With Hoops of Steel

by Kelly, Florence Finch

  Halliday turned the body over and showed them three bullet holes in the back, in the left shoulder blade. They were so close together that their ragged edges touched one another, and a silver dollar would have covered all of them. Apparently, the man had been shot at close range and the bullets had gone through to the heart.

  Mead finished his inspection of the body and turned to Halliday. All the rest of the party had come up and dismounted and were standing beside their horses around the grisly, mangled thing and the four men who were examining it. Several of the men were wounded and blood was dripping over their clothing. A red mark across Tuttle’s cheek showed how narrow had been his escape, and a bloody stain on Mead’s shirt told the story of a flesh wound.

  “Jim,” Mead began, and then paused, looking Halliday squarely in the eyes, while his own friends and the sheriff’s party edged closer, all listening breathlessly. None of them had any idea what he was going to say, whether it would be surrender, or defiance and a declaration of continued war. Nick and Tom exchanged glances and cocked their revolvers, which they held down beside their legs. “Jim,” Mead went on, “I acknowledge nothing about this body except that, as far as I can see, it seems to be the body of Will Whittaker and he seems to have died from these pistol shots. But I reckon it calls, merely on the face of it, mind, for me to make good the word I gave to Wellesly. Here are my guns.”

  He handed his rifle to Halliday, unfastened his cartridge belt and passed that and his revolver to the deputy sheriff. Among the Whittaker party there were some glances of surprise, but more nods of congratulation. Nick and Tom looked at each other in indignant dismay. Tom’s eyes were full of tears and his lips were twitching. “What did he want to do that for?” he whispered to Nick. “We had ’em sure buffaloed and on the run, and now he’s plum’ spoiled the whole thing!”

  “I reckon it was the best thing you could do, Emerson,” said Judge Harlin, “but I’m sorry you had to do it.”

  Mead saw Daniels in the crowd around the body. “Hello, John,” he called, “I thought we tipped you over just now. Hurt much?”

  “No, not much. Only a scratch on the shoulder.”

  The entire party went around to the spring and bathed one another’s wounds, and the Mexican woman tore her sheets into strips and made bandages for them. No one had been killed, but there were a number of flesh wounds and some broken bones. They hired horses of the Mexican to take the place of those that had been killed and then started for Las Plumas, Mead riding between Daniels and Halliday. Judge Harlin, with Nick and Tom, followed some distance in the rear.

  Tom looked after them, as they rode away, with angry eyes. His huge chest was heaving with sobs he could scarcely control. “Damn their souls,” he exclaimed fiercely to Nick, “if Emerson wasn’t among them I’d open on ’em right now.”

  “How we could buffalo ’em,” assented Nick.

  “It was a damned shame,” Tuttle went on indignantly, “for Emerson to give up that way. We could have cleaned ’em all out and got rid of ’em for good, if he hadn’t given up. We’ll never get such a chance again, and the Lord knows what will happen to Emerson now!” And Tom bent his huge frame over his gun and bowed his head on his hands, while a great sob convulsed his big bulk from head to foot. He and Judge Harlin argued the question all the way to Las Plumas, and the judge well-nigh exhausted his knowledge of law and his ingenuity in argument in the effort to convince his companion that Emerson Mead had done the best thing possible for him to do. But the last thing Tom said as they drew up in front of Judge Harlin’s office was:

  “Well, it was a grand chance to clean out Emerson’s enemies, for good and all, and make an end of ’em, so that he could live here in peace. It was plumb ridiculous not to do it.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER XIX

  The grand jury sat upon the Whittaker case and returned a true bill against Emerson Mead, indicting him for the murder of Will Whittaker. Mead was confined in the jail at Las Plumas to await his trial, which would not take place until the following autumn. The finding of Will Whittaker’s body convinced many who had formerly believed in his innocence that Mead was guilty. Everybody knew that his usual practice in shooting was to fire three quick shots, so rapidly that the three explosions were almost a continuous sound, pause an instant, and then, if necessary, fire three more in the same way. The three bullets were pretty sure to go where he meant they should, and if he wished he could put them so close together that the ragged edges of the holes touched one another, as did those in the back of Whittaker’s corpse. It was the number and character of those bullet holes that made many of Mead’s friends believe that he was guilty of the murder. “Nobody but Emerson could have put those bullets in like that,” they said to themselves, although publicly the Democrats all loudly and persistently insisted that he was innocent.

