As the mills of the gods ground on, Pete Monat, with his bandaged head, and Mike Slattery, still nursing his battered jaw, were removed from the bridal chamber, tried, and lodged in the tanks for safety. Pete had hired a shyster lawyer and got ten years in Yuma; Mike had plead his own case and escaped with only three. It was this last lesson that Pecos conned in his heart. When Slattery the yegg was arrested he had feigned an overpowering drunkenness, and though the case was all against him—he had been caught in the act of burglarizing a lodging-house and was loaded down with loot—he had nevertheless framed up a good defence. With the artless innocence of the skilled "moocher" he explained to the court that while under the influence of no less than seven drinks of straight alcohol he had mistaken another gentleman's room for his own and had gathered up his wardrobe under the misapprehension that it was his own. At every attempt to prove his culpability he had represented that, beyond the main facts, his mind was a complete blank, at the same time giving such a witty description of the paralyzing effects of "Alki" that even the district attorney had laughed. According to Mike that was the way to get off easy, be polite and respectful-like to the judge and jury and jolly up the prosecuting attorney—and in this contention the unfortunate experience of Pete Monat clearly bore him out. Pete had made the fatal mistake of hiring, with two months' back pay, a "sucking lawyer" who had so antagonized the district attorney that that gentleman had become enraged, making such a red-hot speech against the damnable practice of horse-stealing—"a crime, gentlemen of the jury, which, because it may leave the innocent owner of that horse to die of thirst on the desert, ought by rights to be made a capital offence"—that poor Pete was found guilty and sentenced before he could build up a new defence.
"Oh, I don't hold nothin' agin you, Pardner," he replied, in answer to Pecos's solicitude for the influence of his battered head, "the jury didn't cinch me for my looks—it's that dam' narrer-headed jack-lawyer that I got to thank f'r this. He wouldn't let me tell my story, jest the way it was. You know, an' I know, that when a man gits his time on the range the boss is obligated to give him a mount to town. How's a cowboy goin' to git his riggin' to town—walk and pack his saddle? Well, now, jest because I give old Sage some back talk and quit him when he was short-handed he told me to walk; an' me, like the dam' fool I was, I went out and roped a hoss instead. Then, jest to git even, he had me arrested for a hoss-thief. But would this pin-head of a lawyer hear to a straight talk like that? No—he has me plead 'Not guilty' and swear I never took the hoss—an' you know the rest. That district attorney is a mean devil—he won't let nobody stand against him—you might as well plead 'Guilty' and take the mercy of the court as to try to buck against him. But whatever you do, Pardner, don't hire no tin-horn lawyer—I give ten years of my life to find that out." Pete sighed and rubbed his rough hands together wearily—it would be long before they felt the rope and the branding iron and the hard usage of honest toil. A great pity came over Pecos at the thought of his unhappy lot, and he treated him kindly before the other prisoners; but all the time a greater fear was clutching at his heart. Pete had taken a horse, but he had burned a calf—and Arizona hates a rustler worse than it hates a horse-thief. For all his strength and spirit, he was caught—caught like a rat in a trap—and as the imminence of his fate came over him he lost his leonine bearing and became furtive, like the rest of them. Outwardly he was the same, and he ruled the jail with a rod of iron, but at heart he was a true prisoner—cunning, cringing, watchful, dangerous—all his faculties centred upon that one thought, to escape!
CHAPTER XVIII
THE LAW'S DELAY
AS the first hot days of summer came on, the district court of Geronimo County closed; the judge, having decided each case according to the law and the evidence, hurried upon his way, well satisfied; the deputies took a last disconsolate batch of prisoners to Yuma, and Pecos Dalhart sat down to ponder on his case. The tanks were nearly empty now, except for the drunks and vags that the constables brought in and the grist for the next grand jury. It was a dreary grist, each man swearing his innocence with unnatural warmth until the general cynicism of the place shamed him to silence. Pecos loathed them, the whining, browbeaten slaves. After he had sounded the depths of human depravity until there was no more wickedness to learn he drew more and more aloof from his companions, thinking his own thoughts in silence. When Boone Morgan came in, or the Blade reporter, he conversed with them, quietly and respectfully—Boone Morgan could speak a word to the judge, and Baker held the ear of the great public. They were very kind to Pecos now, and often, after some ingenious write-up of his exploits, crowds of visitors would come to stare at the grim rustler who ruled the Kangaroo Court. There were no signs of the social theorist about him now, and the revolution was a broken dream—he could not afford such dreams. Let the rich and the free hold fast to their convictions and their faith—he was trying to get out of jail.
The heat of midsummer came on apace, and the sun, beating against the outer walls, turned the close prison into an oven by day and a black hole of misery at night. The palpitating air seemed to press upon them, killing the thought of sleep, and the prisoners moaned and tossed in their bunks, or fell into fitful slumbers, broken by the high insistent whine of mosquitoes or the curses of the vags. Of curses there were a plenty before the cool weather came, and protests and complaints, but none from Pecos Dalhart. In the long watches of the night he possessed his soul of a mighty patience, to endure all things, if he could only go free. Even with a jail missionary, who distributed tracts and spoke bodingly of a great punishment to come, he was patient; and the missionary, poor simple man that he was, proffered him in return the consolation of religion. Being of a stiffnecked and perverse generation Pecos declined to confess his sins—the missionary might be subpœnaed by the prosecution—but he listened with long-suffering calm to the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, and the parable of the seeds that were sown on stony ground. In themselves the stories were good—nor were they strange to Pecos, for his mother had been a good Methodist—but the preacher spoiled them by a too pointed application of the moral to his own unfortunate case. Still, he let it go—anything was better than listening to the yeggs—and waited for the sermon to end. There was a favor that he wanted to ask. Many years ago—it was at camp-meeting and the shouters were dancing like mad—he had promised his sainted mother to read the Bible through if she would quit agonizing over his soul, but the promise he never kept. Small print was hard on his young eyes that were so quick to see a cow, and he put the matter off until such a time as he should break a leg or get sick or otherwise find time to spare. Well, he had all the time there was, now, and it would give him something to do.
"Say, Pardner," he observed, as the missionary pressed a sheaf of tracts upon him at parting, "is this the best you can do? I was powerful interested in them stories—how about a Bible?"