"THE VOICE OF REASON"
The fierce heat of summer fell suddenly upon Lost Dog Cañon and all the
Verde country—the prolonged heat which hatches flies by the million
and puts an end to ear-marking and branding. Until the cool weather
of October laid them and made it possible to heal a wound there was
nothing for Pecos to do but doctor a few sore ears and read the _Voice
of Reason_. Although he had spent most of his life in the saddle the
school-teacher back on the Pecos had managed to corral him long enough
to beat the three R's into him and, being still young, he had not yet
had time to forget them. Only twenty summers had passed over his head,
so far, and he was a man only in stature and the hard experience of his
craft. He was a good Texan—born a Democrat and taught to love whiskey
and hate Mexicans—but so far his mind was guiltless of social theory.
That there was something in the world that kept a poor man down he
knew, vaguely; but never, until the _Voice of Reason_ brought it to his
attention, had he heard of the conspiracy of wealth or the crime of
government. Not until, sprawling at the door of his cave, he mumbled
over the full-mouthed invective of that periodical had he realized what
a poor, puny creature a wage-slave really was, and when he read of the
legalized robbery which went on under the name of law his young blood
boiled in revolt. The suppression of strikes by Pinkertons, the calling
out of the State Militia to shoot down citizens, the blacklisting of
miners, and the general oppression of workingmen was all far away and
academic to him—the thing that gripped and held him was an article on
the fee system, under which officers of the law arrest all transient
citizens who are unfortunate enough to be poor, and judges condemn them
in order to gain a fee.
"_Think, Slave, Think!_" it began. "You may be the next innocent man to
be thrown into some vile and vermin-infested county-jail to swell the
income of the bloated minions who fatten upon the misery of the poor!"
Pecos had no difficulty in thinking. Like many another man of
wandering habits he had already tasted the bitterness of "ten dollars
or ten days." The hyenas of the law had gathered him in while he was
innocently walking down the railroad track and a low-browed justice of
the peace without asking any useless questions had sentenced him to
jail for vagrancy. Ten days of brooding and hard fare had not sweetened
his disposition any and he had stepped free with the firm determination
to wreak a notable revenge, but as the sheriff thoughtfully kept his
six-shooter Pecos had been compelled to postpone that exposition of
popular justice. Nevertheless the details of his wrongs were still
fresh in his mind, and when he learned from the _Voice of Reason_
that the constable and judge had made him all that trouble for an
aggregate fee of six dollars Pecos was ready to oppose all law, in
whatsoever form it might appear, with summary violence. And as for the
capitalistic classes—well, Pecos determined to collect his last month's
pay from Old Crit if he had to take it out of his hide.
When next he rode into Verde Crossing the hang-dog look which had
possessed Pecos Dalhart since he turned rustler was displaced by a
purposeful frown. He rolled truculently in the saddle as he came down
the middle of the road, and wasted no time with preliminaries.
"Where's that blankety-blank Old Crit?" he demanded, racking into the
store with his hand on his hip.
"Gone down to Geronimo to git the mail," replied Babe, promptly.
"Well, you tell him I want my pay!" thundered Pecos, pacing up and down.
"He'll be back to-night, better stay and tell him yourself," suggested
Babe, mildly.
"I'll do that," responded Pecos, nodding ominously. "And more'n
that—I'll collect it. What's doin'?"
"Oh, nothin'," replied Babe. "There was a deputy assessor up here the
other day and he left this blank for you to fill out. It gives the
number of your cattle."
"Well, you tell that deputy to go to hell, will you?"
"Nope," said Babe, "he might take me with him. It happens he's a deputy
sheriff, too!"
"Deputy,—_huh_!" grumbled Pecos, morosely. "They all look the same to
me. Did Crit fill out his blank?"
"Sure did. Reported a hundred head of Wine-glasses. Now what d'ye think
of that?"
Pecos paused and meditated on the matter for an instant. It was
doubtful if Crittenden could gather more than a hundred head of
Wine-glasses, all told. Some of them had drifted back to their old
range and the rest were scattered in a rough country. "Looks like that
deputy threw a scare into him," he observed, dubiously. "What did he
say about my cattle?"
"Well, he said you'd registered a new brand and now it was up to you to
show that you had some cattle. If you've got 'em you ought to pay taxes
on 'em and if you haven't got any you got no business with an iron that
will burn over Upton's U."
