CHAPTER X
1
That morning San Francisco for the first time, as it was to do many times in following years, awakened wrathfully from the seeming enchantment that crime had put upon the city.
People were profoundly shocked by learning what a violent outrage had been committed upon the Spanish-speaking settlement. Men met in the streets and gazed at one another in astonished dismay as parties of Hounds, with hands full of loot, drunkenly swaggered about, hawking what they had stolen, boasting of what they had done.
Among the citizens was one Sam Brannan, ex-printer, ex-Mormon, ex-preacher, and now—though later to die in poverty and alone—the richest merchant in California, and one of the most generous and courageous. Whatever his faults, he had a real even if somewhat theatrical courage. That morning Brannan impulsively mounted a barrel at the corner of Clay and Montgomery streets and cursed the Hounds. So great a crowd gathered that people could not get near enough to hear him.
Followed by the crowd, he then went to the Plaza and mounted the roof of the one story building occupied by the alcalde, himself a Hound sympathizer. From there, Brannan cursed the Hounds and the men that supported them.
The Hounds were astonished and indignant. The responsive demonstration of the crowd made them uneasy. At the very hour when they felt most secure in the rule of the city, the city openly gathered and cheered men who denounced them. The Hounds, backed by the sheriff, the alcalde, and supported by influential men, were at first defiant. While Brannan was speaking, word was sent to him that his store and buildings would be fired immediately if he did not stop. He then displayed the quality that was later to make him appear in the history of the city as perhaps the most audacious spirit among the Vigilantes. Instead of hurrying off to guard his property, he remained on the alcalde's roof and used even stronger words.
The Hounds grew desperate. The boldest of them surged into the crowd, drew pistols, and threatened to shoot him, then and there.
Then and there, Brannan ripped open the shirt on his breast and dared them to shoot.
The crowd roared,with cheers and threats, and the Hounds withdrew. In all parts of the city they began to slink from sight, for other men, as as brave if not as dramatic as Brannan, had mounted boxes and barrels and roofs.
Then the miners, the citizens, the strangers, with that sudden and orderly movement of purpose that was repeatedly, all during the gold-days of California, to appall cocksure scoundrels who felt security in their numbers, and to astonish the world by the composure and firmness of what was, after all, mob-rule, organized themselves into four companies, of a hundred men each, and began at once to search out and arrest the Hounds.
At the same hour a subscription was being taken for the unfortunate Chileans.
Emigrants who disembarked that day found the city under arms, on guard, with un-uniformed men marching in military groups, silently, ominously, through the streets. The name was as yet unknown, but the guardian spirit of the Vigilantes had appeared in San Francisco.
Such, in every particular, is the account that history affirms in regard to the events of Monday, July 16th, 1849.
2
Among those who readily followed Brannan's example was Wallace B. Kern. He too got on a barrel, and also when the Hounds threatened to shoot him, he answered with a warning that made them tremble:
"Shoot—and be hanged!"
Kern was one of those chosen as leaders to arrest the Hounds. He, although a lawyer, had become a miner, successful and proud of his callouses; and he was recently from the mines where evil men were hanged, summarily.
When the first group of Hounds, terrified, dejected as wet pups, were brought triumphantly into the Plaza, Kern made a whirlwind speech and amid roaring cheers called for a rope.
At that moment Judge Deering strode to the box from which Kern was speaking, and literally pushing him from it, mounted.
"In the name of God, no!" he thundered, and his powerful voice rolled across the Plaza, resounding in echoes from the very walls.
Hales, who stood nearby, a companion of Kern's in the Hound hunting, listened in amazement to the dramatic and sonorous power of Judge Deering's words. His great full face was ablaze with passion, his words with eloquence; his big body, that seemed sluggish and nearly awkward in daily inter course, now had a bearing of majesty; he was towering and vigorous, his gestures were full of command; he moved men, and all the more remarkably since he appealed not to their violence, but to their judgment.
