Chapter IX: Narratives of Adventure (1)

Of all forms of narrative the account of adventure is, it is safe to say, the very oldest. It dates back, indeed, to the childhood of all races. Not only was it written on Egyptian papyrus four thousand years before Christ, but it was told and sung around camp and council fires long before written history begins.

Nor has its popularity decreased with age and with the advance of civilization. Young and old alike still delight in accounts of physical prowess, in stories of danger and disaster, in tales of experiences in far-away places and among unfamiliar peoples. Boy scouts reluctantly leave their camp-fires to dream of hunting and trapping in the far north or in the African jungle; college students swap adventures upon their return in the fall; and the Arctic explorer speaks to houses crowded with all sorts and conditions of men.

It is only natural, therefore, that the writing of accounts of adventure should appeal to a student perhaps more than the writing of any other form of narrative. Material lies close at hand, culled either from his own experience or from that of those whom he knows; and he is eager to present that material so that his readers or hearers may feel that same thrill of excitement which he has felt so often.

And yet in order that that thrill of excitement may be experienced to the full, it is necessary that he understand how to tell his story in the best way, how to begin at once with no unnecessary preliminaries which will retard the action, how to keep and to increase suspense in his readers, how to make the most of his culminating and climactic incident, how to conclude his story impressively so that his readers may not lose their eager interest before the last word.

The selections that follow illustrate some of the best methods of handling adventure material. In _Wild Justice_ Mr. Townshend is recounting an incident so dramatic and stupendous in itself that he uses the simplest style possible in its portrayal. His sentences, for the most part, are short and direct; his words are simple and concrete. He realizes fully that description of scenery which is not absolutely necessary, or characterization of persons, except that given by their own behavior, are out of place in a narrative as absorbing as this one.

The student must not think, however, that description is always out of place in an account of adventures. Sometimes, on the contrary, it immeasurably adds to the effectiveness of the narrative. In _The Attack of the Tiger_, for example, which depicts an incident of the jungle, a place in itself strange and exotic to us, Mr. Rosny increases the atmosphere which he would create of this “world of trees” by his beautiful use of description. Again, in the selection from Pierre Loti’s _The Iceland Fisherman_, the exquisite portrayal of the storm is used as the background against which, or perhaps better, as the setting _in_ which, Yann and Sylvestre move. The elements of the storm, the clouds, the wind, the waves, became, in fact, the adventurers, as well as the men who contend against them. And what a charming effect is given by the refrain which Yann and Sylvestre sing through their white lips! Indeed, both of these selections show what artistic heights the writer of adventure narratives may reach, what purely æsthetic effects are possible in his work.

The following suggestions may be of assistance to the student:

1. Study the incident (or incidents) which you are to relate. If it
seems to you to be so dramatic in itself that it needs little help
from the style or diction, then choose the simplest and most direct
manner of relating it. If, on the other hand, the environment
in which the action takes place seems to you all-important, do
not hesitate to employ means which will add atmosphere to your
narrative.

2. Do not waste time in getting started. Remember that
preliminaries are dangerous in the writing of an account of
adventure. Be as economical with them as possible.

3. Be sure that your story _mounts_ continually, that the suspense
increases. Do not allow any digressions.

4. Do not, however, be in too great a hurry to relate your
climactic incident. You will increase the suspense by slowing down
before you reach it, by giving _all_ the details. Note how fully
and clearly Mr. Townshend depicts every step of the proceeding
between the verdict of guilty and the actual hanging. A less
careful writer would have spoiled his narrative by being in too
much of a hurry.

5. Make your close as effective as possible, and _know when you
have finished_. Note that _Wild Justice_ really ends with the
words, “The work was done.”

M. E. C.

WILD JUSTICE

R. B. TOWNSHEND

Returning to Denver, I parted company with Matthews; to tell the truth, I was a bit tired of his everlasting sneers, so often (as I thought) directed against better men than himself. Besides, I thought I was competent now to stand on my own feet instead of going around on a personally conducted tour. Naturally my first step was to buy a horse. For this I went to Billy and Hi Ford, who had brought some 1500 head of wild bronco stock--bronco is Spanish for unbroken--from California to Denver where they were selling them as rapidly as they could get them broken in. Ford Brothers soon took my measure and for I think $60 fitted me out with a little brown mare, who had been ridden several times. They put me very carefully on her, and I went down the Platte a few miles and put up at a ranch. Along the main freighting roads most ranches would take you in overnight and give you supper, bed and breakfast for $1.50, or if your horse had to be fed also, for $2.25. A snowstorm came on that night and I lay there two days till the weather improved. The little brown mare had done herself uncommonly well in the barn, and when I tried to climb on to her back on the third morning she began to play up. The friendly and much amused ranchman lent me a helping hand, however, and at last I got myself fixed in the saddle with my blanket roll padding me in well there and the ranchman hanging tight on to her head.

“Do you think she’ll buck?” I asked nervously as he let her go.

