"How long was it, Sergeant," I asked, "before this affair was reported?"
"I found the bodies were still warm," he answered, "the scent still hot, if I'd had the bloodhounds I requisitioned. But it was pitch dark, no moon, sky overcast."
"Could you find the tracks with a lantern?"
In weary scorn, the sergeant retorted, "A lantern? Too good a target."
Almighty Voice, the Cree outlaw, killed five of our men before we brought up a gun and shelled his earthwork. Sergeant Millard was right not to attempt half measures.
"De Hamel," he told me, "had arterial bleeding, and my first job was to clap on a tourniquet. He was pretty far gone when I reached him. I sent an Indian, his servant, to Doctor Delane, and put a sentry on the house in case the lunatic came back for another shot. I saw that Mrs. De Hamel and the children didn't expose themselves at lighted windows. Next I had to handle the Bloods: they were getting excited. I couldn't get away until now."
"You had three constables?"
"One on pass, one on flying sentry, and one with the interpreter collecting information. At daylight, we picked up the tracks, before the people had them trampled, so I know which way the man went. I want a patrol, sir."
"About this boy, Bears. You brought him in?"
"He escaped, sir."
I told him to send the sergeant-major, then get some food and rest while he had time. So I was left alone.
Grown men in my trade are expected to keep themselves in a state of discipline, but there are times when it is best to be alone.
And even in solitude we of the North are denied the relief of tears, would rather sacrifice the respect of our fellows than lapse from self-respect. For us there is no relief.
My friend and I had fought shoulder to shoulder, with only death between us, who needs no more space than a knife-edge. Stirrup to stirrup we had ridden the long patrols, faced the shrewd killing blizzards, and the terrific heat of an unsheltered land. No word or breath of discord had marred the perfection of our friendship. To him I owed the contentment which made a small career worth living.
Enviously, and yet with dread, I had seen him climbing heights of the life spiritual which I could never dare. And now, it seemed, in one tremendous downfall he was cast to hell. He was mad, a homicidal maniac, to be hunted as wolves are hunted.
From that I wanted to stand aside, had hoped in desperate anxiety that my commanding officer would come quickly and take charge. But now Brat returned with a stiff salute and the official manner to tell me that the superintendent commanding and Mr. Sarde were away, not to be found. The burden of command was on my shoulders, to set the chase in motion which was to hunt the one person I really loved.
I suppose Brat watched my mood, for suddenly, alone as we were, he clapped his hand on my shoulder. "Buckie," he whispered, "can't you get bloodhounds? Isn't it possible, somehow? It's the only hope of getting him without bloodshed. Hire them, and if it costs me my ranch, I'll pay."
"Where can we get them?"
He drew back. "I don't know. One or two sheriffs have them in the states."
"They couldn't send them out of their own districts. And, Brat—if our interests in this business got wind! No, we must get José—and work up a good enough case for the defense. A jury would say it served Red Saunders right, and as to De Hamel, he was only wounded."
III
There are so many narratives of the famous man-hunt, official, published, suppressed, or even truthful, that I am cumbered with too much material.
The official version may be set aside as dull, a record of mileage covered by one hundred sixty horsemen during a period of four months. The district combed was about ninety miles square, or eighty-one hundred square miles of foot-hills and plains complex with brush, with boulder tracts, and ravines affording plenty of cover to a hunted man.
My own story, were I to cite the details, would explain a feverish industry, a craze for duty, a seeking and using of even the flimsiest excuses to shove Mr. Sarde out of the hunt, and take his place as leader on the patrols. In truth, I was not concerned to save my brother officer from overwork, or to win his gratitude, but rather to avert a meeting between Sarde and Don José. Sarde had betrayed a woman, using the mean device of a sham wedding; when brought to account by La Mancha in the duel outside Fort Carlton, the cad played foul; and if my friend met his antagonist in the field he would unquestionably kill. I would have offered myself as La Mancha's second for that just duel, but I preferred a formal mannerly encounter as between gentlemen, and had reason to dislike, to prevent by all means possible the killing of Sarde by Charging Buffalo, as a deed which must bring my friend to a shameful death at the gallows. My main hope in the man-hunt was to make the arrest myself, averting further bloodshed. José would not shoot me.
There are other versions of the story, melodramatic press reports which use the facts as a mere groundwork for building up sensation, but in the interest of truth, I set down here my private notes of what Don José told me. After his capture, I had the prisoner brought before me at the orderly room, placed the two sentries on guard outside the building, produced a flask of whisky and some cigarettes, then took down a more or less official "statement" for use at the pending trial.
It was ever so curious to see the impassive Indian change at an instant into the Spaniard, the cavalier, amused, sympathetic. And as the narrative went on, he swung from mood to mood.
"Oh, Buckie, don't get mixed! I'm to be hanged, not you, so why look so damp? You blighter, I never had such fun in all my life. Tell the Society for the Promotion of Cruelty to Animals that foxes invented hunting. They had merely to run away, and 'Tally-ho!' the hunt was up and out.
"Shocked, Buckie? Does you good! These last years I was getting to be a prig, too precious high-falutin for God's merry winds and laughing, sparkling sunshine. I doubt, old chap, that the winged seraphim are vain of their pinions and their singing, as any peacock.
"The spiritual pride of Lucifer hurled him weltering to damnation. I fared no better, and when I lay smashed, I had to feel myself all over, surprised I was really me. I'm all the better for being real again.
"I'm sorry for some things, Buckie: not for the justice I did to Saunders, but for the pain I gave De Hamel, instead of a quick despatch. He earned that, when he sent Saunders to my lodge."
"He didn't."
"That's all you know."
On this one detail my friend showed obstinate unreason; in all things else sane as I was.
"Poor Millard!" he continued. "With the agent to handle, not to mention the agent's missus and the kids, no doctor to be had, the Bloods throwing hysterics, while all the time he expected me to call and leave a bullet."
"You stayed to watch."
