The first days of October were at hand, and the court session at which
Emerson Mead was to be tried for the murder of Will Whittaker would
soon open. The supreme court of the territory was sitting at Santa Fe,
and its decision upon the shrievalty would be announced in a few days.
The flames of partisan feeling were already breaking out in Las
Plumas. The dividing line of Main street had begun to be drawn,
although fitfully as yet, and conveniently forgotten if business
called to the other an occupant of either side. But in the matter of
mint juleps, cocktails, and the swapping of yarns Main street
stretched its dusty length between Republicans and Democrats as grim
and impassable as a mountain barrier. On both sides there were meaning
glances and significant nods and half-spoken threats of assault and
resistance. The Democrats professed to believe that the Republicans
were determined to hold the office of sheriff through the trial of
Emerson Mead, whatever should be the decision, in order that they
might find some means to end his life should the court discharge him.
The Republicans insisted that the Democrats were planning to seize the
office by hook or by crook before the trial should begin in order
that they might allow him to escape. And each side declared, with
angry eyes and set teeth, that the other should not be allowed to
thwart justice, if the streets of Las Plumas had to be paved with dead
men.
Judge Harlin sent word to Mead's ranch, asking Nick Ellhorn to come
into town as soon as possible, and telegraphed to Tom Tuttle at Santa
Fe to return to Las Plumas at once. But it happened that Tom was
chasing an escaped criminal in the Gran Quivera country, far from
railroads and telegraphs, and that Nick was out on the range and did
not receive the message until nearly a week later.
Nick had settled the matter of the Chinaman's queue on his last visit
to Las Plumas, two weeks before, but not to his entire satisfaction.
Judge Harlin had refused to conduct his suit for the recovery of the
queue against Harry Gillam, the district attorney, and Nick had
declared that he would be his own lawyer and get that "scalp," if it
"took till he was gray headed." Secretly, he was glad that Judge
Harlin would not take the case, because he had an active animosity
against Harry Gillam, mainly because Gillam wore a silk hat, and he
thought that, as his own lawyer, he could contrive to cast enough
ridicule on the district attorney to set the whole town laughing and
make Gillam so angry that he would lose his temper and want to fight.
So he set about preparing his case, with advice and suggestion from
Judge Harlin, who, while he did not wish to be openly connected with
the matter, was very willing to see Gillam, who was a Republican and
the judge's chief professional rival, made a laughing stock and
brought to grief. And he knew that the case, with Nick Ellhorn at the
helm, would be the funniest thing that had happened in Las Plumas for
many a day. Ellhorn's plans began to be whispered about. Presently the
whole town was chuckling and smiling in anticipation of the fun there
would be at the trial. Gillam fidgeted in nervous apprehension for
several days; then he put the pig tail in his pocket, hunted up
Ellhorn and invited him to have a drink. As they drained their glasses
he exclaimed:
"Oh, by the way, Nick, are you really in earnest about that fool suit
you've filed against me?"
"You mean about my Chiny pigtail?" asked Ellhorn.
"About the Chinaman's queue, yes."
"You bet I am. That blamed thing's cost me a whole heap more'n it's
worth to anybody except me and the Chinaman. I reckon he's sold it to
me for that five hundred dollars. It's mine, and I mean to have it. I
sure reckon I naturalized one heathen when I took that scalp. There's
one bias-eyed fan-tanner that won't pull his freight for Chiny as soon
as he gets his pockets full of good American money. I reckon I was a
public benefactor when I sheared that washee-washee, and I deserve the
pig tail as a decoration for my services. No, sir, the scalp's mine,
by every count you can mention, and you'll have to give it up."
"Is the queue all you want?"
"If that's all you've got that belongs to me."
"Well, then, take it, and stop your jackassing about the fool thing,"
said Gillam, holding out the queue.
"The hell you say!" Nick exclaimed, quite taken aback and much
disappointed.
"Yes, here it is. And I call these gentlemen to witness that I offer
it to you freely and without any conditions."
So Nick reluctantly took the braid and gave up his case against
Gillam. "It was just like the blamed whelp," he complained to Judge
Harlin, "to back down and spoil all the fun, but it's no more than you
might expect from a man that wears a stove-pipe." Harry Gillam was the
only man in Las Plumas who wished, or dared to wear a silk hat, and
his taste in the matter of headgear gave constant edge to Ellhorn's
feeling of contempt and aversion. "I'm blamed sorry for it," Nick went
on, "for I sure reckon half the kids in town would have been shyin'
rocks at that plug before the trial was over."
