
She fitted the cigar-box into unseen depths of space and then brought
it out again, wet and muddy. The ground was full of springs hereabouts,
and the thaw had loosed them.
"Boys!" She stood up and held out the box. "Boys! it was full."
Eloquently she turned it upside down.
"How much do you reckon you had?" She handed the muddy box to the
nearest sympathiser, sat down on the fur-covered bed, and wiped her
eyes.
"Any idea?"
"I weighed it all over again after I got in from the Gold Nugget the
night we went on the stampede."
As she sobbed out the list of her former possessions, Judge Corey took
it down on the back of a dirty envelope. So many ounces of dust, so
many in nuggets, so much in bills and coin, gold and silver. Each item
was a stab.
"Yes, all that--all that!" she jumped up wildly, "and it's gone! But we
got to find it. What you hangin' round here for? Why, if you boys had
any natchral spunk you'd have the thief strung up by now."
"We got to find him fust."
"You won't find him standin' here."
They conferred afresh.
"It must have been somebody who knowed where you kept the stuff."
"N-no." Her red eyes wandered miserably, restlessly, to the window.
Over the red half-curtain French Charlie and Butts looked in. They had
not been to the meeting.
Maudie's face darkened as she caught sight of the Canadian.
"Oh, yes, you can crow over me now," she shouted shrilly above the buzz
of comment and suggestion. The Canadian led the way round to the door,
and the two men crowded in.
"You just get out," Maudie cried in a fury. "Didn't I turn you out o'
this and tell you never----"
"Hol' on," said French Charlie in a conciliatory tone. "This true 'bout
your losin'----"
"Yes, it's true; but I ain't askin' your sympathy!"
He stopped short and frowned.
"Course not, when you can get his." Under his slouch-hat he glowered at
the Colonel.
Maudie broke into a volley of abuse. The very air smelt of brimstone.
When finally, through sheer exhaustion, she dropped on the side of the
bed, the devil prompted French Charlie to respond in kind. She jumped
up and turned suddenly round upon Corey, speaking in a voice quite
different, low and hoarse: "You asked me, Judge, if anybody knew where
I kept my stuff. Charlie did."
The Canadian stopped in the middle of a lurid remark and stared
stupidly. The buzz died away. The cabin was strangely still.
"Wasn't you along with the rest up to Idaho Bar?" inquired the Judge in
a friendly voice.
"Y-yes."
"Not when we all were! No!" Maudie's tear-washed eyes were regaining a
dangerous brightness. "I wanted him to come with me. He wouldn't, and
we quarrelled."
"We didn't."
"You didn't quarrel?" put in the Judge.
"We did," said Maudie, breathless.
"Not about that. It was because she wanted another feller to come,
too." Again he shot an angry glance at the Kentuckian.
"And Charlie said if I gave the other feller the tip, he wouldn't come.
And he'd get even with me, if it took a leg!"
"Well, it looks like he done it."
"Can't you prove an alibi? Thought you said you was along with the rest
to Idaho Bar?" suggested Windy Jim.
"So I was."
"I didn't see you," Maudie flashed.
"When were you there?" asked the Judge.
"Last night."
"Oh, yes! When everybody else was comin' home. You all know if that's
the time Charlie usually goes on a stampede!"
"You----"
If words could slay, Maudie would have dropped dead, riddled with a
dozen mortal wounds. But she lived to reply in kind. Charlie's
abandonment of coherent defence was against him. While he wallowed
blindly in a mire of offensive epithet, his fellow-citizens came to
dark conclusions. He had an old score to pay off against Maudie, they
all knew that. Had he chosen this way? What other so effectual? He
might even say most of that dust was his, anyway. But it was an
alarming precedent. The fire of Maudie's excitement had caught and
spread. Eve the less inflammable muttered darkly that it was all up
with Minoók, if a person couldn't go on a stampede without havin' his
dust took out of his cabin. The crowd was pressing Charlie, and twenty
cross-questions were asked him in a minute. He, beside himself with
rage, or fear, or both, lost all power except to curse.
The Judge seemed to be taking down damning evidence on the dirty
envelope. Some were suggesting:
"Bring him over to the court."
"Yes, try him straight away."
No-Thumb-Jack was heard above the din, saying it was all gammon wasting
time over a trial, or even--in a plain case like this--for the Judge to
require the usual complaint made in writing and signed by three
citizens.
Two men laid hold of the Canadian, and he turned ghastly white under
his tan.
"Me? Me tief? You--let me alone!" He began to struggle. His terrified
eyes rolling round the little cabin, fell on Butts.