"Yes. Couldn't miss the fun. Might have to help him with his Indians, too. I felt as if I were back in the police, and when it comes to Indian versus whites, we all have to show our color. Millard's a real man.
"But the properest hero was young Bears. He dipped the wooden heads of his arrows in his aunt's blood, swearing great oaths, too. Then he painted his face for war, and came to me, making bad medicine. He wanted me to raise the Blackfoot nation. He would lead the boys in battle. I gave Rain's nephew the post of honor, to celebrate his aunt's funeral, killing a horse for her spirit to ride up the Wolf Trail. He was to give the grizzly bearskin, your old bed, as an offering to the Sun. Then he was to keep my standing camp at the agency, draw and distribute rations, pick up and send on the news, and put about rumors to fool police interpreters. Oh, he's the very broth of a boy is Bears. Pity he's Many Horses' son and not mine. I'd make him Marquis de las Alpuxarras.
"When I'd made his eyes to shine I streaked off to my old partner, Many Horses. He took charge of all my Blackfoot tribe in the different camps where I'd placed them. He made extra camps with my two dear nursing scarecrows in charge. That made six camps, each with a bunch of ponies from which I could draw my remounts. The Piegans sent me horses. Now, own up, Buckie—didn't I give the old troop exercise?"
Indeed he did!
"I don't think much of white men's tactics, Buckie. You wasted half you strength on pickets at Whisky Gap and the Rocky Mountain passes."
"Sam thought," said I, "that being an Indian, you'd stay in the district, where you had lots of help. I thought that, being a white man, you'd skin out for the states. I didn't say so."
"I thought," said Don José, "as a sort of mongrel white-Indian that before I cleared for Spain I'd better arrange the future for my scarecrows, my little Bears, my brother, Many Horses, and all my rag-tag and bobtail pensioners. But, when I tried to do business, they always blubbered until I had to run."
"Why didn't you leave the business to the Brat, or me?"
"And sacrifice you both to save my tribe, eh? Poor sport to make my brother and my chum accomplices in murder."
So he had stayed in the district with his depot camps and relays of ponies. The Indians were his intelligence department, keeping him constantly advised by signal-fires and smokes, by cypress messages on rocks or trees, or by verbal reports which told him our every movement. I remember one patrol, when I had twenty men for seventy hours in the saddle, until in sheer exhaustion we were compelled to camp at Big Bend detachment. Then came a rider flying to report that Charging Buffalo had just been seen at Kootenay. We white men rallied for the twenty-eight-mile march, but our Indians lay and were kicked, done for, refusing to move. We left them, and went off reeling.
On another occasion, a Mormon farmer brought news that, while he was cutting fence rails, Charging Buffalo had crept out from the bush, and made off with his lunch. Smoldering for revenge, the man led us through the timber to a small opening where we found and surrounded a tent. Two men covered the entrance with their revolvers, while I pulled aside the flap disclosing a couple of Mormons in a shaking funk.
Farther on, in the gray of dawn, we found another clearing, and a second tent. Here Marmot, one of my friend's pet scarecrows, who had ridden with him for many a weary day, heard our approach, looked out and screamed.
"Oh, I remember that!" said Charging Buffalo, "and Marmot had a screech like a deep-sea tug. I ripped the back of the tent with my knife, rolled through, and got to cover just in time to escape a volley. But I was half asleep still, or I'd never have missed the officer's head. Was that you, Buckie?"
I showed him the hole through my hat. "You knocked it off," said I.
"You're an awfully bad shot, Buckie," was his comment, "or you'd have got me that time. As to your men, they panicked and let their guns kick high. You should have steadied them with coffee, for dawn fighting." Then he groaned, tallying on his fingers, "A carcass of Bill Cochrane's beef, twenty-five pounds of bacon, five sacks of flour, and one of sugar, a deerskin for making moccasins, an A tent, and the Marmot. I missed them horribly. And next week Sarde recaptured Bears, riding despatches. All my rag-tag and bobtail tribe caught and imprisoned, too. Many Horses was taken with his wife and the two little girls. Yes, I'd only one helper left, poor Makes-your-hair-gray, who was mostly talk. She and I took to following your patrols, so as to get a sleep when you camped, which wasn't often. I used to think you fellows must be haunted by remorse, for you never gave me time for a decent nap. Once, when you'd left two horses for dead, we had to ride them an extra forty miles; and even Makes-your-hair-gray was too tired to grumble. Oh, do you remember when the corporal at Boundary Creek gave you a feed, while Makes-your-hair-gray stole the horses out of the stable?"
"Fyfe," said I, "was mad as a wet hen."
"So was Makes-your-hair-gray. Fyfe's horse bucked her off. Yes, and after that all the police stables were locked and guarded, so we couldn't get any remounts. Call that sporting? You fellows had no sense of decency. I remember once, at—oh, yes, at Lee's Creek, the corporal came swaggering along with a lantern, and I tried to put it out, from behind the horse-trough."
"Yes, the bullet whisked through Corporal Armour's sleeve. He ran for his gun, but you were off at a gallop."
"Nice chap that," said Charging Buffalo. "I liked him, but I really needed a remount.
"When I was a little boy there used to be a story in a book, all about Pussie on the Road to Ruin, a bad cat who took to evil courses, just like me, and met with a horrid end, tied to a brick in a duck-pond. Buckie, you know the Boulders? They say Chief Mountain was cross and threw them at his wife. Well, Pussie was riding along under the Boulders (on the Road to Ruin) where there wasn't any snow to make tracks in. It was a grim gray day, and Pussie was very, very miserable, riding a rotten old screw he'd stole from the Lazy H outfit.
"Pussie's legs had swelled up with too much exercise. Pussie hadn't any cat's-meat left to eat. Pussie's last helper had been put in prison. Pussie hadn't had a cat nap for three or four days, and you know that bad cats are more miserable than good cats, especially when they're wet. Very cross, too.
