Book: Somewhere in Red Gap

H >> Harry Leon Wilson >> Somewhere in Red Gap




Tea consisted of bottled beer from the spring house, half a ham, and a
loaf of bread. It should be said that her behaviour toward these
dainties, when they had been assembled, made her seem much less the worn
social leader. There was practically no talk for ten active minutes. A
high-geared camera would have caught everything of value in the scene.
It was only as I decanted a second bottle of beer for the woman that she
seemed to regain consciousness of her surroundings. The spirit of her
first attack upon the food had waned. She did fashion another sandwich
of a rugged pattern, but there was a hint of the dilettante in her work.

And now she spoke. Her gaze upon the magazines of yesteryear massed at
the lower end of the table, she declared they must all be scrapped,
because they too painfully reminded her of a dentist's waiting-room. She
wondered if there mustn't be a law against a dentist having in his
possession a magazine less than ten years old. She suspected as much.

"There I'll be sitting in Doc Martingale's office waiting for him to
kill me by inches, and I pick up a magazine to get my mind off my fate
and find I'm reading a timely article, with illustrations, about
Cervera's fleet being bottled up in the Harbour of Santiago. I bet he's
got Godey's Lady's Book for 1862 round there, if you looked for it."

Now a brief interlude for the ingestion of malt liquor, followed by a
pained recital of certain complications of the morning.

"That darned one-horse post-office down to Kulanche! What do you think?
I wanted to send a postal card to the North American Cleaning and Dye
Works, at Red Gap, for some stuff they been holding out on me a month,
and that office didn't have a single card in stock--nothing but some of
these fancy ones in a rack over on the grocery counter; horrible things
with pictures of brides and grooms on 'em in coloured costumes, with
sickening smiles on their faces, and others with wedding bells ringing
out or two doves swinging in a wreath of flowers--all of 'em having
mushy messages underneath; and me having to send this card to the North
American Cleaning and Dye Works, which is run by Otto Birdsall, a
smirking old widower, that uses hair oil and perfumery, and imagines
every woman in town is mad about him.

"The mildest card I could find was covered with red and purple
cauliflowers or something, and it said in silver print: 'With fondest
remembrance!' Think of that going through the Red Gap post-office to be
read by old Mis' Terwilliger, that some say will even open letters that
look interesting--to say nothing of its going to this fresh old Otto
Birdsall, that tried to hold my hand once not so many years ago.

"You bet I made the written part strong enough not to give him or any
other party a wrong notion of my sentiments toward him. At that, I guess
Otto wouldn't make any mistake since the time I give him hell last
summer for putting my evening gowns in his show window every time he'd
clean one, just to show off his work. It looked so kind of indelicate
seeing an empty dress hung up there that every soul in town knew
belonged to me.

"What's that? Oh, I wrote on the card that if this stuff of mine don't
come up on the next stage I'll be right down there, and when I'm through
handling him he'll be able to say truthfully that he ain't got a gray
hair in his head. I guess Otto will know my intentions are honest, in
spite of that 'fondest remembrance.'

"Then, on top of that, I had a run-in with the Swede for selling his
rotten whiskey to them poor Injin boys that had a fight last night after
they got tight on it. The Swede laughs and says nobody can prove he sold
'em a drop, and I says that's probably true. I says it's always hard to
prove things. 'For instance,' I says, 'if they's another drop of liquor
sold to an Injin during this haying time, and a couple or three nights
after that your nasty dump here is set fire to in six places, and some
cowardly assassin out in the brush picks you off with a rifle when you
rush out--it will be mighty hard to prove that anybody did that, too;
and you not caring whether it's proved or not, for that matter.

[Illustration: "THE SWEDE BRISTLES UP AND SAYS: 'THAT SOUNDS LIKE
FIGHTING TALK!' I SAYS: 'YOUR HEARING IS PERFECT.'"]

"'In fact,' I says, 'I don't suppose anybody would take the trouble to
prove it, even if it could be easy proved. You'd note a singular lack of
public interest in it--if you was spared to us. I guess about as far as
an investigation would ever get--the coroner's jury would say it was the
work of Pete's brother-in-law; and you know what that would mean.' The
Swede bristles up and says: 'That sounds like fighting talk!' I says:
'Your hearing is perfect.' I left him thinking hard."

"Pete's brother-in-law? That reminds me," I said. "Pete was telling me
about him just--I mean during his lunch hour; but he had to go to work
again just at the beginning of something that sounded good--about the
time he was going to kill a bright lawyer. What was that?"

