# The Case of Mimbres

Extracted from Blue Book magazine, March 1924, pp. 28–35. Illustrations may be omitted.
The Case of Mimbres
This fine story takes you out to the barren, sun-scorched mountains of the Arizona-New-Mexico border—and back to a day when men administered justice promptly and picturesquely.
By Frederick R. Bechdolt
OLD Beaver Smith, the justice of the peace of Paradise, was holding court. Behind his chair, on the store's dingy wall, hung the certificate of his appointment. Before him on the counter lay a yellow volume of the Arizona statutes. Tinkham, the constable, sat conveniently between the whisky-barrel and the counter's end. Thus every morning at the hour of ten, for a month past, these two had assumed their places in the rear of the establishment, which forthwith suspended its functions of supplying the community with every sort of wares from patent medicines to cartridges, and became, for the time being, the law's temple.
Of that serene judicial calm which is the proper attribute of those holding the reins of justice, old Beaver's countenance bore not a trace. An unpleasant light gleamed in his narrowed eyes; his goat's beard stood out at an angle with his chin; at intervals he tugged it savagely. And Tinkham sat bent forward glowering beneath his bushy brows. Confronting court and constable, the town's six leading citizens stood waiting in heavy silence upon the former's word.
The law had come to Paradise; but on this morning, after a month's sojourn, the question was whether or not the law was going to remain.
The justice of the peace ceased tugging at his wisp of whisker and addressed the sextet whom he had summoned here for conference.
“The showdown's come,” said he. “What do yo' aim to do?”
They shifted their booted feet uneasily. This experiment with formal rules of action had been rather pleasing as long as things moved smoothly; there was not one of them but had felt a certain enjoyment—which was not unmixed with pride—in watching the application of the Territory's statutes to such cases as had arisen in their midst. But now that complications had developed, they were smitten with a sort of trepidation at the idea of laying their hands on the machinery.
CURT WILCOX was the first to find expression.
“When the Sheriff come over from Tombstone,” the cow-man said slowly, pausing between phrases to stroke his drooping mustache, “an' give out the word that this camp had grown too big to run itself, we got yo' to take this job an' promised yo' we'd back yo'r play. We aim to see that this co't gets an even break. But we have got to know the right way to go about it, an' yo'r the man to tell us.” He looked around him for assent.
“Curt is right,” Bronco Bob Lee asserted with finality. He was the youngest of them all, but the width of his experience, which had included border cattle-raiding, faro-dealing and traffic with Mexican smugglers, before he became part owner of the camp's best-paying mine, gave him high standing. “We are plumb busy these days, making money, every man of us. So none of us is keepin' cases on yo'r justice-co't. Me, I'd like to hear the hull business from the start. All. that I know is that this outlaw Mimbres an' his gang has been shootin' up the town ag'in.”
“That's all there is to know, I reckon,” the outraged court informed him. “An' it ought to be enough fer any man. Here I be, every mo'nin', finin' miners an' Mexicans that has raised too much hell the night before. An' all han's take their medicine without a kick, ontel Mimbres gets the notion of ridin' over to Paradise. Fust time he shows up, the' aint much harm—only a few lights shot out an' busted windows an' the like o' that. But last week he puts a bullet through Lon Jenkins' back-bar mirror an' drills a Mexican between the eyes. So Jenkins comes an' makes a kick—which I don't blame him none, fer them mirrors cost a heap of money. Me, I send out word by Tinkham that sech foolishness has got to stop. Then Mimbres rides into town last night along with Black Jack Davis an' Bill Fallon, an' when he hears my orders, he tears loose an' busts the hull street wide open. What's more, he creases Tinkham; who is tryin' to get action with a sawed-off shotgun.”
He paused and clutched his shred of whisker while he spat.
“That brings the showdown. Question is, does this here co't, or Mimbres, run the town of Paradise.”
“The way it looks to me,” suggested Pony Deal, whose wagon-outfits had been carrying freight into the country since the days when Cochise was on the warpath, “this would be easy. All we got to do is lay fer the gang next time they come along, an' kill 'em.”
