COTTERELL “WANTED.”
The day after the fire was an idle one at Perfection City. No one felt
able to work, Ezra least of all. He lay upon the floor of the kitchen
with a wet handkerchief on his head, and several times he asked Olive
not to make so much noise. She was as still as a mouse, she thought, but
then his head ached, poor fellow! So she went out and sat in the shade
of the house among her morning-glories, while the hens walked about with
their wings down and their tongues lolling out, trying to cool
themselves. The black burnt prairie seemed to send up shafts of heat to
the copper-coloured sky.
A man rode up to the bars, and for one moment Olive’s heart stood still.
She feared it might be Mr. Cotterell, whom she had not seen since the
day at the spring, now some weeks past. It was not Mr. Cotterell,
however, but one of the settlers from the other side of Cotton Wood
Creek. He came forward with his bridle-rein over his arm, his horse
following, head down.
“Wal, how’d you ’uns git ’long with that pesky fire?” he observed,
without any preliminary greeting. He was a Missouri man, and they often
prided themselves on their rudeness. It was their way of showing their
independence.
“Good morning, Mr. Owen,” said Olive, who knew the man quite well. “We
have escaped all right, thank you. I hope you were not injured?” She was
extra careful in her manner, as the politeness for two had all to be
furnished by herself.
“Yer hain’t been burnt out I see. You all’s mighty silly anyhow. Why in
thunder didn’t yer back-fire before? ’Tain’t agin’ yer principles, is
it?” Mr. Owen grinned under the impression that he was funny.
“We didn’t back-fire, because we thought it wrong to start a fire in
such a wind and let it possibly burn up our neighbours,” said Olive
stiffly.
“Then ’tis agin yer principles to back-fire, by Gosh! The boys was
’lowing as much over to Union Mills.”
“It is against our principles to injure our neighbours. You don’t object
to that, Mr. Owen, do you?” said Olive.
“I reckon you’ll git mighty tired o’ them idees ef yer live long on the
prairie,” observed Mr. Owen.
“Seen ole man Cotterell lately?” he inquired suddenly, half shutting his
green-grey eyes and looking at Olive intently.
She was somewhat surprised at the question, but knowing from experience
how inquisitive the average settler is, she answered readily enough.
“No, I haven’t seen him for a long time. Was he burnt out? I didn’t know
the fire had gone so far.”
“I calkerlate he warn’t tetched by the fire,” said Mr. Owen, very
slowly. He made long pauses between his remarks, during which he
continued unremittingly the steady occupation of his life, namely,
chewing tobacco. Olive began to feel impatient. She did not like to ask
him into the house for fear of disturbing Ezra, so she sat down again in
her chair, and pointing to a log of wood which lay near and seated on
which he could still hold his horse, she asked him to take a seat also.
Mr. Owen sat down with a grunt.
“Never seed ony pusson so sot on posies as you ’uns be,” he observed
conversationally.
“Yes, I am very fond of flowers. They make the house more home-like, I
think. The prairie is very bare looking,” replied Olive politely.
“Yer ole man oughter rared his house t’other side the Gully, an’ further
down yon’er. This hyar ’ull be powerful col’ when we git col’ snaps in
Jan’ary. Yer dunno nothin’ ’bout things in this hyar all-fired ’Fection
City,” said Mr. Owen, looking around him in criticism.
“Perhaps not,” said Olive, rather nettled, “but we know how to mind our
own business.”
Mr. Owen did not feel one whit abashed. He was far too near akin to the
pachyderms for Olive’s delicate little shafts to have any effect on him.
Another long silence followed, and Olive began to wonder if Owen was
like that man from Jacksonville, who came to see them once and stayed
four hours, during which time he made only two remarks and they
possessed no particular interest. The man and his stony silence had
driven her nearly wild, until she reflected how much more awful it would
have been had she been obliged to entertain him with conversation. A
recollection of this visitation and a dread born of that recollection
began to invade her mind. Mr. Owen, however, was not going to stay for
four hours, and he was going to make a remark of very particular
interest, a remark that would quickly scatter all Olive’s other ideas.
He delivered it slowly and with the monotonous enunciation which
proclaimed him a Missouri man.
“The boys is hout huntin’ down ole man Cotterell.”
