THE LAW AT HEART'S DESIRE
_Continuing the Story of the Pig from Kansas, and the Deep Damnation of
his Taking Off_
"Order! order! gentlemen!" called Blackman, Justice of the Peace,
clearing his throat. "This honorable justice court is now in session.
Gentlemen, what is your pleasure?"
He was a little confused, but he meant well. It seemed incumbent upon
the prosecutor to make some sort of a statement, but the attorney for
the defence interposed. He moved for the discharge of the prisoner on
the ground that there was no Territorial law and no city ordinance
violated; he pointed out that Heart's Desire was not a city, neither a
town, but had never been organized, established, or begun, even to the
extent of the filing of a town site plat; he therefore denied the
existence of any municipal law, since there had never been any
municipality; he intimated that the pig had perhaps been killed
accidentally, or perhaps in self-defence; it was plain that the
prisoner was wrongfully restrained of his liberty, etc.
The ire of Blackman, J. P., at all this was something to behold. He to
be deprived of his opportunity thus lightly? Hardly! He overruled the
objections at once, and rapped loudly for order.
"The trile will go on," said he.
"Then, your Honor," cried Dan Andersen, springing to his feet, "then I
shall resort to the ancient bulwark of our personal liberties. I shall
sue out a writ of _habeas corpus_, and take this prisoner out of
custody. I'll sue this court on its bond! I'll take a change of
venue! We'll leave no stone unturned to set this innocent man free and
restore him to the bosom of his family!"
This speech produced a great effect on the audience, as murmurs of
approbation testified, but the doughty Justice of the Peace was not so
easily to be reckoned with. He pointed out that there was no officer
to serve a writ of _habeas corpus_; that the court had given no bond
to anybody and did not propose to do so; that there was no other court
to which to apply for a change of "vendew," as he termed it; and
reiterated once more that the "trile must go on." The prosecution was,
therefore, once more called upon to state the case. Again the attorney
for the defence protested, a foreshadowing of his fighting blood
reddening his face.
"I call for a jury," said he. "Does this court suppose we are going to
leave the liberty of this prisoner in the hands of a judge openly and
notoriously prejudiced as to the facts of this case? I demand a trial
by a jury of the defendant's peers."
Blackman reddened, but was game. "Jury goes," said he. "Count out
twelve fellers there, beginnin' next the door."
"Twelve!" said Dan Andersen, for the moment almost losing his gravity.
"I thought this court might be content with six for a justice's jury;
but realizing the importance of this court, we are willing to agree on
twelve."
It was so agreed. The jury took in every man in the little room but
three. "They'll do for a veniry," said Blackman, J. P., learnedly.
Under the circumstances, one can perhaps forgive him for becoming at
times a trifle mixed as to the legal proceedings.
At least, it was easy to agree as to the jury; for obviously the
population of the place was fully acquainted with all the facts in the
case, and each one had freely expressed his opinion upon the one side
or the other. There seemed to be no reason for excusing any juror for
cause; and upon the other hand, there are often very good reasons in a
Land Before the Law for not bringing up personal matters of this kind.
Indeed, the trial judge settled all that. He looked over the twelve
good men and true thus segregated, and remarked briefly: "They're his
peers, all right. The trile will now proceed."
Whereupon he swore them solemnly and made a record in his fee book, to
the later consternation of his jurors. "Ain't this court a notary,
too?" said Blackman later. "And ain't a notary entitled to so much fee
for administerin' a oath? And didn't I administer twelve oaths?"
There was small answer to this, after all. The laborer is worthy of
his hire; and Blackman really labored in this case as in all likelihood
few justices have before or since.
The prosecuting attorney, who, it may be seen, held his office much as
did the justice of the peace, by the doctrine of _nemine
contradicente_, now arose and made the opening statement. There, was
some doubt as to whether this was a civil or criminal trial, but there
was no doubt whatever of the existence of a trial of some kind; neither
did there exist any doubt as to the importance of this, the first case
the prosecuting attorney had ever tried, outside of moot courts. It
was the first speech he had ever made in public, barring college
"orations," carefully memorized, and an occasional Fourth of July
speech, which might have been better for more memorizing. The attorney
for the prosecution, however, arose to the occasion--at least to a
certain extent. He spoke in low and feeling tones of the struggling
little community of hardy souls thus set down apart in the far-off
mountain country of the West; of its trials, its hopes, its ambitions,
of its expectations of becoming a mountain emporium which should be the
pride of the entire Territory; he went on to mention the necessity for
law and order, pointing out the danger to the public interests of the
community which must lie in a general reputation for ruffianism and
lawlessness, showing how Eastern Capital must ever be timid in visiting
a town of such reputation, apart from investing any money therein;
then, changing to the personal phases of the case, he spoke of the
absolute disregard of law shown in the act charged, mentioned the
red-handed deed of this lawless and dangerous person who had thus slain
a pig, no less the pride of the community than the idol of the family
now bereft.
