by Max Brand
“At the end of each serious encounter, you usually returned to Wham, in order, one might say, to bask in the admiration of your fellow citizens, and it did not occur to you that it was not unmixed admiration with which they looked upon you. To be sure, they respected your bravery and envied your power of hand and quickness of eye, but when a man begins to use mortal weapons, as you did so young, it becomes less a matter for admiration than for fear, less of envy than of horror.
“And, from that moment, there were voices which announced that Harrison Destry would before the end have taken a human life! Some would not believe it, but eventually belief was forced in upon us.
“They were not entirely reprehensible affairs. The criminal, the brutal, the wasted and vicious lives were those who crossed you, and were those who fell. All seemed fair fight. And yet the time came when men shrank before you, Harrison Destry. In one word, the message went out that you were a ‘killer’ and all that that ominous term implies. That is to say, one who takes life for the pleasure he gains by the taking! Many a man has begun in that way, keeping within the bounds of the law; few have continued so to the end! They overstep, and an innocent life is taken.
“However, there was another change in you. You began as an industrious boy; you ended as a man who scorned any tool other than a Bowie knife or a Colt’s six-shooter. You gambled for a living and fought for amusement. Your visits to the town became an often repeated plague. You roistered in the saloons. You cast a shadow over a community which has never been too peaceful!
“Consider the picture of yourself as at last it was presented to us! The proud, active, hard working boy is changed into the lazy, careless, shiftless, indifferent and tigerish sluggard! Now at last you have discovered a means of making a short cut to a fortune on which you could live for some time. You have taken that short cut. You have violently laid your hands upon the moneys of other people. You have interfered with a mail train. You have robbed the mail itself. For these acts the jury, composed of twelve of your peers, has found you guilty, and I heartily agree with the verdict. Under the circumstances, nothing but intolerable prejudice in your favor could have induced a single man among them to return any other verdict than this one.
“It is now my duty to lay on you a sentence in accordance with the nature of your crime and of your character. And after duly considering all of these things, I have decided that you must be sentenced to ten years of penal confinement at hard labor, in the honest trust that during that time you may have an opportunity to reflect upon your past and prepare yourself for a different future.
“If you have any remarks to make to qualify this judgment, I am ready to hear them, particularly since your legal adviser was summoned at the last moment and has had no fitting opportunity to work on your case.”
It seemed that Destry hesitated, and considered for a moment what he should say, if anything. At length he drawled:
“What might be the meaning of ‘peer,’ your honor?”
“The meaning of peer,” said the judge, “is equal. It is a portion of the law, Destry, that an accused man shall not be tried by those who are socially not his equal. That may be held to hark back to other times, when some men were free, and others serfs.”
“And serfs, what might they be?”
“A serf was a man attached to the soil, or, more properly speaking, a man subordinated and tied to some social regulation which limited his freedom. But, on the whole, you may say that a serf is a man who is not free.”
“These gents,” said the prisoner, “you’ve said a coupla times are my peers. Is that right?”
“I take it there is no man among them who is not your social equal, Destry. At least, they are all free men!”
“Are they?” said Destry.
He turned toward the jury and made a few paces forward, and the guard followed him on either side, anxiously.
“You dunno these here gents,” said Destry. “I’ll tell you. That one on the far left in the front row, that’s Jimmy Clifton—that little narrer shouldered feller with the flower in his buttonhole, as though he was walkin’ out on Sunday with his best girl. Free? He’s tied up worse than a slave and the thing that he’s tied to is the women, I tell you! He can’t walk out without feelin’ their eyes after him, and the reason that he hates me—look at it in his eyes!—is because a girl that he wanted once turned him down to dance with me. If I lie, Jimmy, you tell the judge!
“Next to him, there’s Hank Cleeves. By the look of his face, you’d never think that he’d ever been a boy, but he was. To be on top of the heap is his game and his main idea, and he’s a slave to that. He’s a serf. He’s no free man, I tell you! This here Cleeves, I once socked him on the nose, and sat him down flat and quick. He said ‘enough’ that day, and that’s why he says guilty this day.
“There’s Bud Williams, too, him with the thick neck and the little head, that come down here aimin’ to become the champion wrestler of the whole world. But you can’t fight and you can’t wrestle with the strength of your hands, because it’s the strength of your heart that tells in the long run! And after him and me had it out on the gravel at the edge of the road, and his face was rubbed raw in the stones, he started hatin’ me, and he never stopped from that day to this. Serf? There never was a worse serf than him! He envies the mules on the road, because of their muscle. He’d turn himself into a steam engine, for the sake of havin’ so many hoss power!
“Next to him, I want you to look at Sam Warren, with his long neck, and his long fingers that are square at their tips. Look at him, will you? He could take any gun apart in the dark, and jump the pieces together again without no light. He loved to figger that he had every man’s life inside the curl of his forefinger. He felt free and grand so long as he thought that was true. But when him and me had a little tangle, and he was sliced through the leg with the first shot, he sure was fed up quick and lay down to think things over. Your honor, he’s a serf to the gun that he packs, and that’s draggin’ down under his left armpit, right this minute!”
