they both had good voices, and the Committee thought like enough, being
Germans, they'd know some hymns. It turned out they didn't--but they
blew off "The Watch on the Rhine" in good shape, when singing time come
out at the cemetery; and as it was a serious-sounding tune it done
just as well. Singing it made trouble, though: because Hart's nephew--who
knowed German and was a pill--hadn't no more sense'n to tell old man
Bouquet, coming back to town, what the words meant; and that started old
man Bouquet off so--the war not being long over, and his side
downed--that it took two of us, holding him by his arms and legs, to keep
him from trying to fight both the Elbogens at once. Being good-natured
young fellows, the Elbogens didn't take offence, but behaved like
perfect gentlemen--telling old man Bouquet they didn't mean to hurt
his feelings, and was sorry if they had--and it ended up well by their
having drinks together at the Forest Queen. All that, though, has no
real bearing on the story. It happened along later in the day.
Before the train got in, to save time, a rope had been rigged for
Santa Fé over the cross-bar of the usual telegraph-pole--and Cherry,
who knowed how to manage better'n most, had seen to it the rope was
well soaped so as to run smooth. Cherry said he'd knowed things go
real annoying, sometimes, when the soap had been forgot. Santa Fé
looked well. He'd had a good brush up--and he needed it, after being
tied fast to the safe for three days and sleeping in a blanket on the
express-office floor--and he'd put on a clean shirt, and blacked his
boots, and had a shave. He always was a tidy sort of a man.
When the train pulled in, being on time for a wonder, some fellows
from Chamita and the Embudo--come to see the doings--got out from the
day-coach and shook hands; and the Denver undertaker got out from the
express-car and helped the messenger unload the fixings he'd brought
for poor old Bill. Everybody stood around quiet like, and as serious
as you please. You might have thought it was a Sunday morning back in
the States.
Except now and then a drummer--bound for Santa Fé on Hill's
coach--nobody much ever come to Palomitas on the Pullman; and so there
was something of a stir-up when the Pullman conductor helped a lady
out of the car--landing her close to where Charley in his clean shirt
and handcuffs on was standing between two members of the Committee
holding guns. She was a fine-shaped woman, but looked oldish--as well
as you could see for the veil she had on--having a sad pale face a
good deal wrinkled and a bunch of gray hair. She was dressed in measly
old black clothes, and had an old black shawl on, and looked poor.
Getting out into that crowd of men seemed to rattle her, and she
didn't for a minute look at nobody. It wasn't till she a'most butted
into Charley she seen him--and when she did see him she let off a yell
loud enough to give points to a locomotive! And then she sort of
sobbed out: "My husband!"--and got her arms around Santa Fé's neck and
begun to cry.
"My God! It's my wife!" said Charley. And if the members of the
Committee hadn't caught the two of 'em quick they'd likely tumbled
down.
Santa Fé was the first to get his wind back. "My poor darling!" he
said. "To think that you should have come to me at last--and in this
awful hour!"
"What does it mean, Charley? Tell me, what does it mean?" she moaned.
Santa Fé snuggled her up to him--as well as he could with his hands
handcuffed--and said back to her: "It means, Mary, that in less than
two hours' time I am to be hung! In the heat of passion I have killed
a man. It was more than half an accident, as everybody here
knows"--and he looked over her head at the boys as they all jammed in
to listen--"but that don't matter, so far as the dreadful result is
concerned. I loved the man I shot like my own brother, and shooting
him in that chance way has about broken my heart. But that don't count
either. Justice must be done, my darling. Stern justice must be done.
You have come just in time to see your husband die!" He was quiet for
a minute, with the woman all in a shake against him--and a kind of a
snuffling went through the crowd. Then he said, sort of choky: "Tell
me, Mary, how are our dear little girls?"
She was too broke up to answer him. She just kept on hugging him, and
crying as hard as she could cry.
"Gentlemen," said Santa Fé, "it is better that this painful scene
should end. Take my poor wife from me, and let me pay the just penalty
of my accidental crime. Take her away, please--and hang me as quick as
you can!"
