Part 8

To the left of the pulpit is a long table for reporters; in front of the pulpit the clerks are stationed, and in the centre of the hall a nest of lawyers. On the left again are pine benches behind a railing, occupied by seedy white men, negroes, Chinamen, Kanakas--in a word, by the seedy and dejected of all nations--and in a corner is a box where more can be had when they are wanted.

On the right are more pine benches, for the use of prisoners, and their friends and witnesses.

An officer, in a gray uniform, and with a star upon his breast, guards the door.

A holy calm pervades the scene.

The case of Smith vs. Jones being called, each of these parties (stepping out from among the other seedy ones) gave the court a

## particular and circumstantial account of how the whole thing occurred,

and then sat down.

The two narratives differed from each other.

In reality, I was half persuaded that these men were talking about two separate and distinct affairs altogether, inasmuch as no single circumstance mentioned by one was even remotely hinted at by the other.

Mr. Alfred Sowerby was then called to the witness-stand, and testified as follows:

"I was in the saloon at the time, your Honor, and I see this man Smith come up all of a sudden to Jones, who warn't saying a word, and split him in the snoot--"

LAWYER.--"Did what, sir?"

WITNESS.--"Busted him in the snoot."

LAWYER.--"What do you mean by such language as that? When you say that the plaintiff suddenly approached the defendant, who was silent at the time, and 'busted him in the snoot,' do you mean that the plaintiff struck the defendant?"

WITNESS.--"That's me--I'm swearing to that very circumstance--yes, your Honor, that was just the way of it. Now, for instance, as if you was Jones and I was Smith. Well, I comes up all of a sudden and says I to your Honor, says I, 'D--n your old tripe--'"

(Suppressed laughter in the lobbies.)

THE COURT.--"Order in the court! Witness, you will confine yourself to a plain statement of the facts in this case, and refrain from the embellishments of metaphor and allegory as far as possible."

WITNESS.--(Considerably subdued.)--"I beg your Honor's pardon--I didn't mean to be so brash. Well, Smith comes up to Jones all of a sudden and mashed him in the bugle--"

LAWYER.--"Stop! Witness, this kind of language will not do. I will ask you a plain question, and I require you to answer it simply, yes or no. Did--the--plaintiff--strike--the defendant? Did he strike him?"

WITNESS.--"You bet your sweet life he did. Gad! he gave him a paster in the trumpet--"

LAWYER.--"Take the witness! take the witness! take the witness! I have no further use for him."

The lawyer on the other side said he would endeavor to worry along without more assistance from Mr. Sowerby, and the witness retired to a neighboring bench.

Mr. McWilliamson was next called, and deposed as follows:

"I was a-standing as close to Mr. Smith as I am to this pulpit, a-chaffing with one of the lager beer girls--Sophronia by name, being from summers in Germany, so she says, but as to that, I--"

LAWYER.--"Well, now, never mind the nativity of the lager beer girl, but state, as concisely as possible, what you know of the assault and battery."

WITNESS.--"Certainly--certainly. Well, German or no German,--which I'll take my oath I don't believe she is, being of a red-headed disposition, with long, bony fingers, and no more hankering after Limberger cheese than--"

LAWYER.--"Stop that driveling nonsense and stick to the assault and battery. Go on with your story."

WITNESS.--"Well, sir, she--that is, Jones--he sidled up and drawed his revolver and tried to shoot the top of Smith's head off, and Smith run, and Sophronia she walloped herself down in the saw-dust and screamed twice, just as loud as she could yell. I never see a poor creature in such distress--and then she sung out: 'O, H--ll's fire! What are they up to now? Ah, my poor dear mother, I shall never see you more!'--saying which, she jerked another yell and fainted away as dead as a wax figger. Thinks I to myself, I'll be danged if this ain't gettin' rather dusty, and I'll--"

THE COURT.--"We have no desire to know what you thought; we only wish to know what you saw. Are you sure Mr. Jones endeavored to shoot the top of Mr. Smith's head off?"