Old Beaver shook his head.
“That aint the law. The statutes are plain in these here matters. If a man would tell the co't to go to hell over in Tucson like Mimbres has done here, the jedge would show him where to haid in mighty quick.”
“Well,” Curt Wilcox demanded, “what would the jedge do, Beaver?”
“Make out a warrant,” the latter answered briskly, “an' send somebody to fetch the feller in.”
The cow-man smiled grimly under his heavy mustache.
“Tinkham aint hurt too bad to ride, I reckon,” he drawled. 'An' we are here to go along with him. Write yo'r warrant, Beaver.”
CONSTABLE TINKHAM straightened in his chair, and for the first time that morning he looked as one who regards life as really worth while.
“How many do yo' want?” Curt asked him.
“Three's enough of us.” The constable's voice was soft, with the gentle singing drawl of Texas. “The's only three of them. They've been up Fort Grant way stealing hosses from the reservation; but last night Mimbres give it out that he was aimin' to shove on to La Cañada. Yo' know that kentry, Curt; s'posin' I take Bronco Bob an' yo'.”
“Which makes me think,” said Bronco Bob Lee: “what is the charge in that there warrant, Beaver?”
The court glanced up over the steel-rimmed spectacles which he always wore while writing or administering justice.
“Disturbin' of the peace,” he answered, “onless Tinkham wants to get action fer that bullet that glanced offen his ribs last night.”
The constable shook his head.
“Aint no call to go to law about that,” said he. “I'd o' done the same ef I was Mimbres.”
“What I was goin' to say,” Bronco Bob went on thoughtfully, “—La Cañada's in New Mexico. Aint the' some kink in the law about crossin' the line fer a man?”
“The's sech a thing,” the court informed him tartly, “as bein' too damn fussy about the statutes, Bob. Yo're as bad as that Tombstone lawyer that I had Tinkham throw out of the place fer sassin' me las' week. Now, my instructions is to get this feller Mimbres, no matter if yo' have to foller him to hell.”
“Hell or La Cañada,” Bronco Bob rejoined serenely, “it's all the same to me, as long as yo' are backin' the play in proper shape.”
THE pale, oak-dotted mountains, between whose granite folds the little town of La Cañada lay concealed, were drenched by a downpour of hot sunshine when the three men of Paradise rode down the winding wagon-track which looped its way across the divide. Constable Tinkham was expressing himself concerning the scattered population of the region.
“Sheep-herders an' prospectors,” he growled. “Cain't say I think much of 'em. This feller Mimbres 'pears to have 'em all plumb locoed. Jes' speak his name among a bunch, an' they'll quit talkin' like they'd gone dumb.”
“La Cañada,” Curt Wilcox interrupted, “lays almost under us. We'll see it when we round that next turn. We ort to get some news there..... Now what in hell!” He pulled up his pony, and the others came to a halt beside him.
A rider, coming toward them around the curve, had stopped his horse on getting sight of them. As the cow-man was speaking, he whirled the animal and fled. They looked blankly at one another.
“Beats me,” old Tinkham muttered. “Well, le's shove on.”
They passed the turn and saw a huddle of one-story buildings in the base of an amphitheater whose opening gave a long view to distant flat lands shimmering in the hot afternoon sunshine, and a range of saw-toothed mountains beyond. They came on down the hill, and the road straightened out between two rows of flat-topped adobes whose vega-poles cast sharp, slanting shadows against the mud-colored walls.
“Nice town,” Bronco Bob Lee commented, “but mighty quiet. Puts me in mind of Sunday mo'nin' when I was a kid back in Kentucky.”
The rider whose abrupt flight had astonished them was not in sight, nor was any other of the inhabitants. The men of Paradise found themselves flanked by deserted sidewalks; from under the wooden awnings empty windows stared at them as as if they were intruders.
“Reckon the Apaches is out,” Curt hazarded. “They're hell in these mountains.”
