King of Spades

by Frederick Manfred

  Still another voice called, “Seeing as how he don’t like ticklish ropes none, what we ought to do is to tickle the son of a bitch to death instead.”

  “Yeh, it’s a damned shame we’re only going to hang him. I say, let’s bum him to boot.”

  “By God, I agree. I’d go get the kindling myself even if it was three miles away.”

  But not all on the roof of the tin shop agreed. A shorty miner called out, “Give the man a fair shake, I says.”

  Instantly a fist fight broke out on the roof.

  Judge Todd placed his hand on his gun where it lay on his top hat. He glared over at the fight. “Hey, you, there. You boys stay cool now. Remember, God didn’t give you hands so that you could go around tearing each other’s eyes out.”

  The fighters gradually quieted on the roof.

  A black-bearded miner behind Magnus spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Think the judge can stop a real mob, if it comes to that?”

  “Well, I should hope to smile he can stop a mob.”

  “You know, I notices that even the dogs has shut up, it’s such a calamity.”

  “I’ve noticed that too.”

  “What I’m worried about is, maybe the kid might just make a break for it somewhere along here.”

  “Nah, not with old Troy Barb on the shotgun.”

  “Man, I’m not so sure.”

  “Nah, there’ll be no evaporation here. Nothing like Elijah done anyway.”

  Just then the roof of the tin shop collapsed with a roar and a great crash. There was a hurtling explosion of dust, followed by a wild hullabaloo of cursing and groaning.

  All eyes swiveled to the sudden gap in the crowd. For a few moments all sounds vanished as if sucked down a sink trap.

  “Everybody all right there?” Judge Todd called out.

  A dozen heads emerged from the wreckage. “Get on with the trial, judge. Tom Smith never did know how to build a roof.”

  Judge Todd smiled acidly. “Tom Smith hardly built it for a grandstand.”

  “Well, now, judge, suppose it was winter, and we was all wet snow, six feet deep?”

  There was an opening laugh all around.

  Judge Todd turned to Clemens. “Proceed with the witness, counsel.”

  Magnus shook his white head some more. “Let’s hope the boy had a good reason for what he did.”

  Again Ransom touched a hand to his right eye.

  Magnus started. “I’ll be damned if that boy didn’t look like he was fixing a monocle in place.”

  Clemens climbed up on the stump vacated by Maule. Clemens was a pink man after a summer in the sun. He had more the look of a beloved pastor than a lawyer. He had a way of looking at a man with his gentle blue eyes that not even the most hard-bitten could hold up to.

  Clemens surveyed the crowd. His white fingers played with a watch chain. “Your Honor, if it please the court, before I begin my examination, I’d like to make a few introductory remarks.”

  “Hold on. What will be the purpose of these remarks?”

  “To lay the proper foundation for the questioning.”

  “Ah. You may proceed. Though the court reserves the right to interrupt the remarks if counsel strays afield.”

  Clemens nodded. He studied the crowd some more. “Friends. Fellow miners.” Clemens paused. He paused so long it hurt. “There isn’t a man here in Deadwood but what he hasn’t run away from something back in the States.” A trace of a smile touched the corners of his lips. “Now I like to think that that’s mostly because there’s still a streak of the glorious rebel left in us.”

  “Yes,” Magnus thought, “yes, and I should have been hung for what I did back in the States.”

  “We’re different out here,” Clemens continued. “We not only tend to be more gloriously rebellious, but, as I think, more courteous.”

  “And if I didn’t hang for what I did back in the States,” Magnus thought, “surely they shouldn’t hang this fine specimen of manhood for what he did out here in Deadwood. If there be any justice at all.”

  “Actually, rebellion and courtesy go together. Each one of us has his peculiar past and so we’re not inclined to stick our noses into each other’s affairs. The height of discourtesy out here is for a man to ask another where he came from. To ask that is to put oneself down as a fool.”

  Judge Todd and Maule listened very closely.

