University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
“A MAN FOR BREAKFAST.”

NOW that we have got a Judge,” said Sandy
one day, “why not put him to work?”

There had been a pretty general feeling
against those who took part in the murder of the
Indians the last winter kept alive by the miners, and
Sandy, who was always boiling over on some subject,
and was brimfull of energy, went and laid the case
before the Judge and instituted a prosecution. Here
was a sensation! The court sent a constable to
arrest a prisoner with a verbal warrant, and the man
came into Court; the Howlin' Wilderness, followed
by half the town, gave verbal bonds for his
appearance next Saturday, and the Court adjourned
to that day.

Sides were taken at once. The idlers of course
all taking sides with the prisoner; the miners mostly
going the other way. Sandy took it upon himself
to prosecute. He could hardly have been in earnest,
yet he seemed to be terribly so. The assassins were

active in getting evidence out of the way, making
friends with the Judge, and intimidating all who
dared express sympathy with the Indians. The
miners, with the exception of Sandy, were rather indifferent.
They knew very well that this weak
little egotist would only make a farce of the affair,
even though he had capacity to enter a legal committal.
The giant Sandy, however, held his own
against all the town and promised a lively time.

The Indian boy came home that night beaming
with delight. His black eyes flashed like the eyes of
a cat in the dark. I had thought him incapable of
excitement. He had always seemed so passive and
sullen that we had come to believe he had no life or
passion in him.

He talked to Paquita eagerly, and made all kinds
of gestures; put his fingers about his neck, stabbed
himself with an imaginary knife, threw himself towards
the fire, and shot with an imaginary gun at
an imaginary prisoner. Would he be hung, stabbed,
burnt or shot? The boy was so eager and excited, that
once or twice he broke out into pretty fair English
at some length, the first I had ever heard him utter.

The Doctor, as I said, was unpopular. In fact,
doctors usually are in the mines. Whether this is
because nine-tenths of those who are there are frauds
and impostors, or whether it is because miners give
open expression to a natural dislike that all men

feel for the man to whose ministry we all have to
submit ourselves some day, I do not pretend to
say.

Even the Indian boy disliked the Doctor bitterly,
and one day flew at him, without any cause, and
clutched a handful of hair from his thin and half-bald
head. The Judge, too, disliked the Doctor, and only
the evening before the trial some one, passing the
cabin, heard the Judge call the Doctor a fool to his
teeth.

That was a feather in the Judge's hat, in the eyes
of The Forks, but a bad sign for the Doctor. The
Doctor should have knocked him down, said The
Forks.

The day of trial came, and Sandy, in respect for
the Court and the occasion, buttoned up his flannel
shirt, hid his hairy bosom, and gave over his gin and
peppermint during all the examination.

The prisoner was named “Spades.” Whether it
was because he looked so like the black, squatty
Jack of Spades I do not know; but I should say he
was indebted to his likeness to that right or left
bower for his name.

There was not the slightest doubt that he had
deliberately murdered two or three Indian children,
butchered them, as they crouched on the ground and
tried to hide under the lodges, with his knife, on the
day of the massacre; but there were grave doubts as

to what the Judge would do in the case, for he had
been pretty plainly told that he must not hold the
man to answer.

A low, wretched man was this—the lowest in the
camp; but he stood between others of a more respectable
character and danger. His fortune in the matter
was a prophecy of theirs. The prisoner was nearly
drunk as he took his seat on a three-legged stool
before the Judge in the Howlin' Wilderness. He sat
with his hat on. In fact, miners, in the matter of
wearing hats, would make first-class Israelites.

“Ef I ain't out o' this by dark,” said Spades, as
he jerked his head over his shoulder and spirted a
stream of amber at the back-log, “I'll sun somebody's
moccasins, see if I don't.” And he looked
straight at the Judge, who settled down uneasily in
his seat, and placed his beaver hat on the table between
himself and the prisoner as a sort of barricade.

Two or three gamblers, good enough men in
their way, acted as attorneys for Spades. They at
once turned themselves loose in plausible, if not
eloquent, speeches against the treacherous savage.
Sandy now introduced his witness for the prosecution.
This man told how Spades had butchered the
babes down on the Klamat, in detail; and then
others were called and did the same. It was a clear
case, and Sandy was delighted with his prosecution.

