Red Men and White

by Wister, Owen

  “Once upon a time,” said the sheriff, “there was a man in Arkansaw that had no judgment.”

  “They raise ’em that way in Arkansaw,” said the chatty neighbor, as the company made a circle to hear the story—a tight, cautious circle—with the prisoner and the officer beside him standing in the centre.

  “The man’s wife had good judgment,” continued the narrator, “but she went and died on him.”

  “Well, I guess that was good judgment,” said the neighbor.

  “So the man, he had to run the farm alone. Now they raised poultry, which his wife had always attended to. And he knew she had a habit of setting hens on duck eggs. He had never inquired her reasons, being shiftless, but that fact he knew. Well, come to investigate the hen-house, there was duck eggs, and hens on ’em, and also a heap of hens’ eggs, but no more hens wishing to set. So the man, having no judgment, persuaded a duck to stay with those eggs. Now it’s her I’m chiefly interested in. She was a good enough duck, but hasty. When the eggs hatched out, she didn’t stop to notice, but up and takes them down to the pond, and gets mad with them, and shoves them in, and they drowns. Next day or two a lot of the young ducks, they hatched out and come down with the hen and got in the water all right, and the duck figured out she’d made some mistake, and she felt distressed. But the chickens were in heaven.”

  The sheriff studied his audience, and saw that he had lulled their rage a little. “Now,” said he, “ain’t you boys just a trifle like that duck? I don’t know as I can say much to you more than what I have said, and I don’t know as I can do anything, fixed as I am. This thing looks bad for him we’ve got here. Why, I can see that as well as you. But, boys! it’s an awful thing to kill an innocent man! I saw that done once, and—God forgive me!—I was one of them. I’ll tell you how that was. He looked enough like the man we wanted. We were certainly on the right trail. We came on a cabin we’d never known of before, pretty far up in the hills—a strange cabin, you see. That seemed just right; just where a man would hide. We were mad at the crime committed, and took no thought. We knew we had caught him—that’s the way we felt. So we got our guns ready, and crept up close through the trees, and surrounded that cabin. We called him to come out, and he came with a book in his hands he’d been reading. He did look like the man, and boys!—we gave him no time! He never knew why we fired. He was a harmless old prospector who had got tired of poor luck and knocking around, and over his door he had painted some words: ‘Where the wicked cease from troubling.’ He had figured that up there by that mountain stream the world would let him alone. And ever since then I have thought my life belonged to him first, and me second. Now this afternoon I’m alone here. You know I can’t do much. And I’m going to ask you to help me respect the law. I don’t say that in this big country there may not be places, and there may not be times, when the law is too young or else too rotten to take care of itself, and when the American citizen must go back to bed-rock principles. But is that so in our valley? Why, if this prisoner is guilty, you can’t name me one man of your acquaintance who would want him to live. And that being so, don’t we owe him the chance to clear himself if he can? I can see that prospector now at his door, old, harmless, coming fearless at our call, because he had no guilt upon his conscience—and we shot him down without a word. Boys! he has the call on me now; and if you insist—”

  The sheriff paused, satisfied with what he saw on the faces around him. Some of the men knew the story of the prospector—it had been in the papers—but of his part in it they had not known. They understood quite well the sacrifice he stood ready to make now in defending the prisoner. The favorable silence was broken by the sound of horses. Timeliness and discretion were coming up the hill. Drylyn at the same moment came out of the dead woman’s tent, and, looking down, realized the intended rescue. With his mind waked suddenly from its dull dream and opened with a human impulse, he ran to help; but the sheriff saw him, and thought he was trying to escape.

  “That’s the man!” he shouted savagely to the ring.

  Some of the Gap ran to the edge of the hill, and, seeing the hurrying Drylyn and the horses below, also realized the rescue. Putting the wrong two and two together, they instantly saw in all this a well-devised scheme of delay and collusion. They came back, running through the dance-hall to the front, and the sheriff was pinioned from behind, thrown down, and held.

