"I am happy," said Judge Worthington, "happy and inexpressibly honored to say that the defendant is to be married to me!"
The Hired Man was asleep as the Professor concluded his tale, and some of the rest were nodding. They rose to retire.
"I suppose," said the Groom, "that the only safe way is to let them entirely alone, Professor?"
The Professor, embarrassed by the presence of the Bride, could only bow.
"Gad!" said Colonel Baggs, taking his hand. "Your case goes into the hard-luck file with that of the Nez Percè victim, Mr. Cowan of Radersburg."
"On this lake," declaimed the Colonel, "farther from tide water than any other like body of water on this earth, could float our entire navy."
"Safest place in the world for it, too," declared the Groom.
"I know some awfully nice navy men," protested the Bride; "so don't be cattish about the navy."
They had spent many hours on Yellowstone Lake, and days in its vicinity. Paint pots, geysers, and iridescent springs were no longer recorded in the log-book; but when, at the Fishing Cone, the Hired Man came into camp asking for salt, with a cooked trout on his line, and the Bride learned that he had hooked the fish in cold water, and cooked it in hot without moving from the spot, wonder at the marvel was swallowed up in protest on the Bride's part, against such an atrocity.
"Oh, Mr. Snoke, Mr. Snoke!" said she, almost tearful. "How could you! How could you! How would you like to have a thing like that done to you—cooked alive. Oh!"
"Well," said Mr. Snoke. "If you put it that way, I wouldn't be very strong for bein' hooked, let alone cooked. After I'd been snaked out of the drink, I wouldn't care, Bride."
"Well, I move we don't cook any more of 'em until they have gasped out their lives slowly and in the ordinary mode," said the Artist.
"Shore," said Aconite, "no more automobiles de fe for the trout—hear that, Bill? An' speakin' of cookin' fish that-a-way," he went on, creating a conversational diversion. "Old Jim Bridger found a place out here som'eres, where the water was shore deep. At the bottom it was cold, and on the top hot—hot as it is in the Fish Cone over yon. He used to hook trout down in the cold water, and they'd cook to a turn while he was bringin' 'em to the surface an' playin' 'em."
"That sounds to me all right," assented the Colonel.
"The hot water," observed the Professor, "would naturally be at the surface; but as for the tale itself—"
"It would, eh?" queried Aconite. "Well, I've forded the Firehole where the bottom was hot, an' the top cold. An' Old Jim Bridger knowed of a place where the water of a cold spring starts at the top of a mountain, and slides down so fast that the friction heats the water hot—just rubbin' on the rocks comin' down. It's here in these hills som'eres, yet!"
The Artist, the Groom and the Colonel fished industriously for one day and then handed in a unanimous verdict that it was a shame to take advantage of the trout's verdancy. So the Hired Man and Aconite foraged for the frying-pan.
The change to boat from land carriage was so grateful, now, that they made wondrous voyages, first to the scenes reached by water. They photographed bears near camp and both deer and elk in the meadows and on their shore feeding-grounds. It was no longer a strange or startling thing to see a grizzly bear, and to stalk him with a kodak. The pelicans on the lake were to them as the swans on a private pond. The sense of ownership grew upon them. Here was their own pleasure-ground. It was theirs by virtue of their citizenship. They might not visit it often—though all declared their intention of coming back every summer—but, anyhow, it would be fine to know that here on the summit of the continent was this wonderland, owned by them and each of them.
They took saddle horses down the southern approach to Heart Lake, and voted it the loveliest lake in the park.
"That is," said the Bride, "it doesn't compare with the big lake up yonder in greatness; but it's just pure joy. Let's camp here for the night. Let's draw another romance from the library right now; and give the victim time to compose his thoughts while we go see that Rustic Geyser, with the stone logs around it."
Somehow they seemed farther from the haunts of men here than anywhere else in the Park. The stream of tourists seemed to sweep on past the Thumb Lunch Station, toward the Lake Hotel; and Heart Lake, with Mount Sheridan brooding over it, was theirs alone. And it was here that the Hired Man, with many protests that he wasn't really a member of the party, but only working his way, told his story—like another Ulysses returned from Troy and his wanderings.
It narrows a man to stick around in one place. You broaden out more pan-handling over one division, than by watching the cars go by for years. I've been everywhere from Alpha, Illinois, to Omega, Oklahoma, and peeked over most of the jumping-off places; and Iowa is not the whole works at all. That's why I'm here now. Good quiet state to moss over in; but no life! Me for the mountains where the stealing is good yet, and a man with genius can be a millionaire!
I was in one big deal, once—the Golden Fountain Mine. Pete Peterson and I worked in the Golden Fountain and boarded with Brady, a pit boss. Ever hear of psychic power? A medium told me once that I have it, and that's why folks tell me their secrets. The second day Brady told me the mine was being wrecked.
"How do you know?" said I.
"They're minin' bird's-eye porphyry," said Brady, "purtendin' they've lost the lode."
"Maybe they have," said I.
"Not them," replied Brady, who never had had any culture. "I can show you the vein broad's a road an' rich as pudd'n'!"
I didn't care a whoop, as long as they paid regular; but Brady worried about the widows and orphans that had stock. I said I had no widows and orphans contracting insomnia for me, and he admitted he hadn't. But he said a man couldn't tell what he might acquire. Soon after, a load of stulls broke loose, knocked Pete Peterson numb, and in the crash Brady accumulated a widow. It was thought quite odd, after what he'd said.
The union gave him a funeral, and then we were all rounded up by a lawyer that insisted on being a pall-bearer and riding with the mourners, he and Brady had been such dear friends. The widow never heard of him; but unless he was dear to Brady, why did he cry over the bier, and pass out his cards, and say he'd make the mine sweat for this? It didn't seem reasonable, and the widow signed papers while he held in his grief.
Then we found he had awful bad luck losing friends. A lot of them had been killed or hurt, and he was suing companies to beat fours. We were going over our evidence, and another bunch was there with a doctor examining to see how badly they were ruined.
"Beautiful injury!" said the lawyer, thumping a husky Hun on the leg. "No patellar reflex! Spine ruined! Beautiful! We'll make 'em sweat for this!"
He surely was a specialist in corporate perspiration. I asked what the patellar reflex was, and the doc had Pete sit and cross his legs, and explained.
"Mr. Peterson," said he, "has a normal spine. When I concuss the limb here, the foot will kick forward involuntarily. But in case of spinal injury, it will not. Now observe!"
He whacked Pete's shin with a rubber hammer, but Pete never kicked. His foot hung loose like, not doing a blamed thing that the doc said it would if his spine was in repair. The doc was plumb dumb-foundered.
"Most remarkable case of volitional control—" he began.
"Volitional your grandmother!" yells the lawyer. "Mr. Peterson is ruined also! He was stricken prone in the same negligent accident that killed dear Mr. Brady! He is doomed! A few months of progressive induration of the spinal cord, and breaking up of the multipolar cells, and—death, friend, death!"
The widow begun to whimper, and the lawyer grabbed Pete's hand and bursted into tears. Pete, being a Swede, never opened his face.
"But," said the lawyer, cheering up, "we'll make them sweat for this. Shall we not vindicate the right of the working-man to protection, Mr. Peterson?"
"Yu bat!" said Pete. "Ay bane gude Republican!"
"And vindicate his right," went on the lawyer, "to safe tools and conditions of employment?"
"Ay tank we windicate," said Pete.
"Nobly said!" said the lawyer and hopped to it making agreements for contingent fees and other flimflams. It was wonderful how sort of patriotic and unselfish and religious and cagey he always was.
