# The Popular Magazine/The Scales of Justice

Extracted from The Popular Magazine, Dec. 1908, pp. 161–170.
In the final story of the series Jack Bellamy "gets what's coming to him."
Jack Bellamy, Lawbreaker
By B. M. Bower Author of "The Boss of the Two-pole Pumpkin," "Pirates of the Range," Etc.
VII. THE SCALES OF JUSTICE
Perhaps in these days the scales of justice weigh only money, perhaps sometimes truth and sentiment tip them this way or that. At any rate, justice's final decision in the case of Jack Bellamy is eminently satisfactory to him and to the community
(A Complete Story)
When I say I just happened to light on it, I mean it just that way. I was headed for a spot where I thought I could fix me up a hang-out that would do till I found something better, because I didn't feel noway safe in my present abode, after Goodyear being there. Of course, now I look back at things, he'd have had quite a large-sized contract leading a posse to my cave, even if he had wanted to, because I packed him in during a blizzard and when he was too near done up to know where he was, half the time; and I packed him out again after dark and in a snow-storm. And even in daylight it wasn't any picnic finding the place if you was green to the country especial.
But after I'd got him out of there I felt like a she-wolf that smells human tracks close to her den of pups. Rain or shine, day or night, she's going to vacate that den if she lives. Maybe the man never got next to the place, but that don't make any difference to her—she holds to the theory that it's better to be safe than sorry. And that was how I felt about it. So I was hiking across the head of a coulée close to the one I'd been stopping in, thinking that on the other side was an overhang of rock about like the one I'd fixed up before, and as I said I happened to light on this other place. The way it was, I fell through the earth and lit in a kinda tunnel made by water washing underneath.
I wasn't hurt much; just shook up and surprised a lot. I'd dropped about ten or twelve feet, and when I'd picked myself up and took stock of my bones, I seen I couldn't expect to go back the way I'd come, so I started to find the end of the blamed thing and which end didn't matter none to me. It was plumb dark for a ways, and I was headed down-hill so emphatic I had to lean back and dig in with my heels in places. Some folks might've thought they was headed straight down to the hot springs, but I'd been near the top of a bill when I fell through, and I didn't lose my bearings going down. I judged I was headed for the coulée—or cañon, it was particular—that I'd been trying to get around. So I kept right on going and didn't worry a lot about the wind-up.
Pretty soon the tunnel give a twist—where the water had followed the loose rock and earth and I seen daylight ahead, all right. And then I come out into a clean, level rock hollow that looked good to me, all right, for a hide-out. I went to the opening, and I was about half-way down in the cañon and the walls so steep a jack-rabbit couldn't get up 'em. Only for the spring floods that would come roaring down through the tunnel and wash a fellow plumb out, I could have lived there indefinite and serene with posses hunting through the Bad Lands with drag-nets.
I set down on a rock and looked around me and sized up the lay. On one side a spring dripped a little stream down over the rock wall and landed in a hollow the size of a dish-pan; run over the top and trickled off through a seam to the bottom of the cañon—or the center of the earth, it didn't matter which. There was the water right handy for cooking, and that was all I needed. There was other hollows in the rock floor, but they was dry, mostly.
Well, it all looked good to me, and by the time I'd smoked a cigarette over it I could fair see Porky and me enjoying all the comforts of home in there. The tunnel leading into the cave was small enough so a blanket would shut off the draft, and I could point the stovepipe into the tunnel to carry off the smoke, and fix up a blanket door over the opening, and—oh, sure had it all arranged fine inside ten minutes.
Then I goes back up the tunnel, past the place where I'd fell through, to the head of the hole. It opened out in the middle of a bunch of rocks, secluded as sin. I don't know as I ever run onto such a peach of a place. It was about half a mile across a level bench to my other cañon, and I made long steps for home, and you can gamble on it. This was just after daylight, and I was all packed up and ready to move before that. I was plumb uneasy till I'd got out of my old camp and into the new, and soon as I'd got back from taking Goodyear out, I had overhauled all my stuff and packed things best I could for easy carrying.
So when I'd got Porky and me some bread to stay our appetites, I loaded up and went and dropped the stuff down that hole where I'd fell through. It was snowing and blowing so I didn't leave no tracks, either. When I'd got everything dropped into the tunnel that would drop, and had let breakables down with a rope, I dropped in myself and took Porky with me. And after that it was pickings and I could get settled and take my time about it, and they could ride the high-lines all they blamed please looking for me. There's no use talking when you've got a bounty on your scalp and you know there ain't a man in the country but would be tickled to death to cash you in, you get to feeling a lot better holed up underground like a wolf, and the deeper you burrow the better you feel in your mind.
