With Hoops of Steel

Judge Harlin shot at Mead a surprised look, hesitated an instant, and then nodded approval. Tuttle and Ellhorn looked at him in open-mouthed, open-eyed amazement for a moment, then dropped their pistols to their holsters and stepped back. A sudden hush fell over the crowd, which waited expectantly, no one moving.

“I think Jim Halliday is here,” Mead said quietly. “He has my word. He can come and take me and there shall be no trouble, if he don’t try to take my gun.”

A stout, red-haired young man worked his way forward through the crowded aisle to the platform and took a paper from his pocket. Mead glanced at it, said “All right,” and the two walked away together. The crowd in the hall quickly poured out after them. Tuttle, his lips white and trembling, looked after Mead’s retreating figure and his huge chest began to heave and his big blue eyes to fill with tears. He turned to Ellhorn, his voice choking with sobs:

“Emerson Mead goin’ off to jail with Jim Halliday! Nick, why didn’t he let us shoot? He needn’t have been arrested! Here was a good chance to clean up more’n half his enemies, and he wouldn’t let us do it!” He looked at Ellhorn in angry, regretful grief, and the tears dropped over his tanned cheeks. “Say, Nick,” he went on, lowering his voice to a hoarse whisper, “you-all don’t think he was afraid, do you?”

“Sure, and I don’t,” Ellhorn replied promptly. “I reckon Emerson Mead never was afraid of anybody or anything.”

“Well, I’m glad you don’t,” Tom replied, his voice still shaking with sobs. “I couldn’t help thinkin’ when he kept tellin’ us not to shoot, that maybe he was afraid, with all those guns in front and only us four against ’em, and I said to myself, ‘Good Lord, have I been runnin’ alongside a coward all these years!’ And I was sure sick for a minute. But I guess it was just his judgment that there’d better not be any shootin’ just now.”

Ellhorn looked over the empty hall with one eye shut. “Well, I reckon there would have been a heap o’ dead folks in this room by now if we-all had turned loose.”

“About as many as we-all had cartridges,” and Tuttle glanced at their well-filled belts. He was silent a moment, while he wiped his eyes and blew his nose, and his sobs gradually ceased. “No, Emerson couldn’t have been afraid. Though I sure thought for a minute I’d have to quit him. But you’re right, Nick. Emerson ain’t afraid of anything, livin’ or dead. It was just his judgment. And Emerson’s got powerful good judgment, too. I ought to have known better than to think anything else. But, Lord! I did hate to see that measly crowd sneakin’ out of here alive!”

CHAPTER V

The next morning there were only faint traces of the excitement of the day before. Men began to cross Main street from one side to the other, at first with cautious, apprehensive glances that swept the hostile territory and penetrated open doors and windows, but, as the day wore quietly on, with increasing confidence and unconcern. At noon Colonel Whittaker and Pierre Delarue walked over to the Palmleaf saloon, and while they clinked the ice in their mint juleps, good-natured and smiling, they leaned on the bar and chatted with the two or three Democrats who were in the room. An hour or so later, Judge Harlin strolled across to the White Horse saloon and called for a whisky straight. Then all Las Plumas knew that the war was over and went about its usual affairs as amiably as if the day before had never been.

At the breakfast table Pierre Delarue told his daughter about the mass-meeting, its balked determination to lynch Emerson Mead, and Mead’s subsequent arrest.

“But, Father, how could they be so sure that Mr. Mead killed him? Did they have any evidence?”

“Ah,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders protestingly, “you women never understand such things! Because Mead is a handsome young man and looks good-natured, you think he can’t possibly be a murderer. But it is well known that he had killed more than one man before he murdered poor Whittaker, and he is notorious as one of the worst cattle thieves in the southwest.”

“Father! These are dreadful things! Do you know them to be true?”

She looked across the table at him with horror in her face and eyes. Delarue considered her indulgently.

“Everybody knows them to be true. There is plenty of proof.”

“Then why hasn’t he been arrested and tried and – punished?”

“That is what many are saying now – why has he not been punished long before this? People have been lenient with him for a long time, but he has at last reached the end of his career. They are now determined that a stop shall be put to his crimes and that he shall suffer the punishment he has so long deserved.”

Marguerite was accustomed to having the remnants of her father’s down-town speeches served up at home, and her cooler judgment had learned not to put much dependence upon them. She gave a perfunctory assent and made another effort to reach facts.

“Yes, Father, it is certainly very dreadful that such things should be allowed to go unpunished. But did any one see him stealing the Fillmore Company’s cattle, and do they really know that he killed Mr. Whittaker?”