"And in the Ten Commandments it says you must keep the Sabbath—there's not a word about cat-hunts. Why, even foxes, in decent countries like England, can go to church on Sundays if they want to.
"Besides, it was just like Sarde's cheek to ride Black Prince. He was a picture of sin on horseback, anyway. He had a buck policeman with him."
"Amber," said I.
"And a scout-interpreter."
"Green-Grass-growing-in-the-water," said I.
"And a body of Indians."
"They'd new rifles," said I, "all clogged with factory grease, and frozen so the pin couldn't hit the cartridge. Sarde sent Amber back twenty miles to Pincher Creek to turn out all settlers in the Queen's name; then fire off a despatch here to French, and take out his citizens to surround you—all at full gallop."
"Silly. Snow much too deep. Black Prince came finely, though, romping along through the drifts, with Sarde yelling back at his Indians."
"Sarde ordered them not to fire, or they might hit him by mistake."
"Was that the trouble? Wish they had! Well, along came Sarde, despising Indians, drawing abreast of me."
"With orders to shoot at sight."
"Orders? Orders be darned! Laid his revolver across his thighs, going to make his arrest with a propah swaggah, damme!"
"Own to it, La Mancha. A brave man!"
"Why not? Else what was he doing in God's Own First Dragoons? 'Hello!' says I, as he drew abreast, 'how's Sarde-the-Coward?'"
"He reeled as though I'd shot him.
"'Remember Carlton, Sarde? And your unfinished duel with Don José?'
"He went gray at that, but closed in on my off side.
"'I told you, Sarde, at Carlton, I'd fire at the word "three." I gave you two, and you shot me, you cad. Now get your gun, and ask God's mercy, for you'll have none from me.'
"He shouted, dry-mouthed, hoarse, like a neighing stallion. We were abreast now, and my rifle lay across my knees, my left hand on the trigger, the barrel pointing under my right arm. I held the rein high in the right. Sarde was leaning over to grab at my right shoulder.
"'Get your gun,' I yelled at him. 'One! Two!' I had to swerve, or he'd have hauled me out of the saddle. 'Three!' And I let drive through him. That finished our duel, and put the slanderer to an end."
"He never used his revolver," I explained. "Ashamed to need a weapon, arresting by hand after the grandest tradition of the force, knowing you to be his enemy, and facing certain death to do his duty. That man died a hero!"
La Mancha looked about the office, to the door and the windows, and the orders posted above me on the wall. Then his eyes, avoiding mine, looked down at his shackled hands. I had to fight back tears. So he looked up with that queer writhen smile of his, and, just as once before long years ago, when I had tried to put him in the wrong. "Buckie," he wailed, "please say I'm not a bounder!"
"Not a bounder," I almost sobbed.
La Mancha's bullet had passed through Sarde's body, then, deflecting on the humerus of the extended right arm, traversed the forearm, came out of the palm, and dropped into his gauntlet. Slowly the dead man rolled from the saddle, while Black Prince loped on, and the outlaw went beside him. Then the horse pulled up, snorting, and when La Mancha came grabbing at the loose rein, Black Prince reared up, striking with his forefeet in blind rage at his master's murderer.
"He didn't know me," said my friend in bitterness. "My old horse had forgotten me."
So came that most extraordinary fight for mastery between man and horse, watched by the Indians, pursuing and closing in on every side. Their rifles were for the time useless, and to that accident La Mancha owed his escape, riding away on Black Prince until, a tiny speck upon the snow-field, he went down beyond the sky-line.
"Whining," La Mancha said grimly, "must be a comfort. Remorse is prescribed for sinners, and abject prayer is supposed to be a grace.
"According to the standards of this age, I ought to have sued for damages, and trusted my honor to the sharp tongues of a pack of barristers." He chuckled softly.
"So I was in the wrong. Sarde was a hero to all the whites, and all the Indians. When he betrayed a woman he did it in private, so I killed him openly in public—and I'm a villain. What can you expect of a mere Blackguard?
"Oh, I had put myself in the wrong, there was no explaining. The Blackfoot nation said I was in the wrong, and they should know. They turned their backs on me for killing Sarde. The government offered two hundred dollars for me, the officer commanding added fifty, which shows I was two hundred and fifty times a scoundrel. I was lonely, too, with no friends left in sight, and an awful misgiving that the plague of respectability had infected the Angels in Heaven, who were having their pinions clipped for fear of being thought improper.
"Thou shalt do no murder! It was Sarde's life or mine. Heads, he got made superintendent; tails, I went to the gallows, and he had fifteen Indians to see fair play.
"Thou shalt not kill! God gives thee grinding teeth instead of fangs, and tender finger-nails instead of talons—battles to fight without the armor or any natural weapons; a spirit made for soaring—but no wings!
"The honor of women is more sacred in the sight of God than the lives I took, and if He made a gentleman, He expects the services of knighthood from His feudatory.
"Last night, as I lay there in my cell, chained to the floor, a man on guard, some poor recruit, fancied I'd given too much needless trouble to him and to the troop. He kicked me in the face."
"Tell me which man," said I, "or I'll have the whole guard punished."
"The years he has to live will punish him. If you take actions, Buckie, I shall deny what I told you. There's been enough vengeance."
From the killing of Sarde, La Mancha had ridden into a world turned hostile. The tribes decided that his body belonged by Indian law to the white men, and he must expect no mercy, or help, or succor from any living creature.
"Many Horses believed," he said, "that his two young men, Left Hand and Bear Paw, would stand by me if every other friend had failed. I went to their cabin, and tied Black Prince to a bush. I couldn't stand, so I crept across to the door. They heard me, but when Left Hand came out through the door, I saw something wrong in his eyes. I tried to get back to my horse and escape; but he threw his arms around me, lifted me to my feet, and kissed me on both cheeks. Then Bear Paw stole behind and roped me, so that I fell down. He threw running half-hitches along the rope, lashed my arms to my body, and my feet together. They carried me into the cabin, and pitched me down in a corner. Left Hand rode off on Black Prince to fetch the police, while Bear Paw mounted guard. I suppose they got the two hundred and fifty dollars between them.