At this point the jury began to look much perturbed and solemn, and the
prisoner very red and uneasy. Prosecution closed by offering to prove
all charges by competent testimony. This latter was a dangerous
proposition to advance. We could not well ask the jurymen to testify,
and of the "veniry," more than half had now slipped out for a hurried
and excited visit to the Lone Star, there to advise any possible new
arrivals of what was going on at Blackman's adobe.
Counsel for the defence arose calmly to make his opening statement.
The man was a natural trial lawyer. It was simply destiny which had
driven him into this comedy, as destiny had driven him to Heart's
Desire. It was not comedy now, when Dan Anderson faced judge and jury
here in Blackman's adobe. There came a swift, sudden chill, a gripping
as of iron, a darkening, a shrinking of the heart of each man in that
little room. It was the coming of the Law! Ah! Dan Anderson, you
ruined our little paradise; and now its walls are down forever, even
the walls of our city of content.
Dan Anderson stood, young, tall and grave, one hand in the bosom of his
shirt, for hardly one present wore a coat. He had his audience with
him before he spoke. When he began he caught them tighter to his
cause, using not merely flowing rhetoric of speech, but the close-knit,
advancing, upbuilding argument of a man able to "think on his
feet,"--that higher sort of oratory which is most convincing with an
American audience or an American jury.
The statement of the prosecution, said Dan Anderson, was on the whole a
fair one, and no discredit to the learned brother making it. None
would more readily than himself yield acquiescence to the statement
that law and order must prevail. Without law there could be nothing
but anarchy. Under anarchy progress was at an end. The individual
must give up something of his rights to the state and the community.
He gave up a certain amount of liberty, but received therefor an
equivalent in protection. The law was, therefore, no oppressor, no
monster, no usurer, no austere being, reaping where it had not sown.
The law was nothing to be dreaded, nothing to be feared; and, upon the
other hand, it was nothing to be scorned.
There must be a beginning, continued Dan Anderson. There must be
something established. The pound measure was one pound, the same all
over the country; a yard measure was a yard, and there was no guesswork
about it. It was the same. It was a unit. So with the law. It must
be the same, a unit, soulless, unfeeling, just, unchangeable. There
was nothing indeterminate in it. The attitude of the law was thus or
so, and not otherwise. It was not for the individual to pass upon any
of these questions. It was for the courts to do so, the approved
machinery set aside, under the social compact, for reducing the
friction of the wheels of society, for securing the permanency of
things beneficial to that society, and for removing things injurious
thereto. The Law itself was immutable. The courts must administer
that Law without malice, without feeling, impersonally, justly.
In so far as there had hitherto been no Law in Heart's Desire, went on
the speaker, thus far had our citizens dwelt in barbarism, had indeed
been unfit, under the very definition of things, to bear the proud
title of citizens of America, the justest, the most order-loving, as
well as the bravest and the most aggressive nation of the world. The
time had now come for the establishment in this community of the Law,
that beneficent agency of progress, that indispensable factor, that
inseparable attendant upon civilization. Upon the sky should blaze no
more the red riot of anarchy and barbarism. Upon the summit of the
noble mountain overtopping this happy valley there should sit no more
the grinning figure of malevolent and unrestrained vice, but the pure
form of the blind Goddess of Justice, holding ever aloft over this
happy land the unfaltering sword and the unwavering scales, so that all
might look thereon, the rightdoers in smiling security, the wrong-doing
in terror of their deeds. This was the Law!
"And now, gentlemen of this jury," said Dan Anderson, "I stand here
before you to make no excuses for this Law, to palliate nothing in the
way of its workings, to set no tentative or temporizing date for the
time of the arrival at this place of the image of the Law. I say to
you here to-day, at this hour, that image now sits there enthroned
above us. The Law is not to come--it has come, it is here!"
The old days were, therefore, done, he went on. Henceforth we must
observe the Law. We were here now with the intention of observing that
Law. Should we therefore fear it? Should we dread the decision of
this distinguished servant of the Law? By no means. To show that the
Law was no dragon, no demon, he would now, in the very face of that
Law, proceed to clear this innocent man of that cloud of doubt and
suspicion which for a brief moment the social body had cast upon him.
