Part 27
“Gentlemen, I should like to tell you a story. Those of you who saw the _New York Herald_ of July --, 1876, may have noticed a rather unintelligible account of a crime committed by the scion of a wealthy and distinguished family long resident in the city. It was supposed to be a heavy forgery, but one soon saw that extraordinary measures and powerful influence had suppressed details and prevented further publicity, and the matter passed off as a nine days’ wonder. When I myself first saw the item, I felt sure that I knew who the culprit was. James W---- and I were school-mates at Geneva, and once great friends. He was the son of one of the finest gentlemen of the old school that I have ever seen--who had married rather late in life, and been a most affectionate and indulgent father. James was a boy of most attractive appearance, with very dark complexion, hair and eyes, and the figure of an athlete. There was apparently nothing in feature, expression, or manner, to cause suspicion that he was not a very fine fellow; and yet there came to me before long the positive conviction, first, that under that attractive exterior a desperate power of evil was at work; second (and I am no more able to explain this than those other spiritual mysteries which so many of us encounter in our lives), that it would be my fate to come into contact with him in after years when this power had developed itself.
“Through certain channels then open to me I easily ascertained that, after a career of deep dissipation, James W----had committed a bold forgery; that in some way the money had been paid, and the affair quashed. Other things came to my ears, all strongly confirmatory of my expectations about him. About eighteen months later his mother died, and his father settled all his business and went to Europe; nearly everyone supposing, in the meantime, that the son had suddenly started, when he was first missed from his accustomed haunts, on a journey to Central Asia, and that it would be months before he could hear this sad news.
“Later again, as the Union Pacific train, on which I was a passenger, stopped at the Green River station, I saw on the platform, evidently waiting to join us, a father and daughter. The former was a fine specimen of the better class of plainsmen--six feet two, and of powerful build--his eyes large and blue, his long hair and full beard light-colored, and his expression kindness itself. The young girl was about eighteen, slender and delicate, and altogether charming--one of those beautiful, tender, clinging young creatures sometimes found on the frontier, like the delicate wild flowers in the cañons. They were going to Chicago; and having been commended to Major G---- by some mutual acquaintances, I passed much time in his company, and we became excellent friends. He had been a widower for a number of years, and was deeply devoted to his pretty Anita, who in her turn seemed to adore him. I could not help thinking that she was ill-fitted to meet the cares of life, and that there was a look in her lovely eyes that suggested a rare capacity for suffering. She had never been east of the Missouri before, and the major told me that after a short stay in Chicago, they were going to live on a ranch which he had bought in the Wet Mountain Valley. He had been a noted hunter and Indian fighter in the West, and bore the scars of more than one struggle with wild beast and wilder man. I remained with them one day in Chicago, and remember Anita’s childish delight in a bouquet of flowers which I gave her, when I called at the hotel to say good-bye, and her waving her handkerchief to me as I drove off to the station, and she stood on the balcony leaning on her father’s shoulder.
“Chance brought me, within six or eight months, to the region south of the Arkansas, and I took a trip on the Wet Mountains with an old Mexican called Manuel. One day it occurred to me that we could not be far from my friend’s location; so I asked Manuel if we could not cross the range and go down into the valley, and if he knew where Major G---- lived.
“‘Oh si, señor!’ he quickly replied, ‘we easy come over the mountain and to the Rancho San José, where live the major. Oh, it is a place so beautiful! the valley which the señor will see when we pass the Sierra and go down the cañon.’ ‘And the major, and his daughter, are they well?’ I asked. ‘The major, yes,’ said Manuel; ‘but the señorita’--and his voice changed--‘she is not well. The señor does not then know--but ah! how could he?--that she have so great trouble.’