The glass was drained and Ma Pettengill eyed the inconsiderable remains
of the ham with something like repugnance. She averted her face from it,
lay back in the armchair she had chosen, and rolled a cigarette, while I
brought a hassock for the jewelled slippers and the scarlet silken
ankles, so ill-befitting one of her age. The cigarette was presently
burning.

"I guess Pete's b'other-in-law, as he calls him, won't come into these
parts again. He had a kind of narrow squeak this last time. Pete done
something pretty raw, even for this liberal-minded community. He got
scared about it himself and left the country for a couple of
months--looking for his brother-in-law, he said. He beat it up North and
got in with a bunch of other Injins that was being took down to New York
City to advertise a railroad, Pete looking like what folks think an
Injin ought to look when he's dressed for the part. But he got homesick;
and, anyway, he didn't like the job.

"This passenger agent that took 'em East put 'em up at one of the big
hotels all right, but he subjects 'em to hardships they ain't used to.
He wouldn't let 'em talk much English, except to say, 'Ugh! Ugh!'--like
Injins are supposed to--with a few remarks about the Great Spirit; and
not only that, but he makes 'em wear blankets and paint their faces--an
Injin without paint and blanket and some beadwork seeming to a general
passenger agent like a state capitol without a dome. And on top of these
outrages he puts it up with the press agent of this big hotel to have
the poor things sleep up on the roof, right in the open air, so them jay
New York newspapers would fall for it and print articles about these
hardy sons of the forest, the last of a vanishing race, being stifled by
walls--with the names of the railroad and the hotel coming out good and
strong all through the piece.

"Three of the poor things got pneumonia, not being used to such
exposure; and Pete himself took a bad cold, and got mad and quit the
job. They find him a couple of days later, in a check suit and white
shoes and a golf cap, playing pool in a saloon over on Eighth Avenue,
and ship him back as a disgrace to the Far West and a great common
carrier.

"He got in here one night, me being his best friend, and we talked it
over. I advised him to go down and give himself up and have it over;
and he agreed, and went down to Red Gap the next day in his new clothes
and knocked at the jail door. He made a long talk about how his
brother-in-law was the man that really done it, and he's been searching
for him clear over to the rising sun, but can't find him; so he's come
to give himself up, even if they ain't got the least grounds to suspect
him--and can he have his trial for murder over that afternoon, so he can
come back up here the next day and go to work?

"They locked him up and Judge Ballard appointed J. Waldo Snyder to
defend him. He was a new young lawyer from the East that had just come
to Red Gap, highly ambitious and full of devices for showing that
parties couldn't have been in their right mind when they committed the
deed--see the State against Jamstucker, New York Reports Number 23,
pages 19 to 78 inclusive.

"Oh, he told me all about it up in his office one day--how he was going
to get Pete off. Ain't lawyers the goods, though! And doctors? This J.W.
Snyder had a doctor ready to swear that Pete was nutty when he fired the
shot, even if not before nor after. When I was a kid at school, back in
Fredonia, New York State, we used to have debates about which does the
most harm--fire or water? Nowadays I bet they'd have: Which does the
most harm--doctors or lawyers? Well, anyway, there Pete was in
jail--"

"Please tell in your own simple words just how this trouble began," I
broke in. "What did Pete fire the shot for and who stopped it? Now
then!"

"What! Don't you know about that? Well, well! So you never heard about
Pete sending this medicine man over the one-way trail? I'll have to tell
you, then. It was three years ago. Pete was camped about nine miles the
other side of Kulanche, on the Corporation Ranch, and his little
year-old boy was took badly sick. I never did know with what.
Diphtheria, I guess. And I got to tell you Pete is crazy about babies.
Always has been. Thirty years ago, when my own baby hadn't been but a
few weeks born, Lysander John had to be in Red Gap with a smashed leg
and arm, and I was here alone with Pete for two months of one winter.
Say, he was better than any trained nurse with both of us, even if my
papoose was only a girl one! Folks used to wonder afterward if I hadn't
been afraid with just Pete round. Good lands! If they'd ever seen him
cuddle that mite and sing songs to it in Injin about the rain and the
grass! Anyway, I got to know Pete so well that winter I never blamed him
much for what come off.