“Guess so,” said he.

And buck she certainly did. But I was so well wedged in with my pack that I did manage to remain, though I can’t say I liked it, and the upshot of it was I rode back to Denver and traded her (plus $20 more) to Billy Ford for an ancient chestnut “bronc” who had got over all his youthful frivolities. I called him Methusalem, and he turned out an excellent travelling animal for a tenderfoot. On him I rode out to Kiowa Creek to visit an English ranchman I had met in Denver, and I stayed there a few days riding around the prairie and seeing what cattle was like. My friend had a nice American wife and a nice bunch of American cattle, which he milked, while she, like a good ranchwoman, made butter from the milk. Butter was worth, I think, 75 cents a pound. Of course these American dairy cattle, which were just like our ordinary English farm stock, were quite unlike the long-horned, long-legged animals of Spanish breed, of which drovers had just begun to bring up large herds from Texas. The older Colorado stock-men, owners of American stock, rather resented this intrusion, as the wild Texas brutes could be sold for less than half the prices they had been used to getting, and consequently their profits went down; but they had to put up with it. All the disgruntled owner of American stock could do was to chase the others off his range when they invaded it, but this he had no legal right to do, as the range was Government land, and he only did it at the risk of rough handling from the Texan cow-punchers, and I much enjoyed the good gallops on the prairie even though Methusalem was hardly fast enough to head a wild steer. But I did get my first taste of cow-punching and liked it well.

Next I decided to wander down the Platte and see what that section was like. Ranches extended some fifty odd miles below Denver, about to the point where the South Platte River makes its big bend eastwards, and at this point a new town was just being started. It was named Evans in honour of the man who had been Governor of Colorado before McCook, and its _raison d’être_ was that the first railroad into Colorado was now being opened so far for traffic. This railroad was the Denver Pacific R. R. running from Cheyenne to Denver, and Evans was the half-way house. The city was just three weeks old when I got there, and the site of it was on the north bank of the Platte, across which a bridge was going to be built. I put up at the ranch of a very friendly old ranchman, Godfrey, no relation to the other Godfrey down at Saguache; he had a bunch of American cattle, and a wife and son, the latter a very fine young fellow. Godfrey let me use his rifle, an old-fashioned small-bored muzzle-loader with a heavy octagon barrel nearly four feet long, I should say. Armed with this wondrous weapon I sallied out after antelopes, of which there were any number around there, and I got my first lessons in stalking. Stalking antelope, like everything else, was quite new to me, and I was as keen as possible to take lessons in whatever thing there was to be learnt. There was something, though, to be learnt in that little mushroom city of Evans which I most certainly did not anticipate. When I rode over there I found that it consisted of some forty or fifty houses of raw boards, mostly half-finished or with their roofs in process of being “shingled,” stuck down here and there on the bare prairie. The parched yellow bunch-grass, over which wild Texas cattle had grazed a month before, grew up to, and under, the little frame buildings which were raised for the most part six inches or a foot off the ground on stone or brick props; the earth was cut up in every direction by the ruts of waggon-wheels, and piles of newly sawn lumber lay about. In the middle of all snorted the locomotive, the earliest that ever ran on the plains of Colorado--for the railroad had come at last, and this was the end of the track, the first completed section of the iron road, in Colorado Territory.

I was riding past a bar-room where there were some men with whisky bottles and glasses set out before them, when one of them sung out to me:

“Come ’n hev’ a drink.”

“No, thank you,” I replied without pulling up.

In a moment out flashed a revolver pointed straight at my head.

“Yes, you will,” said the same voice with emphasis, “or else----”

What “else” meant was left to the imagination, but I didn’t find it hard to guess. My reply was:

“Oh, certainly,” and I sprang from my saddle saying, “I’d rather drink than be shot any day.” And without more ado I took my dose. But I can’t say I liked my society.

“I’ve looked to see ’em have a man for breakfast any morning,” said old Godfrey when I got back to the ranch and told him of it. “According to what I hear they’ve bin shooting at the lamps in the saloons and dancing on the bars, slinging their six-shooters round their heads, and raising Cain generally, every night. I’ve wondered there hasn’t been nobody shot yet, but I reckon they were each one of ’em kind of shy of being the first to begin. But now, if they’ve started in, likely they’ll have another Julesburg here if they ain’t interfered with.”

Julesburg, as I have already said, was a spot that had been the end of the track on the Union Pacific Railroad for some months during its construction, and it had been, perhaps, the most debauched and the most blood-stained little moral pesthouse the Far West ever saw. A young man presently arrived at Godfrey’s where he also found quarters under that hospitable roof; he called himself a schoolmaster by trade, and his object was to see if by chance such a thing was wanted in this three-weeks’-old town. A town, even the newest, almost always had some families, and that generally meant some boys of school age, with, as the obvious and natural consequence, an opening for a schoolmaster. I can’t say that I was much impressed with my new friend’s scholastic qualifications, but I was out to learn all I could of this strange country, and at his invitation I rode with him down to the ford across the South Platte with a view to seeing what opening there might be in Evans. “Crack” came the sharp sound of a pistol shot as we rode through the icy ford, and we saw men running among the houses, and a couple of horsemen with rifles in their hands galloping after a man who was flying at top speed towards the brush in the Platte bottom.