"Still, I hoped to escape. They had been mending moccasins, and left an awl on the floor. I managed to open an artery.
"But that sergeant came too soon," he added, his voice breaking, "and twice since then I failed.
"The spirits of my fathers have to be faced at night—when the sentry is pacing his beat outside, and the moon-ray points like a finger at the time. José, Marquis of the Alpuxarras, hanged!
"So I pray, while the sentry marches, and turns, and comes back, beating out the hours; while the moon-ray sweeps like the hand of a clock across the darkness, through the long nights and the long days. God will send me means to come to Him for judgment."
IV
For four months the troop had hunted Charging Buffalo, had been put to derision by the tricks he played us, to shame by his extraordinary scoutcraft, daring and endurance. The gibes of civilians, the fleering press, the lessened respect of the Blackfeet drove our men to such a pitch of exasperation that once they had the prisoner in their power their only feeling was one of bitter rage.
Three times he made most ingenious attempts at suicide,—clear proof he was in earnest. Shackled to bolts in the floor, as the only possible means of preventing self-destruction, his state was so piteous that all men's hearts were moved. Then the fellows began to notice that he seemed to know what sort of dance he led them of extra duty, that he had an odd quaint smile of sympathy for their troubles, that though he had no word of English he was quick to realize little ways of making things easier for them. They began to like him, to bring him cigarettes and such luxuries as they could buy, and to be very tender with the dressings of his legs, both skinned from heel to groin by his constant riding. They knew he suffered excruciating pain, they saw his gay courage, and in the end they loved him.
The Brat, who had been the blithest man in the barracks, appeared to be ill, dragging himself through the day's routine, pallid and listless. He claimed to be well, and the doctor could find no symptoms beyond the need of a furlough, which Brat refused with oaths. He was given tonics.
Sam was annoyed by the capsizal of his year's setting up drills, and tours of inspection, yet treated the prisoner better than rules allowed, and growled at the doctor for failing to get the man fatter. No host likes thin guests—and this veritable skeleton in our closet reflected upon our hospitality.
Because I knew something of the Blackfoot language, because openly I had taken the prisoner's part from the beginning, and because Charging Buffalo would have no man else for counsel, I was allowed to defend him at the trial. But when I tried to show him that his only possible plea was insanity, he refused to have me as advocate until I changed my mind. Still, under pretext of examining witnesses, with Brat's ready help in cash I was able to set my friend's affairs in order, and pensioned off the rag-tag and bobtail tribe. Being, so to speak, a brevet barrister for the trial I had for my junior a veritable and learned scalawag who had eaten his dinners at the Middle Temple. Since then he had risen in life as a constable, to be Sam's last promising young teamster. Once with the Viceroy and Vice-reine of Canada for his passengers, he drowned his near wheeler in a spate of Belly River; but stood on the seat like a charioteer, pouring law and blacksnake whip into his swimming horses, until they dragged the wagonette, dead mare and all, up the far bank into safety. Now, finding himself no longer briefless in his old profession, he drove through the village in his wig and gown, amid scenes of tremendous public enthusiasm. Of course he was punished, and naturally his wig was barred from a Canadian assize, where such things are not worn; but still he made me a jolly good junior, driving me like a team through formidable rites and unknown ceremonies.
More difficult to deal with than the actual case was Brat la Mancha, who insisted upon attending at the trial. He could not be persuaded to keep away until I showed him how his presence in the court would weaken Don José, perhaps break down his nerve, and lead him to full confession. The prisoner's race, his nationality and rank were not matters of public concern, had not the slightest bearing on the evidence of capital felonies, and were rightfully matters of private concern, to be kept secret. A confession would expose his gallant brother to shame, and drag his great name in the dirt to no advantage. But the keeping of the secret made the trial for me a strain to the verge of my endurance, one long agony. My nerve was gone to rage before the court convened. Of course I had been chaffed by every man I knew.
We had what are known as "words," amounting even to "language," when counsel prosecuting for the Crown objected to me strongly personally and with venom as having no right to appear for the prisoner.
"It is true," said the judge, "that a layman may not address the court, but, on the other hand, the prisoner's next friend has the right to help him with his defense."
Prompted by my junior, I turned to rend the prosecuting counsel, challenged his claim to be a British subject, demanded his papers of naturalization, and said he had no right to appear in any court save a back yard:
"The learned counsel," said the judge, "has been called to the Canadian bar."
He then turned up and cited "Pot versus Kettle."
Next I impugned the right of the judge himself to try an Indian.
"The prisoner," I said, "is by treaty not subject to any authority save that of his tribal chief. Her Majesty the Queen has made treaty with the chief as an allay, an equal sovereign, whose men are not citizens or subjects of the Dominion."
The judge told me not to talk rot, or words to that effect, so I gave notice of appeal to the judicial committee of the Privy Council. That bluff gave the jury a fine sense of importance, and impressed His Honor, the fine old humorist on the bench, as a piece of delightful cheek.
Here followed a slight pause, while the prisoner whispered to his advocate, presumably in Blackfoot, "Sick 'em, Buckie! Bite 'em! Go for 'em! Tear 'em and eat 'em!"
"Shut up," said counsel, "or you'll give the whole show away." Then, addressing the court:
"The prisoner pleads guilty."
Still too weak to stand, Charging Buffalo sat in the dock, chained, with two constables armed for a guard. His reputation carried terror still, and pressmen made good copy of his eagle features, his wolfish smile. "A typical redskin warrior," they called him, and with hints implied the lie that he had scalped his victims.