A door banged somewhere ahead of them, and they heard voices in the next cross-street, but when they reached the thoroughfare, it was lifeless.
“There's a saloon,” Tinkham announced, and pointed to the opposite corner. “My tongue is hangin' out.”
They left their ponies at a hitching-rack before the building. As they entered the establishment, a half-dozen men who were standing at the bar forsook their glasses to depart hurriedly through a side door. The bartender alone remained.
“Yo'r customers,” said Bronco Bob, “seems techy. What ails em?”
The bartender drew a deep breath, as of relief; then force of habit reasserted itself, and he fell to polishing the counter. He nodded his head to indicate Curt Wilcox.
“It's that long mustache an' the Texas hat he wears. They think he's Mimbres.”
“So that's what made the hull town hole up,” old Tinkham drawled. “How many is in Mimbres' gang, a regiment?”
“What'll it be?” The bartender shoved forth the whisky-bottle and the glasses before answering the constable's question. While they were drinking, he enlightened them.
“Mimbres,” said he, “killed six men back in Texas, an' there's two a-ridin' with him that's jest as tough—Fallon an' Black Jack Davis. When them three come to town, they run the place. An' most folks finds it handy to get out of sight.”
“I see,” old Tinkham answered dryly. “They're the big he-wolves in these parts. Well, le's have another.”
“He-wolves is right,” the bartender nodded. “Las' night they stood up the stage from Silver right at the aidge of town. The sheriff has been out all day with ten men after 'em.”
“It is,” Tinkham told him, “plumb interestin' to listen to you, but we have got to be shovin' on.” In the doorway he turned. “Which way did your sheriff ride?”
The bartender pointed down the street in the direction of the long flats which lay far below the town.
“He allus goes that road when he is after Mimbres,” said he.
“The sheriff,” said Bronco Bob when they had swung into their saddles, “ort to of stayed to home fer fear them three outlaws might come back an' carry off the hull damn town.”
Old Tinkham shook his head.
“Eleven men! They'll shore eat up Mimbres and the other two. Wont be nothin' left fer us to fetch back to Beaver.”
“Mebbe,” Bronco Bob suggested hopefully, “we'll come up with 'em before the fightin' starts an' get a chance to throw in with the posse. Them outlaws is gen'rally pretty good at hidin' their trail.”
“That's what I'm hopin' fer,” the constable replied. “Le's make the best time we can, boys.”
EVENING was approaching when they reached the flat, and their shadows stretched grotesquely long before them on the white alkali. Out of the blanched expanse, backed by an empurpled range of saw-toothed mountains, they saw a group of horsemen emerging as from beneath the surface of wide waters.
“It's the sheriff all right,” Curt Wilcox announced. “I can count eleven of 'em.”
“Reckon he's killed 'em this time,” Bronco Bob Lee's voice was heavy with disappointment, “or he wouldn't be comin' back so soon.”
They halted at the edge of the plain beside a cluster of crosses which marked the graves of Mexican victims of some Apache ambush. Here they awaited the oncoming posse. The New Mexico sheriff was in the lead; and as he drew nearer, the men of Paradise could see his silver star gleaming in the slanting sun-rays. They noticed how his head was bowed as if from weariness; the others followed, straggling in two's and three's, backs bent and shoulders drooping.
“Howdy,” old Tinkham bade them. The leader pulled up his pony and barely raised his head to answer the greeting.
“I reckon,” the constable went on, “we have come too late fer what we want. We was lookin' fer Mimbres.”
“I reckon so.” There was no joy in the sheriff's voice. He touched his pony with the spur.
“Yo've killed him, then?” Curt Wilcox asked.
The sheriff shook his head in passing them.
“Done lost their trail?” Bronco Lee called.
“The sheriff drew rein.
“The trail,” said he, “is plain ef yo're lookin' to foller it.” He pointed toward a notch in the mountain-range beyond the flat. “They've rode acrost the pass.” He gazed upon them briefly. “I dunno who yo' men be, but I kin tell yo' this. Nobody that wears a star crosses them mountains. That country belongs to Mimbres.”