"They sha'n't hang you, Charley! They sha'n't! They sha'n't!" she sung
out--and she jerked away from him and got in front of Cherry and
pitched down on the deepo platform on her knees. "Don't hang him,
sir!" she groaned out. "Spare him to me, and to our dear little girls
who love him with all their little hearts! Oh, sir, say that he shall
be saved!"
"Get up, ma'am, please," Cherry said, looking as worried as he could
look. "That's no sort of a way for a lady to do! Please get up right
away."
"Never! Never!" she said. "Never till you promise me that the life of
my dear husband shall be spared!"--and she grabbed Cherry round the
knees and groaned dreadful. He really was the most awkward-looking
man, with her holding onto his legs that way, you ever seen!
[Illustration: "'DON'T HANG HIM, SIR!' SHE GROANED OUT"]
"Oh, Lord, ma'am, _do_ get up!" he said. "Having you like that for
another minute'll make me sick. I'm not used to such goings-on"--and
Cherry did what he could to work loose his legs.
But she hung on so tight he couldn't shake her, and kept saying, "Save
him! Save him!" and uttering groans.
Cherry wriggled his legs as much as he could and looked around at the
boys. They all was badly broke up, and anybody could see they was
weakening. "Shall we let up on Santa Fé this time?" he asked. "I guess
it's true he didn't more'n half mean, being drunk the way he was, to
shoot Bill--and it makes things different, anyway, knowing he's got
kids and a wife. Bill himself would be the first to allow that. Bill
was as kind-hearted a man as ever lived. Do please, ma'am, let go."
Nobody spoke for a minute--but it was plain how the tide was
setting--and then Santa Fé himself chipped in. "Gentlemen," he said,
"you all know I've faced this music from the first without any
squirming, and even come into Joe Cherry's plan for making me do
circus stunts at the funeral for the good of the town. I'm ready to go
through the whole fool business right now, and come back here when
it's all over and be hung according to contract--"
"Save him! Save him!" the woman sung out; and she give such a jerk to
Cherry's legs it come close to spilling him.
"But I will say this much, gentlemen," Santa Fé went on: "I am willing
to ask for the sake of my dear wife and helpless innocent infants what
I wouldn't be low down enough to ask for myself--and that is that you
call this game off. This dreadful experience has changed me,
gentlemen. It has changed me right down to my toes. Being as close to
a telegraph-pole as I am now makes a man want to turn over a new leaf
and behave--as some of you like enough'll find out for yourselves if
you don't draw cards from my awful example and brace up all you know
how. Give me another show, gentlemen. That's what I ask for--give me
another show. Let me go home with my angel wife to the dear old farm
in Ohio, where my aged mother and my sweet babes are waiting for me.
Like enough they're standing out by the old well in the front yard
looking down the road for me now!" Santa Fé gagged so he couldn't go
on for a minute. But he pulled himself together and finished with his
chest out and his chin up and speaking firm. "Let me go home, I say,
to the old farm and my dear ones--and take a fresh start at leading
bravely the honest life of an honest man!"
Then he lowered down his chin and took his chest in and said, sort of
soft and gentle: "Let go of Mr. Cherry's legs and come and kiss me, my
darling! And please wipe the tears from my eyes--with my poor shackled
hands I can't!"
The woman give Cherry's legs one more rousing jerk, and said, sort of
imploring: "Save him! Save him for his old mother's sake, and for
mine, and for the sake of our little girls!" Then she got up and wiped
away at Santa Fé's eyes with her pocket-handkerchief, and went to
kissing him for all she was worth--holding on to him tight around the
neck with both arms.
The boys was all as uncomfortable as they could be--except Cherry
seemed to feel better at getting his legs loose--and some of 'em
fairly snuffled out loud. They stood around looking at each other, and
nobody said a word. Then Santa Fé kind of wrenched loose from her
kissing him and spoke up. "Which is it to be, gentlemen?" he said. "Is
it the telegraph-pole--or is it another chance?" The woman moaned fit
to break her heart.
The silence, except for her moaning, hung on for a good minute. Then
Hill broke it. "Oh, damn it all!" said Hill--it was Hill's way to talk
sort of careless--"Give him another chance!"
