Through the Shadows with O'Henry

by Эл Дженнингс

  The calaboose was a wooden pen about 8 x 10 feet. For six weeks I was kept there with Mexican Pete for my guard. Pete would sit in the sun outside the grating and describe my execution. He went into all its details. Every morning he strung me up in a different way. But he was a good sort. After the first week we were friends. Pete had all the Mexican treachery to the stranger and all their doglike fidelity to a friend.

  They would have hanged me with as little compunction as they would have drowned an excess kitten, but they felt no hatred for me as a murderer. Life was reckoned cheap in the cow country.

  One morning Pete stuck his head between the bars of the calaboose. His long yellow teeth gleamed. "Your padre, he come," he said.

  It was as if lightning went through me. I thought that Pete was poking more fun at me. He repeated, "Your padre, big fellow, he come."

  I would rather have been taken out to the tree and hanged. I did not want to see my father. I had that picture of him lying at Shrieber's store burned into my mind. But I had also the memory of a hundred gentle things he had done, balancing the roughness of that last impression. I did not want him to see me in the pen with a Mexican standing guard over me. For the first time I felt sorry for the whole affair.

  It was Chicken who had sent for him. Once in a fit of depression I had confided in him. We were out on night herd together. The thick breath of the hot evening weighed about us. The cattle had been restless, cracking their horns together, crowding and scuffling. We had bedded them down at last on the level prairie and there was that tremendous silence of the night which rests like the hush of death over the plains.

  A storm was coming. We feared a stampede. Chicken and I sat on our horses, riding slowly around the cattle, singing to quiet them. We began to hear the rolling boom of thunder. Lightning struck through the darkness, darting its uncanny flash about the horns of the steers.

  I felt lonesome and homesick and full of premonitions. Often since the death of Jim Stanton I had thought of going back. I was tired of the isolation, of the ranges. I wondered about my father and my brothers. I wanted them to know if I died. This night I told Chicken to write to my father's people in Charleston, Va., if I should be killed.

  Pete stood there grinning at me. Never in my life have I felt so hot with shame and humiliation. I wanted to escape. I came out from my corner to beg Pete to free me. My father, straight, kind, smiling, stood looking at me, his hand stretched through the bars of the calaboose, <...>

  CHAPTER IV.

  Release from jail; quiet years in Virginia; study of law; a new migration to the West; brawl in court; news of death in the night.

  There was such a queer, gentle look in my father's face, as though he were the culprit and not I. It jabbed me to the quick. He never said a word of censure to me—not then nor in all the years that followed.

  But he went quietly to work to win my release. Three days later I left Las Cruces with him. I was not even brought to trial. My father had taken a new start, studied law, won success, gathered the family about him and settled in Charleston, Virginia. The boys he sent to the Virginia Military academy. Frank and I finished the study of law four years later, when I was just past 18.

  There must have been something unstable and reckless in our natures, for our lives never ran along the level. We seemed to court adversity. Our fortunes went like a wave through a continual succession of swells and hollows.

  We struck the hollows when I finished college. The family packed its baggage and moved to Coldwater, Kansas.

  The Middle West was wild, new country then. We moved from Kansas, took up land in Colorado, built the town of Boston, sold town lots, cleared $75,000 and lost every cent of it in the county-seat fight.

  Crumb-clean we went into Oklahoma in 1889. The settlers were all bankrupt. The government even issued food to them. Frank and I were both athletes. We supported the family with the money we earned at foot racing.

  Just about this time one of the periodic swells in our fortunes swept my father into Woodward county, where he was appointed judge by Governor Renfro. John and Ed opened law offices in the same town. I was elected county attorney of El Reno. Frank was deputy clerk in Denver.

  It was the crest of our prosperity. Judge Jennings was the man of weight in the community. He was re-elected almost unanimously. John and Ed were the attorneys in every big case that came up in the courts. My father had built a beautiful home and had a comfortable bank account. We were going forward with a swift, sure current when the Garst affair, like the uncharted rock, blocked our course.

