Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories

by Florence Finch Kelly

It all happened a good many years ago, when Harrison Winthrop Coolidge, then a comparatively young man and newly married, had just come out from Massachusetts to be Governor of New Mexico. His wife was a young woman of tall and shapely figure, handsome face, and striking presence, and possessed of such vivacity, vigor, health, and strength as few women enjoy. Her superabundant vitality found many emergencies upon which to expend itself, but the man who told me this story declared that she never found one that was too big for her. She probably never found a bigger or more important one than that which she faced on the night when she won her spurs. Governor and Mrs. Coolidge reached New Mexico in the days of the first coming of the railroad, when the sleepy old Territory woke to a brief season of active and hilarious life. And the Governor, fresh from New England reverence for law and legal forms and accepted methods, was inexpressibly shocked by the low opinion in which such things were held in his new bailiwick. Especially was he horrified by the frequent and brief proceedings which left men who had been too free with their guns or with other people's property hanging from trees, projecting beams, and other convenient places. The usual rough justice of the affair did not, in his eyes, mitigate the offensiveness of its irregularity.

The Santa Fé Bugle at once interviewed him about his plans and intentions, and Governor Coolidge talked very strongly on the subject of lynch law. He said that it was entirely wrong, unworthy even of barbarians, and was not to be endorsed or palliated in either principle or practice. He deplored the frequency of its operations in New Mexico, and emphatically declared his intention of stamping it out.

And he took that opportunity to announce that all persons connected with lynching affairs would be treated as murderers or accessories to murder.

The editor of The Bugle, which was the organ of the opposition, published every word the Governor said, and then gleefully waited for something to happen. He did not know what it would be, but he was perfectly sure there would be something, and that it would be interesting.

On the night after the interview was published Mrs. Coolidge awoke, possessed by an uneasy feeling that something unusual was taking place. They were living then in the ancient adobe "Governor's palace," with its four-foot walls and its eventful history ante-dating the landing at Plymouth Rock, and for a half-waking instant she wondered if some unshriven victim of century-gone enmity and revenge still walked those old halls or sought its mortal habiliments among the rotting bones in the placita. She listened and heard whispering voices and cautious movements in the portal that fronted the entire length of the building. Then she arose, wrapped a long, dark cloak about her, and peeped out of the window. Directly in front of their bedroom, in the portal, were three or four men who bore among them some long and heavy burden. She drew her dark hair across her face, that there might be no white gleam to attract their attention, and crouched beside the window to watch.

One of the men, who was apparently a leader, mounted the shoulders of two others and seemed to be feeling for something in the wall above the window. The dim rays of an old moon, which showed that the time must be near morning, did not afford as much light as he needed, and he fumbled for some time before he found the hook in the wall for which he was looking. Over it he passed the end of a rope and then jumped to the ground. They pulled together on the rope, and the long, dark burden, which had been left lying on the ground, was drawn upward until it hung in front of the window beside which Mrs. Coolidge was watching, and she saw that it was a human body. Then they fastened the rope to one of the iron bars across the window and stood for a few moments looking at the swaying body and chuckling together. The one who seemed to be the leader rolled a cigarette and lighted it, and by the glare of the match she recognized him. He was a man of prominence in Santa Fé and the leader of the opposing party, not only locally but for the whole Territory as well.

Mrs. Coolidge's first impulse was to awaken her husband, but a swift intuition warned her that that would not be wise. So she controlled her horror and indignation, and, as she stared at the poor, lifeless thing swaying outside, she did some very rapid thinking. She understood that there had been a lynching and that the corpse had been brought there and hung in front of her husband's bedroom window, where his first waking glance would fall upon it, as a sign of how public opinion regarded his ideas and intentions on the subject of lynch law. She saw that it was intended as a warning and a contemptuous defiance, and her spirit rose high in righteous wrath. She knew well that this event presaged for the Governor trouble and humiliation, and probably, if a conflict were precipitated at once, an early defeat, and she quickly decided that he must not see the body or know what had happened. But what could she do with it?

Then an idea occurred to her and she smiled and said to herself that it was impossible. But it seemed such a good idea, and it pleased her so much, that she kept on thinking about it. Presently she assured herself that her husband was still sleeping quietly; then she put on some clothes, and, laughing softly, went out on the portal.

The man who had been the leader in the affair that night, and whom Mrs. Coolidge had recognized, was awakened early the next morning by the sound of voices in front of his house. It was barely dawn, but already a little group of Mexicans were staring at his door and talking with much excitement. Wondering what it could mean he hastily dressed himself and went out. As he opened the front door he ran into the body of the man, swinging above his own threshold, which he had left a few hours before hanging at the Governor's window.

"My jaw dropped and I shut the door mighty quick, when I saw that," he told me, with a reminiscent, amused chuckle at himself. "I knew in a second that the Governor was onto us, that he must have seen us in front of his window, and that it was up to me to do some lively pullin' of freight. As a matter of fact, I had n't had anything to do with the lynching. That had been done by some cowboys who were in town the day before, and the fellow they 'd done for was an ornery cuss of a half-breed Mexican, who was a whole lot better off dead than alive, anyway. He tried to play some low-down game on 'em at poker, and they just strung him up and rode off. Some of our fellows heard about it, and three or four of us decided it would be a good thing to let Coolidge know what our sentiments were.