THE LAW'S DELAY
As the first hot days of summer came on, the district court of Geronimo
County closed; the judge, having decided each case according to the law
and the evidence, hurried upon his way, well satisfied; the deputies
took a last disconsolate batch of prisoners to Yuma, and Pecos Dalhart
sat down to ponder on his case. The tanks were nearly empty now, except
for the drunks and vags that the constables brought in and the grist
for the next grand jury. It was a dreary grist, each man swearing his
innocence with unnatural warmth until the general cynicism of the place
shamed him to silence. Pecos loathed them, the whining, browbeaten
slaves. After he had sounded the depths of human depravity until there
was no more wickedness to learn he drew more and more aloof from his
companions, thinking his own thoughts in silence. When Boone Morgan
came in, or the _Blade_ reporter, he conversed with them, quietly and
respectfully—Boone Morgan could speak a word to the judge, and Baker
held the ear of the great public. They were very kind to Pecos now,
and often, after some ingenious write-up of his exploits, crowds of
visitors would come to stare at the grim rustler who ruled the Kangaroo
Court. There were no signs of the social theorist about him now, and
the revolution was a broken dream—he could not afford such dreams. Let
the rich and the free hold fast to their convictions and their faith—he
was trying to get out of jail.
The heat of midsummer came on apace, and the sun, beating against
the outer walls, turned the close prison into an oven by day and a
black hole of misery at night. The palpitating air seemed to press
upon them, killing the thought of sleep, and the prisoners moaned
and tossed in their bunks, or fell into fitful slumbers, broken by
the high insistent whine of mosquitoes or the curses of the vags. Of
curses there were a plenty before the cool weather came, and protests
and complaints, but none from Pecos Dalhart. In the long watches of
the night he possessed his soul of a mighty patience, to endure all
things, if he could only go free. Even with a jail missionary, who
distributed tracts and spoke bodingly of a great punishment to come, he
was patient; and the missionary, poor simple man that he was, proffered
him in return the consolation of religion. Being of a stiffnecked
and perverse generation Pecos declined to confess his sins—the
missionary might be subpœnaed by the prosecution—but he listened with
long-suffering calm to the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, and the
parable of the seeds that were sown on stony ground. In themselves the
stories were good—nor were they strange to Pecos, for his mother had
been a good Methodist—but the preacher spoiled them by a too pointed
application of the moral to his own unfortunate case. Still, he let
it go—anything was better than listening to the yeggs—and waited for
the sermon to end. There was a favor that he wanted to ask. Many years
ago—it was at camp-meeting and the shouters were dancing like mad—he
had promised his sainted mother to read the Bible through if she would
quit agonizing over his soul, but the promise he never kept. Small
print was hard on his young eyes that were so quick to see a cow, and
he put the matter off until such a time as he should break a leg or get
sick or otherwise find time to spare. Well, he had all the time there
was, now, and it would give him something to do.
"Say, Pardner," he observed, as the missionary pressed a sheaf of
tracts upon him at parting, "is this the best you can do? I was
powerful interested in them stories—how about a Bible?"
Bibles were a scarce article in those parts, but Pecos got one, and
after laying bets with various flippant prisoners, he read it from
cover to cover, religiously. Then, just to show his bringing up, he
went back and read over all the big wars and fights and the troubles of
Moses in the wilderness. Still there was time to spare and he read of
Daniel and Nehemiah and the prophets who had cried unto Israel. It was
a poor beginning, but somehow when he was reading the Bible he forgot
the heat and the vileness of the jail and won back his self-respect. In
that long catalogue of priests and prophets and leaders of the people
what one was there, from Joseph to Jesus, who had not been cast into
prison? The universality of their fate seemed to cheer him and give him
something in common—perhaps they were of some kin with the apostles
of the revolution. And in the long, suffocating nights he would think
back to the mud-streaked adobe house that he had called home and hear
his mother patting softly on her knees and singing: "Oh, come to Jesus,
come to Jesus—" with a little Texas _yupe_ at the end of every line. So
he wore the summer's heat away, and with the return of cool weather
his mind went back to his case.
There was no use trying to do anything before the grand jury, so
everybody said; that great bulwark of the people generally indicted
every one that the district attorney shook his finger at and let the
judge find out later whether he was innocent—that was his business,
anyway. Besides—whatever else he did—Pecos was going to be careful not
to offend the district attorney. The sad case of Pete Monat, who must
have put in an awful summer at Yuma, was ever in his mind, and while
he would not go so far as to plead guilty in order to accommodate the
choleric Mr. Kilkenny, he was firmly resolved not to antagonize him in
the trial. He had money, too—five months' wages, deposited with the
sheriff—but a hundred and fifty dollars would not hire a man who could
stand up against District Attorney Kilkenny, the terror of evil-doers.