"I don' know but one tief in Minóok," he said wildly, like a man
wandering in a fever, and unconscious of having spoken, till he noticed
there was a diversion of some sort. People were looking at Butts. A
sudden inspiration pierced the Canadian's fog of terror.
"You know what Butts done to Jack McQuestion. You ain't forgot how he
sneaked Jack's watch!" The incident was historic.
Every eye on Butts. Charlie caught up breath and courage.
"An' t'odder night w'en Maudie treat me like she done"--he shot a
blazing glance at the double-dyed traitor--"I fixed it up with Butts.
Got him to go soft on 'er and nab 'er ring."
"You didn't!" shouted Maudie.
With a shaking finger Charlie pointed out Jimmie, the cashier.
"Didn't I tell you to weigh me out twenty dollars for Butts that
night?"
"Right," says Jimmie.
"It was to square Butts fur gittin' that ring away from Maudie."
"You put up a job like that on me?" To be fooled publicly was worse
than being robbed.
Charlie paid no heed to her quivering wrath. The menace of the
cotton-wood gallows outrivalled even Maudie and her moods.
"Why should I pay Butts twenty dollars if I could work dat racket
m'self? If I want expert work, I go to a man like Butts, who knows his
business. I'm a miner--like the rest o' yer!"
The centre of gravity had shifted. It was very grave indeed in the
neighbourhood of Mr. Butts.
"Hold on," said the Judge, forcing his way nearer to the man whose
fingers had a renown so perilous. "'Cause a man plays a trick about a
girl's ring don't prove he stole her money. This thing happened while
the town was emptied out on the Little Minóok trail. Didn't you go off
with the rest yesterday morning?"
"No."
"Ha!" gasped Maudie, as though this were conclusive--"had business in
town, did you?"
Mr. Butts declined to answer.
"You thought the gold-mine out on the gulch could wait--and the
gold-mine in my cabin couldn't."
"You lie!" remarked Mr. Butts.
"What time did you get to Idaho Bar?" asked Corey.
"Didn't get there at all."
"Where were you?"
"Here in Rampart."
"What?"
"Wait! Wait!" commanded the Judge, as the crowd rocked towards Butts:
"P'raps you'll tell us what kept you at home?"
Butts shut his mouth angrily, but a glance at the faces nearest him
made him think an answer prudent.
"I was tired."
The men, many of them ailing, who had nearly killed themselves to get
to Idaho Bar, sneered openly.
"I'd been jumpin' a claim up at Hunter."
"So had Charlie. But he joined the new stampede in the afternoon."
"Well, I didn't."
"Why, even the old cripple Jansen went on this stampede."
"Can't help that."
"Mr. Butts, you're the only able-bodied white man in the district that
stayed at home." Corey spoke in his, most judicial style.
Mr. Butts must have felt the full significance of so suspicious a fact,
but all he said was:
"Y' ought to fix up a notice. Anybody that don't join a stampede will
be held guilty o' grand larceny." Saying this Butts had backed a step
behind the stove-pipe, and with incredible quickness had pulled out a
revolver. But before he had brought it into range, No-Thumb-Jack had
struck his arm down, and two or three had sprung at the weapon and
wrested it away.
"Search him!"
"No tellin' what else he's got!"
"----and he's so damned handy!"
"Search him!"
Maudie pressed forward as the pinioned man's pockets were turned out.
Only tobacco, a small buckskin bag with less than four ounces of dust,
a pipe, and a knife.
"Likely he'd be carrying my stuff about on him!" said she, contemptuous
of her own keen interest.
"Get out a warrant to search Butts' premises," said a voice in the
crowd.
"McGinty and Johnson are down there now!"
"Think he'd leave anything layin' round?"
Maudie pressed still closer to the beleaguered Butts.
"Say, if I make the boys let you go back to Circle, will you tell me
where you've hid my money?"
"Ain't got your money!"
"Look at 'im," whispered Charlie, still so terrified he could hardly
stand.
"Butts ain't borrowin' no trouble."
And this formulating of the general impression did Butts no good. As
they had watched the calm demeanour of the man, under suspicion of what
was worse, in their eyes, than murder, there had come over the
bystanders a wave of that primitive cruelty that to this hour will wake
in modern men and cry as loud as in Judean days, or in the Saga times
of Iceland, "Retribution! Let him suffer! Let him pay in blood!" And
here again, on the Yukon, that need of visible atonement to right the
crazy injustice of the earth.
Even the women--the others had crowded in--were eager for Butts'
instant expiation of the worst crime such a community knows. They told
one another excitedly how they'd realised all along it was only a
question of time before Butts would be tryin' his game up here. Nobody
was safe. Luckily they were on to him. But look! He didn't care a
curse. It would be a good night's job to make him care.