"—better ten guilty men live than put to death one innocent"
His voice flowed out over the Plaza. Men hung to him with their eyes and seemed to have lost their breath. Hales felt actually a chill as he watched and listened; he did not feel that it was better ten guilty men live than that one who was not so guilty be put to death, but he did feel the tremendous personality and convictions of this man who urged a mob to respect the law of the land.
When at the end of some fifteen minutes Judge Deering stopped, and looked about over the mass of men, there was silence. The man by Kern who held a coil of rope dropped it with a half-furtive movement. The wretched Hounds, grouped under a guard, stared upward at Judge Deering in pitiable thankfulness.
He stepped from the box, dignified, flushed, dripping with sweat. There were no cheers. He had moved them to sobriety, and everywhere men began talking gravely among themselves, and nodding, acknowledging the right of prisoners to trial.
And from that day until this no man has been hanged in San Francisco without at least the semblance of a trial.
"Judge, you're wrong, dead wrong!" said Wallace B. Kern, the first to grasp and shake Judge Deering's hand. "But by God, sir, if I could make a speech like that, I wouldn't care if I was wrong!"
Judge Deering smiled slightly, but answered gravely:
"Then, sir, you would be wrong!"
3
Col. Nevinson was in a state of astonished anger at the uprising of citizens; and there was also talk of holding him responsible for the outrage to the Chileans. Moreover, other men, politicians, who had supported and profited by the Hounds as much as himself, were running to cover, hastening to make their peace with the mob leaders, abandoning the Hounds to rope, whip, or whatever else the mob might decide upon.
Even he had been advised by friends to leave the city for a time. He had told such friends to go to hell, that he came and went as he pleased, and that he would continue to come and go as he pleased as long as he had one good hand with which to draw a gun; and that he would be damned, sir, if he did not say in public what he had said in private, which was, sir, that the Hounds—he called them Regulators—had done a worthy service to the city; and, sir, if necessary, his last dollar would be spent in their defense!
Col. Nevinson made his way to Judge Deering's office and found him there, alone.
"Sir," said the colonel, "I want to congratulate you for the admirable address on the Plaza. Law must be upheld!" With a careless fling he threw a bag of gold on the table. "There's your retainer, Deering. Seventeen have been arrested by this mob. They have legal rights, those boys. They acted a little wild, but they did the city a service in cleaning out the greasers. I put them up to it, sir, and I'll stand by them now. You take care of them and I'll take care of you. This public excitement will soon blow over. You know their rights. You can get them off. By God, sir, you could acquit the devil before a jury of parsons. And law must be upheld, respected!"
"Sir," said Judge Deering with solemn and dignified anger, straightening his large rotund body. "You are right. The law must be upheld and respected. The law accords to each man, whatever his villainy, certain rights. And I, sir," continued the judge with gathering wrath, "have too great a veneration for the majesty of the law to cheat even a scoundrel out of his right to be hanged legally!"
Col. Nevinson looked at him blankly, dumbfounded.
"What has changed you, Deering? Why, there on the Plaza you spoke in their their defense!"
"No, sir! No, sir! I did not! With the last breath that is in my body, sir, I will defend any man's right to trial trial by jury. I will defend any man's right to all the safeguards prescribed by law—but seek to have have guilty men acquitted, no! No! Never My oath, sir, as an attorney may imposes upon imposes me the solemn obligation of doing all within my power to assist suspected men to a fair and impartial trial by jury. It does not, sir, impose upon me the duty of defending and acquitting men whom I believe to be scoundrels and for whom I have unmeasured contempt!"
"Why, Deering, you're mad! You talk like a fool, sir!"
Judge Deering acknowledged this with a grave bow, and without resentment.
"How do you know these men are guilty, sir?" demanded Nevinson.