Now the prosecution called its witnesses, Mr. de Hamel and his wife, sundry settlers, many of the police, various Indians dealt with through the official interpreter. With dry sardonic humor, the prisoner asked through me his pungent questions. All that the Crown suggested as to the prisoner's malice, ferocity and methods of terrorism collapsed, and one by one I saw the jurors take the weaker side. Left Hand and Bear Paw, who had taken money to betray their friend, had to confront him now, while in their own tongue he made them confess how the one had kissed him on both cheeks while the other stole behind him with a rope. They flinched as though from a whip, their faces turned gray, they shrank, they held up their hands to shield their eyes, while word for word I translated to a court horrified, and a disgusted jury.
"Tell the white chief," said my client, "that Black Robes have taught me about the white man's customs. There was a chief medicine man of their tribe who gave thirty dollars to a white man by the name of Judas, who went to his master and kissed Him on both cheeks. Even the white man was ashamed, and hanged himself.
"Here is the white man's custom. Left Hand was paid to kiss me on both cheeks, while Bear Paw roped me. Did they get the thirty dollars each, or thirty dollars between them?"
"Tell the prisoner," said the judge, "that we can not expect him to understand our customs."
This I translated.
"Then," answered Charging Buffalo, "if I'm not expected to understand your customs, am I to be hanged for breaking them?"
"I think," said the judge to me, "that this is quite out of order. You will please abstain from the methods of cheap melodrama."
But that crushing retort of the Indian, arraigning our justice, left the whole court demoralized, for the prisoner sat in judgment. With a grave sweetness he turned to the witness who had betrayed him. "You may go," he said, "and take my pity with you."
It was then he told his story, while I translated. He called no witness for the prosecuting counsel to browbeat, he made no plea of innocence, he asked no mercy. Rather, he dwelt upon the Indian faith which sent him to worship his God in the far wilderness until the sacred woman, his wife, began to die. He brought her back to die among her people.
"Her spirit rides the Wolf Trail," he said, "that big trail across the star-field which leads to the Place of Waiting, and there I shall go. Life is too difficult to live, and death so easy."
A coming rain-storm filled the western sky, hiding the sun, then darkening the air until one could hardly see across the court room. The judge's clerk lighted candles.
The patter of rain blended now with the prisoner's quiet voice, the flicker of sheet lightning revealed his face and the gray hair braided down his shoulders.
"Think of me," he said, "not as red or black, or white, but as a man. The same light shines upon us all, and where the sun is high the folks are black, and where the sun is low the folks are white; but high sun or low sun, we children of the sun are all one household. There is one Father whose light fills the sky, who makes us what we are: sons, lovers of women, parents of little children. Because we worship our Father up there above, because we obey Him, because we are what He made us, each man-child of the skies must protect his women from outrage, must fend for the weak and helpless, must guard the life he holds because it belongs to those who love and trust him, must hate betrayers, must despise a liar. That is the law above all other laws, above all chiefs, councils and tribes of men, which you must obey, big chief up there on the high seat, and you two warriors on guard, and you men who sit waiting to send me to death or slavery.
"My friend here who speaks for me says that if a negro attacks one of your white women, you burn him at the stake. That is good. If an Indian attacks a white woman, you kill him. That is good. If a white man attacks my wife, I kill him. Is that wrong? When I heard her calling to me for help, should I leave her to her fate and fetch a policeman? Would you? The bears and cougars, the wolves and dogs know better than that. Are you lower than the common curs of the camp—you who dare to blame a man for his manhood? Shame on you, your court, your laws which defend the filthy beast I killed, and condemn me for being a man!
"I killed this beast with an ax, too late to save my wife. She died of her own hand to escape dishonor. That is the right and duty of all clean women. If your wives failed to do that, you would almost die of shame."
The rain swept down in torrents, but the prisoner's voice, with its soft resonance, now seemed to fill the darkness. We could scarcely see him in the deep shadow, but the judge and his clerk at the table had their candle-light.
"The horrible mad beast I killed was called Red Saunders. It is known that he stole a white man's wife, and left her to die in shame. It is known to the Indian women that he was dangerous, and ought to have been killed. But he belonged to a powerful white chief, the Indian agent, who sheltered him, fed him, used him as a servant, and allowed him loose to outrage Indian women. He was more dangerous than a grizzly bear, allowed to range the camp without a chain or muzzle. If the Indians complained of that, the white men would only have laughed—as you are laughing now!"
The rain ceased as it began, with startling abruptness; the sky was clearing, and as the light increased we saw the prisoner lying back in his chair, his face lean with privation, lined with pain, his eyes closed, his lips drawn, smiling, as he spoke with gentle tolerance:
"Was this a laughing matter for my wife when she cried for help and no help came; when she took the knife from her belt and plunged it into her body—until her heart's blood, spurting, drenched her tender, childish, little brown hands?
"Laugh! For tears are weak things, drops of salty water, running to mere waste; but laughter is like a crackling fire flaming up to God! Laugh, for the sun is laughing above the clouds, our God who sees what little troubles give us so much pain."
He raised himself, his eyes alight with a strange fire, his voice quivering with passion.
"Do you blame the blade, or the hand that drives it? Do you blame the wild beast, or the man that keeps it? Do you blame the man, or the God who rules him?
"I blame, not the beast I killed, but the man who owned it. And if I shot that man for owning such a beast, blame God for making me what I am, the hand which wielded justice!
"If you want peace, don't drive brave men to war. If you want war, don't be surprised at the killing. Hear the low thunder rolling, see the air quiver with white light: the flash and roar of storms come out of clouds, the passion and death of men come from injustice. Deal justly with men and there will be no slaying.
"Was I not driven to fight, and goaded like a bear until I turned at bay, hunted by day and night through four moons, until I did not care if I fought a mere hundred men or a tribe, or the whole world?
"What if I killed a chief? Should I kill mere followers? I killed a chief in face of all his men, and let the rest get off. Why did I not kill more, when I had scores at my mercy in that long hunting?"
He lay back wearily, sighing.
"It is done. I am finished. War is a fire burning a man's blood, a great blazing of life—but I am burned out, to ashes.