“The toughs from Cheyenne have been trying to run this town ever since it was started,” said my companion, “but they haven’t killed anyone so far. I wonder if that shot means the first man killed.”

We rode through the fringe of willow brush and cottonwood trees that skirted the river, and up the bluff. We now got fairly into the town and saw all the population--all the male population, that is--swarming like bees in the middle of the main street. Horses and ox-teams stood here and there untended; the shingling hatchets and carpenter’s tools lay around the half-finished houses, just where they had been thrown down. The stores were open, but they were empty, for buyers and sellers had crowded, like all the rest, to the scene of action. There in the centre of the crowd was a sight to remember. Ten men shoulder to shoulder formed a ring, each man facing outwards, each man holding his cocked revolver, muzzle up, the hand that held it being on a level with his chest; the men’s set mouths and searching eyes, turning restlessly on the crowd around, showed them to be sharply on the watch for signs of an attempted rescue.

A rescue, but of whom? It did not take long to recognize who was the object of their care. In the middle of the ring, bareheaded, with his arms bound, stood a prisoner, a sickly smile on his loose lips, and the colour coming and going in patches on his bloated face. By him was a guard, also pistol in hand like those who formed the ring, but his eyes were bent not on the crowd, but on the prisoner; and the pistol he held was pointed not toward the sky, but straight at the prisoner’s heart. Were a rescue attempted, it was clear the rescuers would recover only a corpse. That the toughs would try to set their friend free if they dared was certain; it was useless to try to secure him by locking him up in an extempore gaol, for there was no building in the town that could resist a determined assault for five minutes; but a bodyguard such as now held him could not be maintained for long. These men had their own business to attend to; and standing guard, pistol in hand, expecting to kill or be killed, is a dead loss of time and wages. However, it was not intended by those who were putting their energies, heart and soul, into the building of a new town to waste very much time over guarding a murderer. For it was murder that this wretched captive was held for, and stiff and stark, in a house hard by, with a bullet through his brain, lay the body of his victim. The sound of the loud weeping of the widowed wife and orphan daughters was heard at intervals across the vacant lots, and that agonized crying served to inflame the passions of the crowd. From the bystanders I gathered that old man Steel, a most respectable man who kept a boarding-house, had just been shot by a tough, and that it was more than probable that Judge Lynch would take cognizance of the case. The crying of the wretched widow and orphaned children sounded in the ears of the people, and called for vengeance. The one anxiety was, would the other railroad toughs try to rescue their hero?

Presently an empty lumber waggon was run out a little way from the town on the bare prairie; from the box end of this a few nail kegs were arranged in a double row, perhaps eight feet apart, and boards were laid on them for seats. A man sprang up on the waggon, and said:

“A crime has been committed here, and I move that a People’s Court be constituted to try the case. Those in favour will say ‘Aye.’”

“Aye, aye,” came from all quarters, like a dropping fire.

“Contrary, ‘No,’” the temporary chairman added, as if by an afterthought.

I fancied I heard a few muttered remarks, but no man said “No” openly. Perhaps the railroad toughs were lying low for the present.

Up jumped another man, so quick and pat that it dawned upon me that there was a prepared scheme being put in operation.

“I move that Captain Sopris be elected judge of this court,” he said.

As before, the “Ayes” had it.

“Captain Sopris was a People’s Judge in Denver, and he hanged a heap of men there, too, time of the Pike’s Peak boom,” said an old-timer near me. “The captain knows the ropes.” There was a grim double meaning in the way he said “ropes.”

Captain Sopris mounted the waggon box in his turn and took his seat, throwing a keen eye over the crowd.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I have been elected to try this case by you, the people. Is it your will that I should select a jury? Those who are in favour say ‘Aye!’”

Once more the full-throated chorus of “Ayes!” arose from the crowd.

“Contrary, ‘No,’” said the Judge to the crowd in matter-of-fact tones, turning at the same time to speak to a man beside him. It was his art, I think, to appear to take it all as mere matter of course, yet I am certain he and his supporters were sharply on the watch for any sign of opposition from the prisoner’s friends. But the “people” had got a leader now, and any who would have liked to interfere were cowed by the almost unanimous ‘Aye!’ of the majority. When the judge said “Contrary, ‘No!’” there may have been a murmur here and there, but no man durst answer “No,” square and bold.