  “And, in turn, courtesy fosters the free man. We all know that when we are in the presence of courteous people we feel free to be ourselves.”

  “This fellow Clemens means well,” Magnus thought, “but all his sweet talk isn’t going to help the kid much, if I know people at all.”

  “We are also different here in the West because we need each other more. Because nature is more treacherous out here. Because it is harder to scratch out a living out here. Because we live farther apart from each other and are more lonesome than usual. Thus, the loss of one good man can be a catastrophe.” Clemens paused for emphasis. “So, for all our carrying of guns, we tend to be more sparing of life. We use our guns, yes, and on each other sometimes, yes, but we use them somewhat as nature uses the wolf to eliminate the weak and the old, so that only the healthy and the strong perpetuate the race.”

  From out of nowhere a pair of blue swallows suddenly appeared. The blue swallows dove through the gap in the crowd where the tin shop had collapsed, then circled high overhead. Their flight was erratic, frantic, as if they had lost something priceless.

  Ransom turned his head to watch them.

  Clemens also eyed the swallows for a moment.

  The shorty miner who had put in a word for Ransom before the tin shop had collapsed abruptly showed up beside Troy Barb. The shorty miner touched Troy Barb on the shoulder. “Troy, let me ask you something. Wasn’t you onc partners with the kid?”

  Troy Barb let his moon eyes stray away from Ransom for a second. “Yeh, I was.”

  “And didn’t you share the same cabin with him?”

  “What about it?”

  “And didn’t he give you half of his strike?”

  “Yeh, he did.”

  “A little bit ago, when you put that noose around his neck, didn’t you feel for him? A little bit?”

  “Yeh, I felt for him all right. I felt for his left ear.” Troy Barb cackled at what he thought was a pretty good crack.

  “Here, here,” Judge Todd snapped. “Order in the court. You there, back away now.”

  The shorty miner obeyed.

  Clemens picked up the thread of his thought again. “Now this is pretty strong talk for one who was once a preacher in Philadelphia, and who is at the moment an armed lawyer in Deadwood. But this is what I’ve come to at last.”

  “This fellow Clemens can’t hold the crowd,” Magnus thought. “Somebody else is going to have to step in and do something if the kid is to have a chance.”

  “My friend Carleton Ames”—Clemens paused to look at where Ames stood scribbling—“put it very well the other night when he said, referring to our local miners, ‘Look at them. A bunch of virile characters. Proud. Fearless. And what dignity, what patience, in their faces. No complaints. If things aren’t any better today, it’s because they can’t be any better. No blame on anyone.’ ”

  Ames couldn’t help but beam a little.

  “Perhaps our young friend Earl Ransom here has failed in this courtesy I spoke of. Perhaps he has failed in pride. Perhaps he has failed in patience. In any case, he has killed a woman purported to be his wife, and in your eyes he is now It.”

  Once more Ransom touched a hand to his right eye.

  “I’ll be hanged,” Magnus exclaimed under his breath, “but that boy did make a gesture as if he were fixing a monocle in place.”

  “Some of you may wonder why anyone should stand up for a prisoner who has already freely admitted his guilt. Well, let me assure you that I am not here to help free the guilty at the expense of the guiltless. Not at all. But I am here to make sure that any punishment we
impose on the guilty shall be a just one. Because if the sentence we finally do impose on this man is a just one, we are that much the more courteous ourselves. And patient. And free. Even if the accused cannot be those things, we should be.”

  The blue swallows flittered back and forth over the black mob.

  Ransom slowly wyed his black head around as he watched the wild flight of the swallows. Then, blinking, he searched through the far-off granite peaks.

  “I would like it very much if we here in Western America could somehow show the world what it means to be truly civilized. And to do it without much need for busybody law. An occasional people’s court, and that’s it.”

  Ransom next looked down at the face in the coffin.

  “I shall have done my duty as a citizen of Deadwood and as an officer of the court of justice if I can help you reach a verdict in this people’s court that shall enable us, every one of us, to be more courteous, more patient, more free. Such a verdict will be worth more than all the gold we find.”