"My horses were taken from me, my poor servants. There was no food. There was no sleep. There was no hope except of a death fit for the son of warriors. I had earned the fighter's death. Surely I deserved the death of a chief. But I have been betrayed.
"I have no pride left except that I am guilty of this charge. Not innocent, not a coward, but one who has earned a great death. If I were innocent, I should deserve hanging, or slavery in a prison. I do not plead to women or children but surely to men, brave with the natural valor which comes to us from Heaven, careful of honor. So I pray you take me out into the sunshine, and pay me the death I earned, the death you owe me, with rifles.
"See"—his voice was a mere whisper now—"the rain has stopped, the shadow of the rain has passed, the Sun God lights the rain-drops, even the dirty little rain-drops along the window-frame. Dirty they are, and yet they shine like stars; small they are, yet big enough to reflect the figures and glory of their God, who made them in His image. The Sun-heat will dry them up, so that their bodies die, and yet their spirits rise into the heavens.
"I am no more than that, I am no less—a thing from Heaven, stained and shamed with dirt in this world, and yet reflecting God, who burns my body to call my spirit up, cleansed, freed, eternal."
The prisoner's face was changed. He seemed remote from our world, withdrawn to a great distance, looking down, his smile a benediction.
"Poor little laws!" he said, ever so gently. "Men in earnest, groping through the dark in search of right and truth, children playing at 'Let's pretend to be God.' Play on at your game, your tiresome game, in your stuffy, dirty court room, with your old worn-out rules. But let me go, for I am weary of this mock trial, in a sham court, where little children play at make-believe. I go to take my trial at the Court of God, whose law is truth. You have nothing but death to give. He gives life."
Then there was silence, broken presently by an emotional juror, who sobbed, and tried to make believe he had a cough.
The counsel for the Crown had prepared a very fine speech which he must needs deliver. It was all about a most murderous and ferocious redskin desperado, committing a series of despicable and cowardly outrages, at wanton random of the homicidal maniac, guided only by the low cunning of a savage. Then we found that this very bad man was the prisoner, and ripples of merriment broke into open laughter.
I will not quote my speech for the defense, but merely cite the points which made it hopeless.
There was, for example, a strong contention within my reach that by the most ancient and fundamental principles of justice a prisoner has the right of trial before a jury of his peers. Yet my client was arraigned for felony before a panel to all intents of his enemies, against whom he had levied war, men biased by race prejudice before they entered court. My junior warned me, however, that it is not tactful to impugn the jury; and British practise, unlike the American, does not allow the defense to challenge any juror who has read the public press.
My defense was limited then to arguments which the judge derided afterward as those of a sentimentalist attempting to interpret murder as virtuous conduct. As long as I defended the slayer of Red Saunders I had the jurors with me; even the shooting of the Indian agent might be condoned as an act of natural wrath provoked to the degree of actual madness; but when I came to the killing of Sarde, the whole court turned against me with a disdain which chilled me, silenced me. Myself one of the sworn constabulary, Sarde's brother officer and a justice of the peace, how could I defend what seemed, by all the evidence produced, his ruthless murder, deliberate, unprovoked? The real facts of the Sarde-la Mancha duel, begun in former years and now completed, I was barred from telling, and in default of that excuse the crime seemed monstrous.
My plea was therefore based on the apparent confusion which brought a stone age savage before a civilized court, to be judged, not as he should be, by the sanctions and usages of savagery, but by the customs of a strange, a mysterious, an invading and hostile people. What chance would one of us have, tried by the unknown customs of the heavenly host before a court of angels? The jurors laughed at me.
So, with a stinging self-contempt I sat down, a total failure, knowing that the uttermost endeavors of my friendship had brought my friend just one step nearer to a shameful death.
I am at best a poor interpreter of La Mancha's actions. His character was built upon a scale beyond my measurements, beyond, I think, the standards by which the common run of men must estimate affairs. There are hill districts of India where a respectable woman must keep several husbands; of North America where a church elder may have several wives without affronting his neighbors; of the Appalachian Mountains where a man who shirks the slayings of his family blood-feud earns the contempt of his mother; and the world has never seen such ferocious dueling to the death as that considered right in the southwestern states. The standards of the old England or the new quite fail to take the measurements of even our fellow-citizens; and the whole world's moralities are local to times and places, not pivots on which the planets are swung by eternal law.
So there are men whose lives are guided by sanctions of a conscience above the plane where I obey, who are the clean, effective and useful instruments of powers far beyond my understanding. I should need to be Cæsar before I could justly wield a Roman Empire, levying wars to purge distracted provinces, or milling nations between the millstones of an over-crowded peace.
Perhaps the reader knows whether my friend La Mancha did right or wrong. I don't.
And so the judge summed up:
"I am here," he said, "gentlemen of the jury, as an authority on the common law and an impartial umpire to instruct you before you give your judgment.
"The prisoner's friend disclaimed the right of this court to deal with Indians as British subjects. I find that the prisoner's friend has misread the treaty made by Her Majesty with the Blackfoot nation. This man is subject to the common law.
"He was brought here as an innocent man, charged with capital felony, free to prove his innocence and entitled to go back to the world, with your verdict establishing his character before all mankind.
"He told you that he is guilty. You have heard the overwhelming evidence of the facts confessed. But is he guilty? Is he sane and responsible for these proven felonies? On that you must pass your judgment and give your verdict. He confessed himself a public danger, but if he is insane the public must be guarded while he remains, during the queen's pleasure, under medical treatment.
"The defense raises a second question equally grave. It is an axiom that ignorance of the law excuseth no man; but, gentlemen, an axiom, like a diamond, may be hard, impure and flawed. How can we expect this savage to comprehend our statutes, obey our ordinances and enjoy our liberties? And yet, apart altogether from the customs of our people expressed in common law, deep down at the foundation of all human life, is that instinctive universal wisdom which proclaims that for the common good the slayer should be slain. Even the plea of native red Indian custom condemns this man, surrendered by his tribesmen to our justice.