  “So ye were alone, were ye?” said the chatty neighbor. “Well, ye made a good talk. Keep quiet—we don’t want to hurt ye.”

  At this supposed perfidy the Gap’s rage was at white-heat again; the men massed together, and fierce and quick as lightning the messenger’s fate was wrought. The work of adjusting the rope and noose was complete and death going on in the air when Drylyn, meaning to look the ground over for the rescue, came cautiously back up the hill and saw the body, black against the clear sunset sky. At his outcry they made ready for him, and when he blindly rushed among them they held him, and paid no attention to his ravings. Then, when the rope had finished its work, they let him go, and the sheriff too. The driver’s friend had left his horses among the pines, and had come up to see what was going on at the Gap. He now joined the crowd.

  “You meant well,” the sheriff said to him. “I wish you would tell the boys how you come to be here. They’re thinking I lied to them.”

  “Maybe I can change their minds.” It was Drylyn’s deep voice. “I am the man you were hunting,” he said.

  “‘I’D LIKE TO HAVE IT OVER’”

  They looked at him seriously, as one looks at a friend whom an illness has seized. The storm of feeling had spent itself, the mood of the Gap was relaxed and torpid, and the serenity of coming dusk began to fill the mountain air.

  “You boys think I’m touched in the head,” said Drylyn, and paused. “This knife done it,” said he. “This one I’m showing you.”

  They looked at the knife in his hand.

  “He come between me and her,” Drylyn pursued. “I was aiming to give him his punishment myself. That would have been square.” He turned the knife over in his hand, and, glancing up from it, caught the look in their eyes. “You don’t believe me!” he exclaimed, savagely. “Well, I’m going to make you. Sheriff, I’ll bring you some evidence.”

  He walked to the creek, and they stood idle and dull till he returned. Then they fell back from him and his evidence, leaving him standing beneath the dead man.

  “Does them look like being touched in the head?” inquired Drylyn, and he threw down the overalls, which fell with a damp slap on the ground. “I don’t seem to mind telling you,” he said. “I feel as quiet—as quiet as them tall pines the sun’s just quittin’ for the night.” He looked at the men expectantly, but none of them stirred. “I’d like to have it over,” said he.

  Still no one moved.

  “I have a right to ask it shall be quick,” he repeated. “You were quick enough with him.” And Drylyn lifted his hand towards the messenger.

  They followed his gesture, staring up at the wrong man, then down at the right one. The chatty neighbor shook his head. “Seems curious,” he said, slowly. “It ought to be done. But I couldn’t no more do it—gosh! how can a man fire his gun right after it’s been discharged?”

  The heavy Drylyn looked at his comrades of the Gap. “You won’t?” he said.

  “You better quit us,” suggested the neighbor. “Go somewheres else.”

  Drylyn’s eyes ran painfully over ditch and diggings, the near cabins and the distant hills, then returned to the messenger. “Him and me,” he muttered. “It ain’t square. Him and me—” Suddenly he broke out, “I don’t choose him to think I was that kind of man!”

  Before they could catch him he fell, and the wet knife slid from his fingers. “Sheriff,” he began, but his tone changed. “I’m overtakin’ him!” he said. “He’s going to know now. Lay me alongside—”

  And so they did.