  In the constant debate over the matter which followed the finding of the body the Democrats contended that the two men who had held Thomson Tuttle captive all night near the White Sands must have been the murderers. And it was on them and their mysterious conduct that Judge Harlin rested his only hope for his client. The lawyer did not believe they had Whittaker’s body in their wagon, although he intended to try to make the jury think so. Privately he believed that Mead was guilty, but he admitted this to no one, and in his talks with Mead he constantly assumed that his client was innocent. He had never asked Mead to tell him whether or not he had committed the murder.

  Nick Ellhorn and Tom Tuttle lingered about Las Plumas for a short time, sending their gold to the mint, and trying to contrive some scheme by which Emerson Mead could be forced into liberty. Each of them felt it a keen personal injury that their friend was in jail, and they were ready to forego everything else if they could induce him to break his promise and with them make a wild dash for freedom. But he would listen to none of their plans and told them, over and over, that he had given his word and proposed to keep it.

  “Of course,” he said, “when I made that promise to Wellesly I didn’t suppose they would find Will’s body. But they did, and I mean to keep my promise. I gave my word for you-all too, and I don’t want you to make any fool breaks that will cause people to think I’m trying to skip.”

  Finally they gave up their plans and Tom returned to his duties with Marshal Black at Santa Fe and Nick went out to Mead’s ranch to keep things in order there.

  Ellhorn returned to Las Plumas for his own trial, the result of which was that he was found guilty of assault and battery upon the Chinese and fined five hundred dollars. The moment sentence was pronounced upon him he strode to the judge’s desk and laid down his check for the amount of his fine. Then he straightened up, thrust his hands in his pockets, and exclaimed:

  “Now, I want that pig tail!”

  “You are fined five dollars for contempt of court,” said the judge, frowning at the tall Texan, who looked very much in earnest.

  “All right, Judge! Here you are!” said Nick cheerfully, as he put a gold piece down beside the check. “Now, I want that Chiny pig tail! It’s mine! I’ve paid big for it! It’s cost me five hundred and five dollars, and no end of trouble, and it belongs to me.”

  “You are fined ten dollars for contempt of court,” the judge said severely, biting his lips behind his whiskers.

  “Here you are, Judge!” and Nick spun a ten-dollar gold piece on the desk. “I want that scalp as a memento of this affair, and to remind me not to mix my drinks again. I’ve paid for it, a whole heap more’n it’s worth, and I demand my property!” And Nick brought his fist down on the judge’s desk with a bang that made the gold coins rattle.

  “Mr. Sheriff, remove this man!” ordered the Judge, and John Daniels stepped forward to seize his arm. Ellhorn leaped to one side, exclaiming, “I’ll not go till I get my property!” He thrust his hand into the accustomed place for his revolver, and with a look of surprise and chagrin on his face stood meekly before the sheriff.

  “A man can’t get his rights unless he
has a gun, even in a court,” he growled, as he submitted to be led out. At the door he looked back and called to the judge:

  “That scalp’s mine, and I mean to have what I’ve paid for, if I have to sue your blamed old court till the day o’ judgment!” And he went at once and filed a suit against the district attorney for the recovery of the queue.

  Marguerite Delarue kept on with her quiet life through the summer, caring for little Paul and attending to her father’s house. She did not see Emerson Mead again after the day when, with her little white sunbonnet pulled over her disordered hair, she helped her baby brother to mount his horse. Long before the summer was over she decided that he cared nothing for her and that she must no longer feel more interest in him than she did in any other casual acquaintance. But sometimes she wakened suddenly, or started at her work, seeming to feel the intent gaze of a pair of brown eyes. Then she would blush, cry a little, and scold herself severely.