The people were rousing to their work. We were all packed tight round the court, for that farm waggon and the nail keg seats had become the Court of the People out there on the prairie under the open sky. I had dismounted and wedged myself in next the seats where my neighbour said the jury would be. Quickly a dozen jurors were chosen and took their places. A Bible was produced, and every juror was sworn to give an honest verdict. Each man as soon as he was sworn took his seat, on one or other of the impromptu benches, till there were six on one side and six on the other.

“And now,” said the judge, “bring in the prisoner.”

Accordingly the guards, with the prisoner in their midst, moved up to the open side of the court; but as they did so it was seen that something had occurred, for beside the prisoner stood little Pat Egan, who was believed to represent the majesty of the law in some sort of capacity or other.

“Captain Sopris,” he began in somewhat plaintive accents, “this hyar thing ain’ regular at all. By rights this hyar man’s my prisoner, and I can’t consent to no proceedings of this sort.”

The judge took no more notice of him than if he had been a piece of wood; less, indeed, for he did not appear to see him.

“But,” continued the little Irishman, “I’m a county officer, I am, and I’m liable to be called in question for this business. And I can’t give up this man,” he went on piteously, “without some excuse, ye know I can’t.”

The audience smiled audibly, but the judge, the jury and guards never looked at him, never heard him, never knew he was there, so to speak, but went on with their own business, arranging the order in which the witnesses should be called.

Pat Egan continued his pitiful demands for an excuse. The crowd was jammed thick round the court, the foremost men leaning over the backs of the jury on both sides. Eager to catch every word, I had tied my horse to a post in the street and had squeezed myself in up to the very seat where the jury sat, so that I was within a couple of yards of Mr. Egan and the prisoner. Leaning on me was a great yellow-bearded giant in a slouch hat. He reached down to his hip and produced an enormous revolver, one of the old dragoon Colt’s, with a barrel about a foot long. Bearing on my shoulder with his left hand, he extended his long right arm over the heads of the jury till the pistol-muzzle was within a few inches of Pat’s head. Pat, with his face to the judge’s bench, was still volubly explaining that he was a county officer and couldn’t consent.

“Mr. Egan,” breathed the giant with the big pistol, in the softest tones.

Mr. Egan was absorbed in his own ardent utterances, and didn’t hear.

“Mr. Egan,” a little louder.

Pat turned round sharp and looked into the muzzle of the formidable weapon.

“Mr. Egan, will that do ye for an excuse?” said the giant with an air of gentle sarcasm.

Mr. Egan recoiled several feet with an air of comic alarm.

“Oh, certainly, sir,” he responded with alacrity. “Certainly, certainly, quite sufficient; that will do.” And he, the sole representative of the lawful Government of Colorado, disappeared promptly and finally from the scene.

And now the serious business of the court began.

“Is there a lawyer in town?” asked the judge. “If so, fetch him. The prisoner can have a counsel.”

There was a Mr. Tallboys, a lawyer, a very young one, who came. The people of this mushroom town had arrived with a rush from everywhere, and every profession was represented.

“Understand,” said Sopris, leaning over from the waggon to the counsel for the accused, “this is a People’s Court. Any arguments you can use for your client will get a fair hearing. But you are not to object to the competence of the court. If you try to do so, I am deaf.”

The lawyer, looking very uncomfortable, murmured some indistinct answer. He was in an extremely irregular and unpleasant position. But he saw that he must either accept it or go. He elected to stay. As counsel for the prisoner, he stood beside him in the centre of the court.

“I shall now call on the prosecution to bring forward their witnesses,” said Captain Sopris. “We will hear their story first, and you, prisoner, can cross-examine them either by yourself or by your lawyer.”

The first witness came forward and, after having been sworn on the Book to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, began:

“I was at dinner at old man Steel’s boarding-house. It was the first table and it was chock-full. This man come in--he was a boarder there too--and wanted to find a place, and growled because he couldn’t get none. Then one of Mr. Steel’s gals who was waiting at table told him he must wait till his turn, till there was room. Wal’, he says something sassy to her, and she up and slaps a cup of coffee she had in her hand right in his face. Then he begun to get up on his ear about it, and so two or three of the young fellows at table jest fired him out.”

The judge, who was sitting reflectively on the waggon-box, with his head on his hand, here interposed.

“Did they hit him or pound him at all?”

“No,” answered the witness, “not nohow. They jest took him by the shoulders and jest naturally fired him out’n the door. He’d had a drink or two in him, you know, though he warn’t drunk.”

“What did he do then?” asked one of the jury.

“Went off, I reckon,” said the witness. “I didn’t see no more of him.”

“Did Mr. Steel have anything to do with turning him out?” asked the judge.

“No, sir. He warn’t thar’; he was in the inner room, I reckon.”

“Did you see the shooting?” asked the judge.

“No, sir, I went off to my work as soon as dinner was over,” was the reply.

“Mr. Tallboys, do you wish to ask this witness any questions?” said the judge to the prisoner’s lawyer.

The lawyer conferred a minute with his client, and then said to the court that he didn’t wish to cross-examine this man. The witness, a young carpenter, was accordingly told he could go, which he did with an air of very considerable relief, mingling at once with the crowd. Another man was now brought forward and sworn like the first.