  Many events in my life—pistol shot in the Cincinnati theatre, the desertion in the prairies, the lawlessness of the ranges seemed to have been shaping the channel for the rapids that were to hurl Frank and me into the maelstrom of robbery and murder. The Garst case precipitated the downfall.

  Jack Love had been appointed sheriff at the same time my father was named judge. He was a gambler and a disreputable character. While in office he had a little habit of arresting the citizens and charging them an exit fee in order to get out of jail. He developed also a great penchant for land-grabbing, appropriating 50,000 acres of the government's property.

  Frank Garst rented this land for the pasturage of 1,700 cattle. He agreed to pay Love $3,000. When the bill was presented it was greatly in excess of this sum. Garst refused to pay. Love brought suit. Temple Houston defended the interests of Love; my brother Ed was attorney for Garst.

  Love came to Ed and offered him $1,000 in cash to dump Garst. Ed refused and won the case for his client. He won it on the ground that Love had no right to the land in the first place and was himself a trespasser.

  Love was out his $3,000. He was a bad loser. Ed's fate was really sealed when he won that case. Love waited his chance.

  It came a few weeks later. I went to Woodward to visit my father. Ed was defending a group of boys on a burglary charge. Temple Houston, Love's attorney, was prosecuting. Ed asked me to assist him. The case was going against Houston. The atmosphere was charged with bitterness. In the midst of my plea, Houston got to his feet, slammed his fist on the table and shouted, "Your honor, the gentleman is grossly ignorant of the law."

  "You're a damn' liar," I answered, without any particular heat, but as one asserting an evident fact.

  It was like a blow in the face to Houston. He lost all control of himself. "Take that back, you damn' little !" He hurled the unpardonable epithet, and sprang at me.

  His face was bursting with rage. His hand was on his forty-five and I had mine leveled at him. Lightning anger was striking in all directions. Men rushed to the one side and the other. Somebody dashed the six-shooter from my hand. At the same moment I saw Houston surrounded and disarmed.

  The court proceedings ended for the day. But feeling ran high the white-hot fury of the Southern cow people. Nothing but blood cools it. We knew that the settlement must be made.

  For once in my life I was not eager to square the account with killings. We went to Ed's office, my father and my two brothers. My father's harried face was like a reproach to our hot tempers. He was a broken man. He seemed to see the tragic failure of his life of robust endeavor.

  "What are you going to do?" he asked, almost in an appeal.

  "Nothing, until tomorrow," I told him, for I had made my plans. I intended to meet Houston, apologize for my insults, demand the same from him and let it go at that. If Houston refused it would be time enough to meet the issue.

  My decision was not to be. The town was divided into two factions. Ours outnumbered Houston's two to one. They made up in their rankling animosity what they lacked in numbers. It was as if two tigers stood ready to spring and each but waited to get the other in a corner.

  Ed and John agreed to stay in town to watch the office. I went home with my father.

  Never had the magnetism of his kind, turbulent nature seemed so forcible as in the weakness of his fear for us. He was in a reminiscent mood. For the first time he spoke of that day when he had struck
me down at Shrieber's store. The tears crowded into his eyes. I knew that many a torturing moment had paid for that irresponsible blow.

  At 10 o'clock we went to bed. It was a hot summer night. We left our doors open. I was just dropping into a slumber when I heard the stumble of frantic footsteps on the steps below. The door was pushed to and a broken voice called out :

  "Judge, get up, get up, judge, quick; they have killed both your boys!"

  CHAPTER V.

  Shot from behind; agonies of remorse; death scene in the saloon; a father's rebuke to his son; vengeance delayed.

  "Killed both your boys!"

  The broken cry seemed running up the stairs like a distraught presence; pounding along the walls; shaking through the doors. Its quiver beat through the clamorous silence.

  Thought stopped. My blood seemed to be running into molten steel that was wrapping me in quick, hot suffocation. I felt as though I were melting into a lump of motionless terror.