WITNESS.--"Yes, your Honor."

THE COURT.--"How many times did he shoot?"

WITNESS.--"Well, sir, I couldn't say exactly as to the number--but I should think--well, say seven or eight times--as many as that, anyway."

THE COURT.--"Be careful now, and remember you are under oath. What kind of a pistol was it?"

WITNESS.--"It was a Durringer, your Honor."

THE COURT.--"A derringer! You must not trifle here, sir. A derringer only shoots once--how then could Jones have fired seven or eight times?" (The witness is evidently as stunned by that last proposition as if a brick had struck him.)

WITNESS.--"Well, your Honor--he--that is, she--Jones, I mean--Soph--"

THE COURT.--"Are you sure he fired more than one shot? Are you sure he fired at all?"

WITNESS.--"I--I well, perhaps he didn't--and--and your Honor may be right. But you see, that girl, with her dratted yowling--altogether, it might be that he did only shoot once."

LAWYER.--"And about his attempting to shoot the top of Smith's head off--didn't he aim at his body, or his legs? Come now."

WITNESS.--(Entirely confused)--"Yes, sir--I think he did--I--I'm pretty certain of it. Yes, sir, he must a fired at his legs."

(Nothing was elicited on the cross-examination, except that the weapon used by Mr. Jones was a bowie knife instead of a derringer, and that he made a number of desperate attempts to scalp the plaintiff instead of trying to shoot him. It also came out that Sophronia, of doubtful nativity, did not faint, and was not present during the affray, she having been discharged from her situation on the previous evening.)

Washington Billings, sworn, said: "I see the row, and it warn't in no saloon--it was in the street. Both of 'em was drunk, and one was a comin' up the street, and t'other was a goin' down. Both of 'em was close to the houses when they fust see each other, and both of 'em made their calculations to miss each other, but the second time they tacked across the pavement--driftin'-like, diagonal--they come together, down by curb--al-mighty soggy, they did--which staggered 'em a moment, and then, over they went, into the gutter. Smith was up fust, and he made a dive for a cobble and fell on Jones; Jones dug out and made a dive for a cobble, and slipped his hold and jammed his head into Smith's stomach. They each done that over again, twice more, just the same way. After that, neither of 'em could get up any more, and so they just laid there in the slush and clawed mud and cussed each other."

(On the cross-examination, the witness could not say whether the parties continued the fight afterward in the saloon or not--he only knew they began it in the gutter, and to the best of his knowledge and belief they were too drunk to get into a saloon, and too drunk to stay in it after they got there if there were any orifice about it that they could fall out again. As to weapons, he saw none used except the cobble-stones, and to the best of his knowledge and belief they missed fire every time while he was present.)

Jeremiah Driscoll came forward, was sworn, and testified as follows:--"I saw the fight, your Honor, and it wasn't in a saloon, nor in the street, nor in a hotel, nor in--"

THE COURT.--"Was it in the city and county of San Francisco!"

WITNESS.--"Yes, your Honor, I--I think it was."

THE COURT.--"Well, then, go on."

WITNESS.--"It was up in the Square. Jones meets Smith, and they both go at it--that is, blackguarding each other. One called the other a thief, and the other said he was a liar, and then they got to swearing backwards and forwards pretty generally, as you might say, and finally one struck the other over the head with a cane, and then they closed and fell, and after that they made such a dust and the gravel flew so thick that I couldn't rightly tell which was getting the best of it. When it cleared away, one of them was after the other with a pine bench, and the other was prospecting for rocks, and--"

LAWYER.--"There, there, there--that will do--that--will--do! How in the world is any one to make head or tail out of such a string of nonsense as that? Who struck the first blow?"

WITNESS.--"I can not rightly say, sir, but I think--"

LAWYER.--"You think!--don't you know?"

WITNESS.--"No, sir, it was all so sudden, and--"

LAWYER.--"Well, then, state, if you can, who struck the last."