“Were you with Mr. Steel after dinner?” asked the judge.

“Yes,” said the witness, “I was.”

“Tell the jury what happened.”

“Mr. Steel and I were unloading a load of lumber I’d brought for him. He was at one end of the pile, I was at the other, and we were lifting the boards off the waggon. Suddenly I saw the prisoner come up behind Mr. Steel, and I heard him say, ‘I want to talk to you.’”

“Was the prisoner alone?” asked a juryman.

“I didn’t see anyone, not to say actually with him. There were two or three men standing together across the street, but I don’t know for certain as they had anything to do with him.”

“What did Mr. Steel say?” asked the judge.

“He looks at him, and says he, ‘I can’t talk to you now: I’m busy. You must come around after working hours.’ Then the prisoner says, ‘You’ve got to talk to me, and you’ve got to talk to me now.’ And Mr. Steel he says, ‘Wal’, I ain’t agoin’ to,’ and turned round to take hold of the lumber again; and the prisoner, he reaches down and pulls out his pistol, and, before I could holler to him or do anything, he just put it close behind Mr. Steel’s head and fired. Mr. Steel dropped, and the prisoner he ran. I started round the waggon to grab him, but he ran t’other way. Then I picked up Mr. Steel; he was breathing, but he never spoke. The bullet went in at the back of his head, and come out over his right eye. Me and some more took him into the house.”

“Mr. Tallboys, have you any question to ask this witness?” said Captain Sopris.

Mr. Tallboys consulted with the prisoner awhile, and announced that he had not. The witness, a teamster, was accordingly dismissed, like the former one. Three or four more were called, and repeated the story told by these two in much the same words. It was elicited that the prisoner had had no pistol on when he came to dinner and was put out-of-doors, so that he must have procured it in the interval before he came back. The case was so clear that there was no necessity to distress those poor, unhappy women by calling them.

One of the men who captured the prisoner testified that he was at work near, and “happened to have a saddled horse near, and a Winchester handy.” Also that he had a friend similarly provided. Tenderfoot though I was, it dawned on me that these men must belong to an organized body who had made themselves ready beforehand. Evans had its Vigilantes. The two friends heard a shot, saw a man with a pistol running for the brush, heard the people crying murder, and at once set after him. He just got to cover as they caught him up, but he showed no fight; as soon as they covered him with the Winchesters, he threw up his hands and surrendered, and here he was.

Here the lawyer saw his chance to put a few questions in cross-examination, asking whether they promised the prisoner his life when he surrendered, and so forth; but nothing came out that could help him. Things looked terribly black for the wretched man, and he began to cry.

Nothing could have been more orderly than the behaviour of the court. While the witnesses were being examined, you might have heard a pin drop. Between whiles the crowd conversed among themselves, but in sober and hushed tones. There was no yelling of a mob for the blood of a victim, but a most evident deadly resolution to exact the uttermost penalty. I remember thinking to myself, “How I wish Carlyle were here” (he was still alive in those days), “to feel for himself the contrast between this and the revolutionary tribunals of Paris! This would seem to him more like some old Teuton gathering of freemen in the Northern forests.”

And now the witnesses were all disposed of, and the trial drew to its close. The young lawyer was asked if he had any witnesses to call for the defence, but he intimated that there were none. I felt for the young man in his first case, with such a hopeless task before him as the defence of this red-handed criminal taken in the very act. I racked my brain to think of what I should say were I in his position. I thought of the words of Magna Charta (remember I had only just left Cambridge): “Against no man will we go, neither will we send, save by lawful judgment of his peers, and by the law of the land.”

“The common law holds good in America,” I thought, “and surely they will have heard of Magna Charta.” Then I heard the judge’s grave tones addressing the lawyer.

“Mr. Tallboys,” he said, “the evidence in this case is now before the court; but before the jury retire to consider their verdict you are at liberty to offer any remarks you have to make on it that you may think advisable. Understand, you are not to question in any way the competency of the court. This is a people’s court, sprung from and organized by the people themselves, and if you question its right, you put yourself out of court at once, and it will be my duty not to hear you. On the question of the prisoner’s guilt you are at full liberty to speak.”

These words scattered to the winds my imaginary reference to Magna Charta and the field of Runnimede and the long tradition of Anglo-Norman law. They were all ruled out of court. The issue was narrowed down to the simple question, “Did the prisoner kill old man Steel or no?” and to that, after the testimony of several witnesses to a thing that had happened two hours before in broad daylight under the open sky, but one answer was possible.

The lawyer got up and spoke a few words, but there really was nothing for him to say.

“Gentlemen of the jury,” said Captain Sopris, “I think the case is complete, but before you retire to consider your verdict I will ask the prisoner personally to make any statement he thinks fit that might weigh with you. Prisoner, have you anything to say?”