  My father's voice sprang through the hush a howl, tortured and agonized, that trailed into a whistling moan. It shot through me like a cold blade. Livid, gray, helpless, his hands dropped to his sides, his eyes like burnt holes in a white cloth, he slumped against the door.

  Half dressed, I ran past him, down the street toward the saloon. Something black and hunched fell against me. I put out my hand to strike it off.

  "Only me—got Ed—cleaned out—hurry."

  It was John. His face was a monstrous red stain. His coat was drenched with blood. His left arm—shattered from the shoulder.

  "Hurry 1" he gasped. "Go. I'm O. K. Only got me in the shoulder. Ed's done up. Oh, for God's sake, go and be quick about it."

  Ed was dead. John was dying. My father broken-hearted.

  And all thanks to me! Never was anybody so whipped with remorse, so crushed. Pretty work my crude violence had done at last ! My unbridled temper was the real murderer. If I had not come on this visit! If I had only stayed on the range! If they had only hanged me in Las Cruces! Like a pack of hounds the bitter thoughts kept baying at me as I went that quarter of a mile to the saloon.

  When I lunged through that door the crowd snapped apart like a taut string. Some scooted under the gambling table—others made for the door. The place was cleared.

  And there on the floor, lying in a huge blot of warm blood, his face downward, was my brother Ed. He had been shot through the head, just at the base of the brain.

  All that was good and human and soft in me rushed into my throat, cried itself out and died that hour that I sat there with Ed's head in my lap and his blood soaked into my hands and my clothes. Death was stealing into my soul with a blight more fatal than the wrecking of my brother's body.

  No one spoke—no one put out a hand to me, until presently the doctor leaned forward. "Al, let me do something; get up now."

  At the words the saloon was suddenly a-hum with voices. Men crowded about me. Sentences seemed to rush from them like pebbles down a cliff.

  "He was right there—playing pitch," some one began. Another and another interrupted.

  "They struck from behind— "

  "They sneaked in---"

  "They soaked him when he was down— "

  "They pumped John---"

  "They beat it like coyotes— "

  And then they put it all together and told it again and again from the beginning.

  The saloon was the two-room wooden shack with bar and gambling house combined, the common type in the Middle West a quarter of a century ago. Ed was playing pitch at one of the little side tables in the gambling-room. At one end of this room the town band was giving a concert. A score of crap shooters were busy on either side.

  Temple Houston and Jack Love came in by the back door, passed in front of the band and separated, Houston going toward Ed, (Love sneaking, unseen, behind his table. Both men were drunk.

  "Are you going to apologize?" Houston blubbered. Ed turned and faced him. His back was to Love.

  "When you're sober come back. Apologies will be settled then."

  "That's all I wanted to know," Houston answered, shuffling off. At the same instant Love jammed his forty-five against Ed's head and fired. As he dropped, Houston rushed up and pumped two bullets into my brother's skull.

  When the shooting broke the gamblers barricaded themselves behind the tables. Men in the bar-room scurried into the street. John was standing outside.

  He rushed in as Ed fell. Half way across the outer room Houston and Love caught him with a full volley. Before anyone recovered from the sudden panic the murderers were gone.

  They brought Ed home. John lay dying. My father sat up and watched. I could not go near the house. I went out to the barn and waited. I felt like another Cain.

  There was no indecision in my mind. I knew that my lawless temper had precipitated the killing. But Love had been laying for Ed. He had ribbed Houston to the shooting. They had murdered deliberately, cowardly—they had shot from behind.

  Before the night was over the news went like a flame through the country. Woodward held its breath and waited for the answering shot.

  Houston and Love would come back. They expected me to get them.

  The remorse of the night before had reared like a coiled snake into a poisonous vengeance. There would be no quitting now.

  The mean, sordid gray of early morning had just streaked the night sky. My father came out to the barn. He looked tall and grim, but blanched as a leper.

  "Come in with me." His voice seemed pressed and flattened with misery. "Come in here." He led the way to the room where John lay in a moaning delirium.

