Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

some, clear-eyed, boyish-faced Walters boasted himself of being an ex-trooper of Quantrell's. But he led a peaceful life peaceful life in Boise, and so far as a somewhat interested public could observe, one without reproach. He affected the garb of a hightoned sport, which at that time and place was a Prince Albert coat, light trousers, a big slouch hat, and quiet tie. The only peculiarity of his dress was the clerical choker-collar that he invariably wore a paper one, at that. But though he wore this garb, he never gambled. Though he frequented saloons he never drank to excess. Though he toiled not, in a land where all who did not live openly by their wits made at least some show of toiling, yet he had always sufficient for his needs, without lavishness. At irregular intervals he donned his old. clothes, mounted his pony, and disappeared from the ken of men for a week or two. But no one succeeded in connecting these absences with the somewhat frequent highway robberies which varied the monotony of travel over the dusty roads. Whatever his sources of supply, wherever his private mint or hidden bonanza, they remained undiscovered.

The slight mystery of his life, which made him an object of some suspicion to the mankind of his little world, rendered him irresistible to the womankind, and rare indeed was the maid who could remain quite insensible to the laughing challenge of his frank blue eyes. This mystery was only in its incipiency, when the Fourth-of-July ball, the great social event of the year, came off. This time it was Boise's turn to have the "Celebration," and Idaho City and Silver City sent down their contingents to swell the procession, crowd the restaurants, fill up the livery stables, overwork the perspiring bar-tenders, and crowd the narrow wooden sidewalks. The Fire

Company turned out, with its engine and hosecart decked with evergreens, and perched on the former, a youthful Goddess of Liberty, with flaxen curls, like fresh-planed shavings, in a row about her head, and her little heart swelled nigh to bursting with pride, as she gazed on her red-shirted, black-trousered, helmeted knights tugging in a double row at the long ropes of her chariot. The martial part of the parade was represented by a cavalry company and field battery from the Post, which was regarded with covert, and sometimes, open, hostility by the greater part of the spectators along the line of march.

There was the Orator of the Day, and the Poet, and the Reader in a barouche. There was a wonderful beer wagon surmounted by the great god Silenus and attendant nymphs and satyrs, and bearing aloft the sign of Hochelheimer's Brewery.

But dazzling and resplendent above and beyond all others were the Grand Marshal and his aids, in silken sashes and plumed hats, mounted on prancing steeds with proudly-arching necks, and beautiful wavy manes and tails that had all been carefully done up in crimps over night. Saddled steeds pawed and reared, bit at one another and lashed flies, at every hitching post in town. The élite. drove about in rockaways, the female portion carrying fringed parasols and wearing bonnets gay with artificial flowers, and wide strings tied under their chins.

[ocr errors][merged small]

time in the other nine tenths of the space.

The hoopskirt was seeing its last days of glory, and the leaders of fashion were. out in "gored" dresses, followed by a few home-made ones amongst their imitators, which had a decided tendency to sag at the seams. But the majority of the dancers of the gentler sex, young and old (and the old danced as often and joyously as the young), were quite content. with themselves in white or sprigged muslin with pink or blue sashes, or perhaps a tri-color one in honor of the occasion.

As for the men, they wore all sorts of clothes except a dress suit. That might have created an unpleasantness even in that broad-minded and tolerant assemblage. The ball took place in a great tent borrowed from the Post, and erected over a floor laid by the committee for the occasion. Charlie Walters, in an irreproachable costume, was floor manager, and set his quadrilles and blew his ivory whistle with such grace, and waltzed so very, very well, that a rustle passed over even that exclusive knot at the upper end of the room when he turned that way on partner bent. However, However, Walters was not at all dazzled by these marks of condescension, and more than one noticed that he saved most of his waltzes for one of the white muslin brigade, to whom he had been introduced for the first time that evening.

Little Susie Robins was a pretty, rather delicate-looking blonde just on the verge of seventeen. She was rather of the sandy type, with a row of little brown freckles across the bridge of her nose under her gray eyes. But notwithstanding the freckles and the somewhat illmade muslin, girded with a red and white sash which proclaimed to all and sundry her Southern sympathies, she was decidedly pretty, and her waltzing could not have been improved upon.

Walters saw her home that night. Her little history he already knew. Her life had not been a cloudless one, and accounted for a suggestion of gravity in her demeanor that lent her an appearance of refinement unusual amongst her compeers. Six or seven years previous to the date of this true narrative she had come into the country with her mother and father on top of the load in a prairie schooner. The father had preempted a a ranch fifty miles from Boise at the foot of the War Eagle Mountain, where he had the first use of a little stream which issued out of a cañon, a precious possession in that thirsty land.