"Next, we have to consider an appeal to something in us all more potent than our reason, a trait of man not human but divine, our sense of pity. You have, no doubt, been moved, as I was, swayed out of all reason, by the prisoner's fine sincerity, his perfect manliness, his unusual argument, the purity of his thought, the rare beauty of its expression. This man is not, as the Crown pleads, brutal or depraved, but, as our hearts claim, noble. We have to deal, not with a common felon convicted of mere outrage, but with a man, moved by barbaric warrior motives to acts of war against us. My impulse, and yours, if I read you rightly, is to pardon.
"Yet pardon, in such a case as this, would gratify sentiment at the cost of a solemn duty to the state. As citizens, we may not expose our fellow-citizens to the free activities of native gentlemen with a taste for collecting scalps. The prisoner belongs to the fiercest tribe of savages in the Americas, if not in the world, and they must not be encouraged to hope that we are sentimentalists to be killed and scalped by Blackfoot connoisseurs. For the sake of your women and children, you must do your duty.
"And it is not for pardon that this plea is made. The prisoner dreads the slavery of imprisonment more than he fears the gallows. His only claim is the solemn demand for a death of honor. This, gentlemen, I am sure we would all be glad to grant if it were only possible. But I fear that death by fusillade is a grace beyond the powers of this court, beyond the authority of government, and possible only by a special act of the Dominion parliament. Here again sentiment beats in vain against high walls of reason. I can only warn you that in practise your recommendation to mercy involves for the prisoner that which he most dreads—imprisonment for life.
"To sum up: the prisoner is liable under the law, he is guilty of capital felony, and the sole point left open to your judgment is whether he must be held responsible for his actions. If you find him sane, you have only one verdict—guilty."
The case was so clear that the jury did not retire, but, after a brief consultation, gave their verdict, "The prisoner is guilty."
Strongly moved, visibly reluctant, the judge told me to ask the prisoner if he had any reason to offer why sentence should not be pronounced.
I asked leave to explain in Blackfoot to the prisoner all that had transpired. I had leave. But now I had not the heart to repeat what my friend knew to the uttermost. I dared not whisper in English, words failed me in Blackfoot. All I could say was, "Be brave, be strong." Then I broke down and La Mancha laughed at me. His soft, low, rippling laughter startled the silent court. Then he said out loud in Blackfoot:
"Poor old chap! I'll have to help you out somehow. You've got to pretend to tell me something. Say the Lord's Prayer."
And so we prayed together in Blackfoot, while I could scarcely speak for tears, or he for laughter, I in my cowardice, he in the greatness of his valor.
"Our Father," I muttered.
"Which art in Heaven," he laughed; and so, with alternate phrases, while the crowd waited in awful silence. And then I said theGloria.
"Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, good-will toward men. We praise Thee, we bless Thee, we worship Thee, we give thanks to Thee for Thy great Glory, O Lord God.... Have mercy upon us ... for Thou only art holy.... Thou only, O Christ...."
I had my courage, and stood back, telling the judge to go on, for the prisoner was ready.
"Convey these words," he said, and his voice quivered. "The prisoner will stand."
"He shall not stand," I said. "He can not stand."
"Prisoner," I repeated the words in Blackfoot, "you will be taken back to the place from which you have come, and there you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul."
Then I heard the prisoner whispering in Latin:
"Into Thy hands, O Lord, into Thy hands!"
V
On the morning after his trial the prisoner sent for a priest, who confessed and shrived him, taking his word that he would not again make any attempt at suicide. So we were able to release him from the shackles that chained his wrists and ankles to the floor, and to give him the liberty of the cell. I sent in furniture, and arranged for food from the officers' mess—eccentric conduct, confirming the general idea that I was cracked.
As long as there was something to be done, I had not time to worry, and the time we have for worrying is the greatest curse we know in our little lives. My friend sent his priest to tell me that he had confessed, so with the holy father I had no need for further secrecy. Sharing a secret takes away half the strain.
And at this time I shared no secrets with Brat. He went his own dour way and I went mine, because we dared not be seen in conference. After the trial he went on furlough, by doctor's orders, returning on the eve of the execution completely restored to health.
Sam twitted me in his nice way for my sentimental conduct, hinting at duties apart from those which needed a cap and apron. He visited the prisoner himself, talking in the sign language, telling stories of Sitting Bull, Spotted Tail, Crowfoot and other mighty chiefs he had known in the early days. My officer commanding was a great gossip, a great disciplinarian, soldier, magistrate, administrator, tyrant, friend—nothing by halves. He called me a fool for being sentimental, and furtively smuggled bottles of port to the cell by way of a tonic, to give his prisoner strength for the coming ordeal. Then he chaffed me, and his tongue raised blisters.
"Buckie," he said once, "do you remember a young chap we called the Blackguard?—La Mancha's brother. He was killed arguing with a horse. This Charging Buffalo reminds of him somehow. We'll have him fat before we kill him, Buckie."
No horse or man ever escaped Sam's memory.
"Buckie," said the prisoner, "I don't like fooling Sam."
"Trust him to the limits. But how about the Brat? A scandal would spoil his chance of being inspector?"
"I remember, Buckie, once, when he was a very wee brat, he woke from a dream, screeching as if there were no hereafter. 'Oh, Mummie, Mummie!' he sobbed, 'a fox has biten off my tail, and a sluggard's in my bed!' You know, he wouldn't make a good inspector."
"Don't spoil his chance."
"Well, perhaps not." Then, with a whimsical sigh, "You see, I've lost even my taste for scandals."
The condemned cell had become for me the one place free from worries, for in my dear friend's presence I felt as though I had followed him into rest. Sadness made him laugh, and laughter jarred him. All who came near him were hushed, as in the presence of death, and we seemed transparent to his eyes, which were lost in impenetrable shadows. He was no longer habitant of this earth, but lived among things invisible. He told me that Rain was always at his side, that she would stroke his hair and give delicious mimicry of my voice and manner. "I begin to see," he said, "through veils which grow thin toward the light.
