Through the Shadows with O'Henry

CHAPTER IV. Release from jail; quiet years in Virginia; study of law; a new migration to the West; brawl in court; news of death in the night.

There was such a queer, gentle look in my father's face, as though he were the culprit and not I. It jabbed me to the quick. He never said a word of censure to me—not then nor in all the years that followed.

But he went quietly to work to win my release. Three days later I left Las Cruces with him. I was not even brought to trial. My father had taken a new start, studied law, won success, gathered the family about him and settled in Charleston, Virginia. The boys he sent to the Virginia Military academy. Frank and I finished the study of law four years later, when I was just past 18.

There must have been something unstable and reckless in our natures, for our lives never ran along the level. We seemed to court adversity. Our fortunes went like a wave through a continual succession of swells and hollows.

We struck the hollows when I finished college. The family packed its baggage and moved to Coldwater, Kansas.

The Middle West was wild, new country then. We moved from Kansas, took up land in Colorado, built the town of Boston, sold town lots, cleared $75,000 and lost every cent of it in the county-seat fight.

Crumb-clean we went into Oklahoma in 1889. The settlers were all bankrupt. The government even issued food to them. Frank and I were both athletes. We supported the family with the money we earned at foot racing.

Just about this time one of the periodic swells in our fortunes swept my father into Woodward county, where he was appointed judge by Governor Renfro. John and Ed opened law offices in the same town. I was elected county attorney of El Reno. Frank was deputy clerk in Denver.

It was the crest of our prosperity. Judge Jennings was the man of weight in the community. He was re-elected almost unanimously. John and Ed were the attorneys in every big case that came up in the courts. My father had built a beautiful home and had a comfortable bank account. We were going forward with a swift, sure current when the Garst affair, like the uncharted rock, blocked our course.

Many events in my life—pistol shot in the Cincinnati theatre, the desertion in the prairies, the lawlessness of the ranges seemed to have been shaping the channel for the rapids that were to hurl Frank and me into the maelstrom of robbery and murder. The Garst case precipitated the downfall.

Jack Love had been appointed sheriff at the same time my father was named judge. He was a gambler and a disreputable character. While in office he had a little habit of arresting the citizens and charging them an exit fee in order to get out of jail. He developed also a great penchant for land-grabbing, appropriating 50,000 acres of the government's property.

Frank Garst rented this land for the pasturage of 1,700 cattle. He agreed to pay Love $3,000. When the bill was presented it was greatly in excess of this sum. Garst refused to pay. Love brought suit. Temple Houston defended the interests of Love; my brother Ed was attorney for Garst.

Love came to Ed and offered him $1,000 in cash to dump Garst. Ed refused and won the case for his client. He won it on the ground that Love had no right to the land in the first place and was himself a trespasser.

Love was out his $3,000. He was a bad loser. Ed's fate was really sealed when he won that case. Love waited his chance.

It came a few weeks later. I went to Woodward to visit my father. Ed was defending a group of boys on a burglary charge. Temple Houston, Love's attorney, was prosecuting. Ed asked me to assist him. The case was going against Houston. The atmosphere was charged with bitterness. In the midst of my plea, Houston got to his feet, slammed his fist on the table and shouted, "Your honor, the gentleman is grossly ignorant of the law."

"You're a damn' liar," I answered, without any particular heat, but as one asserting an evident fact.

It was like a blow in the face to Houston. He lost all control of himself. "Take that back, you damn' little !" He hurled the unpardonable epithet, and sprang at me.

His face was bursting with rage. His hand was on his forty-five and I had mine leveled at him. Lightning anger was striking in all directions. Men rushed to the one side and the other. Somebody dashed the six-shooter from my hand. At the same moment I saw Houston surrounded and disarmed.

The court proceedings ended for the day. But feeling ran high the white-hot fury of the Southern cow people. Nothing but blood cools it. We knew that the settlement must be made.

For once in my life I was not eager to square the account with killings. We went to Ed's office, my father and my two brothers. My father's harried face was like a reproach to our hot tempers. He was a broken man. He seemed to see the tragic failure of his life of robust endeavor.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, almost in an appeal.

"Nothing, until tomorrow," I told him, for I had made my plans. I intended to meet Houston, apologize for my insults, demand the same from him and let it go at that. If Houston refused it would be time enough to meet the issue.

My decision was not to be. The town was divided into two factions. Ours outnumbered Houston's two to one. They made up in their rankling animosity what they lacked in numbers. It was as if two tigers stood ready to spring and each but waited to get the other in a corner.

Ed and John agreed to stay in town to watch the office. I went home with my father.

Never had the magnetism of his kind, turbulent nature seemed so forcible as in the weakness of his fear for us. He was in a reminiscent mood. For the first time he spoke of that day when he had struck me down at Shrieber's store. The tears crowded into his eyes. I knew that many a torturing moment had paid for that irresponsible blow.

At 10 o'clock we went to bed. It was a hot summer night. We left our doors open. I was just dropping into a slumber when I heard the stumble of frantic footsteps on the steps below. The door was pushed to and a broken voice called out :

"Judge, get up, get up, judge, quick; they have killed both your boys!"