Three men had hold of him, and everybody talked at once. Minnie Bryan
was sure she had seen him skulking round Maudie's after that lady had
gone up the trail, but everybody had been too excited about the
stampede to notice particularly.
The Judge and Bonsor were shouting and gesticulating, Butts answering
bitterly but quietly still. His face was pretty grim, but it looked as
if he were the one person in the place who hadn't lost his head. Maudie
was still crying at intervals, and advertising to the newcomers that
wealth she had hitherto kept so dark, and between whiles she stared
fixedly at Butts, as conviction of his guilt deepened to a rage to see
him suffer for his crime.
She would rather have her nuggets back, but, failing that--let Butts
pay! He owed her six thousand dollars. Let him pay!
The miners were hustling him to the door--to the Court House or to the
cotton-wood--a toss-up which.
"Look here!" cried out the Colonel; "McGinty and Johnson haven't got
back!"
Nobody listened. Justice had been sufficiently served in sending them.
They had forced Butts out across the threshold, the crowd packed close
behind. The only men who had not pressed forward were Keith, the
Colonel, and the Boy, and No-Thumb-Jack, still standing by the
oil-tank.
"What are they going to do with him?" The Colonel turned to Keith with
horror in his face.
Keith's eyes were on the Boy, who had stooped and picked up the block
of wood that had fitted over the treasure-hole. He was staring at it
with dilated eyes. Sharply he turned his head in the direction where
No-Thumb-Jack had stood. Jack was just making for the door on the heels
of the last of those pressing to get out.
The Boy's low cry was drowned in the din. He lunged forward, but the
Colonel gripped him. Looking up, he saw that Kentucky understood, and
meant somehow to manage the business quietly.
Jack was trying, now right, now left, to force his way through the
congestion at the door, like a harried rabbit at a wattled fence. A
touch on the shoulder simultaneously with the click of a trigger at his
ear brought his face round over his shoulder. He made the instinctive
pioneer motion to his hip, looked into the bore of the Colonel's
pistol, and under Keith's grip dropped his "gun-hand" with a smothered
oath.
Or was it that other weapon in the Colonel's left that bleached the
ruddy face? Simply the block of wood. On the under side, dried in, like
a faint stain, four muddy finger-prints, index joint lacking. Without a
word the Colonel turned the upper side out. A smudge?--no--the grain of
human skin clean printed--a distorted palm without a thumb. Only one
man in Minóok could make that sign manual!
The last of the crowd were over the threshold now, and still no word
was spoken by those who stayed behind, till the Colonel said to the
Boy:
"Go with 'em, and look after Butts. Give us five minutes; more if you
can!"
He laid the block on a cracker-box, and, keeping pistol and eye still
on the thief, took his watch in his left hand, as the Boy shot through
the door.
Butts was making a good fight for his life, but he was becoming
exhausted. The leading spirits were running him down the bank to where
a crooked cotton-wood leaned cautiously over the Never-Know-What, as if
to spy out the river's secret.
But after arriving there, they were a little delayed for lack of what
they called tackle. They sent a man off for it, and then sent another
to hurry up the man. The Boy stood at the edge of the crowd, a little
above them, watching Maudie's door, and with feverish anxiety turning
every few seconds to see how it was with Butts.
Up in the cabin No-Thumb-Jack had pulled out of the usual capacious
pockets of the miner's brown-duck-pockets that fasten with a patent
snap--a tattered pocket-book, fat with bills. He plunged deeper and
brought up Pacific Coast eagles and five-dollar pieces, Canadian and
American gold that went rolling out of his maimed and nervous hand
across the tablet to the scales and set the brass pans sawing up and
down.
Keith, his revolver still at full cock, had picked up a trampled bit of
paper near the stove. Corey's list. Left-handedly he piled up the
money, counting, comparing.
"Quick! the dust!" ordered the Colonel. Out of a left hip-pocket a
long, tight-packed buckskin bag. Another from a side-pocket, half the
size and a quarter as full.
"That's mine," said Jack, and made a motion to recover.
"Let it alone. Turn out everything. Nuggets!"
A miner's chamois belt unbuckled and flung heavily down. The scales
jingled and rocked; every pocket in the belt was stuffed.
"Where's the rest?"
"There ain't any rest. That's every damned pennyweight."
"Maybe we ought to weigh it, and see if he's lying?"
"'Fore God it's all! Let me go!" He had kept looking through the crack
of the door.
"Reckon it's about right," said Keith.
"'Tain't right! There's more there'n I took. My stuff's there too. For
Christ's sake, let me go!"
"Look here, Jack, is the little bag yours?"
Jack wet his dry lips and nodded "Yes."