“Hol' on,” old Tinkham bade him as he spurred his pony again. “Us three will throw in with yo' ef yo' say the word.”
The sheriff laughed unpleasantly.
“Not me,” said he. 'Them there long flats an' mountain ranges is held down by renegades. The' aint an honest man between here an' the Mexican line, only the stage station-keeper at Ash Springs, an' he puts in a heap of time at mindin' his own business. The outlaws does what man-huntin' is done over there.”
“We have,” the constable replied, “come a long ways, an' I reckon we may's well ride fu'ther—” But that sheriff did not hear. And the members of the posse did not heed; they were too busy urging their ponies up the trail toward La Cañada.
THE marvelous blue night of New Mexico had soothed the fevered land to grateful coolness and softened every savage outline until the ragged mountains were as purple velvet, and the great alkali flat below lay glimmering like the ghost of a departed lake enshrouded by long mists of shadow. Under the faint light of the stars, the low mud-colored stage-station in the pass had become a mauve blur from whose center, as from the midst of a setting, a small window glowed like an orange jewel.
Within the room a kerosene wall-lamp was sending a thin spiral of ill-smelling smoke to the dingy ceiling-cloth, leaving in one corner a deep pool of shade that drowned the battered little bar, and casting upon the whitewashed wall black silhouettes which wavered to every movement of five players busy at poker around an oil-cloth-covered table. At times a face emerged into the area where the light bathed it; and again the wide-rimmed hats obscured the features of their wearers. Always there were the butts of big revolvers and holsters of burnished leather gleaming somewhere around the table in the lamp's shine.
“Ef the' aint no harm in askin',” Curt Wilcox was saying to the fat station-keeper, “why do yo' call it pain-killer?”
“Three cards fer me,” the latter said; and when he had picked them up: “Becuz yo' don't have to buy revenue stamps fer patent medicine.”
“Nothin' like travelin',” Bronco Bob commented genially, “to give a man an eddication. I'll take two cards.”
“Where be yo' fellers from?” the dealer asked. He was a pockmarked man with a long nose.
“I'm betting ten,” old Tinkham interrupted quietly.
“An' ten,” the station-keeper chimed in. The pockmarked dealer relapsed to watchful silence, and his question remained in abeyance during two more raises. On displaying a king-high flush at the showdown, Constable Tinkham seized the opportunity to relegate it still farther into the background.
“A dose all round,” said he. And when the station-keeper had returned from the bar, with allopathic portions: “Trade good?”
“Sometimes.” The station-keeper settled himself into his chair with obese unhurriedness. “An' sometimes only so-so.”
“My deal.” Bronco Bob picked up the cards. “All sorts of folks passin' through, I reckon?”
“I fed a minister one time,” the station-keeper told him. 'An' Jesse James played poker at this same table, two year ago on his way back east from California.”
“Where did yo' say yo' fellers come from?” the pockmarked man asked.
“Jesse James,” the unreconstructed Tinkham cut in, “was a good man. I would of done the same as he done ef I had been in his place. I will play these.”
“Which bein' the case, I'll jes' deck my hand,” Curt announced. “Good man is right. Yo' don't find none like him around here.”
“Oh, I dunno.” What with the briskness of the night's trade and the four jacks which had been dealt him, the station-keeper was warming to loquacity. “Mimbres aint so damn slow. An' there was two with him the other night when he stopped off, that would pass as tough in any comp'ny.”
“Two cards,” the pockmarked man growled. “Mimbres may not be slow, but this game is gettin' to be.”
Old Tinkham was stroking his mustache thoughtfully.
“Mimbres, yo' say?” He turned to the station-keeper. “Which way was he headed fer?”
“Me; I will take one card,” the station-keeper told Bronco Bob hurriedly. Thenceforth he remained silent. The game went on. During the next hour there was no talk, save those brief remarks which its necessities demanded.
It was getting on toward midnight when the pockmarked man yawned loudly and stretched his arms.