WITNESS.--"I can't, sir, because--"

LAWYER.--"Because what?"

WITNESS.--"Because, sir, you see toward the last they clinched and went down, and got to kicking up the gravel again, and--"

LAWYER.--(Resignedly)--"Take the witness--take the witness."

(The testimony on the cross-examination went to show that during the fight, one of the parties drew a slung-shot and cocked it, but to the best of the witness' knowledge and belief, he did not fire; and at the same time, the other discharged a hand-grenade at his antagonist, which missed him and did no damage, except blowing up a bonnet store on the other side of the street, and creating a momentary diversion among the milliners.) He could not say, however, which drew the slung-shot or which threw the grenade. (It was generally remarked by those in the court room, that the evidence of the witness was obscure and unsatisfactory. Upon questioning him further, and confronting him with the parties to the case before the court, it transpired that the faces of Jones and Smith were unknown to him, and that he had been talking about an entirely different fight all the time.)

Other witnesses were examined, some of whom swore that Smith was the aggressor, and others that Jones began the row; some said they fought with their fists, others that they fought with knives, others tomahawks, others revolvers, others clubs, others axes, others beer mugs and chairs, and others swore there had been no fight at all. However, fight or no fight, the testimony was straightforward and uniform on one point, at any rate, and that was, that the fuss was about two dollars and forty cents, which one party owed the other, but after all, it was impossible to find out which was the debtor and which the creditor.

After the witnesses had all been heard, his Honor, Judge Sheperd, observed that the evidence in this case resembled, in a great many points, the evidence before him in some thirty-five cases every day, on an average. He then said he would continue the case, to afford the

## parties an opportunity of procuring more testimony.

(I have been keeping an eye on the Police Court for the last few days. Two friends of mine had business there, on account of assault and battery concerning Washoe stocks, and I felt interested, of course.) I never knew their names were James Johnson and John Ward, though, until I heard them answer to them in that court. When James Johnson was called, one of these young men said to the other: "That's you, my boy." "No," was the reply, "it's you--my name's John Ward--see, I've got it written here on a card." Consequently, the first speaker sung out, "Here!" and it was all right. As I was saying, I have been keeping an eye on that court, and I have arrived at the conclusion that the office of Police Judge is a profitable and a comfortable thing to have, but then, as the English hunter said about fighting tigers in India under a shortness of ammunition, "It has its little drawbacks." Hearing testimony must be worrying to a Police Judge sometimes, when he is in his right mind. I would rather be secretary to a wealthy mining company, and have nothing to do but advertise the assessments and collect them in carefully, and go along quiet and upright, and be one of the noblest works of God, and never gobble a dollar that didn't belong to me--all just as those fellows do, you know. (Oh, I have no talent for sarcasm, it isn't likely.) But I trespass.

Now, with every confidence in the instinctive candor and fair dealing of my race, I submit the testimony in the case of Smith vs. Jones to the people, without comment or argument, well satisfied that after a perusal of it, their judgment will be as righteous as it is final and impartial, and that whether Smith be cast out and Jones exalted, or Jones cast out and Smith exalted, the decision will be a holy and a just one.

I leave the accused and the accuser before the bar of the world--let their fate be pronounced.

A DOUBLE-DYED DECEIVER

BY O. HENRY

The trouble began in Laredo. It was the Llano Kid's fault, for he should have confined his habit of manslaughter to Mexicans. But the Kid was past twenty; and to have only Mexicans to one's credit at twenty is to blush unseen on the Rio Grande border.

It happened in old Justo Valdos's gambling house. There was a poker game at which sat players who were not all friends, as happens often where men ride in from afar to shoot Folly as she gallops. There was a row over so small a matter as a pair of queens; and when the smoke had cleared away it was found that the Kid had committed an indiscretion, and his adversary had been guilty of a blunder. For, the unfortunate combatant, instead of being a Greaser, was a high-blooded youth from the cow ranches, of about the Kid's own age and possessed of friends and champions. His blunder in missing the Kid's right ear only a sixteenth of an inch when he pulled his gun did not lessen the indiscretion of the better marksman.