"I don't, sir. But what I say, sir, is that I will not—I never did and to the day of my death I never will!—pledge myself as you have requested"—he swept his hand at the bag of gold—"to defend and undertake to acquit men when I, sir, am ignorant of the merits of their case. I will, sir, undertake to see that any man is tried fairly according to the law, but may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, and may my heart stop dead, sir, if I ever lift my voice to shield and acquit, sir, a man whom I believe to be guilty as charged!"
"I don't understand. I don't understand you," said Col. Nevinson, frowning blankly. "I am surprised at you, Deering. I am amazed! I thought you were a friend of mine, and I thought you had courage! But I see, sir, that since your masterful address on the Plaza, you have been reached, intimidated, sir! by that damn mob!"
Col. Nevinson, with a rapacious grab, snatched up the buckskin sack of gold and with angered steps crossed the room and went clattering down the stairs.
Judge Deering sighed deeply, thoughtfully scratched at his low fringe of hair, then shook his massive old head slightly and turned to his paper-strewn desk, groping about half absently for his big black pipe.
4
While these stirring events were taking place, others were stirring the good Doña.
She had sent the mulatto Sam all about the city until he found the colonel and delivered a message that she wished to see him. But Col. Nevinson, besides not caring to go to her, was in a state of exasperated activity, attending to many things.
Finally the mulatto came with a new message, edged with anger and imperative, which said that if Col. Nevinson did not come to her within an hour, she would come to him, wherever he might be!
To the good Doña it seemed that this was the unluckiest of days. Anna Hales was on her hands and sick, not only sick but near to death. Poor food, wretched sleep, bad whisky, and evil living had so torn the woman's body that at the first and even slight attempt to wean herself from the red bottle, she had collapsed and was put to bed in a fever.
Instead of growing better after the doctor came late at night, Anna began to hover in unconsciousness between life and death, as if she were to occupy indefinitely a room and bed, crowding Tota to a couch and into ill-humor.
The queenly Elvira loathed sickness. However, there seemed nothing to do but keep the woman a while or throw her into the street; and though Elvira might wish Anna would die, and hurry about it, she did not bring herself into sufficient heartlessness to have her carted off.
Two or three times she had determined to send for Hales, say, "There she is—now take the thing away!" but the good Doña had other, and even more distracting, things to think about.
She had heard of Ilona Tesla, heard of her from Monsieur Max, from Sam who was a sort of catch-all for gossip; and the doctor who came late to see Anna Hales had been the same called for Mr. Tesla. This physician did not have a very kindly feeling toward Col. Nevinson.
Col. Nevinson at last came to Elvira, but in a hurry to depart. Many important affairs were upon his hands; so in exasperation he came to her rooms, prepared to make short work in plain words of the quarrel that he expected. But the colonel, though a man of experience with a variety of women, had much to learn; and the good Doña with the first glance of greeting began to teach him some things that he did not know and had never imagined.
Elvira was dressed with care, charmingly, and she greeted him with an eager pleasantness, just as surprising to him as it was deceptive.
She smiled gaily, put out her hand, took his hand, held it and, with a sort of absent-minded air of affection, stroked the arm he still carried in the black silk.
At first he stared suspiciously and remained stiff and cold; his voice was sharply to the point.
"What is it, madam? What is it you want?"
"Want? Why, Colonel! To see you, of course!" she answered innocently. "I know, poor man, you are worked to anger by that fool mob. But don't blame me! Don't blame your Elvira. I didn't have anything to do with it—did I?"
Her dark eyes had the half-playful earnest stare of an affectionate woman.
He had come prepared to face her anger; but she appeared to know, as yet, nothing to make her angry. He felt that he had troubles enough for this day without going out of his way to break with her.
But he did say: "I thought you were angry over something. That nigger said"
"You know Sam's a fool. And I would have gone after you—to find you. I am angry! Why, Colonel dear, you haven't been near me for days! How do you think I feel, so all alone? Come, sit down."
She led him to the couch and sat beside him:
"Colonel dear, now tell me all about everything."