We quit the Golden Fountain, and I got some assessment work for Sile Wilson. Pete wouldn't go. He was sort of hanging around the widow, but his brains were so sluggish that I don't believe he knew why. I picked up a man named Lungy to help. Sile's daughter Lucy kept house for Sile in camp, and in two days she was calling Lungy "Mr. Addison," and reproaching me for stringing a stranger that had seen better days and had a bum lung and was used to dressing for dinner. I told her I most always allowed to wear something at that meal myself, and she snapped my head off. He was a nice fellow for a lunger.
When I had to go and testify in the Brady and Peterson cases against the Golden Fountain, old Sile was willing.
"I'd like to help stick the thieves!" he hissed.
"How did you know they were thieves?" asked I.
"I located the claim," said he, "and they stole it on a measley little balance for machinery—confound them!"
"Well, they're stealing it again," said I; and I explained the lost vein business.
"They've pounded the stock away down," said the lunger. "I believe it's a good buy!"
"Draw your eighteen-seventy-five from Sile," said I; "and come with me and buy it!"
"I think I will go," said he. And he did. He was a nice fellow to travel with.
Well, the Golden Fountain was shut down, and had no lawyer against us. It was a funny hook-up. We proved about the stulls, and got a judgment for the widow for ten thousand. Then we corralled another jury and showed that Pete had no patellar reflex, and therefore no spine, and got a shameful great verdict for him. And all the time the Golden Fountain never peeped, and Lungy Addison looked on speechless. Our lawyer was numb, it was so easy.
"I don't understand—" said he.
"The law department must be connected in series with the mine machinery," said I, "and shuts off with the same switch. Do we get this on a foul?"
"Oh, nothing foul!" said he. "Default, you see—"
"No showup at ringside," said I; "9 to 0? How about bets?"
"Everything is all right," said he, looking as worried. "We'll sell the mine, and make the judgments!"
"And get the Golden Fountain," said I, "on an Irish pit boss and a Swede's spine?"
"Certainly," said he, "if they don't redeem."
"Show me," said I; "I'm from Missouri! It's too easy to be square. She won't pan!"
"Dat bane hellufa pile money f'r vidder," said Pete when we were alone. "Ten thousan' f'r Brady, an' twelf f'r spine! Ay git yob vork f'r her in mine!"
"You wild Skandihoovian," said I, "that'syourspine!"
"Mae spine?" he grinned. "Ay gass not! Dat leg-yerkin' bane only effidence. Dat spine bane vidder's!"
I couldn't make him see that it was his personal spine, and the locomotor must be attaxing. He smiled his fool smile and brought things to comfort Mrs. Brady's last days. But she knew, and took him to Father Mangan, and Pete commenced studying the catechism against the time of death; but it didn't take. The circuit between the Swedenwegian intellect and the Irish plan of salvation looks like it's grounded and don't do business.
"Very well said," commented the Groom. "I couldn't have put it more engenerically myself."
One night the lawyer asked me to tell "the Petersons," as he called them, that some New Yorker had stuck an intervention or mandamus into the cylinder and stopped the court's selling machinery. "We may be delayed a year or so," said he. Pete had gone to the widow's with a patent washboard that was easy on the spine, and I singlefooted up, too. And there was that yellow-mustached Norsky holding the widow on his lap, bridging the chasm between races in great shape. He flinched some, and his neck got redder, but she fielded her position in big league form, and held her base.
"Bein' as the poor man is not long f'r this wicked world," said she, "an' such a thrue man, swearin' as the l'yer wanted, I thought whoile the crather stays wid us—"
"Sure," said I. "Congrats! When's the merger?"
"Hey?" says Pete.
"The nuptials," said I. "The broom-stick jumping."
The widow got up and explained that the espousals were hung up till Pete could pass his exams with Father Mangan.
"Marriage," said she, "is a sacrilege, and not lightly recurred. Oh, the thrials of a young widdy, what wid Swedes, and her sowl, an' the childer that may be—Gwan wid ye's, ye divvle ye!"
Now there was a plot for a painter: the widow thinking Pete on the blink spinally, and he soothing her last days, all on account of a patellar reflex that an ambulance chaser took advantage of—and the courts full of quo-warrantoes and things to keep the Jackleg from selling a listed mine, with hoisting-works and chlorination-tanks!
I got this letter from Pete, or the widow, I don't know which [displaying a worn piece of paper], about the third year after that. Here's what it says:
"Ve haf yust hat hell bad time, savin' yer prisence, and Ay skal skip for tjiens of climit to gude pless Ay gnow in Bad Lands. Lawyer faller sell mine fer 10 tousan to vidder, an thin, bad cess to him, sells it agin to Pete fer 12000$ an git 2 stifkit off sheriff an say hae keep dem fer fees, an Ay gnok him in fess an take stifkit. Hae say hae tell mae spine bane O K all tem, an thrittened to jug Pete, an the back of me hand and the sole of me fut to the likes of him, savin' yer prisence, an Fader Mangan call me big towhead chump an kant lern catty kismus an marry me to vidder, an Pete, God bliss him, promised to raise the family in Holy Church, but no faller gnow dem tings Bfour hand, an Ay tank ve hike to dam gude pless in Bad Lands vun yare till stifkit bane ripe an Mine belong vidder an Ay bane Yeneral Manager an yu pit Boss vit gude yob in Yune or Yuly next, yours truely, an may the Blessid Saints purtect ye,Peter Peterson."P. S. Vidder Brady mae vife git skar an sine stifkit fer Brady to lawyer faller like dam fool vooman trik an sattle vit him, but Ay tink dat leg-yerkin bane bad all sem an yump to Bad Lands if we dodge inyunction youre frend.Pete."
"Ve haf yust hat hell bad time, savin' yer prisence, and Ay skal skip for tjiens of climit to gude pless Ay gnow in Bad Lands. Lawyer faller sell mine fer 10 tousan to vidder, an thin, bad cess to him, sells it agin to Pete fer 12000$ an git 2 stifkit off sheriff an say hae keep dem fer fees, an Ay gnok him in fess an take stifkit. Hae say hae tell mae spine bane O K all tem, an thrittened to jug Pete, an the back of me hand and the sole of me fut to the likes of him, savin' yer prisence, an Fader Mangan call me big towhead chump an kant lern catty kismus an marry me to vidder, an Pete, God bliss him, promised to raise the family in Holy Church, but no faller gnow dem tings Bfour hand, an Ay tank ve hike to dam gude pless in Bad Lands vun yare till stifkit bane ripe an Mine belong vidder an Ay bane Yeneral Manager an yu pit Boss vit gude yob in Yune or Yuly next, yours truely, an may the Blessid Saints purtect ye,Peter Peterson.
"P. S. Vidder Brady mae vife git skar an sine stifkit fer Brady to lawyer faller like dam fool vooman trik an sattle vit him, but Ay tink dat leg-yerkin bane bad all sem an yump to Bad Lands if we dodge inyunction youre frend.Pete."
"So they got married," said Aconite.
Just the way I figured it.
Well, this lunger sleuthed me out when I was prospecting alone next summer.
"Hello, Bill," said he, abrupt-like. "Cook a double supply of bacon."
"Sure," I said. "Got any eating tobacco, Lungy?"
"Bill," said he, after we had fed our respective faces, "did you ever wonder why that Swede received such prompt recognition without controversy for his absent patellar reflex?"
"Never wonder about anything else," said I. "Why?"