The other side did not ask any questions. The

attorneys whispered a moment among themselves, and
then one of them got up, took the stand, and gravely
asserted that on that day, and at the very moment
described, he was playing poker with Spades at two
bits a corner in the Howlin' Wilderness. Then
another arose with the same account; and then
another. It was the clearest alibi possible.

Sandy said nothing, and the case was closed. He
looked black across the table at the defence, and then
went up to the bar, and called for gin and peppermint,
alone.

This was the first attempt to introduce law practice
at The Forks, and no wonder that it did not
work well, and that some things were forgotten. All
were new hands—Court, counsel, and nearly all
present, here witnessed their first trial.

Poor Sandy had forgotten to have his witnesses
sworn, and the Court had not thought of it.

The testimony being all in, the Court proceeded
solemnly to sum up the case. In conclusion, it
said, “You will observe that, as a rule, the further
we go from the surface of things the nearer we get
to the bottom.” This brought cheers and waving of
hats from the Howlin' Wilderness, and the Court repeated,
“I am free to say that the Court has gone
diligently into the depths of this case, and that, as a
rule, the further you get from the surface of things
the nearer you get to the bottom. The case looked

dark indeed against the prisoner at first; but the
Court has gone to the bottom of the matter, and he
is now white as snow.”

“Hear! hear! hear!” shouted a man from Sydney,
who always hobbled a little as if he dragged a chain
when he walked.

“Snow is good!” said a miner between his
teeth, as he looked at the black visage of the
prisoner.

“You see,” continued the Judge, “that things are
often not so black as they first appear, particularly
if they are only fairly washed.”

“Particularly if they are white-washed!” said
Sandy, as he swallowed his gin and peppermint and left
the saloon in disgust.

All this time a tawny little figure had stood back
in the corner unseen, perhaps, by any one. It was
Klamat with his club. He had watched with the
eyes of a hawk the whole proceeding. He had drank
in every sentence, and had never once taken his eyes
from the Court or the prisoner.

At last, when the Judge decreed the prisoner free,
and the Court adjourned, and all ranged themselves
in a long, single file before the bar, calling out
“Cocktail,” “Tom-and-Jerry,” “Brandy-smash, “Ginsling,”
“Lightning straight,” “Forty rod,” and so
on, he slipped out, looking back over his shoulders,
with his thin lips set, and his hand clutching a knife
under his robe.

That evening the Judge was again belabouring the
Doctor with his tongue, which had been made more
than ordinarily loose and abusive by the single-file
drilling process that had been repeated at the
Howlin' Wilderness in the celebration of Spades'
acquittal.

“That little Doctor 'll put a bug in his soup for
him yet, see 'f he don't,” said some one that evening
at the saloon, when the man who had heard the
Judge's abuse had finished reciting it.

“All right, let him,” said a man, who stood stirring
his liquor with a spoon, in gum-boots and with a gold-pan
under his left arm. “All right, let him;” said
the bearded sovereign, as he threw back his head
and opened his mouth. “It's not my circus, nor
won't be my funeral;” and he wiped his beard and
went out saying to himself:—

The Prince, with that clear common-sense which
always came to the surface, had foreseen the whole
affair so far as the trial was concerned, and had
remained at home hard at work in the claim; I told
him all that had happened, and he only shrugged
his shoulders.

The next morning the butcher shouted down from
the cabin as he weighed out the steaks: “A man for
breakfast up in town, I say! a man for breakfast up

in town, and I'll bet you can't guess who it is.”

“Who?”

“The Judge!”

The man had been stabbed to death not far from
his own door, some time in the night, perhaps just
before retiring. There were three distinct mortal
wounds in the breast. There had evidently been a
short, hard struggle for life, for in one hand he
clutched a lock of somebody's hair. There was no
mistake about the hair. That long, soft, silken, half
curling, yellow German hair of the Doctor's, that
grew on the sides of his naked head—there was not
to be found another lock of hair like this in the
mountains.

The dead man had not been robbed. That was a
point in the Doctor's favour. He had been met in
the front, had not been poisoned, or stabbed or shot
in the back; that was another very strong point in
the Doctor's favour.

