by Bret Harte
THE JUDGMENT OF BOLINAS PLAIN
The wind was getting up on the Bolinas Plain. It had started the finealkaline dust along the level stage road, so that even that faint track,the only break in the monotony of the landscape, seemed fainter thanever. But the dust cloud was otherwise a relief; it took the semblanceof distant woods where there was no timber, of moving teams where therewas no life. And as Sue Beasley, standing in the doorway of One SpringHouse that afternoon, shading her sandy lashes with her small red hand,glanced along the desolate track, even HER eyes, trained to the drearyprospect, were once or twice deceived.
"Sue!"
It was a man's voice from within. Sue took no notice of it, but remainedwith her hand shading her eyes.
"Sue! Wot yer yawpin' at thar?"
"Yawpin'" would seem to have been the local expression for herabstraction, since, without turning her head, she answered slowly andlanguidly: "Reckoned I see'd som' un on the stage road. But 'tain'tnothin' nor nobody."
Both voices had in their accents and delivery something of the sadnessand infinite protraction of the plain. But the woman's had a musicalpossibility in its long-drawn cadence, while the man's was onlymonotonous and wearying. And as she turned back into the room again,and confronted her companion, there was the like difference in theirappearance. Ira Beasley, her husband, had suffered from the combinedeffects of indolence, carelessness, misadventure, and disease. Two ofhis fingers had been cut off by a scythe, his thumb and part of his leftear had been blown away by an overcharged gun; his knees were crippledby rheumatism, and one foot was lame from ingrowing nails,--deviationsthat, however, did not tend to correct the original angularities of hisframe. His wife, on the other hand, had a pretty figure, which stillretained--they were childless--the rounded freshness of maidenhood. Herfeatures were irregular, yet not without a certain piquancy of outline;her hair had the two shades sometimes seen in imperfect blondes, andher complexion the sallowness of combined exposure and alkalineassimilation.
She had lived there since, an angular girl of fifteen, she had beenawkwardly helped by Ira from the tail-board of the emigrant wagon inwhich her mother had died two weeks before, and which was making itsfirst halt on the Californian plains, before Ira's door. On the secondday of their halt Ira had tried to kiss her while she was drawing water,and had received the contents of the bucket instead,--the girl knowingher own value. On the third day Ira had some conversation withher father regarding locations and stock. On the fourth day thisconversation was continued in the presence of the girl; on the fifth daythe three walked to Parson Davies' house, four miles away, where Iraand Sue were married. The romance of a week had taken place within theconfines of her present view from the doorway; the episode of her lifemight have been shut in in that last sweep of her sandy lashes.
Nevertheless, at that moment some instinct, she knew not what, impelledher when her husband left the room to put down the dish she was washing,and, with the towel lapped over her bare pretty arms, to lean once moreagainst the doorpost, lazily looking down the plain. A cylindricalcloud of dust trailing its tattered skirt along the stage road suddenlyassaulted the house, and for an instant enveloped it. As it whirled awayagain something emerged, or rather dropped from its skirts behind thelittle cluster of low bushes which encircled the "One Spring." It was aman.
"Thar! I knew it was suthin'," she began aloud, but the words somehowdied upon her lips. Then she turned and walked towards the innerdoor, wherein her husband had disappeared,--but here stopped againirresolutely. Then she suddenly walked through the outer door into theroad and made directly for the spring. The figure of a man crouching,covered with dust, half rose from the bushes when she reached them. Shewas not frightened, for he seemed utterly exhausted, and there was asingular mixture of shame, hesitation, and entreaty in his broken voiceas he gasped out:--
"Look here!--I say! hide me somewhere, won't you? Just for a little.You see--the fact is--I'm chased! They're hunting me now,--they'rejust behind me. Anywhere will do till they go by! Tell you all about itanother time. Quick! Please do!"
In all this there was nothing dramatic nor even startling to her. Nordid there seem to be any present danger impending to the man. He didnot look like a horse-thief nor a criminal. And he had tried to laugh,half-apologetically, half-bitterly,--the consciousness of a man who hadto ask help of a woman at such a moment.
She gave a quick glance towards the house. He followed her eyes,and said hurriedly: "Don't tell on me. Don't let any one see me. I'mtrusting you.
"Come," she said suddenly. "Get on THIS side."