"It was this way," said he. "The crowd that robbed Sile Wilson found they had sold too much stock, and quit mining ore to run it down so they could buy it back. Some big holders hung on, and they had to make the play strong. So they went broke for fair, and let Brady's widow and Pete and a lot of others get judgments, and they bought up the certificates of sale. D'ye see?"
"Kind of," said I. "It'll come to me all right."
"It was a stock market harvest of death," said Lungy. "The judgments were to wipe out all the stock. This convinces me that the vein is hidden and not lost, as you said."
"I thought I mentioned the fact," said I, "that Brady showed me the ore-chute."
"That's why I'm here," said he. "I want you to find Pete Peterson for me."
"Why?" I said.
"Because," answered Addison, "he's got the junior certificate."
"Give me the grips and passwords," I demanded; "the secret work of the order may clear it up."
"Listen," said he. "Each certificate calls for a deed to the mine the day it's a year old; but the younger can redeem from the older by paying them off—the second from the first, the third from the second, and so on."
"Kind of rotation pool," said I, "with Pete's claim as ball fifteen?"
"Yes," said he; "only the mine itself has the last chance. But they think they know that Pete won't turn up, and they gamble on stealing the mine with the Brady certificate. Your perspicacity enables you to estimate the importance of Mr. Peterson."
"My perspicacity," I said, giving it back to him cold, "informs me that some jackleg lawyer has been and bunked Pete out of the paper long since. And he couldn't pay off what's ahead of him any more'n he could buy the Homestake? Come, there's more than this to the initiation!"
"Yes, there is," he admitted. "You remember Lucy, of course? No one could forget her! Well, her father and I are in on a secret pool of his friends, they to find the money, we to get this certificate."
"Where does Lucy come in?" said I.
"I get her," he replied, coloring up. "And success makes us all rich!"
I never said a word. Lungy was leery that I was soft on Lucy—I might have been, easy enough—and sat looking at me for a straight hour.
"Can you find him for me?" said he, at last.
"Sure!" said I.
He smoked another pipeful and knocked out the ashes.
"Will you?" said he, kind of wishful.
"If you insult me again," I hissed, "I'll knock that other lung out! Turn in, you fool, and be ready for the saddle at sun-up!"
We rode two days in the country that looks like the men had gone out when they had the construction work on it half done, when a couple of horsemen came out of a draw into the cañon ahead of us.
"The one on the pinto," said I, "is the perspiration specialist."
"If he doesn't recognize you," said Lungy, "let the dead past stay dead!"
Out there in the sunshine the Jackleg looked the part, so I wondered how we come to be faked by him. We could see that the other fellow was a sheriff, a deputy-sheriff, or a candidate for sheriff—it was in his features.
"Howdy, fellows!" said I.
"Howdy!" said the sheriff, and closed his face.
"Odd place to meet!" gushed the Jackleg, as smily as ever. "Which way?"
"We allowed to go right on," I said.
"This is our route," said Jackleg, and moseys up the opposite draw, clucking to his bronk, like an old woman.
"What do you make of his being here?" asked Lungy.
"Hunting Swedes," I said. "And with a case against Pete for robbery and assault. I hope we see him first!"
We went on, Lungy ignorantly cheerful, I lost-like to know what was what, and feeling around with my mind's finger for the trigger of the situation. Suddenly I whoaed up, shifted around on my hip, and looked back.
"Lost anything, Bill?" asked Lungy.
"Temporarily mislaid my brains," said I. "We're going back and pick up the scent of the Jackleg."
Lungy looked up inquiringly, as we doubled back on our tracks.
"When you kick a covey of men out of this sagebrush," I explained, "they naturally ask about anything they're after. They inquire if you know a Cock-Robin married to a Jenny-Wren, or an Owl to a Pussycat, or whatever marital misdeal they're trailing. They don't mog on like it was Kansas City or Denver."
"Both parties kept still," replied Lungy. "What's the answer, Bill?"
"Both got the same guilty secret," said I, "and they've got it the worst. They know where Pete is. So will we if we follow their spoor."
We pelted on right brisk after them. The draw got to be a cañon, with grassy, sheep-nibbled bottom, and we knew we were close to somewhere. At last, rolling to us around a bend, came a tide of remarks, rising and swelling to the point of rough-house and riot.
"The widow!" said I. "She knows me. You go in, Lungy, and put up a stall to keep 'em from seeing Pete alone first!"
I crept up close. The widow was calling the Jackleg everything that a perfect lady as she was, you know, could lay her tongue to, and he trying to blast a crack in the oratory to slip a word into.
"I dislike," said Lungy, "to disturb privacy; but we want your man to show us the way."
"Who the devil are you?" said the sheriff.
"My name—" began Lungy.
"Whativer it is, sorr," said the widow, "it's a betther name nor his you shpake to—the black far-down, afther taking me man and lavin' me shtarve wid me babbies he robbed iv what the coort give! But as long as I've a tongue in me hid to hould, ye'll not know where he's hid!"
And just then down behind me comes Pete on a fair-sized cayuse branded with a double X.
"Dat bane you, Bill?" said he casual-like. "You most skar me!"
I flagged him back a piece and told him the Jackleg was there. He ran, and I had to rope him.
"You're nervous, Pete," said I, helping him up. "What's the matter?"
"Dis blame getaway biz," he said, "bane purty tough on fallar. Ay listen an' yump all tem nights!"
"How about going back for the mine?" I asked.
"Dat bane gude yoke!" he grinned. "Ay got gude flock an' planty range hare, an' Ay stay, Ay tank. Yu kill lawyer fallar, Bill, an' take half whole shooting-match!"
"Got that certificate?" I asked.
It was all worn raw at the folds, but he had it. The Jackleg had an assignment all ready on the back, and I wrote Addison's name in, and made Pete sign it.
"Now," said I. "We'll take care of Mr. Jackleg, and you'll get something for this, but I don't know what. Don't ever come belly-aching around saying we've bunked you after Lungy has put up his good money and copped the mine. These men want this paper, not you. Probably they've got no warrant. Brace up and stand pat!"
So we walked around bold as brass. The widow was dangling a Skandy-looking kid over her shoulder by one foot, and analyzing the parentage of Jackleg. Lungy was grinning, but the sheriff's face was shut down.
"Ah, Mr. Peterson!" said the lawyer. "And our old and dear friend William Snoke, too! I thought I recognized you this morning! And now, please excuse our old and dear friend Mr. Peterson for a moment's consultation."
"Dis bane gude pless," said Pete. "Crack ahead!"
"This is a private matter, gentlemen," said Jackleg.
"Shall we withdraw?" asks Lungy.
"No!" yells Pete. "You stay—be vitness!"
"I wish to remind you, dear Mr. Peterson," said he as we sort of settled in our places, "that your criminal assault and robbery of me has subjected you to a long term in prison. And I suffered great damage by interruption of business, and bodily and mental anguish from the wounds, contusions and lesions inflicted, and especially from the compound fracture of the inferior maxillary bone—"
"Dat bane lie!" said Pete. "Ay yust broke your yaw!"
"He admits thecorpus delicti!" yelled the lawyer. "Gentlemen, bear witness!"
"I didn't hear any such thing," said Lungy.
"Neither did I," I said.
"I figure my damages," he went on, "at twelve thousand dollars."
Pete picked a thorn out of his finger.
"Now, Mr. Peterson," went on the lawyer, "I don't suppose you have the cash. But when I have stood up and fought for a man for pure friendship and a mere contingent fee, I learn to love him. I would fain save you from prison, if you would so act as to enable me to acquit you of felonious intent. A prison is a fearful place, Mr. Peterson!"
