Life Amongst the Modocs: Unwritten History/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XL
u A MAN FOR BREAKFAST."
OW that we have got a Judge," said Sandy one day, u why not put him to work?"
There had been a pretty general feel ing against those who took part in the murder of the Indians the last winter kept alive by the miners, and Sandy, who was always boiling over on some subject, and was brimfull of energy, went and laid the case before the Judge and instituted a prosecution. Here was a sensation! The Court sent a constable to arrest a prisoner with a verbal warrant, and the man came into Court; the Howlin Wilderness, followed by half the town, gave verbal bonds for his appearance next Saturday, and the Court adjourned to that day.
Sides were taken at once. The idlers of course all taking sides with the prisoner ; the miners mostly going the other way. Sandy took it upon himself to prosecute. He could hardly have been in earnest,
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yet he seemed to be terribly so. The assassins were active in getting evidence out of the way, making friends with the Judge, and intimidating all who dared express sympathy with the Indians. The miners, with the exception of Sandy, were rather in different. They knew very well that this weak little egotist would only make a farce of the affair, even though he had capacity to enter a legal com mittal. The giant Sandy, however, held his own against all the town and promised a lively time.
The Indian boy came home that night beaming with delight. His black eyes flashed like the eyes of a cat in the dark. I had thought him incapable of excitement. He had always seemed so passive and sullen that we had come to believe he had no life or passion in him.
He talked to Paquita eagerly, and made all kinds of gestures ; put his fingers about his neck, stabbed himself with an imaginary knife, threw himself to wards the fire, and shot with an imaginary gun at an imaginary prisoner. Would he be hung, stabbed, burnt or shot? The boy was so eager and excited, that once or twice he broke out into pretty fair English at some length, the first I had ever heard him utter.
The Doctor, as I said, was unpopular. In fact r doctors usually are in the mines. Whether this is because nine-tenths of those who are there are frauds and impostors, or whether it is because miners give open expression to a natural dislike that all men feel for the man to whose ministry we all have to
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submit ourselves some day, I do not pretend to say.
Even the Indian boy disliked the Doctor bitterly, and one day flew at him, without any cause, and clutched a handful of hair from his thin and half-bald head. The Judge, too, disliked the Doctor, and only the evening before the trial some one, passing the cabin, heard the Judge call the Doctor a fool to his teeth.
That was a feather in the Judge s hat, in the eyes of The Forks, but a bad sign for the Doctor. The Doctor should have knocked him down, said The Forks.
The day of trial came, and Sandy, in respect for the Court and the occasion, buttoned up his flannel shirt, hid his hairy bosom, and gave over his gin and peppermint during all the examination.
The prisoner was named " Spades." Whether it was because he looked so like the black, squatty Jack of Spades I do not know; but I should say he was indebted to his likeness to that right or left bower for his name.
There was not the slightest doubt that he had deliberately murdered two or three Indian children, butchered them, as they crouched on the ground and tried to hide under the lodges, with his knife, on the day of the massacre ; but there were grave doubts as to what the Judge would do in the case, for he had been pretty plainly told that he must not hold the man to answer.
"A MAN FOB BREAKFAST." 139
A low, wretched man was this the lowest in the camp ; but he stood between others of a more respect able character and danger. His fortune in the matter was a prophecy of theirs. The prisoner was nearly drunk as he took his seat on a three-legged stool before the Judge in the Howlin Wilderness. He sat with his hat on. In fact, miners, in the matter of -Wearing hats, would make first-class Israelites.
" Ef I ain t out o this by dark," said Spades, as he jerked his head over his shoulder and spirted a stream of amber at the back-log, u I ll sun some body s moccasins, see if I don t." And he looked straight at the Judge, who settled down uneasily in his seat, and placed his beaver hat on the table be tween himself and the prisoner as a sort of barricade.
Two or three gamblers, good enough men in their way, acted as attorneys for Spades. They at once turned themselves loose in plausible, if not eloquent, speeches against the treacherous savage. Sandy now introduced his witness for the prosecu tion. This man told how Spades had butchered the babes down on the Klamat, in detail; and then others were called and did the same. It was a clear case, and Sandy was delighted with his prosecution.