He understood her, and slipped to her side, half-creeping,half-crouching like a dog behind her skirts, but keeping her figurebetween him and the house as she moved deliberately towards the barn,scarce fifty yards away. When she reached it she opened the half-doorquickly, said: "In there--at the top--among the hay"--closed it, and wasturning away, when there came a faint rapping from within. She openedthe door again impatiently; the man said hastily: "Wanted to tellyou--it was a man who insulted a WOMAN! I went for him, you see--and"--
But she shut the door sharply. The fugitive had made a blunder. Theimportation of her own uncertain sex into the explanation did not helphim. She kept on towards the house, however, without the least traceof excitement or agitation in her manner, entered the front door again,walked quietly to the door of the inner room, glanced in, saw that herhusband was absorbed in splicing a riata, and had evidently not missedher, and returned quietly to her dish-washing. With this singulardifference: a few moments before she had seemed inattentive and carelessof what she was doing, as if from some abstraction; now, when shewas actually abstracted, her movements were mechanically perfect anddeliberate. She carefully held up a dish and examined it minutely forcracks, rubbing it cautiously with the towel, but seeing all the whileonly the man she had left in the barn. A few moments elapsed. Then therecame another rush of wind around the house, a drifting cloud of dustbefore the door, the clatter of hoofs, and a quick shout.
Her husband reached the door, from the inner room, almost as quickly asshe did. They both saw in the road two armed mounted men--one of whomIra recognized as the sheriff's deputy.
"Has anybody been here, just now?" he asked sharply.
"No."
"Seen anybody go by?" he continued.
"No. What's up?"
"One of them circus jumpers stabbed Hal Dudley over the table in Doloresmonte shop last night, and got away this morning. We hunted him into theplain and lost him somewhere in this d----d dust."
"Why, Sue reckoned she saw suthin' just now," said Ira, with a flash ofrecollection. "Didn't ye, Sue?"
"Why the h-ll didn't she say it before?--I beg your pardon, ma'am;didn't see you; you'll excuse haste."
Both the men's hats were in their hands, embarrassed yet gratifiedsmiles on their faces, as Sue came forward. There was the faintest ofcolor in her sallow cheek, a keen brilliancy in her eyes; she lookedsingularly pretty. Even Ira felt a slight antenuptial stirring throughhis monotonously wedded years.
The young woman walked out, folding the towel around her red hands andforearms--leaving the rounded whiteness of bared elbow and upper armin charming contrast--and looked gravely past the admiring figures thatnearly touched her own. "It was somewhar over thar," she said lazily,pointing up the road in the opposite direction to the barn, "but I ain'tsure it WAS any one."
"Then he'd already PASSED the house afore you saw him?" said the deputy.
"I reckon--if it WAS him," returned Sue.
"He must have got on," said the deputy; "but then he runs like a deer;it's his trade."
"Wot trade?"
"Acrobat."
"Wot's that?"
The two men were delighted at this divine simplicity. "A man who runs,jumps, climbs--and all that sort, in the circus."
"But isn't he runnin', jumpin', and climbin' away from ye now?" shecontinued with adorable naivete.
The deputy smiled, but straightened in the saddle. "We're bound to
comeup with him afore he reaches Lowville; and between that and this houseit's a dead level, where a gopher couldn't leave his hole without yourspottin' him a mile off! Good-by!" The words were addressed to Ira,but the parting glance was directed to the pretty wife as the two mengalloped away.
An odd uneasiness at this sudden revelation of his wife's prettiness andits evident effect upon his visitors came over Ira. It resulted in hisaddressing the empty space before his door with, "Well, ye won't ketchmuch if ye go on yawpin' and dawdlin' with women-folks like this;" andhe was unreasonably delighted at the pretty assent of disdain and scornwhich sparkled in his wife's eyes as she added:--
"Not much, I reckon!"
"That's the kind of official trash we have to pay taxes to keep up,"said Ira, who somehow felt that if public policy was not amenable toprivate sentiment there was no value in free government. Mrs. Beasley,however, complacently resumed her dish-washing, and Ira returned to hisriata in the adjoining room. For quite an interval there was no soundbut the occasional click of a dish laid upon its pile, with fingersthat, however, were firm and untremulous. Presently Sue's low voice washeard.
"Wonder if that deputy caught anything yet. I've a good mind to meanderup the road and see."
But the question brought Ira to the door with a slight return of hisformer uneasiness. He had no idea of subjecting his wife to anotheradmiring interview. "I reckon I'll go myself," he said dubiously; "YOU'Dbetter stay and look after the house."
Her eyes brightened as she carried a pile of plates to the dresser;it was possible she had foreseen this compromise. "Yes," she saidcheerfully, "you could go farther than me."