“The proof is as clear as any unprejudiced person need want. Will Whittaker and some of his men caught Mead in the very act of driving into his own herd a steer plainly marked with their brand. They stopped him, and he foolishly tried to crawl out of his predicament by accusing them of driving the branded steer into his herd. A most absurd story! They had a quarrel, and Mead threatened to kill Whittaker. Immediately after that Will disappeared and has not been seen since. Evidently, he has been killed, and there is no one except Mead, who had threatened to kill him, who could possibly have had any motive for murdering him. The evidence may be circumstantial, but it is conclusive. Besides, if Mead had not known that the case against him was complete, he would not have given himself up last night as he did. And if he had not done so he would certainly have been lynched. The people were thoroughly aroused, and it was impossible to control their indignation.”

A little shiver ran through Marguerite’s frame and she turned away, looking much disturbed. Her father patted her head indulgently. “There, there, my dear child, these things do not concern you in the least. Don’t trouble yourself about public affairs.”

He hurried down-town and she sat alone, a little frown on her forehead and her mouth drooping, as she thought: “I can not believe he is a thief and a murderer, without more evidence than this. And still – how can it be that so many men are so sure of his guilt that – and he is in jail now – Oh, a thief and a murderer!”

She hurried from the room calling, “Paul! Paul!” The boy ran in from the veranda and she caught him in her arms and pressed him to her bosom, kissing him over and over again and calling him her darling, her treasure, and all the dear names with which womankind voices its love, and at last, sobbing, buried her face in his flaxen curls. The child put his arms about her head and patted her cheek and said, “Poor sister! Poor Daisy!” until, frightened by her emotion, he too began to cry. The necessity of soothing and comforting him gave her that distraction which has been woman’s chief comfort since woman first had trouble. But her face was still sad and anxious when Wellesly appeared on the veranda in the late afternoon.

Albert Wellesly, who lived in Denver, disliked very much the occasional visits to Las Plumas which his financial interests made necessary. He was still on the under side of thirty, but his business associates declared that he possessed a shrewdness and a capacity that would have done credit to a man of twice his years. Possibly people not infatuated with commercial success might have said that his ability was nothing more than an unscrupulous determination to grab everything in sight. Whatever it was, it had made him remarkably successful. The saying was common among those who knew him that everything he touched turned to gold. They also prophesied that in twenty years he would be one of the financial giants of the country. Las Plumas bored him to desperation, but on this occasion he thought it would be the part of wisdom to stay longer than had been his first intention. As long as the town was feverish with excitement he found it endurable. But when the dullness of peace settled over the streets again he walked about listlessly, wondering how he could manage to get through the day. At last he thought of Miss Delarue.

“That’s so!” he inwardly exclaimed. “I can go and find out if the English girl is in love with this handsome big fellow who has been stealing my cattle. I suppose it will be necessary for me to drink a cup of tea, but she will amuse me for an hour.”

Marguerite Delarue’s friends always thought of her and spoke of her as English, notwithstanding her French paternity. For her appearance and her temperament she had inherited from her English mother, who had given her also English training. Miss Delarue laughed at the forlorn dejection of Wellesly’s face and figure.

“My face is a jovial mask,” he gravely told her. “You should see the melancholy gloom that shrouds my mind.”

“I hope nothing has happened,” she exclaimed, with sudden alarm.

“That’s just the trouble, Miss Delarue. It’s because nothing does happen here, and I have to endure the aching void, that I am filled with such melancholy.”

“Surely there was enough excitement yesterday and last night.”

“Ah, yesterday! That was something like! But it was yesterday, and to-day the deadly dullness is enough to turn the blood in one’s veins to mud!”

“Then everything is quiet down-town? There is no more danger of trouble?”

“There is no danger of anything, except that every blessed person in the place may lie down in his tracks and fall into a hundred years’ sleep. I assure you, Miss Delarue, the town is as peaceful as the plain out yonder, and birds in their little nests are not nearly so quiet as are the valiant warriors of Las Plumas.”

“Oh, that is good! I am very glad, on my father’s account. He is so aggressive in his opinions that whenever there is any excitement of this kind I am anxious about him until the trouble is over.” She hesitated a moment, her lips trembling on the verge of further speech, and he waited for her to go on. “Mr. Wellesly,” she said, a note of uncertainty sounding in her voice, “you are not prejudiced by the political feeling which colors people’s opinions here. I wish you would tell me what you think about this matter. Do you believe Mr. Mead has killed Will Whittaker?”

Wellesly noted her earnest expression and the intentness of her voice and pose, and he decided at once that this was not mere curiosity. He paused a moment, looking thoughtful. His keen, brilliant eyes were bent on her face.