Patiently, she let him talk. He told of Tucks, his branded back, of the horse, of the mob's uprising; and his very recital reminded him of the pressing affairs on hand. He stood up, ready to go.
Elvira pulled him down beside her, clingingly.
"But where have you been all this time? And now you go? Just as if you were in a hurry to get away! Are you? You don't love me any more? Then go—go on" she gave him the playful push of the woman who means to cling.
He sat for another fateful moment, and her arms caressed him; her perfumed lips went to his face, hung there in a long moist kiss.
"Now, Colonel dear, where have you been? You didn't come near me yesterday. How do you think I can live if you stay away?"
Col. Nevinson pulled at his neck. His collar felt hot and tight.
"Mr. Tesla and I went out to the ranch. We had some business matters to talk over, and"
"Ah, my rancho?" asked Elvira, sweetly innocent, with a suggestion of gratitude.
"Er—yes—Cowden's."
"Business, and?" Elvira asked.
"And—and an hour after we returned Mr. Tesla was shot!"
"Yes. Wasn't it awful? That man Hales was to blame, wasn't he? Oh that Hales—strange, wasn't it, we talked of him"
"Is that her husband?" he asked.
"Oh, my Colonel, don't ask me! I—what can I know?"
He sat thoughtfully, not at all noticing the steady oblique gaze of her narrowed eyes; then she spoke with the art of the serpent:
"And Mr. Tesla's little girl? Monsieur Max said she is just a child, with a nurse. What will become of her—I wonder?"
"I don't know," said the colonel broodingly, thinking that he knew very well what would soon become of her, and of the security, honor and protection that would be hers.
"Max says she is a pretty little thing. Is she?"
"Um—yes—rather. In a way."
"What color are her eyes?"
"A kind of brown. Light brown—full of light. Almost yellow. Golden, you know."
"And her hair? Has the child pretty hair?"
"Dark and—and very pretty hair."
"Like mine?"
He looked as if appraisingly, at the jet hair of Elvira's; and with self-conscious shrewdness:
"Not nearly as beautiful as yours. No."
For that Elvira kissed him full on the mouth; then asked:
"How old is she?"
"Oh, I don't know. Very young, just a child."
"Oh, the dear little thing! I'd like to see her. Won't you bring her to see me? Today! Isn't she here? I love children. Will you?"
"Oh—ah—really—just a child and"
"And what?" Elvira asked as if teasing.
"You know what I mean. Just an innocent child and"
"And," she asked icily, drawing herself up, drawing from him. "What do you mean by that? What am I? Will it hurt this child if I look at her? Just what do you mean, sir!"
Col. Nevinson, stiffened, amazed.
"I am going," he said, standing up. "I have business—I have been here too long now."
Elvira rose up before him. "You are not going," she said fiercely, "until you tell me why I may not look at this golden-eyed, wonderful-eyed child you took out to my rancho to keep!"
"Damn Ferdinand!" cried Col. Nevinson, confessing everything in an impulsive oath.
"Ferdinand! Was he there? Have you bought Ferdinand too? Oh, I see now! It was all planned that I should know nothing! Ferdinand, even he! But you—you come here today, now lie to me, kiss me, fondle me—and yet are in a hurry to get back to that child! Oh, I know all about her. I know how much of a child she is! Cronin told where she went and who took her! Max knows her. She spent the night in his room—with him, too, I hear."
"Madam, you lie! Damn you, more respect! You lie, sir! You lie!"
"You—you dare swear at me! And who is she? What is she!"
"Madam," said Col. Nevinson fiercely, urged by a gallant respect for Ilona, and by the ungallant impulse to crush this woman who had tricked him. "Madam, I hope to have the honor of making her my wife!"
"Your wife! Oh! Then what am I to be? What of me? Your kisses and lies? What have I been made to think? "
"Madam, you know—you know that between us there has never been—you know, madam, that" Then, violent with anger for the way that she had within the hour tricked him into the very caresses for which she denounced him, "You, madam, are not fit to be any man's wife!"