Ira reflected. He could also send them about their business if theythought of returning. He lifted his hat from the floor, took his rifledown carefully from its pegs, and slouched out into the road. Suewatched him until he was well away, then flew to the back door, stoppingonly an instant to look at her face in a small mirror on the wall,--yetwithout noticing her new prettiness,--then ran to the barn. Castinga backward glance at the diminishing figure of her husband in thedistance, she threw open the door and shut it quickly behind her.At first the abrupt change from the dazzling outer plain to the deepshadows of the barn bewildered her. She saw before her a bucket halffilled with dirty water, and a quantity of wet straw littering thefloor; then lifting her eyes to the hay-loft, she detected the figure ofthe fugitive, unclothed from the waist upward, emerging from the loosehay in which he had evidently been drying himself. Whether it was theexcitement of his perilous situation, or whether the perfect symmetryof his bared bust and arms--unlike anything she had ever seenbefore--clothed him with the cold ideality of a statue, she could notsay, but she felt no shock of modesty; while the man, accustomed tothe public half-exposure in tights and spangles, was more conscious ofdetected unreadiness than of shame.
"Gettin' the dust off me," he said, in hurried explanation; "be downin a second." Indeed, in another moment he had resumed his shirt andflannel coat, and swung himself to the floor with a like grace anddexterity, that was to her the revelation of a descending god. She foundherself face to face with him,--his features cleansed of dirt and grime,his hair plastered in wet curls on his low forehead. It was a faceof cheap adornment, not uncommon in his profession--unintelligent,unrefined, and even unheroic; but she did not know that. Overcoming asudden timidity, she nevertheless told him briefly and concisely of thearrival and departure of his pursuers.
His low forehead wrinkled. "Thar's no getting away until they comeback," he said without looking at her. "Could ye keep me in hereto-night?"
"Yes," she returned simply, as if the idea had already occurred to her;"but you must lie low in the loft."
"And could you"--he hesitated, and went on with a forced smile--"yousee, I've eaten nothing since last night. Could you"--
"I'll bring you something," she said quickly, nodding her head.
"And if you had"--he went on more hesitatingly, glancing down at histravel-torn and frayed garments--"anything like a coat, or any otherclothing? It would disguise me also, you see, and put 'em off thetrack."
She nodded her head again rapidly: she had thought of that too; therewas a pair of doeskin trousers and a velvet jacket left by a Mexicanvaquero who had bought stock from them two years ago. Practical as shewas, a sudden conviction that he would look well in the velvet jackethelped her resolve.
"Did they say"--he said, with his forced smile and uneasy glance--"didthey--tell you anything about me?"
"Yes," she said abstractedly, gazing at him.
"You see," he began hurriedly, "I'll tell you how it was."
"No, don't!" she said quickly. She meant it. She wanted no facts tostand between her and this single romance of her life. "I must go andget the things," she added, turning away, "before he gets back."
"Who's HE?" asked the man.
She was about to reply, "My husband," but without knowing why stoppedand said, "Mr. Beasley," and then ran off quickly to the house.
She found the vaquero's clothes, took some provisions, filled a flask ofwhiskey in the cupboard, and ran back with them, her mouth expanded toa vague smile, and pulsating like a schoolgirl. She even repressedwith difficulty the ejaculation "There!" as she handed them to him. Hethanked her, but with eyes fixed and fascinated by the provisions. Sheunderstood it with a new sense of delicacy, and saying, "I'll come againwhen he gets back," ran off and returned to the house, leaving him aloneto his repast.
Meantime her husband, lounging lazily along the high road, hadprecipitated the catastrophe he wished to avoid. For his slouchingfigure, silhouetted against the horizon on that monotonous level, hadbeen the only one detected by the deputy sheriff and the constable, hiscompanion, and they had charged down within fifty yards of him beforethey discovered their mistake. They were not slow in making this anexcuse for abandoning their quest as far as Lowville: in fact, afterquitting the distraction of Mrs. Beasley's presence they had, without inthe least suspecting the actual truth, become doubtful if the fugitivehad proceeded so far. He might at that moment be snugly ensconced behindsome low wire-grass ridge, watching their own clearly defined figures,and waiting only for the night to evade them. The Beasley house seemed aproper place of operation in beating up the field. Ira's cold receptionof the suggestion was duly disposed of by the deputy. "I have the RIGHT,ye know," he said, with a grim pleasantry, "to summon ye as my posseto aid and assist me in carrying out the law; but I ain't the man tobe rough on my friends, and I reckon it will do jest as well if I'requisition' your house." The dreadful recollection that the deputy hadthe power to detail him and the constable to scour the plain while heremained behind in company with Sue stopped Ira's further objections.Yet, if he could only get rid of her while the deputy was in thehouse,--but then his nearest neighbor was five miles away! There wasnothing left for him to do but to return with the men and watch hiswife keenly. Strange to say, there was a certain stimulus in this whichstirred his monotonous pulses and was not without a vague pleasure.There is a revelation to some natures in newly awakened jealousy that isa reincarnation of love.