So that's how me and Porky moved and settled inside twenty-four hours after Goodyear had gone. And it did break up the monotony of holding forth in the Bad Lands in the winter, all right, and seeing we had a dandy place to stay I was kinda glad we moved.
After that we lived in peace and quiet all through January and February, and the time didn't go as slow as you might think. I hunted quite a lot, and kept in fresh meat that way, which helped out on the bacon and beans and was fun besides. And I had to go up on the side hills for firewood, and pack it down the tunnel, and that was some considerable work, too. Porky used to gnaw the bark off all the stuff that had bark, so I made it a point to pack in some green wood for him: it amused him a lot and was healthy too.
So there we would be, warm and snug no matter how bad the blizzards tore things up on top. I could see where the wolves is in the right about making their home underground. I've wintered in line-camps that wasn't near as comfortable, and was blamed near as lonesome, too. Most I missed was a good horse or two and a saddle; I don't reckon I'd used my legs so constant before since I was a kid, and it kinda went against me till I got used to it.
So now I'm coming to the real funny part. You can maybe imagine me laying on my blankets with a candle so close, to my head it's liable to singe my hair if I move inadvertent, and with old Bill Shakespeare in both fists and a cigarette in my teeth, kinda half smoking and half dozing, and half watching Porky digging into one of the loose hollows in our floor. He was busy as a coon which I mean the four-legged brand and looked important as sin. He'd buried something in there and was trying to get it out, and his quills was rising and falling along with his interest in the work. I thought a lot of Porky by that time, and he was a heap of company for me.
So I watched him, some amused, till he'd got the hole just about empty and was dirt all over his face and hands. And it kinda bore in on me that there was something funny about his looks. At first I didn't take much interest: I just noticed indifferent that his face kinda had a shine, like these paper angels they hang on Christmas trees. Pretty soon I come alive enough to wonder why, and once I got to wondering I got interested as sin and took the candle and went over to him to see how about it.
I set the candle down on the floor and looked around, and say! I like to have had a fit right there. Porky was just wallowing in gold dust and nuggets, some of 'em big as the end of my thumb. Now, what do you think of that? And me living right there for two months or so and never tumbling to what was laying around careless within reach! Wasn't it plumb scandalous?
I guess I don't have to describe particular what took place there the next three or four days. You can shut your eyes and see one Jack Bellamy mostly on his hands and knees, scooping out very blamed hollow he can locate, and whooping like a drunken sheep-herder at Porky over the results. Say, I've read about such things but I never took stock in any real live man striking luck in heaps and chunks that way. Part of the time I couldn't help thinking the solitude had kinda gone to my head and turned me silly, so I was imagining that every hollow in that cave was alive with gold.
Times like that, I'd hike up the tunnel with my rifle on my shoulder and Porky at my heels like a dog, and go off over the hills hunting deer. Generally, when I seen I could shoot same as ever and bring down whatever I took aim at, just like I always had done, I'd be some reassured in my mind and would go back and find the gold right there where I'd left it. And then I'd get to guessing about how much there was of it, and thinking of all the things it would do—properly applied. No use talking, gold is a mighty nice thing to have around. With a quart of dust and a handful of nuggets a man can keep himself interested a mighty long while planning out the things he's going to do with it—and I had several quarts of dust, and nuggets till they was that heavy it give me the blamedest queer tingling feeling all over me when I lifted 'em, just thinking how it was all gold, and all mine. You don't know how crimply you get over it till you've swelled your biceps out lifting your own gold. And it was sure mine, all right—mine and Porky's. Nobody hadn't tore the bone out digging that stuff and then lost it: old Mother Nature had just naturally left it laying in the ground careless, and the spring floods that had washed out that tunnel and cave had sluiced it thorough and washed it down so it caught in the hollows of the rock and stayed there. No telling how many hundred years it had took—but it's safe to say it was longer than it'll take me to get away with it.
I guess it must have took me a week or so to get gentled down so I could view the situation anyways calm at all and think deliberate about me being rich; rich enough to buy out the best stock-ranch in the county, I reckon, and then have some left. So I didn't read no more after that, but put in the time deciding how I could have the most enjoyment in the shortest space of time.