In some of the northern states of Mexico, particularly
at Guadalajara, I remember some years ago
it was a pretty good defence for a man charged with
murder, if he could prove that he had not plundered
the dead, and that he had met him from the face like
a man. These Mexicans held that man is not naturally
vicious or bloodthirsty, and will not take life
without cause: that if he did not murder a man to
rob him, he had some secret and perhaps sufficient

wrong to redress, to at least give some show of
right; then if, added to these, he met his man like a
man and he came off victor, although he slew the
man, the law for that would hardly take his life.

There was something of this feeling in the camp
now. However, if there had been an alcalde at The
Forks, there is no doubt the Doctor had been at
once arrested; but as there was nothing of the kind
nearer than a day's ride, nothing was done. Besides,
the Judge had made himself particularly odious to
the miners, and gamblers are the last men in the
world to meddle with the law. They settled their
suits with steel across a table, or with little bull-dog
deringers around a corner. Sometimes they have a
six-shooter war dance in the streets, if the misunderstanding
is one in which many parties are concerned.

As a rule, a funeral in the mines is a mournful
thing. It is the saddest and most pitiful spectacle I
have ever seen. The contrast of strength and weakness
is brought out here in such a way that you
must turn aside or weep when you behold it. To
see those strong, rough men, long-haired, bearded
and brown, rugged and homely-looking, with something
of the grizzly in their great, awkward movements,
now take up one of their number, straightened
in the rough pine box, in his miner's dress, and
carry him up, up on the hill in silence—it is sad
beyond expression.

He has come a long way, he has journeyed by
land or sea for a year, he has toiled and endured,
and denied himself all things for some dear object at
home, and now after all, he must lie down in the
forests of the Sierras, and turn on his side and
die. No one to kiss him, no one to bless him,
and say “good-bye,” only as a woman can, and
close the weary eyes, and fold the hands in their
final rest: and then at the grave, how awkward—
how silent! How they would like to look at each
other and say something, yet how they hold down
their heads, or look away to the horizon, lest they
should meet each other's eyes. Lest some strong man
should see the tears that went silently down from
the eyes of another over his beard and on to the
leaves.

But the Judge had no such burial as this. Sandy
was on a spree, and the gamblers placed Spades at
the head of the funeral. They had no respect for
the man and kept away. Spades was chief mourner,
and the poor little man was laid alone on the hill-side,
with hardly enough in attendance to do the last
offices for the dead.

That night Spades entered the Howlin' Wilderness
wearing a beaver hat. Sandy saw this, set
down the glass of gin and peppermint untouched,
and went straight up to the man. He seized him
by the throat and shook him till his teeth smote and

ground together like quartz rocks in a feeder. Then
he picked up the hat reverently and respectfully as
his condition would allow, and laid it gently on the
roaring pine-log fire. That was the last of the first
beaver hat of Humbug.

The Doctor appeared out of place in this camp from
the first. Every one seemed to feel that—perhaps
no one felt it more keenly than himself.

There are people, it seems to me, who go all
through life looking for the place where they belong
and never finding it. This to me is a very sad
sight. They seem to fit in no place on top of the
earth.

The general feeling of dislike that had always
been observed, now became one of contempt. No one
noticed or spoke to him now. He came to hold
down his head very soon, and to shun people instinctively
since they seemed to wish to shun him.

I am bound to confess, right here, that after this
murder, when the whole camp seemed turned against
this shy, shrinking, silent man, when he was despised
by all, when no one would share the path with him,
but would make him stand aside and leave the trail
as if he had been an Indian or a Chinaman, I began
to sympathize with him. When the world pointed
its finger and set the mark of Cain upon the man, I
began to like him.

This, you say, seems to you remarkable. It is

certainly remarkable, or I should not trouble myself
to mention it.

There was now an expression in this man's face that
I had not seen before. A sort of weary, tired look it
was, that was pitiful. An idea took possession of
me that he had grown tired in his journey from
place to place in the world, looking for the place
where he belonged, for a sort of niche where he
would fit in, and which he had never yet found.

There are men who sit in a community like a
centre gem in a cluster of diamonds, and who
cannot be taken away without deranging and
marring the whole. The place of such a man
is vacant till the last one of the cluster of which he
forms the centre goes down in the dust.

There are others, again, who grow on the side or
even in the centre of a community, like a great wart
or wen. They sap its strength, they stop its growth,
they poison it thoroughly, and it dies: a miserable,
contemptible community, all through that one bad
man.