As they came into the house a slight circumstance, which an hour agowould have scarcely touched his sluggish sensibilities, now appeared tocorroborate his fear. His wife had changed her cuffs and collar, takenoff her rough apron, and evidently redressed her hair. This, with theenhanced brightness of her eyes, which he had before noticed, convincedhim that it was due to the visit of the deputy. There was no doubt thatthe official was equally attracted and fascinated by her prettiness, andalthough her acceptance of his return was certainly not a cordial one,there was a kind of demure restraint and over-consciousness in hermanner that might be coquetry. Ira had vaguely observed this quality inother young women, but had never experienced it in his brief courtship.There had been no rivalry, no sexual diplomacy nor insincerity in hiscapture of the motherless girl who had leaped from the tail-board of herfather's wagon almost into his arms, and no man had since come betweenthem. The idea that Sue should care fo
r any other than himself had beensimply inconceivable to his placid, matter-of-fact nature. That theirsacrament was final he had never doubted. If his two cows, boughtwith his own money or reared by him, should suddenly have developedan inclination to give milk to a neighbor, he would not have been moreastonished. But THEY could have been brought back with a rope, andwithout a heart throb.
Passion of this kind, which in a less sincere society restricts itsexpression to innuendo or forced politeness, left the rustic Ira onlydumb and lethargic. He moved slowly and abstractedly around the room,accenting his slight lameness more than ever, or dropped helplessly intoa chair, where he sat, inanely conscious of the contiguity of hiswife and the deputy, and stupidly expectant of--he knew not what.The atmosphere of the little house seemed to him charged with someunwholesome electricity. It kindled his wife's eyes, stimulating thedeputy and his follower to coarse playfulness, enthralled his own limbsto the convulsive tightening of his fingers around the rungs of hischair. Yet he managed to cling to his idea of keeping his wife occupied,and of preventing any eyeshot between her and her guests, or theindulgence of dangerously flippant conversation, by ordering her tobring some refreshment. "What's gone o' the whiskey bottle?" he said,after fumbling in the cupboard.
Mrs. Beasley did not blench. She only gave her head a slight toss. "Efyou men can't get along with the coffee and flapjacks I'm going to giveye, made with my own hands, ye kin just toddle right along to thefirst bar, and order your tangle-foot there. Ef it's a barkeeper you'relooking for, and not a lady, say so!"
The novel audacity of this speech, and the fact that it suggestedthat preoccupation he hoped for, relieved Ira for a moment, while itenchanted the guests as a stroke of coquettish fascination. Mrs. Beasleytriumphantly disappeared in the kitchen, slipped off her cuffs and setto work, and in a few moments emerged with a tray bearing the cakes andsteaming coffee. As neither she nor her husband ate anything (possiblyowing to an equal preoccupation) the guests were obliged to confinetheir attentions to the repast before them. The sun, too, was alreadynearing the horizon, and although its nearly level beams acted like apowerful search-light over the stretching plain, twilight would soonput an end to the quest. Yet they lingered. Ira now foresaw a newdifficulty: the cows were to be brought up and fodder taken from thebarn; to do this he would be obliged to leave his wife and the deputytogether. I do not know if Mrs. Beasley divined his perplexity, but shecarelessly offered to perform that evening function herself. Ira's heartleaped and sank again as the deputy gallantly proposed to assist her.But here rustic simplicity seemed to be equal to the occasion. "Ef Ipropose to do Ira's work," said Mrs. Beasley, with provocative archness,"it's because I reckon he'll do more good helpin' you catch yourman than you'll do helpin' ME! So clear out, both of ye!" A feminineaudacity that recalled the deputy to himself, and left him no choice butto accept Ira's aid. I do not know whether Mrs. Beasley felt a pang ofconscience as her husband arose gratefully and limped after the deputy;I only know that she stood looking at them from the door, smiling andtriumphant.
Then she slipped out of the back door again, and ran swiftly to thebarn, fastening on her clean cuffs and collar as she ran. The fugitivewas anxiously awaiting her, with a slight touch of brusqueness in hiseagerness.
"Thought you were never coming!" he said.
She breathlessly explained, and showed him through the half-opened doorthe figures of the three men slowly spreading and diverging over theplain, like the nearly level sun-rays they were following. The sunlightfell also on her panting bosom, her electrified sandy hair, her red,half-opened mouth, and short and freckled upper lip. The relievedfugitive turned from the three remoter figures to the one beside him,and saw, for the first time, that it was fair. At which he smiled, andher face flushed and was irradiated.