Right there is where I bumped into a problem that kinda feazed me at first. I'd build me up a dream that was sure a peach, and then it would occur to me that I couldn't bring it to pass none, because I was an outlaw with a price on my head, and soon as I showed up anywheres they'd slap me in jail; and if I was so unwise as to tell about my find, they'd likely swipe it whilst I walked to my meals with my hands on another fellow's shoulder too blamed intimate to be pleasant.
What do you think of that? Me cached down there in the Bad Lands with more gold than I'd seen in all my life or ever expected to, and languishing after a soft bed and feather pillows and clothes built for the especial and not fit job lots, and all the things a healthy man likes and wants—and not daring to walk up to any man in daylight for fear he'd do me some underhanded trick that would put me all to the bad.
Justice? The name of it fair made me sick. And then I got to thinking over again how I didn't deserve no such a deal as I'd been getting; hadn't killed anybody or robbed no bank or train or nothing like that. All under heaven I could see that I was guilty of was objecting a lot to being close-herded in jail, and busting out when they locked me up for not doing anything. Why, a man is a plumb fool to stay in jail when he ain't done anything mean and can get out! And it wasn't my fault that the bars in their blamed window was set in rotten mortar, was it? I didn't mix that mortar.
So there I was, with gold enough to get out and have a fine, large time and yet held up by that weird reputation I'd got innocent and inadvertent. At first it had looked to me like a big josh—this being an outlaw without delivering the goods—but I'd got all over that; I couldn't see none where the laugh come in, and I was plumb ready to take it serious.
One night I was setting there in the candle-light with the nuggets spread out on a blanket, studying how I could get clean out of the country without being pounded up, and any way I looked at it that rep of mine loomed up large in the trail. And then I just thought to myself, that seeing I hadn't done nothing so fierce I didn't see how they could do me any great damage if I just fought it to a finish.
"The scales of justice," I says to myself, "is used mostly nowadays for weighing gold—and I've got the gold. If I can't tip the scales my way with both gold and right on my side, what the dickens is justice and laws and lawyers for, anyhow? I'm going to amble right in and face Plummer and the rep he give me, and make 'em put up or shut up. This thing of packing a bad name is getting pretty blamed monotonous, especial when I haven't got it coming."
So after that heart-to-heart talk with myself I felt a heap better and went to sleep peaceful as anything. Next morning I commenced tn get ready for the move I was going to make. It was like staking my whole pile of chips on one draw, but I felt good all the same. My packing up didn't take long, except that I had to cache my wealth safe till I could come back and get it, like the fellow in "Monte Cristo." Do you know, I couldn't help kinda wondering if I'd pan out the same and have to tell a side-pardner where to find it and let him wear the diamonds whilst I gazed down from paradise on the swath he was cutting with my gold. I tell you right now, that prospect didn't please me none to speak of.
Anyway, I took all I could with me and made me up some venison sandwiches so I wouldn't have to cook none on the road. I meant to do a stunt of walking that would make my grandchildren set up when I told 'em about it—in case I ever accumulated any—and cover the seventy or eighty miles to the county-seat—which I ain't naming—just as quick as the Lord would let me.
I didn't want to be took in, you understand: I wanted to go in and snub them gay sheriffs and truck up short, and ask 'em how about it. And without wasting no words, I can say that I got out of the Bad Lands without making no disturbance amongst the natives.
Second day out, I run onto a little place where an old fellow happened to be holding her down alone and building him up a ranch and a little bunch of horses. He hadn't been out of there for six months he told me, so I felt tolerable safe and eat dinner with him. He wasn't worrying none about Jack Bellamy: he was all for discoursing on why the United States paid Spain twenty million dollars for the Philippines—which was interesting enough at the time, maybe so, but what you might call stale news at present. He got real excited over it, though, and come up and shook his finger under my nose every time he turned loose a bunch of eloquence, and when we was eating he like to have jabbed my eyes out once or twice with his fork. He was sure an earnest-minded old cuss, and when I offered to buy a horse and riding-outfit from him after dinner, he was still worried a lot over them twenty millions and how they ought to been spent, so he wasn't none curious and sold me his saddle and bridle and a horse like he was handing me the materials for a cigarette. He didn't even come alive enough to haggle none on the price, but stuck the money down in his jeans absent-minded with one hand whilst he made gestures with the other and libelized the Republican party something fierce. He wanted me to stay all night, but I was in a hurry and rode off hasty. The last thing I heard was, "I tell ye, Mark Hanna——" The wind blowed the rest away, and I wasn't none grieved, because I had things on my mind a heap more important.