"Well, this yearling of his got bad and Pete was in two minds. He
believed in white doctors with his good sense, but he believed in Injin
doctors with his superstition, which was older. So he tried to have one
of each. There was an old rogue of a medicine man round here then from
the reservation up north. He'd been doing a little work at haying on
the Corporation, but he was getting his main graft selling the Injins
charms and making spells over their sick; a crafty old crook playing on
their ignorance--understand? And Pete, having got the white doctor from
Kulanche, thought he'd cinch matters by getting the medicine man, too.
At that, I guess one would of been about as useful as the other, the
Kulanche doctor knowing more about anthrax and blackleg than he did
about sick Injin babies.

"The medicine man sees right off how scared Pete is for his kid and
thinks here's a chance to make some big money. He looks at the little
patient and says yes, he can cure him, sure; but it'll be a hard job and
he can't undertake it unless Pete comes through with forty dollars and
his span of mules. But Pete ain't got forty dollars or forty cents, and
the Kulanche doctor has got to the mules already, having a lien on 'em
for twenty-five.

"Pete hurried over and put the proposition up to me. He says his little
chief is badly sick and he's got a fine white doctor, but will I stake
him to enough to get this fine Injin doctor?--thus making a cure
certain. Well, I tore into the old fool for wanting to let this depraved
old medicine man tamper with his baby, and I warned him the Kulanche
doctor probably wasn't much better. Then I tell him he's to send down
for the best doctor in Red Gap at my expense and keep him with the child
till it's well. I tell him he can have the whole ranch if it would cure
his child, but not one cent for the Injin.

"Well, the poor boy is about half convinced I'm right, but he's been an
Injin too long to believe it all through. He went off and sent for the
Red Gap doctor, but he can't resist making another try for the Injin
one; and that old scoundrel holds out for his price. Pete wants him to
wait for his pay till haying is over; but he won't because he thinks
Pete can get the money from me now if he really has to have it. Pete
must of been crazy for fair about that time.

"'All right,' says he; 'you can cure my little chief?'

"The crook says he can if the money is in his hand.

"'All right,' says Pete again; 'but if my little chief dies something
bad is going to happen to you.'

"That's about all they ever found out concerning this threat of Pete's,
though another Injin who heard it said that Pete said his brother-in-law
would make the trouble--not Pete himself. Which was likely true enough.

"Pete's little chief died the night the Red Gap doctor got up here. Ten
minutes later this medicine man had hitched up his team, loaded his
plunder into a wagon, and was pouring leather into his horses to get
back home quick. He knew Pete never talks just to hear himself talk.
They found him about thirty miles on his way--slumped down in the wagon
bed, his team hitched by the roadside. There had been just one careful
shot. As he hadn't been robbed--he had over" a hundred dollars in gold
on him--it pointed a mite too strong at Pete after his threat.

"A deputy sheriff come up. Pete said his brother-in-law had been
hanging round lately and had talked very dangerous about the medicine
man. He said the brother-in-law had probably done the job. But Pete had
pulled this too often before when in difficulties. The deputy said he'd
better come along down to Red Gap and tell the district attorney about
it. Pete said all right and crawled into his tepee for his coat and
hat--crawled right on out the back and into the brush while the deputy
rolled a cigarette.

"That was when he joined this bunch of noble redmen to advertise the
vanishing romance of the Great West--being helped out of the country, I
shouldn't wonder, by some lawless old hound that had feelings for him
and showed it when he come along in the night to the ranch where he'd
nursed her and her baby. They looked for him a little while, then
dropped it; in fact, everybody was kind of glad he'd got off and kind of
satisfied that he'd put this bad Injin, with his skull-duggery, over the
big jump.

"Then he got homesick, like I told you, and showed up here at the door;
and I saw it was better for him to give himself up and get out of it by
fair and legal means. Now! You got it straight that far?"

I nodded.

"So Pete took my advice, and a couple days later I hurried down to Red
Gap and had a talk with Judge Ballard and the district attorney. The
judge said it had been embarrassing to justice to have my old Injin
walk in on 'em, because every one knew he was guilty. Why couldn't he of
stayed up here where the keen-eyed officers of the law could of
pretended not to know he was? And the old fool was only making things
worse with his everlasting chatter about his brother-in-law, every one
knowing there wasn't such a person in existence--old Pete having had
dozens of every kind of relation in the world but a brother-in-law. But
they're going to have this bright young lawyer defend him, and they have
hopes.

