At this, laughter rang through the courtroom. Attorneys, spectators, and several of the jurors were unable to contain their merriment. Judge Hemphill rapped for order. This time it was Major Westall who seized Jason by the sleeve to keep him in his chair.
Kinstrey was bowing to the jury as gracefully as though he were at a grand ball.
“Gentlemen,” he finished, “it would be idle for me, and irksome for you, if I detained you longer in argument of a case that needs so little argument. I yield the floor to Squire Morgan. He, I dare say, will give you some wholesome entertainment with what he can find to say on behalf of the plaintiff.”
He sat down beside Enderby and accepted a pinch of snuff from the planter’s glittering box.
17 The Truth About the Grave
Major Westall’s old hand fell from Jason’s sleeve, and Jason rose slowly to his full height. He heard a hushed titter among the listeners on the benches, and the fury that rose within him drove the last nervous quiver from his limbs. He took a step away from his chair. That step seemed to place him in a great empty area, away from chairs, desks, companions, away from everything. He looked at Judge Hemphill, who waited like a stone figure of stern justice; then he looked at the jurymen. They sat waiting, and one or two could not conceal grins.
That grinning completed the work of steadying Jason. He reflected, briefly, that so far he had managed his first case as a green rider manages an unbroken, rebellious horse. It had refused to move when he wanted it to; it had almost run away with him without his wish. But now he could say what was in his mind about the courthouse matter.
“If Your Honor please,” Jason began slowly, “and gentlemen of the jury. I take leave to begin by noting what Squire Kinstrey has just said about my youth.”
From the corner of his eye he saw that Kinstrey whispered to Enderby, and that both of them laughed silently.
“Perhaps he attempts to argue that being young is a crime,” went on Jason. “You, as a jury in a court of law, had best decide that question for us. If youth is a crime, then I am guilty. I cannot remedy my fault of having no more than nineteen years. Nor can I reasonably excuse it. Nobody can ultimately depart from the truth, though once or twice during this trial such a departure has been attempted. I can only hope that my youth will vanish from me as time goes on, and that when I have maturity at last I will have gained with it the intelligence and manners lacked by the attorney who here represents the defendant.”
Now Jason let himself look full at Milo Kinstrey, who still sat chuckling.
“I am young, yes,” said Jason, more earnestly, “yet, I think, I am past my childhood. I’m not a helpless baby, gentlemen. The things that have been said about me, and about the case in which I am called before you, I feel able to answer with my own words before this court. As to Squire Kinstrey’s suggestion that I should be whipped with hickory switches—” He broke off, and gazed levelly at the other attorney. “I feel able, also, to defend myself with blows somewhere else. Gentlemen of the jury, you may come and watch there, if you like, to see who gets the worst whipping.”
“Good for you, youngster!” cried somebody from the benches.
“Who said that?” cried Judge Hemphill. “Mr. Sheriff, if there is more disturbance, arrest someone.”
Silence again; but Jason, glancing benchward, saw Snipe Witherspoon wink swiftly.
Kinstrey stirred where he sat. “Your Honor,” he said, with a fine show of languid good humor, “I venture to speak at this moment, to hope that Squire Morgan does not add to his indiscretions by offering me a challenge in your presence.”
“I offer no challenge, your Honor,” said Jason, more sharply still. “I simply comment on what has been said, to me and about me, in scorn and criticism. I say it in order that nobody will believe me afraid, of hickory switches or other weapons.”
The judge said nothing for a moment, but a glint in his eye suggested a trace of amusement. Then:
“If you gentlemen have finished with your hints of violence,” he said, “the court will be obliged to have you return to the matter of law now before us.”
“I shall be glad to do so, your Honor,” vowed Jason. “Now, gentlemen of the jury, I shall most certainly return to the matter of law before us. I’ll begin by saying frankly that this should have been a criminal trial, not a civil one.”
“Wait, Squire Morgan!” rapped Judge Hemphill, his hand on his gavel. “I, too, recognize your youth and inexperience, and I must remind you that you are obliged to confine yourself to what the evidence has purported to show.”
Looking around at the judge, Jason had a view of the front window, and his heart rose like a bird.