I tell you right now, I felt like a king once I got a decent horse between my knees again, and more optimistic than I'd been since away back. There's no use talking, a cow-puncher ain't all there when you take his horse away from him and set him on his own legs. I know I meditated a lot on how I come to be such a fool as to let them idiots buffalo me into hiding out, all this while. Looked to me like I should have called 'em long ago. And then I got to whistling, and seeing my horse was a stayer as well as a drifter, we hit that little, old county-seat along about sundown, stepping high, wide and handsome, and me with my hat on the back of my head and elbows flopping gay-and-free-and-don't-give-a-damn.
I galloped right down the middle of their main thoroughfare and come near running over a dog-fight; swung round in a beautiful curve bounded on all sides. and the middle with yellow dust, and pulled up and made me a cigarette whilst I listened to the owner of one dog tongue-lash the owner of the other dog and tell how easy it would be to lick him to a frazzle and what a pleasure it would be if he just only had time to waste on him. He mourned too because he couldn't see his way clear to throwing away good lead on him, and the like of that. And it all seemed like old times come back, when I was just a common, ordinary bronco-twister and cow-puncher and wasn't figuring none in the public eye as the real thing in outlaws.
So pretty soon, when the excitement kinda died down and the dogs had gone off to diagnose what wounds they hadn't accumulated, I asked one fellow if Plummer was in town—which was the deputy sheriff that had caused all my woe, you remember. The man said he was, and what did I want him for especial, because he was over in the Ten-strike, just peeling a sheepman in great, thick layers, in a poker-game, and he wouldn't want to be disturbed for trifles.
I didn't want to make myself none of a bad man and a boaster, but I was feeling good and sassy. "Go in and tell him Jack Bellamy is out here and would like a whole lot to see him a minute." Say, the fellow like to have went over backward, but he just give me one good look and packed my message in to Plummer. And I set out there on my horse and made me another smoke, and nobody done a thing but rubber. They was as meek a bunch as I ever met up with, and it sure did amuse me, seeing I was in the joke and knew how plumb harmless I was really.
Plummer come out, all right; sure, he did! He come with two guns pointed ahead of him and gazabos peering over his shoulder furtive, ready to dodge back just as quick as the fireworks commenced. I kept right on smoking, with one leg hooked over the saddle-horn and my hat back. I will admit I was playing a watch-me-boys game, but seems like them months I put in by my high lonesome in the Bad Lands had to have something to balance 'em, and so I was dead willing to create a sensation and have some fun out of the deal, if there was any. Up to then the fun had been as scarce as meadow-larks in winter. When Plummer was about twenty feet off he stopped and eyed me watchful.
"I heard you was plumb anxious to see me, Mr. Plummer," I says to him pleasant, "so I just thought I"d ride around and——" I stuck there for the simple reason that the fun oozed out of the situation, as yuh might say, and left me mad clear through at the way he'd acted up and give me the worst of it all along. If I'd been the kind of man he'd got me painted, I'd sure have ventilated him up some right there. He was one of these big, red-faced, bull-necked marks that you just hate the sight of on general principles. I couldn't to save my life go on making a show. I got too blamed serious for ever thinking any more about the general effect I was having on the audience.
Plummer come a little closer, scowling something fierce. "Jack Bellamy, you're my prisoner," he bawls out insulting.
"Oh, am I?" I asks him through my teeth and then I turned loose and told him all the things I'd been saying to myself this long while whenever he come up as a subject for my thoughts to dwell on murderous. I don't know all I did say, and anyway, I guess the biggest share wouldn't stand repeating in mixed company. Hut I remember fine how I wound up.