He would show to the gentlemen of this jury and to this honorable court
that there had been no violation of the Law through any act of this
honest, open-faced, intelligent young gentleman, long known among them
as an upright and fair-dealing man. The Law, just and exact, would now
protect this prisoner. The Law was no matter of haphazard. The
prosecution must show that some specific article of the Law had been
violated.
"Now," continued Dan Anderson, casting an eye about him as calmly as
could have done any old trial lawyer examining the condition of his
jury, "what are the charges made by the Territory? The prosecution
specifies no section or paragraph of the statutes of this Territory
holding it unlawful to shoot any dangerous wild beast at large in this
community. But we do not admit that this prisoner shot anything, or
shot at anything whatever. We shall prove that at the time mentioned
he was engaged in a simple, harmless, and useful pastime, a pastime
laudable of itself, since it tends to make the participant therein a
better and more useful citizen. There is no Territorial law forbidding
any act which he is here charged with committing. Neither has the body
social in this thriving community placed upon its records any local
law, any indication that a man may not, without let or hindrance, do
any act such as those charged vaguely against this good young man, who
has only availed himself of his right under the Constitution to bear
arms, to assemble in public, and to engage in the pursuit of happiness."
The prosecution, he said, had introduced reference to a certain pig,
alleging that it was slain by the act of the prisoner. He would not
admit that there had been any pig, since no _corpus delicti_ was
shown; but in any event this was no civil suit now in progress. We
were not here to assess value upon a supposititious pig, injured in a
supposititious manner, and not represented here of counsel. No law had
been violated. Why, then, his client had been thus ruthlessly dragged
into court, to his great personal chagrin, his loss of time, his mental
suffering, the attorney for defence could not say. It was injustice of
a monstrous sort! Prosecution might well feel relieved if no
retaliatory action were later taken against them for false
imprisonment. This innocent young man must at once be discharged from
custody.
When Dan Anderson sat down there was not a man in the jury who was not
bathed in perspiration. Abstruse thought was hard at work. Blackman,
J. P., perspiring no less than any member of the jury, drew himself up,
but he was troubled.
"Evidence f'r the State," the Judge finally managed to stammer, turning
to the attorney for the prosecution.
But it never came so far along as that. There was a sound of many
footsteps; voices came murmuring, growing louder. The door was pushed
open from without, and in came much of the remaining population of
Heart's Desire, so far as it could gain room. The man from Leavenworth
was there, his whiskers wagging unintelligibly. McKinney was there,
and Doc Tomlinson and Tom Osby, and everybody else; and, pushing
through the crowd, there came the Littlest Girl from Kansas, her apron
awry, her hair blown, her face flushed, her eyes moist with tears.
"Curly!" cried she as at last her eyes caught sight of him. "Come
right on out of here, this minute! Come along!"
What would you have? The Law is the Law; but there are such things as
supreme courts. It was useless for Blackman, J. P., to rap and call
for order. It had probably been useless for any man to undertake to
stop the prisoner at the bar, thus adjured. At any rate he arose and
said politely to the jurors, "Fellers, I got to go"--and so went, no
man raising hand to restrain him.
As to Dan Anderson, he himself admitted his wish that the case had gone
on. "I wanted to cross-examine," said he.
That night, over by the _arroyo_, we met Curly and the Littlest Girl
walking in the moonlight. Curly was quiet. The Littlest Girl was
tremulous, content. Curly, pausing as we approached, mumbled some
shamefaced thanks.
"Curly," said Dan Anderson, his voice queer, "I didn't do it for pay.
I did it--I don't know why--"
A new mood was upon him. A lassitude as of remorse appeared to relax
him, body and mind. An hour later he and I sat in the glorious flood
of the light of the moon of Heart's Desire, and we fell silent, as was
the way of men in that place. At length Dan Anderson turned his face
to the top of old Carrizo, the restful, the impassive. He gazed long
without speaking, as though he plainly saw something there at the
mountain top.
"Listen," he whispered to me, a moment later, and his eyes did not
quite keep back the tears. "She's there--the Goddess. The Law has
come to Heart's Desire. May God forgive me! Why could we not have
stayed content?"
But little did Dan Anderson foresee that day how swiftly was to come
further ruin for the kingdom of oblivion which we thought that we had
found.
"There'll be _women_ next!" I said to him bitterly; though this was a
vague threat of a thing impossible.
His reply was a look more than half frightened.
"Don't!" he said.