AFTER THE VERDICT
Peter Blunt stared helplessly up at the eastern sky. His brain was whirling, and he stared without being conscious of the reason.
He breathed heavily, like a man saturating his lungs with pure air after long confinement in a foul atmosphere. Then it almost seemed as if his great frame shrank in stature, and became suddenly a wreck of itself. As if age and decay had suddenly come upon him. As if the weight of his body had become too heavy for him, and set his great limbs tottering under it as he walked.
The excitement, the straining of thought and nerve had passed, leaving him hopelessly oppressed, twenty years older.
The din and clamor of the final scenes in the saloon were still ringing in his ears. It was all over. The farce of Jim Thorpe’s trial had been played out. But the shouts of men, hungering for the life of a fellow man, still haunted him. The voice of the accuser was still shrieking through his brain. The memory of the stern condemnation of Doc Crombie left his great heart crushed and helpless.
His brain was still whirling with all the strain he had gone through, his pulses were still hammering with the consuming anger which had raged in him as he stood beside his friend defending him to the last. And it had 365 all proved useless. Jim Thorpe had been condemned by the ballot of his fellow citizens. Death––a hideous, disgraceful death was to be his, at the moment when the gray dawn should first lift the eastern corner of the pall of night.
The saloon was behind Peter now. Its lights were still burning. For the condemned man was to remain there with his guards until the appointed time.
Peter remembered Jim’s look when he finally bade him leave him. Could he ever forget it? He had seen death in many forms in his time. He had seen many men face it, each in his own way. But never in his life had he seen such calmness, such apparent indifference as Jim Thorpe had displayed.
When the ballot was taken and the doctor pronounced sentence, there was never a tremor of an eyelid. There was not even one quick-drawn breath. Nor was there a suggestion of any emotion––save that of indifference.
Then when the doctor had named the manner of his death––a rawhide rope on the bough of a tree––Jim had turned with a smile to Peter.
“I’d prefer to be shot,” he said quietly. “But there, I s’pose this thing must proceed by custom.”
So Jim received the pronouncement of the final penalty for a crime of which Peter was convinced he was innocent.
It had suddenly set his loyal heart longing with a mad, passionate longing to have his great hands about the mean throat of the man Smallbones. It had set him wild with rebellion against the merciless customs which permitted such an outrage upon justice. He had even challenged the doctor in his fury, on his right to administer 366 justice and accept the condemnation of the men gathered there for the purpose.
In his desire to serve his friend he passed beyond the bounds of all discretion, of all safety for himself. He threatened that he would move the whole world to bring just retribution upon those who had participated in that night’s work. And his threats and violence had been received with a tolerant laughter. A derision more stinging and ominous than the most furious outbreak.
The work would go on. The death penalty would be carried out. He knew it. He knew it.
Then when it was all over, and the prisoner’s guards had been appointed, Jim had begged him to leave him.
“Thanks, Peter, old friend,” he said. And then added with a whimsical touch: “I’m tired to death of hearing your dear old voice. You’ve said such a heap to-night. Get along. I don’t want you any more. You see you’re too big, and you sure take up too much room––in my heart. So long.”
So he had been driven from his friend’s side, and out into the blackest night he had ever known.
Yes, it was an old, old man that now lurched his way across the market-place toward his hut. He was weary, so weary in mind and spirit. There was nothing now left for him to do but to go home and––and sit there till the dawn. Was there no hope, none? There was none. No earthly force could save Jim now. It wanted less than an hour to dawn, and, between now and then–––
And yet he believed Jim could have saved himself. There was not a man in that room, from Doc Crombie downward, but knew that Jim was holding back something. What was it? And why did he not speak? 367 Peter had asked him while the farce of a trial was at its height. He had begged and implored him to speak out, but the answer he received was the same as had been given to the doctor. Jim had told all he had to tell. Oh, the whole thing was madness––madness.
But there was no madness in Jim, he admitted. Once when his importunities tried him Jim had shown him just one brief glimpse of the heart which no death penalty had the power to reveal.
Peter remembered his words now; they would live in his memory to his dying day.
“You sure make me angry, Peter,” he had said. “Even to you, old friend, I have nothing more to say of this killing than I have said to Doc, and the rest of ’em. I’ve done many a fool trick in my time, and maybe I’m doing another now. But I’m doing it with my eyes wide open. There’s the rope ahead, a nasty, ugly, curly rope; maybe plaited by a half-breed with dirty hands. But what’s the odds? Perhaps there’s a stray bit of comfort in that rope, in the thought of it. You know the old prairie saw: ‘It isn’t always the sunniest day makes the best picnic.’ Which means, I take it, choose your company of girls and boys well, and, rain or shine, you’ll have a bully time. Maybe there’s a deal I could say if I so chose, but, in the meantime, I kind of believe there’s worse things in the world than––a rawhide rope.”
It was just a glimpse of the man behind his mask of indifference, and Peter wondered.
But there was no key to the riddle in his words, no key at all. Somehow, in a vague sort of way, it seemed to him that Eve Henderson was in a measure the influence behind Jim. But he could not see how. He was well 368 aware of Jim’s love for her, and he believed that she was less indifferent to him now than when Will had been running straight. But for the life of him he could see no definite connection between such a matter and the murder. It was all so obscure––so obscure.
And now there was nothing left but to wait for the hideous end. He lurched into his hut, and, without even troubling to light his lamp, flung himself upon his bed.