"You made yourself mighty busy till you got me branded for a sure-enough outlaw." I says, "with a bounty on my scalp like I was a wolf. And now I'm here to call your bluff. I'm here to make you prove all them things. You've chalked up the account to please yourself so far, but right here and now you've got to prove the items. You couldn't bring me into camp yourself, you"—we'll just as well skip like everything, along about here—"so I had to come in myself. You needn't get scared for fear I'll pull out—I'm going to stop right here and fight you in the court you've got backing your play. Lead the way down to that imitation jail you've got here. I'm going to stop there to-night"—which I knew fine I'd just about have to, and wouldn't give him a chance to haze me into it—"and I wish you fellows would round up all the lawyer sharps you've got in this burg and send 'em down to me. I'll size 'em up and take my pick." I waved my hand grand—and there was a gun in it. So Plummer led the way like a little man, and if you ask me why when he had them two guns in plain view, I'll never tell you. I know he didn't keep 'em pointing at me none too straight whilst I was making my war-talk, and that give me a chance to pull mine. And I guess my doing the unexpected kinda feazed him and got him rattled. Anyway, he led out all right, and I followed, with just about the whole town at my heels like I was a circus parade.
I went into the jail behind Plummer and told the jailer to put me down for the best room he had, and to serve supper immediate because I was hungry as sin. And do you know, they was that hypnotized with seeing me there giving orders about my own incarceration, that they done just about as they was told and didn't have nothing much to say. Which was sure lucky, for I would've looked plumb foolish if they'd forced my hand, and me not wanting to do nothing fierce.
I was setting on a corner of the table in the jail office smoking a cigarette and telling the gang what a lot of good things I didn't think of 'em, and they listening attentive like I was a Fourth of July orator shipped in from the next county, when in squirms a couple of fellows that looked like they thought it was their game. I sized 'em up out of the tail of my eye and went on and finished what I had to say, and then one steps up and asks me if I'm Jack Bellamy.
"I sure am, old-timer," I answers polite. "If you don't believe me, just cast your eagle optics over the deputy sheriff and be convinced. Don't he look a lot like he was expecting to be rolled down-hill again?"
He glanced over to Plummer, and I seen by a twinkle in his eyes that he had some sense of humor in him, which pleased me a lot. What I was dreading most was to have them that had authority take me serious. I wanted to put the joke on Plummer and keep it there, which would ease things up for me considerable.
"You won't have Plummer to deal with now," he remarks, eying me keen. "I'm the sheriff, and I place you under arrest."
"Oh, joy!" I exclaims. "I've been wanting fierce to meet up with you, Mr. Sheriff. I always like to make my deal with the main guy. If you'll chase all these rooters out of here, I'd like to have a little heart-to-heart talk with you."
"They stay," he asserts, swallowing a grin. "I don't want to be accused of grafting on the quiet. Say on and remember it will be used against you."
"Will it?" I took two or three draws of smoke and looked him over. "I hope it won't be the means of hanging me but I wanted to ask for an immediate preliminary hearing so I can give bonds. They tell me they don't have felt mattresses nor real linen sheets in this hotel, and I'm a heap fastidious and object a lot to the accommodations. Also, it insults both my muscles and my brains to expect me to stay locked in a place that's so easy broke out of. If I should happen to get to dreaming in the night, I'd likely walk off and lose myself: I'm sure a terror to sleep-walk. So if you'll round up a judge of some kind, I'd be much obliged and vote for you next time you run for office."
"The bonds would likely be high," he warns, still looking through me and back.
"I've got a right to have 'em named," I answers, and got up and yawned. "If I can't produce the goods, that's my own funeral and you needn't even be one of the mourners, old-timer. Get busy."
"Well, I like your nerve," he concedes, and sets Plummer to telephoning whilst he kept an eye on me. He wasn't taking no chances—that sheriff wasn't, and I respected him for it.
Pretty soon we was bunched up in the office of a justice of the peace, and he was saying "Two thousand dollars" like he thought I'd wilt right there. I hadn't give 'em an opening to search me, you see, so when I rolled out my nuggets on the desk and called for scales to weigh 'em, their eyes stood out like frogs' and they crowded up till I was humped over the desk and couldn't straighten up for a minute till I'd rammed my elbows into their chests a few times.
The fellow that had come into the jail with the sheriff was a lawyer, and he looked to me medium honest considering his trade. So I handed him the nuggets casual for a retaining fee and told him to hunt me up a bondsman or two and watch my interests in the game and see that they didn't ring in any cold deck on me or anything like that. So he said he would, and took me under his wing right there.