The Colonel snatched up the smaller bag and thrust it into the man's
hands. Jack made for the door. The Colonel stopped him.
"Better take to the woods," he said, with a motion back towards the
window. The Colonel opened the half-closed door and looked out, as Jack
pushed aside the table, tore away the red curtain, hammered at the
sash, then, desperate, set his shoulder at it and forced the whole
thing out. He put his maimed hand on the sill and vaulted after the
shattered glass.
They could see him going like the wind up towards his own shack at the
edge of the wood, looking back once or twice, doubling and tacking to
keep himself screened by the haphazard, hillside cabins, out of sight
of the lynchers down at the river.
"Will you stay with this?" the Colonel had asked Keith hurriedly,
nodding at the treasure-covered table, and catching up the
finger-marked block before Jack was a yard from the window.
"Yes," Keith had said, revolver still in hand and eyes on the man
Minóok was to see no more. The Colonel met the Boy running breathless
up the bank.
"Can't hold 'em any longer," he shouted; "you're takin' it pretty easy
while a man's gettin' killed down here."
"Stop! Wait!" The Colonel floundered madly through the slush and mud,
calling and gesticulating, "I've got the thief!"
Presto all the backs of heads became faces.
"Got the money?" screamed Maudie, uncovering her eyes. She had gone to
the execution, but after the rope was brought, her nerve failed her,
and she was sobbing hysterically into her two palms held right over her
eyes.
"Oh, you had it, did you?" called out McGinty with easy insolence.
"Look here!" The Colonel held up the bit of flooring with rapid
explanation.
"Where is he?"
"Got him locked up?"
Everybody talked at once. The Colonel managed to keep them going for
some moments before he admitted.
"Reckon he's lit out." And then the Colonel got it hot and strong for
his clumsiness.
"Which way'd he go?"
The Colonel turned his back to the North Pole, and made a fine large
gesture in the general direction of the Equator.
"Where's my money?"
"Up in your cabin. Better go and count it."
A good many were willing to help since they'd been cheated out of a
hanging, and even defrauded of a shot at a thief on the wing. Nobody
seemed to care to remain in the neighbourhood of the crooked
cotton-wood. The crowd was dispersing somewhat sheepishly.
Nobody looked at Butts, and yet he was a sight to see. His face and his
clothes were badly mauled. He was covered with mud and blood. When the
men were interrupted in trying to get the noose over his head, he had
stood quite still in the midst of the crowd till it broke and melted
away from him. He looked round, passed his hand over his eyes, threw
open his torn coat, and felt in his pockets.
"Who's got my tobacco?" says he.
Several men turned back suddenly, and several pouches were held out,
but nobody met Butts' eyes. He filled his pipe, nor did his hand shake
any more than those that held the tobacco-bags. When he had lit up,
"Who's got my Smith and Wesson?" he called out to the backs of the
retiring citizens. Windy Jim stood and delivered. Butts walked away to
his cabin, swaying a little, as if he'd had more hootch than he could
carry.
"What would you have said," demanded the Boy, "if you'd hung the wrong
man?"
"Said?" echoed McGinty. "Why, we'd 'a' said that time the corpse had
the laugh on us." A couple of hours later Keith put an excited face
into his shack, where the Colonel and the Boy were just crawling under
their blankets.
"Thought you might like to know, that Miners' Meeting that was
interrupted is having an extra session."
They followed him down to the Court through a fine rain. The night was
heavy and thick. As they splashed along Keith explained:
"Of course, Charlie knew there wasn't room enough in Alaska now for
Butts and him; and he thought he'd better send Butts home. So he took
his gun and went to call."
"Don't tell me that poor devil's killed after all."
"Not a bit. Butts is a little bunged up, but he's the handier man, even
so. He drew the first bead."
"Charlie hurt?"
"No, he isn't hurt. He's dead. Three or four fellows had just looked
in, on the quiet, to kind of apologise to Butts. They're down at
Corey's now givin' evidence against him."
"So Butts'll have to swing after all. Is he in Court?"
"Yes--been a busy day for Butts."
A confused noise came suddenly out of the big cabin they were nearing.
They opened the door with difficulty, and forced their way into the
reeking, crowded room for the second time that night. Everybody seemed
to be talking--nobody listening. Dimly through dense clouds of
tobacco-smoke "the prisoner at the Bar" was seen to be--what--no!
Yes--shaking hands with the Judge.
"Verdict already?"
"Oh, that kind o' case don't take a feller like Corey long."
"What's the decision?"
"Prisoner discharged. Charlie Le Gros committed suicide."
"Suicide!"
"--by goin' with his gun to Butts' shack lookin' f trouble."