“Much surprised and shocked, I gradually elicited from him a narration of what had occurred after the father and daughter took up their abode in the valley. It seemed that a young man, bound ostensibly on a hunting trip, once asked for a night’s lodging at the ranch, and was evidently struck by the beauty of Anita; that he had returned again and again, and finally expressed his intention of taking up a homestead in the vicinity. Anita seemed attracted by him from the first. They were finally betrothed, and the major had the comfort of knowing that they would remain near him. He had apparently given his full confidence to the young man, and talked freely to him of his affairs; and notably, on one occasion, of his intention to keep quite a large sum of money in the house for two days, contrary to his usual custom, but for the purpose of paying for a mine which he had bought. The next morning the money was gone! The young man was never seen again.
“I heard this tale with great regret, and said to myself that the poor girl would never bear such a blow. When I asked Manuel about her condition, he broke into distressed and almost incoherent utterances about _la pobrecita_ (the poor little one), for whom might the _Madre de Dios_ intercede. I began to dread the visit to the ranch, and would have turned back but for a desire to offer my sympathies.
“When we entered the corral the sun was just sinking behind the Sangre de Cristo Range, and flooding the valley with light. The major came out when he heard our horses, and, recognizing me, at once bade us welcome. When I saw his poor daughter I was shocked beyond measure. She lay on a sofa looking at the western mountains. She knew me and gave me her poor little hand, so thin that it seemed almost transparent. Her face was pallid, and deep purple rings were under her eyes. I said a few commonplace words of sympathy, and then turned away. The major followed me into the house, and, coming up and taking my offered hand, said, ‘They call it quick consumption. I know better than that--it is a broken heart!’ His grasp tightened painfully on my hand. ‘My God!’ he cried, ‘how can I bear it!’ The scene was painful in the extreme. I found Manuel and told him that we must go on, and that he had best lead the horses outside of the corral, where I would join him. The major’s life-long instincts of hospitality flashed out in a momentary protest at my departure, but he did not press me to stay. I knew that he had kind neighbors, and the ranch seemed no place for us. I went to say farewell to the dying girl, but finding her lying with closed eyes and folded hands, I dared not disturb her, although I knew that I saw her for the last time. Major G---- walked mechanically to the gate, and bade us good-bye. I saw the tears in old Manuel’s eyes as we mounted and rode some distance in silence. Two weeks after this, coming from Fort Garland, I bought a Denver paper from the newsboy on the train, and saw that I had rightly judged of the poor child’s inability to bear a rude shock, for I read that she had ‘entered into rest.’
“Now, gentlemen, I am afraid that you will think I am spinning a sensational yarn, but it is only a few months since, just as we are sitting here, I was sitting with a party of gentlemen at the door of the fonda at the corner of the plaza in Santa Fé. We were admiring the gorgeous sunset, and listening to the band playing under the trees, when the ‘buckboard’ of the Transportation Company arrived from the South. It was with a start that I rose to salute, in the only passenger, my poor friend Major G----. He had changed sadly; his hair had grown white, and his cheeks were sunken. Then he had a habit of pressing his hand to his forehead, which gave one a vivid impression of despair.
“He greeted me warmly, as of old, and mentioned that he had come from Mesilla, and was going on to Fort Garland in the morning, but he said little more at first, and I dreaded any recurrence to the past. In the evening I induced him to take a cigar, and to drink a little from my flask. Soon he seemed restored to a temporary animation, and after asking me if I proposed accompanying him on his journey, and expressing gratification at my willingness so to do, he went on as follows:
“‘I have heard something which leads me to think that the road agents are going to try to rob the stage, which will have some treasure freight. The only passengers besides us will be a couple of greasers, who can’t help us if they would. You know the boys say that the agents always have things their own way. Now, as I feel at present, I’m not inclined to give up without a try. I don’t want to ring you in unless you are for it; but, with all the trouble I’ve had, a bullet more or less is of no account to me; but I have a notion,’ he continued, ‘that I can block their game. It was done once by an old pard of mine, and, if you say so, I’ll try it, and you just follow my lead. Will you take the chances?’ I knew him to be a man of desperate courage and fertile in resource, and I assented. ‘What kind of shooting-iron have you?’ he asked. ‘Navy Colt? No, that’s good in its way; but I’ll lend you a self-cocker like mine. Mind and take at least a strong cup of coffee before we start; and now you’d better turn in.’
