The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1897-01-13
Stories of an Inland State.

Stories Of an Inland State.
The night Geranium Jim killed Big Ike.
president of the Anti-horse Thief assoc.a-
ton and champion cow-thief of Thorn
county, was not the first experience with
dead men in Geranium Jim's life. 1t would
he untruthful TO say that, although the
fiction might elevate Jim's character with
the world at large.
Lamentable as the fact 1t, still it is a
fact in Thorn county, remorse did not make
the killer toss in his bed and turn pillow
to cool a fevered cheek. Killings GER
.ainly did have this effect on people in
books. Geranium Jim had noticed this
with wonder. He had read once THE
Marble Faun," and it was favorite re-
Election with him that the living Faun. for
wasting away after the killing of the priest,
was fool. Why should the Faun have
worried? The priest was some sinister
agency who was in the way of the Faun' S
sweetheart's happiness. A girl so pure
could not have given an unjust sentence
with her eyes, Geranium Jim argued, and
the execution was not proper sugject for
remorse.
Why was this? Why did the men In
Thorn county who killed under necessity
escape the remorse which is worse than
death. Was it because they were not
amenable to the law? Do not the charac-
ters of fiction suffer more from The fear
of the law than their creators, the novel;
lists, care TO indicate?
Or did the killers of Thorn county escape
the worst penalty for taking human life, as
the soldier escapes it, because the deeds
were done, nine times out of ten, in self
protection, whether the man attacking bit
the dust or the man he attacked. For in
close quarters the man who began the at
tack, even without just grounds, was soon
in position, where his attack had to be
changed to defense.
There had been some trials for murder in
Thorn county-but not many. In these
trials the defendant always set up the plea
of self-defense. The outside world looked
upon the plea as q criminals only subter-
fuge; reckoned that the defendant knew
his own guilt, and only fought for his life
with the brute instinct to preserve 1t, gull
ty or not guilty.
No so the killer. If he had attacked and
killed, his mind reverted to all the provo
cative words ne had ever had with his enc
my. The first word or act of provocation,
he argued to himself and to his lawyers.
was properly the issue and the only issue
in the case. Was he right then or was he
wrong? He believed fully that the court
and jury should consider this rst, and al
most solely.
His neighbor had cut his fence. That
was what first "riled' him. But he had
with the neighbor and the
neighbor had refused to make amends. That
was the second provocation, but it was i'm
because it was contigent wholly
on the event of the first provocation. The
feud, so began, had gone on, always direct
Iv ble n @ original fonPp-pnftinc
When he had at some provoking word at
tackled, his neighbor showed fight. Here
the defendant and murderer refuses for an
instant to admit in his own mind his neigh
boris right to make defense. He realizes
fully himself that he intended to shoot the
man down. But he refuses to admit that
the murdered man had any grounds for
so. The neighbours gun"
revolver usually, was whipped out. Sec
onds become hours now. The defendant
argues to himself, and to his lawyers when
shoot for self-defense. The man he had
attacked had whipped out his gun he
must kill or be killed. He prefers to kill
and II done it in self-defense.''
But" the lawyer will say, THE dead
man drew his revolver in self-defense when
you attacked"
The defendants mind flashes back to the
first provocation and runs quickly along
he whole history of the ever-growing feud
and he replies to the question with this
question:
"Then why did he cut my fence?'
No lawyer can force such man into any,
hing like confession of guilt. He re-
,eives a verdict of guilty with profound
sense of injustice.
One Thorn county lawyer once forced
rom his client the broad Acknowledgement
hat he guessed it was a case of self-de-
ense on both sides and mine was quickest"
This was as far as he would go.
This. too, may account for the singular
lbsence of remorse in Thorn county.
But Geranium Jim had killed Big Ike in |
and any court would have
20 held. There would be no trial. Gera-
hum Jim gave this not a thought. The
lisreputable attack on his shack by Big J
kes gang precluded a trial.
Big Ike went out in the star-lit night. |
The dead man lay face-downward. In his |
all from the horse one boot had caught in |
he stirrup and had been wrenched off.
Geranium Jim put one hand under the |
alf of the leg, the other under the neck |
md rolled the corpse over. Blood got be- |
ween the fingers of the hand under the |
leck. He wiped them off on the dead |
mans coat and finding more blood there,
.
The dead man lay upon the short tawny |
'uffalo grass, his CLASSY eyes wide open to |
he star-Et sky, a black COB on his fore |
lead. One leg was bent, at the knee, up /
'eneath him. Jim Strengthened this, and |
aking barefoot in one hand and the boot |
n the other tenderly dragged his enemy !
nto the shack. He stretched the body out |
n the floor opposite the little east window,
which was a mere hole in the sod. Then
e lit a candle and gave his attention to
is live prisoner, the man who had come in
n him through the hole in the roof.
He looked at the man as he sat in the |
orner bucked and gagged, and said:
That's Big Ike. The rest have gone
hat might have been me there with that
ole in my forehead, Ell?
"Oh, you're gagged he added. ct guess
GU won't holler-therer'
He took the gag away. went over to the
cad man and tied up his chin.
The prisoner sat sullenly in the corner
Hungry" asked Jim as he set himself
piece of cold fat pork and a hard biscuit |
n the cracker box which served as table.
The man did not answer
Nor cid he answer any of the questions |
ut to him that night by Geranium Jim.
The man in the corner did not sleep, but
at wiGe-eyed all through the night, gazing
{ the opposite wall of the shack. The
orpse lay fiat with its CLASSY eyes staring
{ the ceiling and Geranium Jim crouched
n his milking stool and gazed from the
orpse to the prisoner and back again. The
-hite dawn presently began to creep
trough the black hole which answered for
window and the candle burned low. The