“Reckon I'll cash in,” he announced. “I aim to saddle up early. Where be yo' fellers goin' to sleep?”
“We'll make down out there in front of the house,” Tinkham replied indifferently.
“That bein' the case, I'll roll up behind the corral.” The pockmarked man. rose. “I snore. Some folks don't like it.” In the doorway he turned. “See yo' at breakfast.”
TWO hours later the men of Paradise were unrolling their blankets on the hard earth before the adobe building. Curt Wilcox was swearing softly.
“Pain-killer!” he: murmured. “Wow!”
“I have drank as bad,” old Tinkham told him, “up Taos way. They make it out of corn which they have raised themselves, an' it is white as snow.”
“What I want to know,” said Bronco Bob, “is why yo' asked about which way Mimbres was haided? Yo' like to stampeded that there fat man.”
“I reckon that aint all I done.” Tinkham shook the tarpaulin to smoothness. “Do yo' mind what the sheriff said the other day about the outlaws doin' what man-huntin' was done in this country? Well, I happened to think of that, an' it come to me that the feller who is bein' hunted gets the chance to pick his fightin'-ground. This here strikes me as a right good place.”
“Think our pockmarked friend will ride tonight?” Curt Wilcox asked.
“He's rode already, ef I aint mistaken,” the constable answered quietly. “Slip over by the corral, Bob, an' see ef you can hear him snoring like he says he does.”
“Not a sound,” Bronco Bob announced when he had returned, “an' his hoss is gone.”
Old Tinkham was settling himself beside the cow-man underneath the blankets.
“Take the first watch,” said he, “an' wake me in an hour to relieve yo'.” He sighed. “Ef yo' hadn't dropped out of that last pot, Curt, I'd o' caught another ace an' got ten pesos: more off'm that station-keeper.”
T first suspicion of the coming dawn was beginning to show above the eastern skyline when Tinkham shook the blankets of his two companions.
“I hear their hosses in the pass,” he whispered; “an' jedging by the sound, the' must be four or five of 'em.'
They were on their feet before he finished speaking, with their rifles in their hands. Within the narrow space between the flanks of the surrounding mountains, the darkness still lay thick. As they were hurrying to the corral out by the road, they caught the rasping of hoofs against the rocks less than a hundred yards down the ravine.
“Mind,” the constable bade them, “ol' Beaver wants Mimbres. Don't kill him onless yo' got to.”
Now as they slipped along beside the high corral fence, there emerged from the blackness just ahead of them a vague mass which changed in form as it approached, then stopped. They heard the riders dismounting. The voice of Mimbres came to them.
“Hold the hosses, Ed. Us three will slip up on 'em where they are layin'.”
“Han's up,” old Tinkham interrupted loudly, and before he had uttered the second word of his command, he felt the breath of a leaden slug against his cheek. Thin tongues of orange light were licking the darkness before him; the flashes of his own and his companions' rifles leaped toward them. The stillness of the place was riddled by a brief series of sharp, dry reports which came in irregular succession and of a sudden ceased, like the noise of a cluster of firecrackers set off together.
With the same startling unexpectedness as its breaking, the silence resumed. But only for a moment! There came from the darkness a sobbing cough.
“Don't shoot.” It was the voice of the pockmarked man who had been playing cards with them. “My han's is up.”
“I think my shoulder is busted,” Bronco Bob was saying.
Tinkham was straining his eyes in the effort to seek out the form of Mimbres in the darkness.
“Keep your gun on that feller with the hosses, Curt,” he bade the cow-man. As he was speaking, there came a sudden clatter of hoofs. The constable leaped forward and stumbled over a body in the roadway. The hoofbeats were already growing fainter down the pass.
“We got the other two,” Bronco Bob called to him. He made no answer. The pockmarked man stood before him with both hands uplifted; he heard one of the horses close by, and edged over toward the animal,
“Easy, boy,” he said, and his fingers found the trailing reins.
AS Tinkham was swinging into the saddle, he saw the first faint flush of the dawn creeping over the eastern horizon. He drove the spurs in, and was off down the pass on the dead run.