“In the morning we took our places in the coach, the major sitting on the front seat, and left-hand side; I sat opposite, and each had a silent Mexican next him. We drove without incident to the place where the horses were first changed; but, before we started again, my friend said to me,
“‘I allow that we’ll have our trouble, if at all, in the cañon four miles ahead. Now just put your blanket over your lap and hold your pistol under it. Keep a bright look-out, and if we strike ’em, just have your wits about you, and be ready to fire after I do.’ Soon we rolled off again, and I saw him lean back for awhile and then sit upright, and keep his eye fixed on the road. The horses were good; we soon approached the cañon, and the suspense became almost unbearable. I could not help thinking about our chances in the case of attack. Just then--I remember that I was looking at a group of cedars--the stage stopped, and, as if conjured up by the hand of a magician, three men on horseback appeared on our side, two close to us, one behind. I seemed to comprehend the whole situation in the twinkling of an eye; the figures--the levelled barrels--the major sitting before me.
“‘_Throw up your hands, ---- ---- you!_’ They were reckless enough to wear no masks--the speaker lowered his head to look in. Heavens! shall I ever forget that scene? On my part there was a startling recognition--on the major’s there must have been the same, for never have I seen a human face so transformed, and it added an almost demoniacal force to the action, which all passed in a flash. The terror of the sudden start, the throwing out of the left arm, the frightened glare of the eyes, may have been the product of rare dramatic power; but there was something far more terribly real in his wild cry,
“‘_Great God! who is that behind you?_’ The robbers instinctively turned their heads. Crack!--crack! The major’s right arm, rigid as iron, held the smoking weapon, as two riderless horses galloped off, and I mechanically fired at the third man. Then my friend laid his revolver down, and put his hand to his forehead. We drove on a short distance, and then made one of the frightened Mexicans hold the horses, and the driver and I hurried back. It was with a sharp shudder, and a vivid realization that the forebodings of earlier days had come only too true, that I saw my old school-mate lying dead in the dusty road. And then I saw one of those strange phenomena of the occurrence of which there is ample scientific evidence. Gentlemen, I assure you that there _had_ been mutual recognition, and the terror of it was in those dead eyes.
“We drove back to Santa Fé almost at a gallop, the major sitting like a statue in his seat, and never speaking. As we entered the plaza and stopped before the old palace a crowd gathered, and I whispered to an army officer to take my poor friend to headquarters, while I attended to the needful formalities. I can see the scene before my eyes this moment: the motley gathering of Americans and Mexicans, with some uniforms among them; the driver eagerly talking--the hostlers taking the horses’ heads. The United States Marshal and Commissioner came out of their offices, and I told them the story. The marshal stopped me for a moment after the first ten words, and sent for his two deputies and three horses. Then he lighted a cigar and offered me one as I went on with my brief narrative. The deputies came up, the marshal went to his office for his arms, and examined the percussion-caps as he asked me a few questions. Then they all three shook hands with me and galloped down the narrow street. They were fierce pursuers, and when I saw the chief deputy that evening, he told me that the third man was in the jail.
“‘I know ’em all well,’ he added, ‘and two more ungodly ruffians than the dead men never cheated the gallows. I’ve been after that black-haired one a long time for a matter in Wyoming’; and a wolfish look came for a moment over his pleasant face. ‘I knew where to find the third man. He’s a mean cur, and gave in without the show of a fight. To be sure, you plugged him pretty bad in the arm.’
“When the marshal had gone to his office the commissioner and I walked to headquarters and found the major (whom the surgeon had induced to drink a composing draught) sitting in a chair, leaning his head upon his hand. He rose as we approached. ‘Sam,’ said he to the commissioner, ‘the Lord delivered him into my hands! It was his will.’
“He started again the next morning, and as the stage turned the corner he waved his hand to me, and then put it to his head once again in that sad, weary way of his. Urged by the spirit of unrest which had seized upon him, he joined the prospectors at Leadville, exposed himself recklessly, and died of pneumonia in three weeks.
