Peak and Prairie Part 13

"I guess about a week."

"Your mother testified that it happened the same morning."

"Yes, sorr. It was the same marning."

The poor little chap's answers were getting almost inaudible. He looked spent with misery and apprehension. He gave no sign of tears. His wan, pinched little face looked as if he had cried so much in his short life that there was no longer any relief in it. He was soon dismissed, and went shuffling back to his cold corner.

The woman and girls proved no more available for purposes of justice than the boy. Their testimony was perfectly consistent and absolutely unshakable; it had been thoroughly beaten into them, that was clear.

When it came time for Rumpety to plead his own cause before the jury he proved quite equal to the situation. He planted himself before them and harangued them like any third-rate criminal lawyer.

"I tell you, gen'lemen," he declared, "it's no small b'y's job to keep that fahmily in arder!" and he proceeded to describe them as a cantankerous lot, to be ruled only by that ideal justice tempered by mercy which he was apparently a master in dispensing.

At the last he waxed pathetic, and, in a tearful voice, somewhat at odds with his dry, wicked little eyes, he cried, "I've got a row to hoe, that if there was a lot of men in it they'd have hanged themselves from a rafter!"

With which magnificent climax and a profound bow and flourish, he took his seat, and a.s.sumed a pose of invulnerable righteousness from which no invectives nor innuendoes of the prosecuting attorney could move him. He had rested his case on the testimony of his "fahmily," and he knew his jury too well to have much anxiety about their verdict.

The lamps had been lighted long ago, and the early winter evening had set in. The court took a recess, waiting the verdict of the jury. This was the last case on the trial docket for that day.

Rumpety was standing, broad and unblus.h.i.+ng, before the stove, whither, in obedience to his commands, his wife and children had also repaired.

With true prairie courtesy the men had placed chairs for the Rumpety "fahmily," and an unsuccessful attempt was made to converse with them on indifferent topics.

Rumpety stood, plainly gloating over his victims, the queer gleam in his eyes growing more intense every minute.

Mrs. Rumpety did not share her husband's confidence in the issue. Once, when the judge spoke a kind word to her, she muttered, "Ach, your honor!

don't let 'em put the costs on us! Don't let 'em put the costs on us!"

and Rankin, standing by, realized with a pang that even this misery could be increased.

The situation was oppressive. Rankin sauntered out of the room and out of the court-house, closing the door behind him. The air was intensely cold; the stars glittered sharply. He liked it outside; he felt the same relief and exhilaration which he had experienced when he first took possession of his "claim," three years before, and felt himself lord over the barren sweep of prairie. There had been hards.h.i.+p in it; the homely comforts of his father's little down-east farm were lacking,--but it was freedom. Freedom! It used to seem to Rankin, before he knew Myra Beckwith, that freedom was all he wanted in life. This shy, awkward, longlimbed fellow had desired nothing so much as room enough, and he had wrested it from Fate.

He wondered, as he stood out under the stars, why Mrs. Rumpety and her children did not run away. The world was big enough and to spare. They would probably starve, to be sure; but starvation was infinitely better than bondage.

The door at his elbow closed sharply, and a voice cried,--

"Hullo, Rank! did you know that those blamed idiots had acquitted him?"

"I knew they would." Rankin answered, with a jerk which betokened suppressed emotion.

"There's nothing left now but lynching," his friend continued. It was Ray Dolliber, one of the more reckless spirits.

Rankin grunted in a non-committal manner.

"Say, Rank, would you lend a hand?"

"I guess not," Rankin replied slowly, as if deliberating the question.

"Why not?"

"I never did believe in lynching."

"What's the matter with lynching?"

"'T ain't fair play. Masked men, and a lot of 'em, onto one feller."

Dolliber waxed sarcastic.

"P'raps you think it's fair play for a great brute of a man to bully a woman and six children."

"P'raps I do," said Rankin, still deliberating, "but I guess 't ain't likely."

Another man came out of the court-house, leaving the door open behind him. They could see Rumpety pulling on a thick overcoat and winding his ears and throat in a heavy m.u.f.fler. "Come along," he swaggered, with a flourish of the arms; and woman and children, unenc.u.mbered by other wraps than those they had worn all day, followed abjectly and made their way after him to the shed where the team was tied.

"I say, Dolliber, did they say it was fourteen miles to their ranch?"

"Yes."

"South, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"They'll have the wind in their faces."

"You bet!"

A few minutes later the Rumpety wagon went creaking and groaning past the court-house.

Ed Rankin stepped inside and got his leather jacket and woollen m.u.f.fler.

He met the jury straggling out with the crestfallen air of men conscious of an inglorious performance. The judge and the district attorney stood just within the door, waiting for the ranch-wagon.

"They say," said the district attorney, "that Rumpety never does a stroke of work."

"Saves up his strength for bullying his family," the judge rejoined. "He takes good care of himself. Did you see how warmly he was dressed?"

"Yes, curse him!"

"It would be a mercy if the others were to freeze to death on the way home."

"Seems likely enough, too; but it would be rather hard on the three little brats waiting at the ranch for their mother."

Rankin, meanwhile, had got himself equipped for his long ride.

There was to be a dance in the court-house that evening, and some men were sweeping the sawdust into a corner and setting the benches against the wall.

"Ain't you goin' to stay for the dance, Ed?" one of them asked. "The girls are all coming."

Rankin felt himself blush ignominiously.

"No," he growled. "I've got some work to do to-night."