"I guess he was buffaloed," he said later, as he finished giving an
account of the affair to Emerson Mead. "It was the meanest sort of a
backdown you ever saw, but it just showed the fellow's gait. A man
with no more grit than that had better go back east, where he can
wear a stove-pipe hat without lookin' like a fool, which he sure is."
"What made you so determined to have the thing, Nick?" Mead asked,
examining the braid.
Nick gave a twist to the ends of his mustache and looked
contemplatively at the ceiling. "Well," he said slowly, and there were
signs of the Irish roll in his voice, "it was my scalp. I took it,
first, and then I was after payin' for it. Sure and I wanted it,
Emerson, to remind me not to mix my drinks again. It's my pledge to
take whisky straight and beer the next day. And I sure reckon whenever
I look at it I'll say to myself, 'Nick, you've been a blooming,
blasted, balky, blithering, bildaverous idiot once too often. Don't
you do it again.'"
Notwithstanding his feeling about it, Ellhorn went away and forgot the
earnest of his future good behavior. Emerson smiled that evening as he
saw it trailing its snaky length over the back of a chair and stuffed
it in the side pocket of his coat, thinking he would give it to
Ellhorn the next time his friend should come to the jail.
Judge Harlin thought Emerson Mead unaccountably despondent about the
probable outcome of his trial, and at times even indifferent to his
fate. He wondered much why this man, formerly of such buoyant and
determined nature, should suddenly collapse, in this weak-kneed
fashion, lose all confidence in himself, and seem to care so little
what happened to him. The lawyer finally decided that it was all on
account of his client's honesty and uprightness of character, which
would not allow him, being guilty, to make an effort to prove that he
was not, and he lived in daily expectation of an order from Mead to
change his plea to guilty. The time was drawing near for the opening
of the case when Judge Harlin one day hurried excitedly to the jail
for a conference with Mead.
"Emerson," he said, "some member of the last grand jury has been
leaking, and it has come to my ears that testimony was given there by
some one who declared he saw you kill Whittaker. And I've just found
out that the other side has got a witness, presumably the same one,
who will swear to the same thing."
Mead's face set into a grim defiance that rejoiced Harlin more than
anything that had happened since his client's imprisonment, as he
answered:
"I've been expecting this. Who is it and what's his testimony?"
"I haven't been able to learn any details about it--merely that he
will swear he saw you kill Whittaker. I'm not positive who the man is,
but I feel reasonably sure I've spotted him. I think he is a Mexican,
a red-headed Mexican, called Antone Colorow."
Mead nodded. "I think likely," he said, and then he told Judge Harlin
how Antone had tried to lasso him and of the angry man's threats of
revenge for his broken wrists. "I've expected all along," he added,
"that they'd come out with some such lay as that. I don't see how we
can buck against it," he went on, despondently, "for I can't prove an
alibi. Unless you can break down his testimony we might as well give
up."
"I guess there won't be any difficulty about that," said Harlin
assuringly. "What you've just told me will be a very important matter,
and if I can keep Mexicans off the jury it won't take much to convince
Americans that he is lying, just because he is a Mexican."
After Judge Harlin went away Mead sat on the edge of his bed, his
elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, and his broad shoulders
rounded into an attitude of deep dejection.
"What is the use?" his thoughts ran. "They are bound to get me sooner
or later, and it might just as well be now as any time. It won't make
any difference whether they clear me or convict me. She will believe
me guilty anyway, because her father and all her friends will say so."
He rose and began pacing the room and his thoughts turned persistently
to Marguerite Delarue. Since he had heard the rumor of her approaching
marriage to Wellesly he had tried not to let his thoughts rest upon
her, but sometimes the rush of his scanty memories would not be
forbidden.