"Oh-o-o-o-o-o-o-Oh!" said Elvira in one long breath, mingling astonishment and fury.
Her hand swung to her breast and the handle of the dagger appeared between her fingers, but he threw back his shoulders as if to take the blow and looked her straight in the eyes. Something so nearly like fear of him came over her that her hand dropped away from the jeweled hilt; but the shudder she felt might not have deterred her had not her head, even in that instant, been flashing with half-glimpsed thoughts of a better revenge. There was Ferdinand, who must purchase forgiveness by whatever she commanded. And Hales!
She became madly rash. With a rush she reached the door, threw it wide, pointed within.
"There—there, do you know her! That's one of your women! Know her?"
Tota, who was in the room, sprang up, frightened; but no one noticed the negress. Col. Nevinson peered angrily, but without interest, at the wasted features of the woman who lay in a fever coma, and was not aware of the use to which Elvira now put her wretchedness.
"You don't know her! No! I'll tell you—that's Anna Hales, wife of Dick Hales! He's not dead, he's here! Looking for her—and you! I got hold of her to keep him from finding her, so he would not learn about you! I did it for you! And this is how you repay me! But do you know what I'm going to do? I'll tell you! I'll send for him! I'll send for him! Yes, Señor Colonel, I'll send for somebody else too and show her how you treat your women. I'll send for that little Tesla whore"
Col. Nevinson struck her. He struck her full in the face with a blow that sent her reeling backward, then he tramped from the room.
She leaned with her back to the wall against which she had fallen and stared after him so confused with amazement, anger, hate, despair that she could not speak and for a wildly staring moment did not move.
5
Some of the Citizen leaders, and particularly Wallace B. Kern, felt that Col. Nevinson's importance should not give him immunity.
Many of the Hounds, as broken as rats that a terrier has shaken, with eager whining told and retold that Col. Nevinson had sent them to attack the greasers. Moreover, he arrogantly admitted it. That was too much like defiance to pass unchallenged.
Six of the Citizen committee, headed by Kern, moved off from the Parker House where the committee had headquarters to arrest him.
Hales, saying, "No. There's bad blood between us. It wouldn't be fair," had refused to go with them.
They happened to know at that moment where to look for the colonel, and found him near a corral, swearing at a teamster who had neglected his promise to send a wagon and team to bear Mr. Tesla's body into the country.
"You are under arrest, Colonel," said Kern.
Col. Nevinson glared at each of them in turn. He was surrounded by men, quiet and stern, who personally respected him; but this was duty.
"Why"—with many oaths—"do you arrest me?"
"We believe that you instigated the attack on the Chileans."
"Hell-and- fire, sir! I did! Not on the Chileans alone, but on all the damn greasers in California!"
"Kindly come with us, Colonel."
"Where to? What for, sir?"
"You will be placed under guard until your trial."
"You, sir, can go to hell!" said the colonel. "Brave men, you are! Six of you! On one man with a crippled arm! I repeat, sir, you can all go to hell!"
"And you, sir," said Kern, with no loss of temper, but grimly, "may swear all you like—but go you do!"
"Sir, you interrupt me in the sad duty of conveying the remains of my good friend Mr. Tesla into the country for burial. And his daughter, sir. She is under my protection. Set your trial, I'll be there! Do you think I would run like a pickpocket, blast your soul!"
"Unless you come, sir, you will be carried bodily," said Kern.
With tone that vibrated he cried—
"By , sir, the man that lays hand on me will never never—live to"
The colonel's face grew black with hot blood, and his left hand moved ominously.
Then, suddenly, his voice changed to a wrathful urgency:
"It is you, all you, who go with me, sir! Come with me. I'll show you"
The Committee, being sensible men, had no objection to letting the colonel lead the way as long as he went with them. Presently they hesitated at the direction he insisted upon, but were persuaded, and accompanied him to Baer's saloon, up the stairs and into the room above.