“What!” exclaimed Olive turning very white. Then, steadying her voice as
well as she could she said, “Why are they hunting him?”
“To cotch him,” replied her visitor concisely.
“But what for?” asked Olive, looking at him with wide eyes of horror.
She knew only too well what hunting down a man portended.
“Wal, there’s bin a shootin’ over to his house, an’ one o’ thim boys o’
Mills is shot, shot dead. Cotterell done it. And now he’s gone an’ run
off. The boys they ’lowed Cotterell best be hung this time. Las’ time he
was let off. He won’t be agin, you bet.”
“How do you know he has shot young Mills? What evidence have you of it?”
asked Olive in terror, yet she could not help pressing the man to tell
her, although each word was like a stab.
He gave a silent inward laugh as if his thoughts were facetious.
“Evidence an’ enough,” he said. “Jake Mills’ body with a bullet through
his heart. Yer can’t git nothin’ plainer in the way of evidence than
that, I reckon.”
“But how do you know it was Mr. Cotterell shot him?” asked Olive.
“Damn my eyes! but yer mus’ be a nateral born fool, Mis’ Weston. Jake
Mills were foun’ on Cotterell’s lan’. Who else could ha’ done it?
Besides, he did, an’ that’s a fac’ anyhow.”
“I think it is perfectly monstrous,” burst out Olive, trembling with
agitation. “I never heard of a wickeder thing. Here is this man you have
decided to hang, and you don’t even know if he has done the thing you
accuse him of. If that is what you call prairie law and justice I can
only say I never heard of a more sinful and unjust law. Black savages
couldn’t do worse.”
“Mos’ like the boys will let him hev a trial, ef he’s partic’lar sot
on’t. That won’t si’nify nothin’,” said Mr. Owen, again surveying Olive
through the narrow aperture of his half-closed eyes, and again applying
himself to his habitual occupation with vigour. She looked at him with a
face in which horror and disgust struggled for mastery.
“If this horrid murder is committed by your neighbours, Mr. Owen, I
shall think that prairie men are a disgrace to civilization,” said
Olive.
“We prairie folks ain’t partic’lar sot on civilization,” remarked Mr.
Owen with affability.
“I hope you’ll never catch him,” said Olive, with a sound very like a
sob in her voice.
“The boys they ’lowed you’uns was mighty good frien’s o’ his’n, an’ he’d
a mos’ likely come this hyar way to make for the Pottawattamie ’fore
we’uns could cotch him. That’s why I come ’long ter look for him hyar,”
observed Mr. Owen, rising and putting his head under his saddle flap in
order to tighten up the girth a couple of holes.
“Oh, you’ve come here to spy out, have you?” said Olive, in passionate
anger. “Why didn’t you say so at first, and ask the question like a man,
and not come sneaking around? Do you want to hunt all over the house and
see if we’ve got anybody hidden away?”
“No,” said Owen slowly. “Guess that’ll do. I ain’t agoin’ ter hunt
roun’. We ain’t no great shakes at bein’ fine folks out hyar on the
prairie, but we allers takes the word of a lady, by Gosh. You said you
hain’t seen nothin’ o’ ole man Cotterell, guess that’ll do for the boys.
Mornin’.”
Mr. Owen rode away, feeling that in the contest of politeness that
morning he had certainly scored off Mrs. Weston with her stuck-up
Eastern ways.
Olive was in an agony of doubt and terror. That the boys were out
hunting for Cotterell was, she knew, but the preliminary to his death,
if they caught him. The boys seldom or never let off any one they
caught, so she gathered from the stories she had heard of their doings
in time past. What was she to do in this difficult dilemma? Should she
tell Ezra?
Under ordinary circumstances her first impulse would have been to go
straight to her husband with the story she had heard, but in this
instance she felt that such a course would be impossible. She knew that
Ezra was jealous of Mr. Cotterell, he had betrayed his feelings more
than once, and in her heart she knew that few men can be just towards
the man who arouses their jealousy. Her husband was a very just man, and
could, more than any one she knew, put himself in the place of others
and see what was right and what was wrong. But in this instance it was
not justice Olive wanted, it was justice that she feared. Although she
spoke bravely enough to Owen, a terrible fear lurked in her breast that
the evidence, though ludicrously deficient by the rules of procedure
that obtain in old established communities, was quite sufficient to
convince a prairie jury. Ezra would not sit on a hanging jury, nor would
he be a party to catching Mr. Cotterell, but his sense of justice and
what was due to the principles professed at Perfection City might carry
him no further than this passively inactive point? Would he assist
Cotterell to escape? Guilty or not, that was what Olive wanted, and to
help in such an undertaking, she felt sure, was what her husband might
very well refuse to do.