The other side did not ask any questions. The attorneys whispered a moment among themselves, and then one of them got up, took the stand, and gravely asserted that on that day, and at the very moment described, he was playing poker with Spades at two bits a corner in the Howlin Wilderness. Then
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another arose with the same account ; and then another. It was the clearest alibi possible.
Sandy said nothing, and the case was closed. He looked black across the table at the defence, and then went up to the bar, and called for gin and pepper mint, alone.
This was the first attempt to introduce law prac tice at The Forks, and no wonder that it did not work well, and that some things were forgotten. All were new hands Court, counsel, and nearly all present, here witnessed their first trial.
Poor Sandy had forgotten to have his witnesses sworn, and the Court had not thought of it.
The testimony being all in, the Court proceeded solemnly to sum up the case. In conclusion, it said, " You will observe that, as a rule, the further we go from the surface of things the nearer, we get to the bottom." This brought cheers and waving of hats from the Howlin Wilderness, and the Court re peated, " I am free to say that the Court has gone diligently into the depths of this case, and that, as a rule, the further you get from the surface of things the nearer you get to the bottom. The case looked dark indeed against the prisoner at first; but the Court has gone to the bottom of the matter, and he is now white as snow."
u Hear! hear! hear!" shouted a man from Sydney, who always hobbled a little as if he dragged a chain when he walked.
" Snow is good ! " said a miner between his
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teeth, as he looked at the black visage of the prisoner.
" You see," continued the Judge, u that things are often not so black as they first appear, particularly if they are only fairly washed."
" Particularly if they are whitewashed !" said Sandy, as he swallowed his gin and peppermint and left the saloon in disgust.
All this time a tawny little figure had stood back in the corner unseen, perhaps, by any one. It was Klamat with his club. He had watched with the eyes of a hawk the whole proceeding. He had drank in every sentence, and had never once taken his eyes from the Court or the prisoner.
At last, when the Judge decreed the prisoner free, and the Court adjourned, and all ranged themselves in a long, single file before the bar, calling out " Cocktail," " Tom-and-Jerry," " Brandy-smash," " Gin-sling," "Lightning straight," "Forty rod," and so on, he slipped out, looking back over his shoulders, with his thin lips set, and his hand clutch ing a knife under his robe.
That evening the Judge was again belabouring the Doctor with his tongue, which had been made more than ordinarily loose and abusive by the single-file drilling process that had been repeated at the Howlin Wilderness in the celebration of Spades acquittal.
" That little Doctor 11 put a bug in his soup for him yet, see f he don t," said some one that evening
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at the saloon, when the man who had heard the Judge s abuse had finished reciting it.
" All right, let him," said a man, who stood stirring his liquor with a spoon, in gum-boots and with a gold- pan under his left arm. " All right, let him;" said the bearded sovereign, as he threw back his head and opened his mouth. "It s not my circus, nor won t be my funeral;" and he wiped his beard and went out saying to himself:
" Fight dog, and fight bar, Thar s no dog of mine thar."
The Prince, with that clear common-sense which always came to the surface, had foreseen the whole affair so far as the trial was concerned, and had remained at home hard at work in the claim ; I told him all that had happened, and he only shrugged his shoulders.
The next morning the butcher shouted down from the cabin as he weighed out the steaks : u A man for breakfast up in town, I say ! a man for breakfast up in town, and 111 bet you can t guess who it is."
"Who?"
"The Judge!"
The man had been stabbed to death not far from his own door, some time in the night, perhaps just before retiring. There were three distinct mortal wounds in the breast. There had evidently been a short, hard struggle for life, for in one hand he clutched a lock of somebody s hair. There was no mistake about the hair. That long, soft, silken, half
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curling, yellow German hair of the Doctor s, that grew on the sides of his naked head there was not to be found another lock of hair like this in the mountains.
The dead man had not been robbed. That was a point in the Doctor s favour. He had been met in the front, had not been poisoned, or stabbed or shot in the back ; that was another very strong point in the Doctor s favour.