As a man, Shepherd Kilkenny was all right—a devoted husband, a loving
father, all the other good things you read on a gravestone—but as
a prosecuting attorney he was a devil. At every biennial election
he got all the votes there were on his court record. He convicted
everybody—except a few whose friends had worked a rabbit's foot for
them—and convicted them beyond appeal. That saved money to the county.
His reputation for convictions was so great that most of the petty
criminals pled guilty and came down like Davey Crockett's coon, before
he had a chance to shoot. That expedited the court calendar and saved
thousands of dollars in fees and witness expenses—another good thing
for the honest tax-payer. In fact, everything that Shepherd Kilkenny
did was for the benefit of the Geronimo tax-payers, and Yuma was
crowded with convicts to prove that he knew his business. That was what
he was hired for—to convict law-breakers—and if he let a single guilty
man escape he was recreant to his trust. Kilkenny had a stern sense of
civic responsibility—he got them, if it took a leg.
There had been a time when Shepherd Kilkenny believed that every man
who had the price was innocent. That was when, as a rising young
lawyer, he was defending criminals in the courts; and he threw so many
miscreants loose and made such a show of old Trusdale, the former
district attorney, that the community in a burst of popular indignation
put the old man out and gave Kilkenny his job. At this Kilkenny brought
out an entirely new set of adjectives, changed all his fixed opinions
in a day, and, being now in a position to square himself with the
real Law, which holds that a man is guilty until he can prove himself
innocent, he became a flaming sword against the transgressor. His
conversion also enabled him to slough off the old pathetic-fallacy
line of talk that he had been called upon to use in pleading before
a jury and to adopt a more dignified and denunciatory style, a cross
between Demosthenes and the Daniel Webster school. The prosperous life
of a politician jollied him up a bit, too; he developed a certain
sardonic humor in the handling of unfavorable witnesses, and got off a
good one every once in a while for the benefit of the reporters. But
there was one thing that Shepherd Kilkenny could not tolerate, and that
was another rising young criminal lawyer trying to defeat the ends of
justice and beat him out of his job. Yuma was full of Pete Monats who
had fallen victims to this feud, and Pecos resolved to plead his case
himself before he would take chances on a sucking lawyer.
It was while he was in this vacillating mood and feeling mighty lonely
and lost to the world that he heard late one night a familiar whoop
from the jag-cell, followed by a fiery oration in the vernacular.
It was Angy, down for his periodical drunk, and Pecos could hardly
wait to clasp him by the hand. It was a peculiar thing about Angevine
Thorne—the drunker he got the more his language improved, until in
the ecstasy of his intoxication, he often quoted Greek and Latin, or
words deemed by local wiseacres to be derived from those sources.
Drink also seemed to clarify his vision and give him an exalted sense
of truth, justice, and man's inhumanity to man. It had been his custom
in the past at this climacteric stage of inebriation to mount upon
some billiard table or other frangible piece of saloon furniture and
deliver temperance lectures until removed by the police. But times
had changed with Geronimo's champion booze-fighter and in his later
prepossessions he grappled with the mighty problem of wealth and its
relation to the common man. There are some hard sayings in the _Voice
of Reason_ against the privileged classes, but they are all nicely
considered in relation to the libel law, whereas Angy had no such
compunctions. Having spent all his money for drink and received a jail
sentence for life, the law had no further terrors for him and he turned
his eloquence loose. It was a wild rave when Pecos heard it, and grew
progressively more incoherent; but as he lay in his bunk and listened
to the familiar appeals a thought came to Pecos like an inspiration
from the gods—why not turn that stream of eloquence into profitable
channels and make Angy his advocate? There was not a voter in Geronimo
who did not know Babe Thorne and love him for his foolishness—the
life sentence which he suffered for conspicuous drunkenness was but a
token of their regard, placing him above the level of common ordinary
drunks even as his eloquence placed him above the maudlin orators with
whom the saloons were crowded. He was a character, a standing jest—and
Arizona loves a joke better than life itself. Above all, Angy was a
good fellow—he could jolly the district attorney and make him laugh!
They would win their case and then he would be free—free! Pecos could
not sleep from thinking of it and he begged Bill Todhunter, as a
special favor, to bring Babe in from the jag-cell at once.
"What's the matter?" inquired Bill casually, "are you gettin'
interested in yore girl? I hear Old Crit has cut you out."
"Crit be damned!" cried Pecos. "Have I ever asked you for anything
before? Well then, throw him in here, can't you?"