"Ay tank," said Pete, "Ay brace up an' stand pat!"
"If you would do anything," pleaded the Jackleg, "to show good intention, turn over to me any papers you may have, no matter how worthless—notes, or—or certificates!"
Pete pulled out his wallet. Lungy turned pale.
"Take dis," said Pete. "Dis bane order fer six dollar Yohn Yohnson's wages. Ay bane gude fallar!"
"Thanks!" said the Jackleg, pious-like. "Andisthat long document the certificate of sale in Petersonvs.Golden Fountain, etc.?"
"Dat bane marryin' papers," said Pete. "Dat spine paper bane N. G. Mae spine all tem O. K. Dat leg-yerkin' bane yust effidence. Ay take spine paper to start camp-fire!"
It was as good as a play. Lungy turned pale and trembled. The lawyer went up in the air and told the sheriff to arrest Pete, and appealed to the widow to give up the certificate, and she got sore at Pete, and called him a Norwegian fool for burning it, and cuffed the bigger kid, which was more Irish-looking. Pete dug his toe into the ground and looked ashamed and mumbled something about it not being his spine. The sheriff told Pete to come along, and I asked him to show his warrant. He made a bluff at looking in his clothes for it, and rode away with his countenance tight-closed.
Lungy and I rode off the other way.
That night Lungy smiled weakly as I started the fire with paper.
"Bill," said he, "I shall never burn paper without thinking how near I came to paradise and dropped plump—"
"Oh, I forgot," said I. "Here's that certificate."
Lungy took it, looked it over, read the assignment, and broke down and cried.
"How did it come out?" asked the Bride.
"Oh," said the Hired Man, "Lungy waited till the last minute, flashed the paper and the money, and swiped the mine. The company wanted to give a check and redeem, but the clerk stood out for currency, and it was too late to get it. He got the mine, and Lucy, and is the big Mr. Addison, now. No, me for where you can carry off things that are too big for the grand larceny statutes. This business of farming is too much like chicken-feed for me!"
"I came on this trip," said Colonel Baggs, "to rest my vocal organs, and not to talk. In this ambition I have been greatly aided by the willingness of Professor Boggs to assume the conversational burden in our seat. However, now that my name has been drawn from the hat, I shall have the pleasure, and honor, lady and gentlemen, to entertain you for a very few minutes—after which, thanking you for your very kind attention and liberal patronage, the hay—the hay, my friends, for me!"
At the Lake Hotel, to which they had come by boat, they found their tents pitched and their dinner awaiting them—for which they were indebted to the efficiency of Aconite and the Hired Man, who had come overland; and the latter of whom assured them that they had missed the greatest curiosity of the Park in failing to see the Natural Bridge.
"On your way, Bill!" said the Groom. "You didn't see the petrified sea serpent swimming off Gull Point, did you?"
"Dumb it all, no!" exclaimed Bill. "I never am around when anything good is pulled off!"
I was much interested (said the Colonel, beginning his story), in the tale told by my learned brother, Mr. Snoke. The story of the way Mr. Lungy Addison committed grand larceny in getting away with the Mortal Cinch mine is one that, falling from the mouth, as it does, of a person not learned in the law and its beauties, must be true. Nobody but a lawyer could have invented it—and I assure you that lawyers are too busy with the strange phases of truth to monkey—if I may use a term not yet laundered by the philologists—with fiction. The law is the perfection of human wisdom. Our courts are the God-ordained instruments by which these perfections are made manifest to the eyes of mere human beings. To be sure the courts are composed of men who were but even now lawyers—but that's neither here, there, nor yonder—when the anointment of their judicial consecration runs down their beard, as did the oil down that of Aaron, human imperfections are at end with them, and it's all off with frailty. And this brings me to the brief story which is my contribution to the Yellowstone Nights' Entertainment. I sing, my beloved, the saga of The Law and Amelia Whinnery.
I just got a decision over in Nebraska in the case of Whinneryvs.The C. & S. W. It shows that Providence is still looking out for the righteous man and his seed. Never heard of Whinneryvs.the Railway Company? Well, it may put you wise to a legal principle or two, and I'll tell you about it. I was ag'in' the corporations over there, as associate counsel for the plaintiff. Bob Fink, that studied in my office, was the fellow the case belonged to, and he being a little afraid of Absalom Scales, the railroad's local attorney, sent over a Macedonian wail to me, and said we'd cut up a fifty per cent, contingent fee if we won. I went.
Amelia Whinnery was the plaintiff. She was a school-teacher who had got hold of the physical culture graft, and was teaching it to teachers' institutes, making forty dollars a minute the year around.
"How much?" asked the Hired Man.
"I'm telling you what the record showed as I remember it," said the Colonel. "We proved that she was doing right well financially when the railroad put her out of business by failing to ring a bell or toot a whistle at the crossing coming into Tovala, and catching Bill Williams' bus asleep at the switch. Miss Whinnery was in the bus. When it was all over, she was in pretty fair shape—"
"Naturally," interpolated the Artist.
"Excepting that her nerves had got some kind of a shock and she was robbed permanently of the power of speech."
"How terrible!" exclaimed the Bride.
On the trial she sat in the court-room in a close-fitting dress, wearing a picture hat, and would give a dumb sort of gurgle when Scales would pitch into her case, as if to protest at being so cruelly assaulted while defenseless. It was pathetic.
Bob Fink shed tears, while he pictured to the jury in his opening, the agony of this beautiful girl set off from her kind for life, as the preponderance, the clear preponderance of the evidence showed she would be, by dumbness—"an affliction, gentlemen of the jury, which seals her lips forever as to the real facts, and stops the reply she could otherwise make to the dastardly attack of my honorable and learned friend, the attorney for this public-service corporation, which has been clothed with the power to take away your land, gentlemen of the jury, or mine, whether we want to sell it or not, and to rob us of our produce by its extortionate freight rates, and to run its trains into and through our cities, and over our busses, and to maim and injure our ladies, and bring them before juries of their peers, who, unless I mistake, will administer a stinging rebuke to this corporation without a soul to save or a body to kick, in the only way in which it can be made to feel a rebuke—in damages, out of that surplus of tainted dollars which its evil and illegal practices have wrung from the hard hands of toil as represented by the farmers and laborers who so largely compose this highly-intelligent jury."
"Good spiel," commented the Groom.
Bob was good until the other side had the reporter begin to take his speech down, so as to show appeals to passion and prejudice—and then he hugged the record close. The plaintiff sobbed convulsively. Bob stopped and swallowed, knowing that the reporter couldn't get the sobs and swallows into the record. The jurors blew their noses and glared at Scales and the claim-agent. I went over to the plaintiff and gave her a drink of water, and would have liked to take her in my arms and comfort her, but didn't.
"Too bad!" remarked the Poet.
Well, the jury found for us in about three hours for the full amount, ten thousand dollars and costs. They would have agreed earlier, only they waited so the state would have to pay for their suppers. A judgment was rendered on the verdict, and the railroad appealed. All this time Bob was getting more and more tender toward the plaintiff. I didn't think much about it until cards came for their wedding. I sent Bob an assignment of my share in the verdict for a wedding present—if we ever got it. Amelia promised to love, honor and cherish by nodding her head, and walked away from the altar with her most graceful physical culture gait, while the boys outside with their shivaree instruments ready for the evening, sang in unison, "Here comes the bride! Get on to her stride!" It was arecherchéaffair—but excessively quiet nuptials on the bride's side.