The Kid, not being equipped with a retinue, nor bountifully supplied with personal admirers and supporters--on account of a rather umbrageous reputation even for the border--considered it not incompatible with his indisputable gameness to perform that judicious tractional act known as "pulling his freight."

Quickly the avengers gathered and sought him. Three of them overtook him within a rod of the station. The Kid turned and showed his teeth in that brilliant but mirthless smile that usually preceded his deeds of insolence and violence, and his pursuers fell back without making it necessary for him even to reach for his weapon.

But in this affair the Kid had not felt the grim thirst for encounter that usually urged him on to battle. It had been a purely chance row, born of the cards and certain epithets impossible for a gentleman to brook, that had passed between the two. The Kid had rather liked the slim, haughty, brown-faced young chap whom his bullet had cut off in the first pride of manhood. And now he wanted no more blood. He wanted to get away and have a good long sleep somewhere in the sun on the mesquit grass with his handkerchief over his face. Even a Mexican might have crossed his path in safety while he was in this mood.

The Kid openly boarded the north-bound passenger-train that departed five minutes later. But at Webb, a few miles out, where it was flagged to take on a traveler, he abandoned that manner of escape. There were telegraph stations ahead; and the Kid looked askance at electricity and steam. Saddle and spur were his rocks of safety.

The man whom he had shot was a stranger to him. But the Kid knew that he was of the Corralitos outfit from Hidalgo; and that the punchers from that ranch were more relentless and vengeful than Kentucky feudists when wrong or harm was done to one of them. So, with the wisdom that has characterized many great fighters, the Kid decided to pile up as many leagues as possible of chaparral and pear between himself and the retaliation of the Corralitos bunch.

Near the station was a store; and near the store, scattered among the mesquits and elms, stood the saddled horses of the customers. Most of them waited, half asleep, with sagging limbs and drooping heads. But one, a long-legged roan with a curved neck, snorted and pawed the turf. Him the Kid mounted, gripped with his knees, and slapped gently with the owner's own quirt.

If the slaying of the temerarious card-player had cast a cloud over the Kid's standing as a good and true citizen, this last act of his veiled his figure in the darkest shadows of disrepute. On the Rio Grande border, if you take a man's life you sometimes take trash; but if you take his horse, you take a thing the loss of which renders him poor, indeed, and which enriches you not--if you are caught. For the Kid there was no turning back now.

With the springing roan under him he felt little care or uneasiness. After a five-mile gallop he drew in to the plainsman's jogging trot, and rode northeastward toward the Nueces River bottoms. He knew the country well--its most tortuous and obscure trails through the great wilderness of brush and pear, and its camps and lonesome ranches where one might find safe entertainment. Always he bore to the east; for the Kid had never seen the ocean, and he had a fancy to lay his hand upon the mane of the great Gulf, the gamesome colt of the greater waters.

So after three days he stood on the shore at Corpus Christi, and looked out across the gentle ripples of a quiet sea.

Captain Boone, of the schooner Flyaway, stood near his skiff, which one of his crew was guarding in the surf. When ready to sail he had discovered that one of the necessaries of life, in the parallelogrammatic shape of plug tobacco, had been forgotten. A sailor had been despatched for the missing cargo. Meanwhile the captain paced the sands, chewing profanely at his pocket store.

A slim, wiry youth in high-heeled boots came down to the water's edge. His face was boyish but with a premature severity that hinted at a man's experience. His complexion was naturally dark; and the sun and wind of an outdoor life had burned it to a coffee brown. His hair was as black and straight as an Indian's; his face had not yet been upturned to the humiliation of a razor; his eyes were a cold and steady blue. He carried his left arm somewhat away from his body, for pearl-handled .45s are frowned upon by town marshals, and are a little bulky when packed in the left armhole of one's vest. He looked beyond Captain Boone at the gulf with the impersonal and expressionless dignity of a Chinese emperor.