For the week that went by before my case came up in district court that happened to be setting then, I was kept pretty tolerable busy wondering whether I was a hero or a curiosity to that town. I always had a crowd trailing after me when I walked the streets, and in every saloon they bunched around me like I was a Salvation Army on a street-corner. My lawyer—he was named Charley Oberly and was an all-right boy—told me not to tell all I knew, but to leave some of it for him to say in court. So I took the hint and didn't loosen up none on my weird and bloody career, nor how I come to be getting humpback carrying gold nuggets around, nor anything about it. I did guy Plummer some, though, because it was against the rules to kill him off and I had to relieve my mind some way whenever our trails crossed: which he took care didn't happen none frequent after the first time or two.
So then, when my case come up and I went in with Charley to face the jury and take whatever medicine they mixed for me, the court-room looked like a prize-fight was about to be called, the audience was that eager and piled three-deep, seemed like. And I got a jolt, too. I hadn't paid no attention to details but left it all to Oberly, because I was paying him good and wanted to make him earn his money, and I was busy untangling myself from my admirers all the time. So the man that was to build up the case against me I'd plumb overlooked and hadn't thought nothing about. And here he was Goodyear! Goodyear, the man I'd packed on my back in a blizzard and took him to my cave and nursed him and fed him, and rubbed him faithful with Three-H and hair-restorer and lent him Bill Shakespeare to read—oh, thunder!
I was going to shake hands with him, but he eyed me cold and I got hostile and give him a glare that made his look caressing by comparison, and set down haughty and told Charley they could turn loose any old time now. I was disappointed as sin in Goodyear, because I did think he was human and would remember how I could easy have left him to freeze to death, and didn't. But what can you expect of a county attorney, anyhow? They're there for the sole and simple purpose of hanging every man they can, and building up a large, black name for every poor devil that comes into court. They're paid to do it, and they can't do it thorough and be human. So they ain't human; it's their trade not to be.
I will say one thing for Goodyear: he sure could talk white into black. He made me think of when I was packing him through that blizzard and he was arguing against it so that he made me feel as if I was committing a crime to save his life like that. That morning in court I came near thinking I had, all right.
The way he put the case, I was living for the sole object of breaking the laws and doing injury to my fellow men, and I was plumb dangerous to have around. He sure had me painted lurid! He told about me taking a prisoner away from an officer, and about me breaking jail, and then he went strong on me rolling Plummer down-hill to his train and getting off on Helga's snow-shoes. And he orated till the crowd didn't know whether they ought to shed tears over Plummer, or laugh themselves sick over him. Anyways, Goodyear elocuted with a large-sized weep in bis voice.
"Think of it, gentlemen of the jury!" he implored piteous. "Our brave deputy sheriff, who has served us faithfully, subjected to such indignity and made to suffer such mental and bodily anguish! Picture that long, snow-covered bluff, that slope where all was white and innocent to the eye, and yet where this black-hearted scoundrel before you was about to perpetrate an outrage the like of which civilized man had never conceived. Think of him, gentlemen of the jury, driving before him up that hill the officer who had courageously placed him under arrest. Think of our deputy sheriff toiling painfully to the top of that bluff, with this heartless fiend driving him like a—a—a sheep! Picture Mr. Plummer lying down at the command of his prisoner, being spurned with the prisoner's boot and sent rolling down, down that awful slope. Great guns, gentlemen of the jury; what if Mr. Plummer had hit a rock?"
Well, say, I snorted right there and rocked back and forth in my chair and fair howled, I was that tickled. If they'd bung me next minute I couldn't have helped it. Plummer was setting there, red as a turkey-gobbler's brow, and when I looked at him I give a whoop involuntary. Next I knew everybody was laughing and howling, and the judge was near getting apoplexy and the sheriff pounding for silence, and the jury holding onto each other. Such a time I never did see; it was plumb scandalous.
After a while things calmed down so Goodyear could go on; he didn't orate any further, but said the State was ready to present the evidence against the prisoner, and called up Plummer, which was cruel to the poor man. Seemed like he had to bring out all the most humiliating details, and Goodyear trying his blamedest to make the jury see it serious whilst the audience snickered. There was another witness or two; folks that had been on the train. You see, Goodyear had picked on this one particular crime to hang me for, and he was trying to spread it out and make the most of it. And the more he made of it; the more ridiculous it showed up Plummer; till by the time the State rested, I felt as if I was even with Plummer and if I had to go to the pen I could go with a good grace, knowing that he'd be hooted plumb out of the country for the part he'd played.
When Charley Oberly got busy, he didn't do a thing to Plummer and the rest. Oh, no! And he didn't make sport of the whole thing or nothing! He told my tale the way I'd told it to him, and I will say he told it better and made me see myself a martyr to Plummer's damn-foolishness. Then he got serious, and got the jury to looking serious and sorry for me.