“It’s a hard question you’ve asked me, Miss Delarue. One does not like to decide against a man in such serious accusations unless he can be sure. The evidence against Emerson Mead, in this murder case, is all circumstantial, it is true, but, at least to me, it is strongly convincing.” His eyes were almost closed, only a strip of brilliant gray light showing between their lids, but he was watching her narrowly. “We know that he has been stealing cattle from us. We have found many bearing our brand among his herds. Our men have even caught him driving them into his own bands. In fact, there is no doubt about this matter. Emerson Mead is a cattle thief of the wiliest sort.” He paused a moment, noting the horrified expression on her downcast face. But she did not speak, and he went on:

“About this murder, if murder it is, of course nobody knows anything with certainty. But in my judgment there is only one tenable theory of Will Whittaker’s disappearance, and that is, that he was murdered and his body hidden. Mead is the only enemy he was known to have, and Mead had threatened to kill him. The evidence, while, of course, not conclusive, is shockingly bad for Mead.”

She looked away, toward the Hermosa mountains looming sharp and jagged in the fierce afternoon sunlight, and he saw her lips tremble. Then, as if her will caught and held them, the movements ceased with a little inrush of breath. He lowered his voice and made it very kindly and sympathetic as he leaned toward her and went on:

“For your sake, I am very sorry for all this if Mr. Mead is a friend of yours. He is a very taking young fellow, with his handsome face and good-natured smile. But, also for your sake,” and his voice went down almost to a murmur, “I hope he is not a friend.”

There were tears in her eyes and distress, perplexity and pain in her face as she turned impulsively toward him, as if grasping at his sympathy.

“I have it!” he thought. “She is in love with Mead! Now we’ll find out how far it has gone. Papa Frenchy couldn’t have known of it.”

“I can not say he is a friend,” she said slowly. “He is scarcely an acquaintance. I have not met him, I think, more than half a dozen times, and only a few minutes each time. But he has always been so kind to my little brother that I find it hard to believe a man so gentle and thoughtful with a child could be so – criminal.”

“Ah! Love at first sight, probably not reciprocated!” was Wellesly’s mental comment. “I guess it is a case in which it would be proper to offer consolation, and watch the effect.” Gradually he led the conversation away from this painful topic and talked with her about other places in which she had lived. Then they drifted to more personal matters, to theories upon life and duty, and he spoke with the warmest admiration of what he called the ideal principles by which she guided her life and declared that they would be impossible to a man, unless he had the good fortune to be stimulated and helped by some noble woman who realized them in her own life. It was admiration of the most delicate, impersonal sort, seemingly directed not to the girl herself, but to the girl she had wished and tried to be. It set Marguerite Delarue’s heart a-flutter with pleasure. No one had ever given her such open and such delicate admiration, and she was too unsophisticated to conceal her delight. He smiled to himself at her evident pleasure in his words, and, with much the same feeling with which he might have cuddled a purring, affectionate kitten, he went a step farther and made love – a very shadowy, intangible sort of love, in a very indefinite sort of way.

Albert Wellesly usually made love to whatever woman happened to be at hand, if he had nothing else to do, or if he thought it would advance his interests. With men he was keen and forceful, studying them shrewdly, seeing quickly their weak points, turning these to his own advantage, and helping himself over their heads by every means he could grasp. In his dealings and relations with women he aimed at the same masterful result, but while with men this might be attained in many ways, with women he held there was but one way, and that was to make love to them.

Marguerite bade him good-by with the same deep pain still in her heart, but pleased in spite of herself. His words had been laden heavily with the honey of admiration of a sort that to her serious nature was most pleasing, while about them had hovered the faintest, most elusive aroma of love. In her thought, she went over their long conversation again and again, and dwelt on all that he had said with constant delight. For to women admiration is always pleasing, even though they may know it to be insincere. To young women it is a wine that makes them feel themselves rulers of the earth, and to their elders it is a cordial which makes them forget their years.

Marguerite Delarue had had little experience with either love or admiration. Her heart had been virgin ground when her face had first flushed under the look in Emerson Mead’s brown eyes. And the first words of love to fall upon her ears had been the uncertain ones of Wellesly that afternoon. She conned them over to herself, saying that of course they meant only that he was a high-minded gentleman who admired high ideals. She repeated all that he had said on the subject of Mead’s guilt.

“He seemed fair and unprejudiced,” she thought, “but I can not believe it without certain proof. I know more about Mr. Mead than some of those who think they know so much, for I have seen him with my little Bye-Bye, and until they can prove what they say I shall believe him just as good as he seems to be.”

So she locked up in her heart her belief in Mead’s innocence, saying nothing about the matter to any one, till after a little that belief came to be like a secret treasure, hidden away from all other eyes, but in her own thought held most dear.

CHAPTER VI