Then they fell to talk,--he grateful, boastful,--as the distant figuresgrew dim; she quickly assenting, but following his expression ratherthan his words, with her own girlish face and brightening eyes. But whathe said, or how he explained his position, with what speciousness hedwelt upon himself, his wrongs, and his manifold manly virtues, is notnecessary for us to know, nor was it, indeed, for her to understand.Enough for her that she felt she had found the one man of all the world,and that she was at that moment protecting him against all the world! Hewas the unexpected, spontaneous gift to her, the companion her childhoodhad never known, the lover she had never dreamed of, even the child ofher unsatisfied maternal yearnings. If she could not comprehend all hisselfish incoherences, she felt it was her own fault; if she could notfollow his ignorant assumptions, she knew it was SHE who was deficient;if she could not translate his coarse speech, it was because it was thelanguage of a larger world from which she had been excluded. To thisworld belonged the beautiful limbs she gazed on,--a very differentworld from that which had produced the rheumatic deformities and uselessmayhem of her husband, or the provincially foppish garments of thedeputy. Sitting in the hayloft together, where she had mounted forgreater security, they forgot themselves in his monologue of cheapvaporing, broken only by her assenting smiles and her half-checkedsighs. The sharp spices of the heated pine-shingles over their headsand the fragrance of the clover-scented hay filled the close air aroundthem. The sun was falling with the wind, but they heeded it not; untilthe usual fateful premonition struck the woman, and saying "I must gonow," she only half-unconsciously precipitated the end. For, as sherose, he caught first her hand and then her waist, and attempted toraise the face that was suddenly bending down as if seeking to hideitself in the hay. It was a brief struggle, ending in a submission assudden, and their lips met in a kiss, so eager that it might have beenimpending for days instead of minutes.
"Oh, Sue! where are ye?"
It was her husband's voice, out of a darkness that they only thenrealized. The man threw her aside with a roughness that momentarilyshocked her above any sense of surprise or shame: SHE would haveconfronted her husband in his arms,--glorified and translated,--had hebut kept her there. Yet she answered, with a quiet, level voice thatastonished her lover, "Here! I'm just coming down!" and walked coollyto the ladder. Looking over, and seeing her husband with the deputystanding in the barnyard, she quickly returned, put her finger to herlips, made a gesture for her companion to conceal himself in the hayagain, and was turning away, when, perhaps shamed by her superiorcalmness, he grasped her hand tightly and whispered, "Come againtonight, dear; do!" She hesitated, raised her hand suddenly to her lips,and then quickly disengaging it, slipped down the ladder.
"Ye haven't done much work yet as I kin see," said Ira wearily. "Whiteyand Red Tip [the cows] are hangin' over the corral, just waitin'."
"The yellow hen we reckoned was lost is sittin' in the hayloft, andmustn't be disturbed," said Mrs. Beasley, with decision; "and ye'll haveto take the hay from the stack to-night. And," with an arch glance atthe deputy, "as I don't see that you two have done much either, you'rejust in time to help fodder down."
Setting the three men to work with the same bright audacity, the taskwas soon completed--particularly as the deputy found no opportunity forexclusive dalliance with Mrs. Beasley. She shut the barn door herself,and led the way to the house, learning incidentally that the deputy hadabandoned the chase, was to occupy a "shake-down" on the kitchen-floorthat night with the constable, and depart at daybreak. The gloom ofher husband's face had settled into a look of heavy resignation andalternate glances of watchfulness, which only seemed to inspire herwith renewed vivacity. But the cooking of supper withdrew her disturbingpresence for a time from the room, and gave him some relief. Whenthe meal was ready he sought further surcease from trouble in copiousdraughts of whiskey, which she produced from a new bottle, and evenpressed upon the deputy in mischievous contrition for her previousinhospitality.
"Now I know that it wasn't whiskey only ye came for, I'll show you thatSue Beasley is no slouch of a barkeeper either," she said.
Then, rolling her sleeves above her pretty arms, she mixed a cocktail insuch delightful imitation of the f
ashionable barkeeper's dexterity thather guests were convulsed with admiration. Even Ira was struck withthis revelation of a youthfulness that five years of household care hadchecked, but never yet subdued. He had forgotten that he had married achild. Only once, when she glanced at the cheap clock on the mantel,had he noticed another change, more remarkable still from its veryinconsistency with her burst of youthful spirits. It was another facethat he saw,--older and matured with an intensity of abstraction thatstruck a chill to his heart. It was not HIS Sue that was standing there,but another Sue, wrought, as it seemed to his morbid extravagance, bysome one else's hand.
Yet there was another interval of relief when his wife, declaring shewas tired, and even jocosely confessing to some effect of the liquor shehad pretended to taste, went early to bed. The deputy, not finding thegloomy company of the husband to his taste, presently ensconced himselfon the floor, before the kitchen fire, in the blankets that she hadprovided. The constable followed his example. In a few moments the housewas silent and sleeping, save for Ira sitting alone, with his head sunkon his chest and his hands gripping the arms of his chair before thedying embers of his hearth.