  It was late in the summer when Albert Wellesly made his next visit to Las Plumas. He had decided to buy a partly abandoned gold mine in the Hermosa mountains, and he explained to Marguerite Delarue, as he sat on her veranda the afternoon of his arrival, that he was making a hurried visit to Las Plumas in order to give it a thorough examination. And then he added in a lower tone and with a meaning look in his eyes, that that was not the only reason for the trip. She blushed with pleasure at this, and he felt well enough satisfied not to go any farther just then.

  He came to see her again after he returned from the mine. It was Sunday afternoon, and they sat together on the veranda, behind the rose and honeysuckle vines, with Marguerite’s tea table between them. He told her about his trip to the mine and what he thought of its condition and deferentially asked her advice in some small matters that had an ethical as well as a commercial bearing. She listened with much pleasure and her blue eyes shone with the gratification that filled her heart, for never before had a man, fighting his battles with the world, turned aside to ask her whether or not he was doing right. Then he told her how much he valued her judgment upon such matters and how much he admired and reverenced the pure, high standard of her life. His tones grew more lover-like as he said it would mean far more to him than he could express if he might hope that her sweet influence would some day come intimately into his own life. Then he paused and looked at her lowered eyelids, bent head and burning cheeks. But she said nothing, sitting as still as one dead, save for her heaving breast. After a moment he went on, saying that he cared more for her than for any other woman he had ever known, and that if she did not love him then, he would be willing to wait many years to win her love, and make her his wife. Still she did not speak, and he laid one hand on hers, where it rested on the table, and whispered softly, “Marguerite, do you love me?” With that she lifted her head, and the troubled, appealing look in her eyes smote his heart into a brighter flame. He pressed her hand in a closer grasp and exclaimed, “Marguerite, dearest, say that you love me!”

  The innocent, fluttering, maiden heart of her, glad and proud to feel that she had been chosen above all others, but doubtful of itself, and ignorant of everything else, leaped toward him then and a wistful little smile brightened her face. She opened her lips to speak, but suddenly she seemed to see, beside the gate, a tall and comely figure bending toward her with eyes that burned her cheeks and cast her own to the ground. She snatched her hand from Wellesly’s grasp and buried her face in her palms.

  “I do not know,” she panted. “I must think about it.”

  “Yes, certainly, dear—you will let me call you dear, won’t you—take time to think it over. I will wait for your answer until your heart is quite sure. I hope it will be what I want, and don’t make me wait very long, dear. Good-bye, sweetheart.”

  He lifted her hand to his lips and went away. She sat quite still beside the table, her burning face in her hands, her breast a turmoil of blind doubts, and longings, and keen disappointments with, she knew not what, and over all an imperious, sudden-born wish to be loved.

  Wellesly walked down the street smiling to himself in serene assurance of an easy victory. He was accustomed to having women show him much favor, and more than one had let him know that he might marry her if he wished. Moreover, he thought himself a very desirable match, and he did not doubt for an instant that any woman, who liked him as well as he was sure Marguerite did, would accept his offer.

  “It was evidently her first proposal,” he thought, “and she did not know exactly what to do with it. She is as shy and as sweet as a little wood-violet. Some girls, after my undemonstrative manner this afternoon, would write me a sarcastic note with a ‘no’ in it as big as a house. But nothing else would have done with Marguerite. She isn’t one of the sort that wants every man she knows to begin kissing her at the first opportunity. And that is one of the reasons I mean to marry her. The other sort are all very well, but a man doesn’t want to marry one of them. I want my wife to have such dignity and modesty that I can feel sure no other man ever has, or ever will, kiss her but me. And I can feel sure of that with Marguerite—just as sure as I can that I’ll have a favorable answer from her by the time I make my next visit to Las Plumas.”