At intervals the sides of the mountains drew closer, and as he passed through these narrow spaces, it seemed as if new stores of darkness had been poured into the ravine. Then the summits would spread again, and the blackness would melt into a deep gray dusk. The noise of his pony drowned all sounds ahead of him; it was as if he were riding alone, with no man near.
When he passed between the last bare hills at the cañon-mouth and came out on the flat, he pulled up for a moment and listened. From far before him there came the rat-tat-tat of hoofbeats. And even while he was looking, the heavens grew brighter in the east; the blanched surface of the old dried lake-bed became more clearly visible; it was as if the veils of twilight were being swept away by an unseen hand. He got sight of the fugitive through their last thinning shreds, a blurred shape, small, and growing smaller in the distance.
“Plenty of time,” he told the pony. “We'll take it easy fer a while.”
During the next mile he contented himself with keeping to a gentle trot. The bands of pink were widening on the eastern sky, and growing deeper in hue. The whole flat was beginning to throb with reflected tints. The receding horseman showed more plainly. Constable Tinkham rode on at the same pace, his rifle athwart the saddlebow.
The form ahead of him ceased moving. He saw how it had resolved itself into two shapes, one a mere dot. A rifle-bullet whined above his head.
“Yo'r sights is fuzzy, Mimbres,” he muttered, “but we don't take no fool chances.” He reined his pony to one side and drew off from the other's trail, still pressing forward. So for another mile, keeping always the same distance between them, and at the same time edging nearer to the range of mountains which showed dark purple under the splendors of the sunrise across the plain.
Mimbres was in the saddle again and urging his pony to the utmost. He had caught the significance of Tinkham's maneuver, and he did not mean to be cut off from those mountains. For half a mile they raced. Then the constable drew rein so abruptly that a cloud of alkali rose from about his pony's hoofs. He flung himself from the saddle. Before the dust had fairly settled, his gaze was traveling along his leveled rifle, finding the rear sight's slender notch, lining the bead with it. The muzzle of the weapon swung across a brief space, following the movement of the pony five hundred yards away. His finger pressed the trigger.
“Yo' are afoot now, Mimbres,” the constable said quietly, and rose. The fugitive's pony was pitching forward on its knees.
The sun came up. The surface of the wide plain lost its shell-tints and turned to glaring white. Upon it two specks showed. The smaller one was moving slowly; the larger crept more swiftly toward the eastern mountains. Now and again a bullet kicked up a little flick of dust before it. And at intervals there rose toward the cloudless sky the report of the outlaw's rifle, sounding strangely small and flat in these vast spaces.
Then from the base of the dark western mountains a third speck crawled forth upon the white expanse. And as it moved on, the horseman in the east halted.
Thus Tinkham waited, with his rifle ready, watching Curt Wilcox closing in behind, and watching Mimbres, who was coming slowly toward him, with both hands upraised.
THE little town of La Cañada was drowsing in the heat of a New Mexican midafternoon when the three men of Paradise rode up the wide main street with their prisoner. A few cow-ponies stood before a hitching-rack with heads bowed and eyes half closed; a group of swarthy sheep-herders, shod in flinty rawhide sandals, lay asprawl under one of the wooden awnings, their steep-crowned sombreros drawn down over their faces; all others were within doors.
As the four riders came on, the street began to awaken. Faces showed in the wide doorways on both sides of them; the sidewalks behind them resounded to swift footfalls.
Constable Tinkham smiled grimly.
“They aint afeard of that Texas hat of yourn no more, Curt.”
“They shore are turnin' out fer us,” the cow-man drawled. “I've an idee we'd jest as well shove on right through: Think yo' can make it, Bob?”
Bronco Bob Lee was busy readjusting the bandana handkerchief which was serving as a sling for his left arm.
“Suits me.” He glanced at the prisoner, who was riding beside him. “Nobody here yo' want to kiss good-by?”
The outlaw grinned under his drooping mustache.