  "There's one," he pointed.

  And then he moved silently into the other room where Ed had been placed on the board table.

  My father's cavernous eyes glowed into mine in a blazing scrutiny.

  "There's two," he said.

  "Now what are you going to do? Are you going to finish us?"

  It was like a whiplash cutting a welt across my face. I felt like a beaten, cowering dog.

  Neither of us spoke. It was hard even to breathe. I could see that my father's hand trembled. I did not want to look into his accusing face.

  What did he mean? Did he expect me to do nothing, while all of Woodward waited for the blow?

  He knew the spirit of these prairie towns. Men settled their own accounts in swift and deadly fashion. Ex-fugitives and old range men made up the population. They paid little tribute to the law.

  The marshals who administered it were the meanest men in the country. They were mostly former horse-thieves, rustlers or renegade gamblers.

  The outlaws did their financeering with a six-shooter; the marshals used a whiskey bottle.

  I have known deputy U. S. marshals, dozens of times, deliberately sneak the bottle into the schooner wagons going across the plains; double back on the occupants, search the wagons, find the bottle, tie their victims to the trees, hold them until the scoundrelly trick gave them about 10 prisoners. Then they would drive them all into Fort Smith, produce their fraudulent evidence, collect mileage and cold-bloodedly have those innocent men sent up for four or five years on the charge of introducing liquor into the Indian Territory. Ohio penitentiary, when I landed there, was choked with men serving time on such trumped-up cases.

  The marshals grabbed off about $2,000 on the deal. The oowpunchers who sometimes became outlaws were clean men by comparison. They took little stock in the justice of sneak thieves.

  These things I knew. It was not murder to strike down the men who had shot from the back. In the Middle West, it was honor.

  It was not honor that I wanted, but vengeance. Ed and I had been 12 years together. He had taken the place of Stanton, of Chicken. He was more than either to me. Big natured, clear brained, the gentlest fellow that ever lived—and there he was with the back of his poor head blown off with the murderous bullets.

  "Listen to me!" My father's voice seemed rumbling through a wall of pain. It jerked me back. "Listen to me. Ther
e's been killing enough. There's been sorrow enough.

  "Your brother has paid the penalty of vengeance. John, too, may pay. Where will it end? When Woodward runs with blood?"

  He went on as though he were possessed.

  "You shall not do it. I am the judge here. I was appointed when the county was formed. I was named to maintain the law. If my own sons will not stand by me what can I expect from others?"

  All of a sudden he stopped. His colorless face seemed crumpled with misery. "Al, you won't do anything till Frank comes, will you?"

  Frank came on from Denver. My father had his way.

  "Let them go to trial," Frank said. "He wants it. I'll do no killing."

  Frank was always like that, impulsive, soft-hearted, generous—undecided until he got into action, then he tore ahead deadly and relentless as a very hell on wheels. As for myself, I felt a blazing hatred against them all in my heart. I made one promise. I would wait until the trial was over. If the law failed, I would strike.

  But we could not stay in Woodward. Not even the old gentleman could stand that. He took John down to Tecumseh and almost immediately was named a judge there. Frank and I went to the sheriff, Tob Olden, and told him we would wait. He was disappointed.

  "May want to hit the bull's eye later, boys. When you reckon to bust them off, Tob Olden's house is yours."

  CHAPTER VI.

  In the outlaws' country; acquittal of the assassins; a brother's rage; false accusation; the father's denunciation; refuge in the outlaw's camp.

  Nearly every range on the prairies sheltered and winked at outlaw gangs. From peeler to highway-man was a short step.

  Frank and I went down to the Spike S to hang up till after the trial.

  John Harliss owned the ranch. The Snake Creek and the Arkansas river ran through his 100,000 acres. It was an ideal haunt for fugitives. Harliss was hospitable. The Conchorda Mountains, like tremendous black towers, formed a massive wall on one side. The cliff came down to the creek. On the near side of the water the land rolled out in a magnificent sweep of low hills and valleys.