The deputy did as he was bid and went away—he was not of a prying
disposition and Pecos had saved him a lot of trouble. There had never
been an alcalde like Pecos Dalhart. No, indeed—it would rustle them to
get one half as good when he went his way to Yuma.
The conference with Angevine Thorne, attorney-at-law, was long,
and private, but as Angy sobered up he beheld greater and greater
possibilities in the matter; and when he went away he assured his
client that within the calendar month he should step forth a free
man—free as the prairie wind. He was confident of it, and upon his
departure Pecos gave him fifty dollars to use with José Garcia. Also he
was to find Old Funny-face, the mother of the calf, if it took the last
cow in the barn. But all was to be conducted quietly, very quietly,
for if Old Crit ever got wind of any defence he would frame up a case
to disprove it. To be sure, José Garcia was in debt several hundred
dollars to Isaac Crittenden—and afraid of his life, to boot—but for
fifty dollars cash Joe would swear to anything, even the truth; and if
by so doing he got Pecos out—why, there was a man who could protect him
against Crit and all his cowboys. It looked good to Angevine Thorne
and, as an especial inducement to Joe to stay put, he swore by all the
saints to have his life if he dared to go back on his agreement. Then,
very quietly, he instituted a search for Old Funny-face and, having
located her up the river with a tame bunch of cattle, he came away,
knowing full well that he could produce her at the proper time. There
would be a little surprise coming to Isaac Crittenden when he went to
court next week and, being actuated by no feeling of false delicacy in
dealing with such a reptile, Angy went back to work for him and watched
the conspiracy breed.
It was a constant source of surprise to the transient public to observe
how a man with so many disagreeable qualities kept the same men
working for him year after year; but to those who knew Crittenden well
it was as natural as hunger and thirst. In fact, it was intimately
connected with hunger and thirst. Any time that Joe Garcia wanted to
quit he could just tell his wife and six children to stop eating, tie
his things in a handkerchief, and walk down the road. José was ruled by
hunger and the slavish peon spirit of a Mexican—Babe and the cowboys
were ruled by thirst. No matter how many times he had been fired or
quit, a man could always get a chance to work for nothing with Crit;
and so long as he spent all his money at the store Crittenden was even
willing to pay him good wages in the busy season. Babe was the easiest
mark he had as far as money was concerned, and, being so well educated
withal, the illiterate cowman found him almost indispensable as a
letter-writer and book-keeper. So far, so good—but why did Babe, with
his classical education, insist upon donating his services to a man
who treated him so despitefully? Ah, it was a hard question, but even
a vagrant likes to have some place, no matter how unlovely, which can
take the place of a home. Yet for the six long months that Pecos had
lain in jail Angy had had reason enough for staying—Marcelina needed
him, and she needed him bad.
Every month seemed to add some new grace and beauty to the daughter
of José Garcia—the primitive beauty that seems to bud like a flower
beneath the Arizona sun; the beauty of the young Apache maiden and the
slender _Hija de Mejico_, that comes to its perfection so soon and is
doomed so often to fade away prematurely before the lust of men. In
another place Marcelina's face might have been her fortune, but at
Verde Crossing it was her bane. The cowboys lingered about the store to
gaze upon her boldly or stepped outside to intercept her on her way;
and Joe, poor tortoise-brained Joe, did not live up to his full duty
as a father. The _Texano_ cowboys were a fierce breed and impatient of
restraint—also they held a Mexican to be something below a snake. He
was afraid of them, though he rolled his fat eyes and frowned—but most
of all he feared Old Crit. Ah, there was a man to fear—Ol' Creet—and
he held him in his power, him and all his little flock. Day after day,
as the summer passed, the Boss kept after him, and but for his woman
he would have given way. How she did curse him, the _Señora_, his
_mujer_, and how she did curse Crit—but most of all she cursed their
poverty, which exposed her child to such a fate. Even the few _pesos_
to send her to the school were lacking—Marcelina must stay at Verde
Crossing and fight against her fate. There was only one man who would
stand by them, and that was Babe. Only for the one time in six months
had Babe been drunk, and that was when Crit was away. He had left them
his pistols at parting and hurried back, after he had seen Pecos in
the jail. Yet after all it was worth the risk, for Babe had brought
back money—yes, money, fifty dollars in bills— and he offered it all
to José if he would stand up and tell the truth. What a coward—that
foolish José! For a week he weighed his manhood in the balance and was
afraid—and then Babe had given him two drinks, quick, and made him
promise, and given the money to his _mujer_. _Madre de Dios_, it was
accomplished, and the day that Crittenden and his cowboys rode away to
Geronimo to testify before the grand jury the Señora Garcia followed
far behind in the broken-down buggy, and when the town was dark she
drove in and left Marcelina at the Sisters' school.