But the Doctor was neither of these. He had
never yet found his place, had never yet taken root
or hold anywhere, but had been blown or rolled or
thrown or pitched or shuttle-cocked about, it seemed
to me, from the beginning of his life; whenever that
may have been. A sort of sour, dried-up apple, that
no one would eat, yet an apple that no one would
care to pitch out of the window.

I had always hated and feared the man till now.
The universal dislike, however, aroused a sort of
antagonism in my nature, that always has, and I
expect always will, come to the surface on such
occasions on the side of the poor or much despised,
perfectly regardless of propriety, self-interest, or any
consideration whatever.

If a man has succeeded and is glad, let him go his
way. What should I have to do with him? My lot
and my life thus far have been with the poor and the
lonely, and so shall be to the end. They can understand
me.

And maybe, often, there is a kind of subtle
wisdom in this view of men. I think it is born of
the fact that your ostentatious, prosperous man,
your showy rich man of America, is so very, very
poor, that you do not care to call him your neighbour.
It is true he has horses and houses and
land and gold, but these horses and houses, and
lands and coins, are all in the world he has. When
he dies these will all remain and the world will
lose nothing whatever. His death will not make
even a ripple in the tide of life. His family, whom
he has taught to worship gold, will forget him in
their new estates. In their hearts they will be glad
that he is gone. They will barter and haggle with
the stone-cutter toiling for his bread, and for a
starve-to-death price they will lift a marble shaft

above his head with an iron fence around it—typical,
cold, and soulless!

Poor man, since he took nothing away that one
could miss, what a beggar he must have been. The
poor and unhappy never heard of him: the world has
not lost a thought. Not a note missed, not a word
was lost in the grand, sweet song of the universe
when he died.

Save us from such men. America is full of them.
She boils over with them in a sort of annual eruption.
She throws them over the sea into abbeys and
sacred places, with their hats on; they are howling,
hoarser than jackals, up and down the Nile and
over and away towards Jerusalem.

It was remarkable how suddenly the Indian
children sprung up with the summer. No one could
have recognized in this neat, modest, sensitive girl,
and this silent, savage-looking boy, who sometimes
looked almost a man, the two starved, naked little
creatures of half a year before.

There was a little lake belted by wild red roses
and salmon berries, and fretted by overhanging ferns
under the great firs that shut out the sun save in
little spars and bars of light that fell through upon
a bench of the hills; a sort of lily pond, only half
a pistol shot across, at the bottom of a waterfall, and
clear as sunshine itself. Here Paquita would go
often and alone to pass her idle hours. I chanced

[ILLUSTRATION]

PAQUITA.

[Description: 645EAF. Illustration page. An Indian woman its on a outcropping of rock and leans on her arms looking out onto some water below her. She is wearing a dress and mocassins and has flowers in her hair. ]

to see her there on the rim, walking against the sun
and looking into the water as she moved forward,
now and then back, across her shoulder, as a maiden
in a glass preparing for a ball. She had just been
made glad with her first new dress—red, and
decorated with ribbons, made gay and of many
colours. The poor child was studying herself in the
waters.

This was not vanity; no doubt there was a deal of
satisfaction, a sort of quiet pride, in this, but it was
something higher, also. A desire to study grace, to
criticize her movements in this strange and to her
lovely dress, and learn to move with the most
perfect propriety. She practiced this often. The
finger lifted sometimes, the head bowed, then the
hands in rest and the head thrown back, she would
walk back and forth for hours, contemplating herself
and catching the most graceful motion from the
water.

What a rich, full, and generous mouth was hers—
frank as the noon-day. Beware of people with small
mouths, they are not generous. A full, rich mouth,
impulsive and passionate, is the kind of mouth to
trust, to believe in, to ask a favour of, and to give
kind words to.

There are as many kinds of mouths as there are
crimes in the catalogue of sins. There is the mouth
for hash!—thick-lipped, coarse, and expressionless, a

picket of teeth behind with bread about the roots.
Bah! Then there is the thin-lipped, sour-apple
mouth, sandwiched in between a sharp chin and thin
nose. Look out!

There are mischievous mouths, ruddy and full of
fun, that you would like to be on good terms with if
you had time, and then there is the rich, full mouth,
with dimples dallying and playing about it like
ripples in a shade, half sad, half glad—a mouth to
love. Such was Paquita's. A rose, but not yet
opened; only a bud that in another summer would
unfold itself wide to the sun.