"You know, Buckie, that when a gun is fired, or lightning flashes miles and miles away, you wait and count the seconds until you hear the crash. There's not really an instant between flash and bang, but we have an illusion which we call time. It does not exist. Time's only a thing we imagine: the pause between flash and bang."
"The flash and bang of what?"
"Suppose it is a word, proceeding out of the mouth of God, which bids your soul to serve. Between the blaze and the report you enter time, born, living, gone, and all the long revolving years between of happiness and sorrow, sin and penance, the passions, loves, ambitions, triumphs, failures, from birth to death exist within this instant we call a human life. We are like falling stars, the meteor stones which rush through the eternities of space unseen, unknown, save for the moment's blazing transit of earth's atmosphere. But we are spirits lit by a word of God."
"Burned!"
"Yes. Dirt and water will make your mud, but it takes heat and pressure to turn common stuff to gems, burning for stars, torture to create poor creatures like ourselves into immortal spirits, and God alone knows what terrific ordeal exalts His angels until they can exist triumphant in His presence. I am ready, waiting, impatient, filled with ambitions I hardly dare to think of. The light is blinding."
"Aren't you afraid?"
"Awed, rather. I shall leave fear behind me. The blind are made to see, the dead are raised, we poor have the Gospel preached to us. Blessed are the blind, the poor, the dead, for even in Christ shall all be made alive, and death is swallowed up in victory."
So, rapt in contemplation, this dying felon saw not the walls which imprisoned his body, but visions of immeasurable grandeur through the wide gates of death.
VI
It would be morbid to dwell in detail on the last days, when many Indians were permitted to see the prisoner, when the men of D Troop who had hunted him to this death shook hands at parting, when the priest and I by turns sat with him while through the long hours we could hear the hammers at work upon the scaffold across our barrack square. At the very end of that, in the dusk, when our time came to part, I knelt to receive his blessing. Afterward, I sent my servant for Black Prince, and being off duty, spent most of the night out on the plains, where I could be alone. The stars were very bright, and on the uplands a touch of summer frost turned all the grass to silver. So the dawn broke, and far away I heard reveillé sound, like a great throbbing prayer cleaving the skies.
The whole Blood and North Piegan tribes had been assembled to witness the public execution of the Indian who had dared to levy war against empire. The chiefs and medicine men of the South Piegans, stanch friends of Charging Buffalo as the adopted son of Medicine Robe, had come across from Montana to see his passing. Even some of the North Blackfeet and the Stonies had traveled the hundred miles or so from their reserves. All had pitched their teepees on the banks of Old Man's River, and in the daybreak I rode homeward through a camp of the Blackfoot nation worthy of earlier times.
It was broad daylight when I reached my quarters, with time for a bath and coffee. Fear of possible excitement among the Blackfeet had made it necessary to rally our men from the detachments, and muster a general parade of the division to hold the barrack square and guard the scaffold. I went on duty, took the parade and reported to the officer commanding.
The prisoner, thanks to very careful nursing, had been well enough these last few days to walk, taking even a little exercise, although he had not strength to stand at his full height. He was bent like an old man, and when he left his cell would wrap himself in his large blanket, which formed a sort of cowl hiding his face. Civilians would come and stare, and he resented that.
Now, leaning on the priest's arm, he came out from the guard-house, attended by the guard, who formed up round one of our transport wagons which stood in waiting. At my request, a pair of steps had been placed as a mounting-block, from which, with the priest, he entered at the tail of the wagon. The teamster was my junior counsel, and in the off man's place sat the fellow chosen as hangman, wearing civilian clothes and a silk mask.
As the team started at a slow walk, the prisoner commenced to sing his death-song after the Indian usage, but the priest, as I learned afterward, asked him to stop, saying that the Blackfeet would understand, but white men would think him afraid. In a dead silence the wagon crossed the parade ground and backed to the scaffold, which was level with its bed. Then the priest lifted the prisoner, supporting him until they came under the gallows. The hangman joined them, carrying the white cap which was to be drawn over the prisoner's head, hiding his face.
I remember steeling myself to see the common-place details, and to see nothing else, to think of nothing else. A night of preparation had strengthened me to face as best I could the public and shameful death of the one man on earth I loved. Even now I could not bear to look toward that group on the scaffold, but turned about, surveying the hollow square of our parade formation, the dense mass of Indians surrounding the barrack fence, the crowd of white men. Then I heard a sudden tremendous gasp of amazement, of general consternation, and a single triumphant voice rang out from the scaffold.
I turned, could not believe my eyes, stared wonder-struck; then ran as hard as I could pelt toward the platform.
The prisoner, with one great sweeping gesture, rose to his full height, lifting the blanket apart until he held it behind him with widely outstretched arms, disclosing the scarlet tunic, breeches and gleaming boots, the four gold chevrons on his forearms of a staff-sergeant. The blanket dropped; he snatched away the long gray braids of hair, and cast at his feet a wig. There, with his curly raven-black hair, his laughing eyes and milk-white teeth, in the prime of radiant health, laughing hysterically, was Brat la Mancha!
"Drugged!" he yelled. "He wouldn't go, but I drugged him. He's escaped! He's in Montana by now!"
Sam had leaped on the scaffold before I got there, and never have I seen a man in such a blazing rage as my commanding officer was then. "What does this mean?" he asked through his teeth.
Brat stood to attention, beaming with an outrageous benevolence. "It means, sir," he answered joyfully, "that the prisoner was my brother."
"Your brother!"
"Yes, sir; Ex-constable José de la Mancha, my brother, who changed places once with me when I was a prisoner. It's my turn now, sir. Hang me!"
"By the Lord God!"
"To Him, sir," answered Don Pedro haughtily, "you will leave my brother. I am your prisoner."
THE END