He was trying, with the alternate quickness and inaction of aninexperienced intellect and an imagination morbidly awakened, to graspthe situation before him. The common sense that had hitherto governedhis life told him that the deputy would go to-morrow, and that there wasnothing in his wife's conduct to show that her coquetry and aberrationwould not pass as easily. But it recurred to him that she had nevershown this coquetry or aberration to HIM during their own briefcourtship,--that she had never looked or acted like this before. If thiswas love, she had never known it; if it was only "women's ways," as hehad heard men say, and so dangerously attractive, why had she not shownit to him? He remembered that matter-of-fact wedding, the bride withouttimidity, without blushes, without expectation beyond the transferenceof her home to his. Would it have been different with another man?--withthe deputy, who had called this color and animation to her face? Whatdid it all mean? Were all married people like this? There were theWestons, their neighbors,--was Mrs. Weston like Sue? But he rememberedthat Mrs. Weston had run away with Mr. Weston from her father's house.It was what they called "a love match." Would Sue have run away withhim? Would she now run away with--?
The candle was guttering as he rose with a fierce start--his firstimpulse of anger--from the table. He took another gulp of whiskey. Ittasted like water; its fire was quenched in the greater heat of hisblood. He would go to bed. Here a new and indefinable timidity tookpossession of him; he remembered the strange look in his wife's face. Itseemed suddenly as if the influence of the sleeping stranger in the nextroom had not only isolated her from him, but would make his presencein her bedroom an intrusion on their hidden secrets. He had to pass theopen door of the kitchen. The head of the unconscious deputy was closeto Ira's heavy boot. He had only to lift his heel to crush that ruddy,good-looking, complacent face. He hurried past him, up the creakingstairs. His wife lay still on one side of the bed, apparently asleep,her face half-hidden in her loosened, fluffy hair. It was well; for inthe vague shyness and restraint that was beginning to take possessionof him he felt he could not have spoken to her, or, if he had, it wouldhave been only to voice the horrible, unformulated things that seemed tochoke him. He crept softly to the opposite side of the bed, and began toundress. As he pulled off his boots and stockings, his eye fell uponhis bare, malformed feet. This caused him to look at his maimed hand,to rise, drag himself across the floor to the mirror, and gaze upon hislacerated ear. She, this prettily formed woman lying there, must haveseen it often; she must have known all these years that he was not likeother men,--not like the deputy, with his tight riding-boots, his softhand, and the diamond that sparkled vulgarly on his fat little finger.A cold sweat broke over him. He drew on his stockings again, lifted theouter counterpane, and, half undressed, crept under it, wrapping itscorner around his maimed hand, as if to hide it from the light. Yet hefelt that he saw things dimly; there was a moisture on his cheeks andeyelids he could not account for; it must be the whiskey "coming out."
His wife lay very still; she scarcely seemed to breathe. What if sheshould never breathe again, but die as the old Sue he knew, the lankygirl he had married, unchanged and uncontaminated? It would be betterthan this. Yet at the same moment the picture was before him of herpretty simulation of the barkeeper, of her white bared arms and laughingeyes, all so new, so fresh to him! He tried to listen to the slowticking of the clock, the occasional stirring of air through the house,and the movement, like a deep sigh, which was the regular, inarticulatespeech of the lonely plain beyond, and quite distinct from the eveningbreeze. He had heard it often, but, like so many things he had learnedthat day, he never seemed to have caught its meaning before. Then,perhaps, it was his supine position, perhaps some cumulative effect ofthe whiskey he had taken, but all this presently became confused andwhirling. Out of its gyrations he tried to grasp something, to hearvoices that called him to "wake," and in the midst of it he fell into aprofound sleep.
The clock ticked, the wind sighed, the woman at his side lay motionlessfor many minutes.
Then the deputy on the kitchen floor rolled over with an appallingsnort, struggled, stretched himself, and awoke. A healthy animal, he hadshaken off the fumes of liquor with a dry tongue and a thirst for waterand fresh air. He raised his knees and rubbed his eyes. The water bucketwas missing from the corner. Well, he knew where the spring was, and aturn out of the close and stifling kitchen would do him good. Heyawned, put on his boots softly, opened the back door, and stepped out.Everything was dark, but above and around him, to the very level of hisfeet, all apparently pricked with bright stars. The bulk of the barnrose dimly before him on the right, to the left was the spring. Hereached it, drank, dipped his head and hands in it, and arose refreshed.The dry, wholesome breath that blew over this flat disk around him,rimmed with stars, did the rest. He began to saunter slowly back,the only reminiscence of his evening's potations being the figure herecalled of his pretty hostess, with bare arms and lifted glasses,imitating the barkeeper. A complacent smile straightened his yellowmustache. How she kept glancing at him and watching him, the littlewitch! Ha! no wonder! What could she find in the surly, slinking, stupidbrute yonder? (The gentleman here alluded to was his host.) But thedeputy had not been without a certain provincial success with the fair.He was true to most men, and fearless to all. One may not be too hardupon him at this moment of his life.