That evening Absalom Scales got in the finest piece of work that was ever pulled off in any lawsuit in Nebraska. The bridal party went away over the C. & S. W.Omaha Limited, and Amelia and Bob were there looking as fine as fiddles—Amelia a picture, they said, in her going-away gown. Scales had fixed up for a crowd of hoodlums to shivaree them as they went.
"Mighty mean trick, I should say," said the Hired Man, "for any one but a corporation lawyer."
"Wait, Brother Snoke," protested the Colonel, "until you are so far advised in the premises as to be able to judge whether the end didn't justify the means."
In addition to the horse-fiddles and bells and horns, Absalom had arranged some private theatricals. He had plugged up a deal by which Bill Williams, the bus man—who'd sold out and was going to Oregon anyway—came bursting into the waiting-room while they were waiting for the train—which was held at the water-tank by Scales' procurement and covin—and presented a bill for the damages to his bus by the accident which had hurt Amelia's oratorical powers. You see, he'd never been settled with, being clearly negligent. They tried to get off in Amelia's case on the doctrine of imputed negligence, but it wouldn't stick.
Well, Bill comes in with his claim against Amelia and Bob for two or three hundred dollars for his bus. They disdainfully gave him the ha-ha.
"Then," says Bill Williams, "I will tell all, woman!"
Amelia flushed, and looked inquiringly at Bob. Bob walked up to Bill and hissed: "What do you mean, you hound, by insulting my wife in this way!"
"She knows what I mean," yelled Bill, turning on Amelia. "Ask your wife what she an' I was talkin' about when we was a-crossing the track that time. Ask her if she didn't say to me that I was the perfec'ly perportioned physical man, an' whether I didn't think that men an' women of sech perportions should mate; an' if she didn't make goo-goo eyes at me, ontil I stuck back my head to kiss her, an' whether she wasn't a-kissin' me when that freight come a pirootin' down an' run over her talkin' apparatus! Ask her if she didn't say she could die a-kissin' me, an' if she didn't come danged near doin' it!"
"How perfectly horrid!" gasped the Bride.
Well, Bob Fink was, from all accounts, perfectly flabbergasted. There stood Bill Williams in his old dogskin coat and a cap that reeked of the stables, and there stood the fair plaintiff, turning redder and redder and panting louder and louder as the enormity of the thing grew upon her. And then she turned loose.
Amelia Whinnery Fink, defendant in error, and permanently dumb, turned loose.
She began doubling up her fists and stamping her feet, and finally she burst forth into oratory of the most impassioned character.
"Robert Fink!" she said, as quoted in the motion for a reopening of the case that Scales filed—"Robert Fink, will you stand by like a coward and see me insulted? That miserable tramp—a perfect—If you don't kill him, I will.Ikiss him?Iask him such a thing? Bob Fink, do you expect me to go with you and leave such an insult unavenged? No, no, no, no—"
"I don't blame her!" interjected the Bride.
I guess she'd have gone on stringing negatives together as long as the depot would have held 'em, if Bob hadn't noticed Ike Witherspoon, the shorthand reporter, diligently taking down her speech and the names of those present. Then he twigged, and, hastily knocking Bill down, he boarded the train with Amelia. He wired me from Fremont that it was all off with the judgment, as they'd tormented Mrs. Fink into making a public speech. I answered, collect, bidding him be as happy as he could in view of the new-found liberty of speech and of the press, and I'd look after the judgment and the appeal.
"Well," said the Groom, "of course you got licked in the Supreme Court. It was clear proof that she'd been shamming."
"You're about as near right on that as might be expected of a layman," retorted the Colonel. "Just about. The law is the perfection of human reason. The jury had found that Amelia Whinnery couldn't speak, and never would be able to. A jury had rendered a verdict to that effect, and judgment for ten thousand dollars had been entered upon it. I merely pointed out to the Supreme Court that they could consider errors in the record only, and that it was the grossest sort of pettifogging and ignorance of the law for Absalom Scales to come in and introduce such an impertinence as evidence—after the evidence was closed—that the fair plaintiff had been shamming and was, in fact, a very free-spoken lady. The bench saw the overpowering logic of this, and read my authorities, and Bob and Amelia will henceforth live in the best house in their town, built out of the C. & S .W. surplus—and Amelia talking sixteen hours a day. It's locally regarded as a good joke on the railroad."
"But was it honest?" queried the Bride.
"Honest, me lady!" repeated the Colonel,a laOthello. "My dear young lady, the courts are not to be criticized—ever remember that!"
"That makes me think," said the Hired Man, "of the darndest thing—"
"In that case," said the Poet, "your name will be considered drawn for the next number. Save this darndest thing for its own occasion—which will be at our next camp. Oneiros beckons, and I go."
"In that case," said Aconite, "I'd go, you bet!"
Coming in from the right as they took the open trail again, the Cody Road beckoned them eastward, as a side road always beckons to the true wanderer.
"What does it run to?" asked the Groom.
"Wyoming," responded Aconite. "It's nothing but scenery and curiosities."
"Let's follow it a little way," suggested the Bride, "and see how we like it"
Three miles or so on the way, the surrey halted at a beautiful little lake, which lay like a fragment broken off Yellowstone Lake, the shore of which lay only a stone's throw to the right. They walked over to the big lake to bid it farewell. A score of miles to the south lay Frank Island, and still farther away, shut off by the fringe of rain from a thunder shower, the South Arm seemed to run in behind Chicken Ridge and take to the woods. To the southwest stood Mount Sheridan, and peeping over his shoulder the towering Tetons solemnly refused even to glimmer a good-by.
"For all that," said the Bride, "au revoir! We'll come back one of these days, won't we, Billy?"
"Sure!" said Billy. "I'm coming up to put in a power plant in the Grand Cañon, one of these days. This scenery lacks the refining touch of the spillway and the penstock!"
Fifteen minutes' driving brought them to the second halt, a big basin of water, from which steam issued in a myriad of vents. Aconite suggested that they stroll down to the beach and take a look at the water. They found it in a slow turmoil, the mud rising from the bottom in little fountains of turbidity, the whole effect being that which might be expected if some mud-eating giant were watching his evening porridge, expecting it momentarily to boil.
"I don't care much for this," said the Bride.
"I'm not crazy about it myself," assented the Artist.
"What's the next marvel?" asked the Colonel.
"Wedded trees," said Aconite.
"Getting sated with 'em," said the Poet.
"Apollinaris Springs, Sylvan Lake, fine views of Yellowstone Lake and the mountains, bully rocks and things clear to Cody."
"And on the other hand," said the Professor, "what are the features on the regular road from which we have diverged?"
"Everything you come to see," responded Aconite. "Mud Volcano, with a clear spring in the grotto right by it; Mud Geyser, off watch for a year or more; Trout Creek, doubled around into the N.P. trade-mark; Sulphur Mountain—we can camp right near there, and see it in the morning, when we ought to see it—and on beyond, the Grand Cañon and everything. Besides—unless we go that-a-way, we'll never git back unless we come by the Burlington around by Toluca and Billings. Of course, it's all the same to me—I don't keer if we never go back or git anywhere. I'm havin' a good time."
"Turn the plugs around," said the Colonel.