Tucks, having had his back anointed with oil, was shirtless and had been lying face down on the bed; but, wincing and swearing, he sprang up at the sound of many feet. Half crouching, truculently he faced them. He was naked to the waist. His hair was rumpled, his beard wild, his face thrust forward, his eyes hot; he looked like a madman.
"There, gentlemen, there! Turn 'round, Tucks! There is what those damn greasers have done to one American—my friend! What, too, they have sworn to do to me! Turn 'round, Tucks!"
"No!" Tucks snarled, and shrank back.
But Kern had stepped to one side, and behind him. In a low voice of horror he said:
"Great good God!"
Tucks turned on him savagely, and so displayed his back to the other men, who stared, swore under their breath, muttered threats, damned the greasers and, as friend to friend, asked questions of Col. Nevinson.
Then said Wallace B. Kern:
"Colonel, if any other damn fool tries to arrest you—you send for us! Is that so, boys?"
And they answered that it was.
6
Hales stood by himself at the Parker House bar, meditatively eying a glass of whisky. Elvira's Sam, after much searching, came to his elbow.
"Sah, Missus Elvira she says foh me to tell you, sah, dat Anna Hales is now sho' at her house, waitin' foh to see you, sah!"
Hales looked at him in silence as if examining a rather uninteresting but slightly unpleasant object; and Sam edged off, saying, "Ah'm sho' tellin' the truf, sah. Hones', sah!"
"You are lying," said Hales without emphasis.
"No, sah! Ah ain't, sah! Cross mah heart an' hope to die sudden, sah!"
Hales distrusted the good Doña, and did not want to see Anna; moreover he believed this yellow negro was lying. But when, Sam with a lengthy recital of how he himself had found the woman, and where, had convinced Hales, he took a second drink of whisky and went toward Doña Elvira's rooms.
Ferdinand was there. Col. Nevinson, somewhat anxiously, had hurried back to the balcony apartment where Ilona, with the patience of grief, waited through the delay of the colonel's many distractions that she might accompany her father's body on its way to the ranch for burial. He told Ferdinand not to let Ilona out of his sight, and something of why; but just as soon as the colonel himself was out of sight, Ferdinand hurried off to make his peace with the good Doña, who never forgave a man.
Elvira was sitting rigidly in a chair, and broodingly waited the coming of Hales, for whom she had sent. Her arm rested on the back of the chair; her jeweled fingers were interlaced. There was a red and black bruise on her dark cheek.
When Ferdinand entered she said not a word. He entered cheerfully, as if blown in by a merry wind, and saluting her with a gay flourishing bow, wholly ignored her steady, oblique, sinister gaze. Ferdinand knew more about the good Doña than she knew of herself.
"Oh-ho-o-oh! What a day! I have seen the faithful deserted by their good father, the devil, who lets them get caught! Tut-tut-tut! How they hang men in this wicked country!" he said in Spanish. "But for a big man who talked like a priest on fire, there would be a feast for little crows! Ah, you look sick, most beautiful of women! Is it that the stomach has had food it did not want, eh?"
"You! You treacherous beast!" She moved only her lips.
"Flower of the Sun, you are sick!"
"Sick! Yes, of you, Apple of the Gibbet."
"Now what has that damn Ferdinand done? You just tell it to me. I'll poke him in the ribs with a knife-so! Eh!"
"Why didn't you tell me the colonel had a woman at my ranch? What are you there for—to take gold from him?"
"It is sure that I will take gold from him if, like some poor men, he has too much to carry! Ah, Ferdinand's back it is so broad and strong. He helps friends and strangers to carry their gold if"
"Stop that chatter! You're not deceiving me. You can't deceive me! Why didn't you tell me when that woman came?"
"Well, I am here. She was there. Sure it is true. What of it, Moonbeam? How do I know why she comes until I find out? Saints they know things before they have time to learn them, but, no—not Ferdinand!"