  * * *

  THE SECOND MISSOURI COMPROMISE


  I

  The Legislature had sat up all night, much absorbed, having taken off its coat because of the stove. This was the fortieth and final day of its first session under an order of things not new only, but novel. It sat with the retrospect of forty days’ duty done, and the prospect of forty days’ consequent pay to come. Sleepy it was not, but wide and wider awake over a progressing crisis. Hungry it had been until after a breakfast fetched to it from the Overland at seven, three hours ago. It had taken no intermission to wash its face, nor was there just now any apparatus for this, as the tin pitcher commonly used stood not in the basin in the corner, but on the floor by the Governor’s chair; so the eyes of the Legislature, though earnest, were dilapidated. Last night the pressure of public business had seemed over, and no turning back the hands of the clock likely to be necessary. Besides Governor Ballard, Mr. Hewley, Secretary and Treasurer, was sitting up too, small, iron-gray, in feature and bearing every inch the capable, dignified official, but his necktie had slipped off during the night. The bearded Councillors had the best of it, seeming after their vigil less stale in the face than the member from Silver City, for instance, whose day-old black growth blurred his dingy chin, or the member from Big Camas, whose scantier red crop bristled on his cheeks in sparse wandering arrangements, like spikes on the barrel of a musical box. For comfort, most of the pistols were on the table with the Statutes of the United States. Secretary and Treasurer Hewley’s lay on his strong-box immediately behind him. The Governor’s was a light one, and always hung in the arm hole of his waistcoat. The graveyard of Boisé City this year had twenty-seven tenants, two brought there by meningitis, and twenty-five by difference of opinion. Many denizens of the Territory were miners, and the unsettling element of gold-dust hung in the air, breeding argument. The early, thin, bright morning steadily mellowed against the windows distant from the stove; the panes melted clear until they ran, steamed faintly, and dried, this fresh May day, after the night’s untimely cold; while still the Legislature sat in its shirt-sleeves, and several statesmen had removed their boots. Even had appearances counted, the session was invisible from the street. Unlike a good number of houses in the town, the State-House (as they called it from old habit) was not all on the ground-floor for outsiders to stare into, but up a flight of wood steps to a wood gallery. From this, to be sure, the interior could be watched from several windows on both sides; but the journey up the steps was precisely enough to disincline the idle, and this was counted a sensible thing by the law-makers. They took the ground that shaping any government for a raw wilderness community needed seclusion, and they set a high value upon unworried privacy.

  The sun had set upon a concentrated Council, but it rose upon faces that looked momentous. Only the Governor’s and Treasurer’s were impassive, and they concealed something even graver than the matter in hand.

  “I’ll take a hun’red mo’, Gove’nuh,” said the member from Silver City, softly, his eyes on space. His name was Powhattan Wingo.

  The Governor counted out the blue, white, and red chips to Wingo, pencilled some figures on a thickly ciphered and cancelled paper that bore in print the words “Territory of Idaho, Council Chamber,” and then filled up his glass from the tin pitcher, adding a little sugar.

  “And I’ll trouble you fo’ the toddy,” Wingo added, always softly, and his eyes always on space. “Raise you ten, suh.” This was to the Treasurer. Only the two were playing at present. The Governor was kindly acting as bank; the others were looking on.

  “And ten,” said the Treasurer.

  “And ten,” said Wingo.

  “And twenty,” said the Treasurer.

  “And fifty,” said Wingo, gently bestowing his chips in the middle of the table.

  The Treasurer called.

  The member from Silver City showed down five high hearts, and a light rustle went over the Legislature when the Treasurer displayed three twos and a pair of threes, and gathered in his harvest. He had drawn two cards, Wingo one; and losing to the lowest hand that could have beaten you is under such circumstances truly hard luck. Moreover, it was almost the only sort of luck that had attended Wingo since about half after three that morning. Seven hours of cards just a little lower than your neighbor’s is searching to the nerves.

  “Gove’nuh, I’ll take a hun’red mo’,” said Wingo; and once again the Legislature rustled lightly, and the new deal began.

  Treasurer Hewley’s winnings flanked his right, a pillared fortress on the table, built chiefly of Wingo’s misfortunes. Hewley had not counted them, and his architecture was for neatness and not ostentation; yet the Legislature watched him arrange his gains with sullen eyes. It would have pleased him now to lose; it would have more than pleased him to be able to go to bed quite a long time ago. But winners cannot easily go to bed. The thoughtful Treasurer bet his money and deplored this luck. It seemed likely to trap himself and the Governor in a predicament they had not foreseen. All had taken a hand at first, and played for several hours, until Fortune’s wheel ran into a rut deeper than usual. Wingo slowly became the loser to several, then Hewley had forged ahead, winner from everybody. One by one they had dropped out, each meaning to go home, and all lingering to see the luck turn. It was an extraordinary run, a rare specimen, a breaker of records, something to refer to in the future as a standard of measure and an embellishment of reminiscence; quite enough to keep the Idaho Legislature up all night. And then it was their friend who was losing. The only speaking in the room was the brief card talk of the two players.