“The's too many rawhide ropes an' cottonwood limbs in this here town, ef yo' are askin' my opinion.”
THEY rode on up the street and left La Cañada buzzing like a hive of bees. As they were nearing the summit of the hill, they heard the beating of hoofs. Behind them half a dozen horsemen were following on the dead run.
“Ef I aint mistaken,” Tinkham said, “that is the sheriff in the lead.” He drew his rifle from its sheath beneath the stirrup-leather. Curt followed his example. The pair halted their ponies side by side; Mimbres and Bronco Bob rode by and took their places in the rear.
The sheriff of La Cañada drew rein. His companions did likewise, cursing the impetuosity of their mounts. The voice of Constable Tinkham came down the hill to them.
“What do yo' want?”
The sheriff touched his pony with the spur. When he had come within a hundred yards, he saw the pair before him raise their rifles to their shoulders, and he stopped.
“I want that man Mimbres,” he called. “I hold warrants fer him an' Black Jack Davis an' Bill Fallon.”
Constable Tinkham lowered his rifle, holding it athwart his saddlebow while he made answer.
“Yo'll find Black Jack Davis an' Bill Fallon at the Ash Springs stage-station. Their graves is back of the corral. But ef yo' want Mimbres, yo'll have to talk business with the jestice-co't of Paradise.”
The rifle came back to Constable Tinkham's shoulder, and his voice grew colder, traveling across the leveled sights.
“That is where we are takin' him. An' don't yo' dast to even look as ef yo' wanted him, ontel he gets there.”
The silence that followed was broken by the scraping of hoofs in the hard roadway. The sheriff looked behind him. His followers were not blessed with that enthusiasm which will lead a man to try conclusions with a single-action revolver against repeating rifles. And as he saw them departing, it occurred to him that the law offered its own solution of this problem. He turned and rode away to find recourse according to the statutes.
OLD Beaver Smith, the justice of the peace, was holding court on the morning when the sheriff of La Cañada rode into Paradise. Constable Tinkham was sitting in his place beside the counter's end. He glanced up and nodded greeting to the visitor.
“Howdy,” said he.
The sheriff made no answer. The memory of their last meeting was still fresh; but things had changed since then; the executives of two commonwealths had been invoked and had come to aid him. He felt that the situation was in his hands. He reached into his pocket and brought forth the extradition warrant, for whose procurement he had set the law's machinery in motion before Tinkham and his companions were fairly out of sight from La Cañada. He laid it on the counter.
Old Beaver took the paper and unfolded it. He peered at the large seal through his iron-rimmed spectacles for some time; he thrust his nose a little closer and read with painful slowness, moving his lips to shape the words.
“As nigh as this co't can make out,” he said at length, “this here comes from the Guv'nor of New Mexico, who makes demand on this here co't fer the pusson of one Mimbres.”
The sheriff nodded. “And,” said he coldly, “yo'll notice that it has been duly honored by the Governor of Arizona. I'll take my man right now, ef yo'-all aint got no objections.”
Old Beaver cleared his throat portentously.
“When yo' ride back,” said he, “jest give the Guv'nor of New Mexico the compliments of the jestice-co't of Paradise, an' tell him this co't is plumb sorry, but it cain't accommodate him.”
The sheriff frowned.
“I'm tellin' yo',” he declared, “this warrant has got to be honored. Yo' cain't hold no man again' the processes of extradition.”
“This co't,” old Beaver retorted, “aint looked up the law in them there matters; but how kin the Guv'nor of New Mexico expect me to turn over a man when I aint got him?”
A sudden foreboding made the sheriff speechless for a moment. When he was able to find the words:
“Have yo'-all lynched him?” he demanded.
Old Beaver laid aside his spectacles and with them a portion of his judicial dignity.
“Lynched, hell!” said he. “I done socked him a hundred dollars fine for disturbin' of the peace an' warned him not to come back this way or he'd get it harder next time. An' jedgin' by what he said when he rode out of camp, I reckon he wont bother this here town no more!”
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 1950, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 73 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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