Red Men and White

by Wister, Owen

  We finished our case with all the prisoners identified, and some of them doubly. The defence was scarcely more than a sham. The flimsy alibis were destroyed even by the incompetent, unready Rocklin, and when the charge came blackness fell upon the citizens of Tucson. The judge’s cold statements struck them as partisan, and they murmured and looked darkly at him. But the jury, with its Meakums, wore no expression at all during any of his remarks. Their eyes were upon him, but entirely fishlike. He dismissed the cumbersome futilities one by one. “Now three witnesses have between them recognized all the prisoners but one,” he continued. “That one, a reputed pauper, paid several hundred dollars of debts in gold the morning after the robbery. The money is said to be the proceeds of a cattle sale. No cattle have ever been known to belong to this man, and the purchaser had never been known to have any income until this trial began. The prisoner’s name was on Mrs. Sproud’s paper. The statement of one witness that he sat on a stone and saw three other of the prisoners firing has been contradicted by a woman who described herself as having run away at once; it is supported by two men who are admitted by all to have remained, and in consequence been shot. Their statements have been assailed by no one. Their testimony stands on the record unimpeached. They have identified five prisoners. If you believe them—and remember that not a word they said has been questioned—” here the judge emphasized more and more clearly. He concluded with the various alternatives of fact according to which the jury must find its several possible verdicts. When he had finished, the room sat sullen and still, and the twelve went out. I am told that they remained ten minutes away. It seemed one to me.

  When they had resumed their seats I noticed the same fishlike oracular eye in most of them unchanged. “Not guilty,” said the foreman.

  “What!” shouted the judge, startled out of all judicial propriety. “None of ’em?”

  “Not guilty,” monotonously repeated the foreman.

  We were silent amid the din of triumph now raised by Tucson. In the laughter, the hand-shaking, the shouting, and the jubilant pistol-shots that some particularly free spirit fired in the old Cathedral Square, we went to our dinner; and not even Stirling could joke. “There’s a certain natural justice done here in spite of them,” he said. “They are not one cent richer for all their looted twenty-eight thousand. They come out free, but penniless.”

  “How about Jenks and that jury?” said I. And Stirling shrugged his shoulders.

  But we had yet some crowning impudence to learn. Later, in the street, the officers and I met the prisoners, their witnesses, and their counsel emerging from a photographer’s studio. The Territorial Delegate had been taken in a group with his acquitted thieves. The Bishop had declined to be in this souvenir.

  “That’s a picture I want,” said I. “Only I’ll be sorry to see your face there,” I added to black curly.

  “Indeed!” put in Jenks.

  “Yes,” said I. “You and he do not belong in the same class. By-the-way, Mr. Jenks, I suppose you’ll return their horses and saddles now?”

  Too many were listening for him to lose his temper, and he did a sharp thing. He took this public opportunity for breaking some news to his clients. “I had hoped to,” he said; “that is, as many as were not needed to defray necessary costs. But it’s been an expensive suit, and I’ve found myself obliged to sell them all. It’s little enough to pay for clearing your character, boys.”

  They saw through his perfidy to them, and that he had them checkmated. Any protest from them would be a confession of their theft. Yet it seemed an unsafe piece of villany in Jenks.

  “They look disappointed,” I remarked. “I shall value the picture very highly.”

  “If that’s Eastern sarcasm,” said Jenks, “it’s beyond me.”

  “No, Mr. Jenks,” I answered. “In your presence sarcasm drops dead. I think you’ll prosper in politics.”

  But there I was wrong. There is some natural justice in these events, though I wish there were more. The jury, it is true, soon seemed oddly prosperous, as Stirling wrote me afterwards. They painted their houses; two of them, who had generally walked before, now had wagons; and in so many of their gardens and small ranches did the plants and fruits increase that, as Stirling put it, they had evidently sowed their dollars. But upon Jenks Territorial displeasure did descend. He had stayed away too much from Washington. A pamphlet appeared with the title, “What Luke Jenks Has Done for Arizona.” Inside were twenty blank pages, and he failed of re-election.

  Furthermore, the government retaliated upon this district by abandoning Camp Thomas and Lowell Barracks, those important sources of revenue for the neighborhood. The brief boom did not help Tucson very long, and left it poorer than ever.

  At the station I saw Mrs. Sproud and black curly, neither speaking to the other. It was plain that he had utterly done with her, and that she was too proud even to look at him. She went West, and he as far east as Willcox. Neither one have I ever seen again.

  But I have the photograph, and I sometimes wonder what has happened to black curly. Arizona is still a Territory; and when I think of the Gila Valley and of the Boy Orator, I recall Bishop Meakum’s remark about our statesmen at Washington: “You can divide them birds in two lots—those who know better, and those who don’t. D’you follow me?”

  THE END

  * * *

  Footnote

  [A] Let me no longer pervert General Crook’s military tactics. It was a dismounted charge that he ordered on this occasion, as a friend who was present has written me since the first publication of this story.

  Mr. Remington’s illustration was made to suit the text in its original form.—Publisher’s Note.

  * * *

  Transcriber’s Note:

  Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters’ errors; otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author’s words and intent.

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