For through the window he saw three men approaching across the town square, one man behind the other two. They walked swiftly, tensely. The two in the lead were the men who had twice tried to kill Squire Colquitt. Behind them walked Cut Nose, his rifle at the ready, his face like a whittled mask of stern, deadly purpose.
“Your Honor, evidence has been concealed here until this very moment,” said Jason, his voice suddenly resonant with triumph. “The defendant in this case has been guilty of fraud, deceit, and complicity in attempted theft and murder!”
“For the last time, young man, confine yourself to the evidence!” barked Judge Hemphill threateningly.
“I am doing so, your Honor. Mr. Enderby sat here as a witness, under oath to tell the truth, and he denied that he had hired criminals to attack Squire Colquitt. Your Honor, the time has come to bring his lie home to him!”
Enderby’s face turned bright red, and he leaned forward. Kinstrey hopped to his feet.
“Here they are, Mr. Enderby!” cried Jason. “The living answers to your lies!”
There was a disturbance as the door opened. The crowd in the aisle fell back left and right, everybody seeming to cry out at once. Into the room walked the two men Jason knew, the heavy one and the lean, swarthy one, their hands lifted above their heads. Behind them, hard and menacing as a war hatchet, paced Cut Nose.
Yet again Judge Hemphill’s gavel fell, but Jason took two long, quick strides to the table.
“Your Honor, I urge you to hear me out for a dozen words,” he pleaded. “I’m going to impeach Mr. Enderby’s testimony and claims, exhibit him before your Honor and this jury as criminally false.” He pointed toward the two approaching prisoners. “Look at those men, Asper Enderby! Your fellow-plotters have come home to roost!”
Enderby sprang up and whirled around. The two men paused almost before him, and he stared into the heavy face, then into the gaunt, swarthy one.
“What’s this trick ?” he demanded.
“It’s no trick at all, sir,” said Jason. “They’re the men you hired to kill Squire Colquitt, to keep him from trying this case against you. They’re the men who dug up Sun Chief’s body, and they’re here to say so. Why don’t you tell the truth, too?”
“I never set eye on either of these two gallows-birds before in my life!” Enderby fairly howled.
“Squire Morgan, I warn you—” began Judge Hemphill, but a louder voice shouted him down.
“Gallows-birds, is it, you call us?” bellowed the swarthy, lean man with the pointed beard. “You’re going to save your skin by saying you don’t know us? Let us go to jail when you put us up to all this?”
The heavy man made a leap. His hands reached for Enderby’s throat. Cut Nose struck with the barrel of his rifle as with a whip. The heavy man crumpled and fell with a gusty sigh.
Then a racket broke out everywhere; the listeners, the lawyers, the twelve jurymen starting from their seats—all shouted and shoved at once. Jason moved from the table toward the smaller prisoner, who stood transfixed while his eyes glared murderously at Enderby.
“Mr. Sheriff!” raged Judge Hemphill, on his feet with the others. “I want order in this courtroom, and at once!”
Sheriff Thompson came pushing powerfully through the crowd, and his hand fell on the shoulder of the swarthy little man.
“All right, Sheriff!” wailed the prisoner. “All right, I did it! But I wasn’t alone, and I’m not going to take the blame alone!”
“Shut up, you,” Enderby shouted at him.
“I won’t shut up!” The spike-bearded face writhed, a sinewy hand lifted and pointed at Enderby. “He made me do it, Sheriff! He paid me and Harry Munson to shoot at Squire Colquitt—”
Enderby shoved a hand inside his vest and whipped out a snub-nosed, broad-muzzled pocket pistol. He thrust it almost into his accuser’s swarthy face.
But Jason dived at Enderby. Stooping low as he threw himself, he clasped his long arms around Enderby’s legs, gathered them close, and threw the planter heavily upon the floor planking. They both struck with a mighty whack. Struggling to pin
Enderby, Jason caught the wrist of the hand that held the pistol. There was a roaring report, but the bullet drove into the wood of the floor.
“You’re under arrest!” Jason heard Sheriff Thompson shout above the clamor of the crowd, and felt a hard hand clutching his shoulder.