Susie was as happy as the day was long, romping with the ill-favored ranch dogs, chasing the calves, counting the little chickens to be sure none had got away since they were counted last time, and watching the freight wagons or livery teams toiling or trotting across the sandy desert and climbing past up into the cañon on the way to and fro between Boise and Silver City. They always stopped to water at the trough in front of her father's door, and sometimes one offered him a two-bit cigar, or handed him the flask that came out of some handy pocket at such times. Always they had a little joke with blonde-headed Susie, standing open-eyed in the door way, and not infrequently a big red apple or a bag of candy was brought with forethought from town for "Robins's little girl." Then, could she not follow her daddy about, chatting to him ceaselessly as he made irrigating ditches or dug post-holes; and later on, helping him guide the rivulets about the roots of the newly planted fruit trees? But that was an exciting occupation; to chase refractory rills and dam them up; to turn them right about face, and set them dribbling where they were wanted, and to keep them out of gopher holes! But

her mother did not care for all these delights, and every day grew more silent and weary-eyed, looking out over the brownish-yellow desert, with the heat glimmer dancing above it, broken. only by a green line where the cottonwoods grew along the Snake, twenty miles away on the road to Boise.

Then one day when her daddy was away a black-mustachioed man came along in a buggy with a high-stepping pair of bays, and Susie and her mother, dressed in their best, got in with him at the watering trough and were driven away. Then there was a time of strangeness and confusion, her mother sometimes very gay and loud-laughing, and sometimes crying, but always dressed up and doing no work. Then there was a crowded room, hot and badly ventilated, with men talking loudly at one another and to another man who sat up above them behind a big desk. Her father was there, stern looking and yet strangely bowed and broken-looking too. Lots of people said things to the man at the desk about both her father and her mother, and she knew not one of them was true; and yet when they asked her some questions she only seemed to make everything worse by her answers. The end of it was, that her mother rushed to her with wild words that she could not understand, and was taken away out of the room by five or six people, crying and screaming hysterically. Then her daddy took her by the hand so sternly she did not dare resist or ask questions, and led her out and gave her some supper, and then put her in his farm wagon and drove her down the cañon, home. She never had seen her mother again, and once or twice when she had asked her daddy about her, he had answered in a way that silenced her at once. Since that time she had stayed mostly in Boise, going to school and boarding

around with this one and that, her own mistress pretty much, even when she went out to the ranch at times and kept house for her father for two or three months. Knowing it all, Walters must have wondered how she could have grown up so modest and maidenly. I think the scamp had a tender spot for her in what answered for his heart; for he became her loyal-seeming knight from the hour they met, and it was not many months before it was understood they were engaged.

As for Susie, she adored her lover, with his fine raiment and bantering ways, for Charley jested always. Sentiment he certainly had none, and nothing was either too grim or too sacred for his lightly cynical mirth to blister it in passing. But then, many people thought that just "his way," the way of a boy that liked to vaunt his experience of all things, as boys do. While many people fancied his methods of gaining a livelihood might not bear too close scrutiny, I do not believe any of us gave him credit for being a thorough-paced villain. Some of those who knew him best, however, as the sequel showed, had more belief in the serviceable quality of his moral callosity.

A year or more had passed away since his début among us, when one morning I chanced to be sitting in the justice's office, "swapping yarns" with Judge Bill and two or three other choice spirits, as Susie Robins passed by.

"A pretty girl," said Bryant, who was Uncle Sam's internal revenue collector there in those days.

"Too pretty and too good to throw herself away on that scamp of a Walters," responded Judge Bill with some warmth. "They are to be married in a few weeks, I hear."

"What does he do for a living, anyway?" queried Bryant.

"What does he do?" answered Judge Bill. "He brands mavericks, gathers in any and everything that's left lying around loose; and for sure, though nobody can prove it, is in with Simpson at the Ferry, and old Robins himself, and two or three others, at every express robbery and underground transaction that's going on through the whole country from here to Winnemucca. He says he is going to buy out Robins and go to ranching with Susie. A nice gang they are! And I am sorry for Susie, for she is too good to be mixed up with such an outfit."

Hello!" said someone at this point, "speaking of angels," and Simpson himself walked in, accompanied by the sheriff. They both had an air of repressed excitement, and Simpson looked tired; and no wonder, for as it turned out, he had ridden thirty miles since. daybreak.

"What's up?" said Judge Bill. "Lots is up," returned the sheriff. "Simpson here will tell you the yarn."

"I want a warrant for Charlie Walters," blurted out Simpson, "for the murder of Dick Robins last night."

"What?"-" How?". "When?" "Where ?" -"What for?" came in an astounded chorus from his hearers.

"I don't know for sure how or when," said Simpson, "but he done it sure, and I can show you where."

"Nonsense!" said Bryant. "I saw Waters at the Overland Hotel dance myself last night with Susie."

"The hell you did!" retorted Simpson. "He never left my place till nigh sundown last evening. Did you see old Dick Robins too?"

Bryant admitted that he had not, and added that Walters had come in late, after eleven perhaps.