For as he was passing the house he stopped suddenly. Above the dry,dusty, herbal odors of the plain, above the scent of the new-mown haywithin the barn, there was distinctly another fragrance,--the smell ofa pipe. But where? Was it his host who had risen to take the outer air?Then it suddenly flashed upon him that Beasley did NOT smoke, northe constable either. The smell seemed to come from the barn. Had hefollowed out the train of ideas thus awakened, all might have been well;but at this moment his attention was arrested by a far more excitingincident to him,--the draped and hooded figure of Mrs. Beasley was justemerging from the house. He halted instantly in the shadow, and heldhis breath as she glided quickly across the intervening space anddisappeared in the half-opened door of the barn. Did she know hewas there? A keen thrill passed over him; his mouth broadened into abreathless smile. It was his last! for, as he glided forward to thedoor, the starry heavens broke into a thousand brilliant fragmentsaround him, the earth gave way beneath his feet, and he fell forwardwith half his skull shot away.
Where he fell there he lay without an outcry, with only onemovement,--the curved and grasping fingers of the fighter's hand towardshis guarded hip. Where he fell there he lay dead, his face downwards,his good right arm still curved around across his back. Nothing of himmoved but his blood,--broadening slowly round him in vivid color, andthen sluggishly thickening and darkening until it stopped too, and sankinto the earth, a dull brown stain. For an instant the stillness ofdeath followed the echoless report, then there was a quick and feveris
hrustling within the barn, the hurried opening of a window in the loft,scurrying footsteps, another interval of silence, and then out of thefarther darkness the sounds of horse-hoofs in the muffled dust of theroad. But not a sound or movement in the sleeping house beyond.
The stars at last paled slowly, the horizon lines came back,--a thinstreak of opal fire. A solitary bird twittered in the bush beside thespring. Then the back door of the house opened, and the constable cameforth, half-awakened and apologetic, and with the bewildered haste of abelated man. His eyes were level, looking for his missing leader as hewent on, until at last he stumbled and fell over the now cold and rigidbody. He scrambled to his feet again, cast a hurried glance aroundhim,--at the half-opened door of the barn, at the floor littered withtrampled hay. In one corner lay the ragged blouse and trousers of thefugitive, which the constable instantly recognized. He went back to thehouse, and reappeared in a few moments with Ira, white, stupefied, andhopelessly bewildered; clear only in his statement that his wife hadjust fainted at the news of the catastrophe, and was equally helpless inher own room. The constable--a man of narrow ideas but quick action--sawit all. The mystery was plain without further evidence. The deputy hadbeen awakened by the prowling of the fugitive around the house in searchof a horse. Sallying out, they had met, and Ira's gun, which stood inthe kitchen, and which the deputy had seized, had been wrested from himand used with fatal effect at arm's length, and the now double assassinhad escaped on the sheriff's horse, which was missing. Turning the bodyover to the trembling Ira, he saddled his horse and galloped to Lowvillefor assistance.
These facts were fully established at the hurried inquest which met thatday. There was no need to go behind the evidence of the constable, theonly companion of the murdered man and first discoverer of the body. Thefact that he, on the ground floor, had slept through the struggle andthe report, made the obliviousness of the couple in the room abovea rational sequence. The dazed Ira was set aside, after half a dozencontemptuous questions; the chivalry of a Californian jury excused theattendance of a frightened and hysterical woman confined to her room.By noon they had departed with the body, and the long afternoon shadowssettled over the lonely plain and silent house. At nightfall Iraappeared at the door, and stood for some moments scanning the plain; hewas seen later by two packers, who had glanced furtively at the sceneof the late tragedy, sitting outside his doorway, a mere shadow in thedarkness; and a mounted patrol later in the night saw a light in thebedroom window where the invalid Mrs. Beasley was confined. But no onesaw her afterwards. Later, Ira explained that she had gone to visit arelative until her health was restored. Having few friends and fewerneighbors, she was not missed; and even the constable, the solesurviving guest who had enjoyed her brief eminence of archness andbeauty that fatal night, had quite forgotten her in his vengeful questof the murderer. So that people became accustomed to see this lonely manworking in the fields by day, or at nightfall gazing fixedly from hisdoorway. At the end of three months he was known as the recluse or"hermit" of Bolinas Plain; in the rapid history-making of that epoch itwas forgotten that he had ever been anything else.