Ferdinand's voice was rich as a viol; his tongue played with sound as his gifted fingers with the strings; his inflections ran from the merry overtone of jest to the resonant echo of sinister menace, and back again, all in a breath.
"Can I take your colonel by his little mustache, so! and say, 'Answer me! Already he has said to me, 'Damn you, I own this rancho!' And I come, Most Beautiful of Women, to know why, hell-and-fire as the colonel he says, if I give you my money, and you promise me—why I don't own my own rancho? Why didn't you tell me, Ferdinand, who for years and years has loved you much, that you take my money to give your colonel a little birthday gift, eh? If you give him my rancho, how but I know you give him also the permission to bring two women to my rancho? I do not know. I come to ask of you. Tell me! What is it all about? And why do you sit so like you had a cramp-sickness and look so"
And Ferdinand, who had a bigger devil in him than any of the multitude that dwelt within the good Doña, imitated her own narrow-eyed gleaming stare.
She had no way of knowing that, whatever she might do or say, his hand would not be raised against her; she felt that he was dangerous, and that he often forgot the gratitude he owed her.
"Don't look at me that way!" she said uneasily, seeing that his fingers fumbled with the handle of the long knife in his sash, a knife that she had seen him throw twenty feet into a mark half as big as the palm of her own small hand.
"Ho-o-o-o-oh!" he answered softly, and the devil in his eyes gleamed the brighter, "'tis the way you look at me, so! Why? And more why is it that your colonel owns my rancho—eh?"
She sprang up, gesturing frantically:
"He lied to me! That's why! Tricked me, fooled me"
"Ah-ah-ah," said Ferdinand in a low tone of sinister disbelief. "Any man fool you?—Bah, you try now to fool me!"
"Remember, Ferdinand"—she faced him with her queenly air—"I saved you from"
"So? And has it cost you money to feed Ferdinand and buy him what he wears, ever? No! And more than once Señor Death he has said, 'Come here, Ferdinand. You are fat and I am hungry!' And more times than you, Doña, the good God he has saved me! Now maybe I serve Him for a while as I have served you so long years, eh? I come here today, now, merry because I love the good Doña Elvira, to talk in a happy way and ask things, and you"—the growl that always alarmed her came into his tone—"you want a quarrel! Ferdinand is no dog! Well then a quarrel we will have, now! From this day, Ferdinand is his own man, no more to dance when the good Doña wiggles her finger, so! And now"
The mulatto Sam threw open the door, stepped aside, and Hales stood there.
Ferdinand, with the movement of a wild animal unexpectedly approached from behind, turned and faced Hales searchingly, looked at him from toes to head. He recognized Hales as the horseman who had come for Ilona, but before had seen him only in the night-light; now he stared into Hales' face and read it with the sure and literal knowledge of a man who, all the world over, had lived by his wits, and continued many times to live only because he could read the faces of men. Ferdinand saw in the length of a two-second glance that this man was dangerous, less evil than most, one that would stand no trifling, one who spoke straight words.
Hales in turn hardly glanced at him. With distrust and no gallantry he looked at Elvira:
"Madam, now what is it you want?"
Doña Elvira drew herself up with the hauteur of one who is wrongly injured, but answered as if nevertheless she knew that forgiveness at would be asked, and given:
"Anna Hales is here!"
Hales glanced about, not sure that he believed, even now.
"She is here, señor! I not will show you. I found her. I will brought her here. I am giving her all the care this city affords. Oh, and you should hear her tell of that man, how he drew her from you, lied about you, won her—brought her to this city, beat her, threw her aside, threw her into the street, till she dropped so low that she took the name of Ragged Mag! I found her on the waterfront—in the Red Lamb!"
Elvira sensed that even now he was still more incredulous than angered by the recital of Anna's wrongs. Exasperated by the feeling that she could not move, stir, awaken, enrage this man, she cried:
"Look, señor! Look—upon my cheek! See! He did this! He, the man you seek! When he found what I had done for her, this very day he struck me! Came here, beat me! Col. Nevinson, señor, is the man who wronged you—and he did this to me!"