Again he recalled the day when he first saw her, as she stood with her
sick baby brother in her arms. She was so young, so blooming, so fair,
that her anxious face and troubled eyes seemed all the more
appealing. He remembered that he had looked at her a moment before he
could speak, and in that moment love smote his heart. He had wished to
see her father and she had laid the sick child on a couch while she
left the room. The little one had fretted and he had sat down beside
it and shown it his watch and his revolver, and it had put out its
hands to him, and when Marguerite came back she had found the big,
tall, broad-shouldered man cradling the sick child in his arms. He
halted in his moody pacing of the cell and a sudden, shivering thrill
shot through his whole big body as he saw again the look of pleasure
and of trustful admiration which had lighted her face and shone in her
dark blue eyes. The child had clung to him and, pleased, he had asked
if he might not take it in his arms for a short ride on his horse. And
after that, whenever he had passed the Delarue house alone, he had
tried to see the little boy, and had tried still more, in roundabout
ways, to bring the child's sister outside the house, where he might
see her and hear her voice. Four times he had done that, and once he
had seen her in her father's store and had held a few minutes'
conversation with her. He remembered every word she had said. He
repeated them all to himself, and went over again every least incident
of the times he had stopped his horse at her gate and had taken the
laughing child from her arms and they had looked at each other and he
had tried to say something--anything, and then had ridden away.
When the meager little memories were all done he sat down on his bed
again and felt that nothing mattered, since she was to marry Albert
Wellesly and would surely believe him guilty of all that was charged
against him. He felt no jealousy of her chosen husband, and no anger
toward Wellesly because he had won her. He was conscious only of a
vague wonder that any man had dared ask Marguerite Delarue to be his
wife.
On Saturday of the first week in October Judge Harlin received a
private dispatch from Santa Fe saying that the supreme court had
decided the shrievalty contest in favor of Joe Davis, the Democratic
candidate. At once the threatened storm began to break. By noon Main
street was again divided into two opposing camps. Every rifle,
revolver and shot-gun in the town that was not carried on some man's
person was put within easy reach of ready hands. Shops and offices,
stores and gardens were deserted, and men hurried to the center of the
town, where they drifted along the sidewalk or stood in doorways in
excited groups, each side anxiously and angrily on the alert for some
open act of hostility from the other. The Republicans said they had
not received official notice of the decision of the court, and that
they would not surrender the office until it should reach them. The
Democrats demanded that it be given up at once and accused the other
side of secreting the court order with the intention of holding the
office through Emerson Mead's trial. The district court was to convene
at Las Plumas on the following Monday. Mead's case was the first on
the docket.
Men who were next door neighbors, or friends of long standing, passed
each other with scowls or averted faces, if they were members of the
opposing parties. Mrs. John Daniels was planning to give a swell
breakfast to a dozen chosen friends early the next week, the first
appearance of that form of entertainment in Las Plumas society, and
she was delightedly pluming herself over the talk the function would
be sure to create and the envious admiration her friends would feel
because she had introduced something new. She had talked the matter
over with her dearest friend, Mrs. Judge Harlin, whom she had sworn to
secrecy, and she was on her way to the post-office to mail her
invitations when she saw that the threatened storm was breaking. Her
glance swept up Main street on one side and down on the other, and she
turned about and hurried home to substitute in her list of guests for
those whose sympathies were Democratic, others whose masculine
affiliations were Republican.
Hurried messages were sent out to mines and cattle ranches, and in the
afternoon fighting men of both parties began to come in from the
country. A procession of horsemen poured into the town, bronzed and
grim-faced men, each with a roll of blankets behind him, a revolver at
his side, a rifle swung to his saddle, or a shot-gun across its
pommel. They loped about the town, sometimes surrounding the
court-house, angrily discussing whether or not the clerk of the court
was probably hiding the official order, and sometimes lining the two
sides of Main street, as if they were two opposing companies of
cavalry ready to join battle. Among the Republican forces Judge Harlin
saw a red-whiskered Mexican who, he learned, was Antone Colorow. The
man's broken wrists had healed, but they had lost all their
suppleness, and he could never throw the lariat again. He could shoot
as well as ever though, and not a day had passed since that morning at
the round-up when he had not sworn to himself that Emerson Mead should
die by his hand. He hated Mead with all the vengefulness and
fierceness of his race. His mind held but one idea, to work upon the
man who had ruined his occupation the crudest possible revenge, in
whatever way he could compass it. He had allied himself with the
Republican forces only because they were opposed to his enemy, and he
hoped that in the impending clash he would find opportunity to carry
out his purpose.