That settled things. In another minute they had the handcuffs off of
Santa Fé and all the boys was shaking hands with him. And then they
was asking to be introduced to his wife--she was all broke to bits,
and crying, and kept her veil down--and shaking hands with her too;
and they ended off by giving Charley and his wife three cheers. You
never seen folks so pleased! The only one out of it was the Denver
undertaker--who couldn't be expected to feel like the rest of us; and
was in a hurry, anyway, to put through his job so he could start back
home on the night train.
"You come along with me in the coach, Charley," Hill said--Hill always
was a friendly sort of a fellow--"and I'll jerk you over to Santa Fé
in no time, and you can start right off East by the 6.30 train.
That'll be quicker'n going up to Pueblo, and it'll be cheaper too. The
ride across sha'n't cost you a cent. If you and your lady come in my
coach, you come free. And I say, boys," Hill went on, "let's open a
pot for them little girls! Here's my hat, with ten dollars in it for a
warmer. I'd make it more if I could--and nobody'll hurt my feelings by
raising my call."
All hands made a rush for Hill's hat--and when Hill handed it to that
poor woman, who had her pocket-handkerchief up to her eyes under her
veil and was crying so she shook all over, there was more'n two
hunderd dollars in it, mostly gold. "This is for them children, ma'am,
with all our compliments," Hill said--and he and Charley helped her
hold her shawl up, so it made a kind of a bag, while he turned his hat
upside-down.
"Speaking for my dear little girls, I thank you from my heart,
gentlemen," Santa Fé said. "This is a royal gift, and it comes at a
mighty good time. Some part of it must be used to pay our way
East--back to the dear old home, where those little angels are waiting
for us sitting cuddled up on their grandmother's knees. What remains,
I promise you gentlemen, shall be a sacred deposit--to be used in
buying little dresses, and hats, and things, for my sweet babes. I
hate to use a single cent of it for anything else, but the fact is
just now I'm right down to the hardpan." And everybody--remembering
Santa Fé'd took advantage of being on his drunk to get cleaned out at
Denver Jones's place the night before the shooting--knowed this was
true.
"Well, Charley, we must be andying along," Hill said. "Waiting here
to see you hung has put me more'n an hour behind on my schedule. I'll
have to hustle them mules like hell"--that was the careless way Hill
talked always--"if we're going to ketch that 6.30 train."
Everybody shook hands for good-bye with Santa Fé and his wife, and
Santa Fé had his pockets stuffed full of seegars, and more bottles was
put in the coach than was needed--and then we give 'em three cheers
again, and away they went down the slope to the bridge over the Rio
Grande, with Hill whipping away for all he was worth and cussing
terrible at his mules. Whipping done some good, Hill used to say; but
cuss-words was the only sure things to make mules go.
"Well, boys," said Cherry, when the yelling let up a little. "I guess
getting shut of Santa Fé that way is better'n hanging him; and I
guess--with him and the Hen and the rest of 'em fired out of it--we've
got Palomitas purified about down to the ground. And what's to all our
credits, we've ended off by doing a first-class good deed! Them
little girls'll be pleased and happy when their mother gets back to
'em with our money in her pocket, and brings along in good shape their
father--who'd just about be in the thick of his kicking on that
telegraph-pole, by this time, if she hadn't romped in the way she did
on the closest kind of a close call!
"And now let's turn to and get poor old Bill planted. We've kind of
lost sight of Bill in the excitement--and we owe him a good deal. If
Santa Fé hadn't started the reform movement by shooting him, we'd
still be going on in the same old way. You may say it's all Bill's
doings that Palomitas has been give the clean-up it wanted, and wanted
bad!"
* * * * *
When Hill drove into town next afternoon--coming to the deepo, where
most of the boys was setting around waiting for the train to pull
out--he was laughing so he was most tumbling off the box.
"I've got the damnedest biggest joke on this town," Hill said--Hill
had the habit of talking that off-hand way--"that ever was got on a
town since towns begun!"
Hill was so full of it he couldn't hold in to make a story. He just
went right on blurting it out: "Do you boys know who that wife of
Charley's was that blew in yesterday from Denver? I guess you don't!