In half an hour or so they were back on the great north road again. The horses seemed to feel the pull of the stable—still days ahead, for they trotted briskly along, while the tourists gazed with sated eyes on the beautiful Yellowstone River on the right hand, its pools splashing with the plunges of the great trout; and on their left the charming mountain scenery. Even the grotesque Mud Volcano, with its suggestions of the horrible and uncouth, failed to elicit the screams from the Bride, or the ejaculations of amazement from the men which characterized their deliverances earlier in the journey. Entering Hayden Valley, they were delighted at the sight in the middle distance of a dozen or more buffaloes, which held up their heads for a long look, and disappeared into the bushes. Not ten minutes later, fifty or sixty elk walked down to the Yellowstone to drink, crossing the road within a minute of the tourists' passage. Aconite pulled up in the shadow of Sulphur Mountain, the Hired Man, with the assistance of the party, soon had a fine fire blazing, and presently a pan of trout, hooked by the Bride, the Groom, the Artist and the Poet, and dressed by the skilful Aconite, were doing to a turn on the skillet.
The Hired Man, realizing that he was under obligation to tell his version of the "darndest thing" in his experience, was solemn, as befits a public performer. When the psychological moment was proclaimed by the falling down into a roseate pile of coals of the last log for the night, he discharged his duty and told this unimportant tale:
The Colonel's story of how the law and the courts work, reminded me of what happened to old Hen Peters and his forty-second nephew, Hank. It all arose from a debate at the literary at the Bollinger school-house back in Iowa.
You see, old Hen's girl Fanny come home from the State Normal at Cedar Falls as full of social uplift as a yeast-cake, and framed up this literary. It was a lulu of a society, and nights when the sledding was good, the teams just surrounded the lot, and the bells jingled as uplifting as you could ask.
The night of the scrap Hank brought Fanny. The debate was on which was the most terrible scourge, fire or water. Hank was on the negative, and Fanny's father on the affirmative. Old Hen spoke of the way prairie fires devastated things in an early day, and read history, and gave a beautiful tribute to the Chicago fire and the O'Leary cow. Hank coughed with the dust kicked up when Hen sat down, but he got back with a rhapsody on the Hoang-Ho floods, and the wet season in Noah's time. He said that his honorable opponent ought to take a moment or two from time to time to ascertain the properties of water as a scourge, as an inward remedy, and as a lotion.
Now besides having an appetite for red-eye, old Hen was whiskery and woolly-necked, and handling lots of tame hay, he looked sort of unwashed. So the crowd yelled shameful and laughed; and when Hen got up to answer, he was so mad his whiskers stood out like a rooster's hackle, his words came out in a string like, all lapped on one another, and blurred, and linked together so you couldn't tell one from the other; and finally they reversed on the bobbin, and gigged back into his system, and rumbled and reverberated around in him like a flock of wild cattle loose in an empty barn; and the crowd got one of those giggly fits when every one makes the other laugh till they are sore and sick. Asa Wagstaff fell backward out of a window on to a hitching-post, and made Brad Phelps' team break loose. Old Hen stood shaking his fist at them and turning so red in the face that he got blue, and sat down without saying a syllable that any one could understand. You could hear folks hollering and screaming in fits of that laughing disease going home, and getting out and rolling in the snow because they were in agony, and nothing but rolling would touch the spot. But old Hen Peters seemed to be immune.
Now, in a debate, no man is supposed to have friends or relations, and he floors his man with anything that comes handy, and Hank never dreamed that Hen would hold hardness when he got over his mad fit. Hank and Fanny had things all fixed up, and had been pricing things at the Banner Store, and sitting up as late as two o'clock; but the next Sunday night she met him at the door and told him maybe he'd better not come into the sitting-room till her pa cooled off. Hank was knocked off his feet, and they stood out in the hall talking sort of tragic until old Hen yelled "Fanny!" from the sitting-room, and they pretty near jumped out of their skins, and stood farther apart, and Fanny went in. In the spring there was a row over the line fence, ending in a devil's lane. Fanny looked pretty blue, only when she was fighting with her pa. Hen would lecture about the two Peters brothers that came across in 1720, and how all Peterses that were not descended from them were Nimshies and impostors. "I despise and hate," says he, "a Nimshi and an impostor."
Then Fanny would shoot back a remark about the IowaHerald'scollege, and when was her pa going to paint the Peters coat-of-arms on the hay-rake and the hog-house, using sarcasm that no man could understand after being out of school as long as her father had been. Sometimes the old man would forget the spurious registry of the Hank family in the Peters herd-book, and would argue that relations, even the most remote and back-fence kind, ought to be prosecuted if they even dreamed of marrying; and then Fanny would say that it is such a pleasure to know that folks are not always related when they claim to be. Hen would then cuss me for not taking care of my horses' shoulders or something, and things would get no better rapidly.
Young folks need to meet once in a while in order to keep right with each other, and Jim Miller and I often spoke of the way old Hen was splitting Hank and Fanny apart. Then an Illinois man come out and bought Hank out at a hundred an acre, and Hank wadded his money into his pocket, and bid good-by to the neighborhood for good and all. He never crossed the township line again. Fanny flirted like sixty, and cried when she was alone; but old Hen was as tickled as a colt.
It seemed like a judgment on Hen for driving as good a man as Hank to Dakota to have Fillmore Smythe begin yelping on his trail. His first yelp was a letter, asking Hen to call and pay a three-hundred-dollar note Fillmore had for collection. And here's where the law begins to seep into the story. Hen had Fanny type-write a scorching answer, saying that Hen Peters had discounted his bills since before Fillmore Smythe was unfortunately born, and didn't owe no man a cent; and Hen was so mad that he kicked a fifty-dollar collie pup, and hurt its feelings so it never would work, but went to killing young pigs and sheep the way a collie will if you ever sour their nature by licking them. Funny about collies.
One day old Hen come in from the silo, and saw Fillmore Smythe's team tied at the gate, and Fillmore sitting with Fanny on the stoop, readingLucile.
"I hope I see you well, Mr. Peters," said the lawyer, kind of smooth-like.
"None the better for seein' you, sir," said Hen, jamming his mouth shut when he got through so his mustache and whiskers were all inserted into each other.
Now this was no way to treat a person from town, and Fanny began saying how wonderful the sunset was last night, and asking did he ever see the moon-vine flowers pop out in bloom in the gloaming, and to curb her neck and step high the way they do when they're bitted in college.
"Any partic'lar business here?" asked old Hen.
"Ah, yes!" said Smythe. "In addition to the pleasure of seeing you and your accomplished family, I desired a conference as to the curious way in which that little note—"
"Well, now that you've seen my accomplished family as much as I want you to," growled Hen, "you can git. I told you all I'm goin' to about what you call my note."
"But," said Fillmore, sort of like he was currying a kicking mule, "if you'd consent to look at it, I'm sure it would all return to your mind!"
Hen fired him off the place, though, and he sued Hen. The old man was affected a good deal like the collie pup, and mulled it over, and got sour on the world, especially lawyers that blackmailed and forged. He said he knew well enough that Smythe either did it or knew who did, and that every lawyer ought to be hung. I argued for imprisonment for the first offense for a no-account lawyer like Smythe, with a life sentence if it was proved that he knew any law, and the death penalty for good lawyers like Judge McKenzie; and Hen was so mad at me for what I said that he wouldn't let me have the top buggy the next Sunday night when I needed it the worst way.
The big doings come off when the case came up to be tried. I quit hauling ensilage corn, and went with Fanny and the old folks up to the county seat to give testimony that Hen never signed that note. Fanny stayed with Phœbe Relyea; but the rest of us stopped at the Accidental Hotel, where most of the jurors and others tangled up in court stayed too.