"Then I talked some. I said it was true that everybody knew Pete bumped
off this old crook that had it coming to him, but they could never prove
it, because Pete had come to my place and set up with me all night, when
I had lumbago or something, the very night this crime was done
thirty-odd miles distant by some person or persons unknown--except it
could be known they had good taste about who needed killing.

"At this Judge Ballard jumps up and calls me an old liar and shook hands
warmly with me; and Cale Jordan, that was district attorney then, says
if Mrs. Pettengill will give him her word of honour to go on the witness
stand and perjure herself to this effect then he don't see no use of
even putting Kulanche County, State of Washington, to the expense of a
trial, the said county already being deep in the hole for its new
courthouse--but for mercy's sake to stop the old idiot babbling about
his brother-in-law, that every one knows he never had one, because such
a joke is too great an affront to the dignity of the law in such cases
made and provided--to wit: tell the old fool to say nothing except 'No,
he never done it.' And he shakes hands with me, too, and says he'll have
an important talk with Myron Bughalter, the sheriff.

"I says that's the best way out of it, being myself a heavy taxpayer;
and I go see this Snyder lawyer, and then over to the jail and get into
Pete's cell, where he's having a high old time with a sack of peppermint
candy and a copy of the Scientific American. I tell him to cut out the
brother-in-law stuff and just say 'No' to any question whatever. He said
he would, and I went off home to rest up after my hard ride.

"Judge Ballard calls that night and says everything is fixed. No use
putting the county to the expense of a trial when Pete has such a classy
perjured alibi as I would give him. Myron Bughalter is to go out of the
jail in a careless manner at nine-thirty that night, leaving all cells
unlocked and the door wide open so Pete can make his escape without
doing any damage to the new building. It seems the only other prisoner
is old Sing Wah, that they're willing to save money on, too. He'd got
full of perfumed port and raw gin a few nights before, announced himself
as a prize-hatchet man, and started a tong war in the laundry of one of
his cousins. But Sing was sober now and would stay so until the next New
Year's; so they was going to let him walk out with Pete. The judge said
Pete would probably be at the Arrowhead by sunup, and if he'd behave
himself from now on the law would let bygones be bygones. I thanked the
judge and went to bed feeling easy about old Pete.

"But at seven the next morning I'm waked up by the telephone--wanted
down to the jail in a hurry. I go there soon as I can get a drink of hot
coffee and find that poor Myron Bughalter is having his troubles. He'd
got there at seven, thinking, of course, to find both his prisoners
gone; and here in the corridor is Pete setting on the chest of Sing Wah,
where he'd been all night, I guess! He tells Myron he's a fool sheriff
to leave his door wide open that way, because this bad Chinaman tried to
walk out as soon as he'd gone, and would of done so it Pete hadn't
jumped him.

"It leaves Myron plenty embarrassed, but he finally says to Pete he can
go free, anyway, now, for being such an honest jailbird; and old Sing
Wah can go, too, having been punished enough by Pete's handling. Sing
Wah slides out quickly enough at this, promising to send Myron a dozen
silk handkerchiefs and a pound of tea. But not Pete. No, sir! He tells
Myron he's give himself up to be tried, and he wants that trial and
won't budge till he gets it.

"Then Myron telephoned for the judge and the district attorney, and for
me. We get there and tell Pete to beat it quick. But the old mule isn't
going to move one step without that trial. He's fled back to his cell
and stands there as dignified as if he was going to lay a cornerstone.
He's a grave rebuke to the whole situation, as you might say. Then the
Judge and Cale go through some kind of a hocus-pocus talk, winding up
with both of them saying 'Not guilty!' in a loud voice; and Myron says
to Pete: 'There! You had your trial; now get out of my jail this
minute.'

"But canny old Pete is still balking. He says you can't have a trial
except in the courthouse, which is upstairs, and they're trying to cheat
a poor old Injin. He's talking loud by this time, and Judge Ballard
says, all right, they must humour the poor child of Nature. So Myron
takes Pete by the wrist in a firm manner--though Pete's insisting he
ought to have the silver handcuffs on him--and marches him out the jail
door, round to the front marble steps of the new courthouse, up the
steps, down the marble hall and into the courtroom, with the judge and
Cale Jordan and me marching behind.