Sam Warren raised his narrow length from his chair, in such an attitude that it looked for a moment as though he would hurl himself out of the jury box and at the throat of the other. And the prisoner said calmly: “If it ain’t so, call me a liar. You set that gun up and worship it. You never get it well out of your mind. You dream about it all night, and when you look at your best friend, you pick out the button on his coat that you’ll shoot at!”
“Mr. Destry,” said the judge, in his quiet way, “you’ve insulted enough of this jury, I think. Have you finished?”
“I’ll finish quick,” said Destry. “Only, I wanta finish up first with these twelve peers of mine, as you call ’em. I want you to look at Jerry Wendell, whose God is his tailor, and Clyde Orrin, the handshaker, and Lefty Turnbull that’s always hated my heart since I broke his record from Wham to the Crystal Mountains, and there’s Phil Barker, too! How many times did Phil raise hell with his practical jokes, until along comes a letter askin’ him to call on a girl after dark, and he found the dogs waitin’ for him instead of her? He ain’t forgot that I wrote that letter to him, and he’d hang me up by the neck today, if his vote would do it! There’s the Ogdens, too, that took money for my scalp and cornered me to get it; they lost their blood and their money, that day, and they want to see me holler now. Then there’s Bud Truckman and Bull Hewitt. I dunno why they want to stick me, but maybe I’ve give them a dirty look, some time.”
He turned back to the judge.
“Twelve peers?” said Destry. “Twelve half-bred pups. If peers is equals, I’d rather be tried by twelve bullfrogs in a marsh than by them twelve in that jury box! But let ’em set down and think this here over! When my ten years has come up, I’m gunna call on all of these here, and if they ain’t in, I’m gunna leave my card, anyway!”
“Destry,” said the judge drily, “you’d better finish, here.”
The jury sat back, trying to look scornful, but obviously worried, in s
pite of themselves.
“Here’s the last thing,” said Destry. “What you’ve said is plumb true. I been a waster, a lazy loafer, a fighter, a no-good citizen, but what I’m gettin’ the whip for now is a lie! I never robbed the Express!”
Chapter Five
Short speeches linger a long time in some memories; and the final speech of the prisoner remained in the mind of the townsfolk long after he was sent away to stripes and bars for ten years. There was one other detail of that day in the courtroom about which men and women and children talked, and that was how young Charlie Dangerfield slipped through the crowd and got to Destry as he was being led away toward the cell from which he would depart to the prison. There before the crowd she threw her arms around his neck.
“I believe in you, Harry!” she cried. “And I’ll wait for you, too!”
Wham smiled when it heard this story, for Charlie Dangerfield was only sixteen, but as the years went by and it was noted that, though she would laugh and talk with any man, and dance with the first comer on Saturday nights, yet she discouraged all tokens of a serious interest; and when she grew up from pretty child to beautiful woman, and still preserved the integrity of the fence around her, then Wham scratched its chin and shook its head.
It respected her the more; the more worthless the man to whom a woman is devoted, the more she is admired and beloved by all other men. Their own self-esteem and their right to expect the affection of a wife is thereby, as it were, given a groundwork and an assurance.
More than this: The very girls of Wham, the unmarried ones, the green and hopeful virgins, found it possible to have an actual affection for beautiful Charlie Dangerfield, since, no matter how attractive she might be, or how she dimmed their stars in passing, she was no more than a passing moon, and never interfered with their affairs. The established youth of Wham quickly learned to waste no hopes on Charlie; only the strangers who arrived, attracted by her face and her father’s rapidly increasing fortune, flocked for a moment around the flame, singed their wings, and flew lamely away.
Therefore, when the news came to the town that Destry had been allowed to leave the prison, and that his ten years had been shortened to six by good behavior, the first thought of everyone was for Charlie Dangerfield. How would she take this second coming of her hero, now aged from the penitentiary?
Now, on computation, they figured that, if he was twenty-five when he was committed, he could only be thirty-one now. Old in shame, then, if not in actual years—a jail-bird, a refugee still from society. He who has been through the fire must bear the mark on his face!
On the evening of that same day, however, on which the news came to the town of Wham, there was a secret meeting to which came Jerry Wendell, and Clyde Orrin, and the Ogden brothers, and Cleeves, Sam Warren, Bull Hewitt and Bud Williams.
Sam Warren, being the most celebrated shot in the town, presided at the meeting, sitting at the head of the table and regulating the discussion. They talked frankly, as only those talk who are faced by a common danger.
The first suggestion was made by Jerry Wendell, who urged that they should hire a gunman for the work of clearing Mr. Destry permanently from the slate.
It was not waved aside, this murderous thought, but seriously taken in hand, and only after some moments of talk was it decided that it was probably foolish to kill a man who would soon have himself in jail again. Clyde Orrin summed up the verdict on this point.
“Prison never makes a gent better; it always makes him worse! He’ll raise the devil before he’s been in Wham a day, and the sheriff will be waiting for him with both hands full of irons!”