The lawyer in the case ahead of us was a new-comer, and strung it out day after day to advertise himself, and yelled so you could hear him over in the band-stand, to show his ability. Hen, all the time, was getting more and more morbid, and forgot his temperance vows, and tried to talk about the case to everybody. About half the time it would be a juryman he would try to confide in, and this made trouble on account of their thinking he was trying to influence them. One night Hen was owly as sin, drinking with Walker Swayne from Pleasant Valley Township; and when he cried into his beer because Fillmore Smythe was trying to swindle him and blast his good name, Walker slapped him for approaching him on a case he might be called to sit on. I put Hen to bed at the Revere House, and told Mrs. Peters he'd been called home. She 'phoned out to have him count the young turkeys, and the Swede second man had no more sense than to say he had not been there, instead of placing him where they had no telephone, as an honest hired man with any sprawl would have done. You couldn't trust this Swede as far as you could throw a thesaurus by the tail. I am not saying that he was corrupt; but he was just thumb-hand-sided and lummoxy, and blurted, "Hae ain't bane hare" into the transmitter with never a thought of the danger of telling the truth. Mrs. Peters didn't know what to be distressed about, and just because I'm paid the princely salary I get for saying nothing about such things, she jumped on me like a duck on a June-bug.
When Hen and I went to McKenzie's office the night before our case came up, the lawyer was worried. He asked us if we knew who was going to testify against us.
"No," snapped Hen; "an' I don't care. Nobody ever saw me sign that note, and it don't make any matter."
Then he went on to tell what great friends he and Judge Brockway used to be, when the judge used to shoot prairie-chickens in Hen's stubble, and Mrs. Peters cooked the chickens for the judge.
"Brockway thinks as much of me as a brother," said Hen. "He told me as much when he was running for judge. He won't see me stuck."
This didn't seem to impress Judge McKenzie much. He still looked worried, and said the other side had got every banker in town on their side as handwriting experts.
"I don't like the looks of things," said he.
Hen flew mad at the idea of his lawyer's hinting that any man could get stuck in such a case. The judge tried to explain, and Hen asked him how much the other side was paying him, and the judge threw up his job. Pretty soon, though, Hen got him to take a new retainer of fifteen dollars, and he opened a new account in his books. This made Hen feel good, for the judge was great with juries when he was sober. He was good and sober now, for he had just taken the drinking cure for the third time. We had lots of faith in Providence and McKenzie, but were scary as three-year-olds that night at any strange noise in the brush. You know how it is when you feel that way.
Things went wrong the next morning. So many of the jurors said that Hen had talked to them that Judge Brockway just glared at Hen, and said that the court was not favorably impressed by tactics of that sort.
Walker Swayne told how he had slapped Hen's chops to drive off his improper advances, and Judge Brockway said that he could not condone breaches of the peace; but a juror, like a woman, was justified if any one; and when old Hen asked Mac for the Lord's sake, were there any women sitting on this case, Brockway wilted Hen again with a look.
I asked Hen at recess if he thought Brockway would ask him as a friend and brother to sit up on the bench, and he flared up and said Brock was all right, but was disguising his feelings as a judge.
"He's got a disguise that's a bird," said I, and Hen said I might consider myself discharged; but wrote me a note after court took up, hiring me back.
The next juror up related another case of Hen's vile tactics, and the judge threatened to send him to jail if anything more bobbed up. Hen fell back into his chair limpsy, like dropping a wet string,—all spiral like,—and everybody looked at us in horror for our pollyfoxing with the jury. As a matter of fact, in his state of beer and overconfidingness, Hen would have wept on the breast of a wooden Indian that would have held still while he told of the octopus and its forgeries. In all the time I worked for him, he never tried once to destroy the jury system or his country's liberty.
Finally they found twelve men that didn't know anything about the case or anything, and had no opinions or prejudices for or against anything, and the lawyers told the jury what they expected to prove.
"The sacred system of trial by jury," said Fillmore Smythe, "has been saved from the attacks of the defendant by an incorruptible court. Placed on trial before this intelligent jury, what the defendant may do I can not even guess; but we have here in court his note, signed in his own proper person."
"'T ain't so!" busted out Hen, in his own improper person. "You hain't got no such note!"
"One more interruption of this sort," said the judge, peeking down at Hen, "and the example that I'll make ofyouwon't soon be forgotten. Proceed, Mr. Smythe!"
"Concealing his love!" whispers I to Hen; and he put the leg of his chair on my foot and ground it around till I almost yelled.
When they had marked the note "Exhibit A" the way they do, Smythe said "Plaintiff rests," though they didn't seem near as tired as our side was, and the court let out for noon. They let McKenzie take the note with him to look at. There it was on one of those blanks that it cost me a good claim in Kansas once to practise writing on, and I never got to be much of a penman either; it was signed "Henry Peters" as natural as life.
"Well," questioned Mac, as Hen turned it over, "what do you say to it, Henry?"
I could feel that all the time McKenzie had had a hunch that Hen had really signed the note, and Hen felt it, too, and he threw to the winds the remains of his last conversion, and his fear that Mac would strike again, and talked as bad as if he was learning a calf to drink.
"Why, you scoundrelly Keeley graduate," he yelled, "what did I tell you! That's a forgery, as any one but a half-witted pettifogger could see by lookin' at it!"
"I sever my connection with this case right now," said Mac, away down in his chest, and as dignified as a ring-master. "No inebriated litigant can refer to the struggle and expense I have incurred in lifting myself to a nobler plane of self-control, and then call for my skill and erudition in extricating him from the quagmire of the law in which his imprudences have immeshed him. Go, sir, to some practitioner so far lost to manhood as to be able to resist the temptation to brain you with his notary-public's seal. Leave me to my books!"
Mac went into the next room and shut the door, but did not lock it.
"I can see," said Colonel Baggs, "the wisdom of leaving it on the latch."
I took and apologized for Hen; but Mac stuck his nose in a book and waved me away. If Hen had been a little drunker he would have cried; and I went back to woo McKenzie some more. Finally, he agreed to come into the case again, on payment of another retainer fee of twenty dollars. Hen was game, and skinned a double-X off his roll without a flinch. Mac opened up a new account in his books, and Hen, for my successful diplomacy, raised my wages two dollars a month. It was a great lesson to me.
Of course I could see that it was not Hen's signature; for his way of writing was Spencerian, modified by handling a fork, shucking corn, and by the ink drying up while he was thinking. The name on the note was kind of backhand. Mac asked about other Henry Peterses, and Hen told him that there was a man that passed by that name in the county a year or so back, but that he never had credit for three hundred cents, never bought any such machinery, and had escaped to Dakota.
When old Hen testified, he had one of his spluttery spells of reverse English caused by his language getting wound on the shafting, and his denying the signature didn't seem to make much impression on any one. Smythe made him admit that he had bought the tools, and had no check-stub of the payment; and when he said he paid Bloxham in cash, Smythe laid back and grinned, and McKenzie moved that the grin be took down by the reporter, so he could move to strike it out.
Everybody just seemed to despise us but Mac; and I was as ashamed as a dog. This Bloxham, the machine agent, was dead, and most everybody there had been to his funeral; but it took half an hour to prove his demise. Two jurors went to sleep on this, and one of them hollered "Whay! whay!" in his sleep, like he was driving stock, and Brockway pounded and glared atusfor it. I wished I was back with Ole running the silage cutter.