Then Goodyear got up again and told how, fun or no fun, the laws of the country had got to be upheld and respected. And that got me, because is was a fact, all right, that I had broke the law all to smithereens when I tackled Plummer. Assaulting an officer ain't any joke not when you come right down to facts. I could see the jury change its mind as plain as you see a cloud come over the sun and put you in the shadow. Goodyear was a good talker, all right. In ten minutes or less I was feeling small and mean and couldn't look anybody in the eye. I felt like apologizing to Plummer, even; which goes to prove the kind of talker Goodyear was. The judge's spiel had been stern and proper and all that, but it didn't begin to get me the way Goodyear done. Then Goodyear wound up the queerest ever.
He'd got the jury so they had GUILTY in big letters hanging on the ends of their tongues, when he broke off short and waited a minute till everybody got to wondering what was going to happen. Then he commenced something like this:
"While it may seem irrelevant and not bearing on this particular case, gentlemen of the jury, I want to tell a little adventure of mine that happened this last winter. You will have observed, gentlemen, that I limp quite noticeably. You may also have heard how I was lost last December and how searching parties had given me up when I appeared very mysteriously one night on the door-step of the store at Claggett. I refused at the time, you remember, to elucidate. I will do so now.
"Gentlemen of the jury, I was badly hurt from falling off a high bank that caved treacherously near the edge. I was separated from my companions, and could not walk. I lay for hours, shouting and firing my rifle at intervals to attract the attention of the others, but to no purpose. It was near night, and I was chilled through and hopeless of ever seeing anything beyond those high walls, when a man came sliding and scrambling down to me. He was a stranger, and I am going to tell you what he did. He took me upon his back when he found I could not walk, and he carried me somehow up that bluff. It was storming and growing bitter cold, and I begged him not to sacrifice himself for me. I realized to the full what he was doing—or no, I did not then. Afterward I knew.
In spite of protests he labored through the storm, making no explanation but toiling up and down that heart-breaking trail. I am not a small man, and how his muscles must have strained under the load I leave you to imagine. I was faint when at last we reached shelter. That shelter, gentlemen of the jury, was a cave under an overhanging rock, as nearly as I could judge. It was roughly comfortable, and be put me on his bed and worked over me like a brother. He cooked for me, did all in his power to ease my sufferings and treated me as an honored guest.
"Why he was living there alone he did not explain, nor did I inquire. Perhaps I could have guessed, if I had tried. Perhaps I could guess that his safety and his freedom depended on his keeping this place secret, and that he was jeopardizing that freedom and safety when he carried me, a stranger, into his retreat. I might possibly have guessed that he was dividing with me food that it would be hard for him to replenish; that the medicine he used on my injuries he might need badly for himself. I might imagine, when he at last insisted upon taking me on a sled down to Claggett, that I might receive better care than he could give, that he was taking a great risk; that he was running into a danger he must certainly have dreaded.
"I might have guessed, gentlemen of the jury, that the man who did all this; the man who lived down in that God-forsaken hole alone save for the company of a pet porcupine; the man who saved my life and risked his own—more than his own, for he risked the freedom dearer to him than his life; I might have known, gentlemen of the jury, that that man was Jack Bellamy, the prisoner who is waiting now for your verdict."
He sat down, and nobody said a blamed thing for as much as a minute. Then the foreman of the jury looked around at the rest, and they rose up and yelled "Not guilty!" till you could hear 'em clear into the street.
I didn't know why, but I got kinda silly for a minute. I couldn't see anything but blurs, and I kept swallowing at an ache that pinched my throat. And when somebody grabbed my hand, I couldn't for the life of me tell who it was. Then I blinked furious and could see that it was Goodyear.
"You blamed idiot," he was saying in my ear. "Couldn't you see it was for your good that I made my case strong as possible? Couldn't you see it would come out all serene in spite of hell-and-high-water? How's Porky? Did you bring him with you?"
I gulped a time or two and got my voice in working trim. "No," I said, "I didn't; but I'm going back after him and the rest of my gold-mine. And if you and Charley Oberly want to come along, I'll wait till you're through courting, here."
"You bet your sweet life I'll come," he grins.
Then the crowd like to have buried me clean out of sight, they piled in that thick to congratulate me.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1940, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 83 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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