In some of the northern states of Mexico, particu larly at Guadalajara, I remember some years ago it was a pretty good defence for a man charged with murder, if he could prove that he had not plundered the dead, and that he had met him from the face like a man. These Mexicans held that man is not natu rally vicious or bloodthirsty, and will not take life without cause : that if he did not murder a man to rob him, he had some secret and perhaps sufficient wrong to redress, to at least give some show of right ; then if, added to these, he met his man like a man and he came off victor, although he slew the man, the law for that would hardly take his life.
Thorp, was smnptln iig of this feeling in the camp lere had been an alcalde at The loubt the Doctor had been at
once arrested ; but as there was nothing of the kind nearer than a day s ride, nothing was done. Besides, the Judge had made himself particularly odious to the miners, and gamblers are the last men in the world to meddle with the law. They settled their
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suits with steel across a table, or with little bull-dog deringers around a corner. Sometimes they have a six-shooter war dance in the streets, if the misunder standing is one in which many parties are concerned.
As a rule, a funeral in the mines is a mournful thing. It is the saddest and most pitiful spectacle I have ever seen. The contrast of strength and weak ness is brought out here in such a way that you must turn aside or weep when you behold it. To see those strong, rough men, long-haired, bearded and brown, rugged and homely-looking, with some thing of the grizzly in their great, awkward move ments, now take up one of their number, straightened in the rough pine box, in his miner s dress, and carry him up, up on the hill in silence it is sad beyond expression.
He has come a long way, he has journeyed by land or sea for a year, he has toiled and endured, and denied himself all things for some dear object at home, and now after all, he must lie down in the forests of the Sierras, and turn on his side and die. No one to kiss him, no one to bless him, and say u good-bye," only as a woman can, and close the weary eyes, and fold the hands in their final rest : and then at the grave, how awkward how silent ! How they would like to look at each other and say something, yet how they hold down their heads, or look away to the horizon, lest they should meet each other s eyes. Lest some strong man should see the tears that went silently down from
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the eyes of another over his beard and on to the leaves.
But the Judge had no such burial as this. Sandy was on a spree, and the gamblers placed Spades at the head of the funeral. They had no respect for the man and kept away. Spades was chief mourner, and the poor little man was laid alone on the hill side, with hardly enough in attendance to do the last offices for the dead.
That night Spades entered the Howlin Wilder ness wearing a beaver hat. Sandy saw this, set down the glass of gin and peppermint untouched, and went straight up to the man. He seized him by the throat and shook him till his teeth smote and ground together like quartz rocks in a feeder. Then he picked up the hat reverently and respectfully as his condition would allow, and laid it gently on the roaring pine-log fire. That was the last of the first beaver hat of Humbug.
The Doctor appeared out of place in this camp from the first. Every one seemed to feel that perhaps no one felt it more keenly than himself.
There are people, it seems to me, who go all through life looking for the place where they belong and never finding it. This to me is a very sad sight. They seem to fit in no place on top of the earth.
The general feeling of dislike that had always been observed, now became one of contempt. No one noticed or spoke to him now. He came to hold
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146 "A MAN FOR BREAKFAST."
down his head very soon, and to shun people in stinctively since they seemed to wish to shun him.
I am bound to confess, right here, that after this murder, when the whole camp seemed turned against this shy, shrinking, silent man, when he was despised by all, when no one would share the path with him, but would make him stand aside and leave the trail as if he had been an Indian or a Chinaman, I began to sympathize with him. When the world pointed its finger and set the mark of Cain upon the man, I began to like him.
This, you say, seems to you remarkable. It is certainly remarkable, or I should not trouble myself to mention it.
There was now an expression in this man s face that I had not seen before. A sort of weary, tired look it was, that was pitiful. An idea took possession of me that he had grown tired in his journey from place to place in the world, looking for the place where he belonged, for a sort of niche where he would fit in, and which he had never yet found.
There are men who sit in a community like a centre gem in a cluster of diamonds, and who cannot be taken away without deranging and marring the whole. The place of such a man is vacant till the last one of the cluster of which he forms the centre goes down in the dust.
There are others, again, who grow on the side or even in the centre of a community, like a great wart or wen. They sap its strength, they stop its growth,
A MAN FOE BREAKFAST: U7
they poison it thoroughly, and it dies : a miserable, contemptible community, all through that one bad man.