All this time we kind of lost sight of Mrs. Peters and Fanny. Fanny sent some word over to the Accidental the second evening, and her mother went over to Relyea's, and came back kind of fluttery. I was sent to Fanny with a suit-case of dresses her mother had there, and Fanny was in the awfullest taking with blushing and her breath fluttering like a fanning-mill with palpitation of the heart that I couldn't think what was the matter with her. She had never blushed at seeing me before. I began to see what a pretty girl she was; but I couldn't think of tying myself down, even if she did. She came up close to me, shook hands with me, and bid me good-by when I came away. This was a sign she wanted to hold some one's hand or was going away; and I knew she wasn't expected to go away. It set me to thinking. Mac said he wouldn't want her testimony until the surrey-butter part, if then. I made up my mind I'd go up and talk with her once in a while, instead of sticking around down-town. But this trial absorbed my attention when the experts came on.
Smythe had had a magnification made of the name on the note, and the one on old Hen's letter, and every banker in town went on and swore about these names. John Smythe, Fillmore's half-brother, knew Hen's signature; and had had to study handwriting so hard in the bank that he had got to be an expert. He was always thought a kind of a ninny, but here's where he sure did loom up with the knowledge. He acted just as smart as those Chicago experts we read about, and living right here in the county all the time, and never out of the bank a day! A good deal of my ability comes from dropping into some big city like Fort Dodge or Ottumwa, or maybe Sioux City, or Des Moines every winter, and getting on to the new wrinkles and broadening out; but John Smythe was always behind that brass railing, like a cow in stanchions. And yet he was able to see that those two signatures just had to be made by the same man. This spiel was cutting ice with the jury, and Mac roared and pointed out where they were different; but Smythe hinted that it only seemed so because Mac was ignorant. He could just see the same man a-making them—the way the stem of the "P" was made, and the finish of the "y" like a pollywog's tail made it a cinch. Hen swore under his powerful breath that it was a dad-burned lie; but it looked awful plausible to me.
"You notice," said Fillmore, "that the name on the letter is more scrawly and uneven?"
"Yes," said John, "but that merely means that he used a different pen or was nervous. I think I see in the last the characteristic tremor of anger."
This looked bad to me, for if ever a man had a right to the characteristic tremor of anger, it was old Hen when he signed that letter. It showed Smythe knew what he was at.
Mac showed them a lot of Hen's real signatures, but the experts said they only made it clearer. Every one had a little curlicue or funny business that put Hen deeper in the hole; and he finally chucked the bunch, all the reporter didn't have, in the stove. Fillmore Smythe inflated himself and blew up at this; but Brockway, still concealing his love, said that while it looked bad, and the jury might consider this destruction of evidence as one of the facts, the papers belonged to defendant and the court didn't see fit to do anything. Our case looked as bad as it could, and I didn't see why Smythe hollered so about it. The jury looked on us as horse-thieves and crooks, and every time old Hen stepped, he balled things up worse.
Whitten, of the First National, was stronger than John Smythe. He said it was physically impossible for any man but the one that signed the letter to have made that note; and he was an expert from away back. He pointed out the anger tremor, too. Mac showed him how the check-signatures all looked like that on the letter, and not like the one on the note; but Whitten said a man was always calm when he made a note, and mad as a hatter when he drew a check. Knowing Hen, this looked plausible to me, and made a hit with the jury. The man that hollered "Whay!" wrote it down on his cuff.
Ole Pete Hungerford, the note-shaver, snorted disdainfully that there was no doubt that the note was genuine. He swore that a bogus check I made was genuine, too; and got redder than a turkey when he found I had made it, and said it was the work of a skilful forger. The man that hollered "Whay!" looked at me in horror, and wrote some more on his cuff. I felt considerable cheap.
Every expert said the same thing. I believe that there was one while when Hen would have admitted he signed the note if they had called him and raw-hided him enough. Hen had some hopes when Zenas Whitcher of the Farmers' Bank had some doubts about one signature; but he flattened out again when he found it was the one on the letter that had old Zenas guessing, and that he was dead sure the one on the note was a sure-enough genuine sig, only it looked as if he was trying to disguise his hand. Fillmore seemed to think pretty well of this, and had them all go back and swear about this disguise business. They could all see wiggly spots now and places gone over twice where Hen had doubled on his trail to throw pursuers off the track and disguise his hand. It begun to look to me like Hen was up to some skulduggery,—all these smooth guys swearing like that,—but Hen was paying me my wages and needed friends, and I stuck. He looked down his nose like an egg-sucking pup. When I came on to swear that it was not Hen's signature on the note, my mind was so full of curlicues and polly-wogs' tails, and anger tremors, and disguises, and the gall of my swearing against these big men that had money to burn, that I went into buck fever, and was all shot to rags by Smythe's cross-examination,—any of you fellows would be,—so that I finally admitted that the note looked pretty good to me, and that I'd have probably taken it for Hen's note if I'd been a banker and had it offered to me. Mac threw up his hands, said that was all our evidence, then went at the jury hammer and tongs, and I looked at poor old Hen all collapsed down into his chair like a rubber snake, and I went and hid.
In the morning I crawled out, supposing that it would all be over, and wondering where I'd find Hen; but I heard Judge McKenzie's closing argument rolling out of the court-house windows like thunder. I didn't care for eloquence the way I was feeling, and was just sneaking away, when who should I run on to but Fanny walking with a fellow down under the maples. I was shocked, for she was hanging to his arm the way no nice girl ought to do unless it's dark. I trailed along behind to see who it was, when the fellow turned his head quick, and I saw it was Hank. They come up to me, Fanny still shamelessly hanging to his arm, looking excited and foolish, like they had just experienced religion or got engaged.
"Doc," said Hank, "we've just found out about it!"
"I've knowed it a long time," said I coldly. "What is it?"
"This lawsuit," said Hank—"is it over, or still running?"
"It's still running," I said. "Listen at the machinery rumble up there. It's all over but the shouting, and we've got a man hired to do that. Why?"
They never said a word, but scooted up the stairs. I strolled in and found Mac's machinery throwed out of gear by Hank's interruption. Hen was still collapsed, and didn't see Hank. Mac turned grandly to the judge, and told him that a witness he had been laboring to secure the attendance of from outside the jurisdiction had blowed in, and he wanted the case reopened. Smythe rose buoyantly into the air and hooted, but Brockway coldly reopened the case, and Hank was sworn. The juror that wrote on his cuff looked disgusted, but he wrote Hank's name and age with the rest of his notes.
"Where do you live?" asked Mac.
"South Dakota," answered Hank.
"Examine 'Exhibit A,'" said Mac proudly, handing Hank the note, "and tell the jury when if ever you have seen it before!"
"When it was signed," said Hank.
Old Hen kind of straightened up. Fanny sat down by him, and put her arm about him. She sure did look pretty.
"Who signed that note?" asked Mac, with his voice swelling like a double B-flat bass tuba.
"I did," answered Hank.
"I object," yelled Smythe, trembling like a leaf.
"Overruled," said Brockway in a kind of tired way.
"Do you owe this note?" asked Mac.
"You bet I do," answered Hank, "and got the money to pay it. I went to Dakota and forgot about the darned note. Bloxham shipped the machinery out there to me. It's my note all right; Hen Peters never saw it till Smythe got it."
The room was full of wilted experts. This did not appeal to them at all. McKenzie laughed fiendishly, as if he'd had this thing arranged all the time. The jury looked foolish, all but the one that hollered "Whay!" and he looked mad. I could see Hen reviving, and throwing off his grouch at Hank. Fillmore Smythe said he had a question or two in cross-examination.
"What kin are you to the defendant?" he asked.
"That's a disputed point," replied Hank. "I dunno's I'm any by blood."
"Are you not related to him in any way?" asked Fillmore, prying into things the way they do.
"You bet I am," spoke up Hank, looking over at Fanny, and getting red in the face. "He don't know about it; but since night before last I've been his son-in-law."