There was a great silence of the whole crowd for some minutes; all eyes were bent on the man addressed. He swallowed hard a few times, and choked back his tears, and at last whined out:

“I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

Didn’t mean to hurt him--when he had shot him through the head at two yards off! If it had not been a tragedy, there would have been a shout of laughter. But, instead, there was a grimmer silence than before. The prisoner had said all he had to say.

The pause was broken by Captain Sopris.

“Gentlemen of the jury, you have heard the evidence, and also what the prisoner has to say for himself. You will now retire to consider your verdict.”

The jury rose and filed out, and standing off a little distance on the prairie talked together. The tension in the court was relaxed, and there was a hum of conversation. The prisoner whispered to his lawyer inaudibly.

Presently the jury filed back into court and sat down.

“Gentlemen,” said Captain Sopris, “have you decided on your verdict?”

“We have,” answered one who acted as foreman.

“Are you unanimous?” again asked the judge.

“We are,” was again the answer.

“What is your verdict?”

There was a breathless hush in the court as the foreman said in clear steady tones:

“Guilty of murder in the first degree.”

Again you might have heard a pin drop on the prairie grass.

I saw the two men with the Winchesters slip on to their saddle-horses and take up their position on the side between the crowd on the prairie and the town.

Sopris raised his eyes from the jury to the crowd.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “the jury have found the prisoner guilty of murder in the first degree. It is for you, the people, to say what his punishment shall be. Those who are in favour of hanging will say ‘Aye.’”

An answering roar of “Aye” went up to the sky above us.

“Contrary, ‘No,’” said Sopris.

There was a dead silence.

Sopris waited to give any friend of the prisoner time to harden his heart and say “No.” None did.

“Prisoner,” said the judge, turning to the wretched creature, who was now sobbing and unnerved, “the jury have found you guilty and the people have sentenced you to be hung. You will be hung in fifteen minutes to the nearest tree. If you have anything to say before then, you had better say it.”

Then was heard a loud voice from the outskirts of the crowd. It came from a big man, sitting on a horse, with a sixteen-shot Winchester in his hand; two more horsemen, similarly armed, were by him.

“Every man come down to the tree,” he said. “Let no man stay back. It’s one and all.”

“One and all.” It was the motto, if I remember right, of the New Model Army in its struggle with the Rump, that terrible Cromwellian army that did not shrink from cutting off the head of a king. And indeed I asked myself how far was the court, presided over by Mr. President Bradshaw, which sentenced Charles I, more legal than this people’s court, with Captain Sopris as elected judge? “These Americans,” thought I, “are the real true-bred sons of those old Commonwealth men.”

Slowly across the trampled grass the procession moved towards the fatal tree. The sun was sinking fast towards the west, where the great jagged wall of the Rocky Mountains stood dark against the clear sky. Just outside the town, on the edge of the bottom lands of the Platte, grew a big cottonwood tree, its leafless branches spreading wide. Here we halted. I had remounted my pony and, anxious to see the whole thing through, had wedged myself into the middle of the throng. One of the guards stepped up to me, and, holding up his pistol as he laid his hand on my bridle, said:

“Get off that horse.”

“What for?” I asked. “Why do you want him?”

“Never mind,” was his answer, “you shall have him back again; but he’s wanted. You’ve got to get off.”

His manner was peremptory. I dismounted. They took my picket rope, a nearly new one, three-quarters of an inch in diameter and forty feet long, and, making a noose in one end, tossed it over a limb twelve or fifteen feet up from the ground.

“Will you tell us,” said the leader of the Vigilantes, addressing the condemned man, “who gave you the pistol?”

I gathered from his manner that he had been trying to induce him to reveal his accomplices on the way to the tree. The wretch looked up at the rope swinging above him, and said:

“Will you give me my life if I tell?”

“We promise nothing,” said his questioner, a short, bullet-headed man with a singularly resolute face, “but,” he added, “it won’t be worse for you if you do.”

“Then I won’t say,” answered the prisoner.

“Have you any friends that you want to say good-bye to?” he asked again; and, the prisoner nodding assent, he called out to the crowd, “If there are any friends of this man here who wish to speak to him, they can do so, one at a time.”

A dissolute-looking gambler in a very seedy frock-coat, with his hands in his pockets, slouched forward with uneasy swagger. The guards examined him to see that he had no concealed weapons, and then admitted him to the prisoner. He sauntered up to him with an ill-concealed nervousness which he tried to carry off as easy nonchalance.

“Wal, Joe, old man,” he observed to his friend, “you’ve got to the jumping-off place this time, I guess.”

The prisoner gave a ghastly grin.

“Say, old man,” he continued, drawing one hand from his trousers’ pocket, and rubbing it on the unshaven cheek of the condemned man, where three or four days’ stubbly growth of hair bristled, “You’d better ax ’em to let you shave this off. It might be in the way of the rope.”

The prisoner only groaned at the disgusting pleasantry.