Was Cotterell guilty? Olive debated this point anxiously in her mind.
She knew he went armed, but so did many other men. In fact, to be armed
was the rule on the prairie. The doctrine of non-resistance was one of
the least understood tenets of the Pioneers at Perfection City, and was
observed by nobody else on the prairie. Even Brother Wright, as we have
seen—though Olive was quite unaware of this—had granted to himself a
special indulgence in this matter. So the mere fact of Mr. Cotterell’s
always having his revolver in his belt did not really count for
anything, one way or the other. He had always been so gentle and so
chivalrous in his manner to her, she found it difficult to force her
mind to keep hold of the fact that he was a very passionate man.
Everyone said so, and she knew, too, that the Mills’ were a bad lot,
drunken quarrelsome men, who, as Ezra said, combined in their character
all the vices of the prairie and preserved none of its virtues. How easy
it would be for a proud, passionate man like Mr. Cotterell to bring his
revolver into a heated argument with Jake Mills, who might be mad with
drink. But surely such a shooting was not murder according to prairie
law. In her distress Olive found herself falling back upon the probable
laxity of that very prairie justice which a short time before she had so
scornfully characterised to Owen.
The “boys” who were hunting Cotterell were, as Olive well knew, the most
relentless men on the prairie, regular settlers who had found by
experience that the only way to keep order was to keep it with their own
right hands. They had hung several horse-thieves lately, and had
declared they were going to put a stop to the “shooting round
promiscuous” of the younger blades. They were not unjust men, but they
were hasty, and were moreover already terribly prejudiced against
Cotterell.
Having decided that it was best not to tell Ezra what she had heard,
Olive was immediately assailed with a hundred doubts. Suppose Mr.
Cotterell came to them in his extremity, should she try to conceal him?
But how utterly impossible to do so without the co-operation of her
husband! The mere attempt to do such a thing might involve her in
difficulties without being of any use to the unhappy man himself. Then
there was Madame. Should she appeal to her for help? Her heart revolted
from such a course. After their last meeting, when they had interchanged
hot words on the subject of this very man, Olive felt it was impossible
to ask Madame’s aid or to tell her anything about it. Then there was no
one, and Olive resolved to keep the secret of what she had heard, hoping
that something might turn up which would justify her action, or at least
make any further action unnecessary. Thus do people often put off on the
shoulders of chance the burden of a decision which taxes too much their
powers of forecasting events. It was a heavy secret to keep to herself,
and her face looked white and scared as she entered the kitchen on
tip-toe to see how Ezra felt. He roused up as she came in.
“I am better now, little woman,” he said in answer to her inquiries.
“The pain is all gone. I will get up and begin to stir around again.”
He went out with her and with the keenness which is soon a habit with a
prairie man, he noticed the hoof-marks of Owen’s horse, where it had
stamped rather briskly, owing to the flies.
“Who has been here? Those are fresh,” he said, pointing to the marks.
“That man from over beyond Cotton Wood Creek was here a little while
ago, Owen is his name: you know the man,” said Olive, with a beating
heart.
“Cattle-hunting after the fire, I suppose. Were they burnt out
yesterday?” asked Ezra, with slight show of interest.
“No, I believe not, he did not say. He sneered at the Pioneers for not
having safe-guarded themselves, heedless of the welfare of the other
settlers, so I suppose he had been betimes with his back-firing, at
least if he lives up to his principles,” remarked Olive.
“It is too late to go and hunt for our horses,” said Ezra, “and I feel
too tired to start out on foot after them. They may very well be five
miles away by this time. Did you ask Owen if he had seen them?”
“No, I never thought of doing so.”
“Don’t forget always to ask everyone if they have seen your horses
whenever they are out on the prairie: it is one of the golden rules of
prairie life,” said Ezra, tapping her chin.