  Marguerite sat behind her screen of honeysuckle vines, her face in her hands and a mob of blind, wild, incoherent desires and doubts making tumult in her heart, until she heard her father’s footsteps in the house. Pierre Delarue had been taking his Sunday afternoon siesta, and he came out upon the veranda in a very comfortable frame of mind. He patted Marguerite’s shoulder affectionately and asked her to make him a cup of tea. He was very fond of his fair young daughter, who had grown into the living likeness of the wife he had married in the days of his exuberant youth. But he rarely withdrew his thoughts from outside affairs long enough to be conscious of his affection, except on Sunday afternoons, when interest and excitement on Main street were at too low an ebb to attract his presence. On other days, she endeared herself to him by the sympathetic attention she gave to his accounts of what was going on down-town and to his rehearsals of the speeches he had made. On Sundays, when he had the leisure to feel a quickened sense of responsibility, he both pleased himself and felt that he was discharging a duty to her by discoursing upon his observations and experiences of the world and by propounding his theories of life and conduct. For Pierre prided himself on his philosophy quite as much as he did on his oratory.

  Marguerite, on her part, was very fond of her father, but it was a fondness which considered his love of speech-making and his flighty enthusiasms with smiling tolerance. Her cooler and more critical way of looking at things had caused her, young as she was, to distrust his judgment in practical affairs, and about most matters she had long since ceased asking his advice.

  She sat beside him and talked with him while he drank his cup of tea. A recently married young couple passed the house, and Marguerite made some disapproving comment on the man’s character, adding that she did not understand how so nice a girl could have married him.

  “Oh, he has a smooth and ready tongue,” answered her father, “and I dare say it was easy for him to make love. When you are older you will know that it is the man who can talk love easily who can make the most women think they love him.” Pierre Delarue stopped to drink the last of his tea, and Marguerite blushed consciously, remembering the scene through which she had just passed. She rose to put his cup on the table, and was glad that her face was turned away from him when next he spoke:

  “When a man tells a woman that he loves her,” Delarue went on, “and it rolls easily off his tongue, she should never believe a word that he says. If a man really loves a woman, those three little words, ‘I love you,’ are the hardest ones in the whole world for him to say. Most women do not know that when they hear their first proposals, but they ought to know it, especially in this country, where they make so much of love. But, after all, I do not know that it makes so much difference, because all women want to hear no end of love talked to them, and it is only the man who d
oes not feel it very deeply who can talk enough about it to satisfy them. A woman is bound to be disappointed, whichever way she marries, for she is sure to find out after a while that the flow of words is empty, and the love without the words never satisfies. After all, it is better for a woman to think of other things than love when she marries. They manage these things better in France. Don’t you think so, my daughter?”

  There was a deep thrill of passionate protest in her voice as she answered, “No, father, I certainly do not.”

  He laughed indulgently and patted her hand as he said: “Ah, you are a little American!” Then he added, more seriously: “I suppose you, too, will soon be thinking of love and marriage.”

  She threw her arms around his neck and there was a sob in her voice as she exclaimed: “Father, I shall never marry!”

  He smoothed her brown hair and laid his hand on her shoulder saying, “Ah, that means you will surely be married within a year!”

  She shook her head. “No, I mean it, father! I shall never marry!”

  “My dear, I should be sorry if you did not,” he answered with dignity, and with a strong note of disapproval in his voice. “For what is a woman who does not marry and bear children? Nothing! She is a rose bush that never flowers, a grape vine that never fruits. She is useless, a weed that cumbers the earth. No, my daughter, you must marry, or displease your father very much.”

  Marguerite lay awake long that night, trying to decide what she ought to do. Her father’s words gave sight to a blind, vague misgiving she had already felt, but at the same time she could not believe that Wellesly meant less than his words when he told her that he loved her and wished to make her his wife.

  “Why should he propose to me if he does not wish to marry me?” she argued with herself, “and why should he want to marry me if he does not love me? No, he surely loves me. Perhaps father is right about the Frenchmen. He knows them, but he does not understand the Americans. They always feel so sure about things, and they do everything as if there was no possibility of failure. But I wish I knew if I love him! I suppose I do, for I felt so pleased that he should wish to marry me. But I don’t have to decide at once. I’ll wait till he comes to Las Plumas again before I give him an answer.”