He rose quickly, his eyes smarting from powder smoke, and turned to stammer some sort of protest. But Thompson was looking, not at him but at Enderby, who still lay sprawled on the floor; and Jason knew that it was the planter who was under arrest.
Slowly Enderby got to his feet. Sheriff Thompson took die still smoking pistol from Enderby’s limp hand.
“The next person who speaks without leave,” came Judge Hemphill’s angry cry, “will be locked in the county jail for thirty days, with bread and water to eat and a ball and chain fast to his ankle!”
Once again he brought down the gavel upon the hard wooden table. “Sit down, everyone!” he commanded in a voice like the firing of a great cannon.
People obeyed him. The jurymen dropped back into their chairs. The lawyers returned to their places. Spectators sought to crowd into their places on the benches. In the open space remained only Enderby, Sheriff Thompson, Jason, Cut Nose, and the sinewy little man with the chin beard. The stocky fellow called Harry still lay limply where Cut Nose’s rifle barrel had felled him.
“Somebody tend to that fellow who got knocked down,” ordered the judge. “Now, Sheriff, fetch those other people forward to me.”
Thompson caught the bearded man by the collar, and with his other hand pushed Enderby toward the desk. Jason followed them, and Cut Nose, gun laid across his left arm, followed Jason. They ranged themselves in a row before the table. The judge stared from one to the other of them, his eyes fierce and challenging.
“Very well, you,” he addressed the bearded man. “What’s your name?”
A pause. A tongue licked the lean lips. “Stamm Harnish,” was the mumbled reply.
“Is that your real name?” barked the judge.
“Yes, sir—yes, Your Honor. He,” and the beard wagged toward the tottering Enderby, “he knows me.”
“Is that true, sir?” the judge demanded of Enderby.
“Yes, Your Honor,” admitted Enderby wretchedly. “His name’s Stamm Harnish.”
“All right, Stamm Harnish.” Judge Hemphill fixed his baleful eyes upon the man. “Tell us exactly what this is about, and don’t lie. Because if you do, we’ll find out, and then it will be ten times worse for you.”
“I’ll tell the truth, Your Honor,” said Stamm Harnish, his voice shaking. “He—Mr. Enderby, I mean—set Harry and me on Squire Colquitt.”
“Harry?” echoed the judge. “Who’s Harry? That fellow lying on the floor yonder?”
“Yes. That’s Harry Munson. Mr. Enderby told us last spring —the time of circuit court, that’s when it was—that Squire Colquitt had a big sum of money with him, the fees he’d collected; told us where we could meet him and kill him and take his money.”
“I was there when they tried to do it, Your Honor,” offered Jason.
“Squire Morgan, oblige me by waiting until I ask you something before you speak,” Judge Hemphill withered him. “I’ve heard this story; Colquitt himself told me about it. Well, Harnish, you failed to kill and rob Squire Colquitt that first time. What then?”
“Mr. Enderby wanted us to kill that Indian—the one back there behind me.” Harnish did not want to look at Cut Nose, but he jerked his head to show whom he meant. “We didn’t get to do it. Then, last Friday, Mr. Enderby gave us money. He said we were to shoot Squire Colquitt—we were in Rayfield then—get him out of this case.”
“And that’s a lie!” blustered Enderby.
“Sheriff,” growled the judge, “if Mr. Enderby so much as opens his mouth again except to answer a direct question from this court, you are to hit him over the head with something. Whatever sort of murdering outlaw this man Harnish is, I think he’s telling the truth. Go on with your story, Harnish. Tell us how Mr. Enderby came to be acquainted with you and your partner who looks so languid back there.”
“We used to work for him, Your Honor,” said Harnish. “We got into some law trouble and had to go away, but we kept in touch.”
“Squire Morgan,” said the judge thoughtfully, “did you suggest that these men had something to do with digging up Sun Chief’s body before the sale to Major Westall?”
“We did that, Your Honor,” supplied Harnish. “Dug up the grave of Sun Chief so his people could take his bones with them when they traveled off West.”
“I see,” nodded the judge, “and what did you put in the grave when you filled it up again?”