But the Doctor was neither of these. He had never yet found his place, had never yet taken root or hold anywhere, but had been blown or rolled or thrown or pitched or shuttle-cocked about, it seemed to me, from the beginning of his life ; whenever that may have been. A sort of sour, dried- up apple, that no one would eat, yet an apple that no one would care to pitch out of the window.
I had always hated and feared the man till now. The universal dislike, however, aroused a sort of antagonism in my nature, that always has, and I expect always will, come to the surface on such occasions on the side of the poor or much despised, perfectly regardless of propriety, self-interest, or any consideration whatever.
If a man has succeeded and is glad, let him go his way. What should I have to do with him? My lot and my life thus far have been with the poor and the lonely, and so shall be to the end. They can under stand me.
And maybe, often, there is a kind of subtle wisdom in this view of men. I think it is born of the fact that your ostentatious, prosperous man, your showy rich man of America, is so very, very poor, that you do not care to call him your neigh bour. It is true he has horses and houses, and land and gold, but these horses and houses, and
148 "A MAN FOR BREAKFAST.
lands and coins, are all in the world he has. When he dies these will all remain and the world will lose nothing whatever. His death will not make even a ripple in the tide of life. His family, whom he has taught to worship gold, will forget him in their new estates. In their hearts they will be glad that he is gone. They will barter and haggle with the stone-cutter toiling for his bread, and for a starve-to-death price they will lift a marble shaft above his head with an iron fence around it typical, cold, and soulless !
Poor man, since he took nothing away that one could miss, what a beggar he must have been ! The poor and unhappy never heard of him : the world has not lost a thought. Not a note missed, not a word was lost in the grand, sweet song of the universe when he died.
Save us from such men. America is full of them. She boils over with them in a sort of annual eruption. She throws them over the sea into abbeys, and sacred places, with their hats on; they are howling, hoarser than jackals, up and down the Nile and over and away towards Jerusalem.
It was remarkable how suddenly the Indian children sprung up with the summer. No one could have recognized in this neat, modest, sensitive girl, and this silent, savage-looking boy, who sometimes looked almost a man, the two starved, naked little creatures of half a year before.
There was a little lake belted by wild red roses
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-and salmon berries, and fretted by overhanging ferns under the great firs that shut out the sun save in little spars and bars of light that fell through upon a bench of the hills ; a sort of lily pond, only half a pistol shot across, at the bottom of a waterfall, and clear as sunshine itself. Here Paquita would go often and alone to pass her idle hours. I chanced to see her there on the rim, walking against the sun and looking into the water as she moved forward, now and then back, across her shoulder, as a maiden in a glass preparing for a ball. She had first been made glad with her first new dress red, and decorated with ribbons, made gay and of many colours. The poor child was studying herself in the waters.
This was not vanity ; no doubt there was a deal of satisfaction, a sort of quiet pride, in this, but it was something higher, also. A desire to study grace, to criticize her movements in this strange and to her lovely dress, and learn to move with the most perfect propriety. She practised this often. The finger lifted sometimes, the head bowed, then the hands in rest and the head thrown back, she would walk back and forth for hours, contemplating herself and catching the most graceful motion from the water.
What a rich, full, and generous mouth was hers frank as the noon-day ! Beware of people with small mouths, they are not generous. A full, rich mouth, impulsive and passionate, is the kind of mouth tp
trust, to believe in, to ask a favour of, and to give kind words.
There are as many kinds of mouths as there are crimes in the catalogue of sins. There is the mouth for hash ! thick-lipped, coarse, and expressionless, a picket of teeth behind with bread about the roots. Bah! Then there is the thin-lipped, sour-apple mouth, sandwiched in between a sharp chin and thin nose. Look out!
There are mischievous mouths, ruddy and full of fun, that you would like to be on good terms with if you had time, and then there is the rich, full mouth, with dimples dallying and playing about it like ripples in a shade, half sad, half glad a mouth to love. Such was Paquita s. A rose, but not yet opened ; only a bud that in another summer would unfold itself wide to the sun.