Well, I do--she was the Sage-Brush Hen! Yes sirree," Hill said, so
full of laugh he couldn't hardly talk plain; "that's just who she was!
All along from the first there was something about her shape I felt I
ought to know, and I was dead right. It come out while we was stopping
at Bouquet's place at Pojuaque for dinner--they both knowing I'd see
it was such a joke I wouldn't spoil it by giving it away too soon. She
went in the back room at Bouquet's to have a wash and a brush up--and
when she come along to table she'd got over being Charley's wife and
was the Hen as good as you please! She hadn't a gray hair or a wrinkle
left nowhere, and was like she always was except for her black
clothes. When she saw my looks at seeing her, she got to laughing fit
to kill herself--just the same gay old Hen as ever; and she always
was, you know, the most comical-acting sort of a woman, when she
wanted to be, anybody ever seen.
"When she quieted down her laughing a little she told me the whole
story. She and Charley'd fixed it up between 'em, she said; and she'd
whipped up to Denver on one train and down again on the next--buying
quick her gray hair and her black outfit, and getting somebody she
knowed at the Denver theatre to fix her face for her so she'd look all
broke up and old. She nearly gave the whole thing away, she said, when
Charley asked her about the little girls. He just throwed that in,
without her expecting it--and it set her to laughing and shaking so,
back of her veil, that we'd a-ketched up with her sure, she said, if
Charley hadn't whispered quick to pretend to cry and carry off her
laughing that way. She had another close call, she said, when Charley
was talking about the old farm in Ohio--she all the time knowing for a
fact he was born in East St. Louis, and hadn't any better acquaintance
with Ohio than three months in the Cincinnati jail. Charley ought to
go on the stage, she says--where she's been herself. She says he'd lay
Forrest and Booth and all them fellows out cold!
"She and Charley just yelled while she was telling it all to me; and
they was laughing 'emselves 'most sick all the rest of the way across
to Santa Fé. When we got into town I drove 'em to the Fonda; and then
the Hen rigged herself out in good clothes she bought at Morse's--it
was the pot we made up for them sweet babes paid for her outfit--and
give her old black duds to one of the Mexican chambermaids. They
allowed--knowing I could be trusted not to go around talking in Santa
Fé--they'd stay on at the Fonda till to-morrow, anyway: so I might let
'em know, when I get back again, how you boys took it when you was
told how they'd played it on you right smack down to the ground!
"Charley sent word he hoped there wouldn't be no hard feeling--as
there oughtn't to be, he said, seeing he was so drunk when he shot
Bill it was just an accident not calling for hanging; and the whole
thing, anyways, being all among friends. And the Hen sent word she
guessed the two of 'em had give you a first-class theatre show worth
more'n you put in my hat for gate-money, and you all ought to be
pleased. And they both said they'd been treated so square by you
fellows they'd be real sorry to have any misunderstanding, and they
hoped you'd take the joke friendly--the same as they meant it
themselves."
* * * * *
Well, of course we all did take it friendly--it wouldn't a-been
sensible to take as good a joke as that was any other way. Cherry was
the only one that squirmed a little. "It's on us, and it's on us
good," Cherry said; "and I'm not kicking--only you boys haven't got no
notion what it is having a woman a-grabbing fast to your legs and
groaning at you, and how dead sick it makes you feel!"
Cherry stopped for a minute, and looked as if he was a'most sick with
just thinking about it. Then he sort of shook himself and got a brace
on, and went ahead with his chin up like he was making a speech in
town-meeting--and it turned out, as it don't always in town-meeting
speeches, what he said was true.
"Gentlemen," said Cherry, "there's this to be said, and we have a
right to say it proudly: we've give this town the clean-up we set out
to give it, and from now on it's going to stay clean. There won't be
any more doings; or, if there is, the Committee 'll know the reason
why. Palomitas is purified, gentlemen, right down to the roots; and I
reckon I'm mistook bad--worse'n I was when the Hen was yanking my legs
about--if the Committee hasn't sand enough and rope enough to keep on
keeping it pure!"
THE END