"Thinkin' of buyin' that 'ar gulf, buddy?" asked the captain, made sarcastic by his narrow escape from a tobaccoless voyage.

"Why, no," said the Kid gently, "I reckon not. I never saw it before. I was just looking at it. Not thinking of selling it, are you?"

"Not this trip," said the captain. "I'll send it to you C. O. D. when I get back to Buenas Tierras. Here comes that capstan-footed lubber with the chewin'. I ought to've weighed anchor an hour ago."

"Is that your ship out there?" asked the Kid.

"Why, yes," answered the captain, "if you want to call a schooner a ship, and I don't mind lyin'. But you better say Miller and Gonzales, owners, and ordinary, plain, Billy-be-damned old Samuel K. Boone, skipper."

"Where are you going to?" asked the refugee.

"Buenas Tierras, coast of South America--I forget what they called the country the last time I was there. Cargo--lumber, corrugated iron, and machetes."

"What kind of a country is it?" asked the Kid--"hot or cold?"

"Warmish, buddy," said the captain. "But a regular Paradise Lost for elegance of scenery and be-yooty of geography. Ye're wakened every morning by the sweet singin' of red birds with seven purple tails, and the sighin' of breezes in the posies and roses. And the inhabitants never work, for they can reach out and pick steamer baskets of the choicest hothouse fruit without gettin' out of bed. And there's no Sunday and no ice and no rent and no troubles and no use and no nothin'. It's a great country for a man to go to sleep with, and wait for somethin' to turn up. The bananys and oranges and hurricanes and pineapples that ye eat comes from there."

"That sounds to me!" said the Kid, at last betraying interest. "What'll the expressage be to take me out there with you?"

"Twenty-four dollars," said Captain Boone; "grub and transportation. Second cabin. I haven't got a first cabin."

"You've got my company," said the Kid, pulling out a buckskin bag.

With three hundred dollars he had gone to Laredo for his regular "blowout." The duel in Valdo's had cut short his season of hilarity, but it had left him with nearly $200 for aid in the flight that it had made necessary.

"All right, buddy," said the captain. "I hope your ma won't blame me for this little childish escapade of yours." He beckoned to one of the boat's crew. "Let Sanchez lift you out to the skiff so you won't get your feet wet."

II

Thacker, the United States consul at Buenas Tierras, was not yet drunk. It was only eleven o'clock; and he never arrived at his desired state of beatitude--a state wherein he sang ancient maudlin vaudeville songs and pelted his screaming parrot with banana peels--until the middle of the afternoon. So, when he looked up from his hammock at the sound of a slight cough, and saw the Kid standing in the door of the consulate, he was still in a condition to extend the hospitality and courtesy due from the representative of a great nation.

"Don't disturb yourself," said the Kid easily. "I just dropped in. They told me it was customary to light at your camp before starting in to round up the town. I just came in on a ship from Texas."

"Glad to see you, Mr. ----," said the consul.

The Kid laughed.

"Sprague Dalton," he said. "It sounds funny to me to hear it. I'm called the Llano Kid in the Rio Grande country."

"I'm Thacker," said the consul. "Take that cane-bottom chair. Now if you've come to invest, you want somebody to advise you. These dingies will cheat you out of the gold in your teeth if you don't understand their ways. Try a cigar?"

"Much obliged," said the Kid, "but if it wasn't for my corn shucks and the little bag in my back pocket, I couldn't live a minute." He took out his "makings," and rolled a cigarette.

"They speak Spanish here," said the consul. "You'll need an interpreter. If there's anything I can do, why, I'd be delighted. If you're buying fruit lands or looking for a concession of any sort, you'll want somebody who knows the ropes to look out for you."

"I speak Spanish," said the Kid, "about nine times better than I do English. Everybody speaks it on the range where I come from. And I'm not in the market for anything."

"You speak Spanish?" said Thacker thoughtfully. He regarded the Kid absorbedly.