“Take him away,” said the leader to the guards. “No more of this. Now,” he said to the doomed man, “do you want to pray? Will you have a minister?”

No answer was returned; but there was a slight movement among the crowd--men looking to right and left as if searching for the sight of a black coat; but it was in vain--no one like a minister was to be found.

“Do you wish to send a message to anybody?” asked the leader.

“I’ve a wife in Philadelphia,” said the murderer through his sobs.

A notebook was instantly produced.

“Your name, your real name?” said the Vigilante.

“Joe Carr.”

“Her address?”

The prisoner mumbled something I couldn’t hear. It was a hangman’s knot that had been tied in my rope, and now the noose was put over his head, and settled round his neck; the other end of the rope tossed over the bough was made fast with a turn round the trunk of the tree; the horse was brought alongside him.

“Now say a prayer if you want to,” said the Vigilante.

“I’ll be good God damned if I think a prayer of mine ’ud go more’n seven feet high,” said the reprobate.

In a moment he was hoisted on to the horse, the rope drawn taut, and a resounding smack given to the horse’s quarters. The animal bounded forward, and the murderer was left swinging.

“Run him up! run him up!” was the cry, and twenty willing hands hauled on the rope till the body was swung aloft to within two feet of the bough, and the rope was again made fast.

There was silence for a little space; then the leader of the Vigilantes took his stand beneath the fatal branch, and spoke short and plain.

“There’s men here,” said he, “as guilty in intention as that man,” pointing to the body, “was in act. Let this be a warning to them. Let this be a sign that in this town the people don’t mean to tolerate any such goings on. We know there were men who encouraged this miserable wretch to do this thing that brought him to this--yes, and lent him the pistol to do it with. They may thank their stars they are not hanging beside him now. They are just as guilty as he was, and if they know what’s healthy for them, they’ll get out of this before daylight to-morrow. And I say the same to any more there are of the same kidney here, and who thought they were going to run this town. They’d better drop it. They’d better get. The people of this town are going to run this town themselves, and this here is the proof of it. Enough said.” And, turning away, he stepped back into the crowd and joined his friends.

“It’s all over, boys,” said the big man on the horse, with the Winchester in his hand. “We can go back to our business now. Let no man interfere with that body,” he added. “It’ll be seen to to-night. No one’s to touch it without orders.”

And the crowd broke up into knots and slowly dispersed.

“Young man,” said one of the guards to me, leading up my pony, “here’s your bronco. You shall have your rope back in the morning; it’s occupied at present. No one will trouble you over this matter; it was taken from you by force, you understand.”

And then I understood that the demonstration of holding up a pistol when I was told to dismount had been really for my benefit, to relieve me of responsibility, if by any chance the proper officers of the ordinary law of the territory should take any notice of this day’s work.

I took my horse, mounted him, and later on, when the crowd had dispersed, rode down to the ford. The pony stopped in mid-channel to drink, and I shall not forget the scene. The sun was just setting behind the range of the Rocky Mountains, and in the foreground stood the withered cottonwood with its ghastly fruit. The work was done.

* * * * *

So far as I know, the regular law took no notice. The effects of the action of the Vigilantes were, however, marked and immediate. That night many of the worst characters in town left it, some in their haste walking all the way to Denver to get clear of a spot so ominous to them. The rowdyism, the displaying of revolvers and shooting at lamps out of bravado, stopped instanter. There never was another man shot in the town of Evans for two years, and then the shooting was accidental, though, as the man who fired the rifle on that occasion happened to have had words with the man who was wounded--it was not a fatal shot--he was most terribly frightened, fully expecting the Vigilantes to get after him.

This rapid and most surprising purification of the moral atmosphere of Evans City did, I admit, dispose me at the time to think favourably of the action of lynch law. But five years’ residence in the territory was enough to alter my opinion. During that time only one man was legally executed there, and he was a foreigner and a poor man; and, moreover, there is reason to believe that his crime only amounted to manslaughter. Yet during those years many crimes of violence were committed, and many lynchings occurred. Some of these were, I make no doubt, as well deserved as the one of which I was a witness; others very probably were not--for instance, two men, if not three, were lynched, on one of the creeks that run from the Divide, for killing a calf. But the general effect of the system upon the administration of the ordinary law was simply disastrous. Whenever atrocious murderers are hanged as soon as caught, there arises at once a strong presumption that a man-slayer, who is left to be dealt with by an ordinary jury, has probably much to excuse him. This feeling vastly increased the difficulty of getting juries to convict. Popular criminals are quite sure to get off, and the ordinary law became glaringly ineffective and sinks into something very like contempt, while the lynchers alone are really dreaded. And this very dread increases crime, because horse-thieves and cattle-thieves, when pursued, know they will probably be lynched, and never hesitate to shoot, thinking they may as well be hanged for killing a man as for killing a calf. Every thief becomes a potential murderer, and goes armed. Peaceful citizens arm themselves in defence of their lives and property, and, as collisions will occur, crimes of violence naturally abound. The remedy is worse than the disease.