“Strangely enough, the news recently came that old Mr. W---- was never seen after taking a steamer at Vienna to go down the Danube. That is the reason that I have felt at liberty to tell the story. They say the way of the transgressor is hard; but in this case it seems to me that there is a good deal to be said about the ways of those against whom he transgressed. Perhaps many of you have come across curious things in your lives, but nothing much stranger than what you have just heard.”
And to this statement no one took exception.
SPECIMEN JONES
OWEN WISTER
From “Red Men and White.” Reprinted by permission of the author and of Harper and Brothers, New York.[28]
Ephraim, the proprietor of Twenty Mile, had wasted his day in burying a man. He did not know the man. He had found him, or what the Apaches had left of him, sprawled among some charred sticks just outside the Cañon del Oro. It was a useful discovery in its way, for otherwise Ephraim might have gone on hunting his strayed horses near the cañon, and ended among charred sticks himself. Very likely the Indians were far away by this time, but he returned to Twenty Mile with the man tied to his saddle, and his pony nervously snorting. And now the day was done, and the man lay in the earth, and they had even built a fence round him; for the hole was pretty shallow, and coyotes have a way of smelling this sort of thing a long way off when they are hungry, and the man was not in a coffin. They were always short of coffins in Arizona.
Day was done at Twenty Mile, and the customary activity prevailed inside that flat-roofed cube of mud. Sounds of singing, shooting, dancing, and Mexican tunes on the concertina came out of the windows hand in hand, to widen and die among the hills. A limber, pretty boy, who might be nineteen, was dancing energetically, while a grave old gentleman, with tobacco running down his beard, pointed a pistol at the boy’s heels, and shot a hole in the earth now and then to show that the weapon was really loaded. Everybody was quite used to all of this--excepting the boy. He was an Eastern new-comer, passing his first evening at a place of entertainment.
Night in and night out every guest at Twenty Mile was either happy and full of whiskey, or else his friends were making arrangements for his funeral. There was water at Twenty Mile--the only water for twoscore of miles. Consequently it was an important station on the road between the southern country and Old Camp Grant, and the new mines north of the Mescal Range. The stunt, liquor-perfumed adobe cabin lay on the gray floor of the desert like an isolated slab of chocolate. A corral, two desolate stable-sheds, and the slowly turning windmill were all else. Here Ephraim and one or two helpers abode, armed against Indians, and selling whiskey. Variety in their vocation of drinking and killing was brought them by the travellers. These passed and passed through the glaring vacant months--some days only one ragged fortune-hunter, riding a pony; again by twos and threes, with high-loaded burros; and sometimes they came in companies, walking beside their clanking freight-wagons. Some were young, and some were old, and all drank whiskey, and wore knives and guns to keep each other civil. Most of them were bound for the mines, and some of them sometimes returned. No man trusted the next man, and their names, when they had any, would be O’Rafferty, Angus, Schwartzmeyer, José Maria, and Smith. All stopped for one night; some longer, remaining drunk and profitable to Ephraim; now and then one stayed permanently, and had a fence built round him. Whoever came, and whatever befell them, Twenty Mile was chronically hilarious after sundown--a dot of riot in the dumb Arizona night.
On this particular evening they had a tenderfoot. The boy, being new in Arizona, still trusted his neighbor. Such people turned up occasionally. This one had paid for everybody’s drink several times, because he felt friendly, and never noticed that nobody ever paid for his. They had played cards with him, stolen his spurs, and now they were making him dance. It was an ancient pastime; yet two or three were glad to stand round and watch it, because it was some time since they had been to the opera. Now the tenderfoot had misunderstood these friends at the beginning, supposing himself to be among good fellows, and they therefore naturally set him down as a fool. But even while dancing you may learn much, and suddenly. The boy, besides being limber, had good tough black hair, and it was not in fear, but with a cold blue eye, that he looked at the old gentleman. The trouble had been that his own revolver had somehow hitched, so he could not pull it from the holster at the necessary moment.