  “Five better,” said Hewley, winner again four times in the last five.

  “Ten,” said Wingo.

  “And twenty,” said the Secretary and Treasurer.

  “Call you.”

  “Three kings.”

  “They are good, suh. Gove’nuh, I’ll take a hun’red mo’.”

  Upon this the wealthy and weary Treasurer made a try for liberty and bed. How would it do, he suggested, to have a round of jack-pots, say ten—or twenty, if the member from Silver City preferred—and then stop? It would do excellently, the member said, so softly that the Governor looked at him. But Wingo’s large countenance remained inexpressive, his black eyes still impersonally fixed on space. He sat thus till his chips were counted to him, and then the eyes moved to watch the cards fall. The Governor hoped he might win now, under the jack-pot system. At noon he should have a disclosure to make; something that would need the most cheerful and contented feelings in Wingo and the Legislature to be received with any sort of calm. Wingo was behind the game to the tune of—the Governor gave up adding as he ran his eye over the figures of the bank’s erased and tormented record, and he shook his head to himself. This was inadvertent.

  “May I inquah who yo’re shakin’ yoh head at, suh?” said Wingo, wheeling upon the surprised Governor.

  “Certainly,” answered that official. “You.” He was never surprised for very long. In 1867 it did not do to remain surprised in Idaho.

  “And have I done anything which meets yoh disapprobation?” pursued the member from Silver City, enunciating with care.

  “You have met my disapprobation.”

  Wingo’s eye was on the Governor, and now his friends drew a little together, and as a unit sent a glance of suspicion at the lone bank.

  “You will gratify me by being explicit, suh,” said Wingo to the bank.

  “Well, you’ve emptied the toddy.”

  “Ha-ha, Gove’nuh! I rose, suh, to yoh little fly. We’ll awduh some mo’.”

  “Time enough when he comes for the breakfast things,” said Governor Ballard, easily.

  “As you say, suh. I’ll open for five dolluhs.” Wingo turned back to his game. He was winning, and as his luck continued his voice ceased to be soft, and became a shade truculent. The Governor’s ears caught this change, and he also noted the lurking triumph in the faces of Wingo’s fellow-statesmen. Cheerfulness and content were scarcely reigning yet in the Council Chamber of Idaho as Ballard sat watching the friend
ly game. He was beginning to fear that he must leave the Treasurer alone and take some precautions outside. But he would have to be separated for some time from his ally, cut off from giving him any hints. Once the Treasurer looked at him, and he immediately winked reassuringly, but the Treasurer failed to respond. Hewley might be able to wink after everything was over, but he could not find it in his serious heart to do so now. He was wondering what would happen if this game should last till noon with the company in its present mood. Noon was the time fixed for paying the Legislative Assembly the compensation due for its services during this session; and the Governor and the Treasurer had put their heads together and arranged a surprise for the Legislative Assembly. They were not going to pay them.

  A knock sounded at the door, and on seeing the waiter from the Overland enter, the Governor was seized with an idea. Perhaps precaution could be taken from the inside. “Take this pitcher,” said he, “and have it refilled with the same. Joseph knows my mixture.” But Joseph was night bar-tender, and now long in his happy bed, with a day successor in the saloon, and this one did not know the mixture. Ballard had foreseen this when he spoke, and that his writing a note of directions would seem quite natural.

  “The receipt is as long as the drink,” said a legislator, watching the Governor’s pencil fly.

  “He don’t know where my private stock is located,” explained Ballard. The waiter departed with the breakfast things and the note, and while the jack-pots continued the Governor’s mind went carefully over the situation.