"Oh, that's the racket, is it? Well, you tell that deputy that I've got
cattle in that brand and I've got a bill of sale for 'em, all regular,
but I've yet to see the deputy sheriff that can collect taxes off of
me. D'ye think I'm goin' to chip in to help pay the salary of a man
that makes a business of rollin' drunks and throwin' honest workingmen
into the hoosegatho when he's in town? Ump-um—guess again!"
He motioned for a drink and Babe regarded him curiously as he set out
the bottle.
"You been readin' the _Voice_, I reckon," he said, absent-mindedly
pouring out a drink for himself. "Well, say, did you read that article
on the fee system? It's all true, Pardner, every word of it, and more!
I'm a man of good family and education—I was brought up right and my
folks are respectable people—and yet every time I go to Geronimo they
throw me into jail. Two-twenty-five, that's what they do it for—and
there I have to lay, half the time with some yegg or lousy gang of
hobos, until they git ready to turn me loose. And they call that
justice! Pecos, I'm going back to Geronimo—I'm going to stand on the
corner, just the way I used to when I was drunk, and tell the people
it's all _wrong_! You're a good man, Pecos—Cumrad—will you go with me?"
Pecos stood and looked at him, wondering. "Comrade" sounded good to
him; it was the word they used in the _Voice of Reason_—"Comrade Jones
has just sent us in four more subscriptions. That's what throws a crook
into the tail of monopoly. Bully for you, Comrade!" But with all his
fervor he did not fail to notice the droop to Angy's eyes, the flush on
his cheeks, and the slack tremulousness of his lips—in spite of his
solemn resolutions Angy had undoubtedly given way to the Demon Drink.
"Nope," he said, "I like you, Angy, but they'd throw us both in. You'd
better stay up here and watch me put it on Crit. 'Don't rope a bigger
bull than you can throw,' is my motto, and Old Crit is jest my size.
I'm goin' to comb his hair with a six-shooter or I'll have my money—and
then if that dog-robber of a deputy sheriff shows up I'll—well, he'd
better not crowd me, that's all. Here's to the revolution—will you
drink it, old Red-eye?"
Angy drank it, and another to keep it company.
"Pecos," he said, his voice tremulous with emotion, "when I think how
my life has been ruined by these hirelings of the law, when I think
of the precious days I have wasted in the confinement of the Geronimo
jail, I could rise up and _destroy_ them, these fiends in human form
and their accursed jails; I could wreck every prison in the land
and proclaim liberty from the street-corners—whoop!" He waved one
hand above his head, laughed, and leapt to a seat upon the bar. "But
don't you imagine f'r a moment, my friend," he continued, with the
impressive gravity of an orator, "that they have escaped unscathed.
It was not until I had read that wonderful champion of the common
people, the _Voice of Reason_, that I realized the enormity of this
conspiracy which has reduced me to my present condition, but from
my first incarceration in the Geronimo jail I have been a Thorne in
their side, as the Geronimo _Blade_ well said. I remember as if it
were yesterday the time when they erected their first prison, over
twenty years ago, on account of losing some hoss-thieves. It was a new
structure, strongly built of adobe bricks, and in a spirit of jest the
town marshal arrested me and locked me up to see if it was tight. That
night when all was still I wrenched one of the iron bars loose and dug
my way to freedom! But what is freedom to revenge? After I had escaped
I packed wood in through the same hole, piled it up against the door,
and set the dam' hell-hole afire!"
He paused and gazed upon Pecos with drunken triumph. "That's the kind
of an _hombre_ I am," he said. "But what is one determined man against
a thousand? When the citizens of Geronimo beheld their new calaboose
ruined and in flames they went over the country with a fine-tooth comb
and never let up until they had brought me back and shackled me to
the old Cottonwood log down by the canal—the one they had always used
before they lost the hoss-thieves. That was the only jail they had
left, now that the calaboose was burned. In vain I pleaded with them
for just one drink—they were inexorable, the cowardly curs, and there
they left me, chained like a beast, while they went up town and swilled
whiskey until far into the night. As the first faint light of morning
shot across the desert I awoke with a terrible thirst. My suffering
was awful. I filled my mouth with the vile ditch-water and spat it out
again, unsatisfied—I shook my chains and howled for mercy. But what
mercy could one expect from such a pack of curs? I tested every link
in my chain, and the bolt that passed through the log—then, with the
strength of desperation I laid hold upon that enormous tree-trunk and
rolled it into the water! Yes, sir, I rolled the old jail-log into the
canal and jumped straddle of it like a conqueror, and whatever happened
after that I knew I had the laugh on old Hickey, the Town Marshal,
unless some one saw me sailing by. But luck was with me, boy; I floated
that big log clean through town and down to Old Manuel's road-house—a
Mexican deadfall out on the edge of the desert—and swapped it for two
drinks of mescal that would simply make you scream! By Joe, that liquor
tasted good—have one with me now!"