“But he wouldn’t have known Queen Katharine and Rebel even if he did
happen to meet them,” objected Olive. “How could he know one pair of
strange horses from another?”
“Bless your sweet eyes, Owen knows every horse and cow belonging to his
neighbours for a radius of ten miles from his house, at the very least.
Telling a neighbour where his cattle are, is the only rule of politeness
known to many of them, and they are punctilious about it,” said Ezra
laughing.
“I wish I had known that, because I found him deficient in many of the
rules I have been taught,” said Olive. “Possibly he found me as lacking,
according to his estimate.”
Ezra did not go out to hunt for the horses the next morning as he had
intended. Other work, which seemed more important, turned up for him.
Brother Wright came that same evening to arrange about it.
“Good evening, friends,” he said. “I trust you are both rested after
yesterday. It was a hard day and a harder night. Brother Ezra, you did
splendidly.”
“We were much alarmed for the safety of Perfection City: I don’t think
it is ever likely to be in greater danger,” said Ezra.
“No, I suppose, not from the outside,” said Wright.
“And we are not likely to be set on fire from the inside, are we?”
observed Ezra with a laugh.
“Accidents may happen,” said Olive.
“Even in the best regulated communities,” added Brother Wright.
“However, what I came to talk about was the future, and not the past.
We’ve got two good loads of corn ready, it ought to be sold at once in
Mapleton. We’ll get top price. I stepped into Madame’s as I came along,
and she agreed with me. We must sell at once. Brother Dummy has got his
waggon loaded up ready to start. It is a marvel how much that man does
get through in the way of work. Well, the question is, who will go with
the corn? Brother Dummy must drive his own team, because no other man
could manage that black horse for half an hour. Biting Bill would kick
the waggon into match-wood in two minutes, if any of us attempted to
touch his reins. I wonder whether it is the absolutely silent driving
which cows him? You are out and out the best one for attending to
business of any here. Madame thinks it would be well for you to go, and
so do I.”
“I am quite ready,” replied Ezra. “But my horses are both out on the
prairie. I turned them loose after the fire to let them run off to the
Creek, as I had no time to put them up and feed them. To-day I did not
feel able to hunt after them.”
“Well, suppose you take my team, and I will find your horses for you
to-morrow. Will that do?”
“All right, then I’ll go to Mapleton.”
“The corn is already shucked, it won’t take half an hour to load up. You
and I will do it while the horses are feeding. You ought to get off by
six, I will feed the horses at five.”
Each spoke of _his_ horses and _his_ waggons much in the same way as an
artillery officer speaks of his guns. There were three pairs of horses
in the Community, and, in theory at least, everyone was equally free to
use them, but experience showed that that sort of handling did not suit
horses, who do better if left always in the care of the same persons.
Therefore it came about that Brother Dummy always had Biting Bill, since
no one else could manage the brute, and Ezra generally had Queen
Katharine and Rebel, while Brother Wright kept the greys. Now these
animals, although common property, were invariably spoken of by their
drivers as _theirs_, for the use of certain familiar phrases, which to
the outsider might seem to denote the idea of private property, came
naturally to their lips. It is often more difficult to change habits of
speech than laws of property. Reformers who start out to alter the whole
course of modern ideas and to rearrange the world according to a plan of
their own devising, would do well to meditate upon this peculiarity and
see what it points to. Surely so slight a thing as a word might easily
be eradicated from human speech, and yet how difficult it is to do so.
But the point to consider is that the pertinacity, which shows itself in
modes of expression, may very well exist in just as strong a form in
habits of thought and feeling. The Pioneers, like others of that sort,
passed over and disregarded such expressions as “my horse,” “my waggon,”
and “your plough,” not apparently recognizing that the expressions
denoted a habit of thought that might very easily strike at the very
root of their institution. They were communists, as Olive had said, in
bits of this and scraps of that, but the old leaven of individualism was
there still among them, only dormant. The Pioneers never expected that
the leaven would again become an active principle. Like other people,
they were unable to see into the future, and therefore rejoiced in their
escape from the perils of the prairie fire and considered that they had
no further danger to apprehend for this winter at least. The sea was
smooth and the sky was serene, so to speak, and they did not perceive
the sunken rocks that lay in the track of their experimental bark.