“Why, nothing,” said Harnish. “We just flung in some trash— the Indians had roasted a hog and ate it—”
“And you buried those bones where Sun Chief’s bones had been,” finished the judge for him. “Thank you, Harnish. You’ve cleared up one little mystery. That will do for the moment.” He leaned back. He looked weary and worn, and somewhat apologetic, as he nodded to Jason.
“Squire Morgan, perhaps you have something to ask.”
“Your Honor, I move that the trial be reopened,” replied Jason exultantly. “I move that this man Harnish be sworn as a witness and that his story be heard by the jury in proper form.”
“Oh, ten thousand devils!” groaned Judge Hemphill. “That won’t be necessary. Not this term of court. Sheriff, put these three men under lock and key.”
“Which three, Your Honor?” asked Thompson.
“Enderby and Harnish and—what’s his name there? He seems to be trying to sit up. Oh, yes, Harry Munson. Lock them up. Where’s Mr. Solicitor Parks?”
“I’m here, Your Honor,” said the solicitor from the rear of the room.
“You recognize, Mr. Solicitor, that you will have certain matters to attend to in the way of criminal charges? Ask the sheriff to help you. But first—oh yes, Squire Morgan, we mustn’t forget this matter of the courthouse. Where’s the attorney for the defendant?”
“Squire Kinstrey!” called the clerk.
Nobody answered. Jason turned and looked around the room. Kinstrey was not in sight.
“Please, Your Honor,” spoke up Snipe Witherspoon, “Squire Kinstrey left. Mighty sudden and quick, too, like he was going somewhere far off.”
“Mmmmm,” the judge murmured. “Perhaps he felt that he had a good reason. Well, I’ll proceed without him.”
He turned in his chair and looked at the jury.
“Gentlemen, it is my duty, as presiding judge of this court, to instruct you. I doubt whether I shall need as much as a full minute to do so. The court hereby advises and directs that you and each of you shall, here and now, return a verdict for the plaintiff in this matter, setting aside and holding for naught the restraining order brought by the defendant to enjoin the plaintiff from causing the courthouse to be built. Is that understood? No, no, don’t bother to tell me. Mr. Clerk, record the matter as so dealt with.”
And he sagged down in his chair. He looked old and almost sick.
“This court will stand adjourned until tomorrow morning at half-past nine o’clock,” he said.
18 A Sign for the Door
The late November weather was warm, even for Alabama. The sun shone brightly through the last of autumn’s red and yellow leaves, making a pleasant mildness in the front yard of Squire Henry Colquitt.
When Solicitor Rinehart Parks rode into Moshawnee and came to call, Jason brought out two comfortable chairs with bottoms of woven juniper bark, and placed them against the sunny side of the office shed. He and Parks sat and talked there, without overcoats or hats. Through the half-open front windows of the house resounded a clatter of pots and pans as brown Purney prepared the noon meal. Once Betsy came out to shake a dust cloth, and smiled and waved at Jason and the solicitor.
As Parks and Jason talked, they glanced now and then toward Moshawnee’s town square. In its center a sturdy foundation of stone had been laid and strongly mortared. At the rear half workmen were pegging sills for the timber structure that would make up the back section of Foresby County’s new courthouse. The fore part would be of cut stone, and masons were being sent from Montgomery to build it properly.
“By the spring term of circuit court, that building will be ready,” observed Jason. “The jail’s already finished. That’s right, we have a jail, and we have people in it, too.”
“I know,” Parks replied. “I’ve just come from there. I was interviewing those two unhappy fellows, Harry Munson and Stamm Harnish.”
“And did they have something to tell you?”
“They had a vast deal to tell me, all of it interesting. They’re ready to plead guilty, give full evidence for the state, and throw themselves on the mercy of the court in hopes of a light sentence.”
“Those murderers!” Jason growled, and Parks could not but smile at him.
“Gently, my friend, gently. Munson and Harnish aren’t murderers with any great success, so far as we can learn, and we’ve been fairly deep into their records. No, only would-be murderers. In two tries at Squire Colquitt and one at Cut Nose, they were 'unable to inflict a mortal wound. That argues no great skill at murdering.”
Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1956 Page 14