But Justice, which in those days was apt to nod over the affairs of theaverage citizen, was keenly awake to offenses against its own officers;and it chanced that the constable, one day walking through the streetsof Marysville, recognized the murderer and apprehended him. He wasremoved to Lowville. Here, probably through some modest doubt of theability of the County Court, which the constable represented, to dealwith purely circumstantial evidence, he was not above dropping a hint tothe local Vigilance Committee, who, singularly enough, in spite of hisresistance, got possession of the prisoner. It was the rainy season, andbusiness was slack; the citizens of Lowville were thus enabled togive so notorious a case their fullest consideration, and to assistcheerfully at the ultimate hanging of the prisoner, which seemed to be aforegone conclusion.
But herein they were mistaken. For when the constable had given hisevidence, already known to the county, there was a disturbance in thefringe of humanity that lined the walls of the assembly room where thecommittee was sitting, and the hermit of Bolinas Plain limped painfullyinto the room. He had evidently walked there: he was soaked with rainand plastered with mud; he was exhausted and inarticulate. But as hestaggered to the witness-bench, and elbowed the constable aside, hearrested the attention of every one. A few laughed, but werepromptly silenced by the court. It was a reflection upon its onlyvirtue,--sincerity.
"Do you know the prisoner?" asked the judge.
Ira Beasley glanced at the pale face of the acrobat, and shook his head.
"Never saw him before," he said faintly.
"Then what are you doing here?" demanded the judge sternly.
Ira collected himself with evident effort, and rose to his halting feet.First he moistened his dry lips, then he said, slowly and distinctly,"Because I killed the deputy of Bolinas."
With the thrill which ran through the crowded room, and the relief thatseemed to come upon him with that utterance, he gained strength and evena certain dignity.
"I killed him," he went on, turning his head slowly around the circle ofeager auditors with the rigidity of a wax figure, "because he madelove to my wife. I killed him because he wanted to run away with her. Ikilled him because I found him waiting for her at the door of the barnat the dead o' night, when she'd got outer bed to jine him. He hadn't nogun. He hadn't no fight. I killed him in his tracks. That man," pointingto the prisoner, "wasn't in it at all." He stopped, loosened his collar,and, baring his rugged throat below his disfigured ear, said: "Now takeme out and hang me!"
"What proof have we of this? Where's your wife? Does she corroborateit?"
A slight tremor ran over him.
"She ran away that night, and never came back again. Perhaps," he addedslowly, "because she loved him and couldn't bear me; perhaps, as I'vesometimes allowed to myself, gentlemen, it was because she didn't wantto bear evidence agin me."
In the silence that followed the prisoner was heard speaking to one thatwas near him. Then he rose. All the audacity and confidence that thehusband had lacked were in HIS voice. Nay, there was even a certainchivalry in his manner which, for the moment, the rascal reallybelieved.
"It's true!" he said. "After I stole the horse to get away, I found thatwoman running wild down the road, cryin' and sobbin'. At first I thoughtshe'd done the shooting. It was a risky thing for me to do, gentlemen;but I took her up on the horse and got her away to Lowville. It was thatmuch dead weight agin my chances, but I took it. She was a woman and--Iain't a dog!"
He was so exalted and sublimated by his fiction that for the first timethe jury was impressed in his favor. And when Ira Beasley limped acrossthe room, and, extending his maimed hand to the prisoner, said, "Shake!"there was another dead silence.
It was broken by the voice of the judge addressing the constable.
"What do you know of the deputy's attentions to Mrs. Beasley? Were theyenough to justify the husband's jealousy? Did he make love to her?"
The constable hesitated. He was a narrow man, with a crude sense ofthe principles rather than the methods of justice. He remembered thedeputy's admiration; he now remembered, even more strongly, the objectof that admiration, simulating with her pretty arms the gestures ofthe barkeeper, and the delight it gave them. He was loyal to hisdead leader, but he looked up and down, and then said, slowly andhalf-defiantly: "Well, judge, he was a MAN."
Everybody laughed. That the strongest and most magic of all humanpassions should always awake levity in any public presentment of orallusion to it was one of the inconsistencies of human nature which evena lynch judge had to admit. He made no attempt to control the titteringof the court, for he felt that the element of tragedy was no longerthere. The foreman of the jury arose and whispered to the judge amidanother silence. Then the judge spoke:--
"The prisoner and his witness are both discharged. The prisoner to leavethe town within twenty-four hours; the witness to be conducted to hisown ho
use at the expense of, and with the thanks of, the Committee."
They say that one afternoon, when a low mist of rain had settled overthe sodden Bolinas Plain, a haggard, bedraggled, and worn-out womanstepped down from a common "freighting wagon" before the doorway whereBeasley still sat; that, coming forward, he caught her in his arms andcalled her "Sue;" and they say that they lived happily together everafterwards. But they say--and this requires some corroboration--thatmuch of that happiness was due to Mrs. Beasley's keeping forever in herhusband's mind her own heroic sacrifice in disappearing as a witnessagainst him, her own forgiveness of his fruitless crime, and thegratitude he owed to the fugitive.