"Nevinson? He did!" And at that moment Hales' low voice had in it the sound that she had ached to hear.
"Yes, yes, señor!" she answered with lowered tone, but with increase of bitterness. "Come here, señor. She is here—dying. I will show you!"
Doña Elvira, with the light step and tense hush of manner that befits one who encroaches where Death sits at the feast, went to the door, opened it gently, pushed it wide.
"There!" said Elvira in a whisper, pointing toward the thin hungry face that seemed covered with parchment, stained with a fever-glow; and the fever, the better to eat her up, kept her unconscious.
"There," said Elvira, as Hales with noiseless slowness went closer, stooping slightly to the unfamiliar features where hardly a trace of the woman he had known remained, "there is your wife! And Col. Nevinson is the man that ruined her! The man you came to find in this city!"
Hales straightened up and turned sharply, peering from under a puzzled frown at the Doña Elvira, now darkly triumphant.
"My wife!"
"Yes! Señora Hales has told me all" But a confused fear trembled through Elvira as she looked into his face. "Isn't this the woman? Isn't this Anna Hales?"
"Yes. And"—deliberately, coldly, looking hard at Elvira with a deepening of suspicion—"and I begin to see what you are up to, but"
"This isn't your wife?"
"My wife! No! She is not my wife. I said she was my sister. She was my brother's wife—and in her shame and wretchedness I would not disown her!"
"Oh, dios, dios!" said Elvira weakly, putting a hand to her face, looking at him stupidly as a spider may look at a man who has walked through the web.
"I will make arrangements at once, within a few minutes, to have this poor unfortunate removed, since your charity has in it so much that is uncharitable. And, madam, I begin to understand many things. If you are so anxious to have Col. Nevinson killed, you will have to kill him yourself. I will not do it for you!"
As Hales walked from the room without another word or glance, she roused herself, pointed after him, shouted wildly:
"Coward! You coward!"
With a bang she shut the door of the sick-room and looked about with breathless fury, like one who searches for any weapon; then came at Ferdinand, seized him, held him with one hand while a finger of the other touched the bruise of her cheek:
"You, Ferdinand! Go—tell the de Solas! Tell them! It is Nevinson they want! It is he they want! They will come right into the city after him. Oh, I know Spanish blood! Ferdinand, go! Tell them that...."
7
The city that had arisen in wrath and with cries of "To the rope! Rope!" seized a large number of the Hounds, then, to the mystification of historians, whatever their conjectures, tried these rascals with tolerance, sentenced them to inconsequential punishments, and, excepting upon a few who were deported, neglected to enforce even these mild sentences.
This first swarming of the men who were afterward to be the Vigilantes, passed almost as rapidly as it had gathered; and, some three weeks later, the newly elected alcalde, Col. John W. Geary, addressed the following statement to the city council:
- "—we are without a dollar in the public treasury, and it is to be feared the city is greatly in debt. You have neither an office for your magistrate nor any other public edifice. You are with out a single police officer or watchman, and you have not the means of confining a prisoner for an hour; neither have you a place to shelter while living, sick and unfortunate strangers who may be cast upon our shores, or to bury them when dead. Public improvements are unknown in San Francisco. In short, you are without a single requisite necessary for the promotion of prosperity, for the protection of property, or for the maintenance of order—"
But nevertheless at this time, in this wild city, the Baptists and Catholics had erected churches; the Mormons met in the schoolhouse on the Plaza, the Presbyterians, the Methodists and Congregationalists were building or preparing to build houses of worship.
And the Hounds, though there were no policemen, had fled. Mostly they scattered among mining camps where many of them, with an ease that must have astonished their simple minds after the long lawless impudence with which they pestered San Francisco, succeeded in getting themselves hanged.