"You bet," said Simpson, "and he had her father's blood on his hands,

while he was dancing with her, the coldblooded scoundrel. I know it as well as if I saw it."

"Sit down! sit down!" said Judge Bill, and let us find out what you are at. I'll issue no warrant for a man for murder without some evidence better than suspicion."

Thus adjured, Simpson sat down, took off his hat and mopped his brow, and began his tale; which, stripped of profanity and the digressions caused by question and interruption, amounted to this. But before beginning to relate it, it is imperative that the reader should understand somewhat, the topography of the country. After crossing the Boise River, about half a mile out of Boise, one climbed up a bench and stood on an alkali-seared tableland, a horned-toad paradise, which stretched away fifty miles to the foot of War Eagle Mountain. A little more than midway of the distance the sluggish, umber-brown current of the Snake cut a diagonal line across the waste, and where the road from Boise to Silver City crossed it, there was a swing-ferry. Here, in a little patch reclaimed from the desert by water drawn up from the river by a wheel, Simpson held sway. Twenty miles farther on, lay Robins's ranch at the mountain's foot. Here the stage road entered the cañon and climbed up ten miles farther to Silver City, then a busy mining town.

Into the Ferry old Dick Robins had ridden the night but one before, saying he was off tomorrow for Kansas. He had sold the ranch to Walters for three thousand dollars, and was going with him to Boise the next day to conclude the trade, get his money, say goodby to Susie, and take the stage for Salt Lake City; and thence on to Kansas to buy a band of cattle to drive back.

"I said to old Robins then," quoth

Simpson, "You know as well as I do Dick, that Charlie Walters hain't got no three thousand dollars to pay fer no ranch. He's goin to bunco yer some way.' But old Robins thought he was too durned smart to be buncoed by nobody. So the next morning I hitched up, and me and my wife, we druv up to Silver City to do some tradin', leavin' Dick to take care of the Ferry. Long 'bout two o'clock when we wuz 'bout half down the grade comin' back, who shud overtake us but Charlie Walters, in a C-spring buggy, drivin' them blacks of Hank Summers 's, the very best livery team in the Territory. He pulled up, and insisted on my wife a gettin' out of the wagon, and ridin' in the buggy with him. My wife don't like Walters, and she'd a good deal ruther not dun it, but we didn't neither of us want to offend him, so she climbed in with him, and they druv on. When they'd got down out of the cañon and passed Robins's ranch a ways, Walters see a chickenhawk a-sittin' on a grease wood, and he out with his six-shooter, an' says, 'I wonder if the horses 'll stand shootin'?'

"My wife was awful scart of the horses and the gun both, and she begged him not to shoot; but he only laffed at her, and said there wa' n't no team that he could n't handle, and up and takes a shot at the hawk. Wall, them horses nigh upset the buggy fust jump, but Walters kep' as cool as a cowcumher, a smilin' all the time, and got 'em down pretty quick, and says, 'I told yer they could n't get away with me.'

"Wall, he and Dick stayed to supper, an long 'bout sun-down, they hitched up to drive into Boise. I took 'casion durin' the afternoon to take Dick off to one side an' tell him he was a damn fool fer ridin' in with Walters. Sez I, 'Wait til mornin' an ride yer own hoss in an take the day to finish up yer trade. One day VOL. xxvi.-13.

more or less don 't make no such all-fired diffrunce to you.'

"But he on'y got mad. "Any budy 'd think you wuz in the plot, sez he, laffin', 'an wuz a goin back on yer pal. I never saw no harm in Charlie Walters that yer shud accuse him of wantin' to murder a man. An' any way, what for? I ain't got no money on me, nor won't have, till I get it from Charlie in Boise.' "So off they went. When they started, Walters made Robins get in on the right hand side of the buggy; said he had strained his wrist with the fool hosses, when they cut up in the afternoon, and that he was goin' to drive lef' handed. When they were gone, my wife looked at me, and says she, 'There's some deviltry goin' on! There ain't nothin' the matter with his wrists, and he's got on Dick's blind side, with his pistol arm next him.'

"You all know, in course, that Robins had a glass eye in the lef' side of his head. Wall, the more me an my wife talked over it in the night, the less we liked it, and this mornin' I started off fust streak of dawn and came to Boise. An if there's anybody in Boise that's seen Dick Robins I can't find him, and he did n't go off on the stage last night. And what's more to the purpose, I followed them buggy tracks all the way in, and about half way between here and the Ferry I kin show yer the place where them hosses cut up like the devil, and took a turn out into the sage brush like all possessed. An that's the spot where Charlie Walters shot my old pard, you bet!"

We all put our heads together after this narration, you may be sure. Judge Bill was very loath to brand a man with murder on no better evidence than such as was adduced so far, and it was finally agreed that the warrant should be issued, placed in the hands of the sheriff, and

« AnteriorContinuar »