R. B. Townshend. _A Tenderfoot in Colorado._
Copyright by Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc. By
permission of the publishers.

THE BLIZZARD

HERBERT QUICK

Through these wrappings, a strange sound came to my ears--the sound of sleigh-bells; and in a moment, so close were they, there emerged from the whirl of snow, a team of horses drawing a swell-body cutter, in which sat a man driving, wrapped up in buffalo robes and blankets until the box of the sleigh was filled. The horses came to a stop in the lee of my house. There had been no such rig in the county before I had gone to the war.

“Is this the Vandemark schoolhouse?” came from the man in the cutter.

“No, Captain,” said I, for discipline is strong, “this is my farm.”

“Ah, it’s you, Mr. Vandemark, is it?” said he. “Can you tell me the way to the schoolhouse?”

Discipline flew off into the storm. I never for a moment harbored the idea that I was to allow Buck Gowdy to rescue Virginia from the blizzard, and carry her off into either danger or safety. There was none of my Dutch hesitation here. This was battle; and I behaved with as much prompt decision as I did on the field of Shiloh, where, I have the captain’s word for it in writing, I behaved with a good deal of it.

“Never mind about the schoolhouse,” I said. “I’ll attend to that!”

“The hell you will!” said he, in that calm way of his. “Let me see. Your house faces the north. These trees are on the section line.... The schoolhouse is.... I have it, now. Sorry to cut in ahead of you; but--get up, Susie--Winnie, go on!”

But I had Susie and Winnie by the bits.

“Vandemark,” he said, and as he shouted this to make me hear I could feel the authority I had grown to recognize in drill, “you forget yourself! Let go those horses!”

“Not by a damned sight!”

I found myself swearing as if I were in the habit of it. Now the man in any kind of rig with another holding his horses’ bits is in an embarrassing fix. He can’t do anything so long as he remains in the vehicle; and neither can his horses. He must carry the fight to the other man, or be made a fool of.

Buck Gowdy was not a man to hesitate in such a case. He carried the fight to me--and I was glad to see him coming. I had waited for this a long time. I have no skill in describing fights, and I was too much engaged in this to remember the details. How many blows were exchanged; what sort of blows they were; how much damage they did until the last, more than a cut lip on my part, I can not tell. Why no more damage was done is clearer--we were both so wrapped up as to be unable to do much. I only know that at the last, I had Gowdy down in the snow right by my well-curb; and that without taking time to make any plan, I wrapped the well-rope around him so as to make it necessary for him to take a little time in getting loose; I wrote him a receipt for the team and rig, which N. V. Creede tells me would not have done me any good; and I went out, very much winded, shut the door behind me, and getting into the cutter, drove off into the blizzard with Gowdy’s team and sleigh, leaving him rolling around on the floor unwinding the well-rope, swearing like a trooper, and in a warm room where there was plenty to eat.

“And in my opinion,” said N. V., “no matter how much girl there was at stake, the man that chose to go out into that storm when he could have let the job out was the fool in the case.”

It was less than a mile to the schoolhouse, which I was lucky to find at all. I could not see it twenty feet away; but I was almost upset by a snow fort which the children had built, and taking this as the sure sign of a playground, I guessed my way the fifty or sixty feet that more by luck than judgment brought me to the back end of the house, instead of the front. I made my way around on the windward side of the building, hoping that the jingle of the bells might be heard as I passed the windows--for I dared not leave the horses again, as I had done during my contest with Gowdy. Nothing but the shelter in which they then found themselves had kept them from bolting--that and their bewilderment.

I pulled up before the door and shouted Virginia’s name with all my might, over and over again. But I suppose I sat there ten or fifteen minutes before Virginia came to the door; and then, while she had all her wraps on, she was in her anxiety just taking a look at the weather, debating in her mind whether to try for the safety of the fireside, or risk the stay in the schoolhouse with no fuel. She had not heard the bells, or the trampling, or my holloing. More by my motions than anything else, she saw that I was inviting her to get in; but she knew no more than her heels who I was. She went back into the schoolhouse and got her dinner-basket--lucky or providential act!--and in she climbed. If I had been Buck Gowdy or Asher Bushyager or the Devil himself, she would have done the same. She would have thought, of course, that it was one of the neighbors come for her; and, anyhow, there was nothing else to do.

As I turned back the rich robes and the jingle of the bells came to her ears, she started; but I drew her down into the seat, and pulled the flannel-lined coonskin robe which was under us, up over our laps; I wrapped the army blanket and the thick buffalo-robe over and under us; and as I did so, a little black-and-tan terrier came shivering out from under the coonskin robe and jumped into her lap. I started to put it down again, but she held it--and as she did she looked at my blue sleeve, and then up at the mass of wrappings I had over my face. I thought she snuggled up against me a little closer, then.

IV