  Until lately the Western citizen has known one every-day experience that no dweller in our thirteen original colonies has had for two hundred years. In Massachusetts they have not seen it since 1641; in Virginia not since 1628. It is that of belonging to a community of which every adult was born somewhere else. When you come to think of this a little it is dislocating to many of your conventions. Let a citizen of Salem, for instance, or a well-established Philadelphia Quaker, try to imagine his chief-justice fresh from Louisiana, his mayor from Arkansas, his tax-collector from South Carolina, and himself recently arrived in a wagon from a thousand-mile drive. To be governor of such a community Ballard had travelled in a wagon from one quarter of the horizon; from another quarter Wingo had arrived on a mule. People reached Boisé in three ways: by rail to a little west of the Missouri, after which it was wagon, saddle, or walk for the remaining fifteen hundred miles; from California it was shorter; and from Portland, Oregon, only about five hundred miles, and some of these more agreeable, by water up the Columbia. Thus it happened that salt often sold for its weight in gold-dust. A miner in the Bannock Basin would meet a freight teamster coming in with the staples of life, having journeyed perhaps sixty consecutive days through the desert, and valuing his salt highly. The two accordingly bartered in scales, white powder against yellow, and both parties content. Some in Boisé to-day can remember these bargains. After all, they were struck but thirty years ago. Governor Ballard and Treasurer Hewley did not come from the same place, but they constituted a minority of two in Territorial politics because they hailed from north of Mason and Dixon’s line. Powhattan Wingo and the rest of the Council were from Pike County, Missouri. They had been Secessionists, some of them Knights of the Golden Circle; they had belonged to Price’s Left Wing, and they flocked together. They were seven—two lying unwell at the Overland, five now present in the State-House with the Governor and Treasurer. Wingo, Gascon Claiborne, Gratiot des Pères, Pete Cawthon, and F. Jackson Gilet were their names. Besides this Council of seven were thirteen members of the Idaho House of Representatives, mostly of the same political feather with the Council, and they too would be present at noon to receive their pay. How Ballard and Hewley came to be a minority of two is a simple matter. Only twenty-five months had gone since Appomattox Court-House. That surrender was presently followed by Johnston’s to Sherman, at Durhams Station, and following this the various Confederate armies in Alabama, or across the Mississippi, or wherever they happened to be, had successively surrendered—but not Price’s Left Wing. There was the wide open West under its nose, and no Grant or Sherman infesting that void. Why surrender? Wingos, Claibornes, and all, they melted away. Price’s Left Wing sailed into the prairie and passed below the horizon. To know what it next did you must, like Ballard or Hewley, pass below the horizon yourself, clean out of sight of the dome at Washington to remote, untracked Idaho. There, besides wild red men in quantities, would you find not very tame white ones, gentlemen of the ripest Southwestern persuasion, and a Legislature to fit. And if, like Ballard or Hewley, you were a Union man, and the President of the United States had appointed you Governor or Secretary of such a place, your days would be full of awkwardness, though your difference in creed might not hinder you from playing draw-poker with the unreconstructed. These Missourians were whole-souled, ample-natured males in many ways, but born with a habit of hasty shooting. The Governor, on setting foot in Idaho, had begun to study pistolship, but acquired thus in middle life it could never be with him that spontaneous art which it was with Price’s Left Wing. Not that the weapons now lying loose about the State-House were brought for use there. Everybody always went armed in Boisé, as the gravestones impliedly testified. Still, the thought of the bad quarter of an hour which it might come to at noon did cross Ballard’s mind, raising the image of a column in the morrow’s paper: “An unfortunate occurrence has ended relations between esteemed gentlemen hitherto the warmest personal friends.... They will be laid to rest at 3 p.m.... As a last token of respect for our lamented Governor, the troops from Boisé Barracks....” The Governor trusted that if his friends at the post were to do him any service it would not be a funeral one.