"We ain't the whole procession, either. Out in front of the jail was
about fifteen of Pete's friends and relatives, male and female, that had
been hanging round for two days waiting to attend his coming-out party.
Mebbe that's why Pete had been so strong for the real courthouse,
wanting to give these friends something swell for their trouble. Anyway,
these Injins fall in behind us when we come out and march up into the
courtroom, where they set down in great ecstasy. Every last one of 'em
has a sack of peppermint candy and a bag of popcorn or peanuts, and
they all begin to eat busily. The steam heat had been turned on and that
hall of justice in three minutes smelt like a cheap orphan asylum on
Christmas-morning.

"Then, before they can put up another bluff at giving Pete his trial,
with Judge Ballard setting up in his chair with his specs on and looking
fierce, who rushes in but this J. Waldo person that is Pete's lawyer.
He's seen the procession from across the street and fears some low-down
trick is being played on his defenseless client.

"He comes storming down the aisle exclaiming; 'Your Honour, I protest
against this grossly irregular proceeding!' The judge pounds on his desk
with his little croquet mallet and Myron Bughalter tells Snyder, out of
the corner of his mouth, to shut up. But he won't shut up for some
minutes. This is the first case he'd had and he's probably looked
forward to a grand speech to the jury that would make 'em all blubber
and acquit Pete without leaving the box, on the grounds of emotional or
erratic insanity--or whatever it is that murderers get let off on when
their folks are well fixed. He sputters quite a lot about this monstrous
travesty on justice before they can drill the real facts into his head;
and even then he keeps coming back to Pete's being crazy.

"Then Pete, who hears this view of his case for the first time, begins
to glare at his lawyer in a very nasty way and starts to interrupt; so
the judge has to knock wood some more to get 'em all quiet. When they
do get still--with Pete looking blacker than ever at his lawyer--Cale
Jordan says: 'Pete, did you do this killing?' Pete started to say mebbe
his brother-in-law did, but caught himself in time and said 'No!' at the
same time starting for J. Waldo, that had called him crazy. Myron
Bughalter shoves him back in his chair, and Cale Jordan says: 'Your
Honour, you have heard the evidence, which is conclusive. I now ask that
the prisoner at the bar be released.' Judge Ballard frowns at Pete very
stern and says: 'The motion is granted. Turn him loose, quick, and get
the rest of that smelly bunch out of here and give the place a good
airing. I have to hold court here at ten o'clock.'

"Pete was kind of convinced now that he'd had a sure-enough trial, and
his friends had seen the marble walls and red carpet and varnished
furniture, and everything; so he consented to be set free--not in any
rush, but like he was willing to do 'em a favour.

"And all the time he's keeping a bad little eye on J. Waldo. The minute
he gets down from the stand he makes for him and says what does he mean
by saying he was crazy when he done this killing? J. Waldo tries to
explain that this was his only defense and was going on to tell what an
elegant defense it was; but Pete gets madder and madder. I guess he'd
been called everything in the world before, but never crazy; that's the
very worst thing you can tell an Injin.

"They work out toward the front door; and then I hear Pete say: 'You
know what? You said I'm crazy. My b'other-in-law's going to make
something happen to you in the night.' Pete was seeing red by that time.
The judge tells Myron to hurry and get the room cleared and open some
windows. Myron didn't have to clear it of J.W. Snyder. That bright young
lawyer dashed out and was fifty feet ahead of the bunch when they got to
the front door.

"So Pete was a free man once more, without a stain on his character
except to them that knew him well. But the old fool had lost me a
tenant. Yes, sir; this J.W. Snyder young man, with the sign hardly dry
on the glass door of his office in the Pettengill Block, had a nervous
temperament to start with, and on top of that he'd gone fully into
Pete's life history and found out that parties his brother-in-law was
displeased with didn't thrive long. He packed up his law library that
afternoon and left for another town that night.

"Yes, Pete's a wonder! Watch him slaving away out there. And he must of
been working hard all day, even with me not here to keep tabs on him.
Just look at the size of that pile of wood he's done up, when he might
easy of been loafing on the job!"




IX

LITTLE OLD NEW YORK


Monday's mail for the Arrowhead was brought in by the Chinaman while Ma
Pettengill and I loitered to the close of the evening meal: a canvas
sack of letters and newspapers with three bulky packages of merchandise
that had come by parcels post. The latter evoked a passing storm from my
hostess. Hadn't she warned folks time and again to send all her stuff by
express instead of by parcels post, which would sure get her gunned some
day by the stage driver who got nothing extra for hauling such matter?
She had so!

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