“Tried to draw on me, did yer?” said the old gentleman. “Step higher! Step, now, or I’ll crack open yer kneepans, ye robin’s egg.”
“Thinks he’s having a bad time,” remarked Ephraim. “Wonder how he’d like to have been that man the Injuns had sport with?”
“Weren’t his ear funny?” said one who had helped bury the man.
“Ear?” said Ephraim. “You boys ought to been along when I found him, and seen the way they’d fixed up his mouth.” Ephraim explained the details simply, and the listeners shivered. But Ephraim was a humorist. “Wonder how it feels,” he continued, “to have--”
Here the boy sickened at his comments and the loud laughter. Yet a few hours earlier these same half-drunken jesters had laid the man to rest with decent humanity. The boy was taking his first dose of Arizona. By no means was everybody looking at his jig. They had seen tenderfeet so often. There was a Mexican game of cards; there was the concertina; and over in the corner sat Specimen Jones, with his back to the company, singing to himself. Nothing had been said or done that entertained him in the least. He had seen everything quite often.
“Higher! skip higher, you elegant calf,” remarked the old gentleman to the tenderfoot. “High-yer!” And he placidly fired a fourth shot that scraped the boy’s boot at the ankle and threw earth over the clock, so that you could not tell the minute from the hour hand.
“‘Drink to me only with thine eyes,’” sang Specimen Jones, softly. They did not care much for his songs in Arizona. These lyrics were all, or nearly all, that he retained of the days when he was twenty, although he was but twenty-six now.
The boy was cutting pigeon-wings, the concertina played “Matamoras,” Jones continued his lyric, when two Mexicans leaped at each other, and the concertina stopped with a quack.
“Quit it!” said Ephraim from behind the bar, covering the two with his weapon. “I don’t want any greasers scrapping round here to-night. We’ve just got cleaned up.”
It had been cards, but the Mexicans made peace, to the regret of Specimen Jones. He had looked round with some hopes of a crisis, and now for the first time he noticed the boy.
“Blamed if he ain’t neat,” he said. But interest faded from his eyes, and he turned again to the wall. “‘Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein,’” he melodiously observed. His repertory was wide and refined. When he sang he was always grammatical.
“Ye kin stop, kid,” said the old gentleman, not unkindly, and he shoved his pistol into his belt.
The boy ceased. He had been thinking matters over. Being lithe and strong, he was not tired nor much out of breath, but he was trembling with the plan and the prospect he had laid out for himself. “Set ’em up,” he said to Ephraim. “Set ’em up again all round.”
His voice caused Specimen Jones to turn and look once more, while the old gentleman, still benevolent, said, “Yer langwidge means pleasanter than it sounds, kid.” He glanced at the boy’s holster, and knew he need not keep a very sharp watch as to that. Its owner had bungled over it once already. All the old gentleman did was to place himself next the boy on the off side from the holster; any move the tenderfoot’s hand might make for it would be green and unskilful, and easily anticipated. The company lined up along the bar, and the bottle slid from glass to glass. The boy and his tormentor stood together in the middle of the line, and the tormentor, always with half a thought for the holster, handled his drink on the wet counter, waiting till all should be filled and ready to swallow simultaneously, as befits good manners.
“Well, my regards,” he said, seeing the boy raise his glass; and as the old gentleman’s arm lifted in unison, exposing his waist, the boy reached down a lightning hand, caught the old gentleman’s own pistol, and jammed it in his face.
“Now you’ll dance,” said he.
“Whoop!” exclaimed Specimen Jones, delighted. “_Blamed_ if he ain’t neat!” And Jones’s handsome face lighted keenly.
“Hold on!” the boy sang out, for the amazed old gentleman was mechanically drinking his whiskey out of sheer fright. The rest had forgotten their drinks. “Not one swallow,” the boy continued. “No, you’ll not put it down either. You’ll keep hold of it, and you’ll dance all round this place. Around and around. And don’t you spill any. And I’ll be thinking what you’ll do after that.”
Specimen Jones eyed the boy with growing esteem. “Why, he ain’t bigger than a pint of cider,” said he.