This being taken for granted, it was decided at once that all eight of them should leave the town of Wham for a little hunting excursion into the mountains. Before they returned, doubtless Destry would be again in the hands of the law!
This proposal hardly had been concluded before there was a rap at the door of the hotel room in which they were sitting, and Chester Bent walked in.
They looked on him without pleasure, but Chester Bent, leaning on the end of the table, a little out of breath, and hat still in hand, smiled on them all.
“My friends,” said he, “I know you’re surprised to see me here. I wasn’t a member of the jury that called Destry guilty and sent him to prison. You know that I was his friend then, and am his friend now, and I suppose that he’ll come to stay at my house when he returns. Now, I want to assure you all that I shall do my best to keep Destry from taking any steps that are too rash and bold. But I also want to say that I doubt my ability to keep him in order. I hope that you won’t misconstrue what I have to say. I give you my word, I’m your friend, as well as his. I’m here to ask how I can serve you, because I take it for granted that you all realize that you will be in danger from the instant that Destry arrives this evening!”
This was putting the cards on the table with a vengeance, and the eight sitters at that table looked on Mr. Bent with a real enthusiasm, at once. He was a man worth attention in Wham, by this time. For one thing, he had increased his wealth at least six-fold in the time during which unlucky Destry had been in jail. Indeed, it was at about the same time that Destry was taken away that Wham received proof of the business talent of Bent by the amount of cash which he had on hand ready for investment; and, by placing it well in mines, in the buying of shares in a lumber company that operated in the Crystal range, and by picking up random bits of real estate here and there, Chester Bent had now established himself in a position which was hardly second to that occupied by any man in the town or the range around it. He had not piled up such a huge fortune as Benjamin Dangerfield, to be sure, nor as a few of the great cattle barons and the mining millionaires, but Chester Bent was rich, and he was among the few influential men who had to be called in for consultation whenever any important move was made by the controlling spirits of the community.
For all of these reasons, the eight men at the table listened greedily to all that he had to say. Destry, singlehanded, was bad enough, if he were even a ghost of his old self. Destry, backed by such a man as this, would be the equivalent of ruin to them all.
They told him with equal frankness that they had determined to withdraw from the town, and he received the suggestion with pleasure. He would send them word, he assured them, of the time when it was safe for them to return to Wham!
That afternoon they left; that evening, Chester Bent was walking up and down the platform of the station waiting for the westbound train. It drew up, stopped, and half a dozen passengers dismounted; baggage and mails were thrown off, train lanterns swung, and the long line of cars started away, the observation platform swaying out of sight at high speed around the next curve in another moment.
But no Harry Destry!
Then a hand fell lightly on the arm of Bent, a tentative and timid touch, and the young man turned and looked down into a face as sickly white as the belly of a frog.
It was Harry Destry at last, but Bent had to look at him twice before he could recognize the former gunman of Wham, the cynical, reckless warrior whose exploits had broken heads and glassware in every saloon up and down the main street of the town. He seemed both thinner and smaller, like one who has diminished from a great reputation of the past and grown down to a lesser size, a lesser fact.
Such was the Harry Destry who returned to Wham!
A strange gleam of joy appeared in the eye of Chester Bent, and it was not all the pleasure of welcoming home an old friend. Yet he wrung the hand of Destry with a feverish eagerness.
“You’re coming home to live with me,” said Bent. “I’ve fixed up a room for you——”
“I’ve got no claim on you, Chet,” said the other. “I reckon I jus’ better slide on out of the town and—”
“What are you talking about?” said Bent. “Look yonder—that phaeton under the pepper trees, yonder. There’s Charlie Dangerfield waiting for you, man. She would have come up and met you; she wasn’t afraid of doing that in front of ever
yone, y’understand?—but I thought it would be better if she met you quietly. You know how the papers pick up such things? Richest rancher’s daughter greets return of ex-convict—you know what I mean, old fellow!”
He was half leading and half pressing his companion forward as he spoke. He had taken in his left hand the little satchel that contained the total possessions of Destry; his right was in the small of the convict’s back, forcing him on. But here Destry paused.
“Rich?” said he. “Has Ben Dangerfield gone and got himself rich? Charlie never told me nothing about that in her letters!”
“I guess Charlie didn’t want you to know what was waiting for you when you come home,” said Bent, losing some of the polish of his higher school education in the excitement of the moment. “Because that’s just what Ben Dangerfield has done nothin’ else but do! He’s gone and got himself to be the richest man on this range! The Dangerfield mine is so doggone rich that you could break a year’s income for most men right off the lode and drop it into your pockets an’ not weigh uncomfortable much when you walked home with it. Rich? They’re made of money, now, and that means that you’ll be made of money! Go ahead, there, and see Charlie, and kiss her. She’s been waitin’ six years for this minute, Harry!”
He paused when he was a few paces from the carriage, so as to let Destry have some privacy, but the instant that the support of his hand was withdrawn, it seemed as though the latter hardly could move forward. Slowly he drifted towards the phaeton; he stole his way along beneath the shadow of the thin branched pepper trees, through which the stars were gleaming. And, at the last, he stood fixed to the ground.