  Ransom yet once again touched a hand to his right eye.

  Magnus abruptly stepped down off his stump and began to work his way toward the front. His black eyes were suddenly smoked over and his large liberal lips worked in his white beard. Despite his bad back he moved through the crowd in acrisp courtly manner.

  “Yes, we here in Deadwood, where life and gold are so much exposed, we are all miners here together in the Black Hills of the soul.”

  Magnus pushed past the collapsed tin shop. As he did so, he spotted a mud nest. It was stuck to a portion of the north wall of the tin shop, which was still standing. In the nest were two little baby swallows. Their little beaks rested on the edge of the hardened mud like yellow-edged arrows set out for display.

  Clemens’ eyes turned a dreamy blue. “It is better that ninety-nine possible guilty ones should escape than that one innocent man should suffer.”

  A shadow enlarged along the west wall of the gulch.

  Clemens’ voice turned singsong. “There were ninety-and-nine that safely lay in the shelter of the fold. But one was put on the hills away, far off from the gates of gold, away on the mountains wild and bare, away from the tender shepherd’s care.”

  Sighs moved through the black crowd.

  But Maule wasn’t taken in. “Good Lord, John,” he broke in, “how can you stand there reciting such sentimental drivel in behalf of a fiendish killer, a devil incarnate, who took the life of a beloved wife and a coming child? Don’t you understand that out here we worship the loyal wife and the innocent child?”

  Clemens had a merciful blue smile for Maule. “Clifford, your approach is always so moral. So terribly moral. Your cold sense of justice is almost enough to make one wonder.”

  Maule flashed Clemens a furious look, then appealed to the judge. “Objection, Your Honor.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “I object on the grounds that the last several remarks of the defense counsel are irrelevant, immaterial, and not germane to the issue at hand.”

  “Objection sustained.” The judge shifted positions. The democrat creaked under him. He gave Clemens a pair of narrowed eyes. “In the nature of his role as prosecutor, Mr. Maule may very well appear to have a cold sense of justice. However, the court recognizes that his notion of justice is also of value to society.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  “And proceed with the questioning, please.”

  Clemens nodded. He turned to address Ransom. “Did I understand you to say that you did not know your father?”

  Ransom sighed. “I have it coming.”

  “You’re not answering my question.”

  “Better that we both should die.”

  “Ah, then you did know your father?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever even had a nightmare about him. That I can remember.”

  “You have never seen him then?”

  “All I know for sure is that I’m never going to get out of this. Thank God.”

  “Then you had no father?”

  “And the sooner the better because I’m of no good to anyone.”

  “You’ve never had anyone then who was like a father to you? Even like an uncle?”

  “Sam Slaymaker was. He was like a father to me. He found me on the prairie out of my head and almost dead. He took me under his wing and brought me up.” Ransom heaved a deep sigh. “But then Sam was killed. And the first thing I knew I found myself killing the man who killed him.” Ransom heaved another deep sigh. “It was like I had to do it. Like I couldn’t stop it.”

  “Go on.”

  Ransom slowly put both of his hands to his head. He spoke very softly, almost whispering it. “My whole life … you know, it’s been a case of where when I see one fellow shooting another, I’ve got to step in and shoot the killer. Like I’ve been ordered to.”

  “Been ordered to by who?”

  “I don’t know. That’s just the trouble. I can’t remember.”

  “Try and think now. Who?”

  Ransom shook his head. He was exhausted. His eyes closed. “Look. I have it coming. That should be enough for all of you. Let me die like a man.”

  2

  Magnus stood below the judge, hat in hand. He raised his hand for attention.

  Judge Todd spotted the hand. “Yes?”

  “May I have a word with the prisoner?” Magnus’ husky voice barely carried. “I’d like to ask him a few questions.”

  Judge Todd cocked a hand to his ear. “A little louder, please.”

  Magnus repeated his request. “If it please the court.”

  “By what right?”