They drank once more, still pledging the revolution, and then Angy
went ahead on his talking jag. "Maybe you've heard of this Baron
Mun-chawson, the German character that was such a dam' liar and
jail-breaker the king made a prison to order and walled him in? Well,
sir, Mun-chawson worked seven years with a single nail on that prison
and dug out in spite of hell. But human nature's the same, wherever
you go—always stern and pitiless. When those Geronimo citizens found
out that old Angy had stole their cottonwood log and traded it to a
wood-chopper for the drinks, they went ahead and built a double-decked,
steel-celled county jail and sentenced me to it for life! Conspicuous
drunkenness was the charge—and grand larceny of a jail—but answer me,
my friend, is this a free country or is the spirit that animated our
forefathers dead? Is the spirit of Patrick Henry when he cried, 'Give
me liberty or give me death,' buried in the oblivion of the past? Tell
me that, now!"
"Don't know," responded Pecos, lightly, "too deep a question for me—but
say, gimme one more drink and then I'm goin' down the road to collect
my pay from Crit. I'm a man of action—that's where I shine—I refer
all such matters to Judge Colt." He slapped his gun affectionately
and clanked resolutely out of the door. Half a mile down the river
he sighted his quarry and rode in on him warily. Old Crit was alone,
driving a discouraged team of Mexican horses, and as the bouquet of
Pecos's breath drifted in to him over the front wheel the Boss of Verde
Crossing regretted for once the fiery quality of his whiskey.
"I come down to collect my pay," observed Pecos, plucking nervously at
his gun.
"Well, you don't collect a cent off of me," replied Crit, defiantly, "a
man that will steal the way you did! Whenever you git ready to leave
this country I might give you a hundred or so for your brand, but you
better hurry up. There was a deputy sheriff up here the other day,
lookin' for you!"
"Yes, I heard about it," sneered Pecos. "I reckon he was lookin' for
evidence about this here Wine-glass iron."
A smothered curse escaped the lips of Isaac Crittenden, but, being old
at the game, he understood. There was nothing for it but to pay up—and
wait.
"Well, what guarantee do I git that you don't give the whole snap
away anyhow?" he demanded, fiercely. "What's the use of me payin' you
anything—I might as well keep it to hire a lawyer."
"As long as you pay me what you owe me," said Pecos, slowly, "and
treat me square," he added, "I keep my mouth shut. But the minute you
git foxy or try some ranikaboo play like sayin' the deputy was after
me—look out! Now they was a matter of a hundred and twenty dollars
between us—do I git it or don't I?"
"You git it," grumbled Crittenden, reluctantly. "But say, I want you
to keep away from Verde Crossing. Some of them Wine-glass cows have
drifted back onto the upper range and John Upton has made a roar. More
than that, Boone Morgan has undertook to collect our taxes up here and
if that deputy of his ever gits hold of you he's goin' to ask some
mighty p'inted questions. So you better stay away, see?"
He counted out the money and held it in his hand, waiting for consent,
but Pecos only laughed.
"Life's too short to be hidin' out from a deputy," he answered,
shortly. "So gimme that money and I'll be on my way." He leaned over
and plucked the bills from Crit's hand; then, spurring back toward the
Crossing he left Old Crit, speechless with rage, to follow in his dust.
A loud war-whoop from the store and the high-voiced ranting of
Babe made it plain to Crit that there was no use going there—Angy
was launched on one of his periodicals and Pecos was keeping him
company—which being the case there was nothing for it but to let them
take the town. The grizzled Boss of Verde stood by the corral for a
minute, listening to the riot and studying on where to put in his time;
then a slow smile crept over his hardened visage and he fixed his
sinister eye on the adobe of Joe Garcia. All was fair, with him, in
love or war, and Marcelina was growing up to be a woman.
"Joe," he said, turning upon his corral boss, "you tell your wife I'll
be over there in a minute for supper—and say, I want you to stay in the
store to-night; them crazy fools will set the house afire."
"_Stawano_," mumbled José, but as he turned away there was an angry
glint in his downcast eye and he cursed with every breath. It is not
always pleasant, even to a Mexican, to be in debt to the Boss.