  “As a friend of the court, amicus curiae.”

  “Old man, this is a trial. Not a shouting bee around a cracker barrel. Life and death are at stake here.”

  “I know. It is to that point I speak.”

  “Do you know the prisoner?”

  “That’s what I mean to find out.”

  Judge Todd grunted impatience. “Look, sir, this is not a missing person’s bureau. What the court wants to know is, can you shed any further light on this murder?”

  “That’s what I also mean to find out.”

  “What’s that? Speak a little louder.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor, that I am in bad voice. I was shot at years ago. One pellet happened to rip into my throat. It’s never been the same since.”

  Ransom up on the salt barrel behaved as if he hadn’t heard. He went back to staring at the granite peaks.

  Judge Todd glared down at Magnus. “Old man, just what is your business here with the court?”

  “I am looking for my son. I found trace of him in Cheyenne. Then I heard he’d gone on to Deadwood here.”

  “What’s that got to do with the matter here before the court?”

  “Let me ask the defendant a few questions and then perhaps it will become apparent to the court.”

  “What do you do? What’s your profession?”

  “I am a physician and surgeon.”

  Again Ransom seemed not to have heard. Ransom watched the two blue swallows flitter over and through the black crowd.

  “You have a license to practice medicine?”

  “I do.”

  “Ah, then you didn’t come here to strike it rich like the rest of us.”

  “Your Honor, I shall have struck it rich if I find my son.” There were tears in the corners of Magnus’ eyes.

  “And your name?”

  “Magnus King.”

  “Then the name of the son you’re looking for should also be King? If he goes under his right name?”

  “Yes, Your Honor. Alan Rodman King. Though we mostly called him Roddy.”

  “Well, now, but the name of this young man here is Earl Ransom.”

  “So it appears.”

  All of a sudden, Ransom broke in clearly. “You know, it’s a funny thing, but if you’ll look around you, you’ll notice that the father is never talked about much. It’s always th
e mother and child.”

  Judge Todd stared across at Ransom.

  Ransom went on, still speaking very clearly. “I noticed that with Sam. He never talked about his father.” Ransom’s green eyes opened wider. “For everybody I guess the last person you ever get to know is your father. He is the true alien.”

  Judge Todd chewed his lips to himself a moment, then turned to Maule. “You have no objection to Dr. Magnus King asking the prisoner a few questions?”

  “If he is a doctor, none.”

  Judge Todd turned to Clemens. “And you?”

  “No objection. We’re all here to discover the truth.”

  Judge Todd stared down at Magnus for a few moments, finally said, “You may proceed, as a friend of the court, amicus curiae.”

  Magnus cleared his throat, harshly. “Your Honor, can I first direct a question at the bench?”

  Judge Todd bristled. The spring seat on the democrat bounced under him. “Why the bench?”

  “May I?”

  “Proceed.”

  “May it please the court, I should like to ask this question: Since Deadwood is still not legally a part of the United States of America, by what authority do we try this man?”

  “By what authority? Why! we take it upon ourselves to do this so that we may protect ourselves. Why! the very earth itself suffers when we persist in living in sin upon it. You know that.”

  Magnus touched his white beard, and nodded. “All right, fair enough.”

  The two blue swallows continued to fleet about against the looming dark hills.

  Magnus took up his stance at the foot of the salt barrel. “Son?” Magnus tried to make his voice sound like in the old days back in Sioux City. “Son?”

  An awakened lizard abruptly looked out of Ransom’s green eyes. “Where the carrion is there will the vulture be.”

  “Roddy?”

  “Doctors. Lawyers. Politicians. Undertakers.”

  A shudder rippled up through Magnus’ slight frame. Then he got a grip on himself. “Roddy, don’t you remember me, your dad? Roddy?”

  “High-toned tapeworms crawling around in the belly of the country.”

  Magnus lifted all of himself into his black eyes. “How about a great big cow pill, Roddy?”

  Ransom looked across at Judge Todd. “It’s hard. But fair. So go ahead.”